tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1461833642877872872024-03-27T16:37:38.062+10:00Painting Fakes'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.comBlogger596125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-40204875515538798512024-03-04T16:16:00.014+10:002024-03-05T17:24:12.230+10:00Farewell, Scott Morrison<p> Scott Morrison has finally left the Australian Parliament.</p><p>"What?" I hear you say. "Is he still there?"</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg5ho5G41eXpSMiN94SrojtD11_6om9WH-MmfiHSMd_LjS4TwdjT3weJ6XSPI5dzp6QEdRsyeehxcJKNS5Mf485Q74xMeYNXfouyAAB4mRSmL6EnqGwUKbvx4mL2dcFhjmpz1x3AcLK9SjJCFxBrA3qKJC44aUoKiPE6xxLNWFX_v26SHUVzLk_mxT17VD/s443/Morrison.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="393" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg5ho5G41eXpSMiN94SrojtD11_6om9WH-MmfiHSMd_LjS4TwdjT3weJ6XSPI5dzp6QEdRsyeehxcJKNS5Mf485Q74xMeYNXfouyAAB4mRSmL6EnqGwUKbvx4mL2dcFhjmpz1x3AcLK9SjJCFxBrA3qKJC44aUoKiPE6xxLNWFX_v26SHUVzLk_mxT17VD/s320/Morrison.jpg" width="284" /></a></div>Indeed, for the past year and a half he has been lurking there in the back row, keeping out of the spotlight as much as possible. Presumably he has been looking for the right job to move on to. Is it churlish to suggest that offers were slow in coming? That perhaps his time as Prime Minister did serious damage to his reputation?<p></p><p>The recent ABC documentary, <i>Nemesis,</i> displaying the entrails of the nine years of Liberal/National government, doesn't exactly make him more appealing. His various colleagues and State counterparts range from diplomatic to scathing. Some suggest he did a good job of the pandemic response. Some of them talk about him as decisive, hard working, committed. Yet he is also called a bully, a misogynist, a liar and a hypocrite. The man himself sits through his long interview, leaning uncomfortably forward in his chair, with his characteristic smirk. Sometimes he expresses regret at the way his words were interpreted, but can't quite bring himself to admit that he actually made mistakes. Even when it comes to his secret swearing in to multiple ministries his regret is perfunctory, and grudging.</p><p>For those who missed the story, at various times through 2020 and 2021 he had himself sworn in to a number of ministries that were occupied by others. In 2020 it was Health, but that was done in the open, in the context of a global health emergency, with the agreement of the Health Minister Greg Hunt. Through 2021, though, he was sworn in to Treasury, Finance, Home Affairs and Resources without telling anyone, inside the government or out. It was a dirty little secret between himself and the Governor-General. Resources Minister Keith Pitt found out when Morrison made a decision on a controversial issue in his portfolio. He was unable to repeat his response on camera. The others found out months after they had been sent into opposition, or out of the parliament altogether, when they read about it in the paper.</p><p>It was bad. It showed that he neither trusted nor respected his colleagues, that he was fundamentally dishonest, and that he saw the answer to every problem, real or imagined, as giving himself more power. Dare I say the word megalomania?</p><p>To be honest, I see all this stuff as theatre. Sure, his colleagues felt betrayed, but that is not Morrison's legacy. Morrison's legacy, from his time as Immigration Minister, Social Services Minister, Treasurer and Prime Minister, is that he spread pain and suffering wherever he went.</p><p>To be fair, not everything he touched turned to shit. He managed to do a reasonable job with the pandemic, particularly early on. He came up with the National Cabinet idea which ensured quick, united decision-making, at least until it didn't. Health advice was front and centre along with ensuring people were not sent into poverty by the response. We had a rare moment of national unity. </p><p>Sadly, it didn't last. It seemed that even in a national crisis Morrison could only refrain from partisan game-playing for so long, so after a while he had various underlings out there in the community criticising State Labor Premiers for following the advice of their Chief Health Officers. Meanwhile he lost focus on his own job, securing the supply of vaccines, so we ended up behind other parts of the world as the Delta variant cut loose.</p><p>But let's roll back. When the Coalition was elected in 2013, he became Immigration Minister and implemented Operation Sovereign Borders. Asylum seekers who arrived by boat were shipped off to Manus and Nauru, where they were imprisoned for years on end for the crime of not travelling by plane. More than a decade later some of them are still there, while others suffer in indefinite limbo here in Australia, all in the name of 'stopping the boats'. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64TRHmct2A9yLISbNwxkRXNJ2ijA1EgpRf4KF9cctgOXoxZWlKBVcUPp8Vu3P2AqGOmuYEa1kM3bVAFhW7KiHR76W6QAxTKIt5AfsTsHON5D91Vl4ejAtihfNTgrhOlrSFP-Jr67Gm4nelZmCTFXyVWXJkm7cKmG5H9dji1NCytZTFw1T3HBKiadnFDTx/s718/I%20stopped%20these.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="718" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64TRHmct2A9yLISbNwxkRXNJ2ijA1EgpRf4KF9cctgOXoxZWlKBVcUPp8Vu3P2AqGOmuYEa1kM3bVAFhW7KiHR76W6QAxTKIt5AfsTsHON5D91Vl4ejAtihfNTgrhOlrSFP-Jr67Gm4nelZmCTFXyVWXJkm7cKmG5H9dji1NCytZTFw1T3HBKiadnFDTx/s320/I%20stopped%20these.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Morrison soon handed the reins to Peter Dutton but the toxic legacy now runs so deep that Labor and Coalition politicians compete for how enthusiastically they can continue to persecute these desperate people. Just this week we have seen Peter Dutton 'accuse' the government of reducing spending on 'border security', and the Labor minister triumphantly producing figures to show that actually they are spending more as if that is a good thing. For sowing this toxic, racist legacy Morrison was given a trophy which he proudly displays on his desk, a metal boat with the inscription 'I stopped these'. The trophy-maker somehow forgot to add the figures of desperate people fleeing war zones and oppressive governments, begging for help as their clapped out fishing boat sinks in the pitiless ocean.<p></p><p>For this sterling work Morrison was promoted to Minister for Social Services, and later to Treasurer, where he oversaw the Robodebt scheme. Last year we saw him squirming and blame-shifting in the witness stand of the Royal Commission before disputing the finding that he was negligent. Without going into all the sorry details, this scheme used a flawed income averaging methodology to identify about a million people who had been allegedly overpaid on their income security payments, then reversed the onus of proof so they had to produce evidence that they didn't owe the money, up to seven years after it was paid to them. </p><p>The scheme robbed hundreds of thousands of low income Australian of about a billion dollars they didn't actually owe, causing massive distress to many highly vulnerable people, in an attempt to reduce the budget deficit. The government was alerted to the flaws in this scheme many times - by aggrieved consumers, by welfare rights advocates, by Administrative Appeals Tribunal adjudicators, by concerned staff members within the Social Services Department - but it was only shut down when a group of those who were robbed filed a class action and legal advice made it clear the government would lose.</p><p>Somehow, despite this sorry saga, Morrison's colleagues chose to make him Prime Minister because they thought Peter Dutton would be worse. Not that Morrison is more humane and inclusive than Dutton, but he is better at masking and deflecting. Lo and behold, right after he parlayed his daggy dad image and an unpopular Labor Party into a narrow election victory, large parts of Australia literally caught fire while Morrison headed off for a scheduled family holiday in Hawaii. When he was called out on it, he responded, as we all know, by saying "I don't hold a hose, mate". It's fair to say it didn't go down well in the fire zone. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSiXMYllfCZpZPM96l5V-U2QtFJw1AC34l_IkIjT_lWP5TDCvk51a-nbRfMXyitC2pbVFyzomMnB7J-4Hjt6kJF3qeGcyaJmf4XjM1YUSNZWSkAepg9XQL_8fk_lzBfvGRey-13ml5hpwti9oCsgBEn6HwPL043-61nLOSktABN7naxZCWt65DFSetiVOA/s1023/Hawaii.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1023" data-original-width="768" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSiXMYllfCZpZPM96l5V-U2QtFJw1AC34l_IkIjT_lWP5TDCvk51a-nbRfMXyitC2pbVFyzomMnB7J-4Hjt6kJF3qeGcyaJmf4XjM1YUSNZWSkAepg9XQL_8fk_lzBfvGRey-13ml5hpwti9oCsgBEn6HwPL043-61nLOSktABN7naxZCWt65DFSetiVOA/s320/Hawaii.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Being absent in a national emergency wasn't a good look, but his presence really made no difference. After all, he really didn't hold a hose. What made a difference is that almost a year earlier the various State and Territory emergency management heads had come to the government and said, in essence, "next summer is going to be a catastophic fire season and we need more fire fighting resources, in particular a water-bombing plane". The Commonwealth Government had never responded to the funding request. Not only that, but when people pointed the finger at climate change as a cause of unusually hot and dry conditions various government ministers deflected furiously, talking about a 'plague of arson', exploding cow dung, Dorothea Mackellar, the Greens preventing hazard reduction and anything else but climate change. After all, fossil fuel donors must be supported, no matter what. There was no arson plague. There was climate-change-exacerbated heat and drought. Nero, or Morrison, fiddled while Rome burned. Well, not fiddled so much as brutally <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2sKNMof0JY&ab_channel=JackMcPherson" target="_blank">murdered a tune on his ukelele</a>, rubbing all our noses in the Hawaiian episode on national TV.<p></p><p>If he and his ministerial colleagues had put as much effort into fighting fires as they did into fighting any form of meaningful climate action we would not have suffered anything like the same damage. After all, Morrison became Prime Minister in the first place to prevent Malcolm Turnbull from implementing even the pathetic, watered down version of an emissions reduction policy he had finally been able to wrangle through the party room. He proceeded to spend the rest of his Prime Ministership saying 'we won't adopt a net zero target unless we know what it will cost'. He and Angus Taylor even walked into National Party heartland in the National Farmers Federation congress to urge them not to pass a resolution supporting net zero by 2050. The farmers gave them the finger and passed the resolution unanimously. No-one suffers more from climate change than farmers. </p><p>They only yielded in late 2021 with a <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/11/not-zero-seven-absurd-things-about.html" target="_blank">policy</a> that expressed a vague hope that we would somehow get to net zero by deploying some yet to be identified new technologies. Everyone saw through it, the Teals ate them for breakfast, and that was all she wrote.</p><p>There was of course another reason that the Teals ate them for breakfast - they were all women. In 'Nemesis' his colleagues essentially say that he didn't have a problem with women, he just didn't seem to like them much. Which meant that when Australia had its #MeToo moment courtesy of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-nine-lives-of-grace-tame.html" target="_blank">Grace Tame</a>, Brittany Higgins, Chanel Contos and many more, he seemed completely unable to respond with any compassion. While the Women's Marchers congregated outside Parliament House he kept his ministers, including the women, indoors and told the parliament it was great that the women could protest without getting shot. Rape, presumably, was OK. </p><p>Almost the last act of his government, and the final straw for many on his own team, was his attempt to push through the Religious Discrimination Act. The problem with this was not, of course, that his back-benchers, or indeed the Opposition, had any problem with freedom of religion. The problem was that the express aim of the Act was to make it OK for religious institutions like schools to discriminate against LGBTIQ+ young people and staff. Five Liberals crossed the floor, despite bullying from Morrison and his lackeys, and the bill was defeated. </p><p>So here is Morrison's legacy. Human rights violations. Theft. Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Reckless negligence. It's hard to disagree with NSW Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian's <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/01/gladys-berejiklian-called-scott-morrison-a-horrible-and-untrustworthy-person-in-leaked-texts-report" target="_blank">private assessment</a> that he is a 'horrible, horrible person', or <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/barnaby-joyce-offered-to-quit-over-text-message-calling-pm-a-liar/2f5v1kr2i" target="_blank">Barnaby Joyce's text</a> to Brittany Higgins describing him as 'a hypocrite and a liar'.</p><p>But before I finish we should ask ourselves a question. How much of the blame for all this should rest with Morrison? Sure, he played an outsized role and he shouldn't be off the hook. But he didn't do any of this on his own. After all, the Liberal Party elected him as their leader and we (or at least, just over half of us) put his party high enough on our electoral preferences that they formed government. The Labor Party has continued his toxic asylum seeker policies, has applied a bit of Spak-filla and a coat of paint to his dodgy climate change policies, and while not trying to revive Robodebt has otherwise left the punitive architecture of income security policy in place. </p><p>Ultimately the problem here is not that Scott Morrison is horrible or untrustworthy. The problem is that our political system rewarded him for these traits. He spent five years as a Minister. He became Prime Minister, and remained so for four years. No-one stopped him. No-one forced him to step down, or prevented him from implementing his toxic policies. In fact, they supported them and voted for them. We voted for them. </p><p>So once we have finished looking at Scott Morrison's departing rear end, we need to take a good, hard look at ourselves.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-81002704918975830692024-01-16T19:54:00.008+10:002024-02-20T16:07:09.954+10:00Trump 2.0<p>Given the likelihood that the 2024 US election will be a repeat of 2020, Joe Biden vs Donald Trump, and Trump has a realistic chance of winning, I've been catching up on Trump 1.0 via the venerable Bob Woodward. He wrote three Trump books. <i>Fear</i> was published in 2017 and dealt with Trump's transition to power and the first nine months of his presidency. <i>Rage </i>was published in 2020 and dealt with most of the Trump presidency, from its early days to the COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. The final book, <i>Peril</i>, cowritten with Woodward's younger Washington Post colleague Bob Costa, deals with the 2020 election, its aftermath and the early months of Biden's tenure.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC9pH24cnxzhDv3-kcGgRAG2FR4o2loT27X7blAMg74cTya_IXNLMh1OfDaGYB_ltmnwxwew8rTHz4MhE-30Bl6EZvFcV4iDf0qFO0ta0UVr_tzYja6bnPc3WBKsCkVNhnI0vYbNPuFGfQCFrDygL-Rar4hjKEta3StVk7kDHLYbAVkRJJF_ZqXAjzuFQt/s2132/fear-9781501175527_hr.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2132" data-original-width="1400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC9pH24cnxzhDv3-kcGgRAG2FR4o2loT27X7blAMg74cTya_IXNLMh1OfDaGYB_ltmnwxwew8rTHz4MhE-30Bl6EZvFcV4iDf0qFO0ta0UVr_tzYja6bnPc3WBKsCkVNhnI0vYbNPuFGfQCFrDygL-Rar4hjKEta3StVk7kDHLYbAVkRJJF_ZqXAjzuFQt/s320/fear-9781501175527_hr.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>Bod Woodward is a strangely appropriate person to be documenting the Trump and Biden years. He became famous alongside Carl Bernstein in the early 1970s for exposing the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, back in the days when committing a criminal offence was enough to end someone's political career. Over the subsequent half century he has continued to write about US politics for the Washington Post and in numerous books. Hence, he is about the same age as the old white men who continue to dominate US politics - Biden is now 80, Trump is 77, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is 81 while his Democrat counterpart Chuck Schumer is a spring chicken at 73. (I <a href="https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2024/01/13/michael-pascoe-biden-trump" target="_blank">read just recently</a> that the average age of a US Senator is 65, slightly older than the House of Representatives where members average 58.)<p></p><p>Woodward is an engaging story-teller and his books are a kind of superior version of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-road-to-ruin.html" target="_blank">Nikki Savva's</a> chronicles of the recent Australian Liberal governments. He is more measured and objective than Savva, but similarly focused on who said what to whom rather than any serious engagement with policy. (For what it's worth, I had a <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/03/farewell-donald-trumpi-hope.html" target="_blank">brief look at Trump's policy legacy</a> back in 2021.) His books rely heavily on what he calls 'deep background' - what Australian journalists, with less grandiosity, call 'off the record' discussions, where unnamed sources close to the action provide interviews and information on condition of anonymity. For <i>Rage</i> he also had a surprising level of cooperation from Trump who engaged in 17 'on the record' interviews over a period of months. </p><p>What picture of Trump emerges from these books? The short answer is, not great, and pretty much like his public persona. Trump arrived at the White House from a lifetime of success as a property developer but zero experience in government. He had not so much as sat on his local school board. Yet here he was, the most powerful person in the most powerful government in the world.</p><p>You would have thought this would perhaps call for a little humility, an effort to learn the ropes, perhaps some time spent with his predecessors to get some tips, or a bit of study of the mechanisms of government. But Trump doesn't do humility and expressed his scorn for all his predecessors, even those of his own party. Nor does he do due diligence, so his picks for various senior posts were an erratic mix of competence and craziness. His first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, had to step down within weeks when it was revealed he had contact with the Russian embassy while working for the Trump campaign. He chose former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State on the basis that he had negotiated oil concessions with multiple governments. On the other hand his Defence Secretary, Jim Mattis, was a veteran general with 40 years military experience.</p><p>In any case he had little interest in listening to any of these people, novices or veterans. He never read briefings and would barely listen to summaries of them before leaping in to make decisions. He admitted to Woodward that when the COVID crisis broke out he never sat down with his medical advisors and had them explain the virus to him. He told Woodward he didn't have time, and in any case he didn't need to, he understood the virus already. No wonder his pandemic press conferences consisted of Anthony Fauci wincing through an endless stream of misleading and often mischievous nonsense. </p><p>He had no sense of orderly policy-making and this meant that he approached major issues through a series of thought bubbles. For instance, from the beginning of his presidency he was massively critical of the US military presence in South Korea, wondering why the Koreans weren't paying for it and wanting to withdraw. His advisors would explain to him that the Koreans were in fact paying 90% of the cost and providing most of the troops and equipment (the latter bought from the US arms industry) and the benefits of trade with prosperous South Korea and the chance to spy on China at close quarters. Yet next time they discussed the issue it was like they never had this previous conversation. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpCvQkpEz3BhLWU94PtYokMhzhkFCUBfYqQz4NL9tejK2sYeJZpccfgYPiEFNRxVRzFLJfDXYRcLhRo6RzCcpFtPIyjPWkCDN_FsfjBXsDYzSkgqj2ffhyvunWyZxoMoTZ9KZ5rnxyBDFb959sLNFiAp2UoVYvT9M55VdOcpx3Uv5-xjY8ZMNR7u0n4m0s/s600/71wRP7TwzKL._AC_UL600_SR600,600_.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="394" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpCvQkpEz3BhLWU94PtYokMhzhkFCUBfYqQz4NL9tejK2sYeJZpccfgYPiEFNRxVRzFLJfDXYRcLhRo6RzCcpFtPIyjPWkCDN_FsfjBXsDYzSkgqj2ffhyvunWyZxoMoTZ9KZ5rnxyBDFb959sLNFiAp2UoVYvT9M55VdOcpx3Uv5-xjY8ZMNR7u0n4m0s/w263-h400/71wRP7TwzKL._AC_UL600_SR600,600_.jpg" width="263" /></a></div>There is an interesting contrast here with Biden, brought out in <i>Peril.</i> The authors recount how at the start of his presidency Barack Obama wanted to exit Afghanistan but his inexperience meant he was manipulated by the military establishment into increasing troop numbers instead, despite Vice-President Biden's warnings that he was being snowed. Trump was not so easily manipulated but his decision-making processes were so erratic that his officials were simply able to block him and divert him. Biden, a 50-year political veteran and two-term vice-president, arrived in office sharing the same aim and ordered a detailed options review. All possibilities were thoroughly explored, no-one made a convincing case for staying or increasing troop numbers, and they finally set and stuck to a timetable and process for exit. It wasn't pretty, in the end, but they got it done.</div><p></p><p>Yet Trump's erratic, unorthodox approach could also yield some surprises. For instance, his cautious foreign policy and military advisors were horrified when he decided to engage in a Twitter war with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, calling him 'little rocket man' and taunting him over and over. Yet somehow the war of words transformed rapidly into a kind of bromance where the two met, exchanged affectionate letters and even negotiated an agreement of sorts. Ultimately the agreement broke down and there was no lasting change, but Trump got further along the road to peace than any of his predecessors had in the previous seven decades. </p><p>Meanwhile, Woodward describes a horrendous, chaotic working environment in the White House. Trump had a volcanic temper and did not tolerate being contradicted. He delighted in playing advisors off against one another, and there were various people on his team whose roles were only vaguely defined, like his 'chief strategist' Steve Bannon and his son-in-law Jared Kushner who was designated a 'special advisor', not to mention the constant presence of 'first daughter' Ivanka. These loose cannons, with no more government experience than Trump himself, would come in unexpectedly on any policy issue and turn it on its head. Trump had little hesitation in firing people, often over Twitter after assuring them in person that he wanted them to stay, and many more resigned in despair at the toxic working environment he created. <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-turnover-in-the-trump-administration/" target="_blank">Over 90% of his staff roles</a> changed hands over the four years of his presidency. </p><p>Meanwhile, Trump was massively impulsive. He would tend to discuss a policy issue with whoever was in the room, then ask them to go away and write a memo on it for him to sign. Rob Porter, his long suffering staff secretary, had to be always on the lookout for these rogue memos that had not been discussed with the key people who would have to implement them, quietly withdrawing them from the correspondence folder and referring them back to the relevant person. Trump rarely followed up to ask what had happened to them, he seems to have had the attention span of a flea. In Woodward's detailed accounts of their interviews he leaps about from subject to subject, refuses to answer direct questions, never goes into detail on policy issues and provides grandiose assessments of how popular he is, the scale of his electoral victory and his achievements as President. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR8LeT2_J4U0vuRw9Vo-JAYL78WkaVbpKt1CcV58zmxgeNGuYcLicV3gtrSRaOPOajSGr7M9NP19tlWwWuWW73jiw_CA-bz9q6kSicw6cbboOjdtNL89Q2GbOikQofwifKJJXnsbfsPF6qbW6TvGFPXYSkk2v2oA25pIQkopu76SZwrp4EuAS6qOMmhNmH/s346/58546518.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="229" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR8LeT2_J4U0vuRw9Vo-JAYL78WkaVbpKt1CcV58zmxgeNGuYcLicV3gtrSRaOPOajSGr7M9NP19tlWwWuWW73jiw_CA-bz9q6kSicw6cbboOjdtNL89Q2GbOikQofwifKJJXnsbfsPF6qbW6TvGFPXYSkk2v2oA25pIQkopu76SZwrp4EuAS6qOMmhNmH/w265-h400/58546518.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>Yet overwhelming all this was his massive narcissistic ego and sense of grievance. During the intense periods of the Mueller investigation into Russian electoral interference he would spend days raging about the 'witch hunt', watching the Fox News coverage on the big screen and tweeting angrily, unable to focus on his actual job of running the country. He repeatedly pressured his various officials to shut down the inquiry, sacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from oversight of the probe since he was also a potential subject of investigation, and then railing publicly against his deputy, his replacement and Mueller himself. When the report was finally released, with its ambiguous conclusion, he never read it but immediately claimed he was 'completely exonerated' even though Mueller said very pointedly that the report neither concluded he had committed a crime nor exonerated him - not to mention that there were 37 criminal charges arising from the investigation and seven close Trump aides went to prison. <p></p><p>But all of this was nothing to the final stanza of the Trump presidency, the 10 weeks between him losing the election and Biden's swearing in. He spent this period raging about in an increasingly empty White House as his staff departed early to escape the madness, sitting with Rudy Giuliani and his team listening to their concocted evidence of electoral fraud and finally, as we know, egging his supporters on to storm the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the election. In the midst of this madness anything could have happened and nearly did. At one point, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the most senior commander in the US Military) and the acting Defence Secretary were presented with a signed memo (in the wrong format) ordering the rapid withdrawal of US personnel from Afghanistan and Somalia. They took it to National Security Advisor Richard O'Brien, who hadn't seen it either. So who had written it, and on what had they based the timetable? O'Brien managed in the end to persuade Trump to rescind it.</p><p>In the midst of all this, Biden never got a proper handover. He didn't even get the courtesy tour of the White House that is traditional for incoming presidents. Trump didn't have the grace to attend his inauguration, instead flying out by helicopter to his Florida home while it was taking place. Fortunately, Biden is a seasoned professional and was ready to roll from Day 1.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">In the three years that have passed since the publication of <i>Peril,</i> whenever we see or hear from Trump we seem to be in a version of Groundhog Day. The various pieces of legal jeopardy he accumulated across his life are gradually winding their way through the tortuous US legal system. He is facing charges in both Federal and State courts over his role in trying to subvert the 2020 election, charges of bribery over his hush payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the 2016 campaign, and charges under the official secrets act for taking classified documents to his home when he left the White House and hiding them from the FBI when they came looking. His companies are facing charges of tax fraud in New York, while he is being sued for defamation over a rape he is alleged to have committed many years ago. (A couple of days ago a New York court ordered him to pay E. Jean Carroll $US83m in damages for defaming her following her allegations of rape against him).</p><p style="text-align: left;">Not that any of this, nor Woodward's damning assessment, has any impact on his electoral prospects. Trump dismisses each charge as a Democrat 'witch hunt', defaming court officials, judges and prosecutors with impunity, and his supporters swallow his lies whole and beg for more. Woodward, no doubt, is just another fake news reporter. Unless the current legal moves to bar him from the nomination process on the grounds of having engaged in insurrection are successful (and it will have to get past a Supreme Court stacked with Republican appointees), he looks set to win the Republican presidential nomination in a landslide, and various polls show him about level in a head-to-head contest with Biden. Of course a lot can happen between now and November but we have to ask, how does such a person get to remain a realistic challenger for President of the world's richest and most heavily armed country?</p><p style="text-align: left;">As I have often said, no individual can rule a large and complex country, and no individual can ascend to the pinnacle of government on their own. Trump is where he is because significant forces within US politics support him, while others enable him despite preferring that he was not there.</p><p style="text-align: left;">First of all, it's important to remember that Trump is not actually that popular, and has never received the votes of a majority of US voters. In 2016 he received about two million fewer votes than Hilary Clinton, who herself was not a popular figure. In 2020 he received seven million fewer votes than Biden, an ageing, gaffe-prone political veteran. He won the first election, and came close to winning the second, because the US electoral system is based on State boundaries and gives greater weight to voters in small rural States (who are more likely to vote Republican) than larger more urbanised ones. Biden would have lost the election if a few thousand votes in half a dozen key States had gone the other way.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVUYzjmb5BhcZVi6jfHj7xZE0btjkNbK8Idb6DZaQHGieLm5s4m30YSEnBVu6vkby9VkRh6KHYcTX2jmRB1XMUWZSDx8eMdSFKyCE2RtAtLWVnIEdzgcIgAKcP70-YjsxgRPKoeEcIpOjaSFD9T1qBvnmlaVV8YcaQ8TcHEYU2HxG7GvgJT-s3luiwMlra/s790/133027405_10224974804499449_8606754265557610424_o%20(2).jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="439" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVUYzjmb5BhcZVi6jfHj7xZE0btjkNbK8Idb6DZaQHGieLm5s4m30YSEnBVu6vkby9VkRh6KHYcTX2jmRB1XMUWZSDx8eMdSFKyCE2RtAtLWVnIEdzgcIgAKcP70-YjsxgRPKoeEcIpOjaSFD9T1qBvnmlaVV8YcaQ8TcHEYU2HxG7GvgJT-s3luiwMlra/w178-h320/133027405_10224974804499449_8606754265557610424_o%20(2).jpg" width="178" /></a></div>This is just those who vote. Voting is not compulsory in the US and even in 2020, with a record turnout, only about two thirds of those eligible to vote did so. Elections are open to various forms of manipulation. They are run by the State Governments, none of which have independent electoral bodies. The officials running them are elected politicians who often don't scruple to engage in chicanery to favour their own party - manipulating electoral boundaries, limiting pre-polling and mail-in voting, providing limited polling places in poor districts, making it illegal to offer drinks of water to people waiting in line to vote, and so forth. The judges who hear challenges to these laws and the prosecutors who would bring charges of electoral crime are also either political appointees or directly elected, ensuring a partisan legal system.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Even then, it is indisputable that 74 million people voted for Trump in 2020 and that over half of the Republican voters believe he won and the election was stolen from him. How do we explain this bizarre fact? There are many elements that come together to make it happen.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Trump has been able to bring together and take advantage of many dissident currents in US politics. Some of these are long-standing, like the white supremacist sense of grievance that has been rumbling along since the Civil War of the 1860s and the persistent rise and fall of conspiracy theories loosely linked to fundamentalist Christianity of which QAnon is merely the latest. Others are more recent, including the rise of the Tea Party libertarians and their increasing power in the Republican Party, and the growth of the religious right in recent decades and their unswerving devotion to the Republican Party in the name of preventing abortions.</li><li>Alongside this there is a fracturing of the media landscape which has taken place in the internet age. America is awash with misinformation masquerading as news via organs such as Breitbart and Infowars with more mainstream sources, particularly Murdoch's Fox News, taking an 'if you can't beat them, join them' approach. The irony is that this has paved the way for the demonisation of those sources with higher editorial standards, so that while people like me think it is Fox, Breitbart and Infowars spreading lies, their dedicated viewers and readers think it is CNN, NBC and the New York Times.</li><li>Sitting behind this is the hold of billionaires over the US political system. Their handsome funding of think-tanks, electoral campaigns and lobbyists ensures the relentless promotion of candidates who will enable them to get richer (which both Trump and Biden will do, but Trump will do it more) while running down government services to pay for massive tax cuts. These billionaires don't care if unemployed people and sole parents are homeless and starving, lining up for hours at welfare offices for their meagre cheques and sent to prison for petty crimes, as long as nobody looks too closely at how they came by their obscene wealth and what they do with it. It's not surprising, in this context, that poor people are massively cynical about government and don't bother to vote, or vote for some billionaire celebrity who promises them things he has no intention of delivering.</li><li>The final thing to note is what might be self-serving venality, or might simply be spinelessness, among the Senators and Representatives who are elected under the Republican banner. The Republican leaders in Congress - House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - both made their distaste for Trump known before the election. Yet once he became President they locked in firmly behind him, never wavering in their support for his maddest schemes or standing up for their friends and colleagues when Trump publicly pilloried and defamed them. Neither of these men, nor their various supposedly moderate colleagues, owed their election to Trump or were at risk of dismissal by him, yet with rare honourable exceptions (Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney) they continued to support him right up until election day in 2020. It was only in the aftermath that their support wavered. Vice President Mike Pence - who as an elected officer was also not vulnerable to dismissal - stood up to Trump just once, when he refused to go along with Trump's demand that he (illegally) refuse to allow the certification of Biden's election to go ahead.</li></ul><div>All of this points to an electoral malaise that goes well beyond Trump, and that Biden has been powerless to roll back. Even in the months following the 2021 insurrection the powerbrokers of the Republican Party went back to courting Trump, asking him to support their candidates in the 2022 mid-term elections, refusing to back Democrat efforts to impeach him following the insurrection, boycotting the congressional investigation (Cheney aside) and letting 'stolen election' talk go unchallenged. </div><div><br /></div><div>So far the nomination race to be the Republican 2024 candidate looks like a no-contest. Trump's lead in polls of Republican voters is so massive that he is treating the process with contempt, staying away from candidates debates and barely campaigning. At <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-debate-if-trump-is-convicted-support-as-president-jan-6-indictments-pence/" target="_blank">their first debate way back in August 2023</a> the other Republican candidates gave the game away. Debate moderator Brett Baier asked the eight candidates, "If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as your party's choice?". Six of the eight raised their hands in support, including Trump's two closest challengers (if they could be called such) Ron de Santis and Nikki Haley. The powerbrokers of the Republican Party seem remarkably relaxed about the prospect of a convicted criminal in the White House (or, perhaps, ruling from prison). Presumably they will all join him in proclaiming it a 'massive witch-hunt' and proceed to destroy the careers of the prosecutors, judges and court ushers who had the temerity to tear down their gilded idol.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrV4j93FlccLCX82PhWAIGdO6MKDE0K5626jZZ465ktYzfpy_pA-TcGSaZWi9_3XhEt4LVyIDzzwxEZmkZsNkiWFc-mJdyFLSDpkICbKzV657fv8lNyz4GnD3dc2bOjw0MEWhb3cDjJKMmjwOf-xIok72Mv9eOOFji5S1G0Nz-a5eKz7580-_WqAajX157/s2048/210303-trump-statue-cpac-al-1202_9b6e43384ac0f79f4b9d6f7ad293e15b.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1425" data-original-width="2048" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrV4j93FlccLCX82PhWAIGdO6MKDE0K5626jZZ465ktYzfpy_pA-TcGSaZWi9_3XhEt4LVyIDzzwxEZmkZsNkiWFc-mJdyFLSDpkICbKzV657fv8lNyz4GnD3dc2bOjw0MEWhb3cDjJKMmjwOf-xIok72Mv9eOOFji5S1G0Nz-a5eKz7580-_WqAajX157/w640-h446/210303-trump-statue-cpac-al-1202_9b6e43384ac0f79f4b9d6f7ad293e15b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><p></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-44085952813993060002023-11-16T17:07:00.014+10:002023-11-19T09:54:13.474+10:00The 'No' Vote and the Call of History<p>There have been, and will be, plenty of post-mortems on the recent referendum, from people on all sides of the political fence, black and white. A lot of those people will be more qualified than me to comment. <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/a-statement-from-indigenous-australians-who-supported-the-voice-referendum/" target="_blank">This statement</a> from the First Nations leaders behind the 'yes' campaign is a 'must read'. By comparison my thoughts carry little weight, but here goes anyway....</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghxs4YgRnAlw0lZcA277xZAIhim1yji55_3DaRoFMdDKfEhDSl-bMptEpMNumlSNUYEHZLamd1SHRxRlEs66MwhXwMJocrgvIEWOWJTZ-PjyGF88eFN41DGink0l-isoPi9abZqHhfegThDnRxyvLeTW1XNIw2ABWKcqrxPwo8n9x6c_7v1M7CKHFpVrLg/s4000/20230921_135222.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghxs4YgRnAlw0lZcA277xZAIhim1yji55_3DaRoFMdDKfEhDSl-bMptEpMNumlSNUYEHZLamd1SHRxRlEs66MwhXwMJocrgvIEWOWJTZ-PjyGF88eFN41DGink0l-isoPi9abZqHhfegThDnRxyvLeTW1XNIw2ABWKcqrxPwo8n9x6c_7v1M7CKHFpVrLg/s320/20230921_135222.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>I come at this as a partisan. I was active in the 'yes' campaign although far from central to it. I went in the big march, joined with others to make a human 'yes' on a local football field, put up a 'yes' sign on the tree in front of my house, handed out flyers at the local train station, shared stuff on social media. Most of this was done despite knowing it looked like a losing cause. I didn't want to contribute to that loss with my own defeatist apathy. <p></p><p>There are lots of nuances to the explanation for the 'no' vote, and I think they all have some truth to them but to my mind, the deeper we dig the more useful our understanding becomes. Here's three of the many ways to look at it.</p><p><b>1. Blame the 'no' campaign</b></p><p>A lot of good judges have suggested it is almost impossible to get a 'yes' vote in a referendum where one of the major political parties opposes it. Given this, the Liberal and National Parties waged a brutal but highly effective campaign. At least the Nationals were up front about their opposition from the start. The Liberals, on the other hand, played a cunning, ruthless game. They led the government along by not committing either way, asking for more detail, listening to briefings, and declared their hand only when the game was well advanced. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: left;">They were never going to support it. For those who were listening they had withdrawn their commitment to bipartisanship, and affirmed their commitment to lying, back in 2017. In 2015 Abbot and then Turnbull cooperated with then opposition leader Bill Shorten to set up the Referendum Council to consult First Nations people on the process of constitutional recognition. In 2017, the series of consultations held around the country culminated in the development and publication of the <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement/view-the-statement/" target="_blank">Statement from the Heart</a> with its core requests of Voice, Treaty and Truth-telling. Turnbull immediately responded by saying that he had no interest in supporting a third chamber of parliament, even though this was never requested. The die was cast.</span></div><p></p><p>The 'no' campaign itself followed a similar script. The strategy was to sow doubt and confusion, via disinformation and misdirection, and then tell a confused public, 'If you don't know, vote no'. Diligent fact checking by various media outlets found that while a few things in the 'yes' campaign materials were incorrect, the 'no' campaign was riddled with falsehoods, even in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2023/jul/20/the-vote-no-pamphlet-referendum-voice-to-parliament-voting-essay-aec-published-read-in-full-annotated-fact-checked" target="_blank">official pamphlet</a> sent to Australian households at government expense. But who reads the fact-checks? There are no laws requiring political campaigns to tell the truth, and the 'both sides' practices of the mainstream media simply allowed both sides to have their say and let the lies stand. </p><p>It worked, if your aim was to make the Labor government look inept. If you wanted to further the wellbeing of Australia's First Peoples or build greater understanding and respect between black and white, not so much.</p><p><b>2. Blame the 'yes' campaign</b></p><p>Despite the ruthless destructiveness of the 'no' campaign, it is worth also running the rule over the 'yes' campaign in which I played a small part. Despite the warning shot across the bow six years ago the 'yes' campaign had no strategy for combating the flood of misinformation. The campaign was slow to get started, like an elephant trying to run the Melbourne Cup, and by the time it got moving the 'no' campaign had a running start and had flooded the airwaves and social media channels with a dozen different lines of misdirection. </p><p>When the 'yes' campaign did get going, the strategy at local level was very focused on door-knocking, believing this was the best way to change people's minds. I'm not sure what this was based on, but assuming it was true you would have needed a far larger army of door-knockers than what we had when you consider that many of the 'yes' supporters (including me) were not really up for that. Meanwhile, a large group of campaign leaders, mostly First Nations people, spoke to the media whenever they had a chance, trying in vain to cut through the barrage of gotcha questions and communicate a positive message. </p><p>There was a lot of stuff out there, but it didn't really seem to hit the mark. The sense I had in my interactions was that by the time the 'yes' campaign really got rolling and I was handing out flyers most people had already made up their minds and switched off. The early goodwill, expressed in 60% support for the change in early polls, quickly evaporated. It was clear weeks out that the change would be rejected. The 'yes' campaign strategy, based on sustaining the early momentum and sweeping across the line in a wave of goodwill, proved to be a fantasy.</p><p><b>3. Rejecting or Accepting the Historic Moment</b></p><p>While this talk of tactics is interesting in its own way it is ultimately shallow. It treats politics as a game which you can win if you just play it well enough. But politics is not a game, it is a serious process by which we decide how we are governed. To treat it as a game, as many of its practitioners and much of the media do, is to debase it and sell us all short.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyzxjsUhp52YcCWiJDOQ_aC2JmLpDykbq1mUhJuV-_DspTgqWgytXFURRComCNHnaEjXMuL0zzK49t50Qy4c2gSHpyCxxB6jR1BE0OOBwQdzZ6BO2A3-4pOQmrkUR1XScrH-9kq9QfN3FSDBkt-nH4hKyy_PkqMpf29DabqK7zjADH3rz3kZ2JqTIboxDD/s1500/uluru_statement_from_the_heart_a3-1_o2-1500w.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="1500" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyzxjsUhp52YcCWiJDOQ_aC2JmLpDykbq1mUhJuV-_DspTgqWgytXFURRComCNHnaEjXMuL0zzK49t50Qy4c2gSHpyCxxB6jR1BE0OOBwQdzZ6BO2A3-4pOQmrkUR1XScrH-9kq9QfN3FSDBkt-nH4hKyy_PkqMpf29DabqK7zjADH3rz3kZ2JqTIboxDD/s320/uluru_statement_from_the_heart_a3-1_o2-1500w.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>One of the catchphrases of the campaign for the <a href="https://ulurustatement.org/" target="_blank">Uluru Statement</a> and the Referendum was 'Together we can make history'. It is tempting to think that Australians had the opportunity to make history and turned it down. However, I prefer to think that we <u>did</u> make history. It was not the history we were hoping it would be, but it was the true history, the one that actually happened. We need to understand what this history is, and where we are currently in the 235 year story of the British Australian colony.<p></p><p>The first thing we need to understand is that <b>assimilation is not dead</b>. It is not even ailing. It is alive and well, and not going away any time soon. </p><p>Back in the 1950s Paul Hasluck as Commonwealth Minister for Territories (and hence also for Aboriginal Affairs) championed the shift from what was often called 'amelioration' - the idea that Aboriginal peoples were dying out and we just needed to make them comfortable while they did so - to the policy of assimilation. He was supported in this by all the State and Territory 'Protectors'. It was plain that Aboriginal people were not dying out after all and in fact were increasing in number. What future did they have in British Australia? The answer was that they were to be assimilated - they were to be absorbed into the Anglo-European community in such a way that over time you would no longer be able to tell the difference between black and white. The people would survive, but their culture would wither away in the presence of superior European culture. </p><p>It is a long time since the word 'assimilation' has been used to describe official policy. People will talk officially about self-determination, about respect for First Nations cultures in a multi-cultural nation, about inclusion, about 'closing the gap'. The referendum was a test of how serious we are about these new ideas. The answer is, not very. Beneath these words lies the ongoing power of the assimilation narrative. </p><p>This was expressed during the campaign in various ways - in the concern about 'dividing the nation' as if it had previously been united, in the concern about giving Aboriginal people special rights, in the assertion made by Senator Price that colonisation has been good for Aboriginal people, and the idea repeated by various 'no' campaigners that it is Aboriginal culture that keeps them poor. We even heard it, probably in ignorance, from various 'yes' campaigners for whom the primary point of the Voice was help rectify Aboriginal disadvantage by improving service delivery.</p><p>The anthropologist WEH Stanner had this to say back in 1958.</p><i>One would wish that the authors of the policy of assimilation had found for it a happier name. The crunch with which the lion begins to assimilate the lamb and what follows are images best dismissed from the mind. Yet the physiological metaphor brings us uncomfortably near the truth. Assimilation means that the Aborigines must lose their identity, cease to be themselves, become as we are. Let us leave aside the question that they may not want to, and the possibility - I myself would put it far higher than a possibility - that very determined forces of opposition will appear. Suppose that they do not know how to cease to be themselves?</i><br /><p style="text-align: left;"><i>People who brush such a question aside can know very little about what it is to be an Aboriginal. Not that we have ever been a people remarkable for an intelligent appraisal of other races and cultures.</i></p><p>This is where what has been called the 'progressive no' campaign is worth listening to. What they were saying, in essence, is, 'Why would we want to be incorporated into the white nation's constitution?'. In other words, the process of recognition and the creation of the 'Voice' are merely another form of assimilation. Aboriginal people already have a voice, they don't need anyone's permission to exercise it, the problem is that white people are not listening. Why would they listen any better if it was in the constitution? </p><p>As the eventual votes showed, both the 'conservative' and 'progressive' 'no' voters were small minorities in the Aboriginal community, with solid majorities voting 'yes'. However, this doesn't mean the 'progressive no' advocates were wrong. Indeed, we didn't listen. So we march on down the difficult path of treaty and sovereignty, made more difficult now by the fact that the forces on the right feel empowered to withdraw their cooperation from treaty processes and double down (or perhaps chew harder) on their calls for assimilation.</p><p>Which brings me to my second point: <b>racism is alive and well, but most of us don't recognise it.</b> </p><p>Most of the progressive white people I know, whether supporters of the 'yes' campaign or the 'progressive no', share an understanding that we are prone to racism. None of us like this fact, but we understand that racism is structural, that we are trained to it from childhood and that despite our best intentions it can express itself at the most inopportune moments. We understand, like recovering addicts or repentant Christians, that admitting the problem is the first step, but far from the last, in addressing it.</p><p>By contrast, I discovered that 'no' campaigners were remarkably touchy on the subject, with one person even saying to me that being 'accused' of racism had turned them from a supporter to an opponent of the Voice. It is as if having to admit to the existence of racism was too high a price. </p><p>Yet this campaign was shot through with racism from beginning to end. Leaving aside the fact that assimilation is in itself a racist idea, there was blatant racism in the suggestions about various hidden agendas behind the seemingly innocuous 'Voice' campaign, in personal attacks on some of the key leaders, in the characterisation of Aboriginal people as parasites, in the fear (which emerges with every advance in Aboriginal rights) that white people will be displaced. </p><p>Sad to say, some of the most prominent 'yes' advocates fed this racist narrative by framing the Voice in terms of fixing problems in Aboriginal communities. Of course, it won't do to simply deny the problems exist. Whatever they disagree on, all Aboriginal people would like to have better health, safer communities, better education and job opportunities, adequate housing, fewer of their young people in prison. </p><p>Yet to limit the discussion to these issues is to risk trapping Aboriginal people in a deficit narrative and feeding the perception that there is something inherently wrong with them. Warren Mundine's response has resonance here - by enshrining the Voice in the constitution, are we saying that these problems will never be solved? </p><p>Both 'yes' and 'no' campaigns seemed to have had only a hazy grip on what was in play here. The core question is not, 'can we find a way to fix the problems in Aboriginal communities?', but 'can we find a way for the two cultures to live side by side as equals?'. The key problem being solved here is not poverty and poor health - these are the symptoms - it is the ongoing disrespect and marginalisation of First Nations cultures and peoples within post-colonial Australia. The Uluru Statement taken in full (not merely the Voice in isolation) attempts to rectify this - give First Nations people a permanent say in the governance of the nation, negotiate a treaty or treaties to address the unfinished business of peacemaking after the war of invasion, and tell the truth about how this took place. </p><p>The referendum result shows that this process will not be easy or quick. Stanner was prescient, on this as on so many things - the 'forces of opposition' have indeed revealed themselves. This should not come as a surprise, it has happened many times before and will happen again. The referendum is a setback but it is also a starting point. We have about 40% of our populace willing to listen and move forward. That is something, but not yet enough. The work continues.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjntZtbjmIfvUK6Xkpzytnbtmy6vroqLVFw_JX4PQANRZsgcJ_jHmVDVKwXgjoV7QtVlP12I5U2b3tOFS_7BJtCJdXi9k8TShwy_CP7BgN3eNtnz2pyEQXEr4z4PFYyNlPt4OCh4IZ5Urg_iLLyoO9asGILj0wm5kMd5Ed0dmDzFbBwoXzw8YVk8dJdDyqu/s1280/B3-EO939_BAKER_M_20190726101740.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjntZtbjmIfvUK6Xkpzytnbtmy6vroqLVFw_JX4PQANRZsgcJ_jHmVDVKwXgjoV7QtVlP12I5U2b3tOFS_7BJtCJdXi9k8TShwy_CP7BgN3eNtnz2pyEQXEr4z4PFYyNlPt4OCh4IZ5Urg_iLLyoO9asGILj0wm5kMd5Ed0dmDzFbBwoXzw8YVk8dJdDyqu/s320/B3-EO939_BAKER_M_20190726101740.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The final point about our historic moment is a broader one - <b>the forces of the Right are currently ascendant</b>. Never mind that for the moment we have centre-left governments around Australia or indeed in the US and are likely to soon have one in the UK. These governments are hamstrung. More than four decades of neo-liberal governance have left us with hollowed out public institutions, a growing wealth divide, a large and unaccountable global corporate sector and an information landscape dominated by large and barely regulated social media companies. Socially this means a fractured community, declining trust and mutual incomprehension between cultures and political 'tribes'.<p></p><p></p><p>The referendum campaign is just the latest indication that the forces we normally think of as the 'right' are far more adept at navigating this landscape than those on the left or even in the centre. It is easy to flood the environment with misinformation because there is no penalty for lying. With a fractured landscape and low levels of trust in institutions, it is hard to establish an objective criterion for truth.</p><p>There are, of course, limits to what this strategy can achieve. It is a poor strategy to achieve positive change, because that requires you to make your case and convince enough people that the change is a good idea. But it works if you want to resist the change, because you can spread lies, confusion and fear about the change and this can be enough to sink it. This is what we have seen in the referendum, and what we have seen for many years over action on climate change. It doesn't mean you do nothing, it means you keep doing what you are doing now. If this isn't working so be it, perhaps that is the whole point.</p><p>This kind of strategy is also very effective for the politics of grievance. The story of an innocent person victimised by powerful forces, or a despised minority unjustly taking what is rightfully ours, is an easy sell in this environment because it preys on fears we already have and on our sense of vulnerability in the face of our decaying institutions. This was also used effectively in the referendum campaign with the implication that First People were somehow being offered something denied to the rest of us and were intent on stealing our hard-earned cash. The facts about where that cash actually came from in the first place are too long to fit in a tweet.</p><p>We have seen the same in Australia for many years over refugees, with the current controversy focused on people in indefinite detention. We are seeing it here in Queensland over the 'youth crime epidemic' where the not-so-hidden subtext is that the youth committing the crimes are Aboriginal. It is so easy to persuade substantial parts of the populace that the only reasonable answer is to lock people up. The alternatives are much harder to explain, look much more uncertain, and require a leap of empathy for people who are 'not like us'. Hence even supposedly 'progressive' or 'centre-left' governments show little resistance to the adoption of 'law and order' policies. </p><p>This same process led in the UK to the success of Brexit as a way of keeping 'outsiders' out and retaining British resources for British people - all this despite the fact that it is objectively making people poorer. In the US it has allowed Donald Trump to remain within touching distance of a second presidential term despite (or perhaps even because of) his attempts at election subversion and the multiple criminal and civil charges he is currently facing. His formidable publicity machine convinces his followers that every revelation of his criminality is a partisan attack from his (their) enemies. </p><p>It is not yet clear how this substitution of partisanship for objectivity can be reversed.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">In a sense, none of this is new. As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKjgJ3oLJqE&ab_channel=101.9KINK.FM" target="_blank">the Prophet Bruce says</a>,</p><i>Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight</i><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.</i></div><p style="text-align: left;">If you want to save the planet, bring justice to oppressed peoples or even just <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-car-problem.html" target="_blank">make a safe place for kids to ride their bikes to school</a> you will have to fight every step of the way. We thought for a moment we might be at the point where we had worked hard enough, and convinced enough people, that we would be able to take the next step forward on this one. It turns out we were wrong. Now we know. Time to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCykWTsWQxM&ab_channel=ColinHay-Topic" target="_blank">keep on walking</a>.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYub1IEfOEIATzD_sxtBYUGJEIeijyo-KdWGJHyXbADFSMEeozhERrOO9JhLhdwxDD1xqAADkTC8EAguRq9AZOU-ha4FkZVSW7QqxhJWtmD8DJQLk6hDJT9utDcqqEwFLRG_a7gZa_qQ3iFadYRd3T4JdszKFdDIkyoY0QPMZ2k6lECPHOhuUkjNOD2Sa-/s704/p1011899.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="704" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYub1IEfOEIATzD_sxtBYUGJEIeijyo-KdWGJHyXbADFSMEeozhERrOO9JhLhdwxDD1xqAADkTC8EAguRq9AZOU-ha4FkZVSW7QqxhJWtmD8DJQLk6hDJT9utDcqqEwFLRG_a7gZa_qQ3iFadYRd3T4JdszKFdDIkyoY0QPMZ2k6lECPHOhuUkjNOD2Sa-/w640-h360/p1011899.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-92200571126249587992023-05-21T11:45:00.014+10:002023-09-05T16:46:09.009+10:00Why I'll Be Voting 'Yes' to the Voice<p> I'll be voting 'Yes' to the Voice. I don't say you should, you should make up your own mind, but here are my own reasons for doing so, and my responses to the criticisms being made by its opponents.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQbqOgWUlmnaAVjsr9w8Gnh3QWMYJlIvmwM0H2dw6djczBp-Kz2QsLQTyb1xTFj7wGLFaCnXrZwE3cF9Ei6GnDt84u8o7ZuTWYC79XEnUJm16UzyyYY-MLSu_L6EiGSSRyugXyeAOMvbzkZK1bAJAp-P4FZdL4o6Bs6qCoasK-JC3Tmb6lnHS-ezurEg/s1080/Yes_ListenToTheHeart_Instagram.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQbqOgWUlmnaAVjsr9w8Gnh3QWMYJlIvmwM0H2dw6djczBp-Kz2QsLQTyb1xTFj7wGLFaCnXrZwE3cF9Ei6GnDt84u8o7ZuTWYC79XEnUJm16UzyyYY-MLSu_L6EiGSSRyugXyeAOMvbzkZK1bAJAp-P4FZdL4o6Bs6qCoasK-JC3Tmb6lnHS-ezurEg/s320/Yes_ListenToTheHeart_Instagram.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The basics of the Referendum on the Voice are set out <a href="https://voice.gov.au/" target="_blank">here</a>. The vote will ask us to approve insertion of the following words into the Constitution.<p></p><p><i><b>Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples</b></i></p><p><i><b>129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice</b></i></p><p><i>In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:</i></p><p><i>i. there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;</i></p><p><i>ii. the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;</i></p><p><i>iii. the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.</i></p><p>These clauses set out the bare bones of recognition and the creation of the Voice, which means that if there is a Yes vote there will be a lot more debate about how it will be set up and how it will work. However, this debate will not be starting from scratch - the concept has been worked through in great detail first in the original consultations leading up to the Uluru Dialogue in 2017, and then in the subsequent co-design process on the Voice which reported in 2021. The history is summarised <a href="https://voice.gov.au/about-voice/history-constitutional-recognition-and-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-voice" target="_blank">here</a>, and there are links to the various reports for those who say 'we need more detail!'. </p><p><b>Reasons to vote Yes</b></p><p>I don't think the Voice idea is perfect, but perfection is too much to ask for in an imperfect world. What I do think is that it's a lot better than what we have already. Here is a set of reasons I will be voting 'yes'.</p><p><i>1. It is requested by a majority of First Nations leaders and people.</i></p><p>Not all support it, I know (I discuss the dissenting views below), but the concept comes from a wide-ranging consultation process that ended with the <a href="https://www.referendumcouncil.org.au/event/uluru-statement-from-the-heart.html" target="_blank">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>, is supported by First Nations leaders and organisations across the country, and the limited wide-scale polling of First Nations people indicates somewhere around 80% support. Supporters include people who have always held more conservative political views, such as Noel Pearson and Ken Wyatt, along with more progressive people like Marcia Langton or Thomas Mayo. My view is that if the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities say to us 'this is what it will take for us to build better lives' then we should support that.</p><p><i>2. It is Step 1 of a three-step process.</i></p><p>The Uluru Statement from the Heart outlines three steps - Voice, Treaty, Truth - and asks us to start with the Voice. Some people would prefer to start with Treaty but I can see the logic of the Uluru Statement's process. Once you have a Voice in place, there is a structure and process which has the moral authority to represent First Nations in the process of treaty-making, and to facilitate a truth-telling process. Without such a structure, the process of negotiation is a lot more murky, as we see already in Native Title negotiations. It won't mean that First Nations will now magically speak with one voice - why should they? Of course there will continue to be different views in their communities as there are in any community, but this will provide a channel for them to be discussed and processed.</p><p><i>3. It will be a secure, enduring body.</i></p><p>By including the Voice in the constitution, it will become embedded as an ongoing feature of our political landscape rather than being at the whim of the government of the day, as was, say, ATSIC, which was legislated by a Labor government, only to be abolished by a Coalition one. This will give First Nations people the assurance that they will have a say 'as of right', not at the whim of whoever is in power.</p><p>This doesn't mean that it will be outside the realm of politics by any means. The structure of the Voice, and its process of appointment or election, will be set by legislation. There are a thousand ways a future government could hamstring it or neuter it by changing the legislation. But since it must always exist, there will always be that presence in government. To be successful, its members will also need to be politically savvy. As an advisory body it has no power to make legislation and needs to rely on its powers of persuasion and its ability to work the political system to get the outcomes First Nations communities are looking for. </p><p><i>4. The symbolic power of 'Yes'.</i></p><p>The Voice in itself is a very modest reform. It grants First Nations an advisory structure, and provides constitutional acknowledgement of their status as First Peoples. It does not grant sovereignty (nor cede it), it does not directly improve services or provide compensation for past wrongs. If it works well (and this is not guaranteed) it may pave the way for some of these things. This paving of the way seems to me to be the key to the Voice.<br /></p><p>In 1967 the overwhelming 'yes' vote to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws about First Nations people and count them in the Census - also a very modest reform - was a seminal moment in Australian history. For the first time since the British invasion began in 1788, First Nations people felt seen at the national level, felt that their humanity and citizenship was acknowledged and respected. It took on a symbolic significance far beyond the simple legal changes it enshrined in the Constitution. The same can be true of the Voice. If we say 'yes', it will represent a huge affirmation that Australia as a nation is prepared to listen respectfully to First Nations communities, and perhaps represent a fresh starting point for moving forward on many of the crucial issues that still exist between us.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgQgdhc2ZJDWOM8tkBHopoLcfCYgYKRCkb9sB9AqCQJBj3BkKlgeOwJWSWeGPXq5Xoi7-X81PfYehqGkzxlQZUVm4XEtMpLWmEDlwBIII57X8lbDiNkiFZDYB_w7D6OuU5kE8nazL2OxMVumuoh6GgtP16yqZYCrGGsPUIGcCoidYLas0ygjc-RisxQ/s1500/uluru_statement_from_the_heart_a3-1_o2-1500w.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="1500" height="453" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgQgdhc2ZJDWOM8tkBHopoLcfCYgYKRCkb9sB9AqCQJBj3BkKlgeOwJWSWeGPXq5Xoi7-X81PfYehqGkzxlQZUVm4XEtMpLWmEDlwBIII57X8lbDiNkiFZDYB_w7D6OuU5kE8nazL2OxMVumuoh6GgtP16yqZYCrGGsPUIGcCoidYLas0ygjc-RisxQ/w640-h453/uluru_statement_from_the_heart_a3-1_o2-1500w.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><b>Responses to the arguments for 'No'.</b></p><p style="text-align: left;">So, that's my quick, personal reasons for voting 'yes'. Others will no doubt have different reasons, and these are far from a complete list of mine, just the highlights. Now, to the reasons I am not persuaded by the arguments for 'No'.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>1. We should prioritise practical issues.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Some people point to the massive practical issues facing First Nations communities - health, law and order, family violence, unemployment and so forth - and say 'why are we focusing on the Voice not on these things? How will the Voice improve these situations?'</p><p style="text-align: left;">I agree that these issues are very important, and I'm 100% sure that the proponents of the Voice do as well. What I don't see is that this is some kind of 'either/or' zero sum game - either do the Voice, or fix domestic violence. That is because these issues are fundamentally issues of social exclusion, and are bound up with the disempowerment of First Nations communities. </p><p style="text-align: left;">So for me, the question I ask back is, 'how will you address these issues without a Voice?'. It's not like these issues are new. One of the drivers behind the Voice is First Nations people repeatedly saying, 'you're not listening to us. We know how to address these issues but you keep doing things we know won't work.' The Voice, as envisaged through the co-design process, would provide a network of local and regional bodies which would feed into a national Voice to Parliament. If you want to respond to an issue at a local or regional level you would engage with the local or regional groups. If you are developing national legislation or policy you would discuss that with the national body. This is a way of building better policies and programs and better implementation. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Incidentally, the Coalition implicitly acknowledges this in its position. It says it will legislate a set of local and regional 'voices' but not a national one. The problem with this position is twofold - firstly, as a piece of legislation it provides no security to these bodies. Secondly, it cuts the 'voices' out of the crucial part of the puzzle - the framing of legislation and policy - and only brings them in at the implementation stage, once the big decisions have been made. It is a 'voice', but one that is effectively silenced from the beginning.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>2. It will divide the nation and entrench racial discrimination.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">In a sense this is the argument that holds the strongest emotional appeal, since it sounds like a plea for equality. However, I think this is deceptive.</p><p style="text-align: left;">For me the problem with this argument is that it equates 'equality' with sameness. It is a-historical and a-cultural, suggesting that the differences between our cultures and the different positions we occupy in the history of Australia don't matter. In fact, Australia has always been divided - between black and white, between Indigenous peoples and invaders, between the conquerors and the conquered. As such, there have also always been different laws for the two peoples, and this continues to be the case today. 'Native Title' is different to other forms of title, 'Cultural Heritage' laws treat Aboriginal heritage differently to the way 'Heritage' laws treat European heritage. Historically, 'protection' laws prescribed different rights and obligations for First Nations people, and criminal laws, while now formally the same, continue to be applied differently to Black and White peoples. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Since it became clear that Australia's First Nations would not simply 'die out' in the face of the British invasion, Australia has had a strong drive towards assimilation - to incorporating First Nations people into British Australia in a way that eliminates cultural difference, making them 'coconuts', brown on the outside but white on the inside. </p><p style="text-align: left;">You will hear a lot of assimilationist rhetoric from the 'no' campaigners. The trick is that it sounds like equality but actually it is not, because it says 'Aboriginal culture, and Aboriginal ways of being, are not relevant in Australian society'. Under this vision, First Nations people will always be second class, will always have to conceal who they are. A Voice allows them to be themselves, and gives them, as they are with their own cultures and ways of being, a seat at the table. It is fundamentally inclusive, not only allowing but celebrating and welcoming difference.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>3. 'The Executive issue'.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Since the question was announced the 'no' campaign has focused a lot on the inclusion of Executive Government alongside Parliament in the proposal. 'No' campaigners have argued that this gives the Voice too much power and has the potential to freeze up government. To my mind, this is not a good faith argument.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The Executive consists of the various parts of government that are accountable to Parliament - the Ministers and their Departments - along with the Governor-General and his/her 'Council' which is essentially the Cabinet under another name. What the proposal is saying is that the Voice can make representations to Ministers and Departments as well as to the Parliament itself. </p><p style="text-align: left;">To my mind, it's difficult to see how any consultative body could do its job without being able to advise the Executive, because this is where 90% of the work of government takes place. This is where legislation is developed, where program guidelines are set, where policies are made. Everything that goes to the Parliament has passed through the Executive. It is also the Executive that does the consulting - that goes out to the community and stakeholders, seeks their views, listens to their issues, invites them to comment on draft legislation and policies, and so forth. <u>Of course</u> the Executive will want to hear from the Voice on matters affecting First Nations people. This is the whole point of its existence.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>4. Is it just a token?</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Finally, the objection from the other side, from various grassroots activists and from Senator Lydia Thorpe who see the Voice as a diversion from issues of treaty and sovereignty. For them, the Voice is a token gesture that once again fobs off Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and takes the heat off their more challenging demands. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I have some sympathy with this view. Because the Voice is an advisory body, it relies on the goodwill of government to be effective. In a worst case scenario it could simply amount to a constitutional right to be ignored. </p><p style="text-align: left;">My response to this, which I understand is the response of those who framed the Uluru Statement, is as mentioned in my second reason to vote 'yes'. The Uluru Statement represents a three step process - Voice, Treaty, Truth. It represents the first stage of a three-step strategy mapped out by its First Nations architects to achieve the things the more radical activists also want. It may be that we get the Voice but never get to Treaty or Truth, in which case the Voice will remain at risk of being a token. But at this point, with the referendum train having left the station, if the nation votes 'no' the treaty and truth will inevitably fall by the wayside because, in effect, we will be voting 'no' to the whole Statement.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>Some concluding comments.</b></p><p style="text-align: left;">The Voice is a modest reform. It enshrines an advisory, consultative mechanism for First Nations people in the Australian Constitution. It is a small step along the path to righting the wrongs experienced by First Nations and addressing the ongoing issues between them and the rest of us.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As such, we shouldn't expect too much. The Voice will not immediately solve the entrenched issues of poverty, trauma and exclusion experienced by so many First Nations people. It will not instantly lead us to properly respect their cultures and appreciate the riches of their living heritage. If we treat it with bad faith, it is possible it will achieve very little.</p><p style="text-align: left;">However, saying 'yes' to the Voice is better than saying 'no'. A group of highly respected First Nations leaders from across the country, informed by a broad consultation process, have brought us this roadmap for addressing the issues between us. It represents a modest, generous offer, an olive branch, a chance for a new beginning. Why say 'no' when we can so easily say 'yes'?</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-70892782546387109312023-05-13T10:19:00.002+10:002023-05-25T21:58:19.072+10:00The Forest Underground<p>When I wrote a <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-parable-about-trees.html" target="_blank">little post about trees</a> earlier this year I was basically just talking through my hat. What I know about trees would fit on the back of a postage stamp. However, I just read a book by someone who knows lots more about trees than I do, and he surprisingly confirmed what I was saying.</p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuO2I4oJgB6YjLgKU6BnCfKG3jTs_Y-oq2cmPxEWv0u6nLyog4J9k28-TDZ-_zJ1X5aOLsH7HltV9HGVaxlbSvvXFakIP7AOQWiHUVO9jzPAz2ijSrdKF5PeVlHNWqKdDt1RmaHIkaIhJN8lo12MrydTyx3Lyh6-iwH4Avr8X9YlarUL2em5FS8Sckeg/s1300/9780645067118_1622629.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1287" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuO2I4oJgB6YjLgKU6BnCfKG3jTs_Y-oq2cmPxEWv0u6nLyog4J9k28-TDZ-_zJ1X5aOLsH7HltV9HGVaxlbSvvXFakIP7AOQWiHUVO9jzPAz2ijSrdKF5PeVlHNWqKdDt1RmaHIkaIhJN8lo12MrydTyx3Lyh6-iwH4Avr8X9YlarUL2em5FS8Sckeg/s320/9780645067118_1622629.jpg" width="317" /></a></i></div><i>The Forest Underground</i> by Tony Rinaudo has been heavily promoted in Christian circles and was named Australian Christian Book of the Year 2022 by Sparklit (the organisation which used to be known as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge). Rinaudo also received a Right Livelihood Award (a kind of alternative Nobel Prize) in 2018 for his work on reforestation.<p></p><p>In 1981 Tony, his wife Liz and their infant son headed off from Australia to join what was then known as the Sudan Interior Mission in Niger. After a few months language learning and cultural orientation they took up management of a farm school and associated Bible College in the town of Maradi. </p><p>Along with his other responsibilities, he took over leadership of a reforestation program that aimed to plant trees throughout the district. There was no doubt that the project was much needed. Over the decades since the Second World War the landscape of Niger had been heavily deforested in the name of 'modern' agriculture, leaving the land vulnerable to erosion and its people, who depended on timber for a wide variety of uses from firewood to building, needing to travel miles on foot to access the nearest wood supply. Land clearing was meant to make farming more productive but instead it denuded and exhausted the soil, left it loose to blow away in drought or wash away in flood, and left farmers increasingly struggling with falling crop yields and declining food security.</p><p>However, the reforestation project he managed was labour intensive and largely unsuccessful. Like many similar programs around the world, it worked by raising saplings in nurseries then distributing them to farmers to plant. Saplings require a lot of care and take decades to turn into mature trees, but poor farmers have too much work to do already producing enough food to survive so many of the trees died. Those that did take hold rarely survived to maturity because people needed wood now, not a tree in a couple of decades time. Besides, the law of Niger made trees government property, not the property of the farmer on whose land they were growing - this meant the farmer had no stake in the tree's survival and if they didn't cut it down themselves someone else would steal it for firewood. </p><p>After a couple of years of this futile effort two things happened which changed the course of his work and, ultimately, his life. </p><p>The first was a fortunate discovery. While he was driving between villages one day with a trailer load of saplings and a heart full of the futility of it all, he stopped to change a tyre and noticed that the land around him was dotted with shrubs. He took a closer look and realised they were not shrubs at all, but resprouting trees, growing from the roots that remained in the soil after the trees had been cut down. Armed with this realisation he began looking at the farms he visited with new eyes and realised that most of them had similar regrowth, which the farmers removed each year before planting their fields. </p><p>The second was a major disaster - in 1983 Niger suffered from a devastating drought-induced famine. Tony, Liz and the team spent the year distributing food aid throughout their region, using donations from supporters around the world and grain supplies from the World Food Program to help subsistence farmers survive. The time and the work were devastating as, despite their best efforts, they were forced to watch children die of malnutrition. </p><p>The one good thing to come out of this horrible year was this: global aid practice tells you that people should not be given food aid for nothing, because nothing harms a person's dignity more than a free handout. So people are asked to work in exchange for food aid. The task Tony and his team set many poor farmers was this - nurture the tree regrowth on your land. </p><p>It proved to be a much better strategy than planting new saplings. Because the root system is already mature, the part of the tree above the ground grows rapidly with minimal care and few tree deaths. Within a year, even in drought conditions, the regrowth was often quite substantial. Of course as soon as they didn't need the food aid any more many farmers cut down the trees as they had always done - after all, this was what they had been taught was good farming practice. But many farmers could already see the benefit of the regrowth and kept the trees in place. Over time these farmers had better soil and water retention in their fields, more shade sheltering their crops, their animals and themselves and better yields. </p><p>Of course this is what every farmer wants, so over the subsequent years the practice spread, first through the province, then more widely across Niger. By the time the Rinaudo family left Niger in the late 1990s to return to Australia there was a thriving movement across Niger of what came to be called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) which helped rehabilitate thousands of hectares of denuded farmland. Back in Melbourne, Tony went to work with World Vision and before long was helping to spread the movement elsewhere, firstly in Africa and then in other parts of the world. By the time he wrote his book the movement was estimated to have regrown trees on around 17 million hectares of farmland.</p><p>This work has led to Tony Rinaudo being called 'The Forest Maker', but this title is a misnomer. What is involved is not forests but farms with trees growing on them. Lots of farms, with lots of trees. These trees belong to the farmers and they don't simply look at them and think about what a good thing they are doing for the environment, they use them. Part of the use is passive - they prevent erosion, keep moisture in the soil, provide cooler and damper micro-climates, provide habitat for birds and lizards which eat insect pests. All these things aid farm yields, crucial to poor farmers who struggle with food security every year. But they also use the trees in a more active way - they may prune them periodically to use the timber without removing the tree, their livestock might feed on them, the trees themselves may yield edible crops.</p><p>Neither Tony nor anyone else 'makes' the tree covered landscape. The folly of thinking you can 'make' a forest was what he managed to escape from back in the early 1980s when he was starting out. What he did, and persuaded others to do, was to simply allow the trees to be. </p><p>This is classic example of good development work. It looks for what is present in the environment and the people, not what is missing, and starts by building on that. It assumes that the people being 'aided' are rational people who know what they need to thrive and are doing their best to achieve it. It then tries to build on this in a way that people can clearly understand and work with, ensuring that the people can see and experience the benefits for themselves. </p><p>Tony Rinaudo is justly celebrated for his role in FMNR, but his role is very specific. It is to be a catalyst. It is to introduce people, not so much to some key ideas, but to other people who have put them into practice. If it were not for the perceptive farmers in Niger who realised in the 1980s that letting the trees regrow improved their land, and showed their neighbours the results, FMNR would have died in the 1980s. It is just what is says on the box - farmer managed. Sure, people with fancy degrees can research it, advise about it, write papers about it which convince funders to put resources into it, but it only grows and spreads because farmers see others benefiting and try it for themselves, and then benefit in their turn.</p><p>The other reason I love this story is that it highlights so clearly how much human life is interwoven with the life of trees, animals, the soil and the water cycle. A healthy ecosystem is not simply a nice thing to have, much less a tradeoff with economic development, because we ourselves are natural living beings. In wealthy nations we are apt to forget this because we have been growing richer as ecosystems decline, but this is merely short-sightedness. We have achieved this result by exporting the resulting poverty as we import the riches. The Nigerian farmers destroyed their soil to grow peanuts for the Western market. I have a plentiful supply of peanut butter, but one dry year plunges them into famine.</p><p>Just as Tony Rinaudo had his eyes opened by the trees growing all around him, and in his turn opened the eyes of others, we all need to open our eyes and see what is happening in our world. It doesn't have to happen this way. Our received wisdom about what makes for prosperity and a good life is mistaken, just as was the received wisdom of the Nigerian farmers about tree clearing. But the solutions are not in some amazing new tech, or some massive injection of outside resources. They are here, all around us, waiting to spring up if we would just stop chopping them down before they have a chance to grow.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-3204688007672889632023-04-17T20:11:00.005+10:002023-05-13T17:28:44.609+10:00Freedom, Only Freedom<p>In his writings - both his award-winning novel/memoir <i>No Friend but the Mountains </i>and his journalism, recently collected and analysed in <i>Freedom, only Freedom</i> - Behrooz Boochani talks about what he calls the 'Kyriarchal System'. This term is his and Omid Tofighian's translation of the Farsi term <i>system-e hakim.</i> Tofighian attempts to explain the term as follows:</p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>[it] can be translated in numerous ways ... sovereign system, controlling system, ruling system, governmental system, dominating system, oppressive system, subjugating system, ruling system ... but none of these actually capture the essence of what Behrouz is saying....</i></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTfIr5j-58UKDercuF_m2QZswvGhdt-BK8yrbXF0dabaENp3PxnoQOIjCHOzSXLYIcQdEa1wgj-cvtYLPH8BTGVZpQ7nnlj7ATILTqGigf1GwRAFRnFVYElBWZjNDoAiuKU2tLPS-Vx5hgt55N2T-5HIUIbG0cNsGYoLuMbHin1NGX_fxYGelryVZhqw/s600/book-cover-freedom-only-freedon.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTfIr5j-58UKDercuF_m2QZswvGhdt-BK8yrbXF0dabaENp3PxnoQOIjCHOzSXLYIcQdEa1wgj-cvtYLPH8BTGVZpQ7nnlj7ATILTqGigf1GwRAFRnFVYElBWZjNDoAiuKU2tLPS-Vx5hgt55N2T-5HIUIbG0cNsGYoLuMbHin1NGX_fxYGelryVZhqw/s320/book-cover-freedom-only-freedon.png" width="213" /></a></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy#:~:text=In%20feminist%20theory%2C%20kyriarchy%20(%2F,domination%2C%20oppression%2C%20and%20submission." target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> tells us:</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>In feminist theory, kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div>For Boochani this idea highlights that asylum seeker imprisonment is just one aspect of a wider thread running through Australian society. These prisons for innocent people are not an aberration in an otherwise humane, democratic society, they are expressions of colonial domination and what another of the commentators in his book refers to as the 'coloniality of carcerality' - imprisoning people is a fundamental part of the British-Australian colony.<p></p><p>Anybody even a little bit familiar with Australian history should find this idea at least worth exploring further. After all, British Australia was founded as a prison. Overwhelmed by a 'law and order crisis' which was actually a crisis of poverty, the British decided to send their surplus prisoners overseas - initially to North America and then, once that became impossible, to Australia. These were not gangsters, murderers and rapists - those were executed - but petty thieves, forgers and prostitutes, often committing crimes to survive. Although their actual term of imprisonment was generally limited to seven years and in practice much of this was served on 'ticket of leave' working on the farms of free settlers, their exile was intended to be permanent. </p><p>Of course once the British established themselves on the Australian continent - aided by free convict labour - they quickly realised that there was too much potential wealth here for it to remain a prison, and transportation gave way to immigration. But this didn't mean an end to the process of exile, only its transfer to a different group of people. The Australian colonies developed elaborate systems of 'protection' for the various First Nations (we ask, from <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/10/dirty-little-secrets.html" target="_blank">whom were they being protected</a>?). This involved the surviving members of these peoples being exiled to prison camps of their own, termed 'missions', 'reserves' or other variations of the term. Many of these were initially established as genuine places of refuge and safety in the face of colonial violence but over time they were incorporated into the system and the 'protectors' had the power to confine people to them, or send them from one to another. This system was in place until well into the second half of the 20th century, and in a sense it continues today in the excessive rates of First Nations imprisonment.</p><p>The third wave of exile began at the beginning of the 21st century with the Howard Government's 'Pacific Solution' and is still going. This is the phase Behrouz Boochani got caught up in when he arrived by boat on Christmas Island on July 23, 2013, four days after Kevin Rudd declared that no refugee who arrived by boat would be allowed to settle in Australia. He was immediately transferred to Manus Island, where he was imprisoned for six years before finally being able to seek asylum in New Zealand (we ask, from whom did he need asylum at that point?). </p><p>In order to function and retain their social licence these systems need four things - a veneer of legality; secrecy and misinformation; people to run it; and a dose of racism. </p><p>The veneer of legality seems easy to set up - you just need to pass a law. But you also need to defend this law in the courts against challenges alleging that, for instance, it conflicts with Australia's treaty requirements. If you conduct the imprisonment in another country you can get around this by washing your hands of the whole thing - unless that other country has a functioning legal system, which it turned out that PNG has as its High Court found in 2016 that the detention of refugees on Manus was illegal. But this only changed the means of imprisonment - they were now imprisoned on the island, not just within the fences of the prison compound. </p><p>Secrecy and misinformation are also easier when the prison is on a far-off island, especially if you and the host government work together to limit access to that island. The Australian Government went to great lengths to prevent information from escaping - current and former staff working on the sites could be imprisoned for saying what they saw, independent visitors were barred, and for the first few years prisoners were forbidden from owning mobile phones and only allowed extremely limited time on the camp phones. This created substantial clear air which successive Immigration Ministers - and in particular Peter Dutton - could fill with lies. They were not genuine refugees, they were murderers and rapists, they were self-harming at the instigation of health workers, and so on.</p><p>More than anyone else, Behrouz Boochani was instrumental in breaching this silence and presenting, from the ground, what was actually happening in Manus Prison (as he always pointedly referred to his place of imprisonment). He was already a journalist when he arrived, having fled Iran after his writing for Kurdish nationalist publications placed him in danger. As soon as he could get his hands on a mobile phone (initially contraband) he began sending messages in Farsi to activists in Australia, and these were translated into English by Moones Mansoubi and published in various Australian media outlets, most notably the Guardian and Saturday Paper. Initially he was merely quoted as an anonymous source, then his articles were published anonymously and finally, when he realised that revealing his name could not make things any worse for him, he began publishing under his own name. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHYJ5kWOmKplvhJv288o24G-IK_vk9mj3oX2fkPhKHZ4I-hZGlfue5OgBpR9l8iid-YF3Hp3gaLMQ4e5tcaDvNDtYSnnfMdHAqoWjux3Vu2tfg_fHutbMTznWdLER5trTGJpriUNbYVg-Cl-WvuCr-Ps6blJRdV_lcfF_DEmZlJNKhZ2rT9afGtQ3ZvA/s850/p24_manus.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="850" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHYJ5kWOmKplvhJv288o24G-IK_vk9mj3oX2fkPhKHZ4I-hZGlfue5OgBpR9l8iid-YF3Hp3gaLMQ4e5tcaDvNDtYSnnfMdHAqoWjux3Vu2tfg_fHutbMTznWdLER5trTGJpriUNbYVg-Cl-WvuCr-Ps6blJRdV_lcfF_DEmZlJNKhZ2rT9afGtQ3ZvA/w400-h225/p24_manus.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>His stories are a stark contrast to the bland, strangely incurious and often misleading reportage that passes for much or Australia's mainstream journalism. He cut through the official lies but more importantly, broke the silence surrounding what was happening on Manus. He showed the prisoners not as faceless and frightening 'others' but as human beings who loved, dreamed and suffered. Once the High Court decision forced the Australian jailers to open the doors he showed us the Manusian locals who were themselves victims of the same colonialism, who showed kindness and hospitality to the prisoners even as they protested their incarceration and the failure of the Australian government to honour its promises to build local infrastructure. He showed the corruption and purposeful cruelty of the system of incarceration, from the seemingly deliberate medical neglect to the petty rules, periodic under-provision of food, regular destructive searches and confiscation of the items that made life bearable. I was particularly gutted by his tale of the guards confiscating musician Mostafa Azimitabar's guitar because he might have used the strings to hang himself. (You can hear Moz's story <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-UFDR4B3-A&ab_channel=ABCNewsIn-depth" target="_blank">here</a>.)<p></p><p>The third thing is someone to run it. Given that the Commonwealth Government has little experience in running prisons, the prison operators were a parade of increasingly dodgy contractors. Established security and logistics companies didn't mind taking on such work at first, but as the smell around indefinite imprisonment without trial got stronger many more reputable companies elected not to extend their contracts. In the end the Australian Government contracted a company called Paladin to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars worth of services on Manus without a tender, and when the company had almost no previous existence. </p><p>Once again, Boochani casts light on this murky world. Not only does he spend time tracing the corporate connections and back-story of the various contractors, but he tells us what our millions are paying for - the neglect and cruelty of International Health and Medical Services, the appalling wages paid by Paladin to its local staff, the rampant cruelty of the guards from Wilson security (including the two Australian who were whisked out of PNG before they could be charged with the rape of a local woman), the meagre facilities provided for both prisoners and locals. He shines a bright light on what he and other writers refer to as the 'prison-industrial complex' which takes on a life of its own.</p><p>Racism hardly needs much comment. Would we treat people this way if they were white Anglos and not brown skinned Muslims? Indeed, even as Peter Dutton portrayed those on Manus and Nauru as potential or actual criminals and terrorists, he was happy to float the idea of giving urgent asylum to white South African farmers as a result of a bogus story about racially motivated murders. He was more than happy to support the 'right' kind of refugees. </p><p>But Boochani asks harder questions than this, and this is how he deploys the idea of the 'kyriarchal system'. His challenge is not only to his jailers, but even to the activists who supported the prisoners' release. Why did we portray the prisoners as victims, not as purposeful actors capable of speaking on their own behalf? Why did we demonise Manus and Nauru in the process of critiquing the prisons, instead of seeing the desecration of these beautiful islands as part of a long history of colonial exploitation? Why did we fail to make the link between these colonial actions and the dispossession of Australia's own first nations?</p><p>Behrouz Boochani has given Australians a gift which we do not deserve, and which we are more than likely to refuse. He has used his own imprisonment to shine a light on our nation and ask us hard questions. Why was it so easy for our politicians to create a steadily-escalating cycle of cruelty towards asylum seekers? Why do we continue to be wilfully blind to our colonial heritage both at home and abroad? Has the White Australia policy really been dismantled, or just adapted for new purposes? </p><p>As I write this, there are still over 200 refugees trapped on Manus and Nauru and over a thousand in limbo on Australian soil. There are thousands more who arrived before 2012 and who still have not had their status determined. We have a new government in Canberra but they are still telling the same old lies even as they release a single family to burnish their humanitarian credentials. </p><p>Australians love imprisoning and exiling people. We should be expecting, and demanding, better. As Behrouz says more than once, all along the only thing they were asking for was 'freedom, only freedom'. Surely it's not too much to ask?</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-54052126282923266932023-02-19T11:33:00.001+10:002023-02-20T09:01:02.064+10:00The Nine Lives of Grace Tame<p>(<i>Content warning: this post discusses child sexual abuse and sexual assault.)</i></p><p>I have to say I don't generally pay a lot of attention to the <a href="https://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/" target="_blank">Australian of the Year</a> award. Often the person who receives it is someone I've never heard of, and as often as not I am none the wiser at the end of their term. Theoretically they get to use their status to promote the work and issues which got them there in the first place. The 2023 recipient is <a href="https://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/recipients/taryn-brumfitt" target="_blank">Taryn Brumfitt</a>, the leader of the Body Image Movement which tries to counter the negative messages women and girls get through their lives about their bodies and build a more positive culture around our physical selves. It sounds like a good thing, but I had to look that up just now for this article. I was more familiar with her predecessor Dylan Alcott but I heard a lot less of him in 2022 when he was using his platform to promote disability inclusion than than I did in previous years when he was winning tennis tournaments. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiToWU_JmKqIPpnxdDZXo45PEnSd3RaDGVKygfRYybIg95MFQAvEX1L8_Ka9oLmfXR2J-Qg266SYYdeInjyPRXfG0UsOJCuSXUMOf69-Ti-l5z2QSwQMOtiyIxVtWFltAHEeYTQP3Kz50TpU_TQkAvbsV23KhDNYK28BURKYXtkCgIMxxFXvemiBDRlXA/s500/9th%20life%20cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiToWU_JmKqIPpnxdDZXo45PEnSd3RaDGVKygfRYybIg95MFQAvEX1L8_Ka9oLmfXR2J-Qg266SYYdeInjyPRXfG0UsOJCuSXUMOf69-Ti-l5z2QSwQMOtiyIxVtWFltAHEeYTQP3Kz50TpU_TQkAvbsV23KhDNYK28BURKYXtkCgIMxxFXvemiBDRlXA/w264-h400/9th%20life%20cover.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>I had also never heard of Grace Tame when she was announced as the 2021 Australian of the Year, but the rest of the year sure made up for that!<br /><p></p><p>Before the award, she was reasonably well known in Tasmania (everyone is well known in Tasmania) as the key spokesperson for #LetHerSpeak, a movement campaigning for law reform to end the legal silencing of survivors of child sexual abuse.</p><p>Grace was sexually abused at 15 by Nicholaas Bester, a teacher at her high school. Taking advantage of her vulnerability he groomed her over a period of months, followed by six months of regular rapes before she finally called a halt and reported him to the police. He was convicted and spent 18 months in prison for his crimes, which seems pretty lenient for what he did.</p><p>Of course this is not the end of the story, because having been a child at the time of the offences she was unable to speak publicly about what had happened to her, and no media outlet was allowed to publish her name or anything that would identify her. On the other hand, no such bar applied to Bester. This meant that he could be named in media reports, but also that his self-serving confession was on the public court record and reported extensively in the media. Once his sentence was over he could talk all he liked, and in 2017 Australia's favourite rape apologist Bettina Arndt conducted an interview with him in which they had a good laugh together about how young girls will seduce older men and then ruin them. He even went back to jail after posting details of some of his rapes on social media. Yet despite being an adult by this time Grace had no right of reply.</p><p>Eventually, with the help of others who formed the #LetHerSpeak campaign, she succeeded in getting an exemption from the Tasmanian Supreme Court and spoke up for the first time in 2019. She's been speaking up ever since, campaigning for changes to the gag law and on issues of child sexual abuse more generally. It was this work which led to her being made Australian of the Year in 2021 at the age of 25, and catapulted her onto the public stage.</p><p>I think we can learn a lot from Grace Tame's eventful reign as Australian of the Year, but let's focus on two things. The first is that sexual assault and sexual abuse are disturbingly common. In her book, she cites the widely quoted research that one in three girls and one in four boys experience some form of sexual assault during their childhood. This is not new information - I was told similar figures when I worked in child protection in the 1980s. This abuse is often perpetrated by people who are in positions of trust - priests, school teachers, sporting coaches, and so on. But women in particular are also at risk of sexual assault as adults - in workplaces, in pubs, at parties, anywhere really.</p><p>So we should not be surprised that in 2021 we didn't only hear from Grace Tame. We heard from Brittany Higgins, who told of being raped by a colleague in Parliament House in 2019 and then pressured not to pursue the case because it would harm the government's chances of re-election and (by implication) her own future employment. Her finally speaking up in 2021 sparked a wider investigation into working conditions in Parliament House which revealed that about a third of the staff there had either experienced or witnessed sexual harassment. </p><p>Courtesy of the work of <a href="https://www.teachusconsent.com/" target="_blank">Chanel Contos</a>, we also heard the stories of thousands of young women who had been sexually assaulted in their school years by male classmates. The perpetrators included students at prestigious private schools, and the abuse was often brazen and more or less public. </p><p>The second thing we learnt is that because abusers are often powerful people, generally more powerful than their victims, and often clever psychopaths to boot, they are able to mobilise significant forces to their aid. This is also not new information - we had a whole Royal Commission into how powerful institutions protect and enable child sexual abuse. Reading Grace Tame's book we see how Bester was able to bring the school authorities around to his side. During the grooming phase of his abuse he managed to have it understood across the school that he was Grace's supporter and confidante, so if she was upset and overwhelmed at school (recovering as she was from anorexia and coping with prior trauma) they would fetch him, or take her to him. Delivering the lamb to the wolf's door. Her parents understood that this was massively inappropriate (her father was a high school teacher himself) and complained to the school about it more than once, but the grooming and abuse proceeded unchecked. Even once she had disclosed the abuse and was weeping uncontrollably the principal said to her words to the effect that 'I had boy trouble at high school, too'. 'Boy trouble' was the least of her problems at that point.</p><p>But once you report the abuse this is just the beginning. It's incredibly hard for an abuse survivor to genuinely escape further abuse. The world is full of psychopaths who will take advantage of a survivor's trauma and confusion and abuse them again. If they stay silent, they escape the glare of the spotlight but this means they have to cope with the trauma on their own. Yet if they speak up they find there are even more powerful forces lining up to question them, reinterpret the abuse as their fault, deny it happened or otherwise gaslight and belittle them. The louder they speak, the louder the backlash and the more powerful the attackers. </p><p>Hence, Brittany Higgins found her former employers backgrounding the media against her partner, insinuating that her allegations were part of a political plot aimed at bringing down the government. As the public anger about these multiple abuses swelled, Higgins and Tame became friends and found themselves sharing stages at the Women's Marches and the National Press Club, but they also suffered accelerated online trolling and the abuse of the old white men and snarky women who occupy the opinion pages of the Murdoch media. Higgins found the ACT arm of the Australian Federal Police distinctly hostile towards her and reluctant to prosecute her alleged attacker. In the end his trial was aborted due to juror misconduct and the ACT Prosecutor decided not to proceed to a retrial because of the devastating impact the process was having on her mental health. Yet even today, as I write this article, <i>The Australian </i>has published an interview with Linda Reynolds, Higgins' former employer, in which she casts herself as the victim in the whole affair, alongside leaked extracts from Higgins' private diaries which the paper could only have got from the AFP.</p><p>By speaking up Grace Tame also painted a big target on herself and there was no shortage of powerful people lining up to take pot-shots at her, dig up dirt from her past like the photo of her with a giant bong, and suggest once again that maybe the abuse was her fault. (It wasn't, abuse is always the abuser's fault). Like Higgins, by the end of 2021 her mental health was in tatters and she stepped back, took a deep breath and got help.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimwl5Syoy4ga9UzAXxs7z0I8OWtX1qtn5YRZjS8IoHhUv8AKV0Pcjd5ea-Co2mJDJhrh5JMFV_jcM4cjO7M2R276hL3Ar4l40qHuV0bSF9UuJVgjFZRpfE4xS5LvWAcL2Qs3F2S1F9XX9ALkSm_PuD9I8qhS8cJYBjpI-WuJMbUspQkP4IljxBx4wb8A/s3500/Grace_BW_3-min.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3500" data-original-width="2500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimwl5Syoy4ga9UzAXxs7z0I8OWtX1qtn5YRZjS8IoHhUv8AKV0Pcjd5ea-Co2mJDJhrh5JMFV_jcM4cjO7M2R276hL3Ar4l40qHuV0bSF9UuJVgjFZRpfE4xS5LvWAcL2Qs3F2S1F9XX9ALkSm_PuD9I8qhS8cJYBjpI-WuJMbUspQkP4IljxBx4wb8A/w286-h400/Grace_BW_3-min.jpg" width="286" /></a></div>I could go on in this vein and this article would never end for all the awfulness of abuse and the ubiquity of its apologists. But having just finished reading Grace Tame's memoir, <i>The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner</i>, I think we need to go beyond the conflict and awfulness of it and get to the heart of why it matters. It matters because Grace Tame is not a cause, a stereotype, a poster-child for surviving abuse, or any other paper lion. She is a real, living, 3D, complex and multiply gifted young woman. She is a loyal, loving daughter, sister, lover and friend. She is a gifted artist (the book cover is one of hers), a talented comedian with a gift for mimicry and a wicked sense of humour, a yoga teacher, a pretty fair endurance athlete and no slouch at writing (no ghost writers here!). She is also incredibly courageous, not afraid to call a spade a f***ing shovel, and fiercely determined to stand up against injustice.<p></p><p>Alongside this are some more difficult things. She has autism, which is neither good nor bad, just different. Like a lot of girls she went undiagnosed until young adulthood, so she didn't get any support to navigate these differences in a world designed for people who are closer to the centre of the spectrum. She has also experienced multiple traumas over her life - of course the abuse at 15, but before this her parents' divorce and her subsequent childhood shuffling between two households, emotional abuse by an adult who she doesn't name but whose identity you can perhaps reach some conclusions about on your own, sexual assault by an older child at the age of six. No wonder she broke down at 14 and became easy pickings for a clever, practiced psychopath. </p><p>Her story from here on is a story about the effects of trauma, but it is also a story of an adventurous, unconventional and courageous young woman who moved to the US at 18, worked in multiple shit jobs to put food on the table, lived in various dives and at times in her car or friends' couches, studied at a community college in California, learned yoga and became an instructor, did art commissions for stars and had a show at an <i>avant garde</i> gallery, got to meet and work for one of her childhood comedic heroes in John Cleese and became friends with his daughter, and was married and divorced by the age of 24. She doesn't pretend to be a saint, nor aspire to be one, but her sins, if such they are - drug use, short-lived relationships, risk-taking - are the kind of coping strategies and pain responses used by trauma survivors the world over. </p><p>By the time she returned to Australia in 2020 she was approaching the kind of maturity and self-confidence born of hard living and hard lessons. She had learned not to let other people set her agenda for her, to stand up for herself and others without apology, to be herself whether others liked that or not. It was not easy. Reliving her trauma in public over and over again, acquiring an army of online trolls, fielding inane and hostile questions from right-wing journalists, being pilloried in public for not being polite enough to the man who backgrounded journalists about her friend's partner (no, it wasn't her autism, she genuinely loathes him), all the while travelling the country from one gruelling speaking engagement to the next. </p><p>Fortunate for her that just before all this hell broke loose she met a man who neither wanted to abuse her nor was dealing with traumas of his own, who just wanted to be with her, to the extent that he quit his job to become her full time supporter on the road. Hopefully in the years to come they will be able to build a slightly less frantic life together, although I doubt Grace will ever slow down to the same speed as the rest of us. </p><p>The big danger for us is that we forget what we have learnt about sexual abuse in the last few years, continuing to put women and children at risk and apologise for their abusers. After all, it's happened before. But the big risk for Grace Tame is that she will be seen for the rest of her life, which is barely one third over barring accidents, as an abuse survivor and advocate. I hope that after the whirlwind of 2021 and 2022 she will find more space to be all the other things she could be. That she can get off the treadmill of always being asked to retell the tale of her harrowing 15th year and talk about something else.</p><p>I don't say this because I think she should shut up about the abuse. As if she would! I say it because she is more than that. I hope that she gets to put on an art exhibition in her native Hobart and all everyone talks about is her pictures. That she gets to do more stand-up gigs and everyone laughs at her impersonations and her off jokes. Perhaps she'll get to sit in one of the chairs on Spicks and Specks and tell funny stories about touring with John Cleese. Perhaps she'll write a book about her three wonderful grandparents (not the one who was a dud), or maybe a bit of gonzo journalism about life as a broke Aussie expat in California.</p><p>Perhaps she'll do none of those things. Perhaps she and Max will settle down to a quiet life in suburban Hobart where he goes back to his job as an accountant, she teaches yoga and they make babies together. Seems kind of unlikely, but you never know....</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-62762316086014502682023-01-16T10:49:00.002+10:002023-01-17T18:06:33.339+10:00A Parable About Trees<p>Here's a little parable about plants. In particular, a little row of street trees that I often walk past, just a few hundred metres from my home. I'm no botanist, but I believe these are Golden Penda trees, scientific name Xanthostemon chrysanthus. They are Queensland natives but their natural range doesn't extend as far south as Brisbane. They are here because they were the official plant of Expo 88, planted in flower to provide visitors with a vibrant golden welcome. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4aaQOsk8fFBd6YgFarH5b6GRgjn2iFRgGGt9QFDm6tM84Lqt8Qx4cEZNOJz0qyWwy6iSbXg1leoTejfU3Onnksb-19rTTmTYvANpsVI-Z8QbQvq0aK8hrivlF1XHUcN5QCwcvdBpO__E12cB8y92DgJmMP6aXKVywNC0kp-niOBc6JcFFva_SJU8mtA/s2926/20211008_174505.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2926" data-original-width="2041" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4aaQOsk8fFBd6YgFarH5b6GRgjn2iFRgGGt9QFDm6tM84Lqt8Qx4cEZNOJz0qyWwy6iSbXg1leoTejfU3Onnksb-19rTTmTYvANpsVI-Z8QbQvq0aK8hrivlF1XHUcN5QCwcvdBpO__E12cB8y92DgJmMP6aXKVywNC0kp-niOBc6JcFFva_SJU8mtA/s320/20211008_174505.jpg" width="223" /></a></div>The thing about these trees is that they love to grow. What first attracted me to them was the way the foliage was starting to sprout from the base of the trees. At the end of last autumn you could see that the growth was already strong.<p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEVJshboxXluCEM7FtGdqDVPFo3vqzffJB1gHcHjiJ7BnBR-Pz1CKGjG-iqOileHmSU9u8oOLGIjq2CtAJLFT7q1YjQKcvLQceqhoX8In3N8R9ztdMrd-i24IOFZoIfB58CdYIsTeLnS3UqQ3KwPm5RN5XSzEK910_Z3Os7R0mRfT2CH4UQbzbfF-pVQ/s2443/20220123_101812.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2443" data-original-width="2139" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEVJshboxXluCEM7FtGdqDVPFo3vqzffJB1gHcHjiJ7BnBR-Pz1CKGjG-iqOileHmSU9u8oOLGIjq2CtAJLFT7q1YjQKcvLQceqhoX8In3N8R9ztdMrd-i24IOFZoIfB58CdYIsTeLnS3UqQ3KwPm5RN5XSzEK910_Z3Os7R0mRfT2CH4UQbzbfF-pVQ/s320/20220123_101812.jpg" width="280" /></a></div>As I went out walking in the streets around my home I started watching the growth of these exuberant little sprouts. Over a period of a few months last summer they went crazy, growing from modest little shoots to large new growths.<p></p><p>Last summer was one of the wettest on record. It caused havoc to us humans; I had to evacuate my home again, and others had their homes inundated for a second time this century. But the trees absolutely loved it!</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhymiXcRMyHxt4cgqSSs2auV9r4looO66pMyljwPZseIU8y_CoFXywtLJVnAn1fthrScBO26RyboiLF76MFMteoNqyPkwvUs5vM1tBR7n2gkf26vRKOYtFKe2aDU1OrrVdfg8B0dtkeXh_Uji3w4L0MkuG3vtJ_zD_Abdviz4oTK4fzU4sgFTH9o-Hijg/s2585/20220123_101758.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2585" data-original-width="2057" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhymiXcRMyHxt4cgqSSs2auV9r4looO66pMyljwPZseIU8y_CoFXywtLJVnAn1fthrScBO26RyboiLF76MFMteoNqyPkwvUs5vM1tBR7n2gkf26vRKOYtFKe2aDU1OrrVdfg8B0dtkeXh_Uji3w4L0MkuG3vtJ_zD_Abdviz4oTK4fzU4sgFTH9o-Hijg/s320/20220123_101758.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>It wasn't just the base of the trees. Anywhere there was a lopped branch they sprouted new growth. It was like they felt naked and needed to grow themselves new garments as quickly as they could. <p></p><p>I found it wonderful, hopeful, almost giving life to me as I passed and let my eyes rest on those vivid green and orange shoots. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMidEZp7UP3g-BqZeWZ6C8k_k7yTWFGpbhwFanVFzE5o0uJvaLij7yAG0NwYfUukwIPrYPjtzb_1QTC8qQNSNvYJS__ziLW5uucLVbGL0pPcCuAq7gUCjgz0cDV4p4vs0AMh8Ju7yS7YqixshFGvLnsown0TLwnJ5Vc5VCiAWl_ruurySZHxohwMc28A/s2088/20220716_125439.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1896" data-original-width="2088" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMidEZp7UP3g-BqZeWZ6C8k_k7yTWFGpbhwFanVFzE5o0uJvaLij7yAG0NwYfUukwIPrYPjtzb_1QTC8qQNSNvYJS__ziLW5uucLVbGL0pPcCuAq7gUCjgz0cDV4p4vs0AMh8Ju7yS7YqixshFGvLnsown0TLwnJ5Vc5VCiAWl_ruurySZHxohwMc28A/s320/20220716_125439.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Sadly, it was too good to last. A bushy tree may give me joy but it's not really suited to being a street tree on a narrow footpath. Over the winter, my local Council sent their team out to trim off the new growth and return the trunks to their naked state.<p></p>I was sad in a mild kind of way, but not really shocked or surprised. This is how street trees are managed. It's a delicate balance between providing greenery and a little shade and keeping the streets and footpaths clear enough to use. A giant bush doesn't really make for a great street tree. This is part of the reason Council doesn't plant Golden Pendas any more, but these mature trees just have to be managed as best they can be. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpkhwARpsJLfcKnlRV5Jj9i89deUOhuiGDr1b2uu8nXYbmcgBF0qcSKbEKTOca8mR3fVv8JseHAcYsJQCeCFeCI-P30uTROfdi7_EFQVrQMZcLuPlK2Pm6nFs9UnlYKl7030W-y1u_r-WgQMX1dohbLy9o5828azLIGOutgHQkPtWP7f0du8SoeUOLLQ/s2560/20221227_083905.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1857" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpkhwARpsJLfcKnlRV5Jj9i89deUOhuiGDr1b2uu8nXYbmcgBF0qcSKbEKTOca8mR3fVv8JseHAcYsJQCeCFeCI-P30uTROfdi7_EFQVrQMZcLuPlK2Pm6nFs9UnlYKl7030W-y1u_r-WgQMX1dohbLy9o5828azLIGOutgHQkPtWP7f0du8SoeUOLLQ/s320/20221227_083905.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>Of course we don't know what the trees thought about this, but they sure act like they don't like having naked trunks! Summer isn't over yet, and they are already hard at it replacing the growth the Council team got rid of. There are still a good few months of growth left before they slow down for the winter.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps they don't really care. Or perhaps this is just what trees do, the inevitable biochemical product of sunshine, water and soil nutrients. The tree doesn't know the word 'stop' and if you cut it, it will just grow again. </div><div><br /></div><div>It will keep doing this until it dies, because of course trees are not immortal. In the process it will created thousands, maybe millions of seeds and some of them will propagate elsewhere and keep the cycle going indefinitely.</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXFYnbWRYiDZkH8XU6WAbIfhODtW9ceZjfWRTIcngisRVIxA9d29ICFQ1vCSxO6ypief82WBjwBSvOVtJTZLunZ5rWr5X1QvMDL2KsivDIsND9SArsnb7RqvxGKQdNZBuyDiR4ckxtt5BL0Oyb-QmiahKJ3XMPVx3ubyppMHfJaVA-0rBdIkaxCu4eLA/s2931/20221227_081155.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1666" data-original-width="2931" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXFYnbWRYiDZkH8XU6WAbIfhODtW9ceZjfWRTIcngisRVIxA9d29ICFQ1vCSxO6ypief82WBjwBSvOVtJTZLunZ5rWr5X1QvMDL2KsivDIsND9SArsnb7RqvxGKQdNZBuyDiR4ckxtt5BL0Oyb-QmiahKJ3XMPVx3ubyppMHfJaVA-0rBdIkaxCu4eLA/w320-h182/20221227_081155.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Golden Pendas are not the only trees that re-shoot from their bases and lopped limbs like this. Here, for instance, is a Jacaranda tree that grows in a park near me. Unlike Golden Pendas, Jacarandas never go out of fashion, coating parks and footpaths with purple flowers every autumn. This one has been cut back and decided it needed to replace what it lost. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5rUEZEuoCl7_Bkjm_nQGCqsPvIHwhzH6ahI-eN1bPDXd3iyvTMWUBhzOTUm11-sgZU2KqpHPW44tUNL6Gswd8XQwZWyQKXDyLR72xBJB90_76a-ffN6mbSQKHii8H-XVV_W_Dk9U02KPv5XpPWF01Jfw9WlNDnpWuoRZ0EVZ0-o8kWYGoqlltLoVVng/s2713/20221227_081329.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2121" data-original-width="2713" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5rUEZEuoCl7_Bkjm_nQGCqsPvIHwhzH6ahI-eN1bPDXd3iyvTMWUBhzOTUm11-sgZU2KqpHPW44tUNL6Gswd8XQwZWyQKXDyLR72xBJB90_76a-ffN6mbSQKHii8H-XVV_W_Dk9U02KPv5XpPWF01Jfw9WlNDnpWuoRZ0EVZ0-o8kWYGoqlltLoVVng/w320-h250/20221227_081329.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the same park is this Moreton Bay Fig tree, growing near the river bank as they love to, shooting some new branches out from its base. </div></div><div><br /></div><br /><div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ukhAbcO36sXh8O6i1ALzO58EVwUV_uEKJgr8WMIECKBrq0dvXQu5eLlNQOq-SiPyKr3HRsLBcN2S5Zq4Gsg2yAVg4JEmJ7hHIKYiHgmhpkgtjicAhFJ_Pnce696bc7V_d4g4IaF_JjD5oqb4_dDae9wq_mvtX_AJLYWwC5e4Hj0RqCBEL96i6c1ECA/s2105/20221227_080218.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2009" data-original-width="2105" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6ukhAbcO36sXh8O6i1ALzO58EVwUV_uEKJgr8WMIECKBrq0dvXQu5eLlNQOq-SiPyKr3HRsLBcN2S5Zq4Gsg2yAVg4JEmJ7hHIKYiHgmhpkgtjicAhFJ_Pnce696bc7V_d4g4IaF_JjD5oqb4_dDae9wq_mvtX_AJLYWwC5e4Hj0RqCBEL96i6c1ECA/w320-h305/20221227_080218.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Just down the street I live on is a row of mature Leopard Trees that are sprouting away cheerfully.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrAtK12-rOgN4fSPeVMt4z9tb23qmsTYYtEGSIlIvAgUTJUYTMrYs4oGO0dErVRtinPlpDe4A23MSJlOFVZ1EeE6HdrCC8sK7NTs1MPsByFVIHMaNvALX0-7p5o_DJUp1fXiakF9CrCMd7ELnU8pjspaz6Z5Lkw5Nc5PBgrHcQCw2x602ggPsNeGAdEg/s1622/20221227_080120.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1622" data-original-width="1357" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrAtK12-rOgN4fSPeVMt4z9tb23qmsTYYtEGSIlIvAgUTJUYTMrYs4oGO0dErVRtinPlpDe4A23MSJlOFVZ1EeE6HdrCC8sK7NTs1MPsByFVIHMaNvALX0-7p5o_DJUp1fXiakF9CrCMd7ELnU8pjspaz6Z5Lkw5Nc5PBgrHcQCw2x602ggPsNeGAdEg/s320/20221227_080120.jpg" width="268" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">And right across the road from them Council has planted some Tulipwood saplings. This one is already doing its thing, sprouting cheerfully in its new spot. </div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHKdhivSqEKn-i-voaCaQvDhwWW2jgZ-RietfMc2kIp3mSD87OVaN2OvsJfZ_6-dMR3oWK2l6eVIpEdXkQGXyjiXd7DL4YGeS6pwE0fuVW31NyMHj_cLLHXwsX_lJ0KShuZVfCdBOreaCWLgXxQXoTcTu_MghvzBZ1dNN2AAFs-eDltuRjuEd8Xp7Psw/s2384/20220123_101701.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2384" data-original-width="1966" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHKdhivSqEKn-i-voaCaQvDhwWW2jgZ-RietfMc2kIp3mSD87OVaN2OvsJfZ_6-dMR3oWK2l6eVIpEdXkQGXyjiXd7DL4YGeS6pwE0fuVW31NyMHj_cLLHXwsX_lJ0KShuZVfCdBOreaCWLgXxQXoTcTu_MghvzBZ1dNN2AAFs-eDltuRjuEd8Xp7Psw/s320/20220123_101701.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>If you decapitate a human, or any kind of vertebrate or arthropod, it will not survive. However, many plants cope fine with having all their foliage removed. They just regrow from their roots or their stumps. Just down the road from the Golden Pendas is this hibiscus that was heavily pruned. Now look at it!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhERw20ySRO7YgZ95hpq1bP1F2BiIAXuNJSyH4YxMfpXvXtjiB8k6_woD8SYqb7FPQdSH1go2KCk3iHTXgDLY8iXE-TySPDaEiIlNRTTjXKOAOQsFVIXlkKxoldX7D7hU-HIewVdXjsPd95TO16zRFtdoVrIWsG_z2xjvBmBniUtCZHurFzzGZAukyhQ/s2877/20230106_100356.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2877" data-original-width="2123" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhERw20ySRO7YgZ95hpq1bP1F2BiIAXuNJSyH4YxMfpXvXtjiB8k6_woD8SYqb7FPQdSH1go2KCk3iHTXgDLY8iXE-TySPDaEiIlNRTTjXKOAOQsFVIXlkKxoldX7D7hU-HIewVdXjsPd95TO16zRFtdoVrIWsG_z2xjvBmBniUtCZHurFzzGZAukyhQ/s320/20230106_100356.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>We have this tree in our front yard - for the life of me I can't find out what it's called. A few years ago it was thriving, a full bushy tree growing up above roof height. Then it started to suffer - it seemed something was eating it - and it died right back. However, we noticed that it had new, healthy-looking shoots sprouting near the base of its multiple trunks, so we thought we would try cutting it down the the level of the new growth and see what would happen.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Sure enough, the new shoots took off with the extra sunlight and the relief at not having to try and support the dying upper branches, and the tree has survived and kept growing. As you can see even from this photo it's still pretty scraggy and the top branches are getting eaten again. It hasn't grown back to its former glory but it's still struggling on despite the predators and the competition from surrounding plants. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjff7YiaIEhoIfe3k2X9D_r9nP_0JK5PHkklemNbytH19h4-T-V3g1SA_Etn-Hm20ewhVxg3kWsUDBLvmsC4BDPJMpL5faOPX41hBssokBgnbLdFFJvilt11_V2Xosbptyabrcgz_JwCS9-Ww9UrSIXGWOTXOZINrII4B15MumoBVXv4MwhgpqHIIiogw/s2221/20220212_073704%20(2).jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1826" data-original-width="2221" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjff7YiaIEhoIfe3k2X9D_r9nP_0JK5PHkklemNbytH19h4-T-V3g1SA_Etn-Hm20ewhVxg3kWsUDBLvmsC4BDPJMpL5faOPX41hBssokBgnbLdFFJvilt11_V2Xosbptyabrcgz_JwCS9-Ww9UrSIXGWOTXOZINrII4B15MumoBVXv4MwhgpqHIIiogw/s320/20220212_073704%20(2).jpg" width="320" /></a></div>As I say, plants want to grow, and any chance they get they will do just that, even if their seed falls in the most un-promising locations. Like this little trooper, which has been trying for a couple of years to make a life for itself in a stormwater drain at the back of the Princess Alexandra Hospital. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Trees are one thing, but smaller plants are even more prolific. Grasses and other smaller plants will seek out the tiniest cracks and spaces to grow. You will all have seen something just like this, on the footpath just a few metres from the stormwater drain tree. Various species have lodged in a tiny crack between the pavement and the kerb and made the most of the opportunity to sink their roots into the soil beneath and pop their leaves up into the sun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc5o5GtcLKyBoI4tdT0184oF9eNKpF2WlJFGgg04GNdxoVtSUVJ2X5LR9y3wuvyEssXKuK5Js8Ho_Xz0ntvRIEbOfkhyfU0Ws-r1EZISqRGB9uPTEG9_-2oVaJBp_GaM6uPSmUZi-hi6bXaPmOfCRsBH2mIaCZ5FeVj2gT8I86xSKQPPbZfLLm9GitZw/s2348/20220212_073638.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1179" data-original-width="2348" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc5o5GtcLKyBoI4tdT0184oF9eNKpF2WlJFGgg04GNdxoVtSUVJ2X5LR9y3wuvyEssXKuK5Js8Ho_Xz0ntvRIEbOfkhyfU0Ws-r1EZISqRGB9uPTEG9_-2oVaJBp_GaM6uPSmUZi-hi6bXaPmOfCRsBH2mIaCZ5FeVj2gT8I86xSKQPPbZfLLm9GitZw/w640-h322/20220212_073638.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Left to themselves, some of these plants will die, but most will keep on growing or at least keep on living, sending out new leaves and shoots, producing flowers and seeds and eventually covering the ground. Given enough time, the grasses will gradually widen the cracks in the concrete and make way for other, larger plants. If my suburb was left to itself, given enough time it would become a forest, as it was before the founding of the city of Brisbane.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But of course they won't be left to themselves, because we have a sprawling, resource-hungry city to manage. We will trim the trees into shapes we find useful or appealing. We will spray the plants we see as weeds with herbicides (a weed being 'a plant in the wrong place' - wrong for us, that is!). We will try to bend the plants to our will - but fortunately, we will never entirely succeed.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">***</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There are several times when the various Biblical writers portray the whole of creation, including the plants and trees, singing and dancing for joy. For instance, there is Psalm 148.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Praise the Lord from the earth,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> you great sea creatures and all ocean depths,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>lightning and hail, snow and clouds,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> stormy winds that do his bidding,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>you mountains and all hills,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> fruit trees and all cedars,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>wild animals and all cattle,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> small creatures and flying birds,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>kings of the earth and all nations,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> you princes and all rulers on earth,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>young men and women,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> old men and children.</i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Or the famous passage from Isaiah 55.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>You will go out in joy</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> and be led forth in peace;</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>the mountains and hills</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> will burst into song before you,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>and all the trees of the field</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> will clap their hands.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">These are pictures of the world as it should be, the creation exuberant, joyful and us likewise. But we know that it is not like this most of the time, and this is largely down to us. Earlier in Isaiah the prophet warns:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The earth will be completely laid waste</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> and totally plundered.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The Lord has spoken this word.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The earth dries up and withers,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> the world languishes and withers,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> the heavens languish with the earth.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>The earth is defiled by its people;</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> they have disobeyed the laws,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>violated the statutes</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> and broken the everlasting covenant.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Therefore a curse consumes the earth;</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> its people must bear their guilt.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i> and very few are left.</i></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">If we go down, we take the rest of the living creation with us. The Bible reminds us in many places that this creation doesn't belong to us but to God. We also see that living things have their own separate being and are not simply appendages of our lives. For instance Deuteronomy 20:19 says,</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you?". </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We carry a heavy responsibility, and one that at the moment we seem to be failing in a big way. On climate change, pollution, resource extraction, biodiversity, we are rapidly crossing planetary boundaries and creating a less livable earth for both ourselves and God's other creatures. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">What the parable of the trees tells us is that non-human life doesn't simply passively receive whatever we do to it. It is not waiting for us to act in order to begin the process of recovery and rejuvenation - it is doing it constantly, with great persistence and determination. The trees, grasses, mosses, seaweeds, plankton - everything wants to grow and is doing its best. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">On one estimate, we could remove all the excess carbon from the atmosphere by planting a trillion trees. A trillion is a massive number - a 1 with 12 zeroes after it. This is roughly 125 trees for every living human being. How is it possible that we could plant this many trees? It seems unlikely that we can ever do so, and of course it will be much more straightforward to stop emitting greenhouse gases ASAP. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The thing is, if we took our collective foot off the throat of the trees - stopped cutting them down, pruning them, weeding them out, spraying them with herbicides - they would do a lot of the work themselves. After all, there is a tree growing in the stormwater drain at the back of the hospital, and grass and weeds spontaneously popping their heads up from the cracks in the concrete pavement. Plants are everywhere, just searching for a chance to grow and propagate. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">In Romans 8 Paul says:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">What could be more frustrating than to spend the summer putting out exuberant new shoots, which the tree wants and we desperately need as a carbon sink, only for them to be lopped off and mulched the next winter? And doing it year after year, for decades on end? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Let's find ways to reduce the frustration, and give ourselves and everything else a chance at a better life!</div></div></div></div></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-59249069880095756032022-12-20T10:53:00.004+10:002022-12-20T10:53:56.888+10:00Living Democracy<p>It's easy to criticise governments, but hard to be one. How do you solve the pressing problems facing our world, in the face of powerful forces that don't want them solved and a population fed on distraction and disinformation? This dilemma means, as I have been saying in various ways on this blog for some years now, that our problems won't be solved by electing the right government, they will only be solved by each of us working hard to change course and take our governments along with us.</p><p>Sometimes this appears a forlorn hope but plenty of activists encourage us not to give in to this sort of despair. Recently I reviewed Rebecca Solnit's lovely book, <i><a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/11/hope-in-dark.html" target="_blank">Hope in the Dark</a>,</i> in which she shows that despite what we might think, the activists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have had a surprising amount of success. We should celebrate this success, and keep working to achieve more.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-pkx5YKW6T8PwzYFEigs1v1L7lQox1HgLlFy5CSncVMilOvJoCaqXcu7bDa7AIdpFeqc_WChx_fM-jMeXDuxux1Gx8QSlU643ZeX7iJT4zdTV7ufthSNgYYHRvnXTDnOZ6izj-P4cmd9tRAo4OY1AyUbOqQNE43aWge-calbYACbhamOl-ZiRRjVf_Q/s3307/9781742237251.original.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3307" data-original-width="2126" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-pkx5YKW6T8PwzYFEigs1v1L7lQox1HgLlFy5CSncVMilOvJoCaqXcu7bDa7AIdpFeqc_WChx_fM-jMeXDuxux1Gx8QSlU643ZeX7iJT4zdTV7ufthSNgYYHRvnXTDnOZ6izj-P4cmd9tRAo4OY1AyUbOqQNE43aWge-calbYACbhamOl-ZiRRjVf_Q/s320/9781742237251.original.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>Tim Hollo points us in a slightly different direction in his new book, <i>Living Democracy: An Ecological Manifesto for the End of the World As We Know It. </i>Tim Hollo is a long-time environmentalist and Australian Greens activist. During the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years he served as an advisor to Greens leader Christine Milne and among other things he helped with the negotiations around the Gillard Government's climate change policies which to this day is the only set of Australian policies to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These days he is the Executive Director of the <a href="https://www.greeninstitute.org.au/" target="_blank">Green Institute</a>, a Greens-aligned think-tank with lofty ambitions to promote the four pillars of the global Greens movement and two staff. <p></p><p>The book is likewise ambitious in the same crazy-brave way. Hollo uses the term 'ecology' to point literally to the way living systems work, and figuratively to the idea that human systems (since humans are also living beings) can and should also be ecological. Yet our current systems are ecological in neither sense. In the literal sense, we base our society on the idea that the biosphere is an unlimited resource, there for us to use as we wish. This illusion leads us to do irreparable harm. Similarly, in our political systems we try to operate in a top-down, 'command and control' paradigm which expects that society and the natural world will change as a result of laws imposed from without. </p><p>Against this, he presents us with the way ecological systems work. Here, everything is interlinked. Living systems are complex sets of interactions between multiple creatures, each with its own niche and role. Remove one organism, or introduce something new, and you risk harming the whole system with the effects flowing through in complex and unpredictable ways. This is not to say these systems are necessarily stable or constant - natural systems fluctuate over time, and change as a result of external forces like floods, storms or earthquakes. But systems will be more or less resilient to these shocks depending on their health and diversity. Attempts by humans to 'manage' these systems need to understand and work with this diversity and the relationships between parts of the system, rather than focusing on one isolated aspect of it such as saving a single iconic species. </p><p>Human systems are, in this sense, just another sort of ecological system. Paul Keating likes to say 'when you change the government, you change the country', but actually it's not that simple. The formal system of government, and the parties which vie for control of it, are just one part of complex social systems which include individuals, local communities, civil society groups, corporations and so forth. All of these are sites for transformation or resisters of transformation and we need to work across these systems if we want to bring about real, lasting change.</p><p>This understanding has led Tim himself gradually away from electoral politics (although not completely so) and into a more holistic understanding of change-making. To present this picture politically he draws on various sources - anarchist theorists Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin, modern-day thinkers and activists like Naomi Klein and Indigenous thinkers alike Tyson Yunkaporta and Bruce Pascoe. He also discusses various movements for change - Amanda Cahill's Next Economy which works with stakeholders in fossil-fuel dependent communities in Australia to help them think through their future options in a decarbonised world; the radical Green Anarchists of Barcelona en Comu (Barcelona in Common), London's Participatory City and the bottom-up governance of the Rojava region in disputed Kurdistan which has bypassed armed nationalist revolution in favour of simply building an autonomous, essentially anarchist state starting at the community and city level.</p><p>What all these movements have in common is that they are focused on working from the bottom up. Although some have government funding or support, and others have taken over at least some of the levers of government themselves, they are focused on building relationships between people in communities and supporting them to take control of their own destiny. Hence Rojava has no real central government (which would simply be crushed by one or other of the military powers which lay claim to Kurdistan) but works through local and regional assemblies. Barcelona en Comu has taken over the local government of Barcelona via a democratic election and has proceeded to re-orient its decision-making processes towards local control and decision-making. The Australian and British examples are less all-encompassing - the Participatory City approach is based around founding cooperatives in poor communities, while Next Economy works within existing structures to make plans which can be shared and supported across communities.</p><p>With this way of thinking about politics, Hollo tells us that his proudest achievement in public life is not his part in the passing of the Clean Energy Act in 2011 but his role in creating a network of Buy Nothing groups in Canberra. These grassroots networks are informal community swap groups - if you have something you don't want or need any more you can offer it in the group for free, if you need something you ask the group if anyone has one that they don't need any more. This is a classic, and very simple, piece of grass-roots community work - no-one is particularly in charge, people build supportive and friendly relationships with their neighbours, we save resources and money and we reduce the extent to which we contribute to the ongoing plundering and pollution of the biosphere.</p><p>Hollo applies this framework to each of the four pillars of the global Green movement - 'ecological sustainability, grassroots democracy, social and economic justice, and peace and nonviolence' to quote from the <a href="https://www.greeninstitute.org.au/about/" target="_blank">Green Institute website</a>. In each case, an ecological approach enables activists and ordinary people to build the kind of world we need. It's change from the bottom up, not from the top down. </p><p>It seems to me that Tim Hollo is onto something. His understanding is hard-won, like any important learning. The sequel to the heady success of negotiating a genuinely progressive climate policy in Australia took place just too years later as Hollo sat in the public gallery watching while the Abbot Government repealed the carbon price and then danced on the floor of parliament for joy at returning to screwing up the planet for profit. Hollo and his friends made good policy, but it didn't last.</p><p>Why did this policy fail? You could argue, as the Labor Party loves to, that it was all the Greens fault - that they pushed the Gillard Government into a policy that lacked popular support after sabotaging the Rudd Governments more 'realistic' policy two years earlier. Personally, <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-greens-triumph.html" target="_blank">I don't buy it</a>. You could also argue that it only partly failed - the carbon price was repealed but other parts of the policy continued including the Renewable Energy Target, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. Still, it's beyond dispute that the Labor/Greens alliance did not succeed in making long term emissions reductions.</p><p>A good part of this is that in 2011, and in 2013, there was not a powerful enough groundswell of people demanding change. Certainly if you asked Australians if they wanted stronger climate action, as the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/climate-of-the-nation-2022/" target="_blank">Climate of the Nation survey</a> has done year after year, a substantial majority would say 'yes'. But when it came down to it, this did not weigh in the balance as strongly as their fears of job loss or inflation, or their dismay at the chaos in the Labor Party. The power of the corporate media did not succeed in convincing people that climate change was a hoax, but it did succeed in downgrading it in people's imaginations, while upgrading their own sense of insecurity.</p><p>You can't overcome this sort of counter-force through top-down politics, because top-down politics is part of the problem. It isolates us and makes us passive. This is why the Buy Nothing groups are arguably a greater achievement than the Climate Change bill. They build community and trust. They help people to see that there is a better way, that they are not alone, that they don't need to spend as much money or buy as much stuff as the advertisers tell them. It's this that creates the space for lasting change, not just in the way we buy and sell at the margins but in the way we think about our communities and our futures. It creates a base from which we can imagine bigger changes.</p><p>And this same type of local, grass-roots work is what has driven the most notable phenomenon of the 2022 election - the rise of the Teal Independents and the election of more Greens in the lower house. Although the Teals in particular had access to a good donor base, and the Greens have an established national infrastructure, their campaigns were built on strong local connections. Here in Brisbane, where Teals are not really a thing yet, the Greens got three people elected to Brisbane seats by having a strong, energetic group of volunteers out door-knocking and a deep awareness of the issues that mattered to their local communities. Electors in those communities felt that these members would be representing them.</p><p>This contrasts really strongly with my contact with my local Labor member in the lead-up to the election. I went along for a coffee meeting he set up in my local cafe, and local residents raised various issues they were concerned about. For each one, he listened for a moment, and then told us with great enthusiasm about Labor's policy on this issue. When I thought about the meeting afterwards it was quite clear to me what was going on. He didn't really view himself as our representative in P<span style="font-family: inherit;">arliament, and wasn't that interested in what we had to say. He saw himself as the Labor Party's representative in our community, as a kind of sales rep whose job was to sell us a set of policies that had been developed elsewhere. We could take it or leave it. Ultimately, we took it, although the Greens vote has been gradually increasing in our communities over the years, but I don't think the support was especially enthusiastic. He's a decent enough bloke, and they're <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/02/still-not-zero-labors-powering.html" target="_blank">not as bad as the other mob</a>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">And that's the thing. If democracy is just turning up to vote and relying on governments to solve our problems, we will always have a choice between more or less bad options, between different products sold to us by clever sales people. This is because we are leaving the field to others, to the corporate interests who are always in politicians' ears. Our movements for change will only be successful to the extent that we work at the same time for local. grassroots change that gives us a sense of control and relationship, and for big scale change that addresses the overwhelming momentum of destruction we are currently preparing for ourselves and our children. The two things belong together and are what makes politics truly ecological.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">We might or might not succeed in making the big changes. The world is a big place, and the power of global capital is huge. But even if we fail, we will still have strong grass-roots networks and relationships which will leave us in a stronger position to deal with whatever comes our way. </span></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-62558150531238939792022-11-06T17:31:00.000+10:002022-11-06T17:31:19.488+10:00Hope in the Dark<p>I've somehow missed out on knowing anything about American writer and activist <a href="http://rebeccasolnit.net/" target="_blank">Rebecca Solnit</a> until this year, when a chance social media post referenced something she said. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDl_KV9pjd9oNqqFumEbKQIG6YqzsULD74X5nhs_SyZ_97CvK4PbHkfkUSpQuzWvuBkqapuOypnFagKCvE9TRTjik6MM59Zrld3KXHk3auT9wlBmg4U2w9ysAO0nVjP0W4ozzwc6FuyLbGhtSqjFIFeMM2h3JiT0cxOF5P8YCe9Nrf6S3iDnZvSQ8YQ/s475/31344309._SY475_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="310" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDl_KV9pjd9oNqqFumEbKQIG6YqzsULD74X5nhs_SyZ_97CvK4PbHkfkUSpQuzWvuBkqapuOypnFagKCvE9TRTjik6MM59Zrld3KXHk3auT9wlBmg4U2w9ysAO0nVjP0W4ozzwc6FuyLbGhtSqjFIFeMM2h3JiT0cxOF5P8YCe9Nrf6S3iDnZvSQ8YQ/w261-h400/31344309._SY475_.jpg" width="261" /></a></div>My starting point has been her little book <i>Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities,</i> first published in 2005 and re-issued with some more recent material in 2016. She was writing in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and George W Bush's re-election to the US presidency. There was a lot of despair around. The massive peace movements in the US and UK opposing the invasion had seemed powerful, but the invasion went ahead anyway and both Bush and Blair were returned to power in their subsequent elections. Were they all wasting their time, was the world doomed?<p></p><p>I remember the time well. Bush, Blair and Howard all pushed the line that the Iraqis had 'weapons of mass destruction' (which it turned out they didn't), and even hinted that they were harbouring Al Qaeda cells even though their own intelligence told them otherwise. I remember a public briefing from then US Secretary of State Colin Powell showing satellite pictures that he told us solemnly were the 'smoking gun', clear evidence of a chemical weapons factory. The photo showed a ordinary semi-trailer. Apparently, this is what they used for chemical weapons manufacture. </p><p>A picture of a truck.</p><p>In early 2003 <a href="https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/2003-anti-war-protest-brisbane-history-pictures" target="_blank">thousands of us marched</a> here in Brisbane to protest the proposed invasion, finishing up in the Botanic Gardens to listen to the speakers. Among them was then Opposition Leader Simon Crean who sat firmly on the fence, urging that Howard should not go to war without a vote in parliament but trying not to mention that once this happened Labor would vote for war. He was heckled mercilessly but we knew we were going to fail. A month later, when the invasion was launched, I was in Sydney for a meeting. We finished a bit early and those of us who cared enough walked down to join a few hundred protestors outside the Sydney Town Hall. It all seemed so futile.</p><p>It was this sense of futility that sparked <i>Hope in the Dark.</i> In her 2015 foreword she begins like this.</p><p><i>Your opponents would love you to believe that it's hopeless, that you have no power, that you can't win. Hope is a gift you don't have to surrender, a power you don't have to throw away.</i></p><p>It's not just morally wrong to surrender hope, or tactically self-defeating, it's also factually wrong. We are not powerless, even if governments, the military and big business are lined up against us. This is what she wanted to show her readers in 2005, and it was still relevant ten years later, and now. </p><p>In the original book she begins with a beautiful reframing of darkness.</p><p><i>On January 18, 1915, six months into the First World War, as all Europe was convulsed by killing and dying, Virginal Woolf wrote in her journal, "The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think." Dark, she seems to say, as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one for the other. Or we transform the future's unknowability into something certain, the fulfilment of all our dread, the place beyond which there is no way forward. But again and again, far stranger things happen than the end of the world.</i></p><p>On the other hand, she talks about 'the Conversation' which people on the left told themselves after Bush won that 2004 election - 'the tailspin of mutual wailing about how bad everything was'.</p><p><i>Stories trap us, stories free us, we live and die by stories, but hearing people have the Conversation is hearing them tell themselves the story they believe is being told to them. What other stories can be told? How do people recognise that they have the power to be storytellers, not just listeners? Hope is the story of uncertainty, of coming to terms with the risk involved in not knowing what comes next, which is more demanding than despair and, in a sense, more frightening. And immeasurably more rewarding.</i></p><p>So she uses this book to tell stories of hope. </p><p>For instance, the overwhelming story about the peace movements of 2003 is that we lost. The invasion went ahead, thousands of Iraqis lost their lives, the country was destroyed and Al Qaeda, previously kept out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein, moved into the vacuum, morphed into Islamic State and created mayhem. </p><p>This is true, but incomplete. It is likely that the power of activists led the Bush government to abandon plans for the saturation bombing of Baghdad. People turned out to protest who had never marched in any previous cause. The media narrative about protestors shifted from 'unrepresentative minority' to reporting the broad base and diverse sources of the movement. New avenues of international cooperation arose, new networks developed. The US, UK and Australia found themselves internationally isolated as even friendly nations distanced themselves from the invasion. </p><p>She asks us to imagine the world as a theatre. It is designed to direct our gaze to the stage, where there is action, movement, drama under the spotlight. But it is just as important, perhaps more so, to understand what is going on offstage. It is there, in the shadows, that the script is written and rewritten, that the props are prepared and moved on and off stage, that the actors are selected and trained for their roles. It is there that we influence what is going on. </p><p>We often miss these things in the moment, but we can see them in hindsight. For instance, she points to the fact that only a few decades ago homosexuality was illegal and 'coming out' risked ostracism and arrest. What would have happened if the pride activists of the 1970s and 1980s had given up in despair after their initial defeats? Yet now not only are same sex relationships seen as a fact of life, we have even legalised same sex marriage. How is it that this issue went from the shadows to the mainstream in less than half a century? It was because these activists kept on hoping, building their movement and living their forbidden lives regardless.</p><p><i>Thinking about how things that once seemed impossibly distant came to pass, I am embarrassed to remember how dismissive of the margins I once was, fifteen or so years ago, when I secretly scoffed at the shantytowns built on college campuses as part of the antiapartheid movement. That the were protesting something so remote and entrenched seemed futile. But then the divestment of college funds from corporations doing business with South Africa became a big part of the sanctions movement, and the sanctions movement prodded along the end of apartheid. What lies ahead seems unlikely; when it becomes the past it seems inevitable.</i></p><p>Through the book she tells many such stories. I wish I could quote them all, but you'll just have to read the book for yourself - stories of unexpected victory, of slow but decisive shifts in thinking, of victories that are incomplete and defeats that turn out to be temporary, of forlorn failed movements which inspire their more powerful successors. We never know, she says, whether we will be successful or even exactly what our successes will look like. We have to be smart, and we have to keep hoping and keep trying.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">Nowhere is more prone to the kind of despair Solnit is trying to counter than the climate movement. When we focus on the brightly lit stage we see the glacial pace of change, the inadequate commitments made at each successive COP, the greenwashing and partial solutions, the way the global fossil fuel industry has infiltrated every part of the process. It is easy to despair. The science tells us we don't have much time, and our daily experience tells us the climate is already changing.</p><p>In this environment, it is easy for activists to turn on one another. We see this, for instance, in the activists from Extinction Rebellion and its offshoots declaring the failure of mainstream climate activism and telling us that non-violent civil disobedience is now the only viable option. Then in response, nettled by this blanket dismissal, more moderate activists declare that actions like blocking city streets and throwing soup at artworks just alienate potential supporters. As Solnit says, we are often our own worst enemies.</p><p>If, to use her analogy, we accept that what is taking place on stage is the story then we are indeed in a narrative of failure. We could blame one another for being ineffective if we liked. It is true that decades of scientific papers, petitions, letters to politicians, licensed marches and so forth have not brought about an adequate response. But why do we think civil disobedience will do better? After all, it's not like non-violent resistance is a new, as yet untried tactic. People have been chaining themselves to trees and bulldozers for decades.</p><p>But who is to say these things haven't worked? Who is to say they aren't still working? After all, both the <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/initiative/climate-of-the-nation/" target="_blank">Climate of the Nation</a> survey and the <a href="https://www.acf.org.au/australias-biggest-climate-poll-2022" target="_blank">Yougov poll</a> conducted for the ACF show that a massive majority of Australians want to see stronger climate action. The Liberal-National Party government, despite being under the sway of climate deniers in both coalition parties, still felt obliged to declare a 'net zero by 2050' target. The International Energy Agency, long the preserve of the fossil fuel industry, has <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050" target="_blank">recently declared</a> that we can't open any new fossil fuel projects if we want to keep warming below 1.5C. Even our biggest polluters, like BHP, Shell and AGL, have adopted 'net zero' targets.</p><p>Of course it's not time to declare victory. Many of these targets are still just greenwash, with no meaningful pathway to their achievement. Governments in Australia and elsewhere are still approving new fossil fuel projects despite the IEA's advice. Our governments and corporations are still moving too slowly, still walking both sides of the street, still acting as if we can simultaneously limit climate change and go on burning stuff.</p><p>But nor is it time to declare defeat. We have come along way. We have gone from a few hippies and radicals waving banners and being ignored onto centre stage, to billionnaires, big corporations and politicians singing our songs. We should celebrate this, even as we refuse to let them off the hook. We should understand that we are winning, but have not yet won, and should keep fighting.</p><p>Who exactly is winning, and what tactics are breaking through? Is it the scientists writing their papers? Is it the entrepreneurs working out that you can make money out of decarbonisation? Is it the big environmental organisations with their well crafted campaigns and insider tactics? Is it the millions people signing petitions and writing letters? Is it the people blocking the streets and throwing soup at Van Gogh? </p><p>I think the truth of the matter is that it's all of these. That's how movements for change work, especially such big and complex changes as decarbonising the world. No one activist group, no single tactic is decisive, but over time all these tiny streams come together into a big flooding river which soaks everything in its path.</p><p>How do I know this? I don't , exactly. But I believe that it is possible, and that if I and others like me keep working, this is the reality we can create. But if we accept defeat, wallow in our despair and turn on one another then perhaps we won't after all. And that's not a future I am prepared to accept.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-56010763752633804132022-10-10T16:03:00.009+10:002023-01-24T08:39:17.309+10:00Dirty Little Secrets<p>A couple of weeks ago I <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/09/archie-roach-meets-queen-elizabeth-ii.html" target="_blank">wrote about the dirty little secret</a> of the Stolen Generation and the valiant efforts of the late Archie Roach to bring it to our attention. Since then I've been reading about the even darker and dirtier secret that came before that - the fact that the British colonisation of Australia, and in particular my home state of Queensland, was accomplished through the use of deadly force against its original custodians. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH4FlKTg3EvSdb5_dK6_gGugN0DTpNgZG8cCAF7X6wQCjkvCD6vOnqVoRGBewSpcL3kh09y9LE5mmGXCOGPYXdiurKlntFv_j-SOvy_KqTYDj7GVBHyX8phymD0nXsgbjRlhQVFcjpDnigNmnl6gLFfOe2ZKl-Sx-B0dESOhb4CxhFReuj8VRti4GeEA/s1535/Conspiracy%20of%20Silence.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1535" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH4FlKTg3EvSdb5_dK6_gGugN0DTpNgZG8cCAF7X6wQCjkvCD6vOnqVoRGBewSpcL3kh09y9LE5mmGXCOGPYXdiurKlntFv_j-SOvy_KqTYDj7GVBHyX8phymD0nXsgbjRlhQVFcjpDnigNmnl6gLFfOe2ZKl-Sx-B0dESOhb4CxhFReuj8VRti4GeEA/w260-h400/Conspiracy%20of%20Silence.jpg" width="260" /></a></div>This is not a pleasant or a pretty tale and there is really no fair way to soften it. In his book <i>Conspiracy of Silence: Queensland's Frontier Killing Times</i>, published in 2013, historian Timothy Bottoms quotes an estimate that at the time of the first British encroachment into what became Queensland - the establishment of the convict settlement in Brisbane in 1826 - there were somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people living here. By the end of the century there were only about 20,000 First Nations people left. He engages in some technical discussion about whether this could be referred to as genocide, but what do you reckon?<p></p><p>Although there were clashes during the convict era, the real conflict got under way from the 1840s when transportation ended and the areas north of the Tweed were opened to free settlers. Over the next half a century the Europeans gradually pushed north and west from Brisbane until by the end of the 1800s the whole of Queensland was effectively in British hands. </p><p>The process went like this. The British colonists would arrive with their sheep and cattle and settle in, building huts for the boss and the workers, watering the stock at the best waterholes and setting them to graze on the grasslands. Of course this beautiful rich country was already inhabited and along the way they would meet its original owners. Perhaps these would be friendly at first, or perhaps they had heard about these invaders along the songlines and tried to warn them off straight away. However it started , soon enough the conflict would escalate. </p><p>Sometimes it would be the result of a cultural misunderstanding. For instance, a common feature of traditional Welcome to Country ceremonies is a challenge, which involves people yelling and waving their spears at the visitors. The visitors will then acknowledge the authority of the custodians and they will settle down to whatever business or pleasure they have come there for. But of course the British didn't know this and thought they were about to be attacked so they would fire at the people threatening them. </p><p>Other times there was no misunderstanding. In many cases there was some sort of atrocity perpetrated on the traditional custodians - a rape, say, or a child abduction - which would bring about a reprisal. In other cases, the custodians would realise that the invaders had come to stay and take steps to force them off, like spearing their stock, stealing their food or killing solitary stockmen. </p><p>However it started, before too long things would escalate. Sometimes the station owners and workers would band together and form their own posse, chasing after whoever had attacked them and shooting them and any other Aboriginal person they found along with way. Other times they would call on the Native Police to do the dirty work. Either way the outcome would be the same - there would be indiscriminate killing of those who might have committed the attacks and those who hadn't, including old people, women and children. </p><p>At other times the invaders would be more sneaky. They would give their neighbours gifts of flour laced with arsenic, or leave it where they knew it would be stolen. Aboriginal people would take it, cook it up, and then die in agony beside their campfires.</p><p>Bottoms' book is a gruesome chronicle of these events, which appear on almost every one of the 200+ pages of <i>Conspiracy of Silence.</i> At the front of the book is a set of maps showing the locations of over 200 confirmed massacres, with a massacre defined as a killing of 5 or more people. He says there are likely to be many more that can't be verified, not to mention killings of less than five. He quotes an estimate by his mentor, Professor Raymond Evans, that somewhere around 50,000 people were murdered - he regards this as a conservative estimate. </p><p>Of course it won't do to paint Aboriginal peoples as passive victims of this violence. There are two ways in which this would be wrong. First of all, as the current SBS documentary series tells us, this was a war. The original custodians did not simply accept the takeover of their lands, they fought back. Both sides had their advantages in this conflict. The British had guns and horses, while Aboriginal people had spears and clubs and travelled on foot. On the other hand, Aboriginal people had far superior bushcraft and knowledge of the country, and in the first phases of colonisation in any location they had substantial numerical superiority. This meant that sometimes in the initial phases of the conflict the colonists would be forced to abandon their runs.</p><p>However, over time this balance tipped. The British would return in greater numbers and with increased firepower, and over time they would get to know the country for themselves. And then, of course, they could also bring in the Native Police, and this brings us to the other way in which Aboriginal people were not passive. There were Aboriginal people on both sides of the conflict. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNcAQyNDuNLs5UWdiR0mwNNk4pTveE52x-wAb6ryM3ZcrsiJkhT1hz158yYAdQJh2bSp_XceG1lLh_Ka2XLMA2-wLP2xLRZeZ2cL4ANE9l0u9AACpgbqNJWwqTiBN-XJ4JW4h3QNgF9wzTWkbmTBBRbPHsVeeF2PpypZOCo-fWRAI6MLEOMy9-IRlVQ/s570/Secret%20War.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="381" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNcAQyNDuNLs5UWdiR0mwNNk4pTveE52x-wAb6ryM3ZcrsiJkhT1hz158yYAdQJh2bSp_XceG1lLh_Ka2XLMA2-wLP2xLRZeZ2cL4ANE9l0u9AACpgbqNJWwqTiBN-XJ4JW4h3QNgF9wzTWkbmTBBRbPHsVeeF2PpypZOCo-fWRAI6MLEOMy9-IRlVQ/w268-h400/Secret%20War.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>Jonathan Richards' book T<i>he Secret War: A True History of Queensland's Native Police</i>, published in 2008, provides a detailed account of this most pernicious of colonial institutions. The Native Police were not, in any normal sense, a police force. They didn't investigate crimes, make arrests or bring accused offenders to court. They were in fact a mounted, well armed military force. This fact could not be officially stated. The whole of Australia was already regarded in British law as a British territory and all its inhabitants, including its original custodians, were legally subjects of Her Majesty and entitled to the protection of British law. In practice, the story was very different. Aboriginal evidence was not admissible in court until the 1890s and offences against Aboriginal people were rarely, if ever, investigated. <p></p><p>The job of the Native Police, put quite simply, was to go to places where Aboriginal people were disturbing or threatening white colonists and 'disperse' them. 'Dispersal' was a euphemism, appearing over and over again in official incident reports, for massacring them. Sometimes all the people would simply be killed, men and women, old and young. Sometimes some would be spared for a while - women and girls might be initially saved from the carnage, then raped and killed later or kept as slaves. Sometimes children would be taken back to camp and trained as servants or given to other white people. Even many station owners were shocked at the brutality and regretted ever having called for help. </p><p>The official instructions for the Native Police were to only use such force as was necessary to prevent further trouble. Occasionally an officer would be disciplined or dismissed for excessive brutality but they were never charged with any offences, and their actual offence was to perform their acts of violence in front of European witnesses. Officers were officially forbidden from taking non-police colonists with them when they committed their crimes so there would be nobody present who could testify. However, this instruction was often ignored in the field. Sometimes a local station owner or employee would come with them to guide them to the people they were there to 'disperse', and of course help with the killings. Sometimes posses of station people with team up with Native Police. For every European who deplored the violence there were ten who applauded it, and when questions about this practice were raised in the Brisbane or Sydney papers, people closer to the frontier would pour scorn on them. </p><p>Jonathan Richards tells us a lot about the European officers who commanded Native Police squads. Some, particularly in the senior ranks, were ex-military. others were police officers or other sorts of colonial adventurers. Some only lasted months, others decades. Some went on to become regular police officers, public servants or magistrates. He has short biographies of every one of the more than 200 Europeans who served in the force from 1858, when the newly created Queensland colonial government took over control from its counterpart in NSW, until it was finally wound down around the turn of the century. </p><p>However, I wanted to know about the Aboriginal troopers. Who were they, and why were they there? On this subject, Richards is surprisingly unenlightening. There were no proper personnel records of the troopers. We don't even have their names. They are simply referred to by single European names which are almost certainly not the names their families gave them - Jacky, Gulliver, Wallace, Echo, Ned and so forth. We don't know where each of them came from, how long they served for, and we certainly don't know what they thought about their jobs. However, we do have some clues.</p><p>There were not that many of them. From Richards' account there seem to have been fewer than 200 at any one time, and maybe around 2,000 served across the entire history of the force. The preference was to recruit them from a long way from the frontier, so that they would not feel any loyalty towards the people they were 'dispersing'. The first recruits for the Queensland force came from the Murray River area of NSW. Later recruits came from South East Queensland, the Darling Downs, the Fraser Coast and other parts of southern Queensland. This certainly seems to have made it easier for them to take part in the killings.</p><p>How were they recruited? What were they told, or offered, to induce them to sign up? To what extent did they have a choice? This is very unclear. One thing we do know is that desertions were frequent. Some deserted almost as soon as they arrived, which suggests this was not what they had expected. Troopers who deserted were hunted down, returned to their units and punished before being put back into service. Some managed to escape, even walking hundreds of kilometers back to their home country. But most did not. Clearly, once they signed up they were not given the option to leave before the end of their assigned term. </p><p>Some were also given a kind of Hobson's choice - their prison sentences could be cut short provided they agreed to sign up for the Native Police. Kind of a reverse character test. It also seems that for many their other alternatives were limited - their own people had already been colonised and 'dispersed', they had no prospects on their own country, and this was one of their few ways to escape disease and hunger. </p><p>But perhaps these are all excuses. Because the brutality of the Native Police, black and white, was notorious. They were not killing reluctantly, or in self-defence. They were relentlessly hunting their fellow humans and ruthlessly gunning them down, men, women, children, old people, any black person they found. Even station employees were not safe. If you were Aboriginal and in their zone of operation your life was at risk. They were an elite death squad.</p><p>In the 19th century none of this was secret. Although there was a veil of euphemism cast around their actions the nature of frontier violence was very clear, both that carried out by the Native Police and that carried out by posses of civilians. The subject was reported and debated in the press. Inquests were held. Humanitarian correspondents called for the abolition of the Native Police and were shouted down by station owners and small town civic leaders. Overall, frontier killings were at least permitted, and often tacitly encouraged, by the colonial government.</p><p>It only started to become a secret much later. Bottoms suggests this was linked to the push for federation and the upsurge of nationalism that went with it. For the first time people started to conceive of 'Australia' as a nation and it wasn't helpful to the creation of nationalistic fervour to acknowledge that the nation was created through mass murder. So the story just began to be written out of our histories. In its place we got the Pioneer Myth, the stories of the brave explorers and hardy stockmen who brought civilisation to an empty land. </p><p>This is what anthropologist WEH Stanner called <a href="https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/healing-nations/the-great-australian-silence/" target="_blank">'The Great Australian Silence'</a>, and it is the version of the story I learnt as a six year old immigrant in 1967. As we entered Australia we were given a little booklet that told us we wouldn't see many Aboriginal people because these mysterious ancient people preferred to live where they had always lived, way out in the central deserts. Later on our school lessons in Australian history put Aboriginal people at the start, living in gunyahs and hunting kangaroos with spears. As soon as Captain Cook sailed over the horizon on board the Endeavour they mysteriously disappeared.</p><p>We now know this was a pack lies, but up until now we have kept acting as if it was true. To finish this short review it's hard to go past Timothy Bottoms' closing words.</p><p><i>No Australian today is responsible for what happened on our colonial frontier. But we are responsible for not acknowledging what happened. If we do not, our integrity as a nation is flawed and we are shamed as a people for perpetuating a lie.</i></p><p><i>How we will respond as a nation will reflect our own maturity. British colonisation of this island continent resulted in several thousand whites being killed, and an enormous indigenous death toll, in Queensland approaching the numbers of Australians killed during the First World War. When the nation really understands the humanity and suffering of Aboriginal Australians, their spirited and justifiable defence of their territory, and gives full recognition to frontier crimes, along with their mistreatment 'under the Act' since then, then we can speak of truly genuine reconciliation and, truly, a more honest national spirit. The incredible part of all of this is that Aboriginal Australians have survived and twenty-first century Australia will be the richer for their taking their rightful place in our national identity.</i></p><p>Right now we have a fabulous opportunity to make a start on this task by listening to the <a href="https://fromtheheart.com.au/explore-the-uluru-statement/" target="_blank">Uluru Statement from the Heart</a>, voting to embed a First Nations voice to parliament in our constitution and beginning the difficult process of truth-telling and treaty-making. Let's not blow it this time!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxVwwIRVezlNSkPYeIGP6SIs5T4CQEyu8xuc69qYUwc-ltnH65Uz-1fWR4cJTU7Ys6VsBHNTk5u2TaDnfLyCBBQTNYVCXoMjuu8GLE8jECp_YQQmUy621IcAG0c8-FvqUTmwB4DpXc9TPIzy7Yvq5a7jwNuX1ymsc-wK8MBf7yLdJn_8ZKGvYq0n2xA/s2048/607eafab8579530e1e2b3101_ulurustatement.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1446" data-original-width="2048" height="451" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxVwwIRVezlNSkPYeIGP6SIs5T4CQEyu8xuc69qYUwc-ltnH65Uz-1fWR4cJTU7Ys6VsBHNTk5u2TaDnfLyCBBQTNYVCXoMjuu8GLE8jECp_YQQmUy621IcAG0c8-FvqUTmwB4DpXc9TPIzy7Yvq5a7jwNuX1ymsc-wK8MBf7yLdJn_8ZKGvYq0n2xA/w640-h451/607eafab8579530e1e2b3101_ulurustatement.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-50712794042472803372022-09-19T15:05:00.005+10:002022-10-11T08:34:15.712+10:00Archie Roach Meets Queen Elizabeth II<p>I feel slightly sad at the death of Queen Elizabeth. Not deeply sad. I didn't know her. I never had much time for the monarchy. The signs of her impending death had been there for a couple of years in her increasingly brief appearances at royal events and, in the past year, her frequent absences and cancellations. She was 96, the time had come.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSEq0L32dAY-rIf7KNkN8rDdOkpnjCUlLm_3h92-Z6eK3IN80E7jdeU_kRLYnyAnvioYZtlq_qIWDqNybKXmUvfg5qhZWMquCTcS1e9EV5zThZmzwQI0-T9dgvSxOwkJFviQXRbmK3LRt7Xglj_tmMf10lJF0NTvJ_WTWgmSmDln4LNGKF8lxufbOl6A/s650/Queen.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="650" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSEq0L32dAY-rIf7KNkN8rDdOkpnjCUlLm_3h92-Z6eK3IN80E7jdeU_kRLYnyAnvioYZtlq_qIWDqNybKXmUvfg5qhZWMquCTcS1e9EV5zThZmzwQI0-T9dgvSxOwkJFviQXRbmK3LRt7Xglj_tmMf10lJF0NTvJ_WTWgmSmDln4LNGKF8lxufbOl6A/s320/Queen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The closest encounter I ever had with her was in 1977 when she came to Australia. Among other engagements she opened the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stadium at Nathan where the 1982 Commonwealth Games were to be held. School students were bused in from all over Brisbane for the occasion. The ground had been levelled and the athletics track laid but as yet there were no stands. We sat on the grass while she made an extremely boring speech in her strange, plummy voice, then she and Prince Philip paraded around the track in their open-top limo treating us all to the royal wave.<div><p></p><p>I felt a good deal sadder back at the end of July at the death of Archie Roach, the Gunditjmara and Bundjalung elder and iconic singer and songwriter, at the age of just 66. I didn't know him personally either although I heard him sing several times and read his moving memoir, <i>Tell Me Why.</i></p><p>Archie was born in Victoria in 1956, the youngest of a big family. In 1958 he and his siblings were forcibly removed from their parent's home in Framlingham Mission and made wards of the State. He suffered two abusive foster placements before finally ending up with the Cox family in Melbourne, a family he always spoke about with fondness. He never saw either of his parents again. He and his foster parents were told his family had been killed in a house fire. </p><p>One day, when he was 14, a letter arrived at his school from his older sister, telling him of the death of their mother. This letter turned his world on its head and set him on a quest to find his family. All he had was his sister's name and Sydney address on the back of the envelope and by the time he got there she was no longer there. He joined the people living on Sydney's streets and eventually, through living long enough with other Aboriginal people, reunited with his surviving siblings.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigmKX2YhPQifSoqtI3uKbpXHtRpq8kW54iKx2NtHxRldgFPO0KH46s9hOvkJfDEhx0b3LHC-wS1YxnZsKOxeZbUAYtokZ3Cg8tRnwvnYv9tT_QsC7rRRIj4DL8uFunilBOT4Bv7FOWM_ATpiTLwl-se9Ii20xN6N9m6xSZkouIQhljOwaBQhzsbB1VvQ/s275/Archie.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="275" data-original-width="183" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigmKX2YhPQifSoqtI3uKbpXHtRpq8kW54iKx2NtHxRldgFPO0KH46s9hOvkJfDEhx0b3LHC-wS1YxnZsKOxeZbUAYtokZ3Cg8tRnwvnYv9tT_QsC7rRRIj4DL8uFunilBOT4Bv7FOWM_ATpiTLwl-se9Ii20xN6N9m6xSZkouIQhljOwaBQhzsbB1VvQ/s1600/Archie.jpg" width="183" /></a></div>Sadly, the family he found his way back to was shattered and traumatised. He himself struggled with alcoholism for years and nearly killed himself before finally getting sober and starting to build a better family life with his partner Ruby Hunter, another stolen child. Then in 1989 Paul Kelly heard him singing his song 'Took the Children Away' and asked him to open a show for him. The audience were shocked to silence. Ever since, Archie Roach's gentle, soulful songs have been one of the chief ways for Australians to learn about this awful aspect of our society which was hiding in plain sight for so long.<p></p><p>Why have I placed Archie Roach beside Queen Elizabeth in this way? Well, it seems to me that these two lives belong together.</p><p>Queen Elizabeth was in many ways an admirable woman. She was highly intelligent, had a great sense of humour, and had a sense of duty that few could match. She also appeared to have a genuine interest in people and a way of making them feel special. She was able, at times of crisis, to show great compassion. </p><p>But along with that is this other life. Archie Roach was born four years into Elizabeth's reign and died just before its end. The difference in their lifespans is the difference between a life of privilege and one of trauma. He was also highly intelligent, hard working, had a great sense of humour, a strong sense of compassion and a way of making others feel special. He was no less worthy of a long life.</p><p>Yet there is more to it than that. The laws by which the State of Victoria was able to shatter the Roach family, and the various States to shatter thousands more in the same way, were enacted in her name and signed into law by her representatives, the governors of the various States. </p><p>Of course she didn't personally carry out any of these child abductions, which were conducted by police and public servants. Nor did she personally make the laws. The Westminster system of democracy assigns the monarch and her or his representatives a purely ceremonial role. It retains the fiction that she makes the laws but in fact she is merely a figurehead. If she, or her father or grandfather or their representatives, had refused assent to any of these laws it would have created a constitutional crisis.</p><p>But then, constitutional crises are not necessarily a bad thing. A crisis that arose from a key player in that system of government questioning its right to abduct children could only be a step forward. It could have brought on much sooner the discussion about racial justice, about dispossession and reparation, about righting the wrongs of colonisation. As it was, these were swept under the carpet.</p><p>Two questions occur to me. Did she know about this practice? And what did she do in response?</p><p>One possibility is that she was unaware. After all, Australia is a long way from any of her palaces and even many Australians were unaware of it for decades. It was our nation's dirty little secret. Perhaps she could have been forgiven for not knowing. But if this was the case it implies a level of ignorance and disinterest sharply at odds with the picture of the 'grandmother of the nation' we are hearing. It implies a woman who could not see beyond the walls of her castle, who accepted the carefully curated Australia she was shown on her visits as the real thing. Perhaps she did not care to look too deeply, or too far.</p><p>This might just have washed in the 1950s when the Roach children were abducted. By the end of the 1980s it becomes impossible. If she loved Australia, as our journalists have been insisting over the past week, then the stories must have reached her ears. Indeed, she could not have avoided knowing some things. From at least the 1970s onwards all her visits were accompanied by protests from first nations people. In the late 1990s she received a delegation of Aboriginal leaders that included Lowitja O'Donoghue, another stolen child. The notion that she simply did not know evaporates before the number of times she would have been told.</p><p>So what did she do? Those who took part in that 1990s delegation report that she listened to them with interest and asked intelligent questions. But she certainly said nothing publicly of note, beyond generic statements about the importance of respecting all the cultures of her realm. Even when Kevin Rudd delivered his official apology to the stolen children in 2008 there is no record of any corresponding apology from the Queen. It is almost as if what was done in her name was no concern of hers. </p><p>Was she privately horrified? Did this story cause her to reflect on her own legacy and position? Perhaps so, but none of this cracked the facade. Her public face remained neutral. Perhaps she raised the issue in her meetings with Bob Hawke, who promised a treaty and then reneged, or John Howard, who banged the lectern as he refused an apology to the turned backs of Aboriginal leaders. Perhaps she sent Kevin Rudd a congratulatory telegram. If so, we have never heard about them. As far as we can tell, whatever her private feelings she said and did nothing. None of her family's massive stolen wealth was returned to Australia's first nations. They had to fight long and hard even to have their ancestors' remains returned for a proper burial. If she is indeed the grandmother of our nation she is a surprisingly negligent one.</p><p>So, the third possibility, one that can barely be spoken in the current climate of adulation, is that in fact she supported this policy. She well understood that her multiple palaces, billions in wealth, and her global reach were the result of the dispossession of peoples around the globe, and she was grateful for that dispossession. Perhaps she believed, as her colonial governments would have told her, that Aboriginal parents were unable to give their children a good life and they were better off in middle class white foster homes. Perhaps she agreed with John Howard that the benefits of colonialism outweighed the harms and Aboriginal people should be thanking her, not seeking reparations. I would not like to think this was the case, but I have no evidence to disprove it.</p><p>So here we are, three pictures of Queen Elizabeth. Perhaps she was ignorant, deceived by her minders and making no effort to learn. Perhaps she was passive, knowing about grave abuses but remaining silent and doing nothing. Perhaps she was actively complicit, privately cheering on the oppressors and deniers while retaining a conciliatory, neutral public façade. None of these stories matches the gushing adulation we hear day after day as we are told every detail of her extended memorial and watch footage of the eight kilometre queue lining up for their minute beside her coffin.</p><p>I can't find any record of Queen Elizabeth ever meeting Archie Roach. I don't know of she ever heard 'Took the Children Away' - I understand she favoured classical music. Still, I like to think there will be a chance for them to meet now. In God's upside down kingdom their roles will be reversed. Elizabeth will bow before Archie and call him 'Sir'. Perhaps in the light of God's knowledge, moral as well as factual, she will apologise tearfully for her own failings and those of her forebears. He will have the right, according to strict justice, to take her children and grandchildren from her.</p><p>But I like to think he will not - that there in the presence of God's Son he will accept her heart-felt apology and at last they will both be able to rest in peace.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IL_DBNkkcSE" width="320" youtube-src-id="IL_DBNkkcSE"></iframe></div></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-9417144401463736852022-08-25T21:00:00.009+10:002022-10-08T15:52:00.043+10:00Chasing the Scream<p>I've <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2017/09/good-cop-bad-war.html" target="_blank">written before</a> about the crazy world of drug policy and the arms race between dealers and police that marks our futile efforts to outlaw various substances. We are caught in an endless loop of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2012/08/second-order-change.html" target="_blank">first order change</a>, doing more of the same and hoping for a different result. The victims, it has always seemed to me, are the poor people at the bottom of the heap - people with addictions, trauma and other issues in their lives who end up jailed or homeless as casualties of a pointless war. So I was excited to learn about the existence of Johann Hari's <i>Chasing the Scream: The Search for the Truth About Addiction.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtsdfc94mWWVmJrSWCY3UF7r0qcOMKuLkl2QsohRlWAiHqr-PR_i1VL6SuA8Ax6KuA4DGGQQPYas7HzpLtrNoZrwryOdnF5Lfo_NzPq-_cBr65R6xquwvRT5qztJ-2gHg5pzh3P9AqOyfwjGS6hHk-VI7ge6t0fSbmabq_hmjnqSWfCgbFvLxniqvCHw/s570/Chasing%20the%20Scream.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="371" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtsdfc94mWWVmJrSWCY3UF7r0qcOMKuLkl2QsohRlWAiHqr-PR_i1VL6SuA8Ax6KuA4DGGQQPYas7HzpLtrNoZrwryOdnF5Lfo_NzPq-_cBr65R6xquwvRT5qztJ-2gHg5pzh3P9AqOyfwjGS6hHk-VI7ge6t0fSbmabq_hmjnqSWfCgbFvLxniqvCHw/s320/Chasing%20the%20Scream.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>A friend told me about Hari's most recent book, <i>Stolen Focus</i>, which looks at the prevalence of digital technologies and the way they are robbing us of our ability to concentrate and be present in the moment. I really enjoyed it, if that is the right word for a great book about a terrible thing, but it was this earlier book that really made me take notice. Published in 2015, it is a product of Hari's urge to get to the bottom of the addictive cycle that was affecting people he loved and also, to a lesser extent, himself. <p></p><p>To explain the history of our drug policies he takes us to the USA in the 1930s. Up until the early years of the 20th century there was no widespread practice of outlawing drugs. Narcotics, cocaine, cannabis and so forth were as easily obtainable as alcohol, with cocaine used in small quantities in soft drinks and narcotics used in sleeping draughts and soothing teas you could buy at your local chemist. Then in the dying years of World War 1 the abolitionists got their way and alcohol and narcotics were banned. Of course we all know about the history of alcohol prohibition in the US and the way it backfired spectacularly, finally abandoned in 1933. What we generally don't think about is that the same set of laws also affected narcotics.</p><p>Through the 1920s most of the enforcement efforts, and most of the criminal activity, focused on alcohol. Narcotics continued, in practice, to be freely available at pharmacies and doctors prescribed them quite readily. When the ban on alcohol was repealed in 1933 the ban on narcotics remained in place, and now became the main focus of abolitionist efforts. Hari tells the story of this time through the lives of four people - Harry Anslinger, Arnold Rothstein, Billie Holiday and Henry Williams.</p><p>Harry Anslinger became the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. This was the remains of the federal body that had attempted to enforce alcohol prohibition and it was clear that he had been sold a lemon. Its mission was in the process of abandonment and its budget tiny and shrinking. He decided to revive it by promoting a relentless campaign to stamp out cannabis and narcotics, spreading vast amounts of misinformation about the dangers of these drugs, pressuring officials to take action and enforcing the most extreme interpretation of the law he could get away with. At the heart of his campaign was a ruthless and cynical strategy to ride the wave a racist panic, suggesting that cannabis and narcotics turned black and Latino people into raging killers. The stories he used to promote this idea were not worth the crappy newspapers they were reported in, but Anslinger never let the truth get in the way of his ambitions. He remained in place for over 30 years, using his position not only to wage relentless war in the US but to pressure governments around the world to do the same. If anyone was the architect of the present day War on Drugs it was Harry Anslinger.</p><p>Arnold Rothstein, meanwhile, was a ruthless New York gangster. When alcohol was legalised he was among the first to see the opportunities presented by the narcotics market, and cornered this market in his city by violently forcing out rivals. He set up supply chains from South America, kept prices high by protecting his monopoly, ensured he was paid through assault and murder, and subverted police and public officials to make himself untouchable. It was only when he refused to pay a debt from a rigged poker game that he eventually met his match in 1928, shot down during a business meeting. He never got to cross swords with Anslinger but there was no shortage of others lining up to take his place.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2xjLbLU2wIJT7JDD9QY_fkUGSET58m9whaTEF_jz84s0uerjmh95j34-5VO2oWmfuW0n5mZbzrLG72GRIvx3yTPUf5tJJJgntJdMntj47eM6P2F2im_Yt8ZRaQu8Nzh9ssljxdvb96HrJfTvJSyPo-F6f19Cg3AfMGBZeBOhb4llR6nEo_gm4pIOqsg/s890/(Portrait_of_Billie_Holiday_and_Mister,_Downbeat,_New_York,_N.Y.,_ca._Feb._1947)_(LOC)_(5020400274)_(cropped).jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="890" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2xjLbLU2wIJT7JDD9QY_fkUGSET58m9whaTEF_jz84s0uerjmh95j34-5VO2oWmfuW0n5mZbzrLG72GRIvx3yTPUf5tJJJgntJdMntj47eM6P2F2im_Yt8ZRaQu8Nzh9ssljxdvb96HrJfTvJSyPo-F6f19Cg3AfMGBZeBOhb4llR6nEo_gm4pIOqsg/s320/(Portrait_of_Billie_Holiday_and_Mister,_Downbeat,_New_York,_N.Y.,_ca._Feb._1947)_(LOC)_(5020400274)_(cropped).jpg" width="288" /></a>Billie Holiday, meanwhile, was a victim of all this politicking and racketeering. Holiday is a legend of American jazz music, a singer with a glorious voice and an insightful songwriter. She was also a high-profile heroin addict. Her childhood was a tale of tragedy and abuse, abandoned by her mother, brought up strictly by a distant relative, raped for the first time at the age of ten and ending up with no option but to make a living as a prostitute before finally getting a break as a singer. Even after she found fame she was still trapped, with her abusive pimp morphing into abusive manager. For her, heroin was a comfort, an escape from her world of pain and trauma. Where else was she to turn? Yet her comforting drug was illegal and as a high profile black woman she was a perfect target for Anslinger, who pursued her relentlessly and finally hounded her to death.</p><p>The final character in this little drama was Henry Williams, a doctor who was one of the foremost medical minds of his era. He was no liberal and he saw addicts as weak and deserving of whatever happened to them. However, he was incensed when his brother Edward was arrested in the early 1930s as part of a nationwide crackdown on doctors prescribing narcotics. Edward saw plenty of addicts in his practice and ended up setting up an addiction clinic. His experience showed that if addicts were prescribed a controlled dose of their substance they would be able to bring it under control, get their lives back on track and in many cases eventually stop taking the drugs altogether. He prescribed doses of narcotics to hundreds of patients, with great success. </p><p>But Anslinger plumped for an interpretation of the law which forbade such prescribing, launching coordinated raids on clinics around the country in which his officials arrested hundreds of doctors on charges of supplying a prohibited substance. Incensed at seeing his brother and so many of his colleagues thrown into jail, Henry assembled all the evidence he could find about narcotic use and published a book which firmly advocated treating addiction as a medical issue not a crime. He lost his battle, the clinics remained closed, and Edward was forced to watch on in despair as his patients went back to sourcing expensive, contaminated narcotics from criminal networks and their lives went quickly off the rails. </p><p>Here, in four little cameos, is the story of the War on Drugs in a nutshell. We are left with a deeply entrenched policy which doesn't reduce either the supply of drugs or the levels of addiction (in fact, ensures there will be more or both) while further traumatising addicts through jail time, criminal records and being driven into the arms of criminal gangs. </p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>It's tempting to say that it doesn't work, but whether it works or not depends on what you are trying to achieve.</p><p>Certainly, it doesn't work for drug users. The medical evidence is very clear. While some drugs have chemical properties which 'hook' users physically, this is only a small factor in the causes of addiction. The root of addiction is in trauma and social isolation. Billie Holiday's addiction was an escape from the unrelenting pain of her life. She, and millions like her, can only kick their habit by coming to terms with this trauma and by building supportive, caring relationships around them. </p><p>You see this in the stories of so many high profile addicts. For instance, <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2018/01/jimmy-barnes.html" target="_blank">Jimmy Barnes </a>managed to get off cocaine through a stint in a rehab clinic but fiercely resisted any suggestion that he needed to address his experiences of trauma. It was only after a relapse and a brush with suicide that he tried again and started to talk about his horrendous childhood, memories he had spent decades blocking out. And you can see the weakness of the chemical theory of addiction in the life of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2019/07/living-with-trauma.html" target="_blank">Eric Clapton</a>, who was able to successfully break his heroin addiction only to fall into alcoholism before finally addressing the trauma of his abandonment by his mother. </p><p>But the other part of this is that while it might have been good for Billie Holiday to kick her heroin habit altogether, there are other options. As Edward and Henry Williams found almost a century ago, a person can live a normal productive life while taking a moderate dose of narcotics each day. The problem is that this option is not available to addicts in our world. The closest we come for heroin addicts is to prescribe methadone, a substance that provides the chemicals in heroin without the psychotropic effects. It helps them to avoid withdrawal (the effects of which, Hari tells us, are frequently exaggerated) but does not provide the comfort a traumatised person is seeking. They can't truly deal with their addiction until they deal with their trauma and find a way of living their life that brings them support and healing.</p><p>In the meantime, they can only source their drugs on the street. This option is bad in every way. There are no quality controls in the criminal world so you can never know precisely what you are taking - hence the frequency of accidental overdoses. There is also a logic to prohibition which favours the supply of more concentrated forms of the drug over weaker ones, because a small quantity of a highly concentrated drug is easier to conceal than a large quantity of a weak one. You can get oxycontin on prescription (but not if you are an addict) but on the street you can only get heroin or cocaine. </p><p>The product is expensive, so you often have to commit crime to pay for it (most often, joining the distribution network yourself and hence embedding yourself ever deeper in the underworld). Of course since the whole enterprise is illegal you can wind up in jail and add whatever trauma you experience there to your lifelong list. Some of the most harrowing scenes in <i>Chasing the Scream</i> come when Hari visits a drug prison in Arizona where prisoners are detained in tents in the middle of the desert and forced out each day in literal chain gangs to labour in the hot sun chanting rhymes made up by their jailers about what failures they are as people. This is somehow supposed to persuade them to give up drugs.</p><p>So, the policy doesn't work for addicts, and couldn't possibly work because it adds to the very conditions that created their addictions in the first place. You get more addiction and worse impacts, not less, But there are two groups the policy DOES work for - criminal networks, and police. These two, caught in a dance of mutual escalation, get access to ever-increasing resources to fight the war.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSERBAW6-PHNs4cFaAmU0jsPAPgX5LfaqpYe2K9V7I8J95vqQ-HuRIC2dg49SGL-3Rjd0OsQJOABE1S9-wcsgVbxsMYy41lgBK6oMDVpn4wO03sSvsuCeCeqxvD4UGaUGiK-xNMfvQ-Xqx27A4p0MzU-83yMQvVjUlR9fgDj9sc2Ck7sX05UfJO5my4w/s670/42966137_101.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="670" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSERBAW6-PHNs4cFaAmU0jsPAPgX5LfaqpYe2K9V7I8J95vqQ-HuRIC2dg49SGL-3Rjd0OsQJOABE1S9-wcsgVbxsMYy41lgBK6oMDVpn4wO03sSvsuCeCeqxvD4UGaUGiK-xNMfvQ-Xqx27A4p0MzU-83yMQvVjUlR9fgDj9sc2Ck7sX05UfJO5my4w/s320/42966137_101.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>When Harry Anslinger took over the Federal Bureau of Narcotics it was on the point of collapse. By creating and prosecuting the War on Drugs he managed to secure ever-increasing funds, officers and powers. He went from the overseer of a small team of officers in Washington to head of a massive national and international law enforcement network. Police everywhere are getting the same. Perhaps the starkest example in our day is in the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte encouraged police officers to shoot suspected drug dealers on sight rather than going through the tedious formality of arrest and trial. The result is a reign of terror in the slums and poor neighbourhoods of Filipino cities as police have the freedom to shoot anyone they want to.<p></p><p>You might think that this increasing level of enforcement would harm the interests of organised criminals but the opposite is the case. The biggest threat to organised crime networks is legalisation. Prohibition grants criminals an effective monopoly and each effort at enforcement merely drives up the price. Police may sometimes succeed in seizing a shipment of heroin or cocaine but for every one they intercept ten more slip through. The loss is just a cost of doing business, as is the occasional arrest of a mid-level member of a criminal network. Organised criminals are no fans of drug law reform and where they can they will actively work against it. The evidence seems to suggest that Harry Anslinger did not take bribes from criminal bosses but many of his subordinates clearly did - the officers who arrested Edward Williams as part of the effort to shut down legal prescription of narcotics were heavily subsidised by their city's criminal organisations. </p><p>The effect of this is devastating on poor communities around the world. Hari describes entire city neighbourhoods in the US and Canada that are effectively ruled by criminal networks, but it is even worse in places like Mexico and Colombia where entire countries are at the mercy of gangs who make their money selling the products of their illicit plantations in the cities of North America and Europe. This is also the rarely-told story of the Taliban, those Islamic puritans who dominate Afghanistan using money raised by selling opioids to decadent Westerners.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">What are we to do? We are at a point in history where this has been going on for so long it becomes hard to imagine the alternatives. Nonetheless they are out there. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Possibly the most comprehensive example is Portugal. The Portuguese government fully decriminalised all drug use in 2001. They judged that full legalisation, with the licensing of production and supply, would lead to them falling foul of various international conventions and being subject to sanctions. This means the supply of drugs is still in the hands of criminal networks. Nonetheless, no-one is now sent to prison for possessing small quantities of anything. In place of massive enforcement there is now widespread treatment and support. The country has a network of legal injecting rooms where people can take their drug under the supervision of medical professionals before getting on with their day. There are outreach teams actively finding homeless people and offering them help - not necessarily just help to quit, but advice on where to get clean needles, health support, information about housing and so on. It's far from perfect but there have been dramatic falls in drug-related deaths, reductions in use and addiction and a consequent reduction in crime. </p><p style="text-align: left;">There have been smaller experiments elsewhere. In Vancouver's Downtown Eastside local addicts led their own revolution, sick of being caught between the police and the drug lords. They organised themselves and started doing things like banding together to support fellow addicts, distributing information on safe drug use and supporting one another through withdrawal. As they gained strength they started lobbying for law reform and better rehabilitation programs, eventually shifting their State's regime from punishment to harm reduction and education. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Other initiatives have been led by professionals. Liverpool in the UK had a clinic through the 1990s which exploited a loophole in British law to prescribe heroin to addicts. The program was hugely successful in helping addicts to rebuild their lives and in many cases stop using altogether, but it was hounded out of existence and its founder ended up decamping to New Zealand to escape the persecution. A decade or so later a similar network of clinics was created in Switzerland with similar results. Even in the US, home of the drug war, a number of States have now held popular ballots which legalised cannabis, frequently over the opposition of police and elected politicians. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Here is good drug policy in a nutshell: act in ways that minimise the harm, not in ways that exacerbate and perpetuate it while pretending to eliminate it.</p><p style="text-align: left;">1. Decriminalise possession and use of drugs, so that no-one gets sent to jail for their addiction.</p><p style="text-align: left;">2. Legalise and regulate the supply of various substances. Hari points out that we don't need to create a new system to do this as we already have two that work fine. The system we use to regulate the sale of alcohol can be adapted for less potent drugs like cannabis - you could go to your local bottle shop and find beer, wine, spirits and cannabis. For more potent drugs like heroin you would use existing medical regulations, licensing their sale through pharmacies on prescription.</p><p style="text-align: left;">3. Redirect some or all of the billions we currently spend on policing the drug war to treatment and rehabilitation programs - drug education and advice, supervised injecting rooms, counselling and rehabilitation programs, along with associated housing, mental health and employment schemes.</p><p style="text-align: left;">4. Provide balanced, fact-based education in schools about drugs - their uses, the way to stay safe while using, the drawbacks and pitfalls - just like we do about alcohol and sex.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The evidence says that many drug users, of all sorts of drugs, don't become addicted. We know this from alcohol, which is freely available in our community. Most people use it in moderation and it's perfectly safe and pleasant. Some people use it to excess for a time but then realise that's not a good idea and stop. For some people it's a poison they need to diligently avoid, often because it taps into the trauma of their life experiences. This last group need support and treatment, and its helpful if their friends and families support them in this and create safe spaces where they don't get encouraged to relapse. But to do this you don't need to ban it for everyone else.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Other drugs are the same. In moderation they may not be that good for you but they are not as harmful as the drug war mythology would like us to believe. But if they are supplied on the street, laced with impurities and of indeterminate dosage, the risks are greatly multiplied. We wouldn't legalise them because they are great. We would legalise and regulate them because the alternative is not their non-existence, it is the blossoming of an illegal, unregulated and dangerous supply. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The 'cure' of prohibition is worse than the disease of addiction. If we are serious about stopping people dying of drug use we will stop sending addicts to prison and start offering them medical support and rehabilitation. We will stop handing drug supply to criminal gangs and give it back to the people who are best equipped to manage it - doctors and pharmacists. We will stop demonising drug use and start talking about it as a fact of life. We will stop trying to wipe out the results of trauma and start pouring resources into preventing it and treating its results. </p><p style="text-align: left;">On the other hand, if we don't care about addicts and we are ourselves profiting from the War on Drugs then by all means we should carry on as we are.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibtlgKTMaSeGSUOj8vtFVlw2Ef-9vQwWU8gMaxTLSTdBc2x0yExYAyJS_pWV8E6IoPpCMruStWxVn-Buh-4VV5Uai-EWDTqUxG7VhbBK2ePKzyYXx_Z0ftaqDaDpfVmvPY1i4OHQDCSvLdQEoDNBiFdf0zpzcSKXJEu6CatPEbI-MRy4t21ceDN-KRbA/s957/Angel%20of%20Juarez.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="957" height="421" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibtlgKTMaSeGSUOj8vtFVlw2Ef-9vQwWU8gMaxTLSTdBc2x0yExYAyJS_pWV8E6IoPpCMruStWxVn-Buh-4VV5Uai-EWDTqUxG7VhbBK2ePKzyYXx_Z0ftaqDaDpfVmvPY1i4OHQDCSvLdQEoDNBiFdf0zpzcSKXJEu6CatPEbI-MRy4t21ceDN-KRbA/w640-h421/Angel%20of%20Juarez.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Angels of Juarez are young men who bear witness at the scene of murders in their Mexican city, where drug gangs have the upper hand. His sign reads 'for those who do not believe, Christ is coming'. </td></tr></tbody></table>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-72509721040233189032022-07-22T10:36:00.006+10:002022-07-23T09:06:48.528+10:00Active Hope<p>In my <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/06/back-in-1960s.html" target="_blank">musings about late 60s activism</a> in the USA and here in Australia, I noticed a contrast between the hippie movement's emphasis on spirituality and deep renewal, and the Australian political activists' focus on causes and actions. So just like that (Shazam!) I've come across something that beautifully bridges the divide. </p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_58s3PYzo8vzsWBBziyCtk7I3SqlbVLNGERRWffrWudzV3gFjTxnURjlIClsqMkFES23-9zjpuTOPZybfKvgMcMuYc8wAc18c8VmIzmIOy5jDq1sobWes41AESNWbC7VCXegcwPZN_exbF64KXKlyCHUEi_PsTusoCUoycV2vojZa6DFT86HLDc-5uw/s400/9781577319726.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="254" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_58s3PYzo8vzsWBBziyCtk7I3SqlbVLNGERRWffrWudzV3gFjTxnURjlIClsqMkFES23-9zjpuTOPZybfKvgMcMuYc8wAc18c8VmIzmIOy5jDq1sobWes41AESNWbC7VCXegcwPZN_exbF64KXKlyCHUEi_PsTusoCUoycV2vojZa6DFT86HLDc-5uw/s320/9781577319726.jpg" width="203" /></a></i></div><i>Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy</i> is a book by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, published in 2012. It is based on a group process pioneered by Macy and others in the 1970s known as the <a href="https://workthatreconnects.org/spiral/" target="_blank">Work That Reconnects</a>, which has since spread around the world and is still active and widely used. I believe Macy, now in her 90s, is still active in this work. Her bio describes her as 'a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology'. Johnstone is a British doctor and psychologist who first met Macy at a Work That Reconnects workshop in 1989 and is now the main facilitator of this process in the UK. <p></p><p>The Buddhist influence is very clear in this book but you don't have to be a Buddhist to appreciate it or use it. Its ideas could easily be adapted for any spiritual environment, or for none. What it aims to do is to provide readers (and workshop participants) with tools and processes to sustain themselves and remain active in the face of seemingly overwhelming global crises.</p><p>They start out by outlining three stories about our time - that is, three ways of viewing the world we now live in. The first, Business As Usual, sees our society going on as it is indefinitely, with continued economic growth fuelling growing prosperity. If we live in this story we focus on the daily realities of work, family and leisure and don't think too much about the future. This is the story our politicians and oligarchs would like us to live in because it ensures that they stay in place.</p><p>The problem with this is that it is not sustainable, and this leads to the second story, the Great Unravelling. In this story, our world is on a trajectory to inevitable disaster. The threats of pollution, resource depletion and climate change will inevitably catch up with us and our world will collapse, leading to vast suffering and the loss of all we know.</p><p>This is, in a sense, a realistic worldview because at least it takes these realities into account. However, it is also a pathway to nihilism and despair. Hence the third story, the Great Turning. In this story, we are working to avoid the Great Unravelling by building alternatives - simpler lifestyles, <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/03/doughnut-economics.html" target="_blank">circular economies</a>, renewable energy, just distribution of resources and so forth. </p><p>The point is not which of these stories is correct in objective terms because these are not objective facts, they are choices. Will we put our heads in the sand and carry on as we are, sink into despair, or work for change? Living in the story of the Great Turning is what gives us our best chance of avoiding or minimising disaster and creating a world that humans and all creatures can live in. However, this story is hard work, because there is always resistance to change and we face defeats and frustrations aplenty. If we are to maintain this over time we need strong spiritual and psychological foundations that can sustain us through the length of the journey.</p><p>In order to build this sustainable practice they envisage our journey as a spiral with four stages. These are not followed once in order to get us to a destination, they are something we journey through over and over again. Here are the four stages.</p><p><b>1. Coming From Gratitude</b></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3bVM9vRsGyY5xl5bAYRY9DzYyMgZCWnGtw2JmXdP2j-bsLAe6jLW1SDk83fLGchBlaeYmXC0gDVri9FybDGY69kzxFk08SYbLA9Anjw0mjREOo5r9Kf0pmW4sbY5l1b3E5CbZd20PN4eOe0s2Bql3MBsXsdrVQlTRAkp2L7HOny-denOtx3GtnvbYPw/s565/dandelion1.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="565" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3bVM9vRsGyY5xl5bAYRY9DzYyMgZCWnGtw2JmXdP2j-bsLAe6jLW1SDk83fLGchBlaeYmXC0gDVri9FybDGY69kzxFk08SYbLA9Anjw0mjREOo5r9Kf0pmW4sbY5l1b3E5CbZd20PN4eOe0s2Bql3MBsXsdrVQlTRAkp2L7HOny-denOtx3GtnvbYPw/s320/dandelion1.jpg" width="227" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Dori Midnight from <br />www.workthatreconnects.org/spiral/</td></tr></tbody></table>This is a beginning process, and one to which we should keep returning, in which we remind ourselves of the things we are grateful for - not just generalisations ('God's love', 'God's good earth') but specifics - the flowers of the jacaranda tree in my back yard, the sound of marsh frogs after spring rain, the peace of walking near the river, the care of family members when we had to evacuate our house. This gratitude grounds us and strengthens us.<p></p><p></p><p><b>2. Honouring Our Pain for the World</b></p><p>This process involves acknowledging and taking seriously the pain we feel over things like global hunger, species extinction, habitat destruction, war, resource depletion, etc, and the fears for the future these generate. We are often inclined to push these thoughts away, distract ourselves and not talk about these bad things because they are too painful. Yet this pain is essential if we are to act. Ideally, we will create supportive places and relationships where we can talk about such things and support one another, so that the thoughts don't just overwhelm us.</p><p><b>3 Seeing with New Eyes</b></p><p>A number of chapters in the book talk about different aspects of changing the ways we see the world. These include changing the way we see ourselves (as connected to families, all humanity, all life rather than as isolated individuals), our understanding of power (moving from 'power over' to 'power with'), our sense of community (slowly widening from our neighbourhood to our nation, the global family of humanity and all creatures, seeing ourselves as intimately connected to the web of life) and the way we see time (focusing past the immediate to understanding the time-line of the earth, the time-line of humanity, the possible trajectory of the future beyond our own lifetime). Such changed perspectives give us fertile grounds for action and enable us to think beyond the immediate (the next payday, the next election, the next campaign) to where we see ourselves headed and our place in the sweep of history.</p><p><b>4. Going Forth</b></p><p>Finally, they talk about how these things would prepare us for, and move us to, action. Grounded in these practices and ways of thinking, we are enabled to start working with others to bring about the Great Turning. First is 'catching an inspiring vision' - there are so many things we could work on, but we need to choose and this will be guided by what inspires us and excites us (or makes us particularly angry). Different ones of us will be inspired by different things, but all are necessary for the Great Turning to come about.</p><p>Second is 'daring to believe it is possible'. For any process of change there will be voices, both outside us and within us, that tell us it can't be done. Often we will meet obstacles and failure before we succeed. Wilberforce and his fellow anti-slavery campaigners worked for over two decades before their laws were passed and came close to giving up. The struggles over climate change are the same - we seem to have been slugging away for decades with alarmingly meagre results. Yet if we listen to these voices we guarantee failure - everything is impossible until it happens. </p><p>Third, 'building support around you' involves finding other people who support your vision and who will work with you towards achieving it. It's rare that anything important will be achieved by one person acting alone, normally we seek help, build alliances, solve problems together and support each other through frustrations and setbacks. </p><p>Finally, 'maintaining energy and enthusiasm' addresses how we keep going for the long haul, remembering to take time to recharge and refresh, dealing with setbacks, reminding ourselves of our gratitude and of the community (human and non-human) which is working with us. </p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">Macy and Johnstone's hope and belief is that approaching the Great Turning in this way sets us for the long haul, and keeps us going when things get hard. They are the practices that have enabled Macy's five decades of peace and environmental activism, and Johnstone's three. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Unlike the hippies, there are no hallucinogens here, but there are plenty of spiritual exercises drawn mostly from the Buddhist tradition but also from Johnstone's psychology practice and elsewhere. These are used to ground us, help us visualise, help us connect, help us to broaden our view of the world. Alongside this there is practical activism drawn from the authors' own lives, those of their friends and associates and those of luminaries like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As I said, this provides a way of bridging the gap between the hippies and the activists. Like the hippies, they recognise that the Great Turning is as much a spiritual awakening as a political movement, and they lay the groundwork for this awakening. On the other hand, they see this as grounding for action, with people redirecting their lives towards building the new world they are seeking through political action, institution building, research and community change. They seek to avoid the kind of burnout and compromise that can be the fate of ungrounded political activists, as well as the kind of withdrawal and quietism that can be the endpoint of hippie spirituality.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If I've learned anything over my four decades of trying to make change, it's that it's hard work and the results are often meagre. There are strong forces that want to keep things as they are. If you don't have something, or several things, grounding you it's easy to get disheartened and join the system. You need a strong set of beliefs or values, a community of like-minded people, and a set of practices that keep you focused on the goal and keep you alive and energised. None of us is perfect - we often undermine ourselves, drop the ball, make the wrong choices. But if we have this grounding, we can keep on going, learn from our mistakes and put our small shoulders to the giant wheel of the Great Turning.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-38873514889666993612022-07-19T10:03:00.004+10:002022-07-19T14:51:09.772+10:00The Green's Triumph<p><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">As the Labor Party gets ready to introduce its climate change legislation into Parliament next week, the myth of the 'Greens 2009 sabotage of good climate policy' is doing great service in making Labor look like persecuted saints. We're even seeing the line repeated uncritically on supposedly neutral news shows like the ABC's 7.30. It's a myth or, if you prefer, it's a lie. Don't fall for it. The 2009 CPRS was a fatally compromised piece of pro-fossil-fuel greenwash, and the 2011-12 alternative was a big improvement.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBrj2GaLP6kqbxp8DZ9UCcH5D8NDp_h82drxwpGBGbyrATBVzhslNU4NILibOvie5e410doFQb7PUiNbUPNgjFnmgYpUMS8FsvEKsRPzf505vLB1Z60RtAZaCqv5dGnuvTYRAOiSqAiaXshR7zd_h__D8_cqpsyHiusAJwnxWtXUoaeupT3Zc1JLsTQ/s800/r0_0_800_600_w800_h600_fmax.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEBrj2GaLP6kqbxp8DZ9UCcH5D8NDp_h82drxwpGBGbyrATBVzhslNU4NILibOvie5e410doFQb7PUiNbUPNgjFnmgYpUMS8FsvEKsRPzf505vLB1Z60RtAZaCqv5dGnuvTYRAOiSqAiaXshR7zd_h__D8_cqpsyHiusAJwnxWtXUoaeupT3Zc1JLsTQ/s320/r0_0_800_600_w800_h600_fmax.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">What the Greens should learn from their interactions with the Rudd/Gillard government is that blocking legislation can be a good move. They prevented a bad policy and negotiated a much better one. It achieved real emissions reductions, and CEFC and ARENA were cleverly set up so that they are still doing their work despite 9 years of Coalition sabotage.</span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">They should also learn that Labor can be mightily incompetent at promoting good legislation. The Gillard Government made a hash of promoting their climate policies, allowing the Libs and media to <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2020/10/six-things-i-learned-from-carbon-club.html" target="_blank">call the price a tax</a>, focusing <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-not-to-sell-carbon-tax.html" target="_blank">all their PR</a> on how much 'compensation' they were giving.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You only need to compensate people if you are harming them. So they were saying to Australians 'we have just passed very harmful legislation, let's make it up to you'. No wonder the public didn't buy it.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As the Gillard Government tore itself apart, it became clear that they resented the Greens for pushing them into it. Yet in 2007 Rudd, quite correctly, called climate change 'the greatest moral challenge of our generation'.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What the Greens should learn is that Labor has no stomach for moral challenges. They call themselves the party of reform but they have not been that for a long time. To make real change the Greens will have to make the most of every ounce of leverage they have.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaWlRZ_-xOLMPnCVVc3rxCja0p6GX1-wDNt4WERinDQe3ikcE11QJKmvKG0qUm5WuWKSUzy_nEWBePt9Krpz3q4G78Ed9zhLu0R69rxQz_exK-MIhidlno1CnIpU9HwDIATejSxPMPfKK0a2prVlbzj_3ZZ_wQlle6ZaINncP4QbJCHETNdA9cFtOAzQ/s481/carbon-repeal.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="481" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaWlRZ_-xOLMPnCVVc3rxCja0p6GX1-wDNt4WERinDQe3ikcE11QJKmvKG0qUm5WuWKSUzy_nEWBePt9Krpz3q4G78Ed9zhLu0R69rxQz_exK-MIhidlno1CnIpU9HwDIATejSxPMPfKK0a2prVlbzj_3ZZ_wQlle6ZaINncP4QbJCHETNdA9cFtOAzQ/w320-h230/carbon-repeal.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These Liberals!<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sure, the carbon price was repealed, but the Greens didn't do that, the Liberals did. At the same time the Greens, along with Labor and others, wouldn't let them abolish CEFC, ARENA and the Climate Change Authority and did everything they could to protect them from being subverted into the service of the fossil fuel industry.</span><p></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">By holding out for better in 2009, the Greens made possible a set of genuinely effective policies that were robust enough to survive in the harshest environment. As a result we now have the foundations for reducing emissions in a wide range of sectors, just waiting to scale up.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Labor are trying to present this as sabotage because they don't want to give credit to anyone else. But more than that, like the Liberals and Nationals they are firmly in the grip of the fossil fuel industry and are under heavy pressure to put the brakes on change.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is why they have set their target so low. The foundations we have in place mean we can easily achieve the Teals' 60% by 2030 target and even the Greens' 75%. But there will be no place in that world for more than a handful of coal and gas mines and power plants. This industry is literally fighting for its life.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">We all need it to lose. The 43% is just a sideshow. The main game is in the transition - renewables for coal and gas, public and active transport and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;">EVs </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;">for petrol and diesel vehicles, energy efficient electrified buildings, etc. If we focus on these things, 43% will flash by without us noticing.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Instead the fossil fuel industry wants us to believe all this is impossible and focus on things like offsets, CCS and 'gas as a transition fuel', whatever that means. All of these things are just delaying tactics which will keep the fossil fuel industry alive but literally cost us the earth.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">If I had any advice for Adam Bandt and the Greens</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (not that they have asked me</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">) it would be to focus on this transition, with programs, institutions and resources to accelerate it to the max. If they can achieve this, they will create a legacy even more potent than that of 2011.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">End of rant. Don't fall for the Labor BS about Greens sabotage. Don't fall for the false promise of offsets and carbon capture. Don't get caught in a zero sum game. A new world is being born. Work with all you have to let it grow and thrive. We may survive this yet.</span></span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOtQyiMBEFqTOI5WqXK55es6GHSMftN7Y77HdEh1B07yLZkW5aB535MupmHME2Omk6ev9OMBCLR_QuoP8joFkjE7ZF4TiHBRPrX--VrX13OVOzc1efLXkONqWPiSICpsgUyRInmZht8ejFcYNJdQXf27BWBrNhOqHdO-lItKMlCgR5MZzvcDyH4Vm0fg/s2221/20220212_073704%20(2).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1826" data-original-width="2221" height="526" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOtQyiMBEFqTOI5WqXK55es6GHSMftN7Y77HdEh1B07yLZkW5aB535MupmHME2Omk6ev9OMBCLR_QuoP8joFkjE7ZF4TiHBRPrX--VrX13OVOzc1efLXkONqWPiSICpsgUyRInmZht8ejFcYNJdQXf27BWBrNhOqHdO-lItKMlCgR5MZzvcDyH4Vm0fg/w640-h526/20220212_073704%20(2).jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span aria-hidden="true" class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-hiw28u r-qvk6io r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" color="inherit" style="border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 0px; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: inherit;">t-to-sell-carbon-tax.html?m=1</span><p></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-32180879763702721172022-07-11T17:01:00.004+10:002022-07-14T12:18:43.289+10:00A River with a City Problem<p> <i>A River with a City Problem</i> is such a fantastic name for a history book. Margaret Cook's history of flooding on the Brisbane River and its tributaries is in high demand at the Council library service thanks to our <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/03/dear-scomo-dear-albo.html" target="_blank">fresh flooding</a> this year. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCotvH-fMjRsAM02yLSt5QtnnfQBnd8SvyuyegxWUel8eaqMuD9j2nrbODCrQhbvfSLck1iDADD4uYpFgoop_H1PI9iYfAQKo16SoJ-9luVUZyR-m5f76oPPt1VAPxZs7lzNZjdLoZW_J5G2RnjvsTfxlLrbxyljnlEa0ILiCCjjHk6CqSoQQ9QYLdA/s2681/Cover_A-River-with-a-City-Problem_9780702260438_FINAL.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2681" data-original-width="1795" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCotvH-fMjRsAM02yLSt5QtnnfQBnd8SvyuyegxWUel8eaqMuD9j2nrbODCrQhbvfSLck1iDADD4uYpFgoop_H1PI9iYfAQKo16SoJ-9luVUZyR-m5f76oPPt1VAPxZs7lzNZjdLoZW_J5G2RnjvsTfxlLrbxyljnlEa0ILiCCjjHk6CqSoQQ9QYLdA/w268-h400/Cover_A-River-with-a-City-Problem_9780702260438_FINAL.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>I wish I'd read this book in 1994 when we bought our house in Fairfield, but of course it was only published in 2019, prompted by the catastrophic <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2011/01/brisbane-floods.html" target="_blank">2011 floods</a>. When we inspected the house and decided to buy it we knew that in 1974 the property had been covered in over two metres of water, flooding the upstairs of the house. We were also told that the completion of Wivenhoe Dam in the 1980s meant an equivalent flood event would be about two metres lower, meaning we would only have an inch or tow of water under the house. This seemed like a small enough risk.<p></p><p>What we didn't understand at the time, but learned in 2011, is that this story had two big 'ifs'. <i>If</i> the rain fell above Wivenhoe Dam, and <i>if </i>the amount of rain didn't exceed the capacity of the dam. Neither of these 'ifs' were the case in 2011. Massive amounts of rain fell in the Lockyer Creek and Bremer River catchments, flooding Laidley, Grantham and Ipswich before flowing into the Brisbane River downstream of Wivenhoe. At the same time, the deluge in the dam's catchment forced its operators to release water in the midst of the flood. As a result our house had over a metre of water. We were lucky, many of our neighbours fared far worse.</p><p>Margaret Cook tells us we were not the first to make this mistake. The first British colonists knew they were settling on a floodplain in 1825. They were attracted by the rich alluvial soils which they thought would grow cotton for the empire as well as plenty of food for the penal colony. Riverine flooding is not a problem in nature, it is a way of periodically inundating country, laying down new soil and shaping the landscape. The Turrbal and Yuggerah people who had lived here for the thousands of years before that had plenty of stories of flooding and explained where the waters came to. But they knew how to live with flooding, camping by the river when it was low and moving to higher ground in flood seasons.</p><p>Not so the British colonists, who immediately built permanent structures on the floodplain and planted European crops there. Any flood would devastate the settlement. The colony suffered such a flood in 1841 when the river rose 8.43m above its usual height. At this point colony's population was around a thousand persons and it was just about to be opened up for free settlement. This didn't seem to spark any caution in the colonial authorities who proceeded to subdivide and sell land on the floodplain, covering this lovely fertile soil with roads and houses and even building luxury housing on what is now Orleigh Park in West End, right on the river.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXOS7bPxNPN249GqVxRUSPrFr6cTkq9mGr7U_SZXEgN9evpVXmVZHnEEAj-0MgMSHCISVdIRNNhWrV5TFG3736VlnL2EqgJCAu9obSTPFEReWYyKtArhLqyyFNHpcr14iVf_p7OVilthxULG-_Za1wmDxSUl4q9jrryZHRIjoRzhQovb8FW4GrHmAj5w/s2592/DSCF0987.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1944" data-original-width="2592" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXOS7bPxNPN249GqVxRUSPrFr6cTkq9mGr7U_SZXEgN9evpVXmVZHnEEAj-0MgMSHCISVdIRNNhWrV5TFG3736VlnL2EqgJCAu9obSTPFEReWYyKtArhLqyyFNHpcr14iVf_p7OVilthxULG-_Za1wmDxSUl4q9jrryZHRIjoRzhQovb8FW4GrHmAj5w/w640-h480/DSCF0987.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Would you build a house here?</td></tr></tbody></table><p>In 1893, when it was home to around 100,000 people, the city flooded twice. On 29 January the river rose to 8.35m at the Port Office, near the city centre, inundating the CBD and much of the settled area of the city. On 15 February it rose again, this time to 8.09m, sending almost everything back under water before most people even had time to clean off the mud. The Bremer River at Ipswich rose to 24.5m and 23.6m. The floods were devastating, a massive landmark in the history of the two cities.</p><p>In 1893, many of the suburbs which were flooded in 1974 and again in 2011 were still farmland. This included major parts of Yeronga and Fairfield, where I live, as well as Rocklea just down the road, Graceville, Chelmer and the Centenary suburbs further west, and many of the lowest lying parts of Ipswich. You might have thought 8m of water would make even property developers think twice. </p><p>They did abandon Orleigh Park, with owners progressively selling to the Council and allowing it to create one of Brisbane's most popular parks. However, the subsequent reviews and inquiries focused almost exclusively on how to prevent further flooding. The river was dredged and straightened, levee walls were built and eventually, after much debate and delay, Somerset Dam was started in the 1930s and finished 20 years later as a post-war economic stimulus. Brisbane residents were encouraged to believe that these measures would save them from future floods, even though hydrologists and engineers warned that they wouldn't - Somerset would at best reduce flooding by about .5m (provided the rain fell in the Stanley River catchment) while the benefits of the changes to the river itself were similarly modest. A cycle of dry years added to the sense of invulnerability, punctured dramatically in 1974.</p><p>On 29 January 1974 the river reached 5.45m. While this was almost three metres lower than 1893, the city's population was now over 700,000. Fairfield, Yeronga, Rocklea, Chelmer, the Centenary Suburbs and many more were now densely settled. Thousands of homes were inundated. I remember it well. 1974 was the year I started High School. We were high and dry at Sunnybank (or as dry as you can be when 600mm of rain falls in a week) but my scout group went down the road to Rocklea to help with the clean-up, walking through mud and stench to help residents put their sodden stuff on the footpath. We could smell the mud from the train on our way to school for weeks afterwards. </p><p>You might have thought this would make governments and property owners pause. But the Bjelke-Petersen State Government was literally in the pockets of property developers and the Brisbane City Council led by Clem Jones was not much different. The Commonwealth Government made flood adjustment funding conditional on developing floodplain landuse plans that took account of flood levels, so Bjelke-Petersen chose instead to forgo the funds and accuse the Whitlam Government of discrimination. We were assured that Wivenhoe Dam, already under development and completed in 1985, would save us from a repeat. Floodplain development went on as if nothing had happened and people rebuilt their flooded homes unaltered. In 2011 the flood was a metre lower than 1974 but flooded thousands more homes, many built in areas sparsely populated when they went under in 1974.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGqEST9Z6xtdOWMmJYcGs_8d1Sgvv1s2kXjYmveaqhjTARyxnuh4SIqiQdjQezm2PyLcq6tc2F190XCrDVg1z9djKIBB-kdEeQ--P0eMPeZZds-JRo3dHV5Rlbbc0isUGpAHu9WLurpdS3J_hAdssk0uZub1k8MA85prh4iHORnTdteYDrtc2V9BPisA/s1600/PICT3308.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGqEST9Z6xtdOWMmJYcGs_8d1Sgvv1s2kXjYmveaqhjTARyxnuh4SIqiQdjQezm2PyLcq6tc2F190XCrDVg1z9djKIBB-kdEeQ--P0eMPeZZds-JRo3dHV5Rlbbc0isUGpAHu9WLurpdS3J_hAdssk0uZub1k8MA85prh4iHORnTdteYDrtc2V9BPisA/w640-h480/PICT3308.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My house in 2011. Thankfully we live upstairs.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Part of the reason Margaret Cook decided to write this book is that it seemed that in the wake of the 2011 flood, nothing had changed. The Commission of Inquiry set up to review the response to the flood was meant to review everything, including land use decisions, but ended up with a forensic investigation into whether the Wivenhoe Dam engineers followed the dam's operations manual to the letter. Despite the inquiry's expert advisors saying they had done a good job, the lawyers found otherwise and the subsequent class action reached an ambiguous conclusion over a decade later. What this did was allow people, including politicians and developers, to talk about the flood as the result of dam mismanagement, not of vast amounts of rain. </p><p>Over and over again Cook uses terms like Dam Dependency, the Somerset Dam Syndrome and the 'flood-proofing myth'. This is a specific example of the myth of Progress, the idea that humans can 'improve on' nature, that we can control natural forces and bend them to our will for our profit. Every few decades (and more frequently as climate change accelerates) Nature reminds us that it is not so. We can't stop the rain from falling, or tell it where to fall. We need to learn to live within our limits.</p><p>Why are we so slow to learn this? The answer, as far as I can see, is that ignoring this reality makes some people very rich. Property developers build on flood-prone land, with the full approval of local and State governments, and sell the product to unsuspecting home buyers who assume that if the housing has planning approval then it must be OK. By the time the flood comes, the developer is long gone, sitting safely in his or her hilltop home counting their money and enjoying the distant water views.</p><p>And this, although a rather crude stereotype, is kind of typical of our present day hyper-capitalism. It applies to our big agri-business companies, our media oligopolies, our pharmaceutical companies, and most of all to our massive fossil fuel companies. They don't just get lucky and cash in on our ignorance, they spend millions of dollars fostering that ignorance and buying friendly governments (almost entirely legally, the law being what it is) to ensure they can go on profiting long after it has become clear such profits are unconscionable. You wonder, how do they live with themselves? Well. Michael Leunig, as usual, suggests an answer.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwFSTgnT91kQF0M-TNeLgrN-ej6ylDFWVKVscaoFIcvyOHOXMgBq__7ECEOQixGe960T92ggyFwamwF6ECEw3jrpvibblk1LKihE031w7AJzJODhfvXavR1djh33L6ZFjNoKkd7YSPQGH5HlV3e86MicRvfYkYjS8bzexTQwJQj29lcRzVqe59jBJTDw/s716/k%20Michael%20Leunig%20Here%20I%20am.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="716" height="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwFSTgnT91kQF0M-TNeLgrN-ej6ylDFWVKVscaoFIcvyOHOXMgBq__7ECEOQixGe960T92ggyFwamwF6ECEw3jrpvibblk1LKihE031w7AJzJODhfvXavR1djh33L6ZFjNoKkd7YSPQGH5HlV3e86MicRvfYkYjS8bzexTQwJQj29lcRzVqe59jBJTDw/w640-h450/k%20Michael%20Leunig%20Here%20I%20am.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-78488834228853647252022-06-21T10:55:00.005+10:002022-09-01T11:44:11.796+10:00Back in the 1960s...<p>Back in early 2020, as we were all locking down for the first time and trying to work out what the hell this 'coronavirus' thing was, someone left a pile of books in the front of their house with a note saying 'please take'. I picked up a book called <i>In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea</i> by Danny Goldberg. (The title is borrowed, seemingly without acknowledgement, from a 1968 album by The Moody Blues).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvSOQnRekSwVHyz2qOsBdUmv1MvZzu6TG3Aog8zjbvSDxokMvM-NHjmzux_FUE1S324GZfFEpQnXlpDIOfeI8n24DI8J-2s6vRaEPT4T9mcr-HD9i5id5CCBZ1Mp5vG9FzGY4Vs_--nN4eq56FGggJxJKIuOMq4gYsrR-vvb_4L9svTny_f7QbMtPqxQ/s613/9781785783371.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvSOQnRekSwVHyz2qOsBdUmv1MvZzu6TG3Aog8zjbvSDxokMvM-NHjmzux_FUE1S324GZfFEpQnXlpDIOfeI8n24DI8J-2s6vRaEPT4T9mcr-HD9i5id5CCBZ1Mp5vG9FzGY4Vs_--nN4eq56FGggJxJKIuOMq4gYsrR-vvb_4L9svTny_f7QbMtPqxQ/w261-h400/9781785783371.jpg" width="261" /></a></div>Goldberg is a 50-year veteran of the US music industry, managing and publicising musical acts including Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Earle and The Hives. Although he wasn't strictly 'there' in 1967 - that was the year he finished school, and he entered the music business in 1968 - he was very close, and worked and socialised closely with many of its movers and shakers. <p></p><p>Then again, having 'been there' is a somewhat nebulous idea. It's not just that, as many people are credited with saying, 'if you remember the 60s you obviously weren't there'. It's also that 1967 is a time, not a place, and a lot of things were happening in that year in a lot of different places. No-one could possibly have been in all of them. Goldberg readily acknowledges this in his introduction.</p><p><i>...whatever "it" was in 1967 was the result of dozens of separate, sometimes contradictory "notes" from an assortment of political, spiritual, chemical, demographic, historical and media influences that collectively created a unique energy. It should go without saying that no two people perceived the late sixties in the same way, and that the space limitations of a single volume and my own myopia require me to leave out more than I include.</i></p><p>The 1967 the Goldberg describes is the hippie movement centred on the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco and New York's East Village, although not confined to them. Here, groups of young people experimented with living communally, setting up alternative economies, creating new kinds of art, poetry and music and exploring Eastern spirituality. The centre-pieces of this movement were not big programmed music festivals like Monterey and Woodstock but 'happenings', modest-scale, free and largely unprogrammed events in which people came together and created whatever they chose within a loose framework of time and place. </p><p>Of course there was politics. They were opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favour of equality for Black people and women. But the Left politics of that time in the US was very fractured. The Black civil rights leaders were suspicious of these white middle class kids. The hard Left thought they lacked revolutionary discipline, avoiding class struggle rather than engaging in it, while the hippies were dismissive of the 'old left' as having achieved nothing. Many of the sexist norms of the wider society were perpetuated in hippie communities where women still found that they were expected to do the washing and cooking. You could think of it as a thousand flowers blooming, or else as a mess of in-fighting.</p><p>One aspect of this movement was the use of hallucinogens, something you can read about in any memoir from the 60s. In our age we are accustomed to think of 'recreational drugs' or 'party drugs' like cannabis, ecstasy or perhaps cocaine, or more serious 'drugs of addiction' like crystal methamphetamine or heroin. The former are seen to help us have a good time, the latter to perhaps make us feel good or perhaps blot out our pain for a while. But this is not what the 1960s use of hallucinogens was all about.</p><p>In the 1960s they were seen as a spiritual aid. Their use was rooted in the spiritual practices of some American First Nations people who would use mescaline, a hallucinatory drug derived from certain species of cacti, or psylocybin, drawn from a species of mushroom ('magic mushrooms'), as an aid to spiritual visions in ceremonies such as initiation and other important moments. Their use was carefully controlled and guided and took place within a long-standing spiritual framework. </p><p>In the post-war years, interest in these practices spread to the West where they were seen as having potential in psychiatry as well as spiritual awakening. The author Aldous Huxley was persuaded to try mescaline and published an account of his experience in the influential 1954 book <i>The Doors of Perception. </i>In 1938 Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman synthesised lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which had a very similar affect but could be made easily in a lab. </p><p>Through the late 1950s and into the 1960s Dr Timothy Leary became the main promoter of the use of hallucinogens in the US. He and his followers, including Richard Alpert, initially researched and taught at Harvard and after their expulsion from there continued their research and teaching independently. They saw these drugs as having potential to treat mental illness and reduce criminality but more importantly, as an aid to widespread spiritual awakening and subsequent social transformation. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzi4eN9vKKs06pM7hShd3lBtm5P6TT0tMJcapRqx0VdEKkSa_HkQm-Hhp2uZILlgRcGdp9Vdz4nf09aqEHskL5XmqIJqWkelPmAHTUvojzyrh6KNfV0xFgYg0ZZd4mth74M5gajLcTs78b4d_46-iyxAMNCUBOG9eiH1tfr5_KxkUkZZkrJcfqJ7CVJg/s960/slider1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="345" data-original-width="960" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzi4eN9vKKs06pM7hShd3lBtm5P6TT0tMJcapRqx0VdEKkSa_HkQm-Hhp2uZILlgRcGdp9Vdz4nf09aqEHskL5XmqIJqWkelPmAHTUvojzyrh6KNfV0xFgYg0ZZd4mth74M5gajLcTs78b4d_46-iyxAMNCUBOG9eiH1tfr5_KxkUkZZkrJcfqJ7CVJg/w640-h230/slider1.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>They didn't promote indiscriminate use. They stressed the importance of what they called 'set and setting'. By 'set' they meant the mindset with which the user should approach the experience - a spirit of calm, open inquiry, peace and expectation. By 'setting' they meant the context in which the drug was used, and the people who accompanied the user. The drug would be used after careful preparation, in a safe comfortable place supervised by an experienced person who knew how to administer it, and the user would be accompanied by someone who was not using it, who would keep them safe and comfort or reassure them if they became disturbed or agitated.</p><p>1967, give or take, was the moment when this set of ideas hit the mainstream, and it became 'hip' to use hallucinogens as part of the process of expanding consciousness. But it wasn't just about drug use, it was about counter-culture. It was about exchanging war for peace, competition for cooperation, conformity for freedom to be yourself, ambition for self-realisation. This is, I suppose, the 'hippie idea'. You would free your mind, learn to think and live differently, and this would ensure not only the end of specific unjust wars but the creation of peaceful, just societies that made them unnecessary.</p><p>In the hands of these anarchic young idealists hallucinogens weren't always used within the confines of Leary and Alpert's careful psychological guidance, never mind the deeper spiritual discipline of its First Nations originators. People had 'bad trips' and careless use heightened the risks, particularly the risk of triggering psychotic illness. The drugs were also seen as threats to social order by the conservative political establishment, and in 1968 they were made 'controlled substances', so their supply and possession became criminal offences. This drew criminal organisations into the market and they were interested in profit, not spiritual awakening or psychological healing. Heroin and cocaine, which offered easier highs but were more harmful and addictive than LSD or mushrooms, flooded the scene and further muddied the original aim of awakening.</p><p>It's hardly surprising, then, that the moment passed quickly. Along with the internal divisions, the pressure from the FBI, and the infiltration of criminal drug suppliers there were plenty of people keen to cash in. No-one was trying to get rich out of the Happenings and no-one did but already by 1969 entrepreneurs were circling. Woodstock, so often seen as a high point of 'peace, love and rock'n'roll', was designed as a commercial venture and even though the event itself lost the organisers a bucket of money they earned it back many times over through the film and recordings. The 'vibe' was still there but it was already becoming hollow, as much marketing as reality. Capitalism, in the end, reasserted itself and 'normality' returned.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">Here in Australia Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley have written a very different book about a similar time. <i>Radicals: Remembering the Sixties </i>was published in 2021. It taps the memories of 20 different people involved in Australian radical politics as young people in the late 1960s and early 1970s.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJWQcPUnAg87irzXdW_0gdILg71vtfCWmrfFDfBOt4LU5L4AC5FdZk6sDpuOCmNe7-yJl2zPiKHenXRPpvnzmUPkpDRUj5_osYNjgGhUvmBZZVmoBI4n4KpT_G4OHNfp_QwGxaSh3o0uwF-rKuJIbt85X7HNoAUPBzQ06vXLfqbgyoqD505IIDI7N8g/s500/9781742235899.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="327" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEJWQcPUnAg87irzXdW_0gdILg71vtfCWmrfFDfBOt4LU5L4AC5FdZk6sDpuOCmNe7-yJl2zPiKHenXRPpvnzmUPkpDRUj5_osYNjgGhUvmBZZVmoBI4n4KpT_G4OHNfp_QwGxaSh3o0uwF-rKuJIbt85X7HNoAUPBzQ06vXLfqbgyoqD505IIDI7N8g/w261-h400/9781742235899.jpg" width="261" /></a></div>Burgmann and Wheatley were indeed 'there', perhaps more so than Danny Goldberg. The pair met at Sydney University's Women's College in 1967 and went together to various anti-Vietnam War and anti-apartheid protests, two big issues that energised the radical movements of the late 1960s. Both of them entered university as well-behaved middle-class kids (although Wheatley has a back story of child abuse) but were rapidly radicalised through student politics and within a short time were taking part in sit-ins and getting arrested. <p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Some of the people profiled in this book are old friends and the book often feels like a reunion as the authors, occasionally separate but mostly together, sit down with their contemporaries (now in their 70s) and chat about the old days. Many of them are familiar figures - former Labor politicians Margaret Reynolds and Peter Duncan, singer Margret Roadknight, journalist David Marr, Aboriginal activist Gary Foley, celebrity human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, and indeed Wheatley herself who is a widely read writer. There is a strong Sydney flavour but a reasonable seasoning of Victorians and even a couple of Queenslanders and South Australians.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There's also a lot of diversity here. Some of the people are right out on the far left - Albert Langer, for instance, has been a lifelong communist, while long-standing Brisbane activist Brian Laver is an anarchist or, as he sometimes prefers, Libertarian Socialist. Helen Voysey, a prominent figure in High School Students Against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, talks about how the movement was seeded by Resistance, a Trotskyite activist group in Sydney. But the presentation of this in the press as some sort of sinister manipulation of young minds by older radicals is hilarious when you consider that many of the Resistance organisers were still in their teens.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Others were much more mainstream and became even more so over the years. For instance, while Burgmann, Wheatley and others in this book were getting arrested and fronting court for their actions, their friend Geoffrey Robertson was carefully avoiding arrest so as not to risk his future as a lawyer. Yet as soon as he was able, he used his training to represent activists in court and continues to do so to this day. Others were taking part in University Labor clubs and ended up as Labor MPs like Margaret Reynolds, a long serving Queensland Senator and sometime Minister, and Peter Duncan, who served in both the South Australian and national parliament and introduced legislation decriminalising homosexuality as Attorney-General in the South Australian Labor Government. The journalist Peter Manning revived Sydney University's Democratic Labor Party club (for young readers, the DLP was a highly conservative Labor Party breakaway) before ending up on the Labor Left.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Then there were the Aboriginal activists, Gary Foley, Gary Williams and Bronwyn Penrith, who largely ran their own race. While the white radicals were focused on the Vietnam War, the Aboriginal ones were focused on racism, police violence and land rights, causes that the white radicals were a little slower to take up. Gary Williams remembers he saw Vietnam as a 'white folks war' and nothing to do with him, but the two cultures found common ground in the protests against Apartheid which focused on the touring Springboks rugby side. Both Foley and Williams were prominent in the Springboks protests, publishing cheeky photos of themselves in a Springboks jersey (donated by a dissenting Australian rugby player) in response to South African President Vorster saying 'no black man will ever wear a Springboks jersey'. But they also used the events to challenge their white partners to look at the racism closer to home - indeed, Williams comments that Apartheid was modelled on the system of segregation that still existed in Queensland at that time.</p><p style="text-align: left;">And of course there were women's activists like Jozefa Sobski and Margaret Reynolds and gay and lesbian people like David Marr and Vivienne Binns who had their own gender and sexual issues to fight for in addition to the causes everyone was fighting.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Despite this diversity the story that comes out of <i>Radicals</i> is almost entirely political. There's not a lot of drug taking or 'free love', and aside from Margret Roadknight there's not much music although there's a bit more theatre and visual art. There's a lot of protest, a lot of marching, rallying, getting arrested, organising and standing up for justice, along with ideological ferment and ongoing tensions between the different radical tribes - the Labor left, the Maoists, Troskyists and Stalinists, the Anarchists, and those who just wanted Australia to stop killing kids in Vietnam. But drugs, if they are present at all, are just for recreation. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1BtoMpmn4POFfQvn0BpM5IRSZ1cNJrDvTUNqwNPI1to3WoHZbiete4FPA6mO_yFqjr2JCUOed5OtEYJ7D2rTNz9z4WGpSJxZ9SQl0ODX6Go1IiPBsBHBQx9ru5Zq_Rgg2NAEXKsl-szeCNUmt1ELH3M7T-9ggdr9oBeyRssOgrTqQaq5JyTmpXm4-A/s696/Vietnam-Moratorium-web.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="696" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf1BtoMpmn4POFfQvn0BpM5IRSZ1cNJrDvTUNqwNPI1to3WoHZbiete4FPA6mO_yFqjr2JCUOed5OtEYJ7D2rTNz9z4WGpSJxZ9SQl0ODX6Go1IiPBsBHBQx9ru5Zq_Rgg2NAEXKsl-szeCNUmt1ELH3M7T-9ggdr9oBeyRssOgrTqQaq5JyTmpXm4-A/w640-h360/Vietnam-Moratorium-web.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">The outlier here is Robbie Swan, the only person who talks about hallucinogens and who went on to spend many years practicing and teaching Transcendental Meditation. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Robbie agrees that his sense of outrage was strong. Seeing it all up close, he understood how society was beginning to break down and things had to change. He says that it all pushed him towards meditation and an understanding that 'there needed to be societal change, not politics as the be-all and end-all. People had to change their attitudes.' He goes on to say that he became 'more into the spiritual side of things'.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Swan aside, the prevailing narrative of <i>Radicals </i>is of a move away from religion or spirituality towards political action. Most of the featured activists grew up in families that were at least formally, and often very deeply, involved in Christian churches, Protestant or Catholic. For the young radicals this was part of the stultifying, conformist culture of 1950s Australia which they threw over on their path to radicalism. If religion appears it is mostly an opponent, the conservative Catholic politics of Archbishop Daniel Mannix and BA Santamaria. Only the distinguished journalist Peter Manning was able to reconcile his activism with ongoing Catholic faith, aided by radical university chaplain Fr Ted Kennedy and the writings of Dorothy Day. For the rest, it was all politics.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">These differences are not, I suspect, about differences between the US and Australia, so much as differences between the authors. The US had its materialist left, Australia had its hippies. I've just stumbled upon authors with different outlooks. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I've been thinking as I read and revisit these two books that what we see here are two different theories of change. I don't necessarily mean this in the technical sense that the term is used in government programs but in the more general way of answering the question, 'how do you make change'. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The view in <i>The Secret Chord </i>could be summarised in John Lennon's lyric:</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>You say you want a revolution, you'd better free your mind instead.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Although Redgum only arrived on the scene in the late 1970s, the dominant view in <i>Radicals</i> might be encapsulated in their line.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>If you don't fight, you lose.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Where should we focus our attention - on inner work and spiritual growth, or on activism for political and social change? </p><p style="text-align: left;">On the first view, it is not that activism is wrong or to be avoided, but it is viewed as superficial. You may make a small change here and there but the fundamental structure of things will continue. Even if you have a revolution, without a change of mind, a change of heart, you will just replace one form of oppression with another. This view was, of course, borne out graphically in the 20th century experiments with communism in Russia and China, which exchanged oppressive capitalism and imperialism for oppressive communism. In the late 1960s it was still possible to follow this old style communism, but as more atrocities came to light over the years this became less and less tenable, and Australia's communist party collapsed. </p><p style="text-align: left;">What the 'hippie view' risks is that you retreat into an inward-focused spirituality in which you change your mind and heart, but don't change anything else. You might, in some individualistic way, become a better happier, more peaceful person, but you leave society to go on as it is. </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXMwraAtHk1_zDsSIOJs8p-She3ILlgAiGf7Lr7070EXOJxPum4vtrXsQo8OaC5OLAEHJDRiXhoZOb0IPZfCwZPnGEx82Bn_QrEh_YJi4qPUYqmHziifx2i8P6rkuj3tlvE6uklS_CruTPxpi6r-J-iTfeDfS6tPQF_NjJpqHHS64Tz8xUwa1flz2_w/s2913/gettyimages-636202524_custom-91c4ca6d1e52c46456b6eb4ccec86c302bcd14e6.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2913" data-original-width="2161" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXMwraAtHk1_zDsSIOJs8p-She3ILlgAiGf7Lr7070EXOJxPum4vtrXsQo8OaC5OLAEHJDRiXhoZOb0IPZfCwZPnGEx82Bn_QrEh_YJi4qPUYqmHziifx2i8P6rkuj3tlvE6uklS_CruTPxpi6r-J-iTfeDfS6tPQF_NjJpqHHS64Tz8xUwa1flz2_w/w296-h400/gettyimages-636202524_custom-91c4ca6d1e52c46456b6eb4ccec86c302bcd14e6.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>Then again, you might not. Richard Alpert, after he split from Timothy Leary, went to India and studied yoga, with his guru giving him the name Ram Dass or Servant of God. He returned to the West and spent his life teaching yoga, but he also did a lot of very practical things, like founding a charity which helped to treat blindness in India and Nepal, and was a pioneer of palliative care in the USA along with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Even Robbie Swan, after a period teaching meditation in Europe, returned to Australia and founded the Sex Party (now Reason) as a way of campaigning against censorship.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Did it work? Well, people like Ram Dass, Wavy Gravy and others held true to their principles through the years that followed and did a lot of good. But the US, and the world, doesn't seem to have undergone a spiritual liberation in the years since. Does this mean that the strategy was wrong, or just that the countervailing forces were more powerful? And is the world a better place for having played host to those activists back then? I would like to think so.</p><p style="text-align: left;">On the second view, what matters is action and organisation. Personal spirituality is all very well, perhaps even admirable, but the important thing is getting out on the streets and into the halls of power, pushing for change and getting concrete reforms to laws, policies and systems. This is not to say that stopping a particular war, or changing a racist regime or a discriminatory law, is all there is to it. These young Marxists understood that our political and economic systems were (and are) deeply unjust, but the small immediate battles were steps along with way towards greater peace and more justice, as well as tools to build lasting movements. </p><p style="text-align: left;">How did they go? Actor John Derum, who was involved in radical theatre in Sydney and Melbourne in the late 60s and early 70s, provides a lovely reflection on his activism.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>When my son, Oliver, was having a demonstration at Penrith High one day, I said to him, 'But everything we demonstrated against, we lost". And Oliver came back to me a few days later and said, "But Dad, they didn't bring back conscription, and we haven't had another Vietnam and they haven't hanged anyone else." It was great that he spotted that.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">This is at least partly true. The death penalty is indeed a thing of the past, as is conscription, although the latter may have more to do with war now being so highly technologised that massive poorly-trained militias are not much use. Still, what are Afghanistan and Iraq if not 'another Vietnam' as we gear up for a newly intense Cold War with China?</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3zUiycjJSaBOuWIsCDvl-Ab4gqlxBoAo9qhWSNQ8RHETY9b0B1URApxQ4457dL5lf_M-vjKErY2URO9eq5A71aF2cjj4OS0yIJHaf2l2QSD4cPvv5Pfxycf5bfakTHGUfMhtjjkl8dxTwyaQ9PR2zr_PmZLFO478RLp_vJYTVQWK82KNdQ2bJRAXpgA/s3834/EddieMabo.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3834" data-original-width="2700" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3zUiycjJSaBOuWIsCDvl-Ab4gqlxBoAo9qhWSNQ8RHETY9b0B1URApxQ4457dL5lf_M-vjKErY2URO9eq5A71aF2cjj4OS0yIJHaf2l2QSD4cPvv5Pfxycf5bfakTHGUfMhtjjkl8dxTwyaQ9PR2zr_PmZLFO478RLp_vJYTVQWK82KNdQ2bJRAXpgA/w281-h400/EddieMabo.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>Other successes share this partial nature. We have native title, anti-discrimination laws and same sex marriage but we still have inequality, racism, militarism and environmental destruction. All the organising and revolutionary doctrine of the 1960s didn't save us.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">But once again, did it make us better? Peter Duncan pioneered the legalisation of homosexuality, allowing people to become open about their status - and now we have same sex marriage. Gary Foley, Gary Williams and Bronwyn Penrith campaigned for land rights and anti-racism measures and founded the first Aboriginal Health Service and Legal Service in Redfern. The successors to these organisations have grown stronger in the years since, while Native Title, imperfect though it is, is a step in the right direction.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I would argue, as I tend to about all sorts of things, that neither of these theories is 'right' or 'wrong' in the black and white sense. Organising is necessary. Lobbying, court cases, taking to the streets, blockading all contribute to moving our society in a more just, more ecologically responsible direction. We can't afford the 'paralysis of analysis' while exploitation of humans and nature goes on unchecked. </p><p style="text-align: left;">But we shouldn't somehow think that these are 'the answer'. There are indeed deep spiritual maladies at the heart of our exploitive practices - greed, selfishness, insecurity, the will to power. If we leave this unattended, then the freedom fighters can easily become oppressors, the movements for liberation can fracture on their own internal politics and we will never get very far.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Ultimately, what really matters is that we keep working on both these things, and this is what both these books highlight in their own ways. <i>Radicals </i> begins in 2020 with Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley together in Sydney's Town Hall Square, where they have stood so many times before, joining in a Black Lives Matter rally. These two women in their 70s, still inspired by the political lessons they learned 50 years ago, present an inspiring vignette of perseverance and deep radicalism which keeps on keeping on. We see this played out in so many of the stories in the book as people move on from their naive 60s radicalism to lifelong ventures in politics, law, journalism, education, community organisations and the arts, working for a better world in their own spheres. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The movement described in <i>Lost Chord</i> is in many ways more ephemeral. The people dissipated and although many of them (like Ram Dass) continued to do good work others quickly faded from view. Yet 50 years on it continues to fascinate and attract, a time and ethos that we often yearn for but find impossible to realise. And elements of the hippie era continue. People like the Hog Farm Collective founded by Wavy Gravy were the forerunners of communal movements that still flourish today - land cooperatives, intentional communities, movements for simplicity - and these provide much of the deep grounding for the environment movement. And, of course, the music of that era continues to inspire. Even the use of hallucinogens as spiritual aids still has its disciples. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Did any of these people 'succeed'? Yes they did. They made the world a better place. But they didn't fix everything. This is why they, and we, are still working on it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVraUAqAcqJjPcqehuSylilJTy1IpvgiNc50ECYlrmVvQQpL1WxCZTMVWZ7Mec1RH0iD16mIFgcc-dR9WHku59jSUL4QjAbF7lp47rzxacitIbRk5PllZnz2m3r7GI6w20gKXxqZiWxUgIBStECqYkRXwvKFhs7g_oIpK8XN-Y_63NsOlu4g8GmWk5ag/s590/2021-17-590x332.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="590" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVraUAqAcqJjPcqehuSylilJTy1IpvgiNc50ECYlrmVvQQpL1WxCZTMVWZ7Mec1RH0iD16mIFgcc-dR9WHku59jSUL4QjAbF7lp47rzxacitIbRk5PllZnz2m3r7GI6w20gKXxqZiWxUgIBStECqYkRXwvKFhs7g_oIpK8XN-Y_63NsOlu4g8GmWk5ag/w640-h360/2021-17-590x332.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-56115888666163531422022-04-23T15:28:00.001+10:002022-04-24T09:26:21.666+10:00The Insect Crisis<p>I hesitated before reading Oliver Milman's <i>The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World.</i> I knew it would be depressing. I made myself read it anyway because it's important not to look away.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZ_N8N4NcNj-cEu8uf4X0pP4TZZjlgOhG9v_koLnsZywIuFIiT8Kn-75SYG3sDi8-kGkbEjrRCLb0GzYDEdsn9e_DUdKtTQ3VK28s7bO8CZesaLXtUK_d-_QCmUP73msxaLbnNYKPa3lX0thRzq5tpWpWaKJBcULHzPHvTA2DHjiaXfuFyR9WnFWs7Q/s2835/Insect%20crisis.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="1896" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiZ_N8N4NcNj-cEu8uf4X0pP4TZZjlgOhG9v_koLnsZywIuFIiT8Kn-75SYG3sDi8-kGkbEjrRCLb0GzYDEdsn9e_DUdKtTQ3VK28s7bO8CZesaLXtUK_d-_QCmUP73msxaLbnNYKPa3lX0thRzq5tpWpWaKJBcULHzPHvTA2DHjiaXfuFyR9WnFWs7Q/w268-h400/Insect%20crisis.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>I was right, it was a depressing read. There are multiple strands of evidence that the past few decades have seen substantial, sometimes dramatic, falls in insect populations around the world. Various longitudinal surveys in different places - primarily Europe and the USA - show declines in insect numbers that are generally in the range of 20-50% but in some places are as much as 90%. Some formerly abundant species, like North America's Monarch Butterflies or some species of European and North American bumblebees, are now threatened, but even species that are far from being threatened, like our common domesticated honeybees, are facing increasing pressure. <p></p><p>A caveat is in order. None of these are comprehensive region-wide studies, let alone national or continental. Many parts of the globe (including Australia) have very little insect data at all. What we have are snapshots of different locations, taken over time. </p><p>Yet with this in mind, the story remains remarkably consistent, and is backed up by wider anecdotal stories from around the globe. Insects seem to be declining. This is bad news for the insects, but its effects also ripple through the rest of the ecosystem. Insects are vital as food for other species - birds, reptiles, small mammals, other insects - and also play a vital role in pollinating plants including a large number of our food crops. Without insects, all sorts of creatures suffer, including us.</p><p>What is causing this decline? There's no single culprit, but the list of causes is familiar - habitat loss, pollution (in this case, insecticides) and climate change. </p><p>The main culprit for habitat loss is agriculture, although logging, mining, urban sprawl and bushfires (linked to climate change) also play a role. There are many aspects to it, because insects live in diverse habitats. The loss of forests, especially rainforests, devastates complex webs of insect life. Modern industrial farming removes pockets of insect habitat such as hedgerows, native grasslands and tree cover which co-existed with more traditional farming methods. Urban lawns, with their manicured monocultures of couch and concrete, do the same. Insects that rely on flowering plants for their food need diverse plant communities to live on because different plants flower at different times of the year - if whole swathes of country are devoted to a single crop they have a glut (provided the crop is something they can eat from) then a famine. As habitats shrink, populations of a species become increasingly 'islanded' - unable to move from habitat to habitat, stuck with a small gene pool, and with nowhere to migrate to if disaster hits. </p><p>Insecticides are of course, by definition, harmful to insects. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Rachel Carson's <i>Silent Spring </i>drew the attention of millions to the problem of DDT, and it was eventually banned around the world. Seemingly we never learned the fundamental lesson, because now we have a new generation of insecticides called neonicotinoids which are even more potent. They are heavily promoted by massive agricultural conglomerates and many famers, following the modern trend of industrial agriculture, sow mono-cultural fields, often using proprietary seeds that are coated in pesticides, and then spraying at intervals to control pests. Of course, pretty much any insect is caught in the crossfire and the deaths spread as the poison is blown on the air, washed into streams and finds its way to the most unlikely places. </p><p>Interestingly, Milman suggests that while this is hugely profitable for the ag companies, it is not necessarily a huge net benefit to the farmers. They find themselves caught in a cycle where they have to buy pesticide resilient seeds from the companies, then spray expensive pesticides in increasing quantities as the pests develop resistance. Meanwhile, natural predator insects are also decimated. If farmers cut out or reduce pesticides they may get more pests which would result in increased crop losses, but this would be offset both by increased natural protection and decreased costs. </p><p>Finally, of course, climate change changes all sorts of things. At the simplest level, insects that are temperature sensitive can no longer live where they used to. They could, perhaps, move to cooler latitudes or altitudes provided they have access to these, but islanded habitats can prevent this, and the plants they need may not move with them. More complex things happen too. For instance, if plants flower based on the length of the day while insects hatch and pupate based on temperature (or vice versa), then the mutual benefit of feed and pollination don't meet up any more. Too much rain, or not enough, can interfere with life cycles. </p><p>The source of hope here is that insects can bounce back. Most insects breed prolifically, and in the right conditions their populations can boom. If we just take our foot off their throat they will have a chance to rebound - allow more diverse plant communities, pull back on the pesticides, move quickly to mitigate climate change. Nothing beyond our capabilities, and most of this would be good for us in so many other ways.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">Milman points out that a lot of our conservation efforts focus on a few charismatic mammals - white rhinos, tigers, giant pandas, koalas. Meanwhile, the loss of insects barely registers. We have an ambivalent relationship towards them - we love colourful butterflies, iridescent beetles, ladybirds, even praying mantises. On the other hand, we do our best to eliminate flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches and have a visceral response maggots. Even the species we love we often don't notice. Mostly, if insects aren't annoying us we don't think about them. This means that we also don't notice their disappearance.</p><p style="text-align: left;">One example of this is the 'windscreen test'. In my youth I remember driving through rural Queensland. If we travelled at night, by the time we arrived at our destination the front of the car would be plastered with dead insects - grasshoppers, moths, beetles, butterflies. First order of business the next morning would be to call in at the nearest servo and give the windscreen a good scrub so Dad could see out for that day's driving. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I can't remember any such journey in recent years. If I have one critter splatted on the front of my car, that is an unusual event. Milman records such changes from around the world. There's a man in Denmark who has turned the issue into a detailed scientific investigation, with he and his graduate students driving nightly down the same roads at the same speeds for years, logging the number of insects they kill on a massive database. You guessed it - a lot fewer insects now than when they started. </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyY_VephpLFDZse0VR0LNL9urmslLWpzpRqRNFGd4ZFKDpf2SOlLdEmLVtWUGFQcGBQpyXeSQnGmekb0-Pn9-U3mAp93Za1S6u9FkdV9dkk6asxvexy5xKT20d-TQ5f5V4ksKW46Frohm6IG36hZwugHFrRciDFmqCuPhMDh4nYNvInSIRlqKEjGjXTg/s920/DSC_9068b.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="656" data-original-width="920" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyY_VephpLFDZse0VR0LNL9urmslLWpzpRqRNFGd4ZFKDpf2SOlLdEmLVtWUGFQcGBQpyXeSQnGmekb0-Pn9-U3mAp93Za1S6u9FkdV9dkk6asxvexy5xKT20d-TQ5f5V4ksKW46Frohm6IG36hZwugHFrRciDFmqCuPhMDh4nYNvInSIRlqKEjGjXTg/s320/DSC_9068b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>But the childhood experience of insects that sits closes to my heart is the story of <i>Rhopaea magnicornis, </i>a species of scarab beetle most often known as the Brown Cockchafer. When we were kids our parents called these Christmas Beetles - as English immigrants they got them mixed up with their more beautiful golden-carapaced cousins. When I lived in Maryborough in the heart of Queensland's cane country in the 1980s everyone called them cane beetles. <p></p><p style="text-align: left;">These beetles appear each Spring here in South-East Queensland. They don't live long as beetles. For most of their lives they live underground as white larvae that people refer to as 'curl grubs'. These munch away at organic matter - you might find them in your garden, where they don't do any real harm - if they chew on the roots of your plants a little, they make up for it by aerating the soil and breaking down organic matter. They pupate under ground, and the spring rain stimulates them to come out, find a mate, lay some eggs and then pass out of this life.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuhh8iAEagGUGuQuq3xpQWJm1huWgHczYuvr4FCw98kGXBzFB8CiMdKfnOEfhaEY_TUkjzfPX_LLMKf8BBXv6qGLier7W13BwwmsLjtOoAYOXduBjRKVi8fc1p9VH88hiSIjxRWXcx_53UKby4VQDjfZaErz6G9yAEQ_XdzhqCUXLOoSh6Yny3GcirCA/s700/IMG_3644_sm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="700" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuhh8iAEagGUGuQuq3xpQWJm1huWgHczYuvr4FCw98kGXBzFB8CiMdKfnOEfhaEY_TUkjzfPX_LLMKf8BBXv6qGLier7W13BwwmsLjtOoAYOXduBjRKVi8fc1p9VH88hiSIjxRWXcx_53UKby4VQDjfZaErz6G9yAEQ_XdzhqCUXLOoSh6Yny3GcirCA/s320/IMG_3644_sm.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In my childhood, each October featured hundreds of them banging on our windows at night, trying to get to our lights. Every morning the verandah and garage would be littered with them wriggling on their backs, and they would be lying under every window. We would try to set them on their feet and sometimes they would try to crawl off but they wouldn't get far. If we tried to keep them in boxes they would be dead within 24 hours. But their children would be back the next Spring, and the one after. <p></p><p style="text-align: left;">It was the same in Maryborough. The grubs loved the canefields and each spring when the rains came they would pour out and fly around town. You could tell they were around because they gave off a faint bitter smell. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Yet last Spring I don't think I saw one. We still have curl grubs in our garden so not sure where the adults go, and they could be from a different species - the grubs can be hard to tell apart. I haven't found any wriggling in the ground. I haven't seen them when I'm out walking. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I wondered if it might be urban sprawl and me living closer to the city now - after all, we were pretty close to the edge of town as kids. So I asked some Maryborough friends if they still get them now. Same story - they have declined slowly and they hardly see any now. Yet the town is still the same, the cane fields are as close as ever.</p><p style="text-align: left;">What's happened to them? Short answer is, no idea. No-one has researched it, as far as I can find. No-one even has any record of numbers. The Atlas of Living Australia has <a href="https://biocache.ala.org.au/occurrences/search?q=lsid:urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:36e9d436-ce76-4c3c-b820-c48e036fac5f#tab_mapView" target="_blank">a few recorded sightings</a> of it around SEQ but nothing around Maryborough - but this is dependent on ordinary enthusiasts taking an interest. Still, four specimens from around Brisbane in two years is a meagre record of a beetle which once appeared by the hundreds at my house. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Certainly around Maryborough, insecticides could be part of the problem. These little critters don't do much damage to cane but there are closely related beetles that do, and the insecticides don't distinguish. In Brisbane perhaps habitat loss is more significant - they seem to live in my garden, but the big numbers are likely to come from bushland areas and these have been progressively cleared to make way for urban sprawl. Meanwhile, the farmers on our outskirts presumably use insecticides too. What role does climate change play? Have our hot dry years placed them under stress? </p><p style="text-align: left;">But this is all speculation. In fact, no-one cares enough to really find out, to understand their lifecycles deeply and find out what is going on for them. Perhaps they are not yet rare enough to go on the endangered list but how would we know? Beyond a few iconic species, like the Bogong Moth, we really <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-fear-insect-populations-are-shrinking-here-are-six-ways-to-help-128213" target="_blank">have no idea</a> what is happening to Australian insects. But one thing is for sure - there are a lot fewer of them than there used to be. </p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">The British evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane is reported as saying that God has 'an inordinate fondness for beetles'. There are about 300,000 documented beetle species, and almost certainly thousands more not described and classified by scientists. If some went extinct, we probably wouldn't even know. No-one would notice, or mourn their passing.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Except for God, who we assume, given he marks the death of every sparrow, is also marking the death of his beloved beetles, and mourning every species that passes.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iwZZf5oB4l4" width="320" youtube-src-id="iwZZf5oB4l4"></iframe></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-72559178498085638622022-03-29T16:31:00.009+10:002022-03-30T10:02:42.647+10:00Bill McKibben meets Angela Carter<p>I just read Bill McKibben's <i>Oil and Honey</i>, his memoir of the early days of 350.org, published in 2013. Of course I already knew who McKibben is - he is the key founder of 350.org and a long-time writer and activist on climate change - and I'd read a few short articles he's written, but this is my first long-form encounter with him, almost a decade after the event. I may be slow but I get there in the end.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEUZauM191L68cLE8edeeCAOPm4xDIesCHiJPVvt0HPJr4UlRCfcW69HDiyk4qedv3q9X62VIhDyOJveN4JZkddhJuVcnfm6ZwE5yIHIWp7rFz7TVNAMtY9pLq66n35vh-Ku9D48NKe4eUAz8oVfuMQGmIkseABqdU1tENtuGEyj-DXZT3JhNrcDkbsQ/s2119/Oil%20and%20Honey.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2119" data-original-width="1400" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEUZauM191L68cLE8edeeCAOPm4xDIesCHiJPVvt0HPJr4UlRCfcW69HDiyk4qedv3q9X62VIhDyOJveN4JZkddhJuVcnfm6ZwE5yIHIWp7rFz7TVNAMtY9pLq66n35vh-Ku9D48NKe4eUAz8oVfuMQGmIkseABqdU1tENtuGEyj-DXZT3JhNrcDkbsQ/w264-h400/Oil%20and%20Honey.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>McKibben has been writing about climate change for decades. In 1989 he published <i>The End of Nature</i>, one of the first books to explain climate change to a broad audience. He kept writing in the years that followed, expecting that sooner or later the penny would drop and governments and corporations would act rationally and reduce their emissions. Around 2006 he realised this wasn't going to happen without a fight and he teamed up with a few of his students at Middlebury College, Vermont to form 350.org and launch a rolling series of global actions.<p></p><p><i>Oil and Honey</i> describes the key actions, or at least McKibben's role in them. He describes the sit-ins at the White House to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline; the 'Connect the Dots' campaign which got people around the world to place dots on places threatened by climate change; the campaign for fossil fuel divestment; and through it all the endless round of lectures, interviews and forums he spoke at to promote the cause, and the interminable hours spent on buses and planes crisscrossing North America and the planet. He and his colleagues succeeded in building a global movement and had some wins but he is all too aware that the fossil fuel lobby still has the upper hand. The fight continues.</p><p>It's an exciting story but what gives this book its depth is the way he pairs it with a second story - the story of his partnership in a beekeeping enterprise with his friend Kirk Webster. Kirk is a pioneer of chemical-free beekeeping, weathering the storms of Colony Collapse Disorder, the Varroa Mite and other recent <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2015/10/bee-apocalypse.html" target="_blank">beekeeping crises</a> not by using pesticides and supplements but by selecting and breeding for resilience. </p><p>This grounds the story of activism in the soil of McKibben's home in rural Vermont. Here he and Kirk - mostly Kirk - are contributing in their own small and slow way to building the world as it needs to be to weather the climate crisis. Instead of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/12/mining-australia.html" target="_blank">mining the soil</a> and treating the bees as machines Kirk is working slowly to restore the exhausted land they bought with McKibben's money and to breed bees that can survive. It's not lucrative, but in these passages of the book you sense a deep contentment, a slow, patient building that offsets the frenetic activism. It gives the story a wholeness that the activism alone couldn't do. Just as his time with Kirk and the bees serves as a peaceful retreat for McKibben, it restores hope to the reader in the midst of angst at how small the gains from activism seem to be compared to the scale and urgency of the problem.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">I came away from this book with a sense of the sheer stupidity, even insanity, of it all. Not of Kirk Webster and Bill McKibben - they are among the wise and sane people of the world - but of the governments and corporations who are the targets of McKibben's activism. We have known for decades that burning fossil fuels is creating climate change that threatens life on this planet. Yet companies and governments around the world keep doing it, not out of passive inertia but with purposeful, aggressive ruthlessness.</p><p style="text-align: left;">At one level the answer is obvious - money. Fossil fuels bring in billions for the companies that mine and burn them, and they deploy a small portion of these funds to ensure that governments will do their bidding and sustain the flow of gold.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Yet this answer only makes superficial sense, and this is what McKibben skillfully shows us in his stories about beekeeping. In a good year, Kirk Webster earns maybe $50,000 from the operation, in a bad year he can end up with less than $20,000. Yet he is happy and content, indeed would not choose any other life. Even McKibben, who no doubt has a more substantial but still modest income between his academic salary and book royalties, is happy to invest money and time in an enterprise from which his returns are not in money but in contentment, in the chance to spend his downtime in the meditative seasonal rhythm of honey production.</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is, more or less, how much of the world lives. We have <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-cobbler-and-rich-man.html" target="_blank">enough</a>. Some of us have more than we need. But very few have obscene wealth. We don't seek it or need it. We are happy to have somewhere secure to live, the love of family and friends, enough set aside to weather storms and retire comfortably.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Why, we ask, can't the Rineharts, Kochs, Adanis and Palmers of this world see this? Why do they subvert governments, bulldoze local communities and indigenous peoples, drive species to extinction and place the future of civilisation at risk in their pursuit not of enough but of obscene profits, more money than any human can possibly need? Why do they knowingly steal the future not only of everyone else's children and grandchildren but even their own?</p><p style="text-align: left;">Are they insane? Are they stupid?</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">It might just be a coincidence that straight after <i>Oil and Honey</i> I read Angela Carter's <i>The Bloody Chamber.</i> Then again, perhaps there are no coincidences.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Published in 1979, <i>The Bloody Chamber</i> is a series of gothic tales inspired by the folktales collected by the likes of Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and Andrew Lang. These stories are mostly seen as children's tales but she is decidedly writing for adults and she pulls no punches.</p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAbvE9TGPLcVeAXCLFSF23j8mqgDKva3rtRWPasYWEqONBD70bipUaDCP7JioIx3ncaP4yxtKUkdl7--VOcklnrJ--nCqIvAbziiuCwLjzzRu1rMWOjEQDDOyJKJArcwGUJ6NfT_HI-jHDDBVgJ3-DWm3WB_vxwD5I11Z4bIQrHf1YV9tVtRfJIgWvUw/s450/Bloody%20Chamber.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAbvE9TGPLcVeAXCLFSF23j8mqgDKva3rtRWPasYWEqONBD70bipUaDCP7JioIx3ncaP4yxtKUkdl7--VOcklnrJ--nCqIvAbziiuCwLjzzRu1rMWOjEQDDOyJKJArcwGUJ6NfT_HI-jHDDBVgJ3-DWm3WB_vxwD5I11Z4bIQrHf1YV9tVtRfJIgWvUw/w266-h400/Bloody%20Chamber.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>You get a sense of it from the beginning with the title story, a kind of mash-up of Bluebeard and the Marquis de Sade with more than a nod to Pandora's Box. A poor seventeen-year-old music student is wooed and wed by the Marquis, already married and widowed three times. She is dazzled by his romantic charm and by his immense wealth, brushing aside her mother's doubts. Once she arrives at his castle she is drawn into a world of sordid sado-masochism before being cunningly tempted to enter his secret chamber and find there, not merely implements of torture, but the bodies of his three murdered wives displayed in gruesome tableaux. She is only saved from joining them by her mother, fearful for her daughter's safety, arriving on horseback with her late father's service revolver. <p></p><p style="text-align: left;">It's almost a perfect parable for the conundrum of these billionaires. On the surface what you see about the Marquis is his wealth and worldliness, a kind of sleazy self-focus which makes people uneasy but remains within the bounds of civility. But in the heart of his castle, which in the iconography of fairy-tales can be seen to represent his own heart, is a charnel, a murderous obsession with torture, blood and death.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Is this the hidden psychology of our climate crisis, the dark hearts of our billionaires driving us purposefully to our death?</p><p style="text-align: left;">Or Beauty and the Beast. Carter offers us two versions of this story. The first, 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon', is the story as presented in the popular accounts. Mr Lyon is a kind, generous man trapped in the body of a lion. He saves Beauty's loving but hapless father from financial ruin, and Beauty's love restores him to human form. The bestiality, in a sense, is only skin deep.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The second, 'The Tiger's Bride', is something else altogether. Not the Beast - although rather more thoroughly bestial than Mr Lyon he remains honourable and generous. But Beauty's father is a piece of work, a dissolute lord who stakes his daughter along with his wealth in a losing card game with the Tiger. The Tiger offers her a deal - if she will just let him see her naked (no touching), he will return her to her father along with the rest of his winnings. When she refuses he doesn't attempt to force her but instead woos her, finally taking her on a horse ride through his grounds and revealing his naked tiger's body. Persuaded at last, she disrobes for him and lets him gaze his fill. Satisfied, he keeps his end of the bargain and returns all the wealth, but she chooses not to return with it, and on her marriage bed is transformed into a tigress.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Who is the beast here? The tiger certainly hunts at night for his prey, but he is also a creature of wisdom and honour. Beauty's father, on the other hand, is a man who will trade his own child in a fever of gambling addiction and not mourn overmuch if he never sees her again, so long as he gets to keep his money. So with our billionaires, feverishly gambling away the lives of their children, and everyone else's, for the sake of gold and lands. What do we prefer, the beast without or the beast within? Any sane human will leave the billionaires to gamble away their own wealth while denying them any more.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Just one more, 'The Lady in the House of Love'. Here the daughter of Count Nosferatu, left orphaned years before by his staking, lives out her shadowed life in the ruined castle above the deserted village, shunning the day in a curtained room with the dimmest of lamps, feasting at night on the blood of woodland creatures and, when the occasion offers, young men who wander into the village and are enticed into the castle for her to first seduce, then consume. </p><p style="text-align: left;">One day, in the early years of the 20th century, a young British officer pedals a bicycle into the village, drinks from the ruined fountain and is duly invited to dine at the castle. Yet this time, when the countess casts her tarot she sees not the usual cards of death but love and death paired. Disturbed by this difference she fails for the first time to perform the movements of ritual seduction as she has so many times before. She drops her dark glasses on the floor, then cuts her own hand trying to pick them up, seeing her own blood for the first time.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Into this vile and murderous room, the handsome bicyclist brings the innocent remedies of the nursery; in himself, by his presence, he is an exorcism. He gently takes her hand away from her and dabs the blood with his own handkerchief, but still it spurts out. And so he puts his mouth to the wound. He will kiss it better for her, as her mother, had she lived, would have done.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>All the silver tears fall from the wall with a flimsy tinkle. Her painted ancestors turn away their eyes and grind their fangs.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>How can she bear the pain of becoming human?</i></p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>The end of exile is the end of being.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">His innocence protects him like a halo, he sees not an alluring temptress but a sad, ill young girl, refuses to take advantage and spends the night sleeping on the floor. By morning she is dead, released from her endless torment of loneliness and sick craving.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But there is something more here, because he takes with him a rose which was her final gift. Soon he is recalled to his regiment as the Great War breaks out. Arriving in the barracks he takes the withered rose from his kit and soaks it in a vase of water, upon which it comes alive. And although he could face down an alluring vampire and keep his innocence, we know he will soon lose it and perhaps also his blood in the trenches. Who, again, are the blood-sucking monsters here?</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">"Surely this is overdramatic," you will say to me. "Surely our billionaires are not ravening beasts intent on prey, or sado-masochistic noblemen and women, or vampires driven to darkness and cannibalism." Well, not literally, but their actions nonetheless result in a lot of suffering and death. Why do they do it?</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCMHbDrMg92071Sih0pvmCRlausA330PHrQGaUFrovdjfBCz1I5UVQI38NfSLqFqukPFcjSLj15MdZOGi-qxyLtEIJgb5CMjMU1yROP7IR4juPIacT15nAv3zQZyZkk8rpNDnzC7ZMcK_nMu-h-WA-9WK53DMzRF6NW2H12WU6klc8qU-MO0KLJdbh8g/s2240/Sigmund_Freud,_by_Max_Halberstadt_(cropped).jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2240" data-original-width="1647" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCMHbDrMg92071Sih0pvmCRlausA330PHrQGaUFrovdjfBCz1I5UVQI38NfSLqFqukPFcjSLj15MdZOGi-qxyLtEIJgb5CMjMU1yROP7IR4juPIacT15nAv3zQZyZkk8rpNDnzC7ZMcK_nMu-h-WA-9WK53DMzRF6NW2H12WU6klc8qU-MO0KLJdbh8g/s320/Sigmund_Freud,_by_Max_Halberstadt_(cropped).jpg" width="235" /></a></div>To present this in a highly simplified form, think about the ideas of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2020/09/freud-and-jung.html" target="_blank">Sigmund Freud</a>. He saw humans as driven by two fundamental drives, Eros and Thanatos. Eros, named for the god of love, is the sex drive but also so much more - the drive for love, for regeneration, for unity with something outside ourselves. Thanatos, named for the god or personification of death, stands for chaos, death and dissolution, for a return to our inanimate origins. We live with the constant tension between these two drives which co-exist within us.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Angela Carter's stories can be seen as little pictures of this tension. The characters must find a way to defeat or, at least, tame and contain Thanatos in order to not only live but find love. The Marquis (Thanatos itself) aims solely to seduce and then kill his bride, but she is rescued by her mother (Eros) whose love drives her to the rescue, aided by the blind piano tuner who truly loves her. In the end, Thanatos is defeated - ironically - by a bullet to the head, his castle is converted to a school for blind children and the Marquess settles down to a modest life of love, founding a music school with her blind lover. Yet she continues to wear the mark of death on her forehead, and the bloody chamber is merely sealed up, not destroyed. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Similarly the young soldier's innocence protects him against the lure of the Countess, the Angel of Death, and his simple love ends her predations - but whereas the Marquis resists to the end, her death is a release as for the first time she experiences love and life as companions to death and is freed from her painful cravings and the endless sequence that she needs, but hates. Yet the force that animates her lives on and, if anything, grows stronger as the rose from her garden revives and blossoms on the fields of France.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The challenge for Beauty and her Beast is a little more tricky. Mr Lyon does battle with the two forces within himself - on the one hand, a gentle kind man, on the other, a prowling lion hunting its prey. In this case, he wins his own victory, and Beauty's love merely completes the triumph by converting him back to his own form. But the Tiger presents a more complex challenge. Beauty must first of all learn where the greatest and most dangerous bestiality lies - in her father, whose protestations of love are mere fronts for possession, rather than in the Tiger who gives her freedom to choose. Her father remains at large in the world with his wealth, which no doubt he will gamble again, but she is freed from being one of his possessions. Yet the Tiger, like Mr Lyon, is also a fierce and ruthless hunter and in joining herself to him she becomes a tigress and must, presumably, hunt at his side.</p><p style="text-align: left;">These stories, and the folk-tales from which they are drawn, provide us with pictures of the struggle we all live with. They are ways of bringing what is hidden into the light. We are not constantly aware of these drives, and we often believe we are doing something else when actually we are living out the tension between them. Sometimes we reach a healthy resolution of this tension, but at other times we resolve it in ways that are harmful to ourselves and to others.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is the tension we can see in our society, and in Bill McKibben's stories of his activism and his and Kirk's bee-farming. They are both, in their own way, trying to find a way of allowing Eros and Thanatos to co-exist in a world where Thanatos is running wild. One half of the tale is about doing battle with Thanatos in our economic and political systems, trying to slay, or at least tame, the forces that want to destroy much of our world. </p><p style="text-align: left;">These forces are not the billionaires and politicians themselves. Indeed these billionaires often kid themselves that they are doing this as much for their children as themselves, giving their children a multi-billion legacy. Yet we see the folly of this in tales such as Gina Rinehart going to court to keep control of her children's money against their wishes, or two of Rupert Murdoch's children departing the company, one quietly out the back door, the other noisily in protest at the company line on climate change. Not to mention Clive Palmer, whose nephew is now a global fugitive after serving as a front for Uncle Clive's shameless plundering of Queensland Nickel. If these people are doing it for their children they have a funny way of going about it. </p><p style="text-align: left;">In fact, they are rather like the mythical King Midas who was given the gift of turning everything he touched to gold. Everything he touched did indeed turn to gold - food, clothing and even his beloved daughter - and he died in lonely starvation in a golden palace. Midas thought he had found a way to create abundance and allow Eros to triumph, but instead fell straight into the hands of Thanatos. This is the story of our 'gas-led recovery' if only we can hear it, but no-one reads this stuff any more except kids.</p><p style="text-align: left;">These people are dangerous precisely because they are blind to the influence of Thanatos in their lives. They need, ideally, to be brought to their senses but if not, they need to be deprived of the power to harm others. This is what McKibben and his co-campaigners are trying hard to do, playing the political game with as much skill and compassion as they can muster.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But this would be incomplete without the other half of the story, and they would risk turning themselves into what they oppose, descending into violence and destruction like the human protagonists of <i><a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/04/intelligent-trees.html" target="_blank">The Overstory</a>.</i> Hence the other part of story is crucial for its completeness. Here, Bill McKibben and Kirk Webster immerse themselves in Eros - not the uncontrolled sex drive which is actually an aspect of Thanatos, but loving regeneration of the soil, tending of bees, and the cultivation of peace and sufficiency which are needed not only to keep us within planetary boundaries but to keep us sane, to get us off the treadmill of endless acquisition.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The path to psychological and spiritual healing involves hard work. Yet if we don't do it, we can find ourselves stuck in a cycle of <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2012/08/second-order-change.html" target="_blank">first order change</a> which amounts to 'more of the same'. Because our problems aren't just individual but social and ecological, it's not enough to simply work on ourselves, we need to foster new ways of thinking in those around us. This is why change is so much harder than staying the same.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Until it isn't. Because if we push ecological limits, just as much as if we push our own physical and psychological limits, sooner or later the system we are working so hard to maintain will crumble despite our best efforts. Then the rebuilding task will be so much harder. Let's listen to the wisdom of the ages, and make the change ourselves before it is taken out of our hands.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-21777216363015100452022-03-11T14:02:00.001+10:002022-03-11T14:03:16.216+10:00Dear Scomo, Dear Albo<p>It rained. And rained. It rained more. The river was rising. There would be minor flooding. It rained more. Actually, it would be moderate. More rain. No, sorry, major.</p><p>We moved stuff upstairs. The lights went out. We headed for higher ground, and there we stayed for five days. We were lucky, we just had a couple of inches of water in the rooms we had emptied. Our neighbours, a few metres down the hill, not so much. The rain headed south, wreaking havoc wherever it went. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEixT2AkiJPqk_q6PEj4G9MhgiQ7Bn7k60jnFjKIUtkX1Oc6rtrw1VfoJrMTb1zgh7UdogEnZfr-fpK2Y3lnLPvuG81vyjUIrpgojuHARbjAlor277FgqCb62pI3t8jEnlCJj7v9nGTVyDxdnohKVxeegrYciOvKfnm1vm7X_EPO6MjFJTVV_sW4ypveSw=s3264" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1836" data-original-width="3264" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEixT2AkiJPqk_q6PEj4G9MhgiQ7Bn7k60jnFjKIUtkX1Oc6rtrw1VfoJrMTb1zgh7UdogEnZfr-fpK2Y3lnLPvuG81vyjUIrpgojuHARbjAlor277FgqCb62pI3t8jEnlCJj7v9nGTVyDxdnohKVxeegrYciOvKfnm1vm7X_EPO6MjFJTVV_sW4ypveSw=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><p>Amidst all this, along with the war in Ukraine and the ongoing global plague, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/" target="_blank">released a report</a> saying how bad the impacts of climate change are, how much worse they will be, and how much we're not doing to adapt. Tell us something we don't know. If you listened to our politicians, you wouldn't know the report had been published. From many of them, you wouldn't even know that its contents were being acted out in real life in communities they were meant to represent. Even our local ones have mostly been slow to make the connection.</p><p>And then, as people are still cleaning up and thinking about how to rebuild, we will have an election to which both our leaders will take terrible climate change policies. One <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/11/not-zero-seven-absurd-things-about.html" target="_blank">absurdly terrible</a>, one <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2022/02/still-not-zero-labors-powering.html" target="_blank">a little less terrible</a>. So of course I wrote their two leaders a letter.</p><p style="margin: 0cm; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0cm;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dear Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese </span><o:p style="font-size: 11pt;"></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I write
this as my wife and I go through another flood event here in Brisbane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A week of torrential rain sent the Brisbane
River over its banks, flooding my suburb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We spent five days staying with relatives on high ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our lounge room is filled with stuff brought
up from downstairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The impact on us is
small compared to many but it is real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ironically, it’s also the week the IPCC released its latest report
looking at the impacts of climate change and the state of adaptation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course
we know that Australia has always had floods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>South-East Queensland had a major flood in 1893.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also had one in 1974, the year I started
High School.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My school year was delayed
while we helped with the clean-up, and for weeks after we could smell the mud
and mould as we passed the low-lying areas on the train to school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmRhR3lcc-sLi-uLdhsiDypSmGLBsTh5eA0C0X-vDT-IbSr0JzbuaqoXACmYZUlY8nFOZ0woOwodvGkJZwWE7-pa31UzoOB90aXzQHbH7IJTHZzqMOL3A9UUrv-outlLcRUELZ2Nt00TMbFN1iWIZwA4UOZt-SPc-mpd4-siiwxT8ohBTzF4JXZLW7NQ=s1600" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmRhR3lcc-sLi-uLdhsiDypSmGLBsTh5eA0C0X-vDT-IbSr0JzbuaqoXACmYZUlY8nFOZ0woOwodvGkJZwWE7-pa31UzoOB90aXzQHbH7IJTHZzqMOL3A9UUrv-outlLcRUELZ2Nt00TMbFN1iWIZwA4UOZt-SPc-mpd4-siiwxT8ohBTzF4JXZLW7NQ=s320" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The home we live in now flooded in 2011 and we
had to spend two weeks living with my sister while we cleaned up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were lucky, this one was not so bad, but
others in my suburb still got inundated again, and many in places like Gympie, parts
of the Sunshine Coast and Northern NSW have had <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>their worst ever.<o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s not
new but as I’m sure you both know, these events are getting more frequent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somewhere in Queensland has been seriously
flooded virtually every year since 2011, and yet for much of that we have also
been gripped with drought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stanthorpe
ran out of water in 2020 for the first time in its history and had to truck in
water for a year before the rain finally arrived this time last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course that drought also led to
Australia’s most catastrophic ever bushfires.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All of
these things are not just events in Australia’s history, they are turning
points in people’s lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the
reasons my wife and I are so stressed is that we went through 2011.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the impact of the 2011 floods on us was
minor compared to that of many of our neighbours who lost all their possessions
and had to rebuild homes from scratch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The same goes for those who lived through the 2019-20 bushfires or other
catastrophes, many of whom are still rebuilding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We know
that climate change is what is making these events more frequent, and more
extreme; that the world’s burning of fossil fuels (including the ones we burn
here in Australia, and the use of those we export) is what is causing this to
happen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is why
I am appealing to both of you, in the leadup to this year's election, to change
the story on climate change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For too
long we have heard that reducing our emissions is too hard, too costly, or
somehow not really that important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
have seen it used as a wedge, a scare tactic, a marker of party loyalty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The result is that so far, both of you have
released policies in the past few months that do less than the bare minimum,
that cut our emissions by much less than our fair share of the global necessity
and hedge these cuts about with caveats and exclusions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have seen both of you vote to give
government money to new fossil fuel projects, and celebrate the continued
growth of coal and gas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have seen you
object to the planned early closure of coal generators, or stay silent, when
you should be cheering. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We need you
to stop doing this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need Australia, a
wealthy country with abundant renewable energy but also a major player in the
fossil fuel market, to move from laggard to leader in reducing emissions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need this election to be a competition
over who can do more to cut emissions, not who can do less or a little bit more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the
leadup to this election, here are some things we need to see in both your policies.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Increased emissions reduction
targets</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgB-gz2xeMHxKTrGENjwKbvkpWISJ7fFgR4ABk-4IYDUIVcLjgvFZLLReclnHy6yu2NPu_HUXi89bBRW_UEBaem1m6ZhXSHtCshbd4SzPvnG-HUtxpVibo_NTs9SWxjuG_XXtYQB7wdRKTmgK8Q-LsXFbOIkBosm_Yk6Jbp8R0EtzMj4svWA61jJ2Ht9A=s825" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="520" data-original-width="825" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgB-gz2xeMHxKTrGENjwKbvkpWISJ7fFgR4ABk-4IYDUIVcLjgvFZLLReclnHy6yu2NPu_HUXi89bBRW_UEBaem1m6ZhXSHtCshbd4SzPvnG-HUtxpVibo_NTs9SWxjuG_XXtYQB7wdRKTmgK8Q-LsXFbOIkBosm_Yk6Jbp8R0EtzMj4svWA61jJ2Ht9A=w320-h202" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We don’t
need 28% reduction by 2030, or 43%, we need 60%, or 70%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t need ‘net zero by 2050’, we need
actual zero much sooner – by 2035 or 2040.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We don’t need our cuts outsourced to offsets, we need them to be real.<o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We also
need to stop pretending that the emissions generated by our fossil fuel exports
are nothing to do with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to
stop expanding our capacity to extract these fuels and start the wind-down of
our coal and gas extraction.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Comprehensive, sector by sector
plans</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To achieve
these cuts, we need governments to be working closely with the various sectors
of the economy that are responsible for the emissions – electricity, transport,
agriculture, construction, industry – to develop emissions reduction
plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the
moment, our electricity industry has an excellent plan developed by AEMO which
you can easily get behind and help drive instead of dragging your feet over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other sectors, you need to work with those
who are driving change, not just announce scattergun interventions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghQQoCZoP6aidjU3jFWcNak9KlqxUbAT3McNE2NyICHWGg59lj3keeqwEKGUdFKg4cbT3XMK0SwbdSol_j4N9pSLN2LilWBZHFV6jNU2Gf8A4R6pM21gX1xoKProwJGC6RO3kVyFZwlt7viLmZVwxjnN6k4hsyAlMN8YRXNPqwQh60AA2hHwi13G5-Ww=s600" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="374" data-original-width="600" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEghQQoCZoP6aidjU3jFWcNak9KlqxUbAT3McNE2NyICHWGg59lj3keeqwEKGUdFKg4cbT3XMK0SwbdSol_j4N9pSLN2LilWBZHFV6jNU2Gf8A4R6pM21gX1xoKProwJGC6RO3kVyFZwlt7viLmZVwxjnN6k4hsyAlMN8YRXNPqwQh60AA2hHwi13G5-Ww=s320" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For
instance, in transport it’s great to see some initiatives supporting the
roll-out of EVs but we could <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-car-problem.html" target="_blank">do so much more</a> on that (for instance, converting
the entire government fleet, and introducing emissions standards that reward
low- or no-emission vehicles) as well as pay attention to supporting active and
public transport to reduce our car-dependence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In
agriculture you can work with those in bodies like the Meat and Livestock
Corporation, the National Farmers Federation and Farmers for Climate Action to
work out what support they need to reduce their impact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In construction you can work with our housing
peak bodies to use the Building Code to continue to drive up expectations of
energy efficiency in materials, construction and operation of buildings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each sector and industry needs its own plan.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p><b>A</b></o:p></span><b style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> just transition</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course we
all know that there are people and communities who rely on fossil fuels for
their livelihoods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to stop
pretending that these jobs and industries can go on indefinitely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The workers and communities know it
can’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We need to start working with
them to help them develop what comes next, to develop the new industries and
new jobs to replace the ones they will lose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They shouldn’t simply be abandoned to the vagaries of the global market.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Adaptation</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I started this
letter talking about extreme weather and the impacts of climate change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These will get somewhat worse even if we and
the rest of the world act quickly to reduce our emissions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we don’t, they will get dramatically
worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While we are working to avoid the
worst-case scenario, we need to be working with communities around the nation
to build resilience – to adapt infrastructure for the new normal and build our
disaster response capabilities and preparedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In my suburb we need to be as flood-resilient
as we can be, lifting our houses above the flood line and ready to respond when
needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many people will need help to do
this – technical help and advice, financial help.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Global leader not laggard</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmW26VmtCYFYKu2UnCmvKXql_LHG_pIj57u9tnP4mdu2-gs_Bhd4_uKr4eIbIdkCxBUj1HIVFrc0MemzRIx7AMclqhM5I38y77iEnVv-r0k3qPnl0btwTUL23hs-tAftm4ZtcSkv5evCDYvmsYnqKVg2d2vh0LkpKchaXR1KpgtuZ8rZF_Cb1OXSV__w=s1024" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="1024" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmW26VmtCYFYKu2UnCmvKXql_LHG_pIj57u9tnP4mdu2-gs_Bhd4_uKr4eIbIdkCxBUj1HIVFrc0MemzRIx7AMclqhM5I38y77iEnVv-r0k3qPnl0btwTUL23hs-tAftm4ZtcSkv5evCDYvmsYnqKVg2d2vh0LkpKchaXR1KpgtuZ8rZF_Cb1OXSV__w=s320" width="320" /></a></div><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My final
point – we need to start turning up to the COP conferences, starting with COP27
on Egypt,<br /> ready to be leaders for change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead of blocking progress on key aspects of the Paris accords we need
to be finding solutions to the blockages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Instead of staying out of treaties and coalitions to drive faster cuts
we need to be enthusiastic in joining those that exist and promoting new
ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To signal our seriousness, we need
to stop peppering our delegations with fossil fuel executives and sponsoring
fossil fuel promotions, and instead showcase innovative zero- or
negative-emissions technologies and projects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We need to put our energy behind increased ambition and momentum across
the globe</span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s make
2022 the year we end the climate wars and replace them with a climate
championship in which the winner is the party that can do the most, the
fastest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our communities, and our
children and grandchildren, are depending on it.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jon<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbvwicTzWSiMcpE0iBV99JAQH1FlK3KkSgwHTT5bHyVq7qm9Xzg6QzOb_fQCVvl27i8k-_gnPZnqU17na2xczC8jGrh1Av4Cdd_AZ4JpFYjiuqm3G1JqEzNmfv4zu9pBB9Qbfa3rCeQPMiZUnqq2TcShbxTNk4DZWtB2KfrY8fHBbio3iMCXHQC43V0w=s1476" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="1476" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbvwicTzWSiMcpE0iBV99JAQH1FlK3KkSgwHTT5bHyVq7qm9Xzg6QzOb_fQCVvl27i8k-_gnPZnqU17na2xczC8jGrh1Av4Cdd_AZ4JpFYjiuqm3G1JqEzNmfv4zu9pBB9Qbfa3rCeQPMiZUnqq2TcShbxTNk4DZWtB2KfrY8fHBbio3iMCXHQC43V0w=w640-h204" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-17607503625746320202022-02-15T09:25:00.010+10:002022-03-30T15:53:10.010+10:00Still Not Zero: Labor's 'Powering Australia' Plan and the Art of Being a Bit Less Terrible<p>I've been busy so this article is a bit late, the Labor Party released its climate change policy back in December. The election hasn't happened yet but it's already clear what Labor's strategy will be. They will be just a little bit better than the Coalition. This is not difficult, surely they can achieve it!</p><p>In some areas it just involves being a little bit more competent at doing the same thing. They would have ordered vaccines and RATS in time (we will never know). They voted to pass the Government's Religious Discrimination Bill with a few amendments (proposed by independent members) to make it less crap enough for the Government to withdraw it. On asylum seekers they promise to be better at trampling on people's human rights. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh9Jw3hOByvPArrNdBa54oKiQLo7nWvKNiOtqIInE1rOqKmP_G4LyBzTfTejKhCrWcsputsXFKbt5FYdD_Qmyi-O_dXUlZoZERpSV2_h--3K0nkaumYuJmsCIx6Sn7oSemGvHYUVPNJ_BphPNAiXDhORJG_NMVBTI0YF70xMaZiRD3zYK2eS-9ztP0obQ=s540" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="540" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh9Jw3hOByvPArrNdBa54oKiQLo7nWvKNiOtqIInE1rOqKmP_G4LyBzTfTejKhCrWcsputsXFKbt5FYdD_Qmyi-O_dXUlZoZERpSV2_h--3K0nkaumYuJmsCIx6Sn7oSemGvHYUVPNJ_BphPNAiXDhORJG_NMVBTI0YF70xMaZiRD3zYK2eS-9ztP0obQ=w320-h320" width="320" /></a></div>Meanwhile, on climate change they will be a little bit better at concealing the fact that they don't really give a s*** about climate change as long as fossil fuel companies keep those donations flowing. But if they promise a little bit more emissions reduction, they can be sure of getting Greens preferences and getting the Greens and sane independents to hand them government if we end up with a hung parliament.<p></p><p>Here are seven ways that Labor's <a href="https://www.alp.org.au/policies/powering-australia" target="_blank">climate plan</a> is the same as <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/11/not-zero-seven-absurd-things-about.htm" target="_blank">the Coalition's</a>, but a little bit less crap.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>1. Still Not Zero</b></p><p>The Coalition promises to get to 'net zero emissions' by 2050 but when you read their plan, even their own wildly optimistic estimates only get to 85%. And as Angus Taylor says, it is 'net zero not absolute zero' - they are planning for Australia to go on emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases while re-capturing some of them through Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), which doesn't work, and by offsets, which sometimes work but the amount of offsets needed would be massive. Meanwhile, their 2030 goal remains stuck at 26-28% reduction from 2005 although they say in a vague kind of way that they could do more if they are lucky.</p><p>The Labor plan has one difference from the Coalition's - it promises to get to a reduction in 'net emissions' of 43% by 2030. Labor has also said it will get to net zero by 2050 but it doesn't say how, its whole focus is on the 2030 target. This target is also a 'not 43%' target, it is also 'net'. Some of it will be through emissions reductions and some through 'other means' - basically, offsets and CCS. </p><p>There's also another 'not zero' trick which both parties use with equal shamelessness - the claim that we have already reduced emissions by 20% so only 6-8%, or 23%, to go. The trick is that back in 2007 Australia managed to get land-use emissions (mainly from deforestation) counted as part of each country's emissions profile. This is not totally stupid - cutting down trees and forests (or burning them) does indeed release carbon. However, what they did in setting their own targets for Kyoto and for Paris was to pick a base year (1990, then 2005) in which there were historically high levels of land clearing. Then, when land-clearing goes back to normal, you can claim you reduced your emissions. For an extra bonus, you can use the Emissions Reduction Fund to pay people not to cut down trees (yes indeed, literally money for nothing) and claim that as a reduction. Next thing you know, bingo! we have a 20% emissions reduction since 2005. If you take this out of the picture, Australia's emissions have stayed about the same, even increased a bit, with reduced electricity emissions (thanks State Governments!) offset by increased transport and industrial emissions. And this is before you start asking questions about how deforestation is reported and measured.</p><p>Anyway. Not zero. Not even 43%. But not quite as crap as the current lot.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>2. Technology, but Different Technology</b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8Kv9rOgZ6MFdPI7GBrS-22eiKZfQfq3s0z7gER_nE2ucx8dF_TYQFbWGCvQQcGYl6loYXSfSPIWXPutgXZ561uEJ5uAu2mBNlrFmPLnZTt9qBjpbdP7JGCAZmSRgYKWyvk91L1T90h0tu7QUO7Cg-AhjDkTpDbiLGFp2oylNIA0avYriyZLXGT_KCrw=s2462" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2462" data-original-width="1808" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj8Kv9rOgZ6MFdPI7GBrS-22eiKZfQfq3s0z7gER_nE2ucx8dF_TYQFbWGCvQQcGYl6loYXSfSPIWXPutgXZ561uEJ5uAu2mBNlrFmPLnZTt9qBjpbdP7JGCAZmSRgYKWyvk91L1T90h0tu7QUO7Cg-AhjDkTpDbiLGFp2oylNIA0avYriyZLXGT_KCrw=s320" width="235" /></a></div>The government's policy is about Technology Not Taxes, including a mix of technologies that already exist, some that exist in concept but not in practice, and some mysterious future technologies yet to be named or discovered. <p></p><p>Labor's policy also focuses on technology. Because they are leaving any period after 2030 as a blank slate, all the technologies they talk about exist - renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, carbon farming. How will this technology come into being and be implemented? Not entirely clear, but at least it's real.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>3. Technologies that Sort of Work</b></p><p>The Government relies on a mix of technologies that are good for reducing emissions (solar power, energy storage) some that are OK (soil carbon), some that are mostly fantasy (CCS) and some that don't exist at all. As I mention, all Labor's named technologies work, in the sense that they can actually be implemented (they don't mention CCS, although it is lurking there in the shadows) but will they actually reduce emissions?</p><p>The big ticket item in their policy document is $20b for upgrading electricity transmission. We know electricity transmission works, and it's a fact that if we want to deploy renewables at scale we need to build new transmission lines that don't just connect everything to the existing coal generators. They also have a few 'small ticket' items - a little bit of money for community batteries, solar banks, and a modest EV strategy. All these things work, but only the transmission upgrade adds up to any significant cut in emissions and even this relies on someone else (i.e. companies, driven by State governments) building the generators that will connect to it. </p><p>Their chosen technologies are also not necessarily optimal. For instance, EVs are a very low-ambition way to cut transport emissions, and they perpetuate the other problems in our transport system. If you're serious, you need to make a major investment in active transport infrastructure (walking, biking etc) and public transport - and this also has <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-car-problem.html" target="_blank">a swag of other benefits</a>. </p><p>There are also some mystery technologies here, even in the lead-up to 2030. Labor's strategy relies heavily on using the <a href="http://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/NGER/The-safeguard-mechanism" target="_blank">Safeguard Mechanism</a> to gradually reduce the level of emissions companies can produce. How they reduce their emissions is up to them and hence something of a black box, but if you join the dots you can see that lower industrial emissions is paired with carbon farming, and this tells you, without quite saying it, that there will be lots of reducing 'net emissions' by buying offsets which pay farmers to trap carbon in soil, which kind of works but is a poorer outcome than not making the emissions at all. And you can bet, given this process leaves it up to industry, that there will be a fair bit of CCS jiggery-pokery in there too.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZUiupAyysjm5ry6t7yDZX4s3YFYfjI9Kvw8wWRAbIzDgvuAX15xiKibXsTGttYvQTr9A2coKEVJYC4AKxAuRjM5MXzXuSgCXO38G_LzAET197SLXYzpKsZdqxBep_Mt-xSxdIh4cDQrGEPEasqTasE2SKuz5f717zA6K1MUC-7weXXykeSSu-CHvd-g=s1920" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZUiupAyysjm5ry6t7yDZX4s3YFYfjI9Kvw8wWRAbIzDgvuAX15xiKibXsTGttYvQTr9A2coKEVJYC4AKxAuRjM5MXzXuSgCXO38G_LzAET197SLXYzpKsZdqxBep_Mt-xSxdIh4cDQrGEPEasqTasE2SKuz5f717zA6K1MUC-7weXXykeSSu-CHvd-g=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></div><br /><b><br /></b><p></p><p><b>4. We All Love Coal and Gas</b></p><p>The government, at least, is honest in telling us that its climate plan is just a smokescreen for ongoing expansion of the fossil fuels industry in Australia. They barely took time out from their constant coal and gas spruiking to announce their Not Zero policy. </p><p>Labor is slightly more adept at <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/07/alternative-reality-and-reef.html" target="_blank">talking out of both sides of their mouth</a>. The Powering Australia document does not contain the word 'coal' except as part of the word 'Coalition', and the word 'gas' only occurs in a reference to Coalition policy failure and in reference to agricultural methane. It's almost as if the Labor Party doesn't realise that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. These industries get some brief mentions in the no-details Reputex economic report that accompanies the policy, but more by way of context than focused analysis. There is no suggestion in this document that Labor will support any kind of managed transition out of fossil fuels for the regions and workers who depend on these industries.</p><p>Meanwhile, out of the other side of their mouths Labor MPs, and particularly Anthony Albanese, are doing their best to outdo the Coalition in declaring their eternal love for coal and gas. They have voted to support government subsidy for the Beetaloo Basin gas-field, have donned the hard-hat to visit coal mines, and Albanese intervened personally to ensure that Labor's candidate to replace Joel Fitzgibbon in the Hunter is a bearded coal mining blokey bloke instead of one of the more environmentally responsible alternatives who were putting up their hand for a pre-selection contest that was never allowed to take place. In case you are thinking that maybe all this will change once they get into government, just take a look at the Labor State Governments in Queensland and Western Australia.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhw_4o7so4gzKC5e26_kn7zCwkDFCnEwZ9cQ3LBpf1f1P_9NNMe296HjO2c5enLegoGA_NuSTbNOddoERl_8gOYvMYrrJC5jMOUjrzsxZSjjBQ8F97bbSDH9iJm_p-vgrrMs67V-oVLqA8uiBxmVss25Hf0TK2p-lwDDV68W5TzHPpYVBH36KSGyMZ_8Q=s1280" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhw_4o7so4gzKC5e26_kn7zCwkDFCnEwZ9cQ3LBpf1f1P_9NNMe296HjO2c5enLegoGA_NuSTbNOddoERl_8gOYvMYrrJC5jMOUjrzsxZSjjBQ8F97bbSDH9iJm_p-vgrrMs67V-oVLqA8uiBxmVss25Hf0TK2p-lwDDV68W5TzHPpYVBH36KSGyMZ_8Q=w400-h225" width="400" /></a></div><b><p><b><br /></b></p>5. Don't Talk About the Cost of Climate Change!</b><p></p><p>Over the past three decades one of the Coalition's favourite sticks to beat Labor with has been the wholly fictitious claim that any climate action proposed by the Labor Party will ruin the Australian economy, raise power prices, ruin the weekend and generally be the end of civilisation as we know it. Labor has stumbled into this trap so many times that it is like one of those time loop stories where everyone is doomed to live the same life over and over again.</p><p>This has become increasingly difficult to sell as the two parties' climate policies have converged but that won't stop Morrison, Joyce, Taylor and co from giving it a red hot go. Labor, with Chris Bowen as climate change minister, are determined that they won't fall for it this time, and their economic story is full of sunshine and light. Economic growth will continue thanks to the glorious economic opportunities in the transition, 604,000 jobs will be created, electricity prices will fall, there will be wonderful new industries for the regions and all the streets will be paved with gold, or at least lithium. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikj02z3DLKgiV4GGc0sz8HbISyTd3OX-QSDxQzrRYew_dZdpHVzttjERaKBb-5-fz_3eNF8G8tQjfDbSG5oKMclqyXaKCY2ULsd6m8M-kQCEI1Dw92vD0L_ON-5vOIAbTdRNQAoSyVWne-jg3hEZ1Rqv1oTyWbxAqj18N-vKejyr3D64xs5DeAOq1JLg=s2048" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikj02z3DLKgiV4GGc0sz8HbISyTd3OX-QSDxQzrRYew_dZdpHVzttjERaKBb-5-fz_3eNF8G8tQjfDbSG5oKMclqyXaKCY2ULsd6m8M-kQCEI1Dw92vD0L_ON-5vOIAbTdRNQAoSyVWne-jg3hEZ1Rqv1oTyWbxAqj18N-vKejyr3D64xs5DeAOq1JLg=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Unlike the Coalition's economic modelling the detail-free report on Labor's modelling done by Reputex is not careless enough to mention that they don't take account of the economic impacts of climate change. The introduction to Powering Australia talks about bushfires and other extreme weather events, but we have no sense that climate change, not emissions reduction, is the massive, economy- and civilisation-wrecking agent in this story. This allows Labor to get away with just being a bit less crap than the coalition instead of, say, acting in line with what the IPCC says actually needs to happen to avoid catastrophe.<p></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>6. The Carbon Price in the Appendix</b></p><p>Technology Not Taxes is the chosen three-word slogan for the Coalition's not-zero policy. This will allow them to simultaneously pretend they are serious about climate change, and imply that Labor, by contrast, will achieve their non-serious policy by taxing everyone. This made it necessary for the government to bury the carbon price in the appendix of their modelling report, where the modellers report that their preferred scenario uses $25 per tonne. </p><p>In the interests of convergence, the Labor Party has done the same. They don't use the slogan, since it's already taken, but like the coalition they have a 'technology not taxes' plan with an identical carbon price buried in the appendix. Everyone knows that a key way to make industries reduce their emissions is to make them pay money to emit. But it's a bit like how babies are made, we all know it, but we don't talk about it in front of the children.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>7. We Take This Seriously (LOL)</b></p><p>It's abundantly clear that the Coalition is having a loan of us on climate policy. They don't even try to hide it. The day after the launch of their climate policy the Deputy Prime Minster was filmed in front of a coal train. The government made a gas company's CCS proposal the centrepiece of their COP26 stall. They banged the table in their refusal to increase their 2030 target. What you see is what you get.</p><p>Labor is a little more tricksy, mostly because they know that if they totally alienate the environment movement they will never get elected. So they promote their climate policy with a straight face. They keep Chris Bowen away from the coal and gas spruiking. They don't say 'CCS' out loud. There are no Labor MPs out there, not even Joel Fitzgibbon, claiming that climate change is a big hoax. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQTZEfG6IyBxlyxE4x3hsu57LnNu2rU4Kgm7gntqAabqu70PwlnP8e5kfg5FIL0t1cbnRcbkVtaCKckm9GS3NLOLd9MgoBzRvjrslX4Anqqyl-L-G35MVhpI0-kkbPBu-cGwkdZIeOHXUBJwbkscc2ceHcmQ999xfkiTztRfoJb-Mu2MBFQBvIzXEkwQ=s1015" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="569" data-original-width="1015" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQTZEfG6IyBxlyxE4x3hsu57LnNu2rU4Kgm7gntqAabqu70PwlnP8e5kfg5FIL0t1cbnRcbkVtaCKckm9GS3NLOLd9MgoBzRvjrslX4Anqqyl-L-G35MVhpI0-kkbPBu-cGwkdZIeOHXUBJwbkscc2ceHcmQ999xfkiTztRfoJb-Mu2MBFQBvIzXEkwQ=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Yet for all that they are not really serious. The IPCC says the world needs to cut its emissions by around 45-50% by 2030 to have a chance at keeping temperature increases at between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. Wealthy and high-emissions countries, like us, need to cut faster than poor countries, so our fair contribution to this effort is a cut of somewhere around 70-75% by 2030. Even the International Energy Agency, a notoriously pro-fossil-fuel body, has said that mitigating climate change requires the immediate cessation of exploration and financing of new fossil fuel projects, yet here is the Labor Party actively facilitating <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/07/beetaloo-basin.html" target="_blank">new coal and gas projects</a>.<p></p><p>Labor will not be our climate saviour. As if to reinforce the point, there is an interesting detail on Page 12 of the Powering Australia document where they make the case for greater Commonwealth ambition by comparing the Coalition Government's target of a 26-28% emissions reduction by 2030 with those of Australia's States and Territories. They don't mention who is currently governing those States and Territories so let me correct this oversight here.</p><p><i>Coalition States</i></p><p>Tasmania - 100%</p><p>South Australia - 50%</p><p>NSW - 50%</p><p><i>Labor States/Territories</i></p><p>ACT - 65-75%</p><p>Victoria - 45-50%</p><p>Queensland - 30%</p><p>Western Australian - to be announced 'early 2022'</p><p>Northern Territory - none</p><p>I don't think I need to comment on those lists.</p><p>Labor supporters will tell us (and have been saying stridently on social media) that this policy is responsible and realistic, unlike those weird idealists in the Greens and the climate movement who are pushing for a 75% reduction (or even a 50% one). But this reflects a particular view of reality - not scientific reality, not even economic reality, but <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2021/07/alternative-reality-and-reef.html" target="_blank">political reality</a>. Labor's judgement is that if they present a climate policy in line with actual, real reality they will not win the election. </p><p>We will never know because this strategy has yet to be tried. This is because 'political reality' is code for State capture. The problem we have is not that the Coalition has sold its soul to the fossil fuel companies and so we need to elect Labor. The problem is that all three of our major parties - Liberal, Labor, Nationals, the ones with the resources and party infrastructure to form a national government - have been equally captured. Labor are just as dependent on fossil fuel donors, and favourable coverage from at least some of our fossil-fuel-infested mainstream media, as the Coalition. The only people who are free of this capture are those like the Greens and the Voices Of independents who don't get fossil fuel donations and rely on the support of local communities and networks.</p><p>You might be tempted to give way to despair (indeed, this is very tempting) but resisting temptation has a long and honourable pedigree. I think this story tells us three things.</p><p>1. A Labor Government will be a little bit better than a Coalition Government, so in a world of sub-optimal alternatives by all means, let's at least have a Labor Government.</p><p>2. As voters we have excellent options to resist the process of State capture by giving the major parties the flick wherever possible. Don't be a dill and vote for destructive minor parties like One Nation or the Clive Palmer Show, because they will be worse. Vote for the Greens, or for a responsible independent like Zali Steggall or Helen Haines or the various other candidates supported by Climate 200. None of these people and organisations is perfect, but at least they are not captured by the fossil fuel industries and if they get the balance of power in the next parliament they will push the major parties closer to real reality.</p><p>3. Don't rely on politicians. Stay active. Keep writing to the people who are supposed to represent you, collaring them at their meet-and-greet events, waving banners outside their offices. Keep picketing coal facilities and blocking roads if that is your thing. Don't let them forget for a minute that they are being watched and their actions compared to real reality. Keep talking to your friends and family, posting on social media, even blogging. If we want our planet to remain livable, we need to recapture our State from the fossil fuel industries and re-orient it towards real reality. </p><p>It won't be easy, but '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKjgJ3oLJqE&ab_channel=101.9KINK.FM" target="_blank">nothing worth having comes without some kind of figh</a>t'. So fight on!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEislgDSXvUMMI9vPDzr2OMuhBRvAXxPa-oUkuYC6B0xk3wUPSvxFGcocJSOpye5eUZkzcBKdeXsaufxBSLpCHHptz4clGLEcE88lN8PXPPnMcHvpJAxJ69JEppQkpWTxmqD_0wwpMhjlFRN90x0kzrP3ZH4_kf0hhMNuB4ynl4TJtUPfzaqfNDLgItf_A=s2048" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEislgDSXvUMMI9vPDzr2OMuhBRvAXxPa-oUkuYC6B0xk3wUPSvxFGcocJSOpye5eUZkzcBKdeXsaufxBSLpCHHptz4clGLEcE88lN8PXPPnMcHvpJAxJ69JEppQkpWTxmqD_0wwpMhjlFRN90x0kzrP3ZH4_kf0hhMNuB4ynl4TJtUPfzaqfNDLgItf_A=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-3380923025588795782022-02-08T12:36:00.000+10:002022-02-08T12:36:43.958+10:00I Am An Ecosystem<p>Did you know that over half the cells in your body are not actually human? You and I contain masses of bacteria, fungi, viruses and archaea. They live in every part of us - on our skin, in our hair, in our mouths, in our bloodstream, in our lungs, and most especially in our digestive tract. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXi1_tenFRC5XduDeWWx61xfPQHEhU-vg4ZN9ZJg0287fqFZVQiVIIvhKbERJQaNXGKAM6PhK8LiSL37L8LkzifWod4T4sBCgomFFsi_Rcbz2x4YVaICLgDg06iBoJkrXA4LAFZhwWri6vjCxbMCMFlOrpKmE111xtuqAAdzCmACZoNM6rQt5l4UNb_A=s430" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXi1_tenFRC5XduDeWWx61xfPQHEhU-vg4ZN9ZJg0287fqFZVQiVIIvhKbERJQaNXGKAM6PhK8LiSL37L8LkzifWod4T4sBCgomFFsi_Rcbz2x4YVaICLgDg06iBoJkrXA4LAFZhwWri6vjCxbMCMFlOrpKmE111xtuqAAdzCmACZoNM6rQt5l4UNb_A=s320" width="208" /></a></div>Having just read Ed Yong's fascinating book, <i>I Contain Multitudes</i>, along with a few articles, I now have a much clearer idea of how much I don't know about this subject. Of course, there are lots of people who know way more than me but I also have an idea of how little <u>anyone</u> knows.<p></p><p>For instance, how many non-human cells are there in our bodies? One rather complicated article I read estimates the number is within the range of 3.8-10<sup>13</sup> - that is, somewhere between 38 and 100 trillion cells. They estimate that the ratio of non-human to human cells in our bodies is somewhere around 1.3:1 in the 'average man', 2.2:1 in the 'average woman', and 2.3:1 in a young infant, with other variations for people of different ages and body sizes. </p><p>These numbers are unfeasibly large to get our heads around, and also have a huge range of error. The numbers could be quite a bit bigger or smaller, and most likely vary from person to person and from week to week in any individual. </p><p>Another way to look at this is to think about how many species there are. One estimate suggests that each person has somewhere around 900-1,000 species living in and on them. But this is one person. The species vary from person to person, and from body part to body part. Our hands, for instance, are sites of massive diversity. Your right hand has about 150 microbial species on it. So does your left hand, but only about 17% of these species will live on both hands, and only about 13% on someone else's hand. Your gut has about 160 different species and once again these differ between people. The human genome has approximately 20,000 pieces of encoded genetic instruction, but the microbes that live in and on you have somewhere between 2 and 20 million. </p><p>That's enough big numbers, right? These tell us two things - we are intimate with a lot of microbes, and we don't know much about them - not even something as apparently simple as how many types of them we host. Each of us is a diverse and rich ecosystem, or even a series of ecosystems - our gut, our bloodstream, our lungs, our skin, each present very different environments and are home to different microbes. Our stomach is home to a different set of microbes to our colon. Our armpits have a different set to our scalp. </p><p>Considering that we have only a fairly hazy idea of what all these little beings are, it's not surprising that we have an even hazier one of what they do. We know that they're important. They are, in the main, not parasites that harm us, and many if not all of them are more than simply passengers. For instance, we know our gut bacteria and fungi are essential to digestion. If they weren't there we would likely starve. We also know that the various microbes all around our body play an important immune function, helping our own immune systems to keep out harmful invaders. </p><p>This opens up possibilities - can human microbes be used to treat disease? Can we improve our health by eating bacteria? Following this path has led to a lot of dead ends. 100 years ago Elie Metchnikoff surmised that Bulgarian peasants were so long-lived because they drank sour milk, and drank it every day for the rest of his life. In the 1930s Minoru Shirota went looking for helpful bacteria and ended up creating Yakult yogurt, incorporating the much marketed Shirota strain of gut microbe. He and his company became rich but in actual fact they don't seem to provide much health benefit beyond the fact the yoghurt is nutritious anyway. The bacteria in Yakult, and in sour milk, just pass through. </p><p>On the other hand, there have been some successes. One example is the disease <i>Clostridium difficile,</i> a bacterial gut infection that is highly resistant to antibiotics and leaves sufferers with uncontrollable diarrhoea, living in adult nappies and turning skeletal with weight loss. If antibiotics don't work (and they often don't) then it can be treated by what is called a faecal microbiota transplant - you take some faeces from a healthy donor, blend it and insert it into the sick person's gut either via a colonoscopy or by a tube inserted through the nose or mouth. This resets the person's own microbiota and enables them to fight off the infection. It's not a perfect cure and the disease can return, but it's more effective than anything else.</p><p>There's a lot of uncertainty about this stuff because no-one is really sure how it works. You can't do a randomised control trial because there's no way of knowing exactly what the composition is of each faecal sample you inject. And there's lots of other illnesses where similar approaches have been tried and failed. A big part of the problem is that the whole thing is so complicated. You can't extract a person's microbiome and examine it piece by piece, and you can't rid a person of all their microbes and add them one by one to see what happens. This means that a lot of what we think we know is based on doing the same thing to lab mice bred in completely biota-free environments. It's kind of analogous because mice are similar to humans in many ways, but not exactly the same and in any case if you introduce something to a biota-free mouse and it has a certain effect, there is no guarantee it will do the same in a human who is already teeming with trillions of microbes. I feel kind of sorry for the mice.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>All this is way above my pay grade. If the best microbiologists know so little there's no chance I could know anything much at all. What fascinates me is the fact that the world is like this. We habitually think of ourselves as individuals. We carry a genetic inheritance from our parents and grandparents and pass it on to our children and grandchildren. The the genes make different combinations so everyone is differently but ultimately we know what we are dealing with. But actually this is not how it is at all.</p><p>When we are born, we get out genes from our parents, but we also get a set of microbes. These aren't passed on to us in the uterus, which is a sterile environment, but on the way out, especially if we have a vaginal delivery, and in our first days and weeks of life as we are cuddled, fed and have our nappy changed by various parents, family members and friends. We pick up more when we cuddle the dog or cat, dig in the garden or crawl around on the carpet. The little creatures we pick up can harm us but more often they are our helpers and friends, coming along fir the ride and doing things that we can't do so well using our own genetic equipment.</p><p>It's tempting to think of ourselves as their hosts, as providing them with a home and a place of safety, but that is a very anthropocentric way of looking at the world. Microbes have existed for over 3 billion years, while <i>Homo sapiens</i> only appeared around 300,000 years ago. We are, in a sense, built out of microbes. Eukaryotic cells, which are the building blocks of all multicellular life, incorporate parts of archaea and bacteria. All complex life, animal or plant, exists in symbiosis with a collection of micro-organisms. There doesn't seem to be any living being of more than a few cells that can live without some kind of bacteria or fungus working alongside it. </p><p>So you could say, in the misleading language of intention that biologists use when writing for people like me, that we brought the bacteria on board to help us survive, but it would be more accurate to see that they built us to provide them with a place to live. If you like at the whole story of life, it's not about us, it's about them. From our own point of view, we are the lords of the universe, conscious beings who create glorious works of art and architecture, explore the stars and ponder the meaning of life. </p><p>From the point of view of a microbe, if a microbe has such a thing, we are a handy place to live, a source of food and a way to get from place to place. We are, perhaps, an example of their marvellous creativity. We might like to flatter ourselves that we are their greatest creation but I doubt it. That would be whales.</p><p>The 19th century naturalist JBS Haldane was once asked what he had learned about God from his study of nature. He replied that God has an amazing fondness for beetles. Learn a little about beetles and you will see why this is so. If Haldane had known about microbes he would, perhaps, have sung a different tune. Compared to mammals, and even insects, microbes are hugely diverse and prolific, endlessly adaptable and, viewed under a powerful enough microscope (sure God has such a microscope) extraordinarily complex and beautiful. If we were able to ask God what was God's greatest creation, I suspect this would be the answer. </p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-80569044126739963412022-01-04T13:53:00.007+10:002022-12-19T15:26:55.154+10:00Playing 'The Game' for Real<p>One of the favourite political books from my young days was <i>The Deep North</i> by Deane Wells. It was published in 1979, the year I started university, and Wells was a Lecturer in Philosophy at my university. His book analyses the political philosophy of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, who at that time was Queensland's Premier. Joh was a figure who loomed large over our State, an authoritarian pro-business leader who outlawed political protests and set the police onto protestors. During his reign the Police Special Branch spied on activists and union leaders and kept secret dossiers on them, trying to find ways to implicate them in crimes. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6_IMKq7-iSv0RbeH9C1kveMSM7KFLQZcbj5aOACECzjN7gcFbfnK0zaNrrpTPhr8HIFjm6akI4p2z9Nfv6SSmejjfe7SSiNCqeqnff7ZKX_tbG_EzpQ9GSK0CAUrLtnWJnPqZ3s_AJxhw67fRO2RSnBUo9_rTNdEtILkXhl5WkaplnNvjijFYvMosXA=s595" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6_IMKq7-iSv0RbeH9C1kveMSM7KFLQZcbj5aOACECzjN7gcFbfnK0zaNrrpTPhr8HIFjm6akI4p2z9Nfv6SSmejjfe7SSiNCqeqnff7ZKX_tbG_EzpQ9GSK0CAUrLtnWJnPqZ3s_AJxhw67fRO2RSnBUo9_rTNdEtILkXhl5WkaplnNvjijFYvMosXA=s320" width="215" /></a></div>Wells' thesis was that Joh was a genuine, dinky di fascist. He didn't mean this in the general sense that left-wing activists often use for right-wing authoritarians. He meant that Joh followed the philosophy outlined by Adolf Hitler in <i>Mein Kampf, </i>even though he had probably never read Hitler's writings<i>.</i> He illustrated the point with various quotes from Joh's own statements and descriptions of his actions, which he compared to a set of seven criteria against which to judge totalitarianism. All couched in reasonable-sounding analysis from an expert in political philosophy.<p></p><p>Could it really have been? I was convinced at the age of 20, even though the proposition, in hindsight, is a little absurd. Joh was certainly authoritarian and, as it turned out, also highly corrupt, as was the government he led. But fascist? </p><p>Many years later I read Nikki Savva's <i><a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-road-to-ruin.html" target="_blank">The Road to Ruin</a>,</i> a detailed analysis of how Tony Abbott, aided by his high-profile Chief of Staff Peta Credlin, went from stellar Opposition Leader to woeful Prime Minister, running his government into the ground before finally being shafted by an insurgency that installed Malcolm Turnbull in his place. </p><p>I enjoyed it but 35 years later I was, if not wiser, then at least more skeptical. In her telling of the tale Credlin was a workplace psychopath who bullied staff and MPs, had tantrums if she didn't get her way and wrapped her boss around her little finger. Abbott, meanwhile, was incompetent, stumbling from one stupid statement and foolish decision to another despite the advice of his senior ministers, who he resolutely ignored. Finally his colleagues had no alternative but to boot him.</p><p>Once again, it's a good story but is it true? Or is a convenient tale to make the now-departed Abbott and Credlin the scapegoats for a dysfunctional government?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNGD00U5xmOuJ_aWdOEgVXcfZ59rj11mjaM2N0y6-Z1HWIJmP2uQthIFMAMLR5s0is5q_HBPwrjssnOYtO5Pc-cjug2Raj-d7QqAYIo1YxbcqCEsotVEpz46ItrIf9Xv7YtP8v-wAtqYNv7aFjwHcdAy9n9VGIpqA2jdQMFcsH01vrZ6jCw4uFrEFblg=s500" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="327" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjNGD00U5xmOuJ_aWdOEgVXcfZ59rj11mjaM2N0y6-Z1HWIJmP2uQthIFMAMLR5s0is5q_HBPwrjssnOYtO5Pc-cjug2Raj-d7QqAYIo1YxbcqCEsotVEpz46ItrIf9Xv7YtP8v-wAtqYNv7aFjwHcdAy9n9VGIpqA2jdQMFcsH01vrZ6jCw4uFrEFblg=s320" width="209" /></a></div>Over Christmas I read the latest installment in this genre, Sean Kelly's <i>The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison. </i>He provides a detailed analysis of our current Prime Minister's political persona. What drives him as a politician? What does he stand for? How has he crafted his image as PM and who is the real man behind this public image? <br /><p></p><p>Kelly's conclusion, although he doesn't use the term, is that Morrison is a hollow man. It is difficult, even impossible, to get a clear sense of who he is or what he stands for because he stands for nothing. In his youth he acted in amateur theatre and he continues to act to this day. His political philosophy is like the famous/infamous 'Where the Bloody Hell Are You' tourist advertisements he oversaw as the CEO of Tourism Australia - a series of comforting, stereotyped images that do not tell any kind of coherent story. Like that advertisement they are strangely effective but ultimately empty.</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">None of these books is to be trusted. </p><p style="text-align: left;">At one level, this is because their authors are partisan players, pursuing a definite agenda. </p><p style="text-align: left;">In 1979, Deane Wells was a lecturer in philosophy. By the end of 1989 he was Attorney General in the newly elected Goss Labor government, installed in the wake of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and tasked with the job of turning the Queensland Government from a corrupt oligarchy into something more closely resembling a modern democracy. Wells was, I assume, honourably motivated in wanting to rid the State of a corrupt government, but he was also politically ambitious on his own behalf.</p><p style="text-align: left;">In 2016 Nikki Savva was a columnist with News Ltd, the unofficial PR arm of the Liberal Party. Before this, she served for many years as the press secretary to Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello, whose long rivalry with Tony Abbott was a feature of the Howard Government. Her column in The Australian was often used by Abbot's enemies in the party to spread gossip and fuel the fires of division and dissatisfaction in the Liberal Party. She had a personal interest both in Abbot's downfall, and in the success of his replacement. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Kelly, likewise, is now a journalist with Nine Media, whose papers have long been the preferred outlet for Labor politicians, and previously served as a media advisor to both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. He may not be angling for a similar role with a future Prime Minister Albanese, but he sure would like to see him installed. </p><p style="text-align: left;">These biases colour their writing, influence the quotes and incidents they choose from the daily public utterances of their subjects and the spin they put on them. They also influence what inside information they have. Labor politicians are much more likely to talk off the record to Kelly (and Wells in his day) than Coalition ones. Turnbull's supporters would feed Savva gossip, but she wouldn't hear as much from Abbott's supporters. Some of these briefings might be unguarded, shared unwisely after a few drinks, but many are purposeful and strategic. When we read these books, we need to remember that we are reading sophisticated, well crafted propaganda.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But that's not the biggest problem here....</p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p style="text-align: left;">Historians have long abandoned the Great Man Theory of History, but political analysts have yet to catch up. We constantly hear about the doings of the leaders of the various parties and take polls on their popularity. If parties are struggling in the polls they change their leader. Morrison talks about 'his' government as if it was different from the governments led by Turnbull and Abbott, even though these governments were made up of the same people, just with the chairs rearranged a little. </p><p style="text-align: left;">No human being can rule a nation of 26 million people on their own. Even the most ruthless of fascist dictators rely on the support of key parts of society for their success. Adolf Hitler, that archetypal dictator, never killed a single Jew, nor fired a single shot in the war his regime started. His minions did it all. For he and his gang of psychopaths to rule Germany and create the carnage they did they required the support, or at least the acquiescence, of the key institutions of German society. The industrialists backed them in the hope of economic recovery. The military backed them on the promise of massive increases in military spending. A significant proportion of the population (although not the majority) bought the nationalist propaganda and voted for them. Once they were in power the army, the public service, the industrial and commercial sector, even the mainstream churches all fell into line. The population, on the whole, either cheered on or kept their heads down. It's all very well to blame Hitler, but a lot of other people were in on the act.</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQ1aXjI9SdsTRwks_srFIS0fcGsFCI6LEzTIzIgq7_eL4_2jmjjqZNd9_FKSooObzPU-JwYJoGcXBUCPmzZ8wcuslkNTETc-GqdnQPRn_QCv6B15LzcCzqo1LRD1DGPX8dVhU7arJEuU0AWR-cso5D3d02T7z4f0VyfwKMEvyiCftbIrgJLF9zHhcNtw=s768" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="768" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQ1aXjI9SdsTRwks_srFIS0fcGsFCI6LEzTIzIgq7_eL4_2jmjjqZNd9_FKSooObzPU-JwYJoGcXBUCPmzZ8wcuslkNTETc-GqdnQPRn_QCv6B15LzcCzqo1LRD1DGPX8dVhU7arJEuU0AWR-cso5D3d02T7z4f0VyfwKMEvyiCftbIrgJLF9zHhcNtw=s320" width="320" /></a></div>It matters a lot less who the leader is than you would think based on our political commentators. The Liberal Party switched from Tony Abbott, an abrasive and erratic right-wing ideologue, to Malcolm Turnbull, a pragmatic and articulate moderate, and then to Scott Morrison, a daggy dad whose political philosophy remains elusive. Which of the three made the best Prime Minister? Frankly, the question is absurd. What changed, apart from the face on the posters? <p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Turnbull always accepted the findings of climate science and has recently presented himself as some kind of champion of renewable energy, but in his time as PM the government pursued precisely the same climate policies it has followed during the tenure of Abbott, the climate skeptic, and Morrison, the man who accepts and rejects the science at the same time. He took his turn at blaming renewables for the SA blackout, bullying AGL into keeping the Liddell power station open despite its state of decrepitude. He leaked disinformation to News Ltd with the best of them.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The Robodebt scheme, which stole a billion dollars from low income Australians via an automated debt recovery mechanism identified as flawed as soon as it was launched, was designed by Morrison as Social Services Minister under Abbott, implemented under Turnbull and only discontinued during Morrison's term as PM when it became clear the government would lose a class action. Meanwhile, all three have combined to give massive tax cuts to rich people.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Abbott oversaw the imprisonment of thousands of asylum seekers (with Morrison as Immigration Minister) and neither of his successors has seen fit to release them. Turnbull joined in the chorus of lies about the Uluru Statement, saying he would not agree to a third chamber of parliament when no such thing was proposed. Under Morrison poor old Ken Wyatt has been forced to sell a model that no-one wants to members of his own community still angry at being misrepresented.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjkZdgn744wCe1rWp67QYnlJDAY0e2Sn06KFBZGJlwoX5d271HL77rIJZ20Z2Jt3oaLQNIxTEc0qQBBaQ_iYJOJ3_dCHcy4AVwyoOadbgJuiBqd7RoNn5qO3nZA2iEaPaFS8rlybCaLJ6KPbe3ctyh2gTyLiFpUhqVGaFTVXst7KHLDo4x4XaUO3-_M_w=s1024" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjkZdgn744wCe1rWp67QYnlJDAY0e2Sn06KFBZGJlwoX5d271HL77rIJZ20Z2Jt3oaLQNIxTEc0qQBBaQ_iYJOJ3_dCHcy4AVwyoOadbgJuiBqd7RoNn5qO3nZA2iEaPaFS8rlybCaLJ6KPbe3ctyh2gTyLiFpUhqVGaFTVXst7KHLDo4x4XaUO3-_M_w=s320" width="320" /></a>I could go on but you see my problem. Behind the froth and bubble of changes of leadership and the different styles of the men sitting the chair is a tale of fundamental continuity. </p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">But lest you think I am on the 'Vote Labor' bandwagon, let me say this clearly - voting Labor will not solve the problem. Changing the party in power changes more things than changing the figurehead and leaving the party in place, but nowhere near as many things as progressive people would like. Labor has promised to review (but not necessarily increase) the rate of Newstart, has been very critical of Robodebt and has promised to implement the requests of the Uluru Statement. On the other hand, it has remained pointedly silent on asylum seekers in detention, a policy they initiated (distracting us by promising to release a single family), has confirmed the tax cuts for the rich and has produced a climate policy which is is slightly improved version of the Coalition's, with slightly larger emissions cuts measured through the same dodgy accounting mechanism and a pledge of their eternal love for coal and gas.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Labor supporters (who are out in force on social media as the election looms just over the horizon) urge progressive people to support Labor because that is the only way we will get change. They tell us Labor policies are pragmatic, acknowledging political reality, the best we can do in the current environment. This is absurd. It asks us to accept a version of 'reality' in which the rather conservative projections of the IPCC and the International Energy Agency can be safely ignored, in which asylum seekers who have been imprisoned without charge for nine years can just be left to languish forever, in which tax cuts for the rich are inevitable so there is no point talking about them. It asks us to accept failure as the price of success.</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is because there is a lot more to governing a country than the political party in power. Parties have donors, and the same wealthy people and corporations dominate the donors to both major parties. They are reliant on the same media outlets to get their word out and form the public opinions on which people will base their votes. If you really want to change the government you need to do a lot more than change the party in power. You need to change the structures around them. </p><p style="text-align: left;">It would help to change political donation laws, but this is a Catch-22. In order to change political donation laws we have to elect a party that is willing to change them, but with the laws as they are none of the major parties are willing to upset their donors by doing so. So we also need to change the donors. We need to find favourable media coverage for progressive policy, but this is a similar problem so we need to change the media, or invent new media that is resistant to being subverted in the same way. We need people to vote for progressive policy and advocate for it, which means we need to educate and convince them. We can't rely on our political leaders to do this even though they are the ones best placed to do it, because they are the ones currently being shaped to resist it. </p><p style="text-align: left;">You get the picture. Elections are only a small part of political change. The big part is creating an environment in which such change becomes possible. That takes hard work, over many years, with many setbacks. You can't achieve it with a single protest, even one involving civil disobedience. You can't do it through a single campaign, even a suberbly organised one. You have to do the hard yards over many years, build support, analyse the problem/s, crystallise the answers in ways ordinary people can relate to, fight disinformation, have those awkward conversations with family and friends. It's OK to get tired, check out for a break and leave it to others for a little while. It's OK - indeed essential - to not take on every fight. But it's not OK to give up.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>When you're lovers in a dangerous time</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Sometimes you even get to feel your love's a crime</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.<br /></i><i>Got to kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NKjgJ3oLJqE" width="320" youtube-src-id="NKjgJ3oLJqE"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-52174362923519945892021-12-29T16:29:00.009+10:002022-03-30T16:13:16.809+10:00The Eyes of the Blind<p>I was too busy to get my head into writing a Christmas post this year, but this is almost it. After all, there are 12 days in Christmas, right?</p><p>This Christmas I've been thinking about something that's not strictly a Christmas story - Jesus' inauguration message in the Nazareth synagogue, as told in Luke 4.</p><p><i>He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:</i></p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,<br /> because he has anointed me<br /> to proclaim good news to the poor.<br />He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners<br /> and recovery of sight for the blind,<br />to set the oppressed free,<br /> to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’</i></div><p><i>Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'</i></p><p>Jesus' message, reading from Isaiah 61 with a little import from Isaiah 58, was initially well received by his fellow townspeople. Then he explained to them that it meant they would have to overcome their own blindness and prejudice and they threatened to throw him off a cliff.</p><p>This Christmas I've been thinking about what this message means for Christians in our age, and for me as a wealthy Australian Christian, someone who is meant to be sharing and continuing Jesus' mission.</p><p>Jesus is proclaiming five things. In the manner of such lists in Jesus' rhetorical style (and that of other Biblical writings) the list is constructed like a mirror. The first and last items mirror one another, as do the second and fourth, and all four centre around the third, middle item.</p><p>good news to the poor</p><p><span> </span><span> </span>freedom for the prisoners</p><p><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>recovery of sight to the blind</p><p><span> </span><span> </span>set the oppressed free</p><p>the Year of the Lord's Favour.</p><p> </p><p><b>Good News for the Poor</b></p><p>Every Christmas you will see stories of people (often churches, but not always) doing nice things for poor people. This year I saw a story about someone who has set up a charity which provides haircuts on the street for people who are homeless. There was footage of their street salon out on the footpath, and comments from some of the customers about how much they loved the service and how good getting a haircut felt for them. Then on Christmas Day, along with footage of carol-singing and organ music in the cathedrals and the vibrant Hillsong crowds, there was the Wayside Chapel and the Salvos putting on Christmas lunch for people who couldn't afford to put on their own.</p><p>All this is nice and not to be sneezed at - it's better to have a meal and a haircut than not to have them. However, I don't think this is the good news for the poor that Jesus had in mind, which is why he paired the phrase with 'the Year of the Lord's Favour'. It's likely that in using this phrase Isaiah and Jesus had in mind the Torah system outlined in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhwme5zse6Q4nhJ2fIVAJqy5n88dm8eA9PA2VeexlNc4u3MCGU7sMn6LtDIuTQZNVl_1UN-10UEldrlL8YD1s_HLGy9hVIVuN_fYIdDOdPXaIxtP6V0MrgLMxQ2IUevG7Halw-xxZosqgNQpJQsU5UJe5GE4cEg66TT-WgS0-LlvNPbyh9dhjugEA_mjw=s1166" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1166" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhwme5zse6Q4nhJ2fIVAJqy5n88dm8eA9PA2VeexlNc4u3MCGU7sMn6LtDIuTQZNVl_1UN-10UEldrlL8YD1s_HLGy9hVIVuN_fYIdDOdPXaIxtP6V0MrgLMxQ2IUevG7Halw-xxZosqgNQpJQsU5UJe5GE4cEg66TT-WgS0-LlvNPbyh9dhjugEA_mjw=s320" width="320" /></a></div>Just as every seventh day was a day of rest, every seventh year was a year of forgiveness. Debts were to be cancelled, slaves released, and the land, labourers and working animals given a year off. After every seventh sabbath year (that is seven lots of seven years, or the 50th year) there was to be a year of Jubilee in which property was redistributed - ancestral lands would be returned to their original owners so that wealth inequalities were negated and the community would restart on the basis of economic equality. The word 'jubilee' is drawn from the Hebrew word for a <i>shofar </i>or ram's horn trumpet - the year was to be announced with celebratory music. It was a festival of rejoicing for the community, a reminder of the Lord's abundant favour.<p></p><p>There is no evidence that the Jubilee was practiced regularly in ancient Israel. Nor is it practiced in modern Australia, or anywhere else in the world. Yet this was the 'good news' Jesus announced to the poor in Nazareth that day. The notion itself seems absurd - a young carpenter, speaking in a village synagogue on the eastern edge of the mighty Roman Empire, announces a wholesale redistribution of property. Yet this is what we are called to.</p><p>As I have <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2016/08/naive-charity.html" target="_blank">said elsewhere</a>, the kind of charities that feed homeless people, provide them with clothes or bedding, wash their clothes or cut their hair are nice and well intentioned, better than the imprisonment that is often the lot of very poor people, but ultimately naïve. The way to solve homelessness is to provide people with safe, accessible housing that they can afford, and if necessary the support they need to deal with their associated issues. To not do this is to accept, even to plan for, their ongoing homelessness. </p><p>Jesus is calling us to do better, to work for a world where there is no homelessness. And this is, at its very heart, redistributive, because we have no shortage of housing in our country, nor any shortage of housing finance. Our problem is merely that these housing resources are poorly distributed, that some of us are well, indeed palatially, housed while others sleep on the streets, or on their friend's couches, or in flea-pit boarding houses. We have a <a href="http://www.ethos.org.au/online-resources/Engage-Mail/why-im-happy-when-house-prices-fall" target="_blank">tax and financial system that encourages this</a>. We need to blow the shofar and redistribute these resources to those who have none, and celebrate as we do so. </p><p><u>This</u> will be the Year of the Lord's Favour.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Freedom for Prisoners</b></p><p>For various reasons I haven't been going to church much in the past two years, and the only public Christmas celebration I've taken part in has been Carols for Compassion, an event at which we gather outside a place of immigration detention and celebrate the Jesus who was also a refugee, as we call and pray for the release of the captives within. In 2020 we sang outside the Mantra Hotel at Kangaroo Point, which was being used as a detention centre and at one stage held 120 men, most of them detained since 2013. In March 2021 the centre was handed back to its owners and returned to use as a hotel and 50 of the men were released into the community after over a year of sustained protests from within and without. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxncVTP1PM0PXet_pLRwu3r3jNCftROfQavmcstg6X_c1zxLOR_ryLbu7r0pcQNp-fy_LmWHyNbcu-4t1XgJuqT5YEGfRTAWNVF-wDAOBOFxYgDuLwDDxk7a7wNXckJ_c59_it2Y-zCv4GeUzbexVbiderc8xO4Anl-tyUFDBiYhfKOoQyFf5M_SZZ-A=s2048" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgxncVTP1PM0PXet_pLRwu3r3jNCftROfQavmcstg6X_c1zxLOR_ryLbu7r0pcQNp-fy_LmWHyNbcu-4t1XgJuqT5YEGfRTAWNVF-wDAOBOFxYgDuLwDDxk7a7wNXckJ_c59_it2Y-zCv4GeUzbexVbiderc8xO4Anl-tyUFDBiYhfKOoQyFf5M_SZZ-A=s320" width="240" /></a></div>But other men were transferred, some to detention in Melbourne, others to the grossly misnamed Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation (BITA), a high-security prison tucked out of sight near Brisbane's airport. So in 2021 we sang outside BITA, alternately praying for the men, calling on our government to release them and lamenting that we were still doing this after so long.<p></p><p>This is what Jesus calls for when he calls for freedom for prisoners. But its mirror statement is much broader - freedom for the oppressed. Because while some people are in literal prisons with fences and barbed wire, others are imprisoned in different ways. The 50 men who were released, and thousands of others living in our community, live with a threat over their heads - they are not Australian residents, at any time (and without warning) they can be re-imprisoned or deported to the homes they have fled. In the meantime they have no entitlements in the community and rely on the charity of friends.</p><p>Australia's First Nations understand all too well that the <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2020/06/noel-henry-and-rayshard-brooks.html" target="_blank">unconscionable imprisonment rates of First Nations people</a> are just part of the broader oppression they live with every day. It includes routine police harassment but also poverty, poor housing, low levels of education and poor health. This is not just a phenomenon that arose by chance. It is an integral part of Australia's history, the story of stolen land, stolen lives, stolen wages and stolen children that leaves their community poor and traumatised. </p><p>If we want to free the prisoners, it goes hand in hand with freeing people from this oppression - with recognising their land ownership and compensating them for its loss, with telling the truth about the massacres and forced displacement and reckoning with what needs to be done now, with placing resources and decision-making power back into the hands of First Nations communities and walking with them as they forge their own path. It goes hand in hand with treating refugees and asylum seekers justly and supporting them to make a new home here. </p><p><u>This</u> will be the Year of the Lord's Favour.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Sight for the Blind</b></p><p>Both these movements for liberation - the redistribution of wealth, the freeing of poor people from oppression and imprisonment - hinge on the 'recovery of sight for the blind'. At first sight it's an odd thing to put at the centre of a call for liberation. Are we talking about a cure for disability here? </p><p>I have a friend who is blind. I've no doubt that he would love to be able to see, but this is not what occupies his attention. He has no expectation that it will be possible. What he wants is a world where his blindness does not shut him out from the life of the community. He wants documents in a format that his screen reader can translate for him. He wants pathways he can navigate with his white stick without tripping over stuff. He wants to work in a workplace where his blindness doesn't prevent him from contributing his considerable intelligence, energy and creativity. To put it another way, he is asking <u>us</u> to see <u>him</u>. </p><p>It's a hard ask and he has to fight hard and shout loud, because we are holding our eyes tight shut. Jesus was acutely aware of this. That's why, in Matthew 13, he quotes Isaiah again.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><i>You will be ever hearing but never understanding;<br /> you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.<br />For this people’s heart has become calloused;<br /> they hardly hear with their ears,<br /> and they have closed their eyes.<br />Otherwise they might see with their eyes,<br /> hear with their ears,<br /> understand with their hearts<br />and turn, and I would heal them.</i></div><p style="text-align: left;">The reason we don't solve homelessness is not that we can't, it's that we don't really see homeless people - or if we do, we don't see them clearly. We see them through a haze of myths which lead us to accept their homelessness. The reason we don't see the need to declare the Jubilee Year and redistribute property is that we live by the myth that its current distribution is already fair, that those who have the wealth are entitled to it while those who don't could get it with a little hard work. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The reason we don't release the captives is to some extent because we literally don't see them - they are locked behind bars in an obscure prison hidden in the industrial zone behind our city's airport. But more fundamentally, we don't see their claim on us as legitimate, we have willingly allowed ourselves to be convinced that it is they who have perpetrated the injustice by not following proper immigration procedures while they were fleeing for their lives. We don't see their faces or hear their stories. We only see the faces of, and hear the stories told about them by, their jailers.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Jesus could heal the ordinary kind of blindness and there are many stories of him doing so. This kind, however, is much trickier. We like our blindness and are attached to it. We keep our eyes tight shut, terrified of what we might see if we opened them. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And indeed, the reality is confronting. It is not a peacefully sleeping baby in a manger, watched over by his serene parents. It is a child born homeless, carried hastily across the border in the dead of night to escape a massacre perpetrated by a ruthless dictator intent on ensuring the Year of the Lord's Favour would be indefinitely postponed. Following in his footsteps in not easy. It is so much easier to retain our blindness, keep the captives where they are and convince ourselves that Herod has our interests at heart. </p><p style="text-align: left;">This is why the call must be repeated each year, why we continually have to learn to see and hear new things, to repent of sins we did not know we were committing, to inch our way, like my blind friend, carefully step by step towards a light we struggle to see, guided by the sound of trumpets we can barely hear. If we can just step closer and open our eyes we will see that the sight and sound have a beauty deeper and more real than all of our illusions.</p><p style="text-align: left;">May the light shine bright and the music sound clear for you in 2022, the next installment of the Year of the Lord's Favour.</p>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-146183364287787287.post-54006820012987241762021-12-05T15:11:00.002+10:002022-08-03T11:20:28.156+10:00Mining Australia<p> In his book <i>Collapse,</i> Jared Diamond uses mining as a metaphor to explain Australia's environmental predicament.</p><p><i>Mining in a literal sense - i.e. the mining of coal, iron and so on - is a key to Australia's economy today, providing the largest share of its export earnings. In a metaphorical sense, however, mining is also a key to Australia's environmental history and to its current predicament. That's because the essence of mining is to exploit resources that do not renew themselves with time and hence to deplete those resources....</i></p><p><i>Australia has been and still is 'mining' its renewable resources as if they were mined minerals. That is, they are being exploited at rates faster than their renewal rates, with the result that they are declining. At present rates, Australia's forests and fisheries will disappear long before its coal and iron reserves, which is ironic in view of the fact that the former are renewable and the latter aren't.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvJae5Zcmho4IB1ekHFAwi7xdvrfkaWfzkFM78AUz2P7qn9J86DQlKkDkDA7lZoazXWbhHryUcBnxKACtETAUliLKr37oRr472YX_zLMxFp4XuQFhyphenhyphenXubBtMmxy11Whcv3ppu6p8wjdErq/s462/wounded-country.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvJae5Zcmho4IB1ekHFAwi7xdvrfkaWfzkFM78AUz2P7qn9J86DQlKkDkDA7lZoazXWbhHryUcBnxKACtETAUliLKr37oRr472YX_zLMxFp4XuQFhyphenhyphenXubBtMmxy11Whcv3ppu6p8wjdErq/s320/wounded-country.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>I thought of this in the past week or two as I was reading Quentin Beresford's <i>Wounded Country: The Murray-Darling Basin - A Contested History.</i> What Beresford describes, in essence, is the long process of mining the Murray-Darling.<p></p><div>The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia's most extensive river system. It includes a couple of dozen rivers and hundreds of creeks flowing from east to west and from north to south through four States, coming together in the Murray to flow into the ocean through Lake Alexandrina in South Australia. It has been a major population centre and food source for most of the history of human life in Australia, and although us recent European arrivals chose to build all our major cities around sea-ports we still rely on the Basin for a lot of our food.</div><div><br /></div><div>The various nations who lived there in the millennia before Europeans (and still do) managed their resources sustainably. The system features the most elaborate fishing infrastructure in ancient Australia, and there was also the annual harvesting of perennial grasses and yams and the hunting of various native animals to sustain a substantial population.</div><div><br /></div><div>But as we know all too well, the European invaders didn't care for any of this. What they wanted was land to graze sheep and cattle, and to grow European crops - wheat, citrus fruit, and so on. This means that although Sturt and Mitchell, the first British officials to find their way along the system, noted some of the richness and complexity of these communities they had no interest in protecting or learning from them. They and their successors embarked on a campaign of raping and pillaging, driving the nations out before them so they could clear trees and graze sheep in peace. We continue to do the same to this day.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two things stand out about this process. </div><div><br /></div><div>The first is its massive wastefulness. In their rush to set up pastoral and agricultural enterprises, the invaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries engaged in wholesale tree clearing and extermination of native animals. These things could have been useful - timber for building, animals for food and skins - and sometimes they were used for these purposes. Some of the timber was used to build homes, or for railway sleepers, but much of it was burned, or left to rot. Same with the animals - they were rarely eaten (the Europeans despised kangaroo or wallaby meat, even though it is just as tasty as cow or sheep and better for us) but the skins were often sold, especially the possum and koala skins. But much of this went to waste too, the animals just burned or buried, seen as nothing more than an impediment to progress. No attempt was made to conserve these resources or manage them sustainably.</div><div><br /></div><div>This wastage extended to the grasses and even the soil itself. Australia's original lush grasslands were maintained through a system of regular harvesting and cool burning, along with light grazing by marsupials like kangaroos and wallabies. The introduction of sheep and cattle, and the overgrazing practiced by Europeans, resulted in the grasses being torn up at the roots and the soil compacted by hard hooves. The grasses didn't regenerate, and the now denuded soil was washed away in the rain or blown away in dust-storms during drought years. </div><div><br /></div><div>The second stand-out for me was European-Australians' failure to learn as we went along.</div><div><br /></div><div>One example of this is the persistence of what Beresford calls the 'agrarian ideal' - the notion, beloved of politicians and newspapers, that Australia could be a land of thriving small farmers growing crops along our great rivers, fed by irrigation. This led to successive waves of land selection - firstly after the population boom generated by the gold rush years, and then through soldier settlement schemes after both World Wars. Aspiring farmers, with little money behind them and often zero farming experience, were allocated plots of a few acres and expected to clear the land, plant crops and build homes. Each time, the result was widespread poverty, debt and disillusionment, along with waves of environmental damage from tree clearing and erosion.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another example is the recurring environmental crises. We all know about the American dustbowl years of the 1930s, which became a significant cultural moment in American history. But how many Australians know that we have had the same thing here, in the same period and several times since, right down to the present? The causes and consequences are the same in both places, but the difference is that we have refused to learn from our mistakes.</div><div><br /></div><div>As time has gone on our knowledge of the science of these rivers has become more accurate and sophisticated. It is now clear that we are extracting too much water for irrigation, causing environmental disaster downstream, and that extensive tree clearing is causing widespread salinity that makes land unusable for crops. The Murray Darling Basin Authority, which supposedly manages the system on behalf of the Commonwealth and the four relevant States, has a plan to return to water to the system. But when the nation's leading water management experts criticised the plan as not returning enough water to the system the Authority's Chair responded, out loud and in public, that the plan was '<a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2011/05/not-science-exercise.html" target="_blank">not a science exercise</a>'. Because we prefer guesswork and hoping for the best.</div><div><br /></div><div>Just like our efforts on climate change, we go through successive phases - deny the science for as long as we can, then when it is undeniable pretend we are following it even as we actually ignore it and do the bidding of big business. Except whereas on climate it is the big coal and gas companies, in the the Murray Darling it is the big agribusiness companies which grow thirsty crops like cotton and almonds, harvesting floodwaters and buying up the now tradeable water extraction licenses which have become sought-after investments in their own right. </div><div><br /></div><div>The result is a series of rolling environmental disasters. The one which opens <i>Wounded Country, </i>and which persuaded Beresford to write it, is the 2019 fish kill at Menindee. We all watched our TVs as two local farmers waded into the shallow still water that was the remains of the once mighty Darling River to inspect the thousands of fish floating on the surface. One of the men cried as he held up a gigantic fifty-year-old Murray Cod gasping its life out. Farmers, environmentalists and Traditional Owners added their voices to the call for a solution but the politicians stayed away and talked about drought as if that was the problem, and the major irrigators protested their innocence. Two years later, and at the close of his long tale, Beresford returns our attention to Menindee, where in early 2021 the conditions were building for a repeat episode. Fortunately this time rain and our current La Nina cycle have saved us, but unless we change things there will be a next time.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">***</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the same time, perhaps not coincidentally, I've been listening to <a href="https://paintingfakes.blogspot.com/2015/08/rumours-of-glory.html" target="_blank">Bruce Cockburn's</a> <i>Nothing But a Burning Light</i>, which includes that lovely song, 'Mighty Trucks of Midnight'.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yW2bYAGFU_E" width="320" youtube-src-id="yW2bYAGFU_E"></iframe></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Wave a flag, wave the bible, wave your sex or your business degree</i></div><div><i>Whatever you want -- but don't wave that thing at me</i></div><div><i>The tide of love can leave your prizes scattered</i></div><div><i>But when you get to the bottom love's the only thing that matters</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Mighty trucks of midnight</i></div><div><i>Moving on</i></div><div><i>Moving on</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I believe it's a sin to try and make things last forever</i></div><div><i>Everything that exists in time runs out of time some day</i></div><div><i>Got to let go of the things that keep you tethered</i></div><div><i>Take your place with grace and then be on your way</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As you know, Cockburn is one of my most enduring spiritual teachers, a songwriter with the ability to get to the spiritual and emotional heart of big questions. We all like to treat temporary things as eternal. The serpent told Eve that she and her husband would become like gods and she believed him, but the proposition is absurd. We are not divine, we are frail and mortal. As King Canute shrewdly pointed out, even the most powerful king has no influence over the tide.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Yet the illusion persists. We still think we can control the rivers, that somehow our divine might will prevail against the forces of nature, that we can continue to extract more water, clear more trees and build more dams without destroying the very resources we are exploiting. It's probably too much to expect that big agribusiness companies might care about traditional owners, Murray Cod or even downstream farmers, but surely they care about their own children? Yet they keep taking out more water than the rain puts in, clearing more trees than they plant, as if the earth had no limits. We, and our elected governments, keep on letting them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Apparently the economist Joseph Schumpeter once said, 'If a trend cannot possibly continue, then it will stop'. This is where we are now. The tide of Love is preparing to leave our prizes scattered. God has told us, many times and in many ways, the Love is the only thing that matters. Will we listen now, or will we wait until we have no choice?</div>Jonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11272544252649766985noreply@blogger.com0