Burn Hollywood Burn...

The only reason that the media and the Australian government have been hounding Sheikh Hilaly is not because of what he said (which was stupid) but because he is Muslim.

For crap's sake, can the Australian government and media sink any lower? Can they be even more transparent than what they are now? Are there really that many people that who have given up their independence of thought that this is allowed to continue?

Aah, I've been trying to come up with something more 'profound' to say about the whole topic but I just don't seem to be able to do it.

As they say, sleeping with dogs..... How many are flea infested now, I wonder?

They want to fingerprint us down at the station....

I was, as you do when you have too much time on your hands, going through some old emails of mine when I found this one. I felt that it was somewhat appropriate, given my recent posts.

"For the first 21 years of my life, I mocked and discredited everything that my parents did. It was so odd and I used to think why couldn't we be like everyone else in Australia. I used to be embarrassed because I didn't have an English name and I used to envy my brother who got away with an Anglicised version of his Arabic name. My sisters have English names (Melissa and Kelly) and I used to tell my sisters that they were the lucky ones in our family.

Then, in 1996, I went to Lebanon with my father.

EVERYTHING changed.

Every, single thing.

In hindsight, I realised that you can't 'pretend' to be something that you are not, unless you are so well grounded in it that you can do the 'henka' necessary for the switch.

Nonetheless, you simply can't erase 21 years of being 'Australian' (plus another 6 years of living there). Also, I don't want to erase that because I've come to understand the good of it.

Look at it in this way. Before I went to Lebanon, I was living in denial and trying to be something that I obviously wasn't. After Lebanon, I found that I was trying to catch up on something that couldn't be caught (no matter what I wanted, I DID grow up in Australia).

At that point, I started thinking, just what the hell am I? And then I realised, I am human.

That is my culture.

Sixty years ago, there was no Lebanon as a sovereign state. Two hundred and twenty years ago, there was no Australia as a sovereign state. What would've been my 'nationality' then? What about in two more hundred years?

I decided that, like Soke (I think...) that being a UFO is the best nationality, the best culture, the best ethnicity.

HOWEVER, in order to do this, I have to understand in depth, the humanly developed culture that I was born into. First the basics, then the variation (or is it the other way around?)

Practically, I have found that my Lebanese identity has offered more in terms of discovery (which is to be expected, I guess). It could be argued that it is my Australian-ness (re, Western) that is allowing me to discover more about being Lebanese but I would argue that a questing spirit is just that, no matter the culture. Also, I am learning, at the bare minimum, to be able to move naturally between both 'worlds'. I also think that it is BECAUSE of my study of my own culture, that I have had no problems with culture shock in Japan.

To me, culture is a fascinating area of study, but I don't mean in an intellectual sense....

In anycase, I am hoping that my personal study of all of this will lead me to board that UFO (or am I already onboard?) ....

Does any of this make any sense?"

We're stuck with each other

There was a post on an internet forum the other day by a chap who was extolling the virtues of his country. Pointing out the inventions that his country had produced over the last two hundred years and the fact that his countrymen were the recipients of the majority of Nobel prizes, this fellow was a tad dumbfounded that anyone not from his country could have been offended. After all, he was 'justifiably proud'.

Human and cultural dignity is not predicated on the accumulation of successes. Every civilisation or group, has had it's share of world offerings, large or small, direct or indirect though they may be. Yet, even here, seeing value through the lens of this kind of 'success' is to put the cart before the horse. To be able to not think "I'm glad I don't live there" in front of someone, I think, is a far more personable measure of worth.

As they say, better to step back and learn to say hello to the other man, rather than to enforce a smile and walk right into him.

(By the way, this is not a post about my country or your country or his country or her country or their country or our country. It's a post about human connections.)

A comment I made on the SMH blog

There was an article a few days ago about the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian sect/party that operates in the US, Australia and New Zealand. In a nutsehll, the article highlighted the groups strong right-wing views, their cult-like qualities and interestingly enough, their apparent abstinence from voting. The crunch in the article came when John Howard refused to condemn the group, offering up the lame excuse that they were entitled to their views and we had to respect that. Given the group's contempt for the law, or 'Australian values', the hypocrisy in Howard's statements, when compared to the anti-Muslim bias that he so clearly favours, promotes and loves to ride on, is staggering. Democracy is dead when demi-gods rule the airwaves...

In anycase, I couldn't find the article proper (well, I could but I wasn't going to pay $2.20 to have it sent to me!) but here is a link to the blog regarding the article:

http://blogs.smh.com.au/newsblog/archives/your_say/006467.html

My response was finally passed through the filter and is reprinted below.

"Howard's lordship over Australia has seen him gradually reveal his onion-layered bigotry. What is most astonishing is that he exhibits an almost deluded arrogance and confidence in the validity of his 'mandated redneckism'. Only those who are amicable to this underlying fear of the other, fail to recognise it for what it is.

In the decades to come, when Australia finally hurdles over it's cultural birthing pains, we will all look back at the last two hundred-plus years and shake our heads that a man like Howard ever ended up with the authority that he did.

Smug satisfaction in the lowest common denominator is not a quality worthy of admiration. Poor Australia."

• Posted by: solly at September 27, 2006 11:36 AM

(Do you like the onion comment? Howard, what a vegetable...)