THE FRIDAY FIVE: System of a Down (with empire)

This week: Flooding in Spain, the appeal of easily digestible feminist moments, All Eyes On Sudan, tax breaks for billionaires and a new moon in Scorpio. 

For the week ending November 3, 2024….this is the Friday Five with Clementine Ford. 

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Let’s face it, we don’t always pay attention to the news. But just in case it comes up at pub trivia or knock off drinks with our friends, we still want to know what’s going on. Clementine's Friday Five provide's a quick cheat sheet of five of the week’s biggest news items, political gaffes or pop culture tidbits so YOU can bluff your way through whatever comes up. 

It's smart, irreverent, quickfire and to the point - just like that friend who everyone always says should have gone into politics, if only she didn’t hate authority figures and rules.

Chapters

• 0:00 Climate Crisis and Gender Ignorance
• 12:13 Global Injustices and Corporate Greed
• 24:17 Podcast Subscription and Everest Updates

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This episode of the Friday Five is proudly brought to you by Home Beauty, home of the best makeup primer in the world and now home also to the incredible Stay Glaze lip gloss. Come home to yourself and have fun while you're there with Home Beauty. Hello news hounds, it's me, clementine Ford, back with another episode of the Friday Five. Now you might hear some bumps and beeps and whistles in the background, because I am actually in Kathmandu, in Nepal, and I am recording this from my hotel room, because I'm here with a group of 18 women and we are beginning a trek to base camp at Sagamatha slash, mount Everest. Tomorrow yes, that's right, tomorrow morning we will be beginning in Lukla a 12-day trek that will take us over 5,000 meters above sea level and, to be honest, I'm super nervous and also extremely excited and thrilled really to be connecting with nature and our own insignificance in this way, which is, you know, especially welcome because next week, obviously, is the US election.

Speaker 1: 1:05

I will still be doing the Friday Five next week, but as much as possible, I'm going to be trying to not tune in every day and working myself up into a lather, because at this point, either outcome is basically disastrous for Palestine, for democracy and for anything remotely resembling the kind of society that we should be working towards. With any luck, though, no matter the outcome, it will inspire an uprising of people demanding better, not just from their leaders, but also from each other, for themselves, from community, for a vision, for a kind of future that we all actually want to live in. Anyway, I promise this episode is not going to be entirely cynical, but there's a lot to be cynical about in the world right now, and, as I've always said, being informed and involved is one of the best ways we can fight back. I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Nuwar people of Kathmandu. Remember, wherever you are, know whose land you're on. For the week ending the 3rd of November 2024, this is the Friday Five with Clementine Ford.

Speaker 2: 2:18

The damage here is huge. Just look at what the force of the floodwaters has done to this railway line. There are helicopters circling overhead. The death toll in this particular town is very high. One man told me that everybody here knows somebody who's died or is missing, and the rescue operations are still underway. People are walking around through the mud trying to salvage what they can from their shops and homes and there's a real sense of shock and deep sadness here. People say they've never seen anything like these floods.

Speaker 1: 2:56

We start this week's Friday Five with another devastating report of climate disaster. Earlier this week, a flash flood swept through Valencia in Spain, and the death toll from that disaster is still rising. At the time of recording this, it had risen to 158 people. I think it's difficult for people who haven't experienced a flash flood to understand how quickly something like that occurs, and when you consider the fact that in Valencia on Tuesday, more than a year's worth of rain fell in just under eight hours, it's not hard to understand how so much infrastructure was swept away and how people really are in an impossible situation when it comes to escape With any kind of natural disaster like this, although, of course, we can call it a human-made disaster. It's not just the initial death toll of the disaster itself, but the fallout beyond that, the lack of clean drinking water, the risk of airborne and waterborne viruses and diseases, the risk of starvation, as people are unable to get access to food. There's also, obviously, the long-term trauma and PTSD that is inevitable when things like this occur. In the Spanish town of Paiporta alone, at least 62 people have died, many of them elderly.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Now obviously there are some people who continue to deny the science around climate change and about the impending reality of climate collapse, and it's extremely frustrating to continue to witness this, particularly when it comes from people with the kind of wealth and institutional and government power to actually be able to intervene and do something that will help. At this point, I don't even know if we can stop climate collapse, but at least somehow manage it so that there is some vision of hope for the future. You know, these things are not disconnected from each other, no matter how much people want to deny it. Climate Central, which is a research group that obviously looks into climate change, said in a report this week that a low pressure system behind Spain's floods had tapped into an quote atmospheric river, carrying excess moisture from the unusually warm tropical Atlantic, and, according to its research, this kind of human-caused climate change has made these elevated sea surface temperatures at least 50 to 300 times more likely. We're heading into summer in Australia, which means that there is always the risk of bushfires, and, as we saw back at the start of 2020, those bushfires are devastating and have the capacity not just to tear through towns and properties, but to tear through human lives.

Speaker 1: 5:32

As the death toll rises in Spain and as we see more and more of these climate disasters occurring on our watch, with very little intervention or management done by the people who are supposedly elected to represent us and who are instead operating and working with billionaires and oligarchs and conglomerates to ensure that their ability to continue making money is not just prioritized but seen as paramount and fundamental to a successful society. We need to collectively organise and start taking this shit seriously. You know, there's a real problem in mass society that is deliberate and that we've all participated in I certainly have where something is always someone else's problem, that it will be fixed, that we just expect that things will never really get that bad. Well, if we believe that, then we've been living under a cloud of privilege. We don't have time to waste when it comes to fighting for some kind of habitable future. The time is well beyond now.

Speaker 1: 6:37

We're in damage control phase and the only question is how much of the world can we save versus how much of it have we been willing already to let die? It's a doom and gloom story, but it doesn't have to be a doom and gloom outcome. I know it's demoralizing, I know it's scary. Trust me, as the mother of a child, I know how fucking frightening it is. But it is also an opportunity for us to find that collective action again, for us to engage in revolution, for us to fight for something that is actually real, so that, if and when the time comes where we learned that it wasn't enough, we can at least know that we fought as hard as we could and we didn't just roll over and let it happen. What a terrible way to end as a species, to look at what's happening around us and think, oh my God, we could have prevented this. And yet here we are. What an awful burden to die with. Don't let it be yours.

Speaker 2: 7:40

I find some of the techniques, though, that you learn like. Some of the things Paul taught us is how you can use your phone if someone's attacking you, the butt of your phone who's actually going to think about that?

Speaker 1: 7:50

though someone attacks me, I'm not going to go phone that's a very good point, I like.

Speaker 2: 8:02

That's what girls have to think about all the time. Oh, am I right, ladies? Very good point.

Speaker 1: 8:07

That's what girls have to think about all the time, am I right? Ladies? You may have seen that clip pop up on your news feeds this week, or on your Instagram or Facebook or wherever you get your social media. That was Saoirse Ronan, eddie Redmayne and Paul Mescal on the couch of the Graham Norton show. You know, they all seem like very affable people and everyone loves Paul Mescal and Eddie Redmayne. They're such good guys and I'm sure they are but it was a moment where they displayed the sort of casual ignorance that so many men have about the reality of women's lives and the reality of the myriad things women think about in order to protect ourselves from risk of violence, from risk of attack, whatever it might be. The joke was that they were saying you know, eddie Redmayne was saying that oh, I've heard that if you get attacked, that you should just get your phone and you should use that to attack your attacker back. And Paul Mescal's like oh, who's going to think of that? Who's going to just be thinking about doing that kind of thing? The interesting thing here is that Saoirse Ronan quite clearly tried to interject a few times, only to be sort of spoken over and ignored, until eventually she just loudly and forcefully said that's the reality of women's lives every day, am I right, ladies? And everyone, of course, cheered. Mescal and Redmayne seemed chastened and the world moves on.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Now my friend Aileen, who runs the Tinder translators page, posted something interesting this week where she said that you know I I'm probably going to get hate for this, but I didn't think it was that amazing, I thought it was fine. I thought I mean I'm paraphrasing, obviously but she was like I don't think that it was the big deal that everyone's making it out to be where somehow these boys were put in their place. You know, they made a gaffe. They effed up I don't know why. I just said effed up, like I, as if I don't swear my head off on this podcast. They fucked up and then they kind of took the note and moved on. And I agree with her in that.

Speaker 1: 10:04

I feel like with no criticism of Saoirse Ronan at all. I really like Saoirse Ronan and I think she made a really good point. She made an obvious point that we are all familiar with, those of us who have been conditioned to kind of clock the exits, so to speak. But the problem I have, I suppose, with the response it, which is not at all to criticize anyone who felt like it was really galvanizing and cheered along to it. Whatever is that?

Speaker 1: 10:30

There are too many examples of a very obvious kind of feminism, I suppose, or an obvious kind of feminist moment that ends up being because of the sort of immediacy of social media and the enticement of clickbait and the enticement of getting involved in a conversation like this and also sharing, obviously, like people share it, that's, you know, fine, share it with a cheer or whatever. But the problem is and I agree with Aileen in the sense that these are not, you know, objectively, really progressive, radical, revolutionary moments of feminism. These are actually just the same conversations we've always been having, and the fact that the message is not breaking through isn't the fault of feminism. It's the reality that patriarchy will always resist the message, so that we find ourselves now, as feminists, in this point where we're just reiterating the same things over and over and we're celebrating wins that really should not, at this point, be conceived of as wins. Now, again, I just want to say I'm not criticizing anyone who enjoyed that moment, but we have to be able to distinguish between an enjoyable moment and something that is, you know, heralded as this great moment in feminism. I don't know if it was heralded as a great moment in feminism everywhere, but the temptation to kind of make these our feminist moments in order to feel good about ourselves, while ignoring much more profound and paramount issues, I think is something that you know we should maybe just start to be a little bit more aware of.

Speaker 1: 12:13

I saw someone on Aileen's post say well, I disagree with you. I think this is important. And the fact that we need to keep saying this until the point that men are saying it and we can stand alongside them, and it's like well, firstly, if that men are saying it and we can stand alongside them, and it's like well, firstly, if all men are saying it, then who would they be saying it to? But then this person followed up by saying we need to keep going for the women of afghanistan. They need us. And I was like this is a huge problem in the feminist movement and the mainstream feminist movement, which is so like drenched in capitalism and is, so you know, unrelentingly white and I'm white, obviously I'm I'm including myself in this critique that the capitalist fixation on these minor girl boss moments is really damaging for us as women and also for the feminist movement. I think it's a big problem and it is a sign that either the movement is failing in some way or people are willfully not paying enough attention to the things that we should be paying attention to. That someone in this day and age, with all of the feminist education that we have available to us and all the diverse intersectional voices that we have available, can sit there and say, no, this is actually an amazing moment and we should celebrate it, because we need to keep going, because the women of afghanistan need us. As if these two scenarios are in any way related, as if somehow what the women of Afghanistan need is white Hollywood celebrities having cheer moments on a couch on a TV show, and as if a you know collective of women cheering it on is somehow doing anything for anyone, aside from the temptation to continue to massage this idea that we've all collectively been drawn into, which is that activism doesn't really have to involve anything more now than just clicking on things online and feeling something. Good on Saoirse Ronan for standing up for herself. Good on her for interjecting I really like her work. I think she's a sassy lady interjecting. I really like her work. I think she's a sassy lady, but come on, now, let's get a grip.

Speaker 1: 14:35

This next story contains descriptions and references to graphic sexual violence and genocidal sexual violence and suicide. One of the reasons perhaps why I take that stance on that couch moment and kind of feel a bit eye-rolly towards those moments in general is because the catastrophic level of violence that is being perpetrated against women and girls worldwide is so incomprehensibly monstrous that it's difficult to even correlate the two stories as being remotely connected to the same movement, the two stories as being remotely connected to the same movement. Obviously, I've talked a lot over the last year about Palestine and I will continue to talk about Palestine and the depraved violence that is exerted against all Palestinians, but Palestinian women and children in particular, by Israel and by the Israel occupying forces, but Palestinian women and children in particular, by Israel and by the Israel occupying forces. But you may also be aware of the fact that there is a genocide occurring in Sudan right now, and I'm reading now from the United Nations that quotes Amy Pope, who was director general of the International Organization for Migration. Pope says the situation in Sudan is catastrophic. There is simply no other way to put it.

Speaker 1: 15:49

Hunger, disease and sexual violence are rampant For the people of Sudan. This is a living nightmare. The conflict is between the violence the violence. At this point in time, 11 million people inside Sudan have been displaced. There are significant and catastrophic as Pope put it levels of sexual violence being perpetrated against women and girls, and this week, news broke that this violence is so unrelenting and so destructive that a group of women and girls uh unalived themselves en masse to avoid the inevitable sexual violence and torment and torture that was being prepared to be perpetrated against them by the rapid support forces, the RSF. In addition to this incomprehensible, monstrous reality, there is also an impending famine. Cindy McCain, who's the head of the UN World Food Programme, recently told the BBC that Sudan could see the world's largest ever humanitarian crisis if a ceasefire is not reached, and she warned that millions of people could die from starvation. The sexual violence that is being perpetrated in Sudan currently has been described as staggering by Mohammad Chandei Othman, who is the UN chair of the panel that compiled a report into the conflict. Chair of the panel that compiled a report into the conflict.

Speaker 1: 17:38

Reading even a cursory number of news stories about Sudan is deeply distressing and obviously we are obliged, as citizens of the world, to, as activists are calling for us to do keep eyes on Sudan. There is a level of hypocrisy amongst feminists if we choose to look away from a scenario in which countless numbers of women and girls children are being so brutalized and so devastatingly harmed and psychologically and physically tormented, not to mention watching their families murdered around them, and it seems almost impossible to believe that we live in a world that would continue to look away from that. But, of course, this is the world that we live in. So if you're listening to this and you're hearing this for the first time, then, as I said, let's do what activists on the ground and Sudanese people have been asking, which is to keep eyes on Sudan. Now here's some news that will make you rage in a different way.

Speaker 1: 18:41

The Australian tax office has found that 31% of large businesses paid zero tax and as many companies deducted losses and used offsets to dial their bills down to zero. These companies include Qantas, virgin, netflix and Canva, and they're among 1,200 major companies that paid no income tax in Australia in 2022 to 23. These are millionaire, if not billionaire, conglomerates, and they are brought in the system to pay no tax and we are being fucked. I have to pay fucking tax. Why the fuck does Qantas not have to pay tax? Why does Rupert Murdoch not have to pay tax? Why does Netflix charge us all so much money and punish us for sharing our Netflix passwords? And they're paying no fucking tax. These people are parasitic. People are parasitic. They're vampires. The pursuit of money is so disgusting and everything is geared towards supporting corporations and organizations that are in the business of making money and not supporting individuals who are just trying to survive a cost of living crisis.

Speaker 1: 19:49

I'm reading now from a report in the Guardian. When a corporate entity has deductions that exceed its income, it may incur a tax loss that it can use in future years. This can occur when a company is under pressure or expanding rapidly, which often happens when resource companies are building projects. Some large businesses also have multiple entities that use transfer agreements to charge other divisions, which can reduce the amount of tax they pay in the jurisdiction where the money is earned. Get fucked. I'm under pressure. I'm sure all of you listening to this are under pressure. Every single individual trying to just survive in a cost of living crisis under impending climate collapse is under massive fucking pressure. So again from the Guardian under pressure.

Speaker 1: 20:33

Mining and service company Mineral Resources generated $5.64 billion in income in 2023, 2022 to 23, but had a $0 tax bill. And a company spokesperson said that they indirectly paid $240.8 million in income tax through its 50% interest in the I mean, it's also fucking boring through its 50% interest in the entity that owns the Mount Marion lithium mine. So these people are also like dredging the earth of all of its resources, profiting from it and then saying, whoops, we can't put anything back. We can't put anything back into it. The same company paid a franking credit that they used to reduce its cash tax. Like this is fucked. The online retailer Kogan, which sells garbage, again just completely dredging the earth of its resources also no tax. This is insane that we live in a world where you are more protected if you're a fucking company than if you're a company.

Speaker 1: 21:35

But this one will really make you rage. News Australia Holdings, which is tied to News Corp, generated $1.88 billion in income in 2022 to 23, but had no tax payable. Fucking News Limited, news Corp. Oh God, I hate those cunts. And here's the laughable cherry on the cake. The ATO deputy commissioner, rebecca Sainz, says while there are legitimate reasons why a company may pay no income tax, no, rebecca, there's no fucking legitimate reasons for that. The Australian community can be assured we pay close attention to those who pay no income tax to ensure that they are not trying to game the system. Newsflash, rebecca. They're fucking gaming the system. They're all gaming the system. They're gaming it, babe. They're gaming the system. You guys are not very good, clearly, at your jobs.

Speaker 1: 22:30

And finally, for our final piece in the Friday Five this week. Yes, it's a little bit of astrology news, just to keep things light. To end things on a fun note, you know I love my astrology. Well, today is the new moon in Scorpio. Scorpio is a mysterious, complicated, subterranean sign and a new moon in Scorpio is a chance to reinvent yourselves. The tarot card for Scorpio is the death card, which doesn't mean death. It means rebirth, renewal, like transformation, metamorphosis.

Speaker 1: 23:03

So this moment invites you to think what are the ways that you would like to change your life, to renew yourself, to rebirth yourself, to bring into your life something different? What is it that you're craving and what is it that you're wanting to let go? I don't care. If you don't like astrology, that's fine. I mean, I care about you, but I love astrology and hopefully, the more I bring of astrology and tarot to my various projects, the more people will just start to have a little bit of fun with it. Okay, you don't have to take it so seriously. It's all good guys.

Speaker 1: 23:40

That has been the Friday five for this week. It has been a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you so much. I apologize if any background noise did make it onto the podcast. Halfway through recording this, a very obnoxious party began to happen in the hallway outside my hotel room. I'm sorry, but if you're going to make a racket at 1130 at night, can you at least make sure that your music isn't absolute garbage? Thank you, german backpackers. I'm setting off on my trek to base camp tomorrow morning. I will still be making these podcasts while I'm away. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1: 24:17

If you are enjoying the Friday Five and Dear Clementine and my conversations on Wednesday, which have taken a break for a couple of weeks the conversations. But if you're enjoying them, please don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Give me a five-star rating if you like it, tell your friends about it, and you can also support my work and the podcast by subscribing to my Substack, which is in the details of the line of notes here, but to make it easier for you, it's just at the Substack website and the username is at Clementine F. You will also be given access, if you subscribe now, to all of the voice notes that I'm making about my time trekking up to base camp at Mount Everest.

Speaker 1: 24:54

It's been a really emotional time. We haven't even started the trek yet, but there's been some really emotional moments and I'm expecting there to be even more so. If you're curious about following along, that is all behind the paywall on my sub stack and I'd love for you to be there In the meantime. This has been the Friday Five for the week ending November 3rd. It has been a pleasure to be here with you and, no matter what you do, stay informed and stay untethered.