It’s “fear the asylum seekers” time, as the screwy situations in the world lead to an influx of displaced people, and half of Australia rears its ugly and paranoid head again in fear of the other. The government is behaving reasonably well in the situation though, about as well as you could realistically hope for, while the Opposition is behaving exactly as pathetically xenophobic and politically opportunistic as you could believe.

Is the situation really hard to understand? Sure, people smuggling is not a good thing, for a whole host of reasons. It’s extremely exploitative and dangerous for the desperate people being smuggled, first and foremost. But asylum seekers are not the enemy, and never have been. They are scared, desperate people who will do anything to escape their previous situation.

Basically all current asylum seekers in our part of the world are from Sri Lanka, people from the Tamil minority, who’s half of the country was completely devastated earlier this year. Leaving the “who’s to blame?” for that to other arguments, it’s not at all surprising there have been many Tamils fleeing. And terribly obviously, it’s a local conflict that barely made a dent in the local media (both because the government there did minimise the reporting on it, but also because local media didn’t care enough), so too many people now have no idea why there would be so many people fleeing.

And so we have the local reaction. The Labor government is caught in the “must be tough” situation, like all governments here, with an electoral majority equal parts ignorant and intolerant of how these situations come about, but they’re going about it reasonably well: they’re not demonising the asylum seekers, they’re treating them humanely, and they’re doing it in conjunction with neighbours like Indonesia. Sure I’d like to see more compassion, but any party in power will only go so far in this country.

But the Opposition… my goodness. It’s almost too obvious, watching Turnbull’s desperate and pathetic lunge for old Howard policies, simultaneously trying to scare everyone with xenophobia while declaring it’s all Kevin Rudd’s fault somehow. Like he could have stopped the Sri Lankan civil war. I had a slight amount of respect for Turnbull recently, watching him battle the extreme idiots in his own party, trying to get some kind of engagement on climate change, instead of writing themselves into irrelevance with more old Howard obstructionism.

That’s out the window now as Turnbull desperate grabs for the racist idiot vote. Give it up Malcolm, Johnny Howard did it so much better than you, and it won’t work from Opposition anyway. The difference between the parties couldn’t be more stark again: the pragmatic and reasonably good versus the xenophobic and dated.

And remember, the asylum seekers are not the enemy here. They are the exploited, the threatened. The fact they desperately want to come here says something good about us. I wonder if they’re faith is justified of course, but it is what it is. What we really need to do of course is as much as possible to address refugee problems in countries like Sri Lanka before it becomes the serious problem we see now. Tamil refugees are everywhere now (dozens were found on a cargo ship heading for Canada recently).

We should be working there to help resettle people orderly as required, not lock them out. Australia takes its share, as will other countries. Then we freeze out the people smugglers and help the asylum seekers. That’s how you fix the problem.

Rupert: you ugly old luddite

In response to this recent news:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/09/2710281.htm

Murdoch warns Google: it’s time to pay

What we all really need to do is stop linking to News Ltd sites. Stop blogging about them, stop submitting to Digg, Stumbleupon, linking on Facebook, Twitter, whatever.

Murdoch appears not to want this… unless we pay, of course.

It’s a boycott of sorts, but clearly he doesn’t think that his content needs to be promoted — we all know it’s just perfect already, and we should all be immediately paying for it.

And in the spirit of the main article, Google must immediately remove all News Ltd material from the search logs. No one can be allowed to find it without paying. As usual, he seems to have completely lost track of how the Internet works… apparently News Ltd content will just stand out by itself now, because it clearly has no competition.

There is only one way I can think of this being good for Murdoch, and it involves finding at least one other big company to be very stupid. But that’s for another time.

For now, we really should just boycott News Ltd on the web. And as a Simpsons/Buffy/Dollhouse/Bones fan, let’s clarify and say News Ltd news content — because that will be HYSTERICALLY EASY

More on this Hey Hey It’s Saturday sketch… I’m over the sketch, it’s so clear that no one meant to be racist, even if it clearly was, and I believe the people who did it (even channel nine), were ignorant and dumb at the worst, not racist.

But the defense of this situation… even after all the explanations, even after all the details, even after all the reaction and embarrassment — this is just pathetic now. This is what is wrong with Australia, or at least a very big proportion of Australians.

Now we’re seeing  new stories that polls declare it was all okay. But hey, 77% thought the way Howard treated the Tampa refugees in 2001 was okay too, and look what that said about us.

Don’t people fucking get it? I even read blog comments declaring Connick was somehow deficient his his reaction… give me a break. We’re going to attack him for taking offense at something he obviously had every reason to dislike? And this whole “but he did it too” defense, complete with 13 year old video is even worse: HE WAS NOT IN BLACK FACE, and that’s all there is to it. No one ever said you could never make any joke relating to black people, but black face humour is pathetic, dated and wrong.

And yes, politically correct… blah, blah, blah. STOP IT. The argument essentially goes “I can do anything and say anything I like because if you don’t like it you’re being politically correct and that’s bad now.” I’ll say it again: political correctness is a myth invented to justify being as obnoxious as you like and pre-emptively attacking anyone that would dare take offense.

Once again, this particular situation is almost irrelevant now. What this shows is just how screwy attitudes in this country are to race and racism. All it takes is something to bring it out (and I thought we’d ended that in November 2007).

What else can you say really. It’s all over the news today, even though I had no intention of watching it myself, so everyone is now talking about whether a sketch with men in blackface pretending to be the Jackson Five was lame, stupid, racist or all of the above.

I’ll go for all of the above really, and it truly is an embarrassment to imagine the minds at Channel Nine that didn’t fortell anyone would find this offensive. And I can’t believe it took Harry Connick Jr to let them know this.

Look, let’s be honest… I’m sure the people doing the sketch meant no racist intent. But that’s not the point. Of course this sort of crap is racist… there’s a long history of ridiculing African-descended people with this kind of rubbish. Whether it was meant as racist or not is beside the point. It just is.

This has to be one of those “Australia in a bubble” kind of things… and I can’t believe there are still people trying to defend it. That’s the worst part: that there isn’t just a 100% “yes, this was racist and stupid, sorry,” response to this situation. And the international web reaction is sad, for us, because it’s another round of “aren’t those Australians backward” stories.

Of course, this is another feather in the cap of the pathetic nostalgia that the Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunions represent. The young people especially — I had nil desire to watch this — but apparently plenty of people my age did.

The train trips seem longer than normal at the moment, with the weather really weird and variable. Last week it was over 30 degrees on one day, and now it’s back to winter, at barely 10 degrees in the morning, and apparently no more than 16 for the day.

And the worst thing in the last two days seems to be the return of illness. Not mine thankfully, at least not yet, but for the last two days I’ve been sitting on the train in the same carriage and had exactly the same woman sitting in the same seat hacking away with a terrible cough for 40 minutes. It’s a bad scene, with this really noticeable carry-on effect where plenty of other people start coughing, me included, if only slightly.

Damn I was really mentally wishing some harm on this lady. I really wanted to say something, but she wasn’t that close to me, and proprietry got the better of me. Just didn’t seem much point, though it’s a wonder the people directly opposite her didn’t say something. I’d hate to have been sitting next to her and dealing with that.

It makes me wonder really… is she just going to work and coughing all over her colleagues the whole day? People seemed to think better and stay home back in winter, back in the main swine flu panic, but now that’s somewhat subsided and it’s mid-spring (albeit unseasonably cold), people probably aren’t paying the same attention.

I’ve had a really good winter health-wise, not taking a sick day since March I think, so I’d hate to see that streak broken. The flu shot I got really seemed to have the desired effect, so I hope that sticks. People at work are getting sick now as well, so it might be a late season shock for people.

Then I’ll start getting annoyed about the length of the train ride again… and so on. At least I’m getting some new blogs up; school holidays seems to give me a seat more often. Got to find that writing time of course…

Have resisted writing about this so far, but it’s been a topic hard not to think about in the last week. In some ways, it’s both a difficult and an incredibly easy situation to discuss and think about.

Easy in as much as yes, women are treated poorly by far too many league players (not to mention too many men in general), and the specific situation in the Johns saga, while not apparently criminal, was certainly damaging and degrading and we should all do everything possible to stop these situations from occuring.

But apart from that, it all becomes very difficult. I notice that no one really wants to talk about how some young women behave. It’s not that anything excuses sexual assault of course, but some women are very willing participants in these sorts of sexual escapades, and the latest reports in the Johns thing seem to indicate that this young women involved was keen on everything at first, and even after apparently, only developing second thoughts about what went on a week later. This puts the whole situation in a slightly different light, only in as much as the belief that Johns saw everything as consensual, and if these new reports are true, then at the time it certainly appeared as nothing other than consensual.

The situation does however redefine a bit what consent actually is in these situations, though it also highlights that Johns (one of two players she consented to sex with) is not even primarily at fault here. What started as consensual sex between 2-3 people ended up being a weird orgy when another 10+ players entered the room. While Johns obviously could have stopped it, the fact is that the other players are as much to blame for what went on as Johns is. And we haven’t heard at all who any of them are… which is gutles beyond belief.

But for league in general… what does this all mean? First of all, I think it’s unfair for this incident to tar the whole game — for a start, it happened seven years ago. It sure shows how bad the problem has been for a while, but it doesn’t do anything to show the changes and programs that have been in effect in the last few years. Saying that something that happened seven years ago would change your opinion of league now is a bit dumb, but I’m seeing a lot of that around. That said, you can’t blame anyone for a negative opinion right now.

Though, is this really a “league problem”? I don’t think so. It’s probably difficult to know, but would the rate of sexual assault or misdeed by league players be any worse than general society? I doubt it. This is a problem for society more than it’s a problem for league, though league does need to address it seriously, because of their position in society, and the fame and influence of players. Of course, changing public attitudes by sportsman would help change society in general, which is of course another reason for league to work at this.

Lastly… Matthew Johns would appear to have his whole career in ruin, on every front, and though I utterly condemn the stupidity and thoughtlessness of what he did, I canj’t really shake the idea that he does deserve at least some of his life back. With 50,000+ people apparently agreeing with me on Facebook, I wonder if he might be back next year as a commentator, or more behind the scenes as a coach. You do have to wonder how much and for how long he needs to pay for what he did… bearing in mind he’s become the public face by default, and is thus sharing all of the blame. And you have to remember that he was fired by Nine because of bad PR, not because of his misdeeds.

So… a sad and degrading situation all round really. Let’s hope that the NRL really is moving seriously to stop this from occuring in any regular way ever again. They’ll never stop occasional bad behaviour, but of course this sort of thing has to be out the question in an institutional sense.

If the movie studios of this world made DVDs of movies available to buy at the same time as the movie is released, I’d buy every single thing I take Will to see immediately, as I’m sure millions of parents would. We’d already own Bolt and Monsters vs Aliens, instead of having to wait however many months until the DVD release.

This is a golden opportunity if they just wake up and realise that people must be downloading pirated versions because they can, and because their child wants to see the movie again already. I mean, they’ll say “pay again to see it”, but most won’t. The DVD is a better solution for repeat viewing, and believe me, kids want to see what they love again and again. And just pretending the pirated versions aren’t out there and making us wait months won’t cut it in the long run. There’s not much reason to wait anymore.

I mean, why not be innovative… make the purchase conditional on seeing it at the theatre first: ie, you can only buy the DVD if you just watched the movie on the big screen. That won’t harm box office at all, and if you’re worried about piracy, it’s already here, so why care? The kids will love you again for it.

That concludes my public service announcement.

Currently in a work sense, I’m really not doing Fridays very well…

Day’s too long, work is too overdone, and not enough gets done anyway.

Work-wise, it’s all crazy… I’d rather be doing the new things, but the old things just take up all the time.

And lunchtime is party time on Fridays, which is great, but it cuts down on the work time as well. Can’t really complain about that, wouldn’t want to change it.

But the end of the work day never comes, and I’m always the last one there… I can change it if I organise it of course…

And damn you Channel Ten for putting The Simpsons on Friday night for some stupid reason! The only night of the week I’m almost always home well after 7.30pm… typical! More reasons to download…

It was raining and crap when I left home this morning. When I got to work it was still crap. By mid-morning it actually looked OK outside. When I went for a walk at 1.30pm it was suddenly clearing, quite warm and very nice.

By the time I came back to the office at 2.30pm, it was total grey again, and raining, again.

This is Sydney’s weather right now. Apparently, moderates need not apply. We’re not allowed to have 25 and sunny here. I hear the rain is to continue all week.

And I fully expect it to be 40 degrees and insane again in another week. That’s how it goes…

When Obama mentioned John McCain during the victory speech, there was quiet applause.

When McCain mentioned Obama in his speech, there was boos.

McCain’s speech was pretty gracious in defeat, and was far better than his supporters deserved. Maybe McCain will start to show again exactly why more people thought well of him a few years ago.

Meanwhile, this is Obama’s night, and he and his supporters deserve every moment of it.