Criminal Anyone who goes into Malheur National Wildlife Refugee and provides supplies of any kind to the Y'all Qaeda terrorists is an accessory and should be arrested. Just because the terrorists of Vanilla ISIS are old white men doesn't mean they're patriots. They're criminals. Aiding and abetting is also criminal. Why are is Federal law enforcement treating them any differently than they do other armed and dangerous criminals?

Theatre Weekend For the Sydney Festival and our month-without-a-free-weekend, we started at Carriageworks, to see the production of Woyzeck, based on a Robert Wilson collaboration with Tom Waits. For German Expressionism, Waits made a great fit, but how much of the original 1823 play remains is highly questionable, aside from the plot overall. Nevertheless, it made a very enjoyable piece of theatre, especially the set, which consisted mainly of a stage-sized grid of net, raised and lowered at various angles, and through which the cast played their scenes. We followed this on Sunday with a revival of Fase, a set of four dances to Steve Reich's music, by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, which she performed herself, with Tale Dolven. Reich's music might be described as mathematical, in its cycling through repetitions, with different streams eventually coallesceing, and de Keermaeker's coreography matching it, without describing it. The interplay of the dancers and their shadows added an element of complexity to help in matching the music and movement. We've got Festival performances - one of music by Bach and one of Beethoven - plus a music festival at St John's College, "So Frenchy So Chic", and an Open Air Cinema screening of Youth, by the director of one of my recent favorite films (The Great Beauty). This will leave us with very little time to get any substantial bushwalking done prior to our NZ trip in February, but it will all be worth it.

Happy New Year (Eve, technically, as this is from the 9pm show.)

Pictures as Sculpture While in Hobart for Christmas, we took in an exhibition at MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, of the artist duo, Gilbert and George. They’ve been around since the late sixties, and I’d never encountered them previously, but am now a fan. The exhibition was extensive, exhaustive, and gave a very good overview of their career, including a couple of films, one of their work and another documenting them. They have been what we would now refer to as “performance artists”, but refer to themselves more as sculptures, even though it appears that most of their work is photographic. However, the installations of their photographs are wall-sized – “mosaics” rather than collage, although using that technique, too – so the chosen appellation seems apt, nevertheless. MONA itself is an eclectic collection – as the name says – of ancient and modern art, presented according to the whim of its founder, David Walsh, without labels, largely in darkness, so that each piece is highlighted and separate from those around it. Like much of modern art, a fair bit of it is museum-only in style, and much of it is fairly confrontational. Gilbert & George certainly fall into the latter category, and largely into the former, but what they’ve done certainly does what great art always seems to: It makes you think. Primarily it makes you think about your own thinking: Are you simply reprocessing received opinions or are you trying to understand something new? Not for everyone, certainly, but that’s also true for most great art.

Why Are Republicans So Extreme These Days That’s the question the Sydney Morning Herald asks, and correspondent Chris Zappone answers. He tells us that: 1. The demographics are changing and the Republicans are losing their core constituency to age and increasing inequality. 2. This has led to a loss of direction and floundering leadership. 3. As a consequence, the Republicans are using increasingly strident and hectoring tactics, relying on fear rather than substance, but this is actually driving what’s left of their constituency away. 4. Donald Trump. How true is this? Well, Trump used to be registered as a Democrat, but since Trump is Trump, political affiliation isn’t any reflection of core principles. He’s an opportunist, entirely self-serving. There’s only one reason he’s running for President, and it has nothing to do with immigration, terrorism, or “making America great”. It’s about him. Unlike other immensely wealthy people, like Bill Gates or even, more lately, Mark Zuckerberg, Trump’s status as wealthy is all he cares about. His wealth serves him and he serves it. Running for President is like a perk. He does it because he can, and because it increases his personal brand penetration. The Republicans shouldn’t be running away from Trump. They have to bear the responsibility for having created Trump the Presidential Candidate, even if not Trump himself. They’ve ginned up the hysteria, left the power vacuum, and abandoned any attempt at running the government. So instead of running away, they should be rolling up their sleeves to get down to business, and meanwhile roundly and loudly condemning every word that comes out of their monstrous creation’s mouth, including, but not limited to “and”, “the”, or “an”. They won’t, of course, because if Trump is right about one thing, it’s that the Republicans are stupid. Yes, he also says that about the Democrats, and a lot of them are, too. The Democrats, even when they had the Congressional majority, spent an inordinate amount of time being proud of themselves rather than working, and then let the Republicans steal the majority. But the Republicans have built a trap for themselves, a tar baby named Donald whom they now can’t escape. The Republicans, if they tried, could find their way back to a reasonable right-of-middle position, one that would allow them to address immigration, accept Obamacare, but since the days of Ronald Reagan have so thoroughly aligned themselves with the extremists on every issue that that’s all they’re left with. The Religious Right has a lot to answer for, but by pursuing that demographic, the Republicans have ended up with the Nativists, as well, and increasingly pursuing law-and-order into something more resembling fascism than any other political philosophy, amply demonstrated by their current campaign leader for 2016. Americans have long held their exceptionalism in an incestuously close embrace, to the point where any perspective on themselves than their own becomes impossible. “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, An' ev'n devotion!” The louse is out there, for everyone to see, if they would.

Watch and Wait President Obama has proposed using the Federal “no-fly” list as a register to deny the purchase of weapons. Seems like an easy win. Some say, however, that it would be unconstitutional, violating the Second Amendment, or that it would be simply unworkable due to the errors inherent in the list itself. I don’t buy “unconstitutional”. There’s a provision in the Constitution to protect the “freedom of assembly”, i.e., the right of persons to travel and to associate with one another freely. Banning them from commercial air travel could be interpreted as a violation of this right, but nobody minds that: Because nobody wants to be on the plane one of those banned bombs. Well, nobody wants one of those banned to head to the office and start shooting up the place, either, do they? As for “unworkable”, Carly Fiorina’s “friend” notwithstanding, I don’t buy that either. Her friend got off the list eventually, and now, presumably, flies hither and yon regularly, without guns, of course, but probably still has to take his shoes off and stand in the scanner and have his carry-on bags wanded, etc. Waiting for the next mass shooting or the one after that is what’s unworkable. Watching people buy guns whom you suspect would be trouble on a plane is what’s unworkable. The concern that being unable to buy a gun would tip a suspect off is just stupid. They’re already not allowed on a plane. Don’t you think that might make such a person concerned for their status regarding law enforcement? The NRA bought-and-sold politicians will make up any excuse to do nothing regarding the regulation of firearms. They ignore the part about a “well-ordered” militia in favour of an armed rabble that inevitably includes psychopaths and criminals. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” come up-front ahead of other rights. Want a gun? Join the military.

All Politics Is Local, II What is wrong with the Republicans in the US? And what is wrong with Barack Obama? Republican governors and the GOP nominees for the 2016 Presidential election are seeking to stop accepting refugees from Syria – refugees from a conflict essentially grown up from the failed and illegal war George W. Bush initiated in Iraq, where Daesh was born – and to go back to another ground war in the Middle East. Even the Republican candidates who have been on the record as relatively moderate have now swung into full-on xenophobic hate. It seems to have started with Trump, the most ludicrous of the candidates, and one of the least qualified on any subject (other than himself, and even that’s questionable), forcing each one after the next to attempt to match or exceed Trump’s vitriol. Meanwhile, Obama, who, as President, has the executive authority to ignore or override the governors now actively rejecting the settlement of refugees – women, children, and infants – has commenced only a campaign of rhetoric, strongly worded as it may be. Time for more Executive Orders, Mr. President. This is Federal, not State’s Rights. I see too many people I once thought reasonable bowing to fear and embracing hate, conflating all Muslims as terrorists (“it only takes one!”) and refusing to listen. Don’t you know anyone from the Middle East, any Muslims? I do. They are just as appalled by Daesh and the actions of terrorists abroad as anyone else. Have you never met a Christian extremist or seen them in the news? I have: Atlanta Olympics bombings, anti-abortion assassins of doctors, Westboro Baptist Church. But the vast, vast majority of people identifying as Christian are just as appalled as anyone else at the actions of these hateful loons. We need to get a sense of proportion. The survivors and family of those killed by the terrorist Dylann Roof, at Emmanuel African Methodist Church, in Charleston, South Carolina, could each stand up in court and offer their forgiveness to that criminal, from their faith, but also their knowledge that he isn’t the whole of whatever social segment he might have been chosen to represent – whites, Southern whites – and we, too know better than to say those fleeing Syria are the same as those from whom they flee. We know better and need to act accordingly, or we give up the same humanity we otherwise deny to them.

All Politics Is Local As Tip O’Neill famously said, and it’s no less true when we consider Daesh, despite Paris, Beirut, Libya, Egypt, etc. The Daesh leadership are politically motivated: they seek to establish themselves as a state. They cloak their ambition in religious justifications, millenarianist claims that their “caliphate” will bring about Armageddon and the return of the Mahdi, the Islamic “second coming” and the kingdom of heaven on earth. There are indications that this philosophical justification is increasingly central to their ambitions, which must be seen, as it is in all apocalyptic cults, as evidence of insanity. Madmen with tanks, guns, bombs, and internet outreach. It’s still political, and they use political tools to promote their claims to legitimacy and to recruit new members. Even the terrible acts of violence they commit are political messages. So, too, are the West’s acts of violence and oppression, especially when we turn on those Daesh’s recruitment pool and those in fear or in opposition to them. The Grand Mufti of Australia, for example, has repeatedly condemned the Paris attacks, as he has other Daesh atrocities, yet the right-wing Murdoch media continually misrepresent or ignore his statements, so as to characterise Australian Muslims as “sleeper cells” waiting to strike. That we have had three violent incidents and can point to a not-insignificant number of young men who have sought to or accomplished travel to Syria to join the criminals there hasn’t helped the moderate Muslims get their viewpoint out or accepted by a large part of Australian society (but there are at least a few of us listening). The Abbott government’s demonization of refugees has also been highly effective among the ignorant and cowardly: all asylum-seekers now appear as potential terrorists, infiltrators and invaders. Labor’s me-too policies on immigration just entrench the problem. Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria, as well as the various conflicts in North Africa, in Afghanistan, continuing in Iraq, along with all the rest of the world’s oppressed who seek a better, peaceful life, are affected by the hateful, political, rhetoric of both Daesh and our own politicians, whether in Australia, Europe, or the US. Daesh would kill or convert them, but succeed in co-opting them as proxies with the complicity of Western populations and politicians willing to let fear trump sense, or doing so in their own pursuit of power. We give too much legitimacy to Daesh by giving them too much air. While Daesh need to be stopped in Syria and Iraq, where they seek to establish their state, they also need to be stopped elsewhere, but that won’t be as easily accomplished with guns and bombs. We need to show that we are not cowards, not fascistic power-hungry ideologues willing to sacrifice a minority to our fears and desires. We can do that by reaching out to our Muslim neighbors, accepting difference, offering tolerance, and by making an honest effort to take in the refugees. We can do more to end terrorism by requiring more from ourselves, and from those we do business with or treat as allies and equals, but it starts at home. If we hold ourselves to a higher standard, we have the right to hold others to the same standard.

Nous Sommes Parisian Paris is one of those cities that people all over the world feel like the “own”. There are only a few of these, I think. We don’t even ever have to have been there. Cities like Paris are, of course, part of and often central to the character of the nation they belong to, but also entirely separate. New York’s like that, and London. So when something like 13 November 2015 happens, we are all of us shocked and outraged. The murderers in Paris have shown just how far Daesh is willing to go in their program: kill and be killed. They never expected to or even tried to get away with the slaughter they inflicted. They sought only death. This isn’t “terrorism”. It’s simply horror. The perpetrators and those who sent them are monsters. How do we respond? Do we, like the torch- and pitchfork-wielding villagers, enraged by the creating of Victor Frankenstein, chase down these monsters and destroy them? The calls for NATO to engage in full against Daesh certainly says so, as does the reaction of the French in immediately stepping up its bombing campaign in Syria. And there is no reason to say we shouldn’t continue to seek the end of Daesh any more than we should seek to stop and punish its predecessor, al Qaeda. But bombs and tanks and massive retaliatory warfare won’t stop criminals from perpetrating acts of violence. We need to know what these monsters want, and we need to keep in mind what’s at stake. In The Atlantic Monthly, in March, Graeme Wood wrote of his research and analysis into the motivations behind the so-called Islamic State. It is, in a word, politics. They call themselves a state, they claim territory, and they administer that territory according to what they consider codified laws. They even have currency. But, like we sometimes see among extremist Christians, who seem to predict the end of the world fairly regularly, and whom we refer to as “millenarian”, Daesh have cloaked their political goals in religious mysticism to accord themselves justification for their actions. They say they believe that in establishing the new caliphate they can bring about Armageddon and the ultimate triumph of Islam. Part of this belief is the expectation of disastrous failure. The forces of the “West” are expected to engage them in battle in the area they claim as their territory and to defeat them. Like the killers in Paris, they expect to die, even relish the prospect, because the battle against them and their deaths is proof of their legitimacy. They are, in a word, insane. It would be equally insane to leave them alone or to engage them in all-out war. Air raids aren’t going to cut it, but to send in the troops of the “West” accords Daesh more legitimacy than their crimes deserve. While a negotiated end to the Assad regime in Syria is undertaken, a coalition of Muslim nations in the region should coalesce and engage in rooting out this band of criminals from amongst them. Either Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. are themselves legitimate states, or ISIL is, and they’ll have to decide which. The selfish sectarian feuding used by these states is no less political than the millenarian nonsense of Daesh, and it must be set aside. If they can do this, they can also then decide to engage with and join the modern world.

Dead I've been reading often too many stories in the last year or so of police abusing and even murdering unarmed persons, both in conducting justifiable and unjustifiable arrests, usually of African-Americans, and I know one thing: it didn't happen to me and this is the indisputable truth of US police are out of control. In 1981, I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a university town and about as peaceful a place you could ever want to be, as well as being about an hour outside of Detroit, even then a place many people didn't want to often be, for its rampant crime and its terrible working class poverty - and yes its racial disparity. A friend and I had gone out to blow a small windfall of money on a nice dinner in an actual restaurant, and were hitch-hiking back to the center of town, at about nine o'clock. We got a ride quickly, we thought, ran up to the car that had pulled over, ebullient from our meal and our luck, only to find ourselves staring into the barrel of a pistol. The person who'd pulled us over was a cop, and he had us at gunpoint. And we didn't die. He didn't shoot us. The story he told us was that he'd had a radio call of two males possibly breaking into vehicles in the parking lot of the shopping plaza we'd been coming from (yes, we'd been to a restaurant in a mall and thinking we'd been somewhere special, but they did serve wine, after all). Not actually breaking into vehicles, just maybe, but you know, maybe. I was 5'10' and about 140 pounds, so tallish, thin, glasses, but yeah, it's dark. My friend was over six feet tall and 300 pounds. Big guy, also white. The suspects? Can't tell you, of course, but just how likely is it that we met any description that cop had? How likely is it that we weren't just two guys leaving the vicinity? And how likely is it that a cop would be within his rights to hold us at gunpoint without backup, without even calling it in - which he did and which he had not? As I pulled upon the front passenger's side door and leaned in to thank the driver, I was inches from being shot, and when my friend and I the next day confronted the officer and his superior, we didn't get an apology, we got an arrogant dismissal. Every encounter with the police in the United States can end up the same way, or worse. I didn't get shot, and I believe it's because I'm white. That if I'd been African-American or Hispanic, that when I pulled open that car door, that cop would have shot me, that I might very well never even touched the door handle and the cop would actually have been out of his car, leaning across the roof and shooting me and my friend both, with no warning and no justification. And I was oblivious enough at the time to have thought myself only aggrieved at having been held at gunpoint, not damn lucky to be alive. I don't believe the police first, not anymore, not since then, not anywhere. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. And today they are more heavily armed than ever, and very clearly far more apt to shoot without justification. I'm very sorry for the victims of mass shootings, very sorry that America refuses to do anything about gun control, but also that it refuses to believe it has a problem with its police and that this is part of its problem with being a gun culture, with being over 200 years old and still thinking it's the wild west and that that's o.k.

War We invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 because of a violent act of terrorism that resulted in 3,000 deaths. But we do nothing when, year after year, Americans slaughter one another with hand guns and semi-automatic rifles. The statistics are damning. And it's not just criminals. It's suicides. It's police shooting and killing civilians - even unarmed and even innocent of any wrong-doing. But gun violence still remains a frightening and unsustainable outlier. In the last decade, as shown in the chart accompanying this article, terrorism has killed 3,300 people in the US, but gun homicide accounts for 165,700: 98%! I've written to my Congressional representatives to demand they stand up against the NRA and those constitutionalists who argue spuriously, from whatever motivation, for strict Second Amendment rights. I don't believe the Constitution of the United States should continue to be interpreted as it has been, but I'll settle for sensible and strong Federal gun control measures to stop guns getting into the hands of criminals and the insane. Not another mass shooting should be allowed.

Immortality Did you know there's a Toy Hall of Fame (at all, let alone in Rochester NY)? The current list includes: alphabet blocks, Atari 2600 Game System, baby doll, ball, Barbie, bicycle, Big Wheel, blanket, bubbles, Candy Land, cardboard box, checkers, chess, Crayola Crayons, dollhouse, dominoes, Duncan Yo-Yo, Easy-Bake Oven, Erector Set, Etch A Sketch, Frisbee, The Game of Life, G. I. Joe, Hot Wheels, hula hoop, jack-in-the-box, jacks, jigsaw puzzle, jump rope, kite, LEGO, Lincoln Logs, Lionel Trains, little green army men, marbles, Monopoly, Mr. Potato Head, Nintendo Game Boy, Play-Doh, playing cards, Radio Flyer Wagon, Raggedy Ann and Andy, rocking horse, roller skates, rubber duck, Rubik’s Cube, Scrabble, Silly Putty, skateboard, Slinky, Star Wars action figures, stick, teddy bear, Tinkertoy, Tonka Trucks, and View-Master. Blanket? Cardboard box? What about dining room table with a sheet thrown over it to make a fort? Other nominees this year were American Girl dolls, Fisher-Price Little People, Hess Toy Trucks, My Little Pony, Operation Skill Game, paper airplanes, pots and pans, Slip‘N Slide, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. See? Pots and pans! Anything can be a toy. Why Mr. Potato Head when a real potato will do? And where are chemistry sets? I think that if the Easy Bake Oven can be in the Hall, then the Strange Change machine can be, or one of those other electrical plastic melting devices we loved to burn our fingers on. Like space heaters.

Confessions The Waiting Wall is a public art project that posts messages from anyone of their secrets, dreams, messages they can't otherwise express; sort of like Postsecret online and offline. It's kind of amazing.

Bridge Run 54:23 in the Sydney Running Festival's 9k Bridge Run on Sunday. Just under 6 minutes per K (the course distance is actually just over 9k), so a satisfying result, if not the under-50 minute outcome I'd hoped for. Maybe I shouldn't have gone out to watch the Swans the night before.

Don't Forget Where You Put It If scientists really have created an invisibility cloak, can they prove it? I mean, here's this guy with his hands up as if he's holding something, but you can't see it. Are you sure it's actually there? What happens if you put it down somewhere and can't remember where? I can see this being easily weaponised, too. Remember that jacket with the taser-like electricity delivery system built in? Now add the invisibility cloth as the outer layer.

PM5 Malcolm Turnbull has successfully toppled Tony Abbott to be Australia's fifth Prime Minister in the last five years. There is hope for this kind of churn to now stop, but less for the country to be effectively governed. The next election is, after all, sometime next year, so Turnbull will have little time to get the Liberal house in order and has already set a substantial portion of his side of the House on edge: the Nationals portion of the Coalition is already disgruntled, resentful of Turnbull's action in challenging for the leadership, regarding the move as sidelining and expressing disregard for their role. (Not that they have much role, being effectively the rural rump of the Liberal Party anyway, rather than an effective political force in their own right.) There will be those front-bench ministers dismissed or resigning from their portfolios and the back-benchers who stayed loyal to Abbott, all lined up to help Labor give Turnbull some knocks. Possibly the independent Senators will be more open to Turnbull's overtures, but what actual policy changes can we expect? Will Turnbull's Treasurer, whomever that turns out to be (not Hockey, of course, whose statement of support for Abbott prior to the Party room vote was an exemplar of bullying and a threat of non-cooperation), produce a budget that doesn't direct all its cost-savings at the poor and all its revenue-raising at the middle class? I'm betting not. As Hockey pointed out, Turnbull raised none of his objections in the Party room or in Cabinet previously, so any claims he makes to manage the economy better than Abbott are hollow, as we can anticipate his persuasions to be honeyed attempts to mask bitter pills. Remember: Malcolm Turnbull is a Liberal. He's also of that delusional ilk among Liberals that believes government is a business. He will govern - or attempt to - accordingly. But at least we're rid of that troublesome failed monk, Tony Abbott.

Plague Explain to me why the US military is playing with biological weapons. Other regimes have been overthrown for less.

The Funeral of Kings A state funeral has been conducted for a horse trainer. Why? Because he made a few rich people rich by training horses for races. The wealthy owners then made heaps of money in prizes, funded by all the punters gambling their hard-earned dosh and getting little or nothing in return, unless you count whatever pleasure can be obtained from watching animals being abused. Horse racing, dog racing, it's all just like bull fighting: despicable practices. And for this, politicians and "dignitaries" have turned out, abasing themselves, right along with the "horse racing identities", who will include people with too much money but who won't spend it on helping people, gangsters, and social parasites. No mention will be made of however many horses this animal abuser condemned to early death.

The Changing Society, the Changing Economy Ever read "The Grapes of Wrath"? Probably the closest would be you've seen the movie, but here's a passage I think appropriate to the current crisis of refugees in Europe and disgrace in Australia: ". . . repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. . . . The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on." What's sad is how hopeful of revolt Steinbeck was, and how little and paltry the response required at the time to eradicate its potential, and how cruel the response is today. They've got the guns, the power, and the hate. The rest can only hope to reach a place of sufficient safety to be exploited and denigrated as subhuman. And us in the middle? We're the ones who let our politicians make them subhuman. We're the cowards waiting for our turn and hoping it never comes. And all it takes is a bad bout of ill health, a few extra weeks of unemployment. We're lucky, until we aren't, so we'll dehumanize whom we can and pretend otherwise. Take note especially of the phrase "The changing economy", equating even then society and the economy. It's well past time we stopped that conflation of terms.

Comics I'm only disappointed that Dr. Hormone's super power isn't making teenagers break out.