"Twilight Time", a gift from our very good friend, John Hughes
Professor Des Ball: The insurgent intellectual
These days have been momentous days, weeks and months and years. In the past couple of days the news has included the McBride case:
Jailed whistleblower David McBride loses appeal against
severity of sentence, flags High Court challenge
ands also the Richard Boyle case:
and then yesterday a visit to my home in Kyneton from John Hughes, lots of goodies as in wonderful pastries from Italian bakery Monelli near his home, plus a film John has worked on for many years about Des Ball.
This film is called Twilight Time and is voluminous in the history it covers from about 1950 to the present. I asked John if I could share it with our friends here on the blog and he agreed:
Hi Peter.
Thanks for taking the time to watch the TWILIGHT TIME film. It’s being distributed by Antidote Films (Gil Scrine) so I can’t freely distribute the film. There are still theatrical screenings afoot (see website below). But Gil’s plan is to have the film on streaming sites after these July screenings… there’s a nice essay /review by a young writer Cher Tan just published on Overland.
Well, I don't know Gil Scrine except as he has been mentioned by John and as he appears in the film about Des Ball.
https://twilighttimethefilm.
And now I know a lot about Des Ball who is a most remarkable person, someone who has put himself on the frontline of information gathering and protests against the US interests in Australia since the early 1960s.
For all of you who have been on the lefty side of politics in the past 60 something years, many of you started being protestors during the Vietnam War when we were pledged to be "All the way with LBJ" , this film made by John Hughes reveals much that we knew about and much that we did not know about and the range of subject matter it covers is simply astonishing.
Perhaps the most terrible indictment of us Australians is how we have become tied to the US as lapdogs who never confront their masters, never show any regret at being involved in terrible wars, and who welcome putdowns such as the US presidents forgetting the names of our current Prime Ministers, even when we are buying Nuclear Subs from them. Even when we make down-payments on Nuclear Subs which may never be delivered... I hope!!!
So what can I say? I recommend all my friends and even some or all of my enemies to view this film.
You won't be disappointed in the film except insofar as it reveals what a terrible mess our Australian Nation is in, caught up with the "protection" of the USA which means we are a primary target of any Nation which goes to war with the USA, and the number of those nations varies from time to time.
Now that the Albanese Labor Government has been returned with such a huge majority, is it possible they will be a little less subservient to our masters? Is there the slightest possibility that they might disentangle us from AUKUS?
Hopefully Greens Senator David Shoebridge has some friends in the Labor Caucus who might support his views on AUKUS?
Over the weekend, the Greens announced our plan to get
us out of AUKUS and end a series of US weapons programs,
from big heavy tanks to very old helicopters.
But why am I being so terribly pessimistic?
pt
29.05.25
What a hero: Des Ball. Thanks John Hughes for this and many other movies. So important that we know the courage of fighters for justice and a less shameful Australia.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that pithy comment Tom, yes "shameful" is the perfect word for where we find ourselves now!
ReplyDelete