While reading Nick Miller’s article Veiled Intent this morning it occurred to me how very complex the issue of racism is. When I first hear that people wish to “Ban the Burqa” or “Not the Niqab”, it immediately strikes me as pure Islamaphobia and I ignore any following  diatribe. But when the argument is linked to security, I can see the problem with people wandering around with their faces hidden.

I mean if they go into a bank they might conceivably be robbers in disguise about to steal pensioner’s savings. In a government department or say, visiting the nation’s parliament house, they may be approaching the building with 10 billatons of explosive strapped beneath their billowing black robes. Of course an obese person too could have a shitload of explosives strapped beneath their copious plaid shirt intent on covering the National Monument with their intestines and those of anyone in the vicinity. Who can know the mind of a madman?

“Sex doesn't sell, it's fear. In the first episode of Mad Men (Smoke gets in your eyes) Don Draper outlines the appeal of fear as a tool for selling with chilling clarity. "Advertising is based on one thing: happiness," he calmly tells his clients. "And do you know what happiness is? … It's freedom from fear.”

I’ve been watching the addictive Jacques Peretti, Director, Producer and Presenter in his current offering of The Men Who Make Us Spend on ABC on Thursday evenings and it makes for some horrific viewing. Oh it’s not gory but it does make the hair stand up on the back of your head, and Casper does a quick shuffle across your grave.

 I know we are manipulated by the media at every turn. I watch The Gruen Transfer and understand the premise of advertising and their raison d’ etra; it’s to make money for their clients. The ‘Mad Men’ of the sixties were so successful with Listerine that it went from a profit of $115,00 per annum to several million with the machinations of clever advertising. 

In the throes of national grief over the downing of MH17 there was mention in particular of the loss of several AIDs conference delegates, one of whom had been a leading HIV expert and activist, all due to meet in Melbourne this week. In this vein,  ABC News 24 interviewed Chris Beyrer, Director, Johns Hopkins Training Program in HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Science to garner his take on the impact to international studies regarding the loss of these people.

Beyrer was heartbreakingly frank as he discussed his past and how many friends and lovers had been  lost to the disease in the days before there was any drug therapy or hopes of anything other than a palliated death. To me it was moving, it was sad and then suddenly it became something completely shameful; something that rent my heart.

I have always admired Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner where although bleak, the world was a multicultural paradigm where speech has been fused with a mixture of words from many languages. The world is becoming an amalgam of humans communicating in new ways and without a dominant language.

 Language is a social process and heavily influences and shapes culture. To a great degree it determines one’s very thoughts. Language denotes identity. It is power. Many indigenous societies around the world rue the fact that conquering nations forced them to adopt the conquering language and that, more than anything is blamed for destroying their culture and identity.

I've always thought I’d rather eat my own liver with a cheap Chianti than go on a cruise. They sound boring; I’d rather not waste time hanging around a pool on the top deck and just get to my destination. Then I can hang around a pool in the resort.

I was thrilled to find there were several places on board where one could find peaceful and quiet surrounds to allow one to just ‘be’.  There was of course the party deck where one could find all the stunned couples desperately sitting together, taking in the splendour of everyone else who must be having a good time amid the deafening noise of the loud music and inane chatter of the onboard Entertainment Officer. There were, to be fair, a deal of interesting activities of which you could partake; yoga, stretching, knitting, craft making , art auctions, lectures on real estate, cooking demonstrations… or none if you wished to sit quietly with Ramon or Lucy who faithfully fetched you mojitos and then silently slunk back to their post by the bar so you could quietly ‘be’ …drunk by dinner.

 I have always been strongly opposed to racism (Well aren’t we all? Apart for that one understandable exception; Asian drivers/ Indian salespeople/ American evangelicals/ Australian drunks/ Muslim ‘fundamentalists’/ Finnish sauna radicals/ ...

 It is sometimes an inexplicable dislike, more often a preposterous stereotyping and always an unforgiveable breach of human rights. It is that shameful hearkening back to the days of tribalism that so ruthlessly involved ‘us and them’ and if they were ‘them’ then they got a spear through their gullet licketty split and splashetty gush the threat was neutralised and you could return to your ruminative chewing of the mammoth shank in peace.

It became a question of degree to me; the delineation of death really. If it was her child or her spouse, no question I’d be in the car now, enroute. I’d camp out in the garden if I had to. But it was her father. It is expected, that if all goes right, you will bury both parents. This is known Kahleesi.

I know the death of a parent is a devastating and for many, a complicated experience. They are complex relationships these familial ones. From whence we came can be a curse or a blessing. Ultimately along with our choices, it makes us or breaks us. The grief can be enormous and enduring.

Even Jesus said there will always be poor among you. I somehow don’t think he meant that it was an inevitable condition but that human nature, being selfish and greedy, means that it is a predestined outcome of the human power system. Those with the most seashells have the most power and so rule in the way that best suits their agendas. Those without seashells live on the periphery and gaze in wanton envy at those with the wherewithal to barter for the bigger skins which only those with culture and breeding wear rather than those nasty little rabbit fur the common oyster eaters wear.

And the common folk have proliferated, having nothing better to do no doubt, than procreate. According to Gary Younge in the Guardian last week,

“Their nation, many will tell you, is not just a land mass but an ideal – a shining city on the hill beckoning a bright new tomorrow and a dazzling dawn for all those who want it badly enough. Such devout optimism, even (and at times particularly) in the midst of adversity makes America, in equal parts, both exciting and delusional.”