Day: June 4, 2009

Women Are Cool, And Betterer Than Men

June 4, 2009 / Augustus / 2 Comments

From the editorial of Island magazine, Autumn 2009 edition:

Ruth Sunderland discusses the gender issues she feels are being ignored in the endless analysis of our current economic crisis. She writes: ‘This mess was made by men’ and goes on to argue that women should be vitally involved in the development of solutions. In this issue of Island I have invited activists and radical thinkers, Susan Hawthorne and Ariel Salleh, to engage in a conversation about this very dilemma. It seems timely for us to listen seriously to those who think outside the square, especially when it is clearly inside-the-square thinking which has precipitated these disasters.

Extracts from “Thinking Beyond, Thinking Deep” by Susan Hawthorne and Ariel Salleh in Island magazine, Autumn 2009 (not available online):

… in a time of global warming it’s crucial to spell out the links between ecology and women, North and South.

Australian commitments under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism may cause Indonesian women to lose their communal livelihood as forests are turned into externally financed carbon sinks. This kind of policy is neocolonial and regressive.

The European study on men’s consumption choices causing more global warming than women’s, reminds me of very fine US research by Pat Hynes in which she found that when men spend, they buy luxuries – cigarettes, alcohol, petrol, pornography and women’s bodies for their individual use. Whereas when women spend they buy survival goods – food, shelter, medicines and schooling for themselves, their children and others who depend on them, including male partners.

This, of course, is why women’s personal items, fashion, perfume, make up etc, typically occupy seven times more space in shopping malls and retail centres than men’s personal items. And women don’t drink, smoke or drive.

Defence Minister Resigns

June 4, 2009 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Sad, really, because the Defence Department is notoriously difficult, and department staff and military personnel both seem to have respected Joel Fitzgibbon’s abilities.

The trigger for his resignation was a lack of clarity about contact between Mr Fitzgibbon and his staff, and his brother Mark, head of Australian health insurer NIB, and US health insurance giant Humana. In particular, Mr Fitzgibbon failed to declare accommodation paid for by NIB.

This was the last in a long series of failures to declare gifts including accommodation and travel.

Defence Department staff again affirmed they had no knowledge of any departmental investigation of links between Fitzgibbon and possible Chinese spies. This was reported in the Australian as PURE FICTION: Media reports of spy affair inaccurate, which is hardly the same thing.

As I have said before, Fitzgibbon is either totally brainless (and he’s not) or he lied repeatedly about his relationship with Chinese/Australian business woman Helen Liu. People who think they need to lie usually have something to lie about. Fitzgibbon had to go.

Samson and Delilah (Again)

June 4, 2009 / Augustus / 0 Comments

I wrote about the taxpayer funded Australian film Samson and Delilah a couple of weeks ago.

Gary Johns has written a review of the film. The review appears in today’s Australian.

Here’s a bit to get you started:

The film opens with a typical day in Samson’s life. He wakes to reggae music from his brother’s band playing on the porch of the archetypal concrete box house. He sniffs a can of petrol. There’s nothing to do, no work, no school. Instead, Samson follows young Delilah around as she cares for her grandmother. He is clearly taken with her, but cannotor will not say so. Instead, Samson throws stones at Delilah to catch her attention.

The next day, Samson whacks a band member over the head with a lump of wood, and in retaliation his brother beats him senseless. Samson takes his filthy rubber mat and blanket across the road and camps outside Delilah’s concrete box. Delilah’s grandmother dies, Delilah is beaten by other women in punishment for the death; the two steal a four-wheel-drive and head for town. In town Delilah is kidnapped by youths, possibly raped and certainly beaten. Nevertheless, the next day she returns to Samson who has taken shelter under the bridge on a dry river bed. He did not think to look for her. Next day, they wander out into traffic and she is run down. He did not think to look for her. The ambulance people return her, patched up.

One critic said it was “one of the bravest Australian films I’ve ever seen”. And so it was, as a documentary. Except in one respect: Delilah enters a church (suspiciously like the John Flynn church in Alice Springs) and then wanders out under the stern eye of a clergyman, who offers no help. If this is meant to convey a message about the missions, it fails. The missions saved more than souls in outback Australia, they saved lives.

Thornton says: “As far as telling a story that’s realistic, I needed to go all the way and not hold back on how grim things are. Most 14-year-olds in Alice are walking around with the knowledge of a 90-year-old, from what they’ve experienced. They’re bulletproof.”

No they are not, they are traumatised and despondent.

Any answers, Warwick? How did you escape? What is your optimistic story? How did you learn to read and write? Do you live on country, totally dependent on the white man’s petrol and canned food?

Like many films and documentaries before it, Samson and Delilah succeeds in showing the hopelessness and violence of life in remote aboriginal communites. Like those others, it offers no solutions.

Despite the rantings of deranged critics, writing from the comfort of their Melbourne apartments, this film offers neither joy nor hope.

Film makers can be agents of change. They can and must do better than simply preaching or pointing accusing fingers.