Truth can be very inconvenient

A school board in the US state of Washington has effectively banned Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth after Christian fundamentalist parents objected to it, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. It’s apparently the first time this has happened to the film, though similar events happen in the US all the time.

The gist of the story is that a fundamentalist who believes the earth is 14,000 years old and opposes sex education objected to the film being shown in a public school in the town of Federal Way, Washington. He told the paper, “Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore.” Clearly a very scientific objection. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. …The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD.”

The documentary is a summary of scientific evidence on global warming and climate change. As such, it doesn’t present various religious views. Not to be outdone in this scientific debate, the fundamentalist’s wife added:

From what I've seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of “bad America, bad America,” I don't think it should be shown at all. If you're going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don't think the video should be shown.

In fact, the US accounts for about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions, despite having only five percent of the world’s population. Per capita, it is the world’s biggest polluter overall, and the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels.

Things like facts and truth don’t matter to the fundamentalists because they challenge their religious beliefs and assumptions. They want their particular brand of extreme Christianity presented as fact even though there’s considerable variation and debate about matters of faith among Christians.

As is often the case in these situations, school students can be more sensible than their elders. One student told the paper, “Watching a movie doesn't mean that you have to believe everything you see in it.”

It’s hard for people in other parts of the developed world to understand why America continues to fight these battles with religious extremists over and over again. I’m at a loss to explain it. America promotes freedom and progress, but it seems that all anyone in America has to do is scream “Christian bashing!” and they get whatever they want, however illogical, irrational or undemocratic.

It seems America has yet to learn that practicing religious tolerance doesn’t require pandering to people with particular religious views. If it did, we’d also have to take into account the views of all religions, like Pastafarians and their god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I’d like to see America stick to the truth—fact-based truth—however inconvenient it may be for some people.

Update 25/01/07: The Washington Post reported that the email the fundamentalist sent to the school board said "No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation—the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet—for global warming." He apparently believes that global warming is a sign of the "End Times" some fundamentalist Christianists fervently believe in.

Update II (03/02/07): Reuters reports "The British government will distribute Al Gore's dramatic global warming film to all secondary schools in England…"

Censoring for fun and profit

A 2006 documentary opening tomorrow in Toronto, This Film is Not Yet Rated, exposes the secret methods and agenda of America’s MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), according to Canada’s globeandmail.com (thanks to Slap Upside the Head for the pointer). The MPAA is both America’s film censor and a trade lobbying organisation for America’s film industry.

The documentary alleges that the MPAA uses the NC-17 rating to force cuts to films and to stifle competition. The rating, introduced in 1990 to replace the “X” rating, was supposedly for adult-themed films but has become to be the same as X. Many newspapers and television stations won’t accept ads for NC-17 films, some film distributors won’t touch them and some cinema chains won’t show them.

Using undercover investigation, the film shows the NC-17 rating is used mostly on anything that the secret reviewers think is aberrant, including gay themes as well as some other sexuality. Violence, however, clearly doesn’t raise the risk of an NC-17 rating.

What does the MPAA stand to gain from this? Most films threatened with an NC-17 rating are foreign or independent—meaning, direct competition to America’s established film industry. This provides them a seemingly legitimate way to fend off some competition.

It also allows them to reward the Christian Right, who don’t want film depictions of homosexuality, among other things, but whose support the MPAA needed to enact some repressive legislation like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. To advance the financial interests of their industry, the MPAA is happy to cede censorship duties to the far right.

So, the MPAA have things completely their way. They get to reduce competition from foreign and independent films that won’t bend to MPAA ratings, they can make money distributing those that do, and then they can make more money from the same audiences when they sell uncensored versions on DVD. Sweet deal.

The American system shows the folly of allowing a film industry lobby group to control the censorship of films. In many other countries, like New Zealand and Australia, a government body handles it.

In New Zealand, unrestricted films (G rating) and many rated PG and M (16 and over) films aren’t reviewed if they’ve received their rating from similar authority, like in the UK or Australia. Restricted films are checked here against NZ standards.

The overall system is like a traffic light: Green is rated G; yellow is PG and M, and red is restricted. Restricted films are generally R16 (must be over 16) or R18 (over 18; this includes adult films). A general R rating has some other restriction, like must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. In addition, the labels may carry an informational warning (like “contains violence”) which aren’t legally binding, but help consumers—and parents in particular—to make informed choices.

Being separate from the industry, a government system like New Zealand’s provides a more impartial review than the MPAA can. Some people feel that having an official censor is dangerous, but how can it be any more dangerous than having totally unaccountable secret individuals with private agendas deciding what people can and cannot see? In NZ, if we don’t like what the censor does—and the public has a lot of input into the office’s work—there is a democratic means to change things. It’s impossible to change the MPAA system.

I suppose this is just another reason why I don’t go to movies (generally, only one MPAA-approved version is released worldwide due to cost). Instead, I wait for the uncensored version on DVD or on pay TV. Declining attendance at movies? Perhaps the fault, dear MPAA, lies not with your stars but with yourselves.

The costs of war

Writing in the New York Times, David Leonhardt offers an excellent analysis of the financial cost of Bush’s Iraq War. The original estimate was that it would cost US$50 billion (one White House official estimated US$200 billion, but was fired for saying so). The current estimate is that Bush’s war will end up costing at least US$1.2 trillion, or roughly US$200 billion per year.

The article helpfully provides suggestions on what that money could buy:

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

So, as if all the lives senselessly wasted on Bush’s disaster weren’t enough, we now see what else the US has been denied at home. Can Congress now exert some control over that man? If so, will it do so?

Different Planets?

This video, "Scary Mary", presents an alternative movie trailer for a well-known family movie. This completely different take on the film shows how in the hands of a media master something innocent can be made to seem menacing (the Karl Rove approach). It's also kind of like the way people can look at the same issue/politician and see something completely different. Whatever, I just think it's a great vid. Thanks to American Values Alliance for putting up the link (they're a group in Indiana that seems to want to do the right thing about political discussion, even if I personally think they're not quite there yet). The path to them came courtesy of a comment at Joe.My.God (blog link at right).

4:55PM: This post has been slightly edited and expanded since originally posted.

Barack to the future?

Barack Obama, US Senator from Illinois, has announced the formation of a Presidential Exploratory Committee. It’s probably the first step in announcing he’s running for US President in 2008. If nominated by the Democratic Party and elected by American voters, he would be the first African-American President.

Few would argue with him when he said in his announcement:

Challenging as they are, it’s not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It’s the smallness of our politics. America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions.

Let me disclose my biases: Actually, I can’t think of any—I have an open mind about his candidacy. Even though I’m Illinois born and bred and spent many years in Chicago, none of that makes me any more or any less likely to support him. But neither am I prepared to fall in behind his candidacy, at least not yet.

The right wing is flapping around, saying he’s too “inexperienced” to be President. And that’s important why, exactly? George Bush/Dick Cheney were both “experienced”, yet they’ll go down in history as having run the worst presidency in American history—and the most incompetent. In their case, clearly “experience” was meaningless.

The far right also accuses Obama of being an “extremist liberal”. Yeah, right—as if there was such a thing in mainstream American politics. Putting aside the fact that the American Right uses “liberal” like their parents once used the word “communist”, the fact is that Bush and especially Cheney are “extremist conservatives,” and look what a disaster they’ve been. Let’s try something different so we can have different results.

I could point out that another skinny man from Illinois entered the White House with no executive experience, yet Abraham Lincoln is widely regarded as one of the best US Presidents. Ironically, when he ended slavery Lincoln helped set the wheels in motion for an Obama presidential campaign to be taken seriously.

Obama isn’t Lincoln, of course. He may not be great—he may not even be simply “good”. There are things that make me uncomfortable about him, like his strongly religion-oriented view of things. But he also opposed Bush’s Iraq War before it began, unlike every other Democratic candidate for president.

In his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama summed up the traditional values of the Democratic Party:

Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.*

The Republican Party doesn’t believe those same things, even if sometimes it tries to make people think it does. In that same speech, Obama also talked about what makes the Democratic view of politics different from Bush and his Republicans:

There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. Wecoach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people…*

In time, we’ll see if this rhetoric is backed up by substance. And, we’ll see if Americans are finally ready to see beyond the colour of a person’s skin.

To be honest, I have concerns about my fellow Americans. In the 1986 Illinois Democratic Primary Election, two followers of a right wing political extremist with “normal” names defeated two Democrats with “foreign sounding” names. Can a man with the name “Barack Hussein Obama” succeed in a land ripped apart by divisions caused by Karl Rove and the rest of the Bushies?

The neocons will work overtime to discredit Obama. And, maybe he doesn’t have what it takes to mount a successful campaign, much less be president. But whoever is nominated, and whoever is elected, I’m hoping it will fulfil the closing sentiment of Obama’s 2004 speech: “Out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.”

*Quotes from Obama's 2004 speech taken from the 2004 Democratic National Convention Official Site, www.dems2004.org, no longer in operation.

More Meta For Us

This will only interest other bloggers, and probably not many of them. Nevertheless…

Tags are it

A few posts back, I included a footnote saying that as an experiment I was creating a new tag for my posts, “expat / expatriate”. Previously, I’d had two separate tags, which meant listing the same post under two different tags—different, but essentially the same. I wanted the posts to show up whether someone was searching for “expat” or “expatriate”.

And so my experiment.

I wanted to know if a joined tag would still show up in Technorati searches for just the one word. When I found they did, I also created a new tag called “gay expat / gay expatriate”. Then I went back through all my old posts and changed the tags to the new ones (and, in some cases, re-thought how the posts were tagged in the first place). It was boring, to be honest, so that process took a few days.

I’m trying to limit using tags to ones that are most directly relevant to my post, though I still get carried away sometimes. Like a lot of bloggers, I get visitors who land here through some sort of totally irrelevant Google search. I’m trying to make it easier for people who use Technorati or similar tag searches to land on relevant posts in this blog.

And on the subject of Technorati, for some reason, not all blog posts that link to my blog show up in a Technorati search, even though they’re counted in the totals (I think). I have no idea why that is.

Blogger blues?

I’ve been reading on some blogs how some Blogger users are having a lot of trouble with uploading their posts or files. I’ve never had any trouble, apart from some times when there were other Internet problems having nothing to do with Blogger. I’d be curious to find out if any other Blogger users have had trouble uploading posts/files.

Incommunicado

Today I set off to pick up some stuff at a store about fifteen minutes or so away, and about two thirds of the way there I suddenly realised I’d left my cellphone at home. It was the first time in a very long time that I’ve been anywhere without a phone and I suddenly remembered what it used to be like.

When I first arrived in New Zealand, cellphones were still fairly scarce, restricted mostly to executives and tradespeople who needed to be reached on the road. In those days, I used to carry plastic phone cards for pay telephones. The cards had a stored dollar amount and were available in different amounts. McDonald’s sometimes gave them away as a promotion.

Phone cards were needed because it was becoming extremely difficult to find a pay phone that accepted money. Now, it’s hard to find a pay phone of any kind.

I got my first cellphone after Bell South began offering Prepay in New Zealand. With it, a customer could buy a phone without a contract, and buy airtime in advance as needed. Bell South’s New Zealand business was sold to Vodafone which in the years since has taken it from an also-ran to the largest cellphone operator in New Zealand in terms of connections.

I’m now on my fourth phone, but still with Vodafone Prepay because it suits my needs, which are clearly very limited. Nevertheless, I carry my phone everywhere just in case—in case the car breaks down, I see a crime or my partner rings to tell me we need milk. I can even post to my blog with a cellphone, though I haven’t done that (yet).

All of which means that it felt odd to be running around without my phone. And yet it also felt a bit liberating to be incommunicado, even if it was only for a short time. I wouldn’t want to do it every day, but it’s probably a good thing to be reminded from time to time of how things used to be. It helps us appreciate how things are now, and I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to the past.

What’s in a name?

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but for American men changing names at marriage stinks.

A California man is suing the state for the right to take his wife’s name. In that state a woman can take the man’s name without any trouble, but a man who wants to do so has “to file a petition, pay more than $300, place a public notice for weeks in a local newspaper and then appear before a judge,” according to the AP. Apparently, only six US states have name-change equality.

Personally, I can’t understand why anyone would want to change their name at marriage. Admittedly, it wasn’t something I ever thought much about being a man, and also because I never thought I’d be able to legally marry another man.

I see the tradition of a woman automatically taking a man’s surname as some kind of sexist throwback. After all, she’s no longer considered his property, and she doesn’t stop being her family’s descendant just because she marries. What do most women get out of the deal by changing their names?

In the California case, the wife has no brothers and wants her family name to continue. The man is estranged from his father, so has no connection to his surname. Clearly for them his taking her surname is a thought-out choice.

Here in New Zealand, partners getting married or entering a civil union can take one or the other’s name, form a new joint name or keep their own names. Neither taking the partner’s name nor forming a joint name affects the birth name.

New Zealand marriage is restricted to two people of opposite sexes, and the Department of Internal Affairs website advises:

In New Zealand it has been customary for a woman to assume the man’s surname after marriage. In some cases couples are combining their names to create a new family name, or some husbands are assuming their wife’s surname on marriage. You may retain your current surname.

Civil unions are the legal equivalent of marriage in New Zealand but open to same-sex couples as well as opposite-sex couples. The advice on names is the same, without the reference to one partner customarily taking the other’s name. Civil unions are still too new for anything to have become “customary”.

Gender equality in name choice upon marriage/civil union is good, of course. Whether it’s silly or not, and even though I wouldn’t do it, people—men and women both—should have the choice as they do in New Zealand. The name for that is “equality”.

Update 16/01/07: Just to prove some people don't take the whole name thing too seriously, a New Zealand couple decided which person would change surnames by playing a game of minigolf. Well, that's one approach…

That wacky George

Hot on the heels of asking critics to suggest alternatives to his loony “plan” for Iraq (ignoring, of course, all the alternatives suggested over the past few months), Bush now says of his critics, “I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward.”

Cheney, meanwhile, continued to try and push the failed war in Iraq as part of the “war on terrorism” and suggested, as he so often does, that opposing their “plans” would undermine US troops. Yawn! It’s all so very tired and predictable. They clearly don’t understand how much the American people oppose them. So, let’s help them realise it: Impeach Cheney first!

What kind of dollars?

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in NZ was how seldom actual money was needed. Instead, people pulled out their ATM cards, swiped them, entered a PIN and they were done—without ever touching a coin or note.

In NZ it’s called EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale), but the same thing is in many countries under other names. It’s very convenient for cash purchases, and also for credit card transactions: We enter a PIN and don’t have to sign a receipt. For some reason, this can’t yet be done in Australia.

New Zealand is now going one step farther by making it possible to make a credit card payment in a tourist’s home country’s currency (like US dollars, for example). The system tells the user the exchange rate being used, the conversion charges and still gives the option of paying in New Zealand dollars.

Why would this be good? Say you have a specific budget on how much you can spend. It could be very helpful to know right then and there what the charges will be in your own currency with no surprises when the credit card bill arrives.

Touring New Zealand is becoming better and easier all the time. Packed your bags yet?

New Zealand on holiday

A lot of my posts lately have in one way or another talked about how New Zealand is on holiday this time of year (for example, see my previous post). Here’s some more evidence.

Regular readers will have noticed the Technorati chart I placed on this blog, showing the number of posts per day containing “New Zealand”. On December 23, the number dropped below 1000 per day for the first time in a long time, and only began to go up again on January 8—which, as it happens, was the first day back at work for a lot of people following the Christmas-New Year holidays.

We all know that bloggers are the centre of the universe (just ask us—we’ll tell you), and the fact we stopped making mention of New Zealand over the public holidays proves what a big deal it was. I mean, if the summer holidays can tear bloggers away from their computer keyboards, just imagine the general holiday mode that covers the country.

Seriously, though, it’s one of the things that makes this country so great at this time of year.

NZ Minister also doesn’t like the “surge”

It’s often in the off-times that New Zealand gets dragged into seeming clashes with the US. At the moment, the government is on a kind of hiatus, with one cabinet member being designated as “Duty Minister” to kind of look after the shop for a few days.

It was reported yesterday that Jim Anderton, while Duty Minister, criticised Bush’s plan to send more US troops to Iraq:

It is hard to see how an additional 20,000-25,000 troops are going to be capable of making any real difference and this has an eerie Vietnam revisited element to it. One wonders whether the lessons I would have expected to be learnt from that fiasco have been learnt in any way at all.

Prime Minister Helen Clark was quick to point out that Anderton wasn’t speaking for the Government. Foreign Minister Winston Peters said the remarks were "ill-informed and regrettable".

Predictably, the conservative National Party leader John Key condemned it, with another story reporting that he’d criticised Anderton’s “anti-American” comments which, the article reported Key as saying, would “weaken the Government's attempts to improve relations with the US.” Key was probably referring to a “free trade” deal with the US, something that in the last election his party was so eager to gain that it was willing to drop New Zealand’s nuclear-free status. The article also asked for Key’s position on the “surge” and reported that “Key was non-commital, saying New Zealand was too far away to judge the best course of action.”

On the Left, Green Party Co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons praised the remarks and criticised Clark for different reasons:

The fact that Clark has been willing to bag her closest coalition partner in order to keep relations with the US friendly is not something I would have expected from a leader who just three years ago inspired New Zealand by refusing to bow to pressure to join the “coalition of the willing” (in the invasion of Iraq).

Early reports are that ordinary New Zealanders seem to agree with Anderton. Actually, most Americans probably do, too. But it’s typical for the National Party to brand any criticism of US policy—however justified—as being “anti-American”. As a sovereign nation, New Zealand has a right to have differences with the US, something even the current US government grudgingly admits. History will show the Clark government was right to avoid supporting the Iraq war, and that Key is wrong in blindly backing US policy because we’re “too far away to judge the best course of action”.

Seems to me, this is one issue where it’s far better to be on the right side of history.

George Bush is insane

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." —Albert Einstein

In announcing an increase in American troop numbers George Bush has demonstrated that he’s gone completely round the bend. He’s ignored absolutely everything: The Iraq Study Group, the stated opinions of the generals who are actually fighting Bush’s war, world opinion and—for him most importantly—the will of the American people who clearly want an end to this war.

He seems convinced that the current “leader” of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, will be able to control Shia militias when Malaki is in power only because of the support of the Shia warlords. What possible incentive would he have to disarm Shia militias? If he can’t/won’t, Bush’s entire “plan” (and I use that term ironically) collapses.

Iraq is not a country and never has been. It was formed arbitrarily and only kept together by force. It’s now in civil war, the only unifying force at present being overwhelming opposition to occupation forces. That civil war, and certainly that opposition, won’t be ended by increasing US troops. It’ll be made worse.

An obvious answer is to work with Iran and Syria. Neither country will ever be a friend, much less an ally, but they, too, have an interest in stability in the region we call Iraq. However, it’s impossible for the Bushies to even imagine doing that.

So what’s really going on? We can only guess, but it’s clear that Bush is dancing to his masters’ tune, and those masters are the right wing nut jobs who put him in power and who control him. Britain’s Guardian says:

Mr Bush has turned to the right, to those who argue that honour and…America's national interests require fighting on. One senses that "honour" is the more important of the two.

Putting some sort of weird notion of honour ahead of human lives is in itself a reason for psychiatric evaluation of the Bushies. But there’s more going on: Certain of Bush’s far right supporters are hoping to spark a massive war in the Mideast because they think it’ll bring the end of the word and the “return of Jesus”—their so-called “End Times”.

These people have a lot of influence on Bush’s government, even if some Bushies recognise that the religionists are nuts. Even so, it’s what’s behind the Bushies’ unblinking support for Israel no matter what it does.

Hard as it is to believe, things can still get much worse: What if Israel attacks Iran? A conventional attack would have the Bushies tut-tutting and telling the Israeli government it’s been naughty. A nuclear attack on Iran—not impossible to imagine—would create only mild irritation from the Bush team—and, probably, a world war.

I still firmly believe that Bush, Cheney and Co should be impeached and removed form office. If Clinton failing to keep his willy in his pants is a definition of a “high crime and misdemeanour,” then the Bushies should be long gone.

To let the Bushies remain in office one second longer than necessary, that is a definition of insanity.

Nice Country

I actually don’t have that much I want to say about my short trip. It was to the Rotorua region, a place my partner and I visited recently when Jason was here. Rotorua is a geothermal wonderland, but this time we were staying away form the city itself in the lakes area.

The weather was crap most of the time we were there—rainy, overcast and humid. Naturally, the weather improved when we left. Oh, well. We had a trip into Rotorua, where we visited the Rotorua Museum (which I last visited with Jason), had lunch and picked up a few things.

The weather meant we spent time inside, where the family tried to teach me euchre, a game I never really got the hang of. We also played Pictionary, which I did somewhat better at.

The photo above was about the best I could do, taken during a brief break in the weather. The water is part of one of the lakes, but it also shows how heavily bush-clad this region is.

Send us your workers yearning to breathe free

New Zealand doesn’t have a large green statue of a lady standing in any of its harbours, so we don’t have any ignored poem welcoming immigrants. But welcome them we do, according to government figures just released.

In the year ended 30 June 2006, New Zealand issued nearly 100,000 temporary work permits, up 21 percent. Part of this increase is attributed the expansion of working holiday schemes New Zealand has in place with several countries.

The numbers of long-term immigrants (those intending to stay 12 months or more) is also up, as are permanent residencies. However, even tourist visas are expected to be up in the coming year.

Overall, the increased numbers of immigrants, both short- and long-term, is related to the government’s attempts to plug skills shortages. New Zealand has record low unemployment, among the lowest in the world, and has trouble filling many positions with local workers.

This is how I originally came to live in New Zealand: I had a sponsored work permit that allowed me to live and work in New Zealand a year at a time. Eventually, I applied for (and was given) permanent residence as the partner of a Kiwi. Similar programmes still exist, and unlike the US, New Zealand includes same-sex couples in immigration programmes.

New Zealand is, as I’ve said, a great place to live. Apparently, more people have decided to find out for themselves, and I, of course, think that’s great news.

Back home again

My brief trip is over and I’m back home now. It was a good trip to a beautiful part of the country. I’ll have more to say about that tomorrow.

Brief Trip

Today I’m going with a sister-in-law and my mother-in-law to visit another sister-in-law at their bach for a couple nights.

Pronounced “batch”, a bach is the name for a holiday home in the North Island. In the South Island, it’s usually called a “crib”. Traditionally, baches were very often little more than shacks, but loved by generations of families.

These days, baches are becoming rarer as the old ones are done up or knocked down for something grander. Former summer destinations have also become year-round towns, with an increase in demand for baches making them less affordable in those areas. Many ordinary Kiwis can no longer afford to buy baches in some places.

This newly-built bach was only recently completed and I haven’t seen it yet. I return to work at the end of the month, so I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to take off for a couple days while I still can. Carpe diem, and all that

Going to the bach during summer, and having a parade of relatives coming to visit, is part of what the golden Kiwi summers were once like for a lot of people. Or, so I’ve been told. This is probably the closest I’ll ever get to finding out.

All of which means there won’t be a post tomorrow, and possibly not on Thursday either.

The more things change…

News from my old hometown has it that a Chicago alderman “…was arrested this morning …in connection with federal corruption charges.” Some things really do stay the same, after all.

Is Aussie TV afraid?

Most of the time, the New Zealand-Australia rivalry is simple fun. A joke here, a good-natured put down there, no more than you might expect to hear at a gathering of friends.

Sometimes it’s a bit more.

Australia’s Screen Producers’ Association is threatening “industrial action” if the country’s Channel Nine is allowed to include the New Zealand-made comedy-drama Outrageous Fortune as part of its “local content” requirement. In 1997 a high court decision found that New Zealand programmes count as local content.

From a New Zealand perspective, there are two things about this: First, Aussie unions seem as if they’ll go on strike if someone so much as glances at them sideways. We do know that’s just John Howard propaganda, but we like to pretend it’s true.

The other thing is this: It’s a big joke. If the Aussies are worried about NZ drama elbowing Aussie drama off of TV, they should probably worry more about whether synthetic or natural fibres are better. The fact is, there's so little NZ drama (or comedy) produced that it in no way threatens Aussie-made programming. Seriously, they need to get a grip.

And whatever happened to the ANZAC spirit, eh mate? Your country is big enough to accommodate a Kiwi programme or two. God knows we put up with truly awful stuff made in your home girthed by sea—and that’s just the TV commercials!

Seriously, relax! We’re no threat to Aussie TV and we won’t be even if you deign to allow our programmes to count as “local”. Ironic, though, how some Aussies are quick to want us to merge with them while others want to treat us as foreign as Japan. Maybe we all need to hit pause and have a cup of tea. That’s sure to make things better.

What’s it like?

Living in another country is an experience most people never have. A higher proportion of New Zealanders and Australians do it than do Americans, but even in this part of the world, being an expat is an alien concept to the vast majority.

Being an expat isn’t easy to explain. Each person has unique experiences that depend on where they move and who they were to begin with. My experiences, then, are probably totally different from any other American living in New Zealand, and definitely different from Americans living in other countries.

When I first arrived in New Zealand, I was struck by both the similarities and the differences, much as I would when visiting a place as a tourist. The difference is that I wasn’t just looking around, but trying to find my way in a foreign land (though I was the foreigner, of course).

I noticed familiar fast food chains, brands of petrol and cars, items in grocery stores and so on. But I also noticed brands that were unfamiliar to me, which was nothing, at the time, compared with one major difference: Driving on the left side of the road.

In time, I learned about the new products and services, learned my way around and even got used to driving on the other side of the road (it’s second nature, now). Life, in other words, settled into a new normality.

However, it wasn’t an overnight or easy thing. In those early months, there wasn’t a single day that went by that I wasn’t reminded I was in a new, unfamiliar place. All I had to do was walk out the door and see cars driving on the left side of the road, or speak to a Kiwi or just look at shop signs. There were times I ached to be surrounded by the familiar, to feel the sort of comfort and ease I’d left behind. I coped in various ways, like seeking out some American products, but also in some unusual ways.

Many years ago, I had a blocked ear. I put on some stereo headphones, turned the volume up for the affected ear and I could hear normally. I could also feel a kind of pressure easing inside my head. In New Zealand one day early on I boarded a bus and sat in one of the seats facing backwards so I was looking up the right-hand side of the road—just like in America. I felt the same kind of pressure-release those headphones provided many years earlier.

I suppose the fact that I had to look backwards to feel normal is some kind of metaphor, but it didn’t feel that way at the time.

The fact is, all I really needed was time—time to adjust to my new surroundings, to learn local slang (and to be able to understand the accent), to form emotional connections to my new home—in short, to build a new life. As that slowly happened, the need for American comfort and familiarity disappeared because I’d replaced it with a New Zealand life.

So moving to a new country is in many ways like life in general—filled with both joy and pain, requiring hard work and determination to get you where you want to be. For me, the rewards at the end of that effort were huge and well worth it. Others might not find that to be true.

My best advice for anyone who really wants to know what it’s like to be an expat is to try it. Just be sure you know what you’re getting yourself into before you start to pack.

Note: As an experiment, I've created a new tag "Expat / Expatriate" for this post. I have them separate at the moment so they show up in Technorati searches. If this does, too (as separate words) I'll go back and tag all the old posts filed under "Expat" and "Expatriate" with this new tag instead. In the meantime, if you want to read more of my posts on the subject, you'll need to click on either "Expat" or "Expatriate" (they mostly have the same posts listed). If you don't have any idea what I'm on about, don't worry—you don't need to.

Who Am I?

Don’t panic—this isn’t some sort of existentialist exploration of my place in the cosmos. I’m not even sure I’d know how to do that, to be honest.

This is just another weekend pitstop for this blog as I pause to talk about my favourite subject… me. This sort of picks up where my first post left off, but was actually inspired, in part, by introducing our “fur children” yesterday.

When I started this blog, I didn’t intend to be vague about my personal life but there’s a simple truth about the Internet: There’s no taking it back. Once you put something “out there” you can’t go “Whoops! I’ve changed my mind—ignore that!”

So I felt it made sense to be a little cautious about personal information. I decided early on that I wouldn’t post anything about myself that would make things easier for an identity thief. This isn’t actually a problem in New Zealand, like the American media makes it out to be in the US. Still, it was a useful way to decide what to keep private.

I also decided that I wouldn’t mention the names or many details of my partner or anyone else close to me. I feel I have no right to decide for them what’ll be “out there”.

That still leaves a lot of information I could share, but haven’t. This wasn’t deliberate, it’s just laziness. For example, I haven’t filled in the “complete profile” on Blogger. Actually, I think the whole idea of listing my favourite movies, music or books is boring (though, strangely, I often find it interesting when others do it). Maybe I’ll do it one day.

The lack of a photo of me isn’t on purpose, either. The truth is, I didn’t have a recent photo of myself when I started the blog. Instead, I scanned a lapel pin I bought in a little shop in New York City, just down from Central Park, when we were there on holiday in 1999. As it happens, that image sums up who and what I am better than any photo I would’ve come up with at the time. So, I use it here, which means it shows up on comments I make on some blogs. I also use it for Technorati and Flicr. It’s the next best thing to having a logo or medieval crest or something.

It’s easy enough to see what interests me by reading what I write about. Over time my posts will show more of me (that’s kind of the whole point of a blog, after all). Who I am is, or will be, right here to see. Stay tuned.

Weekend Distraction

I was going to do a proper post today. Something meaningful, probably. I even started a couple different posts, but it’s a cool, grey day in Auckland and I just couldn’t focus properly

So, instead, I thought I'd introduce our “fur children” with these recent snaps. I meant to post them before now, but better late than never.

Our cat is called Curzon. He’s an Ocicat who’s just turned eight and is named after Cuzon Dax in
“Star Trek” because the breed has spots running down their spine and on their stomachs, much like the character he’s named after. He spends a lot of his day sleeping in different parts of the garden (as these photos demonstrate), or on the deck. At night, he cuddles up next to me.

Our dog is Saibh (rhymes with “five”), a soft-coated wheaten terrier who turns eight this year. In these photos she needs a clip, but was just bathed and brushed the day before. Her name is Irish Gaelic for “goodness” (or so the baby naming website told us). Our previous dog was named Bart after Bart Simpson, and he lived up to the name. We thought we’d play it safer this time.

Oh, and just to prove there’s no favouritism, I made sure each “fur child” got the same number of words in their mini-bios.

ABC misleads viewers

American ABC’s “World News Tonight” broadcast of January 4 (today in Australia and New Zealand on Sky News) carried a story on “Patriot Guard Riders,” motorcycle riders who accompany funerals of US military personnel killed in Iraq. Many of the riders are themselves military veterans.

In introducing the segment, anchor Charles Gibson said the escorts began in response to “protestors” disrupting these funerals. An average viewer, unaware of the history, might think Gibson was talking about anti-war protestors. In fact, he was talking about a bizarre religious zealot whose family “church” picketed solders’ funerals to say the soldiers were dying as God’s punishment for the US “tolerating” homosexuality.

One commentator on the viewer forum at ABC News observed:

Understandably, ABC did not want to make the focus of the story about the negative, but instead about the positive aspect of what these bikers are doing. However, by not clarifying these details this story maligns war protestors who have always been supportive of the troops and the families.

A member of the Patriot Guard Riders also said: “I don't believe that any anti-war protestors have ever shown up or shown disrespect at a funeral—to my knowledge.”

ABC News should have been clearer—yes, because anti-war protestors were smeared by omission. Mainly, ABC had an obligation to show that soldiers’ families were victims in one man’s vicious hate campaign against gay people. Americans ought to be told the truth about the level of hate in America and not have it glossed over so ABC could have a feel-good story.

Truth isn’t always pretty, but it is always necessary.

Lady of the House

The election of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the US House of Representatives is great news for democracy in America (though conservatives will take awhile to realise that). It’s not because of the Democrats’ agenda, nor the fact the House has tilted back toward the centre. Instead, it’s simply that the white boys’ club has finally been closed. With a woman Speaker, it’s no longer impossible to imagine a woman—or a woman or man who’s not of European descent—leading the House or the Senate—or the country.

America’s democracy needed this shot in the arm, a dramatic break from the partisan politics of “divide and rule” promoted by the Republicans over the past 14 years. Change will likely take on a life of its own now, and progress may finally come.

But forgive me for not being too excited. Outside the US women have long held power. For example, Britain had a female Prime Minister (the reprehensible Margaret Thatcher) way back when Reagan was president. And, of course, there was Golda Meir in Israel and Indira Gandhi in India, whose two terms were at much the same times as both women.

In New Zealand we have our second female Prime Minister, Helen Clark. When our first female Prime Minister (Jenny Shipley) took power, the Leader of the Opposition (Clark) and head of the largest state agency were also women. Prime Minister Helen Clark has been in the role since 1999.

So, other parts of the world are a bit ahead of the US when it comes to gender equality in politics. But you have to start somewhere, and this is as good as any.

Well done, Madame Speaker. Keep it up, America.

Hot and cold

Some hours after my previous post ("I was right but I was wrong"), a group called the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition was reported as saying that NIWA reporting New Zealand’s cold December proves there's no climate change here:

This bears out what the coalition said in July 2006 in its open letter to members of the New Zealand Parliament, when we pointed out that Niwa's own data showed little evidence of warming, and no evidence that humans are affecting the temperature.

The Coalition is in clearly in the minority on this one, and, anyway, why would they assume that regional variation would mean there's no global warming? Doesn’t sound very scientific to me.

As it happens, Britain's Meteorological Office released a report saying that 2007 is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, warmer than the previous warmest, 1998. 2006 was the sixth warmest.

We’ve had record ice break-up at both the Arctic and Antarctic. Antarctic icebergs floated very close to the South Island for the first time in many years. In the Arctic, polar bears are threatened as sea pack ice disappears.

Clearly something’s going on. Pity the Coalition seems incapable of seeing that. Good thing the people with power—including both Labour and National—don’t pay any attention to them.

I was right but I was wrong

A few times recently I’ve mentioned the poor weather so far this summer. I called it cool and rainy. Well, I was right—and wrong.

The monthly climate summary report from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)’s National Climate Centre said that the average December national temperature was 1.9 °C lower than normal.

December was unusually cool for the time of year, due to more frequent southerly winds. Temperatures were 2 to 3 °C below normal (making it coldest start to December for many years) throughout New Zealand during the first half of the month, with little change during the last two weeks. For the month, many locations experienced one of their coldest December’s [sic] on record. Wellington recorded its coldest December in more than 70 years, while New Plymouth, Wanganui, and Blenheim had their coldest December in at least 60 years.

So, it was cooler than normal. However, the report noted that “Rainfall was also below normal in much of Auckland…” In fact, the report says that overall “Auckland was the warmest and driest”. It certainly didn’t seem that way.

The cooler weather wasn’t good for beach going or other summer activities, but it did mean that day-to-day living was quite comfortable, and way better than typical December Chicago weather. For me, that’s certainly a good thing—and I know I’m right about that, at least.

Death in Massachusetts?

Massachusetts lawmakers moved a step closer to ending same-sex marriage in that state—the only one in America that has it—when they (reluctantly) approved a measure to place a constitutional amendment on the November 2008 ballot. If the measure passes another test in the new legislative session and is then approved by voters, it would ban all future same-sex marriages, while leaving those already married alone.

A spokesperson for an anti-marriage far right group told the AP:

This is democracy in action. It's not a vengeance campaign. It's not a hate campaign. It's just an opportunity for the people to vote.

Well, actually, that's wrong. It’s not about democracy, it’s about imposing particular religious views on everyone else. It is about vengeance and it is about hate. They only want a “vote” because they’re sure they can lie, manipulate and cheat their way to victory. Again.

No state has yet rejected such a constitutional amendment, though in 2006 Arizona voters rejected a narrower ballot measure. Considering the unlimited millions of dollars that the far right has to throw at Massachusetts along with their proven campaigns sowing hate and fear, it’s by no means certain that marriage justice will survive in Massachusetts. Ending the only legal same-sex marriage in the US would have to be at the top of their agenda.

Much will depend on who the presidential candidates are in 2008, because they may bring out supporters or opponents of the amendment. All of this assumes it will end up on the ballot. That’s not certain, either, but probably likely.

At this point it looks like any same-sex couples wanting to get married in Massachusetts should do so as soon as possible—while they still can. Democracy and justice, it seems, can wither and die as fast as wedding flowers.

There are times

There are times when life just hands “compare and contrast” opportunities. We mind our own business, then whomp, the opportunity arrives.

Yesterday I said how openly-gay MP Chris Carter being NZ’s official representative at Gerald Ford’s funeral represented one of the things I really like about New Zealand.

Then today I read (courtesy of Adam at This Boy Elroy) that the only (known) gay Republican US Representative, Jim Kolbe of Arizona, gave a warning to fellow Republicans as he prepares to retire from Congress: Move to the centre or face being out of power.

Kolbe was firmly closeted until 1996 when he was outed because he voted in favour of the notorious anti-gay “Defense of Marriage Act”. Now, according to 365Gay.com, he says “he wishes the act had included a provision that marriage belongs in the hands of the states and that couples in states where same-sex marriage or civil unions are legal could have access to federal benefits accorded opposite-sex married couples.”

Give me a break. He had the opportunity to argue that at the time, and he didn’t. Instead, he arguably made things worse for LGBT people, and he helped set the stage for the theocons’ war against any recognition of same-sex relationships.

So pardon me for not giving a stuff what Jim Kolbe has to say about anything. He wasn’t there when we needed him most and he came out only when he was forced out—revealed as a hypocrite is perhaps a better way of putting it. He had zero influence in the Republican Party then and his advice now will fall on stone deaf ears.

That’s where the opportunity to compare and contrast arrived.

Kolbe ends his career with zero influence in the Republican Party. The Democrats aren’t really any better—they’re too afraid of alienating the conservative voters they’re trying to win over.

In New Zealand, we have an openly gay cabinet minister. Another gay MP, Tim Barnett, is believed to be the first openly gay person elected to a first term in any national legislature (all others, including Chris Carter, came out after election, though Carter wasn’t trying too hard to be closeted in that first campaign). Both have had influence within the Labour Party caucus. Barnett steered prostitution reform through Parliament, as well as working on the Civil Unions Bill and other legislation. NZ had the world’s first transgendered MP, Georgina Beyer (soon to retire). We now have other gay and lesbian MPs, including even within the conservative National Party.

I simply can’t imagine LGBT people having that much influence in America.

I’ve said before that it’s dangerous to compare and contrast the US with any country. Americans don’t take it well when the country is revealed to be lacking when compared to another country. That doesn’t change a simple truth: For LGBT people, some places simply are better and safer than America, and some countries respect the contributions of LGBT people more than America does.

Jim Kolbe’s warnings now, when they can’t possibly do any good, won’t change that in the least. I still believe that it’s ordinary people who can and will—if they will.

A few blog notes…

Blog Housekeeping

One of the last things I did at the end of the year was to go through old posts and fix their formatting (it had been messed up when I switch to New Blogger). That gave me the chance to add subject tags so similar subjects will be grouped together. I’m also trying to be better about limiting tags to just the ones explicitly relevant to the post.

Blog traffic

One of the best ways to get people to check out your blog is to post photos of naked people. Or, better still, photos of naked people doing their bidniss. I have nothing against either, personally. In fact, they can be rather nice. But this blog is about other things, so I don’t post such photos.

The next best thing, though, is to be linked to by someone who does post photos. Recently a fellow blogger in Melbourne, YarravillePaul, added me to his “Gay Blogs” links. It has become the biggest single source of non-accidental new visitors to my blog ("non-accidental new visitors" are people who click a link to get here for the first time). Mind you, many of them don't stick around (were they looking for photos?), but others have a bit of a read. So, thanks, Paul. I’ve added a link in my blog listing at right (for those of you who don’t know, the designation NSFW means “not safe for work”, so it’s probably not a good idea to access the blog from a work computer). The blog is pretty interesting and I'll certainly keep reading it—from home, though…

Happy Expataversary to Lost in France

No mention of blogging would be complete without acknowledging a significant event for my fellow blogger Lost in France at Cyberfrance. Today is the anniversary of his arrival in France, and the beginning of his being an Expat. The phrase “expataversary” was coined, as far as I know, by another gay American expat, Jeffrey (The Gay Expat), who also lives in France.

Lost in France writes a great blog about life in France and Toulouse in particular, being a gay American expat, and a variety of other things. The posts are always written in a friendly voice that stands in contrast to some of the harsher posts out there (including on this blog, it must be said). I highly recommend it.

So Happy Expataversary, Lost in France!

The Year Begins

An advantage in New Zealand’s location is that we enter the new year 19 hours ahead of my old hometown. So, I get to ring friends and family back in America and joke about calling from the future. Silly, I know.

As it happens, 2007 began not very differently from any other year. There were a few spots around the country where drunkenness caused problems on New Year’s Eve (What? Drunkenness on New Year’s Eve? I’m shocked). Unusually cool and often rainy weather helped minimise the problems. However, there was a fatal stabbing at one all-night party where alcohol (and, allegedly, more) was in abundance.

Our own New Year’s Eve celebrations were far less dramatic: Just a sister-in-law and a couple friends, some Thai takeaways and a few wines (a fair few, perhaps...). The whole neighbourhood was similarly quiet.

We’re in the middle of the summer holidays, so it’s quiet in most of the country right now, with even the politicians staying out of the media. It’s a welcome relief.

Still, there were a couple news items that caught my eye:

New Zealand’s official representative at the funeral of former US President Ford will be Cabinet Minister Chris Carter. As it happens, Carter was New Zealand’s first openly gay MP (there are several others now), and its first openly-gay Minister. I couldn’t help thinking to myself that the fact that Chris Carter will be NZ’s official representative at the funeral illustrates one of the things I love about living in New Zealand: I like the fact that here an openly gay Minister is no big deal, nor is designating him as an official representative of the country. I can’t even imagine an openly gay cabinet member in the US.

The other story was published yesterday: The United Nations 2006 Human Development report indicated that 78 percent of New Zealanders use the Internet, more than anyone else. We were followed by Iceland at 77 per cent and Sweden at 76 per cent. Only 65 percent of Australians access the Internet, as do only 63 percent of Americans.

We’re far less likely to use mobile phones, however: “New Zealand is far down world rankings of mobile phone ownership.” Personally, I’m not sure this is a bad thing.

Taken together, these stories provide a snapshot of what New Zealand is like this time of year: Mostly quiet, laid back, probably emailing or surfing the web (or blogging), but maybe not using mobiles too much. The social problems here are similar to those of other countries, but ratcheted down a few notches.

To me, New Zealand is a great place to live. I hope it’ll become even clearer why I feel that way as this year progresses. Right now, though, I need to go place some phone calls from the future.