Tag Archives: history

Kissing Cousins

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by Evolution • Tags: , , , ,

[Note this was written to follow on from discussions which began in comments on post "When you wish" below and continued into those of "Extraordinary". One of my most regular commenters on this blog, Eric, is trying to understand evolution. I, we, are trying to help him. This post arose from Eric's comment that "I don’t get the 'every generation' being a transition between the species at all." So, Eric, let's try it like this.*]

I don’t know if you are interested in your family history, but let’s assume you are. And let’s assume that you know all your ancestors, way way back (will come to how way back soon). And let’s imagine that not only do you have photographs of your ancestors going back 150 years (when the camera was actually invented) but there was a previously unknown mechanism which enabled photos of all your ancestors going way way back.

So you start to arrange the photos on your table. Parents first, then grandparents, great grandparents and so on, back through the generations. And let’s assume (last assumption, promise) that you have not only told your immediate family what you are doing, but have told your more distant family of cousins etc, your community, and, through the internet, the whole world.

OK, with me? Right. You are putting your great grandparent’s photos on the table, your children remarking how much you look like them and you not being sure if it is a compliment, when in walks your second cousin and says, hey, they are my great grandparents. You chat for a while and keep working. Down go the photos generation after generation.

Back to six generations and a previously unknown cousin from Germany drops in and points out you share a great great great great great grandparent. He still lives in the same village your ancestors migrated to America from (I have a real example of that, a sixth cousin living just a few miles from the village in England my six times removed grandparents lived in).

I don’t really know your background so I will switch to me now. I keep adding more and more generations (roughly 4 per hundred years). Back a thousand years. All those people, all 45 generations look much like me – variation in hair colour here, different height there, shorter nose over this way – all residents of the English Midlands.

About a thousand years ago a bit of a change – more men and women seem to be of strapping solid build with red or yellow hair. Just as I am putting their photos out, trying to keep track of which generations I am up to, there is a knock at the door and a couple of strapping red haired gentlemen tell me that I have just identified some common ancestors of their’s which means I now have Danish and Saxon distant cousins.

Another 500 years back and a knock at the door tells me those dark haired olive skin ancestors are the reason I have Italian cousins. And so on, back thousands of years. Little differences between generations, but all recognisably the same group. Tens of thousands of years, still the same, and if you put any of them in modern clothes they could drink in my local bar unnoticed.

Oh there are changes, as you [that is me, "I" became awkward!] realise when you look back to your recent ancestors, and when you hear knocks on the door from people from Germany, Hungary, Turkey. But still, generation to generation, no obvious change. And then as more tens of thousands of years tick over you get vists from Australian Aborigines, Asians, South Americans, and finally Africans. Still no obvious change from generation to generation, but your ancestors are now recognisably different – shorter in stature, with curly hair and darker skin – from those ten or twenty thousand years later or those today. You realise if you put the photos in a bundle and flicked them like those old children’s moving picture books, you would see a gradual change over time to the present day.

And still you go back, ancestor after ancestor. You’ve lost all sense of time. What is it, a million years maybe, gosh, that’s, um, 2500 generations. Curious, you hadn’t noticed change, but these G G G G …. Grandfathers of yours are much heavier built, more muscly, bigger jaws, bigger brow ridges. Other cousins drop by from Indonesia, far east Russia. Similar but a bit different again.

And still we go on, another 2500 generations and another. Is it your imagination or do these ancestors seem shorter, darker, more, well, hairy? No it’s not. You look along the table, can’t see the change, until you jump forward a couple of million years (big table this) and compare. And then you get a phone call from zoo, chimpanzee there wants to tell you that you and he are 10,000th cousins, sharing a 9999 great grandparent. Seems odd, he looks quite different to you when you arrive at the zoo, but on a table he has arranged all his ancesors going back same number of generations as yours. You look at his photos and notice the same pattern. The later ones all look just like him, “typical chimpanzees”, but as you get further back you notice small changes – slightly shorter arms perhaps, jaws a little larger, hair colour a little different, slightly more upright. He points at another slightly different looking chimpanzee, and you discover that when your friend got back to about a million years ago he got a visit from a Bonobo chimp who said he was his long lost cousin, just like the calls you had along the way. By the time you look at his ancestors and yours from about, say, 9000 generations ago, there’s not much difference at all, and when you get back to the shared ancestor they are of course identical.

Seeing that you are a bit puzzled your Chimpanzee cousin points at you and points at the ground, then points at himself and then at a tree outside. Light dawns – your common 9999 great grandparents were mainly ground dwellers, but around 4 million years ago his direct ancestors were in a group that became separated from yours, and while your ancestors adapted more and more strongly to ground living, his were in an area where tree living was all the go. Adaptation proceeded in the two directions in different parts of Africa, and by the time conditions changed and the two groups were in contact again they had become different enough not to interbreed.

You go home, pleased to have discovered more long lost cousins, and keep working through your photos. Back to 7 million years, 17500 generations and another zoo call, this time the gorilla wants to say hullo to his cousin. Same thing. A line of photos on a table, call from a distant gorilla cousin (separated in east Africa), not much change from one photo to next, but change over longer time. Seems quite different to Humans and Chimps initially, but doesn’t look that much different to the common human-chimp grandparent perhaps 5 million years ago, and as you get further and further back they converge in appearance (and genetics of course) until they look more and more like a kind of generalised ape – Australopithecus (again with various cousins).

And… Well, you get the idea. You can continue generation after generation through the other apes, then back through the early mammals, the reptiles, the amphibians and so on. Not much evident change from one generation to next but over immense time substantial change. No modern species the direct ancestor of any other modern species, just like your cousins are not your grandparents, but all are cousins to some degree.

There you are Eric, evolution over four billion years in a short post – gradual adaptive change, and equally importantly, geographic separation of different populations forming new species. What a wonderful world that has such potential in it.

* I’d love to claim the credit for this idea of how to present evolutionary change, but saw it (in the marvelous illustrations by Dave McKean) and read it originally in Richard Dawkins 2011 “The Magic of Reality” Random House, London. However I have added the calls from cousins, and the zoo, as my own piece of originality.

Through early morning fog I see

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Don’t know if you remember, but last year there was a lovely story about a long ago failed suicide attempt. A young woman’s fiance had died (I think, or jilted her) and in her despair she threw herself off the Gap in Sydney. I forget the precise details but she missed the rocks below, landed in the water, and was rescued by a couple of chaps fishing in a boat who by chance saw her fall. Anyway the point of the story (apart from being an example of the absolute random nature of life and death) was that she decided she wanted to live after all, eventually got married, got an education, produced children and grandchildren etc, had a career, a rich and full life of benefit to many others. Happy ever after. So it goes.

Got me thinking though.Thought about it as there was debate in the US about execution of prisoners on poor evidence. As DNA evidence freed prisoners on death row. As the execrable Rick Perry, as vicious a hanging Texas governor as George Bush before him, had to “apologise” for executing a prisoner as belated evidence proved his innocence. Thought about it, in short, as the madness that is the death penalty continues to play out in America, uniquely among civilised countries. Thought about the wasted lives, the clearly rehabilitated prisoners whose appeals were turned down by hanging governors, often mockingly.

Thought too about the mandatory sentencing, the mandatory minimum sentencing, the “three strikes” populism that has filled the gaols of America and is filling up those of Australia. The madness that leaves young people behind bars for life. It is clear in both countries, that any idea of rehabilitation, of trying to turn lives around, to save them from drowning in prison, is long gone. Guantanamo is, in a sense, a microcosm of the penal mindset of politicians and public in both countries. Lock ‘em up, throw away the key.

And finally, emerging once again in the last year, were yet more stories of the children “stolen” (under various pretences) in the not too distant past from poor parents, black and white, and shoved into religious [usually] hell holes, with vicious physical punishment, often sexual abuse, and no real education beyond physical labour. The wasted potential, the ruined lives, still makes the victims weep today, makes those who hear their stories weep.

They needed rescuers too, they were drowning, not waving, and all of them had potential for rich lives, contributing much to society, producing families. Potential often greatly reduced or totally lost as a result of the treatment they received.

People may say I’m a dreamer. Hell yes, guilty as charged. Obviously there are psychopaths, sociopaths, pedophiles, arsonists, murderers, with damaged or inadequate brains who need to be kept out of society. Obviously there are crimes so heinous that a very long time in prison, if not life, is called for as punishment. But the shock jocks and populists would have you believe that everyone in prison comes under those headings, I suspect the proportion is small.

And for the rest of them, isn’t it better to try to rehabilitate them so they can productively repay their “debt to society” back in society rather than unproductively in a prison cell? Or by killing them?

Life is short, death is long.

Aux armes, citoyennes

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

The other day a storm erupted on Twitter and in blogs about an article in a magazine. The argument was about little*, really, a storm in a teacup, but it raged for several days. The even odder thing was that it didn’t pit right against left, but consisted of feminists, female and male, arguing with each other as if enemies.

The popular mythology is that feminism has triumphed, men and women equal in society. A great symbolic photo in November showed President Obama being greeted on arrival by female Governor-General, Prime Minister, ACT Chief Minister. Women head major corporations, institutions, public service departments; succeed in all professions (including the military).

But underneath the neat symbolic photos and the few excellent women at the top, things are not quite so rosy. A woman prime minister? She is the subject of misogyny, often really nasty (with threats to kill her), every day. Women’s pay is still much lower; while one or two make it to the top, most of the next management levels are still men; the battle for paid maternity leave revealed many politicians who want women back in the 1950s; equal opportunity legislation is attacked; sexist jokes flourish in “anti-pc” times; adverts openly portray women as either dumb or harridans; many women proudly say “oh no, I’m not a feminist”.

In Australia and elsewhere, gender equality, taking off like a rocket in the 60s and 70s, is falling back to Earth as the last booster fails.

The bad guys are winning, and the rocket falls with gathering speed, back to where it started. Many of us I think sense this, but don’t quite know what to do about it. Which is why, I think, the storm erupted the other day. Nerves are edgy, opinions are varied, approaches are debated, solutions hotly contested. The heat is on and temperatures are fraying.

Much the same in other areas, most notably conservation, gay rights, education, social services. Everywhere you look it seems, conservative, religious, business, political operators, with the active help of large sections of the media, are pushing back successfully against the social and environmental advances of the 60s and 70s. The political scene is like the aftermath of a battle, a battlefield where small groups are trying to fight a conservation battle here, a childcare battle there, a battle for gay marriage on the other side, support for unemployed being challenged on one hand, glass ceilings are replaced with concrete ones over the road. If we fight these battles singly we’ll lose them all.

Time I think, not just for all women to work together to change views from “I’m not a feminist” to “I’m not a feminist, but …”, to “of course I’m a feminist, want to make something of it?”, but for all progressive groups to work together. It was hard coming out of the fifties, when the conservatives were taken by surprise by the progressive movement. This time they are ready for us and have the weapons.

Progressives united can never be defeated.

* this is not to say the issue, the use of the word “hysterical” to describe a woman writer’s tv appearance, was not of interest/importance, just that by any measure it was a small issue in relation to the reaction. Although that reaction was compounded, rather like a nuclear chain reaction, by the vehemence of the opinions expressed and the increased personalising of the debate.

Note
The original article by Justin Shaw is here
Three of the major subsequent debaters have also posted on the topic (as have many others apparently):
Tammi Jonas
Ben Pobjie
Jennifer Wilson

If there are any blog readers who like what I have been doing on the blog it would be good if you could put in a vote for me in the “Shorty Awards” blogger category. Really good! You have to say, in a few words, why you are voting for me (@watermelon_man) in the blogger category. And that’s it really.

Counting out his money

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by Economics, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What slogan is above the door of the free marketeer’s think tanks? No, it’s not “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”, you naughty people. It’s “Government small enough to drown in a bathtub”.

These people believe that “government” should leave banks and financial institutions alone, get rid of regulation, has no business in business, as it were, should “get out of the way” of private enterprise, and so on. Any suggestion that the “government” should do something about CEO salaries, risky investments, fees, interest rates, is met with the outrage usually reserved for apostates from a religion. And the outrage in turn is largely met with acquiescence by the media, themselves determined not to be regulated in any way. Faced with the unanimity of “think tanks”, media, and of course the financial institutions themselves, politicians from both “sides” have quickly jumped in to say “oh my goodness gracious me heavens to betsy why no of COURSE we wouldn’t want to regulate banks etc. Reckon we are socialists or something?”

So let’s think about this for a moment. Twenty two million Australians elect several hundred people from among their number to represent their interests. Each one has gained the confidence of tens of thousands (in the case of Senators hundreds of thousands) of people. And yet, these people, combining to form a “government”, are told, by a handful of people with a bizarre ideology, that they must not attempt to have any control over the organisations that not only serve the financial needs of the 22 million, but through their activities fundamentally control the economy of the nation.

That is forget the word “government” as used pejoratively by this little band of reverse Sherwood Foresters, instead say to yourself – these financial bodies are supposed to have no oversight by we, the people of Australia? Really? How did that come to be a thing?

Well it came to be a thing because the banks and the think tanks kept saying it, and a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth for all practical purposes these days.

Look, money isn’t a get out of jail free card. Oh, sorry, yes it is of course. Let’s start again.

Just because your major activity, your role in society, involves money, doesn’t mean you can do what you like. I mean, banks aren’t churches, are they?

In almost all other major kinds of activities in our society we, as a people, through our government, decide how we want those things to work. If you are in medicine, teaching, building roads, serving food, police, flying planes, and all the rest, you work within structures, within limits, for the good of society.

Once upon a time only the church was, as they say, a law unto itself. the reason was obvious, they had you over a barrel, in an explicit, and exquisite form of blackmail – try to rein us in and we will damn your soul to eternal hell, no white robes, harps, bunches of grapes or virgins for you. So they were left alone and for centuries did very nicely thank you. Still do pretty nicely actually with tax exemptions, and ability to make their own laws, and avoidance of laws on discrimination, and largely a freedom from discrimination. Nice work if you can get it and they got it.

And then a second group achieved a similar status floating above and beyond ordinary mortals – the media. Achieved in the same way – hey, try to control us, even look sideways at us, and we will hack our phone, have you on the front page of a fish and chip wrapper; or running the perp walk between serried ranks of cameras and blonds with microphones as weapons, outside your own front door every morning. Wouldn’t like that would you mr politician, we know where you live, and we know where your children go to school, oh, and we have a copy of that ill-advised video you and your wife made on holiday in Bali. Any questions? Right then, piss off and leave us alone.

And now the third of this unholy triumvirate. The blackmailing style the same, the weapons slightly different. Not being poked by imps with red hot pokers for eternity, or junior reporters with red hot microphones, but worse, much worse, blackmailed by the guys, and gals, with the keys to the treasure chest. You want us to do what? Cut CEO salary from $20million to $19million, pass on interest rate savings to home buyers, lend more to small business, reduce fees on breathing while in bank, stop playing risky games with dodgy financial brothers? Right, we’re out of here, got a place to go to in Panama, Liberia, Burma, Zimbabwe, no nonsense about regulation there, few dollars to the country’s president and you can do what you like. See ya.

No wonder solidarity from the media, playing similar games. No wonder support from libertarians who mistake a license to print money for a statement about human freedom. No wonder that other industries, seeing the way these groups have got away with murder as effectively as Al Capone, are adopting the same tactics. MIners, clubs, supermarkets, manufacturers have all been at it, when faced with royalty payments, or regulation of problem gamblers, or food labelling.

So time we the people told our representatives we want the bluff called. Want banks behaving responsibly before we count to ten. Nine, ten, knockout. And the blackmail? To hell with it. Do you really think a rich country with 22 million people can’t develop new community banks if the others pick up their notes and coins and go home? Some genuine competition from groups prepared to work with community for a modest return rather than against it for greed would quickly emerge. Competition, you see, remember that quaint concept? Bit old-fashioned, but then I’m just an old fashioned guy with an old-fashioned idea about millionaires.

And with that victory under the belt the government could then tackle the media, and then, gulp, the church. Let’s move from the 14th to the 21st century in one giant leap. And put the fear of god into these other wannabe blackmailers while we are at it.

Oh, and that sound you hear? Tents being folded in the night as the freemarket think-tankers, no longer a job to do blocking regulation here and no money to be earned from doing so, head for Zimbabwe and freedom.

World turned upside down

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by politics • Tags: , , , , ,

When I was young, a year or two ago, the world seemed a somewhat predictable place. You knew, each New Year’s Eve, what you would be doing, as school year followed predictable school year. You knew what family would be doing, as they lived daily lives, worked at long-term jobs. The country seemed predictable, Robert Menzies having been appointed prime minister for life, or a century, whichever was longer. The world, apart from the odd event, was predictably broken up into east and west, north and south, with an iron curtain set literally in concrete, and Nelson Mandela in prison for life or 100 years.

But suddenly, almost overnight it seemed, things fell apart. I greet each year with trepidation, wondering what nasty thing is going to leap out of woodshed. And the country seems gripped with the same fear, often though about things so trivial they evaporate in the cold light of a new day. The media constantly searches for new sensations, and our politics has left the Westminster System in the dustbin of history.

Around the world there are wars, revolutions, economic uncertainty, a return to the anti-science dark ages, and a return to refugees fleeing terror in all directions. And, most frightening of all, the very Earth itself, once seemingly so stable and supportive, is warming and changing as we watch.

If I was indeed a child now I would look around me and wonder why, and wonder what was going to happen next. Not much certainty for generation Z as we tiptoe with trepidation further into a new and frightening century. No wonder teenagers are making whoopee, and making mistakes, in what looks like a repeat of the youth culture between the two world wars.

So all of us let’s make a New Year Resolution to contribute what we can to making the world a better place in 2012. With 7 billion of us how hard can it be? Everyone has different skills, different concerns, different interests, different ways of making a difference at home and abroad.

So a happy New Year to all, and Hey! Be careful out there.

When I use a word

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by Atheism, politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Every year, regular as clockwork, as stores play “White Xmas” for first time and begin selling mince pies, some conservative-religious-fanatic-populist-politician-radio-shockjock will begin complaining about the “War on Xmas”.

Complain (with complete lack of historical/linguistic knowledge) about saying Xmas instead of Christmas, complain about “Happy holiday” instead of “Happy Xmas”, complain about lack of (totally invented) “nativity” scenes, and so on.

Some of this, most of this, is culture war stuff. Religious and political conservatives seeking stick to beat progressives, determined to impose their will and world view on society. But some, to be charitable in this season of goodwill, is a complete absence of any historical sense, and an inability to recognise the role of personal development in apparently rock solid core values. You know how your popular music tastes are formed by the music that is, well, popular in your teenage years? Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Beatles, Lady GaGa (heaven help us) will forever remain the yardstick by which you judge all the music that pre- and post-dates your period.

Same with Xmas. Your memories of the pleasures of childhood, your childhood, Xmas will remain etched in your brain as the sine qua non of all Xmases past present and future. The slightest deviation from that golden mean, just like the arrival of the Beatles (more popular of course than Christmas) heralded the death of Presleyesque Rock and Roll, means the pagans, the atheists, are out to destroy the one and only true spirit of Xmas past.

But this is also true in a more general sense. We think of Xmas, of course, as essentially the Xmas of our lifetimes, and our parent’s lifetimes, the Xmas, in fact of the twentieth century, of, for many of us, Dear old Blighty, The Mother Country, England. A Xmas unchanged and unchanging until, as the culture warriors see it, those militant atheists spoiled it for everyone – the end of Xmas as we know it.

Absolute nonsense of course, it has changed, been changed, added to, amalgamated, combined, modified, ever since the decision, many thousands, probably at least 10,000 years, ago, to begin celebrating the winter solstice. The depth of winter in the northern hemisphere, time to hope that the Sun was once again on its way back, and the happy days of Spring would one day be here again.

You know all the rest don’t you, pagan rituals, mistletoe, Saturnalia, adopted by christians to fit an imaginary story, St Nicholas, Queen Victoria, German trees, Charles Dickens, Coca Cola? Suffice it to say that if xmas culture warriors like Barnaby Joyce or American Bill O’Reilly were transported back to any time prior to, say, 1830 in England (or indeed Scotland or Wales), or to Europe (or indeed any other continent) they would find Xmas unrecognisable. Similarly a medieval English or European peasant time travelling to Xmas 2011 would have no idea what was going on, would view the festivities as they would an alien spaceship.

To take just one example. My beloved Pickwick Papers is often rightly seen as the book that began the trend towards the modern Xmas we see now. But if you read the Xmas scenes, this is a celebration by a rich landowner and his family with a visit by a group of rich unemployed middleclass travellers. The great mass of the population of England, peasants and poor, weren’t celebrating like this. They were lucky to get Xmas Day as a holiday at all. They never had celebrated it much other than by attending church on an extra day. The lords and ladies had always had solstice celebrations (nobless oblige us every one), but it wasn’t for the likes of you and me. Even after Pickwick Papers, the Xmas celebration was more popularised by Queen Victoria, and her German Consort introduced Germanic elements like trees and ornaments etc, and it remained very much an upper classes celebration.

Then other elements were added for commercial reasons – the food, the Xmas cards, ornaments, presents, indeed “Father Xmas” himself. And eventually, slowly and gradually, we got to the “traditional Xmas” in its current form some time after the second world war, the time that the culture warriors remember. Oh and “Xmas taking the Christ out of Christmas” (devilishly clever these culture warriors)? Fraid not, it is a very old religious abbreviation, the “X” actually being the Chi used as first letter abbreviation of Christ in Greek going way way back to the early church.

All sound familiar? Yes, you got it, it’s very very similar to the same-sex-marriage-war-on-marriage line pushed by many of the same cultural warriors who are dying in the ditch to keep Coca Cola Christmas as it ever was. “Traditional marriage” has about the same pedigree as “Traditional Xmas”. Proper registration of marriages only came in in England in 1837. Up until then it was the province of individual parishes. And the concept of people getting “formally married”, unless you were a member of royalty or aristocracy, with alliances to seal, land to inherit, was pretty hit and miss before about the eighteenth century. Peasants either married informally, or didn’t marry at all, children were christened or not or in batches. And the “nuclear family” was pretty much an invention of the post-war world. And all of that even without considering “marriage” customs in Australia or Africa and so on, all considerably different to what we have now. So, quite frankly, when people talk about marriage as an ancient institution they are talking ignorant bullshit.

Atheists can’t celebrate the festive season and gays can’t get married because some hard-faced men who look as if they have done well out of the culture wars have defined what those things are? Get over yourselves. Looking at you Barnaby.

Anyway, to all my blog readers and twitter followers, wherever you are, and whatever your marital state, have a great end-of-the-year-politically-correct-happy-holiday with family and community.

And as George Grossmith said “I am a poor man but I would gladly give ten shillings to find out who sent me the insulting Christmas card I received this morning.”

Lipstick red

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by Atheism • Tags: , , , , , ,

The other day the Australian government rejected a scheme for food labelling which had been proposed by its own review committee. Instead of all the fine print and misleading concentrations and secret coded additives there was meant to be a “traffic light” system of red amber green signs on labels. Red would be high concentrations of stuff like sugar and fat that was bad for you and so on. Easy to see, understand, respond to, so naturally the people who sell groceries fought a furious and successful campaign to prevent its introduction (shame Nicola Roxon, shame).

Got me thinking though that the concept could be applied much more widely – newspapers, tv programs, sports, children’s pageants, farming practices, shock jocks, toys, and so on. But the obvious place to start, give it a trial run, get people used to the idea, is with religion.

Plenty of ingredients that could be considered, but let’s keep the trial run simple and just base the traffic light warning (to be put on a large billboard outside each place of worship) on misogyny. This sums up the rest anyway.

In various religions at various times, including right now, women have been stoned, executed, had acid flung on face, put into weird clothes that cover every mm of body up to and including hands and eyes, made to sit in back of worship house, included in polygamy, raped as children, refused permission to drive, refused permission to communicate outside family, encouraged to jump on to funeral pyres, had children removed, made subservient to head of house, had genitals mutilated, refused education and kept ignorant, refused birth control and abortions, refused positions of authority within the religion.

So we could add up points, work out where each religion stands. Oh, what the hell, it would be a red light outside every place of religion wouldn’t it? Lipstick red.

And Justices for all

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Look forget about the Monarchists for a moment. The ones with flags and funny hats and collections of Charles and Diana commemorative mugs; the ones who camp out for two days on the street to possibly catch a glimpse of a gloved hand waving from a speeding limousine; the ones who spontaneously sing “god save the queen” or are in tears at the thought that they have been in the same public space as a person of royal blood. Forget them, I say (and yes, I know it’s not easy), and let’s look at the question of Australian “head of state” in a different way.

Oridinary intelligent thoughtful people (ie not monarchists) can still sometimes remain opposed to the idea of a “republic” in Australia. They will say “would you rather have the Queen or George W Bush?” and I admit that it is a fair question (more widely they will refer to the presidents of African or South American banana republics, suggesting that we are better off with the queen in, now that bananas are cheap again, a banana monarchy). Even more generally they will say “well, we have to have a head of state, so it might as well be the Queen, because elected presidents have too much power” (essentially the argument John Howard used to win the unloseable referendum on the republic). And so the combination of mad-brained monarchists and the apparently rational “we have to have a head of state might as well be the queen” middle-of-the-roaders, dooms us to another thousand years of the French-Scottish-German British Monarchy.

Look from time to time (not a lot of time) I mull over this issue when there is some media eruption over the sacred nature of the monarchy and how when people marry into it they (usually, except Fergie) acquire the magic DNA during a kiss on the balcony and become imbued with royalness themselves. I think of trying to explain to people that they are confused between the presidential style of executive government (US, Russia, France, China effectively, and, yes indeed, South American countries) and the Westminster style (Britain, Japan, Australia, Ireland, India). In the former the President holds the dual roles of head of government and head of state so an election sees the instant transfer of the embodiment of the state and its continuity to the winner of the election. In the latter the prime minister is there at the whim of parliament, and can be overthrown at any moment by a vote of no confidence in parliament or party room. In these countries then the continuity of the state, the person who hands the keys to the prime ministerial residence to the new leader, and who meets other leaders of countries as the symbolic embodiment of their own country, has to be represented by someone independent of the normal election cycle. Sometimes this is a monarch (Britain, Japan), sometimes a person elected to the role (Ireland, India) – and only to the role, taking absolutely no part, and there being no mechanism to take part, in the political issues and battles of the day.

But I tend to get tired about half way through that explanation and give up. If people don’t understand that there is absolutely no proposal by anyone to swich from Westminster govt to presidential govt in Australia then there is no way of reaching them.

But during the recent royal visit, as the Queen wandered around curing sickness by touching people or merely by being seen by them, I had a blinding epiphany. Why do we need a head of state at all? Or rather, to be more precise, why do we need a head of state who lives in govt house and puts the queen up in her spare bedroom and sits in the head of state box at Olympic Games? It is always confusing things (remember the arguments about arch-monarchist Howard going to the Games in Sydney). Essentially these days the PM accompanies the GG to any occasion where “Australia” is meeting “some other country”. The last time the GG played any role in sorting out a dispute in the actual political process and government of Australia was 1975 when unelected John Kerr so spectacularly injected himself into politics and corrupted our democracy for a decade.

Otherwise the GGs constitutional role has been restricted to making a batch of scones and handing a pen to the incoming PM to sign the pathetic oath of office (in which they essentially just promise to be PM). Then they all have a glass of best bubbly and stand around making small talk for 5 minutes before the PM goes off and does some real work. If we really do need someone to do that then there are any number of candidates around the country. Little old ladies, little old men, living in small country towns could be slipped a few dollars for scone mix every three years and the new PM and ministers could drop in to sign a stat dec to say they are going to be nice to poor people and not wreck the joint. I am referring of course to Justices of the Peace. Pick one at random out of a hat or a computer, ask for a volunteer. They don’t have much else to do except witness documents for the peasantry, they could easily do the same for the new government.

If there was some kind of constitutional crisis – and it is hard to picture what it might be, other than some even more complex variant on the last hung election – then I reckon any country JP could set the two opposing leaders down in the front parlour with a glass of home brew and bang their heads together until common sense prevailed. If it didn’t (and I only say this given the nature of the current Opposition Leader) then a committee composed of the Speaker of the House, the President of the Senate, and the Clerk of the House could be called in like a football review tribunal to make a final decision.

There you go. No foreign Queen. No Governor General. No elected President getting uppity. And a huge saving of money.

Some of which a grateful nation could send my way.

You give me fever

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

When you have a fever your perception of the world gets distorted, your brain cells manipulated by virus and high temperature to see all kinds of things that are not there.

Chemotherapy is similar. After you have it you are left not knowing what changes to your body are the result of the illness, which are the result of the treatment, which are just ordinary everyday ailments that you normally would have ignored.

The media is having the effect of fever or vencristin on the body politic. Reading, seeing, hearing the news now I have no idea whether the events being described are real or fake, meaningful or meaningless, deserving of outrage or approbation. Video and photographic images may (or may not) be faked; descriptions of events true or false; reporters may (or more likely may not) be anywhere near the scene they are apparently describing; both witnesses and reporters may (or may not) have a vested interest (or an ideological purpose) in presenting a story in a certain way; politicians and soldiers and economists may be telling the truth or lying.

Bodies may or may not have been buried, shots may or may not have been fired, money may or may not have been stolen, people may or may not be terrorists or freedom fighters, heroes or villains. Conversely the Earth is warming, the poor are getting poorer, religion is damaging society, taxes are too low, science is essential to society, in spite of narratives that pretend these things are debatable.

The media were once meant to fling open the curtains of the sick room, let the light in, diagnose the symptoms of society, treat ills. Now they bring new and virulent diseases, raise temperatures, manipulate our brains, create illusions, prevent us perceiving the real world.

How do we cure that?

Miracle Play

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , ,

News the other day, though not really news I suppose, of the teams of American and Australian (and presumably other) special forces troops operating a “kill or capture” program in Afghanistan. One such American team for example was responsible for killing bin Laden (capture apparently never considered as serious option).

But the teams wander around consulting a list. Bit like the Wild West wanted posters in a compact form I guess. Then they either arrive by helicopter in middle of night and kick doors down, or they call in air strikes, or missiles from drones. Kaboom, cross another off the list.

Except, “oh, sorry, same name different fellow eh, who knew?” Or, “what do you mean the one who gave us the name was a business rival?” Or “family members in the house at midnight. All dead? Shouldn’t have been there. Gotta expect collateral damage. Do our best to avoid civilian casualties. Yada yada.” Or “Wedding party? They have weddings? Who knew?” “Why do they hate us? Buggered if I know, think they hate our freedoms and way of life. Yes, that must be it.”

Reading and hearing this stuff gives you the feeling you get from first reading Slaughterhouse Five or Catch 22 – an overwhelming sense of sadness and despair.

These same “mistakes”, same conversations, could easily have been discussed among the Roman troops occupying Britain or Germany. Among any of the European troops occupying Africa, Asia, South America in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. German troops occupying France in WW2. Japanese occupying SE Asia. French and Americans occupying Vietnam. Russians occupying Afghanistan. And so it goes. On and on, over and over.

No imperial country ever learns from history. All believe that occupying soldiers will eventually be loved by the people of the occupied country if only you can kill enough of them. And destroy their houses and farms and cities. Great minds, the best and the brightest, put a lot of thought into coming up with plans like this. Not one of these great minds (obviously no Einsteins among them), in the last two millenia, ever seems to have had enough nous to carry out a thought experiment. Not even complicated, goes like this:

“Let me imagine that I live in country A, minding my own business, raising my family, tending a farm, creating art, working in a factory. suddenly country B invades my country. The incoming soldiers are from a different ethnic group, religion, culture, society. They proceed to throw out the government, justice system, all social structures, and administer the country themselves, in the process beginning to appropriate raw materials and factories for their own purposes. You don’t take too much notice, never having been much interested in politics.

But then my brother and all his family are wiped out when his house is blown up by a bomb dropped by a plane. Missed the local resistance leader’s house by just “that much”. Then two of your cousins are killed by a missile from a drone as they try to repair their broken down car on a country road. Then while you are at market one night in the city, soldiers break into your house at midnight, rape your wife, then shoot her, your children, and aged father who lives with you as they lie on the floor tied up, then set fire to the house and shoot all your farm animals. They have done this because a neighbour who has always wanted to take over your farm told them you were a resistance leader.

So you take your gun into the hills and join the resistance, vowing revenge. You kill some soldiers in an ambush. In their revenge the other troops call in a bombing raid on your village and then charge in killing every single person, men, women and children. More men from the surrounding area, relatives of the dead villagers, join the resistance group. And so it goes. Even when the occupiers manage to kill a real resistance leader he is replaced by an eager volunteer the same day – the plans for resistance are not even delayed.

There you are – a general story but substitute the name of any country and any occupying country and the script is the same. Yet not one of the planners ever seems capable of conducting that thought experiment to see how they would react in the same situation. Not one seems capable of running the script through to its inevitable end – the occupiers leave (the occupied have nowhere else to go) sooner or later. And so here we are again, running the same Miracle Play through its stylised script, the actors all knowing their roles, the ending certain, in Afghanistan.

What’s that saying about people who don’t know history?