Move on orders as a strategy to criminalise legitimate dissent and protest

Just one day after WA Police and the City of Perth used military like tactics to enforce a move on order against Aboriginal people reclaiming their land at Herrission Island, the WA Police have used move on orders against citizens protesting illegal logging and destruction of flora and fauna near Dardnaup.

This continues the pattern of WA Police and government authorities using move on orders to criminalise lawful protest and dissent to protect and advance the economic interests of the corporate, moneyed and political elite.

The strange case of Malcolm Naden and Australian histiography

photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald

Since 2005 Malcolm Naden has evaded NSW Police by hiding out in the bush in northern NSW. Naden is one of the country's most wanted men and is being pursued by Police as a suspect in the murder of two women and the disappearance of a third in Dubbo.

In December 2011 NSW Police nearly apprehended Naden but once again he escaped  into the bush after wounding a Police Officer. Six years after he first evaded Police capture Naden remains on the run.

As Michael Breen points out in the piece below Naden's exploits and evasion of Police is the subject of plenty of speculation and myth making in the NSW media, not the least because of his Aboriginality and the fact that he is the first man to have a bounty on his head since the notorious case of Jimmy Governor in the late 19th century.

 Living here on the West Coast I was largely unaware of the Naden case until sent this piece by  Michael Breen who lives in the NSW Southern Highlands. Michael has written before for this blog (here, here, here and here). His piece on the case of Jimmy Governor, another Aboriginal fugitive in rural NSW in the late 19th century is among the fifteen most read pieces on this blog. In the piece below Michael writes of the similarities between the Maden case and the Jimmy Governor case.

The case of Malcolm Naden

by Michael Breen

The New South Wales police Minister Michael Gallacher has urged people not to turn the fugitive Malcolm Naden into a cult figure. Naden has been on the run evading arrest for 2538 days to date. (December 25^th.) He is wanted for questioning about two murders, aggravated assault of a fifteen-year-old girl and recently of wounding a policeman. 

Strike Force Durkin made up of police, detectives, the anti terrorist squad in bullet proof camouflage vests, with high-powered rifles, sniffer dogs, a mobile communications centre, two helicopters with infra-red cameras and exact coordinating devices was searching for and supposedly closing in on Naden.  Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, emboldened by this firepower and bereft of good news about the hunt, (Naden had eluded them on seven occasions since being on the run) said, “I expect Malcolm Naden will be in custody this afternoon”.

Fifty kilometres away a house break-in was reported. Two local police were sent to investigate when they came face to face with Naden and spoke to him. They drew their weapons, Naden retreated into the house and disappeared. The local police spokesperson excused the officers as they were just local cops and the house had several entrances and exits, and it was bushy outside.

So is it the public making a ‘cult figure’ of Naden or are the police making monumental gobbaloons of themselves and trying to control public ridicule and disbelief?  And how might they do that?

Much of the story has connections with bushranger figures, especially the Governor Brothers. Prescinding entirely from the gravity of the alleged offences the two sets of events have lots in common.

Bushrangers are said to belong to two groups: murderous thieves and police-taunting celebrities. Authorities would prefer the public put all fugitives in the former category, thus they would attract less community sympathy as well as increased support for police. 

Naden seems to have just pinched what he needed to survive. (Unlike operatives in the finance industries). The Governors did murder and violently settled old scores. Naden took a grazier’s rifle and later replaced it with another. So despite his alleged crimes he is more evading than rampaging, which makes him even more of an aggravation. 

The Womans Weekly’s Jordan Baker likened Naden to a modern day Ned Kelly. “It was the first time a reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of a known person since Ned Kelly (usually they are offered when there is no suspect).”

The setting for Kelly, Naden and Governor events is the Bush. That archetype of Australia which so few of the coastal majority ever experience immediately. The bush claims lives; it is as potent an Australian symbol as the Forest is in European mythology or Indian Kali. The bush also gives life to our native people and to wild life; but you have to respect Mother Bush. You can’t pretend that ‘cos you are an Oz, drink stubbies and follow the footy you can wander off into the bush or live off her bounty unless you are an Aboriginal person. Eye, there’s the rub.  With all our sophisticated tech gear we can’t match the naked survival skills which Aboriginals get from their closeness to their mother who protects and nurtures them.

As the media focus on bush locations the they highlight bushy places, obscure towns like Niangla, Nundle, Nowendoc, Grawin or Tuggolo State Forest. Who ever heard of these spots before their recent notoriety?  The unfamiliarity of these places makes the episode even more mysterious. The bounty on the heads of the Governors was a thousand pounds, on Naden’s capture it has risen from $100,000 to $250,000 which might get some folks to venture to these obscure places. If they dare or are sent.

    

 Like the Governors, Naden came from Dubbo. Historically the name has been a cityslicker synonym for Hicksville and latterly is infamous for “troubles” with the blacks who were relocated there from other parts of New South Wales and plonked in groups side by side with hostile skin groups.  Mind you, Naden has shown signs of severe disturbance and alienation for years, retreating to his room going out only at night via the window, refusing food and becoming obsessed with books on survival and the Bible. So who it makes one wonder will take the responsibility for not raising the mental health alarm?

Like the Governors, fugitives who have evaded capture out there take on  fabulous and fearful qualities, like the ability to disappear. So much so that there is something quite incongruous between the numbers and firepower of the constabulary and the fabulous one with the knife and  rifle.

The Daily Telegraph’s Janet Fife-Yeomans and Mark Morri state in Teleboganstyle,

 “Like a wild animal, he is a loner, comfortable to go for months at a time without speaking to another soul in the impenetrable bushland of western NSW which has been his home for more than six years. Malcolm Naden won’t be taken alive. Malcolm Naden is a master hunter, as cunning as a fox, stealthy as a shadow. Yet this week he became the thing that he most dreaded - prey.”   

Get the message not really one of us.

Naden is a skilled skinner and slaughter hand and lived in Dubbo Zoo for some time in the roof of an animal enclosure where they later found perfectly boned kangaroo skeletons. That time he evaded a force of abut 60. One news report quotes Assistant Commissioner Carlene York saying that Naden was obviously not being supported by the community otherwise he would not have broken into a house. Authorities, though, did find he had accessed porn sites on the house computer. She went on “…and it is likely he would struggle with cold conditions in the area.” 

In contrast York’s officers were working in a number of teams that were well fed and could keep warm at night, she boasted. One would have thought that the cold would not be a problem for a bushman who had been out there for six years, but may be a problem for city police. Commissioner York again; after expressing disappointment that Naden has evaded officers at the hut he broke into, said the officers would have had permission to shoot Naden based on their "assessment of events", but it is understood the pair may not have immediately realised the offender was Naden. Code for shoot to kill?

 So here was the most wanted man in NSW face-to-face talking to two cops with drawn weapons and he disappeared. The next bulletin celebrated that police had identified a rifle from the house matching one allegedly used by Naden to shoot a policeman in the shoulder on December 7th. However, although the victim was with a party of police they could not tell whence the shot had been fired.

 Naden’s future does not look promising. He shot a cop, he has made the force laughable in public eyes, and he is a blackfeler. It is almost as if the police are larding their ludicrous briefings with hints to prepare us for a future report stating that Naden was surrounded by a group of heavily armed police who shot him in self defence when he was resisting arrest.

These events have all those hot elements of race, the Bush, city versus country, hubris, David and Goliath, cops and robbers, police relations and bungles; even the implied undertones that the colonists who took the land from blackfellers have not yet made it safe for whitefellers. 

Michael D. Breen

25 12 2011

Art Garfunkel interview

Art Garfunkel, right, with Paul Simon c.1965. Photograph: Corbis

"Things fell of a cliff when the 1970s began. That was the point where in America and in Britain we really embraced the culture of money, and what was of value from the previous decade was left behind. To me it became a bankrupt scene in our two countries........ You can't have a society where a $12m bonus is considered "not enough" by some people. The numbers drive you crazy."

Excellent interview here in The Guardian with Art Garfunkel on being 70, support for the Occupy movement and the years of Simon and Garfunkel.

Naomi Shihab Nye: Thoughts for Xmas

Like Naomi Shihab Nye my sack of hopes is pretty thin at this time of the year. I find her words and poetry deeply comforting.

"Every year when the holidays threaten to roll around again, I feel utter dismay. I hope they will miss me. People will start asking “Are you ready for Christmas?” again. I have never known what that means. No, I say now. I will never be ready for Christmas in a world of war. I hope, every year, to find a better answer, or to travel to a Buddhist country for December again, or to find a sweeter sensation to keep me afloat during the horridly counted-down days, the obsessively-worried-about-what-to-give-everyone days. I hope for a way to vote more strongly and loudly for peace, and sense, and responsibility, a way to help people who are barely ready for regular days much less heavily-decorated ones, a way to say — Jesus would just hate the fact that someone spent 2 thousand dollars on cutesy lit-up cottages but can’t pay her own utility bills, or, our absolutely broke country seems to be able to find plenty of money to spend on weapons, and smart people continue to defend war, and so forth. It’s such a sad joke, how everybody abuses Jesus and his so-called birthday when people didn’t even celebrate birthdays in his part of the world. Anyway, good luck with your own sack of hopes. Mine are pretty thin this time of year. And some people think I’m an optimist"

 Naomi Shihab Nye

Remembering June Jordan

On this meridian of failure or recovery
I move
or stop respectful
of each day
but silent now
and slow

June Jordan

First Poem after Surgery

At the moment I am enjoying the poetry of June Jordan who is one of the most widely published African- American poets and writers. Jordan was a tireless activist against injustice and oppression, as well as prolific poet, writer and essayist.

Poem for South African Women

Commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who, 
August 9, 1956, presented themselves in bodily protest against 
the “dompass” in the capital of apartheid. Presented at The 
United Nations, August 9, 1978.

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open
eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea

we are the ones we have been waiting for

from Passion (1980)
and from Directed by Desire. The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
Copyright 2005 by the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust

When profit drives the delivery of human services the quality of care suffers

More evidence of the danger of allowing for- profit corporations to provide human and caring services to vulnerable people.

A major US study  to be published in the Journal Health Services Research has found that for-profit nursing homes deliver significantly lower quality of care than not-for- profit and government run nursing homes.

In the US the 10 largest for-profit corporate providers of hursing homes  operate about 2,000 nursing homes, controlling approximately 13 percent of the country’s nursing home beds.

The study found that the main reason that the quality of care is worse in corporate and for-profit run  nursing homes is that corporate and for- profit providers employ fewer staff  to keep costs down and profits up. In studying staffing and quality in the 10 largest corporate for profit providers of nursing homes the researchers found that the corporate providers  have a strategy of keeping labor costs low to increase profits, with the result that the quality of care suffers and there is a higher number of rated deficiencies.

The researchers found that low nurse staffing levels are the strongest predictor of poor nursing home quality.

The study found that between 2003 and 2008, both the percent of registered nurses and the numbers of all nursing staff were significantly less (30 percent) in the corporate for profit providers than the non-profit homes.  The lower staffing correlated with a considerably higher number of rated deficiencies - the private chains having 36 percent more deficiencies, and 41 percent more serious deficiencies than the non-profits.  Deficiencies include failure to prevent pressure sores, resident weight loss, falls, infections, resident mistreatment, poor sanitary conditions, and other problems that could seriously harm residents.

What is also troubling is that the study found that the quality of care worsened in nursing homes taken over by private equity companies. Nursing homes had more deficiencies after being acquired by a private equity company.This is directly relevant to Australia where private equity companies are increasingly involved in aged care and nursing home provision. The study is the first to make the connection between worse care following acquisition by private equity companies.

"In recent decades, nursing home chains have undergone a considerable expansion.A number of chains were publicly-traded companies until the early 2000s, when five of the country’s largest chains went bankrupt. Following restructuring and ownership changes, as well as increases in Medicare payments, the largest chains became more financially stable. More recently, some of the largest publicly held chains were purchased by private equity investment firms, which invest funds received from investors, with whom they share profits and losses. 

The researchers compared staffing levels and facility deficiencies at the for-profit chains to those at homes run by five other ownership groups to measure quality of care. The 10 largest chains were selected because they are influential in the nursing home industry and are the most successful in terms of growth and market share. 

The study found that for-profit homes strive to keep their costs down by reducing staffing, particularly RN staffing.

The 10 largest for-profit chains in 2008 were HCR Manor Care, Golden Living, Life Care Centers of America, Kindred Healthcare, Genesis HealthCare Corporation, Sun Health Care Group, Inc., SavaSeniorCare LLC, Extendicare Health Services, Inc., National Health Care Corporation, and Skilled HealthCare, LLC.

From 2003 to 2008, these chains had fewer nurse “staffing hours” than non-profit and government nursing homes when controlling for other factors. Together, these companies had the sickest residents, but their total nursing hours were 30 percent lower than non-profit and government nursing homes. Moreover, the top chains were well below the national average for RN and total nurse staffing, and below the minimum nurse staffing recommended by experts.

 The study also found that the four largest for-profit nursing home chains purchased by private equity companies between 2003 and 2008 had more deficiencies after being acquired. The study is the first to make the connection between worse care following acquisition by private equity companies.

There is now a growing body of evidence that demonstrates conclusively that for-profit corporate run nursing homes deliver lower quality care than not-for profit nursing homes.

A study in the British Medical Journal  compared quality-of-care measurements in 82 individual studies that collected data from 1965 to 2003 involving tens of thousands of nursing homes, mostly in the United States. It found that

The authors' meta-analysis, i.e. their integration and statistical analysis of the data from the multiple studies, shows that nonprofit facilities delivered higher quality care than for-profit facilities for two of the four most frequently reported quality measures: (1) more or higher quality staffing and (2) less prevalence of pressure ulcers, sometimes called bedsores.

The results also suggest better performance of nonprofit homes in two other quality measures: less frequent use of physical restraints and fewer noted deficiencies (quality violations) in governmental regulatory assessments.

"The reason patients' quality of care is inferior in for-profit nursing homes is that administrators must spend 10 percent to 15 percent of revenues satisfying shareholders and paying taxes..... For-profit providers cut corners to ensure shareholders achieve their expected return on investment."

Weekend poem: Afred Noyes The Highwayman

Alfred Noyes long narrative poem The Highwayman has long fascinated me.  Like many others I learned to recite the poem at primary school and remain captivated by the poems rhythmic cadences and vivid imagery. 

The poem was written by Noyes at the turn of the 20th Century and is set in 18th century England.

The poem  tells the story of a highwayman and his lover Bess, the landlord's (innkeeper) daughter. The Highwayman is betrayed to the authorities who take Bess hostage and wait in ambush for him. Bess sacrifices her life to warn him. Learning of her death he dies in a futile attempt at revenge, shot down on the highway. The final stanza tells us that the ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights.

The poem has also been turned into song, most notably by Loreena McKennitt and Andy Irvine

The Highwayman
Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)
                                  
                       PART ONE
                                                 I
    THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the highwayman came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
                                                 II
    He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
    A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
    They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
    And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
                      His pistol butts a-twinkle,
    His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
                                                 III
    Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
    And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
    He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
                      Bess, the landlord's daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
                                                 IV
    And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
    Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
    His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
    But he loved the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
    Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
                                                 V
    "One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
    But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
    Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
    Then look for me by moonlight,
                      Watch for me by moonlight,
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
                                                 VI
    He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
    But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
    As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
    And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
                      (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
    Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.
 
                                        PART TWO
                                                 I
    He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
    And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
    When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
    A red-coat troop came marching—
                      Marching—marching—
    King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.
                                                 II
    They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
    But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
    Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
    There was death at every window;
                      And hell at one dark window;
    For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
                                                 III
    They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
    They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
    "Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
                      She heard the dead man say—
    Look for me by moonlight;
                      Watch for me by moonlight;
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
                                                 IV
    She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
    She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
    They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
    Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
                      Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
    The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
                                                 V
    The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
    Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
    She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
    For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
                      Blank and bare in the moonlight;
    And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .
                                                 VI
        Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
    Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
    Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
    The highwayman came riding,
                      Riding, riding!
    The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!
                                                 VII
    Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
    Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
    Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
    Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
                      Her musket shattered the moonlight,
    Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
                                                 VIII
    He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
    Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
    Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
    How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
    Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
                                                 IX
    Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
    With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
    When they shot him down on the highway,
                      Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
                  *           *           *           *           *           *
                                                 X
    And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
    When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    A highwayman comes riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
                                                 XI
    Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
    He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
    He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
                      Bess, the landlord's daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
                                        PART ONE
                                                 I
    THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the highwayman came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.
                                                 II
    He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
    A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
    They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
    And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
                      His pistol butts a-twinkle,
    His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.
                                                 III
    Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
    And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
    He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
                      Bess, the landlord's daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
                                                 IV
    And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
    Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
    His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
    But he loved the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
    Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—
                                                 V
    "One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
    But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
    Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
    Then look for me by moonlight,
                      Watch for me by moonlight,
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."
                                                 VI
    He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
    But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
    As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
    And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
                      (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
    Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.
 
                                        PART TWO
                                                 I
    He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
    And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
    When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
    A red-coat troop came marching—
                      Marching—marching—
    King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.
                                                 II
    They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
    But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
    Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
    There was death at every window;
                      And hell at one dark window;
    For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.
                                                 III
    They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
    They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
    "Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
                      She heard the dead man say—
    Look for me by moonlight;
                      Watch for me by moonlight;
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
                                                 IV
    She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
    She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
    They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
    Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
                      Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
    The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!
                                                 V
    The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
    Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
    She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
    For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
                      Blank and bare in the moonlight;
    And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .
                                                 VI
        Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
    Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
    Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
    The highwayman came riding,
                      Riding, riding!
    The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!
                                                 VII
    Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
    Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
    Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
    Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
                      Her musket shattered the moonlight,
    Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.
                                                 VIII
    He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
    Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
    Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
    How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
    Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.
                                                 IX
    Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
    With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
    When they shot him down on the highway,
                      Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
                  *           *           *           *           *           *
                                                 X
    And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
    When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    A highwayman comes riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
                                                 XI
    Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
    He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
    He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
                      Bess, the landlord's daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

John Pilger from the streets of Mexico

Diego Rivera's Mural, "A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park." (Photo: asmythie / flickr)

Australia's finest journalist and documentary film maker is vilified and ignored by the mainstream media in this country. 

In his latest piece  John Pilger writes from the streets of Mexico about the the evils of contemporary capitalism and the legacy of those who resist:

"The beneficiaries of the new, privatized Mexico are those like Carlos Slim, now ahead of Bill Gates as the world's richest man, whose fingers are lodged in every imaginable pie: from food and construction to the national telephone company. A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks says, "The net worth of the 10 richest people of Mexico - a country where more than 40 per cent of the population lives in poverty - represents roughly 10 per cent of the gross domestic product.

For most of this year, thousands of los indignados have taken over the massive parade ground known as the Zocalo facing the National Palace. The occupations in Wall Street and around the world have their genesis in Latin America. The difference here is there is none of the angst about the protesters' "focus." As in all places where people live on the edge and the state and its cronyism cast lawless shadows, they know exactly what they want. Ask some of the 44,000 employees of the national power company, who prevented the fire sale of the national grid until Calderon sacked them all; and the striking copper miners of Cananea, whose owners funded Calderon's campaign; and the former pilots and stewards of the national airline, Mexicana, dissolved in a sham bankruptcy that was a gift to the private airline industry.

These angry, eloquent and often courageous people have long known something many in Europe and the United States are only beginning to realize: there is no choice but to fight the economic extremism unleashed in Washington and London a generation ago. Employment, trade unionism, public health, education, "life itself," says Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City who ran against Calderon, "has since been struck by a political and economic earthquake."

Weekend poem: Dennis Brutus

Dennis Brutus

And the riptides rip and tear
erode, devour
and unrest, questing, yeasts in my querying brain
and I beat on the fierce savaging knowledge
rampaging through my existence
accepting the knowledge, seeking design

For I am driftwood
in a life and place and time
thrown by some chance, perchance
to an occasional use
a rare half pleasure on a seldom chance

and I grate on the sand of being
of existence, circumstance
digging and dragging for a meaning
dragging through the dirt and debris
the refuse of existence
dragging through the diurnal treadmill of my life

and still I am diftwood.
Still the restlesnness, the journeyings, the quest,
the querying, the hungers and the lusts.

Ageing

The road, too, diminishes:

one would see less if one tried:

it is what ageing is about -

if one gave it thought:

generally though, one is content

eyes fixed on the road

content to see what can be seen

unanxious to speculate

about a possible road -

the diminishing road

Musgrave,

July 7 2008

Phillip Pullman on the "greedy ghost of market fundamentalism"

"there are things above profit, things that profit knows nothing about.. things that stand for civic decency and public respect for imagination and knowledge and the value of simple delight"   Phillip Pullman

This speech by the British novelist and writer Phiilip Pullman describes the 'greedy ghost of market fundamentalism' that haunts the offices, meeting rooms and conference rooms of Governments all over the world. 

Pullman describes how everything that sustains the fabric of a decent society and of communities is destroyed by the onslaught of the market fundamentalists and their acolytes. He is right. A great speech.

 "And it always results in victory for one side and defeat for the other. It’s set up to do that. It’s imported the worst excesses of market fundamentalism into the one arena that used to be safe from them, the one part of our public and social life that used to be free of the commercial pressure to win or to lose, to survive or to die, which is the very essence of the religion of the market. 

Like all fundamentalists who get their clammy hands on the levers of political power, the market fanatics are going to kill off every humane, life-enhancing, generous, imaginative and decent corner of our public life. I think that little by little we’re waking up to the truth about the market fanatics and their creed. We’re coming to see that old Karl Marx had his finger on the heart of the matter when he pointed out that the market in the end will destroy everything we know, everything we thought was safe and solid. It is the most powerful solvent known to history. “Everything solid melts into air,” he said. “All that is holy is profaned.”

Market fundamentalism, this madness that’s infected the human race, is like a greedy ghost that haunts the boardrooms and council chambers and committee rooms from which the world is run these days"

Sunday's poem: Adrienne Rich

.. My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world

Adrienne Rich
Natural Resources

 The lines from ‘Natural Resources’ are taken from The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1978 by W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. 

Artistic freedom Western Australian style

Sometimes artists and charities who take money from mining companies in Western Australia give the game away.

This story Mining Company cash creates movie making boom  appeared on the ABC TV program Stateline WA on Friday November 4 and demonstrates that the primary reason for the "philanthropic" activity of the mining industry in WA is self interest.

The message is very clear- we will sponsor you but you must not speak certain truths about the industry. In other words the mining industry buys the silence and acquiesence of those it sponsors.

Listen to the journalists and artists in the ABC story who make it very clear that with the money comes conditions and the expectation is that you must show the mining industry in a favourable light.

Show the mining industry in a less than favourable light in their eyes or speak certain truths about the industry and you can say goodbye to the sponsorship.

One interviewer put it this way:

" We can't say we want you to sponsor us but the script says you are unscrupulous swines who rape and pillage the land..... they see the first draft of the script....... they don't want the industry shown in an unfavourable light..... you don't bite the hand that feeds you".

Of course this story reflects a much larger issue- the way that the mining industry and corporations in WA are using their money and power to shape the arts and cultural industry and the charitable sector to serve their corporate interests.

This article by Rosemary Neill provides an insight into the corporate takeover of the arts and cultural industry and charitable sector in WA:

In a harbinger of this, some of the country's most powerful businesspeople have teamed up with artists and launched a new, turbo-charged arts lobby, the Chamber of Arts and Culture, aimed at developing a coherent cultural vision for WA. Among the chamber's founding members are Rio Tinto iron ore chief executive Sam Walsh, prominent arts patron and businesswoman Janet Holmes a Court, former WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss John Langoulant, KPMG national executive director Helen Cook and former Australia Council chairwoman Margaret Seares.

An alliance of high-powered executives -- some drawn from the blokey resources and engineering sectors -- intent on proselytising for the arts is a first not just for the West but, arguably, for the nation. Walsh says this move signifies that "the state is growing; there is a need for a more creative and vibrant community and arts and culture will help us deliver that and help us attract people. I think the stars are aligned . . . we have a unique opportunity in Perth and WA's history, building on the mining boom, to work on these things." The unfailingly courteous Rio Tinto boss says the chamber has received "very strong support" from Day and federal Arts Minister Simon Crean. He stresses it is not merely an arts lobby; that it will engage with governments, the regions, schools and untapped audiences to spread the word about culture.

New book by Palestinian poet and writer Mourid Barghouti

Reading this review from the UK Independent of  the new book by Palestinian poet and writer  Mourid Barghouti titled  I Was Born Here. The book has a  introduction by one of my favourite writers John Berger.

The review in the Independent describes the book this way:

"I Was Born... is that collection of "questions", voiced in the place and beyond, from many angles of vision or time and delivered in Barghouti's inimitable style. John Berger's introduction speaks of what happened and continues to happen in Palestine as "unclassifiable" - a term that also fits both volumes. Here Barghouti resumes in the late 1990s, flitting across the subsequent decade, delivering characteristic mini-essays, deep family memories, accounts of employment in Ramallah, visits with Tamim to Jerusalem and Deir Ghassanah, alongside crystalised visions of horror and happiness.

"Essays" focus on Jerusalem and Iraq, on coffee and the loss of Palestine: they rival Mahmoud Darwish's work on the subjects. They also cover Arafat and fatherhood, corruption and "the wall of the Silent Transfer", as well as celebrating anecdotal histories. More personal than his first volume, freighted with individual and collective return, here are the minutiae of the immediate consequences. It's an honest confrontation with Israeli violence and impunity, an unflinching description of the Palestinian Authority's compromising failures, and a plea for joy"

John Berger's Introduction to the book is here:

Come Closer  
Introduction by John Berger

This book, with its fury and tenderness, its close observation and cosmic metaphors, is wild. Reading it, you follow graphically the experience of the Palestinian people during the last sixty years, and, at the same time, you partake of some of the most ancient recourses of the human imagination when faced with collective suffering and humiliation.

It has been written by the distinguished poet Mourid Barghouti, who is also the father of an honoured poet, Tamim Barghouti. It’s a book that begs for an answer to the question: why write poetry? And, in begging, it gives its own lacerating, literal and sometimes lyrical answer.

I’ve read no other book in which poetry is so interleaved with the problems and shit (such as identity cards) of daily life, or in which a working poet—either the father or son—is felt to be so close to those for whom their poetry speaks. It comes from the heart of an endless tragedy where jokes are one of the principal means of survival. It redefines in such conditions what is “normal”.

It’s also fine to die in our beds
on a clean pillow
and among our friends.

It’s fine to die, once,
our hands crossed on our chests
empty and pale
with no scratches, no chains, no banners,
no petitions.

It’s fine to have an undusty death,
no holes in our shirts,
and no evidence in our ribs.

It’s fine to die
with a white pillow, not the pavement, under our cheeks....

What has happened and is happening to the land of Palestine and its people is unclassifiable. None of the historical terms such as colonization, annexation, invasion or elimination are precise enough. The word ‘Occupation’, which is generally used, has been given a new vast meaning and this book spells out that meaning and the extension of what it means.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the book itself is unclassifiable. It’s a book of heartrending stories, a book about poetics, a personal memoir, the history of a family, a journal of confessions, an uncompromising political tract attacking the state of Israel, the corruption of the so-called Palestinian Authority, and the self-serving dictatorships of the surrounding Arab countries. It is also a book of love—love for all those who, although powerless, somehow continue to live with dignity. With courage, too. Yet dignity offers not only an example, but also a shelter. These pages demonstrate how it does so.

The reader is brought face to face (like people come close together in a very small shelter) with what is happening in Palestine today (every day), which is inseparable from what happened yesterday and what people fear will happen tomorrow. The media never refer to what you discover here. Place names such as Jenin, al-Khalil, Rafah, Hebron and Qalandya become dense with experience.

This, however, is only part of what the book offers. There is something else. Mourid Barghouti’s form of narrative insists that lived moments when they are momentous contain something that can be considered eternal, and that such moments, however brief and trivial they may appear to a third eye, join together and form a necklace called a lifetime. Living as we do in a consumerist culture, which recognizes only the latest and the instantaneous, we badly need this reminder. Thank you, Mourid.

Andy Irvine, Moreton Bay and the history of Australian gulags

Listening to Andy Irvine's dazzling version of the Australian convict ballad Moreton Bay from his 2000 CD Way Out Yonder I am reminded that Australia has a long history of creating "gulags" away from the prying eyes of the citizenry where the authorities inflict cruel and inhumane treatment on detainees.

From convict settlements to internment camps to Aboriginal reserves to prisons and to modern day immigration detention centres.

Moreton Bay**
I am a native of the land of Erin
That was early banished from my native shore
On the ship Columbus went circular sailing
And I left behind me the girl I adore

On the bounding billows that were loudly raging
Bold sea mariners our course did steer
We were bound for Sydney our destination
And every day cold irons wore

chorus
O Moreton Bay you’ll find no equal
Norfolk Island and Emu Plains
At Castle Hill and cursed Toongabbie
And all Time Places in New South Wales.
When I arrived it was in Port Jackson
And I thought my days would happy be
I soon found out I was greatly mistaken
I was taken as prisoner to Moreton Bay
For three long years I was beastly treated
And heavy Irons on my legs I wore
My back from flogging it was lacerated
And of times painted with crimson gore

Like the Egyptians and the ancient Hebrews
We were oppressed under Logan’s yoke
Till a native Black there he lay in ambush
And he gave the tyrant a mortal stroke 
Now fellow prisoners be exhilaratedThat all such monsters such a death may find
And when from bondage we are liberated
Our former suffering shall fade from mind

(Trad. Arr. Andy Irvine) information about the song written by Andy Irvine

**This is one of the best known Australian Convict Ballads. Captain Patrick Logan was the cruel Commander of Moreton Bay Penal Colony between 1826 and 1830 when he met his death at the hands--and spears--of a party of Aboriginal Hunters. He was found buried face downwards in a shallow grave--"Looking at Hell, where he was surely bound". The convicts at Moreton Bay went nearly insane with joy at the news of his death. My good friend Kevin Bradley, who is Sound Archivist at the National Library of Australia in Canberra invited me to learn and sing this song at the Woodford Festival in Queensland in 1998. The original was recorded by Simon MacDonald of Creswick, Victoria who lived from 1907-1968.