Monday 7 October 2013

To "Obey" in Taipei

You may have noticed the brand OBEY. They sell T-shirts and the like for progressively oriented, young-at-heart types with the word written in bold. It is not obvious what the philosophy behind the satirical creed is, so I'm dedicating my new yellow hat to President Obama. The same Obama who ordered peaceful protesters against Don't Ask, Don't Tell to be moved along by police outside the Whitehouse back when the law was still in force; the same president who ridiculed a female Australian journalist who dared to suggest that there was a schizophrenia between the readiness for war with China symbolised by the influx of troops to the Top End of Australia and the official denial that they were looking that far north.
Recently a top journalist complained that everyone was lapping up the official story given out by the Whitehouse, and there weren't enough outsiders.  Obama, possibly embittered by the Republicans' treatment of him, has turned to increasingly authoritarian methods to impose his own agenda of "protecting" (more like spying on) the general populace.

So if anyone asks, my hat is dedicated to the farce of democracy that is the US (and Australian, and British, etc) government. If I had closer ties to China I may be worried about them spying on me too, but I'm not. I will probably never visit the Mainland again - as a person who has "experienced psychosis" they don't want to let me in, and I'm not exactly jumping up and down to go. 

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