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Martin Wesley-Smith's 2009 BLOG |
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an incomplete and opinionated ramble through miscellaneous events, performances etc so far in 2008 ...
2008
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Thursday June 25 2009:
An enthusiastic audience member wrote to cellist David Pereira after his concert last weekend:
I see that a new documentary movie about West Papua will be available for free download from Al Jazeera English on July 2 2009. Called Pride of Warriors, it "tells four personal stories of West Papuan's struggle for freedom. Based on footage smuggled to Australia (it) gives a new perspective on the human rights situation from areas in West Papua never seen on TV before ... All the people that appear in this film have risked persecution for speaking out. However they want their stories to be told ..."
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Sunday June 21 2009:
I was in Canberra last night to hear the premiere of my new piece Morning Star for cello & piano, which cellist David Pereira and pianist Marcela Fiorillo played again - beautifully - this afternoon. I now intend to work on it some more before self-publishing it.
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Thursday June 18 2009:
Last night I went to a preview in Sydney of the new Australian film Balibo, which is about the murder, in East Timor in 1975, of six Australian journalists by invading Indonesian troops. Directed by Robert Connolly and starring Anthony LaPaglia, it is a powerful film at every level: rivetting entertainment yet displaying the cynicism and brutality of Australia-USA-UK-Indonesia politics. Surely the Rudd government will now be forced to follow the recommendations of the Pinch coroner's report into the death of one of the Balibo newsmen. Surely someone's head must now roll for the cold-blooded and pre-meditated murder of six men whose only crime was to try to tell the world what was happening in East Timor. Since when in a democracy has it been a crime to try to preserve that democracy? Surely justice will now be done?
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Tuesday June 16 2009:
On June 6, the USA House of Representatives passed (235 votes to 187) the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011 with a section (1123) on West Papua. An excerpt:
8. Today, the violence continues. In its 2004 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices the Department of State reports that Indonesia 'security force members murdered, tortured, raped, beat and arbitrarily detained civilians and members of separatist movements especially in Papua' ...
11. West Papuans are Melanesian and believed to be of African descent ...
The full text can be read here.
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Cellist David Pereira writes:
Meanwhile, my special colleague Marcela Fiorillo and I will play this weekend Saturday 7:30pm and Sunday 3pm at Wesley Music Room: From the Heart is a program that concludes with the Rachmaninov sonata for cello and piano. In the first half is the Grand Tango by Piazzolla, a rarely heard Piece by Chausson, the Rachmaninov Vocalise, four songs from Opus 10 by Strauss, and Marcela has found three short pieces by the amazing teacher/composer Nadia Boulanger that I've never heard before, let alone played. They too are lovely. But there is more. Martin Wesley-Smith has written a brand new work for the occasion. It is a set of wildy contrasted variations on a Papuan melody. He has kindly permitted me to interview him during the concert.
The Wesley Music Centre is in Canberra.
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Friday June 12 2009:
Someone who'd been at a recital by cellist David Pereira in Bendigo on Wednesday night wrote to him:
Hotel Turismo is my piece Welcome to the Hotel Turismo. David has recorded both this and Carl's piece for Tall Poppies Records.
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Tuesday June 9 2009:
Finished today a piece for cello'n'piano called Morning Star - for a concert coming up in Canberra. It sets the beautiful national anthem of West Papua, Hai Tanahku Papua. I wrote it for cellist David Pereira, who is playing my piece Welcome to the Hotel Turismo in Bendigo tomorrow for Soul Food. Morning Star is really a work-in-progress which I intend to develop further after David, and pianist Marcela Fiorillo, have played this first version ...
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I was interested to read a recent article in The Australian newspaper about the new Head of VCAM (the Victorian College of the Arts and Music), Sharman Pretty. "Collaboration and 'inter-practice' learning is at the core of Pretty's vision for the new VCAM", writes Corrie Perkin. "I am astonished at how siloed this campus has been" says Ms Pretty. "The whole university is open to (our students), they can either shut the whole lot out and say, 'I don't want any of that, I just want to focus on my own little area', or they can embrace the whole lot and say excitedly 'How many of these things can I do?' The whole world is open to them. And that's very exciting."
I too am astonished! In the 90s, Ms Pretty was Head of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She and I clashed on a number of issues, one bone of contention being the location and design of a new building for the Conservatorium. Her view, echoing that of a predecessor, John Hopkins, was that it be where the Con had always been - in Macquarie Street near the Sydney Opera House - but sunk underground. I opposed that view on a number of grounds, one of them being that as the Con was part of Sydney University, it should be on the university's main campus precisely so that our students and staff could rub shoulders with the wider university community, thus encouraging and facilitating "collaboration and 'inter-practice' learning". Once the decision had been made to stay in the city, I ventured to suggest that the design of the new building had to be informed by consideration of how music education might develop in the 21st century. I remember saying something to the effect of "What if we discover that a dance program, say, is a valuable music education tool? We need to design a flexible building that can easily accommodate such a program." Ms Pretty's response: "We teach music." In other words, we are a standard European-style classical music institution, so we need standard European-style classical music institution facilities ... It's a good thing that she's now at VCAM: if she were still at the Sydney Con, she would not be able to implement her new vision of "'inter-practice' learning" in an underground building in the middle of the city.
Needless to say, my forthcoming book about music and music education will deal with such issues in more detail.
I am also astonished, incidentally, that anyone could name an institution a "College of the Arts and Music", implying that music is not one of the arts!
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The local choir I sing in and direct, the Thirsty Night Singers, has recently been singing an SATB arrangement of a kids' song of Peter's and mine called Progress. If you wish, download and print the sheet music here (pdf, 76KB, 3 pages); listen to a MIDI file of it here.
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Tomorrow I'm getting together with Vera, Chuck and Dave.
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Thursday June 4 2009:
Today's date lives in infamy as the date of the massacre of thousands of Chinese civilians in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989:
That's from an article by Dan Edwards called Forgetting Tank Man Costs China Dearly, published in today's edition of newmatilda.com. To read more, click here.
My piece Brother Jack was reputed to be a protest piece about the Tiananmen Square massacre. But it ain't. The story is that the leader of a Swiss big band touring China sometime in the 90s found himself playing variations on the French song Frère Jacques during his solo. The audience erupted into wild applause, which puzzled him 'cos he didn't think his playing deserved such acclaim. He later discovered that the melody of Frère Jacques is the same as that of a Chinese folk song which was used by Tiananmen Square protesters to carry words sending up the government. It's amazing that just a few notes can carry such heavy humanitarian and political import. If my piece does then it surely would only do so amongst a few Chinese people who demonstrated - and survived - in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago, and it's most unlikely they will ever hear the piece.
A reminder: you can hear (and see) Sarah and Elizabeth Watson play Brother Jack on YouTube by clicking here.
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Tuesday June 2 2009:
from someone who recently received the recording of Peter's and my Lewis Carroll-inspired choral music theatre piece Boojum!:
Boojum! is available here on a Vox Australis double CD for AUD27 (a bargain!) from the Australian Music Centre. Read the libretto here: Act One, Act Two.
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Saturday May 30 2009:
Next week, at 10.30pm on Saturday June 6, on ABC-FM will broadcast Hollis Taylor and the music of Australia's Pied Butcherbirds:
Can't wait to hear it! I recently read Hollis's book-with-DVD POST IMPRESSIONS: A TRAVEL BOOK FOR TRAGIC INTELLECTUALS, which has contributions from, amongst others, Jon Rose. It's beautifully written: original, imaginative, quirky, honest, with distinctive character. One of the great travelogues! See Hollis's website for more information.
Jon, incidentally, has the Kronos Quartet playing his Music From 4 Fences on Friday June 5 at the Sydney Opera House. See here. Bookings: call (02) 9250 7777 or click here. Fascinating!
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If you fancy a 14km or 50km walk on Saturday 19th September through beautiful National Park and State Forest in Kangaroo Valley, raising money for projects in East Timor while you do so, visit www.kvrp.org.au. This is a fundraising initiative of the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership.
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Friday May 29 2009:
I was very happy with last Tuesday night's recording of Peter's and my 2005 piece doublethink (Roland Peelman and The Song Company at Trackdown Studios in Sydney; engineer: Bob Scott). At the moment it's in a hundred or more bits that need to be mixed, edited, cut together, and post-produced etc (using Pro Tools). It will end up not so much a concert piece recorded for CD but more a radio piece based on the concert version. It's a bleak though not un-entertaining look at the use of propaganda. From our program notes:
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Talking of Peter Wesley-Smith, the recent Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival had a session in which my daughter Olivia Wesley-Smith read some of his children's verse. Excerpts from a letter from a satisfied audience-member who loved, in particular, two of his books (The Hunting of the Snark (Second Expedition) and Foul Fowl, both published by the now-defunct Cherry Books):
Olivia's reading of your poems was, to us, one of the highlights of the festival. Thank you both for giving such pleasure, and laughter, to so many ...
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Talking of Belinda Webster, which I wasn't - but she is the Artistic Director of the afore-mentioned Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival - I was recently asked to write a testimonial in her favour. An excerpt from what I wrote:
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Last night I conducted the first rehearsal of a local choir that's coming together to sing one song - Since You Went Away (words by black American writer James Weldon Johnson, music by Danish composer Otto Mortensen) - with brilliant a cappella jazz vocal quartet The Idea of North at their concert in Kangaroo Valley on Saturday July 4. We made a promising start on what is a most beautiful song.
On the way back home along Green Valley Road I came across Peter and Rob coming out: someone had run over and killed a female wombat, but inside her pouch was a baby, very much alive; Pete had rescued it and was taking it to a carer who will look after it for eighteen months or so before releasing it back into the bush.
Talking of wombats, a large python has apparently decided to see out the winter sitting on top of our woodheap. It's a beautiful animal, and not dangerous, especially now that winter has made it sleepy and lethargic. You wouldn't want to be bitten by one, however, so we have to exercise some care when getting wood for the fire ...
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about legs:
1. For those who know our old Mum Sheila, the ulcer on her leg - the only real health problem she's enduring, which is pretty good for someone in her ninety-fourth year - is showing steady signs of progress. She has regular visits from healer Teresa Keyser, who does lymph massage and applies honey, golden seal, aloe vera etc to the ulcer itself - that, combined with exercise (walking, operating the foot pedal of a spinning wheel, doing exercises, and so on) and resting with her leg elevated (it's a circulation problem), seems to be doing the job, albeit slowly.
2. For those who know our old dog Flash, he came home from hospital today after having had an operation to fix the cruciate ligament in one of his legs. He has a huge wound, sewn up with stitches, and a large plastic collar designed to stop him licking it. Needless to say, he's not a happy dog at the moment, but he will be a lot happier, in time, than he would've been had he not had the op.
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Have come across a comment on the recent Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival by JohnofOz:
Also this by Jon Rose, writing about music with socio-political intent:
These articles come from The Australian Music Centre's ezine Resonate.
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Wednesday May 20 2009:
Top Australian vocal ensemble The Song Company (directed by Roland Peelman) is currently recording pieces and songs of mine for a projected all-Wesley-Smith double CD to be released in 2010. This week it's some a cappella conservation songs, including Billiards, Freddie the Fish, Nobody Cares Anymore and Who Stopped the Rain?. Next week it's doublethink, a piece commissioned by Song Co for our 2005 birthday concert.
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I'm currently getting a local choir together to sing a song with a cappella jazz vocal quartet The Idea of North at a concert TION is doing in Kangaroo Valley Hall on Sat July 4. For more information, click here.
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Friday May 15 2009:
This strong and courageous person was charged for breaching the conditions of her 19-year house arrest because an uninvited American man - identified as Mr John Yettaw - swam across a lake to her home in Rangoon and stayed there in secrecy for two days. Apparently she's being held responsible for someone turning up at her door, uninvited, when she had no power to stop him ...
For more information, and to help Amnesty's campaign for justice in Burma, click here.
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Wednesday May 06 2009:
Music and politics: Pete Seeger, a man I have revered most of my life, has turned 90. At a birthday concert last Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, Arlo Guthrie said that Pete, like his father Woody,
(from Springsteen to Seeger: "You Outlasted the Bastards" by Katrina Vanden Heuvel in The Nation, Monday 04 May 2009)
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I've been organising concerts and events in order to raise funds for the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, a group of locals that sponsors projects in East Timor. On July 4 2009 there's brilliant a cappella jazz vocal quartet The Idea of North. On August 15 there's The Seventh Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival, with pianist Robert Constable. And on Sunday August 30 2009, singer Annalisa Kerrigan, with pianist Dean Sky-Lucas and fiddler Clare O'Meara, will present a concert of Irish songs called Ireland.
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According to William Pfaff, the war in Afghanistan:
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see, also, here (Patrick Coburn in counterpunch)
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Wednesday May 06 2009:
Anna Rose writes, in So Long Kevin, And Thanks For All The Fish (newmatilda.com, May 5 2009):
First up, (the Rudd government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) will be delayed until July 2011. Why? All the advice that the Government has received on the economics of climate change shows that the sooner we cut emissions, the less expensive it will be. Early action is much cheaper than waiting. This was a central tenet of the UK's Stern Review and of our own Garnaut Review. We need to move quickly, especially if we want to create new green jobs and new investments in clean tech and renewable energy in Australia.
Secondly, in 2011-2012 the carbon price will be set at $10 per ton and there will be an unlimited amount of permits. Full market trading won't begin until July 2012.
This is a joke - $10 a ton! ...
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Rudd was elected to do the carbon reduction thing, but has broken his promise (due, he says, to the GFC). He's acting like, even looking like, John Howard more and more every day. Stand up, Kev! And get rid of Ms Wong, who is proving to be an even greater disappointment ...
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Tuesday May 05 2009:
Yesterday I received an email from a woman saying that she'd heard that my ex-brother-in-law Bill North was in jail and could she go visit him? Bit of a shock! I rang him at home: there he was, blissfully unaware that the long arm of the law had caught up with him at last ....
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In today's Sydney Morning Herald there's an enthusiastic review by Harriet Cunningham of the recent Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival. It doesn't appear to be on-line as yet; if/when it is I'll post it here (later: can't find it ...)
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Monday May 04 2009:
We're currently being plagued by a mystery caller who rings us several times per day, waits for one of us to pick up the phone, listens to our "hello", waits for a few seconds, then hangs up. Once merely annoying, it has now become distressing, for we - including our 93-y-o Mum - are having our sleep disturbed. If whoever is responsible is reading this blog, please understand that you are causing us great anguish. Please stop!
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Music and politics: today's Sydney Morning Herald has an article called Portraits of the composer, a man deeply concerned for the future by Yuko Narushima about composer Peter Sculthorpe:
"I chose to write about Easter Island as a metaphor for the world." ... [more]
This was published on the same day that Prime Minister Kevin "Howard-Lite" Rudd announced a one-year delay in implementation of Australia's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme ....
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Sunday May 03 2009:
Today was the final day of the second Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival, a biennial event whose Artistic Director is Belinda Webster. Judging from the comments I heard from audience members it was a great success, with its combination of great weather, visual art exhibitions, well-known writers reading from their poems and/or novels, and concerts of "fine music", all set in the beautiful environs of Kangaroo Valley, proving irresistible to audience members from near and far. I had two pieces played: Welcome to the Hotel Turismo, for singing cellist & CD [2000], and Psst, for string quartet, a two-page 1' 05" piece which I wrote earlier this year as an 80th birthday tribute to composer and friend Peter Sculthorpe. Cellist David Pereira gave a very powerful and emotional performance of Turismo, which he has recorded for Tall Poppies Records, while Psst was superbly played by the Goldner String Quartet along with other short pieces by a bunch of composers that included Anne Boyd, Barry Conyngham, Ross Edwards, Mary Finsterer, Andrew Ford, Matthew Hindson, May Howlett, Ian Munro and Rosalind Page.
It was remarkable that the festival program consisted almost entirely of contemporary Australian work (music, literature, sculpture, paintings etc), with hardly a classical work to be heard. Yet the almost-capacity audience went from one venue to the next with big smiles on their faces and unrestrained enthusiasm for what they were seeing and hearing. It helped, of course, that the festival was set in the spectacular natural beauty of Kangaroo Valley on a glorious sunny autumnal weekend. It helped, too, that the festival was almost flawlessly organised and that the quality of the musicians, actors etc was superb. For its audience, this festival hit the spot perfectly.
There were many highlights for me. One was a concert by The Band of Brothers (Leonard Grigoryan, guitar, Slava Grigoryan, guitar, James Tawadros, percussion, and Joseph Tawadros, oud): stunning virtuosity and impressive new compositions presented in a relaxed, informal way. Another was an outdoor performance by didge virtuoso William Barton. I've heard this amazing young musician many times before, but on this occasion I thought he reached new heights, especially when playing a duet with a lyrebird ...
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I'm appalled to see that Prime Minister Rudd is planning to send 400 more Australian troops to Afghanistan, even though he admits that it is highly likely that some of them will be killed there and that the USA and its allies are not winning the war. I'm yet to see a definition of what would constitute "victory" in a country that has been the graveyard of armies from Britain, Persia, the USSR, and many others. And what's the justification for the war, again? To go get bin Laden and his fellow jihadists? Right. While we're looking for them I s'pose we might as well bring democracy, Christianity, and pipelines for American oil companies. Seems fair ...
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Tuesday April 28 2009:
I've received a few comments from friends re the YouTube clip of my piece Brother Jack played by Sarah and Elizabeth Watson. Here are some of them:
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Sunday April 26 2009:
Our old Mum, Sheila, who lives with Peter and me in Kangaroo Valley, is 93 today! To her many admirers: she's well, generally, apart from an ulcer on her leg, the result of poor circulation. She's going out this morning for a birthday breakfast with some of her favourite local ladies then coming back here for a family lunch. During the 60s, Sheila was known to millions of people as the presenter of the ABC's Kindergarten of the Air, a radio program that was broadcast via Radio Australia to South-East Asia.
One of the family who's here today is her son Rob, or Wes, who drove from Darwin, a distance of about 4,000km. The story of his near-fatal fall last year and subsequent recovery is told here.
later: a good time was had by all at Sheila's birthday breakfast, birthday lunch and birthday dinner. Her greatgrandsons Oskar (12) and Bassy (8) stayed on for a couple of days, helping Pete'n'me eradicate a patch of moth vine, which is one of the weeds du jour threatening Kangaroo Valley bushland.
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Sunday April 19 2009:
Pianist Liz Watson has written to say that a recent Watson Duo performance of my Brother Jack is up on YouTube. You can watch it here.
This morning I picked grapes, helping out a neighbour harvest his Chambourcin crop from which he hopes to make a dessert wine. This afternoon I went to a concert in Nowra by The Joubert Singers, a choir from Hunters Hill in Sydney conducted by Rachelle Elliott and accompanied by pianist Jee Young. Good! I was very pleased to hear a bracket of contemporary Australian pieces by Katy Abbott, Paul Jarman, Stephen Leek and Matthew Orlovich. One generally doesn't at concerts like this. What a difference it would make, in all sorts of areas, if every choir in Australia did just one bracket of Australian songs per year!
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Friday April 17 2009:
Here's another piano piece, this one rather Chopinesque, available as a free download: Olya's Waltz (pdf, 3 pages, 100KB). Listen to it here (MIDI file). It's from a larger piece called On A. I. Petrof, which I composed in 1993. I'm preparing a new score of this.
Here's a kids' piano piece: Red Rag (pdf, two pages, 56KB).
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Wednesday April 15 2009:
Someone enquired recently about my piece Brother Jack, for piano (four hands). If anyone else would like a copy of the sheet music, feel free to download it here (24 pages, 416KB).
This piece received its first performance at the hands - four of 'em - of Australian Virtuosi (Michael Kieran Harvey and Bernadette Bolkus) in The Studio, Sydney Opera House, Fri March 12 1999. It received a second - also excellent - performance, by Daniel Herscovitch and Gerard Willems, in the Recital Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, on Thurs May 11 2000. The most recent performances, as far as I know, were by the piano duo Sarah and Elizabeth Watson on a Victorian tour last February.
Critic Jack Carmody wrote in the Sun-Herald (Sydney), March 21 1999:
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It seems that we might, one day, see at least a tiny bit of accountability for some of those who actively pursued the invasion of Iraq. See this:
Britain's foreign secretary David Miliband said in late March that the government would undertake a "comprehensive" inquiry into Britain's decision to join the 2003 United States-led invasion of the Middle Eastern nation.
The review will be carried out after July, by which time the majority of British troops will have been withdrawn from Iraq.
"We're very pleased that the British government has taken this decision and we would support the same thing happening in Australia," says Sue Wareham, president of Australia's Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW), a professional not-for-profit organisation which works for the promotion of peace and disarmament ....
That's from Australian Government Urged to Conduct Iraq War Probe, Saturday 11 April 2009, by Stephen de Tarczynski.
Some of those in the USA who allegedly gave the green light to the torture of Al Quaeda and Taliban prisoners might soon find themselves in a spot of bother:
Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo ... The six defendants-in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith-are accused of having given the green light to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in "the war on terror."
That, by Scott Horton, is from an article titled Chill the Champagne: The Bush Six to be Indicted.
One wonders, of course, why names such as Bush, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz etc are so conspicuously absent from that list and why the Obama administration is not itself seeking justice. And if there's to be an inquiry into Australia's involvement in the invasion of Iraq (don't hold your breath), one wonders how John Howard, Alexander Downer, Philip Ruddock et al could, in a just world, escape prosecution for war crimes. I mean, kill in self-defence a vicious wife-beater and you'll go to jail. But illegally invade another country, causing the deaths of a million, say, innocent civilians, and you get a medal.
1. a return concert by stunning a cappella jazz vocal quartet The Idea of North (7.30pm Sat July 4 2009, Kangaroo Valley Hall),
2. the Seventh Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival (7.30pm Sat Aug 15 2009, Kangaroo Valley Hall), and
3. Annalisa Kerrigan's Ireland (2.30pm Sun Aug 30 2009, Kangaroo Valley Hall).
left: tenor Nick Begbie of The Idea of North
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I was looking forward to an Australian tour this year of the Hong Kong Fringe Club's production of brother Peter Wesley-Smith's play Ho Chi Minh in Hong Kong, to which I contributed incidental music and audio-visual sequences. I've just heard that the tour has been cancelled, a victim of the GFC and the low Australian dollar. Bugger.
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Monday March 30 2009:
I've been tarting up a few songs for soprano & piano, for a friend. They include She Wore a Black Ribbon (pdf, 60.6KB, two pages, QuickTime, MIDI, about Australia's stolen generation), After the Storm (pdf, 86.2KB, four pages, QuickTime, MIDI), Afghan Lullaby in E minor (pdf, 48KB, two pages, MIDI) and Afghan Lullaby in D minor (pdf, 52KB, two pages, MIDI). Feel free to listen (QuickTime, MIDI) and/or download and print scores (pdf). I've also been working on something for soprano & cello (not finished yet).
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Yesterday I helped a neighbour pick his Chambourcin grapes. It was an abundant crop that promises to be an excellent vintage (I'll let you know in due course - watch this space!).
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Sunday March 22 2009:
Am currently working on new songs for a short musical called Noonday Gun, which is about Noel Coward's visit to Hong Kong. Libretto and lyrics by Peter Wesley-Smith. Finished one today called Britain Rules the World (it's set in the 1930s, before Britain's ruinous involvement in World War 2).
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The other day I came across, again, this statement by Ari Fleischer (Press Secretary in the first George W Bush administration), 7th September 2003:
As a contributor to t r u t h o u t commented:
see William Rivers Pitt's article Remember, 20 March 2009
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British MP George Galloway has been banned from entering Canada because of his views on Afghanistan. He writes, in an article in The Guardian,
More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, which had taken away his passport. But he was still able to transfix a vast crowd of Vancouver's mill hands and miners with a 17-minute telephone concert, culminating in a rendition of The Ballad of Joe Hill ...
Paul Robeson remains a hero of mine, not only a superb singer but a man of conviction with the courage to stand up for justice and equality. We need musicians of his stature and commitment again.
Australia has now lost two soldiers in Afghanistan in the past week. How long before Prime Minister Rudd comes to his senses and withdraws Australian troops from an illegal war doomed to failure?
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Thursday March 19 2009:
Good article by one of my favourite journalists, Andre Vitchek:
Jihad, Orthodox Islam and Religious Intolerance in Indonesia
Wednesday, 18 March 2009 Vitchek also covered Hilary Clinton's recent visit to Indonesia, writing that she "praised the democratization process in Indonesia, which is a model for Islam." But then she added:
see this article by Clinton - The role of civil society in building a stronger, peaceful world - in The Jakarta Post, Wed 25 February 2009
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Wednesday March 18 2009:
I've been preparing some of my Songs for Kids for soprano Nicole Thomson and cellist Rachel Scott to perform in a concert for 500 kids on April 6. They include (click for free download) I'm Walking in the City (pdf, one page, 44KB) and Chuffa-Luffa Steam Train (pdf, one page, 40KB).
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Elizabeth Watson, who is one half of the piano duo Sarah and Elizabeth Watson, who recently performed my piece Brother Jack on a tour of Victoria, has written to say they "had a brilliant time performing Brother Jack! (and much positive feedback) ... thank you for writing such a great piece for four hands - we wish there were more like it!"
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The latest from Robert Fisk in The Independent (UK), March 14 2009, is The West Should Feel Shame Over its Collusion with Torturers:
So, in the long term, is torturing prisoners ... there are an awful lot of men in Western governments who should be in the dock. They won't be, of course. And oh yes - just in case you missed it - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just admitted that Canadian troops in Afghanistan are not going to win a military victory there. Just think. All that torture - for nothing.
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Australia has just lost its ninth soldier in Afghanistan, with both sides of politics mouthing platitudes about him sacrificing his life defending freedom, democracy etc (I thought we were there to help the USA capture Osama bin Laden). Just think. All those deaths - for nothing.
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Friday March 13 2009:
Tom Allard writing in today's Sydney Morning Herald:
FIVE Australian tourists caught in a legal limbo in West Papua after a six-month nightmare in custody are setting up camp at a local airport and refusing to leave until they are allowed to return home ... The five residents of far north Queensland took a joyride in September last year to Merauke in West Papua, a ruggedly beautiful Indonesian province where a sporadic separatist insurgency has led to tight military control ...
[more]
While the case, and the convictions, are patently absurd, my main interest here is the description of West Papua as a "ruggedly beautiful Indonesian province where a sporadic separatist insurgency has led to tight military control". A sporadic separatist insurgency did not lead to tight military control. It was the other way 'round: tight military control, as well as human rights abuses (including rape, murder etc) and theft of natural resources, led to armed revolt. The indigenous people of West Papua had their country stolen from them in an act of Indonesian treachery that the United Nations refuses to confront ...
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Monday March 9 2009:
The situation in West Papua, where the Indonesian army rapes, tortures, kills, pillages etc with total impunity, or so it seems, gets worse and worse. See the article Health and human security in West Papua, by Susan J Rees, Remco van de Pas, Derrick Silove and Moses Kareth, published in The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA 2008; 189 (11/12): 641-643). Abstract:
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Long-standing allegations of violence being perpetrated against Papuan civil society are supported by accounts given by West Papuan refugees involved in an Australian-based study.
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Health data collected by Médecins du Monde and other sources provide an insight into the poor health and lack of health care in the province, with high rates of infant mortality and morbidity, maternal mortality, and HIV/AIDS.
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Extraction of natural resources is causing major disruptions to the traditional livelihoods of indigenous Papuans, as a result of environmental degradation, mass displacement and an influx of migrant workers.
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Australian health professionals are urged to assist in remediating this dire situation, in keeping with our tradition of contributing to the health care of societies in our region.
My audio-visual piece Papua Merdeka, for bass clarinet & Macintosh computer, is concerned with these issues, highlighting allegations that in various ways the TNI (the Indonesian army) treats the indigenous people of West Papua as sub-human. It intentionally spreads HIV/AIDS, for example, and jails, for up to fifteen years, anyone who flies the Morning Star flag:
The Australian government has to do far more to pressure the Indonesian government to rein in the TNI. And it must itself rein in Australia's so-called "Jakarta lobby", an informal group of influential Australians largely responsible for Australia's policy of appeasement towards Indonesia.
*
Friday March 6 2009:
"During the occupation Kenneally visited the territory four times, starting in 1990 when he was 76 and travelling extensively around the hills where he had fought. He returned three more times after the ballot on self-determination, (reporting) back to East Timor activists in Australia and to the veterans who remained involved ... Though he was a Labor man through and through, Kenneally had little time for (Gough) Whitlam because of his support for Indonesia's invasion."
(from Fervent Champion of Timorese by Paul Cleary, Fri March 5 2009, Sydney Morning Herald)
*
My email application - Mail - did a melt-down the other day, so I ordered a system upgrade that contained a new version. In the meantime I used Webmail, which at some point and for some reason corrupted my mailbox on my ISP's server, meaning that I have lost most of the emails I received during the past fortnight or so. If you sent me something during that period, I would be grateful if you were to send it to me again. One exception: if you sent me a notice advising me that I had won yet another lottery, there's no need to send it again. In the previous month I won various prizes totalling c.$238 million, which is just about enough ...
*
For those living in this area there's a Poetry Day - "a day of poetry, food, conversation and fun" - coming up featuring poets (and friends of mine) Nicola Bowrey and Harry Laing. According to the blurb:
To be held in a rainforest cottage near Berry on Saturday, 21st March, 2009, from 10.00am to 5.00pm - to be followed by a leisurely walk and dinner to relax and celebrate the day. Total cost is just $85 including lunch/dinner (BYO wine). For further information contact Ted or Caro on 4464 2330 or email Caro here.
I'm hoping to be there myself ...
*
Wednesday March 4 2009:
As mentioned below, piano duo Elizabeth Watson and Sarah Watson have recently been touring Victoria with a program that included my Brother Jack for piano (four hands). I was delighted to receive the following comment from a friend who went to one of the gigs:
Written in Hong Kong in 1995, the piece has previously been played by Michael Kieran Harvey & Bernadette Bolkus and Danny Herscovitch & Gerard Willems.
*
tomorrow:
I never met Ali, although I once met her mother, author Joanne van Os. But like many others I was very moved by the account of a tragic accident in Phuket that resulted in Ali suffering massive brain trauma that led to her death. Joanne was very concerned about the severe brain trauma suffered in September last year by my brother Rob (Wes), who has now largely recovered but who - were it not for the superb job done by medical staff in Nhulunbuy and Darwin - could so easily have suffered the same fate as Ali (see the roblog). My condolences to her family and friends.
*
Sunday March 1 2009:
Have just heard that old soldier, "wonderful friend to Timor, and an unswerving expression of the Australian conscience", Paddy Kenneally, died this morning. Activist Susan Connolly has reminded us of the following extract from Michele Turner's book Telling: East Timor Personal Testimonies 1942-1992, University of NSW Press, 1992:
John (Paddy) Kenneally was a young private with the 2/2 Independent Company of the Australian Army, which was stranded in Timor by the Japanese invasion of 1942. He speaks of his anger at the subsequent betrayal of the East Timorese people:
We went to Timor and brought nothing but misery on those poor people. That is all they ever got out of helping us - misery.
And there I was, alive because of them! In 1942 we were just a handful of men, short of everything and fighting an all-conquering enemy. We were the only unit from the Philippines, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies which didn't surrender and survived, and only because of their help. We were living off them. We arrived in Timor with plenty of ammunition but only one month's ration and we were there for twelve! They didn't sit down and say, 'The fight's between you and the Japanese. You paddle your own canoe.' If they hadn't given food to us we'd have had to take it, because we had no money at the start and we weren't going to starve, and once you start to grab, abuses creep in. This is true of every army in the world. It wouldn't have stopped at taking food, they'd be taking money and women and anything else going. Once we'd started those sort of relations we wouldn't have lasted a month because they'd have informed on us and you couldn't blame them.
The Government has never really acknowledged our debt to the Timorese from the War. Governments are pretty unreliable, you can't leave your conscience with them. In 1975 everyone behaved very badly. I thought it was an absolute disgrace. No one seemed to care about the Timorese. About all they got out of it was that we put a monument to them at a place called Dare, on the heights overlooking Dili.
During the dark times of East Timor's brutal subjugation by Indonesia, sweet good-natured Paddy was at every demo I attended, doing his bit to encourage our government to pressure Suharto to withdraw from the foreign policy disaster, and human rights abyss, that was East Timor. Thanks, Paddy, for everything you did. You will be sorely missed.
*
Friday February 20 2009:
The Federal Government is threatening to impose internet censorship on all Australians:
Unbelievable! Not even the despicable J. Howard had the gall to attempt what Senator Conroy is apparently quite serious about.
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Thursday February 19 2009:
Last night the vocal group I sing in and direct, The Thirsty Night Singers, travelled to Robertson (a town in the Southern Highlands, near here) to meet and sing to/with members of a new local choir that's just getting underway. It was a delightful evening that might lead to future musical collaborations.
The tour starts at Wesley of Warragui on February 21 at 8pm then goes to
Traralgon Little Theatre (22nd at 2.30pm), Cardinia Cultural Centre (25th at 6pm) and Murray Conservatorium (27th) before finishing at Camberwell Uniting Church (28th at 8pm).
*
While it appears that President Obama will not, for various reasons, prosecute members of the recently-departed Bush administration for the crimes they committed in office (see Obama's Justice: Reconciliation, Not Retribution, by Cynthia Boaz), the International Federation for East Timor (IFET) is still trying to get justice for the people of East Timor nearly ten years after Indonesian troops finally left in a final orgy of killing, raping, burning, stealing. kidnapping etc. Yesterday the organisation wrote to the President of the United Nation's Security Council:
We are writing on behalf of organizations long concerned with the justice process in Timor-Leste.
As you meet this week to discuss renewing the UN mission in Timor-Leste, we urge you to look at the unfulfilled UN pledges concerning human rights and accountability for serious human rights crimes committed in Timor-Leste between 1975 and 1999.
We urge the Security Council to seriously examine the recommendations of the 2005 Commission of Experts (CoE) report and Chega! (Enough!), the final report of the Timor-Leste's Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CAVR), as guides to establishing a process that can contribute to genuine justice and reconciliation. Such a process will support democracy and accountability in both Indonesia and Timor-Leste ... [more (.pdf)]
The message is clear: rob a pharmacy and go to jail, but destroy a country, invading and occupying it illegally, and you're free to enjoy the spoils.
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Wednesday February 18 2009:
I've just read an excellent (as usual) article by John Pilger called Hollywood's New Censors (in Information Clearing House):
Censorship by omission, actual censorship, and state and corporate propaganda are all designed to twist truth and subvert democracy.
Monroe Reimers writes, in response to Pilger:
I don't entirely agree with that, but I certainly think that state-subsidised theatre companies - and orchestras, opera companies and others - should be subjected to a lot more government and other scrutiny with regard to repertoire, self-censorship, propaganda, cultural relevance etc.
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Sunday February 15 2009:
The other day I came across a marvellous Hunting of the Snark blog, written with great erudition, and Carrollesque invention and lightness, by illustrator Mahendra Singh of Montreal, Quebec, who describes himself as an "illustrator busily fitting Lewis Carroll into a protosurrealist straitjacket with matching dada cufflinks." Amongst other things it contains a comprehensive collection of links to everything Carroll, including one to Peter's and my Boojum!.
Talking of Boojum!, I've received an enquiry about a possible new production ...
*
Friday February 13 2009:
"Up to 100 people, about one-fifth of Marysville's population, may have died in the inferno that swept through the town, Victorian Premier John Brumby said on Wednesday." [more]
"Germaine Greer has joined the call for reform of Australia's fire management systems, arguing that it is 'useless looking for arsonists' as the blame for Victoria's bushfires lies with 'governments and administrators' ... Fire plays an essential role in the cyclical life of Australian forests ... for 60,000 years, Aboriginal people used fire to manage the environment, she said." [more]
*
Thursday February 12 2009:
Have just read comments, about the situation in Gaza, by Brian Eno (see synthtopia, reprinted from The Daily Swarm):
Stealing Gaza
It's a tragedy that the Israelis - a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression - are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked "Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it's the Palestinians". By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they've forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians - with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers - and themselves - with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world - they sacrifice all credibility.
The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.
Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly ... and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?
Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now 'under attack' you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation.
And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.
Eno was speaking at a Stop Gaza Massacre protest in London on Sat 3 Jan 09.
Some of the responses on the site are interesting. Synthhead, for example, writes:
There are the usual responses saying that art and politics don't mix, and there's the personal abuse one expects these days from people who can't be bothered trying to put together a coherent counter-argument (e.g. this from Dx09: "Who cares about Eno anyway? He has never been relevant but is clearly a has-been now who just speak out to get a few minutes in the spotlight.") I like this contribution from JollyRogered:
Eno has the same right as anyone else to express his personal view on any topic he likes. Other people are free to offer a contrary view. It amazes me that those who stridently support wars whose stated aim (when others have proved to be bogus) is to export "democracy" often have little real understanding of what democracy means.
*
Tomorrow and Saturday I'll be going to the Kangaroo Valley Show, which is always a most enjoyable event. Displays of local agricultural produce compete for attention with log-chopping, dog-jumping, photography exhibits, side-shows etc. Unfortunately for the Show, but fortunately for the Valley, it's raining - as it often does at this time of the year (there are three local events that can be relied upon to bring rain: the Show, the Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival, and last weekend's Yarrawa Estate concert, which this year managed to sneak itself in one day before its usual deluge).
*
Sunday February 8 2009:
Last night's concert at local (Kangaroo Valley) winery Yarrawa Estate went very well. It has been very hot here (a cool change has just arrived, bringing great relief) - setting up audio gear in the blazing sun when it's 40 degrees plus in the shade ain't fun. But as soon as the sun sank behind a hill, not long after 6pm, it became a very pleasant evening. The performers (Nicole Thomson, soprano, Jenny Duck-Chong, mezzo soprano, Yevkin Varbedian, piano, and Rachel Scott, cello) performed - superbly - in the open air to an enthusiastic audience of nearly 200 people. Their eclectic program ranged from Mozart and Purcell to Lou Reed and Eric Idle, with some Wesley-Smith thrown in for good measure. And there were some very good measures in there! Well, not for me to say - but I was very pleased with Peter's and my new piece, Eyeless in Gaza (for soprano, piano and cello), which was even more powerful in performance than I had imagined. Our Baghdad Baby Boy (soprano, piano and optional cello, from 2007) was sad, and awful, but it was very beautiful, too, with the beauty somehow intensifying the horror. To end the first half, Rachel played - and sang - my piece Uluru Song. Although I wrote it (in 1993) for her teacher, David Pereira, Rachel has made it her own, performing it literally hundreds of times in many parts of the world. I was delighted to hear her do it again. Plans are afoot to record it, with its companion piece Jerrinja Song and a third singing cellist piece that I plan to compose this year ...
The vocal group I sing in, and direct, The Thirsty Night Singers, also performed at the concert. We'll never be a great group, perhaps, but our two songs - When I Fall in Love and Old Coat - went down very well. I recently bought a couple of AKG C 1000 S microphones, which gave the group a nice boost. Sound was handled excellently by Ben Sibson, who'd also arranged, for soprano & cello, Lou Reed's song Perfect Day.
from a friend:
from another friend:
(A large tree fell in the forest close to where the concert was being held as Rachel was nearing the end of Uluru Song)
*
The current bushfire situation in Victoria is horrific - special thoughts go out to all those who have lost family and friends. We here in Kangaroo Valley are vulnerable, particularly on a summer's day that is hot and windy, with low humidity, but so far we've escaped disaster even though we've just experienced the hottest period I've lived through since moving to New South Wales in 1974.
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Tuesday February 3 2009:
The final thing to add to the Sugamo recording is a choral part, which we will be doing shortly. Recording engineer: Dave Cafe; producer: Belinda Webster.
Click on the photo of Tegan, above, for a larger, more detailed shot taken during the session by Dave.
*
If you're in Sydney on Saturday February 14, there's gonna be a fascinating event at Carriageworks in Eveleigh called Pursuit, by Jon Rose and Robin Fox. From the blurb:
As the health of the planet gathers speed on its spiral descent, The Pursuit Project places itself in the nexus between art, sport and ecology. Pedal power will drive the acoustic and electronic musical instruments and generate mobile video. Pedal power will also generate most of the electricity upon which the performance's computers rely. In this respect Pursuit picks up the historical innovation introduced by Alfred Traeger in 1929 with his revolutionary outback bicycle generator designed for The Australian Flying Doctor Service, and points to a time in our future when electricity will not necessarily be taken for granted.
All the bicycles used in Pursuit are re-cycled.
Ha! Sounds amazing. Other artists involved include Jim Sosnin, Garth Paine, Rod Cooper, Paul Bryant and marvellous instrument-maker Harry Vatiliotis (who makes regular contributions, through his instrument repairs, to music in Timor-Leste). See Jon's excellent website about it here.
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Saturday January 31 2009:
I've recently created a website for a forthcoming concert at Yarrawa Estate, Kangaroo Valley (Sat 7th Feb). The idea is that instead of having a large printed program, with detailed notes on each piece, we have a bare-bones program backed up by a website that people can choose - or not - to study, at their leisure, before and/or after the concert, thus saving a lot of paper. I've done this for several concerts now (see, for example, here), with, as far one can tell, only a few audience members taking advantage of the facility. One lives in hope.
Check it out here.
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Thursday January 22 2009:
Scores and parts of two of my political songs - Eyeless in Gaza, for soprano, piano and cello [2009], and Baghdad Baby Boy, for soprano, piano and optional cello [2007] - are now available for free download.
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I see that newburycomics.com is selling my electronic music CD Wattamolla Red.
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Monday January 19 2009:
Have finished, more-or-less, a song called Eyeless in Gaza (lyric by Peter Wesley-Smith).
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Friday January 16 2009:
Have recently received a couple of emails from old friends of my late brother Jerry, who died in 2006:
I had the great joy of working with Jerry on some musical projects back in the 70s ... Jerry's version of the Rodgers and Hart song, I Like To Recognise The Tune, remains one of my all-time favourite recordings.
I also had the pleasure of sharing the odd bottle of champagne with Jerry from time to time, not to mention some other substances. And it's funny what can stick in the memory. On one occasion, during a dinner together at a restaurant, Jerry told me that he thought I was an "old soul". I'm not religious or spiritual, but coming from someone whom I loved and admired I took it as a huge compliment!
Jerry's song Special Days remains one of my favourite songs. I arranged it for The Thirsty Night Singers (the little amateur choir I sing in and direct), but so far we haven't been able to do the song justice.
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Tuesday January 13 2009:
cartoon by Michael Leunig see his article Little Picture, Big Picture, The Age, January 10 2009
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Sunday January 11 2009:
Music and Politics 1:
From an article about singer Reem Kelani in The Guardian by Mira Katbamna called Land and Freedom, November 1 2006:
[more]
You can shoot them, bomb them, poison them, run over them with bulldozers, whatever, but if you really want to defeat them then you must destroy, or deny them access to, their culture.
re destroying the people:
1. from UN Wants to Know If War Crimes Were Committed in Gaza, by Ahmed Abu Hamda and Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy Newspapers, Fri 09 January 2009:
[more]
2. from Getting away with murder, by Julia Irwin, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 January 2009 ("You've got to hand it to the Israeli public relations flacks: only they could convince you that killing children was an act of self-defence"):
[more]
Music and Politics 2:
I've recently added an optional cello part to my 2007 song Baghdad Baby Boy (lyric by Peter Wesley-Smith), to be performed in Kangaroo Valley on Feb 7. Now scored for soprano, piano & cello, the song is available for free download here (.pdf, seven pages, 156KB). Download the cello part here (.pdf, 60KB).
Baghdad Baby Boy was first performed at the 2007 Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival (which commissioned it) by soprano Yvonne Kenny.
I've also done a new version of our song We Thought We'd Lost You, Johnny, for soprano, mezzo soprano and piano, about the pain of parents discovering that their son is gay. Having the parents' part sung by two women raises the delicious possibility that Johnny is the son of lesbian parents. Download for free here (.pdf, 4 pages, 88KB).
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Tuesday January 6 2009:
Recent times have been dominated by the injuries sustained by my brother Rob Wesley-Smith in a fall on September 9. Physically he has completely recovered, but it will be a while before he's back to normal mentally - as one expects after serious brain injuries. Here's a recent message from one of his many friends in Timor-Leste:
We knew what happened to you. Actually almost all Timorese pepole who know you heard about what happened. You know words spread very quick in Timor Leste. I got information from ETAN. Altough we did not come to visit, but our hearts were always there with you. The forces and enegies that came from so many people and your courage brought you back with us in Oz and in Timor-Leste. God Bless you! I hope to see you next time all recovered.
All the best for the Year 2009 ...
*
I'm now working on material to contribute to a concert at Yarrawa Estate, in Kangaroo Valley, on February 7. The performers will be soprano Nicole Thomson, mezzo soprano Jenny Duck-Chong, pianist Yevkin Varbedian, cellist Rachel Scott, and the vocal group I sing in and direct, The Thirsty Night Singers. I recently arranged one of Peter's and my songs - Together - for the whole group.
*
from today's Sydney Morning Herald:
The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, who provided troops for the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, is also being honoured by US President George Bush, as is Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
"The President is honouring these leaders for their work to improve the lives of their citizens and for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said as she announced the list on Monday Washington time.
"All three leaders have been staunch allies of the United States, particularly in combating terrorism.
"And their efforts to bring hope and freedom to people around the globe have made their nations, America and the world community a safer and more secure world," she said. Mr Howard has confirmed he will travel to Washington for the medal ceremony.
He told the ABC it was an honour to receive the award and he was looking forward to meeting Mr Bush again.
"It's an indication of the very close relationship between our two countries," he told News Radio. "I see this very much as a compliment to Australia."
[more]
I find it amazing that this kind of stuff can be reported without any apparent embarrassment. How can it be a "compliment to Australia" for a discredited president to give a medal to a discredited prime minister, both of them war criminals responsible for the deaths of - who knows? - a million or more people?
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Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, Tues 30 December 2008:
That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it - Askalaan in Arabic - were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They - or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren - are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.
But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday ...
[more]
Good old Fisky, still telling it like it is despite a huge campaign to discredit him.
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From activist and friend Vacy Vlazna, who is doing a great job organising protests against the carnage in Gaza:
Stomach-churning but important raw footage. You can hear "Where are the world?"
In 1991 or so I attended a talk by Noam Chomsky in San Diego, USA. He said that he's often approached by groups to give talks, sometimes up to ten years in advance. On one such occasion he was asked what his topic would be. "Er, er, let's say The Current Crisis in the Middle East", he said. Everyone laughed, thinking that surely in ten years' time a solution will have been found. Eighteen years later the situation is worse than it's ever been ...
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page last updated 25 June 2009
e-mail: mwsmith@shoalhaven.net.au
