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humans are amazing

Gets especially freakish around 1 min 35.

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Written by Jeff Sparrow on 30-04-2009, No comments

The Baader Meinhof Complex

Managed to see The Baader-Meinhof Complex last night, a recent German film about the famous radical left-wing terrorist group. It continues in the recent vein of novels and films which a kind of critical but romantic view of the radical left-wing terrorist groups of the late sixties and early seventies (the Weather Underground in the US, etc). Typically, the film is light on political context. It does make some attempt to present the logic of the group, but there really isn't much debate presented (and certainly not from those on the left but from the broader movement who I'm sure (as in the US) would have been arguing against the use of terror), and at other times the film presents the group (particularly Andreus Baader) as crazed madmen. I know a lot less about the Baader-Meinhof group than I do the Weather Underground, so I can't comment so much on the details, but I'm not sure you'll get a particularly deep understanding from the film. In addition, it's pretty long, and V, who I went with, squirmed her way through the last hour of the two and a half hours. I hadn't eaten beforehand, so was becoming increasingly cranky as the last half-hour concentrated on the various attempts to rescue them from jail. The film is particularly monotonal - lacking in emotional dynamism - preferring to concentrate on the violence and the almost thriller-like aspects rather than presenting us with more human and personal moments (Baader and his partner don't have a single moment onscreen alone together that I can remember, for example). I couldn't find the trailer in English, but here it is in German. ... read more

Written by Rjurik Davidson on 30-04-2009, 8 user comments

the war on refugees

This is a thing from Crikey a few days back.

Somebody should give Sri Lanka’s high commissioner to Australia Senaka Walgampaya a cabinet post, for he has just encapsulated the logic of Australian refugee policy into a few pithy lines. Discussing the prospect of Tamils fleeing the Sri Lankan army campaign, he assured the public: "These people don't have the financial resources to pay anybody to smuggle them into Australia. The people who have the financial resources have earlier left these areas".

Phew. That’s all right then -- the poor are still stuck. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 30-04-2009, No comments

US border control

Democracy Now is running a story on No More Deaths' Dan Millis, who was convicted of littering last year for leaving water out for Mexicans crossing illegally into the USA.

I spent a week with No More Deaths last year and wrote a piece about it for New Matilda. Good to see the issue's alive and well in the US, and disappointing to see nothing has changed on it since the election.

Isabel Garcia of Derechos Humanos says "I think the Obama administration is smart, competent and totally unaware of what’s going on along this border." Let's hope she's right, and they are made aware, though i suspect this swine flu business will be used as an excuse for further tightening.

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Written by Jennifer Mills on 28-04-2009, No comments

the slow death of newspapers: part 758

The NYT reports that the print circulation of US newspapers dropped by another 7 per cent:

Of the top 25 newspapers in the United States, all posted declines in circulation except for The Wall Street Journal, which eked out a 0.6 percent gain, according to the figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. For the others, the declines ranged from 20.6 percent for The New York Post, to a slight 0.4 percent drop for The Chicago Sun-Times.

Both The Post and The Journal are owned by News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 28-04-2009, No comments

the contemptous-rock-stars-versus-idiotic-journalists Youtube war is on

At its new 'Spike' blog, Meanjin has launched a fresh provocation (ostensibly by way of promoting the Meanjin-Overland discounted sub deal, of which you may have heard some mention  here). They've posted a clip of a fantastically debauched-looking Lou Reed treating some moronic Australian reporters with utter contempt. Well, we yield to no-one when it comes to uncovering contemptuous rock stars. Thus we present Iggy Pop dealing ('Hi ya, dog face!) with Molly Meldrum -- with bonus footage of a deranged Iggy capering around the Countdown stage. Top that, Meanjin! ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 28-04-2009, 4 user comments

guns before chocolate

I got mailed a gun the other day...

No, I haven't joined a terrorist group, nor investigated the loonier regions of e-bay. The gun came as promotion, a rare occurrence in the book trade. I have on occasion received promo artisan chocolate (‘we do bribery and corruption properly', said the PR lady), and a really tacky skull keyring from HarperCollins. A certain publisher was going over the top out with a thriller, and somebody's bright idea was that the package should include a toy gun, capable of firing caps. The timing of this particular package was particularly inopportune given a recent spate of of random shootings, almost but not quite ho hum in the news, and entirely the product of too much guns too readily available.

I don't think my gender get guns, except as useful objects of last resort, as when you live in the bush and need to cull the feral dog population. Need I say anything about the phallus fetishized? Overcompensatory hormonal power fantasies?  [Makes a gesture favoured by nice Italian nonnas who have just been honked at by hoons, of which a rough translation is Big Car Little Dick.] ... read more

Written by Lucy on 26-04-2009, 1 user comment

would they let Sassoon march?

In the course of writing my book Killing (due out in July), I read a lot of the literature from the First World War. Or re-read, I guess, cos you can't help but encounter much of it (or at least Owen and perhaps Sassoon) in high school.  But looking at it again, I was struck by how the forms used by the Great War writers have been reappropriated to neutralise their content.  Take Owen's 'Dulce et decorum est', the one poem everyone studies. These days, there's nothing shocking about the description of men dying horribly in a gas attack. Indeed, the Anzac Day columns appearing in this weekend's newspapers don't attempt to hide the horrors of war. If anything, they do the opposite, with a plethora descriptions of shell shock and trenchfoot and corpses on barbed wire and the rest of it. Yet, for the most part, they draw entirely the opposite conclusion to Owen. They emphasise the horrors to emphasise Anzac heroism, whereas Owen's point was that in modern war heroism became impossible. That was 'the old lie', after all -- the idea that anything great or glorious came from dying on the battlefield. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 25-04-2009, No comments

the Pavlov’s dog of newspapers

As soon as you learned that Sally Warhaft had resigned from the Monthly, you knew (despite having no knowlege whatsoever of the circumstances behind her departure) that the Australian would rub its nasty little hands together in glee. And, lo, so it came to pass. Robert Manne! Kevin Rudd! Drool! Drool!

Whatever your opinion of Kevin Rudd as essayist, the success of the Monthly has been an unambiguously good thing for Australian culture. Everyone at Overland wishes both it and Sally the best for the future.

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Written by Jeff Sparrow on 25-04-2009, 1 user comment

from now on Overland will be autotuned

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Written by Jeff Sparrow on 24-04-2009, 1 user comment

and what if they don’t follow the script?

A point that's been missed in the discussion of the Bush torture memos is that interrogators always go further than regulations allow. Police in the developed world aren't supposed to beat prisoners in cells but everyone knows that, like, some of them do. Naturally, then, if the official instructions permit interrogators to waterboard, to slap prisoners, to push them into walls, to humiliate them, to keep them in cramped positions, some will push things to a whole different level. For instance:

Yes, I walked into this room, and it was a small room with the walls painted black. There was an interrogator sitting in a chair. To his left was an interpreter. The detainee was kneeling with his wrists handcuffed behind his back before the interrogator. Standing behind the interrogator was a guard carrying a — I don't recall now if it was wood or iron rod — and it was almost stereotypical, being patted into his hand like it was some B movie, gangster movie, if you will.

And the questions were posed to the detainee, interpreted. The detainee would answer, the answer was interpreted, and upon that interpretation, the interrogator would slap him across the face. For those who have read the report, they talk about in survival training, an "insult slap." It's very important to understand that those are affected in a very careful fashion, and to truly shock someone rather than hurt them. And this type of slap was much more forceful. The other difference is, it was being delivered systematically, and when I walked in, I asked how long it had been going on, and I was told "30 minutes." So this individual had been slapped continuously while he was on his knees for 30 minutes.

This was in Iraq. What do you suppose happens in the CIA's black prisons, where the interrogators know that whatever happens in their cells will never, ever be known to the outside world?

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Written by Jeff Sparrow on 24-04-2009, No comments

a warning from the newspaper biz

Former newspaper media director Brendan Sherar goes Ancient Mariner in this interesting post, warning that publishers need to come to terms with technology now or else suffer the same awful fate currently besetting the traditional newspapers:

[L]ately, I’ve been getting nervous when I hear people dismissively say, “Oh, people will always want the printed book.  They’ll never want to read books on computers.”  I’m not going to debate herein the truth/untruth of such a statement, but the sentiment really bothers me. [...]

Seriously, folks, the future of books is being decided now, much like it was being

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 24-04-2009, No comments

what it means to have a life

John Crace at the Guardian books blog distinguishes JG Ballard from most writers today on that basis that Ballard had accumulated some experiences before putting pen to paper:

Before he had even got his first short story published in the late 1950s, Ballard had survived the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, been separated from his parents, been interned in a prisoner of war camp where he lived off weevils, joined the RAF and served in Canada, been an encyclopedia salesman and even worked as a porter in Covent Garden market. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 24-04-2009, 8 user comments

scariest Twitter update ever

Just received this message from Twitter: 'Karl Rove (KarlRove) is now following your updates on Twitter.'

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Written by Jeff Sparrow on 22-04-2009, 3 user comments

modesty prevents them

Being such shy, retiring types, my co-editors have been all coy about their achievements. Lacking inhibitions of that kind, I note that Rjurik will soon publish a book of his short stories in Britain, while Kalinda's novel The Danger Game is rapidly taking shape. Here's some of the encomiums it has attracted:

'Kalinda Ashton's The Danger Game is an unflinching examination of familial and communal bonds. It is a masterful, poignant, powerful and true. Ashton¹s is a remarkable voice and this is a wonderful novel.' ­
Christos Tsiolkas

'The Danger Game is an exquisitely written portrait of a disintegrating family in a turbulent era.'  ­ Amanda Lohrey

'Ashton's The Danger Game announces a new and vital voice in  Australian literature. The writing hits every note ­ on every page.' Tony Birch

'Kalinda Ashton loves her damaged characters, and makes us love them too. With forgiveness, an enormous sensibility for suffering, and a wry, forensic eye, she explores the injuries that lie inside their souls. This subtle and engrossing debut novel combines Ashton¹s exquisite feel for language with precise observation of suburban lives. Lonely Jeremy, survivor Alice and risk-taking Louise are people we know from life; discovering their secrets and stories makes The Danger Game a wise, disquieting, and memorable read.' ­ Kate Holden ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 22-04-2009, 5 user comments