Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for May, 2009
Swine Flu. What is a cruise ship to do?
29 May 2009
We have some very unhappy people on a cruise ship off Australia’s coast at the moment.
They were expecting to have an island cruise of a lifetime, stopping off at all the island paradises and at the most delectable spots up Australia’s north-east coast.
Alas, it was not meant to be. A number of people on the ship starting showing symptoms of swine flu, including three crew members. In keeping with rules decided by Australian authories, the ship was declared a quarantine zone. What this meant was that the passengers were not allowed to get off the ship until after the qaurantine period finished. It also meant that the ship would not be visiting any of the exotic destinations.
There is talk this morning that some passengers, apparently angry at the fact that they were not going to be sipping pina coladas on an island beach, are going to sue the cruise operator.
It will be interesting to see if they go through with their threat. We can understand that they are disappointed. They would have saved for a long time to go on such a cruise (they ain’t cheap), and for some of them it was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime.
It was just not meant to be. When something like this happens you have no choice. You can rail against the injustice meted to you by the world, or you can get what you can get what you can out of the situation. You are on a ship. Swimming pools, bars, entertainment, no work, no hassle, read a book, relax.
The Chief Medical Officer here in the Australian state of Victoria has come out suggesting that twenty percent of the workplace in this state could be hit by the swine flu. This will mean the cancellations of many more holidays, the temporary closing of restaurants and infrastructure. Take a fifth of a workforce out of any country and there will be problems, huge problems.
We will get through this extremely contagious pandemic, but it will disrupt our lives. Expect it. We live in a time when we in richer countries have come to expect that everything will go our way. It takes one microscopic virus to put paid to that.
We don’t have to grin, but we’ll have to bear it.
– Phil
John Farnham. The Voice makes a comeback
28 May 2009
John Farnham has made more comebacks than Rocky Balboa has had broken noses.
Farnham, of course, is best known for his 1980′s singe You’re the Voice, which came from the album Whispering Jack, one of the biggest sellers this country has seen. The song was an anthem, even if most of us didn’t have a clue what it was supposed to be about.
When the album came out Jack had just finished a stint at the helm of the Little River Band, which gave him some exposure across the U.S. I was in fact in Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympics (my first overseas working trip), and I, mere youngster that I was, found myself sitting next to Jack at a weird nightclub with the even weirder name of Nuclear Nuance. I and the rest of the team were thrilled to be sitting near such an Aussie icon (a joy that was a touch diminshed when he left us to pay the bill).
The reason we were so pleased had nothing to do with the Little River Band, but it was a much more faffy song that dated back to the 1960′s, Sadie the Cleaning Lady, recorded under the pubescent name of Johnny Farnham. Yes, it was all about being near an icon of our tender years, as crook as the song was.
John Farnham took the success of Whispering Jack and made the most of it. He went on to do world tours, record more successful albums and even sang the role of Jesus in a major Australian arena production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Earlier this year he sang with Coldplay (who claim to adore him) as a funfraiser for bushfire victims here in Australia.
Over the last ten years he has made a series of farewell tours, each promising that it would be the last, and each one being even more absolutely the last than the previous one.
Well he’s announced that he’s going back on the road again, and now admits that the farewell thing was tongue in cheek. He had no intention of calling it quits permanently. And for a man with a voice that can be rightly called The Voice, that’s just as well.
Welcome back, Jack.
– Phil
The Australian media gets it skewiff again
27 May 2009
This has not been an enchanting time for the media of my country.
First of all Sol Trujillo, former head of our biggest telco Telstra) claimed that Australia was racist. Trujillo, an Hispanic-born American, was referring to newspapers making joking references to his ethnicity during his tenure, calling him ‘amigo’ and the such. Apparently he was privately dismayed by these racial references. When he left these shores after what some have called a less-than-successful stint at Telstra, the prime minister himself (who was rumoured to have had a not very good relationship with Sol Trujillo), said ‘Adios’ at a media conference. This must’ve been the final straw for Trujillo, who told the world media this week that Australia was not only racist, but backward.
The newspapers today react in a way that just reinforces the point that they just don’t get the point. Melbourne’s Herald Sun has a headline saying ‘Adios Amigo’. The broadsheet Agecalls it a Mexican stand off. Yes, neither paper seems quite capable of understanding the nub of his complaint.
That’s bad enough, but barely a week after the media in Australia went into a frenzy about an Australian woman being held in Phuket for stealing a barmat, news comes through that an Australian photographer has been held by Somali kidnappers for NINE months. I don’t remember seeing much in the media about this story before this week, and it would probably still be buried if it wasn’t for a taped interview with the man, 37 year old Nigel Brennan, in which he begs for a ransom to be paid, and adds that the captivity has taken a heavy toll on the health of himself and his fellow captive, Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout. They had been on assignment when kidnapped.
Australian respondents to a news story on the kidnapping were rightly dismayed by the fact that these people have been held for so long with little apparent action, while the bar mat woman was front page news because of her situation. There were also a few comments about how the Australian prime minister commented on the bar mat woman, but little has been said about the captured journalists.
That’s the good thing about the instant reaction that the internet gives. It offers an opportunity for media non-professionals to make their view known, and sometimes these views are just so spot on.
– Phil
North Korea tests a bomb and the world shudders
26 May 2009
Literally. Yesterday’s underground test caused an earthquake that registered 4.7 on the Richter Scale.
It also caused a diplomatic earthquake. Japan was one of the first out of the blocks to condemn Kim Jong-Il (which was no surprise since there has been no love at all between Noth Korea and Japan for a long long time). Then followed the U.S., with Barack Obama condemning the test. Russia, which shares a border with North Korea, followed. And then came an almost surprising word from a Kim Jong-Il ally, China. China shares a border with North Korea (1416 kilometres), and so has every reason to be concerned about its ally’s decision to set off a home-made bomb.
And I mean it when I say it’s home-made. North Korea expert Andrew O’Neil from Flinders University told us this morning that North Korea produces its own fissible material and is capable of independently carrying out every step in the production of a nuclear weapon. No international sanction or imbargo will impede this process since North Korea is not reliant on imports to do it.
O’Neil has gone as far as to predict that North Korea will produce more weapons no matter what kind of heavy words come from the UN Security Council. He also says that he thinks the stand-off could only be stopped by an invasion, and that will not happen anytime soon. China and Russia would simply not allow the U.S. that close to their borders.
So the world remains in a state of nuclear flux. North Korea is a nation that has made questionable domestic decisions and has a population that is, according to some, suffering terribly from privations inflicted by a government that continues to thumb its nose at the world. Undoubtedly military hierarchies in the U.S. and elsewhere are making angry gesticulations towards North Korea, while at the same time knowing that North Korea, with the detonation of this Hiroshima-sized blast, is now a world player in the unfortunate nuclear game of ‘mine is bigger than yours’.
– Phil
South Korea’s Roh Moo-Hyun’s death.
25 May 2009
When former human rights lawyer Roh Moo-Hyun was elected president of South Korea in 2003, he did so on the ticket of squeaky cleanness.
In his five years in office this proved not to be enough. His critics multiplied, making allegations of incompetence, not helped by unnecessary diplomatic tensions with the U.S. and Japan. His “sunshine policy” of reapproachment with North Korea just wasn’t winning him the approbation he had hoped would come with such a strong move.
He also demonstrated a lack of political judgement when he admitted that he felt incompetent as a president and that he had anxiety that he would not be able to perform in the role. Now this was most probably just openly expressing the personal fears and doubts that every person, politician or not, feels when hoisted to positions of responsibility. What marked Roh’s admission was the fact that he should’ve kept those fears to himself. To a watching world, including North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, such an admission made him look weak.
Still, he lasted five years in the job, which is an extraordinary time, considering that his supporter base dropped pretty quickly , and an impeachment finding (later overturned) was made against him.
Roh had only been out of office less than a year when investigations started into a bribery allegation against him and his family. A relative was charged with influence peddling. This month, allegations mounted that other family members and the former president himself had received bribes.
Roh’s body was found at the base of a mountain cliff on the weekend. Reports suggest that he left a suicide note on his computer.
The investigations into the former president’s honesty will continue, and there will be plenty of people today who will suggest that the act of suicide is the final proof of his guilt. It isn’t, of course. People suicide because of stress and an inability to cope with that stress, not necessarily because of shame and guilt.
Whatever the investigations reveal, this was a tawdry end to six years of political life that started so promisingly. Roh should’ve been enjoying this time of life as a feted former leader who reformed his country and made an ally out of its bitterest enemy.
Instead all that lies in scandal and disrespect. And that’s pretty sad.
– Phil
