Compulsory viewing

Took advantage of half-price day and the Oscar victory to go and see "The Hurt Locker". I had suspected this was an important film and it is.

In my opinion compulsory viewing for anyone who thinks they need to join the armed forces, or when we are thinking about invading another country.

My mind went back to the seminal film Full Metal Jacket, but I thought this was much more important than that. Or maybe our world has degenerated between Vietnam and Iraq. Interesting too that Vietnam films were made 20 yeard after that war ended, while Iraq fils are made while war is going on.

Its premise is that war/violence is a drug. And it makes a good case. Its addictive and mind-altering nature is quite alarming, but believable. Too-believable at times.

And amidst all that there is the awful sense of the incredible waste.

Accidently smelly feet

You know the National Press Club addresses are wasted on the likes of me. Too few people with too little to do at midday on a Wednesday.
Today's was particularly good.David Kilcullen: Author And Guerrilla Warfare Expert giving us some pretty incisive analysysi of what is really going on in Iraq, Iran adn Afghanistan. I am not sure if you can see it on the web but it's worth tracking down.
(here's a former interview on Lateline)
His book The Accidental Guerilla (reviewed here) offers piercing critique, or so it seems to me, of the difference in warmongering policy and the policy of reasserting stable governance. Is it likely, he asked, that American lawmakers are going to to move to scale down war efforts when thousands of jobs in their electorates are dependent on weapons manufacture. He at least is askign the questions. I hope they get more airing

getting out of the war

One headline today reads "Obama: Discussing the war he never agreed to!"
It is, necessarily, part of the dilemma that he faces. In order to be seen as credible by the wider electorate he now has to get up to speed on how you deal competently with a war....even though he didn't think America should have been in that war in the first place.
The President, of course, is also the Commander-in-Chief, [a scary thought when you think of George Bush] but Obama does appear to be taking it seriously. And is being taken seriously by those who will have to cooperate with him. (See the steep learning curve here)
It will always be an issue for incoming politicians. The electorate will have to decide whether the fresh approach outweighs lack of experience. McCain seems to me tired and not up to the task. Obama at least has the capacity to grow and learn.

The price of petrol war

As we watch the price of petrol escalate we should not forget that this is also the price of war.

A war which, as ever, old men decided would happen despite the protestations of their nations. A war which would be paid for not by the rich and powerful but by the sons and daughters of those who protested.

Such foolishness, such waste!

Foxes find holes

A story doing the rounds in the US press (here) about the erstwhile Iraqi veteran who, in declaring himself to be atheistic, finds himself under attack from his alleged comrades (perhaps not a word you would use in the Amercian military).
Having to be put under protection because of his open atheism, there are huge questions here about what sort of society America actually promotes when it can't even tolerate a modicum of difference amongst its own.
We are not talking here apparently about a couple of fundies from the wild hills of Kentucky..or is that Dakota...or are they Black Hills...but you get the point. But ranking officers who tell an atheist who doesn't want to pray that he is some how threatening the glorious constitution, or that when a couple of them want to meet together to discuss their common plight they are some how threatening the war effort.
It makes the Australian Christian Lobby (here) look positively smart by comparison.
More significantly it suggests how ill-founded this particular Iraqi war is.
In the minds of many in power not about democracy at all, but about some curious religious view which doesn't tolerate difference even amongst its own.
The problem is not that people shoudn't be allowed to hold whacky or inconsistent views; the problem is that when it is officers who hold people's lives in the palms of their hands, and they are manifestly confused about what they are on about.
Here for example

in July, while still in Iraq, Hall organized a meeting of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. According to Hall, after things began, Maj. Freddy Welborn disrupted the meeting with threats saying he might bring charges against Hall for conduct detrimental to good order and discipline, and that Hall was disgracing the Constitution. (Err, I think the major has that backward.) Welborn has denied the allegations, but the New York Times reports that another soldier at the meeting said that Hall's account was accurate.

What sort of democracy, freedom, religion, tolerance etc.etc is being promoted?
This stuff, to my mind, is slippery.....and really really scary!

Political Legacy

I suppose that one of the mercies of politics is that history tends to remember people for what they have done and not for what they have NOT DONE.
This is no doubt a huge relief to Mr Howard, though no doubt it will take him a wee while to note it.
What exactly did he do?
We know what he did not do. He did not say sorry! He did not capitalise on the opportunity the Keating Government left him to advance the cause of aboriginal people through Mabo and Wik, it was only in the death throes that he discovered aboriginal issues and 'invaded' the Northern Territory. God save us all from paternalistic politics. Very interesting analysis on ABC today (here) of the significance of Keating's Redfern speech the 10th anniversary of which falls on Monday. It reminds us that it heralded a change. No longer could aboriginal people just be ignored, but rather when they were engaged with it was discovered they were mighty powerful folk.
Don Watson, amongst others, argues that this empowering deeply threatened Tory politics. Chief amongst these was the former PM.
The very fact that aboriginal people could and should be heeded was deeply threatening to those whose view of "history" was that European settlement brought nothing to apologise for. It was as recalled by various noteworthies in the broadcast a mythical view of history not based on the facts.
Key amongst these proponents was one JW Howard, whose constant declamation of "black arm band history" was roundly dealt with as being an unsophisticated approach which fails to allow the real facts to be dealt with.
This is logical if you think about it, if all you can do is say that any criticism is "black arm band" then it sets up a scenario in which no genuine critique can be offered. Watson and others note that this is exactly what JWH and others wanted; any suggestion of anything else threatened their (mythical) view of themselves. Only the passage of the years will, I suggest, properly expose how fully pathetic little politicians were.
So what did he do...well I suppose he introduced the GST, probably good.
He tagged along behind Dubbya into Iraq. No doubt catastrophic.
He failed to sign Kyoto...well Kev will be remembered for the ratification being first thing he did.
Can't remember much else he did....ohh yes there was Workchoices...and that cost him the election.
Ohh and he wouldn't resign because people would think he was a coward...and that also cost him the election.
It's a pity I suppose....but what was his name again?

We are the world

What next? Yesterday's Religion Report reminded that nothing we do, eat, see or enjoy is without taint. (For traditional Christians this is nothing new!)

The focus...chocolate. British social activist, Steve Chalke reminded the listeners that in many places the production of chocolate is only made possible by  low cost labour  provided by children sold into slave-like conditions. This does not suprise us. 

Rather we choose to be ignorant, I guess. 

The same point has been made about coffee in times past, and it is now obvious and clear that we should look for the "fair trade" markings on almost anything.

Fair Trade is a new and necessary buzz word/concept. It applies to coffee, rice, clothing manufacture and anything else that we, the greedy West, demand that the poor make for us, to satisfy our insatiable greed.

Nothing we do, eat or use is morally neutral. Our response to that has usually (as I say) to just be plain dumb about it. 

If we are to be responsible we have to do a bit better than that.

It is popping up all around us though, isn't it?

The trafficking of people...worth more than the global illegal drugs industry.

The rebuilding of the devastated Iraq attracting the poorest of the Asian poor (here)

It is almost all we can do to worry about whether or not we can have drippers on our lawns.

We just simply have to do better!

Today, by the way, is the memoria of Vincent de Paul.  To whom we have generously given bags and bags of unwanted clothes in the last few weeks. The tribute to our own unending need to have stuff without end!

Misleading advertising

Came across this little advertsing gem whilst browsing the world papers over the weekend

Would you like the chance to travel to Poland, Canada, Jamaica or Cyprus in the first year of your new job? How about the chance to earn an excellent starting salary and receive six weeks’ paid holiday every year, all while training in a trade, profession or skill?

We will all note that it fails to mention Iraq and Afghanistan, because, Yes!, it is an advert for the British Army.
Who constitutes our armies? Seldomly the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful (H Windsor being the exception that proves the rule) it is the listless, and perhaps directionless, and least hopeful. We don't like to say this but for some, the forces are a place where you can go if your prospects are not too good. That is not to say that it is not a good place for these people. For those who survive (and that is the key) time in the army, or navy can haver proved very formative indeed. But not much help if you don't survive.
I point you again to Lehrer News Hours honour roll (see blog here)...this US Public broadcasting news show is on SBS daily from 4.45-5.45. Often at the end they show photos of fatalities in the Iraq war...last Friday's dozen or so were all either people of colour or of Hispanic name.
And one of our parish dads has become very clucky indeed because his youngest son is presently doing intensive training with the Army Reserve, I felt cruel (and was indeed careless in the extreme) when I remarked that the Reserve was good training until you actually got called up! He is a fine young man, and it will be doing him good; but he is floating, unsure and very vulnerable to a course of action which may end up costing him and his family dearly.

I offer again American poet Wyatt Prunty's poem THE RETURNING DEAD

Each night I make a drink and wait for them
They have become the day's concluding news,
Installments from a world without anthems
Or children, unfocusing eyes

A question that repeatedly rejects
My easy terms. They are ones who believed
And acted in the narrow and select
Ways handed them, while ordinary lives

Ran on without interruption
Or bad pictures, as though nothing had changed
Change is the one unanswerable question
Of these faces. The world can rearrange

Itself repeatedly, but these remain
The same, silent in everything they lack;
That's what they've come to, in places with names
Like Afghanistan, Iraq,

And this is the way it happens: the words
Are old - mother, father, home - and will catch
Surrounding currents in the slow absurd
Descending will of any river etched

Out of a landscape history refines
To myth. The TV blanks between
Segments, but every static face defines
Itself, holds stubbornly its private scene…

Fixed, publicly, as we are led
Back to that little negative whose lack
Is each of us, staring the staring dead,
Leaning, sometimes like grief itself; then straightening back.

It ain't necessarily so

I was loaned a tape of a talk of one who has worked in Bangladesh on and off for 30 odd years. Whilst still identifying herself as an outsider she had some interesting reflections to make on matters we don't readily understand.
She notes for example that when Carey first translated the Bible into Urdu he was unaware of dialectical variants between Hindus and Moslems. Which are significant.
She noted for example that Carey was advised by an Hindu and used the Hindu variants for theological language. Thus translating the word "pray" the Hindu word means to "bow down" as in ..bow down to an idol... which is of course anathema to Moslems , thus failing to realise that a stumbling block had accidently been put into place.
She noted also that Bangladeshi converts to the Way were not keen to be called Christians...because that word has about it the hidden cultural connotations..pork eater, drinker and womaniser. Another observation concerned some of the current political dogma, which I must admit has bothered me, and that is that the presnet political orthodoxy is that Democracy is the highest form of all government.
You could have a good argument about that.
But what is often now the case is that Imperialist US and Imperialist UK joined by the little cousin wagging our tail is now going about using the road to democracy as justification for almost everything.
We invade Iraq to establish democracy.
We tie foreign aid to the establishment of democracy.
We beg the question about how our form of democracy works.
Does for example American democracy deliver health care for the poor in the US?
Does democracy provide shared wealth for society? Or do only the elite share in that particular largesse.
Does 'democracy' mean that everyone can influence the politiocal process, or only those at the top of the tree?
Does 'democracy' actually discourage ideology and replace it with popularist dogma (bread and circuses) or patronising government (father knows best)?
We note that the US and the UK are remarkably silent about the lack of democracy in Saudi Arabia and in Brunei.
We note that the US does little to protect the democratic infringement of the rights of Palestine by 'democratic' Israel.

Yes, this lady has a point. Not unquestioningly she invites the world to be more open-minded to Islam, even daring to suggest that a culture which scorns drug-taking (questionable) may in fact be the onlky thing that holds out hope to the youth of the decadent west.
Ahhhhh, interesting days.

Trainers by any other name

The news that PM Howard will be sending 70 more "trainers" to Iraq is a gauntlet down-throwing exercise. Equally well Mr Rudd's declaration that the Labor party's position is now the opposite, and that no more troops should go to Iraq is no surprise. The 70 trainers are a drop in the bucket in the scheme of things, but the amount of heat that this discussion generates indicates one unfortunate feature and that is that this is not about Iraq but about votes and the posturing is about creating a sense of political difference rather than about solving the problem. In realityt they could do this by saying "I say black" and the other could then say "White!" and the same dynamics would be playing out.
It is sad to say that this opportunism, rather than problem solving, will only be resolved when something truly awful happens. When 10 Australians are killed and their bodies brought home in coffins, the debate will be galvanised in an astonishing way that we should be smart enough to envision before it actually takes place.
Each day the Jim Lehrer Newshour from American public broadcasting play back photos in silence of American soldiers killed in Iraq. They do this in silence and it is deeply moving.
As their names, ranks, places of origin and ages flash by it is the ages that impact.
Marine Joseph Cruz-22, Corporal Terry Blenh-25, Captain Mark Harris-28, Private Louis Ouinh-19 (not their real names)...and so it goes on.
Last week Senator Kate Ellis asked ...Why do we persist in sending our finest and our best to theatres of war?
There is a sad, sad answer: It is the political game that old men play with our children.
I want better from both of our parties and our leaders. But I don't hold out much hope.

Talking Heads

The execution of Saddam Hussein's 2-i-c rather makes the point about the death penalty that I have been trying not to pontificate about.
In the course of the execution his head came apart from his body.
The official spokesman (in all seriousness) assured the news conference...

"I want to assure you the rope did not break, the head just (sic) became separated from the body"

If we had any doubts about the barbarism of the death penalty this should dispel them. This little encounter demonstrates how our perceptions get twisted, and we begin to rationalise the irrational and defend the indefensible.
One only has to read Stephen King's "The Green Mile" which has 3 or 4 well crafted descriptions of executions in the electric chair ( which are clearly based on real-life accounts) to realise that it is nopt a sanitary affair, and indeed unnecessarily cruel.
Oh, how arrogant we are if and when we think we can be masters and mistresses of God's domain

Tomorrow's announcement today

There is little doubt that President Bush will make no friends tomorrow when he tries to justify the sending of 30,000 more troops to Iraq.
It is difficult to both understand and to escape the logic. On the one hand Iraq is clearly the most unstable place in the world, and the 30,000 troops will go towards establishing the stability that is necessary to allow the withdrawal. But will they be able to do what the troops already there have been unable to achieve.
It is difficult to understand just what this war has achieved, and this is the mystery of war...does it actually achieve anything. Apart from the execution of Saddam, which seems to have been more an exercise in bloodlust than peace-making, it is difficult to sustain the case that Iraq is safer now than it was.
I heard an American senator say the other day that he had been to Baghdad 6 times, the first was to buy carpets and the last .....well we all know about the last.
Theer are, however, those whose lives were tyrannised by the evil of Saddam Hussein
The thing that depresses me most about this sorry affair is that it does rather prove the argument that war is not about achieving goals, they are about politics. Bush won a short term victory, until mothers started to lose their sons.
Australia lacks any credibility at all. In wanting to seem to be a big player we all know that we are a piddling little country with few military resources. We ride on the Yankee back hoping for glory by association.
In so doing we lose all credibility because we cannot critique the war that has gone horribly wrong. So terrified are we of losing the American alliance, that we dare not critique what has manifestly failed to work and what has become an immoral debacle.

legalised murder---as predicted

I for one will not sleep better tonight knowing that once again the world has executed another human being.
No matter how "evil" we might assume or presume him to be there is a certain sense of irony that those who so loudly bey for the blood of such men as Saddam Hussein, so loudly decry the life taken through abortion or euthanasia.
I do not condone either of those courses of action, but find it rather disturbing that death penalty protagonists don't get this profound contradiction. see the ABC story here

An appropriate check -but to what avail?

The news that Donald Rumsfeld has fallen on his sword (or been pushed) in the wake of the much vaunted anti-bellum vote represented by resounding Democrat victories in the mid term Congressional election (here) comes as no surprise.
It is, I suppose, an appropriate reminder to all in power that they are all vulnerable. But does it really achieve anything. The Americans (and we as the 52nd state!) are still 'twixt the rock and the hard place. The damage has been done, and evacuating now will, one suspects, not actually make the country a safer place in the short term. But the war ( one suggests) was never about making Iraq safe, it was about the politics of oil. And what that was all about, who knows.
The other war mongers, Cheney, in particular remain firmly ensconced. Bush will limp with ever increasing ignominy to the end of a lame-duck Presidency. And hundreds of people have died.
The Howards and the Downers will continue to justify this awful war. And I am left with the reminder of how in the pre-war days week after week thousands of us marched against the war and were ignored by our government.
What has been achieved?
Well for our sins the evil Saddam will ultimately be executed and no one has raised their voice to say the death penalty is objectively wrong.
What a mess!