LOT’S WIFE
don’t look back
student newspaper
VOLUME LI, EDITION VI
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17 2011
FREE
Co-Op closed, hundreds
ripped off, answers few
Photo by Richard Plumridge
harry sabolcki
“I was unable to afford to eat
for three days because the co-op
couldn’t pay me for the books
I sold,” one student remarked,
on the condition of anonymity,
when asked about the co-op.
The MSA Co-operative
Bookstore, founded in 1976 as
an anarcho-syndicalist collective was being run in a manner
counterintuitive to its motto:
‘By students, for students.’
Book sales at the co-op are on
consignment, in other words,
books remain the property of
the student until they are sold.
At this point, the co-op takes a
small commission – 28 per cent
for members and 38 per cent for
non-members, to assist in their
running costs. The remainder
is available for collection by the
student.
What then, exactly, is happening with the co-op?
Lot’s Wife asked co-op board
member Lynton Gunn who,
during week two of semester
two, claimed that he was un-
able to comment as he was on
the board. Gunn, cheekily, also
said: “It is temporarily closed
for semester break.” One other
board member has also declined to comment on the same
grounds.
Monash Student Association
Business Manager, Gail Morgan, who also sits on the board,
has twice requested that the author not send people to her office, which is located on the first
floor of the Campus Centre in
the MSA section. The author
has taken this to extend to any
and all her e-mail address at
gail.morgan@monash.edu and
her phone number on 9905
1668. Even though the author
believes that Morgan, as the
business manager, and co-op
board member, is the best person to direct questions by students to regarding how they can
collect their money or books, he
has been instructed by her not
to send students to her on the
aforementioned contact details.
It is only fair to include that
Morgan told the author that
“Monash solicitors are looking
into the situation”.
Since there are no answers
forthcoming from anywhere in
the management hierarchy, the
author, as an ex-employee of
two years’ standing, would like
to propose a theory.
The Australian Securities
and Investments Commission
(ASIC) provides a list of some
key indicators of insolvency.
Continued PAGE 5
The
Menzies
Building
joshua kenner
editor-in-chief
The Menzies Building seems to be
undergoing constant construction
and renewal. Why don’t we just
let it die?
One of my very first tutorials at Monash, back in 2005,
started late because there had
been a fire drill in the Menzies
Building. Afterwards, sitting in
a room on one of the upper levels, my tutor began the class by
saying, “Just to be clear, in the
event of a real fire on one of the
lower levels; don’t panic, don’t
run; just sit here and console
yourself with your death.”
This left an impression.
I’m certainly not the first to
critique the Menzies building, nor will I be the last. The
subject of countless jokes (and
tragedies), it’s not uncommon
for those who have been around
a while at Monash to roll their
eyes at its very name. However,
to put it bluntly, the Menzies
Building should not exist. It is
ugly, unsafe, ill-conceived, and
should have never been built in
the first place.
Constructed in the early
1960s, the Menzies Building
was supposedly built along
‘modernist’ lines. For the last
48 years it has been home to the
Arts Faculty at Clayton campus
and currently accommodates
10% of all campus staff and
provides teaching space for a
possible 2,600 students. It also
happens to create a wind tunnel
through the campus that most
people may complain about,
but I quite like.
However, until the 1970s,
Continued PAGE 5
Photo by Richard Plumridge
‘PlayStation warfare’ spreads to Somalia as famine is declared
Glen haywood
After two years of drought
in Somalia, the United Nations
has officially declared the region
a famine zone, due in part to
the combined consequences
of climate change, decades of
conflict, international monetary
policy and the US global ‘War
on Terror’.
On July 20, the UN declared
“that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia:
southern Bakool and Lower
Shabelle”.
Both areas are controlled by
al-Shabaab, the Islamist group
currently fighting the Somali
Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Nearly half of the Somali
population – roughly 3.7 mil-
Protests at
Deakin
PG. 8
lion people – are ‘now in crisis’,
according to the UN.
The measure used by the UN
to declare an official famine is
“acute malnutrition in more
than 30 percent of the children
and two deaths per 10,000 people every day”.
More than 500,000 children
are now “at risk of death in the
Horn of Africa, where high food
prices and the driest years in
decades have pushed many poor
families into desperate need,” a
UNICEF statement said.
The two-year Somali drought
has triggered record food inflation with the prices of the staple
sorghum grain soaring 240 percent higher in one year.
Oxfam said the drought has
A young girl stands amid the freshly made graves of 70 children
A young girl stands amid the freshly made graves of 70 children
also killed “up to 90 percent” of
livestock in many areas.Oxfam
also said that“there has been a
lack of investment in social ser-
vices and basic infrastructure
and a lack of good governance”.
According to South African
geography professor Abdi Is-
The Demise of
Australian Bookstores
PG. 15
mail Samatar, the Somali people
have been exposed to climatic
changes largely because of political factors: the US ‘War on
Terror’, the US-backed Somali
TFG, the al-Shabaab Islamist
group, the US-backed Ethiopian invasion and the UN.
Samatar said that these political factors of war and intervention exhausted food resources,
and outside food aid was “denied or delayed until tens of
thousands of people starved”.
The international community
continued to label the famine as
a drought until July 18, “when
it was no longer possible to conceal the deaths of almost 80,000
people from starvation,” Samatar said. “The United States and
its allies have been so obsessed
with defeating al-Shabaab that
they have ignored the fate of the
millions of people who live in
areas controlled by al-Shabaab.”
Droughts are said to now
be more devastating in Somalia due to decades of intensive
cropping in the last half of the
twentieth century; much of it
exported, land degrading, fertiliser-intensive cash crops to pay
off exorbitant debts to Western
banks.
During July, most Western
media outlets were running
with stories such as ‘Somali Islamists maintain aid ban,’ and
‘Somalia Islamists lift aid ban to
Continued PAGE 10
Must
Presents:
The 39 Steps
PG. 28
Staff List
Contents
Editors
04
Campus Life
07
Nation News
10
World News
14
Editorials/
Letters
15
Opinion
18
Sport
20
Science
22
Creative Writing
25
Music
Joshua Kenner
Timothy Lawson
Photography
Richard Plumridge
Campus Life
Caelli Greenbank
Nation News
Christine Todd
World News
Kimberly Doyle
Martin Shlansky
Science
Aimee Parker
Sport
Andrew Mayes
Kiran Iyer
Creative Writing and Books
Anastasia Pochesneva
Music
Jillian McEwan
Andrew Wright
28
Film/Theatre
29
Visual Art
31
Extras
Film
Jessica Marshall
Estelle Pham
Photo by Richard Plumridge
Lot’s Wife is your 100% student-produced newspaper It’s a great avenue
to get your work in print, especially if you’re interested in photography,
writing, typesetting, design or investigative journalism. Anyone can
submit articles, funky graphics, reviews or whatever else that will print.
If you’re happy just to read it, you’ll find a new copy around campus
monthly during semester.
Writer’s meetings: Wednesdays 12pm, Lot’s Wife Lounge
Contact Details
Submissions: Please email content to lotswife.msa@monash.edu
First Floor
Campus Centre
Monash University
Wellington Road
Clayton, 3800
Ph: (03) 9905 8174
Fax: (03) 9905 4185
http://www.msa.monash.edu.au/campus-life/lots-wife/
Facebook group: Lot’s Wife (MSA)
Twitter: @lotswife2011
Thank You
A huge thank you to Caelli Greenbank for all your time writing and editing; Harry Sabolcki and Jaqui O’Leary for their mad proofreading skills. And a special thank you
to anyone who actually submitted an article by the material deadline; we love you, maybe not deeply, but as one loves a friendly butterfly, or a leaf twirling in the wind...
Disclaimer
The Lot’s Wife editors aim to provide content which will be informative and entertaining for Monash students; and believe that all students should have the opportunity
to express themselves. Equally, we recognise the right of all students to read the publication without feeling threatened or offended by racist, sexist, militaristic, or
homophobic material; therefore we refuse to publish anything of this nature. The views presented in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or
the Monash Student Association. Articles that are submitted are proof read and may be altered, chemically or otherwise.
Lot’s Wife acknowledges the Kulin Nations as the original and ongoing
owners of the land upon which the paper is produced.
4 CAMPUS LIFE
strongly encourage as many
students as possible to attend
next year.
Glad to see all you students
back and wish you all the best
for second semester!
OB REPORTS
President:
Imogen Sturni
Recently the MSA kicked of
the ‘McMonash: Would you
like fees with that?’ campaign
to fight ancillary, or illegal,
course costs at Monash. One
of our biggest concerns at
Monash is the excessive cost of
replacement student ID cards
which currently cost $60. This
is by far the most expensive out
of all universities in the country, with most other universities
charging an average of $20 for
the replacement cards. Show
your support for the campaign
and find out about all of the
upcoming events through the
Monash Student Association
facebook page or website –
www.msa.monash.edu.au
Secretary:
Sheldon Oski
Hey Monash students,
Welcome back to semester 2!
While you’ve been away, there
have been a few changes in
the MSA. We now have a new
Women’s Officer, a new Female
Queer Officer and a new
Welfare Officer. Feel free to
drop by and visit Olga, H.M.
and Bernadette – I’m sure they
would love to say hello!
Much of my time has been
spent helping induct these new
office-bearers, along with other
everyday Secretary tasks such
as agendas, minutes etc. I also
attended the National Union
of Students Education Conference held at the University of
Western Australia and Curtin
University in Perth. It was a
very productive conference
which even Higher Education Minister Senator Chris
Evans chose to attend. I would
OB reports are unedited
Treasurer:
Jenna Amos
As always I have been busy
with the numerous tasks of
the Treasurer (cheque requisitions, budget analysis, financial
report analysis etc) but during
the quite periods I have had
enough time, with the help of
Host Scheme, to organize the
MSA’s Silent Disco. This event
was originally organised to
protest the decision of Monash
Venues to increase restrictions
on student bookings of nonacademic spaces. Monash Venues has since had a change of
heart but we have decided that
a Silent Disco is an event too
awesome not to run and will
be setting up a large marquee
on the Menzies lawn handing
out wireless headphones at the
door. Radio Monash is also
on board so we can dance the
afternoon away with two channels to alternate between. Silent
Discos are notoriously fun so
make sure you get down to the
Menzies lawns from 12 until
2pm on the 27th. You won’t
want to miss out on this!Hope
to see you there!
Male Queer:
report not
submitted
Female Queer:
Education
(Academic
Affairs):
John Monroe and Hannah Aroni
Exams have been and gone,
and if you forgot your seat
number or had other problems
on the day, you probably would
have seen your Ed-Ac officers at the Exam Help Desk in
Caulfield. In addition to that,
over the semester break this
Department has been working
on increasing lecture recording
at Monash, and fighting against
staff cuts and suppression of
student criticism; articles on
these are in this edition of
Lot’s.
Now that semester is starting again, make sure you’ve
re-enrolled – check out the
counter-faculty handbook to
find student reviews of subjects,
and look at the University
administered SETU results.
Because of your results in last
semester, you may have received an Early Warning Letter
from your faculty warning you
that you might have to face an
Academic Progress Committee
at the end of the year. If you
get one of these, make sure you
see Student Rights on the first
floor of Campus Centre to find
out what to do.
ance at events and rallies, such
as the Melbourne Slutwalk and
the Australian Services Union
Equal Pay rally; and organising events and campaigns for
the second semester of 2011.
Up and coming events of note
include our Personal Safety
Concepts workshop, which
will run 1 - 2pm on Tuesday
26th of July in the Conference
Room. The Conference Room
can be found on the first floor
of the Campus Centre.
For enquiries, or to get
involved, you can contact us
at vittoria.careri@monash.edu
or by heading up to the first
floor of the campus centre and
knocking on our office door.
Education
(Public Affairs):
Esther Hood
The Education (Public
Affairs) department has just
started working on a new
campaign to fight the recent
proposals to cut a further 16
staff from the faculty of science,
and 2 from Engineering. This
proposal could potentially lead
to an array of negative consequences for students, including
the loss of specialized areas,
increased staff/student ratios,
decreased consultation time
and increase turnaround time
for assignment results. While
staff numbers can be decreased
the work load won’t leaving
staff over worked and unable
to teach to the level we deserve.
To sign the petitions go onto
the MSA website at http://
www.msa.monash.edu.au/.
Other than this, we have spent
a lot of time planning for semester two campaigns- want to
have your say? Take the poll on
the ‘MSA Education’ facebook
page. Hope your holidays were
relaxing and welcome back to
semester two!
report not
submitted
The Environment & Social
Justice Department have been
busy organising some awesome events for you guys.
These include a Trivia Night in
conjunction with the Monash
Biological Society, Bike Polo
and more! We’ve also managed
to rustle up a brand spanking
new shed for the Monash Permaculture Garden and will be
starting a bunch of workshops
in the coming weeks – so keep
your eyes peeled. There is a lot
more social sustainability work
being done now, so if you’re
keen to get involved in this or
anything else, send us an email
or come visit us.
Environment and Social
Justice:
Bianca Jewell and Cassie
Speakman
Activities:
James Gordon and Jenna
Conroy
After bringing you a fantastic AXP (thanks to everyone
who helped out), Activities
have been working on semester
two events like Green Week.
With teams registered and
ready to go, come check it out
from 1st-4th August on the
Menzies Lawn. Oktoberfest is
also coming out, keep checking our facebook page for more
info.
Women’s:
Vittoria Careri and Jasmine Crooks
The MSA Women’s Department has been busy over
the mid-year break: we’ve
been organising the Monash
contingent for the Network
of Women Students Australia
Conference, an exciting opportunity for Monash women
to meet with other women
students, share ideas and
participate in workshops and
discussion; organising attend-
Welfare:
Matthew Polmear and
Bernadette De Sousa
Bernadette has recently
stepped in as Welfare Office
Bearer, along with Matt, who
has held the position for the
first part of the year. We’ve
been working on a Survival
Guide which will be published
as a replacement for the Orientation Guide in 2012. If anyone has any content that they
would like available to students
and published in the guide,
please contact Welfare. We’ve
also been preparing for Survival
Week, which is held in Week
3, Semester 2. We’re preparing
for events such as Derelict Ball
(keep a look out for posters and
tickets will be on sale Week
0), a second clothes swap, and
having a guest speaker from
the Tenancy Union come to
speak and run an information
session for students on rights as
tenants.
Indegenous:
report not
submitted
Focus on employability for Biology students
If you are taking any of these
qualifications:
Bachelor of Science
Bachelor of Environmental
Science
Bachelor of Science (Biotechnology)
Bachelor of Science (Honours)
Bachelor of Biotechnology with
(Honours)
Bachelor of Science Advanced
with Honours
Bachelor of Science (Science
Scholar Program)
Bachelor of Science (Science
Scholar Program) (Honours)
Associate Degree in Applied
Science
Diploma of Biotechnology
(Research and Management)
Study specialisations include:
biology, biotechnology, ecology,
environmental
and conservation biology, genetics, genetics and molecular
biology, marine
and freshwater biology, plant
sciences and zoology.
The skills and attributes this
qualification aims to develop:
• The ability to plan and conduct field-based research.
• The ability to use laboratory
equipment appropriately,
effectively and safely.
• Quantitative literacy including the ability to collect,
organise, analyse and interpret data using appropriate
mathematical and statistical
tools.
• Information management
including research skills
to source and evaluate the
usefulness of information
appropriate to the task.
• Skills in scientific methods
– understanding the nature,
practice and application of
science.
• Skills in science communication: the ability to communicate ideas and results
effectively to non-academic
audiences, including the
ability to write clearly and
make effective oral and
visual presentations.
• The ability to apply discipline knowledge, critical
thinking and problem solving skills to develop efficient
solutions to challenges.
• Knowledge of ethical and
social issues relating to scientific research and an appreciation of the role scientific
research has in society.
• Self management skills to
undertake work independently including planning,
time management, comple-
tion of tasks and evaluation
of own performance.
• Interpersonal skills to operate efficiently with others in
teams.
Previous students who have
completed this degree’s first
job titles have been:
• Anatomist
• Biological Scientist
• Biologist
• Biotechnologist
• Botanist
• Clinical Regulatory Affairs
Officer
• Commercial Development
Officer
• Ecologist
• Environmental and Conservation Biologist
• Evolution and Adaption
Biologist
• Food Technologist
• Forest Planning Officer
• Geneticist
• Human Geneticist
• Immunologist
• IVF Scientist
• Laboratory Technician
• Life Scientist
• Marine and Freshwater
Biologist
• Medical Information Associate
• Microbiologist
• Molecular Biologist
• Patent Examiner
• Patient Transport Officer
• Pharmaceutical Sales Representative
• Pharmacologist
• Physiologist
• Plant Scientist
• Policy Advisor
• Rangeland Technical Officer
• Research Technician
• Sales Account Manager Life Science
• Science Educator##
• Technical Marketer
• Technical Officer – Microbiology
• Threatened Species Officer
• Veterinary Microbiologist
• Zoologist
Note: Further qualifications
may be required for some roles.
You could consider joining
one of these professional associations, many of which you
can join at a much reduced
rate for students:
• Australian Academy of Science
www.science.org.au
• Australian Academy of
Technological
Sciences & Engineering
www.atse.org.au
• Australian Biotechnology
Organisation
www.ausbiotech.org
• Australian Institute of Biol-
ogy
www.aibiol.org.au
• Australian Marine Sciences
Association
www.amsa.asn.au
• Australian Science Teachers
Association
www.asta.edu.au
• Australian Society for Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology www.
asbmb.org.au
• The Australian Society For
Fish Biology
www.asfb.org.au
• Australian Society of Microbiology
www.theasm.com.au
• Australian Systematic
Botany Society Inc.
www.anbg.gov.au/asbs/
• Ecological Society of Australia
www.ecolsoc.org.au
• The Australian Society for
Medical Research
www.asmr.org.au/
• The Monash Sustainability
Institute
www.monash.edu/research/
sustainabilityinstitute
Clubs and societies at
Monash:
• Monash Advanced Science
& Science Scholar Society
(Cl)
www.masscubed.com
• Monash Environmental Science Students Association
Email: messa@monashclibs.
org
• Monash Postgraduate Association (All)
www.mpa.monash.edu.au/
index.html
• Monash Science Society (Cl)
www.science.monashclubs.
org
• Monash Student Association
(Cl)
www.msa.monash.edu.au
• Monash University Gippsland Student Union(Gipp
www.mugsu.org.au
• The Biological Society (Cl)
Email: biologicalsociety@
monashclubs.org
Employment and Career
Development
T: +61 3 9905 3151
E: info@careers.monash.edu.au
W: careers.monash.edu
Anonymised data presented here
on employment outcomes for
Monash University graduates has
been gathered from the national
Australian Graduate Survey
that is conducted twice a year by
Monash University in association
with Graduate Careers Australia.
When it is your turn please
remember to complete the form!
CAMPUS LIFE 5
Co-Op closed, hundreds
ripped off, answers few
lynton gunn
2011 MSC General representative and president of clubs & societies
2010 msa secretary
Continued From PAGE 1
These include; poor cash flow
or no cash flow forecasts; disorganised internal accounting
procedures; continued lossmaking activity; outstanding
creditors [such as students] of
more than 90 days; significant
unpaid tax liabilities and loss
of key management personnel. This last one is especially
galling – for a student managing the co-op took his own life
last year. The last conversation
the author engaged in with this
student was one week before
his death, in which he mentioned recently receiving the
auditor’s report.
Were the board members
engaging in insolvent trading?
Lot’s Wife is aware of a complaint being formulated on
behalf of Monash students to
the relevant statutory authority,
ASIC.
Hopefully this will eventuate
in answers being provided by
New MSA staff member to be paid $180,000 per year
people who claim to represent
students with the MSA – i.e.,
members of the board.
The only way any students
will see a red cent from their
book sales is if the university,
the MSA or some other philanthropic organisation bails
out the co-op, so that it can
continue operating or at the
very least honour its contractual obligations to students.
It is shameful that half a
dozen students have lost their
jobs without prior notice, that
many hundreds of students
are stripped of their rightful
money or property, and that
students are now subject to
the monopolistic pricing of
the sole remaining on-campus
bookstore. Future students
will also be robbed of the invaluable service the co-op has
provided for the last 35 years.
The buck stops with the
board.
History of Lot’s Wife
The MSA Executive has
created a new position of
Executive Officer, which will
become the senior MSA staff
position, situated above the
current organisational structure of three managers. The
online advertisement for this
position did not provide the
proposed salary, which is not
uncommon for positions such
as this. However, it was with
great shock that I was later
told by an MSA office-bearer
that the successful applicant
would be paid up to $180,000
per year. At the most recent
meeting of the Monash Student Council (MSC), I questioned the MSA President,
Imogen Sturni, about this. She
confirmed that the successful
applicant would be offered
a package valued between
$140,000 and $180,000, and
that the salary may be reduced
should benefits such as a car
or additional leave allowances
be requested by the successful
applicant.
While I do not disagree with
the creation of this position,
I am greatly concerned at the
amount of money this staff
member will cost the organisation. Under the 2010 MSA
Enterprise Agreement, staff
members within the MSA at
the highest level of classification are paid $103,967 per
annum, which increases to
$105,544 after one year of
employment. The Executive
Officer, therefore, will be paid
somewhere between $36,000
and $76,000 more than a staff
member starting at the highest
level of classification.
For those of you not paying
attention, the MSA is currently
running off its own financial reserves, as the Funding
Agreement the MSA has with
Monash University has expired
and is currently being re-negotiated. However, all signs point
to a minimum 10% funding
cut, as the University itself has
a 2011 budget deficit of $45
million. In expectation of this,
several areas of the MSA have
taken a funding cut this year.
I raised these concerns at
the Monash Student Council
meeting, where I was initially
interrupted and informed that
staffing matters were not within
the purview of that body. On
the contrary, the Executive is
responsible for the employment
of staff “on behalf of the MSC”
(§22(1) of the MSA Constitution), as the MSC is the
governing body of the organisation. Once that was conceded,
I proposed that the MSA
Executive should offer a salary
compliant with the Enterprise
Agreement, and if the desired
applicant was so outstanding
as to warrant a salary above
$105,000, that the Executive
should seek the approval of
the MSC. This proposal was
rejected, with 3 votes in favour,
7 against, and 5 members
abstaining.
My concern that the high salary paid to this position would
compromise the ongoing
financial sustainability of the
organisation was dismissed, and
I was simply told ‘consultants
had reviewed the situation’.
These consultants are, to my
knowledge, not accountants or
financial advisors. According to
their website they specialise in
organisational conflict resolu-
tion.
Unsurprisingly, $180,000
buys you a lot in the MSA.
$180,000 is:
• Nearly 3 times the size of
the MUISS budget
• Over 8 times the size of the
Education (Academic Affairs) budget
• Almost 10 times the size of
the Welfare budget
• More than 80% of the total
cost of running all officebearer departments for one
year
• Nearly 90% of the Clubs
& Societies budget, which
covers two staff members,
three casual staff, and nearly
$100,000 worth of grants to
clubs.
$180,000 is a lot of student
money, and if that amount is
to be spent, not to mention
guaranteed for years to come,
a greater level of accountability
needs to be applied, especially given such an amount is
substantially above the salary
levels established by the MSA
Enterprise Agreement.
caelli greenbank
campus life editor
“In those days there walked
in the land a woman whose
star boded her nought but ill.
Her fate was her misfortune,
and her fame, but her name is
lost in the oblivion of corroded
time. At an early age her troth
was plighted, and she could not
escape her said lot. She is remembered to us in fact, as Lot’s
wife, and if it is claimed that
her husband was a bugger, this
in no wise [sic] distinguishes
him from the other men of his
city.
In taking her name for the
title of this refurbished and
renowned newspaper, no mere
caprice was involved. Chaos
is in an unhappy state, and
unhappy are the students who
must perforce be twice monthly
associated with it.”
Thus was born Lot’s Wife, on
Wednesday, June 24, 1964,
out of the ashes of the dying
student newspaper Chaos. As
editors Tony Schauble, John
Blakeley, Damien Broderick
wrote in the first edition, Chaos
was becoming increasingly out
of touch with student culture
and ideals, and so the transition was made to Lot’s Wife,
her name borrowed from the
Biblical story. The Lot’s wife
of the story made the mistake
of turning back to look at the
burning city of Sodom, and
was turned into a pillar of salt.
It was thought that taking this
name would remind everyone
not to look back on the dark
days of Chaos, and to move
forward into a new way of
thinking.
A lot of things have changed
from that first Lot’s Wife over
the years. The format and size
have changed many times,
notably from the ‘60s style of
printing the original editions.
The clubs page has disappeared,
and so has the classifieds page,
full of what was happening
around Monash.
But in many ways, student
life at Monash hasn’t changed
at all in the past few decades.
Should your lecturers complain about your comatose
state during Friday morning
classes, you can inform them
that it’s part of a long-standing
Monash tradition, and remind
them of the notices in Lot’s
Wife of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“Terms may start…terms may
end! The Notting Hill Hotel
goes on forever!”
The other theme that has
survived the years is the colour
that dominates Monash life for
seven days every year. Green
Week has featured prominently in Lot’s every year since it
was born in the annual ‘Green
Edition’ of the paper (which
often featured a matchingcoloured cover).
Lot’s has documented many
of the defining moments in
the lives of Monash students
over the years. In 1992,
around when many of us
were born, Monash had its
own army reserve recruitment
building. It was also Lot’s that
published the speech of Brett
A. Inder, Associate Professor
of Econometrics and Deputy
Head of Department, after the
Monash University shooting
in 2002. Then, of course, there
are the regular parody editions
such as the ‘Herald Scum’,
a hilariously funny look at
everything within society and
culture that we’re usually too
polite to say.
“In another sense, the title
can act as a warning. Lot’s
wife didn’t have the sense to
see that she was being given a
chance to escape the Bad Old
Days so she’s probably still
staring in stony affection at the
remains of a culture that had
well and truly had its day. Our
moral: Don’t let this happen to
you, or to Monash.”
The Menzies Building
Continued From PAGE 1
the wind tunnel was more of
a problem. As nothing but
a single monolithic slab, the
Menzies Building swayed dangerously in the wind. Thus the
south wing was constructed to
literally hold the building in
place. That was the first patch
job; there have been many
since.
When I first came to
Monash, almost the entire
perimeter of the building was
fenced off due to some work
that had begun in 2004. The
outer façade had been found
to have significant damage
and deterioration due to the
passage of time and outdated
construction practices. Specifically, concrete spalling had
been occurring – where the
steel reinforcement corrodes
and expands due to carbon
dioxide, causing the outer concrete slabs to crack and shed
material. Also, the ‘lifting ferrules’ on the inner side of the
green panels interspersing the
windows – metal rungs which
allowed them to be lifted into
place during construction –
had been rusting from general
weather exposure. So bits of
concrete were falling off the
building, and bigger bits of
concrete were in danger of
falling. These issues were dealt
with successfully, giving the
building another 40-50 years
of life.
In 2006, plans began to
upgrade the building once
Photos by Richard Plumridge
again. Work on Stage 1 (out of
three) began in 2009 and is due
to be completed this coming
November. Focussed on vertical
movement issues, Stage 1 has
removed the central stairs and
escalators and added new lifts
(and new stairs I think) in an
effort to ease the continuous
ascending and descending of
hundreds of students and staff.
Costing $50 million, Stage 1
supposedly grants the building
another 40-50 years of life.
Now I’m aware that I just
repeated myself. It’s a curious
collusion of facts. Both the
façade work that began in 2004
and the current renovations,
which started only five years
later, were meant to extend the
life of the building by 40-50
years. This leads one to question: either this figure is simply
a random arbitrary number
put forward by the university
for any renovations relating to
the Menzies Building, or rather
they believe it to be true, and
new issues just keep cropping
up. Or even, the figure may be
specific to the sections of the
building being repaired. For
instance, the work from 2004
gave only the façade another
The Menzies Building today
robust half-century, while Stage
1 grants only the central part of
the building a longer lifespan,
and Stage 2 (which will focus
on the wings) will get its own
40-50 year demarcation, and so
on. So that in 50 years everything will have to be repaired
all over again. Stage 1 of the
current renovations in itself has
cost $50 million. The amount
of money the Menzies building drains away over time is
dismaying to think about.
Razing the building has been
considered in the past, even as
recently as 2004, but judged
too problematic. Naturally it
takes longer to build a structure than to demolish one, and
in the meantime there is no
space for staff and students to
interact. Well of course there is,
at Caulfield campus and even
in the existent buildings here
at Clayton, but the logistics of
coordinating such an upheaval
Photos by Richard Plumridge
are surely daunting to consider.
The real reason however, is of
course money. The upfront cost
of demolition and building
anew, together with everything
else involved, is too high for the
university to consider feasible.
Also the outer façade of the
building is heritage listed by
local council for its ‘iconic’ appearance. Before learning this
I thought the bland-yet-domineering ‘East German-inspired’
architecture of the Menzies
Building was universally
disliked. Surely it can’t be a real
reason to keep it around.
The cost of demolishing the
Menzies Building and constructing a structurally sound
learning environment may
be very high, but I’m willing
to bet the cost of perpetual
renovations will end up being
higher. I could be wrong.
6 CAMPUS LIFE
Food Society Diaries
Jessica turnbull
Photo by Richard Plumridge
Long library loans limit learning
Glen haywood
Controversial Monash
Library loan deregulation has
come under fire after reports
that an increasing number of
students are struggling to succeed in their subjects due to the
unavailability of books caused
by this deregulation.
The Library loan deregulation, which came into force at
the start of semester one this
year, has provided University
staff and postgraduate research
students with the ability to
borrow an unlimited number
of books.
Students are worried that
the more than 15,000 Monash
University staff may take advantage of this new system, and
accumulate many thousands of
books for periods of up to nine
months.
The Library loan deregulation stipulates that staff can
borrow an unlimited number
of books at intervals of six
weeks - effectively half of one
semester.
The unlimited number of
books can also be renewed
another six times, according to
the Library’s website.
Students are concerned that
staff could potentially borrow
every book in their area for
an entire semester by renewing their unlimited number of
books only once.
The online renewal option allows staff to be in possession of
a book for a total of 42 weeks
of the year.
The library deregulation has
been described as the “worst
and potentially most abusive
university book borrowing
deregulation in Australia” by
a student in regular use of the
library.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that lecturers are receiving an increasing number of
complaints that their students
are struggling to write essays
because they cannot access the
books that are needed.
A lecturer who spoke to Lot’s
Wife on the condition of anonymity said that the “Library
deregulation threatens the
quality of teaching and learning [at Monash University],”
and that “many students face
extreme frustration every time
they search for a book and find
that not only is it not available,
but will also not be available
for months”.
“It is difficult to ask students
to take notes from a book that
they are denied access to,” the
lecturer said.
Library books “should be
returned in under two weeks”
when a student requests it, he
said.
Lot’s Wife has spoken to a
number of students who were
forced to ask for extensions
for major pieces of assessment,
and were forced to consider
dropping subjects, because of
a lack of access to books.
One frustrated student
complained that if she needed
to borrow a book for the usual
week five assessment task that
was unavailable due to the recall policy, in order to receive
the book before her essay is
due, she would have to request
the book before she had even
started the subject.
Sources close to the Library
said that the deregulation has
occurred in part due to a push
by the University Administration to reduce the number of
book-shelving staff, “because
library funding is connected
with the number of books on
loan”.
At the time of going to
print, Lot’s Wife has not yet
received a response from the
library.
Clubs & Societies
Election Notice
An Annual General Meeting
(AGM) of the Clubs & Societies Council is to be held on
Thursday 15th September at
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM at a location to be advised.
The AGM will feature the
election of the 2012 C&S
Executive:
• President
• Vice President
• Treasurer
• Secretary
• 5 x General Representative
Positions
The duties of these positions
can be found in the C&S Constitution. The Constitution is
available on the C&S website,
or in hard copy at the C&S
Office.
Nominations must be
received by no later than 1:00
PM on Tuesday 13th Septem-
ber via the nominations box in
the C&S Office. Nomination
forms are available next to that
box.
All nominations must be
submitted in accordance with
section 5.4.2 of the C&S
Constitution. The nomination
form must be filled out in full
and include: the nominee’s full
name and student number; the
body from which the individual is being nominated and
position held within that body;
clubs of which the nominee
is a committee member and
the position(s) held; and the
signature of the nominee. The
nomination must be endorsed
by a Club Office Bearer from
two clubs, of one of which
the nominee must not be a
member.
Candidates may wish to
submit a written statement
supporting their nomination
for election. These may be
up to 500 words in length,
and must be submitted to the
Returning Officer by email
(secretary@monashclubs.org)
by no later than 1:00 PM
on Tuesday 13th September.
Statements will only be accepted from the email account
of the nominating body (e.g.
Monash Elephant Society –
elephant@monashclubs.org).
If there are less nominees
than vacant positions, the
positions shall be filled in
accordance with section 5.6 of
the C&S Constitution.
If you have any questions,
please contact the Returning
Officer, C&S Secretary Daniel
Nash, via email at secretary@
monashclubs.org.
Last article I asked everyone how their holidays were.
My friends overwhelmingly
answered this question with
the same two words: Harry
Potter. At the Food Society,
we’re all about what’s popular
so here are the very best Harry
Potter recipes adapted from the
internet.
PUMPKIN PASTIE
Pumpkin pasties are sold on
the Hogwarts Express. Popular
opinion is that these are sweet
but honestly, vegetables in
dessert sort of freak me out so
these are savoury. This recipe is
a bit more difficult. I bet you
wish you had Hermione to
help you.
Ingredients:
Half a pumpkin (skin off, cut
into little cubes)
Half a cauliflower (cut into
little cubes)
2 turnips (cut into little
cubes)
1 onion
100g grated cheddar cheese
1 cup breadcrumbs
About 6 puff pastry sheets
Butter
Salt
Method:
Fry turnips and onions in
butter. Steam the cauliflower
and pumpkin. Half blend
turnips, onions and cauliflower
till it looks like rough stuffing but with some chunks left
in. Chuck in the pumpkin,
breadcrumbs, grated cheese
and a couple of pinches of salt.
Slap one-and-a-bit tablespoons
of mix onto a square piece of
pastry a bit larger than a napkin and then fold the square
into triangles. Seal the edges
by pressing them together with
a fork and cook the pastries in
the oven until they are golden.
TREACLE TART
This is one of Harry Potter’s
favourites.
Ingredients:
1 sheet of shortcrust pastry
300g golden syrup
1 tablespoon black treacle
1 lemon (juice and zest)
4 eggs
Handful of breadcrumbs
Cornflour
Whipped cream
Method:
Mix lemon juice, treacle and
golden syrup. Whisk eggs and
add them too. Chuck in the
breadcrumbs and thicken the
mix with a bit of cornflour
dissolved in water. The mix
still might be very liquid but
don’t worry…all’s well that
ends well. Line the bottom
and sides of a tart dish (or any
shallow dish) with pastry and
pour the treacle mix in. Bake
it in the oven for about half an
hour and serve with cream.
Mischief managed.
Refugee activists protest on Monash
University rooftop
Timothy Lawson Editor-in-chief
martin shlansky World news editor
On Wednesday, July 27, 2011
five members of the Monash
Refugee Action Collective
(MRAC) gained access to the
roof of the campus centre
at the Clayton campus of
Monash University as part of
a protest against the Gillard
government’s treatment of
asylum seekers. These students
hung several banners over the
side of the building including
statements of their support
for asylum seekers and their
stance against both mandatory
detention and the ‘Malaysian solution’. The activists
were joined by supporters on
the ground that handed out
leaflets and made speeches to
other students. Their protest
was made in conjunction with
that of a group of about 20
asylum seekers who climbed
on the roof of the Northern
Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin on Sunday and
participated in a hunger strike
along with a number of other
detainees inside the centre.
The students requested they
be given a means to come
down safely from the rooftop,
which the campus administration readily agreed to; however,
their request to not be made
to face disciplinary action was
refused. The students later
requested to face such action as
a group; Terry Hogan, Director of Client Services at the
university, spoke on behalf of
campus administration, telling
the students that they would
face disciplinary hearings as individuals, as has been the precedent. Mr Hogan stated that his
primary concern was getting
the students down safely, and
as light began to fade, the
students agreed to come down.
‘The Rooftop Five’, as MRAC
leadership dubbed the rooftop
protesters, were received by
their peers with a round of
applause.
MRAC spokesman, Declan
Murphy stated: “This action
was called for two key reasons;
the first is that MRAC activists
demand the end of mandatory
detention – it’s a barbaric and
unjust system and we think it
is a clear example of the Gillard
government’s racist, anti-refugee agenda. We also reject the
other tenets of the Gillard government’s asylum seeker policy,
such as the reintroduction of
temporary protection visas, the
fact that there are still children
in detention despite Labor’s
election promise leading up
to the 2007 federal election,
the constant deportation of
refugees back to their country
of origin – back to danger, and
the Malaysia Solution which
is effectively an attempt for
the government to outsource
its human rights abuses to the
Malaysian government.”
“The other key reason, and
the most important one, was to
show solidarity and support to
the refugees across the nation,
specifically in Darwin where
there have been rooftop protests,” Murphy continued, “we
have been in contact with the
refugees in Darwin and they let
us know that they stayed out
longer on the roof in Darwin
after hearing about MRAC’s
rooftop protest at Monash
University; that they were emboldened and really heartened
to know of the support MRAC
was extending to them.”
The “rooftop five” as the
MRAC leadership has dubbed
them, will be facing individual
disciplinary action by the University for their actions.
Poll Results
In response to the Lot’s Wife poll printed in the last edition, in which we asked the question: Is this photo militaristic? The results are as follows:
Yes - 1
No - 14
However, this result is of course fairly meaningless in
that only 15 people voted, which is hardly representative
of Monash students as a whole.
The ‘rooftop five’
NATION NEWS 7
News Briefs
Christine todd
nation news editor
You Must Be
Bananas
Health Reform to
Lift Hospital
Standards
Carbon Tax Hard
Sell
Billions Stripped
From Australian
Share Market
Injunction Puts
Malaysia Solution
On Hold
Banana prices are expected
to drop next month as banana
farms hit by Cyclone Yasi begin
shipping their latest stock to
Australian supermarkets.
Prices have reached as high
as $14 a kilo in some supermarkets. The average total cost
of three bananas at this price is
$8.50.
Cyclone Yasi tore through
northern Queensland in February this year, wiping out 75%
of Australia’s banana production. Banana farms have spent
the six months since the disaster
harvesting new crops to refresh
depleted banana supplies.
However, potassium-deficient
consumers will need to be patient while they wait for prices
to tumble. Growers will be staggering the introduction of their
banana crops to avoid a glut in
the banana market, with the
bulk of supply being introduced
through September and October.
Got a thought on this matter?
Submit a piece for the next
edition!
The Gillard government has
announced a renewed multibillion dollar hospital-funding
package this month, alongside
claims it finally has the support
of all Australian states and territories.
A shift in the public hospital funding pool will see the
Commonwealth and the states
operate under a 50-50 per cent
funding agreement. This will
differ from the current system
that requires states and territories to negotiate hospital funding with the Commonwealth
every five years.
It is expected the new deal will
provide an extra $16.4 billion in
hospital funding by 2019, alleviating elective surgery waiting
lists and inefficient emergency
departments.
The announcement comes
more than a year after a more
ambitious plan by former Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd failed to
achieve state and territory approval.
Got a thought on this matter?
Submit a piece for the next
edition!
The Gillard government has
begun an Australia-wide publicity blitz in order to sell its controversial carbon tax policy.
The grassroots campaign followed growing concern among
Australians that they would
be worse off under the carbon
pricing scheme announced last
month.
Apprehension is likely to be
a spanner in the works for the
Gillard government, with a recent Age/Nielsen poll revealing
that only 6 per cent of people
believed they would be better
off under the carbon tax.
The poll also found that support for tax was highest among
Green and Labor voters, with
77 per cent in favour. In contrast, however, 82 per cent of
Coalition were against putting a
price on carbon.
The Prime Minister has promised to “wear out her shoe leather” selling the plan to Australians, and has encouraged fellow
Labor MPs to rally behind her
in promoting the vision behind
the policy.
Got a thought on this matter?
Submit a piece for the next
edition!
Declining retail growth
and fears of a recession in the
United States have seen Australian stocks plunge in value.
Reports of a credit rating
downgrade in the US sent chills
through the Australian share
market, with stocks plummeting as much as $100 billion in
the first week of August.
The announcement came
soon after the Australian retail
sector posted a 0.7% reduction
in sales during May and June,
revealing that consumers are
spending cautiously in accordance with global financial uncertainty.
David Jones CEO, Paul
Zahra, insisted that the drop in
consumer spending confidence
could be tied directly to uncertainty over the new carbon tax.
“I think the debate has certainly fuelled a reduction in
confidence,” he said to reporters. “By far the largest fall in
confidence has been the highest income group because these
taxes actually ultimately impact
them.”
Superannuation funds were
hardest hit by the share market plunge, effectively wiping
away 9.2 per cent of super fund
growth over the past financial
year.
Got a thought on this matter?
Submit a piece for the next
edition!
All of the different ways we
take the public pulse – from
vox pops to Q & A - seem to
tell us that we’re getting more
and more disillusioned with
the narrowing of debate about
big issues.
Forums like the ADR help
to keep the line open to different points of view, to frame
debates in a wide range of settings. In the upcoming issue of
the ADR we have a range of
approaches to some pretty big
issues. We have philosophical
and reflective essays on issues
that are crucial to development, such as the global inequities of climate change, the
relations between social and
environmental justice, and the
importance of humility in development practice.
These reflective contributions are great thought-provokers for students of development studies and anyone with
an interest in development issues. We’re also tackling some
nitty-gritty issues with some
in-depth analysis of European
Union trade policies and hydro-electric power. There’s also
a diversity of emotional range
with impassioned blogs and
opinion pieces on the struggles
facing asylum seekers.
In a new development we’re
also linking in with an aid
agency, which will not only
give students and others with
an interest in development an
insight into the practical operation of an aid agency, but also
invaluable links to information
and organisations working in
development – all a great inspiration to get out there and
get into the debate.
You can now follow the ADR
on Facebook by becoming a
friend of: ‘The Australian Development Review’. We will provide you with links to articles
published in the ADR as well
as articles published elsewhere,
relevant to the content of the
ADR. We will also provide you
with information on events that
support the goals and interests
of the ADR, which may also be
of interest.
If you have an event that you
would like us to help promote,
please get in touch by writing to
shankar@theADR.com.au.
A last minute legal challenge has halted government
plans to deport illegal asylum
seekers to Malaysia.
The High Court of Australia has placed an injunction
on the movement of asylum
seekers following a challenge
by prominent refugee lawyer,
Robert Manne. The stalemate
now means lawyers can present
a human rights case against the
deportation of 42 asylum seekers.
The last minute dash
stemmed from concerns over
the constitutional legitimacy of the deal, with Robert
Manne sceptical of the government’s power to go ahead with
the swap.
“All they’re really doing is
asking whether, under Australian law, the government has
the power to do this, to refuse
them the ability to have their
case for refugee protection
heard in Australia,” he said.
The injunction follows controversial debate over the legitimacy of the Malaysia solution,
with considerable focus placed
on Malaysia’s record of refugee mistreatment. Under the
deal, 800 illegal asylum seekers
would be deported to Malaysia
for refugee assessment in a direct swap for 4,000 of Malaysia’s processed refugees.
The Greens have strongly
condemned the Malaysia solution, with Senator Sarah Hanson-Young welcoming news of
the High Court injunction.
“Expelling vulnerable people, including children, is cruel and inhumane, and it may
now be illegal,” she said.
With the injunction in effect
until a full court hearing later
this month, asylum seekers
will remain in limbo at Christmas Island until an outcome is
reached.
Got a thought on this matter?
Submit a piece for the next
edition!
Graphic by Gabriel Kenner
The press hasn’t exactly been
getting much good press lately,
has it?
The recent News of the
World phone hacking scandal
has quickly become the biggest media story of the year
and continues to bring new
revelations to light. The affair
has already claimed London’s
police commissioner Sir Paul
Stephenson, News International chief executive Rebekah
Brooks and Dow Jones chief
executive Les Hinton, and at
one stage there were murmurs
that even British PM David
Cameron and Rupert Murdoch himself could be forced
out.
But more than anything, the
scandal has underlined some
of the uncomfortably cosy
ties between law enforcement,
politicians and the press in the
UK and how a blind eye was
turned to it for far too long.
Who knows what the parliamentary media committee
will uncover as the hearings
unfold.
The scandal has had a
knock-on effect here in Australia, with The Greens calling
for a parliamentary enquiry
into the activities of News
Limited, News Corporation’s
Australian division. However,
there is no evidence that News
Limited journalists have ever
used illegal phone hacking
techniques or that management condoned these practices. Even if journalists were
found guilty of phone hacking, these transgressions could
be dealt with adequately under
existing communications laws.
Instead, the impetus for an
enquiry has more to do with
the editorial line of News Limited’s major mastheads. It’s no
secret that News Limited and
the Gillard government don’t
exactly see eye to eye, with The
Australian in particular having
been a trenchant critic of the
carbon tax, Gillard’s border
protection policies and the
NBN. News Limited’s relationship with the Greens is
even more fraught – editorials in The Australian have expressed a desire to crush the
Greens while the Greens have
labelled The Australian the
hate media.
But whatever your thoughts
are on News Limited’s political
stance, the idea of a political
enquiry into free expression
is disquieting. As a privately
owned media organization,
the editorial line it chooses to
run is its own prerogative and
any moves by a government to
interfere in this area have some
nasty implications.
8 NATION NEWS
Protests over parking at
Deakin University
martin shlansky
world news editor
On August 2, outraged staff
and students of Deakin University gathered at a number
of campuses to protest major
changes to parking by the university’s administration. The
proposals include steep increases in fees for parking and the
removal of free parking.
In an email sent to staff and
students, Deakin’s vice-chancellor Jane den Hollander announced the proposed changes,
citing the unsustainable cost of
constructing and maintaining
the university’s parking facilities as motivating the changes
to be implemented in 2012.
Students stage sit-in at Deakin
Professor den Hollander suggested staff and students make
greater use of public transport,
yet there were no indications of
a planned increase to the availability of public transport.
“Public transport around
Deakin is just terrible; students
would catch public transport or
take alternative means of transport if it was feasible to do so,”
Deakin University Student Association (DUSA) President
Kali Watson said in a press release. “The reality is that [given]
the lack of public transport...
students should have the option
to drive to university.”
Given that Deakin maintains several campuses in rural and regional areas, using
public transport to reach such
campuses can be difficult due
to infrequent and irregular service. The increased parking fees
would upset a number of staff
and students, particularly those
travelling long distances to university. Many students living in
Portland (in the far west of the
state) find driving to be the only
way they can attend Deakin’s
Warrnambool campus. For such
students, the increased fees and
removal of free parking would
be financially detrimental.
A survey conducted by DUSA
found that many Deakin students have poor access to public
transport as a means to reach
university, and that a number
of them have no viable public
transport options. Some Colacbased students only had access
to public transport three times
in a 24-hour period, while many
of those living in Torquay had
to get connections in Geelong’s
CBD, making their commute
three to five times longer than if
they had driven themselves.
DUSA sent the vice-chancellor’s office a document containing thirteen recommendations
to improve access to the university for students and staff,
Kali Watson, president of DUSA,
at the protests
Students find alternative parking options
including free carpooling, subsidising bike hire, increasing access to public transport (with the
need for more direct bus routes
being highlighted) and reducing
the increases in parking fees to
levels that are manageable in the
long-term, in accordance with
supply and demand. The university administration’s response
to these recommendations has
so far been underwhelming and
disappointing.
As it stands, the administra-
tion at Deakin University and
its student body (not to mention many of its staff) do not
see eye-to-eye on an issue that
is both very important to students, and could imminently
affect them severely. The justifications for the proposed
changes to parking are simply
insufficient, and to be able to
convince their students to take
public transport it has to be
available and timely. As an interesting side-note, in a survey
conducted on eight members
of the Deakin University senior
executive, seven members drove
their car to University and had
an allocated space.
“It’s difficult for the university
[administration] to consider the
frustration related to parking
if they have never had to drive
around for an hour and a half
looking for a car park themselves,“ Ms Watson said of the
matter.
NATION NEWS 9
Australia’s richest man versus the
Yindjibarndi people
Glen haywood
MINING billionaire and
Fortescue founder Andrew
‘Twiggy’ Forrest has accelerated
his forceful tactics in order to
seize over half of the traditional
lands of the Yindjibarndi people
for the mining of iron ore, by
claiming that offering a fair deal
to the Yindjibarndi would result
in young Indigenous girls propositioning men for the price of
a cigarette.
The Fortescue Metals Group
(FMG) Solomon iron ore mine
sits 200 kilometres south of
Roebourne in the Pilbara region
of Western Australia, covering
7,000 square kilometres, and
will double the size of FMG’s
mining operations.
FMG is hoping to mine at
least 2.4 billion tonnes of iron
ore from Yindjibarndi land over
the next 40 years, worth more
than $280 billion.
The terms of the ‘Agreement’
proposed by FMG have been
described by GetUp as “openended, blank-cheque terms that
will steal from generations of
Yindjibarndi people”.
Mr Forrest said in an interview on ABC’s Four Corners
that little girls have come up to
him to “offer themselves for any
type of service I don’t want to
mention on television for the
cost of a cigarette… I’m not going to encourage with our cash
that kind of behaviour,” implying that the result of a fair deal
being offered by FMG would
result in solicitation by Indigenous children.
Members of the Roebourne
community have demanded an
apology for Mr Forrest’s slur of
Roebourne girls and his blaming of this supposed child prostitution on so-called ‘mining
welfare’.
Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) chief executive
Michael Woodley said that Mr
Forrest is repeating his story
of being approached for sex by
young Indigenous girls, because
it allows Mr Forrest to reiterate
that complete social breakdown
of Aboriginal societies has occurred.
Mr Woodley said that “under
the native title law, remnant
members of such societies are
not entitled to legal recognition
(in a native title determination)
of their traditional property
rights; so, FMG can exploit the
mineral wealth of their traditional lands with a clear conscience”.
“Mr Forrest apparently wishes to persuade the Australian
public that payment of proper
compensation to YAC – the
chosen representative institution and the corporate trustee of
the Yindjibarndi People – will
somehow result in the exacerbation of the ‘depraved’ behaviour he allegedly encountered in
the streets of Roebourne,” Mr
Woodley said in a press release.
Mr Woodley also said that
Mr Forrest is aware that calling
a fair deal ‘mining welfare’ is
designed to ignore the reality of
what the compensation would
go to: “long-term, autonomous
self-development, not just in
resources, but for-communitybenefit businesses; and in di-
verse commercial enterprises to
fund health and housing, education, training and employment, in ways that promote the
long term survival of the distinct culture of the Yindjibarndi
People”.
According to the YAC, the
“contract strips all meaningful
cultural and economic control from Yindjibarndi in their
country, for as long as FMG
wants, and with no consideration of changing economic climate over the next few generations”.
Mr Woodley said that “Mr
Forrest needs to tell stories of
depravity in Aboriginal communities, so he can put himself
forward as the humanitarian
philanthropist who will rescue
Aboriginal people from themselves – all the while dispossessing traditional owners of the
rights they are due from their
ancestral lands”.
FMG want “to go back to the
dark ages of Aboriginal paternalism by dictating and controlling how Yindjibarndi use any
benefits,” Woodley continued.
“We’ve suffered for so long and
the only way to get out of poverty, the only way to fix up some
of our social problems is to insist that these companies pay a
fair deal.”
Mr Forrest was caught on video 3 months ago speaking at a
meeting, which according to the
Yindjibarndi “demonstrates the
unscrupulous actions of a miner
trying to bully traditional owners into a land use ‘Agreement’
that will see massive disturbance
of country and will swindle several generations of Yindjibarndi
people”.
The native title meeting had
been staged by Mr Forrest and
a splinter group of elders, the
Wirlu-Murra Yindjibarndi Corporation, funded by Mr Forrest and FMG in order to allow
Fortescue ‘open slather’ for its
Solomon iron ore project.
The Wirlu-Murra Yindjibarndi Corporation is prepared to
accept FMG’s offer to avoid the
risk of getting nothing if the
court rules in FMG’s favour.
However, Mr Woodley alleges
that “FMG encouraged dissent
by misleading some Yindjibarndi members into believing that
they would be entitled to nothing if YAC did not accept what
FMG was offering; then assisted
and funded those members to
establish a splinter corporation
to take the benefit of the annual
cash payments under the proposed agreement to which it is
not even a party”.
The new group was assisted
closely by FMG, who provided
contract workers, funding for
administration costs, a team of
lawyers and an anthropologist,
all free of charge.
However, even Vince Adams,
from the Wirlu-Murra Yindjibarndi admits that “the deal
that’s on the table is not the best
deal … it’s not the best deal but
at the end of the day it’s a deal
we can work on to move forward”.
FMG chief negotiator Blair
McGlew was filmed telling traditional owners that FMG “recognise that we don’t pay quite
the same money as some other
companies, so we have put our
energy and focus into other
areas, and that is employment
support and business support”.
Mr McGlew said in the negotiation that “Fortescue will
always use legal avenues to get
our mining leases and roads and
whatever else. I’m not going to
hide that. We will do that every
time, because we are in a hurry,
in a rush”.
FMG and the Wirlu-Murra
group called the ‘native title’
meeting to take control from
the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal
Corporation. The Wirlu-Murra
group wanted to withdraw all
legal objections to the FMG
mine currently before the courts
and sign FMG’s preferred deal.
The Wirlu-Murra group also
aimed to strip any senior elders
of their traditional rights if they
refused to sign the deal with
FMG.
Mr Woodley told Mr Forrest
at the meeting that “Yindjibarndi people look after ourselves
from the country that’s making
you rich, and your shareholders
and your investors [rich]”.
In response, Mr Forrest told
the meeting not to judge him
harshly, “if you look at me what
I’ve already done for Aboriginal
people… [and] the more you
know Aboriginal people the
more you love them”.
Due to the FMG representative railroading the meeting and
putting the FMG - Wirlu-Murra motion to the vote, the Yindjibarndi elders still refusing to
sign the deal walked out in protest and stated that the meeting
and its outcome was not valid.
In a reference to Mr Forest’s
claim that providing the Yindjibarndi with a fair and equitable deal amounts to ‘mining
welfare,’ ABC Four Corners
presenter Kerry O’Brien asked
Mr Forrest “why is it welfare,
why isn’t it a right on the part
of these people? I don’t see how
you can get away from the fact
that you are making a judgment
that they are not able to properly manage their own money”.
Mr Forest appeared to be offended by the question, “Kerry
it’s unfair of you to draw that
proposition. It is completely
unfair of you to draw that”. He
continued “you’re behaving as
though we’re obligated to and
somehow we’re doing the wrong
thing if we don’t’ pay the Yindjibarndi for acquiring their land
for mining purpose”.
Native title expert Professor
Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh, who
believes that Native Title inadequately serves Indigenous
people, told ABC’s Four Corners
that “while under Australia’s native title laws Aboriginal groups
have a seat at the table, they
don’t have equal power”.
“The mining company knows
that at the end of the six month
[negotiation period] it can go to
the National Native Title Tribunal and get its mining lease,”
Professor O’Faircheallaigh told
the ABC.
“The Native Title Tribunal
consistently rules in favour of
miners over Aboriginal groups,”
he continued. “If one bargaining party is under enormous
pressure to do a deal and the
other one isn’t, the people who
are under pressure generally
have to give in and that’s what’s
happened.”
Lawyers paid by FMG and
acting on behalf of the WirluMurra initiated a Supreme
Court action to appoint an administrator to the YAC in order
to close them down.
FMG claims that it has all of
the approvals that are needed in
order to increase the speed of
construction, but Yindjibarndi
elders are contradicting FMG
claims of validity. Despite these
concerns, FMG is fast-tracking
construction and plans to start
producing iron ore by the start
of 2013.
Three of the four mining
leases needed by FMG for operation were granted last year;
however the issue is still before
the Federal Court and will likely
be appealed to the High Court
of Australia. The fourth mining
lease is yet to be granted.
nesian when taught by teachers
with limited exposure to the
country.
In the great geopolitical shift
toward Asia, Australia has been
intensively focused on China.
We have become mesmerised by
China as either our economic
saviour, or our strategic nightmare.
Public perception plays a
large role in the decline of Indonesian in Australian schools.
Indonesians are seen through a
‘distorted lens’, inflated by the
media. Reformasi has a long way
to go, but Indonesia’s transition to democracy has been a
remarkable success – Egypt has
sought Indonesia’s help to implement democracy. Indonesia’s
occupation of Timor-Leste resulted in three horrific decades
for the Timorese, but Indonesia
was not alone. Indeed, there was
covert support from Australia
and the US. Terrorism remains
a problem, but Indonesia is not
a country of Islamic extremism.
The vast majority of Indonesians do not accept radical views
- they have a commitment to
democracy.
The fear of millions of Indonesians invading Australian shores simply has no merit.
Prominent Indonesian scholar
Tim Lindsay might be able
put some minds at ease: “An
Indonesian officer with whom
I once discussed these perceptions expressed amazement.
‘What about the threat from
the south?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got
planes that fly and equipment
that works. We haven’t’.”
The mistreatment of Australia’s live cattle export in Indonesian abattoirs has dealt another
blow to the Australian public’s
perception of Indonesia. Given
the media’s craving to demoralise Indonesia, Canberra’s politicisation of the event effectively
diverted attention from the carbon tax and asylum seeker swap
with Malaysia.
Australian students need aspi-
rations to learn Indonesian. In
a reply to Indonesian President
Yudhoyono’s address to the Australian Parliament in early 2010,
former Prime Minister Rudd
said: “we are neighbours by circumstance, but we are friends
because we have chosen to be
friends”. The more Australians
eliminate stereotypical perceptions and embrace Indonesia’s
diversity, the better equipped
we will be for the Asia Century.
Indonesia: Australia’s Gateway into
the Asia Century
olivia cable
access
Australia should place
more value on an education
in the Indonesian language. In
1994, former Australian Prime
Minister Paul Keating confidently declared “no country is
more important to Australia
than Indonesia. If we fail to get
this relationship right, and nurture and develop it, the whole
web of our foreign relations is
incomplete”.
It is no wonder that Jakarta
is Australia’s largest diplomatic
post.
Indonesia was in Australia’s
orbit long before Keating’s famous statement and today remains a strategic, economic
and political priority. Yet remarkably, current trends show
that there will not be a single
Australian student in Year 12
learning Indonesian by 2020.
This necessitates a need to understand the long-term consequences of this decline.
Australia’s educational bilateral engagement with Indonesia
appears to be rather unbalanced.
As Australia’s largest aid recipient, Indonesia received $452.5
million in 2009-10 and $2 billion between 2005 and 2010.
Education is a priority. Among
a number of programs, the
Australian government aims to
deliver better access to schools,
improve education quality and
train teachers. Under the ‘Australia Awards’ scholarship program, $200 million is invested
each year for international
scholarships, supporting over
300 Indonesian postgraduates
to study in Australia. For Aus-
tralians, there are opportunities
to study, research and undertake
professional development in Indonesia. The aim is ‘to promote
knowledge, education links and
enduring ties between Australia
and our neighbours’.
However, the Australian
government’s commitment to
such programs is questionable.
Seemingly unnecessary travel
warnings issued by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) have
prevented Australian teachers
from in-country engagement
with Indonesia. The Endeavour
Language Teacher Fellowship established by the Department
of Education, Employment and
Workplace Relations and now
run by the Indonesia Australia
Language Foundation (IALF) –
was designed to be an intensive
summer course for teachers in
Australia to improve their proficiency in Indonesian. When
DFAT issued a travel warning after the Bali bombings in
2002 and 2005, the program
was conducted in Australia. Although appropriate immediately after the Bali bombings, the
travel warnings still remain. The
Endeavour Language Teacher
Fellowship was restricted until
2010, when the federal government decided for the program
to be conducted in Indonesia.
The education system is failing to prepare Australian students to enter the Asia Century.
In December 2008, the Australian Government announced
the National Asian Languages
and Studies in Schools Program
(NALSSP). With a budget of
$62.4 million, to be implemented over four years from
2008 to 2012, NALSSP aims
to “significantly increase the
number of Australian students
becoming proficient at learning
the languages and understanding the cultures of our Asian
neighbours – China, Indonesia,
Japan and Korea. It also aims to
increase the number of qualified
Asian language teachers and develop a specialist curriculum for
advanced languages students”.
NALSSP has set a target that
“by 2020, at least 12 per cent
of school students will exit Year
12 with a fluency in one of the
target Asian languages sufficient
for engaging in trade and commerce in Asia and/or university
study”. To achieve this, it would
require 24,000 students to
study one of the four languages
in Year 12 in 2020, a 100 per
cent increase in student numbers from 2008.
An increase in the number of
qualified Indonesian language
teachers is critical for this goal
to be achieved. Indonesian
teachers in Australia range from
those who have committed their
lives to the language and visit
Indonesia regularly, to those
who have never learned a second language before. Importing Indonesian teachers would
be a good start to filling the
gap, and Indonesia has plenty
of qualified teachers. However,
visa restrictions on Indonesians
working in Australia are stalling
expansion. Australian students
see little benefit learning Indo-
*Olivia is studying a Bachelor of
Asia-Pacific Studies at the Australian National University. She
is currently in Indonesia studying
Indonesian at Universitas Kristen Satya Wacana, and climbing
mountains in Salatiga, Indonesia.
If you would like to comment on
this column, please email monthlyaccess.editor@aiia.asn.au
10 WORLD NEWS
Global Snapshot
martin shlansky
world news editor
US Credit Rating
Downgraded Amidst
Markets’ Turmoil
Rating agency Standard
& Poor’s downgraded the US
credit rating from AAA to AA+
due to low investor confidence
in the wake of significant falls in
global markets. While American markets were able to save
some face, other markets generally did not have strong gains.
The downgrade comes after a
significant period of speculation
on the matter, as Democrats
and Republicans struggled to
find an agreement about raising
the US national debt ceiling.
The decision reflects a lack of
confidence by the agency (S&P)
in the US to pay its debts. The
difficulties caused by strong partisanship in the federal government and a number of delays in
the passing of legislature have
contributed significantly to the
rating downgrade.
Libyan Rebels Enter
Zawiya
Libyan rebels have hoisted
their flag in the main square of
Zawiya, a key port along the
coastal highway used to supply
Tripoli with food and fuel. The
unprecedented advance could
cut off the nation’s capital from
its lifeline, although a number
of heavily-armed troops still
stand along the 50 kilometre
stretch between the two cities.
There were initial reports of
pro-government snipers active
in the city, as well as the sounds
of artillery and machine guns
still being heard. However, later
reports indicated that the rebels
had reduced a large part of this
opposition.
A photographer for AFP reported that Libyan warplanes
had bombed a tank near Zawiyah that had been captured by
the rebels, killing 4; a daily update by NATO merely said 2
tanks had been struck in Zawiyah on Saturday.
Australia’s gross external debt per capita $52, 596
US’ gross external debt per capita $47, 644
China’s gross external debt per capita $303
“In the United States, current debt dynamics with unchanged policies
are unsustainable. The imperative at the current conjuncture is to
raise the debt ceiling,” – IMF
US Helicopter Shot
Down, 38 Victims
Including 22 US
Navy SEALs
On Friday 5 August, 38 people died when their CH-47
Chinook helicopter crashed in
central eastern Afghanistan. The
victims of the crash comprise
8 Afghans and 30 US troops,
22 of whom were elite Navy
SEALs. The incident is the
greatest single loss of life for International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) troops since the
invasion of Afghanistan commenced in late 2001.
AFP reports that a senior official in the Afghan government
claimed the Taliban shot the
aircraft down in a planned trap,
citing intelligence reports gathered from the area. The official
said that a Taliban commander
lured US forces to the area with
a false tip-off regarding a Taliban meeting.
Two US officials said the helicopter was en-route to reinforce
US Army Rangers beleaguered
by heavy fire from Taliban
forces, according to AP sources.
Those sources spoke on condition of anonymity.
Brigadier General Carsten
Jacobsen, spokesman for the
ISAF, told a press briefing on
Monday that ISAF were “still
investigating this incident so we
have no picture of what was the
cause”.
On Monday August 8, another Chinook helicopter made
a “hard landing” in Paktya province, according to a statement
by ISAF, though there were no
injuries. “Initial reporting indicates there was no enemy activity in the area at the time of the
incident,” ISAF said in a later
statement.
Later on Monday, eight insurgents were killed by a night
time airstrike. General John Allen, commander of US forces
in Afghanistan, conducted a
teleconference with reporters
in the Pentagon on Wednesday, saying that the insurgents
were believed to be responsible
for the downing of the helicopter on the 5th. “This does not
ease our loss. But we must and
we will continue to relentlessly
pursue the enemy,” General Allen said during the conference.
His statement appears to confirm that the first helicopter was
shot down by Taliban.
At the time of writing, the total number of military fatalities
in Afghanistan is 392 for 2011,
and 2,673 since the invasion
began.
Modern Gladiators
A sting operation by undercover Italian police has resulted
in the arrest of 20 gladiator impersonators. Undercover officers disguised as gladiators, rub-
bish collectors and members of
the general public moved in to
arrest the impersonators. Gladiator impersonators can earn up
to 10 euros ($14 AUD) for each
picture they have taken with visitors at many of Rome’s famous
tourist destinations, including
the Colosseum, where the arrests took place.
Police officers dressed as gladiators were beaten up by the
impersonators before other undercover officers swooped in to
arrest the group. The arrested
impersonators had been using
violence and intimidation to stifle competitors out of the business. Several such competitors
who had been driven away by
the gang reported their activities
to the police.
‘PlayStation warfare’ spreads to Somalia as famine is declared
Continued From PAGE 1
help drought victims’.
However, it took until August 2 for the US to finally
start to ease sanctions against
al-Shabaab initiated in 2008, in
order to allow US aid to reach
famine stricken areas under alShabaab control.
The UN World Food Programme withdrew from southern Somalia in 2010 due to
threats that were made against
its staff.
William Bowles from the
Californian Global Research
Centre was quick to point out
the inconsistencies with these
stories, stating that “so far no
aid is being sent by the US, thus
the reality betrays the claims of
the headline”.
To complicate matters, documents obtained by The Los Angeles Times revealed that four major US oil companies – Conoco,
Amoco, Chevron and Phillips –
own exploration rights to more
than half of Somalia, negotiated
soon before the former USsponsored President Mohamed
SiadBarre was ousted in 1991.
Following the beginning of
the global war on terror, the US
installed an unpopular warlord
as Somalia’s president, Abdullahi Yusuf, who was famous for
profiting from piracy and the
smuggling of qat – a euphoric
plant.
When the Islamic Courts
Union (ICU) rose as a rival administration to the TFG, the
Bush administration funded
and armed the fledging TFG
warlords, and assisted in the
formation of the Alliance for
the Restoration of Peace and
Counter-Terrorism in 2005.
Once the Islamic courts won
control of the capital, Mogadishu, in 2006, 15,000 Ethiopian troops backed by US military hardware and intelligence
invaded Somalia to crush the
ICU, and back up the unelected
US-backed warlords.
The Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 that lasted until
2009 was designed and spurned
on by US Special Forces and the
CIA operating out of the US
military base in neighbouring
Djibouti, which is now home to
the US African Command station (AFRICOM).
More than 15,000 Somali
Somalian child clinging to life
civilians were killed as a result
of the Ethiopian invasion, and
many of those displaced are
now victims of the famine.
Veteran war journalist Pepe
Escobar suggested four years
ago that the US are “betting
that hunger and ethnic and religious conflicts will coalesce into
anti-Western and anti-US feeling and be the perfect conduit
for the spread of radical Islam”.
“First you create chaos. Then
you create terror, and then you
expand your ‘War on Terror’
to every Islamic corner of the
world,” Escobar said.
As a result of the Ethiopian/
US invasion of Somalia in 2006,
ICU forces disbanded and then
re-grouped as the Harakat alShabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM)
(Movement of Striving Youth),
or al-Shabaab for short. In early
2010, al-Shabaab acknowledged
for the first time that it had links
to al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.
Al-Shabaabis known to be
funded by Saudi Arabia, and
there are now anxieties as to
whether or not al-Shabaab is
supported covertly by Western
intelligence agencies.
According to leaked reports,
almost half of the US weapons
supplied to the Burundi and
Ugandan troops as part of the
African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) – who do
most of the fighting against alShabaab – are being sold to intermediaries who then sell it on
to al-Shabaab.
Prior to the ‘War on Terror’, and the Somali Civil War,
which began in 1991 and is
ongoing, experts say that the international policies of the 1980s
led to the devastation that Somalia has borne during the past
20 years.
Canadian economist Michel
Chossudovsky said that the “experience of Somalia shows that
famine in the late 20th century
is not a consequence of a shortage of food”.
Chossudovsky said that famines are partially the consequence of a global oversupply
of grain staples. Since the early
1980s, “grain markets have
been deregulated under the supervision of the World Bank
and US grain surpluses are used
systematically as in the case of
Somalia to destroy the peasantry and destabilize national food
agriculture”.
Somali agriculture, according
to Chossudovsky has therefore
become “far more vulnerable to
the vagaries of drought and environmental degradation”.
In the early 1980s when the
IMF and World Bank intervened into Somalia, “a very
tight austerity program was imposed on the government largely to release the funds required
to service Somalia’s debt with
the Paris Club. In fact, a large
share of the external debt was
held by the Washington-based
financial institutions,” Chossudovsky said.
William Bowles claimed that
“far from being a ‘natural disaster,’ events in Somalia can be
traced directly to Western intervention, an intervention carried out in at least one hundred
indebted economies the world
over in the name of ‘structural
adjustment’”.
According to Chossudovsky,
ten years of ‘IMF economic
medicine’ in the 1980s “laid the
foundations for the country’s
transition towards economic
dislocation and social chaos,”
and combined with austerity
measures, led to public sector
wages collapsing to three dollars
a month.
On June 23, 2011, the US
military and the CIA expanded
its ‘Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa’ to include
the somewhat-acknowledged
use of the remote-controlled
MQ-1 Predator drone.
However, ‘offensive uses’ of
Predator and Raptor drones
continues to remain classified.
Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya
Since 2006, and allegedly
since as early as October 2002,
the US has been conducting
missions inside Somalia with
Special Forces teams, AC-130
gunships, Apache helicopters
and Tomahawk cruise missiles
fired from aircraft carriers stationed in the Gulf of Aden.
Two months ago, Somalia became the sixth country (along
with Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,
Pakistan and Yemen), where the
United States uses unmanned
aerial vehicles, or Predator
drones, armed with Hellfire
missiles to conduct assassinations of ‘terrorist suspects.’
US politicians have been described as warmly embracing
the expanded use of drones,
which allow so-called ‘surgical
strikes’ to take place with little
or no risk to US personnel.
The strike drones operated by
the US Air Force are controlled
via joystick from airbases in
Nevada and Texas, while CIA
drones are operated by controllers based in a suburban facility
near Langley, Virginia.
Retired US Air Force General and former CIA Director
Michael Hayden said that the
colloquial term in use amongst
drone controllers is the ‘bug
splat’, which refers to the impact of a drone attack on its
target.
The UN World Food Programme said that 10 million
people across the region will
be in need of food aid in a few
weeks, and at least 1,000 refugee families per day are fleeing
to what is now the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab, in
Kenya.
“Dabaab is a town of 70,000
people, but there are 370,000
refugees who have poured in
from southern Somalia,” said
EbrahimMoosa, an aid worker
based in Dabaab.
More than one-fourth of the
entire Somali population is now
displaced, adding to the already
large numbers of displaced Somalis due to decades of war.
“We don’t have anything to
eat,” SainabYusuf Mohamed
said, whose son died while she
and her family travelled across
the desert in search of food and
water.
“As we were burying his body,
my second child died,” she told
Al Jazeera by telephone.
WORLD NEWS 11
Global Media Eyes on Chile Miss Potentially
Historic Day of Conflict
ben convey
A battle is currently being
fought by the students of Chile’s
secondary schools and universities. They are fighting for a public education system to replace
the current market-based system where education is not seen
as a basic human right but – in
the recent words of President
Piñera (one of the world’s 500
richest businessmen) – a consumer good fit for profiteering.
On Friday August 5, 2011,
international news sections of
the major capitalist media outlets the world over were proclaiming the one year anniversary of the Chilean mine collapse.
The trapping underground of
33 copper miners in Chile’s
arid north was the second time
in less than six months that a
tragic event had conspired to affix the gaze of mainstream news
followers onto a country that
otherwise figures rarely in international news.
What a timely and largely
missed opportunity then for
journalists. They are, after all,
ever keen to break - or provide
the winning coverage of - the
best and biggest news stories;
intent on the prime news values
of modern media. These values
largely keep the scope of their
international reporting very
narrowly focused on the grand
gestures of the big players, and
the occasional outbursts of un-
rest or disaster in areas of strategic relevance to those big players.
Why then did so few of the
‘Chilean mining disaster one
year on’ stories give any more
than passing mentions of the
student protests? Let alone the
specific details that the nation
had just witnessed government
repression. Repression that –
while certainly not as extreme
– had not been seen since the
Pinochet dictatorship that decades before had violently compelled Chile’s pueblo into accepting their lack of choice in
being made the world’s neoliberal petri-dish.
Sure, major global outlets like
Time, The Guardian, The New
York Times made the events of
Thursday, August 4 the centrepiece of standalone stories with
generic headlines like ‘Chile
student protests explode into
violence’. Yet why wouldn’t foreign journalists struggling to
get an interesting spin on the
cookie-cutter ‘one year later’
story genre have seen the value
in drawing stronger connections between these events and
the minig disaster that inadvertently granting the country a
brief moment of international
news currency?
After all, their local counterparts described the day prior
as a day of mass national protest reminiscent of the rounds
of protests that coincided with
the end of the Pinochet dictatorship. Chile’s media reported
a rebellion against government
oppression on a scale not seen
since an even earlier period –
during the presidency of former
dictator of Ibañez del Campo
in April of 1956. They spoke
of thousands of police repressing adolescents as young as
thirteen whose only crime was
to attempt to add their voice to
the chorus of their peers. Those
peers include not just other secondary and university students,
but also teachers.
Only a small portion of the
world’s international news journalists focusing momentarily
on ‘unimportant’ Chile saw the
need to mention all this in any
great depth. Meanwhile, Chile’s
right-wing government deployed massive police resources
in restricting the free movement of citizens throughout
the streets of the nation’s capital
that Thursday in a vain attempt
to prevent what it decreed an
illegal political demonstraton.
Matching this deployment of
government resources was the
Chilean media’s digital-era rolling saturation coverage of the
conflict.
It was a conflict that one local journalist described as transforming La Alameda – the city’s
main vehicular thoroughfare into a ‘battleground’. The same
journalist characterised the government repression as having
backfired, but not before almost
1,000 students were thrown
into the slammer, and Camila
Vallejo, one of the leaders of the
student movement, was publicly threatened and her personal
details announced via Twitter.
These questions about journalistic choices are interesting
and important, and the answer
doesn’t lie in pointing blame at
working journalists. However
they cannot be addressed in
depth here.
What is more urgent is getting
the story out there. The conflict
of Thursday August 4, 2011 in
Chile was not the beginning nor
is it likely to be the end. August
4 was simply the largest peak to
date in a two-month-long reignition of a years-long fight for
Chilean students protest their right to education
a more just and equitable education system in Chile, and in
turn a more just and equitable
society at large.
August 4 was a significant day
because of the scale and tenor
of the government repression
unleashed. But it was a also a
day in which it emerged that
while it is impossible to predict
what will happen in the coming weeks and months, a major shift occurred that directed
popular support in favour of the
protesting students and teachers
and against the repressive government. Piñera’s popularity has
plummeted to 26% according
to one trusted poll.
This is the backfiring of the
government´s tactics about
which the aforementioned
Chilean journalist spoke. There
now exists a major opportunity for the broader Chilean
social movements that seek to
rally support and build activism
amongst the populace. But real
and lasting change in the relations of power is not easily won.
The remarkable tenacity, energy
and courage demonstrated by
the students of Chile on Thursday August 4, 2011 are testa-
ment to that. For they have not
yet won. If they are to be serious
about winning, then they have
only just begun a new round in
the battle.
This article represents the first in
a series on the history and current
status of the Chilean student political movement. Parts two and
three will present an historical
overview of the student movement
and coverage of the current events.
To find more information
about the unfolding movement
in Chile in English, join the Facebook Group Australians Supporting Chile’s Fight For Public
Education.
For coverage in Spanish visit
www.elciudadano.cl or www.cooperativa.cl
Disclaimer: The author is an
Organiser with the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance
- the union for Australian journalists. The views expressed are
the author’s own and do not
necessarily represent the view of
the MEAA.
12 WORLD NEWS
Hacking, bribing, union busting: The usual business
world news editor kimberly doyle investigates Murdoch and the morality of journalism
Milly Dowler’s parents spent
six months waiting for news
of their 13-year-old daughter
before her badly decomposed
body was found by mushroom
pickers in a wood 40km from
her home in Walton-uponThames in Surrey.
“For six long months the
Dowler family suffered the excruciating pain of not knowing what had happened to their
daughter,” Dowler lawyer, Mr
Altman said.
In the first crucial days of the
kidnapping journalists from
Murdoch’s News of the World
deleted voice messages left by
distraught family members on
the teenager’s phone in order to
free up space for more messages,
so they could record their every
private word. As a result friends
and relatives of Milly concluded
wrongly that she might still be
alive.
News of the World then conducted an exclusive interview
with the Dowler family where
they spoke of their hope, unaware that it had been falsely
ignited by the newspaper’s intervention. Sally Dowler, Milly’s
mother, told the paper,“If Milly
walked through the door, I don’t
think we’d be able to speak.
We’d just weep tears of joy and
give her a great big hug.”
Sally Dowler is a maths
teacher and her husband, Bob
Dowler, an IT consultant. They
are ordinary people, like many
other targets of hacking, including the family of British soldiers
killed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
as well as relatives of the victims
of the July 2005 London subway bombings and, possibly,
even victims of the September
11 attacks in the US. They are
not celebrities or politicians.It
is this hypocritical attack on the
privacy of ordinary people that
has drawn the most virulent
public outrage over the News of
the World phone hacking scandal.
While Murdoch’s papers
profit from the misery of ordinary people, and in the case of
Milly’s parents actively prolong
it, Murdoch’s companies enjoycorporate secrecy jurisdictions
and tax havens.
Journalist Paul Barry reported
in February that “the US General Accounting Office noted in
2009 that News Corp had 152
subsidiaries, with a big flock in
those delightful Caribbean holiday spots, the Cayman Islands
and British Virgin Islands. This
was more than any other major
US company apart from the
two big banks, Morgan Stanley
and Citibank”.
Like the majority of the top
500 US banks and corporations, News Corporation is
incorporated in the American
state of Delaware, a notorious
corporate haven. Delaware corporate law affords the corporate
elite protection from their own
‘free’ market ideology, allowing corporate manoeuvres like
poison pills and anti-takeover
statutes.
These double standards can
be seen in the litany of misogynistic, xenophobic, singleparent-hating, asylum-seekerbashing, anti-union headlines
of the Murdoch press. Some of
the more memorable headlines
from ‘the world’s greatest newspaper’ include: “Life’s a ball on
benefits”, “Breeding scrounger”
and,in the latest campaign
against British workers in the
run-up to the June 30 strikes,
“Strikers set us on road to ruin”.
“Don’t let them win,” it told
readers, “or we’ll all be losers.”
The use of the inclusive ‘we’
presumably refers to the vast
majority of us who, like Murdoch, own vast amounts of capital, and the foreign ‘them’ the
minority interests of working
people. Or this is certainly the
ludicrous impression the reader
gets from these misleading, anti-worker headlines.
This is not a new development
in the history of the Murdoch
press and certainly not unique
in the newspaper business. Murdoch earned his union-busting
stripesin the 1980s Wapping
dispute. During the 1986 strike
by British print workers against
Murdoch-owned papers, Murdoch collaborated with the
Thatcher Government to sack
6,000 workers. For months the
unions battled Murdoch’s thugs
and the police to hold onto jobs
with entitlements such as vacations and secure retirements,
however, in breaking the union
Murdoch moved his operations
to a largely automated printing
plant in the Wapping area of
London.
Anyone wondering how Murdoch developed such a cosy relationship with the Metropolitan
police need look no further than
police collaboration to protect
Murdoch capital from workers
demanding nothing more than
decent working conditions.
The Metropolitan Police
worked in conjunction with
News International executives
throughout the 1986 strike.
Police regularly attacked picket
lines, especially on Saturday
nights when it was vital for
the company to make sure that
its prize asset, the News of the
World, reached stores. On at
least one occasion, mounted police charged directly into pickets
to clear a path for truckloads of
copies of the News of the World.
Smashing the union made
sense because the culture of
bullying and relentless climate
of fear and competition was
conducive to the bottom line.
Anyone wondering how the
‘newsroom culture’ which facilitated phone hacking was developed and enforced need look
no further than the ruthless
practices employed against unions.To Murdoch, news is not
something that happens in the
world, but a commodity to be
produced and bought and sold.
Any attempts at ‘high’ quality
journalism are seen as advertising and prestige to pull in more
dollars and compete with the
competition.
This culture of fear and competition cannot be seen in isolation from the system that created Murdoch and from which
he and his competitors benefit.
This system tells us that people like Bradley Manning and
Julian Assange are criminals for
providing private information
about corporations to the public
for free, while people like Mark
Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, are named Time Magazine’s person of the year 2010
for providing corporations with
individuals’ private information for money. When the state
spies on its citizens through all
sorts of electronic data, through
warrantless wiretapping and
other methods, and big business monitors reams of personal information, from credit
details to medical records, is it
any wonder that ‘big media’ has
no qualms in hacking personal
voice messages, especially when
there is money to be made.
The obvious question ishow
did News Corporation obtain
unlisted numbers of murder
victims and witnesses if not
from the police?
Yet, Murdoch’s ties to the ruling elite extend further than the
Metropolitan Police.
In May 2010, British Prime
Minister David Cameron
named former News of the World
editor Andy Coulson as his
communications director.
These incestuous relationships of privilege extend beyond
Murdoch’s British papers. In
May 2006, for example, then
Fox News anchor Tony Snow
was made press secretary for
George W. Bush.
In Australia, the big question is cross-media ownership.
Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan
Murdoch, is a director of News
Corporation. He also owns and
effectively controls two of the
largest radio and television networks in Australia, DMG and
the Ten Network. In fact, he
remains the acting CEO of Ten.
This is all legal.
In Australia, politicians and
media pundits have focused the
debate over Murdoch’s Australian arm on a reform of Australian privacy laws. Ordinary
people should enjoy every protection from the state spying
on its own citizenry. However,
the problem is not that phone
hacking is not illegal – it is. The
problem is that in practice there
are two sets of laws, those for
the majority and another for the
elite minority. If police in the
pay of the Murdoch press refuse
to investigate the phone hacking scandal, what difference
would it have made which laws
they chose to ignore?
While the Murdoch press attack refugees as “queue jumpers” in a line that does not exist,
Murdoch changes nationality at
will in order to further his capital concerns in the US. While
his papers cry for law and order crackdowns in Melbourne’s
CBD and worldwide, he effectively runs his own organised
crime ring, paying off police
informants for private information on ordinary people while
his companies hide behind corporate secrecy veils. His papers
print hysterical headlines about
‘welfare cheats’ and ‘scroungers’
whileNews Corporation paid an
average corporate tax rate of 6%
between 1986 and 2000.
As despicable as News of the
World’s practices are, it is important to see they are not unique.
Many rival media corporations
have been suspiciously slow to
capitalise on their competitor’s
demise, fearing calls for investigations into the media business would reveal their own
comparable profit-making tactics.Britain’s biggest newspaper
group Trinity Mirror has also
been accused of phone hacking.
News Corporation is not short
of company in those ‘delightful
Caribbean holiday spots’.
As genuine investigative reporter and newspaper veteran
John Pilger put it, “Murdoch
may be more extreme in his
methods, but he is no different
in kind from many of those now
lining up to condemn him who
are his beneficiaries, mimics,
collaborators, apologists.”
mation League, which opposes
boycotts against Israel, warned
that the law impinged on the
“basic democratic rights of Israelis to freedom of speech and
freedom of expression.”
Netanyahu reacted to a boycott by Israeli artists of performances in the illegal settler
colonies by stating, “The state
of Israel is under attack of delegitimisation by elements of the
international community... The
last thing we need at this time
is to be under such an attack –
I mean this attempt at boycott,
from within”.
The Tel Aviv think tank Reut
Institute presented a report to
the Israel government entitled
‘The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall’. The report recommended
that “A consistent and honest
commitment to end its control
over the Palestinians, advance
human rights, and promote
greater integration and equality
for its Arab citizens is essential
in fighting the battle against
delegitimization”.
This cynical invocation of
Palestinian human rights, however insufficient, is an acknowledgement by the Israeli establishment thatit is well aware
that it is being targeted preciselybecause of its human rights
abuses.
Likewise, the peace process
has been cynically exploited by
Israel. The period of the Oslo
Accords, often lauded as a time
of peace and progress,saw the
largest ever expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Between
1994 and 2000 Israel seized
35,000 acres of Arab land in the
West Bank, built 30 new settlements, and doubled the number
of settlers living on occupied
land from 200,000 to 400,000.
Even the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the
Occupied Territories, Richard
Falk, admits, “I’m very sceptical
[whether] inter-governmental
diplomacy can achieve any significant result. And the best
hope for the Palestinians is what
I call a legitimacy war, similar to
the [South African] anti-apartheid campaign in the late-1980s
and 1990s that was so effective
in isolating and undermining
the authority of the apartheid
government”.
In the words of Nelson Mandela, “The Palestinian-Israeli
conflict is not just an issue of
military occupation and Israel
is not a country that was established ‘normally’ and happened
to occupy another country in
1967. Palestinians are not struggling for a ‘state’ but for freedom, liberation and equality,
just like we were struggling for
freedom in South Africa”.
The BDS Campaign: Our South Africa Moment
world news editor kimberly doyle reports on the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement
“WHAT’S great about Gaza —
you see a person on a path, he
doesn’t have to be armed, you
can simply shoot him. In our
case it was an old woman on
whom I did not see any weapon
when I looked. The order was
to take down the person, this
woman, the minute you see
her.”
This is the account of the
murder of an unarmed elderly
Palestinian woman. It was one
of many statements made on
February 13, 2008by Israeli
soldiersrecounting the terror of
the war in Gaza from December 2008 to February 2009, in
which over 1,300 Palestinians
died, 300 of whom were children.
Max Brenner, the Israeli
chocolate chain, currently operates 37 Chocolate Stores worldwide, including 24 in Australia.
The chocolate shop is owned by
the Israeli conglomerate Strauss
Group: a company that provides ‘care rations’ for the Israeli
military, including the Golani
and the Givati brigades – two of
the key Israeli military brigades
involved in Israel’s brutal war
on Gaza. These brigades were
routinely ordered to move from
house to house,clearing out Palestinian residents by shooting
without warning. When interviewed, Ron Chayek of the Givati Brigade stated, “You write
in Al Jazeera that Ron Chayek
said ‘a good Arab is a dead
Arab’.”
Israel has declared the Jordan
Valley, including the Dead Sea,
off limits to Palestinians. – arestriction that is enforced by military occupation, as well as an
apartheid system of Israeli-only
roads, exclusive zones, an apartheid wall and an elaborate network of checkpoints. The cosmetics company Jericho profits
from illegally exploited minerals
from the Israeli-occupied Dead
Sea which lies within internationally recognised Palestinian
land.
This is the rationale behind
the growing Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
movement targeting Israeliowned companies such as Max
Brenner and Jericho who support and profit from Israeli
apartheid.
Launched on July 9, 2005, by
Palestinian civil society as part
of the global struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice and selfdetermination, the movement
calls for boycotts until Israel
fully complies with its human
rights obligations under international law. Since 2008 the
BDS campaign has been run by
the BDS National Committee
(BNC), the largest coalition of
Palestinian civil society organisations inside historic Palestine
and in exile.
The campaign is in many
ways inspired by the boycotts
and divestment initiatives applied to South Africa by the
international community in the
apartheid era.
As an eye witness to both
South African and Israeli apartheid, Desmond Tutu described
his visit to Palestine: “I’ve been
very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded
me so much of what happened
to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation
of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering
like us when young white police
officers prevented us from moving about”.
Although there are many
similarities between Israeli and
South African apartheid, they
by no means have to be identical to prove the charge. Israel’s
apartheid nature is based on
its system of bestowing rights
and privileges based on ethnic
and religious identity, which
fits with the UN definition of
apartheid as proscribed in the
1973 International Convention
on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 2002 Rome Statue
of the International Criminal
Court.
Even mainstream figures such
as former US President Jimmy
Carter professed the apartheid
nature of Israel: “When Israel
does occupy this territory deep
within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements
to each other with a road, and
then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or
in many cases even crossing
the road, this perpetrates even
worse instances of apartness, or
apartheid, than we witnessed
even in South Africa”.
Despite, and most likely
because of, the growing international success of the South
African-inspired campaign the
Israeli government has outlawed
the BDS campaignin Israel.
Approved in a 47-to-38 vote
by Parliament, the law effectively prohibits any public call for
a boycott — economic, cultural
or academic — against Israel or
its West Bank settlements, making these actions a punishable
offense.
The law allows Israeli citizens to bring civil suits against
people and organisations instigating boycotts, and subjects
violators to monetary penalties.
Companies and organisations
supporting boycotts could be
barred from bidding on government contracts. Non-profit organisations could lose their tax
benefits.
Even supporters of Israel have
voiced criticism at this latest
blatantly undemocratic law.The
Israeli newspaper Haaretz called
it “politically opportunistic and
antidemocratic.”The Anti-Defa-
WORLD NEWS 13
The Murdoch scandal: More to come
timothy lawson
editor-in-chief
The past few months have
seen an ongoing series of revelations that have rocked the Murdoch media empire. The News
International phone-hacking
scandal’s genesis began at the
Murdoch owned, now-defunct
News of the World UK newspaper.
A new website ‘Murdoch
Leaks’: www.murdochleaks.org
has been setup recently and is
accepting information on criminality occurring at Murdoch
publications.
Last Monday, Lulzsec hacked
into The Sun, pinned a fake
news story about Murdoch’s
death on the homepage and redirected the site to their Twitter
page; they also bought down a
number of other News Corp
and News International websites.
Following this, on Thursday,
the hacker known as ‘Sabu’(who
is rumoured to have connections with LulzSec and Anonymous) claimed to have 4gb
worth of emails - or ‘sun mails’
that might blow up into a series
of new revelations with regards
to criminality in Murdoch outlets. This information was said
to be procured during the hacking. It is not yet known whether
Lulzsec will be releasing this
information to the public. The
Lulzsec twitter has posted,
“We’re currently working with
certain media outlets who have
been granted exclusive access to
some of the News of the World
emails we have.”
The media scandal began
in May 2000, when Rebekah
Brooks (then known as Rebekah
Wade) was appointed editor of
News of the World; she worked
there for three years before
moving to the Murdoch-owned
The Sun in 2003. During her
three years as editor at News of
the World, it was alleged that
reporters working under her engaged in illegal phone-hacking,
including the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
In January 2003, Andy Coulson was appointed editor at
News of the World. During his
editorship, Coulson appeared
with Brooks before a Commons committee where Brooks
admitted to paying police for
information.
In November 2005, News
of the World published a story
about Prince William suffering
an injury to his knee; Buckingham palace suspected that
Prince William’s voicemail had
been hacked to get the story
and contacted Scotland Yard.
The reporter who wrote the
story, Clive Goodman, was arrested along with private investigator Glen Mulcaire, for illegal
phone-hacking.
On January 26, 2007 Goodman and Mulcaire were incarcerated for illegally intercepting
Prince William’s phone messages. Coulson resigned and
Colin Myler took over as editor.
In March of that year, a senior
aide to Rupert Murdoch told
a Commons committee that a
“rigorous internal investigation”
found no evidence of widespread phone-hacking at the
publication.
On May 15, 2007 the Press
Complaints Commission (the
newspaper regulation watchdog), published a report on the
phone-hacking allegations but
concluded that no illegal activity of that nature had occurred
at News of the World.
Sixteen days later Coulson
was appointed by then leader of
the opposition David Cameron
as his media advisor, just four
months after Coulson’s resignation as editor at News of the
World.
‘Brooks denied any knowledge of the activity and stated that it was “inconceivable” that she knew’
The next major chapter in the
saga came came in December of
that year. James Murdoch was
appointed the chief executive
of News Corp’s European and
Asian operations. In April 2008
James Murdoch authorised a
payment to Gordon Taylor of
the Football Association reported to be £700,000 as settlement
for a phone-hacking claim; the
deal included a suppression
order preventing Taylor from
discussing the case. James Murdoch later stated that he “did
not have a complete picture” of
the situation.
On July 8, 2009 details of the
payments to Gordon Taylor and
two other prominent footballers
totaling £1m were published in
The Guardian newspaper. The
settlement was paid to prevent
the naming of other journalists
who were involved in phonehacking at News of the World.
Following this, Assistant Met
commissioner John Yates stated
“after the most careful investigation by experienced detectives”
no further investigation would
be necessary.
On July 21, 2009, The Guardian revealed that up to 3,000
people may have been victims
of illegal phone-hacking by
News of the World staff. Subsequently, the Commons culture,
media and sport committee in-
terviewed News International
executives about the claims.
Coulson told the committee
that he has “never condoned the
use of phone-hacking and denied having any knowledge of
incidences where it took place”.
On September 1, 2009
Brooks left The Sun to take up
the position of chief executive
of News International. News
International chairman Les
Hinton then appeared before
the Commons committee and
denied that Clive Goodman
was paid to keep quiet about
the scandal.
In February 2010 a Commons culture, media and sport
committee report found no evidence that Coulson had known
phone-hacking took place at
News of the World. The report,
however, did conclude that it
was “inconceivable” that only
Goodman was aware of it. On
March 9, The Guardian reported
that PR man Max Clifford was
paid €1m to drop legal proceedings that could have exposed
more of the reporters involved
in phone-hacking at News of the
World.
On September 1, 2010 a New
York Times investigation quoted
ex-News of the World reporter
Sean Hoare, who stated that
phone-hacking and other similar practices were encouraged at
the publication. Hoare also told
the BBC that phone-hacking
was “endemic” at the paper and
that Coulson instructed him to
engage in it. This was backed
up by former News of the World
reporter, Paul McMullan who
told The Guardian that illegal
reporting techniques were widespread within the tabloid.
Two weeks later, Scotland
Yard reopened the inquiry and
questioned Hoare and McMullan as witnesses, but nothing
came of it as no new evidence
was uncovered. Following this,
on September 17, Lord Prescott
launched legal action seeking a
judicial review of the investigation carried out by Scotland
Yard.
On January 5, 2011 News of
the World suspended its assistant
editor Ian Emondson following
allegations by News of the World
reporter Glenn Mulcaire that he
was commissioned to engage in
phone-hacking by Emondson.
Soon after, Coulson resigned
as David Cameron’s media advisor, blaming the coverage of the
phone-hacking scandal. “I stand
by what I’ve said about those
events but when the spokesman
needs a spokesmen, it’s time to
move on,” he said.
The following month the
High Court ordered former private investigator Glen Mulcaire
to reveal who commissioned
him to hack phones. In March,
the BBC broadcasted allegations that former senior executive editor of News of the World
Alex Marunchak had been im-
plicated in the scandal.
In April 2011, former news
editor Ian Edmondson, senior
reporter Neville Thurlbeck and
journalist James Weatheerup
were all arrested. At this point
News International admitted liability.
‘Former News of the World
journalist Sean Hoare was
found dead at his home on
July 17, 2011; police say the
death is not being treated as
suspicious.’
In June, 2011, actress Sienna
Miller settled for £100,000 in
damages and costs from News
of the World; Sky football pundit Andy Gray also settled for
£20,000 in damages after it was
exposed that his voicemail had
been illegally accessed by News
of the World staff. On June 20,
300 News of the World emails
from News Internationals solicitors were given to Scotland
Yard; allegedly showing that
doch’s News Corporation withdrew its plans to bid for full
ownership of satellite broadcaster BskyB; the move came just
before MP’s were to vote for a
motion with cross party support
calling on him to withdraw the
bid. News Corp deputy chairman Chase Carey stated that
the bid had become “too difficult to progress in this climate”.
The scandal then spread to
the US, with US politicians
calling for the FBI to investigate
News Corp’s US publications
following allegations that News
of the World staff attempted to
buy phone records of people
that died in the 9/11 attacks
from a New York police officer.
There were also calls for a USled investigation into reported
payments to UK police – which
could expose News Corp to
charges under US anti-corruption laws.
The following day, Brooks
resigned from her post as News
International chief executive. In
a public statement Brooks said:
“I feel a deep sense of responsibility for the people we have
hurt.” Les Hinton also resigned
from his position as a senior
News Corp executive – Hinton
was head of News International
from 1995-2007 when News
of the World was engaging in
phone-hacking. Following these
resignations, Rupert Murdoch
personally apologised to Milly
Dowler’s family.
On July 17 Murdoch chief
Rebekah Brooks was arrested
and detained by British police
on charges of conspiring to illegally intercept communications
as well as corruption, in the
form of bribing police.
Brooks was apprehended by
detectives working on Operation Weeting – the UK Metropolitan Police’s phone hacking
investigation, and Operation
Elveden – the investigation into
illicit payments to police officers, a July 18 Guardian article
reported. More information on
Brook’s arrest can be found here:
http://wlcentral.org/node/2048
On July 17, hours after
Brook’s arrest, Sir Paul Stephenson announced that he
was resigning as commissioner
of London’s force because of
“speculation and accusations”
over his links to Neil Wallis –
the former News of the World ex-
ecutive editor who was arrested
in early July. Wallis had worked
for the London police as a PR
consultant for a year until September 2010. Sir Paul said
that it was not his decision to
hire Wallis and that he had no
knowledge that he was linked
to the phone-hacking scandal.
“I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice
and the repugnant nature of
the selection of victims that is
now emerging...I will not lose
any sleep over my personal integrity,” he said. The following
day, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates
resigned as well.
Former News of the World
journalist Sean Hoare was
found dead at his home on July
17, 2011; police say the death is
not being treated as suspicious.
Hoare was the first former News
of the World and The Sun reporter to go public with claims
that illegal news-gathering was
endemic at the papers and that
former News of the World editor Andy Coulson knew about
the practices. Sean Hoare was
expected to give evidence to a
pending judicial inquiry; he was
found dead on the eve before
the hearing was to take place.
More information on Sean
Hoare’s story can be found here:
http://wlcentral.org/node/2052
On July 19, News Corporation chiefs Rupert Murdoch
and his son James Murdoch
appeared before MPs in a parliamentary inquiry to face questioning over their knowledge of
the phone-hacking scandal. Rupert Murdoch told the inquiry
that he was not aware of the extent of the phone hacking and
had been misled by his staff. He
said that responsibility lay not
with him but with the people
that he had trusted and the people that they had trusted. When
probed about Brooks’ payment
to police for information, Rupert Murdoch replied: “I am
now aware of that, I was not
aware at the time. I’m also aware
that she amended that considerably very quickly afterwards.”
The following day, UK Prime
Minister David Cameron cut
short his visit to South Africa
to make a Commons statement
of the phone-hacking scandal.
He stated that with hind sight
he would not have appointed
Coulson as his media advisor.
On July 22, David Cameron
announced that James Murdoch
has more questions to answer
about the phone-hacking scandal following statements made
by two former News of the World
senior executives in which they
elucidated that he knew about
a key email, which contradicted
evidence he gave to the MPs
during the parliamentary inquiry. Labour MP Tom Watson
has asked police to investigate
the discrepancy.
recommendations of the police
and sign the order under Section 8(1) of the Act which allows the police to detain people
for renewable two-year periods.
Kamaruddin’s arrest came
the day after the Cabinet ordered the Multimedia and
Communications Commission
(MCMC) to re-instate access to
all blocked-websites, including
Kamaruddin’s ‘Malaysia Today’
site- which was blocked on August 27.
Kamaruddin has been detained under the ISA before.
Former Prime Minister Matahir
detained him under the ISA in
April 2001 for his involvement
in when former DPM Anwar
Ibrahim initiated [the] ‘refor-
masi’ movement. Kamaruddin was held for 53 day days:
then released, reportedly due
to pressure from the King, the
late Sultan of Selangor who was
Kamaruddin’s uncle; the current
Sultan of Selangor is his cousin.
The cable specifies “the US reaction to the arrest today (September 12) of blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin under Malaysia
Internal Security Act (ISA)”.
It states that if asked on Malaysia’s use of the internal security act, the US would respond
with: “As a matter of principle,
we hope that countries refrain
from using national security
laws to curtail the peaceful expression of political views and
media freedom.”
James and Rupert Murdoch at the recent News Corp. inquiry
Coulson had authorised payments to police officers.
On July 4, 2011 The Guardian reported that News of the
World had hacked into the
voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, during the
period when Brooks was editor. Brooks denied any knowledge of the activity and stated
that it was “inconceivable” that
she knew: Just days later, News
International chief executive
James Murdoch closed News of
the World.
On July 11, Coulson was
arrested over charges relating to phone-hacking and illegal payments to police – he
was questioned for nine hours.
Goodman was also arrested on
suspicion of making illegal payments to the police. The same
day the British PM announced
two separate inquiries into the
entire scandal.
Two days later it was revealed
that the scandal had spread to
other News International newspapers. The Sunday Times was
alleged to have illegally acquired
private financial and property
details of Gordon Brown when
he was the chancellor; it was
also accused of accessing private medical records about Mr
Brown’s Son Fraser.
The same week, Rupert Mur-
Malaysia limits press freedom, cable shows
timothy lawson
editor-in-chief
Cable
‘08KUALALUMPUR806’ released by
WikiLeaks on July 29, 2011
documents the arrest of controversial Malaysian blogger Raja
Petra Kammaruddin, as well as
how the US would respond to
the arrest. Kamaruddin, a contentious figure in Malaysia, had
been quite outspoken with his
criticism of the incumbent government at that time.
On September 12, 2008
Kamaruddin was arrested at
his residence under the Internal
Security Act (ISA) - which allows for detention without trial.
Kamaruddin’s arrest came days
after Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
threatened to use the ISA to
repress those purportedly stoking racial and religious tensions.
The arrest was meant as a deterrent to the growing Internet
media; it was also meant as a
message to the political Opposition, which had vowed to topple Badawi’s coalition later that
month.
Malaysia’s on-line news sources and blogs have blossomed
over recent years as an alternative to the government dominated mainstream media. This
trend has only increased after
the March 8 elections, in which
Abdullah and his UMNO
party suffered a major setback,
‘ 0 8 K U A L A LU M P U R 8 0 6 ’
stated.
08KUALALUMPUR806
states that: “the arrest is another
sign of insecurity on the part
of Abdullah and the UMNO
party. The government’s use of
ISA sends a strong warning to
other opposition bloggers to
curb their activities. The arrest
may intimidate some activists,
but it could result in a backlash
by the independent media and
bloggers, and increase public
disaffection with Abdullah’s
leadership.”
Home Minister Syed Hamid
Albar, who approved Kamaruddin’s ISA detention order, told
the media that he was detained
under 73(1) of the ISA because
he was deemed a threat to security, peace and public order. The
arrest came after one of his more
controversial posts in which he
is alleged to have ridiculed Islam
and the Prophet Muhammad.
Home Minister Albar stated:
“We have called and advised
him [Kamaruddin] many times
following the publishing of his
statements but he has continued
to write, so much so that they
[the statements] could pose a
threat [to security and public
order].” Albar also said that
Kamaruddin would be detained
for 60 days and that police
would do an assessment during
that period; further, he stated,
“if they feel he should be held
more than 60 days, the police
will then refer to me”.
The normal procedure would
be for the minister to accept the
14 EDITORIALS/LETTERS
Letters to the Editors
A hack’s progress
Jeffrey Archer the English novelist, in his work The
Fourth Estate, explains that:
“In May 1789, Louis XVI
summoned to Versailles a full
meeting of the ‘Estates General’. The First Estate consisted
of three hundred clergy. The
Second Estate, three hundred
nobles. The Third Estate, six
hundred commoners. Some
years later, after the French
Revolution, Edmund Burke,
looking up at the Press Gallery
of the House of Commons,
said, ‘Yonder sits the Fourth
Estate, and they are more
important than them all.’”
The mass media is an allpervasive force that influences
every aspect of our lives. Lot’s
Wife believes that the primary
role of the media, as one of
the pillars in the foundation of
modern democracies, is that of
a watchdog role, a checks and
balances system, on the actions
and spending of government.
Looking at the university as
a microcosm of this system,
Lot’s Wife, as the university’s
newspaper, has a responsibility
to alert students to the actions
and spending of those elected
to represent them.
Therefore, we feel that it is
our responsibility to inform
students about the elections
and about the political group
that runs the Monash Student
Association (MSA) currently.
The voting period for the
MSA elections occurs September 19 – 22. The MSA is
currently run by Go! – a ticket
aligned with the left faction
of the Australian Labor Party.
Control of the MSA has tended to swing between the far
left and left of student politics
over the years. Although, Go!
has run the MSA now for the
past five and a half years.
Go’s mediocrity can only
be rivalled by its insidiousness. Year after year, Go!
campaigns on the same issues
and then once elected very
little changes. One example of
an issue that has been campaigned on by Go! for years,
is that of concession cards for
international students – there
has been no change. Surely if
it were possible to change, it
would have been done in the
last five years; if not, then it is
an empty promise. Lot’s Wife
believes that this is intended to
chase the votes of international
students. Anecdotal evidence
suggests that some parties
engage in racial profiling to
lead unwitting international
students to voting booths.
It is also relevant to mention
at this point that the Deputy
Returning Officer for this
year’s elections, Gavin Ryan,
who was appointed by the
MSA, was the Go! president of
the MSA in 1998, according
to our research.
We don’t see it as necessary
to mention in great detail
the fact that two former go
presidents were permanently
disqualified from ever running in the MSA elections in
2008 for publishing material
that breached MSA Election
Regulations 120(2)(a), 120(3),
138(2), 138(3), and 138(4)
(q), and that this material is
also likely to have contravened
the Equal Opportunity Act,
the National Defamation Act
and the Occupational Health
and Safety Act.
Nor do we see it as necessary to mention in great detail
that many students run with
Go! because they believe that
Go! will help them win the
position they want; and not
because they believe in Go!’s
ethos. Likewise, an endless list
of unfulfilled election promises
is not necessary to illustrate
the point that Go!’s only
strength is winning elections.
Lot’s Wife believes that it is
vital to think about what the
different parties have to offer
and not be swayed by the
numbers of coloured t-shirts
one sees.
We believe that the primary
reason for Go!’s domination
of the MSA in recent years is
linked to the disunity of tickets that sit to the left of Go! on
the political spectrum.
Lot’s Wife believes that
there are only two methods
by which a rival political
group can wrestle away Go!’s
dominance. The first would be
a unification of the left. If they
can manage to work together,
they can create a political
group full of passionate and
dedicated people who truly
represent students’ best interests and won’t just be working
for a line on their CVs.
The second would be an anti-Go! party – in this scenario,
all students from a selection of
political groups would have to
band together to form a party
that was capable of challenging Go!.
The constitutions of many
other university student associations prohibit political groups
from contesting the editorship
of the student newspaper and
other positions in the association concurrently.
Lot’s Wife believes that the
MSA’s electoral regulations
should be changed to mirror
the case at these other universities.
fari, and reggae is essentially
religious music. Thus reggae
musicians would (and still do)
proselytize the use of ganja,
write odes in its honor, and
smoke it in prayer on stage. As
marijuana was already a deeply
ingrained part of most cultures
worldwide, it didn’t take much
for this green message to take
root.
The sixties was also host
to another culture explosion.
From the first ‘acid test’ near
San Francisco in 1965 – inspiring the Grateful Dead to
experiment with a new style of
rock music – psychedelia was
poised to sweep the globe. In
the words of William S. Burroughs, it was a time “when
a tiny psychoactive molecule
affected almost every aspect of
Western life”. LSD gave birth
to a new and wildly popular
free-thinking culture, particularly amongst the youth of the
day, and it may be the best example of drug/music symbiosis
there is. The culture that arose
from LSD gave music a reason
to flourish. It was a veritable
petri dish for the inception of
new and creative ideas, and
they propagated with reckless
abandon. Acid inspired The
Beatles, Pink Floyd and countless other bands and musicians to experiment in sonic
texture; experimentation that
has continued unabated to this
day, and which will continue
far into the future.
While cocaine fuelled the
disco craze of the eighties, it
wasn’t until late in the decade
when ecstasy widely hit the
market that dance music
truly peaked. MDMA was
originally developed in 1912
by German pharmaceutical
company Merck for a variety
of ineffectual clinical trials. It
wasn’t until 1978 that a study
was published on the drug’s
psychotropic effect in humans.
MDMA’s ability to induce a
sense of communal euphoria
fused seamlessly with the
burgeoning underground club
scene. House music, trance,
techno, drum and bass, twostep, dubstep, breakbeat, and
the myriad sub-genres since,
are all products of a culture
engendered by drugs, engendered by music, etc.
Naturally, too, there are
many negatives in this discussion. Drugs have caused a lot
of pain and death in the world
of music. Addictions amongst
musicians has been historically
rife, and led to many bright
flames burning out prematurely. Even among the names I’ve
already mentioned, Charlie
Parker was a slave to heroin for
much of his life and died of an
overdose, while Syd Barrett of
Pink Floyd took so much acid
he became a vegetable. Stories
the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jim
Morrison, and Janis Joplin are
common knowledge. Drug
addiction is a dangerous and
deadly spectre, and would be
almost impossible to control in the culture of excess
many famous musicians have
inhabited.
These days drugs pervade
most, if not all, musical
scenes in various forms, and
contribute to wild creativity, particularly in the realm
of experimental electronic
music. However, its been a
little while since any new drug
has been created (or released
upon society) that hasn’t been
a variation or similar in many
ways to the drugs we already
know. And perhaps as a result,
no new and powerful subculture has swept the globe in
a number of years.
Yet drugs and music entwined goes back to the very
beginning, when entheogens
were used in religious ceremonies accompanied by drums
or other percussion, flutes
and strings. This was when
hallucinogens – long, long
before the creation of LSD –
I am concerned about the
ever-increasing prices at
Wholefoods. As a student
with a very limited income,
I rely on Wholefoods for
affordable healthy food. I
was disappointed to find
out that the MSA, that is
supposed to look after the
welfare of students, has been
putting constant pressure on
Wholefoods to raise its prices.
Student services like Wholefoods should exist because
of the essential service that
it provides to students, not
because of the profit-focused
managers running the MSA.
Jason Hornsby
Arts/Science
Dear Lot’s Wife,
Drugs and society, Part 3
In 1937, Harry Anslinger,
Director of the US Federal
Bureau of Narcotics, convinced congress to criminalise
marijuana by telling them,
“There are over 100,000 total
marijuana smokers in the US,
and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers.
Their satanic music, jazz and
swing, result from marijuana
usage”.
Now obviously, this was a
preposterous reason for the
criminalisation of marijuana
(though some of the reasons
given even today are still more
absurd), but somewhere in
his racist lunacy Anslinger
actually had a point. Jazz and
swing were not exactly the
direct result of marijuana, but
certainly it was an influence in
the creation and development
of these genres.
Drugs and music have
been symbiotically connected
through all of history. In the
20th century alone the development of many new drugs,
and the re-discovery of old,
spawned scores of sub-cultures
worldwide from which evolved
new forms and sounds.
Marijuana may have played
a part in the proliferation
of jazz, but the real drug of
choice for jazz musicians in
the 1940s and 1950s was
heroin. It was wildly prolific,
to the extent that you weren’t
considered ‘cool’ by the jazz
community unless you shot
up, and jazz was all about
being cool. Most of the greats,
including Charlie Parker,
Miles Davis and John Coltrane, were heavily under the
influence of the needle during
the heights of their careers.
In the 1960s, when reggae
spread like wildfire across the
globe – popularised by the
likes of Peter Tosh and Bob
Marley – synonymous with
the music was the message of
marijuana. Cannabis is held
holy in the religion of Rasta-
Dear Lot’s Wife,
were integral to our spiritual
connection and interpretation
of the unknown (before the
advent of modern monotheistic religions muted our
dialogue with nature). Music,
even only as a steady rhythm,
was a path to follow, and a
guide – a transcendental nexus
for the travelling mind. And
musicians have walked this
path throughout the ages.
Not only musicians, but
countless writers, philosophers, painters, inventors,
and innovators have lived
under the sway of one drug or
another. And with their minds
chemically altered, they have
made invaluable contributions to the canon of human
creativity.
To alter one’s consciousness and escape reality (or
discover a new one) seems
essential to the equilibrium of
the human psyche. As an idol
of mine David Foster Wallace
wrote, “People are virtually
unlimited in their need to
give themselves away”. This
I think is true, though, I also
believe drugs, particularly
psychedelics, allow us to break
outside the bubble of everyday
life and perceive our reality
from a different perspective.
We need this, or at least crave
it in one form or another, and
if kept under control is very
healthy and expanding for the
human mind, and our species
as a whole.
In the words of the late great
comedian Bill Hicks: “If you
don’t believe drugs have done
good things for us, do me a
favour. Go home tonight. Take
all your albums, and all your
tapes, and all your CDs and
burn them. ‘Cause you know
what? The musicians that
made all that great music that’s
enhanced your lives throughout the years were real fucking
high on drugs”.
Since I first came to
Monash in 2005 Wholefoods
has changed a lot. There used
to be all sorts of plants and
herbs lining the edge of the
balcony. It was colourful outside too, with a bunch of cool
paintings and other artwork
on the walls and windows.
And couches!! And comfy
chairs in a communal area
to one side. And there were
always cool people to hang
out with.
The coffee wasn’t the tastiest, nor was the food, but it
was cheap. And students,
being generally poor, valued
this. The line for lunch often
stretched out the door and
every table was always full.
Nowadays, as the prices
have risen steadily, fewer and
fewer students go to Wholefoods. The business may be
making less of a loss, but
they certainly aren’t making
as much money as years past.
What seems to have been
overlooked from a business
perspective is that the appeal
of Wholefoods is not as a restaurant, but as a place to hang
out. The atmosphere is more
important than anything, and
turning Wholefoods into a
clean, cold, efficient business engine will only drive
students away in droves. Then
the MSA will finally be able
to achieve its long-held goal
to shut Wholefoods down
and replace it with a moneymaking enterprise.
But Wholefoods should
not have to break even. For
a huge amount of reasons,
not least because it’s run by
the Monash Student Association, Wholefoods should
exist to support students. And
if it makes a loss it should
be subsidised by the (very
wealthy) MSA, with funds
that otherwise get spent on
stupid, frivolous activities that
don’t do anything meaningful
for students.
Geoff Williams
Dear Editor,
My parents found a Rage
Against the Machine album
in my room when I was a
teenager; I remember them
telling me: “If you are not a
socialist at twenty, you have
no heart, and if you are still a
socialist at Monash, you have
no brain.”
Brand ‘Socialist Alternative’
is dead. There probably isn’t
a student at the university
who has not heard of Socialist
Alternative or been accosted
by them. Their aggressive
recruiting strategies, cult-like
mentality and inability to see
any grey are known to almost
every student at Clayton.
Socialist Alternative are the
people who put together the
far-left ticket, Left Action, at
the elections.
Cicero
OP-ED15
Welcome to McWholefoods, would
you like fries with that?
Anastasia Pochesneva
Creative Writing Editor
I am writing to address the
current state of Wholefoods
Restaurant at our University.
Over the last couple of
months, an incredible number of changes have occurred
without involving the Collective. The Wholefoods Collective is made up of volunteers,
staff and anybody who wants
to come to discuss Wholefoods
and any issues that have to be
resolved. The point of Collective is that decisions regarding
the running of Wholefoods
are made together. Not by one
person on top of a hierarchy.
But this is what’s happening: the people with the most
‘power’ are making important
decisions. Unfortunately,
they are also clueless to what
Wholefoods is and why she is
so special.
So readers, what does Wholefoods mean to you? Is it your
home? Is it where you play the
piano? Is it only where the hippies go? Have you never heard
of it? Is it too colourful so you
avoid it? Is it your workplace?
Or the only place you go to
for healthy food? What does
Wholefoods mean to you?
To me, Wholefoods is a
sanctuary. It is warm and sunny
and colourful. Delicious smells
from the kitchen and friendly
people fill the space at midday.
Memories attached to this place
Elaine Wang
are in the floor, in the colours.
We are so privileged to have a
space like Wholefoods at our
University. It is for students,
friends and staff. It is for us.
It has been since 1977. It is
a place where people have
prolonged their degrees to
stay at Wholefoods longer. A
space where up until recently,
spontaneity was allowed and
the youth were nurtured. It is a
place that fills people up, their
bellies and their souls.
So why is it being destroyed
by people who just don’t get
that?
Wholefoods was making a
loss last year and that is the reason for all these changes. But
they are only making Wholefoods like every other café or
restaurant. Somewhere where
other companies’ products
dominate and we are sedated.
What would you rather, another McDonalds, or a space
that is unique and full of community - where real peoples’
opinions are valued?
Wholefoods isn’t a company.
It isn’t a place that needs to be
renovated for advertisers, be
stripped of expression, couches
or healthy food. What is being
compromised here?
Everything. Ethos, healthy
food, comfort, the will to avoid
forced advertising, student
empowerment, traditions and
the value of consensus decision making. It is no longer
where you drink coffee and
chai from unassuming cups.
No longer the place to go to
for cheap, delicious dhal. It’s
no longer a place for comfy
couches outside. No longer
can you take or borrow zines.
It is no longer somewhere you
can avoid advertising or prepackaged hot chips. No longer
a place I can pin up my Lot’s
Wife creative writing poster
where I want to, because that
space is reserved for suppliers.
It is no longer a place where
people know and respect
the unique no-meat policy.
Instead there is oil, oily bread,
oily chips, oily plates. I think
of Wholefoods as a living, lush
and abundant Amazon rainforest, now contaminated by
oil. Instead of clothes smelling
like coffee after working in the
café, my clothes smell like oil.
I heard a guy at an anarchist
book fair telling a stallholder
that he was surprised and
angry that the zine stand was
gone and that he loved it so
much. I hear a lot of students
express their distress and fury
about the changes made. MSA
are you listening?
My close friend R-Coo has
once described Wholefoods as
a mother. That’s what she is.
Read on
The inaccessibility of public
transport concessions for
international students is an
issue that has been debated for
quite some time.
Australia is a multicultural
society with people from all
over the world, attracting
a great number of overseas
students every year. Take
Monash University as an example: international students
at Monash make up some
35% of all enrolments, most
of them from Asian countries.
On March 10, 2010, The Age
published an article entitled
‘For international students,
fares are not fair’. Author
Anthony Jarvis, Associate
Dean (International and
Future Students) at La Trobe
University, said it was essential
for the government to break
the barrier and help international students to join the
community.
So, what contributes to the
barrier preventing international students from being eligible
for concessions? Australia is
an inclusive, multicultural society. Is it really reasonable to
distinguish overseas students
and local students in regards
to public transport whilst
they enjoy the same education opportunities at Monash
University?
Monash Mayor Greg Male
gave his opinion on this issue when he visited Monash
College on July 20th, 2011.
According to Mr. Male, the inability of international students
to receive ticket concessions
is discrimination, preventing
equality of transport accessibility for the overseas student
population. He also mentioned
that a key concern with this
issue is many Australians won’t
be happy to subsidise travel for
international students if they
aren’t receiving a concession
themselves.
When considering this issue,
we also need to consider the
Australian education industry.
Australia is famous for its highquality education system. Take
Monash University as an example again: every year, thousands
of international students choose
to study here. The number
of international students has
increased by nearly 23% from
2005 to 2010 at Monash alone.
With the growth of international students, the education
industry in Australia is becoming extremely profitable. It
has become Australia’s ‘golden
goose’, and concessions for
international students would
attract even more students from
other countries. The decision
on whether concession tickets
should be available for international students is made by the
state government, which is responsible for setting the pricing
and concession structure. As
such, the best means through
which to change this structure
is through the government,
not through taxpayers. It is the
government’s responsibility
to educate the public on the
importance of resolving this
issue and make the necessary
changes.
Concession tickets for international students can be regarded as a constructive step to help
overseas students integrate into
the local community. These
students are trying to engage in
the community but they are excluded from buying concession
tickets, and this makes them
feel as though they are strangers
and outsiders in this country.
So while they are experiencing
the culture and lifestyle of the
community they live and study
in, education facilities oncampus and public transport
concessions off-campus need to
be provided by universities and
government, to both overseas
and local students. The sooner,
the better.
Something more than human
caelli greenbank
Christine todd
campus life editor
nation news Editor
I’m sorry, Borders. I used
you, abused you, drank coffee
inside of you. Powered my
way through at least twenty
of your titles on Australian
political discourse without
actually purchasing anything.
But you seduced me with your
comfy chairs and inexplicably
wide range of science fiction
titles. The smell of cappuccino wafting over books on
DIY scorpion racing matched
remarkably well with the
soothing overhead music that
seemed to chant ‘Buy our
overpriced books, we love you’.
Not me, though. Ever the savvy
consumer, I took advantage
of your generosity. So when
I heard the news about your
impending closure earlier this
year, I couldn’t help but feel an
initial pang of guilt within my
book-consuming core.
The parent company of
Borders Australia and Angus &
Robertson, Reader’s Feast, went
into voluntary administration
earlier this year, leaving behind
it a trail of debt bordering
on $200 million. Its gradual
shutdown saw the closure of 26
Borders stores and 114 Angus
& Robertson outlets, with over
two thousand employees losing
their jobs in the process. But
jobs weren’t the only thing lost
when the company twirled
almost effortlessly down the
toilet last month. With it went
the investment of the publishing industry, the confidence
of local authors, and roughly
30 per cent of Australian retail
book sales.
So what will this mean for
the average Joe wanting to
purchase a replacement copy of
Knitting with Dog Hair? What
is the future of publishing
Why the barrier for international
students?
and print books without retail
giants?
For the publishing industry it
will mean a decreased investment in risky or new content,
with fiction publishing houses
likely to consolidate on titles
that can guarantee success.
Book industry insiders warn
that the contracted retail market is already reducing print
runs and the diversity of titles
produced by smaller publishers.
Reputable authors and market
savvy writers will benefit from a
sparse book market where new
local talent will struggle. This
bodes poorly for local Australian authors just making their
mark in the writing world. In
short, if you’re presently undertaking a writing degree, jump
ship now. You’ll make better
money racing scorpions.
For the book consumer the
closures represent something of
a bittersweet irony. Our refusal
to buy overpriced titles from
the retail giant, blended with
the move to online purchasing,
can in some way be blamed
for the near total absence
of Australian bookstores at
present time. The investment in
popular titles over local talent
by Australian publishing houses
will likely result in a glut of
books we’re not particularly
interested in. And, most disappointingly, hard to find books
will become that much harder
to find. It’s like rain on your
wedding day.
Consequently, our thirst for
paperback will, for the time
being, be restricted to a string
of independent Australian
bookstores, major department
stores, and online book retailers
such as Amazon and The Book
Depository. With the Austral-
ian dollar steadily on parity
with the US dollar, purchasing
overseas makes the most financial sense. Don’t fall into the
tired old argument that buying overseas products via the
online medium is what got us
here in the first place. Australian restrictions on the parallel
importation of books drove
prices to outrageous levels,
and drove consumers to desperation via their Mastercard.
Until the industry can provide
better prices, customers will
feel grossly undervalued and
will not refrain from taking
their business elsewhere.
Expect a radically altered
book retailer to pop up in a
few years time. Bookstores
worldwide are investing
considerable amounts of dosh
into savvy online stores, with
the trend expected to blossom
here in the absence of a book
retailer conglomerate. The
only way the in-store book
retailing industry can claw
back any measure of consumer
confidence is to offer itself
as not just an alternative to
online shopping, but an extension of it. In the so-called city
of literature, book lovers will
never tire of browsing through
a dimly lit bookstore. Brushing your hands over freshly
printed paperback and sheepishly hauling four or five titles
to the counter is a romantic
staple of the book lover. If
book retailers can learn to
respect that enthusiasm with
fair prices and a soft spot for
local writing, Australia might
one day possess a book retailer
we would feel guilty taking
advantage of.
People often ask me why
I’m so obsessed with cycling.
What it is that draws me to
this sport that is nothing but
six hours of spinning the
pedals on a bike? With three
weeks of non-stop cycling
before my eyes, I had plenty
of time to think about my
answer.
And it’s the quality of the
human spirit in these athletes
that I love. These guys are riding hard every day for 21 days,
and yet every day they still
have the passion to ride harder
than the day before. Being
Australian, one of the traits
we value most is hardiness,
endurance, that utter tenacity
of the soul where you can’t
give up but instead just keep
soldiering on despite all the
odds. We call it the ANZAC
Spirit, and we value it above
almost all else in people.
These men have that spirit,
the GC riders most of all.
Thomas Voeckler is a beautiful example of why I love
this sport - he predicted three
times over the course of this
year’s Tour de France that he
would lose his yellow jersey at
the end of the stage. Maybe
it was a defeatist attitude, or
maybe he was just being a
realist, but every time, something in Thomas just wouldn’t
let him give up. We could all
see the grit and determination
that made him keep on going,
every inch of it clear in the utter pain on his face, somewhere
inside himself finding the
ability to keep on going despite
all else and do something that
human beings should not be
able to do - be superhuman.
Watching Johnny Hoogerland also had that feeling,
but this time the whole world
could feel it. We could see the
streams of blood running in
rivulets down his legs as he
rode to the finish of that horrific stage where he became so
intimately acquainted with a
barbed-wire fence. We could
see and feel his pain, and yet
he clambered out, was back on
the bike and began riding after
the breakaway. He needed 33
stitches afterwards, but he was
still putting his body and his
mind through agony to keep
going when any normal person
would have collapsed in a sobbing, bleeding heap by the side
of that road. These men have
some celestial ability to transcend normal human limits and
go beyond, time and again, to
be heroes, legends and champions - glimpses of the heights to
which humanity can ascend.
And of course, our golden
boy, Cadel. When his bike
broke down riding up
Alped’Huez with Andy and
Alberto, everyone thought he’d
lost the Tour de France. Even
I was dubious. Trying to make
up a minute and half on the
world’s top climbers racing up
a mountain is almost foolhardy
in its impossibility. It’s like running after a car – you’re never
gonnaget there, unless you can
fly. And Cadel Evans showed us
he can. He achieved with ease
what we were all saying was
impossible, and yet every time
we apply the word ‘impossible’
to something these men do,
they find a way to prove us
wrong again. It was the feat of
a winner and a champion – and
now he’s both.
Just like the Greeks who lived
near Mount Olympus, catching
glimpses of the gods from time
to time, this proximity to greatness touches us all. There is
something inspirational about
the men who possess this magical ability to be more than they
are, just for a little while. The
six hours of mindless pedalling
merely gives us the context so
we can truly appreciate when
they have one of these man-asgod Olympian moments. It is
the humanity in cycling that
draws me - and the proof that
sometimes, if we only try hard
enough, for just a little while
we can be something more
than human.
16 OPINION
The truth about China
colin macgillivray
Contract
Christine todd
nation news Editor
I’m in love with the Australian
Constitution. There I said it.
The document is an awkward,
yet surprisingly versatile combination of two political traditions; the British Westminster
system of democracy through
responsible government, and
the US federal system of checks
and balances through the
dispersion of governmental
power. It’s the equivalent of accidentally adding cinnamon to
your coffee one bleary morning
and uttering, ‘Hey, that actually
makes sense!’
The Australian constitution
inserts serious democratic grunt
into our political system. For
the uninformed, democracy
as a concept promotes the notion that governments be held
accountable to the citizens
they govern. It’s an ideal that
has been notoriously difficult
to apply in real terms. In fact
our very best thinkers spend a
great deal of time thinking up
ways to apply democracy in
countries that don’t yet want it.
But that’s beside the point. Our
funky little rulebook commits
to the ideals of democratic
thinking with great enthusiasm.
Section 7 of the constitution
outlines that:
‘The Senate shall be composed of
senators for each State, directly
chosen by the people of the State,
voting, until the Parliament otherwise provides, as one electorate.’
While section 24 states that:
‘The House of Representatives
shall be composed of members
directly chosen by the people of
the Commonwealth.’
While the Australian Constitution does not expressly
declare that citizens possess the
democratic right to vote, these
two sections imply that the
right, or more accurately the
duty, exists for all citizens. This
democratic provision allows
citizens to engage collectively
with the formation of their
government. Elected representatives, through this system
of responsible government,
are thereafter responsible to
parliament, while the parliament is, in turn, representative
and accountable to the people.
Those that do their jobs poorly
are booted out. That, my dear
readers, is the ideal of democracy in all its legal splendour.
Overwhelmingly cool, yes?
Don’t answer that.
Now to power dispersion.
Using the American federal system as inspiration, the
Australian constitution divides
government authority into subsections of Commonwealth and
state power, with independent legislative, executive and
judicial branches limiting the
capacity for any one branch to
possess unlimited control. This
dispersion of power ensures
that even democratically elected
governments are restricted from
controlling the lives of citizens.
In fact, such power dispersion
can be said to enhance the
democratic participation of
citizens because, in addition to
national government, it creates
sub-governments to manage
local issues and engage with
the people. I’m feeling fuzzy.
The most wonderous thing
about the constitution is how
smoothly it moved through
the motions to become the
backbone of an independent
nation of the Commonwealth.
While in part this had much
to do with the transformation
of the British Empire into a
British Commonwealth, the
existence of a sturdy political
document meant that liberties
could be taken to develop innovative legislation alongside
the constitution. The authors
of our terrific little document,
and little indeed, at a mere 66
pages, ensured that parts likely
to become outdated over the
course of time were prefaced
with the expression ‘until the
Parliament otherwise provides.’ Thus, while particular
systems of management and
power are constitutionally
protected, the Parliament
maintains the capacity to alter
irrelevant sections through the
application of an Act of Parliament, should the need arise.
Consequently, it is often the
legislature of the Australian
Commonwealth that bears the
brunt of cyclical policy fashion
rather than the Constitution.
There, you just learned
something. Now go lie down
on the Menzies for a nap.
Nazi like transportation, a diminished people and a hunger strike
marlow von trier
As everyone knows the Nazis
transported Jews, Roma, Slavs,
Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissenters and
enemy combatants – among
others – all over Europe for
various racist, homophobic,
military and political reasons.
While the Australian Labor
Party (ALP) is not a Nazi party
and Julia Gillard and her colleagues are not Nazis they also
want to transport vulnerable,
frightened, homeless people
who have a legal right to sail a
boat to Australia if they have a
well founded fear of persecution. Of the 54 refugees the
Australian government will
send to a precarious existence
at the back of a 90,000-person
refugee queue in Malaysia, 19
of them are children and 13
of them are unaccompanied
minors. The UNHCR has not
approved of this agreement and
there is no political or econom-
ic reason for it. No other country swaps refugees and very few
mandatorily detain them.
Collectively powerful,
comparatively wealthy and safe
people are not judged by the
way they act in their own interests but by the way they act
when they can prevent the pain
and suffering of others. Australians on the political, religious,
academic and trade union Left
do not usually see themselves
as collectively responsible to
stop the military and refugee
policies they oppose. Although
we see ourselves as responsible
to act in our own interests we
do not usually see ourselves
as collectively responsible for
the consequences of not acting
to stop the unnecessary pain
inflicted on others when we
could. Our diminished sense of
collective responsibility results
in the unnecessary suffering of
others, which we oppose but
will do nothing effectively to
prevent.
One report suggested
that the refugees to be sent
to Malaysia will go on a
hunger strike; the report
was subsequently denied by
government authorities. We
need forms of protest which
few can easily avoid because
they are peaceful, legal and
sincere. As a small child and
mother walked across the
jetty on Christmas Island
they waved to the camera.
Should we reply to their wave
with endless excuses about
our inability to prevent their
forceful exclusion? Isn’t it time
that especially the academic
and religious Left stopped
being hypocrites and started
to act on what they preach? A
HUNGER STRIKE should
be called in every religious
place and university.
As a frequent consumer of
news in Australia, I’ve noticed
that one thing never seems too
far from the front page of our
papers or the top of our news
bulletins – China.
The amount of coverage
given to China-related stories
and more importantly, the
content of these stories is,
frankly, enough to make me
more than a little spooked.
Pick up any paper and you
can read about how the Australian economy is completely
dependent on China, how the
Chinese are heavily invested
in developing nations right
across the world, and how the
country with the biggest stake
in America’s ugly debt crisis is,
you guessed it, China.
They seemingly have their
financial fingers in more pies
than most Western nations
are comfortable with, and as
the European and American
economies flounder, China is
poised to become the world’s
next superpower.
This alone is enough to have
some people tugging nervously at their collars, but apparently the bad news doesn’t
end there.
In addition to their
monumental political and
financial clout, China also
has an extremely chequered
human rights record. Concepts like freedom of speech
and expression are given little
currency, and it seems anyone
who is too vocal in criticising
the government disappears,
sometimes never to return.
This only adds to the sense
of foreboding which accompanies any report concerning
China – not only are they
extremely powerful, but
worryingly authoritarian and
seemingly indifferent to the
rights of others.
And it would seem I am
not alone in being frightened
by what I hear and see in the
news. Our former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was certainly
wary of the ‘rat fuckers’ north
of the equator, and most
Western politicians seem to be
cast in the same mould.
Bearing all this in mind, I
thought a recent trip to China
with some friends would be
an excellent opportunity to
test these Chinese stereotypes
so readily presented in our
culture.
Are the people of China
really just a brainwashed
multitude of communists,
waiting for their opportunity
to conquer the world? Are they
really governed by a tyrannical
oligarchy that falsely purports
itself to be the vanguard of a
‘People’s Revolution’? Intense
curiosity about what I would
find built day by day as I prepared to leave.
Admittedly, I should provide
a disclaimer here: I was not
on a ‘fact-finding’ mission or
anything of that sort. I am not
normally politically inclined
either. I was merely there as
a curious tourist, to enjoy
the sights (which I certainly
did) while at the same time
casually observing everyday life
forChinese people, and how it
measured up with reports in
our media.
What I found was quite different from the expectations I
had built.
We were greeted warmly by
almost every person we met,
and it was obvious that most
Chinese people held Western
nations such as Australia in
high regard. In fact, life in big
cities like Shanghai and Beijing
is in many ways parallel to our
own.
After school, teenagers flock
to the shopping malls, blowing any disposable income on
bright clothes, video games
or whatever else catches their
fancy. In China, communism
seems to be little more than a
word – Marx would undoubtedly be spinning in his grave
if he could see the consumer
culture which exists in ‘communist’ China today.
And yet paradoxically, communism is huge in China.
In the lead-up to the 90th
anniversary of the Communist
Party of China, the hammer
and sickle were virtually inescapable.
TV screens in buses, taxis,
trains and even on the side of
skyscrapers made sure nobody
would forget the day. Tiananmen Square was decked out
in red for the occasion, and
Chinese celebrities (Jackie
Chan was the only one I could
actually recognise) sang songs
on TV about the greatness of
their homeland.
One of China’s major
newspapers carried a front page
article which straight-facedly
explained why there was no
need for an opposition party as
an alternative to the Communist Party.
The sense I got was that criticism of the Communist Party
is allowed in China, as long
as it is constructive or ‘soft’
criticism. Anyone who is too
vociferous in condemning the
party isn’t given a voice in the
media.
On the whole, Chinese
people aren’t exactly the poor,
insulated, brainwashed masses
often portrayed in the media.
They aren’t required to love
communism or even the government, just as long as they
aren’t too proactive in speaking out against them. While I
definitely do not support such
a system of government, it is at
least a little reassuring to know
that different ways of living are
not viewed with contempt by
ordinary Chinese citizens.
China seems to draw its
strength from a fiercely proud
national identity. Even the celebrations for the 90th anniversary of the Party spoke of ‘our
home’ instead of ‘communism’
or ‘the party’. While we in
Australia seem to grow fiercely
patriotic on ANZAC Day every
year, it is nothing compared to
the love the Chinese have for
their homeland.
This is something that the
Western media does not always
pick up on. They are quick to
point to ideological and political differences between China
and the West as reasons to be
afraid. However, while I can’t
claim any knowledge of how
the minds of Chinese politicians work, I can confidently
say that the ordinary people
of China harbour no grudges
against the West. While national pride is big in China, it
doesn’t come at the expense of
respect for other nations.
I think a little of this perspective is needed in the slightly
xenophobic media, which
regards the Chinese with fear,
not really a warranted response
in my opinion.
The Chinese government
does suppress many human
rights and often covers up
evidence which could present it
in an unfavourable light, to the
detriment of its people. This
is unquestionably wrong, and
journalists wherever they are
should hold them to account
for this. However, the notion
that the rise of China will spell
disaster for the Western world
is unfounded, and really only
serves to scare us unnecessarily.
OPINION 17
Do We Have An Unquestionable Right to Protest?
Christine todd
nation news editor
As students we’re rather
familiar with the concept of
protesting. Don’t agree with a
carbon tax? Protest about it!
Don’t agree with the government sending our troops to
Afghanistan? Protest about it!
That suss food from Meeting
Point? PROTEST ABOUT IT
OR THEY’LL KEEP CALLING IT FOOD.
The freedom to protest is
considered fundamental to a
truly democratic society. For
the purposes of this piece we’ll
define ‘protest’ as a politically
expressive gathering in a public
space. The protest itself can be
interpreted to include marches,
demonstrations, rallies, etc. A
public space can be interpreted
to cover spaces such as roadways, public squares, pedestrian malls, or parliamentary
precincts. Protest is one of the
most effective means to have
one voice heard where you feel
your individual voice is going
ignored. It isn’t for all, with the
majority of individuals avoiding loud public demonstrations
despite their overwhelming
passion for any particular
subject. However, for those that
do engage in public protest,
there can be a minefield of legal
considerations to consider.
It is important first of all to
note that there are no specific
federal or state laws permitting
the freedom of assembly. Rather, the freedom exists as purely
residual law, existing in that
finicky little space that state
and federal legislation haven’t
covered. The only concrete
form of legal acknowledgement
exists in our commitment to
the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, an
international agreement that
protects freedom of expression, association and assembly.
However, as per any democratically thriving country, all
laws must be balanced. The
Australian government ensures
that the freedoms outlined in
the ICCPR are subject to legal
limitations that protect groups
and individuals from offensive
behaviour. This explains the
presence of state and federal laws to enforce peaceful
demonstrations of political
disapproval, with the most
relevant piece of legislation for
Victorian protesters being the
Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act 1958 (Vic).
Protests outside popular
chocolatier Max Brenner last
month raise a pressing legal
and social question; which is of
greater importance: the democratically enhancing freedom
to assemble and protest, or
the right of citizens to avoid
inconvenience and harm by
such protests?
The protests were designed
to highlight Max Brenner’s
questionable support of the
Israeli military. Organised by
student group Students for
Palestine, the protest was loud
and obtrusive and took place
directly outside the store,
restricting customer movement.
Megaphones were employed to
energise protesters and to bring
local attention to the political
demonstration. The latter in
itself is of little consequence
given most public displays of
protest employ similar means
to get their message across.
However, combined with customer obstruction, the protest
can be viewed to have disturbed
the public peace and successful continuation of business,
breaching the Unlawful Assemblies and Processions Act 1958
(Vic) and sections 9.1(e),(g)
and 52.1 (a) of the Summary
Offences Act 1966 Vic.
Irrespective of your political
view in relation to the IsraelPalestine dilemma, it is clear
there existed a blatant disregard for citizen discomfort by
Students for Palestine. It is an
essential element of their Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
campaign, which pressures
pro-Israeli businesses to remove
their investment in an Israeli
state. It is worth noting that the
employees that were restricted
in their capacity to serve customers on that night, as well as
the customers who ultimately
avoided the establishment
because of its riotous nature,
are in no way affiliated with the
Israeli state. Furthermore, the
statement that Max Brenner in
itself provides support to the
Israeli army is questionable;
given it is in fact the parent
company of Max Brenner, the
Strauss Group, which provides
this unwavering support to the
cause. Businesses owned by
parent companies are unfortunately powerless to discourage
suspicious political affiliation
by the people that fund their
existence and successful business expansion. Ideally one
would hope a business would
take a stand against questionable social and political behaviour, but realistically doing so
could prove to be the final nail
in the coffin of their business
existence.
It is fair to state that the
freedom of assembly must exist
in collaboration with that assembly remaining peaceful, and
must also refrain from impairing the rights and freedoms of
individuals nearby. Students
for Palestine cannot possibly
guarantee that in protesting
in a public space they did not
at some point openly show
distaste and disgust towards the
Israeli occupation, the Israeli
people, and those of a Jewish
religious inclination. And they
cannot possibly guarantee that
in their spirited fervour, which
they have every right to express,
they didn’t impair on a nearby
individual feeling unsafe to
be known as a Jewish IsraeliAustralian citizen. Allowing
this kind of discomfort to exist,
while unintentional, needs to
be borne as a responsibility by
the organisers of the protest,
and in future must be taken
into consideration when planning public demonstrations. It
is well and good to exercise the
luxury of free assembly in this
splendid country, but it must
be done responsibly, and with
due care to the legal and social
rights of others. To do otherwise is morally obnoxious, and
does more to distract from the
legitimacy of a protest than it
does to support it.
18 SPORT
The Tanking Saga Rolls
On
Tour de France Summary
caelli greenbank
campus life editor
Though it’s a new name to
many of our lips, every Aussie
knows that Cadel Evans won
the Tour de France.But most
people still don’t know how –
or why – Cadel did it. So sit
back and listen to the story of
how a champion came to be.
The thing that really defined
this year’s Tour de France was
the crashes. Somehow this
year there seemed to be a lot
more crashes than usual, and
in particular many of the good,
high-profile riders seemed to
crash out too. Case in point: of
Team Radioshack’s four riders
contending for the yellow jersey, three ended up in hospital,
and the fourth finished over an
hour behind Cadel after crashing.Cadel, incidentally, didn’t
crash. Andy Schleck didn’t
either. Alberto Contador did
– multiple times. So there was
the first hint as to who was this
year’s best rider.
The first several stages were
pretty unremarkable. They
usually are – at the start of the
Tour the good riders just sit
tight and stay out of trouble.
There were two moments
worth mentioning, though.
On the very first stage, Cadel
Evans sprinted ahead at the last
instant to cross the finish line
second, three seconds ahead of
the nearest riders. He did the
same thing three days later, taking a photo finish victory over
Alberto Contador in Brittany.
Contador looked a little bit out
of form, but Cadel, sitting in
second place overall, was looking perfect.
The next week of the Tour
was the medium mountains
and then into the Pyrenees,
where everyone began stretching their legs, and a few decided to go for a little run. Still
nothing too serious from the
three big names, though other
good riders including Thor
Hushovd and Samuel Sanchez
were beating their figurative
chests with stage wins, while
Frenchman Thomas Voeckler
had unexpectedly taken the
yellow jersey from Hushovd in
Stage 9, with Cadel still comfortable in second.
It was always going to be in
the Alps that everything went
down – or rather, up to the top
of the mountains. Historically,
the rider who wins the stage
on top of Plateau du Beille
wins the Tour. While this year’s
stage winner had no chance at
the yellow jersey, it was still a
significant day. Andy and Cadel
went head to head racing up
the mountain, while Contador
tired, lost too much time and
sacrificed his chance at victory.
Four days later Andy raced
Cadel up the Col du Galibier,
Andy coming within three
seconds of taking the yellow
jersey and Cadel relegated to
fourth place.
Andy took the yellow the
following day, 57 seconds
ahead of Cadel, who was in
second place again.Unfortunately Andy would only
keep yellow for one night,
as the following day was the
individual time trial, where
Cadel shone even more than
usual and gained almost 2:30
on Andy, who just couldn’t
quite make it. A triumphant
Cadel rode into Paris the next
day, the proud wearer of his
hard-won maillot jaune.
And now you’ve heard the
story of how and why the first
Australian winner of the Tour
de France came to be.
Kiran iyer
Sports editor
It’s the issue that will never
die.
After recently sacked
Melbourne Demons Coach
Dean Bailey all but admitted
that he had played players out
of position to ensure that the
club lost games and improved
its draft position, condemnation from the football world
was swift. Hawthorn President Jeff Kennett bleated that
this was an abuse of the system which must be punished.
The commentariat went into
overdrive, with The Australian’s Patrick Smith claiming
that the integrity of the game
was at stake (for Patrick,
the game’s integrity is at
stake every week). The AFL’s
football operations manager
Adrian Anderson was forced
Australians in the
Tour de France
caelli greenbank
campus life editor
We all know how Cadel did,
but what about the rest of
the Aussies? This year’s Tour
featured five Australians, not
including the NT-born winner.
The highest-placed was young
Tasmanian Richie Porte (Team
Saxobank-Sungard), who was
ranked 72nd overall and also
came 5th in the individual time
trial, ahead of world time trial
champion Fabian Cancellara.
Team Leopard Trek’s Stuart
O’Grady finished just below
Porte in the overall standings
(78th), but the 37-year-old is
best known as the road captain
(rider who calls the shots during the race) for his Luxembourg team.
America’s Team HTC-Highroad boasted two Aussies this
Tour. Newcomer Matt Goss
had a good first run, coming
142nd overall but 2nd in the
stage to Lisieux, certainly an
achievement of which to be
proud. Mark Renshaw has
never finished higher than
143rd (163rd this year), but he
is universally acknowledged as
the best lead-out man in the
business, able to get a sprinter
to the finish line better than
anyone else in the world. Simon Gerrans (Team Sky), more
fondly known as ‘Gerro’, had a
disappointing Tour. After team
leader Brad Wiggins crashed
out, Gerro’s job was just to ride
as best he could, finishing 96th.
Australia is better known for
producing good domestiques
(riders who help their team
leader) than champions, but
with the plethora of young
Aussie talent coming through
and an Australian team on the
way, I’m definitely looking
forward to the next few years of
the Tour de France.
to face the media and maintain the strained argument
that tanking did not occur, in
the face of widespread incredulity from the football public
and the threat of legal action
from gambling agencies.
Under the AFL’s rules,
teams which finish at the bottom of the ladder in any given
year receive the highest draft
picks, meaning that they have
first crack at the best young
players in the country. Teams
which win four or less games
across consecutive seasons are
allotted priority picks, reflecting the depth of their poor
performance and the need to
accelerate their recovery.
Tanking is a necessary byproduct of the AFL draft as it
is currently structured. Teams
which are out of finals contention have a perpetual incentive to lose games to maximise
their capacity to rebuild in
future years. The priority pick
system merely enhances that
incentive, as the potential
reward of picks 1 and 2 in the
draft (as Melbourne received
when it drafted Tom Scully
and Jack Trengove in 2010) is
too hard to resist.
Although the incentives are
extremely clear, tanking is extremely difficult to establish.
Clubs can always claim that
they are prioritising ‘development’ by trying players in
new positions, or thinking
long-term by dropping senior
players in meaningless end of
season fixtures.
Despite these flimsy claims
about development, everyone
knows that tanking occurs.
The real question is whether it
is as much of a problem as is
sometimes claimed. The draft
system reflects a clear policy
choice by the AFL: continued underperformance by
any club for a long period of
time is unacceptable. For this
reason, concessions must be
offered to the weakest teams
to give fans something to look
forward to and to ensure that
recovery is on the horizon.
All the steps which have
been floated to deal with
tanking undercut this worthwhile aim. Transferring to a
lottery system in which all of
the teams who miss the finals
have the same opportunity to
get the best draft picks would
reduce the incentive to finish
last, but simultaneously make
it much harder for the bottom
teams to rebuild their list.
The abolition of priority picks
is thrown around as an easy
solution, but is it really so
unreasonable that clubs which
win less than 8 out of 44
games across 2 years receive
additional draft picks?
The harm of tanking is
outweighed by the harm of
a system which denies the
weakest teams the capacity to
adequately rebuild through
the draft. Teams which tank
make a decision that the
potential loss of fans and
sponsors through sustained
underperformance is worth
it to improve their draft position. That decision should be
theirs to make.
SPORT 19
The tap on the shoulder
andrew mayes
Sports editor
We’ve already seen two
dominoes fall in the coaching
merry-go-round for 2011. One
was a swift, well-executed and
respectful dismissal of a longstanding and respected member
of the Adelaide Football Club.
The other turned into an ugly,
drawn out process which saw
Dean Bailey as the Lee Harvey
Oswald of the Melbourne
Football Club. Both coaches, it
must be said, were dignified in
their exits. The clubs though,
of the ugliest afternoons in
the club’s history at Kardinia
Park, losing by 186 points,
the pressure valve on Dean
Bailey was about to burst. The
ugliness of the dismissal was
only revealed in the aftermath.
It was discovered that a group
of players had not a week
before approached the board
with serious concerns over the
football department and the
CEO, Cameron Schwab. It is
understood that at subsequent
Dean Bailey
couldn’t have been further
apart.
Adelaide has really suffered
from never bottoming out. The
norm now is for clubs to accept
the state of their list, inject
youth and build a team whilst
selling the club on potential. It
takes years but it usually works.
St Kilda, Carlton, Essendon,
Collingwood, Hawthorn, West
Coast and Fremantle have all
taken this on board and at
the time of writing, all sit in
the 8. This is something Neil
Craig had avoided up until
now. Craig, an SANFL veteran
of over 300 games was well
respected for his different outlook on the game, especially in
terms of fitness. His structures
were sturdy and discipline
strict. This year however, saw
too many underwhelming
performances and after a 100
point loss and increasing media
speculation, Craig resigned
(after what we assume was a tap
on the shoulder). Swift, dignified, and well executed.
Melbourne however, was different. The bottoming out process had begun for Melbourne
and a lot of the so-called
deadwood had been cleared
from their list. Older players
had been asked to do the team
thing and retire prematurely so
that a younger player was given
an opportunity. It rattled these
individuals but it was accepted
that the club was moving in
the right direction. After one
meetings, the decision was
made to review Schwab’s position. It has been reported that
as late as the Friday before the
Geelong debacle, Schwab was
as good as gone. An emergency board meeting was called
for Sunday and nine arduous
hours of debate took place
where it was decided that
Schwab would now stay and
Bailey would lose his job. All
this after one game, with the
Demons still a realistic chance
of making the finals. It was
messy, hasty, reactionary and
damaged the club more than
if they hadn’t reacted to the
capitulation at all. Decked out
in Melbourne attire inspirational President Jim Stynes
and Vice President Don
McLardy faced the media and
answered all the questions
they could. Then, bizarrely,
sponsorship placards were
taken down and out strolled a
cool, calm and collected Dean
Bailey who presented himself
with aplomb.
Both sackings came after
100 point losses. Both sackings came after intense media
scrutiny. The two dismissals
however couldn’t have been
more different. I just hope
that whichever coach inherits
the Melbourne list, which,
talent-laden as it is may take
them to a premiership, pays
tribute to Dean Bailey who
was the fall guy for a badly
managed football club.
186 – The number that cost Dean Bailey his job.
English Premier League
Preview
Sports editor andrew mayes looks at an interesting
season of English football ahead.
The 2011/12 season will
surely be known in years to
come as the year that the
top four in English football
was redefined. Arab-owned
Manchester City; the noisy
neighbours of Manchester
United will either nudge out
the ‘Gerrard-reliant’ Liverpool
or the ‘don’t spend a penny’
Arsenal. It does loom however
as a season that holds more
unknowns than usual. How
will the top four cope with a
new contender? Will Liverpool get back into Europe?
Can a 33-year-old Chelsea
manager unite a team? How
does Roberto Mancini spend
endless money? For this reason, the season looks set to be
a cracker.
One of the most attractive
things about the world game
for football devotees is that
the off-season is often more
entertaining than languishing mid-table for 12 weeks.
For the contenders, like a
rich man buying artwork to
complete his collection, the
manager chooses whom to
target in the transfer window
to put the finishing touches
on his sculptured squad. For
everyone else, it’s all about
looking for a bargain from
the scraps left by the big
boys. With oil money flowing
through the football transfer
market, figures are rather
inflated at present. It’s why we
see summer transfer sums of
over $200 million for some of
the richest clubs. Importantly
though, one still needs an
elite manager to mould elite
talent. Alex Ferguson secured
the 19th Manchester United
title last year with a squad
that perhaps wasn’t as rich in
natural ability as others but
managed very well.
Manchester City is a club that
has lived in the shadow of
their Red neighbours for some
time now. In 2008 the club
was purchased by the Abu
Dhabi United group. This saw
an influx of funds allowing
it to compete with the best
in the Premier League. They
wasted $64 million on their
first transfer Robinho who
was a flop but it didn’t matter.
Now almost $400 million
worth of footballers later,
(obscene isn’t it?) they find
themselves in the group stages
of the Champions League, the
FA Cup in their back pocket
and are a genuine chance to
win the title. The one thing
they lack though is cohesion.
Their summer, even with a
cool $100 million spending
spree has been plagued by a
captain that wants out and a
precocious show-pony called
Mario Balotelli who was
involved in an infamous back
heel that reeked of arrogance
and disrespect. If they can get
their squad united, they could
do anything.
Probably the antithesis of City
is Arsenal. Their manager is a
reluctant spender and relies on
nurturing his own young talent. No doubt he is regarded
highly in this area but Gunners fans have been crying out
for a star to take them to a
trophy, something they haven’t
added to in the new cabinet
at the Emirates Stadium. This
has been a summer of turmoil
for the club with rumours of
captain Cesc Fabregas moving
back to Barcelona and losing
established players like Gael
Cliché and possibly Samir
Nasri. Not all is well in North
London and they may be on a
slippery slide.
Chelsea has gone with a youth
policy off the field. After the
sacking of Ray Wilkins last
year, the Blues took a nose
dive. Carlo Ancelotti’s sacking
illustrated the fragility of your
time as a Chelsea manager.
The man who won an historic
double the year before was trophyless the year after and felt
the full force of Roman Abramovich’s inflated expectations.
The man they call AVB ‘Andre
Villas-Boas’ is just 33 and has
the weight of the world on his
shoulders. The Blues have the
talent but are they too old?
The battle of the Reds remains. Liverpool is looking to
build on a mini rejuvenation
under Kenny Dalglish while
Alex Ferguson just keeps on
keeping on. Both teams have
invested heavily in English talent as a result of the new FIFA
regulations regarding homegrown players. The question
for United is can they replace
their retired stars with a new
generation of kids? It has been
an unusually expensive summer for them as Fergie tries
to fill the void left by United
legends like Scholes in order
to take them to Eurpoean
glory and a potential 20th
title. Dalglish however, is aiming just to make Europe. He
too has spent big and cult hero
Kenny will look to break back
into the top 4.
All in all, it’s a refreshing
change not having a walkup winner for the Premier
League. Manchester City’s success and strong squad has everyone pleading for a rich Arabian oil tycoon to take them
over. It takes years to assemble
a talented squad and longer to
acquire the best management
skills and unity. That is why
the trophy will be heading to
Manchester. City or United? A
team of champions will never
beat a champion team.
Biggest falls from grace
Stars of sport that we’ve put on a pedestal only to see the carpet pulled
out from underneath their careers. Sports editor andrew
mayes looks at six of the biggest falls from grace in sport.
Tiger Woods
Is there much more you can
say about Tiger? He had the
golfing world at his feet, having won 14 majors by the age
of 31. A perfect family man
with a beautiful wife and two
beautiful kids. Then a little
trip to Melbourne in 2009
revealed that over the years
Woods had a string of birdies
on and off the course. Then
came the apology, sex rehab
and Tiger hasn’t won a tournament since.
the best players of the modern
AFL era and was a hero to so
many North Melbourne fans
who were deprived of any
success since the 1970s. He
single-handedly dragged the
Roos to many famous victories
including the 1996 and 1999
premierships. His off-field indiscretions were often ignored
until he was found to be sleeping with his then best friend’s
wife. It ruined the fabric of
North Melbourne and after a
year out of the game, Carey
headed to Adelaide but was
Tiger Woods and family
Ben Johnson
The blue riband event of
any Olympic Games athletics
is the 100m final. When Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson
ran a world record 9.83 at the
Rome World Championships
in 1987, smashing the previous record, the world was in
awe. The battle between him
and American Carl Lewis at
the Seoul Olympics in 1988
was much anticipated and he
ran an incredible 9.79. This
was revoked 3 days later when
he tested positive to steroids
and the whole world let out
a collective sigh of anger and
frustration.
Mike Tyson
Tyson was a boxing protégé. Amazingly he won his
first 37 professional bouts and
won the WBC Heavyweight
Title at the age of just 20.
Continuing onto a record of
41-1 Tyson found himself in
trouble outside of the ring. He
was arrested in 1991 for the
rape of a 19 year old woman.
The jury took just 10 hours to
convict him in 1992 and after
controversially spending only
3 years in jail, he was released.
Tyson was never the same
again, enjoying mixed results
for the rest of his boxing days
and going completely off the
rails.
Wayne Carey
He was nicknamed the King
for a reason. Carey was one of
never the same and retired two
injury-plagued years later.
Ryan Giggs
Imagine what it would be
like to have a childhood hero
who was everything one should
be – family man, exquisitely
skilled, a boy star, a games
record holder, a patriot. This
is what Ryan Giggs was to so
many people. Until this year. A
suppression order was dodged
through the convention of
parliamentary privilege when
John Hemming MP revealed
that the Welsh wizard had cast
his spell on a string of women
throughout his glittering career.
His career will still be regarded
as one of the greatest for Manchester United, but he is an
idol no longer.
Hanse Cronje
Cricket has been plagued
more recently by match fixing
probes and spot fixing offences.
Cronje was perhaps the first
page in a whole book of deceit
that was to be uncovered. A
fierce competitor and staunch
leader, Cronje quickly elevated himself to great heights,
becoming captain of both
the test and one day sides at
the age of just 24. In 2000,
it was discovered that Cronje
had been a recipient of illegal
bribes from bookmakers. He
was subsequently banned from
cricket for life. In a sad end to a
sad tale, Cronje was killed in a
plane crash in 2002.
Spin Bowling and Australian Selectors
Kiran iyer
Sports editor
Kevin Rudd must be casting an envious eye at Andrew
Hilditch, Australian cricket’s
Chairman of Selectors. Despite
a number of baffling decisions
at the selection table and a
capitulation in the 2010 Ashes,
Hilditch remains in his job and
insulated from the consequences of his ineptitude. The bizarre
treatment of the next generation of Australian spinners is
in itself grounds for Hilditch’s
removal.
In the last five years Australia
has lurched from spinner to
spinner, desperate to recapture the magic of the Warne
era. Nathan Lyon, a former
groundskeeper who has only
played four first-class matches
with an uninspiring bowling
average, is the most recent addition to the selection merrygo-round. Touring Sri Lanka,
a country which thrives on
demolishing mediocre spinners, is perhaps not the best
induction for such an inexperienced player. There’s little
reassurance in the selection of
left-arm spinner Michael Beer,
who took one wicket in his
debut Test last year, to act as
the ‘experienced’ foil for Lyon.
To add an additional layer of
incoherence, neither Beer nor
Lyon were one of the 25 players offered a Cricket Australia
contract in June. Contracted
spinners Jason Krejza, Xavier
Doherty and Nathan Hauritz
must be scratching their heads.
It has become almost trite
to say that spinners need time
to develop. If Hilditch was a
Selector in 1992, one could
only wonder what would have
happened to Shane Warne after
recording 1/150 in his debut
innings. Yet the selection panel
has been unwilling to persist
with a spinner and provide
them with the opportunities
required to develop their craft.
Hauritz, Doherty and Krejza
have all shown potential at
different stages, yet it must
destroy their confidence to be
immediately dropped after a
poor performance and replaced
by another spinner pulled out
of the ether.
In particular, Krejza has
shown that he can trouble
quality batsmen such as
Sachin Tendulkar with his
drift and turn. Playing in Sri
Lanka would be the ideal time
to try an attacking spinner
who is willing to toss the ball
up and take risks. However,
this selection panel appears to
be drunkenly throwing darts
in the hope of finally hitting
the target. The patience which
is required to develop quality
spin bowling is in short supply
in Australian cricket. The Sri
Lankans will be licking their
lips in anticipation.
Is Juddy the only bloke to have a Brownlow and an Oscar? –
Brendan Fevola asks the question of his former teammate.
With Sandi injured, big Dean Cox has been racking it up, averaging over 114 points.
20 SCIENCE
Do you want to hear a joke about sodium hypobromite?
NaBro
Science Q&A
Aimee parker
science editor
Why doesn’t superglue
stick in its own bottle?
Superglue contains a
chemical called cyanoacrylate
that reacts with water and
causes the glue to harden.
There is water vapour in the air
around us, so when superglue
comes into contact with air
(and therefore water) it will
harden. There’s no water inside
the bottle to cause the reaction
with the cyanoacrylate, so the
glue will not stick.
If you want to make superglue set more quickly, then
breathing on it will speed up
the process as our breath contains a lot of moisture.
How would Earth be different if we didn’t have a
moon?
If Earth had never acquired a
moon, then it would not be as
we know it today, and we may
not even exist.
The most obvious effect of
the moon is to cause tides. The
moon exerts a gravitational pull
on Earth and the water that
covers most of its surface. The
oceans closest to the moon will
be pulled toward it, causing
the water to rise in this area
and reciprocally lower in the
area where the water has been
pulled from.
Tides probably played an important role in the development
of life. Water which reached
onto land then returned to
the ocean would bring with it
How to... make plastic from milk
Aimee parker
What you do:
- Using the thermometer,
warm the milk to 50°C in a
saucepan
What would happen if
you never brushed your
teeth? Do animals get
cavities?
Cavities, infections, pain,
gum disease and general unpleasantness. This is due to the
average diet, which contains
a lot of sugars. Bacteria in the
mouth use the sugars and pro-
duce acid which damages the
teeth. If you only drink water,
and eat fibre-rich raw food then
you may not need to clean your
teeth at all as these foods will
essentially do that for you.
Animals can get cavities,
most often those animals that
eat human food and rubbish.
It’s the same problem for them;
refined sugary foods cause acid
production and damage. The
natural diet of a wild animal is
unlikely to cause tooth decay,
and as most animals don’t live
into ‘old age’ the way humans
do, there’s a shorter time span
for damage to accrue.
Creating your own key-print
Aimee parker
science editor
science editor
What you need:
• 100 ml milk
• 10 ml vinegar
• a saucepan
• a thermometer
• a piece of cloth for straining
• a spoon
• paper towel to drain
chemicals necessary for life to
evolve. Churning of the water
caused movement of these
chemicals and the introduction
of gases. This could occur without moon tides (rivers introduce chemicals to oceans and
the gravity of the sun causes
some tidal movement) but at
a much slower rate. The result
would be a different course of
evolution, or a much slower
one, and it’s likely that humans
would never have evolved. It’s
unlikely that other animals
that rely on the moon would
exist either, such as salmon and
turtles. And there definitely
wouldn’t be any werewolves :)
- Add the vinegar and stir
- Strain the mixture through
the cloth, squeezing out as
much liquid as possible
- Put the remaining solid on
the paper towel
- Shape the solid and leave to
dry in the sun for a couple
of days
What’s happening:
What you have made is
casein, a substance of milk
proteins that are also used
in making cheese. Casein is
also used in glue, paints and
plastic. It is mixed with other
chemicals to make a type of
plastic that is used for buttons.
You can make your own
buttons (or whatever else you
like) by shaping the casein
and rubbing with food dye
before drying.
From CSIRO Education
Ever found it frustrating to
type on a virtual keyboard?
Found that it is slower and
that you’re more likely to
make mistakes? You wouldn’t
be the only one.
A lot of frustration, and
some very unfortunate autocorrect mistakes, occur because the unique anatomy of
each user is not well-suited to
the standard virtual keyboard.
Technology giant IBM has
come up with a way to reduce
the distress, recently filing a
US patent application for a
virtual keyboard that morphs
the position of the keys to suit
the user. Initial calibration
involves tests to establish the
speed of typing, finger position,
and contact area, leading to alterations in the size, shape and
position of the virtual buttons.
The idea is that by creating a
unique ‘key-print’, with some
letters larger, smaller, or in a
slightly different position to
those on a standard keyboard,
the user will be able to type
more quickly and accurately.
IBM is not the only company addressing the needs of
the virtual typist; ThickButtons
is a program which predicts the
letters you are most likely to
use next while typing a word,
making these letters larger and
the less useful letters smaller.
LiquidKeyboard, a product of
the University of Technology,
Sydney, completely changes the
standard qwerty keyboard layout, assigning blocks of letters
to each finger.
While these developments
are welcome news to the users of virtual keyboards, the
promise of increased accuracy
can only be a disappointment
for fans of technology fail sites
such as ‘Damn you Autocorrect’ where the vagaries of
technology are the source of
others’ amusement.
LOT’S WIFE
don’t look back
student newspaper
Edition VI
Liftout
Culture
22 CREATIVE WRITING
Culture front page photo by Richard Plumridge
Graphic by Gabriel Kenner
Cultivated
Michelle li
It’s a marriage of convenience. They pull the wool over their guardians’ eyes —their elusive sharp remarks just this side of cruel. His
eyes, they say, are the portents of the past. Her hair, as pale and fine
as the grains in an hourglass, are the first points of anchorage for
the irresistible ebb and flow of his relentless ambition and his penetrating presence; the key to the Machiavellian glimmer behind his
irises. Together, they paint the portrait of an irretrievable youth.
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you rank. Whether or not
your desk is three floors below his or in the covetable floor above. If
your opinion of him sways to the left or to the right or to the neither
and in between. He knows. He knows how you take your tea—one
sugar, sparing milk, steam unfurling languidly into the air. He knows
that you finish work fifteen minutes early on a Friday. He knows
where you spend your weekends—Saturdays at your father’s semidetached house on Holloway Road, Sundays at your mother’s boutique. He knows that the ten-flight walk up to your apartment winds
you because the elevator has been out since May. He knows that
your birthday is on the sixteenth of October, and that you are partial
to the perfume of English tuberoses. In short, he knows more about
you than anyone else cares to.
It’s hard to understand at times. You are nobody. A paper pusher,
at best; a lackey, to be frank. His mind is naturally compelled to
blueprint the rabbit warren of connections and cabals within these
floors and halls. But you—who are you to him? There is nothing
you can offer, nothing short of a hello and perhaps some shortbread
from your desk. It’s strange because he maps out the terrain and
marks in the territories, calculating with all the skill of a cartographer the distance between now and his next rise up the ranks. But
perhaps most captivating of all is how skillfully he manipulates
those around him, with all the careless ease of a child at play, the
deep blue of his eyes as unfathomable as the steel structures that
rise around him.
It starts with a strange twist of heat in your navel when you chance
to pass him in the hazy interim between midday and afternoon. His
gaze is still sharp above the crisp navy of his tie, heedless of the
snifter or two of Armagnac that has passed his lips during his lunch
with one department head or another. The golden glow that filters
through the dusty windows suspends the moment in a perfect orb of
time; the warmth suffuses through your body, his mere glance like a
sunbeam on your skin. Then it shifts into a slow burn of desire, your
breath carefully controlled as the sleeve of his tailored suit brushes
against the back of your hand in the elevator. There are no sunbeams now. There is only the velvet expanse of what could be.
It’s a hopeless case. You need only to see her on his arm to understand the line that defines the difference between them and you,
between distinction and subpar. Beneath marble skin lie high, deli-
Book Recommendations
cate cheekbones, and above a dry thin-lipped smile emerald eyes
smolder in their beds of mascara. There is an understated elegance
to their almost feline-like grace. The gentle sway of her hips, the
careful drape of silk across her collarbones, the steady staccato of
her stilettos against the paneled floors—they resonate from within
a quiet assurance that has spread its tender roots within her character, a tacit understanding that buoys her sense of self in all the
humors of the sea. With a knowledge refined from birth, she has the
weight of centuries of breeding behind her.
It doesn’t matter that she engenders nothing within him. She is
beautiful, yes, and every inch the cultivated fritillary in first bloom.
But they are only human, and the best are always discreet. If he
finds no solace in the smoothness of her limbs, and she feels no frisson of anticipation in their sharing of breath, then they are both safe
with the knowledge that it all means nothing. What is important is
the heady rush of power, the dizzying heights of success, and the
faint arousal of ambition. What life lacks is no matter for contention.
What remains unfulfilled is unforgivable.
It’s what he keeps in mind when he beds you. You told him you were
still a virgin; his half-mast eyes told you he was intrigued. For it is a
novel experience for him, to take something unmarked by another’s
possession. For you? More than you could have hoped for. Your face
turned into the starched hotel linen, your legs wrapped around his
waist, your mind pausing in between the staggering of your gasps
and the arch of your back to realize this surreal twist of events.
What makes you special in his eyes is what has branded you as a
nobody—a person whose heat and flesh has been passed over by
even the most desperate of men in favour of an empty bed. When he
is sated, the hunger that was never in his eyes is gone, and the impenetrable façade that had never been lowered is still there. He fixes
his tie and leaves. You sit in the centre of the white counterpane, the
sheets pooled around your waist, and you understand. This is how
things are, perhaps not how they should be, but how the prodigious
wiles of men have shaped them to be.
It is a return to the status quo. He still sends you tuberoses on your
birthday and he continues to nod at your tentative greetings. There
is no extra gleam in his eye when you pass him in the halls. There is
no glimmer of recognition, only the perennial air of detachment and
cool regard. You shiver under those cold eyes—the gaze which sees
everything, but alights on nothing.
Avenues for mind expansion, from the Creative Writing Sub-editor and friends
Ani pochesneva
Josh Kenner
Aidan Kenner
michelle li
Strangeland Tracey Emin
The Elephant’s
Journey Jose Saramago
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
A Confederacy of
Dunces - John
Kennedy Toole
The Collected
Stories of Lydia
Davis
Callan
Foundation series Isaac Asimov
Society of the
Spectacle Guy Debord
vishnu chari
The Plague Albert Camus
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John Le Carré
flo dacy-cole
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
Hunting the Wild
Pineapple Thea Astley
The Secret Supper Javier Sierra
CREATIVE WRITING 23
Little Death
Smouldering
David heslin
Thomas Lew
Your body is finite and within it, your mind
is bound to decay,
long after hate or hurt or apathy
accompany your meditations
on our varied acts of congress.
IN THESE days
These fledgling days of Spring, life smoulders
Smoulders as crisp as the rough concrete against your cotton fingers.
YOU CAN almost taste your own exquisite smallness
Almost carve clay-like dolls from the pulp of your own absurdity,
In its all elusive meaning and constant expiration.
You will not survive
in books or public memory,
and nor will a half-page
celebrate your life-span.
THE DROWNING man surrenders to the river,
He would laugh at the other reed-clutchers,
Were he not breathlessly gulping away his life
Like a lioness.
My body, too, is finite
and within it, my brain
commands impulses
and reactions
fetishised since first record.
And yes, these are finite,
as are all things, living or dry –
and better that it is so.
But we breath so young.
I mean,
You are alive!
Could I forget what that means?
Oh how gorgeous your flexing muscles must seem to the infinite unmoving rocks!
THANK GOD for this
Thank anyone you please
A chance. A chance to drown in existence itself,
Until the vortex swallows all and only you.
This is transitory, but it is:
graspable, physical,
our forms celebrate their tenure.
I AM so grateful for you
Tears and tears
aidan kenner
Kind friend,
How holy to feel your presence smouldering alongside my own.
Mutual life is a miracle, and I love you
M.O.: establish
a cloud of distance.
Not puffy or wispy,
but more like fog.
A warm encompassing softness of you don’t know me and I don’t know you,
like Tom says in Miller’s Crossing,
‘Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.’
Stuart kells
A line of ants
on a white-washed wall
is very typographical
Insisting on judgement
reserved and unspoken
for now,
as we lay our cards
on the table
and sit to drink,
and speak of how things
should be, maybe,
if only everyone could see.
Utopia
david heslin
You’re rather too fat,
and the hair
on your legs, your cunt, and back
must have grown by mistake;
For, in the end,
we are
and always will be family,
as judged by history,
a kinship born
beyond the sun and
all the stars in the sky.
but that’s the way
we are these days.
I can’t picture my face
without twinges of pain or this mottled wall,
and this caked-on paint;
or your freckled neck,
and the arrhythmic beat.
Theft
I stare at my feet:
Michelle li
When I take you, your china bones grasped
tight,
All thoughts disperse—save one.
Carbon copies in flight, we are but silhouettes
Against the fabric of the sun.
Words string and tangle between us,
A perverse game of cat’s cradle.
In these sheets, so intertwined,
You’ve left me numb. Disabled.
Shower me in orchids, bloomed;
Strip me back to youth.
Lead me to Dante and his Paradise,
Away from purgatory, this truth:
You are but a calf, thrown from her mother.
Dream not of sinking steps, dear child,
Nor the echo of my leave.
For I left more than just a shirt behind:
I am the recently bereaved.
but there’s respite to this when
I’m regaled with tales of Eden
and God Almighty on the screen and for twelve bucks, I can wish it was
me.
dust
anastasia pochesneva
pregnant love stones. you’re playing a dangerous game
she says.
it’s not a game we’re playing, baby.
he whispers in her hair and holding a knife to her throat
he puts his hand up her skirt, glitter comes out. glitter
and sparkles, so dusty it is now with glitter everywhere.
ha ha
It’s a happy routine,
but the walk home always sucks
as I negotiate the cracks in the footpath,
and the unevenness of my step.
she doesn’t cry for she wants him to see the beauty too.
ponder 1
Shua
Trailing tendrils of time
curl lethargically...
Smoke of course, not time,
though the difference is now less clear.
I ask the time - 12:35 am.
Impossible, the smoke has only reached my fingertips.
24 CREATIVE WRITING
Half is better than nothing
Aidan Kenner
Slip F-18, Bahia Mar marina,
Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The docking place of one of
America’s greatest unofficial
detectives, literarily speaking...
Travis McGee, salvage
consultant, will take on a job
that you don’t want to take to
the cops or to your lawyer or
to your friends, except there’s a
good chance that Travis McGee
is your friend, or a friend of a
friend. Otherwise you wouldn’t
know about him. His cases
come about by way of friends,
or friends of friends, who
have lost something or had
something taken from them,
with no recourse for recovery.
When he’s flush, he takes his
retirement in pieces, sailing the
Florida coast and the Caribbean and sipping gin on his
houseboat, The Busted Flush,
named after the poker hand
and the memory of the game
he won it in.
When he’s not in retirement,
McGee can be found in the
pages of John D. MacDonald’s
twenty-one book Travis McGee
series. Tough, streetwise, philosophical and fighting-fit, he is
cool under all kinds of pressure
and although he often exhibits
a propensity for revenge (i.e.
in the case of a lost friend), he
nevertheless works for half the
value of the goods he has been
commissioned to recover, and
if he takes the case, he risks
expenses. When his clients
point out that his fee is high,
they are reminded that half is
better than nothing, especially
if the loot is valuable, secret, or
precious.
His adventures feature a
varied cast of women, villains
and locales, a resounding sense
of Florida and America at the
time, and rousing appearances
from his quasi-sidekick Meyer,
retired economist and fellow marina dweller. From his
beginnings in The Deep Blue
Goodbye (1964) to the last in
the series The Lonely Silver Rain
in 1985, Travis McGee blazed a
memorable and colourful trail
through the paradoxic heart
of America and some of the
great issues of our time, and it’s
a trail that has been acknowledged, as well as emulated, by
writers and readers alike to this
day.
You may wonder why I’m
talking about this dude so
much. Well, I like a good
mystery as much as the next
guy, but when I discovered
Travis McGee in The Empty
Copper Sea a few years ago, I
found out what a good mystery
novel truly was, and since that
point I’ve searched far and wide
for instalments in the McGee
series, and just about anything
and everything his creator ever
typed. Needless to say, the
public libraries don’t have very
much, and the second-hand
book stores even less, so I’m
writing this to tell you that if
one of them ever happens to
cross your path - grab it, you
won’t be disappointed.
John Dann MacDonald
(July 24, 1916 - December
28, 1986), was an American
novelist, primarily of well-loved
mysteries like the Travis McGee
series, which sold millions of
copies, but also many other
novels and works including
some science-fiction and short
stories and even a commissioned essay on the importance
of reading entitled Reading For
Survival. In the words of Carl
Hiaasen, Mr. MacDonald told
“a rip-roaring yarn”, and his
distinctive voice speaks straight
from the page. His novel The
Empty Trap is, to me, a delicate
study in rebirth, and his novel
The Damned is straight-up one
of the best books I’ve ever read.
He captured Florida in a
powerful light with his writing.
The sense of place absolutely
oozes off the page, and through
his rusty knight Travis McGee,
John MacDonald brought that
place with all of its beauty and
corruption, people and business, into a strong and unique
focus for his readership. His
novel The Executioners has been
filmed twice, both times as
Cape Fear, and another book A
Flash of Green was filmed with
Ed Harris.
The question, as I suppose it
is so often, is where do Travis
McGee and John MacDonald
stand in literature? From what
shelf, in the libraries upon
libraries of mystery writers,
and more than that, of all
writers, are we drawing from?
For me, it’s top-shelf whiskey,
but it’s different for everyone.
Dean Koontz, mystery writer,
agreed with me in an interview,
saying that Mr. MacDonald
was his “...favourite author of
all time,” and Stephen King is
widely quoted as praising him
for being “the great entertainer
of our age, and a mesmerizing
storyteller”. Although sadly
he is no longer with us, his
stories are most definitely here,
just waiting to be found, like
Jimmy Buffett sings in ‘Incommunicado’, “Travis McGee’s
still in Cedar Key, That’s what
ol’ John MacDonald said..”
John D. MacDonald was an
author who wrote about what
he knew, and what he saw, and
made no apologies. His messages on the environment and his
visions of encroaching business
interests were in many ways
Ed Harris in A Flash of Green
ahead of their time, and marvellously couched in very classy
mystery fiction. His lead characters, a la Travis McGee, are
tough but fallible, like us all. As
Travis himself says: “Every day
you learn something new about
yourself, and all most of it does
is teach humility”.
The Art of Mindful Gardening
By Ark Redwood
anastasia pochesneva
AUD $19.99 inc. GST
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Spring time is calling! Next
month, those with hayfever
will start exploding, hibernators will crawl out of their
caves, people will start falling
in love, it will finally be
warm… and best of all, the
flowers and vegetables will
start their growth spurts and
bloom.
If you are like me, and
have planted or want to plant
more, and have no idea what
to do - I suggest reading The
Art of Mindful Gardening by
Ark Redwood. It is a small,
hardcover book that pushes
you in the direction of zen
gardening and explains the very
basics of seasons, plants, compost and nature. It is a really
beautiful book. To hold, look
at, and read.
Redwood is a life long student of Zen Buddhism under
the teachings of Zen master,
Thich Nhat Hanh. He speaks
to you in a peaceful, poetic
tone that is reminiscent of the
writings of Rumi. And draws
the reader into being grateful
to the plant, the fullness and
emptiness of just being, and the
earth’s regenerative ways.
If you enjoy meditation,
nature, your garden and want
to encourage yourself and your
plants to be healthy, then buy
this book. It is a jewel.
Graphic by Gabriel Kenner
MUSIC 25
Interview with Owl Eyes
Seeker Lover Keeper
jillian mcEwan
laura bishop
music editor
radio monash
Campbell mcnolty
radio monash
Welcome back Radio
Monash for another semester.
We started off the semester in
style with our Launch Party
at the Order of Melbourne.
Candice Monique and the
Optics supported by Saskwatch and the OMGeeees put
on a blistering show. Thanks
to everyone who came down.
Radio Monash programs
have commenced for another
semester. We have a choice
selection of diverse shows all
programmed by students. As
always our website is the place
to head for more information or to listen to our live
stream. Check it out at www.
radiomonash.fm
If you’re kicking yourself
for not submitting that program application you might
be in luck. We still have a
few vacancies for weekly
programs. If you or your
friends would like to present a
weekly show in any genre you
like, contact programming@
radiomonash.net for more
information. Get in quickly!
Have a great semester and
keep listening to great student
radio.
Devendra
Banhart
Prince Bandroom,
July 29
patricia tobin
radio monash
Before hitting Splendour in
the Grass, Devendra Banhart
and his four-piece band spent a
night at the jam-packed Prince
Bandroom last Friday. Clad in
a battered leather jacket and
skinny jeans, Banhart looked
more like a guitar-rockin’, indie
superstar rather than the folky,
animal-loving hippy he was
better known to be. Fortunately, his incomparable quirkiness
and buckets of creative talent
were still present that night.
His beard too, of course.
To kick off the evening, Banhart wooed the audience with
his quavering croons on the
doo-wop stomp ‘Shabop Shalom, Jane’. Superbly supported
by his remarkably precise band,
his captivating voice was not to
be reckoned with as he plunged
into crowd favourites ‘Angelika’
and ‘Baby’. Banhart’s affectionate charm and light-hearted
banter were further welcomed
with yelps and trills.
At one point in the night,
It could be argued that Australia has produced its own
female supergroup. Seeker
Lover Keeper brings together
three of Australia’s most
individual and enthralling
songwriters. The combination
of Sally Seltmann’s whimsical melodies and nostalgic
songwriting style teamed
with Sarah Blasko’s hauntingly beautiful vocals and
Holly Throsby’s calming tones
makes Seeker Lover Keeper a
must for those wanting to
be aurally swept away. Their
debut self-titled album is a
collection of tunes written
and performed exclusively by
the three songstresses.
As the name of the trio suggests, there is a strong focus
on seeking and keeping love
in all its forms through many
of the songs on the album.
Lead vocals and song writing responsibilities are shared
equally around the group
adding a unique twist to the
idea of a band with three lead
vocalists. The tracks range from
haunting melodies such as the
opening track ‘Bring Me Back’
to boppy pop rhythms like
‘Rely On Me’ and also whimsical, nostalgic tracks like ‘On
My Own’. In fact, much of the
album consists of reminiscent
tracks detailing the difficulty
of love in an ever changing and
moving society.
There is but one song on this
album which brings all three
artists to the forefront; ‘Rest
Your Head On My Shoulders’
serves as a Kumbaya-esque
campfire folk song which
captures much of the group’s
musical charm. Notable tracks
include the album’s first single;
Holly Throsby performing a
Sally Seltmann creation called
‘Even Though I’m a Woman’
which tells the story of a
complicated love between a
constantly travelling woman
and her stagnant partner. The
immense honesty in Throsby’s
voice renders this track a
powerful reminder about the
detachment of modern love.
Along with the aforementioned catchy and memorable
tracks are also a small number
of arguably mundane tunes
which border on emotionally
draining bores. That being
said, the overall effect of the
album is positive and will have
you pining for summer and
reminiscing back on your own
attempts at taming the allusive
and treacherous knave called
love.
Dananananaykroyd - There Is A Way
Bill murphy
radio monash
On a fateful night down in
Sydney’s Annandale Hotel,
Dananananaykroyd drummer-slash-vocalist John Bailie
Jnr tried to crowd-surf and
brutally snapped his arm in
three places. After emergency
surgery, he realised that he’d
not be able to play the drums
as hard as their 2009 debut
Hey Everyone! required him to.
When it seemed like a
situation only a lot of hard
liquor could fix, JBJ dropped
the drums and took up vocals
full time. This was the start of
something a lot better; their
second album, There Is A Way.
For what Danananaykroyd
lost in noise from having two
drum-kits, they lost none of
their energy and punk aggression. Rather, they gained restraint and even more melody.
There Is A Way finds them
working with Ross Robinson,
whose influence (Robinson
produced Relationship of Command for crying out loud)
has polished the hardcore-like
intensity to a point of possible
cross-over material.
‘Reboot’ opens the album,
calling forth the more recent
efforts of ...Trail Of Dead and
setting a standard of boisterousness for all songs to follow,
which they do. ‘All Us Authors’ and ‘Glee Cells Trade’
find John Bailie Jnr. and the
other lead singer Calum Gunn
bouncing off each other vocally,
reaching almost hysteria set
to art-punk guitars. ‘Muscle
Memory’ and ‘Think and
Feel’ sound like a dancier and
punker Les Savy Fav, both being catchier than malaria in a
third-world country. The latter
‘Da-na-na-na-na-na-na’ hook
is likely to burrow into your
head. ‘Make A Fist’ and ‘Seven
Days Late’ are just incredibly
epic, the latter of which is
not just the best track on the
album, but one of the best of
this year.
On the list of worst band
names ever, Dananananaykroyd would have to rate fairly
high. It’s a given. However,
don’t dismiss them because
of the name, as they’ve also
become one of the best punk
bands around with the release
of There Is A Way. The crazy
Scots have taken the relentless
aggression and melody from
their debut and channelled it
into a fiercely precise dancepunk record. It’s precise and
loose, aggressive and melodic,
anarchic and restrained and
above all, just really fun. If
there’s a fault with this album,
it’s not blatantly obvious.
Other rock bands, are you
even trying?
the band left to rest, leaving
Banhart alone on stage to
perform a miniature solo set.
Armed with just his guitar,
the stage lights dimmed as the
leading man began with the
achingly beautiful ‘The Body
Breaks’. Not a sound escaped
the masses and only after he
sang his last line did the crowd
finally break into rapturous
cheers. Followed by the incredibly enduring ‘At the Hop’, the
hazy sways of ‘Bad Girl’ and
the Jeff Buckley-chanelling
‘A Sight to Behold’, Banhart’s
exquisite aura led someone to
whisper, “This is so beautiful...I
feel like I’m going to cry”.
“Pay attention to the lyrics,”
Banhart said before he dived
into outrageously obscure
covers from exotic origins
with one song that ran “I am
a good sport / I am a sports-
man”. However, it was none
other than epic rocker ‘Seahorse’ that proved Banhart as a
man with an undeniable stage
presence. Shifting effortlessly
from the serenading sounds of
being ‘high, happy and free’
to the frantic rush of churning
guitar strums, Banhart’s zest
and dynamicism were utterly
infectious.
While belting out ‘Long
Haired Child’, Banhart’s sweeping arms started gesturing for
a dance, as his voice shivered,
“When my baby slips out my
mama’s womb / We’re gonna
enter a new life / Enter a new
life, that’s for sure”. But it was
none other than Spanish number ‘Carmencita’ that sent the
band onstage and the crowd
wild, gleefully chanting along
“Lalalala...”
As the end of the night ap-
proached, Banhart began apologizing, “Sorry for not playing
any new songs...” but the
crowd didn’t seem to mind.
With his clever intermeshing
of soothing folk melodies and
jamming guitar rock tunes, his
musical greatness was present
throughout the night.
Banhart had ditched his
leather jacket and guitar for
the encore, and was now
making full use of his liberated limbs. He basked in the
freedom of his unconstrained
body – his arms outstretched,
his hips jerked, his lean figure
squiggled. Closing off with ‘I
Feel Like A Child’, Banhart’s
sudden burst of peculiar bodily movements captured the
essence of his demeanour and
the night perfectly – a loveable sense of eccentricism, and
full of unstoppable vigour.
White Wards – Waste My Time 7”
Andrew wright
music editor
Is it a single? Is it an E.P.? Is
it a… of course it’s a bloody
E.P. Punk is designed around
the E.P. Short and (relatively)
cheap, it’s the perfect format for
a style that boasts some of the
briefest pieces of music with a
typical song structure and that
irrepressible DIY thing going
on.
I walked into a prominent
Bourke Street record store on
a recent trip to the CBD, and
asked for something that was
new and very loud to review.
The shopkeeper’s recommendation was this, the $10 7” White
Wards E.P. Wasting My Time.
I’d never come across them. I
doubt many of you have either.
White Wards are a hardcore
punk band from Olympia,
WA. I believe that this is their
first non-demo recording, but I
might be wrong. There’s sparse
information about them on the
internet.
The first thing I noticed is
that neither side of the record
is marked. There’s no way of
telling which is the A-side or
the B-side, but given the nature
of the songs, this distinction
probably isn’t too important.
‘EVERYTHING ENDS IN
ROT’ and ‘FAMILY VAN
R.I.P.’ are the only markers,
carved into the run-out groove.
The insert sheet is similarly
obscure, looking like some kind
of demented X-Ray film gone
through a typewriter.
But, the songs… well, to me
they sounded like a less refined
version of Black Flag (Early
Rollins), with barely intelligible vocals and copious atonal
guitar feedback. There are some
hints at melody, which I guess
is what the casual listener takes
pleasure in straining out. With
titles like ‘Tear The Veins Out’
and ‘Fucking A Dead Body’,
one can guess at the songs’
subject matter. Of course,
once you get your mind in the
right place, it’s all good fun.
That’s the problem for the
punk outsider. It requires
effort to get your head in the
right place to enjoy it. But,
is it worth the effort when
you could just as easily, and
perhaps (paradoxically) less
expensively, listen to the aural
MSG of The xx, Massive Attack or even U2? All are bands
that are steeped in praise
I interviewed Brooke Addamo
better known as Owl Eyes just
days after her guest appearance
with Illy at Splendour in the
Grass ahead of her national
tour.
You’ve just come back from
Splendour. How was it?
It was such a great experience; I got to meet Devendra
Banhart the person who I
named myself after. Watching
all the bands – Coldplay were
amazing and Illy had a great
crowd, so all up it was a great
weekend. I might be collaborating with Clare Boweditch
and I got to hang out with
her, which was really nice.
You appeared on Australian
Idol in 2008, was it a good
experience? Did you find
the exposure helpful or a
hindrance in making a name
yourself?
Neither really, it was just an
awkward teenage experience
phase on TV. I came out of it
very confused. I got pushed in
a lot of directions and came
out of it knowing what I
didn’t want to be. Then I took
a few years just to really focus
on my artistry and working
out what came naturally to
me, and I think that really
paid off in the end.
You mentioned appearing
on stage at Splendour with
Illy for It Can Wait, do you
think your collaboration
with him helped gain you
more exposure at the beginning?
Definitely, I feel it was a good
thing for me to do. He’s a
great artist in his own right,
but it’s completely different to
what I am and I still kept my
imagery. So I feel like it was a
different thing outside of my
comfort zone which was good
for me.
Do you like stretching
yourself past your comfort
zone and pushing what your
comfortable with?
With collaborations definitely;
I like doing something that’s
a bit different and interesting. He works with the same
producer as I work with (Jan
Skubiszeweski). I really respect
Jan’s work.
I hear that finding the perfect producer for you took
a fair while, what was it like
when you finally found Jan?
Did it just click immediately?
It kind of did just click immediately. I know I found it
hard, a lot of people didn’t
understand me, or my direction, or they tried to change
what I wanted. So I felt a bit
frustrated by the end of it.
So by the time I found Jan, I
thought ‘this is exactly what I
want to do and this is who I
am’. I didn’t know exactly but
I had my ideas, and he didn’t
try and change that, and he
likes the same music I like. I
feel like he brings out the best
in people. He doesn’t try to
alter them, just get the most
out of them.
So he enhances your natural
talent? Do you feel like he’s
helped with your growth
process and helped you find
the sound you were going
for?
in the anonymous world of
criticism, but you’re unlikely
to meet anyone who will admit
they like that last option in the
Den…
But, criticisms and ponderings aside, it’s an interesting
record. I’d personally spend
I feel like Jan is a mentor to
me now, he’s pretty much a big
brother. I feel like I knew what
I wanted, he just bought some
of it out. He’s a genius at what
he does and I have so much
respect for him.
With regards to Faces your
first EP, I hear that you and
Jan only took five days to
produce it. Did Raiders take a
similar trajectory? Or was it a
longer process?
(laughs) No it didn’t take five
days, I felt like that was just a
really big fluke. The first time
(writing Faces) we’d just met,
we were writing songs and just
experimenting and then I got
signed on those songs and they
became an EP. The second time
around I knew I was writing
an EP, so I took my time a bit
more to try and make it more
in the vein of my whole [image]. I wanted to make it more
like a mini album, songs that
actually fit on the same CD,
not just a bunch of songs. It
took a bit longer, but I didn’t
want to rush anything.
When Faces was released it
was just you with Geordie
Hewitt, you now have a full
band, are the members set?
Being a solo artist it’s never
really set in stone, people are
always changing around and
doing other things. But I feel
like my band is pretty solid at
the moment, everything’s still
new to everyone, and I’m still
working out my place, but I
feel that it’s a pretty good lineup at the moment.
Your upcoming Raiders EP
tour has a hell of a lot of
dates; will this be your longest tour yet? How are you
feeling about it?
Yes, 16 dates is my longest
tour so far, I feel excited, my
Melbourne show sold out and
I opened another one 3 weeks
in advance. I’m really grateful
for that, I didn’t expect that at
all. I was kind of a bit nervous
when I looked at some of the
venues. It’s great, such a good
thing going into a tour and
your Melbourne show sells out.
That’s really fun and I’m excited
to go places like Tasmania,
which I haven’t been to before.
I’m co-headlining there with
Stonefield and doing a couple
of under-age gigs. It’s going to
be really fun.
You mentioned that you
might be collaborating with
Clare Boweditch? Is there
anyone else you’d like to work
with?
I haven’t really told anyone
about that yet, I don’t know
what we’re going to do. She’s
building a studio in her home,
and invited me to come down
and work on some things. I’ve
never really worked with a female before, which I’m excited.
It’ll be a nice perspective. Im
keen for anyone interesting to
collaborate with. Everything
is busy with the tour but I’d
like to go over to Europe and
work with people in Paris and
the UK. I’m really excited by
Australian female artists. I got
to see Seeker Lover Keeper
and I’m a massive fan of Sarah
Blasko – she’s just beautiful and
talented.
You can catch Owl Eyes at the
Northcote Social Club on the
21st of August, but be quick
tickets are selling fast.
money on more 80s hardcore,
but it’s nice to see that this particular vein of musical heritage
is kept alive across the pond.
Oh, and I’d say that the
‘EVERYTHING ENDS IN
ROT’ side is slightly better.
26 MUSIC
Kode9 & The Spaceape - Black Sun
Released: April 2011
Label: Hyperdub
Rattlesnakes: A Brief Lloyd Cole
Primer
Andrew wright
Joshua kenner
music editor
editor-in-chief
Black Sun is the second
release from Doctor-in-Philosophy Steve Goodman (aka
Kode9) and his extraterrestrial
MC collaborator The Spaceape.
It has depth, this album, and I
should say I haven’t fully made
up my mind about it at the
time of writing. The first release
from Kode9 & The Spaceape,
Memories of the Future, I hold
in very high esteem, and so I’m
aware that I don’t really like the
new album in part just because
it’s different, and not necessarily for any other reason.
Parting with the slow, subbass-drenched, moody dubstep
of the original, Black Sun is
full of constant motion. Lots
of oddly-placed beats and
bouncy bossa nova–inspired
basslines characterise many
of the tracks. And the music
in general is more prominent
than in the original. Not that
it’s better; in fact I like it much
less. Memories of the Future is a
brilliant study in subtlety. Dark
soundscapes and deep throbbing bass undulate beneath The
Spaceape’s voice, and percussive
variation generally conforms
to the lyrics. By contrast, Black
Sun largely dispenses with
the ‘dub’ part of dubstep and
instead we get lots of mid-range
synth and techno style. Also,
there are more instrumental
tracks than in the original,
which on most albums I would
never complain about, but this
is The Spaceape we’re talking
about.
The Spaceape – with a
strangely accented voice
so magnificently deep and
resonant you almost have no
choice but to listen – is far
better in the original album. In
Memories, his dark dystopian
rhymes are poignant explorations of society and the human
condition. Plus, Kode9 uses
The Spaceape’s voice more as an
instrument, layering it with reverb and other effects to blend
with the other low frequencies.
In this new album, not only
does The Spaceape’s voice seem
to lack its resonant depth, but
the lyrics seem less poetic.
There is less structure, more basic rhymes and repeated lines.
In the first album too, there
are lines and phrases repeated,
but they are spread throughout
the album in different tracks to
create an effect of reoccurring
themes and ideas. In Black
Sun, The Spaceape quite often
ends up chanting the same
line over and over again for
half the song.
‘Neon Red Sign’ is my
favourite track on the album,
both lyrically and musically,
and in terms of how the two
coalesce. Whereas in comparison, the track ‘Am I’ I
find both lyrically and musically annoying. The Spaceape
introspects: “Am I…[something paradoxical]/Am I…
[something else paradoxical]/
Am I…[yet another something paradoxical],” over and
over. And some of the lines
are admittedly mildly clever,
but after about a minute in I
feel like yelling out, “for fuck’s
sake we get it – a person is a
paradox – move on already!”
Lyrically, nothing on this
album is anywhere near the
quality of ‘Portal’, ‘Quantum’,
and several others from Memories of the Future. Nevertheless
I admit Black Sun is really
good; it’s hard to deny. It may
be a break in style that isn’t
at all to my taste, but it’s still
good music. The production
is excellent, and each track
is quite individual while still
fitting together as a cohesive
whole.
Veludo
Café: Milan
Andrew wright
music editor
I’ve arrived 15 minutes early.
A young woman with a guitar
and blue hair is playing on a
corner stage. Typical coffeeshop
style music, the kind you read
about in articles on bohemian
living. Probably a little poppy
too, maybe some Jewel or even
Alanis Morisette. She ends her
set and RnB-tinged hiphop
crossover takes over the P.A.
I’m here to see Milan (his
real name). I met him at the
John Curtin Hotel two months
previously. A friend of the wellchampioned Little Audrey, I’m
anxious to see what he can do.
Especially considering that he
asked me to write a review of
his E.P., which, at writing, has
still not arrived.
Milan is a young man with
hair of Sly Stone proportions.
He carries a guitar on his back
and a beer in his hand. I’m the
first person he sees as he shows
up to Veludo Bar (ten minutes
prior to his slot, of course). I
wave, he remembers me, exchanges pleasantries and heads
to the amenities.
Before his set starts, let’s
discuss the venue. Located on
colourful Acland St, Veludo
Bar and Cafe is an atmospheric, cozy… enough with the
copywriting. Veludo’s strikes
me as pleasant, if a little nervewracking. These venues are a
little foreign to me, but I’m
more than willing to explore.
There’s a downstairs restaurant
section that I didn’t investigate,
as well as the upstairs bar area.
It regularly hosts performers on
its little stage. The atmosphere
is, on the whole, intimate,
and offers open space on the
balcony for fresh air. I could
hear the music within whilst
walking up Acland St.
As soon as my friend Nina
arrives, we order drinks. I’m
in the mood for something a
little warmer than Tiger Beer,
so after a rather perplexing
exchange with the barman I
arrange for ‘something good’
and coffee. It arrives for $10
and includes ‘a few goodies’. It’s
very strong coffee… maybe a
shot of whiskey, one of brandy
and perhaps even a touch of
Cointreau. Whatever’s in there,
my head is spinning after I
down the whole thing.
After Milan disappears, Little
Audrey himself arrives. Guy
(his real name) tells me that the
soundman is late, and we get a
conversation going. Bands from
Perth? Tame Impala, Dead Letter Circus, Jebediah and Effigy.
Guy owes me a DVD full of
Nouveau Vague films (I want
to watch Breathless, because I’ve
heard it’s a good movie.
You may not have heard of
Lloyd Cole. Indeed, he has
had few solid hits, and nearly
all of them were in the eighties. His reputation amongst
the rock cognescenti is,
however, that of an overlooked
genius or an underappreciated
songster. Lloyd’s experienced
a bit of a renaissance recently,
after touring Australia in 2009
and earlier this year, releasing
a 4-Disc B-side box set and
a new (fan-funded!) album.
Could his music be experiencing a renewal of the hipster
interest not seen since his
indie-pop heyday? With actual, real-live modern hipsters?
First, a little of a biographical introduction. Cole was
born in Buxton, Derbyshire,
in the upper midlands of
England. The reason he’s geographically grouped with Scottish groups like Orange Juice
and The Blue Nile is because
he went to Uni in Glasgow.
There, he formed the band
that would take him to the
top of the pops and back. The
Commotions were an ably
talented bunch of musicians
who turned Cole’s coffee-shop
crooning into suave indie-pop.
With a band in tow and
a head full of contemporary
literature, Cole set about
recording his debut album in
1984, Rattlesnakes. I’ll make
my point right now, so you
don’t miss it. If you run out
and buy a Lloyd Cole album
after reading this little subjective analysis, you must buy
this album. Actually get rid
of that wankery at the start of
that sentence; you must buy
this album.
As you must’ve now
guessed, Rattlesnakes is a dear
personal treasure to me. One of
the few albums that my parents
both liked, it got a fair few plays
in my dad’s house. He was the
one that told me that the first
track was brilliant, the second
was very good, and the third
the best pop song ever written.
Rattlesnakes is a striking
album, but not in the most immediate way. Its cover is a photograph of a door. Yes, a door,
but not just any door – the
grimy, musky looking door that
can only belong to a run-down
Glaswegian student bedsit.
To tell the truth, that’s what I
thought Uni was going to be
like (thanks to Blackboard and
Uni Bureaucratics, there was a
sharp learning curve ahead).
If you were to demark a gimmick of Cole, you’d probably
pick his lyrics. Dropping names
like Leonard Cohen, Norman
Mailer, Turman Capote and
referencing Joan Didion, you
can kind of guess that Lloyd
was an Arts student. Far from
being a cheesy lyrical technique, he carries it off very
well, with a tongue-in-cheek
cleverness that would be hard
to reproduce in modern rock
and pop.
The songs are a little like
R.E.M if they were more insecure and less vague (we’re talking their first 4 albums here).
Key example – ‘Speedboat’.
A marvellous trip through
what it is to be unpopular, to
live in the slow lane of youth
and “take notes, trusting in
prudence”. That’s me to a tee
in highschool. Uncle Lloyd
was, inevitably, a dear friend
who didn’t mind me quietly
writing instead of being Corey
Worthington.
‘Perfect Skin’ is an ode to
that mythical indie girl, a
woman who, with the glamour
of Greta Garbo, will take your
hand and show you the livelier
side of life (without letting go).
It also has my mum’s favourite
lyric in it – “She’s got cheekbones like geometry/and eyes
like sin”.
I’d like to draw your attention to the title track. ‘Rattlesnakes’ has everything that
a song needs: simple chords,
pining lyrics and one of the
finest string arrangements that
has ever graced a pop song
(‘Unfinished Sympathy’ notwithstanding). Look it up on
YouTube if you’d like an inroad
to Cole’s works.
Sadly, however, most people
stop at the brilliance of Rattlesnakes. Go to any JB-HiFi or
other record store and, more
often than not, it’s the only
trace of Lloyd Cole in stock.
Truth is, Cole has released two
more albums with the Commotions and nine as a solo artist
(not counting compilations or
live albums). They’re all very
good, and well worth checking out. Over the years he’s
ventured into folk, electronica,
country and even ambient
music (Plastic Wood). A writer
of quality music and highly
literary lyrics, Lloyd Cole deserves as much praise as can be
garnered for the greats.
Guy is recording Milan’s
first E.P. (“in it’s early stages,”
according to the photographeron-duty Adam Dean). Guy,
being the gentleman that he
is, plays me a couple of tracks
on surprisingly bassy Hong
Kong headphones. The first,
a lengthy six-minute acoustic
ode called ‘Hope’, opens with
Milan’s acoustic guitar and surpringly deep baritone – his demure stature is deceiving. His
Dylan influence shines through
when the harmonica arrives at
the two-minute mark, but I’d
say his lyrics are more Cohen
than Zimmerman – they have
a plainess about them that Bob
tended to eschew in his earlier
days. Heavy bass swells and
doesn’t relent, becoming a pair
of walls housing Milan’s guitar
and song. I’m enamoured by
the final organ chord, which is
held for the last 30 seconds of
the song. Time will tell if this
quirk survives the edit.
‘Pink Avenue’ is the next
teaser taste. A much more
upbeat song than its predecessor, it brings happier feelings to
the table. I can’t quite remember what it sounded like, but
it went for barely a minute.
After listening, another threequarters of an hour passes. The
sound system is set up and
Milan takes the stage. He opens
with an original composition,
entitled ‘Who Will Love You
Now?’. A decent showcase of
his guitar and neck-harmonica
prowess, it proves a pleasant
introduction to this afro-haired
performer. More please.
Milan is meek, laconic, even
sheepish on stage, but this
could well be an affectation. He
begins strumming his second
piece and his voice comes to
fore. A surprisingly deep croon,
Milan’s voice channels 75%
Bill Callahan, 25% Nick Cave.
His lyrics are excellent for such
a young performer – perhaps
a literary background? Or too
much Leonard Cohen? A Dylan cover gets a throw around
(‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All
Right’) and then a few more of
Milan’s own..
Milan’s brief set finishes
with a rather passionate cover
of Lennon’s ‘Working Class
Man’. Obviously one to honour
the greats of the art, Milan
likely polishes his craft none
too seriously, but with great
dedication. The names that
I’ve dropped, like Cave, Dylan,
Cohen and Smog, all have great
weight attached to them – just
listen in to the conversation
of any passing rock snob. Just
dedicated, simple songwriters,
many of whom have gained the
esteem and acclaim reserved
for writers of classic literature.
Milan obviously traces their
hallmarks with care. After all,
if you’ve got your eye on the
pantheon, why not mimic the
gods?
Editors’ Recommendations
josh
Tim
Shpongle - Are You Shpongled?
MF DOOM and Madlib - Madvillainy
The be all and end all of psychedelic electronica, this
album has influenced hundreds of artists in the genre and
yet remains unsurpassed. Shpongle began when Simon
Posford and Raja Ram attended a solar eclipse in India and
immediately afterwards attempted to sonically replicate the
experience in the studio. No other album I’ve ever heard as
effectively captures aspects of what it sounds like on dmt.
Madvillainy is an amazing album featuring rapper MF
Doom and producer Madlib; it was praised for its unique
and innovative approach to hip hop: short tracks, abstract
lyrics, few choruses and a sound generally unfriendly to
commercial radio.
Plaid - Double Figure
Bob Marley and The Wailers - Catch A Fire
There’s a particular satisfaction I get out of listening to
Plaid that no other artist delivers. The playful quircks and
conflagration of genre, the variation, while still retaining
its own unique sound, is just brilliant. Each Plaid album is
quite different, and I like them all, but Double Figure is my
favourite. I’ll never get over ‘Assault On Precinct Zero’ as
long as I live.
This album was the major album debut for Bob Marley
and the Wailers. It made them international superstars. I
smoked so much weed in high school, that when I was a
teenager I had a huge poster of Bob Marley on my wall,
and in the painting he was wearing a t-shirt with me on it.
MUSIC 27
Interview with Children Collide
jillian mcEwan
music editor
Before Children Collide headed
off to Splendour in the Grass,
I managed a quick chat with
drummer Ryan Ceaser and threw
him a few curly questions about
hair, filming, song inspiration,
and their tour this month.
I’ve just been watching the
clip for Loveless, which I
thought was really cool. The
first thing I wanted to ask was
whether Johnny took much
convincing to shave off all his
hair?
It was his idea! That’s how the
whole clip came about. He said
to us ‘We should do a clip for
Loveless where we shave my
head in one constant shot.’
Some of his ideas we thought
would be cool but could be
a bit too earnest if not done
properly, so out of the blue
Johnny contacted the director
who directed Animal Kingdom,
David Michôd. And he said
he’d love to do it, which was
great because we’re all huge
fans of Animal Kingdom. So he
then took on Johnny’s idea and
made it his own and made it
really cool. I never got to meet
him unfortunately; I just said
hi to him in an email.
Was there any symbolism
behind it, because I know
Johnny used the tarot cards
for connecting to songs on
the album, what was the reason for shaving his head?
I think the song was kind of
about an ex-girlfriend and
sometimes people cut their hair
after relationships.
Oh, okay I hadn’t thought
about it like that. An image
change is always good after a
relationship I think we can all
relate to that.
Fortunately it was shaving off
a horrible haircut in the first
place. (laughs.)
Have you seen the Ball Park
Music clip for ‘Rich People
are Stupid’ by any chance?
Because they’ve also done a
one-taker, Sam shaves off his
mo and smokes it.
(laughs) That’s a really good
one, no I haven’t seen it. He
shaves off his mo and smokes
it? That must’ve tasted really
bad.
You’d think so. I actually
saw their clip before yours,
noticed the similarities and
when I found out yours was
filmed last year, and their
clip was only uploaded a few
months ago, I was wondering
whether you guys thought
they’d copied the shaving
idea?
you record into the night?
Oh I’m sure the hours will be
pretty long. Studios cost a lot
so you want to make the most
of the time you have in there.
You can spend ages trying to
get one thing right then realise
it doesn’t sound right in the
song, so it’s good to put in long
hours.
(laughs) No I don’t think so,
maybe Johnny smoked his hair
after the filming the clip. We’ll
never know.
I was reading the band bio on
your website, and I was quite
intrigued by how well read
you guys seem. Johnny references Alchemy and chemistry,
reason and religion, love and
logic. It makes me wonder whether there’s deeper
meaning and complexity
behind your music than I first
thought. Has it always been
like that since your beginnings in 2005, or is it something that you’ve acquired
along the way?
This question would probably
be better answered by Johnny.
We’ve always been into finding
stuff that interests us. Johnny’s
always been into obscure scientific facts, I don’t know, but I
hope it’s always been there.
On Triple J, I first heard
you guys when they played
‘Farewell Rocket Ship’, how
influential have they been in
helping you get exposure?
Oh, massively. They’re probably
the single biggest thing. Without them I don’t think we’d be
doing much. With the whole
Australian radio scene you’ve
either got commercial radio, or
Triple J. For broader national
exposure for alternative bands
and stuff Triple J is the thing.
And they’ve been incredible,
absolutely incredible.
So you guys are coming on
tour in August, what are you
doing in the mean time? Are
you just taking a break?
We were meant to be doing
some demoing but I think
we’re ready to start recording,
the album. We’ve got a bit a
of a break, then Splendour [in
the Grass] then the tour, and
then we’ll be getting started on
recording the new album.
I was reading an interview
with you back from 2009 and
you said you have about 40
songs on the backburner.
Yeah they’re still there, there’s
heaps. We try and dip into
them for albums. But Johnny’s
been writing a lot by himself,
and I think we’re going to start
writing more closer towards
the recording of the album. So
there’s going to be a bunch of
new songs. And I don’t know
Do you have a set time
booked in the studio?
whether we’ll lift any of the
old ones. We might but I think
we’re interested in progressing a bit. We’re going to take a
different approach to recording, probably spend a bit more
time and try and do some more
interesting stuff.
So Johnny does most of the
lyrics, other than that is it a
joint effort? What about the
instrumentation?
It depends, we’ve all sort of
written differently. Sometimes
it’ll be just from jamming in
the rehearsal room. Sometimes
Johnny will have a part and
start playing a bass line and
we’ll work off that. Or sometimes he’ll come in with a full
song. It’s cool. I think this
album may lean more towards
Johnny having an idea and then
us building it in the studio, it’ll
be written more in the studio.
Everything that we’re doing is
more of a broad idea, and we’re
going to use the studio as more
of a tool to write, which should
be great fun because everything
else we’ve done has been like
‘Okay we’re a rock band, lets go
in and record what we do,’ as
opposed to having freedom, or
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars overseas.
What was it like touring in
the US? You’ve been gaining
quite a bit of traction over
there.
Its been good there. Most of
the touring we’ve done over
there has been relatively easy.
Other than the travel involved,
we’re always away for a long
time when we go overseas,
mostly we fly to cities here and
there. But one tour we drove
across the country, the band we
were touring with pulled out of
the first three gigs in Cali, did
one in Seattle and then pulled
out of the rest of the tour with
over a month left so we had
to do the tour as a relatively
Graphic by Gabriel Kenner
unknown band.
The Long Now was recorded
in LA, where was Theory
of Everything recorded and
where will you be based for
the next album?
Theory of Everything was
recorded all over the place, in
Spain and the UK, half in LA
again and the rest in the same
studio we’ll be using for the
whole album in Collingwood.
It’s going to be great doing the
whole album at home, and
being able to go home and chill
out instead of going back to
a weird hotel room. The first
album we all lived in this tiny
apartment together, and by the
end of it we were all ready to
kill each other. This tiny apartment in the middle of Hollywood, it was intense. It was
amazing though.
When you aren’t touring do
you give each other space?
We all live rather close to
each other. I used to live with
Heath, and before that I lived
with Johnny. When its time
off its time off, but then when
we’re back with the band it’s a
24-hour a day thing, you’ve got
to do what the band’s doing.
24-hour days? Literally? Do
I don’t actually know how long
we’ve got booked this time.
Our management company
actually own the studio, our
manager and tour manager are
married, and Chris Chaney
from The Living End and his
wife own the studio, which is
actually under the management
office.
So how did that work out? Is
Chris Chaney involved at all?
No, Ray Harvey, The Living
End’s manager also manages us,
which is pretty cool, The Living
End being the biggest rock
band in Australia. Being able to
say hello to them is pretty cool.
You can catch Children Collide
at the Corner Hotel on Sunday
August 14. For bookings check
the Corner Hotel website.
28 FILM/THEATRE
Monash University Student Theatre
Slowness of Eternity
39 Steps
estelle pham
Joshua Kenner
film editor
Here I want to share my
thoughts on a subject that
spans across three films I have
seen at the Melbourne International Film Festival: Kivu
Ruhorahoza’s Grey Matter,
Phan Đăng Di’s Bi, don’t be
afraid and Sivaroj Kongsakul’s,
Eternity.
In all these films I have heard
people scorn after and even
during the film, saying “This
film is so slow!”
I feel that people are too
quick to judge films based on
‘slowness’. Slowness does not
equal awful. I do acknowledge
that some films are just lacking
too many features and render
the cinematic experience a
disappointment.
Yet the ability to watch a
slow film also comes down to
patience. During the screening of Eternity I think at least
40 people walked out of the
cinema! It was distracting but
more importantly it made me
curious as to why people would
do that. Yes everyone has different cinematic expectations
and experiences, but I feel that
cinema audiences (I can only
speak for the ones I’ve seen in
Melbourne) have inadvertently
editor-in-chief
clogged themselves into accelerated cinema. I don’t mean that
people go to the movies to find
out the ending, but that people
are used to seeing films where
something is always happening,
a bang, a philosophical revelation or a resolution.
Eternity contained several
long shots of the countryside of
Thailand, sounds of landscape
and two poetic a cappellas. The
love story between Koi and Wit
is a subtle romance; a romance
I would describe as nude. Although I did not like how the
ending was directed, I enjoyed
being drawn into a ghostly
memory of love. A love that
may not have seemed stimulating for some, but for me it was
honest and humble.
After the screening of
Eternity I sat in the cinema
for a while wanting to listen
to what other people had
thought about the film. I
distinctively remember the
couple next to me saying that
they were waiting for ‘something’ to happen and that the
film “had no story, it had no
story at all”. To say that a film
doesn’t have story is senseless
because everything has a story
to tell. It’s just how the story
is told that alters the film’s
accessibility. Watching a slow
film is a chance to immerse
ourselves into what we easily
take for granted. It is an opportunity to regain a sense of
patience in a life that we often
speed through.
Written and directed by the
young British up-and-comer
Stevan Riley, Fire in Babylon
is much more than a simple
sports doco. Tracing the evolution of the West Indian cricket
side from calypso cricketers to
world beaters, this film captures
the wider social and political upheaval occurring across
the Caribbean in the late ‘70s
and early ‘80s for which their
collective cricket side was both
a microcosm and a beacon of
hope.
Highlighting the history of
the people and their strong
cultural ties to Africa, Fire
in Babylon goes behind the
scenes of the extraordinary
circumstances that lead to the
creation of an unparalleled
sporting superpower. From the
humiliating defeat to Australia
in the summer of ‘75, to the
second “blackwash” in England in 1984, the West Indian
cricket team’s turnaround
is showcased through an
insightful series of interviews,
archival footage and musical
interludes. The socio-political
context in which this was
achieved is also illustrated
with phenomenal ease.
This fast paced, but surprisingly moving documentary
was showcased before an enthralled crowd on the final day
of the Melbourne International Film Festival. A must
watch, not only for sports fans
but all film enthusiasts.
chris swan
news hit
Beastmaster). It never pokes fun
at the world it inhabits, instead
the humour comes from the
characters themselves much like
the classic The Princess Bride just a lot dirtier.
While the film does have
a few very funny parts, these
moments seem to come too
few and far between. It feels
as if the filmmakers sat down
and worked out about five big
set pieces that needed to occur
and then just improvised a
movie around them (Green
has admitted in interviews that
there was actually never a copy
of the script on set while they
were shooting). The improv
approach to filmmaking does
work in some instances (Judd
Apatow having mastered this),
but with a film of this scale
they really needed to stick
to the script. Yes, there are
some great lines born out of
the improv approach (talk of
beating off in front of a Pegasus
was among my favourites) but
the end result is a lot of cheap
laughs at the expense of wellneeded character development.
Despite having an A-list
cast, the star of the film truly is
Danny McBride. I’m a big fan
of McBride’s work, his insanely
dark-humoured HBO series
Eastbound & Down is one of
the best things on TV at the
moment and if you haven’t
lot of the same lines even, but
it’s been turned into a comedy, somehow”. Aiding in the
transition to comedy is the
fact that a cast of only seven
play every role in the show, of
which there are over 100. Girls
playing guys and guys playing
girls; “backstage things can get
pretty hectic, but we try and
The 39 Steps is showing from
August 11-20, 8pm (no shows on
Sunday and Monday)
Matinee on Saturday August 20,
2pm
Bookings: www.msa.monash.edu.
au/student-theatre
I Am India: an interview with
Oni and Juhi Chawla
news hit
Your
Highness
With both sword and sorcery
films and stoner comedies
ranking highly on moviegoers’
‘to see’ lists, it was only a matter of time before the two were
combined. It’s just a shame the
result was Your Highness.
The film is the latest effort
from indie-filmmaker-turnedHollywood-director David
Gordon Green, most well
known for his bleak dramas
George Washington and Snow
Angels and most recently, his
entrance to the comedy realm,
Pineapple Express. The film
follows the exploits of young
Prince Thadeous (Danny McBride, who also co-wrote the
film), a lazy, self-centred royal
who’s always been outshone by
his braver, nobler older brother
Prince Fabious (James Franco).
However, when Fabious’s new
bride-to-be (Zooey Deschanel)
is kidnapped by the evil wizard
Leezar (Justin Theroux), Thadeous finally gets his chance to
man up and save the day. Aided
by the beautiful warrior Isabel
(Natalie Portman) and Fabious’s faithful companion Simon
(a robotic bird), the two brothers set out on an epic quest to
save the blushing bride from
the evil wizard before he can
“get her cookies, so to speak.”
One important thing to
point out about Your Highness
is that it is not a parody film.
Instead it’s a loving tribute to
the 80’s fantasy genre (films like
Krull, Conan the Barbarian and
keep it presentable on stage,”
says Molyneux.
For Tom, who is a secondyear Law and Performing Arts
student, directing The 39 Steps
has been a valuable learning
experience. “It’s taught me a lot
about time management,” says
Molyneux. “Trying to juggle a
double degree, which includes
Law, and trying to do this as
well – directing – is a big, big
job. Everyone needs you all
the time… It’s taught me a lot
about stuff I’m interested in doing once I leave uni.”
andrew moraitis
Fire In Babylon
vishnu chari
The new production
brought to you by MUST
is The 39 Steps. Adapted by
Patrick Barlow from the 1935
Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller
(itself adapted from the novel
by John Buchan), the play is
Broadway’s longest running
comedy. The story is set in
1930s England and revolves
around stiff upper lip British
war hero Richard Hannay,
who, eager to escape the
mundanity of everyday life,
gets sucked into a world of
danger and intrigue.
The idea for The 39 Steps
came to director Tom Molyneux around September last
year, and with the cast on
board since the end of April,
the last four months have
brought the play to final fruition. The show draws much
from the Alfred Hitchcock
film. According to Tom, “if
you know the film there’s a
seen his independent feature
Foot Fist Way I suggest you
track down a copy ASAP. That
being said, the light-hearted
nature of the material here
doesn’t seem to mesh well
with his comedic style and we
end up with a character that’s
really hard to like, and not in
the fun way like in Eastbound.
While recent Oscar winner
Portman and Oscar nominee
Franco seem to be coasting
along in this picture with not
much to do, the real crime
in the cast is the horrible
underuse of the wonderfully
talented Zooey Deschanel
who is only on screen for
around twenty minutes and
is given the laborious job of
being nothing more than a
damsel in distress.
There is definite potential
in the film which gives me
hope for the next outing by
McBride and Co., however
this one really just feels like
it’s made by a bunch of people
who wanted to get paid to
hangout together rather than
actually make a great movie.
If it’s a good story and great
characters you’re after I’d
steer clear but if you’re seeking nothing more than 90
minutes of dick and fart jokes
amidst a world of witchcraft
and wizardly, this film might
be right up your alley.
Identity is a major theme
in the new Indian film, I
Am. Based on a number of
anecdotes, this portmanteau
film expresses the importance
of upholding gender, political
and sexual identity in an oftunsympathetic society.
Contrasting the respective experiences of seemingly
disparate characters and their
similar need for acceptance by
loved ones and society, I Am
tells four separate stories, each
dealing with a controversial
issue in modern society.
The single Afia (Nandita
Das) wants a child and rejects
pressures to and considers
sperm donation; Kashmiri
Pandit Meghar (Juhi Chawla)
returns home to her home village to discover a society now
controlled by the military;
Abhimanyu (Sanjay Suri) is
a burgeoning film director
who is dealing with the sexual
abuse inflicted by his step-father and the gay Omar (Rahul
Bose) finds himself blackmailed by a police officer.
News Hit had the chance to
sit down with writer-director
Onir and star Juhi Chawla to
talk about the film.
Some of the reasons for the
film’s change in tone, in
which the first story seems
more like a traditional
Bollywood-type (music,
comedy, drama) than the
other more realist segments.
Onir: Well, for me, it was
very important to know
which viewers the film is
being addressed to. So, the
most, most important thing
for me – for a film like this –
is that people in the country
watch the film and identify
with the film. And then –
when you are dealing with
certain subjects that they have
not been really exposed to before – you have to lead them
on, prepare them for what’s
coming.
Chawla’s reaction to the
project, in which she was
first asked to provide some
finance to the film.
Chawla: The money came
first. Eight months before the
role came. The role did not
come for a long time. I can’t
even remember if he even said
that I would be in the film at
that time. He came and said,
“Juhi, I am going to raising
funds over the net and I would
like you, also, to contribute.” I
said, “Fine then.”
Chawla’s character, Meghar, is
a Kashmiri Pandit who must
venture back to her home to
reconnect with her family,
who stayed behind into a
militarised zone.
Chawla: The backstory would
be like 18 or 19 years ago, her
family lived in Schrinaga. You
know – happy, loving family,
with a big house. Life is good.
And then this whole turmoil,
this political turmoil around
them and the terror in which
they would probably drop
everything that they own. Their
life had to be put on hold and
they fled literally overnight.
And then the trouble of living
in refugee camps and living
in relatives’ homes and then
slowly building life again. It’s
less traumatic for her but even
more traumatic for her parents,
whose life came apart because
their whole foundation was
shaken.
Onir: She was going back
after twenty years, and when
we were location-hunting, it
was important for me to find
a house that was originally a
bandit house because there
were certain differences in the
way a Muslim family lived and
the way a Hindu family lived.
[For example], the décor of the
house where a current Muslim
family was staying.
Some of the difficulties of
shooting Chawla’s story.
Onir: I think it was a very,
very difficult shoot in that
way in Shrnaga. We had to be
very, very careful. Though we
had shown the script to some
people so that we had that
support system – some people
from the Government, our line
producer. At the same time,
everyday I think we had 70-80
army men/guards with us and
we made sure we were shooting for three hours maximum.
Outdoors everyday and then
quickly shift indoors before
there was a big crowd there.
Though people are very friendly
and nice, anything can happen.
One day I remember just before she was supposed to come
onto the set, someone started
throwing stones, which hit one
of my assistants. But it was
just a kid who had probably
just been told to do it, because
otherwise there is no reason for
that kind of behaviour. So you
have to be careful. I remember,
I was really worried the last day
of shoot we were supposed to
shoot in the area which had
really narrow lanes, and it was
really difficult to get out. Once
upon a time that used to be an
area where a lot of Hindu bandits stayed, and in the morning
we got the red alert from the
security, who said, “You can’t
shoot there”. There was a river
and on one side of the river the
commander said, “Go ahead.
You are safe.” And on the other
side they said: “No. No way
will you shoot”.
Chawla: It would just be
houses, which had been
burned, ruined. You are shooting in that. That is when you
know. It comes really close: that
is a place where people lived.
Children and women and families and laughing and crying
and whatever. And then, all this
happened. Look at the state.
Everybody fled the sate with
no belongings. Being there in
that colony was almost spooky,
I think.
The differences between Indian and American culture.
Chawla: Indians have a very
rich culture…and a lot of colour in their lives. They’re a very
emotional lot. Hollywood deals
with things a little subtly. Even
if it is an emotional scene, you
see a tear. Indians will cry.
Onir: The media conception
of Indian cinema right now is
only Bollywood. Which is not
the entire gamut of what the
Indian cinema has. All Hollywood is not Matrix or Superman. There is Milk and The
President’s Speech (sic.) There are
different kinds of Hollywood
films. And one is increasingly
aware of of smaller Hollywood
films [rather] than the Brad
Pitt/Angelina Jolie glamour
films. Similarly, there is increasing independent and studio
content which is real. So just
as Hollywood has two layers,
Bollywood also, has that. You
have the big, glamour Bollywood and you have the smaller,
realistic cinema which is trying
to find its way into the cinema
market.
I Am is now showing.
VISUAL ART 29
Scuffling - a solo exhibition by Stormie
Mills
Photos by Richard Plumridge
georgia berlic
The creatures creep. They are
familiar and engaging because
they are lifelike. Above all,
Stormie Mills’ characters reflect
human emotion and circumstance.
Scuffling is Stormie Mills’
latest solo exhibition in his 25year visual arts career.
At the Metro Gallery’s
opening of Scuffling, Mills
wore, in the most down-toearth way, a solid block silver
mouth grill and fluorescent
orange kicks - mirrored by his
wife’s fluorescent orange socks.
Reaching around 5’5 he was
not, in person, the giant of the
streetscapes one would imagine.
He appeared introspective and
polite. His pieces, too, are quiet
observations of the human
spirit.
Scuffling both describes the
process of creating the creatures
and the subtle movement they
make on the canvas. Mills
applies paint to canvas using a
method that is a cross between
a shuffle and a scrape - portraying perpetual texture. After the
success of the Life exhibition in
Perth, Scuffling is an extension of Mills’ consideration of
human frailty. What makes his
pieces so captivating is their
essential humanity - whether
you term it fragility or vulnerability is a glass half full/empty
argument.
‘The Home in Your Head’
(featured) is one of the highlights from the Scuffling exhibition. Mills was inspired after
an interview for GQ Magazine,
when he was asked, “Where is
the home in your head?” For
Mills, who left Perth for Wales
at 15, moved to New York at
16 and subsequently lived and
worked pretty much everywhere, the home in your head
is an ephemeral yet grounding
concept.
From street vagrant; to street
artist; and now Australian col-
drawing by Gabriel kenner
lectors’ choice, Stormie Mills
illustrates the changing public
opinion of graffiti art in Australia. Street art is less sexy. It
is also not the “up and coming
investment” it once was. This
reflects the transient nature of
street art - it is both illusive and
immediate.
And although you can
preserve a nice neat canvas for
your wall - it would be a greater
homage to the classic anti-establishment attitude of graffiti
art to abscond with a fence
emblazoned with a “Stormie.”
Scuffling is on exhibition at
the Metro Gallery from 3 - 20
August.
EXTRAS 31
Samurai Sudoku
Crossword Puzzle
2-3. What bargain hunters enjoy
4-5. A written acknowledgement
6-7. Such and nothing more
10-11. A bird
14-15. Opposed to less
18-19. What this puzzle is
22-23. An animal of prey
26-27. The close of a day
28-29. To elude
30-31. The plural of is
8-9. To cultivate
12-13. A bar of wood or iron
16-17. What artists learn to do
20-21. Fastened
24-25. Found on the seashore
10-18. The fibre of the gomuti palm
By Aaron McGruder
6-22. What we all should be
4-26. A day dream
2-11. A talon
19-28. A pigeon
F-7. A part of your head
23-30. A river in Russia
1-32. To govern
33-34. An aromatic plant
N-8. A fist
24-31. To agree with
3-12. Part of a ship
20-29. One
5-27. Exchanging
9-25. To sink in mud
13-21. A boy
Lot’s Wife
Histories