Notes by the indefatigable Ira Maine, Poetry Editor

The poem is easy to understand and needs no further explanation.  Go on, reader!   Have a crack at it!

To The Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: and What He Hath Left Us
by Ben Jonson

To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book, and fame,
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither man nor Muse can praise too much.
’Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For seeliest* Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right;
Or blind Affection, which doth ne’er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin, where it seemed to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore,
Should praise a matron. What could hurt her more?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill-fortune of them, or the need.
I, therefore, will begin. Soul of the age!
The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!
My Shakespeare, rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further, to make thee a room:
Thou art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses;
I mean, with great but disproportion’d Muses.
For, if I thought my judgment were of years,
I should commit thee, surely, with thy peers,
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line.
And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,
From thence, to honour thee, I would not seek
For names; but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus,
Euripides, and Sophocles to us,
Paccuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead
To life again, to hear thy buskin** tread
And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on,
Leave thee alone, for the comparison
Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.
Triumph, my Britain! Thou hast one to show
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe.
He was not of an age, but for all time!
And all the Muses still were in their prime,
When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm
Our ears, or, like a Mercury, to charm.
Nature herself was proud of his designs,
And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines,
Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit
As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes,
Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please;
But antiquated and deserted lie,
As they were not of Nature’s family.
Yet must I not give Nature all; thy art,
My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the Poet’s matter Nature be,
His art doth give the fashion; and that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat
(Such as thine are), and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses’ anvil, turn the same
And himself with it), that he thinks to frame,
Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn!
For a good Poet’s made, as well as born;
And such wert thou! Look how the father’s face
Lives in his issue; even so, the race
Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turnèd and true-filèd lines:
In each of which he seems to shake a lance
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance.
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames
That so did take Eliza, and our James!
But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere
Advanced, and made a constellation there!
Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage
Or influence, chide, or cheer the drooping stage;
Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night,
And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.

*seeliest: most seemly; here, it seems to stand in for “it seems that”
**buskin: a laced boot reaching halfway to the knee

This dispatch is from 1 May 2014.

Så snart, jag vet. 
Vänligen, läs den i alla fall.

From my Dad’s Anecdotes:

JAN.’08- Opeens vraagt Pa: “Weet je waarom engelen vleugels hebben?” “Nee dat weet ik niet, waarom?” “Omdat de meeste mensen die sterven oud zijn, en die kunnen bijna niet meer lopen!”

I was so taken by this that I subsequently got my father to help me translate it into the other languages he was proficient in:

JAN.’08- Plötzlich bittet Vati: “Weist du, warum Engel Flügel haben?” “Nein, weis ik nicht, warum haben Sie Flügel?” “Weil die meisten Leute, wenn sie sterben, bereits alt sind, und kaum laufen können!”

Enero’08-De repente mi papá me pregunta: “¿Sabes porqué los angeles tienen alas?” “No lo sé ¿Porqué las tienen? “¡Porqué la mayoria de la gente que se muere estan viejos y ya casi no pueden caminar!”

JAN.’08-All of a sudden dad asks: “Do you know why angels have wings?” “No, I don’t, why do they? “Because most people that die are old and can hardly walk!”

A couple of months later, I added this footnote:

MARCH’08- In a book called ‘Angels’ (by Peter Lamborn Wilson) I find the following quote by Plato: “The function of the wing is to take what is heavy and raise it up into the region above, where the gods dwell…” I prefer dad’s more secular function (to help people that can hardly walk).

In May 2008 dad got to go to the University (to which he’d donated his body).

If there is a heaven, dad is now sporting a magnificent pair of wings.

Is how I concluded his story that he helped me write

Wish I had the wings of a dove…I would fly away…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYDkeS24C7g

Birds (and bats) have a right wing and a left wing. When these wings are evenly balanced it enables the birds to fly and gracefully soar, or a colibri (hummingbird) sucking nectar to remain suspended in the air without coming a cropper.

Democracies have an idealistic left wing and a pragmatic right wing. When such wings are evenly balanced societies function quite well. Such a balance existed during the Whitlam/Fraser era that gave us Aboriginal Land Rights and self-determination and the homelands movement and bilingual education. It made Yuendumu a great place to be, a great place for your children to grow up, whether you were Warlpiri or not.

When the right wing spends all its efforts on trying to ruffle the feathers on the left wing rather than trying to fly or soar, and when the left wing aspires to become more like the right wing you end up with a society incapable of graceful flight. A bird or butterfly with two right wings no more can fly than a person with two left feet can become a football star. You end up with such unjust abominations as the ‘Intervention’, the ‘four hours English only’ policy, ‘99 year leases’ and obscene amounts of money spent on top-down assimilationist ‘service delivery agencies’ intent on and failing to ‘Close the Gap’; a gap they themselves ethnocentrically defined.

Remote Aboriginal Australia isn’t given the opportunity to decide how to use its wings, nor how to teach its children to fly….

…. take these broken wings and learn to fly… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wORwlCy3JDI

An army of consultants, mentors and facilitators arrives in places like Yuendumu that take the natives under their wings, whether they like it or not. They fly in and fly out. They assume and believe the natives are incapable of flight. They teach them how to suck eggs and simultaneously clip their wings. Many chicks are removed to be fitted with other wings. A significant number are locked up to prevent them flapping their wings to the sound of a different drum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3Nq48sHF8M

In the self proclaimed land of the ‘Fair-go’, one would have thought Aboriginal Australia would be encouraged to take what is heavy and raise it up into the region above, where the gods dwell…

As is, Aboriginal Australia is hardly allowed to walk in its own shoes.

If I could be you, if you could be me for just one hour
If we could find a way to get inside each other’s mind,
If you could see you through my eyes instead of your ego
I believe you’d be surprised to see that you’ve been blind,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI0jqAxk3cU

Tack 
Tills nästa gång

Frank

The USA jails its citizens at a rate close to six times that of most other western countries, and among the highest in the world at large.  

A rather long post today, but well worth the effort.  within this report you will find
1) Because of its prison system, the US is the only country in the world where more men are raped than women.
2) There are more black slaves in America today than in 1850.
3) Solitary confinement, widely used in American prisons, is regarded internationally as torture.
4) The food served in prisons is often stale, moldy, under-cooked, unhealthy and scarce.
5) Many prisoners are forced to work real jobs for private corporations, forcing down wages in the rest of the economy.

by Sean Kerrigan via SeanKerrigan.com,

We’ve done several exposés on the prison system in America, including The Prison System Runs Amok, Expands at Frightening Pace (Sept 6, 2012) and Selling the American Dream is the Biggest Market of All (Sept. 30, 2013), but there’s still much more to be said about this topic. America’s massive prison system is creating a long list of unintended consequences, some of which will effect all of us in the coming years. To help explain just how bad things have gotten, we’ve compiled this list of the most stunning facts and statistics on the America’s prison system today.

1) Because of its prison system, the US is the only country in the world where more men are raped than women.

According to the 2011 report from Department of Justice, nearly one in 10 prisoners report having been raped or sexually assaulted by other inmates, staff or both. According to a revised report from the US Department of Justice, there were 216,000 victims of rape in US prisons in 2008. That is roughly 600 a day or 25 every hour.

Those numbers are of victims, not instances, which would be much higher since many victims were reportedly assaulted multiple times throughout the year. Excluding prison rapes, there about 200,000 rapes per year in America, and roughly 91 percent of those victims are women. If these numbers are accurate, this means that America is the only country in the world where more men are raped than women.

Even if the number of unreported rapes outside of prison were substantially larger than most experts believe, the fact that many victims in prison tend to be raped repeatedly would indicate that rape against men is at least comparable to rape against women.

Kendell Spruce was one such inmate, sentenced to six years for forging a check for which he hoped to purchase crack cocaine. In a National Prison Rape Elimination Commission testimony, Spruce said:

“I was raped by at least 27 different inmates over a nine month period. I don’t have to tell you that it was the worst nine months of my life… [I] was sent into protective custody. But I wasn’t safe there either. They put all kinds of people in protective custody, including sexual predators. I was put in a cell with a rapist who had full-blown AIDS. Within two days, he forced me to give him oral sex and anally raped me.”

Spruce was diagnosed with “full blown AIDS” in 2002 and died three years later.

2) There are more black slaves in America today than in 1850.

This sounds outrageous. How can there be more slaves in America today than before the Civil War? First, consider there are more black men in prison today than there were slaves in 1850, according to Michelle Alexander, an Ohio State law professor, who cited the last census immediately before the Civil War. This comparison not account for changes in population, but the statistic is accurate in terms of sheer numbers .

Next, consider the 13th Amendment to the constitution which reads:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Note there is an exception to the otherwise total abolition of slavery. Those suffering “punishment for a crime” can still be constitutionally enslaved. In other words, everyone convicted of a crime is at least potentially a slave.  The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether or not they technically are slaves, but practically it is obvious they are.

Slavery has different definitions, but almost all include the following characteristics: 1) A slave is forced to work under threat of physical or psychological threat. 2) A slave is considered owned property, an asset or commodity which can be sold. Finally, a slave has restrictions on their liberties, including freedom of movement. Right or wrong, a US prison inmate easily meets this criteria.

Prisoners can be denied communication with their fellow inmates, or forbidden from voluntary associations including union membership. Obviously, they are denied their freedom to leave the prison, but they are also forced to work unpaid or for extremely low wages. Prisoners are effectively being bought and sold to private corporations who are using them as cheep labor for private gains. There is also a market for younger and healthier prisoners because their healthcare cost make them less expensive to hold. Private prison contracts allow the transfer of prisoners to state run institutions.

If this is not slavery, then what is?

3) Solitary confinement, widely used in American prisons, is regarded internationally as torture.

This form of punishment has become increasingly common in the US since it was introduced as a part of America’s then new “Supermax” prison system which began growing in the mid-1980s. Prisoners held in solitary confinement are typically kept in a small, windowless cell for 23 hours a day, with minimal access to lawyers, family and guards. The number of prisoners currently in solitary is estimated to be around 80,000, though the number is growing faster than the overall prison population, indicating the method is becoming increasingly normalized.

Solitary confinement is used against a variety of offenders, including those picked up for immigration violations, which is a misdemeanor or the legal equivalent of a reckless driving ticket. Others are placed in solitary confinement “for their own protection” since they may be a target of other violent inmates. There are few regulations prohibiting its use or duration.

The Sun Times reports that Former US Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who is currently serving a prisons sentence for breaking campaign finance laws, was removed from the general prison population and placed in solitary confinement for 5 days after “advising other inmates in North Carolina about their rights in prison, according to the source, who said a guard took exception to that.”

Human rights groups have called the practice torture. The Center for Constitutional Rights argues:

“Researchers have demonstrated that prolonged solitary confinement causes a persistent and heightened state of anxiety and nervousness, headaches, insomnia, lethargy or chronic tiredness, nightmares, heart palpitations, and fear of impending nervous breakdowns. Other documented effects include obsessive ruminations, confused thought processes, an oversensitivity to stimuli, irrational anger, social withdrawal, hallucinations, violent fantasies, emotional flatness, mood swings, chronic depression, feelings of overall deterioration, as well as suicidal ideation.”

This was known as far back as the 1890s, when the Supreme Court originally ruled on the practice. They noted then:

“A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still committed suicide, while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.”

Despite this admission, the practice itself wasn’t ruled on and the method is still used today.

4) The food served in prisons is often stale, moldy, under-cooked, unhealthy and scarce.

In the 1940s, prison food used to be good, offering a wide variety of options. Today, they call it “shit on a shingle.” The reality is not much worse. State budget cuts and the trend to privatize prisons and prison services has substantially cut food variety and quality.

Incentives to cut costs exist at the institutional and individual level. In Alabama, state law allows law enforcement to pocket leftover funds after feeding prisoners provided they can still provide for their basic needs. The incentive to cut on quality and quantity resulted in the arrest and sentencing of Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett who kept over $200,000 in funds intended for prisoners. The judge concluded that Bartlett had failed to provide “a nutritionally adequate diet.”

In April 2008, 277 prisoners at Florida’s Santa Rosa Correctional Institution became sick after eating chili. The Tampa Bay Times repoted the Philadelphia based food provider, Aramark, “landed the state contract in 2001 and is currently paid $2.67 per inmate for three meals a day. It serves about 60,000 inmates across Florida and contends it has saved the state $100-million in food costs.” The chili story is not an anomaly; it has been repeated across the country including New Jersey, where Aramark also provides meals.

This video shows some of what prisoners in Alabama are forced to eat — rotten and  uncooked meat. It’s difficult to hear, but skip to 0:59 to get a good view of what the meat looks like.

Even when the food isn’t rotten, that doesn’t mean it is particularly appetizing. Occasionally, the food tastes so bad that it has been considered “unconstitutional” in some states. States like Illinois and Pennsylvania feed inmates a food called “Nutraloaf,” a mix of raw vegetables shaped like a meatloaf.  In this video, the staff of the Glens Fall Post Star newspaper taste test the block of food. They conclude, “One bite is one thing, but if you have to live on that, that is awful.”

Sickness and hunger are a common and increasingly accepted part of being a prisoner in America. In addition to stale and rotten food, servings are often extremely small. Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges quotes a prison inmate who said, “You could eat six portions like the ones we served and still be hungry. If we put more than the required portion on the tray the Aramark people would make us take it off. It wasn’t civilized. I lost 30 pounds. I would wake up at night and put toothpaste in my mouth to get rid of the hunger urge.” Read the rest of Truthdig’s expose for more.

5) Many prisoners are forced to work real jobs for private corporations, forcing down wages in the rest of the economy.

While cheap sweatshop labor is becoming increasingly common across the country, no one takes better advantage of the system than prisons.

Alternet reports that almost 1 million prisoners are doing simple unskilled labor including “making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.” They continue:

“Rarely can you find workers so pliable, easy to control, stripped of political rights, and subject to martial discipline at the first sign of recalcitrance — unless, that is, you traveled back to the nineteenth century when convict labor was commonplace nationwide….  It was one vital way the United States became a modern industrial capitalist economy — at a moment, eerily like our own, when the mechanisms of capital accumulation were in crisis.”

Compare the cost of less than $5 a day with the cost of a minimum wage worker at $58 a day and you begin to see the perverse influence on the entire labor market.

CNN Money reports that prison inmates are now directly competing for jobs in the rest of the economy, and employers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up. Lost jobs are the result. They cite one company, American Apparel Inc., which makes military uniforms. They write:

“‘We pay employees $9 on average,’ [a company executive] said. ‘They get full medical insurance, 401(k) plans and paid vacation. Yet we’re competing against a federal program that doesn’t pay any of that.’

[The private prison] is not required to pay its workers minimum wage and instead pays inmates 23 cents to $1.15 an hour. It doesn’t have health insurance costs. It also doesn’t shell out federal, state or local taxes.”

The new influx of cheap, domestic labor will inevitably drive down wages for both skilled and unskilled jobs.

So reported the Age newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

‘Ah don’ t like wind farms refrain; Tell me why?

Ah don’t like wind farms refrain: Tell me why?
Ah don’t like wind farms refrain: Tell me why?
Ah don’t like wind farms 

Ah just wanna shoot oooh oooh oooh oooh oooot
A hole ol ol ol ol ol, through guys like you’!

I agree with Joe.  I much prefer the beauty of the stacks at the brown coal fired power stations like Morwell and Hazelwood.  They really are the symbol of where we’re at.  Such progressive forward looking people.

Go on,  pull the other one!  He don’t like Wind Farms, reckons they’re ugly.  Just like Pauline Hanson didn’t like Asians.  Asians, like Wind farms represent the future.  He probably don’t like holograms, quantum computers, bionic arms, testicular implants, (sorry I had to put that in) and he probably don’t like any other funny new fangle ideas.  That’s why he and his mates quite rightly keep sheilas where they belong in Parliament; on the back bench!

Now to be fair, he doesn’t mind a lot of things, it’s just he HATES stuff that the coal industry hates.  He hates Wind-Farms because the coal industry are his mates.  You stick by your mates through thick and thin.  That’s what Gallipoli taught us.  It’s pretty simple.  And we know now that without Coal Miner Nathan Tinkler putting funds through the back-door into the Liberal Party’s coffers they’d be stuffed!  They’d be stuffed more so because they’ve pissed off the tobacco lobby and particularly the shooters party who still bear a grudge from Johnny Howard taking guns away.  So let’s face it without the COAL the entire government is stuffed.

I hate Wind Farms too.  Europe is rancid with them.  I love that about Australia and the United States: No signs of emergent alternative energy.  No signs of emergent alternative thinking either, it’s that same-ness that I find reassuring.  Go on, mine the buggery out of this continent and get it over and done with.  I also hate Wind Farms cos the turbines and towers are obviously manufactured locally.  We hate manufacturing in this country!  Much easier to import machinery and sell coal.  That’s what we’re good at; selling stuff we don’t manufacture or value add.  So don’t give me any more of this namby pamby sustainability crap – coal mining is sustainable, and  it’s good for jobs.  Good for the future.

We’ll let em know the world over that we hate Wind Farms and change.  We hate lefties too, who all seem to want us to go back to the ice age and live in mud huts and do macrame.

They don’t understand that to sustain a fuckin economy you’ve gotta root something.  We came to this country and it was in a desperate shape, no mines, no industry and no consumers.  We still can’t get the aborigines to consume, that’s why we’ve made prisons for em.  We’ll make em consume, even if it fucken kills em!

Fucken Wind Farms are tearing the heart outta this country.  I’ve known people who’ve been on the land for up to three generations and they can tell ya a thing or two about Wind Farms.  They’re turning people gay!  Fair dinkum, they turn decent blokes into pooftas, and I’ve heard nice clean livin sheilas becoming lezzos.  That’s what the turbines do.  No lezzos in coal mining, no pooftas either.  Coal is about clean livin, it’s clean coal.  Turbines are a blight, and each turbine is one straight man turned pooftah.

Think about it, it’s un-Australian!

By Quentin Cockburn

by Quentin Cockburn Esq

Went to a party the other day.  It was for an old family friend.  He was the administrator, (sort of governor) for the Northern Territory.  A real-life Poo-bah.  The evening was excruciating.  People and conversation defined by what school did you go to?  And then with stifling boredom, polite conversation endured somewhere between small talk and interrogation.  I suppose it was all they had left beyond the tissue of respectability.  As I left I was collared by his daughter, she could’ve been beautiful, but middle aged respectability and a lifetime of academia had denied her that.  She was spark-less.  Christ, I had to get out of there!  Yet in the back of my mind there was something, sinister, disturbing, it was the ghost of a John Wyndham Novel stirring within me.

Then, in a flash I got it!  They all had PERFECT TEETH!!

Realisation hit me.  I was now firmly on the outer, ‘Nice people’ have perfect teeth.  They obsess about orthodontics.  They are the standard bearers of the campaign bordering on the hysterical proclaiming that imperfect teeth will shorten your life.  Statistics prove those with imperfect teeth will most likely to lead to a predisposition to heart attacks, diabetics, pleurisy, rickets, aneurism, syphllis, lumbago.  The list is endless, the point all consuming,  it says, “You shall be punished for not having perfect teeth, you shall be ostracised, and struck off the “decent persons register”.

What bullshit!  Of course people with imperfect teeth are liable to figure highly in the death statistics.  For the simple reason, people with imperfect teeth are POOR.  Poor people die at an earlier age than wealthy ones.  And with the current orthodontics bill at $8k and counting for my daughter, (who MUST NEVER have imperfect teeth) the cost to society?  I wonder.  Food getting stuck in the crevices, the tendency to bathe the listener in a fine mist, and the debilitating requirement to feel self-conscious.  I ask, is it worth it?

My father had grossly distorted teeth, it reminded me of tank traps, an incorrectly sharpened bush saw,  a triceratops in profile.  Theres a sense of it on rustic bridges, the jagged serrated profile of rocks, part defensive, part utilitarian.  With Dad there’s an excruciating sense of un-corrected bloody mindedness.  You see, my Dad, imperfect in so may ways, believed straight teeth were affectation.  He passed this conviction onto me.  A gift you might say.

Once, all individuals in society had imperfect teeth.  On trams I marvelled at the gold teeth, the clackers, the gummy embrasures of the old, afflicted, life-worn.  Teeth descriptive of a real person to define and delight.  More engaging than fingerprints to distinguish personality, the visual DNA from the masses.  I’m enthralled by ancient newsreels.  A favourite, the rescuing of the BEF from France.  Smiling at the camera, a cavalcade of imperfection, gaps, and rotted, by wear, life, experience.  ‘In khaki we we are a mass, but when we smile, and give the thumbs up, for Britain, for mums and dads, for the kiddies back home, we are individuals.

I imagine that those newsreels transported back to the U.S, repelled their American audiences, “How can those limeys clutch victory in defeat with teeth like that?”  I think that alone precluded Americas entry into the war by two and a half years.  I believe that famous photograph of the general executing the Viet Cong spy, with a bullet to the head, was more instrumental in shocking the American public into a realisation of the horrors of war, it conflicted like nothing else, because the general and the victim, had teeth more crooked than the Mighty Mekong.

We are now all Americans.  Imperfect teeth a symbol of inner defeat, you shall be humbled by allowing yourselves such neglect, such abrogation of self.  And so we live in a society of the brain dead.  Moment obsessed, the consumer, and every one of us is encouraged to do the same.  There’s social pressure and conformity, we pretend that we’re rugged individualists.  In reality we’re all just in-dentured slaves to standardisation, uniformity and mediocrity.

A representation of a proper party.
Guests, resplendent to be seen, sans orthodontia

by Quentin Cockburn

Could it be believed?  Last time there was a really big financial crisis, an accountant got together with a group of artists and writers, and cast a new mould, (no pun) for economic growth through the Twentieth Century.  This was after the cataclysm of the Great War.  In the midst of the Great Depression.  And well before Archie Bevan and Clem ‘The Gem’ Atlee gave people what they’d earnt in suffering and deprivation as the “Welfare State”.  The accountant’s name was John Maynard Keynes.  Posterity hates him.  They named a suburb after him.  What then did the people want after defeating the Depression and Fascism?  A sense of social welfare, free education, medical assistance, and a stable indexed pension.  That’s what several hundred million dead and a couple of wasted generations delivered.  That legacy has been forgotten.

It all happened in a little place in Sussex, UK, called ‘Charleston’.  It was here in the grips of the Great Depression, 30% of working men unemployed, that the architecture for our modern era was forged.  And a decade after, the die was cast to instill ‘fairness’ as the basic plank for a progressive society.

Imagine then Milton Keynes and Virginia Woolf in the kitchen.  She’s just finished ‘The Hours’.

Keynes puts down his pipe, Quentin Bell walks in, and in the distance, Duncan Grant, shouts, “Anyone for tennis?”

Milton says to Virginia, ‘Jeez Ginny I think I’ve nailed it”!

She turns to him, ink dripping from her fingers, “The antidote to the world’s worst depression and a saviour for humankind the world over?” She enquires.

“Yes!” He replies matter of factly, stuffing another pinch of tobacco reassuringly into his pipe.

“Its this thing called pump priming, and leveraging the economic process through government incentives to help the common man”.

“Oh,” Virginia exclaims; “the common man?”  She reaches for a cigarette and in lighting exclaims, “the type that read the Mirror?” (1930’s equivalent of Melbourne’s (and Rupert’s) Herald Sun)

“Yes of course Virginia, just because they read muck doesn’t mean they should be punished for it!  It’s all about education and dignity, we must instill these platforms into our new society”.

“What!” exclaims Virginia flummoxed, “So they become more like us? …and eventually do away with first class compartments in carriages?”

“No, there’ll still be class divisions on pubic transport, it’s just that the rich and poor will have to know each other, and with education craft a fairer world for all of us to share.”  He paused obscured in a cloud of smouldering Havelock rough flake. “I’m confused Ginny. I thought you liked the common man.”

“Well I have some sympathy for them, but I don’t want to be like them!” Virginia puts the pen down after scrawling “The End” on the last page of manuscript.  Milton walks out of the room.

Tony Abbott is not strong on artists and writers.  He establishes a Cabal of 80’s ideological fundamentalists to re-jig the economy and surprise surprise they come up with something that’s anti social in every way.   (These people see literature as subversive and artists as lepers, – unless the artist is dead, then his art can adorn their walls as a sound investment.)

Their report seethes with retribution for the poor, and seeks to avenge 100 years of wealth distribution and society with a narrow puritanical fundamentalism.  At the forefront, the axing of funding to Film Australia.  Films, like Maypole dancing and laughter are ‘Wicked and shall be punished’.  And rightly there shall be no redistribution of tax, to ensure that the obscenities of negative gearing remain to enshrine the non negotiable privileges

These people live in a bubble, they don’t pay tax, (or very little) don’t need government services, have entrenched wealth, and would rather the public eat cake.  In actual fact the public realm is just an inconvenience  They see the entire structure of government co opted as a bigger public private partnership.  They as shareholders, get the benefits, for the public, it’s feudalism.  Birth over an open grave.  No wonder they have no interest in history, except for bits where the unwashed shall die for them.  Can’t blame them though as I know history is all about shopping, and consuming.

A plan concocted by the National Business Council (the audit commission) and excuse me just a moment, “The National Business Council”.  The same who presided over the extinction of Australian Manufacturing.  The decline in our economic diversity, the capitulation to Coles and Woolworth’s.  The same who supinely cash their chips and sell any Australian business to anyone anywhere, for personal gain, (shareholders interests) to the impoverishment of us all.  There’s a documentary on this, it was produced in 1937 by Warner Brothers.  In the lead role starred a charismatic Australian.  He is our blogs patron. He had a plan for the redistribution of wealth that called to the people.  It’s not “The Hours” though, it’s called ‘Robin Hood’.

The Alpha Male, the real man, a man’s man, a warrior, a stand-up guy. It doesn’t matter what you call him, he’s a leader, the guy others look to for motivation, inspiration, and often with a hint of jealousy. He’s the man women want, without intention the center of attention.

Well, that is how the theory went.  And who developed the theory?  Self assessed Alpha Males.  Dana Ardi challenges this paradigm in her 2013 book “The Fall of the Alphas”.

“In recent years, new generations of ethnologists and comparative psychologists have … reconsidered the findings of their predecessors.  New theories have pulled away the veneer that protected the Alpha paradigm.

Today, scientists realise that both male and female behaviour is profoundly influenced by environment, and is often the consequence of socialised learning.  They have also criticised the idea that a field researcher could elicit valid data from observing animals, whether primates in a zoo or chickens in a coop.  When scientists carried out their first primate studies, zoos squeezed as many animals as they could into cramped enclosures that provided limited resources for the animal’s health and well-being.  In nine cases out of ten, the inevitable result was a stressful, highly unnatural environment.  Is it any wonder those animals were so aggressive and competitive?

Even as zoos modernised and updated, they were still in the business of creating artificial environments where animals couldn’t hunt, mating was choreographed, and caretakers provided food.  Coming up with theories on primate behaviour based on observations of animals in captivity is the equivalent of coming up  with theories abut human behaviour based on observations of prisoners on death row.

Scientists are even calling into question the earliest primate studies on natural free-ranging populations that their peers carried out in the wild.  Anthropologist and primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy went so far as to theorise that the traditional concept of the Alpha male is nothing more less than a crude form of projection by male scientists.  The idea that there’s a single top male that gets to mate with all the females and dominate the other males, she speculated, had more to do with the fantasy lives of all those early evolutionary biologists, many of whom were elite males themselves.

Maybe that’s one reason why renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey preferred to sponsor female observers of great apes in the wild.  He handpicked Jane Goodall to study chimpanzees, Diane Fossey to study gorillas, and Birute Galdikas to study orang-utans.  Their contemporary studies of primates in their natural habitats have led to far less sexist assessment of the roles played by males and females.  Many of the most interesting studies came about from observing the behaviour of bonobos who, like chimpanzees, share 99 percent of the same DNA as human beings.  (At the time of Leakey’s death in 1972, he was in the process of arranging for a fourth woman, Toni Jackman to launch a project observing bonobos.

The dynamics of bonobos society shattered the myth of the Alpha male as an innate primate characteristic, and therefore a natural paradigm for human society.  Even though male bonobos are generally larger and stronger than the females, bonobo groups are matriarchies.  Scientists have observed few aggressive encounters between male and female bonobos, and when it happens, the females band together to discourage excessively aggressive behaviour by individual males.

Bonobos use sex to create bonds, and to reduce stress and aggressiveness.  Female bonobos use their sexuality to control male members of the pack.  Whereas chimpanzees commonly attack males from neighbouring packs who wander into their territory, bonobos initiate sexual contact with scouts from other packs.  Both male and female bonobos have been observed engaging in homosexual behaviour as a bonding activity.

As for the status of males in a bonobo group, it’s determined not by strength or aggressiveness, but by the status of their mothers.  The bond between mothers and sons remains strong and enduring throughout the animal’s lives.  Fans de Waal, the Dutch primatologist and ethologist, characterises bonobos as altruistic, compassionate, empathetic, and patient.  Contemporary ethologists suggest that if you don’t have to be an aggressive, physically intimidating, chest pounding Alpha male to lead a pack of bonobos, then just maybe you don’t have to be one to lead a pack of people, either.”

From “The Fall of the Alphas” by Dana Ardi 2013.

A poem by D. Fawlt.

From the wracked and aching depths
Where senses swam and fishes leapt
Out of nowhere on this Monday
Bursts a beacon! Poetry Sunday!
I have been ill, I have been lax
Gone completely off the trax
And furnished not a tiny jottle
You think I’ve wholly lost my bottle?
I shall attempt, from this day hence
To furnish much of verses dense
And offer in this lucky dip
(if I don’t break another hip)
Oh stuff divine! A happy grist!
Goodbye for now! I think I’m pissed!
You don’t like this? Well, make your own ads,
And here’s my boot right in your gonads!.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

And now for A.E. Houseman;

THE SHADES OF NIGHT

The shades of night were falling fast
And the rain was falling faster
When through an Alpine village passed
An Alpine village pastor.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

And now, to celebrate cause and effect;

On his death-bed poor Lubin lies;
His spouse is in despair;
With frequent sobs and mutual cries,
They both express their care.

‘A different cause,’ says Parson Sly
‘The same effect may give:
Poor Lubin fears that he may die;
His wife that he may live.’

Matthew Prior (1664-1721)

Trifles of course, but splendid trifles, enough to encourage a smidgen of levity, I hope.
Fear not! All is not lost.

IRA MAINE, Poetry Editor

This dispatch is from 26 April 2014.  

Saudações novamente meus amigos,

Things continue to get curiouser and curiouser. If only they were getting better….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqIrsIAecZg

When those in authority can convincingly assert that we definitely should do nothing to try and save the planet lest it “hurt the economy”, and large section of the public fail to see that the Emperor has no clothes and lives in a house of cards, the inmates are in charge of the asylum. Like MH370, the plot is lost, but unlike MH370 there is no serious effort to find it.

The cart is firmly placed in front of the horse, and the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l482T0yNkeo

Eduardo Galeano in “El Fútbol (A Sol y Sombra)” quotes historian Arnold Toynbee: “La más consistente característica de las civilizaciones en decadencia es la tendencia a la estandarización y la uniformidad”. (“The most consistent characteristic of civilizations in decay, is a tendency towards standardization and uniformity”). Galeano was writing about football (or as it is known in Australia: soccer), as metaphor.

Australian Governments are intent on ‘Closing the Gap’, a massive failing effort at uniformity.  Making ‘them’ more like ‘us’.  Little consideration is given to Bridging the Gap, appreciating and celebrating and encouraging cultural and linguistic diversity.  In Yuendumu, Alice Springs contractors are erecting a $4M ‘Family Centre’ which will compliment the already existing $2M Centrelink building that arrived a few years ago on the back of semi-trailers hailing from Bendigo in Victoria.  All of this for a population of less than 1,000 Warlpiri, who have virtually no say in all of this.

In Australia, the right to be a bigot (in the name of Free Speech) eclipses the right of children to be taught to read and write in a language they understand.  Yet another example of the plot having been lost.

Japaljarri sent me a book “Debt- The first 5,000 years”.  It is written by an anthropologist, not by one of those crew-cutted, pencil tied sages one sees at the end of TV news bulletins sprouting such nonsense as “Stocks were jittery today” or “commodities were bullish” or “oil took a dive”  or “The Aussie Dollar is firm” (like a tomato) and “the markets were flat” (as once was the earth).

At the beginning of Chapter Two, David Graeber quotes H.L.Mencken*: “For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong”
I don’t know the context in which H.L.Mencken uttered those words, but they describe in a nutshell what remote Aboriginal society has been and continues to be subjected to.

The Northern Territory Emergency Response (the Intervention)’s Government Business Managers (GBMs or Ginger Bread Men) have been rebadged GECs (Government Engagement Co-ordinators) under the Stronger Futures (Intervention Mark II) legislation. Engagement has replaced Consultation. When you Consult you ask Subtle and Complicated questions, when you Engage you provide perfectly Simple and Straightforward answers…… which are wrong.

When I read these words out to Nangala, without hesitation she came up with the same example I first thought of: School Attendance.

Not long ago the current Minister for Indigenous Affairs did a “whistle-stop” tour of remote communities to cajole Aboriginal Australia into sending their children to school.

He saw the question as to why Aboriginal children were “performing below the standards” as having a Simple and Straightforward answer: “Send them to School”

One of the Northern Territory’s claims to fame is that the rate of incarceration of black people exceeds the rate of incarceration of black people in South Africa during the Apartheid era.  The two prisons in the NT are filled to capacity.  To the question of what should be done about it the NT Governments had and have a Simple and Straightforward answer: “Build another gaol”

During the Whitlam/Fraser era (1970’s early 80’s) a baby was born.  They named it Self Determination.  The baby ‘failed to thrive’, it was given few opportunities to do so.

When the question as to what should be done about this situation was posed a Simple and Straightforward answer emerged: “Throw the baby out with the bath water”

Stolen Futures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyMeA8CfnGo
Não se desespere, apreciar a música!

Franklin.

A change is gonna come…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6YCxXQ6Scw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwS8H-ZjlB4

Type text or a website address or translate a document.

* Mecken is also credited with this quote: “We must respect the other fellows religion, but only in the sense, and to the extent (that) we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children (are) smart”

 STOP PRESS

Incontrovertible evidence of the wrath of God here in the USA where we have experienced severe tornados and wild weather.

Now to today’s post, written by quentin cockburn

It has often been said; ‘What has that got to do with the price of fish in India’?

At first I thought it was just an open imponderable.  A reflective unanswerable.  A paradox within an enigma.  A rhetorical flourish.  A conversational gap filler, when words, thought and    the capacity to argue the toss had all but vanished.

But then I got to thinking.  What is the price of fish in India?  Do we really know?  And if knowing is important?  What bearing should it have on our day to day life?

A great deal, and I’ll tell you why.

Once upon a time we used to have a pretty good grasp of the price of fish.  We knew that Flathead was more expensive than Flake.  Snapper and Whiting were a little bit more pricey, and the exotics – Crayfish, Bream and Flounder tipped the scales.  We knew that the price of Scallops was variable, and, like Mussels and Oysters susceptible to seasonal fluctuations.  Now that’s all changed.  At the local Coles or Woolworths they’ve recognised, (ahead of the pack you might say) that we can now afford to eat fish imported from Thailand, Vietnam, the Phillipines and Malaysia.  Though they may have warnings: “Fish may contain traces of mercury” and you have an inkling that these fish, like Basil Fawltys, “meat substitute”, may contain traces of actual fish, you take it as a “valued client” that the fish on sale from just about anywhere but India is tried and tested.

The local fish may be found less frequently either at Victoria Market, or the local ‘fisho’ in any shopping street.  I don’t think anyone worries about the provenance of their fish at the Fish n Chip shop because after it’s been so battered and standardised it may as well be boot.

But the Indians seem to have missed out.  I don’t see their fish at Coles and Woollies, and yet I know, from Kevin McCloud and Rick Stein, that they possess a most interesting fishing industry and it all seems to be run by half naked Indians in gaily coloured, roughly crafted wooden vessels.  Its the antithesis of what we believe contemporary India is all about as it seems, from the delightful pictures almost completely non standardised.  The fish from all those other Asian countries, we assume, are plucked from a fish farm, a tranquil adjunct to a settling pond or treatment plant, where the fish are plumped and primed on human excrement.  And why shouldn’t I think that?  Cos that’s how they do it over there without our bounty of superphosphate and cheap diesel.

Which gets me back to the price of fish.  We are in the fortunate situation that Coles and Woolies are pushing the government hammer and tongs to sign a raft of new free trade deals with our valued overseas clients.  I am pleased because of this that the nasty noxious industries we used to have, the orchards round Harcourt, the fruit growers, the  vegetable growers, the berry growers and citrus growers are all but doomed.  We don’t need them, they’re old industries.  The new industries will be all about being managers, (middle managers at the very least) at Centre-link or doing tourism.  Play to our natural strengths.  With these local industries wiped out it will ensure we get those prices lower and lower, and maintain a level playing field.  It’s good for the producer, good for the consumer.  And finally when we produce nothing, but have aisles at our supermarkets replete with cheap tomatoes and malaysian fish, we’ll understand what’s meant by the price of fish in India.   And the Indians will then tell us with some authority; ‘We’ll tell you what the price of fish is in our country, (subject to local variations and seasonal fluctuations) just as long as you tell us how long, (precisely) is a piece of string’

It’s that simple.