Throwing stones from the glasshouse

Over the last few days, a couple of stories in the news have caught my eye. One was Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s visit to Indonesia and Japan, and the other was a very interesting article by one of Australia’s top diplomats in regard to the flawed testing procedure for those seeking Australian citizenship. Both these news stories highlighted two things to me. How much damage the previous Howard government has caused in relation to not only immigration in Australia, but also to our relations with the asian region. Two, it highlighted to me just how big a job Kevin Rudd has to smooth over relations with Asia, and to truly make Australia a friendly, warm and open country in the region.

There is this unfortunate habit with conservative governments all over the world, and that is to be racist, whether that be conscious or unconscious.  Whenever conservatives are asked about races outside the limited sphere of ‘white english speaking’, they either plead ignorance, or they are forthright in their criticism. In the case of the Howard government, it gave the impression that it was ‘for all Australians’, but it failed to look after Aboriginal Australians, it looked to the US as a more important friend than the countries of the Asian region, and now we find out that the citizenship test is flawed, and is difficult for migrants to pass; thereby sending a strong message that non-English speaking migrants are not wanted in Australia.

I have said in a previous blog that I get highly offended when Australia is seen as a racist country, but when I hear about the testing procedures for those who wish to gain citizenship, I feel disheartened, and I am banging my head against a brick wall. Former head of the Foreign Affairs Department, Richard Woolcott, has been put in charge of a review of the citizenship requirements for Australia, and he has come up with some blatant bias against non-English speakers:

“Citizens need to have what is called basic English and there’s no doubt that the booklet on which the test is based is way way above basic English,” he said.

“It discriminates very much in favour of people who have been educated in English as a first language.

“There are 20 questions selected at random on the computer. Three of them are mandatory, so you can get 19 right, [which] gives you 95 per cent, and get one mandatory question wrong and therefore fail, so the test is flawed.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/15/2274932.htm

John Howard would never have admitted he was racist. Most people don’t. But actions speak louder than words. If it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see that Australia’s citizenship test if racist, then it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realise that the person who approved of such a test was also racist.

The conservatives have already criticised Rudd for being a bit of a ’show off’ when it comes to his fluency in the Mandarin language. Whether he ends up being a good Prime Minister or not, one of his major focuses is foreign relations. Howard and his ministers concentrated heavily on the economy, which of course is important. But a government must do much more than that if it is to be seen as a global player. Rudd is now having to spend at least his early days as PM doing 11 and a half years of catch up for things that Howard failed to do.

Let’s hope it’s not too late to receive a second chance.

Enjoy your day

We all make mistakes. What we are taught from a very early age is to admit when we have made one. What most of us hate, either in ourselves or in others, is an inability to say sorry, and admit that a wrong has been done.

For the second time this year, a national parliament, lead by the leader of the government, has apologised to indigenous people for the narrowness of mind, and the human failures of generations past. Today, Canadian Prime Minister, Steven Harper, apologised to the indigenous community for the mistakes made as part of the ‘residential schools’ program, which was designed to remove Native Indian, Metis, and Inuit children from their families and assimilate them into ‘white’ society. Quoting Prime Minister Harper:

“Indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, ‘to kill the Indian in the child’. Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country.”

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N11368212.htm

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said similar words just a few months back when apologising for Australia’s attempts to ‘kill the Aboriginal in the child’ by stealing them from their families and assimilating them into white families:

“We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/apology/text.htm

I find Canada’s announcement today as both frightening and heartening. Frightening because it yet again shows just how narrow minded and superior we were as recently as the early 70’s. Heartening because there now seems to be a wave of apologies surfacing, and at last indigenous people can stand with their heads held high and finally be vindicated. They were abused. Their unique cultures were ignored, and partially destroyed. Their place within their respective countries was at the lowest level possible. They were right to believe that what they went through was wrong; very wrong.

Why is there a habit of some cultures and countries to claim superior status, thereby having the right to dictate their ways over others? The English governments did it, and still weep that they can’t do it anymore. The American governments still do it; just look at Iraq. The American style of democracy is the standard to which we all must attain, just like the Brtitish Empire was the golden era that brought about civility as we know it. Lord knows, the English still think that without their intervention, these ’savages’ would still be eating their own shit!

I have always said that domination of the Australian indigenous people began when the English first landed on Australian soil. I’m sure they were seen as primitive and savage, and had to be brought to heel. And until the early 1970’s, that attitude prevailed. The same occured in Canada:

“In 1920, attendance (at the residential school) became compulsory by law for all children aged 6 to 15. Children were often forcibly removed from their families, or their families were threatened with prison if they failed to send their children willingly. Some have suggested that many of the practices exerted on the children were consistent with current UN conventions on genocide, though destruction of culture and language does not fit the usual definition of genocide as mass killing of ethnic or racial groups. They claim the schools systematically tried to destroy their language and their way of life. The idea of cultural genocide appears to have arisen within lawsuits against the government and churches, as advanced by lawyers.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residential_schools

When are we we ever going to learn that everyone is different, and that’s what makes this world such a great place. Religions still fight over who is the best. Fundamentalist Muslims constantly try to convert the world to radical Islam. Mormons still have their ‘missionaries’ travelling the length and breadth of this world with their clean white shirts and military haircuts, asking if they can ‘pray in your house’. Even my own father was known to say that “the Catholic faith is the one true faith of God.”

The more we apologise, humble ourselves, and admit our profound sorrow on behalf of the ignorant fools that have come before us, the more this world will begin to heal itself of some of the mindsets that have infected it for generations.

Enjoy your day.

  (Whitlam holding his dismissal letter)                 (Whitlam in 1975)

There is one man who most Australians think of when they hear the three words above, and that is Edward ‘Gough’ Whitlam.

You see, these three words of defiance came out of a political event in Australia that has always fascinated me since I was a student in Secondary school. It was the dismissal of the then Whitlam Labor government on the 11th of November, 1975.

Dismissal, you may ask? How can a sitting Prime Minister and his government be ‘dismissed’? Well, the then Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, who was Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Australia, decided that the best course of action after the then conservative opposition party (oddly called the ‘Liberals’) blocked Budget Supply bills, was to dismiss the government. Whitlam was asked to go to an early election. Whitlam refused, so Kerr sacked him. Simple as that. However, Whitlam told everyone to ‘maintain the rage’ and today, at the ripe old age of 91, he is still raging.

Today, Whitlam was in the nation’s capital, Canberra, to hand over a hand written note he jotted down on the day of the dismissal:

“The hand-written note now in the possession of the National Archives is a draft notice of motion expressing parliament’s confidence in his government to maintain power.

It was jotted down over lunch at The Lodge after Sir John told Mr Whitlam he was dismissing the government, then embroiled in controversy over the refusal of the opposition-dominated Senate to allow budget supply bills to pass.

Mr Whitlam did not get a chance to move the motion in parliament that afternoon. At the time he did not know that (Opposition leader) Mr(Malcolm) Fraser had already been sworn in as caretaker prime minister.”

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=577792

Whenever anyone gets a chance to grill Whitlam on the dismissal, it’s always well worth it. He still, to this day, believes that maintaining the rage is correct.

Yes, it’s a very rational approach,” Mr Whitlam said.

When you ask if I’m still sore about the business, as far as Fraser is concerned, certainly not,” Mr Whitlam told his interviewer, Special Minister of State John Faulkner.

“As far as Kerr, of course, I regard him with contempt, as I think most people do.

Mr Whitlam’s discussion of the events were peppered with words like “betrayal” and “conspiracy” in reference to Sir John.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=577792

Whitlam was, and still is, an old time Labor man. This is a man that still calls colleagues ‘Comrades’ and has very old fashioned Labor ideals. The dismissal was an outrage to him, because Kerr was a friend he hand picked to be Governor-General; someone he thought he could trust and would be loyal to the government and to the ideals of the Labor movement. So his feelings at the time are still his feelings now. When Sir John Kerr died in 1991, Whitlam neither attended the funeral, nor sent any message of condolence.

There is one thing we all hate, and that is betrayal and disloyalty. To be ’stabbed in the back’ is the worst thing that can happen. Should Whitlam have ‘healed’ after all these years? Why should he have? He has milked this political crisis for the last 33 years. He made history for being the first Labor Prime Minister in Australia in 23 years, at the time, and was part of the most tumultuous time in Australian politics, that created history. This event has gone on far longer than his Prime Ministership, which lasted just shy of 3 years. Milk that sucker for all it’s worth, Gough!

I will leave you with the words of Whitlam on the steps of Parliament on the 11th November, 1975. Apart from it being a unique political event, guaranteed never to happen again, it produced some of the best lines:

“The proclamation which you have just heard read by the Governor General’s official secretary was countersigned “Malcolm Fraser”, who will undoubtedly go down in Australian history from Remembrance Day 1975 as Kerr’s Cur.”

“Well may we say “God save the Queen” Because nothing will save the Governor General.”

If maintaining the rage has kept Gough kicking on into his 90’s, then a good dose of hearty anger may be beneficial to our health.

Enjoy your day.

Our world is becoming a depressing place. With people having to foreclose on their homes, the price of oil making it nearly impossible to even afford to drive to the local shops, and basic food supplies harder to come by, it’s no wonder we witness yet again another sad and tragic figure taking out his frustrations on the innocent people of Tokyo.

Yesterday, Tomohiro Kato did what many have done before. He got angry, frustrated, bitter and depressed, and decided that the world will pay. But this time, a gun wasn’t used. Instead it was a knife, and his car. He ran people down in his car and finished them off with a knife. Bizarre to say the least, but the reason for the attack is all too common.

Like the Virginia Tech massacre, where an angry, twisted young Korean man also decided that people must suffer as much as he did, this young man in Tokyo felt exactly the same:

“I’m used to acting like a good person. I can fool everyone easily,” Kato wrote, adding he was struggling to make friends.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUST27752620080609?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0

‘Struggling to make friends’. Isn’t this all too telling? How easy do we make it for sensitive, shy, introverted people to make friends or join our inner circle? This was written about Seung-Hui Cho, the Korean man responsible for Virginia Tech:

‘In the ensuing investigation, police found a suicide note in Cho’s dorm room that included comments about “rich kids”, “debauchery”, and “deceitful charlatans”. “His thought processes were so distorted that he began arguing to himself that his evil plan was actually doing good. His destructive fantasy was now becoming an obsession.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre

Suicides are seen by some as ‘an escape’, where the person is regarded as ‘copping out’. But I think it is evident that we don’t do enough to truly identify and understand what people have really gone through in order to get to that extreme state of being. They say people who commit suicide have thought patterns that are so beyond reality, that they have become dillusional. And in that dillusional state, they believe that what they are doing is for the betterment of society, or at the very least their immediate family.

“Recently, peoples’ relationships have become strained,” said 29-year-old Taishi Ikeda, who works in the publishing industry. “There’s no-one to talk to when you’re troubled.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUST27752620080609?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0

Life can be a miserable place, and it promises to get even more miserable. Maybe this is why Barack Obama’s message of ‘Change we can believe in’ is hitting a chord with younger voters. We need a seachange in our thinking. We need to talk to our neighbours, worry more about our friends, and identify when colleagues are buckling under their own personal strain.

I got the title of this blog from an episode of ‘Sex and the City’, when one of the characters was visiting someone living in a very depressing part of town. It sort of sums up how people feel everyday about the situation they find themselves in. Where most of us just sigh heavily and get through those days where we find ourselves in the middle of ’shitsville’, there are those of us in our community who find it harder to cope, and need us to at least be aware of what they go might be going through.

“But when these people fail to fulfill themselves in socially acceptable ways, they are treated as losers and their frustration builds up,” he added.

Some members of the public pointed to an economic downturn and government policy as reasons for rising frustration.

 ”Politicians don’t think about the people, they raise taxes and change the healthcare system,” said Kentaro Inoue, a 56-year-old worker for an architectural firm.

 “I think that’s what breeds this violent behavior. People begin to hate society when they can’t succeed.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUST27752620080609?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0

Society in general has a huge responsibility to celebrate important events in each other’s lives. Whether that’s acknowledging a friend’s cultural value, respecting religious beliefs and customs, or taking more of an interest in the things that matter to those close to us, it is more necessary now than ever. As external events in our world start to close in on us, we are going to need each other a hell of a lot more.

Unfortunately, as our own personal crises become tougher, we will inadvertently turn in on ourselves. If that trend continues, our newspapers will be filled more and more with hapless humans at the end of their rope.

Enjoy your day…and make someone else’s day enjoyable too.

Yesterday, I was at a local hospital here. While I was waiting to see a doctor, out of the corner of my eye I noticed what I thought was a black bundle of material on a couch. On closer inspection, I noticed it was, in fact, a Middle Eastern Islamic woman who was draped head to foot in traditional Islamic dress.

Now, before a jihad is declared on me, and I am denounced as a culturally insensitive racist, read on. Religion does have this bad habit of ‘defeminising’ women. Islamic women in some parts of the Middle East have one choice for public clothing; the black Abaya. Not only is it black, but it covers everything. There is nothing feminine about it at all, but then again, that’s its purpose.

Abayat are known by various names but serve the same purpose, which is to cover up. The term hijab or veil is not used in the Qur’an to refer to an article of clothing for women or men, rather it refers to a spatial curtain that divides or provides privacy.

In the Catholic tradition, too, nuns have had to endure covering themselves, and making sure that they don’t let anyone know that they are actually women. A former Catholic priest friend of mine remembers officiating at a ceremony for nuns once, and was struck but just how devoid these women were of any form of femininity, and how that hit him for the first time. Female Buddhist monks are even more extreme, wearing plain robes, and shaving their heads. This ensures that their is absolutely no semblance of a feminine self.

There are a number of issues here; some I understand, and some I don’t. I can understand that wearing plain robes, shaving your head, and abandoning make up and mainstream clothing is a sign of abandoning one’s previous life and dedicating the rest of one’s life to either a higher being, or to a philosophy. But what I don’t understand is why the women must dress in ways that they never normally would as a woman, whereas the men in these religious cultures wear pretty much what they like. 

Male Buddhist monks have to shave their heads, but hey, guys look good bald. Male Catholic priests have the freedom to wear either the clerical collar or pretty much anything they like, and Islamic men can also wear whatever suits them.

If we have religious rules for one gender, surely all those same rules must apply to the other gender. Buddhism is the only religious lifestyle where the playing field is fair and even.

On my trips to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, over these last few years, what absolutely blew me away was a simple walk through the shopping centres and streets of this cosmopolitan, predominantly Muslim city. South East Asian Islam is a lot more moderate than Middle Eastern Islam, and the dress code for women may well be the same in this part of the world as it is in the Middle East, but the designs of the hijab and abaya are stunningly beautiful. Never in my life have I seen such femininity, colour, and unique design. These women are fulfilling all the religious requirements, but they are doing so without sacrificing their womanhood or their femininity. So too have I seen young Islamic women from parts of the Middle East wearing a headscarf, but free attire for the rest.

Seeing this woman yesterday yet again confirmed to me how much woman are still the ones who don’t make the rules, but follow them. And if women do become the rulers, (i.e Magaret Thatcher of the UK, Helen Clark of New Zealand, and Angela Merkel of Germany), they deliberately defeminise themselves, and like Hillary Clinton, be as tough and strong as a man. Otherwise, they don’t get taken seriously.

I heard someone make a very interesting point once about the physical appearance of some lesbians. “Why do these woman who don’t like men at all, spend the rest of their lives looking like them?” How many times have we seen a lady with short cropped greying hair, no make up, wearing pants and comfortable shoes, and say, “She’s either a lesbian or a nun.” The other observation, albeit a bit bad taste, was about the famous tennis player, Martina Navratilova. She was known as ‘the best man in women’s tennis.’ In saying this, I am not at all criticising how lesbian women choose to dress, but it is simply another interesting angle to look at when discussing this issue.

Are we letting women be women, or are we making them sacrifice their own unique gender qualities? Maybe the Islamic women of Malaysia have struck that healthy balance.

Enjoy your day.

Barack Obama has officially made history by becoming the first African American nominee from a major political party for US President. The months of slogging away across the nation just to get to this point has been bruising and hurtful. But he has stayed the course, and has snared the prize; the chance to take on Senator John McCain in November.

But Obama’s victory is not the most important thing here. What Hillary Clinton says and does now is. Democrats are divided, sometimes fiercely, and now that Hillary is out of the race, we are finding some of her supporters saying that they will now vote for McCain. This is a phenomenon that mystifies me.

If you are a left winger, the last thing you would do is vote for a right wing party, and vice versa. So where in God’s name is the logic in Clinton supporters turning around and paying allegiance to a conservative candidate?

Hillary has an extremely important move to make, and she needs to make it quickly. She needs to endorse Obama, and get her voters behind him, so that the full force of the Democratic party will be like a tidal wave against McCain. There is talk that she is weighing up what she should do, and it is rumoured that behind that thinking is first and foremost Hillary, not anyone else.

Yes, she does have to sure up a legacy, and yes, she does need to show that she intends to keep her position of power. But, as I have said in other blogs, if she simply looks at herself, then she will give McCain the presidency on a plate. The last thing we need is 4 more years of Republican incompetence. McCain is already rubbing his wrinkly old hands in glee that the democratic nomination race has taken so long. What he will really want now is one of two things to happen; one is for Hillary to distance herself from Obama, and make him work for every voter she has received, or two, Obama to choose Hillary as his running mate. To have Hillary dominating from the back, and Bill sniffing around Obama’s policies will only undermine the message of change, and a new beginning. McCain will exploit that to the ‘nth’ degree. He will see Obama as hypocritical and he will go to town on Bill Clinton’s flirtatious nature. The best thing for Obama to do is thank Hillary for her support, reach out to her supporters, but keep her as distant as he can from his message.

There are still many who say that there is no chance a black man will ever become President. There is no doubt this will be a tough call. What works for Obama is his opposite number. McCain is old, disliked by many in his own party, and supports the policies of George W Bush pretty much 100%. He is rumoured to have a horrible temper, and cannot even begin to compete with the huge crowds that gives Obama energy. Obama is young, vibrant, and has got more people out to vote than any other politican in American political history.

Let the momentum grow. Can he do it?

Let’s hope he can.

Enjoy your day.

Today I was listening to a podcast of my favourite late night radio show, “Late Night Live”. You have absolutely no idea how overjoyed I was to discover that on getting an Ipod last year, I was able to go online and download LNL. Since living abroad, I hadn’t listened to the program in a good 6 years and it was great to hear the dulcid tones of that lefty satirist Phillip Adams, and his amazing array of guests who talk about literally anything from ’sovereign wealth funds’ to ‘who the political players are in Tonga.’

Now you may think that all sounds terribly boring and so highbrow that it would be better than valium, but it is amazingly interesting, and I can count on one hand the amount of times that I have thought, “Nah, this interview’s boring” or “Not downloading that show. Not at all interested.”

Well, I listened to a gem today, which has inspired this post. Phillip was having one of his ‘indulgent’ shows, where he got to talk about one of his passions for the hour, and on this particular day it was books. His guests were Harold Bloom, a New York literary critic, and Bob Car, former Premier (Head of Government) of the state of New South Wales, Australia. Carr has just written a new book called My Reading Life  and Bloom has written way too many to mention.

To hear these three men sit for an hour and natter about literary works was amazing. As a child I was a book worm, but as soon as I hit secondary school, that passion for books left, and is only just starting to come back now. These three men adore books, and, in the case of Bloom, have devoured whole libraries of books, and can wax lyrical about any author, or genre of writing. To say I felt inadequate was an understatement.

It made me think though how important books are in our lives. Even if we only read, or had books read to us as a child, we all must have our favourites. My favourite childhood book was ‘Little Black Sambo’, which is now banned in most countries, and is the epitome of racism. But as a child, that never occurred to me. It was exotic, and I just thought it was funny that the tiger ran and ran around the tree until he turned into Ghi (clarified butter). Little Black Sambo then took the Ghi home to his mother and she made pancakes. Fabulous!

Adams, Carr and Bloom all believe that books should be so much part of us that they “become part of our DNA”, as Bob Carr so eloquently put it. How many books have we come across in our lives that have are so part of us or our beliefs? Name the books you couldn’t put down once you started reading them. No matter if we are the lightest or the heaviest of readers, there must be at least one book that has touched us, made us angry, made us think, made us cry, struck us dumb.

Students notoriously hate having to read books as set texts for study. I have always said to students that one day they may find the author of their dreams. I did. And it was the most unlikely of authors, too. His name was Chaim Potok, a Jewish New Yorker who wrote at least six works of fiction about the experiences of the Jewish life and wrote with such a richness that I was hooked and read every book he ever wrote. Just recently I looked on the web to find out what he is writing now, and found that he had passed away in 2002. It was like I had lost a long lost friend. Potok’s works have stayed with me forever, and one of them, ‘My Name is Asher Lev’ is still one of the most stunning pieces of fiction I have read, ever. Its complex messages, imagery, and descriptive language still live with me, and after hearing these three literary sages all agree that re-reading an old book again and again as one gets older allows you to see it through different eyes, has made me want to get my hands back onto ‘Asher Lev’ and immerse myself in the riches of that Hasidic world of New York past.

So, I hope this inspires you to get out a book and start to read, or dust off an oldie, and take a little journey down the road of rediscovery. Your DNA may never be the same.

“The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.”  ~James Bryce

Enjoy your day.

Jacqueline Pascarl would be known to few people outside of two countries; Australia and Malaysia. In 1992, her two children Iddin and Shah, were taken by their father, Prince Raja Datuk Kamarul Bahrin Shah, and taken to Malaysia. Yes, it was illegal under Australian law, and yes, we all felt for Ms. Pascarl, or as she was known then, Jacqueline Gillespie. She wote a book on the subject, ‘Once I Was a Princess’ (1995), and has recently revisited the story in her follow up book, ‘Since I Was a Princess’ (2007). After hearing a recent interview with Ms. Pascarl, a number of things just didn’t quite make me lend a sympathetic ear anymore.

Ms. Pascarl was being interviewed by journalist Jon Faine, a morning radio talk show host in Melbourne. The interview started well, as Ms.Pascarl talked about her recent reunion with her two children, now 20 and 23. While everything in the interview centred around her, and her new book, she was extremely pleasant. She was the loving, happy mother, glad to be in contact with her kids once again, after such a traumatic split.

However, as is Jon Faine’s style, he started to bring up some of the past Ms. Pascarl didn’t want to talk about. It’s very convenient to write not one, but two books about one side of the story, but what Faine wanted to bring up was the fact that Ms. Pascarl and her then husband Iain Gillespie, had the children baptised Christian, against their Muslim father’s wishes. This offended the Prince, as it was perceived as an insult to him. For those of you familiar with asian customs, keeping ‘face’ is extremely important. Faine also pressed Pascarl to admit that she hadn’t discussed this important matter with her husband at any time they were together. She angrily retorted that ‘it wasn’t the point!” Little Princess Jacqueline was not getting her way.

Needless to say that the interview went downhill from there. What did surprise me was the level of emotion Ms. Pascarl displayed. She cried, whined, and began to very quickly sound like a little child who was used to always getting her way. She was for once in her life being put under the spotlight, and made to justify the claims she has made in her books. She is happy to write the books, make plenty of money out of them, but don’t question her. She was the persecuted one. She had her children ripped away. She gets the sympathy. That’s the deal.

There is something about Ms. Pascarl that says to me she loves the attention of it all, as long as the attention is all about her, and all about her side of the story. Faine continued to pursue Pascarl thoughout her crying and whining by simply saying, and I paraphrase, ” I’m not trying to upset you, but for all these years we have only heard one side of the story.” Prince Bahrin Shah has himself written a book about his recollection of events, and Faine wanted this to be brought to the surface. To take on Pascarl when most of Australia is firmly behind her is very risky. Although Faine can be pigheaded, and a major smart arse, on this occasion he was right. He never for one moment said that he believed the Prince, and no one can deny that what the Prince did was a criminal offence.  The Parliament of Australia characterised this removal as an “abduction.”

People do things for a reason, and that reason can sometimes be provocation. We see this all the time around the world. Israel’s existence as a state is provocation to the arab. Suicide bombing is an answer to what is seen as provocation by the west. Wars in general happen because someone ‘provoked’ someone else. Dr Mahatir, the then Malaysian Prime Minister, started hating Australians after then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating provoked him by calling him ‘recalcitrant’ after his non-appearance at an APEC summit.

Jacqueline Pascarl provoked her husband. Should he have responded by abducting his children? Of course not. But Jacqueline Pascarl, as highlighted by Jon Faine, was totally insensitive to her ex husband and believed that her plan for the children was her decision alone. She obviously did not wish to see his point. Of course not. If she did, she would not have made a lot of money out of the ’sad and sorry Princess’ routine.

I remember when this was big news in Australia. Pascarl’s then husband, Iain Gillespie, always fronted the media, and fended off the tough questions. This is what I have just discovered while researching this blog:

“Upon the return of his wife’s abducted daughter Shah in 2006, her husband Bill (Crocaris) was the spokesperson for his wife to the media pack that had formed outside of their house.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Pascarl

Must come with the job of being Pascarl’s husband. She doesn’t seem to cope with an overly inquisitive media.

Enjoy your day.