Death by law

I'm rather suprised at the chorus of outrage and disbelief that has greeted the vicious attack on Chang Jiun Haur. Not that outrage isn't the right response for what happened. Even when attacked, it is the responsibility of the police to uphold the law. That means using minimal violence, sufficient to restrain, no more. There is no possible way that the police can claim the use of legitimate violence. The ludicrous attempt to claim that the four occupants of the car were involved in 'attempted murder' is just that - ludicrous.

What suprises me is the disbelief, the suprise that our police officers could be capable of such brutality. The disbelief has to be the result of a fairly wilful refusal to look and see what our officers (or some of our officers, let's not forget that there are good cops, and that they have a difficult time) have been doing for some time.

Even if we forget the 'small fry', the obviously overlookable detritus of society that we seem to think can be deprived of human rights because they are foreign or because they are poor, there are plenty of high profile cases that should have warned us of the nature of our cops. Top of the list, of course, is that a convicted thug was head of the police force for five years. Lest we forget, the judge who read out the conviction said "His action was inhuman. This is the worst act of indiscipline". He got a grand total of two months' imprisonment - and after his release, there were a slew of sympathetic news stories about how he was a 'broken' man.

Police officers have testified that they have seen other officers with detainees who were naked, and thought nothing of it (the officer in question was later found guilty of rape). There have been students, doctors and engineers who have complained of police brutality. At public assemblies, police have repeatedly been found guilty by the Human Rights Commission of using excessive force. Yet I can think of not a single incident where a police officer was charged.

Is it that suprising that the police behave with impunity? Is it that suprising that they think they can assault a young man and get away with it? Why should this case be any different?

The real world

Apologies for the long hiatus. I think I was getting unemployment blues, falling ill to every small germ that I perceived to be hanging around. These blues no longer linger. I am, once more, an officially productive member of society. I am working in basically, a call centre. While the work was quite interesting for the first few days, it is excrutiatingly dull now - largely because the sector I'm working for had been inundated with work, so went overboard and employed three casual workers where one was necessary.

It is, however, interesting in some ways to be at the bottom of the employment pile (in terms of office employment). The assumption is, of course, that I have barely scraped through secondary education, and am bereft of any intelligence. There are people who treat you as barely human, those who feel that it isn't worth wasting their time on you (to be fair, probably the category I fall into in the reverse situation) and the few who judge you on how they find you. And it seems to be that the higher up the pecking order, the more likely you are to judge on ability, not appearance - the most judgemental of all being one of my 'equals'.

Hm. Maybe I'm just bitching.... but I'm generally really glad to be back at work. All that stuff that lefties spout about ppl, generally, wanting to work has a fairly solid basis!

Stiiiillll, if anyone knows anyone who can offer me job in academia, I'd be very grateful!

Another NS death

My youngest sister has been chosen to go for National Service. It worries me. But I was worried about the National Service scheme from the first day it opened, if not before.

The cavalier attitude that was taken from the first with our children astounded and still astounds me. The buildings hadn't been finished, there was a strangely relaxed attitude to the recruitment of staff and even the programmes seemed a bit half-arsed. The argument was that they didn't have time... so rather than delay the precious programme, they decided to go ahead, regardless of the harm it did the kids.

It worries me that these decisions were signed off on by those who are still the leaders of our country. It worries me that they are still the ones in charge of the NS programme. It worries me that there is no transparency on what happens in the camps, or how it happens. And I am exceedingly relieved that my sister is studying overseas, so postponing (hopefully till the programme is dissolved) her recruitment to boot camp.

Illness and work rights

I've not been well. I don't like the cold. I don't like the heater. And my head seems to hurt all the time. BUT I do at last have the right to work here in Melbourne, so have started job hunting, and things are looking vague but promising.

One of the more interesting discoveries is the homophobic policies of Exabytes.com, who, I was reliably informed, have taken down the Ben's Bitches (www.bensbitches.com) site because it is on the Disarseter Records site which also hosts the Panda Head Curry (?) site *and* PHC have lyrics in one of their songs that touches on the issue of homosexuality.

The lyrics include the concern, for example, facing every young male, that if you ride on the LRT you are obviously gay because it is phallic. The song warns homosexuals not to go near the singer or he'll be mean to them. Or somesuch. But such is the level of homophobia at Exabytes that they've taken it down. The most ludicrous thing about this is that they've taken it down on the basis that the lyrics were somehow *adult* content, rather then puerile nonsense. Ah well.