Simon Rumble’s blog

We're still in Hoi An, it's still raining but we have some fantastic clothes. We've been hanging out with a couple of poms and Irish people which has been fun. Not much else to do in the rain.

We tried our clothes out last night. They're fantastic! I've US$120 and have the following tailor made:

• A grey Ho Chi Minh style suit with straight collar
• A normal, boring black business suit
• A green silk business shirt
• A green silk tie to match
• Two cotton business shirts
• Two funky elephant design hippy shirts
• A very good corduroy Winter jacket made from a picture in a fashion magazine
• A black shirt with orange and yellow flames embroidered on it.

Gotta love this place! Holly has also had a few dresses and a great red duffle coat made. Michael's had three suits and a bunch of shirts made. Our biggest problem now is carting all this crap the rest of the way up the coast of Vietnam. We'll have to buy another bag :)

Tomorrow morning we're heading up to Hue. From the weather map it looks like it's pouring there and apparently much of the town is under water. If that's the case we probably won't stay long, missing some of the Royal Tombs and other sights, and head for Hanoi which appears to be dryer.

Still more than two weeks to go in this country and loving it!

Not much to report. We spent the day on the bus from Hoi An to Hue. It's still raining (sounding like a scratched record). Tomorrow we'll try and get onto a boat ride on the Perfume River to see the tombs, then we're on the bus at 6pm to Hanoi.

It's the big killer of a bus ride: 16 hours in one hit. It's only about 650 kms but on the goat track they call a road, that's how long it takes...

More when we have more to report.

Keep watching this page for updates about where Holly, Michael and Simon are and to hear about their adventures.

There have been recent press reports about an unreleased report on anti-semitism in Europe claiming it is on the rise. I'm not sure it every went away.

On that note, you may have been on the receiving end of a rant from me about lazy thinking with regard to the state of Israel. In particular, I always strongly and rigorously anyone who uses comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. This kind of comparison is not only intellectually lazy, it is dangerous ground that puts you in the anti-semite, nationalist camp.

The simplest way to demolish this kind of argument is that, of course, Israel may well be doing horrible things but there is no systematic attempt to wipe out an entire race of people. But it's the thinking behind such statements that is truly scary.

During a recent discussion on Plastic, someone mentioned this great article from a Dutch anti-racist organisation. It's a fantastic piece that goes through some of the key pieces of lazily argued beliefs that are commonly held by otherwise sensitive, anti-racist left-wing people. Well worth a read!

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exchausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban

The great news is that ERA have abandoned the Jabiluka mine in possibly the most incredible environmental win in Australia since the Franklin campaign. Absolutely incredible!

In case you don't know about it, in 1991 Energy Resources Australia bought the Jabiluka uranium mine from Pancontinental. They immediately set about trying to develop the mine, to enormous popular opposition amongst Australians and particularly the native traditional owners of the land. The Jabiluka mining lease is inside the Kakadu World Heritage National Park, one of the most beautiful yet fragile regions in the world.

A massive and highly popular campaign swung into action, with possibly one of the most recognisable and extensively-used logos ever used in a political campaign. Rallies, benefits and a huge blockade of the remote mine showed the massive popular opposition to the mine.

Of course Australia's government never caved to the opposition. The mine has closed due to low uranium prices and the high cost of defying the popular opposition to the project. This just goes to show the power of secondary lobbying and boycotts in these kinds of campaigns.

I wasn't enormously involved in the campaign (apart from some silly fines in 1999), but it's hard to put into words how proud I feel that we've won. It's a great day for the environment movement. Congratulations to all those who were involved.

The Free State Project is an interesting idea run by a bunch of no-government, libertarian, gun freak nutjobs. The plan is to get 20,000 people who share their paranoid world-view to move to one sparsely-populated state, tipping the balance of voters in their direction. Interesting idea, pity about the people pushing it.

The idea is to repeal all those big-government, freedom-infringing laws in the state and re-draft the state constitution in a libertarian frame. Of course, the thing they forget is that most of the bad, freedom-sapping legislation in the USA is imposed by the federal government. So of course the only laws they'll really be able to influence are evil things like welfare, keeping AK-47s out of your neighbour's hands and taxes to pay for terrible things like schools and roads.

If successful, and that's pretty doubtful, the next step is of course to secede from the US. That's just not gonna happen. Any smart federalist would, I imagine, be planning to gently up the number of troops garrisoned in New Hampshire, the libertarian nutjobs' choice of state to invade.

But anyway, my point in all this is that it could be very interesting if it succeeded, even only partially. This is the kinda thing that could well bring the whole empire crashing down, as the wealthy middle classes start resenting more and more the taxes they think go to pay spongers on welfare but are actually funding US military terror and massive subsidies to the rich. If enough middle class yankees got interested in this kinda idea, and it started looking like there might be the chance of success, you can bet the US government will end up with troops out on the streets. Freedom-loving (read: gun nut) Yanks get kinda uppity about that sort of intervention.

Could be interesting. Then again, it could well end in a whole heap of squabbling over tactics, the hard-line libertarians ("my right to bear child porn") versus the pragmatists. Either way, loads of fun for all!

Recently there's been speculation about Bob Carr making the move to Federal politics in Australia. But when will he make his move?

He'll let Crean stumble through the next election, handing another victory to Howard and biding his time in NSW. When Howard passes the baton to Costello after the next election, he'll make his move. Costello will be wildly unpopular, of course, given his sneakiness and his general smarminess, though he is actually a very intelligent man but then so was John Hewson.

Carr is a sneaky, slimy and incredibly efficient political player. He really knows how to think strategically, shaft the right people and grease the way when he needs to get through. He's also good at identifying hatchet-men to take on his dirty work, Costa being the current (contrast with Howard's Wilson Tuckey and fall-guy Reith), while remaining clean himself.

In short, the NSW Right can and will be the place where the next Labor Prime Minister emerges. Sad but true. At least we'll know what to expect: economic "rational"ism, greenwashing, lip-service to liberty, tough-on-crime etc etc

Today started rather inauspiciously. Yawn. Bash alarm off. Crawl out of bed. Grunt at girlfriend. Remember it's a weekday and (ugh) I have to go to work.

Then when I got to work, one of my colleagues mentions that Pauline's been sent down. Suddenly the clouds parted, the sun came out and the angels sang. What a glorious day!

If there is a Bob, she'll be sharing a cell with a big half-aboriginal, half-tongan woman named Bruce. With a bad temper. And an irrational fear of redheads.

Actually it'd probably do to have a cellmate with a brain larger than a dim sim. Doesn't take much to run rings around Australia's sourest white whine.

Now let's just hope it spells the end to One Notion.

Looks like Apple and the music industry have worked out that the music industry is over. So they've mounted a rear-guard assault to try and claw it back. Let's go through the problems, shall we.

To start with, it's Mac-only so you've just cut out the majority of your market. Next, you have to use Apple's horrible borg-like iTunes: resistance is futile. Am I the only one who sees that Apple is actually more monopolistic than Microsoft, given half the chance?

Okay so they're techie problems I have with it, and to be expected from Apple. The real problem is that it sticks with the "I own this record" model of music. Sorry guys, it's not gonna work that way any more. We're used to it being free now, so you'll have to make it way convenient to get us to pay.

How about giving us access to every piece of music ever recorded? I'd pay for that. Hell, I'd pay the price of an album-a-month for that! And no, I don't mean just every piece of music that Britney has recorded.

Of course there's another big problem here: Apple won't ever get a cent from me ever again. Hell hath no fury like a fucked-over Evangelista. Remember the Newton!

I used to be incredibly impressed by Claire Short's principled stance on issued of development and peace. She had the balls to put her cabinet post on the line over important issues.

But I always had the nagging suspicion that she was being used. Labour always seemed to roll her up whenever they had something of a leftie-friendly nature to announce. And whenever they were doing something incredibly dodgy, she was always allowed much more length on the leash to criticise the government's, her government's, policy. Any other front bencher would be raked over the coals for such forthright statements, yet she seemed to get away with it. I always assumed she was the token leftie on the New Labour cabinet.

So then came the big mother of all confrontations between Short and Blair over Iraq. She announced in quite plain terms that she would quit the government should the country go to war with Iraq without UN approval. When they called her bluff, she backed down and probably lost most of her support, certainly mine.

So now she's gone, when it's way too late to make any difference. It's sad to seee someone who clearly had her heart in the right place let the politics of expedience completely destroy her tactical good sense.