A Tale of Two Countries

Rage against the Machine

Images of Muslim rage are so commonplace nowadays they would be almost amusing if they weren’t so violent.

With an US ambassador killed in Libya and the ever present threat of offending extremist muslims hanging over our daily discourse, it takes more courage than ever to stand up for our values.

This is not a replay of the Crusades, where two faiths squared off and rejoiced in their fanatic animosity.

But for the secularisation of Islam to succeed, the West still needs to defend its own secular faith, its values of freedom of thought, speech, respect for the individual and gender equality.

The Perfect Storm?

It was by no means the greatest storm ever to have hit a city, or even the Americas for that matter.

Yet Hurricane Sandy has been an interesting indicator of how far we have come in managing environmental disasters.

As people bunkered down in their apartments with films, books and children long put aside, disaster management teams kicked into place and partisan politics were put aside, the question might be asked:

Are we getting used to natural disasters?

Always Look On The Bright Side

“He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy!” The Life of Brian

So said Brian’s mother in what is probably one of the funniest scenes in the history of comedy.

Yesterday morning French embassies across the Middle East closed in anticipation of attacks by extremists offended by caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

They weren’t nearly as good as The Life of Brian but a chorus of disapproval followed, with the French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault saying that while freedom of speech was paramount in France, the cartoonists should have chosen a different moment.

Well, as they say in comedy, timing is everything.

One Diamond that’s not forever

Two titans of Barclay’s PLC–chairman Marcus Agius and CEO Bob Diamond– have resigned over their bank’s involvement in rigging a benchmark interest rate that underpins US$800 trillion worth of loans and derivatives.

Claims by Mr Diamond that senior regulators knew of the manipulation have dragged in the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Paul Tucker.

The scandal explodes the myth that global finance has reformed itself after the financial crash and begs the question: just when are regulators going to clean up Wall Street and the City of London?

Blame it on Rio

As the curtains closed on the failed United Nations conference on sustainable development Rio+20, one question hung over the crowd.

If the world is sitting on a ticking environmental bomb, why have we put off a strict and ambitious plan of sustainable development?

The economic crisis and the structure of the forum were blamed for the uninspiring outcomes of the week, but they don’t change the fact that we have made little progress on the world’s most pressing issue.

Has the era of a grand global vision of environmental sustainability come to an end or are rich countries once more kicking the can down the line?

Prospecting Fairfax

It’s hard to imagine that the ambition of Gina Rinehart to control Fairfax Media represents a threat to Australia’s democracy.

But the fear is far from an idle one. Fairfax Media offers an important counterbalance to News Ltd. Amidst massive structural change in the media landscape which is resulting in layoffs and reduced reporting budgets, Rinehart’s success would almost certainly restrict freedom of speech in Australia.

But the Government is right not to get involved with heavy handed state sponsored buyouts or ownership controls.

Instead, they should look to the diverse and rapidly expanding sphere of online media to fill the gaps left by traditional media.

It’s about the money, stupid.

The battle over special visas and mining taxes goes straight to the core of Australian identity, but it’s got nothing to do with race

In the latest round of the battle between the Gillard Government and the mining industry, miners have likened the backlash against temporary visas to the White Australia policy, ironic perhaps, given their spiritual father Lang Hancock once referred to part Aboriginal people as “no-good half-castes”.

But this time Australians aren’t chasing the red herring designed to guilt ordinary Australians into not asking for their rightful share of Australia’s biggest economic boom.

Darwinian Derivatives

As America’s biggest investment house, JP Morgan Chase, announces more than US$3 billion in derivatives losses, people are asking has anything changed on Wall Street?

The Obama Administration is trying to regulate Wall Street to avoid another financial meltdown but will the same old debates about adequate capital buffers and the separation of proprietary trading from normal banking work this time?

We face a different world of high finance today compared with that of the 1930s.

The profit motive is still the engine, but the increasingly complex and powerful world of banks, computers, financial theory and arid values is the fuel for financial market volatility.

Legislators need to recognise this fact.

What to expect when you’re expecting

There’s one thing you can definitely expect when you are expecting and that’s misinformed debate about irrelevant issues.

In the latest episode of the parenting wars Time Magazine launched an thinly disguised attack on breast feeding with their article ‘Are you mom enough?’

But with no scientific evidence on either side for breast vs bottle, childcare vs stay at home, sleep-in-the-bed vs controlled crying, attachment vs free range, one has to wonder what the debate is really about.

Is it a feminist debate about rights? Is it a psychological division resulting from the divorces of the 70s? Or have we lost the wood for the trees on what parenting is really all about?

The Power of Fun

Australians work the longest hours of all Westerners and forgo $72 billion of wages in unpaid overtime each year.

The rules of the workplace, the classroom and the church mandate good and uniform behaviour. Our bodies are huge conspirators against us and there is very little we can do about it.

In a world where the invisible soldiers of civil society stand guard around us at all times, having fun has never been so important.

In fact, it just might be the most subversive thing you can do.

Oh help me nanny!

When my daughter was less than six weeks old, I made the obligatory rounds of the childcare centres in my locale. Things looked grim.

‘‘She should have been registered six months ago,’’ said one apologetically (presumably as a four-month-old foetus). At another, there were 300 people in the queue before me.

Unless you knew someone or knew how to ruthlessly monster people into getting what you wanted, there was no childcare. Quite simply, there is a market failure in the care of young children in Australia.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s nanny rebate proposal could not have come at a better time for Australian parents facing our diabolically inadequate childcare system.

Margin Call

Unemployment had never been a consideration for educated financial sector worker Brigit Wilkinson, until she found herself spat out by the markets.

Exhausted by the chaos of working through the GFC in the fast-paced City of London, she found herself almost begging for a redundancy last year. After a trip overseas and plenty of café time, she finally fronted up to find work only to discover the market in fast retreat.

Single, 38 and weighed down by a massive mortgage, she joined the growing ranks of the white collar unemployed.

Beyond the day-to-day struggle of applying for jobs in a market that hasn’t finished shedding them, she found herself facing much deeper questions about life.

Born to work

If Bruce Springsteen is the writer who best chronicles the American man, then the land of dreams is in deep trouble.

The American economy might be showing signs of recovery, but with 46 million people still living in poverty, the country is facing more than the usual ups and downs of capitalism.

In Springsteen’s latest album, Wrecking Ball, the man who once railed against the boss man at the steel factory now has no job at all and the character who was once hotting his engines up ready to run is now cleaning leaves out of gutters.

Where hope once flowed, Springsteen’s characters now turn to love as their reason for being. But will they find redemption in that alone?

Quiet

I once had an actor friend who told me the key to his success at castings was in the silences, not the things he said.

As the silent film The Artist scoops up one film award after another and Susan Cain’s book Quiet roars up the charts, the word on everyone’s lips is shhhhh.

Amidst a frenetic world of networking, team building, bonding and quality time with others, The Artist and Quiet offer us a rare commodity: permission to say nothing.

Susan Cain argues that quiet people may be happier, smarter and more productive. Is it finally time for a little reflection?

It’s not you, it’s us

When I lived in Brazil and would return home for holidays, there was nothing that would get people going more than poverty in Rio’s infamous favelas.

Activists I knew in Brazil used to call it “poverty porn” – the morbid fascination of the west with the living conditions of the extremely poor.

A similar conversation about living standards within aboriginal communities in Australia might have been met with a stony silence.

The problems of Uganda are far more intricate than Kony2012 suggests, but it’s almost irrelevant in a debate that has less to do with African misery than the freely-floating moral outrage of Westerners.