I will be speaking on the ANU campus this Wednesday 19th, 4-5 pm, on The Rise and Failure of the Radical Right.
Details: http://billboard.anu.edu.au/event_view.asp?id=95107
Venue: 204A Lecture Theatre – Innovation Building
It’s a public lecture, so you will be welcome if you can make it.
Update 20th: Here is a pdf (5.8 Mb) of the slides I used: RiseOfRight_Emeriti
Australian indigenous people: a Chief of Bathurst Island, and friends, 1939. (Personal photographs of C L A Abbott during his term as Administrator of the Northern Territory. Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve had lies on my mind.
How our governments and politicians lie, and lie, and lie, and how we let them. How much damage that has done. How much damage it still does, day after day.
I’ve been thinking to write about it, but knowing it’s another downer, and we can’t just dwell on what’s wrong because we lose hope and become numb and cynical. It’s cynicism and numbness that creates the space for the liars.
Then a video came along, a video of a man speaking the painful truth about his country, speaking from his head and from his heart.
More about ANU and its School of Music, this time published in the Canberra Times.
What is a university supposed to be? GEOFF DAVIES wonders if Ian Young knows
The determination of Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Young to downgrade the School of Music leaves serious doubts that he understands what a university is. His stated reasons are still unconvincing, and leave the suspicion of an unstated agenda. The rest of ANU must be concerned.
Continuing the alliterative series on how to reform and save ourselves. The Eight Elementary Errors got a big response, so I might develop these into something more substantial.
When I was a young adult it dawned on me there is such a thing as collective insanity. I was reading about Japan near the end of World War II. The Japanese collectively refused to believe they could lose the war, and continued behaviour that was very destructive for themselves and others (they are not unique in this respect, they were just the example I happened to read about). It took the atomic bombs to shock them out of their state of psychological denial.
One view of insanity is the continuation of behaviour that is detrimental to one’s self, despite ample evidence of harm being done. How sane are we now, those of us who live in the rich countries?
English: ANU School of Music, LLewellyn Hall. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
[Although this is a relatively local issue, it is symptomatic of the venality of the neoliberal dominance of Australia and much of the world. The Vice Chancellor of ANU recently proposed to downgrade the School of Music from top-class performance to vocational training. Published in City News 5 June.]
Defenders of the Australian National University School of Music have come up hard against the utilitarian attitudes of the ANU Council, which refused last week to question the Vice Chancellor’s plan to gut the School. The Council is a politicised body, and Australian politics has itself largely lost interest in excellence.
[Published 7 Feb on ABC’s The Drum Opinion.]
Gina Rinehart’s evident intention to own large chunks of our media is focussing many minds on the question of media ownership. However most of the discussion does not properly recognise the special role of the media in our society, and canvasses only variations on concentrated ownership by very rich people, usually with an implication that ownership by government is the only alternative.
The media are the means of social conversation in large societies. They deserve to be accorded special status, like the courts. Ownership could be widely distributed among those served by each outlet.
[A condensed and modified version published at Eureka Street, 7 Feb.]
The Australia Day “riot” at the Lobby restaurant in Canberra was the subject of hysterical misreporting – I know, I watched it. We would be wise not to dismiss this episode as just another example of media sensationalism. Rather, it is symptomatic of a growing nexus in Australia of fear, hysteria, racism and ignorant ranting.
These phenomena are rapidly degrading our capacity for decency, our democracy, and even our perception of reality. We are moving rapidly away from the decent, laconic Aussies of our stereotyping, and into being a fearful, intolerant, nasty and brittle society.
[We happened to witness a demonstration last Thurday, “Australia Day”, which commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet, with convicts, and so of course also marks the beginning of the dispossession of Aboriginal people. I gather pictures of our Prime Minister being dragged by a security man have gone around the world. I have sent this account to media, we’ll see if it gets a run.]
[Posted on The Drum, 30 Jan.]
The bias, hysteria and divisiveness of our public political conversation is never far from view, but this week I encountered it first hand. I watched the Aboriginal protest unfold at The Lobby restaurant. The event reported in the media and reacted to by many commentators is a lurid parody of what actually happened. Perspective and balance are hard to find.
The 10th anniversary of “9-11” will see a frenzy of commentary. Ten years ago I saw it as the beginning of an end game that will see the collapse of US power, and perhaps of the current version of global consumer capitalism. Recent political and financial events in the US suggest it is still very much on that track. This is from 15 October 2001.
The aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. is developing ominously, and in broad terms predictably. Violence is being met with violence. More innocent people are dead, on both sides, and more relatives are grieving. It seems likely that the U.S. counterattack on Afghanistan will be counterproductive, because for every bomb that drops another young moslem will join the holy war against the U.S.
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