Having arranged, a few months back, Gabriella's Song, from the wonderful Swedish film As It Is In Heaven, for a cappella choir, I've now finished an arrangement for choir and piano. And I'm currently putting together a choir to sing it at a fundraising concert in Kangaroo Valley that I'm organising for Sunday January 27. By then the piano part will have morphed into a part for seven harps, for the main performers at the concert will be SHE (Seven Harp Ensemble, formerly the Kioloa Harp Ensemble). This charming group, led by Alice Giles, gave us a delightful concert two years ago, and we've been eager to have them back ever since. I'm also composing a piece for SHE based on Japanese war crimes trials after WWII - hardly a fun topic, I admit, but I'm hoping that the piece will be very beautiful even though sad. More on this later. In the meantime, tickets can be purchased for the concert via mail order by downloading, filling out and returning the concert booking form.

* The new leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party (now the Opposition) is the appalling Brendan Nelson, the man who as Minister for Education in the most recent Howard Government insisted that before getting their annual funding schools must erect a flag pole in the school grounds and fly the Australian flag ...

* Last Tuesday night I attended a meeting of local subscribers to GetUp to help formulate suggestions as to the main areas of concern that we want the new Rudd Labor Government to address. The number one priority of our group was - of course - climate change. As GetUp recently pointed out, the caution that Prime Minister Rudd has displayed so far on short-term emissions targets reveals the grass-roots activism that's going to be needed to make sure that his government is more effective on this issue than Howard's was ...

* I've just heard of the death, on August 26, of journalist, linguist, and lecturer in art history Vesselina Ossikovska-Burchett. Born in 1919, she married Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, the man who first revealed to the world the horror of the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima.

I pay tribute here to the work of German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who also died recently. When I was first getting into contemporary music, back in the 60s, it was Stocky's music to which I returned over and over again for inspiration. I vividly remember hearing his Kontakte for the first time and being amazed at the imagination and the virtuosic audacity of that piece. I subsequently met the man several times, and although I didn't warm to him personally I remained a great fan of his music, especially of the earlier masterpieces. His electronic music helped inspire me to explore that medium way back in the early days of the Moog synthesizer.

In the 70s I wrote a song, Cosmic Superman, that sent Stocky up, although in a fairly gentle way. I don't remember all of it, and seem to have lost the sheet music. There you go ...

* Sunday December 2 2007:

I returned yesterday from a week in Canberra, working at the National Film and Sound Archive "acquisitioning", annotating etc my old audio-visual materials. In days of yore my audio-visual pieces used slide projectors, a technology that one rarely sees these days except when Uncle Barney shows the slides he took of his 1983 trip to Hawaii. I used to use two control systems: either an Electrosonic ES69 unit that controlled two projectors (e.g. my pieces Kdadalak (For the Children of Timor) and Dodgson's Dream), or an Apple ][e-based Clear Light Superstar that controlled nine projectors on one screen (e.g. Wattamolla Red, Snark-Hunting 2 etc). As time went on it became harder and harder to keep these systems - especially the Apple ][e - going, so after a presentation at the University of Melbourne, at a fringe event of the 1998 Melbourne Festival, I retired them, moving instead to using Macromedia Director on a Macintosh computer and projecting images with an LCD projector. This is the system I still use for pieces such as Weapons of Mass Distortion and Welcome to the Hotel Turismo. But I believe that at least some of the early pieces are worthy of preservation. Hence I'm hoping to reconstruct at the NFSA a nine-projector system so that at least some of the pieces can be shown again in their original form, video versions can be made, and they can be reconstructed as computer pieces ....

* More rain: while I was away over nine inches fell on Kangaroo Valley in one night! People were stranded behind fast-flowing rivers, our dirt road was partly washed away, people's houses were flooded ....

* I must say that it has been delicious to watch the recriminations fly as John Howard's Coalition falls apart post-election. In most cases, Coalition members remained mute as Howard, Ruddock et al pushed through ever-more-egregious legislation. When Howard finally went too far, buoyed by sychophantic support and insulated from criticism by supine media, there was a bloodbath as the Australian public finally decided that enough was enough. If the Liberal Party had shown that at least some parliamentary members still had a moral compass, and that genuine debate within - and without - the party was still possible, then perhaps they would not now be having difficulty picking themselves up from the floor ...

As barrister and human rights campaigner Julian Burnside, QC, wrote in 2002: "Mr Howard and Mr Ruddock deserve our contempt." See p68 of his new book Watching brief: reflections on human rights, law, and justice, published recently by Scribe.

* Sunday November 25 2007:

YES! A brilliant result last night! The polls suggested a late surge towards Howard and the Coalition, which was worrying, but when I went to bed the result was as good as one dared hope, especially if Howard ends up losing his seat ...

What an ignominious end to eleven and a half years in the top job: his party, and his coalition partner, severely wounded, possibly mortally; not a single Liberal government at state or federal level anywhere in the country; a divided country where selfishness, meanness of spirit, hypocrisy, lying etc have become commonplace; a boring country, where a white picket fence mentality has devalued creativity, education for its own sake, disinterested research ...; a frightened country, one that kowtows to the USA, one where people no longer stand up for what's right if it means disagreeing with those in authority; a country that invaded, illegally, on the basis of lies, another country, contributing to over one million deaths, yet apparently has no qualms about that (Iraq received hardly a mention during the election campaign); a country that will possibly never recover from the environmental damage caused by Howard's refusal to take climate change seriously; a country whose democracy has been severely restricted, with sedition and other repressive and anti-democratic laws in place ("But we'll never use them", said Ruddock); an insecure country, constantly worried about terrorist attack that is only a threat because of its eager support of American militarism; and so on ....

* I'm off in the morning to spend a few days working at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra ...

* Friday November 23 2007:

The phone and modem lines here have been out for several days, making life extremely difficult .... More rain! So far, the last couple of days have brought several inches, with every drop gratefully received ... Have recently arranged a couple of spirituals for the choir I sing in: I Want to be Ready and Meet Me in the Middle of the Air. We'll sing some songs at the Morgans' election party tomorrow night, including my Little Johnny Longnose ("Liar, liar, your pants are on fire ...").

* Tomorrow's the big day, with the polls pointing towards a Labor victory but plenty of uncertainty as to whether the polls can be trusted. Meanwhile, I've just read, in on-line journal New Matilda, an excellent article on one aspect of the Howard government's tenure in office. Called Conservative Correctness, it's by Mark Davis. An excerpt:

Over 11 years in office, the Howard Government has worked assiduously behind the scenes to stamp out criticism, silence voices of dissent, and muzzle and neuter organisations and institutions that show the slightest tendency to depart from its preferred line or to inform the public about many of its activities - all this as part of what can only be understood as a concerted attempt to remake the culture in its image. Along the way, NGOs have been defunded, journalists nobbled, whistleblowers prosecuted, boards stacked, courts compromised, and organisations that protect due democratic process wound down or disbanded. [more]

This appalling behaviour is the very antithesis of the democracy Australian troops are dying for, supposedly, in Afghanistan. Yet at Howard's appearance the other day at the Canberra Press Club - one of our main Bastions of Democracy - there was not a single question about this, or Iraq, or the Free Trade Agreement with the USA, or any other area where Howard's legacy will have a devastating effect on future generations. There was one question - a soft one - about climate change, but Howard was able to turn it to his electoral advantage (he talked about his new grandson, thus appearing to be a doting, devoted family man) - and the Press let him get away with it, showing how effectively dissent in this country has been silenced.

* Sunday November 18 2007:

I've just received an invitation to a party next Saturday night:

If you are one of the leftie latte-sipping, chardonnay-swigging, chattering classes, perhaps you would like to join us on Saturday the 24th from 7pm, yes Election Day 07, to farewell Johnny Howard on his journey to oblivion. (We) are hosting a very respectful and quiet do with utter confidence that a new Government will sweep Howard to the exit door stage 'right'. BYO as we couldn't possibly supply the amount of Beveridge you will feel like consuming if we win and of course more if we ... (having just read Alan Ramsay's SMH article I feel so confident now I wont even say the word!) There will be entertainment of course, apart from the Television and Maxine's smiling face. Various seditious songs will no doubt erupt from the 'so happy I could sing' chardonnay-swiggers, perhaps some silly rhymes from the latte-sippers, and some rousing anthems from our many talented local idols. Libby and her friend have promised some tabletop dancing if ... when ... Maxine is victorious ... sure to be the highlight of the mainly sedate evening. Party clothes are acceptable unless you would like to wear a little rodent outfit as a sign of respect for J & J Howard. We hope you can come and share a quiet evening in front of the box with us on Election night.

I would hate to be accused of being a "Howard-hater", which is the standard insult from the Right towards anyone who dares to take a different point of view from J. Howard and his hench(wo)men. But I have to admit that by now I've probably slipped into that category. While I might hate, or at least disagree with, many of his policies, that's not necessarily a reason to hate the man himself. It's the lies, the hypocrisy, the lack of any perceivable moral compass, the ruthlessness with which he has pursued political aggrandizement, his criminal refusal to address global warming concerns, and so on, that make it very difficult to exercise Christian charity towards him.

What if the Lying Rodent (as one of his own Ministers has described him) defies the opinion polls and leads his coalition to yet another victory? Gee ...

* I went to Sydney last Friday to listen to New South Wales Coroner Dorelle Pinch deliver the eagerly-awaited report of her INQUEST INTO THE DEATH OF BRIAN RAYMOND PETERS. Mr Peters was one of five journalists (the others being Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie, Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart) - the so-called Balibo Five - who were working for Australian news organisations when they were killed in East Timor on October 16 1975. Ms Pinch's finding:

Brian Raymond Peters, in the company of fellow journalists Gary James Cunningham, Malcolm Harvie Rennie, Gregory John Shackleton and Anthony John Stewart, collectively known as "the Balibo Five", died at Balibo in Timor-Leste on 16 October 1975 from wounds sustained when he was shot and/or stabbed deliberately, and not in the heat of battle, by members of the Indonesian Special Forces, including Christoforus da Silva and Captain Yunus Yosfiah on the orders of Captain Yosfiah, to prevent him from revealing that Indonesian Special Forces had participated in the attack on Balibo. There is strong circumstantial evidence that those orders emanated from the Head of the Indonesian Special Forces, Major-General Benny Murdani, to Colonel Dading Kalbuadi, Special Forces Group Commander in Timor, and then to Captain Yosfiah.

There you go: after at least four official enquiries, 32 years of obfuscation and lies by successive Australian federal governments, and millions of dollars of tax-payers' money spent, we now know officially what activists have known since the news of the deaths leaked out. Of course, no Australian official will suffer any sanction for the abject appeasement of Indonesia that allowed the cover-up of this deplorable crime, and no Indonesian official will be charged despite Ms Pinch's intention to refer the matter to the Commonwealth Attorney General for consideration of potential breaches of Division 268 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code. Despite this, Maureen Tolfree (the late Mr Peters' sister) and other family members of the five journalists were relieved that the truth had finally come out. To reiterate: the men were not killed in crossfire in the heat of battle, as Indonesia has maintained all along, but were murdered as they did their duty as journalists trying to discover the truth.

On Friday night I attended - along with seventy or so other long-time supporters of the East Timorese people in their struggle for self-determination - a celebratory dinner hosted by Shirley Shackleton (Greg's widow). This was not yet the end of a very long road, but it was a significant step towards justice for the victims' families. Of course, no-one expects the perpetrators of the crime to be charged, so justice will ultimately be denied just as it has been to the families of the 200,000 or so Timorese who died during the Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, 1975-1999.

Clinton Fernandes writes in an article titled Lesson still waiting to be learnt (The Canberra Times, Saturday November 17 2007):

War crimes can be prosecuted wherever they occur and regardless of the nationality of the victims or perpetrators. There is no statute of limitations. The Attorney-General can make an extradition request under the 1995 extradition treaty with Indonesia. Indonesia may refuse to extradite, but must then submit the case to its prosecutors. Australian law also provides the right to prosecute crimes privately even if the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has decided to not prosecute the matter. This private prosecution may, however, be taken over by the DPP, who can then discontinue it if he deems it contrary to the public interest. But upholding international law can hardly be against the public interest or Indonesia's democratic transition, despite the Indonesian military's opposition. The case has important lessons for the future. It shows how policymakers think they can dismiss public opinion but are later defeated by it. More than a year before Indonesia's invasion, a senior official warned that it would not be possible to conceal Indonesian brutalities from the Australian public, nor to conduct a good working relationship with Indonesia in the face of sustained public condemnation. He argued Australia should support self-determination for East Timor despite Indonesia's objections. This might have given then-president Suharto firmer grounds for resisting his military's desire to invade East Timor. Instead, policymakers chose a supposedly pragmatic, hard-headed realism, and, according to a key Indonesian general, ''helped Indonesia crystallise its own thinking'' ...

* Sunday November 11 2007:

Went today - Remembrance Day, and the anniversary of the 1975 sacking of the Whitlam government - to the Pereira/Sitsky concert in Kangaroo Valley Hall. It was lovely to hear David Pereira playing, after his recent illness, at close to his beautiful best, accompanied superbly by the amazing composer/pianist/writer/musicologist etc Larry Sitsky. My problem was the music, which in my opinion should have been allowed to die with Anton Rubinstein in 1894. No, I don't mean that: the music - quite interesting from several points of view, competently written, and pleasant enough - is part of the rich tapestry of Mankind's Creative Achievements and deserves to live. It's just that there is so much music to listen to, and so few concerts in Kangaroo Valley, that if I'm gonna part with $40 to listen to live music in a stiflingly hot hall on a sunny Sunday afternoon then I want something more stimulating, less dull, in shorter chunks, with fewer repeats, more relevant, than these forgettable pieces from the 19th century.

* Earlier in the day I was interviewed by author and academic Clinton Fernandes for a book he's writing about political activism, especially that focussed on the invasion and occupation of East Timor by the Indonesian army between 1975 and 1999. He is the author of the excellent book Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the independence of East Timor (Scribe, 2004). From a review by Damian Grenfell of RMIT University: "The evidence assembled by Fernandes paints a sorrowful picture of successive Australian governments who were unable to let go of bad policy even as it collapsed around them." [more].

* Saturday November 10 2007:

Drought? What drought? During the past week Kangaroo Valley has received more than eight inches of rain. Beautiful!

* Yesterday, brother Rob Wesley-Smith, long-time activist on East Timor and other issues, gave a talk at a memorial service in Canberra for Ken Fry, Federal Member for Fraser from 1974 to 1984 and a great supporter of the people of East Timor. Ken died of cancer on October 10.

* At last some real culture in Kangaroo Valley! Tonight Arts in the Valley (The Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival) is presenting a concert by the Sydney Piano Trio (Susan Blake, cello, Ron Thomas, violin, and Gerard Willems, piano, all ex-colleagues of mine at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music). They will play Beethoven's Piano Trio No.1 in Eb and Shostakovich's Piano Trio No.2 in E minor, Op 67. Gerard Willems will play Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.17 in D minor ("Tempest"). Tomorrow afternoon, cellist David Pereira and pianist (and composer) Larry Sitsky will play the complete cello works of Anton Grigorýevich Rubinstein [1829-1894]: Cello Sonata No.1 in D, Op 18, Cello Sonata No 2 in G, Op 37, and Three Pieces, Op 11/2. This is a step up from Buster Keaton movies with live piano accompaniment, sopranos who sing songs by Eric Bogle, and seven-harp ensembles. No lollipops here. No mere entertainment. No pandering to the incessant demands of Australian composers to have their voice heard. This is where it's at!

* Sunday November 4 2007:

On Thursday I went to Smiths Hill High School in Wollongong to do a Musica Viva-in-Schools Australian Music Day with six-member vocal ensemble The Song Company. What I had to show and say, and what Song Co sang, generally seemed to go down well with the secondary school students from several schools who were there, although there was a complaint (unjustified, of course) from one of the teachers about perceived political bias in my audio-visual piece Weapons of Mass Distortion (I had presented that piece in a version for piano - played by Roland Peelman - and computer). At one stage we all sang a four-part round called Little Johnny Long-Nose, which, so I assured the audience, almost certainly had little if not nothing to do with John Howard and his invention of the concept of core and non-core promises (i.e. lies). And if that's not an absolute fact, then at least it's a non-core fact.

Seeing Howard on television this morning accusing Peter Garrett of lying was one of the more blatant examples I've seen of the H-word (that's "Hypocrisy", synonymous with "Howard").

My thanks to Musica Viva's Carol Coomber, Mark Lawrenson and Claire Nesbitt-Hawes - and to the members of The Song Company, who were, as usual, in excellent voice. They showed me their program booklet for 2008, which gives details of two touring programs that include stuff of mine: Waltzing Matilda in July and Singing in Tongues in September-October. The first includes excerpts from Boojum! (The Hunting of the Snark, We Must Be Off, Jubjubby etc) and several songs, including Black Ribbon, Tommy Tanna and Lines by a Lovelorn Cowhand. The second will include a new version of doublethink, about propaganda etc (commissioned by Song Co in 2006). For details, and to book, call [02] 8272 9500 or visit www.songcompany.com.au.

* More comments from people who attended the Fifth Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival last weekend:

As I have known for a while now, you really are an imaginative and talented bunch at Kangaroo Valley. What a fantastic idea for a fundraiser. This was the first of your film festivals I have been to and was probably the first time I had ever seen a silent movie, let alone one made in Australia. Congratulations on Dirty Dan - there were some very funny antics going on there. I am now a big Buster Keaton fan and a Robert Constable fan as well. Please tell the latter what an amazing job he did. I loved the music - so light and lively, it fitted with the movies perfectly and it was good to hear a few familiar tunes woven in, including your Caterpillar. It's amazing to think he can play non-stop like that for over an hour!

also (excerpts):

"Wasn't that the most fabulous on Saturday night? We had such fun!"
"I had trouble seeing the screen properly, but the music was so good it didn't really matter."
"What a great night that was! The pianist was so good and so funny - I don't know how he does it, playing at that level for so long ..."
"You've done it again, East Timor people. I don't know how you manage to persuade that marvellous pianist to come each year - he's so clever being able to do that, without one mistake."
"The atmosphere was fantastic, and really makes you appreciate living in Kangaroo Valley. I heard several visitors comment on how friendly everyone was. There was a real buzz about the place."
"In a world of films filled with noise and destructive, violent images, how refreshing and delightful it was to watch a master of silence and gentleness be embellished by a master of musical interpretation."

* Monday Oct 29 2007:

Yesterday I woke into a post-FAKVBKSMF world (FAKVBKSMF: the Fifth Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival, which along with the new Dirty Dan movie (see below) has been occupying my life in recent weeks). The show went beautifully, with nimble-fingered pianist Robert Constable accompanying all the films with his usual flair and aplomb. Upper River Hall was packed by a generous-hearted audience, enabling us to raise nearly $3000 for scholarships in East Timor. As someone wrote: "The house was bursting with laughter and happiness" ...

When this tradition started, back in 2003, Robert Constable lived in Newcastle, New South Wales. He now lives in Auckland, New Zealand (where he's Head of the School of Music at the University of Auckland). He came here for this unique event at his own expense (air fares, car hire etc) - a magnificent contribution to the cause! Our gratitude to him is immense.

At some point we'll be selling DVDs of the entire Dirty Dan saga. Watch this space!

* Wednesday Oct 24 2007:

Have finished shooting and editing the final episode of the silent movie Dirty Dan - The Trilogy, which will be premiered on Saturday night (7.30pm, Upper River Hall; tickets - $20, $15 (concession) - from the supermarket). A rare example of a four-part trilogy, it stars, as usual, Helen George and Paul Turnock, and will be accompanied live by pianist Robert Constable. Some of it is very funny! For more information, go to the official Fifth Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival website here.

Here's what Dirty Dan - The Trilogy is all about:

Dirty Dan absconds with Kangaroo Valley's last-remaining virgin, Fluff. Pursued by angry townsfolk, the lovers escape by leaping from Hampden Bridge into the icy torrent of the mighty Kangaroo River! Later, Dan saves the Valley from flood, thus earning the love of the local inhabitants who elect him Mayor. But his corrupt ways see him pursued again. He gives up being Mayor and has, with Fluff, a baby boy - Sod - instead. Fifi, a waitress, has a baby girl called Puff, who looks like Fluff, and Sod'n'Puff grow up as friends. They both become accomplished actors, starring in many local productions, including innovative outdoor versions of Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet, and a movie - It Takes Three - in which Sod plays Paul Turnock and Puff plays Helen George. Puff dramatically re-interprets the Marilyn Monroe role in The Seven Year Itch. At the end it appears - or does it? - that this movie-within-the-movie is in fact a movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie being watched (created?) by the aptly-named Froth, who's Fluff's dad, and Fifi, raising troubling questions to do with regression, retrograde inversion, and the inter-relationship of art, love and life.

The two official patrons of the Kangaroo Valley Arts Festival both claimed, in their speeches opening the Festival earlier this year, that Culture had at last arrived in Kangaroo Valley. I'm confident that with the new Dirty Dan, with its deep intellectual underpinnings and art-house complexity, I too can now become an official member of the Kangaroo Valley Culture Club!

* Also on this coming Saturday night, classical guitarist Tim Kain will play, at 8pm, my solo guitar piece Kolele Mai at the Independent Theatre in Sydney. Tim wrote to say that he's recently played it in Perth, Gosford and Melbourne.

* A few weeks ago, some hoon hit and killed a female wombat on a dirt road near here. We discovered, later, that it had a baby, about a foot long, that appeared to be doing OK browsing on grass but which was almost certainly - according to the afore-mentioned Helen George, who's an expert in such things - gradually going downhill through not getting the right nutrients it would've been getting from its mother's milk. So local bloke Norm and I caught it (actually, he caught it while I held the bag open) and took it to Helen, who gave it a bottle, whereupon it went to sleep. It appears that we've saved its life! In a few weeks, when she (for it turned out to be a she) is able to survive by herself, we will put her in a wombat enclosure we're gonna build here so that she has somewhere to sleep while looking for a permanent home in the bush (the burrow in which she was born will by now have been taken over by another wombat who won't take kindly to competition).

* Saturday Oct 13 2007:

Went last night to Kangaroo Valley Hall to see a special screening of Hard Rain, a documentary by David Bradbury about the perils of pursuing nuclear energy. The show was organised by Chris Nobel for the Shoalhaven Greens. I can't imagine how anyone who sees Hard Rain can seriously consider nuclear energy as a viable future option ... I was delighted that our local Liberal Party Member of the House of Representatives in Federal Parliament, Joanna Gash, turned up.

* Two events coming up:

[1] At 7.30pm next Saturday (October 20), SHE (the group formerly known as the Kioloa Harp Ensemble) is giving a concert in the Southern Highlands town of Bundanoon. Seven women playing seven harps! Their program will include my piece Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers.

[2] At 7.30pm the following Saturday (October 27), Kangaroo Valley's Upper River Hall will witness the FIFTH ANNUAL KANGAROO VALLEY BUSTER KEATON SILENT MOVIE FESTIVAL, with pianist Robert Constable accompanying not only Keaton's The Goat [1921] and Steamboat Bill Jnr [1928] but Kangaroo Valley's complete Dirty Dan Trilogy [2007] as well! Tickets ($20/$15 (concession)) are available from the Kangaroo Valley Supermarket, with all proceeds going to the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership, which raises money for projects in East Timor. For more information, click here.

* Friday Oct 12 2007:

Came across an article called The History Warrior by Phillip Knightley in The Bulletin, Monday May 14 2007, about British military historian Antony Beevor:

Since he is going to Australia and is used to controversy, I raise John Howard (and) the history wars ... What is a historian's duty? I put to him Howard's view that history should be an objective record of achievement, a chance for readers to learn about their country's heritage and "enrich it with their loyalty and patriotism". He is dismissive. "That's not history, that's propaganda. History should not set out to be a celebration. It's got to be about examining the facts and the consequences and debating them ..."

Howard would cut funding to any school that did not teach his compulsory history course in years 9 and 10, just as he does now if a school does not erect a flag pole and fly the Australian flag.

Roll on the next Australian federal elections ...

* Wednesday Oct 10 2007:

Got back on Monday from a successful tour of New Zealand with clarinettist Ros Dunlop. Landing in Christchurch, we hired a car and drove - through stunning scenes of snow-capped mountains, wild rivers etc - to Takaka (at the top of the South Island) to do a concert of audio-visual pieces of mine in the Village Theatre there. Next day we performed at the Riverside Community Culture Centre, near Nelson. There followed a composers' workshop and concert at the University of Canterbury, then a lecture and concert at Victoria University in Wellington. A lecture and some workshops at the University of Auckland, and a concert in the crypt of St Benedicts (a Catholic church there), concluded what was a most enjoyable tour in a most beautiful and hospitable country.

* Monday Sept 24 2007:

from yesterday's SCOOP Independent News, New Zealand:

Tekee Tokee Tomak Concert Press Release, Indonesia Human Rights Committee Announcing a Multimedia Concert at The Crypt, St Benedicts Church, 1 St Benedicts St Newton (Auckland) on Saturday 6 October at 7-30 pm. The concert features stunningly powerful multimedia works about East Timor, West Papua and Iraq. The presenters are two well known Australian contemporary musicians, clarinettist Ros Dunlop and composer Martin Wesley-Smith. Entry is by koha and all funds raised will go to support the advocacy work of the Indonesia Human Rights Committee. In February 2007, Martin and Ros attended the Asia Pacific Festival in Wellington, where an advertised performance of Martin's piece Papua Merdeka was dropped from the program after pressure had been applied by the Indonesian Embassy. They have now put together a tour that will allow New Zealanders to see and hear what has previously been denied to them .... [more] For further information: Maire Leadbeater: 09-815-9000 or 0274-436-957 (NZ)

Maire Leadbeater is the author of Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand's Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor-Leste (Craig Potton Publishing).

* Paul Cleary in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

All the weaker, thanks to a greedy grab for oil In March 2002, two months before East Timor became independent, the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer ... announced "changes to the terms upon which Australia accepts international dispute resolution mechanisms" for maritime disputes, including boundaries. What seemed a dull statement had profound implications for Australia's conduct in the disputed Timor Sea and elsewhere ... [more]

The article concludes: "The lesson for Australia is that greedy short-term opportunism is not in anyone's interest, least of all for a wealthy Western country which should be a model of democratic values, the rule of law and a committed partnership with its impoverished neighbours."

What is clear from this article, and from Paul Cleary's recent book Shakedown (Allen and Unwin), is that greedy short-term opportunism is a hallmark of the Howard government. Andrew Charlton's book Ozonomics (Random House) explodes the myth of Howard's and Costello's economic superiority over previous Labor governments in Australia. National Insecurity - The Howard Government's Betrayal of Australia (Allen and Unwin), by Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews, picks a number of areas, including rural industries, culture and defence, and shows how Howard has acted against the interests of all Australians (their previous book was How to Kill a Country: Australia's Devastating Trade Deal with the United States). Liberal Party member Guy Pearse has written High & Dry, subtitled John Howard, climate change and the selling of Australia's future, a book that is as devastating an attack on the irresponsibility - and short-term political opportunism - of the Howard government as can be imagined. Alan Parkinson's book Maralinga (ABC Books) reveals how cost-cutting resulted in an inadequate clean-up of plutonium and other harmful products of the 1956-57 detonations of atomic bombs by the British at Maralinga in South Australia. As far as I'm aware, none of the claims made in these books has been satisfactorily rebutted by Howard or his cronies. He simply shrugs and changes the subject. It amazes me that the Labor Party's lead in the pre-election polls isn't larger than it already is.

* Am busy getting ready for a concert tour of New Zealand starting later this week. And working on a new movie, Son of Dirty Dan, to be premiered in Kangaroo Valley on October 27 (see here). And since I last blogged, Peter and I have been installing our mother, the saintly Sheila Wesley-Smith, in the house here in Kangaroo Valley. Mum, who's 91, recently had a few health problems in Adelaide. But she's now doing really well, and enjoying herself in this beautiful environment amongst her many friends here. In our view she is still the The Spirit of South Australia (the role she played in a production in Adelaide in 1936 to mark the centenary of the establishment of South Australia as a whitefella entity).

* Peter and I recently wrote a song - Glorious Defeat - for the forthcoming Festival of Sedition at Huskisson on the New South Wales south coast. But unfortunately it can't, for various reasons, be performed on that occasion ... watch this space!

* Tuesday Sept 11 2007:

Iain MacWhirter in today's edition of UK newspaper The Herald:

... our enemies' enemies are our friends ... except that we are responsible for creating the enemy force that we are calling on our former enemies to fight. For the supreme irony of the Iraq war is that al Qaeda was a marginal presence in Iraq - all western intelligence agencies accept this - until we invaded the place in 2003 and turned it into a Mecca for Osama Bin Laden's rootless terrorists. What an achievement. Has there ever been a war that has been so completely misconceived? That has been so witlessly counterproductive? That has consumed so many thousands of lives only to strengthen the elements most opposed to western values?

To which one adds "Has there ever been a war that was so completely unjustified?" And then: "Those who lied about the reasons for this war, and then went ahead with it, must be brought to justice! Let's start with Blair, Bush & Howard then spread the net from there."

Gary Hart, in J'Accuse (The Huffington Post, Sept 10 2007): "(The Bush) administration stands indicted for incompetence and mendacity. That it still commands the loyalty of even a quarter of our fellow citizens is testament to the persistence of willful ignorance. Against all the facts assembled in this indictment, that the administration's operatives can still make claims on strength, security, and determination is chutzpah on stilts. That the media still treat these operatives and spokespersons, and indeed the president himself, seriously is witness to their desire for 'access' and 'sources' rather than their commitment to the truth."

GLOBAL PETITION "We reaffirm our commitment to continue making progress in the advancement of the human rights of the world's indigenous peoples at the local, national, regional and international levels, including through consultation and collaboration with them, and to present for adoption a final draft United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples as soon as possible." -- 2005 World Summit Outcome, adopted by the UN General Assembly, 24 October 2005 In every region of the world, the survival or well-being of Indigenous peoples is threatened by grave and persistent violations of their fundamental human rights. A strong and uplifting United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is urgently needed to establish minimum international standards to inspire and urge states and others to respect and uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples without discrimination. We call upon all states to support as a priority the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and its adoption by the General Assembly.

To sign this petition, click here

* Sunday Sept 9 2007:

Today is Day 3 - the final day - of the second Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival. I'm looking forward to more superb performances from the likes of Kate Fagan, Enda Kenny, Lee Kingston (not on today but did an excellent set yesterday), Chloe & Jason Roweth and The Wheeze and Suck Band. Also on the bill: choirs Ecopella, Madrigala and the one I used to sing with but left a couple of months ago, The Courthouse Choir, which is run by the Wollongong Conservatorium of Music, conducted by Carlos Alvarado, and which rehearses in the old court house in Berry (half an hour's drive from Kangaroo Valley). I'm looking forward to hearing them from out front.

* Saturday Sept 8 2007:

River, the eloquent and persuasive Iraqi blogger whose blog Baghdad Burning is a moving account of life in Baghdad beyond the Green Zone, has escaped Iraq and is now living in Jordan. She describes her family's flight here (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/, Thurs Sept 6 07). An extract:

The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness ... How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death? How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and ... peace, safety? It's difficult to believe - even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can't hear the explosions. I wonder at how the windows don't rattle as the planes pass overhead. I'm trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I'm trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest ... How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away? [more]

Today, as accused war criminals Bush and Howard stand triumphantly together at OPEC in Sydney, I mean APEC, I recall River's post of February 20 last:

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It's worse. It's over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq's first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

For how long can Bush and Howard remain in their own little Green Zone, protected from - indeed, profiting from - the reality produced by their lies? Will the Australian people finally open their eyes to Howard's crimes and propaganda and throw him and his cronies out? The very thought is intoxicating! So far the polls are encouraging ...

* Brilliant violinist, musical improviser, one-time musical collaborator etc Jon Rose has an interesting take on the notorious Sydney fence, built especially for OPEC, I mean APEC, that snakes around the city:

Not since 1788 has such a dangerous bunch of Homo sapiens been sent to Sydney. In fact, the 21 hardened criminals presently locked up behind a 2.8-meter high, five-kilometer long fence clearly have much worse records than any of the small time, half-starved, pickpockets in the first fleet. Amongst this new lot of undesirables are killers responsible for body counts rising into hundreds of thousands; others steal from the poor and powerless on a global scale; others sadly just seem to suffer from lack of equipment - commonly known as the small member syndrome; and worst of all, some are communists! Sentenced to hard labour, eventually they will all be sent to Western Australia to dig big holes in the ground, but before that happens, they must be restrained in a holding pen. [more]

Jon, often joined by fellow violinist Hollis Taylor, has bowed fences from the Australian outback to Israel. The APEC fence provided the perfect opportunity to make music and, at the same time, make a political statement, one taken advantage of by Jon, Sam Dobson and Dale Gorfinkel.

For more about the remarkable Ms Taylor, and to order any of her books and CDs, visit her website here.

* Wednesday Sept 5 2007:

Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports:

The Prime Minister (Mr Howard) likened the finely balanced economy to a cricketer who had just reached a double century: "The gap between bat and pads is now wider and his cover drives are just as immaculate."

Rash pre-election spending promises (core or non-core?) are likely to be the flipper that zips through the gap ... I've recently read a book that explodes the myth of John Howard's superior economic management: Ozonomics by Andrew Charlton (Random House Australia). Joseph E. Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, writes: "Charlton makes an extremely convincing case that Australia's remarkable performance is not because of the Howard Government - indeed, it may be despite it."

A cousin of mine is a citrus grower on the River Murray in South Australia. He claims that Howard's much-lauded Free Trade Agreement between Australia and 'Murrica immediately removed tariffs from citrus imports from the USA into Australia but removes tariffs in the opposite direction over an eighteen-year period. This has devastated the local citrus industry. Well done, John!

The Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2004 "much to the intense dismay of (the Australian government's) own negotiators who advised the government to walk away from the deal, and much to the disquiet of expert advisors - just about every non-aligned expert in the land willing to use their wits and speak freely." (Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Mathews: National Insecurity: the Howard Government's betrayal of Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, Sydney; 2007).

* Hamish McDonald in yesterday's SMH:

A wealthy businessman will spend nearly $500,000 trying to get Asia-Pacific leaders to focus on human rights abuses this week. In a series of advertisements starting in newspapers and on television and radio in Sydney and Canberra tomorrow - the morning the US President, George Bush, wakes up in Sydney - Ian Melrose will highlight Indonesian military abuses in East Timor and Papua ... [more]

Go Ian! His outdoor advertising was stymied by billboard company APN Outdoor's refusal "to carry political content". And Channel Seven refused to take the television ads. It's OK, apparently, to advertise products made from illegal imports of rainforest timber clear-felled by the Indonesian army in West Papua, but not to protest about the inhabitants of those forests being arbitrarily shot.

* Tuesday Sept 4 2007:

It was confirmed today that a concert of some of my audio-visual pieces about East Timor and West Papua at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra on September 21 has been postponed till February 22 2008.

Am working on two fund-raising concerts coming up for the Kangaroo Valley-Remexio Partnership: the Fifth Annual Kangaroo Valley Buster Keaton Silent Movie Festival on October 27 and SHE (formerly known as The Kioloa Harp Ensemble) on January 27 next year. Click here for details and bookings. And I'm writing a song - Glorious Defeat - for mezzo soprano Karen Cummings to sing at the 2008 Festival of Sedition at Huskisson, New South Wales, on September 29 (unfortunately I won't be there to hear it as I'll be on a New Zealand tour at that time).

* Monday Sept 3 2007:

I received this heart-warming email today from the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir:

On August 18th & 19th SGLC participated in a truly moving experience. The choir was the main entertainment for the Common Dreams Conference, a conference for progressive religious groups. Retired Episcopalian Bishop (and staunch gay and lesbian rights campaigner) John Shelby Spong was the keynote speaker. For two months SGLC members worked on repertoire designed to reflect the challenges and triumphs of Bishop Spong's life in readiness for our Saturday night performance at his keynote address. Some choir members wrestled with their hostile feelings towards religious establishments, while others shared their experiences and their Spong libraries. All choir members engaged in the debate about what we were hoping to achieve and how important it was for us to engage with our supporters, no matter how foreign to us their beliefs might be. When the event finally rolled around, the choir sang its heart out. Audience members both wept over us and welcomed us, telling us how brave we were to take a step towards institutions that had rejected many of us in the past. Bishop Spong hugged as many of us as he could get his hands on, and his lovely wife Christine listened to our stories with respect. Conference attendees came from all over Australia and New Zealand, with a number of gay ministers, or ministers from inclusive churches, inviting us to sing for them in their home states ... We cannot recommend enough building bridges like those we built last weekend. Regardless of our personal beliefs, we found a warm welcome and staunch supporters in the conference attendees. SGLC would also like to thank the conference organising committee, who were so keen to include us. We felt we made a little piece of history on the weekend; we hope other G&L choirs will get the chance to continue the dialogue.

Aaaaaaah, the power of music ...

In 2002 librettist Peter Wesley-Smith and I wrote a piece called True, for soprano, choir, flute & piano. Commissioned by the Canberra Gay & Lesbian Qwire, it deals with gay and lesbian issues. Read the libretto here. To find out more about it, or to order the CD, email the Qwire, or leave a message on their voicemail (+61 (0)2 9294 4234), or write to them at PO Box 3095 Canberra City ACT 2601 Australia. To enquire about the music, email me.

An excerpt (from the song Feeling the Spirit [lyric (c) 2002 Peter Wesley-Smith]):