You are currently viewing the archive for July 2004.
Welcome to the blogosphere
There are a whole bunch of new blogs that deserve a plug (by “new” I mean “I didn’t notice them until recently”):
For your non-political reading pleasure, Richard Giles’s Gadget Lounge, and Andrew Canion and Hannah Beazley’s Two Sitting Ducks photoblog are worth a look.
Oh, and the Bob Katter Experience is back on deck for another season.
If there are any commenters or readers who have been thinking about setting up a blog, I’d encourage you to do so. After all, it’s free — and you can do it secretly for a while and let it die if you change your mind. If you want help, email me and I’ll be happy to give you advice or assistance.
Not good enough
The UN Security Council passed a resolution on Darfur. Not good enough. As Alan points out:
Somehow it just doesn’t read as all that imminent. If the crude mortality rate in Darfur is 10 000 each day then 30 days is a long time to give the Sudanese government, especially when their complicity with the Janjaweed is now beyond doubt.
Update: John Quiggin is more upbeat, noting that the African Union is better on this issue than it has been on similar crimes against humanity in the past (though from what I’ve read it worked hard against the SC resolution), and that the US and Europe are working together.
It’s also worth noting that France has stationed troops on the Chadian border, and although they are there in a humanitarian capacity, they will be able to act quickly when (and sadly I mean when) Sudan fails to respond adequately.
Update: Sudan has rejected the Security Council’s resolution:
“Sudan expresses its deep sorrow that the issue of Darfur has quickly entered the Security Council and has been hijacked from its regional arena,” Information Minister El-Zahawi Ibrahim Malik said in a statement. “It pains Sudan to have to express its rejection of the Security Council resolution, which was a not correct one.”
That should be enough for the UN to declare that Sudan is in breach of the resolution. Unfortunately, it’s not. We’re going to have to sit around for thirty days while Khartoum sits on its hands.
In related news, Canada has offered to train police in Darfur. This would be welcome — the evidence suggests that the Sudanese regime is absorbing the janjaweed into the existing police force, so a new, local body will need to be established.
Australia’s Tim Costello visited Darfur, and is now leading World Vision’s Sudan appeal. Please donate generously, as the UN has estimated that there is only enough supplies for half of the current refugees.
It is disturbing to read that Sudan is turning its attention east, claiming that rebel groups in Darfur are connected to rebels near Eritrea. That might be true, but since it was a crackdown on the Darfur rebels that provided the pretext for the genocide, extending the policy to other regions is potentially disastrous.
Update: Apparently Sudan has backflipped and now accepts the resolution. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will make any real difference.
Bill O’Reilly is a liar
During his reasonably entertaining interview with Michael Moore, Faux News host Bill O’Reilly explains what constitutes lying:
MOORE: Uh huh. So, in other words, if I told you right now that nothing was going on down here on the stage…
O’REILLY: That would be a lie because we could see that wasn’t the truth.
MOORE: Well, I’d have to turn around to see it and then I would realize, oh Bill, I just told you something that wasn’t true…
Right. That sounds simple enough.
Later, O’Reilly suggested that nothing was going on down here on the stage — or at least that Ted Kennedy was not speechifying:
Bill O’Reilly, who was presenting his show live from the Democratic National Convention, teased the upcoming segment of his show by saying of convention speaker Senator Edward Kennedy: “When we come back, we’ll let you listen to Ted Kennedy for a while, if he shows up.”
In fact, Kennedy had already shown up and had been speaking for several minutes, as O’Reilly need only have turned around to see.
So by his own standards, Bill O’Reilly is a liar.
While we’re on the topic of the Moore/O’Reilly exchange and right-wing dishonesty, Matt Drudge posted a transcript, along with a photo of Moore and O’Reilly. Thing is, he stole the photo from Tom Tomorrow, and went to some extraordinary lengths to hide that fact. Needless to say, the photo has vanished from Drudge’s site.
Not a sterling effort
Peter van Onselen has written a column about a key marginal seat in Western Australia. The seat is named after the first governor of Western Australia. Plenty of other things around here are named after him, too. Van Onselen is a lecturer in political science at a Western Australian university. He refers to the “strong parochialism” of Western Australians.
You’d think he’d bloody-well spell “Stirling” correctly, wouldn’t you?
Gah.
Update: By email, Peter tells me that he’s a new arrival to WA, and that his computer’s spell-checker interfered with his work. I guess I can forgive him… ;-)
Don’t flatter yourself
According to Tim Blair, “Some people have called me the Michael Moore of the Right.” I can see the similarities.
Moore is funny and successful. He has had books on the NYT Bestsellers list and movies that break box office records. As a result, he is immensely wealthy.
And Tim… well, Tim has a blog.
Socialist Alliance meeting
This evening I spoke at a public meeting organised by the fledgling Subiaco Branch of the Socialist Alliance, on “Building Alternatives to the Howard Government.”
I was alongside Greens Senate candidate Rachel Siewert and Socialist Alliance Senate candidate Alex Whisson (known to some as ” Mr Professional Activist” and to others as a certain dapper personage” — he is quite dapper). My role was token ALP-defender and general whipping boy. It wasn’t so bad once I numbed myself to the “Labor is just as bad” rhetoric — which was generally followed by emphasising how important it is that Labor wins… go figure.
I tried to stress the importance of left-wing extraparliamentary action, in order to keep left issues in the national debate and to keep Labor MPs on their toes.
Alex, Rachel and I agreed that the election of a Latham Government would be a wonderful thing, but it would be merely the start of our most important campaign activity. There must be no “honeymoon” — Latham and Labor need to be held accountable from the start of their term in power.
There were about 25 people in the audience. Naturally they didn’t agree with everything I had to say, but they didn’t throw anything so I guess I should be grateful. It was a good night. Thanks for inviting me, Alex, and good luck with your campaign.
Make way for President Arnie
Yobbo mentions a bill to remove a constitutional prohibition on foreign-born citizens becoming President of the USA.
About bloody time, I say. Although I think Australia’s Section 44(i) restrictions are reasonable, it seems ludicrous that a person who might have spent fifty or sixty years living in the US would be ineligible for the presidency.
I hope Arnold Schwarzenegger would lose a presidential election, but I think he should lose on his merits and not because of some silly archaic ban on his candidature.
Time for action
I feel very guilty for ignoring the genocide in Sudan. I know it’s happening, but I’ve put off posting because I’m too busy, or I’ve got something else to post about, or whatever. That’s unacceptable.
So here’s my effort to make amends by offering a round-up of links about the crisis in Sudan.
Read the rest of this entry…
Ex-MP’s husband v ex-MP’s wife
Excellent news! A disgruntled Liberal intends to run for Kinglsey at the next State election:
“They are not happy with [Cheryl Edwardes’s] husband coming through just to take over the reins basically,” [Marie Evans] said.
“They think it’s not fair, they think there should be somebody better, somebody else and that they should both, if they’ve done their time, take their superannuation and move on.”
It might seem a bit hypocritical for Marie Evans to run this line — she is, after all, the wife of a former Liberal MP — but she’s dead right that the community is pissed off. My own thoughts on the matter attracted a phone call from Mrs Edwardes.
It’s a close seat. If Marie Evans can peel off even a few hundred Liberal votes and push them Labor’s way, we might win it.
Things of stone and wood
Today’s West Australian carries a story about neighbourhood paranoia. Residents of a housing estate in Australind are up in arms about their new neighbours. They’re worried that property values will fall.
It’s difficult to see how they arrived at that conclusion when you see the picture and read the description of the house:
With jarrah floors, French windows, high ceilings and a new veranda, it would also be seen as the sort of place that could only enhance the appearance and value of a neighbourhood.
What’s going on?
Don Arthur recently posted an excellent piece on lawn fetishism, in which the neatness of a family’s front lawn represents their wealth, social status and moral worth:
A person with a shabby lawn, according to conservative logic, is likely to be a person with shabby morals. The kind of people who refuse to mow their lawns probably refuse to meet all kinds of other social obligations. More than likely they also have lax standards of personal hygiene, lax standards of sexual behavior, and poor spelling and punctuation. They probably don’t like to work, they drink to much, watch violent videos, and leave dirty dishes in the sink to attract cockroaches. And however nice they seem to be when they say hello over the fence be assured their lawn has revealed their true nature.
We’ve all met someone who follows that logic. As you’re going down the road, they point to an unmowed lawn and declare, “That’s a rental property.” They spit it out as if it’s sour in their mouth. Everyone knows that if you can’t afford to buy a house, you obviously haven’t got a decent job. And if you haven’t got a decent job, that’s because nobody wants to hire you — you must be defective.
The people of the Belvedere Estate have a different fetish — they can’t abide anything not built of brick and tiles. It’s very similar to lawn fetish, as an angry Dave Jarvis explains:
He was also concerned that the soon-to-be-transported house … would be rented. … “Everyone’s entitled to live in the house they can afford, but in the appropriate area.”
In other words, if a house is not built of bricks, it must be a rental property. If you have to rent, it’s because you haven’t got a decent job, because you’re a defective person. And all of those defective people should piss off and live “in the appropriate area” — presumably, a ghetto.
Congratulations to the eight councillors who refused to get caught up in this bullshit.
Fahrenheit 9/11
As I mentioned earlier, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 twice over the weekend. I thought it was a very powerful movie, which moved between uproarious humour and profound sadness to produce a damning assessment of the Bush Administration.
It wasn’t a perfect film. The first section, about the links between the Saudi regime and the Bush family, was not particularly well done. The clip of the Secret Service (in uniforms — not so secret, huh?) following Michael Moore as he filmed outside the Saudi Embassy was hilarious, but the extent of Saudi influence on Bush was not demonstrated. Worse still, by flashing images of Bush and his pals shaking hands with unidentified Saudi officials, Moore seemed to suggest that anyone who wears a ghutra is sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. I don’t think the section added anything to the film, and the time could have been used far more effectively elsewhere — for instance, explaining in more depth what happened to the electoral rolls in Florida.
The other sections, though, were excellent. Moore puts together a convincing argument that the Bush response to 9/11 was not really about catching the terrorists. It was about milking people’s fears, creating an atmosphere of compliance, and ramming through policies that had always been on the neocon agenda. It was a story of strange priorities — instead of banning butane lighters on planes and chasing down Osama bin Laden, the Administration infiltrated cookie-eating peace groups and invaded Iraq.
I thought the most interesting part of F9/11 was the story of Flint. It’s a place where unemployment is massive, and the young people are shoe-horned into the military. The job agencies recommend the military as an excellent option, and the military recruiters hassle high-school kids in their cafeteria. Their tactics were outrageous — urging a ninth-grader to sign up, claiming that having a wife and child was “even more reason” to risk your life in Iraq, and lying about the reason for collecting people’s contact details.
The discussion after the ABC screening was disappointing. Liam Bartlett spent a long time telling us that he was confused by Moore’s distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq. “What was it, do we have an argument that’s pro-war in Afghanistan and against war in Iraq?” he asked. In a word, yes. I would have expected an award-winning investigative journalist to grasp this nuance, but it was beyond him.
Towards the end of the forum, a gentleman asked for the roving microphone. He introduced himself as Mark, “a Yank”, and spent some time calling Michael Moore a dangerous extremist and defending President Bush and his policies. What he didn’t tell us is that he’s not just any Yank. His name is Mark McBurney, and he is a key officer of the US Department of State. His job as Consul is to defend the Bush foreign policy, and it would have been nice to hear this disclosure.
Apart from that, the discussion didn’t bring out anything more than a handful of humourous slurs on Dubya. Hopefully the blogosphere will be a better forum.
Transdermal celebration
Ween Live in Chicago is frickin’ awesome. Thanks to my brother, Richard, for lending it to me.
James Russell recently pointed out that live CDs will be available five minutes after many concerts. I predict that live DVDs will be available on your way out, within a year.
Extreme nude limbo
This would have been an “only in America” post, except it happened in Norway:
According to news bureau NTB, the man in his 20s had tried to visit a lady friend in the building on Huitfeldts Street downtown. Newspaper Aftenposten Aften reported that she rejected his overtures, however, and he tried to leave the building. Slightly intoxicated, however, he couldn’t manage to open the building’s security gate to get out.
He then decided to try to squirm under the [gate], and in the meantime had taken off most of his clothes. His exfiltration attempt didn’t work. Instead, the man wound up stuck under the gate, in the buff.
Something tells me their timeline is wrong. I reckon he was probably naked before she knocked him back…
(Isn’t “exfiltration” a cool word?)
