'The Beatles: Get Back' (2021)

That End Of An Era, Half A Century Ago

Thanks to this lousy Covid infection I had the time to sit through the 3 part documentary put together by Peter Jackson. As with any historic document from the era, the power to evoke the era's ambience is powerful. There was even one moment Paul McCartney mentions the 1968 Hong Kong Flu pandemic, and somehow that felt really quant.  

I have a soft spot for all the stuff in the film. The Beatles, the 1960s, the equipment, the look of the fashion, the mood on the streets, the cars, the ambience. All of it. So it's a relatively easy thing to take it all in but I do wonder how much of this would make sense to somebody who grew up with the internet and mobile phones. They try calling John but his phone remains off the hook. They sort of give up on phoning him - no messages are left. What kind of technological Dark Ages were they doing this in?

Jokes aside, the overall elegiac feeling is that the 1960s are coming to a close, like it or lump it. Somewhere on the horizon is the feeling that The Beatles just can't keep going on. They don't see the drama that is about to engulf the management of the band and their company, Apple Corps. All of that is in their future; for the present, they are trying to play themselves into shape for an unknown outcome. 

What's Good About It

The documentary delivers a pretty comprehensive account of how the Beatles worked, and captures a vast trove of communication between the members. It is not clear for a long time if the Beatles are heading towards any particular outcome beyond doing another album, but as the episodes progress, there is an accelerating feel of cohesion that climaxes on the rooftop concert.

We get a pretty good view of the side players like Glynn Johns, Mal Evans, George Martin, and their respective roles in keeping The Beatles functioning. Mostly, it is the nuanced dynamic of the members that we come to understand, and it blows away all the conjectured theories about why The Beatles broke up, that have plagued us since the day they split up. The story is a lot more nuanced than that - and in some ways very difficult to articulate. To see the interpersonal dynamic between these people was priceless.

What's Bad About It

It's really long. I wondered if it really was worth sitting through the 3rd jam on 'Blue Suede Shoes'. 

It could have been chopped into 6 parts and still been equally compelling. I had to stop each episode somewhere in the middle just to get a rest and have a think about what I was watching. 

Peter Jackson must have an elephant's bladder. 

What's Interesting About It

All of it is interesting if you like the Beatles. I imagine it's a weird kind of torture if you don't. My significant other couldn't possibly sit through all of this because she does not like the Beatles at all. But if you're a fan, this series is a must. 

It's basically a story of how The Beatles pull out an album's worth of material in under a month - with a week missing in there because George quits at the end of week 2. It's impressive how quickly they work up the outline of the material but equally impressive is how they spend long days honing the arrangements and working out the harmonies. We know where the end point is and how the songs go and for the vast majority of the time we see those songs in a very loose state as they feel their way towards a solid arrangement.

Some of the songs are not quite right as they close out rehearsals the day before the rooftop concert, but miraculously, the versions with which we are so familiar, manifest themselves on the winter rooftop. It's so weird to see through to the Beatles' music in the hot molten state back through the history reification that has taken place to their music. 

Yoko Ono, International Woman Of Mystery

Yoko does stick out. Apart from the wives and girlfriends, the inner circle surrounding the Beatles is pretty blokey. Billy Preston turns up and his blackness is in stark contrast to the essential whiteness of London 1969. That was the world then, and therefore all the more reason why it is so strange to see Yoko Ono in that space.

There's a funny bit where Linda brings in her daughter Heather who watches Yoko do her scream thing in an impromptu jam. I'm sure it adds fuel for the people who want another reason to hate on Yoko. The next thing you know, Heather is copying Yoko's screams into the microphone. It's delightful, charming and funny.  

In most part she seems to sit there quietly taking it all in, reading her Japanese magazines. With everything going in the series, it's abundantly clear that the Beatles did not split up because Yoko turned up. 

Take These Broken Wings And Learn To Fly

A wag out there on the internet made the observation that the problem with The Beatles at this point in their career is that McCartney is trying to do a dress run for Wings, and the other members simply do not want to be subjected to this project. It's funny, but also a bit unfair. We can clearly see George is chafing under Paul's hectoring instructions because he has his own creative needs that are burgeoning quickly. At the same time we see John is drifting deeper into Yoko and drugs, politics and activism. Keeping the Beatles together is a Herculean task of the will. It is clear by the effort McCartney puts in that Wings, which follows the demise of The Beatles is his second option given he cannot keep The Beatles going.

The truly amazing thing about the Beatles between 1967 and 1970 might be how much good stuff they manage to produce. There's Sgt Peppers, followed by Magical Mystery Tour. Then there's the magnum opus of 1968, The White Album; and all the while they are producing enough single to fill yet another disc of its own (which got released as 'Hey Jude' in America) and then the Let it Be sessions followed by Abbey Road. That's 7 discs in 3 years 6 months. It might be the most productive 3 years and 6 months of any band ever. 

After their break up, the respective Beatles keep the pace up until about 1982. John Produces 7 albums, 5 of which take place between 1970 and 1975 plus Double Fantasy and his posthumous Milk & Honey. Paul produces 11 albums up until 1982's 'Tug of War'. He does more after that but it doesn't seem to belong to the same creative impulse after 1982. George produces 7 albums 9 discs up to 1982's 'Gone Troppo'. Even Ringo produces 8 albums up to 1981. It's a lot of work, and you have to figure if they tried doing it as The Beatles, they would have been pumping out double albums every year between 1970 and 1982 or so. 

Granted, not even half of it is good, but it is still a lot of music. It's easy to argue contractual obligations and grubby commercial incentives led to this overproduction, but it highlights the extraordinary nature of the Let it Be sessions for what they were, a band at the peak of their powers grinding out the hits. It's an inside look at the sausage factory of the best band of the 1960s doing their thing - and we are grateful to be able to witness so much of it.  

The Smallness Of Rock History

Because I grew up in the era, Rock music seemed like it was this gigantic social artistic phenomenon and movement. Of course, this might have been overstated. Rock goes from Chuck Berry and Elvis to the debut of the Beatles in a mere 7 years. Then the Beatles define recorded music with their own stamp for 7 years. Afterwards, it is a short 5-6 years until Punk emerges and from there it is a short 3 years before New Wave. When you consider the longevity of a band like The Foo Fighters today, you sort of have to marvel at the how quickly Rock music's market and target demographics moved through the genre. 

At each juncture, rock added an extra digit of global fans. Rock music had tens of thousands in the early days. That became hundreds of thousands during the Sixties, and then became millions in the maturation phase. This compounding growth of its fans clouds our appreciation of what The Beatles were to their peers as well as fans in real time, through the 1960s. Today the music landscape cannot encompass a fan base as broad and deep as The Beatles commanded. This series goes a long way to casting some light on the breadth and depth of their impact. 

The Beatles And Reification

If one thing works to the disadvantage of the music by The Beatles today, it is that through 60 years of their music being in the public sphere has led to a fixing of meaning. The people know the catalogue well have had so much time to settle upon the personal meaning of these songs. Those who do not know the catalogue well are confronted by a gigantic cultural icon replete with generational zeitgeist of sometime in the middle of the last century. What this means is that it is actually quite hard to have a fresh, fluid vantage point on the meaning of The Beatles' song catalogue. The entirety of the project has become fixed in the public consciousness like World War II or Seinfeld.

As such, it is interesting to be confronted by alternative readings of the famous songs as they are being worked up. Suddenly the meaning of a song like Get Back is not fixed in our minds on the basis of having heard it for 50-odd years. It is a song that is seeing a dynamic process of creation unfolding in front of us. What this presents is an opportunity - a rare one at that - to remove ourselves from our own sense of the reified art that surrounds our perception of The Beatles' work. 

In that light, the documentary series is interesting in its ability to undo some of the reification that has taken place over the decades. I'm sure the marketing machine will think of new ways to re-package The Beatles and sell it to us all over again, but this might be the last time they find anything actually fresh and unexpected - and for that this series deserves more than a little commendation. 

  

'Where To Invade Next'

Michael Moore's Timely Polemic

GS got me out to one of his free movie night courtesy of the ethics society. I think I'm on a good wicket here. It's for hard to convince one self to get to the cinema when your income drops - so a special shout out to GS who keeps asking me to go watch these films with him. As with 'Eye in the Sky' this film deserves a write up too.

It's been a long time since I last saw a Michael Moore film. The way I see it, I don't really need the heavy-handed propagandising that he carried out with 'Capitalism: A Love Story' because I'm pinko enough and I'm not an American so I can't vote to change America; so with me, Moore's preaching to the choir in the wrong church in the wrong suburb. All the same I got emboldened by the freebie I saw last time which was 'Eye in the Sky' and thought I may as well catch up with GS again and catch what Michael Moore had to say this time.



What's Good About It

As polemical tirades from Michael Moore go, this one's a lot gentler and perhaps more probing. The central idea is what is it that the European states got going so well that the USA doesn't but from which it could easily learn. The premise takes him to a series of countries where various policies are explored in context of the people they serve. Moore then throws the American political discourse at the locals to see if it sticks and in most part it doesn't seem to gain any traction at all.

In most parts, what Michael Moore is recommending is common sense through to a little bit extraordinary. That would be my own cultural spyglass distorting my view of what Moore uncovers in Europe. Surely no state - certainly not America - and probably not Australia could adopt all those things and keep a balanced budget. I'll get into it bit more in a moment but suffice to say the survey is optimistic about what can actually be done.

Also, the film gets out to Iceland where they jailed the bankers and makes its strong case for totally equal rights and access for women, where the Icelandic women have some choice words for America. When asked for 2 minutes to advise America, the female CEO of a company tells Moore that she would not like to move to America because they would make bad neighbours and they treat their fellow Americans badly. She says she can't understand how Americans live with themselves knowing how badly they treat one another. It's a corker of a moment when an ethos borne out of a deeply cohesive culture slams the rampant individualism of America.

What's Bad About It

Michael Moore is cherrypicking the good things from these countries without going into how those things are being costed. He talks a little about the history of how some of these admirable institutions came into being, but the potted history is so abbreviated it lacks a logical persuasiveness. He also basically meets people who want to show off their best and he accepts these things without much critical assessment.

The film is also a little long-winded. by the 5th country being introduced, we're sort of tiring of the ruse. They could have sharpened the film more in the editing suite. It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it isn' as sharp as his more polemic films and maybe a little tired in parts.

What's Interesting About It

Some of these European countries Moore visits - Italy, France, Germany and Portugal - have serious economic problems. Part of the problem is that all of these countries have large deficits they cannot rein in. Italy and Portugal in particular, as part of the PIIGS, are in danger of sovereign default. France's Debt to GDP ratio is above 100%. Germany is sitting on Deutsche bank which might blow up with $60 trillion worth of bad derivatives has written - many on the back of Greek Government debt. Should Deutsche Bank blow up, Germany might embark on a massive bailout instead of letting the banks fail like the Icelanders did, and give rise to more massive government debts. These are things that were not being discussed at all in the film, and gets to the crux of the argument.

America by comparison runs a much smaller government if you exclude its extraordinary military spending. The argument can be boiled down to whether the states carrying out these wonderful programmes really can afford to keep carrying out these wonderful programmes. It is arguable that the Italian regime of holidays is costing the government and economy too much; or that the French lunch at schools programme is too expensive; or the work conditions in Germany are too lenient. The poster child for such arguments is actually Greece, where after the GFC, they became known to France, Italy and Germany for having too many perks.

Greece is of course paying a terrible price today, just to preserve the Euro. The countries that benefit the most from this arrangement also happen to be France, Italy and Germany, while Portugal is staring down the barrel at becoming like Greece. It is easily argued that France, Italy and Germany get to preserve their wonderful entitlements at the expense of the Greek poor. France, Italy and Germany also get to export their goods denominated in the Euro, which allows their produce to be more competitive thanks to the Euro depressing their prices. If they had to do it with their own currencies, they would be much less competitive. It's an arrangement that works doubly better than it does for Greece that has no benefits in trading on the Euro, has no significant export industries except tourism, and carries its massive government debt in Euros, all of this just to preserve the Euro.

For a more balanced argument, Moore needed to go to Greece and get their story.

What Windfalls Buy

Another interesting topic of note was Finland's education system, which has shot to the top of the world in the last 15years. As Moore notes, for much of the Twentieth Century, Finland's schools and students did no better than the Americans. Then, it reorganised its educational system, giving rise to the tremendous results it boasts today. The thing is, Finland did on the back of the economic windfall from mobile technology. The temporary but significant popularity of Nokia phones gave rise to a massive rise in revenues in Finland which could then afford to re-organise its schools.

The parallels there would be with Australia which had its once in a lifetime commodity super-cycle, giving rise to the revenues from the mining boom. Of course Kevin Rudd tried to harness those revenues with a Mining Tax which ended up getting him removed. Julia Gillard then went and instituted the NAPLAN based on the Gonski report. While it is horses for courses, the one recommendation the Fins give to Americans in this film is to not have a national standardised test.  And not to have private schools that reinforce class differences. They're great suggestions that will doubtless fall on deaf ears in Australia as well as America.

The status quo in this country at least says private education is here to stay, so within it we can see it is our State's commitment to preserving class stratification. They can say whatever they like about Gonski and NAPLAN and whatever it is they think they're doing - the government is building a patchwork quilt of bullshit to paper over the stark reality that they are willing to accept class stratification in our society, with all the ills it presents. It's disappointing, and more so when it comes from the ALP on the centre-left. If anything is for certain, this film convinced me to hate private education even more than I do already.

Legalising Drug Use

Portugal's contribution to Michael More's haul is about legalising drugs. This one stands in stark contrast to the other policies Moore brings back in that it would cut law enforcement costs significantly to stop criminalising drug use and medicalising it. The Portuguese police argue that it has to do with human dignity, but as with all things it is probably rooted in the economics of the drug trade.

A good portion of the drugs our societies worry about come from plants and farmed plants at that. Even LSD was originally extracted from a plant. Marijuana, Heroin, Cocaine are all grown in quantities by farmers under the control of warlords. They do so because together, they can produce a substance that returns multiples on investments. The nexus of drugs and arms is possible only because of the large margin in the drug trade - and what enables this large margin is the scarcity created by the states who try and block supply.

The criminalising of the demand is a complement to the blocking of supply which Moore's film argues is actually a racist ploy to decimate the Black leadership in America. All the same, the prices go up because the war on drugs makes the value of illegal substances higher, which benefits the drug lords and warlords in central America and Afghanistan much more than it benefits the citizens of the first world.

What the Portuguese example illustrates is what happens when the state refuses to cooperate with the marketing plans of the drug lords and reduces the margin. The flow of drugs falls to a level that matches the natural demand for them, which turns out to be much lower than when the state is policing the users, criminalising the demand. The crime rate goes down because it is less onerous to service the drug money. As with ending prohibition of alcohol, the violent crime relating to the drug trade goes down because it becomes less valuable. Illegal motorcycle gangs would fear the decriminalisation of drug use the most because it would decimate their margins.

You'd think after 40 years of Nixon-ian racist paranoia that our society could find the simple courage to do what Portugal did.

'The Killing Season' - Episode 3

To The End, The Chaos

Aye Carumba, as Bart Simpson would say. Episode 3 puts us into the tumultuous 3 years of Julia Gillard's turn at the Prime Minister's chair and finishes with the election defeat. As with the previous episodes, it feels like too close to be called history as the heat from it being news is all too familiar.

Perhaps this is part of the Big Now where everything is in some way significant, but it leaves you feeling numb to realise that the ALP coughed up a big lead over personality issues. It is on the whole, unreal and unbelievable. Our disbelief marks us out as neophytes, the unwashed, and outsiders in the arena of parliamentary politics. Clearly we knew so little and have little to do or to say or give.

What's Interesting About This Episode

This was simply devastating to watch right down to the end. People have said some rather extreme things about Kevin Rudd but I don't find him that hard to understand. He's logical and principled and what you see is what you get. He's not perfect, he's not the saviour, but he's there for the greater good. When he was Prime Minister he was there for all Australians. Over the years I have been told how warm and friendly Julia Gillard is, but I actually find her mentation a lot harder to understand. I have to commit to political expediency as the guiding ruler understand why she would do or say the things she would. And yet it's not like she didn't have principles and she had much discipline.

Still, watching this episode was even more traumatic than the previous 2 episodes. Kevin Rudd is essentially self-conscious to a fault while Julia Gillard seems to be unaware of the extent she kids herself when she prevaricates. When she chooses to characterise things, she is far less convincing than Kevin Rudd, and Rudd to his demerit, does not characterise things enough. They may be two of the least insightful leaders from the ALP in a long time. It's funny because they're both clearly intelligent and educated, but insight into themselves seem somehow faulty. Mark Latham seems to possess more insight into his own character than these two, and we thought he was nuts and unworthy.

As long time readers know, I never warmed to the Julia Gillard Prime Ministership. What happened with the 2010 Rudd removal was too drastic and shocking for me to ever get over and then embrace the new Prime Minister. What it did was highlight how little control we had over the political process, and just how much the parties run on the cult personality and take our votes hostage. When Julia Gillard tells us her time in office started with a shadow over it and it only got darker, it highlights the fact that she's trying to ignore the deed that got her into office having any currency as a problem. You really shouldn't try to talk about accidents you caused in the third person.

Lessons In Power

In watching it, one thing becomes very clear. Julia Gillard should have been ruthless and forced Rudd right out of Parliament. As long as he remained, everything that happened was inevitable. The problem of courses was that she couldn't buy out his career, and there was not enough political capital anywhere to buy out Kevin Rudd's career. And so he stayed. Which is like one of those Bond movie bits where the villain's got James Bond strapped to a death machine, spills his beans on the dastardly plot to take over the world and walks away without killing James Bond. She really didn't finish the job she started. And as long as Kevin Rudd was politically alive, he was always going to come back.

The fact that Julia Gillard didn't have this simple insight alone tells you a few things. She didn't really think through what would happen in the event she knifed a Prime Minister in his first term, and a very popular one at that, and she didn't seem to have the insight that if the shoes were reversed, she would be the one doing the come back. In fact if there's one thing that could be said about Julia Gillard's time as Prime Minister, it would be that she didn't seem to have a hell of a lot of insight into the minds people who voted for the ALP in the Kevin '07 campaign. Maybe it was deliberate, maybe it was a blind spot, it's really hard to tell and we may never know. But it translated as being tone-deaf to the electorate.

Then again, former Senator Mark Bishop observes that she was miscast as the leader.

Albo Made Me Cry

There was a moment in March 2011 when there was the first spill to try and bring back Kevin Rudd, and Anthony Albanese pleaded for unity. It was busting him up that the ALP had come to such straits.  Holding back tears he fronted the microphones and pled. Seeing that footage again just broke me. It was pure grief.

But then it made me think, "who are these people making Albo cry? Who are these people in Parliament moving these machinations?"

They're the first beneficiaries of Whitlam's free tertiary education. They are that generation who got the free tertiary education and did with it whatever they could - and they made it parliament. It wasn't a birthright, it was serendipitous that it fell on their laps; and now they're milking it for what it's worth, damn the country, the future generations, the budget bottom line or any kind of integrity. They're grubs.

You Missed The Bit That Pissed Me Off, Sarah Ferguson

It's a very simple thing if you are not a union member but support the broad Left. In this country, if you can't go with the radical idealism of the Greens, then you have to find your place with the ALP. If the ALP tells you, we're putting union concerns ahead of your concerns - your 'social democrat' ones - then you are deprived of a political platform that represents you. Now, I might not agree with Kevin Rudd's do-gooder Christianity-tinged ethos on a personal level, but in all his time as leader and PM, I never felt like the ALP somehow didn't represent my broadly Left-y position. Julia Gillard set about narrowing what the ALP stood for, to the point she was telling us proudly she is not a leader of a 'social democratic' Party.

Gillard sold us out. She told me and my friends who are educated and progressive, and who broadly support her cause, to fuck off. And while I'd never vote for the Tories, she wonders why the middle ground never came back.

Alan Jones & Tony Abbott

Years ago I met a producer who was worried what would happen to an Australia where right wing shock jocks ruled the airwaves with their extraordinary rants. At the time it seemed a little too sensitive to the carping of people who were exercising their right to freedom of expression. Nonetheless it is abundantly clear that years of this kind of hateful bilge from the likes of Alan Jones has infected our democracy to the point where sensible dialogue does not find traction, and instead we get slogans and obtuse rhetoric.

The destruction of nuance and meaning in our polity by the likes of Alan Jones directly led to the rise of Tony Abbott, who can only be described as an utter disaster as Prime Minister. Now, Alan Jones might console himself by saying that he was a kingmaker, but what is the point of installing a functional imbecile as the Prime Minister of this land?

The poisonous slogans and rhetoric that emanated from Alan Jones and his kind has for worse and worser and worst-est, destroyed the political discourse in this country. It is shameful that Alan Jones still has a job and keeps doing it. It is shameful that the Prime Minister of this land takes his cues from the likes of Alan Jones.

Shameful and vile, is what all this is.

It's All Over Now

It's all a little quaint now that we've adjusted to the daily horrors of an Abbott Government. Right up to the last minute of Kevin Rudd's first Prime Ministership, there was a semblance of intelligent discussion about policy and where our nation was going to go. Julia Gillard did try to keep it going, but in the face o the monolithic negativity and feigned-stupidity that marked Tony Abbott's time as Opposition Leader, it never really survived.

Today, I have been reduced to just laughing every time somebody tells me the latest study thing Tony Abbott has said or done. The short answer is, on some level we have no control over any aspect of this stuff. Our democracy only offers us a delusion that our votes count, our opinions matter, facts trump opinions, that our democratic ideals are somehow intact. The fact is, Tony Abbott's government goes to show everyday how venal and menial our existence is, how much our political classes disrespect us, how little integrity there is going in Canberra, how close we are to an authoritarian state where things get decided by decree and not proper discussion.

There are days where I blame Rudd and Gillard for what transpired that brought us to this place. Then again, it might just be a reflection of just how dumb the population has become, and was inevitable that we would come to this point in time. We may marvel yet at Rudd and Gillard in future years - it becomes more likely the longer we are forced to live under the rule of these tories.

'The Killing Season - Episode 2'

We Really Lived Through That?

If there's one thing tougher than living through the tumult of the Rudd to Gillard change over and seeing it happen (and having no control over it, as with most things in politics), is having to relive the emotions of it all in this documentary series. I think it's a very valuable account by those who were there as participants and witnesses and perhaps it will serve as a lesson to the future.

The agony of watching the CPRS put on hold, watching Rudd's support fail and having Julia Gillard suddenly emerge as the Prime Minister was one of the greatest horror sequences of the ALP's time in government. It's hard to believe these people managed to forget what got them into government and pissed both the climate change issue and their Prime Minister down the toilet.

I'm sorry Ms. Gillard, but you don't come up smelling of roses when you swim in that toilet. As for Kevin Rudd himself, he hasn't really changed my mind about him. He was a populist PM, but he did have the big picture right. We were incredibly lucky to have had him at that time.

What's Interesting About This Episode

The number of people who contradict Julia Gillard's account is mounting. Sarah Ferguson has said she believes both Rudd and Gillard lied to her in the interviews, but as far as the headcount goes, quite a number of people are disputing her version of events. And she looks quite shifty in the interviewee's chair. Maybe Kevin Rudd was always a better media performer, but nobody except Julia Gillard is seriously contradicting his account. If indeed both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are lying, that's one thing; what we're seeing is that Kevin Rudd might tell little lies to smooth over difficulties and problems whereas Julia Gillard tells big lies to coverup her tracks.

Worse still, Wayne Swan was hardly the honest broker as Gillard went and white-ant-ed Rudd's Prime Ministership from her position as his deputy. The Removal was fomented on the backbench by first-timer rookie MPs, and the cabinet ministers were either on-lookers or unaware until it happened. It's quite insane when you think about that. A bunch of rookie MPs scuttled the very Prime Minister whose popularity brought them to power and at the first sign of trouble, they panicked. Nobody seems to have thought ahead to what that would look like and how it would play out in the electorate.  The colossal stupidity of it is breathtaking.

Which brings us to Tony Burke who comes across as this big doofus who let the whole thing roll into action. Whatever his reasons and his latter-day rationalisations, it is clear he totally ignored the contra-indicators and fairly historic reasons why you should not roll a Prime Minister in his first term. As such, he deserves his place in ALP history as one of its villains. Not that anybody's saying out loud, but yes, he did a damnable thing in fomenting the challenge. He should never be allowed to live that down.

We're Hostage To The Cult Of Personality

There's no other explanation for the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd in the eyes of the public as well as the Caucus. The ALP needed a man who could get its message out to the public. Once they put him in as Prime Minister they were constrained by the fact that he exercised power. As idiotic sit seems, the ALP clearly couldn't handle the conditions of victory any more than they could handle the condition of defeat in Opposition. Mark Bishop offers up a picture of how the various Senators started panicking at the polls while Tony Burke started spreading the word that Gillard should replace Rudd.

For all the high-minded talk about policy from Kevin Rudd, it's unbelievable that all these other politicians went about the business of replacing Rudd out of a sense of grievance against the persona. i.e., it wasn't a policy thing at all. At one point Julia Gillard starts psycho-analysing Kevin Rudd to justify her sabotage efforts and well... it drove me to drink I tell you.

Both Gillard and Swan let all the talk fester and pretended it wasn't going on and kept it from Rudd. The only person who conveyed to Kevin Rudd there was trouble brewing was Albanese. Justifiably, Rudd has not forgiven either Swan or Gillard. Seeing that the both of them presided over the election that brought about a hung Parliament and the subsequent government followed by the Abbot government, they have a lot to answer for. It makes it worse to think that Gillard wanted to ride through it with the 'First Female Prime Minister' branding as if this was going to negate the issues of how she came to power. As it turned out, the electorate was not interested in her gender, they were interested in the fact that she just rolled a popular PM, and in a most negative way.

Bitar, Arbib, Howes

Paul Keating referred to the Senate as unrepresentative swill. In the case Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib, he was right. What Paul Howes - who is not an MP, not an elected official in any government - had to do with any of this and why they needed his consent remains a kind of nudge-nudge-wink-wink mystery.

The most objectionable of the lot remains Mark Arbib who brought his NSW Right faction bullshit to Canberra and promptly applied the machinations (addition, it's called Mark Arbib, addition. Not 'calculus') he used to usher in the likes of Iemma, Reece, Keneally in quick succession in NSW with the help of the likes of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. Yes, the stench of foul Morbid Obeidity stretches all the way into the Rudd Removal as it does to so many other things.

It goes to show that there is a great problem with the nature of party politics and the upper houses, and how people are chosen to preside there. If you had a normal street view of things and life, there's no way you give that kind power to the likes of Bitar and Arbib. Somehow, they happened to have it, and exercised it against the will of the people.

Careerist Politicians

It used to be the case that people had careers in other things before they went into politics. Now, they seem to go straight into the business of politics as soon as they are able to, after finishing school or university. Being in office is kind a bonanza - a winning lottery ticket - that attracts all kinds of ambitious people, but it can also be seen from this series that they might be the wrong people.

It's hard to like the Nationals and Liberal Party in this country. The Nationals are old school fascists while the Liberal Party at this point in time seems like a Neo-Fascist party. The Greens at the other end of the spectrum appear to be just as mercenary and self-serving as the Nats and Libs. The worst thing about all this is that the whole lot of hem are careerists trying to look after their butts. It's despicable. And that includes the ALP in the ostensible 'middle'.

The light at the top of the hill is clearly only there to attract the worst moths in our society.

The Limits Of Holding Power

I might have pointed out this before but the modern ALP Prime Minister has a short time in power with the exception of Bob Hawke. For all this talk about the glory of the Hawke-Keating years, the second part where Paul Keating was PM only went four and a bit years. He won the incredible 'This is the Sweetest of Victories' '93 election, but from there, he only had 1 term. Whitlam was really only in power for 3 years. The same goes to Kevin Rudd and now Julia Gillard.

So if there is a pattern emerging, it is that the ALP has structural issues where it can't keep its Prime Ministers in power for long. This lay dormant through the Hawke years exactly because Hawke was an expert peacemaker and the ALP was still shocked from the events of 1975, nobody dare rock the boat. Perhaps the events of the late 2000s and early 2010's will be remembered as so shocking that the next ALP Prime Minister will be able to stitch together a long consensus based stay.

If this doco is anything to go by, it shows that there are simply too many factions and people who can destabilise even the most popular of Prime Ministers, and that they are none too wise about the consequences of doing so. The fact that the Removal was organised from the backbench and the cabinet were last to know indicates that a bunch of novices got way ahead of themselves simply because they could; but when they got what they thought they wanted in Gillard, they spent the next 3 years wondering why the electorate was in a punishing mood.

The worst aspect in all of this is that there are echoes of Bill Hayden's time as Opposition Leader in Bill Shorten already.

Hate Tony Abbott Coming To Power? Blame The Greens

I forgot how in the fray the Greens scuttled the CPRS because wasn't sufficiently pure for their liking. Given the opportunity to do something for the environment and nothing but grandstand, they clearly chose the latter. Then they held the Gillard government hostage and put in the carbon pricing which was more pure to their liking but saddled Gillard with a broken election promise.

In a roundabout way and then a direct way, all of that combined led to the Tony Abbott Government of today - and we know how environmentally un-friendly they are. Way to go stupid Greens, way to go! I'd forgotten just how odious the Greens were in this time. If you want proof that the Greens are just as careerist and self-righteous hypocrites, their actions during the Rudd and Gillard governments tells you plenty.

*ugh*.

'The Killing Season - Episode 1'

The 'Phantom Menace' Of Australian Politics

Earlier in the week it was reported that all the TV stations rejected a TV drama series based on Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership, a project that had Rachel Griffith attached. The TV stations all rejected it because basically Julia Gillard was still hated. I laughed when I read that because we all know it was low polls hat eventually brought her Prime Ministership to an end. 27% support at the end of 27  straight losing polls would do it to you; so maybe there is some truth there.

In any case, the ABC doing a documentary on the Rudd-Gilard-Rudd years was exactly the kind of thing I didn't want to watch. After all, I don't think I've ever endured as much trauma at the hands of the ALP at another time in my voting life, and I hoped not to be subjected to the same teeth-grindingly-awful sequence of events so soon. All the same, it has been 9 years since Rudd and Gillard took over from Kim Beazley and 8 years from Rudd's victory over the Howard Government. It might just be the right time to reflect on what once was and could have been.

And let's face it, for all the turmoil of those years, it was still a much better government than the daily farce presented to us by Abbott, Hockey & co.

Whats's Good About It

As long time readers know, I was in fact down on the ALP and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard when they deposed Kim Beazley. John Howard had been in power for a good part of a decade and stinking up the joint while the ALP in the wilderness of opposition were doing a fine impersonation of the Coalition in their wilderness years. So it's good to be reminded of just what Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister. He was indeed formidable as he was prescient on the GFC, and he was the right man at the right time.

What's Bad About It

It's in such a rush to tell the story leading up to Julia Gillard's coup, it glosses over some really important details about the unfolding GFC. it also glosses over just who some of these players were beyond their job titles. Some time is spent on the Godwin Grech affair, which was one of those awful things that ultimately had very little to do with Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan and just about everything to do with showing us why Malcolm Turnbull was a terrible alternative Prime Minister.

What's Interesting About It

It is the battle for posterity and my gut reaction to finding out about this series was "for the love God, please - both of you shut the fuck up and go away and leave us in peace!" That being said, once you start watching it, it does bring back memories of things and events that seem so distant now. The GFC really was terrifying. It still is terrifying; but back in 2007 and 2008, it looked like financial Armageddon was going to consume the planet.

The documentary goes some distance in explaining just how out of the ordinary Kevin Rudd was as an ALP politician. He didn't come up through the traditional Union ranks and he was also the right man at the right time even for the ALP to lead them to an election win. The ALP had gone through most of the Howard years recovering from the '96 election loss and reeling from the leadership failures of Simon Crean and Mark Latham; and without any meaningful direction or policy ideas worth spit, had fallen back on the caretaker Kim Beazley, and were going to lose again.

They really needed new policies, a fresh face, they needed a new direction, and had they been brave enough they might have settled on Julia Gillard right there and then. The reasons they didn't probably highlight the sign of the times more than anything else. The ALP of that era probably didn't want to go to the polls with a female leader against John Howard and taken extra punishment for gender politics, and they didn't really believe they were in any kind of winning shape in 2006. they sure didn't look like it.

I went back and did a quick scan of my own blog here and I can attest to the fact that all ALP supporters were deep in a funk, so picking the seeming populist in Rudd and pairing him up with the party apparatchik in Gllard made some kind of weird sense. What the doco goes on to show is that Julia Gillard saw herself as the person of destiny - Kevin Rudd turning up was a spanner in the works for her. And so the seed of the eventual destruction was sown right there at the beginning in the unholy alliance of expediency and need.

Still, all this machination and party-politicking seems quaint next to the monstrous stupidity of the Abbott Government. In trying to escape the horror circus of the ALP this decade, our electorate voted in the greater horror that is the Abbott Government. Just don't ask me how subsequent governments are going to repair this damage.

Horrible Bosses

Kevin Rudd's reputation as a boss was in tatters. It may still well be the case, and it comes down to this business of the kitchen cabinet "gang of four" and the urgencies and demands that the events made on the government. Ken Henry who was Treasury Secretary says in this doco that the cabinet process would not have been able to deal with the GFC. These were indeed extraordinary times. If Climate change was the moral challenge of a generation, the GFC was a once a century financial challenge that had to be dealt with and put to rest.

What's struck me as odd through out the latter part of Rudd's year as Prime Minister was just who was spreading this notion that Rudd was too chaotic, and how they were making a comparison.
Who was leaking? You can eliminate Rudd from the 4, and Lindsay Tanner who retired shortly after the period could not have a motive to be doing it. Wayne Swan was the Treasurer and neck deep in the GFC questions and by Julia Gillard's own reckoning she was going down to Swan's office to bitch about Rudd's style. By her own words she was destabilising Rudd in the same language that was used to bury him.

Even as events were unfolding it was hard to believe that the ALP would roll their own PM in the first term - especially one who was so popular for so long - and then run out an argument that he was a horrible boss. Naturally, the argument never really stuck with the electorate and Julia Gillard deservingly was hung by that rope.

Just A Side Note On Conservatives And Moral Fortitude

It was pretty galling to be reminded of the whole Godwin Grech saga. Like some evil Gollum from the dungeon caverns underneath Treasury came upon this land a blighted man of much negative charisma and visibly distorted persona with a fake email to bring about the complete humiliation of Malcolm Turnbull as Opposition leader. It was bad because it was stupid; and yet Malcolm Turnbull was willing to be that stupid because he believed so strongly that Gordon Grech had some kind of moral fibre as a whistleblower when there has been no such bone in the conservatives of this nation, all the way back to mother Britain.

The really strange thing is that after the Grech-fake-email-debacle, Malcolm Turnbull hung on as Opposition Leader despite an 18% support rating in the polls. The Liberal Party really didn't think they could do better than Malcolm Turnbull who basically humiliated himself with the chasm that was his "lack of judgment" (as described by Paul Keating). But when the topic got to carbon pricing and introducing the ETS, that was different, the Liberal Party and its climate change deniers erupted into an open rebellion and managed to put Tony Abbott in as their leader.

And Australian politics has been in a state of lobotomised moron-ry ever since. It's like our political leaders cannot talk about anything in sensible ways because Tony Abbott single-handedly destroyed all nuanced discussion of anything and everything by turning all topics into into three word slogans.  We've been dragged down to the abyss of unfathomable, intolerable, execrable stupidity by our very own political leaders.

Which just goes to show that for all this talk of morality and moral fortitude that conservatives love to bandy about, they're just as likely to excuse themselves and their friends of any unconscionable acts and keep pretending they have some kind of high ground in the morality stakes. If you could ever build a moral argument out of economics, then surely Kevin Rudd saving Australia from the GFC-induced recession was a much more high-minded act than the subsequent carping about deficits that the Liberals and Nationals have done. The brazen hypocrisy of the conservatives in this country - who undoubtedly benefited greatly from Kevin Rudd saving their bacons as well, for they had more to lose - essentially captures the intellectual bankruptcy of the government that today exults in winding back renewable energy in this country.

'Stolen' Imbroglio Continues

The Q&A On Audio

Here's the link as provided by artrlight. Thank you.

I'm shocked at the degree of rhetoric coming from both sides. This is not a Q&A that was ever going to yield any answers.

Just as I had anticipated, Tom's interpreter was brought in to rubberstamp the films claims, in absentia of context. They showed him/her the fiLm over a few nights with some extra shots before and after. After which the said interpreter gave his/her seal of approval and then said, they anted to remain anonymous. That's hardly an objective assessment that would stand. Talk about garbage-in-garbage-out.

I'm appalled at how inarticulate Ms Ayala is in this interview. I understand English is not her first language, but she comes over as a petulant child insisting on having things her way. Maybe it works for her to force things through with the force of her pushy persona, but her answers weren't really enlightening of what they were thinking. It struck me that whatever it was they were thinking, it didn't have much to do with responsible reportage.

The questioners also line up their rhetorical ducks in line and Dan refuses to answer the questions. Violeta kind of raves with inarticulate "you knows" punctuating what is essentially a stream of self-justification. The AWSA reps are asking pretty forensic questions about tapes and who asked what questions when which don't really go to the heart of the matter.

I'm aghast at the sense of what Dan thinks is polite, where he's willing to break trust to get the shot, but that's all okay in film making; and what Violeta thinks is human rights being more important than politics. It's as if they've decided they just won't see the problem as a probelm, and therefore it's not a problem. They're like non-contenders in the basic ethics stakes.

Which naturally begs the question, how come these other people are so upset? Dan replies he dosn't want to comment to a pointed question. I'm sure Dan wouldn't because there's not an answer he could give that would make him look good. It's a really ghastly Q&A. Nobody sounds good or decent. None of it is in the least bit edifying. It just makes us confront the obtuseness of Tom, Dan and Violeta and Kemal and Fetim and the privileged-to-be-black dude and the Australian dude.

A Lot Of Fuss For A 1/4Million Bucks

The other thread where we discussed the issue of releases and translations got a little long so I started to add an entry here for the continued joy of gratuitous argument.

To put things into a little perspective, 'Stolen' got less than $250k from Screen Australia which, on one hand is a lot of money but on movie-making stakes, is peanuts. All this arguing over a measly $250k film. I don't think James Cameron would get out of bed in the mornings for a $250k film. Nonetheless we have this incredibly stupid controversy which cannot be resolved because nobody seem to have enough clout or financial wherewithal to sort it all out.

ScreenHub Goes To Bat For Tom

Anyway, here's David Tiley from ScreenHub's account of the Melbourne Film Festival screening, abridged:

The screening itself passed off quietly, to a fascinated audience. The q&a was moderated by Andrew Dodd, and recorded for Radio National, who asked questioners to identify themselves, and their affiliations with Polisario or the filmmakers.

That didn't work for long. A variety of people attempted to cast doubt on the plausibility of the story, with a series of mannered micro-speeches; the film's attackers in Melbourne were clearly disciplined, well-rehearsed and courteous. At least one person supporting the film seemed to share the same passion for planning.

Producer Zubrycki, never relaxed in public, was clearly tense. Fallshaw and Ayala were defensive and hectoring, reflecting their behavior in the second half of the film.

Afterwards, the cinema was abuzz with excited discussion. As I said to one viewer, "I haven't seen something like this for a long time. It feels like the Seventies."

"No", she replied. "The Seventies were much worse."

The extraordinary thing about this film remains its honesty, which has clearly evolved to anticipate and respond to criticism - an evolution which is only possible with easy digital recuts.

Audience members I talked to generally disliked Fallshaw and Ayala, who admit they dealt with the Moroccans, who seem self important and grandiose, who bully interviewees late in the film.

But it remains convincing - there is slavery in the camps, it takes a certain cultural form, it is named as such, and the film provides a fascinating picture of the experience of enslavement in action.

It is also obsessed with its own story, which shifts from slavery to Polisario's attempts to deal with a public relations problem. It doesn't enter the politics of the struggle - we don't even get a map for around an hour, even though the film is crossing borders. While it defines slavery as present across the region, it never provides a wider context.

And so it went. The most telling 2 paragraphs of David Tiley's article is here:

Polisario is clearly attacking details of a film which most of our readers have not seen, in order to question the whole, attacking the motivations of filmmakers, and painting itself as staggeringly benign.

It is possible to smell a number of rats in this situation, but the biggest rodent is being dragged around by Polisario. And the inadequacies of the filmmakers are clearly visible in the film.

So here we are with all this controversy about the film and whether it's accurate or ethically compromised or even down right dodgy. Tiley's being disingenuous himself when he argues that:

• if Polisario is attacking the details in order to question the whole,


• Then this imperfect procedure brings doubt on the Polisario's main point


• and therefore the Polisario cannot be itself staggeringly beign.

EXCEPT the third line also runs the same trope of questioning the detail in order to cast aspersion on the whole. You can't condemn a method and then use it yourself to condemn a party.

It is logically self-defeating. But I guess it looks good on the page - until you put it to proper scrutiny. Not that I give a shit about the Polsiario and their politics. I'm sorry to disappoint some people, but this blog just isn't about that part of the issue.

David Tiley also writes at the end:

Given the pressure that Polisario and its friends in Australia, particularly inside the ALP, have brought to bear on this matter, the statement is unsurprising.

But it does not represent either a shift in policy or a rejection - Screen Australia would never claim that a production it funded reflected any official point of view.

That's a little slippery there. A non-endorsement does not mean a policy shift, true enough. However, a non-endorsement might easily mean it's a rejection under the guise of plausible deniability, which is something you wouldn't put past politicians and bureaucrats. i.e, we ARE rejecting it, but not in a way that says so.

Which happens to be exactly what they're doing, as I've been told by people inside Screen Australia. So David Tiley's assertion is flat out wrong.

The fact that Screen Australia would never claim that a production it funded reflect any official point of view, is not what is being questioned. What is being asked is why would Screen Australia make a point of its non-endorsement if not but to avoid legal ramifications? - Like, the absence of signed releases and that sort of thing, perhaps?

One thing I have noticed with the side of the film makers to date is that logic doesn't seem to be their strong suit and truth claims seem to be too difficult for them to address. Instead, it's the insidious machinations of the Polisario and its long reach across the globe that gets trotted out. Which it might well be, but even then the defenders of the film don't seem to be on top of their philosophical position.

Maybe it's a Post-Modern problem after all, where there is no fixed 'Meaning', only the small-m meaning we draw from the text and the very modality of the various modes of truth claims coalesce into a socially formed *meaning* kind of hyper-real relativist mind space. (Oh, get me my vomit bag!)

I have to confess I'm getting really tired of wrestling with this topic. It's not much fun. And to that extent, I don't take too kindly to the film makers.

For a start, the Gen Y film makers of 'Stolen' probably are generationally (and I do grossly generalise here but...) the sort of people who think nothing of illegally downloading pirate songs onto their iPods and iPhones and not bat an eye-lid at the copyright infraction. Run cracked versions of software on the computers, run pirated videos on their DVDs. Why on earth would they care about truth claims and verification and release forms and legalities? Why bother? Nobody ever knew nothing, right? Make up the meaning as you go along. Shout out long enough that there are slaves in the camps, maybe then the meaning of slavery will warp enough into the image they want? Nothing unethical in that is there? How could there be, when ethics itself can't get established in the motile sea of flexible, ambiguous meaning?

Cue my Vomit bag, please.