Editorial

Note this: NY Times publishes Tom Cotton's advocacy for sending troops against citizens on the anniversary of this: Tiananmen Square Massacre

Spooked

It's surreal. The streets are empty. The cafes are shut. The bars, restaurants, libraries, all deserted and dark. Yes, you can get take-away, but social distancing makes the experience very different from the usual bustle of going out for pizza or Thai. The buses don't make all the stops, because there's nobody waiting. At most there will be six people on a bus, even one of the double-length, and everyone sits as far apart as possible. We're working alternating days at home or the office, split into teams. I will not see some of my colleagues now for months. I went to the vet to get some of the special diet food my cats now require. They were open, but have the door locked. Gloved and masked, they open only to allow the animals inside. Everything else takes place over the phone. It's so quiet. Less traffic on the street, fewer people, usually just because they have a dog to walk. I know this is affecting many other people far more than it is me. As an office worker at a hospital, helping run the payroll, I can expect to continue to have an income, which is lucky, since I've just taken on a new home, just prior to this thing blowing up the way it has. But others are being stood down. My upstairs neighbour is an actor and often a stagehand. He will not work now for a long time. Academics, teachers, many others in many different roles will not be able to work. There is no real effort to provide relief. Other countries are guaranteeing 75-80% average earnings for affected people. In the US it's a one-time $1200 check. Here, the Newstart allowance has been raised, minimally, for the first time in 25 years. It's not enough. Billionaires are finding stockpiles of masks and personal protective equipment, and supplying them to hospitals. What was Apple doing with masks in the first place? I have hope this could change the world for good, but no expectations. Bizarrely, Trump's approval ratings are higher than ever before, even while he does a terrible job managing the crisis. Morrison's been forgiven his callous response to the bush fire disaster, as if he's actually doing a good job, even while he contradicts himself at every turn and fails to enact the tough measures that would work to flatten the curve. We're left, around the world, in many countries, to do the job ourselves, even while we cannot interact with one another. Support is staying away. Hand sanitizer is impossible to find. Thank God for soap. The supermarkets now open at seven a.m. for pensioners, eight for the general public. Now they're setting aside seven to eight on Tuesdays and Thursdays for hospital staff. We are on the edge of overwhelmed. It reminds me, sometimes, in my emotional response, to 9/11. I find myself sometimes inexplicably on the edge of tears. The difference seems largely that, whereas 9/11 was galvanizing, there's nothing to be done except nothing. Don't touch your face.

Moving

I've scheduled movers for next weekend, so why am I sitting here not packing? So much to do, so little time to do it.

Destruction Reading about the scale of the devastation of the bushfires, I fear for what remains. Significant parts Tasmanian wilderness stands due to be used to replace what can no longer be logged elsewhere, burned to ash. We must address climate change with science and speed.

Palme d'Or Parasite deserves it. Unexpected at nearly every turn from start to finish.

Road Warrior Days As the US prepares for yet another war in the Middle East, this time against an adversary with ballistic missiles and the potential for nuclear power, should we be heading out to gear up with arm-mounted crossbows and American football shoulder pads or hockey masks?

Mar-Vellous Captain Marvell is all that, and a cute cat, too.

Weather vs. Climate Pretty sure I've seen this No comments:

All Politics Is Local That’s the adage, coined by Tip O’Neil, but the interpretation can be misleading. Yes, you as a candidate rely on the locality in which you run, to be recognised, to have the support necessary, and you build this on your actions. But when you get to the federal level, you’re delivering for the nation much more than for your own district. Spending will be directed down to a local level, but the municipality and the state will have greater local effects than federal spending programs. High-speed trains between Sydney and wherever, a long-held fantasy project, will have local effects, but spread across the cities at the anchor points and in between. So Tony Abbott can point to his record and proudly claim historic site preservation spending on the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, but that’s not just Warringah, and Warringah knows it. (And whatever happened to the spending he promised years ago, well before his time as PM, to upgrade Brookvale Oval? Never happened. Other local promises? Anyone remember? Thought not.) And he can deride independents as “Labor candidates in disguise”, but that’s disingenuous. Such candidates run on policy, and the latest such to rise up and challenge is putting forth a national agenda. Zali Steggall has cited climate change – something Abbott has categorically stated he doesn’t believe in – as a key issue, a policy that was integral to Kerryn Phelps taking Wentworth off the deposed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. That’s the kind of leadership we want in Canberra. But it’s going to be tough for an independent to drive policy, or a bloc of them, if the LNP or Labor can form government in their own right, which seems increasingly likely for the latter party, given the defections and retirements the former has experienced lately. So vote for the local candidate, but vote for the own who can help get the agenda set. That might not be someone socially progressive and fiscally conservative.

May We Do Better May is still a long ways off, but maybe not long enough to not start thinking about the prospective federal election. Double-dissolution, maybe? Morrison and the LNP don’t have the numbers to get anything much through the Senate, but they’re also a minority government after losing the Wentworth by-election, so perhaps they’ll focus on actually forming government and hope to firm up the Senate later. But their collective goose is cooked, by all accounts and analyses, which means it’s Labor’s election to lose. Or is it? Labor sucks, face it. They are just the LNP-lite. Sure, they’re capable of governing, just, but aside from some small tweaks to social programs, we can’t expect them to do anything truly forward-facing. So that leaves the Greens as the only minor major party available. Except they suck worse the Labor, especially at the federal level, where their entire strategy is on doing deals with Liberal or Labor as it suits them to best get in the news, all the while engaging in ridiculous power struggles that are all that actually gets them any notice and make them look like children. They’ve largely abandoned any pretence at policy other than in sound bites. So independents. Oh, God help us all. Sure, there are minor parties, but they’re effectively just disaffected Liberals or Nationals or independents tarting themselves up as something more than single-issue candidates. And the actual independent independents are usually single-issue pollies, and usually just disaffected Liberals or Nationals tarting themselves up as populists. Luckily, we’ve got preferences. Now the trick with preferences is that when you vote, you’ve got to take into account where candidates and parties are directing theirs. If you’ve got an independent that seems like anything better than the LNP and can put a complex sentence together even if just in printed policy positions, then preference that one, so long as their preferences aren’t going to the LNP. If it is, go Greens, as their preferences usually go to Labor. Then down the line accordingly until the LNP is dead last in your selection barring One Nation. It’s the only way to send a message to either the LNP or Labor: we hate you all and will turn on you if you don’t get your acts together and we’ll always hate the LNP anyway.

Prognostications I’m going to call it early: Trump will be re-elected in 2020. And if he is, very likely Pence will follow in 2024. It doesn’t matter if the Democrats re-take the House and Senate – either or both – in the midterms in November. In fact, even if they do, we can expect nothing from them. Their efforts at investigations will come to little or nothing. If they persue impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh, it will come to nothing. There are too many Democrats who don’t vote with their party or who would fear a Trump-aligned challenge in the next election cycle. They might protect the Affordable Care Act, what’s left of it, but they’ll never get through the reforms it needs to bring about universal health care. They’ll never get through gun control. They’ll be treading water for two years and with the re-election of Trump will be back in the outer darkness. The Republicans have broken the country. The appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seals their grip on power for a generation. Worse, Ruth Bader Ginsberg will soon retire, and that’s going to leave Trump another seat and a 6-3 majority in the Court. Breyer’s 80, so he’ll go, too, and that’s 7-2. Forget dissent. There won’t be anything meaningful. What brought this about? Is it the state of the nation, the income inequality, the institutional racism, the backlash movements these and toxic masculinity have brought, leading to knee-jerk reactions? Is it purely political? If it’s just politics, when did it start? Maybe you could say it started with Nixon, and the resignation of a President before he could be impeached, and the Republican revenge enacted against Clinton that didn’t see his downfall. (Yes, he was bad, in many ways, including his sexual abuse of his power, his financial “reforms” that gave us 2008, chief among them.) Maybe it only started with Obama, and the Republican leaderships’ distaste at having an African American lead the nation. What are the Democrats going to do about 2020? Put up Cory Booker, another black man? Kristin Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren, another woman? Doesn’t matter. The fact is that Trump goes from strength to strength, whether he accomplishes anything or not. North Korea? Doesn’t matter, his base love the noise he brings. Same with the destruction of civil liberties the Supreme Court will oversee. More black lives lost? Trumpets are fine with it, even Kanye West. More families destroyed in detentions and deportations. You know they want the wall, right? Climate change? That’s not real. LGBTI rights stripped away just when things were looking up? They weren’t, they won’t be, get back in the closet. Abortion? You know that’s gone. Welcome to the Handmaid’s Tale. I miss Howard Dean’s 50-State strategy. The only way America can ever hope to return to any measure of progressivism is to work its way back up all the way from the bottom. States have to turn blue, not just purple. Court-based activism is going to be a long struggle, so gerrymandering has to be eliminated as an option, voter registration is going to have to be opened up, and the greater care in each of these is going to be required that the current state governments will need for where they’ll be going on abortion, LGBTI rights, etc., because the court challenges will mount up and they will reach the Supreme Court and they will get knocked back. America, you’re fucked. Sorry, but you did it to yourselves, as usual, and now you’re going to live with it for a very long time.

RIP What's that you're drinking, Uncle Bill? Goat's milk. What kind of goat's milk is it, Uncle Bill? Nanny goat's milk, my dear. Admittedly, Gloria Jean was not the highlight of the one movie I remember her for, but I remember her.

Shame We went to see BlacKkKlansman on the weekend. There were other choices, but this did seem to be the movie of the moment, one not to be missed. It is surely one of the best things Spike Lee has done and a superior movie overall. I sat through nearly every minute of it rigid with shame. Sure, it's 1979, nearly forty years ago, but as Lee's coda shows, we haven't gotten very far from then. I found it impossible not to cringe throughout, especially sprinkled through as it was with nearly tossed-off references to the present day. America has a long history, much longer than the last forty years, the last fifty, sixty years. The country was built on two hundred years of slave labor and another hundred plus of keeping their descendants from accessing the same privileges as the rest of the country, let alone offering any redress. Yes, Civil Rights Act, etc., but making the equal status official does nothing unless it's properly enforced, unless reparations are made, and unless the fundamental attitudes and prejudices are dealt with. I look at the young people I know and have hope. But I look at the young people I don't, when they appear in the news, and despair. How long, O Lord, how long? (But don't think America is alone. Look at Australia's treatment of its indigenous population and the dog-whistling regarding refugees, let alone the internment camps we send those asylum seekers we capture to. Look at the Windrush generation in Britain. Look at the treatment of refugees throughout Eastern Europe. Look at the Rohingya, the Uyghurs . . . . We all have a lot to answer for in how we treat our fellow humans and how we have treated them for so very long.)

Archaeological Evidence of Razorfist Remember Razorfist? Well, they dug up his ancestor in Italy in 1994. Just one hand replaced by a knife, so at least we can reduce speculation about various matters of hygiene etc. in the earlier incarnation.

Rift I’ve seen this movie.

Guns In 1996, following the mass shooting at Port Arthur, Tasmania, John Howard, the Prime Minister, was successful in forcing the states to adopt new gun restrictions and in running a buy-back program in which individuals turned in their weapons during a year-long process. There have been no mass shootings as at Port Arthur since. In fact, murders and suicides using guns have also fallen overall. Australia is often looked to following mass shootings in the US as a model for what could be accomplished to reduce such incidents. It is the single most universally acclaimed accomplishment in Australia attributed to Howard. So now, with all that’s happening in the US and receiving global news coverage, is Liberal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton seeking changes to permit gun manufacturers and distributors input to the government’s policies on gun regulation? Is it anything to do with the fact that he’s an ex-cop? And don’t pretend the police aren’t a problem when it comes to gun violence, in Australia or anywhere else. Is it because he’s an authoritarian and front-bench far-right faction leader? Is it because he formerly had oversight of the immigration portfolio and continues to demonise immigrants? Is it because, down in Tasmania, at the recent state election, the Liberal government that got back into office did so in spite of only revealing their intention to soften gun restrictions after the polls closed? In Tasmania, where Port Arthur is, the flashpoint for Liberal government coming to its senses on the issue of gun violence! It’s got to stop. Hunting continues. Farmers continue to control pests. Guns remain in use. But semi-automatic weapons do not belong in the hands of civilians and handguns exist only for murder. Dutton needs to be slapped down. Malcolm Turnbull needs to be the one who does it. But Turnbull is a coward in the face of the far right of his party and will do nothing.

Advertising Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri over the weekend. Good story, terrific performances – not least from Sam Rockwell, whom I think I always like, as a performer – and an interesting commentary on at least some aspects of American culture. The ending says something in particular about larger concerns, but they don’t gloss over too much other topical matters. Also attended the St George Open Air Cinema, for Lady Bird, a smallish film, but very well done, very real. It basically hits nearly all the notes that make an adolescence, all the way through. I think Greta Gerwig learned a lot of Noah Baumbach, and that’s not a bad thing.

Dear Prime Minister Re: National Broadband Network Dear Prime Minister: How did you know: http://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet-string.html. You're a visionary.

The Hollow Arguments Against Full Equality Now that the public has voiced their support for marriage equality in Australia, it’s time for the politicians to do their jobs and fix the inequality they previously legislated in the Marriage Act, led by that recalcitrant bigot, John Howard, and with the full knowledge that other bigots among the LNP have been marginalised, most especially Howard’s protégé, Tony Abbott, whose electorate returned one of the largest margins in favor of equality. But arguments are still being put forward in an attempt to reduce any bill’s effect on achieving equality, empty, disingenuous arguments, such as the need to “recognise the religious freedom of commercial service suppliers.” Rot. Commercial service suppliers are free to practice their religion in Australia. They are not, however, free to pretend that their commercial services are the practice of their religion. If you are baking cakes for a living, bake them, sell them, and then go to whatever church you favor and pray to whatever god you worship howsoever you please on whatever topic you choose. You can even pray for the cake to turn to ashes in the mouths of the same-sex couples who bought it to share with their friends and families. “[A] guarantee to the rights of expression [and] association” is similarly vacuous. Exclusions regarding “threatening or harassing speech” notwithstanding, allowing same-sex couples to marry does not preclude anyone from speech in opposition to the practice or preventing them from excluding LGBTIQ persons from their social circles. You don’t have to talk to the gay couple or have them in your home just because society lets them marry. Go ahead, ignore them. They’ll more likely be grateful not to have to listen to you or associate with you than not. There is, indeed, a “right to be a bigot,” it’s just that it’s the social equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. You do more harm to yourself than anyone else. But don’t think that if you make your behavior public you can’t be called out for it. Employment decision exclusions are just discriminatory. Period. You do not get to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. The days when you could legally discriminate on the basis of marital status are long past, and that’s where they should stay. That’s it. Church officials don’t have to marry anyone, gay or straight, but if they want to pretend there’s something different because their invisible sky friend tells them so, they can take their medieval trappings and fade into history.

Redux I wanted to go watch Blade Runner 2049 when it was still in production, and then when it came out I was ambivalent, but I finally broke down and went. It's very good. Long, maybe, but it takes its time and does the story justice. It's a police procedural, really, and police work takes a slow, plodding pace, with punctuations of misdirection and revelation, until the mystery is solved. The sequel also learned a lot from the original's post-production problems: no voice-over, mainly, the thing that bothered everyone until the final director's cut got released on DVD. Anyway, I'm going to have to watch this one again. I think I like it better than the original, although you have to have the first one for context. Maybe that's its particular flaw.