Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for July, 2009
Balibo: The horror tale of a horror time
24 July 2009
Tonight the Melbourne International Film Festival opens. It’s already faced controversy over that film about Rebiya Kadeer and the resultant boycott of the festival by China.
Tonight’s opening film is the equally controversial Balibo, the story of how five journalists were murdered in East Timor in 1975.
The men were covering a skirmish in the town of Balibo. On the way in they met ABC journalist Tony Maniaty, who had been getting out of the area. He warned them that things were going too hot in Balibo and strongly advised them not to go in. They did go in, did some reporting, and from accounts, then ignored the further warnings of their local ‘fixer’ who told them that Indonesian troops were very close. For some reason the men did not heed the warnings, and stayed to continue capturing footage. Perhaps it was Australian bravado. Perhaps it was a unrealistic belief of safety in numbers. Or perhaps it was a belief that journalists were somehow immune from the events surrounding them. Whatever the reason, the men stayed, the militia arrived, herded the journalists into a room and killed them.
Shirley Shackleton, the wife of one of the murdered men disputes Maniaty’s version. An angry Shirley Shackleton told us this morning that Maniaty’s description of her husband was the opposite of what he was. And on this day of the film premiere she has also called on the Australian government to bring the mens’ remains back to Australia as soon as possible.
As I said, this story has been a long-running controversy here, with allegations that the then-government of Gough Whitlam knew about the dangers the journalists faced in East Timor, but did nothing about it. Adding to the pain of the story, many years passed before anyone was called to account over the killings.
East Timor president Jose Ramos Horta is in Melbourne and will be at the premiere, which speaks volumes for the importance of the Balibo incident in the East Timor-Australia relationship. The return of remains will not mean the story will be forgotten, but at least it will mean that the decades-long fight by Shirley Shackleton for acknowledgement for her husband will have some fitting conclusion. As anyone who has ever lost a loved one in mysterious circumstances, just knowing the location of the body is a huge relief. Let’s hope it will be so for Shirley and the relatives of the other victims.
– Phil
It was forty years ago today, the moon and the Beatles..
23 July 2009
On Monday it was forty years since man set foot on the moon.
Another event happened on that very same day in July 1969, an event that some might believe was even more important.
It was the day that the Beatles recorded one of their last great tracks.
John, Paul, George and Ringo had put aside personal acrimonies to collaborate on a benign set of sessions and produce what many consider to be their masterwork, Abbey Road. It was the album that realised how great were the hidden talents of George Harrison, who wrote two of the albums master tracks: Something, and Here Comes the Sun. Harrison had been feeling frustrated in the last years of the Beatles, with few of his songs being accepted and Lennon and McCartney taking over lead guitar on some of their tracks.
Abbey Road has been criticised for the medley that ends the album, but on recent listening, it jumps out as one of the great nineteen minutes of pop music with the lot: fabulous playing from all four of the lords of pop rock; the tightest harmonies imaginable (on Because); great humour (on Sun King and Polythene Pam) and little bit of pathos (The End).
But for me the masterpiece was the work recorded as the Apollo 11 team set foot on the moon. It was Lennon’s Come Together, the album’s opening track, which stands as probably the most original song of the era, a song that has never dated, with avant garde (or perhaps, gobbedegook) lyrics that still creates picture images, not matter how many times you listen to it. As one reviewer put it, pop music went downhill from there.
We all know the moon landing was probably the most incredible feat of humanity, but as one co-worker said to me, only half in jest, at least Abbey Road had a point.
And it’s a point that keeps on being made every time someone chooses to listen to it on their music player.
– Phil
IQ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
22 July 2009
I knew it.
I always suspected that ranking peoples’ intelligence by IQ was problematic, or at least I started suspecting it after the smartest guy in our school told me that me he got high results in IQ tests by learning how to approach the questions (studying number sequences, learning the tricks in the questions etc). If the system can be so rorted, how good could it be (sorry to all you good people at Mensa).
Since starting journalism, I know that I have become much smarter now than that bored little Greek kid languishing in the back row of Summer Hill Primary in Sydney. Back then it took weeks for me to understand a arithmetic concept. (Mind you, back then I had trouble learning how to tie my shoe-laces). I suspect if they tested my IQ in those days I would’ve come in somewhere between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. Hopefully things have improved a little since then.
Today I got some support in my suspicion of IQ. It’s to do with Working Memory. This is where a person has to remember something while simultaneously processing another piece of info. An example that we used on the program this morning was the phonetic alphabet, when we spell out something directly from the phonetic alphabet (eg: kafcaloudes: kilo-alpha-foxtrot-charlie etc). In this example we are remembering the name and applying an unrelated alphabet to it as we spell it.
It seems this Working Memory (WM) ability is very useful, perhaps even more so than IQ, particularly in assessing the brain activity of children. UK researcher Dr Tracy Alloway has studied 3000 children and found that ten percent had working memory problems. Some are so limited in WM that they forget the task the are in the middle of doing; can’t solve problems, and make many careless mistakes.
She says the problems can be solved by simple techniques like reading out a list of numbers to your kids, getting them to recite them back but in reverse order. Dr Alloway says simple tasks like these will go a long way towards fixing the problems.
If this has pricked your interest, Dr Alloway suggests going to www.junglememory.com which gives your kids a memory workout.
Take it from a guy who has just graduated from Cro-Magnon.
– Phil
Freddie Flintoff takes five, and we flail
21 July 2009
This time yesterday I was so sure.
There was going to be no way that Australia was going to lose the Lords cricket test. We only needed 209 runs, and we had a full day and 5 wickets left, including two batsmen sitting on huge scores already.
Was I being too optimistic? Was I just silly?
Well I’d be the one laughing if it wasn’t for a guy called Flintoff. The retiring English test bowler (and one-time captain) knocked over the remaining Australian batters like ten-pins, and in the process made himself an English national hero.
Australian fans are bemoaning the drawn first test, where the biaised English weather denied the team of a certain victory, and then again in this test when three umpiring decisions appeared to wrongly give Aussie batsmen out. But folks, this is cricket. There are bad decisions on both sides. This time the ledger worked for England. Australia lost the test and that’s that.
There are still three tests to go, and thanks to Freddie, and a very smarting Ricky Ponting, they will be corkers.
– Phil
Doing business across the world. Sometimes it’s dangerous.
20 July 2009
Three Australian businessmen were killed in the Jakarta bomb blasts on Friday.
They were just having a working breakfast when a man with a bomb in a backpack and a wheelie case came into their conference room and detonated his explosives. The Australians never had a chance and, perhaps mercifully, didn’t see it coming.
Thus is the risk of doing business in countries where terrorist cells operate. The chances of becoming a victim of terrorists is slight, very slight, but they are a good deal stronger than if the businessmen had decided to just stay in Australia to do their work.
The dangers of doing business are not confined to terrorist attacks though. Stern Hu, Rio Tinto’s Australian head of operations in China was arrested two weeks ago on allegations of spying. He still hasn’t been charged.
Then this morning were made aware of two Australian busnbinessmen in Dubai who have been held in custody for much longer. Marcus Lee and Matt Joyce were arrested in January and were only charged last week by Dubai authorities with fraud. The men deny the charges very strongly, and this morning their lawyer Martin Amad told us that he was confident that his clients would be found not guilty. Perhaps, but they still would’ve spent six months in jail without charge, and without incomes.
Amad then confirmed that ninety-one Australians have been arrested in Dubai since January last year. Amad says that the problem is that business practices that might be fine in Australia might not be seen as kosher in other societies.
Another person who knows about this is Kay Danes. She and her husband were arrested in Laos and eventually (after the seemingly obligatory six months in detention) charged with embezzlement, destruction of evidence and tax violations. They were sentenced to seven years’ jail in 2001, but were pardoned by the Laos president.
Kay Danes will be with us later to share her story.
– Phil
