The Sydney Obsession
There is no escape. Absolutely everyone in Sydney talks about real estate. If you’re renting, you’re talking about buying; if you’re buying, you’re talking about what you’ve seen; if you own, you talk about your mortgage. Every gathering of any size is an opportunity. Every minute consideration is exhaustively examined, every triumph savored, every set-back wallowed in for whatever comforting horror stories you can receive in exchange for your own. It’s endless.

It doesn’t help that many of us take on mortgages that leave our disposable income in need of such tight controls that a weekend at the movies can nearly mean missing a payment, let alone that those on variable rates are subject to the inflationary measures of the Reserve Bank, pushing their repayments up and up to the breaking point. There are many mortgagee sales around the greater Sydney area, and an expectation of yet more to come. This would be a great time to buy, but the fact is that clearance rates have also fallen, whether for private treaty sales or auctions.

Meanwhile, somehow this has also meant that rental units are at an all-time low in availability, a situation exacerbated by the return of the university students, all in search of a cheap unit somewhere not too far from campus, preferably in Newtown, a suburb seemingly devoted to youth culture, but also Glebe and much of the rest of the Inner West. Competition is fierce. Renters line up at open viewings, and it’s pretty much first-come, first-served thereafter. Agents can’t be bothered to show units privately or to show up at showings on time, often enough. They’re rude, curt, dismissive of the concerns of people desperate for housing, especially at the “lower” end of the market – anything under $300 per week. Mind you, even $250 per week is over $1000 per month ($13000 annually), and to afford that you’re going to need a decent job. You will, after all, pay for electricity, food, transportation, and a phone, as well as an internet connection, potentially, and clothes, or laundry at least, various grooming requirements, and some relief in terms of entertainment. It all adds up pretty quickly, and taxes take a fair whack off the top of your wage, leaving little enough to begin with. Thank goodness there are still doctors who bulk-bill, but dentistry isn’t covered, and if you need a filling or crowns or a medical procedure that really can’t wait, some private health insurance isn’t a luxury.

So what can you get? Moldy carpets, chipped paint, plastic plumbing fixtures, and a kitchen that hasn’t been cleaned in a year or more (let alone windows that have), in a walk-up block of flats where the unit door doesn’t fit snugly in the jamb. We saw an amazing number of those when we were looking for our interim rental after we first moved to Sydney, and we were looking at the higher end of things. Units with no divider between the kitchen and the garage, like some new version of a peasant’s hovel, an automobile in place of the cow. Units where the investor-owner has bought the place purely for the negative-gearing, and so puts in no effort whatsoever to ensure a rental income, allowing the place to become run-down. Units where the developer has put no foresight into the design. I remember one place where renovations were made to add a bedroom in the space between the ceiling and the roof. This attic room would have been a valuable addition, except the stairs up to it took up three-quarters of the living room.

Will the unit be cleaned? No. Will it be painted? You can paint it if you want. Will something be done about the stain on the carpet that looks like the previous tenant brought their car engine in to rebuild it? It’s new. (Huh?)

Here’s my favorite: New York-style loft. It means small, with especially low ceilings, so a second level could be crammed in. (It’s like when you’re travelling outside New York City and see “New York-style pizza,” which just means nasty, lowest common denominator ingredients, and with a crust like cardboard.)

The thing is, however, that right now, renting is cheaper than buying. Short- and long-term. Right now, your money’s better off anywhere but in real estate, at least if what you’re trying to accomplish is having a place to live. If you’re capable of investing, it’s still worthwhile to have a unit or two, even if just to claim the negative gearing, let alone hanging on to it to sell when the market takes off again. The rich get richer, and the rest of us live in Ashfield.

Third Way
I read about Unity08 in this month’s Atlantic, and I’m thinking about signing up. Third parties have an interesting history in America, and not just because of Ralph Nader in 2000 or John Anderson (technically not a third party, just independent). There’s Teddy Roosevelt, of course, and H. Ross Perot, too. The idea of Unity08 – creating a centrist ticket by combining candidates from the two majors – is perhaps more akin to Anderson’s candidacy than it is to that of the others. And that’s the point where it falls apart for me. I don’t regard myself as committed to two-party politics. In Australia, where we’ve got a state election coming up in March, I’m more than a little open to voting Greens or Democrats rather than Labor (Liberal’s just right out). But they’re viable, established parties with a federal presence. While the Democrats have seen support shrink to nearly nothing, they’re still in there, and the Greens are doing pretty well, too, even if Peter Garrett took up Labor’s preselection offer in the last federal election. If I am going to vote for a third party candidate in the U.S., it’s because the candidate has the political appeal, the policies I support. Unity08 seems like more of the kind of nonsense that had Democrats in the U.S. trying to draft John McCain. Bipartisanship is all well and good, but a bipartisan ticket? Sounds like somebody’s been watching too much ”West Wing” (or, worse, ”Commander in Chief). Nevertheless, I like the process, I like the possible effects, and I especially like the participatory intentions. Maybe I’ll try out for delegate from Australia.

Diplomatic Incident
I think it can be safely assumed that Amanda Vanstone won’t be posted to Indonesia or any other country from which refugees come to Australia.

I Pledge Allegiance
Growing up in “love it or leave it” America, I always found the zealotry around the U.S. flag rather excessive, although I was thoroughly imbued with the principles of respect embodied in law: don’t let the flag touch the ground, don’t burn the flag, don’t mutilate the flag, don’t fly the flag upside-down except as a distress signal, take your hat off and put your hand over your heart when saluting the flag or reciting the pledge of allegiance or singing the national anthem. . . . It’s still all a little excessive, but patriotism is very important to Americans. At university, I took a course studying the First Amendment, the one about freedom of speech, and had to read excepts of Supreme Court decisions overturning arrests, prosecutions, and laws regarding the misuse of the flag: protestors wearing a flag patch over their crotch or burning a flag on the steps of one courthouse or another or in front of their draft board’s offices. As a result, a lot of the 1960’s-70’s jingoism the flag had come to embody was lost, watering down the flag’s iconic status, not wholly, but enough. The flag was something you saw at civic assemblies and sporting events and didn’t pay much attention to. Then we had September 11 and the flag was everywhere. M. and I both remember this one tow truck we’d often see, cruising up and down the avenues, covered with flags, large and small, whipping out behind the truck as it went by. We also remember the Sikh cab drivers who found themselves so fearful of being mistaken for Muslims they’d put a flag decal or sticker up in the cab, visible to their passengers, hoping to deflect a conversation or confrontation over what should be done to terrorists.

M. tells me the Australian flag was never so ubiquitous as it was after we moved here, post-Bali, and I well remember the high visibility it gained during the Cronulla riots. That was pretty scary, but what was worse was how the government dog-whistled their support for the bigots abusing their flag. And now they’re at it again.

The Big Day Out is a music festival. It travels around the capital cities during the summer, including the Sydney Australia Day weekend concert. Name acts from around the world participate, as well as local bands getting a bit of exposure. It’s not quite the same thing as Homebake, a multi-band concert devoted to promoting Australian performers, but it’s very popular. Last year, the Big Day Out took place not long after the Cronulla riots and there was some trouble with drunken Neanderthals promoting their own violent version of patriotism. This year, BDO has, in effect banned the flag.

Well, not really, unless you’re a politician and can’t read, or a patriotic zealot and can’t be bothered to read, or a bigot intent on promoting hate and violence.

It isn’t a government-sponsored event, and flying the flag isn’t a prerequisite for staging the shows, and if trouble-makers made the flag a security issue last year, the organizers are within their rights to request that concert attendees don’t cause a similar problem again this year. If you want to bring a flag to a gathering, stage it yourself or go to a patriotic event.

Maybe we need a nice Jimi Hendrix version of “Advance, Australia Fair” to lighten things up.

Cleaned Water
When I started back to work after our holiday on the Central Coast, I immediately made a note to bring my digital camera along the next day, after seeing the Parramatta River from the Church Street bridge. I’d seen the river over its banks many times since starting this job, but that Tuesday, there suddenly wasn’t much water, the flood-control embankments visible, the weeds drying in the sun, and fish visible in the center, circling in remaining pools where there remained some depth. Also, unretrieved shopping trolleys, a bit weedier than this one. It took a couple of days before I found out that the upper reaches had been drained to allow new fish ladders to be built, since there was no sign of construction. Too late, as it turns out, because today, the water’s back, even though the ladders aren’t due for completion for two more months yet. It’s just as well, though; the fish didn’t seem happy. I’m not certain if the clean-up mentioned in the Council’s website was particularly complete, but I’ll assume they pulled the trash they could reach.

Dreamgirls
It was so stinkin’ hot over the weekend that it was impossible to stay away from the movies, and since we already had free tickets in hand for Sunday’s screening of Rock ‘n’ Roll Heart, the Lou Reed biopic from 1998 (showing at the Chauvel, in Paddington, as part of the Sydney Festival), we headed out on Saturday afternoon for this must-see musical. Now I’ve found Dad’s theory regarding the transition of Broadway show to movie, that it should be accomplished within a year of the show’s close or the movie will suffer, to be reliable, but while Dreamgirls came in 1981 and went in 1985, whatever it took to bring this to the screen was worth waiting this long for. I didn’t see Chicago, the last movie touted as the revival of the movie musical, but I don’t care if I never do. From the first song, I was hooked, and that was before the Dreamettes took the stage and even before Eddie Murphy came out. Frankly, while every song and every performer in this movie is top notch, Eddie Murphy supplies the performance of his life and pretty nearly steals the show. He does it all, from James Brown to Marvin Gaye, and in his dramatic performance moments puts in an effort we’ve come to never expect him capable of. Yeah, Jamie Foxx is a good actor, but Murphy? Yeah, he is. Beyoncé Knowles transforms into Diana Ross so well it’s spooky, and Jennifer Hudson, well, for a girl who didn’t do well (if she didn’t do badly) in “American Idol,” it turns out she can act and sing. Not all the songs are brilliant – I mostly enjoyed the early stuff (and yes, the Dreams wouldn’t have toured China) but every song was used to good effect in driving the plot, both narratively and cinemagraphically, and the whole thing was immensely enjoyable.

Community-Minded
Last night, someone (Sara, the Bargain Queen) finally got around to organizing a Meet-up for Sydney webloggers, the first in quite some time that I’m aware of. There were probably about a dozen of us around the table, although interestingly, not all bloggers, and three of whom work in public relations, one in particular, visiting Sydney to watch his son compete in the Youth Olympics, making up, along with a Sydneysider on a home visit and myself, a New York contingent.

(It’s funny, but I have trouble sometimes distinguishing American accents, on television or in person, from Australian, other than very broad or very strong regional accents, something I attribute to having become accustomed to the overall Australian “voice” while [or “whilst” as is the common usage here] having a U.S. accent myself. It took me a moment or two to realize he was from back in the States. I think he’ll regret only spending a week here, as well as his having succumbed to the tourist syndrome of failing to apply adequate amounts of sunblock.)

What was more interesting than such coincidences was that so many of those attending don’t maintain a personal blog, such as this one, but are more focussed on professional blogs or actual websites, as distinct from blogs in the content. the Bargain Queen, for example, follows a traditional blogging format, but its content is devoted to generating revenues, presumably through advertising and affiliate sales and referrals. If it does well, it could do very well indeed, and if it does just o.k., it could still generate a fairly substantial, if purely supplementary income. It also provides a clearing house of shopping and fashion-related links some of which even I find of interest. After all, I’m going to have to re-cover the cat’s favorite sofa sooner rather than later, for example.

So, Trevor Cook has a blog, but its focus is on blogging’s contribution to public relations, often from a back-handed method, pointing out the breadth and depth of blogs as media, but, like Peter Himler, keeping a distinct web presence from the office website, while On Voice Over uses the blog format more in the way Sara does, although with a focus on creative design, particularly with the internet in view. The other PRblogger, Steven Noble, runs Elbow Grease within the context of the firm, although the content reads in the more usually experienced blog “voice.”

Meanwhile, Luke Matcalfe’s Rapid Intelligence is producing some amazing content: Nation Master and State Master, for example, which provide statistical and comparative data on a wealth of topics (is Texas really the biggest oil-consuming state in the U.S., or does that include processing as consumption?). Fact Bites and Qwika provide alternatives to other internet search engines.

I didn’t talk to everyone, but I’d go again just to see who turns up, and what internet trends they represent. Even if I did feel a bit like a 1980’s “home-pager.”

Closing in on 2008
While a lot of what goes on in the media focuses on how early the Presidential campaign season starts, it does take a lot of time and attention, from voters, that is. Or it should. All politics is local, as Tip O’Neill said, which means we mostly only know the politicians having some personal effect on us individually. As much as the President has a national profile, it’s the repercussions of his actions and policies that mean anything to us. “Congress” exists as a collective entity not unlike the circus. It’s only after some spectacular clowning that we notice anything in particular happening there, unless our Rep. or Senator brings home some tasty pork that doesn’t just get eaten up in the State House. But some of these politicians achieve national notoriety separately from previous runs at the White House. John Kerry went into government with a name and stayed more or less in the national consciousness, which should have helped him more than it did, when he ran in ’04. John Edwards, on the other hand, was known mainly to the media pundits, until he threw his hat into the ring. Now, he’s a contender. Barak Obama, on the other hand, stood up and delivered an address at the Democratic National Convention, and now he may run for President. And he could win, too, even against Hillary Clinton or Edwards, both of whom are often touted as favorites. Frankly, I’d rather any of these three than Biden or Kerry, and I don’t consider Dennis Kuchinich especially viable. Whether Governors Vilsack or Richardson can turn their executive credentials in their favor remains to be seen. Meanwhile, a solid announcement from any outstanding candidacy-contemplators would be worthwhile, if just so we’re not left cramming for the election too late in the piece to get a good handle on why one or another of them deserve the job, let alone who presents the best chance of taking on whomever the Republicans throw up. Much as I like Obama, he’s going to take some studying.

Tuesday Cat Blogging
If I work at it, I could have a nice cat-blog, instead of one full of political outrage. I would, however, have to have the camera at hand more often and then force the cats to do cute things worth photographing. If I'm going to do that, however, wouldn't it be better to video them and try to win the cash prize on "Australia's Funniest Home Videos"?

Tanned, Rested, and Ready for Retirement
We've just spent four days at Kim's Beach Hideaway, at Toowoon Bay, up the Central Coast. My God, this has been the best vacation I've ever had. Even though we took the least expensive option available - midweek, off-the-beach instead of beachfront semi-attached bungalow - I have trouble only in failing to imagine going back again and for longer. Three buffet meals a day, and a bell rung at the dining hour, with cocktails at seven, hundred-year-old Norfolk pines lining the central walkway, bamboo and Balinese gardens, and the beach just an arm's length (or short walk, anyway) away, I could picture myself a new Ernest Hemingway (if only it was as cheap as Cuba back then). The food was never short of wonderful and plentiful. The beach stretched for miles. And if we were slightly plagued by a surfiet of seaweed, and if the water was perhaps cooler than average this past week, it didn't matter. Father-in-law Russell and cousin-in-law Don separately threw money at us for Christmas to pay for exactly this, after all our medical travails in 2006, and for four days, we recouped every agony. Well, sort of, at least as far as it's possible to do so. I'll be saving money this year to go again as soon as possible. What I think I'd really like is to spend a week in winter and really settle into a little writerly fantasy. I'll remember to bring my own cocktails, though, seeing as how the booze is more than a little pricey. Worth every damn penny, just the same.

What Good's an Attorney General if He Won't Read an Indictment?
Phillip Ruddock has been busy these last few years, blaming David Hicks for his own incarceration, claiming it's the appeals that have left Hicks rotting in Guantanamo. Meanwhile, he never asked for, never read any bill of indictment, and so has no real idea if there's an indictable offense at work. So when he, or his master, the Prime Minister, fail to even ask, let alone demand (as Tony Blair did for his own citizens) the release of David Hicks, it's because they can't. They haven't got the guts to face down George Bush. A greater group of cowards has never before run a country, and it's Australia's great shame they keep putting this goons back into power. For what? Mortgage rates? Or fear of Muslims?

What Next
So, another year's anniversary in Iraq approaches, and, after all the "Study Group's" work, what we have is an increase, an escalation, another 20,000 troops sent into harm's way, and where is this all coming from, let alone where's it supposed to get us? Speculation has it that the so-called surge is at the behest of the Iraqi government, perhaps seeking to at least get Bahgdad under control, and that may be, since it's pretty clearly not the Baker group's consensus or the Pentagon's or anything like the conventional wisdom, if anyone takes that seriously. Maybe Bush is making it up himself, and that's likely, too, since that's pretty much how we got into this predicament in the first place: he's the decider, remember? I caught David Brooks on the SBS broadcast of the News Hour, and he's doing the usual Republican song-and-dance: it's all well and good to be critical, but until somebody else (a Democratic candidate for the 2008 Presidential election) actually proposes a policy, there's nothing else to do than keep on doin'. Bull. Bush and his cronies and handlers and corporate masters got us into this neo-Vietnam quagmire, so it's up to them, to him, the decider, to get us out, to fix this and move on. Instead, he's got the new Secretary of State, the death's head, Condoleeza Rice, proposing an escalation against Syria and Iran. How thoroughly reminiscent of the 70's does Bush propose to go? It's Laos and Cambodia all over again, although at least this time, it isn't Iraq using extra-national territory, but actual state players interferring in the war, crossing borders themselves. How Bush can keep this from playing out into Road Warrior scenarios, with general Middle East conflict becoming global conflagation, has never yet been articulated. Of course, articulation isn't exactly this President's strong suit, is it? It's time to go. Get out of Iraq.

Tick, Tick, Tick
Congratulations to the new Democratic leadership and incoming freshmen. The first 24 of Representative Nancy Pelosi’s 100 Hours is underway, and the Republicans are already mounting the traditional Opposition High Horse. I hope our new Speaker gets through at least some of her agenda, including what mostly sounds like a worthy effort on addressing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations for “homeland security.”

Proven to Prevent Tooth Decay
Back when the threat of communism was everywhere, pinko governments fluoridated the drinking water, and the next thing you knew, the scourge of cavities was eradicated. O.k., well, fluoride toothpaste, brushing after meals, flossing, and visiting the dentist twice a year helped, but we all know that if you're worried about you children's teeth, make sure they drink plenty of tap water.

Look, seriously, we have socialized medicine in this country (or we did, until the Howard government started its push to get everyone signed up into private cover), and, with all the studies that have shown a link between dental health and general health, it would make sense to extend the program to cover preventive dental care. Of course, this is an area where the medical coverage providers are making a bit of money for themselves/their shareholders, so it's not likely to happen. I wonder how many of his own teeth the Rodent still has?

Season's Entertainment
As soon as Christmas was past, M. & I headed up to Darlinghurst to Govindas (the best entertainment bargain in all Sydney, and very comfy) for The Devil Wears Prada, which was terrifically entertaining. It had one of the very best performances I've ever seen from Meryl Streep, so much so that even though I didn't believe the ending, in any of its particulars, I really didn't care. As much as I enjoyed Andy's narrative arc, I watched it for Miranda Priestly. What a character. See this movie soon.

(Oh, and I do wish the Hare Krishnas would upgrade their projection equipment; the reel change-overs were pretty jumpy, and a little distracting, although not as bad as the group of twenty who came in thinking the whole place was just like their lounge room. I blame DVD's, myself.)

I Hereby Commit a Blatant Act of Plagiarism
Copyright law’s a funny thing. What’s fair use? Sometimes, it seem, that precept doesn’t even exist anymore. The Australian Federal Court has now determined that linking to copyrighted material is an actionable infringement. While the ruling was delivered in the context of a case involving music downloads, all the defendant did was provide links to sites offering downloads, not the downloads themselves, so the ruling now makes bloggers potential targets if anyone uses a link to copyrighted material to publish or make other unauthorized use of that content, including my link, above, to the Sydney Morning Herald. Not only that, but comments containing links left on a blog are also the responsibility of the blog operator or owner. Do I care? I do not. Go ahead, link some stuff in comments. I’ll do the same in the posts.

The Approach to Christmas
We’ve been getting a variety of personal matters out of the way, to the degree such things are even possible, and keeping busy therefore during the run-up to Christmas, when we’ll be hosting M.’s brother’s family (or anyway the parents and youngest members thereof) for Xmas eve. Given that we’ve been so occupied, there’s been a welcome reduction in the ‘what am I getting for Chrissie’ barrage usually endured from about the time the decorations go up in stores to first thing in the morning 25 December. Now that the day is so close, I can probably anticipate recognition of the uselessness of such inquiries. Right.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, the AWB got their present early: their bribes to Saddam Hussein were not bribes and therefore tax-deductible (which isn’t stopping the lawsuits in the States or the U.S. Federal government delisting AWB); the NSW Labor party continues to be wracked by scandals large and small and leading the Premier to delist one after another of his party’s sitting members. Will anyone be left to vote? Thank goodness we’re headed for the Christmas break. Also, it seems that England’s performance in the Ashes (that’s a major cricketing event between us, one we’ve been winning a lot lately, but lost last year in England, and won back this year in 3 straight tests out of 5) have produced a win of sorts, with the highly regarded spin-bowler, Shane Warne, now set to retire at the end of the series, and Glenn McGrath (ooh, ah, Glenn McGrath) due to announce his resignation from Test cricket thereafter. Happy Christmas, England. We got back the little urn, but you’ve worn out some of our top players. Or something like that.

Tales of the Flying Kangaroo
Qantas used to be the national airline of Australia, and it still has exclusive rights to many of the major direct air routes to and from the country. Not long ago, in 2002, it undertook a redevelopment project for some billions of dollars, for which it required the government to relieve the airline of restrictions on foreign majority-shareholders (and part of which program was to buy a significant stake in Air New Zealand). Most of the socialized capitalist democracies seem to have undertaken a program to divest themselves of national assets in favor of private enterprise, something Qantas went through, from what I can tell, around 1992. I’m not at all certain at this point who’s got what, although foreign ownership is presently limited to 49% total, but Qantas is up for sale, and it’s a consortium of Macquarie Bank and a big Texas outfit. While there are no plans for breaking up the airline or laying off personnel, that’s just what they’re saying now, and the CEO’s statement that “if we don't be more efficient going forward, our competitive situation will not be strong” in the context of the buy-out, is suggestive that it’s all about the share price, and we all know what that means. Whether or not Qantas maintains its government-supported dominance seems an open question at this point. Will the sale go through? If it does, is there any incentive to keep the restrictions on other airlines in place? Well, the T3 sale of the government’s remaining shares of Telstra appears to have been a success, although there’s been little enough effect on services, so maybe this one’s a go-er, too. And how’s the food these days, anyway?

Monday Friday Cat Blogging
It’s been a while since anyone’s seen Felix, so here’s his alpha cat activity: riding my shoulder as we walk through the apartment.

It’d be better for me if he’d stick to one shoulder, but he feels better wrapped around my neck like a stole. I’m going to have to get some heavy turtlenecks. (Yeah, I'm not sure which of us looks craziest, but the votes'll probably be against me; I'm the one being surfed by a cat.)

Super Size
In the three years M. and I lived together in NYC it was a common experience for her to receive a meal in a restaurant that was significant larger than she was accustomed to from dining in Australia, a reciprocal experience I can attest to following our relocation to Sydney. Science has now confirmed that portion control has become uncontrolled over the last 20 years, making, for example, every sandwich a Stage/Carnegie Deli sandwich (so imagine what’s been happening at those infamously overstuffed venues). O.k., it’s not just an issue of restaurants, but of how we feed ourselves, and the study has shown we load up our plates more than ever before, along with using bigger plates. What’s been even more interesting to me, apropos my role as culture-clash commentator, is that serving size is on the rise here, perceptibly so, since our arrival in 2002. Maybe the fashion in restaurants to use large plates as a presentation palette, a Nouvelle Cuisine innovation, has led to a corresponding rise in diners’ expectations, as the U.S. study suggests. Certainly, an enormous dish with a bit of tenderloin or whatever stacked up and surrounded by decorative squiggles of sauce and sprinkled with chopped chives looks a little lonely, whereas a great slab of t-bone accompanied by a baked potato and some mixed veggies has the satisfying appeal of getting your money’s worth. As much as I appreciate the artistry of making the fish look like it’s leaping off the plate in a spray of julienned green papaya, it also makes eating the thing into a planned campaign of deconstruction, and I’m just not that post-modern. Presentation used to be a sprig of parsley, now chefs appear to be applying skills learned from a post-graduate fine arts degree, and menu prices have increased accordingly. Maybe this is why I like Italian restaurants so much: by-and-large, this is a cuisine well past trickery, although Domino’s keeps trying with pizzas.

So childhood obesity is on the rise here, and everybody’s looking for answers, whether it’s governmental regulation of fast food advertising on television or better labelling of packaged foods in the supermarket (or, in the case of the incumbent government, doing nothing and letting the market work itself out, such as we’ve seen in McDonald’s, where the wrappers come pre-printed with nutritional statistics and the walls are plastered with disinformation campaign posters and nobody reads either of them, but ”Make Up Your Own Mind”™).

I once heard it said that the Keen’s mustard empire made their fortune on the smears people left on their plates, and I understand the economics of that. Nevertheless, we could always leave a little on our plates, take less from the salad bar or buffet, and think before we cook. That could work, too.

Iraqization
The Study Group results are in and, like so many others, they say we should get out of Iraq. Leaving aside whether or not we should have gone there in the first place, the plan is rather full of “if’s,” as it must be, under the circumstances. “If” Iran controls it borders and stops fuelling the insurgency, “if” Syria does the same – these are two in particular that I see as significant problems. Iran and Syria don’t much have a history of non-interference when it comes to their neighbors’ sovereignity, let alone how they conduct themselves in relation to terrorism. To simply reject these elements out of hand – “talking isn’t a strategy,” according to National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley – doesn’t move the situation towards a resolution, however, unless you count civil war and a new, centrally located Arab terrorism national base as a resolution (and OBL and his minions are probably the only ones seeing that as a positive). And I have to agree with Bush on troop withdrawals, at least insofar as they are not going to be “graceful.” While I think we can avoid the helicopters on the roof scenes right out of Saigon, withdrawing is graceless: we made a mess of the country and can’t stay around to clean up after ourselves. We can, nevertheless, come back when the violence is finished and then do the reconstruction work that we’ve failed in since the days of “Mission Accomplished.” At least now there’s a plan. Is it any use wondering what Bush will do with it?

Bear Essentials
Many years ago, my siblings and I discovered a stash of Rupert Annuals in the basement of our Aunt Jill, who had brought them from her native England for her children to enjoy. Here was a strange menagerie of British (if just in nationality) creatures: animals who dressed and behaved as humans while retaining their distinctive animal features. Edgar Trunk, for example, the elephant boy, had a trunk and tusks and elephant ‘arms’, just as Rupert Bear himself had a muzzle and round, furry ears at the top of his head. Rupert, however, had human hands, no doubt because, as the lead character, he would be required to manipulate objects and interact with other creatures in and around the town of Nutwood, including some humanoids and post-humans (as the current parlance is in the Marvel Universe of underwear perverts formerly known as superheroes), in particular elves, Santa Claus, and Chinese magicians, and to do so without mauling them. Poor Edgar, on the other (ahem) hand, was left without even fingers, let alone an opposable thumb. Many years later, when the Counsellor’s children discovered Rupert, I first heard indications of the eldest daughter’s incipient interest in logic: if Rupert Bear has human hands, what kind of feet does he have? True enough, Rupert was never seen (ahem again) bare-footed, only shod. Even if he was at the beach, if he was seen near or in the water, his feet were kept out of sight. His new incarnation is no different, at least in that respect. Just sayin’ is all.

Changing Horses
This morning the Australian Labor Party votes on whether they want the incumbent, Kim Beazley, or the challenger, Kevin Rudd, as the new leader of the party going into next year’s federal election. Kim’s had two shots at Howard already, but after being dumped in favor of Simon Crean, himself dumped for Mark Latham, who lost the last election against Howard, there’s been a lot of media talk about Labor’s chances in 2008, mostly negative, mostly based on Kim’s performance, and despite a growing trend in the polls showing Labor leading against the Coalition. So with a 6-point lead, why shake up the leadership?

There’s been a little bit of speculation that’s it’s a ruse, a way for Beazley to quash further leadership disputes and media nonsense, most of which has centered on Rudd replacing Beazley, or Gillard, for that matter, who is running as Rudd’s deputy. That makes a certain amount of sense. There are a substantial number of swing voters who’d vote Labor if they believed Kim was the leader the party needed, but who have bought into Howard’s old line about Kim’s lack of “ticker” for the job of PM. I don’t buy any of it.

It seems to me that this is a genuine challenge based on the perception of job performance. I think Beazley’s got the stamina and determination to be PM and that he’d do a good job, but I also think that Rudd, along with much of the media and a substantial part of the Labor faithful, see Kim’s performance as lacking. It’s true; I think he’s failed to stand up and capitalize on issues where Howard’s vulnerable, at least to the extent I’d prefer, but in some cases at all. It’s not like I’m watching Question Time, or that I have a good idea of the day-to-day operations of Parliament, and I have to factor in what I see as the media’s bias in favor of Iron John – the news tends to focus on Howard’s invulnerability and the mythos of his status as the most brilliant politician of the modern age. Or something. The opposition, particularly Beazley, just don’t get as much time on the air or in the papers, except for their missteps. It doesn’t matter about the war in Iraq, the incompetent performance and ludicrous cover-up over the AWB or any of the outright lies Howard’s used to divide the nation; he’s untouchable, his every word swallowed delightedly and regurgitated for the masses.

This is why Rudd’s got a chance, as much as why I don’t like his timing. Beazley’s vulnerable but the party’s strong. If the electorate prefers Howard as PM but also the ALP as government, then the ALP with a more popular leader ought to be able to topple the Liberals at last. Rudd’s gotten plenty of attention as a potential alternative, and now we’ll see if it comes about, but what the effect will be, now that the only story in the papers through to the election is going to be Labor’s leadership problems, is anyone’s guess.

This Just in: Rudd's in, pretty decisively, too.

Usual Year-End List Mania
Last night, the ABC aired “Australia’s Favourite Album,” a top-ten publicly voted list of rock ‘n’ roll records, with a panel commentary. The full 100 list has a lot more satisfaction to it, for me, than the top ten, because while I’ve heard at least songs from the albums, I’ve only ever sat down and listened to the entirety of two of them, Jeff Buckley’s Grace and (because I was a college student at the time and every dorm room had a copy) Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Australia’s number 1.

As the panel noted late in the program, not a woman in the ten, not a single non-white person. Carol King comes in at 18, with Tapestry, of course (did she record anything else?), and Prince’s Purple Rain at number 61. If we discount for “Australian Idol” and the “latest release” phenomenon, the list is pretty typical, and it was no surprise that that particular Pink Floyd album was at the top or that Sgt. Pepper’s was included, since the Beatles were sure to be represented. Abbey Road may be a little bit of a surprise, but only because of “Octopus’s Garden”, although at least it doesn’t ever get played, even by Ringo). Still, very few women, very few black people, no Aretha Franklin or any of the soul greats, and the Velvet Underground only edging over the line at 100 despite the undisputable fact that everyone who ever heard their record at least wanted to start a band of their own.

I voted for Brian Eno’s Another Green World, but I’m neither surprised nor disappointed that it didn’t turn up. Even I don’t listen to it that often.

Library Notes
Last night I stayed up a little longer than I’d originally planned, because I had only twenty pages or so left in the book I was reading and I wanted to finish it. This is only the second book by David Malouf I’ve read, the first being Johnno, which is probably the traditional starting place. I wasn’t a fan, but when I was desperately pawing through the office stack of shared books, setting aside the James North Patterson and such, picked up Remembering Babylon based on simply the awareness that Malouf is highly regarded and the blurbs on the cover indicating he’d been shortlisted once for the Booker and this particular book had been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin, the local prestige award.

The story centers on a small community’s collective and individual encounter with a kind of “wild child,” or, as it was expressed in the American Old West, a renegade; that is, a white man raised by the aborigines. His presence brings to mind the white community’s alienation from its surroundings, at least for some, and allows Malouf to explore the themes still plaguing Australian consciousness, land rights, the “Sorry” campaign, the denialist, revisionist history of colonization being perpetrated by certain academics. Nothing too explicit, nothing too deeply written into, but well-managed just the same, although the renegade’s portrayal is a little on the overly magical side, which is why, ultimately, it isn’t a major work. That, and the rather abrupt forward jump in time across fifty years and only a romantic reminiscence to tie things together.

This is, however, the first Australian novel I’ve read to address the pre-Federation period, so I’m not aware of anything better out there. Still, if what you’re interested in is Australians’ relationship to their past and the place of the aborigines, my preference at this point is Andrew McGahan’s The White Earth, even though there isn’t an aborigine anywhere in it.

Yet Another First-Run Movie
While M. was out for a bit of socializing, I took the opportunity to see Children of Men, a movie I didn’t think she’d like, howsoever much she may have been interested in it. I was right about that, but it shouldn’t take anything away from the movie itself, which, while not great, is very affecting and very good indeed. Julianne Moore doesn’t have a lot to do in it, but then neither does anybody else, really, although I guess that’s kind of part of the point and really they’re all doing such good work that you hardly even notice, sucked into the situation and the characterizations right from the start. There’s plenty of tension, understated exposition, effectively detailed settings, and anti-action sequences that leave you holding your breath. So much hopelessness that even by the end, you’re not sure if there’s any hope left, and that’s kind of the point, too. I don’t know about the original P.D. James novel, but I assume the filmmakers have opted to make it all that much more topical, if only with particular pointed references to Hezbollah-style Islamic militarism, Iraq, and torture. But while such current-affairs touch-points do their job, the larger point isn’t lost to politics. We are so cruel to one another, so devoted to our cruelty; but if we suffer, there’s someone else who suffers more, because that’s who we made them to be.

Oh, Shut Up, All of You
Not really, but I made the mistake of "upgrading" my blogger template, which means that my haloscan.com comments feature has been lost, at least until I can figure out where it goes. I'm putting things back in, but it could take a little while, especially the third party stuff.

On the other hand, I rather like some of this new content management. Look: post labels.

(Meanwhile, I'll switch on Blogger commenting, just in case.)

The Energy Debate We Had to Have
With our PM, John Howard, pretty well committed to the development of nuclear power generation (despite the preference in some states not to have these things foisted off in their jurisdiction – although that concept has been seriously damaged by the recent High Court decision on Howard’s “WorkChoices” override of states’ rights), should it be surprising that we’re not part of the new US$12.8 billion fusion development project? Not really, since it will take decades, and the next federal election is much sooner than that.

Besides, nuclear power, fusion or fission, won’t save us from bush fires - or will it? That’s part of the selling point, after all, that nuclear energy would increase “clean” energy production and thereby reduce global warming contributions in Australia.

Update: Former Telstra chief, Ziggy Switkowski, who headed up the report to his good friend, John Howard, on the viability of nuclear power, says the waste wouldn't be more than would fit in a household bathroom. Ziggy, mate, how's about we put the stuff in your bathroom? Seriously, I get the idea he just made it all up.

National Service
Charles Rangel wants to reinstate the draft? I expected it from the Republicans, but to have the new, Democratic, Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee propose this is a bit of a shock. O.k., he’s been a supporter of registration for a long time and often proposed putting the draft back in place, but c’mon, the draft? Really? And he wants to extend mandatory military service to age 42. Sure, that might catch some of the Fighting 101st Keyboarders, as the on-line chickenhawk brigade are known, but, c’mon, really, the draft? Who’s he working for? O.k., now that Kissinger’s weighed in to say Iraq can’t be won, a bigger troop commitment seems like a good idea now? Not that Chuckie’s proposing the start up conscription right away, but keep in mind that the GOP did activate the Selective Service some time back, just in case. Oh, this sounds bad.

Little Miss Sunshine
We made our first cinema excursion in months yesterday to see this movie, and we’re very glad we did. There isn’t much plot as such, but the dialogue’s terrific, the acting is top-notch, the picaresque occurrences along the way very funny, the characters well-defined and playing off one another brilliantly. It’s all one big set-up for the gag at the end, but the payoff’s worth it, all the dots pretty well connected at last for a painfully funny send-up of all your expectations. What’s that Tolstoy line about happy families?

Politics as Usual
This is no time to be playing politics. While the 2008 Presidential election season is, effectively, already in progress, and so fund-raising matters, governmental ethics are long past due for a serious clean-up effort. Let’s have it, Democrats: let’s go all-out on ethics reforms. The Republicans may block parts, but not if they don’t want to be seen as the party of corruption they let themselves become. But it’s not just about who benefited from the K Street Project or who didn’t. Democrats are just as prone to abusing the loopholes as anyone else. God knows, Murtha’s got a rep for cosying up to the GOP when it suits him, and everybody loves some legislative pork. I’m with Obama: it’s about putting some bite in the rules. Then let’s move on to campaign financing.

R.I.P.
I only got to one game when I was at Michigan, but it was at a time when Bo Shembechler could do no wrong. What a coach.

Environmental Indecision
While fires rage in the Blue Mountains, down in Tassie and Victoria, there’s snow, and more to come, with last night the coldest in Sydney for this time of year in a 100 years, too. Aberrant weather isn’t necessarily a proof of global warming, unless it becomes a pattern of its own, but maybe it’s just as well that our beloved PM has adopted a new(ish) position on the matter.

Justice for All
It's not just about a 'fair trial' or whether he's making use of the appeals process built into the U.S. justice system, as Ruddock and others persist in saying, but whether he is a legitimate prisoner of war or an Australian citizen eligible for repatriation and the benefits of Australian law. Like the British citizens Tony Blair retrieved from their legal limbo, David Hicks deserves the support of his government.



Here’s an Amnesty International video (produced by our friends at Ether Productions).

Rummy Dummy Spit
Rumsfeld’s out, apparently in response to the Democratic majority in Congress (say, wasn’t it just this week that George II was going to “stay the course” with his Defense Secretary?), and Robert Gates is in. What is it with Bush and all these former Iran-Contra crooks? Can’t he bring in anyone to his administration but the worst of the Reaganites? First, Negroponte, now Gates. Who’s next? Ollie?

What an astute move by our lame duck Executive.

(Meanwhile, what can we expect from the first 100 hours? Nancy Pelosi’s agenda sounds pretty good.)

Too Bad, So Sad; But in Other Races, I’m Glad
There are many more returns yet to come in, but while Lieberman may have succeeded in his Senate bid (and I’d have given up any hope for a majority just to see him lose), at least we’ll have gotten rid of that devil’s minion, Rick Santorum. I remain hopeful for Virginia, too, where the Webb-Allen race is still close, with 96% reporting and only a 1% difference between the candidates, and Montana, where Tester's showing an early lead. Missouri looks like it'll go Republican, as does Tennessee, although they could both still swing.

???? [It's supposed to be Chinese for "Convenience Store", but Blogger don't do that.]
Marrickville will go to a vote on whether shop signs must include English. Apparently, some residents, or Councillors, anyway, are concerned about Asian-language shop signs they can’t read. What? Do they think they’re selling crack? (???? [Again, no non-Roman characters available, so never mind, don't bother contacting the Laowai; you'll have a pretty good idea what it probably said, anyway.]) Now, I’m all for being able to find a tea-smoked duck at the lowest price, or I would be if I was eating duck, let alone wasn’t thoroughly grossed-out by the shop display usual to such places as sell it, but this is forced assimilation and a little silly. It would be indicative of a desire to integrate for such shop owners as are deliberately catering to a particular ethnicity that they include English, and I’m sure delicatessens and bodegas anywhere in the English-speaking-majority world could attest to more success by expanding their signage past Hebrew or Yiddish and Spanish. I couldn’t begin to count the number of “Sino-Latino” restaurants I used to see in NYC, and back when I lived in Queens, it was a multicultural delight to walk into the local Chinese take-out joint and find it was run by Koreans who spoke English and Spanish as well as their native language. But, again, isn’t this just (legislatively) catering to a xenophobic few, already well-serviced by shops providing for mainstream consumers, who are otherwise intimidated by an immigrant presence maintaining their cultural identity through language and custom without otherwise interfering with the day-to-day lives of anyone else? If the shop’s signage puts you off, don’t go in. Or even better, go in and ask questions. What’s this? How much is it? Etc. Buy something. The operators may realize they’re missing out on some income.

How Do You Tuna Fish?
In less than 50 years, there will be no more fish. The ramifications of Dr. Worm’s report extend far beyond whether or not our dining options will become limited, because we’re not the only ones on the planet dependent on the ocean. (We’re better off than the whales and dolphins, obviously, in this projection; they don’t farm.) Meanwhile, the Bush administration denies there’s a problem. Somehow, back in the States, the trend is improving, but tell that to the men in boats hunting cod. Or Australia, where the concern over illegal fishing is a headline-grabber. I’m waiting to hear what Johnnie thinks: it usually sounds like whatever’s just popped out of George’s mouth.

GOTV
If your voting machine is easily hacked and doesn’t produce a paper trail, that’s o.k., but it’s a whole ‘nother story if your software company owners are Venezuelan and started with the referendum to elect Hugo Chavez. Anybody else smell brimstone?

"Whatever they are"
A major highway improvement project is stalled because a colony of platypus is living in a creek along the road. Senator Bill Heffernan wants the road finished, but doesn’t regard the animals as worth holding up construction, although they are a protected species. Maybe he doesn’t think they’re real. Did I mention he’s a Liberal? Of course he is. Do any of them care for anything beyond the expedient?

More Dog-Whistling?
It’s true that here in New South Wales, the government already provides some funding for
But the federal government’s proposal to pay for school chaplains strikes me as requiring a jaundiced eye, if only because of the continuing controversy over Sheik Hilaly and the timing of Mr. Howard’s announcement. Although I’m sure the bill, should it be presented in Parliament, would make no distinction in religious persuasion, there is no more than the mere tradition of freedom of religion in Australia, and even that’s relatively modern. It seems quite clear that this is not much more than an attempt to “get ‘em young” and establish a state-sponsored theology. As one interlocutor on a previous thread expressed it, all religion is a means of repression, or can be at least, and especially when the state inserts itself into matters of faith. Schools have counsellors, but what if they become proselytizers, too? It’s issues like these that make the Greens and Democrats look so much better than the Opposition.

Discontinuing the Constitution
Now that George II can declare martial law anywhere and anytime, should we be concerned for the present restriction on holding the Oval Office to two terms? We’ve pretty much already lost Habeas Corpus, so if the Democrats fail to achieve a majority in either or both houses of Congress, can we expect Bush to resolve his Cheney problem (the guy’s never going to pass muster to run, medically) by opening the way to a third term? How far would he go – would he even suspend the 2008 election? More immediately: how does he keep getting away with this stuff?

Mufti Muff
It’s hardly on the same scale as a global religious leader denigrating the faith of millions, but at what point will the Islamic leadership learn that the world has changed, and women can dress as they please? I don’t care if Al Hilaly was sermonizing about fidelity and abstinence or not: this isn’t a Third World country (not that that matters), let alone the nineteenth century and he needs to get over it. If there isn’t any other more serious problem in Islam as a religious organization, globally or locally, it’s that the rest of the “leadership” can’t make idiots like this shut up and sit down.

Update: Deporting the creep doesn't appear to be an option, unless it can be shown that Al Hilaly has spoken to incite violence against women, and that would take a member of his congregation carrying out such a crime. Even then, it would probably be a stretch to prosecute the cleric. Really, his statement is not much more than the often-heard "she asked for it" vileness still perpetrated by more modern members of societies around the world, though no less deserving of condemnation.

Jiggity-Jig
Even as we speak, Mom & Dad are waiting in the airport (or possibly even on board the plane at this hour) to return to the U.S., although, due to the effects of time-travel, they are also already back in Los Angeles. Isn’t the International Dateline marvellous?

They’ve had a good trip, even if all they’ve seen has been Sydney and a bit of Canberra, and I think Dad feels a bit better than he may have previously about our move here four years ago, now that he’s seen the place. It is a beautiful country, with a fascinating history (that I’ve been pretty remiss in studying properly, at least its post-Federation story) and inexplicable wildlife. Why did Australia get all the marsupials except the North American possum (and why are our possums so different from the o- variety)? Why did the animals develop here they way they have with the absence of any major predators, the former thylacine notwithstanding? Why did Kerr really sack Whitlam? Some things we may never know.

While it’s my turn for an international jaunt, it will be a while yet before I accomplish it, barring any employment changes that offer me that opportunity, an eventuality now forestalled by six months, as I’ve taken up an extension to my contract here. I’d like to go back at some point, though maybe only once the Democrats are back in power.

Bizarre Food/Bizarre Ban
I’m no fan of Vegemite, but the ban on its importation – even going so far as having Customs agents preventing Australian tourists bringing the stuff in with their luggage – is just weird. Only breads and cereals can contain added folate (folic acid), a B vitamin, so Vegemite, which is mostly all about the B’s and high in folate, is illegal. What will Howard do? Can he get his mate, Bush, to rescind the ban? What will the ex-pat Aussies do? Hollywood better watch out, since they stand to lose a substantial amount of top talent when Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, et al. all decide they can’t work without their yeast-extract breakfast spread.

Damn Tourists
It all goes well so far, with Mom & Dad safely ensconsed just up the road and having a fine time. We've been walking them off their feet pretty much daily, sometimes letting them have a bus tour to let them rest a little. We hit the foreshore first, of course, and down through the Rocks, and later in the week joined them for a Hunter Valley vineyard trip that really was very good. You never know, but Boutique Wine Tours went to a couple of good wineries, from which I brought home a couple of bottles of chardonney (well, I am a leftie, after all) I'm looking forward to with relish. Today, Dad and I did the Bridge Climb, which, regardless of the price, every tourist to Sydney ought to do, and probably most Sydneysiders, for that matter. We'll send them down to Canberra, soon, on their own, and I know they'll enjoy it, but most importantly, they went to the Blue Mountains yesterday. Now, apparently, Blue Mountains Cultural Tours" are relatively new, but we chose them because Mom made the trip west last year and we thought something different from that tour would be a good idea, and these guys did the Jenolan Caves as well as the usual Three Sisters stuff. But now I can never allow them back in the country. I've been here four years, and they're in the country for four days when they see a platypus. I haven't seen one, and it's been a goal of mine from the day I first heard such creatures existed. It's just not fair. After they've gone, I'm going to have to head up to the Blue Lake and spend as long as it takes. I can't let them get away with it.

Making Water
Are we really on the verge of running out of drinking water? Years of drought and wasteful utilisation practices and other forms of mismanagement suggest it’s true. More dams won’t help, but conservation will. There are studies, there are recommendations, which, if implemented, would improve the situation, if not resolve it. We hear about these things only occasionally, and usually as exceptions, such as this or that farmer who’s managed to defeat soil salinity or the city that’s implemented a wetlands rainwater purification catchment system. There’s plenty more that could be done, products and systems installed to directly conserve water as well as indirectly. Energy production isn’t just a matter of petroleum, you know. Water plays a significant role. Everything every ordinary person can do to reduce energy consumption and water utilisation is worth doing. Year by year, the world goes into “ecological debt” sooner and sooner. I once heard it speculated that the next global conflict would not be over land or oil but water, and even considering the present conflicts in the Middle East, there’s a good deal of truth in it. Who controls the Jordan, who controls the Tigris and Euphrates? Major sources of fresh water in specific regions of desert, and the nations in conflict with one another and themselves. Will Tasmanian exports do the trick?

This Has Been a Test . . . in the Event of a Real Emergency. . . .
We’ve known that North Korea had nukes for a long time now, so the test they conducted shouldn’t be a surprise, any more so than their previous ballistic missile attempt. Everybody treats North Korea like they’re the village idiots: unpredictable, probably dangerous, but not terribly bright. A recent Robert Kaplan article in the Atlantic Monthly outlines why that kind of thinking is what’s dangerous about North Korea and takes a more forward-looking view of the eventual, inevitable collapse of the Pyongyang regime. Validation of their nuclear capacity does make the situation more immediate to the world, if no more destablising to the region than Pakistan and India trading tests was not so long ago. China does need to take more of a hand than they’ve been seen to do up to now, but in the end, North Korea seems less likely to launch a war than to leverage foreign aid and an increased period for the Kim family to hold power. We should, however, keep our heads as we work out what to do in response to the test. North Korean claims must be assessed with as much accuracy as possible. Already there appear to be reports that seismology reports are conflicting. While that doesn’t make the prospect of their atomic weapons capacity any less, it does raise some interesting questions about their claims in general and in some specifics. Was it a “neutron” device, designed for high radioactivity and a lower blast, for example.

Wringing It
O.k., so, not in the air. It seems somebody gained a day instead of losing one, and that, along with perhaps some additional math problems, have left the parental units still at home, peacefully regarding their impending departure, while I paced the bloody airport wondering what Qantas had done with my parents. No harm done, of course, as luckily the itinerary we'd planned for them had some flex. I guess I might as well go to the office tomorrow and finish one or two things I'd put on hold.

Winging It
Mom and Dad are in the air and on their way to Sydney. For Mom, it's her second trip, but Dad's coming because her first trip sounded good enough to endure the 20+ hours in the arms of Qantas. Plus, he can't let her have done a Bridge Climb and not have done it himself, so I'll be on my third go. It's a lot of fun, and I never remember the answers to any of the quizzes. Is it a million rivets or ten million? (I don't think the Bridge Climb staff really know, either.) There are a few things they have to see and I hope we can make them happen: a platypus (or platypussery, anyway), a kookaburra, and, of course, kangaroos in the wild. You can't come to Australia and settle for zoo 'roos, can you?

Let Loose the Dogs of Culture War
Earlier this week, Prime Minister John Howard gave a little speech commemorating the start-up of Quadrant, a dull, vapid opinion journal dedicated to the proposition that conservative values are only those that serve a reactionary agenda and in full opposition to any suggestion of merit in more inclusive government policies because those are only ever communism and we know about Joseph Stalin, don’t we? Now, while it’s true that from the time of the Soviet revolution and on into the ‘fifties and ‘sixites, many far-left opinions were supportive of a regime that didn’t deserve support, that ignores other, more majority-representative opinions on the left, that the arms race, for example, endangered us all, or that a policy of open engagement rather than punitive sanctions and sphere-of-influence interventionism would better (or at least equally) serve to bring about positive change in Eastern Europe, as Gorbachev’s own policies toward the end of the Cold War proved. But never mind all that, because it’s too late. School funding, Mr. Howard not long ago proposed, should be based on schools having a flagpole and flying the national flag. And teachers are evil ideologues because they oppose Mr. Howard’s policies towards the elimination of the social safety net and the gutting of Medicare. Socialist policies from a previous government driven from office by its inability to get a budget passed to pay for it, and socialism is really just communism that’s been run through the wash. And universities are hotbeds of communism, all those Red professors with tenure left over from that now discredited era still peddling their pernicious ideas like “think for yourself” and equality for women and homosexuals and ethnic minorities. Even worse, some people have the unmitigated gall to suggest that we ought to consider the institutional abuses of the past as wrong, that we should apologize for them – because they didn’t really happen, as has been proven by revisionist historians (on the basis of incorrectly cited footnotes in the work of a few other historians claiming such abuses did indeed happen). So the Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, now proposes that the Federal government should take the responsibility for setting the basic educational curriculum away from the states and territories. Really, it’s all part of Mr. Howard’s strategy to eliminate federalism in Australia, which is a petulant reaction to the fact that the states and territories are governed by the opposition party. That there are – if there are – first-year law students taking remedial English (and if that’s due to some failure from their primary or secondary school years) – is not a result of ideological pedantry “straight from Chairman Mao”, as anyone familiar with the educational system can tell you, but that the system is overwhelmed, insufficiently funded, and as a result allowing kids to slip through. It’s not the curriculum, and it’s not the teachers, it’s the system, as we lefties have often had cause to point out, and unless the system is fixed, it will continue to happen. It doesn’t matter if you teach revisionist history or accurate history, whether you teach British literature or internationally sourced books, or even if same-sex parenting gets a look-in on Playschool: if the system can’t supply sufficient funding so that students get the support they need, kids will continue to progress without learning. Better pay for teachers, and not fatuous merit schemes, and more school funding (so that teachers aren’t paying for supplies from their own pockets, for one thing), would do more to attract better teachers and to keep them in the system, first of all. More and better teachers would allow more and better attention to the children. Let’s stop pretending that the curriculum is controlled by the politics of individual teachers, when what you really object to is the governments running the schools. More dog-whistle politics, whipping up the forces of division.

Abuse
Mark Foley has plenty to be ashamed of, apparently, including his lawyer, who is now offering his client’s own history of childhood abuse and sexual orientation as something like an excuse. Frankly, the latter is largely irrelevant, except in which pages would have been subjected to harassment, and the latter is only relevant insofar as it underscores why such abuse is so serious. It seems, however, that Rep. Foley wasn’t so much a perpetrator of abuse as just a creep, although that doesn’t make his actions any less improper or potentially harassing. And there’s the real issue to be addressed.

Guidelines for addressing sexual harassment are well-established in the States at this point. Most large businesses (and many small ones) have set forth policies and procedures for handling complaints, and they’re based on laws and regulations and court case precedents and EEOC-issued policy papers. For any Federal government body to fail in its duty is indicative of a serious failure of oversight. It was bad enough that we had the embarrassing admissions of the Lewinsky affair, but there’s considerable room in that incident for it to have been a matter of censure rather than a full-blown case of workplace harassment. No such leeway is evident here, particularly in the actions of the Speaker of the House.

If it’s true that he knew of Foley’s actions in 2005 and did nothing, then he would be at fault, just as liable to redress as Foley himself. Although Congresspersons are essentially independent contractors, that they identify with a party and work therein according to party directives and discipline under the supervision of the Speaker makes them functionally employees, and their employers have a responsibility hierarchically to ensure they act according to ethical standards.

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert will have violated those ethics by failing to take the matter with due seriousness to the same degree and in the same kind as Foley’s actions have done. He should step down immediately pending the outcome of a properly conducted DOJ investigation.

Colossus
Independent bookstores struggle, and it’s no surprise. But for all the convenience of and discounts from the on-line retailers, sometimes a bookstore is the only way to get what you want, especially if what you want is the experience of searching for an unspecified something to read, or, as the soon-to-close Coliseum Books did for me, when you need something that only an overstuffed store will allow to stay on its shelf. That’s how I ended up with a complete set of the Martin Beck mysteries years after I’d first encountered >The Laughing Policeman. It was also my bookstore, while the rest of my NYC family had Scribners or Brentano’s or (before it was a chain) Barnes & Noble. My first job in the city was just a couple of blocks away, so I spent many more lunch hours there than was good for my take-home pay. I’m sorry their shutting up, and I’m sure there will be others who are, too.

Despicable
The new torture laws passed by the Senate will surely go down in history as one of the most heinous acts of legislation ever perpetrated by the United States. The 12 Democrats who voted in favor of the new law are bedwetters and don’t deserve their seats.

Carper – Delaware
Liberman (of course) – Connecticut
Lautenberg – New Jersey
Landrieu – Louisiana
Johnson – South Dakota
Menendez - New Jersey
Nelson – Florida
Nelson – Nebraska
Pryor – Arkansas
Rockefeller – West Virginia
Salazar – Colorado
Stabenow – Michigan

I’d vote for a Republican before I’d vote for any of these fools, but only Lieberman, Carper, Menendez, the Nelsons, and Stabenow are up for re-election in the mid-terms. Now that Lieberman’s running as an Independent, Connecticut has the chance to vote Democratic anyway, but it’d be a shame to lose the other four seats, when we need to gain six to re-take the Senate. Nevertheless, if you’re in favor of torture, you’re no friend to America.

Webtools
Every now and then something comes up on the internet that makes me think: Wow. Map My Run may not be flying car-cool, but it is a terrific tool. I’ve just had a go at mapping a couple of areas here in Sydney, one being the Parramatta Park Runners Club route, and I’m so impressed that I may spend altogether too much time planning out training runs. (If any of my job prospects come through – and they’d better do it soon – this could be a great resource for working out distances for lunch hour programs.) But the coolest feature of all is the Play feature, using Google Earth (which, if you haven’t downloaded it yet, you should), which tilts the map about a third or so and navigates along your plotted course, beginning to end, displaying the satellite images along the way. Genius.

Thirty Years Gone
Back at the Bicentennial I left behind that supposedly experientially iconic condition: High School. “Supposedly,” because it’s really only in certain boys’ lit and Hollywood output that it marks some magical coming-of-age transition, whereas real life isn’t often like that at all. Sure, some – and no small number – have high school as the end of schooling and thus their entry into adult life, but it’s reasonable to say that their passage will be more often fraught than not and of no less duration than for those going on to university and then moving into family and jobs and all such responsibility therein entailed. What’s still remarkable to me, however, is that anyone would bother me with an invitation to attend a reunion. The fact that I live now in Australia has nothing to do with my surprise, but that I had only a few friends, none of whom appear on the reunion committee list, and, if generally regarded at all, was probably generally regarded as a social waste of time, much as I saw my classmates, for that matter. Sure, they’re all “different” now, as am I, as the Counsellor pointed out in our email correspondence on the matter, but I’d contend that we’re also still likely to be very much the same people, carrying some of the same attitudes and behaviors we were forming then. High school was a trial, mostly, a torturous endurance test with just enough educational benefit to keep me from losing interest altogether. Once I left, I pretty much never saw or heard from any of the other 400+ classmates again, and have only ever occasionally wondered as to the fate of any of them. I’m certainly even less interested now. I have nothing in particular against the school I attended, the students, or even any of the teachers, or at least not much in that last category –some of them were at least trying to keep me and everyone else interested and were themselves fairly passionate about what they were teaching. Yes, there were some I’d rather not have had to contend with, but that’s true of people in my adult life since, so maybe it was good training. If nothing else, none of them left any scars as such, and the others left some worthwhile datum or another. And although I was graduated from one high school, my secondary education started at another institution, a boarding school I was asked to leave after one year, and they’re the ones with whom I credit the skills that carried me through a post-graduate tertiary degree. The study habits inculcated in me there, whether in rote-learning exercises or for more analytical applications, were trialled through more intensive testing than I’d spend the next three years having to contend with, and both the habits and the test-taking skills have proven their worth ever since. And while I never later met or even much thought of any of those classmates either, it’s less of a surprise, since they were drawn from a much broader geographic area than my graduating high school class, and if any of them successfully made it through the four years and the intended tertiary program thereafter, would have likely been spread even further yet (although not as far as this end of the earth). Few of them would have, and many would not be looking back there now, but whether the one school or the other, they can keep it.

Ministerial Mysteries
Does John Howard want to create a Ministry for Water? Maybe not yet; after all, while years of drought may mean we have a problem getting enough fresh water, there isn’t any problem with global warming, so the problem is sure to fix itself eventually.

But why be so cagey? Why is this such a bad idea? Water is a big issue here, and we’re likely to have to do something about it sooner rather than later. A ministry to see to the development of conservation and management on a federal level sounds like the kind of planning that would be worthwhile. Or should we wait until it’s time for a War on Water?

(Meanwhile, there had been some news reports that Bush was planning an announcement of a major turnaround on global warming policy, with speculation it was being done to disrupt a potential Gore candidacy in 2008. So what happened, did somebody convince him it would disrupt oil sales?)

Season Well
Maybe it’s one of those cases where I just don’t remember from year to year, but this seems to be the earliest bush fire season start since I got to this country, and it’s certainly been one hot, dry Spring. Yesterday, out on the awning cleaning the front windows, there was a distinct scent of fire in the air, and not that barbeque cooking smell or the pleasant odor of a woodfire in winter. With a fresh El Niño forming in the Pacific, this could be a very difficult summer. And still everybody mocks Al Gore.

What’s that Smell?
Let’s see: Bush makes a speech at the UN. Chavez follows with a speech where he calls Bush the devil and says the podium smells like sulphur. Customs detains Venezuela’s foreign minister at JFK on his way out of town but doesn’t have an explanation. Cause and effect? You decide.

Our Duty
Of course a deal was made, look at the participants. On one side, President Torqumada , and on the other Senators Warner, Graham, and – of course – McCain. “We did our duty,” says Warner, but their duty consists of backing down to Bush. It’s McCain, in the end, who most infuriates me. Here’s a man who knows what being a POW is about and what can happen if your captors are not bound by quaint treaties, like the Geneva Conventions. And yet he’s happy – again – to sign off on allowing secret overseas prisons and the use of abusive interrogation techniques – torture, in fact. McCain signed off because the legislation, as he previously waffled over, turns the responsibility onto the CIA, keeping the military out of it. That doesn’t really cut it, John. Do you think anyone on the other side cares if their people are being tortured by spies versus soldiers, or that having a soldier in their care they would act differently than if they captured a CIA agent? I think we already know the answer to that. To say that secret detention and torture are less reprehensible when conducted by or under the aegis of the CIA makes the agency separate from the rest of the government, leaves them out from under the cover and the legal requirements of the Constitution, and puts every American at risk, as if things weren’t bad enough already. Either the CIA is part of the federal government or it isn’t. McCain is serving a very narrow class of American by caving in on Bush’s legislation and dog-whistling to the Bush constituency. It’s craven, immoderate, self-serving politics, and it’s no surprise at all.

Inexpert Opinion
Judge Richard Posner of the 11th Circuit, is a well-respected jurist and well-received public commentator on matters of law, and has now weighed in on the limits of power under the Constitution in the so-called War on Terror™ in his book, >Not a Suicide Pact. But the latest review of his position suggests he’d have been better sticking to matters of administrative law or the economic analysis of law, his area of expertise, and given the outline of his arguments, I’d have to agree. Somehow I always expect senior jurists to come down in favor of a robust support for civil liberties, despite Scalia et al., but I guess that’s unrealistic. Is it Nixon’s fate that so weighs on the judge that he can’t see the validity of limits on Executive power? I wouldn’t have pegged him for a bedwetter, but if he’s that scared, maybe he should retire so he can stay home.

Another Velvet Morning
The Velvet Underground are often touted as both the best and the worst thing to ever happen to rock ‘n’ roll. (It’s also frequently said that everyone who ever heard the Velvets immediately went on to start a band of their own, part of “best thing,” maybe.) They’re not included in this list, although some far better examples of “worst things” are. I have to agree with number 25: tribute albums, in particular, with the possible exception of I’m Your Fan, the Leonard Cohen tribute, that has the best version of “Hallelujah” you’ll ever hear (in your face, Rufus Wainwright). O.k., M., yes, the >Jeff Buckley version is very good. The rock poet entry will be somewhat controversial at home, too.

Apologies & Retractions
So the pope makes a speech in which he makes some fairly insulting comments about Islam in the course of quoting some medieval bigot and has to apologize for causing offense. It takes him awhile to do it, too, initially relying on spokesmen and then having to come out himself and say he’s sorry. It wasn’t much of an apology, and it didn’t do a lot to calm anyone down, but the Muslims burning him in effigy and issuing fatwas and the like are a minority and should really consider whether they care so very much about what the leader of somebody else’s religion has to say about theirs. Whether or not the pope was really trying to make a point about an open dialogue between Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam – and it sounds like a stretch to me – or was name-calling or whatever, God or Allah or whatever deity you worship doesn’t need nuns murdered or street marches or anything else to defend it. However, Cardinal Pell doesn’t have to make things worse for his boss by essentially retracting the apology. There is a modern history of mass violence among Muslims that isn’t paralleled in the global Christian community and that ought to be addressed. Islam, doesn’t have the structures in place to achieve a Reformation or to broadly adjust matters of doctrine, but that doesn’t make it less necessary to do so. The fact that this religion is such an integral part of the identities of its adherents culturally, the single defining element of the lives of millions upon millions who are otherwise entirely distinct from one another, and that Islam has essentially mired itself into a nearly unreformable static condition, in no small part by making Arabic the language of God, also seems to make Muslims rather sensitive to the interpretations of others, and those others might want to take that into account in making public pronouncements. We would all, indeed, do better with an open dialogue between the factions, but that doesn’t preclude being polite.

Visa Vie
Why opposition leader, Kim Beazley, has proposed a visa issuance signing statement should be incomprehensible, but really only highlights that under his leadership, many of the differences between the ALP and the Liberals have been eroded, unfortunately by making the ALP more rightwing than left-. While it is entirely reasonable to require entrants to this (or any other) country to agree to abide by its laws, it’s a different matter to have them explicitly sign up to abide by its “values.” How do you define these? What is “mateship” or “a fair go”? What other values are to be included? Values aren’t the same as ethics, morals, or laws. They’re more aspirational. If the ALP can legislate the conditions of “a fair go,” then fair enough, I suppose, but I still think it’s silly, at best, and another failed attempt by Mr. Beazley to co-opt the dog-whistle politics of the PM to benefit his own party, one that’s supposedly more committed than Mr. Howard’s is to precisely such values as he wants immigrants to sign up for, even if such signing statements serve an opposite principle. (Besides, there are clear indications we don’t value our values as much as we used to, anyway.)

Peter Pays Paul?
If the FA-18 radar upgrade doesn’t work, then spending AU$200 million on it certainly should be stopped, but I wonder if the money won’t just go for the controversial Joint Strike Fighter program, a defense-budget blow-out itself, and what will become of the Hornets if they can't go into a "hot zone" as is?

I was talking to M.’s elderly cousin, Don, on the phone last week, and he mentioned watching some of the programming that’s been on about the events of September 2001, and his voice was full of anger. He didn’t rant about Muslims or “them” or anything like that, but he was working his way to it, building up a head of steam, and I had to cut him off. We hadn’t watched any of it, didn’t go to United 93, won’t go to the Oliver Stone movie, and didn’t watch last night’s Part 1 of the Disney neo-con exploitation of that day’s death and destruction. It’s still too close. It may always be so.

Everyone is asking now, do you feel safer? Is the world different? For me, the answer to both questions is, no. But that’s too simple. I don’t feel I’m in any more danger, not to death or injury in a terrorist attack, than I ever was. The world is just as dangerous as it was in 2000 or in pretty nearly all the years I’ve been alive, and the U.S. going to war in Iraq hasn’t made any difference there, unless it’s been to have inflamed who started out aggrieved over injustices, perceived and real, inflicted by a system the U.S. has long since come to represent, a system of exploitation and dehumanisation on behalf of profit.

It doesn’t matter how true any of it may be, but it does matter how much people believe it. Hearts and minds – right? Well, that’s part of it, anyway.

The main thing, right now, is that today, five years on, the biggest change is the world is in us, Americans, Australians, British, etc.: the West. There are a lot more of us a lot more aware than before of the rest of the world, and that ought to be a good thing. It’s unfortunate, then, that so many of us have simply bought into the hateful rhetoric and cowardly principles being sold to promote more death and destructions. Clash of civilizations? Give me a break. Threat to the free world, the freedom-loving world, that democratic way of life? Please. The only threat we face to the progress of freedom in the world is the ease with which a few of our own leaders are willing to subvert the principles by which we live for just another day’s political leverage, just another percentage point of profit.

Today, my greatest fears aren’t from terrorism, but of more Diebold voting machines, more cronyism and more Swift-boat politics. My greatest fears come true when governments act to undo the good work of previous administrations or when they lie, promote lies, or just cover up the truth and hope they’ll get away with it.

It hurt a lot when the towers came down, and I’ll never forget what I saw, what I could smell in the air for days afterward. But it didn’t make me hate anyone and it didn’t make me want to foster hate in others and it didn’t make me afraid. And the only thing that’s really made me angry is everything done since to exploit that day.

Crikey
What else can you say upon hearing that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, is dead? I guess he was always going to go out this way, killed by a wild creature he got too close to, although stabbed through the heart sounds more like street crime than something that would happen swimming with stingrays. (Growing up on the south shore of Long Island, we always heard about stingrays and were told to be careful about where we stepped to avoid getting a painful slash on our foot or leg, but clearly these are stingrays of a different order.) He did a lot of good work in conservation and for the protection of endangered species and may have been a somewhat cringe-inducing face of Australia to the rest of the world, but endearing just the same, for his enthusiasm and sincerity.

The Long, Hot Summer
There’ve been indications that this past winter may have been colder than last year’s, and, meanwhile, back in the northern hemisphere, the same period had extended periods of excessive heat. So when I hear warnings of a fresh El Niño and a subsequent extension of the current drought, which has been persisting for a few years now, already, and which has led to Sydney tapping deep reserves and other regions’ water systems, I have to start thinking about what I can do to decrease my own utilisation. This is a puzzler. We live in an apartment block, and our water rates won’t decrease just because I use grey water on the plants (not to mention that even during the height of summer, with two of us, there’ll be more than enough to keep the few plants well irrigated for the duration). It’s more of a moral imperative, than practical application. I’d like to have a rainwater tank, perhaps especially because we live in the city, so all our runoff heads pretty much straight into the harbour, rather than being caught in the catchments or otherwise feeding into and replenishing the ground water. Of course, it doesn’t do much good even in the Western Suburbs, where there’s at least as much storm water management wastefulness as not, but here there’s more room for single family dwellings and thus a greater possibility for recycling. Mostly I don’t like the idea because last summer was hot enough, and while I may have acclimated (negatively) to winter, I haven’t yet to summer. The idea of spending my summer commuting to Parramatta has no appeal, given the higher temperatures, and even if they’re only a degree or two or five. Those centigrade degrees can cover a lot more ground than Fahrenheit.