Caveat Emptor

Unintended self-portrait with a cellphone.

I recently saw a film (out on DVD) about a bunch of Australian TV journalists - there was also a Kiwi cameraman amongst them - who went to East Timor to report on what was happening there at the height of that country’s problems.

After centuries of Portuguese occupation the country wanted independence, but Indonesia was about to invade it and claim it for itself - and it had the full support and knowledge of the likes of the US under President Gerald Ford and his Foreign Secretary, Henry Kissinger.

Australia was one of the few other countries that recognized the new East Timor.

Balibo, starring Anthoy LaPaglia and Oscar Isaac as eventual Nobel peace prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, expects us to feel sorry for the journos who were out to prove that Indonesia had warships hovering around the country, and they were.

We are also meant to feel outrage that the Australian government knew about all of this, including the journos’ plight, and did what most countries do when they can profit from or be embarrassed by such a situation. They shut up - for a long time.

This is exactly what happened and the journalists were massacred, which is awful.

But wait a bit. They were given a chance to get out by the rebel forces, including Ramos-Horta, but no, they somehow thought they could fight advancing troops with cameras and mics and then plead journalistic rights.

This is insane. With all respect to the journos and the families involved, what history teaches us is that the truth comes out anyway, eventually, and in this case it didn’t have too much to do with whether our white boys were involved or not.

About a seventh of the East Timorese population was killed, regardless.

All of this is a rather long-winded way of saying that a similar sentiment is at work in Inside Job, the Oscar-nominated documentary by Charles Ferguson about how the current recession came about.

Yes, it was evil what the likes of Goldman Sachs were selling the world a future that did not exist – effectively a Ponzi scheme, as one commentator said - but then the world, meaning about six million gullible Americans, wasn’t forced to buy that dream.

They walked into the trap with their eyes wide open and their minds tightly shut. They wanted that dream house so badly that they never wondered why they wouldn’t have to pay off on it for the first two years.

For believing all the economic bilge the banks and the ratings agencies spoke, they lost their houses and the rest of us tightened our belts considerably, worldwide, and I speak from personal experience.

South Africa was one of the few countries that wasn’t such a willing participant in that global gang bang, but then if the rest of that country’s government had been as astute as its finance minister we’d still be talking about the miracle, not the monsters.

What makes the film important is that it shows how money people talk complete and utter rubbish, from the highest echelons of Wall Street to those in academe but, even more sickening, how those who caused so much pain were not punished but promoted, just as it is politically in South Africa.

And the madness didn’t stop with George W Bush; all those big players are now advisers in Barack Obama’s government, bless their thousand dollar socks.

Should there be more regulation, as the film, narrated by Matt Damon, argues? The likes of Alan Greenspan – who politely declined to be interviewed for this film, just like all the others who have now been appointed by Obama - were vehemently against it.

They argue that market forces should determine the economy, even though they are the ones who are now effectively running it – and therefore the body politic and thus the world, for now – and they are right.

Caveat emptor. The buyer should (always) be aware.

Regulators can be just as corrupt as these greedy bastards and, as long as ordinary folk vote for systems and people that allow CEOs to give themselves half a billion dollar annual bonuses, they get what they deserve.

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Ad-ditionally

There has been a series of rather delightful ads on New Zealand TV, featuring a (childless, it seems) married couple. She’s your average Sarah, he’s your hairy, bearded redhead Jim of Scottish extraction and not exactly lean.

In the one ad he’s mowing the lawn and she’s watching him, giving him the sexual come-on. By the time he swaggers into the house, clearly ready to do the caveman thing in just his shorts, the parents-in-laws have arrived, mouths gaping.

In another the couple are playing charades with the folks, at the folks’ house, and Jim, not being a delicate fella, is trying to get them to guess what movie he’s enacting, threatening to tip the precious china vase in the process. But they just don’t get it.

Jim finally grabs a porcelain aeroplane and a model gorilla, which just happens to be at hand, and the old man shouts, desperately, “Kong! King Kong!” Just don’t break the bloody china.

This is clever because it refers to Kiwi uber-director Peter Jackson’s remake of that famous film, thus engendering further pride in the local film culture, and it manages to convey a world of underlying family relationships in a matter of moments – with a great deal of charm.

But then it’s not so clever from the advertiser’s point of view, since I cannot for the life of me remember what the name is of the insurance company being advertised.

Neil Sonnekus