Baracking for Reform
John McCain is the wrong guy to look up to when it comes to lobbying reform, mostly because it involves money, something he’s got trouble turning down, but you’ve got to love Barack Obama’s zeal and the Democratic Party’s proposal for an independent commission, perhaps especially since it gets up McCain’s nose. It is, however, rarely a good idea to rush through legislation, even when the need, as in this case was revealed with the Abramoff crash-and-burn, is so patently obvious. Total travel ban or partial? 60-vote requirement on “earmarks” or no vote? Whatever else happens, one thing is clear: the now-public spat between Senators McCain and Obama is just the Arizonan’s ego getting in the way of substantial work. Ever since the S&L crisis, McCain’s been trying to paint a fiduciary picture of himself, coming off more whited sepulchre than White House material most of the time.

RU486 Debate
Next week the House of Representatives will vote on whether the Health Minister gets to keep his discretion over pharmaceuticals or if the Therapeutic Goods Administration can use science to decide whether a drug is safe or not. While the argument that scientists would do whatever science itself demands, that’s basically saying that they have no ethics or morals of their own, and that’s just nonsense, not to mention insulting. And while Tony Abbott says he’d review individual applications for the prescription, that, too, is nonsense, since the time necessary to bring an application would exceed that required for the use of the drug, not to mention that even if such a submission were made in time, he’d only have to “think about it” for a day in order to exceed the window of opportunity. But with the Senate already on board, perhaps this is soon to become a non-issue? About time, but a little too late, as far as how the issue has been framed in public perception. Originally, this was the “morning after pill,” and that was a far better description of its use and intention than the “abortion pill,” as it’s been allowed to become. RU486 doesn’t trigger miscarriage per se, neither does it cause an abortion, although a D&C procedure is part of the care required for persons taking the drug. What it does do is to prevent the implantation of the egg in the uterine wall. It’s little different than an IUD, such devices themselves being little different than a condom or the Pill. For Abbott, these are all the same, as they are for many fundamentalist Christians, perhaps especially Catholics up on their doctrine, but even Rome remains focussed on abortion itself, not birth control (although the larger issues have had their encyclical moments), so reproductive health largely gets to stay a private matter between doctor and patient, not a public policy debate. To me, this is not a matter of conscience, just science. Mr. Abbott, as it’s been so wittily proclaimed, can get his “rosaries off [women’s] ovaries” and let the TGA do its job.

Who’s Fighting Terror
George Bush is claiming credit for thwarting an attack in Los Angeles in 2002, and I thank him for it, right along with thanking everyone else who was involved, like the unnamed Southeast Asian nation who actually captured and interrogated the al Qaeda operative behind the scheme. But let’s look at the mechanisms: was unrestricted electronic surveillance without warrants the key to breaking up the plot? Was it a result of information gathered in Iraq? No, it was international cooperation. Let’s keep some perspective, o.k.?

(And can somebody explain to our President that while the two words may have many of the same letters in common, “liberty” and “library” are related only insofar as there should be no infringement of one upon the other in that damned USA Patriot Act?)

Use of Force
In 2001, Congress authorized the use of force by the President in retaliating for and preventing further acts of terrorism. The resolution passed is now being used as an override to the 1978 law precluding domestic surveillance. Insofar as the NSA has used its computers to monitor thousands upon thousands of emails and other transmissions across telephone lines, it could be said that Bush’s order for them to do so was a brute force” approach, and therefore legal. That’s the best excuse I can come up with for him, not that I’m usually in that business. Nevertheless, as an American citizen, it’s my duty to support the President*, and offering stupid excuses for a man too stupid to come up with his own surely qualifies.

* Only if you’re listening to Britney Spears, of course, since it’s only convention that the “elected” leader should be accepted as President, and you still get to disagree with him and even actively oppose the stupid things he does.

The Spam Defense
The argument in Parliament over how RU-486 should be managed in Australia is headed for the ludicrous much faster than I'd have expected, even with Health Mininster Tony Abbott laying about him with every club within reach. The idea he's presenting now, that RU-486 is female Viagra, just shows how far he'll go to maintain ministerial control over this one drug, despite all rational argument. Giving the Therapeutic Drug Admininstration oversight of RU-486 doesn't seem like any reason to believe in a sudden black market for the drug; just the opposite, in fact. While the availability of Viagra over the internet is certainly clogging up the email accounts of many people, that isn't because there's no one at a ministerial or cabinet level imposing control by fiat over a therapeutic substance scientifically judged safe and effective within the limits of its intended purpose and physician-directed utilization. Abbott's getting desperate, but it's his private ideology in operation, not politics, and certainly not medicine.

Half
The AP scorecard on the State of the Union speech shows up the Bush administration for the half-truths and lies of omission it’s built on. Reduce dependence on Middle East oil, not all oil imports, not oil overall. (Yet when he refers to Iraq as a “strategic nation,” he means it’s got lots of oil. For us.) Provide health care to the poor and elderly, but only pharmaceuticals and even then miss tens of thousands, increase the number of uninsured Americans, and cut spending. Blame Congress for failing to act on proposals to save Social Security but forget to mention that no such proposal was ever actually issued in a way anyone could act on it, let alone that the ideas floated around at various sycophant-fests only addressed part of the workforce funnelling their FICA taxes into Wall Street. Progress in Iraq? Don’t mention the war. (Seriously, did he say “further decrease our troop levels”? Does he mean coalition members pulling their soldiers out? And citing what’s happened in Egypt and Palestine doesn’t inspire hope for democracy in the Middle East, which I guess is what he means when he says their democracies won’t “look like our[s].”) Katrina? Forget “stronger levees,” let alone any redevelopment money; the $85 billion is in business loans and temporary housing assistance, and the levees will only be built up as strong as they were before the hurricane. Those school programs he wants aren’t going to stop a Force-5 storm. The focus on homeland security is all wiretaps all the time and ignores FISA (although the way he puts it, it sounds like he applied for and received warrants, even though that never happened), never addresses how having 8 congresspersons in for a chat constitutes legislative oversight, and dissembles over the fact that thousands of leads forwarded by the NSA to the FBI were useless dead ends targeting entirely innocent American citizens, not “al Qaeda operatives”. The so-called No Child Left Behind act keeps turning out to be a song-and-dance number, and non-security deficit reduction is a joke with no punchline, unless you think “make the tax cuts (that benefit the rich over the poor) permanent” is funny or enjoy hearing about the billions of dollars being mishandled in Iraq, which means only that the kind of stewardship the American people might enjoy is missing, leaving the economic burden to lie more and more heavily on working people’s backs. Over 5,000 words, lots of optimism and triumphalism, stirring, surely, but empty, devoid of real meaning, because every freedom he proclaims he tramples on, every ethical principal he trumpets he violates. If the state of the Union is strong, it is so no thanks to the President.

Who Knows
In the U.S. I could often get by just showing a set of credit cards to claim my identity to some officious bureaucrat, although I doubt that’d work now, especially flying, when the airlines were already getting pretty severe about photo ID before anyone flew a plane into a building, but here I’ve got to make up what’s known as 100 points of identification. Right now, no one can present 100 points with a single piece of ID unless you’re under 18. A passport is only 70 points, as is a birth certificate (although, and rightly so, a birth certificate isn’t properly identification at all, but only, as I was once told when attempting to renew a U.S. passport, proof I was born in the country, but that’s a separate story), a driver’s license is 40. Once you get to the credit cards and so forth, you’re working with 25 points apiece. While proposals are floating around for a National ID Card (interest in which was renewed following the London bombings last July, and which continues despite the recent finding that they’d have been entirely useless in preventing the attacks, something any reasonably intelligent person would already know), the points are part of the requirements of the Privacy Laws, legislation that keeps my details from being spread around too liberally, but which also cause some troublesome interference both in extraordinary circumstances and the quotidian. So while employers must exercise great care in what data they collect and store, let alone give out, and airlines couldn’t help the government figure out who any Australians were potentially caught up in the Boxing Day Tsunami, they also make sure I’ve got to front up to a teller at the bank in order to transact anything beyond the simplest on-line transaction or send original documents through the post for authentication. Such laws are even more robust elsewhere, and what Dracula’s proposing seems meant to bring Australia up the scale as well, while allowing particular loopholes for the government. In other words, more complexity for me, less for them.

If We Could See Ourselves as Others See Us
And we can. What’s remarkable – though unsurprising – is how the negatives are denied by Americans and the positives embraced, in counterpoint to the overall trend. Sure, the agreement among Americans to “America scares me” is bound to be low (although how that’s possible with today’s Senate vote on cloture giving Alito a clear path to the Supreme Court, among other things), but look at some of the other questions, like “America is a force for good in the world” or even more “America is reaping the thorns planted by its rulers in the world,” where we’re alone in the view that we’re not. Of course, nearly everyone likes our movies, and that’s something, right? (Maybe not, since most other countries don’t regard our cultural output as something to emulate.) But meanwhile, while most people around the world seem to think al Qaeda is more dangerous than America, they also tend to agree that American military strength makes the world more dangerous rather than safer.

Maybe therapy would help.

The JFK Look-Alike Caucus
Remember Bob Forehead? Funny how, more than twenty years later, we’re still dealing with the Reagan legacy. Look at ‘em. All earnest hair and serious mien. Unfortunately, with the House and Senate and the White House all dominated by the same generation of crooks and liars of a single party, there are no checks and balances worthy of the concept, particularly with Alito set to join the Supreme Court, the American system of government is going partisan in way perhaps never seen before. There’s been a lot of talk of impeachment and special prosecutors and so forth, but I don’t see it going anywhere. Why should it? While Patrick Fitzgerald is pursuing the Plame affair, even with Libby rolling, I don’t see a result worth the effort being forthcoming. And Bush? Nada. So all that’s left is consoling myself with old “Washingtoon” comics, seeing the relevance as much as ever, maybe even in the correspondence between Ken Lay and Mr. Oxboggle.

Yo’ Mama
Quite a lot of discussion on where ‘Diss’ songs originate over on Boing-Boing, where I note attributions being corrected to Old Norse, the Romans, etc. But surely if we’re tracing the line back from rap, yes, we’ll go through the dozens, but rather than Vikings or Catullus or other European white folk, we ought to find our way back to the griot tradition, a sort of poet laureate role employed by any person of status among a wide array of African societies in which the singer composes and performs paens to the worthy person, citing their family history and its significance. Because this is an oral tradition, there’d be no records of ancient practices, but it seems pretty obvious that there’d be an ancillary tradition of taking the mickey, too, both in a spirit of just plain fun but also as a more spiteful practice for when someone’s failed to pay the negotiated fee and so forth. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it. In fact, I’d say the Romans got it from the Egyptians who got it from the sub-Saharan Africans, and the Vikings got it from the Romans, and so on. But these chains of causation are really pretty tenuous, since I'm sure many different strands of oral history have also developed satirical versions of themselves. Who wouldn't want to make fun of the king? It even works today.

4th Act
Over at the Counsellor’s, I read a reminder of the old Gatsby line that there are no second acts in America, as well as Bill’s assessment that indeed America is all second acts. Sometimes, it seems to me after this weekend’s cinema-going, there are even third and fourth acts. The Palace Verona had a preview of Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic, and he’s an example of much the U.S. loves an underdog and how often they’re willing to let him have another go. Not only did Cash manage to make his big ’68 Folsom prison comeback, he did it with his personal life shortly thereafter, marrying June Carter, once he’d gotten himself off the pills, and that’s one of the best examples of success – in both the personal and professional spheres – of all time. Then, marginalized by and large musically, Cash had his third act in the 90’s with the release of a string of albums of cover songs in which he redefined iconic and lost material by other artists in a way that better expressed his own genius than nearly anything he’d ever done before. Now that this movie’s out, he’s sure to see a posthumous fourth act, and rightly so. While the critics have often focussed on the linear narrative as a flaw, I don’t see much point in doing anything else (perhaps especially since it finishes up with his marriage to June Carter). Although pretty much all of the story is well known enough to many if not most people, the lack of revelations doesn’t detract. The music works to help engage the audience with the rise and periodic falls of the man and his career, and the performances keep us engaged with the characters on a personal level that works just fine. You’re rooting for the guy all the way through, so that every time you think, that’s it, what a wash-out, Joaquim Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon pull a Cash and/or Carter number out that revs you right back up into their lives. T. Bone Burnett’s music is terrific, too, as is the overall look and feel of the picture.

A Man Walk into a Doctor's Office with a Parrot on His Head . . .
The idea of creating a nurse-staffed medical diagnosis hotline sounds pretty iffy. I'm sure there would be instances where the nurse would be able to say, "Take two aspirin," etc., but the reduction in ER examinations followed by treat-and-releases would, I think, be slight, and perhaps not worth the cost of setting it up and staffing it. While I'm glad enough that Health Minister Tony Abbott is trying to do something about the rising cost of health care in this country, the fact that the Liberals have pushed the country more and more into private cover has been of much more concern to me; this is, after all, where we rank-and-file members of the society take the pocket-book hit. So what's really at stake is the future of Medicare. Unless the government can find a way to continue funding it, they'll remove it, a piece at a time, and let us fund our own care, U.S.-style, and we all know what a success that's turning out to be over the long term. Also, the states have let the quality of medical care in hospitals fall, at least if we can judge by the number of stories of emergency rooms denying ambulances entry and reports of malpractice-related injury and death. From my own experience, I look at those with a jaundiced eye, but I also don't live outside a major metropolitan center, putting me at a distinct advantage in any analysis of modern health care.

Brokeback
Even after The Shipping News, I’d probably go see anything adapted from an Annie Proulx story, but right now I can’t remember if it was the original story, which I read in the New Yorker when it appeared, all the pre-release hype, or just the immediate recognition somehow that Brokeback Mountain was going to be a terrific movie, that drove us to ensure our place in the theatre for opening day by purchasing a pair of tickets days in advance. Well, all that and the fact that living as close to Oxford Street, where Sydney’s gay community tends to congregate, meant that sold-out sessions were in the cards unless we did. Even then, showing up early still left us facing a line down the block to get in.

The reviews we’ve seen have all tried to find something negative to say, but failed, ultimately. “Lingers too long on the landscape,” we’d hear, or something more or less to that effect. Sorry, no, I don’t think so at all. In that specific, for example, the vastness, the sweeping reach, oh, never mind, every shot worked with the characters, with the performances of the people, to give us something more than some drawing room version would have. And the actors were terrific. Who knew Heath Ledger had it in him to be that good? As he’s said in an interview, without the benefit of working on stage or taking acting lessons, he’s made all his learning-curve mistakes on screen, but if that’s what it takes to put on a performance like this one, it’s been worth all the Knight’s Tale’s he wants to make.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking of it as the “gay cowboy movie,” that misses everything important about it, mischaracterizes it in a demeaning fashion. (Not that there’s anything wrong with gay cowboys.) Brokeback Mountain is a heartbreaking story. Ang Lee has applied an incredibly sympathetic eye to every element of the movie, not just the characters and the story itself, but even to the 1970’s electric carving knife – hey, Dad had one of those! – used in one scene of domestic intranquillity, for example. I’d have expected it from the director of The Ice Storm and even Crouching Tiger, if not The Incredible Hulk (but maybe I underestimate what he tried to do there). Everything in the movie contributes to the story, everything breaks your heart.

Midterm
With Ariel Sharon out of the political picture permanently (other than in respect to his legacy, a mixed bag at best), the Palestinian elections became even more significant than they were bound to be already. The win by Hamas has probably been inevitable since Arafat’s death, if perhaps not expected to be so at such a large margin. Hamas has, over many years now, provided the social services the PLA were never able to unmire themselves from their own internecine conflicts and corruption long enough to establish, even though those were the very things needed to put “Authority” in place of “Organization.” Their control of southern Lebanon and the support of Syria made them a political contender in a way that Arafat couldn’t do for himself, for all his bravado, bluster, and Nobel Prize-winner status (the man who wore a gun to the UN? who orchestrated the ’72 Olympics massacre?), let alone with whatever small help the US ever provided. What will come from this has all the appearance of a hydra’s head: lop off Arafat and seven times worse grows from its neck, and without even the cauterizing power of a strong man in the Knesset.

Happy Australia Day
Or, as Columbus Day is known among the indigenous population back home, "Invasion Day." Today is the commemoration of the landing of the First Fleet, a fun fact I ought to commit to memory as much interview for citizenship approaches (next Friday, itself also a more personal anniversary), although luckily, I won't be required to make much of an effort, apparently, a situation at least one politician would like to remedy. Although I'll miss out on being included among this year's new citizen crop, I wasn't going to get a card from the PM anyway, let alone any other notice, since Canberra isn't my local council. Nevertheless, I understand Sydney Councils hand out tree seedlings. Much as I'd rather some basil or a tomato plant, it will be an interesting experiment when the time comes to see what my roots grow to on the balcony.

Oh, and I started the day with an 8K run, sponsored by one of those private healthcover insurance companies. I'll post the results when they do, along with any photo I can turn up - not that my results were such I'm eager to publish them, but it was the first run since we got back from Terrigal, so I'll take that as my excuse.

Up or Down
After invalidating their own whinging claim regarding the entitlement of judicial nominees to an “up or down vote” by forwarding an unqualified candidate for review to the Supreme Court, subsequently withdrawn, the GOP-dominated Judiciary Committee has now sent the latest Bush ideologue to the full Senate with approval split 10-8 on party lines. As Howard Dean has said, Alito must be rejected. He approves of the Bush violations to the checks-and-balances system established 200 years ago that has worked so well all this time, as well as being a fundamentalist zealot who believes in legislating morality even when the issue at question may be simply medical. With him and Roberts in the Nine, we’ve only got Kennedy to rely upon for nuanced and thoughtful votes, many of which we can expect on a court so constituted to end up as dissents only. If any of the Republican legislators had the true courage of their self-touted “moral values,” the vote on Alito might have gone the other way, and it still might, when the remaining 82 vote. I doubt the utility of a filibuster on this, except as a way to let the Repugnants eliminate the option, but I still hope for a strong fight from Senator Reid and his colleagues.

Tax Cuts
Abolishing the 15% tax on superannuation make sense to me. “Super,” as its called, is the primary retirement fund mechanism for working Australians, and consists of an annualized 9% of salary paid by employers into specially-designated mutual funds. This contribution towards employees’ retirement is treated as part of their “total compensation,” much the way health and welfare benefits are in the U.S., although, under normal “permanent” employment conditions, it’s compulsory. Of course, that’s the idea behind “total compensation” – that employees aren’t simply paid a wage, they cost their employers much more, and those costs, too, are part of what an employee is “worth.” Fair enough, I suppose, to an extent, and in the case of superannuation – unlike the U.S. 401(k) programs, where I’m contributing pre-tax funds matched in part as a benefit by my employer – it’s free money to me for when I’m old enough to make that “sea change,” only costing me that 15%. That’s if I’m not misunderstanding the tax at issue. It’s possible, reading this article, that the 15% is being levied annually against the funds themselves. Since I’m also paying exorbitant administrative fees – me, mind you, not my employer (and again, fair enough), an additional 15% to the government just so I can have retirement funds is 15% more than I’m willing to pay. Tax me when I retire, if it comes to that, not before, so the funds have a chance to develop into something I actually can retire on.

Rogue State
When Will Ferrell did his version of the GWB “axis of evil” speech, I was incapacitated with laughter. “You know who else is in the Axis of Evil? France. How do you like that, France?” Guess what? Well, really, France has long been a member of the nuclear club, and one of the more active ones, too, regularly irradiating Pacific atolls explosively. Like the great hero of the West, George II, Chirac has decided to make his country’s position clear: if you screw with our oil supplies, we will nuke you. (Will Ferrell also had Bush include Cheney in the “axis,” but there’s no hope of France doing the same.)

Resolution
Google Earth is pretty fun, all things considered, and the other day a friend sent a snapshot with our apartment block tagged, leading me to spend a little time on-line, working out from the satellite image not only where home is, but also the office, scrolling along an arm of the harbour as it becomes the Parramatta River until I located the park where I run during lunch. The image below is just a screenshot, so it won't zoom in, but you might use the coordinates and scroll around yourself, if you're that interested.

Women & God
How Julia Bard became the pundit of all things feminist and religious for the Sydney Morning Herald escapes me, especially whenever I read her latest thoughts on either, let alone both. Is she married to someone there or related to some high-ranking clergy[person]? Apparently, feminism isn’t just responsible for abortion, but gay marriage, censorship, and atheism, not to mention, well, feminism. (And I think she means “apocalyptic” not “apocryphal” when she quotes Manning Clark, but given the rest of her thesis, I may be wrong.) Even worse, those feminists who ran screaming from church are also responsible for the patriarchal politicians embracing the patriarchal power structures left behind, as if that hadn’t already been a power relationship well-entrenched and part of what so many over the last 50 years and more have rejected. I’ll give Ms (Miss? Mrs?) Baird one thing: at least she’s trying to think and not an Ann Coulter wannabe like Miranda Devine.

Beachiness
4 nights on the Central Coast, just steps away from the beach (although a deal further from the patrolled section), was everything it ought to be, except longer. Our hotel looked out over the Terrigal Council Lagoon – a semi-artificial body of water where we did a bit of paddling about (but no swimming, because it’s full of rain water runoff after its initial annual refill by the Council, who open a channel to the sea and let the tide do its work, then backfill it until next year) – and a little close to the road, which was not really a problem. We ate well enough, too, at the various restaurants around town, although, opting for a pizza-delivery one night proved to be disappointing. The Break offers “gourmet” pizzas, which they’ve defined as meaning small and expensive. Look, I hate to break it to you, but “gourmet” is defined by the ingredients, their variety if not their quality, and not by quantity. When I lay out $20 for a pizza, I expect at least a 12-inch circumference, not 7. Even 10 would have been o.k., so when M. asked how large a Large is, you might have said something other than “6 slices,” especially since what you sent was only divided in quarters anyway. At least the salad had macadamia nuts. It was fun calling them back and explaining all that to them, although they offered nothing else in satisfaction and we ended up going down to the restaurant attached to the Clan hotel to pick up a bit extra. The Haven provided the best meal of the trip, and I was very pleased with their vegetarian menu, something none of the other restaurants – all naturally enough focussed on seafood – thought to provide other than the usual risottos and pastas. (They also handed me a sub rosa bottle of wine, not having gotten their license yet since reopening a few weeks ago. How that works is a mystery, but I won’t question it.)

The weather wasn’t brilliant, with only Saturday offering the kind of sunshine one requires of a beach holiday, but it only really rained heavily the one day, so while our tans may not be what they might otherwise, since we practice “Slip, Slap, Slop” (slip on a shirt, slap on a hat, slop on some sunscreen, as the jingle goes), we weren’t going to be terrifically browned to begin with.

Of course, not having a car means that we only saw as much of the Central Coast as is visible from the beach or the top of the “Skillion,” a local promontory, except for the first day I went jogging and ended up somehow 10-12 kilometres further from home than I’d anticipated, my sense of direction leading me ever further from the beach (and south) than I’d meant to go, so I got to see Bateau Bay and Forrester’s Beach from the top of the highest coastal hill in the area, but was fully sore for the next two days, having done something approaching a half marathon – not all at a run, of course, since I’m not even ready for a half a half a marathon – by the time I made it back to the hotel, three hours past what I’d planned for or what M. could endure before wondering where to start calling and how to describe me in order to determine what hospital or morgue she’d have to visit.

The train to and from Gosford was quick and the bus rides not too trying, although passing through retirement communities did leave us subject to many little old ladies and men counting out their exact change fares, pre-calculated at pre-fare increase prices, sometimes causing some consternation and usually no little fumbling for change purses for the extra thirty cents. I consoled myself with the knowledge that someday I will be the one doing the fumbling and tripping over my own cane.

The return to Sydney proved humid beyond endurance after the gentle zephyrs of the coast, but we’re resolved not to fail in having another vacation before another four years have passed.

Summertime
Now that we all know that last year was the hottest overall on record, and with this year starting off with a record temperature bang, we’re off to fabulous Terrigal for a quick holiday. As happy as I’d be to simply lie around the beach, there are various sights worth a look, including the lagoon and the Skillion, a bit of headland so named for its shape, resembling a sloping roof with no ridge or peak. Everybody says, oh, yes, don’t forget to go look at the Skillion. So we will, and then lie around on the beach until it’s time for a swim.

Meanwhile, if you need something to read on the web, I suggest Alien Loves Predator

Update: There's a lot of !!!! over sharks the past few days, as a result of a swimmer being killed up in Queensland, but sightings 50 metres from swimmers don't constitute "close" in my mind (and one of the four reported was cited in another paper as being 100 metres away), being more than half a football field (gridiron, American football) in distance. Admittedly, if the fish decides to pick me out, even from that distance he's going to get me before I even know he's there, let alone can swim to shore. But while my post-Jaws instinct is to chant, Cowardly Lion-style, "I do believe in sharks, I do, I do, I do," instead my mantra will be "I do believe in nets."

Free Trade Isn’t
The free trade agreement reached between the U.S. and Australia last year was widely touted as a bad deal, although a lot of the noise, coming as it did from celebrities, focussed on the devastation expected to film and television in this country, something pretty well effectively accomplished long before, at least if you’ve ever watched any of the shows on offer from the three broadcast networks or gone to a multiplex cinema. It turns out to have been worse than that, with imports up and exports down. So Mark Vaile, deputy PM and chief trade negotiator is going to work on selling sugar to America at the expense of access to generic drugs. But don’t worry too much about it: the U.S. is tremendously protective of its sugar producers, famously keeping the trade embargo against Cuba on behalf of cane growers (what, you thought it was about the cigars?), so Vaile will be free to sell out to Big-Pharma without a bad conscience, but with the satisfaction of whacking National Party whipping boy Barnaby Joyce over the nose for ever speaking up. How’s the sugar crop in Brazil?

Sold Out
Remember John McCain’s principled bill against torture and abuse of prisoners? He had to fight Cheney tooth and nail, but won against the White House in the end, didn’t he? Except every (uninformed) Democrats’ fantasy of the savior of the GOP sold out all prisoners in Guantanamo in exchange for avoiding Bush’s veto. It’s unclear from the news report if this is only the existing set of prisoners or all future “illegal combatants” sent to Cuba, but for a man who experienced the depredations of the North Vietnamese, this would be a surprising and disappointing concession.

The Fire Every Time
The bushfires started early this year but seemed to stop well before Christmas, leading me to foolishly believe that we might have the holidays without any big outbreaks. Instead, we’ve got extreme conditions, big fires up in the Central Coast, and even record temperatures - 44° in the city for New Year’s Day, higher by far than any previously recorded.

The dry conditions of Australia naturally give rise to fires, although surely the numbers deliberately (or even just stupidly) set could bring significant relief. Nobody’s burning off great swathes of grassland just to hunt kangaroos anymore, so other than lightning strikes, it seems most fires are the result of arson, which I wouldn’t limit by excluding idiots tossing their cigarette butts around. (I remember reading a 19050’s Ross MacDonald detective story featuring his hardboiled successor to Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Lew Archer, where he drives a client up through the summer hill country and has to stop the car to stamp out her carelessly tossed cigarette, making quite a point of the nearly sociopathic nature of the thoughtless gesture. This impressed me greatly at the time, not least for the environmental awareness it evidences as a significant part of Californian public conciousness.)

Last year or the year before or the year before that, back in Arizona or New Mexico, there were cases of wildfires set by seasonal firefighters looking to get a little extra work, and while I can’t recall any such incidents here, there are enough other instances of kids and adults deliberately setting fires, more often than not never to be caught out. Unless they are, they can do it again, and we’re left unable to understand their motivation and work to prevent future occurrences, which is, of course, one of the things we need to do.

The Rural Fire Services do a magnificent job under highly dangerous conditions, suffering injury and even death, such as the ambulance driver last week, but it shouldn’t come to this, despite years-long droughts. Maliciousness and ignorance need more than a few public service television ads to be defeated.

Update: Turns out there are known arsonists, all under surveillance by police. Good, but are they arsonists, or bushfire arsonists, because I'll bet there's a difference.

More Movies
We hit Broken Flowers over the last weekend before I returned to work, because other than Brokeback Mountain, it’s about the top movie of the season we wanted to see (and Brokeback doesn’t open until Australia Day). I’ll pretty much see anything Bill Murray’s in these days, but maybe his understated acting set within the understated context of a Jim Jarmusch film is pushing things. We enjoyed it, sure, but most of what I enjoyed had little enough to do with the plot or the performances as such. The places he travels all look like parts of America I’ve spent a lot of time in, i.e., upstate New York (which isn’t itself a bad thing, just familiar and a little nostalgia-provoking and therefore a bit of a distraction; it would have been that anyway), and the music on the soundtrack is terrific, and the camera-work is excellent, but in the end, the movie’s main accomplishment, I think, is to leave you feeling the emptiness of the character as an emptiness of your own.

Note to Self: 2006
Happy New Year, any and all who might venture here now and then. M., back from the hospital last Thursday, and I spent the evening watching a minor entry in the Billy Elliot school of Britsh film, Millions; cute enough, I suppose (and I rather liked the whole visitation by saints motif), but so thoroughly unfeasible as to rather deflate the thing in the end. Once it finished, we headed off the bed and slept through the fireworks and other moments of revelry in order to be revitalized for today's 40+ heat. The air conditioning is making a mockery of any other devotion we have toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Before the heat hit, I managed a quick trip out to Coogee for a dip in the ocean. It'd be a shame not to indulge our easy access to the beaches before the end of the year, and since M.'s responding well to the antibiotics, I took advantage of the weather for a bit of refreshment in the Tasman. The water was very warm, but diving down a little you could reach cooler temperatures, although immediately upon exiting the water, the sun would bake it right out of you.

This is a difficult time of year for a variety of reasons, not least being that the entire country appears to go on holidays, which is especially frustrating for M., since she'll have to get some tests done, and all the doctors are away. Some may be back on Tuesday, but it's possible it'll be another week yet before they'll actually be doing anything more than making appointments. Of course, the tests must wait on the complete cessation of the inflammation that was the immediate cause of her distress last week, and even with the antibiotics having successfully removed the infectous agents causing the inflammation, it will itself take its own time to reduce. Nevertheless, it's very hard to be patient under the circumstances, although M. is bearing up surprisingly well for all that.

And thus we enter the new year, trying to remember to write '06 on cheques and correspondence and so forth and mainly looking forward to medical interventions more so than anything else, at least initially. But once we've got those out of the way, who knows? This may yet turn out to be a very good new year.

So This Is Christmas
We headed into the weekend well enough it seemed, for a little while, but M., who's had a problem lately with acid reflux, complained long on the first day of the holiday, Friday, being the first full day of school holidays, of intestinal pain. Naturally, since it's only just over a year or so ago that I had my appendix out, we initially assumed she was only jealous of my vestigial organ-free lifestyle, but it was really too severe, too painful to be ignored or glossed, so in the end, at about 6 p.m., we headed over to St. Vincent's emergency room with a presenting appendix. Or so we assumed.

Of course, appendicitis wasn't all we went with in our heads, given the new complexity of acid reflux, but after about four hours, the consultation suggested only two things: (1) not M.'s appendix and (2) we don't know what else it might be; and thus we were admitted, if just to the casualty floor beds.

A day later, now Christmas Eve, we soon found ourselves having to face the fact that M. was unlikely to be released in time for our celebratory plans and made the call to Mark & family that we were forced to cancel. M. spent the night in the Emergency Medical Unit (EMU, which leads one to wonder if there are any other fauna-related acronyms in use at the hospital, but I'm not going to speculate on what KOALA might stand for), with an early call for a scan in the morning, which, upon duly completing the 2-hour ingestion of the contrasting solution, was not conducted until nearly ninety minutes later.

And there we were: Christmas Eve and no more information than that her colon showed some inflammation down near where the appendix would present itself if that had indeed been the cause of her distress. Over six hours later a surgeon finally turned out to discuss the diagnosis and our plans for Christmas Day, neither of which was particularly pleasant, although they weren't by any means catastrophic either. Most probably some kind of viral or bacterial infection, M. would spend the next couple of days on intravenous antibiotics and we'd unwrap our pressies in the ward.

Note on Christmas Morning: M. & I received most excellent gifts from overseas; notably subscriptions to the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly - bye, bye The Monthly, not that you were ever particularly worth the cost of the subscription - and a gift card each to Barnes & Noble, that paragon of on-line booksellers (because they don't have the same Red/Blue political donation ratio of Amazon, who favor the GOP), which I already know what I'll spend it on. Betweeen ourselves, however, I came out ahead, at least in the immediate context: M. got a promise of the 30th Anniversary edition of Horses, the 1975 Patti Smith album which may be one of the most perfect rock 'n' roll records ever, but also Joan Didion's new memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which in a variety of ways may have struck more close to the bone than otherwise. M. got me Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America, which I've been pining for, and the latest UQP edition of the Best Australian Poetry annual (not the Les Murray version, since although his own verse is good, we find his taste, at least as expressed in Quadrant, questionable). Presents were of exceedingly high quality this year. Now to sort the health issues.

Happy Christmas
I learned that "Merry Christmas" is frowned upon in some circles under the apprehension that it promotes drunkenness.

Never mind: Merry Christmas, just the same.
(Holly via Botanical.com.)

The City Won’t Stop
There’d been threats for every year I lived in the city, but outside of a few breakdowns and other, unexplained delays (and the 5-year renovation of the 7’s elevated line), I never had to endure a strike. Well, it’s on now, the first since 1980, and in the middle of winter, just to add insult to injury. The city is dealing with the problem by imposing a car-pool minimum on vehicles travelling in Manhattan below 96th Street that extends even to taxis and the usual screaming invective against the unions, who are acting against a preliminary injunction and now facing fines of $1 million per day, while residents and commuters simply endure as best they can.

I’m sympathetic to the pension plan changes at issue. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid only go so far, and the burden of caring for yourself after retirement is tremendous. While raising the retirement eligibility age to 62 sounds reasonable, it’s important to keep in mind the nature of the work and to query the ability of workers to maintain employment those extra 7 years. The 4% rise in employee contributions toward the pension also sounds reasonable, but the difference to your wage between 2% and 6% is bigger than you’d think without actually doing the math, especially since you’re already also contributing to other health and welfare benefits, as you will post-retirement.

Still, it’d be hard on everyone else, working men and women, business owners and operators, even for those living in Manhattan, let alone the thousands upon thousands who come in by car, bus, and train every day, many of whom only get as far as the middle of Queens before being left to their own devices. There are only so many cabs, after all, and if you’ve come to Jamaica via the LIRR, I’ll bet you didn’t bring your bicycle.

If CityRail went out here, I’m 27K from the office. I could walk, but at, say, 20 minutes a mile, I’m looking at a 6-hour commute each way, not to mention a shower when I get in.

It’s About the Oil
There’s a standard practice in Congress of attaching unrelated riders onto bills expected to have an easy passage that’s long been a source of great frustration to the public, but to the House and Senate themselves, as well, especially when bills of great seriousness are subverted to some partisan pork-barrelling, or worse, as is the case now with the defense spending bill being hijacked to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling for oil.

We need the $453 million for the miliary, for obvious reasons, but opening up ANWR needs a debate of its own. Often these riders slip through because they’re just small-change pork, but this issue is huge, it alters the environmental trusteeship balance nationally, something the Bush administration has been trying to achieve incrementally elsewhere since the man first swore the oath of office 5 years ago, and it’s unacceptable, not just in implementation, but also in subverting the ability of Congress to examine the implications and act reasonably and responsibly. This is piracy of the process. Harry Reid’s got a big fight on his hands, now, and not just because of this, but because Bill Frist is going to push every issue he can into a face-off from now on, looking to eliminate any power the minority party could ever again wield in opposition to the radical agenda of the extreme right. Frist will plunder the nation to achieve his goals in service to his corporate masters. It’s time for the Democrats to pull out the stops. Republican ruthlessness cannot be deterred by just waiting for the next election.

Fair’s Fair
Ian Harper’s failed business owes its workers $700,000 since March 2001. After the Federal Reserve fiasco, does the Howard government really need another creep-appointment?

Fair’s Fair
Ian Harper’s failed business owes its workers $700,000 since March 2001. After the Federal Reserve fiasco, does the Howard government really need another creep-appointment?

Oils and Water
I don’t know much about art, but doesn’t Rolf Harris’ portrait of QEII look like she’s about to sprout vampire fangs and attack? Perhaps that crazed look in her eye is just a result of internet photo reproduction, but if it was my 180th birthday portrait (oops, I mean official portrait, on for her 80th birthday, not that she doesn’t look a little, let’s say, haggard in it), I’d hang the thing facing the wall.

'Tis the Season
One thing about working where I do is that they take Christmas very seriously, well, that is to say, they're serious about celebrating. Friday was the office mass and Christmas lunch, complete various baked foods, lots of beer and wine, and a themed trivia contest (my table did not win, but we made a decent showing; maybe next year). Today there's another party, just the department, and Wednesday yet another. On Saturday we'll have one at home for family, so that by the time Christmas has actually arrived, we'll be well worn out and looking forward to a bit of quiet time.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, M. & I attended the traditional gathering of Michelle's friends, this year in Pyrmont, a suburb we don't spend much time in, but which is really very nice. There's not much there beyond the Powerhouse museum and a few pubs and cafes, so I don't expect to be going there any more often. Michelle's very nice and takes her responsibilities as hostess seriously, including the planning, which ran to a $5-value "Kris Kringle" gift exchange. Most people took the price limit seriously, although M. & I insisted that there was nothing worth giving at that level (and we were right, although the chocolates I got were nice enough). The main point was, of course, the company, and there were a couple of other of our friends there and some new people to meet and chat with, so all-in-all a nice enough event.

Yesterday, Astrid arranged an evening picnic at Neilson Park, a lovely harbour beach M. and I rather like, and which is also very accessible via public transport, although the ride can be complicated at this time of year by holiday traffic, especially if you get stuck behind a Salvation Army marching band. (They might have used the footpath, but we made our connection with time to spare in the end anyway, so all is forgiven.)

The director and the producer of Meera's short (shameless plug: Upskirt) were there, of course, being family and friends, but also various others, some we've met and others new to us, and it was a lovely evening in the cool by the water in the last of the sun, perhaps the best way of all to finish a weekend.

Yes, that is a shark net across the beach in the photo at the bottom.

The System Works
It'd probably be better not to become too sanguine over the Senate's action to block renewal of the evil USA Patriot Act, as it's seems largely a reaction to the revelation of Bush's personal illegal authorization of the NSA's spying on citizens domestically, but it's not just hard not to cheer, it'd be ungracious. Good for you, Senate, especially you four Republicans who recognize what's right (although what's gotten into those two Democrats who failed in their duty, I don't know). Bush's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, we need to get our government back on track, and this is an excellent first step.

Sin City
Inner city life’s the same everywhere, it seems. Except for the fact that there are many single-family homes in our (formerly) South Sydney suburb, apartment-living is the norm, or approaching it, anyway, as more commercial space is converted into residences. A particular shared characteristic of apartment-living is noisy neighbors, both within and outside the block of units, such as the pub across the way, whose patrons (especially now that the partial smoking ban is in place) insist on loitering on the footpath to conduct loud portions of their revels, but also those yet unsuited to such cheek-by-jowl arrangements as are enforced by having a common wall with someone else.

Initially, our apartment was particularly blessed, with only neighbors above and adjoining one wall, the latter being at the top of the long vertical of our L-shaped unit, so that our bedroom, being at the far end of the horizontal, was relatively insulated. Once the backpacker contingent above were removed and the same-floor neighbor converted the unit into an office, we spent something like a year-and-a-half in considerable peace and quiet. Enter the 20-year-old Central Coast child of privilege.

Our new neighbor, S., is lucky enough to have parents who will assist her in the purchase of an inner city unit and then head back up the coast where they are far more insulated from their progeny than those upon whom they have inflicted her. Not too long after S. moved in next door, we realized we’d met her before, late one evening when she and her roommate had locked themselves out of the unit they’d been renting on an upper floor and were seeking the assistance of the non-existent caretaker. In the end, they obtained the aid of a friend with a power saw, who cut a hole in the apartment’s fire-rated front door with no thought to many hundreds of dollars it was going to cost to be replaced. Realizing her identity, we regarded the advent of S. next door as an ill omen, as it is proving to be.

I met her mom when the move happened and painting the unit was underway. “Oh, S. is a wonderful girl, 20, but no parties, of course,” was the gist of the message mom imparted. 20, I thought, and no parties? Oh, that’s accurate, I’m not sure. As it immediately proved, when merely four days later, at 2:30 a.m., her return from whatever revels she’d been attending was heralded by the doof-doof bass more typical of an Oxford Street nightclub than of anyone’s home. Two attempts to cajole her into reducing the volume required only a third, the final attempt being performed by the local constabulary, since my own authority was evidently dismissed out of hand. That quietened her for the next two weeks, more or less, although there has been a bass throb some mornings after 7 and some evenings before 10, reasonable enough hours that we’ve been able to accept with great aplomb.

Today, however, has been a bit more dramatic. Earlier, around noon or so, the shopkeeper whose establishment lies beneath S.’s apartment, came up to report his grocery was experiencing a cascade from the ceiling. Not us, says M., it’s next door. But the shopkeeper was unable to rouse any inhabitant thereof, forcing him to request the emergency services of a plumber, whose investigation only determined that indeed, yes, it was the S.’s unit causing the problem. He and the shopkeeper again attempted to entice any occupant to open the door, but although there was a response, it was only the groans of someone who must be injured in some fashion. The fire brigade was contacted for assistance, while the plumber attempted to bash in the heavy door.

Now, remember, the apartment doors in the units are fire-rated. In other words, they’re thick and heavy, quite substantial, and meant only to respond to someone with an axe. Hurling himself at the door, well, all right, kicking it really, really hard – and this is a big bloke – was doing some damage, but it wasn’t getting anyone inside. However, it was getting the attention of the resident, S., at last, who was finally aroused from her stupor – which was all that was wrong, with her, that is – to complain “You’ve broken my door.” Well, yes, you idiot, we have; we thought you were dying in the shower you left running for the past God knows how many hours enough for it to have caused a flood in the shop below.

S. did eventually open the door to find out what all the fuss was about and turned off the taps. The damage, however, was done (and the fire brigade arrived; very timely), and the liability assessed as: the strata’s! No way we’re paying for this one, though, any more than we paid for the fire door S. destroyed before.

Look, I don’t mind if you can’t take care of yourself any better than this, but I’m not paying for it. Mostly, however, I’d just rather not live next door to it. I’m not your daddy, and if they’re not going to take care of you, you’ll have to do it yourself.

Can We Go Home Yet?
Congratulations to the 70% of Iraqis participating in the vote for a permanent democratic government. Reports so far indicate only sporadic attacks and a high turnout, including many of the minority Sunni population.

The VIPER at Our Breast
The Transportation Security Administration, the group responsible for deploying Air Marshals, has instituted a new, expanded reach program, called ”Visible Intermodal Protection and Response,” in which (besides the spelling mistake – shouldn’t that be “VIPAR”?) Air Marshals will become ground troops, i.e., patrol train stations and bus depots and ferry slips. The TSA has despatched a VIPER team as a pilot to Washington, D.C.’s, transit system, who, when queried, denied the TSA’s claims of cooperation. At last, the Feds are doing something about Homeland Security. Of course, after the death of the mentally ill passenger in Florida a week or so ago, having these guys expand beyond air travel is not entirely reassuring, perhaps especially because we’ve already got transit cops doing what these guys are now being charged with. Homeland Security’s mandate isn’t to supplant other security agencies or efforts but to coordinate them. There’s no discernable benefit in the VIPER program other than to extend Federal intrusion into local governance, much as we’ve heard of the Pentagon doing in monitoring domestic peace rallies and activists, compiling a list of thousands of citizens exercising their right to free association. Clearly, it’s become altogether too easy for the Bush Administration to implement its agenda of fear and oppression, instead of actually working on keeping the nation safe. Want to expand the TSA mandate: what about container shipping and freight yards?

Meanwhile, the House is trying to make the legend on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal mythical, seeking to enact a tough new immigration law that will make it a federal crime to live in the U.S. without a valid visa, instituting a mandatory detention policy and turning church groups and social services organizations into “coyotes.” November 2006 can’t come soon enough.

War of Terror
The rioting in Cronulla yesterday was the action of uneducated, racist thugs, and cannot be tolerated. The police were often overwhelmed, but it’s a welcome move that they’ll be reviewing video and still photography to identify and arrest additional participants for prosecution. But I’m going to be one of those “ideological” people who don’t blame the Lebanese, at least not entirely, but certainly without offering their “gangsta” culture as an excuse for the Cronulla Neanderthals.

Since my arrival in this country, I’ve learned a lot about Lebanese youth and the influence of American rap culture has had, an unfortunate mix, given an ingrained misogyny still highly prevalent, even among the otherwise more assimilated, and this comes out in offensive and sometimes disgusting behavior, the kind of macho nonsense we’d most of us taken for granted as thoroughly marginalized. But “yobbo” culture also still has its celebrants, and the tensions inflamed by anti-Muslim rhetoric and the focus turned on Muslims in the broader community, despite reassurances to the contrary from government officials, have done their job now. One 24-year-old was quoted in the paper as having been “at war for 10 years” – where did he learn this? It doesn’t matter; there’s no excuse. Was his girlfriend taunted or teased at the beach? No excuse, on either side. We can’t arrest people for thought-crimes (despite the ludicrous sedition laws), but we can acknowledge the brewing resentments and work for resolution of the conditions causing them. Lebanese “gangstas” aren’t to be tolerated any more than the neo-Nazi Patriotic Youth League’s organizing efforts or the “Bra Boys” surfie gang.

The race riots in America of the 1960’s are the only comparable events I can think of – even the more isolated incidents around the U.S., or most recently in Paris, are more on the order of the events some months ago in Macquarie Fields. This is organized violence; it’s racism; it’s despicable.

Pele Says We've Got a Shot
I think he only meant to be nice about it, but the Socceroos did beat Uruguay to qualify for the World Cup, so even if the draw has resulted in facing off against Brazil sooner rather than later, it is still possible we'll make it through. Funny, but soccer isn't a big sport here, although it's growing. I guess the association of Australia and sport, especially insofar as it's well-known to be a cricket powerhouse, leads to other British sports associations, such as soccer, and the expectation of some level of world-class competence. It just isn't the case. Australia, despite the Ashes result this year, rules cricket, and is highly competetive in swimming, tennis, and rugby (not to mention we've got a sport all our own: AFL, a game, like baseball, pretty well unique to its nation of origin), but soccer just hasn't been a major part of the culture here, despite the 1950's+ immigration wave from Europe. That we've qualified is a big deal, however, so here's the the Socceroos and hoping they survive a round or so.

The Solid Gold Weblog
This is the winner of Smartyhost’s AU$10,000 “best weblog” contest. No doubt the starving artist spending her days and nights recording bridge noises wherever she goes can use the money. (Me, too.) I won’t quibble over it’s ‘bloggishness (although it isn’t and doesn’t even really contain one among the various pages at the site, with the arguable exception of the “travel diary”), but “best”? There are better. I suppose I’m mostly annoyed because I didn’t even get an invite, as others did, only hearing about it at the last minute reading the Icon section of the SMH. Look, I know the only people reading this are family, a few friends, and people looking for puzzles (and sometimes the words to some Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young song – I’m not even getting all that upskirt traffic I’d been expecting since the movie), but c’mon, I’m almost Australian and I’m running a ‘blog. Surely I should be eligible, too? Maybe next year. I’ll have to work on providing more of that cross-cultural content, though.

The Progress of Democracy in the Middle East
When Hosni Mubarak announced democratic reforms in Egypt’s political process, many hailed George Bush’s war in Iraq as providing precisely the impetus for change that he’d promised. In case anyone still has any doubts about the effect of the Iraq war, please note that Egypt’s elections this year have not been notably more open than usual, but they have been more violent. They have also resulted in significant gains in the Egyptian parliament by the Muslim Brotherhood, an officially banned party of radical Islamists, while secular opposition parties were only able to gain a handful of seats. Nice one, George. Thanks.

Patriotism and the Act
Now that the House and Senate have worked out a deal on how to further the Patriot Act’s effect on the erosion of civil liberties in the U.S., it’s worth noting what they’ve done and the reasons they’ve given. In an almost passing notice, the NY Times reports Senator Specter, one of the more evil Pennsylvanians in government (although the title still goes to Santorum), as saying the 7-year deal they were going for was bad because it would require the Act to be debated again during a presidential election. In other words, just in case they lose the White House in ’08, they don’t want this hideous piece of legislation impinging their ability to get it back again four years later. This merely highlights how amoral Specter and his cohorts are and how wrong the legislation is for America. Fourteen of sixteen provisions will become permanent, so only the wiretaps and untrammelled access by law enforcement into libraries will come under review in four years. At least we can hope for a Democratic majority and Presidency then, but if the vote goes through, most of this noxious law will remain forever.

Airlines & Homeland Security
It is an indication of the woeful state of security at U.S. airports that a mentally ill passenger has been shot dead in Florida by a federal air marshal. While we can all agree that it is a very bad idea to claim to have a bomb in your luggage – and has been since the first airline hijacking – a deranged person acting erratically should probably not end up dead, either, especially when the marshals pursuing him are themselves being pursued by the man’s poor wife, crying out that he’s ill, that he’s off his medication.

Since September 11, thousands of marshals have been added to the original staff of just over thirty who protected our air passengers, but this kind of panic scenario is highly suggestive of entirely inadequate training. (Actually, I’m fairly surprised it wasn’t some poor National Guardsman who ended up killing this guy, except that they’re probably mostly in Iraq at this point, rather than staffing the metal detectors at the check-in gates. That’s been a rapid-fire tragedy waiting to happen.) That this is the first such incident is worth being thankful for, but it should not have played out the way it did. It’s as much a “setback” in America’s defenses against terrorism as the recent Florida court case (and what’s with that state, anyway?), and equally indicative of the failure of the Bush big-stick approach to, well, everything.

VSU
We had a student union back in the States where I went to university, but as near as I can determine from memory, it was just a building where we could go get a meal and where the campus “rathskellar” was housed. An assembly hall served for second-run discounted movies and an occasional concert, one of which was Elvis Costello and the Attractions, but was otherwise more likely some third-rate band only the hicks wanted to see anyway. Later, in graduate school, I attended a university that had a stronger tradition of student activism, but the “union,” as far as I was concerned, was again meeting rooms and the bookstore.

Here in Australia the student union is exactly that: a union, a collective with officers exercising the power to act on behalf of the overall student body, much in the European tradition, usually in running a newspaper, organising intramural sports, and so forth, but also pursuing a broader political activism by students outside the confines of the campus. As a result, they’ve come under fire by the union-busting Howard government.

Universities charge a student union fee to all matriculating students. The fee is used by the union to fund their activities, including rallies and marches and protests insofar as these require funding, such as for promoting the event or for getting banners and such made up. The Howard government would like us all to believe that the bulk of the mandatory fee is spent on partisan political activities and materials. Maybe it is; without looking at their books, how would I know? On the other hand, university students are not a monolithic bloc, and the student body in a conservative educational bastion would likely spend their union fees on partisan activities in support of the present government. But the PM’s convinced the students are all against him and spending their parents’ money unwisely, in opposition to mom & dad’s voting patterns, in other words, spending it on the Labor party.

So the push is on for an end to student unions via legislation for “voluntary student union” (VSU) fees. Passing by the University of Technology, Sydney, or Sydney University, I can see the level of opposition to VSU, but there are plenty who support the new scheme (including the National Party waffle-maker, Barnaby Joyce, whose latest cri de coeur to cross the floor is over intramural sports; God forbid he should have a conscience over industrial relations mangling or the inane sedition laws). My experience with the VSU supporters, other than the Liberal-voting populace, is with mature-age, part-time students. They don’t believe they get their money’s worth. They don’t live or otherwise spend much time on campus, and since they’re usually working, they don’t participate in the sports or other social activities provided for by the union. For them, the union is a waste, and I see their point.

The VSU reform therefore only proves my point as to its motivation. Instead of providing an alternative for the part-time or otherwise non-participatory students, the legislation is meant only to gut the funding of student unions so they cannot act even if they’d like to, even if it would be to the benefit of all students, including the part-timers. The legislation is meant to undercut the ability of student unions to provide an alternative message to the Liberal-National coalition government. Whereas a little learning can be a dangerous thing, for this government, ignorance is bliss.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Sure we’ve got secret prisons, says that death’s head, Condoleezza Rice, but they’re so we can help people. America sounds more and more like a tyranny every day, and it sickens me. Rice claims there’s no torture, and I’ll have to take her at her word, despite the indications of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re in violation of major international treaties, first of all, and without some reasonable level of accountability – even as little as Red Cross/Red Crescent inspections – no one can be sure we’re any better than the Soviets at their worst or the various military juntas of South America. Claiming any justification in “you’re complicit” is despicable, even if true, since at least the Europeans are trying to achieve transparency. Oh, and let’s not forget that American law, including habeas corpus, is applicable to citizens and non-citizens alike, even “illegal combatants.”

“We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible,” Rice hypocritically pronounces, “but there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option. In those cases the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in the transfer of a suspect to third country, which is known as a rendition.” In which case, Dr. Rice, why don’t we, acting in cooperation with the “local government,” render the suspect to America for interrogation, trial, and incarceration? Why is “traditional extradition” inadequate? Who are the “third countr[ies]” and how are they permitted to participate; what do they get out of it; what is the extent of their involvement? “These efforts” wouldn’t be “misunderstood” if we were open about what we’re doing. Threatening Europe over the decision to “work with us to prevent terror attacks against their own countr[ies]” is shameless. But Rice, like her masters, knows no shame.

Right Hand, Left Hand
We don’t use propaganda, Donald Rumsfeld would have us believe, it just happens. Well-meaning contractors working in Iraq are putting stories in the local media there without identifying the content as coming from the U.S. military. I’m not at all surprised that the Pentagon would have a hand in news reports in Iraq, despite any lip service paid to a free and independent media being integral to democratic efforts there. I’m even sort of gratified that we’re at least paying for the column space. What does surprise me, even if it shouldn’t, is how intent the Bush administration is on treating the matter as it does other scandals, with a cover-up. Claiming ignorance, Rummy says he doesn’t know how it started, if it’s being done “in accordance with policy,” and the Pentagon chimes in similarly. What nonsense. Of course you knew: it was your idea. These are just stalling tactics. If the government would run its Iraq operations openly, there’d be no scandals. O.k., yes, there would still be scandals; the press is easily scandalized. At least they wouldn’t be these hand-in-the-cookie-jar it-wasn’t-me lying scandals. Cover-ups. You’d think the GOP would’ve learned something after Nixon.

Looking for a New Job
Twelve years ago, NYC politicians put term limits up as a voter referendum, and, reflecting the prevailing sentiment regarding government, it passed. I thought it was a bad idea at the time, infantalizing voters, who, at each election, could vote in someone new if they were dissatisfied with the incumbent. Having made their bed, the politicians are uncomfortable and want to put things back they way they were. Tough, I say. The problem is, however, that the pollies are going to have a try without putting up another referendum. They've learned one lesson: voter dissatisfaction is more likely to have an effect on your career if you force the issue in a broadly sweeping context than if it's just this or that candidate for office. But legislating the reform of the reform is just playing the same games that got the voters dissatisfied in the first place. Go on, be brave: put it on the ballot or live with your mistake.

1837
I've been reading Gotham for something like the last year, dipping in when I'm staying up late or don't have a stack of New Yorker's to get through, and have finally reached the economic crisis of 1837 and the subsequent depression. Speaking of which, the conditions that brought about the the hard times then sound so very much like those prevailing now - with the two notable exceptions of war (none then; lots now) and the "independent" Reserve bank system presently in place (which had been defeated in the marketplace just prior to the crash then) - that I was getting pretty depressed over the economic prospects we face in America and Australia right now.

While the Federal Reserve is a strong and effective institution now, it cannot control every aspect of the economy, and recessions and depressions are nearly inevitable. And while the central cause of America's foreign debt is the war in Iraq, which is ostensibly a temporary situation and one meant to eventually result in better world economic conditions (among other, more immediate and stated goals), the nation's currency is still being substantially propped up by China. If they call in even a portion of that debt. . . .

Meanwhile, in Australia, I can't speak knowledgably about foreign debt, although I understand it's pretty substantial, one of the other key conditions is teh battle against inflation and the relationship of the government to the management of labor vis a vis management, which the present administration seems intent on reverting to conditions more akin to the nineteenth century than the twentieth. In 1837 the government frequently and harshly intervened in labor disputes, prosecuting unions and unionists, supporting strike-breaking, even sending in the troops periodically, to the point that unions were effectively abolished. If anyone looks at the Howard industrial relations laws and says that's not what he's up to in this instance, they're lying or deluded. The argument then, over 150 years ago, was whether the worker had any right to set the worth of his or her labor or if that could only be set by free market forces. Wages went down and prices went up and the depression that resulted was devastating, with little or no assistance provided by the government, which had determined to rely on the same charitable impulses and institutions that the Bush administration has been trying to use as a replacement for welfare. Howard's been pushing for government to get out of the business of providing a social safety net, too, and I fear we're headed for a fall.

If you've got a credit card with any debt on it, pay it off fast, I'd say, and cut the damn thing up. I also had a moment of panic, thinking that selling up our mortgaged-to-the-hilt property might put us in a position to weather the coming storm, but really, our ability to ride out any substantial economic downturn is more reliant on my ability to hold a job than anything else, and the unit is really all we've got. Once the IR laws go into effect, it will be a year at least before the true effect is felt, or more, since I've got a contract for that period. Then we'll see what has to be done or if my utter lack of economics training has just led me into doomsaying.

Thanksgiving
While the Podeans gather in NYC without us this year, M. and I have failed to institute the tradition here in the antipodes despite our firm resolutions of the last two years. Nevertheless, I blame not ourselves nearly so much as the fault that is in our season. Thanksgiving is always a cold weather holiday to me. Yes, I know it’s celebrated pretty much the same way all around the U.S. and the weather in Atlanta is not so dissimilar from that of Sydney, or Melbourne Florida from that of Brisbane Queensland, but still, like Christmas, there seems something wrong with roasted foods for dinner when the temperature is over 20°.

’Blog Notes
You may recognize Thomas Ashelford’s name from Ether Productions, because that’s the outfit, formed of himself and his wife, Ingrid Spielman, that produced Upskirt, but he’s also got a ‘blog: Wood & Wire. Posting seems to have gone into hiatus nearly immediately upon (re-)startup, but it’s a nice looking ‘blog, as I’d have expected given Thomas’ expertise in matters webish. Right now he’s finishing the sound edit on Upskirt, but later we also look forward to seeing The Pure Drop, Ether’s world music documentary.

State Watch
2006 can be the year we take back Congress, and in case you don’t know what’s going on around your state, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has provided this handy little web app. It’s just the House, so don’t forget to keep an eye on Senate races, too.

Bagging the Minister
I’m not a fan of Amanda Vanstone, Immigration Minister in the Howard government, but calls by the opposition for her to be sacked over comments about the governments anti-terror efforts seem counter-intuitive to me. When a minister speaks out against the party line, I’d think her comments at least might be applauded for their worth to the opposition . Besides, she’s right: most of what’s being done is just for show. The example she cites, outlining a plan for an in-flight attack, is insensitive, but everyone who’s had to give up a nail-clipper at the airport has thought much the same way. Until the airlines start handing out “sporks,” the existing measures are just an annoyance at best. Sure, the cockpit’s been “hardened,” but taking over a flight isn’t the only method terrorists have for wreaking havoc. So Vanstone’s point stands: address the substantive, strategic issues, or you’re just treating the symptom and not the disease.

Please, Sir, May I Have Some More
The Howard industrial relations laws have come through the Senate committee with a recommendation for seven changes, but also that the laws should be passed even if no amendments are made. A bad result, and no surprise: the committee, is, of course, the Coalition’s. The news has been reporting various levels of discontent even within the Coalition, suggesting that amendments would inevitably be proposed, but it’s still surprising how the committee acted. If the laws as presented for inquiry don’t contain sufficient protections, then they don’t, and amendments are needed. Otherwise, no amendments. Instead, the committee has said the laws are inadequate but they don’t care. Either they are so in thrall to Howard they can no longer think for themselves or they hold the Australian public in contempt. Assuming Labor (28) have the courage to stand together against this and are joined by the Greens (4) and Democrats (4), it would take only a handful of Coalition (38) backbenchers to put an end to this monstrosity. With their party’s polling numbers falling dramatically, it may be that there are enough Liberals concerned for their seats two years from now to do the trick, but that’s a long way off, and the public has serious ADD problems. While some among Howard’s triumphalists claim a Labor win in two years would allow them to reverse these hideous laws, that isn’t true: they’d need to have a Senate majority itself at that time to ensure a reversion to labor-management equity. It has to be stopped now, before we end up with debtors’ prisons and workhouses.

Bondi Weekend
Yet another weekend packed with entertainment. After the movie premiere, with houseguest in tow, we headed out early for the annual Sculpture by the Sea exhibition (re the article linked here: didn’t much like the faces; oh, well), marching along the cliffwalk from Bondi to Bronte. As usual, for me, the best part of the exhibition is at Tamarama, where much of the beach is devoted to very large installations, including, this year, a giant beach chair, which I rather liked.


Also as usual, there were a couple of instances of Christo-lite: wrapped or netted rocks. They look good, but they’ve been done enough at this stage. After a period of recovery we made our way to Café Pacifico, one of the few places around town doing Tex-Mex food, since our guest is an expatriate American and expressed a hankering for something with chillies from that side of the Pacific.


This suited us, too, and we made a fine meal of margaritas, fajitas, tacos, enchiladas and so forth. Rather done in, we elected a quiet remainder of the evening at home following gelato in Stanley Street, where we watched the bats make their way out of the Botanical Gardens, with a bit of music before our guest left the following morning.

More Adventures in Movies
Last night was the gala premiere of Upskirt, the 15-minute short film M. wrote and co-produced, inspired by research she'd done for an article in Salon.com. When I read the script, I thought it was one of the very best things M.'s done, so the production was a little fraught for me, although never quite so much as it was for M. herself, or the director, Antonella Franchini, and producer, Ingrid Spielman, both friends of ours, the latter of whom, with her husband, Thomas Ashelford, have a production company, Ether, which has largely focussed on broadband video and similar output (and all three of whom, along with Astrid Spielman, of whom I've written here previously more than once, form the occasional band, The Yokos, whose music is featured throughout the film).

Well, it was all worth it. Upskirt is a finely realized short, with emotional depth, humor, and sensitivity dealing with a subject not often addressed, fetishism, as well as the overall topics of desire, sexual power, and emotional need. The performances by Emma Grant and Graham Harvey, along with support from Lena Cruz and Oriana Panozzo were first rate, as were those turned in by veteran character actor Gary Waddell, and Stewart Armstrong, Madison McKoy, and Brett Danalake, all of them volunteering their efforts, as did the production crew, notably director of photography Steve MacDonald and editor Karin Steininger.

I'll come back in later and add some links, but the important one is the film's website itself (again: Upskirt-the-movie.com, which I recommend using, and not just because trying to do a Google search is going to get you in trouble at work if you're not careful). The website's got some scenes off the cutting room floor, a slideshow of stills, and the usual site material.

The movie was great fun, and our after-party at the new Hilton was a worthy celebration. Congratulations all around and many thanks for everyone's efforts.

Christmas Comes But Once a Year
But it seems to arrive earlier every year and stay longer, too. Eventually the decorations will stay up year ‘round. Last night, we were riding the bus down to Circular Quay, and as we passed Martin Place I saw the annual tower of fake-fir plastic already in place. I’ve got to speak to the mayor about this: why plastic? This country’s got plenty of very nice Norfolk pines, a favored configuration for ein Tannenbaum, so other than because they put these up down by George Street, where the Anzac cenotaph is, why not plant one and just decorate it each year, leaving the tree bare the rest of the year to provide a nice bit of shade and comforting greenery in the midst of the CBD?

Wildcat
The Australian Industry Group, an employer representative organization, has issued a broadcast warning to all employees of member companies that they may face penalties for attending tomorrow’s anti-IR rallies around the country. The AIG is recommending to its membership that they take action against any employee who goes to a rally. I expect some employers to so act, but if the proposed changes were actually fair, none of this would be necessary. Since they’re patently unfair, I’d prefer to see employers actually work with their employees to allow attendance, and, in fact, many employers are doing just that. The debate in the Senate begins today and will last only 5 days. State IR Ministers get 7 minutes apiece to address their concerns, but even if all 5,000 submissions on the matter were to be addressed, hope resides only in the actions of the Coalition itself, that some backbenchers might stand up and do the right thing. Little chance of that, when even the “WorkChoices” call center staff are under threat already. (Thanks to Larvatus Prodeo on that last bit. Meanwhile, check in with the ACTU on tomorrow’s rallies.)

In other labor-related news, the PM won’t step in to help resolve a strike between Boeing and 25 engineers, for which the strikers have expressed their disappointment. Given the last time Howard meddled in a labor dispute, maybe they should be grateful instead.

))<>((
M. and I went to see Me and You and Everyone We Know over the weekend. Somehow, when we make the effort to go see something in the cinema, it’s always, well, almost always, a good pick, whereas renting ends up being a much lesser experience, by and large. I suppose I’m just being reactive to how much I enjoyed Miranda July’s movie. After all, Batman Begins wasn’t bad, really. Me and You is, for a commercial film, quirky, which I hate, but it’s also not a commercial film. This is an art movie, a performance piece, with very little story, very little connection between the characters, except for a very desperate need in each of them to find some connection somewhere. The broader outlines of the different failures and forms of success in establishing relationships are seemingly all encountered and treated with great sympathy and humor. I’d be interested to see some of Miranda July’s performance pieces, to find out if they’re anything like the work her character creates in this movie, if this movie is anything like what else she’s done. I’m not expecting her to become a new cinematic presence of any particular note, but this movie is enough to her to have a place as an artist of film.

Transparency
Sunlight is a great disinfectant, so I agree with the lawyers for Sydney’s terror suspects: open the proceedings to public scrutiny. I don’t think the need for this is entirely or even in any large measure to maintain government accountability, but rather because the more we all know, the safer we actually become. Ignorance of the threat of terrorism, whether internal or imported, has been more the source of the present precariousness than other factors, that and ignorance of the internal and external conditions that have given rise to such hatred. Our own lack of knowledge and understanding is where our efforts need to be concentrated. Once it comes to arrests and prosecutions the damage is already done, even without any bombs going off. So let’s see who these people are, let’s hear the evidence, let’s hear all of it, and let’s really pay attention.

24/7
So the five-day week is dead? Anyone could have told you that, but it doesn’t mean the same thing the Prime Minister says it does. He wants to eliminate penalty rates, the excess paid for overtime and shift work and weekends at the office, but wouldn’t it be better to use the demands for a 24/7 lifestyle to create rather than destroy? If the demand for the goods and services is that high, the supply can be raised to meet it, and the workers can be paid to provide it. Tanya Plibersek’s right: there isn’t the child care infrastructure to support Howard’s changes, but that’s just one of the problems working men and women will face once employers have been given the freedoms the PM is proposing. And before anyone claims I’m proclaiming some kind of apocalypse, no, the effects won’t occur overnight; it will take years. And that’s what the Liberals are banking on. By the time the full effect is achieved, the public’s attention will have shifted elsewhere. The time to oppose the change is now. The bill’s already through the House, with Tony Abbott playing standover man to gag debate. 24 working hours isn’t a long time to discuss the effects of over 600 pages of legislation, but it’s on its way to the Senate. Call, write, make yourself heard. By the time Labor gets back in power it’ll be too late.

Off to See the Wizard
So Kansas has not only decided that creationism is science, but that science isn’t science. I’d expect to see Harry Potter in the Physics curriculum, except it’s about witchcraft and these nuts wouldn’t put up with that. Really, they just never got over Scopes, did they?

Music
I’d heard about this new performer, Bright Eyes, some time ago, on Gothamist, I think, and thought, “yeah, sure, Bright Eyes . . . how good can he be? But it stuck in my head, so when a friend turned out to have a couple of Conor Oberst’s discs, it was a short time thereafter before I had a chance to hear the songs for myself. Well, they’re that good. The music itself may not be the most inventive, especially on I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, where it’s largely acoustic, but the lyrics are the most poetic stuff I’ve heard in ages, highly inventive, highly evocative. Listening to the second of his recent releases, Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, the cumulative effect is like an audio version of the movie Tarnation. I think some of his recent notoriety would have to be due to the song, “When the President Talks to God,” but that’s all right; it’s a good tune and a fine protest piece.