Damn Dirty Ape!

So I have to weigh in on this one. Some time ago, the NY Post printed a cartoon. Like most political cartoons it addressed what was happening in politics at the time. Makes sense. But this one has caused a lot of outrage and while I also am ashamed of this ad, it's for a much different reason. For starters here's the cartoon.


I am kind of confused by this cartoon. I guess it's trying to say that an ape wrote the US's current "economic stimulus" (have we had enough of these words) bill. That's a pretty wealthy ape or at least a very powerful ape.

I say good for him or her. Writing a complicated bill like that would be a chore for any of us. Why not give the job to an ape? Take affirmative action to a new level.

Maybe it's one of those super intelligent apes from NASA. Did you ever think of that?

But to add to my confusion I wondered: why would police or security guards shoot an ape for writing a stimulus bill on a street in broad daylight with lots of witnesses driving by? Was the bill that bad? Doesn't it stimulate you enough? Do the editors of the NY Post want people to go to the zoo and shoot apes? Maybe they should shoot the greedy (suicide?) or economists instead since they are the real problem.

But back to the uproar. People think this dead ape is a stand-in for Barack Obama. This is a bit of a stretch. First of all Barack Obama is a homo (wait for it) sapien. But apparently people of African descent are considered apes or monkeys by silly racist people.

(As a side note, in Europe if you have black football players on your national team almost every country will make monkey calls at them. Hey fat, lazy, drunk white guys! Those footballers could probably kick your balls out of the stadium! Get a life.)

And do people actually think Barack Obama wrote the bill himself? Clearly not. I think this is a case of reading into things too much. I'm sure the NY Post has apologized for any offense by now.

The funny thing is that his predecessor was often portrayed as an ape himself. I read the Guardian on occasion and have greatly enjoyed political cartoons by Steve Bell. Bell's Bush is terribly simian and funny. How is portraying Bush in this way acceptable and just drawing a picture of an ape, far from having Obama swinging from tree to tree on the White House lawn, racist?

Even if you don't believe in evolution like our friend Bush, we're all still descended from apes in Africa.

And that's the real problem. It's not that this is another example of racism (I'm not disputing that by the way), it's that apes are demeaned by this cartoon and our culture more generally. Apes are apes and humans are humans, trees are trees and bacteria are bacteria. There isn't a hierarchy of intelligence or feeling or any of that shit we've been taught since we were kids. If God told you that, then God is wrong. We are all equal, all creation, all species on this earth and we all have a right to be here.

Apes, far from stupid, are too smart to waste their time developing a global economy and huge, bloated governments let alone writing an economic stimulus bill. Life is straightforward for them. Eat, fuck, shit, die, repeat.

Homo sapiens like the editor of the NY Post, Barack Obama and the racist football fan could learn a lot from them and pretty much every single other being on this earth.

Magic Money

Isn't this all a bit surreal? Now the American government has passed another $800 billion stimulus package, great! Next the tax-dodging Treasury Secretary wants to spend $2.5 trillion on more stimulus by buying up all the bad debt that's out there. Where is this money coming from? From heaven? Is it from the God that watches over their country? How can their currency be worth anything anymore? Surely you can't just print money whenever you feel like it?

And if all this money could have been printed at any time why the fuck didn't they use it to support the millions of Americans who live in Doritos-Coca-Cola-Walmart-poverty. Hell, with all that money you could have built each and every one of them and the rest of the middle classes a mansion and given them a car with enough money left over for a healthy green salad.

Think about that figure again: $800 billion + $2.5 trillion = $3.3 trillion dollars.

And that doesn't include the $700 billion Bush dropped into the hands of the rich before he left office (unless, as I think, Obama's stimulus just replaces that one but with this corporate media it's impossible to know what's going on).

And I keep waiting for Americans to finally have enough. Enough of cancer, enough of being dominated by by a crooked and violent elite, enough of being told only what they are allowed to hear, enough of sending their sons and daughters to die in mad wars, enough of pretending there's a future for their children. But there's no action yet. Probably because everyone is working 70 hour weeks, but thankfully that dismal truth is about to change. When you're unemployed (or retired) you have a lot of time to think. And thinking makes you mad, when you realize that you're being fucked over. Then you start to hit the streets and wouldn't that Capitol building look a lot better as a smoking rubble? C'mon guys you're almost there. But really we don't get angry when enough of us are comfortable so we've got some way to go.

This system isn't working anymore. It's got to go. Happily we aren't going to have the choice. It's just going. Farewell!

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But in other news, I'm quite amazed that Obama is proposing talking to Iran unlike the dismal performance of his predecessor. Well it's about time Americans elected a thoughtful person to their highest office. Imagine that: working out your differences by discussion and compromise. Wow!

And best of all and you might not have heard much about this, Obama is talking to Russia about scaling back their nuclear weapons stockpiles and those on hair-trigger alert. Unbelievable.

I still can see of target on his back with every progressive move he makes. But you've got to give him credit. At the end of the world, the last thing you want is anyone holding on to nuclear weapons. I'll take the stone-age, just keep the radiation away.

The Journey

There wasn't any sunblock for the journey. Not that I worried much about sunblock anymore. When I was a child, we were always reminded to slather on that white, wet cream by parents, at school, at church if we ever went outside. Ever. I heard that at the worst of times, people drank their sunblock. Hard to believe. But then when your mouth is always dry, anything will quench your thirst.

You don't want to know what I've drunk on this trip. What I've eaten.

Did you ever see any of the Crocodile Dundee movies in the 1980s? People really loved those films. Seems a long time ago now. People loved Australia then. They loved the crocs, loved the koalas, the kangaroos. They wanted to come to our lonely beaches. To see the vastness of the oceans. Surf. The tourists stopped coming well into the drought, when bottled water seemed a ridiculous idea. Now even the animals are gone. It's too hot for most of them. No more eucalyptus leaves for the koalas; the leaves can't even take the heat. I guess the crocs might have gone out to sea since there's no more water on land. No rain, no water. They understood it pretty quickly. Took us a bit longer.

I used to live in Darwin, before the voyage. I'm pretty lucky I wasn't from Adelaide or Perth. Too far to travel. Not enough fuel. But Darwin is close enough to water. I'm not talking about the sea of course. All of Australia's cities are close to the sea. I'm talking about fresh water. The kind that falls from the sky and gives forests that smell. You know it, the smell of dampness. It's there waiting for me just across the ocean.

In survival guides that I read after university, I learned that you can go without food for weeks, but if you don't have fresh water you won't last more than a day or two. And in this heat, good luck. So I had to go.

When the power plant in Darwin stopped running, the air conditioners were already a distant memory. We were on rations and most of the power went to the desalinization plants and to pump that liquid salvation to all our homes. My parents had an orange tree which they managed to keep alive by giving it some of their water ration. Man cannot live on water alone, my father had joked.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that we in Darwin had it worse than in other parts of the country. In the centre of Australia, people just left or died. We were all on the coast by the end. And it still rained on occasion in Darwin. We're tropical. But when it rained it poured. We had no rain for weeks and then floods. But I'd rather have that than the slow burn of South Australia or New South Wales. At least then you can save water. When the power failed, God only knows what happened to those poor bastards.

I managed to save enough water for the journey. Filled up all my plastic bottles. Memories of better times. Squandered times. I set out by myself. I didn't have any brothers or sisters and my parents were dead along with their orange tree. They wouldn't have enjoyed the journey but I guess if they had wanted to survive they would have left with me. Maybe they wouldn't have been able to leave. Old habits die hard. But I had nothing to lose.

I could have stayed, I suppose, near Darwin. Played uncivilized. Gathered food, ate insects, learned to find water in the parched land. But that's not for me. I belong in a city with buzzing electrical wires and lights that shine day and night. Where you can get everything but have nothing. I can't live in a cave like bin Laden.

So to Indonesia. A generation ago it was a backyard Muslim country with nothing to offer us Australians but beaches and hashish. And we bullied them and got our way like spoiled children. We abused them and they were happy for our Australian dollars. It was an ideal relationship. Master and servant. White and brown.

Now it is my destination. Once they wanted to come here. For our human rights, for our economy, for our superiority. I bet the asylum seekers that made it and settled in Sydney and Melbourne regret it now. But white or brown, we all need water. Before the power went out, I heard about Indonesians being targeted in Sydney. Lots of blame to go around and few mirrors.

The journey was long and I'm not there yet. After trading water for a voyage by boat across the strait between Australia and Indonesia our boat was intercepted by the Indonesian Coast Guard. I didn't think they had one. Lots of extra soldiers on board. They must have been expecting us.

They were pretty harsh with all of us. Many of us were too weak from dehydration. We didn't put up much of a fight. They had fun with some of us. The exceptionally weak were pushed overboard. Lots of sharks to clean up the evidence. Not that the UN is going to order an investigation. They never did when we boarded Indonesian vessels enroute to Australia. Besides the UN has bigger problems. Some of us got off lucky with a few bruises or concussions. Some of the women were raped. No news there.

I lost a few teeth but managed to pick them up. Maybe if I make it to Indonesia, a dentist will put them back in. I heard that if you knock out a tooth you should keep your it on ice and see a dentist. The soldiers didn't understand my laughter and they just hit me harder.

But I'm still alive.

Human rights don't mean much anymore. They never really did unless you had the power. Australia used to have power. But we messed it up. Thought we were in charge of the climate. Thought we could save ourselves with an election and a few voluntary actions.

I think ever since the first prisoners were dumped on a beach that our fates were sealed. Australia was never meant for me or my family. I'm as white as a ghost. Does that sound like a good defense against the sun and heat? I guess my white skin reflects sunlight like polar ice. Until I turn pink. We were a people of sunblock. Without it, we were gone.

Now the soldiers are deciding what to do with the rest of us. All of a sudden one of them is pointing to something on the horizon and shouting. I don't dare look up over the rail. Maybe it's Bali. I've always wanted to see Bali. Mangoes, durian, rivers, waterfalls, beer. I can taste them all in my dry mouth, on my sandpaper tongue. A dream.

What are they looking at? What's coming? I wish I could stand up and see for myself.