Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.

Hubert Humphrey

This is a cropped image taken (stolen) from the Herald-Sun’s #occupymelbourne gallery. I was flicking through, & this poster caught my attention. I flicked back & forth & still ended up at the same image.

Why? Because it speaks to me so loudly of everything that I find disturbing about the occupy movement as it exists in Australia. No economics or factoids in this post. Purely visceral.

Firstly, an apology to #occupysydney participants for not fully understanding why the camp was established outside the Reserve Bank of Australia. I was hammering away, railing inside my head & on Twitter as to why camp hadn’t been set up in Bridge Street (drunken aside: #occupybs would be a cool hashtag) given it’s home to the ASX? I asked a question on Twitter tonight (depending on how quickly I write this, maybe last night) and, thanks to @hailants, I learned something. Securency. I thought polymer notes were just a cool invention. I asked politely, genuinely, & I got a polite, genuine, informative answer about something I knew nothing about. That’s pure gold to me.

OK, so back to the poster. This is so fucking far from pure gold to me it’s not funny. Starving African child juxtaposed with obese Western kids eating junk food. Seems like everything capitalism, everything wrong, everything #occupy represents. Not to me.

I am in no way accepting of how totally fucked it is that gross poverty, is delivered in white 4WDs to the Global South by, yes capitalism, but also inept, corrupt governments & non-state actors. The answer (according to me) to a fraction of that starving African child’s problems is not the carte-blanche, lazy finger-pointing at evil capitalism. It is pathetic infrastructure. It is more expensive to transport food to famine-declared areas from a food bowl IN Africa than it is to ship food aid from Europe. As this Massachusetts Institute of Technology project contends, it is only through global actors such as the World Bank that intra- and inter-country roads in Africa can be built and maintained (the example it uses is the Mombassa - Nairobi road project in Kenya). People in sub-Saharan Africa starve not because there is no food, but because transportation costs are so high, making them aid dependent, and if the greedy Global North cannot be arsed, they die. Dambisa Moyo’s seminal work, Dead Aid may not be popular, but her central thesis, that cutting aid will force these capitalist solutions to take hold, is worth study. I do not agree with cutting foreign aid; but I would play with the idea and put forward the following solution – that the member states which signed up to lift aid to 0.77 per cent of GDP under the UN Millennium Goals – make that abysmal fraction higher, and invest in an infrastructure fund that will assist in building transportation routes and enable, empower the most impoverished to trade with their neighbours. It’s a capitalist solution to a problem that exists, that is so obvious, that for the life of me, I cannot understand.

Next: is this problem assisted by a poster in Melbourne? No. Bring forth the person in, Melbourne, or my Sin City of Sydney, this city of 4.5 million, who is not aware, that somewhere in the world, people are starving. Seriously, I will travel to them, I will jam my foot in their front door  & show them this poster if I am wrong. People know famine exists; they may not understand why, beyond natural causes such as drought; but we know it happens. Forgive me, Occupiers, but where are your solutions, where are your ideas, to fixing this unnecessary, base evil, ill? Capitalism Isn’t Working? It’s not an idea; it’s a statement of questionable fact. There is no attempt to make a constructive argument; it’s not even a talking point memo. Where, in the general assemblies or working groups, are the solutions? I know what the problem is. I’m disgusted by it. I’ve been to Dharavi, one of the world’s largest slums. I’ve seen poverty in South London, where I worked in social housing; in Gaza; in Russia; in Redfern – none of which this poster represents – barring one teeny, tiny thing. The fat kids. The ultimate representation, the tool to demonstrate, about the greedy Global North. Shyeh, right on.

Yep, the fat kids eating junk food. What greater depiction of corporate greed could you imagine? Oh, I can. Teeny, tiny mind of mine suggests that the kiddies sat at the Golden Arches of the capitalist piggery of the Global North, are the the poorest percentile, those totally dependent on welfare; the kids who grow up in households where generational unemployment is a fact of life … these kiddies, the fat capitalist pigs gorging on the fries – they are the 99 per cent. Not you, not even me, with my multitude of fucktardness visited, uninvited, on my childhood. Fact: poor families sacrifice, or cannot afford, fresh fruit and vegetables. They eat fried food. They have less playing space. They are the children whose life expectancy is slashed; who will develop NCDs (non-communicable diseases) such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They will die earlier, their lives straining public health systems in between. They will, on average, not go to university. They won’t make these posters & camp in Martin Place or City Square, because they have never fucking been to Martin Place. They are in our rural and regional centres. They are on the fringes of our cities & at there epicentres. They do not regularly attend school. They are supplied with breakfast & taught how to read by the best of the 99 per cent – our under-valued teachers. These are the children Occupiers need to speak to; not Twitter twats like me. These children are growing up poorer than any of us – not in terms of disposable income, the measurable, cold, economic indicators I have written about before but under-educated, not even disengaged. They are the scorn of our ‘current affairs’ programming. Fringe-dwellers, regardless of race. The underclass. The illiterate and innumerate. The kids who set London on fire while we, the lucky 99 per cent of the Land of Oz sat here and watched. Rail against quantitative easing, #occupysydney … give me a small break while I imagine an austerity package, two or three, visited upon us. The truly frightening thing is that these children are not the stereotypical fat, unruly progeny of Macquarie Fields, or Fitzroy Crossing, or Frankston: they are the middle classes of  the BRICs, especially China and India. There are 78 million Indians with Type 2 diabetes. To work these most basic health issues through, we – who are not the 99 per cent – must get off Martin Place and reach Mumbai. Indians don’t see themselves as victims of capitalism. Indians thrive on trade; not just now, but through the ages. They live in a post-colonialist, still caste-ridden and religiously-divided country. They are more powerful than this lazy portrait, the Indians, South Americans, South Africans, Russians than our piss-poor democracy can imagine.

OK, I am drunk, and tired and I have ranted and railed more than enough for the early hours. Please leave a comment or tweet me about what this poster says to you. I am a cranky old woman, sure; but I genuinely want to know, in more than a cut and paste about how we are controlled by the banks, the media, the corporations and politicians, just what this poster represents. I want more of you,from you, as the individuals who claim to make up the 99 per cent. Agree, disagree; just don’t ignore. Oh, and don’t bash the people you have so long admired for kicking against the pricks of the right, and laughed at the idiocy of the Convoy of No Confidence. If you believe that Wayne Swan is going to chuck a Tony Abbott and stand in front of an ‘occupy buildings, abolish gaols’ banner, you are sorely mistaken. Barack Obama is endorsing #ows in his cool, pragmatic style. He wants to save his presidency by appealing to his base. End of Politics 101. Time for bed. Like this, loathe me, just think about it. Please.

Nearly lost you

Don’t call me daughter, not fit to be

The picture kept will remind me

“Daughter” – Pearl Jam (Vedder / Gossard)

I’ve been throwing up in the middle of the night again. Since Saturday. Since the nightmare started again. That you went to work & you didn’t come back. I wake up screaming & I sob & I can’t stop until I vomit. Just like I did when I was a little girl. And it was always you who came to stop it; not Mum. You would run to me when the screaming started. I don’t know what it was like for you to see me in the grip of this terror … it must have been unbelievable. Unbearable, even; to not understand – but how could you when I couldn’t tell you what was going on in my head, Dad? That I was scared when you weren’t there? That it played in my mind like a movie. That it wasn’t someone else’s father, but you; gone to work in the dark, dying in the dark. So I scream again in the night for a loss I am yet to experience. For the call which didn’t come. Not to our house. The only difference is you’re not here to shake me until I stop and prove to me that you’re alive. And so I scream & sob until I vomit, & I call home every day since Saturday.

Mum says I’m having flashbacks, but I can’t say, ‘I love you, Dad, please don’t leave me’.

I’m the hard one. ‘I think they’re dead, Dad’. I tell my brother as well. His answer is the same as yours.

“Probably. But they chose to do the job and knew the risks associated, as I do.”

My brother is the one in the rescue chopper. He is the man ready to walk up the barrel of a gun, just as the man from the mine said today. He’s right. There are 29 men missing; I don’t know them, I don’t have any connection to them & I am screaming in the middle of the night for them to come home.

Please let them be safe, please let them go home, please give strength & some small comfort to their families & community. Please grant the people at the pit top the wisdom to make the right choices, however desperate that choice may be. I’m agnostic; I’m not going to feign religion, it’s an insult to the faithful. Let them come home; but don’t let others go in to face the bullet in the chamber of that gun. One of those men in the dark could have been my Dad. And the man at the surface, planning the rescue, doing the risk assessment, could be my brother. 

Dear Nellie …

Nellie of Penrith Posted at 5:54 PM October 17, 2010:

… as for Kristina Keneally allowing her husband and sons appear in a family photo and allowing the stillbirth of her daughter to be used as brownee points for politics. She should be ashamed, I know any respect I had for her has gone, gone, gone.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/spin-out-of-control/story-e6freuy9-1225939672167

Dear Nellie,

My name is Kimberley. I have one brother, and three sisters. I was born a huge (9lb, 11 ounces, 23 inches long!), healthy baby girl at 1.18am on 6 December 1971. I am my parents’ second child; their oldest surviving one. I am the younger sister of Kelly Margaret, who was born, and died, in 1969. In all of our birth notices, my parents celebrated their healthy babies’ arrival with the words, ‘sister / brother of Kelly, in heaven’. I cannot begin to tell you how much I respect my Mother, who quietly, but factually explained to us as children that she went into labour with her daughter’s heart beating; a heart which stopped beating before Kelly was born.

As the member of a family with first-hand experience of stillbirth, I find your comments, which I believe relate to this story (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw-act/kristina-keneallys-sad-memories-of-a-stillbirth-10-years-ago/story-e6freuzi-1225939374867), abhorrent. If you click on this link, (http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/node/125), you’ll see that the story relates to the Premier’s decision to become patron of Stillbirth Foundation Australia.

As an adult, I look at my parents in awe to think that they could even attempt to turn what must be unspeakable pain into a part of our lives; just as Ben & Kristina Keneally have done for their sons. I am proud that the Premier has shared her love for her daughter, and her very real place in her family’s heart, since she entered public life. You may not know, but Caroline Keneally’s name is in the NSW Parliament Hansard, in her mother’s maiden speech, along with the rest of her family. Like the Keneallys – and too many families – mine has an angel in heaven as well.

Yours sincerely

Kimberley Ramplin

PS: You can help make a difference to this parent-run charity by visiting http://www.stillbirthfoundation.org.au/node/95. The five-year Little Feet lunch raised more than $50,000 for research into why so many stillborn babies’ babies’ deaths remain unexplained.

DISCLAIMER: I work in NSW politics, as a ministerial adviser. I disclose this on my Twitter account and in the ‘about’ section of this blog. While this post isn’t about politics per se, it was sparked by the ‘anonymous, vicious, troll’ debate. I actually agree with the, ‘yes to anonymous, vicious, trolls’ argument, but I have been obsessing over it today because it instantly brought to mind this pseudonymous online comment – almost one month later. If you think I didn’t cry when I read it, or cried again when I started typing tonight, think again.

What if it doesn’t get better?

Take a good look at my face

You’ll see my smile. It’s out of place

Look closer, it’s easy to trace

The tracks of my tears

“Tracks of my Tears”, The Miracles

Written by William “Smokey” Robinson Jnr, Warren Moore, Marvin Taplin

A few days ago, as part of a random twitter conversation, the subject of nicknames came up. Worst childhood nicknames. I could have chosen a number. When I was a little kid, I was “Jazzpop” to the older children of my parents’ friends, thanks to my love of jigging about to ABBA songs at inappropriate moments, such as surf club presentation nights & dinners; but that’s more of a, ‘gee I was a funny little thing when I was five’ nickname; as far as the worst nickname goes, there was only one contender. It was just a matter of writing it down and hitting ‘reply’. More than 20 years later, I can barely bring myself to write it; not because it dredges up the past, but because it speaks to the present.

When I was in year 9, I got a new nickname from a group of boys who caught the same bus to and from school as me. As far as nicknames go, this was a real winner. It went from the cool surfer boys who sat at the back of the bus to the point where my brother, two years younger than me, would not catch the same bus. I was re-christened ‘Sharkbait’ because I was so ugly that was all I was good for: to be chopped up and used to bait hooks. As far as catchphrases go, it was a pretty good one. It spread from the 708 school bus to the quadrangle of my high school. My friends told me straight – I couldn’t sit with them anymore. To make sure I got the message that they were serious, some of the boys in the group stopped playing handball at recess and pegging tennis balls at me instead. I stopped going to the quadrangle when they started calling me Sharkbait as well. I hated the school bells, because it meant the end of the relative safety of the classroom. It meant shuffling around and waiting until the hallways were clear and I could sit with a group of bookish, accepting girls outside the library. When they started to get hassled for letting me eat lunch with them, I sat on the steps of an empty school building. I was so ashamed of what was happening, of who I was, that I learned how to hide emotionally as well as physically. I didn’t tell anyone and I made my brother promise not to tell my Mum and Dad, but it didn’t last. Two girls had the courage to go to a teacher and tell her what was happening, and the school counsellor found me.

Looking back at the 14 year old me, crying uncontrollably as the school counsellor told me off (albeit gently) for not saying something about the bullying before it escalated, I still don’t feel sad. I was told that I was no good for anything, or anyone – and instead of doing something about it, addressing the way I perceived myself, I sucked it up because I wanted it to get better. At first, I tried to rise above because like most bullies, these ones hunted in packs and there was no way of escaping them; secondly, because I was ashamed. I was ashamed that if so many people saw me this way, and had no hesitation in letting me know, that it must be true. In perfunctorality accepting the forced and uncomfortable apology forced on two of the bullies by the school counsellor, I believe I was sold a lemon – that it would get better.   

In order to make it better, I became masterful at the dark art of showing that it was better. Instead of allowing myself to have days where it’s not OK, or having the proportional response if someone’s behaviour is out of line, I hold things ‘together’, because that means I am better. I will do almost anything, for almost anyone, sometimes at the detriment of my wellbeing (& definitely to my wallet) to prove I am the best friend, daughter, sister, lover, employee. I have difficulty displaying vulnerability and would prefer people think I am a nasty piece of work than weak. I chose a career in politics, which aside from being showbusiness for ugly people, as the saying goes, is chiefly adversarial. I am good at finding flaws in myself, which is the perfect training ground to hone in on those of others: and thus the victim becomes the bully.

I know I have good characteristics; I am a good person to talk to, and a good person to rely on; yet I can’t put emotions into perspective. I agonise before asking for help – I lay in bed with meningitis for three days before calling a health infoline for god’s sake – because I didn’t want to put anyone out and I was too embarrassed to call an ambulance. I have travelled the world, lived outside of Australia for extended periods, not simply because of a lifelong curiosity to know what lay beyond the suburb I grew up in, but because I am a better person when I travel. I am not weighed down by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future; I am ‘of the moment’. As this piece from The Economist reminds me, http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/bullying running away / or moving is not an appropriate, or even possible option for most people. In setting impossible standards for myself to live up to, I want to control everything in my life – including other people. I won’t ask for what I want, or need, I just want everything to be better. It’s not only delusional, it’s unfair.

My point: I don’t know whether telling people who are being bullied for any number of reasons that it will get better is the right advice. For every bullied LGBT teen who grows up to have a successful relationship, make peace with his father, and, frankly, look like Fort Worth Councillor Joel Burns, whose heartfelt personal story and plea to suicidal teens of it gets better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax96cghOnY4) to LGBT youth across the United States was promptly followed by messages from Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and President Obama, there are scores of LGBT adults who just grow up, move to the inner-city and are sneered at in nightclubs and gyms.

Finally, I believe it is entirely possible that Cameron Lowe, a 17 year old Victorian boy who died following a fight on Saturday night, tried to make things better, when, scared, confused and soon to die, he wrote a series of Facebook wall posts. One reads:

2.01am (two hours after the confrontation between Cameron, a group of his family & friends outside his workplace): ‘‘Wtf I must be drunk. All I know is my head hurts.’’

Cameron, it is too late for any of us to say to you stop writing on Facebook & ask for real help, instead of emoticons (http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/teen-made-tragic-facebook-farewell-20101108-17kl6.html). I can only hope that the truth of your last night will come out; that you were with people you trusted enough not to ‘man up’ when asked whether you were hurt. The alternative – that your 17-year-old brain told you not to acknowledge physical pain or weakness – and that later, you couldn’t or wouldn’t ask for assistance that may have saved your life – is the antithesis of it gets better. As a society, resilience is a wonderful quality to teach our children. Not every life event is catastrophic. Resilience comes to the fore as a way of coping with trauma; but you cannot be resilient forever. We must acknowedge and allow ourselves our human frailties, and understand them in others.

Too bloody dangerous

I keep straining my ears to hear a sound.
Maybe someone is digging underground,
or have they given up and all gone home to bed,
thinking those who once existed must be dead.

“New York Mining Disaster 1941″ (Barry Gibb / Robin Gibb)

I look in awe as a combined marvel of engineering, solidarity and hope saved the lives of 33 miners in Chile in the last 24 hours; in awe of the strength and determination of the men, their families and those who worked to free them – whether they were in hard hats, NASA or in government. Like the rest of the world, I was gripped by this story; but as I watched Fenix II being tested, I was gripped with fear. Not hope. Not anticipation. So when I saw the son of the first miner to surface, as I watched his face, I saw anxiety, not excitement, and when he sobbed uncontrollably as his father emerged from the capsule, so did I. In that moment I was connected with a small child I will never know and more in touch with my own frailties than I have been in a long time. I have travelled half the world. I have stood on ground where crimes against humanity have been committed; but if grief and suffering has a place and a name, it  is a small town in Wales: Aberfan.

I grew up in a mining village near Newcastle; up until the 1980s when the coal companies decided the land was worth more than the coal, a string of them dotting the coast south of the Hunter River; communities which sprung up around the pits since John Shortland discovered a rich seam of the black stuff in the late 18th century. All of my adult male relatives worked in coal mines, including my father. As a child, I heard the pit whistle signal the change of shift, and if my dad was on days he would knock off at 2pm and be in the bowlo by 3. If he worked a ‘doubler’ he was gone for 16 hours. He used to do a double shift at least once a week until he retired, buggered from 35 years of slaving his guts out. I also knew the story of Aberfan.

When you mine coal, you take out the black stuff, but also tonnes of useless stuff – ‘slag’. At the Merthyr Vale colliery, the slag heaps or ‘tips’ were monstrous. Fifty years of crud dumped on the side of a mountain. The mountain came with mountain springs. Some of the tips were laid directly over the springs. Aberfan’s primary school lay directly below the mountain – and the slag heaps. At 9.15am on Friday, 21 October 1966, one of the slag heaps gave way. It had been raining for days. Combined with the underground springs, the rain turned 150,000 cubic metres of slag and rock into a torrent of mud. Most of it stopped at the foot of the mountain, but as the little children of Aberfan returned to class that Friday morning, the last day of term, 40,000 cubic metres of this filth smashed its way into town, 12 metres deep. After destroying terraced houses on the way, it hit the school, destroying buildings and filling the classrooms with thick mud and rubble up to 10 metres deep. There was an almighty roar, then silence. 144 people choked, had their skulls caved in or were crushed by the impact. 116 of the victims were aged between 7 and 10 years old. 104 (or almost half of the students) died at the school. The mothers and fathers of Aberfan clawed at the mud with their bare hands, searching for the teachers and children who were dying metres below their despair. Hundreds of people drove to the village to help the rescue; as did police and trained rescue teams. No survivors were found after 11am. It took another week for 2,000 emergency services workers and volunteers, some working for more than 24 hours straight, to recover all of the bodies from their earth. Most of the victims were buried at a joint funeral at the local cemetery.

I went to Aberfan in 1996 – 30 years later. I was living in Cardiff, and I wanted to see for myself the town I had only seen on a documentary in primary school – which scared the living daylights out of me as there was a (small) slag heap across the road from my grandparents’ house. The only way I can describe walking the streets to pay my respects at the cemetery is to imagine getting an inside look at the mind of a person living with post-traumatic stress disorder. A town that can’t rest while the memory of that day remains fresh; streets and shops and pubs populated by old people and people in their 20s (the birthrate went up after the disaster) and a generation missing, 35-45 year old adults, either lying in the graveyard or broken by the horror of that day. A town split between families whose children survived (145) and those whose lives were taken in 1966, people who could not bear to see the living children play; and so guilt beset grief. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has found that more than 50 per cent of survivors suffered PTSD, and as of 2000, 82 per cent of those had not recovered; they were more than three times as likely to develop lifetime PTSD than a comparative cohort of life-threatening trauma victims.

So, on such an uplifting day, I am writing in honour of the thousands who risk their lives everyday by going underground. I have seen widows; known fatherless children; watched as my Dad’s mates went from pulling ‘doublers’ to being pushed in a wheelchair, their backs broken in roof falls. When John Lennon’s 70th birthday was remembered around the world, all I could think of was the morning after my 8th birthday party – the day of Lennon’s assassination and the day they came to tell my Dad that his mate Ray Jones was dead. When we grew up, my brother did his mine entrance exam. Our Dad let him do it but flatly refused to allow him to go underground. ‘Too bloody dangerous’ were his first, and only words on the subject, even though my brother could have worked at his pit. Instead, my brother became the rescuer of men; as a senior crewman on Westpac Rescue Helicopter he saved the lives of the sailors on the Pasha Bulker and took a boy I had gone to school with to Royal North Shore spinal unit after he was injured in a mining accident.

Safety standards worldwide have improved, but approximately 6,000 miners die in China each year (it’s a guesstimate; most of the accidents occur at small, pretty much illegal mines, I don’t think the government actually knows the true figure). As press secretary to a former Minister for Mineral Resources, I have been underground – he insisted that all of us know what it felt like for the people who worked the black seam (including the receptionist, who fell on her arse trying to cross a longwall excavation). There’s a hum, dim light, water, and kilometres of roads. I’ve also been woken up in the early hours of the morning to be notified of accidents; on one day, Friday 28 May three separate and tragic incidents resulted in the deaths of two young miners and serious injury to another. James Adams Jnr of Muswellbrook died in an incident at Dartbrook colliery, north of Muswellbrook. Paul Strong of Pelaw Main died in an incident at Mount Thorley open-cut mine, near Singleton. The Government was in the midst of overhauling mine safety legislation and conducted a review, but they were two new names to add to the the Jim Comerford Memorial Wall in Aberdare, which commemorates each of the 1,795 miners killed on the northern coalfields since the first lease was granted in 1801. To put the Hunter region’s loss in perspective, that is three times the number of soldiers Australia lost in the Vietnam War. I celebrate the success of the Chile mine rescue, but I honour the names on The Jim Comerford Memorial Wall. It was paid for by my Dad’s old union, the Northern District Branch of the United Mineworkers and named after the Rothbury Riot survivor and union stalwart. The records show that the youngest was 11-year-old Robert Irving, who was killed at the Co-operative Colliery at Plattsburgh on February 16, 1883, when he was “run over by loaded skips”. The oldest fatality on record was 73-year-old Frederick Charles Roose, who was killed at Waratah Colliery by a “fall of stone”. I am relieved beyond measure that 33 lives have been saved as the world watched on, but I am mindful of those who are subject to these dangers every moment of their working lives, and the graves of Aberfan. 

Notes:

“New York Mining Disaster, 1941″ was inspired by the Aberfan disaster.

Prof Iain McLain (2007): Aberfan: no end of a lesson http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-52.html

Royal College of Psychiatrists (2000) Over 30 years on – Aberfan survivors still suffering post-traumatic stress disorder http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/press/pressreleasearchive/pr160.aspx

NSW Parliament Hansard: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20040601005

Jagged little pills

Now … is everyone who has expressed their relief at the acquittal of Tegan Leach and Sergie Brennan ready to push for RU486 to be imported into the country so people do not have to resort to smuggling it?

RU486 (or Mifepristone) was legalised in Australia in 2006 – with the transfer of approval from the Minister for Health to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, but here’s the catch: no pharmaceutical company has applied to import and distribute it. I am pro-choice. Abortion law requires reform, but the reason this couple was put in the dock in the first place is because they ‘procured a home abortion’ with a drug that is legal and SHOULD be available across the country, as a choice for a woman to make in consultation with her doctor. Anyone with me?

If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next

In the last few weeks, allegations against high-profile sportsmen have dominated the national conversation about sexual assault. We’ve had Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt’s, ‘you’re not going for a Milo at 3am’, to Kerri-Ann Kennerley’s description of young women as ‘strays’ (why am I reminded of the sheikh who likened women to uncooked meat?) and a ‘rape apologism bingo’ game set up for a sporting-focused Q&A panel http://twitpic.com/2wknsi/full.

I’m sickened by each facet, but I found the latter to be tremendously unhelpful, and sadly indicative of the chattering (or Twittering) classes, which seem to chatter loudest when we put sexual violence in the domain of the cashed-up, under-educated, piss-wrecked footballer and avoid the truth: most sexual assaults in Australia are committed by people known to the victim. The offenders are our partners, siblings, parents, friends. Our neighbours and workmates. In the nightmare scenario, the victims are children. In the unthinkable, they are assaulted by members of their own families.

The annual Australian Bureau of Statistics report, Recorded Crimes – Victims – Australia 2009 (released on 3 June 2010) states of the 18,803 recorded sexual assault victims in Australia:

• 3,266 were aged 0-9 years ( a rate 0f 117.5 / 100,000 people)
• 4,741 were aged 10-14 ( a rate of 337.5 / 100,000 people – the highest of all age cohorts)

Once again, these are recorded crime statistics. Forty-two per cent of sexual assaults reported to law enforcement agencies across Australia in 2009 were perpetrated against children under the age of 14. (NB: This includes offences recorded by adults which took place when they were under 14). In NSW, the rate of victimisation in this cohort is four times higher than the overall rate. In South Australia, 26 per cent of all sexual assault victims had a familial relationship with the perpetrator; in the ACT and Tasmania that figure stood at just over one-fifth. In Queensland, 30 per cent of offenders were family members of the victims; in NSW it was 39 per cent.

Crimes against people are notoriously under-reported in comparison to property crimes, which is why qualified data is critical to getting a more holistic view of sexual assault in Australia. Each year, the ABS conducts a Crime Victimisation Survey, where one person in a household over the age of 15 years is surveyed. Given what it describes as ‘the sensitivity of the issue’, the ABS seeks responses regarding sexual assaults from people aged over 18. The 2008-09 Report (released 1 March 2010) estimates 52,500 people living in Australian households had experienced at least one episode of sexual assault in the 12 months to December 2008. Similarly, Sexual Assault in Australia: A Statistical Overview offers a broader and deeper exploration of the prevalence and characteristics of sexual violence against men and women. The report, produced in 2004, found:

• 36.1 per cent of victims experienced more than one incident of sexual assault in the preceeding 12 months;
• 52.4 per cent of offenders were known to the victim; and
• 30.3 per cent were family members / friends or former partners.

Regardless of your gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, age, making an allegation of sexual assault, telling someone, anyone – family, friends, a doctor, let alone the police - must be one of the most difficult decisions a person could make, because it is an acknowledgement that you were not in control of your own person. I’m not talking about being under the influence of alcohol or drugs; I’m referring to being denied the liberty to choose what happens to your body – surely our most fundamental human right? For every victim who faces a defence barrister looking for any advantage in a court room, while their alleged attackers sit there comes the agony of first acknowledging to yourself that a crime may have been perpetrated against you; and forget about KAK calling you a ‘stray’ – how does anyone function with Mrs XX up the road airing her inside knowledge and opinions at a barbeque? How do you go to school with ‘raped by ‘Uncle XX’, my Dad’s best friend’ burnished like a brand on your heart? Sexual assaults are crimes of power; someone exercises power, and someone is powerless – a feeling that extends beyond the victim. No amount of love, no matter how fierce and unyielding, can protect a child, a sibling, a partner from harm to their person at all times, especially when the offender is another family member. As a society, we can repudiate the crime, convict the perpetrator, educate and learn to respect each other’s physical boundaries – but healed wounds are still wounds. If you need help, the following link to the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault offers an excellent, state-by-state list of crisis and specialist services, including those for indigenous and CALD communities, intra-familial and male victims of sexual assault:

http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/crisis.html 

PS: I’m sure there are cashed-up, piss-wrecked, under-educated sports stars who commit sexual assault. They’re still sons, brothers, husbands and fathers – and they will be long after the final siren. Someone knows them.

Notes:

The ABS defines family members as partners, parents, children, siblings, boyfriends / girlfriends and other related family members including blood relatives or relatives by marriage, such as cousins, grandparents, step-parents and in-laws and sexual assault as:  

Physical contact, or intent of contact, of a sexual nature directed toward another person where that person does not give consent, gives consent as a result of intimidation or deception, or consent is proscribed (i.e. the person is legally deemed incapable or giving consent because of youth, temporary/permanent (mental) incapacity or there is a familial relationship).

ACSSA is part of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, a statutory agency of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Be victorious

Jai Ho!

(VICTORY TO YOU)

Aaja Jariwale Nile Aasman Ke Tale

(COME JOIN ME UNDER THE GLITTERING BLUE SKY)

Jai Ho, Lyrics: Gulzar / Composer A.R. Rahman

“It is pretty shocking seeing the empty seats. Wonder what ticket prices are?”

“1.2 billion people live in India and maybe 40 or 50 of them have turned up to watch the host nation play in a netball game”

“Maybe they should of held the commonwealth games in Perth, there were better crowds at unigames”

“#T1 : Grandma interested in #CWG status of the day, #T2 : Grandma asks when does the next Test Match Start?”

“#cwg 6 golds wow….but y we don’t get more then single gold in Olympics……i always wish,India should be on top of table in Olympics “

“That indians have a fascination for gold is not new.. that we can win it in sports and so many of them .. is ! #CWG”

I love India; it’s an incredible and infuriating country to spend time in – & it requires time. India is everything and nothing … you can eat, cross-legged on the floor with thousands of Sikh pilgrims at Amritsar’s Golden Temple; go to the Regal Cinema in Mumbai & throw popcorn at the bad guys in a Bollywood blockbuster; or take a package holiday in Goa, eating full English breakfasts & never setting foot outside Calangute.

It’s incredible: the languages, the food, the people, the diversity of landscapes, architecture, religions; and infuriating: the wild goose chases because nobody says ‘no’, or ‘i don’t know’, spending half a day to send a parcel, the obvious baksheesh deals to get you into the ‘right’ shop, the unbelievable gap between rich and poor. Most of all, it’s intense: the slums, the inevitable illnesses, the Taj at dawn, the ghats on the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, Gandhiji’s memorial, the forts and palaces, the impeccable saris, the rituals, the sacred cows.

India is everything the world is – but in one country. Communal violence, corruption, coexistence, TV channels – all on a monumental scale that you don’t understand until you arrive. The crowds buying bhelpuri on a muggy night at Chowpatty Beach aren’t hundreds of people, they’re thousands; Dharavi slum is Asia’s largest, & yet there’s an emerging middle class of 200m plus and 565 million mobile phone connections (and better reception). In 2007, I arrived in Delhi after three months travelling from Kerala to the Pakistani border. From my autoricksaw in freezing December, I saw children sleeping outside construction sites; yet Forbes 2010 rich list names 69 Indians in the world’s top billionaires – two in the top five. It has one time zone – the infamous Indian Standard Time – which is an elastic concept in a geographically daunting country and the accepted price of doing business.

So with every tweet, comment, news update, whatever, that I come across about how badly the Commonwealth Games is going attendance-wise, I want to scream. India is a maddening place to get things done, but when you go with it and see its mighty past and awesome (in geopolitical and socio-economic terms) future, you just laugh. You laugh and you cry and you are moved by the smallest things and the biggest problems. Having seen construction standards, and experienced power failures across the country, the fact that the athletics track is on par with a school playground and the official broadcast centre is a shambles doesn’t surprise me. That people question a country’s pride or place because of a sketchy crowd at a netball game – that just saddens me. I’m obviously passionate about this, but I’m trying to rationalise it. Here goes:

1/. The BCCI (The Board of Control for Cricket in India) refused to reschedule the Australian test series. It is an utter conundrum that the most cricket mad nation I’ve visited can’t fill a 30,000-seat stadium in Mohali for a thrilling test match, but weigh it up – there are entire TV channels devoted to cricket, 24/7 – replaying matches endlessly. A new match = huge TV audiences, product placement and profits. It is no joke that everything moves a little slower when a cricket match is on. It is inescapable, but as a woman who can attempt to bowl overarm, I was all kinds of weird to kids wherever I went, whether it was in the laneways of Old Delhi or an orphanage in Mamallapuram; for my backyard cricket days I remain eternally grateful. The laughs I had with children I couldn’t otherwise communicate with - (unless I handed over my camera – self-portraits are a big hit) made my angst about the overwhelming poverty a little more bearable. I don’t think I have ever cried as hard as I did leaving that orphanage. I had my own Jolie moment, fantasising that I could somehow adopt a child when in reality, I can’t even keep tropical fish alive. Enough: suffice to say that the BCCI is as powerful as the IOC, FIFA and the European Union rolled into one and the Commonwealth Games didn’t stand a chance against it;

2/. Historically, India has never ‘performed’ at the Commonwealth Games (271 total medals won at 14 games attended out of 18) - or the Olympics – 20 Olympic Games medals total since 1920 (6 gold in men’s field hockey). Australians flip their wigs if we finish further down the medal tally than countries larger than us by infinity and beyond; yet the IOC’s head, Jacques Rogge, is there, encouraging an Indian bid for the Olympics. This is a trial run, they’ll get a whole heap of criticism and then get it right in 20 years time. $100 on it now;

3/. Not all countries care. Australian TV promos pitched the entire games as a grudge match between Australia and England. Stuff everyone else. Try listening to BBC World Service. Every time any other nation wins anything, they’re shouting from the rooftops. Last night, every hour, they played a quote from an Australian competitor (sorry, can’t remember name) who described the games as a bit like a training run for a better competition. It comes at the end of the far more lucrative Euro athletics season; the sun has well and truly set on the Empire, so it’s time to ask: is the whole thing an anachronism? Plenty of the Commonwealth’s best athletes are voting with their feet and saying I’m not bothering. Why should Indian spectators pay for the privilege of not seeing many of the best athletes in the world (barring, for example, Steve Hooker who is competing and to his absolute credit, has publicly stated that he doesn’t understand why others have withdrawn) – or even the best athletes in the Commonwealth. This article from the Bangalore Mirror gives a pretty comprehensive list of reigning champions not appearing (some who definitely wanted to go but had to withdraw because of injury); others, like Usain Bolt, who at least said straight up that it doesn’t suit his training schedule; but I’m going to call it as I see it: if it’s safe enough for the Australian cricket team to go, it is safe enough for Canadian badminton player Alvin Lau to get out of uni for 12 days to compete (seriously – I’ve never met a student who couldn’t wangle their way out of college)

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/71/20100929201009292319556674415277b/Pullouts-are-in-at-CWG.html

http://www.smh.com.au/commonwealth-games-2010/comm-games-news/reasons-change-but-result-the-same-as-more-drop-out-of-games-20100930-15z2p.html

4/. There are shedloads of Indians who can undoubtedly afford tickets and get time off. Public servants get approximately 20 days’ holiday a year – 3 secular, national holidays – the rest are (‘local’ holidays according to which state you live in, or religious observances). If you work in the private sector, say for a corporation, chances are you may get the same time – but what if you don’t? What if you’re the hundreds of millions of rural and urban poor? What if you work everyday selling ice from a cart to feed your family? Ticket prices for athletics events range from zero on the last day of competition – the marathon finals to Rs1,000 (AUD 23.22 today)http://www.tickets.cwgdelhi2010.org/cgibin/bv60.dll/cwg/home/schedule.do?sportsname=Athletics. The median salary in Delhi is Rs419,000 (AUD9,729 today): http://www.payscale.com/research/IN/Country=India/Salary/by_City The median salary in Sydney is $65,460. So each Rs1,000 seat would cost a Sydneysider on the median salary the equivalent of $163. Think about it, long and hard: would you fly to the Gold Coast, pay for accommodation and alcohol, put up with maddening security and see the best of who can be arsed turning up when you can watch it on tv for nothing?http://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Country=Australia/Salary/by_City

5/. Finally, who the hell are we to talk? ANZ Stadium is hardly ever ‘full’ … a couple of football games a year; it’s never carried the same numbers as it did during the Olympics because they got rid of the extra stands. If people are so incensed by crowd numbers at the netball in New Delhi, then TV ratings and attendance figures at Australia’s stellar women’s comp should double next year.

But most of all, why should any of this deter this inspiring, infuriating country, one of the world’s fastest developing economies, from sinking billions into sporting & other infrastructure? India is a member of the G20; the world’s largest democracy and second largest population. I really hope that Delhi makes similar reuse of facilities as Beijing did with its Olympics venues  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26393878/ns/beijing_olympics-beijing_olympics_news/ and the performances of the stars who will be made  by these games inspire and bring joy. A sincere “Jai Ho” to everyone who loves the Commonwealth Games. To all of the competitors, supporters, TV audiences around the world … “Victory to You”.

Your cheatin’ heart

Your cheatin’ heart,
Will make you weep,
You’ll cry and cry,
And try to sleep,
But sleep won’t come,
The whole night through,
Your cheatin’ heart, will tell on you…

Hank Williams

Yesterday, more than 100 elite athletes rode 267.2 kilometres from Melbourne to Geelong, and then 11 laps of a hilly, sometimes tortuous circuit of the town, chasing a dream that is the world champion’s rainbow jersey in the sport of professional cycling.

It was a beautiful day – well at least it was in Geelong, with its wide streets and large houses on quarter-acre blocks packed with fans. Legendary cycling commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen regaled worldwide audiences with such pearlers as, ‘Geelong is the centre of Australia’; ‘you can smell the bbqs’, and my personal fave: ‘everyone’s drinking tinnies’ (I don’t know anyone who drinks tinnies. Not even my dad). It was a true win for Australian cycling fans used to sitting up in the early hours, shouting at a TV screen or a sketchy livestream of Fleche-Wallone in Flemish, although I was disappointed by the paucity of ’roadside randoms’ (e.g. http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/photos/1997/DEVIL.JPG  we are used to laughing at as they pursue cyclists into the high Pyrenees along roads that bear greater resemblance to goat tracks. This year’s Vuelta a España (the Tour of Spain) featured mountain top finishes that were so tight the team buses could not navigate them; after hours in the saddle, at gradients between 10 and 20 per cent, the riders had to jump back on their bikes and descend the mountain.  There was a concern that the UCI World Championships would be overshadowed, given the AFL Grand Final Redux, and the NRL Grand Final in Sydney. As a cycling fan, I desperately wanted to be there, but a number of factors made that impossible. Chiefly, my level of disorganisation & lack of money. But for once, this blog isn’t about me.

There were other preoccupations aside from Australia’s addiction to two sports that are almost meaningless to the rest of the world: Floyd Landis, who had his 2006 Tour de France title stripped after returning positive drug samples, was speaking at a conference on doping in sport; and then the big news: Alberto Contador, arguably the rider of his generation, had tested positive to the steroid, clenbuterol, which helps develop lean muscle and drop fat. Although illegal, it has been found to contaminate livestock, particularly pig meat (see http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=060919065258.qtzm4eom&show_article=1 and http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/22/china.poisonings/index.html)

It is highly toxic in human beings (See this University of New South Wales factsheet: http://www.med.unsw.edu.au/NDARCWeb.nsf/resources/NDARCFact_Drugs2/$file/CLENBUTEROL+NDARC+FACT+SHEET.pdf)

Maybe it’s the greatest stitch up of all time – this information was a mere Google away for me. Contador was, after all, named in Operación Puerto, but later declared clean (as was Australian Allan Davis). However, it does make me inclined to give AC the benefit of the doubt, as Anthony Tan writes today (http://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/blog-article/120577/Hold-your-horses-please) of the seemingly laughable defence that he had eaten contaminated meat. As Tan and Australia’s Cycling Central website report:

UCI chief Pat McQuaid says Contador could have his fate decided by scientists from the union and World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

World cycling’s ruling body itself says only a “very small concentration” of the drug had been found and that the case warranted “further scientific investigation” because the Cologne laboratory which detected the clenbuterol is known to be able to detect the tiniest traces of drugs.

“The concentration found by the laboratory was estimated at 50 picograms which is 400 times less than what the antidoping laboratories accredited by WADA (World Anti Doping Agency) must be able to detect,” the UCI said Friday, adding that analysis of a B sample “confirmed the first”.

Cycling Central’s report (http://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/news/17131/Contador-may-quit-if-banned-for-doping ) goes on to say that if he is perceived as ‘damaged goods’, AC may give the game away. To me, that would be both a tragedy (this is a guy who, at the age of 27 has won EVERY Grand Tour, including three Tours de France) and perhaps, progress for the sport.

The Contador story, while the biggest of the week, wasn’t the only cycling doping yarn to emerge. More names came tumbling out -  Xacobeo-Galicia riders Ezequiel Mosquera and David García Dapena had both tested positive for Hydroxyethyl starch on September 16, during the Vuelta. Mosquera (“The Mosquito”) had finished the race in 2nd place, and Da Peña finished 11th overall. I think everyone who watched the Vuelta this year cheered Mosquera on, a rider who rarely races outside his native Spain, as he duelled with this year’s Italian sensation, Vincenzo Nibali. A podium finish in a Grand Tour is professional cycling’s Holy Grail; yes, this year’s Vuelta was somewhat diminished by its closeness to the UCI World Championships and the number of elite riders who didn’t enter, or pulled out; nonetheless, it was rough and tumble racing from Day 1.

Here beginneth the rant:

In 2010 alone, the following riders have all been named, suspended by their teams or from riding in certain countries, subjected to provisional or set-time UCI bans after returning positive samples:

• A giant of Spanish cycling, Alejandro Valverde, who is banned from riding in Italy after failing to overturn a suspension by that country’s racing body in the Court for Sporting Arbitration. The UCI extended the two-year ban worldwide and erased all of his 2010 results;
• Claims in Italy’s La Gazzetto dello Sport of a police investigation of 54 people centred on the town of Mantova, in Italy’s Lombardy region. The newspaper named 16 of Lampre-Farnesi Vini’s current and former riders, including ‘The Little Prince’ of Italian cycling, Damiano Cunego; former UCI Elite Men’s Road Racing champion, Alessandro Ballan and Mauro Santambrogio (now with BMC Racing Team – which provisionally suspended the pair until the completion of the police investigation); BMC reinstated the pair, satisfied that no authority had opened proceedings against them; Lampre did not take similar action against any members of its squad.
• Another BMC rider, Thomas Frei, was provisionally suspended, pending further investigation and testing of his B sample, after testing positive for Recombinant Erythropoietin (EPO – which increases red blood cell production, allowing the body to carry more oxygen);
• Team Radio Shack suspended rider Li Fuyo pending the outcome of the B sample after his positive test for clenbutrol;
• The UCI banned Gabriele Bosision from professional cycling for two years after testing positive to EPO in 2009;
• In ongoing cases, the UCI has named Franco Pellizotti, Jesus Rosendo Prado and Tadej Valjavec for returning irregular blood values in their ‘blood passports’ (A biological passport is an individual, electronic record for each rider, in which the results of all doping tests over a period of time are collated. Doping violations can be detected by noting variances from an athlete’s established levels outside permissible limits, rather than testing for and identifying illegal substances);
• French rider Mickaël Larpe tested positive for EPO;
• Francesco De Bonis became the first cyclist to receive a two-year sanction on the evidence of his blood passport results;
• Pietro Caucchioli was also banned for two years on the evidence of his irregular blood passport results;
• Ricardo Serrano was suspended by the Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) for two years due to Continuous Erythropoesis Receptor Activator (CERA) having been found in two separate blood samples collected around a year ago. He was also implicated due to abnormal values in his blood passport;
• Nicklas Axelsson was suspended for life following positive analysis of his B-sample for EPO. He had previously been suspended for EPO use in 2001;
• The UK Anti-doping agency posted the two year suspension for cyclist Dan Staite for EPO and ATD found in sample taken at a National B level event;
• While he was riding the Vuelta, it was announced that Roy Sentjens had failed an out of competition doping control and would be suspended. He admitted to having doped with EPO that he had obtained in Barcelona, Spain, and declined to request the testing of his B-sample. He also announced his immediate retirement from professional cycling;
• A UCI statement announced that Óscar Sevilla tested positive for the blood expander Hydroxyethl starchafter the final stage of the Vuelta a Colombia, which he had won.

(Sources: cyclingnews.com; cyclingcentral, velonation andWikipedia – the font of all lazy blogger’s knowledge)

Other recent high profile professional cycling cases include: Bernhard Kohl; Tom Boonen (cocaine); Ricardo Riccò; Michael Rasmussen (who at the time, was wearing the general classification leader’s maillot jaune in the 2007 Tour de France); Iban Mayo (suspended for two years – has not returned to the sport); Alexandre Vinokourov; Ivan Basso (for self-confesed ‘attempted doping’); Landis; Danilo Hondo; David Millar; Stefan Schumacher; Leonardo Piepoli; Tyler Hamilton (Olympic Champion); Bjarne Riis (1996 TdF winner and Team Saxo Bank manager); Marco Pantani (winner of the 1998 TdF and Giro d’Italia) Jan Ullrich (winner of the 1997 TdF, 1999 Vuelta; Olympic champion) – famed for his rivalry with Lance Armstrong, Ullrich retired in 2007, having been barred from the 2006 TdF amid speculation of doping.

Some episodes are so damaging, so prolific, they have become ‘affairs’: Telekom, Festina; Operación Puerto; ‘Oil for Drugs’. Welcome to professional cycling – the sport of dopers. Different day, different race, different drug, same shit. I cried when Rasmussen was caught, because I was tired of watching inspiring performances of man and bike versus mountain being trashed the next day. Sickened by the stench of mendacity, of lies and liars, to borrow from Tennessee Williams.

Tragically, and for decades, drugs have ruined the reputations and careers of sporting heroes – example A: Diego Maradona – and in the worst instances, been implicated in the deaths of heroes including Marco Pantani. But the use of performance-enhancing drugs or banned substances is neither a new phenomenon or limited to cycling. So why is cycling perceived by many as a haven for cheats, marred by the constant suspicion of drug cheating (particularly by afficionados who believe the successes of certain stars of the sport cannot be due to their extraordinary abilities)? Even the most one-eyed fanatics know the sport has been damaged, and seems to hurt more than others, with every transgression, every whisper, every allegation.

Think of the use of anabolic steroids in bodybuilding and athletics; where the Olympic ideal of ‘faster, higher, stronger’ could only be achieved by the likes of Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, through doping. The United States Olympic Committee covered up the use of banned substances, as admitted by stars including Evelyn Ashford and Carl Lewis. Both American football and baseball have been connected with steroid use; footballers, tennis players, cricketers, ice hockey players linked to the use of illegal drugs and diuretics; the evermore sinister ways of covering up – from urine and blood sample swapping to new masking agents.

Without doubt, it is the systemic abuse of East German athletes and swimmers that haunts me most. A regime imposed on young people; state-sponsored and dictated, often without their knowledge, or at least informed consent. For every star the ‘system’ produced, it wounded the bodies and minds of hundreds, so much so that on 1 October 2010, Craig Lord labelled it the ‘Sporting Crime of the Century’ on SwimNews.com:

Sport is war and at its core in the Cold War years of the 1970s and 1980s was a cancer called State Plan 14:25. It was a medal-making machine that created sure-fire winners and podium placers. Some names came, conquered and vanished almost as quickly. To the architects of State Plan 14:25, a systematic doping regime rolled out to an estimated 10,000 young athletes in all sports during the days of the German Democratic Republic, the names were, effectively, mere numbers, the swimmers (and others) there for one purpose: to serve as “ambassadors in track suits” and show the world that the socialist-communist system was the best, better than the West. 

The notion was a sham behind which generations of sporting scapegoats had their talent twisted for political gain before being spat out of the machine at the other end as victims, many of whom still pay a very high price today 20 years after a GDR about to be dissolved through reunification of Germany held its first free elections, on March 18, 1990. The people of the German Democratic Republic formally joined the people of the Federal Republic of Germany on Oct. 3, 1990. In swimming, that gave rise to the first joint swim team at a world titles, Perth 1991 featuring Michael Gross, at his swansong meet, and the retired Kristin Otto on a podium together.

Gross appealed to reporters to leave the past behind. Impossible for those who lived through it, warts and all, of course. Between 1973 and 1988, GDR women swimmers shattered 130 world records, won more than half of all Olympic medals available to them in the pool (1976, 1980 and 1988), almost two thirds of all world titles and 97 out of 104 European crowns. 

State Plan 14:25 held that children (for many of those doped, particularly in sports such as swimming, were under age) would be doped with substances such as anabolic steroids, some never clinically tested on animals before human guinea pigs were plied with them, and without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The 1966 blueprint refers to the drugs as “Unterstutzenden Mitteln”, or “supporting means”. The blueprint would not be signed as official policy until 1974 but experimentation on athletes started much earlier and tests had surely been conducted in international competition by then at the start of what would be the biggest pharmacological experiment in sports history. 

The drugs, administered by doctors and coaches, included Oral-Turinabol, a synthetic anabolic agent developed for cancer patients; testosterone derivatives; and “STS 646″, a drug considered too dangerous to licence inside the GDR but given to teenagers before being tested on lab rats. “The pills came in a box of chocolates,” Catherine Menschner would say in court in 1999. You are unlikely to know here name. By the time she spoke she had suffered seven miscarriages in the years after quitting the sport in which she was fed a diet of drugs but not for international glory. “I was a guinea-pig. I was used to test drugs for better athletes so they could win for the GDR.”

In his trial, Dr Lothar Kipke adopted the role of Nazi concentration camp guard: “I was only following orders…”. There to hear him was former swimmer Martina Gottshalt, who urged her abuser to “look my 15-year-old son in the eyes and tell him you were just following orders”. Her son, Daniel, sat beside her, his clubfoot swinging under the bench.

… Among doctors called to court to account for their role in a massive deception was Dr Dorit Rosler. Irony of ironies, she would set up a surgery in Czarnikauer Strasse in post GDR days with the very purpose of helping victims of the GDR doping system. In court, Rosler broke down in tears when she faced some of those victims and said: “I should have shown more courage. In Nazi Germany we did what we were told to do. The GDR doping machine was no different; we were just carrying out medical orders … have we not learned anything?” 

… And all the while, German sports bodies continue to list the efforts of GDR athletes as the German record for events galore. In swimming a handful of national records remain in place 20 years on, including the women’s 400m and 800m free standards that even world champion Hannah Stockbauer could not get beyond. In track and field, four GDR world records remain the world records today, bodies from the IOC downwards apparently unable or unwilling to grasp the nettle and place the GDR years in context: the sporting crime of the 20th century.

So back to my original question: why is cycling perceived to be dirtier when other sports and events, including the Olympics, have also been tarnished? In my opinion, it is because cycling almost always imposes bans that last a few years, and are applied retrospectively, inviting known, or confessed drug cheats back into the sport almost as soon as they left it. In other sports, if you’re exposed as a drug cheat, you’re forever ‘disgraced’; stripped of your titles; outcast. Not so with cycling: you do the crime, you pay the time, and back you come (unless you decide to give it up). I was happy that Ivan Basso won this year’s Giro d’Italia; but that ‘clean’ feeling is marred by the knowledge that he was at least willing to dope. While there is redemption, I find myself wanting to turn the TV off every time David Millar talks about drugs in sport - the hypocrisy of a man who excelled while doping; and the greatest what if for me – what if Contador IS a master doper, learning the dark art through his connection to Operación Puerto, and robbed Cadel Evans and Andy Schleck of Tour victories? The conjecture surrounding Lance Armstrong and the rest of the US Postal / Discovery teams is ongoing, with Landis’ allegations about the highest profile cyclist of the modern era as yet unfounded and tainted by his own flakiness.

What if the only way forward for professional cycling is, together with what is acknowledged as one of the toughest anti-doping regimens in sport, banning dopers for life? Is it that terrible and that necessary to get the message through to the numbskulls caught this year that it isn’t worth it, that they are defiling a sport which can separate winners over a three-week Tour by a handful of seconds? A sport that deserves to be associated with all that is noble, with its reliance on strength, determination, speed, agility, tactics, teamwork and individual brilliance - with riders who honour the jersey, regardless of the colour, and whether they wear it for a day or a week.

In both my head and heart, I want to know, I want to believe that Alberto Contador is not a drug cheat. We share the same birthday (fun fact) and even if he did beat my beloved Cadel Evams by 23 seconds, he won the 2007 Tour de France by holding his nerve to produce the Individual Time Trial of his life when almost everyone with an opinion at the time (me included) thought Cadel would blast him off the road. I don’t want to know that he stood on the winner’s podium this year – winning over Andy Schleck by a mere eight seconds in controversial circumstances (meh, I think AS is a whinger) – knowing in his heart that he made it with a little help. I don’t want his achievements to be written off. Professional road cycling will be more than a little poorer without his talent; and it will have one fewer fan. It may be self-indulgent, but I’d like to think that the long hours spent loving a sport count.

Four dead in Ohio

As a copykid many, many years ago, I was sent on a ‘death knock’. For the uninitiated, a death knock involves getting a picture, vision, anything, on a person who has died in a ‘newsworthy’ way. In my one and only experience of performing this duty, a backpacker, BASE jumping from Blues Point Tower, had been killed. It was a news story. BASE jumping was a pretty big deal in the early ’90s, and it wasn’t a suicide, which generally aren’t reported. So the news desk sent me to a hostel in Coogee to get a photo of the dead man. Which I did. From someone who had known him for a few months.

I thought about that death knock last night – and why, in a world where we leave ourselves open through Facebook, Twitter, etc. death knocks like that will become almost redundant. I’ve been to two funerals this year – both friends of mine who died in shocking ways and well before their time – and the amount of shit families have to go through to close down email accounts and Facebook and blah blah blah – it’s worse than dealing with banks. For this reason, I’ve started mapping my extensive digital footprint so that if my brain really does leak out of my ears one day, my friends won’t have to see my mug when they want to check in with Kim Kardashian (thanks to the wonders of auto-fill).

So … the Grog’s Gamut outing. Quelle surprise – having announced it on Twitter, the ‘Twitterverse’ responded – as did what many people perceive as the ’dark overlords of the MSM’. In the previous week, I agreed in a Twitter exchange that pseudonyms were annoying; that people should ‘man up’; if you have an opinion, and you want to express it, have the conviction to stand by it. I also believe that people have a right to engage in social media under a pseudonym if they choose to do so – not for the ‘anonymity’ get-outta-jail free card (writing a blog is NOT the same as being an anonymous source or whistleblower) but because it’s not how things work. Every day, mainstream media outlets invite the general public to offer stories; capture vision; dial in to talkback radio; participate in forum-style programs such as Q & A or Insight; trawl Twitter for, and post promos or links to yarns there. I think it’s a good thing; we’re just having trouble finding our way with the acceptable ‘citizen journalist’ who films a hail storm and bloggers who don’t need to write a Letter to the Editor to critique the media. It cuts both ways, and sometimes people get hurt.

I admire many Australian journalists; even if our jobs require us to go mano a mano on occasion, at the end of a day, most of the journos I’m in contact with will sit down and have a beer at the end of the day. Someone (sorry, it’s been a blur) wrote that journos are under increasing pressure because of staff cutbacks; a lot of people dismissed this. I think it’s not just cutbacks in staff, and the expectation that journos will file stories on multiple platforms, but cutbacks in time. I truly believe time is needed to work up the game-changing yarn (was there a better story in recent memory than the UK Daily Telegraph’s exposé of systemic expense rorting by MPs? I can’t think of one) and it just isn’t available to many journos these days. It was the result of a leak, but also defo-defying reporting and editing.

What we all have to get a grip on is that there are more than 60 million blogs online, and social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube mean vision and words can be transferred globally in minutes. Twitter can be used as one giant, free ad and blogs are unfiltered, unedited responses. As Richard Edelman, founder of one of the world’s largest public relations firms, told an audience of students in Salt Lake City in November 2006:

What we have now is the evolution of a horizontal axis of communications that complements the traditional top down vertical axis. We are witnessing the democratisation of information. There is no longer a single source everyone agrees is always accurate. The sweet spot … is the intersection of vertical and horizontal, the controlled, top-down and the spontaneous peer-to-peer discussion.

So, eyes to the front, back to me. As one of the few ‘out’ political staffers, I made a conscious decision to ‘unlock’ my Twitter account. I also made a very conscious decision NOT to tweet about work (barring the odd shout out to some of the NSW Press Gallery, and on very rare occasions, to tweet on my way to an event my boss was speaking at). I accept that because I don’t lock my account and despite disclosing my name and job, that there are people who don’t play nicely BUT thanks to expressing my obsessions with UK & US politics, professional cycling, the World Cup, AFL (in particular my beloved Sydney Swans) and Manchester Utd, I have hit the ‘sweet-spot’ and made some great ‘mini-networks’ of people who have been there for me. Sometimes a *metaphysical hug* is what you need.

Some people like the 140-character version of the rest of me: my dazzling wit & repartée (that was sarcasm); some people I’d never heard of find my retweeting of Malcolm Tucker ‘risqué’; so god help the people who think I swear too much. They are your thoughts and opinions, and while I may think you have a bee in your ‘jaunty little bonnets’, as Malcolm would say, don’t follow me. You have a choice, like all of us, with our developed-world problems, of which media – mainstream, social, red, blue, girly mags or celeb rags – we want to be bombarded with. In so many other parts of the world, people are threatened, not by a middle of the book yarn and a Twitterstorm, but with their lives and liberty, for finding their voice by whatever means is available to them. If that’s Twitter, then so be it. 

So, my ‘takeaways’ from #grogsgate:

1/. I think that it is a ‘gate’ is fucking ridiculous, but so are most ‘gates’. They diminish Watergate, which should be the only gate. Ever.

2/. Twitter is dangerously close to creating your own private cargo cult. Think about the language … ‘followers’; ’blocked’; ‘unfollow’; ‘spambots’; ‘trolls’.

3/. I think James Massola was wrong to use his own avatar to point to the story at 12.15am. It wasn’t a big enough yarn for the official Australian Twitter site to point to, but really, big deal. Most journos do it. Bloggers do it all the time! Let’s call it evens. We’re all wankers of the highest order.

4/. I saw the yarn when it was posted. I read it. My first thought was for Greg Jericho’s wellbeing. I don’t know enough about APS rules to know whether they’ve been breached, but I sincerely hope he has a great network of support in a time of undoubted stress as he is no longer blogging or Tweeting.

5/. That said, there is NO excuse or justification for threats against James Massola. Post a blog, write a Letter to the Editor of The Australian, get bolshie on Twitter, raise it at Q & A but as I have said on more than one occasion that the Twitter I had enjoyed until the last two weeks is descending into a bad parody of Lord of the Flies.

6/. I’m not quitting Twitter. It’s inspired me to write again. So consider yourselves warned: if you don’t like cycling, horse racing and cricket, bad language, and the lowest form of wit, don’t follow me on Twitter. If you do, feel free to join my sparkly unicorn-filled world; where Kim-Bo Il is the rightful heiress to Kim Jong-Il and drinks sour apple martinis while cabana boys attend to her every need.

PS: “Four dead in Ohio” is a line from a Neil Young song about the Kent State University shootings in 1970. That was a yarn. These are photos of the four young people killed on 4 May 1970:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_HyyDHyAwI6k/S8op1Z-49jI/AAAAAAAAI1M/Iu7IPLlHVEE/s1600/kent+state+victims+2.png

You can read more about it here:

- a KSU sociology department paper:

http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm

 - a column from a local newspaper:

http://ourcommunitynewspaper.com/2010/05/when-the-viet-nam-war-came-to-america-and-there-were-four-dead-in-o-hi-o-i-was-there/ which includes John Filo’s iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller.

They didn’t need to go on a death knock to get the pictures of three of those four young people. Americans produce class yearbooks.