Here today and GM tomorrow

Genetically modifed crops were introduced secretively to agriculture with such indecent haste that one could only wonder what on earth was going on. Why the rush? Why the push? Why the aggression? Why the corporate paranoia?
There are many things to be said in favour of gene technology. Very many things. Their promise is immeasurable.
But there is something worrying about the way the agro biochemical mobs went about trialling their crops, about the very politics of the process and about their extraordinary hostility towards other parts of agriculture, especially the organic.
I had cause to do research on all of this some years ago and the results were disturbing, to say the least.
The big biochem corporations have won their battles. GM crops now are ubiquitous in many parts of the world.
There has been hope that we could hold out here and keep our crops green as a niche market. But, thanks to a former agriculture minister, one Rob Kerin, a former ag-chem salesman, the biochems were given a secret door into our landscape. I do recall the way in which he dismissed me as some sort of ignorant little woman when I asked him about the benefits of GM-free crops. He told me it would be impossible. It would cost too much.
We have had a holding pattern of sorts, a ban under a GM Crops Management Act. But it expires next year. The Democrats are trying to have it extended - and good on them.
It turns out that the Japanese are prepared to pay us premium prices for GM-free canola that we are growing on the wilderness environment of Kangaroo Island - proving that GM-free status is a lucrative niche market.
Japan is scouring the world with its wallet open looking for GM-free products. Europe, too.

But politics and corporate handshakes are a law unto themselves.
They are used to having their own way - buying their dominance.
Wait for the campaign to demean those who promote the idea of GM-free as a market advantage. Watch the barrage of the old hate invective....greenies, hippies, tree-huggers.
Politicians' interests are short-term. They would rather feather their nests with cosy arrangements with their biochem buddies than leave a clean future for their children. It just makes one so very, very sad.

Water, water, everywhere...

The cult of drinking bottled water is turning into an environmental catastrophe. The springs are being sucked dry to satisfy the thirst of those who wish to pay large amounts to have their water designer labelled. And then there are all the plastic bottles that become the wasteful by-product of their indulgence. What a consumerist farce.

I have always found those water-sucking trendies rather farcical. Their obsession with hydration is such that they can't move without their bottles. They take them to work, they take them shopping, they take them to the theatre, for heaven's sake. Now when it our metabolisms change so much that we were unable to go 90 minutes without fluid? When did we begin to require constant top-ups?
Never.
It is all marketing. People are slaves to fashions, cults, theories, advertising. They don't stop to ask how logical is this absurd excess. They believe, like some new religion. They mimic each other, terrified of being left out.
And they are suckers not only of water, but of the current myth that it is an essential lifestyle accessory.

Sssh...don't 'tell 'em. Some naughty water companies are selling them tap water. It seems designer water drinkers can't tell the difference.

Gunning for Cheney

Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. Apparently, he mistook 78-year-old Mr Whittington for a quail.
Big men out shooting tiny birds with broad-spreading shotgun pellets. Hunters! Great white hunters. What fun for them. How brave they are. And, to make sure the big men do not miss the little birds they must have lots of shot. Enough shot to cover a man from head to chest. How sporting. How skilful.

How approximate do you have to be to be a good shot, I wonder? I hear Cheney is very experienced. But does this hot shot take his pot shots for the pot? No, I'm sure that the little birds would not be worth eating when they are peppered with shot. So what reason could there be for rich, powerful men to spend their time and money on inefficently killing tiny wee birdies which can barely fly??

I guess they have to shoot them because they are an environmental issue. Nasty little quail ravaging the delicate ecosystem. Thank heavens for Republican environmental activists such as Cheney and his ilk. Ridding the landscape of evil little birds.

Poor Cheney's bag count must have gone down with that accident. Well, at least he hit something, even if it was not a tiny little bird.


Dontcha love big strong men with guns?

Camping @ Brokeback

Brokeback Mountain is running full steam ahead towards the promise of Oscars. Everyone is gushing about it. A bit of censorship controversy did not hurt it at all - and one can always wonder if it was engineered in any way. Ang Lee is one of the great directors. No arguments. It is Heath Ledger's finest moment. No arguments. But why is everyone getting so carried away?
Because it is a gay movie. Which, people seem to keep trying to deny. How odd. It is is gay movie! It is about two handsome, uneducated country men who fall in love and spend the rest of their lives having clandestine assignations at the place where this great love was born. The place, of coourse, is Brokeback Mountain. Gay men of the 60s tended to marry to protect themselves from the stigma of homosexuality, for that is how it was then. And, fortunately, Annie Proulx, in writing the story on which this film was based, and Ang Lee, in making it, have allowed the damage wrought upon women to be portrayed. Of course, it is not the big thing of the male love story. It is incidental collateral damage.
I know women who married gay men, not knowing they were gay. I find this deception callous and self-interested. I can't feel the sympathy I am supposed to feel. It is not a moral judgement about gayness, since that is not an issue for me. It is about honesty and integrity. It is about fidelty and trust.
Here comes a movie which attempts to justify the brutality of this misuse of women in the name of a greater love between men.
It might come as a huge novelty to the ingenuous American cinema public and the equally ingenuous but ever good-cause-driven Hollywood crowd - but not to this little black duck.
However, I am putting my two dollars into the tipping cap - since for those reasons alone, just to show how broad-minded and enlightened they all are, they will vote Brokeback to the trophy top.

But, of course, the dividend is that all those men who like to go fishing and camping out in the woods with the blokes are now going to be highly suspect. Camping out with the boys now takes on a much camper meaning.

Who put the slam in Islam?

The responses of Islam are always worrisome. It is a faith which keeps us in line with quite fearsome discipline. One word out of place and we are fair game for the most violent and vindictive retaliation. It is all pretty unforgiving.
It perplexes me, since I know some very gentle Muslims and in my readings about Islam over the years, I have found is creeds to be kindly and rational. Islam, whence came the sciences. Islam, which respects Christianity's "son of God" as a prophet. Islam, which welcomes the wayfarer and will never let a beggar be ignored.

Where has the break occurred that spawned this other form of Islamic fury wherein the world must walk on glass for fear of inciting vengeance?
Those Danish cartoons are mainly offensive in their complete lack of humour. They are lousy cartoons. Gratuitious. But, I understand the paper had a competition going and they are not "proper" cartoons by cartoonists of distinction. Which makes it all the sillier. Plain dumb.
Blind Freddy could have told them that Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) is never to be portrayed as an image. From the West, it is a common courtesy to respect this. The Danes did it as an idiot provocation and it worked.
Now we are all in the middle of an emotive kerfuffle and Islam has an excuse for yet more fury at the rest of the world.
I never did work out what the Buddhists did to earn those ancient giant statues being destroyed in Afghanistan. I am sure it was nothing as terrible as drawing rude images of Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him).

Luminous, luminous, all is luminous

Every so often a word erupts from the pleasant world of general expression to have its beauty and relevance ripped to pieces by overuse. Of the moment, "luminous" has emerged. It is one of the lyrical words which had its place in the language. But now its place is all over the place. The last straw was hearing some Hollywood type thanking her "luminous daughter" for being in her life. We now have luminous people! As well as luminous days, luminous events and even luminous meals. And thus does luminous go the way of serendipity and matrix, paradigm and parameter, awesome and resonate...

Proving climate change

Just as old-timers say that they feel the weather changing in their bones and their old wounds are like barometers, I say that I can discern climate change with my hair.

These many long years, my longish hair has stayed smooth and tidy with the usual 3-day wash-and-blowdry routine. When I am in Adelaide where the air is clean and dry.
If I go to Bali or to New England or Georgia, or sometimes even to Sydney, I am in bad-hair-day territory. The humidity makes my hair unruly. I have to tie it up, wear caps, hairclips, copious lotions...

Until this summer, I have never had to do any of these things in Adelaide. My wavy hair accepted its straightening discliplines and maintained a constant, ever-recognisable style.
Now it is rebellious, day after day. Even if I were to do the blow-dry treatment every morning, I'd be lucky to have it tidy by lunchtime.

This is a basic and major change. It is something I can observe. And that means it is evidence. How much do I have to reiterate this in argument against the naysayers who insist that the dewpoint is low and that it is really not humid? What is wrong with their powers of observation? It is Blind Freddy department.

Our climate has changed! It is different. Humidity has come to the driest city on the driest continent. It is not as it was. Why can the climate curmudgeons not be convinced of this? Bald obstinacy, I'd call it.

Hello, sugar. Goodbye apple of my eye.

Scientists never fail to give me the giggles. What vast amounts of time, funding and intellectual energy they apply to the most superfluous of things. From day to day, they request sea changes in people's lives and diets. You can be guaranteed that what was good for you yesterday is poison tomorrow. Look at margarine versus butter.
Look at meat and soy. Then there's chicken soup. In their wisdom, scientists expended their expertise on confirming that chicken soup really is curative when you have a cold. Well, thanks, scientists. Jewish penicillin is just that!
This week they have outdone themselves. Firstly they have discovered that sugar is good for the memory. Contrary to earlier beliefs, high sugar drinks, the ones that make people so fat, also make them smarter and help them to remember. Sugar may help in treating dementia!

However....sugar is good for you but also it is unhealthy. Well, maybe it is good for you in sugar drinks, but certainly not in fruit. Fruit is unhealthy! Especially apples and pears. They contain too much sugar.
Fruit must not be advertised as healthfood! Especially fruit with pips.

Now are we coming or going on the sugar issue?
Whatever you do, don't ask a scientist!

Hollywood on the bottom line

The cinema boxoffice downturn has been blamed on poor films.
Well, well, well.
At last someone has clued up.
The movie industry has been churning out lowbrow, gross, dire, moron movies for some time now. The lowest common denominator has ruled its selection process. But the lowest common denominator is also the poorest - since low achievers are low earners. So the box office has slumped.
I often lament the power of the dollar, but this time I celebrate it. For it is only when hit in the pocket that moguls and corporations will sit up and take notice. Now they must recognise that they have been targeting losers.
And cinemas are empty because the rest of us are staying away - forlorn that there are so few movies with appeal.
I blessed George Clooney for being perhaps the only one in 2005 to send me out of a cinema both enlightened and filled with admiration - "Goodnight and good luck".
And that, of course, is an arthouse movie.
The general public would not put up with such a thoughtful, historic production. It has to have car chases. Or just chases. "Lord of the Rings" is just one great big chase. Yawn.

But the good thing is that Hollywood has clued up. It has stopped blaming half a dozen "pirates" trying to flog dreadful films of new films (taken with cams in the cinema, complete with audience coughing). It has stopped blaming videos and DVDs - for they are the big part of their market. It has realised that it, wonderful Hollywood itself, has lost the plot - and are the world experts in crap.

Meanwhile, is it not an odd thing that, when looking at how the make the idea of going out to the cinema more appealing, they are coming up with a concept of fewer screens and more comfortable theatres. Back to the future, methinks.

Scientology at the top

A passing mention in "The Australian" identifies James Packer, newly-inherited richest man in Australia and head of a media and gaming conglomerate, as a scientologist.
I must say I was gob-smacked.
There is much one could say about this - but I have written about Scientology in the past and the repercussions from the scientologists were pretty nasty. They were aggressive and persistent. A bit on the bully-boy side, my experience showed.
So one leaves them alone, feels contempt for the pitiful pea brain of Tom Cruise - and one wonders about how much influence this sect may exert on our country through its hold on James Packer who might be the richest man on the block, but was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.
The Packers control a huge gambling empire - so one wonders how gambling and sceintology go together. I did a Google and found a mention of "clam casinos" which apparently are where scientologists gamble. This indicates that profits from gambling must suit their cause - and the connection with the Packer empire might suit them very well indeed.
This is only speculative, of course. But I think it is probably something Australia should know and ponder.

All hail Ricky Gervais

Ricky Gervais IS new comedy. If we are lucky, every era produces some ground-breaking new comic form. The Goons. That Was The Week That Was. Monty Python. Fawlty Towers. Absolutely Fabulous.
They all left strong influences on the culture of comedy.
Ricky Gervais is the "now" comedy of this comic history timeline - with series that will live on in timeless reruns. I just watched his new series, Extras, and I ache from all the laughter. It is as funny as The Office - no, funnier. Ineptitude, eccentricity, the little man at large...
So long as the Brits keep breeding original comics, the world is alive and well.

Tourist hell

Once they said it was the Americans. Those in the know in Europe always said it was the Germans. But I am starting to think that the Singaporeans have become the worst tourists in the world today.
Certainly this was the impression of an entire boatload of people this week, cruising the fragile Coorong ecosystem in South Australia.
The first sign was when the boat had to wait at dock and delay departure. The busload of Singaporeans was late because, reported the bus driver, they had made an en route loo stop and the Singaporeans had just gone off and taken their time re-boarding the bus.
When their bus pulled in to the dock, the Singaporeans scattered again and had to be rounded up. One small boy spotted a pair of ducks grazing on the grass and charged at them, waving his arms and screaming. We all called out to leave the ducks alone, but he made repeated charges until they had made a series of defensive flights to the edge of the dock. A grey-haired man looked as if he was coming after the boy and we thought, "oh, good, a parent". But the man indulgently watched as the boy made a last screaming affront on the ducks and forced them to fly out into the water. The man then put his arm around the boy and they meandered amid their tour pack onto the boat. Not just one small boy but more and more...a large group of boys aged between 7 and 11.
If only they had all had IPods or gameboys! If ever children needed them, this was the time.
At the sight of this rowdy bunch, we quickly escaped to the exposed upper deck. Bad luck. Within minutes they had followed us. They shouted, wriggled, fought, yelled, jumped, wrestled...
We asked them to quieten down. They cared not a hoot, although they spoke good English. I tried a warning in Malay. They understood this, too, and were amused by it, but not impressed.
No sign of parents. Just a teenage girl who seemed to be in charge. A Singaporean nanny who took care, kept company, but did not discipline the kids.
And thus, as the parents sat comfortably downstairs with the other adults in their group, did the quiet eco journey of bird-watching become a noisy riot of stomping and screaming.
Repeatedly we told the children to hush so we could hear the guide's commentary on the locations. Repeatedly we received defiant stares or laughs.
The parents popped up once or twice to look approvingly upon their young. They were indifferent to our general misery and annoyance.
When we moored to walk across the dunes, the boys raced up the sanddunes screaming and proceeded to make landslides for the fun of it. I could only walk away at this point. Where were their parents? Oh well, I don't suppose they really understand environmental degradation. Singapore is hardly an eco site. Was this trip meant to edify the young on this issue? Or, had they thought it was some sort of a leisure cruise?
I was hoping the long trek across the sandhills to the open ocean may have tired those kids from hell. But no. They returned bouncy and noisy, the horror boy with his nose running badly. And ugly site. We turned away. "Go blow your nose," snapped Ben.
The wrestling and shouting resumed as the boat chugged quietly back upstream, pausing to look at massed swans and pelicans.

It was not until this worst of the children held a coke can over the side of the boat threatening to throw it in the protected waters of the reserve that we really exploded. "Don't even think about it". "Do not do that!" This pleased him and he threw the can in.
That was it. Four of us turned hissing with fury. "You can't throw rubbish in your country, how dare you thow it in ours," bellowed Ben.
"In your country you would get 20 lashes for that", shouted Bruce.

At last, something was said to cow that horror child. He retreated to the nanny. The others joined him and they sat in a huddle looking grim - and then, at last, they withdrew to the lower deck and their doting parents.

We had, at last, some peace on the trip - half an hour from home on a four and a half hour trip.

Workers uniting

A union meets to view the prognosis for its existence under the forthcoming Workers' Legislation. It is an odd union, a merger between journalists and theatricals - the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. Like all the other unions in Australia, it is in for a hard time - with most of its conventional forms of negotiation and communication about to become illegal. The Howard Government has made the move of its dreams, to disempower 150 years of worker union strength and to give employers the ability to call the tune without argument.
The ACTU secretrary, Greg Combet, a quietly-spoken and restrained man, came to give support and advice to the union's Federal gathering in Sydney.
He spoke of the ethos of unions, of why they exist, which, of course, is to defend and support the working people. He spoke of the beliefs on which unions are founded - compassion at their core.
And he noted that this new legislation would be but a blip in the great scheme of history. For, indeed, reason and fairness must prevail - eventually. But not right now.
He noted the sweet irony of how the Government's $55million advertising campaign to promote its new Workplace Legislation had resulted in a one per cent fall in its approval rating.
But he warned that things were going to be dark, dark, dark. The Government has everything in place to give power to its forthcoming rules. Even the High Court is stacked now with people of the Prime Minister's mindset.
Unions' right of entry to workplaces now becomes perilous with constraints. It will take only one cavalier union official to lose rights of entry altogether, he warned. To put it bluntly, "union activity is being criminalised".
He called for union restraint - and opposition to be only in the form of a professional campaign by which the public, which is still remarkably unaware of what is happening, is informed of their immense vulnerabilities as workers.
Employers henceforth will be able to dictate the terms of employment, the rates of pay, the hours worked, the shifts worked. They will be able to dismiss at whim - with no recourse through "unfair dismissal", if the company is under 100 strong.
Young people will be signing workplace agreements without option, or at least option of which they know. Their careers will begin at a disadvantage. And, indeed, this is all about young people - for their future is written in this legislation.

Combet left to hold a press conference - and was still at it, cornered by a gaggle of cameramen and boom mikes in the hotel foyer, when the meeting broke for lunch.

Lively and diverse with its range of talents, the union delegates talked on into the afternoon - for a second day of discussions and deliberations. Sedition reared its ugly head. It is another of the Howard Government's forms of suppression - raised in the name of the War Against Terrorism. It seeks to censor written word and, well, any manner of things it may choose to define as inciteful - a union meeting, for example. Once such laws are in place, they may go as far as the whim of those in power.

It is a sad and difficult time to be in a union - but we must have fortitude because once the people clue up, they will seek change. And perhaps, in a perverse way, this appalling legislation will shock the country out of its years of apathy - the years which have allowed this Government to have its way for so long.

Until then, we shall maintain the rage.

Creationists evolving

A colleague wrote a column critical of creationists. He was spammed by streams of primitive vitriol - most ubiquitously containing the accusation of "idiot". He was shocked by the spiteful vehemence of the mail, more abusive than articulate. But such are the creationists, it seems.
We might not find them very educated or articulate - but one has to acknowledge that they are organised and outspoken. Their campaign is a serious attack on science and education and it is succeeding - so much so that it has, in the USA epicentre of creationism, managed to intimidate respectable corporations.
Hence, the disturbing report that the historic Darwin exhibition is unable to find sponsors in the US.

From the SMH: The failure of American companies to back the exhibition reflects the growing influence of fundamentalist Christians, who are among President George Bush's most vocal supporters, in all walks of life in the US.

While the Darwin exhibition, which features a live Galapagos tortoise, has been unable to find a business backer, the Creationist Museum near Cincinnati, Ohio, which takes literally the Bible's account of creation, has recently raised $7 million in donations.