MrGareth’s Missives

Recently, and quite coincidentally, I've watched three analyses of the 2008 financial crisis.  The Inside Job, a sensational documentary narrated by Matt Damon; and two dramatizations of the collapse of Lehmans: : The Last Days of Lehman Brothers (BBC) and Too Big to Fail (HBO).

The highlight of all three has to be this now famous "give it your best shot" moment with corrupt academic Glenn Hubbard:

 

We all know the story.  Outrageous risk. No regulation. Disproportionate compensation for irresponsible risk. Arrogance, conceit and deceit, and most importantly greed.

Shocking, horrible and involving tens of millions of job losses around the world and doubling the national debt of the USA, not to mention now threatening the financial validity of several European countries.  I remember sitting in a diner in Holywood when the first bailout bill fell over and the global stock market fell off a cliff within seconds.  After I had got over my own shock I realised that everyone else in the diner had also stopped what they were doing, had their jaw on their chin (like me) and must have been thinking the same as I: "We're fucked!"  Won't ever forget that.

I'm not aware of that many repercussions for many of the people that allowed this to happen, or engaged in it.  I'm not aware that many of those involved, with the exception of those working at Lehman Brothers, even lost their jobs, let alone went to jail or had their vast ill-gotten wealth removed. At best, some were literally rewarded with massive severence payments - paid for by the bailout money provided by the tax payers.  Often those same punters defrauded in the first place.

Then I read this article at The Guardian, and this arresting quote: 

"When governments seek to protect the rich from the poor, they act swiftly and decisively. When they undertake to protect the poor from the rich, they fanny about for years until the moment has passed."

That kind of summed up this whole mess for me.  You read the article, and - certainly in London it seems - regardless of a lack of punishment there's not even any real regulation efforts to stop it happening again!  But those trying to protest for change to stop it happening again are now being included among terrorist groups as a major danger from which society should be protected.

This is like the police allowing thieves to steal from citizens, buying the loot from the thieves with the citizens' money and then preventing the citizens from even complaining about it.

Then French Finance minister, Christine Lagarde, sums it up rather well at the end of Inside Job.  "The Financial Services Industry needs to remember it is a services industry...it needs to serve others before it serves itself."  Furthermore, Government needs to remember to serve us and not the financial services industry because we put them in power and we pay for what they do!

I've always been fascinated with photoraphy, particularly photo-journalism, but I've never understood it. While I've been told I have an eye for composition, I certainly have never understood the relationship between a camera and colour. I've never grasped light and shaddow and how to take a photograph that exploits those two properties. I fact I often mailnly manage to take photos that are quite spoilt by one or other or sometimes both.  I admire and envy those who have grasped these things and in an age of digital photography, those people seem to me in a particularly good place.

So when I saw a friend's post on Facebook about the World Press Photography Exhibition at The New South Wales State Library, for free, I grabbed the opportunity.  But only just. I got there on the last day to find the exhibit was not only a showcase to the best in photography but also to humanity's tendency to leave everyhting until the last minute - it was rammed!  You could hardly find room to look at the pictures and read their context.  It was beyond standing room only.  I did, though - after some careful manoevering - manage to get up close to some of the best.

The Exhibition contains a selection of the best news photography based not on the topic celebre of today, but rather the technical brilliance, articulation and artistic integrity of the photograph.  As a result there is an array of images from events and situations that are quite forgotten to the world's mainstream media.  The drugs wars of Mexico, the abortion industry in Kenya, the Somalian prison system, the East Java Earthquake, the streets of Haiti all have sections of brutal, harrowing, and thought provoking images that require what seems like an age to digest.  Three photographs from the Somali prison struck me right between the eyes, particularly the shot of a 25 square metre room housing 60 prisoners with only one bucket serving as a toilet and not a matress between them. Equally as powerful was the picture of three men sleeping out in the open Yemeni desert after crossing the Gulf of Aden from Somalia in a series about desperate migration.  Sometimes images like those can take longer to consume than a 1,000 word article. 

I think the unique personal perspective on events and situations that photography provides brings a completely impactful insight to current affairs that neither the written word nor the moving image ever can.  For a start, the photographer says everything which thechoices he or she makes.  Choice of the moment, choice of light, choice of subject and choice of mood.  Also it seems such a more personal view than the written view or a piece of footage.  An article is edited, massaged and cut based on all manner of nuances brought by the aggrogated agendae of editor, publisher, owner and advertiser.  Footage is sliced and diced by so many producers and editors it can barely recognise itself from the raw material.  They are both products of a machine while a photograph is one person's product, entirely contrived of one point of view.  And yet, what they are able to provide is a voice for the subject too.  

Searing photograhy also means that - depending on the power of the photograph - it can have an impact on the psyche quite inependent of the news agenda of the general media.  Regardless of whatever political heartbeat is taking precedent at that moment, a powerful photograph can always punch through that noise with unequivical clarity and reset the perspective.

One shot, the shot of Bibi Aisha, quite deservedly took centre stage.  Bibi Aisha ran away from her violent husband but was captured by Taliban-assisted relatives who took her into the mountains one night and, after slicing off her ears, literally cut her nose off to spite her face and left her to die.  Miraculaously, a consortium of charitable organisations conspired to return her to a full recovery, both psychological and physical.  Now she stands as a symbol of triumph over adversity as well of the brutality of a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.  The photograph is so powerful and for me, has all the profound, evocative and graphic expression of The Mona lisa.   It is all about her expression, her eyes, what she is saying to you through the camera and not about her horrendous injury and ordeal.  She is remembering, accusing, injured and challenging all at once.  What does she say to you?

P.S. For anyone remotely interested in photograhy, I strongly recommend The Guardian Eyewitness iPad app, which selects the most striking photograph of the day and downloads it in beautiful clarity.

This week i had cause to ponder the relative realities of human existence.  Yes, pretty profound and heavy eh? Well, let me explain.

I volunteered, as part of a company scheme, for a day's work at an event called Sydney Homeless Connect.  The event was simply a day for homeless people in Sydney.  One homeless person actually described it as like "Christmas Day" for homeless people.  Everything from clothes to massages to haircuts on the one hand; to medical aid, housing and welfare advice were collected together in Sydney Town Hall to come to the aid of about 1800 men, women and children down on their luck.  It was an incredible feat of organization, here are some facts and figures:

- 1800 homeless and at risk homeless people

 - 1500 hot lunches cooked and eaten

- 60 back, shoulder and hand massages

- 300 haircuts

- 800 pairs of shoes, 200 blankets and several hundred pairs of jeans distributed

- 100 service and support organisations took part

It was a day of conflicting emotions.  It is great to be able to help people in that situation.   I had a job as a "chaperone" - greeting the "patrons" as they arrived and pointing them in the right direction for what they needed.  The conversation is unusual in it's nature.  To be able to ask a destitute person what they need and most likely be able to help is rare. "I want clothes", they might say,  "great well clothes are downstairs, come this way." "I need a birth certificate," says another, "no problem, come with me."  "Can I have lunch?" another would ask, "yes, take a seat over there and you'll be waited on". It's not often you get to do that.  It's a terrific moment, albeit mitigated by the fact that the satisfaction of being able to provide a solution was brought about by the misery of the original need.

But despite all the various needs that were met there was something surprising missing.  There was massage.  There was food.  People received good coffee, for free.  They received free shoes, dental help, pedicures even.  But amongst all this, a conversation with one gentleman stuck with me.  "Can I help out?" he asked.  Sadly we already had more volunteers than we could possibly need.  Oftentimes there were more people helping than being helped!  But his question went to a wider problem: "I'm just bored, I'd like to do something with my time."

Right then and there I had an epiphany.  This material society will tell me that the most important parts of my privileged position in life is that I have more than enough money to get through the week, that I own all the electronic gadgets I want and that the only holes in my clothes are the ones put there by designers.  But in this moment I realised that beyond the money that my gainful employment brings me, the unseen importance of it is a sense of purpose when I get up in the morning.  I mean it's not like I'm fighting crime, disease or even poor nutrition day in day out; but I do have...something to do.  There was very little this day could do about this need.  Only he could solve this problem. 

The next morning I went to work with a different perspective.

 

 

“What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately, I’ve done so because we can’t afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades to achieve peace.”

I must admit I was incredibly surprised by Obama's speech on Middle East Policy last week.  Obviously not the part about the Arab Spring being a good thing, or Osama bin Laden being a bad man.  But the part about the 1967 borders of Israel-Palestine.

But I'm surprised for a number of reasons.  For a start, it was about time he did something impactful about the Palestine question with another election coming up.  With his envoy, George Mitchell exiting stage left recently having achieved nothing, he was going to have a tough time at the polls on this issue.  However, he has chosen an interesting week for it.  Just as the Republican candidacy collapses, he decides to throw away millions of dollars of Jewish lobby funding.  For it's about as politically risky as it gets, canvassing a policy that Israel should revert to the 1967 borders (not to mention asking Hamas to recognise Israel!).  It's about as radical as anything anyone has said on the middle east for more than a decade.  It certainly has put the cat amongst the pigeons. 

I'll never forget my visit to the Golan heights in 1996.  It's a beautiful place, high up above the sea of Gallilee on the Syrian border.  It was Syria before The Six-day war in 1967.  Now it's full of very serious and mostly militant Jewish migrants.  We stopped to help a couple whose car had broken down, and they invited us back to their's for tea to say thanks.  They talked almost exclusively about how they will never leave, how they will fight and die before they let the Syrians have it back.  I don't believe, if they were a good indication, that many of the Jewish settlers in The Golan are going anywhere.

I visited East Jerusalem in 1999.  I visited the highly tense Temple Mount, where the third most important Islamic shrine sits atop the most important Jewish shrine, both only a stone's throw from the most important Christian Shrine.  Security of The Wailing Wall is the raisin d'être of the Jewish State.  They're not going to give up Temple Mount without a fight as intense as the one that won it in 1967.  I don't believe they're going anywhere either.

I walked around the Jewish Quarter.  It's a wonderfully calm place compared to the mayhem and frenetic excitement of the Arab Quarter bazaar.  It's been beautifully renovated since its near destruction in the wars of 1947-8 and 1967.  It's a bastion of Jewish strength.  It's streets are peppered with Orthodox Torah study groups and synagogues.  Its streets are armed ot the teeth with Jewish check points.  I don't see Israel giving that up in a hurry either. 

I did visit the West Bank too.  It's fortified by the seemingly endless compounds of Jewish settlements, many of them built quite illegally.  Then of course there's The Wall.  I don't see those people going anywhere either.  They are as nailed to the spot as those in The Golan.

I think something needed to change to give new life to the peace process.  It took a bold leader to say something controversial and risqué to kick start a negotiation everyone had grown tired of and that had entirely run out of steam.  But I wonder how wise it was to suggest that Israel should revert to the 1967 borders so publicly and so bluntly.  To give up The Golan Heights, which they secured to stop missile attacks on The Galilee and secure its northern border; The West Bank to the Jordan River, which Israel used to secure it's western border and East Jerusalem, which Israel secured in order to claim ownership of it's perceived Biblical inheritance.  I don't see any of these things happening.  I think Israel has given up everything it is prepared to, The Sinai, Gazza, South Lebanon.  There is no more to negotiate.

On that visit in 1999 I had the privilege of meeting with Jewish writer Amos Oz at his home in Arad (Read the interview here on page 92).  It was during the Presidential Election that saw Ehud Barak take power on a wave of peace and optimism, shortly before the withdrawl from South Lebanon.  Arad is a thriving community in the middle of the Negev desert.  His feeling was that unless ways were found for more people to be able to live in the desert, and better ways of distributing water equally among Israelis and Palestinians, the State of Israel would not be sustainable.  Perhaps he is right and until the Jewish occupants of The West Bank and The Golan can be found new homes in the Negev Desert, there is no hope.  (How the problem of Jerusalem is solved though is quite another matter!)

I wish Mr Obama luck, I really do, but the only surrender I can see from this is his surrender of millions of dollars of Jewish lobby funding for his re-election campaign.

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness, we’ve got better stuff to do.  I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve, and I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them, not on this...[sideshows and carnival barkers].” Barack Obama

It's a kooky coincidence that the same week as the most powerful man in the world spat the dummy about media trivialisation of politics, the former Australian Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, launched his book about media trivialisation of politics, called "Sideshow".  Now you can assume this was not co-ordinated.  They may agree, but they don't really operate in the same circles.

And I agree also.  Although he doesn't seem to have refererred  to it in what I've heard, the "silliness" around Obama's birth certificate couldn't have been more timely for Mr Tanner in supporting his point that policy has been subjugated in favour of theatrics.

The infuriating thing about the situation we have reached that both men point out is that, particularly in Donald Trump's case, the media is not doing it's job in putting the microscope on policy proposal and are instead eating up Trump's "sideshow" with a spoon.  I mean, let's face it, Trump is mad!  He wants to tax Chinese imports by 25%!  Has he any idea how dangerous that is?  And yet the media lapped up his hair-brained conspiracy theory instead of taking him down on the issues. Meanwhile Obama is quizzed ad nauseum on his already well-researched origins instead of engaged directly on policy debate.  It's a farce.

Tanner's book makes many useful points it seems from the couple of interviews I've seen him do this week.  His point was usefully underlined by a sad return of the hair scrutiny Gillard is being subjected to, recently beaten up for her hair while she toured the sites of the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear-meltdown.  How much more trivial can you get?

While lamenting the media for their shallow nature is nothing new, it seems there's always been a fairly strict convention in the States that no one mention it.  It seems quite unprecedented that the President himself should take them to task on it, complaining as he does that he could never get media "cut-through"on policy but when he makes a statement about the birth certificate issue, they are on him like a shot:

Of course naturally, it's not really the media that is to blame, directly.  Just as parties complain that the media don't talk about the policies and help people understand the issues at stake, so companies complain that the media has no interest in products but only in sensationalising and gossip.  The media respond that people, the people, aren't really interested in that stuff.  Frankly, they are right.  Sadly we can all complain as much as we like, but until we start demonstrating that we want more depth in our media reporting of political issues, they are only going to keep serving up what we ask for. 

A further caveat I think though is this, how is Lindsay Tanner hoping to promote his book?  How is President Obama hoping to get re-elected?  Media campaigns.  It's catch-22. Furthermore, it is worth noting that in every Tanner interview I saw, when asked about his time as a Government Minister, he declined to comment quite steadfastly. While the issues his book raises are very interesting, I wanted him to talk about his role in the overthrow of the last Prime Minister and in the scraping of the emissions-trading scheme - which right now are two of the biggest issues we face.  So he was taking from the media, but not giving back.

So it seems important to remember that if media is truly a mirror to society, 'perhaps then if you're looking into it you can't really complain about what it reflects back to you.

<Nasel twang> "Now I like a punt as much as the next bloke, but..." 

In reality I'm pretty indifferent to gambling.  I do like a punt on the Melbourne Cup once a year, just as I used to on the Grand National in the UK, but I'm not much good at it.  While I've picked the winner more times than not, I've often bet on so many other horses through indecision that I rarely come out on top.  But its not really about the money, I like to join in with "the race that stops the nation" and I like the sport.  I've also got a lot of time for a game of Two-up on ANZAC day for precisely the same reasons.  I'm not very good at it and so I've never been adicted to it. 

So when it comes to Pokies - those foul, noisy and ugly machines that spoil most pubs in Australia - I really don't understand the attraction.  It's a bad look and a very private experience - so there's no aspect of joining in, but more importantly, there's no sport.  They are mathematically programmed to win 8 or 9 times out of ten.  Where's the sport there?

I found this comment quite stark from a detailed examination of the mathematics of pokies:

"On of the most important points to note is that there are no pokies with a pay back set to over 100%. This means that the longer you play the more you are likely to lose. There is no way to consistently win on the pokies."

So, I don't understand it, and to be honest I don't understand the mathematical equation on which they operate either, being almost completely inumerate!  So perhaps I shouldn't get on my soapbox about something I understand so little about?  But what I do get is that a lot of organisations - pubs and clubs - make a huge amount of money out of sending some people bankrupt and destroying their families.  That so much of Australian society is organised around this principle - exploitation of the stupid, the desperate and the weak-willed - is something I find quite abhorent and distasteful about life down-under. 

Here's some stark facts: In 2008 Australians lost $12 billion dollars on the pokies - 40% of which lost by those with a gambling problem, i.e. they couldn't afford to lose that money.  Furthermore, it is horrifying to note that Australia - a population of 20 million, has more than five times the number of machines as in the United States, a nation with a population of over 300 million!  One quarter of ALL the world's poker machines are in New South Wales.

So even though I've only a limited amount of time for Andrew Wilkie, whom I find to be more than just a little self-righteous and sanctimonious, I do applaud his bill to impose a license-system on those using the pokies.  Having to set your own limit is really rule one for the sensible gambler and if people can't figure out on the fly when it is time to stop than I'm all for helping them to do it.  Problem gambling is a horribly sad state of affairs and that a family member might make the rest of their family homeless by a simple inability to get across the maths and know when to say "that's enough", then perhaps society should step in to assist - ESPECIALLY when the rest of society is benefiting so very well from their addiction! 

Society is taking a role in helping to reduce the amount people smoke and drink and through another license system, ensures that when driving, people are responsible and sober.  I see no difference.  (I just wish I think that this crusade - if successful - be attributed to Nick Xenophon, the independent Senator, who's been waging this campaign far longer and far more sensibly and without narcicism.)

In all honesty I'd like to see Pokies banned.

I do like Malcolm Farr's comments on Insiders this week, "When someone says something is 'Un-Australian', that's a clear sign they've run out of coherent argument." How can a country so obsessed with mateship, think it is Australian to fund whole aspects of society from the misery and degradation of a vulnerable few?

So after an initial good news start - unusually rapid decision making by the international community and an immediate reversal in Colonel Gaddafi's fortunes - what has become known in the US, somewhat euphemistically, as "the Libyan Adventure" has gone fairly pear shaped. 

Responding to the so-called lessons of history, the Libyan Adventure surprised so many with its initial successes.  Unlike the spectacular failure in the international community's reponse to the Rwandan genocide, the UN and then NATO moved with lightning speed to agree, plan and execute a plan to save Benghazi.  But also learning from the lessons of Iraq, misjudging a people's response to an apparently 'liberating' army, a plan was executed to avoid any kind of  "Boots on the Ground" scenario.  The outcome, while intially successful, has seen the rebels' early advances reversed as the Colonel's troops learned how to hide their columns among civilians, leading to the inevitable targeting errors that come when a campaign is being fought only from the safety of 30,000 feet in the air.

It seems history has hovered over this latest chapter like a ghost.  At first the community was galvanised into action by memories of Rwanda, when a million people were butchered in three months before anyone in New York could decide what should be done; and memories of Srebrenica, when the Dutch UN peace keeping troops literally stood by as thousands of menand boys were massacred by Serbian troops.  But the still-raw memories of Iraq - of western troops marching into a Middle-eastern and Islamic culture with the ever-present skeptre of oil interest - ensures that foreign boots will not form part of the solution.

But does history determine too much of the international community's response to disasters, which are not enoughy judged on their own merits?  Iraq II was to some extent a response to Iraq I where problems were seen to have escalsated from an unwillingness in 1991 to finish the job, to invade the country and change the regime.  The sense that leaving the job undone led to a need to revisit the problem so much more expensively years later.  That mistake, in turn, could be construed as a repsonse to Vietnam and a fear that becoming embroiled in a quagmire, in a insurgency of asynchonous warfare, was not worth the risk.  Ironic huh?

In some ways it is like a never-healing trauma.  Iraq I itself was a repsonse to WWII.  How often did George H. W. Bush and Margaret Thatcher talk about wanting to learning the lessons of 1939 by not allowing aggression to stand, as the international community had when Hitler invaded Czechoslavakia in 1938/9.  How much was that appeasement driven by the need to avoid another European cataclysm?

Is history ever helpful in informing the day's decisions?  Hitler himself was so keen to learn the lessons of history.  He studied in obsessive detail the failed invasions of Russia before him, of Napoleon's disastrous adventure in 1812.  He learned from the lessons of WW1 and was ever careful to void the Kaiser's mistake of attempting to fight a war on two fronts.  He would have been more than haunted by the enormous irony that it was a two-front war that finally did for him.

It seems to me that learning from history is a tricky business.  It is of course important to study histroy and understand where mistakes were made and what could have been done better.  But at the same time, if you allow an obsession with the past to define all your decisions then it can blind you to detail of the present and cloud your judgement.  I'm not sure if this means that the international community should not be involved in Libya today, or more involved than they are.  But I certainly feel that everything that is being done is defined by events in the past rather than the present.  

It happens only a few times in your life when the really HUGE stars die.  I remember James Stewart going, Robert Mitchum, Audrey Hepburn, Rod Steiger.  I was standing opposite the CNN office on Sunset Boulevard the moment  the news broke on their ticker that Paul Newman had died.  I think Liz Taylor’s death was as important, but in a way less sad perhaps.  The difference is obvious, Paul Newman died in dignity.  Taylor did not.

But does it matter?  I will in coming weeks indulge in my own Liz Taylor wake I imagine.  I can’t do "top ten type" lists of films but Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and A Place In the Sun are all films I own, rate and treasure – mainly because of her performances. (Respectively, Paul Newman, Richard Burton and Montgomery Cliff do quite well too!)

But the other night I was watching Platoon. I got to thinking about Charlie Sheen’s legacy.  (Let’s not forget the importance of Wall Street).  In recent weeks obviously only the most hermitic would have missed the meltdown in Sheen’s dignity.  I was in the US as it transpired and saw it in the most stark detail, including that bizarre Piers Morgan interview and those macabre U-Stream broadcasts.  Quite startling, but – I thought – the 21st century equivalent of what Taylor went through in the 80s and 90s?

A colleague and I joked about the irony of the inevitable return of Charlie sheen. I said King Leah, he said Macbeth. He said 'funny how we both went to Shakespeare’- but isn’t *that* it – the more they *live* the more they can act?  As long as Charlie Sheen survives, and that’s no certainty, what he has been through could make him a great actor.

Watching Platoon, I thought of his father.  The opening of Apocalypse Now – the 1970s equivalent of Platoon – is the actual meltdown and subsequent heart attack of Charlie’s father, Martin Sheen.  The man recovers and shoots one of the great performances of all time and between them the two Sheen men document the Vietnam War for posterity quite comprehensively.  As I watched his son’s meltdown on prime time TV the other week, coincidentally I was watching his father’s complete performance in The West Wing. 

Liz Taylor for many years was a joke.  Be it the exhausting and alcoholic multiple-marriages with Richard Burton or the kooky friendship with Michael Jackson, her latter years were far from noble.  But as I write now, I care not.  Those three films I mentioned above are among the finest ever made, and her performances in them are genuinely legendary.  The entrails of her existence are irrelevant in comparison, except that they are symptoms of a personality and character that could create that wonder and art I enjoy so much.

Rest in Peace Liz Taylor, you deserve to.  Do great things again Charlie Sheen, you probably deserve to.

[CAVEAT: Note I am not suggesting the talents of these two people are even in the same league. I am merely drawing comparisons.]

"You even dream about beating me, you better wake up and apologise!"

Easily one of the greatest, most moving and inspiring movies I've ever seen is "When we were Kings", the almost unbelievable story of the so-called "Rumble in the Jungle".  The story itself is quite astounding, and i say unbelievable because you just can't believe it isn't scripted.  You just can't believe that even if it is based on real life events, it hasn't been given that Hollywood gloss, that lick of unreal veneer that story-telling gives events that both elevates them and cheapens them at the same time.  Well it hasn't, and neither has "Facing Ali".

The story of Ali's entire boxing career is told through the sometimes cloudy recollections of those that fought him, "Facing Ali" is no "when we were Kings".  The latter is a film that is commensurate with Ali's stature. It is to sports documentaries what Ali was to boxing.  It won an Oscar to prove it.  It is the rightful testament to Ali's legacy.  But "Facing Ali" deserves to be an uber-extra to that film, sitting alongside it as a worthy supporting feature in a truly memorable double-bill.  Whether you care about boxing or not, the things these two films say about their times and about humanity in general are relevant to everyone.

The film begins with Sir Henry Cooper, and moves through the various opponents Ali faced - either as Muhammed Ali or as Cassius Clay, his "slave name".  Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Leon Spinks, Larry Holmes and many others you probably don't remember whether you were alive at the time or not.  It not only charts the background of each of their encounters with him, but the times in which they were set and the circumstances that brought each fighter to these moments; moments which for all of them together clearly form among the most profound experiences of their lives.  Naturally, each boxer's chapter features footage of their historic bout, with all the drama and violence that entailed.

As Cooper says right at the outset, there never were any middle class boxers; no one would take a beating like that unless they had to.  For almost all of them, a heavyweight boxing career either proved an alternative to a life of crime, or a distraction from one.  Many did time, many knew those who had done time.  Many learnt to fight either on the streets or in prison; many used boxing as a way to drag themselves out of the gutter.  A gutter society seemingly forced them into.  Many had terrible lives cursed by either drugs, murder, suicide or broken homes - to say nothing of the brutal social inequities suffered by the African American, a community to which almost all of these men belong. 

Each of their stories are moving in their own right, none are without the colour of at times the most miserable misfortune.  But they are set against the backdrop of the awesome story that is Muhammed Ali, a story that still continues today.  Despite the things he might have said of each of them in the poetic sledging that preceded each fight (for instance he said of one opponent, "he too ugly to be the champion of the world. The champ should be pretty like me!".) they all speak of him at the end with tears in their eyes, with deeply sincere words of profound respect and gratitude; so much so that it will in turn bring tears to your eyes. 

What is so great about the man?  It would be impossible to sum up in a few short words, especially by someone who hasn't even met him.  His campaigning for the rights of the African American at a time when those others brave enough to do so were shot down in their prime?  The stand he took against the Vietnam War at a time that meant most of America cursed his name as a traitor?  His very public conversion to Islam at a time when it was almost even more unacceptable to middle America than it is today?  His bravery and courage to many times fight boxers much younger and/or more formidable than himself, and win?  Or is it his struggle against Parkinson's Disease which he continues to wage to this day? 

It's difficult to say what it is that is so enduring about Muhammed Ali, but that he is a living legend seems so universally agreed.  Perhaps it is that very altitude of stardom that he has reached by way of the many great feats he achieved - including three world championships - he serves to restore some hope and faith in what humanity can be.  Moreover, his demise was so sad, and his latter years are so tragic, it reminds us that even the greatest are still mortal.  No one - no matter how majestic - can transcend that mortality.

If you love boxing or completely loathe it,  you won't find a more awe inspiring story than that of Muhammed Ali, and these two films together I feel do that story complete and utter justice.

On a business trip to New York this week, I was able to steal a couple of hours for myself. I could have gone to a Gallery, or taken a walk in Central Park or something similarly uplifting. But I didn't.

The "Bell of Hope", St Paul's Chapel, corner Church and Vesey Streets.

Instead a I took a cab from my hotel on 56th street, and sped downtown along 5th avenue, past St Patrick's Cathedral, past the Rockerfeller plaza, the Public Library and the Empire State building before turning left on 34th and heading across Madison and Lexington avenues and onto the FDR, along the banks of the east river towards the Brooklyn Bridge.

(As an aside! My learned Chinese taxi driver told me that the city ran out of money building the bridge and couldn't pay the Chinese workers who built it, like so much of American infrastructure. So instead they were given land nearby - hey presto: China Town.)

It was 11yrs almost to the day since my first and only other visit to the big apple. I can't remember being more excited to arrive anywhere else. I all but exhausted myself tearing about Manhattan seeing as much as I could. I toured the UN on the east side and by contrast visited the US Intrepid on the west side. I went to Tiffany's listening to Frank Sinatra on my walkman and drank cocktails in a revolving bar above Time Square. I went to the roof of the Empire State Building and I took a ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I had a ball. Who wouldn't? There was one thing I didn't get time to do though.

So as we came off the FDR around the end of Broadway and headed towards Wall Street I thought of that visit, suddenly vivid in my mind. Of all the landmarks I saw on the journey, there was something missing now. To say it was significant in its absence is an understatement.

I was dropped on liberty street and walked to the Stage Door deli on Vesey street. The deli was full of construction workers. I bought a bacon cheese burger - one of the best I've ever had, and on which I chipped my tooth - which will remind me of this day as long as I have that tooth.

I crossed the road and visited St Paul's Chapel, apparently the oldest public building in continuous use on Manhattan. It was where George Washington went to pray after he was innaugurated as the first president of the United States. Outside the door is a bell (above) forged by the same place in England as the Liberty Bell and Big Ben. It has only been rung 11 times. once on March 11, 2004 and once on 7th July 2005, and nine other times on the anniversaries of the events that took place the other side of Church Street on 11th September 2001.

The bell is called "the Bell of Hope".

I did visit the World Trade Centre on that visit 11 years ago. It so completely dominated the skyline you could see it almost whenever you looked up and by the of the week I felt I had to go in, and up, it. I wanted to go to the "window on the world" restaurant but ran out of time in the queue and had to leave it for another trip. I was bound to visit new York again I thought, I could do it then. It was such a vast complex, and the gaping wound left by it's demise is shocking. The dignity with which New Yorkers carry this wound is quite humbling.

Nothing could have prepared me for how what I did next would affect me. Not even watching on TV the events that took place that day. I, like everyone, can remember vividly that experience, quite late at night in Australia. I was about to go bed early, I was launching a range of new laptops the next morning. Just as I was about to turn in, the TV announced they were about to screen "When We Were Kings", one of my favorite movies, and unable to resist, I sat back down. Within minutes though a ticker came across the screen: "a plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York.". Before long, after the second plane had hit, the ABC scrapped the movie and went live to cover what was taking place. I sat up for the next four hours, jaw on chest in the shock and bewilderment. I've not yet got over that shock and bewilderment. Has anyone?

I crossed Church Street and turned right onto Liberty Street and went to the WTC Tribute centre.  Just as I'm not going to go over the entrails of those attacks, I'm not going to attempt to describe the museum or the way it made me feel or the many poignant items on display there - among them an airplane window, a twisted iron girder and a pair of lady's shoes. I think it says enough just to repeat the words i wrote in the visitor's book before I went outside and fought back tears.

"Coming here is the saddest thing I've ever done. To those grieving loved ones lost that day, I am so, so sorry for your loss."

Footnote: Next door to the Stage Door Deli is a place called the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site (20 Vesey Street).  I didn't have time to go in but just knowing about it was comforting.  The memorial opens 11th September 2011.  And with the Deli full of construction workers and Ground Zero itself busy with the sound of new buildings taking shape, the healing has certainly begun.  

And one day, if not already, Osama Bin Laden will be dead.