Aung San Suu Kyi gets the verdict today

31 July 2009

Burma’s democracy leader will most probably be found guilty today.

She was arrested some months ago after an American man swam uninvited to her crumbling lakeside home, where she has been under house arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters say the junta used this incident as an excuse to arrest Ms Suu Kyi and charge her with violating the conditions of her house arrest. You see, next year Burma is supposed to have an election. Although few people believe the junta’s election will be anything like democratic, the arrest is seen by many as a way of getting Aung San Suu Kyi out of the way for the election.

They needn’t have bothered. Any candidates remotely interested in real democracy have boycotted the so-called elections anyway.

It is an action of extraordinary ineptness by the junta, who should have known that to do nothing would’ve been far cleverer. Their actions have already led to action, with U.S. President Barack Obama this week announcing sanctions on Burmese jade and gems. Suu Kyi supporters say action like this will have some effect on the junta and not hurt the Burmese people because, they claim, most of the proceeds of such exports goes directly to the junta and its friends anyway.

Dr Myint Cho, an Australian-based Aung San Suu Kyi supporter says what needs to happen now is a United Nations sanction against Burma. That would necessarily mean that China and Russia would have to agree to it, and if that happened, it would be a significant worry for the junta.

Myint Cho is clear. He believes, like many, that there will be a guilty verdict in this case, but he thinks the sentence (of up to five years) could be suspended, meaning that Ms Suu Kyi will just be returned to her decaying home for more years to come.

As for Aung San Suu Kyi, she is not in great health, but she seems to be less concerned for herself than for the two women who have been her companions in house arrest, and who have also been charged with aiding in the alleged crime. Having a lesser profile they are at a greater risk of being dealt with much more harshly.

This concern speaks volumes for the quality of the woman we’re talking about.

– Phil

Read More >

THAT swimsuit controversy, Part II

30 July 2009

Yesterday I blogged that world records at the Rome Swimming Championships were falling all over the place like teacups in an earthquake. I also blogged that one of the reasons for these amazing times was the amazing monocolour dreamswimsuit that is being worn by almost all competitors at the meet.

Overnight one swimmer refused to wear the aforementioned swimsuit, and decided to go into the pool in his usual briefs. That swimmer was U.S. Olympic champion Michael Phelps, the man who is possibly the greatest swimmer of all time. He had been shocked a day earlier to see his 200m freestyle record shattered by a suit-adorned swimmer. Clearly determined to get his own back, Phelps attacked the 200m butterfly with gusto, and shattered the world record, and in the process, left his swimsuit adorned competitors in his wake, literally.

Which just goes to prove that a champion is a champion is a champion.

That’s one strike for unaided athleticism.

– Phil

Read More >

THAT swimsuit controversy

29 July 2009

Did it seem strange to you that all of a sudden, at the Swimming World Championships currently on in Rome, world records are falling all over the place?

Ian Thorpe’s record fell, Stephanie Rice’s world record fell. Overnight we even had a Michael Phelps world record fall.

You must’ve wondered if all the world’s elite swimmers suddenly got faster.

In truth, they did. They got faster, and it was because of the polyurethane swimsuit that they have been wearing. This is no ordinary swimsuit. It compresses the body (so much so that it takes more than half an hour to get into it), and adds a huge amount of buoyancy, which means that the swimmer doesn’t have to fight to stay on top of the water.

The result is that swimmer is faster. When the Rome Champs organisers announced that every swimmer would be wearing the same swimsuit (to avoid unfair advantage to any one competitor), we saw scores of athletes struggling into the Catwoman-style body suits. And we saw them breaking world records like, as one newspaper put it, confetti.

Then overnight came the news that the swimsuits will be banned from next year .

It’s a funny call in some ways. The call is realistic in that swimmers who have no access to such suits have been disadvantaged. People all over the world are training right now in nothing but their speedos and ordinary bathers. At least swimming will be open to everyone again. On the other side though, having allowed the suits for a short while, we are now going to change the critieria again, giving nobody any real closure, especially the swimmers who have been competing in Rome. They’ll never know if they were legitimate. The feeling will be that they never were.

But mostly the problem will be that the world records set in those suits will be very hard to beat, and when they are beaten, the athletes that do it will have to be much much stronger and better than the swimmers who set the records, because they will not have the advantage of the suits.

So where does this leave people like retired Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe, who no longer competes, and will not be able to try to regain his world record. It leaves him precisely nowhere. His record was beaten by almost the smallest possible margin, even with the help of the suit, which just goes to show how fantastic a swimmer he was. That a lesser swimmer in a catsuit beat his record is just not fair.

For a brief moment swimmers have been given a leg-up. Serious thought should be given to taking away world records won in the suits. For those swimmers who would’ve beaten the record anyway, suit or not, that would be a shame, but that’s life.

Of course this is not a life and death issue, but people in two hundred years will look back at these records, and unless some reparation is made, the people of that future generation will wrongly think that the record holders were greatest swimmers on the planet, when the truth is they probably weren’t.

– Phil

Read More >

A new name, but we’re still here.

28 July 2009

You might’ve noticed a change in our program over the last few weeks.

We’ve got some new music themes and a new name: Radio Australia Today.

It’s more than a change in the froth and bubble though, because we’re doing a lot more harder interviews, and are adding in a few interviews from some of the most respected journalists from other parts of Radio Australia and our parent organisation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Yesterday, one of our listenerws asked why we changed the name. Well, it’s an interesting story. When we started four years ago, the idea was to provide a program for the Asian region, a breakfast show that would give all the news that people in the Asian region would need as they wake up. Hence The Breakfast Club became our first moniker.

But within weeks the name became a little redundant because management decided to also put us out across our Pacific FM transmitters (most of whom were in mid-morning when we went to air, and a few were already in the afternoon during our broadcast time). And as we built an audience, we started getting listeners from across the U.S. and Britain too. The Breakfast Club was clearly not a name that made a lot of sense for these midnight listeners.

So as we went with a little more edge to the program, it was time for a name change as well.

We hope that the program will give you all the info and people that you want to hear, while still retaining our natural exuberance.

Do tell us that you think: club@radioaustralia.net.au is our interim email. We love hearing from you.

Happy listening.

– Phil

Read More >

Jose Ramos-Horta, Balibo and a night of tears

27 July 2009

On Friday night Melbourne’s Hamer Hall was packed for the opening of this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival.

It’s always a big night, but this year’s was the biggest, because this one featured the world premiere of the Australian film Balibo. I’ve mentioned this film in earlier blogs, but this was the first time I had seen it.

I must say before I go any further, that I was on edge about seeing it. I knew the story about the murders of the five journalists by invading Indonesian troops in late 1975. I knew that the journalists were trapped and butchered and their bodies burnt. I knew that the Australian government denied knowing anything about either the deaths of the impending Indonesian invasion.

What I didn’t know was the humanity of the story, of what these men were like, of why they were there in Balibo when they were warned repeatedly not to stay. After seeing the film, I now know. Here were five journalists on a story, a great story. They were not Rambos; they just wanted to report.

The film also told the story of Roger East, a veteran Australian journalist who found out what happened to the Balibo Five, by going into occupied Balibo three weeks after the jousrnalists were murdered. He too was certainly no Rambo. He just wanted the truth. Roger East was so touched by the story pf the East Timorese that he decided to stay in Dili and report as Indonesia invaded that city. It was a decision that saw him arrested by the forces within minutes of the invasion, and executed on the wharf at Dili.

The film was hugely emotive and gave plenty of space to the events. The performances were superb, including that of Anthony LaPaglia, who played Roger East.

But the one character who flows through from both the Balibo Five and Roger East was the now-president Jose Ramos-Horta. The film shows that he was the man who encouraged Roger East to come to Dili, and it was Ramos-Horta who showed the Balibo Five where the Indonesian forces were preparing to attack. He also warned both the Five and Roger East to leave when things got too dangerous. What he didn’t count on was that journalists will stay for a story, even if they know there is danger involved.

Unfortunately for the six journalists, they had no idea just what kind of enemy they were dealing with, and lost their lives as a result.

A truly great film has come out of this horrible episode, a film that shows that when Australians want to tell a story, they tell it like no other.

We’ll be speaking with Jose Ramos-Horta later in the program.

– Phil

Read More >