Vignettes
April 2004 The Way To Go Baby boomers may bang on about how kids these days don't get out and protest like they used to, but the fact is that many culture jammers are slipping under the radar.
If companies aren't worried by what they can't see, they should be - this generation is much more media savvy than their parents, and their children will probably be more so again.
Culture jamming is not about vague notions of alternativeness battling against the mainstream. It has to do with the issues that Naomi Klein first talked about in No Logo - loss of public space, corporate censorship and unethical labour practices.
When explaining why such a phenomenon exists, Kalle Lasn, the publisher of Adbusters magazine, says that people are waking up to the fact that the fight of the future is not about race, gender, or left or right - it is about culture.
The use of satire, humour, graffiti, street theatre and performance art in politics is, of course, not new, and the US media studies theorist John Dowling has noted culture jamming's interaction with movements of resistance. What is new is the way in which activists have chosen to protest against what they see as self-serving institutions - government, big business and mainstream media.
Milissa Deitz: In this resistance movement, literacy is the weapon |
Nixon's heirs are George and John G. Gordon Liddy, the former FBI agent who masterminded the Watergate burglary on behalf of Richard Nixon, once said that he would like to kill John Dean by shoving a pencil through his neck.
This week, as Mr Dean publishes Worse than Watergate: the Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, the sentiment is likely to be shared by many in Mr Bush's White House.
"When it comes to dealing with dissenters and those willing to speak the truth," said Mr Dean, "this Administration is putting Nixon to shame". Mr Nixon had a "responsiveness program", which was uncovered by the Senate Watergate Committee. The idea was to help "friends" and hurt "enemies".
Julian Coman: Bush Administration 'worse than Nixon's' |
Scared Weird Little Guy Deserves Oblivion This week, in its frenzied desire to smash Latham, it paid scant attention to the distinction that must exist between governments and public servants. Departmental and agency heads were treated by the Prime Minister, other ministers and their staffs as factotums whose purpose was to advance the political cause of the Government.
An oft-heard criticism of the Government going right back to the latter half of 2001 was that it had no third-term agenda. This has turned out not to be true. The third-term agenda has been to secure a fourth term.
In many important respects, the Government is barely even governing any more. The work-and-family policy that the Prime Minister in July 2002 nominated as the centrepiece of his third term? We still have not seen it. The only things that count now are destroying Latham and winning this year's election. It has become accepted wisdom in Canberra, for example, that the singular purpose of the budget to be delivered on May 11 is to serve the Government's re-election prospects.
Of course, all governments frame their budgetary policy to help themselves politically. But has incumbency ever before been deployed for political ends in such a naked way?
Howard actually brandished and read into the Parliament record a letter from the head of the Defence Department to Defence Minister Robert Hill that contained a list of 10 people who had not briefed Latham about Iraq. Think about that. The head of Defence rang around to smoke out who might have briefed Latham. When he turned up empty-handed, he was then required to provide a letter whose only possible purpose could be to harm the Government's political opponents. Is that what we pay our public servants to do?
Even more extraordinary was the Prime Minister's accusation that Latham had lied when he said the shadow cabinet had decided on a policy of immediate withdrawal of troops a year ago.
For a leader of any political party to think they know exactly what goes on behind closed doors on the other side of politics, and to try to win a debate about it, is just plain bizarre.
Shaun Carney: Howard's crossing of the line
See also:
Alan Ramsey: No truck with misguided diversions
Paul Kelly: Howard plays the man |
Gallipoli Then And Now So Alexander Downer warns Australians not to go to Gallipoli (The Age, 2/4). This after a war that saw Saddam removed from power in Iraq, a war which Downer and John Howard promised us would lessen the threats from terrorists et al.
When I went to Turkey four years ago, Saddam was in power across the border in Iraq, but the only life-threatening events I experienced came from Turkish motorists. Even last year while the war still raged in Iraq, many visitors went to Turkey for the Anzac Day ceremony and other reasons. Now we are told that the situation is so serious that Australians should not go there at all. What happened to the promise of greater safety, post-Saddam- or was that a "non-core" Howard promise?
Brian McKinlay, Letter to The Age
I almost fell off my lounge chair laughing. The Government has warned Australians not to go to Gallipoli on Anzac Day as they could be in danger. They are 89 years too late. I will bet thousands of diggers are convulsed with laughter, wherever they lie. It is too much.
Denis Cartledge, Letter to The Age
I like it that the Australian Government is warning young Australians it may be dangerous and unnecessary to go to Galipolli for Anzac Day.
If only they had realized that in 1915.
Doug Steley, Letter to SCATT |
If "National Security" Equates To "Warmongering" Then Libs Are Tops Both the Vietnam War and the present Iraq conflict are examples of the national interest being betrayed by Liberal governments.
Thirty-nine years ago the Menzies government justified its decision to send a battalion to Vietnam on the basis of a request it claimed to have received from the South Vietnam government. That request was as illusory as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are today. In both instances, the real reason for our involvement was to keep sweet with America.
What happened when Curtin directed that Australian troops should return home to defend Australia is a compelling vindication of Latham's assertion last week. When it mattered most, Curtin held firm under sustained pressure from Winston Churchill and insisted that Australia's soldiers should return.
In contrast, Churchill's proposal to divert them to Burma, where they would probably have been slaughtered, was supported by no fewer than six conservatives who at some stage held the office of Australian prime minister. Their attitude made Curtin's task even harder.
Ross McCullin: Who says the 'Tories' win on security? |
Are Dubya's Mercenaries Having Fun Yet? When the doors open at Level 5 of the Palestine Hotel, there's a spit-and-polished Gurkha pointing a high-powered gun into the lift.
The whole floor and another above it have been taken by Kellogg Brown & Root, the construction wing of Halliburton, one of the biggest US firms working in Iraq. And though the linguists of occupation don't allow the word "mercenary", the Gurkha is part of a 15,000-strong private security operation that is the third biggest armed force in Iraq.
Their numbers - and salaries as high as $US1000 ($A1300) a day - attest to the danger of this Arab version of Dodge City.
But when they signed up, few would have anticipated the terrible butchery of four colleagues whose bodies were dismembered and dragged through the streets of the western city of Fallujah on Wednesday.
The ranks of the private armies in Iraq are growing so rapidly that US and British defence officials are at a loss to know how to counter offers to the best of their Special Operations and SAS staff.
Paul McGeough: Mercenaries flock to fill vacuum |
Boys Will Be Yobs Mark Latham says it's about single-parent families, and you find it where boys grow up without dads. John Howard says it's about same-sex couples adopting children, and you find it with lesbians raising sons. The Catholic Church says it's about an abundance of women teachers, and you find it in classrooms without male role models.
Scratch the surface of these arguments, and what you really find is good old-fashioned sexism and homophobia.
Neither Howard nor Latham have expressed any concern about girls being raised by dads or girls not having a balance of male teachers in the classroom.
Neither Howard nor Latham has expressed any concern about the glass ceiling for women in the workplace, nor the low numbers of women found in areas such as science, engineering or politics.
The Catholic Church sees no hypocrisy in having only male popes and refusing women into the priesthood.
Role models, it seems, are only important for males.
Curiously, at a time when several rugby league and AFL players are accused of being rapists, there is a deafening silence about the crisis of masculinity that underpins this. Is anyone going to seriously suggest that this misogynous aggression is the result of single mums, lesbian parents and female teachers?
We are repeatedly told by sincere and well-meaning men's groups that suicide by aggrieved dads is a national tragedy, and it is. But it does not follow that the Family Court and its alleged "female bias" is to blame. The cause rests with many men's difficulties with interpersonal skills, inability to work through relationship issues and an almost complete paralysis when it comes to addressing emotions and expressing feelings.
The real crisis in masculinity is the knee-jerk reaction to any perception of "female" thinking and behaviour, the accepted culture of male violence and power, and the psychosis many men have towards sexual difference.
Brian Greig: Here is the real masculinity crisis |
(Courtesy: Cathy Wilcox, Sydney Morning Herald) |
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