The Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference and the Government's Call for an Arms Hub in Western Australia

We already live in a militarised state here in Western Australia, with the Stirling Naval Base (it makes me iller than I already am just writing this name) and its 'key' role in the developing AUKUS nuclear submarine horror junket, but the latest effort of the Cook government (pseudo left-lite... essentially populist and not based on consensual politics in any real way) to create an 'arms industry hub' reaches new levels of appalling. 

As much as 'overuse' of adjectives horrifies certain writing teachers, so too the underuse allows the militarists to push their way through to outcomes that serve their violent, profiteering orientations. Further, they make every use of propaganda methods that they can, from the 'subtle' behind the scenes approach, to the grand announcement designed to appeal to an imagined 'majority's' desires and 'requirements'. 

Missiles are the key selling point because we have all seen the 'power' they have to rule from a distance, but this pitch to arms companies to tender for such a hub is 'inclusive'. Wars across the world serve to illustrate this, just as drone-manufacture and software have become a passport to trade viability.

When in 1956 G. E. M. Anscombe coined the term 'scare quotes' with reference to irony and specific usage in Aristotle's writings (see Mind: a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy (VOL. LXV. NO. 267, January, 1956; p.3), she might have been more than aware of its Cold War and active war implications (but this is guesswork on my part). Scare quotes and adjectives can barely expose the brutality and shortsightedness of Premier Cook and his compadres' thinking in this, with even the lightest challenge from a press conference journalist asking if to create such a hub meant that he was happy to be an arms dealer, he replied that he saw himself as a 'jobs dealer' (though roughly direct representation of speech, this actually deserves no quote marks beyond an accusatory function). 

The Perth Convention Centre we hear is heavily policed for this stanza (quote marks? my term...) of the Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference, to ensure the war talk and arms dealing can go along without interruptions or too much visible opposition. We hear the police will intercept those approaching, we know that national media will play down questioning. 

The Labor government sell of jobs, jobs, jobs has a corona of run-on employment about it: the threat of war creates work, and war itself demands everything (including control) of and over a community. The recent fossil fuel crisis (ongoing, as it can only ever be) has roused receptivity to fever-pitch susceptibility. Even the Tesla drivers yearn for the byproducts, just as Musk delivers his racist, polluting discourses via the SpaceX rockets and his broader industrialism. Yes, this is a conflation, but it's all about conflations. That's capitalism at full tilt... a martial metaphor. Oh, Tesla Cybertrucks are part of the 'targeting' program of the US military.

In the consumer-materialism of a 'resource rich' state (as they call Western Australia: scare quotes again but with a different inflection), such jobs obviously promise the sustaining of some lives at the expense of others. The translation of weapons into death is a far-away problem, until it isn't! And to heap more destructive pernicious corrosive and glib adjectives onto the whole, it is barely surprising that the town of Collie is being suggested as a feasible location for this arms hub. 

We learn that as the workforce transitions from its focus on coal mining, jobs lost will be jobs found (hand in hand with tourism and the natural environment?). The hard labouring base of mining and all it evokes in class struggle workers' rights achievements, even if those struggles meant something very different and more 'positive' in the times when they were so fervently pursued, is exploited by the implied correlation that one dirty industry can easily translate into another. Now, some miners might feel this way, but I am sure many others won't (even if someone like me opposes their very work base in the first place due to the rampant ecological and climate damage it causes). 

Human rights are human rights. Our histories might be different, but we need to start from a premise that we all deserve to live without direct or oblique threats. The arms industry is an industry of threat.

A personal note to all this, as it so directly affects the colonial gazetting I spend so much time in... I have been seriously ill of late and am hindered regarding what I can do in speaking out as this is happening, and I am hoping this short statement contributes to the groundswell of opposition. Missiles and mining, military vehicles and mining, first aid kits... and mining. These are binaries, they're part of the language of a conference that requires much ongoing background activity, and that defies anyone who contest its murderous reality. 

In Australia each state and territory is manipulated as a synecdoche for the people within its voting catchment (of course). So when Western Australia (meaning the government and specific lobby groups) calls for missiles, it's 'the people' who 'want them' because jobs mean not only sustaining one's own life (and family), but also destructively enhancing 'prosperity' through consumerism. Individuals and families destroyed by these activities (directly or indirectly), have no say and are not going to have a say in any way.

     John Kinsella

Support to All Those Suffering from Repression in Georgia

I post this poem in support of those I know in Georgia, and for all those who are suffering under its repressive Georgian Dream Party government. For information on what's happening there, you might start with the Amnesty International report on human rights in Georgia here. I especially send this poem to those imprisoned or harassed for their belief in freedom of expression and for their peaceful resistance to tyranny, and will work for their release using my pen, even if it's at a distance. Poets are always among those whose voices are crushed by the institutions of power, but poets speak beyond borders and will be heard. So many younger people are deeply distressed by the reactionary shifts in their life situations, and need to be heard, to be understood, to be affirmed.

A Pacifist Sends Support to All Those Suffering from Repression in Georgia

 

I have never visited Georgia,

though I have seen how pictures

of mountains and their valleys

can evoke both the fantastical

and pragmatic, how the comforts

and tensions of family

can be illuminated,

how distance between

village and city

can be both a stress

and relief. I hear talk

outside the global news

services and their selective,

delegated, weighted stories.

And I hear charged voices

arising from many

streets, houses, work-

places, parks, burning

with anger and frustration

but galvanised, polyphonic

through power-lines, through leaves,

a choir of terrain and its people,

gathering across altitudes.

I sense those after-image fragments

reaching out over the sea —

a mist with clarity —

coalescing to stir

all sacred places.

Lines of pain stretch out

from prisons, their speakers

hidden away, smothered,

and I know those, too.

You are heard, people,

you are heard. I send

this back in the hope

that it acts as a talisman —

to  help keep you safe,

to show that we care.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

Poem in Memory of JH Prynne

 

No Ultima Thule, No Coda

 

            im Jeremy

 

Obituaries will slant

towards inclination —

            in this

            de-realming,

wood pigeons bombilate

and you watch their

            history

            with application.

Roasted root vegetables

were more than an invitation,

            and the ferry

            was work

across speech bubbles

of reflection: what holds

            an identikit

            against conspiracy,

swayed in the circuitry,

limited to outreach emoticons.

            What will

            become

of that manuscript (monumental)

of love poetry (deprogrammed)

            shown

            beyond

the fallout of the Financial

Times? Contractions

            from the epoch

            of typewriter:

less space for questioning

before punctuation

            seizes

            the tiller.

Offering company, hinting

chimeras — drizzle

            arcing efflorescent

            powerlines:

how power is sourced,

distributed, made in reliance.

 

 

            John Kinsella

Mass Destruction of Habitat on Toodyay Road, Western Australia... it has biospheric implications

The horror of witnessing more and more habitat destroyed along and near Toodyay Road, Western Australia, is so overwhelming that it is causing post-traumatic stress disorder for some of us, and for the biosphere itself. And it's ongoing. Soon, large swathes of bushland will remain only as photos and memories. Then people can forget it was ever there and adjust to the new reality? No.

This 'road realignment' and 'improvement' for safety reasons, to bring into accordance with 'modern road standards', is excessive and counter-intuitive. The violence of driving patterns is in evidence for all to see on any journey along that road and that's a huge part of the safety problem. Upgrading doesn't have to mean mass destruction. Further, the extraction industries and their trucking patterns are a doom in themselves. Trucks are supposed to be speed-limited to 100kmh, and I can promise you that's frequently not the case — I have seen trucks overtaking cars that were doing 100kmh. The plus or minus in their limiting must be truly flexible.

Associated (above ground) power line installation (and the wide clearing for fire-safety reasons required around power lines), the nearby mining of gravel for road-building, and ongoing agricultural land clearing (clearly some are escaping scrutiny or working the laws to their advantage) are part of a package from Dante's Inferno. 

Yesterday, nearer Toodyay, we also saw machinery tearing down vegetation around a creek, with the tracks of the diggers embedded in the stream bed itself. Have permissions been obtained from the Noongar community/elders? These are sacred waterways, as is very well known in the region. 

The environmental 'sign-offs' on these kind of 'works' is reprehensible, and the gall of the justifications, including a specious argument that because there's nearby national park, animals have other habitat available to them, is appalling. And as soon as you read that some of the bush being cleared is 'degraded', you get the (il)logical rhetoric at work. And a sign on the road saying a section being cleared is 'dieback affected' is not going to prevent its spread!

Every crunch of the bulldozer kills innumerable smaller creatures — reptiles, rodents, marsupials — and demolishes bird nests and so on. We have for many years watched white-tailed black cockatoos roosting in the very trees that are being literally plucked out by the roots —it's an inventive array of machinery the destroyers have got at their disposal.

It bemuses me to see the operators of these machines chatting between killing sprees. Sure, people are compelled to make a living, but all of us have consciences, and surely these must be bothered? It reminds me of the 'just-war' scenarios and the military tyranny we are all being affected by, some catastrophically. A pseudo-theological debate just as governmental 'environmentalism' is a pseudo-ecological fait accompli. And these demolitions are yokings of government and business — the twin arms of the modern Western state doing their best to cover each other's complicity in ecocide by fulfilling 'promises', 'contracts', and meeting 'outcomes'.

This is a local issue with planetary implications — if habitat can be treated with such disdain, then all life is devalued, and we all know where such degradation leads. We all have an obligation to act, including those doing the damage and hiding behind specious justifications. We are all in this together, let's start acting as a community that recognises that all roots reach into the planet itself, and roots around here are specifically Noongar and without ongoing Noongar consultation, there's no way through on any level.

Stages of Planet Killing on Toodyay Road

 

It starts in offices and conferences room,

unless it is that grim whisper on the road

as drivers overtake on double

white lines or thrash the speed limit.

 

It echoes through government,

through departments, to business —

that search for quotes combining

frugality, outcomes, and brag sheets.

 

The surveyors come — neat harbingers

with their deft theodolites, stakes

through hearts, pink ribbons

streaming like dead arteries.

 

Environmental clearances an exquisite fait

accompli, ultimately, and sacred water-

ways re-mapped to be entered by tracked

machinery, banks undone, water stained.

 

There is the language of minimisation,

which we’ve come to expect, thanks, and down-

loads to offset the distress. And as old trees

are yanked out by the roots, and buttressed

 

bulldozers mount vegetation

before crushing, carrion vehicles

buzz like powerlines, the land rewritten

outside so many memories — but not all.

 

Wildlife told there are other places

it can go as it is slaughtered. Contract

killers anonymous as, later, efforts to tidy

with a few plantings, or just guiderails.

 

 

            John Kinsella

In Response to Cyberbullying

Alphabetical Disorder 24

 

Apocryphal as spite,

false social media account

purports & implicates,

engines the basic ingredients,

kicks home goals, exclaims

yum yum to suffering,

zips personality into a body

bag — always on the hunt,

traducing through ‘own lips’,

deploying capitals & exclamation

marks. The storm came

though it wasn’t forecast,

sheet lightning sarcasm

while the buddy buddy

republic of letters

caught on & followed

xenologists throughout —

globe-trotting, re-routing,

questing & occupying

(virtually) every outlet.

High fives over drinks,

jolly hockey sticks,

increments of fabulist

lingua franca. Exploration

of those private spaces,

ululating with gratification.

New bullying — cyber & otherwise.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

Malice and Cruelty Towards Corellas in the WA Wheatbelt

A generalised hatred of corellas in the wheatbelt is remorseless and obvious. Not only do shires carry out ruthless culling, but if one hears corellas coming into a zone, it’s inevitable that gunfire will follow. I’ve been writing about this for decades, and all that happens is I have an index of poems lamenting the violence, the aggression, the excuses for cruelty.

And the excuses meted out by the killers? That the birds are an agricultural pest. Everyone who lives here knows about their loss of habitat — less than 3 percent of pre-colonial vegetation remains in the wheatbelt — and everyone knows that the birds are managing their environment in the best ways open to them.

 

Everyone knows that these are flocking birds with complex social interactions, and everyone knows that arguments around them being ‘invaders’ are ludicrous. Further, everyone knows that these birds are considered ‘fair game’ across various parts of Australia and are treated as animals without any rights. Western and little corellas live in the paradox of being ‘protected’ under the 2016 Biodiversity Act and also being labelled an agricultural pest.

 

I have intervened in culls (York 2003/4), written poems and stories against them, and recorded observations in an attempt to oppose them. I am not alone in this — many others have spoken, written, and campaigned against the slaughter, and continue to do so. There was a recent mass cull across a number of shires in the ‘Avon Valley’, and that has also brought an outcry, as it should.

 

But until the mistreatment of these birds and many other animals across the wheatbelt is highlighted, and until shooting while arguing on the grounds of the common good (‘anti-feralism’) is shown to be an hypocrisy (sport gained out of killing), and the other methods of killing exposed for their cruelty, this will continue. Grain growing areas are inevitably going to ‘collide’ with the wildlife that have been ousted, but rather than this kind of abuse of animal rights, it seems essential that more areas are set aside for these creatures, and that non-violent means of working towards a co-existence are investigated and put into practice.

 

Apropos of all this, indifference to targeted animals becomes a masking of cruelty. The other day we witnessed someone calmly driving their car over a stunned corella (but standing and surrounded by other birds)  — literally crushing it under their tyre. Did they perceive this as a ‘mercy killing’ (what a sick concept — ‘putting out of its misery’) or did they just see themselves as extending the cull? It happened next to the Northam Grain Terminal, where corella shooting is a regular occurrence (I wrote and published a story relating to this last year), and the roadside was a display of battered corpses.

 

What was one more corella? It was a sentient life. It was in need of help which could easily have been provided by a vet or animal care worker.

 

Before we could intervene, the deed was done and the driver left the scene, slowly returning to the speed limit. People who treat animals with cruelty are also capable of treating humans the same way. This poem is part of a collaborative work I am involved with which acts as witness, but really, the actions have to be on a personal level across the entire community. Some are speaking out; may many more.

 

Malice

 

In the age

of the short

attention

span

 

a white car

approaches

arrangements

of white

feathers —

 

a clutch

of corellas

on the road

alongside

the great

A-class

wheat bin

(longer

than

a ship);

 

one of the birds

has been injured

and rocks

back

& forth,

tended by

its companions

 

the white car

glides then slows

and almost stops

before the driver

guns the motor,

crushing

the injured,

shocking

those birds

tending;

 

it’s as specialised

an act of cruelty

as I’ve ever

witnessed,

 

deliberate

as a war

crime.

JK

 

NOTE: looking through my old emails, I find message after message to shires protesting corella culls. These spread over many years and are directed towards York, Northam and Toodyay shires. And I found this poem I sent to the Northam shire. It's never made a difference, though not for want of trying. I found an email where Tracy points out one woman who tried to stop an earlier cull.

Dawn Corella Asks to be Let Live: against the 2020 Northam ‘Corella Cull’

On returning after being away and hearing corellas at dawn

As if survival of dawn and call

is a matter of word sparkle —

a quid pro quo you expect from ‘art’,

a gift of zest and boost of the beautiful.

How so when so many of you won’t stand 

for the art of corella, the collaborative

art, the voicings of faith and fascination,

the line through darkness that gives?

When the cullers come to cull 

ask how many are getting a bit of sport 

out of it — the kill that plays with ‘skill’,

the art of the dawn call’s bloody fall.

John Kinsella

 

Poem for All Those Suffering from the Violence in the 'Middle East'

When One Is on the Verge of Leaving the World

When one is on the verge of leaving this world

the stresses on the atmosphere are increasing,

and the war-makers gloat over their annihilations

and many others die quicker than it takes for 

your own death to complete its cycle, even when

it’s ‘mini-stroke’ after ‘mini-stroke’ and you’ve 

only got one eye to the world. In the time between 

emergency and operation, in the time blood 

pressure drops critically in ICU to be persuaded 

to rise but not rise too far, the killers have killed 

so many others, with or without ‘pre-existing

conditions’ (other than living), and some repairing

from ailments, others just finding a way through

to dawn. These lives all terminated, these lives

burnt in the name of other lives and also to show-

case hardware, to make an exhibition of power.

When one is on the verge of leaving this world,

bushland is replaced by a playing field on which

a ball moves between profiles, the slices of life.

John Kinsella