Africa Weeps.

What is there to say? What is there to do? Africa weeps. This can't be happening again.

Obama and the EasterNats.

Barack Obama, has managed to put through Congress what no other American President has done before, "to provide medical coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans after an epic political battle that could define the differences between the parties for years."

It is a step in the right direction and one that moves away from the neoliberal policies of the Bush era. It is a decision that does not have immediate effects in Australia, but does put forward the idea that everyone is entitled to adequate health care, without regard to the size of their wallet. One can only hope that momentum for initiatives like this will increase, where the almighty dollar and the market are not the only factors that are considered when making political decisions.

Rioters, wearing tight jeans and tight tops, showed their masculinity, anger and all round low intellect by smashing the windows of a Bob Jane store in Oakleigh, because the EasterNats had been canceled. Bob Jane was the sponsor of the event, but the store that was targeted was owned by a Franchisee, who had nothing to do with the event. It is an indictment to the brain capacities of these protesters that it took an event such as the Easternats go to the street and protest, rather than the many more meaningful issues that affect the world. After all what is at stake? A few sausage sizzles, burn outs, woman in lycra and a few drag races, or the future of the world and all of its inhabitants. Watch out for these sort of people, sub consciously they have made a pact with the devil, they are not your friends, they would steal possessions from your house when you were not looking, they are the people that date rape and cut your throat while you were asleep. They play bad music and will be bad parents if that is not already the case. There is evil and stupidity in this world and these morons are at the bottom of the scale.

It was a beautiful day outside. It really was. Photos by Jehad Nga.

Arrival.

Now that you have gained this knowledge what will you do? Nothing. If only the walls could tell you what they have seen. What they see now. Death and blood. Sorrow and pain. You cannot hear them weep as spirits of the people float from their bodies towards the stars above. Travelling from this world to the next. If only the walls could tell you what they have seen. If only they could. But I will tell you. I will.
The room overflows with the sick and wounded. The dying and the bereaved. I lie propped up on a bed in the corner of a large sterile room. One among many. My legs wide open. Those closest to me huddled around my bed. Preying to God. For my survival. The survival of my child. His name will be Sabelo. King among men. I did not want it to ever be this way.

All around are screams of agony. Madness. The fear of death. I feel his presence here more than anywhere else I have ever been. He rubs his evil hands together. Eagerly waiting for his next victims. Never having to wait long. There is a constant stream of unfortunates that flow in. Victims of gunshots and knife wounds. Burns and accidents. Bodies of those who have given up and tired of life. Death. He laughs as he watches the spirits leave their bodies and float towards the sky. Laughs at their cries. The walls will tell you that they have never seen a spirit not cry. It has never happened. You may not think this would be the case. But if the walls could speak they would tell you it was. There is never any joy in a persons passing. Only sadness. Only regret. A fear of judgment by a higher being.

My mother speaks softly into my ear telling me that everything will be all right. But I know this is not the case. I am too far-gone. There is but one more task to do. Then it will be over. I have no choice in the matter. I feel death’s cold grasp around my neck and know that I cannot break free. A doctor and fat nurse walk down the hurriedly hallway. Speaking of a patient from whose head an axe protrudes. Poor soul. Of all the ways to go. My mother breaks free from my grasp and runs toward them. I try to tell her not to go. That these are our last fleeting moments together. But I am weak and must save the last of my strength so that he may come into this world. She pleads for the pair to come and attend to me. Pointing vigorously with her finger to where I lie. Salty tears streaming down her face. All the nurse says in return is ‘we will be there soon,’ and with that quickly brushes my mother away. She runs back to my bedside and takes my hand in hers. Holding it tight. How I love her. How she loves me. How I will miss her. How she will miss me. She sobs into my ear that everything will be okay. The sweet lies we tell. Death’s grasp around my neck tightens and I hear his evil laugh. Smell his foul breath. The walls pulsate and cry. For me and everyone in here. The walls. Their existence is not one to be envied. They wait for this place to be demolished. Oh how they wait for that day . And it is close now. My death. So close. I look towards the face of my mother. One last time. Though she is old she is still beautiful. A queen. My eyes close and with what is left inside of me I give one last push. I feel him leave my body. Hear his scream. Sabelo. My son. King among men. Alive. And then I am floating above it all. Watching it all. My aunt cries and holds and holds my son in her arms. He is beautiful. My mother begs for me to wake up. Shaking my limp body. Screaming. I reach out to her. But I am floating upwards. Floating through the ceiling. Through the clouds. To the stars. I cry. I cry. Death. I hear his evil laugh. How I hate him. How I hate myself. Life and death. This terrible cycle. Will it ever end?

The New City

{The New City}

I found myself in the new city, trying to make my old home a distant memory. A place to be forgotten and never remembered. One day I hope to be able to say what happened there. To talk about the people I knew and all their craziness. To tell you about the cold concrete streets that haunt my dreams, but for now it is all still too close, still too real. I have heard it said ‘that time heals all’ and if that is the case (which I hope it is) not enough time has passed to heal the wounds that I carry day to day. Walking past me on the street you would not know I was wounded, but that is the way of the world, to be unaware of each others pain.

{The People}

No one spoke my language in the new city. Communication was hard. Language had to be substituted for strange hand gestures and facial expressions. Though these only helped me get so far. I would often listen to people talk the foreign language. Watch their lips move. Take in the gestures they made with their hands and faces. I would try work out what they were saying. Attempt to work out how they felt. With some people it was easy. Others remained a mystery. It was to them I was drawn. Did they hide their emotions so well? Or was I just blind to them? I did not know, but I loved to watch. Knowing no one in the city meant I had become an observer. Watching all. Talking to no one. Writing observations in my ledger. Random poems and sudden thoughts. I tried to capture existence in a sentence. Describe the loneliness of being. State the Σdifference in me from all of them, but in truth I was only fooling myself. I was not separate to the mass. Only part of it. Indistinguishable. A particle in a much larger whole.

{The Streets}

The Sun beats down on the concrete. How I love its warmth.
I wrote this poem in my ledger two days after arriving in the new city. It was the height of summer and my bank account was in rather good shape. Actually it had never looked so good. (So much so that I glued the bank balance in my ledger before I left the old city) Tired with convention I chose to spend my nights on the street. I knew my mother would not have approved, nor my father, nor the general public, but it did not seem so bad to me. Nothing would happen I was sure of it and nothing did. Apart from an incident one evening when a group of teenagers decided to prod me with sticks until I awoke. They were laughing drunkenly and talking to one another in slurred voices.
Leave me alone, I screamed, shaking my arms violently in the air. They quickly ran away still laughing and yelling to one another. I watched as they disappeared into the darkness of the night. I tried to compose myself. The teenagers had scared me none, but the streets of the old city had been haunting me in my dreams. What a terrible way (I thought later) to wake up from a nightmare to a nightmarish scenario. Memories unwilling to rest.

{The Stars}

It was soon after my encounter with the drunken teenagers that I moved away from the large statue of a king I did not know to an inner city park a few blocks away. The grass was soft there and never covered in dew. I would lie there at night, fighting away sleep (too scared to see the streets of the old city) and stare at the stars above. The nights were always cool and still and I felt a great peace take a hold of me when I stared up to into that dark blue sky.

I would smile at the stars. They were creation and pure. All knowing and beautiful. A reminder that everything was infinite.
{a day in autumn}
Suddenly autumn was around the corner. Rubbing her soft hands together. Muttering through the wind. The leaves of trees that filled the city parks and sidewalks slowly started to change colour and fall to the ground. All the colours. A feast for my eyes. I loved to watch the leaves fall. Slowly. Slowly.

{Beauty}

And I was walking the city streets one chilly autumn afternoon. And I was thinking it's time for a new home. Somewhere with walls. Where it's warm. It's getting cold. Real cold. I wake up with cracked lips. I've started to wake up feeling ill. The skies were dark silver and promised rain. I walked the city streets. Everywhere I looked I tried to find beauty in what I saw. In what I beheld. Something's were easier to find beauty in than others.
But look deeper, I said. Look deeper. Surely there must be beauty somewhere there. Beauty everywhere. Beauty in that fat man with sauce running down his half unshaven face. Yes. Beauty. Beauty. Beauty everywhere. Maybe I said to myself. Maybe. Still waiting to be convinced.

Walking the streets I had started to recognise some of the people of the city. People who came to this place day in and day out. People that worked here and could not wait to get out. I walked with a great smile on my face. No one else seemed to. No one. The more open I was to beauty the more she would let me see. It was a great day. It really was. Until I cut my finger on a piece of paper that a teenage boy was handing out.

{Blood and Glass}

Why did I take it? I asked myself much later on. I cannot read this language. This is not my country. This is not my home.
Why did I take it? I carried on walking staring at my wound, watching the blood slowly flow. The redness. It began to rain softly. While crossing a street the smallest of drops landed on my meager little wound. Diluting the blood and changing everything. How ones emotions can quickly change. How quickly everything can unravel. Maybe it was all in my head. It does not matter. The events still transpired. Everything became unreal and quite unfamiliar. It scared me how things began to appear, alien and breathing. Everything weeping. The plants with the saddest songs. I could not handle it. In an attempt to gather myself I rushed into a public toilet to wash my face. The floors of the toilet were filled with used toilet paper and old newspapers filled with the ghosts of the past. My body vibrated, so much so that I thought I would be sick. Somehow I made it to the bathroom sink, where in the reflection of the mirror I saw not myself but my father, watching me in disappointment. To him my life had always been a series of bad decisions. An elderly man walked into the toilets to find me screaming and smashing at the mirror. Shards of glass sticking deep into my hand. Blood everywhere. He stared at me deeply.Σ I stared back. I saw his fear. He saw my madness. He spoke. I did not know his words but they were slow and shaken and filled with fear. He slowly backed up the stairs, not taking his eyes off of me.

{Back to the Streets}

I found myself walking the streets again. My hands covered in glass and blood. I saw no beauty. None at all. I needed a new place to stay. I marched towards the park where I had been sleeping (also where my possessions where hidden in the bush) While walking I caught glimpses of people I remembered from many years past. I tried to avoid them. What were they doing here?
This was far too for them to come. My mind’s playing up I said. But I still found myself hiding behind doorways and down alleyways when I saw these people approach. Just in case. Just in case. The day had become too much. I had begun to question everything. To take a rest (it's hard when you cannot escape yourself) I sat on a bench. Across from where I sat a blind man played the blues on a steel guitar. A monkey wearing an usher uniform danced beside him with a mug of coins in his right hand. Between us three there was a constant flow of people. A never-ending flow. I watched the people file past and then quickly wrote in my ledger, staining the pages in near dried blood.
They file past, Like ants, Who is their Queen?
After this I continued to watch the pair play and dance. How much energy they had. Obscure thoughts entered my head. They would not leave. The dark clouds above my head rushed past and day got ever closer to night. The realisation kept coming back to me, that perhaps the old city had become the new and where to run now?

{Catching Kisses}

I found a cheap apartment (were the cockroaches included in the price?) and the stinging solace of cheap red wine. My money was running out, but I would still have enough for another couple of months. I did not eat well. Tomorrow I thought I'll start to cook for myself, but that tomorrow never came. My room was simple and warm. I had forgot the luxury of having a bed, though I tried to sleep as little as possible. The room was on tenth floor of a crowded apartment block, where people from all over the world lived. All of them with different skin colours, all with different native tongues. To me it felt like some zoo. I wanted to find someone that spoke my language; eager was I to talk, to make a connection with someone, anyone. I walked the hallways of the building knocking on each door, but no one that answered spoke the same tongue and I retired at the end of my escapade sullen and withdrawn, happy to know I had a bottle of wine. My room looked over a street where prostitutes sold their wares to all too eager men and I would watch the goings on of the streets all night. Can't sleep I thought. The streets. Those dreams. They eat away at me. So I would watch the prostitutes. One woman, I called her Petal, began to realise that I would watch every night. She started to pull the fingers and yell words I had no way of knowing at me. Soon however we became comfortable with one another, and would stare at each other with wide-open eyes and in those moments so much would be said. Hope and pain and fear of the future. As she would get into cars to travel to cheap motels she would blow me a kiss. I would catch them and swallow them whole. I loved their sweet taste and the warmth they gave me. She disappeared one evening in a black Mercedes though. Never to be seen again. Sometimes the world swallows us whole.

{A meeting}

Things became worse. I was in bad shape. I drank all day and ate from a pile of mushrooms that grew in the corner of my room. Their taste was bitter but one became accustomed to them. My room and the street below took new forms. I spoke to the moon. Felt it pulsate. Everything vibrated and melted into one large whole. I questioned my entire life and needed reassurance that everything was all right. But I was alone. I was on the brink of tears one evening, pondering death, when the door to my apartment sounded. I opened the door to a girl in her late teens. She was small and beautiful and entirely pure. She smiled sweetly and to me softly said.
You’re in bad shape. I nodded and let her in. She walked into the room and slowly looked around taking a seat on my bed. I walked to my chair by the window and sat down. Would you like a drink? I shakily asked. She shook her head. We sat in the silence of the room. She looked at the despair that was written over all the floor and walls of my room. I hear you scream all the time, she said. I meekly smiled. Everyone knows about you. They do? She nodded and then looked away. They do. You speak my language. There aren’t many of us here. I’m alone. We all are. Do we have to be? Some of us. What about you and me? I don’t know. Why did you come here? To see. What?

Who you were. Will you be back? Maybe. Come back. Please. I’ll see. Please. She stood up and walked slowly towards the chair I sat on, kissing me softly on the lips. I smiled for the first time in I don't know how long. She pulled away from me. Come back soon, I said. She smiled and slowly walked to the door. I watched how gently she shut it behind her, her every move so calculated. I sat there all night staring out onto the quiet street, eager to see her again, my heart on fire. I wanted to touch her again. For her to be mine. I smiled and thought of the future, of her and I and it all looked beautiful and free. I could not wait for her to come back. I did not need to know her name, just needed her.

{Waiting}

But she never came. She never came.

{Leaving}

I was alone and heartsick and my money was gone. The landlord would knock on my door yelling and screaming. I knew it was time to go. I packed my belongings and filled my bag with all the mushrooms it could hold. I had developed quite a taste for them. I walked out onto the dark street uncertain in where to go. I felt ill, but needed to move on. I was searching for something I was not sure existed. Onto the next city I thought. There's more to be seen. This world so grand and large. Filled with adventure and people to meet. It was all a lie really though. I knew it deep down. I was haunted by the past. Always taking the wrong steps. Every decision turning to shit. I had left the old city for the new city with high hopes, eager to escape the past. What had gone wrong? I did not know, but I still blamed that little drop of rain.

{Past Fading Away}

I started walking. The new city behind me. The lights of the buildings becoming smaller and smaller. Slowly fading away. I did not know where I was headed, but took much joy in my escape. Darkness surrounded me. I became one with it. Felt whole. The lights of the city I lost as I crossed over a hill. The future became now, became the past, lost and forgotten.

Bemba.

Always forever. A new day begins. Redemption. God moves over the face of the waters. A negative thought came into your head and it started to rain. You smelt it on the hot concrete and it reminded you of your childhood. It's such a beautiful day, one that you will always remember.

The smile on your face, the taste of your tears. A hegemonic state, decisions already made for you. A lack of alternatives in a world where the consumer is always right. The class struggle. A mistake, a blatant lie. Sometimes the world swallows us up hole and leaves no trace. We make our mark and become infinite. A belief in God and yourself, that the Universe constantly expands, that there is extra terrestrial life. He looked to the stars and realised how small he was, that he was infinite, finally in the moment, quiet and still, breathing, filled with love. Always forever.

These photos were taken by a South African photographer, Guy Tillim. The top photo is one without comparison; in regards to access, composition, history. Taken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Heart of Darkness, Tillim trails Jean Pierre Bemba and his bodyguards, into a stadium in Kinshasa, during the 2006 National elections. Bemba with his back to the camera, dominates the photo, he is a man not to be messed with, whois now in under arrest and facing trial in the Hague.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Pierre_Bemba

An introduction to one of Tillim's books, Departure, is below.

"My journeys have been idiosyncratic, often purposeless, not so much to commit journalism as to travel for its own sake. Perhaps the more successful images reflect this; perhaps a pattern can be discerned from their parts. I can describe moments, or trace a journey, by the images I am left with. They themselves form a thread. How I came to be in a certain place seems banal, often forgotten.

In 1997 I was in Korneliuskondre, a village on a tributary of the Coppename river in the former Dutch colony of Suriname. My friend and I had spent some time in the forest, and we were on the way to a border town, from where we would cross into Guyana. We were invited to the village by someone we¹d met further up the river, and that night he offered us a thatched shelter, that had beams from which to hang our hammocks.

In the morning I walked into a small church and found children playing there. I was impressed by the simplicity of the building: the polished concrete floor, the sparse altar, and the crucifix hanging above it. I started to take photographs, trying to include the boys in the scene without alarming them, or making them self-conscious. Then, as if we had entered into a silent conspiracy, as if he understood entirely what I wanted, one of the boys moved behind the altar, leaned his head on it, and raised up his schoolbook. On it was a photo of Johan Cryff, a famous Dutch soccer player.

In Guyana, I photographed a dog in the middle of the road. The image made me begin to think of a collection of images ­ a sort of diary in retrospect. I was struck by its seemingly arbitrary and loose composition, and distant subjects. It was an ordinary scene ­ two cars passing on a road, but the dog caught in the traffic (he escaped) created the worthy moment. The fire on the horizon and the piece of white added an undefined menace. The image is a thing of beauty to my mind, has stayed with me for years, it always will. But the scene itself, in reality, was not. It was an instant in an uncomfortable journey, unmemorable except for this scene, which, if I had not captured it on film, would too have passed into oblivion.

These moments are elusive, alluring for being so. My brand of idealism that had its roots in the time I started photographing in South Africa during the apartheid years of the 1980s has dimmed. There was right and wrong, it seemed clear to me which side I stood. One would forego, what I might now call subtlety, for the sake of making a statement about injustice. The world's press set the tone and timbre of the reportage it would receive, and I for one was bought by it. Perhaps that is why I now look for ways to glimpse other worlds which I attempt to enter for a while. But one cannot live them all, and usually I am left with a keen sense of my own dislocation.

Of course, there is always this: to change what is ugly and brutal into something sublime and redemptive. So I have photographs I like for reasons I have come to distrust.

I learned my trade as a photojournalist but feelings of impotence in the face of others¹ despair led me to look away, as if catching only obliquely their reflected light. These are photographs of disparate locations, but their justification for ending up in one collection, their basis for comparison, is of another nature: disquiet, introspection, wonder."

Slow down Gandhi, you're killin' em

Slow down Gandhi, you're killin' em
by Sage Francis

On my soap box yelling into megaphones.
Killing hard rocks using carcasses as stepping stones.
Had to promise that I'd stop holding my marches
The day that Chris Columbus got crucified on golden arches.
My pedestal was too tall to climb off,
In fact that's the reason for the high horse.
And from up here I see Marines and Hummers on a conquest;
Underdogs with wonderbras in a push-up contest,
All for the sake of military recruitment.
It felt like Kent State the way they targeted the students,
I galloped off whistling "Ohio."
The rest of them, stuck doing stand up at a cricket convention.
What would they die for? (repeat)
Is it the same machine that leaves the quality of life poor?
An abominable colony of cyborgs?
Clogging up the property that I bought with eyesores?

That clever ad campaign ain't worth
The time taken from minimum wage labor;
I don't care how half-naked or fake she looks,
She smells like dirty cash and aged paper books.
What would she die for?
Slow down Gandhi, you're killin' em
Slow down Gandhi, you're killin' em.

Now it's whistle blower vs. the pistol holder;
Case dismissed, they'll lock you up and throw away the key witness.
Justice is the whim of a judge, check his chest density,
It leaves much room for error, and the rest left to destiny.
The West Memphis 3 lost paradise,
It's death penalty vs. suicidal tendencies.
All I wanted was a fucking Pepsi.
Institution.
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
If they could sell sanity in a bottle
They'd be charging for compressed air,
And marketing healthcare.
They demonize welfare,
Middle class eliminated,
Rich get richer til the poor get educated.

But some of y'all still haven’t grown into your face,
And your face doesn't quite match your head.
And I'm waiting for a brain to fill the dead space that's left,
You're all, "Give me ethnicity or give me dreads."
Trustafundian rebel without a cause for alarm,
Cause when push turns to shove
You jump into your forefathers arms.
He's a banker, you're part of the system,
Off go the dreadlocks in comes the income.
The briefcase (the freebase)
The sickness (the symptom)
When the cameras start rollin' stay the fuck outta the picture pilgrim!
The briefcase (the freebase)
The sickness (the symptoms)
When the cameras start rollin'...
Slow down Gandhi, you're killin' em.

Mr. Save The World, spare us the details,
Save the females from losing interest.
And Miss Save The Universe,
You're a damsel in distress,
Tied down to a track of isolated incidents.
Generalize my disease,
I need a taste of what it's like.
Living off the fat of kings,
I play the scab at your hunger strike.
Slow down Gandhi, you're killin'em.

One love, one life, one too many victims.
Republicrat, Democran, one party system.
Media goes in a frenzy,
They're stripped of their credentials.
Presidential candidates can't debate over this instrumental.
Let 'em freestyle, winner takes all,
When the music’s dead, I'll have Ted Nugent’s head hangin' on my wall.
Kill one of ours, we'll kill one of yours.
With some friendly fire, that’s a funny term, like civil war.

Six in the morning, police at my crib.
Now my nights consist of two toothpicks and eyelids.
The crucifix and vitamins, music that is pirated.
New flavored food made of mutated hybrids.
Uh, they tell me that it's not that bad.
It fucks you up good, but its not that bad.
They hold on to these tales till it's the dog that wags.
God save us all if he lets the cat out the bag.

Who's the one to blame for this strain in my vocal chords?
Who can pen a hateful threat but can't hold a sword?
It's the same who complain about the global war,
But can't overthrow the local joker that they voted for.

They call the shots
(but they're not in the line of fire).
I call the cops
(but they're breakin the line of duty).
Lets call a stop to the abuse of authority.
The truth keeps callin' me, and I'ma live to tell the story.

So look for truth, quit seeking forgiveness.
You need to cut the noose, but you don't believe in scissors.
You support the troops by wearing yellow ribbons?
Just bring home my motherfuckin' brothers and sisters.

Cause they don't call the shots
(but they're in the line of fire).
I'd like to call the cops
(but they're breakin' the line of duty).
It's time to call a stop
(To the abuse of authority).
The truth keeps calling me
And I'ma live to tell the story.

Water. The early Christmas present for Melbourne.

Water restrictions have been eased, and there seem to be no critics of this decision. But should this really be the case? Or am I out of touch? The ABC calls it "An early christmas present for Melbourne." In Melbourne water capacity is only at 37.4%. When the catchments are less than half full, is it appropriate that more people should be able to water their gardens? Is this really neccassary? Is it a waste? Our roses will look beautiful again.

If it is in the interest of more sporting grounds to be watered so that playing surfaces are less hard and less injuries occur, then it should be allowed, but the watering of gardens is unnecessary. What is needed rather is a concerted push to make peoples gardens more resilient to the current climate. We should not waste a precious resource on mere vanity. Perhaps if individuals feed themselves off their garden then an exception should be made, but the idea during a time of drought that people should be able to increase their water usage is simply unsustainable.

Since 1997, when the capacity of the catchments was near 100%, the water levels have been dropping. We do not know when this trend will stop, or if it will. Decisions such as John Brumby's do not help, nor do they communicate to the public the idea of water being a precious resource.

The Age puts forward the idea that it is a decision made in an election year. If this is true, it is simply not acceptable to play with the future of a state to gain another four years of power. Perhaps if there was more foresight and restriction of water use, desalination plants would not need to be built to sustain our thirst. This is a bad decision and shows that John Brumby is out of touch with the current water scenario. In the future when restrictions are once again placed on Melburnians, I wonder how many litres would have been wasted on Flora unsuitable for an Australian climate and if then we would have finally learnt our lesson, to take only what we need. Watch water levels closely.

The above photos are taken by Christopher Morris, a photographer comfortable in war as he is taking photos of the high and mighty.

Robert Capa & the ever increasing detachment.

Technology has sped everything up. We live in a so called globalized world. A world of haves and haves not. Fad diets, Biggest Losers and people that struggle to eat. We live in a world of detachment. We are detached from the decisions we make, the actions that we take. Bombs sent from remote drones by operators on the other side of the world. Shareholders receiving dividends from mining companies and other subjective evils according to LOUD SPACE'S own subjective opinion, though with out doubt has benefited from some these evils or at least been corrupted in some way since man and womans original fall from the Garden of Eden.

We are detached from the materials and modes of production for the items we buy. It is a world of beauty and sadness. Contradiction and redemption. Eat in or take away. Caged or Free Range. Smoking or Non Smoking. Right and wrong.

Lara Bingle flushed her engagement ring down the toilet. The new headline of the Herald Sun. Everyone has an opinion, and an asshole, an elderly gentleman said to me. It is sad and voyeuristic that that is all I remember from todays news. The flushing of a $200,000 engagement ring.

It is an example of the media ability to shape what we read, but in all honesty I could have read something else, but the media momentum had built to such a degree that I had to read the next chapter in a couples own private saga. A banner at a New Zealand cricket field yesterday said "Clarkey, where the bloody hell are you?"

What has happened in Haiti? Iraq? The Democratic Republic of Congo? We forgot to remember. The media storm has moved on. There's so much happening in our own lives. Dinner to make. Clothes to wash. Bills to pay. People to visit. Another stabbing. Another suggestion to join Costco.

The sun was out today, a perfect day for the beach. But you stayed inside and grew older. You put it off till tomorrow. What was your life like before the internet?

You knew you shouldn't but you did, favours for favours, an ulterior motive in your behaviour, but does that take away from a good deed? Subjectively, of course it does.

The photos above were taken by Robert Capa during D-DAY.

"Capa's most famous work occurred on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. He was armed with two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. Capa took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives in three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eleven frames in total were recovered. Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the loss of three and a half rolls of his D-Day landing film.

Although a fifteen-year-old lab assistant named Dennis Banks was responsible for the accident, another account, now largely accepted as untrue but which gained widespread currency, blamed Larry Burrows, who worked in the lab not as a technician but as a "tea-boy". Life magazine printed 10 of the frames in its June 19, 1944 issue with captions that described the footage as "slightly out of focus", explaining that Capa's hands were shaking in the excitement of the moment (something which he denied).Capa used this phrase as the title of his autobiographical account of the war, Slightly Out of Focus."

James Nachtwey.

To witness the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti is to be lost inside a waking nightmare, the markers on this mapless journey, swarms of looters, children with chopped-off limbs, cities fabricated of sticks and bed sheets, pulverized cathedrals, dogs circling the dead in the streets.

Most Haitians have always lived in a society clinging to a narrow ledge on a precipice above the abyss - on the plateau over them, the rich, unseen in their black-windowed Land Cruisers. Higher still, as if levitating in air, the immaculate, blinding white Presidential Palace, the secret desire of all despots, now crushed by the weight of its own three Baroque domes. Where the ledge crumbled the dead cascaded into oblivion. Where it held, people huddled closer, those with next-to-nothing now with even less. They continue to endure their own history - a crescendo of privation and hardship, matched by strength, pride and dignity born in the conquest of slavery, nurtured by poverty, struggle and faith.

The earth shrugged, Haiti collapsed and the world responded, “compassion fatigue” unveiled as the straw man of cynics and ad salesmen. Epic catastrophe was met by epic generosity, without benefit of untapped oil reserves or geopolitical gain. The UN is here in force, but the real united nations are the small NGO's from every corner of the planet who just showed up, flying by the seat of their pants. String their acronyms side by side, and they'd go halfway around the equator. Recite them, and you'd be speaking in tongues.

The Haitians themselves are not just sitting back with their hands out. They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting; so humble in its nature it seems invisible. Massive, international relief supplies are transported by cargo ships, helicopters and C-130's. Haitians carry what they need on their heads. They dig survivors out of the wreckage by hand, not with big yellow machines. Everyone is doing what he can by whatever means available.

As a photojournalist involved in documenting the history of the past 30 years, much of my work has focused on wars, conflicts and social injustice. It's been fueled by anger, driven by the belief that if people are informed they will be inspired by compassion, and will share a sense of outrage at violence, aggression and the unacceptable deprivation of fundamental human rights. Those issues are all man made, and anger can jump start the process of change. An earthquake is an act of nature. Tens of thousands die in a few minutes. Who is to blame? Regime change is not an option. How can anger be directed at the earth itself? Compassion is the ultimate motivation in a natural catastrophe. The challenge is to maintain it for the long haul, not allow it to die with the headlines.

Haitians have forged history with a capital H. Slaves rose up to vanquish the armies of Europe's mightiest empire. An earthquake reveals the power within the earth itself. But the spirit of the Haitian people is also a force of nature. Virtually all the symbols of political power in a country synonymous with corruption have been erased. What will the people of Haiti write on the blank page of a new chapter of their history?


- James Nachtwey

Deconstruct yourself, deprogram your mind.

The sun was out today, but yesterday, the St Kilda night market was cancelled in fear of today's bad weather.

"We do not believe that it is in the best interest of the Market or the Traders (particularly the food traders), to hold another wet weather evening. High winds are forecast and warnings have been issued. It has been an unfortunate season for weather, for us all and we hope the weather patterns will be kinder to us next season."

It so happened as I drove home that a radio presenter commented on how sophisticated weather bureaus were these days and how they never got it (the weather) wrong anymore. He went further to say that he remembered in days gone past when people could not trust weather reports, that they were always wrong, but that was something the young people of today would know nothing about, right listeners? They always get it right now! What with technology so advanced, how could they ever get it wrong? When did this happen? I'm sure at sometime last year or the year before I would have heard someone curse at a weather presenter or bureau for getting it wrong.

The presenters show was focussed on Climate Change and Climate Skepticism, primarily focused on the comments of the Chairman of the Board for the ABC who supposedly told journalists that worked for the organisation to give a greater voice to Climate Skepticism, he being Maurice Newman, according to the report a Climate Skeptic himself.

And so it is with opinions that I will quickly touch on my Political Science tutorial, one can get frustrated with the wide array of opinions people hold in the microcosm of society that is my Political Science tutorial. Even if students show that their opinions are in line with what you may yourself think, you cannot help but feel somewhat angered by them. At least in my opinion (the irony is not lost on me) with some people in class there seems to be a sense of; self pride, righteousness and ego associated with peoples opinions, there also seems to be an elitism that pervades some of the students opinions, feeling separate, higher and mightier than the rest of the population, separating themselves from the larger mass, potentially not realising that they themselves are part of it as well.

As I have said the irony of this entry does not elude me. Indeed recently a friend read my blog and called me a pretentious Jew. But how important do we do feel when we have a belief that we believe to be true. How clouded and shut off can we get to dissenting voices. I am right. You are wrong. It was the smugness of some peoples opinions that kept me quiet in class. Who am I to judge? Deconstruct yourself, deprogram your mind. How? More to come.

The photo above was taken by Guy Tillim.

Black & White

Labour Weekend.

Wild Weather. A weekend at Port Fairy. Too much to drink. Kilkenny. Guinness. Unsustainable behaviour. A clear view of the horizon. The night becomes a blur. Have another drink. Lost and then found.