Top Gun

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/china-tv-news-top-gun

This is worrying news, it seems China's military advancement is bounding forward. We all remember well how crucial Tom Cruise's efforts were in ensuring the success of Reagan's military buildup in the eighties, a policy which was instrumental in bringing about the fall of communism - an eventuality which all US government organisations accurately predicted - and ushering in our contemporary era of peace and contentment.

As we also know only too well the Chinese are no fans of intellectual property laws, but the PLA are certainly steppin it up on the aesthetics front by adopting Cruise power for their own. However, does this point to a PLA-Cruise-Scientology triangle which will bring about a shift in global power balances from west to east? Or conversely are Cruise's "people" currently working around the clock to distance him from any involvement in the US-China strategic relationship? Better yet, could a Palin Presidency in 2012 see history repeat itself with Cruise returning to reinvigorate a distracted US military? I certainly hope so... I'm sure he still has those cut-off somewhere.

Either way given that the new realm of conflict is undoubtedly the symbolic it may only be so long before China is producing unbeatable box office hits of its own. While the boffins may agonise over the implications of the Chinese carrier killer missile, stealth fighter, and carrier fleet, I personally think the true turning point will be seen when the Chinese wheel out a home grown Tom Cruise.

I hope you can use chop sticks biatch!

the Colonial

straya day, here we go again!

It’s Australia Day eve and I am already worn out! The pathetic display of nationalism of all shapes and sizes has aggravated me all day. I need to have it out so I can get on and enjoy the serenity of a cool, summer evening in the Melbourne suburbs.

This year it hasn’t been so much violent talk extolling the supremacy of an Anglo-Australian identity but its identical opposite: the betters who moan how much Australia is brought down by the aforementioned display of parochialism and bigotry. This stripe of pathetic is apparently in vogue this year; today’s press – especially the Punch: here & here - contains numerous articles revolving around the same set of arguments:

1. There is an abundance of scummy bogan Anglo-Australians who like to get shitters on Australia Day and trumpet their superiority. The lack of Australia Day Awards recipients in this social grouping means they generally celebrate superiority in processes of othering: categorising the population along ethnic lines, elevating themselves, and condemning difference as a marker of inferiority.

2. The above described practice is crass, infuriating, and evidence of the inferiority of this “type” of person. They lessen Australia.

3. This xenophobe type and their impact on Australia are refuted through a practice of comparison with another stereotype: the “noble immigrant”. Compared to the bigoted ogres of Australia’s lower classes this noble immigrant can easily be found superior. It logically follows that immigrants are good and muppets with Australian flag and Southern Cross tattoos indeed blight Australian society.

All of the above is nonsense. Although there may be grains of reality in each point, the argument they make is useless. There is no shortage of bigotry in Australia. It does not adhere to class, race, economic or any other lines. Nor should anyone get too concerned to be shamed by it. Not only is your shame not helping the situation, but there seems little point being ashamed of a tendency which crops up in most societies. Nation states the world over rely heavily on the negative attributes of Nationalism (jingoism, parochialism, ethnocentricity, bigotry) for cohesion and motivation.

However, that those ashamed individuals who imagine themselves to be above crass nationalism can only muster a response pointing out the utilitarian benefits of immigrants - they can do helpful things, like work hard, and invent new stuff - is a serious failure. This sort of argument is a deception which hopes to convince the reader that immigration is in our enlightened self-interest. This is a fundamental problem with contemporary immigration debates the world over. Clearly immigration on a socially just basis, i.e. open immigration, or full labour freedom, is not feasible, nor in the developed world’s interest.

Immigration policies in developed nations reflect this reality to varying degrees. Nations throughout Europe and North America - with Australia perhaps at the draconian forefront – have restricted their immigration programs and become more resolute in guarding their borders. Remarkably this has occurred at a time when many same nations are happy to poach the cream of developing societies. Doctors, engineers, business people, health workers, financiers and others desperately needed in their home societies are welcome to immigrate if they have the willingness to wind their way through the system which checks their identities, skills, and credentials.

This demonstrates that nations like Australia have certainly become more tolerant of skin colour and ethnic background over the years. However, rather than being overturned, the White Australia Policy has more or less only been moderated. We still want to create an economically prosperous country for nice folk; accordingly the parameters for welcome in Australia remain tight. If you can be useful to the national project and economy you should be ok. If not: fuck off – we’re full.

So Mr Koch, Mr Tin, and likeminded, before we start patting ourselves on the back for being enlightened enough to change our bad old ways maybe we should consider the principles which really drive our immigration policies. I feel we have little to celebrate. For all our enlightened views on the benefits of immigration and the noble contributions of immigrants, the awful truth is we are not so different from the bogans we deplore. So next time you encounter one in public, simply ignore them, or perhaps smash their stupid faces, don’t resort to pathetic arguments which seductively reproduce tenets of xenophobia.

the Colonial