I've not been writing much here, but

There's been more out there in my 'suburban forest' blog (link in right column) but I confess I am doing more outside work than scribble about it. With physical and mental benefit!!

Notes from linkedin caused me to review my profile generally today (after all, three people have looked at in three months... Well, maybe a few more). The great puzzle I find is that people send me messages saying they would like to connect... but if I write to them ["Hello, thanks for asking me to connect, your profile is interesting, etc.. ] it seems usually they do not respond. What is this 'connect' ... or does someone imagine my name will help them in the world, or is it just raw numbers of connectednesses?

Which tends to bear out this fun item in The Guardian this week, asking "has every conversation in history been a series of meaningless bleeps?"  One commentator on that usefully sent me (and hopefully one or two other readers, who knows) to find George Orwell's four motives for writing. What Orwell seems to miss is the tendency of this species to burble on and on, or conversely, not. Though he might suggest that that is a dimension of propensity not motive. On the matter of whether there is point or not to things said (motive or propensity), the brown chook, the elder-chook – yes, this is sort of in the wrong blog, but it remains germane – spoke to me with evidnet concern when I took my breakfast outside this morning: to say, I took it, that the two white chooks, recent arrivals, had vanished. Or so I thought Mrs Brown to say, at length, over hours. And to the of us both relief, later in the day the elegant young Livornese Ladies wandered back in from up the street.

Also though, I had figured out by then that Mrs Brown was telling me not only that she was alone and had only me to Friend and Connect (see meaningless beeps, previous para, but see also this, also from The Guardian recently)... but also that the feed bin was empty. This I divined from inspection of the bin, not from our discourse.

Cross-cultural barriers lesson 1: attend to the facts, not your assumptions,

Cross-cultural barriers lesson 2: do not presume the number of facts is the number you suppose.

===

Last night the LinkedIn computer, perhaps after a party, had written to me to say:

From: LinkedIn
Subject: Dennis: Australian Aerospace Resources Pty Ltd, BAE Systems Australia and NGO Recruitment are looking for candidates like you.

That last one was for: Country Director - China - World Society for the Protection of Animals
The details (of course I went to look) mentioned animals once but then slipped gracefully into the human resources species-talk, beginning with this from The Book of Common Babble:

You will be responsible for the development and delivery of the business strategy in accordance with regional and international goals. As the spokesperson you will develop and nurture relations with stakeholders including government authorities, inter-governmental organisations, media and key society. 

So:
... these below are my newly edited top-of-page self-promotional LinkMeUpScotty words, to see what new offers may come!

Beginning as you may know with Job Title, Company, Dates and Location, the sine qua nons of existence:

writer  

good company occasionally July 1943 – Present (69 years 11 months): in head, on paper, on screen, on brain, on soul... on too many subjectsI have a novel half done, 50000+ words. It runs through my head but currently not to paper, many other things under way in life. 
The novel draws on life experience in locations, in Australia and China. It has social and political dimensions. 
It also derives from personal experience of trying to be a reformer who works to change systems from within, rather than by tearing down. An activity that can mean you get abused from both sides, from the entrenched and conservatives on one side and on the other from the protesters at the gate. In my novel I hope to describe the story of leaders in China in the 1980s in that difficult context. 
But also with a contemporary Australian connection... though month by month, like the female protagonist in my novel, I find much of 'contemporary Australia' disconcertingly unattractive, not only in prospective political leadership but also the determination it seems, of a swathe of the population, to abandon thoughtfulness and go for dumb whinging. 
See, whatever I do turns to writing.. or thoughtful dumb whinging?
Oh, here is something I wrote long ago, so many aspects of life seem to weave together so often:
http://aplaceof.info/06/0610.1/1027capes.htm

new blog on suburban food forest

I have been neglecting keeping a record of my efforts at establishing a food forest on my suburban block. Hard to wedge in between all this other stuff in this blog, so I have established:

http://suburbanfoodforest.blogspot.com.au/  [click to go there]

this week.

See you there! Chance to see fruit between trees  :-)

Australia-China

With the announcement of agreement with China on annual leaders meetings, I was asked by Radio National Breakfast to contribute to analysis. The program is accessible here. The comment selected from my interview was about the need for intelligent national leadership to get Australians away from fear and misinformation about China. Here's hoping...

Earlier entries in this blog (click on China among the labels in right hand column) showed my concern that we needed to get some shape back into the relationship. 

I scribbled some quick briefing notes for the Breakfast team yesterday morning. These covered more than the core subject for interview. We have in Australia, as generally in the world, a great ignorance of what has happened in China in the past 35 years, the greatest revolution in world history. Where is that being thought or taught? French Revolution, let alone Eureka Stockade, just piddling by comparison. These were my notes, also prepared to freshen up my brain for interview:

What has just been done in Beijing restores and reaffirms a course we should have been on, which we were on until the overall relationship became lost in talking about the money.
We have enjoyed a strong relationship with China because we are seen by China as a country that acts in its own interests and has been prepared to work with Chinese leaders in helping them build a strong economy AND a civil society. This is still a broad and important task; government has had a major role in the China relationship not only because China has a communist country but also because the Chinese government has been engaged in extraordinary reforms.
I hope the Federal Opposition will recognise all this.
I hope both Government and Opposition will also work to change a lot of silly attitudes in Australia, that China is 'taking us over'.
Noting that China's investment in Australia stands around 20 billion compared with US 550bn (the ABS main page on this doesn't even count China!)

There is also the notion that Chinese are so numerous among us. But only 3% or so of the population was born in China. Recent conversations with China-born Australians have begun with the wish that more Australians could learn and get facts right. The Beijing announcement will please them, but it's only a start, the big problem is in Australia... and alas it has some narrow racist elements.
There is also the perspective that China is the cause of greenhouse problems. But we do have to look at climate change in social science perspective too - to allow room for developing countries to catch up. in 1985, China consumed around 50kg per capita of steel, we consumed ten times that. We have matured, in a post industrial phase, and Australian consumption has dropped to around 300kg - while China has risen to over 400kg per capita - and it is not clear when their consumption pattern will mature. We supported growth of their steel production as core to development. I expect China, with increasing focus on pollution, to do more efficiently.
China was the first country with a renewable energy law, China is a huge producer of solar power capacity, including exported panels and other gear.
China is going through an industrialisation process in several decades that took us a century. We need to show respect for the extraordinary complexity of political and economic issues in China, not just focus on relatively tabloid issues. Yes, there are human rights issues, but what has happened since 1978 is the largest revolution in human history and hundreds of millions have benefited.
What happened in 1978? Before that a person related to a 'work unit' and the work unit controlled whether you remained a fetus and got born, whether you had a roof over your head, whether you had whatever education, whether you got work, got married, whether you had a child. Everything a farmer or worker produced belonged to the state. In 1978 farmers were told to produce a quota and keep the rest. This kind of reform moved into industry. A need for company law, tax law, provision for profit and loss, bankruptcy, unemployment, new business establishement, social security and health systems... in a country with sixty times our population, minorities numbering ten times our population; per capita income has risen from under $300 to around 5000.
A lot of people in private cars now in China (zero in 1978) but consider that China has 5000km of high speed rail and plans to build to 25,000 by 2020.

Having noted that last number in my notes yesterday, it was interesting that the China discussion on the radio this morning was preceded by a news report that Australia may have 1700km of very fast train track by 2053. I suppose the awfully precise and remote number 2053 derived from discussion in 2013 in which someone said "we couldn't finish something like that for forty years!"

2053 is by my calculation seven years after 2046. I expect any very fast train in 2053 will be even more of the future than Wong Karwai's 2046 train.*** 

click on pictures for sources

So bizarre for a government (sadly bound for the butchers in a few months) to call for discussion about a train in 2053. We can't remember what has happened in China in 35 years... Here's a lovely glimpse of a fancy train, 50 years ago, when it too was about to be sent to the butcher.


*** if you haven't seen 2046, please first see Wong Karwai's staggeringly beautiful In the Mood for Love to which 2046 is a sequel. For more words on these films see this blog. I tend to find Australian film boring; perhaps I watch too many films like these two. They confront also with the extraordinary intellectual force of China, which we are generally not bright enough to imagine.

reading and editing

Perhaps my last post's darkness was shaped in part by my being affected at the time by a minor concussion, but the year has not gotten off to a wonderful start with the dessication and inflammation of much of the Australian continent and climate abnormalities and extremes at the cold end of the scale in the northern hemisphere—plus further decline in governability in Saharan Africa, inflamed by the disintegration of Libya and spread of arms and angry people from there, and now with western interventions and problems in Algeria. It was good to be sent this article from the Transcend organisation, with some real information on the Mali situation.

My period unable to get out after concussion mercifully did not prevent me reading.

Two very good books read, I have reviewed at Amazon, Mo Yan's Big Breasts and Wide Hips and Ann Jones's Kabul in Winter. Links are to the review page, egotistically, my review the most recent as of this date  .. :-)

Ann Jones's book should be read, serialised, at the beginning of every sitting of the Australian parliament and the US Congress until they begin to learn something about the world (more than they seem to get from the ritual reading of the Lord's Prayer).

I found Mo Yan's book relevant to my preparing to go on with my novel. It is intimidating though, to seek to write about China from the outside, when there is such astonishing literature from the inside. On the other hand I do want to do something which is from the outside, with an Australian perspective...

Meanwhile I am delighted that I have today been able to take to the printer the formatted copy for the memoirs of Isabel MacCallum. My first venture into editing and publishing thus plus also a very worthy book, which definitely will be launched in Nowra on 25 February. Wonderfully impressions** of early life, with good recall, candour towards self as well as others and situations, a nice blend of intellectual and ethical and practical perspectives... and entertaining.

More will be reported at the Backhouse Press blog soon.

** as regards 'impressions, I remain greatly influenced by those words of Ford Madox Ford which I quote at top of A Place of Info

peace on earth - perspectives

There has been appropriately despairing horror at the deaths of young children in a gun rampage at an American school. And diverse comment on it, including this moving discussion of the backdrop of greater numbers of dead by guns in America in 'lesser' events day-in day-out. That deeply personal article argues also that young American men go to war for their country motivated not least by the fact that in their private lives they are at war, as young people in America. So the fight-ability of war, the recruit-ability of large armed forces, is assisted by this sickness at home, or so it is argued.

Others, such as Glenn Greenwald, note that there is one reaction to death of young at home in America, another to deaths of children in other places in 'state-sanctioned' killings.

There is an interesting 'intellectual' nexus between on the one hand the numbing of public attitudes towards prosecution of war as the key to strategic purpose, encompassing alteration of customary international law, in effect, to sanction remote and secretly authorised killings and on the other the National Rifle Association's blaming violent games and videos (a point worth making) and the proposal for a good guy with a gun to protect every school in America.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” 

Is that national security policy or the NRA?

I go back to what I wrote in 2003 to then Australian Foreign Minister Downer:

it is in the nature of modern war that it tends, more than anything else - certainly it does not tend to ‘victory’ - to import into the righteous invading countries the problems you seek to eliminate by invading... Your assertion of effectiveness of violence in international policy drifts down to validate the use of violence by non-states in international affairs, and increasingly by individuals in national and sub-national affairs, and indeed, I suggest, in domestic life. We are dealing not just with a narrow national security issue but a large ethical dimension.

The process is self-feeding, self-perpetuating. Sustained also by the difficulty, ever, of shaking national policies from deeply worn ruts.

———————

Also regarding contrasting of perspectives: the media howl about the anti-Christmas fatwa of an evangelical mullah at the Lakemba mosque in Sydney. More sensible Moslem voices seeing it removed swiftly.  I look forward to similar patterns of conduct when next there is an attack on Moslems (or other minorities) by people who do not share their views.

The miasma that poisons our public and private thinking in Australia is that we are living on the edge of misery and we need to keep at bay contrary thoughts, contrary people, contrary values. This fed from the top by the antagonistic nature of our politics, the constant damnation by opposition, the adoption of ways of campaigning that appeal to base instincts and the perversion of politics here as in the US and UK by the great media mogul with his domination of the press and intimidation of politicians.

Let me end the year then by noting that we still rank second after Norway on the UN Development Program's Human Development Index... Norway above us no doubt because it is an even bigger-government country than we are imaged to be by clods who want to rip down community supports and wage protections. Thank goodness we have Ross Gittins.

Also in the media this month the dreadful cyclone that hit first Samoa and then Fiji. And so much of the popular media had its focus on the fate of "Aussies" having holidays disrupted. A shame that young adults could not learn from being in a place at a time where their energies could be useful to other people, people who presumably so recently smiled at them and were their hosts; that seems far from the 'schoolie' mindset or that of the schoolie-parent.

I could grinch on. But should call a halt and simply hope that starting locally we all be more insightful, aware and compassionate in 2013.

critical juncture in world affairs

I have just put an update at this web page I established many years ago, when the Iraq war was upon us and figures in the then Australian government, committed to war, told opponents to shut up.

My update brings in information on the cost of war in money and human horrors also in Afghanistan. We are trapped in fantasies in public policies, seemingly unaware that we leave behind wreckage from war that will poison lives there and here for generations.

I maintain this view as expressed to the Australian foreign minister in 2003 (no reply):

I have become increasingly of the view... that it is in the nature of modern war that it tends, more than anything else - certainly it does not tend to ‘victory’ - to import into the righteous invading countries the problems you seek to eliminate by invading... Your assertion of effectiveness of violence in international policy drifts down to validate the use of violence by non-states in international affairs, and increasingly by individuals in national and sub-national affairs, and indeed, I suggest, in domestic life. We are dealing not just with a narrow national security issue but a large ethical dimension.

In my update on that page set up to speak about Iraq and Afghanistan, I have limited my comments to those subject, with the US 'fiscal cliff' thrown in. That's the purpose of that page.

But the diseases of head in sand, staying the course, being great again, etc (aka pride?), also are poisoning capacity to deal with the increasingly profound issues related to climate change, the decline of Europe into depression, the approach of "Arab winters" in the wake of the "Arab Spring" and so on.  Insert the word Israel here, Israeli conduct contributing heavily to mayhem in the Moslem world.

The weakening of the developed world has huge impacts on developing countries left, as many are, poorly equipped with self-confidence, too often poorly governed, wanting cago-cult like deliverance of and by the material and modern.. these countries also dealing with China as the new global power (another large subject***, but on the resources scramble, do read Geoff Hiscock  — I do not profit in any way from this Amazon link).

***

I've had an email swiftly after writing that last bit asking questions about Chinese investment. I should make clear that I do not regard China's hunt for resource access as more predatory than is western multinational activity. And is tiny in Australia compared with other more traditional foreign investment. I think it would help people seeking to understand China's approach to issues (including for example opposition to military interventions in Syria (another very big subject) to read about the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence which do really hang about at the core of Chinese policy (along with lots of self interest). Also to read some of the policy documents from the recent party congress. OK, hard? Try reading Hansard ... or the local government act for my state. Or the Australian federal opposition's foreign policy. The Chinese stuff is pretty elegant!

Australia-China relations: oral histories

The National Library of Australia is placing online audio and transcript of a project by the Library, Australia-China Council and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, called "Beyond the Cables" to record perspectives of forty years of Australian ambassadors to China for the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China established December 1972.

I approached listening to my own recording with some trepidation. I am always apprehensive about re-reading things I've written... this recording went from unprepared to on-the-record in three hours sitting in a fancy studio with the lovely Michael Wilson as my interrogator. I had not expected Michael to begin at the beginning as we seemed to do. You are spared my prenatal life but not much more.

I guess it's in the nature of oral history that it may ramble. I speak not in prose but in utterances, as we are supposed to do. I fear there are anecdotes incomplete as we changed subject here and there.

It is mercifully easier to browse with the text and audio parallel. The transcript not perfect but a huge labour. I hope no one will sue me for things said  :-)

As I write this, my own transcript is the only one accessible online so far. I will have to find time to listen to others as they become available, I suppose... life is a string of distractions from what you think you should be doing (I refer not to the vacuum cleaner but the novel).

I hope this collection amounts to something valuable long-term. I hear from GS who interviewed a number of the others that he has been having a good time, that there are some good stories. More seriously, perhaps it will give international relations and history academics more insight into how we go about making international relations. Too much writing in the history of Australia-China relations, in my observation, has drawn upon news clippings and the surmise of authors as to how to pin them together... dignities and dogmas become entangled with notions unsoundly based on fragmentary evidence.

video support for Congo project

I have made a small video in support of the trades school project in Nyalebbe, DR Congo (see also my blog entry of 27 November).

 The video is for the fundraiser of Reach Architectural Studio in Toronto, see and contribute at their website.

The protagonists, the principals of Reach, are two remarkable and committed women, Crystal Waddell and Lisa Sato. See also Crystal's website.

This Congo project is for their masters degrees in architecture at the University of Toronto. You can contribute online... I think it's worthwhile — as I say in my video:

When, in 2007, I sent the Nyalebbe Community Development Alliance funds to buy the first sewing machine for their tailoring trade course, they sent me back this wonderful photo and asked "can we call it the Argall machine". 

I said could they please call it the Agwara Machine, after their traditional Agwara dance, music clip here.

on the national political front; sport and beginning the 'silly season'

'The silly season' is a term in Australian public life for that summer period when top people have gone on leave and other people become spokespersons - and when junior journalists get a run at showing their understanding or otherwise of truth and what sells newspapers. This seems upon us in Australia already this summer, except that the principals remain in place as the silliness grows.

There is a tendency for some people (an increasing number just turn off in despair) to retreat with a sigh to sport and away from politics when the politics gets divisive, which is odd, when one considers that division and contest are at the core of competitive sports.

An observation made when I was an anthropology student long ago was that in the highlands of Papua New Guinea the arrival of football with the colonials provided a generally non-lethal alternative to warfare which was an integral part of daily life for men, who painted up and went on guard or rampage. I note in passing that, comparable with our modern politics in Australia, attacks on working women was deemed easier, safer, more likely profitable than frontal engagements between blokes.

It's summer, the end of the parliamentary session for the year is disappearing under dirt, someone (in a Murdoch online rag) had to say that cricket is no less than "The Last Great Unifier in a Deeply Divided Nation."

I was pleased to see some commentators disagreeing. I have added my comment thus:

The team competitive chauvinistic bind-us-together drive comes from the r-complex, the ancient and primitive part of the brain we share with dinosaurs and fighting ant colonies.  

It is not noble, it does not solve local or global problems but feeds divisiveness. 

One might hope that with Lynton Crosby gone to drive the next British Conservative Party election campaign that we might experience a turn for the better in Australian public life, but he has left a lasting legacy from his years managing willing marionette Howard that  division, sledging and hatred pay dividends if fanned well and in particulars. 

In drafting that I sought the right word to describe the Crosby-Howard relationship and was delighted when I found Wikipedia had this description for 'marionette':

A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator.^[1] Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms of theatres or entertainment venues. They have also been used in films and on television.The attachment of the strings varies according to its character or purpose.

Observing the development of Crosby's career in the UK has led me to the thought that we do need to review the public image of former Prime Minister Howard. Even those who hold negative views on his impact on the nation see him in awesome power. But he was, under the garb of postures, a small figure. What did The Great Oz say to Dorothy? "Pay no attention to the little man behind the screen" or words to that effect.

Noting also that the role of the marionette, the manipulated, is of course to manipulate the audience, generally with extravagant emotions. In which context, we can carry the metaphor further, to Punch and Judy, the archetypal marionettes, amusing because of all the violence displayed. And oh gosh, The Punch being the name of the rag in which the cricket story was published. Game over.

Port Kembla billy cart derby

Well, making those little rough films (Congo blog entry below) meant I had to do something with the film and photos taken at the Port Kembla billy cart derby a week and a bit ago. Port Kembla is an industrial town, near Wollongong, south of Sydney in southeastern Australia. A town hit by the bomb of steel plant re-design, sale and reduction since the 1980s, along with other factory closures in garments, etc, plus the knock on-knock over of associated business. Loss of jobs, loss of community meaning and integrity. In recent years the main street has been looking like a battered empty film set. Some efforts have been made in the community organisations over some years, recently also in greening the main street and in the 'wedding industry' deciding to move in and make this a centre for trade.

My partner Helen Backhouse, active a long time in regional community services and social policy leadership, took me to the billy cart derby on 17 November - a major event, none for the previous 25 years, this a big revival. Revived under the lead of the local Redpoint Art Group.... a bit courageous in these days of nanny-rules insurance and liability.

The day was brilliant - sunny and mild. I hope it gives the town a real boost, itself and in the eyes of a wider public and media in attendance.

Here's my little movie.. .as usual I'm interested in the crowd too. The sound is as recorded in the street.

Congo project

Crystal Waddell and Lisa Sato of Reach Architecture Studios
meeting with women in Nyalebbe DRC, August 2012

I spent some time this week helping Vincent Ulargiw of the Nyalebbe Community Development Alliance in the eastern DR Congo, editing a film - subtitles to come [link] - and making a film from photos - voiceover to be added in Toronto[link] -  to be used at a Toronto fundraiser by Reach Architecture Associates for their project helping establish a technical college for the CDA.

I have worked on some projects with CDA and Vince since 2007. I have seen all the working papers and planning information associated with the REACH-CDA project. There is no communication directly with Nyalebbe; Vince lives over the border in Nebbi, Uganda and has to travel by motorbike to Nyalebbe, while also trying to keep his fledgling IT business going in Nebbi— not easy with constant mains power failure and generator problems  See this website which Vince and I have to find time to update.: the technical college project is #1 item now.

You can donate to the Reach-CDA project here. I have made a donation and will look to doing more as the project develops. I am quite sure of the integrity of those involved.

It is difficult to mobilise and achieve positive attitudes and energy in a community which like Nyalebbe is recovering from war. Every effort is being made. In my view the importance of this project is the extent to which it is based in the community, it uses local materials, local management and timelines agreed between the two sides to meet obligations. It is designed to build local confidence. This is different from aid projects which may dump their own priorities on local communities. See this quote from Mama Mado, chair of the CDA at a local meeting some time ago:

Most people believe that NGOs are supposed to distribute free things to the community as was the case with some international NGOs who first operated in our area when we had just returned after the war. I urge everyone in the community to focus on the fight against poverty but not materials gains. Poverty is not only lack of material wealth and money but also ignorance. Ignorance is actually the biggest problem that people in our community face and is the reason why people are poor.

I urge everyone to embrace opportunities such as the training that CDA is going to offer and other development projects that will come by. Let us break the vicious circle of poverty that ties most of us down.

Mama Mado Beriu, Chairperson, Nyalebbe CDA,