9/11 my thoughts

[Tea]

It's not in the slightest difficult to believe, JTR. Indeed, it is exactly as I would have expected, though I was not aware that NYC was quite so different as you relate. (Is it a little like Berlin, which Berliners and Germans alike seem to regard as a world apart?)

One of the interesting things about Australia is just how little difference there is between the individual states. Is this a function of the relative youth of the country, or is there some other reason? The latter, I think. Some people still say that they can pick the difference between, say, a South Australian and a Queenslander just by their accent. Bullshit. I'm pretty good at accents (being an ape helps) and I can sometimes make a correct guess - Queenslanders and Territorians tend to speak a little more slowly than those from NSW or Victoria, South Australians sometimes have a detectable tone - but these are tiny, tiny differences, and a professional linguist with expertise in the field might manage to guess correctly perhaps ten percent more often than he could manage just by flipping a coin.

There are a few specific terms that are different though. For example -

this little fellow is called a Mud Lark in Victoria and South Australia, a Pee-wee in NSW and Queensland. Both names are so well-established (it is a very common bird) that neither one could be used for the formal name without great controversy. (Unlike most plants and animals, which have a formal scientific name and as many common names as anyone cares to use - quite often seven different creatures will have the same common name, which makes it useless for any scientific purpose - birds have a latin name and a formal common name, which is precise and unambiguous. There is, in other words, a one-to-one correspondance between the scientific names and the common names, so that if I say "Striated Grasswren" it can only mean Amytornis striatus.

(Tea! What the hell are you rambling on about? Get back to the point!)

(Sorry.)

(Err, Tannin? Do you think those medications are doing us any good?)

(Probably not, Tea. You seem to be coping with them better than I am, but I don't think you are as immune as you think. Steve said I should try some Xanax - whatever that is. Worth a try?)

(Might as well. I doubt it could make you much worse.)

Ahem. Culture. Regional differences. Australian states. Yes.

The most visible differences, oddly enough, are sporting ones. First up, they play different codes in different states: In Queensland and especially NSW it's mostly Rugby League, but in the rest of the country it's the real McCoy. But the language is different. When the umpire takes the ball and hurles it into the turf so that it bounces high to start or re-start the game, it's called a "ball up". Except if you are from Western Australia, in which case it's a "bounce down". Now these terms were inviolable, unquestioned. Being a Victorian, I never, ever heard the term "bounce down" in my whole life until I was about 30, when the national league was formed. And my opposite number in WA or SA would probably not have known what a "ball up" was. But as soon as the competion went nation-wide (instead of being a number of seperate local comps) we got radio broadcasts of (say) West Coast vs North Melbourne, and if it was a West Coast home game, the broadcast would come from the ABC in Western Australia.

It was bad enough having to listen to those incredibly biased commentators (and yes, they were: real "home town" stuff) but what used to get on people's nerves was hearing the ball up called a "bounce down" (and several other similar linguistic things). One of those entirely trivial matters that somehow just grate on you.

But here is my point: now, ten years or more since the national league began, the Victorian commentators have begun to call it a "bounce down" - quite unconsciously, I'm sure - and I'd be very, very surprised to discover that the Western Australians hadn't picked up various of the Victorian terms as well. The country is becoming homogenised, the same in all parts; we are loosing what small traces of local identity and culture we once had. Much worse, there is an ever-increasing tendency to pick up foreign terms - almost always American - and insert them into the language too. When a player takes a shot at goal, suddenly everyone is saying a "shot on goal" - which is not only ugly, it's ungramatical. Hey - there is nothing wrong with American Football: it's a great game and I like to watch it. But if we want to play gridiron, we should play the real thing, not stuff about changing our game so that it's a half-arsed compromise between the two.

What I'm getting at here is that (in these two tiny examples) we are seeing a gradual erosion of the differences between different parts of the world. As communications improve, this mixing and homogonisation becomes ever stronger, and local cultures and local identities dissapear. Before too long, we shall have lost them forever.

Does that matter? Is not change an essential and vital part of the world? Yes: of course - but when we change 17 local cultures and replace them with one, homogenised one, we have gained one good thing, and lost sixteen good things.

 

[Fushigi]

For some reason, although it's always been technically part of America, NYC is really a huge collection of small, ethnic neighborhoods, totally different than middle America.

I would say NYC is not that different from middle America. Chicago has distinct Polish, Irish, Hispanic, Ukrainian, Greek, Chinese, African-American (a term I dislike), etc. areas. Extending to the suburbs you will also find many pockets of Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, and other Ethnicans. A decent chunk of the city & the surrounding suburbs are blended, but there are many, many neighborhoods where English is the second language.

Even my somewhat smaller (<100,000 pop) suburb has black, Indian, and Hispanic areas.

- Fushigi

 

[Buck]

I would say NYC is not that different from middle America.
- Fushigi

Have you ever been to Brooklyn? Just go to Williamsburg Brooklyn.

 

[cas]

What is "culture"? It is a system of ideas and beliefs and common values and shared experiences, which are passed on from one generation to another. By owning and controlling the mechanism through which these shared ideas and experiences are communicated, the international media companies (which are overwhelmingly American, of course) have the ability to shape, change, and disrupt the cultures of all the nations that they control, and they use this ability constantly.

There is a fairly strong, anti-American undercurrent to this and other recent threads, expressed through the same tired platitudes one commonly hears about the press and popular culture. I can't help but wonder how Londoners felt in the 1960s, when a wealthy young Australian decided not only to buy The Sun, but materially change its content.

Rupert Murdoch was born in Melbourne Australia on March 11th, 1931. His modus operandi has been to buy media properties, and move them down market with a distinctively conservative editorial style.

Intellectuals around the world have lamented at Murdoch's "lowest common denominator" approach for many years. Even so, he has proven time and time again, that he is selling what the public wants.

Today, Murdoch owns and influences, Fox television, sports, and film, Star in Asia, BSkyB, including SkyNews in the UK, a large number of newspapers in Australia, the UK, and the USA, as well as publisher HarperCollins.

I blame neither Australia, nor Murdoch for "When good pets go bad". As he said years ago, "I'm rather sick of snobs who tell us they're bad papers, snobs who only read papers that no-one else wants". In a capitalist society, the people get what the people want.

Although I am uninterested in much of Fox's programming, I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[Dozer]

Even my somewhat smaller (<100,000 pop) suburb has black, Indian, and Hispanic areas.

I grew up in Melrose Park, a suburb of Chicago, and most of my friends were Hispanic, black, Italian, Indian, and Polish. While this particular community was blended, there were many, many ethnic communities all over the Chicago area, sort of like a small country within a city. I believe that many cities are similar to NYC in this way.

 

[Tea]

If there is a "fairly strong anti-American undercurrent to this and other recent threads", then it is simply because when discussion turns to matters of world cultures, that is the way most of the world sees things. No more, no less. Back in the days of the British Empire, there was a strong anti-British undercurrent almost everywhere except Britan. During the rule of the South-east Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, Japan was unpopular. One assumes that Rome was not popular in 100AD. It's a fact. Deal with it. (Hint: the empires that lasted the longest dealt with these issues by attempting to understand and work with their conquered provinces and client states, went to some considerable trouble to take account of local differences. The ones that lasted the shortest time used B-52s, or whatever the nearest available equivalent was at the time.)

Cas writes: "I can't help but wonder how Londoners felt in the 1960s, when a wealthy young Australian decided not only to buy The Sun, but materially change its content." I'll give you London to a brick that they were appalled. I certainly would have been. Murdoch is no longer Australian, nor is his company Australian. He pretends to be Australian for regulatory purposes now and then, just as (with a little more justice) he pretends to be American for the same reasons in a different place, and for taxation purposes he pretends to be something else entirely. I haven't seen Murdoch's figures to remember, but I saw Kerry Packer's tax bill one year (Packer is the richest man in Australia) and it was tiny. There was quite a fuss about it - questions in the house, the whole bit - but it didn't seem to rate a headline in the Packer press, for some reason that escapes me.

Have you ever heard Murdoch interviewed or giving a speech? He has a very strong, quite unmistakable American accent. No-one would ever mistake him for an Australian, let alone an Englishman. Except, possibly, an American - because there is something odd, something 'wrong" about the way Murdoch talks. It's American but it's not quite right. Now and again I hear other Australian-born people who have lived most of their adult lives in the US, and there is a similar, indefinable "wrongness" to their speech. It is obviously American, and yet it's not quite a "proper" American accent. Somewhere underneath there remains a well-hidden dash of strine, I think. But I cannot hear it, not directly, for I am so used to hearing strine that I don't really hear it at all, it's just "natural". But I should imagine that someone who is not used to hearing Australian voices, simply because it is unfamiliar and thus obvious, would pick it up straight away.

PS: from time to time I see an English or American TV show or movie that happens to have an Australian character in it. Sometimes, they cast a local actor and he or she has to put on an Aussie accent - and generally speaking, makes a terrble mess of it. It doesn't sound anything like the real thing. I assume that, when we make a movie and cast an American or an Englishman in it, our local actors make just as bad a mess. It sounds OK to me (at least I don't recall anyone getting it horribly wrong), but then that's just it. I wouldn't hear the difference.

 

[cas]

I'll give you London to a brick that they were appalled. I certainly would have been. Murdoch is no longer Australian…

I am sure they were. I am equally sure that Murdoch had a strong Australian accent at the time(60s).

When I was a lad, I ate Australian beef, watched Australian television, listened to INXS, and learned to read and write from Australian "English" teachers. Yet, I have never lived in Australia.

My point is that American companies are not alone in exporting goods, music, or film. They are certainly not alone in purchasing foreign corporations.

Furthermore, I have never gone for fish and chips in the US, and complained that they were not called fish and fries.

 

[James]

James, I had no idea cane toads had penetrated so far south. You really should be more discreet. :bigeek: :eek4:

*shrug* I've said what I think. Several people in the thread have said essentially the same things subsequent to my post. It's a defensible view, even if you don't agree with it.

 

[jtr1962]

Chicago has distinct Polish, Irish, Hispanic, Ukrainian, Greek, Chinese, African-American (a term I dislike), etc. areas. Extending to the suburbs you will also find many pockets of Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, and other Ethnicans. A decent chunk of the city & the surrounding suburbs are blended, but there are many, many neighborhoods where English is the second language.

Even my somewhat smaller (<100,000 pop) suburb has black, Indian, and Hispanic areas.

- Fushigi

Chicago is probably a great deal like New York in that respect. In fact, most large American cities have their own unique characteristics. I really meant middle America suburbs when I said middle America, especially those built in the last 20 or 30 years. Those are truly homogenous, bland American culture. They may even have a mix of races, but they are usually thoroughly Americanized and retain little of their original culture. Such is not the case in large cities, even among those who have been here several generations. A quick trip to downtown Flushing will confirm this-about half the stores there have only Chinese or Korean signs, and you might as well be in Hong Kong when you go to Chinatown in lower Manhattan, and Little Italy is right across Canal Street. Williamsburg in Brooklyn, mentioned by Buck, is populated by an Orthodox Hasidic Jewish population who retain their own unique identity despite being here for a number of generations. And there are Russian, Indian, Irish, German, Jamaican, Haitan, and many other enclaves everywhere, in total well over 100 groups have a fairly good representation. The amazing thing is we all get along fairly well most of the time despite our differences. A pity the world can't learn a lesson here.

One point lost here was that this event is getting worldwide coverage(albeit excessive) because nearly every country lost someone in the attacks. It wasn't just Americans killed.

 

[time]

*shrug* I've said what I think. Several people in the thread have said essentially the same things subsequent to my post. It's a defensible view, even if you don't agree with it.

Now, now, don't get shirty.

20 years ago if you went out for a meal in Australia, to use your example, your choice was basically bad UK-inspired food (meat and 3 veg, all overcooked), or the early stages of fast food such as you describe.

I responded with incredulity because you were flat wrong. Fifty years ago you might have been more or less right, but Melbourne has had Italian restaurants since at least 1928! Chinese take-aways seem to have been around forever, and thirty years ago we could get pizza and Greek take-away in country Queensland, which would surely be the last stronghold of meat and three veg!

Twenty years ago there were more French restaurants in Brisbane than there are today, including the wonderful Scaramouche, set in a stone church (it was bulldozed during the reign of the infamous Joh and replaced with an overpass pillar). A team from the Cloak and Dagger scottish restaurant won the international Culinary Olympics.

We bought excellent hamburgers and homemade gourmet pies (the maker prepared the filling with wine and herbs in a slow cooker). In Cairns, I was able to walk down the street and sample restaurants from half a dozen different nationalities (I remember the Swiss fondue best).

And you stand there and tell me that all we had was meat and 3 veg? :roll:

Kmart and shops like it have brought a huge choice of products out to where people live and offered them at prices more and more people can afford.

Kmarts are found in large shopping centres, strictly the province of dense urban areas. If you can name me one product, any product, that they were the first to bring to us grateful consumers, then I'll reconsider my disdain.

To quote from Rainman, "KMart sucks". They offer inferior knockdowns of original products. What they have succeeded in doing is displace specialist merchants who actually had some clue about what they were selling. As long as I can remember, there has always been a better place to shop. :-?

 

[James]

I responded with incredulity because you were flat wrong. Fifty years ago you might have been more or less right, but Melbourne has had Italian restaurants since at least 1928! Chinese take-aways seem to have been around forever, and thirty years ago we could get pizza and Greek take-away in country Queensland, which would surely be the last stronghold of meat and three veg!

My point was not in the specifics but in the general. (Besides, we're only discussing one specific example of a wider change.) Today there is an enormous range of cuisines, and it is widespread across the country. Even I can tell the huge difference between what things were like food-wise 20-25 years ago here and what they are like today. Much of what there was 20 years ago was pretty dull and uninspired, and the range was limited compared to today. Sure the pinnacles of excellence in various forms of cuisine in Australia remain usually in the big cities, but the corner Chinese takeaway in Broken Hill today is streets better than it was in 1980. And as I said Australian cuisine itself has benefited enormously over the years as well.

Kmarts are found in large shopping centres, strictly the province of dense urban areas. If you can name me one product, any product, that they were the first to bring to us grateful consumers, then I'll reconsider my disdain.

I never said Kmart and its ilk were first with anything. What I did say was that Kmart brought a wide range of products at prices people were able to pay. Is it better than what went before? You and I may not think so, but it's sort of moot given that large stores filled with very wide ranges of lower grade products and staffed by uninformed sales people is now the norm, and it's because that's what the buying public has chosen.

 

[Pradeep]

Globalisation is OK, but it only works well if everyone opens their markets too, otherwise we are not playing on a level playing field. So the end result is that Aussie markets are wide open, yet the US and much of Europe continues to provide massive subsidies to their primary producers. Not to mention large tariffs to prop up local product.

 

[cas]

No one is more disgusted with US tariffs and subsidies than I am. In fact, I have had a wonderful time in Pittsburgh, speaking out against the recent, embarrassing US steel tariffs (Pittsburgh is the historical home of American steel).

That said, it is Australia that has made hard-core social-engineering protectionism a back bone of its economy since the time of Alfred Deakin, roughly 100 years ago. While the changes of the last twenty years are welcome, there is still plenty of lost time to be made up for.

Nevertheless, the point still stands. The United States can hardly claim to champion free trade, while it continues to subsidize farmers, and impose tariffs.

That's it, I am moving back to Hong Kong

 

[Tea]

it is Australia that has made hard-core social-engineering protectionism a back bone of its economy since the time of Alfred Deakin, roughly 100 years ago. While the changes of the last twenty years are welcome, there is still plenty of lost time to be made up for.

Good God! What century are you living in? Just what products do you think are subject to tariff or import restriction in modern-day Australia? We began slashing tariffs in 1972 - thirty years ago - and kept on slashing until there was nothing left. (I may disagree with the wisdom of this policy, but no-one can argue with its reality.)

 

[cas]

Effective rates of protection to manufacturing industries Australia, 1968-69 to 1981-82 (per cent)

Years                   1968-69  1973-74  1981-82  
Textiles                43       35       54  
Clothing & footwear     97       64       204  
Motor vehicles & parts  50       38       124  
Other manufacturing     32       23       14  
Total manufacturing     36       27       26

Source: Anderson & Garnout 1986, p.163.

204% protection on clothing and footwear 20 years ago. This is a rate, even Brazil would be embarrassed of. Not exactly "nothing".

 

[Tea]

My question was: what century are you living in?

In this century "the average tariff for the industrial sector applied by Australia is ... 4.5%. This average rate include tariffs of 0.8% for raw materials, up to 5.9% for transformed products and 6.9% for manufactured products."

Clothing tariffs continue to drop. They are currently 25% and scheduled to drop to 17.5% in 2005. Footwear is presently 15% and will drop to 10% in 2005.

(Source: "Bilateral Trade Relations" European Union On-line, http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/bilateral/australia/australia.htm )

Motor vehicles and parts have a 15% duty, going to 10% in 2005, and 5% in 2010.

(Source: www.auto.com/reuters/2002-07-29T210342Z_01_SYD27.htm )

Of course, the wisdom of this "we will just drop all our protections and ignore the fact that most of our trading partners lie, cheat and blackmail their way to not doing the same" policy is another matter. I'm all for free trade and efficiency, but this business of going it alone is just lunacy.

 

[cas]

the changes of the last twenty years are welcome

You must not have read my post.

 

[Tea]

Australia ... has made hard-core social-engineering protectionism a back bone of its economy

"Has made" = used to and still does
"Once made" = used to but does not anymore.

I read it.

Those familiar with the Australian economy well recall the end of "Black Jack" McEwan's protectionist policy era. Protectionism was mortally wounded in 1972 when the Whitlam government slashed protection across the board. The massive unemployment that resulted was the main reason that Whitlam was booted out of office in 1975. Despite the figures Anderson & Garnout cite, protection was well and truly on the wane by 1974, never mind 1982. The incoming Fraser Government moved more slowly than Whitlam did, but rolled back protection rules one by one just the same. Some of those weird-looking numbers A&G cite were the result of short-term emergency measures to keep unemployment under 20 percent. They worked, just. The Hawke/Keating Government that followed Fraser went into high gear on the protection issue, and the present Howard Goverment shows no sign of varying from that stance. Both major parties are united on this.

The fact that our economy has survived these massive changes - many welcome and long overdue, but quite a few incredibly stupid and short-sighted ones as well - with only a relatively modest drop in our stand of living is a testament not to good management or wise policy, but to the average Australian's adaptability and willingness to work hard, to a massive sell-off of capital resources, and to the excellent service infrastructure we then had. (I have in mind our education, transport, health-care and utility systems, none of which has survived the last twenty years intact. All four can be expected to deteriorate a good deal further, alas, and the flow-on effect will impact the entire nation.)

 

[cas]

I clearly acknowledged the changes of the past twenty years in my post. While Australia's reductions on passenger vehicle and apparel tariffs are impressive, they remain higher than their US equivalents, even today.

I applaud Australia for finally joining the free trade bandwagon, but given its long history of protectionism, it's probably a bit premature to start throwing stones just yet.

 

[Pradeep]

The 2002 US Farm Bill. Need I say more?

"We Stunk Up the Outback"

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett052202.asp

 

[flagreen]

The 2002 US Farm Bill. Need I say more?

"We Stunk Up the Outback"

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_bartlett/bartlett052202.asp

Pretty interesting article Pradeep, thanks for posting it.