Disposable Words

If Not Mao, When?

Matthew and Melanie — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:12:08 +0000

The Great Wall of China does not immediately strike one as a great feat of human ingenuity, but rather as a testament to all-consuming paranoia. Everything one knows about the structure—its length, its age, its supposed visibility from space—combines with everything one probably should have known about it but didn’t—that it’s built high in the mountains and is less a walking trail than a hiking one—to give the impression of an obsessive impulse towards self-preservation. That this obsessive impulse was often well-founded—the wall helped defend the Ming Dynasty against the Manchu invasions for forty-four years before it was finally breached—is almost beside the point. China worked on the wall and its predecessors over the course of seventeen hundred years and it certainly wasn’t under siege for all of them. It was the principle of thing, not the immediate threat level, that mattered in the long run.

To this extent, the wall doesn’t only represent China’s ancient past, but its authoritarian present, too. The exception is that, where the country’s paranoia was once directed at external enemies, it is today directed primarily at internal ones. An even more representative totem to this latter tendency is to be found on the site where it was made most manifest. On Tiananmen Square in Beijing’s centre, the Monument to the People’s Heroes stands guarded from the people themselves lest any of them suddenly take to it and start fermenting counter-revolution. But the monument is not the totem in question. That would be the nearby light pole—and the dozens of others like it around the square—which is festooned with no less than five closed-circuit television cameras. Who needs to be afraid of the Mongols, after all, when there are locals about with homemade fliers? Farmers becoming aware of their rights? Poets to be jailed?

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Words by Matthew Clayfield / Photos by Melanie Cook

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The Chairman's Glare: Domestic Chinese tourists file out through Beijing's Gate of Heavenly Peace underneath the placid visage of one of last century's least placid men. Regardless of whose metric you're using, Mao Zedong inevitability finds himself alongside Hitler and Stalin in the circle of Hell reserved for mass-murdering ideologues. (If you include those whose deaths were the accidental result of his failed economic policies, and not merely those he deliberately wiped out, his tally is in fact the highest of all three.) But where both Germany and Russia have long been aware of their former dictators' bloody shortcomings, China staunchly refuses any Khrushchev-like Thaw and thousands still file through the old man's mausoleum every day to prostrate themselves before his waxy corpse.

Winter at the Summer Palace: A young boy on a wooden sled slides up one of Kunming Lake's tributaries towards the man-made body of water itself. With a surface area of a little over two square kilometres, Kunming Lake accounts for three quarters of the palace grounds.

Finger-Lickin' Good: Roast pigeon is among the many exotic delicacies available at Dong Hua Men night market in central Beijing. One can also snack on scorpions, tarantulas and starfish.

Red Paper Packages Tied Up with String: At Dong Hua Men night market, a vendor shows off his nicely wrapped almond brittle. (Photo: Matthew Clayfield)

Steampunk Orwellian: Tiananmen Square's Monument to the People's Heroes appears dwarfed by one of its ubiquitous light-and-surveillance poles. The National Museum of China is visible in the background.

Masks and Mittens in Tiananmen Square: Wearing an NBA beanie and the obligatory face mask, a child looks up into the smog above the city as the adults around him or her wait for the square's twice-daily flag ceremony to begin. (Photo: Matthew Clayfield)

Cohiba Espléndido: Tucked away in Chaoyang District's 798 Art Zone, the proprietor of a cigar lounge joins one of his customers for a smoke. A plastic horse stands incongruously in the centre of the space, doubling as a knife block. (Photo: Matthew Clayfield)

All the Better to Sculpt You With, My Dear: One of the snarling wolves that comprise Liu Ruowang's cast iron "Wolf Coming" sculpture on Originality Square in the 798 Art Zone.

In the Shadow of the Wall: Locals play ping-pong at the Great Wall at Mutianyu. Located in Huairou County, seventy kilometres northeast of Beijing, the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall is one of the the best-preserved. (Photo: Matthew Clayfield)

Forehand: The Great Wall at Mutianyu tends to see fewer tourists the famous section at Badaling. This is especially true in winter, when one often has whole sections of the two-and-a-quarter-kilometre stretch to oneself, giving one some slight impression of what kind of special hell it must have been for a soldier stationed on it. The ping-pong player won this shot. (Photo: Matthew Clayfield)

The Great Paranoia of China: China's past and present anxieties meet at Mutianyu's section of wall.

Firework Hymns

Austin Andrews — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:50:47 +0000

Of the not-insignificant number of events around the world billing themselves as “the greatest show on Earth”, the Rio Carnival has a thicker-fingered hold on the title than most. Twelve elite Rio samba schools each staged ninety-minute parades of multimillion dollar floats and casts of exquisitely costumed performers numbering in the thousands at the renovated Sambódromo, the “temple of Samba”, over two nights last week.

The sumptuous costumes and choreography were topped only by the sheer scale of each school’s production, and by focusing on the parade’s intricate micro here I’ve sacrificed its extravagant macro, which would make for another — perhaps even more dazzling — photo series.

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Words and photos by Austin Andrews

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RGB Summoner: Fireworks and raucous applause herald the arrival of each new school on the avenue.

Submitting To the Arrows' Will: An estimated five million people participated in the five-day Rio extravaganza, including a capacity crowd of 72,000 folded into the 800m parade route. Officially the "Sambódromo" and known among locals as "Sapucaí", the parade route was redesigned last year by centenarian architect Oscar Niemeyer, best known for his mid-century designs for the United Nations headquarters and the planned city of Brasilia.

Colourstruck.

Catalogue Smile.

Emblem Takedown.

Occupational Hazards.

Face for a Smile.

Witness on the Stand: High up on a float, a destaque watches in horror as a fellow dancer stumbles on a level below her.

Pound of Cotton, Almond of Flesh.

Sunflowers.

The Face in the Flock: Air thick with the smoke of her stalled float's sputtering engine, a headdress-garbed performer watches maintenance crews battle her school's diminishing chances.

Feather Fortress.

Ill-Timed Repairs: Crews work to repair a collapsed, power-less float as its school advances onto the avenue ahead of it. The float was eventually patched up and thrust into the parade six spots late, as the school's penultimate float. Parading floats out of order is sometimes worse than leaving them out entirely: each school tells a story through its costumes, sets and choreography, and to jumble the pieces risks confusion (and lost points).

Poodle Poms.

An Outspoken Minority: Supporters of Estação Primeira de Mangueira, popularly known as Mangueira, fly their school's colours from the nosebleeds of Sector 1.

Mask for the Invisible.

Her Polka Face.

Clay Accordions: Performers on Unidos da Tijuca's "abre-alas", or the first float of its parade, spring to life in time with the beginning of their song. Unidos da Tijuca would later be crowned the winner of the 2012 Carnival, just the third time the school has won the coveted title in its 82-year history.

Starcast Rafters.

Warbird.

Deflated Dreams: An abandoned float lays exposed to the elements the night after its school's parade outside Cidade do Samba, the "Samba City" of warehouses and rehearsal spaces where each school spends the twelve months before Carnival preparing in secrecy.

The Human Ribbon

Matthew and Melanie — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:57:54 +0000

Just north of Patriarch Ponds, where Bulgakov had the devil appear, protesters started milling about early with the intention of preventing his return. Well, not his, exactly, but certainly that of his vassal, Vladimir Putin, who is widely expected to win next weekend’s presidential election.

They say that the best way to get to know a city is to walk it. Occasionally, walking it can be the best way to get to know its residents, too. That was certainly the case yesterday, when some thirty thousand protesters, bedecked in white and in high spirits, came out to line Moscow’s Garden Ring road, forming a human chain around the city centre, calling for free elections, and opposing the current prime minister’s plan to return to the most powerful office in the land.

It is important to step back and acknowledge that there were far fewer people protesting yesterday than there were going about their lives elsewhere in the city. The protests appear larger from the inside than they do from more objective vantage points elsewhere. The opposition has years of protest ahead of it if its genuinely interested in changing the status quo, not to mention years of building its base beyond one hundred thousand people in the capital. But there’s certainly something intoxicating about being in the thick of things, and as we walked along the Garden Ring from Tverskaya to Smolenskaya, we found that even we were prone to it. Hunter S. Thompson had similar feelings in the 1960s and described them in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “There was a fantastic universal sense,” he wrote, “that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…” It’s worth remembering, however, how that same passage ends: with a high watermark and a wave rolling back.

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Words and photos by Matthew Clayfield

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Go Ask Alice: A little girl in rabbit mask and white scarf waits to cross the road. Children were well-represented at the protest.

White Ribbon Headband: A couple prepare for the protest with a quick cigarette.

Get Them While They're Young: A father ties a white ribbon to his son's wrist. Moments after this photo was taken, the son tied one to his father's. White ribbons have become the symbol of the opposition movement.

Nasha Russia: Moscow's Garden Ring is some sixteen kilometres long. Organisers estimated they would need approximately thirty-four thousand people to attend the unauthorised protest in order to complete the circle. They didn't quite pull it off—there were gaps in the line, particularly in the north, where we were walking—but there were also plenty of protesters walking the road and couple of thousand people driving it. The latter showed their support by honking and flying white ribbons from their windows. For one afternoon, Putin's Russia was theirs.

Its Fleece was White as Snow: From white ribbons to white balloons to white plush toys, the protesters have now commandeered white altogether, as this elderly oppositionist demonstrates.

The Hardest Button to Elect: Anti-Putinism is a broad church, encompassing liberal democrats, communists, and nationalists. Sunday's protests seemed to be the domain of the former group and Mikhail Prokhorov supporters were subsequently out in force. Current polling has the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets coming second to Putin in next weekend's poll, but only in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They have him coming second to last nation-wide. (Our discussions with young voters in Siberia would suggest that his nation-wide poll numbers may be lower than will eventually prove the case.)

Knights with White Satin: Protesters line the Garden Ring while press photographers shoot at them from a passing van.

Knights in Bright Orange: Moments after this photo was taken, these road workers, both sporting white ribbons, were approached by an OMON (Special Purpose Mobile Unit) officer, who had harsh words for both of them.

Tiptoe Through the Protests: An elderly Muscovite, sporting a white tulip and looking for her sons, allows her portrait to be taken.

A Fantastic Universal Sense that Whatever We were Doing was Right, That We were Winning: In Arbat District, a protester raises her comrades' arms. Unlike oppositionists in Siberia, Moscow's have been encouraged by both their increasing numbers and the authorities' reluctance to crack down on them. The sense of optimism among them is far greater—and far more infectious—than anywhere else in the country.

AIDS Awareness: In December, Vladimir Putin went on television and made fun of the protesters' adopted symbol, the white ribbon. "To be perfectly honest," he said, "when I saw something on some people's chests, I'll be honest—it's not quite appropriate—but in any case, I thought that this was part of an anti-AIDS campaign, that these were, pardon me, condoms." Since then, the opposition have claimed condoms as part of their symbolic arsenal. Which, if you think about it, rather makes sense. After all, the protests themselves are intended as a prophylactic against the once and future president's return to office.

Free Propaganda: A protester whose catch-cry is "Russia without Putin!" distributes a variety of stickers, signs and ribbons to those who haven't brought their own.

All the President's Men: Drawn by a mischievous protester, arrows point out a rather revealing number plate to passersby.

Stumping for the Stooge: Prokhorov's campaign has been dogged by charges that it is in fact a Kremlin ruse to bring liberal-minded protesters in off the streets and into the voting booths. These charges have grown less ferocious recently as his campaign has issued a series of complaints to the electoral commission—most recently that his signage has been damaged and removed in sites across the country—and as he has proven genuinely popular with inner-city elites and younger voters.

I'm Lovin' It: Protesters wave and shout to passing traffic.

Faceless Disagreement: Banners supporting Putin hang silently from balconies opposite the protesters.

The Revolution will be Tweeted: Actually, I have no idea what this young girl is doing on her iPhone. I have a better idea what she's doing with the balloon, which another protester handed her moments before this photo was taken.

We are All Muscovites Now: Protesters, including opposition leader and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, raise their arms as motorists honk their support.

Faking It: Standing before a group of pro-Putin youth, the lot of them sporting "Putin Loves Everybody" signs, RT's Peter Oliver turns off the obligatory anchor's smile. He ended his dispatch with a hollow-sounding line about how the country's new-found political activism appears to be here to stay—a line that sounded hollow precisely because he's standing in front of a group of people who are probably too young to vote, are carrying mass-produced signage, and are completely and utterly outnumbered by their anti-Putin counterparts. In Oliver's defense, the spot that appeared on RT's news later in the evening was much more balanced and didn't take place in front of the Children of the Corn.

Maybe Yours, But Not Ours: An anti-Putin protester tries talking sense to a pro-Putin one. As the afternoon wore on, several dozen of the latter group took to the streets and started harassing protesters. Without taking sides, I can honestly say that, on a day notable for its sense of celebration and decorum, the only people I saw shouting slogans, making rude gestures, and harassing those they disagreed with were the pro-Putin youth. One kid ran up to an elderly woman, popped a balloon behind her head, and ran off laughing while she looked around as though someone had been shot.

Get Outta Her Face: An elderly protester tells a Putin supporter many years her junior why he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Heading Underground: The pro-Putin youth head to the Metro while a protester gives them a piece of his mind.

Cheerleaders, Russophobes and Spies: That large swathes of the Western media are on the protesters' side almost goes without saying. While to some extent their solidarity is the result of a shared liberal world-view, it must also be said that many are hoping for a repeat of either the Arab Spring or, even better, the fall of the Soviet Union, on the grounds that it would simply make a great story. The result is often overstatement and a striking lack of nuance in their coverage.

Holding the Line and Balloons: While pundits like to push the line that more Muscovites will vote against Putin than for him, the line they don't like to push as much is that more of them will vote for Putin than will vote for anyone else. He doesn't have to win the majority of Muscovites' votes in order to win Moscow. He is set to win the capital regardless and the country in a rout.

Solidarity: The question is thus not what sort of effect the opposition protests are likely to have—as far as the election is concerned, the answer is little to none—but whether or not the opposition protests are likely to continue long after next month's vote. Because the election was the regime's finishing line. It's only the first checkpoint on a long and winding road for the opposition.

The Road to Kabul

Austin Andrews — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:57:08 +0000

The keen ear hears the phrase “since World War II” a lot in Kabul. The strategic and logistical hub of the so-called Global War on Terror, the city plays host to a dizzying cacophony of rah-rah rhetoric. A NATO commander will tell you that the current troop build-up in the Afghan National Army, designed to take over from retreating Western powers, is “the largest army assembled since World War II”. The increase in deployment period from 12 to 15 months with the United States’ much-discussed troop surge has resulted in “the longest Army combat tours since World War II”. Or that it’s the “first war fought outside Europe by the united West since World War II”.

But this is a flawed metric better suited to an XBox game than international war. Vietnam had a more difficult battlefield; Korea, a better-equipped opponent. Even the Gulf War, all eighteen months of it, saw more American deaths than Afghanistan has in ten years. Kabul, rebuilt since 1992 to a reasonable facsimile of its pre-war shape, is a functioning city first and a fortified war hub second. The two often exist in an uneasy tension, like toy soldiers fashioning a fortress from a sandcastle, and indeed many we spoke with in Kabul were resentful of NATO’s hawkish presence in a city they’d like to reclaim for themselves. But the majority here live out lives of adjusted normalcy, less cohabitating with the military machine than occupying an altogether different city from it. These are their stories.

Veiled Suspicion: A woman walks through a Kabul alleyway laid to waste during the country's last civil war. Though Afghans are quick to denounce the oft-cited (and impossibly exaggerated) figure of 90%, much of Kabul's infrastructure was destroyed in the years following Soviet withdrawal as extremist factions on both sides jostled for control of the country's supply routes. Afghanistan has weathered alternating bust-bust cycles of civil war and international engagement since its last monarch, King Zahir, was deposed in a 1973 coup.

Single-Minded: More fascinated by a piece of string than the strip of meat it hangs from, a cat plays in a alleyfront sundry shop.

One (Is The Loneliest Number)

Textile Crossing: Cotton merchants socialise under a poster of the late opposition leader and 1980s Mujahideen hero Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Thousand Year Old Skyscraper: Tenements crawl up a mountainside in Shahr-e-Kohna, Kabul. At 1800m above sea level, Kabul is among the highest major cities in the world.

Load-Bearing

A Warren of Mud and Stone: Informal commerce and commuters converge in a knotted, multi-level maze of alleyways in Chindawol, Kabul, many of which date back over 2000 years.

Staple on the Stake: A baker awaits customers at a naan stall in Chindawol, Kabul.

Multipurpose: An Afghan National Police officer looks out over the bombed-out remains of the Soviet-era Palace of Science and Culture in Kart-e-Char, Kabul. Boasting a library, exhibition space, classrooms and an outdoor cinema playing an unending loop of Soviet propaganda films, the palace was once an emblem of the grandiose new ideas sweeping through Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviet withdrew, it became a key site in the battle for Kabul as opposition groups weathered rocket attacks inside its heavily fortified walls.

Illyich Defaced: A mangled portrait of Vladimir Lenin greets squatters and trespassers inside the Palace of Science and Culture.

Rusted Ambitions I: Soviet tanks lie rusting in the deserts northwest of Kabul.

Rusted Ambitions II: Although the majority of Soviet tanks lost in Afghanistan were lost in battle, others were captured by the Afghan Mujahideen and are still in service decades later.

Future-Facing: Kabul University undergraduate students, most of whom were born in the chaotic half-decade between Soviet withdrawal and the beginning of Taliban rule, congregate on the plaza outside the Faculty of Social Sciences. Built with Pakistani seed money and propped up by a South African telecommunications giant, the faculty and the university at large are designed to prepare students for an increasingly globalised future, with exchange programs in place and teachers often sourced from outside Afghanistan.

Open Door, White Window: A peek inside Kabul University.

Vaccine: A UNICEF volunteer administers an oral polio vaccine to a child in Kandahar City. Backed with funds from CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and two departments of the United Nations, polio eradication has been the most-discussed of Canada's three signature projects in the country. Afghanistan is one of just four countries in the world where the disease is still endemic.

Combat Hospital: A specialist prepares the ER of the Role 3 trauma hospital in Kandahar for an incoming medevac of Afghan civilians wounded by an IED blast.

Sunrise Clique

At Play in the Shadow of Ghosts: Afghan boys play football under the hulking ruins of Darulaman Palace, sixteen kilometres southwest of Kabul. Built in the 1920s as the show-stopping centrepiece for a new capital city to be connected to Kabul by tramways, for a half-century the palace was only sporadically occupied before war gutted it. The planned city, meanwhile, was never built.

Crescentlit: A waxing crescent moon rises alongside the "moon of Kabul", an ISAF surveillance airship that took to the skies in summer 2011. Dubbed the Blue Devil, the dirigible is equipped with cameras and listening devices to monitor conversations and detect insurgent threats. The airship is longer than a football field and seven times the size of the Goodyear Blimp, making it the largest airship produced since, yes, World War II.

Household Purchasing Decisions

Tandoor Fruit: Disc by disc, a vendor clears out the night's stock of Obi Non, an Uzbek-style naan bread popular in Kabul.

Grill Fruit: Meat, cooked and uncooked, wait for hungry passerbys during a slow night at a kebab stand opposite Pārk Shāre Naw, Kabul.

Elemental: A kebab vendor fans hot coals to cook a line of cubed-beef skewers.

Men and their Hairstyles

Flightline II: Parting Shots

Austin Andrews — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:21:51 +0000

Manpower: Canadian Forces soldiers roll Canada's last combat helicopter remaining in Afghanistan, a CH-47 Chinook, to the front ramp of an Antonov An-124 for transport out of the country.

Slow Winch: Already stripped of its rotors and weapons, the helicopter is guided into the belly of the Antonov. The An-124 is the world's largest serially-manufactured cargo plane.

Hotel Womb on Kandahar Airfield.

Black Flag.

Ascending: Final checks before the Antonov departs for Ontario via Kuwait. The Canadians have found an eager buyer for the Chinook in the US Army, who will inherit it after maintenance is performed in Ottawa.

Fragile: The Ukrainian flight crew secures an assortment of Canadian soldiers' personal belongings to the fuselage.

Combat Close-Out

Austin Andrews — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:20:27 +0000

For all the ink, here and elsewhere, given to its Operation Attention training mission in Kabul, Canada’s largest operation in Afghanistan remains the comparatively unheralded Mission Transition Task Force (MTTF). Based in yesteryear’s focus province of Kandahar and drawn on the contributions of 1300 Canadian Forces soldiers and support staff, the MTTF is responsible for closing out Canada’s six-year, multi-billion dollar combat mission in Kandahar.

Humvee Dust Up: An ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) humvee kicks up a cloud of dust against a row of Canadian sea containers awaiting passage from Kandahar Airfield (KAF) to the sea ports of the Indian Ocean and back to Canada beyond. In closing out Kandahar, the Canadian Forces estimate some 1800 containers of military hardware and support equipment were shipped through Pakistan between August and December 2011.

Chemical Cleanse: The soil remediation program sets Canada's combat close-out apart from other nations' withdrawals. In an effort to curb environmental damage to its former Forward Operating Bases throughout Kandahar province, soil from around the bases is shipped to a remediation plot at KAF and treated with a chemical compound to flush out heavy metals and harmful toxins.

Razor Window: A Canadian Forces soldier tears down a maintenance shed at one of the 19 Canadian sites on Kandahar Airfield being closed or transferred to other coalition forces. A total of 1300 Canadian soldiers were deployed to the MTTF on six-to-nine month rotations, the last of which end this week.

A Soon-To-Be Former Site: Canadian soldiers carry away metal trusses earmarked for donation to the Afghan National Security Forces.

Can on the Move: A Canadian sea container loaded with tarpaulins is carted off to the Humanitarian Assistance Yard. Canadian flag-bedecked sea containers are a familiar sight on the roads from KAF into Kandahar City, with several dozen containers having undergone CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency)-sponsored conversions into residences for Afghan civilians.

Intersection.

Wave/Weigh: To save taxpayers from the shipping burden, buyers are sought among the other coalition nations for every piece of the Canadian war machine. All items remaining must be shipped back to Canada, with high priority and protected technologies flown home via a staging area in Kuwait and less important items driven overland in convoys through Pakistan to ports on the Indian Ocean. Items deemed too complicated to ship home are donated to the Afghan National Security Forces. The tank pictured here was sold to the United States.

Always Fresh / The Canadian Workplace.

The Donut Run Juggle: The 30,000 deployed Canadian soldiers served at Afghanistan's only Tim Hortons, while impressive, pale next to the 2.5 million customers the chain estimates have visited it from the 47 ISAF contributor nations, with the donut shop becoming such a favourite on KAF that the Americans, who take control of Canada House in December, plan to replace it with a Dunkin' Donuts. The location was originally scheduled to close with the departure of combat troops in July but a fierce outcry from the incoming MTTF team prompted head office to keep it open until Christmas 2011.

Sugar Envy: Since opening its doors on Canada Day in 2006, the KAF Tim Hortons has served 4,000,000 cups of coffee and 3,000,000 donuts. More than 300 sea containers of Tim Hortons products were shipped over five years from Kingston, ON.

Delivery Day: Canadian Forces service members CAPT Magill, SGT Wade and MAJ Meszaros walk back to their residences with mail and packages sent from overseas. The USPS and Canada Post, among others, maintain branches at KAF.

Off-Hours Activity: "Fan mail" sent to Canadian Forces members is made available at Canada House to read or reply to during off hours.

Unsolicited Scripture.

Slates, Former Lives: Outside the former Canadian HQ on KAF, a wood-and-granite cenotaph carries the names of every Canadian and international soldier killed on the Canadian combat mission. The monument will be repatriated to Ottawa after withdrawal.

The Rag Doll's Surrounds.

Red Box Comforts: Prior to shipping from Afghanistan, every item -- however insignificant -- is given a unique barcode with information about its history, destination and, if applicable, buyer. The British have been watching the Canadians closely in preparation for their own withdrawal from Afghanistan next year.

Idle Players.

Husky Handover: With just a tenth of the military vehicles Canada used in Kandahar being redirected to Operation Attention in Kabul, buyers are being sought for the remainder. Here, Canadian (tan uniform) and Australian (green uniform) soldiers field test a Husky mine detection vehicle being transferred to the Australians for use in Uruzgan province.

Brazil’s Cidade Maravilhosa

Austin Andrews — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:28:48 +0000

Signal Interference: The open arms of Christ the Redeemer rise over a cloud swell. One of the New Seven Wonders of the World, the 40m statue looks out over the Rio de Janeiro harbour, itself crowned by CNN as a Wonder of the Natural World.

Rio bisected: Halves of affluence, poverty seen at sunset.

To Arms: A crudely drawn portrait of Osama bin Laden watches over boys at play in the sprawling Cidade de Deus (City of God) favela near Rio de Janeiro.

Bebidas: Best known for his role as gang leader Li'l Ze in the 2002 film City of God, actor Leandro Firmino grew up in the titular favela and still lives there today.

Shadow City: In a bitterly ironic twist for the city's many penthouse owners, Rio's best views are indisputably found in the numerous favelas that crawl up the city's mountains. Although definitions are blurry, 513 different favelas are officially listed within Rio de Janeiro city limits.

Samba de Roda: Dancers at the Unidos da Tijuca samba school rehearse their parts in February's Carnival during Saturday's midnight rehearsal. Resplendent in million dollar floats and thousands-strong casts, thirty-one samba schools compete for top honours in the parade. Unidos da Tijuca has won twice: in 1936 and 2010.

Embrace I.

Embrace II: Adopted as an infant by a white family, 10-year-old Joaquim Patana is very much the face of a new Brazilian middle-class: post-racial, multilingual and upwardly aspirant. Here, he takes a break from configuring his new Facebook account to kiss his sister Valentina, also adopted.

Jungle Gym Bleachers: Local boys watch blue and green square off during a three-team football "championship" organised by Joaquim's parents.

Corner Kick.

Snack Break: Joaquim watches from the sidelines as green and orange compete for supremacy. If the boys notice they're playing in a tennis pitch, they don't show it.

Skyscraping.

Gold: Million-selling records and memorabilia adorn a bathroom in the home of two-time Grammy Award-winning Brazilian recording artist Gilberto Gil.

Silver: Street performers prepare for their routine in a square in central Rio de Janeiro.

Spot Check.

Mixed Messages: Plush toys bearing the messages "You Are Special" and "I Love You" contrast scenes of poverty in the Vidigal favela in Rio De Janeiro's Zona Sul.

Essentials.

The Peanut Gallery: Speaker Hire

Tim Boots — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:07:13 +0000

It’s been tough getting motivated to write this column of late. As the same three policy issues have gyrated robotically on the media chocolate wheel over the last few months, interspersed with the odd reheated MP sex scandal, the only even vaguely suspenseful aspect of the federal news cycle has been whether it was going to be a mining tax, a carbon tax, or an asylum seekers week. Forests of newsprint and a Van Allen Belt-dissolving tonnage of cathode rays have been utilised to regurgitate the same flatulent political rhetoric and professionally hysterical editorials we”ve become inured to on each of these issues. And despite having it drummed into us on a daily basis by an amped-up, circulation-chasing media that this parliament is the most volatile and unstable in post-war history, apt to be felled at any minute by Craig Thompson’s subsidised libido or Kevin Rudd’s equally priapic leadership ambitions, and despite the government trumpeting the passage of hundreds of relatively minor pieces of legislation as an illustration of its lack of dysfunction, the last few months have felt like an enervating period of stasis.

In the last two sitting weeks before the Christmas break however, the game suddenly became interesting again. Along with the passage of the carbon tax into law, and the mining tax clearing the Lower House (and now likely to be given a saloon passage through the Senate), Harry Jenkins’ resignation as Speaker looks set to usher in a genuine, post-Oakeshott paradigm shift. By inducing the “colourful” (read dipsomaniac) Liberal MP Peter Slipper to assume Jenkins’ seat as parliamentary class monitor, the Gillard government has given itself a crucial extra vote on the floor of the Reps with which to stave off a potentially fatal by-election or no confidence motion, whilst simultaneously diminishing the Coalition’s numerical strength by one. This means that the government will in all likelihood now see out its full term—something that was always the most likely outcome, despite sensationalist media conjecture to the contrary—and leaves Tony Abbott faced with the prospect of having to devise a new, longer term strategy that, incredibly, could include developing some alternative policy. For all the talk about the success of his constant hyperbolic negativity, his net average approval rating as preferred PM is lower than Gillard’s, something which has been causing disquiet in Coalition ranks for some time now. The polling shows that the government’s “Dr No” tag is beginning to stick, and Abbott’s obvious discombobulation at the dramatic events surrounding the Speaker’s resignation on the last day of term, coupled with Christopher Pyne’s apoplectic performance in the chamber in attempting to nominate everyone on the government side of the House, including the cleaners, as an alternative Speaker, spoke to their collective desperation: they were watching Plans A, B and C slipping away, painfully aware that Plan D—i.e. something other than relentless rejection—was yet to be thought of.

Much guff was written in the immediate aftermath of the Jenkins episode (much of it by doyen reporters like The Age‘s Michelle Grattan) that this adroit move, masterminded by the verso-Pyne, Anthony Albanese, would somehow paint Gillard as even more devious and conniving in the public imagination than when she knifed Kevin Rudd and welched on the carbon tax. This line of thought is pure Canberra beltway, the sort of thinking that people surrounded entirely by other political journalists, staffers and public servants tend to ascribe to the common man. Graham Richardson gave it a cold shower on one of the innumerable Sky News panel gibberfests he earns a quid from these days, making the point that if you’d taken a straw poll of a hundred people on the streets of Ashfield two weeks ago as to who Harry Jenkins was, you would have been lucky to get two correct answers.

As for the Coalition’s sledgehammer hints that they’re about to start drip-feeding their voluminous dirt file on Peter Slipper (by all reports a venal drunkard with a fondness for his Cabcharge card) to the press, the latter would be the only winners out of that in terms of filling advertising-challenged column inches. This is a man whom the Liberals have preselected a total of nine times for his Sunshine Coast seat, and whom they’ve spent the last decade closing ranks around so as to keep his nefarious behaviour from becoming a public scandal. He is a weed that sprouted and flourished on their patch. It’s what Slipper gets up to over the next two years, however, that will be of concern to the government from here on out, as they are now the registered owner of this political stray. Thus every pair of eyes in Canberra will be trained on “Slippery Pete” from sun-up ’til sundowner.

There is also a notion doing the rounds that this turn of events somehow cripples the influence of the independents, in particular Andrew Wilkie and his oft-made threat to bring down the government if it doesn’t successfully conclude his personal crusade for poker machine reform. There is no doubt that his immediate influence, along with that of his fellow crossbenchers, has been diminished by the move, and that many Labor MPs facing serious heat in their electorates from the clubs and pubs lobbies over pokies will be pushing to back away from Wilkie’s plan. However, with the Parliament still so finely balanced, the government would be foolish in the extreme to now “burn” Wilkie and walk away from their negotiated agreement to introduce pre-commitment technology (although there’s speculation the “mandatory” aspect may now be negotiable), as his vote will undoubtedly be important in the future, and utterly crucial if there was to be an unexpected by-election.

Wilkie himself, on a recent edition of the ABC’s Insiders program, articulated how most people in the centre feel about the Jenkins episode—i.e. that this is an unusually difficult parliament to navigate legislation through, and as such a government, any government, looking to harness creative ways of gaining a working majority is no dastardly affront to the Westminster System. He probably wouldn’t agree that it’s a good thing his own influence has been diluted, though, but when you see the impact he was able to have on the final structure of the mining tax—personally raising the tax free threshold by $100m, presumably to benefit boutique Tasmanian mining companies in his own electorate—you’d have to agree it’s a good thing. Regardless of whether one thinks the pokie tax is good policy, one man elected with a primary vote of 21.3 per cent in a Tasmanian seat should not have such ridiculously large leverage.

The mining tax now stands revealed as that rarest of things: a popular government policy. As it turns out, most people feel it’s only right that companies reaping the benefits of a minerals export boom should be allowing more of the proceeds to trickle down into the substrata of the economy, and don’t seem too bothered by the Chicken Little predictions of imminent budgetary ruin that have now almost entirely dried up since it became clear the legislation would pass the Lower House. And here, Tony Abbott’s reflexive oppositionism has for once proved problematic, as he faced strong criticism from within his own party room for rejecting the tax, whilst simultaneously embracing a three per cent rise in superannuation contributions the tax had been designed to fund.

The carbon tax “lie”, Gillard’s original sin, will most likely see her doomed at the next election, despite it simply being a poorly communicated compromise born out of an extraordinary electoral situation. But with the ALP conference just around the corner, and gay marriage set to dominate the agenda, she could do a lot worse than perform another ungainly backflip and come out (boom boom) in support. As Labor continues to be wedged from both sides of politics on things like asylum seekers and the environment, now could be the moment to stem the votes bleeding to the shamefully unscrutinised Greens, and at the same time steal a march on the Liberals, by taking a brave decision on an issue whose time is surely coming. Otherwise, the time they’ve bought themselves with the Jenkins manoeuvre could prove to be their swansong as a major party able to govern in its own right.

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Hockey Night in Kandahar

Austin Andrews — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:03:59 +0000

Of all the strange and unlikely pleasures to be found on the coalition bases of southern Afghanistan, the hockey rink at Kandahar Airfield must rank among the most surreal. Built in 2006 on their days and evenings off by hockey-mad Canadian soldiers and buoyed in the years since by the Canadian military and the donation of a scoreboard by the city of Guelph, this floodlit desert apparition has hosted visits from former NHL stars Guy Lafleur and Lanny McDonald, infamous colour commentator Don Cherry, and, during the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Stanley Cup.

Guardian: A Slovak soldier watches a pre-game warm-up from the Boardwalk, an overnight mall of timber and shipping containers that circles the hockey rink. With the KHL season concluding in October and the final Canadian troops pulling out of Kandahar not long after that, Slovakia is set to assume control of the league for 2012.

The Nosebleeds: A Canadian soldier watches the Kandahar Storm square off in their last-ever playoff game against a squadron of American engineers. Matches between Canadians and teams of other nationalities are rare, even after the combat withdrawal; in the 24-team KHL, more than half of all teams are still Canadian.

Starting Lineup: Storm players watch as their team is put on the defensive. As with everywhere else on the airfield, the rink is vulnerable to Taliban attacks, with games routinely interrupted by a telltale siren warning of incoming rockets. Even between attacks, low-flying jet fighters and helicopter medevacs are common hazards for any easily-distracted player.

Right Wing Rush: The Storm take the offensive.

Line Change: A Storm player watches from the bench during a stoppage in play.

Fighting Words: Down by six goals, the Storm head coach calls a time out to rally his team back together.

Tally: The rink scorekeeper records another goal for the Americans. The Storm would lose 13-4 in one of the final games ever contested by Canadians in Kandahar, ending their five years atop the league.

Sportsmanship: Members of the opposing teams shake hands after the final whistle.

Pre-Game Stretches: Taking a cue from CBC's Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts, the Kandahar rink regularly hosts double-headers of Canadian teams. Here, members of the Angry Beavers, a team named after the brewpub in Belleville, Ontario that sponsors them, prepare to play in the second of the night's two games.

Stickwork.

Basic Warrior Training

Austin Andrews — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:53:46 +0000

Building Something from Nothing: A phalanx of Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits wait in a position of readiness on a hillside overlooking the 20000 acre Kabul Military Training Centre (KMTC) in October, 2011. Increasingly prized by the NATO-led international military campaign as their ticket out of Afghanistan, the eight-year-old ANA has swelled in numbers since 2008 and is projected to reach 250,000 by 2015.

Desert Formations: Divided into battle-ready battalions called kandaks, one of which is pictured here, an estimated 10,000 soldiers are enrolled in the KMTC's eight-week Basic Warrior Training program at any given time. Located on 81 km² of desert northeast of Kabul, the KMTC layout mimics the harsh, unforgiving conditions that soldiers can be expected to endure. Like many of the major Afghan bases, it was founded with Soviet muscle in the 1980s and laid to waste during civil war in the 1990s.

Hostile Compound: Three weeks into their eight week training program, a group of intermediate-level recruits storm a compound during a house-clearing drill.

Red-Tipped: ANA recruits take four corners for a firing exercise in a room riddled with the empty shells of past drills.

Shooting Skyward: Two trainers supervise a sentry on the roof of the house.

Show and Tell: An early beneficiary of ISAF's new policy of "training the trainers", an Afghan trainer demonstrates proper technique for holding a rifle. An estimated one-third of all active ANA soldiers were originally trained at the KMTC.

Sights and Scopes: A designated sentry keeps watch over the main entrance to the house.

Scalene: A triangle of M16A2 rifles open fire on an imaginary target.

Ammo Dump: An ANA recruit drops his empty cartridge on a stack to be reloaded with new shells after completing the house-clearing drill.

Decibel Wise: Two weeks into his training at the KMTC, a new ANA recruit waits for an open berth on the firing range.

Paper from Forty Paces: Stray bullets kick up plumes of desert soil at a firing range.

Ammo Strands: A recruit reloads cartridges as an incoming group takes possession of the firing range.

Results: Cartridges empty, two recruits take down their target sheets for assessment.

Zeroing Target: To pass the firearms test and be issued an M16 of his own, a recruit must hit the sheet of paper 38 times out of 50. This particular recruit's aim was uncommonly good.

Flawed Symmetry: Fresh target sheets in place, four recruits await marching orders on the firing range.

Spout: Recruits receive water top-ups as the firing range breaks for lunch.

Rations: In contrast to the lavish coalition bases that fly in most of their ingredients and dishes from abroad, an average lunch on an ANA base includes rice, chicken, a chickpea or bean curry, fruit, and rice.

A Warzone Picnic: ANA recruits break for lunch under the midday desert sun.