Breakfast Club Blog
Archive for May, 2008
Mofizur Got a DigiCam
30 May 2008
Do you remember the first time you took a digital photo?
Do you remember the thrill of knowing that you could just click click click away knowing that there’s no film being wasted, no development costs, nothing.
Mofizur, our long-time listener from Bangladesh has discovered this very joy. He went on a driving trip the other day and clicked away taking shots of everything that swept past.
Including this landscape portrait of a telegraph pole.
And this one of a boat (or is it a shed)?:
Whatever it is, these photos show that Sylaet in Bangladesh is just beautiful.
And this last shot is a killer:
We love getting your photos. We have a gallery of photos on our homepage, and Mofizur’s shots are going into it. Send us your shots. We may be radio, but we want it to be radio with pictures. Don’t go hiding your camera under a bushell.
- Phil
Hollywood Actors Doing Their Bit
29 May 2008
One of the news stories around this morning is about Madonna adopting an African child.
In what Madonna’s lawyer called a beautiful and positive judgement, Malawi’s high court approved Madonna’s application to permanently adopt the three-year-old boy who was living in an orphanage, and whose outlook was dim.
Until today that is.
Madonna has her own children, and obviously didn’t need to have another little person to take care of. She juggles motherhood duties with her career, which already sees her having to spend time away from her director hubbie.
You’ve got to say that this is a most altruistic move by the diva of pop.
Then we have fellow actor Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father) who is obviously attached to Australia’s aboriginal community. He came to Australia last year and did a tour of aboriginal communities at the invitation of indigenous leader Pat Dodson.
Pete was touched by the aboriginal people, and said that one of his greatest wishes in life was to see aborigines happy and healthy.
He then went back to England, and most people here probably thought that he’d forget his new friends.
But not so. Next month he will be at London’s Royal Festival Hall to introduce Murundak, a history of Aboriginal resistance through song.
We’ll be speaking with the creator of Murundak on the program today, as part of our celebration of Reconciliation Week here in Australia.
By the way, Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s Marrandil has been a smash hit on out Breakfast Club Top Ten in its first week. How cool is that. And how timely.
Opening the Borders
28 May 2008
We seem to be in a time when everyone wants to be inside of everyone else’s borders.
Think about it. We have governments tripping over each other to set up Free trade Agreements. We have international radio stations (like ours and the BBC) setting up shop inside of countries far removed from our own. We have aid organisations with permanent bases inside countries to help people who should be looked after by that country’s own government.
It wasn’t like this a century ago. Free trade didn’t exist. Countries kept to themselves, even the USA, which intervened only in countries close to its own borders, and when it did so, it was for immediate national security. Of course Britain, Holland, Italy and France spread their tentacles back then, but when they went into a country, they took that country over completely. It was a domination, not the backdoor or short-term methods being used today.
Then we have Burma, a country run by a tough military junta, elected by no-one except themselves, a junta that feigns to show what they would consider a nationalism by refusing the entry of foreigners. Never mind that these foreigners are not military; they are helpers there to save the lives of Burmese after a cyclone.
After weeks of suffering by people who have no food or safe water, at last the regime appears to be letting the helpers in. But it is slow.
As I said at the beginning, borders are becoming things that people want to climb over, like Mount Everest without the height.
One of the world’s most famous borders is between North and South Korea.
This is a cold war if ever there is one, this remnant of the 1950s. When I was there, it appeared that even the soldiers manning the security towers looked bored. But check out the scenery that is the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone):
Yes, these soldiers come to work every day to guard against intruders from the north. Presumably the guards on the north look equally bored. Bizarrely, in the central post in the middle of the DMZ, where negotiations happen, there is a line painted across the room. The negotiators from the north sit on the north side of the table. Their opponents sit on the south side only centimetres away, and behind both sets of talkers stand guards who grimace at each other with strict orders that posturing and grimacing is as far as they are allowed to go. It’s a comedy that has has the very unfunny side of being capable of starting a world war.
Makes you wonder what would happen if you took the border away. Would there be a mass egress to the north from the south. Doubt it. The south has all the facilities, health care and wealth. Perhaps it’s just a case that some borders are solely for leaders, a huge example of just how far people will go to protect their job.
There are Doctors who can be Without Borders. Nice idea if we spread it to a few intractables.
- Phil
Reconciliation. It Starts Today.
27 May 2008
Today is the start of Reconciliation Week here in Australia.
This is when we devote at least a couple of minutes to thinking about the original inhabitants of this country, and how we can become reconciled.
This time of goodwill is also a reminder of what we don’t have.
We don’t have health equity between black and white.
We lack health resources for our aboriginal community.
A much larger percentage of the aboriginal community is in jail compared to the rest of the community.
Aboriginal babies are 7 times less likely to survive than babies in the rest of society.
Aboriginal people live twenty years shorter lives on average than they rest of society.
Aboriginal people are Australia’s most disadvantaged, and the truth is that they are disadvantaged simply by their race.
Aboriginal society is a gentle, caring and giving society. Any child born in an indigenous community instantly becomes a child of the whole clan. They can have dozens of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. It is a warm society leached by dislocation and good intentions of people who had no idea of how aboriginal society works.
At least Reconciliation Week can give us some way to connect.
If you are an Australian, why not spend a few minutes this week to think about why things have gone so pear-shaped.
- Phil
Faker. These guys are no Fakers
26 May 2008
Faker is certainly a brave name. Knowing the propensity of schoolchildren to play naughties with names, Faker is akin to calling your son Bart.
But name aside, the guys in Faker have presented a few problems for we radio jocks, because it always seems that whenever we do an interview about cholesterol or coronary problems, the song that inevitably comes up next on the playlist if Faker’s last big hit, This Heart Attack.
I can’t explain to you the embarrassment that results from this unfortunate coincidence. There we are trying to be serious.. and then in comes the guitars and the voice singing the virtues of chest pains.
Oh well.
But the guys themselves are charming. Their new found pop stardom here in the Land of Oz hasn’t affected them at all. They were fun, a little shy and apparently a little bemused by all the fuss. Except when Kim asked them to signed their autographs for her kids. Nathan, the lead singer, suggested giving Kim a separate autograph for each of her kids, instead of signing for both kids on the one sheet of paper. “Kids like individual signatures”, Nathan said. Which reveals the extent of their fame among the youngies here. Faker are well loved, but like Eskimo Joe and countless other rockers who have trod through the Breakfast Club doors over the years, they have not let a bit of it go to their heads.
Good looking guys too.
Bet they were prefects at school and won the maths prizes too.
Will someone please find something to criticise there guys about!
- Phil
