Heat by Rob O’Neill

Having courted a media beat-up with her upcoming book on the beauty of young boys, Germaine Greer throws another rock in the pond today with publication of the latest edition of Quarterly Essay.

White Australians, she says, should accept they are Aboriginals and that Australian culture is Aboriginal. After all, if you emigrated to France from Australia three generations ago, you would not still be calling yourself Australian, you’d be calling yourself French. So most white Australians should call themselves Aboriginal.

Aboriginal culture, she says, is the best of Australia. Australia should embrace its heritage as the world’s foremost hunter-gatherer society, ditch the governor general and become a republic headed by a council of elders.

Greer doesn’t realistically expect her suggestion to be adopted: it’s about “imaging society” you see. In fact, she expects, as always, her views will offend just about everybody.

Quarterly Essay itself is an interesting endeavour, bringing intellectual controversy to the fore every few months and frequently winning significant column inches in the daily media. Over here debate occurs relatively frequently about the role of the "public intellectual". It is considered a part of normal cultural life, that the country’s elite thinkers should contribute to public debate. And with people like Greer, Clive James, Robert Hughes and many others willing to contribute, that debate can get pretty lively.

Anyway, I expect the noise of the inevitable backlash will be heard all the way over in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, I had to step out to get a needle for my gramophone. Yes, it’s that old comedy sketch: the old guy walk into the music shop and asks for a needle for his gramophone…

Anyway I knew better. I wandered into the new Virgin Megastore that arrived in George St a couple of weeks ago, with strangely little fanfare for a Virgin launch. It occupies one of the grand stone temples to finance down near Martin Place. After browsing around and picking up a couple of CDs for a birthday bash later, I ask at the counter if they sell styluses.

Indeed they do. The girl asks her friend if she knows anything about them. She doesn't. Then they call across the floor to a cool looking dude to help me out.

“I need a stylus for my turntable,” I ask, pretty confident the lingo is okay. I give him the remnants of my old one, which had been sitting in my pocket for weeks.

He looks at me oddly: “What sort of deck have you got, man?”

“Ahh,” less confidently, “it’s a Technics,” I say.

He seems to approve and takes me over to a cabinet where he outlines my options. Buy a new stylus or upgrade to a new cartridge. The new cartridge will make the stylus easier to get and cheaper, he says.

“I DJ at night and I recommend one of these,” he says holding up a $70 box.

Well, you can’t argue with a DJ. “Okay, are you sure this’ll fit in my ‘deck’?” I ask, hoping he doesn’t hear the quote-marks.

He asked what model it was. I didn’t know.

“I bought it in 1978.”

At this point he pretty much gave up on me being some kind of older fellow hipster DJ-guy.

"Just hang on to the receipt," he says.

Dealing with young people can be so fraught. Later, at the pub on Manly Wharf I handed over the CD I’d bought and wished my workmate Amanda a happy birthday. It was quite a family do with kids running around, older folks and a few others from work. The birthday girl was in the process of downing a shot. I had a beer and then offered her another.

“I’ll have a Cocksucking Cowboy,” she says, giggling.

So I wander over to the bar and ordered a VB - and a Cocksucking Cowboy.

The barmaid serves the beer, but says I’ll have to go inside for the shot. They don’t have cocktails on the wharf, you see. So in I go, up to the bar and order a Cocksucking Cowboy. Somehow it seemed okay when I ordered it with a beer but it was very odd going to the bar and ordering just a Cocksucking Cowboy. On its own. Nothing else.

Try it sometime. At 2 in the afternoon.

The barmaid pours it and looks at me: “Enjoy,” she says.

“It’s not for me,” I feel compelled to say. “It’s a girl’s drink.”

She looks at me oddly.

“A birthday girl, I mean.”

“Wish her a happy birthday from me,” says the barmaid.

I don't.

Amanda skulls her Cocksucking Cowboy. Her grandmother, with a strong European accent, was sitting across the table.

“What’s that, Amanda?”

“Oh, it’s a shot, Gran. With Bailey’s and stuff.”

“Yes, but what’s it called?” I prompt.

Amanda looks at me unfazed.

“It’s a Cocksucking Cowboy, Granny,” she shouts.

“Ohhh!” says the old lady, before going quiet for a couple of minutes as the conversation continues.

Then she pipes up:

“About fifteen years ago,” she says, “I think it was fifteen years ago, I had an ... Orgasm!”

Back home I spend an hour working out how to install the new cartridge in my "deck". It does fit. How cool is that?

We've heard so much about WMDs, oil, human rights, the spread of truth justice and the American Way in the last few months, but lingering in the background there are other theories about why the US went to war with Iraq. Personally I favour oil plus daddy's unfinished business, but these two are worth a look.

The business case
In the August 25 issue of BusinessWeek Harvard professor of economics Robert J. Barro gives a solid outlook for the second half of the financial year, attributing this lift to a number of factors, the first of which is growing defence spending.

Spending is $US76 billion higher than it would have been before September 11 2000, and 25% up over 2001. According to his analysis each dollar of defence spending lifts real US GDP by 75 US cents, equating to an increase of $US57 billion in 2003 GDP or 0.6% of total.

Crucially, he notes, the results would be different for wars in which productive capacity was destroyed, not something the US has traditionally had to worry about to any significant degree.

For the US war is good for business. And what’s good for business is good for America. This isn’t the first time war has served its purpose to rev-up the US economy

Forget oil, it’s all about water
It is common knowledge water rights are a key issue between the Israelis and Palestinians. It is also an issue with Syria and between Turkey and Iraq.

But how could these essentially local issues be considered a cause of the US invasion of Iraq? After all, Iraq is a downstream state. Its water supply is threatened by the activity of others, particularly dam-building in Turkey, but it has little ability to threaten the water supplies of neighbors. Does it?

Well, the existing water supply maybe. But according to this site Iraq was an obstacle to a grand water supply scheme that would have benefited US ally Israel considerably.

The so-called “Peace Pipeline” would have tapped the source of the Tigris and Euphrates in Turkey to deliver water to gulf states and Israel, to the considerable detriment of Iraq. Will we see some variant on this scheme reemerge now the US has knocked out the key political obstruction?

Another argument can be made around what the US promises to do in Iraq. When the occupier talks about the “reconstruction of Iraq’s economy” we probably think of getting oil pipelines working, power plants operating, getting productive capacity moving again. But is “reconstruction” being used as a euphemism for “restructuring”? And will that restructuring take the form of the good old-fashioned crony capitalism George and his buddies specialise in? The signs are already there in the way reconstruction contracts are being awarded. There’s not an open tender or selection process in sight.

The Iraqi economy will be rebuilt, for sure, and it will be rebuilt along different lines. There’s nothing essentially wrong with that. After all, the pre-war economy was built for the benefit of Saddam’s family. However, it is now distinctly possible it will be rebuilt for the benefit of George Bush’s mates and benefactors. This crew has never done business in a free market in their lives. They wouldn’t know what a free market looks like and would run a mile and grease any number of palms rather than engage in fair and open competition. Like George himself, they make their money by wielding their political influence to win exclusive favours.

So, has the military been used to grab markets? Undoubtedly. Is George Schultz’s old company Bechtel getting ready to control the Iraqi water supply through privatization, as it did in Bolivia and elsewhere? We’ll have to wait and see.

Former Army War College professor and CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere, in an op-ed in the New York Times, has suggested a bigger geo-political picture.

Pelletiere says when the Iranians seized Halabja, they were aiming to control the Darbandikhan dam, the largest in Iraq. Control of Iraq’s water, he says, would “alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way that probably could not be challenged for decades....”

While Pelletiere’s credibility on some fronts is doubtful (he has been known to suggest the gassing of Halabja was undertaken by the Iranian not the Iraqi military, despite massive evidence to the contrary), you only have to look at a map to see where those rivers run.

Meanwhile…
No Right Turn and numerous other blogs have carried the item below in recent days. However, I can find no way of verifying this story. I’ve tried numerous different Googles, but can find nothing official or even from a reliable source on the subject. In fact, this is the only item that even mentions such a contract. It’s all a bit smelly.

If anyone out there can shed some light, drop me a line.

"One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000!!"

A Question of Faith, Federation Square, Melbourne.

A few weeks ago, after my visit to Canberra, I lamented the absence Colin McCahon’s “Victory over Death II (I Am)” from the National Gallery of Australia. Now I know why. The painting was on tour, on its way to Melbourne, along with many others from all over Australia, New Zealand and collections around the world as part of a the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam’s McCahon retrospective, “A Question of Faith”.

And “Victory Over Death” was worth waiting for. I’ve only ever seen it in small reproductions that simply don’t convey how rich it is. This exhibition allows you to study the themes and styles that, combined in that one painting, were developed separately over time. These are landscape themes, the development of texts and McCahon’s attention shifting towards that dominant “I Am” as seen in this painting, “Practical Religion”.

Time was limited, unfortunately, my visit squashed between a business lunch and a return flight to Sydney. I would have liked to linger. Never mind, the show comes to Sydney in November.

Despite that constraint I saw enough to confirm, as if that was needed, just how great and unique McCahon is. What is really striking is the spiritualism. Now we all know that McCahon was a spiritual guy, but that’s something that is rarely expressed in modern art and especially in Australian modern art. And McCahon doesn’t just express it. He explores it deeply, incessantly, and sets these explorations in wonderful renditions of the New Zealand landscape. These landscapes over time become rendered almost as pure mood, with a severely constrained palette and attention to the subtleties of paint that is reminiscent of Rothko.

Taking the paintings individually the effect is tremendously powerful, but with so many gathered in one place it is overwhelming. One critic here said he found the show so strong he had to leave, take in some of the other exhibitions and then return.

This exhibition has already passed through Wellington and closes in Melbourne on the 7th. But if you do happen though Melbourne there is another magnificent later McCahon in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, “A Letter to Hebrews (Rain in Northland)”, from 1979. I saw this one by chance a couple of years ago when I went to the Gallery to see the Dead Sea scrolls. Somebody had a bright idea of exhibiting paintings featuring text on a mezzanine above the scrolls. McCahon, with his religious themes, was a natural choice.

The painting ambushed me. I confess, I got quite emotional.

Meanwhile, those lefty commies at Time Magazine are trying to undermine President Bush again, with headlines like: “Who Is Losing Iraq? Retreat is not an option, victory is elusive and the cost of staying the course is rising fast. Iraq is our greatest crisis since Vietnam.”

Columnist Joe Klein highlights the limited options the US faces:

“A Pentagon official told me the idea of reactivating the [Iraqi] army is "naive"—which is ironic, given the Pentagon's willful naivete about postwar Iraq. But I suspect that all these options will be attempted in the coming months, lest George W. Bush face the electorate in 2004 as the President who presided over a severe degradation of the U.S. military and the diminution of America's reputation in the world—as the President who lost Iraq.”

Another correspondent, Tony Karon, says Iraq is now pumping around half its pre-war levels of oil and, as we know, supply is continuing to be disrupted by sabotage as guerrilla attacks continue.

A typical day’s incident report: “One U.S. soldier killed and three wounded by an improvised explosive device in Fallujah; another soldier killed in an ambush on a convoy in Baghdad and two of his colleagues wounded, four soldiers wounded in two separate ambushes in Baqubah and Ramadi. The U.S. is facing a guerrilla insurgency capable of mounting multiple simultaneous attacks in different locations, high profile terror attacks that spread panic in the civilian population and systematic sabotage attacks on oil, water and electricity supplies.”

Over here the opposition is reminding Howard that as one of the coalition of occupiers, Australia too has an obligation to ensure security in Iraq. It’s not an argument the government wants to hear.

I don’t know how it happened but I’m on an Air New Zealand flight on the way home for a lightning visit - and somehow we managed to book tickets for $A399.

Pretty damn good. Dontcha love competition?

I haven’t flown Air NZ for yonks and it was pretty good. Anyway, for some reason the airport was deserted, which is unusual for a Friday, and I steamed straight through check-in with an hour to spare. A couple of chardonnays, a couple of magazines and things are looking sweet.

I love flying.

Naturally I picked up a handful of papers on the way in including the Friday Australian Financial Review and the New Zealand Herald to add to the Bulletin and a copy of Time bought at the newsagents on the way out. I bought the Bullie, as it’s called over here, because its cover headline shrieks about the fall of Fairfax. I bought Time because the cover is “Cool Kiwis: Why it’s suddenly hot to be on the edge of the world”. I got the AFR because on Friday it has the Review section, which is often brilliant and stimulating in very un-financial ways. I picked up the NZ Herald because I haven’t seen it in print in ages, though I go to the site most mornings.

The AFR this week was a little light on items of interest to me personally, but I picked up some stuff that I will follow up on at work when I get back. Pitched as “your Guide to the World of Issues, Ideas & Opinion” the Review section features something on a WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, which I can’t be bothered reading, another on the appeal of Six Feet Under, which I’ve never seen, an item on the philosophy of science and some stuff on the Australian judicial system. For me a bad week, except for an article on Michel Foucoult’s deconstruction of “society”.

(The nice man is about to offer me a beer. I have a choice of Export Gold or Steinlager. How wonderful. Make mine an Ecky, kind sir.)

The Bullie was interesting, though pretty disparaging to anyone living sout h of Taupo.

The discussion about Michael Cullen’s role is interesting too. He treats “the revenue” as if it was his own money.

Time’s NZ feature was a bit too sweet to be believed. Sure, New Zealand is performing well, and it really is a great place. These articles are great PR, but not much else for anyone connected to the place.

Now, the New Zealand Herald. Hmmm. This one’s a bit problematical. First the Friday edition:

What have they done to the design! Is it a broadsheet that thinks it’s a tabloid, or is it a tabloid printed as a broadsheet? I can’t work it out.

And why do we need those bold pointers on the introductions? An item on Virgin Blue has the intro “AVIATION: Airline says…” Oh, so Virgin Blue is an airline. I see. Or, even more stupidly, under the headline “Telecom offers farmers speedy internet deal” we have an intro that reads “TELECOMS: Broadband plan could…” So Telecom is a telecoms company. I might have missed that.

(The Chicken Kiev’s just arrived!)

Also it looks like each section heading has a slightly different style with some using narrow fonts and some normal. The plugs on the front page are too overpowering using too many fonts.

SuperSPORT
With OnForm

Hmm.

What that "SuperSport" refers to is the sports supplement. Now here’s a section that really knows what it’s about and does it well. Looks right, reads right.

As to the content, there’s some pretty decent stuff in the Herald though clearly some non-news. Take the business lead on Vector: “Vector has finally…” That “finally” is a dead giveaway: everybody knew before the story was written. A few lines down: “Vector’s canning of the float came as no surprise…” Right.

I always find “Small Business” sections a bit patronizing and to have a review of a digital camera in the middle of your IT page is a bit crass too. But when you’ve only got one page what can you do? Chris Barton’s column on Microsoft was nice and lively though.

The second lead on the front page is an item on the closure of water birthing pools in three hospitals. Only in NZ.

(Ice cream and a wee bottle of wine!)

After stepping out on the town at midnight and catching some zzzzs I checked out the Weekend edition, and it’s a totally different beast. Good reading and much cleaner. The teaser panels are bigger but much better executed. I didn’t like them devoting the whole front page to GM (and the illo, a piece of corn with Helen clark’s face, was a tad amateurish). The profile on Tony Timpson by Paul Panckhurst was a bravura piece of weekly business writing. Excellent, in-depth work on a really interesting guy.

Then there’s Gordie in the middle of the opinion page… don’t get me started.

To draw the weekend to a close, the Sunday Star-Times steps up. It also looks much better than I remember and knows its job as a weekly, though I found the arts/books coverage a bit lightweight.

The Star-Times is nice a contrarian, stirring the pot with stories like the one on how the Lord of the Rings films didn’t really benefit NZ and Rod Oram’s prediction that the Qantas/Air NZ merger would go ahead.

I’m just back from the bush, having had my car serviced at about half the price it would cost in Sydney, fired a few wayward rounds at some wascally wabbits (my mate, farm-boy Nigel, reckons they’ve never been safer), and generally had a good relax.

Having left strict instructions with the Girlie that there were to be NO PARTIES, I got out past Forbes in central NSW a bit late for the annual Bedgerebong Show, which was a shame, but just in time for kick-off in the final Bledisloe, which was superb. We were going to chase kangaroos on motorbikes at some stage, but somehow ran out of time.

Never mind, I did that last time I was out there and here’s a little known fact: kangaroos, especially big ones, can’t change direction when in full flight – there’s too much weight, momentum and time in the air to turn sharply, or even bluntly. So you can ride right up beside them and have a good drag. Some larrikins, I hear, ride right up and push them over with their boots, but of course I would never…

Eventually, even here, you have to reach a fence. The roo bounds over effortlessly, you slam on the brakes, roo looks around, give the finger and disappears in a cloud of dust. Great fun.

The farm I was on, Caroboblin, features the remains of what was the world’s largest shearing shed. It’s about a quarter the size it was in years gone by, but still in use. Inside the shearers have stenciled their names and the year they worked there, going back to the 30s and beyond.

Huntin’ is a feature of life in the bush. They even have a range of specialist magazines catering for the hardcore set. Bacon Busters is our favourite, featuring three pages of girlfriends draped over bloody pigs. The girlfriends are the ones in the bikinis.

Anyway, while out there we heard the ubiquitous Bondi-boy Richard Butler had been appointed governor of Tasmania. Now here is a man on the make. Butler is one of the most subtle shape-shifters I have ever seen. His changing stances on Iraq’s WMDs have been staggering and are matched by his acceptance of the governorship. Now the Queen’s man, he was a staunch republican.

(My God, I just linked to Miranda Devine!)

But when you see Butler justify these U-turns, he is almost believable. Almost, but not quite. On the ABC’s 7.30 report, when Kerry O’Brien asked how he had the gall to accept the position, Butler defended superbly: He’s a democrat. The people have had their say. He supports the constitution.

Let’s look at it another way: When offered a cushy number Butler seemingly decides a republic isn’t worth fighting for any more. Obviously it’s not a matter of principle.

My guess is he hasn’t yet saved enough for his retirement.

Butler concedes he won’t be able to engage in politics as much in his new role and will have to tone down some of his public statements. The good news is, even without that, we should see a lot less of him. I mean, let’s face it, name the last governor of Tasmania.

Go on.

Meanwhile, Pauline Hanson’s chances of a governorship took a bit of a setback today.

Spooky update, 21 August 11.15

My off-the-cuff comment about Richard Butler's retiremnet savings gets an echo from Crikey:

"A pensioner writes:

"Sorry I cannot be more positive about Richard Butler but the appointment made me recollect the article by one of the more cynical commentators less than two years ago that Butler needed to get some money behind him as he had dependents and not much in the way of assets and income.

Lo and behold, he gets the Governorship of Tasmania - in mainland states the benchmark wage is equal to that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State and after five years service, the ex. Governor gets a pension of 75 per cent of the wage of the Chief justice as it is from time to time, for life.

Not a bad stipend that.

Might be worth checking up on the remuneration of the latest member of the Bill Hayden coverts to the benefits of monarchy club.

The jealous pensioner"