One the best advertisements I've ever

I found this in The Age a week or so ago. Isn't it great?



Not only is there a word missing, but it claims that ANU is "one [of] the top Australian universities in the world". Surely that just makes it one of the top universities in Australia though, right?

Anyway, I trust them, with ads like this.

Sometimes you like the pie

Is it just me, or do the world leaders these days just not have any charisma? I don't just mean charm, but that commanding ability to walk into a room and demand its attention. Bill Clinton, though steeped in "boyish good looks", had it to a point. But lately I can barely think of anybody.

The Late Show (i.e. "Letterman") has been running an hilarious semi-regular segment entitled "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches", poking fun at Dubya. Sure, when JFK's "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" and FDR's "the only thing to fear is fear itself" speeches are followed up by Dubya mumbling "sometimes you like the pie, ya know, but you don't like, ya know, the slices in the pie!" it's pretty much shooting fish in a barrel, but it still makes a good point.

George W. Bush, Tony Blair, even our esteemed John Howard - none of them give particularly great or inspiring speeches. Even the guys we're s'posed to hate seem to command more attention - just think of the wall-rattlers that Saddam has directed at the prosecution in the last couple of months, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's angered barbs towards Israel. Of course, it's probably easier to give great speeches and inspire the already angry masses - it's well known that Hitler was one of the greatest orators - but it's no exclusive club.

JFK and FDR are two of the greatest examples, but how about Martin Luther King? Even our own Paul Keating - with the help of his wordsmith Don Watson, of course - had his day.

Do these people exist anymore? Maybe they do, but the public just don't care. Certainly the closest we've got to a leader-of-the-masses type we've got in Australia is AWU national secretary Bill Shorten, yet despite his recent media ubiquiouty (c/o Beaconsfield), he barely registered a blip on the latest ALP leadership polls.

The trend has not gone unnoticed. Joe Klein (best known as the originally-anonymous author of Primary Colors) has written a book that makes more than fleeting reference to the problem, and an excerpt has been published in Time.

Listen to Kennedy's Indianapolis speech and there is a quality of respect for the audience that simply is not present in modern American politics. It isn't merely that he quotes Aeschylus to the destitute and uneducated, although that is remarkable enough. Kennedy's respect for the crowd is not only innate and scrupulous, it is also structural, born of technological innocence: he doesn't know who they are--not scientifically, the way post-modern politicians do.

Respect. It's something barely tangible, yet everybody knows when they command it. And it's something, as Klein says, that barely seems to rate on the political radar these days. It's a shame.

Blogs are evil! Outrage!!

So Jim Schembri's an occasionally funny guy - most often when he doesn't try so hard - but lately his ranting and forced humour has been increasingly schoolyard-ish.

A couple of weeks ago he went off on an "Oh, I'm so hard done by" tangent about all the horrible horrible hate mail he gets, and how difficult the life of a film reviewer is (Jim, the reason you're the one getting paid and they're not is because you're supposed to be smarter than them, and above all that crap).

But on Friday he sank to new depths, with an hilariously "satirical" poke at the "new" craze that is blogging. With such intellectual wit as an excess of exclamation marks, Schembri's genius becomes apparent.

In reality, Schembri's puerile pretentiousness really begins to resemble, er, one of his own articles.

Now, this isn't me getting all defensive. I realise that this here blog is little more than my chance to get up on a soapbox and rant to an audience (of two or three people). But to presume that all blogging is essentially artless and without merit is extraordinarily childish and shortsighted.

It's not just that Schembri hasn't heard of (or so it seems) blogs such as Baghdad Burning (which is now an acclaimed book), but the fact that he's actively avoiding referencing the most obvious retorts to his own immature argument.

Don't tell the babysitter, mum's dead

In Florida ... a man was arrested for keeping his mother at home for months after she died so that he could keep cashing her Social Security checks.

I see a Weekend at Bernie's style movie idea here...

Stand-up guy falls down hole, nobody laughs

Yes, I'm probably going to hell, but I couldn't help but laugh at this story in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

After a wet winter, the ground opened and swallowed a 27-year-old schoolteacher at 9:30 p.m. Friday. He was in the converted garage of his family's home, where he lived with his pregnant wife, authorities said.

She escaped and called for help, but it was too late. State forestry department firefighters found Jason Chellew in a 10-foot-deep sinkhole with no pulse.

Despite San Francisco's notorious history of earth-shaking events (the San Francisco Earthquake, which killed as many as 6,000 people, occurred 100 years ago just last Tuesday), the sinkhole's cause somehow remains a mystery to authorities.

But if you can't find humour in the unseemly and tragic deaths of thousands of innocent people, surely there's room in your heart for a chuckle at just one. Chellew, said a neighbour, "was a wonderful, standup guy".

Until, that is, he fell down.

Australian death in Iraq

Today's Crikey editorial has put forth a little speculation regarding the first Australian death in Iraq - Private Jacob Kovco. Citing The Sydney Morning Herald's report, which begins "Private Jacob Kovco was around guns for much of his life", the question posed is, "What could be the significance of this, other than a coded suggestion that he knew better than to accidentally shoot himself in the head while cleaning a loaded gun?"

Hmm, a conspiracy afoot?

With all the current controversy surrounding the Howard Government and their "I know nuffink" Cole Inquiry responses, the last thing they need is for even more problems in Iraq. But sweeping something like this - if there is indeed a something would be insulting to both the Australian public and the soldier's family.

Is it in you?

Ever felt just a little strange when grasping a large, firmly shaped Gatorade bottle and quenching your cold, hard thirst? Well, there's probably a reason for it. Kids, look away now.



Their slogan just gained extra meaning. Ew.

How unnecessary

Feminists make me nervous. Not because I'm some horrible woman-hating chauvanist; more because I'm worried that deep down inside of me one is trying to get out. But I'm certainly a masochist; I adore Sylvia Plath, I was glued to Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch, and right now I'm progressing through Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary? (answer: no) at a rate of knots.

And as anybody who's read her New York Times columns would already have guessed, it's good. Real good.

It starts slow(ish), mainly because Dowd finds it difficult to snap out of that acerbicly rapid-fire wit of hers and get with the point too often (the frustration is akin to Jim Schembri's occasional brilliance), but soon enough she is on track. The jokes flow on, of course, but they're focused.

The book is good because despite all temptations Dowd resists the opportunity to talk down: there are those asides, those digs at "us crazy men" and the incomprehensible world in which even the smart ones seem to dwell, but the comments are always insightful and the surface-sheen is really only there for show; there's plenty of substance underneath.

One troubling thing: the New York Times grammar controversy continues. On page 104 Dowd refers to "alpha [as in alpha males and alpha females and "alpha moms"] SUV's". Sports Utility Vehicles. SUVs. But she says "SUV's". God dammit.

I don't understand where the laws of grammar went out the window (but it's somewhere in the middle of New York City apparently), but it makes me angry. Next angry email stop: Maureen Dowd's inbox. I never did get a response from the Times though.

It's still murder

Does anybody else find the entire concept of not holding soldiers responsible for their (politically instructed) actions rather ridiculous?

I know it's not the done thing to say so - in fact, if I shouted this aloud in a street in America I'd probably be handbagged to death by otherwise sickly sweet and perfectly reasonable Democrat-voting mothers - but I think, and always have, that soldiers should be held as accountable for their actions as you and I or the prime minister or president (wait, those last two don't count, do they?).

Really, since when did soldiers become mindless automatons? (The depressing answer to that question is, incidentally: when they were "programmed" day after day to act like mindless automatons:

Many people think killing is a natural act, but Col. Grossman argues that it isn’t. He discusses how new and innovative pop up targets, video-based firearms training simulators, and Simunition®-based training are used to facilitate overcoming this innate resistance. These devices are then combined with high repetition to condition a correct response even in the face of fear.)

Because whatever their training, soldiers are still human beings; living, breathing, thinking, decision-making human beings. And in the world I've always lived in, following someone else's instructions doesn't get you off the ethical hook.

I don't particularly care if these views are controversial either, because when the only other option is shutting up and essentially condoning the deaths of innocent people, there's a line dividing silence and protest, and I know which side I'm on.

It's not as if people don't know what they're getting themselves in for when they join the army. Understandably things were different in this world five years ago, and the likelihood of being called into action would have been much lower than today, but the basic gist of the army, as I understand it: they give you guns and training and angry drill seargants, and they teach you how to kill other people in the most efficient way possible.

It's not exactly Play School.

This isn't an argument for pacifism. I'm not a pacifist. This is an argument against blind loyalty, and an argument against the lack of responsibility for one's own personal actions. If I sign up for a job where I know a potential consequence is killing others in (often somewhat shady) "defence of my country" I'm making an ethical decision then and there. If I continue this position when a war breaks out or is declared, I am making another. Finally, if I am assigned to duty in such a war, I have one final decision. The penalties may be harsh to desert at this point, but there is no such thing as a situation where you're without a choice. Even making no decision is making a decision.

So if you're telling me that this war might be bad, that the innocent deaths are unnecessary, and that there's blood on the hands of these - American, English, Australian and so on - governments, then I'm sorry, but I fail to see why the soldiers aren't just as guilty.

It doesn't matter if you put the gun in my hand and tell me to pull the trigger, once I do it, I'm the murderer.

Young innocent children being blown up: one of the great things about America

Ah, that Bush. He really does have a way with words, doesn't he. Just like last week, when he told us that war is bad because it "creates a sense of uncertainty", Bush is making profound comments again.

This week Bush has been singing democratic America's praises because of all the dead kids.

Well, I think that's what he meant.

According to the latest weekly review at Harper's Magazine, Bush said: "one of the great things about America, one of the beauties of our country, is that when we see a young, innocent child blown up by an IED, we cry".

All hail Americans and their great compassion!

Fear and loathing in Victoria

The censorship issue continues. Is last week's pre-trial Victorian Supreme Court ruling that newspapers cannot reveal the names of three AFL players who tested positive to illegal drugs a blow to free speech?

Not if there's still some semblance of difference between what we consider private and public.

There's no doubt that opinions pertaining to what newspapers can and cannot publish often vary wildly, and in ninety-nine percent of cases I'll fall on the "go right ahead" side of things, but a certain line must be drawn.

When the decision is based around a situation in which private results of a medical test are revealed to the public, I think the line is clear.

Yes, drugs are illegal (at least, the ones in this instance are).

This should have little bearing, however; if the players were before a court of law then there would be no question to the public's right to knowledge. But this is not the case. Instead, an in-house procedure by the AFL has been leaked to the media, and publication of the results violates the players' rights for no reason other than tabloid gossip.

If the AFL - or the clubs themselves - had chosen to release the information, it would be a different matter. The players are contracted employees who are aware of their obligations to their clubs and the AFL, and one of those obligations is to abide by the drug code. Yet with obligations come rights, and those rights, here, are the players' rights to privacy until they, or their contracted employers, choose otherwise.

The newspapers, nor anybody else, have no more right to publish that information than to publish your personal medical records.

Nobody likes George

"Nobody likes war," Bush said. "It creates a sense of uncertainty in the country."

Yep, that's why everyone hates war so much. All that damn uncertainty.

The art of banning a film

You should all go and buy the latest issue of Metro magazine, and read my censorship article in it (even though they didn't put me on the cover dammit).

Here's a portion (totally out of context, but you get the idea):

It isn’t just the OFLC who can exercise control over what adult Australians can see or do in the privacy of their own homes though; state boards have these powers too. Earlier this year the film 9 Songs (Michael Winterbottom, 2004) to mild acclaim for its honest appraisal of a romance between two twenty-somethings. The film featured graphic, non-simulated sex, yet it sought not to be pornography but a romance. It met with controversy and complaints during its cinema run, and didn’t last long, although it retained its R18+ rating. On 11 August however, the South Australian Classification Council deemed the film worthy of an X18+ rating. Of course, this doesn’t sound too bad until you realize – sneakily – that it is illegal to show or sell X-rated films in South Australia. What is more disturbing than any of the pointless bureaucratic wrangling surrounding the film’s rating though, is how it actually came about. There were no protests against the film, no outraged advocacy groups, no arguments against excessive, violent, or prejudiced content. No, just two complaints. According to the press release, the complaints came from – one, an individual, and two, the ‘Festival of Light’ . This is not a decision based on community outrage or democratic wisdom; rather, pointless pandering to the baseless complaints of an individual and a zealous group of fundamentalists.

Also in August, film director Gregg Araki found himself dealing with seemingly the never-ceasing wrath of Australia’s pro-censorship lobbies, when his film Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004) met heavy criticism from the Australian Family Association’s spokesman Richard Egan, and calls from Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock to have the film banned. The film’s star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, couldn’t understand the furore. ‘My impression of Australia, from the Australians I’ve met,’ he said, ‘is that people are open-minded and cool. I was surprised that Australia, of all places, was the country that tried to ban Mysterious Skin’ .

Mysterious Skin is anything but gratuitous. Margaret Pomeranz described it as a ‘film [with] the potential to inform, heal and possibly transform’ , and L.A. Times critic Kevin Thomas wrote that ‘it’s hard to imagine a more serious or persuasive indictment of the horrors inflicted on children by sexual abuse’ . Araki argues that the film helps ‘break the silence on child abuse’ , but disgracefully it is the very people who purport to act as advocates of such causes – like the Australian Family Association – who are seeking to have the film silenced.

Surely the longest-running and most infamous of all Australian cases of cinematic censorship is that of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final – and most divisive – film, Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1976). Based on the Marquis de Sade’s disturbing book The 120 Days of Sodom, Salò was completed just prior to Pasolini’s murder in 1976. Posthumously, the controversy was to continue.

That year, Salò was banned in Australia, and despite several requests for classification being made over the following years, the ban remained. Until, that is, 1993, when the old debates raging around it had apparently been forgotten, and it was unbanned. This was short-lived, however, and in 1996 – following an amendment to Australia’s laws – it came under review. In 1998 its classification was again withdrawn . Though the OFLC seemed to come half way – admitting that the film was intended to be a serious work of art, and a damning metaphorical critique of fascism, ultimately ‘the majority of the Review Board considered that this metaphor was not clearly established’ . Like so many that would come after it, Salò seems to have been banned without once considering the members of a democratic society’s right to exercise their own free will, discretion, and liberty. Metaphorical fascism? Well, who needed metaphor?

Tinsel town

Could this be the worst analogy ever? - "Like tinsel at a family Christmas party, it looks pretty but it does not alter underlying social dynamics."

Which is nice, 'cause last year I set up the Christmas tree and was totally pissed off when the tinsel stubbornly refused to alter my lounge room's underlying social dynamics even one bit.

Turns out I'd set my expectations a touch high though, as Christian Reus-Smit (page 350, The Globalization of World Politics) has now explained.

Tinsel just ain't as tough as it used to be I guess.

Guantanamo gulags?

Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja is normally right on the ball, but today's press release was just a touch on the dramatic side.

David Hicks' incarceration in Guantanamo Bay is a shameful display of the hegemonic power and arrogance that the United States wields over the rest of the world, and our own government's lack of action on the matter is just as disgusting. But to compare the prison - admittedly second rate and probably even a haven for torture - to the Soviet gulags is not only inaccurate, but insulting to anybody who had to endure their horror.

In Stalin's gulags it is estimated that a quarter of the approximately twenty-five million prisoners (some estimates put the figure as high as fifty million - most of them innocent, jailed only due to the fact that Stalin, with his feeble understanding of how to run a country properly, needed their labour, or persecuted for their religious beliefs) died, and the conditions were almost impossibly grim.

I'm the first to criticise America and their policies, but hyperbole and exaggeration won't get the cause anywhere - Stott Despoja normally knows this better than anyone.

The New York Time's?

At first I just thought I was going insane. (And it's always important, at such moments, to take stock and really have a good long think before proceeding.) Turns out I wasn't though - rather, The New York Times, that great bastion of Western journalism, just can't punctuate their own articles.

For perhaps the third time in the last couple of weeks or so, I've come across an article with a reference to a decade (like this example - "First came an economic opening in the 1980's under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet") which has an apostrophe incorrectly added to the unfortunate word, as if somehow "the 1980" was in ownership of something called the "under the dictatorship...". Which, clearly, doesn't make sense.

It's not like the world's going to fall apart at the seams at this news, and I'm sure I make plenty of errors here, but come on, it's the New York-bloody-Times!

Strunk & White must be turning in their respective graves, and I can only imagine what Lynn Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves and all round punctuation Nazi, would make of it all. And if you're struggling yourself, there's a good rundown of some of the hard and fast rules here, incidentally entitled "The apostrophe is the modern day Shibboleth" (cute).

This New York Times thing is no isolated incident. Are the proofreaders purposefully passing this over, under some misguided assumption that they can re(n)educate the world to the wicked ways of the extra apostrophe?

Or do they simply just not realise that they've totally buggered it up? Maybe this is a question I should be asking of the Times themselves... Watch this space.

These boots are made for hookers

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I know when Bush is lying - his lips move

Recently, I was able to secure an interview with the world-renowned human rights activist, filmmaker and journalist John Pilger. (Choice Pilger quote: “I know when [George W.] Bush is lying. His lips move.”)

Originally, the interview was to appear in the magazine that I spent 2005 editing, La Trobe University's Rabelais, but for a variety of reasons, the final issue never eventuated.

The interview was timed to coincide with the release of Stealing A Nation, his latest film, but that's now passed us by. Nonetheless, it's probably available from your latest video store, and is well worth checking out.

Instead of letting what is a fairly interesting interview go to waste though, I thought I'd put this, the unedited interview, up here. So enjoy.


Panda Obscura: How did you originally get involved in this project (Stealing a Nation)?

John Pilger: The extraordinary story of the expulsion of the Chagos Islanders has been at the back of my mind for some years. In 2002, I had an opportunity to see the declassified official documents, and making Stealing a Nation became a priority. The film is about a single epic injustice, but it's also a metaphor for the way great power imposes itself on small countries: indeed, on the world today. Not only were the people of the Chagos expelled by the British, but their main island, Diego Garcia, was handed over to the Americans, who have turned it into a vast base -- from which they have attacked Afghanistan and Iraq.

PO: What do you think an 'independent' journalist actually is, do you consider yourself one, and if so how do you remain independent?

JP: Yes, I consider myself an independent journalist. 'Independence' is a noble term; it says you can have your own views, but the journalism you pursue is not beholden to any vested interest: that you are not a member of anyone's entourage.

PO: Is the recent Federal Court ruling against Freedom of Information for journalists - and in favour of the rather murky concept of 'National Interest' - a blow to the democratic integrity of Australia (and the world), especially considering the role that uncovering official documentation (albeit from London's Public Record Office Washington's National Archives) played in your expose of the crimes against Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands?

JP: Yes, it is a blow. But you know, the most worrying threat to press freedom -- or media freedom – in Australia is not so much the government's draconian restrictions, it is the will of journalists to circumvent them. And the strength or weakness of this will is directly related to the restrictions that already apply in Australia and about which journalists rarely protest. I refer to the corporatism that dominates the Australian media, infamously the ownership of 70 per cent of the capital city press by Rupert Murdoch, an ideologue with extreme views. Only
when journalists stand up to this corporatism – and this is true of Fairfax and the ABC -- will there be an end to the widespread censorship by omission in
Australia.

PO: How worrying are England and Australia's 'little America' roles in the world today, particularly when one considers the parallels between the American and English Governments' apparent belief that any lie can be solved by denial and/or spin-doctoring (Diego Garcia, WMDs etc.) and our own Government's proclivities (the denial of oil to East Timor; recent refugee crises; SIEV-X) toward such trends?

JP: Well, we ought not be surprised. The same ideology that dominates and distorts political life in the United States is in Britain and Australia. In Australia, the erosion of real democracy is especially worrying -- there is no effective opposition and real dissent is kept out of the media. It's more worrying because our democratic traditions are more fragile than elsewhere. Freedom of speech, for example, only really puts down roots when the autocratic Governor
Darling was recalled from New South Wales in the 19th century after he had failed to silence criticism of him in the press. We no longer have a critical press like, say, the fearless Sydney Monitor of that period. We have a supine, trivial and deeply politicised press, and, with honourable exceptions, academics who remain silent. If this is to be changed, voices must be
raised; and I would suggest the voices of students are urgently needed.

PO: How can today's public play a role in preventing the subjugation of minorities such as the people of Diego Garcia, Australians in captivity like David Hicks, and refugees held in custody?

JP: They can play a part by taking direct action on behalf of the minorities, on behalf of David Hicks. Direct action resulted in the closure of Woomera detention camps, with all its horrors. It's very simple. Make yourself aware: don't be "surprised" by what rapacious governments do, then act, as true democrats and true radicals have acted for a very long time.

Millions of Iraqis marking their liberty

No, really. According to Dubya, there's cause for optimism in Iraq. Sure, tens of thousands are dead, there's daily rioting, unrest and suicide bombings, but the thing to remember is that "millions of Iraqis [have marked] their liberty with purple ink," and of course it wouldn't be at all possible if it weren't for those lovely, inspiring murderers of the United States Military.

And so Saddam Hussein was given a choice. He chose war. And so we moved and he was removed from power. And there is absolutely no doubt in my mind, America is safer for it, and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.

- said Bush...

And there's something you don't want to forget either. This is Saddam's war. (Against terror? No, wait, he was for terror, wasn't he? All those weapons of mass destruction and the like. So tough to remember the details these days - though I guess that's never stopped Bush.)

Anyway, it turns out that Iraq is at a "moment of choosing" this week, which sure is generous of good old George, since he's been so big on Iraqi rights so far. Luckily though, Bush is optimistic, informing us that his optimism is based on solid grounds, and that "the Iraqi people have spoken".

Forgive me, but I guess I've just been having trouble hearing them speak over all that bombing - and of course the rhetoric that spills forth daily from Bush's own mouth.

But I'll have to take his word for it, I guess. This is liberation, right?

Media's watching

So Media Watch has now been back for two weeks, and things are, er, different. The unfairly maligned Liz Jackson is gone (back to Four Corners after only one year at the post), and the newly appointed Monica Attard is now staring down viewers.

Last week they led with a fairly weak story investigating the validity of those "message in a bottle" stories that seem to turn up far more often than is likely. Turns out, surprise, they're mostly fakes. A CSIRO oceanographer was brought in to decredit claims of enormous distances travelled, which bodes well for the programme's closer focus on research, but a slight feeling of dismay remains - bottles in the ocean? Is this really the kind of stuff Media Watch is here to look into?

The final story was, of course, those cartoons. Unfortunately, it amounted to little - a quick mention of Tim Blair, a deflection from ABC Managing Director Russell Balding, and an underhanded jab at "Western ideologues who insist we must see the cartoons" (I guess that's me).

Attard herself was serviceable, but one must wonder where the show is going when the leading story amounts to little more than page three trash (that's Herald Sun-style, not English tabloid), and the biggest story is tucked up the back with barely anything to add to the debate.

Week two, and things didn't improve much. Again the leading story was little more than news fodder - this time a story about how Launceston's Kim and Dave SEA FM radio show had one over, it seems, the rest of the nation (well, those who cared, anyway), when they made a prank call about the possibility of a Ricky Ponting statue being erected in the local area.

Well, sorry Monica, but this is about the time that we needed a nice, icy stare from ol' Liz, and a frank "who cares?"

Because I certainly didn't.

Things improved from there, with a small expose on a Channel 9 cricket interview with Betfair founder Edward Wray - a conflict of interest, when one consider that Betfair is fifty percent owned by Packer's PBL.

All in all though, Media Watch seems to have lost a little of its shine. Hopefully it will get better, but if not, perhaps Attard should just go back to watching her hair.