I am a volunteer treasurer for an association of ministers in the Uniting Church, so every while I receive bank statements. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. We don’t spend a lot, so normally the statement only has interest credit recorded on it.

Today the statement came with a newsletter, talking about the current global financial crisis and how the institution can help those wanting more security, yada yada yada. The financial institution is managed by one of our church’s synods, so no big surprise that the newsletter is called Mustard Seed.

No big surprise, sure, but really disconcerting. It bothers me that the newsletter’s title takes me to the story of how faith can grow, and yet is used to talk about money.

Should I be bothered?

Highlights of 2008:

1. Kevin Rudd said sorry.
2. I got a keynote gig at an international conference.
3. They accidentally introduced me as Professor Emerson.
4. They thought I was funny.
5. Someone called me a world expert in online religion.
6. I fell in love with both Santiago and Edinburgh.
7. I met the girl who has been making my brother so happy (and could see why!).
8. My daughter told me she wants to be a stand-up comedian when she grows up (I had never been so proud. I actually had tears).
9. A whole lot of rich people lost money.

Disappointments of 2008:

1. Brendan Nelson said “sorry, but.”
2. They thought I was so funny at the keynote gig that nobody actually wanted to talk more about the research.
3. A whole lot of poor people lost money.
4. Santiago and Edinburgh are both very jealous cities (thank God Thatcher and Pinochet aren’t around anymore).

Have a fantastic 2009, everyone. In 2009 I will get a PhD and lose enough weight so I can fit into a leotard so I can front a David Bowie tribute band. Who’s with me?

On 13 February 2008, the Australian parliament finally gave an apology to its citizens for its country’s history of abuse to indigenous people. The month beforehand, we knew it was going to happen. Well, we knew that at least the Prime Minister would give an apology. We hoped that the Leader of the Opposition would give a positive response, and he did, though many of us were (well, I was) disappointed at his repeated grasp for excuses - We thought we were doing the right thing. We though we were helping them. - in contrast to the unconditional apology given by the PM.

In January loads of us Aussies sent emails and wrote letters to our local MP, if they were in opposition to the governing party, to ask them to support the governments move to say sorry. We were happy the Labor government was going to apologise, but we dreamed of a nonpartisan unified step toward healing. Appealing to our Liberal and National party MPs was the best strategy. GetUp Australia provided us with the words to send, so all we had to do was press a button somewhere.

My MP was (and still is) Dr Sharman Stone. When the Libs/Nats were in government Dr Stone was a parliamentary secretary on a number of issues and projects, yet I always thought she had so little power given she represented the most conservative electorate in the country. I must confess, though I respected her as a hard-working and qualified MP, I didn’t like everything I knew about her, and I especially didn’t like the party she worked for and defended. Working for an agency that received government funds to support indigenous and refugee communities, and advocate for them, I always got my back up when she passed the blame on to us for problems her government caused.

After the Libs/Nats lost to Labor in our national election in November 07, and the new Leader of the Opposition chose its shadow cabinet, Dr Stone was called to be the Opposition Spokesperson on Indigenous Issues. Given her apparent unconditional support for the Lib/Nat “crackdown” in indigenous communities that year (which I had always believed to be little less than a campaign against civil freedoms), I thought it would be like appointing a shark to be the Opposition Spokesperson of Swimmers and Surfers.

I was proved wrong in mid February, 6 days after the PM’s apology and the Opposition Leader’s weak response, when a letter arrived in the post from Dr Stone’s office:

About the ’sorry’ business

It is my long held personal belief that it is time for every Australian Government on behalf of the nation to say sorry to Aboriginal Australians who were victims of misguided policy based on false assumptions about racial superiority.

[...] I believe [the victims of this policy] deserve whatever closure and healing a national acknowledgement and saying we are sorry might bring.

Successive Australian governments, mirroring similar policies in Canada, New Zealand and the USA forcibly removed mixed race children from their native mothers. The intent was the “saving” of the mixed blood child from the “taint” of the “dying out” race of their indigenous mothers. Through forced assimilation and exclusion from the mother’s culture and kin, it was hoped that these paler skinned children would come to take their “rightful” place in the Australian economy and society of the future.

This was never a policy of rescuing neglected or vulnerable children.

[...]

The last surviving first hand victims of these policies; the mothers, and their children and grandchildren want the nation to acknowledge their history and their loss.

Let’s hope a bi-partisan apology sincerely expressed helps with the healing. And by acknowledging out past, may it also help to ensure our great society continues to evolve towards an even more fair and tolerant future.

Bold emphasis mine

Dr Stone, please accept my apology to you. My lack of confidence in you was due to my identifying you according to your party and its leaders, and neglecting to find out about you as an individual. If I had done so I would have wished that, even if for only the 13 February 2008, you were the Leader of the Opposition. You would have been top favourite.

Also, my apologies for only posting this now. Your letter got lost in a pile of PhD stuff that I’ve just begun to clean up. I hope you are satisfied with a better-late-than-never.

Pew has just released its latest Global Attitudes Project report: Global Public Opinion in the Bush Years (2001-2008). You can read it here, but I can give you a taste.

“The U.S. image abroad is suffering almost everywhere. Particularly in the most economically developed countries, people blame America for the financial crisis. Opposition to key elements of American foreign policy is widespread in Western Europe, and positive views of the U.S. have declined steeply among many of America’s longtime European allies. In Muslim nations, the wars in Afghanistan and particularly Iraq have driven negative ratings nearly off the charts. The United States earns positive ratings in several Asian and Latin American nations, but usually by declining margins. And while the most recent Pew Global Attitudes survey finds that favorable views of America edged up in 2008, only in sub-Saharan Africa does America score uniformly favorable marks.”

“Finally, citizens of predominantly Muslim nations express positive views of democracy, as do those of other developing countries. In the 2006 survey, majorities or pluralities in five Muslim countries said democracy was not appropriate just for the West but could work for them as well. Included were some of America’s toughest critics, such as Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan.”

I have not been in the USA since 1999. I found everyone I met to be brilliantly open and friendly; even passers-by on the street talked to me as if I was not a stranger. In the decade since being there I had grown a disdain for all things American, saw their government as bloodyminded on colonising the world, and their spiritual leaders (you know, Oprah, Deepak, Phil and the like) as, well, capitalist reductionists, i.e. the most important problems are yours and can only be solved by the next great idea that comes along.

May I go so far as to propose that America is as much a victim of bad PR as Islam? Probably not. But I, the everyday average chardonnay socialist in suburban Oz, am led to feel a little proud of his anti-USAness in favour of a more global sensibility. And most of my American friends feel the same. I think it’s time for a change. Obama may be a catalyst for it, but only in that he will have some impact on the global PR machine that governs what we hear and see about both forces.