Oqurum

Wrapping up in Yogyakarta

On Sunday I return to Australia, having completed my thirteen month placement through Australian Volunteers International with local NGO the SATUNAMA Foundation.

It’s been an incredible year, packed with work and travel and good times. I’ve got more new friends than I care to count, and, especially in the past six months, feel like I’m part of a community here. It’s pretty hard to leave.

I’m satisfied that, as far as work is concerned, I’ve achieved the objectives that were set out for me by SATUNAMA. In addition, thanks to their generosity, I was able to assist some friends of mine in Taring Padi to set up a new blog, and to show them how to maintain it. Hopefully this means that their friends in Indonesia and around the world will be able to keep up-to-date with what they’re up to. There’s still some work to do on the blog (so I’ll be working right up until Friday), but it’s up and running.

This year has been chock-a-block. I’ve been to Anak Krakatau and Flores, and a fortnight ago fulfilled an objective to get up to the Dieng Plateau. I’ve DJ’d many times over the past few months, and been a collaborator in an exhibition. I helped out with the Festival Mata Air, and photographed subject matter from temples to Vespas (and, on one lucky occasion, both).

There’s a phrase that gets used by way of thanks for international volunteers that I’m not too fond of: ‘taking a year out from your life’. I don’t like it much because, as far as I’m concerned, this is my life. I hope that makes sense.

Yogyakarta is now like another home town for me, and I had to think about whether or not I’d stay for quite a while. Ultimately, I’m glad to be returning to Australia (not without some trepidation), but I know that when I come back it will be to a community of friends.

So, what’s next? I’m going to Perth for a week of catching up with family and friends, and then on to Sydney where, with any luck, I’ll get a bit of work as a lawyer again while completing a Master of International Law degree at the University of Sydney. That’ll take me up to July. Beyond that, who knows?

Back2Back: Love Hate Love vs Rewi

I was pretty pleased with the turnout to this new exhibition last night, at Survive Garage in Yogyakarta. I’d guess that over the night about 100 people passed through, at it’s peak there was probably about 60, spilling out into the streets. I do have some photos from the night, but for some reason I’m having trouble saving them to the blog, so if I get that fixed later I’ll add them.

I contributed a few photographs to this collaboration, which featured street artists from the Yogyakarta Art Crime (YORC) crew. Love Hate Love has been painting the streets since 2000, and he’s got a great crew, including Here and OYS. Their work for the exhibition included customizing a bunch of found objects as well as a few more formal pieces. The photos I contributed are from around Jogja, concentrating on Love Hate Love, and show the change in his style over that period.

Love Hate Love’s hiphop outfit Tawazun also played, along with a bunch of other collectives such as Noise of Terror. It turned out that I was their DJ for the set, which was… chaotic. One of the standout performances for mine was a MC who can’t have been more than about 10 years old. He only jumped up for one track, but he was right into it.

The cops were called in at about 9.30, and we were told to shut it down at 10.

Thanks heaps to Love Hate Love for suggesting we do this exhibition, to all the guys from the Yogyakarta Art Crime crew and to Bayu and all my friends from Survive Garage for hosting the event and helping out with all sorts of logistical things. Thanks also to Reza and Principle of South for the sound gear, and to all my friends who came down.

Those of you in Jogja can visit the exhibition until the 14th, at Survive Garage, Jalan Bugisan 11.

Reflections on conversations in Perth: part 2

The other big conversation point in my visit to Perth last Christmas concerned variations about nationalism in Australia.

One of my friends was decrying the lack of a national identity in Australia, or at least an identity with which he could identify. Comparing it to many, if not all, of the nations from which migrant families come to Australia, he considered the cultural identity of Australians to be impoverished. With no really identifiable national dress, or music, or even community cohesion, he considered Australia to be in a state of quiet yet sustained anxiety.

This, he thought, might explain why there is an increasingly yobbish aspect to nationalism in Australia: insecurity. (As an aside, a couple of my friends were speculating this week as to how it is that ‘Aussie larrikin’ has become ‘Aussie yobbo’. No firm answers have yet been forthcoming).

However, other friends think that, to the extent that nationalism was promoted and advanced over the previous decade, increasingly Australians are suspicious of and repulsed by overt nationalism. Compare this with the observations of another friend, who recalled Australia Day last year, at which a group of young men stood-over passers by and required them to kiss their copy of the Australian flag.

I confess to being slightly puzzled by the notion of ‘national pride’. I’m not sure how or if a ‘nation’ ever achieves anything. Certainly, people residing within the borders of a nation achieve things, either individually or collectively, but what does a nation coherently and collectively achieve?

In addition, it strikes me that nationalism is as much about exclusion as it is about coherence, perhaps even more so. The idea of a ‘nation’ isn’t so different from any other form of exclusivity, it’s just a matter of scale and the nature of the exclusion/inclusion that occurs. Arguably, ‘patriotism’, a word used by some to distinguish their national pride from the more pejorative ‘nationalism’, sustains this exclusivity: ‘patriotism’ is still to a nation, which must still be exclusive.

Is it nationalism or patriotism that leads people to get tattoos of the Southern Cross on various parts of their bodies? What do these tattoos represent to the people who get them? There is no question that there is an increasing prevalence of such tattoos across Australia.

I, for one, am not particularly concerned if (and I think this is a matter of some dispute in any case) there is a paucity of national identity in Australia. I’m not convinced that nationalism is something worth advancing, and surely ‘national identity’ and ‘nationalism’ must go hand in hand.

Even if the only options are a choice between aggressive nationalism and cultural anxiety, I’ll take the latter. Surely, though, there are other options. I know plenty of people who are quite content in Australia without missing any specific national cultural identifiers. Indeed, many openly reject those identifiers that have been given increased attention over the past ten years. They feel no inferiority for a lack of these symbols, nor are they intimidated by the strength of the cultural reference points of Australia’s migrant communities. Indeed, they celebrate this diversity.

If Australia were to remain or become less than a cohesive hybrid community and more a peacefully coexisting collection of communities, would this really detract from our status as a ‘nation’?

Private surveillance

In the light of suggestions that Japanese whalers have, through a third party, hired aircraft to conduct surveillance on anti-whaling group Sea Shephed, the ABC reports that Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is seeking legal advice on the issue.

Professor Don Rothwell has already said, though, that there seems little recourse under existing law to stop Australian airspace from being used in this way.

Now, maybe some people would prefer that such activities not be conducted, and see something sinister at play. They may be right.

But, then, a broader question arises concerning private surveillance generally.

The issue appears to be whether or not a private person, in this case in the form of a corporation or other entity, should be able to use private resources to undertake surveillance of persons they feel may act contrary to their interests. In this case, such surveillance probably wasn’t as covert as it sometimes can be: it’s pretty hard to see how civil aircraft circling the Southern Ocean could be effectively concealed.

If we’re really worried about such private covert surveillance, though, surely such concern should extend to a whole range of ways in which private persons engage investigators to covertly monitor the activities of their competitors, their former spouses, and for any number of other reasons. If we’re going to draw a line on such activity, where should it lie?

Reflecting on conversations in Perth: part 1

Visiting Perth in the last week of December was reassuring politically in a couple of respects.

I had been concerned about the election of Tony Abbott to the leadership of the Federal Liberal Party. My concern centred on a belief that there is an undercurrent of conservatism and, frankly, selfishness in a significant proportion of the electorate that could be swung by Mr Abbott’s ideology and personality. I still think that there is a section of the community that his brand of conservatism caters to, but have been comforted by a few key points made by friends in Australia.

There appears to be a strong argument to be made that Australians, or at least sufficient numbers of them, have moved away from being easily led by the politics of fear and hate. The dog whistle isn’t as effective as it once was. Personally, I hope this is true. Over the past decade it has been a little depressing feeling that the country was slipping ever deeper into a pattern of concurrent dark nationalism and a certain kind of triumphalist denigration of difference.

If it is true, this suggests that the people who might be affected by the kinds of messages about asylum seekers that the Liberal Party is sending, or on climate change, are almost certainly already in their base of primary voters. It also means that liberal voters are theirs for the losing, at least on the primary vote if not in preferences as well.

There’s a fair row to hoe before the next election, which in my opinion should now not be early (whereas as late as last October I was in the early election camp), but it seems that Labor has every reason to remain confident. There is still a chance, I think, that the poll could be a fair bit closer than it seems now, but some signs support a quiet self-assurance.

Apart from anything else, Tony Abbott’s hold on the leadership is tenuous at best. As was pointed out to me, if the spill had included the two new members for Bradfield and Higgins (or even the caucus member who was away sick), it likely wouldn’t have gone his way. This line of reasoning does discount the very significant rift within the left of the Liberal Party which occurred as a result of Malcolm Turnbull’s breathtaking last minute candidacy in the spill, and presumes that at some future date either he or Joe Hockey will reconcile themselves to allowing the other the leadership. Whether this can happen before the election is anyone’s guess.

I had also started to come to the view that Labor should ditch its plan to reintroduce the CPRS legislation in February. My reasoning was that the failure of Copenhagen effectively handed the Opposition a ‘See, we were right’ line. However, I now see a pretty big upside to pressing on: the basic principle is still right. Either we’re doing something, rather than nothing, about climate change or we’re vacating the field to the denialists.

More to the point, the divisions within the Opposition about whether we should be acting now still exist. If there is any debate which is likely to bring on further leadership tension it is this one.

The debate will need to shift slightly though, I suspect. There’s no question that the Opposition will lead with crowing about the failure of Copenhagen. But behind this will come the argument that even if something must be done, this CPRS is not the answer. I think this might be the kind of rationale that those Liberal Senators who support action on  climate change use as the basis for opposing the legislation and supporting the Opposition’s policy on the issue. The Government will have to be quite convincing on the merits of its scheme if it hopes to either peel off the Liberal Senators it needs or to provoke further internal disruption.

In the meantime, it will be good to see some results from the Government’s programs in infrastructure and education start to bear some fruit this year. We can expect the media to continue to develop the argument that if we exclude Labor’s excellent response to the global recession then there’s not much to be said for its record. This is a spurious argument, and one that deserves to be corrected vigourously.

Regarding Western Australia, it is pleasing to see that Eric Ripper’s leadership of the party remains strong and that the Party is working hard on building its team into a force to be reckoned with at the next election.  While it remains the case that there hasn’t been a one-term government since Tonkin, the only way to test that record is through discipline and hard work. Stranger things have happened: Colin Barnett winning in 2008 being one stand-out example.

Apologies again to all my Perth friends that I didn’t get to catch up with this time. It was probably the wrong time of year, what with family commitments and so forth. Next time!

So, it’s been a while…

In truth, I’ve been wondering what I would write about next for some time. I could have given my views on the ongoing problems regarding the Federal Liberal leadership, but, really, what more is there to say on that score? After all, there was a point in the time I worked for the Western Australian government at which I swore off schadenfreude.

It took a quite special event to spark me once more into action.

I had been enjoying another great night in Jogja, last Saturday. The frequency with which I’ve been DJing is on the increase, and at the moment there is an inordinate amount of action about the town. The Yogyakarta Biennale opened at Taman Budaya Yogyakarta on Friday night (I half-forgot, half-intentionally didn’t take my camera, so sorry if you’re expecting photos), and there is naturally a heightened degree of activity surrounding it.

On Saturday night I played at the Jogja National Musuem for the opening of that venue, in particular for the opening of the Taring Padi art collective’s room there (there will be more about Taring Padi soon). I was asked to play a punk/rock/metal set, and was happy to oblige.

From there, I headed to Benting Vredeberg (Vredeberg Gate, a Dutch era fort) to play an indie/pop set for a private party.

Finally, I went to the widely renowned Bintang Café to watch a couple of bands, one rockabilly (from Magelang), the other blues.

I thought, as I was riding my friend Venus (who I thank for the photo below) home, that it had been a pretty good night, but not that much better than so many of the weekends here. I was concerned, slightly, about the fact that two nights previously the chain on my bike had come off, and renewed my resolve to have the machine serviced in the next couple of days.

Then, as I changed gear turning a question, the bike came to a sudden and unexpected halt in the middle of three lanes of traffic. I had to lift the rear end in order to wheel it to the side of the road as cars and bikes came hurtling around the corner.

The chain was twisted and completely mangled.

Two guys appeared seemingly from nowhere, and asked what the problem was. I showed them. There was some discussion with Venus to which I was a witness. Two more guys appeared, with tools. They set to work.

Eventually, at about 1am, they removed the chain and it was clear that it needed to be replaced. One of them took me on the back of their bike to a nearby roadside kiosk where we woke the man sleeping waiting for business to buy a new chain. They returned to work.

It was clearly going to take a while, so Venus hopped in a taxi at about 1.30. The chain was too long, so a couple of them headed off to get a replacement.

A waria (wanita (woman) + pria (man)) approached me with the unsurprising opening gambit of ‘Hey Mister’. After some very polite conversation and a little crude suggestiveness on her part, she left.

Several passers by stopped for a bit of a chat with the guys, much joking about ensued, none of it obviously at my expense, but who knows, really? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Finally, at about 3am, the bike was ready to go again. I felt a very high level of gratitude and amazement that these guys would just set to work fixing a complete stranger’s motor bike for three hours in the middle of the night without once asking for money. I rewarded them at a level equivalent to that gratitude and amazement. Since then, one of my colleagues has suggested that in similar circumstances I might have been robbed. Maybe I just got very, very lucky.

But I prefer to think of this as just yet another reason that I love it here in Jogja. And here’s a picture.

WTF indeed.

Latest victory in campaign for Safety First

The True and Just of Western Australia have scored another victory for the forces of Safety over the perils of freedom, and in this have no greater Crusader than Western Australian Liberal Peter Abetz.

Western Australians have long ago denounced the maxim that ‘the price of freedom is eternal vigilance’, preferring to substitute it with the far more appropriate ‘decent families need protection from thugs’.

Truer words have been spoken.

Peter Abetz has quite rightly pointed out that Western Australia is in a state of near anarchy. An economy that is merely growing rather than booming, rocketing wages and higher than median growth in house and grocery prices are all signs of a society in turmoil. A queue of resource projects scheduled to tip more revenue into the economy can only signal one thing: a lack of confidence in a society that more and more resembles a failed state.

How long would it be, without firm measures, before mindless acts of thuggery practiced by a few drunken louts could turn into open pitched street battles between armed revolutionaries and the Forces of Safety? We at oqurum.com don’t care to find out.

That’s why it is so refreshing to point out, as Mr Abetz has so ably done, that what Western Australians need and want is the kind of approach taken by the National Socialist regime.

‘When it comes to the crunch, people prefer to be safe than to have freedom,’ Mr Abetz said in Parliament.

How right he is!

There is nothing like the Iron Fist of the State hammering down on its citizens to ensure meek compliance. Western Australians have given up on the notion of personal responsibility, have resigned themselves to the utter failure of a sense of community instilling peaceful social relationships. What they want is for the state to tell them how to relate to one another, and to do so through inculcating Fear of Reprisals.

Mr Abetz points out that it was a state of anarchy, surely comparable to that extant in Western Australia, that led to the rise of National Socialism.

Thankfully we don’t have to wait for fascism to save us.

We have the majority of our Members of the Western Australian Parliament.

Demonstration to support the Indonesian anti-corruption commission, the KPK

One of the things you get told quite early on when coming to live and work in Indonesia is that it is preferable that you not attend any political rallies or demonstrations, let alone participate in one. It’s also considered pushing the boundaries even further to take photographs of such a demonstration.

So it was with this warning firmly relegated to the back of my mind that I set off to a demonstration march today, held to support the KPK, Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission. You see, there’s been a bit of a scandal here of late. Apparently, the KPK was investigating somewhat underhand dealings at high levels of government. These investigators were allegedly later implicated as a result of a conspiracy to undermine their position. These officials have been required to stand down pending the outcome of this episode. The whole thing is exceptionally messy. However it is very clear that there is a groundswell of support for the KPK officials involved, including a facebook page which is seeking 1,000,000 supporters. They’ve got over 180,000 so far.

I had some friends who were going, so I thought that if I tagged along with them I’d be fine.

I turned up at about the appointed hour, met one of my colleagues and stood with the assembled crowd waiting the all clear from the traffic police who were there to facilitate the march. Cameras were going off everywhere, and I found myself the subject of several close-up photos taken by non-demonstrating gentlemen who certainly weren’t wearing any police uniforms. Those of you who’ve read other posts here would know that I’m opposed to generally pervasive surveillance measures in any society, but the truth is that I would have been surprised if my photo wasn’t taken today. Nonetheless, my level of apprehension did increase somewhat.

Our protest leaders were yelling and chanting through truck-mounted loudspeakers, including statements such as that we should not respond to provocation. Righto, I thought. Then another voice came over the loudspeakers that were mounted to the walls of the nearby bus station. I was advised that this was someone speaking in favour of the police, and it was clearly this person’s intention to drown out the pro-KPK demonstrators. Apprehension kicked up another notch.

I spied another group of demonstrators about fifty metres away, and thought they were waiting for a gap in the traffic to join us. It turned out that they were a counter-demonstration, who were given permission to march ahead of us, but only to stop a little down the road where we would be passing. Much aggressive yelling from the pro-KPK mob at the others in a manner that might be considered a little hostile.

Again came the pleas to reject provocation. Rewi begins to assess exits.

I have seen a little violence here, it must be said. Sometimes, as is the case all around the world, a couple of idiots will want to get into a fight at a gig. But here, at least, you get a little bit of warning about when to expect violence.

I’ve been told that one sure sign is when you see people wearing their motorbike helmets while walking around in a crowd. I haven’t been told that spotting large bamboo poles sharpened to a point at one end is another sign, but something, let’s call it instinct, put me on edge about that as well.

So it was thus forewarned that I decided to take my motorbike helmet along with me, rather than leave it with my bike. I didn’t wear it, but, you know, just in case…

Now, I’ll put you all out of your suspense and tell you that all of this amounted to a highly peaceful and well-organized protest march. There was no hint of violence during the entire event. The marchers stopped periodically, including for a bit of oratory outside the office of the Governor of Yogyakarta, and finally near the Post Office. More speeches were given, and an artist did an impromptu painting/performance which included mock-hanging himself from a lamp post.

Sure, possibly there were more police officers taking video and photographic footage of the event than might be the case in Australia. Or, possibly, Australian police are just more surreptitious about it. In any event, the demonstrators got their view across and vastly outnumbered their opponents.

Maybe it’s not as sexy as a protest-gone-wrong story, but I find it immensely satisfying to report that a few hundred people were able to peacefully assemble and demonstrate their strongly held views on a political issue of vital importance to their country.

Email to Prime Minister Rudd re: Copenhagen

If you would also like to send an email to the Prime Minister on this or any other subject, you’ll find the form through clicking ‘Continue’ on this page.

Dear Prime Minister [I may have accidentally neglected to include this salutation in the form I sent to the PM. Whoops.],

Against a backdrop of diminishing hope for a sufficiently strong Framework Agreement at Copenhagen, I found myself disappointed on hearing reports of the Treasurer’s position at the recent meeting of G20 Finance Ministers regarding establishing a fund for technology transfer and mitigation measures for developing countries. These measures are vital if those nations are to avoid industrialization of a form similar to that which we have benefited from in Australia and which has led to us being one of the highest per capita emitters of polluting gases in the world.

The Treasurer’s position on this issue was expressed just days after you made your widely reported, strong attack on climate change deniers. I, and many others, have been heartened by that attack. I have been, unfortunately, disheartened by the Government’s approach to the G20 meeting.

I have already resigned myself to the prospect of Copenhagen delivering no more than each nation agreeing to attempt to meet their own domestically established targets. From what I understand of the views of eminent scientists, this will at best increase the pressure that we all will face in future years to make deeper and more significant cuts in emissions. From what I have read, each year we delay in making such cuts increases the levels to which we must cut in the future.

Prime Minister, the greatest concern to me of such an eventuality is the very low target set at the bottom end of the Government’s 5-25% range. If this range has been proposed on the basis that the Government will accept a higher target so long as this is the result of Copenhagen, but no such agreement seems likely, it would appear that we are destined to only a 5% target in Australia.

Surely we can do better than that?

I appreciate that there are many pragmatic considerations that your Government must take into account. Yet I cannot accept that a target of 5% cuts by 2020 is the best we can do, with or without an international agreement for agreed international targets.

I urge you to consider a target that is at least in the middle of that range: absent a binding agreement to international targets, 15% by 2020 would appear to be a reasonable starting point. It will, I suspect, meet the test of pleasing no-one and thus suggesting that the Government has ‘got the balance about right’.

Manuva #4 presented by Principle of South

I think I neglected to mention that one of the great outcomes of performing at Festival Mata Air a month ago (really? already?) was meeting the organizers and some of the talent from the Yogyakarta based organization ‘Principle of South’. My friend Tim, who plays by the name DJ Deathbeetle, introduced me to the crew, including producer Gato and now Manager Rie Ri.

We got to chatting about performing and after what seemed like a very short period of time Gato informed me that I was now a part of Principle of South. It turns out that this means they’re my agent for gigs around town, and have already secured me two slots in the intervening time. One was at a party a couple of weeks ago, and the latest is tonight. In fact, I’ve had to turn back an offer or two due to other commitments.

All very pleasing indeed. Thanks should especially go to Jude, who brought over my iDJ desk in April without which it’s pretty unlikely things would have gone quite so well. Principle of South have an iDJ of their own, but there’s nothing quite like the familiarity of your own equipment.