Isobel Blackthorn's Blog, page 44

the magic of writing

For me, writing fiction is all about trusting the imagination. Out of that darkness emerge all sorts of surprises and happy accidents. It’s as if hidden in the depths the story is already complete, and it’s up to me to bring it into the light of day. Whoever it is in me who creates these stories knows far more than I do.

Creative people are often required to appear humble and self-effacing, receiving all praise with bowed head, when really such praise isn’t humbling at all, it’s gratifying. What is humbling is the relationship we have with this other creative entity within, one that eclipses the ego entirely and makes us slaves to our craft.

I believe this is where the ideas of automatic writing and channelling come from. If I were to give my creative self a name and claim��a special relationship with this superior being, claim that she was somehow extraneous to me, ironically I would have fallen foul of my own ego. I would have attached special importance to something that exists in all of us and is owned by none of us. It’s simply a question of gaining access and to do that is hard work as any artist will tell you, for many skills must be acquired, an artistic trade learned.

All I know is this relationship is the most precious thing on earth. This is what makes us fully human. I pay homage every time I pick up the pen.

I might have written more but my neighbour has someone in felling a tree in her garden. There’s something about the sound of a chain saw…

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: artists, creativity, imagination, the muse, writing

Welcome to Australia

I woke this morning at about five o’clock to the sound of cock crows and magpie chortles, knowing that my third piece, Welcome to Australia, would��appear in On Line Opinion�� today.

It’s a controversial piece and in the pre-dawn darkness I feared some would misread it and accuse me of being anti-Australian. Then I thought that if they did, it would only serve to strengthen one of the themes.

My thoughts wandered on to all the different sorts of people who are against our treatment of asylum seekers. From human rights lawyers such as Julian Burnside, to doctors, actors, musicians, writers, teachers, religious��groups and social advocates, Liberal voters, Labor voters, Greens voters, all sorts of people motivated by all sorts of factors.

The bottom line for all of us is that we care.

Why do I care? What motivates me? Before the break of dawn I recalled my relatively late entry into the asylum-seeker cause. It was entirely the result of investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein’s book,��Profits of Doom.��A fast-paced read taking the reader from Curtin to Christmas Island, then on to PNG and beyond. Of concern to Loewenstein is the role that transnational corporations such as Serco and G4S and Transfield play in the detention of asylum seekers. He calls them vulture capitalists. I think that’s an apt description.

And such corporations don’t restrict themselves to running detention centres. They run our railways, our hospitals, our courts, our prisons, our defence services, anything in fact that governments outsource. Even, if our government has its way, Medicare.

I can only conclude that asylum seekers held in indefinite detention are profiting these vulture corps in exactly the same way as we profit the very same corporations the moment we hop on a train. Corporations who also profit from our taxes, which our governments hand over in payment for their services.

Asylum seekers are the ultimate victims of this system. Like prisoners, the longer they are there, and the more of them there are, the greater the corporate profit.

Yet there is no separation here. We are all victims of the same system.

I think that is why I am so passionate about the mandatory detention of asylum seekers. They are lambs, sacrificed in the name of a dollar god.

If you are interested, you can check out my other writing by following this link to��Asylum. Or poke around my blog. Cheers, Isobel
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: antony loewenstein, asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, boat people, globalisation, illegals, neoliberalism, profits of doom, refugees

Necessary journalism, say the greyhounds!

I wasn’t going to say anything about the greyhound baiting revelations on ABC’s 4 Corners Monday night. It turned my stomach. I thought it a terrific piece of investigative journalism. What it must have taken to film all that!

 

Then last night on 7.30 Report I listened to Liberal Senator Chris Back stating that he had drafted��a Bill that would require that the source material be handed over to some ‘authority’ within 5 days of acquisition, arguing that such handovers would expedite action to stop whatever it is that is going on.

He’s assuming of course, that said authority has no vested interest and is immune from corruption and has the capacity to take such swift action.

Meanwhile, whistleblowers and journalists beware!

No journalist gaining access to any material that might harm the reputation of any organisation will be allowed to hold onto that material and produce a film that explores and probes the issue in question.

There is a reason why this freedom exists for journalists, this ability to investigate behind the scenes then reveal to the public their findings.

It is not to create a sensation, although a sensation is often the result.

It is to expose hidden truths, hold the corrupt to account, help keep all pockets of society, especially those beyond the reach of ordinary citizens, in check.

If this Bill is passed, journalists will be forced to hand over source material to a government or other authoritative body whose job it will be to investigate the matter.

The potential for corruption and suppression of truth is enormous.

In other words, if this Bill passes we will most likely only get authorised, sanitised, heavily redacted versions of events, those that our government of the day wants us to see.

I thought that sort of censorship and control of the media was evident in countries with dictatorial or totalitarian styles of governance. Those with appalling human rights records.

Not Australia.

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Chris Back, dystopia, Four Corners, freedom of speech, greyhound baiting, Mainstream media, social democracy, totalitarianism, Whistleblowers

Welcome to Australia

I’m Australian, a migrant, a ten pound Pom in fact. Like all migrants I feel half in half out, as if I’ll always have at least a toe wedged in the door marked exit. Not that I would wish to return to my homeland, for what would I do there? Who would I know? Besides, my children are here, my immediate family are here, so here I must stay. And I do like it here, even though I think the nation takes itself too seriously. I’m convinced if we stopped trying to prove to the world that we matter, we would matter a whole lot more. There is much grace in simply being. I think the true custodians of this land could teach us this, and a lot more besides.

I was dismayed to see trending on facebook that��Egypt is bombing IS targets in Libya. With Jordan already in the fray, I’m concerned that the Middle East will crumble, leaving Saudi (bleach clean hands raised in a pretence of obsequious loyalty) and Iran. I am reminded yet again of the fine and ancient cultures, the sophistication and grace of the people, beautiful people and their gifts old and new, perishing.

Of course our impeccable Prime Minister, ever on the hunt for new ways to oppress those fleeing the bombs, the rape, the torture, is now threatening to instantly reject asylum seekers without documentation. (You forgot? Too much of a hurry you say? Bad luck mate. Goodbye.)

Tony likes to be tough. He thinks it proves he matters.

Meanwhile, also trending on facebook is the news that a man has ejaculated (allegedly) on a woman at St Kilda festival.

Charming. That, too, is no way to prove you matter.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, boat people, Egypt, illegals, ISIS, Libya, nature of humanity, refugees, Tony Abbott

Abbott’s barrow of inhumanity

I realise I have a number of Liberal supporters in my friendship network. I am not Liberal in a political sense, but I understand and respect those who are. If I didn’t, then I couldn’t in the next breath champion social democracy. A pluralistic society includes a wide range of views/beliefs/party affiliations and so on.

Having said that, I cannot condone our current leadership. Yes, all politicians are apt to be very one-sided, to push their own barrows and in so doing make��all the other barrows seem full of falsehoods and bad policies.

Abbott, however, is beyond the pale.

And he’s back to his old self. His attack on the Human Rights Commissioner yesterday took my breath away. All aggressive accusations, his defence packed with lies and omissions. He was vitriolic and entirely inappropriate. His reaction was so strong it echoed reactions of despots.

In People of the Lie, Scott Peck said the defining attributes of an evil person are the capacity to lie, and an unwavering belief in those own lies, and to deny, as if in righteous innocence, those lies. Out of that denial, comes the attack/defend dynamic.

I think Abbott displays these attributes. I find him verbally abusive, in much the same way as a perpetrator of domestic violence.

Malcolm Fraser is with me on the same page, and I have included his press release in full here:

“���Enough is enough���

The government had the Australian Human Rights Commission���s report on children in detention on 11 November last year. They have tabled it on the last possible day. It is now clear that the attacks made on the Commission, especially by senior ministers, has been designed to make it easier for the government to ignore the Commission���s report.

The government’s response is a disgrace. It is based on a lie. They claim to have saved lives by stopping the boats and that the trauma inflicted on children by detaining them, is a small price to pay. They deliberately chose an inhumane way of stopping the boats.

If the Australian Government worked with our regional neighbours and the UNHCR, to process people humanely in offshore processing centres in Malaysia or Indonesia, then there would be no market for people smugglers. Refugees would be flown to their final destination. This is not supposition or hearsay. This was the policy model adopted during the exodus of refugees fleeing Indochina following the Vietnam War. It would work again.

The real question for the government is why did they choose to do this, despite the trauma and harm done to hundreds of children, when there was a decent and proven way of achieving a much better result.

The attack on the integrity of the Human Rights Commission and its President is only to be expected of this government, who uses bullying as their default tactic. The attack is consistent with the way the government has approached legal decisions that have gone against it. This government has also refused to listen to our highest Court, undermining the rule of law and ignoring International Law.

The only conclusion we can really draw is that the inhumanity inflicted on these children is part of a policy of deterrence, which the government has pursued relentlessly. Australians needs to understand that this government has chosen an inhumane path when a compassionate path was available to it.”

Rt Hon Malcolm Fraser AC CH

I’m not a politician.��I’ve explored the issue of asylum seekers here on my blog, in articles such as The moral descent of Australia’s policy on asylum seekers.��in which I��assert that the asylum seeker strategy amounts to,��“an ideological war…, one in which the victims of war and persecution in their own lands have become the victims of a war playing out in ours.

Under attack is the very fabric of our morality. We are being systematically conditioned into accepting the cruel treatment of others as necessary and inevitable…”

I also voice my views��in my novel Asylum, available in Ebook format at

Smashwords

Amazon

and all major distributers.

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, boat people, fiction, government, illegals, literary fiction, Malcolm Fraser, novel, social democracy, Tony Abbott, women's fiction

What does it take to care about asylum?

The only horror most of us are prepared to watch is via our movie screens. If we took the time to put ourselves��in an asylum seeker’s shoes with one droplet of empathy and a tiny bit of imagination, we’d be mimicking Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Meanwhile, asylum seekers are taking extreme measures to protest their incarceration. A hunger strike is no small thing.

Yesterday I received word from a friend on the ground. She said the temporary protection visas, the ever-present threat of being rendered stateless or deported back to certain torture and death was so horrendous, case workers and volunteers were in despair.

How much resilience can we expect of people?

For how long do we expect such cruelty to go on?

Every day I read harrowing reports from those in detention centres. I read as well the anguish and desperation��in the hearts of those front-line volunteers who visit asylum seekers regularly.

I hear too, the frustration voiced by so many that we as a society are not doing enough. We are failing in the eyes of the world, and we are failing in the eyes of our own people.

Stand up Australia! Pledge support! Do something, anything to let the asylum seekers and their supporters know you care.

Why? Why bother? Because doing nothing makes us little better than those who turned their backs on the concentration camps and pretended they were not there.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, boat people, illegals, refugees, trauma

ASYLUM will be released in days!!

I am delighted to announce the forthcoming release of ASYLUM in both Kindle and e-pub formats. I just had a preview of the Kindle version and it looks terrific! Far, far superior to reading a blog post.

I am grateful to all the followers of my blog for engaging with the serialised version of ASYLUM and to those who urged me to publish an e-book version instead, which is more polished than the blog version.

ASYLUM is over three years in the making. It is my first novel and one I feel close to, not least because it contains the theme of asylum seekers, juxtaposed with hapless Yvette Grimm, a visa overstayer struggling to find her��way��in Australia as she waits for her residency application to be decided.

You can read more about ASYLUM��here.

And many thanks to Geoff Brown at Cohesion Press for making the publishing process a breeze.

 

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: antony loewenstein, asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, boat people, illegals, profits of doom

Writers for social justice

I missed out on modern history at school and confess that for decades I shied away from gaining much knowledge of the rise of fascism as it all seemed too ugly, too horrific, to delve into.

Now I’m finding it hard to put down Anna Funder’s All That I Am, a novel based on real events in the��period between WWI and II, when Hitler rose to power and those on the Left, the communists and socialists of all stripes, were purged. The captured were rounded up and put in prisons until there were so many that concentration camps were created to house them. ��Thousands of journalists, writers, poets, activists and intellectuals fled Germany to live in exile as refugees in bordering states. Denied the right to work, these refugees existed on air. And they were forbidden from political activism of any kind. Breaking this rule meant deportation. ��

Many were made stateless. Others were hunted down and killed in exile.

They were dangerous revolutionary times, when humanitarianism was pitted against ugly despotic power.

A similar sort of energy hangs over the world right now. An intensification of power and control versus the revolutionary spirit. The rise of neo-Nazi far-right parties throughout Europe with an equally if not more powerful rise of the Left. Not the Left of old. Something new and fresh is emerging, populist in flavour, youthful, visionary, determined to represent the people, not ideology. Anti-austerity movements emerging in Greece, in Spain, in Italy, and even, in its own way, in Queensland, Australia.

The road ahead for these movements will be fraught, but out of goodwill, out of hope, out of respect, I shall not add my voice to analysis and criticism before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves.

Meanwhile, the old-school persists in habits that have long since been discredited. The treatment of refugees a case in point.

Rounding up refugees (asylum seekers) and putting them in off-shore detention centres is somehow worse than what Hitler did. Those seeking asylum, the same sorts of people that were purged by Hitler (with his lists), the��journalists, writers, poets, activists and intellectuals, having already fled persecution, are being imprisoned without trial and tortured, not by their own country, but by ours. There’s something so nightmarish about it. For anyone held captive it is a horror on an epic scale. And here we stand, yet more journalists, writers, poets, activists and intellectuals, risking our own freedoms under new anti-terror and surveillance laws, speaking out on behalf of common humanity.

Anna Funder’s All That I Am is well-researched and factually based. Her contribution to our awareness of that era is profound.

In my own small way I have attempted to do the same. My forthcoming novel Asylum, is situated against a backdrop of events occurring at the time of writing, of asylum seeker boat turn backs, of wretched conditions on��Manus and Nauru, and of the intractable cruelty of the Department of Immigration (and border protection).

(Asylum will be available in e-book format in February 2015).

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: AlexisTsipras, All That I Am, Anna Funder, asylum, asylum seekers, boat people, concentration camps, Dora Fabian, Ernst Toller, Gestapo, human rights watch, illegals, Podemos, Power, Queensland election 2015, Syriza, war

Abbott the Abuser?

More than seven hundred asylum seekers on Manus Island continue on hunger strike over resettlement fears, some sewing together their lips, others swallowing razor blades. It’s a dramatic mass act of protest and despair that is gaining global media attention.

19 Jan 2015

Meanwhile, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre posted a press release on their website��stating that, ”the Abbott government is about to become the first government in Australian history to knowingly ��and deliberately let an asylum seeker die in their care.

A young Iranian man in a Darwin detention centre has now gone a total of 76 days without food. Days from death. Lost 30 kilos. Lost all hope. Abbott plans to let him die.





Today, he told us that he fled Iran to escape being locked up and tortured ��� only to suffer the same fate in Australia.

We call on the Abbott government for an Act of Compassion. They can relieve his suffering and save his life by releasing him into Community Detention immediately.”

This could be me, you, anyone in fact born into an unhappy fate. My head hangs in shame of my government, in shame of my country.

I hear some say in the face of domestic violence and child abuse, ”you must forgive, otherwise you will end up bitter.” – What do we do in the face of ongoing violence and abuse meted out to asylum seekers by our abusive��government, a scenario in which many of us feel the agony of bearing witness? Am I to forgive? Of course not. Am I too forget, push aside as too damaging to my own psyche? Nope.

Those of us who stand in solidarity are crucified, our flesh weeping blood from so many nails as our friends on the other side of the fence are violated, tortured and oppressed every day.

Acceptance of violence and abuse always happens after the fact. I may not forgive the perpetrator but I can find acceptance in my heart, for I cannot undo time, regret is futile and I would not wish to give the perpetrator the additional satisfaction of ruining my whole life. While the violence and abuse continue however, there is no acceptance. There is only an agony of heart. There is only the awareness that we exist inside a living hell, a hell equal to all the other living hells, from the Inquisition to the Nazi death camps.

There will always be those who condone or even approve of the internment camps, just as there were those who approved of the Inquisitors.

I’m always amazed by how many who choose to stand on the side of the abusers, the perpetrators, those prepared to deny the horrors, the truths. Mothers who blame��their daughters for the bruises on their faces, bruises from marital punches. Citizens who vilify victims of terror for fleeing the bombs, the bullets and the blades.

As I hang from the nails embedded in my flesh, my wounds weep all the more knowing this.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum seekers, Australia, boat people, child abuse, domestic violence, Hunger strike, illegals, Inquisition, Manus Island, Nazi death camps, Perpetrators, Resettlement fears, Tony Abbott, trauma

Radicalisation and a kiss

Happy 2015! What a jolly time of it the powers that be are having – Obama and Cameron posturing like ancient philosophers on the problem of radicalisation and how to combat (combat?) hardline ideologies. LMAO – Mirror mirror on the wall…

Islamic fundamentalism grows in catch up with Christian fundamentalism and neoconservative/neoliberal fundamentalism.

There, I’ve answered it for you in a nutshell. But let me explain, in case you don’t get it yet Mr O and Mr C, (although I’m certain you get it very very well):

In a reality of linear and concrete��thinking, where in Scripture this and that is taken to be literally true, fundamentalism will always beget fundamentalism.

Meanwhile hardline neoliberal policies of post GFC austerity beget a downtrodden populace, a populace with a dim yet tangible sense that they’ve been conned. (You will have heard the term bankster Mr O and Mr C?)

As ever, the two extremes, Christian and Islamic, foment each other, and as the pot is stirred by Western Supremacism (your way or the highway, eh), the utterly disaffected become so pissed off they’ll take up a bomb or a gun. It’s an obvious response. Happy days, say the Crusaders.

Radicalisation exists because we have a word for it, our gluttonous media slavering over every ounce of it. Hat’s off to the think tanks for this latest bit of spin in this new wave of propaganda. My, how adept you must think you are! Adept at creating thought wars, the battleground a dense fog, a miasma. Must be a fun job that.

Woo hoo say the corporations, circling vultures, waiting to swoop and eat their fill as cities fall and people flee. There’s the arms trade, there are the government contracts, there’s the private militia/security business, there’s the reconstruction, and there are the billions of dollars of profit to be made out of asylum seeker detention centres. It’s a bonanza.

Yet��two women kiss and canoodle and are thrown out of a cafe in Vienna, and the owner is forced to apologise after over��a thousand people take to the street outside in protest. If humanity is capable of mass action in the face of a cafe kiss, then little wonder you��are afraid of us, so afraid you��stamp us down with anti-protest laws and beefed up surveillance and security.

Let the woman in the hijab be. Let Islam, a religion of peace and grace, be. Let fundamentalism slip away on the wings of an open heart free of fear and hatred. And let neoliberalism fall, as all empires fall, and we can say farewell Mr O and Mr C, and welcome in a new and better age of fairness and goodwill.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Arms trade, asylum seekers, dystopia, empire, Fundamentalism, government, hard-line ideologies, Islam, Lesbian kiss Vienna cafe, Mainstream media, nature of humanity, neoliberalism, New Age, Power, Radicalisation