Dave Riley : Blogisode -- writing archive and notes

My Favorite Years : Prologue

2011-06-13T18:52:00.005+10:00

Here's the drill: I'm writing a memoir of sorts that is designed to make the telling of it easy for me.

The trick is that I pick a year among the many I have amassed in the cartage of my person and 'recall' it as a 12 month long chapter.

Maybe it will end up as so many digitalised notes, but the main game is getting the hindsight out. The attraction is that I don't have to cover every year that I have been alive -- only the 'favorite' ones.

This project will surely end up as a sort of hierarchy of selective preferences as the years fall into a rating by dint of which ones I decide to do at all and those I decide to do ahead of the others...which later are rewritten anyway.

A palimpsest....

The main game, however, is that I don't have to tackle this as a strict chronology. I am allowed to jump about in time as preference and inclination suits. That's the way my memory works anyway. And later I can maybe start editing in the connections.

The trick is that as an adjunct to the writing -- despite its free form improvisations -- I can harness these chapters online in chronological order by deploying a few hacks I am familiar with. So something that is composed on the fly will be presented online seemingly in narrative form.

Whether anyone else draws sustenance from the exercise -- or not -- isn't really the point. This is all about me making do with what I've got or had in the context of my own personal experience.

That said -- it has been a pleasant existence, thus far, a tad different at times from many others I could have had.

As my mother insists: you are a long time dead.

You can take comfort in my presence

2010-08-23T20:18:00.001+10:00

GOOD NEWS! This column will soon be entering its fifth year. The smiling dial that marks it has not changed one smidgin in all that time. I'm ageless, that's what I am. I'm still the same bloke I was way back when that pic was taken; still my dear old mother's son, the crème de la crème of the Highett Rileys in the prime of his wonderful life.

How can this be, you may ask. Surely one day he must be touched by cruel time?

My resilience from the toll life levies rests on a little-known feature of my existence: I'm the second son of God.

My brother you surely know. He dropped in for a while way back in BC something or other, and went on to make quite a name for himself among the locals.

Me? I'm the shy one in the family. You won't catch me getting up to the little tricks Jesus was forever performing whenever he thought he could pull a crowd. That's not for me. I'm the family intellectual. (Please note the glasses in that regard.) The thinker.

Dad's plan was to send down a sibling every thousand years or so. My sister, Eileen, who got the job for the millennium after Jesus got nailed, was burnt as a witch just as soon as she said boo.

You won't catch me as main course on a barbecue. I want to live on to a good old age (not that you will be able to tell it), thank you very much. So as far as my theological duties are concerned, I thought I'd keep them on a back burner and settle instead on well-chosen words of wisdom each week in the pages of Green Left Weekly.

You can't blame me. Members of my family tend to die young.

So, as another Easter passes, I want you to take comfort in my presence. You won't catch me pissing off home as soon as the authorities get nasty. No, I'm in it for the long haul. And you can forget that malarky about a heavenly reward — why do you think I want to stay on down here? Dad is so strict and dogmatic that he makes the afterlife a merry hell.

My advice to you is to do the best with what you've got.

Just don't tell Dad I told you so.

From GLW issue 313

The very latest draft

2010-08-23T20:12:00.000+10:00

I've taken the view that, in the end, to allow the whole preamble to the Federal Constitution to fall over because of a personal passion for a word — "profit" — that we may all love very much would be a poor ordering of priorities. We now have within our grasp an historic opportunity to include in our Constitution, in our own contemporary words, a reference to the key role of the business class in our society.

It was extremely important for us to embrace and celebrate the indigenous entrepreneur within the Australian community. I believe this is a significant further step towards reconciliation, which has heretofore been muddied by crass expressions of opposing interests.

In this spirit of national unity, I present to you the very latest version of the draft preamble of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia:

Here's hoping (touch wood) the Commonwealth of Australia continues to serve our collective good.

We the Australian business community commit ourselves to this Constitution proud that national unity has been forged despite our many ancestries of varying fiscal interest; never forgetting the sacrifices of all who defended our markets in time of war; upholding the rule of law; (... the Abo bit goes here ...); thankful of cheap labour contributed by generations of immigrants; mindful of the ready resources and energies afforded by our unique natural environment; supportive of free enterprise and business opportunity; valuing independence and a national spirit which binds all to us despite adversity.

From GLW issue 372(1999)

Spit the dummy, why don't ya

2010-08-23T16:02:00.000+10:00

Like many of my comrades among the Greenly Left masses, I am prone to a wee bit of cynicism every now and then.

There's nothing wrong with that. While ideals and the passion they engender may claim a fair share of our dreams and waking moments, within the bounds of normally acceptable behaviour among consenting adults in the privacy of their own chitchat, cynicism in small doses surely does little harm and can, on occasion, be therapeutic.

That said, I want to confess that I am prone to chronic attacks of cynicism. If I look after myself and pace my endeavours, I find that I can go for very long periods without suffering a relapse, which is sure to cause harm to the people closest to me and the activities I love.

Presently, I am recovering from a particularly bad spell. On election night, I suddenly came down with an attack.

When Cheryl Kernot spat the dummy about the seat she had been allocated by the ALP, an immediate onset of the big "c" overwhelmed me.

Still suffering, my condition worsened the next day when Gareth Evans interrupted his golf game to tell us all that he was leaving parliament — and all those who had voted for him could go stuff themselves.

Still indisposed, the sheer scale of the golden handshakes given to those who lost their Senate seats in the poll worsened my condition. And then — after all I had been through — One Nation put out its hand for the close to $3 million it "earned" from the votes it received.

You can imagine how I was feeling! I can't recall ever being so cynical as I have been since October 3. I don't mind telling you, I was beginning to worry that maybe mine was a terminal case.

However, as they say, a trouble shared is a weight off your mind. I have since learned that I am not alone in my condition, that thousands, perhaps millions, suffer as I am suffering now.

Cynicism is no longer a condition we must experience in private, or one that affects only a few. Cynicism has now reached plague proportions. Within the four corners of Australia, everyday chitchat is sure to be marked by some symptoms of home-grown cynicism whenever the conversation drifts to the topic of politics.

I think it's a good thing. It's good to get it all out. We need to confront this new sickness that is warping our commitment to the commonwealth and its parliamentary institutions. We need to face up to our responsibilities to each other, help each other out, talk about our collective drift toward cynicism.

Most of all, cynicism needs to be recognised as a political entity in its own right. Howard and company may have their ideological commitments to this and that, but we Greenly Left masses are perhaps not so doctrinaire about what we believe in.

I'm not asking you to sign on as a Marxist or a communist; you need to be comfortable with the choices you sometimes must make.

I'm telling you to stand up for what you believe in, respect yourself and be proud of what you are. I'm saying: Cynics! Stand up and be counted! There's a whole world out there that we have just begun to feel cynical about.

From GLW issue 337

Deciding

2010-08-23T14:09:00.000+10:00

How are youse? Still making two ends meet?

— Doin' my best.

There's not much else you can do, is there?

— Not much else.

'Cept hold your head above water.

— That's right. Makin' do.

Yesiree. You can only do your best.

— Only your best.

But sometimes best ain't good enough. You follow me? You bust a gut and then even that ain't enough. Try as you might, you start to go under. The bills mount up and you lose the plot. You're cactus.

— You talkin' about someone in particular?

No. No-one special. Just general like, that's all. I'm making an observation. I mean, look at this thing what's happening in the stock markets at the moment.

— I'm not up with it, are you?

You don't have to be. Sure as hell all you need to know is that it looks bad. You, me and the other geezer are in for it.

— But I don't own any shares.

You don't have to. It doesn't work that way. When the bottom drops out like this, it's every man for himself. Mark my words: liquidate your portfolio.

— But I don't have any bloody shares.

If you had, I'm giving you fair warning. Mum's the word: property. Stick to real estate.

— But I own nothin' but a mortgage.

A nice little unit or two. Steady income with the option to negative gear.

— Sure. In my dreams.

I'm just trying to be helpful. If you were a shareholder and the markets went bust like this, I'd pull out and cut my losses. But since you're not ...

— Yeah. Go on, Mister Know-all. Since I'm not ...

Since you're not ... well, what can I say? Will you go with a GST or settle for Labor?

— Do I have to choose?

'Fraid so. It's a democratic country, you know.

— Decisions. Decisions

GLW 1998

Hero of true believers everywhere

2010-08-23T14:05:00.000+10:00

Following the return to political life of ARTHUR AUGUSTUS CALWELL, the election we are being treated to by the firm of Messrs Murdoch, Packer and Partners has taken a decidedly unusual turn.

Not one to stand on ceremony, the grand old man of the ALP parliamentary caucus has been seen shadowing Kim Beazley at every turn and photo opportunity throughout the length and breadth of this dry, brown land on which we all do dwell.

Hero of True Believers everywhere, Arthur Augustus Calwell MHR (retired) has been putting his current reincarnation to very good use indeed. "I'm still the man I used to be", the sprightly gent is often heard to say to anyone in ear-shot. "If I was any fitter, I'd be dangerous."

During this final week of the campaign I was able to catch up with the honorable deceased, who kindly granted me an audience despite his busy schedule.

Any audience with the distinguished parliamentarian is never a private affair. Always milling around are his many aides and actuaries, who he likes to refer to as his "pallbearers".

"I don't mind telling you", he said after the customary exchanges of greeting, "that I know I'm looked upon as a bit of a has-been. Calwell, they ask, who's he?

"Maybe I am an antique. Good lord, I've been dead and buried for many a long year. But you know, I've been exhumed for a very good reason.

"I'm not here to wrest back the leadership of the party. That's just spiteful rumour, no doubt put about by the Tories. Mine is a higher purpose. I'm here to remind people what the Labor Party stands for.

"There I was, minding my own business, making my own way through eternity, as is the way with we moribund types, when I got the nod that the party was drifting from its roots.

"Could I spare a mo'? It wasn't as if I was busy. Of course, I heeded the call. I know it well: now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. And before you can say upsadaisy, I'm no longer horizontally disposed.

"That's the long and the short of it. But it's somewhat strange to visit like this only to discover that, after all, I wasn't really needed. Mind you, I'm grateful they thought of me. It's an honour to be exhumed for purposes other than forensic, but really they shouldn't have bothered. Those True Believers will believe anything you tell them.

"Trust me, I know. There's one born every minute."

From GLW issue 335(1998)

Election Aftermath: Woe Is Me

2010-08-23T14:02:00.000+10:00

Let us face facts. Coffee has shattered our nerves; takeaways make us slaves to indigestion; Joseph Stalin has made us shrink from the name of socialism, and has destroyed, in the more refined part of the community (of which number I am one), all enthusiasm for uproarious political activity. And now this happens. Woe is me. A man may as well cut his wrists.

A VOICE: I suppose you are referring to the unhappy events of last Saturday. Deary me, what a catastrophe. It was only 7.30pm. The keg had been tapped and I only had time enough for two pots of bitter when I said to my offsider: "We've had it, mate. We're gone. We're stuffed." I was right. What a black day it was for the labour movement.

MYSELF (very sternly): It would take a depraved imagination to be imbued with pleasure at the prospect of the suffering that is sure to follow. All the vices and blackest passions tricked out in a masquerade dress of free choice are sure to be visited upon us. The great evil is that such reactionary sentiments are now so commonplace.

THE VOICE OF REASON: I told you so.

MYSELF: I do beg your pardon. If you did tell me, maybe I wasn't listening. I have myself a passion for reform; and, to that end, affixed my hopes to the banner of the Australian Labor Party. The whole secret to success — before my benevolence was so bitterly disappointed — seemed to lie in forming combinations with those who proclaimed to speak for us in the elected chamber of the nation's capital.

THE VOICE OF REASON: But whose side were they on? After ~~13 years~~ 3 years in office, what have you or me got to show for it?

FIRST VOICE: Watch it, mate. It's what you believe in that counts.

MYSELF: Rightly so — and I believed that we were better off with the party that proclaimed its roots deep within the soil of toil than some other, whose allegiances were overwhelmingly wedded to the business classes or one whose rhetoric always seemed somewhat suspect and actions divisive.

FIRST VOICE: Too right. If it wasn't for the Labor Party and our loyalty to it, we'd be much worse off today.

MYSELF: Precisely. Ours was the only choice available to us and we went with the lesser of two evils, then tried to make the best of it.

THE VOICE OF REASON: With your hands tide behind your back. Admit it. When it came down to the line, saving the government was more important than anything else.

MYSELF: Sometimes. Yes.

THE VOICE OF REASON: Always. Always your bottom line was keeping Labor in office despite — or even regardless of — what it did to us.

MYSELF: Such cynicism does not become you. If you must be so surly, then do so somewhere else. I am too depressed to participate in this dialogue. In fact, to put a word on it, I am shattered: shattered that we who gave our all must now suffer in silence while the new government goes about its terrible business.

FIRST VOICE: Go on. Be off with you. You can stick your rah-rah street talk of revolution up your bum. We are sick and tired of your harping.

MYSELF: Leave me in peace. My world is not a happy place. My dreams have died. Have pity on my grieving soul. It is all too much. Farewell.

From GLW issue 223(1996)

Best of all possible parliamentary worlds

2010-08-23T13:53:00.001+10:00

Look at that will ya? If you ask me they're a pack of vultures going on, baying at the heels of the pollies.

— What are you on about?

This thing that's happening to the Labor Party. It's tragic, that's what it is, real tragic. All Wayne Swan wants to do is to serve. It's like a calling, like a nurse. Politics is a vocation. You got to be very community-minded to want to go into politics in the first place. You have to be special, you know what I mean?

— Oh, you're special all right.

Don't be like that. It pains me to hear you say that. It's a national past time: let's kick the politicians, let's go after their blood. We're a nation of cynics. But tell me, if it wasn't for the politicians, our professional representatives, who'd show us the ropes, who'd run the show? Without them we'd be headless.

— It's not just this Labor stuff. What about the travel rorts and the phone card scandal and stuff like that. I bet that's just the tip of the iceberg!

There you go again. You gotta take in the big picture. You have to be generous.

— What? Love thy local MP as thy would thyself?

I'm talking about respect. Maybe they err sometimes. Maybe they lose the plot occasionally. But, damn it, they're the nation's finest.

— Why?

Because we elected them. That's what it's all about and for 100 years, every now and then, we get to decide who we want. That's democracy. That's federation. It's freedom of choice.

— And this is the best we can do? After a hundred years of voting and platforms and "choice" , this is what we get?

Yes. It's the best of all possible worlds — a bicameral, federal system resting on preferential voting with universal franchise and a strategically located national capital. A parliamentary democracy: the pinnacle of humanity's worldly achievements.

— Gee. I think you're right. What a horrible thought!

Yep. It doesn't get any better than this.

The ALP left: Lest we forget you

2010-08-23T13:49:00.000+10:00

By Dave Riley

I am sick of the bitter, sectarian divisiveness that exists on the left in this country. Unlike some of my colleagues, I would like to express my utmost respect for those readers of Green Left Weekly who plan to renew their membership of the Australian Labor Party.

At a time when notions of commitment are standardly treated with disdain, it is heartening to know that there are people among us who believe that they can make a difference. Yes, even in the Labor Party. Such sentiments are rare.

This is precisely what the Left should be doing to regain its relevance — daring to struggle, daring to win.

No matter what others may say, no matter how futile the exercise may at first appear, it is pleasing to see such sentiment rekindled even in the most cynical of breasts. (And let's face it, we lefties are a cynical bunch.) I don't think I could do it. Comrades, I take my hat off to you.

I tell you: ignore the criticisms. Be firm and resolute. What this country needs is a Labor Party left wing. If we only had had such a body 25, 15, 10 or even five years ago, things would be so very different today.

To you campus students, let me say: the future of the Labor Party is in your hands. It is from among you that the leaders of tomorrow will be drawn. The radical idealism of youth and its determination never to compromise will find a ready home in the new left of the Labor Party.

Unfortunately, I cannot be with you to share your great endeavour. While my heart and my hopes go with you, this old soldier will be sitting this one out. But don't worry, from the sidelines I — and maybe one or two others — will be cheering you on.

To give my support some tangible form, I have arranged for the early reprinting of the seminal work Towards

Socialism in 1001 Motions. This classic text shows you how to make each vote count. In the Labor Party, you can't be left without it.

So before you renew your ticket, make certain you pick up a copy. You'll need some grounding in theory, because this time the left is reputed to mean business — so entry standards are quite high.

I also understand that there is still a limited stock available from head office of the newly revised and updated edition of The 1994/95 ALP Careers Guide. Always a popular seller, you'll need it if you want to keep abreast of all the left options currently available to you.

It is no use pretending that you won't run into some problems of credibility. Other members of the left community are not as well read as I, and ignorance does breed misunderstanding. Their criticisms may tend to annoy, even phase you at times. Unlike so many others, you know on which side you stand. Never forget that. If anything distinguishes the militant wing of the ALP from the sham socialist politics that masquerades outside, it is practical allegiance to the working people of Australia.

Such fortitude shames the rest of us. Where would we be if you weren't where you are? Who says the left is no longer capable of sacrificing for its principles?

Let's hear it for the new left of the Labor Party. Comrades, heed my plea: Stay in and fight!

Lest we forget you.

...from GLW issue 160

Something to fight for

2010-07-31T00:50:00.000+10:00

That Craig Johnston was released from jail on the very day that the Coalition government unveiled its new industrial relations laws warrants special attention by all those millions of Australian working people who will see their wages, job security and working conditions ravaged by this package.

Johnston's fighting speech upon his release has had an inspiring effect and multiplied the call for resistance by prominent Socialist Alliance trade union leaders and others who have declared that they too are keen to fight.

Already the Socialist Alliance-initiated National Trade Union Fightback Conference, to be held in Melbourne on June 11, seems assured of being a success. In the context of the desultory response to the impending Coalition control of the Senate from among ALP parliamentarians, an old adage has suddenly become exceedingly relevant: if you don't fight you lose.

That Johnston stepped from his prison cell unbowed tells us a lot about him. It may seem corny to suggest it, but this is the stuff that makes for working-class heroes. I don't want to get caught up too much in such labels or embarrass Craig, but the very best thing about his example is that maybe, just maybe, such people do exist and for them "struggle" is not a dirty word.

Because if we don't fight, what are our options? A court challenge facilitated by the very same state premiers who have orchestrated any number of measures against working people in their own domains. Or wait and fume until we can re-elect Labor federally — but it will take until the next decade before Labor, in tandem with the Greens perhaps, can get another crack at controlling the Senate.

In the meantime what are we supposed to do? That's the problem. How much it is a problem shared will become very clear over the coming years.

While we will need our working-class heroes and militant speeches, any fight-back has to draw together those who are keen to resist. But where is that coming together going to happen? It's happening now in the Socialist Alliance. Over the past four years the SA has begun to assemble those who are ready to fight. It has drawn together some 1200 members who are proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with people like Craig.

Our project may have legs but the political need is much bigger than what we can fulfil.

While that may be our problem, it is also yours. Alliance members like Craig Johnston can't do it by themselves. If the alliance epitomises all the elements of fight-back, resistance and struggle, what we need and what you need is not another cheer squad. We are all going to have to come up with much more in the years ahead.

Perhaps we are at a stage where our options may seem clearer because they are so stark. PM John Howard's arrogant extension of the proposed exemption from unfair dismissal laws means that 60% of already insecure workers will be much worse off. Once in place, these laws crudely and boldly proclaim that class governs all workplaces, and that the struggle the boss was keen to ignore still festers there despite all those years we were told to hose it down or put it to one side.

If that means that we have to proudly and aggressively reclaim our true identity as members of the working class, then that's something to fight for.

Dave Riley

[Dave Riley is a member of the SA/GLW liaison editorial board]

From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.

The expensive hardware that visits your backyard

2010-07-31T00:39:00.001+10:00

What would I be if I were 77 metres high, 344 metres long, 78 metres at my widest point and a full three metres taller than Brisbane's Story Bridge?

Give up? I'd be the USS Ronald Reagan, the world's largest aircraft carrier, come to Brisbane for some well deserved R&R.

This boat was surely the biggest thing ever to come to town — and park downstream from the CBD.

The local media pitched the ship's statistical attributes as the main story: a crew of 6000, a flight deck that covers 1.82 hectares, a total weight of 97,000 tonnes, its own newspaper, as well as a radio and television station ... The USS Ronald Reagan was its own live-in suburb and work station, which dropped by for five days to spend something in the order of $5 million soaking up, as the ships's PR team would have it, "local culture".

Brisbane residents were told how lucky they were to have so many sailors in port. We learned that a local committee generated by the business community had been working for some time to encourage the US Seventh Fleet — which comprises 50 ships and 20,000 sailors and marines — to schedule the port of Brisbane as a routine stop-over for the fleet's R&R.

With potentially so many in port — think of all the money they'll spend!

But there was to be a trade off. Squeezed in among all the data about this very big boat was a note to the effect that the vessel is powered by two nuclear reactors and, as the Courier Mail newspaper put it as an aside, "The reactors will remain in operation even while the ship is docked just kilometres from the inner city".

If you were thinking that you don't much care for that kind of thing ticking over in your own backyard, don't complain ... this visit was supposed to be a win-win for all concerned. (And don't forget about all that money!)

As far as the news coverage went, a great time was had by all for the US dollars spent, before the ship set sail to join the fleet.

But not long after the Ronald Reagan had "fissioned" (as distinct from "steamed") out of port it lost one of its planes overboard — a $37 million FA-18 Hornet strike fighter that crashed while attempting to land on the carrier's deck.

Suddenly the nuclear attributes of the ship became an issue, such that Lieutenant-Commander Gary Ross was very keen to point out: "I can assure you it was not carrying nuclear weapons". With this piece of unrecoverable hardware sitting in 4000 metres of water off the continental shelf, who's to know?

But the loss of the plane sure soured the good PR the visit was getting. While the crash served to highlight the nuclear issue and the prospect that this ship wasn't error-proof, the price tag on the Hornet drew attention to the amount of capital tied up in instruments of war.

The USS Ronald Reagan cost $5 billion to build and requires about $3.68 million per day to operate. While gargantuan boats such as this are sure to come with a hefty price tag, that's a lot of money to spend on an enterprise whose primary function is to kill people.

With such costs involved, it is tempting to consider how else the money could be spent. Five billion dollars would go a long way if stretched for education or health or housing.

Billions of dollars worth of hardware are floating the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean as part of US Seventh Fleet on the off chance there's some killing or bullying to do. Surely there's better and more humane things to spend the money on.

Dave Riley

[Dave Riley is a member of the Socialist Alliance-Green Left Weekly editorial board.]

From Green Left Weekly, February 8, 2006.

Successor to a certain dog

2010-07-31T00:29:00.000+10:00

Aladdin

Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements

With voices of Robin Williams, Linda Larkin

Reviewed by Dave Riley

You know the story, of course: everyone knows the story. The tale of Aladdin's lamp was good oil long before petrol or BP. This three wish wonder has been around for 1100 years.

But the Disney studios know better. If the Arab imagination could make carpets fly, then Operation Desert Storm could do away with Baghdad all together. They tried. US forces targeted it relentlessly during the 1991 Gulf War. In the fight against evil it is the American way to replace magic carpets with smart bombs.

While George Bush, may have used up all his wishes punishing Saddam Hussein, in the New World Order at the Magic Kingdom, Baghdad simply does not exist.

Instead, rub as you may, this lamp won't get you out of Hollywood. The high tech graphics and 3-D visuals overlay the same old stuff. Disney animation monopolises twee females seeking marriage for love and animals who chatter away in Brooklyn accents. It's all very much the formula.

More's the pity, because this story has been filmed with great success a few times already. The best version was Alexander Korda's masterpiece The Thief of Baghdad, shot on the coast of Britain during the second world war. In comparison, this Aladdin seems like a video game.

Even by Disney standards the animation is not a touch on the sensuousness in Pinocchio nor is the music comparable to The Little Mermaid. In the hype to turn the film into a "date movie" and generate even higher profits than Beauty and the Beast, this old tale has been turned into a cynical marketing exercise. The kiddies won't know what hit them.

Those of us who take greater care than our offspring at the ticket office window may be safe from the mental gymnasium in Robyn Williams' mouth and in future take our cartoon characters neat. Homer Simpson may not have the verbal pastiche of Williams' over the top genie, but Homer and his kin have a lot more to say to us than Aladdin could ever dream of with all his wishes.

And that, I suppose, is the point. Aladdin with all its thrills and magic carpet rides is as empty as Goofy's brain.

From GLW issue 108

Hello. Is there anyone in there?

2010-07-31T00:28:00.000+10:00

Comment by Dave Riley

Roger Clarke's brave attempt in the pages of Green Left Weekly to encourage us not to forsake the Labor Party has contributed nothing new to a perennial debate. Roger's gall is his attempt to sweeten the bitter pill of Laborism at a time when the ALP is the most broadly reactionary — in its rhetoric, in its platform, in its philosophical loyalties and in its practice — during the whole of its history.

History, if you recall, is what happened yesterday. Instead, the amnesic Clarke promises the left a new beginning if it only joins him in the ranks of the Labor Party.

This debate developed out of an interview I did with ALP ex-senator George Georges, which was published in these pages last September. Georges — rather boldly, I thought, given his own somewhat bitter experience of ALP membership — called for a return of the left to the ALP.

Since that time, almost six months ago, what has the left of the ALP achieved within the party that seems worth crowing about? Have they changed their tack and tried to win one? Indeed, we could ask of them how successful have they been in fulfilling the mission prescribed for them by George Georges and Roger Clarke?

The balance sheet isn't conducive to confidence. Aside from word that reaches us about the usual run of faction fights, we would be hard pressed to discover what the Labor left has done for us lately.

To insist on tangible results is not an unfair demand given our previous collective experience of the ALP — of its left as much as its right wing. Maybe the left is waiting for an issue to cut its teeth on, choosing to pick its fight rather than going off half-cocked. But what's wrong with the issues already to hand?

It is, however, outside the Labor Party where issues are not being neglected or put off to another day because it is outside the Labor Party where struggle is currently focused. From Mascot airport to abortion law reform and East Timor, the actual dynamic of campaigning is being determined by people outside of — and in most cases, extremely hostile to — the ALP.

Clarke concedes to reality and bemoans our readiness to identify the party with its spots. But then we are told that our easy bias fails to address the presence of the ALP's true left — the genuine socialists in its ranks, like Comrade Clarke (who now seems determined to donate his political organs to the party).

These are the flecks of gold within Labor's dross and supposedly deserve our undivided attention — so much so that even the hint of their presence should be enough to cause us all to drop everything else we are doing and go in after them.

This doesn't mean that an active orientation towards the Labor Party is, in principle, wrong or merely a hypothetical question. Two examples that stand out in my mind which could call for such a tactic to be adopted are the massive spread of the socialisation units in the New South Wales Labor Party during the Lang administration of the early '30s, and the climate within the Victorian branch soon after federal intervention — and the initial formation of the Socialist Left — which coincided with a threefold increase in state ALP membership before the 1972 federal poll. Neither of these dynamics is analogous to the situation in the Labor Party today.

Indeed, many of these so-called "genuine socialists" who supposedly inhabit the cloisters of the ALP are refugees from small or defunct organisations outside it — like Roger Clarke — who have given up the project of building an alternative to laborism and now cover their tracks under the guise of the rhetoric of "relevance" (which is supposedly distinct from the practice of accommodation).

But as it is said: the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Since Clarke has courageously put his foot in it and spoken so keenly for the left to rejoin the ALP, it is now not merely a question of how many naive souls take up his call but also what Clarke, Georges and company manage to achieve.

We all will be watching and waiting. Personally I'm sticking with the independence of the political life I have rather than trading it in for the second hand existence imprisonment within the ALP offers.

[The editor respectfully suggests that all participants in this debate follow Dave Riley's advice by absorbing the experiences of at least a few months before renewing this discussion.]

From GLW issue 182

Idolising the competition

2010-07-31T00:25:00.000+10:00

Australian Idol

Channel 10

Just finished

BY DAVE RILEY

With a net annual profit of $76.93 million to crow about, Network Ten's hold on the youth market demographic is sure to continue — at least until it's milked what it can from the recently completed series of Australian Idol.

Idol looks set to be the biggest ratings hit of 2004. It is the most watched television program around the country among teenagers and young adults. Almost 2 million viewers tune in each Sunday night.

But the momentum Idol has generated tends to obscure the fact that it is essentially another gong show. After nationally orchestrated televised try-outs of thousands of pop wannabees, the culling process was skilfully manipulated by the show's producers. Like its reality counterpart, Survivor, contestants were required to prevail by dint of true grit and maybe a good set of pipes.

The new protocol for interactive television is that competition rules. When last year's Idol winner, Guy Sebastian, released his first album and single they both went straight to number one on the ARIA charts. Whoever wins Idol this time around is guaranteed to replicate such success. Unlike Big Brother, in which the succession of households simply broke up at the end, Idol offers the loyal watcher the prospect of investing further in the winner's future by buying the end product.

Idol may be a gong show with sophisticated production values, but the way viewers are encouraged to identify with and relate to their preferred performer ensures that their loyalty is snared — and despite themselves, viewers will be tuning in again to witness the unfolding tale of how Casey, Anthony, Chanel or whoever fare in their quest for the big time. And they can do this three nights each week through three hours of prime-time television.

But at its core, Idol is a bunch of young people with a proverbial hope or dream and maybe the talent to realise it. The contestants' sincere passion for what they do — sing — seem acutely out of place amid the shenanigans they are asked to endure, as week by week they are methodically moulded and culled. Each week the demands made by the show are more acute. And each week the voting masses are asked to help design the marketing template they later will be asked to purchase. While your standard Idol contestant may be a youngster from the suburbs enjoying their allocated 15 minutes of fame, Network 10, the recording studios and corporate advertisers are making millions. Vocal intonation may be discussed and dwelled upon, and we may thrill at the pure artistry of some of these performances but what's required is, in the end, a marketable package.

However, a lot of issues are played out on the way. Idol is such a major phenomenon and because it embraces a key expressive form such as popular music, the exchanges around it are well worth tuning into. Even a quick tour of the Idol website's message boards confirms this. Young people employ music as an important tool to explain or explore the world. Despite all the attempts by the show's minders and judges to shape the end product and reformat these young people to rule — and the youngest in the final is 16 — their determination to remain themselves is impressive.

From Green Left Weekly, November 24, 2004.

Permanent war for permanent peace

2010-07-31T00:21:00.002+10:00

Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith

Directed by George Lucas

Starring Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen & Ewan McGregor

REVIEW BY DAVE RILEY

Just when you thought you'd had enough of the throbbing fluroescence of light sabres hovering over the heads of intergalactic villains, along comes this latest and maybe last offering in the Star Wars franchise. Busier than its predecessors, Revenge of the Sith has enough pumped up activity to patent merchandise aplenty. Sith-related stuff is sure to be cropping up everywhere.

This time around though, it's a long ride or warp drive to the outer star systems. I guess a lot of what you get out of the journey depends on what you came for. Star Wars is now so much a prized artefact, that you have to be able to say at some time that you're one of those who has seen it. And see it millions will.

What you don't expect from the franchise is the gripping analogy between today's "war on terrorism" and this once-upon-a-time galaxy far away. As Lucas himself has noted, "When I wrote it, Iraq (the US-led war) didn't exist ... but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable."

Other observers have been digging up George Bush homilies, such as "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terrorism", and matching them with such takes as "You are either with me, or you are my enemy" from the fledgling Darth Vader. While Lucas excuses the analogy as coincidence, because the story was conceived back in the 1970s, there's a nasty dark parable being played out on screen that is horribly close to reality. In the eyes of many people in the US, the question posed by this Star Wars — how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship? — seems remarkably relevant to their anxiety over the current occupant of the White House. This may be simple hand wringing to go with the popcorn, but there is even a darker message there on screen.

If it hasn't twigged with you yet, in this episode the dark side of the force triumphs. Despite the Jedi Knights and their sustaining temple (I guess that's a new attribute of Jedism), galactic democracy, such as it is, gets a drubbing. So as endings go, you could call this one a bummer.

But hey! we know how it ends, don't we? With young Luke Skywalker yet to come, the forces of good triumph (circa 1983 of course!) when Return of the Jedi puts all to right and corrects that grave disturbance in the force we all knew about.

If the film of that victory was first screened a generation ago, in a different political period, Revenge of the Sith embraces its time not with a potent rallying call for resistance, but with the filmic note that the galactic zoo of extraterrestrials must wait at least 20 more years until Luke and his twin sister Princess Leia come of fighting age before resistance can begin to triumph.

If this film is a parallel with the terrestrial now, its message is bleak indeed. If Bush's permanent war for permanent peace is cross-referenced in a galaxy far, far away, then we are sentenced by dint of the medieval mumbo jumbo that Star Wars trades in, to patiently wait until a Jedi Knight comes our way.

From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.

The Third World comes to town

2010-07-31T00:19:00.002+10:00

Dave Riley

If you are among the 4 billion or so of this planet's occupants who hail from the Third World, a moment of fame can be yours if, by some extraordinary good fortune, you take part in the tournament we like to refer to as the Commonwealth Games.

While we would normally be asked to look upon you as a fascinating exotic, nothing delights us more than seeing foreign flesh stepping onto the rostrum to claim a trinket as first, second or third best in some sport that your country is apparently rather good at.

Come to our country to compete in such events and we'll think you are the cat's pyjamas. Too bloody right we will. We honour muscle regardless of colour when it puts on a show like that.

We're human too and if your body can run faster than another one, jump higher or what not, we will give credit where credit is due. That's what the Games are all about — celebrating excellence in sport.

So excuse us if we rely on the medal tally to assure ourselves that what we lose on the swings we gain on the roundabouts. Nice try ... but we make no apology for the fact that our team is better than your team and our country is, of course, the ant's pants. That's what the Games are all about, and especially now that Britannia is no longer in invasion mode. (Other than Iraq of course, but we're there too).

Empire is yesterday's news. Today we aim to get on, you know, with one another — despite our differences.

But that doesn't mean we want to live in each other's pockets. While we'll celebrate diversity, we'd prefer, if you don't mind, to keep such differences at arm's length. We celebrate your country, you celebrate ours. We don't mind what colour the back is we pat. But we'd prefer — well, we'd insist actually — that you stay where you are.

Don't get us wrong. We love it when you visit. That's what the Games are about. Your creme de la creme puts on a real good show and we appreciate, we really appreciate, you coming ... to our games. We'd be lost without your, what shall I say ... colour.

But when the Games are over and you go back home to your Third World — and we get on with our business of being Australian and you get on with yours of being, you know, whatever — don't ever think that it can be like that every other day.

It's nice to have the Third World in town for a visit. Real nice. We must do it again sometime. See you later. Our regards to those at home.

From Green Left Weekly, March 29, 2006.

Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer - reluctantly

2010-07-31T00:16:00.000+10:00

Dave Riley

Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer ran out of petrol and reluctantly died of kidney failure on Boxing Day. He was 68.

When I look back at a life such as his I am reminded that we are all victims of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In Kerry's case this amounted to $100 million — being the amount bequeathed to him by his late father Clyde. Such a fortune is, in anyone's estimation, pretty outrageous.

When dear old Aunt Maude passes on and leaves you Uncle Reg's ashes, the budgerigar, Tiddles the cat and a month's supply of kitty litter — you need to spare a thought for the heavy burden of responsibility the young Kerry had to bear.

No one asked him what he thought. It wasn't his choice to be born a Packer. Maybe — we don't know, but maybe — he yearned for a simpler and easier life?

Regrettably we will not know the answer, as Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer (now deceased) could only live the one life that was allotted him.

Someone had to break the sports boycott of apartheid South Africa. To imagine Channel 9 without a Packer at the helm seems almost unAustralian, does it not? And what's a polo pony to do without a rider?

So you gotta cut the man some slack. Sure he was a rich so and so and died with a net worth of around $6.5 billion (give or take a hundred mill here or there), but come on — all he could do was his best as he saw it within the bounds of his legacy. That's the most we can ask of any of our children.

He had a dicky heart and dodgy kidneys remember ... and he was addicted to gambling. And you know how deep a hole the pokies can make in a pension cheque! With Kerry it was the same, although the holes are deeper even if the cheques are larger. So it's all relative, I guess. He was one of us, who nonetheless had his own crosses to bear.

I think we often forget that. He may have been a Packer, rather than your Joe Average, but at heart (and a faulty heart it was too) Kerry Packer knew which cricket team to barrack for. He may have been a gambler, but he knew gambling's demons and had the good sense to own some of the casinos he wagered in.

There's a lesson there that we tend to ignore. He may have been a tycoon in every sense of the word, but he was our tycoon. Here was a man that could stand up to multinationals like Rupert Murdoch's and proclaim that we Australians prefer to give our money to the local guy.

He could say that and mean it! Every word of it!

Makes you so darn proud it does. Whether we're watching Channel 9, or reading Women's Weekly, or dropping the food money into the pokies, each of us, in our own small way, will be doing our bit to ensure that future generations of Packers won't have to work as hard for their next billion as their dear old dead dad had to.

From Green Left Weekly, January 25, 2006.

The new industrial trinity

2010-07-31T00:06:00.002+10:00

Did you know that there are three major changes contained in these new industrial proposals? Did ya know that?

— I estimated that maybe a cardinal figure of such numerate proportions was involved.

There's three, see — one, two, three — 'tis an industrial trinity. Cause they gotta come together to work their magic.

— They surely do.

It's spiritual. Very spiritual.

— Wow. I mean, wow!

The first is one single unitary national industrial relations system!

— No more flow-ons?

That's so right. There'll be you, see — and there'll be them. In mutual agreement — battlers and bosses. It'll be consensual. All together under the southern cross. One big conjugation.

— All for one, one for all. One big union.

No. Not a union.

— Oh.

But there's more. I said there were three, didn't I? That's only number one. As well as offering one single unitary industrial relations system! you'll also receive ... as part of the same industrial package ... an on-the-job, do-it-yourself, user-friendly, flexible wages and conditions interface tailored to your individual needs.

— I don't quite follow you there...

Well, it will be so simple that even you can do it. It will be so simple you'll want to do it. It will be so simple that even a child could do it — assuming we were employing them (but hey, its still early days).

— Do what?

Negotiate your very own boutique award.

— My own what?

Award ... well, "contract", but we won't be calling it that.

Boutique award, has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Very evocative. But hey! What could be simpler! No smoke and mirrors. You yourself get to lay your cards on the table and talk turkey.

— What, with the boss?

With the very same — up close and personal.

— Wow.

You'll be somebody. You'll be your own man ... or lady ... whatever the case may be.

— My own man, you say?

The very same. Interfacing. "Doing lunch", eh? Chewing the fat ...

— Across the table.

Partners under the Southern Cross ...

— You did say it was spiritual.

Oh, my, yes. You have to believe. The true measure of the worth of any industrial relations system is its contribution to the economic strength of the nation and that is why we need to believe this new system will deliver more jobs and higher wages.

— It will, will it?

Of course it will! Why do you think we bother with this stuff?

— Oh.

You have to look at the big picture.

— But how do these changes deliver more jobs and higher wages?

They just do. You need to believe. Trust me.

— Right. Sorry. I forgot.

And the third and final change is to better balance the unfair dismissal laws.

— How's that done?

We make them fairer and less unjust.

— By making dismissal more just?

Exactly. Now you're getting the hang of it.

Dave Riley

From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.

The new IR bill: it's about choices

2010-07-31T00:05:00.001+10:00

You don't mean, do you Minister, that under these proposed IR changes that an unemployed person will need to accept any job regardless of the conditions offered?

— Well, yes. He has no choice. If he doesn't take the job no matter what the conditions he loses his benefit. We don't make any excuses for this.

No-one is asking you to make excuses.

— Well they won't get any —

But we would like some clarification.

— You got it.

Yes. I suppose we did. But ... correct me if I'm wrong ... but wouldn't that mean, in the long run, wages and conditions would tend to deteriorate?

— Ah. But you miss the key point: they'll be working. We believe that the best form of welfare that a person can have is to have a job and remembering this: when a person gets a job it is the best way of getting another job.

But what sort of job would that be?

— A paying job. What other kinds are there?

But how much pay and under what employment conditions?

— That's up for discussion between the parties concerned. You know, across the table.

But you just said, Minister, that if the unemployed person "doesn't take the job no matter what the conditions", he loses his benefit.

— So?

Well, how can that be a matter for discussion?

— It just is. I'm sure they'll discuss it. I'm not a fly on the wall, you know.

But surely the result is forgone, isn't it, as the person on the dole has to accept the job no matter what?

— No matter what what?

They'll lose their benefit won't they if they say no?

— I don't quite follow you. They can still choose not to take the job.

And lose their benefit —

— Or take the job. That's choice. That's free enterprise.

But what sort of choice is that?

— Remember, if they don't like that particular job, they can go looking for another. That's what we're doing — creating jobs. They'll be tons of jobs out there once this bill gets up.

Paying and offering less.

— I don't know that, do I? I'm not a fly on the wall.

But it stands to reason.

— What's that got to do with it? This is all about choices. The bloody thing's called "WorkChoices" for Chissake!

But the unemployed person won't have any.

— Then they shouldn't have been so unemployed in the first place.

Dave Riley

[Inspiration: ABC TV — The Insiders interview with BarryCassidie. See here .]

From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.

Robert Long is lucky to be alive

2010-07-31T00:02:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, July 12, 2000 - 10:00

BY DAVE RILEY

Robert Long is lucky to be alive. As a "witness" wanted in connection to the Childers Hostel fire, Long was indeed fortunate to make it to jail with only a flesh wound.

I'm sure there are many who thought Long was ready made for the desperado role. Going bush with the finger of blame upon him for the manslaughter of all those touring backpackers (and in an Olympics year!). An itinerant picker and reputed partner basher who most likely/more than likely/really did burn down a caravan. Already wanted by the police in connection to some other nasty charges ... This guy must be a really mean bastard. He even hit a dog and knifed a copper who was only trying to protect his little bow wow from a fink like you.

Robert Long, you sure are lucky to be alive. Because if the media had their way, you would have made a great corpse for the six o'clock news. The last time anyone went feral in Queensland he had the good sense to do himself in. Next time, keep to the script!

Robert Long, because you are still alive, further juicy details of your evil existence will have to wait. But since we don't like your chances of beating the rap, you would win a lot of Brownie points if you bravely copped the blame.

In the year of the Olympics, we want the world to know Australia doesn't make a habit of incinerating visitors. Think of your country, Robert Long. We want tourists to be able to sleep soundly in their B&Bs without giving a thought to overnight ignition.

Robert Long, on your head rests the future of the Australian tourism industry. Think about it, Robert: even a bum like you can make a wonderful contribution to this country if you go quietly into the night. So be as guilty as they hope you are. Don't rock the boat. Take you punishment bravely.

And remember, Robert: it is a far, far better thing you do now than you have ever done. It is a far, far better sleep you offer us than before. It is a far, far better option to blame you than to ask.

Mum's the word, Robert.

From GLW issue 411

A very important message

2010-07-30T23:59:00.002+10:00

BY DAVE RILEY

The World Health Organisation today issued a new warning against non-essential travel to the entire Western hemisphere following renewed concerns about the spread of Severe Loss of Perspective Syndrome (SLOPS).

Officials are warning travellers not to visit Britain, the US, almost all of Western Europe, Canada and Australia, following further outbreaks of the disease, which has led to mass panic among the media, thousands of ecstatic children being kept out of school by their credulous and moronic parents, and increased profits for DIY stores from the idiot public rush to bulk-buy face masks and boiler suits.

A WHO spokesperson said, "You'd be much better off going to somewhere like Taiwan or China, because all you've got to worry about there is SARS, and let's face it, you're about as likely to die from that as you are to get kicked to death by a gang of zombie nuns."

The SARS virus has now claimed a staggering 500 lives in only six months, which makes it considerably more deadly than, say, malaria, which only kills around 3000 people every single day. Malaria, however, mainly affects only those that speak "foreign" languages, whereas SARS has made at least one English-speaking person feel a bit iffy for a couple of days, and is therefore considered much more serious.

The spread of SLOPS has now reached pandemic proportions, with many high-level politicians seemingly affected by the disease. The rapid spread of SLOPS has been linked to the end of the war in Iraq and the need for Western leaders to give the public something to worry about. Otherwise, they might start asking uncomfortable questions about domestic issues, and that simply would not do.

To contain the spread of SLOPS, anyone who appears to be exhibiting symptoms of SLOPS should be placed under house arrest with no access to TV, internet or newspapers until they regain their sanity.

From Green Left Weekly, July 2, 2003.

Troy: A sword and sandal anti-war allegory

2010-07-30T23:57:00.002+10:00

REVIEW BY DAVE RILEY

Troy

Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

With Brad Pitt and Eric Bana

Screenplay by David Bewioff

For an uncomfortably long time into this movie I thought I had done my dough. I don't like investing risk money into my entertainments and the dollars spent on hyped-up Troy were a risk.

The movie seemed turgidly caught up in itself. Where were the great special effects, the FX stuff I could get wholesale from every other sword and sandal epic, like Gladiator? Where on Earth was this movie going?

The actual historical siege of the city of Troy not only fostered Homer's The Iliad, but was the substance that Euripides employed to create the world's first great anti-war play — The Trojan Women (415 BC), which has been revived around the world as part of coordinated international protests against the Iraq war.

With that in mind, as I sat there yearning for more for my buck, the penny dropped — the siege of Troy was again an excuse to oppose war, this time against Iraq. The invasion of Iraq occurred just as shooting for this film got underway in Malta.

I doubt that the screenplay was consciously bent to relate to events three millennia later than when the film's story was set, but as its director, Wolfgang Petersen, has said: "Just as King Agamemnon waged what was essentially a war of conquest on the ruse of trying to rescue the beautiful Helen from the hands of the Trojans, President George W. Bush concealed his true motives for the invasion of Iraq."

Some may lament how much history repeats itself, but when you settle into the contemporary relevance of this movie it becomes an incredible exploration that runs deeper than mere analogy.

Troy pivots around the character of Achilles (Brad Pitt). In this retelling, ancient Greece's most fearsome warrior is not a relentless fighting machine dedicated to any amount of right stuff idealism, but a prototype of modern soldiery.

Achilles may be the best and the bravest but he's pretty much sick of the slaughter he is party to. For him it's a job and glory is merely a bonus. He'd rather do his killing on his own terms than someone else's. Shackled by loyalty to his comrades he really doesn't give a fig for the big picture.

Indeed, Achilles' problem is the sudden realisation that the enemy isn't so much on the battlements of Troy, but at home. As Petersen has said: "I wouldn't make a movie like Air Force One now." And I doubt anyone else would either.

From Green Left Weekly, June 9, 2004.

What do we do next?

2010-07-30T23:55:00.004+10:00

The recent Australian Labor Party federal conference presents us all with a major challenge. Despite the hype and spin that Mark Latham's ascendancy over the ALP has been able to generate in the media, none of this extravagant attention addresses the question of what "we" do next?

Like a child's knock-knock game, we tap on the ALP to ask who's there? Whoever was there at this conference didn't get us very far at all. What hope there was for a major change in refugee policy was dashed. Latham Labor is not going to stray very far from the Coalition government's stonewalling approach to refugees.

The reality was that change for refugees was beaten back when the amendments went down. But does it then follow that our one course of action is that advocated by Carmen Lawrence — to now plan to come "back again and again and again" to future ALP conferences, each time arguing for further amendment? Is that what we do next? Lick our wounds and wait for another prearranged national gathering in the hope that policy then could be bent more to our liking?

Is it enough to console ourselves — as quite a few do — that at least under Latham the ALP has a chance of ousting the Coalition government? The ALP is currently in power in every state and territory in Australia and their implementation of the pro-corporate, economic rationalist agenda is there for all to see. There is no reason to believe that a Latham ALP government in Canberra would do any differently.

If the ALP left recognises this, it should reach out to the progressive forces outside the ALP to help shift the national political agenda to the left to counteract the ALP's right-wing leadership. This would be a dramatic shift in the ALP left's traditional role, which has been to integrate dissent into the ALP electoral option, not challenge it.

The problem with that approach is that it assumes that change in this country is hostage to the ALP alone. It is a perspective in dire need of a reality check. This year's ALP federal conference can be compared to the one held 20 years ago, in 1984. Then the ALP dramatically changed its position — deciding to support the mining and sale of uranium.

Immediately there was a massive reaction. Labor's turnaround was met with anger and disgust. Few anti-uranium activists were interested in coming "back again and again and again" with a cap in hand full of amendments. As a direct result of that conference decision, the Nuclear Disarmament Party was formed.

The formation of the NDP and its subsequent, if brief, electoral success, dramatically challenged the monopoly the ALP had over the progressive side of politics in this country. It kicked off twenty years of rich experimentation — both success and failure — to the left of the ALP.

We can draw nourishment from this experience. We can talk about the various forms this process has taken, but there is no contrived remedy we can point to. But we do know one thing: a party for real change can and has to be built outside the ALP. That has already been proven, especially with the continuing electoral success of the Greens.

The Socialist Alliance was formed by eight left groups and parties on February 17, 2001, as an anti-capitalist party.

We stand for socialism — democratic ownership and management of the social wealth. We believe that a society based on satisfying human need can be created, but only by taking power from the elites who now rule.

We stand for a society run by and for working people, both here, but also internationally. We believe that socialism will be won by the power of the masses on the streets and in the workplaces. We seek election to parliament not to "represent" the movements, but to help build them, resource them, and help them win.

We are committed to working with all other parties and individuals in campaigns for progressive change.

That's a big part of what the Socialist Alliance project is about. While the alliance makes a pitch for its share of the electoral disenchantment with the ALP, it doesn't just raise its head at election time. That's where the difference lies between it and other political formations.

For many people, politics like this — which is ongoing — may be a new approach to the perennial problem of seeking to change: whether it be a particular policy or the whole world. It isn't a self evident thing that effort and success don't have to cease once the polling stations are shut.

For the Socialist Alliance, the business of change never closes.

Dave Riley

[Dave Riley is a member of the Socialist Alliance editorial board.]

From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.

People's court jester wins Nobel prize

2010-07-30T23:53:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, October 29, 1997 - 11:00

By Dave Riley

In a decision that has angered the Vatican, Dario Fo — Italy's leading contemporary performer/playwright — has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

The Swedish Academy's choice confirms what thousands worldwide have already discovered: Dario Fo is a great 20th century satirist. His plays are the most frequently performed of any living playwright's in Europe, and his reputation has been growing steadily in English-speaking countries since the late '70s.

The Vatican's objection was to be expected, because Fo's work has consistently angered the Catholic Church and the Italian right with the seriously argued politics that underlie his dazzling radical satires.

Fo has been aligned to the Italian non-parliamentary left since the early '60s. An avowed Marxist for most of his career, he refused to revise his outlook in line with the revisionist current that tamed Italian socialism under the guise of Eurocommunism; this ensured that he also received the wrath of the Stalinist leaders of Italy's huge Communist Party.

Of his plays, Accidental Death of an Anarchist is probably the best known, but works like Mistero Buffo are sure to be performed more frequently following the award.

This latter play, a one hander, is an examination of the satiric tradition in medieval Italy, when religious themes where utilised to make a social point the guardians of the church had not intended. Originally presented on Italian television, Mistero Buffo gained a popularity that has always irritated the Vatican as a work desecrating religious belief.

Victorians are indeed fortunate that a new production of Mistero Buffo is scheduled to premier this month as part of Melbourne's Fringe Festival.

Other works by Fo include: Can't Pay? Won't Pay!, Trumpets and Raspberries, Archangels Don't Play Pinball and The Pope and the Witch. Fo's companion and collaborator, Franca Rame, is also a renowned playwright loved especially for her works on feminist themes.

From GLW issue 295

The ALP: Swapping deckchairs on the Titanic

2010-07-30T23:52:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - 11:00

After the debacle that was Mark Latham's exit from politics, the decline in the fortunes of the Australian Labor Party proceeds unabated.

With a state poll fast approaching in Western Australia — which may see Labor lose office there — any hope that the ALP can quickly re-position itself as a credible electoral force must be considered forlorn. News that the party may even lose the upcoming by-election for Latham's safe ALP seat of Werriwa has only encouraged Labor to gloss over its glaring deficiencies and appeal to its "underdog" status instead.

Rather than arresting this decline, Kim Beazley's recent elevation to the party leadership is widely being seen as an exercise in swapping deckchairs on the Titanic. Like a broken record this time around, there's nothing of the excitement that greeted the Latham ascendency a year ago. Despite Beazley's assertions that he will lead an opposition "that sharpens the distinctions between ourselves and the government", Labor has been quick to highlight how little distinction actually exists between the major parties by doing the exact opposite, and dumping major policy planks from the last election. Now gone is the party's verbal commitment to save Tasmanian old-growth forests. Also trashed is the attack on elite private school funding and the half-cocked Medicare Gold package for free hospital care for those over 75.

Exploiting Latham's exit as an excuse to remake the party by dropping elements that distinguished it from the Coalition indicates how little leadership changes actually mean to the trajectory of the ALP. Since the election, party post-mortems have chosen to converge ALP politics with those of the Coalition rather than consider another tack. The abrupt leadership change is merely window dressing for the rot that set in long ago.

This continuing exercise in realpolitik is best indicated by Beazley's attempt to go on the attack over the Iraq occupation. Now that the "troops-home-by-Christmas" line has been put to rest, and the electorate has been told that its use-by date has passed, Labor is now keener than ever to run dead on the question of troop withdrawl. To hear Beazley wing it, it's a Catch 22. "While there are Australian diplomats in Iraq", he told his inaugural press conference, "Australian troops are needed to protect them".

If it is your impression that the ALP is now on side with the Coalition over its Iraq policy, the new ALP leader is keen to differ. While Howard toadies to the US on Iraq, and places no conditions on Australia's continuing cooperation, Beazley's ALP promises a new purpose by encouraging the US to withdraw as soon as possible to avoid being stuck in a quagmire. According to Beazley, Labor was prepared to be the ally the Americans needed, not the one they wanted.

As Sydney Morning Herald web diarist Margo Kingston put it, Beazley "has solid pro-American credentials, and today he used them to argue that Labor was the true pro-American party, the party which was prepared to give the Yanks advice they didn't want to hear to ensure the superpower stayed strong, solvent, and capable of leading the world in the fight against WMDs and terrorism. Want a strong America to look after Australia? Vote Beazley."

If this is not the policy differential you hoped to hear, it is unfortunately what's on offer as Labor searches for any chink with which to mark itself off as a bona fide opposition without actually getting into too much technical detail about what it actually opposes. Beazley says that he is going to give Howard the fight of his life and win the next election. Assuming he lasts that long, Kim Beazley isn't saying on what grounds he is preparing to lose the election — let alone win it.

Dave Riley

[Dave Riley is a member of the Socialist Alliance]

Bad medicine: The Accord process repeats

2010-07-30T23:49:00.001+10:00

One hundred and fifty years ago, on April 21, the eight-hour-day movement began in Australia when stonemasons and building workers marched through Melbourne.

The young working class of this country proved its industrial worth as one trade after another won the right to shorter working hours. Australia became one of the first countries in the world to win the eight-hour day and, towards the end of the 19th century, its working class was one of the most highly unionised.

By the end of the 21st century, however, Australian workers were registering the longest working hours in the OECD and the trade union movement's industrial coverage had collapsed. Furthermore, the new Work Choices legislation intends to marginalise unions completely by replacing any semblance of collective bargaining with individual contracts.

What happened?

This was the question asked in a recent ABC documentary on the eight-hour-day movement by the Radio National Hindsight team. While many factors bore down on the trade union movement over time, Hindsight singled out the Accord experience as the most salient.

The Price and Incomes Accord was hailed by the ALP as a new way of working with the trade union movement, such that it became the cornerstone of the Bob Hawke and Paul Keating federal governments after Labor's victory in 1983. The Accord was sponsored by the union leaderships as a means to broaden the "relevance" of unionism by trading off various wages and conditions, to enable greater workplace "efficiency" and economic restructuring, for social gains in areas such as superannuation, Medicare, and taxation. The Accord process integrated the trade unions into national policy by making them a partner in government — at least that was the rhetoric.

The Accord was "supposed" to be tripartite, with the employers joining the unions at the table for the "consensus" making. But that never happened and the unions instead became an arm of the federal government.

While the Accord had some very vocal opponents, the union leaderships worked, in the main, to marginalise them and the Accord was sold to the movement's ranks as the core industrial strategy. Two by-products of the movement's restructuring through the Accord process were the loss of union democracy and on-the-job combativeness.

In the Hindsight program, John Robertson, now the secretary of Unions NSW, said: "The Accord process wasn't managed well by the unions with their members, and I think what you saw — and everybody talks about this — is that at the point of our most influence in our history we went into our biggest decline in terms of members. I think this was due to the way the whole Accord process was managed."

Robertson, a union organiser at the time, went on: "Guys I'd worked with on building sites were calling me all sorts of names because of the way we were dealing with the second-tier agreements to get wage increases and those sorts of things. We weren't being told how we ought to be communicating with our members about this stuff. We were being told that you have to go out there and there has to be trade offs and those sorts of things, and we started to disconnect."

Robertson admitted that the unions "went out there and told people this is how it has gotta be. And it was almost this thing that the medicine doesn't taste nice but you have to take it because it's good for you."

But it wasn't. The Accord, promoted as the pinnacle of trade union relevance and political strength, sacrificed the working class's independence. Contrary to what Robertson suggests, the major problem with the Accord was that it embodied the trade union movement's collective deference to the Labor government.

Unfortunately, with little thought to what happened in the past, the same "Accord process" is being embraced by the movement leadership — with some exceptions among militant unions. In the face of Work Choices, we are being told that our best strategy is not use our own collective strength and organisation, but to rely on an ALP election victory. That medicine still tastes bad, and it is still not good for us.

Dave Riley

[Dave Riley is a member of the Socialist Alliance-Green Left Weekly editorial board. The Hindsight program can be heard online or as a podcast here].

From Green Left Weekly, May 3, 2006.

ANZAC Day (among other things) celebrates the Australian invasion of Turkey

2010-07-30T23:46:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - 10:00

By Dave Riley

With the increasingly strident nationalism that greets ANZAC Day each year, it is easy to forget what the ANZAC tradition celebates. In almost nine months of entrenched fighting on Turkey's Gallipoli peninsula, Australian and New Zealand casualties reached 8587 killed in action and 19,367 wounded in the line of duty. Those Turks were defending their homeland from invasion.

Where so many died invading we now call "sacred ground".

When the British Empire (which included the ANZACs) and French forces finally withdrew from the Gallipoli peninsula, they had suffered 44,000 deaths. At least 85,000 Turkish soldiers died during the campaign.

That was in 1915. The same year, ANZAC forces suffered massive losses of 28,000 killed or wounded during the first seven weeks of the Battle of the Somme. So it comes as no surprise that during the following year Australians rejected conscription at a federal referendum — with troops in the front line trenches strongly voting "No" . Another referendum the following year rejected conscription by an even larger margin.

So I am a proud Aussie, not because this country has a penchant to celebrate the slaughter of those who we sent to invade or defeat, or the deaths of those this country sent to do such deeds. I am a proud Aussie because, in the face of such slaughter, a massive campaign was organised in this country against strengthening that war through conscription — and it won!

You have to see past the jingoistic bullshit on Anzac Day. You can't afford to forget, that's true, all those who died. But for whom did they die? Not for me.

If conscription had prevailed many more would have died. That's really what's worth celebrating.

Lest we forget.

From Green Left Weekly, May 4, 2005.

Debating Che's legacy

2010-07-30T23:44:00.001+10:00

Dave Riley

The youth radicalisation that swept Australia in the late 1960s fostered a massive wave of hope and idealism. Many young people, keen to change a society that they found so wanting, identified with figures who gave their all to such a cause. Many of these consciously signed on as the heirs of Che Guevera.

But in a January 10 diatribe in the Sydney Morning Herald against such idealism, Sydney writer Louis Nowra fulminated against the persistence of Che's legacy.

While Nowra's embarrassing piece of red baiting doesn't stand up to historical scrutiny, his rant against revolutionary chic fails to explain why, after almost 40 years, new generations of young people still keenly identify with Guevera. If he was a would-be mass murderer — as Nowra would have it — then there are culpable fools aplenty behind every one of those Che T-shirts and badges.

But dismissing this rant as "Nowra versus Che" would be only half the story. Nowra doesn't just lament Che's persistent iconography — he also celebrates his murder.

If Nowra wasn't such a recognised writer — with many plays, novels, and film scripts to his credit — it would be easy to dismiss his article as the inept ravings of classical McCarthyism templated from some Cold War archive.

Despite his own background within the same generation of student radicals that first identified with Che Guevera, Nowra's hindsight doesn't stretch to those alternative views of Stalinism he himself once explored during a youthful fit of leftism. Essentially, the libertarianism he dabbled with in his youth has suddenly found a voice in the context of the "war on terror". Blind to the irony, this writer who has never been noted for his political engagement or protest, has apparently embraced a new calling — one so half cocked that he fails to explain why people aren't walking the streets of our towns, proudly displaying on their chests images of the heroes of the "war on terror" or the destruction of Fallujah in Iraq.

After railing against dead reds, Nowra embraces the same militant code as the "war on terror" and pleads with his readers to remain vigilant. The "red menace" may no longer be under our beds but we are urged to remain alert to the insidious possibilities hiding in the country's many wardrobes.

Paradoxically, much of Nowra's bluster is spent on currents that have not survived. The student Maoists of his youth have all disowned their past allegiances and made peace with the "war on terror". The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), of which Frank Hardy and Dorothy Hewitt were members, quietly wound itself up in the late 1980s. Nowra knows this. He also knows that the same political thread that parallels the example of Che Guevera persists in Australia, sustaining itself on a lot more than radical chic. But he has chosen not to let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Nowra's disinclination to tackle the present-day combatant left seems somewhat cowardly. While I know that he is a keen student of religious iconography, this failure to address the real-time activity of contemporary socialists doesn't serve his argument one bit. With our politics already distorted by our choice of icons, Nowra would have us stigmatised as he would any heir of Stalin, Mao or Hitler.

This preoccupation with archetypal communism is reprised by David McKnight in his response to Nowra — published in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days later. McKnight, who oversees the Search Foundation — the trust that comprises all the physical remains of the defunct CPA — was keen to plead for mercy and dismiss communism and Marxism as historical relics. Excusing his own membership of the party as a fit of "unashamed idealism", McKnight wasn't about to defend anyone but himself.

Unfortunately, now that Nowra has cast his lot in with the fulminating scribes who pose as experts on the evils of the political left, among his many literary attainments he can now add that of Cold War warrior.

[Dave Riley has been an active socialist on and off for 35 years and is currently a member of the Socialist Alliance. A sometime political and artistic collaborator with Louis Nowra — whom he has known since 1968 — Riley is the model for the lead character in Nowra's play and film, Cosi.]

From Green Left Weekly, January 19, 2005.

From GLW issue 611

A different approach to change

2010-07-30T23:39:00.000+10:00

Friday, November 10, 2006 - 11:00

By Dave Riley

For Margarita Windisch, an anti-war leader and one of the organisers of the G20 protests in Melbourne, the "Hey, vote for us! We'll sort it all out!" attitude of the two major parties is not only condescending, it is increasingly falling on deaf ears. This is because the major parties have not, and cannot, "sort it" to meet people's needs, she said.

Windisch, who is standing for the Socialist Alliance in the November 25 Victorian state election, thinks people are sick of being patronised. "We don't agree that voting is enough", she said. "We're saying that people have to get involved in forcing changes in our working and personal lives. It's through that process — more people getting involved and being a part of collective action — that change will come about."

The alliance doesn't distinguish between the ongoing political campaigns it is involved in and election activity. "Elections provide a platform for us to profile the issues and campaigns that our members are involved in every day."

Because the alliance seeks to change society, relying on elections isn't enough. However, as Windisch said, "it is part of the process of identifying the key issues of the day, and helping people become active in those political movements to the point where they can have a real impact on governments".

Support for the Socialist Alliance's Victorian election campaign has come from local Middle East, Arab and Muslim communities because "they have seen us campaigning week in week out, not just around election time", Windisch said. The Alliance is no fair-weather friend: "We've been working with these communities, and not just when the shit hits the fan and there's an invasion of their home country", Windisch added. "We're conscious that the vilification of Muslims by state and federal governments means that solidarity and united campaigning are essential. For us, it's the 'touch one, touch all' principle."

The Socialist Alliance is also being supported by a number of unionists. "We have always fought for workers' right to organise in their workplaces and to be in a union." Unionists on recent picket lines have been making donations and signing up to the Alliance, and some will also help out on polling day.

"It's the on-the-ground work — being with people in struggle — that makes the alliance different", Windisch said. "We're working against the neoliberal program that both Labor and the Liberals are putting forward."

On polling day, the Socialist Alliance will be building public support for the November 30 rallies on the ACTU-called national day of action against Work Choices. "This is a chance to send a very clear message to Howard that these laws are not acceptable. But it's also a chance to tell Labor that we will not stop campaigning until these unjust laws are dumped, along with the others that Labor has yet to commit to dumping, such as sections 45D and E of the Trades Practices Act, which outlaw solidarity actions."

Windisch, who has also been involved in organising the G20 protests in Melbourne, promised that after the election the alliance will not hibernate. "We'll be continuing to campaign hard with all those wanting to force some changes now."

"Given the current climate change debate, there's an opportunity right now", Windisch said, "to raise the question of socialism as an alternative to this rotten capitalist system. Ultimately, only a people- and environment-centred social and economic system — call it whatever — has the capacity to fix the devastating global problems being caused by an outdated and irrational system."

To get involved in the Socialist Alliance's Victorian election campaign or in its ongoing campaigns, visit or phone (03) 9639 8622.]

From GLW issue 690

Informing the ecological debate

2010-07-30T23:35:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, April 28, 1993 - 10:00

From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected Writings in the Life Sciences

Edited by Connie Barlow
The MIT Press, 273 pp.

Reviewed by Dave Riley

There seems to be a frustrating paucity of informed debate within the environment movement. A certain sentimentality for Nature sits arrogantly on a greener-than-thou-stance which merges into a chlorophyll metaphysic. Greenness has religious proportions fundamentally personalised for each true believer.

From Gaia to Selfish Genes changes that around. In our concern for nature, we are best served by trying to understand rather than mystify it. This is what Connie Barlow bravely encourages in her anthology, culled from the works of biologists, geneticists, zoologists and sundry other theorists of the life sciences. Her contributors are an impressive list, each of whom has established credit before lay audiences. This is comprehensible stuff with sharp polemics to heighten the differences.

Current debates about heredity and environment, competition and cooperation, randomness and determinism, and the meaning of individuality are covered, beginning with the planetary perspective of James Lovelock and Lyn Margulis and concluding with the reductionist views of Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson. Barlow certainly has her favourites, but the collection is diverse enough for readers to draw their own conclusions.

This book simply begs you to make your own link between biology and philosophy, especially as it becomes very clear that the outlook of each contributor meshes in with their politics. While purportedly focused on the laws of nature, the discussion rests firmly on divergent views of human society. Natural history and human history aren't really that separate.

The central essay in this regard is by Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Kamin. Drawn from their book Not in Our Genes, the writers compose a radical critique of reductionism — the belief that the properties of complex wholes can be understood in terms of the units of which they are composed.

Instead, the authors advocate dialectics, in which "the universe is unitary but always in change; the phenomena we see at any instant are parts of processes, processes with histories and futures whose paths are not uniquely determined by their constituent units". Lewontin and Kamin later applied dialectics — the core method of Marxism — to ecology in their book The Dialectical Biologist.

This view is different again from the holistic homeostasis expounded in James Lovelock's concept of Gaia, in which the earth's atmosphere seems to have been designed cooperatively by the totality of living systems. Almost like a new animism, Lovelock speculates that "Gaia may turn out to be the first religion to have a testable scientific theory embedded in it".

Perhaps too much of the book is given over to card carrying reductionists. Perennial questions over who or what we are were once answered succinctly by the eminent zoologist George Gaylord Simpson: "The point I want to make is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 [when Darwin published The Origin of Species] are worthless and that we'll be better off ignoring them completely."

Latter-day biological determinism in the form of E.O. Wilson's sociobiology has reduced organic behaviour to the activity of genes. Richard Dawkins' outlook is a gene's eye view of life on earth, in which the immortal gene simply dons a different survival mechanism each generation. Culture, since it is not inherited, is transmitted mind to mind by "memes". Human existence is a compound of genes and memes.

All up, there are 35 contributors, though a good proportion get only an isolated paragraph. Favoured writers such as Stephen Jay Gould and Ashley Montagu are poorly served, and I could have done without the heavy angst of the old Cold Warrior Arthur Koestler.

Nonetheless, anyone with the slightest interest in natural history should take in this book as an introduction to further reading. You will be enthused into further research, and the ecology movement will be the better for it.

From GLW issue 97

Is biology destiny?

2010-07-30T23:27:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, May 4, 1994 - 10:00

The Doctrine of DNA: Biology as ideology

By R.C. Lewontin
Penguin Books. 128 pp. $14.95

Reviewed by Dave Riley

The definitive answer to how much you could drink and still feel good about it was recently supplied by the Sun Herald. "Alcoholism in the Genes" was a front-page story.

The newspaper outlined research which confirmed "widely held views" that there was a genetic cause of alcoholism. "This breakthrough", said the report, "follows the recent discovery of the so-called gay gene and a gene which causes breast cancer among women".

The secret of life is out: human personal and social attributes — like homosexuality and alcoholism — are caused by the physical make-up handed to us at conception. Science has spoken: we are trapped in a destiny confirmed before birth.

If some genes can cause cancer, maybe others conspire to make things bad for us. If there are genes for elbows, knees and toes, others must operate to form a human nature. Some genes good, some genes bad; we are stuck with it.

This all-encompassing and simplistic rationale is often presented as objective truth. If there is a line of causation which runs from gene to individual and then to society, the problems we confront in our lives must be universal and true for all time. Three billion years of evolution have made us what we are, so don't bother even to think of changing things.

Explanations such as these legitimise the society in which we live. If blacks are drunken or hubby comes home pissed again, don't go blaming our society for racism or unemployment; it does its best with the organic matter to hand.

Unfortunately, we all tend to be mesmerised by these "unassailable" facts. The claim that all human existence is controlled by our DNA is a popular one. Supposedly coded into our genes are differences in temperament, ability and physical and mental health. Transcending these ideas does not come easily. To believe that something better is both possible and necessary (and in itself, scientific) must be mere utopian dreaming.

Since most of us are not professional scientists, we cannot ourselves so easily prove otherwise. Maybe the competitive, entrepreneurial, and hierarchical social relations which differently reward different temperaments, cognitive abilities and mental attitudes are determined by DNA and are therefore unchangeable.

Fortunately, there are also scientists, like Richard Lewontin, who argue otherwise.

Lewontin is a leading geneticist and professor at Harvard University, where he holds the Alexander Agassiz chair in zoology. As the author of The genetic basis of evolutionary change and co-author of The dialectical biologist and Not in our genes, he readily identifies himself with a science dedicated to empowering people to be free.

The Doctrine of DNA is a little book which summarises in six chapters the arguments advanced in his previously published work. Through a concise and accessible polemic, originally delivered on Canadian radio, Lewontin advocates an alternative view to the increasingly orthodox claim that all human existence is controlled by DNA.

His message is that things are much more complicated and uncertain than such simple rules: "Development depends not only on the materials that have been inherited from parents — that is, the genes and other materials in the sperm and egg — but also on the particular temperature, humidity, nutrition, smells, sights and sounds (including what we call education) that impinge on the developing organism. Even if I knew the complete molecular specification of every gene in our organism, I could not predict what that organism would be ... [V]ariations among individuals within species are a unique consequence of both genes and the developmental environment in a constant interaction."

For those of us who locate ourselves on one side or other of the nature versus nurture divide, Lewontin is keen to dismantle such a division. For him, environmental and genetic variations are not independent causal pathways, nor are they separate in the sense that we usually view them. He opposes environmentalism — in genetics as well as in politics — because you cannot have one without the other. Organisms not only experience environments, they create them. Even during the life of an organism, its environment is constantly being remade.

So one of the most subtle of the arguments for biological determinism — that of partitioning the effects of environment and genes so that, for example, 80% of the difference between individuals is caused by genes and 20% by the environment — is dismissed by Lewontin. Under this scheme, manipulating the environment will not make much difference, when in fact a change in cultural environment, for instance, can change abilities by many orders of magnitude.

No-one insists that students should study without eyeglasses or that mathematics be performed using Roman numerals or without the aid of calculators. Differences between individuals are abolished by cultural and mechanical inventions such as these, just as gender-based variations in strength are irrelevant in a world of power hoists and power steering. In this sense there is no basic, unaided, naked ability that deserves our preoccupied interest. "The contrast between genetic and environment", he writes, "between nature and nurture, is not a contrast between fixed and changeable".

This may seem a bit messy to those used to an easy categorisation of the world into readily identifiable abstract entities, each with its own unique properties. Contrary to the orthodox philosophy of modern science, things are not separate from other things. The world described in The doctrine of DNA is not one in which parts are alienated from the whole or causes separated from effects. Nor is it indissoluble, its essence lost if we break anything down into its contributing parts.

This dynamic view in biology causes Lewontin to revise some of the major tenets of Darwinian theory. In doing so, he begins to uncover how working scientists can be so complicit in imposing an idealised human social model onto the natural world. The ideology of DNA, like that of Darwinism, reproduces nature not the way it is, but as it is viewed through the prism of our society.

Thus the contradiction of immense inequalities in a society that claims to be founded on equality is resolved by referring back to nature for a new gloss. Like a foot race, life must be measured by equality of opportunity rather than of result. Natural inequalities now find their true level because there are no artificial barriers to who gets what. An enlightened society such as ours enables individuals to attain their potential genetic capacity.

However, the unique interaction between the environment and the organism, says Lewontin, cannot be described as differences in capacity. "When the environment changes", he writes, "all bets are off".

Even the similarity between parents and their children is an observation requiring explanation. It is not evidence of genes. If 80% of Finns are Lutheran or three generations of the same Australian family vote Labor, no-one seriously argues that there is a gene for a specific religion and another for voting ALP.

Lewontin's measured claims about the complexity of life and how ignorant we are of what determines it are perhaps out of step with the scientific rhetoric we are used to. But such scepticism can save us from the compelling headlines that dramatise limited thinking. A succession of rather simplistic show-bizzed discoveries does not a human make.

While The Doctrine of DNA is a rigorous and unforgiving polemic, it is the breadth of Lewontin's vision that sustains its logic. This is radical science determined to harness an interpretation of both the natural and social worlds to help us to be free.

Who we are and what we might be are written neither in our stars nor in our genes. The science that makes and transforms us is not a rigid prescriptive biology but one "that can be understood and explored only through that unique form of experience, social action".

From GLW issue 141

The view from Tralfamadore

2010-07-30T23:25:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, October 13, 1993 - 10:00

Fates Worse Than Death — An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980s

By Kurt Vonnegut
Vintage, 1992. 240 pp. $12.95

Reviewed by Dave Riley

Once upon a time artists were people; that is, they were for the people, by the people and of the people.

But all that changed. They began to fall back on themselves in search of a private vision, which in their lonely quest for profound expression made them incomprehensible to the rest of us. They tried very hard to tell us of our plight, but they had read so many books and thought so many thoughts that they forgot our language.

Then came Kurt Vonnegut. He wrote weird stories. People seemed to like him. His popular acceptance as a paperback writer rested on his literary prominence in the 1960s. He was a hero of youthful radicals, and his books sold in their millions.

Now 70 years of age, Kurt Vonnegut is still pumping it out.

Fates Worse Than Death is a freewheeling memoir of the '80s done as only he can. Recollections and anecdotes range through time, written with the wry wit and the sardonic good humour of an affable tolerance.

Vonnegut's idiosyncratic views are so profoundly human that he has not recovered from the fire-bombing of Dresden — which he witnessed as a POW in World War II — nor has he forgiven the United States government for the Vietnam War.

But he is not bitter enough to be satirical. "Listless playthings of enormous forces", is how he once described his fictional characters. In this most recent book, that listlessness seems to include himself. His attempted suicide and his mental breakdown are all part of the universal narrative. As many a Vonnegut devotee will tell you: so it goes.

Vonnegut really doesn't live in anyone's street directory. Formally a resident of the United States he seems to have his abode elsewhere, perhaps on his beloved planet of Tralfamadore.

Written from that perch his books have a quirky long view about them, where earthly time and place have little significance. In Galapagos — which he wrote in the mid-'80s — the human species is wiped out and replaced by a gene pool generated at the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

In the books of Kurt Vonnegut the future comes uncomfortably close. The fates that are worse than death are really with us now, if only we could recognise them. Fortunately, surveying from a distance, Kurt Vonnegut is there to chart them for us.

From GLW issue 118

More than songs for the dispossessed

2010-07-30T23:22:00.000+10:00

Sunday, July 26, 2009 - 10:00

By Dave Riley

Phil Monsour is a singer/songwriter based in Brisbane. His songs reflect a passionate commitment to the struggles of ordinary people. But Monsour does more than just sing about the world. As part of a broader political engagement, he deploys his music as an organising tool.

His recent recordings and performances have been built around the theme of the Middle East, particularly Palestine.

"Over the last five years", he told Green Left Weekly, "we've done a series of concerts and fundraisers that have put that issue front and centre in terms of song selection, the images that accompany the show and the people who organise the nights."

He says that these concerts "try to focus a bit more on the overall story and on the continuing disposition and the imperialist interventions in the Middle East.

"I cannot think of a historical example where so many millions of people have been hung out and abandoned by the world community so aggressively. Even to this day we are talking about 1.5 million people in Gaza who have nothing. They have a small piece of real estate that has been pummelled and destroyed. They have no facilities, no services, very little food. Children are starting to die from malnutrition.

"When you link that to events like the Iraq war and to other military interventions in the Middle East, you can also link that to events in Australia like the riots that occurred in 2005 in Cronulla and that wave of racism that grew up around people of Middle Eastern descent in Australia.

You can link that to Australia's refugee policy which in effect is largely played out against people from the Middle East who were up until recently many of the people in detention who were running from various conflicts."

Monsour said that a number of songs on his latest CD, The Empire's New Clothes, grew out of his response to the 34-day bombing and destruction of Lebanon in 2006.

This relates to his story "as someone who grew up as an Arab Australian of Lebanese background and knows what it was like to be in a household where there's a war on — in what my parents called the old country — where their brothers and sisters still lived.

"The experience of having this strong connection to one of these 'conflict zones' and having to function normally in mainstream society as well and trying to give people around you an understanding of how we see those events is quite different from how they are told what is happening.

"A lot of those songs are saying: those stories you see on the nightly news are very human stories about people we love and care about."

Monsour says that the events he has organised have "raised some significant funds for Union Aid Abroad. We've branched out and done similar shows in Sydney and Melbourne. What's been interesting about these events is that they give an avenue to people who aren't going to turn up to rallies to hear people speak who they haven't heard before.

"But it is also a music event. Over the last few years in Brisbane, the group of people I started organising with have built strong connections with people in the Palestinian and the Arab communities in Brisbane.

"That's why those events are significant and provide a model for how people can work with communities and with issues like this in other places as well. That's why I'm keen to export it to other places.

"The way we've packaged and organised these events has led to a diverse mix of people in the room talking and eating together, engaging in the process."

Monsour says an important component of these events is a Middle Eastern meal and involving people in organising that meal. "That's the mix essentially: food and culture, politics and the music."

Monsour says that when he performed the song "We Will Go Home" at the last concert he did, he realised that there were people in the room who had been dispossessed of their homes in Palestine so he invited them up on stage to sing the refrain.

He says it was a moving moment for everyone when those who had been exiled — and some had been exiled in 1948 — deepened the experience for others with their presence.

"This is about linking music to the organising", he said, "and the participation in the political struggle. That's something that has always impressed me. I don't know if I've done it successfully but I have done it and at different times forged a significant link between music that is about something, events that are about something and engaging as a participant in the struggle."

[Phil Monsour's latest CD, The Empire's New Clothes can be bought from www.philmonsour.com. He will be performing on the National Palestine Solidarity Tour with David Rovics. Shows are planned for Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane, Newcastle, Wollongong and Lismore.]

From GLW issue 804

German cabaret between the wars

2010-07-30T23:21:00.001+10:00

By Dave Riley

The German revolution of 1918 was as vigorous and perhaps more spontaneous than its Russian counterpart of the previous year. The uprising of the Spartacists in Berlin and the Munich "reds" was smashed by the organised terror of the Freikorps — a right-wing militia and precursor of the Nazi Party.

In six days of street fighting in Berlin, 1200 were killed. The leaders of the Spartacists — Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht — were brutally murdered by the police. The new republic's street baptism set it on a course that guaranteed that it was forever fearful of the left and always reliant on military muscle.

Radical artists such as the Dadaists were changed greatly by their alliance with the revolutionary cause. Their initial raucous negation of society was later to mature into an intense and bitter critique. In the wake of the revolution, the 30 performances of the Berlin Dada between 1918 and 1920 laid the foundation of the anti-illusionist theatre of the '20s, Piscator's experiments in total theatre, the Communist Party's agitprop revues and the Bauhaus.

As the partisans of Dada separated off into their various fascinations, the relaxation of censorship promoted a social and cultural explosion that fed a heady atmosphere of experimentation.

In the '20s Berlin roared louder than most capitals. There were 120 newspapers — left, right or indifferently popular or pornographic. The number of theatres and cabarets escalated, but the new cabaret forms had little in common with their artistic forebears. Some were strip clubs, just dives and dance halls marketing sex. However, a new style of cabaret developed as an outpost of dissent, bridging the gap between high and elitist art and consumer entertainment for a mass market.

With its mixture of sex, smoke and jazz; song, skits and stinging satire, it seemed the perfect medium for an art seeking popularity. Known as Kabarett to differentiate it from the purely amusing cabarets, this form was associated with the most radical artistic movements and experimenters.

Taking in the most skilled participants of the German Dadaist movement, Kabarett refused to define the limits of art and cultivated the possibilities of protest and provocation. Satire

was its weapon: in song, poem and monologue.

Of all the great writers for the Kabarett, like Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring and Eric Kstner, only Bertolt Brecht is known widely today. Their amusing bitterness guaranteed that they were among the first victims of the Nazi terror.

While the movement flourished between the still active interventions of the constabulary, venues like Die Katakombe, Brecht's Red Grape, the Schall und Rauch and Rosa Valetti's Cabaret Grossenwahn secured a huge following among burgher and worker alike with a menu employing eroticism, a touch of sentimentality, music with contemporary words, a strong rhythm, melody to be whistled, jokes and wit. The cabaret chanson, much loved by the French, found a new home on this rough stage as much to harness the articulate protest of an angry writer as to allow Marlene Dietrich to lament in song about "falling in love again".

Our preoccupations with a strictly rehearsed theatre make the improvisational ambience of the Kabarett seem distant. While many writers and performers collaborated in moulding the material for the cabaret stage, the real essence of the performance lay with the conferencier.

Basically a conferencier was a master of ceremonies who introduced the acts and set the tone of the performance to draw out the spectacle. They would provide quick repartee to any challenge emanating from the audience and, as masters of improvisation, they acted as antennas of the day's events. It was a complex role.

Most were men, but conferenciers like Rosa Valetti were renowned for their ability to work an audience. Today the tradition of the conferencier lives on in the best of the stand-up comedians.

[Second of a series on the history of cabaret.]

From GLW issue 90

The so-called gay gene

2010-07-30T23:19:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, April 27, 1994 - 10:00

By Dave Riley

There are many human conditions that are clearly pathological which seem to have a genetic cause. Disorders such as Huntington's chorea and cystic fibrosis occur in people who carry the relevant mutant gene regardless of diet, occupation, social class, or education.

While such conditions are rare — 1 in 10,000 for Huntington's disease — other disorders, like sickle cell anaemia among people of West African descent, occur at a higher frequency but are less severe and more sensitive to environmental conditions.

The medical model that rests on such discoveries has so far failed to prove that diabetes or heart disease is similarly caused. However, it is generally accepted that some cancers have a genetic predisposition. Such genes, known as oncogenes, are thought to disrupt normal cell division, and the recently discovered mutant gene on chromosome 17 has been linked to the early onset of breast cancer.

Less founded in fact are the many claims over the last 20 years which insist that schizophrenia and manic depressive psychosis have a direct genetic origin. Regardless of the biochemical and genetic research lavished on these conditions — more so than any other in psychiatry — proof of an organic cause has not been found.

So a claim that a gene exists which causes homosexuality should be treated with considerable scepticism.

The medicalisation of homosexuality, by employing a gay gene to explain it, assumes that it is a pathological condition. In such a medicalised social world, human sexual behaviour is clearly divided between heterosexual and homosexual activity.

This description does not correspond with our knowledge of human sexuality. There is a continuum of sexuality that runs from the exclusively heterosexual through those who have a wider range of experiences, through those who are regularly bisexual, to those who are exclusively homosexual. A succession of polls in the United States has suggested that up to one half of the male population has had at least one homosexual experience.

Single sex male enclaves such as prisons tend to be more actively homosexual than similar populations outside. Unless this gay gene is a switch on, switch off again gene, or one that also has a proclivity toward crime, maybe we should review its ready predictability.

Aside from the problem of dealing with the corresponding suggestion that there is a gene for lesbianism, biological research in this area is greatly hampered by the fact that those who engage exclusively in homosexual behaviour leave no offspring. Very few of us can confidently say that grandad was gay. Since grandma did not then have access to artificial insemination, maybe we don't carry our forebears' sexual preference after all.

Another difficulty faced by the geneticists is that instead of homosexuality being linked to a specific thread of DNA, maybe it is bisexuality that is more readily transmitted at conception. "Indeed", writes geneticist Richard Lewontin, "we could make an argument that bisexuality is a manifestation of greater general libido, and it might turn out that bisexual people leave more offspring".

But the best argument against the gay gene is the rationale that biological determinism has employed to explain how it evolved. In some long ago time, so the story goes, homosexuals did not mate but helped their heterosexual brothers and sisters to raise more children. Such dedication to the prehistoric nest ensured that their relatives had twice as many offspring as usual so that the gene for homosexuality was kept in the population.

Anthropologically, such a scenario is extremely suspect, and the determinists have yet to find a more credible functional role for homosexuality that would explain its continuing presence on the human genetic tree.

While some people have welcomed claims of a gay gene because it supposedly proves biologically that homosexuals are born gay and therefore should not be oppressed for this reason alone, others have embraced the claim because it shore ups separatism in the gay community.

The willing acceptance of this attempt to isolate sexual preference and tie it to a specific biological cause is unfortunate. A readiness to go along with such claims placates an ideological offensive geared to convincing us, regardless of our sexual preference, that most of our social and psychological make-up is inherited. If gays are gay because of their genes, then maybe characteristics of gender, race and class are similarly "inevitable" rather than socially conditioned.

From GLW issue 140

Much too nice : The Threepenny Opera

2010-07-30T23:10:00.002+10:00

Wednesday, May 31, 1995 - 10:00

The Threepenny Opera
Music by Kurt Weill. Text by Bertolt Brecht
Director: Chris Johnson
Musical Director: Michael Morley
Suncorp Theatre, Brisbane
Until June 10

Reviewed by Dave Riley

Before Hair and The Rocky Horror Picture Show was Die Dreigroschenoper — the notorious Threepenny Opera. With its Berlin premiere in 1928, modern musical theatre was severely shaken. Here was a low life burlesque that chose to be as crude as the bawdiest of cabarets.

But shock was not its only mark. Weill's musical score, with its mixture of jazz and sometimes atonal melodies, complemented a modern parable that sarcastically represented capitalism as a den of thieves. As musicals go, The Threepenny Opera was as radical as they come.

Unfortunately, with this production you wouldn't know it. While the music under Michael Morley's direction is a faithful rendering of Weill's original score, the performers do not fare as well.

The most annoying feature — a true disaster — is the inability of the actors to make themselves heard over the din of the orchestra that shares the stage with them. Since the point of the play relies on the lyrics of the songs the audience simply cannot understand the logic of the performance before them. Hopefully, this is a technical problem which can be corrected early enough in the season for the production to recover.

But aside from that, this production lacks guts. The play's coarse cynicism has been toned down. This should be a disjointed and episodic satire that verges on political revue, but Chris Johnson seems to have failed to enliven her actors with a bold confidence to project their performances beyond the footlights. With a few exceptions — Robert Alexander's Macheath, Susie French's Jenny and Christen O'Leary's Lucy — this is shy theatre.

Thus reticent, it fails to deal with the immense anger projected onto the lives we are forced to lead. Georgie Parker's Polly, for instance, a figure who calculates her chances by always referring back to No 1, is here presented like Goldilocks skipping merrily through villainy. Such niceness is just too much.

It is a pity that Brecht, at least, has not been better served. All the hard work on stage by such a large ensemble of skilled actors should be more fruitful than this. When performers address the audience directly, there is a hint of the potential that lies in the work. If only its robust energy had been tapped.

From GLW issue 189

Bertolt Brecht: the man who never was

2010-07-30T23:07:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, March 1, 1995 - 11:00

The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht
By John Fuegi
Harper Collins. 732 pp., $39.95, (hb)

Reviewed by Dave Riley

As the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, word went out that this action drew on the inspiration of "the three B's" — Biermann, Bahro and Brecht.

The masses of Berliners who took to the streets in search of a new beginning had chosen their heroes well: Wolf Biermann was a master of the protest song, something of a Germanic Bob Dylan but with an allegiance to socialism; Rudolf Bahro, a sometime jailed GDR dissident who, after being exiled to the West, became a major theoretician and leader of the German Greens; and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), renowned poet and playwright.

Brecht's ready listing was sure to fuel the immense controversy that he has attracted since his early theatrical successes in the 1920s. Sometimes compared to Shakespeare (by Charles Laughton), Brecht is generally considered one of the great playwrights and directors of the 20th century.

Even now, almost 40 years after his death, his plays — along with those of Chekhov — are the most frequently performed works in the modern repertoire. (In my locality alone there have been three separate Brecht productions in the last year.) As the English theatre director Peter Brook has emphasised: "Brecht is the key figure of our time, and all theatre work today at some point starts or returns to his statements and achievement".

But much of the enthusiasm extended to his work inevitably catches on a snag — Brecht was a Marxist, and proud of it. Here was no fly-by-night intellectual acting out a brief romance with the revolution before returning excused to the comfort of bourgeois patronage. Instead, he immersed himself lifelong in the method of Marxism so as to enrich his skill and focus his playwrighting.

This unshamefaced political allegiance has annoyed the critics no end. Some, like John Willet — the author of many books on Brecht and his chief English translator — have chosen to look upon it as an aberration, something unfortunate but incidental to his achievements as a playwright and poet. In contrast, Eric Bentley — the keenest Brechtian in the United States — lamented that Brecht "would be a better writer if he gave up Marxism". Others are more disparaging and oppose his work on the grounds that it is coarsely didactic — even propagandistic — and lacks the subjective sentiments accessible only through a more personal theatre of individual experience.

Among the rest of us there are any number of specialists whose cursory acquaintance with his work promotes an all too ready employment of the label "Brechtian" to a wide range of very diverse offerings.

And finally, there are writers, such as John Fuegi, who tail-end controversy by generating their own hype in the hope that in the New World Order, mud-slinging sticks to dead reds better today than it did before Berlin lost its dividing wall.

Inevitably, commentators are forced to approach the phenomenon of Brecht by addressing not only the scripts of his plays but also his many writings on theatre as well as the way he directed productions in his last years. Mostly they decide to deal with his technical expertise in isolation from his politics. Thus sterilised, Brecht is apprehended as a modern dramatist and poet worthy of careful study, and of no more particular interest except that he also happened to be political.

This conscious attempt to neglect the total Brecht is more annoying because of its success in obscuring the continuing relevance of his artistic achievements. For those determined to seek him out, Brecht's legacy is a rich cultural vein that has survived all attempts by fascism, Stalinism and modern academic discourse to destroy its revolutionary content and warp its significance.

After he was driven into exile by the rise of Hitler in 1933, for the next 15 years Brecht's plays were seldom to reach the stage. Thwarted in his ambition to create a new theatre geared to the revolutionary promise of his time, he spent his last years defining and reworking his ideas while kowtowing to the new rulers of the GDR, who gave him a theatre of his own, the Berliner Ensemble.

What we identify today as Brecht's dramatic method is an amalgam drawn from the traditional Elizabethan and Asiatic stages, modern German cabaret and the work of his Marxist contemporaries such as the director Erwin Piscator and the theatre of the new Soviet state instigated by Vsevolod Meyerhold and Sergei Tretiakov (both of whom were later to die as victims of Stalin's campaign against "formalism" in the arts). Brecht's role — aside from his superb poetic ear and skill as a dramatist — was to develop a form of theatre that transcended mere illusion by committing itself to representing the social world as it was rather than as it appeared to be.

Most commentators have had trouble with such a quest and have failed to understand the rationale of the method involved. But Brecht was quite clear about what he wanted and how he proposed to get it. When he referred to Karl Marx as "the only audience for my plays that I had come across", Brecht was describing a primary focus that is lost on his many critics. He did not mean that only Marxists could understand his plays. Rather it was Marxists alone who could understand what he was trying to do.

And for those willing to make the effort, Brecht comprehended how insidiously and pervasively manipulative cultural production had become under capitalism. His response was to do something about it by creating a theatre that sought to redefine the relationship between audience and performance.

This particular and significant achievement — resting primarily as it does on the content of his work rather than its style — seems not to have registered with some professors of literature such as John Fuegi. For him, this side of the fall of the wall, Brecht is open season. After being compared to Hitler and Stalin, the Bertolt Brecht in Fuegi's new biography is portrayed as a misogynist and plagiarist whose major works were written by other writers. Fuegi insists that what we know as his plays were actually the work of women (and socialist feminists at that!): Elisabeth Hauptmann, Grete Steffin and Ruth Berlau — sometime lovers of Brecht who have not received appropriate recognition.

While the collective method of Brecht's writing has always been acknowledged (as well as his penchant for lifting material from the works of Arthur Rimbaud, Rudyard Kipling, Francois Villon and Arthur Waley's translations of traditional Japanese Noh plays) Fuegi's determination to downsize Brecht's primary and essential role in its creation is advanced through the most preposterous assertions.

In reviewing the book for the Australian recently, Michael Morley (professor of drama at Flinders University) was curt: "... we are asked to accept that he [Brecht] cheated his collaborators blind, caused Margarete Steffin to die of tuberculosis, was indirectly responsible for Ruth Berlau's death in a hospital fire in 1974 (18 years after his own) and had so exhausted his stock of what a Victorian poet termed 'faithful female friends' that 'by 1956, as in his teen years, his most trusted companion was a dog'. Thankfully, the author refrains at this particular juncture from explicitly suggesting bestiality."

As founder of an outfit known as the International Brecht Society, Fuegi's motives in generating his own highly original version of the Brecht story can only be described as dubious. His interpretation of the epoch in which Brecht lived is facile and couched in sternly judgmental terms that even insist that somehow Brecht was complicit in the rise of fascism and Stalinism and the Cold War extremes of Senator Joseph McCarthy!

This ready moral outrage contrasts sharply with his subject's fascination with the ethics of capitalist society. Indeed, the bulk of Brecht's plays and poems are parables in the mode of those of the New Testament. In casting Brecht as a hypocrite and charlatan, Fuegi's core project is to make out that the Bertolt Brecht we think we know did not exist. Rather than a shock, it's an embarrassing fantasy.

From GLW issue 177

Why bother with Brecht?

2010-07-30T23:05:00.000+10:00

Wednesday, April 29, 1998 - 10:00

By Dave Riley

We should thank Eric Singh (GLW #313) for reminding us that this year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. No doubt, as the drama industry cranks up, we are sure to be treated to a fact feast of seminars and conferences dedicated to the work, life and times of "BB".

But for those of us who aren't registered as Brecht scholars or who don't officiate over the dinner table as bona fide "Brechtians", the fuss may all seem a bit much. I mean, you're sure to be thinking: why bother?

What's the attraction in Brecht? Unfortunately, Brechtians are like British Trotskyists — put two of them in a room together, and you are sure to end up with three factions.

A Brecht discussion soon gravitates toward a debate as each side lays claim to their Bertolt Brecht — the playwright, poet, theatre theorist, Marxist or human being. Shakespeare should be so lucky to have his love life or politics attended to so keenly by so many.

Who today argues about the "ethics" of Will Shakespeare's ready purchase of enclosed common land thanks to patronage at the Elizabethan court? We accept Richard III or King Lear on its merits despite the hard-working playwright being a paid propagandist of the House of Tudor.

Poor BB cannot hide so easily in far-off history. Indeed, rather than being tucked away in some corner of the 20th century churning out poetry and plays, Brecht was buffeted by it. He engaged it in ideological combat. This arrogant upstart from Bavaria strutted the world's stages not merely as the new Shakespeare but a Marxist one at that!

This has annoyed so many so much since it first became evident in the late 1920s, that Brecht has been cast as a major controversial figure in this century's culture: the quintessential modernist who went all the way.

The furore that surrounds Brecht rests on one question, a question that Eric Singh fails to address: how much of Brecht's artistic achievement is due to his Marxism?

Rather than deal with the "Marxist" quality of his plays and poems, scholars emphasise the pragmatic opportunism of his life, often in order to contrast this with the revolutionary ideals he supposedly subscribed to. Thus suitably judged — and found wanting as a concerned intellectual — Brecht is then dealt with merely on the basis of his talent for writing drama and promulgating theories.

For my part, I find Brecht's life fascinating. He is one of the few cultural icons of this century who remained a Marxist despite the immense difficulties in doing so. To do this and later to die quietly in your own bed is quite an achievement. Neither Hitler's concentration camps nor Stalin's gulag could lay claim to Bertolt Brecht.

Perhaps he is now finally being undone, this time by scholars keen to deconstruct him. But then he guessed what his fate might be when he once wrote: "I fled the tigers, I fled the fleas; What got me at last — mediocracies."

If it's worth something among all the din, Brecht was not only a bearer of the label "Marxist", but a darn good one. I say this humbly but it needs to be stated — I base my statement on this: it takes one to know one. And my fellow Marxist, Brecht, recognised and explained how bourgeois our culture is.

But then, if you yourself aren't Marxist, you're unlikely to recognise what he was on about or how great his achievement was in this regard.

So if you are one of those poor souls bemused by all the fuss about Brecht, I'm not going to ask you to read plays about Galileo or chalk circles, or to look up all the rude bits in The Threepenny Opera and ponder interminable quotations ("a fart has no nose" being my favourite).

Accessing Brecht is easy: read his poems, and read about what Brecht did and how he did it. It should then be self-evident.

[The poems of Bertolt Brecht are published in English by Methuen: Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, and Bertolt Brecht: Poems and Songs from the Plays.]

From GLW issue 315

From Moratorium to socialism

2009-03-28T17:36:00.001+10:00

GLW 24 May 1995

By Dave Riley

When I left school at the end of 1966 I had two passions -- theatre and politics. But they seemed contrary to one another. While I was able to indulge my dramatic bent at university, my political commitment was much more variable.

Radicalisation only truly visited me during 1969, and then I gave myself up to it with abandon.

As a student at a Catholic school in the '60s, meditating on the spectre of communism was our substitute for social studies. We were taught to be rabidly anticommunist. So, as a youth with a vague interest in the struggle between good and evil, I was recruited during my final school year to an organisation which was then being established by B.A. Santamaria.

With his years in the National Civic Council behind him and his ready access to the Catholic establishment, Santamaria drew together a coalition of right-wing forces to combat the emerging youth radicalisation. With such conservative luminaries as the academic Dr Frank Knopfelmacher, the Zionist demagogue Isi Leibler, the Bulletin poet and journalist Vincent Buckley and the sons of stalwarts of the Democratic Labor Party, Santamaria aimed to organise a viable right wing on the nation's campuses committed to pursuing the war against communism in Vietnam.

Peace With Freedom -- as the coalition called itself -- organised camps and held its initial meetings at an aptly named Jesuit-run establishment, the Institute of Social Order. The young men (young women being thought not up to the task), recruited from within the Catholic school system, were urged to do their darnedest to combat antiwar sentiment on the campuses they were soon to attend. To shore up the campaign and hone our militancy, we met fortnightly.

It was at the second of these meetings that I was asked to address the topic, “Why we are in Vietnam”. Facts always seem to ruin a good story, because in researching the history of the conflict I soon realised that maybe Australia should not be there at all. Nonetheless, I dutifully delivered a formula talk with Santamaria sitting next to me and nodding effusively as I dealt with the rationale of Australia's involvement.

Despite the enthusiasm of our mentor, I never went back, and thereafter adopted, albeit passively, an antiwar stance.

It wasn't the war that then dominated my thinking, but social injustice. I became part of a cross-campus movement which we called Social Involvement. Initially under the auspices of the Brotherhood of St Laurence, students volunteered their labour to off-campus community projects which could utilise their skills. I coordinated student involvement in the nearby mental hospital. We would run discussions and tutor in English. We later established a choir and a weekly coffee shop.

These successes encouraged further experimentation, so by the end of the year I was directing revues and cabarets put on, and mainly written, by the patients themselves. We established quite an enthusiastic theatrical ensemble that then decided to tackle a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Trial by Jury. By this time I was working in campus theatre with Louis Nowra, who I invited to join the production. He rewrote the script, and we incorporated many new songs that we thought might suit a comic opera now set amongst Chicago gangsters.

It was this incident that Nowra recently reworked into the highly successful play, Cosi, which is currently being turned into a feature film. I mention this because while Cosi concertinas the period into one event coinciding with the first Moratorium, Nowra distorts the political outlook of his characters by trivialising their opposition to the war.

This projection of energy to off-campus activities was a strong and pervasive sentiment. There seemed something indecent about the ivory tower concerns that dominated university life. We denigrated the degrees we were supposedly working towards as “meal tickets” and considered that true meaning could be found in practice only by merging with the rest, particularly the oppressed, of society. With my penchant for extracurricular activities, I readily volunteered to find out.

After a short stint in a Melbourne bank -- through whose windows I could watch the student marches against the war that were becoming more frequent -- I joined the building industry as a labourer. By this time, I had attended my first of many antiwar demonstrations and had gone AWOL from the Army Reserve (initially joined as a substitute for being conscripted).

Although I had attended one meeting of the local branch of the Young Labor Association, its activities seemed more social than socialist. I started to haunt the left bookshops in town and read periodicals such as Red Mole, Intercontinental Press, and the Communist Party's weekly newspaper, Tribune. After the CPA reaffirmed its opposition to the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, I thought they must now be OK and signed on as a Communist.

My revived enthusiasm for political activism radically changed my theatrical interests. Now greatly influenced by Marxist playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht and Peter Weiss, I tried to envisage a theatre that was relevant to the times. So when I returned to university part time -- now even trying to look, with my leather jacket and closely cropped hair, like my hero, Brecht -- in 1970 I formed Boxiganga.

Initially Boxiganga was a radical street theatre group that proclaimed itself an exponent of clown power. Our first production was a short agitational antiwar play which we worked up for the May 8 Moratorium. We thereafter toured it to schools by invading them during the lunch break; we also performed at city building sites and would march down the middle of Little Bourke Street in Melbourne to put on impromptu performances in the post office square.

During my year away from campus -- La Trobe -- there had been a major leftward shift in student consciousness, and I found that it was into politics and radical theatre that I could invest all my energies. The huge success of the May 8 Moratorium had encouraged the campus left and broadened the audience for its revolutionary ideas. We led occupations of the university's careers and appointments office and thereafter the administration building in the week leading up to the July 4 antiwar mobilisations.

By this time my political outlook was being clarified by the experience of working with other groups. While the activism and boldness of the campus left enthralled me, its shallowness and impulsiveness seemed not to address the scale of the problem of which the Vietnam War seemed only a part.

My time in the Communist Party had been instructive, because with the regular run of meetings and selling Tribune I learned a certain discipline that was lacking in the student milieu. However, the membership of the CP seemed positively conservative when compared to the gregariousness of the students. Ultimately the tug of my peers was too much, and I resigned my membership in the Communist Party to become a non-aligned student activist and theatrical entrepreneur.

Without the money to pay my fees, and certainly without the inclination to study, I rejoined the work force as a shipping clerk for ICI. One day during my regular sortie among the Melbourne bookshops I picked up a copy of the new periodical, Direct Action. From the first, DA was clear what it was about -- and what it wasn't. It was offering its readership the opportunity to build a new political formation that was neither Stalinist nor dismissive of the traditions of the Marxist movement. I thought: this is the outfit for me, and I joined the Socialist Youth Alliance.

After my time in the Communist Party and among the student left, SYA was a delight. We'd meet, discuss, decide what we were going to do -- then do it. Politics were much more focused, and there was a role for everyone who joined. Membership seemed a great discovery because all your activity was harnessed into the one great endeavour.

We grew quickly that year as we garnered a major role for ourselves in the antiwar, feminist and student movements. It was during the height of one of our many campaigns that I was approached to join a discussion group around the journal Socialist Review, which had seen only one edition. I was told that the plan was to form “the nucleus of a future revolutionary party”.

Actually, I thought that SYA suited me fine and hadn't considered that anything beyond our youthful exuberant commitment needed to exist. But the notion seemed sound, and we formed the Socialist Workers League (later the Democratic Socialist Party) in January the following year. If we hadn't, where would someone like me be today?

In the meantime, Boxiganga had moved toward more structured performances, mostly indoors. Inevitably, its politics sharpened as it became more Marxist in orientation. As some of its members were drawn more deeply into political activism, and thereafter joined me in the SYA, others decided that counter-cultural and lifestyle endeavours were more worthwhile. With one wing pondering which rainforest mushroom had more magic than a previous one, and the other actively organising against capitalism and war, the group inevitably split and wound itself up with a production based on the independence struggle in Papua New Guinea.

In hindsight, the period of mass mobilisations against the Vietnam War possessed a wonderful logic. Huge social and economic forces were involved in the conflict but once you decided which side you were on -- and did something about it -- your life changed dramatically. With all the present brouhaha about World War II, it is worth remembering that while the parents of my generation were marched off to war, many of their sons and daughters organised against it. Let's not forget that.

I moved across the full political spectrum within a very short period of time mainly because I wanted to put my energy where my mouth was. Without that willing activism, my experience of the time would have been totally different. And without the continuing legacy of the organisation we formed out of it, I would not still be politically involved nor remain an antiwar activist today.

About Blogisode

2009-03-27T22:20:00.005+10:00

I'm all over the web like a rash. I use it as my personal assistant and if it moves I link it to a blog. So for any project I tackle, I create a blog for it.

There are reasons for this that I won't go into here.

What I will go into is why this blog? And the short answer is, why not?

After some very mixed writing adventures -- plays, satirical columns, blog entries, journalism, political polemic, monologues -- I thought I'd set aside a little corner of the big web and get personal. It has to be about me. Always about me.

So what could be more personal and more self centred that posting a succession of seemingly random entries that could be strung together into an auto-biographical pastiche. That is if anyone wanted to string them together.

Now that my own children are getting on in years -- 18 and 21 years of age respectively -- I cannot help but relate to their lives in a sort of 'when I was your age' way. And when I started thinking about when I was their age -- some 40 year ago - in the grand world wide year of 1968, I am overwhelmed by memories.

I'm on replay you see.

Steve Martin, the comedian, finishes his short memoir on his stand up career -- Born Standing Up -- with a sentence that registered with me as a challenge:

I have learned that people are uploading their lives into cyberspace and am convinced that one day all human knowledge and memory will exist on a suitable hard drive which for preservation, will be flung out of the solar system to orbit a galaxy far, far away.

While not a Stars Wars aficionado I seek to book space on that hard drive for reasons I am for the moment unsure of.

But I've worked out how I am going to do this. That's a start anyway.

Any biography proceeds chronologically but I don't have the presence of mind to do that and if I did it would be a bore to read. So mine -- if I can call it that -- my autobiography will be a series of themes and sequences laid down on top of one another so that they overlap, intermingle and shake hands. It's a series of episodes written on a blog -- blogosode.

That's why I've used the pretentious term palimpsest

A manuscript (usually written on papyrus or parchment) on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible

My palimpsest is digital and online.

En route I'll s post some of my past fictional output here for the purpose of archiving. The exercise may encourage me to write more or indeed record some of the material I have written and may write.

We'll see.

I wear so many different hats on the web but this here will be my cubby hole.

Girt by Sea - a Radio Play

2009-03-27T13:58:00.003+10:00

Free ebook Download: Girt By Sea

Girt by Sea is an amalgam of several street theatre performances reworked as a play for voices (or for radio broadcast). There is nothing especially ambitious about the play as it merely tries to touch on a few notions about the mandatory detention of refugees and package them in a short, sharp piece that quickly gets down to satirical business.

__________________________
CHARACTERS
COOEE!
AUSSIE OI!
INTERCOM (Some amplification and voice distortion required as through a loud hailer.)
_________________

FX SOUND OF VOICES DEVELOPED FROM A BABEL MIX OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND ASIAN LANGUAGES.

AS VOICES EBB THEY BLEND WITH THE SOUND OF WAVES LAPPING ON A BEACH.

ROUGH DRUM ROLL FOLLOWED BY A SINGLE DISCORDANT NOTE FROM A PARTY WHISTLE OR KAZOO. FOLLOWED BY COUGHING AND MURMUING AS IN A HALL OF PEOPLE.

COOEE! AUSSIE OI! (TOGETHER. SINGING UNACCOMPANIED.)
Australians let us all rejoice
AUSSIE OI! For we are young and free
With ……..and
Our home is girt by sea….

COOEE! (IN TUNE - HUM/UM)
La da de da de da da da

AUSSIE OI! A beauty rich and rare

COOEE! (IN TUNE - HUM/UM)

Ummm Hmmmm Hmmm Hmmm Ummm Hm

COOEE!/AUSSIE OI : (TOGETHER)

AD vance Os tray lia fair….!

FX: DRUM ROLL. MUCH WHISTLE AND KAZOO BLOWING HAD BY ALL. SUDDEN SHARP BEAT. SILENCE

COOEE! Girted by sea.--

AUSSIE OI! Makes you think.

COOEE! To "girt".

AUSSIE OI! "Girtedness".

COOEE! Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!

AUSSIE OI! Oi! Oi! Oi!
(BOTH LAUGH.)

FX: BLOW AND HUMMING OF KAZOOS. DRUM BEAT. STOP).

COOEE! Girt--

AUSSIE OI! Sea.

FX: BABBLE OF ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES.

COOEE! Land.

AUSSIE OI! Girt-

COOEE! Sea.

FX: BABBLE OF ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES.

AUSSIE OI! Land.

COOEE! Girt-

AUSSIE OI! Sea.

FX: BRIEF BABBLE OF ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES.

(AUSSIE OI & COOEE! THEN DO THIS CIRCUIT OVER AND OVER FASTER AND FASTER RAISING THEIR VOICES UNTIL…)

AUSSIE OI!: Land.

COOEE! Girt-

AUSSIE OI! Sea.

FX: BABBLE STOPS

(PAUSE.)

COOEE!/AUSSIE OI!
Refugees!

FX: DOUBLE DRUM BEAT.

COOEE! Over there,…
AUSSIE OI! Beyond the girt
COOEE! Beyond the girt… people live in garbage tips.
AUSSIE OI! Over there, they work for next to nothing.
COOEE! Over there, life is cheap.
AUSSIE OI! The root problem over there… is…
COOEE! --there's too many of them
AUSSIE OI! Over there.
COOEE! Or they're not over here.
AUSSIE OI! Over here, you can live the life of Riley if you work hard.
COOEE! But we don't want them from over there working hard over here.
AUSSIE OI! If they were over here who'd be working over there making all the stuff we buy over there?
COOEE! So all those over there need to stay over there so over here can stay the same. If they weren't over there we couldn't enjoy over here as much as we do. So we need them over there.
AUSSIE OI! And they need us over here. That's the rule, the status quo…that's geography in the market place.
COOEE! Thus the girt!
AUSSIE OI! (AGREEING)
Thus the girt!
COOEE! Without us over here, who'd buy what they've got to sell? It's a well known fact that over there you can live much cheaper than over here.
AUSSIE OI! Over here we don't live on garbage tips. Over here we've got a mortgage, a car to run and reticulated sewerage….Over there you can get by without those things.
COOEE! (ASIDE) So why don't they!
AUSSIE OI! Over here we've got problems. Over there they have them too. But the problems over there are just so BIG.
FX: DRUMBEAT.ROLL. CYMBAL.
COOEE! Over here we have a big enough task making ends meet. Over there it is probably the same…but hey! we're not over there, we're over here. And since we are over here, over there is a world away.
COOEE! Thus the girt!
AUSSIE OI! Thus the girt! So who gives a stuff, if over there gets it tougher than we get it over here.
COOEE! It's all relative. That's life.
COOEE! AUSSIE OI! (TOGETHER)
Fortunately it 's not ours.
FX: DRUMBEAT - CALL TO QUARTERS.
INTERCOM I wouldn't "jump the queue" if I was you
"Cause we got ways and means.
Of making sure we lock the door
To protect our coastal seams.

Wether you swim or drown
It's all the same
'Cause we don't give a stuff
Blather and cry, winge and complain
It's useless --- we play tough.

Girt by sea we can live with
Refugees we can't.
We secure our borders
By giving orders --
One rule for all when you approach our door
It's simple, just …piss off!
COOEE! Globalise existence if you will. We're ready here downunder.
AUSSIE OI! Restructured--
COOEE! Best practiced--
AUSSIE OI! Marketed--
COOEE! Fiscally reformed--
AUSSIE OI! Downsized--
COOEE! Privatised--
AUSSIE OI! Corporatised.
COOEE! Christ! We got a GST!
AUSSIE OI! So come on world
COOEE! Oi! Oi! Oi!
AUSSIE OI! And do you stuff:
COOEE! Send us your huddled downturns, your in-balanced sheets and your homeless capital yearning to be free!
AUSSIE OI! Oi! Oi! Oi!
COOEE! This is Australia calling.
AUSSIE OI! (SHOUTING)
Coooooooo_____ee!
FX "COOEEE" ECHOES…ENDS. THEN:
ANNOUNCER'S VOICE (FAR OFF. IN CLIPPED ENGLISH ACCENT OTHER THAN AUSTRALIAN)
Stay where you are Australia - I'm coming over!
FX: FIRST THREE BARS PLAYED BY A BRASS BAND OF ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR. THIS ENDS ABRUPTLY.
CARCOPHANY OF ASIAN URBAN SOUNDS MESHES WITH ANTHEN FROM WHICH EMERGE…CHORUS: AUSSIE OI'S AND COOEE'S VOICES EITHER PRE-RECORDED AND PLAYED IN FAST MODE OR THE SAME ACTORS EMPLOYING DIFFERENT OR DISTORTED VOICES .

1ST VOICE I don't know who they think they are fooling --
2ND VOICE We suffer and starve and go without schooling.
1ST VOICE: To make ends meet we gotta come cheap --
2ND VOICE Selling our labour till the end of the week.
1ST VOICE They told us the old days were over and gone -
2ND VOICE But everyone knows the same days live on.
IST VOICE Labour and capital, rich and poor --
2ND VOICE We don't want to live like this anymore.
IST VOICE We need some respite
2ND VOICE But what do we get?
1ST VOICE The same old "solution" -
BOTH Debt! Debt! Debt! …
FX: THIS EXTENDS INTO A BALINESE STYLE MONKEY CHANT WHICH DRIFTS INTO THE BACKGROUND WHILE AUSSIE OI! SPEAKS.
AUSSIE OI! What are we going to do? Offshore -- everywhere -- there's all these people dead set keen on coming here or any location offering a shot at three meals a day and an indoor toilet. Not that that's guaranteed, but that's the promise in the promised lands. And whether you recognise it or not what we've got here in the way of material pleasures is as good as it gets. Yesiree, it won't get any better than this. You may have misgivings. You may be one of those who harps on and on about how hard done by you are. Get a life! Instead of being born into a triple-fronted brick veneer low set and a regular breakfast of Weetbix plus choice of beverage, you could have been stuck in the household of a landless peasant from Upper Volta with early tuberculosis and a nasty case of intestinal worms. Get real, matey! You've got it good.
FX: "DEBT" MONKEY CHANT STOPS'
INTERCOM Stay away.
FX: WAVES ON BEACH
INTERCOM Stay away. Stay away.
FX: WAVES ON BEACH. STOP.
COOEE! Sheep shit in the South Pacific. With your baa lambs and your empty sky, you big fella stretched out sun baking.. Sunburnt. Sleepy. Empty. You lucky bastard of a country. You your own boss cockie. Sheep shit and blowies. My country. "Core of my heart."… My suburban quarter acre block with 3 b/rms, VJ interior, carpeted floors, refurb kitchen and all cons. You it. You girt by sea. You gloating in your wee little Aussie battlers this small. Youse the underdog. Youse all mates. Too bloody right you are… So with a sprig of wattle in our hand we celebrate from whence we came. Australians! You true blue sons and daughters of Oz! I ask you to charge your glasses and raise your voices. And let's hear it for all the dinky-dyes out there:
(ATTEMPT AT SINGING)
Australians let us all rejoice, for we are young and free ... etcetera, et…cet…tera…rah…rah…rah…rah!.
FX: MERGES INTO BACKGROUND OF DRUNKEN PARTY EXCHANGE WITH CLINKING OF GLASSWARE. TAPERS OFF.
INTERCOM Stay away!
FX: WAVES ON BEACH
INTERCOM Go back where you came from!
FX: WAVES ON BEACH
INTERCOM You're not wanted here!
FX: WAVES ON BEACH STOP.
(PAUSE)
COOEE! If we offend it is with our good will.
AUSSIE OI! We want the best
COOEE! The very best
AUSSIE OI! For all and sundry.
COOEE! For you--
AUSSIE OI! And you--
COOEE! And you--
AUSSIE OI! For all of us.
COOEE! In this dry brown land do dwell.
(PAUSE)
AUSSIE OI! But the job market is so very, very tight.
COOEE! Let us make this quite clear: Very tight.
AUSSIE OI! We're not to blame.
COOEE! Free enterprise being what it is.
AUSSIE OI! Has its ups.
COOEE! And downs.
AUSSIE OI! Here --
COOEE! As well as over there --
AUSSIE OI! Here .. there… is-simply-not-enough-to-go-around.
COOEE! Not enough land.
AUSSIE OI! Think of our carrying capacity.
COOEE! Hospital beds.
AUSSIE OI! Think of our carrying capacity.
COOEE! Pensions.
AUSSIE OI! Think of our carrying capacity.
COOEE! Money.
AUSSIE OI! No where near enough of that.
COOEE! Jobs.
(PAUSE)
AUSSIE OI! So if you are down and out ...
COOEE! We don't want to have to be lifting up our heads and shouting:
AUSSIE OI! Some wog's got my job!
COOEE! Do we?
AUSSIE OI! (ASIDE) Many lands.
COOEE! (ASIDE) One voice.
AUSSIE OI! But them --
COOEE! Them. Them's a different matter.
AUSSIE OI! Sneaking into our country!
COOEE! (ASIDE) And there's no way of telling them from the locals.
AUSSIE OI! No way.
COOEE! No bloody way!
AUSSIE OI! If they were to-
COOEE! Play by the rules
AUSSIE OI! Follow procedures.
COOEE! Join the queue.
AUSSIE OI! They'd be most welcome here.
COOEE! Most welcome.
(PAUSE)
AUSSIE OI! (AGGRESSIVELY) Don't come in the first place.
COOEE! We're not a soft touch.
AUSSIE OI! (ASIDE) Many lands.
COOEE! (ASIDE) One voice.
AUSSIE OI! But to sneak in!
COOEE! Sneak!
AUSSIE OI! Without an invite.
COOEE! We don't want people like that here…
AUSSIE OI! You never know what to expect…
COOEE! (ASIDE) It's embarrassing…smudging our picture postcard like that.
AUSSIE OI! We like to pick our own.
COOEE! It takes real effort to become a bona fide Australian.
AUSSIE OI! You don't become one by sneaking into the country, for instance.
COOEE! That's un-Australian.
AUSSIE OI! No. To become one you gotta play by the rules.
COOEE! Our rules.
COOEE!/AUSSIE OI! (TOGETHER.)
--We're searching for identity.
FX FIRST TWO BARS OF WALZING MATILDA. ABRUPTLY STOPS
AUSSIE OI! (ASIDE) Many lands.
COOEE! (ASIDE) One voice.
AUSSIE OI! COOEE! (TOGETHER. CURSORY ATTEMPT AT SINGING )
We are Aus-tray-lee-yarn.
COOEE! And just because you're here it doesn't mean you can stay.
AUSSIE OI! That's taking advantage.
COOEE! Stay away
AUSSIE OI! Stay at home.
COOEE! Go someplace else.
AUSSIE OI! Not here. Out there.
COOEE! Somewhere.
AUSSIE OI! Beyond the girt.
FX: WAVES ON BEACH QUICKLY BUILDING IN VOLUME AND POWER WITH A RISING WIND.CRY OF SEAGULLS. MUSIC RISING ABRUPTLY: 'ONEDIN LINE THEME' (THE BALLET MUSIC FROM SPARTACUS BY KHACHATURIAN.)
COOEE! (SHOUTING) Not here. Out there. Beyond the bloody girt.
FX: SEA, MUSIC AND WIND SOUNDS TAPER OFF QUICKLY TO SILENCE.
COOEE! Girt--

AUSSIE OI! Sea.

FX: BABBLE OF ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES.

COOEE! Land.

AUSSIE OI! Girt-

COOEE! Sea.

FX: BABBLE OF ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES.

AUSSIE OI! Land.

COOEE! Girt-

AUSSIE OI! Sea.

FX: BABBLE OF ASIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN LANGUAGES.

AUSSIE OI! Land.

COOEE! Girt-

AUSSIE OI! Sea.

FX: NO BABBLE
(PAUSE)
COOEE!/AUSSIE OI! Refugees!
FX: CICADAS, BLOW FLIES,ETC ON A HOT SUMMER DAY.
RISING FROM BACKGROUND -- FAR OFF TO OFF --IS SOUND OF ETHNIC RADIO EG: ARABIC THEN INDONESIAN POP MUSIC -- AS STATIONS ARE CHANGED. THIS IS SUDDENLY SWITCHED OFF AND REPLACED BY STERILE MUSACK. SOUND OF A MICROPHONE BEING HANDLED AND STATIC.
INTERCOM Unlawful non citizens…Unlawful non citizens….This is not a borderless society. You are not wanted here….You are unauthorized arrivals...You are unauthorized arrivals…You have chosen not to apply for a visa. You refused to line up. You should have staid at home. You have shown no respect for the rule of law in this country...You have shown no respect.
FX: BLOW FLIES BUZZING
INTERCOM (PAUSE)
You are detained as a result of your unauthorised entry, not for asylum seeking …not for seeking asylum. You should have done that before you left to come here. That was your mistake. That was your mistake...You will be removed from here. You will be taken to the place from whence you came…You cannot stay in this country. You are going to be sent home...or somewhere else. You are non citizens who have broken our laws.
FX: BLOW FLIES BUZZING
AUSSIE OI! Naughty, naughty, naughty…
COOEE! We don't like that.
AUSSIE OI! Not at all.
COOEE! Any offshore resource is similarly girt by law.
AUSSIE OI! Girt by law.
COOEE! So if any unlawful non citizen were to beach themselves on Christmas Island.
AUSSIE OI! That's girt by law.
COOEE! Ashmore reef.
AUSSIE OI! Girt by law.
COOEE! Cocos Island.
AUSSIE OI! Girt by law.
COOEE! Oil rigs at sea.
AUSSIE OI! Girt by law.
INTERCOM (BARKED AS ON PARADE GROUND)
Excised offshore places strengthening our territorial integrity.

FX THREE BARS, ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR.

AUSSIE OI!/COOEE! (TOGETHER PSEUDO SINGING IN 4/4 TIME AS SOON AS MUSIC STOPS)
Girt by law
Girt by law.
FX: BLOW FLIES BUZZING
INTERCOM (BARKED AS ON PARADE GROUND)
As your official detention service provider we have been contracted to run this immigration detention facility.
AUSSIE OI!/COOEE! (TOGETHER PSEUDO SINGING)
Girt by law
Girt by law.
INTERCOM (PROMOTIONAL)
For around $120 per person per day twin share we offer a great deal. Three meals a day. Culturally appropriate menus. A bed for all. Laundry facilities. Games room. Shower block. Unlimited chilled water, tea, coffee, milk and sugar. 24 hour medical centre. All mod cons. So if you are depressed, severely depressed or slip into psychosis on occasion during your extended stay with us…We're prepared.
FX: BLOW FLIES BUZZING. STERILE MUSACK* BEGINS. THEN STOPS
INTERCOM (VOICE MOVE FROM 'OFF' TO 'ON' AS IN PASSING BY]
No escaping… No self mutilation… No starving to death…No sitting on roofs.... No stitching of lips together…No torching facilities…No rioting … No litigation…No attention seeking…No embarrassing behaviours of any kind … None of that…You can't complain. Not allowed…That's un-Australian.
[VOICE MOVE FROM 'ON' TO 'OFF', THEN 'FAR OFF' & PART REPEAT THROUGH A FADE.]
FX: BLOW FLIES BUZZING . SILENCE. STERILE MUSACK BEGINS. THEN STOPS
INTERCOM Thankyou for waiting. Your application as an unlawful non-citizen is being processed.
FX: STERILE MUSACK BEGINS. THEN STOPS
INTERCOM Thankyou for waiting. Your application as an unlawful non-citizen is being processed.
FX: STERILE MUSACK BEGINS. THEN STOPS
INTERCOM Thankyou for waiting. Your application as an unlawful non-citizen is being processed.
FX: STERILE MUSACK BEGINS. THEN STOPS.
INTERCOM Thankyou for waiting. Your application as an unlawful non-citizen is being processed.
FX: STERILE MUSACK BEGINS. FADES. SOUND OF A DISCONNECTED PHONE LINE. TAPERS OFF. DRUM ROLL. FOLLOWED BY SINGLE LONG BLOW ON SPORTS WHISTLE
INTERCOM All men on stage!
FX: RUNNING ON WOODEN FLOOR.
INTERCOM Everybody down on one knee! Now bend down low and look battle-worn. A bit more tension there. A touch more gloom on your faces. That's it.
You there, you'll play the role of Dole Bludger. Now dance over to the others with an expression of furtive glee.
FX: SINGLE PERSON DANCING ON WOODEN FLOOR.
INTERCOM Furtive glee, I said, furtive glee! Ah, that's better.
All available female personnel. Line up!
FX: RUNNING ON WOODEN FLOOR.
INTERCOM You -- yes you! -- you're Miss Homelife. Sorry, Mrs Homelife. You seem demure enough for the role. And you're Miss Equality, because it's all the same to me whoever plays the part. And you're Miss Australia, so look stalwart and generous. Stalwart and generous, I said!
Get ready now. Let's go.
All you men there, break from your imaginary toil and rise upward toward an imaginary sun. Mrs Homelife, Miss Equality and Miss Australia, minister to them. Minister! Put some love in it! They're your little darlings, for crissake!
Men, pretend "you have nothing" and imagine "you can make it". Climb over each other, symbolising the effects of a free market economy. Excellent! Now build a pyramid with your competing bodies.
FX: STRAINED SCRAMBLE OF BODIES. SOME FALLING.
INTERCOM How about a little teamwork there! That's better. Dole Bludger, lay down flat so you can break their fall.
You on top, take an imaginary flag in your hand and wave it to the tempo of a free country, conveying the joy of being a victorious Aussie battler. Great.
All ladies stand up. Come on up you get. Hang imaginary garlands around the necks of everyone -- for trying. That's to symbolise the blooming of happiness that only comes with effort.
Wonderful! That's it. That's it! Let in the sheep. Bring up the kookaburra chorus.
FX BACKGROUND: SHEEP. KOOKABURRA CALL.
INTERCOM Add the didgeridoo.
FX BACKGROUND: DIDGERIDOO LEAD IN. ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR SLOWLY RISING

INTERCOM Now, unfold the flag. Slouch hats on. Wave the sprigs of wattle. I said, wave them -- hold them aloft and give them a bloody good shake. That's better. Now all you ethnics in the front row, face the front and smile. Good. Excellent. Send in the wombat and the kangaroo. And you, indigenous Australian blackfella-type person in a loin cloth, show us your teeth. Now we're cooking. Are we happy or what? I can't hear it? Are we happy? You bet we are.
(PAUSE)
No wonder they all want to come here.
FX ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR RISES QUICKLY IN VOLUME AND OCHESTRATION. THEN FADES. WAVES ON BEACH. BLOW FLIES BUZZING.

FINIS

*STERILE MUSACK: [Suggestion] The same few bars--repeated each time-from the instrumental version of The Girl from Ipanema (Antonio Carlos Jobim)

About Dave Riley and RatbagMedia

2009-03-26T12:52:00.000+10:00

Dave Riley :I'm a blogger and podcaster based in Brisbane , Australia.This blog was called Life of Riley for four years of its existence and was the first experience in blogging. I then explored (audio) podcasting and now produce a series of podcasts and web audio streams.

I aggregate my productive output under the label of RatbagMedia.

Life of Riley was originally the name of a regular satirical column I wrote for Green Left Weekly during the 1990s. As well as writing satire I've written journalism and short plays.

In the 1970s and again in the 1990s I formed and ran street theatre troupes. Today my online street theatre manual is apparently used by colleges in the US -- either that or I'm getting paid for my good looks.

I also ran theatre projects in mental hospitals while at university in the sixties and the play and feature film, Cosi -- written by the playwright, Louis Nowra -- is based on the experience during one of those productions.

In 1985, I developed Fibromyalgia and this chronic arthritic condition has formatted my life style since, limiting it so often to domestic activities. This is why I am so active in matters of the web. It's my way of working from home.

For a time I neglected to post items to Life of Riley because I was focused elsewhere but am now utilizing the site as a home for videoblogging. My interest in creating video came about because of my exploration of and use of multimedia. My work in that regard is located at LeftClick -- blog and multimedia for a left and green perspective.

Since taking up video production my work has been shown on community television, archived by the Queensland State Library as part of their video collection, and shown before hundreds as part of film screenings, conferences or forums.

I've been a Marxist since 1969, helped found the Democratic Socialist Perspective in 1972, and am today an active member of the Socialist Alliance.

Ratbag

In my working life -- prior to 1985 -- I've been a psychiatric nurse, political organiser, process worker, storeman in a wool store, cement worker, truck loader, shop assistant & pollster. While I've been a disability pensioner for most of the time since, I nonetheless established myself for a time as a mask maker, Punch and Judy Professor, and community artist. It was as a puppeteer that I promoted myself as Professor Ratbaggy (and his Red Cordial Show). That's how the "Ratbag" got his name.

When not slaving over a hot world wide web, I have to maintain an exercise regime so that I can keep some of my symptoms from worsening. So I do boxing training and ride a kickbike around my neighbourhood. I also work in my permaculture inspired garden and walk my dog,a Jack Russel Terrier, named Nugget -- usually daily if I'm not laid up.

I live on the northside of Brisbane "in cooee of the swamp and in the shadow of the Golden Circle Cannery" with my partner of 21 years, Helen, who is currently doing a doctorate on late discovery of genetic origins.

I have two offspring-- Keir and Anae.

I used to play clawhammer five string banjo but now have a preference for Cajun and Zydeco music and dance. I once built a gamelan and appreciate classical Persian music. I sometimes play bodhran and other frame drums but I 'm no good at it.

I'm a member of the Queensland Irish Association as my forbears on my father's side were transported to Australia as convicts in the 1830s. My mother's family were descendants from Penzance (where the pirates come from)tin miners who settled along the Murray River Valley in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains in the 1860s before being pauperised by the 1890 Depression when they moved to Sunshine to work for International Harvester. My grandfather's brother, a socialist, once punched PM Billie Hughes for being a "labour rat" when he caught him crossing Chapel Street Prahran one day during the anti-conscription campaigns of 1916/17. My great grandmother met Ned Kelly; and my father received two shillings from Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor at his first communion. I grew up in Melbourne and although I've lived in many eastern seaboard cities, I have resided in sub tropical Brisbane since 1985.

I'm a jack of many trades but master of none.

Guide to Dave Riley on the web.

At last count I had a hand in over 30 blogs. For many of these I am mentoring others, but I nonetheless have spread my presence across the web.

Blogs/Podcasts

RatbagMedia Videoblogging: as you now know it to be, a videoblog.
LeftClick: blog and multimedia for a left and green perspective. LeftClick carries a lot of political material and is usually updated daily: commentary, audio, video, slideshows...from across the 'RatbagMedia Network'.
LatinRadical: podcast and radio show focusing on Latin America and Timor Leste. Produced by Warwick Fry out of Nim FM community radio station in northern New South Wales. I used to produce weekly reports from Venezuela but now handle the web side of publishing this broadcast.
LeftCast: a news and commentary audio podcast project "generated from a left and green perspective" where I publish interviews and street stories.
The Blather:"Dave Riley's mordant view of the political process". A continuation of my satirical interests in audio monologue form.
Kickbike: a kickbikers' journey. While this blog began life to report on my experiences with the kickbike, it now also functions as my exercise and movement workshop.
Education for Socialists: where audio about socialism,Marxism and activism is shared.

Wikis & other

RatbagMedia Hub:This is where I lay out all the elements and published items in the RatbagMedia enterprise.
The Activist Toolkit:a wiki project that aggregates handy DIY information for activists.
AltMediaNetwork:a wiki site that carries how to information about web audio
Climate Capitalism Socialism:political notes, resources and references
LeftClickTV: An internet TV station I run by aggregating a selection of political videos and documentaries as well as other digital presentations such as slideshows.

Social Networking

Contact Dave

Email: ratbagradio@gmail.com
Phone:(07) 33331805

Blogisode #4 Wanted

2007-03-24T11:09:00.001+10:00

Caught in a tedious doldrum OUR AUTHOR begins his masterful magnum opus only to discover that before the plot can take form he will need to invest it with a character --or characters(plural)--to carry the storyline forward in time and substance. This unfortunate feature of literary protocol has stymied the creative juices so that OUR AUTHOR is forced to explore WAYS & MEANS by which a "character" can come forth to occupy the first person or third person singular position the Blogisode requires. To this end OUR AUTHOR has advertised widely with the intention of auditioning a few wannabes for the part. It is hoped that by sifting through would be personality attributes offered freely by a collection of ambitious CHARACTERS WITHOUT AN AUTHOR some arrangement can be made with a suitable individual to begin a mutually advantageous partnership which can get this fictional exercise underway.

WANTED Novel Characters AUDITION THURSDAY Experience Not Required Apply Blogisode

See you Thursday..

Blogisode #3 Note to self

2007-03-23T23:41:00.000+10:00

Blog Fiction Project [Note to self]: Blogisode is so fictional that it has left reality so very far behind and is still located in one of my two thumbs....

METHINKS: The left thumb can service Character A and the right thumb can service Character B. That way I will have a constant resource to develop 'character'.
[AFTERTHOUGHT]Methinks it is just like Pavlov's dogs.

Woof! Woof!

Back to the thumb sucking...

Blogisode #2 The author apologises for the poorly formed character previously offered

2007-03-23T23:14:00.000+10:00

I am very very sorry for failing to develop my lead character when I first introduced him.

It is a him by the way.What with the reference to Adam and such, it should be a him.I'm not being in any way sexist in so deciding. It's just that a character with testes -- rather than one without -- is much closer to my own personal experience of gender.

You can however read on assured that I have ample space left to me to develop the personal attributes I have thus far offered you. I will avail myself of those many opportunities to deepen this character's characteristics so that by the time I'm finished with him he'll be

leaping off the ~~page~~ blog and
into your lap

as digitally enhanced as any Hollywood blockbuster.

Now, read on....

Blogisode #1 A fictional character

2007-03-23T22:41:00.000+10:00

That's me. I am a fictional character. I am to be digitally enhanced into being by marrying elements sucked from an empty thumb.

Nameless. Homeless. Penniless. Not real.

Keep sucking.

I am Punch...Yes. I am Punchinello. I am rude and outrageous . I am a mischievous puppet. A naughty boy. A mask. I am a fart without a nose. I am the first fictional character who is...who is...

... me. I am to be digitally enhanced into being by marrying elements sucked from an empty thumb.
Nameless. Homeless. Penniless. I am Punch.

Suck some more..please! Oh please keep on sucking!

I am Adam without his Judy...I am...

Try the other thumb.Go on suck! Suck you bastard! SUCK!

To be continued...

Blogisode Preface

2007-03-19T22:24:00.001+10:00

For some time I have been crippled by an inability to concentrate while attempting to read. Given my penchant for fibrofog this isn't unusual . But such a long break of not being able to studiously read has proven a handicap. I thought that my enthusiasm for listening to audio (and podcasts) had turned my brain absolutely into aural mode and my days of reading literature had passed. (instead of reading for so many hours I was listening for so many hours...)

But thanks to a recent spirited diet of Walter Moseley I am now back in the literate world. (Thanks Walter!)

But now that I'm back -- got my brain back -- my brain at least -- maybe I can entertain other ventures.

And so I have come in my own good time to the option of Blog Fiction (aka: serial fiction blogging ). There may be a couple of ways to explain this -- the long way and the short way. But if you are keen for the long route - watch this video or go sample some fictions.

If not stick with my words here... and I'm telling you that I have had in mind a project I refer to as "a dialogue novel" which I imagine as a play that is read rather than a play that is performed. However because I can record myself reading it --and doing voices -- it can be an audio "book" too. So we're talking multi media.

What appeals to me the most is that I need only publish it once per week. So if I can pull myself out of this mundane and unscheduled hole I am in -- time wise & temperament wise -- by obtaining a couple a bookends for each week -- one for each end.

What could be simpler? Blogging is easy... I can do it with one hand tied behind my back. Any day. Every day. Any hour. And I blog hither and yon. But what gets my fancy going about this option isn't so much the blogs I read but the writers I admire -- especially Thomas Love Peacock (pictured) -- friend of Percy Bysshs Shelley and co-worker at the British East India Company to John Stuart Mill.

You see, Peacock wrote dialogue novels. That was his genre. And he wrote them rather crudely compared to such contemporaries as Jane Austen. They were indeed novels with dialogue as that's the way they were in part written -- they were playwritten. I tend to compare it to the way radio broadcasts are written -- such as a segment on ABC news radio like The World Today:

Washington Correspondent Kim Landers has been speaking to two US soldiers who have returned from Iraq.
(Sound of bombs exploding)
KIM LANDERS: It's almost four years since bombs rained down on Baghdad as the Iraq War began.
(Sound of bombs exploding)
BILL FERGUSON: My name is Bill Ferguson, I'm 25 years old. I was in the initial surge into Iraq.
KIM LANDERS: Bill Ferguson was a machine gunner.He's never spoken to the media about his experience and when we met at a shopping centre he was clearly nervous.
BILL FERGUSON: So I'm always alert, always looking around. You know even though there's no threat here, I still feel in my mind there is because I've been so indoctrinated in my brain to believe that there was one always.

Do you get the drift? I love this stuff. Or as The Goons would have it:

Greenslade: This is the BBC. We commence with a flourishing chorus of 'The Gallant Hussar' by Fotheringay's Singing Midgets.
Grams: Speeded up banjo and vocal followed by an explosion.
Greenslade: And here is the midget composer, Harry 'Nuts' Secombe.
Secombe: Hallo folks! Hallo folks. Now let me inform you Wallace, that no midget composer am I. Haaallo Folks! My vocation is engineering, I graduated in tunnel building.
Greenslade: How terribly, terribly.
Secombe: Yes, yes, yes, yous, yes, yus, my first big tunnel I built in 1931
Greenslade: Oh yes, I remember now, six other convicts escaped with you.
Secombe: What, what what, what, what, what, what, all lies I tell you, we were just dressed as convicts, it was carnival night. That's how we slipped away unnoticed, all lies I tell you, all lies! [Mutters off into the distance....

So I have a similar notion to write my blogosode in like manner... a similar notion. Nothing has been written yet!

But I have my drift and maybe you get it? Maybe not?