a heap of junk for code

2003-04-21T01:48:00.000-07:00

junk for code has shifted

A heap of junk for code has shifted to Moveable Type. The new address is here.

Thanks to Scott Wickstein for organizing the move. I could not have done it without him. I was too whacked from painting the roof of the porch of the electronic cottage and decorated front of the house above the porch to be able to do anything other than collapse and stair in the distance.

Then I had to shift clothes and furniture to the new townhouse in the early evening.

2003-04-20T05:25:00.000-07:00

Moving 11

We travelled back to Adelaide from Victor Harbor this morning. Everybody was going the other way. It was glorious weather on the Southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast. Balmy autumn days, no wind, glorious sunshine. The place was jumping with Easter holiday makers. We were so reluctant to leave.

Adelaide was dead and empty. Shops were closed. So were the cafes. Everybody had gone south for fun, romance and family joy. We called into the new townhouse in Sturt Street. It was empty as the previous owners had gone. It was ready for us to move in. The Vogue grey walls were very noticeble. Ari hated it. He couldn't see the street and he refused to go upstairs to the bedrooms, study and balconies----the stairs were too step, the gaps between the stairs were too great and the steps were too polished. The great white hunter, killer of possums, galahs and magpies, had to be carried up and down the stairs.

It had a very urban feel---so different from the electronic cottage in the South east corner which has a friendly residential/community village atmosphere even though it is in the inner city of Adelaide. Sturt Street was more hard edged. Street kids hanging about; a drunk squatter reeking of metho staggering out of a derelict house; cars moving all the time; people walking down the street; no speaks to anyone. There is no eye contact. Agtet sat by the front security gate and lapped all the sounds up ---it promised to be a 24 hour day party.

Suzanne had cold feet. She is a suburban girl at heart. The electronic cottage was cute and sweet with its mornign sun in the back courtyard and afternoon sun in the front porch. Sturt Street was too raw. It was in area where people worked and business was conducted. We have gone deep into debt to do this and we keep our fingers crossed that house prices continue to rise, consumers go on a spending binge in the US, American businesses invest big time; unemployment keeps coming down in Australia; economic growth continues in SA and the Reserve Bank keeps saying no to interest rate rises and huge tax cuts are offered to those who reckon the meaning of life is spend, spend spend.

Yep it's a gamble. Australian house prices have got to hold. We trust no one. The market sucks. Its all blind faith and naked greed. The market says justice is a mirage.Its grab what you can when you can. The regulators only care about covering their back from the follies, indulgences and stupidities of others.

Then back to the electronic cottage to continue the renovations, pack and met the new tenant---a female computer programmer who works from home ---and her parents. 20 something professional women have yet to fully gain independence. The parents have to check the landlord out to see that he doesn't take advantage of their daughter. A century of emancipation and still the parents keep a watchful on their daughters. Urban life is seen to be threatening by those baby boomer adults whose horizons are formed by a suburbia that was a refuge from the harsh city.

Time is short. We have to be out by Thursday. And to make it worse we are going to shift ourselves.

At twilight time, after all the days work was done, we sat on the front porch, sipped a Coonawarra red and listened to a Kookaburra in the city celebrate life.

2003-04-20T04:39:00.000-07:00

Moving

I've decided that a heap of junk for code is going to leave Blogger after the disasters I've experienced over the last two days--Saturday and Sunday. This weblog will move to Moveable Type. Like James Russell I've had enough. Blogger sucks big time. Even though I'm paying for Blogger Pro. the service is deplorable.

Blogger is now back online but Sqwarkbox is out. Great. Easter is time for everything to fall aprt.

Nothing much will change with the content of a junk for code. The mask will continue to be a melancholy cultural critic whose roots are in a pessmistic, western continental marxism concerned with a damaged life.; a cultural critic who affirms the particularity of individual experience in the face of a systematic neo-liberalism that speaks for American-style techocratic Enlightenment.

2003-04-18T20:58:00.000-07:00

I see that Norman Mailer has a new book out called The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. You can find some reviews here and here, if interested.

I gave up reading Mailer years ago. I found his writing too macho, pugilistic, sexist and too much of a traditional conservative baroom brawler. I recall that I stopped reading his work about the time that I sort of decided that Anglo-American literary culture was in decline.

I do appreciate Mailer as the political being and his ability to decode those American flag conservatives (neo-cons) who desire an Empire as a way to prevent the country from going down the drain. Mailer reads the subtexts of that political scene very well; understands the flag conservatives (ie., the neo-cons) deep hate for Bill Clinton when he was US President; and he is able to clue right into an American political unconscious that is marked by a great guilt that it has meant the Americans have lost their compassion.

Mailer also has a sense of the tragic. He understands that Israel has now become one more powerhouse in the world; that they treat the Palestinians as if the Palestinians were ghetto Jews; and that Sharon is a brute, a powerhouse general, whose defense would be that “I am what fate has made me.”

To his credit Mailer understands that Anglo-American literary culture was in decline. He grasps that the new media of television, radio, and substandard cinema----the culture industry----has caused literature as art to wither into a literary journalism. And journalism has withered into entertainment ass they became cogs in the production machine of the culture industry. Something went badly wrong with an Anglo-American literary culture in the last quarter of the 20th century---writers are no longer taken seriously anymore----but Mailer is unsure what to do about it.

2003-04-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

wog sterotypes

The server was down last night. I could not post a weblog in Victor Harbor after giving a talk on the Murray River to the local Marine Society. It was a good socratic question and answer session. I will post the talk on philosophy.com sometime next week.

We have two days of rest and recuperation on the coast before we go back to Adelaide to finish the painting. We need it as the stress of shifting household is starting to tell. Suzanne has had a migraine for three days straight and is completely out of action. Ari has not eaten for 4 days though he was chasing rabbits this morning.

And renting the electronic cottage has become a hassle.The person selected highly groomed 20's passive something who works in a bank, has a bright, confident, independent persona, and who gaily signed the lease contract last Monday with the flourish of a merchant banker. Lebanese, but definitely not wog glam. Nor a wog sterotype who did not make a radical distinction between wog heritage and Aussie nationality.

The aspiring mechant banker was a bundle of neuroses. We had two phones a day haggling then saying no then yes, then no then yes then no. Family troubles you see. Lebanese immigrant culture. The parents will not allow a mid-20s single woman to live on her own. Wog culture really is anti-urban and anti-liberal. No doubt the 20's something was full of shame because of her foreignness.

Once the shift to the urban townhouse has been made, then we are off for a holiday in Mallacoota; well, more specifically it's the Inlet in East Gippsland, Victoria via the Great Alphine Road A week there to get to know the place.

Will there be an internet cafe in Mallacoota? There is a community weblog but, if there is such a cafe, then I reckon that internet will be a problem. But I don't want no Victorian cultural tourism

Then back home to Adelaide through Melbourne, that great melting pot of wog culture----(Sydney says it is the
multicultural capital), then along the Great Ocean Road yet again.

Aaah, being a tourist in my own land seek a range of cultural experiences on the road by passing the signs that celebrate white settlement and refuse to offer any kind of critical account of Australian history. Driving through the country towns will be stepping into the pioneer idea of the past as a set of signs, or a set of icons that sit there for easy consumption.

2003-04-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

making it plain

If you to want to see support for the view that the war on Iraq has really been about the cultural wars in Australia, then this piece by Andrew Bolt makes it very plain. It's pay back time for the 1968ers and those who opposed Australia's involvement in Vietnam.

The political unconscious here is one which represents the left as supporting evil (terror, tyranny and genocide); the left driven by the dark passions of resentment and loathing and a left that sneers. Resisting the bad forces are the forces of goodness.

Bolt says it plainly:

"The war in Iraq has been won well. Let's move on to the next war -- a war for our culture. A war for truth, rationality, humanity, democracy and wisdom. Let the accountability begin."

In this war scenario the left is held to be against truth, rationality, humanity democracy and wisdom. The left is the Counter-Enlightenment. Its against the heritage of the West. It is opposed to liberty.

The tone of the conservative attack is harsh. Blood is required for atonement for the past attacks on the West. Sacrifices need to be made. Retribution is necessary. Its a culture war.

2003-04-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Nice quote and .....

"...high culture ... is no longer the dominant culture but is rather a pocket within commodity culture'

(John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value, Oxford, Clarendon 1995, p. 86).

And the moment of high literary culture? It still stands for the old narrative stories of the intellectual as outsider – the 'maverick' who preserves or redeems the space of rational public discourse from the ravages of the marketplace, the mass media or culture industry and politics. This high literary culture is an aesthetic one that is disdainful of academic life and the plodding dreary academic scholar or researcher for their lack of taste in a lifestyle sense. They come across as monkish hermits who have no sense of romance, joy, flirtation and the pleasures of desire.

I know. They were the very people Suzanne rejected as tenants for the electronic cottage. They were beyond the pale by definition.

Now a single working class female psychiatric nurse who was also a writer of literature -----aah that was a very different story.

The space of the aesthetic in public life is the space that stands in for “unalienated labor”, the whole person. Sorry Chutney and Invisible Adjunct; you got the wrong institution. It ain't the academy, the realm of cold hard theory. Its the literary institution that centres around immediacy, individual experience, sensousness, the unique and sensibility.

It is a literary culture that refers back to European culture and instinctively repudiates philosophy (theory) and criticism (negative harping) whilst emphasising good literary writing. It is an art or a writing that fulfills the hunger for the humane, the spiritual and the remembrance of things past.

Outsiders and mavericks? Well hardly. In a world emptied of meaning these literary voices wearing the mantle of cultural authority are filling the void whilst continuing to distance themselves from the common life.

Its easy to imagine their moral sensibility. Romantic love gone wrong. Boy betrays girl. Young girl hangs herself with the blue ribbon of her lost childhood. The style is effusive with a serious moral undergone. Its all very literary and hastily put together. Standard photo of moody literay type on back cover.

And me? I'm just searching for a way to make melancholy cultural criticism sexy.

2003-04-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

Its still the eyes

Blogger was down last night so I could not post at the end of another long day of painting the electronic cottage and dealing with possible tenants.

How do you decide between those interested? A single woman who works in a bank; a young professional couple; a working class nurse just arrived from Sydney; a male academic just arrived from Brisbane on a research contract; a young Korean couple in American street wear who are overseas students and can't speak a word of English; a young lower middle class guy returned from overseas who has a dog; Australian student couple with a hippie/grunge dress style; a young couple planning to live inner city even though the women is terrified of all the nasties that stalk the city streets at all hours etc etc.

What I did notice was that eye contact was still a part of human interaction in establishing trust as one human being to another. It was embodied in the negotiations around 'expressons of interest' that lead to a market contract and to the exchange of money for a service.

Eyes are still the more intimate place of connection betweenone human being and another; the place where human beings continue to express our trust in another being and to the world of convention that joins us.The light of free and generous eyes is most openly expressed in terms of romantic encounters---though not those on the Internet and is what is most cherished.

Of course when the romance goes right, convention is flouted and we are betrayed by naked self-interest we seek revenge by wishing to blind those who have betrayed us and weep false tears. American's miss this, as the deep wish for revenge in American movies shown on TV is usually expressed in terms of killing the other; or mutilating their genitals. Much better to return to the Greeks (eg; Hecuba) and mutilate their vision. They abused 'the look of the eyes', the promise with trustworthy look, and so blind to romantic convention. We turn away from them in disgust.

In such situations why not set the world to rights by bringing to light what is really between the romantic couple? Mutilate the vision of the betrayer because they are blind to convention?

Does that not capture the tragic moment of romantic love?

2003-04-12T02:57:00.000-07:00

just another day in Adelaide

The sun was shining this morning. It promised to be a glorious autumn day. After an early coffee at Lucias (7.20 am), a hug at the Coles checkout counter and a big shop in the Central Market, we had a quick breakfast on the front 'porch' of the electronic cottage.

We chatted to the local councillors about quality of life issues of Adelaide city as they came by canvassing votes whilst taking phone calls about renting out the inner city electronic cottage.

Yep the big shift has started to happen. Its on. Another week and we are out of here.

The rest of the morning and early was spent painting the front fence and showing young professionals around the cottage. Then lunch, a quick glance through the Financial Review looking for blogging topics. More phone calls about renting the one bedroom cottage.

So many peoples lives in transit. Broken relationships, houses being sold under tenants, women asserting their autonomy from boy friends, students moving from hosue to house and so on. Then sealing the sandstone tiles on the porch. A passing squall and washed away the sealer. I cried.

My tears were washed away by the rain and they flowed down the gutter with the storm water, then out to the sea in the St Vincents Gulf.

More people having a squeeze at the cottage. Everyone found it cute. A quick shower then walking the dogs in the parklands amidst grey skies, swirling leaves, mild temperatures and the odd drop of rain.

Returned home to Suzanne getting dressed up for a dinner with a long-term female friend at one of those Italio-Australian New Cusine resturants where the wine starts at $50+ a bottle and the food is cutting edge.

Just another day really. Its called stark reality. Everybody was jolly and friendly. No one mentioned the war in Iraq, Israel, the woes of Australian democracy, the sources of instablity in the world of nations or Rupert Murdoch's liking for a good bombing.

In Adelaide in post-war Australia the economy is booming, house prices are rising, rents are increasing, happiness is in the air.

It is a balmy night, the Barossa chardonnay is full of flavour and the poodles are happily crunching on their bones in the back courtyard.

No more postings from Salam Pax but Chris Allberton is going great guns. I read Ralph Peters to get into the swing of things.

2003-04-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Doctor

I woke up this morning feeling depressed. Winter is coming.

You can feel the cold in this chill world where people talk past each other, and behind the masks there is a tacit acceptance of inhumanity.

Doctor do you think that we are losing the capacity to distinguish who has done what harm to whom.

Doctor we seem to be spending our energies disentangling ourselves from past intimacies. We accept that romance is a fragmentary collision of wary strangers full of sociability lacking appropriate objects.

I was in a pub last night doing a bit of networking over a drink and overheard a bright young professional saying that all spontaneity should be mistrusted. Only romantics let themselves go and even that was a pose they'd learned from their counseller or therapist about the advantage gained from appealing impulses.

Her companion presented herself as a victim of injustice. She had the air of someone who knew what life was like. A malignancy of hardness, hate and intolerance.

What is happening to me. My life seems to lack meaning. I no longer know why I get of the bed each morning. I no longer know how to live serenely.

Doctor, how nice of you to give me two minutes of your time to listen to my woes about the poisons of individualism for a fee.

2003-04-10T03:08:00.000-07:00

romance in cyberspace

The form in which life's little pleasures are expressed are changing.

I thought that a bit of theory was needed after reading some of the sad comments on 'tears the heart'.

If you don't enjoy that theorizing romance, then how about a bit of social science-US style on Love on the Internet?

Bounce out of it as if you'd hit a brick wall? Cold science has nothing to do with warm desire?

Then this whimsical Chagall-like image will appeal to all those who think that romance is alive and well, even though the good men out there are entrapped in drunken dysfunctionality; or they are just plain too tired for sex. They've ended in up a place where they can be witty and clever but are no longer able to be be sensitive and romantic.

I don't think the Internet Guys are clued into romance. Of course Cyberspace provides only virtual romance. It just ain't the real thing. But maybe its all we have. Maybe then maybe my romantic feelings are transferred to the computer, now that our experience of the other person is limited to the text.

Maybe its just me and the yawning void. The poetry is pretty bleak. Shouldn't we be listening the poets now that we no longer trust?

Life's little pleasures. They are so difficult to manage.

2003-04-09T07:42:00.000-07:00

Top war photos

These are some of the better photos of the war plus a commentary. But we do not see the charnel-house reality of bits of bodies.

The one that catches my eye is the one of the family leaving Basra with the little girl dressed in white frock. That face expresses terror. It says a lot about the battle for hearts and minds.

2003-04-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

Imre's junk
I have been at the office all day; meetings phone calls, briefings etc. You know the usual stuff that people do everyday in political life. No time to read the newspapers or hear the news. Just on the go. Switching from this to that to this. You know what I mean. Its modern life.

So I have no idea what's going on in the world. Nor did I care. I feel jaded. Depressed. I feel my life is ebbing away.

Then I spied this..Its Imre Salusinszky doing his smash left intellectuals number. It evoked a memory of a hurdy gurdy song in a seedy fun fair that had seen better times. Its easy to imagine the scene.

There's a women outside Miss Lottee in 1930s swimsuit and fishnet stockings doing a very passable imitation of Australia's foreign minister singing a Beach Boys song Kokomo in a down town Japanese bar. Miss Lottee invited us inside to see the show called Spoofing the intellectuals.

Inside was a balding sort of guy in need of bit of excercise. He wore a bow tie, non-descript clothes and his shoes needing cleaning. He was standing on a bare stage reading from a text in a flat monotone. Live feeds from Fox Television were being broadcast on a tv on the right front of the stage. Left back the pianist was slumped over the keyboard. It was all very minimalist, spoiled by the huge Australian flag being used as a backdrop. That made the performance kitschy.

I couldn't hear much of what Imre was saying because of the high rev babble on the television. But it got the gist. It had something to do with lefty intellectuals barracking for the enemy in the Iraq war.

Must be a comedy act I thought. I never like comedy. The free to air networks were full of comedy shows. Soem peopel thought that you could never get too much comedy. Whole evenings were devoted to comedy from what I could judge.

My initial take on the show? A postmodern gesture to the soapbox oratory in the park I thought by an old modernist sort of guy who had seen better days as a cultural conservative. Very self-referential. But then I see postmodernsim everywhere.

Yet the vibes didn't feel too good. I looked around . A few people were standing around. It was a free show. But no one made eye contact. "Not good, not good", I mumbled to myself.

I heard this:

"The tradition of critique and scepticism among intellectuals in the West is nothing new; it stretches back nearly 3000 years to Plato's Academy. However, in the age of capitalism and of the mass culture that has arisen alongside it, that critique has in a great many cases become something quite different. As intellectuals have found themselves marginalised, critique has morphed into disgust at the habits and values of ordinary people – a disgust reflected in the title of a "progressive" tract such as Michael Moore's Stupid White Men – and has been accompanied by a wholesale rejection of the habits and values of the open society."

Yawn. God. How many times have I heard this routine. Then a variation. A bit of creative spark.

"But contexts change and what seemed like harmless wankery before September 11 seems like something else now. September 11 put a fundamental question to the intellectuals about their ultimate allegiance and whether their critique functioned within Western liberalism or was, in fact, a challenge to it."

This was no postmodernist gesture. It was the good old either routine. It completely displaced the way critique had functioned within western liberalism and was a challenge to it. Chewing gum and walking the jive.

I yelled out. 'Hey Imre, "critique is good to have around cos its the lifeblood of democracy. Even old Socrates understood that you know."

Imre stopped. It was a theatrical gesture. But he really needed to catch his breathe.

The voice of Miss Lotte drifted in filling the silence. She was singing

"Aruba, Jamaica ooo I wanna take you
To Bermuda, Bahama come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego baby why don't we go

Ooo I wanna take you down to Kokomo."

Imre started winding up on what he meant by harmless wankery ' seeming like something else now'. It took the form of a long detour by way of the moral lessons WW2 and housepainting.

"Give us a break Kokomoa ," I yelled. "Don't you know that its difficult to write poetry after Auschwitz."

I walked out. Miss Lottee smiled at me. She really did look like some guy I saw on television a lot. You know the one who is a bit of mummy's boy. She was singing.

"Ooo I wanna take you down to Kokomo
We'll get there fast
And then we'll take it slow
That's where we wanna go
Way down to Kokomo."

I plunged into the crowds bumping into an astrologist who was talking excitedly to her handbag about the stars being down to earth . I could hear an old David Bowie song being played. I stopped to listen. It was about heroes. A wounded soldier walked by.

Thats another story.

2003-04-07T22:24:00.000-07:00

Tears the heart

This is story about romance not love; a postmodern romance.

Yep, there is such a thing. Its all about constructed identities and cyberspace.

2003-04-07T21:48:00.000-07:00

The war party

Here is a website that is totally devoted to the photos of the Iraqi victims of the war.

It is under constant attack from hackers---from the war party. Who else?

What's wrong with this crowd that they attack the first amendment of the American constitution? Aren't they meant to be representing the good guys, the Enlightenment, in this clash of civilizations?

Are they meant to be fighting to defend the Ist Amendment?

What it shows is that the American Enlightenment has gone totalitarian, doesn't it?

Oh I know the response from listening to Fox Television. Its patriotism. Those photos support the Iraqi's political strategy to swing world opinion away from the Anglo-Americans.

Yeah!

American nationalism and exceptionalism have swallowed up the liberal tradition.

Lets hope it resurfaces for all our sakes.

2003-04-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

Statute of Liberty

These are night thoughts.

I couldn't sleep. It rained all day yesterday.The plumber, who was meant to come at 9am, turned up 5.30pm. That's the time the poodles were really chafing to go their walk. The plumber was Lebanese and hated dogs.

I was depressed last night after watching 4 Corners on the ABC.

Suzanne was in Brisbane. My mind was racing. Not even a glass of wine slowed me down. And we move in 3 weeks.

This is as far as I've got in making the night thoughts coherent.

In the opening passage of Kafka's Amerika we read of a statue of liberty with a "sword" in hand. Should we accept Kafka's substitution of a sword for the actual torch?

Or should there be a torch of Enlightenment in one hand and a sword in the other.

I favour both. That gives me America as the militarised enlightenment.

No one else seems to like that idea though.

I can see historical precedents. The 'enlightened absolutist', Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia. Maybe the party of humanity can dismiss Frederick's Prussia -as a militarized, war-hungry state indifferent to individual civil and political liberties and so resembling a perversion of the true goals of the 'party of humanity' rather than their fulfilment.

But we do have the co-joining of enlightenment and military. The neo-con US is another kind of co-joining though instrumental reason.

You see it if you see the current events in MIddle East in terms of a clash of civilizations and then view the clash from the perspective of a conflict between the accelerating forces of modernity and the resistance by a faltering, defensive, traditional religion-infused Islam.

Its crude. I know. But its okay as a first cut.

What you do see is the American eagle over the Middle East.

The eagle swoops on prey. It likes babies and the innocent.

2003-04-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

A query
'vulgar aesthetic irrationalism'

A suitable definition of that right wing tabloid network Fox Television?

Do you think that Rupert Murdoch reckons Fox News eludes rational understanding and that feeling is everything?

Well I saw a bit of Fox cable on Media Watch. One of its executives celebrates praiseworthy immediacy.

What I saw was a babbling along with the stream of media images. The primary reception response was one of consumption.

2003-04-07T05:21:00.000-07:00

New oz blog

This is high class writing. Sets the standard.

2003-04-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

Motto

I am reading Paul McGeough's, Manhattan to Baghdad: Dispatches from the frontline in the War of Terror. I come across this scene.

An Egyptian man dancing alone in a nightclub a few hours before the opening fury of Operation Desert Storm in 199. He says:

"You live, you dance, you die."

No, 'you love'?

The Iraqi's in 1991 knew too well what the impact of the US bombing would be. They would become hamburger meat.

2003-04-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

Indivdual voices

If we take multiculturalism in Australia seriously, then we need to listen to different Iraqi voices and hear what they are saying. Zainab Al-Badry is one such voice. She is an Iraqi living in Australia. She speaks here and here about the war. It is a more complex and ambivalent response than that offered by the masculine, rightwing voice of Wogblog.

Here is another voice from an Iraqi living in Britain.

2003-04-06T05:12:00.000-07:00

Back to Iraq

Christopher is going great guns walking the mountains over the Turkish Iraq border as he makes his way back to Iraq.

2003-04-06T05:02:00.000-07:00

War dogs

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this. This is the history of the dogs of war.

2003-04-05T19:19:00.000-08:00

good ole wogblog

I see that the conservative Wogblog (April 3, 2003) has been dishing out the trash again to lefty Oz webloggers (public opinion and She sells sanctuary to keep the cultural wars going in Australia. The cultural wars have been flagging a bit with the failure of the conservative Iraqi war wedge.

The responses to the trashing can be found here and here. I want to come at it from a different perspective.

I would take the cultural fight more seriously if conservative ethnics, such as the proudly Italian Wogblog, broadened their historical perspective of being under attack by the institutionalised racism of Anglo Americans, and started acknowledging the racism within ethnic communities towards Anglo-Australians, Aborigines Arabs, Muslims and Asians. Reverse racism is the phenomena.

Those subject to white racism are not necessarily pure or free from racism----ie., defining a particular cultural group (eg., Arabs) in a negative way.

Of course, just raising this means being charged with being anti-migrant and anti-ethnic.

But white Australians are not the bearers/repository of all cultural evil, whilst the non-white migrants or aborigines are the bearers/repository of all cultural goodness. Social reality is more complex than the dualism of a defensive, communal multiculturalism makes out.

Its about time the question mark was placed over wog as in wog culture in Australia. This is a good start. What is taken to be wog culture has its roots in the European immigrants who came to Australia after WW2. Since they came from agricultural areas and small towns, rather than the big cities, they were peasants, culturally, religiously and socially. It is this deeply conservative and patriarchal culture that informs wog culture; and it is one that is at odds with urban cosmopolitan culture of liberal Australia.

2003-04-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

new OZ weblogs

I came across this one by Ian McMillan in Sydney courtesy of Tim Dunlop. And this one has some good photos of graffiti in Newtown Sydney. Weblogging in Australia is going great guns.

2003-04-04T21:34:00.000-08:00

Pioneer History

I collapsed last night. Running 3 weblogs, holding down a job, doing renovations to the 1890s cottage and shifting to a new electronic townhouse in the city (Sturt Street) took its toll. After visiting the chiropractor to fix a twisted, painful back and walking the dogs in the Adelaide Parklands I barely had enough energy to do a transport run down to Victor Harbor, grab a pizza at the Beachside Cafe along Franklin Parade, open a bottle of red and eat my dinner. I was asleep in the armchair before Taggart on our ABC had ended.

This morning, after doing the morning shopping, we sat on the outside tables at the Barvarian Coffee shop near the causeway to Granite Island in the sun. It was a glorious sunny day with a cool sea breeze and I was thinking about returning to the Corrong National Park to take some photos in late autumn.

The three stately poles of the Margaret Worth Sculpture, On Occupied, which had been officially opened last week, looked magnificent against the backdrop of the bright blue sky. It referrred to the 1802 encounter between Mathew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin and the encounter with the local Aboriginal nation

As I was reading the Sorry Statement from the Victor Harbor Council (no link) and looking after the poodles whilst Suzanne was ordering coffee. A Grand Pioneer Parade of people, costumes and machinery from the 19th century cruised past. It was Heritage Week in Victor Harbor. What was presented was pioneer history for tourists. There was no sign of the destructive relationship between the Ngarrindjeri people and British colonists in the Grand Parade; or any indication why the Ngarrindjeri people were now living at at ex-mission settlement at Point McLeay.

That was Saturday morning coffee. I needed the time out.

Whilst sitting there relaxing I saw very few blue jeans, coke cans or baseball caps: those symbols of the US version of the good life. Maybe culture does not triump politics and economics after all.

2003-04-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

Remembering

Recall one of the Howard Government 's reasons for going to war with Iraq once the weapons of mass destruction reason failed to get traction. The Iraqi regime gouged the eyes of children, cut out the tongues of opponents, shredded human beings in shredding machines and killed a million of its citizens. This human rights record is probably quite accurate and it would be a good reason for human beings to flee from state terror and seek asylum elsewhere.

Yet this is the same government which blocked the aslyum seekers from entering Australia and, at the time of the last federal election, implied that these people fleeing from hell were terrorists.

We do not want these sort of people here was the refrain.And it won the election on this hard line of national security

This is a government that has no sympathy for human suffering. It is one that condemns itself by its own words.

2003-04-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

a little myth

The server was down last night but I was too tired to write anyway. I fell asleep watching the 7.30 Report at the end of the interview with Anthony Cordesman. This morning is another day.

There is an article here by Janet Daley, a columnist with The Daily Telegraph London.

Not the Australian one where we find Piers Ackerman holding forth on the way that the term neo-conservative has been used by the ABC's instant experts as if it explains everything. He says, 'Typically, such usage by Four Corners' reporters explains nothing and exposes only the ignorant bias of the national broadcaster's flagship program.'.

Janet is writing about the duty of journalists during war being clear: avoid any hint of treacherous behaviour like talking to the Iraqi state run media. What caught my eye was this paragraph:

"Well, it's easier for members of the commentariat like me: we are paid to give our opinions, the more heated and idiosyncratic the better. In print journalism, partisanship is acceptable. But what about the broadcasters who just report and analyse? When does duty to their supposed impartiality become self-indulgent professional vanity?"

The commentariat are no different to the webloggers. There is no pretence that they are informing, providing news, or being objective. They just have a bigger media platform than their webloggers for their partisan opinions. And they are paid to be over the top and outrageous. It sell copy.

It is the broadcasters who just 'report and analyze' ---but not interpret. Their loyalty is to objectivity which requires them to maintain critical distance from all the interested parties.

Its myth that broadcasters are objective and do not interpret? Thats what they do. Interpret the news. However, interpretation is bias and thats not being objective. Its a myth being recycled here. Interpretation goes all the way down.

2003-04-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

All in a days work

I did manage to see the piece of Oz bloggers on the ABC's 7.30 Report. I was painting the roof of the porch at the time and was trying to listen to Kerry O'Brien. I heard something about the coalition military forces trying to convince Iraqi civilians that they're liberators rather than conquerors.

Then Suzanne my partner called me in. Everybody looked the part. Such a diverse bunch of public intellectuals. But no Tim Blair? Then I went back to painting for an hour or so and I mulled it all over while high on the paint fumes.

The phrase 'they're individuals seated at their computers day and night, unpaid and devoted to keeping themselves and their fellows better informed' did capture some of the phenomenon. John Quiggin's remark that,

"I think what's been published in the Australian weblogs is as good, or better, as what's been published in the opinion papers of the major newspapers"

was very apt. But this insight did not connect the writing on the weblog to other kinds of writing --to the literary institution; nor did it explore the weblogging writing as a new kind of writing. And the programme missed exploring the relationship between 'better informed' , opinion, citizenship and democracy.

The programme missed the diversity of the writing because it viewed weblogging through the eyes of the media. Bloggers will never supersede the mainstream media nor are they parasites on the media. But the insight of James Morrow that,

"The blogs are really kind of the front line.They're like a new wire service of volunteer reporters and rewriters and commentators, who are all out there getting news out to other people and each other.."

only captures one dimension of weblogging. It is the perspective of a journalist weblogger and was reinforced by Gareth Parker's comment that instant feedback is provided bya lot of the bloggers. Yet webloggers make no pretence to be objective and balanced in the way the media say they are. Weblogs are very partisan--- but then so are some of the US television networks on the war. They see themselves (eg. Fox) as an arm of the US military. 'Rewriting' and 'commentating' captures some of it but it misses the polemics.

This weblog, for instance, makes no pretence to be news or provide news. It is an online cultural criticism that situates itself in opposition to the culture industry. It is cultural criticism with a very personal voice.

MIck O'Donnell did mention 'critique' when he said that James Morrow 'delivers a neo-conservative critique of the latest - [news] from the ABC, the American media - all of his pet hates, like the coverage of the deaths of US soldiers., But there was no exploration of the role of 'critique' in Australian society; or how a weblogger does it differently from a neo-conservative journalist in the tabloid media.

Nothing about the role of neo-conservatism in the culture wars or their attack on the liberal media. This sort of weblogging has nothing to do with being "umpires of the net, blowing the whistle on media complacency." It is a political critique of the role of liberal media in a democracy. What is the purpose of this critique? Once again no mention of democracy.

What was most disappointing was the failure to explore the whole relationship between weblogging, poetics and politics briefly mentioned by Gianna. A pity. Because there is a lot of good creative writing being produced by webloggers.

The programme was too centred on the weblogging/journalism relationship and whether or not webloggers woud free themselves from their dependence on mainstream media. But it was a long way ahead of, and far more informative than, the material on weblogging presented on Radio National Summer Show earlier this year. That limited weblogging to social gossip, personal diaries and voyeurism.

2003-04-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

A dream
I finished the day's painting around 8.30pm; then fell sleep on the couch whilst having a bit of a relax.I woke up with a start. I had been dreaming. Dreaming that I was having dinner in a Kurdish restaurant with Chemical Ali. Thats all I remember.

Oh, I do remember another bit. The waiter was from Amnesty International. He called Chemical Ali Ali Hassan al-Majid. They seemed to know one another from somewhere.

More fragements of the dream return. The food was late because the cook kept on burning the Turkish flag.

And the juke box played an old Chuck Berry song called The Promised Land.

However, Chemical Ali would have nothing of it. All he wanted to hear was Johnny B. Goode, which he played over and over again.

2003-04-01T04:54:00.000-08:00

Iraqi Photos
I cannot read Italian so I don't know what is on this website. But I can read the photos.

Why do Australians want to kill these people in order to pay a premium on a security insurance policy with the US?

2003-03-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

Where is the support for Turkey
I have been scanning the Australian news looking for Howard, Downer and Hill giving a doorstop to express their strong support for Turkey resolute and courageous stand in the war. As a read it Turkey has acted by sending its troops to establish a defensive ring inside Iraq to prevent the influx of refugees from the war.

This is something Canberra understands well. And Turkey knows a thing or two about Islamic terrorists. Haven't they suffered like Australia from refugees? So where is Canberra's support for a fellow anti-refugee soul mate trying to stop a flood of asylum seekers?

I haven't seen anything in the media? Have I missed it? Or did the above ministers duck their heads?

Shouldn't we misunderstood manly nation states band together and affirm our loyalty?

Oh, such support would mean going against the US line that we should be angry with Turkey because they refused to allow their sovereign territory to be used to launch a northern front, even though they were offered huge bribes. And we cannot criticize the US cos that would be seen as dissent from a loyal and trusted friend of the US.?

Oh dear. What is the world coming to.

2003-03-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

Early morning thoughts

Because the job of renovating the electronic cottage is so boring and tedious I have time to think about the worlds around me and what I've been reading (currently, Ghassam Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism.)

What I thought about yesterday was that those conservatives in power in Canberra who love a good war do offer us hope.

Well, it is hope of a sort. It is something like this.

If I am possessed of the Australian character, then I have the capacity for upward mobility even though I am at the bottom of the heap. Even though my life is one of scrapping the barrel, I not not need equality and the good life handed to me on a plate. I have the capacity to hope for a better life. Unlike Aborigines and ethnic communities in the big cities, I, as a white person have the capacity to get myself out of this hole I'm in, get myself a better job, a better lifestyle and more consumer goods.

Australian society offers me opportunities to make a life for myself and so create and give social significance to my life and so be recognized as a worthy human being living in a decent society.

Does that get it?

What I see as I walk the streets to the Parklands with the poodles is social death: the neo-liberal economics of the past two decades has produced unemployment, poverty, neglect, homelessness, wounded bodies sleeping on park benches or church doorways. Third world conditions have been created within the boundaries of the nation in our cities. A world of the rejects of global capitalism is now in existence, and there is no acceptance of these marginals in our public spaces. It is a world marked by a lack of social hope. The poor, especially those with dark skins, have to be moved on from public spaces, and they are left to defend for themselves. The excluded are seen as potential criminals.

As are whole ethnic communities. Increased penal sanctions is the answer. The media I glance at and the conservative law and order local councilors and state politicians who knock on my door at election time encourage me to make a causal link between criminality, poverty and ethnic identity.

That is what I see daily. A world without hope. And the small business that I pass in Hutt Street as I walk to the parklands? Well they are just hanging on, doing the best they can. There is a sense of entrapment in the air. Hope is scarce as they realise that they too are becoming marginalised. They are unsure what to do about their new life condition of struggle street. They are fearful, wary, insecure and worried.

And me? Well I have given up hope of social advancing. I'm stuck in marginality too. I'm struggling with seeing myself a no-hoper as I endeavour to persevere in my own being. I'm in search of a national cuddle, though I don't expect to find it.

And the big solution to re-connecting to social hope? The conservatives in Canberra say we gotta defend the nation and the Australian way of life from the refugees and the terrorists coming from the Middle East.

2003-03-30T19:44:00.000-08:00

Anti-Americanism

This is the charge often used against the critics of the war.

When so is used it means an irrational aversion to the United States, an opposition to its core values and to the dynamism of its economy and culture. It refuses to acknowledge a distinction between disagreeing US foreign policy in the Middle East as a super-power and affirming the people, democratic culture of the US and the utopian idea of a national America as a land of freedom: the American dream.

In the culture wars waged by conservatives in Australia anti-Americanism stands for 1960s-style radicalism, which is held to undermine Australian traditional culture and values. Left-wing criticism of the US in Australia, which once affirmed Australian cultural diference, is held to be anti-American in its very core. It is a hatred of the American people and and culture per se.

The charge of the anti-Americanism of the Australian left when it is lumped in with the anti-Americanism of Old Europe---we are all against the Iraqi war-- pretty much amounts to the term being used as a political weapon.

That move fails to acknowlege that Australians do not share the European belief of cultural superiority over the US which holds that the US has no real culture'; or that the Europeans see US as a neophyte in international politics and in need of diplomatic guidance by wise European hands.

The anti--Americanism of the Australian left has its roots in the emergence of the US as a major power, the way that it has used that power to further its national interest and a criticism of the idealised of images of America. The cultural criticism decodes both the myth of America and American paranoid nationalism.

The field of power relations is the key because they give rise to the tension between dependence and independence in Australia's relationship with the US, a feeling of resentment at the limitations on Australia's autonomy as a nation state by that relationship, and the ongoing internationalisation of American mass culture. What arouses antagonism is the way the US governments uses their power to establish optimium conditions for US companies, often at he expense of Australian concerns and interests.

2003-03-30T18:08:00.000-08:00

Alternative voices

There is a great post on motherhood and the duties of citizenship in a war situation here. Do take time to read this post by a weblog that is of very high quality.

The post raises the issue: when should mothers with young children go off to fight in a just war. How old should the children be? It raises the issue in response to photos of mothers in the New York Times going off to war.

2003-03-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

A little bit of silliness?

I read in The Weekend Australian (no link) that Brendan Nelson, the federal Minister of Education, has been privately telling state governments to rigorously inspect teaching at Islamic schools fearing that anti-Western feeling was being promoted. Publicly the Minister is saying that the allegations are unfounded.

After reading that bit of news I decided to immediately affirm the Muslim custom of drinking a strong black coffee.

Oh, I know its a silly middle class response to the paranoia of the national security state. But then I am no-hoper ---newly marginalised is my new life condition.

In a multicultural liberal society that Australia proclaims itself to be, the federal Minister of education would have also been privately telling state governments to rigorously inspect teaching at Christian and Jewish schools fearing that anti-Islam feeling was being promoted. He didn't.

He didn't, did he? The perception of threat to the security of the nation was onesided. So much for multiculturalism.

Do you get the sense that our national culture is becoming claustrophobic and our public spaces full of fear?

Paraniod nationalism. That is the culture of the national security state.

2003-03-29T17:53:00.000-08:00

Historical shudders

The ongong shock and awe tactics, coupled with the urban battle for Baghdad, look like razing Iraq. How many wounds can the Iraqi people take from the blowtorch of the militarized enlightenment? I shudder to think what the country will look like after the war. I shudder at the extent of the suffering of the Iraqi people. I shudder at the leagacy of this conflict in Iraq.

2003-03-29T17:17:00.000-08:00

Boredom

I find the blanket coverage of war provided by the TV network's news services is boring and mind numbing. Matt Price sums up the experience well. He says:

'Last weekend I watched John Howard give a televised press conference where he declared the war was going "better than expected". Moments later the caption – "Howard: War going better than expected" – appeared at the bottom of the screen. When Howard finished, the newsreader summed up that the PM thought the war was "going better than expected". They crossed to a correspondent in Canberra who agreed that, yes indeed, Howard thought things were "going better than expected".It's inane and mind-numbing, yet perversely hypnotic. Amid the dross there has been brave and informative reporting, although many correspondents embedded with US and British forces appear to be going native.'

Its not hypnotic. Its boring. That's why my energies are concentrated in renovating the inner city cottage and increasing household debt.

Renovating is boring as well. But at least I have a sense of achieving something at the end of the day. Watching blanket coverage of war by the TV networks leaves me with a feeling of ennui.

2003-03-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

Says it well

Paul Dibb, an Australian defence analyist, sums up the previous post about the e- military types on the ABC's 7.30 Report in one pithy sentence:

"The mistake military analysts make is to think this is a military operation with a military end."

Its not. The military operation to overthrow a tyrant is an instrument of the political goal to contain and roll back a militant Islam.

2003-03-28T06:13:00.000-08:00

Descriptions
I have given up watching the ABC's 7.30 Report on the war with Iraq. Its pretty poor stuff. Those two ex-military types, JIM WALLACE & PETER NICHOLSON, are a pretty poor show. They are advocates of “a new kind of war”, based on the combination of high-precision airpower and a few elite units on the ground. Their view of things is summed up in this prediction:

"When the long-anticipated fight against Iraq begins, it may not last long. A reasonably optimistic timeline might look like this: simultaneous airstrikes, Shia revolts and manoeuvres of the coalition ground force on the first day; by Day Four, substantial allied ground forces are near Baghdad; by Day Seven the defences around the capital have fallen; by Day 14 most organised resistance has been defeated, except for isolated elements in the city."

The two resident ex-military types on the 7.30 Report continue to see success just around the corner.

What they say is that things are great, victories are being won, and there are only minor hiccups. They do not take into account judgements that Rumsfeld sent too few troops, say retired generals. They have no feel for the political side of the war at all. based on Arab media portray a bloody conquest. No attempt is made by them to analyse Iraqi military tactics and strategies based on reports like this Because everything is viewed from the Anglo American military perspective we get no sense of how the battle is being waged across the country. The Iraqi's are almost seen as incompetent goons instead of the Anglo-American military having significantly underestimated the enemy, the psych.ops strategy based around shock and awe being a failure.

The Major General on SBS's World News Iraqi Special cuts them for dead.

The only person on the 7.30 Report talking any sense is Hugh White. He is the only one with a broad perspective.The others should be pensioned off and let Hugh White take over. He is the only one with a sense that the perception of war is shifting----from one of welcome liberation to one of a war of conquest. Since the ABC won't pension the others of, then we are best reading war analysis accounts here. Much more sophisticated and informed.

And ABC Watch has been running a pretty poor show in criticism of the ABC. He just points the finger at Kerry O'Brien's pessimism. He should be burning along with his watchdog role.

The only person on the 7.30 Report talking any sense is Hugh White. He is the only one with a broad perspective.The others should be pensioned off and let Hugh White take over. He is the only one with sense that the perception of war is shifting --from welcome liberation to a war of conquest and a sense of what the battle for Baghdad will be like.

This contains some plain accounts from westerners in Baghdad about the impact of bombing on ordinary Iraqi's.

2003-03-27T15:24:00.000-08:00

Libertarian.org

The guys over at Libertarian.org contacted me the other day and asked me to both link to them and to give them a plug. The link to their weblog is up ---at this weblog its all and sundry.

As for the plug? Well that's a bit harder cos it depends on what they write. Rob over at Blogorrhoea gives them a bemusing plug. He thinks they are okay.

Me? I came across this sentence from a post that is a quote by one P.J. O'Rourke. It is posted by 24601. This caught my eye.

"There's only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please".

My my. Not even the US constitution says that. And their old mate Hayek doesn't hold to that either, as he recognizes that the self-organizing makert is in institution that can only function properly if liberty is constrained by rules. Even free market capitalists accept the need for contracts to restrain their desire to do what they please.

So where is 24601 living then? Alone on a desert island. He must be ending his posts by wireless to the guys and girls at libertarian.org. Note the org. bit. They too have rules. So do weblogs to ensure that the stuff that comes down the line can get posted.

So 24601 cannot do as he pleases.

Thats the plug guys.

2003-03-27T00:04:00.000-08:00

An individual Iraqi voice

I came across this interview Gazwan Al Muktar, a retired engineer, living in Baghdad. It was conducted just moments after reports emerged that US/UK forces had bombed Iraqi television and a market place in a residential neighborhood in Baghdad. Link via mark at pinappletown.

Some points made. Civilians are targeted:

"I took a tour in Baghdad. I went to Mansour, I went to Adhamiya, I went to Karrada. There are very few people on the road because again yesterday the US said that any vehicle moving on the road is a target, a legitimate target .. and that was coming out of the Centcom in Bahrain, in the briefing. So even right now civilians traveling on the road are being targeted according to the US Central Command..."

There is no escape:

"Every other town is being targeted. Every other town is being targeted It’s not only Baghdad that’s being targeted. Baccuba is being targeted, Mosul is being targeted, Tikrit is being targeted, Hilla is being targeted. God, the whole country is being targeted. What you are hearing is only that Baghdad is being targeted and Basra is being targeted. No, it’s Mosul and Basra, Kirkuk, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Samawa, Nasriya, the whole place is being targeted. Ramadi has been targeted on the western part of the country. So where do you go? You leave your house, where do you go? "

And there is resistance to the Anglo-American war machine:

"And you saw what happened in Um Qasr, Al Fao and Basra and Nassiriya. Those are the Shi’ite places where you think they should have welcomed the revolt against the government. But they did not. So it’s about time, you people open up your eyes and see what’s happening and understand the message and forget about the rhetoric."

2003-03-26T14:17:00.000-08:00

Photojournalism

via Tim Porter's First Draft. An essay in the Boston Review by Susie Linfield examines the role of photography in today's world of corporate media.

2003-03-26T06:37:00.000-08:00

Bored, Derrida, Iraqi War

I didn't even turn the tv on tonight to saturate myself in media flows. I'm bored with war as reality tv. I want some Derridean difference with the Iraq war. The US media net works are all about identity and sameness:---- their view of war is free of all difference. Difference is repressed and forgotten. Arabs are the Other. There is no outside to their triumphal representations of war as short, swift and clean based on precision bombing and a light run up the highway to Baghdad.

Confronted by the eclipse of difference I"m hungry for the play of difference:----I want to hear some grieving Arabic voices. I would like to hear what the mothers in Basra are thinking and feeling about the brutal tragedy they are living. Because of my need for some good old fashioned Derridean difference in the war with Iraq, my daily read is Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Pages. At the moment I am exploring the links ---have a look at this one for Afghanistan; or this one about representations of Arabs in the Australian media. After 9/11 the Arab migrant community is seen as a threat to the security of the nation state; they are branded a security risk; target for surveillance by the security forces.

So let us celebrate difference with Derrida and work to put it into play in the war with Iraq. Lets liberate difference as a counter to the effacing of difference by the Anglo-American media networks.

2003-03-26T01:55:00.000-08:00

War hackers

I have been trying to access Al-Jazeera's newly-released English language site all day with no luck. I suspect that it has been attacked by US hackers and is currently out of commission. It has So was Al-Jazeera's Arabic language site.

So I will just have to wait for the site go back up.

2003-03-25T18:42:00.000-08:00

Oscars
So our Nicole won their Oscar in a glitzy event. Everyone wore black, the mood was sombre, there were tears all round and the presenter parodied the show. Cosmopolitian Sydney is delighted. Hollywood understands postmodernism and art.

All that was missing was a gig by the Dixie Chicks

And those dresses. I had to look a second time. They look like so many references to the formal fashions favoured by British Royalty.Hollywood is not saying we are the royality of the New Order of Things?

Oh, and Mike Moore ruffled some peacock feathers as he charmed the pants off everyone. I love his line, 'We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times.' Hollywood is a great place to deliver that line.

This is a better kind of nationalism than that currently embodied by the Australian Cricket team.

Sport and Art. Australia is sitting on top of the world?

2003-03-25T06:19:00.000-08:00

War madness

I came across this comment by Ken Parish in a post by Wayne Wood at Troppo Armadillo. The post is about about Middle East strategy---to do with taking out Iran after the Anglo-Americans have finished with Iraq. Basically its an anti-left rave:

"...when the US and Britain implement an intelligence-led effort to undermine the evil terror-dealing ayatollahs and reinforce existing liberal democratic forces in Iran (as they will and should), the left will be screaming just as long and loud as they have about Iraq."

What can you say to that? I do remember Ken, people saying something about the UN at the time. Have you forgotten already?

Ken continues in the same angry vein:

"Sadly the left, which was once a voice of conscience and morality in the days of Vietnam and Pinochet, has now been reduced to a state of utter moral bankruptcy, where it mostly seeks to defend the supposed sovereign rights of bloodthirsty, corrupt dictators to continue persecuting their own people and exporting terror without let or hindrance."

Not so. The policy of national self-determination of a nation state was over-ridden through the UN ---what else was containment and weapons inspections? Ther were rules and conventions to meet when it came to over-riding the foundational principle. Otherwise it was might=right.

Ken gives an indication why none of this is taken seriously:

"This pathetic state of affairs seems to have been reached because of the left's tunnel vision hatred of American capitalism and belief in a mythical international order. There is a desperate need for the left to re-invent itself in a principled way, because there remain many negative aspects to unrestrained capitalism and unrestrained US hegemony. At present, however, there is no sign of any sensible analysis from anywhere on the left that I've seen."

Now it becomes clear. The UN stands for a mythical international order. One of the illusions of an epoch. Because they are ensnarred in illusions the left are incapable of anything more than hatred of America. Ken, of course, is speaking in the name of an enlightened reason that exposes myths. The left has given up reason is the inference. Hence they have nothing to say about human goodness.

This junk---and that's what it is---reads like a neo-con attack on the Left---Miranda Devine style---- by someone who says that they are a centrist in politics. The war does funny things to people. All sorts of emotional stuff comes bubbling to the surface. Alas, the madness has got to Ken. Sad really.

Maybe its just a settling of accounts with past lives. Making a clean break by working through painful and tragic emotions.

Just thought you might be interested in the psychological impact of the war.

2003-03-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

On the road to Adelaide

Yesterday, when I drove back to Adelaide from Victor Harbor around lunchtime I wondered about the possibilities of a bio-terror attack --the plague or anthrax being let loose in Australia. I couldn't cope with that line of thought.

I got this far though. Do the health authorities have the vaccine readily available in Adelaide? They should, shouldn't they? After all we don't have this vaccine stuff ready to hand in our medicine cabinets. And the PM has been warning us for weeks now about all this stuff. Its why we at war isn't it. So all the disease tracking, crowd control, communication and local vaccine delivery mechanisms should be in place.

Oh, I know. There's nothing. So what does that say? It was all too difficult. So I stopped wondering about it.

Then I pondered why I had given up watching the live feeds from the war zone by the US television networks late at night. One night of live coverage (and flickering chanels) was enough for me. I could cope with that.

Fox Television sickened me-----so gungho war (not just this war but war in general ) and the thrills of it all. The commentary from the tank by the embedded reporter sounded as if he had a hard on from all the high tech stuff + the thrills and spills. War = big desire. War is sexy. He was almost masturbating as the mobile and lightly armed forces of the Militarized Enlightenment dashed to Baghdad.

As a viewer watching from a beach house with a backdrop of waves and wind it was like being in a video-game. No that's not quite right---I'm groping for the visual form here. It was more like reality television. Well, not quite because it hadn't quite got there. It had the form of not the content reality television----that was the marketing of war.

But there was another side to all this. The US military have ensured that the US networks are their lapdogs in Operation Iraqi Freedom. They have become the psych-ops arm of the US military, which is trying to scare the Iraqi soldiers to give up in the face of overwhelming power racing up the highway. That's the tactics of shock and awe. The thesis is simple. Iraq as a nation state only holds together because of fear of the evil dictator. Create another fear ---death from bombardment--cos these peopel only understand fear. So now's your chance to give up. Take it while you can and side with the forces of liberation. Its Saddam we are after, not you or the Iraqi people. We have a common enemy. So get out now because we are going to pummel Baghdad good and proper. You haven't got a chance.

So the Iraqi resistance is downplayed and the forward momentum is played up. Resistance is also unexplainable in the high tech discourse---sporadic resistance is encountered. Why are they resisting? Where are the flowers and kisses and smiles from a grateful people? It is not rational to resist. Sandstorms yes. Stiff resistance no.

Then it dawned on me. The psych.-ops boys had forgotten to factor in patriotism---Iraqi patriotism--into their equations. Of course, the psych.ops boys had overlooked that because there was no such thing as Iraqi patriotism in their high-tech discourse.

Maybe the Iraqi people wanted to see Saddam go and the tyranny end, but they weren't too happy with the Americans occupying their country. Maybe they wanted to govern the country for themselves. After all Iraq is their homeland. It's a bit arrogant to say Iraqis do not know what democracy is until the Americans bring it to them.

What has been rejected as irrelevant by the Militarized Enlightenment is what is most important.

Thats what happened on the road to Adelaide.

Then I read this personal account by Nate Thayer of a day's experiences as an American journalist in Baghdad. (Link courtesy of Tim Dunlop, who is doing a great job at Road to Surfdom.) And this personal voice from April Hurley, an American working in a Baghdad Emergency room.

2003-03-24T05:39:00.000-08:00

This ain't pretty

More war casuality pictures from Al Jazeerah. This will not play well in the Arab street.

The Arab street will be watching both CNN and Al Jazeerah. We in Australian street have the BBC and CNN---its not the same thing though, is it?

2003-03-24T05:11:00.000-08:00

Baghdad Blogger

Salem Pax in Baghdad has not posted since Friday.

Update: He's back. Salem had no internet access for a couple of days. He says the images:

"...we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire. The only thing I could think of was “why does this have to happen to Baghdad”. As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion I was close to tears. Today my father and brother went out to see what happening in the city, they say that it does look that the hits were very precise but when the missiles and bombs explode they wreck havoc in the neighborhood where they fall."
He adds that:

"The images Al-jazeera is broadcasting are beyond any description. First was the attack on (Ansar el Islam) camp in the north of Iraq. Then the images of civilian casualties in Basra city. What was most disturbing are the images from the hospitals. They are simply not prepared to deal with these things. People were lying on the floor with bandages and blood all over. If this is what “urban warfare” is going to look like we’re in for disaster."

Yes, I suspect that Basra is an indication of what will happen in Baghdad. Of course, the American war machine will say that its all going to plan--its all been figured and calculated in the equations in the computer. We know the script after listening to a couple of briefings from the Big General. It says trust instrumental reason.

2003-03-23T20:54:00.000-08:00

Collateral damage

The horrible side of war is the death and destruction of civilians. US and British war planes began their attacks on Basra around 11.30 am (0830 GMT) on Saturday, initially bombing the outskirts, but then began targeting objectives in the city.

US airstrikes on the southern Iraqi city of Basra are not as clean and surgical as is being made out by the publicists for the militarised Enlightenment machine. These are photos of the civilian dead and the injured And there is more, since battles have raged around the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Nassiriya on the road to Baghdad. So charred Iraqi bodies will litter the landscape on the road to Baghdad.

Will we see lots of images like these on our television channels to counter the beautiful violent images of the spectacle of Baghdad exploding and burning at night? Will the media shake off their role of being lap dogs?

2003-03-23T14:53:00.000-08:00

Cricket

My hopes that Australia would be knocked off its perch as world champions by India have been dashed. Such is the way of the world.

2003-03-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

A mother's lament

Personal experience provides a different perspective to the violently beautiful spectacle of shock and aweand the ignorant commentary provided by the media networks, such as CNN. Burning flesh and twisted bodies highlights the gap between dream and reality It provides away to counter the bad history used by conservative politicians to justify an unpopular war.

2003-03-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

Bush's poodle? Not so!

Remember Tory Blair being called Bush's poodle? If you have forgotten, then this piece by Dave Carr over at Samizdata will remind you.

Well, I've decided after much hard thinking in the mountain top retreat where come to eagles come to rest, that this description of Tony Blair demeans standard poodles. Blair definitely deserves non-poodle status.

My reasoning? Tony Blair was once all hot and strong on getting the approval of the UN to march on Baghdad. The UN was the centrepiece of his strategic vision for making the world a better place. Bush gives the UN the fingers when it refuses to civilize his barbarism. Blair rolls over tail between his legs.

Healthy standard poddles just don't do that. They're hunters. They stand and fight for what they believe in when confronted by the top dog. They would have challenged Bush rather than rolled over.

2003-03-22T18:24:00.000-08:00

Envious

The rich and powerful are saying that I'm envious of their success. I'm a crazed irrational freak because I reckon that corporate governance is corrupt---eg., Enron and HIH. I hate the well-merited success of the rich and powerful. I'm obsessed with what they have and I lack-- those big salaries cosmic payouts, fast cars, luxurious houses and adoring adornments.

The reason why I oppose tax cuts for the rich is because of my politics of envy wrapped up in class war rhetoric. And I oppose the US action in Iraq because of my huge envy of freedom. I have no reason. I'm all destructive raging emotion. I'm part of a great unwashed lynch mob out to get the rich and powerful.

On the other hand I'm meant to be a rational consumer, making my choices on the basis of information and preferences.

2003-03-22T17:31:00.000-08:00

Council as eco-vandals

Yesterday I noticed that Victor Harbor Council had been culling trees in the reserve across the road from our holiday house at Victor Harbor Dead trees had been taken out, along with some trees that had been planted too close together for the council lawnmowing man to do his thing. Then I looked more closely----a lot more trees had gone. The addditional ones went beyond these culling considerations as they were in areas where there was no lawnmowing. All the wattles had been taken out+ some river gums, blue gums and west Australian flowering gums. Around 20 trees had been taken out.It was a systematic attack.

The pro-European group had taken their revenge----the nasty, messy natives had been gotten rid off. They hate the native bush. And the Council hackers had gone along with it. Eco-vandals both of them.

2003-03-22T06:34:00.000-08:00

Blogging from Iraq

I've just discovered this too late. But we do have a history of Kevin's posts. Here are some personal voices of reporters in Iraq. And the emails of Rachel Corrie, the US peace activist crushed to death by bulldozer as she tried to prevent the Israeli army destroying homes in the Gaza, can be found here and here.

2003-03-21T20:37:00.000-08:00

Wilderness

Wilderness still means something in Australia.You only have to visit Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park to understand that.

And a new photography gallery, The Wilderness Gallery, devoted to wilderness photography is opening soon near Cradle Mountain. Olga Truchanas, an early Tasmanian wilderness photographer, stated that the point of wilderness photography was to help "retain as much as possible of what still remains of the unique, rare and beautiful."

He also expressed the philosophy behind wilderness photography:

"If we can revise our attitudes towards the land under our feet; if we can accept a role of steward and depart from the role of conqueror; if we accept the view that man and nature are inseparable parts of a unified whole---then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform and largely artificial world."

This Australian wilderness photography was then developed by Peter Dombrovskis in the 1980s. It is thriving in Tasmania and will be showcased by The Wilderness Gallery.

Alas, The Wilderness Gallery, which opens in June, is not yet online. So it is impossible to see if the beautiful pristine landscapes untouched by human hands still dominates in the 180 works in the inaugural exhibition. Or has the sublime entered the Australian wilderness discourse?

For the sublime, see here and here What would the sublime look like in Australian wilderness?

It is unclear how much the new Wilderness Gallery will be connected into art criticism or aesthetics

2003-03-20T19:36:00.000-08:00

Dream factories

On my way down to the coast this afternoon I plan to check out a number of dream factories to see what's on offer these days. I want something more than fully stocked supermarkets, targeted health care and being able to toss my opinions to the wind whenever I want.

I am looking for something big, bold and inspirational as I need something to nourish me on the bumpy ride through the long dark night.

Whats down on the coastal towns is not much----a fundamentalist right-wing Christian dream factory full of repressive sexual morality, duty of work and God, all of which is wrapped up in an ethos of community care and hatred of Islam.

The dream factory in Adelaide is the secular, neo-Darwinian, enlightened one. High tech+ free markets=the path to happiness. It sees Islam as an obstacle to be removed because it is a religious faith. Religion is little more than blindness and stupidity because it is unreason: myth, ignorance and superstition. This dream now comes wrapped in liberalism (with the demise of socialism); but it an arrogant and triumphal liberalism that has reconnected to a Hobbesian view of the world.

The underside of both dreams converge into a heap of dislike of Islam, which becomes the Other. At is most extreme the dislike becomes a hatred that finds expression in a crusade against Islam. (link courtesy of The Clipboard at Al-Muhajabah's blog.) Each nation codes this junk differently. In Australia, it moves from an attack on multiculturalism in the name of assimilation and Australianness (see under polices, then nationalism and people) to lets use the doctrine of pre-emptive strike to take out the Islamic terrorists in Indonesia before the Islamic militants take over that country and come to get us. Of course, that is never stated openly. What is stated is the thin edge of the wedge The rest is implied through the use of the word 'terrorist':----thus Islam, terrorist, threat, security, strike.

And the coast itself? What dreams does it offer in terms of a sea change? Well, it has been decided by the local councillors and buiness people that its future is to be a gigantic pleasure resort for the solace and amusement of jaded tourists. These scour the coast on Sundays, looking for new dreams and myths to enable them to cope with the chaos.

These are dark times indeed. You see why we need new dreams.

2003-03-20T17:03:00.000-08:00

Games for boys

It is the weekend of car races here in Adelaide. The Clipsal 500 has begun. Its where Holdens, Fords and whatevers go head to head shootout through the city and parklands. Yes its another round in the V8 Supercar Championship. The Clipsal 500 Supercars practice and qualify today. More crashes and spills. The noise level is gradually rising from cars and helicoptors. Oh, the throbbing excitement of it all.

Its being talked up by the publicity machine as usual, in order to grab more market share of the leisure dollar. Judging from the crowds the race has a big hold in masculine working class culture. Ticket sales are up. Business is booming-----though not for the local traders, pubs excepted.

It is Adelaide's substitute for Formula I after the failure of Le Mans. V8 Supercar Championship all sleaze and no glamour despite the appearance of race chicks who are supposed to ooze sex and beauty. Its an affirmative culture not a critical one.

I doubt that any of the cars will have NO WAR painted on them, or the race organizers will fly a NO WAR flag from the control tower. These guys are into fast machines. They imagine themselves to be top guns.

Its time to clear out of Adelaide and head for the coast for the weekend.

2003-03-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

A house of cards

As I struggled to awake early this morning I was caught between this surreal account of Baghdad city sleepwalking to war and what I heard on the radio that the war with Iraq will be short, clean and sweet.

Iraq will collapse like a house of cards, crowed one old warrior. He seemed to wish that he was there marching victoriously through the streets of Baghdad being welcomed by all the young Iraqi girls throwing themselves at him. He made it all sound like a summer holiday where the band played in harmony. It was surreal. Just like the Fisk story I read the night before about the city of Baghdad caught up in fantasy land.

Oh the joys of war. A swift fight based around the tactics of shock and awe. A clean war with high precision bombs. Then the long sweet joys of celebration. A quick tour of duty.

Nothing about the man with the bayonet coming from a hidden place?

And the house of cards? Well if the fallen cards are the rubble of Baghdad----the annihilated infrastructure----then who is going to rebuild the house? Not Australia. Who will pay for postwar construction? Not Australia.

Why not? Why we have paid our premium on an essential insurance policy for national security. We have done out bit. We are not going to hang around for reconstruction. We dodged it in Afghanistan. We'll dodge it in Iraq.

And the looting? Isn't that a necessary part of war? So who is going to loot what? Will there be anything left to loot other than the oil?

And what happened to the seige of Baghdad? Or is that Old Europe thinking? Or just a Ba'ath fantasy?

2003-03-19T06:37:00.000-08:00

Light relief

Music & politics Maybe its time to Dance in the Street.

2003-03-19T05:22:00.000-08:00

military machine & individual experience

In a few hours the destructive power of the US military machine will be unleashed. It is designed to be an awesome spectacle that strikes terror in our hearts. When the military machine, as the embodiment of the unified world spirit, threatens to crush human beings, then all we can do is fall back on personal experience. Imagine being an Iraqi schoolgirl; a mother worrying about her son, a father concerned to protect his family?

What is their nightmare?

Individual experience, or the inarticulate terror and dread that I, as a particular individual, feel now, is what the military machine rejects as just so much garbage. The automated Enlightenment rolling onto Baghdad has no time for the feelings of individuals, not even as poetic luxury.

When inevitablity rules--- ie., nothing can derail the mad rush to war---then the junk of individual experience is all we ordinary human beings have left. We have been reduced to numbers in an opinion poll:----the declining majority opposing the war who will be massaged, seduced, bowbreaten and manipulated by the politicians and the media.

The goody good war stories are already circulating in the mediascape. They have the publicity imprint of the war machine all over them.

We cling to what we have left; for amongst our chaotic feelings of terror lies our humanity that we stubbornly hang onto.

Therein lies our strength.

2003-03-18T21:19:00.000-08:00

Graffitti
Doesn't it look great. 'No War' written on the western face of the central white sail of the Sydney Opera House with rollers and paving paint at 9am.

The media treated it as a breach of security and as an embarrassment to the NSW Labor Government. What a beatup. They missed the important bit.

Culture protests. Culture signifies its resistance to a political system bent on war.

How do we interpret this fragment of resistance by modern Australia?

Well, if art lends a hand to ease human suffering, then 'no war' says that the level of threat posed by the Iraqi regime to the international community does not justifiy a war that will result in the deaths of thousands a of innocent women and children.

2003-03-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

The blood of innocents

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain and war talk. I heard a grab from President Bush who said yesterday: "Instead of drifting along towards tragedy, we will set a course towards safety."

Safety?

As the boys march on Baghdad, cheering Iraqis welcome the troops and US bombs shock and awe the whole world, real men in Washington are girding their loins to launch pre-emptive strikes to deal with Iran, Syria and North Korea.

The real men are seduced by aggression and power. Other people's sons and daughters will be slain. The blood of innocents will flow once again.

And that is not a tragedy?

2003-03-17T15:10:00.000-08:00

The 'hand of history'

I went to the central market in Adelaide early this morning to top up the fruit for the household for the rest of the week. It was a glorious morning with the promise of hot dry summery day. The radios were going in the stalls, a jumble of different stations, blaring our their news and cooment.

Normally they compete against one another and it all becomes just so much noise that I then try to filter out as much as I can. This morning they spoke in unison: war war war war war war war. It was one of those moments in daily life that you remember.

The situation we are in is no accidental trifle.

I thought that the 'hand of history' does not set lightly on our shoulder. Nor does it lightly caress our body.

No, the 'hand of history' is on our throat. And it is squeezing it.

I cannot cry out for help because good empiriicsts cannot see the 'hand of history'. Its all in my imagination they would say.

I cannot see whose hand it is, but I have no doubts that it belongs to an unsavoury character.

I heard the words of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, echoing from the past. He says, you should not scorn 'the hand of history' just because of the company it means having to keep. That may be well and good for Tony as he walks through the corridors of state powern or is out on the hustings whipping up enthusiasm for war with Iraq. I do not have to hang out with American neocons.

I do not scorn 'the hand' of history. I fear it. I fear the way that Blair and his mates---George and John as they are affectionately known ---worship the world spirit as if it is a deity. They reckon they are in harmony with the world spirit because they are ahead of their time.

What I scorn is their theodicy and their official optimism that all be well.

My world spirit drips with suffering and blood. History is a slaughter bench and the hand of history holds the weapons of war that are now directed at civilians.

Of course, no one on the radio talked about the 'hand of history' or the world spirit even though the word is inevitable was being thrown around willy nilly.

I returned home with my purchases, talked about tiles in the bathroom, had breakfast in the sun, listened to Radio National and wondered when the north wind would hit town.

2003-03-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

For Rachel Corrie

The American peace activist Rachel Corrie, 23, was run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip. She was a civilian. It appears that she was attacked directly and intentionally.

This place is really the killing fields with both sides dragging one another into a living hell.

A post with lots of links about Rachel can be found here

If Palestinian suicide bombings are war crimes, then Israeli military assaults that systematically and purposefully kill civilians are also war crimes.

2003-03-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

Sontag on war photography

Curses. Blogger has been down again tonight.

Susan Sontag has just published a new book on photography, Regarding the Pain of Others. This is a review of the book.

I have to admit that I was never impressed with her earlier book, 'On Photography'; but then I was never really tuned into her as a cultural critic. Photography carried the burden of her dislike of television I thought.

The book is timely with the war of Iraq just around the corner.

2003-03-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

Glorious autumn days
I've been painting the inner city cottage all day whilst parties raged around me in the street as students made merry. I did try to make a post early this morning but Blogger was down, the post would not go through and it was lost. So I gave up in disgust, glanced through the weekend papers on the NSW election (the Liberals will be decimated was the judgement), helped wash the dogs and painted the outside of the electronic cottage non-stop from 11am to around 7.30 pm. I barely saw the glorious autumn day as I worked on the south side of the house.

I had a few glasses of chardonnay around 7.30pm, had a great dinner of caremalized pork and rocket salad, then fell asleep during D.H.Lawrence's Sons and Lovers on ABC. I had read the book years ago and thought it the best work Lawrence produced:-----it both captured the damaged repressive sexual mores that cause human beings such misery, and explored the destructive emotional bonds between mothers and sons in great detail. This was an Edwardian time----almost 100 years ago--- when sexual feeling was held to be an unsuitable guide for human action directed towards achieving a flourishing human life.

I knew both. I have not spoken to my mother in over 20 years. Her husband was a drunk and abusive and she took the damage she suffered out on her children-----and still does. So she lost a son whom she tried to prevent from growing up into an adult. Family life was a tragedy even though it was wrapped up in Catholic ethical doctrine of human beings being deeply flawed creatures doomed to suffer terribly but for the grace of God. But it was not a sparkling life full where human beings radiant with health, good looks and ability, were surrounded by beauty. It was a life of shame and disgust. We walked the earth with our heads covered and obsessively worrying about personal hygiene.

The Catholics cheapened ethical discourse because their doctrine was a list of conclusions, or rather a list of proclomations of received truths handed down from on high. They claimed to be the fount of wisdom from God and they did not invite an open ended give and take discussion in which we could assess what is going for ourselves through entering into argument. So our existence was one of drugged ethical passivity whilst living a tragic, dehumanizing life. Unlike Plato the Catholics never demanded that we be intellectually active nor did they foster our power of reasoning as regards ethical goodness or truth.

It was a time when personal love and passion was seen to be a form of madness----people were possessed by romantic love---and this was deemed to be incompatible with rational order and stability. Achieving rational order and stability through philosophy was to deny the body and the value of individual love---or so I learned from studying analytic philosophy in New Zealand. (I also learned that the Humean conception of justice was a means for the pre-set end of human survival). Erotic passion was seen as a form or degrading madness for philosophy. So I feel in love with a mathematician who felt in terms of equations and who reckoned that the world was a dangerous place.

Methinks I have had too many glasses of wine.

But its an old story isn't it----the conflict between madness and reason; one that goes back to Plato (of the Republic). Cultivate in yourself self-possession by exercising strict control over the wild bestial non-intellectual passions. Repudiate romantic sentiment and avoid emotional turmoil. So spoke analytic philosophy.

2003-03-14T16:41:00.000-08:00

junk email

I am being deluged in junk email at the moment. Last month it was from some people in Nigeria wishing nothing less than to make us exceedingly rich.This week it is from those saying I will become incredibly rich by working from home. Next week it will be? Whatever, I know that my e-mail account being clogged up with junk. Spam into my email account is increasing at an alarming rate, and it makes up over half of my email content. It is leading me to consider to abandon my email account.

I feel so passive other than hitting delete. There seems to be little in the way of legislation to regulate the sending of unsolicited electronic mail (or pop up adverts). No doubt there are web crawling robots search for email addresses on behalf of the spammers. Maybe it is time to avoid putting my email address on the web pages.

I hope the people that send spam eat junk food, get fat and are crippled by a heart attack.
Update Neale over at Wrongwaygoback has a account of the responses by public authorities to his inquiries about spam and what can be done.

2003-03-14T16:32:00.000-08:00

Being serious
If Tony Blair is Bush's poodle, then he is in the doghouse back home.

If Australia is to go to war to avoid another Pearl Harbour, then Australia is the 51st state of the US.

If the US under the Bush administration is acting like a schoolyard bully, then many hope that it gets a blackeye.

2003-03-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

What can you say

Not much, not much.

I was unable to post yesterday.Blogger was down last night. The old problems continue. I have been thinking about moving out. Moving over to Blosxom

I was going to mention my reaction to John Howard's speech to the National Press Club. His winning style was long on passion and short on reason. He used passion to persuade Australians citizens not reason to win the war of words. There was no new evidence that the Iraqi regime had provided such weapons to known terrorist groups around the world (meaning there is none).

The speech employed the standard rhetorical techniques of appealing to the commonplaces. He invoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to argue that the world could not wait no longer for further evidence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He appealed to used the imagery of Iraqi torture methods – including the gouging out of children's eyes and amputation of tongues – to justify the support for the war.

It would have gone down well with US administration and the Australian war bloggers. It would have won their approval-----John's doing a good job selling the war. But that is not the purpose of rhetoric. The aim of the PM mastering the arts of speaking and writing with persuaveness is to shift or move a hostile or sceptical audience towards the acceptance of the PM's point of view of why we need to go to war now without UN sanction.

As an Australian citizen I did not find this vivid imagery an effective use of language.It was as distasteful as the invoking the Bali bombing to help make the war case on Iraq a week ago.

The self-defence argument simply failed. The Iraqi regime is not planning to attack America in that way, and it is Australia that we are talking about. I thought this was a sick joke and an abuse of history given the PM"s rejection of the old war of warfare and his advocacy of a shift into a new kind of warfare with international terrorism.

The vivid torture imagery was deployed to arouse our emotions. But John Howard has come late in the day to a humanitiarian concern about the brutaility of the Iraq regime and he has shown no sympathy towards the refugees from the Iraq regime in the past. The Tampa incident clearly put political before humanitarian considerations.

The speech struck me as akin to selling a political product. Bad taste on my part. Perhaps. But the PM invoking the above commonplaces as a seat of persuasion was in bad taste.

The PM has my respect but he did not persuade me.

2003-03-12T04:08:00.000-08:00

Dr. Janet offers advice
I'm stressed. God I'm stressed. I'm on the go the whole day and far into the night. And weekends too. It never stops. Life is a treadmill. The stress is making my body sick. It's all aches and pains. I yearn for some time out to relax. I feel like taking days off to recover. The boss will understand that I need to see the doctor.

He will won't he?

GP's are generally pretty good about giving you a few days off work for the body to recover.

And then I read Janet. And I fell a whole lot better because Janet sorts me out quick and smart. Her policy prescription is for me to stop complaining. Stress, she says, is a non-problem. I' m just a whinger. She quotes authorities to that effect.

One authority, the federal MP Ross Cameron said, in the context of the debate over bulk-billing, that "we [Australians] are a bunch of hypochondriacs and we need to be weaned off our addiction to general practitioners".

That comes as a a bit of a shock I must admit. I'm just a hypochondriac!

Janet, however, concurs with Ross Cameron. She says:

"He is correct. We also need to be weaned off our obsession with stress. It is a sign of the fickle, cosseted spirit of our times that the wealthy complain about it, academics write about it, and others expect to get paid for it."

And I'm neither wealthy of an academic and I don't get paid for it. But I sure have stress. Do I ever. But I feel sorted out after reading Janet. Its a non-problem.

I realize that you just get on with your life and look at stress as a challenge. Life is a series of opportunities to overcome challenges.

Oh well, back to the daily grind.

2003-03-11T04:09:00.000-08:00

cyberculture contra the freewheeling market?

The heading of the post comes from a question asked at the end of Sunday's Broadband/Internet post. What I had in mind was whether the weblog as a democratic form could stand in opposition to the self-organizing market even though the weblog's feet are in the marketplace. We pay for pay for server space, bandwidth and various services so there is a little commercial involvement to enable us publish what they want to say. Writing and the market are intertwined.

The question that is posed is: will commercial interests enclose the commons? This was raised or suggested by plasticbag.org who drew attention to the advertising and publicity corporations sailing into weblog world behind Google's acquisition of Blogger. Tom Coates says:

"The main impact of that acquisition is not faster servers or a better weblog infrastructure, it's that marketing and public relations firms - always more brand-conscious than perhaps they should be - have noticed Google turn our way, and (carefully following the integrity-based brand's line-of-sight) have finally noticed us... "What is this new grassroots phenomena?" they seem to be asking ..[Weblogs] are almost inherently a tool for rating and promotion. They are public opinion made manifest. In fact the only mystery is that marketers haven't been trying to exploit them before...

... weblogs have already had their integrity 'corrupted' - we're already advertising things for companies in return for money. The most common and widespread form of integrity-reducing advertising we are undertaking are Amazon referrals. We don't tend to think of them as interfering with our credibility or compromising our integrity - but we make more money if we write in a way that puts more Amazon links into our sites, and we make money if those links are recommendations...But this does seem to me to be the crux of the issue - that as soon as advertising enters the space of personal publishing, integrity becomes questionable - the particular authenticity of weblogs and diarist content becomes under threat."

The simple answer is suggested by Marcus Weatherall at neverthink.com is to be transparent. He says that if:

"you're a weblog author who uses commission-earning links: write (commission earned) next to the link. Easy hey? This way, you're advertising your interest. You're being 100% transparent about what you're doing."

And Rebecca's Pocket has an extended post on ethics for weblogs here. These six rules or guidelines are centred around around acountability and are for primarily for those webloggers taking the path to journalism.

Whatif turn to the language of democracy rather than journalism? This introduces is a political language. This language in the words of the Happy Tutor at Wealth Bondage: is about public goods, the public interest, of the common weal, and the web as a small piece thereof. This political language of democracy is concerned with our responsibilities as citizens, and what must we do to protect our public goods, including not only the internet, but our political freedoms. The Happy Tutor gives this democratic discourse a particular twist:

"Bit by bit, we, the best educated among us (fools and knaves, though we be) are reinventing the rationale for classical liberalism. We remember the bit about the free market, but we have forgotten the bit about free speech and political liberty, nor are we willing yet to see that these ideals are now in conflict. That our government has sold one out for the other. To balance public goods against private interest is why we have government -- and why some would wish to downsize or eliminate it. Leaving us as satisfied customers of one big happy global corporation run amok and calling itself America."

As an aside, prefer a less individualist language and more republican political language myself, with its talk of civic virtue, self-governing citizens, political communty and citizens acting for the sake of the common good . But that is another debate.

My concern here is: does the political language of democracy make any sense in terms of weblogs and emerging democracy and gives us a way of thinking othewise to the market? Jon at Listen to Musak thinks so. He says that the weblog as a form of:

"...personal publishing can empower people. To me the pull of the medium was access to views and interests outside the main-stream. The ability to publish what you had to say without an editor's red pen."

This gives us freedom of expression to express diverse views and thus is writing within the realm of the aesthetic. So how do we go from the aesthetic to politics and democracy?

2003-03-10T22:24:00.000-08:00

forever young

Loren Webster, who lives in the Pacific Northwest, where the snow storms pound the mountains, is responding to our dark time by Planting seeds of hope. Spring is in the air. What a great and lovely idea.

Over here, in southern central Australia where the mouth of the Murray River meets the southern ocean, autumn has come. The soaking rains will soon arrive. I will plant some eucalypts in the creek bed near our holiday place at Victor Harbor. They will be Red River Gums, which will last several hundred years. When we are all well gone, and the war a chapter in a military history book the majestic red gums will still be forever young.

2003-03-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

dead bodies
There is a bit of a debate about internet porn happening in Oz judging from this this and this and this report from the Australia Institute. For a response see Net censors ride again. See this for the double standards and moral hypocrisy.

This response by Family.org captures the ethics of pornography. It is a perversion that distorts the humanity of those involve. Those captured by camera images are treated as mere sexual products to be manipulated, exploitated and consumed, rather than treated as fellow humans worthy of dignity and value. The calls for censorship is countered by the libertarian informed free expression and Libertus.net

The problem with Family.org is that it fails to account for the moral hyprocisy noted above or give an account of why an enlightened liberal society has ended up in such a strange place.

What we have with porn is the effects of instrumental reason that treats bodies and nature (eg., females bodies) as objects to be manipulated for (males) personal pleasure through a process of domination and subjugation. This calculating reason is unable to adjudicated between competing values other than through private decisions whilst the form of activity ---its usefulness---becomes more important than its content. So pornography as private vices (perversions) becomes the dark side of the public virtues of the liberal Enlightenment that has separated mind and body.

What porn discloses so dramatically is both the intimate connection between reason and domination, and the character of the subject as one of unrestricted strength, hardness and authority.

2003-03-10T06:30:00.000-08:00

A quote
"'One is always one too many around me' ---thus speaks the hermit."
Nietzsche.

It would not pay to go to a hermit looking for advice about friendship. Not all hermit are sages. Many are homeless.

2003-03-10T06:14:00.000-08:00

New Oz Blog

Check Mortigi Tempo out by Tim. Nice and bitey in a weblog way.

I don't agree with his claim that media bias in Australia is pretty much a non-issue. What the heck. The neo-cons will sort him out about the liberal press if they are on their toes.

2003-03-10T05:48:00.000-08:00

Photos of World Trade Centre

A portfolio of photographs of the World Trade Centre before during and after 9/11.

2003-03-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

Machine Politics

That the factions drive and control the Australian Labor Party is a well known truism in politics. If you doubted this, then this fragment in the story by Miriam Cosic, 'Rann the Man', in the Weekend Australian Magazine, (March 8, 2002, p.10ff) should ease any doubts. The SA ALP is controlled by the left and right factions combining into a machine that runs the political party led by Bob Ellis, who says the factions:

"...were devastated when Mike got so many extra seats in '97---their plan was for him to be the fall guy. And when the Lewis thing was happening [in 2003], the leader of one faction said, "Rann's got two more days, then we are going to neck him', he says."

Okay, its political gossip, Mike Rann survived, and the Machine backed off because Rann delivered what they desired ---power, power and power.

But it speaks volumes about democracy in the ALP. This account of Sussex Street spells out the totalitarianism in the ALP. The event iinvolves Ms Deirdre Grusovin –--- an active NSW ALP member with 24 years' experience, who increased Labor's majority in Heffron at the past two elections. She isSussex Street's first victim of the controversial N40 preselection rule, a strategy that is used to deny the rank-and-file a vote on the preselection candidate and installs head office's preferred candidate, Kristina Keneally, 33. Deidre says:

"You have to do as you are told (by Labor's executive) and have unquestioning loyalty or you don't get anywhere, and unfortunately this can have an effect on the quality of the candidates who do make it...Don't ever think there's a sisterhood in Labor, there's no real support because it's too difficult for a woman's career path."

There is a tragedy here. Ms Grusovin earned her political stripes in the early 90s after exposing the failed police pursuit of the now notorious "Mr Bubbles" child sex abuse allegations. But after naming alleged pedophiles in parliament, she lost support within top-level Labor ranks in late 1994, after making unsubstantiated allegations of pedophilia against prominent Sydney lawyer John Marsden.

Sleaze: private vices and public virtues. Its old one. There are many untold stories in the pages of that sandalous chronicle.

Another story is told by Margo Kingston in her Meanwhile, in the NSW Election ... post. She reports that ALP member David Borger, was a talented up-and-comer in Parramatta with the support of his local branch for pre-selection. it was not to be. Margo says:

'The NSW Labor right machine said no and abused the good intentions of an affirmative action rule to install Tanya Gadiel, chief of staff to NSW Right Police Minister, Michael Costa, wife of Labor Council assistant secretary, Michael Gadiel, and sister-in-law of Mr Obeid's chief of staff, Aaron Gadiel. The machine rules, OK? It's in the family.Machine money-man Eddie Obeid then rang Borger and offered him the spot if he'd defect to the Right faction. "I declined his offer because I do not trust him," Borger said.'

Borger than offers this comment on the state of the ALP in NSW:

"The rank-and-file preselection process is dead and one of the reasons is because the party is so dependent on funding from corporate sources. The ALP no longer rely on local supporters, on people putting things into letterboxes any more. They rely on the big fund-raisers and use those resources to run campaigns. There is a disconnection between branch membership; they are owed less now, have less input and, as an extension, now do not have their say in the selection ballot process."

There are many untold stories in the political sleaze chronicle. Poor democracy. It has been destroyed by its guardians whose embrace of machine politics sanctions totalitiarianism. The self-discipline of the criminal is what the political culture of Sussex Street signifies in civil society these days.

2003-03-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Broadband/Internet

As the take up of internet broadband services continues to rise I wonder what the future will look like.This is an interesting scenario by Dakach CompHobby.org

"I also believe in this new webscape the death of dialup is only a matter of time. The future packages could perhaps be defined this way, basic half speed broadband for $39.95 or unlimited full speed broadband for $59.95 plus additional services at about $5.95 per month for each service selected. Sort of like cable tv works. First the ISPs would have to kill off P2P though and tiered product offerings would be a way to try and accomplish this."

This is probably on the money. Still, broadband is dammed expensive for households at the moment.The above prices are US $. The figures I've seen are similar but in Australian $. The high cost is due to a monopoly telecom acting like a robber baron in the marketplace.

To invest the money per month we need some idea of what the Internet is about within the newly-forming information or network society. This offering from Doc Searls and David Weinberger has lots of ideas. The text is a number of theses with a brief commentary about what the Internet is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. In a nutshell they are saying:

"1. The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet’s three virtues:
a. No one owns it
b. Everyone can use it
c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already."

Lots to engage with here. For a response to it, see EmptyBottle.org. Its a thoughtful, ribbing response.

I find it a bit too technology orientated. Searles and Weinberger are freewheeling entrepreneurs with a libertarian perspective and do not engage with the network as a cultural framing, a kind of writing and various practices of interpretation.

This cyberculture perspective is important at a time when the techno-sciences have taken hold and displaced the humanities in the corporate university; and the cultural framing traditionally performed by the universities has been displaced by the deregulated market. Can we think of cyberculture being contra the freewheeling market?

2003-03-08T03:38:00.000-08:00

Tim Blair is a revhead & other stories

Its official. Tim is seduced by the fast cars of Formula I. See Australian Grand Prix Notes. Explains a lot don't you think?

The good professor of the bilabong gets his rocks off on a good flogging. (Saturday, March 08, 2003)

Where's the sex? Thats what is missing from a fascination with fast cars, glamour and flogging. The body is the key to all of this but it strangely absent. Don't these guys like the fleshy, sexy disruptive body? Surely they are not into the old repression sexuality game? And so stoking the burgeoning junk porn industry where sex is equivalent to domination, the assertion of masculine power over women's bodies and the liquidation of individuality.

2003-03-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

The myth of the Don
In an earlier post, Mark Latham on Cricket, I gestured towards the way that the Prime Minister is making Don Bradman into an icon of the Liberal Party. I did so as part of my case of professional sport being deeply intertwined with politics. What I was gesturing to was Don Bradman as a coded mythical figure, which circulates on many levels through the nation's mass culture. What I was pointing to with this gesture is the way this figure is being appropriated for political purposes to legitimate a return to traditional values.

This book by Brett Hutchins, Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth, (Cambridge University Press) carries my gesture much further. it sets the figure of this iconic cricketer in the cultural setting of cricket and the wider national culture. Bradman is located firmly within an Anglophile social conservative tradition. Within the wider national culture the 'Don' has become the representative of authority and legitimacy that reinforces dominant social values. This figure stands for an older conservative-aligned Australian (white) nationalism.

2003-03-07T04:34:00.000-08:00

the branding continues

Well the Stones are in Australia doing their shows. Its all been very quiet. The reviews have been, well flat. the music certainly does not burn up the town. Just another show biz act really.

Apparently the group has left grey Melbourne and is now in sunny Brisbane.

Yeah its been quiet apart from the spin. Yes sir, the spin that keeps the rebel brand going.it is being spun by Keith Richards, who says that being a Rolling Stone was a licence to misbehave. His words:

"To be in the Rolling Stones, you get a licence to do what everybody else wanted to do, but couldn't due to the constraints of life...It's almost as if you were given a free ticket to do it. Of course, when you took it literally, that's when you went to jail...I think society always wanted us to be the bad boys, and we absolutely obliged."

Well, it evokes more laughter than Tim Blair. And we all need a laugh in tragic times.

2003-03-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

Blogging: technology and writing

I have just come across bertramonline, the weblog courtesy of John Quiggin. There is an interesting piece here about technology and writing. A couple of paragraphs caught my eye:

"And don’t think that your tools do not influence your output. Think about the first IDE and how programming was no longer about structure and analysis, but rather throwing together a quick GUI and some event handlers? Or – shudder – what about PowerPoint? You know that there are corporations where the only way to get a message through is to squeeze it into those infernal slides? Nothing that cannot be summarized in 5 to 7 seven bullets is no longer worth communicating, it seems. "

Point taken. Powerpoint! Loved by the bureaucracy. The technology was like hitting a concrete wall. I did not even bother trying to use it. People used to send me their talk in PowerPoint Slides through email --but I had no idea what was being said when I scanned them. I could see no argument or logical progression/inference in the points. They were just points grouped into a heap bounded by the boundaries of a slide.

Then we have this insight into Moveable Type and Blogger, which is the technology that I use for my weblogs.

"Actually, one thing that is wrong (in a sense) [with these] is the mode they put you in: a quick tour around the Web; a Blog This! click or two, et voila… You do your writing in a tiny text box in the browser, with no spell checking or whatever. Not that anything is wrong with all that: it just influences your writing."

I find that. Look at this post for example.

I detest the lack of spell check on Moveable Type. (Though Blogger Pro has one.) The technology imposes limits that I brush up against all the time. It suits this type of writing or this or this or this. Its a particular kind of writing.

2003-03-05T21:02:00.000-08:00

Tim Blair Watch

What does the Tim Blair Watch turn up today?

Tim's pathbreaking column, The Continuing Crisis has a bit of a pot shot at the well-known watchdog website,Crikey.com.au website for failure to disclose that one of its prominent columnists is a staffer at the ABC's Media Watchdog Program; tells the carnivalesque anti-war protestors to get a job and wear suits; and says that Hugh McKay using the word 'values' is an example of cliched thinking.

These are the absurdities of life that are meant to effect a big belly laughter. Sorry Tim. It didn't happen this week. I turned the page to read Maxine McKew's lunch interview with Bob Hawke.

What did I get from the Tim watch this week? That Tim has no time for ethics. That's cynical reason for you. Cynical because Tim reckons that going to war is a good thing to do. Tim keeps his values in his back pocket.

And Tim does not like carnivals or fleshy bodies. Such a stick in the mud. Or is it the old puritan sitting under the cynical reason?

And if we put the two fragments (no ethics & dislike of carnivals) together? What we get is a cynical reason as a conformist reason. This says that we accept, work within, and remain close to, the established conventions of society. Thats a good working definition of Australian conservatism as any, don't you think?

And me? Am I just a bit of slimey data trash who gazes on the neo-cons? No way. I'm no internet junkie. I'm more interested in love affairs than being data trash. True. The erotic passion of the body pulls against staying close to the established conventions of society. And I feel so vulnerable, because love affairs and their emotional attachments can go so badly, as well as going well. Living such a life is putting my own life at the mercy of luck.

Still, living on the razor edge of luck gives me a critical distance from which to watch the textual comings and goings of Tim Blair.

2003-03-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

Crikey.com, Warne, Drugs
There is a great montage photo of Shane Warne here. I guess that the free-wheeling crikey.com crowd are not convinced by Warne's 'mum gave me the tablet' line. I think they got that right.

Not convinced. This is more considered and serious. Either way he wasn't all that smart.

2003-03-05T04:30:00.000-08:00

Mark Latham on Cricket

I don't like Mark Latham much. Not that I have ever met the Member for Werriwa. Its just that I don't like his political attack dog image, nor am I much enthused about his Third Way between socialism and the free market. But he sure spotted the dirt under the carpet for why Australia played cricket in Zimbabwe. As reported by Alan Ramsay Latham says:

"...the reason our cricketers are being asked to put their safety at risk in Zimbabwe is that the ICC had to choose between cash and player safety - and chose the cash. The ICC would rather risk player safety than risk its broadcasting rights money by changing fixtures."

Yeah. I could smell the corruption. And while we on the topic have yopu ever noticed the way that the Prime Minister is making Don Bradman into an icon of the Liberal Party?

2003-03-04T04:20:00.000-08:00

Ivory Towers Revisited

Joseph over at reading & writing has been writing about universities as ivory towers in response to comments made by Dorothea here on surviving in an academia. Dorothea had argued that the university has the institutional power to cause people to lead damaged lives. I wholeheartedly concur.

Joseph makes a good argument in response to this:

"I'm an existentialist at heart: I can accept the power of institutions to fuck people up, but ultimately each human being has to come to terms with his or her place beneath the cold, hard sky glittering with stars... Before we can have any meaningful discussion about the role of individuals in contemporary universities, we must acknowledge this historical fait accompli. The ivory tower was torn down for good more than fifty years ago, though its shadow lingers on..... the university is just one more institution among other institutions. Every institution, of course, ought to be subject to critique & I'm not here to "defend" academics & academia so much as to suggest that the terms of the critique need to be revised."

It is hard to find an objection to this. And I won't. Joseph, bless his soul, is 'a Humanist at a "technological university."' The shadow of the two cultures (at 11.12.2002) is a long one(at 12.12.2002)

Joseph knows about the moral law in his heart whilst walking that lonesome highway by himself with the starry skies above. He would understand the terror that assails us at that stilliest hour; aa terror that seizes our hearts and causes the blood to drain from our faces and us to weep uncontrollably.

What I would do is add a bit. The ivory tower shadow is a long one indeed. The walls of university are firmly in place, the culture is deeply insular, there is little connection to region or community, the research of most academics have little connection to the public concerns of citizens and there is little in the way of education for democratic citizenship. In fact the big disgust towards everyday life and mass culture is the norm amongst the academic higher types. Yes all this is changing in Australia but few can sing their songs in such a place. Most get sick. Few are free spirits.

Joseph says that "you owe it to yourself & to the rest of us to find a place where you can sing. Or, minimally, work to change the place you are so that you can sing." Fair enough. I got out. These were no blissful islands. As Nietzsche says in 'Of Scholars' in Thus Spake Zarathustra:

"For this is the truth: I have left the house of scholars and slammed the door behind me. Too long did my soul sit hungry at their table; I have not been schooled, as they have, to crack knowledge as one cracks nuts..... They keep a sharp eye on one another and do not trust one another as well as they might. Inventive in small slynesses, they lie in wait for those whose wills go upon lame feet---they lie in wait like spiders... They also know how to play with loaded dice; and I found them playing so zealously that they were sweating."

There is a big sadness in Australian universities. I got out of living in the ruins so that I could sing Nietzsche's Song of Melancholy (Thus Spake Zarathustra). I just wanted to take the hump out of my hunched back.

Joseph's argument leaves me puzzled. What are the new terms of critique? What are the terms of critique in a dark time when the old traditions and conventions lie shattered on the ground and the new ones are yet to be formed?

2003-03-03T17:27:00.000-08:00

Ho hum election battles
It is often observed that political parties at election time is a contest between Tweddle Dum and Tweddle Dee. Both have more or less the same product wrapped in different packaging (the personality of the leader). Many citizens are bored by the choice on offer ----its all too close to the choice of soap powder on a supermarket shelf.

Do we make a rational choice based on good information there?

Well Meat pies or sausage rolls? says it all.

Junk food junk policies.

2003-03-03T05:56:00.000-08:00

Jingoism and cricket

Lets hope that Sachin Tendulkar does to Australia what he did to Pakistan. I will be cheering India from the sidelines.

Though a nationalist I detest the culture of jingoism around professional sport. The commentary by the culture industry is so one eyed. It is all Australia Australia Australia. The Australians are the greatest; they cut everybody else; none can come close to these heroes. Its jingoism not nationality.

The commentators give you no idea how cricket is seen and played in India, Pakistan and the West Indies. It is just assumed that the culture of cricket is the same there as it is in Austrralia.

The jingoism makes me sick in the stomach. There is very little self-reflection on this culture or the way that a once great game has been taken in hand by the culture industry.

2003-03-03T05:19:00.000-08:00

Bush's poodle

If Tony Blair is George Bush's poodle, then what is John Howard?

Bush's labrador?

2003-03-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

Junk psychology abounds

There has been a lot of junk psychology circulating through the circuits of the corporate media about the psychology of the dictators of rogue states. "Psychopathic dictators" is frequently slipped into the columnists in the Murdoch Press. But this psychological spin took a new turn with James BoneChildhood wounds of the Butcher of Baghdad' in the Weekend Australian (no link, March 1, p. 14), with its appeals to science. But see here for the link courtesy of Media Watch

The claim was that the trauma of rejection by his mother turned the Iraqi leader into a murderous tyrant.

Since this weblog is tuned into, and a nodal point of, the movement of the World Spirit, we thought we could do a political psychology of the neo-cons. We have turned to Dr. Adorno and this research on Negative Dialectics for guidance on this important matter.

Your typical neo-con almost didn't make it out of mummy's womb. They did so only because of massive medical intervention in a public hospital. As a young child they watched their parents torture the family dog, and turn it into a savage beast that guarded the suburban house from strangers and killed any other animal that moved. The backyard was filled with dead rats and the stench of cadavers filled the air. The sweet smell of rotting cadavers in the high summer was accepted as normal---much like the household rubbish sitting the rubbish bin.

The brutal torture of the family pet by their anal retentive parents was their first image of what it was to be human.

As a teenager the young child left home to get themselves an education at the sandstone university in the heart of the city. This was a turning point for them and for liberal civilization because they meet future politicians and businessmen who were latter to become the movers and shakers in the country. All celebrated bourgeois freedom (Dr. Adorno was a bit of a Marxist you understand. If you don't like the word 'bourgeois' cross it out or replace it with 'liberal').

By this time they had forgotten the cause of their image of human being but this image was seared into their unconscious. The civilizing university taught them that culture is based on forgetting but the unconscious power of the human image whispered to them what was repressed by a civilized education. They became the defenders of a triumphant liberal culture that abhorred stench because it stinks (the great unwashed, the rabble, the mob); raged about the cultural bolshevism of the liberal left; and always tacitly understood that culture was built on death.

They are very insecure because they did not have the power to shape their society to mirror their psychology and so they are very frustrated and angry at those who cross their path. They have an arrogant facade;identify with the nation; take pleasure in hurting people; have no empathy for the pain and suffering of those people they sink their fangs into; have a defensive comportment as see themselves as under threat from all sides; and consider attack to be the best form of defense. They consider using whatever means is necessary to accomplish their goals because they are at war with those left liberals who do not accept their view of things.

That's the political psychology of the 'lets-have-war-now' neo-con. It is just as good as those we find on the dictators of rogue regimes in the Murdoch-owned war media, don't you think?

2003-03-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

Great website

Check out Dublog when you have a moment. Lots of visuals to view and links to explore.

2003-03-01T15:39:00.000-08:00

Rolling Stones Inc

My argument that the Rolling Stones, who are currently visiting Australia, are primarily a business corporation has been reinforced by this article in the Financial Review.Called 'Stones have all the right moves' it says that this corporation is part a culture industry that has all the right moves for making lots of money. Rolling Stones Inc. can be seen as as cash cow, which is:

"... a successful enterprise in a mature phrase, no longer developing new product, or investing in new businesses, just consistently bringing in the money....what sets them apart is that they have sustained that fundamental intellectual capital---and they have made money from it...Each song, each unity of intellectual effort, is leveraged through recording, licensing, touring merchandising; from the organizations point of view."

My sentiments exactly. That is why is difficult to get enthused by their presence in Australia. Once they sold themselves as quality culture in a junk music market-- elitist, arrogant rock culture that pushed the boundaries of the form that resisted and contradicted a repressive social existence. They stood for freedom in a world of unfreedom. They were serious musicians in a world of frivolity and light-heartedness.

That avant-garde facade has been shattered. Now the talk is about how their business method is text book. Their conglomerate is driven by synergies between different business units, touring, recording, royalties and merchandising. Their:

"success is due to them having pulled their way out of a crowded market---which is more down to product and brand. They operate in a a popular market with extremely low barriers to entry, long term intellectual capital development costs, and, usually short-term periods of high return."

What I see from media accounts of their current tour is that their yea-saying performance is prescribed to tired business people, politicians and journalists looking for a bit of nostalgia and needing a shot in the arm. No one, not even old radicals, are asking the band to be serious creative musicians who produce songs that act as a critique of the brute existence everyday life that has been imposed on us by the neo-liberals. They are accepted as a part of kitsch that cheerfully fits into the way of the world.

2003-03-01T06:55:00.000-08:00

Look

Yesterday was highlighted by household chores, renovations, Ari chewing the mobile phone and problems with the server. I wasn't able to go online for a large part of the day. So much for the virtual office structured around the mobile and internet. I was no longer able to tap into those living networks that are transforming and shaping my work and leisure relationships and promising to liberate myself from conventional organizations. Not that I have much leisure time anyhow. My mood is such that I fear I'm breaking down in the face of reality and enter a netherworld where humor no longer an expression of our humanity.

Then again, my subjectivity could be all to do with the paint fumes, dust and aching back associated with renovating an 1890s innercity workingman's cottage. How I long to shift into the new townhouse in the heart of the city. I want to escape from my entanglement with Adelaide heritage; to free myself from the tradition and convention of the provincal; to avoid becoming an unhappy caricature of tv advertising that says make your house into a home with a bank loan.

Great photo at Helen's Loom to view. More Nietzsche at Whisky River to read. And this site Dogs in Cars brings a smile to my face, as it captures an aspect of my existence that I rarely see expressed on the web. And this is an interesting weblog v-2 Organization even if the post on emergent democracy and post-national states is to cosmopolitan for me. Thats all the surfing I could do. Oh, and Loren Webster's reflections on the war, pop cutlure and the media at In a Dark Time are well worth reading.

Here we have music that is more lighthearted because it has refused to be taken in hand by the culture industry that works its myths to pull us into a reconciliation with life as it is. The songs Lora mentions have an endearing seriousness to them. They use arts freedom to refuse to accept their place amongst the consumer goods in the marketplace.

Some good comments on creative commons licences at Math class for poets. Link courtesy of Jonathon Delacour who has interesting comments on this issue.

That's all I have time for.

2003-02-28T05:41:00.000-08:00

The right order of things

I have been firmly put in my place by the learned Scott Wickstein about my off-the-cuff comments about the Australian Cricket team boycotting a match played in Zimbabwe. Scott points out that the Waugh brothers are from the traditional working class areas of Sydney. Ricky Ponting is from the wrong side of the tracks of Launceston. Glenn McGrath and Matthew Haydon are from harder rural backgrounds, as was Ian Healy. They are from tough workingmen's backgrounds

Good oh. So where is the tough working class politics huh? Where is seeing through the bullshit, calling a spade a spade, concern for justice, outrage at the battlers being trodden on?

Forgotten. These guys are now hard-nosed professionals.They have joined the progressional middle class they were once excluded from. They crossed the railway tracks long ago, as they have become business people making big bucks out of their commercial endorsements. Sport is about sport they say---I only think about cricket says Shane Warne.

Nonsense. Sport is about money. The politics is now wealth creation through becoming celebrities---tall poppies who have become a brand name who give capital new opportunites for investment. They have embraced commercialism with gusto and mixed it up with a bit of criminality to give their celebrity a bit of spice. Makes good copy for their sponsors does it not. From what I can make out the World Cup is about sponsorship contracts and "amended clauses"; advertising and image rights; compensation claims and who should earn how many millions of dollars, or, more accurately, who should earn how many millions upon millions of rupees. it si about money.It is a business that is called a sport.

The Australian cricket team was used by Mugabe. Roasted. These white heroes did not fight back. Nor even show a bit of resistance. They went along with the dirty politics and gave Mugabe's regime credibility. These heroes gave no solidarity or support to the victims of oppression. These big tough guys on the sports field who take no shit from anyone when playing other nations were a bunch of wimps when it came to Mugabe. They did not even have the courage to thumb their nose at him. Whatever spirit of Ned Kelly that once flowed through their working class culture has long been discarded.

It made me sick in my stomach.

2003-02-27T21:47:00.000-08:00

Social Priorities
If you had a choice to give money to:

A. enable a young women to have silicon breasts so that she canhave a pair of big beautiful breasts?

B. enable an independent journalist to go to Baghdad send back news reports to his weblog from that city during the forthcoming war for all to read.

Which would you choose. Would you now.

Like to know what others have chosen? Then see Annals of Inanity: Rational Choice?. Its a great post.

2003-02-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

French Poodles
Our two standard poodles, Agtet and Ari, have decided that they will not join any US class action to take the "French" out of French Poodle. They are proud of their heritage. They would like to point out that the roots of their heritage reaches back into Germany---to German hunting dogs.

On the poodles understanding of things France and Germany are two great European nations. So them dam Yankees had better watch out and learn to tone down their arrogance and moderate their abuse about accommodation and appeasment. Poodles are used to being treated with respect.

2003-02-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

Australian cricket
I am not a follower of cricket though I do think that it is a fine game. I do not feel patriotic about the Australian team and generally prefer the underdog to win in any match that catches my eye. Nor have I followed the early rounds of the current World Cup. And I have no sympathy for Shane Warne whatsoever. He is suitable material for the NSW Labor Right to use.

What I have noticed is the politics of cricket. I did notice that the Zimbabwe skipper Andy Flower and his teammate Henry Olonga donned the black bands in the opening Zimbabwe game to signal their contempt and disgust for the brutal Mugabe regime by wearing black armbands. They will pay dearly for that gesture.The Mugabe regime will not forget that act of defiance and opposition.

I noticed that the England team refused to go to Zimbabwe. By doing so they refused to sanction the daily murder and purposeful starvation conducted by the Mugabe regime to stay in power.

I noticed that the Australian team went to Zimbabwe and refused to wear black arm bands when they played even though the Australian Government has been outspoken in its condemnation of the Mugabe regime and acted to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth.

Nor should the Australian cricket team have acted politically I hear people saying. It is not the right thing to do. Or it would not be effective says Scott Wickstein

That response is too easy, given the history of Australian cricket in the context of Africa---recall the history tacit support of apartheid in South Africa, briefly outlined here.

Thats what I noticed. A poiltical gesture would have been useful and it would have carried a lot of symbolic weight.

My response? I hope Australia does not win the World Cup. I hope that a non-white team wipes them out and, in doing so, crushes the arrogance out of them.

I also hope the governing body of world cricket is taken over by nonwhites. The politics of that body has been disgraceful. And I have little time for the Australian Cricket Board (ACB). It is a secretive organization that spins dishonesty.

2003-02-26T05:13:00.000-08:00

By the seat of our pants

We live our lives on the razor edge of luck-----floods, bush fires and droughts.

I thought about the power of luck today. Luck---our exposure to fortune---creates anxiety and fear. The conservatives then advise us to live our lives within established conventions as a way to cope with the bust and boom fortune of the market. The economists response to 'tragic reversal' is to embrace the eternal world of mathematics and marvel at the beauty of the theorems. That is the way to control the contingency in our lives.

The power of luck? It haunts me. I feel so vulnerable. And fragile.

The power of luck? It's what makes our lives tragic.