MWF: Is neo-liberalism finished?
MWF: Is Neo-liberalism Finished?
Robert Manne’s lecture was by far the most informative and interesting session I attended at the writer’s festival. I was actually going to also attend Does democracy have a future? but got the dates wrong in my diary. So if anyone went to that lecture I’d really appreciate the key points you came away with. The lecture I attended, which formed part of The Quarterly’s lecture series, explored non-liberalism (free markets) and whether or not they would survive.
Mr Manne began his talk by reflecting on the past and the end of the Great Depression when the Keynesian theory emerged. This theory is similar to neo-liberalism – its principles on capitalism are similar but where they differ is that Keynesian’s don’t believe the market is self-correcting and believe there should be government intervention whereas neo-liberalists don’t. Thirty years after the Great Depression, when Thatcher came into power in the UK, she favoured neo-liberalism and so Keynesianism was thrown out the door while she privatised government-owned enterprises. This was the period were neo-liberalism was embraced by Western governments and we can look at our own government privatising Telstra as an example of this.
Neo-liberalism is essentially individuals pursuing self-interests in free markets. Global trading takes place freely without government intervention. Competition is necessary so monopolies are prevented from happening. Trade-unions are tamed by governments because labour should be market set. An example of this would be a corporation outsourcing to India because the labour is three times cheaper. Markets should be deregulated because they are self-correcting.
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MWF: Cyprus and a response to genocide
Thomas Buergenthal is a leading law scholar and judge of the International Court of Justice. He presented a lecture on the history of international human rights and how the law stands today. Judge Buergenthal explained that there is still a long way to go until the world has a system that can protect human rights, although he is optimistic about the future.
Judge Buergenthal spoke about the UN and how it comprises of member states. But most of these states are not committed to signing a binding bill of human rights. Therefore, the UN declaration of human rights has vague descriptions of members having to respect human rights but this declaration to not binding.
The European Court of Human Rights is the first court to successfully force governments to pay compensation and amend their constitutions. This court is where the most progress has been made on the Cyprus problem where Turkey has been held accountable for their invasion of northern Cyprus. In one of the landmark cases presented, Loizidou v. Turkey, the Court ordered Turkey to pay Loizidou approximately $915,000 in damages and costs for the house she had to flee when Turkey invaded.
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MWF: Writers, readers and Dali
Dali has always been my favourite artist – when my Year 9 teacher showed me his painting The persistence of memory I was hooked. The talk Writers, readers and Dali was held in the NGV member’s lounge. I thought the talk would encompass more on Dali but instead it was mostly about the paintings in the member’s lounge and their relevance to literature.
The half an hour spent discussing Dali was interesting but apart from a few of the magazines he contributed to, there was no other art of Dali’s shown. Instead Dali’s writing career was explained. I have always thought of Dali as a surrealist painter but he was actually so much more: an impressionist, a book illustrator, a draftsman, a sculptor, a film producer, a fashion designer, a religious painter, a photographer, and of course, a writer.
Dali wrote from a young age and finished his first book at 10 years of age. At 14 he started a diary that was recently published. While studying he wrote controversial articles for his college newspaper. But he didn’t finish his Art degree – he was expelled for telling his teachers that they were not fit to judge his work. Dali was well known for his outrageous and outspoken nature. He spoke 4 languages fluently but in public would only speak French fluently to trick people – it was part of his persona.
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MWF:Poetry and the body
Pleasure and Pain: Poetry and the Body
Anne Michaels, Ian Buruma, Christos Tsiolkas, Bernhard Schlink, Emily Ballou and Andrea Goldsmith poetry readings. This was my first poetry reading and I found it truly inspirational. I write poetry but I’m not sure if it is poetry. I may share some with you all on my blog one day.
I love the way Emily Ballou read – I think reading aloud to an audience is a skill and she did it so well speaking slowly, in time, with melancholy in her voice. She read Emily Dickinson and her words were truly spooky.
The poems I was most impressed with were the ones Andrew Goldsmith read: For my lover returning to his wife, Ann Sexton and The Ninth Hour, Dorothy Porter. Ann used words that caused you to feel bitter towards her lover’s wife, and the poem seemed to be almost a threat. Dorothy was asked to write The Ninth Hour to depict Jesus’ final hour but she had been diagnosed with cancer at the time. The poem was screaming with anger and the surprise and brutality of looming death. It was dark and disturbing – I loved it.
MWF:Looking west (Muslims in Australia)
Irfan Yusuf discussed with Waleed Aly his memoir, Once Were Radicals and the cultural confusion he felt growing up Muslim in Australia. The talk was informative and eye-opening. Irfan spoke of his frustration with questions such as “what is it like being a Muslim?” and compared it to asking “What is it like to be a Catholic?” He equates answering the question “what is your religion?” to ticking the Muslim box on a Sensus questionnaire – Muslims come from so many different countries and all have varying beliefs and degrees of faith. It’s so true. Although I say I am Orthodox, I don’t go to church regularly and most of the time I am confused about my faith.
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MWF:Finding meaning in the media
Jeff Sparrow spoke to Margaret Simons, author of The Content Makers about the changes currently facing the Australian media. Margaret has been a journalist for over 20 years. This was an enlightening talk because I personally believe blogging is becoming the new face of journalism and Margaret seems to have embraced this notion having her own blog on crickey. When Margaret first started working as a journalist she felt extremely powerful. But today, anyone with an internet connection has that power.
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MWF: What in the world is going on?
It was my first experience of the Melbourne Writers Festival and it wasn’t at all what I expected it to be. I imagined small talks similar to the emerging writer’s festival – how wrong was I? There were so many people, writers signing books, staff husking off writers while they were bombarded with fans. I’ll be attending quite a few sessions over the next fortnight and posting my reflections on each session and the key points I’ve come away with.
What in the world is going on?
Robin Niblett, director of the UK’s prestigious Chatham House, Professor Stephen King from Monash University and The Age’s Daniel Flitton talked about the new administration in the US government and the global financial crisis.
All three speakers supported the capitalist system and the talk was more about how to fix this system rather than considering alternatives which seems strange to me since this is the system that caused the problem in the first place.
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Coping with rejection – the heartache of emerging writers
Since I didn’t get short listed for the Premier’s Literary Awards, I thought I’d write a piece on rejection. As I sat at my computer refreshing the State Library website on the date of the announcement for the hundredth time, a thought crossed my mind – how many times can a person refresh a website before losing their mind? It was at this point that I thought I better stop and just accept that the 0.0005% chance that I magically did get short listed and the judges just lost my phone number, was a mirage.
I guess the news hit hard because I actually thought I would at the very least, get short listed. Looking back, I don’t know why I thought that. Maybe it’s because I had never sent my manuscript to any of these big competitions before, so you could say that this was my virgin experience – and we all know our first time can be a bit of a letdown. If you have a read of the short listed participants, two of them are teachers of creative writing. How can I possibly compete with that?
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MWF: Put your hands all over my body
August 30, 2009 at 5:21 am (Creative commentary, Reviews) (Krissy Kneen, Linda Jaivin, Melbourne Writer's Festival, Nikki Gemmell, put your hands all over my body, Sex, writer's festival)
Put your hands all over my body
Linda Jaivin, Krissy Kneen and Nikki Gemmell, all writers of erotic fiction discussed the genre. The chair of the conversation, Peter Veitch, was obviously nervous, stumbling on words and making statements that his panellist didn’t agree with – his intentions were good though.
When Peter asked about guilt and its relationship to writing erotic fiction, all three women agreed that they didn’t identify with guilt when they wrote erotic fiction. Nikki said that when she wrote The Bride Stripped Bare, she found it liberating. She explained that everyone has a public, private and secret self, and she challenges anyone that says they know their partner’s secret life.
Peter asked about erotic fiction and if it stems from dysfunction – and Krissy quickly stopped him. Her debut novel Affection, is a memoir where she pretty much exposes her sexual life. I think it’s admirable that she has the courage to be so publicly honest. She explained that she didn’t think humans were meant to be monogamous – it’s not about dysfunction, she said, it’s about the world’s problem with this concept. She believes that you’re born alone and you die alone, and anyone that thinks differently is lying to themselves.
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