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The Starry Rift by Jonathan Strahan (2008) 525 p.
I was quite surprised, when I began reading this book, to reach the end of the introduction and find that it was signed off: “Jonathan Strahan – Perth, Western Australia, 2007.” It wasn’t so much that I was surprised to discover a sci-fi anthologist based in my hometown, but rather a sci-fi anthologist who pulled names like Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds and Ian McDonald.
Strahan’s intention with this anthology was to recreate the golden age of sci-fi, to feature stories that would “offer today’s readers the same kind of thrill enjoyed by pulp readers fifty years ago.” He carefully avoids mentioning “children” or “young adults,” but many of the authors have chosen to interpret his mission statement as such, so the majority of stories in The Starry Rift feature teenage protagonists. Only a few of them try to recreate the space opera feeling of Heinlein juveniles, which I think is what Strahan was going for.
Neil Gaiman was the only author whose work I’d read before, and so the stories in this book offered an excellent sounding board to see which big-name sci-fi authors are worth further investigation. Stephen Baxter earned himself an immediate toss onto the rejection pile, with a poorly written space opera jaunt called “The Repair Kit,” full of wooden characters and the apparent belief that every noun must be preceded by at least two adjectives. I was ready to throw Cory Doctorow there too, as his smugly-titled story “Anda’s Game” featured an Australian stereotype on the very first page (I wonder what Strahan thought of that?), but he surprised me by telling an entertaining and thought-provoking story about MMORPG economies.
Kathleen Ann Goonan’s “Sundiver Day” was a story about human cloning that featured beautifully visual writing but did not particularly grab my attention. “Orange” by Neil Gaiman confirmed by belief that he is a fairly talented writer who is simply not my cup of tea. “Lost Continent” by Greg Egan was a thinly-veiled attack on the astonishing vitriol Australia treats refugees with, the politics of which I strongly agree with, but which was obviously shoehorned into the science fiction genre.
“The Star Surgeon’s Apprentice” by Alastair Reynolds was a promisingly creepy story about a kid hitching a ride of a vessel crewed by cyborgs where all is not as it seems, but which fell apart in the final act. “Infestation” by Garth Nix was a fairly interesting story about vampire hunters in which the vampires are actually insectoid aliens. By far the best story on the anthology is Ian McDonald’s “Dust Assassin,” set in a futuristic India with cyberpunk technology and evocative descriptions reminiscent of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. McDonald is the one author from this book whose other works I will most definitely be seeking out.
The rest of the stories are somewhat interesting but largely forgettable. Overall, The Starry Rift is an easy science fiction read and a good way to sample the works of some well-known authors in the genre, but if you die without reading it your life wasn’t neccesarily a waste.
It’s Remembrance Day, which marks the biannual ritual of the media going through the usual hollow, jingoistic motions and patching together new editorials and opinion pieces from previous years, the same old talk about sacrifice and freedom and courage and blah blah blah. I don’t mean to belittle the experiences of soldiers serving in any war, but I’m getting pretty fucking tired of watching commentators attempt to wrangle WWI combatants into the paddock marked “died for our freedom.”
Australian troops weren’t dying for our freedom, they were dying for the British Empire, they would have gladly said as much, at the time they considered themselves British subjects, and the entire retarded myth was created retrospectively. I’ve ranted about this before, so I won’t bother doing it again, but I did want to comment on something I found particularly stupid. In a column by Rod Moran (who resembles a cartoonish circus ringmaster) in today’s West Australian 8-page liftout to COMMEMORATE THE TROOPS, LEST WE FORGET, HOO-RAH, he makes the completely empty assertion that “much was at stake for Australia” (literally nothing was at stake for Australia and I challenge anybody to prove otherwise), and he quotes the Australian journalist and historian C.E.W. Bean, who spent much of the war embedded with Australian troops:
“Nearly every symptom that marks the Nazi return towards international chaos and permanent war was observable in the methods of the German leaders in 1914-1918… There can be no question which side then, as today, offered most hope for humanity, of which the mass of humanity favoured.”
What a load of shit. Apparently it was as fashionable in the early 40’s as it is today to assume that Germany was the evil bad guy in World War I as well as in World War II. It was not. The German state at the time was a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government and an overseas empire; essentially a Continental counterpart to the British Empire, with both parties responsible for their fair share of reprehensible atrocities in the name of imperialism. Germany did not initiate World War I; Austria-Hungary did, and Germany was dragged along as its ally. The entire war was the result of a regional squabble that escalated due to a complex web of military alliances. This is common knowledge to anybody with a high-school level of education.
Germany fell into a whirpool of fascism and military expansionism as a direct result of its loss in World War I, with the Nazi Party exploiting the bitter sense of wounded national pride that would have instead existed in Great Britain had fortunes been reversed. Bean argued that the German people were naturally more inclined to violence, aggression and the support of a totalitarian state because he was as influenced as anybody else by the Allied propaganda and jingoism of the time. Rod Moran quotes him because it provides neat support to the DEFEND FREEEEEEEDOM theme of the West’s Remembrance Day liftout. I don’t chalk this up to mere journalistic laziness; Moran has also dabbled his toes in denying Aboriginal genocide in articles for Quadrant Magazine, the white blindfold publication edited by racist shitbag Keith Windschuttle, and I have no doubt that he truly believes this ludicrous caricature of the Hun.
Both men are peddling a view that is not only stupid but dangerous. To believe that one particular nation or race is more susceptible to becoming a fascist state, to surrendering its freedom and unleashing a hellish war, is naive in the extreme. To provide a much milder example, I have watched with dismay over the last ten years as my fellow Australians have, under the administration of John Howard, grown increasingly racist, nationalist and belligerent. It is the height of arrogance to assume that good ol’ Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking subjects of the Crown are exempt from the power of our leaders to shape our opinions and sway us towards their own goals and desires, to gently lead us down a road that culminates in war crimes or other horrific acts of barbarity. There was nothing remarkable about the German people or any other race of Europe that resulted in the foundation of Nazi Germany. Given enough time, and the right circumstances, any nation in the world can morph into a totalitarian state, and it is our duty – especially the media’s duty – to be forever vigilant against it.
Now that is something that we should never forget.
I’m getting to the point where I’m thoroughly disillusioned with Kevin Rudd. These things build up over time – his generally arrogant nature, his proposed Internet filter, his feet-dragging on the republic and gay marriage – but what’s really pushed me over the edge is his stance on asylum seekers.
Let’s recap the history of this in Australia. We have a long, long tradition of xenophobia that I won’t bother going into – the treatment of Chinese immigrants in the gold rush, attitudes towards Southern Europeans after WWII, the White Australia Policy, etc. Even today it is evident in the charming young men and women who drape the flag across themselves on Australia Day and write “Fuck Off, We’re Full,” on their chests (for the record, Australia has the third-lowest population density in the world). Most Australians are racist pricks who don’t like brown people, a sentiment that our leaders rarely neglect to take advantage of.
In 2001, a sinking boat full of several hundred Afghan asylum seekers was picked up near Christmas Island by a Norweigan cargo ship, the MV Tampa. With the boat severely overloaded, the captain requested to dock at Christmas Island. The Australian government promptly refused him. With many of the refugees needing medical attention, and some becoming aggressive at the prospect of returning to Indonesia (where they would subsequently be sent back to Afghanistan, as Indonesia is not a signatory to any refugee conventions), the captain took a stand and entered Australian waters anyway.
John Howard promptly responded by dispatching the SAS, who seized control of the vessel in order to protect Australia… from helpless, sick, desperate refugees. I think it was around this point that, with John Howard’s careful nurturing and a little help from 9/11, we experienced a paradigm shift in the Australian mindset. We went from vaguely disliking the brown people who came here and ate funny food and didn’t speak English well, to seeing them as an active threat that required military intervention; a yellow Sword of Damocles right above us, lurking in the jungles and ports of Indonesia, assaulting us with wave after wave of leaky wooden boats. Flooding us, even! We started using words like border “protection,” a “tough stance,” worried that Australia was becoming a soft “target.” We didn’t talk about refugees and asylum seekers; we talked about “illegal immigrants” and “queue-jumpers.”
Flash forward eight years. John Howard is gone, and in his place is Kevin Rudd, who leans further and further to the right with every passing month. A similar situation has occurred, but instead of a foreign cargo vessel, an Australian Navy ship was first on the scene. 78 Sri lankan asylum seekers were rescued from a sinking ship in Indonesian waters, transferred to an Australian customs vessel, and taken to the nearest safe port in Indonesia. They now refuse to leave the ship, and the stalemate has dragged out for weeks. They refuse to step onto Indonesian soil for the same reason the Afghan refugees on the Tampa did: they will be returned to where they came from, where they have every reason to fear for their lives, and the lives of their children. It is a perfectly understandable response. If I was in their shoes I would do the exact same thing.
I’m sure John Howard was quite pleased with how he dealt with asylum seekers. It was politically popular, and the Tampa alone was responsible for winning him the 2001 election. It was also desirable on a personal level, because Howard was a racist. Not the kind of racist who would spit on an Asian in the street, but certainly the kind of racist who orchestrated policies and legislation designed to limit immigration and keep Australia as white as possible.
Kevin Rudd, on the other hand, is somewhat torn. I’m sure that he personally sees the need to be more humanitarian towards refugees. He recognises the insanity in demonising the world’s most wretched, hopeless, pathetic groups of people, the ruthlessness in painting them as a threat for political gain. Such is evident from his general relaxation of the Howard-era policies: the disbandment of the Pacific Solution, speeding up processing of protection visa applications, and the guarantee of permanent residency to successful applicants.
But, because of the kind of man he is, Kevin Rudd is allowing his political instincts to overpower his compassion. He wants to appear TOUGH, just like John Howard was, and ignore the fact that this was never an issue that needed “toughness” applied to it. That big ball of hatred that Howard carefully crafted is too difficult (and useful) to just get rid of, so he’s done his best to transfer the loathing to people smugglers – a strategy that is both blatantly transparent and no more ethical than Howard’s.
A real left-wing politican would try to undo Howard’s legacy. A real left-wing politician would try to convince the Australian people that refugees are not a threat, not a danger, not a problem to be solved but rather people to be helped. A real left-wing politician would make us look at refugees and see human beings, mothers and fathers and their children, rather than “illegal queue-jumpers.”
Unfortunately, Rudd is not really a left-wing politician at all.
Chronicling the events of September 13-14, 2009
4.25 AM – Sitting in my dark and empty apartment. Turn off laptop. Shove it and the charger into my carry-on. My pockets contain my passport, iPod, wallet and 3,000,000 won in cash.
4.26 AM – Load my huge backpack onto my back, and sit on the bed listening quietly. The building is silent. Adrenaline starting to flow.
4.29 AM – Take a deep breath.
4.30 AM – Open door, lock behind me, leave key on ground.
4.31 AM – Walk right past boss/neighbour’s front door. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. If she steps outside right now it will be the most painfully awkward freeze in human history.
4.32 AM – Emerge from stairwell at bottom of building, and quickly head down sidestreet. I have now left the Red Zone: my apartment, the corridors, the stairwells and the immediate exterior of the building, all places where I could conceivably bump into the six or seven people who could blow the lid right off this thing.
4.33 AM – Heading down the sidestreet to the canal, it occurs to me that I severely understimated the Red Zone. I am walking down a street full of bars and restaurants, all of them still full of people and open to the street. What if my boss is in one of them? Or her family, or friends? Jesus fucking Christ I can’t believe I’m doing this.
4.35 AM – Reach canal.
4.40 AM – Still walking down canal, but much further from my building now. Okay. Passed the first hurdle.
4.55 AM – Arrive at Jeungsan subway station, which is still closed up for the night. Plop bags on floor and sit down for a while. Hope I don’t get mugged.
5.10 AM – The roller doors are pulled up, and I am granted entry into the subway station along with several early morning aj-folk.
5.11 AM – An insistent ajumma tries to help me recharge my T-money card. I guess with the bacpack I look like a tourist. Despite reassuring her that I’m fine, she calls for the subway attendents. I KNOW HOW TO DO IT OLD WOMAN STOP DRAWING ATTENTION TO ME.
5.13 AM – Take a seat at the far end of the subway platform. Sit there quelling panic.
5.21 AM – An ajossi wearing a shiny silver suit and holding a briefcase is slowly shuffling up and down the platform. Where is he going? Work? At 5.00 AM on a Sunday? This is the country I am escaping.
5.45 AM – First train of the day arrives, and I scamper onboard.
5.50 AM – Subway stations I will never see again slide past: Susaek, World Cup Stadium, Mapo-gu Office.
6.15 AM – Several transfers having come and gone, I am now sitting down on the purple line and nodding off. Nearly everyone in the car is. Slap myself to stay alert.
6.25 AM – Gimpo Airport station. Drink shitty vending machine coffee before boarding the AREX Express.
6.34 AM – The Arex emerges from her tunnel into daylight. When I entered the metro system it was still completely dark – now the sun is rising over the green hilltops to the east. Concrete apartment blocks and rice paddies shrouded in mist slide past as the train powers on towards the islands of the West Sea.
7.01 AM – The AREX Express arrives at Incheon International Airport, a vast complex that is fresh and clean and new… everything Korea is not. Koreans believe in the power of first impressions. Or just impressions, actually.
7.05 AM – Push my bulky, backpacked form through a convenience store to refund the 5000 won left on my T-money card. This may seem petty when done by a man with the equivalent of $3000 AUD stuffed in his pockets. Duly noted.
7.09 AM – Take the travelator across to the main terminal.
7.10 AM – Begin lugging my tired, nervous ass up and down the three kilometre width of the terminal looking for the Cathay Pacific desk, carrying 22 kilos on my back.
7.22 AM – Success! A Chinese desk clerk informs me that check-in is not until 12.15, a five hour wait. Hoo boy.
7.45 AM – I have now been without sleep for nearly 24 hours. Caffeine is a neccesity.
7.51 AM – Cafe Pascucci located.
7.55 AM – Jesus Christ, why is all the coffee in this country so fucking awful?
7.58 AM – Incheon’s wifi is also awful.
8.10 AM – For some time now I’ve been having severe stomach cramps; it has become clear that this is not merely stress, but an urgent message from my nether regions. Shouldn’t have had Lotteria for dinner.
8.11 AM – Urgently begin looking for somewhere to keep my backpack, which will be quite cosy in a toilet cubicle.
8.21 AM – Locate a locker room and shell out 7000 for storage.
8.25 AM – Locate bathroom.
8.26 AM – Ahhhhhhhh, yeah.
9.00 AM – Have breakfast at Paris Baguette’s. A woman who resembles a Midwestern stripper is eating lunch with her blonde, mullet-haired son. If that kid’s name isn’t Tyler I will eat my hat.
9.08 AM – Why can’t I find a bar? What kind of fucking airport doesn’t have a bar?
9.17 AM – Fuck it, Bennigan’s will do.
9.18 AM – Order a draft beer and sit down. Just as the bartender starts walking towards my table with it, my iPod shuffles onto “Shining Star” by Earth Wind & Fire. Maurice White wails out “Yeaaah!” just as I take my first grateful gulp.
9.34 AM – Too goddamn fidgety and nervous to sit still. Drain the last of the beer and start wandering the airport again.
9.49 AM – Settle down in the viewing lounge next to Bennigan’s, watching sky blue Korean Air planes taxi and take off.
10.03 AM – Fucking awful hip-hop blaring out of the speakers drives me a’wandering again.
10.35 AM – Shuffle from couch to couch and chair to chair all over the airport. Sitting still for too long makes me nervous. Well, more nervous. I passed the first hurdle, which was getting out of the neighbourhood. Now I face the second: clearing customs. Time drags, its natural passage held back by the claws of worry and fear. Oddly enough it reminds me of scuba diving, of the low-key anxiety, the barely suppressed terror I always felt whenever I was breathing underwater. So I wander, and sit for a while, and wander again. It’s so fucking hot. Or is that my imagination?
11.23 AM – I must have passed the same pair of patrolling security officers five times by now. And these are the intimidating ones, the paramilitary dudes with black uniforms and Ray-Bans. I’m a sweating, nervous wreck with bags under my eyes and a bloodstream full of alchol, caffeine and several litres of adrenaline. Not for the first time, I realise that I probably look like an uncommonly well-dressed drug mule.
12.07 PM – GODDAMNIT DEPARTURE BOARD DISPLAY MY FLIGHT ALREADY I CAN’T STAND THIS ANYMORE
12.15 PM – Ok, check-in open for business.
12.17 PM – Pick up backpack from storage.
12.25 PM – Display passport at counter and receive two Cathay Pacific boarding passes: Seoul – Hong Kong, Hong Kong – Perth.
12.26 PM – Stare at the customs gate with swelling panic. I have been warned that, passing through customs, I may be detained and interrogated by officials who are well aware of what I am doing. It is not a crime and they have no legal right to arrest me or make me miss my flight. I still don’t relish the idea.
11.28 PM – Come to think of it, while the soundtrack to Waltz With Bashir fits my mood right now, it isn’t really calming my nerves. Turn off iPod.
12.30 PM – Okay. Time to run the gauntlet.
12.32 PM – Push bags and laptop through X-ray machine. Pray that the tightly rolled wad of cash in my jeans pocket isn’t too obvious.
12.33 PM – Wanded, and given the all-clear.
12.34 PM – Permit myself fifteen seconds to briefly scan the immigration lines and find the friendliest-looking customs officer. Settle on the single female.
12.36 PM – Have conversation with customs officer:
“You have alien card?”
“Yes, here.”
“You come back?”
“No, leaving.”
“You leave… but visa not finished?”
“Yes. Quit.”
“Okay. I keep card then.”
“Yes, okay.”
“Thank you, have a nice day.”
12.37 PM – Holy shit. Did that actually just happen? Am I really free?
12.38 PM – I have never been this relieved in my life. The knot in my stomach untwists, and the pressing weight on my shoulders is lifted. Am I really free? I can’t afford to get careless. Not until I am off Korean soil will I let myself smile.
1.00 PM – Locate boarding gate. The plane is being prepped outside, a spectacular machine gleaming in the sunlight. The Cathay Pacific flight attendents seem like the most beautiful women in the world to me.
1.01 PM – Flight doesn’t leave for some time yet, so I set off to find lunch.
1.06 PM – A convenient food court with a number of different restaurants. As one final act of contempt, I order Japanese.
1.12 PM – My udon noodles and fish arrive… with a side of kimchi. Oh, Korea. One last ditch effort to win me back using the same failed ploys? I do not hate you, Korea – I pity you.
1.40 PM – After finishing lunch, I duck into a toilet stall to check that my three bundles of cash are still secure, tucked away in various pockets in my jacket and jeans.
2.05 PM – Sitting around at the boarding gate, I am approached by a friendly young man doing a tourism survey. He’s quite nice, so I’m more generous than I really should be in my answers. When I come to “Would you recommend Korea to others?” my pen trembles and I just barely manage to settle on “Not sure.”
2.55 PM – Begin boarding Cathay Pacific Flight 411, bound for Hong Kong.
3.30 PM – Takeoff. Yes. Yesssssss.
3.35 PM – Naturally I have a window seat, since I was five hours early for check-in, so I’m treated to my last glimpses of Korea from high above. It seems strangely satisfying to be leaving by plane, to look down on this place from above. I am untouchable now. I am invincible. I am in the sky.
3.38 PM – The last of the islands disappear as we climb above the cloud layer. After a few minutes, I permit myself a Michael Clayton smile.
3.40 PM – Insert iPod. Listen to “Exogenesis Part 3: Redemption” by Muse while the plane gently rolls left and right through the cloudscape, sailing towards freedom.
5.16 PM – After three hellish hours of constant nodding-off and re-awakening, the half-sleep that torments the body and soul (with a timezone change thrown in for good measure) we land at Hong Kong International Airport in heavy fog.
5.30 PM – This airport has the longest corridor I’ve ever seen. I can’t actually make out the finer details of the far end, and I’ve already been walking down it for five minutes. Fuck my legs hurt.
5.45 PM – A frustrating search for a meal in a very inefficiently designed airport. WHY IS EVERY RESTAURANT CHINESE WHY WHY WHY oh yeah
6.12 PM – Burger King for dinner. I’m burned-out on Asia.
6.55 PM – Locate boarding gate, settle down in chairs with laptop.
6.59 PM – Email Internet acquaintance who gave me advice on pulling a midnight run, having done one himself the previous month (customs detainment and all). Never heard from him after the first email, in which he wouldn’t tell me where he fled because his school was sending him death threats, but I wanted to let him know I’d made it. Somewhere between the use of codenames, the phrase “off the grid” and listening to “Extreme Ways” by Moby I feel like I’m living in a thriller movie.
7.34 PM – Watch a dry thunderstorm roll over the city. Lightning flashes down and stabs at the dark outlines of the mountains above Kowloon.
7.57 PM – Why the fuck is it so hard to find a single place selling water? No I don’t want your touristy knick-knacky airport shit, I want water. I NEED IT TO LIVE.
8.01 PM – In a chemist, of all places.
8.15 PM – Back to the gate to kill some more time.
8.35 PM – Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation, but the CNN anchors look like aliens. Their skin is stretched too tightly across their faces. Are they some kind of advance scouts for a coming invasion?
9.12 PM – My legs hurt bad. Whether I leave them on the ground or cross them or stick them on the chairs, they hurt bad.
10.55 PM – Boarding begins for Qantas Flight 68, bound for Perth.
11.25 PM – Plane begins trundling out to the furthest runway.
11.55 PM – Delayed, waiting at the end of the runway because of a tropical storm in the South China Sea. A Cathay Pacific plane crawls past, an enormous dark monster in the shadows.
12.04 AM – Finally take off, the plane rumbling down the tarmac and powering into the night sky. Hong Kong drops below us. Pulses of cloud-damped lightning flicker over the city, and in the harbour fishing boats are lit up like golden scarabs.
12.07 AM – After arguing with his wife and calling her a cow, the cunt in front of me reclines his seat all the way back into my face. I think you can judge a lot of a person’s character by how far they choose to push their seat back on a plane.
12.17 AM – I want to sleep. But I also want food and drink. Oh, God, how I want a drink.
12.44 AM – Oh come on, this is minor turbulence. Take the seatbelt sign off and serve us dinner already.
1.10 AM – Flight attendent asks me if I would like the beef or the chicken. “Whatever’s the least Asian, please.” They forget to give me a coke with my bourbon, but my psyche is so ravaged by the last 24 hours that I barely notice.
2.00 AM – Try to get some sleep, face up against the windowpane, shoes off, curled up underneath my jacket and an airline blanket. Feel half-drunk and empty.
5.00 AM – Emerge through a very thick layer of noise, dream fragments and blindness into full consciousness. Pull sleeping mask off and rub eyes. Another three hours of awful half-sleep. Not sure if they even turned the cabin lights off.
5.30 AM – Because, this being Qantas, they have to serve us both dinner and breakfast! Who cares if we only get three hours of sleep in between! What if the passengers began to starve to death, and resorted to cannibalism, the flight crew holing up in the cockpit while the rest of the plane became a bloodbath of violence and anarchy? That would make QF72 look like a joyride.
5.31 AM – I guess I am hungry though.
5.40 AM – Eat some kind of potato cake and fruit salad. Insert iPod to drown out the domestic dispute in the two seats in front of me. Bloc Party, “So Here We Are.”
6.00 AM – Daybreak over the desert. Out the window below is the rocky landscape of the Pilbara, blue in the pre-dawn light. Endless plains of rock, trees clinging to the creases of the creeks and streams. Ancient and weathered by time. As the sun rises it shifts from blue to violet to pink to red. No buildings, no sign that humans can even inhabit this place. Borne across it by the white wings and red tail of the flying kangaroo. Australia. Home.
What is it with Australians? Why are most of us such irredeemable fuckheads?
A bunch of refugees show up in a rickety boat, having crossed thousands of miles to escape the kind of terror and misery that we can’t even begin to imagine, and Australians react by writing angry letters to the The West Australian about how we should “send them back where they came from” and how “we decide who comes into this country.” The West feeds the fire by regularly splashing photos of boat people across the front page with headlines like “STRAIGHT TO OUR DOORSTEP.”
I hate the West. I really do. I read it because I don’t have much of a choice, it being the only daily in the state. The highlight of each paper is usually the letters to the editor, a seething nest of xenophobic snakes that lash out at anything remotely foreign and lament the road to ruin that we are surely rocketing down. And you know, the funny thing is, the day that the most recent SIEV exploded out near Ashmore, killing two and severely wounding dozens, the West ran two editorials by Andrew Probyn and Paul Murray. Both of them dispelled the notion that there is a “tide” of illegal immigrants threatening to “swamp” Australia, and pointed out some facts:
1. In 2008, 4750 people applied for (“applied for,” not “were granted”) asylum in Australia… compared to, say, 36,900 in Canada and 31, 200 in Italy.
2. Less than 1% of the global population of asylum seekers wind up on Australia’s shores.
3. The vast majority of asylum seekers (95% to 99%) in any given year arrive by plane, not by boat. The vast majority of illegal immigrants in Australia are not those who apply for refugee status, but rather those who arrive here legally on tourist or working visas and then simply remain when they expire.
Why does the West concurrently run reasonable, sensible articles on the one hand, and throw fear-mongering headlines around with the other? A rhetorical question. It sells papers, and all you need to give up in return is your journalistic integrity!
The fundamental truth is that asylum seekers are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a threat to Australia. They are poor, ragged, desparate human beings who throw themselves on our mercy. The fact that the previous government exploited them as a convenient political scapegoat, pandering to the worst kinds of ugly, racist elements in Australian society, is disgusting. The fact that the current government maintains the status quo for fear of being seen as “soft” is disgusting. The fact that most Australians still see refugees as a threat, a problem or an inconvenience, rather than as human beings who need our help, is disgusting.
We went camping on the weekend. Chris and I had an argument with the adults about the whole issue. I find it shocking that these people, mature adults whom I am very close to and whom I greatly respect, have such ignorant and bigoted views on the issue. My father complained that all the medevac flights and Navy rescues and surgical operations will cost a lot of (PRECIOUS TAXPAYER’S) money. What is the alternative? Letting them burn to death, or drown? How warped does your moral compass have to be to put a price tag on a human life? “They’re not from our country,” he said. How warped does your moral compass have to be for you to think that, simply because somebody was not born on the same patch of soil that you were, you have no obligation to PREVENT THEM FROM BURNING TO DEATH?
One of my aunts said “where do you draw the line?” I repeatedly tried to explain to her that there is no need to draw a line; that boat people are a non-issue; that the numbers are so miniscule as to be completely irrelevant. She stubbornly repeated the same line over and over.
Another of my aunts said she was genuinely concerned that Muslims could become a majority in Australia and somehow destroy our culture and not let us raise the flag, sing the anthem etc etc. Apart from being a mathematical impossibility, the fact that people view Muslims as some kind of all-devouring force of subjugation and destruction is so hysterical as to be completely laughable. “They come here and tell us how to live,” “if we tried that in their country we’d be shot,” “we’re not allowed to celebrate Christmas anymore” BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH. I’m so goddamn sick of hearing the same old, tired arguments with a foundation in nothing more than a filthy swamp of prejudice and xenophobia.
And this didn’t fucking happen by accident. Yes, the urge to fear and destroy anything different from us is deeply embedded in our genes, but it was fucking Howard who carefully, painstakingly nurtured that urge into violently nationalist sentiment over his eleven years in office. Now it’s part of the zeitgeist and it isn’t going away. We still have people perceiving a handful of Muslim refugees in leaky boats as some kind of MASSIVE OVERWHELMING THREAT to the Anglo-Saxon juggernaut that straddles this massive continent. Racism and intolerance has become a social norm.
I can’t wait till that generation dies.
Perth is a fucking hole.
Less than a week until Japan, and I’m tackling the problems of finding winter clothing in midsummer in a city with a Mediterranean climate where the temperature rarely drops below 10 degrees Celsius. I went to Harbourtown with Chris yesterday and managed to find a decent jacket, and bought some new shoes and jeans, but stuff like gloves and thermal underwear are a lot more difficult. This stupid city. A trench coat would be awesome – I remember wearing one of those in Canberra and reading TIME Magazine at an RSL club, and feeling like I was in the 1940s – but there’s no chance of that.
Also today is Australia Day, a holiday I dislike for a number of reasons, primarily the fact that I get heartily sick of seeing our shitty flag slathered across everything (and yes, it is a shitty flag, because 25% of it is taken up by another country’s flag). I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to be born here. I should live in Ireland or the U.K. or somewhere a little more cold and overcast. In any case, happy 220th birthday, permanent European presence in Australia!
47. Following the Equator: Volume I by Mark Twain (1897) 288 p.
Following the Equator was written at a time of great financial crisis for Twain. He had sunk all his money into a foolish investment in a “revolutionary typesetting machine,” which failed, and left him a hundred grand in the hole – equivalent to nearly $2 million today. To extricate himself from this debt he planned a global lecturing tour, with the route chosen to emphasise English-speaking countries. The first volume in this travelogue follows his misadventures in Hawaii, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand.
I’ve never read anything by Mark Twain before. I suppose if I was American I would have read The Great American Novel in high school, but naturally I read the Great Australian Novel instead. So this was my first Twain book, and I was given an opportunity to view my own nation, in the late 19th century, through the eyes of an outsider. It was similar to Down Under in a way, as both writers thoroughly enjoy their time in Australia, with plenty of compliments, and observations on the curious nature of the Australian inferiority complex considering the fact that most foreign visitors are utterly enchanted by this country. Both visitors also criticise Australia’s dark past, and for Twain this is no mean feat, considering that he was writing at a time when Aboriginals were considered to be no better than animals. It’s all well and good to look contemptuously on the mistakes of the past from a smug modern vantage point, but to be the man decrying such horrors as they are going on around him is quite laudable.
Twain would be a rare breed for this reason alone – compassionate, progressive thinking, breaking away from mindsets which we today consider abhorrent. But he is a jewel among pebbles for other reasons, too. He’s funny, intelligent, witty, and accessible even to the 21st century reader. It’s always a pleasure to be able to read non-fiction more than 100 years old and find that it is easily understandable and relatable.
Books: 47/50
Pages: 15, 258
The Republicans were always going to be the underdogs this year. After eight years of the worst president in history, it would be hard for them not to be. The Democrats have an incredibly charismatic nominee, easily malleable mass dissent, and the media firmly on their side. If they can’t win this election, they can’t win any election.
Any lingering doubts over this have been put to death with the gradual revelation that Sarah Palin is going to be one gigantic liability. Her selection as McCain’s running mate was a political move about as subtle as blatantly screaming, “HEY DISENFRANCHISED HILLARY SUPPORTERS! PALIN HAS A VAGINA TOO! VOTE FOR HER DESPITE THE FACT THAT SHE STANDS FOR EVERYTHING HILLARY DOESN’T!” With every passing day it has become more clear that her selection was one great big fuck-up.
Hillary Clinton is going to destroy this woman. She was harsh enough on Obama, a fellow Democrat. Imagine how she will react to a woman – a Republican woman – who stands a good chance of becoming president before she does. She’ll be a fucking rottweiler.
It won’t be difficult for her, because Palin is literally Hillary’s ideological opposite. She wants to open pristine Alaskan wilderness for oil drilling. She doesn’t think polar bears or beluga whales belong on the endangered species list, because – get this – it could damage the economy. She put off providing same-sex couples in Alaska with equal rights for as long as possible. She’s a strong supporter of abstinence-only education, a ridiculously useless program, as we can see from the flashing warning signal that is her PREGNANT TEENAGE DAUGHTER.
And she’s vehemently anti-abortion, which deals severe blow to the entire purpose of her selection in the first place: winning the oestrogen vote.
Moving on from the fact that this woman isn’t Hillary Clinton, however much she’d like us to think she is, let’s look at the other big problem: she’s dangerously inexperienced. She served two terms as mayor of a rural village with a population of less than ten thousand people, and has been Governor of Alaska (pop. 683, 478) for less than two years.
So a campaign which has been continuously (and successfully) playing on Americans’ concerns that Obama is inexperienced has gone and selected a vice-presidential candidate with even less experience than him.
A campaign which has continuously (and successfully) distanced itself from the extremely unpopular current president has gone and selected a vice-presidential candidate who speaks in the same rustic, folksy, stupid manner that he does.
A campaign which has continuously (and successfully?) downplayed its candidate’s tottering 72 year age has gone and selected a vice-presidential candidate who is very obviously unprepared to become the most powerful person on the face of the planet, should McCain die in office – noting that in less than one presidential term, he will have passed the average life expectancy of the American male.
There were plenty of other female Republicans with more experience and a higher public profile, so the McCain campaign’s decision to choose her is not just stupid, but bizarre and puzzling. Maybe they’re doing a 180 on their usual policy of “don’t do anything Bush does,” and selecting a candidate to appeal to redneck voters who want a simple, naive candidate whom they can relate to. But I can’t imagine why. The “stubborn idiot who knows nothing about anything” angle running is running thin after eight years, and they knew that.
Here’s a speech excerpt:
I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better. When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too.
Okay, that’s swell. But it doesn’t work like that in a presidential campaign, sweetheart. And the GOP is well aware of that. Which is why everybody is so bemused that they chose you.
Anyway, to look at something similar and yet completely different, there’s a state election this weekend. Ad campaigns have been running for several weeks now, urging us to “Be involved in the decision process – Vote on September 6,” despite the fact that voting is compulsory in WA and we regularly have a turnout of 97 – 99%. What a waste of money.
I’m really not sure what to think of Alan Carpenter. Everybody says he’s arrogant (which is irrelevant), and people are constantly harping on about how Perth is going to shit, what with the rise of crime and violence, which people don’t seem to realise is bound to happen in a rapidly growing city. They’ve provided us with new rail infrastructure and handled the gas shortage pretty well. The only things I dislike about the current government is their attempted control of the press, which is quite worrying, and their terrible road safety program, which mostly relies on speed cameras and scapegoating P-platers.
But then, the Liberals would probably do a lot worse.
I think what irritates me most about contemporary politics in WA (and, to a lesser extent, Australia) is the parties are so goddamn close to each other. It doesn’t really matter whether I vote Labor or Liberal. It won’t make a whit of difference to my life or to how this state is run. The general consensus among most people I talk to is that both parties are as useless as each other, which is the typical Australian view on all things political, but it seems especially pronounced this year. There’s a lot of dissatisfaction.
So I’m going to vote Green as a lark, banking on the laughable idea that voter disillusionment is so widespread that they’ll actually get in!
I FUCKING LOVE DEMOCRACY
Google Street View went live in Australia the other day. When they first launched this last year in the States, it was just a handful of intersections in major cities, and I thought “lame” and went back to snowboarding with Samuel L. Jackson.
It’s only just now that I’ve discovered that Street View in Australia (and presumably, for some time, in the United States) actually has hundreds of thousands of photos from virtually every street in the country, from the esplanades of Sydney to the remote desert highways of the Northern Territory. Notable absentees are Kalgoorlie and most of the Top End, including Darwin. Nonetheless, this is fucking amazing.
Here’s my house!
My car isn’t there, so I must be somewhere out and about. It’s not parked on the edge of the road outside Warwick Train Station either, so I can’t be at university. I’m probably at work – but Google was FUCKING LAZY and didn’t bother to do every carpark in the country as well as every road, so we’ll never know for sure. I’m out there somewhere in that frozen moment of time. Judging from petrol prices, that frozen moment was quite some time ago – last year at least:
At the same time it can’t be any earlier than about October or November, when I was driving to work and saw a group of people on the side of the road clustered around a guy who’d taken a spill on his motorcycle, and who later died.
Here’s the driveway where, in mid-2004, I had an accident of my own and could easily have died. I used to ride my bike at top speed down the footpath on this hill every day on the way home from school, despite Chris’ warnings that a car could back out of a driveway and I’d run right into it. As it turned out, he was right, and one afternoon I woke up lying on the verge of this house with a broken arm. I note that they still haven’t trimmed that view-obscuring hedge.
I think this is an awesome little toy. If you had decent broadband and mountains of spare time you could take a virtual roadtrip from one side of the country to the other. In fact, sooner or later I expect to see a blog doing just that, as dull as stretches of it might be…
There’s the usual hysterical panic from the tinfoil hat brigade, who claim that it’s a breach of privacy to be able to see a photos of people walking down the street, or the outside of somebody’s house. Whatever. Here’s a news flash: when you’re in public, people can see you!
