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From the archives (2) Blogging and human rights

blogging-human-rights — Iranian protest photo Christopher Rose

In case you were curious, the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Iranians who interact with the internet are by definition risk-takers.
Photo Christopher Rose
As recently as late 2016, five Iranians were sentenced to prison terms for writing and posting images on fashion blogs. The content was decreed to ‘encourage prostitution’.
The Independent quoted lawyer Mahmoud Taravat via state news agency Ilna that the eight women and four men he represented received jail time of between five months to six years. He was planning to appeal the sentences handed down by a Shiraz court on charges including ‘encouraging prostitution’ and ‘promoting corruption’.

The immediacy of blogging appeals to those who live under oppressive regimes. They use the online diary to inform the world of the injustices in their country as and when they happen. I cited Iran (Persia) as just one example of a country where expressing strong opinions contrary to the agenda of the ruling government is extremely risky business.
The founder of Iran’s blogging movement, Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger, spent six years in prison (the original sentence was 19 and a half years), before being pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Derakhshan also helped promote podcasting in Iran and appears to have been the catalyst that spawned some 64,000 Persian language blogs (2004 survey). Clearly there is/was a level of dissent among people who think the right to free speech is worth the risk of incarceration or worse.

Blogging can be a lot of things in Australia, but risky it rarely is, so long as you are mindful of the laws regarding defamation and contempt of court. Not so for bloggers or citizen journalists of oppressed countries who try to get the facts out.
It is no coincidence that most of the countries guilty of supressing free speech are among the 22 countries named by Amnesty International as having committed war crimes. They include Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan and, closer to home, Myanmar, where persecution and discrimination persists against the Rohingya. Amnesty’s national director Claire Mallinson told ABC’s The World Today that not only are people being persecuted where they live, 36 countries (including Australia) sent people back into danger after attempts to find refuge.
Amnesty’s 450-page Human Rights report for 2015-2016 does not spare Australia from criticism, particularly our treatment of children in custody, with Aboriginal children 24 times more likely to be separated from their families and communities. We are also complacent when it comes to tackling world leaders and politicians accused of creating division and fear.

Still, at least if you live in Australia you can openly criticise something the government is doing (or not doing), apropos this week’s Q&A and the Centrelink debt debate.
According to literary types who seem to have warmed to my turn of phrase, FOMM is not a blog as such, but an example of ‘creative nonfiction’ which I am told is not only a genre, but also something taught at universities.
I never knew that.
Bloggers in comfortable democracies like ours use blogs to write about cats, dogs, goldfish, cake recipes, fashion, yoga, raising babies, travel adventures and produce how-to manuals about anything you care to name.
The definition of a blog is ‘a regularly updated public website or web page, typically run by an individual or small group, written in an informal or conversational style.’
Scottish comedian and slam poem Elvis McGonagall, who you met last week, satirises the blog format with this entry.
Monday:
Woke up. Had a thought. Dismissed it. Had another. Dismissed that. Stared at the cows. The cows stared back. Scratched arse. Shouted at telly. Threw heavy object at telly. Had a wee drink. Had another. Went to bed.
Tuesday to Sunday – repeat as above

The definitive blog is an online daily diary, kept by people while travelling, carrying out some stated mission like preparing for an art exhibition, producing an independent album, dieting or training for a triathlon. Most of these literary exercises are abandoned at journey’s end, or on completion of the mission. A fine example of this is folksinger John Thompson’s marathon effort to post an Australian folk song each day for a year. He did this from Australia Day 2011 to January 26, 2012.
Some of the tunes have ended up on albums by Cloudstreet, Thompson’s musical collaboration with Nicole Murray and Emma Nixon.
The social worth of a blog, though, is when an oppressed human being writes a real time account of what atrocity or infringement of human rights is happening in their third-world village, right now.
There are millions of blogs circulating on the worldwide web, many of which are concerned with marketing, selling, promoting and luring readers into subscribing to the bloggers’ products and/or clicking on sponsors’ links. It is nigh-on impossible to find a list of blogs independently assessed on quality, although some have tried.
The Australian Writers Centre held a competition in 2014 to find Australia’s best blogs, dividing entries into genres like Personal & Parenting, Lifestyle/Hobby, Food, Travel, Business, Commentary and Words/Writing. The competition attracted hundreds of entries which were whittled down to 31 finalists.

The AWC told FOMM it has since switched its focus to fiction competitions but has not dismissed the popularity of blogging. Even so, continuity is an ever-present issue.
The 2014 winner, Christina Sung, combined travel and cooking, two topics which spawn thousands of blogs worldwide, into The Hungry Australian. But as happens with blogs, the author has somewhat moved on since then. As Christina last posted in September 2016: ‘Hello, dear readers! Apologies for my lengthy absence but I’ve been working on a few writing projects lately’.
Likewise, the author of The Kooriwoman, the Commentary winner for a blog about life as an urban Aboriginal in Australia, has not posted since January 2016.
It is not uncommon for finely-written blogs like those mentioned to have a hiatus or disappear without notice, for a myriad of reasons linked to other demands and distractions in the authors’ lives.
The few lists of Australian blogs you can find tend to rank them on popularity (numbers of followers or clickers). The top 10 blogs in this list are all about food or travel.
http://www.blogmetrics.org/australia
Hands-down winner Not Quite Nigella is a daily blog curated by Lorraine Elliott who according to blogmetrics has 28,523 monthly visitors. It’s not hard to see why – the blog is constantly updated with recipes, restaurant reviews, travel adventures and the like, featuring mouth-watering photos and a chatty prose style.
So there are those like Lorraine who make a living from blogging and those who start with a skyrocket burst of enthusiasm and fall to ground like the burnt-out stick.
Whatever your absorbing passion in life happens to be – cross-dressing, wood-carving, wine-making, writing haikus, collecting Toby jugs, quilt-making, proofreading or growing (medicinal) marijuana, you can bet someone out there has created a blog.
Just yesterday for no reason other than a bit of light relief after months of heatwave conditions, I searched for ‘grumpy spouse blog’ and got 22 hits. Have a look at this one – it’s choice.

Dawe, Morrow and Gessen – Satire and The Rise Of Populism

Dawe-satire — Satirist Bryan Dawe (left) and comedian Julian Morrow at Integrity 20. Photo by Frances Harper

Actor/satirist Bryan Dawe has such a low-key, laconic approach to ‘giving a talk’ that the journalistic instinct to take notes deserted me. Dawe is the surviving half of the satirical act Clarke & Dawe, but he is much more than that. He told the audience at Griffith University’s Integrity 20 Summit that when it came to political satire, he and John Clarke had never been short of material over 25 years of producing their weekly TV show.

Dawe introduced one of his best-known satirical characters, boozy retired judge Sir Murray Rivers QC; Dawe as interviewer/straight man to Sir Murray’s confused bigot. His presentation was funny; funny and sad, as he often referenced his late partner in satire John Clarke, who died in April this year. Dawe’s ‘talk’ would have been illuminating for the year 11 and 12 students attending Integrity 20, as Dawe summarised his unhappy days at school where he left early after being told by a careers adviser he would not amount to anything because he came from the ‘wrong postcode’.

Dawe joined Julian Morrow of The Chaser and The Checkout for a discussion on satire, comedy and how to know when you’ve gone too far. When asked that question by panel chair Rebecca Levingston, both agreed that nothing was off limits.

While agreeing that one could satirise and make jokes about anything, Morrow conceded that The Chaser’s skits post-9/11 were “too soon”. Levingston prompted Morrow to revisit the time The Chaser (a TV satire show), penetrated security at the 2007 APEC conference in Sydney with a fake motorcade transporting a ‘Mr bin laden of Canada’. As Morrow recalled “We never expected to succeed.”

Both satirists agreed that there are powerful people who always try to have good satire shut down, probably because nothing is funnier than the truth, greatly exaggerated. The trick, said Dawe, was not to engage with critics, trolls and others whose power base was being diminished by The Chaser’s sharp sketches or by John Clarke’s familiar introduction: “Thanks for having me, Bryan.”

Bryan Dawe’s presentation was the ideal tone for Integrity 20’s afternoon session, which followed serious and at times contrary debate about hate speech, free speech, censorship, the global rise of populism and how to destroy democracy.

Masha-Gessen-populism — Masha Gessen, photo by Bengt Oberger, Wikipedia CC

You may have heard Richard Fidler on Conversations interviewing Masha Gessen, an exiled Russian American journalist and author. Her speech ‘How to Destroy Democracy’ and later contribution to a panel discussion on populism was a highlight of Integrity 20.

New York-based Gessen outlined the seven lessons in ‘imagining the worse’, in which the rise of populism destroys democracy. These include destroying the sense of participation, conspiracy myth-making, and engaging in the ‘forever war’, (which in the US means a 16-year war against ‘terrorism’, an unidentifiable foe, with no end point in sight).

Gessen, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, also referred to the way democracy could be destroyed simply by degrading language.

“Trump is a master at that. He lies and lies to convince you that something that’s not true is true. There’s no way for a journalist not to quote his lies.

“Trump says he’s the subject of a witch hunt when that’s the opposite of what he means. He creates word salad and makes it difficult to work out what it all means. It’s a direct assault on how we all live because language is the main tool we use to co-exist.”

Even while Gessen was articulating this I was thinking about former PM Tony Abbott’s ludicrous comments about goats, volcanoes and climate change. However daft the comments seemed, journalists had no option but to quote what he actually said at a climate conference in London.

As Ricky Gervais said this week in a thought-provoking tweet:

Some opinions are so stupid they hurt my feelings. But that’s my problem. It’s a person’s right to hold as stupid an opinion as they like. (@rickygervais):

A panel discussion followed on the global rise of populism. Panel chair Luke Stegemann summarised the rise of populism in countries including Italy, Poland, the UK, France and Germany. “Australia is not immune by any means,” he added, citing the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and how it taps into the frustrations, racism and bigotry of people who are angry about immigration and furious about globalisation and the perceived impact these issues have on their jobs.

One ought to keep in mind that populism − a movement for the people and against a privileged elite − can occur across a broad political spectrum. It is possible, as panellist Geoffrey Robertson QC observed, to have left-wing populism.

The origins of populism date back to the 1800s when rural peasants revolted against their robber baron landlords. Today it is more about polarising the electorate and pitting angry poor people against (poor and possibly angry) immigrants and asylum seekers.

The privileged elite seem to survive with wealth intact, whichever way the populist wind is blowing.

Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the common perception was that supporters of populism are racists and bigots.

“There is a racist fringe but the core of populism is about high inequality and why people don’t understand why politicians don’t listen.”

Geoffrey Robertson said young people were disenchanted about the rampant capitalism that democracy encourages. This was in response to Kleinfeld’s comment that only 52% of people aged 18 to 29 think it is preferable to live in a democracy. Robertson said the key threat imposed by populist leaders was the attempt to replace an independent judiciary with their own people.

Kleinfeld made comparisons between Donald Trump and outsider president Andrew Jackson (1828-1834), who enjoyed two terms and put his successor, Martin Van Buren, in place to ensure 12 years of a populist government.

The Atlantic made much of the Trump/Jackson similarities.

“Jackson, like Trump, won over many white working-class voters, who brushed aside critics who warned that he was unstable and a would-be dictator. He maintained their loyalty even though, like Trump, he was of the elite.”

I can’t recall who started it, but it seemed all panellists agreed that Trump, despite being widely reviled, would easily take another term in office. They didn’t say so, but it seems obvious that Trump has a like-minded and seemingly un-impeachable successor in Mike Pence sitting on the bench (wearing a Martin Van Buren t-shirt).

If you were not yet confused about populism and its multiple meanings, Cas Mudde, a professor at the University of Georgia, coined the phrase “thin ideology”. This means to merely set up a framework: pure people versus a corrupt elite. Thin ideology can be attached to all sorts of “thick” ideologies such as socialism, nationalism, anti-imperialism or racism.

I will leave it to the reader to decide what type of populism exists in Australia.

Monday I’ve got Friday on my mind

I leave you with a tribute to the late George Young, who co-wrote the song from which this essay takes its name. Young and co-writer Harry Vanda and their band The Easybeats had an international hit with Friday on My Mind in 1967. Here’s a terrific cover from Richard Thompson and band from the album 1000 Years of Popular Music. (Please don’t listen to the Bruce Springsteen version that comes up after that…Ed)

Thanks for having me, Bryan – a tribute to John Clarke

tribute-john-clarke — Cyclone Malcolm, image used with permission from the website mrjohnhclarke.com.

John Clarke has died of natural causes while bushwalking in Victoria’s Grampian Mountains. Clarke, best-known for the long-running ABC political skit Clarke & Dawe, was 68.

Sad way to start a week, hearing about the demise of Mr John Clarke, Dip Lid, PhD in Cattle (Oxen), advisor and comforter to various governments. Still, we like to think he is now having a celestial ale with the likes of Murray Ball, Bunny Walters and Phil Garland.

Clarke, the same age as your correspondent, initially found fame in his native New Zealand by creating the iconic gumboot-wearing, singlet-clad Kiwi farmer, Fred Dagg, father of seven boys, all named Trev.

John Clarke had a long and varied career in Australian film and television. He wrote film scripts, starred in films (he was the voice of Wal the dog in Footrot Flats), and was a regular on television in the 1980s and 1990s, including The Gilllies Report and a series he wrote and starred in, The Games.

He also wrote the original script for The Man Who Sued God, starring Billy Connolly. Don Watson wrote the final screenplay, but as movie reviewer David Stratton observed, Clarke’s ultra-dry approach to satire (exemplified in the Olympics spoof, “The Games”), can be detected at the heart of the film.

Clarke was best known for his ‘mockumentaries’ – satire in the form of the television interview. His long-running collaboration with Bryan Dawe first ran on the Nine Network in 1989 then was relaunched in 2000 on the ABC’s 7.30 Report.

For 27 years John Clarke and Bryan Dawe continued to broadcast a weekly satirical interview in which prominent figures spoke about matters of public importance. John pretended to be someone he wasn’t pretending to be and Bryan, the straight man, contained his frustration.

They outlived other ABC attempts at satire including The Roast, The Glass House and Good News Week, all axed or moved to short-lived stints on commercial TV.

Satire, rare as a hen’s pecker

Sharp, subtle satire is thin on the ground in Australia. Good written satire is rarer still. Toowoomba residents might remember Sir John Branscombe, a satirical writer of merit hiding behind a pseudonym and a pith helmet. Branscombe used clever anagrams to pillory 1980s-era politicians with his series of letters from the remote mountain village of Motowoboa, ruled by one King Elvic. It’s a shame no-one has revived this subtle style of satire, where you get away with a lot by inventing a Swiftian world that vaguely resembles the one you live in.

When Mad as Hell won a Logie in 2016, Anthony Morris (SBS) asked whether Australian satire was on its way back or too far gone to be saved. Morris took us back to 1966 when the Mavis Bramston Show won three Logies, arguably the last time we had good satire on Australian TV. Twenty years later came the Gillies Report (aided and abetted by John Clarke and Brian Dawe). The 1980s was a period when comedy spiced with satire prevailed – the Aunty Jack Show, the Norman Gunston Show, Rubbery Figures and Australia, You’re Standing In It.

“It’s easy to dismiss the Logies as a popularity contest,” writes Morris. “But comedy is meant to be popular – if nobody’s laughing, then it’s not working.”

“Put another way, Rove McManus has 16 Logies, including three Gold; The Chaser team has none.”

Last year, Mad as Hell and Gruen won Logies which sums up the state of satire in Australia, not counting in this context the Clarke & Dawe Thursday spot on the ABC.

When inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame in 2008, the then 60-year-old John Clarke typically quipped: “I’m inclined to regard this as a youth encouragement award. I’m deeply grateful and will do what I can.”

The final episode, maybe

Good evening Prime Minister and thank you for coming in at such short notice.

My pleasure, Bryan, or should I say my sadness for your loss.

Not just my loss Prime Minister, also John’s family and the people of Australia who admired his keen sense of political satire.

And his virile baldness, Bryan, although I never quite got his pretending to be me, or Tony, or Julia, or the little bloke from Queensland. He didn’t look like any of us or try to sound like us.

Yes but he got away with it through deadpan humour and taking on some of the traits of the person he was impersonating.

Quite, Bryan, but why am I really here?

We wanted to ask you about your trip to Papua New Guinea.

What trip to Papua New Guinea?

You know, across the waters from Cape York, where you keep asylum seekers locked away, out of sight and mind.

Oh that Papua New Guinea.

You’ve been accused of interfering in PNG’s sovereignty by visiting just a few days prior to a general election.

Well the ABC said that. I never said that.

They also said you were ‘tight-lipped’ over the fate of refugees held on Manus Island, even when a PNG court has ruled that their detention on Manus is illegal.

I don’t know about tight-lipped. It’s just the way God made my face.

You congratulated Papua New Guinea for making “significant progress” in resettling 1,000 asylum seekers who are in their fourth year in PNG. We’re hearing that fewer than 20 have been resettled, is that right?

Well I’m not there now, Bryan. It’s very hard to know what’s going on when you’re not actually boots on the ground in PNG. As they say in the Highlands, Mi no save nating long dispela samting! Nice touch providing Niugini Gold in the green room, by the way.

And then you went on to India for what were said to be business meetings. Was one of those meetings with executives from Adani?

Oh good try, Bryan. No, we try very hard to stay out of State government affairs and if Queensland wants Adani to build an export coal mine in their State, good luck to them I say.

So you did meet with Adani?

Don’t put words in my mouth Bryan. As I said, it is State government business, even though the Federal Environment minister has the last word on approvals.

So is he going to approve it?

Early days, Bryan. Early days. But now let me ask you a question.

Oh, well, why not?

Many of my colleagues have been fans of Clarke & Dawe, for years, Bryan, years. They have all the boxed sets from the ABC or their own private copies. Sometimes we watch replays before cabinet meetings. You’ve become famous, but now you’re a man down. What are you going to do about that?

Someone will step up, Prime Minister.

(Waggles eyebrows and makes like Groucho Marx). I like to follow the horses, Bryan. But the horses I like to follow also like to follow the horses.

Don’t give up your day job, Prime Minister. Thanks for coming in.

The pleasure and the sadness was all mine.