Bin Laden - Big Deal

I have long had a theory that Australia (indeed the world over) is less tolerant after and because of September 11 (Edit: this theory isn't mine, but I share it, I think)

I've been asked to contribute this year to a wanky popular International Affairs magazine this year, and the following is a likely forthcoming column in the Sydney Globalist.

Truthfully, I'm only posting this because I wrote it in 10 minutes and am quite proud of my efforts. And also because I managed to reference the Snuggie in an article about Bin Laden.

Imagine how big my ego would be if I was actually successful.


BIN LADEN, BIG DEAL


The capture of Osama Bin Laden was the perhaps America’s best chance to recapture what global sympathy and moral triumph it had gained and squandered within a year of September 11. But all that potential to regain a title as a true defender of individual liberty and the rule of the law went down with Osama’s body in the Arabian Sea. Never mind that Osama had a gun or a human shield in his wife – surely the US troops that stormed his compound had many more of them. If internet footage of Osama curled up in a snuggie watching classic clips of himself on Al Jazeera is anything to go by, the old geezer had nothing on these guys.

Some – or rather many, judging by the streets of Washington immediately after the announcement– celebrated the ‘big deal’ of killing the man over whom the United States (and the world) lost face, an entire decade and trillions of dollars in the War on Terror. The true ‘big deal’ however comes from the little-recognised triumph from an American and even International rule of law the States would have observed in putting Public Enemy Number One to trial as they might have done with any ordinary or even extra-ordinary criminal (just don’t mention Guantanamo). Taking this higher ground would have been the softer, but more difficult step.

The rule of the law is contingent on us taking such difficult steps to higher moral ground, but such is fragility of the rule of the law and our descent into arbitrariness if not even a superpower can follow it.

The Bin Laden trial could have been the Nuremberg Trial/s of the twenty first century, the trial that Hitler or Pol Pot were never but should have been put through. No matter what the outcome, keeping Osama alive would have inspired years of intense, heated, and most importantly, intelligent debate, for generations to come.

Whether or not he would have been sentence to life or death, the Bin Laden case would have been permanent fixtures in law school programmes, curriculums in general, and the agendas of the intelligentsia the world over. Instead, we sit at home scouring Wikileaks, YouTube, or Google Image for dud and less-dud photos.

The bigger deal, then, is what the lawless assassination of Osama says about what wider society has become in the aftermath of September 11. The twin towers may have been the only fixtures to fall on that fateful day, but in the years since then a general respect for the rule of law, civil liberties and good taste have also taken a tumble.

Bin Laden’s death is significant not because of what it produced but because of what was lost when his body was gunned down and thrown out to sea. The little that has changed (except Obama’s approval rating) in death, as opposed to all that could have been in life, is testament to what was lost with Osama's body.

Whatever we did, or what we could have done with Bin Laden, was America’s biggest and best chance to rebuild what had collapsed not just on but because of September 11.

Looking for... ?

Apologies for the lack of posts. Decided it was best to say nothing rather than be unfunny, not that this post is guaranteed to entertain. Also had to find a story that didn't involve Air Mauritius.



Looking for Alibrandi was perhaps the Bend it Like Beckham of Sydney in the 1990s, something so iconic it was on the high school English curriculum. Indeed, Melburnians and other non-Sydneysiders still race each other in the Sydney University quad like Josie and John Barton did in the movie. Josie Alibrandi's Five Dock home was actually shot on location somewhere in Glebe, so one night my friends and I actually literally went up and down Glebe Point Road and looked for Alibrandi. We (or rather I) asked at each shop, restaurant, the youth hostel, and at one point we flagged down the bus 431 and asked the bus driver "I'm looking for Alibrandi - do you know where Josie Alibrandi lives?". Silly man had been living under a rock (or rather some place in the Shire that didn't get SBS), he didn't know who I was talking about.

Eventually, we found Josie Alibrandi... in ourselves.

Hah.

Actually, posting 'Looking for Alibrandi' is a popular request that should've been but was never made. It's a little outdated - in the movie (and book), the Inner West (of Sydney) is still working class, and the Italians are still daggy and oppressed (a far cry from today when antipasti is now 'Modern Australian'), although maybe today the Wogs still marry the Wogs and the North Shore marry the North Shore (if not rich Asians from Chatswood). Does Australian young adult literature, then, need to look for a new Alibrandi? Who are the new Alibrandis? The Lebanese (or Phoenecians, rather)? The Asians? Indians?

Watch this space.

Sydney Tribes

Looking back on an edit made in the last post on Cabramatta, far more attention needs to be paid to the reality that most Sydney suburbanites don't truly encounter the hustle and bustle of the city 'til age 17 or 18, let alone the Asians that come en masse in the city these days (never will I forget UTS Debating Day circa 2003, when some really Mosman-esque girls cried and whined about having to walk up from UTS to State Parliament for a debating final, and they all gagged in disgust when they found out they were in Haymarket Chinatown. I recall bitching really loudly about them to my mother afterwards as we picked apples and pomelos like nobody's business in Paddys Markets. I didn't care, no one else around us would've understood English anyway. And if I wasn't class conscious after this, I definitely was by the time a 'Grammar' contingent trekked down south for a friendly debate, only to laugh at the 'quaint' classroom heaters and our poor excuse for a swimming pool). It actually means that, more often than not, uni will be the first time many kids from the North or East encounter tribes from the West.  But for the rest of us, it probably also means that we can't be as offended as any normal person would if the likes of Lufthansa or Alitalia dismiss you because you're a woman of colour or sexually ambiguous being - there's an all too real chance that they've just never encountered one before.
So - suck it up?

The Zeitgeist

Old news, but captures the zeitgeist.

Groundbreakingly Ethnic Sydney

Last week's Sun Herald paper in Sydney greeted us with yet another article on the groundbreaking ethnicness of Western Sydney. Clearly, the author has only recently crossed the Harbour Bridge and ventured west of Ashfield, and like my friend Air Mauritius just a fortnight ago, the author was sincerely stunned at what she saw. It's not the author's fault though - most Sydneysiders never leave their neighbourhoods, let alone venture outside a 10km radius until they get jobs in the city centre, or God forbid, Parramatta (EDIT: Actually, it's probably by attending university in the city that most Sydney suburbanites first venture regularly into the city) . I have only recently learned that not everyone memorises the Sydney Cityrail network and timetable by age 10, unless of course they have some form of Asperger's:

Children with Asperger's have average or above average intelligence and are sometimes (but not always) skilled or gifted in a specific area, i.e., math, reading maps, memorizing train schedules, playing an instrument, etc.

Truth be told, my visit just a fortnight ago with Air Mauritius to Cabramatta, Australia's most famous Vietnamese enclave, was actually my first in my 22 years in Sydney. Quite poignantly, the NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell announced on the same day Cabramatta's inclusion on the official tourist map for Sydney. Yet even on the morning of our trek, my mother packed me a rape whistle in case '3'/Vodafone didn't have any reception there. As it turned out, the food was nothing to write to Hanoi about. I'd had better food this side of Bankstown. Air Mauritius, though, could not get over the near Vietnamese-homogeneity of the place. But as a native of Sydney's upper north shore where the spiciest thing in town is woodfired hawaiian pizza, for Air Mauritius, that bowl of Pho may as well have been Air Mauritius' first. It was a revelation.

We managed to not only leave unscathed, but to also enjoy ourselves (although the close to 2 hour trek left a fresh stamp in our minds that living this far out west was some sort of life sentence, especially for anyone that worked east of Strathfield). Cabramatta, however, was a stark contrast to Canberra some 4 hours down the road, one week later. Canberra somehow had more black people in its city centre during business hours, and yet it managed to still be whiter than Sydney. What was sad though was this visit was our first ever to Cabramatta, let alone anywhere down the South Line of the Cityrail network. What was even sadder that we were two SHEs, and yet we were probably just as clueless about this part of Sydney as Pauline Hanson was about the continued whiteness of London (although I was less impressed by the local Asian grocery selection than Air Mauritius, who travels halfway across the city to Parramatta for ethnic groceries, while I walk 15 minutes down the road). If Air Mauritius and the Sun Herald writers' experiences are anything to go by, Sydney remains a spice rack where the saffron, chilli powder and coriander have hardly been touched or remain unopened, and only the salt and pepper gets used.

White on the outside...

First things first, lets get some terminology sorted out.

Judging by the Wikipedia page on ethnic slurs, there is a dearth of terms for persons that are white on the outside, and some sort of colour on the inside (what the hell is a Magic Middle anyway).

In keeping with this blog's penchant for food (and my personal thing for buffets in general), here are some suggestions:

Wedding Cakes
White MnMs
White Peanut MnMs
Boiled Eggs
Pumpkins

Any suggestions?

From SHE to HE

For avid readers of this fresh-off-the-blogosphere (FOB) blog, you may have noticed a recent title change too (‘From SHE to HE’ sounded too much like a transsexual support group according to some). But going from SHE to HE (Hateful Ethnic) will otherwise remain a recurring motif. When a SHE turns into a HE, he or she needs all the support they can get. Especially from blogs like these. 

Confused?

'Race to the Top' was otherwise inspired by the many bananas and coconuts in my life, you silly fruit loops. But while the likes of American bananas are all over the mainstream with successful publications KoreaAm’ and blogs like Angry Asian Man that the Los Angeles Times refers to when people post YouTube rants about Asians in libraries, Sydney and Australian fruit salads in general make do with food blogs. However, ‘Race to the Top’ is by no means my first foray into blogging. For those of you who were lucky (or rather unlucky) enough to attend high school with me, I started a blog to ‘discuss’ certain concepts (read: horrible people), with the aid of airline names as codes for these horrible people, sorry, concepts. As much as there is a need for this whilst in law school (which is just full of concepts), this won’t happen again

(I’ll simply get bored and take the blog down once you all work out who I’m talking about, but mainly because there aren't enough airlines for all the 'concepts' that could be discussed).

What will happen, though, is that the many of you who have, for no apparent reason, subscribed to me in some form (without there being anything to actually read) will now have something to disrupt or even start your day with. What will also happen is that I'll somehow get a book deal from this like the guys from stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, or at least an interview with Natalie Tran from communitychannel. A boy can dream. I'm a boy.

Who is SHE?

First post. No pressure.

If you identify with an EGOTAS (ethnic group other than Anglo-Saxon), ask yourself a few questions.

Do you have no friends from your own ethnic group?


Do you go to the University of Sydney? Did you go there because you didn’t want to go the University of Hong Kong in Kensington, Sydney?

Do you thank your parents for sending you to Grammar, Knox, Xavier or SHORE so you could be like 'them'?


Do you enjoy living in the Sutherland Shire, the North Shore (outside of Chatswood) or the Northern Beaches (outside of 'Dee Wong') in Sydney for its lack of ethnic diversity?


Do you avoid driving down Beamish Street in Campsie or anywhere in Hurstville, Ashfield or Western Sydney whenever you have white friends in your car?


Do you go to Commerce lectures and resent that no one speaks English?


Do you do an Arts degree and compliment yourself on your English language abilities?

Do you identify yourself as Phoenician?

Do you avoid Bamboo, the Roxy or Shanghai Nights? Do you think that these terms refer respectively to a plant that Pandas eat and Asian builders climb, a brand of ladies surf wear, and a week of ethnic festivities?


Do you secretly apologise to elderly people on the train or bus when a bunch of ‘your people’ launch loudly into ‘your language’?

Do you have double eyelids?


Do you celebrate the fact that you need to ask for a fork in Asian restaurants, or to tone down the chilli in your curry?


Do you cringe when people do the Zorba dance outside of a wedding?


Do you get angry when you hear the French language outside of France and its territories?


Do you exaggerate the Australianess of your English when speaking to Caucasian strangers?  When you do, do you advertise that you really hate refugees?

Are you relieved and proud that you can easily cross the border without joining a separate line thanks to your first-world Australian/American/Canadian/British passport?

Are you secretly glad that you are half-white?

Are you embarrassed by your parents’ accents and the smell of your pantry?

And in the interest of social inclusion, ask yourself the following if you don't identify with an EGOTAS:

Do you refuse to watch a movie unless it's in LOTE (languages other than English)?

Do you feel the urge to teach or work in a 'Remote Area Location' whenever you meet someone 'Indigenous'?

Do you want to work for Ausaid, USAid or World Vision to 'make up' for Colonialism? Did you make a donation after studying Colonialism?

Did you join or even start up a charity or NGO after volunteering in Africa or doing that Contiki tour in Southeast Asia? Did you adopt a child on these travels?

Do you get excited by the mere prospect of going to Lakemba or Cabramatta in Sydney (and does visiting these places inspire you to move there?) Have you since started teaching English in Asia?

Do sausages, peas and carrots give you nausea?

Do you chase people down the street to ask them what country they got that kaftan from?

Is your furniture suite Javanese?

Is your chocolate fair-trade?

If you answered yes to any or all of the above, then you are a SHE (Self Hating Ethnic), and perhaps you should read on...