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The migrant problem

AUSTRALIA is a nation of migrants. Apart from the Aborigines, the original inhabitants of this big, brown land, every single resident has come from afar, some on the first convict ships in the 1700s, others more recently.

Migration is thus a central issue in Australian political, social and cultural life. It is easy to get people worked up over issues around migration, and starting from rednecks – who advocate that only white people should migrate here – to the bleeding heart liberals who want all and sundry welcomed, you can find every shade of opinion vented in some forum or the other.

In recent days, people detained at immigration centres in Australia have started protesting, often violently, against being held in these centres. The reason? They feel that their cases are taking too long to resolve. Of course, some of those who are up in arms have had their applications for refugee status rejected and face the prospect of being deported.

Others have a peculiar problem – they are stateless and hence even though their cases have been rejected, they cannot be deported as there is no country that will take them. The problem, as it exists today, is quite serious – detainees burnt down nine buildings at a detention centre in New South Wales. Some of the ringleaders are still up on the roof, refusing to come down.

The protests have spread to other parts of the country and detainees at centres in Victoria and the Northern Territory have also started protesting.

One must bear in mind that it is the poorer class of would-be migrant who comes to Australia in a leaky boat and gets detained. The more affluent come by air and are never part of the public discussion. British backpackers by the thousand overstay here but are never deemed to be part of the problem. They are rarely detained despite being as big, or probably a bigger, drain on the national economy than the detained ones.

The government is reluctant to do anything that could be seen as a throwback to the policies of the Howard government – a coalition of the Liberal and National parties. Additionally, it is dependent on the Greens for its stability so it cannot take steps that are seen as too harsh. Yet something has to be done because the situation as it stands is giving the opposition plenty of ammunition to attack the government.

A part of the problem is down to perception. The Labor party is seen as being soft on migrants – even though the practice of detention was begun by a Labor prime minister, Paul Keating. And though the last Liberal prime minister, John Howard, made lots of near-racist statements about migrants, the level of migration was never higher than under him. He knew well that he had to cater to the business lobby – which supports higher migration quotas – so he quietly increased the numbers while publicly speaking out against migration.

After Labor came to power in 2007, some of harsher policies of the Howard mob were watered down. The offshore processing of migrants was stopped and so was the practice of issuing what are called temporary protection visas.

Since 2007, the numbers coming to Australia in boats to ask for refugee status has increased – but when considered against the total number of refugee applicants worldwide, it is but a drop in the ocean. The immigration department is an inefficient organisation and processing claims takes far too long. The detention centres are run by an inefficient American organisation, Serco, and people in the centres develop mental health problems as they stay longer and longer in crowded centres.

The expressions of frustration are the effects; the cause is an inefficient system. Labor governments are not exactly renowned for their efficiency in anything and the immigration process reflects the government of the day. Not that Howard’s mob did things much better.

The solution? I think Australia should cease being a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees. Then nobody can rock up to the Australian border and ask for refugee status.

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The myths of Anzac Day

AN ARMY is sent to invade another country to satisfy the ambitions of an imperial power. The army fails miserably in its mission, and ends up being cannon fodder.

Years later, the country which provided the armed forces is uttering pious slogans that this was the defining experience that shaped it as a nation. You would call that country a nation of losers, wouldn’t you?

Yet this is modern Australia. And the military fiasco that is said to define the country is the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops in Gallipoli during World War I. Tomorrow, there will be much talk about the Anzac spirit – as though the spirit in the Australian army ranks at that time was any different to that which pervaded the German and Japanese ranks during World War II.

A lot of this drivel is driven by politicians who strive to find anything behind which they can unite a fractious nation and prevent people from asking questions that will expose the hypocrisy of the political class. People who have no idea of the horrors of war extol its virtues and are ever eager to despatch young men and women to serve as cannon fodder for the imperial power of the day.

Australians are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan as a bulwark for American troops who prefer to bomb from afar and expect Australians to do the dirty work. As indeed they do.

For some time, especially during the era of the Vietnam War, Anzac Day was largely ignored. It has been revived by politicians like John Howard who found a cause behind which they could hide. The Returned Servicemen’s League has cash by the bucket poured into it and statues of soldiers are erected at every street corner to glorify the killing and carnage that is never visible to the populace at large.

Americans have developed this worship of war to a fine art. No-one can question the deployment of troops to any far-flung corner of the world – it is sacrosanct. Many Australian politicians would love to have a similar situation, as a mask for their own shortcomings. Patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels – and Australian politicians squarely fall into that class.

There is also more than a touch of racism in this whole war fetish. As the comedian George Carlin pointed out once, America has invaded only brown and black countries since World War II. Never once have the Yanks gone into a white nation since the Berlin airlift.

Quite often the racism inherent in these adventures is revealed in behaviour by troops. Remember the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib? But that is dismissed as an aberration. After all, the politicians say, boys will be boys, won’t they?

Anzac Day makes me sick.

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Brotherly love can often extend too far

IT IS unlikely that there are too many Bahrainis who would look kindly on the intrusion into their internal affairs by the neighbouring Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia. After the recent spate of demonstrations in the little island nation appeared to be getting out of control, the Saudis led a posse across the causeway and began a brutal crackdown.

The Saudis are aware that any flirtation with liberalisation will affect their own country, the most mysterious and shrouded on the Arabian Peninsula. And they have always had a paternalistic attitude towards Bahrain given that Iran, Riyadh’s main rival for power and influence in the region, takes a keen interest in the affairs of the little island which is said, by some, to be the location of the Biblical Garden of Eden.

If that is so, then there is certainly more than a single serpent roaming around. Dissatisfaction over the employment policies of the current ruler – King Hamad, the son of Shaikh Isa bin Sulman Al Khalifa, who elevated the country to a constitutional monarchy in 2002 from a mere emirate – boiled over and, drawing inspiration from protests in other regions of the Middle East, the Bahrainis started their own version of the French revolution.

Protests continue to this day and there now appears to be evidence of the brutality of the Saudi crackdown. Of course, the Saudis know only two methods of quelling opposition – either buy them off with bribes or else kill the whole lot. The first method would not have worked, so now they are taking recourse to the second.

A distance behind the Saudis, and standing tall in support, are our good friends, the men and women from the land of the brave and the free, the United States of America. Bahrain may be just a glob of sand when viewed from a plane, but it is home to the US Fifth Fleet. Hence, Uncle Sam is solidly behind a return to the status quo. After all, we cannot have a gentleman by the name of Mahmoud Ahmedinajed pulling the strings in Bahrain, now can we?

Bad memories are evoked in Bahrain when one talks of liberalisation. In 1973, Shaikh Isa, who had then been in power fo 12 years, decided to liberalise and a constitution was published, guaranteeing freedom of religion, conscience and speech. A parliament was elected by 85 percent of the adult males who were eligible to vote.

Alas, it did not quite work out – the ruling family, the Khalifa clan, expected the right-wing lobby of merchants to gain a majority of seats. They did not; instead, reactionary religious leaders and left-wing elements were voted in in large numbers.

Over the next couple of years, this mob tried to spread their influence – one day their pet cause was preventing women from playing a role in public life, the next day they would try to suggest that the national oil company be taken over.

Finally, in 1975, when they began to oppose detetntion without trial, Shaikh Isa suspended the whole lot and returned to ruling by decree – with the added feature of having his own family in every post of any influence. The Prime Minister. Shaikh Khalifa bin Sulman Al Khalifa, has been holding that post since then.

Though Bahrain is an Arab country, a large number of its citizens are of Iranian origin. The balance of the Shia-Sunni is skewed towards the former – and these two Muslim factions, who owe their genesis to the battle over a successor to the Prophet Muhammad, are generally not the best of neighbours.

However, they are hardly at each others’ throats as painted by the Western media; rather, it is the ruling family which, fearful of agents of Iranian influence, has excluded Shias largely from public life and from public sector employment. This has led to a feeling of injustice and it is, thus, hardly surprising that the majority who are out there protesting are Shias.

The intervention by troops from what is called the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council countries – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates – does not find favour with its own members, solely because a defence pact signed by the six was meant to defend against external aggression. Members of the defence forces in the AGCC are not exactly experts at combat – when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the AGCC forces did not exactly show a great deal of alacrity in rushing out to defend their northerly neighbour.

However, Saudi Arabia has always been the big brother of the region and, thus, despite their opposition to getting involved in the affairs of a “brotherly” state – even the AGCC agreement is against interference in each others’ domestic affairs – the others have maintained a stoic silence on this aspect of the troubles in Bahrain.

The island has no oil of its own and is a service centre, with a large number of banks operating in a free climate. There are handouts from the Saudis now and then, and the Americans are keen to see the place quiet. Moving the Fifth would be a massive logistics exercise and upset the economy of Bahrain – not to mention the owners of the better class of brothels on the island. The chances of any protest succeeding are, thus, much less than evens.

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In the battle of captains, Dhoni comes out ahead

ON SATURDAY, India won the World Cup cricket tournament, defeating Sri Lanka and becoming the first team to win the competition at home. But the more remarkable aspect of the win was the way it showed how a captain can lead and accept responsibility, even in this day and age when people are loath to do just that.

India was set a target that wasn’t overly intimidating but not easy to get either; batting second and scoring 275 at Bombay’s Wankhede Stadium isn’t a walk in the park. One needs someone to play a long innings, or two or three people to play knocks of about 60 or 70 to get to this kind of target.

India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni had batted at number 6 right through this tournament. He hadn’t made any decent scores, his best effort being in the low 30s. But he had led the team with his usual calm approach and the final saw him display his leadership qualities.

When India faced Pakistan in the semi-finals, Yuvraj Singh, a batsman who had been a model of consistency, fell for a first-ball duck. Perhaps the intensity of the occasion overcame him – there is no bigger game for either country, and this was a World Cup semi-final to boot.

Had Yuvraj been sent in during the final – India was 114 for three at the stage when he would normally have come in – and not performed, India would have been under immense pressure. The load on Dhoni would have been that much greater. There was also the matter of retaining a left-right hand combination to make it difficult for the Sri Lankan spinners to control the flow of runs.

But Dhoni was in woeful form. He had made some team changes – pulling in the non-performing Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, and leaving out the capable off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin – and if he had failed, then it is unlikely that anyone would have allowed him to forget his decisions in a hurry.

Dhoni could have sent in Suresh Raina, a capable if young player, to retain the right hand-left hand combination. Raina showed immense maturity in partnering Yuvraj during the quarter-final against Australia, taking the team from 187 for five, a position when things could have come unstuck if a wicket had fallen, to the 261 needed for victory.

But no, Dhoni came out himself. He looked in terrible nick, but kept making ungainly strokes and taking singles and twos here and there. Gradually, he grew in confidence and his form returned. He is never a pretty batsman to watch, but can hit the ball with great power.

One must bear in mind that the two men who were expected to do great things in the final, veterans Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendular, had both fallen by the time the total reached 31. Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli added 83 before the latter fell.

Then Dhoni took over. He and Gambhir took the total to 221 and then Dhoni and Yuvraj took India to victory, with Dhoni hitting a majestic six to seal the win.

One can contrast his actions with those of the Sri Lankan skipper, Kumar Sangakkara, who failed to implement the team’s strategy which has been uniform throughout the tournament – throttle the opposition, and then take wickets when they are trying to increase the scoring rate. Sangakkara left out one of the premier spinners, Ajanta Mendis, based on the logic that India plays spin well. Yet another spinner, Suraj Randiv, was included.

Sangakkara normally bowls his best speedster, Lasith Malinga, in spells of three, three and then four overs. This time, when Malinga was brought back midway through, to obviously try and take a wicket, he was given just the one over. Sangakkara’s other trump card, veteran Muthiah Muralitharan, did not even complete his quota of overs.

And long before the end appeared to be nigh, Sangakkara’s body language told the wrong tale – he looked beaten, his shoulders were hunched, he looked really agitated and in a panic.

I have commented some years ago on the way Dhoni goes about his captaincy; leadership comes naturally to this man who hails from one of the most under-developed regions of the country.

He hasn’t completed a college degree. He doesn’t know the latest buzzwords. He is verbose during TV interviews. He isn’t terribly good-looking. But he shows, time and again, that leadership is a natural trait. You can’t create leaders – they are born, not made.

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Hosts to fight for honours

INDIA went into the World Cup semi-final against Pakistan depending on its batting. Pakistan, on the other hand, was banking on its bowling. On the day, things came out in reverse.

For the first time since 1983, the final of the World Cup cricket tournament will be contested by non-white teams. In 1983, India met the West Indies and registered a famous victory; on April 2, India will take on Sri Lanka, both teams bidding for a second win in the tournament, Sri Lanka having won in 1996.

After getting off to a flying start – Indian opener Virender Sehwag took 21 off the third over of the match, bowled by Umar Gul, a medium-pacer who has been one of the Pakistan’s star performers in the tournament – India did not exactly sparkle. Despite reaching 114 for one off the first 18 overs, India finished with 260.

Gul fared poorly on the day, giving away 69 runs off eight overs, the occasion probably getting to him.

The only Pakistani bowler to give away less than four runs per over was off-spinner Mohammed Hafeez who went for 34 in his 10 overs. Wahab Riaz took the wickets, five of them, but gave away 46 runs in his quota of overs. But India made life difficult for themselves; scoring ws not unduly difficult but no batsman could dominate apart from Sehwag.

India had an anchorman in veteran Sachin Tendulkar who made 85 after being dropped four times. Many of the other batsmen got starts but did not go on. Young Suresh Raina made an unbeaten 36 as the innings fell away, ending with 260.

After a start when the run-rate was around 9 during the first five overs, with Sehwag in a ferocious mood, it was a middling effort at best. Had Pakistan held their catches, India would probably have struggled to reach 200.

When Pakistan began the chase, things seemed to be on track until Asad Shafiq fell for 30 at 103. He was the third man to go and the scoring rate was, at that stage, on par. But after that there was nobody to keep Misbah-ul-Haq company.

Pakistan had no decent anchorman – Misbah made a painful 56 but did not hang around long enough and, more importantly, could not lift his scoring rate. Pakistan’s best batsman, Younis Khan, made only 13. And the two who could have scored faster when the asking rate increased – captain Shahid Afridi and youngest Umar Akmal – fell for 19 and 29 respectively. On the day, a quick 50 or 60 was called for from either of them.

Surprisingly, India’s bowling and fielding was disciplined. Ashish Nehra, coming back into the team to replace young offie Ravichandran Ashwin, was the pick with two for 33 off his quota of 10 overs.
And though Zaheer Khan and Yuvraj Singh went for nearly six an over, each took two wickets.

If India wins the tournament, it will be the first time that a host has won at home. If Sri Lanka triumphs, it will be the country’s second win as host, but neither would have come at home. Sri Lanka defeated Australia in the 1996 final which was held in Lahore; India’s win in 1983 over the West Indies was at Lord’s.

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Hanson’s looking for public money again

WHENEVER Pauline Hanson runs for elections, there is but one reason – the woman has run out of money. She made much of the fact that she was leaving Australia and moving to England last year but is back again like a bad penny to contest a seat in the New South Wales election that is scheduled to be held on March 26.

Hanson is the type of phenomenon one sees in countries like Australia and the US; countries which are built on immigration but where a certain percentage of the white people have unreasonable fears about being swamped by the tide of migrants. (Her story is told well here.)

The first time Hanson stood for election, she was accepted on the Liberal party’s ticket in 1996 for the seat of Oxley in Ipswich, Queensland. She had been a local councillor from 1994 till 1995 before that but lost her seat.

Shortly before the 1996 election, Hanson made some comments to a newspaper about the abolition of special government assistance to Aborigines; she was disendorsed by the Liberals but won anyway. Her first speech to parliament in September that year made headlines – she complained about Australia being swamped by Asians and raved against the benefits given to Aborigines.

The prime minister of the time, John Howard, made no statement to indicate that he disapproved of what she was saying; this came as no surprise, as he is also known to quietly harbour similar feelings.

Hanson has stood for election numerous times and often succeeded in getting the necessary percentage of votes to obtain funding from the taxpayer. She faced bankruptcy in 1999 after being sued.

She has a following among sometimes unusual circles – when I came to Australia in 1997, I was surprised to note that a senior Salvation Army official was a fan of hers. I had gone over to the Salvation Army office in Melbourne’s Bourke Street to borrow some furniture for use in the little house in which I was staying.

The man, one Captain Stevens, took my details and then advised me to listen to Hanson’s message as he said she was a very sensible woman. His attitude made me sick – that of a Westerner who thinks every brown man is an idiot and knows nothing. A little over a year before that I had been sorting copy at the paper I worked for in Dubai and, after reading the Reuters account of her maiden speech, wondering out of what kind of hole this woman had crept.

But Hanson still enjoys support among many classes of people in Australia. It is amazing than an uneducated person, who believes that every migrant who comes here is potentially taking away a job from a white Australian, can hold such sway. But then Sarah Palin has proved that it can be done, provided that one plays the them-and-us card. The two are birds of a feather.

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Surprising loss but no hint of foul play

WHEN Australia played Zimbabwe in the World Cup cricket tournament preliminary rounds, the openers, Shane Watson and Brad Haddin, took an awful amount of time to score their runs.

Haddin, one of the more adventurous openers in one-day cricket, took 66 balls to make 29 while Watson made 79 off 92 balls. Their opening stand of 61 took 18.5 overs.

As a result, soon after the match the International Cricket Conference. world cricket’s governing body, began an investigation to see whether the slow scoring had been done to aid the good work done by bookies in the subcontinent.

Spot betting is big business during tournaments of this kind and the Australian pair is not normally known for anything other than aggression.

The story was broken by an Indian paper, the Indian Express, and made big news all over the cricketing world.

As it turned out, there was smoke, but no fire and everything settled down as well as it can when a cricket tournament is being played in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

As the tournament is still running through its preliminary games, most of which are quite lopsided as they pit established sides against minnows, there was much interest last week when India played South Africa.

The Indian batsmen got off to a good start and at one stage the board read 267 for the loss of one wicket with about 13 overs left. The lower-end estimate by observers was that India would get 350. The more ambitious evaluations were that 400 was within reach.

But 29 runs later, India was all out. Most of the batsmen played really stupid strokes and threw away their wickets. The top three batsmen, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir scored 73, 111 and 69 respectively.

The remaining 43 runs were scored by other eight men in the team. South Africa, which has a reputation for being a side that chokes when confronted by a task such as it faced that day, held its nerve and chased down the 297 it needed for victory.

Surprisingly, nobody has even raised the possibility that there might have been something more in the game than just careless batting. It smacks of double standards.

Both countries involved have a history of being involved in match-fixing; India’s Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Sharma, Ajay jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar had to end their careers after being found guilty.

South Africa’s former captain, the late Hansie Cronje, was found guilty and two other South Africans, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, have avoided going to India after Cronje was caught.

The ICC has not raised even an eyebrow at the way the Indian innings collapsed. Such are the mysterious ways of the world’s cricket administrators.

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Understanding the GFC

IT hit the world in September 2008 but the effects of the financial crisis, that was precipitated by the failure of Lehman Brothers, continue to haunt the world to this day. Apart from a minority of countries that are not closely connected to the global economy – some African countries, for example, the rest of the world took the hit when American financial crooks played fast and loose with other people’s money.

The film Inside Job is an excellent and detailed account of the crisis; it is made so much better by the fact that Matt Damon is the narrator.

Charles Ferguson’s film is a must watch for anyone who is interested in world events and wants to know how greed can spoil the party for everyone – except those who are at the grabbing end, people like those at Goldman Sachs. The film traces the genesis of the problem as it grew, examines the reasons why and talks to people around the globe to provide a broader perspective.

It is well-researched, authentic and gripping even though the main events took place more than two years ago. The film does not attempt to over-dramatise – it does not have to, the events it details are sobering enough in themselves. But hyping up things is a common failing of filmmakers and TV channels and by avoiding this altogether, the filmmaker emerges with a product that provides a more compelling viewing experience.

Telling the truth about the US of A is a difficult job; the country has done a magnificent job of selling itself as the greatest on the earth. Yet what we see in this film is a nation that is corrupt to its very soul, one where money is the only thing and everything, one where seemingly educated men behave like criminals, one where tenured professors turn into professional thieves with not a shred of integrity.

The magnitude of theft that took place to cause the crisis is amazing. Yet nobody went to jail; they were all bailed out and those in favour, like the Goldman Sachs bosses, continue to grow richer. At one level the film leaves one feeling sick inside; at another level, one is left with a profound feeling of respect for the filmmaker, the researchers and the narrator for making the tale one that is easy to comprehend, one that does not trivialise or sensationalise, one that seeks to educate above everything else.

And putting Damon behind the mike adds to the film in no small way – he is one of the few Hollywood stars who has integrity and puts his money where his principles lie. Inside Job is well worth the price of the ticket.

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The West wants one thing in Libya: stability aka regular oil supplies

LIBYA is in turmoil and it looks like the forces of the madman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi are slowly retaking city by city from those who rose up in protest against a despot.

For more than 40 years, Gaddafi has done what he liked with the oil income from one of the world’s major producers. Nobody was bothered about democracy or any damn ‘cracy for that matter as long as the spigots were open, the oil was flowing and Westerners could line up at the bowser and fill their tanks with cheap oil.

Now that equilibrium has been disturbed, Oil prices are up – though undoubtedly a good deal of the price rise is due to speculation in the US. Americans will not act on this though; they prefer to blame external factors. It is much more convenient to look at the mote in someone else’s eye than the beam in one’s own eye.

By the time there is any movement on a no-fly zone to protect civilians who are trying to take their county back, it will be too late. Gaddafi will be back on his throne, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people will be lying in the streets and the oil prices in Britain will be back to what they were before the Libyans started their quest for freedom.

But then why did anyone expect anything different? In 1991, encouraged by the US which had just finished the job of driving Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, the people of Iraq started agitating against Saddam Hussein. George the senior encouraged them to rise up. He was riding a wave at that point, and could afford to indulge in bluster about democracy and freedom.

But midway through the protests, George developed cold feet. The US has always had a morbid fear of Iranian fundamentalists controlling any part of the oil-rich Middle East apart from their own little patch of sand after 1979 when the Shah was overthrown and Ayaltollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over.

The strictures on Saddam Hussein flying his own helicopters, put in place by the US in order to prevent him from killing Iraqi civilians, were promptly withdrawn; the old man indulged in the most savage butchery of his own people and regained power. Most importantly, oil supplies regained their old levels and Americans could drive to the bowser and fill up at near normal prices.

Thus, any changes in Libya will be governed by just the one factor – stability. It doesn’t matter how many Libyans die. They are just, to quote Donald “rummy” Rumsfeld, just collateral.

In the rest of the Persian Gulf and the Mideast the same reasoning will be used. Bahrain is the home of the US Fifth Fleet – does one really think that the Americans want to go looking for a new home for those massive ships? Think again.

Perhaps the only country in which the Americans will encourage protesters to continue their activities will be Iran. And that is because of the perceived nuclear threat from Teheran. But there too, any dictator who will agree to submit the nuclear programme for inspection will be acceptable. Oh, and he (it is always a male in Iran) must agree to open the oil spigots as well…

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ISP support staff are in a class of their own

IN JAPAN, friends of mine who visit the country regularly tell me, the attitude towards customers is summed up in one line: “The customer is always right [1].” When it comes to the men and women who man the support desks at Australia’s ISPs, the reverse seems to be the case.

There is no other way one can account for their attitude. The one overriding aim they have is to disclaim responsibility. The customer is asked to jump through numerous hoops and a great many customers are not able to do so.

The first test the support person puts one through is the “power-cycle the modem” test. I’ve never been able to figure out why one needs to do this. I can understand if one is asked to reboot (a more earthy term which means the same thing) a Windows box in order to restore it to its “normal” state of functioning.

But one has to go through this switching on and off of the modem before the support person will deign to continue the conversation.

Then we come to the more difficult tests. You are asked to test the modem by switching over to another modem. How many customers keep a spare modem at home? Well, says the support person, you have to do it to rule out the possibility that your modem is at fault. You know, modems don’t last forever.

If, by chance, you are among the minority who do keep a spare modem, why then you are asked to switch ADSL filters. The support person is just warming up.

Let’s assume that you are also one among the rare minority who keep a spare modem and spare ADSL filter at home. You do the switch and the problem still remains. What then?

OK, says Mr/Ms Support, disconnect all devices from your telephone line and see if the problem persists. And then there are a plethora of questions: do you have a fax machine on your line? what about any other device?

It goes on. After 15 or 20 minutes, finally the support person finds a loophole. Can you test the sync speeds at your end and let me know? comes the query. How many people know how to do that? What is sync speed?

Or there is another question: can you see what percentage of packets are being dropped? Either of these questions is enough to discourage even the hardiest – except for the 1 percent of nerds who know what this means.

At the end of it, you are left wondering why this is called “support.” One often pays top dollar for this kind of service.

[1] One of those friends adds a correction: “It is more correct to say The customer is God. It follows from this that the customer is always right. However, it’s important to note that in Japan the matter of right and wrong is besides the point. It’s more basic than that even, and operates at the level of obligation that starts with the standard greeting that one receives when entering any store in Japan: Irasshaimase!”