Blog
Visible power
A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence the actions of the state is near its end – Julian Assange, 2006
In 1948, the New Yorker published a short story by Shirley Jackson called ‘The lottery’. It is the story of the public stoning of a woman in a small town in Vermont. The stoning, however, is not the result of any crime committed by the woman. Two male elders are charged with the responsibility of organising a lottery in which all the citizens of the town are compulsorily entered in the full knowledge that one of them will be required to forfeit their life. Jackson infuses the conduct of this strange, democratic ritual with a perfunctory efficiency. The elders are keen to have the matter decided and executed before sunset, as if it were a bothersome town hall meeting that everyone would prefer to do without but was essential to the good governance of the town. It is clear that the townspeople do not know why these stonings take place and Jackson gives no clear indication of motive other than some oblique references to agricultural rituals that may have been observed by the community in years long gone. That one of the presiding elders is the owner of the local coal company suggests that the story is set in the industrial era but the precise time is not specified. It is clear, however, that the ritual has lost whatever meaning or function it may have had but has continued to be conducted as a matter of empty ceremony. Once the lot is drawn the assembled, which includes women and children, set upon the condemned with efficient alacrity. ... read more
Written by Boris Kelly on 13-12-2010, 17 user comments
A big Australia?
In the recently released Overland 201, Dr Mark Diesendorf and former Greens senator Andrew Bartlett debate a progressive response to population policy and Gillard’s declaration that Australia ‘should not hurtle down the track towards a big population’. Mark Disendorf begins:
Long before population became a public issue, debate had been stirring behind the scenes. There had been internal arguments within the environmental movement, with tension between those who recognised population as one of the three drivers of environmental damage, and those who wished to avoid taking a public position against population growth for fear of alienating some of their members.
The debate was brought into the open when Mark O’Connor and William Lines published their book, Overloading Australia. Kevin Rudd made the issue newsworthy with his Big Australia speech, and Julia Gillard attempted to hose down the subsequent public concern by making reassuring noises, appointing a Minister for Population and trying the turn the issue into one solely about infrastructure provision.
It is, however, much more than that. Possibly because population is simultaneously an environmental, social and economic issue, it has been misrepresented in many different ways by those who wish Australia to continue with one of the fastest rates of population growth among OECD countries. Some claim that to oppose growth is racist or anti-refugee. Others argue that we need more births and young immigrants to look after our ageing population or to defend Australia or to provide the workforce for mineral development. Some assert that the real issue is the excessive consumption per person. In conversation at the launch of a wind farm project, I was even told by NSW Premier Kristina Keneally that population growth from births is much greater than from immigration. All these claims are false.
There is nothing inherently racist or anti-refugee about limiting total immigration. Indeed, one could argue more credibly that the existing immigration system is biased, because it allows unlimited entry to New Zealanders, facilitates the permanent residency of overseas students who graduate in Australia on the debatable grounds that education is an ‘export industry’, and restricts the entry of refugees escaping from devastated regions of Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The system makes it easier for wealthy, well-educated people to enter the country, while excluding the needy and desperate.
Written by Editorial team on 13-12-2010, No comments
Voices from detention: Hazara youth speak out
Today is International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. To mark today I thought that it would be fitting to publish some correspondence I received from some young Hazara men currently living in the Darwin Accommodation Lodge. They are unaccompanied minors but as the Darwin Accommodation Lodge is an Alternative Place of Detention (APOD), the same rules of detention do not apply.
The stories were sent round in a collective email to encourage people to support those in detention. They are from three young Hazara men under 17 years of age who left family behind (around Quetta on the Afghan border with Pakistan) to make the journey for peaceful asylum to Australia. One of them left Quetta at 11 years of age in the trust of an ‘agent’. He spent many years struggling as an ‘illegal’ in Malaysia and Indonesia before meeting another of this trio, and boarding a boat bound for Australia. They also befriended another Hazara family in their time in Indonesia, whom they say brought them some of the happiest times in their lives; that family is now in Leonora APOD in remote WA, also awaiting outcome of application for asylum. ... read more
Written by Scott Foyster on 10-12-2010, No comments
The Communist Puritan: It is good to die for the revolution
The life of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara has lately been receiving revived interest. There were the movies about parts of his life: Motorcycle Diaries, and the two-part Soderbergh movies, featuring four hours of Che as a guerrilla. These were followed by the revision and updating of Jon Lee Anderson’s massive, authoritative, and highly praised biography, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life.
It is not hard to understand the appeal to many of Che. Che was born into a privileged family in Argentina and wound up fighting against tyranny in Cuba. It was obviously not his fight: he was not born into the misery in which most Latin Americans lived then, or now, and he wasn’t even Cuban. Yet he risked his life fighting injustice. Having overthrown the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in 1959, Che left Cuba in 1965 to again risk his life fighting for revolution, first in the Congo, then in Bolivia. This short sketch of his life seems to indicate characteristics of Che that inspire many: selflessness, internationalism, passionate commitment. And for many, the fact that Che fought against US imperialism is, on its own, enough to commend his battles. ... read more
Written by Michael Brull on 10-12-2010, 22 user comments
The legacy of humanitarian imperialism
Overland editor Jeff Sparrow is making waves this week: writing to the Prime Minister and crashing internets; arguing, with teammate Adam Bandt, for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan; speaking on the BBC, on RRR, at Melbourne's WikiLeaks demo.
He’s also penned one of the lead essays in Overland 201, which traces the history and discourse of the war in Afghanistan, and dissects liberal imperialist arguments supporting the war.
‘The banality of goodism’ begins like so: ... read more
Written by Editorial team on 10-12-2010, No comments
Theatre review: Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt | Four Larks Theatre | until Saturday 11 December
On Wednesday night I was lucky enough to share with friends in the experience that is the Four Larks Theatre company. Even a visit to their website gives a sense of how this self-funded young company masters atmosphere. Entering their space is like being stolen by storybook Gypsies.
Four Larks describe themselves as ‘a collective’ and this collab
Written by Clare Strahan on 10-12-2010, 5 user comments
Learning from the (r)evolution of a political movement
‘Can you really teach rebellion?’ my friend asked after spotting the cover of the book on my table. ‘Yes, I think you can,’ was my reply.
When Eleuterio, Sara, Hugo, Carmelina and other compañeros provide their account of the popular Mexican uprising in Teaching Rebellion: Stories from the Grassroots Mobilization in Oaxaca, we can learn some valuable lessons for progressive dissent. ... read more
Written by Sharon Callaghan on 9-12-2010, 3 user comments
Fiction review: Bereft
Bereft
Chris Womersley
Scribe
Occasionally a book so exceptional comes along that you want to greedily devour it in one sitting. Like a new lover you want to spend every moment together and become resentful when forced to part. You eat with it, curl up in bed with it, and pick it up the moment you wake. This rarely happens to me, but it did with Bereft.
Bereft is Chris Womersley’s second novel, and his first, The Low Road, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction in 2008. If Bereft doesn’t pick up some prestigious awards I’ll be very surprised. ... read more
Written by Irma Gold on 8-12-2010, 1 user comment
Non-fiction review: Why vs Why: Nuclear Power
Why vs Why: Nuclear Power
Prof Barry Brook & Prof Ian Lowe
Pantera Press
It isn't easy to review a book that consist of two different people arguing each side of an argument. In this case, it's about whether Australia should pursue nuclear power, but my objections would serve for any book that worked in the same way. Why vs Why: Nuclear Power is written as a flipbook; each writer argues his case for or against nuclear power, and is then rebutted by the other. You can then flip the book to hear the opposing side, and its accompanying rebuttal. ... read more
Written by Georgia Claire on 8-12-2010, 1 user comment
In praise of Climate Camp
On Saturday morning, two activists at Camp for Climate Action chained themselves to Xstrata Ravensworth Coalmine.
They were arrested for their action. On Sunday, over 150 activists pushed over a fence to block the train lines running to Bayswater coal-fired power station. The most recent count is 73 activists arrested, including an 88-year-old man. ... read more
Written by Michael Brull on 7-12-2010, 1 user comment
Non-fiction review: Unmaking War, Remaking Men
Unmaking War, Remaking Men
Kathleen Barry
Spinifex Press
Five years ago, walking through the Dandenong ranges outside Melbourne with my lover at the time, I had one of those fights that seem to tear the hills down around your ears. It was meant to be a beautiful afternoon, allocated ‘couple time’, but I have very little memory of the day, of what the weather was like, of the shifting undergrowth.
All I remember is the fight, which was over feminism: if it was worth it, what it meant, and who was worse done by when all the million hurts and slights of our different genders had been tallied and reckoned. ... read more
Written by Ruby J Murray on 7-12-2010, 2 user comments
Like badgers and birds
Jesus, what a can of worms. If it were scripted from Hollywood with Brad Pitt in the starring role you wouldn’t give it a second look. It’s not just the embassy cables themselves of course, but the accompanying furore around Julian Assange’s imminent arrest on sexual assault charges, not to mention the calls for his murder by people such as Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. For much of this week my preferred activity before breakfast has been to hit the net and find out what the embassy cable leaks have revealed overnight about the operation of our rotten political systems.
There are so many perspectives from which to look at the embassy cables release, because there has been such a deluge of information: the US government’s sleazy threats to any other nation that might impede their hideous regimes of torture and surveillance; the way the US sought to railroad Copenhagen; the utter contempt in which the democratic process is held by popularly elected governments; not to mention the subsequent ganging up on Assange by prize-winning journos who sniffily claim that he and his WikiLeaks crew are not ‘real journalists’, and so on and so on. But what has been occupying my thinking this morning is the Amazon decision to boot WikiLeaks off its servers where it was temporarily resident, and the implications of this for writers and for whatever is termed literature. ... read more
Written by Stephen Wright on 6-12-2010, 31 user comments
Focus on young writers: Cassie Wood
The final author feature in Overland 201’s ‘Young Writers’ section is Cassie Wood. Her story is ‘Eddy’. Cassie is a second-year writing student living in Melbourne. She talks here with Kalinda Ashton and Samuel Cooney.
Why write?
Why not? I think if you ask yourself this question, that’s when things get messy and you start considering business degrees and nuclear families. That isn’t to say those with business degrees and/or nuclear families couldn’t write. But that’s just it, isn’t it! You write because you can. I do.
Writing is a catalyst for discussion. The author
Written by Editorial team on 6-12-2010, 1 user comment
Posting from Uganda
Part 1: Life and death
I am writing this post from the shores of beautiful Lake Bunyonyi in the south of Uganda. I have just watched the dark clouds push through the emerald green valley where the lake is nestled, bringing a whipping wind and a burst of rain to clear the air. My cold Nile Special rests on a pile of stones that are serving as a table beside me, and I have a good book on my lap. Now that the rain has past, the vast array of birdlife has come out of hiding, busying itself with the daily work of diving for fish, fighting for space and bouncing across rushes. They really do talk a lot. ... read more
Written by Louise Pine on 3-12-2010, 1 user comment
Focus on young writers: Frank Boyce
Frank Boyce is the third author featured in the ‘Young Writers’ section of Overland 201 with his story ‘Minerals are not nomads’. Frank is a writer and student living in Melbourne. He’s interviewed here by Kalinda Ashton and Samuel Cooney.
Why write?
Terry Eagleton speaks about artistic or cultural production as different groups of people trying to make ‘symbolic sense of their situation’. It’s quite a plain quote but probably the most vital piece of reasoning when it comes to the questioning of writing. Feeling as though you are a part (small as it may be) of the collective process of shaping symbols, or uncovering them, or adding to them, or rejecting the old or commonly held ones, is something exciting and worthwhile. ... read more
Written by Editorial team on 3-12-2010, 2 user comments
Subscribe
Overland depends on your subscription. If you like what you read, sign up for a year’s worth of politics and culture, delivered direct to your door.
Contribute
Overland accepts submissions across a range of genres. We can’t publish everything but we do read all material sent to us.
Recent posts
- ‘Love is a madness most discreet’: The Red and the Black, A Chronicle of 1830 by Stendhal: Jane Gleeson-White
- Infrared: Georgia Claire
- A literature that refuses to go missing: Jennifer Mills
- Dispatch from our intern: Roselina Press
- ‘Last Man in Tower’: Rhona Hammond
tags
Recent comments