Truganini

 

Truganini

Journey through the apocalypse 

Cassandra Pybus

 The haunting story of an extraordinary Aboriginal woman.
'A compelling story, beautifully told' - JULIA BAIRD, author and broadcaster

'At last, a book to give Truganini the proper attention she deserves.' - GAYE SCULTHORPE, Curator of Oceania, The British Museum

Cassandra Pybus's ancestors told a story of an old Aboriginal woman who would wander across their farm on Bruny Island, in south-east Tasmania, in the 1850s and 1860s. As a child, Cassandra didn't know this woman was Truganini, and that Truganini was walking over the country of her clan, the Nuenonne.

For nearly seven decades, Truganini lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than we can imagine. But her life was much more than a regrettable tragedy. Now Cassandra has examined the original eyewitness accounts to write Truganini's extraordinary story in full.

Hardly more than a child, Truganini managed to survive the devastation of the 1820s, when the clans of south-eastern Tasmania were all but extinguished. She spent five years on a journey around Tasmania, across rugged highlands and through barely penetrable forests, with George Augustus Robinson, the self-styled missionary who was collecting the survivors to send them into exile on Flinders Island. She has become an international icon for a monumental tragedy - the so-called extinction of the original people of Tasmania.

Truganini's story is inspiring and haunting - a journey through the apocalypse.

'For the first time a biographer who treats her with the insight and empathy she deserves. The result is a book of unquestionable national importance.' - PROFESSOR HENRY REYNOLDS, University of Tasmania

My Review

This was praiseworthy book that gave me so much more than I expected. It was interesting to learn that the indigenous people were very dedicated to their family and fellow tribe members.  
It is such a painful history with enormous betrayal, especially by Robinson, and hate filled violence by the white invading settlers. At one stage there was a move to give the Aboriginal people the North East of Tasmania, but Robinson prevailed and they were denied this.
The research for this book was obviously extensive and it is written in easy that makes reading easy. 

Rating 5/5

Bad News

By Anjan Sundaram

Published 2016

My review

I found the book jumped about a lot and did start to wonder how factual it was.  I have discovered a few reviews and web information that casts some doubts but there is plenty of suggestions out there in various newspapers that all is not as it seems in Rwanda.  One also can't be certain of bona fides of the reviews that suggest it is all fiction and lies.

However I think some references could have been included to assist, for example where it was stated that the Millennium Challenge Corporation funds were forfeited. It would have reduced that feeling of uncertainty.

 

I did some searching on the internet and that did provide some indications that the country was not free and the press were heavily constricted.

 

Rating  2/5

Telagraph UK

For example http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/rwanda/7900680/Paul-Kagame-Rwandas-redeemer-or-ruthless-dictator.html#

By Richard Grant 22 Jul 2010

Twagiramungu persevered, even after two of his most prominent supporters disappeared without trace, and Kagame won 95 per cent of the vote.

 

The government has closed down two critical news­papers, and arrested a journalist for defamation (he compared Kagame with Hitler) and divisionism. A dissident general has survived an assassination attempt in South Africa, and a newspaper editor who linked it to the Rwandan government was murdered in Kigali. Two opposition parties have been prevented from registering, and the vice-president of one, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka of the Democratic Greens, has turned up dead from machete wounds. Political rallies have been been broken up violently by the police, and two Hutu opposition candidates have been arrested, one for divisionism, the other, Victoire Ingabire, for the Orwellian crime of 'genocide ideology’.

Is Kagame a benevolent dictator, the strong hand needed to pull Rwanda forward into a better future, or is he an incurable despot? If you hold him up to the light in the right way, you can see both facets glinting at once.

Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/another-rwandan-dissident-assassinated/2014/01/24/10bff274-82ca-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html?tid=a_inl

By Lara Santoro January 24, 2014

But as human rights organizations keep noting, the survival rate among Rwanda’s dissidents is not h'igh .

Human Rights Watch

And certainly the Human Rights Watch report that  in 2015  "tight restrictions on freedom of speech and political space remained in place"   

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/rwanda

Book Publicity

Hearing a blast, journalist Anjan Sundaram headed uphill towards the sound. Grenade explosions are not entirely unusual in the city of Kigali; dissidents throw them in public areas to try and destabilise the government and, since moving to Rwanda, he had observed an increasing number of them. 

What was unusual about this one, however, was that when Sundaram arrived, it was as though nothing had happened. Traffic circulated as normal, there was no debris on the streets and the policeman on duty denied any event whatsoever. This was evidence of a clean-up, a cloaking of the discontent in Rwanda and a desire to silence the media in a country most of whose citizens were without internet. This was the first of many ominous events.

Bad News is the extraordinary account of the battle for free speech in modern-day Rwanda. Following not only those journalists who stayed, despite fearing torture or even death from a ruthless government, but also those reporting from exile, it is the story of papers being shut down, of lies told to please foreign delegates, of the unshakeable loyalty that can be bred by terror, of history being retold, of constant surveillance, of corrupted elections and of great courage.

It tells the true narrative of Rwandan society today and, in the face of powerful forces, of the fight to make explosions heard.

The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo

Written by  John Garnaut

When news of the murder trial of prominent Communist Party leader Bo Xilai's wife reached Western attention, it was apparent that, as with many events in the secretive upper echelons of Chinese politics, there was more to the story. Now, as the Party's 18th National Congress oversees the biggest leadership transition in decades, and installs the Bo family's long-time rival Xi Jinping as president, China's rulers are finding it increasingly difficult to keep their poisonous internal divisions behind closed doors.

Bo Xilai's breathtaking fall from grace is an extraordinary tale of excess, murder, defection, political purges and ideological clashes going back to Mao himself, as the princeling sons of the revolutionary heroes ascend to control of the Party. China watcher John Garnaut examines how Bo's stellar rise through the ranks troubled his more reformist peers, as he revived anti-'capitalist roader' sentiment, even while his family and associates enjoyed the more open economy's opportunities. Amid fears his imminent elevation to the powerful Standing Committee was leading China towards another destructive Cultural Revolution, have his opponents seized their chance now to destroy Bo and what he stands for? The trigger was his wife Gu Kailai's apparently paranoid murder of an English family friend, which exposed the corruption and brutality of Bo's outwardly successful administration of the massive city of Chongqing. It also led to the one of the highest-level attempted defections in Communist China's history when Bo's right-hand man, police chief Wang Lijun, tried to escape the ruins of his sponsor's reputation.

Garnaut explains how this incredible glimpse into the very personal power struggles within the CCP exposes the myth of the unified one-party state. With China approaching superpower status, today's leadership shuffle may set the tone for international relations for decades. Here, Garnaut reveals a particularly Chinese spin on the old adage that the personal is political.

Review

It was amazing to learn of the corruption and appalling behaviour of so many of the Chinese leaders.  This book was primarily about one of them but it provided enough insight about others.  It was hard trying to remember who was who.
2/5

Available only as an eBook  $3.99

Rich land, Wasteland

How coal is killing Australia

by Sharyn Munro

For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting the communities in the coal-mining areas. She found a war zone. Here, ‘at the coalface’, towns and districts are dying — homeowners and farmers forced out by mining, broken in spirit and in health, or else under threat, in limbo and battling the might of the multinationals. Incidences of asthma, cancers and heart attacks show alarming spikes in communities close to coal mines and coal power stations, yet the government seems powerless (or unwilling) to act.

Once reliable rivers and aquifers are drying up or become polluted, once fertile agricultural land is becoming unusable. But the big mostly foreign-owned mining companies continue to push on with their coal rush and government continues to assist and protect them: ever more mining licences are granted, ever bigger mines are opened. In this life-changing book, Sharyn exposes the real story of coal: how people are hurting, and rebelling, as coal pushes into hitherto unthinkable areas; how the true costs outweigh any benefits; and how all of us will ultimately pay the price.

Review

This is the story of the terrible way the coal mining and coal seam gas industry tramples on the land and people.  It just seems shocking that this industry can have access to private land.  The book is written from the victims perspective.  When travelling through the Hunter region of NSW I was appalled at the coal mines size and felt that it is not right that such scars should be permitted, I had  read elsewhere of locals trying to stop these companies coming on their land, but didn't realise how terrible this industry is nor the extent of how Governments bend to the wishes of the miners at the expense  of the lives of citizens and the land.  It seems Governments are even worse in doing their job than I thought.

Rating 4/5