Adam's Ambles

Burma, baited breath

Videos of the protests--100,000 in the streets of Rangoon--here.

Ominous military threats to crack down on the "Golden Revolution"--here.

Entering Australia

How long can you chase the ocean before it catches up with itself? How long can the night run away from the morning?

When you leave Virginia at 8 in the evening and arrive in Australia at 6 in the morning, over 24 hours and—two, three days?—later, after 17 hours alone over the trackless Pacific Ocean, a never-ending ripple of black under a black night sky, the answer to the above questions is: a long time. And yet, now, after all that, after three in-flight meals and five in-flight movies, here I am. Flying over the Australian continent, over a blustery, Southern Hemisphere winter, my usual broiling August reversed on itself into a dry, 50-degree cold, except it’s not even 50 degrees, its 10 according to a temperature system I don’t know.

Here I am, asking the same questions Tony Horwitz asked in the beginning of “One for the Road,” when he moved to this odd little country around the world where the woman he happened to love lived: Where am I? You look down and it’s all a crumpled plain of dry and scarp and shrub, brown-green mountains smoothed out by age and the rough-hewn canyons of tectonic isolation.

I came here once before, in 2004, on a working holiday visa, a joke of a holiday if ever I heard one, as if working as one-step-above an illegal immigrant for minimum wage is somehow a vacation. It seemed a strange country then and still a strange one now, not for its differences but its utter similarity to the States. Sitting next to a couple from Baltimore on the plane over, I remarked, staring over the endless Pacific, that coming to Australia feels like coming all the way around the world to the place you just came from. Of course, its not, in certain, certainly pertinent ways: a different landscape. Funny accents, funny spelling. Strange weather. A dry, Pacific land carved by a dry, Pacific wind, with no forests or fields I’d recognize in North America.

But in so many ways, more than England, more than anywhere except Canada, Australia feels like America. The books in the airport lounge are all by Americans — the same ‘Marley and Me’ and Oprah book club recommendations, maybe a few more Bryce Courtenays and Lonely Planets over Fodor’s and Frommer’s, to this country’s credit. The same fashions, and the same brashness of youth. The same disengagement from world issues, although here I suspect our motivations differ; Americans are turned off to the world because we feel above it. Australians ignore the world because it is so far away. The immensity of the Pacific isolates this land, its people, even its flora and fauna, like a million, modern English Channels. During World War II, wounded American Marines fighting the Japanese were flown back to Hawaii for hospital care. If their comrades in France flew the same distance for treatment, they’d be evacuated from Caen to Kansas City.

The love of sport (of course, the Australians I saw in LAX were part of a cycling team), the love of MTV, the lack of history, all make Australian culture feel like a rip-off of my own, as if I were shopping in Hong Kong for nationalities and couldn’t afford genuine ‘American’ and settled for a cheap knock-off: Yankshmee! Just as loud and shallow and young and vibrant as the real thing!

Except (and it’s a big except) Australia isn’t an independent country. It is still part of the Commonwealth of nations, and what’s more, the head of state is still technically the Governor General of her Majesty Elizabeth II, the Queen of England. A technicality you may say, except that same Governor General used the authority derived from the inbred House of Windor, thousands of miles away, to remove a sitting Australian Prime Minister from office in the 1970s. Australians can claim all they want that the Whitlam affair was simply a bending of the rules, an expedient expulsion no different from any ‘No confidence’ motion, but I still think Americans would balk in disgust at the idea of the appointed representative of the Queen removing their head of government from office. And worst of all: When Australians had the chance to vote, in referendum, on becoming an independent Republic in — what year was that honey? ‘I don’t know!?’

See, they don’t even CARE about the time they COULD have become a real country, which isn’t surprising because they didn’t. You read me right — when Australians had the option of voting themselves into a real Republic (note: didn’t even have to fight a revolution) they opted: to stay. To stay in the Commonwealth. Because it would have cost too much to change all the stationary and the stamps. Because becoming an independent member of the society of nations was too much trouble and bother.

I’ve had Australians rib me for my American spelling. To which I say: You win a revolution and become an honest-to-God, independent country, and then you can spell any way you want.

Funny extremists

Well, yes and no.  In depressing news, a radical conserative cleric of the worst stripe is set to take over spiritual leadership of British Deobandi Muslims.

Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times.

The funny side of things?  Perhaps he will teach his followers to boil an egg, Islamicist style.

How do we get our eggs back? Well, the only solution is a Muslim State, based north of the border, which will unite all the eggless Muslims. These eggless Muslims have been led astray by the corrupt and deviant Sunni Extremist, the corrupt and deviant Shia Extremist, the corrupt and deviant Dictators, the corrupt and deviant Politicians and the corrupt and deviant Misguided Ordinary Man in the Street. All of the above are also decadent.

Other solutions by other Muslims will not work. The Salafis will argue the egg is taken because it has become a bid’ah. The Sufi will argue for eliminating the egg from oneself. The Shia will argue that the Mahdi will come to restore the egg. The Muslim liberals will argue that the egg was a misinterpreted out of context verse, in fact it is a phoenix. The Barelwis will build a special mosque for the eggs.  The Deobandis will still not let female eggs into the mosque. Harun Yahya will argue that the egg did not come from the chicken, but spontaneously appeared. Academics will argue that the egg is merely a small incident in a long line of orientalist interpretations and further evidence of the essentialisation of the Other.

Asia Pacific Affairs

Every now and then, I'm willing to give the president a little credit.  The big news out of the APEC conference in Australia (which  received surprisingly little coverage in American media) was a mushy compromise on climate change and the antics of these guys, who managed to motorcade their way into the conference dressed like Osama Bin Laden.  They seem like the Daily Show, but way lamer.

But to me, the big diplomatic news seems to be the president's push for a new Asia Pacific Democracy Partnership.  As fars as I'm concerned, the president called pushed for all the right reforms:

Mr Bush called on China's leadership to usher in more political openness, demanded the Burmese regime release political prisoners and called for an early return to free and fair elections in Thailand.

That kind of diplomacy may not win the president many friends, but it does take a solid moral high ground as far as I'm concerned.  It's good for the Chinese to hear this:

Mr Bush said next year's Beijing Olympic Games would be a moment of great pride for the Chinese people.

"It will also be a moment where China's leaders can use this opportunity to show confidence by demonstrating a commitment to greater openness and tolerance."

The West needs to vocally press the need for democracy and human rights in Asia at a time when even Buddhist monks are protesting in Burma (traditionally a sign that protests are picking up public support), Thailand grapples with a dodgy constitution, and the Australian government is rather shamefully allowing the Chinese to manipulate the APEC press pool.

The Russians are coming

Anyone else find it a little weird that the Russians continue to probe NATO airpsace?  In a world where China is rising and Jihadists are at the gate, we sometimes forget the old Russian Empire is a big batch of instability.

The new anti-semitism

Or Judeaphobia, whatever.  This is an excellent, if disturbing, Washington Post article on new waves of European anti-semitism.

More worrisome was what we described as anti-Jewish discourse, a mood and tone whenever Jews are discussed, whether in the media, at universities, among the liberal media elite or at dinner parties of modish London. To express any support for Israel or any feeling for the right of a Jewish state to exist produces denunciation, even contempt...

...Europe is reawakening its old demons, but today there is a difference. The old anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have morphed into something more dangerous. Anti-Semitism today is officially sanctioned state ideology and is being turned into a mobilizing and organizing force to recruit thousands in a new crusade -- the word is chosen deliberately -- to eradicate Jewishness from the region whence it came and to weaken and undermine all the humanist values of rule of law, tolerance and respect for core rights such as free expression that Jews have fought for over time.

The president of Iran is the most odious example of this new state-sanctioned anti-Semitism. But from the Egyptian Writers Union to the notorious anti-Jewish articles in the charters of Hamas and Hezbollah, hatred of Jews is an integral element of a new ideology rising to prominence in many regions of the world.

Democracies always take their time, often too much time, to recognize and face a totalitarian threat when it is posed in ideological terms. In prewar Europe, conservatives were soft on right-wing ideologies because they were seen as being anti-communist and anti-labor. In postwar Europe, socialists were soft on the Soviet Union because the communists appeared to challenge capitalism and imperialism. Today there is still denial about the universal ideology of the new anti-Semitism. It has power and reach, and it enters into the soft underbelly of the Western mind-set that does not like Jews or what Israel does to defend its right to exist.

Academic writing sucks

As this Guardian article so rightfully points out:

A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: "In this novel I shall show that the butler did it." The rest will be just filling in the details.A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: "In this novel I shall show that the butler did it." The rest will be just filling in the details.

Hamas bans Friday prayers

Notice how no one in the Left gets all that worked up about Hamas banning Friday prayers, an action that, if insitgated by Israel, would cause mass protest?

Bow to our new Chinese overlords

I used to always laugh at the Asian kids who spent all day plus forever on the computer, kicking ass at Starcraft and not getting any girls.

Until today, in the AFP: "China's military successfully hacked into the Pentagon's computer network, raising fears it could disrupt the US defence department's systems, the Financial Times reported Tuesday."

Dude, I take it all back.

British leave Basra

Should the US pull out of Iraq?  Let's see what happens in Basra.

Although this:

"The International Crisis Group, a Brussels based think-tank, said in a June report that unconstrained militias were destabilizing Basra and that locals believed British forces had been driven out.

"Relentless attacks against British forces in effect had driven them off the streets into increasingly secluded compounds," the report said. "Basra's residents and militiamen view this not as an orderly withdrawal but rather as an ignominious defeat."

With additional Iraqi soldiers in the streets, residents say things have quieted in recent weeks.

But last week, the head of the security committee on the Basra city council, Hakim al-Miyahi, predicted "some disorder" after the British pullout from the city because he feared that Iraqi forces were incapable of maintaining order."

Doesn't make me feel too good.  A withdrawal should be done in a way that preserves a public perception of strength, and discourages roving gangs from trying to furhter destabilzie the country.