Author: Rebecca

Greenwing – a TV series to watch

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I don’t know how many people who read this blog have watched Greenwing, but I’m currently rewatching it with my house guest and it is such an awesome – and very wrong – TV series.  I don’t want to spoil anyone who hasn’t watched it, so this post will be quite brief.  One thing I wanted to point out about the series is it’s interesting critiques on gender roles.  The show is set in a hospital, and the characters are either doctors or administrative staff in the hospital.  Thankfully not all the doctors are men, and although for the most part the staff in HR are women – that’s not too far away from reality.  The gender of the character is important in relation to the stereotype they are assigned to play, but whether the character is admin or professional is irrelevant.

You have the competitive, objectifier of women who believes that you have to, “play them mean to keep them keen”, and who really doesn’t understand people or emotions at all.  You have the mouse who is frightened of everything and is cowed by his more aggressive male colleagues, who he just wants to be like.  You have the man who wants to be powerful and sometimes thinks he is, but is generally disliked by everyone because he’s either sleazy, incompetent, offensive or exceedingly eccentric (and sometimes all at once).  You have the character who is affable, well liked, sometimes rude, generally caring and who isn’t particularly open about how they feel.  You have the boyish character who likes to challenge authority, loves a joke, loves supporting those who needs it and is sexually voracious (which is completely fine in the series).  You have the IT guy who is cute, charming and wanted by everyone.

You have the slightly eccentric, but well meaning woman who doesn’t know what she wants exactly, but has an idea and is willing to experiment a little to find out more.  You have the female equivalent mouse character.  You have the woman who is lovely but stressed with her personal life and keeping track of her children.  You have the sexually voracious and generally nice character who likes to be silly (in fact all of HR are silly) and whose sexual nature isn’t an issue.  You have the fat woman who at one stage is picked on by the objectifier and who tells him to “fuck off” (oh and he’s a little scared of her too), she’s also happy with her body and her attractiveness.  There is the scheming, eccentric and rude woman who is one of the best characters on the show.  The perfect woman who everyone aspires to be – beautiful, competent, intelligent, cheerful and always perfect.  There is the rude, sleazy, incompetent, offensive and really wrong character who makes me cringe every time I see her on screen – though she does it SO well.

Extra internet points if you can name all the characters I’ve described in order.

I love this series.  It has many moments of wrong, but is beautifully written, fantastically directed, has an awesome cast and makes me laugh every time I watch it.

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Red Riding Hood – DON’T SEE THIS MOVIE

Movie Review 2 Comments

(Just for clarity’s sake, there will be spoilers ahoy, because you’re not going to see this movie as it is SO awful)

 

Seriously, it is a REALLY bad film.  Once upon a time there was a good script, but I think it was killed by a committee whose sole aim in life was to make something in their own image.  The only two glimpses of the good script are at the end of the movie, one the “what big X you have grandmother” scene, and the other which was the twist to the whole movie – which had never been foreshadowed so was less of a twist and more of a “HUH???”.

Anyway, the director, Catherine Hardwicke, managed to get poor performances out of every actor in the movie.  Gary Oldman, who is at his most entertaining when chewing the set, provided an incredibly wooden performance and I was much relieved when he eventually died.  The pouting underwear models were wooden and unbelievable – as was pretty much everyone on set.  Let’s get into the breakdown of everything.

Quick story synopsis – There is a village, and for the first time in a couple of generations the “wolf” has killed a villager.  The villagers decide to go and hunt down the wolf and their priest calls a witch-finder.  No hilarity ensures.  The body-count builds, but no one seems to care much, and eventually after the witch-finder is dead, we discover who the wolf is (werewolf), and everyone lives confusedly ever after.

The movie is set in a village, in the middle of some mountains – it looks a bit like the German Alps or Scandinavia.  Given the period(ish) clothing and basic living conditions, I would suggest that it was the Dark Ages, or perhaps if generous the Middle Ages.  Everyone was surprisingly clean, with perfect hair, teeth and skin.  No one was sick, no one was disabled from injury and everything was clean (they even washed their hands).  When it snowed, they didn’t put warmer clothes on.  I do get that people who live in cold climates have a different sense of what is cold and what is not cold, but their breath didn’t fog and there was no mud after the snow was trampled into the ground.  It wasn’t really believable.

So, with the whining about the unbelievability of the set up out of the way, let’s move to the story itself.  Now Valerie (Red Riding Hood herself) has a really bad day.  Her love interest tells her that he’s just found out that she’s now betrothed to marry the other underwear model.  They decide to run away together, but then the church/alarm bell sounds and everyone returns to town.  Valerie’s sister has been killed by the wolf, and there is much wailing.  Afterwards, while they are preparing the body (Valerie, her mother, and Valerie’s friends) of her sister for burial (which never features in the film), Valerie’s betrothed comes with his family to pay their respects.  Valerie climbs the stairs to the loft of the cottage and retreats.  Her mother follows her and they talk about how important it is that Valerie marries this underwear model than the other one, because this one has more money, and how the mother didn’t marry the man she loved either, and that’s just the way it is.

This is pretty much the end of the dead sister plot device.  No one is sad in this film when someone dies.  There are some immediate tears, but life goes on and a couple of hours later people are partying, working, whatever again like the dead person never existed.  The townsmen go off to kill the wolf, believing that it lived in a nearby extensive cave system, when they return with a wolf corpse (and the dead body of the betrothed’s father – again briefly touched upon death, just another plot device), they throw a party.  The witch-finder turns up just before the party, tells everyone that he knows that the wolf is not yet dead because his wife was once a werewolf and he had to kill her to save himself and his children, and then he wanders off with his army while the party is prepared.

It’s more of a rave than a party, and if I EVER find the choreographer of the dancing in this movie I will stab them repeatedly. The love interest is off dancing with another woman (after telling Valerie that they should go their separate ways), and Valerie is upset.  So she grabs another girl and joins in the dancing.  It’s a cross between the lambada and stately court dancing and is truly awful.  Faux-lesbianism is incredibly wrong on many levels, and this movie doesn’t make it any more right.  With a witch-finder in the village, I’m sure nothing else would attract his attention more than two women apparently dancing sexually together.

The wolf turns up, savages a few villagers, quite a few soldiers and then escapes.  During this the village idiot (yes, they even had one of those) is suspected of knowing who the wolf is, and he’s captured and tortured.  His sister (because apparently they didn’t have parents), goes to the witch-finder to bargain for his release.  She gives him all her money (which isn’t much) and when he isn’t impressed offers her body to him.  He’s still unimpressed so she offers information “about a witch”, specifically that Valerie can communicate with the wolf.  Once Valerie is captured, the informant goes back and demands to see her brother, and she’s shown him crumpled on a bed of straw.  We never find out if he is alive or dead, and again some minutes later the plot-device is discarded and everyone moves on.

Death as a plot-device certainly doesn’t endear me to any of the characters or the movie in general.  Oddly, perhaps, I am more likely to engage with characters who experience the full range of human emotion, including grief that family or friends have died.  Even shock that a massive werewolf is bounding around the village would be a good start.

This movie could have gone places.  It could have been a great feminist movie about a woman taking a stand against the kyriarchy and living independently despite the unfriendliness of the world (does anyone ever wonder WHY Red Riding Hood’s grandmother lives out in the forest away from the village?).  It could have been about a woman (or group of women) rewriting the rules of their society in order to make their lives fairer despite the wolves – because in the end Valerie ends up killing the wolf.

It could have been good, but it really wasn’t.

 

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It’s time to grow up

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There are some people I know, who I think are fantastic in many ways, who have a trait that tends to bug me a lot.  It’s this, an ability to tolerate/indulge certain (mostly negative) behaviours from individuals because they need to be that right now, or that they need to feel that it is ok to be that right now.  The thing that gets to me most, is not that my friends tolerate/indulge these behaviours from these individuals, it’s generally that I am expected to tolerate/indulge this behaviour as well.

If I complain about one of these people and say, “Ow, my eyes have been sporked“, then far too often I feel that the other individual (often masculine oddly enough) will be defended, and I am expected to attempt to compromise around their behaviour and it’s negative impacts on me.  I feel that I am expected to be the grown-up while the other person is often indulged in whatever tantrum, bad behaviour, etc, that they are undertaking that I am objecting to.  “Oh but you don’t know where they are right now” and “But they’re not really like that” aren’t good enough.  Compromise is not a one way street.

If someone is being an arsehat, then I’m going to call that out.  I understand that the support I’m going to get from some of my friends is going to be seriously lacking, but that’s going to be ok.  Because right now, I clearly need to be angry and intolerant of all arsehatted behaviour.  I will be spending a lot more time being intolerant of arsehats and the negative impact that has on me.  Because it’s time we all grew up.

 

 

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The Catholic Mass

Religion 1 Comment

Now I’m a long, long, long time ex-Catholic (ok, probably not that long, but long enough), I don’t hold a torch for Catholicism (you might have noticed with my posts about the place focusing on The Pope), but I still have family involved in the Church, and spent some very happy times there (going LALALALA about certain aspects).  I enjoyed the Mass as it was, the rituals were comforting and familiar, and I liked the ideals (that I understood) of Vatican 2 – the inclusiveness of the actual Church goers (you know, the people that fund the Church for the most part) in the rituals. (An aside, I learnt more about the whys and wherefores of Vatican 2 from Brides of Christ than I ever did during 12 years of Catholic education)

Anyway… I read with some dismay the changes to the Catholic Mass that are the beginning of an attempt to roll-back the progressiveness of Vatican 2 (how this works with the infallibility of Popes I have no idea).  The Age had a useful explanatory article (warning picture of Pope Benedict – I mean Emperor Palpatine) detailing some of the changes to the Mass wordings.  I don’t know about other people, but I struggle to remember changes to texts when they’re suddenly changed, particularly if I’m not happy about the changes.

So, the Catholic Church has decided that rolling-back Vatican 2 is a good idea because… well politics and power and removing power from the individual churches and concentrating it higher up.  It’s always annoyed me that such a large institution, one that claims it serves the faithful, is such an undemocratic organisation.  Surely those that fund it and use it, should have a say in how the organisation runs.  It’s not like democracy is a new thing, but I suppose that dictatorships are even older.

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (John 13:13-15)

So off you go Mr Pope, and Mr Cardinal, and Mr Bishop, and Mr Priest.  Go and wash the feet of your faithful, the feet of those who provide the church with money to fuction and provide charity to others.  Go and ask what they want, and stop imposing things from on-high as if you are the only men in the world who have a direct line to God (if ou exists).

British commentator William Oddie trumpeted in the conservative Catholic Herald last month that the liturgy battle is over but for a bit of mopping up, and ”the good guys won”.

”The new translation is wholly successful, and if we had been using it from day one, thousands of people repelled by the banality of the translation now being superseded would still be regular worshippers rather than lapsed Catholics. I really believe it’s as important as that.”

…

But it takes a particularly fervent advocate to suggest, as William Oddie does, that a liturgy-led revival will reverse declining church attendance.

Bob Dixon, head of the Australian church’s Pastoral Research Office, regards the idea as ”absolute fantasy. When we asked people why they stopped going to church, almost nobody said it was because the church has lost its sense of reverence by using modern English. They said they stopped because they can’t find relevance, they can’t see a connection between the church’s agenda and their own agenda, they disagree with certain church teachings.”

DIXON has two concerns. Nearly a third of Australian church-goers come from non-English-speaking backgrounds , so will a more elevated, less idiomatic liturgy create language hurdles for them? Second, will some of those disenchanted with the church over sexual abuse by clergy say, ”you have this crisis and you are just fiddling with the language”, and leave?

Seriously, people don’t leave a Church or a faith because they think that the language used in the liturgy is “banal”.  I’m with Dixon who suggests that perhaps there are far more important reasons than boring language behind people leaving Catholicism.  Perhaps the priests, the bishops, the cardinals and the pope need to sit down and listen to people who have left or who are going to leave – and decide what is really in the Church’s best interests versus the power-hungry grabbing that is going on now – just saying.

 

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How to radicalise your population

Religion 2 Comments

I’ve read with… well not exactly dismay because it is part of the whole USA falling into a chasm… more resignation, the stories recently of the US Congress setting up a body to probe US Muslims, of US taxes going towards law enforcement bodies to “educate” them about Islam and instead failing to do so, and about Tennessee wanting to ban Sharia.

[ok I now have a fever and am sick, so if this post doesn’t make all the sense that I intend, apologies]

The stories above are just the Government actions taken against US Muslims.  They do not detail in any way the daily prejudice, discrimination and bigotry faced by Muslims in the US.  Islamaphobia is in full swing.

From where I’m sitting (sick and fuzzy headed), the Islamaphobia in the US (yes, I know it exists in Australia too, and is equally problematic) can lead to some very bad outcomes.  The estimated number of Muslims in the US is around 2.3% of the US population (Australia’s Muslim population is 1.71% of the overall population).  There just are not enough Muslims in the US (or Australia) to rise up and protest against the oppression they’re suffering (unlike the peoples in many Middle Eastern nations currently – which has nothing to do with Islam and all to do with oppression, lack of opportunities, etc).  The research on stereotype threat also suggests that Muslims may feel that they have to conform to the predominant sterotype held of them, which doesn’t do anyone any favours.

If we look back at history, we can see many many examples of groups that have been vilified and terrible results (clearly we are very bad at learning from history and are doomed to repeat it).  The news media played a large part in the Rwandan Genocide.

According to recent commentators, the news media played a crucial role in the genocide; local print and radio media fueled the killings while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground.[14] The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis, which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators, anti-Tutsi hate speech “…became so systemic as to seem the norm.”

…

From late October 1993, the RTLM repeatedly broadcast themes developed by the extremist written press, underlining the inherent differences between Hutu and Tutsi, the foreign origin of Tutsi, the disproportionate share of Tutsi wealth and power, and the horrors of past Tutsi rule. The RTLM also repeatedly stressed the need to be alert to Tutsi plots and possible attacks. It warned Hutu to prepare to “defend” themselves against the Tutsi. (Source: Wikipedia – link above)

Sound familiar?

We can also look at the internment of Japanese people (definitions on who was Japanese or not was interestingly broad) in the US during World War 2.

Many concerns over the loyalty of ethnic Japanese seemed to stem from racial prejudice rather than evidence of actual malfeasance. Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Command, each questioned Japanese American loyalty. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that “A Jap’s a Jap” and testified to Congress,

I don’t want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty… It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty… But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.

…

Internment was popular among many white farmers who resented the Japanese-American farmers. “White American farmers admitted that their self-interest required removal of the Japanese.” These individuals saw internment as a convenient means of uprooting their Japanese American competitors. Austin E. Anson, managing secretary of the Salinas Vegetable Grower-Shipper Association, told the Saturday Evening Post in 1942:

“We’re charged with wanting to get rid of the Japs for selfish reasons. We do. It’s a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown men. They came into this valley to work, and they stayed to take over… If all the Japs were removed tomorrow, we’d never miss them in two weeks, because the white farmers can take over and produce everything the Jap grows. And we do not want them back when the war ends, either.”

The Roberts Commission Report, prepared at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s request, has been cited as an example of the fear and prejudice informing the thinking behind the internment program. The Report sought to link Japanese Americans with espionage activity, and to associate them with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Columnist Henry McLemore reflected growing public sentiment fueled by this report:

“I am for the immediate removal of every Japanese on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. I don’t mean a nice part of the interior either. Herd ’em up, pack ’em off and give ’em the inside room in the badlands… Personally, I hate the Japanese. And that goes for all of them.”

Other California newspapers also embraced this view. According to a Los Angeles Times editorial,

“A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched… So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere… notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American… Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion… that such treatment… should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race.” (Source: Wikipedia article linked above)

Again, the same sort of language is used to vilify a group, which then results in investigation and restriction of that group’s ability to participate in society.  I worry that the Muslims in the West (particularly in the US and Australia) are going to be increasingly targeted and that is going to end up being really bad.  I don’t really have a solution, just fears that the situation is going to get worse, but I hope I can stand up against Islamaphobia whenever I encounter it.

Propagating this fear runs the risk of radicalising the general population against those who follow Islam, and that crimes against Muslims may not be reported or may not be fully investigated by the authorities.  Discrimination and prejudice will continue to rise, people may feel obliged to recant their faith in order to face less bigotry, to hide their culture and act white, to remove their sense of self to find some safety.  This sucks.

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It’s not very funny

body 1 Comment

There was this joke I read on a website (which isn’t known for being friendly to women), and it wasn’t at all funny.  Here it is (emphasis all mine):

A woman, wearing a sleeveless sun dress, walked into a Bar in Dublin.
She raised her right arm, revealing a huge, hairy armpit as she pointed to all the people sitting at the bar and asked, ‘What man here will buy a lady a drink?’

Down at the end of the bar, an old drunk slammed his hand down on the counter and bellowed ‘Give the ballerina a drink!’

The bartender poured the drink and the woman drunk it. She turned again pointed around at all of them, revealing the same hairy armpit, and asked, ‘What man here will buy a lady a drink?’

Once again, the same little drunk shouted ‘Give the ballerina another drink!’

The bartender approached the drunk and said ‘Tell me, Paddy, it’s your business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you keep calling her a ballerina?’

The drunk replied, ‘Any woman who can lift her leg that high has got to be a ballerina!’

This joke relies to two things to make it funny – the confusion suffered by a drunk man about what he was looking at – armpits and pubic mounds totally the same, and the fact that women with hairy armpits (or “huge, hairy armpit[s]”) are gross and revolting and no one but a drunk man would buy such a woman a drink.

The joke isn’t funny as far as I am concerned.  Hairy armpits are fine, there is nothing wrong with them, and how they’d be huge… can you have huge armpits?… I’m not sure.  This joke is one in a million others which reinforces crap beauty and gender myths about what it is to be a beautiful woman.  This joke is one in a million of others which reinforces gender conformity and beauty conformity.

I call bullshit.

Be beautiful.  Love your body for it is beautiful.  It gets you from here to there (most of the time), helps you feel good (much of the time) and is gorgeous.  Be beautiful in your own way.  Don’t ascribe to society’s fucked up view of what makes a woman beautiful.  You are gorgeous.

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Making trouble

LGBTIQ 1 Comment

I’m a member of the committee of Bisexual Alliance Victoria (Vice President since you asked), and am one of the founding members of that group.  We participated in our first (as Bisexual Alliance Victoria) Pride March in early February 2011, and unsurprisingly (to me at least) we received negative feedback from the crowd, “Make a decision”, “Get off the fence”, “Make up your mind”, “No such thing”, etc.

I expected these comments, which really sucks at a queer event, because every time I’ve marched since 2007 as a bisexual, I’ve heard them.  Some of our members were really upset by the negativity, and so as a committee we decided to write a media release indicating that we were disappointed with the negativity and that we were working with Pride March Victoria to march prominently and be involved in tackling further biphobia.  At the same time, two of our members wrote an article which was published in the Star Observer.  This article has also attracted biphobic comments – neatly proving our point.

So I wrote a comment in response to the biphobic comments, which I’ve captured below in the very unlikely event that it doesn’t get through moderation.  I started with the lyrics from The Whitlam’s song I will not go Quietly (Duffy’s Song), which I think neatly captures the fight that bisexuals go through constantly at the moment (hopefully less so each year.

One final thing before I get to my comment.  The San Francisco Human Rights Commission has put together a paper on biphobia titled, “Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations” which is an eye opening read into the effects of bisexual invisibility and biphobia.

Ok, my comment:

“I will not go quietly
I will not accept your rules
gonna live with myself
before I live with any of you”
(I Will Not Go Quietly (Duffy’s Song) – The Whitlams)

I identify as bisexual and have now for 20 years – I’ve never thought I was straight or gay – always bisexual.  Yet at the Pride Marches I have been in, when marching with the bisexual community (since 2007), I have been booed, told to decide, told to get off the fence, and had my sexual identity derided.

Let me be very clear here – this is a queer event (Pride March) and so is attended by a large number of gay and lesbian Melburnians.  At this queer event, I have had my sexual identity called into question and made fun of.

I’m made of relatively strong stuff, and so laugh at bigots who tell me that I’m being dishonest when identifying as a bisexual, but there are bisexuals who aren’t made of teflon coated kevlar like me – and do you think that it is fair to tell them that they’re wrong with their own identifiers?  Do you think it’s ok for you to identify someone else on their behalf without any consultation?

I wish it wasn’t the case that the way SOME gay and lesbian people treat bisexuals mirrors quite closely the persecution that gay and lesbians fought against for years.  I wish it were actually true that those who don’t believe that bisexuality exists actually spent some time listening to bisexuals about their lived experience and let us decide whether we exist or not.

We’re not a danger to you.  We don’t dilute your movement.  Like any group of individuals in any community, there are always arsehats, but no one should take them as representative – just as broader society is learning not to take gay or lesbian or women arsehats as representative of an entire group.

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Japan

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When I came home on Friday night and found my husband (husband 2 for ease of reference) watching footage of the tsunami in Japan, I was horrified by the sheer devastation.  I had been out drinking decadent (and delicious) hot chocolate with my husband (husband 1), my girlfriend and a dear friend after work and gym, and generally having a fantastic evening.

I stood behind my husband (number 2) and watched the tsunami, listened to the news reports, and watched in dumb horror the destruction occurring to my brothers and sisters to the north (and in winter when everything is going to be so very very cold).

As it happens, my husband (number 1) and I had organised to travel to his brother’s 50th on Saturday, and so that morning piled into the car to drive to Albury for the party.  We stayed at a gorgeous B&B, went to the party (and my FIL didn’t upset me even once – a new record!), travelled home via a friend’s place (where we had tea, scones and deep and meaningful conversations) and eventually got home Sunday night (thank the FSM for Labour Day in Victoria).

On return I turned on my PC and started talking to my sister, while catching up with the news and finding out how much worse the devastation of Japan was.  She shared two links with me, the first a collection of quotes from arsehats suggesting that aid should not be sent to Japan because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour – or that the earthquake was return karma for bombing Pearl Harbour.  Now for everyone who doesn’t have a grasp of World War 2 history (because clearly that isn’t important to some people), the Japanese did not start WW2, and the US retaliated for the bombing of Pearl Harbour with the ATOMIC bombing of two CIVILIAN cities (not military targets) – an actual war crime. So if Japan was to be paid back in any kind of karma for Pearl Harbour, that nuclear bombing certainly was it and then some.

The whole karma payback for Pearl Harbour thing is also incredibly US-centric.  It certainly doesn’t address anything other grievance that other nations may have with Japan, and given some of the atrocities that occurred during WW2, there are certainly the potential for a lot of that.

The second site my sister shared with me was Karma Japan, a site that started collecting racist and bigoted commentary from Twitter mostly regarding the earthquake in Japan.  Many people apparently suggested that Japan deserved an earthquake because they killed dolphins and whales.  Clearly every other nation that kills dolphins and whales doesn’t deserve earthquakes and tsunamis.  Karma Japan has also published positive commentary from those who are condemning bigotry and racism, and provides counter argument to the hate and ignorance.

My favourite article of all on the earthquake and tsunami that has hit Japan (yes I am serious) is this from The Age, “World Rushes Aid to Japan“.  I am happily stunned by the generosity of past enemies and poor nations (well provinces) towards Japan in her hour of need.  In summary:

  • China’s Red Cross pledged one million yuan ($A150,000) to its Japanese counterpart
  • The Afghan province of Kandahar announced $A50,000 in aid

I feel that I am unable to even grasp the magnitude of this event (and the aftershocks and the possible nuclear meltdown).  It’s going to take Japan a long time to recover and rebuild, just as it will take Christchurch a long time to recover and rebuild.  I wish there was more I could do other than donate money to the Red Cross.

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Democracy by the sword

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It always struck me as incongruous that democracy (and not demoncracy which I usually typo) has been imposed on so many sovereign states through Western Imperialism (mostly the US).  The most recent examples are Iraq and Afghanistan, but there is a lovely trail of US led, Western imperialism, democracy imposition (the right type of democracy) in other nations, such as Vietnam and South America.

It’s always seemed really odd that you can invade another nation, tell them that they’re doing government wrong, and then hang around while they do it to your standards (and I’m not a fan of US democracy anyway).  How can you impose democracy?  Isn’t that an oxymoron?

What has struck me about the past month and a bit is the both the people’s uprisings in northern Africa and parts of the Middle East, and the uncertainty of the US and back-footed response of the UN.  Clearly the US had vested interests in the various regimes as they were.  Egypt’s Mubarak was a useful ally, so little attention to was given to human rights violations or the wishes of the Egyptian citizens.  Yemen is an ally in “the war on terror”, so the current regime has been propped up using rhetoric that Al-Qaeda is based in Yemen (it may or may not be, I don’t know).  Libya is different again, with a great friend in Italy, and defrosting relationships with much of Europe – though I don’t think anyone expected Gadaffi to go quite off the rails the way he has.

I’m in awe of the courage that the regular people in Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Morocco (list may not be exhaustive), are displaying as they take on their regimes, as they watch their fellow countrymen be beaten, killed or arrested, for standing up and demanding a better say, less corruption, and more rights than they currently have.  I’m honoured to be able to hear their stories and watch them fight for democracy.  I’m amazed at how technology is being used for good (and not just for spying on citizens).

I am living in an amazing time, and I hope that my brothers and sisters who are fighting for democracy get everything they want, that the civil war in Libya ends quickly and that further violence is minimised.

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Revisiting my childhood (Part 1)

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I think I might write a series of articles over revisiting various things I loved during my childhood, and going back and finding if they have any appeal to me as an adult.  I don’t know how frequent they’ll be, but I thought I’d start with a series of books by an author I adored (one of many) when I was growing up in Alice Springs.

Given my mother’s love of Science Fiction, and the religious viewing of Doctor Who, it isn’t all that surprising that as soon as I discovered that I loved to read (which would have been when I was around 10 years old or so) that I found the science fiction books at the public library.

Today’s post is on the Last Legionary Quartet by Douglas Hill (now out of print, but available second hand on Amazon and in second hand bookshops (where I got mine)), a typical space faring adventure but with some really interesting tweaks.  First up, the first book of the series, Galactic Warlord was published in 1980, a time I certainly associate with bad science in science fiction, however Douglas Hill has gone out of his way to ensure that the science in the books is as accurate as it can be.  Space is three dimensional and a vacuum (so no noise in space), and performing sudden manoeuvres in space will result in g-forces being applied to the craft and pilot.  Some future technology is incredibly similar to 1980s technology with tapes and keyboards in use, but there is a large array of energy weapons, faster than light travel and different worlds, so that certainly makes up for it.

The next best thing about the series is that it is not sexist.  Yes the main character is male, but it is clearly stated from the beginning that he is from a world where the entire adult population could be turned into an army, where everyone is trained to be a warrior from early childhood, and that his squad’s gender make-up was secondary to its capability.  So the main character could have been a woman.  Women are not written as sex objects, nurturers, princesses needing rescue or victims of circumstance, they are strong, capable, leaders, agitators, aggressive, good, evil, wise, and just like men.  At one point the hero hesitates in attacking a woman, not because she is a woman but because he thought she was on his side and his friend.

Another positive in the series is that there are humans who settled on other planets in the galaxy (it turns out that humans are the only sentient life form in this galaxy), and who have developed beneficial mutations to survive on those planets.  Those planets are collectively known as the “altered worlds” and the emotive word “mutant” is rarely used throughout the book.  The inhabitents of those planets are referred to coming from the “altered worlds”, but no value judgement is made about any difference that has developed in that group of humans.  Additionally, any individual who comes from those planets (and this holds true for all individuals in the book regardless of where they have come from) is taken to not be a representative of their race/planet/home world system/type.  So if someone is evil in the book, that person is evil, not all people like them.

That last positive that I’d to note out of this series is that the hero can’t always win the day on his own.  He has a non-human companion – an alien from another galaxy, who is female and non-humanoid – who comes to his rescue, shields him when required (she’s a telepath), and who is completely capable on her own.

This series really lives up to my memories of it – in fact I’d forgotten how awesome they were.  I’m enjoying it immensely and only have two books to go before I’m done.  They’re quite short – so all four books is normal novel size.  I was sad to find out recently that Douglas Hill had died just after submitting the final manuscript for the last book in another of his series (one I haven’t read in its entirety), but given how good The Last Legionary Quartet is turning out, I’m going to go and hunt down all the books of his I can, and enjoy them all.

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