- The Guardian
- Issue #2163
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance is dismayed by a decision by Melbourne University Publishing to axe one of the nation’s longest-running literary journals, Meanjin.
The publication has played a significant role in Australia’s intellectual and cultural landscape for 85 years, providing ongoing work for dozens of freelance writers and creative workers.
MEAA Media director Cassie Derrick said it was a sad day for media diversity in Australia and questioned the justification for the axing.
“At a time when writers and creatives are increasingly facing censorial voices, the frank and fearless writing Meanjin has always published is more important than ever.”
What a lot of ballyhoo about Daniel Andrews, Bob Carr, and other former Australian politicians and diplomats attending China’s marking of the defeat of fascism 80 years ago, the end of WW2! A celebration belonging to working people the world over was used by the warmonger cheer squad as an opportunity to put the boot into China.
The media beat-up was a reminder that Australia’s master-puppet relationship with the US causes the puppet to bend into ludicrous contortions. In 2008 the current Australian ambassador to the US, noted lap dog and self-promoter Kevin Rudd, was PM. Rudd’s much vaunted “engagement” with Asia was his proposal to fashion an Asia-Pacific Community.
Rudd had been Prime Minister for just over six months and had made few visits to Asian countries, but in introducing his scheme said, “It is time Australia began to shape this agenda, which is why this government has put forward an ambition for the region to create an Asia-Pacific Community.” Rudd offered himself as an “honest broker amid the regional rivalries that hold back cooperation.”
But there were no wars among Asian countries and even the most difficult questions were, and are, being worked out. ASEAN, for example, includes socialist and capitalist countries and no serious problems have arisen among them.
Rudd said that “once and for all” he wanted to bring the US, China and India into a common body. To work out what was really behind Rudd’s proposal (which was not new in any case) it is necessary to read between the lines and view the proposal against the background of developments in the Asian region.
One of the important groups to emerge in this period was the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Membership now includes Belarus, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Not the US of course, it not being an Asian country.
PARASITE OF THE WEEK: Australia’s refugee regime.
Last month Ruth, a 35-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker who has been in PNG for more than eight and half years, was found dead in her accommodation in Port Moresby.
Ruth arrived in Papua New Guinea seeking asylum in 2017 and was held in the notorious Bomana detention centre for three and half years.
Ruth had been suffering serious medical issues, but received inadequate treatment after her release from Bomana. Refugees in her accommodation report that Ruth had been particularly sick for weeks but had been unable to get any medical attention.
Ruth’s death highlights the precarious existence and neglect of asylum seekers and refugees in PNG, along with the 36 refugees sent by the Rudd Labor government in 2013, living in Port Moresby.
Previously, people found to be refugees in PNG by the UNHCR were resettled in Australia, but that agreement was scuttled when Manus Island became Australia’s offshore prison for refugees in 2012.
“Ruth is just as much a victim of Australia’s offshore refugee regime as those who were sent to Manus,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, “Ruth’s death has created yet another wave of anxiety among the refugees in PNG.
“All the asylum seekers and refugees need to be brought to Australia,” said Rintoul.
