My current favourite hobby horse is the degree to which “awareness” has become the new model of social action. In some ways it really started (at least in my mind) with the Make Poverty History campaign and Bono’s call that “we don’t want your money, we want your voice”. And while I get that, it seems to me that the vast majority of Gen Y is being passed a pale imitation of activism: where it doesn’t cost you anything except for a little badge on your Twitter avatar or a Facebook status message. The grand-mother of them all is the ubiquitous Breast Cancer Awareness campaigns. Is it too terse to say that perhaps the battle for Breast Cancer Awareness(TM) has been run and won? Are there really women still out there not aware of the need to check with their doctor about any lumps?

This was spurred on by seeing the magnificent opposite. Last night I saw “The Most Dangerous Man In America”, a doco on Daniel Ellsberg who released the Pentagon Papers. He was an defence analyst who made the decision to release masses of documents on the Vietnam War: showing that the US were essentially in it to save face. I was incredibly struck by an press-conference in the film where Ellsberg was being asked whether he was concerned that he was risking a jail term by releasing these papers. He replied: “Wouldn’t you go to jail to end this war?”

Now I’m not on my way to jail, but I refuse to believe that anything of value comes without a cost. Much as I love U2′s music, I’ll take Ellsberg’s activism over Bono’s any day.

Labor Party: Lindsay Tanner

Sure Lindsay is officially stepping down at this election, but you can’t tell me that the Labor leadership wouldn’t tempt this man to make a run at glory. And Lindsay is one of the best things about the Rudd government: the one member of the “gang of four” you felt could genuinely be trusted and a man who genuinely believes in things and speaks intelligently about why he does so.

Interchange: Penny Wong impressed me on Q and A last night. Mind you I reckon I’d almost take anyn of the Labor politicians without the “faceless back-room hacks”.

Liberal Party: Malcolm Turnbull

Maybe he just feels let off the leash now he’s a glorified back-bencher, but Malcolm was very impressive last night on Q&A. He showed that he actually had vision for the nation that didn’t involve shutting the front door and bagging out the other guy. While I think he got a bit lost in his first attempt at the Liberal Party leadership I’m pretty certain that he wouldn’t take the same crap if he got another go around.

Interchange: Ummmm. Well. Would it be too late to get Fraser back? Perhaps Joe Hockey on a really good day, but it’d be touch and go.

Greens: Christine Milne

Bob Brown is a little past it for my liking, and while I have little doubt the man is passionate he usually comes across as though he’s just watched “How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days” for every day for four months and has completely lost the will to keep his eyes open. Christine Milne in contrast actually composes well constructed arguments in response to the sort of lines that have historically always been used against the Greens (blah blah hippies, blah blah unrealistic, blah blah blah).

Interchange: Do the Greens have anyone else in parliament? Let’s leave this as is.

Democrats (or perhaps just as an independent): Andrew Bartlett

Sure he’s running for the Greens in the House of Reps this year, and the Dems are well and truly dead (buried and cremated?) but Andrew Bartlett is still one of the best thinkers in Aussie politics, and the parliament is much much poorer for his absence. His blog is still worth a read.

That’s my ideal election: at least with the poor standard of politicians we have on offer right at the moment. Feel free to submit your own if you’re the kind of politics nerd who thinks about these things too.

Abbott was worse: even his summation failed to provide any positive policy that wasn’t just a reaction to the Labor party. The sole time he impressed was when he got on the subject of paid parental leave: a position that is surely from the playbook of the other party and a clever attempt to bring some dissatisfied Labor supporters across.

But the saddest part about politics this year and every year for as long as I’ve been allowed to vote is that the migration of about 2000 desperate people a year (in a country who reportedly takes about 300,000 a year) will define how a huge percentage of constituents vote, and will likely decide the election whichever way it goes. It’s the most pathetic issue, and apparently the only way to make it work for you is to see who can possibly be the nastiest.

So I’ll be voting, but certainly not for either of these two disgraceful attempts at political parties, and I’m definitely not happy about having to vote for the guys who will end up with it. Politics is very hard to love these days.

1. I can’t watch this video without believing, at least for a moment or two – that this piece of technology would make me a happier, more complete person. It’s a fantastically brilliant piece of advertising.
2. Promises like this feel to me to be an alternate gospel.

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

via Official Google Blog: A new approach to China.

While I realise lots of you will have heard this news already, congratulations are in order to Google who have decided that it’s not enough just to say you’re not going to be evil, and are instead doing something about it as well.

“I’m quite sure I could beat LeBron James in a game of one on one basketball. The game merely needs to feature two special rules: It lasts until I score, and as soon as I score I win. Such a game might last several hours, or even a week or two, and James would probably score hundreds and possibly thousands of points before my ultimate victory, but eventually I’m going to find a way to put the ball in the basket.

Our national government and almost all of the establishment media have decided to play a similar game, which could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts until there are no longer any terrorists, and;
(2) If terrorists manage to ever kill or injure or seriously frighten any Americans, they win.”

Sourced from: Lawyers, Guns and Money: Terrorball

Rich white straight-acting blokes who believe in God, or pretend to, hold a disproportionate amount of the world’s power and have for centuries. It’s not because, as many would like you to believe, it’s a case of ‘we are the best, chuck out the rest’. It’s simply due to circumstance. Class, freedom, money and education are the basis of power. And access to these is almost entirely due to where you were born and to whom. Sexually transmitted hereditary privilege and genitally determined advantage.

via Sexism | discrimination | God | Catherine Deveny.

This quote has been waiting in my draft posts for over a month now, waiting for me to have something valuable to add to it. And like her or hate her (and there are plenty on both sides of that divide), I don’t think that you can really argue that Catherine Deveny is actually wrong here.

The Brandenburg gate in 1989, and today

The fall of the wall in Berlin seems to me to be one of those events that the West has a pure love for: mostly because (at least in the retelling) it is a triumph of “democracy, freedom and capitalism” over the tyranny of communism. It’s a story we can tell where we can unambiguously claim the moral high-ground. And make no mistake: this is a beautiful story: a triumph of the force of will of a people, to overthrow their oppressors. How nice it is to be sure that you’re the good guys in the story.

But I couldn’t let this opportunity go past, and while I have no ability to verify the accuracy of this story, that doesn’t change it’s worthiness. In my year 11 German class, we were studying a bit about the fall of the Berlin wall, and saw a great film: “Das Versprechen” (The Promise). In one scene they were showing the East German guards in their guard towers, while just the other side of the wall, West German propaganda was blaring from cars driving alongside. Through the loudspeaker came one of my all time favourite quotes:

“The Roman soldiers would wear red so that their enemies could never see their blood, and your soldiers wear brown pants”

Feel free to get someone to explain that to you if it doesn’t make sense at first pass.

So far, the main thing occupying the minds of our business people and politicians is how we can introduce an emissions trading scheme without hurting anyone.

Henry offers the tart observation that the introduction of such schemes ”is intended to cause a significant shift in the structure of the Australian and global economies over coming decades; quite possibly the largest structural adjustment in economic history. That is the point of doing it.”

Translation: It’s meant to hurt because that’s what changes people’s behaviour. If it doesn’t hurt it won’t work.

via Ross Gittins.

Found this quote a few days ago, and thought it was a valuable insight; worth cutting through the bleating of both sides of the political aisles as they attempt to make the ETS policies hurt the least they can.

””Rudd has an approval rating of 68 per cent [71 per cent in the Nielsen poll]. He has the unanimous loyalty of his caucus. He has an almost non-existent Opposition.

He is in a unique position to change the debate. Changing the way Australia deals with race would be pretty special – that’s Labor hero stuff.”

Paul Howse, quoted by Peter Hartcher.

When Kevin Rudd was promoted to opposition leader, and then voted in as Prime Minister, there was a great deal of optimism about what that might mean for Australia’s policy framework; specifically with respect to adopting a more compassionate approach, specifically after having read some very very positive things in Rudd’s essay on “Faith and Politics“. And initially it appeared that the hopefulness was justified:  there was an apology to the stolen generation, temporary protection visas were scrapped…

But this recent asylum seekers debate has seen KRudd taking a distinctly Howardly line: “I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia.” (source) I can understand Rudd needing to tow a party line, with respect to this issue; but the tone of the rhetoric is bordering on insulting, from the same man who wrote the following:

“Another great challenge of our age is asylum seekers. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to a vulnerable stranger in our midst.

That is why the government’s proposal to excise the Australian mainland from the entire Australian migration zone and to rely almost exclusively on the so-called Pacific Solution should be the cause of great ethical concern to all the Christian churches.”

I still firmly believe that Rudd, for the most part, wants to do the right thing here. But it’s one thing to write of lofty ideals while you’re the shadow foreign minister. Quite another to carry that out when you’re the guy in charge.

"Sigh No More" by Mumford & Sons

I’ve spent the past two days marveling at this album. Having heard the first single: “Little Lion Man” – I was excited about the album from Mumford & Sons. I was expecting the raw emotion you heard in that track: not too stylistically different from the voice of a Glen Hansard. What I didn’t expect was to find an album packed full of spiritual references, alluding to some genuine struggles with faith in a similar lyrical bent to a Nick Cave type writer (though perhaps with a touch more optimism).

There’s already been a bunch of lyrics I’ve wanted to quote (and indeed have put a few up on Twitter already):

“it’s not the long walk home that will change this heart, but the welcome I receive with the restart”

“If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy, I could have won”

“It seems that all my bridges have been burned. You say that’s exactly how this grace thing works”

“How can you love what it is you have got, when you took it from the weak hands of the poor? Liars and theives you don’t know what is in store”

“These bodies they will live, and these bodies they will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. ”

“Love it will not betray, dismay or enslave you it will set you free. Be more like the man you were made to be.”

There’s plenty more too, this is an album has anger, disappointment, love, optimism and sadness. I realise that this feels like it has shifted from being a review to more of an advertisement, but it’s probably now sufficient to just say that I love this album. But be aware little kiddies – “Little Lion Man” does have include some vocabulary best avoided in polite company. All in proper context though.

In considering the issue of global warming, the immediate temptation is to think really big picture, and in so doing effectively out-source any sense of responsibility. But societal change rarely finds leadership in political leaders: rather in the gradual change that comes about through considered action from the general populous.

So as I think about my own reaction to the climate change reality, I’m struck at the paralells with our current attempts to lose weight. Both recognise that the way our lives are structured at the moment is essentially unsustainable. Both are fighting against greed and laziness. I thought I might share the closest I can come up with for a method for fighting my carbon obesity.

1. Make the big decision

For Bec and I, we’ve had enough discussions about Climate Change to recognise that we both believe that it’s a reality for the world, and that we are compelled to do something about it. Making the big decision that you want to change something about the way you’re living has to be the starting point.

2. Make millions of little decisions

Having done the easy part: deciding that you’re going to side with the good guys in the battle for societal change, there now comes the much harder part. In the same way as you make a weight-related decision every time you reject or accept the opportunity to snack on a deep fried mars bar – there are millions of decisions we make (or fail to make) that can have an impact on our carbon footprint. Some are big (our two houses since we got married were deliberately near train stations so we could use public transport as much as possible), others not so big (switching the lights off).But the bigger point is that every time you make any decision: whether a big imposition or not, you change something in your mindset. And it becomes easier to make the right choice next time

3. Journey with other people

The reason that we’ve seen relatively positive results with our latest health-kick has been that we’ve done it with my family. All of a sudden you have a group of people that you’re taking the same journey with: people you can encourage, spur on, get competitive with, etc.

So that’s my advice. Save the planet, one light switch at a time.

“A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” is Donald “Blue like Jazz” Miller’s latest book, and it certainly shares Miller’s free-wheeling, conversational style. Miller recounts the experience of turning his life into a movie: and the weirdness of having to make “Don” a more interesting person for film.

It’s a touch ironic that in a book centered around needing to flesh out a narrative structure: that it does feel in lots of ways that Miller is missing any real meat. Million Miles is a nice book, but if feels like having a discussion with a good friend that you haven’t seen for too long: you just keep waiting for the small talk to get deeper. There’s no question that Don Miller is a genuinely good writer, but I’ve been following his blog for a while now and I really just ended up feeling like I wasn’t sure that I was getting a lot more out of this than I would a good blog post. Perhaps he’s just a victim of being a good blogger.

If you’ve enjoyed “Blue like Jazz” and want a nice, relaxing read: this is a book for you. I was hoping for a book that would challenge me and build on some of the more profound parts of his previous books: and this didn’t do that as much as I expected. A good read, a nice book, but not exactly a life changing one, for me at least.