Not a MDFF 17 January 2015

There is no music and this dispatch is not from the front.  However it comes from Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu, a book that deserves to be widely read and discussed.

“Arguing over whether the Aboriginal economy was a hunter-gatherer system or one of burgeoning agriculture is not the central issue.  The crucial point is that we have never discussed it as a nation.  The belief that Aboriginal people were ‘mere’ hunters-gatherers has been used as a political tool to justify dispossession.  Every Land Rights application hinges on the idea that Aboriginies and Torres Strait Islander people did nothing more than collect available resources and therefore had no managed interaction with the land, that is, the Indigenous population did not own or use the land.

If we look at the evidence presented to us by the explorers and explain to our children that Aboriginal people did build houses, did build dams, did sow, irrigate and till the land, did alter the course of rivers, did sew their clothes, and did construct a system of pan-continental government that generated peace and prosperity, then it is likely we will admire and love our land all the more.  Admiration and love are not sufficient in themselves but they are the foundation of a more productive interaction with the continent.

Behaving as if the First People were mere wanderers across the soil and knew nothing about how to grow and care for food resources is a piece of managerial pig-headedness.  Smart business people rule nothing out, especially if the seeds of success are obvious.

The song lines of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people connected clans from one side of the country to another.  The cultural, economic, genetic and artistic conduits of the song lines brought goods, art, news, ideas, technology and marriage partners to centres of exchange.

The Brewarrina fish traps were one such centre, the Lake Condah eel fishery another, Sturt’s grain fields of the Warburton River region another and Melbourne’s Botanical Gardens were the point of dispatch for the great Dreaming corroborees brought from the Australian Alps by such important philosophers as Kuller Kullup.

We can trace the green stone axes from Victoria’s Mount William quarry along the routs of that exchange; we can see elements of dance and music trading ideas back and forth across the nation.  And, if we looked, we might even find that indigenous plants flourishing in new homes were first brought to those regions by the hand of black traders.

If we accept that Aboriginal people were managing their landscape and economy across cultural and geographic boundaries we need to wonder how that co-operation was wrought without resort to the physical coercion and war common in other civilisations.

In all the archaeology and all the investigations done to date there has been no time identified when those trade routes were used for wars of possession. The Grecian and Roman frescoes and ceramics feature war and torture as an element of dominion, but while individual acts of violence are depicted in Aboriginal art there is no trace of imperial warfare.  This absence demands respect, and the skills employed to bring about the longest lasting pan-continental stability the world has known must be investigated because they might become Australia’s greatest export”

From Bruce Pascoe Dark Emu Magdala Books, Broome WA 2014

Blaming Islam

by Taraq Ramadan (From The Guardian 10 Jan 2015) (Follow the link for comments)

The attack on Charlie Hebdo compels us to be clear and to be consistent. We have to condemn what happened in Paris absolutely. I said the same after 7/7 and after 9/11. And after Jordan and Bali and Mali.

It is particularly important to be clear about where we stand, for the attackers said things that cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. They said they were avenging the prophet. That was wrong. In fact, it is the message of Islam, our principles and values, that have been betrayed and tainted. They refer to Islam to justify what they did. From a religious viewpoint, I feel it is my responsibility to say that this has nothing to do with the message of our religion. I would expect anyone, if something was happening in the name of their country or in the name of their religion, to take a stand. As a Muslim scholar I have to take that stand.

That said, there is also a wider political side to this equation. We condemn what happened in France. We condemn the violent extremism that is targeting westerners. But it is not only westerners. We are reacting emotionally because 12 people were killed in Paris, but there are hundreds being killed day in, day out in Syria and Iraq, and still we send more bombs. We have to look at the big picture. Lives matter, but it is important to be clear that the lives of Muslims in Muslim majority countries have as much value as our own lives in the west.

What happened this week is a tragedy heightened by familiarity, for I met the cartoonist Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier), the editor of Charlie Hebdo, who was among those killed on Wednesday. We had a debate in which I told him that I respected his freedom to say whatever he wanted to say, and that there was no justification for any kind of censorship.

But I also told him that he had to be clear about the way he was using that right. In 2008 his magazine fired a cartoonist who made a joke about a Jewish link to President Sarkozy’s son. Where was the freedom of expression there, I asked the satirical magazine. I was told that when it comes to freedom of expression that there are limits, not everything can be said. The double standard is troubling, to say the least.

I am shocked that something as terrible as this has happened to Charb and his colleagues, but less surprised that there was a backlash against them. There had been controversy concerning Charlie Hebdo on an almost six-monthly basis, and lots of threats. To have a sense of humour is fine, I told them, but to target an already stigmatised people in France is not really showing much courage.

The shootings have been described as an act of war. I can understand why some might characterise it that way. But they are wrong to do so, for isn’t this exactly what the violent extremists such as Da’esh, so-called Islamic State, want? They want to say the west is at war with Islam, but if we are to take the action of marginal groups and use that as evidence that there is a war between Islam and the west, aren’t we merely falling into a trap?

George Bush fell into that very trap immediately after 9/11 by calling it the war on terror, but actually he promoted it with his rhetoric. The most we can reasonably say now is that we are at war with violent extremists, wherever they are coming from. But why play that game at all? Let’s be specific: these are criminals exploiting Islam. The great majority of the victims are actually Muslim.

There are tensions in many countries, but things have been very difficult of late in France. Two recently published books reflect the atmosphere: very negative and very demoralising. The French Suicide by Eric Zemmour expresses the fear that millions of Muslims might be colonising and transforming the country (he is hoping they will be helped to leave), and Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, which predicts that in 2022 an Islamic party will take over France. Three years ago, Houellebecq said Islam was the most stupid religion in the world.

In the UK, in terms of daily life, the situation is better. There isn’t that feeling of permanent stigmatisation in the discourse as happens in France. But even so, things feel as if they are changing for the worse. It is no accident that Ukip has been on the rise, and in such a climate one feels the public discourse changing. There are parties happy to target migrants and to target Muslims. It’s a drift we have to stop, for in my view we actually have a shared responsibility. Politicians, intellectuals, journalists, Muslims and people of other faiths (or none) must be clear and united about our common principles. We need politicians with more on their minds than winning the next election.

One sees difficult days ahead as yesterday’s dramatic events in France showed; and there is the issue of media organisations intent on publishing the most offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoons, claiming that it would strike a blow for free speech. I support free speech, but I would urge them to desist, for what they plan to do is not courageous and will do nothing to afford people dignity. It will be another example of targeting all Muslims. It would say that if our fellow Muslim citizens are not part of the equation, we will target not the extremists – but Islam itself. It would hand the extremists a victory they could scarcely have achieved for themselves.

Poetry Sunday 11 January 2015

Ira Maine, Poetry Editor reports:
My sister Celine presented me with a book of poems for my birthday. I have never heard of Pat Ingoldsby, their author. He lives and works in Dublin, writes prose for newspapers various, and puts together some irresistible poems;

There are two signs
At O’Connell Bridge,
Both pointing
In exactly
The same direction
Down Aston Quay.

One says-“The West.”
One says “The South.”

I love that.
Then there’s the poem entitled;

Sometimes under certain controlled conditions, a release of flatulence in your backyard can lead to  spontaneous prayer.”

I sometimes like to sit outside
On top of my coal bunker
At four o’clock in the morning
And let fly with a fierce
Ripsnorter of a fart
Which resounds with a deep full
Metallic boom.
Some of my neighbours
Who are lying awake in their beds
Sit up suddenly and exclaim-
Good heavens- that must be some
Fog at sea. God bless all mariners
And bring them safely back to shore.”

Blessed are those who fart on top
Of their coal bunkers
For they shall be called foghorns.

 Mr Ingoldsby deserves greater investigation.

MDFF 10 January 2015

(This dispatch is from 29 August 2011)

Ave amici  (Italian: Hail Friends… Latin: Fowl Friends…. Take your pick)

The 45th. anniversary of the Wave Hill Gurinji walk off that was the egg from which Northern Territory Land Rights hatched was celebrated last week at Kalkarindgi and Daguragu.

On our way there, we overnighted in a back yard in Lajamanu.

A bird cacophony started at 6 a.m. As Dylan Moran once said “The trees were singing and the birds were swaying”.

Punctually at 7 a.m. the strangest of birds joined the chorus.

http://youtu.be/V3ypXnpFzQQ

Screeching eerily like a suburban train platform announcement we heard “Hello, good morning, the sun is shining brightly this beautiful Friday morning in Lajamanu. I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up to go to school….”  Similar announcements wafted across sporadically as the school bus wended its way around Lajamanu streets.

Am told that a Warlpiri man was offered and accepted a position at the school. When he was told that the job consisted of driving the school bus wielding a megaphone at sparrow’s fart he took flight.

http://youtu.be/g3VrggQW7tk

As well as acting like the town crier, the multi tasking Principal has started a banana plantation. Lajamanu school has more banana plants than pupils.

The ‘Freedom Day’ celebrations started with a re-enactment of the walk-off. The surviving members of that historic event were joined by a multitude of supporters. It felt like this was the ‘The Walk-off Mark 2’ but alas it wasn’t.

Gurindji Blues composed by Ted Egan, one-time Superintendent of Yuendumu: http://youtu.be/EdLIlyhLewI

Then came the speeches. Speaker after speaker expressed frustration and anger and sorrow that after such a hopeful beginning we’d come full circle. Every time a speaker expressed disillusionment or anger at the Intervention, it elicited enthusiastic applause. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all just political antagonism; some very beautiful words were spoken about the spirit that drove Vincent Lingiari and his brethren; about the importance of Land. Rosalie Kunoth-Monks like a wise owl, defiantly declared that Australia did not have ‘an Aboriginal Problem’ but a ‘White Australian Problem’, and yes, many very funny things were said. If laughter is the best medicine we all came away healthier and happier, also sadder.

Mercifully politicians at the celebrations were like the Gouldian Finches, rare and endangered.

Paul Henderson and his flock mounted the podium. Thus spoke Paul:

“In regards to the intervention, I have said very strongly to the Prime Minister, to Minister Macklin with the review that’s happening at the moment, no more intervention…..”

wild applause ……. And then the punch-line:

“I will not support, as the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, I will not support any new program that has the word intervention in it.”

Stunned silence….

Once again, oppression by semantic warfare. Don’t mention the war!  http://youtu.be/7xnNhzgcWTk

In the evenings came the concerts. Musicians flew in from far and wide.

A highlight was the Black Arm Band. Consummate musicians all. They sang like nightingales. Songs of protest, songs of freedom, songs of sorrow.

Only two of them were left on the stage to close their segment with a song (actually two songs if you listen carefully). A song of hope.

Here it is:

http://youtu.be/q5aMNXdd3iU  somewhere over the rainbow blue birds fly 

Bonum vesperum,

Franciscus audiens et observator

 

Peace and religious belief

Adam Lee explores religious belief and peace.  From The Guardian

The quiet truth behind the inescapable headlines about man’s inhumanity to man is that the world is actually becoming a more peaceful place. Deaths from war and conflict have been declining for decades – and, if current trends continue, we can make them rarer still.

What mysterious force is sowing peace among humankind? One possible reason is that there are more atheists and nonbelievers than ever before.

In America, millennials are the largest and least religious generation in the country’s history. The trend toward secularization in the US mirrors the movement in Europe and throughout the developed world. And poll after poll have shown that the nonreligious also lean more progressive and more pacifist on a wide variety of issues relating to violence: torture, the death penalty, corporal punishment, military adventurism and more.

A Pew poll from 2009, well before the Senate released its devastating torture report last month, asked whether torturing suspected terrorists could be justified found that the non-religious were most opposed to torture, with a combined 55% saying that it could rarely or never be justified. Gallup has also found that people with no religious preference are less supportive of the death penalty than any group of Christians. The non-religious are also among the most likely to say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. The religiously unaffiliated are also less likely than Christians to believe that the US is superior to all other countries in the world, a hyper-patriotic attitude that’s hardly conducive to careful reflection about the use of American military power.

Religion’s violent tendencies also tend to be reflected in its adherents’ personal lives. The social scientists Christopher Ellison and Darren Sherkat found that conservative Protestants disproportionately support the use of corporal punishment, such as spanking or whipping, for children. The researchers speculate that this stems from theology: Christians who promote a literal interpretation of the Bible tend to believe that human nature is inherently evil, and that sin demands severe punishment. What’s more, the Bible itself (among its many other bloody verses) specifically calls for beating children in verses such as Proverbs 13:24. (By contrast, freethinkers like the famous American orator Robert Ingersoll recognized the cruelty of corporal punishment as early as 1877.)

As long as humanity was in thrall to the violent morality of religious texts, our societies were warlike and cruel. As the American revolutionary Thomas Paine said, belief in a cruel god makes a cruel man. It’s only in the last few decades, as we’ve begun to cast these beliefs off, that we’re making real moral progress.

The influence of the non-religious shows is also evident on an international scale. The nonprofit group Vision of Humanity publishes an annual Global Peace Index, which ranks countries on a broad spectrum of indicators, including violent crime, incarceration rates, weapon ownership, and military spending. Sociologist Phil Zuckerman summarizes their results in his new book Living the Secular Life:

…according to their most recent rankings, among the top ten most peaceful nations on earth, all are among the least God-believing – in fact, eight of the ten are specifically among the least theistic nations on earth. Conversely, of the bottom ten – the least peaceful nations – most of them are extremely religious.

Of course, not every atheist is peaceful and not every religious person is violent. Avowedly pacifist faiths like the Quakers or Unitarian Universalists have played an important role in peace movements and, in the other direction, there are lamentably prominent atheists like Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchens who’ve been entirely too cavalier about imperialism and military aggression. But in general, the trend is that, as the world becomes less religious, we can expect it to become even more peaceful.

Metaphysical Mutations

Today’s post comes from ‘The Age of Consent‘, George Monbiot’s 2003 manifesto for a new world order.

In his novel Atomised, Michel Houellebecq writes of the ‘metaphysical mutations’ which have changed the way the world’s people think.

Once a metaphysical mutation has arisen, it moves inexorably towards its logical conclusion.  Heedlessly, it sweeps away economic and political systems, ethical considerations and social structures.  No human agency can halt its progress – nothing, but another metaphysical mutation.  (Michel Houellebecq. 2001 Atomised. Vintage, London)

These events are, as Houellebecq points out, rare in history.  The emergence and diffusion of Christianity and Islam was one, the Enlightenment and ascendency of science another.  I believe we may be on the verge of a new one.

Throughout history, human beings have been the loyalists of an exclusive community.  They have always known, as if by instinct, who lies within and who lies without.  Those who exist beyond the border are less human than those who exist within.  Remorselessly, the unit of identity has grown, from the family to the pack, to the clan, the tribe, the nation.  In every case the struggle between smaller groups has been resolved only to begin a common struggle against another new federation.

Our loyalties have made us easy to manipulate.  In the First World War, a few dozen aristocrats sent eight million men to die in the name of nationhood.  The interests of the opposing armies were identical.  Their soldiers would have been better served by overthrowing their generals and destroying the class which had started the war than by fighting each other, but their national identity overrode their class interest.  The new mutation will force us to abandon nationhood, just as, in earlier epochs, we abandoned barony and the clan.  It will compel us to recognise the irrationality of the loyalties which set us apart.  For the first time in history, we will see ourselves as a species.

Racism on TV

Cristina Rocha: colonialism is alive and well on television

Sunday Night on Channel Seven portrayed white people meeting an allegedly “lost tribe” living in the “stone age”. In fact, the tribe had been contacted in the early 1980s and live in a reserve managed by the Brazilian government.

In true 16th century first-contact fashion, the journalists gave the Suruwaha Amazonian Indians trinkets and mirrors, mesmerising them with technology. Like centuries-old colonialists, they claimed this “primitive” tribe killed their own disabled children, and so they were the “worst human rights violators in the world”. The audience could almost hear them ruling: “They have no soul!”

Long ago, anthropologists did a mea culpa for their work with colonial empires. But some TV journalists and adventurers can’t get enough of the “barbarian savage”. This is not simply harmless fun – television is serious business, just as the former colonials empires were.

As a Brazilian anthropologist who has lived in Australia for the past 15 years, I can see parallels between how Europeans have dealt with Indigenous Brazilians and Indigenous Australians. The strategies of removing Indigenous children, cultural assimilation, expelling traditional owners from their land to open it for agriculture and mining, are common in both contexts.

Why did Channel Seven not consult anthropologists who have studied this tribe? Why not use what professional researchers have written in putting together the story? The likely answer is the one reached by Survival International and now the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma): racism.

As much of the western world start to acknowledge the value of traditional indigenous cultures, Channel Seven has drawn on tired stereotypes of savagery. It is comforting that Acma has decided it is not acceptable to denigrate other cultures so blatantly any more.

Cristina Rocha is an associate professor and ARC future fellow at the religion and society research centre, University of Western Sydney

From the Guardian – Read the full story here

Poetry Sunday 4 January 2015

Today’s poem comes from the contemporary Palestinian anthology “A bird is not a stone” (Freight Books, Glasgow, 2014) (Thanks to Ali Cobby Eckermann).  The poem is A Woman, by Samih Faraj, translated by Jackie Kay

A Woman
Take one step towards the old house
And another down the stairs to the home
Where a woman sits in the early evening light:
Light, the radiance of a dove, shining;
Or light like the light from a shrine.
No one knows where she has come from –
Through which quarter or distant land she has passed.
No one knows which door she opened –
What shadow the light cast when she’d gone.
No one knows the flood she passed through – 
The risks she took, the daily deluge.
No one can measure the vast sea she crossed,
The hazards she held in her small hands.
An ordinary woman: one step at a time, one step
On the land lacking, on the barren soil, one step
On the time passing:one step on the clock ticking.
Except for something in her now rising, hot, scolding.
Even her dreams are besieged, it seems, yet
In the middle of a siege it’s still possible to dream.
A dream of the old house, and her first step.

 

 

Man as Machine – Trains Pt 15

Tarquin O’Flaherty continues his discourse on the development of the steam locomotive.

The Guardian newspaper of today was, in Stephenson’s time known as ‘The Manchester Guardian’.  Incensed by the endless vitriolic attacks George Stephenson was being made to suffer, the newspaper launched a highly articulate, well informed attack on ‘The Mechanics’ Magazine’.  Describing their attitude to the Stephensons as ‘….persecution…’ and nothing more than a  ‘…system of petty detraction so long and insistently levelled at Mr Stephenson’s engines by a little knot of pseudo-mechanics…’ The ‘Mechanics’ Magazine’ dismissed the accusation and accused the Manchester Guardian of  being careless with the truth.

The Manchester Guardian, sensibly, did not rise to this bait.  Instead in an editorial they noted that the ‘Novelty’ simply hadn’t been up to the job, ‘…their engines will not work…’ and that Stephenson’s engines had ‘…performed their tasks in an admirable manner…which…our readers have… witnessed…’

This shut the ‘pseudo-mechanics’ up, but his enemy, Cropper, was waiting.  Cropper, in an effort to humiliate Stephenson, and aware that the still unfinished line was way past the promised finishing date, had persuaded the board to bring in a William Chapman to report on the reason for the delays.  George took so high a degree of umbrage at this that the letter he composed, doubtless with the help of both his son Robert and a more than able secretary, was so professional, and occupied so much of the moral high ground that the board was forced to dismiss Chapman and organise an effusive vote of confidence in George.

On the day of the Grand Opening, George Stephenson excelled himself.  He provided eight locomotives pulling eight trains packed to the rafters with 722 Lords, Ladies and gentlemen.  The Prime Minister (the Duke of Wellington) had his own carriage, smothered in red and gilt and plushly accoutred.  Three future Prime Ministers, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne and Sir Robert Peel were just three of the VIPs in attendance.  There were Viscouts, Barons and Earls of every stripe and altogether too many ambassadors to mention.  You could hardly move without tripping over a Bishop or a potential Prime Minister.  William Husskisson, former President of the Board of Trade, MP for Liverpool and long time friend and supporter of Stephenson had a place of honour, whilst other Members of Parliament swarmed there like wasps round a jampot.

George Stephenson doubtless derived real satisfaction from the fact that the ‘cream’ of that august body, the society of engineers, lined up like lapdogs to shake his  hand.

TO BE CONTINUED

George Stephenson

George Stephenson