Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for February, 2009
UNICEF Childrens Day of Broadcasting. And Bob.
27 February 2009
This Sunday children right around the world are getting their chance to have their say on radio and television through a new UNICEF program.
UNICEF has had a pretty hard time of it since its formation more than half a century ago. UNICEF used to stand for the UN Childrens Emergency fund, but now it is just the UN Children’s Fund, because, as former UNICEF ambassador Peter Ustinov told the world famously in the 1970s, the emergency is always there.
Empowering children is more than just providing a stable environment, food and housing. It must also be about having a voice. That’s what the Childrens’ International Day of Broadcasting is all about.
We are part of it this year. This week we spoke with children from the Pacific, Cambodia, an indigenous Australian school and America. These chats were put together into a special that will be broadcast this week on Radio Australia, and across the world on our affiliates.
The star of the show is Bob. He’s a Tongan-Australian who came in the studio like the 8-year old naughty boy that he is, and took over. He was a scream. For example, we asked all the guests what was the most important thing in the world to them:
The aboriginal kids said ‘family’.
The Cambodian kids said ‘family’.
Adora from the U.S. said ‘family’.
The kids from Fiji said ‘family’.
Bob answered: ‘family’ and ME.
You’ve got love the Bobster.
If you get a chance to hear the program, it’ll be broadcast this Sunday at 6.30am Suva time and again at 6.30pm Cambodian time.
I think you’ll love Bob and all the others. And while you’re at it, do what you can to try to give kids a voice this Sunday. Ask them what they think of things. And listen to them. It doesn’t happen as much as it should, and it wll make a difference, believe me.
– Phil
Ghost Town. A movie that reflects on death
26 February 2009
One of the richest sources of comedy in movies has always been death. Remember Four Weddings and a Funeral, which starts with Hugh Grant expletiving his way to a wedding that leads to a funeral. Or Death at a Funeral, where Jane Asher’s dead gay husband’s body is rolled out of a coffin in a surreal slip of slaptick. Or the much less funny Weekend at Bernie’s, which has, as its major plot device, two youths carrying around a coprse for most of the screen time. Or Corpse Bride. Or any one of the very many other taboo-busting renditions of the end of a hapless person’s life.
The latest in this line is the Ricky Gervais flick, Ghost Town, which really is hilarious. It’s built on the premise that Gervais’ character, Dr Pincus, died on the operating table for seven minutes. Because of this he has the ability to see the ghost of people who have died with issues unresolved.
So we thought we’d look at death. Today we speak with a doctor about when we actually die. You might’ve thought that after seven minutes Dr Pincus has well and truly shuffled off his mortal coil. Does death come with the brain stopping, the heart stopping or the spirit looking down on the body (as depicted for the Pincus character at one stage).
The now-dead Kerry Packer, once Australia’s richest man, once survived being clinically dead of a massive heart attack , and claims that he went across to the other side, and his famous quote was something like: “I’ve been dead, and I can tell you, there’s nothing there.” Many others including my own mother-in-law, tell a different story. She was clinically dead for some time, and later told of white lights, dead relatives and an amazing feeling of joy.
The hindus say that life is virtually unending; that we just keep changing our bodies as we try to sort out our karma as we go from incarnation to incarnation. Sort of like Dr Who, except the good doctor keeps changing actors with each incarnation.
We really want to know your stories.
– Phil
Jill Robinson: one woman for Moon Bears
25 February 2009
Jill Robinson is one of those special people who saw an injustice and did something about it.
She had heard about the practice of bear farming in China. This is where bears are farmed for their bile in a way that works like this. The wild moon bears are captured, put in tiny cages, have catheters inserted, unhygenically, into their abdomens, and their bile is extracted and sold.
Practitioners of traditional medicine in China use bear bile for a whole lot of stuff, and it works apparently.
But what they extract from the bears is not pure bear bile. It is infected, with traces of pus and cancer cells.
And to make it more tragic, the bile has been synthetically reproduced elsewhere, and the synthetic version is cheaper to produce and is just as efficacious.
So, Jill asks, why are people still doing this cruel practice to the Moon bears.
The answer is simple economics. People do it because they can make a living from it. Traditional practitioners are loathe to trust anything to come out of a laboratory. They want the real thing, no matter how contaminated it is. After all, they’re not the ones actually taking the stuff. People, often poverty-stricken and forgotten by the Chinese government, catch the bears simply to survive. That’s why Jill’s Animals Asia buys all the catchers’ equipment, and pays enough money for the catcher to be able to set up some other business.
Jill has a motto of working with the Chinese authorities, not demonising them, a positive way that has reaped some success. Some members of the local authorities in China have come on side and have contributed money or land for her sanctuaries.
It doesn’t mean that the problem is being solved. Jill is in Australia right now with a petition, a huge petition. It has 110,000 names on it, names collected from visitors to zoos and aquaria across Australasia. In keeping with the positive theme of Jill’s diplomacy, the petition congratulates the Chinese government for its action so far in helping the Moon bears, and encourages them to go further.
Jill has been fighting the fight for ten years, and has seen many of the bears she loves die from tumours, malnutrition and abuse. They were simply too far gone to be saved. I have met Jill, and I can tell you that she is not a woman drained by it all. She knows that every bear she gets out of those cages is up against it to survive, but even if their lives are not long, they live out the last part of their time on earth in something like a bear’s paradise, looked after with plenty of food, friends and love.
She’s an inspiration to anyone who thinks there is nothing that one person can do. If Jill had decided that it would have been too hard and went to Acapulco for her holiday ten years ago instead of China, then many more bears would be suffering right now, and the world would be worse for it.
We’ll talk with Jill later today. Hope you can have a listen.
– Phil
Hamas, Israel and oil. The problem or the solution?
24 February 2009
There is a view in Buddhism that says that problems and obstacles are good things. They help us to learn and understand ourselves a little better.
There is nothing to suggest that this applies only to personal issues or stubbed toes. If we were to extrapolate to major international issues, perhaps we would not be thinking of unrest as quagmires or wars as unending.
The former Australian ambassador to Israel, Peter Rodgers came in the Breakfast Club yesterday to discuss the middle east (which of late has also been seen as a quagmire, given the diffuclties in Israel, the Palestinean territories, Iraq, Iran and oil).
Rodgers says that the Hamas-Israel conflict is the centre of the problems in the region. It has been a running sore since 1948, when the artificial boundaries set by the UN demarcated the Palestianeans and the Israelis. Even after the Israeli occupation of these Palestinean territories in the early 1970′s, both communities lived together with the tolerance that they had shown, mostly, for thousands of years. But in the last decade or so tempers exploded. Palestineans sent rockets into Israel. Israel retaliated. Whole families have been killed, innocents have died. You don’t need to be a genius to see that the anger has not been salved by this action. Instead the anger has built on itself.
This single issue has heightened an unsavoury muslim versus jew attitude, and according to Rodgers, it dates back to 1948.
Add oil to these troubled waters and the ill-will expands. Rodgers says that the west is sure to become more and more dependent on oil. Back in 1977, the then-U.S. president Jimmy Carter promised to halve America’s consumption of foreign oil. Barack Obama has just made a similar promise. But as Rodgers so succinctly puts it, “we are all oil junkies”, so the the fine promises of mice and presidents mean little when the needs of the people are the opposite.
Perhaps Buddhists see a good side to this oil dependency. Oil may become the enforcer, stopping the world splitting into two. Without oil, the U.S. may just shut up shop and ignore the implositions in the middle east (some of which it has had a hand in). Instead, the oil forces trade between east and west. It makes the middle east one of the few places that the U.S. depends on for prosperity.
Rodgers, from his position as a former diplomat, says that a sensible U.S. government should be making friendly approaches to Iran, not demonising it. In this world where oil is the glue, it could also be the grease that lubricates what has been for the last few years a rusty pipeline.
As for Israel and the Palestinean Hamas, Peter Rodgers doesn’t know how to fix it. he says there could be a possibly of breaking down the borders and making a single country with Israelis and Palestineans living side by side. Or it could be a case of changing the borders a little to the pre-1967 days. He doesn’t know. But he does know that the problem will be fixed eventually. Oil is making sure the conflict just can’t go on. The question is how much pain is going to be felt before it is fixed. Going hardline is not going to do it. We have already seen that. As the Buddhists might suggest, opening arms and hearts, with the support of the world, might just.
– Phil
Heath Ledger. Mickey Rourke. A great year.
23 February 2009
There have been some turkey years for the Academy Awards, years when there have been some slim pickings for the judges.
This is not one of them.
For more than 18 months we have been hearing about an extraordinary performance by Australia’s Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Ledger’s death only built the momentum, and put him in a space occupied by others who died too young, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. For both of these actors, we were left to wonder what kinds of performances these magnificent actors would have given as they aged.
The same will be said of Heath Ledger. His performance in Monster’s Ball was a portent of the great things to come. His subsuming of himself in Brokeback Mountain was a coming of age. Sadly, Dark Knight will be seen as his pinnacle. I say ‘sadly’ because although he gives one of the great screen performances of all time, he could’ve (and would’ve) done so much more.
Ledger has won every major award so far for his Joker. The Academy Award would give him a clean sweep. Let’s hope.
Mickey Rourke as the Wrestler is Rocky thirty years on. Stallone deserved an Academy Award for his Rocky, but had to be content with a Best Picture in 1976. I’m sure he’s not hurting too much though. As for Mickey Rourke, after years of bad times, he’s proved that when you’ve got talent, you’ve got talent. He will probably win, and his win will be all the stronger because of the field that he’s up against: Sean Penn in Milk; the fabulous Frank Langella who superbly played Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon; and Richard Jenkins, who broke our hearts in The Visitor. If you haven’t seen this film, then you have missed a great two hours. In any other year, Jenkins would win the Oscar.
The year also belongs to Slumdog Millionaire. This is a film that does everything. It’s a gangster film; it’s a love story; it’s a social critique; it’s even a comedy at times. It will rend you as any three-cry film does. If it wins the Academy Award for Best Picture, it will be well deserved. It is simply the most complete picture of the year. It is a movie that takes you on a journey and blanks out the rest of your life for those couple of hours.
And there is nothing more praiseworthy of any movie.
Yes folks, it’s been a great year in film.
– Phil
