Spam Email #2

To: disproportionate.response@gmail.com
From: usefulidiottravel.com

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Chad, student, Los Angeles, California, on our totalitarian immersion program

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Foreign Relations: Nationality and Family Luncheons

Some months ago, in connection with a family wedding, I found myself speaking with an uncle on my father’s side, a New Zealand farmer (yes, I am half New Zealander), who I hadn’t seen for about ten years. The pleasantries out of the way, I proceeded to bait him by making the following statement:

“You know what I like about New Zealand? They are the only Pacific island nation which isn’t giving Australia any trouble at present.”

I admit it was pre-meditated; I didn’t just come up with that one the spur of the moment. And I got a rise without even needing to go with my planned escalation:

“But then, of course, New Zealand is Polynesian, while the Solomons, PNG, Fiji et al are Melanesian – silly me.”

For those of you who are not especially au fait with New Zealand history or demographics, our neighbour across the Tasman was, much like us, settled by British colonists, and thus has the same character of Anglophone multiculturalism as the other Brit dominions, and indeed the metropole herself.

Anyhow, needless to say I was given an explanation of why New Zealand is not a “Pacific island nation” and, indeed, why any patriotic kiwi would take great exception to his glorious motherland being compared to Nauru or Kiribass.

Understandable, I suppose, given that Pacific island nations haven’t exactly excelled themselves in the development stakes and, especially in the cases of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, have become highly dependent on Australian assistance.

These states have also, consequently, developed a sort of adolescent, love-hate relationship towards their big benefactor, who both finances their independence and secretly – they suspect – shakes its head and looks down its nose at them for screwing it up. Despite the aid, The Solomons appear almost comically corrupt and misgoverned, and PNG is pretty much the same.

The difficult relationship between Australia and these two has recently erupted publicly, with slights, insults and accused paedophile Solomon Islands Attorneys-general (seriously) being traded all over the place.

This all puts Australia in a difficult position. If its costly aid programmes appear ineffectual, and their beneficiaries’ governments are as likely to bleat about Aussie “arrogance” as consider Australia’s suggestions, what can the Australian government do?

Back in the day, if the big power didn’t like what its small neighbours were doing, it could simply send a gun-boat and a squadron of naval reservists into their capitals and replace any errant administrations, much like my uncle would give a recalcitrant sheep a kick in the bum should it balk at being dipped (or not; hey, I’m not the farmer, he is!) Anyway, that sort of muscular diplomacy has rather gone out of style of late, and moral persuasion: “Hey, we’re paying for all this silly, independent country nonsense, you have an obligation to do what we say” clearly doesn’t work a treat either. At least, not unless you are willing to turn off the hard currency tap.

Which is exactly where we find ourselves now. There is an understandable aversion among local policy makers to our Pacific neighbours persisting in a state of perpetual, slow decline. Worse, the geopolitics wonks fear that some of them may become full-blown “failed states” – a rather over-used description, in my view. Nonetheless, continuing the current arrangement makes little sense: if all you have to beat someone with are carrots, it’s time to toughen up.

Start putting some serious conditions on the money, and maybe you will find that Pacific leaders will be prepared to play ball.

Changing the Subject

An article in The Age today by one Dennis Altman, the 2005 Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University and author of a book called Fifty First State - no prizes for guessing what that would be about - highlights an alarming trend among Australia's left-wingers, elites, members of the chattering class and "people like us"s. When confronted with the biggest issues of our time: terrorism and the rise of political Islam generally, their stock standard response is to dodge the question in some transparently desperate manner - that hasn't changed, of course - but now they have a new distraction to the main game: Christians.

Apparently, conservative politicians are cosying up to them, indeed, some of them may even be Christian. Whatever happened to secular democracy! As everyobody knows, the decent thing to do in any free, modern society is to hide one's religious convictions away in the basement like your grandparents did with your crazy uncle, not parade them around, and certainly never let them influence your attitudes or values.

In fact, in Australia, Christianity has become so marginalised that professing any degree of belief practically makes one a social dissident. The fact that otherwise intelligent people can become so paranoid about the success of a few fringe pentecostal churches or, in Altman's case, tax breaks for churches which have likely existed for decades or centuries, attests to this. Which is what makes the "Christians under the bed" movement so very ridiculous.

Today, the greatest internal threat to our secular democracy (realistically, radical Islam is, thanfully, a threat from without) is militant atheism, not some mythical resurgence in pre-enlightenment Christianity. For those Christians who haven't been cajoled by wider society into leaving the mainstream churches - still, numerically, the main source of this alleged Christian scourge - these churches are deserting them. Whether it's in a desperate attempt to remain relevant, or some other pathology which afflicts dying organisations, the establishment branches of Christianity seem to have decided to go cold turkey on the fire-and-brimstone stuff and instead taken a course of soft-left happy pills. Which is fine, unless you're a believer, which is probably why so very few people still are.

So what happens when faith has been ridiculed away and descredited in the minds of the masses as so many silly fairy stories unworthy of belief? Well, you could always worship the state instead, that's worked out fine in the past, hasn't it?

Just don't mention the terrorists (or the communists, for that matter).

Sunday Round Up

Fresh-faced Hicks:



The Sunday Age ran the above picture of a cute-as-a-button, no doubt very young David Hicks today; clearly taken many years before he commenced his career as an Islamist guerilla. No rocket-propelled grenades in sight!

The Age presumably believes reality is just too prejudicial for Hicks.

Grog on the shelves bad idea, for some reason...

Meanwhile, The Hun reports that professional wowsers are attempting to stop supermarkets from placing liquor items on the supermarket shelves - the general rule in my neck-of-the-woods is that liquor is sold in a separate, attached bottle shop. Clearly the sobriety brigade thinks alcoholics are currently being prevented from picking up that bottle of vodka by the effort of having to walk five metres to the Liquor Land.

I guess it is the same logic which would prevent addicted gamblers from getting to a poker machine venue if the local one shut down and they had to travel another kilometre or two to indulge the habit.

It must be fun to be a self-indulgent moral narcissist.

Statement Counter to Reality

"It, I think, is also generally accepted that disarmament of Hezbollah cannot be done by force."

Kofi Anan

Praise be to the excellent Romeo Mike's (click the heading) blog for alerting me to the latest zinger from the court jester of the international community.

So, what does the UN's Secretary-General mean by that snippet of inverse-fact insight? Well:

"Iran and the Arab League don't want Hezbollah disarmed, and the confused, compliant Europeans, who are providing the lion's share of soldiers for the farcical UN 'force', have neither the will nor the inclination to have them disarmed either."

It is becoming ever more obvious that the international community have no intention of disarming or even seriously restricting Hezbollah. This multilaterial force is simply a cosmetic quick-fix.

Hezbollah should be celebrating; Israelis should be enraged.

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Whatever happened to the herbal Viagra?

Coming Out

The problem with being gay AND right-wing is that you have to come out twice. And, in this day and age, that second exit from the closet can often cause quite a stir.

This happened to me recently. Having assumed, as one does, that everyone in my workplace was aware of my open, flamboyant, outrageous right-wingedness, I was reminded of the old wisdom that there is always somebody who doesn’t know.

There I was in the lunchroom, passing the time between cigarette breaks by reading the newspaper and watching my coffee cool down, when I noticed that Faheem Khalid Lodhi had been sentenced to up-to twenty years jail for plotting terrorism offences.

“Oh”, I remarked to nobody in particular. “That’s good news”.

A colleague of mine, likewise whiling away the day in the lunchroom, guffawed audibly and stood up.

“Good! What do you mean good?”

Then the penny dropped: “You mean you’re…”

“Yes”, I replied. “I thought it was common knowledge.”

“But, but, I mean, I didn’t know. I mean, it wasn’t obvi…”

And she grabbed up her tea and, in a Herculean effort to compose herself, declared:

“Sorry. I think I’m going to have to go, um, think about this; come to terms with it.”

And she stalked away, muttering: “Nobody told me…what a joke…fascists, fascists everywhere…not natural…soon they’ll want to get married…” and so on.

Hey, at least it wasn’t as bad as with my parents.

Rumours Ridiculed, Extremists Popular!

In an interview with the Herald Sun, swimming superstar and national sporting hero Ian Thorpe was asked to respond to "those" gay "rumours". Note, asking a subject to respond to gay rumours is the MSM equivalent of saying: "Hey, we reckon you're gay. Discuss." Thorpe did respond, by ridiculing the rumours – which means ridiculing the question, which was itself not printed in the article – without specifically denying the implied allegation. (Click the link above, see if you agree with my analysis).

Now, I have no idea whether or not Ian Thorpe is gay, and there is also the possibility that the journalist edited the interview to make his comments appear more vague and non-committal than they actually were. Nonetheless, it strikes me that the best way for a heterosexual to respond to "gay rumours" would be to say something along the lines of, oh: "I'm not gay."

This, again, doesn't mean Thorpe is gay. Maybe he merely wants to keep a bit of mystique around the issue, or genuinely believes it's nobody's business. Either way, high-profile sexuality revelations – such as the two most recent ones, both by former pop stars – are in the habit of being made at the press stop on the way to the celebrity retirement village, certainly not at the height of fame.

Thorpe is no faded musician, and even if his endorsement contracts don't carry a clause stating: "The Athlete is not to come out of, emerge, or otherwise remove, or cause to be removed, himself from any closet, cupboard or like metaphorical item of furniture", it is probably financially sensible for him to keep those gay rumours, rumours for now.

I mean, if the public cannot even stomach boy-banders who like boys, sexual openness for well-known athletes is obviously not an option, even for exalted champions like Thorpe.

Assuming he is actually gay, of course, which I am certainly not alleging. Nice change from the Middle East doom and gloom, though, isn't it?

Oh, I can't resist.

It appears that a recent Egyptian popularity poll has been topped by a trio of terrorists: Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas' Khaled Meshaal, and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This is very bad news, at it suggests that radical adherents of "the ideology" (scroll down) are starting to win the argument in the Arab world's leading power. Governments, both Arab and international, must start offering "The Arab Street" alternative things to get excited about. I suggest economic reform and development, but then I'm right wing.

Something needs to be done though.