May 31, 2004

Quack Quack!

From the SMH:

Governments need to review regulation of the complementary medicines industry to protect the public against poorly qualified and unethical practitioners, say the authors of Australia's first national survey of the field.

The report's lead author, Associate Professor Alan Bensoussan, said it was too easy for practitioners to attain credibility by joining, or even creating, dubious professional affiliations.

Professor Bensoussan, the head of the University of Western Sydney's Centre for Complementary Medicine Research, said getting a firm grip on the number of practitioners was "very, very difficult".

"At present there is nothing stopping people doing a weekend course in something to do with naturopathy and then putting a sign up and saying they practise it," he said. "There is fundamentally no authority they need to register with."

Reiki...

I mean....oh, never mind.

Posted by hakmao at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2004

Sunday Arvo...

Apologies for the continuing lightweight subject matter. Real LifeTM continues to intrude - assignments, drawings, exams and stuff that I actually get paid to do. I have a bunch of posts knocking around, but it all takes time...

Where I live, Real LifeTM likes to shin up the drain pipe, jump through the window and shout at you. Despite being well above ground level, one gets to hear all of the knock-down drag-out screaming matches that people like to have - the ones at 03:15 on weekday mornings are the best.

[catnap]

04:15 - Some very noisy chaps have a conversation on the street and then get into a car. The motor is almost redlining before the clutch is let out - there's a screech of tyres, the car travels about 10 metres and stops. The process is repeated until it finally fades - a ringing endorsement for driving while drugged.

[catnap]

07:00 - Some Britney lookalikes stagger back to their [parents'] car (which unfortunately is parked directly below the window), sucking on their alcopops, they drive away rather erratically - heading back to the suburbs.

[...]

16:25 There are some junkies wandering up and down the street arguing because the smack wasn't shared evenly.

[???]

Then there are those mornings when you are short a coin for the washing machine and walk down to the mini-mart to get some change, and you have to think seriously about where you live.

Stepping cautiously to avoid landing in any of the five major body-fluid groups - taking particular care to avoid the thick and broad smear of blood mixed with snot drying on the cracked terrazzo - no matter how much one loathes wearing shoes, they are an absolute neccessity - you decide that you really should move somewhere else.

None of this puts me in a mood conducive to writing much of anything...

Posted by hakmao at 05:17 PM | Comments (2)

May 28, 2004

Rubbish (not)

The link has been up for a few days, but I'd like to officially welcome A General Theory of Rubbish to my sidebar. Hop in, squeeze up, and if it starts getting a bit hot, you might have to stick your head out the window...

Tovarishch Kolya the Magnificent notes that [the author] Will calls himself "Will". Um yep - if I was to speculate wildly and rather irresponsibly, I might hypothise that that is indeed his name, something which may be lost on fanboy channellers.

Kolya has left a comment at aGToR (or is it GTR, or GToR?), saying that he "resile[s] somewhat from fulsome praise given the links..." Just as well - there's nothing worse than a fulsome Swappie - pull his ears and use him as a hat rack!

Returning to A General Theory of Rubbish - the world needs more materialists with a wicked sense of humour. Looking forward to more posts, comebacks, and Albert Einstein medal awards. Happy blogging, and may your ducks always be arranged to maximum effect!

Posted by hakmao at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

The blank space

I've been doing more stumbling. This time it's an article which appeared in the New York Times in 2002. It is a review of a new "new" translation of Sappho's works, or more realistically - fragments.

Virtually nothing at all is known about Sappho - most of the claims about her are mere supposition and wishful thinking. Maybe Sappho had sexual relationships with women, maybe she didn't. We'll never know - and it's not actually that important. She has been adopted as a lesbian icon - the paperback version of the Mary Barnard translations was standard in the bags of certain awkward schoolgirls in the 1970s.

So anyway, back to the latest translation:

...[the translator] denotes the missing words and lines in the poetry with single bracket marks, as in the title piece:

. . .if not, winter
]no pain. . .

The words seems like a cry of anguish, the missing line, the blank space, like a freeze, or a death.

Perhaps not. Possibly the fragment has sufficient context in the book to support that assertion, but as it stands quoted in the review, it could be taken from Sappho's Treatments for Common Skin Complaints...

If you have the juice of burtlewort[*], its application is quite efficacious in the treatment of excema. If not, winter pansies may be applied to good effect. Relief is rapid, and there will be no pain or swelling.

It may be that the words are a cry of anguish, but they could just as easily be a shopping list. I'm imagining Sappho sitting in her back garden with a mound of papyrus, ripping out little bits here and there and throwing the rest on a bonfire, cackling gleefully and muttering "these'll get 'em going - wankers".


[*] Plant names fabricated to protect the innocent.

Posted by hakmao at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2004

Tourist warning

From the Patani United Liberation Orgnisation website:

DEAR PEOPLE OF THE WORLD,

Due to the political unstability, persons who plan to visit Thailand NOW are adviced not to travel to Patani Raya Region, (Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, Satun, Songkhla) and the neighbour provinces (Phuket, Pangnga, Krabi, Pattalung).

There is also a counter which is counting down "[6 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes and 39 seconds] until SRI RAYA!"

This is not a festival or similar event about which I have been able to find anything. Sri literally means something like "shining splendour" and Raya is "great" or "large". Maybe somebody with decent Malay can help out here.

Sounds like someone's planning a big day out.

Posted by hakmao at 09:17 PM | Comments (1)

HP Sauce with that

I noticed the other day that there is a new Harry Potter film coming - oh goodie.

Which was the last book? The one with the yellow cover - HP and the Order of the Phoenix was it? Imagine sitting in the vestibule of a railway carriage - two six person bench seats facing one another - and eleven adult commuters are reading the same book. Phoenix? - more like bird flu...

It's perfectly respectable for adults to read children's books, however there is something positively undignified about a very large subset of adults reading the same children's book at the same time. It's also worrying that the Harry Potter reading adults don't appear to read any other books, except possibly those self-help books called things like "How to make a million dollars selling crappy self-help books to gullible commuters".

I was looking for a link to the A S Byatt article Harry Potter And The Childish Adult in which she bucketed the HP phenomenon, when I found a site which refers to the "Harry Potter Community" - excuse me if I think this is going a little too far. Is it registered for tax or migration purposes? Can we expect a schism to develop between the Philosopher's Stone and Sorceror's Stone elements? Will the Philosopher's Stone sect being persecuted in the United States?

Perhaps I'm being excessively cruel, but we are not talking about the EarthSea or His Dark Materials trilogies, or the Prydain Chronicles, or the works of Alan Garner here.

I'm not going to say don't read Harry Potter, just like I won't say don't eat Wonderwhite bread, but I do think children and adults would better feed their imaginations with something containing a little more fibre.

Posted by hakmao at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2004

Wet work

Its a good headline - ASIO linked to Cabinet room leak fiasco:

Spy agency ASIO has been linked to a damaging federal cabinet water leak that caused $700,000 of damage.

[I]t was ASIO's recommendation that a perspex viewing port be fitted to a steel water pipe above the cabinet room.

Mr Richardson said the perspex fitting was installed when Parliament House was constructed in the 1980s.

He wouldn't say why, although it's been surmised that it was intended to allow inspection of the pipe for surveillance devices.

"I can't say that publicly," he told a Senate estimates committee.

"We did make a recommendation that the perspex was put in. We did not install it ourselves."

The deluge left water 250 mm deep in the room and that was aggravated by double-sealed walls and doors.

It also spread to the hallway and other rooms after doors were opened.

The faulty component had been replaced with a metal part.

Presuming the pipe is 100mm or 150mm in diameter, how far along it can you see through a viewing port? Not very is the answer. You would need a camera or something in the pipe - a little robot crawling along the pipes looking for foreign (sorry!) objects. Or maybe it's a long perspex strip. Or perhaps they think a listening device would have long trailing wires. And if Peter Wright is/was to be believed you don't necessarily need listening devices in the pipes - pipes, radiators and whatever else are themselves quite efficient at picking up vibrations.

Posted by hakmao at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)

May 24, 2004

Hot Zone

Cheery news this morning in the SMH about a haemorrhagic fever outbreak in Africa:

Scientists suspect that a new milder strain of the Ebola virus may have caused the latest outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic fever in southern Sudan...Four of the 10 people infected with the Ebola-like virus have died in Yambio, a Sudanese town near the border with Congo...Tests of blood samples taken to the US Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta indicated that the outbreak is not linked to the known strains of Ebola-like viruses that cause the severe viral infection...There are four known strains of Ebola-like viruses, three of which cause the deadly disease...The viruses are probably preserved in an undefined reservoir in the rain forests of Africa.

I lent my copy of Richard Preston's The Hot Zone to somebody, and they must have liked it because I never saw it again. It's definitely not a book you would want to be reading around meal times. The author goes into stomach churning detail about people "crashing" and "bleeding out" - then I am totally squeamish. The fact that the host species and source of the virus are unknown, and that a virus previously thought to be spread via direct contact managed to become airborne (Ebola Reston strain) rather adds to the creepiness factor. If you want to learn more about Ebola and related viruses like Marburg, the CDC is as good as any place to start.

Scary viruses are a favourite subject of film makers. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Outbreak - unless you are really bored, and have already seen everything else in the video shop twice. 28 Days Later panders to evil animal research institute playing with monkey virus stereotypes (besides being a tedious warming over of Day of the Triffids). I thought the Terry Nation series Survivors in 1975, and the Andromeda Strain in 1971 were better. Alien and its successor films don't count, as they were not about viruses, but bad cases of intestinal parasites...

Posted by hakmao at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2004

Life on other planets

Yes, there is life away from blogging. Visited building sites for my course in the morning, and this afternoon I visited the planet Polemikos, and churned out a longish article not destined for this blog - shock horror...

Yes, the kiddies can whine as much as they like about united fronts and pamphlets and whatever else - but the naked truth is - they don't know shit. Do I or don't I? Self-justification is not my game. I'm not seeking your approval. If you get it - good. If you don't - well, get thee to a pineapple!

Posted by hakmao at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2004

Smash it down, grind it into dust.

The US Congress has approved funds to demolish Abu Ghraib prison.

The measure, by Representative Curt Weldon, a Republican, and John Murtha, a Democrat, would demolish the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and build a modern detention facility in its place.

One hopes that the new facility will not be built literally in the same place. It should never have been used by Coalition authorities in the first place.

Posted by hakmao at 03:09 PM | Comments (4)

May 20, 2004

Troy in 15 minutes

It has been a long, long day. Someone sent me a link to the following silliness:

Some Voiceover

ODYSSEUS: If there's one thing we Greek heroes hope, it's that you remember us.

AUDIENCE: EEEE!! IT'S BOROMIR! SQUEEEE! HI, BOROMIR!

ODYSSEUS: ...That's not exactly what I meant.

...

They did rather go on about being remembered.

Posted by hakmao at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2004

tajwIj 'oHbe' chorlIj jeqbogh Dochvetlhe'e

This is just silly! I remember when cornflakes used to come with proper toys.

What sort of person would want to own something like this? Surely it'll get all scratched up from being dragged along the ground?

Ooh look at me! I can do a Klingon war..zick! thunk.....

Posted by hakmao at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

Doc puts mockers on Fidel

In the SMH:

Fidel Castro's doctor denied rumours that the president's health was ailing, saying today the 77-year-old leader is in excellent health and claiming he can live at least 140 years..."He is formidably well," Mr Housein told reporters at a conference on "satisfactory longevity" in the capital city.

Posted by hakmao at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2004

Salam Pax on Australian TV

Salam Pax is in Sydney for a writers' festival. He was interviewed on Enough Rope on the ABC last night:

Andrew Denton: It's not just the Americans you're ambivalent about, though, because you write about the freedom fighters that have come from other countries to fight the Americans. You don't seem to have a great deal of time for them?

Salam Pax: Uh… I was once in Jordan, in a taxi, and talking to the taxi driver, and he said something which got me really angry. He said, "Look, we want to, you know, we want to be jihadis and we want to fight the infidel, and Iraq now is the place." Fight your wars somewhere else. That's the problem. We ended up being a battlefield. Not only… We have enough problems in Iraq - you know, the Kurds, the Sunni the Shiah - everybody has its own agendas. And now, you know, other people seem to be fighting their wars inside our country, which is even more frustrating. I mean, you can't even deal with your own problems. Now you have to deal with these people who are coming in. It is very strange. Um, I don't know… We were never expecting something like this to happen - that we've become a battleground for all this. Everybody is trying to, you know, settle their problems inside our country.

A sentiment which echoes Iraqi Communist Party Central Committee member Salam Ali in this interview with the Morning Star on 20 April last.

Posted by hakmao at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2004

Not in the mood

I could be writing bitchy stuff about all the charming people who piss me off every day in countless little [and not so little] ways, or picking a fight or something, but tonight I'm going to watch telly[*], drink beer and sleep. All three activities are more interesting, rewarding, and useful than... Oh, you know who I mean!


[*] at least I will once Big Brother is over for the evening.

Posted by hakmao at 09:36 PM | Comments (0)

More violence in Thailand

From the SMH:

Fears of mounting sectarian violence grew in Muslim-dominated southern Thailand today after bomb blasts rocked three Buddhist temples overnight, officials said...

Thailand's south has been hit this year by a campaign of bombings, arson attacks and murders targeting government officials, security forces and Buddhist monks.

In crimes that shocked the nation, three monks were killed in separate incidents in January, each involving assailants on motorcycles who slashed them as they walked in public receiving alms.

The violence escalated dramatically on April 28 when 108 Muslim rebels were killed as they mounted disastrous coordinated assaults on police stations and checkpoints.

A Muslim insurgency raged in the south until the 1980s, but the movement fragmented and attacks dropped off until January when a raid on an army weapons depot left four soldiers dead and heralded a new wave of violence.

Posted by hakmao at 08:37 PM | Comments (1)

May 16, 2004

256 shades of grey

The ABC is repeating the landmark World at War documentary series on Sunday afternoons. Today's episode was about Britain from 1940-1944.

There was the young Michael Foot and then old Michael Foot, Bevan, Tom Driberg, and the [former] British ambassador to the USSR saying the Soviet Union has no interests outside its own borders - "I have that from the lips of Stalin himself."

Oh yes, and the public schoolboy who had been drafted into the mines instead of the army, but "we all have to do our bit." I'd love to know how that experience shaped his political views. It's too late to ask him now.

Posted by hakmao at 11:22 PM | Comments (1)

May 15, 2004

Topless towers of Ilium

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
and burnt the topless towers of Ilium

Saw the Brad Pitt with no clothes on movie today.

Long it was... Nearly as long as the Iliad, although it did cover more than the wrath of Achilles. If there is an Odyssey film will it be called Troy 2?

I so wanted the Trojans to win. It seems the screenwriters didn't want to go that far in tinkering with the story.

Achilles pouts, Patroclus pouts, and Paris is pouting for Mysia.

Odysseus with a Yorkshire accent was good, pity he didn't have a nice bat to dispatch those burny things when the Trojans sent down a few overs.

No Cassandra, so Agamemnon suggesting that Briseis would be set to work on his bath was good for a snicker, although the reference may not have been intentional. After seeing this film, it's safe to say that Wolfgang Petersen ain't going to be making the Oresteia:

Cassandra:

No, no, see there! What is that thing that shows?
Is it some net of death?
Or is the trap the woman there, the murderess?
Let now the slakeless fury in the race
rear up to howl aloud over this monstrous death.

Chorus:

Upon what demon in the house do you call, to raise
the cry of triumph? All your speech makes dark my hope.
And to the heart below trickles the pale drop
as in the hour of death
timed to our sunset and the mortal radiance.
Ruin is near, and swift

Cassandra:

See there, see there! Keep from his mate the bull.
Caught in the folded web's
entanglement she pinions him and with the black horn
strikes. And he crumples in the watered bath.
Guile I tell you, and death there in the cauldron wrought.

Or so it goes in the "real" story.

Posted by hakmao at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 14, 2004

Making sense of...

Use this handy utility to improve the output of your favourite columnists. Feed it plain text or a URL and select your filter - Poe, Hunter S, God... Weird.

Search the Guardian World Order with a manifesto for a very gross tableau. So here we sleep still too early to eliminate terrorism. Good to bring all kinds of reason. More plausibly no man's land: three or four angels which score only two immigrant preachers cobbled together a grapefruit and never mentioned the sharpest knife - and sliced it just once. Creeping through the Ballantine Ale now...a hamburger with floating nudists, what addict will be soon deterred?

The infidels among teenagers and corporations are seldom celebrated. I advise you to act, quavering sort of God, zombie drunk. The guy with a head full of these coconut husks began sucking on your pyjamas and never mentioned the original motion. You drive, but they enter the TV set. His eyes were full of men. To understand what is actively seeking the original motion they buy a friend. I'll have undivided claim to get to a few uncontroversial matters. Would he said - a final showdown in paperback.

Well it helps if you start with quality source material...

Posted by hakmao at 10:25 PM | Comments (1)

Grim reading

Grim reading over at Normblog, including evidence of the efficacy of torture.

Posted by hakmao at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)

Rubbernecking

I share Harry's discomfort at people's eagerness to watch the murder of Nick Berg:

Its rather disturbing to think of the thousands of people logging on to the web in search of such horror.

Who actually wants to watch that video and why? I'm not sure I even want to know.

Already disturbed by images of Iraqi prisoners being abused, the accounts in the mainstream press were enough to make me queasy - I don't need to see the pictures thank you.

Yesterday someone posted a link to the video on a US blog, with the warning that "good Christians" (like the poster himself) should be aware that the link was at a porn site, and they should avert their eyes from the parts of the page that contained nudie bits.

!!!

Encouragingly, someone immediately admonished the fuckwit, telling him to get his thinking straight.

Posted by hakmao at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2004

DVD commentary

From JFD in the comments at Harry's Place, a link to the transcript of an unused commentary track from the Platinum Extended Edition of Fellowship of the Ring:

Chomsky: And now, with Frodo in the midst of a hallucinogenic, paranoid state, we meet Strider.

Zinn: Note that the first thing he starts talking about is the ring. "That is no trinket you carry." A very telling irony, that. It is the kind of irony that Shakespeare would use. It is something Iago might say. And did you hear that? "Sauron the Deceiver." That is what Strider, the ranger with multiple names, calls Sauron. A ranger. I believe today we call them serial killers.

Chomsky: Or drug smugglers.

Zinn: And notice how Strider characterizes the Black Riders. "Neither living nor dead." Why, that's a really useful enemy to have.

Chomsky: Yes. In this way you can never verify their existence, and yet they're horribly terrifying. We should not overlook the fact that Middle Earth is in a cold war at this moment, locked in perpetual conflict. Strider's rhetoric serves to keep fear alive.

Zinn: You've spoken to me before about Mordor's lack of access to the mineral wealth that the Dwarves control.

Chomsky: If we're going to get into the socio-economic reasons why certain structures develop in certain cultures… it's mainly geographical. We have Orcs in Mordor - trapped, with no mineral resources - hemmed in by the Ash Mountains, where the "free peoples" of Middle Earth can put a city, like Osgiliath, and effectively keep the border closed.

Zinn: Don't forget the Black Gate. The Black Gate, which, as Tolkien points out, was built by Gondor. And now we jump to the Orcs chopping down the trees in Isengard.

Chomsky: A terrible thing the Orcs do here, isn't it? They destroy nature. But again, what have we seen, time and time again?

Zinn: The Orcs have no resources. They're desperate.

Chomsky: Desperate people driven to do desperate things.

Posted by hakmao at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2004

Fanfic

There is an interesting phenomenon where people in online communities adopt the names of fantasy figures. You see this sort of thing on IMDB message boards and fanfiction sites - people who call themselves "Legolas" or "Captain Janeway" or whatever. They are usually of a certain age, and fixate upon their heroes to the point of mania.

This has its analogue in the political blogosphere. Most people use some permutation of their real name, although for various reasons many use a pseudonym or nickname. Some sad cases use multiple pseudonyms, and are quite capable of carrying on an entire dialogue by themselves - they definitely need to get out more. The truly strange ones are the bloggers and the people who pop up in comments boxes, who adopt the persona of a historical figure, and go on as if they are channelling the thoughts of said [usually] dead thinker or activist. Wishful thinking, when unlike their heroes, they are usually incapable of independent thought, and endlessly recycle tracts of febrile nonsense. These fan-boy channellers also appear to be of a certain age, are fixated, dogmatic to a fault, and take themselves so seriously, it seems almost cruel to laugh at them. However, their conceits invite ridicule even before they commit word to page.

Pause for a moment and imagine the potential for all manner of confusion in the future - how for example, are Marxist historians expected to differentiate the writings of Vladimir Illich Ulyanov from those of the eponymous blogger? It is difficult enough to separate them now, the space of a few short years will surely render their bodies of work a seamless whole.

Posted by hakmao at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2004

Filonov

Quite a few years ago, there was an exhibition of Russian Avantgard artists at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The painting which really struck me was Pavel Nikolaevich Filonov's The Narva Gates. The scan obviously doesn't do it justice, although you get a better idea if you click the picture (100KB file).


This excellent website has hundreds of scans - if you are even vaguely interested in early twentieth century Russian art, you should take a look. It's a work in progress - there's plenty more to come.

Posted by hakmao at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2004

What ever happened?

At 4Glengate recently, Nick asked SIAW "what ever happened to solidarity, comrades?" An interesting question to be sure, and one which I have asked myself numerous times in the past year or four or five - what the hell happened? So much of the "left" has become unrecognisable to me.

Having just mentioned Nick, I would like to make it clear that I'm not directing these comments at him or AWL, once described as the "thinking wing" of the anti-war movement, and with whom I feel a greater sense of solidarity than others on the "Trotskyist" left. These comments are instead addressed to those who appear to have misplaced their moral compass.

It is easy to be cynical about a left which is continually fracturing and riving into smaller, frequently mutually hostile, and ever more closely defined grouplets. What of "no enemies on the left"? That's a poor joke when sects denounce those who deviate from the designated script as "fascists" or "mad dogs", with concomitant calls for them to be dealt with when the day finally dawns; and when independent thought is unwelcome and dissent is ruthlessly suppressed. In these circumstances, the notion of a unitary left is cheap sleight of hand.

What happened? This is a "left" which is big on anti-imperialist rhetoric, while simultaneously forging alliances with those who would establish a Salafist hegemony across not only South West Asia, but Africa, the rest of Asia and a good portion of Europe. The "anti-imperialism" of the Salafists is not so much opposition to colonial oppression as it is a reflex loathing of modernity, or in the words of Abu Hamza "...the evils of democracy, capitalism and communism." Explicitly reactionary and feudalist in outlook and intent, where would their 'revolution' lead socialists? Who is riding whose coat-tails in the quest for power and influence? You can be sure that this section of the left believes it is in control of its own destiny, but those dancing with the agents of reaction may one day be in for a short sharp reality check.

The Enlightenment is the bedrock of Marxist thought. Disturbingly, many who call themselves "Marxist" have repudiated universalist principles and raised the standard of the counter-Enlightenment. Relativism is the order of the day - demanding rights which by act or omission, they are willing for others to be denied. To curry favour with their new found friends and in their efforts to appeal to sectarian interests, commitments to women's and lesbian/gay rights have been quietly sidelined. I witnessed an extraordinary outburst recently, when a man exclaimed that gay people have no business worrying about our sisters and brothers being tortured and murdered, unless we know them personally. Otherwise our motivations must surely be merely sexual and predatory - the implication being that we are only upset by loss of possible "talent". Over the past two years I have noticed instances of stencilled graffiti which is couched in anti-capitalist language, and extremely hostile to homosexuals. The anti-capitalism may be new, but the other sentiments are depressingly familiar, albeit that we normally expect them from the right. So much for universal human rights eh?

What of secularism, now that "Marxists" are telling interviewers of their lifelong belief in God? Engels and Lenin were both specific on the point - whatever it is, if it ain't materialism it ain't Marxism. This point is crucial in terms of philosophical 'taxonomy' - the divide between materialism and idealism, or the difference between reason and belief, is a class difference of the magnitude of "is it fish or is it fowl?" What are we to make of the God-fearing Marxist? Neither fish nor fowl? Or perhaps playing to the gallery in the expectation of picking up a few more votes?

Their lips are moving and there are vaguely Marxist noises coming out, but if you listen a little more closely, and see who their friends are, an entirely different picture emerges. I don't wish to be associated with them, and expect the feeling is probably reciprocated. Some journalists may think that we "cannot afford to be choosy", but experience has taught me that it pays to choose friends and allies with care - you may have to rely upon them one day.

So what about solidarity? There's no manual which says socialists have to think exactly the same thing at the same time, and I won't argue against solidarity with democratic socialists, but I will not stand shoulder to shoulder with reactionaries and their fellow travellers.

Finally, to return to Nick for a moment, we have had words in the past, and will quite possibly disagree about things again at some point in the future, but it hasn't stopped us moving beyond our differences. You might think there's a lesson in that.

Posted by hakmao at 08:28 PM | Comments (4)

Lacking motivation

Blogging motivation has been seriously lacking of late. Life keeps on intervening at inopportune moments, although something substantial is in the pipeline.

Continuing the tradition of time-marking on this blog...

The Auckland Blues beat the Highlanders 50-22 in the final round of this year's Super 12 rugby. The Crusaders meet the Stormers next week in Christchurch, while the Waikato Chiefs will play the Brumbies in Canberra to sort out the finalists.

Posted by hakmao at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2004

Helping creationists

A friend has suggested a way for creationists to get around all of that pesky evidence people keep on finding around the place which supports evolutionary theory:

I think some creation scientist should "discover" those lost bits of the bible which say "and then God created the dinosaurs, and then God did change his mind and say 'nah, fuck the dinosaurs' and he didst send a big-ass meteorite and he didst smite them mightily and he didst start all over again"...

Posted by hakmao at 05:38 PM | Comments (1)

May 07, 2004

Avian lifeforms

You will probably be unsurprised that I have something of an interest in birds. Australia is teeming with brightly coloured, noisy parrots like the rainbow lorikeet, and there's a special place in my heart for the Australian raven.

There are plenty of stories about the Australian magpie attacking passing pedestrians in breeding season (although it has never happened to me), but undoubtedly the scariest bird you can expect to meet on a suburban street is the currawong. There's something about a currawong swooping onto a head-high branch as you walk past, and that beak, that makes you want to call it "Sir".

Posted by hakmao at 12:03 PM | Comments (2)

Intel Dump's take on torturers

After reading an article by Phil Carter at Slate, I checked his blog Intel Dump, which I used to read regularly. Phil, a law student and journalist, was formerly an MP officer. This is part of what he has to say:

Two things. First, I have to call BS at this line of investigation, and this line of defense. The actions depicted on the photographs now shown around the world are not the kinds of things you need training to abhor. In fact, any adult ought to know better, and certainly, any army sergeant or officer ought to know better. This is a basic matter of common sense and human decency. You don't need to know the rules under the Geneva Convention, and you don't have to be a lawyer, to know that it's wrong to shove a chem light into a detainee's rectum and take a picture of it. I think this is a specious argument, and that it will fail spectacularly before a military jury of officers and NCOs.

Second, it's possible that these MPs didn't have proper individual or collective training on specific tasks related to Internment and Resettlement Operations (what the MP school calls this stuff). But hey -- this isn't rocket science. Anyone in this unit could've gone online to get FM 3-19.40, Military Police Internment/Resettlement Operations; anyone could've also gone online to get FM 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare. These soldiers, sergeants and officers were derelict in not taking the initiative to learn how to do their jobs once they were on the ground. So I don't buy this "we weren't trained defense" for a minute. If an NCO doesn't know the conditions and standards for a given task, the NCO should take the initiative to find them. A lieutenant or captain certainly should too. This MP unit may have been given a task it wasn't familiar with, but the burden falls on the unit leadership to adjust on-the-fly, and to teach the unit how to do these things. Guess what? Not everything goes according to plan; not every task can be anticipated or trained for. It falls on the unit to figure this out, and the failure to do so was derelict in my opinion.

Interesting to see a professional opinion. There's quite a bit more over at his blog.

Posted by hakmao at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2004

Libyan convictions

In the SMH:

A Libyan criminal court today sentenced six Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad for deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the deadly HIV virus, Bulgarian radio reported.

The health workers were convicted of giving contaminated blood products to 426 Libyan children at a Benghazi hospital.

One person might do such a thing, but seven? Was there some sort of financial gain? Were they monumentally negligent and incompetent, or are they simply rotten to the core?

[Update:] More information overnight in the Guardian:

Internationally-renowned Aids experts have put the blame for the April 1997 to March 1999 outbreak on poor hygiene at the hospital, and defence lawyers have raised serious concerns about the conduct of the investigation, including allegations of confessions extracted under torture... It also emerged in the trial that two of the accused did not work in the hospital.

An entirely different story. In this instance, retraction of "Materialists don't believe in hell, but it doesn't stop us thinking it might be a good idea for some people..." is in order[*]. Mea Culpa - I shouldn't editorialise on scant information.

[Update to update:] Anthony has more details and links at Black Triangle.

[*] There are others making headlines at the moment who are quite worthy of the sentiment.

Posted by hakmao at 11:12 PM | Comments (4)

On the iPod

The Jam - Direction, Reaction, Creation
Gustav Holst - St Paul's Suite
Gustav Holst - The Planets (Mars was playing as the train tiptoed through John Howard's electorate this morning, which struck me as amusing)

Posted by hakmao at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2004

Feline medicare

From the SMH:

A woman told police she robbed a string of US banks to raise money to pay for surgery for her cat.

Catherine Kaczanowski, 44, who was arrested last month, said she set off on her crime spree after learning her stray cat Smoochie had a cancerous tumour and needed surgery, police said.

Posted by hakmao at 03:09 PM | Comments (1)

Hitchens on Abu Ghraib

Christopher Hitchens writes about the Abu Ghraib prison torturers in his latest Slate column:

The images from Abu Ghraib prison do not test one's convictions about the wrongness of torture. They test one's opinions about the wrongness of capital punishment. Just consider for a moment what this bunch of giggling sadists has done, with its happy snaps and recreational cruelties...

This is only the rehearsal for one's revulsion. One of two things must necessarily be true. Either these goons were acting on someone's authority, in which case there is a layer of mid- to high-level people who think that they are not bound by the laws and codes and standing orders. Or they were acting on their own authority, in which case they are the equivalent of mutineers, deserters, or traitors in the field. This is why one asks wistfully if there is no provision in the procedures of military justice for them to be taken out and shot.

He concludes:

[T]here's no hypocrisy in holding self-proclaimed liberators to a higher standard.

Indeed, otherwise the "liberators" are in danger of becoming the oppressors themselves. Two of the Abu Ghraib accused (including the senior enlisted man) are prison guards in civilian life. Claims they were not given adequate training in the handling of prisoners is a pathetic excuse.

Posted by hakmao at 01:44 PM | Comments (1)

New website

The Do Something for Iraq webpage has been redesigned (thanks John), and I have started populating a list of things people can do to help. Send email with details of democratic groups needing support, or highlighting incidents like the raid on the IFTU, and I will add them to the list.

Please remember that the site is not to advance a specifically socialist agenda, or (to quote Salam Ali of the ICP) the campaigns of those who seek to turn Iraq into a battlefield to fight their own wars against America.

Whatever my personal feelings or politics, the manifest failings of the CPA, the imperfections of the IGC, and the questions hanging over Ahmed Chalabi, the object of the exercise is to support those working towards representative liberal democracy. Western leftist sectarian squabbling has no place there.


Posted by hakmao at 11:16 AM | Comments (1)

May 04, 2004

Marky

On Sunday evening I ventured out to a small and excessively smoky club to see Marky Ramone. Marky is touring with a bunch of slides and a video, and picking up local punk bands along the way.

There was a set from the Spazzys. Surprisingly good, and definitely more entertaining than Blink 182 or any of the other airbrushed skater punk wannabes.

Marky came out and talked about his life and people he knew in different bands - including the Ramones. He then answered a few audience questions.

Marky and the Spazzys finished off by playing a whole bunch of Ramones songs. It was all quite fun.

If you like Ramones-related fun, you really should take a look at the Ramones Songbook as Played by Nutley Brass.

Posted by hakmao at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2004

Uniform Code of Military Justice

892. ART. 92. FAILURE TO OBEY ORDER OR REGULATION

Any person subject to this chapter who--

(1) violates or fails to obey any lawful general order or regulation;

(2) having knowledge of any other lawful order issued by any member of the armed forces, which it is his duty to obey, fails to obey the order; or

(3) is derelict in the performance of his duties; shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

893. ART. 93. CRUELTY AND MALTREATMENT

Any person subject to this chapter who is guilty of cruelty toward, or oppression or maltreatment of, any person subject to his orders shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

There doesn't appear to be a lot of wiggle-room there. Unequivocal in fact.

David Aaronovitch in the Observer:

This week, Brigadier Mark Kimmitt...made the point that, "If we can't hold ourselves up as an example of how to treat people with dignity and respect, we can't ask that other nations do that to our soldiers."

In other words, Lynndie England's actions will lead to the deaths of her comrades, as surely as if she'd pulled the trigger herself.

Which sounds rather like:

899. ART. 99. MISBEHAVIOR BEFORE THE ENEMY

Any person subject to this chapter who before or in the presence of the enemy--

(3) through disobedience, neglect, or intentional misconduct endangers the safety of any such command, unit, place, or military property; shall be punished by death or such punishment as a court-martial may direct.

Posted by hakmao at 08:13 AM | Comments (3)

May 01, 2004

Highlanders 29 - Waratahs 28

36,000 people (including one bitchy feline correspondent) were at the Sydney Football Stadium this afternoon to watch Otago play New South Wales. Otago were down 16-7 at halftime, and when lock Filipo Levi was sent off and the score was 28-7, I was ready to pack my jumper and slink away home.

The Highlanders scored three tries to reach 29 points with about four minutes left on the clock, then proceeded to kick possession away. Defending a one point margin in your own half is a recipe for giving away penalties, and the Waratahs were duly awarded a penalty with less than a minute to go. Matt Burke lined up in front of the goal...and hit the post!

I'm still grinning like an idiot. A New Zealander couldn't wish for better on 1 May.

Posted by hakmao at 06:54 PM | Comments (1)