By James Moore

“One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.” – John F. Kennedy

We were flying due north out of Omaha. The old DC-3 had shuddered with effort on takeoff and rose so slowly we thought the treetops would remain just beneath our wingtips for the entire trip. Level much later at around 10,000 feet, the props spun with efficiency and the checker-boarded plains below slipped away to our rear with a mystifying slowness. Small towns speckled the prairie and twinkled at dusk. Long trains ran toward the orange light of the evening west.

After we crossed over the Canadian border and turned northeastward, the roads beneath us narrowed and the earth showed less illumination. Late sun on the flat land revealed the dark pines shrinking in height. Eventually, there were almost none emerging from the tundra because it was too cold and short of a summer to sustain their growth.

The PR man was happy, though. Reporters had cocktails and everyone was friendly in the back of the cabin. There was a false sense of adventure. The power company had arranged the flight to upper Manitoba, Canada, at the western shores of Hudson Bay. A great trading company had once sent animal pelts from these remote reaches to global capitals. There were now moose and bear and the rivers that were still wild and scenic but crossed by snow machines and a few people.

“There’s already a dam down there,” the PR man said. “It’s generating a lot of electricity. Not all of it gets used. Why don’t we use it?”

“Maybe it’s just not needed,” I said.

“Of course, it is. We are growing. America is always growing. And we can’t do that without affordable energy.”

The Ol’ Tail Dragger

He was the only one on the flight wearing a tie. His confidence was not convincing and the trip was growing long. There seemed no lights below to give us any indication of where the outdated passenger plane might alight on the ground. The sky and the world seemed of one eternal piece out the window as the day faded.

The dam we saw the next day was a massive white obelisk that had been laid on its side. A mighty river had been contained behind it by concrete and steel. Trapped water was forced through gates and turned absurdly large turbines. Electricity spun out into 161 kilovolt lines across Canada and ran manufacturing plants in the cities and TV sets in luxury cabins up in the Okanagan.

“Canada produces more power than it can use from this one dam,” the PR man told us. “There’s no reason we should not try to get this very affordable energy down into our country. That’s why we are proposing the Mandan power line from here to Omaha.”

I loved the name of the power company’s project. The Mandan were a small tribe that had lived along the Heart and Knife rivers in the Dakotas. They had their own language, a derivative of the Sioux tongue. They were not given to tribal warfare and had little resistance to offer as the white Manifest Destiny blew through their villages. I decided to call my series of reports on the power project, “Man and the Mandan.” I just liked the sound of the words gathered.

We went up in a helicopter the next day and flew out over Hudson Bay and skimmed the river and marveled at its dark swiftness. The PR man sat in the front seat of the chopper and I took the back but he still spoke to me through the headset.

Hudson Bay, Manitoba, Canada

“You can see the potential here,” he said. “This river and this dam will always be generating power, unless the world runs out of water.”

Back up in the sky in the old tail-dragger a few days later I watched the sectioned land and the dark green splotches of crops. The country had been divided by an ordinance in the late 1800s into mile square sections. Railroads were seduced into building transcontinental lines when the government gave them every other square mile section along the route. Land was money. The history of that law was apparent in the farmland laid a plaid and broadly visible from the air.

The Mandan Power Line was engineered to cut across the high plains of the Dakotas and down into Nebraska. The Omaha power company wanted that cheap energy from Manitoba. Inexpensive electricity would be sold into the Mid American Power Pool and be marked up to profit the shareholders of the Omaha supplier. No one believed the consumer was likely to benefit.

I went back north into the Dakotas to talk to landowners. There had been very few towns visible from the airplane but the power line route went near a few farm communities. In Iroquois, when I asked about the Mandan, I was told to talk to Marlin. He was growing wheat in wide fields out in the northern flatness.

Near Iroquois, South Dakota

“Ain’t nothin’ comin’ between me and that sunset,” Marlin Clendening told me. “I don’t care what the power company says, this isn’t that important. They can find another way to do it.”

A few children moved through his house. Marlin was tall and angular and his limbs were loose and his animation made his perspective more visible to me. His wife stood behind his chair, her hand on his shoulder as he talked, a kind of indoor American gothic image.

“I’ve been a farmer since I was a kid and I’m always going to be a farmer,” he said. “And I don’t need a 161 kilovolt line crossing my property, hanging right there in front of the sun, and maybe even killing my animals.”

There were early studies in the eighties that indicated increasing stillborns during calving season if the mothers grazed beneath power lines. No one understood electrical smog but we were encouraged to take a fluorescent bulb and stand beneath a 161 KV line and watch the emanations cause the light to activate. We did. And it made good video.

“Tell me why their power line is so important,” Marlin said. “Do you really think they are worried about being able to manage growth? Of course not. This is just about making money selling cheap power. Well, they aren’t taking away my prairie and my sunset. We are gonna fight.”

A South Dakota Sunset

Clendenning organized farmers and environmentalists. They went to hearings, wrote letters, called members of congress, cajoled local elected officials, and confronted the Omaha power company. The sunset was in jeopardy.

The power line was never built. Clendening’s singular resistance was too much for the multi-billion dollar project. The cost was never justified. Instead of giant towers stalking the plains and black lines crossing the precious blue horizon, the sunset remained unimpaired.

My reports on the Mandan got some attention and I was invited to New York City to receive an award from Dartmouth College. The National Media Award for Economic Understanding also involved a nice check for a young journalist. I stayed in the Plaza Hotel and was on the same dais with Dan Rather and Peter Jennings. Job offers followed and opportunity rolled out in front of me.

I expect Marlin Clendening stayed on his farm along that dirt road south of Iroquois. My hope is that he has had a full life and the earth has been good to him and given him abundant crops. Maybe there are grandchildren tugging at his pant legs and he and his wife take them to the back porch at the end of the day after dinner. They look west together where the weakening sun still brightens the wheat that appears alive in the wind. There is no power line crossing his horizon, though, only birds and the invisible things that ride in the breeze.

I hope Marlin Clendenning lives a long, long time. He deserves a lot of sunsets.

Youth Will Be Served

The last time I saw the Pawnee National Grasslands I was driving a beat-up old Ford from Burlington to Greeley, Colorado. I was a radio announcer on my way to do the play-by-play of a high school football game on the Western Plains. The native blue stem and buffalo grasses had lost much of their summer green, but the wind moved across their tops and the sky and road seemed like a single piece of creation, and they gave me memories I still cherish.

Pawnee National Grasslands, Colorado

I daydreamed about buffalo herds and indigenous peoples moving through those flatlands, but I also noticed the road. It had not changed since I had first traveled this section of the national park system on a motorcycle when I had been tempted by the throttle and the highway. The asphalt was straight and fresh and there was not a single curve on the horizon nor a vehicle on the road.

My bike was hardly up to any dream of unfettered speed. I was riding a Honda 450 and had cleaned the plugs so many times it seemed impossible for them to deliver spark. I was a college student that summer and did not have the money to buy plugs; my first concerns were gas and food and sometimes a paid campground with a shower.

But I had switched out bikes with my buddy and he had been riding a Kawasaki KZ 1000, which was one of the fastest production bikes on the road when they first came into the marketplace. We had stopped to hear the silence, turned off our engines, listened to them tick, and walked away to where there was no sound but the wind moving through the grass tops.

“You wanna try it?” Bobby asked.

“The KZ?”

“I’m offering.”

There is an unspoken rule among motorcyclists, even those with the most modest of machines, that you do not ride the other person’s bike; you especially do not make the request. But an invitation is a different thing.

“Yeah, I’ll give it a go,” I said. “You sure?”

“I figure you’re staring at the white line and wondering about speed.”

I laughed. Friends understood. I tended to move through the world slowly and with observation of detail, but motorcycles were transformative. If I felt safe, I liked to roll up the power and let the bike perform. The KZ would carry me faster than I had ever ridden.

The Dream Machine

We had come down from Nebraska on Highway 71 and the road had been impossibly straight and true. Rocky buttes rose out of the grass and the late afternoon sun turned them white against the sea of green. Our pace was leisurely and slightly burdened with cheap backpacks with metal frames and heavy cotton sleeping bags increasing our drag coefficient. The sun and clear sky and the churn of the little pistons were comforting and made me feel like I never wanted to get off the bike.

But I have always felt that way.

Bobby and I walked back to the bikes and exchanged keys. We had turned onto Highway 14 and were headed west. The road looked like it might not have a single bend before it reached California.

“It’s faster than its reputation,” Bobby said. “Be careful.”

“Yeah, I will. See ya in Greeley.”

I pulled my helmet with the bubble shield over my head and wondered what my Ma might think when she got the news her son had gone down speeding on a motorcycle not his own out in the middle of America’s big empty. She had taught me to entertain the worst scenarios and I had decided to spend my youth in defiance of fear.

I had never been on a bike with that big of an engine displacement and compared to my little Honda it felt as though I were driving a car. The gears made a solid clunk like what I had heard when riding next to Harleys and I pushed the RPMs upward before shifting. I was at 80 by third gear and the wind was roaring in the ears of my thrift store helmet.

I passed the cutoff for Keota and tore down the asphalt toward Briggsdale, and as the speedometer crossed 100 the only disconcerting feeling was the loudness in my ears.

There was still too much roll left on the throttle and I wanted to see where it might take me. I did not pull it back all at once but eased the RPMs higher and felt the bike easily increase speed.

A bit of buffeting began to change the aerodynamics and I realized Bobby’s backpack had loose flaps that were now being torn to bits in the slipstream of 130 plus miles per hour, but I did not want to stop, and I did not. I took what little turn was left on the throttle and spun it until it would not go further.

I lost my nerve on that long, gleaming straight when the speedo crossed 140 mph and was still climbing. Maybe it was the wind, or I dreamed the ride but when I eased back on the throttle and got back down to 60 mph, I had the sense I could get off the bike and walk next to it as it rolled down the road.

I have never ridden faster since, nor do I expect I ever will. I crossed the Nullarboor in the Australian Outback on a BMW 1200 GSA while staring down the 90-mile straight, which is known as the longest roadbed without a curve in the world. I did not speed. My eyes were out for ‘roos and camels and wombats and sunsets. High-speed riding is not what motorcycling was ever about for me.

But just one time, I wanted to know. I would much rather slow down and think about natives riding the plains or spring winds through the gramma or wildflowers tilting before a summer storm off the Rockies. But I never remove motorcycles from my mind.

They have taken me to those memories and keep me rolling toward new ones. 

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

Oxfam Australia Media Release

In reaction to Israel’s imminent invasion of Rafah, Sally Abi-Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director said:

“We are horrified by Israel’s order to evacuate around 100,000 people and what appears to be an impending invasion of Rafah, despite a universal plea from world leaders urging it to stop its continued, barbaric, onslaught.

“The fear in Rafah is palpable, as people who have already been forced to flee across Gaza multiple times, must now move again.

“For over six months, Israel has deliberately and systematically targeted civilians and aid workers, including in clearly marked ‘safe zones’ and ‘evacuation routes’. Any claims it now makes that civilians can be safely evacuated, have lost credibility. Al-Mawasi area – a so-called humanitarian safe zone where people have been told to flee – has already been targeted twice.

“With Israel now blocking aid, fuel or goods from entering the two critical crossings of Rafah and Kerem Shalom, humanitarian efforts to save lives will be even more difficult.

“It’s unfathomable that one government is allowed to ignore all warnings of the catastrophic humanitarian cost with full impunity, and to callously press forward in chilling disregard for human life, international law, and the ICJ ruling to prevent genocide. 

“This ground invasion must not be allowed to happen. With their multi-billion-dollar funds and direct arms support, powerful nations have effectively given Israel carte blanche to commit war crimes, they must finally act before more atrocities take place and press even harder for an immediate, permanent ceasefire.”

The latest Suburbtrends “Rental Pain Index” for May 2024 uncovers the escalating severity of the rental market crisis in Australia. As rental prices continue to climb and homes remain scarce, the report highlights the urgent need for comprehensive solutions to alleviate the stress on renters throughout the nation.

Kent Lardner, founder of Suburbtrends, delivers a critical analysis and a dire warning about the future implications of current policies: “This month’s data signals a looming reckoning for the political class, who have long neglected the growing distress of the renter class. The barriers to homeownership are especially daunting for first-time buyers without familial financial support, leaving shared equity schemes in capital cities as one of the few remaining options—yet many will still find these schemes out of reach.”

The data illustrates a disturbing trend:

• In Western Australia (WA) and Queensland (QLD), rental pain indices have escalated to 85.71% and 81.39% respectively, underscoring the acute stress felt by renters.
• South Australia (SA) and Victoria (VIC) are also experiencing significant increases in rental stress, with the index rising sharply, indicating that the crisis is widespread across major population centers.

Kent emphasises, “Our immediate focus must be on implementing emergency accommodations and creating incentives for homeowners to offer underutilised properties for rent. These measures are crucial stopgaps that can provide some relief in the short term.”

He elaborates on strategic solutions: “To address the twin challenges of availability and suitability, we propose tax incentives or financial benefits for homeowners to bring under-occupied houses into the rental market. This approach not only maximises the use of existing housing stock but also alleviates some pressure from the rental market.”

Kent concludes with a powerful call to action: “As the construction of new homes lags behind demand, exacerbated by stringent building codes that drive up prices, we find ourselves at a critical juncture. We must act decisively to deploy emergency shelters and rethink our housing policies to include more immediate, practical solutions such as mobile home villages and prefabricated homes. The time to act is now, to prevent a deeper crisis where more Australians face the grim reality of homelessness.”

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia Media Release  

The decision of the Australian Government to cut student debts has been welcomed by the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent skills training, higher education, and international education providers.

The Australian Government will cap the higher education HELP indexation rate at the lower of either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the Wage Price Index (WPI) with effect from 1 June 2023. This relief will be backdated to all HELP, VET Student Loan, Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan, and other student support loan accounts that existed on 1 June last year.

“The Australian Government’s initiative will be most welcome for the millions of people with student debt struggling to deal with cost-of-living pressures,” said Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive.

The universal application of the cut to student debt has been welcomed by ITECA.

“ITECA welcomes the fact that this important measure will support students that undertook their studies with independent skills training and higher education providers,” Mr Williams said.

In welcoming the move, ITECA said more could be done to support students studying with independent Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and higher education institutions. One such measure would be to remove the 20% student loan tax (formally referred to by bureaucrats in Canberra by the more innocuous term ‘loan fee’) that many students taking out an Australian Government loan to study with independent RTOs and higher education providers face.

“It’s abhorrent that the Australian Government whacks a 20% student loan tax on the debts of people investing in study to achieve their life and career goals. It’s time for the Australian Government to end the student loan tax,” Mr Williams said.

ITECA will continue to lobby the Australian Government to end the student loan tax.

Monash University Media Release

The spotlight is yet again shining on the national crisis of violence against women in Australia, and the calls for increased action and improved responses to all forms of domestic, family and sexual violence has intensified over the last three weeks. 

With the need for a perpetrator register or a disclosure scheme emerging as one option to improve women’s safety, Monash University and University of Liverpool researchers have published a study examining whether such schemes actually improve women’s safety.

Domestic violence disclosure schemes (DVDS) provide a mechanism – for victim-survivors, individuals who feel at risk, and/or an individual’s friends and family members – to apply for information about whether a person has a documented history of domestic violence. The schemes can also involve police proactively providing information to protect potential ‘high risk’ victims from harm from their partner. 

Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, who led this research, said the study revealed significant gaps in terms of both timeliness of data sharing and also the lack of follow-up supports and safety planning provided to applicants. 

“This study represents the first examination of the operation of the domestic violence disclosure scheme in Australia,” said Professor Fitz-Gibbon. “It raises significant questions as to the value of the scheme, and serves as a word of caution for other states and territories that are currently considering this approach.”

The research team, including Professor Sandra Walklate and Dr Ellen Reeves from University of Liverpool, interviewed scheme users, relevant practitioners, academics and policy makers in Australia and New Zealand to generate the evidence required to inform decisions about the introduction of a DVDS. 

Despite the often used political justification for disclosure schemes – that it provides women with the information they require to secure their safety – this study found that of the applicants interviewed, the majority had already experienced abuse and since separated from their partner when they accessed the same. For these applicants, the information disclosed did not necessarily come as a surprise, but rather a confirmation of suspicions they already held. 

“Applicants in this study did not necessarily require the information disclosed to them to support immediate safety planning and relationship decision making, but rather to confirm decisions they had already made about the viability of their intimate partner relationship and their safety in it,” Professor Fitz-Gibbon said. 

Sharing information with no follow up may put the applicant at greater risk of harm and represents a missed opportunity to keep the victim-survivor’s risk in view. 

In Australia, only South Australia has a domestic violence disclosure scheme. NSW piloted a scheme in 2016 but it was discontinued in 2018. No other state or territory has as yet introduced a scheme, although several have considered a scheme. 

Professor Fitz-Gibbon said DVDS carry significant resourcing implications; administrative workload, data sharing, training, support services and access. 

“The specialist domestic, family and sexual violence sector are calling for an urgent increase in funding to ensure they can support the safety needs of victim-survivors across Australia. At a time when funding for services is falling short across the country, it is imperative to critically question what policies are supported. ​​While several practitioners described the value of the scheme – whether it is the best use of resources in a chronically under-funded sector was of paramount consideration,” she said.

With national and state conversations currently underway around implementing reforms to end violence against women and children, this study assists policymakers in understanding not only what works, but also what policy approaches may be less effective. 

This research calls not for the introduction of a DVDS but for evidence-based policies and adequate funding for wraparound specialist support services to support safer outcomes for victim-survivors. 

By James Moore  

“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.” – Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

Dan Rather was twenty years a legend by the time I began to work in Houston television news. Eventually, I was to become an alum of the station where he got his start, KHOU-TV. His rise to prominence began there in 1961 when he was looking at a weather radar screen of Hurricane Carla and its spinning clouds covering the entire expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. The story told is that the young correspondent had his cameraman turn his lens on the image to enable the audience to get a sense of what would soon make historic and devastating landfall. The decision probably saved an untold number of lives because the evacuations of Galveston accelerated and people were compelled to leave the island for inland safety.

Ultimately, I began to think of Rather as destiny’s darling, which is, effectively, an insult to his abilities and preparation as a reporter, though he was not without luck. His career followed American history’s arc, in part, because he was always aware and ready. CBS hired Rather away from KHOU-TV and sent him to run a bureau in Dallas. When the president announced a trip to the city, Rather is said to have asked his editors for additional resources because of the politics manifesting under community leadership in 1963. Texas later became a location for jumping over to Dixie and reporting on the brutality confronting the Civil Rights Movement, which was followed by an assignment covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where he was roughed up on live TV. Rather also got sent to report on the War in Vietnam and was later back in Washington covering Watergate before, finally, succeeding Walter Cronkite as anchor of the evening news.

Shortly after the Texan had ascended to the lead role at CBS, I was working at the network’s affiliate in Omaha. I had managed to come across the fact that a group of historic re-enactors were about to commemorate an anniversary of the Pony Express by riding from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, and I was able to prepare a feature report, which had interested editors in New York. My piece was the closing story on the CBS Evening New with Dan Rather that day, a moment of great note for an ambitious young man. I did not encounter Dan Rather in person, though, until August of 1992, when he came back to Houston and anchored his newscast from the city hosting the Republican National Convention. I was a lead political reporter at his early employer’s news department, KHOU-TV, and he briefly introduced himself in the hallway. Our futures, however, were to become entangled in a little more than a decade.

During the 1994 gubernatorial campaign between George W. Bush and Ann Richards, I had asked Bush how he had managed to get into the National Guard in Texas and avoid the draft and combat in Vietnam. My question grew out of the loss of friends who had died in Vietnam and my own anti-war activities as a protestor. I had decided that, short of leaving the country, the only way to avoid the draft was to enlist in the National Guard. Unlike Bush, I was told the waiting list to become a pilot was five years and it was three to join the infantry. Bush, however, simply walked into the Guard headquarters at Ellington Air Force Base outside of Houston and signed up to become a pilot, and told me during that statewide TV broadcast of the debate that his father, a U.S. Congressman, did not exercise influence to get him the slot. His answer was not just disingenuous, it was a lie.

“People,” he claimed, “did not want to spend the amount of time necessary to become a jet pilot. It requires a one year commitment to learn how to fly. It required another six and a half months to learn how to fly the F-102, as you may recall. I decided I want to learn how to fly a jet. And I did fly a jet. It took a year and a half worth of training something that most people did not want to do.” (40:15 below).

Houston, though, had numerous pilots home from Vietnam wanting to keep current on their qualification certificates, and there was no need for Ellington to spend a million dollars training a congressman’s son to be a pilot. Although it took decades for the truth to come out, the Texas House Speaker during that time, Ben Barnes, acknowledged in 2004 that he had gotten Bush into the Texas Guard as a favor to his father.

“I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was lieutenant governor of Texas, and I’m not necessarily proud of that, but I did it,” Barnes said in a brief video. “I became more ashamed of myself than I’ve ever been because the worst thing I did was get a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance into the Guard and I’m very sorry about that and I apologize to you and the voters of Texas.”

Bush never acknowledged the privilege or influence, and still has not. The morning after my debate question in 1994, I got a call from the communications director of Ann Richards’ campaign telling me that I needed to call Barnes and he would give me the full story. Barnes led me along, telling me he had the guy who ran the “political list” for the Guard, and he was willing to give me the full story of Bush’s enlistment. Barnes, however, the ultimate political animal, sniffed the political breezes blowing across Texas and decided Bush was going to be president, and pissing him off would not help his business or fund raising. He made up a story about why the source would not talk.

I spent the next ten years very quietly filing FOIA requests to the military and federal government to get relevant documents on Bush’s time in the service. Responses were incomplete, and clearly missing timelines and relevant documents. Eventually, though, I was able to piece together his history and his disappearance from the Houston air base at Ellington. The eldest son of the future president went to Alabama to work on a U.S. Senate campaign for a friend of his father and claimed he was still on duty at the Alabama National Guard in Montgomery. Records showed, however, he never showed up for duty and was only on base for haircuts and dental work.

After endless calls for interviews and searching for printed evidence, I was referred to a rancher in West Texas. Bill Burkett claimed to have been in the Texas National Guard and witnessed a purging of Bush’s military files by people on the governor’s staff. He told me he and a Guard colleague had retrieved certain pages of the paper files from a waste basket, and had retained them for future reference. No matter how many times I requested the materials, they were never delivered to me even after Burkett insisted they were proof Bush had gone AWOL and never performed his duty. His story was not, however, fanciful, and fit with the timeline I had developed from the files I had received via FOIA.

Dan Rather

Dan Rather’s producer, Mary Mapes, had been in pursuit of the same story regarding Bush and the Texas Guard. Burkett presented her with the documents he had consistently refused to provide me, even though he never wavered in saying he had them available in safekeeping. Mapes took the material to forensic experts whose analyses convinced her she was looking at copies of originals that explained Bush’s Guard absence and various failures while he was serving, including not passing a physical. Rather and her created a report, which I am convinced, was true, even though the documentation was never one hundred percent verified. The Guard materials I published in my second book corroborated the missing info that Rather’s piece had provided.

Rather and Mapes were assaulted online before his half-hour newscast had concluded. The Internet trolls claimed the letters purported to be National Guard documents were fake because they used a superscript type face that was not available at that time. In fact, the Texas Guard was one of the early purchasers of electric typewriters with superscript capitalization. Nobody wanted to hear the contradiction because the noise of the critics was too loud and the political right was ascendant. Mapes contacted me and asked me to go on the air with Rather, which I did, and although I was unable to speak to the veracity of the letters and other documents they had acquired, I affirmed my confidence the story they had reported was true.

A special commission investigated the reporting and concluded it was unsupportable. His own employer, CBS News, appeared to be coming after a correspondent and anchor who had frequently risked his life to serve their advertisers and his journalistic audience. There was, however, no chance of survival. Rather signed off, left the network, and, eventually, his producer Mapes was no longer employed, either. Mapes published a book that laid out the experience in great detail, Truth and Duty, which was later made into a movie with Robert Redford playing Rather. The early script had an Australian reporter in my debate role but the scene ended up on the cutting room floor.

My book on Bush and the Guard was released in early September of 2004 as the president’s reelection campaign was launching. In January, as I began work on a new book for a new publisher, I was catching a flight from Austin to Columbus, Ohio to begin research. While trying to print a boarding pass at a kiosk, I got the “see agent” message, and went to the airline’s ticketing desk. I was told by the agent that I was now on the “No Fly Watch List,” which is a lesser sin than the No Fly List. I demanded an explanation and she was unable to provide one but called Homeland Security and handed me the phone.

“Ma’am, I don’t understand,” I told the anonymous female voice. “How can I be on the No Fly Watch List?”

“I can’t answer that, sir,” she said. “And even if I had that information, I would not be able to give it to you.”

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“Well, only that there is something in your background that is similar to, or might relate to, someone the government is looking for.”

“Seriously? I’ve never even had a parking ticket and I have the most mundane name in all of the English language. My dad walked across Europe shooting enemies of this country and now his son is getting screwed around by the government he defended?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I wish there were more than I could tell you.”

The No Fly Watch List does not prevent you from flying but it does make travel tedious. There was no checking in online, or using baggage curb check, no printing boarding passes on kiosks, either. I had to always go to a ticketing counter to get cleared and then was given a boarding pass that indicated I required extra attention when I went through security. I talked to an attorney in Washington about suing DHS but was told everyone who attempted was shut down during the discovery process.

“As soon as you get discovery,” I was informed, “The judge gets told that releasing the needed documents to plaintiffs will jeopardize national security, and the case gets dismissed.”

A process was finally developed to allow people to submit materials and information to appeal their status, and DHS would reach a conclusion. Even when a disposition was reached, though, you were unable to know what it was. Your case was assigned a number in the DHS that was recorded in the Traveler’s Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). Airlines can look at the number when you load it into their reservation system and it will determine if you are worthy to board an airplane. I have suspected from the first time I was informed that I was placed on the NFWL it was a consequence of my reporting on Bush’s military service record.

I am certain Mr. Rather had no such difficulties, though his accomplished career was treated cavalierly by an employer and a nation to whom he had been faithful. His story as a journalist and a Texan is compelling, regardless, and is the subject of a new Netflix documentary premiering tonight (May 1), and I’ll watch with my usual admiration. He was dogged, and unafraid, and at 92 still maintains a relevance with his Substack Steady. Turn on your TV. His story might be the best one he’s ever told.

And he’s told a lot of great ones.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

Oxfam Australia Media Release  

Australian dividend payments to shareholders from corporate investments grew six times faster than worker pay between 2020 and 2023, new Oxfam analysis reveals on International Workers’ Day (May 1).  

Accounting for inflation and through COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis, dividend payments in Australia rose 37%, while average real wages in Australia have fallen by 6%. This is as Australia’s biggest banks, miners and retailers record sky-high profits off the back of higher prices, supply chain disruptions and the alleged use of price gouging and unfair pricing practices.  

Globally, dividend payments to shareholders grew 14 times faster than worker pay in 31 countries, which together account for 81% of global GDP.  

Global corporate dividends are on course to beat an all-time high of USD $1.66 trillion reached last year, according to the Janus Henderson Global Dividend Index, which covers the world’s largest 1,200 corporations, representing 90% of global dividends paid. Data for both dividends and wages for 2020-2023 are available for 31 countries, and Oxfam’s research shows:  

• After adjusting for inflation, global dividend payouts climbed by 45% (USD $195 billion) in 31 countries between 2020 and 2023, while wages grew by just 3 percent.  
• Excluding China, which accounts for most of this wage growth, global real wages in these countries fell by 3% during this period.  

“The trend of rising dividends payouts has worrying effects on inequality. Corporate profits and payouts to rich shareholders have gone into the stratosphere, while wages continue to go nowhere, said Oxfam Australia Chief Executive Officer Lyn Morgain.

“Millions of people hold jobs that trap them in a cycle of working hard while still being unable to afford enough food, medicine or other basics. The super-rich don’t amass their mega-fortunes by ‘working’ – they extract it from people who do,” said Ms Morgain. 

Oxfam’s analysis of Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC) data from countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, found that:

• Only 2 out of 37 countries have a minimum wage above the living wage—a pay rate the GLWC estimates allows workers to meet basic needs, such as housing, food, healthcare, clothing and transportation. Minimum wages on average provide just 38% of the wage needed for living.  
• Bangladesh’s minimum wage provides a mere 6% of a living wage, and in Ghana it provides just 12%. 

These findings reinforce warnings by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of rising numbers of working people living in poverty – skipping meals, getting into debt, and going without the basics. Using ILO data on in-work poverty, Oxfam found that 66% of workers in low-income countries earn poverty wages – a level of pay that doesn’t clear the $3.65 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) poverty line. This is a 1% increase since 2020, which marked the reversal of a long-term decline. 

“No corporation should be shelling out to rich shareholders unless it’s paying a living wage to all its workers. Governments must cap payouts to shareholders, support trade unions and legislate for living wages. We should be rewarding work, not wealth,” said Ms Morgain. 

By Jane Salmon

A Story About Young Refugee or Stateless Children Born Overseas

Once upon a time, a group of brave children embarked on a perilous journey. A tornado of strife had upended their lives in Iran. Friends were lost. They had to leave.

Some of their companions had failings, but all along the way, they leaned on each other for support, their resilience shining brighter than the darkest of nights.

They decided to journey to a mystical place called Aus where problems magically disappeared. But on this trip, there were no yellow brick roads to security; only their own unwavering resolve to find a place to call home.

They missed everyone back in Iran, especially Grandma. “There’s no turning back now, Toto,” they whispered to their loyal companion, as they braved the overgrown and broken path ahead.

Their quest was fraught with challenges – crowded camps, discrimination, upheaval, tall seas, bad boats, wrong passports and uncertainty loomed around every corner. But through it all, they clung to hope and determination, building strength with every step they took.

Along the journey they met the wicked witches of immigration, the flying monkeys of Border Force, the trolls of Serco and some a kind witch or two, too.

They coped when their allies lacked heart, ideas or courage. They did not give up and lie down for long, even when drained by depression or frustration.

Despite every adversity, they pressed on: fuelled by their dreams of a better tomorrow. And finally, after overcoming countless obstacles, they reached the gates of the fabled Aus, a gleaming beacon of hope in a world filled with shadows.

But hardship was far from over. In Aus, they encountered new challenges like arbitrary guards and snobbish locals, elusive leaders, sloth-like ticket sellers, zombie lawyers and confused neighbours.

Yet, through it all, they refused to lose sight of their dreams. Flawed as Aus seemed, it was somehow still a sanctuary, a place where their aspirations could take root and flourish. It was where they found friends, opportunities, and a sense of belonging.

And as they explored some of the wonders of Aus, their hearts filled with gratitude and hope, they whispered to themselves, “This could be our home.”

But they had more to go through.

They had to deal with the silly school kids who teased them about their accents, customs and food. They had to do paperwork for everyone.

They had to write and tell their story a million times to the big-headed wizards of Aus that just didn’t seem to care.

These wizards hid in their offices and in an all-white castle in Canberra where the halls were lined with mirrors.

But they clacked their ruby red slippers together and pled “Fair Go For All” and “Permanent Visas Now” enough times that, FINALLY, after years and years, the longed-for work rights, Medicare and access to study came to them. They had a safe haven in Melbourne.

“We truly belong!” they exclaimed as they received their magic tickets.

At last, they were free! Poor old Grandma could visit. Their dreams and goals were within reach. Their parents could stop worrying and reap the benefits of their hard work and worry.

“There truly is no place like home!”, they whispered to Toto.

And they never forgot how to be kind and to treat others the way they wanted to be treated themselves.

In time, they replaced the old Wizards of Aus and made it a better, more interesting, colourful and welcoming place.

By James Moore  

“You don’t go on bended-knee to petition the official culture for your rights. You have to take them.” – Terence McKenna.

In a matter of days, 54 years will have passed since the National Guard shootings of unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio. They had peacefully assembled on their campus to protest the War in Vietnam and its expansion into Cambodia. In just 13 seconds, though, guardsmen fired 67 rounds that killed four students and injured nine, including one who was permanently paralyzed. The soldiers were all of the same approximate age as the students and eight of them later were charged with depriving the protestors of their civil rights. A judge acquitted the shooters, but what happened on the Kent State campus that day changed the politics surrounding the draft and the war in Southeast Asia.

Every generation of American youth since 1900 has confronted a war, and they are currently dealing with one not of our country’s immediate making. Unflinching, unilateral support, though, financially and politically, for Israel’s assault on Gaza, has left college campuses, especially in this country, restive. Israel has managed to be more horrific than Hamas terrorists during their October 7 attack, and the videos and imagery leaking from Gaza via social media have added an emotional overlay to geopolitics sustaining the war, though it looks more like genocide and a complete razing of infrastructure than any type of combat. The extent of devastation is almost beyond comprehension.

More than half of Gaza’s surviving population, one million people, is now homeless, and 77,000 of them are living with wounds caused by the Israeli invasion. Seventy percent of the wounded and the 34,000 killed are reported to be women and children, living in the streets because 221,000 housing units have been destroyed. An average of 88 children a day have been killed in the six months of attacks. A total of 26 hospitals are out of service and more than 400 health care workers have been killed, which may partially account for a recent mass grave discovered at a hospital site. When the White House said it wanted the discovery investigated, an IDF spokesman responded with, “Investigate what?” Meanwhile, all 12 of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed along with 56 schools, and 625,000 students are displaced without educational resources. Israel’s president, Bibi Netanyahu, labels American complaints about these statistics as “anti-semitism.”

Protesting the slaughter of innocents as casualties of war is not antisemitic just as marching in the streets against the Vietnam War was not anti-American. When a student rally to support Palestinians was organized for the University of Texas campus, the state’s governor had troopers from the Department of Public Safety immediately dispatched to break up the gathering, although there had been no apparent violations of the law or violence by anyone present. The governor, however, had more than 100 DPS officers at the ready to move in with riot gear and disrupt the student assembly. These are the same officers, who, under Abbott’s control, were unable to raise a gun against a mass murderer at a public school in Uvalde. UT reportedly has about $50 million invested in arms manufacturers and pressuring the administration to divest was a central cause of the protest.

In the video above, a TV news photographer from FOX7 News in Austin is dragged to the ground by officers and ordered to lay down. He seemed to be only doing his job by moving with the crowd and recording student and law enforcement interactions. The photographer, along with dozens of students, was arrested, though charges seemed vague and unsubstantiated. The Travis County prosecutor said the DPS lacked probable cause in the arrests and all 57 cases were dismissed even as the governor has characterized the students as criminals who belong in jail. DPS has indicated it plans to pursue a criminal investigation against the TV photographer because it believes he hit a trooper with his camera, an absurd notion, on its face.

The governor held a news conference the next day in Dallas to say he is going to be advocating for new laws that turn participation in “riots” and acts of violence into felonies, which is likely to give law enforcement great discretion in deciding what exactly comprises a riot. Like most radical right conservatives, the Texas governor conflates resistance to war and genocide with antisemitism, which politically characterizes citizens as criminals and racists simply for exercising their right to peacefully assemble and petition their government.

The Texas governor’s tactics are a common element of fascism. Using law enforcement in riot gear or soldiers is an effective method for suppressing and intimidating dissenting voices. It can also be a catalyst for political backlash against the governing institutions and their policies. If most of the Texas National Guard were not already deployed to a stretch of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, he likely would have sent those troops as an exercise in asserting power, which is what Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes did at Kent State. Just as college students today are trying to execute a nationwide strike and protest over Gaza’s treatment, a similar one had been called for by activist groups after President Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia to expand the War in Vietnam. Students believed the soldiers arriving at Kent State were armed with blanks but live bullets were fired the next day on May 4, 1970.

My friend, and also a frequent Big Bend habitué, John Filo, was a student photographer that morning when young people scrambled for cover as their government began firing into their midst for protesting an expansion of a wasteful war. John was a senior and without a specific assignment that day but was wandering campus with his camera when he heard shots. He still thought the gunfire was the sound of blanks until he saw a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Vecchio, kneeling and screaming over a young man’s body. Pointing his camera and snapping a photo, Filo took what has become a singular, iconic picture of the Vietnam Era protest movement. He won a Pulitzer for photography at the age of twenty-one.

“I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition,” he told CNN in an interview a few decades ago. ”I don’t know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity, but I never took cover. I was the only one standing at the hillside. After I did that self-check and turned slowly to my left, what caught my eye on the street was the body of Jeffrey Miller and the volume of blood that was flowing from his body was as if someone tipped over a bucket. I started to flee-run down the hill and stopped myself. ‘Where are you going?’ I said to myself, ‘This is why you are here!’”

The tragedy of Kent State coalesced the anti-war movement and prompted May Day Marches in Washington, D.C. Although U.S. troops are not presently involved on the ground in Gaza, our government’s continuous military and financial aid to Israel make this nation culpable, an unacceptable reality for millions of Americans, not just college students. The brutal crackdowns on campuses here appear hardly different than those often criticized by this country’s government when they occur in China or Iran or Russia. The University of Texas said it was concerned about the possibility of anti-semitic behavior. Too many Texans, though, are more worried about fascistic behavior by the current administration of the governor and lieutenant governor. Regardless of characterizations to the contrary, there were no indications of any pro-Hamas messaging in the crowd. Nothing had been done to justify such a dramatic overreaction by the DPS but the governor seemed to want to make an example out of Austin, which he has referred to previously as “the people’s republic of Austin,” vilifying the city for its historic liberal politics.

“These protesters belong in jail,” he tweeted. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

That is not what happened, and he knows it.

The current campus movement is driven by considerably different dynamics than those that prompted the protest marches against the Vietnam War. Young Americans are not being drafted into combat nor are any coming home in coffins draped with flags. Social media, however, brought the suffering of Palestinians into the living and dormitory rooms of this country in a manner that not even color film did for Vietnam, which became America’s first “living room war.” The U.S. is, historically, parochial and foreign politics seemingly have little impact until they are sufficiently dramatic to get our attention. The Israeli genocide, which is the definition given to the assault by international human rights groups and numerous diplomats, is, finally, beginning to affect American politics. I remain convinced, however, that Israel could drill a hole to the center of the earth, detonate a bomb that blew the planet in half, and there would be politicians of this country spinning off into space yelling their last words, “Israel has right to defend itself.”

The protest movement of the early 70s might have fizzled had there not been an overreaction at Kent State. The subsequent May Day Marches on Washington began to turn national politics away from support for the war after a few hundred thousand people took to Pennsylvania Avenue to get the president’s attention. One year I hitchhiked out from Michigan and another spring we squeezed five of us into a friend’s old coupe and went out across the Pennsylvania Turnpike and down into D.C. We camped out in Potomac Park and there were thousands of tents and trucks and people with fire pits and loudspeakers. The scene felt more like a rock concert than an important and historic political moment.      

I remember in great detail a conversation with a girl who had stopped by our campsite on her way to the concert at the Washington Monument held the night before the march. I wrote about her in a journal I occasionally kept to improve my writing during those years. She was already a bit drunk when she arrived and said she had been smoking weed most of the day. Drinking deeply from a bottle of cheap wine, she sounded like we had just entered a conversation already in progress that had been going on privately in her head.

“But I don’t give a shit, ya know?” she said. “They killed my fucking big brother for no reason. Just because of their communism paranoia. I hate Nixon. I hate his fucking war.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry. That’s pretty awful.”

“Yeah, well, I’m staying stoned and fucked up until he comes home.”

“But I thought you said he was…”

“Doesn’t matter. Long as I’m messed up, I can convince myself he’s coming home. My dad won’t talk, and my mom has Donny’s picture on the counter in the kitchen and she talks to him all day long like he’s there. We’re all fucked up.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing to say. I came up here from Georgia to feel like I’m doing something, you know, just being here in the street, being a number.”

“Yeah, seems like the only thing we can do, I suppose. Not sure how it makes a difference. Doesn’t look like anything more than another concert with a big stoned crowd.”

“Yeah, but they’ll notice us, and we’ll be on the news and tomorrow we’ll shut down Pennsylvania Avenue and that motherfucker president will know how many people hate him.”

“I think he should know by now.”

The sadness she carried was probably constant in every moment of her life and everyone around her suffered because that was what she intended. She was pretty with big round eyes and narrow, square shoulders but her darkness was visible even in the sunlight. Multiply her agony by the tens of thousands and you get the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Every war is the same.

Until it becomes genocide.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

By Jane Salmon  

“Visa Amnesty, Permanent Residency, No Deportation After 11 Years”. Refugee Vigil Outside Minister Giles’ Thomastown Vic Office Monday 29/4/24 – 10am

Refugee and stateless families are urging the federal government to provide amnesty for the 10,000 refugees who have been living in Australia for the past 10 years – ahead of a vigil planned outside the Immigration Minister’s electoral office this coming Monday.

Families and individuals have been begging for an end to the ten-year legal deadlock that prevents them from becoming permanent residents of Australia. Minister Giles has the power to break that deadlock.

The protesters also call on National Party, Independent, Liberal and Labor Senators of conscience to vote against the Migration Amendment 2024 Bill which would expose them to increased risk of deportation.

The Refugee Council of Australia has offered six compelling reasons why the proposed Bill should be rejected by all parties in the Senate.

These reasons are:

Opposition to the Bill: The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) strongly opposes the Bill due to its broad discretionary powers, the criminalisation of people seeking asylum, and the risks of breaching Australia’s protection obligations under international law.

• Criminalization of Asylum Seekers: The Bill raises concerns about potentially criminalising individuals for refusing to return to their country of origin, leading to mandatory imprisonment for those fearing harm upon return.
• Failures of the Fast Track Process: The Fast Track refugee protection assessment process has been criticized for not providing fair, thorough, or robust assessments, placing thousands at risk of returning to danger or facing years of incarceration.
• Separation of Families: The Bill threatens family unity, particularly for those seeking asylum, by potentially forcibly separating families as a result of compliance with the removal process.
• Broad Discretionary Powers and Visa Ban:The Bill grants the Minister extensive powers to ban visa applications from “removal concern countries,” risking arbitrary and discriminatory practices.
• Impact on Economy and Community: The visa ban could negatively impact diplomatic relations, trade, the education sector, tourism, and social cohesion, especially within Australia’s multicultural and diaspora communities.
• Unchecked Ministerial Powers: The Bill could expand the powers of future ministers, allowing them to designate “removal concern countries” and expand classes of visas for “removal pathway non-citizens” without sufficient oversight.
• Alternatives to the Bill: The Refugee Council suggests that a better approach would be to provide tailored individual support to facilitate voluntary returns in a dignified manner, rather than using coercive measures.
• Recommendations: The RCOA recommends rejecting the Bill in its entirety, re-assessing protection applications rejected via the Fast Track process, and using non-coercive measures to facilitate removal options for those not found to be refugees.

“There are less draconian and arbitrary alternatives to the proposed measures.

“The failed ‘Fast Track’ assessment process which was haphazard and has provided neither speed nor a clear pathway”, said X of Y. We are still waiting for a replacement mechanism that works well.

Former Iranian refugee Arad Nik says, “There is no genuine ‘Emergency’ that justifies the sudden imposition of these powers. The Immigration has dragged its feet on developing mechanisms that honour human rights for two decades. Nothing justifies the introduction of such sudden, extreme or sweeping measures.”

Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil, has admitted that some refugees and others targeted by this Bill are ‘not removable’; yet the government is intent on seeking extraordinary powers. Mandatory sentences of one to five years jail are punitive measures designed to re-introduce indefinite detention.

There is no indication that discriminatory travel bans anticipated by the bill, on countries such as Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Somalia, will shift those countries’ policies on accepting forced removals. But such bans will have an enormous impact on Australian migrant communities.

It seems likely that there will be a vote on this Bill in the latter half of May when the Senate reconvenes.

A Senate inquiry into the Bill attracted 109 submissions. (Another 30 submissions by individuals have not met the publication criteria). Only one of the 109 published submissions was in favour of the Bill and just happens to have been prepared by Home Affairs.

Children aged between 9 and 20 who have attended recent rallies have calmly articulated their situation.

“We kids are raised and educated here as Aussies. We know English than Farsi. We have friends and pets and dreams”.

“Our parents escaped a murderous regime. Some of them are from ethnic minorities who had fewer rights. Some spoke out for justice for women. It is not safe to go back.”

“After 11 years of struggle and uncertainty, please offer us safety and hope, Australia!”

“Australia has already invested in our education. Why not retain our talent?”

“We want the same chances as our classmates. They are allowed to work and to go on to higher study. We are left to rot in our rooms despite great marks.”

“We are innocent. We are children. Our parents did the best they could.”

“We should not be punished because countries cannot agree. We should not be punished because the appeal system is broken”.

“We are sick of powerlessness and would like the chance to become caring politicians ourselves.”

On Monday 29 April 2024 at 10am, refugee and stateless families will again rally outside the (187-189 High Street, Thomastown, VIC, 3074) electoral office of the Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, pleading for positive changes to their situation. Their vigil will last until 3pm on the same day.