colin penter: "always keep a diamond in your mind"

Art Garfunkel interview

2012-01-01T10:03:00.000+08:00

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

2011-12-20T21:35:00.000+08:00

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

2011-12-06T21:13:00.001+08:00

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

2011-12-03T17:18:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-27T15:59:00.001+08:00

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

2011-11-13T14:15:00.000+08:00

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

2011-11-12T21:31:00.000+08:00

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"

2011-11-07T20:43:00.001+08:00

"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

2011-11-06T16:56:00.000+08:00

.. 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

2011-11-06T16:29:00.002+08:00

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

2011-11-05T19:17:00.001+08:00

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

2011-11-05T17:55:00.003+08:00

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.

This is what happens when profit drives the delivery of human services

2011-08-20T09:27:00.000+08:00

photo courtesy of Sydney Morning Herald

The dangers involved in allowing the for-profit private and corporate sector to deliver human services to vulnerable people are once again evident in a report More than board and lodging: the need for boarding house reform by the NSW Ombudsman into licensed for- profit boarding houses in NSW. The Report documents what happens when the profit motive becomes the main driver of the delivery of human services and Governments and the not for profit sector hand over responsibility for service delivery to the private sector..

In NSW boarding houses are run as for- profit private businesses to provide accommodation to people with disabilities, people with alcohol and drug problems. and mental illness. Residents are usually reliant on income support and pay between 75-100% of their benefits to the boarding house for accommodation and consumables

The Report documents shocking levels of abuse, sexual assault and mistreatment of residents by staff and other residents. The Report demonstrates the complete failure of the Government's licensing and regulation of for- profit and corporate providers.

The Ombudsman's investigation found that residents have been physically and sexually assaulted by staff and other residents, have died in appalling circumstances, and been denied basic rights, including contact with their families. This is the fourth report in less than 10 years on the failure of the state and the for profit providers to protect boarding house residents, in particular those with psychological and intellectual disabilities.

Adele Horin's report in the Sydney Morning Herald describes the conditions:

An estimated 455 private boarding houses operate in NSW with more than 5000 residents, most of them poor and vulnerable. They pay the proprietor 75 per cent to 100 per cent of their pension. Thirty-one of the boarding houses are licensed by the government to accommodate 687 residents with mental illness and/or intellectual disabilities. They must comply with conditions set out in legislation.

The report, More than board and lodging: the need for boarding house reform, shows the level of care for boarding house residents is inferior to that received by people with similar conditions in housing run or funded by the government.

For example, in 2008, a resident was found 12 hours after he had died in a room strewn with faeces and toilet paper. Three months earlier, hospital staff had raised concerns about his hygiene and nutrition. Around the time of his death, the department had assured the Ombudsman of its initiatives to improve monitoring and compliance at the boarding house. The boarding house eventually closed due to ''unrelated factors''.
Another case involved two residents aged over 80 with schizophrenia, who lived in a licensed boarding house despite having been assessed as needing nursing home care.

Jan Daisley, president of People with Disability Australia, said: "It is abhorrent that people with disability are left to deteriorate and die in these places while all along paying up to 100 per cent of their income to live in this form of housing''.

The Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, noted the good work of some proprietors but said resident welfare should not depend on the ''goodwill and favour of individual proprietors.''

Dr Gabrielle Drake, a researcher and lecturer from the UWS School of Social Sciences who completed a PhD study in 2010 on the deinstitutionalisation of boarding houses for people with mental illness and disability. has long called for the closure of the boarding houses.

Dr Drake says many of the current licensed boarding houses came about as a part of the poorly resourced and poorly coordinated deinstitutionalisation process.
"The result of this process is that people use the majority of their pension to live in boarding houses which are located in the community, yet they still have restricted access to that community and are still denied their right to self-determination," says Dr Drake.
"These homes are effectively still institutions, where the residents must conform to structured meal times, closed kitchens, and a lack of coordinated health care and planning. Too many also experience abuse, sexual assault, fear and intimidation."
Dr Drake says licensed boarding houses are an archaic approach to service provision for people with a mental illness and disability.
"The Ombudsman's Report clearly indicates that the NSW Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care's (ADHC) procedure for monitoring the conditions in boarding houses has been unacceptable," she says.
"While I support legislative reform and the need for a cross-agency and partnership approach, at the heart of this debate needs to be the realisation that people with disability have the right to live and participate in the community in non-congregate accommodation."

Privatization of the care of vulnerable people

2011-07-24T10:05:00.000+08:00

images by Simon Bosch, courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald

State and Federal Governments of all persuasion continue their love affair with "market based approaches" to the provision of health services and human and community services.

These market based approaches take many forms, including privatization and contracting out of government services, competitive tendering of services to not-for- profit and for profit agencies, increasing use of for-profit providers and the private sector to provide services, use of user pay and cost recovery principles, the application of business metrics and the imposition of corporate management models and approaches that have their origins in the for- profit business context.

But they all are predicated on the assumption that applying market principles to the delivery of health and human and community services will drive innovation, deliver greater efficiency and better quality services and save Governments money.

Adele Horin's piece in the Sydney Morning Herald Sad Truth behind Closed Doors is further evidence of the dangers of relying on market based and for- profit approaches in the delivery of health and human services. Horin shows that a reliance on market based approaches is a threat to the health and well being of vulnerable people.

Horin argues that the reliance on for- profit providers of boarding houses to accommodate and support people with mental illness has failed to protect and improve the lives of vulnerable people. Horin draws on the work of Sydney academic Gabriel Drake who calls the rise of licensed boarding houses in Sydney, as "the privatisation of the back wards".

In a study of inner Sydney licensed boarding houses, Drake describes a situation where large numbers of people with only their disability in common, live together with little to do, receive poor mental and physical health care, and have few chances to learn skills. Their pension is handed over. They can't afford a bus fare. They become highly dependent on the boarding house owner.

Horin describes how the failure by Governments to provide the funds and support to people with mental illness who were "de-institutionalized" and moved out of large psychiatric institutions meant that they were thrown to the vagaries of the "market"

And so hundreds moved into the boarding houses which were run for profit with minimal or no accountability or monitoring. People with sometimes serious conditions, such as schizophrenia, went from the state being in charge of their welfare to a boarding house owner.

The state passed a law to license boarding houses that accommodated people with psychological or intellectual disabilities. But three Ombudsman's reports in nine years - two of them secret and the latest delivered to the Minister for Disability Services last month - testify to the failure of the responsible government department, Ageing, Disability and Home Care, to do its job of inspecting and monitoring the boarding houses properly.

A weak law, and some aggressive licensees, did not help the hapless bureaucrats in their role of protecting and improving the lives of the vulnerable residents.

It is time the state government took a serious look at boarding houses, both the licensed kind, and the unlicensed, which cater to a slightly different clientele of poor, single tenants often with alcohol and gambling addictions.

Currently reading

2011-07-16T20:18:00.000+08:00

Antonia Juhasz's new book Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill explores the devastating impact of the disaster at the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

An interview with Antonia Juhasz about the book is here

A video of Antonia Juhasz talking about the Deepwater explosion and her book is here.

The contemporary relevance of the life and legend of TE Lawrence

2011-07-16T16:48:00.002+08:00

Like many others my first knowledge of the life and legend of T.E. Lawrence was from seeing David Lean's epic move Lawrence of Arabia at the Albany Town cinema during the 1960's.

Lean's film was a cinematic masterpiece, winning 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. For many people it is perhaps the finest film ever made.

But Lean's film is neither historically accurate, nor an accurate account of the Arab Revolt against the Turks in the Middle East during WW1.

It is intriguing to read Michael Korda's new book (review here) about the life of T.E. Lawrence and his role in the 1915-18 Arab revolt, against the backdrop of the 2011 Arab spring uprisings that continue to sweep across the contemporary Arab world, most recently in Syria and cities such as Damasacus and Deraa (which in 1918 were liberated by Arab armies led by Lawrence).

It could be argued that the last time that the Arabs revolted in such unison was in 1915-1918 when they rose up, with Lawrence's assistance, to overthrow the 500 year old Ottoman Empire. In 2011 they are rising up against repressive, merciless corrupt and greedy rulers who have terrorised their citizens under the protection of Western governments, particularly the British, French and American governments.

Korda's mammoth book (all 762 pages) Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia provides a detailed overview of both the life and legend of T.E. Lawrence. It is an overly long book, although its great strength is the detailed description and analysis of Lawrence's role in the 1916-1918 Arabian campaign and his post war involvement on behalf of Arab claims for independence.

What Korda shows is that Lawrence was a fierce advocate for the cause of Arab independence and for the creation of independent Arab states, and he understood the dangers of allowing Britain and France and their Western allies to divide up the Middle East amongst themselves. He foresaw and predicted many of the problems that arose in the Middle East, including the division of Palestine, as a result of the carve up of the Middle East (and the Balkans) by western powers.

Yet Lawrence was instrumental in crafting a solution to the break up of the Ottoman Empire which simply entrenched and extended the power of the British and the French. Despite his misgivings Lawrence played a critical role in drawing the lines on the map and negotiating the arrangements that created the Arab states that now exist- Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia- as well as the creation of Palestine under British rule.

Korda suggests that Lawrence was tormented by his failure to convince the British and French Governments to keep their promises to the Arabs and the part he played in the betrayal of Arab independence. Korda seems to be of the view that the rest of Lawrence's life was played out in the shadow of this betrayal.

Korda's book shows how ultimately the desire for Arab independence in 1915-18 was constrained and repressed by Western Governments. Despite his enormous achievements, TE Lawrence played a key role in that betrayal.

Poet of the Day: Judith Wright

2011-07-15T13:32:00.000+08:00

....Change is my true condition,
to take and give and promise,
to fight and fail and alter.

I aim towards Forever,
but that is no one's country,
till in perhaps one moment,
dying I'll recognise it;

those peaks not ice but sunlit
from sources past my knowing,
as beauty of completion
the end of being human.
from Some Words by Judith Wright
A kind of weaving
goes on all the time in houses, its pattern
determined by the years of taking and giving.

And we were fortunate, house, to have your shelter.
Your roof crouched among trees on the turning planet,
part of a surface receiving rain and sunlight,
kept off the shrieking
spped of space, the bad weather,
enclosed our portion of time, our pattern of making.

The crises engulfing David Cameron, the Murdoch empire and the British political class

2011-07-10T21:22:00.007+08:00

Gerry Hassan is always worth reading. In his latest piece Hassan writes about the significance of the crises engulfing Britain's neoliberal state, particularly the collusion between the Murdoch empire, Prime Minister Cameron and the British political class.

Hassan writes that:

"This may seem like a schadenfreude moment for many who have despaired at the profound influence of the Murdoch empire across British life, and who are feeling a little spring in their step upon seeing Andy Coulson, former editor of the ‘News of the World’ and Downing Street Head of Communications charged by the police, while David Cameron and his Tory-led Government struggle to deal with events.

The Cameron Conservative project is now in major crisis".

A Murdoch newspaper, The News of the World, and its Editors have been involved in criminal activity. They authorized and allowed the hacking of the phones of a murdered girl, the families and relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and people killed in terrorist bombings. One of the Editors of the paper who was directly involved in this illegal activity was subsequently employed by David Cameron, the current Prime Minister as his Head of Communications.

The British PM has been damaged seriously by the implosion of the News of the World and the fall out from the scandal. Some commentators are suggesting that PM Cameron has been damaged irrevocably.

Robert Zeliger writes that Cameron is irrevocably tarred because he turned a blind eye to some of the press's shadier tactics, while cozying up to media executives in order to win political backing. Zeliger writes

"After all, Cameron has ties to some of the most vilified people in the scandal. He courted Rupert Murdoch in the run-up to last year's election (which helped to ensure his victory). He's friends with Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the tabloid and current News International chief executive who has become a focal point of criticism for the mess. And he hired Andy Coulson, another former editor of the paper, as his communications director at 10 Downing. This morning, Coulson (who stepped down from his job in January) was arrested for his involvement with the paper's illegal activities.

Gerry Hassan writes:

"That brings us to the state of Britain and the Murdoch News International scandal. It isn’t an accident that in the last three years there have been three seismic crises of the new forces of power and privilege in the new British establishment. In 2008, we had the crises of the banks, followed by the political classes and the expenses crisis, and now, the escalating revelations of the amoral, out of control nature of the Murdoch press.

All three crises are important because they are parts of the pillars of Britain’s neo-liberal state: the reconfiguration of the British political, public, economic, social and cultural life of the UK, and the collusion of our politicians and wider political classes with all of this.

As Hassan ponts out:

"It may be heart-warming to see the attention of media, politicians and police investigation turn on the inner workings and abuses of the Murdoch empire, but we will need to ask much more penetrating, far-reaching questions if we are to take back British public life from the vulgarians, fellow-travellers and apologists for Murdoch’s empire, the marketisation of our society and development of Britain and the British state into an outlier for corporate power.

Two public inquiries into the phone hacking and media ethics are only the start. We need our politicians, media and wider political world to begin asking what kind of Britain have they colluded in creating? What kind of nomenklatura have they allowed to evolve and what have been its consequences? And given the forces of power, privilege and status which exist in the UK, and of which Murdoch is but one manifestation, how do we row back against the world they have created?

Clare Sambrook exposes the consequences of privatising services for vulnerable West Australians

2011-07-06T11:22:00.002+08:00

Clare Sambrook is an award winning British journalist who has written this remarkable piece on the death of Mr Ward in the back of a G4S van in the Eastern Goldfields region of WA.

Her article reveals the lethal consequences of contracting out to profit making companies, be they G4S or Serco, public responsibility for vulnerable people, be it the care of prisoners, or for that matter vulnerable youth, children or adults. It does not matter whether it is G4S or Serco. There is no place for them in the care of people.

Ultimately there is little difference between Serco and G4S. The Barnett Government has awarded Serco the new contract to transport prisoners around WA (instead of G4S) and G4S staff will simply transfer across to Serco, the new contractor. This is despite widespread opposition and protest in WA against G4S's previous contract and Serco's new contract to run prisoner transport.

Clare Sambrook writes:

"Indeed the case of Mr Ward provides a shocking glimpse behind the corporate spin, exposing shakiness in the logic that has propelled the global boom in privatisation of core public services".

Clare Sambrook links Mr Ward's death to the profit seeking mantra of companies like G4S and Serco who see the death of a person in their care as simply a risk of doing business. Her report of a business briefing by G4S and its senior Executives in London is chilling.

"Thousands of miles away from scorchingly hot Kalgoorie, here in the UK G4S executives briefed financial analysts the other day. There was a slide show — “Core values: Customer Focus, Expertise . . . Integrity (We can always be trusted to do the right thing)”. Director David Taylor-Smith ran through the company’s UK business, £1.2 billion of it, £700 million with government — the UK Border Agency, the Ministry of Justice, the National Offender Management Service. (Only yesterday morning G4S corporate development director Peter Neden sat in committee room 6 at the Palace of Westminster, arguing the case for “reform” of the probation services.)

“We’re now bigger than the Scottish Prison Service and Northern Ireland Prison Service combined,” said Taylor-Smith. “So we’re starting to get proper scale now in the UK as a kind of a credible alternative to national bodies running prisons.”

There’d been major wins in providing “facilities management” for NHS hospitals: "we do 13 acute hospitals now. So that’s great.”

About Welfare to Work (“when that’s clocked in next year that will be £130 million”), Taylor-Smith joked: “I’m just reminding those taxpayers, if there are British taxpayers in this room, £159 billion spent in this area of government.” G4S will be paid by results, managing subcontractors getting long term unemployed people back into work (or at any rate off the state’s books).

“We see this as providing significant additional growth opportunities,” said Taylor-Smith, confiding: “Two nights ago I was with [government ministers] Iain Duncan Smith, Oliver Letwin, Crispin Blunt and they’re talking now also applying this into the prisons programmes, into drug programmes and also benefit fraud. (It pays to get friendly with G4S. Former Labour Home Secretary John Reid was trousering G4S fees of £50,000 a year even before he’d left Parliament. Now Lord Reid is a G4S director.)

The analysts asked about Australia. The year after Mr Ward’s death G4S lost its contract to run Australia’s refugee detention network and last month it lost the Western Australia court security and custodial contract as well (both pieces of business picked up by Serco).

Nick Buckles, who is paid £27,000-a-week, said of the Australian market: “We haven't had a good run recently on care and justice because of a major incident that happened about three years ago.”

But, looking on the bright side, he said: “there is only two or three major players, typically sometimes only two people bidding for care and justice. And with . . . our global expertise, in time we will become a winner in that market because there's a lot of outsourcing opportunities and not many competitors operating down there.”

WA Police set to do the dirty work for Woodside and the WA corporatocracy

2011-07-04T18:11:00.000+08:00

The civil society and community campaign against Woodside's (in partnership with Shell, Chevron, BHP and BP) proposed $30 billion gas hub at James Price Point is about to enter a new phase with reports from Broome that Police are preparing to disrupt the month long blockade that has prevented Woodside contractors from clearing native vegetation at the proposed site.

For nearly 30 days hundreds of protestors have prevented Woodside contractors from accessing the James Price Point site, claiming that they have neither Federal or State environmental or heritage clearances. Protestors claim they are resisting Woodside's contractors from undertaking illegal clearing at James Price Point.

Since last weeks signing of a land access agreement between the WA Government, Woodside and some of the traditional owner's associated with the Kimberley Land Council, the rhetoric of Premier Barnett and the KLC's Chief Negotiator Wayne Bergman has become increasingly heated.

Premier Barnett has accused the protestors of standing in the way of Aboriginal people, conveniently overlooking the fact that the majority of the protestors are Aboriginal people, some of whom are traditional owners of land around James Price Point.

Kimberley Land Council Chief Negotiator Wayne Bergman has accused the protestors of being rebels who are just "running amok in the face of what was a very legitimate process".

But many Aboriginal people, including some traditional owners reject Bergman's claims and a delegation of local Aboriginal people are off to Canberra to convince Federal politicians that there is mounting opposition in Broome to the proposed development. Local Aboriginal leaders Anna Poelina, Mitch Torres and Alan Pigram have collected 3,000 signatures on a petition that opposes the gas precinct at James Price Point on environmental and social grounds:

"Dr Poelina believes that people in Perth and Canberra have the impression that Aboriginal people and traditional owners are all very happy with the way business is being done. She says this isn't the case and that many Broome families want to slow the process down and seriously consider how industrialisation is coming to the Kimberley '...because we do not believe that it is good business."

Civil society groups are reporting that they expect the Police to attempt to clear the protestors to allow the Woodside contractors access to James Price Point.

Community groups involved in the blockades are issuing advice to the protestors about how to respond to the anticipated Police action:

"Keep calm and respectful. They will try and provoke to get some resisting arrest charges. Try and get as many numbers on the ground as possible and stay your ground.................They will not be physically able to give you each a move on directive which they need to, though if you receive one it's up to you what you do with it. You do not need to move on, though if you are charged for resisting a move on directive you need to go with the officer, he needs to tell you you are under arrest.. At that point do not resist as you do not need a resisting arrest charge, or an assaulting police and or affray charge, stay calm and remember there is a greater power in numbers than you each can imagine. The country is so proud of each and everyone of you. Stay strong and true and respectful and you will be rewarded"

Kimberley blockade and protest against Woodside's corporate invasion and the WA corporatocracy

2011-06-22T17:15:00.012+08:00

West Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlum made an important speech in the Australian Senate today about the protest and blockade against Woodside in the West Kimberley, now into its third week.

For 16 days hundreds of protestors have been blockading access roads to James Price Point, the site of the proposed $30 billion gas hub 50 kilometers north of Broome in the Kimberley region. The protestors are preventing Woodside contractors from reaching the site to carry out surveys and clear vegetation. Despite having no environmental or heritage clearances the State and Federal Governments have allowed Woodside to commence the work (you can follow the protest here).

Here are some extracts from Scott Ludlum's speech in the Senate today:

These scenes are being played out all over again as Woodside moves heavy equipment on site to begin land clearing for the Browse Basin gas project-a gigantic industrial complex which is being proposed for 40 or 50 kilometres north of Broome at the moment. It is amazing to hear the reports and see what is happening up there. We now have a blockade camp at Minari Road. They have had up to 120 people blocking the road and trying to stop-successfully-Woodside and its contractors getting equipment onto country.

It is extraordinary to see this because this project has not yet been approved by either the state government or the federal government. In my experience non-violent direct action, with people putting themselves in the way to stop these sorts of projects, generally comes last, after all options have been exhausted. But in this case it is happening before either the state or federal government has given formal approval-because the company has decided to move in and start land-clearing anyhow. They are proposing to put in roads and flatten areas-allegedly to do work to complete their environmental impact processes-before approvals have been given.

The residents of the Kimberley do not necessarily want the same mistakes that have plagued the Pilbara and the south of our country to be repeated and that is why they are standing up. What needs to happen surely would be obvious to anybody with a basic appreciation of what has gone on in Australia and how we can do things differently in the Kimberley. We need to listen to local voices for local governance and local economic development in a form that is appropriate to the Kimberley and not simply to repeat the mistakes of the past at the behest of oil and gas companies and mining companies. That will end up locking-in on non-extractive economic development that is not based on chewing down the resource base on which we depend.

While the protests and blockade in the Kimberley has a strong local focus and are being led by local Aboriginal people and people who live in the West Kimberley, they also reflect a growing protest movement erupting all over the state opposed to the WA corporatocracy- the system of government in WA that exists to serve the interests of corporations and the wealthy, and which involves close ties between business, corporations like Woodside and the Barnett Government and its public service bureaucracy.

Some examples of other protests include:

campaigns against proposals to mine coal and bauxite in the densely populated South west of the State
campaigns against multinational corporations like Serco and G4S who are winning more and more contracts from the Barnett Government to provide public services
campaigns against the privatization of public services and public assets to corporations in areas such as public hospitals, prisons, public utilities, infrastructure, health care and justice
campaigns against the uranium mining and nuclear industry
legal action by local residents against Alcoa for the harm done to communities and residents in the South West
local community action against polluting corporations in towns and communities such as Kwinana and Esperance
campaigns against mining companies granted access to community water supplies in the Wheatbelt
community opposition to Monsanto's introduction of GM crops and its takeover of grain research and production in WA.

Chris Hedges interviews Tim DeChristopher

2011-06-22T08:41:00.000+08:00

Chris Hedges has published this interview with Tim DeChristopher whose case I wrote about in this recent blog piece.

Hedges writes that the prosecution of DeChristopher is evidence that the moral order has been turned upside down:

The bankers and swindlers who trashed the global economy and wiped out some $40 trillion in wealth amass obscene amounts of money, much of it provided by taxpayers. They do not go to jail. Regulatory agencies, compliant to the demands of corporations, refuse to impede the destruction unleashed by the coal, oil and natural gas companies as they turn the planet into a hothouse of pollutants, poisoned water, fouled air and contaminated soil in the frenzied quest for greater and greater profits. Those who manage and make fortunes from pre-emptive wars, embrace torture, carry out extrajudicial assassinations, deny habeas corpus and run up the largest deficits in human history are feted as patriots. But when a courageous citizen such as DeChristopher peacefully derails the corporate and governmental destruction of the ecosystem, he is sent to jail.

Hedges publishes extracts from his interview with De Christopher:

“Our strategies must be to not only change our energy system and food system, but to change our power structures,” he said. “We shouldn’t be looking for the big corporations running the show to become a little greener and cleaner. We should be overthrowing those corporations running our government. Our job as a movement is not just to reduce emissions; while we still need to do that, we also have this other challenge of maintaining our humanity through whatever challenges lie ahead. This is much more abstract and foreign to this movement.”

“Civil disobedience puts us in a vulnerable position,” DeChristopher said.

“It puts us in a position where we are refusing to be obedient to injustice. Civil disobedience puts us in a position where we are making a risk and possibly making a sacrifice to stand up against that injustice. It also puts us in a position where with that vulnerability we see how much we need other people. This is something I have experienced over the past few years as people have come out of nowhere to support me, to make actions more powerful and to help me personally get through this experience and grow from it. Appreciating these connections is one of the most important parts of resiliency. A lot of the unwillingness to take bold action is coming from a disempowerment that comes from a lack of connection. When we view ourselves as isolated individuals it does not make sense to stand up to a big powerful institution like a big corporation or big government.

"It is not until we gain the understanding that we are part of something much bigger that we feel empowered to take those necessary actions. This is a self-reinforcing cycle. The more we stick our neck out the more connected we become and the more empowered we become to do it again.”

Environmental activist Tim DeChrisopher faces 10 years in jail for civil disobedience

2011-06-20T16:21:00.001+08:00

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I think the opportunity that's here is to build a real resistance movement -- not just a lobby movement, but a resistance movement, that says this path that we're on is absolutely unacceptable, and we're going to use our power as citizens and as a movement to shut this system. I think that's where we need to be right now, recognizing that this is not a matter of lobbying for trivial reforms, but we're at a point where we need to make the path we're on absolutely impossible to continue. Hopefully that's the lesson that people are taking out of this.
Tim DeChristopher

Student and activist Tim DeChristopher found a way to resist corporate power and fight against the damage caused by US oil and gas corporations. But it may cost him a long prison term.

On June 23 the environmental activist and campaigner will find out whether he will spend the next ten years in a US Federal Prison for an act of civil disobedience against the oil and gas industry.

His case is being seen as yet another example of the serious assault on public protest and dissent that is occurring around the world, whereby governments and corporations are increasingly using whatever means possible, such as anti- terrorist legislation, increased police powers, direct restrictions on public protest, SLAPP suits and arbitrary detention, to prevent and limit the right to protest.

In December 2008 DeChristopher participated in an oil and gas auction of 150,000 acres of public land in Southern Utah. Sale of the land had been fast tracked in the last days of the Bush administration to benefit the fossil fuel industry. It was a last minute land grab authorized in the last days of the Bush administration.

DeChristopher was outraged by the illegality of the land grab and the fact that leases were being handed out in an irregular way. He was also outraged about the ways that the oil and gas companies privatized all their profits and externalized all their costs. His argument was that the oil and gas companies had no intention to pay the full costs of their operations which are offloaded to the public :

"Well, I saw this auction as, first off, a fraud against the American people, that the government wasn’t following their own rules and was locking the public out of the decision-making process for public property. I also saw it as a real threat to my future, because of the impact on climate change that this kind of “drill now, think later” mentality was having, and an attack on our public lands, on our natural heritage, in pretty pristine and irreplaceable areas in southern Utah".

DeChristopher successfully bought (without any money or intention to pay) 22,000 acres of the land in order to save it from fossil fuel extraction. De Christopher had originally attended the auction to protest without any intention of bidding for the land. However, upon entry to the auction he was asked if he intended to be a bidder to which he replied "yes" and he became Bidder No 70. DeChristopher then proceeded to bid and successfully secured 13 leases, thereby disrupting the sale.

De Christopher actually raised the money to buy the land but he was still charged with fraud because at the time of the auction he had no intention to pay. However, that fact and many other issues were not allowed to be introduced into the trial.

In March 2011 he was convicted of fraud and faces a 10 year jail term and $750,000 fine imposed by the Obama administration.

As Tim De Christopher points out his case was prosecuted to scare off others who might consider civil disobedience.

"I was born the year that Ronald Reagan took office. The reality throughout my lifetime has been, corporations and governments are powerful, and people are weak, and there is nothing you can do to change that. Now that paradigm is starting to shift, and all of a sudden, the world is starting to believe in people power again"

Various web sites have been set up to publicize DeChristopher's case (Bidder 70) and The Trial of Tim DeChristopher and a Facebook site allows you to follow the case. Interviews and stories about DeChristopher can be read here, here, here, here, here and here.

Mahmoud Darwish: We Journey towards a Home

2011-06-18T23:01:00.006+08:00

We Journey towards a Home
By Mahmoud Darwish

We journey towards a home not of our flesh. Its chestnut trees are not of our bones.
Its rocks are not like goats in the mountain hymn. The pebbles' eyes are not lilies.
We journey towards a home that does not halo our heads with a special sun.
Mythical women applaud us. A sea for us, a sea against us.
When water and wheat are not at hand, eat our love and drink our tears . . .
There are mourning scarves for poets. A row of marble statues will lift our voice.
And an urn to keep the dust of time away from our souls. Roses for us and against us.
You have your glory, we have ours. Of our home we see only the unseen: our mystery.
Glory is ours: a throne carried on feet torn by roads that led to every home but our own!
The soul must recognize itself in its very soul, or die here.

translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché
Mahmoud Darwish

The death of Pablo Neruda and the "rattling of Chilean skeletons"

2011-06-14T17:56:00.001+08:00

It is intriguing to see the way that inquiries into extrajudicial killings, disappearances and human-rights violations committed during the military dictatorship in Chile during the 1970's and 1980's are unfolding.

There will also be some nervousness about the inquiries within the US and UK political establishment and among those western collaborators, including multinational corporations and free marketeers, who were involved in and supported the 1973 coup that overthrew the Chilean President Salvador Allende and installed the military dictatorship of General Pinochet (some earlier pieces I wrote on US involvement in the coup and military dictatorship are here and the contemporary consequences of the military dictatorship here).

Chilean Judge Mario Carroza is investigating the death of President Salvador Allende during the military coup in 1973, as well as the disappearance of of hundreds of Chileans during the military coup and the Pinochet military dictatorship. Carroza is also investigating allegations that the legendary Chilean poet and political activist Pablo Neruda was in fact poisoned by agents acting for the General Pinochet and his coup supporters. It has long been claimed that Neruda who died during the coup died as a result of prostrate cancer, but these allegations and investigations cast doubt on that claim.

Neruda, in fact, died in the same Santiago clinic in which a former Chilean president, Eduardo Frei, was allegedly poisoned in 1981, also by Pinochet agents.

This extract is from a piece in the LA Times

"A judge in Chile has opened an investigation into the death four decades ago of the Nobel Prize-winning poet in response to allegations by his former driver that Neruda was poisoned by agents acting for Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The general led the military junta and coup that toppled President Salvador Allende in 1973.

Neruda's estate has long maintained that the poet's death on Sept. 23, 1973 — just 12 days after the Sept. 11 coup — was due to prostate cancer. Yet Neruda's former driver and associate, Manuel Araya, has repeated claims recently that Neruda was assassinated for his activism as a Communist Party member and supporter of Allende, a democratically elected Marxist.

Days before his death, Neruda published an impassioned critique of the coup. Araya told reporters Neruda was probably poisoned to prevent him from traveling to Mexico, where the poet could position himself safely as a vocal opponent to the dictatorship.

Judge Mario Carroza ordered the investigation last week after a request filed by the Communist Party. The investigation could lead to the exhumation of Neruda's body from his grave at his beloved Isla Negra residence (links in Spanish).

The Neruda Foundation repeated its belief last week that Neruda died of cancer. Yet Communist Party members have pointed to press reports from the days after Neruda's death that said the 69-year-old went into "cardiac arrest" on Sept. 23, 1973, after a "calming substance" was injected into his stomach, contradicting the cancer story, the daily La Tercera reported.

Carroza has ordered press reports from the era to be located and examined.

Neruda's case is the latest rattling of skeletons in Chile's history since the end of the dictatorship in 1990. Last month the government ordered Allende's body exhumed to determine once and for all whether he committed suicide on Sept. 11, 1973, or was assassinated. Read The Times' report on that investigation"

The genius of actor John Cazale

2011-06-12T20:35:00.000+08:00

Godfather 2 is showing on Foxtel tonight. Al Pacino is breathtaking as he transforms into the Godfather but it is the performance of John Cazale as his older brother that always holds my attention.

John Cazale is one of my favourite actors. In each movie he made John Cazale dazzles with performances of great humanity, integrity and intensity.

Before his premature death in 1978 aged 42, Cazale made just five movies, but all of them stand as among the iconic movies of all time. Cazale had starring roles in the Godfather; Godfather II, Dog Day Afternoon, the Conversation and The Deer Hunter. His influence upon actors such as Al Pacino, Robert De Diro and Meryl Streep was immense.

Cazale was also a legendary stage actor and at the time of his death from cancer was in a long relationship with Meryl Streep, with whom he starred in the Academy award winning movie the Deer Hunter.

A documentary on the life and work of John Cazale titled I Knew it Was You appears regularly on Foxtel and is a magnificent tribute to a fine actor. If you get the chance, watch it and marvel at the brilliance of Cazale's work and the enormous respect that his fellow actors and Directors have for him and his work.

Naomi Shihab Nye: The value of public libraries

2011-06-08T21:07:00.001+08:00

Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things
Naomi Shihab Nye

She is holding the book close to her body,
carrying it home on the cracked sidewalk,
down the tangled hill.
If a dog runs at her again, she will use the book as a shield.

She looked hard among the long lines
of books to find this one.
When they start talking about money,
when the day contains such long and hot places,
she will go inside.
An orange bed is waiting.
Story without corners.
She will have two families.
They will eat at different hours.

She is carrying a book past the fire station
and the five and dime.
What this town has not given her
the book will provide; a sheep,
a wilderness of new solutions.
The book has already lived through its troubles.
The book has a calm cover, a straight spine.

When the step returns to itself,
as the best place for sitting,
and the old men up and down the street
are latching their clippers,

she will not be alone.
She will have a book to open
and open and open.
Her life starts here.

Michael Breen on Dangerous Knowledge: Impressions from the 2011 Sydney Writers Festival

2011-06-07T21:38:00.001+08:00

In yesterday's piece on his impressions of the 2011 Sydney Writers Festival my friend and colleague Michael Breen wrote that:

"Three streams of thought emerged from the sessions I attended. One was what you could call dangerous information, the second information in decline and the third the non-rational gap between information and action"

In this the second part of his reflections on the Conference, Michael discusses some dangerous knowledge uncovered by Australian war historian Greg Lockhart who documents a military and history cover up used to to serve imperial power and stoke racial fear. As Michael points out in his summary, Greg Lockhart's work demolishes historical myths that have sustained Australia's national identity. The complete article by Greg Lockhart that Michael is referring to can be found here on the online edition of the Griffith Review.

The first part of Michael's article What Economists Can't Buy You and Have We Got a Lie for You was published previously (here). Part 2 is published below.

An earlier piece Michael wrote on the Legacy of memories of Jimmy Governor is one of the most read pieces on this blog.

After many years as a Jesuit teacher, educator and leader in Australia and overseas, Michael lived in Western Australia for many years where he established one of WA's leading small management consultancies. I was fortunate to work with and learn from Michael in the early years of my consultancy career.

Michael retired to Canberra and now lives in the NSW Southern Highlands where he continues to write and think about contemporary issues and educates and agitates about social and political issues.

Impressions from the Sydney Writers Festival

Part 2: Media-politician folie a deux and Gatekeepers, Whistle blowers and Imperialism
by Michael Breen

Before returning to a monumental national information scam I want to look at the third emergent matter which was the sick relationship between government and the press. The scene resembles two snakes with mouths full of one another’s tails stifling discourse and infuriating citizens. Kerry O’Brien facilitated a Town Hall session of over 1600 people involving Bob Carr, Lenore Taylor, Bob Ellis, Barrie Cassidy and George Megalogenis on finding leadership. There was majority agreement politics and its coverage were at a spectacular low, though Carr says it is always like that and that pollies ought just get on with it. Others redistributed responsibility to the media, politicians and people who want to be entertained rather than informed. The bread of consumerism and the circuses of cheesecake are still winners, as Roman emperors knew so well. The mainstream media profit from the supply of bread and celebrity circuses.

Lindsay Tanner had a session on “Sideshow” his book in which politicians and the media dumb down lest they offend anyone who matters. Politicians have to be seen to be doing something. Have you noticed how often they now say, “We are working very hard on or with so and so about this matter”? Howard perfected the get out of an interview corner technique with “We are spending so many dollars over the next whatever years on that.” Lindsay says maintenance of assets is not a popular area for politicians because there is not the chance to invite the media to “a grand opening”. Politicians have to put on a funny hat or budgie smugglers or go on a commercial TV pop show to get noticed, and recognition is everything for them. Press conferences are endangered activities in Canberra these days. The snake cycle-media wants-poly speaks-journos pounce on cosmetic slip up-poly defends-media wants just goes mobiously onwards. Abbott makes an art form of it in a confessional-penitential way. He outrageously overstates, then when confronted and found to have sinned, as he knows he will be, confesses pleads human fallibility and has had more exposure than getting it out right in the first place.

This year’s Alan Ramsey’s chat with, the still The Hon Senator, John Faulkner was anything but a chat. Ramsey barked grumpily, disappointed that Labor is no longer Labour. He grilled Faulkner who was caught between the Scylla of Labor’s silly factions and the Charybdis of the Carr, Bracks and Faulkner committee report on failure and reform in the party. Poor Faulkner could only point to genuine values and his commitment to lobbying his comrades to act honourably.

Andrew Denton yelled from the gallery, “Why must we have a Prime Minister who cannot communicate who talks in stolid unexciting blurts?” Ramsey held firmly to No Questions! which made AD the focus of the meeting after the meeting.

The most enthralling session by far for me was Military Historian Greg Lockhart’s segment in a Griffith Review panel with British Journalist Barbara Gunnell, Assange watcher, and ex MP John Langmore. The title “Gatekeepers, Whistleblowers and Imperialism” conveys the flavour of the session but nothing could have prepared those attending for Lockhart’s material and its historical and cultural consequences.

He commenced waving a copy of a neatly handwritten 1911 record by General Nicholson Chief of the Imperial General Staff; minutes of an Imperial conference at which Australia’s Minister for Defence Senator George Pearce offered to develop an Australian expeditionary force to be at the service of Britain wherever in the world Britain wanted. The document was buried in the Director of Military Operations’ file as War Office 106/43. That is for nigh eighty years before John Mordyke an Australian military historian unearthed it in 1988. As Lockhart says before this “…there was no public knowledge that the key military discussions that determined Australia’s entry into World War I had ever taken place” Griffith Review 32 P.144.

The cover-up was necessary because the “offer” was contrary to the letter and the spirit of the 1904-revised Defence Act and the minds of many in Federal Parliament and the Australian people. The act permitted an Australian defence army but not an expeditionary force especially not under the command of another nation.

The bones of the story lie thus. The British were keen to have Australian help in time of war. Kitchener visited Australia and in a report recommended compulsory military training for Australian youth. 92,000 boys between twelve and seventeen commenced compulsory training in 1911. Kitchener put the wind up Australian politicians about the likely threat of an attack from Japan as John Mordyke covers in his second book “ ‘We should do this thing quietly’ Japan and the Great Deception in Australian Defence Policy 1911-1914” (2002).

The constructed threat was the suggestion that following the Sino Japanese war Japan would turn expansionist eyes on Australia. Australia’s response, “We cannot defend ourselves; better we chum up to Britain and the motherland will defend us”. Sound familiar? After the secret deal Pearce gave the nod to train an Australian expeditionary force in 1912. So by the outbreak of war in 1914 Australia had trained 18,000 men in a British type of brigade and 2,000 light horsemen. Munitions, clothing and saddlery factories were going full steam.

The official line, which underpins the Anzac myth, is that the Australian army was trained in six weeks which common sense and documents prove is a lie. Visiting Australia four months before the declaration of war in 1914 the Imperial Inspector General of Overseas Forces, General Sir Ian Hamilton wrote, to British Prime Minister, H. H Asquith “…Play the tune of an Australian army for Australia, and they dance to any extent not otherwise. Australia-not Empire-is then the string we must harp on. That is to say, we must encourage them to do what they will do willingly and lavishly, namely pay up for safeguarding a White Australia from the cursed Jap! Then when the time comes, and we are fighting for our lives in India or elsewhere, I for one am confidant that the whole military force of Australia will be freely at our disposal”.

And thus it did happen and still does in “the domino theory”, “the threat from the north”, “the yellow peril”, the White Australia Policy and now military white papers claiming that as China becomes more economically powerful it will be more militarily powerful and want Australian soil. That is unless we get big friends to protect us. In fact the opposite is true. By clasping hands with America we have made ourselves more a target from terrorists. Obvious as this is Mick Kelty chief of the Federal Police stated it out loud and John had him retract immediately. Bali bombings claimed a greater percentage of Australian lives than the percentage of American lives lost in the Twin Towers and Pentagon in 2001. Who doubts that this would not have happened were we not seen as mates of Bush’s USA?

There are many more pieces to the story of the great deception including the fact that the first convoy of Australian troops sailing in 1914 was escorted across the Indian Ocean by friendly the Japanese battle cruiser “Ibuki.”

Let’s see more from Lockhart again, “Deceptions are part of politics. What makes this one special is its continuing centrality in Australian history. ‘Twenty thousand volunteers were enlisted in six weeks beginning in early August 1914’. But, all too easily dazzled by these enlistments, generations of historians have failed to see that without extensive prior planning, organization and training, the AIF could not possibly have been constituted as it was for the Gallipoli landing”.

It seems that since a White force from Britain seized Australia in the eighteenth century there has been an ongoing fear that a dark race will in turn treat aboriginal people and us as and grab us. The current fear fuel is that boatloads of dark refugees and illegal immigrants will overrun us; not the white British and American white ones who come in by plane. Instead of celebrating our isolated position have a non-alliance policy we join imperial, immoral forces in silly conflicts as if this will be some kind of insurance. Then we have to sneak out with lives and integrity lost after Gallipoli, the Western Front, Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan. We create hatred from nations who should be our friends. We spend more money on militaristic toys and propaganda than building relationships. Were this Gallipoli lie not so central to our culture we could be excused for forgetting about it.

By perpetuating the heroic Gallipoli and ANZAC myths of men who miraculously became soldiers overnight such was their valour and strength that we bury the fact that they and Australia were tricked into the whole business by a Kali motherland deceiving us into believing that if we hated locally, fought globally and gratuitously we would be safe.

Michal Breen: Impressions from the 2011 Sydney Writers Festival

2011-06-06T18:37:00.004+08:00

The Sydney Writers Festival is one of the largest such events in the world, so when I heard that my friend and professional colleague Michael Breen was going I asked him if he would write a piece for the blog.

Michael's article is presented in two parts. Part 1 What Economists Can't Buy You and Have We Got a Lie for You is published below. Part 2 Media-politician folie a deux and Gatekeepers, Whistle blowers and Imperialism will be published over coming days.

An earlier piece Michael wrote on the Legacy of memories of Jimmy Governor is one of the most read pieces on this blog.

Michael retired to Canberra and now lives in the NSW Southern Highlands where he continues to write and think about contemporary issues and educates and agitates about social and political issues.

Impressions from the Sydney Writers Festival
by Michael Breen

Mostly we don’t see writers we read their stuff. So it is unusual for thousands of readers to meet hundreds of writers to listen and respond and start a million conversations. Why is the Sydney Writers’ Festival one of the largest such events in the world? What is its magnetism? Chip Rowley the festival’s artistic director quotes Milan Kundara from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. Much of the festival for me was unearthing things we should never have had the chance to forget.

Three streams of thought emerged from the sessions I attended.

One was what you could call dangerous information, the second information in decline and the third the non-rational gap between information and action.

What Economists can’t buy you.
Ross Gittins, Herald journalist and economic commentator’s session “The Happy Economist” was a sell out as were copies of his book. Gittins said Bob Hawke jolted him with a statement that ‘economics is about happiness’. So Gittins chased up happiness, its definitions and surprises, like facts that conservatives are more happy than progressives.

Can money buy happiness? Most people we know would say “no”. But strugglers need bread and money for to buy some of it. The paradox is that we say money won’t give you happiness but act as if the opposite is true. We say natural resources like air, water etc. are precious but act as if they are almost free and infinite. To economise we cut expensive labour costs and at the same time waste natural unrenewable resources. We use an indicator like Gross Domestic Product because it is expressed in numbers, because we consider numbers give facts close to reality, even though GDP is not a measure of national wellbeing.

Gittins, who has commented for decades on economics, and economies, points out economists operate as if the economy is in a box separate from the planet. The planet is near breaking from cancerous expansion of population, and inordinate consumption on the one hand and degradation of precious finite resources on the other. We are on a hedonistic treadmill where running will not reach happiness, but bring eventual unhappiness.

So for the situation to even start to get better rich countries need to live more simply, to reduce consumption and give some of their utilities to poorer countries, to reduce population, to protect resources and to reform economic thinking.

Paul Gilding in “Growing Pains” a joint session with Gitting argued that the crisis is with us now and growing and that like the crisis of World War II new leaders will arise and the changes for sustainability will go on for centuries. Planet Saved! Gilding seems not to understand the behaviours of groups in crisis. One of the irrational responses to crisis, apart from the fight-flight we are seeing now, is the notion that a messianic figure or figures will emerge and save us. Gittins’ hope lies in changes to thinking by economists, governments and people despite our non-rational behaviour.

Have we got a Lie for You

The second and very central stream at the festival was the Wikileaks phenomenon. In the year since last year’s festival, Assange and co have changed the international information stage by removing some of the illusory props and widening the proscenium. Wikileaks have done so in the size of their information dump, the seriousness and secrecy involved and the effects flowing to journalism and governments. Much of the material we suspected was there is now on show. Suspicions are now evidenced based. So far more damage has been done to government and corporation images, their credibility and egos than trauma to individuals or groups; except of course for Corporal Bradley Manning and Assange. The former in arguably torturous solitary confinement and the latter the plaything of the imperial and Swedish justice systems.

Leaker’s (there ought to be a better title; how about “searchlighters”, “unearthers”, “spin strippers”?) have often been personally damaged which trauma fuels the rage of their activism. Julian Assange is a highly intelligent, very complex, betimes grandiose and naïve soul. Often the man’s personal private activity gets more focus than his publishing. And wouldn’t governments and corporations much prefer that angle? The Writers’ Festival owes Assange a lot for his efforts but when asked at a large Town Hall session on Wikileaks what Australia could do to support him the audience applauded loudly. Andrew Fowler said lawyers and journalists need to pressure government, Sulette Dreyfus pointed out we ought pressure parliamentarians about a piece of proposed legislation limiting information and increasing ASIO powers. But Assange and Manning?

Hopefully governments will be forced to lower the barriers between what is essentially secret and what is not. The fear, though, is that they will erect tougher barriers to protect their embarrassment. There is talk in the USA of amending the freedom of speech amendment to enhance secrecy. Many journalists feel guilty about not preventing the Iraq war and so they ought take more risks while absolutely defending their sources. Yet how do you manage that if you work for the Murdoch Empire?

Breaking the silences in WA history: A history of WA forest protest movements

2011-06-06T15:49:00.003+08:00

Reading a PhD thesis is not something you do for fun.

But Ron Chapman's PhD Fighting for the Forests: A History of the WA Forest Protest Movement 1895-2001 is an important document of WA history.

I have long argued that protest action by ordinary West Australian citizens, in the form of social movements and civil society action, has been at the forefront of most significant social, political, economic and environmental change in this state. This is not reflected in traditional narratives about Western Australian history which largely marginalize or trivialize the action taken by WA citizens fighting for social, economic, racial and environmental justice.

So I was excited to read Chapman's thesis which shows that forest protest has been a major force for environmental and political reform throughout WA history.

Chapman shows how over time small scale protest activity by citizens was transformed into a social movement that had a significant influence on forest policy and practice, culminating in the defeat of the Court Government in 2001 and the adoption of policy by the Gallop Government to protect WA forests

Chapman describes the diversity of protest activities used by WA civil society groups to focus public attention on forest issues and pressure the WA Government to change its forest policies and practices. He shows how protest groups had to constantly adapt organization and strategies to the changing social and political conditions.

Chapman's analyses the campaigns and strategies used by West Australian citizens and civil society groups from 1895 to 2001. He distinguishes a number of distinct periods, firstly from the late 19th century to 1950, and then a second period from 1950 to 2001, characterized by 5 distinct phases:

Formative phase from the 1950's-60's which saved urban bushland.
Transitional phase during the 1970's which adopted assertive forms of protest.
Collaborative phase during the 1980's when campaigners began to collaborate with and influence political parties.
Expansionary phase during the 1990's which saw the spread of local protest groups in the South west.
Confrontational phase which involved an intensive campaign of confrontational and direct action.

Chapman's research demonstrate the importance of "localism" as an activist and organizing strategy. Chapman shows how the WA native forest protest movement established a network of urban and south-west activist groups which encouraged broad public support.

The eventual success of the forest protest movement resulted from the rise of these organized and effective local groups and campaigns focused on public education, media exposure and local action. The transformation of local action into an influential social movement played a significant role in bringing down a government and protecting WA forests.

Sunday poem- Wendell Berry: Lives and deaths that have belonged to us

2011-06-05T21:06:00.000+08:00

Wendell Berry

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.

More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.

Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

Creating counterfeit communities

2011-06-05T15:59:00.000+08:00

The adverts appear everywhere. Developers adverting their ritzy housing estates claiming that they don't build houses, they build communities. And property developers employ community development specialists to create "communities" in order to sell more houses at higher prices.

And then there are the Government departments and NGO's who describe their top down efforts to impose solutions on people to achieve already defined outcomes as "community development".

Frankly it is all an illusion.

It is as Australian blogger and writer Bruce Watson rightly points out the commodification of community- the turning of a complex human and social institution into a commodity that can be exploited for profit and political gain. Watson reminds us that most of what takes place under the banner of "community" has become clouded and easily manipulated for commodification and marketing.

John Freie and Bruce Watson call it "counterfeit communities" and it is a good description. In counterfeit communities it is less important that communities exist in reality. It is the appearance of community that is important. People are encouraged to see the manifestations and spirit of community without accepting the complex interactions that must occur for it to be realized. As Wilson writes:

"Community has regrettably become a product to be advertised, marketed and sold. It makes no difference whether genuine community exists or not. As long as it appears to exist. Consequently, we are subjected to planned communities that are advertised as “truly a special place”, “we’ve made the dream a reality” and “the tasteful community you deserve” with a “neighbourhood bar and grill” (in the multi-story shopping centre complex)"

As Watson points counterfeit communities, despite all the glossy brochures, promises and hyperbole, are inherently hollow and exploitative. They are never fully satisfying.

And Wilson gets to the nub of counterfeit community:

"Counterfeit community extends the power and expands the wealth of those who create it".

Tribute CD in memory of Alastair Hulett (1951-2010)

2011-06-04T18:16:00.002+08:00

Pleased to hear of the tribute album to the Scottish singer songwriter and revolutionary socialist Alistair Hulett who died in January 2010.

Hulett, who lived in Australia for 25 years, was a Scottish born folk singer who used his music to educate, inform, inspire and confront.

The CD Love, Loss and Liberty is a collection of Hulett's songs performed by musicians including June Tabor, Roy Bailey, Nancy Kerr and Rory Mcleod. Reviews can be read here and here.

Hulett wrote many songs about the silences and forgotten events in Australian history- about unions and the labor movement, racism, refugees, Indigenous struggles and capitalism. As well as writing and singing songs in the acoustic folk tradition, Hulett was instrumental in the Australian punk scene during the 1970s and 80's.

His song He Fades Away is a powerful indictment of the greatest industrial and corporate crime in Australian history- the deaths and suffering of millions of Australians due to exposure to asbestos.

He Fades Away” is about an Australian miner dying young of asbestosis, from exposure to asbestos. The song is written from the perspective of the wife of the miner who is dying of asbestosis. The English singer June Tabor does a powerful performance of Hulett's song.

He Fades Away
Alastair Hulett

There's a man in my bed I used to love him
His kisses used to take my breath away
There's a man in my bed I hardly know him
I wipe his face and hold his hand
And watch him as he slowly fades away
And he fades away
Not like leaves that fall in autumn
Turning gold against the grey
He fades away
Like the bloodstains on the pillow case
That I wash every day
He fades away
There's a man in my bed, he's on a pension
Although he's only fifty years of age
The lawyer says we might get compensation
In the course of due procedure
But he couldn't say for certain at this stage
And he's not the only one
Who made that trip so many years ago
To work the Wittenoom mines
So many young men old before their time
And dying slow
He fades away
A wheezing bag of bones his
Lungs half clogged and full of clay
He fades away
There's a man in my bed they never told him
The cost of bringing home his weekly pay
And when the courts decide how much they owe him
How will he spend his money
When he lies in bed and coughs his life away?

The economy of grace: New online collection of poems by Dennis Brutus

2011-06-04T16:29:00.003+08:00

“No poem is ever finished—it is merely abandoned.”

“Perhaps all poems are merely drafts.”
Dennis Brutus

"Someone
made me more alive,
more human;
I repay that gift
by making more alive
someone else".

Dennis Brutus
Nov 14 1976

For those of us involved in social and political activism the poet Dennis Brutus is an inspiration. Brutus's poetry has appeared many times on this blog (here).

So imagine my excitement when I stumbled across this online collection of unpublished poems by Dennis Brutus "Poetry and Human Rights: Poems by Dennis Brutus" published by Worcester State College. The book contains many unpublished poems uncovered in Brutus private papers held by Worcester State College.

In his famous poem "Easter 1916" the Irish poem W.B Yeats warned of the emotional price paid by those involved in political struggle:

" Too much sacrifice
can make a stone of the heart"

What I find inspiring about Dennis Brutus's work is that despite his intense lifelong political commitment and engagement , his heart never turned to stone.

"I salute the jacarandas anyway
whatever else the world may offer
offer for our praise
or our opprobrium
I salute the jacarandas anyway.

It will be as if I never lived
there will be no trace of me
there will be no sign of me remembered
it will be as if I never lived
no trace of me will remain
it will be as if nothing had been.

What will it matter if nothing remains?

you will have breathed the fresh morning air
and walked the dewy morning grass
and will have asserted for once your being

and I will salute the jacarandas once more.

Oct. 3, 2008
For Mahmoud Darwish
East London, Oct. 11, 2008

* * * * * *
X Parish, New Orleans
Corpses floating in that murk
of water, mud, debris, arms dangling
or stiff in death’s rigor, breasts
bloated with congealed blood;
burly boatmen, bursting with vigor
in orange protectors, pole
their skiffs expertly, their tenterhooks
grapple with cadavers, impale thighs
exposed in death’s indifferent obscenity;
in call centers data clerks enter ciphers
that record someone’s loss:
there is no place for grief.
Oct., 2005

* * * * * *
An erratic experience
concrete wilderness
a scrivener’s jungle
they will exclaim dismayed
somewhat in pity, somewhat in horror
while I chuckle amused
buried in my predicament.

* * * * * *
Beyond this problem
many others rise
peaks loom through mists
beyond this range
gathering our energies
we know much more
will be demanded
in times to come.

July 21, 2004

The failure of market led approaches in Australian water policy

2011-06-02T15:06:00.000+08:00

"Australian water is now effectively commoditised: allocated to whoever is willing to pay the going price"
Ian Douglas

Excellent article by Ian Douglas of Fair Water Use Australia on the failure of market approaches in national water reform.:

"This blind commitment to growth, which also suffuses the policy platforms of the major parties, is being used to justify public-private partnerships and the construction of ill-conceived and untenably costly water infrastructure, most notoriously desalination plants. Our governments appear quite comfortable entering into public-private partnerships with multinationals whose track record in terms of corporate responsibility on the global stage is, at best, in-glorious."

Douglas argues that the reliance on market based approaches and the privatization of water is incompatible with the idea of access to water as a public good and poses a serious threat to Australia's water future.

Douglas argues that despite the fact that polling indicates that at least 70% of Australians are opposed to water privatization it continues to be imposed on the nation, under the guise of water reform:

"Australian water reform was conceived in 1994 by the Council of Australian Governments; nurtured by the prevailing mantra that free-market exposure was the ultimate panacea for undercapitalised and inefficient public utilities. COAG went one giant leap further, in deciding to establish a national water market; arguing that this would direct water to its most productive use.

In the years since these sweeping changes were announced, the wisdom of applying free market principles to the management of an essential natural resource has been largely discredited by events overseas: In the water-supply sector, major corporate players have been accused and, in more than a few instances, convicted of price-gouging, anti-competitive behaviour, corrupt practice and fraud. On all continents there are moves to wrest control from private corporations. Globally, more than 90 per cent of water services are now publicly owned.

In Australia there are valid concerns that water reform is leaving crucial decisions, with respect to the “where”, “when” and “how” of water distribution, in the hands of entities whose priority is profit rather than socially and environmentally responsible water use. Questions are being raised as to why our governments have been prepared to implement these radical policies without seeking and obtaining prior electoral mandate and in the absence of adequate constitutional protection of water.

Naomi Shihab Nye: At First Light

2011-06-02T05:43:00.000+08:00

"This morning the newspaper
was too terrible to deliver
so the newsboy just pitched
a little sheaf
of Kleenex"
Consolation
Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye's evocative poems below capture exactly what it is like when I get up in darkness each day.

In all her poetry and prose Naomi Shihab Nye writes clearly and beautifully of the daily realities of life and the sad state of the world in which we live. Her work has featured on the blog before.

Words When We Need Them
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Before this early moment,
another, ripe with rain,
the scent of its own full shape.

Each day the rooster
we have never seen
raises the first greeting
and darkness which holds us
in its loose pocket all night
sets us down.

Now we walk,
waking up rooms,
switching on lights.

Into the breath,
wordless but ripe
with all possible words,
messages not yet gathered
or sent.

Morning looms,
more friend than
the best friend.
We could still say.

Breaking the Fast
By Naomi Shihab Nye
1.
Japanese teacher says:
At first light, rise.
Don’t hover between
sleep and waking,
this makes you heavy,
puts a stone inside your heart.

The minute you drift back to shore,
anchor. Breathe.
Remember your deepest name.

2.
Sometimes objects stun me,
bamboo strainer, gray mug,
sitting exactly where
they were left.

They have not slept
or dreamt of lost faces.

I touch them carefully,
saying, tell me what you know.

3.
Cup of waves,
strawberry balanced
in a seashell.

In morning the water seems
clear to the bottom.

No fish blocks my view.

Sunday morning Reflections

2011-05-29T09:45:00.001+08:00

photo courtesy of The Boston Globe

The Guest House
Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The dark side of Australia"s refugee policies: Safe havens and the Balkans wars

2011-05-28T10:53:00.013+08:00

Once again events of the past have been catapulted into our daily existence.

The arrest of former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic is a reminder of the terrible events of the Balkans Wars of the 1990s.

Mladic will stand trial accused of the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 and the deaths of 10,000 people (including 3000 children) during the 3.5 year siege of Sarajevo during the early 1990's.

Mladic led the Bosnian Serb armed forces during the Balkan Wars of the 1990's and was responsible for the worst ethnically motivated mass murders in Europe since WW 2. He was arrested in a small farming town north of Belgrade after Police were tipped off by a local source.

So while those events resonate around the world, they have a profound resonance here in Australia, particularly for people who fled the Balkans war and came to Australia under Safe Haven visas in search of sanctuary. Many found it, but others didn't, as Pamela Curr from the Melbourne based Asylum Seeker Resource Centre points out in this piece.

Pamela's piece reminds us that that some refugees from the Balkan Wars who came to Australia were treated appallingly by Australian Governments of both political persuasions, despite government rhetoric about safe havens.

Pamela's piece is a reminder that the "dark side" of Australian Government immigration policies and practices, something that is ever more evident by the day, has a long history that should never be forgotten.

"It was dark and noisy in the Trades Hall Bar. The boy leant forward as he told me about the day Ratko Mladic came to his village. The soldiers rounded up everyone then separated the men and the women. The boy stood beside his father at the back of the group.

Mladic called out for boys born in certain years to step forward. He was 17. His year was called. As he moved to obey, his father fixed his arm in a vice-like grip, wordlessly holding him back. The boy saw his friends marched around the side of the barn. Then the shots rang out. The father whispered to the boy- run- NOW. In the distress and confusion, he escaped into the hills.

This boy came to Australia in 1999 on a Safe Haven visa when the Australian government responded to a call to accept evacuees until they could safely return. He stayed at the Albury army camp and was welcomed by the local community who responded with generosity and hospitality to the Kosavars. Then overnight the Australian army left and the private security contractors took over and the open camp became a prison.

The boy and his friend escaped on the same day. They worked on farms along the Murray until betrayed and handed over to Immigration. Then they were detained in Maribyrnong Detention centre. There, they witnessed the terrible death of Viliami Tanginoa who dived head first off the basket ball post after being ignored all day. They saw his body lying in the rain for an hour. Then they were taken to the Melbourne Custody Centre and locked in isolation for six weeks. Then they were taken to the Fitzroy Police cells and locked up for 23 hours out of 24 for months. They were never charged with any crime.

Eventually they were released to report to the police station every day until they were deported."

Nikos Kazantzakis and the Politics of the Spirit

2011-05-25T22:33:00.000+08:00

"Gradually I began to understand that it does not matter very much what problem, whether big or small, is tormenting us; the only thing that matters is that we be tormented, that we find a ground for being tormented. In other words that we exercise our minds in order to keep certainty from turning us into idiots, that we fight to open every closed door we find in front of us".
Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

On my fortnightly pilgrimage to scour the shelves of the Reid Library at the University of Western Australia I found the second volume of the biography of the Cretan writer Nikos Kazantzakis by Peter Bien ( Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit, 2007).

Kazantzakis is best known for his 1946 book Zorba The Greek (made into a famous film starring Anthony Quinn) and the Last Temptation of Christ, published in 1960 (which was made into a controversial film by Martin Scorsese)

In my 30's I read everything that Kazantzakis wrote and was deeply affected by his work. Bien's mammoth work, which totals over 600 pages, is the second volume of his biography of Kazantzakis's (the first volume was published in 1989).

I look forward to re-engaging with the remarkable life and work of Nikos Kazantzakis.

The never ending creativity of Bob Dylan

2011-05-24T21:19:00.002+08:00

"Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them" - Bob Dylan, “To my fans and followers”, 13 May 2011

Bob Dylan is 70. The longevity and brilliance of his career is frankly breathtaking. And his creative output continues unabated into his sixth decade of making music. He continues to tour extensively, has further back-catalog releases planned and is reportedly writing a sequel to Chronicles the first volume of his autobiography. No doubt there will be future recordings and he continues to deliver the highly acclaimed radio show Theme Time Radio Hour.

This piece by David Hayes from the UK online publication Open Democracy is well worth reading. Hayes makes the point that the period since the mid 1990's has been among Dylan's most prolific and creative periods. I think he is right.

The media deluge that surrounds his 70th birthday - tributes, articles and profiles galore, new books and new editions of books, career reviews, and countless items in the “Dylan and me” sub-genre - is evidence of this rediscovery of a figure who (it is hard to recall now) was regarded during parts of the 1980s and 1990s as no longer of fresh interest artistically.

In great part the recognition is owed to Dylan’s immense and diverse creative efforts since the late 1990s. The turning-point may have been 1997, when the singer received emergency medical treatment for a serious heart infection. In the same year Dylan issued the first of what would become a series of three acclaimed albums of original songs (Time Out of Mind, Love and Theft, Together Through Life).

These alone represent a musical renaissance in terms of the preceding decade. But there have in the post-1997 years also been well packaged compilations and “official” bootlegs of earlier material from his prolific oeuvre (including to date nine volumes of The Bootleg Series, with many live performances and out-takes), and covers (Christmas in the Heart); an astonishing autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, which seems both to absorb and extend the literary lineages it belongs to, much as his music does; hosting an exuberant weekly radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour, where songs of many styles and periods loosely connected by subject are presented with an inimitable mix of affection, learning and bone-dry wit; having his drawings and paintings exhibited, and reproduced in book form (Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series); and not least a concert schedule often described as the “never-ending tour”, which has seen Dylan perform live around 100 times a year across two decades and forty countries.

Dylan’s appearance in a range of advertisements (for lingerie, cola and cars) has, meanwhile, extended his commercial profile in what would earlier in his career have been unthinkable ways. More beneficial to his artistic reputation has been the work of film directors who have explored his achievement and beguiling persona via documentary (Martin Scorsese’s superb No Direction Home [2005]) and drama (Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There [2007], where six actors portray Dylan at various stages of his life).

All this - and there is both more, and more to come - is enough to make Dylan’s “late period” (assuming he really is mortal) worthy of note as a further rich phase of an already epic journey. This “mature” work also casts a fresh light on his career as a whole, in that the 1960s era of cultural and psychological transformation which his music helped define can now more clearly be seen as but one (albeit the founding and decisive) period in an ongoing achievement of astounding range. The arc of decades now, for example, allows the potent aura of ageless wisdom conveyed by some of the most renowned songs of Dylan’s 20s (Man of Constant Sorrow) to be heard alongside moving reflections on age, change and mortality (Not Dark Yet) composed decades on.

Bob Dylan has now spent fifty years doing what any great artist does - elaborating and sharing a distinct vision, and seeking to remain true to what he once called “the inspiration behind the inspiration”. The core of this achievement - songs, writings and performances (and some of the best “Dylanologists”, Betsy Bowden, Paul Williams, Greil Marcus and Michael Gray among them, emphasise how important the latter are to any assessment of his musical genius) - is more than ever available to anyone who cares and can afford to explore them.

Colin Barnett's Budget and WA and Commonwealth relations

2011-05-23T20:48:00.000+08:00

Sarah Burnside has written a thoughtful piece in New Matilda about the political theatrics displayed by WA Premier Colin Barnett and his ability to exploit the natural hostility West Australians have for Federal Governments in Canberra, particularly Federal Labor Governments.

Sarah argues that Colin Barnett's decision in the State Budget to increase state mining royalties is one of a long line of showdowns over the years between the West Australian Government and Canberra. It is also a potent political ploy that has created problems for both Federal Labor and the WA Labor Opposition. Sarah writes:

Last week — in an exception to the general rule that state budgets are of little interest to the nation at large — the WA Liberal-National Government announced an increase to mining royalties, eliciting criticism from the federal Government and delighting the Opposition.

The royalty increase was provocative in light of the proposed minerals rent resource tax (MRRT). In cutting a deal prior to the 2010 election, the Government promised that any future royalty increases would be rebated once the MRRT was imposed in 2012. Thus it looks a lot like WA gazumped Federal Labor by incurring a debt on the Commonwealth’s behalf........

.................The Government disagrees. Julia Gillard has confirmed that adjustments will be made to infrastructure spending to Western Australia to "protect the federal budget". Martin Ferguson, who confirmed that the government would honour its deal with the mining industry, criticised the increase as a "short term grab for cash" which may be "to the eventual disadvantage of the West Australian community". Wayne Swan has disputed the numbers: the WA Government claims that the increase will represent $2 billion over the next three years but Swan argues that there is "a real doubt" as to the accuracy of this prediction.

In any event, as business reporter Michael Pascoe pointed out, the Commonwealth Grants Commission process adjusts monies given to the states against the revenue they raise themselves. Pascoe charges that Barnett has "wilfully damage[d] his own budget … to score a petty political point against Canberra, recording the most Pyrrhic of victories". This is politics-as-theatre; in the next act the Premier, a picture of outraged innocence, characterised Swan and Gillard’s remarks about infrastructure spending as a threat.

The dispute puts the WA ALP in a difficult position. Leader Eric Ripper stated rather vaguely that if the federal government "threatens infrastructure spending…that would show a complete lack of understanding of how politics in Western Australia works."

This stand-off has been brewing for some time, as illustrated by complaints about WA’s GST share: of each dollar of GST revenue generated within the state, it receives about 68 cents. In late March, in what was seen as an attempt to placate the mining states, Gillard announced a "full scale review" of GST revenue allocation. Barnett was not mollified. In April, he charged that Tasmania had "become Australia’s national park", asking "what right is there to simply take some of the spoils of the hard work in other states?" The presence of iron ore within state boundaries seems increasingly to be viewed as the result of some special virtue on WA’s part — rather than of luck and geography"

In memorian: a poem by Guiseppi Ungaretti

2011-05-22T17:52:00.001+08:00

In Memoriam
by Guiseppe Ungaretti*

He was called
Mohammed Sheab
Descendant of nomad emirs
a suicide
because he no longer had
a country

He loved France
and changed his name

Became Marcel
but was not French
and had fogotten how
to live
in his own people's tent
where they listened to the sing-song
of the Koran
as they sip coffee

He did not know
how to release
the song
of his unconstraint

I followed his coffin
I and the managress of the hotel
where we lived
in Paris
number 5 rue des Carmes
steep decrepit alleyway

he rests
in the cemetry at Ivry
a suburb that always
looks
like the day
they dismantle a fairground

And perhaps only I
still know
he lived

translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh.

* Guiseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) was an Italian poet, journalist, essayist and academic. Ungaretti started writing poetry whilst fighting in the trenches during WW1.

published in Kaminsky I & Harris S (2010) The ECCO Anthology of International Poetry.

100 days of the Egyptian revolution: Voices from within

2011-05-21T09:41:00.000+08:00

"The revolution was a great human achievement .It means people are willing to die for freedom and justice. When you participate in a real revolution you become a much better person. You are ready to defend human values"

Alaa al-Awany

100 days have passed since uprisings by the Egyptian people caused the overthrow of Hosni Mubarek, the Egyptian dictator and friend of the West. But there is growing concern within Egypt that a counter-revolution is taking place with old regime military loyalists consolidating power with army support.

The UK Guardian has published a series of articles from prominent activists within Egypt offering their views on the current situation.

Egypt's most celebrated writer Alaa al-Awany warns of a counter revolution by the army who is using the threat of unrest and violence by so called thugs and criminals as justification for ongoing repression.

Heba Morayef is an Egyptian based researcher for Human Rights Watch writes that torture and imprisonment by the military remains rife. Morayef describes how protestors and activists involved in the uprisings continue to be arbitrarily imprisoned.

Hossam al-Hamaalaway is a prominent Egyptian journalist, blogger and activist who writes of the resentment and anger within Egyptian society about the neo-liberal policies that have impoverished people. He argues that what is needed is socioeconomic aqnd workplace reform- giving people decent salaries, protecting their rights and improving their economic lot. His blog is here

The piece below is extracted from his latest article:

The revolution was against the Mubarak regime but all we've managed to do so far is remove Mubarak himself. The ones running the country right now are Mubarak's generals, who were the backbone of his dictatorship from day one.

Many are therefore disappointed with Egypt's progress – me less so because I never had high expectations from an army takeover. But two things have changed in Egypt in the past 100 days which give me hope, and both relate to the fact that the revolution is unfinished. The first is that mass strikes are continuing. The second is that workers have taken the step of establishing independent trade unions, which I believe are the silver bullet for any dictatorship..................................

But the main part of any revolution has to be socio-economic emancipation for the citizens of a country; if you want to eliminate corruption or stop vote-buying then you have to give people decent salaries, make them aware of their rights and not leave them in dire economic need. A middle-class activist can return to his executive job after they think the revolution is over, but a public transport worker who has spent 20 years in service and is getting paid only 189 Egyptian pounds a month – you can't ask this guy to go back to work and tell his starving kids at home that everything will be sorted out once we have a civilian government in the future.

So this is phase two of the revolution, the phase of socio-economic change. What we need to do now is take Tahrir to the factories, the universities, the workplaces. In every single institution in this country there is a mini-Mubarak who needs to be overthrown. In every institution there are figures from the old state security regime who need to be overthrown. These guys are the counter-revolution. Maybe the counter-revolution isn't clearly organised with a specific command structure, but you have to assume that everyone who belonged to the old regime and enjoyed privileges under it is going to try to defend those privileges, and much of the malaise you see around you in Egypt today is down to that.

There is huge resentment within the Egyptian working class about the neoliberal policies that have impoverished them over the past 20 years, and the struggle for change will be a dramatic one. No doubt the western powers and Arab monarchs who are already deeply unhappy at what they see taking place in Egypt will be even more dismayed at this. But however much pressure they put on the military junta, the pressure of the street can be stronger. The Egyptian people are vigilant about their own revolution.

Mahmoud Darwish " On Wishes"

2011-05-21T08:01:00.005+08:00

"I yearn for the bread my mother bakes
I ache for my mother’s coffee.
And her touch."
Mahmoud Darwish

On Wishes
Mahmoud Darwish

Don't say to me:
          Would I were a seller of bread in Algiers
          That I might sing with a rebel
Don't say to me:
           Would I were a herdsman in the Yemen
           That I might sing to the shudderings of the time.
Don't say to me:
   Would I were a cafe waiter in Havana
           That I might sing to the victories of sorrowing women
Don't say to me:
   Would I worked as a young labourer in Aswan
   That I might sing to the rocks.

My friend,
The Nile will not flow into the Volga,
Nor the Congo or the Jordan into the Euphrates.
Each river has its source, its course, its life.
My friend, our land is not barren.
Each land has its time for being born,
Each dawn a date with a rebel.

Christy Moore: "the Atlantic's seethe and swell" and the death of the Two Conneelys

2011-05-19T15:01:00.004+08:00

The "seethe and swell" of the Atlantic Ocean has been in my thoughts a lot recently as my step daughter is currently sailing from one side of the Atlantic to the other- from the Caribbean Islands to the French Riviera.

So Irish balladeer Christy Moore's song Two Conneeleys, which is a haunting elegy to 2 brothers lost in the Atlantic Sea near the island of Inis Maan off the Irish coast, has a particular poignancy. Innis Maan is one of the three Aran Islands in Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland. It has an estimated population of 160 people and is a stronghold of traditional Irish culture.

The Two Conneelys is one of my favourite Christy Moore songs as it brings together so much of Moore's unique style. His remarkable phrasing and tone of singing, the uniqueness of his guitar picking and his haunting lyrics are all present in the song which pays tribute to the lives of two Irish brothers who drowned at sea off the coast of Inis Maan.

Christy Moore is arguably Irelands greatest contemporary singer in the Irish folk tradition. As a founder of Plantxy and Moving Hearts he revolutionized traditional Irish music by merging traditional and contemporary instrumentation. Moore continues to deliver CD's and live performances of remarkable power and beauty.

The Two Conneelys (and his tribute to Guisepe Conlon) can be found on Moore's 1994 CD King Puck.

Moore's songs have featured on the blog before (here), namely his remarkable tribute to Irishman Guiseppe Conlon, which featured in this blog piece about the death of British actor Pete Posthelwaite (who played Conlon in the Jim Sheridan film In the Name of the Father).

The Two Conneeleys

(Christy Moore and W.Page)

Hear the Atlantic seethe and swell
And hear the lonesome chapel bell
God save their souls and mind them well
Tomas and Sean Conneeley

Yesterday at half past four
They pushed their currach from the shore
One took the net while one took the oar
The two fisherman Conneeley

From Conor's fort and from Synge's chair
Towards Inis Mor and Inis Iarr
They scout the sea in silent prayer
As they go searching for their neighbours

Dia diob a beiir iascairi brea
nac mbeid ar ais ar barr an tra
Go mbeid sib sona sasta ar neam
Tomas agus Sean o' Congaile*

Draw the seaweed up the hill
And sow potatoes in the drill
Try to understand God's will
And the loss of the two Conneeleys

Hear the Atlantic seethe and swell
And hear the lonesome chapel bell
God save their souls and mind them well
Tomas and Sean Conneeley

*English Translation of Irish Verse:

God be with you two fine fishermen

Who will not be back at the top of the strand

May you have peace and happiness in Heaven

Tomás and Seán Conneeley

Serco: profiting from failure, lack of accountability and a disregard for human life

2011-05-18T23:49:00.001+08:00

Here are the results of privatization and Serco running public services. A complete lack of accountability for public funds, extreme profit gouging from the public purse, an obsession with secrecy, unauthorized use of force, poorly trained and under prepared staff and a disregard for human life that leads to self harm, suicide and death of those in Serco's care.

Each day there are more exposures of Serco's shocking record in running Australia's immigration detention centres.

Detainees in Villawood were forced to use a cigarette lighter to try to burn through a rope used by a detainee to take his own life. Serco staff were ill prepared and untrained to respond to attempted suicide. according to ABC Online which reports:

Detainees say they tried to burn through the rope 41-year-old Ahmed Al Akabi had used to take his own life.

They say they have borne witness to a string of suicides at the centre in the past year, including that of Iraqi-born teacher Mr Akabi.

The detainees, mostly of Kurdish origin, relayed numerous concerns over their indefinite detention, with several afflicted by illnesses related to stress and depression.
Tensions at the centre came to a head last month when riot police were called in during a night of rioting that saw several buildings destroyed by fire.

One of the men who found Mr Akabi says guards employed by Villawood's privately owned operator, Serco, were ill-equipped and not adequately trained to respond appropriately to the suicide attempt.

The man says the guards did not have a sharp instrument available to cut Mr Akabi down and did not know how to respond.

The detainee, who did not want to be identified, says he and others tried to hold Mr Akabi aloft in a bid to save him from suffocation until help arrived.

He says they were forced to use the cigarette lighter to try to save the father of three, but were too late; he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Serco declined to comment on specific allegations, but in a statement to the ABC said it runs a comprehensive staff training program that goes beyond its contractual obligations.

"Serco is committed to doing everything we can to prevent those in our care from coming to harm," the statement said.

"Our staff take this commitment extremely seriously and work hard to keep those in our care safe and secure."

The amount of public funds paid to Serco was secretly doubled by the Federal Government and is expected to reach $1 billion within months. This is despite the Federal Government claiming that Serco was only paid $370 million. This windfall has massively boosted Serco's Australian revenue by 30%:

Serco originally signed a five-year contract worth $370 million to run the facilities, including the Maribyrnong Detention Centre, until mid-2014.

But immigration industry experts said this figure was now likely to burst through the billion-dollar barrier.

Figures obtained from government tender records show the total size of Serco's contracts in relation to asylum-seekers was quietly doubled in November to more than $756 million.

But immigration industry sources are saying the latest contract amount for Serco is already six months out of date, and it stands to make hundreds of millions more from the taxpayers with continued boat arrivals.

One source said the asylum-seeker boom since November had already added up to $200 million to the total value of Serco's detention contracts. That would value them at up to $950 million as of this month.

Industry experts said Serco's bonanza was set to easily crack the $1 billion barrier if the Government's new "Malaysia Solution" does not work and refugee boats keep coming.
An Immigration Department spokesman refused to speculate on the Serco bonanza. A Serco spokeswoman said these were "questions for the Government".

Serco is so fearful of exposure of its activities that it considers the unauthorized presence of media near a detention centre to be a critical safety threat- the highest possible threat level. This report found that:

The company running the country's immigration detention centres has upgraded how seriously it takes the unauthorised presence of media, putting it on par with a bomb threat or an escape.

The Serco document says "unauthorised" media presence at a detention centre is now considered "critical" - the highest possible threat level.

Accounts of events from within Christmas Island detention centres show that Serco's use of force, its under-staffing and ill preparedness and poor management were major contributors to recent riots and protests on Christmas Island. A full account of the claims can be read here.

Foreign Policy in Focus: the summer of revolt in Arab states

2011-05-17T23:18:00.001+08:00

The US Journal Foreign Policy in Focus is always a good source for articles on international events and a critical analyses of American and western foreign policy hegemony.

This weeks edition has a number of pieces on the Arab summer of revolt and uprisings in Syria, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates, and the potential of Turkey to provide a model for other Arab democracies;

"The revolutions of 1989 toppled a number of undemocratic regimes but failed, in Tiananmen Square, to transform Chinese politics. Similarly, the Arab Spring has come up against serious resistance. And the Obama administration continues to hesitate.

In Syria, the government of Bashar al-Assad has killed at least 850 people and imprisoned 8,000 others. "In an age where Islamic extremism and terrorism continue to dominate Washington’s foreign policy relations in the Middle East, the Obama administration has been careful not to prematurely push Assad overboard," writes Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) contributor Daniel DePetris in Don't Count Bashar Out.

"White House rhetoric is heating up, President Obama’s National Security Council continues to demand that Assad halt the killing of unarmed protesters, and the administration has recently drafted individual sanctions. But in the case of Syria, Washington has yet to adopt the regime-change outlook that became so prevalent during the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings."

In Yemen, too, Washington has been reluctant to jettison an ally. "Since Obama came to office in January 2009, U.S. security assistance to the Yemeni regime has gone up 20-fold," writes FPIF columnist Stephen Zunes in Yemen on the Edge. "Despite such large-scale unconditional support, however, the 32-year reign of autocratic President Ali Abdullah Saleh may finally be coming to an end. Yet the Obama administration has been ambivalent in its support for a democratic transition in this impoverished but strategically important country."

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Arab Spring are looking around for role models. FPIF contributor Richard Javad Heydarian looks at the potential of Turkey to serve as an example for aspiring Arab democrats. "Political freedom, accountability, corruption, and economic justice are at the center of democratic protests," he writes in Arab Spring, Turkish Summer? "Turkey’s record on these issues has drawn the notice of many in the Islamic world. But Turkey’s experience with electoral politics and market economics is unique, a response to the specifics of Turkish history and culture. The example therefore may not be replicable."

10 lessons from the nuclear disasters at Fukishima and Chernobyl

2011-05-16T07:49:00.001+08:00

Excellent article from the Miami Herald by David Krieger who is a councilor on the World Future Council and the chair of the executive committee of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility.

Here are 10 lessons from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 25 years ago and the Fukushima disaster this year.

1. Nuclear power is a highly complex, expensive and dangerous way to boil water to create steam to turn turbines.

2. Accidents happen, and the worst-case scenario often turns out to be worse than imagined or planned for.

3. The nuclear industry and its experts cannot plan for every contingency or prevent every disaster.

4. Governments do not effectively regulate the nuclear industry to assure the safety of the public. Regulators of the nuclear industry often come from the nuclear industry itself and tend to be too close to it to regulate it effectively.

5. Hubris, complacency and high-level radiation are a deadly mix. Hubris on the part of the nuclear industry and its government regulators — along with complacency on the part of the public — has led to the creation of vast amounts of high-level radiation that must be guarded from release to the environment for tens of thousands of years.

6. The corporations that run the nuclear power plants are protected from catastrophic economic failure by government limits on liability. If the corporations that own nuclear power plants had to bear the burden of potential financial losses in the event of a catastrophic accident, they would not build the plants because they know the risks are unacceptable. It is only when government limits the liability, as the Price-Anderson Act does in the United States, that companies go ahead and build nuclear power plants. No other private industry is given such liability protection, which leaves the taxpayers on the hook.

7. Radiation releases from nuclear accidents cannot be contained in space and will not stop at national borders.

8. Radiation releases from nuclear accidents cannot be contained in time and will adversely affect countless future generations.

9. Nuclear energy — as well as nuclear weapons — and human beings cannot coexist without the risk of future catastrophes. The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have long known that nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist. Fukushima, like Chernobyl before it, makes clear that human beings and nuclear power plants also cannot coexist.

10. The accidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl are a bracing reminder to phase out nuclear energy. We need to move as rapidly as possible to a global energy plan based upon conservation and various forms of renewable energy: solar cells, wind, geothermal, and energy that is extracted from the oceans and the tides and the currents.

Poet Maya Angelou once said, “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage doesn’t need to be lived again.” We need the courage to abandon nuclear power. No one should have to experience the wrenching pain of another Chernobyl or another Fukushima.

Current Reading

2011-05-15T20:00:00.001+08:00

The books shown include:

Marie-Monique Robin the World According to Monsanto

Martin Duberman Paul Robeson: A Biography

Judy Linn & Patti Smith Patti Smith 1969-1976

New York Review of Books

Dennis Brutus: Letting the facts sing

2011-05-14T23:41:00.011+08:00

"Sometimes a mesh of ideas
webs the entranced mind,
the assenting delighted mental eye;
and sometimes the thrust and clash
of forged and metalled words
makes musical clangour in the brain;
and sometimes a nude and simple word
standing unlit or adorned
may plead mutely in cold or dark
for an answering warmth, an enlightening
sympathy;
state the bare fact and let it sing."

Dennis Brutus
from A Simple Lust: Collected Poems of South African Jail & Exile

The Witnessing Prescence: Denise Levertov

2011-05-14T17:59:00.000+08:00

Witness
Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountains
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day, to reconfirm
that witnessing prescence.

Beginners
Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

“From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea—“

But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
—so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
—we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet—
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

The Jacob's Ladder
Denise Levertov

The stairway is not
a thing of gleaming strands
a radiant evanescence
for angels' feet that only glance in their tread, and need not
touch the stone.

It is of stone.
A rosy stone that takes
a glowing tone of softness
only because behind it the sky is a doubtful, a doubting
night gray.

A stairway of sharp
angles, solidly built.
One sees that the angels must spring
down from one step to the next, giving a little
lift of the wings:

and a man climbing
must scrape his knees, and bring
the grip of his hands into play. The cut stone
consoles his groping feet. Wings brush past him.
The poem ascends.

Favourite Songs: Bruce Hornsby "The Way it is" and "The End of the Innocence

2011-05-14T17:01:00.001+08:00

"Remember when the days were young/ And rolled beneath a deep blue sky/ Didn't have care in the world/..... But now these skies are threatening/ They' re beating plowshares into swords/ For this tired old man we elected King/ Armchair warriors often fail/ And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales/ The lawyers clean up all details/ Since daddy had to lie".
The End of the Innocence Bruce Hornsby/Don Henley

Bruce Hornsby is of one of those consummate musicians who over a long career has crossed many musical genres. He has been a successful singer songwriter, had commercial hits in the 1980's, and as a piano player has played with some of the finest American jazz, blues, country and contemporary musicians, including the Grateful Dead, BB King, Lou Reed, Chaka Khan, Bonnie Rait, Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden to name a few.

Recently Hornsby appeared playing piano on one of my favourite CD's for 2009 Charlie Haden Family and Friends the country album by jazz icon Charlie Haden (who I have written about here). Hornsby's evocative piano playing features on a number of the tracks. Hornsby is a such a fine piano player with a distinctive touch, whether playing solo or as a part of larger band.

Bruce Hornsby is probably best remembered for his 1986 album The Way it Is, recorded with his band the Range, which featured 3 top 20 hits, including the song The Way It Is. That album sold millions worldwide, stayed in the charts for over 12 months and won Hornsby a Grammy for Best New Artist. After a couple of successful albums Hornsby tired of the commercial pressures, and returned to his roots which included jazz, folk and bluegrass.

Two of my favourite US songs- The Way It Is and the End of Innocence- were both composed by Bruce Hornsby and reflect something of the feelings of many Americans during the years of the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.

The song the Way It Is was the first track on the 1986 album of the same name. Hornsby's piano solo introduction is such a distinctive piece, as is the piano solo in the middle of the song.

The song speaks of issues of poverty, homelessness and of civil rights in the US in the mid 80's- and the turning away from those issues during the Reagan era (see the lyrics below). In one way the song is a statement of resignation about the difficulty of addressing injustice, but also about the need for strength and persistence in the face of injustice. In one line Hornsby sings "Some things will never change". But then he follows up with the line"But don't you believe em".

The End of the Innocence was co-written by Hornsby with Don Henley in 1989 and while I have always liked Don Henley's version of the song, Hornsby's live version on solo piano is better (I think). Hornsby slows the song down and gives the song a very different feel. It becomes a lament, a song of regret (as well as sequing into a version of Danny Boy).

I always liked the way the song bridges the personal and the social, with its references to Ronald Reagan (For this tired old man we elected King/ Armchair warriors often fail) to the passing of the hopes and innocence of the 1960's and 1970's and to the pain and regret of lost hopes. Hornsby's live version captures the yearning, regret and nostalgia that is such a strong element of the song.

Lyrics of The Way It Is (Bruce Hornsby)

Standing in line marking time/Waiting for the welfare dime/ 'Cause they can't buy a job/ The man in the silk suit hurries by/ As he catches the poor old ladies' eyes/ Just for fun he says "Get a job"/ That's just the way it is/ Some things will never change/ That's just the way it is/ But don't you believe them/ They say hey little boy you can't go Where the others go/ 'Cause you don't look like they do/ Said hey old man how can you stand To think that way/ Did you really think about it Before you made the rules/ He said, Son That's just the way it is/ Some things will never change/ That's just the way it is/ But don't you believe them/ Well they passed a law in '64/ To give those who ain't got a little more/ But it only goes so far/ Because the law won't change another's mind/ When all it sees at the hiring time/ Is the line on the color bar/ That's just the way it is/ Some things will never change/ That's just the way it is/ But don't you believe them

Robert Fisk on Bahrain

2011-05-14T11:14:00.000+08:00

As always Robert Fisk asks questions the West avoids. Why does the West overthrow some Arab tyrants, while other Arab tyrants who serve the West's interests get away with oppressing, shooting, torturing and murdering their citizens without a whimper from the West and other Arab leaders?

The extract below is from Robert Fisk's latest piece in the UK Independent newspaper. Fisk has written before about the uprisings in Bahrain here.

Robert Fisk

Why No outcry over these torturing tyrants

Christopher Hill, a former US secretary of state for east Asia who was ambassador to Iraq – and usually a very obedient and un-eloquent American diplomat – wrote the other day that "the notion that a dictator can claim the sovereign right to abuse his people has become unacceptable".

Unless, of course – and Mr Hill did not mention this – you happen to live in Bahrain.

On this tiny island, a Sunni monarchy, the al-Khalifas, rule a majority Shia population and have responded to democratic protests with death sentences, mass arrests, the imprisonment of doctors for letting patients die after protests and an "invitation" to Saudi forces to enter the country. They have also destroyed dozens of Shia mosques with all the thoroughness of a 9/11 pilot. But then, let's remember that most of the 9/11 killers were indeed Saudis.

And what do we get for it? Silence.

Silence in the US media, largely silence in the European press, silence from our own beloved CamerClegg and of course from the White House. And – shame of shame – silence from the Arabs who know where their bread is buttered. That means, of course, also silence from al-Jazeera. I often appear on their otherwise excellent Arabic and English editions, but their failure to mention Bahrain is shameful, a dollop of shit in the dignity that they have brought to reporting in the Middle East. The Emir of Qatar – I know him and like him very much – does not need to belittle his television empire in this way.

CamerClegg is silent, of course, because Bahrain is one of our "friends" in the Gulf, an eager arms buyer, home to thousands of Brit expatriates who – during the mini-revolution by Bahrain's Shia – spent their time writing vicious letters to the local pro-Khalifa press denouncing Western journalists. And as for the demonstrators, I recall a young Shia woman telling me that if only the Crown Prince would come to the Pearl Roundabout and talk with the protesters, they would carry him on their shoulders around the square. I believed her. But he didn't come. Instead, he destroyed their mosques and claimed the protests were an Iranian plot – which was never the case – and destroyed the statue of the pearl at the roundabout, thus deforming the very history of his own country.

Obama, needless to say, has his own reasons for silence. Bahrain hosts the US Fifth Fleet and the Americans don't want to be shoved out of their happy little port (albeit that they could up-sticks and move to the UAE or Qatar anytime they wish) and want to defend Bahrain from mythical Iranian aggression. So you won't find La Clinton, so keen to abuse the Assad family, saying anything bad about the al-Khalifas. Why on earth not? Are we all in debt to the Gulf Arabs? They are honourable people and understand when criticism is said with good faith. But no, we are silent. Even when Bahraini students in Britain are deprived of their grants because they protested outside their London embassy, we are silent. CamerClegg, shame on you.......

What is this nonsense? Well, I will tell you. It has nothing to do with the Bahrainis or the al-Khalifas. It is all about our fear of Saudi Arabia. Which also means it is about oil. It is about our absolute refusal to remember that 9/11 was committed largely by Saudis. It is about our refusal to remember that Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban, that Bin Laden was a Saudi, that the most cruel version of Islam comes from Saudi Arabia, the land of head-choppers and hand-cutters. It is about a conversation I had with a Bahraini official – a good and decent and honest man – in which I asked him why the Bahraini prime minister could not be elected by a majority Shia population. "The Saudis would never permit it," he said. Yes, our other friends. The Saudis.

Poetry and daily life: Reading Judith Wright

2011-05-08T21:18:00.005+08:00

Poetry should be an important part of our daily lives. A poem can assist us to live good lives. It enables contemplation, reverence for the cycles of daily life and a more refined moral outlook.

Judith Wright's poetry always has that effect on me. Wright is a profoundly social, political and mystical poet. Her poetry derives its power from its directness and profound humanity, and is best read "out in the world". Which is where I read her poetry today- between breaks whilst goal umpiring my teenage son's football match. Other blog pieces on Judith Wright can be found here.

Grace
by Judith Wright

Living is dailiness, a simple bread
that's worth the eating. But I have known a wine,
a drunkeness 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 though a human face.

To Mary Gilmore
by Judith Wright

Having arranged for the mail and stopped the papers,
tied loaves of bread Orlando-like to the tree,
love- messages for birds; suitcase in hand
I pause and regard the irony of me.

Supposed to be fifty-six, hair certainly grey,
stepping out much like sixteen on another journey
through a very late spring, the conference papers packed
as a half excuse for a double tonged holiday;

as though I believed- well, then, as though I believed.
Remember Mary Gilmore, her little son
turned sixty four and bald; And Mary playing
her poet's game as though she'd never be done.

This is my place. It isn't far to my grave,
the waiting stone. But still there's life to do
and a taste of spring in the air. Should I sit and grieve,
Mary or keep the ink running, like you?

Years have their truth, and each as true as another.
Salute, Mary. Not long now till we know
the blackened deathly world you once foresaw;
but now-let's live. I pick up my case and go.

Request to a Year
By Judith Wright

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great-great-grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,

who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland

and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice-floe,
drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,

while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist’s isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.

Year, if you have no Mother’s day present planned,
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.

Carl Safina on the catastrophic consequences of the Deepwater Horizon disaster

2011-05-07T11:15:00.002+08:00

A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout by Carl Safina

Twelve months after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which resulted from the explosion at the BP's Deepwater Horizon more books are appearing that chronicle the catastrophe and its terrible legacy. Carl Safina is a renowned marine ecologist and expert on the world's oceans.

The extract below is from Douglas Brinkley's* review of Carl Safina's new book on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and the terrible legacy for the planet:

In “A Sea in Flames,” his newest installment, Safina investigates the impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout......

His kinship is with two tribes of people: gulf fishermen and marine biologists. “Crucial mistakes, disastrous consequences, the weakness of power, unpreparedness and overreaction, the quiet dignity of everyday heroes,” he writes. “The 2010 Gulf of Mexico blowout brought more than oil to the surface.”.................

Back in 2008 around 300 exploratory wells were dug in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico. Very few Americans questioned the environmental damage inherent in such activity. “Our everyday use of fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere,” Safina warns, “ruining the world’s oceans.” He garners credibility by being evenhanded. Doing some complicated math, he argues that the mixing of millions of gallons of BP oil with the Gulf’s 660 quadrillion gallons of water allowed the oil to easily dilute. But the carbon dioxide we’re emitting into the atmosphere, he scolds, isn’t being diluted. It’s building up in an extremely toxic way.

Safina suggests that the oceans are Earth’s lungs and they’re smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Sea water is getting more acidic due to carbon dioxide. This spells dire consequences for oceans, which are losing habitats ranging from glaciers to tropical reefs at an astonishing rate. “Because we’ve bet the house on burning oil, coal, and gas,” he writes, “our atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide is a third higher now than at the start of the Industrial Revolution.”

At the end of “A Sea in Flames,” Safina is desperate to close the deal against fossil fuels. His previously steady and nuanced prose turns polemical. He reminds us that oil is making undemocratic countries like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia powerful. Petro dictators, he charges, are stoking anti-Americanism all over the world. If we don’t get behind a Marshall Plan-like program for renewable energy, it seems, China will surpass America as the world’s superpower.

Carbon dioxide, the killer of Earth, can be slain only by consumers who are aware of how hideous oil, coal and gas truly are to the atmosphere and oceans, Safina argues. The smartest way to respond to the Gulf disaster shouldn’t have been cleaning birds or picking up turtles or spraying 1.84 million gallons of Corexit 9500. Instead, an infuriated citizenry should have pulled the subsidies out from under Big Petroleum. Tax the oil conglomerates out of business. It’s still not too late. Better to be, as Safina puts it, “shocked at the pump” than dead in the water.

* Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University. His most recent book is “The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom 1879-1960.”

Bruce Dawe and " those worn coins of memory"

2011-05-07T10:37:00.001+08:00

The Wallet

(for Andrew Court)

By Bruce Dawe

Sometimes, it may be years, it may be less,
a life is merged with yours and then moves on,
but where and how and why may not be known
until much later word comes back
from that far universe as from a star,
and suddenly you're shaken with this sense
that certain lives which occur were once most
immediate to yours have lived and gone
and you have only lately learned
something of how they lived, that precious knowledge

coined in a realm whose currency
is rarely recognised any longer
as legal tender, those worn coins
as memory you can never trade
or spend for what they're worth while still
regretful for your own forgetfulness....

Bruce Dawe is considered one of Australia's most influential poets. An earlier piece on Bruce Dawe's poetry and his style of social and political critique is here.

Chris Hedges on the reported death of Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-02T21:51:00.001+08:00

Chris Hedges is a wise journalist and writer whose opinions I deeply respect. He won a Pulitzer Prize reporting from the front lines as the Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times until he resigned because of comments he made about its pro war editorial policies.

Here are his comments on the reported death of Osama Bin Laden from the US online publication Truthdig

Editor’s note: Chris Hedges made these remarks about Osama bin Laden’s death at a Truthdig fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening.
I know that because of this announcement, that reportedly Osama bin Laden was killed, Bob wanted me to say a few words about it … about al-Qaida. I spent a year of my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times. It was the work in which I, and other investigative reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize. And I spent seven years of my life in the Middle East. I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I’m an Arabic speaker. And when someone came over and told Jean and me the news, my stomach sank. I’m not in any way naïve about what al-Qaida is. It’s an organization that terrifies me. I know it intimately.

But I’m also intimately familiar with the collective humiliation that we have imposed on the Muslim world. The expansion of military occupation that took place throughout, in particular the Arab world, following 9/11 – and that this presence of American imperial bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha – is one that has done more to engender hatred and acts of terror than anything ever orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.

And the killing of bin Laden, who has absolutely no operational role in al-Qaida – that’s clear – he’s kind of a spiritual mentor, a kind of guide … he functions in many of the ways that Hitler functioned for the Nazi Party. We were just talking with Warren about Kershaw’s great biography of Hitler, which I read a few months ago, where you hold up a particular ideological ideal and strive for it. That was bin Laden’s role. But all actual acts of terror, which he may have signed off on, he no way planned.

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the whole rise of al-Qaida is that when Saddam Hussein … and I covered the first Gulf War, went into Kuwait with the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, was in Basra during the Shiite uprising until I was captured and taken prisoner by the Iraqi Republican Guard. I like to say I was embedded with the Iraqi Republican Guard. Within that initial assault and occupation of Kuwait, bin Laden appealed to the Saudi government to come back and help organize the defense of his country. And he was turned down. And American troops came in and implanted themselves on Muslim soil.

When I was in New York, as some of you were, on 9/11, I was in Times Square when the second plane hit. I walked into The New York Times, I stuffed notebooks in my pocket and walked down the West Side Highway and was at Ground Zero four hours later. I was there when Building 7 collapsed. And I watched as a nation drank deep from that very dark elixir of American nationalism … the flip side of nationalism is always racism, it’s about self-exaltation and the denigration of the other.

And it’s about forgetting that terrorism is a tactic. You can’t make war on terror. Terrorism has been with us since Sallust wrote about it in the Jugurthine Wars. And the only way to successfully fight terrorist groups is to isolate themselves, isolate those groups, within their own societies. And I was in the immediate days after 9/11 assigned to go out to Jersey City and the places where the hijackers had lived and begin to piece together their lives. I was then very soon transferred to Paris, where I covered all of al-Qaida’s operations in the Middle East and Europe.

So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. And we had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion. And we had major religious figures like Sheikh Tantawy, the head of al-Azhar – who died recently – who after the attacks of 9/11 not only denounced them as a crime against humanity, which they were, but denounced Osama bin Laden as a fraud … someone who had no right to issue fatwas or religious edicts, no religious legitimacy, no religious training. And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. What were the explosions that hit the World Trade Center, huge explosions and death above a city skyline? It was straight out of Hollywood. When Robert McNamara in 1965 began the massive bombing campaign of North Vietnam, he did it because he said he wanted to “send a message” to the North Vietnamese—a message that left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaida has been handed. If it is correct that Osama bin Laden is dead, then it will spiral upwards with acts of suicidal vengeance. And I expect most probably on American soil. The tragedy of the Middle East is one where we proved incapable of communicating in any other language than the brute and brutal force of empire.

And empire finally, as Thucydides understood, is a disease. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. The disease of empire, according to Thucydides, would finally kill Athenian democracy. And the disease of empire, the disease of nationalism … these of course are mirrored in the anarchic violence of these groups, but one that locks us in a kind of frightening death spiral. So while I certainly fear al-Qaida, I know it’s intentions. I know how it works. I spent months of my life reconstructing every step Mohamed Atta took. While I don’t in any way minimize their danger, I despair. I despair that we as a country, as Nietzsche understood, have become a monster that we are attempting to fight.

Thank you.

The Syrian people and the yearning for freedom

2011-05-01T23:32:00.003+08:00

photo courtesy of AFP/Getty and the Guardian

"The freedom within us is larger than the prison that holds us"
Faraj Bayraqdar, Syrian poet

The terrible crises in Syria worsens. Protests by the Syrian people seeking an end to President Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian rule have been met by a brutal crackdown with the regime intensifying attempts to crush the revolt by killing 535 of its own people in the last few days.

The Guardian published this eye witness account of the regime's crackdown in one Syrian town.

The UK Guardian reports that:

"the Syrian regime has banned all foreign media and restricted access to trouble spots, making it almost impossible to confirm the dramatic events shaking one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world....."

"....Friday was the second deadliest day since the uprising began in mid-March in Deraa, sparked by the arrest of a group of teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a wall. The protest movement quickly spread and is now posing the gravest threat to the 40-year rule of the Assad family"

The Sunday Observer carries this piece by Zaki Shehab on the potential fallout of regime change in Syria across the Middle East:

The international consequences of regime change in Syria are many and complex. The fallout will be particularly marked in Lebanon and Palestine, and there will also be impacts on the country's alliances with Iran, Turkey, and Iraq, and, perhaps most importantly, on its relationship with Israel.

With their allies in Egypt overthrown, Israel may not welcome yet more regime change so close by.

Upheaval in Syria will not only affect its immediate neighbours – it will reshape the balance of power in the Middle East more than any event in the Arab Spring thus far.

It is remarkable to see the courage of the Syrian people who continue to come out onto the streets to resist and protest another authoritarian regime, despite the brutal crackdown.

As Tariq Ali points out in this piece in the Guardian what is happening in Syria is an attempt to crush or contain genuine uprisings and protest. Ali argues that despite the West's pronouncements of its support for democracy in Libya, it continues to support dictators and despots in Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Syria, where Ali believes the West and Israel prefer that the Assad regime remain.

The Syrian poet Faraj Bayraqdar spent over 17 years in Syrian prisons because of his political activity. He was released in 2000. His poetry speaks of the yearning for freedom in Syria. The extract below is from one of his poems.

Extracts from "Groans"
by Faraj Bayraqdar
1
Here I am you alone
In this mad, gaping
Hell
Here I am you alone and death altogether
With its predators and its seers and the informers
Perhaps I am arriving at
The limit of my possibilities
For you to arrive at the last
Dream
Flare up until you see me and
Become complete until I see you
My rose between two fires
Inflaming me
Hopefully I am inciting wisdom
In this ruin I have tried
To the end of the flower and the fire,
Then, how have they isolated my voice
And your silence?
! Have you leaned on a belated
Sword?!
Or have I been exchanged--one absence for another?!
...................
3
With thorns the guard caresses
Your sparrows
And the state bestows upon you
A precautionary death,
And enough of the darkness
For you to go -so go
You are aware of the insanity of death,
Thus the music breaks out
, And your myths are shaken
his other body is in the arena,
Are you asking me
Who has splattered a name . .
. And the throne with blood . . . ?
No time . . .
This other body
Who has taken it from me
And who has taken me from it?
And who testifies that death
Has grown weary?
The obscure caresses its vacancies
with wires and blasphemy
I have tried often. . .
. As the constellation has mourned the horizon of a poem
I said I have tried often
And with lilac, I have caressed your night
.......................
6

I have not yet handed over my directions
To the judgment of the sand . . .
Behind me a time
Ashamed of the deceits of geography . . .
Thanks to the sparrow
That built a nest on the other
Window and flew.
Breaker of my back
Your shadow is now a spent tomorrow
Upon which I disperse my thoughts
And I call to you with what is in the spirit
From the groan of the horse . . .
Do you hear me . . . ?
I am calling
I am not searching for a collective grave
Rather . . . for my country
February 1993