">My Big World Of Crap

The US’s military deaths in Iraq near 2,000, 2 and 1/2 years after victory was declared by President Bush. What a tragic waste of many young soldiers’ lives! Iraqi civilian deaths are also estimated at 30,000 in that time. You’d have to ask “was it all worthwhile”?

It hardly seems that the Iraqi people are convinced. Public opinion polling there indicates that 82% of people surveyed “strongly opposed” the presence of coalition troops, 67% felt less secure because of the US occupation and 45% believed that attacks against coalition troops are justified. That doesn’t look like the Americans and British (and us Australian hangers-on) are even remotely winning the “hearts and minds” battle.

Tonight I watched the ARIA awards, not fully focussed but enough to get the general idea. Missy Higgins seems to have been the big winner, which is OK with me, I like her songs (and she has an interesting voice).

She ended up with 5 awards.

It was also good to see the Go-Betweens pick up an award for their album “Oceans Apart”

Apart from that some of the stuff by bands like Eskimo Joe, Thirsty Merc and Grinspoon was ok but nothing fantastic.

The awards I can’t see the point of are the ones for highest sales ….the recognition for this already comes from the sales figures - the ARIA awards should be solely about critical/peer recognition.

….the Catholic Church has decided to retain celibacy for priests.

I’ve just come back (on Friday night) from a few days away, spent in the Blue Mountains, mainly walking up hill and down valleys. I like the Blue Mountains, but haven’t been for more than a day there since I was a teenager and our family stayed there for a week.

This time, stayed in Katoomba near the 3 Sisters. Katoomba itself seems a little run down to me, at least in the main shopping street. Leura seems to be the happening place in the mountains and there were also some really nice houses around Wentworth Falls and Blackheath. For a popular tourist destination, the mountains remain fairly “olde worlde” - you don’t have the abundance of Maccas’s, KFC etc that you get at most other popular places. There also aren’t a hell of a lot of tourist traps, Scenic World, and The Edge cinema being the main exceptions. The other thing I noticed since I was younger was that a large percentage of the people you meet are English, German, Japanese, American, and several other nationalities - its obviously a place for backpackers and other visitors to go. (Speaking of which, late one afternoon in the motel room, heard a young English girl having a shower in the next room and laughing and carrying on loudly enough so everything she was saying was audible - thought we might have been audience to a noisy night time romp, but no, it didn’t happen or if it did, she and partner had quietened down).

Weather wasn’t great most of the time, with much drizzle, and mist around, but not enough to keep inside. I actually quite like walking in light rain (and when you get down into the valleys the trees block out most of it anyway). See the photo below for the spectacular views from one of the lookouts at Leura on a cloudy day.

Stopped off at Jenolan Caves on the way home - its nice as always, although the prices are getting a bit steep ($28.50 for the River Cave) and the food you can buy there is pretty ordinary.

Very rarely do I agree with the rabble that is the federal opposition, the Labor Party, but Kelvin Thompson is absolutely spot on about the obscene waste of taxpayers’ money on blatant party political propaganda about the workplace relations reforms. Supposedly the advertising blitz is running up a bill of $40m!!!! I haven’t seen anything in these ads that is enlightening me about the details of the government’s proposals, it is just propaganda aimed at getting public support behind the changes, whatever they are.

The public servants in whatever department is paying for these ads need to get some guts and send the bill for them here:

Street address:
Cnr Blackall and Macquarie Sts
Barton ACT 2600

Postal address:
PO Box 6004
Kingston ACT 2604

Having had a chance now to see some of the detail of the proposed anti-terrorism legislation, I must admit to having more concerns that at first thought. The stuff that really seems to be going overboard is to do with the offences, punishable by 5 years gaol, concerned with informing others about someone who is placed under preventative detention or subject to a control order.

For example, a parent whose child is detained, is not allowed to inform their partner of that fact. What exactly is the point of that? Also, the laws against sedition, which say in part:

seditious intention means an intention to effect any of the following purposes:
(a) to bring the Sovereign into hatred or contempt;
(b) to urge disaffection against the following:
(i) the Constitution;
(ii) the Government of the Commonwealth;
(iii) either House of the Parliament;
(c) to urge another person to attempt, otherwise than by lawful means, to procure a change to any matter established by law in the Commonwealth;
(d) to promote feelings of ill-will or hostility between different groups so as to threaten the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth.

pose a potentially serious limitation on our ability to criticise government. Why shouldn’t I be able to call the British royal family a bunch of clowns who ought to be removed from office (which they only have because their ancestors were better thieves and murderers than rival families), or ridicule our political figures when they deserve it?

The laws about preventative detention and communicating with other people will effectively mean people can be disappeared by government officials - if the people carrying out such laws are as competent as DIMIA or some of the health departments around the country, we have a lot to be worried about. You could be detained in error, and disappear from your normal life for months, and not be able to tell people about it and have severely curtailed, if any, rights to legal representation about the wrongs done to you. Very scary stuff!

Ex-PM Malcolm Fraser made some excellent points in a recent lecture. He raises valid questions about the usefulness of preventative detention and control orders as a tool in fighting terrorism, and about the arguments for why terrorism can’t be fought satisfactorily under existing laws. Why indeed do we need draconian laws?

Is the threat of terrorism so great that we are prepared to sacrifice some rights that we have had for years? As I’ve argued previously, I don’t think the risk in Australia is huge - your chances of getting killed in a car smash are no doubt thousands of times greater than of being killed by terrorists (unless you hang out in Iraq or Afghanistan and a handful of other places) but we aren’t seeing bad drivers locked away without trial or charge.

The other thing I find disturbing is the secretive way the Federal Government is trying to sneak these laws through with little public or parliamentary debate. I think something this fundamental needs to be carefully considered, and we should not be treated in the “don’t worry, trust us, we know whats good for you” manner that seems to be the government’s preferred modus operandi recently. Shame on the Government for being so sneaky!!!

What comes next in the fight against terrorism? Room 101? (or is the model for that already in existence at Guantanamo Bay?)

I normally couldn’t give a shit about horse racing, but I heard that Makybe Diva won today’s Cox Plate in Melbourne, this following her wins in the last 2 Melbourne Cups. Go you champion! Hopefully, her owners will line her up for the Melbourne Cup in a week and a bit’s time and she’ll be aiming to become the first horse ever to win it 3 years in a row.

At least this will make the Cup worth watching. Most years I don’t give a stuff about it. Wipes out the best part of a work day’s productivity - should be on a Saturday like other sports.

Its happened again …some fucking cunt has rammed a shopping trolley into the side of my car. This doesn’t look like just an accident to me - there’s scratches all over the place, not just a single impact point.

Hopefully, the fuckwit that did it will die a painful death sometime today!!!!!!!!

Car door

AFI award nominations have been announced, and “Little Fish” has been nominated for 13 awards. This movie features Cate Blanchett as a reformed heroin addict trying to get her life together. Also in it are Hugo Weaving (almost unrecognisable), Sam Neill (are there any movies he isn’t in?) and Noni Hazlehurst.

I saw the movie several weeks ago and it was pretty good, especially the performances. I thought that the story sort of drifted a bit, and the movie seemed more a collection of scenes rather than a coherent and flowing story.

I thought much the same about previous best picture “Somersault” - beautifully filmed, well acted, but where’s the story? (Little Fish had much more of a story than Somersault though).

Is it enough to have just a pretty performance piece? Is that part of the problem with Australian movies?

Actually this year’s crop of award nominees is quite strong, unlike the last few years. Other nominees, none of which I’ve seen yet, include “Look Both Ways”, “The Proposition”, and “Oyster Farmer”. Of these, the only one I’m interested to see is “The Proposition” and thats driven by my like for Nick Cave’s work - he wrote the script.

I’ve been away for a few days, and spent more time in the car than usual listening to the radio (apart from when I was listening to CD’s …mainly compilations featuring Jill Sobule, the Go Go’s and Jason and the Scorchers).

I must say that I think there’s been a lot of hysteria being whipped up about bird flu. Just like terrorism! The risks in Australia are realistically very low.

Bird flu has still killed only 60 odd people in Asia, all of whom (I understand) have contracted it from contact with poultry, and probably in more crowded, less hygenic circumstances than are ever likely to be experienced here. The real threat is when (if) avian flu is transmissable between humans and presumably airborne (ie by coughing and spluttering all over each other). Add to this our relative isolation, and the risks are even smaller.