The Honour

International Women's Day is on Monday, and to celebrate, our town had its annual IWD event to add the names of exemplary local women to its Honour Roll. In this photo, midwife Sally McCrae is accepting her honour. Under extreme political pressure, Sally fights, and walks the talk for women who choose to birth at home.

Later in the night, the keynote speaker from the International Women's Development Agency spoke. In her speech she pointed out that although women have so much to celebrate, we still have a long way to go until equality for all is reached. I agree. She read out some statistics including: only 3% of the CEOs in the ASX companies are women.

This percentage represents an enormous gender inequality and reminds us that although women may vote and live independent lives, we should remember who really holds the power.

I say, you can shove your corporate power up your ass. This statistic is not a measure of women's deficiency, but of their virtue.

The planet is in serious trouble because of greedy CEOs, so why would we want to participate in the corporate model? When decisions are made because of shareholder profits instead of forests and air and flowers and fish, why would we want to play with you? We don't value you what you value. We value what you cut down, what you poison, what you maim.

Some might argue that the system needs more women in order to turn it around, but I don't think that's true. What we need is a brand new systems approach; not one that is measured by a disembodied GDP, but one that functions within in a steady state economy.

I hope you have a great International Women's Day on Monday!

May our hearts be strong, and our vaginas, happy.

The Shock Doctrine

Reading a book like Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, at a point like this in economic history is enough to make anyone want to run back to the safe pages of fictional books.

Several weeks ago, when PJ and I had finished watching the final episodes of Underbelly, it was exciting to read in the paper about all the unsavoury underworld characters we had come to know and even like.

Not so with Klein's chronicle of greed. To read her descriptions of so many militant capitalists, such as the Chicago School's Milton Friedman, and what they were prepared to do to get their economic policies into place in other countries as well as in the US, is frightening to say the least. But to open up the paper and read the extent to which the world economy has been affected because of such greed is simply horrifying.

From forbes.com:

Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs took home $74 million in salary, bonuses and other awards last year. Richard Fuld, chief executive of the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers received $71.9 million.

Over the past five years, Fuld made $354 million leading his company on a wild ride that ultimately ended in bankruptcy. He was Lehman's biggest individual shareholder.

Let's hope Rudd's crackdown on "extreme capitalism" and bank executive salaries is received as the blow we wish we could deliver ourselves, personally. 

In the US, it looks like someone beat us to it:

The Garden of Self Defence

On the opening night of TINA, PJ was invited to be on a panel called 2020: Arbitrary Figures & Advocating Real Cultural Change. The panel was made up of people who run festivals or write books or host radio programs about the arts; people whose opinions influence change, but who were not invited to take part in Mr Rudd's 2020 Summit.

Many of the questions were about how young artists can find alternative sources of funding.

"Do we have any Climate Change or Peak Oil deniers in the audience?" PJ wanted to know.

"Is there anyone here who thinks the Government is going to save us from environmental catastrophe?"

He asked: "Why not take responsibility for ourselves and not rely on Government for funding or survival?" He asked: "To have more time to make our art, why not grow our own organic food?"

I am thinking about this because of two great articles my Mum sent me. One is Dirt cheap – Step one in the battle against soaring food prices: Start your own recession garden and the other is Sweat Equity Put to Use Within Sight of Wall Street, and also because PJ launched his blog yesterday, from where the above picture of our broad beans comes.

Friday Night Rule

Whenever we go to Melbourne, the Friday Night Rule applies regardless of what day it is.

PJ implemented the rule several months ago after I had a fight with a guy on a street corner. The guy finished his cigarette and dropped it on the ground just as I walked past him. Taken aback, I asked if he was going to pick it up. He told me he wasn't and a fight ensued.

The rule relates not just to smokers but to people doing anything offensive and pertains to my not accosting them on the street, especially after dark.

Last night PJ and I went to Melbourne to see our gorgeous friend SV perform with her cabaret outfit for the Fringe Festival.

Every time we come to Melbourne, the first things I notice are how many cars there are and how many people smoke. But this time the first thing I noticed was how people were just carrying on, business as usual. 

The shops were full of shoppers and their hands were full of goods in plastic bags. How is it that the papers can be so full of doom and gloom but that the majority of people haven't noticed?

A bit of denial is a good thing, I know this. Otherwise being awake would be too hard. But for how long can be people be in denial about the state of things?

Global warming? Peak Oil? The Wall St Crisis? The list goes on and on. People still smoke, gamble, eat junk food, fly overseas on holidays. We delude ourselves to get by, I get that. 

But what I don't quite get is the extent.

Public Concern

This is the first image that came up when I googled Private Public.

This morning I left later than usual for my walk and ran into two different parties of bush walkers in full Gore-Tex attire. At my usual hour it is just the native animals who spy me in my op shopped conglomeration of mismatched colours and layers.

I had my iPod and was in my own world as I listened to the latest This American Life podcast, so to see other human forms amongst the trees really punctured my sense of solitude.

The private made public.

Later in the morning over coffee I read the chapter of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine entitled, 'A Corporatist State,' in which she writes:

In some ways, however, the stories about corruption and revolving doors leave a false impression. They imply that there is still a clear line between the state and the [disaster capitalist] complex, when in fact the line disappeared long ago. The innovation of the Bush years lies not in how quickly politicians move from one world to another but in how many feel entitled to occupy both worlds simultaneously.

The public made private.

And then just now I read on (Text)ure and (me)aning about artist Sophie Calle's fascination with the interface between our public lives and our private selves.

Calle's followings, recordings and wanderings are her work.

She brings the public/private space to the gallery.

To the published page.

To the archive of the extraordinary ordinary.

The private made private made public.

Crisis Opportunism

I am half way through reading Naomi Klein's 533 page tome, The Shock Doctrine, which seems an especially pertinent choice of books right now, given the current situation on Wall St.

The Shock Doctrine: The use of public disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters – to push through unpopular economic measures often called 'shock therapy.'

I will save my opinions until after I have finished reading it, but just wanted to recommend you watch this clip:

500 Tablets (500 mg)

Five years ago I asked a naturopath: What one supplement do you recommend everyone should take? To which she replied, without even thinking, Spirulina. And thus began my love affair with the blue-green algae.

When I moved to the country, I was most pleased when I found out there was a guy selling it locally.

I know I bang on and on about all the reasons I love living in a small community, and I guess I do because I was born in the city where people operate with different, less personal motives. 

Here, business transactions aren't raced through because I have deadlines to meet or parking meters to feed or trams to catch. I used to live like this. But now my relationships are nurtured because there's time, and because in a town with a population of under 4,000 people, you are bound to see the people you have dealings with again and again and again.

When I buy my Spirulina, if I'm not home, J just drops my jar off on the deck. J is a photographer and one of my favourite parts of buying my spirulina from him is that he will email me through a recent photograph he's taken. Today it was of his son.

Robbin' the Rich

From Reuters:

Greek anarchists stormed a supermarket and handed out food for free in the latest of a wave of raids provoked by soaring consumer prices.

About 20 unarmed people, mostly wearing black hoods, carried out the midday robbery in the northern city of Thesaaloniki, police said.

Local media have labelled the raiders "Robin Hoods" following previous raids.

They take only packets of pasta, rice and cartons of milk which they drop in the middle of the street for people to collect, a police official said.

"They have never stolen money or hurt anyone. They ask people to remain calm but use ambush tactics, jumping over cash desks," he said.

"When they attack without hoods, people are surprised to see that they are mostly women."

The rising cost of living has replaced unemployment as Greeks' main concern. Inflation is officially running at a 10-year high of 4.9 percent although many items have risen in price more sharply.

Green Lights

When I stepped off the train in Melbourne last week, the first thing I saw was a big poster advertising the latest anti-gambling campaign. It should have made me happy - better anti-gambling than pro-gambling - but instead it made me furious.

You gave us the damn things in the first place, I thought.

But the government has to be seen as doing something. Though with state government revenue from poker machines and Kino nearly as much as $3 billion (in 2006-07), why would they do anything that could genuinely jeopardise this income?

And yet. Despite the 68,000 Victorians who are problem gamblers or at risk of becoming problem gamblers, and the families and communities that breakdown as a result, at least there is the logic of revenue.

But what of Melbourne's Grand Prix? With a loss of $40m per year, it just doesn't make sense. Not to mention the larger environmental implications.

For six years, my folks were involved in the Save Albert Park campaign (whose flag appears top left). At the time, I was younger and didn't understand what they were protesting against and what it all meant. But now I am a tax payer and awake to the injustices of governments, I am appalled that a decision such as the one to renew the Grand Prix's contract in Melbourne would even be considered, in this day and age.

$40m loss?? The irresponsible burning of all those fossil fuels? How could a government today even table such an event, let alone give it the green light?

Great Value

Today over the Bass Strait, one of my favourite bloggers, Farmdoc, has been musing about the value of things:

The true value of something is often out of proportion to its perceived everyday value. In other words, it’s often the little things that have the biggest impact.

I agree with him wholeheartedly. (And not just because he's my dad.)

I also wholeheartedly believe that we in the privileged West have no real understanding of what "perceived everyday value" really means. Myself included.

So removed are we from what's most important in our lives, that when we see the words Great Value, we immediately assume they are referring to a bargain.

As one of our household's heroes, George Monbiot wrote yesterday in The Guardian:

If the world is sliding into recession, it's partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology.

It's true PJ and I are on our way to becoming self-sustaining, but still we have been stressed lately about our personal finances in the face of rising interest rates, our council rates that are now the third highest in the state, water rates increasing by 25%, petrol prices, blah blah blah.

I say, bring on the crash, and let's start again.

Only after we have been forced to redefine the merit of our principles, will we be reminded of what's of real value in our lives and what's not.