News That's Fit To Punt - 18/Apr/2016

The End Of The Road For Bronwyn Bishop

It's minor news but I love it anyway. Bronwyn Bishop has lost her preselection for her seat of McKellar. She had long overstayed her welcome in Australian politics and she really won't be missed by the middle Australia that had no influence over her pre-selection. The more interesting aspect of her demise as a political figure might be that her ideological lovechild Tony Abbott had a hand in unseating her.

Tony Abbott has publicly praised Bronwyn Bishop amid anger in sections of the Liberal Party that the former prime minister urged his supporters in Mackellar to end Mrs Bishop's political career in Saturday's preselection vote. 

A bloc of 12 votes for Walter Villatora, a member of the hard right who was backed by Mr Abbott, became instrumental in Mrs Bishop's defeat by Jason Falinksi. 

Mr Falinksi is a member of the Liberal left - the moderate faction - and it is highly-unusual for the hard right to work towards the ascendancy of a moderate in a seat previously held by a conservative like Mrs Bishop. 

The 73 year-old former Speaker retained the backing of the centre-right in NSW despite loud public calls for her retirement and agreement in the senior ranks of the Turnbull Government that her time was up.

Members of the hard right were playing down talk of an official deal on Sunday. "There was no deal done, this one was free of charge," said a source. 

But the centre-right is convinced that the hard right planned the hit on Mrs Bishop in collusion with the left and that Mr Abbott had been "hitting the phones hard" to ensure that outcome.

It doesn't really matter. The woman was an ideological nut job that foreshadowed the Tea Party style partisan politics coming to Australia. She was also responsible for running up a huge bill on the public purse, flying around in helicopters on private business, while her resume shows she didn't really do much except be a big noise on behalf of the hard right. 

She really was a terrible human being before being an awful member of Parliament and even an awful Speaker of the House to boot. Together with Sophie Mirabella, it is best we consign her to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.

Double Dissolution Coming Down The Pike

Malcolm Turnbull recalled parliament early to debate that ABCC bill for three weeks. The Senate voted it down in a day. That now activated the 2 July date for a Federal election.

The sanguine news for both major parties is that the polls are pretty even.

The latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend put support for the Coalition and Labor across the country on a knife-edge at 50-50, assuming an allocation of preferences similar to those at the last election.

The national survey of 1402 electors was conducted between April 14-16 and showed support for the Coalition had dropped by a statistically significant 3 percentage points since the March poll. 

This equates to a 3.5 per cent swing away from the Coalition's share of the vote achieved at the September 2013 election, raising the prospect the election could produce a government with a wafer-thin majority or even another hung Parliament.

The only thing the Coalition have got going is that Malcolm Turnbull is far more popular than Bill Shorten. It's not much to go on if you're a backbencher looking to be wiped out in a 3.5-4.0% swing, but Bob Hawke with his personal popularity won on the back of such numbers in incumbency so it's not like they're toast just yet.

I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities to bitch even moe and louder about this truly horrible Coalition Government in the coming weeks so I'll just leave that bit for now. Stay tuned, I shall be whinging with all my might.

Meanwhile The NSW Government Wants To Go Orwellian On Our Sorry Butts

This is just awful, and it's flying under the radar.

On March 22, 2016, a set of bills was introduced to the New South Wales Parliament by Deputy Premier and Minister for Justice and Police Troy Grant that included the Serious Crime Prevention Orders Bill and Criminal Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Public Safety) Bill. 

The acts upon which this amendment is based are shockingly outdated bases for common law. Most date back to the early 90s and one was written in 1900, a time when the faces of both crime and civil liberties were starkly different than they are today. This would be one matter if the intent of the amendment had been to more clearly define violent crimes--such as differentiating hate crimes from others--but instead, the amendment's stated purpose was to "recast the offence of dealing with property suspected of being proceeds of crime so as to adopt certain provisions of the corresponding offence in the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth."

As another site puts it:

The bill would grant police the power to cut off your internet, terminate you from your job, tell you who can associate with, and where you can go if they think you have some association with a “serious” crime. 

These “serious crimes” can range from anything as minor as theft, possession of a cannabis plant or illegal gambling to major offences like homicide, kidnapping and extortion.

They are essentially the same laws used for a terror suspect, but they can be applied to any innocent person in New South Wales without their chance at a proper criminal trial. 

Why should you be worried?
If the police, who are often wrong, believe you were in some way connected to a crime, they can impose all of these restrictions on your life without having to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. 

One of the most concerning parts of the legislation is that it can apply to a range of potentially completely innocent people.

As the NSW Bar Association explained, it’s not just for people convicted of the crime – it’s anyone that’s seen to “facilitate” it, which is a very vague term.

You could even get done for simply lending your phone or car to a friend who uses it for a criminal act.

What’s even more sinister is that there’s also basically no reasonable way to appeal the control order once you cop it.

You can only prove it by way of ‘legal error’, which means it’s not a matter of proving whether you’re innocent or not, you have to prove the police didn’t apply the procedure properly.

Pre-crime here we come! It's sinister in that it tries to set up a zone where a person is not innocent because they're suspected of something, which would overturn the principle of innocent until proven otherwise. The government has minimal onus to present its case in any detail, is enabled into malicious prosecutions, and can't be stopped unless they happen to trip up on procedure. Keep in mind, we have no 'Miranda Rights' made explicit in this country, so procedural errors of the police are less likely to be spotted by the legal profession. This is like a leap back to the18th century. 

The terrible irony course is that the party wanting to do this is called the 'Liberal' Party. The party that supposedly values individual freedoms.  

'Suits' - Seasons 1-5

That Was A Big Binge

My better half has been watching this show regularly and I've sort of shrugged at it because the aesthetic of the show was way too smooth and manicured. I like my law shows a bit grittier; my fave law show was 'The Practice' back in the 90s where Dylan McDermott played criminal attorney Bobby Donnell and each week had a big trial speechifying moment. Of course the same person who created 'The Practice' also created 'Ally McBeal' so ... what can I say? Maybe 'The Practice' wasn't as gritty as I remember it to be - Wikipedia lists its genre as comedy drama. I sure don't remember laughing a whole lot watching 'The Practice'.

Anyway, I decided to take the plunge because FetchTV served it up on a platter, and I was researching how to write a series and it seemed appropriate to see what a multiple award winning show did. Plus, my better half is the better half for a reason. She has a sharp eye for character drama. It couldn't be bad at all to go through it all, could it?

80 episodes is a long journey to go through, but having gone through it, I think I at least understand what the hell is going on in the show, and why it might appeal to audiences. The one benefit of watching a show about lawyers is that they do it without special effects or masked vigilantes saving the day. It's nice watching something that is ostensibly content for grownups, and in most part it is.

'Suits' seems to hark back to the 'L.A. Law' style of slick lawyering show that inspired another generation. You can see how this works - the constant glamorising of the law sucks in the ever aspirational into a turgid career pushing paper. I once met a woman who wanted to be a trial lawyer who explained to me just how far one had to go just to be the kind of lawyer that gets up and works a trail. After her explanation it seemed to me law shows were far more misrepresentative of the career allure of its profession than medical dramas. Yes it takes a long time to become a surgeon too, but you don't exactly go into not expecting to see blood and gore.

'Suits' gives the impression that lawyering is not only glamorous, it might just be easy enough that you can watch a few episodes of 'Suits' and then you too can go into court and argue for a client. It is fanciful. But then so is 'My Kitchen Rules' or the Six o'clock News.

What's Good About It

The best thing about the show is the premise whereby a savant turns out to be a en excellent lawyer in practice but has no qualifications to be practicing law. Much of the tension in the series is built on whether the character Mike gets found out for this brazen fraud. The show teams up Mike with Harvey who is meant to be the sharpest lawyer going, and Harvey is complicit in the fraud because he can see the immense potential of Mike.

The show isn't as good a survey of the law as something like 'The Practice'. It's relatively light on the sort of procedural law show tropes. Instead, it spends a lot of time exploring the hierarchy and institutional strengths and weaknesses of a top flight law firm.

Gabriel Macht who plays Harvey is a very solid leading actor with great range. you can see why the show is so successful watching him. He has more range than the character he is playing so he surprises you at least once every few episodes. The show hangs on him more than the other main character of Mike played by Patrick J. Adams. Adams is also good, but when you watch 5 seasons in a row you start seeing his limitations. He just repeats certain moods and moves over and over again. It wouldn't be noticeable if you saw the show once a week, but it sticks out when you watch the series in a row. He's simply not as varied in voice or elocution or body language as Macht.

What's Bad About It

The writers of the show can't resist quoting movies. It's just time-wasting fodder when real character stuff could be explored. The show has many moments where they're just spinning wheels, which are more apparent when you sit down and binge watch 5 seasons. You get to hone in on which narrative lines are important and which ones aren't, and you find yourself watching quite a number of tedious exchange built on quotes from movies.

The worst moment was when they started quoting 'Mad Men' when 'Mad Men' clearly informed the template for the office politics. It was just bad writing, bad execution. The moment they likened a situation to 'Game of Thrones' was also terrible. I'm sure they meant it as an homage, but it killed tension and the sense of place of this show. It was these moments where the writers gave in to their own anxiety of influence.

Also some of the lesser characters seem have difficulty breaking out of their two-dimensional characterisation. Louis, the strange obstacle character, spends a better part of the five seasons until he finds himself enough to stand in solidarity with his cohorts. It's just not believable that somebody so smart could be so dumb about their circumstance - especially a circumstance the character claims to love and cherish above all else.

What's Interesting About It

The whole exercise turned out to be quite instructional on how to formulate a long-lasting TV series. The show has an overarching problem - that Mike Ross is a fraud - but it also has secondary story arcs that last the season where the show presents with a antagonist who seeks to destroy the firm or take it over. There is a tertiary arc where the character interactions reside whether it be romantic love interest or professional regard for one another or simply bickering over process; and only after then does something happen in each episode to nudge things along on all the arcs.

Some times you wish they spent more time on the big arc, while other times you're happy watching the lawyers do their TV lawyer thing. The tension between the story arcs goes a long way to pushing the show out to 5 series and counting.

Defending The Indefensible, Arguing the Implausible

The trick to writing a good lawyer show seems to be capturing the ability of lawyers to and do and say things normal people would never consider doing. The system is there to give a fair trial to people and that means somebody has to argue to the best of their ability in favour some unsavoury people and things. Take our foreign minister Julie Bishop who as a lawyer defended Big Tobacco and James Hardie in the famous cases before she turned to politics. I know some well educated people who hold this against her as a sign of bad character but you watch enough law shows, you quickly understand that those trials wouldn't have been fair trials had Big Tobacco and James Hardie not had their lawyer in their corner arguing the implausible to defend the indefensible. To that extent I sure don't hold Julie Bishop's legal career against her as having bad character. For our society to be as moral and ethical as it claims to be, somebody needed to be in that corner for the system to work.

In many ways the fun of watching these law shows is watching the lawyers do and say these extraordinary things. Harvey Specter then, is an interesting lawyer character because he often opts to not go to trial. Instead he looks to make sure he cuts the best deals for his clients. That is an interesting wrinkle because for a show about lawyers, they don't seem to go into the courtroom anywhere near the frequency that the lawyers in 'The Practice' or 'L.A. Law' or 'for that matter 'Ally McBeal' did. Instead we're treated to a world of finding the leverage and pressing hard to get outcomes. It's indefensible at times, implausible at others, but it sure makes for interesting viewing.

Race, Gender, Faith And The System

The main characters are palimpsests of American anxieties about race, gender and faith.
I was watching the series and it struck me that Harvey Specter was a dead giveaway name. Harvey is like the imaginary rabbit from the eponymous movie, and Specter is actually spectre, a ghost. He is the least present of the characters in the show, and so he gives us the least information of himself or what he is truly about. Harvey is also unlike any standard American character in that he hates his mother. That's something you don't see everyday in American media. He seems to be living out a WASP nightmare of repressed feelings and memories which are finding expression in his angry outbursts and terrible treatment of those around him. By season 5, he is sent packing by the writers to go see a Psychiatrist which creates its own troubles.

Mike, in stark contrast, is a Catholic boy haunted by a sense of guilt. He finds moral purpose where other sane, normal people might not choose to find them, but given that his character pretty much is at the centre of the main problem in the show, you sort of accept the whole thing. Mike is constantly flip-flopping about what to do, essentially weighing up what makes him feel less guilty as he goes along, but all the while repressing the fact that he is indeed a fraud.

Louis is a man full of self-loathing and a strange sense of satisfaction at his own idiosyncrasy. He's a man in search of one good friend, and he can't maintain friendships because he perceives his social standing only in hierarchical terms. If he is meant to be comic relief, then it is pretty psychotic. It is revealed Louis is Jewish by birth and upbringing but he seems to have devoted his faith more to the church of Harvard Law school as an institution than his own naive faith. It's not clear what exactly drove him to the self-loathing, but what seems to soothe his self-loathing is prestige. It is comic but also profoundly sad when put next to the fabulously WASP and cool Harvey, or the Catholic and empathic Mike. Louis' pettiness is the foil to distract us from the repressed anxiety of Harvey and repressed guilt of Mike.

The managing partner Jessica is a stern black woman of considerable fortitude. She protects her turf because she alone understands how far things can fall, and she is determined not to let that happen. And so her story combines the emancipation of both women and blacks. The system does not play by the rules it advocates, and so Jessica is eternally committed to managing the firm in a way to stay ahead of the volatile ructions of the system. The absolute lack of faith she shows in her staff except Harvey is very revealing. It asks, can Black people ever come to peace with the system that has prosecuted them for so long.

Institutional Elitism

The less appealing aspect of the show is the affirmation of a two-tiered society where the chosen elite reign supreme over the unsuspecting masses. The lawyers in the fictional law firm Pearson Specter Litt are all recruited from Harvard Law School and from that school alone. The other 20 or so leading law schools are given short shrift for most part simply out of snobbery. The characters in most part believe in the snobbery and the importance of maintaining this snobbery which reaffirms their social standing. It's quite unappealing even if Mike who is not from the school runs rings around these lawyers because in most part the status quo is affirms over and over again. The maintenance the elitist institution takes such precedence over so many real concerns.

In a sense a show that strives to give us diversity chokes itself by giving us an institution that would resist diversity as the party for whom the audience supports. There are moments in the show where you just ant to vomit all over the worship of Harvard University. It is all too reminiscent the misplaced awe in which University of Sydney graduates were once held. There probably are law firms that only hire from one place and make it a hallmark of their firm. It's an ugly look.

Because the law is by its nature conservative affair the show never really gets close to undermining the institutional elitism that underpins the socius in the show. Nobody really breaks free, nobody questions the validity nobody really finds the gait creates with the rest of the world to be  serious problem. Louis, at the end of Season 5 is forced to consider graduates from other law schools but by then the firm is in too much turmoil to make good.

Donna Paulsen is clearly a outsider to the coterie of Harvard educated lawyers. She looks in as she contributes mightily to the fate of the law firm. But for all her extraordinary talents and accomplishments and personal guidance to the lawyers, she will never be acknowledged the way Joan Holloway is acknowledged in 'Mad Men' when she ends up owning a share of the advertising firm. Interestingly enough they're both redheaded women.

The Law Is A Sorry Ass

When you watch 80 or so episodes of a show, you come see many moments where characters reverse course of action. And then characters apologies to one another for having done the 180 degrees. Sometimes a character is forced to do two 180 turns within the space of two episodes. Then the apologies ensue.

There'a whole lot of apologies going on in five seasons. If you run a show long enough, the characters end up being n bad enough conflict to have to apologies to one another so often. It's no surprise Harvey ends up seeing a shrink in season 5.

The Law Can Kick Ass

The central tenet of the show seems to be the law can be made to do anything. If it's written down anybody can argue anything and there is a whole posse of lawyers trying to push an agenda. It's interesting because the law is seen as a utilitarian guide to the smooth and fair running of a society.  It's a far cry form the conception of the law that comes from above and perhaps this is why there are so many characters that play fast and loose with the law in this show.

That being said, the procedures and protocols seem to be rigidly enforced and judges seem to frown on most anything bought in front of them. You can imagine being a judge in America is like being asked to intervene in so many idiotic disputes that one's initial response is to frown at any document being thrust under your nose.

There is a lot of document thrusting. And for the sake of the show, most of the characters take one look at the first page of any file and seem to understand the entirety of the content. It's like magic.

The Magical Characters

For all the talk about Harvey being the superhuman amazing lawyer, he doesn't seem to live up to his billing all too well. Instead it is Mike with his amazing photographic memory and Donna's telepathy that saves the day more than once. There are quite a number of episodes that hinge on the fact that the talents of Mike and Donna are simply not normal. If this were Marvel or DC it would make sense. The fact that it happens in a law show reveals that American fiction really is degenerating.

Movie Doubles - 'Bridge of Spies' & 'Pawn Sacrifice'

Cold War Nostalgia




Today's Movie Double is from two movies on Fetch TV, back-to-back, about how the Cold War was engaged. 'Bridge of Spies' is about how significant spies were exchanged, as all parties pretended there was no quid pro quo when it was all about a quid pro quo; and 'Pawn Sacrifice' is about Bobby Fischer's epic win over Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972. Both films feature a tremendous amount of ambient paranoia about the communist Russians and weave their stories through the tacit embrace of the paranoia of that era.

Both are true stories - though the usual caveat is that they're true-stories-loosely-based-on-fact. The looseness of the 'loosely' hangs pretty loose with both films, but they make for good entertainment.

Steven Spielberg seems hell-bent on recreating the images of his youth through his film about the late 1950s and easy 1960s. Front and centre to the story is the threat of mutually assured destruction through nuclear war. To avoid the war, the participants must step back just a little bit from their ideological rhetoric, and as it turns out the main character played by Tom Hanks gets to walk that distance the longest because he's a man of American Principle. It's actually quite ra-ra about America, even though the CIA agents that help him seem to want to negotiate for part of that principle.

Edward Zwick's film by contrast seems to delve deeper into the paranoia infecting the mind of the protagonist Bobby Fischer, who plays off against the Russian cheese master in a surrogate confrontation in the Cold War.  If War is diplomacy through other means, then it stands to reason that under Mutually Assured Destruction scenarios, Chess is War through other means. In a very unnatural way, the paranoia of the US government becomes the paranoia of the intensely unhealthy mind. It's hard to say for sure whether Bobby Fischer would become the kind of paranoiac he became had he lived in another time. Perhaps it is the contention of the film that Bobby Fischer too was a figure rooted in his era when at least a little bit of paranoia was healthy trait.

America As Inept Underdogs

In both films, American engagement with the Russians seems to come from a position of relative innocence and amateurish engagement with the problem. In order to negotiate the exchange of spies, the Americans send in a civilian lawyer with plausible deniability of its own involvement. The Russians are happy to engage with James Donovan at the state level, accepting his negotiation with the tacit knowledge that they reindexed dealing with the US Government.

Similarly, there is a sense in 'Pawn Sacrifice' where the American chess fraternity is amateurish and disorganised compared to the state-sponsored prestige teams from Russia. Thus it falls to Bobby Fischer to try and beat these Russian chess masters, as an individual. It is evident that the US Government has tremendous interest in Fischer doing well, but it cloaks itself in the same plausible deniability it bestows upon James Donovan.

One imagines this positioning of America as a kind of naive underdog suits the narrative for both films where the seemingly ordinary guy manages to secure the right deal, or the ingenious individual triumphs over the collective that is the Soviet Republic. It's a bit cheesy because it understates the actual power America exercised during the Mid-Twentieth Century.

It is also questionable if Bobby Fischer's win over the world champion would have been such a seminal moment had the grand master at the time been from India or Africa. Without the context where the prestige of the state is on the line, the conflict in the story would have weighed less to the world. The drama was heightened exactly because the oppose number Boris Spassky came from Russia.Yet in an evenly matched contest of state power that was the Cold War who can reasonably claim America was the underdog?

Their Paranoia Is Our Paranoia And Vice Versa

The sense of pervasive paranoia of the 50s and 60s is essentially the backdrop to both films. Looking back on the era, it is easy to imagine that the Americans looking at how the Russians finished off the Germans in brutal fashion decided the Russians were truly frightening. Equally, had the Russians looked closely at how the Americans finished off the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, then they equally would have had cause fro alarm. That mutual suspicion would have played out equally through the post-World War II era as both sides developed their nuclear arsenal and had to ponder the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine.

The public that surrounds James Donovan in 'Bridge of Spies' is palpably scared. The children are scared of nuclear war, the adults are scared of communism. Even being the lawyer to represent a Russian spy is enough to elicit the violent response of the mob. It's not that far from the terrain of Atticus Finch in 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. It is easily conceivable that somebody growing up in this climate of fear ends up with the paranoid thinking that sees conspiracy everywhere. It's natural to to be paranoid when the state exercises paranoia as default option - and so the Bobby Fischer we see in 'Pawn Sacrifice' is a prisoner of his own fears.

The real Fisher seems to have been a fan of Hitler and more of a self-loathing Jewish person. It's hard to come at how somebody turns into that as well as one of the greatest chess masters ever, but then there's nothing to say these things are mutually exclusive or that Fischer saw any problem with it. The film is, if anything, a little light on the questionable ideas that informed the personality of Bobby Fischer. In any case, "paranoid nutcase" seems to have been the best description of Fischer, and that part seems eminently the product of the era in which he came to maturity; The unintended consequence of the Cold War as propaganda management where a citizen was driven nuts by the ramifications of the Cold War.

The Better Self

The logic of the Cold War is pretty unforgiving, and the courting dance of spies negotiating for their respective states has something of a zero-sum game about them. Each and every escalation in threats of violence is reciprocated with an equivalent or higher threat of violence. The incremental shift upwards is like an endless game of poker with the chips forever being mounted up as the players 'raise", but never being able to "call" because of Mutually Assured Destruction. To "win" in this scenario means the same as losing, so the necessary enterprise is to prolong the game rather than rush to its conclusion.

In this context, Tom Hanks' James Donovan makes a point of appealing to people's better selves. Whether it be an anti-communist judge or the Supreme Court or the CIA or the Russian KGB counterparts, he is constantly appealing to people to make a better judgment, to behave in light of their better selves. He is persuasive, although it might be Spielberg's deft hand at manipulating the audience into thinking that Donovan is a deft hand. (Speaking from personal experience, you're unlikely to be able to appeal to your horrible boss that way). Nonetheless the story of 'Bridge of Spies' depends upon the fact that even the hardened negotiators of the KGB and East German Stasi are willing to be their better selves to make the deal stick.

Of course a similar moment appears in 'Pawn Sacrifice' where Bobby Fischer's lawyer friend Paul appeals to Bobby to be his better self. This being Bobby Fischer, his better self turns out to be a single-minded but singularly brilliant chess player and nothing else. It's a bit sad that that is the entirety of Bobby Fischer's better self, but it may also be an indictment of the Cold War that produced such a warped individual. As we're shown in glimpses, it's not as if Boris Spassky is any less crazy as a result of his chess career undertaken in the shadow of the Soviet state.

The Anti-Climactic Climax

The funny thing about both these films is that the climax is so subtle it's almost non-existent. The big moment in 'Bridge of Spies' consists of three people crossing a couple of bridges on foot. The big moment in 'Pawn Sacrifice' is a chess move that convinces Spassky he has lost the game, prompting him to get up and applaud Bobby Fischer. As cinematic moments go, it's a far cry from the world of comic book movies that dominates the box office these days, where you know the climax is going on because buildings explode and cars flip and the sound track roars with orchestral music at a crescendo. There's none of that in either of these films. I don't know if this subtlety is the new riposte to an American cinema mainstream where the content has gone completely juvenile and stunted - but it was certainly refreshing to see, in both these films.

In the olden days it used to be Spielberg making the kiddie content and earning himself critical scorn. Times have sure changed when Spielberg is the elder statesman serving up content for the adult table.

Hollowed Out

The Unbearable Lightness Of All Being

I'm still reeling from the Martin Place siege. I didn't write about it yesterday, but I am specifically distraught about one of the victims Katrina Dawson. Sydney is a small enough that there are people around me whose lives intersected with hers and her family. It's like 2 degrees of separation, sometimes 3. Above all, her life and career to date reads like an exemplary human being we would all want to spire to or at least have our kids grow into. I'm sure she had her foibles but it's rare you find a life that reads like a perfect record.

She was by all accounts a remarkable human being. Topped her school, topped her state in graduating; topped the law faculty at Sydney University; got a masters at UNSW; topped the class in her bar entrance exam; a loving, admired mother of three; by all accounts she was the best of the best - and her life came to an abrupt end at the hands of a malicious jerk. To tell you the truth I'm aghast at this turn of events for her and her young family.

I'm doubly aghast because her death seems to open up a void, a nihilistic space of nothingness that stares back, absent of meaning. The religious sermon delivered does not fill it; philosophy can only abstract it, but it cannot fill it; it just feels like if you wanted conclusive proof that nothing in this life has any profound meaning, you could point to this siege and her death. The violence that befell her didn't come looking for her specifically - she had not made an enemy of this man. There really was no rhyme nor reason to the violence that felled both Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson. The allegedly political stance taken by Monis was hardly credible, legitimate, or real - it was just some bullshit he came up with in order to try and give some meaning to his senseless stupid life. But if there's one thing that's certain, his life was devoid of any serious meaning. He sure made sure of that one by ending on a note of gratuitous violence.

Our own liberalism offers very little help in all of this mess. Officials from Iran claimed that they asked to extradite this Monis back to Iran and they said our government refused. Our government presumably refused because having issued political asylum to this man it must have assumed that a return to Iran would be giving him up for political reasons and therefore against our sense of freedom (or whatever liberal principle we might have had). After all what could possibly happen to the man? Probably torture, so they said 'no'. Our government probably didn't look too deeply into the possibility that the Iranians genuinely/legitimately wanted this man for fraud.

So we held on to him in Australia because giving him up to Iranian authorities would mean we were giving up on our liberal principles. He wrote disgusting letters to the family of dead servicemen. He was convicted of harassment but his sentence was only 300hours of community service. Rather than just do the community service, he fought the sentence al the way to the high court (and lost). He had his wife killed and set alight. He pretended to be a healer and sexually assaulted women. Each time he found himself in front a of a judge he got the benefit of the doubt and got bail. At each and every turn where this man might have been taken off the streets, our very liberal principles put him back onto the street.

Hence you'll have to forgive me if I feel a little shirty about my own small-'l-liberalism just for this week. We effectively fight for the rights of the very people who would kill us senselessly. It sure makes you want to embrace fascism and looser gun laws, even if only temporarily. There is no meaning to any of this. Nothing bloody well matters.

I don't envy the task of her widower husband who must explain mummy's death to three kids. I can't possibly imagine how he's going to frame it with any kind of meaning when he explains what happened. In my humble opinion, there is not a sensible conversation to be had there. If it is just tears and embraces, that would make more sense than any words that can be uttered. There's nothing but the meaningless void.

We should all be nice to each other a lot more. Life's really short.

News That's Fit To Punt

DNA Justice = Payback?

The latest thing with DNA testing seems to be checking paternities. I mean, if it were me, I'd do it immediately after birth, but it seems this is difficult in some cases. 18 men have been cleared and so the women who have been pulling in Child Support from these guys have to pay back what they owe.I think this is kind of cool.

More than 300 men have been cleared by DNA of being fathers. Documents obtained under Freedom of Information show orders for $171,567 to be returned have so far been made against the mothers.

Angry women's groups said last night that it would be the children at the centre of the disputes who would suffer most if money were paid back.

The money is being garnisheed from mothers' incomes by the Child Support Agency in the same way that payments are taken from the wages of non-custodial fathers.

In each case the duped men were able to prove beyond doubt in the courts they were not the fathers based on DNA paternity testing.

The next bit got my attention:

But making mothers pay back child support was last night condemned by women's groups.

Sole Parent's Union president Kathleen Swinbourne said garnisheeing a mother's wages would only hurt the child.

"The money has already been spent on rearing the child," she said. "If the mother is forced to pay it back, its hard to imagine the child won't be disadvantaged."

She said men should raise doubts about paternity when they are first told they are a father.

Men's Rights Agency director Sue Price said men wrongly named as a father of a child were entitled to justice.

She said all child support payments made by a man should be "refunded in full" by the Child Support Agency where paternity is successfully challenged and then recouped from the woman.

"A woman's knows who she's been with in a particular month," she said.

"They must know if there is any doubt about whether the man they are pointing their finger at is actually the father."

You'd think so, wouldn't you?

I don't quite get the Sole Parent' Union logic that taking the money from the mother after the money had been spent would hurt the child. Yes it would, but the child wasn't entitled to that money form that man in the first place. That's the point of the law - it's tough cheese for the kid, but the mother's to blame for lying in the first place.

Of course it's a 2-way street. This dude was told he wasn't the father through DNA testing and so will lose contact with the girl he thought was his daughter forever. Listen pal, it's a good thing.

I Don't Get This Either, Nor Do I Want To

This guy had sex with his wheel-chair bound mother and is now headed for jail.

The 26-year-old man moved from Western Australia in February this year to live with his mother in Darwin.

On May 29, they were watching television when he told her: "Why don't women want me. I can't get no women here," the Northern Territory Supreme Court was told.

The son then pulled his mother's pants down, took a condom out of his wallet, and had sex with her.

They had sex again before the mother got into her wheelchair and went to her bedroom.

The woman - who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and has been dependent on a wheelchair for the past seven years - told her doctor about the incident the following day and the man was arrested.

He pleaded guilty to two counts of having sex with a person knowing that the person was his mother.

In the Northern Territory Supreme Court in Darwin today, Justice Sally Thomas sentenced the man, who cannot be named, to three years in prison with a non-parole period of six months.

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Justice Thomas said the mother had felt "betrayed, lost, lonely and very upset".

But she said the son, who was drunk at the time of the offence, was "extremely remorseful".

She said the fact that he had been raised by his father in Western Australia meant the two did not share "a normal mother-child bond".

I guess they don't. What a Motherfucker.

Gag me with a spoon, that's just plain wrong. I don't think I'll be writing a song about that one, by the way.