In memory of Peter Porter: Australian poet (1929-2010)

"See how our once lived lives stay on to haunt us"

Peter Porter, "An Australian Garden"

Although he lived overseas for some 60 years the Australian born poet Peter Porter, who died this week, wrote many beautiful meditations on Australian life, events and places.

LITTORAL TRUTH

You are discovering one of the mimetic truths
About Australia - it is a long and silver littoral
Within the sound of surf, a country rhymed by waves
And scanned by the shifting outlines of the bay.
We are all still strangers on its shore - the palms,
The Norfolk pines, the painted face of concrete to the sea -
No matter how far from the coast you go you only
Leave yourself and drift in double legend to
An old impossibility - no wonder those explorers sought
An Inland Sea; it was the pool of madness in them
Fed by rivers running into nothing. Relax instead
Along the endless shore, the mountain seas of sand,
The various heads and raging bars where change of tide
Rips channels to a narrow bottleneck - you can be
Odysseus or Captain Cook, forget the package tours
Flying into Cairns. The washed-up stubbies on the beach,
And step into a balanced darkness, mangroves, mud
And soft withdrawal at late evening. Your inheritance
Is welcoming you, and as you flap along the sandbanks
Look out to sea and watch the tourist preen himself:
'Thus sung they in the 'Australian boat' but not to praise
The land, themselves or God, but with a level voice
To mark their presence in a sky of perfect stars.

from Peter Porter Collected Poems (Oxford University Press 1999)

But his poetry is also infused with a deep melancholy that haunts the land and those of us who live and were born here.

"No- one can say why hearts will break
and marriages are all opaque:
A map of loss, some posted cards
The living house reduced to shards
The abstract hell of memory
The pointlessness of poetry"

from Exequy, the Costs of Seriousness copyright Peter Porter

I appreciated how Porter questioned the narcissistic obsession we have in this country with our "national identity". In his poem "The Burning Fiery Furnace" from Better than God he wrote:

"Henry Ford was right: what's history,
Why do Australians wonder who they are"
Infinite stars in heaven-your one star
Is your own life- the millions don't agree.

They sulk in digits and symposia
And measure muscle tone and their synapses
Childhood’s Tower (not Ivory) collapses.
Eucalyptus is a plain ambrosia.

I write this down I’m sure because I’m old;
The country of my birth’s become hot news
And selfishness would always take short views —
My ancestors came out and found no gold.

The world is made again in each of us.
Australian homes are dark to help the sun
Lure children out for democratic fun.
The myopic boy’s gazetted an Odysseus."

A collection of Peter Porter's poetry can be found here. An 2009 interview with Peter Porter from the ABC Radio National Book Show is here.

This piece from the Australian includes links to Obituaries of Peter Porter.

Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

Two poems by Yehuda Amichai, considered Israel's finest poet.

My Mother on Her Sickbed

My mother on her sickbed with the lightness/
and hollowness of a person/
Who has already said goodbye at an airport/
In the beautiful and quiet area/
Between parting and takeoff.

My mother on her sickbed
All she had in life is now
Like empty bottles in front of the door
That will show once more with colored labels
What filled them with joy and sadness.

Her last words. Take the flowers out of the room,
She said seven days before her death,
Then she closed her eyes for seven days,
Like the seven days of mourning.

But even her death created in her room
A warm hominess
With her sleeping face and the cup with its teaspoon
And the towel and the book and the glasses,
And her hand on the blanket, the same
hand that felt my forehead, in childhood.

I, May I Rest in Peace

I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life.
I want peace right now while I'm still alive.
I don't want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without
and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always
my own, my lover-face, my enemy-face.
Wars with the old weapons – sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,
dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons – machine gun, missile,
words, land mines exploding, love and hate.
I don't want to fulfill my parents' prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.

From Open Closed Open, by Yehuda Amichai
Copyright © 2000 by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

ANZAC Day: Rembering the horror and pointlessness of war

Anzac Day is upon us. I ran through Kings Park last evening where the Anzac Day Dawn service takes place. Hard to believe the size and scale of the planning for the dawn service.

Thinking about Anzac Day brings to mine James Scott's book Domination and the Arts of Resistance in which he writes of the public rituals, performances and ceremonies- parades, memorials, state ceremonies- that the powerful use to distract attention away from the strategies they use to retain power. War of course being one of those.

I will spend the day reflecting on the horror and tragedy of war, and of Australia's history of fighting in other country's wars. I will think of my own family members who fought (and suffered) as a result of their war experiences. They had no interest in all the glorification and memorialisaion of war.

And I will think of a former neighbour of mine. He fought in New Guinea where he saw the horror of war. He told me once that "war is just ordinary men with families and children killing other ordinary men with families and children...... Unnecessary killing that’s what war is”. I wonder if his message will get spoken on Anzac Day.

A piece inspired by a conversation I had with him on the eve of the invasion of Iraq can be read here.

And I will listen to Australian music and read poetry that speaks of the horror, futility and brutality of war. One song I will play is Eric Bogle's masterpiece of the futility of war, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda (the versions I will listen to is the Bushwackers' version-just voice and piano-from their 1975 album and English singer June Tabor's version featuring just her unaccompanied voice.)

I will also be listening to John Schuman and the Vagabond Crew's Behind the Lines a CD of Australian anti-war songs, including songs he wrote for the socio-political folk band Redgum in the 70's and 80's, as well as covers of other Australian songs of war by Don Walker (Khe Sanh), Russell Morris (On the Wings of an Eagle), Rob Hirst and Midnite Oil (My Country) Eric Bogle (And the Band Played Walzing Matilda and No Man's Land) and Mike Rudd and Spectrum (I'll be Gone/ Someday I'll have money)

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda
by Eric Bogle

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?
copyright © Eric Bogle

The genius of Monty Python

Of late I have been wading through the documentary Monty Python: Almost The Truth: The Lawyers Cut. It is a blockbuster- three DVD's and 7.5 hours worth of the the history of the Pythons, from their comedic origins through to the present day. It is a reminder of the comic brilliance of the Python crew.

For me Life of Brian is their cinematic masterpiece and the Piranha Brothers, about the fictional gangland brothers Doug and Dinsdale Piranha, one of their funniest sketches.

Who can forget the exchange between the Interviewer and Stig O'Tracey.

Presenter	Another man who had his head nailed to the floor was Stig O' Tracey.
	Cut to another younger more cheerful man on sofa.
Interviewer	Stig, I've been told Dinsdale Piranha nailed your head to the floor.
Stig	No, no. Never, never. He was a smashing bloke. He used to give his mother flowers and that. He was like a brother to me.
Interviewer	But the police have film of Dinsdale actually nailing your head to the floor.
Stig	Oh yeah, well - he did that, yeah.
Interviewer	Why?
Stig	Well he had to, didn't he? I mean, be fair, there was nothing else he could do. I mean, I had transgressed the unwritten law.
Interviewer	What had you done?
Stig	Er... Well he never told me that. But he gave me his word that it was the case, and that's good enough for me with old Dinsy. I mean, he didn't want to nail my head to the floor. I had to insist. He wanted to let me off. There's nothing Dinsdale wouldn't do for you.
Interviewer	And you don't bear him any grudge?
Stig	A grudge! Old Dinsy? He was a real darling.
Interviewer	I understand he also nailed your wife's head to a coffee table. Isn't that right Mrs O' Tracey?
	Camera pans to show woman with coffee table nailed to head.
Mrs O' Tracey	Oh, no. No. No.
Stig	Yeah, well, he did do that. Yeah, yeah. He was a cruel man, but fair
	Cut back to Vince.
Interviewer	Vince, after he nailed your head to the floor, did you ever see him again
Vince	Yeah.....after that I used to go round his flat every Sunday lunchtime to apologize and we'd shake hands and then he'd nail my head to the floor
Interviewer	Every Sunday?
Vince	Yeah but he was very reasonable about it. I mean one Sunday when my parents were coming round for tea, I asked him if he'd mind very much not nailing my head to the floor that week and he agreed and just screwed my pelvis to a cake stand.
	Cut to man affixed to a coffee table and a standard lamp.
Man	He was the only friend I ever had.

Random Thoughts*: Tony Judt

"Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within. The impact of material differences takes a while to show up: but in due course competition for status and goods increases; people feel a growing sense of superiority (or inferiority) based on their possessions; prejudice toward those on the lower rungs of the social ladder hardens; crime spikes and the pathologies of social disadvantage become ever more marked. The legacy of unregulated wealth creation is bitter indeed."

Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, New York Review of Books, April 29, 2010

* Random thoughts is a attempt to use the words and thoughts of others to illuminate aspects of contemporary life here in Australia and Western Australia.

Truths that are hidden by 'lest we forget': ANZAC Day and selective rememberance

"War, in short prompted behaviour that would have been unthinkable, as well as dysfunctional in peacetime... War- total war- has been the critical antecedent condition for mass criminality in the modern era"
Tony Judt 2008

Anzac Day is fast approaching and with it comes jingoism, nationalism, memorialization and glorification of war. I am all for respecting and acknowledging the sacrifice and courage of Australian soldiers, but what we get with Anzac Day is "selective remembering": the promotion and popularization of a mythology that accords legitimacy to some truths about Australia's military history and silences others. Much of the history of Anzac Day does not enhance our appreciation and awareness of Australian history. It serves as substitute.

During Anzac Day there is no place for alternative political narratives about Australia's past and current military history. We hear nothing about, the foreign invasion of sovereign nations by Australian troops; the exploitation of Australian troops by Imperial powers (USA and Britain) ; the lies and deceit that have been used time and time again to justify Australia's involvement in overseas wars (Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan); the pointlessness of Australia's involvement in the geo-political maneuvers of imperial powers; Australia's unquestioning involvement in imperial wars since the Boer War; the incompetence and callousness of military and political decision makers- American, British and Australian; the horror, brutality and pointlessness of war; the atrocities perpetrated by the Australian military and their allies; the brutalizing effect of war on ordinary soldiers and their families and on civilians; the abandonment of many Australian soldiers by the Australian military and government once they return home from war; the bellicose attitudes to war and the political uses that military, media and political leaders make of the Australia's military history.

School memories as a marker of passing years: a Philip Larkin poem

Philip Larkin's poem is a reminder that for students, teachers and parents alike memories of school days are an important marker of passing years.

The School in August

The cloakroom pegs are empty now,
And locked the classroom door,
The hollow desks are lined with dust,
and slow across the floor
A sunbeam creeps between the chairs
Till the sun shines no more.

Who did their hair before this glass?
Who scratched 'Elaine loves Jill'
One drowsy summer sewing-class
With scissors on the sill?
Who practised this piano
Whose notes are now so still?

Ah, notices taken down,
And scorebooks stowed away,
And seniors grow tomorrow
From the juniors today,
And even swimming groups can fade,
Games mistresses turn grey.

copyright Philip Larkin

The poetry of Mourid Barghouti

The Pillow
by Mourid Barghoiti

The pillow said:
at the end of the long day
only I know
the confident man’s confusion,
the nun’s desire,
the slight quiver in the tyrant’s eyelash,
the preacher’s obscenity,
the soul’s longing
for a warm body where flying sparks
become a glowing coal.
Only I know
the grandeur of unnoticed little things;
only I know the loser’s dignity,
the winner’s loneliness
and the stupid coldness one feels
when a wish has been granted

The Palestinian writer Mourid Barghouti is best known in the West for his book I Saw Ramalallah, a memoir of exile and displacement. Barghouti is also distinguished poet who has published ten books of poetry in Arabic.

Midnight and other Poems is his second book of poetry in English, but the most comprehensive collection of his work available.

The UK Independent has a review of the book here from which this extract is taken:

"There is not a single line of propaganda in this book. You will search in vain for any didactic message about Israel-Palestine politics. The only poem clearly prompted by a public event, the televised killing of a small boy by occupying forces on the West Bank, segues into a poignant ghost story in which dream – and dream alone – redeems an accursed time.

Instead of polemic and accusation, Barghouti fashions harrowing elegies, mordant ironies, and a gallows humour as bitter as the coffee grounds marking one of the small rituals that help make the days of dispossession bearable. He quotes Yeats and Shakespeare; he can sound, in his weary, sardonic pluck, much like Auden or Brecht.

This bone-bred sadness does not make Barghouti a detached or "neutral" voice. He bears witness to a people's tragedy that men, not fate, have made – but men in several different uniforms. And, in many poems, the life that coercion cannot kill – the memory of an orange grove, a woman's love, the creatures of the earth and the stars in the sky – kicks against the dark. Barghouti never openly indicts but, an emissary of the defeated, he does ask the victors – any of history's victors – why they find it so hard to sleep soundly".

Barghouti's writings in English are available on his website.

Neoliberalism in Australia

Listed to an important program on Radio National's Late Night Live with Phillip Adams talking with David McKnight and Richard Dennis on the topic "Is neo-liberalism Dead in Australia".

The program was built around the new book edited by David McKnight and Robert Manne titled "Goodbye to All That: On the Failure of Neoliberalism and the Urgency of Change".

Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute argued that neo- liberalism is well and truly alive in Australia. His view is that at the level of macro-economic policy there has been a small departure away from neoliberalism, exemplified by the Rudd Government's stimulus package and its willingness to intervene in the economy to respond to the global economic crises. However, Denniss argues that at the level of micro-economic policy the hold of neoliberalism over the Rudd Government is a strong as ever, if not stronger than before the global crises.

Issues to do with neoliberalism and the domination of 'market based thinking' are the focus of another blog I edit- Challenging the Market- which is a project of the WA Social Justice Network

British Election posters

photos from Flickr

Just love the poster from the British election featuring the Tories "man of the people" leader David Cameron whose policy pronouncements get more ridiculous by the day. As well as promising tax cuts to the richest billionaires he is now going to hand power back to the people to decide critical policy. Yeah as if!!! Still what a choice the electorate has- which corrupt political party do you vote for?- The Tories or Labour.

There is a site collecting 'real" election posters from the election. Worth a look, particularly those that have been graffitied.

Iraq Veteran on the slaughter of Iraqi civilians and journalists

Josh Stieber is a former soldier of the company shown in the video recently released by Wikileaks (Bravo Company 2-16 features in David Finkel's book the Good Soldiers), which showed U.S. soldiers killing civilians including a Reuters photographer. Josh Stieber is now a conscientious objector and writes an interesting blog where he wrote this:

"A lot of my friends are in that video. Nine times out of ten, that's the way things ended up. Killing was following military protocol. It was going along with the rules as they are.... If these videos shock and revolt you, it's because they show the reality of what war is like. If you don’t like what you see in them, it means we should be working harder towards alternatives to war....Secretary Gates put his seal of approval on the attack. We're funding the war with our tax dollars. We have to decide if this really represents us as a country, is this what we really value?"
The Company that Josh Stieber was part of- Bravo Company 2-16- features in David Finkel's book the Good Soldiers, which is published in Australia by Scribe Publications

ABC's 4 Corners program on the dirty business of coal mining

Thanks goodness for the ABC's 4 Corners program. It continues to undertake essential investigative journalism, often shining the light on the murky world of corporate and government power in Australia.

Monday night's program "A Dirty Business" sheds light on the appalling silence and inaction by the NSW Government and the mining and power generation industries about the negative health and social consequences of their activities in the Upper Hunter Valley. Andrew Fowler's report asks whether emissions from coal mining and power generation are the cause of serious illness including serious respiratory problems, nervous system diseases, cardiovascular disease and liver disorders.

Andrew Fowler's report documents and describes what many in WA know well- the real social, human and environmental costs of this country's mining economy. What the program demonstrates once again, is the complete and utter disregard that governments and the mining and resources industry have for the the social harms the industry causes.

The desire of governments for mining royalties and of mining companies for massive profits overrides any other consideration, even people's health.

The love that binds fathers and sons

image courtsey of Reckonings

Over on one of my favourite blogs (Notes on) Politics, Theory and Photography the author Jim Johnson has written a deeply personal piece about the loss of his son in a sporting accident. Jim's moving piece is a beautiful exemplar of the power of the father and son relationship and a cry to celebrate and cherish that relationship very day. Jim's piece is a powerful reminder and one I am grateful for.

My own son has been away from Perth for nearly 2 weeks on holiday and I feel his absence profoundly. But I am lucky. He will be back on the weekend.

On the day I read Jim's piece I was listening to the English folksinger, songwriter and guitarist Martin Simpson who has written two profound and beautiful songs about the father and son relationship.

The song One Day from his 2009 CD True Stories was written by Martin Simpson and jazz guitarist Martin Taylor. The song is about Martin Taylor's youngest son who died tragically young, and is based on a 3 line poem Martin Taylor wrote about his son. Taylor asked Martin Simpson to complete the song. It is a profound musical performance, described by one writer as "a song of such exposed pain" and "a poignant masterpiece" by another.

ONE DAY- by MARTIN SIMPSON

Well my heart is broken
for I loved you so dearly
you're my romany charl
my dear gypsy boy

But the life that we shared
it was gone in a moment
and with it all pleasure
and with it all joy

You rode a horse like a king
and you sang like an angel
but it bought you no peace
by night and by day

When sunlight burns cruel
and moonlight shines balefully
there would be nowhere to go
and no reason to stay

You rode a horse like a king
and I watched you so proudly
with my heart in my mouth
afraid you might fall
and when the fall came
there was no-one could catch you
no one could help you
no one at all

The twin oaks in the hedgerow
they grow strong from such sadness
drawn from the grave
of a lost gypsy child

and the leaves and the long grass
they whisper your name
my romany chavel
so near and so wild

One day I will hear hoofbeats
and not grieve for the rider
and the song you sing
will bring peace and not pain
and the fields where you rode
on your pushty ride
will bloom with the promise of laughter again

One day I will hear hoofbeats
and not grieve for the rider
and the song that you sing
will bring peace and not pain
and the fields that you ride on
on your own pushty ride
will bloom with the promise of laughter again

On his 2007 CD Prodigal Son Martin Simpson performs the song "Never Any Good", a moving tribute to his own father. Simpson's song tells the story of his father's life and of the gifts he gave his musician son.

NEVER ANY GOOD - Martin Simpson

You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job,
Not steady enough for the office, not hard enough for the hod.
You'd rather be riding your Norton or going fishing with your split cane rod.
You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job.

When your grammar school days were over, it was nineteen-seventeen,
And you did the right and proper thing. You were just eighteen.
You were never mentioned in dispatches. You never mentioned what you did or saw.
You were just another keen young man in the mud and stink of war.

You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job,
Not steady enough for the office, not hard enough for the hod.
You'd rather be singing The Pirate King or fishing with your split cane rod.
You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job.

You came home from the Great War with the pips of a captain's rank,
A German officer's Luger and no money in the bank.
Your family sent you down in the coal mine to learn to be captain there,
But you didn't stand it very long. You needed the light and the air.

You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job,
Not steady enough for the office, not hard enough for the hod.
You'd rather be watching performers fly or fishing with your split cane rod.
You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job.

When the Second War came along, you knew what should be done.
You would reenlist to teach young men the booby trap and the gun;
And they sent you home to Yorkshire with a crew and a Lewis gun
So you could save your seaside town from the bombers of the Hun.

You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job,
Not steady enough for the office, not hard enough for the hod.
You'd rather be finding the nightjar's nest or fishing with your split cane rod.
You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job.

And when my mother came to your door with a baby in her arm,
Her big hurt boy, just nine years old, trying to keep her from harm—
If you had been a practical man, you would have been forewarned.
You would have seen that it never could work and I would have never been born.

There's no proper work in your seaside town, so you come here looking for a job.
You were store man at the power station just before I came along.
Nobody talked about how you quit, but I know that's what you did.
My mother said you were a selfish man and I was your selfish kid.

You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job,
Not steady enough for the office, not hard enough for the hod.
And your Norton it was soon gone along with your split cane rod.
You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job.

You showed me eyebright in the hedgerow, speedwell and traveler's joy.
You showed me how to use my eyes when I was just a boy.
And you taught me how to love a song, and all you knew of nature's ways,
The greatest gifts I have ever known and I use them every day.

You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job,
Not steady enough for the office, maybe, not hard enough for the hod.
You'd rather be riding your Norton or going fishing with your split cane rod.
You were never any good with money. You couldn't even hold a job.

Poets against War- Dahlia Ravikovitch, Israeli poet

On the wonderful website Poets Against War I am introduced to the powerful poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch who was considered one of the great Hebrew poets. I was not familiar with her work but find myself overwhelmed with the power of her poem Hovering at a Low Altitude described by one reviewer in the following way:

"The image of low-altitude hovering over an atrocity is an . . . effective emblem of the situation of the ordinary Israeli, knowing but choosing not to see certain terrible acts perpetrated by other Israelis, or even in the name of the nation; more generally, it is a parable of the moral untenability of detached observation in [the] political realm." This parable is more timely now than ever"

HOVERING AT A LOW ALTITUDE

I am not here.
I am on those craggy eastern hills
streaked with ice
where grass doesn't grow
and a sweeping shadow overruns the slope.
A little shepherd girl
with a herd of goats,
black goats,
emerges
from an unseen tent.
She won't live out the day, that girl,
in the pasture.

I am not here.
Inside the gaping mouth of the mountain
a red globe flares,
not yet a sun.
A lesion of frost, flushed and sickly,
flickers in that gorge.

And the little one rose up so early
to go to the pasture.
She doesn't walk with neck outstretched
and wanton glances.
She doesn't adorn her eyes with kohl.
She doesn't ask, Whence cometh my help.

I am not here.
I've been in the mountains many days now.
The light will not scald me. The frost cannot touch me.
Nothing can amaze me now.
I've seen worse things in my life.

I tuck my dress tight around my legs and hover
very close to the ground.
What could she be thinking, that girl?
Wild to look at, unwashed.
For a moment she crouches down.
Her cheeks soft silk,
frostbite on the back of her hands.
She seems distracted, but no,
in fact she's alert.

She still has a few hours left.
But that's hardly the object of my meditations.
My thoughts, soft as down, cushion me comfortably.
I've found a very simple method,
not so much as a foot-breadth on land
and not flying, either —
hovering at a low altitude.

But as day tends toward noon,
many hours
after sunrise,
that man makes his way up the mountain.
He looks innocent enough.
The girl is right there, close by,
not another soul around.
And if she runs for cover, or cries out —
there's no place to hide in the mountains.

I am not here.
I'm above those savage mountain ranges
in the farthest reaches of the east.
No need to elaborate.
With a single hurling thrust one can hover
and whirl about with the speed of the wind,
make a getaway and take comfort in saying:
I haven't seen a thing.
And the little one, her eyes start from their sockets,
her palate is dry as a potsherd,
when a hard hand closes over her hair, grasping her
without a shred of pity.

by Dahlia Ravikovich

The evils of capitalism

Police Officer at the entrance to the Upper Big Branch mine photo by Chris Kean, Reuters (courtesy of Corp Watch)

"What corporations can get away with legally in the United States while ignoring the costs they impose on the public is bad enough. But it's even worse to see a corporation brazenly and repeatedly break mine-safety laws, destroy pristine mountains and rivers, and crush worker rights—and get away with it all, again and again".
Roger Bybee

The death of 25 miners in a massive explosion in a West Virginia coal mine is the worst US mine disaster in 25 years .

The deaths shed light on a coal company whose behavior points to the evils of corporate capitalism. Human life and the environment are expendable commodities, always secondary to the pursuit and protection of corporate profit and corporate power, and corporations use their wealth and political power against democracy.

The Upper Big Branch Mine where the explosion occurred, is owned by the Massey Energy Company, the largest producer of coal in Appalachia. Massey operates 47 mines in the Appalachian region and generated revenue of $2.3 billion in 2009 from its mining operations.

Massey Energy has a long "criminal" record of safety and environmental violations at the mine where the explosions occurred, as well at its other mining operations. In March 2010 the Upper Big Branch mine was cited for 53 safety violations, and in 2009 the number of citations against the mine doubled and penalties imposed tripled (to $897,325). The mine has been the site of other fatalities in recent years. Corp Watch cites comments from subcontractors at the mine who said that the mine had been unsafe for years. The company pushed the mine for more coal production- and more profit- at any cost

In 2008 a Massey subsidiary paid the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry after pleading guilty to safety violations that contributed to the deaths of 2 miners. The company has continually been fined for violations of safety and environmental laws.

It is hard to believe the appalling track record of Massey Energy and its CEO Don Blankenship (described in articles by Michael Winship and Roger Bybee). Blankenship has been described as the scariest polluter in the US and as "evil".

As Winship describes it, Blankenship has banned unions from his mines, denies global warming and climate change, supports the anti regulation agenda of conservative free market think tanks and uses his money and power to influence political and legal decision making. As Roger Bybee sees it, Massey Energy has such wealth and political power that it has outgrown the restraints of democracy. Bybee writes:

When Blankenship became infuriated with all the safety, environmental, and labor-law violations with which Massey was being hit, he took action. He used his wealth to essentially buy two State Supreme Court seats in West Virginia, where many of Massey's mine operations are located.

The Corp Watch piece quotes commentators who describe Massey Energy as one of the worst companies in the industry

This is an example of unbridled capitalism at its most evil. It raises a fundamental question- how can such a recidivist corporate offender can be allowed to continue to operate. It highlights the need to introduce what Richard Grossman and others call the corporate death penalty- the ability to revoke the charter to operate of corporations that continually and knowingly break the law. In essence this means losing the state's permission to exist as a corporation, thereby putting the corporation out of existence.

If corporations want to claim the rights of ordinary citizens, to free speech for example, then it is time they also face the penalties for crimes committed against people and the environment.

America's imperial project in Iraq and Afghanistan is coming apart

cartoon copyright of Peter Brookes

America's imperial project in Iraq and Afghanistan (still supported by the Rudd Government) continues to spiral out of control.

A string of bombings in Baghdad over the last 5 days have claimed nearly 200 lives in the Iraqi capital. There is growing concern that the level of violence and sectarian unrest now rivals the bloody months before the "surge" of 2007.

And there is international outrage about footage showing US forces deliberately murdering journalists and civilians . Here's a piece from Amy Goodman of the alternative media source Democracy Now on the video footage of the murder of journalists and civilians in Baghdad by the US military:

A United States military video was released this week showing the indiscriminate targeting and killing of civilians in Baghdad. The nonprofit news organization WikiLeaks obtained the video and made it available on the Internet. The video was made July 12, 2007, by a U.S. military Apache helicopter gunship, and includes audio of military radio transmissions.

Two Reuters employees—a journalist and his driver—were killed in the attack, along with at least eight other people, and two children were injured. The radio transmissions show not only the utter callousness of the soldiers, laughing and swearing as they kill, but also the strict procedure they follow, ensuring that all of their attacks are clearly authorized by their chain of command. The leaked video is a grim depiction of how routine the killing of civilians has become, and is a stark reminder of how necessary journalism is, and how dangerous its practice has become.

The independent journalist Dahr Jamil, who reports from Iraq and the Middle East, writes that unprovoked slaughter by US soldiers is not uncommon. Jamil has published first person accounts from US soldiers of the slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians.

And here is the highly regarded William Pfaff, author of eight books on American foreign policy, international relations, and contemporary history, and columnist of over 25 years on the unfolding debacle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Washington once again finds itself dangerously entangled with the hostile policies, nationalistic interests and supporters, and personal ambitions of a foreign figure whom it counted on to serve American interests.

This time it is in Afghanistan, the latest in what, alas, must be described as America’s quasi-imperial foreign military adventures. This is a country to which the United States, at stupendous cost, and with stupendous effort, is transporting the greater part of the huge logistical and war-fighting apparatus it has deployed over the last seven years in Iraq. It occurs at just the moment when Iraq’s situation—which none (save the surviving admirers of George W. Bush) dare call victory—is threatening to come apart.

Negotiations over the formation of a new government in Iraq have, for weeks now, been accompanied by bombings and suicide attacks, clearly political in nature, which imply the possibility of an eventual resumption of communal violence in that tragic country."

The extent to which US forces are committing atrocities in Afghanistan is the subject of Stephen Lendman's article in Dissident Voice. Lendman argues that systematic atrocities have escalated sharply since General Stanley McChrystal took charge of US/NATO forces (including Australian troops) and that the US media has suppressed accounts of atrocities that are reported in European and Arabic media.

The crimes of capitalism go unpunished

image courtesy of Centre for Media and Democracy

Two excellent pieces by Mary Bottari on the website of the Centre for Media and Democracy about the crimes of the American capitalist corporate elite.

In one piece Bottari reports that the real cost of taxpayer bailouts of US financial corporations is much greater than reported and totals $4.6 trillion- yes, that is $4.6 trillion gifted by the US public to the doyens of free market capitalism.
Bottari writes:

The Centre for Media and Democracy (CMD) concludes that multiple federal agencies have disbursed $4.6 trillion dollars in supporting the financial sector since the meltdown in 2007-2008. Of that, $2 trillion is still outstanding. Our tally shows that the Federal Reserve is the real source of the bailout funds. CMD’s assessment demonstrates that while the press has focused its attention on the $700 billion TARP bill passed by Congress, the Federal Reserve has provided by far the bulk of the funding for the bailout in the form of loans amounting to $3.8 trillion.

In a second piece Bottari highlights the lack of action by American authorities in investigating and prosecuting the financial crimes committed by America's largest financial corporations. Not one person from a financial institution has been imprisoned for their crimes (the exception is the Ponzi scheme king Bernard Madoff) :

"Eighteen months after the collapse of the financial system, not one Wall St Titan has joined the Ponzi king in the federal pen.............. Apparently no one at the Department of Justice or the FBI really cares about the greatest white-collar crime wave in the history of the world -- even if it did rob average American of some $14 trillion dollars in lost wages, savings, and housing wealth. After eighteen months, it is difficult to point to one CEO from a major Wall Street bank, hedge fund, or fraudulent mortgage company who is behind bars".

The website BanksterUSA also developed by the Centre for Media and Democracy is a great source of information.

When it comes to investigating and prosecuting corporate crime and criminality, particularly financial crime and fraud, the situation is little different here in Australia. Despite two decades of corporate collapses and pervasive financial fraud, usually the result of corporate criminality, there is little evidence in this country that the crimes of the rich and powerful corporate elite are accorded anywhere the same priority as ordinary street crimes.

The Catholic Church and cover up of sexual abuse

images copyright Mr Fish and Mike Luckovich, courtesy of Truth Dig

How ironic. At the holiest time of the year the sex abuse scandal engulfing the Catholic Church spreads across Europe, USA and South America and Australia, with questions being raised about the involvement of the current Pope and the church hierarchy in covering up sexual abuse by priests.

Interesting to see high profile Catholics in this country who normally want to impose their moral standards on us all now trying to downplay the scandal, whilst not appearing to condone sexual abuse. The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and its supporters know no bounds.

As always cartoons say it best.

Obama sure ain't no Martin Luther King

image courtesy of Black Agenda Report

I have written before of my mistrust of the Obama phenomena and his philosophy and policies. So I was taken by this quote by Glen Ford, the Executive Editor of BlackAgendaReport.com

"Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been “polluted” by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today".

Black Agenda Report is an excellent source of information and analysis. It offers intelligent and penetrating insights into contemporary social, political and economic issues from the perspective of Black America.

Judith Wright- Living is Dailiness- " Grace"

Easter for me is contemplation, reflection, and reading. Poetry is figuring large on my reading list, including Judith Wright, Australia's finest poet. Here is her fine poem Grace.

Grace by Judith Wright

Living is a dailiness, a simple bread
that's worth the eating. But I can't have known a wine,
a drunkenness that can't be spoken or sung
without betraying it. Far past Yours or Mine,
even past Ours, it has nothing at all to say
it slants a sudden laser through common day.

It seems to have nothing to do with things at all,
requires another element or dimension.
Not contemplation brings it; it merely happens,
past expectation and beyond intention;
takes over the depth of flesh, the inward eye,
is there then vanishes. Does not live or die,

because it occurs beyond the here and now,
positives, negatives, what we hope and are.
Not even being in love, or making love,
brings it. It plunges a sword from a dark star.

Maybe there was once a word for it. Call it grace.
I have seen it, once or twice, through a human face

Re-reading Rainer Marie Rilke

image courtesy of Allyshoo (http://www.allyshoo.com)

Many years ago I used to spend hours immersed in the poetry and writing of the poet Rainer Marie Rilke. In recent years, I avoided his work, preferring to read other poets, but of late I have been rediscovering the beauty and power of Rilke's work.

As Joanne Macey and Anita Burrows point out in the their excellent collection A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the best of Rainer Marie Rilke, Rilke was a poet who understood impermanence. He was able to grasp and cherish the transient nature of all things.

Remembering
Rainer Marie Rilke

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is-
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusty bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived

(from Book of Images)

Australian history and ANZAC mythmaking

" This business of memory making demands analysis"
Marilyn Lake

As ANZAC Day approaches the new release section of my local bookshop groans under the weight of books on Australia's military history. I counted ten today and plenty more will appear over coming weeks. Most of the books have the word 'ANZAC' in the title.

I am currently reading two of these new books, each with differing perspectives on Australian history.

Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds's new book What's Wrong with Anzac argues that the Anzac obsession distorts Australian history and identity. They argue that official sponsorship of the Anzac legend, through commemoration and education, has often been used to mobilise conservative forces for political ends. Their reason for writing the book was:

"We are deeply concerned about many aspects of the Anzac resurgence. We are concerned about the extraordinary government intervention in promoting Anzac Day, most of which has occurred without people knowing its true extent. We are also concerned about the misrepresentation and forgetting of our broader history. History runs counter to myth making. We write to encourage a more critical and truthful public debate about the uses of the Anzac myth."

Lake and Reynolds argue that the myth of Anzac continues to exert its power and looms large in our historical memory (thanks in part to the research and PR Departments of the Australian government and the Australian War Museum). It is also part of what they describe as the 'militarization of history'. Marilyn Lake has written on these issues before here.

Alastair Thomson in his book Anzac Memories argues similarly when he describes war remembrance as selective forgetting- forgetting of the horror of war, the atrocities, the horrendous deaths, the brutality, the centrality of killing.

Many of the new books revisit the history and myth making of the Gallipoli campaign. A new book produced by the Australian War Museum sheds light on a little known aspect of the history of that campaign. Gallipoli Revisited: In the footsteps of Charles Bean and the Australian Historical Mission by Janda Gooding, tells the story of the Australian Historical Mission (AHM) who returned to Gallipoli in 1919 to research the campaign and the battles. The AHM was led by Charles Bean (Australia's official war correspondent during the Gallipoli campaign), artist George Lambert and photographer Hubert Wilkins, and its task was to understand what happened at Gallipoli and to communicate that to Australians so they could comprehend what took place there. The Mission walked the battlefields to collect relics and recreate what happened through photographs and artworks.

The book contains hundreds of original photographs, drawings, sketches, artworks, diary notes and letters, and images from the time. Because Wilkins's photos of the battlefields and the Gallipoli Peninsula were taken in 1919, so soon after the campaign, they convey the scale and grandeur of the landscape and the poignancy of what took place there. Wilkins's photographs really are the centrepiece of this book. They are stunning.

Upon completion of their mission Bean and a number of his colleagues returned to Egypt by train through the heartland of Turkey. The book includes photos of the Turkish landscape and haunting photos of Turkish soldiers returning from the war.

Despite the wonderful presentation and the significance of this book, I am troubled by some aspects of it. There is a silence about the role that Bean and his colleagues played as 'propagandists', in conveying certain narratives about the Gallipoli campaign back to Australians, and ignoring others. Gooding's book, for example, does not explore the way that the history of the Gallipoli campaign , which was heavily based on Bean and his colleague's work, was (and is still) used by the Australian military and political establishment to create and support an idealized mythology about Australia's involvement in war.

Despite the brilliance of his achievement and his legacy, Bean played a role in legitimising an idealised version of the Gallipoli campaign and contributed to the creation of a mythology that accorded legitimacy to some truths and silenced others. This continues today, so that alternative narratives about Gallipoli (and Australia's past and current military history) continue to be marginalized- the foreign invasion of a sovereign nation by Australian troops; the exploitation of Australian troops by their Australian and British leaders; the pointlessness of Australia's involvement in the geo-political maneuvers of imperial powers; Australia's unquestioning involvement in an imperial war; the incompetence and callousness of military and political decision makers- both British and Australian; the horror, brutality and pointlessness of war; the atrocities perpetrated on, and by the Australian military; the bellicose attitudes to war and the political uses that military and political leaders make of the work of well intentioned journalists, artists and historians.