The Little Death

Written and directed by Josh Lawson

This Australian-made film opens by explaining that in French, “the little death” is slang for orgasm. It then takes us on a light-hearted romp through the bedrooms, garages, parking lots and a few other places of a suburban neighbourhood, scratching its head, so to speak, at the lengths to which some straight, white, monogamous people will go in their quest for sexual satisfaction.

It’s a comedy. Though allusion is repeatedly made to sexual predation (in the shape of the new neighbour who offers home-made biscuits as a gesture to soften the disclosure he is obliged to make that he’s a convicted sex offender), the film never gets too dark.

And as a comedy, I guess it’s asking too much for it to have delved deeply into the community of kink, in its survey of fetishes from somnophilia (getting turned on by watching someone sleep) to role-playing to rape fantasy. Instead, it hovers around the edge of mocking without engaging, though maybe it’s what the audience brings that is decisive. Scenes I saw as poignant had others laughing aloud. How much is that the film’s invitation to ridicule and how much, the audience’s expectation that watching anything to do with kink will be funny? I’m not sure.

[Of course, from a certain perspective, just about anything to do with human sexuality – from the straightest of straight vanilla sex to the most latex-covered group rope or needle play dreamt up by any voyeur – has its ridiculous side. Here we are, hurtling through space on a planet that’s become more and more hostile to life as it’s currently evolved – and people put vast amounts of effort into all sorts of things for sexual gratification. And making and watching films about it, for that matter.]

And yet, there is the poignant side.

There’s Phil, the man threatened with the sack for sleeping at work – staying awake nights turned on by watching his wife Maureen sleep: a wife who, awake, has only criticism of him, seems to be unhappy because of him, never listens to him; a wife who accidentally drinks the tea he made for himself with a dose of the sedative drug given to him by his boss to ensure he gets a decent night's sleep. Finding he can tell her how much he loves her, he takes to deliberately drugging her – violating her trust not for sex, as such, but for a strange kind of sad, illusory companionship.

Or Rowena and Richard, having lots of sex to try to get pregnant – lots of incredibly boring, joyless sex, at least to judge by Rowena’s face. Told that the doctor has advised conception is more likely to happen if the she has orgasms, Richard objects dismissively, “but you have lots of orgasms,” leaving Rowena crestfallen, agreeing, “yeah… so I guess we’ll just keep on doing what we’re doing.” When she discovers she has a tear fetish – sexually aroused by her partner’s tears – how can she begin to explain?

She can’t.

And if there’s a recurring theme, it seems to be the hopelessness of imagining anything positive can come out of exploring kink. While not every scenario is pursued without consent, even where there’s consent (Maeve indulges Paul’s foot fetish; Paul attempts to indulge her rape fantasy… did I mention it’s a comedy? The results are pretty funny), only the strength of the relationship makes the disappointment of the unfulfilled fantasy bearable.

The closest the film comes to hope is in the midst of the absurd situation of Sam, a deaf man unable to sleep, making a call to a phone sex line answered by a worker who needs the money to look after her nan who’s had a stroke – with Monica, an Auslan interpreter, in between. The hope is not about the phone sex – which of course is pretty funny and kind of fizzles out – but for the warm connection made by Sam and Monica despite, or perhaps because of, the absurdity.

But kinky sex? Look, it was never going to be a substitute for Dan and Evie learning to communicate, no matter how hot their role-playing scenarios got. But really? No-one was able to negotiate their way to something consensual, intense, pleasurable and connecting?

I guess I’m still waiting for that film.

A tribute to the Rojava revolution and especially the women of the YPJ.

broken

here there is no music
only poetry
and steel

Spare me

O spare me the tiredness
of wisdom
of the wisdom
of knowing better
of the wisdom of knowing better than
to dream
impossible dreams.

Spare me the serenity
of the adult I became
when I outgrew
the folly
of spring.

And spare me the sanity
that traps my pain and hope
in a grey web of calm
beside stone tears
I do not shed
anguish
I do not feel
and need
I’ve rocked to sleep.

And you,
yearning
– it began with you.
Where are you now?

powder

Nothing smashes the dream
of icecream castles in the air
quite like
the grinding boot
of reality.

Cesar Chavez

US release 2014

Directed by Diego Luna

Written by Keir Pearson

Australian release date to be announced (but there it was, on a Qantas flight!)

The US 1936 National Labor Relations Act recognized the rights of workers in the US to organise and collectively bargain – but excluded farm workers.

This film tells the story of the heroic struggle of farm workers and their leader Cesar Chavez for their rights to organise and for a dignified living.

Cesar Chavez, born to a farming family in Arizona, moved with them to California when the family lost their farm during the Great Depression. He became a farm worker there at the age of 11, at a time when mass unemployment gave the farm owners immense power and workers, bugger all.

He wanted to change all this and joined the Community Service Organization, where he learned the principles of community organising. By 1962, when Chavez returned from the city to Delano in central California, farm workers were subjected to precarious employment as day labourers with no minimum wage (paid as little as $2 a day). Workers from different ethnic groups were pitted against each other and decent working conditions (like toilet facilities in the fields) were denied.

The film – not a documentary, but an artistic representation of the struggle and the people involved – portrays the arduous and dangerous work of organising within the community during the 1960s and 70s. It depicts the solidarity developed in the course of the struggle, the violence of the bosses and the state, the farm owners’ racism and the toll of their many sacrifices on Cesar and his family.

It also explores the many tactics employed by the United Farm Workers, as Chavez (played by Michael Peña) first makes contact with Mexican workers willing to organise, then along with his wife Helen (America Ferrera) and other comrades, take up work in the fields alongside them. The newly formed union, co-founded by Dolores Huerta (Rosario Dawson) establishes a credit union to make links with more workers, and distributes literature to explain to workers their rights (using cartoons because of the high rate of illiteracy).

As the bosses cut the wages of Filipino workers in 1965, the new union is called on for solidarity. A strike wave spreads throughout the region. Linked to the strike is a boycott campaign that the union spreads first across the state and then throughout the US. It features an epic 300 mile march from Delano to Sacramento to put the spotlight on the mistreatment of farm workers. As grape growers and wine makers feet the boycott pinch but remain intransigent, and newly inaugurated president Richard Nixon facilitates grape export to Europe and promises the military will purchase the excess, the union seeks and finds the solidarity of a consumer boycott and union bans in the UK.

What stands out in the film is the union leadership’s clear approach to self-organisation of the workers, hand-in-hand with outreach – to other workers and unionists, consumers, religious communities, students, civil rights groups – for support on the basis of justice and human rights.

A contradiction of the times that is treated in the film is the intersection of sexist attitudes and militant antiracist working class solidarity. It is exemplified in Chavez’ insistence his wife Helen not risk arrest – after declaring his willingness to do so himself – asking “who’ll look after the kids?” She stands up to him with the same determination she then displays in leading resistance to a court injunction prohibiting the use of the word “huelga” (Spanish for strike) in the vicinity of the farms. As she is arrested and led away, others take up the call.

This is further explored in the exploration of violence in the struggle, which at least in part is portrayed as a manifesto of machismo. Chavez’ commitment to non-violence is also portrayed as derived from his Catholic convictions. Other protagonists point to the importance of not being portrayed as crazy Mexicans in order to retain public support. A remarkable episode the film recounts from the 5-year strike and boycott movement is Cesar’s 25-day fast, directed toward the strike movement itself. He begins the fast in response to an act of retaliation to strike-breakers’ violence on the picket line. It is both a call to the movement to unite in renouncing violence and a demonstration of his commitment to pursue the strike and maintain non-violence.

Despite the violence of the farm owners and support from local, state and federal authorities, the crippling boycott and strike forces the growers to capitulate. They sign an agreement with the union in 1970, and after a further five years, the workers had win passage of legislation recognising farm workers’ right to organise.

“Cesar Chavez” is still highly relevant today, at a time when undocumented workers have been deported by the Obama administration in record numbers, and when the struggle for a $15/hour minimum wage is being fought by underpaid workers across the US. The film joins the rich heritage of those like Matewan and Made in Dagenham that successfully keep alive the knowledge of working class history and that by so doing, dare us to struggle and win.

Say no to Islamophobia, war and attacks on our civil liberties!

A speech I gave at a rally in Perth, 18th October 2014.

Since the theatrical police raids on the homes of Muslims in September 2014, in the name of security/fighting terrorism, Australia has witnessed a tide of religious bigotry directed at Muslims. This rally, with about 200 people participating, was a public demonstration of opposition to Islamophobia, the government's war drive and attacks on civil liberties, and the use of the terror hysteria to distract community attention from the government's unpopular austerity budget.

Socialism and religion

This is a talk I gave at a seminar at the Perth Activist Centre 2 July 2011 hosted by Socialist Alliance and Resistance.
 

United States: Supreme Court grants private companies control over women's bodies

The US Supreme Court ruling in favour of Hobby Lobby represents an expansion of corporations’ rights at the expense of workers, health care provision and women’s reproductive health choices.

Everyone should be concerned about the June 30 US Supreme Court’s ruling in favour of retail arts and crafts company Hobby Lobby.

Along with two other family-owned firms, it sued the federal government, saying they should not have to pay for health insurance plans covering four contraceptives to which they object on religious grounds.

The decision represents an expansion of corporations’ rights at the expense of workers, health care provision and women’s reproductive health choice — all in the name of protecting religious freedom.

Most health insurance in the US is privately provided through employer-sponsored schemes. Under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms introduced in 2010 (often called “ObamaCare”), all large employers have to pay for their employees’ health insurance schemes by 2016. Regulations stipulate that all new insurance plans must cover all available Food and Drug Authority-approved contraceptives.

Republicans opposed ObamaCare and are seeking to wind it back piece by piece. The Supreme Court’s ruling is part of a pattern of attacks on the scheme.

It reveals both the lengths those opposed to any moves towards universal healthcare will go to undermine it, as well as the weakness of a scheme that relies on individuals and large employers to purchase privately provided health insurance rather than build a publicly funded scheme.

The contraceptives Hobby Lobby objected to were levonorgestrel and ulipristal — emergency contraceptives that work after sex predominantly by delaying ovulation — and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs).

The copper IUD works mainly by preventing fertilisation. The hormone-releasing IUD stops the fertilized egg from being implanted in the womb. The religious objectors claimed such methods cause abortions.
In a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby, saying “closely held” (a legal term to describe “family-owned”) companies with religious objections did not have to comply with the regulation.
In dissenting, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made several criticisms of the majority decision. She pointed out that while the people who own the companies might have religious beliefs, corporations are artificial, legal entities without religious (or indeed any other) feelings or beliefs.

Corporations also differ from religious groups, which are set up to pursue the religious objectives of a community with a shared faith — and as such are provided with exemptions under the law. As profit-making enterprises, corporations are set up to make money. The workers who contribute their labour cannot be obliged to share their owners’ religious views.

Most corporations in the US are family-owned; they include giants Cargill, Koch Industries and Mars, each with multi-billion dollar turnovers and tens of thousands of employees. Therefore, the ramifications of this decision are extensive in terms of the numbers of workers potentially affected as well the impact on contraception and other health services.

Since the court does not have a role in determining how sincerely a religious belief is held, or how critical it is to the practice of a religion, it does not take much imagination to suppose that for-profit companies would claim an exemption not only from the contraceptive mandate, but from anything else that might be construed as running counter to their religion in order to save money.

Even if we supposed that a for-profit business had the right to protection of its “religious practice”, most views recognising freedom of religious practices accept these are limited by the rights of others not to be harmed and the broader public interest.

This ruling, however, allows employers to impose their religious views on others regardless of the potential harm it may cause. There is nothing in Obama's health care reform that forces employers to use contraceptions they object to. There is nothing that obliges any employee (with or without religious objections) to use any form contraception.

The ruling allows employers to impose their non-scientific religious interpretation of contraception onto their workers as well as the workers' families who are also covered by the health care plan.
Ginsburg highlighted several other health treatments that are the subject to some religious objections — blood transfusions, medications derived from pigs (including anaesthetic, intravenous fluids and medications coated with gelatin), and vaccinations.

The ruling opens the way for a plethora of treatments that workers may need, but which their boss may be able to use “religious objections” to refuse to pay for the insurance to cover it.

It may also open the way for discrimination on religious grounds against the provision of certain kinds of health care to people from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer communities.
But just looking at the decision on the contraceptive mandate, the potential impact on women requiring contraception is huge. Already, many women are stopped from using the contraception of their choice due to cost.

Ginsburg noted that provision of IUDs (which could be up to 90 times more effective than condoms) cost about a month’s salary for those on minimum wage. This places them out of reach of minimum wage earners who are not covered by health insurance.

The impact in terms of unwanted pregnancy may be substantial. And its impact in furthering the ideological push to stop women from making their own decisions about reproductive health needs is incalculable.
The ruling comes in the context of a global tussle over rights — between the rights of women to reproductive healthcare, and the rights to freedom of conscience of others.

Some doctors, nurses and pharmacists have invoked the right to refuse to provide reproductive healthcare — ranging from contraception, sterilisation and abortion and abortion aftercare, to artificial reproductive technologies and prenatal diagnosis.

But the global consensus reflected in United Nations treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and other regional charters and conventions, recognise that the freedom to practice religion can be restricted to protect the rights of others.

As debate continues about whether any group or institution has the right to refuse care, we must insist the overriding interests of women's health and right to control their own bodies prevails.

A version of this article first appeared at Green Left Weekly.

Music to listen to while reading this article: David Rovics' Corporations are People too , and Taylor Ferrera's Hobby Lobby is Pro-Abortion, and Businesses are People too.

All the news that's fit to sing

All The News That’s Fit to Sing
David Rovics
Released July 4
www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com

Review by Kamala Emanuel

So here it is, the latest album from prolific radical songwriter David Rovics All The News That's Fit to Sing.
It contains some completely new songs and some previously released some already available on Youtube, some that die-hard fans might have heard on the sneak preview Rovics gave on his Spreaker online radio show, “June in History and Song”.

The album brings these new songs together and the studio recordings include new arrangements and backing vocals that make it worth streaming or downloading for old fans and new.

Rovics plays acoustic folk music with a punk influence that has become more pronounced over the years. Several of the songs on this album set a mellow acoustic mood, but most are upbeat with the energy of percussive guitar rhythms. Many are enhanced by Rovics’ own harmonies.

For this reviewer, the music is a wonderful medium, but even more, it’s the message that contains the prime appeal. And as Rovics fans would expect, there are songs about topical issues.

“TPP 101” lifts the lid on the latest free trade agreement being negotiated by the US and other Pacific nations to strengthen the hand of the rich in “the transnational class war”.

“Mudslide” tells the story of the tragic mountainside collapse in Oso, Washington, earlier this year an avoidable tragedy predicted by scientists and the consequence of erosion from hillside logging.

“Mitch Daniels” tells of the former Indiana governor's censorship of radical historian Howard Zinn's work: “Because a patriotic history of half-truths and lies/Is all the history you need.”

And “Moazzam” provides an impassioned musical argument for the release of Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo prisoner and British national, arrested again by the British government on “terror” charges. His real “crime” was essentially for blowing the whistle on that government's cosy relationship with the Syrian government sending prisoners to be tortured by the Assad regime.

“Tax the sun” blasts the Oklahoma government for penalising solar power while subsidising fossil fuels. “Eat the rich” offers a lighthearted “theme song” for an annual Norwegian festival of the same name.

“Bubbling Up” provides a somewhat cryptic critique of Hollywood star Scarlet Johansson’s decision to support Sodastream — a company profiting from the illegal occupation of the West Bank and a target of the pro-Palestinian global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

Then there are the contributions to keeping people’s history alive. “The Dam” lauds the dramatic direct action opening to Iceland’s environment movement. “Dead” relates the chillingly calculated murderous mentality of those responsible for the shooting of antiwar campus students of Kent State and Jackson State universities in 1970.

And “Song for Oscar Grant” tells of the 2009 extra-judicial police killing of Oakland man Oscar Grant, movingly painting a picture of the impact on Grant’s four-year-old daughter.

Elsewhere (“Love of an Unknown Soldier”) Rovics wrote “Every song I’ve ever written has been a love song.” The album contains a love song in the more recognisable form (“Judy”), as well as compassionate cameos that tell stories of homelessness (“Invisible Man”) and loneliness “Hoarder Song.”

In “Welcome to the Working Class,” Rovics pokes fun at the popular misconception that “we’re all middle class now,” leaving it for the audience to work out who benefits from this myth.

There’s even something for cricket fans (“Sachin”).

With the title track, he takes aim at those in power who would keep us in the dark to maintain the status quo, urging us, “Turn off your tv or you won’t learn a thing/Gather round I’ll give you all the news that’s fit to sing.”

In keeping with Rovics’ progressive politics, his songs cover themes of anti-capitalism, environmentalism, solidarity with Palestine, anti-racism, free speech and deep humanism.

“I don’t have all the answers,” the song acknowledges, and women’s struggle for liberation remains a set of questions and answers absent from his repertoire.

He sings some wonderful songs about women tender, poignant and sexy songs about lovers; songs paying tribute to women fighters, prisoners and martyrs like Assata Shakur, Ana Belen Montes, Chelsea Manning, Judi Bari and Rachel Corrie.

And he sings songs that relate to feminist themes that the personal is political and in support of abortion rights. However, these latter are songs addressed to men (“Sit down to piss”) and about a man (assassinated abortion doctor George Tiller, “In the name of God”), respectively.

Songs about any of the many struggles women have organised and won against their oppression as women would certainly round out his immense, diverse and inspiring body of work.

The album is available online to stream or download. It can be purchased at a price determined by the listener (useful to remember that this is how such artists pay their bills and that liking and sharing helps build an audience and support base). And Rovics gives a "guided tour" of the album at http://www.spreaker.com/user/davidrovics/guided-tour-of-new-album - not great quality at first, but bear with it, it gets better.

Progressives, folkies, activists, history buffs here are songs to inform, anger, move and energise us. Listen to them; share them; enjoy.

A version of this review was first published at Green Left Weekly.

It's so windy

Random

So this isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Especially after some help from a friend.

Maybe this will be my blog after all.

It's still a pretty obscure name. Well, if anyone gives a toss, please say. Contenders in my mind were "Life, Love, Liberation," "Love n Solidarity," and "Unfuck the world." Maybe someone has already taken that last one.

Maybe this is really just a draft. Permanently. Everything's always only partial anyway.

Philosophy

Might as well make it philosophy and religion.

Rainbow

Not exactly running out of colours, but sort of running out of colours. Posts on gender, sex, sexuality, and hey, why not relationship styles, fetishes and amories as well? Or maybe not. Let's see.

Black

I was born on Eora country, grew up on Minjungbil country, worked with Palawas and now live on Nyoongah land. I remember in primary school learning that racism still existed - I thought it had been eliminated. Still today I have so much to learn. I stand in solidarity with sovereign, indigenous and Aboriginal people of this continent (understanding different people and communities choose different words to describe themselves) in their struggles for recognition, treaty, land rights and justice. And against racism in all its forms.

Red

I thought that was obvious, but in case not: fighting poverty, emancipation of the working class, human liberation, anti-imperialism, Marxism, communism, socialism. Social justice.

Scarlet

Solidarity with sex workers.

Violet

(No, I didn't forget the n.)

Feminism, here: the Marxist kind. Women's liberation. The notion I'm not a doormat. And neither are you.

Green test

Naturally, this is where ecosocialism comes in.

Politics test

The point, however, is to change it.

Poetry test

Poetry

First go

So this is my practice blog, because I really have no idea what I'm doing.
Big apologies to anyone who wanted this domain name - not that I expect there to be many. Pity it's so obscure, because I rather like it.
So anyway, here it is, maybe being useful as a way to figure out how to blog.

guard dog

monster confronting
just imagine my surprise
jealousy my friend

i enter

i enter knowing
any step might be my last
love is a minefield

emu

i am an emu

a flightless bird

some days, content to run.

i see you, songbird,

on branch and wing:

my eyes are dazzled

by the sun.