Thursday, December 28, 2006
Xmas Greetings
Apologies for a long absence. For Christmas, I went down to Portsmouth to stay with my housemate's parents. It was very nice of them to put me up and I spent a very pleasant few days eating, drinking and chatting.
I didn't get to see much of Portsmouth but did go out for a drive along the water on Boxing Day. There are a number of old ships in Portsmouth including the HMS Victory which was Nelson's command at Trafalgar (Ha Ha) and the Mary Rose. Unfortunately, they had closed the historic docks for Christmas so I wasn't able to see any ships except for the HMS Warrior which was built in 1860 and was the world's first ocean-going iron-hulled armoured battleship. Here's a picture of it.
In other news, I am once again having to move my lodgings. I had to check out of my hotel a couple of weeks ago as it decided to close down. Luckily, I was able to organise a spot of house-sitting in Gosforth which is northwest of Newcastle city centre. The owners of the flat are coming back on Saturday so I am moving into hospital accommodation in Gateshead which is south of the river Tyne.
I will be on-call over the New Year period so I won't get a chance to celebrate but I hope you all have an enjoyable NYE wherever you are when the clock ticks over.
I didn't get to see much of Portsmouth but did go out for a drive along the water on Boxing Day. There are a number of old ships in Portsmouth including the HMS Victory which was Nelson's command at Trafalgar (Ha Ha) and the Mary Rose. Unfortunately, they had closed the historic docks for Christmas so I wasn't able to see any ships except for the HMS Warrior which was built in 1860 and was the world's first ocean-going iron-hulled armoured battleship. Here's a picture of it.
In other news, I am once again having to move my lodgings. I had to check out of my hotel a couple of weeks ago as it decided to close down. Luckily, I was able to organise a spot of house-sitting in Gosforth which is northwest of Newcastle city centre. The owners of the flat are coming back on Saturday so I am moving into hospital accommodation in Gateshead which is south of the river Tyne.
I will be on-call over the New Year period so I won't get a chance to celebrate but I hope you all have an enjoyable NYE wherever you are when the clock ticks over.
# posted by Michael @ 11:58 PM
Friday, December 08, 2006
Gay Rights in SA
I've just found out on news.com.au that the Domestic Partners Bill 2006 has finally been passed by the South Australian Legislative Council by a vote of 16-3. It's not surprising that it was opposed by the two Family First MLC's Andrew Evans and Dennis Hood and even the Liberal's Terry Stephens.
I'm sure standing up to this 'filth' made Andrew Evans feel as proud as Lot did when he offered his two virgin daughters to a raging, horny mob that had come to sodomise two angels that were staying in his house. (Check it out Genesis:Chap 19)
This legislation finally brings SA into line with other states allowing any two people who live together to enter into a 'domestic partnership' a term that has replaced 'de facto'. After years of campaigning and the issue being side-lined by Labor and Liberal governments there has finally been some progress. Amazing when you consider that South Australia was one of the first places to legalise homosexuality under Premier Don Dunstan.
I thought that it was interesting to note that there was no mention of this legislation being passed on the Advertiser website. I suppose that the Advertiser is ambivalent enough about the legislation to not print anything or maybe they just don't want gays and lesbians to know that they are now just that bit more equal. If anyone has seen the print edition of the Advertiser (and is able to read) could they let me know if the legislation is mentioned anywhere.
I'm sure standing up to this 'filth' made Andrew Evans feel as proud as Lot did when he offered his two virgin daughters to a raging, horny mob that had come to sodomise two angels that were staying in his house. (Check it out Genesis:Chap 19)
This legislation finally brings SA into line with other states allowing any two people who live together to enter into a 'domestic partnership' a term that has replaced 'de facto'. After years of campaigning and the issue being side-lined by Labor and Liberal governments there has finally been some progress. Amazing when you consider that South Australia was one of the first places to legalise homosexuality under Premier Don Dunstan.
I thought that it was interesting to note that there was no mention of this legislation being passed on the Advertiser website. I suppose that the Advertiser is ambivalent enough about the legislation to not print anything or maybe they just don't want gays and lesbians to know that they are now just that bit more equal. If anyone has seen the print edition of the Advertiser (and is able to read) could they let me know if the legislation is mentioned anywhere.
# posted by Michael @ 1:58 PM
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Wedge: A View From Afar
Congratulations should go out to Kevin Rudd for taking over the role of leader of the parliamentary Australian Labor Party. I don't think that anyone would have been surprised that the ALP was more than happy to drop "Bomber" Beazley in favour of a fresh face. However, given Labor's recent history with opposition leaders, one has to wonder if it will make any difference at all. We all remember the disaster of Mark Latham and the great grey wave that swept Simon Crean to the leadership in 2001. Will Rudd's Labor be any different to his predecessors?
The answer is most probably not. Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard have less than twelve months to convince the Australian people that there would be something to be gained by voting Labor. That's the conundrum.
Since 1996, Howard has proven to be the most canny and manipulative politician in Australia. He has managed to be elected by the Australian people four times despite being significantly behind the ALP in the polls at some stage during each of his terms. Howard has two powerful weapons in his reserve that have served him well over the years. The first is his ability to feed and manipulate the media into pushing his political agenda. The second is his skilled use of wedge politics.
Most of you probably know that the Australian media is controlled by a small handful of media moguls, most notably Rupert Murdoch - the mogul's mogul. Murdoch owns almost every paper in Australia with the exceptions of The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age. It's saddening that a country with twenty million people has only one national newspaper, The Australian, another Murdoch daily, which in recent years has become a glorified press office for the government. The other papers remain parochial tabloids with a strong focus on celebrity, opinion based reporting and non-news, the Adelaide Advertiser being a fine example. Howard's strategy has been the promise of changes to Australia's protective cross media ownership laws. Until recently, these laws prevented owners of one form of media (TV, radio, newspaper) from having controlling interests in other forms of media so Murdoch was restricted to print journalism and feeding the rest of the Australian media through his Fox network. But those laws have gone thanks to a Liberal dominated Senate, with a small amount of help from the Christian right in the form of Family First's Steve Fielding (who doesn't put family first? Orphans? Scientologists?).
Howard has had the vast majority of the Australian media in his pocket for years now. Many of you will remember the embarrassment of the Tampa incident in 2001 and will remember how Howard made sure that only the right amount of information made it to the media in the lead-up to the election. There was a complete lack of enquiry by the media and it allowed Howard to appeal to the inherent racism of the Australian people, directing them to suspect that asylum seekers have a different set of morals to “us”. This was Howard at his finest and most conniving, driving that wedge through the electorate.
There is no doubt in my mind that Howard will attempt to use similar machinations at the next election in 2007. Already this year we have seen him laying his groundwork for using Islam as this election’s wedge issue. Earlier this year, Howard warned us that there were pockets of the Islamic community that were not willing to adopt Australian values (whatever they are) and were refusing to integrate.
"There's a small section of the Islamic population which is unwilling to integrate…. Fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language if you don't already speak it…” - John Howard, MP
He also stirred up the cultural melting pot when he said that the Muslim world’s reaction to Pope Benedict’s recent comments was out of proportion. Most sensible world leaders kept quiet about the issue but not Howard who was keen to follow up George W. Bush's washing away of the Pope's sins with his own damaging contribution to this escalating clash of civilisations.
Howard’s not the only one in his party to be using this racist agenda to gain popular support. Danna Vale MP made comments about Australia aborting itself out of existence and becoming a Muslim nation, and Bronwyn Bishop even attempted to ban Islamic dress from schools.
I am sure that at some point before the next election there will suddenly be a debate about the right of Muslim women to wear religious clothing at some level in our society. This happened recently in the UK and was fanned by the Labour government who used it to take attention away from the tenuous nature of Tony Blair’s leadership and the ambitions of his deputy, Gordon Brown. It has also been used by John Reid (Home Secretary) who has coupled his obvious positioning for the leadership with a number of home office statements regarding Muslim communities.
It’s surprising that all this is still going on five years after September 11. Many people have said quite rightly that this frequent demonisation of the Muslim community is contributing to the disenchantment and isolation of many Muslim people. Reports released after the July bombings in the London Underground have pointed out that the British government’s foreign policy and involvement in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan contributed significantly to the bomber’s motivation and future Islamic terrorism.
“Today, free and open societies face a new tyranny: the tyranny of Islamist terrorism, one with at least a family resemblance to the great struggles against forces of totalitarianism in the past. A Czech writer once wrote with great prescience: You can't build utopia without terror and before long terror is all that's left.” – John Howard, MP.
So Howard is using the perceived threat of Islamic terrorism to build his utopia. But, to even call what happened in New York and London Islamic terrorism is buying into the insidious language of the neo-cons and others with an interest in maintaining fear and paranoia. To label these murderous deeds Islamic is as misinformed as calling those that bomb abortion clinics “Christian” terrorists or calling the US, Britain and Australia the “Christian” invaders of Iraq. Some may say that the imagery and language that is used by those connected with these terrorist acts is religious in nature but we cannot expect people who live in a society where religion is an intrinsic part of everyday existence to develop a discourse without religious content. That would be like Bush not mentioning that God supports his invasion of Iraq. From the start we have been using language that is instantly segregating and insulting the very parts of our community that we should be trying to win over. It also shows how little we understand about why these terrorist acts are occurring and why there has been so much unrest because of the American involvement in Iraq.
To say that these terrorist acts were all a direct result of an interpretation of Islam is overly simplistic and fails to appreciate their motives. Painting a picture of violence based on religion is akin to saying that there is no logical or moral explanation for these attacks. It’s amazing how we fear something more when we believe it to be irrational.
The violence in the Middle East and the attacks in London and New York are far from irrational. The desire for political or economic power is a much better motivator than religion for making people go to war or hurt others. The bombings are carefully planned and well thought out attacks whose aims can all be determined but appear to give the impression of randomness. Don’t believe me? Consider the current death rate for insurgents in Iraq. It must be enormous and I am sure that the ratio of insurgent deaths to US soldiers is very high. Most soldiers are happy to kill and die for their cause. A suicide bombing gives a much better ratio in favour of the bomber. For a single life one could potentially kill hundreds or thousands of enemies and take the war from one locality to another.
So how does Kevin Rudd use all of this to show that he can offer something more than Howard. The Prime Minister is over-committed in his relationship with the United States (Bush did refer to him as “the Sheriff”). Because of this Australia has become involved in two ridiculous wars and gained very little from it except to make ourselves more of a terrorist target. Rudd could set a firm timetable for the withdrawal of Australian troops from the Middle East, one that would be entirely separate from the US. He could also demand that the Americans release David Hicks, an Australian national who has been held in Guantanamo Bay for five years with trial and currently without charge. Considering that Mamdouh Habib and the British detainees were all released years ago it is a travesty that Howard has been so reluctant to get Hicks released.
Rudd could also start to heal the divisions that Howard has caused within sectors of the Australian community by emphasising acceptance and tolerance. That might be a good move for Australian foreign policy as well considering that Australia’s nearest neighbour is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia.
Ultimately, using anti-Americanism as a wedge may be the tactic that Rudd needs to unseat Howard although he would have to be very careful about how he did it. But let’s be fair, no world leader has ever lost popularity at home by attacking the United States.
The answer is most probably not. Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard have less than twelve months to convince the Australian people that there would be something to be gained by voting Labor. That's the conundrum.
Since 1996, Howard has proven to be the most canny and manipulative politician in Australia. He has managed to be elected by the Australian people four times despite being significantly behind the ALP in the polls at some stage during each of his terms. Howard has two powerful weapons in his reserve that have served him well over the years. The first is his ability to feed and manipulate the media into pushing his political agenda. The second is his skilled use of wedge politics.
Most of you probably know that the Australian media is controlled by a small handful of media moguls, most notably Rupert Murdoch - the mogul's mogul. Murdoch owns almost every paper in Australia with the exceptions of The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Age. It's saddening that a country with twenty million people has only one national newspaper, The Australian, another Murdoch daily, which in recent years has become a glorified press office for the government. The other papers remain parochial tabloids with a strong focus on celebrity, opinion based reporting and non-news, the Adelaide Advertiser being a fine example. Howard's strategy has been the promise of changes to Australia's protective cross media ownership laws. Until recently, these laws prevented owners of one form of media (TV, radio, newspaper) from having controlling interests in other forms of media so Murdoch was restricted to print journalism and feeding the rest of the Australian media through his Fox network. But those laws have gone thanks to a Liberal dominated Senate, with a small amount of help from the Christian right in the form of Family First's Steve Fielding (who doesn't put family first? Orphans? Scientologists?).
Howard has had the vast majority of the Australian media in his pocket for years now. Many of you will remember the embarrassment of the Tampa incident in 2001 and will remember how Howard made sure that only the right amount of information made it to the media in the lead-up to the election. There was a complete lack of enquiry by the media and it allowed Howard to appeal to the inherent racism of the Australian people, directing them to suspect that asylum seekers have a different set of morals to “us”. This was Howard at his finest and most conniving, driving that wedge through the electorate.
There is no doubt in my mind that Howard will attempt to use similar machinations at the next election in 2007. Already this year we have seen him laying his groundwork for using Islam as this election’s wedge issue. Earlier this year, Howard warned us that there were pockets of the Islamic community that were not willing to adopt Australian values (whatever they are) and were refusing to integrate.
"There's a small section of the Islamic population which is unwilling to integrate…. Fully integrating means accepting Australian values, it means learning as rapidly as you can the English language if you don't already speak it…” - John Howard, MP
He also stirred up the cultural melting pot when he said that the Muslim world’s reaction to Pope Benedict’s recent comments was out of proportion. Most sensible world leaders kept quiet about the issue but not Howard who was keen to follow up George W. Bush's washing away of the Pope's sins with his own damaging contribution to this escalating clash of civilisations.
Howard’s not the only one in his party to be using this racist agenda to gain popular support. Danna Vale MP made comments about Australia aborting itself out of existence and becoming a Muslim nation, and Bronwyn Bishop even attempted to ban Islamic dress from schools.
I am sure that at some point before the next election there will suddenly be a debate about the right of Muslim women to wear religious clothing at some level in our society. This happened recently in the UK and was fanned by the Labour government who used it to take attention away from the tenuous nature of Tony Blair’s leadership and the ambitions of his deputy, Gordon Brown. It has also been used by John Reid (Home Secretary) who has coupled his obvious positioning for the leadership with a number of home office statements regarding Muslim communities.
It’s surprising that all this is still going on five years after September 11. Many people have said quite rightly that this frequent demonisation of the Muslim community is contributing to the disenchantment and isolation of many Muslim people. Reports released after the July bombings in the London Underground have pointed out that the British government’s foreign policy and involvement in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan contributed significantly to the bomber’s motivation and future Islamic terrorism.
“Today, free and open societies face a new tyranny: the tyranny of Islamist terrorism, one with at least a family resemblance to the great struggles against forces of totalitarianism in the past. A Czech writer once wrote with great prescience: You can't build utopia without terror and before long terror is all that's left.” – John Howard, MP.
So Howard is using the perceived threat of Islamic terrorism to build his utopia. But, to even call what happened in New York and London Islamic terrorism is buying into the insidious language of the neo-cons and others with an interest in maintaining fear and paranoia. To label these murderous deeds Islamic is as misinformed as calling those that bomb abortion clinics “Christian” terrorists or calling the US, Britain and Australia the “Christian” invaders of Iraq. Some may say that the imagery and language that is used by those connected with these terrorist acts is religious in nature but we cannot expect people who live in a society where religion is an intrinsic part of everyday existence to develop a discourse without religious content. That would be like Bush not mentioning that God supports his invasion of Iraq. From the start we have been using language that is instantly segregating and insulting the very parts of our community that we should be trying to win over. It also shows how little we understand about why these terrorist acts are occurring and why there has been so much unrest because of the American involvement in Iraq.
To say that these terrorist acts were all a direct result of an interpretation of Islam is overly simplistic and fails to appreciate their motives. Painting a picture of violence based on religion is akin to saying that there is no logical or moral explanation for these attacks. It’s amazing how we fear something more when we believe it to be irrational.
The violence in the Middle East and the attacks in London and New York are far from irrational. The desire for political or economic power is a much better motivator than religion for making people go to war or hurt others. The bombings are carefully planned and well thought out attacks whose aims can all be determined but appear to give the impression of randomness. Don’t believe me? Consider the current death rate for insurgents in Iraq. It must be enormous and I am sure that the ratio of insurgent deaths to US soldiers is very high. Most soldiers are happy to kill and die for their cause. A suicide bombing gives a much better ratio in favour of the bomber. For a single life one could potentially kill hundreds or thousands of enemies and take the war from one locality to another.
So how does Kevin Rudd use all of this to show that he can offer something more than Howard. The Prime Minister is over-committed in his relationship with the United States (Bush did refer to him as “the Sheriff”). Because of this Australia has become involved in two ridiculous wars and gained very little from it except to make ourselves more of a terrorist target. Rudd could set a firm timetable for the withdrawal of Australian troops from the Middle East, one that would be entirely separate from the US. He could also demand that the Americans release David Hicks, an Australian national who has been held in Guantanamo Bay for five years with trial and currently without charge. Considering that Mamdouh Habib and the British detainees were all released years ago it is a travesty that Howard has been so reluctant to get Hicks released.
Rudd could also start to heal the divisions that Howard has caused within sectors of the Australian community by emphasising acceptance and tolerance. That might be a good move for Australian foreign policy as well considering that Australia’s nearest neighbour is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia.
Ultimately, using anti-Americanism as a wedge may be the tactic that Rudd needs to unseat Howard although he would have to be very careful about how he did it. But let’s be fair, no world leader has ever lost popularity at home by attacking the United States.
# posted by Michael @ 3:45 PM
