----------------------------------------------
Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
--------------------
To have your emails deleted please write to me at renatoobeid@hotmail.com
--------------------
Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
"Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.”
-Jane Perrone, The Guardian
audio
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Thursday, September 13, 2001
AFGHAN HOUNDED
by Renato Obeid
- The Despondent Correspondent
Its most infamous resident is a 44-year-old billionaire gone bad – wreaking havoc and terror and bent on world domination.
No, not Seattle, home of Bill Gates, but The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, host country of public enemy number one – Osama bin Laden.
Afghanistan (capital Kabul) is a rugged agrarian land of great mountain ranges, fertile green valleys and dry barren plains in Central Asia.
Landlocked by Iran, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Zemanekstan (erratum – Stan Zemanek is an Australian state unto himself not a Central Asian state!) it is about the size of Texas and had a pre-war population of around twenty million.
Afghans are predominantly Sunni Muslim tribes people, belonging to the Pathan tribal group (Indo-European speakers believed to be related to Indians and Iranians), although there are minority Shiite Muslims and ethnic Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.
In ancient times, Afghanistan (meaning, predictably, “country of the Afghans”) lay on the main caravan route between Europe and Asian - causing it to be invaded by, amongst others, Russians and Britons.
But it was the most recent invaders, the then Soviet Union in 1979, the caused the most damage – to both Afghanistan and themselves.
In what became known as the “Soviet Vietnam” the Soviets were eventually chased out by the rag-tag American backed and funded Mujahaden (“holy warriors”) after a costly 10-year war of attrition.
An inevitable power vacuum and struggle ensued amongst the victors, the Pakistan backed Taliban emerging victorious in the mid 1990’s.
The Taliban (Arabic for “students” – the Afghans are not Arabs but like all Muslims worship in Arabic) were Islamic seminarians that had lived and trained in Pakistan.
They immediately set about enforcing their strict 7th century interpretation of Islam, giving all men a month to grow beards (a rare concession to practically by the Taliban – somehow “all men must have beards immediately!” wasn’t going to work); banned television, radio, music, art, theatre and non-Islamic literature; denying females work, education and movement without wearing burkhas (basically an all enveloping cover) and accompanied by an immediate male relative.
Not that Afghanistan ever was a whole lot of fun.
There never was a “Thank Allah It’s Thursday” (Friday being the Islamic Sabbath) in Kabul.
Traditional Afghan entertainment was folk dancing, and a game called buzkhasi – which involved a dead calf being thrown into a ditch and hundreds of men on horseback trying to grab the calf and carry it to a goal area (polo, rugby and a BBQ all rolled into one!).
Surprisingly, and this is something that has been overlooked in the boatpeople debate in Australia, THEY ALSO PLAY CRICKET.
Refugees returning from Pakistan brought back cricket with them and it’s becoming increasingly popular – provided the male-only players are modestly dressed and stop for prayers.
Surely our Cricketer-in-Chief John “Donald Bradman” Howard can issue special Cricket Playing Refugee Visas.
But it’s not all (non-alcoholic) beer and skittles in Afghanistan.
The Taliban continue to wage war against their surviving opposition – the Northern Alliance – who control some 10% of the country.
There are unconfirmed reports that the Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Masoud, has been assassinated but this has to be taken with a grain of salt – one of the protagonists, General Adid, in another similarly tribal recent war, Somalia, was reported dead by his opponents on some twenty separate occasions before finally succumbing (“this time he’s REALLY dead, promise, swear to God and hope to die”).
Shades of “We killed Kenny!”
All this, coupled with famine and scorched earth ethnic cleansing of minorities and opposition, has resulted in a mass exodus.
There are some 3 million Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan, hundreds of thousands in Europe and North America and a staggering FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT “queue jumping” refugees trying to get into Australia on the Tampa.
According to all reports, Afghanistan has become “hell on earth”.
This is confirmed by an eyewitness I made up who declined to give me “his” name in order to save me the hassle of making one up.
The Australian government (namely the tabloids and talkback radio) are probably as outraged towards these “queue jumping” refugees as they are those unfortunate “queue jumpers” jumping of the roof off the burning World Trade Center.
Thankfully, they’re not in charge of this rescue and relief operation.
“America Under Attack” is indeed a tragedy and, as it’s been described, “a day that shall live in infamy”; and on television – vulture-like saturation coverage continues and a Jeff Mills soundtrack seems inevitable.
I certainly don’t wish to make light of this tragedy.
I myself, a la Ian Thorpe, Leyton Hewitt and every other Australian celebrity who’s been in New York this year, narrowly escaped death in the WTC bombing.
Had I have been on the top floors of the WTC New York rather than Campbelltown (NSW, Australia) I would certainly have died.
And regarding those emails circulating that Nostradamus predicted all this, Nostradamus also predicted that “people in the 21st Century are going to be extremely gullible and full of shit”.
All this brings us back to Afghan resident number one, Osama bin Laden.
The exiled Saudi born billionaire (“next on Jerry Springer – When Billionaires Go Bad”) is the prime suspect in this and other terrorist atrocities.
Bin Laden (the 17th of 52 children – it’s always the 17th child that causes all the trouble) ran away from home and joined the disparate American trained and supplied pan-Islamic Mujahaden, staying on in Afghanistan and turning his attention to ridding the Islamic Uma (the nebulous supranational Islamic homeland) of American occupation (boomeranging on his erstwhile allies).
The Taliban harbor and protect him (he’s even taken reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s daughter as his second wife) but, as America points the finger at bin Laden and wages war, that welcome may be wearing thin for this Caucasian gang leader (contrary to the ethnological arbitrators – talkback and the tabloids - Arabs are Caucasians).
So, what to do?
I don’t know.
“All I know is that I know nothing” to quote Aristotle.
But I do suggest that we put aside all the hysteria, hyperbole and rabble rousing and defer to those who do know – our democratically elected institutions – Alan Jones, Mike Munroe and the Daily Telegraph.
*Since this article was penned, we can indeed confirm that Ahmad Shah Masoud is really, really dead – promise, swear to God and hope to die.
*The Quadrangle (the building formerly known as The Pentagon, now missing one side) is two weeks into its crusade to turn Islam into Waslam in Afghanistan.
The Taliban and non-western news agencies in Afghanistan claim that there have been hundreds of civilian deaths but his has yet to be verified by white people.
Renato Obeid
- The Despondent Correspondent
All writing in this article is crap, any resemblance between this and proper reportage is unintentional and purely coincidental.
(first published in inthemix.com.au)
8:00 pm
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
When you get caught between the moon and New York City
8:17 pm
Thursday, September 06, 2001
Just got back from a rendezvous with ---- -----*in town.
We had drinks, dinner and coffee at various places around Kings Cross to the soundtrack of blaring sirens – the Sydney anthem.
Is Sydney burning (dying, rampaging or all of the above and more)?
Walking back to the Kings Cross train station I saw a pair of policeman talking to a drunk and disorderly Aboriginal.
A novel approach for Australian police!
Hung around for a while, waiting for them to bash him ("policia in my country very bad men!”) but they didn’t!
They’re no fun anymore!
Felt like telling them “would you just hurry up and bash him, I’ve got a train to catch, I’m going to miss my train!”
Was telling ---- that all this anti-Muslimism in Australia at the moment is totally unacceptable!
I mean that’s our (Maronites) job; they’re encroaching on our prerogatives
At the end of the day its midnight.
*Ironically, although it bears my name, this blog is not about me.
It’s about saving the world!
It’s about you – the little people, the unheard unwashed masses who don’t have a voice!
Renatoobeidsworld makes this money back guarantee pledge to you (it’s subjects) – you wont ever read “I’m feeling blue today”,” I’m feeling vulnerable today”, “I had an argument with so an so”, “went to the mall today with so and so, it was so kewl!” and the other unimportant, banal, petty, superficial, indulgent, self important, self obsessed, pop culture centric tripe found in so many other blogs (what do you think I am – an American?).
Thus, I generally refrain from mentioning myself, family and friends etc except when relevant to some overarching transpersonal issue, point etc.
When these people are referred to (out of sheer necessity) I generally won’t mention them by name or (where names are written in the original unpublished text) blank their names – pending their approval and payment.
11:00 pm
Sunday, September 02, 2001
Just got back from a dinner party at --- and ------- and am watching The Big Shmooze on the Comedy Channel - an interview with some whore from the unfortunately successful stage show “The Vagina Monologues”.
I saw a cartoon in a recent edition of Private Eye which showed a mother with her daughter (in a pram) going past a theatre which had a sign out the front for that production.
The child is asking her mother “mummy, what’s a monologue”.
Also in that issue of Private Eye was a cartoon of two women talking over a back fence and one of the women’s children is saying “the Conservatives are going to win the election” - the mothers reply is “children say the funniest things”.
In that vein, maybe I should call these tapes “The Dickhead Monologues”.
Tonight at the dinner party I had no luck in finding people who were in agreement with me over the issue of the day – the Tampa crisis.
Of the ten people there I was the only person who was sympathetic to the “hostages” which pretty much reflects opinion polls in which over ninety percent are in favour of the tough stance taken against the hostages.
It felt like the dinner party version of “Twelve Angry Men”.
So, why are these people so hard-line?
Well, apart form the fact that they are bourgeois, they are anti-immigration because, quite ironically, they’re the product of immigration themselves!
It is ironic that it seems that the most rabidly anti-immigration people in Australia are themselves immigrants or products of immigration themselves (by that I mean recent immigration as we are all migrants in Australia)!
I was reading an interview in the paper today with a Vietnamese woman who was amongst the first wave of boat people to Australia (not including the first settlers) – the Vietnamese.
She came here in 1978 and (apparently) subsequently became a bourgeois professional Wasp wannabe and is therefore anti-immigration and doesn’t believe that these people should be allowed in!
Its absurd, it’s ludicrous!
There but for the grace of God go I and her and every Australian for that matter!
She and her ilk ought to be sent back (your wish is our command) – by her own reasoning, she shouldn’t of come and been allowed here in the first place.
My suggestion is that any Australian who is opposed to immigration should practice what they preach and go back to wherever it is they came from.
Retroactive immigration control.
We are all migrants on this orphaned island – our forebears are buried elsewhere.
These migrants who are anti-immigration are, in their own ignorance, digging their own graves without even knowing it because this “anti-immigrationism can also be retroactive.
There’s a fine and blurred line between opposed to further immigration and being plain anti-immigrant – a lot of their fellow anti-immigrationists aren’t just opposed to further immigration but to immigrants in general (including established entrenched incumbent migrants).
For example the British National Party (who have counterparts in all countries that have significant migrant populations) are obviously dead set against any further immigration but also want migrants (who have often been in the country for several years) to be sent back or, euphemistically, to be encouraged to repatriate.
“Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for thee”.
So, why are so many migrants anti-immigration?
I think its “dog in the mangerism” – a lot of migrants are greedy, selfish, jealous and covetous and quite simply want to pull the ladder up after them and after they’ve used it.
They don’t want anybody else to benefit from what they’ve benefited from and no longer require.
Who knows? – it might encroach upon them, although it doesn’t (well no more than it does on the non-immigrant population).
In this area as in other areas (like racism, which is the twin and clone of this - for some paradoxical reason a lot of migrants are racist) they become hyper-Australian.
More royalist than the king.
So desperate are they to fit in and become and be perceived as Australians by white Australia that they become hyper-Australian, over-Australian, turbo-Australian and Australian Plus – “hey we’re just like you”.
This is particularly prevalent in the area of “culture” where some of the most Australian Australians, the most ockerish Australians are migrants or children of migrants.
They tend to become either one extreme, total hardcore “wogs”, or, the other extreme, total ockers – almost a parody of Australians as they’re perceived by someone who’s acting (or overacting) Australian, inadvertent caricatures of Australians.
I once answered the phone to some Australian/Lebanese women (are there any worse!) calling to speak to Aunty Mary.
She told me that I must be from Lebanon because of my accent.
That piqued me – there’s nothing wrong with having an accent of a person who learns at least three languages (English being one of them) practically from birth but I don’t have a Lebanese accent I just don’t have much of an Australian accent.
But in this lady’s narrow world, you either have an Australian accent on steroids or you’re Lebanese.
After I hung up I was pretty pissed of, muttering to Anthony‘’if you don’t sound like a dickhead then you must be Lebanese!’’.
Anthony thought it funny - ‘’settle down son – that stuff (stress) will kill you’’.
Some Australian/Lebanese girl once asked me ‘’where you born here?’’
When I replied in the affirmative she said ‘’ you don’t talk like me’’.
‘’Thank God for that’’ was my riposte.
Quite simply, these immigrants and their children are aping Anglo-Australians (or their perception of them).
And how more (stereotypical) Australian can you be than being anti-immigration and anti-immigrant.
Strange fruit!
It reminds me of a Syrian I met in Lebanon who was about to become a naturalised Lebanese who told me, jokingly, that he couldn’t wait to become a Lebanese and say “when are these bloody Syrians going to leave!"
Looking of images of that ship (the Tampa) particularly in Fridays Sydney Morning Herald where you see a photo of the vessel taken from Christmas Island - a Palm fringed vista of clear blue sea and, in the background, that stricken forlorn ship (a stranger in paradise) - you get the feeling that you’re looking at one of the defining issues and images of our time, of Australia and the world in general at the beginning of the 21st Century,
A juxtaposition of the haves and the have nots, the lucky and the unlucky, people who were in the right place at the right time and people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, people who have the right passport at the right time and people who have the wrong passport at the wrong time.
Those hostages are strangers in paradise, are in purgatory.
So close yet so far.
I think this will, should be and is a defining image of the beginning of the 21st Century.
Just like the images of the Kennedy assassination and, more relevantly, images of other hostage dramas (planes being blown up in the desserts of the Middle East, a gunman with a pistol aimed at a grimacing pilot in the cockpit of a TWA plane on the tarmac at the airport in Beirut, a balaclava clad Black September terrorist peering over the balcony of the Olympic Village in Munich) were in the 20th Century.
This is quite simply the marine equivalent of those!
The fig leaf arguments and justifications (or lies in plain language) about this all being necessary to prevent Australia being swamped by hordes of illegal, unsubstantiated queue jumpers and whatnot taking the places of other more eligible deserving immigrants who apply for it legally and through the right channels are just lies and a smokescreen!
“So spake the fiend, with necessity to disguise his devilish deeds”.
P.S: The Standoff at Sea was finally resolved when the government bribed (hundreds of millions of dollars so far) various poverty stricken Pacific neighbours (mainly Nauru) to host the refuges until they can be processed.
Some of them are still there to this day (Monday 1st December 2003).
The government called this "the Pacific solution" but I think commandos violently hijacking a vessel is hardly pacific!
DISCLAIMER
In the interests of fairness I must add that dialling the wrong number in Australia is an absolute pleasure.
Australians are so nice when you accidentally call them (‘’what number where you dialling?’’ in a pleasant phone voice*) compared to Lebanese who practically interrogate you if you dial a wrong number (‘’who are, where are you from’’ etc?).
I’ve even had Lebanese interrogate me when they’ve accidentally called me.
But don’t just take my word for it, try it yourself – dial any wrong number in Australia and I can almost assure you that you’ll end it with ‘’thank you – it’s been a pleasure having a wrong number in your country’’
And you’ll almost miss them when you hang up and you’ll think to yourself ‘’that person was so nice – I wish right numbers in my country were so friendly. Maybe I won’t fly airplanes into their skyscrapers after all’’.
It’s an absolute pleasure dialling a wrong number in Australia and I really ought to do it more often.
Now where’s that phonebook.
*I notice that Westerners in general have special ‘’phone voices’’ whereas Arabs just use any old everyday voice.
1:50 am
Saturday, September 01, 2001
Just got back from Matt’s going away do at the studios of Rhythm FM in Balmain.
It was a good night and Matt will be sorely missed.
It was good to hear civilized, sane, humane and cultured discussion about the Tampa affair from educated, civilized, humane and cultured young people which every country has a small minority of.
Wednesday 29th August 2001 is a day that will live in infamy and, as I speak, the hostages on the Tampa remain hostage and in captivity – languishing at sea, kept company by 50 Australian SAS commandos who it seems are stuck there (so that seems to be an additional problem now – how are we going to get the commandos out, how are we going to rescue the commandos?).
Apart form this being an act of terrorism, a hijacking and an act of piracy its also an act of war and aggression towards a friendly ally – Norway.
In the Australian press we seem to be going from the sublime to the ridiculous – when the press and the letter writers to the press aren’t baying for blood they’re just as bad.
To wit a letter to the editor that appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on Thursday 30th August, “I find it ironic that the Norwegian government can profess to have traditional respect for all seafarers of the world but can happily slaughter the whale”.
In my opinion that person, all his descendants and all his ilk should be damned to eternal hell.
It’s just a manifestation of that typical and true cliché and truism that a lot of westerners are more concerned with the welfare of animals than human beings.
2:00 am
Thursday, August 30, 2001
Thursday 30th August 2001
The front page headline of the Sydney Morning herald – “Troops told ‘whatever it takes’”.
Last Sunday a Norwegian registered freighter rescued some 438 mainly Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers after the boat carrying them to Australia from Indonesia ran into trouble just outside Australian waters.
Pandering to the increasingly and alarmingly right-wing, racist, fascistic and xenophobic Australian electorate the Australian government defied international conventions governing assistance to people in trouble at sea (to which they are signatories to) and refused them permission to dock at nearest landfall which was Christmas Island – some 1700 kilometres off mainland Australia and merely a few miles away from where the ship ran into trouble.
A standoff ensued over the next few days with the Norwegian and Indonesian governments refusing to receive the asylum seekers.
Finally, the captain of the vessel, under apparent pressure from some of the refuges who had threatened to jump overboard and taking into consideration that there were women (some of them pregnant), children and some people in need of medical assistance aboard, proceeded towards Christmas Island.
In an extraordinary and heavy-handed move the Australian government sent in 50 SAS commandos who took charge of the freighter.
Defence sources euphemistically said that the troops had the capability to steer the ship into international waters should the captain refuse.
The ship moved several kilometres yesterday but remained in Australian waters and that is still the situation as of now.
Understandably, all hell has broken loose internationally with an international incident ensuing – Norway has reported Australia to the United Nations, the Norwegian foreign minister has described the actions as “unacceptable and inhumane” but the most appropriate comment in my opinion came from a spokesman for the ships owners who said “I would not say anything if the ship was in the vicinity of a banana republic but this is supposed to be a civilized country”
Hmm, yes – the important thing is that we don’t overreact here and send in the army or anything.
Christmas Island is Australia’s outermost territory and the port of arrival for scores of refuges who make similar journeys.
I won't make much comment about this because the developments speak volumes for themselves.
Suffice to say that this is every redneck hick’s fantasy come true!
Australian public opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of this with public opinion polls registering approval rates in the nineties.
Australia’s two main political parties (if you can actually call them two parties in this duopoly) have come out in favour of this – surprisingly the opposition Labour Party, which is traditionally the humane worldly party in Australian politics but has since abdicated that, has also sided with the government.
A cartoon in yesterday (Wednesdays) Sydney Morning Herald shows the MS Tampa (which is the name of the freighter) shows the captain at the bow of the ship addressing the refuges “I’m afraid we have to turn about or we’ll be caught in the eye of a federal election campaign’.
Which is exactly what this is all about – I’m surprised that those SAS commandos aren’t issuing how-to-vote cards whilst they’re at it.
Moreover, the captain of the Tampa who was in fact initially responding to a REQUEST BY AUSTRALIAN AUTHORITIES TO COME AND RESCUE A SHIP IN DISTRESS (the ship carrying the refuges from Indonesia which sank) has assessed and deemed his vessel to be unfit to sail into international waters – particularly with 438 passengers on-board which its unfit and not built to cater for!
Christmas Island leaders (who represent a population that is 60% ethnic Chinese, 25% Malay and 15% European) have sent a message to the Tampa’s crew and “passengers” saying that Christmas Islands elected representatives were “ashamed of the actions of the Prime Minister of our country”.
International press reaction to the situation is pretty much summed up by the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle “Australia, a country built on immigration, continues to refuse entry to refuges saying it was sending a strong message to future asylum seekers”.
12:00 am
Sunday, August 26, 2001
Caught up with (I hate that Sydney expression) Anthony in Sydney last night.
We had dinner, went on a harbor cruise that Anthony was performing on and then carried on swanning around Kings Cross with some friends of Anthony’s until about 6.00am.
During the Comedy Cruise (as it’s called) the waters got a bit choppy (figuratively speaking).
As always, there were hecklers but there was a particularly persistent whole table of them who were trying to give Anthony and the other comedian a hard time.
They were pretty indicative of the type of people on the good ship Yobbo – people on bucks and hens nights etc.
Anthony gave as good as he got – “I’m working here! Do I get into the bed when you’re working!?!” (to an especially disruptive hen) and the more direct but apt “shut up you c***s” to some others.
A Chinese comedian (funny only in that his English was so incoherently bad) was impressed with Anthony’s comeback lines and even went as far as asking Anthony to repeat them to him after the gig, whereby he actually wrote down the latter insult for future use.
“How you say it? – ‘shut up you c***’?”
In an aside, Anthony told me that his was classic stuff that you just couldn’t write.
Just after that, somebody came up to them (as some people always do after gigs) to commend them on how entertaining they were and whatnot.
I tried to get the Chinese gentleman to use his newly inscribed comeback line on her but it was to no avail.
We also benefited from this peculiar cultural exchange, I recalled Deng Xiao Ping's "it doesn’t matter of the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice" quote and Anthony asked him to say it in Chinese.He did and it sounded absolutely nothing like it!Shifty Asiatic pulled a fast one on us!
Many of the post-gig well-wishers were disavowing themselves from and condemning the hecklers.
Surprisingly one of the hecklers even approached Anthony and apologized – saying that he was only mucking around and that Anthony didn’t have to respond so (he thought) aggressively.
“I’m nobody and your somebody”.
That, to me, sums up the psyche and impetus of a heckler.
I observed that it was strange that people on boats wave to people on other boats but didn’t do that sort of thing when they were on land, say in cars or buses (you don’t see people in cars or buses waving to people in other cars or buses do you?).Anthony kindly obliged me by mentioning it in his act.
Maybe they’re waving because they’re about to crash – Sydney ferries crash far too often for my liking.
Put it this way – Sydney gives Bangladesh a good run for its money when it comes to ferry crashes.
3:30 pm
Friday, August 03, 2001
“To eat they had a handful of white sugar sachets, to drink a liter of water which froze at night and in pursuing their dream of fleeing Australia for a better life they rode across the continent on the roof of a goods train at speeds of up to one hundred and ten kilometers per hour.
Three Iranian men who escaped from the Woomera detention center waited for days in the desert before jumping the train for the 2150-kilometer journey to Perth.
Their mission?
To get to another country with a more sympathetic attitude to their application for refugee status.
Their big disappointment was that the train was headed the wrong way.
One wanted New Zealand, another wanted to head for Canada.
Australia, which they had been told by people smugglers who brought them from Indonesia would treat them well had become a country they wanted to flee…
Sentenced to eight months jail for escaping…
Mr. Keily (their solicitor) said the men were not upset about going to jail – “they made the comment to me that the remand center here is much more comfortable than Woomera”.
This left the Magistrate with few choices he said – “what sort of penalty do you give to people who have just escaped from a concentration camp? – a bond wasn’t an option so the choice was prison or a detention center and they prefer prison”
- “Escapees jump on the slow train to a country jail” (Andrew Stevenson, today’s Sydney Morning Herald)
This reminded me of the equally ill-fated convicts who used to escape their prison settlements and trek across the country in the vain hope of reaching China (which they thought was across the continent) in the early days of White settlement here.
Plus ca change.
Putting aside the Aboriginals (the decimated and alienated ghost people who make up one percent of our population), everybody else in Australia, from the British colonists who founded the colony, to the most recent Asian immigrants are illegal immigrants in this country.
Nobody is an Australian but everybody is an Australian.
We’re all in it together; nobody has primacy over anybody else – just a couple of years.
E.g. Anglo-Australians, whose ancestors arrived here two hundred years ago, have simply been here longer than an Asian who arrived five years ago.
By coming from somewhere else and settling on Australian soil, you, like any existing Australian or any Australian who’s ever existed or will exist, are an Australian.
I think that almost anybody who manages to get to Australia should be allowed to stay here because they have passed the unwritten Australian test – they got to Australia (like every other Australian has ever done before).
Australia is like the try zone on a rugby ground – the melee that occurs on the rest of the field is like the chaotic rest of the World.
But if you can get the “ball” from that and into the safe zone (Australia), then you’re in.
A terrorist threw a bomb into a crowded Jerusalem marketplace today (police are looking for a man of Middle Eastern appearance).
GOLD STANDARD
Commenting on Australian sports stars and the reverence they’re accorded, somebody retorted with “how many gold medals have you won?”
I replied that I hadn’t known that winning a gold medal was the prerequisite for expressing an opinion in this country.
FIGHT BREAKS OUT ON SET OF JERRY SPRINGER SHOW
The Kremlin has declared the Russian nuclear submarine the Kursk, which remains at the bottom of the Barents Sea along with the remains of it’s 118 man crew after sinking nearly a year ago, “the most successful submarine ever”.
“We don’t understand what all the fuss is about – it’s a submarine and submarines are meant to be underwater”.
“The Kursk is a victim of it’s own success”
BEJIING TO HOST 2008 OLYMPICS
- Hangman to debut as an Olympic sport
Cigarettes don’t kill people, smoking does.
PHILOSOPHERS URGED NOT TO ANSWER EVERY CENSUS QUESTION WITH A QUESTION
A couple of weeks ago I met a Waspish urban thirty-something yuppie who made the very rich claim that she was descendant from the exotic nomadic spear-carrying mountain dwelling Berbers of North Africa.
This strikes me as typical Western yuppie grass is always greener on the other side-ism.
I got to wondering whether there were Berbers who claimed to be descendant from “exotic” sedentary mobile phone-carrying urban Sydneysiders.
I also wonder whether there are exotic Tibetan Buddhists who have converted to “exotic” Australian Anglicanism picketing the Australian Embassy in Beijing demanding that their Australian co-religionists be released from the oppressive yoke of, say, the GST – just like the Australian Anglicans who have converted to Tibetan Buddhism picket the Chinese Embassy here demanding freedom for Tibet.
Despite all the media rabblerousing incitement about ethnic crime gangs here in Sydney, such ethnic crime gangs are not a new phenomenon here – ethnic crime gangs first appeared in Australia circa 26th January 1778 (wearing t-shirts that said “you don’t have to be a criminal to get sent her but it helps”).It can also be argued our most famous folk hero, Ned Kelly, was a member of an (Irish) ethnic crime gang.
12:00 pm
Tuesday, July 24, 2001
“BACKYARD BLITZ” FOR OUR PACIFIC BACKYARD
The Australian government has refused a request by the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu to relocate its entire eleven thousand strong population to Australia.
Tuvalu says that rising water levels will eventually waterlog and submerge their entire nation.
Why don’t we just send the “Backyard Blitz” (“popular” home improvement program on local television) crew to build a giant pergola or something for the entire Tuvaluan population to shelter in?
A question for nonsmokers – “how many cigarettes do you not smoke a day?”
“Have you cut down?”
I know some nonsmokers who don’t smoke up to two or three packets a day.
When you accept that life sucks (to put it simply), you’ll never be sad or miserable again – you’ll just be sad and miserable all the time (which is to be expected in view of those circumstances).
But it’s a different sort of sadness and misery, a sort of ambient sadness and misery that is a lot easier to cope with than sadness and misery that occurs occasionally when one is of what would be called a “normal” disposition.
This “sadness” and “misery” is not of the kind usually associated with those terms, it’s a kind of “happy”, accepting, resigned, worldly fatalistic and realistic sadness and misery.
When sadness and misery are constant they cease to be sadness and misery they just become normal and something one is used to and expects and accepts – without delusions and illusions.Besides, they’re the only things in life that are consistent and faithful
2:00 am
Tuesday, July 17, 2001
Just about to go to sleep (hopefully).
While having a couple of cigarettes in windy weather outside I was reminded of the man who told me, sitting on our balcony in Harisa, that he smokes three packets a day but four packets if it’s windy.
I think that they ought to ban television ads or programs that have telephone ringing in them.
There are so many of them and they’re so stressful – you constantly think that your phone’s ringing, until you put the volume down and finally figure out that it’s not your phone that’s ringing.
I read in the paper today that Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was divorced, after thirty-five years of marriage, by his wife, Janet, because she thought that he had no sense of adventure.“One of these days, Alice, pow, right to the moon!”
I can’t understand all the fuss about technology – e.g., you can’t open a newspaper these days without seeing a section on computers.
They’re appliances for Christ’s sake!
Imagine having a newspaper supplement called “Fridge”.
I also think that calling a newspaper supplement “Money” (the Sydney Morning Herald) is a bit indelicate and vulgar.
“BEAUTIFUL APATHY” – THE STORY OF MY LIFE
My Year Eight Italian teacher wrote that comment on my report card (next to the F).
How poetically evocative, how Italian!
Know everything, care about nothing.
We’re just visitors on earth, just passing through.
Like ambassadors to a foreign country, you know everything about it but it doesn’t concern you.
5:15 am
Tuesday, July 10, 2001
Half watched (whilst reading the paper) the Wimbledon final on television yesterday with Rebecca and Jeff – Croatian Goran Ivanisevic prevailed over Australia’s Pat rafter in what was described as one of the closest and most exciting finals in the history of the tournament.I’ll take their word for it.
5:30 pm
Sunday, July 08, 2001
Recovering today after a big night out in Sydney.
Caught up with Anthony and we had a couple of drinks and dinner in the Cross and then went to a pub to watch some of the football.
It was a great night for sport, as it almost always is in Australia, with an Australian playing at Wimbledon, the Australia versus. Britain rugby union game somewhere in Australia and the Australia versus England Ashes cricket test match at Lords*.
After that we went to the upstairs section of the pub (the Laugh Garage) and saw three pretty unfunny acts – one of them was particularly unfunny and Anthony said that he was a new age comedian who didn’t have to be funny.
I almost felt that I’d be kicked out for laughing – it wasn’t in the spirit of things.
Gary Eck who was very funny and still walks like he wants to buy carpet saved the night.
That was one of his old jokes about being harassed by carpet vendors in Turkey – “you walk like you want to but carpet”- and it was the first thing that I greeted him with after having not seen him for three years.
Unfortunately he didn’t do said carpet routine, nor “Transport” – about being harassed by taxi drivers in Bali – but he’s promised that he will do them by popular demand next week if I come and see his gig at the Comedy Store.
I’m still smoking and still unpopular – smoking is very unfashionable and unpopular in Australia these days.
Such is the extent of the fear and horror about smoking that you could probably rob a bank with an unlit Marlboro Red cigarette these days, threatening to light up if your demands for dollars aren’t met – a la people who are robbing banks and shops with syringes allegedly full of AIDS contaminated blood.
Imagine the ensuing siege - police armed with big Cuban cigars outside encircling the bank.We all know that JFK was really assassinated by passive smoking and that it couldn’t of been by Lee Harvey Oswald – the cigarettes that he was smoking up there in the Texas Schoolbook Depository were really weak (Alpines or something) and that it must have been a second secondhand smoker on the grassy knoll who really did the deed.
*“Watching the Aussie’s is like a porn movie – you always know what is going to happen in the end”-Mick Jagger on the Ashes
I suggest that the ACCC – the Australian consumer watchdog – investigate the board game Monopoly for monopolization.
6:00 pm
Tuesday, July 03, 2001
Just got home from a fairly busy and productive day (by my standards) in Sydney.
Shopping and lunch with Maha, dinner and drinks with Anthony and catching up with Matt after that.
Anthony and I came up with an unorthodox solution to the Palestinian/Israeli quagmire – appease and placate Yaser Arafat with a position on the Campbelltown Council.
Arafat is one of the stumbling blocks to the peace process and seeing his main ambition is to have any position of power at any cost then that would be ideal.Anyway, it can be argued that the President of the Palestinian Authority is just a glorified (Israeli) Councilor.
2:15 am
Saturday, June 23, 2001
“Like all Prime Ministers, Chifley had a dedicated phone on his desk known only to his wife and senior colleagues and advisers.
It was of course a silent number but apparently it was only one digit removed from the number for the butcher shop in the nearby suburb of Manuka and every now and then the phone would ring and when the Prime Minister of Australia answered he would find some housewife calling wanting to leave her meat order for the weekend.
And what would Chifley do?
Of course he’d simply take down the order for the chops, the leg of lamb whatever, say nothing to the caller except “yes Madame”, then, when she’d rung off, he’d phone the butcher himself and say “it’s happened again” and he’d repeat the order and the butcher would duly have the meat delivered and the original caller would never be the wiser.
It’s a wonderful story and could only of happened probably in the Australia of half a century ago and only with a Prime Minister like Chifley I suspect.”
-Allan Ramsey in today’s Sydney Morning Herald on the train driver who became Prime Minister.
The average age in Australia is 35.
The Sydney to Melbourne air route is the third busiest in the world.
The second most widely spoken language in New South Wales homes, after English of course, is Arabic.
“My expectation of a good Australian is when white people would be proud to speak an Aboriginal language, when they realize that Aboriginal culture and all that goes with it – philosophy, art, language, morality, kinship – is all part of their heritage and that’s the most unbelievable thing, that it’s all there waiting for us all – white people can inherit forty thousand or sixty thousand years of culture and all they have to do is reach out and ask for it”
“Charles Perkins: An Autobiography”
Germaine Greer expressed similar feelings when she told a BBC World Service radio program about Australian identity that all the navel gazing going on about Australian identity these days (European vs. Asian) was unnecessary – Australians already have an identity, culture and history and it is Aboriginal.
The national Australian rugby union team, the Wallabies, are currently hosting the visiting British national team, the British Lions, in a series of three games.
Some of the “action” from the stands includes British fans shouting (to the Australians) “get your stars off our flags” and Australians fans rejoining with “what’s the matter mate, couldn’t you afford the whole flag?”
PLUS CA CHANGE
Immigration, particularly boat people, is a controversial issue in Australia at the moment (when hasn’t it been?).
A cartoon by Tandberg in the Sydney Morning Herald depicts two Aboriginals standing on the shore looking out at a tall ship, presumably a First Fleet ship, in the bay and one saying to the other “you can’t trust these boat people”.
ADVERTISING – APPLY LIBERALLY
Since coming into power in 1996 the Liberal federal government has spent a record 1.5 billion dollars on advertising, marketing, consultancy etc.Dressing up mutton to look like lamb.
5:00 pm
Sunday, June 03, 2001
Miranda Devine’s column in today’s Sun-Herald is about envy being the most mysterious part of the Australian psyche.
She attributes this to “the rebellious anti-authoritarian psyche of captured people who later became subjugated by bureaucracy – it seeps through generations”.
I agree.
Australians are indeed subjugated by bureaucracy.
Australia is the most over governed and over regulated country in the world and there ought to be laws against this!
Sam’s moved into his new mansion on the hill.
An elegant and luxurious sprawling modern minimalist place with all the mod cons, it has one inconvenience – it has an outside dining room.
His parent’s place – some 300 metres down the hill.
That joke’s a “feature” of the “guided tours” I take visitors on – “here’s the billiards room…the cinema room…and there’s the dining room (pointing down the hill)”.
“The only nation to pass from barbarism to decadence without the intervening stage of civilization”.
- George Bernard Shaw on what I call “the accidental superpower”, the United States.
At the risk of sounding like “what have the Romans ever done for us?” what do the American’s have that enables them to be or makes them deserving of being a superpower other than military might and economic supremacy (just about the only things that make a superpower these days)?
The Americans have no culture, no great intelligence or education, nothing!
There are all sorts of terrible side affects being reported by people taking the popular new smoking cessation drug Zyaban, but I think that the worst side affect (it certainly doesn’t appear to be a primary affect) by far is that it makes you not want to smoke, give up smoking.
5:00 pm
Tuesday, May 29, 2001
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women are created evil.
“HORSE RIDING KILLS TWENTY EACH YEAR
…The number of horse related accidents has prompted a year-long pilot study in New South Wales and Victoria into what exactly makes the sport dangerous”
- Daily Telegraph (Sydney)
I volunteer that falling off horses makes the sport dangerous perhaps.
The article also reveals that riding a horse is more dangerous than riding a motorcycle.
Which brings to my mind another little known fact – more people are killed every year by donkeys and mules than are killed in plane crashes.
The current shenanigans in Indonesia, where Vice-President Megawati Sukarnoputri is trying to depose the country’s first ever democratically elected President Abdulrahman Wahid, is living proof that women should not be allowed any sort of power.
Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile!
Indonesia is practically Australia’s only foreign affairs interest.The international coverage in most Australian media might as well be titled “Indonesia” – “coming up after the break, the Indonesian news”.
Another day another Australian corporate collapse – mobile telephone company One.tel is on the rocks (some of the papers are calling them “None.tel”).
Their advertising jingle used to feature the chorus “tell all your friends about One.tel”.
Indeed, “tell all your friends (about One.tel) but don’t tell the police”, as the old dodgy spruiking line used to go.
And what if you did “tell all your friends about One.tel”? (I know I did – I’m a sucker for advertisements that order me to “onadvertise” the advertised product).
How guilty would you feel, how much face would you of lost and how much shame and dishonour would you of brought upon your family and your venerated ancestors?
Japanese people would commit suicide over that sort of thing.
5:00 pm
Sunday, May 27, 2001
Got home an hour ago from a night out.
Went to a ballet performance in Newtown with Bronwyn and then we went to a party in Edgecliff with an Indian bloke we met there – an economist at the recently opened World Bank office in Australia.
Although his card reads “ECONOMIST POVERTY REDUCTION AND ECONOMIC MANGEMENT EAST ASIA AND PACIFIC REGION”, he claimed that there was no cause for concern - the office was here to deal with the region more than Australia.
I don’t know - I think it’s rather ominous that the World Bank now has an office in Australia (maybe it’s our declining dollar).
The usual raucous Nightride to Campbelltown and then taxi home from Campbelltown station.
The taxi driver certainly wasn’t too happy with the economic (apparently everything above the ground in Australia is foreign owned) and otherwise situation in Australia.
He emigrated here from Italy in 1970 on an adventure of sorts, ended up marrying and getting “stuck” here as he put it.
He opined that in this country you and your wife had to work just to make ends meet and that it wasn’t the “Lucky Country” at all – in Italy his mother and his sister never worked a day in their life he said.
He told me that he’d rather be in Italy eating onions than in Australia and, obviously not knowing that my parents were back in Lebanon already, said “your parents would walk back to Lebanon if they could”.
He also said that Australia was the most racist country on Earth and that you’ll never belong here and that this will never be your country.
Bummer!
The flip side of the Australian dream that we don’t hear that often.
6:07 am
Friday, May 25, 2001
A wedding hall collapsed in Israel today, killing scores of people.
Structural defects were blamed, so Hamas took the day off.
There’s got to be a Jewish mother-in-law joke in there!
(In a Jackie Mason New York Jewish type accent) “My mother-in-law’s so fat – I told my wife, ‘don’t bring your mother!’”
Also in the Middle East, another news story begging for a joke.
A Lebanese Armenian stole a light plane from Beirut International Airport yesterday and flew it into Israel.
After several warnings and fired warning shots, the Israeli army shot down the plane – killing its occupant.
There’s got to be an Armenian joke in there somewhere, don’t know what it is but there’s got to be one, possibly a la the jokes based on the difficulty Armenians have with the feminine and masculine in Arabic (e.g. an Armenian wanted to go to Our Lady of Lebanon and ended up at Christ the King – am I sounding like Ali G’s Borat character with these Central Asian jokes?).
“So the Armenian misunderstands, goes to the airport, steals a plane and flies it to Israel and gets shot down”.
There’s the punch line- I just need the joke.
9:03 pm
Thursday, May 24, 2001
Just got back from Sydney on the last train out of Sydney after catching up with Anthony.
We had dinner and drinks and then we walked over to Sydney Harbour – taking in the majesty of the Harbour, the Bridge, the Opera House etc.
I expounded to Anthony on my theory that the Sydney Harbour precinct should come under international (or at least national jurisdiction), like the plans being proposed for the Holy Land, particularly parts of Jerusalem.
Just like Jerusalem is pivotal to all monotheistic faiths, Sydney Harbour is pivotal to all Australian “faiths” and should be “desydneyed” as it is about Australia and not just Sydney.
When Captain Cook and then the First Fleet sailed into nearby Botany Bay, they weren’t sailing into Sydney or New South Wales but were sailing into Australia, thus that area is unique, pivotal and important to all Australians and should be depoliticised.
It merely happens to be in the city of Sydney and the state of New South Wales – Sydneysiders are merely the custodians of Sydney Harbour.
Just as King Fahed of Saudi Arabia styles himself as the “Custodian of the Two Holy Sanctuaries of Mecca and Medina” but they don’t belong to him or the Meccans or Medinans but to all Muslims, Sydney Harbour should belong to all Australians.
Or maybe even like the Vatican – it’s in Rome and Italy but it is a separate entity and the home of all Christians.
It’s just a matter of time before we see UN peacekeeping forces at Sydney Harbour to implement this.
Afterwards, I popped over to the “Capital” to see Matt.
When one is in Sydney it is a matter of protocol and courtesy to visit the “Capital”.
Walking back from Darlinghurst to Museum train station, I saw the familiar female busker who was, as she was last time I saw her, singing “Zombie” by the Cranberries.
It seems to be a recurring theme for her - maybe she’s Irish.
With their tanks and their bombs, they are fighting…
“She has an Evita Peron complex – she truly believes she is a political phenomenon when in fact she is the fortunate beneficiary of a political phenomenon”
- Editorial on Pauline Hanson in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.
1:20 am
Wednesday, May 23, 2001
I’m waiting for Aunty Mary to get home to give me a lift to Campbelltown train station to catch a train (duh) into the city and catch up with Anthony.
Whilst waiting, I’m listening to my favourite Australian radio station – 2RPH.
I used to read for 3RPH (the Melbourne station of the RPH network) in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Basically, it’s just non-stop reading of newspapers, magazines etc (except from 11.00PM until 6.00AM where they relay my favourite international radio station – the BBC).
As the name Radio for the Print Handicapped suggests, it’s ostensibly for blind people but it’s it appeals to a far greater demographic than that e.g. illiterate people, people learning English, people who are too busy to read the papers etc.
I find it a great service – I can listen to the newspapers!
Right now I’m listening to “Suburban Smorgasbord” (I love the daggy names) – a roundup of suburban newspapers, broadcast every weekday from 3.00PM to 4.30PM, punctuated by clips of gay (in the old sense of the word) music.
Where else on the radio would you hear “The Pushbike Song”?
Riding along on a pushbike honey, you look so pretty…
3:40 pm
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
The Federal budget was tabled in Parliament today.
Very much an election budget with plenty of sweeteners and tax breaks etc but that’s not addressing the core problem - it’s the GST stupid and there’s no relief on that front.
Experts say that smoking may cause impotence.
Good – it leaves you more time to smoke
8:49 pm
Sunday, May 20, 2001
Went to the football this afternoon with Sam and Kerry and Michel and Debbie and the kids to see the Bulldogs take on the Dragons at the Sydney Showgrounds at the Olympic complex.
I’m now well and truly a convert to rugby league.
Although I was born into Australian Rules football and grew up as an Aussie Rules fan for the past dozen years or so I’ve been a lapsed non-practicing one.
Incidentally, the doggies lost today.
Who let the dogs out?
No one!
No one let the dogs out today, it’s as if they weren’t even there.
I saw little sign of “hooliganism” at the game but outside the stadium I saw police clearing away a group of Lebanese Muslim Canterbury supporters who were carrying a banner that read “leave us alone” (as if these indulgent morons where Chinese pro-democracy protestors or something).
A lot of people have said that these reprobates give Lebanese a bad name; I think that they give hooligans a bad name.
Calling them “football hooligans” is definitely a misnomer.
I think the best way of dealing with these so-called “football hooligans” is to copy a technique used in the animal world and import natural predators – real football hooligans from the UK who would sort them out and eat them alive.
So our current immigration requirement shouldn’t be skilled trades people (who we apparently have a dearth of and are in need of) but proper soccer hooligans.
An article in the Daily Telegraph (London) shows a picture of the man who blew himself up outside a shopping mall in Israel killing five Israelis and provoking an Israeli military response in the Occupied Territories under the headline “This man reignited the Middle East war”.
It’s just another typical example of the pro-Israeli anti-Arab bias of most Western news media.
The suicide bomber did not reignite any war – the war has been going on non-stop for years.
As a matter of fact, the bombing was in declared retaliation for the killing of five Palestinian policemen by the Israeli army on Monday (an operation which the Israeli government has described as “a mistake” though without offering an apology).
“I looked for people to back up my views and then attributed them”
- “The World From Italy: Football, Food and Politics”, George Negus.
That pretty much sums up what all journalism and writing is about, despite all the myths about objectivity etc.
The average weekly wage for an Australian male is $883.80 (450 US).
“Wealth beyond what is natural is no more use than water to a container that is full”
- Epicurean philosophers (ancient Greece).
8:30 pm
Thursday, May 17, 2001
CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
-I’ve seen two different contestants on two different Australian game shows mistakenly answer “Martin Luther King” rather than Martin Luther” to questions about who lead the Protestant Reformation.
-I once enquired about booking a ticket to Lebanon at a travel agency in Melbourne and was told that I needed to show evidence of a visa, as "all countries in Europe require an entry visa". Needless to say, I took my custom elsewhere - they didn’t even know where it was!
IT’S GOOD TO BE KING
What do you call a Protestant male monarch?
Martin Luther King.
10:32 am
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
Australia’s second largest insurer, HIH, has collapsed leaving the government to bailout thousands of stranded policyholders.
An editorial in one of the papers picked up on this, pointing out that “companies want to privatise profits and nationalize losses”.
And on the sidelines of this latest economic debacle, a linguistic debacle is taking place with certain electronic media journalists, commentators and members of the public mispronouncing aitch as “haitch” (and HIH is practically all aitches - not since Hubert Horatio Humphrey, aka HHH, have Australians had it so tough).
But at least, they’re using the aitch, which isn’t always the case in Australian English – asked by a member of the public what he intended to do about “‘ousing”, Robert Menzies, famously replied “put an aitch in a front of it”.
How Marie Antoinette-esque – “Prime Minister, the people have no ‘ousing”, “let them say ‘aitch’”.
Typical of Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, an Australian Prime Minister (1939-1941, 1949-1966) who claimed to be “British down to my boot heels”.
5:57 am
Monday, May 14, 2001
Just got back from the Campbelltown Mall where I got my weekly stash of chips, chocolate etc, thus avoiding getting robbed by the “Great Train Robbers” (overpriced vending machines at train stations, which I’m often forced to resort to) and “convenience” stores that are far from convenient to one’s economy and have only about ten product lines.
6:30 pm
Sunday, May 13, 2001
Quite day in today after having gone out last night – went to the Establishment nightclub
(aka the Victorian Embassy) with Rob and company.
One of the highlights of the night was my 2.40 am Nightride bus ride home from Town Hall Station to Campbelltown, one of the better Nightrides I’ve been on actually - these after midnight train replacements are usually interminably long two and a half hour plus crawls.
The requisite yobbos that make such trips interesting were of the better variety – the more articulate, even charming and amusing, harmless variety.
They made those two and a half plus hours just fly, as the bus meandered through half of night-time Sydney pretending it was a train.
Off course, no Nightride is complete without a performance by the Yobbo Philharmonic Orchestra – the highlight of their performance was their accompaniment to “You’re So Vain” that was playing on the radio.
You haven’t lived until you’ve heard yobbos’ singing/shouting “YOU’RE SO VAIN!”
The bill also included a spirited yobbo rendition of Cold Chisel’s “Khe San”.
Halfway through the anthemic Aussie classic, one of the yobbos, obviously an intellectual as he was wearing glasses, mercifully stepped in and ordered them to stop, which they did.To the chagrin on one of the young ladies present who reproached him – “are you an Australian?” (to which one of his mates interjected “yeah but he’s a poofter”) “well you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
The Nightride is a real Yobbfest, like the Footy Show but uncensored.
Fortunately, some of the media are standing up for sanity and tradition in the “Pell Mêlée” as the Sydney Morning Herald called it – The Sun Herald’s editorial on Sunday 13th May (“A Priest in a Turbulent City”) balanced things up a bit and provided rare counterweight.
“We firmly believe the man is entitled to a fair hearing, we reject the condescending writings and pronouncements of those who appoint themselves the voices of liberal enlightenment yet display their own intolerance towards people who lead us in faith’.
I think that that intolerance is also extended to people who have opinions and values that differ and conflict with their own.
Also in the papers, excerpts from Humphrey McQueen’s newly released “The Essence of Capitalism”,
“Globalisation is merely the latest label for imperialism and monopoly”
I couldn’t agree more, but I divide this into two sub categories.
Internally, within their own countries and other like Western countries, these multinational corporations use their clout as a means of increasing their market share and also exploiting people who work for them with all sorts of new technologies.
Previously people would work from, say, nine to five and then go home, maybe taking a bit of work home with them, but with new technology, people are chained and harnessed to this new technology and their jobs – they’re effectively on call and twenty four hours a day.
Externally, these companies are doing the same sort of thing but are also pitting the might of their corporations, countries and economies against the total opposite in most countries in which they operate.
A company like British Airways outsourcing its back office to India is not creating opportunities for Indian workers and growth for the Indian economy but is merely exploiting them as cheap labour.
Pure and simple.
If these jobs truly are as good as these fiscal fascists keep banging on about then why don’t they give them to people in London?
That flimsy threadbare altruistic cloak they attempt to cover it up with is fooling nobody, but as with all forms of imperialism today, is covering it with the fig leaf of altruism.
Plunder, murder, exploitation, invasion etc are just as prevalent nowadays as they ever were but previously they were that pure and simple and not covered, cloaked, hyped or spun as they are now.
The United States invades Iraq to obtain, via blackmail, billions of dollars from its Arab cronies in protection money (just one of their adventure’s many sordid aims) and calls it the “liberation of Kuwait”.
Most of today’s political and economic empires were built on the blood, sweat, defilement, pillaging and exploitation of what we call the Third World.
That’s why I won’t lose any sleep over piracy – piracy is merely reverse imperialism, a tiny way of avenging past imperialism.
When somebody in some Third World hellhole reverse engineers some patented Western product they are merely reverse engineering imperialism
It’s a way of getting something back, albeit a trickle, from the one-way street of imperialism (globalisation as it calls itself today).
Microsoft is the modern version of the East India Company – using a modern form of gunboat diplomacy.
Microsoft made the Lebanese parliament change statutes and outlaw piracy so that poor sods couldn’t buy programs for a couple of thousand lira’s and had to pay as much as two thousand dollars in some cases for “legal” programs or else!
They then opened up an embassy in Beirut.
McQueen also quotes Adam Smith who told his students, in the 1770’s, that governments were “a combination of the rich to oppress the poor”.
My sentiments exactly, but I think that nowadays, in modern Western democracies, governments are a buffer zone between the rich and the poor, not necessarily oppressing the poor but pacifying and placating them and keeping them in line, organized and under control so that the rich can oppress them, essentially facilitating this oppression.
The West is not a greater breeding ground for intellectual fruits; it just has the freedom to nurture them in those who are inclined that way but all that can’t create this.
In fact Western superficiality, materialism and banality smoothers this and intellectuals who emerge from this are often as superficial, materialistic and banal as the society they sprang from.
So, ironically and paradoxically, this freedom often only benefits those who don’t originally come from these societies but émigrés, exiles etc who reap the rewards of this freedom.
Unfortunately, a lot of these émigrés and exiles use their newfound freedom to attack the very societies that have freed them.
A couple of years ago, some naturalised British Muslims conspired with some Yemeni fundamentalists to attack the British Embassy in Sana!
Having done that, they hotfooted it back to Britain to claim political asylum.
Even whilst they were briefly detained in Yemen they demanded to speak to the “British Council” (sic) – they meant the British Consul (you know, the bloke they’d just tried to kill!) and not the British Council, which it can be argued they were more in need of (to learn bloody English and the difference between the British Consul and the British Council!).
5:15 pm
Friday, May 11, 2001
The new Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Doctor George Pell, was sworn in at Saint Mary’s Cathedral yesterday.
Arriving at the cathedral, he was greeted by protestors chanting “shame Pell, shame” and waving placards with “go to hell Pell” and “get your rosaries of our ovaries” (a reference to his opposition to lesbian women mothering children through the in vitro fertilization program).
Although Archbishop Pell has raised the ire of Sydney’s considerable gay and lesbian population, it is worth noting that he is not necessarily anti-homosexual (although he’s not necessarily pro-homosexual), but the die was cast when he refused to serve Communion to confrontational homosexuals wearing sashes advertising their homosexuality (their rainbow fag “flag”).
Regarding trouble at Canterbury Bankstown football games, police last night visited about twenty Bulldogs supporters suspected of hooliganism, ahead of today’s match between the Bulldogs and the Sharks, and issued them with warning letters warning them that they could be banned from all National Rugby League games.
These mostly Muslim Lebanese fans belong to a very distinct subculture, so I’m wondering whether the police spoke with to them, or had translators speaking to them in their own sub language - “Don’t make trouble owright or I’ll get my cousin onto you – my cousin Victorian Kickboxing Champion three executive years in a row!”
Linguistic explanation, it’s ironic and paradoxical that most of these types like using big words (although they never get them right), e.g. the “executive” for “consecutive” in the above sentence.
They’re also master tautologists, “three executive/consecutive years in a row!”
And most of them do indeed claim to have a cousin who was “Victorian Kickboxing Champion three executive years in a row!”
Once in Lebanon, Will and I were making fun of this and the Australian/Lebanese person we were with, unintentionally verified this by saying that, no surprises for guessing, his cousin was indeed “Victorian Kickboxing Champion!” although I can’t recall whether it was for “three executive years in a row”.
An Afghan cricket team has played Afghanistan’s first international cricket game, playing a Pakistani team in Rawalpindi.
Maybe they should of provided assurances that they wouldn’t blow up the stumps – anti-Islamic idolatrous false idols (a la Bamyan).
Cricket came to Afghanistan via returning Afghan refugees who had picked it up whilst in camps in Pakistan and has since become quite popular.
3:00 am
Wednesday, May 09, 2001
I've just got back from a night out with Maha and Matt.
When I got to Central Station this afternoon, I tried to call Matt from a public telephone but it was occupied by a man who was spelling, rather than speaking, – "boy (sic) for Barry…" (No NATO phonetic alphabet for this man – it's all names of blokes down the pub).
Realizing that a spelled out conversation was going to take a lot longer than an ordinary conversation, I ventured off looking for another phone booth, hopefully unoccupied or at least occupied by someone capable of stringing letters together, and got stuck in Sydney's torrential rain.
It doesn’t rain that often here, as opposed to Melbourne, but when it does rain, it really makes up for it – it buckets down, torrential rain, the Flood-type rain.
Matt has just got back from his trip to Qweld (QLD - Queensland) and he told us all about his travels north – including a visit to the Madrigrass Festival in Nimbin, the hippy, marijuana etc "capital" of Australia.
As the name suggests, there was lot of "grass" on offer – at stalls along the main road, just two hundred meters down from the police station.
The same police station that houses dogs which are used for drug raids.
My suggestion is that, rather than stiffer dogs, they get some Seeing Eye dogs to help them detect the marijuana stalls, which they're apparently blind to, just down the road from them.
On the subject of drugs, isn’t it ironic that heroin users get free needles from the government but diabetics have to pay for their needles (except in NSW where they’ve been receiving free needles for the past six months – but even that is tenuous, with rumors that it's going to be scrapped)?
Obviously diabetics should give up their insulin indulgence and take up something considered essential and necessary enough by the government to warrant issuing of free needles - like heroin.
Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has apologized for what he claims is the "accidental killing" of a four month old baby during Israeli shelling of a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza (isn’t the whole of Gaza essentially a Palestinian refugee camp?).
Ariel Sharon has really come a long way – previously he'd kill Palestinian children at Palestinian refugee camps and now he kills Palestinian children at refugee camps, but now he apologizes for it ("sorry, there'll be no more accidental killing of children - only deliberate killings of children!).
What a statesman – being elected Prime Minister has obviously done him and the world a world of good!
A kinder, gentler Ariel Sharon.
Matt is very intelligent and informed, but the only news that he’s interested in right now is that that pertains to his work, the dance music scene, so he asks me for regular briefings on current affairs.
In that capacity, I was telling him about the Pope’s recent trip to Greece and the controversy it generated – due to the Great Schism (Catholic/Orthodox*) of 1054 (to put it simplistically) and explaining the history of said schism to him.
During this, in a Beavis and Butthead-esque moment, he asked me “did we learn this at school?”
“Of course we did” I lied jokingly, “this was the only thing we learnt at school, we learnt this every day, how can you not know this!?!”
But, in truth, of course we didn’t learn about the Rome/Constantinople divide, we learnt about the Sydney/Melbourne divide – that great Australian tale of two cities.
This rivalry is pretty much one-way – Sydneysiders have a superiority complex and look down on Melbournians, who are too cool to care.
But it’s more often than not good natured and in jest.
About twenty years or so ago I was with Sam at his university in Sydney.
Sam was telling a classmate that we had to get back to Campbelltown because I had to catch the bus to Melbourne.
The classmate asked whether I lived in Melbourne or was going there for a visit.
Sam replied ‘’he lives there – who’d want to visit Melbourne?’’
They jokingly call their southern neighbours Mexicans.
Even the state apparatus join in on the fun.
Once Noel me mate and I got pulled over by the police for a routine traffic check in Sydney and the policewoman, on learning that we were from Melbourne, joked that we were Mexicans.
So what is the difference between Sydney and Melbourne?
In my opinion the difference came be summed up in this metaphor - Melbourne is the queen of the Southern Hemisphere whereas Sydney is the beauty queen of the Southern Hemisphere.
Beggars it seems, can be choosers – a heroin user, interviewed on TV about, the new legal safe heroin injecting room (sic) was complaining that, being on a busy street, it wasn’t private enough.
They obviously need something more exclusive, with valet parking and room service heroin – Sheraton on Heroin.
We’ve already established that the Melbourne uniform is Country Road, but the Sydney uniform is two-toned t-shirts and tops (where the body is one colour and the sleeves are another colour) - all the rage here in Sydney, very cool and trendy in a Sydney sporty casual way.
I’m quite a fan of them myself – I’ve bought two of them (when in New Rome does as the New Romans do).
Although my Sydney uniform is of the cheaper variety – having paid $11.95 and $19.95 respectively for my two two-toned t-shirts (a Sydney tongue twister) at Harris Scarfe (a middle-of-the road Sydney department store).
I never pay full price! I want top-quality, top brands and top value at the lowest price!
I also bought some Cotton/Nylon/Elastane “Sock it to me” (get it?) brand “Aussie Socks”, emblazoned with the Australian flag, for $2.20 from Everythings a Bargain" at Liverpool Westfield Shoppingtown – ironically made in China, as are most Australian flags, souvenirs and even the Olympic Sydney 2000 merchandise!
A tragic footnote to all this, Harris-Scarf have since gone into receivership.
I fell guilty, responsible; it’s all my fault!
I knew that they couldn’t keep this up!
It’s one thing me never paying full price etc but what about those who have to bear the brunt of that?!?
*Aka Muslims with crosses.
Lebanese Maronites joke that Orthodox are closer to being Muslims.
This is exemplified in a joke doing the rounds in the early 1990’s about a Maronite who went to his parish priest and told him that he wanted to convert to Shiite Islam.
‘’We lost the war, such and such a (Maronite) leader is dead, such and such a leader is in exile, such and such a leader is in jail etc’’
The priest says ‘’you’ve got a point son but why don’t you stay within Christianity – why don’t you convert to Orthodoxy?’’
The man replies ‘’no- it’s not that bad!’’
1:45 am
Tuesday, May 08, 2001
I'm about to go into town to meet Maha and Matt in Darlinghurst.
What larks we'll have!
Darlinghurst is well and truly an autonomous and unique area.
You see all sorts of vice and gaiety (so to speak) that you wouldn’t see anywhere else in the ordinary Sydney.
Also, it's a lot more festive, gayer (in both senses in the word) a lot more cosmopolitan and less formal, orthodox and conformist and even less Anglo for that matter.Not just in the obvious way, lifestyle, but I think that some of that also filters down intellectually, politically and culturally – a sort of Greenwich Village or a Haight Ashbury
4:00 pm
Sunday, May 06, 2001
Just two hours to go until the screening of the Sunday edition of Big Brother (or Big Bother – which it well and truly is) and the first eviction!
I won't sleep comfortably tonight knowing that one of those philistines is back in society.
The producers of that program have done society one service though – by rounding up twelve of the most annoying irritating wankers that ever lived and segregating them from the community in a ghetto of sorts.
5:30 pm
Writing in the Sun-Herald newspaper, the Prime Minister, John Howard, concludes his piece on the one hundredth anniversary of Australian nationhood
"We recommit ourselves to the same goals of peace honor and prosperity that our founders set for us a hundred years ago, convinced that they are within the reach of a united and kindhearted people."
Well said.
Just as in Lebanon a certain ally and a certain enemy have to be mentioned on all occasions, in Australia, sport has to be mentioned on all such occasions
"As proud Australians we also celebrate the achievements of our sportsmen and women who rank among the most successful of any in the world – our national teams have been worthy flag bearers of Australian pride and continue to be a source of tremendous unity to our people"
THE TRUTH ABOUT SPONGES
- renatoobeidsworld exclusive expose on the lies and myths of the "so-called sponge" industry
"Most of the so-called sponges sold in stores today are not true sponges – they are synthetic materials made to look and clean like true animal sponges.
Skeletons used as true commercial sponges consist of soft elastic sponge and fibers.
They are free from impurities and can absorb large amounts of water.
These qualities make sponges excellent cleaning tools.
True commercial sponges come from Tarpon Springs, off Florida's West Coast, and from waters off Key West, the Bahamas and Cuba.
Sponges are also taken from the Mediterranean Sea, off the coasts of Egypt, Greece, Tunisia and Turkey"
- World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 18, 1976
Are your sponges from Tarpon Springs, off Florida's West Coast, from waters off Key West, the Bahamas and Cuba, off the coasts of Egypt, Greece, Tunisia and Turkey?
No?
Didn’t think so – you my gullible friend have been sold a lie!
Soak that up!
How's that for investigative journalism!
Sponges - they're all a big lie!
Those lying sponges' merchants!
You can't hide your lying sponges anymore now that I've expunged (or should I say ex-sponged) your lies and deceit!
Smoker's cough is the "good cough"
It's like a burp after a good meal.
Smoker's cough is the cough that says "I've had some good smokin'".
Smokers cough – it's the cough worth havin'.
As a matter of fact, I think I got it now.
THROW TRANSPORT DOWN THE WELL
Sydney’s public transport system is very ordinary to say the least.
Put it this way, it’s better than Lebanon’s public transport system (aka “walking”) and worse than Melbourne’s – my personal yin and yang parameters of efficiency, practicality etc.
Although they’re always working on it, there’s no visible manifestation of the results of this “work” to be seen - except for closing down virtually the whole bloody rail network every second weekend (at least the Campbelltown line anyway) ostensibly for “track maintenance” (I didn’t know that there was any bloody track to maintain), although the real reason and aim appears to be to stultify, subdue and pacify the masses, especially those in the restive provinces.
How many times have I headed off for Sydney on a Saturday night, hell-bent on revolution and upheaval, only to find that the trains weren’t running and had to catch a replacement bus that thinks it’s a train, drives me around in circles in a not so merry-go-round for two and a half hours* and drops me off dizzy, exhausted and spent in the state capital?
If the Zapatista rebels, who seized four county capitals in the southeast Mexican state of Chiapas on New Years Day 1994, had of been driven around in circles for two and a half hours in a bus en route to those said county capitals from their jungle hideaways the exact same thing would of happened to them and the uprising would never of occurred.
State Rail (or should that be Statist Rail?) has inadvertently created a perfect way of quelling restive provincials.
* The reason why what usually takes around forty minutes on the train takes two and a half hours on the bus is that it has to follow the train’s regular route and stop at every station – which is much easier for a train to do than for a bus which has to weave in and out of cities and then back onto the highway etc.
1:34 pm
Tuesday, May 01, 2001
MOY DAY, MOY DAY!
May Day anti-globalization demonstrations held around the world.
On the television news this evening, I saw images of the Australian protests ? Australian kids quibbling with police over demarcation lines "your permit says you can protest here but not there ? listen to moy, look at moy!"
And then I saw some of the protests in Europe ? Molotov cocktail throwing rioters battling against armed police, tanks and teargas.
Now that's a protest/riot!
Unlike our version where you get a permit beforehand ? "excuse me Mr. "The Man", may I protest on such and such a day between such and such a time?"
Whoever heard of permit applying revolutionaries?
Can you imagine a Mr.V.I. Lenin sending in an application to Czar Nicholas II for a revolution permit - "dear Mr.II, may I please have a revolution permit to overthrow your regime?"
Just as "the revolution will not be televised"*, it also won't be permitted! (actually, it will be strictly forbidden!)
If Australia wants to compete on the world stage, as it always says it does, it's going to have to do a lot better than that!
How can we ever look a Northern Irishman or South Korean** in the face again?
But nearly all of the protesters have one thing in common ? they're part-time revolutionaries and fulltime hypocrites.
They'll protest against globalization and then they'll go off to McDonalds and have a Big Mac for lunch and go home and watch Foxtel and worry about their taxes.
A friend of mine took the day off from his $150,000 a year job at a multinational bank to protest against er?um?$150,000 a year paying multinational banks in the 2000 Melbourne S11 protests!
(in his defense, he's since quit that job)
*How will we know about it then? ? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody televises it, did it still fall?
**Asians are pretty adept at rioting too, particularly the South Koreans and Taiwanese.
Although the Taiwanese are not as good at street riots as the South Koreans are, preferring instead to specialize in parliament riots.
Sometimes I think that Taiwanese parliamentarians and Channel Nine are in collusion so that the Channel Nine Evening News can close their bulletin with footage of rioting Taiwanese parliamentarians ? the classic news-ending footage (when images of cars crashing and bursting into flames at Grand Prix races or cute newborn animals frolicking at the zoo aren?t available).
I was talking to a friend of mine today and she was saying how my aunty here spoils me, home cooked Lebanese meals etc, as does my mother back in Lebanon and that I can go anywhere in the world and get that sort of treatment.
"Hey, that?s globalization, the New World Order" was my response.
I telephoned Guy today to wish him a happy May Day.
It's not as inappropriate as it sounds ? Guy isn?t the workers enemy, as this anecdote, straight out of a happy version of "Bonfire of the Vanities", will verify.
When I was in Melbourne, Guy and I went on one of our drives back to the '"hood".
It was about 10.30 PM on a Thursday night, driving through Williamstown and past the dockyards, we saw a group of striking workers from the dockyards, camping out around a campfire, on a picket at the gates.
So Guy, the confident well-dressed businessman in his multi-thousand dollar Mercedes, pulls over and asks them what the story is.
They explained.
He then asked them whether they wanted any beers and, surprisingly enough just as the Pope is Catholic and children piss in the swimming pool, they said yes.
So we drove off on an emergency dash to the nearby bottle shop and got them two slabs* of VB ? the workers beer, go back to the dockyards and distribute the beer to the picketers who mill around shaking our hands, asking us questions (who we are, what we do?) and explaining their version of the affair.
Suffice to say, we made some friends that night ? they'll probably be telling their grandchildren this story which will become the stuff of union legend.
There's probably a law against that somewhere ? inebriating strikers or something or other (laws concerning alcohol and motorists are the only laws Australian parliaments seem to make).
*A "slab" is Australian for a carton containing twenty-four bottles or cans.
Anthony and I were sitting around at 4.00am one morning watching TV when Anthony turned to me and said "do you realize that we've got another fifty years to kill?"
That is the most accurate summation of both of our lives and our attitudes and Weltanschauungs that I've ever heard or thought of and probably that he's ever heard or thought of too.
It's no secret that comedians like Anthony and wannabe satirists like me are a pretty miserable depressive bunch – life is often so stupid, miserable, boring, banal and pointless that the best way to cope with it is to make fun of it, the only thing we can do is make fun of it.
I think that such people often have the truest and most accurate insight into life – life is so often just a bad joke, so let's just show it for what it is!
‘’The best way to defeat the devil is to mock him’’ as C.S. Lewis observed.
Comedy is a very unfunny business!
I learnt that on my last visit here, the "comedy tour" in 1998, when I spent a lot of time on tour with Anthony and the "crew".
This visit has been the "dance tour" - I've been spending a lot of time with Matt and his inthemix (dance music website) colleagues and their retinue of DJ's etc.
Whilst I enjoy that and other ventures into town, I also like being on the last train out of Sydney – heading back to my Campbelltown redoubt (just as in Lebanon I like to go back to my mountain redoubt in Harisa).
The last train out of Sydney's almost gone.
My verdict on dance music – it's nothing to sing and dance about.
And if you must sing and dance, then just play the record and shut up! – playing records is essentially what these DJ's are doing when you take away all the carrying-on and hype.
Jeff Mills (who I met during my adventures in danceland!) whacks a soundtrack onto a 1920's black and white movie, "Metropolis" (I attended the Sydney premiere! – "Dude, Where's My Car?" wins hands down) and then goes on a world tour to tell everyone about it!
I'm not a huge fan of "Seinfeld" – if I want to watch whining Jews I can just watch CNN.
Just one of several examples of CNN's pro-Israeli bias – they recently reported on some sort of Islamic conference held in Tehran which heard "controversial remarks" about the true extent of the Holocaust from Ayatollah Khamenei.
Now news must be looked at within its context - within the context of an Islamic meeting in Tehran, those comments surely weren't controversial.
In fact, in that context, not making remarks like that would be controversial.
Australians will never want for furniture.
There is so much furniture in this country and so many furniture purveyors.
And the proprietors of such establishments are always going crazy!
Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your relatives but don't tell the police!
They've gone completely mad! Bananas! They're giving it way! How long can they keep this up for!?!
Something must be done, this can't be good for the economy, no society ever got anywhere by giving furniture away* (look at what happened to the Ottoman Empire), and it's bound to damage us internationally – surely it must be against the World Trade Organization convention to give away furniture.
Fuzzy furniture – it must be the furniture equivalent of fuzzy economics.
*With a personal fortune of $53 billion, Ikea Furniture founder Ingvar Kamprad is the richest man in the world (Forbes 500 2004 – when I actually got around to transcribing this).
To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t get there by giving away! furniture.
Whenever I miss Melbourne and it's pretentious vain superficial formal and stuffy nightlife, I go to the Establishment bar here in Sydney.
I thought that that type of place was banned here in Sydney – as is any place where you can't wear a t-shirt, shorts and thongs and pretend you live in Miami or any place that doesn’t play Cold Chisel's "Khe San" and Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" (practically the state anthems here).
The Establishment is the closest thing we have to a Victorian Embassy here in New South Wales.
Another candidate for a possible Victorian Embassy is Country Road – purveyors of the Melbourne uniform (as Anthony used to call their wares – "lets go to Country Road and get a Melbourne uniform" he used to say as we trudged through the Bourke Street Mall).
Various possible methods of curtailing the rioting, vandalism and other raucous behavior of mainly Australian/Lebanese Muslim Canterbury Bankstown supporters are being entertained – including having local Muslim sheiks attend the games in the hope that they may set an example and shame their wayward flock into submission.
That could also go horribly wrong – what if the sheiks themselves get caught up in the game and issue a fatwa or declare a holy war against the infidel opponents?
There's no fear of the Islamic green flag or any other flag flying at rugby league games though – in a move apparently aimed at Australian/Lebanese fans who used to wave their Lebanese flags , "national flags not permitted" signs were on display at the recent Canterbury vs. Parramatta game I recently attended at Parramatta Stadium.
That can't be legal – whatever happened to freedom of expression or freedom of irrelevancy?
Don't people have the right to take an irrelevant (in this context) national flag to a domestic rugby game?
I used to have an Australian flag out on my balcony in Lebanon and no Lebanese ever asked me to take it down or banned it.
Should that be banned?
Should Australians be banned from waving Australian flags in support of Australian teams or nationals at overseas sporting events?
Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think that there have ever been any ‘’national flags not permitted’’ signs at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, home of the Wimbledon tennis tournament for example.
7:08 am
Saturday, April 21, 2001
Prime Minister John Howard announced today the appointment of the new Governor General of Australia, or should that be the new Ayatollah of Australia?
For the new GG designate, who will take up the post in June, is the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth.
It's the first appointment of a churchman as Australia's head of state and the Queens representative but Mr. Howard was at pains to point out that the current GG is a devout Roman Catholic and that his predecessor was a self-declared atheist.
So much for separation of church and state.
Unelected right-wing senior cleric as head of state sounds like an Ayatollah to me.
But maybe this country does need an Ayatollah, Ayatollah Hollingworth – there's an ad running on MMM, one of the country's major FM radio networks, advertising for prostitutes!
Another safe smoke – the government health warning on this packet says "your smoking can harm others".
F--- them, who cares?
As long as those "others'' aren’t smoking cigarettes with a similar warning - that could harm me (being an "other" in that particular context).
To counter my smoker's cough and smoker's rasp, I've been smoking more – a hair of the dog.
Seriously though, none of this should be in any way construed as my endorsing smoking – smoking is a vile deadly habit that kills one in two of its adherents!
Half of all long-term smokers die of smoking-related illnesses.*
What more disincentive do you need than that!?! – If there are two of you in a room smoking, statistically, one of you is guaranteed to die from it!
You're safer off playing Russian roulette!
Russian roulette is safer! – Out of six people in a room playing Russian roulette, only one is guaranteed to die! (That's not factoring in the participants chickening out and deciding to play dominoes instead)!
So next time you're having a smoke with your fellow death rowers, look around and know that half of them (including possibly yourself) are going to die of it!
The best way to give up smoking is to not take it up in the first place.
That I feel should be emphasized and worked on in anti-smoking campaigns (smokers are a different category entirely).
Prevention is vital – after all, all smokers where once non-smokers!
Even if you only smoke socially or occasionally, you should stop before smoking becomes the punctuation in your life.
You wake up you have a smoke
You get out of the shower you have a smoke
You have a meal you have a smoke
You have a break you have smoke
Before you leave home you have a smoke
You get home you have a smoke
Before you go to sleep you have a smoke etc etc etc
*Then again, all nonsmokers (still) die (anyway) of nonsmoking-related illnesses so smoking is arguably safer than not smoking according to my calculations. I’ve assured my young cousins that they can smoke as much as they like when they’re older and it won’t kill them – I will.
I happened to find myself at the casualty section of the Westmead Hospital in Parramatta at 2.00am on Saturday morning.
Somebody I was out with apparently got slipped a Mickey in their drink.
Alls well that ends well – they weren’t "cured" by a medical professional but recovered during our endless wait in the aptly named waiting room.
Our wait was understandable, amongst the distinguished personages in the waiting room ahead of us in the que were a druggie who claimed to be hearing voices and some sort of criminal who was handcuffed and escorted by two police officers.I was half expecting a Hollywood movie type situation, a la Diehard, where the criminal escapes and takes everybody hostage or something or other.
Ansett Airlines, who have a considerable chunk of their fleet grounded at the moment due to insolvency issues, are claiming that they have a perfect safety record.
Maybe that's because they never fly.
Pauline Hanson is up in arms after learning of a leaked memo from one of her favorite fashion outlets, Que, instructing staff to not sell her any of their wares because they apparently feel that she can do their image harm.
Never mind, she'll always have Kmart which suits her and her demographic better.
There's just not enough sport on Australian TV, there ought to be more.
The US/China spy plane standoff is over and I quite miss it actually.It wasn’t any Cuban Missile Crisis but it was the closest thing that this generation's had to it.
They say that Australia is a classless society and they're right.
People are a lot more easygoing here, down-to-earth, good natured, no airs and graces.
It's also just a lot easier to interact with people, to get on with people – people here have a lot less chips on their shoulders and baggage and are less guarded and less complexed, a lot more natural.
Although I'm staying in a mansion on a multi-acre property, outside the natives are getting restless - I do occasionally go into Campbelltown and it's a pretty rough area.
Single mothers, welfare dynasties (family's who have had three generations on welfare – grandparents, parents and kids) and, just down the road from here, there's an occasional Westie intifada – youths throwing stones at passing cars.
At night I always here police sirens.
Those old enough to remember other times tell me that Campbelltown wasn’t always like this – that it used to be a quite, peaceful close-knit community until the dreaded three words that no Australian community wants to hear HOUSING COMISION FLATS came along and there went the neighborhood.
About a month and a half ago I went to Katoomba (in the Blue Mountains) with Maha and Matt.
On the sidelines, there was a quintessential Aborigine - a middle-aged man wearing a loincloth and face paint, sitting down playing a didgeridoo.
Tourists where gathering around watching and yuppie Wasps were bringing their children up to him like he was Santa Claus or something.
The kids weren’t fooled by this black bearded Santa though – they were quite scared actually, despite him playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for them on his didgeridoo.
Who's going to apologize to them for that trauma!?!
I even heard one mother telling her child, as she led her away from the "audience" with the Abo, "that was special wasn’t it"
And I decided that I wanted an Aborigine – take him back to Lebanon for my little cousins, they've already got a Sri Lankan domestic to play with and this would make it quite a party.
We then had lunch at some friend’s of Matt – a gay yuppie couple who had quit the big smoke to live in a caravan in the middle of nowhere.
We had bought a roast chicken with us from the closest shops, which posed a problem as such delicacies in Australia are practically dipped in tar and there was no running water in this bush idyll (they had eschewed all modernity).
There were no tissues or serviettes either (unthinkable for Lebanese!) and I had quickly used up the emergency tissue that I always carry with me.
To make matters worse, they had two huge unruly dogs who jumped and slobbered all over me as their “parents” did nothing to stop them (there’s an argument against same-sex parents).
My clothes were soon covered in dust and dog slobber (I couldn’t wipe my hands there) so I decided to kill two birds with one stone – clean my hands and get back at the dogs.
I proceeded to wipe my greasy hands on the dogs when nobody was looking (they were cleaner than I was by that stage) – “washing” them by wiping them on one dog and “drying” them by wiping them on the other dog.It was a very pleasant afternoon and they were lovely people but I couldn’t wait to get back to Sydney and running water and a very placid lapdog that does a perfect statue imitation (the Boo Boo dog).
Last time I was in Australia I visited a household where the dog was not as welcoming.
The little terrier/terror ‘’greeted’’ me with barks and growls but eventually settled down, accepting my presence as a fait accompli, until I had the impertinence to call his name later on
That reopened old wounds – every time I called his name he’d erupt in protest, barking something to the extent of ‘’I reluctantly accepted your presence but don’t need to be reminded of it and I certainly don’t need your impertinent calling me by name, now let sleeping dogs lie and shut up!’’.
I arrived in Sydney on Friday 2nd March - I fled Melbourne as a refugee on the eve of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix that was brewing in the gentile lakeside suburb of Albert Park where I was staying.
How can I sleep in the day with the din of bloody fighter jets showing off!?! - "practicing" for Sunday's festivities.
If our air force needs to "practice" for a couple of laps over a race track then what chance do they have in actual combat!?!
Out of the frying pan and into the fire – in Sydney it was the eve of "Sydney Day" as I call it, The Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras!
One of the topics of the hour in Australia is still the GST (Global Suffering Tax).
How it works is a bit of a mystery to everyone, including the government – it's talked about a lot but nobody quite understands it but it is all pervasive, it's everywhere!
And that in my opinion is the essence of the GST – unhappy with a taxation rate that was already one of the highest in the world, the tax grubbing government just decided to tax EVERYBODY for EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME!
Voila, the GST.
And that's something bilateral, something that all political parties can agree to – there's a consensus on tax.
Meet Joe Black; meet John Howard and Kim Beazley.
Whilst it's true that you can't fool all of the people all of the time, you can indeed tax all of the people all of the time for everything!
That the Liberal government campaigned on the GST and won the last election on the strength of that is testimony to the dearth of talent in Australian politics (probably the first and last time in history that a party gets reelected by promising new taxes! – "read my lips, yes new taxes!").
The government announced a five hundred and forty seven million dollar "sports development program" yesterday.
Apart from being outrageously wasteful (over half a billion dollars on sport!), it's a huge misnomer – I thought that sports were already pretty well developed in this country.
A "sports development program" in Australia is like coals to Newcastle, Muslims to Mecca and single mothers to Campbelltown etc.
Charity drives are getting more and more "creative", the most recent being a "shave your head for childhood cancer" charity drive.
I can imagine them getting even more "creative" and outrageous.
Is this a charity drive of the future?
HAVE A WANK FOR CHARITY
Don't be a wanker, have a wank for charity on Red Knob Day
Go on, do it for the kids!
Red Knob Day – look stupid, feel great!
I think that developed countries suffer from information overload.
E.g. on the milk carton it says "for further information call…"!
What further information do you need!?! – It's milk, it comes from a cow and not a giraffe, drink it!
And to make matters worse, it's a free telephone call!
I think that people who are that stupid should have to pay for their telephone call to the 24 hour milk emergency hotline!
I went to my hairdresser in Liverpool today.
I'm pretty much used to him now, but there are three things that you don't want to hear from a hairdresser and I heard them all when I had my first and last haircut there (about a month and a half ago).
"Things aren’t going too well in my business, house painting (1), at the moment so I'm helping my wife here (2)" – but in my country, I'm an Iraqi Kurd (3), I'm a hairdresser" (paraphrasing).
Now who on earth gets their hair cut by an Iraqi Kurd!?! (Other than other Iraqi Kurds who seem to be his main clientele).
My pointing out on these pages that Kurds aren’t exactly renowned for their taste is not going to be an exclusive world first.
How many famous Kurd fashion designers or coiffeurs are there?
Which is understandable and excusable I guess when you're too busy ducking Turks, Saddam Hussein and treacherous Americans*.
I don't get my hair cut there (not since that first and last time), I just go there for grooming because Arabs (and they are Arabs although they pretend not to be) understand and have empathy with hair that isn’t on your head (i.e. on your face, neck etc and anywhere else that non-Aryans have hair).
Although he has the mandatory magazines, with pictures of various hairstyles you're never going to see, on display and goes through the pretence of asking you how you want your hair cut, he seems to come from the "one haircut fits all" school and that haircut is the "Saddam Hussein" for older men and the "Oudai Hussein" for younger men (I had to go around looking like Oudai Hussein for the two weeks they say is the difference between a bad haircut and a good haircut).
And he has a moustache.
What is it about Iraqi's and moustaches? - All Iraq's have moustaches (and the men have them too)!
When I go there to have my beard lopped off, he always asks me if I want the moustache off too (rhetorical question I'm sure - he can't imagine that anyone would actually answer yes) and when I answer in the affirmative, as I always do, he seems stunned and repeats the question as we get closer to that moment of doom.
I practically have to sign a release for him to shave off my moustache – one day he'll probably regale the folks back home with the story about the crazy white Leb* who shaves his moustache off!
Apart from its wonderfully diverse and multicultural inhabitants, Iraqi Kurd housepainters/hairdressers and all, the only other interesting thing in Liverpool is the train station – the recently upgraded twenty five million dollar Frank Lloyd Wright-esque (to my inexpert eyes) train station is a wonderful work of architecture that you only really see properly when you're entering it to leave Liverpool (at least you get a good last impression).
Off course one (not me one, some other one) could argue that any place that facilitates leaving Liverpool is wonderful, regardless of its architecture.
Note: Liverpool, Sydney, Australia should not be confused with Liverpool in the UK because they have one too – it's amazing how many English places are named after Australian places!
* Like George Bush Sr. – "rise up against Saddam and we'll help you…help you get visas to America and Australia (Liverpool specifically, where you can be housepainters/hairdressers) after masses of you have been slaughtered".
** He didn’t believe me at first when I told him that I was Lebanese – saying, in Arabic, "It's impossible for someone so white to be a son of Arabs"
Vietnamese are also on my hairdresser veto list.
It’s not racist but merely aesthetic – have you seen some of the hairstyles on some of them (mainly the men)?
Seeing that there are a lot of Vietnamese hairdressers around these days, this has led to a bit of an etiquette dilemma as to how to tactfully avoid getting my haircut by one of them.
I told my cousin Sam about this and he advised me to “just point to someone (non-Vietnamese) and say ‘I want her to cut my hair’”.
Sounds logical and straightforward enough but how would you explain it to them?Pointing to an assortment of women and saying “I want her” might sound okay at a whorehouse but I can’t quite see how I can pull that off at a hairdresser’s salon.
A dentist I went to in Melbourne asked me how many cigarettes I smoked a day.
When I replied that I was on about ten a day he said that, whilst in Lebanon that may not be much, in Australia it is a big deal.I told him that in Lebanon, ten cigarettes is breakfast!
Although Australia's next Governor General is to be a churchman, the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth, there isn't much religiosity in this country.
I think that Australia, like many other developed countries, feels that it doesn't need God.
There's a bit of hubris involved there.
I think that most Australians are oblivious to God, the church etc – I was in town yesterday and this morning, Saturday night out in Sydney, and I saw an apparently intoxicated young man pissing on a church, literally pissing on a church in the middle of town!
Whilst we're used to drunks relieving themselves whenever and wherever they get the urge, this was above and beyond that!
Shades of Sodom and Gomorra there – one can just imagine Roman revelers pissing on their houses of worship sometime just before the fall of Rome.
I can't' understand the international hue and cry over the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan – I really don't think it's the end of the world.
The Taliban are the authorities in Afghanistan and they fell that the statues are idolatrous (which they are) – that's fair enough, unto each his own.
Where was the outcry during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?
And if the Dalai Lama doesn’t like it, he can sit on a tack!
The Dalai Lama is a theocratic feudalistic dynastic dictator – the only difference between the Dalai Lama and Ayatollah Khomeini is that the Dalai Lama is not in power thus has to cover up his true nature so he can return to power just like the Ayatollah once did.
During his years in exile in France, Khomeini was revered as some sort of spiritual peaceful Mahatma Gandhi-like figure by the same loony liberal left-wingers who are now courting the Dalai Lama.
The only difference now is that the Dalai Lama has his own press agency – Hollywood (the likes of Richard Gere).
Something must be done to counter the insidious encroachment of the tentacles of Buddhism into the morally and spiritually hungry West.
Buddhism appeals to more and more of these "bankrupt" Westerners because it's novel, exotic, easy and trendy.
Supermarket religion - "I'll have a bit of Buddhism; throw in a bit Feng Shui and give me some of that New Age spirituality (sic)".
Their own religion isn’t good enough – it's too commonplace, too hard so they just cherry-pick parts of other religions that suit them and they can live with.
Apart from using these lost souls to further his political agenda, the Dalai Lama also benefits from them financially.
Make no mistake about it; the Dalai Lama is a multinational corporation just like McDonalds or Microsoft.
And a very astute corporation at that – he doesn’t go after the mass market like McDonald's do, but tailors his product to rich Westerners ("he's going for second and third homeowners" as my friend Noel Stovell* put it").
*Noel’s official title is “Noel Me Mate”.
I spent most of yesterday, Sunday, going through the Sunday trees – that is the Sunday newspapers which seem like entire forest loads of paper.
And I say "going through" because just turning all the pages can take a whole day let alone reading them (which I don't on account that most of what's in them is nonsense).
An American millionaire has just become the world's first space tourist – paying the Russians forty million dollars for that distinction.
At that price you'd want to shop around!
If I went into a travel agency and got quoted forty million dollars, I'd want to shop around – maybe the Americans, the French, other Europeans or the Chinese perhaps.
I can just imagine this bloke coming back to earth and telling his friends "it's a great place to visit but you couldn’t (literally) live there (oxygen issues etc)".
But he may not be the world's first space tourist after all, gays have beaten him to it – they go to Uranus all the time (a variation of the oldest pun in the world).
3:36 pm
|
|
| |
|
|
|
