Short shots; federal election, make John Howard dance, jeans-size and meta. More on; pulled over by a PA copper, ice hockey lockout season, dingo neo-cons and history wars.

Poll: Should the federal government apologise to the Aboriginal people?

Shorts

• With twenty days to go until the Australian Federal Election, Bryan Palmer is currently giving it to the Coalition . For the House of Representatives;
  • 77 Coalition
  • 70 Labor
  • 3 Independents
  Odds and so forth can be gathered from Centrebet . I don't gamble so I have no idea what they all mean. You can even bet on who will win the Nobel Peace Prize, as well who will host the 2012 Olympic Games. Talk about spitting on a window and betting on who's spit gets to the bottom first.
• As pointed out by phage; flash page to make John Howard dance .
• Another update on the I,Cammo diet and fitness regime; I am back in my 33 inch black jeans. Last year I was wearing 36 inch jeans. In six months I have dropped 3 inches off my waist and go it back down near to what I was in my mid-twenties.
• Some Meta, I have turned on comments in the diaries for "Anonymous Pundits" which is similar to the way the Movable Type sites work. Look for the "post a comment" links or "reply to this" links to post a comment. You now do not need to be logged in to post a comment in the diaries section. I will leave it like that unless it is abused.
• More Meta. Articles and Diaries now appear on the front page. The syndication is now working correctly. The rdf includes both articles and diaries.
• And some self-censoring. I deleted one of my diaries, the one with the title about being disgusted and dismayed. It was a shitty emotive diary entry with no real content. The sudden desire for "pre-emption" demands a diary of its own on the subject.

Pennsylvanian State Troopers

I was driving through Pennsylvania outside of Gettysburg when I got pulled over by a State Trooper. I was doing 76 mph in a 65 mph zone. The trooper was a good fellow, I got a written warning instead of a ticket. I was in a rental car, with a tie on and a funny accent. I was thinking I caught a break for that reason, but the trooper said; " I only give tickets for twenty over, I won't lie, I don't do the speed limit either. "

I think there was also a blitz on in PA, as I saw several other traps. As the trooper was giving me the writ and asking for my signature I said to him; I get pulled over again, will I get a ticket? He thought about it a bit seemed that was likely, I replied, Ok no worries, I will keep the speeds down then. Thanks mate. As I was driving away I was thinking that was a dumb thing to say, the trooper probably thinks I am just going to go straight back to speeding. I did, but I shouldn't have telegraphed my intentions.

NHL Ice Hockey Lockout Season

The ice hockey competition in North America is currently undergoing a lockout. The owners and players were unable to come to an agreement over a labor contract. The main sticking point was the introduction of a salary cap. The owners believe they are bleeding red ink as player salaries are too high. However, the owners are the ones paying for these salaries, they are also the ones that are inflating salaries by bidding against each other. I have no sympathy for the owners, it looks like they are trying to extract a subsidy from the players for their own inept business practices.

Gary Bettman is the NHL commissioner and led the expansion of the NHL into the American market. Hockey has been well established in New York, Detriot, New England and Minnesota for many years with strong grass roots support. Under Bettman, the NHL has expanded into the sub-belt with teams such as Anaheim, Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa Bay, Nashville, Florida, Atlanta etc. This larger pool of teams has put pressure on the draft. The NHL is rife for contraction, in reality it needs to return to its grass root fanbase. There may be room for a couple of sun-belt teams (especially if they are winning), but not for all of them. Expansion was a mistake.

The NHL cannot compete with the mainstream appeal of baseball, grid iron and basketball in the US. The big three sports (and NASCAR) get big upfront payments to be on mainstream television. Bettman managed to negotiate a contract where there was no upfront money to the NHL. If there was any indication that NHL has remained a regional and niche sport, this was it.

Solutions For The NHL

First I would remove several teams and move some others. In the sub-belt I would leave Los Angeles, Dallas and Tampa Bay. The LA Kings have some history, Dallas has been successful in the last decade and Tampa won last year. The rest would either have their NHL franchises rescinded or be offered to move to a region that has grass-roots support, such as Winnipeg, St Johns and Bangor. Ottawa and Buffalo have solvency problems but this is easily solved by those teams decreasing their payroll. In other words stop over-spending on players.

A salary cap is not needed, a free market is a free market, and the owners have been spending on salaries unsustainably. Owners of hockey franchises need to stop treating their teams like their personal toys and start treating it like a business. Other small-market teams are solvent and competitive, ie Calgary, New Jersey, Vancouver, Minnesota and Edmonton. If the owners make their teams insolvent then they deserve everything they get.

Big spending teams have not been successful, New York are perpetual underachievers. Even teams like Toronto and St Louis have been unsuccessful. Other big spenders like Colorado, Detriot and Dallas have had some success, but the penny pinching New Jersey Devils have been the most successful of all teams. Maybe more owners should review Lou Lamorello's management style.

As to the game itself, there is too much hooking, clutching, holding, picking and obstruction. Let the players play with speed to the puck and call these infringements. Those are slowing down the game and making the players into hulking 250 pound linebackers. The faster the game the smaller the players. If the obstruction is removed players will not need to be 6 foot 4 and 250 pounds to fight their way through the obstructing opposing team in the neutral zone. One of the reasons the trap works is because of the obstruction, hooking, picking and holding that goes on.

First Game Of Hockey

When I was a kid of about eight years, my father had a client that was a Canadian. He gave my father two tickets to an ice hockey game at the Macquarie Centre. So we went and watched, the crazy Canadian, Russian, American, Swedish and odd Australians bash each other against the boards and glass. At the end of the game he came over and gave me the puck, I guess hoping for a convert to the game. He got it, but twenty years later.

When I was playing pick up games at the hockey rink the teams would be divided into white and darks. The darks would be black, red or blue jumpers normally. I used to wear either plain training jumpers or a NY Rangers jumper. Australia has an ice hockey association , which I kept emailing to try and get an Australian jumper. I also emailed the Sydney Bears (which was a North Sydney ice hockey team). But was unable to procure one. Now the Australian ice hockey association is selling national ice hockey jumpers . Good on them.

Dingo Neo-cons

From a Mike Carlton op-ed titled; "Same Story Different Era" ;

Well, who would have thought it? [That Iraq would end up a failure] Quite a few of us, actually, but in this country we were howled down as anti-American by what you might call the dingo neocons who fantasised that a failed, spoon-fed oilman and small-time baseball team owner could remake the Middle East into Dallas, Texas.

Emphasis mine. Carlton's turn of phrase is remarkably like Dan Deniehy's pillorizing of Wentworth with the "bunyip aristocracy".

History and Culture Wars

John Howard has claimed victory, as no-one asks him to apologise anymore . Is it that simple though? At the heart of the history wars is a fight over the modern telling of Aboriginal amalgamation into Australian society. The Keating side recognizes the suffering of the Aboriginal people at the hands of institutions such as the colonies and governments. The converse is Howard's view where Australian should not be ashamed of its anglo heritage and the sticking point, the British and early Australian handling of Aboriginal affairs, was benevolent, rather than malevolent. Along with Federation this is an attempt to control the argument by beating on the triumphalism drums of anglic culture.

Is that all the history wars are? Who gets to tell the tale of Aboriginal assimilation? Others see it as deeper. From an article on Hindmarsh Island ;

debate in the present "culture wars" over how our history should be understood and regarded, and what claim it has on the present.

And a definition from the historian Stuart MacIntyre who wrote a book on the subject;

More generally, the History Wars are concerned with the obligations of the historian and the demands of patriotism. They arise when historians question the national story and are accused of disloyalty.

And a description from Robert Manne ;

When history wars are fought in contemporary nation-states, they almost invariably turn on those dark chapters which most seriously threaten to undermine the nation's rosy self-regard. When it was finally declared, Australia's history war was fought over the question of whether we were willing to acknowledge, as a serious moral wrong, the destruction of Aboriginal society.

Manne argues that since Howard became Prime Minister the history wars have turned to two area's; the "denial by the right of the meaning and extent of Aboriginal child removal", the second has been over whether the colonisation and settlement of Australia was benign and the Aboriginal people died out thsovereigntyrough disease rather than a program of genocide.

Modern Australians and Colonial Australia

The colonisation of Australia seems a very remote series of incidents to a modern Australian; it is almost impossible to have any empathy with the British administrators, military or the convicts. The manner with which Aboriginal history is presented in modern Australia also helps to make the Aboriginal story either unknown or simply hidden from popular history. What is undeniable is the findings of the "Bringing Them Home" report. I defy anyone not to be distressed reading that report.

What the "Bringing Them Home" report shows, is the the institutionalized disrespect for the of the family. The report also exposes the complete disregard by government for the natural rights and liberties an individual has. The process of forced assimilation was a racist policy that was carried out by the racist Australian institutions of Federal and State Government. However history wants to debate the colonization of Australia, the fact remains the government policies were discriminatory, racist and without care for individual rights and human dignity. That alone demands an apology from the government institutions that implemented this abominal legislation.

Fighting For The Anglosphere

John Howard's Prime Ministership has been one long battle to make the anglosphere relevant in area's other than indifferent cultural recognition. While many Australians still travel overseas to live and work in the UK and USA, Greece is now the third largest destination for the Australian diaspora. This is due to the large number of Greek-Australians that are an inseparable part of Australian culture. The anglosphere culturally is on the wane, and nothing like what it was 50 years ago.

I originally thought that Howard killed the republic referendum as a new republican system of government may have been a barrier to the Prime Ministers power. Certainly a popularly elected Governor-General would have created new issues to the Prime Minister in at least the first ten years. One of the former Australian Democrat leaders remarked that all governments seek to dismantle anything that stands in their way to absolute power.

While I believe Howard's "Othellian" failing is his desire for personal power and the lengths he is willing to pollute the Australian democratic system to achieve it; in the case of the republic he may have been attempting to defend the anglic institution of the Westminster system. The Westminster system is definitely an inferior system of government. It is a hack to route power around and away from a monarch. As a result the Executive is not cleanly separated and the Executive Cabinet not only gets to fund their laws, but also to enforce their legislation.

The attempt to discredit historians that expose the mistreatment of the Aboriginal people from the start of colonisation to the present day, is to remove the notion that the British colonisation failed to bring order and justice to the Australian continent. The establishment of common law in Australia did enable western style property and economic development, but not without travelling through corruption first. John MacArthur's manipulation of the economy, justice system, military and the government was a strong example of the early corruption that afflicted the new colony. Reverend Samuel Marsden was another example of the tyrannical control the justice system often maintained over the populace.

The "History Wars" is really about trying to establish a noble and moral Australian history from within the framework of an anglic heritage. Like most nations; Australian history is bloody, brutal, murderous, tyrannical, oppressive and ultimately one long war against the rights of the individual. Australian history and the British heritage component of it is definitely not noble or moral. Too often the individuals in this nation have been subject to the arbitrary whim of the current entrenched interests who use government as the vehicle of oppression.

cam