The great shark hunt

State of the world pt. 1

2005-11-22T00:22:00.000+11:00

Afghanistan: A Rebuilding Plan Full of Cracks

Albania: Dodgy Elections?

'Angola is a rich land with many poor people'

Argentina: Worker's take control

Armenia: Debate over constitutional referendum

blog back

2005-11-20T13:26:00.000+11:00

Yah, i guess i might try blogging again, i've got plenty of free time, we'll see how i go.

To start us off here's a lovely poem:

AH, FREEDOM COMES TO IRAQ

Ah, the freedom to be fucked in the ass,
Ah, the freedom to be tied to a leash,
Ah, the freedom to be hooded and chained,
To shit in your pants, and rip out your hair,
To shiver and sweat, squirm naked in piss,
To know the agony will never pass;
The freedom to scream, the freedom to screech…
To know the torturers will not be rained
In by law, reason, or moral despair
Provides one the hateful freedom to kiss
Goodbye the life vomited on the floor
Amidst broken teeth and bloodied bile
Leaking from your holes. Freedom is the whore
And death the pimp with the "'merican" smile.
g.last - '05
link

And check out this article, hilar.

Blogging it up..

2005-07-07T18:57:00.000+10:00

This article epitomizes the reasons blogs suck, and why I don't contribute to them. BTW, this is Neal, and I couldn't be fucked finding my password.

today is the last parent-free day

2005-07-06T01:21:00.000+10:00

I don't know what to say, this blog feels inapproriate, maybe i should start a diary.

UPDATE

2005-07-03T13:09:00.000+10:00

Friday- Edith's , ali g, japanese room, neal, washing, strip poker.
saturday- Claires, Shosh, drugs, home, cab, robbie, speed, dark nest, bikes stolen.

Week

2005-06-30T15:17:00.000+10:00

Wednesday- Neal here.
Thursday- Hookahs
Friday- Cards and beer and the comfy chair and harts old/new house, cold , hard floor.
Saturday- Harry's, Neal threw up on me, danced on a tabletop, goon, Harry's mum had to drive us home.
Sunday- Mulgrave, fish and chips, edith's friends, drugs, pantry, Teishan- chinese province, mcdonalds, breakfast club.
Monday- Home, banquet, michael and angus, mess, drunkenness, snuggles, Freg.
tuesday- Date, Batman, Robbie Still at my house with Neal.
Wednesday- scottish guy, fregs, chicken, glasses, home, drugs, bucket, freg and leyla, Alex.
Thursday- Rally , Neal at Wills, Robbie still bleeding here when i get back!

Today and not yesterday or the day before

2005-06-19T16:49:00.000+10:00

I just remembered a very amusing dream where i was sitting next to my liberal voting neighbour and for some reason he had an erection and I was yelling about how Angus and Robertson should get out of Iraq.
Explain what that one means.
Yeah , today and yesterday have been really boring, firstly i can't remember what i did yesterday except sleep and then i watched Scream which was quite fun actually. Definitely a classic. but a very weird film. Finally i can see some sunshine in the weather forecast. how symbolic. I think I would have had a good time today were it not for the anxiety of homework. Which i haven't actually done. I'll start soon. Neal is coming on wednesday. Should be cool and weird. There's some weird stuff that's going to happen this holidays that's for sure. I think I should start another pure love thing. Maybe to distribute on the last day of term. Send me random articles that you think people should read, or quotes or poetry or anything. I feel frustrated, i might go outside.

Idea

2005-06-12T15:10:00.000+10:00

Ok I've had a thought. The posters didn't work, they were too political and ultimately maybe useless. What we need is a new project. Kind of a public art project, except at school. This is inspired by recent intersting happenings. On wednesday I spent about 30 mins drawing pictures on leaves in the park, I liked the idea of someone picking up a leaf randomly that had been carried away by the wind and finding a picture on it. And then last night leaving messages on people's cars. Poetry and 'pure love'. And me and Emily's quote swapping. It's time to expand the program. Perhaps it could be like the now infamous S.I.X. campaign. What do you all think? Firstly it takes the form of posters, poetry left in library books, graffiti on tables, quotes and poetry left on whiteboards. What's the name of the campaign though, pure love? Does it sound insincere? Any other ideas?

Jesus

2005-06-07T22:05:00.000+10:00

Alex has the right idea. The only cure is an unrelenting radicalism. When you grow up does your heart die? The enemy is fundamentalism in all its forms. The time is ripe for something new. It'll be bloody but i'm sure it'll work.
Hare Krishna

GAT tomorrow. The death rattle sounds. The drugs didn't kick in.

Radicalism in a new age, a ramble for Max

2005-06-05T17:22:00.000+10:00

If you take the view that we are headed for a future that is at the best ghastly and that we are living under the oppressive cultural hegemony of capitalism, then what can one do to affect change and what does it mean to be political in the modern age?
What it means to be Australian it a tricky question but whatever that culture is, it doesn't amount to anything when we, in effect do not live in a culture created by us (Australians). The society in which we wile away out small lives is predominately American and this makes it very difficult to have a political identity based on a sense of nationhood. We cant really hark back to the good old days, when true blue Ozzies could walk proud and say to visitors in a firm and confident tone "I am an Australian"(except for a brief time after the establishment of the eight hour day in the 1850s) . There wasn't a time for us (us white bastards) when we made contact with a foreign power and our culture became colonized by another. There was no time of conflict when publicly calling ones self Australian got you beaten in the streets by occupying troops and torched to death in a cell (a la Tibet). This makes it hard to say the least to fight against something (cultural, economic, and political colonization) for something (a (socialist) culture of out own) that we never had (we did for a while however have one of the best welfare states in the world (1900s again)) That fleeting time of unionised hope is the only thing we can look back on and wish for again but that is not enough to counter the current political nightmare and also provide a convincing alternative to the dead, empty consumer driven culture that has been pressed upon to us. What we must do is forge our own alternative, not from dreams of the past but from a solid vision of the future.
But how can we (those who care) go about making out own future in a country that is in effect no longer a democracy (come july), in a world ruled by the few with a populous televised into apathy? It it disheartening when people ask why we need to struggle, exemplified by the whole poster fiasco at school some people saw no point in needing to express a view and challenge the status quo (Max knows who I mean).
Does the new age in communications herald a new form of political protest? Maybe blogs will be the tool of the new generation, perhaps radical pod casters will rouse people from their couches and possibly online democracy will lead the peoples of the world to freedom. I personally don't believe any of that, I think that blogs are a clever tool for adsorbing political energy, giving a false impression of having a say. While dedicated blogers are belatedly bloging about current events and ideas for protest the world glides by around them and the power structures they supposedly challenge just smile, nod and make their own blogs. That doesn't mean we should give up on them just that they don't convince me as been the way to go, perhaps just another brick in a multitudinous arsenal needed to break out of our dire situation. Taking down a bill board or two is a form of political protest, but it wont change the world, what it does change are people involved and thats just as important. Been able to do more that just talk is liberating and gives a new way of looking at the world. When such an act as taking down a bill board is proposed it is met with bewilderment; "What? You cant do that, what's the point,? Its illegal anyway." But once done you can see that although we are a colony of an empire whose only master is money, things are only like that because we let it be so.
You can equate installing a wind/solar system that allows independence for the grid to Ghandi making his salt, why should we be slaves to private companies who care only for our money?
Anyway, where was I going? I don't know. But whatever, the way things are, is bad. They are only getting worse and, by the looks of things, are going to become very bad indeed. We need to do something to change, how we should do I don't know and what we should change to I don't really know either. But we will find a way and a future of our own.

It's started again and you can't stop it.

2005-06-05T14:03:00.000+10:00

(Neither can I)

Insanely frustrated

2005-06-04T19:44:00.000+10:00

Ahhhh, I know this is emo but today's been really bad. I'm sick and I've been having arguments with everybody and getting grumpy. I feel really angry and frustrated.

Watergate

2005-06-02T19:47:00.000+10:00

The Watergate story is dangerous because it perpetuates the myth that the system works and that the mainstream media is a dissident force. In fact, all it shows is that the media can periodically bring down a corrupt individual, but it is unable to challenge a corrupt system. And the parallels today are not promising. In the buildup to the war in Iraq the press failed to do it’s duty and White House disinformation was uncritically dispensed to the American public. Just like 30 years ago, a few exceptional examples of investigative journalism cannot make up for the failures of the press as a whole.
- Adbusters

Mandatory detention is too drastic, too damaging, and out of control

2005-05-30T21:19:00.000+10:00

Lindsay Tanner brutalised by leftie students

2005-05-30T16:35:00.000+10:00

I will do my best to make this a reality. But I need your help. On Friday Lindsay Tanner MP will be visiting our politics class, we will have the opportunity to ask questions. Please leave in comments any hard questions you have for the man, whether its about labor policy, current issues, anything. and if they are hot I will use them. I'll be taking notes on what he says and I'll rush home and post about what he says. Thank you good readers.

saturday arvo

2005-05-28T16:40:00.000+10:00

No homework done again. Dear lord. FILTERKEYS HAS HIT AGAIN> GOD I LOVE HOW DEMENTED IT IS> WHENEVERR I STOP TO THINK AND HAPPEN TO BE HOLDING SOME CERTAIN COMINATION OF KEYS IT GOES CRAZY> IT MAKES MY POSTS VERY>>> AH WELL >

Post-post posting

2005-05-26T20:25:00.000+10:00

I need an outlet for my creativity. And this blog is it, however there is school and there is social and i have no time to deal with politics. Maybe the best political blog post of last year and the defining one for me was this one. I suffered extreme disillusionment and apathy after this election and now with Kim Beazley leading the labor party its not getting any better. I no longer watch tv news, maybe thats part of it. But jesus how do they expect young people to be interested in politics when there's no alternative models and hope . This is what we need now in Australian politics, hope. And there is none.

Blogging from the house of Matt

2005-05-26T10:26:00.000+10:00

Good morning. This morning i had a very strange dream.

then i went to school. Did my italian oral sac. Now i'm at Matt's wanging around.

Ah jeez. I wrote a really emo post last night but it got lost.

yay

2005-05-24T22:17:00.000+10:00

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=9685
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=9685
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=9685

Good news, good news, good news. To me this bill looks quite similar to what the ALP were proposing going into the election. This is Labor's big moment. They must exploit, propound and support this bill endlessly. If they fail to support it they will have lost my support for a long, long time.
Unfotunately this bill will not get up. It seems there are at the most five dissident libs who will support this bill. Imagine what could have happened if the election had been a very close one? Good luck to these dissident libs and a big, fat, massive congratulations for all those asylum seeker advocates out there.
Love,
Nu-Ju

New blogs and backness (possibly temporary)

2005-05-22T20:32:00.000+10:00

Matt J's blog here
Teishan's blog here

My god. Saturday night was another new experience. I feel pretty weird now. A mixture of tiredness, depression and happiness. up, down, up down. Ah It will be a good day tomorrow. Just how to get there. Teishan has a brave attempt at gonzo journalism. A poem:
Gwen Harwood, dead, poet
Max Kaiser, alive, know it

Hehehehe. Thats pretty good.

Ah god, Political analysis?
Howard is officially getting worse and worse. Nothing can save us. The Coalition will have a senate majority until at least 2011. Think about that. This is the most dangerous government we've ever had, and they're killing us.
As Teishan mentioned, we met a german guy. Germans have an awful sense of humour. He comes to this country and talks about how there are too many asians and they keep to themselves too much. I really felt like saying Fuck off, this is our country, we like it multicultural, we like our asians, what right do you have to come to our country and talk about the people who live here so nastily. Ahh, but he's not a racist as Teishan says, just an idiot who doesn't understand our culture.

more tragedy and injustice for the newest nation in the world

2005-05-15T20:37:00.000+10:00

4 things on my desktop at the moment

2005-05-06T20:56:00.000+10:00

1

2

3

4

A debate between Nietzsche and Buddha

2005-05-01T18:28:00.000+10:00

by Bertrand Russell

The ethical, as opposed to the political, question is one as to sympathy. Sympathy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the sufferings of others, is to some extent natural to human beings; young children are troubled when they hear other children crying. But the development of this feeling is very different in different people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture; others, like Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering. Most people divide mankind emotionally into friends and enemies, feeling sympathy for the former, but not for the latter. An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism has its emotional basis in universal sympathy; Nietzsche's, in a complete absence of sympathy. (He frequently preaches against sympathy, and in this respect one feels that he has no difficulty in obeying his own precepts.) The question is: If Buddha and Nietzsche were confronted, could either produce any argument that ought to appeal to the impartial listener? I am not thinking of political arguments. We can imagine them appearing before the Almighty, as in the first chapter of the Book of Job, and offering advice as to the sort of world He would create. What could either say? Buddha would open the argument by speaking of lepers, outcast and miserable; the poor, toiling with aching limbs and barely kept alive by scanty nourishment; the wounded in battle, dying in slow agony; the orphans, ill-treated by cruel guardians; and even the most successful haunted by the thought of failure and death. From all this load of sorrow, he would say, a way of salvation must be found, and salvation can only come through love.

Nietzsche, whom only Omnipotence could restrain from interrupting, would burst out when his turn came. "Good heavens, man, you must learn to be of tougher fibre. Why go about sniveling because trivial people suffer? Or, for that matter, because great men suffer? Trivial people suffer trivially, great men suffer greatly, and great sufferings are not to be regretted, because they are noble. Your ideal is a purely negative one, absence of suffering, which can be completely secured by non-existence. I, on the other hand, have positive ideals: I admire Alcibiades, and the Emperor Frederick II, and Napoleon. For the sake of such men, any misery is worth while. I appeal to You, Lord, as the greatest of creative artists, do not let Your artistic impulses be curbed by the degenerate fear-ridden maunderings of this wretched psychopath."

Buddha, who in the courts of Heaven has learnt all history since his death, and has mastered science with delight in the knowledge and sorrow at the use to which men have put it, replies with calm urbanity: "You are mistaken, Professor Nietzsche, in thinking my ideal a purely negative one. True, it includes a negative element, the absence of suffering; but it has in addition quiet as much that is positive as it to be found in your doctrine. Though I have no special admiration for Alcibiades and Napoleon, I, too, have my heroes: my successor Jesus, because he told men to love their enemies; the men who discovered how to master the forces of nature and secure food with less labour; the medical men who have shown how to diminish disease; the poets and artists and musicians who have caught glimpses of the Divine beatitude. Love and knowledge and delight in beauty are not negations; they are enough to fill the lives of the greatest men that have ever lived."

"All the same," Nietzsche replies, "your world would be insipid. You should study Heraclitus, whose works survive complete in the celestial library. Your love is compassion, which is elicited by pain; your truth, if you are honest, is unpleasant, and only to be known through suffering; and as to beauty, what is more beautiful than the tiger, who owes his splendour to his fierceness? No, if the Lord should decide for your world, I fear we would all die of boredom."

"You might," Buddha replies, "because you love pain, and your love of life is a sham. But those who really love life would be happy as no one can be happy in the world as it is."

For my part, I agree with Buddha as I have imagined him. But I do not know how to prove that he is right by any argument such as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific question. I dislike him Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.

Politics

2005-05-01T15:02:00.000+10:00

My homework is to explain why the Coalition won and Labor lost last year...

Vietnam must be remembered

2005-04-30T19:30:00.000+10:00

Vietnam is the defining historical event of the 2oth century, of our parents generation and which still has massive implications and lessons for the youth of today. Today we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The tragedy of which was caused indubitably by the USA. That the US has never paid any adequate reparations for their war in Vietnam is one of the great travesties of history.

The lessons learnt must be reapplied today if for nothing else than so we aren't looked on as absolute fools in the history books who continue to repeat history over and over until our stupidity and short sightedness cause us to destroy the world.
George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard: War criminals who must be held accountable.
The UK needs to send a short sharp and meaningful message to Blair this election: Fuck you!
It's one we didn't send to John Howard and it was one of the most appalling election results since 2001.

Troops out of Iraq! Full reparations need to be paid and the process of so called 'reconstruction' must stop, all the coalitions 'orders' must be struck down as invalid and illegal as according to international law.

the weekend so far in dot point form

2005-04-24T12:12:00.000+10:00

Friday- hung out at Alex's, Matt came over and out we went to shoot a music video.
Ran around southbank and crow casino
Felt wanged so went home
Slept
Woke up, watched FL CL with Alex
Matt K came over
Matt J came over
We went to the bus stop to catch the bus down brunswick rd to get to Emma's party
Waited there for about half an hour before realising that we'd misread the timetable and the bus wouldn't be coming for until the next day
Walked to Emma's
Bit of a blur, met some christians
Danced ecstatically to 'It's raining men'
Decided to go to Paul Scarmazzinos party
Took ages to leave but we did, about 7 of us including a german backpacking rugby player that we'd invited to play tiggy with us a few days before.
Got to Pauls
Danced ecstatically to John Zorn and then half of Abbey Road
Jumped on a table
Went to brunswick St
Saw Jethro
Saw Kat and Olaf and friends
Sad Braiden and George begging for beer money
Didn't give them any
Met random Adelaideian skater guys who said they were having a party but were really just playing playstation and being sleazy adelaidian fucks.
Ran away
Slept at Alex's
Celebrating Passover tonight

Troops out of Iraq

2005-04-21T18:14:00.000+10:00

Here's a kick arse debate with Naomi Klein kicking arse. In a way this is a continuation of the debate I had with Nic White a little while ago. Check it out.

Baghdad Burning

2005-04-20T22:50:00.000+10:00

This is an interesting interview with Riverbend the writer of the Baghdad Burning blog.

In other news about Iraq, we here about the disgusting contempt that America has for democracy:

As politicians debated renewed violence, an Iraqi lawmaker accused a US soldier of grabbing him by the throat and shoving him to the ground after he parked his car in Baghdad’s Green Zone. Fattah al-Sheikh, an independent politician, said he had parked his car ahead of a session of parliament when US troops approached him and told him he didn’t have the right permit.

“I don’t speak English and so I said to the Iraqi translator with them, ‘Tell them that I am a member of parliament’, and he replied, ‘To hell with you, we are Americans,’” Sheikh told parliament.

This event left Fattah al-Sheikh in tears.

and,
I don't mean to be too paranoid about conspiracy theories but:
The night before she died, at one of her thrown-together parties, she said she was staying in Baghdad longer than she had originally planned because she was close to establishing that the military kept records on civilian deaths in Iraq, despite military statements that such records don’t exist. From here
The death of Marla Ruzicka seems to have been a good thing for the Americans aswell as a great loss for the Iraqi people.

The Selection of Cardinal Ratzinger Is Bad News for the World and for the Jews

2005-04-20T17:39:00.000+10:00

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the world's largest circulation progressive Jewish magazine, TIKKUN, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco, took the unusual step of criticizing the choice made by the Catholic Church for its new Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Lerner was careful to make clear that he was NOT speaking as leader of The Tikkun Community, the interfaith organization whch he co-chairs, which has NOT taken a stand on these issues, but only as editor of TIKKUN magazine. Moreover, Lerner started with the following: "I want to bless the New pope and pray that he transcends his views on gays, women, secularists, the lack of validity of other religious paths, etc. I also pray that all the good people in the Church who do not share his views and want to preserve the social justice orientation of Jesus' teachings will join with us in creating an interfaith Network of Progressive Spiritual Activism--now more than ever such a context both for secular and for progressive religious and spiritual peole is badly needed."

Rabbi Lerner issued the following statement: "Since the days in which he served in the Hitler Youth and Nazi army in Germany (apparently against his will, but nevertheless apparently absorbing the deep patriarchal and authoritarian character structure that the fascists did so much to foster in younth) to his role as the leader of the forces that suppressed the liberatory aspects of Vatican II and purged or silenced the Church of its most creative leadership (including German Catholic theologians Eugene Drewermann and Hans Kung, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, and several prominent American Catholic thinkers), to the present moment in which he is recognized as the leader most identified with the forces of reaction and suppression of dissent within the Church, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has distinguished himself as a man who can be counted on to side with the most anti-humane and repressive forces, in opposition to those who seek to give primacy to a world of peace and justice.

"Although normally Jews would welcome any choice of leadership by our sister religion, we have particular reason to comment on this choice.

"Jews have a powerful stake and commitment in ending global poverty and oppression. We fully well understand that in a world filled with pain and cruelty, the resulting anger is often channeled in racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic directions. Both as a matter of principle, based on our commitment to a prophetic vision, and as a matter of self-interest, Jews have disproportionately supported liberal and progressive social change movements seeking to end war and poverty.

"So it was with great distress that we watched as Cardinal Ratzinger led the Vatican in the past twenty-five years on a path that opposed providing birth control information to the poor of the world, thereby ensuring that AIDS would spread and kill millions in Africa.

"And we watched with even greater distress as this Cardinal supported efforts to involve the Church in distancing itself from political candidates or leaders who did not agree with the Church's teachings on abortion and gay rights, prioritizing these issues over whether that candidate agreed with the Church on issues of peace and social justice. As a result, Cardinal Ratzinger has led the Church away from its natural alliance with Jews in fighting for peace and social justice and toward a stance which in effect allies the Church with the most reactionary politicians whose policies are militaristic and offer a preferential option for the rich.

"We can't help noticing that under Cardinal Ratzinger's tutelage the Church began moves to elevate the infamous Pope Pius XII to the status of saint. Instead of repenting for the failure of the Church to give unequivocal messages telling all Catholics that they would be prevented from receiving communion for collaborating or cooperating in any way with Nazi rule, or for failing to hide and protect Jews who were marked for extermination, Ratzinger has sought to whitewash this disgraceful moment in Church history. Many Jews are outraged at a Church that denies communion to those who have remarried or those who oppose making abortion illegal but that did not similarly deny communion to those who participate in crimes against humanity.

"In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger publicly praised the fascist movement in the Church known as Opus Dei and supported canonization of Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, an open fascist who served in the government of Spain's dictator Franco, and who publicly praised Hitler.

" While many of us agree with Ratzinger's critique of moral relativism, he extends that critique in illegitimate and dangerous ways, equating secularism with moral relativism and suggesting that secularism is now repressing religion. Since many, many Jews are secular, we have much concern about the way that this assault can quickly turn in anti-Semtiic directions (some of us remember the Nazi-supporting priest Father Coughlin of the 1930s whose US radio show always insisted that he was only agaisnt the secular Jews and hence wasn't "really" anti-Semitic). But whether or not he turns against Jews, those of us who are religious Jews or people of faith in other religions should rally against the attempt to demean all secular people and blame on them the problems of selfishness actually rooted in the dynamics of the the global capitalist market.

Ratzinger also publicly critiques all those inside the Church who are tolerant enough to think that other religions may have equal validity as a path to God. This is a slippery slope toward anti-Semitism and a return to the chauvinistic and triumphalist views that led the Church, when it had the power to do so, to develop its infamous crusades and inquisitions.

In 1997 Ratzinger said that Europeans attracted to Buddhism were actually seeking an "autoerotic spirituality" that offers "transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations." Hindusim, he said, offers "false hope," in that it guarantees "purification" based on a "morally cruel" concept of reincarnation resembling "a continuous circle of hell." At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger predicted that Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic church's main enemy.

"Ratzinger is being falsely described as a conservative, when in fact he, despite his publicly genteel manner, is a raging reactionary. Unlike many American conservatives who oppose gay sexual practices but not their legal rights, Ratzinger in 1992 argued against human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be "legitimately limited."

"Those of us in the Jewish world who have enormous respect for Christianity and for the wisdom and beauty of the Catholic tradition are in mourning today that the Church has confirmed for itself a destructive direction that will hurt not only Catholics but all those who seek peace and justice in the world.

"We remain hopeful that the new pope may return to his original more progressive positions (pre-1968) and realize that the world needs a church that can respond compassionately and wisely to what is needed rather than remain wedded to dogma that is so destructive. In a statement that Ratzinger made a few years ago, he seemed deeply aligned with TIKKUN's ciritque of the selfishness and materialism of the contemporary world. We hope that he stops blaming that on secularists and comes to understand that secularists too, as well as people from other faiths, can be allies in the struggle for a new ethos of love and generosity. We pray that he may find a way to bring a better, kinder, more loving and compassionate agenda to the Catholic Church.

It is precisely because we continue to feel allied with the Church and see it as an important ally in the struggle for social justice and peace that we are so dismayed at this misdirection. Meanwhile, we reaffirm our solidarity with the many millions of Catholics who had hoped for a very different kind of Pope who would make the Church more open to women's leadership, to prioritizing social justice, to rethinking its opposition to promoting birth control, and to returning to the hopeful spirit of Vatican II. We can say publicly what many of you can only say privately-that this new Pope does not represent what is most beautiful and sacred in the teachings of Jesus."

The loser now will be later to win.

2005-04-20T10:11:00.000+10:00

Me and my mysterious alter ego have a discussion

2005-04-15T14:06:00.000+10:00

Me: Yo man, has m3r started up again?
Also me: What, what are you talking about... m3r?
Me: You remember man, that cutting edge blog of the democratic youth movement at Princes Hill?
Also me: Oh yeah I kiiiinnnd of remember that.
Me: Yeah?
Also me: Yeah?
Me: Has it started up again?
Also me: I don't know, has it?
Me: There's a new post. It says that its being started up again. You don't know anything about it?
Also me: I may and I may not.
Me: What? You do know about it.
Also me:Maybe
Me: Well do you think it will be as wildly successful as it was before?
Also me: I don't know, Its really only me, _____ and ____.
Me: Oh ____. I love ____ he's so hot.
Also me: Me too. Well you know if m3r doesn't work out i've invited ____ to this blog anyway and that could be massively awesome.
Me: Will you blog about your 10 day party which will no doubt involve massive amounts of alchohol, sex (not between you two obviously), drugs and strippers.
Also me: Yeah I guess so.
Me: Cool

2005-04-15T00:28:00.000+10:00

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -28
Conservative -57
	Liberal Democrat 96
	UK Independence Party 7
	Green 70

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Well I'm going way for a week to Philip Island.

2005-04-09T00:36:00.000+10:00

The talk of Shane maloney over at Le Driver's reminded me of his speech at scotch college and so I thought I'd just post his excellent speech perhaps stimulating some discussion about Private Schools. Recently at school there was a petition put up around school about better treatment of year 12's or something and some demands. To these rather unimportant complaints a friend and I added our list of demands.

Abolition of private schools
Abolition of all school fees
Guaranteed entry into tertiary education
Abolition of HECs

And a couple of others but those were the important ones. Would you agree?

Well here's the Shane Maloney speech:

When I first received an inquiry about my availability to come and talk at this school, I was naturally reluctant. After all, this school has little to recommend it in the eyes of the wider community. Historically it has been simply a machine for the transmission of inherited privilege.

It is a place where boys from middle-class backgrounds are sent to improve their material prospects and to reproduce the values of their class, or where the boys of insecure parents are sent to fulfil the distorted ambitions of their fathers.

When I think of Scotch College, what comes immediately to mind are the values and actions of its most prominent Old Boys.

I think of the scene I saw on television after Scotch old boy Jeff Kennett used his power and his philosophy to close down the only high school in the state specifically dedicated to the education of young Aboriginal people. How students from that school came here and stood at the gates and how your principal went out and told them to go away.

I think of your old boy, David Kemp, the federal education minister, giving millions of dollars of public money to enhance the marketability of schools like this one - justifying his actions with statistics and arguments that he refuses to apply to the needs of the 70 per cent of Australian families who choose to educate their children in the democratic and equitable environment of government schools.

I think, too, of the newspaper reports of the violent behaviour of some of your students - and the quick readiness with which these boys were defended and excused in the courts by their adult class allies.

For these reasons, I was initially reluctant to come here.

On the other hand, I thought, 'Well, all this is hardly the fault of the current crop of students.' It is not your fault, after all, that your families decided to institutionalise you. It is not your fault that your mothers and fathers elected to place you in the emotionally distorting and educationally deficient environment of an all-boys school.

It is not your fault that your parents lacked sufficient confidence in your personal maturity and ability to respond to the opportunities offered by government school education - and Australia has one of the best systems in the world, by the way, despite the relentless propaganda to the contrary by the vested interest of the private-school lobby.

Right now, you are the victims. Later, of course, society will be your victim, and will suffer from the attitudes with which you are indoctrinated here.

But who knows? Just as prison does not always break the spirit of all who are incarcerated there, perhaps you will not turn out to be a burden to society.

Perhaps when you leave here, some of you will even manage to contribute to the wellbeing of this country.

I certainly hope so. But just to hedge my bets, I will be donating part of my fee today to the campaign for public education.

Good luck with your studies and thanks for having me.

You can read his opinion piece here

the Vietnam syndrome

2005-04-09T00:14:00.000+10:00

Before I went to Vietnam although I was opposed to the occupation of Iraq, I like some thought of it as something inevitable and something that we were powerless to stop. But whilst I was in Vietnam, after hearing and thinking about the huge amount of damage done to that country, unimaginable damage that constitutes genocide and thinking about all I'd read... I remember this one day sitting on a boat just seething with anger about what had happened to Vietnam and thinking about how we absolutely could not allow it to happen again to Iraq. We went to a big craft shop that was set up as a charity for victims of agent orange. I don't know if you've ever read about the use of agent orange and it's still present effects on the Vietnames people but its simply horrendous. And also going to the museum of war crimes and seeing incredible photos and disgusting things done by the americans and their puppets in south Vietnam.
Then I came back home and more details about what had happened to Fallujah came out, we had these 'free fire zones' where anyone and anything was a legitimate target, we had the americans cutting off food and water and medicine from the city, shutting down hospitals, arresting doctors etc. And then we're now hearing about Napalm, the US using Napalm on cities and I think about Vietnam . Now when you as a westerner travel to Vietnam you encounter some of the friendliest people in the world, America and Australia absolutely devastated that country and yet they welcome us and share themselves and their culture with us. Somehow I can't imagine in 30 years going to Iraq and feeling safe and being welcomed.

Monbiot endorses Wolfowitz for the world bank presidency

2005-04-06T23:20:00.000+10:00

And he does indeed make a compelling case. I'd previously thought that this appointment would really be of an inconsequential symbolic nature, but with these kind of stupid assertions of power America is setting itself up for a big fall. Anway read the article. Here's a sample:

Best of all is the outside chance that the neocons might just be stupid enough to use the new wolf to blow the Bank down. The former British minister Clare Short laments that "it's as though they are trying to wreck our international systems."(17) Well, what a tragedy that would be. I would sob all the way to the party.

Read it here

Weekend roundup

2005-04-03T20:58:00.000+10:00

The pope is dead. Antony Loewenstein has an interesting post about him.
As mentioned in comments there were 3-way, maybe 4-way kisses last night, thankfully not involving me. There was also Sex on Toast.
It was the first weekend of the holidays, I have a lot of homework to do, books to read, socialising to do, movies to watch, blogging to do.
I'm still tired, 10 people slept at my house last night, not including my family.
I can't really think of anything else, ... Amanda Vanstone is a horrible disgusting creature.
I think I might start reading Kafka on the shore. Anybody read it?

posting

2005-03-31T22:24:00.000+10:00

Just a short post to say tomorrow is the last day of school for this term and also april fools day. I have a philosophy SAC on Aristotle to do. Sucks. I remember in primary school if the teacher was really cool at the end of every term we used to have a party with junk food and other partyish things. That was awesome. Now the end of term just means the beginning of 2 weeks where you get to temporarily fool yourself that you will have some free time until the crushing reality of how much homework you have to do hits you. Ah but for that first weekend.
Friday: movies and computer games
Saturday: Top Arts and a wild party
Sunday: recovery and reading and blogging, mmmm.
Do you remember recovery? That show was awesome. I probably blogged about this before but during the summer holidays before last they were playing repeats of recovery episodes on rage and they had one from 1998 when I was 11 and public enemy were on and they didnt believe the show was live and hilarity ensued and they talked about politics and Chuck D. had composed a poem called the perils of pauline. Oh it was great. I miss those days when I used to be conscious on saturday and sunday mornings and there used to be good television on. I blame it on Howard and the abc funding cuts.

Baxter 05

2005-03-27T13:21:00.000+10:00

I remember quite clearly an incident in year 9, 2002 after the protests at Woomera. We were discussing the outcome of the nuremberg trials in class and I put my hand up to explain that the outcome of the nuremberg trials was that it was not a sufficient excuse to say you were following orders or that you were obeying the law if the law was immoral and in breach of human rights and that I had read an activist publication that was applying this idea to the actions of the protesters at Woomera, breaking the fences and freeing detainees. It suggested that we are in fact morally obligated to disobey the immoral laws concerning the detention of asylum seekers.
This for me was quite a revelation and it's a philosophy that I believe in to this today. The law holds no moral ground and in fact we mustn't respect it when this is the kind of thing it enables.

I for one am very grateful to the protesters currently outside the Baxter detention centre.

Eliminating Journalists pt.2

2005-03-26T12:55:00.000+11:00

This is very chilling. Naomi Klein interviewed Giuliana Sgrena and then want on Democracy Now! to talk about what she's said. Here's an extract. You can read the whole thing here.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah. At first I want to say that I know Giuliana really would have liked to have been on the show herself to talk to your listeners and viewers, but one of the things that surprised me when I met with Giuliana is that she was quite a bit sicker than I think we have been led to believe. Her injuries were described as fairly minor; she was shot in the shoulder. But when I met with her, she was clearly very, very ill, and that's why she's not on the show this morning. She was fired on by a gun at the top of a tank, which means that the artillery was very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart. And it didn't just injure her shoulder, it punctured her lung. And her lung continues to fill with fluid, and there continues to be complications stemming from that fairly serious injury. So that was one of the details.

She told me a lot about the incident that I had not fully understood from the reports in the press. One of the most – and at first, the other thing I want to be really clear about is that Giuliana is not saying that she's certain in any way that the attack on the car was intentional. She is simply saying that she has many, many unanswered questions, and there are many parts of her direct experience that simply don't coincide with the official U.S. version of the story. One of the things that we keep hearing is that she was fired on on the road to the airport, which is a notoriously dangerous road. In fact, it's often described as the most dangerous road in the world. So this is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road. And I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn't on that road at all. She was on a completely different road that I actually didn't know existed. It's a secured road that you can only enter through the Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for ambassadors and top military officials. So, when Calipari, the Italian security intelligence officer, released her from captivity, they drove directly to the Green Zone, went through the elaborate checkpoint process which everyone must go through to enter the Green Zone, which involves checking in obviously with U.S. forces, and then they drove onto this secured road. And the other thing that Giuliana told me that she's quite frustrated about is the description of the vehicle that fired on her as being part of a checkpoint. She says it wasn't a checkpoint at all. It was simply a tank that was parked on the side of the road that opened fire on them. There was no process of trying to stop the car, she said, or any signals. From her perspective, they were just -- it was just opening fire by a tank. The other thing she told me that was surprising to me was that they were fired on from behind. Because I think part of what we're hearing is that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, because they didn't know who they were, and they were afraid. It was self-defense, they were afraid. The fear, of course, is that their car might blow up or that they might come under attack themselves. And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that she -- the bullet that injured her so badly and that killed Calipari, came from behind, entered the back seat of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren't coming from the front or even from the side. They were coming from behind, i.e. they were driving away. So, the idea that this was an act of self-defense, I think becomes much more questionable. And that detail may explain why there's some reticence to give up the vehicle for inspection. Because if indeed the majority of the gunfire is coming from behind, then clearly, they were firing from -- they were firing at a car that was driving away from them.

I love John Howard (not really)

2005-03-25T11:49:00.000+11:00

John Howard: democratic reformer?
I just found this quote from AnonymousLefty's blog:

Speaking on radio about the federal-state tax deadlock, Mr Howard said it would be better if Australia had no state governments - adding that it was "unrealistic" to wish for that now.

"If we were starting Australia all over again, I wouldn't support having the existing state structure," he said. "I would actually support having a national government, and perhaps a series of regional governments having the power of, say, the Brisbane City Council (Australia's most powerful local government).

"But we're not starting Australia all over again, and the idea of abolishing state governments is unrealistic."

I really think that this is a good idea, the states at this present moment can no longer prove their relevance to our system, they are simply out of date colonies. In fact we lose $20 billion dollars a year because of the current federal system we have. It's a much smarter idea to have these regional governments that Howard suggests except I think they should have more power than the Brisbane City Council and be more akin to the type of regional governments they have in Europe and they would definitely be given constitutional rights so the commonwealth government could not override them.

Howard's reforming ways go further than Australia. At one stage he was suggesting some actual democratic reform to the UN including abolishing veto powers. This is far more democratic than any reforms being suggested today which are mostly just proposals to expand the number of permanent members. Who knows if Howard is sincere about this belief or was simply just confused about how the UN has actually worked throughout its existence ie. with the US using its veto power to vastly impede the legitimate workings of the UN. Anyway you don't here much about these reforms anymore, perhaps he's been put in his rightful place by his masters. You can read about his ideas here.

Antony Loewenstein has a blog?

2005-03-24T19:17:00.000+11:00

The one of best things about the last election campaign was without a doubt for me the pleasure of reading and following the links from Antony Loewenstein's fine fine Counterspin blog over at the SMH website. Unfortunately after the election he closed up shop and I've only since read him at the Znet website with articles such as this but thankfully now I've dicovered thanks to Weezil's links that he has a blog.
Best wishes to Antony Loewenstein and his new blog.

UPDATE: I also love that despite being an a serious journalist he still has the mandatory bloggers link to ms fits.

United against the occupation

2005-03-23T13:51:00.000+11:00

Book book

2005-03-23T13:32:00.000+11:00

Possibly for around a year if you have firefox and have looked at the bottom of my sidebar you will have seen that I've been reading Fateful Triangle by Noam Chomsky. Well sadly my friends I must now tell you that this sidebar feature was a fiction. The last time I read it was way before I went to Vietnam and I'm not planning on picking it up again until I have a lot of spare reading time. So for now I shall be changing my 'all consuming' book titles to those I am actually reading for school.
I must say I am quite dissapointed in year 12. I have almost no time to do any reading that isn't school related and if I wasn't doing literature I think my brain would explode for lack of narrativium. However this year it seems we're creating many of our own stories, just as exciting as novels and I'm not jealous of my parents who have a minimal social life and manage to read quite a few books.
So anyway Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Racist or not?

2005-03-21T21:46:00.000+11:00

These are our signs, given to us by two very attractive girls

2005-03-21T21:45:00.000+11:00

Phoebe, Hart and Matt

Daniel O'Connor breathes the biggest sigh of relief ever.

2005-03-21T20:32:00.000+11:00

Eliminating journalists

2005-03-20T18:58:00.000+11:00

Reading this article about Iraq , I remembered this article by Naomi Klein and putting them together you get a very disturbing picture. First of all the recent article:

Iraq's series of unfortunate events, especially at US military-manned checkpoints continue unabated. One such episode that recently got its fair share of media coverage was the killing of an Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari on May 4. Calipari gave his life to save the recently freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena.

Sgrena was taken hostage by a group of Iraqi militants who demanded an immediate withdrawal of the 3000 strong Italian troops from their country. While the demand itself is legitimate, the method used to achieve it was callous and cowardly, threatening the life of one very courageous anti-occupation journalist who worked for the Italian daily, Il Manifesto.

Sgrena and others, who chose to narrate the war from the mouths of Iraqi civilians, were a thorn on the side of the US administration. She interviewed women prisoners released from Abu Ghraib and visited Fallujah, the defiant city of 300,000 completely destroyed by the US Army. The details she conveyed were harrowing, to say the least.

When the 56-year-old journalist was released, her close encounter with death was anything but over. Agent Calipari hurriedly escorted her to the Baghdad airport, only to be "ambushed" along the way by US troops who showered their car with 300-400 bullets, according to news reports. The results were deadly. Calipari was instantly killed as he dove on top of Sgrena to shield her. Sgrena was also wounded.

According to Pier Scolari, Sgrena's companion: "The Americans and Italians knew about (her) coming. They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints. Giuliana had information, and the US military didn't want her to survive."

Segrena, who insisted that the car was not speeding, that there were no checkpoints, no hand signals, not even warning shots, supported Scolari's statement. "I remember only fire," she wrote from Rome's Celio military hospital. "At that point a rain of fire and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few minutes earlier."

But the relationship between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and George W. Bush is just too "special" to be compromised by another "unfortunate" event and the life of some unknown "although courageous " officer.

The US military responded once again, claiming that they "had immediately ordered an investigation." The US administration also offered its customary response, dismissing the allegations of intentional murder as conspiratorial nonsense.

The US mainstream media reported on the story, failing not to unreservedly mention that Sgrena was a "self-identified communist" working for a communist newspaper. The subtly implied notion was that Giuliana Sgrena is an ideological nutcase and was not to be trusted.

The Naomi Klein article:

Eliminating journalists
The images from last month's siege on Falluja came almost exclusively from reporters embedded with US troops. This is because Arab journalists who had covered April's siege from the civilian perspective had effectively been eliminated. Al-Jazeera had no cameras on the ground because it has been banned from reporting in Iraq indefinitely. Al-Arabiya did have an unembedded reporter, Abdel Kader Al-Saadi, in Falluja, but on November 11 US forces arrested him and held him for the length of the siege. Al-Saadi's detention has been condemned by Reporters Without Borders and the International Federation of Journalists. "We cannot ignore the possibility that he is being intimidated for just trying to do his job," the IFJ stated.

It's not the first time journalists in Iraq have faced this kind of intimidation. When US forces invaded Baghdad in April 2003, US Central Command urged all unembedded journalists to leave the city. Some insisted on staying and at least three paid with their lives. On April 8, a US aircraft bombed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub. Al-Jazeera has documentation proving it gave the coordinates of its location to US forces.

On the same day, a US tank fired on the Palestine hotel, killing José Couso, of the Spanish network Telecinco, and Taras Protsiuk, of Reuters. Three US soldiers are facing a criminal lawsuit from Couso's family, which alleges that US forces were well aware that journalists were in the Palestine hotel and that they committed a war crime.

I remember just the other day listening to an anti-war activist named Margarita saying that Nicola Calipari was assasinated by the americans. I first expressed disbelief. They assasinated an ally's intelligence officer? But it seems now that Berlusconi is too good of an ally to follow through with what his people want and the US knew this. It seems increasingly obvious that if it was an assasination the real target was Giuliana Sgrena.

M18 anti-war rally

2005-03-19T14:16:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I went on the anti-war rally. It was a great experience and I'm considering joining the stop the war coalition. Anyhoo here are some pictures taken by strangers but including me or friends, conveniently highlighted within the pictures for your enjoyment. Also I got the new adbusters today and have we made it in! Remember when i told you about the buy nothing day activities? Well they got in there. Only in the form of four sentences but its still cool. I'll quote.

'What does every event like this need? Shopping Zombies of course! We had at least seven participants don white makeup and wander the the streets and shops around the mall. I can report with pride that they were thrown out of the Nike store, the David Jones' store and possibly Myers as well.'

Pretty cool. Frankly our other activities have been of much more notablility that this such as the one alluded to in the kangaroo post but this is good anyway.

On a related note. I'd like to start a discussion about activism. What is it? What's the point? etc. I have a good friend who believes that rallies are only important if John howard personally kows about them and takes notice. I must say I don't think this is the immediate aim of rallies. What groups and work are you people out there doing? Do you go to rallies? Why?

In a semi-related note I was also pondering our horrible drug laws. To be honest I know that a lot of you take drugs and if you were to be caught either selling some to your friend or just simply indulging in these recreational drugs you could go to Jail! This is plainly ridiculous. Cigarettes are always going to kill a million times the number of people that die from recreational drugs and yet they're still legal and their use is widespread. Thankfully a renewed stigma is being attached and i'm pleased to report that its becoming less common among young people. Anyway non habitual drug use is far from a horrible thing and it reflects poorly on our society that we are so intolerent of recreational drug use that we need to lock peo-ple up for it.
Perhaps I'll leave you with the lyrics from the streets song: The Irony of it all . And then the pictures.

Hello, hello. my names terry and I’m a law abider
There’s nothing I like more than getting fired up on beer
And when the weekends here I to exercise my right to get paralytic and fight
Good bloke fairly
But I get well leery when geezers look at me funny
Bounce ’em round like bunnies
I’m likely to cause mischief
Good clean grief you must believe and I ain’t no thief.
Law abiding and all, all legal.
And who cares about my liver when it feels good
What you need is some real manhood.
Rasher rasher barney and kasha putting peoples backs up.
Public disorder, I’ll give you public disorder.
I down eight pints and run all over the place
Spit in the face of an officer
See if that bothers you cause I never broke a law in my life
Someday I’m gonna settle down with a wife
Come on lads lets have another fight

Eh hello. my names tim and I’m a criminal,
In the eyes of society I need to be in jail
For the choice of herbs I inhale.
This ain’t no wholesale operation
Just a few eighths and some playstations my’s vocation
I pose a threat to the nation
And down the station the police hold no patience
Let’s talk space and time
I like to get deep sometimes and think about einstein
And carl jung and old kung fu movies I like to see
Pass the hydrator please
Yeah I’m floating on thin air.
Going to amsterdam in the new year - top gear there
Cause I taker pride in my hobby
Home made bongs using my engineering degree
Dear leaders, please legalise weed for these reasons.

Like I was saying to him.
I told him: top with me and you won’t leave.
So I smacked him in the head and downed another carling
Bada bada bing for the lad’s night.
Mad fight, his face’s a sad sight.
Vodka and snake bite.
Going on like a right geez, he’s a twat,
Shouldn’t have looked at me like that.
Anyway I’m an upstanding citizen
If a war came along I’d be on the front line with em.
Can’t stand crime either them hooligans on heroin.
Drugs and criminals those thugs on the penny coloured will be the downfall of society
I’ve got all the anger pent up inside of me.

You know I don’t see why I should be the criminal
How can something with no recorded fatalities be illegal
And how many deaths are there per year from alcohol
I just completed gran tourismo on the hardest setting
We pose no threat on my settee
Ooh the pizza’s here will someone let him in please
We didn’t order chicken, not a problem we’ll pick it out
I doubt they meant to mess us about
After all we’re all adults not louts.
As I was saying, we’re friendly peaceful people
We’re not the ones out there causing trouble.
We just sit in this hazy bubble with our quarters
Discussing how beautiful gail porter is.
Mtv, bbc 2, channel 4 is on until six in the morning.
Then at six in the morning the sun dawns and it’s my bedtime.

Causing trouble, your stinking rabble
Boys saying I’m the lad who’s spoiling it
You’re on drugs it really bugs me when people try and tell me I’m a thug
Just for getting drunk
I like getting drunk
Cause I’m an upstanding citizen
If a war came along I’d be on the front line with em.

Now terry you’re repeating yourself
But that’s okay drunk people can’t help that.
A chemical reaction inside your brain causes you to forget what you’re saying.

What. I know exactly what I’m saying
I’m perfectly sane
You stinking student lameo
Go get a job and stop robbing us of our taxes.

Err, well actually according to research
Government funding for further education pales in insignificance
When compared to how much they spend on repairing
Leery drunk people at the weekend
In casualty wards all over the land.

Why you cheeky little swine come here
I’m gonna batter you. come here.

Awesome Joke

2005-03-16T13:35:00.000+11:00

Stolen from here.

Background:
Amongst the Palestinian populace, Palestinians from Hebron are often regarded as the Polacks of the Palestinian community. In that, they are stereotyped as being incredibly dimwitted, and jokes in the vein of traditional "Polish jokes" are often applied to them.

Josh, one of my fellow fellows, happens to be friendly with a Palestinian neighbor of his, Bossom, who we've come to know for, among other things, his outrageous Hebroni jokes. Here are a few of them, told as closely to the way Bossom told them as possible. Imagine them being said in English with a thick Arab accent.

Joke:
A Hebron man becomes very unhappy with his life, and very depressed, and decides he's going to kill himself. Somehow some members of Hamas find out and they come to him and say, "Brother, we hear you are going to kill yourself. We have come to ask you, if this is truly your desire, to become a shihadi (a suicide bomber). If you are going to die anyway, you may as well be a martyr for Allah and the cause of Palestine and die with some honor and... eh, take some Jews with you."

After thinking about it for a little while, the man agrees.

A few days later the man meets with his Hamas commander and he is strapped with a bomb and sent into Tel Aviv. He crosses through the checkpoint and at first stops at a gas station, where he calls the Hamas commander. "Brother, I am at a gas station. There are about five Jews here. Should I kill myself now?"

"No, no brother," the commander says. "It's not enough. Go find more Jews."

"Okay brother," he says and hangs up the phone.

He then finds a café and calls the commander again. "Brother, I am at a café. There are twenty Jews here. Should I kill myself now?"

"No," says the commander. "It is still not enough Jews. Keep looking."

"Okay brother," he says and hangs up the phone.

A few minutes later he is at the central bus station. He calls the Hamas commander. "Brother, I am at the bus station. There are hundreds of Jews everywhere. Should I kill myself now?"

"Yes brother! Yes! May Allah guard you! Kill yourself now!"

The Hebron man hangs up the phone, takes a knife from his pocket and stabs himself in the stomach.

This is a great blog by the way. I highly reccommend it.

Literary analysis

2005-03-16T12:42:00.000+11:00

Analyse this passage from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive -- not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night -- quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush -- man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor -- 'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no purpose.

Blog me up before you go go.

2005-03-16T12:06:00.000+11:00

Well after a long hiatus from blogging. I've decided that I am indeed back from the dead. Here comes your much missed teenage political commentary, personal stories, gonzo anecdotes. The things most occupying my mind at the moment are, in order:

1. Homework- 41 q's of Politics work to do. Here are some you may be able to help me with.

What is an electoral redistribution?
Give 2 reasons why it is necessary?
Explain one argument for and one against the use of single member electorates in the house of reps?
Explain the preferential voting method?

That should do for now. If you want more ask me. I can't say I'm expecting any traffic to come immmediately streaming to this site after i've neglected it for so long. So I may have to go on a commenting spree.

2. Jewish girl

3. Last weekend at Port fairy. We got into the green room and smoked a joint with Mia Dyson and played Bocce with the Vasco Era. We also made friends with some swedish drug dealers , 2 of my friends made out with girls that were far too young and got drunk on really cheap goon.

4. Next weekend: Strippers, ecstasy and political activism.

5. Just did the www.politicalcompass.org test. Scored a sweet -9.25 for economic and -9.59 for social. Check it.

6. God I hate John Howard and love Tim Colebatch.

7. I also despise Berlusconi. Or Burlesqueoni as some call him. But he seems to be representing his people properly on this one.

8.This. Who's coming , who isn't? A lot of people seem not to know about it.

9. Crap. That homework.

Kangaroo

2005-03-06T17:00:00.000+11:00

Hehehe. Some more justification.

What was that?

2005-02-23T11:13:00.000+11:00

Jon Brion did you say?

In other news. Looks like my dressmaker review was useful to someone. And a lot of people are oming here seaching for, would you believe it? "The Great shark hunt". Well 3 SAC's coming up this week. Wish me luck , so long and Mahalo.
( I'm not going to commit suicide I just wanted to pay homage to the good doctor's final written words ( by the way how weird was that final column? Bill Murray? Shotgun golf?) )

Hunter S. Thompson, dead at 67

2005-02-21T19:30:00.000+11:00

Very sad.

The Dressmaker

2005-02-15T19:59:00.000+11:00

The Dressmaker

By Rosalie Ham

The novel ‘The dressmaker’ is subtitled: ‘An Australian gothic novel of love, hate and haute couture’. The basic plot of the book is that a young woman named Tilly who grew up in the town of the setting, Dungatar, after suffering the loss of her baby returns after a long (forced) absence to help her old mother. Weaved in with this plot is a very unsatisfactory series of glimpses into the lives of the townsfolk. Tilly and her mother Mad Molly are really the only ones with fully developed character arcs. This may be because one of the major themes of the book is outcasts. Tilly and Molly are outcasts and the only other characters to get more than a page’s mention are the Beaumonts (the old money family who live out side the town) and the cross-dressing policeman Sergeant Horatio Farrat. In creating this stark contrast it seems that Ham does not have any feeling for the townsfolk. She paints them as gimmicks- the lesbians, the feeble old man, the adulteress etc. These people are not real characters to Ham or us. They’re products of Rosalie’s distorted imagination of the immense hypocrisy of her own 1950’s small town in the Riverina. This does not endear the book to us at all. In fact, coupled with the extreme graphic descriptions and acts that are the hallmarks of the gothic genre, it serves to distance us from characters that are the subject of half the book. One wonders what Rosalie Ham’s original story was like before she expanded it.

The subtitle does indeed convey much of the plot. The love is the love of families and/or the lack of love, and also the romantic and not so romantic love of the novel’s three central couples: Lesley and Mona, William and Gertrude and Tilly and Teddy. These couples all have their problems throughout the book- Lesley’s erectile dysfunction, William and Gertrude’s love so quickly lost, and Teddy’s accident. The hate of the subtitle is the hate of the townspeople towards Molly and Tilly, and Ham’s obvious hatred of them back. The ‘Haute Couture’ could be, depending on your knowledge of fabrics and dresses, the most boring thing about this book or the most interesting. Ham’s love and passion is quite obvious in the overlong, self indulgent passages about the dresses.

It seems the major issue in The Dressmaker is the hypocrisy of the 1950’s. In fact the novel does not really go much further than this. There are, of course, secondary issues involving morality and sexual eccentricities and abuse. The intended meaning of this book seems to be to provide a serious yet light hearted account of a self determined young woman’s fight against the prejudices of a small town in the fifties. So of course it means that this book is best suited to be read by older women who harbour feminist leanings and bitterness about the stifling atmosphere of the fifties. The serious nature of the book has much to do with the harsh depictions of the struggles of women in the novel from the tragic tale of Molly to the very disturbing tale of Marigold Pettyman. This book, when analysed from a Freudian point of view, would seem to reveal Ham’s deep hatred of men, particularly her father. And so injecting scenes of craziness through the harsh character depictions into an essentially light hearted novel is entirely logical. I found this book to be an enjoyable if not a particularly well written or deep novel. Some of the writing did interest me but overall the plot structure and two dimensional portrayals of the characters belie a substandard amateurish first novel from my fellow Brunswickian Rosalie Ham.

UPDATE: Please feel very welcome to leave a comment about this review.

Pandagating it up!

2005-02-07T16:16:00.000+11:00

IMG_0161-edited
Originally uploaded by Nu-Ju.

Note: Edited to avoid embarassment (and create an air of mystery).

How good is food?

2005-02-07T16:05:00.000+11:00


In other news all my wildest dreams have come true.

Noone wants to start a googlebomb to make me number 1 do they?

jeez its been a little busy

2005-02-03T23:18:00.000+11:00

Fo sho. i just kicked off my final year of high school. Year twelve. Have had heaps of homework the last few days. Managed to get to the big day out last sunday though. Which was kick arse. How good were the hives? 7. And the Beastie boys, even though I could only see the tops of their heads, it was quite possibly the best show ever. Well anyway thank god I'm only doing humanities subjects and am so far doing the most interesting homework ever. Doing such things as:

Politics homework on the constitution: the work isn't that interesting but the specific cases are hellaz interesting. Politics , so interesting. I think the constitution is a really neglected area of focus for us lefty activist type people, it needs a hell of a lot of changing.

Revolutions homework: Reading about the Russian revolution. so interesting.

Italian homework: Speaking Italian Man! So good. Today as we were walking down Canning st to Alex's house we were stopped by these 3 old italian people who wanted to know our ages or something, and my friend Matt who spent a year in Italia and speaks italian fluently stopped and talked to them for like 10 mins in italian. Freg and I were too scared of getting lost to join in but it was really good just to listen.

Literature Homework: Reading Books!

Philosophy homework: Speaks for itself, how good is philosophy? 7, i agree.

Best subjects ever!

So that Iraqi election went well eh?
Pity about it being totally illegitimate. Sucks!

and for good measure: OMGWTFLOLLMFAO!!!!111!!~!!!!

What they're not telling you about the "Election"

2005-02-02T11:43:00.000+11:00

I know this is cheap but...

2005-01-28T21:27:00.000+11:00

You may remember a while ago I posted some confessions from this site. I just rediscovered it and it is soo funny I had to share some.

My friend says he saw a leprauchaun, but I think he's full of shit.

a girl 3 years younger than me gave me oral sex and i dont even talk to her anymore

i once filled up a bathtub with warm water and 2 large bags of dry dog food and laid in it for about an hour one time. funny thing was i didnt regret doing it but am secretly embarrassed about it.

i think religion is a big lie some guy started a long time ago...is that bad?
i mean it feels like religion is there to make death seem less painful
but i feel when u die...u die...nothing to it...there is no god...if there was a god y would there be suffering...he could jus make it all better...is he jus toying with us?

The only reason I associate with women is so I can have sex with them.

about two years ago i got horny due to the lack of attention from my current girlfriend, and proceded to jacking off in a bannana

My boyfriend cut his hair over the weekend. It used to be down to his shoulders and unbelievably sexy. Today his dad forced him to cut it, it is now to the tops of his ears. The only remnants of his long, gorgeous hair is his bangs. He looks terrible. I should be able to look past his horrible haircut and see my joshie, but all I see is this guy I'm stuck with, with no attraction to now. I am a conceited bitch and I hope I die. sorry joshie..

i download music, then i listen to it. after that, if its good ill say to myself, "ok its good, ill buy the CD" but i never do.

i know it's ridiculous, but i love you... no one has ever made me feel the way i do than when i am with you. the only thing is i could never say it until you said it, because i'm afraid that that will push you away and make you think that it is stupid since we are only in high school. it's true though, i love you

My dad took me in to the living room when i was about 15 to tell me that there was "nothing to worry about" and "nothing that i needed to say to my mother, no need to upset her" and to "make sure i was ok", and told me that he'd been sleeping with his best friend's daughter. She was pretty hot, so it was a strange mix of disgust and jealousy that i felt.

i actually think im an alcoholic. my parents do too but i deny it to them. i wish i could just get back with my ex bf. he was amazing and had such a lovely penis. it wasnt amazing huge but it was perfectly formed. i think about him all the time. i know i shouldnt seeing as it was me who split but i cant help it any longer. im such a dick. i hate the major lil miss perfect IT girl at school. every1 always goes on about how its impossible to hate her coz she so lovely to everyone but shes so fake and up her own ass. i wish she would just get laid so she would stop looking down on me and thinking im a slag. even tho she hasnt said it, i know she thinks it. damn the bitch.

I hate my boss Chris. I think it is because I have feelings for him and want to give him a bj.

Is this gay? I mean, I only want to try it once...

I was going down on this fat chick last week (whom I was only with because I hadn't had sex in a while, and I knew she'd do practically anything -- fat girls DO try harder), and I found myself watching the snooker on the TV out of the corner of my eye.

Even though I recognise my moral depravity, I feel strangely good about all this.

Thats enough for today. God I love that site.

So long Franja, we hardly knew ye.

2005-01-28T16:45:00.000+11:00

Yes indeed. Everyone's favourite croatian chemistry teacher has been fired or at least asked to move on. The school keeps getting better and better. Phat principal, new classrooms, fired Franja, Nolan gone to a catholic school in werribee or something, and I heard a rumour that Forster was leaving but I won't get my hopes up about that. Anyway, I won't compose a song but here for your enjoyment is a list of some of Zlata Franja's choice quotes:

'I don't eat very often. I will be OK after 7th period today.'

'We done something today, even if I'm dead already.'

'If you dissapoint me I will kill you.'

'In my culture we don't apologise.'

'Today I can't even see with my glasses, probably I should sleep more.'

'I swear I'll kill everyone and everything.'

'Read questions 3 times, answer only once.'

'Sometimes I don't have 100% of my brain, probably because I didn't sleep.'

How do I post over the fold?

2005-01-28T16:41:00.000+11:00

How do I make a fold? Anyway I got this by email from the wildfirejo list. Here it is in full until I work out how to make a fold.

A Brief Guide to the Iraqi Elections 1. Iraqis are voting not for a party or an individual but for a list. • There are a very few individuals and parties standing as such but the majority are part of lists. There is, for example, a ‘main Shia list’ and several other Shia lists, some Kurdish lists, and so on. • The lists contain, between them, over 7000 candidates, many of whom are not even named for security reasons. • That means people are more or less compelled to vote not according to the credibility or policies of a person or party but for an ethic group, a national group or a religious faction. 2. Iraqi people have no opportunity to elect their president or prime minister. • The elections will create a 275 member National Assembly which will select a 3 member presidency council, which in turn will select a prime minister. It’s assumed, but nowhere stated in the ‘transitional law’ that these selections would come from among the 275 elected members. 3. None of the elected members of the National Assembly will represent a locality. • Former US viceroy Paul Bremer decided the entire country should be a single constituency so the electoral system creates a national proportional representation. • Anyone who gets a 275th of the vote will get a seat, regardless of how many others are elected from their city or province. • The system creates a likelihood of over-representation at the national level for groups which turn out in high numbers. For example, in Kurdistan, where security is much better and people are more in favour of the elections, far more people are likely to vote, giving the Kurds greater representation than their numbers warrant. Of course, they were unrepresented, to all intents and purposes, for decades (thanks to Winston Churchill and all who followed him) but the solution isn’t to simply shift the inequalities. 4. Large areas of the country are not expected to be able to vote. • Interim leader Ayad Allawi stated that there are 4 provinces where the security situation militates against voting – he didn’t mention that they include Baghdad, and up to half of the population. • The people of Falluja have not been registered to vote or given voting cards. • A lot of Iraqis believe that a lot of the attacks and unrest have been orchestrated by the occupying forces using covert operations, stock-in-trade of both the interim prime-minister Allawi and the current US viceroy (‘Ambassador’) John Negroponte. The areas where security ‘militates against voting’ are those where voters can’t be relied on to vote for someone ‘unpalatable’. • There’s been intimidation in some areas – Felicity Arbuthnot reported a case of a family visited by their local shopkeeper who asked for their ration book ‘for safekeeping’. Ration books are needed as ID for voters and the family refused. Later the shopkeeper came back in tears – he’d been threatened, on his family’s lives, to collect all the ration books. 5. The rules for polling and who can or can’t be a candidate were set, essentially, by the US. • Rules were set by the Independent Iraqi Electoral Commission, or some similar arrangement of those words. The group, bar one or perhaps two members, were appointed by Paul Bremer, before handing over “power” in June. • The Commission has absolute power to bar any candidate or organisation. It has banned a number of candidates but is so secretive that nobody knows who has been forbidden or for what reason. There’s been no due process, no establishing a case against a candidate before barring. • Candidates and organisations taking part have to swear allegiance to Bremer's law • One of the bars is “moral turpitude”. That in itself is not unusual- many countries don’t allow a person with certain convictions, for example, from standing. The bar does not, though, apply to either Ahmed Chalabi, a US appointee to the interim government who has been convicted (in his absence) of massive fraud, or Ayad Allawi, US-appointed interim prime minister, who was a covert CIA operative commanding bombings including a school bus and a cinema in Iraq during Saddam’s rule. 6. Expat voters are expected to decide the result. • A huge number of people living outside Iraq will be allowed to vote. There are 3 polling stations in the UK, several in the US and others in fourteen countries around the world. Contacting of expats to invite them to register appears to have been selective. • The UN opposed the expat vote as highly vulnerable to fraud but the election planners chose not to listen. • Because expat voters don’t face the security risks of Iraqis in-country, a higher proportion of those eligible are expected to turn out. • It’s a bit unclear exactly what are the criteria for being allowed to vote but it appears to be possible even for people who have never lived in Iraq but whose parents did. 7. Certain parties and individuals have also been funded by the US. • The International Republican Institute, an organisation linked to the US Republican party has been funding certain groups in their campaigning, giving a massive advantage. • It is also believed to be organising the exit polls. • It orchestrated, among other things, the coup in Venezuela. 8. Whoever wins, the occupation will go on. • The US has built enormous bases in Iraq which it has no intention of withdrawing from. • The US has already spent more than $100,000,000,000 on the war in Iraq – that’s a hundred thousand million to most of us, a billion to the US. Bush is requesting another 80 thousand million dollars to carry on. • US officials, mainly remaining anonymous, have made it abundantly clear that the elections are free only within the parameters set by the US government. The US is prepared to ‘tolerate’ a limited form of theocracy, according to one. • Iraqi candidates are aware that there are ‘red lines’ as an unnamed Shia official put it – the election winners will not be at liberty to set any policy they choose. 9. The new government is already bound. • The next plebiscite (on a permanent constitution) has to be held under Bremer's law too: any three of the eighteen governorates can veto the constitution, even if the constitution wins 90% of the total vote. • It was unlawful for Bremer or the occupying powers to enact any laws, because an occupier is not allowed to change the laws of the country seized. Nevertheless, Bremer ruled, and the interim governing council signed into law, that everything in Iraq is to be privatised, open to 100% foreign ownership or at least foreign leasehold for forty years. That includes resources, amenities and public services. • Because of the lack of security, little has yet been sold off but the law, though illegitimate, is expressed as binding on future governments. • Iraq is the most indebted country in the world in terms of its debt to export ratio. Saddam’s wars built up massive debts, now at $180 billion. Western countries and the IMF were happy too carry on funding Saddam with loans and to sell him weapons, including the chemical weapons and related hardware to attack the Kurds. Added to that are compensation claims ($30 bn) from the invasion of Kuwait, mainly ‘owed’ to incredibly wealthy oil companies and such like. Now, with the constant addition of compound interest throughout the sanctions, when Iraq was unable to pay off any debts at all, the debt is immense. • The Paris Club and others have agreed to a package of debt relief which is linked to a programme of ‘structural adjustment’ whereby Iraq has to follow Argentina, Romania and others into disastrous policies of global capitalism. 30% of debt relief is unconditional, 30% depends on adopting a ‘standard IMF policy’ and 20% hangs on a three year review of implementation of the IMF policy. Iraq hasn’t got any bargaining power to resist. • Two of the IMF’s conditions are the ‘opening up’ (read cheap sell off to Bush’s pals) of the Iraqi oil industry and the rollback of the food ration, currently the only major social welfare programme, presumably because it means people with no money get stuff free instead of paying for it. The leading candidates have agreed to all this – that’s why they got the money to become leading candidates. • The debts left over after the promised, but conditional, relief are still more than enough to keep Iraq in servitude for many, many decades to come. 10. Iraq has no free press. • Allawi and co issued a rule that the press have to publish versions of events which put the government’s point of view. • Press ‘disrespect’ to Allawi is banned. • Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiya and an unknown number of smaller outlets have been banned already for refusing to conform. 11. The Iraqi people fought for this election. • Last year, Iraqi people held massive demonstrations for elections. Other demonstrations had been fired on by coalition troops so it’s no exaggeration to say people risked their lives for elections. • It was only when they realised they faced unrest from thousands and thousands of ordinary people, including the ethnic and geographical groups which had been quiet till then, that the occupying powers backed down and started working on ways to distort the election and turn it to their advantage. • Opposition is nation-wide to the distortions imposed on the election. Thousands of anti-occupation activists are being arrested across Iraq (under martial law). • Though the preferable option, clearly, must be an end to the occupation, there were demands from the Iraqi National Foundation Congress – a far more representative group than the interim government, never mind the electoral commissioners, that would have made the elections substantially more fair: 1. That the elections are supervised by a commission of figures with known credentials of impartiality and integrity, internationally and in the Arab and Islamic world. 2. That this commission supervises all the local committees in all phases of the elections. 3. That essential changes are made to the still anonymous Permanent Election Commission¹ appointed by the American ex-governor contrary to any criteria of transparency and integrity. As a minimum: a. to include a representative from each competing list b. to include a number of Iraqi active and veteran judges with known integrity c. to remove the right to arbitrarily bar any candidate in the election except through legal process of incrimination. 4. That measures are taken to ensure safe and fair conduct of elections in all cities and country towns as follows: a. an immediate halt to all military operations against towns and neighbourhood. b. withdrawal of all occupation forces from all towns and neighbourhoods at least one month before election date. c. release of all political prisoners regardless o their political affiliation especially those not specifically charged. …with thanks to Dahr Jamail, Ewa Jasiewicz, Gabriel Carlyle from Voices in the Wilderness and countless friends in Iraq for helping me make sense of it all.

Julia Gillard in hot lesbian action search term-gate

2005-01-27T16:13:00.000+11:00

Someon came to this site via this site. That is all.

Shit man shit.

2005-01-23T01:19:00.000+11:00

Well it's 1 am on sunday morning. I'm going to canberra on monday morning beacuse my fantastical cousin has been nominated for the young australian of the year. Getting back on wednesday night. School starts on thursday. I have 150 pages to go of 'The Dressmaker' and then I have to write a 600-800 word review of it. And if you do the maths all of this must be done tomorrow. Plus I have a chapter of Italian homework to do. Wish me luck.

I thought I was nerdier

2005-01-22T19:33:00.000+11:00

Actual good news that i'm possibly excited about

2005-01-21T13:07:00.000+11:00

Yeah. I'm glad Latham died. We could actually be in for a good leader, Latham did really badly since the election and to be honest he should have done better, he lost the election badly. He had some good policies but he didn't sell them and he didn't get rid of Howard for us. He was sick after the elcetion. Now we have a choice, now of course i would orgasm repeatedly if Gillard got elected but I wouldn't mind if Rudd won either. We can't afford another Beazley loss. He's an old tired man. Oh my.

Gimmicks

2005-01-18T23:20:00.000+11:00

Ok the person that can find me the best wallpaper for my desktop gets a whole post and massive linkage devoted to them.

In other news Spinach7 in its current incarnation is no more. Sad.

Bob Ellis in Adbusters!

2005-01-18T13:40:00.000+11:00

Hotness. I'd now like to offer my preferences for the leader of the ALP based on the current viable options.

UPDATE:
1. Tillops
2. Julia Gillard
3. Kevin Rudd
4. Anyone but Beazley

I hate that fat bastard. I'm as of now starting the ABB - anyone but Beazley camp. Please join me.

Software

2005-01-15T17:40:00.000+11:00

Ok guys, now that I have the new computer I need to get software. Any reccomendations at all are most welcome. I'm particularly interested in what program to use for P2P file sharing. But anything else that is your must-use, must-have software program tell me.

PHSC update

2005-01-13T21:55:00.000+11:00

We'll have Maragaret Lacey as principal for a term next year.She's the old principal of Moreland City College. This is a really sad story but she doesn't sound too bad.

Borat stikes again.

2005-01-13T18:19:00.000+11:00

Via the view from here.

Far too lazy

2005-01-13T17:12:00.000+11:00

I've realised that i'm far too lazy to write a real post about this subject. And I applaud Chelsea Peretti's commitment in actually following through on what she's said (yet to be fully evidenced though). I will say that Aid definetly has its place in the world and its absoloutley vital to hundreds of thousands of people today. But it does have it's limitations. Have a look at this article by Arundhati Roy. Aid in effect is something of a propaganda tool, so are calls to cancel developing countries' debts. As I've said in the comments box of the post below, the best way to alleviate global poverty is through fair trade. George Monbiot in his book The Age of Consent resurrects the the idea of one of the world's geniuses John Maynard Keynes; the international debt clearing house. I'm sure you can find out mor about these ideas through an internet search. I have to stop writing now as I have a splitting headache.

Muhuhaha

2005-01-13T13:11:00.000+11:00

I'm pretty sure Ishita Acharrya just googled herself and found this post by me. Congrats on your 43 for Japanese though Ishita.

Here she is. on the right.
She's ugly and I want to make the lesbian fingerbang fuck with her?
respond damn you piece of Ishita. Hahaha
(I realise that i'm futilely trying to provoke an MAB style attack from her, but it was worth a try)

I'm going to brazenly steal this idea!

2005-01-12T02:03:00.000+11:00

Commission a Post.
The basic idea is that you tell me your special area of interest and what type of post you would link to in your blog and I will fulfill your wildest fantasy.

I knew his name was pronounced goff

2005-01-11T23:37:00.001+11:00

Gough Whitlam was born in Kew, one of Melbourne's wealthier suburbs. (He has always been known by his middle name, which is pronounced Goff.) - Wikipedia

There's this teacher at our school who's a big fan and he swears the proper pronounciation is gochh like he's coughing up phlegm. Very amusing. If you ever meet a Sasha/Sacha Robertson try and get him to say it. We also have a highly literate canadian teacher who's doing his PHD who says 'ecscape'.
Whilst we were in Vietnam one of the tour guides we had referred to people 'ploffing' the field. What we realised eventually was that he'd seen that the word cough was pronounced coff so logically the word ploughing was pronounced ploffing.

Commie rats.

2005-01-11T18:18:00.000+11:00

An interesting piece by Louis Nowra, the well respected australian playwright who Authored one of our texts last year, Cosi. via John Quiggin.
In part this is an answer to my Che Guevara question. I guess he was an arsehole after all. I think the reason why it is still seen as acceptable to have communist leaders portrayed without the stigma of a fascist leader is the same reason why many left liberals in the world support the UN, of course in practice it's a piece of shit but there are noble ideals behind them whereas for fascism there are no such ideals that would be seen as politically appropriate at the moment.

UPDATE: David McKnight has a very good answering piece.

2005-01-10T03:29:00.000+11:00

Neal in the snow.

New Computer

2005-01-09T23:02:00.000+11:00

Getting a new computer finally after having this old hunk of crap for 5 years its' definitely time to get a new one. Here are some specs I think I want but am not quite sure what they all mean:

CPU 3.2 + GHZ eithet Pentium 4c or SMD Athlon 3400+ with an FSB of at leat 800 and capable of HT

RAM 1 GB 3000DDR400 or PC3200

3d card- Nvidia GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon X700 Pro

Hard Drive- 240 gb RAID or SATA

Fast Ethernet
Dual layer DVD burner- multiformat
4 USB ports
Firewire Port
Integrated HD Audio

If anyone wants to explain to me what this all means, be my guest, particularly the numbers and acronyms part. Other comments on what I want/need and don't want/need are also welcome.

State politics

2005-01-09T21:50:00.000+11:00

I think I may spend more time talking about state politics as its far more interesting and less depressing than federal politics at the moment + I plan to make use of my hot contacts.
In Crikey today I recieved this shocking news:
'The Bracks government in Victoria, incompetent but less scandal-prone, is doing better, but it too is behind for the first time, 51% to 49%. That's a swing of about 9 per cent.'
Dear lord man what the hell happened here? What kind of Victorian would even think of voting for this little pile of snot

There are now only 24 coalition members in the 88 seat Legislative Assembly, and this is how it should damn well stay. They're arseholes, complete cocks, if you were comparing them to federal members they'd all be Alexander Downers. Half of them have grey hair! Half!

Link whoring and what I've found on returning to Australia

2005-01-09T13:46:00.000+11:00

Agent FareEvader getting sexed byMs Fits

Le Driver looking at fish without me

Andrew Bartlett talking about Whitlam and getting indignant about Andrew Bolt calling Team America a validation and vindication of Conservative politics

Knifey dreaming of being a girl and playing with excited dogs

John Quiggin talking about extending the world's generosity past the tsunami

The Age talking to Natalie Portman

The Chaser reporting on Yushchenko vowing never to eat KFC again. 'Who'd have guessed one of the eleven secret herbs and spices would be dioxin?”

Robert Corr becoming a creative commie in opposition to Bill Gates

Ausculture reviving the long lost nickname 'old rice and monkey nuts'

A new blog springing up under the name of AnonymousLefty

Darp continuing the battle against the PYL

Melbourne Grogblogging being held at an overage venue giving me a convenient excuse not to go

Suki reporting on a helicopter with a band aid

Ms Cynic becoming the main character in a hot, new, soon to be written novel

John Howard not updating his blog, arse

Nadine posting about sex and the magic faraway tree

The Daily Flute having moved his Flutiness

Fulmination Dave being a nerd

Palmer analysing the polls

TSP long having completed his 1000 hottest songs

More Australian Ramblings reviewing 2004

Kate presenting her summer in mix tape form

Nic White telling us about God's lack of involvement in the tsunami and more old rice and monkey nuts

Buck Fudd also reviewing 2004

Sherriff reviews places he's had sex

The End

Sorry if you're not in there, I was either too lazy or I couldn't think of anything interesting to say.

Memory Block

2005-01-09T13:11:00.000+11:00

Trawling throught the m3r archives I also found this (03)9292 2000 Andrew Bolt's phone number. I have no memory of anyone doing anything with it but maybe it doesn't work, apparently it goes through to his Personal assistant first.

Something else I found was an amusing piece of satire by my good friend Neal in response to this post by Fregmonto.

New American and why we should bomb England

Firstly I would like to say I approve of the new American we've got to replace Neal. She has offered to challenge him to mortal combat to win our hearts. I'm taking bets, Megan Nu-Ju (Max's title) is at $1.03 and Neal's blown out to $251. She's from San Francisco, the city of sin in the eyes of Iowans, and is Neal's nemesis in every way. I'm glad that the school has stopped discriminating against personal hygeine by finding a replacement for Neal. (No offense Neal, but I suspect from your ruddy features and constant heammoroging that you have Ebola.)

In a related topic, this time in agreeance with Neal, I have come to the logical conclusion that the only way we can bring about a world free of discrimination and nuclear weapons is to bomb all the countries with nuclear weapons. I vote that we start with England because it is rainy and I have relatives there who are part of the National Front. I think we have to accept that England (like Neal) is past its use-by date and for its own sake must be put down. Only then will we achieve our anarcho-syndicalist utopia. Gather your explosives comrades!
posted by lokomotiv moscow at 6/17/2004 04:47:35 PM

NealPerlman says...
Although the Jewish population is concentrated in New York and California, she is far more likely to be Mexican or black. Plus, she's from the San Francisco area, which is filled with hobos, riff-raff and other draft dodgers which oppose everything that makes America great. These are the type of people who have never tasted a hot dog with real all-American floor sweepings. These are the people who burn flags on Independence Day. These are the type of people who you would find making out in massive homosexual orgies while sharing drug needles. Thank you God for putting AIDS on this planet to strike down this horrible riffraff much as you struck down the residents of Sodom and Megorrah.
I, on the other hand, am an upstanding Iowan, the heart of America, the true Americans. Iowa has sent proportionally the most troops to I-raq to save that country from Mohammedians and other infidels. I drive an American automobile to save our country from being taken over by Asians, and use the local bank branch to keep the Jewish overlords from stealing my money.
America is the land of oppurtunity, and people like that Californian interloper want to destroy that.
Why should you be worried, living down here in Australia? There shall come a time, when Martians invade the Earth, and the hippies of the San Francisco Bay Area will have taken all of our nukes destined for real purpose (such as experimentation on whales) and used them on genetically engineered crops, and then what. What will we do? We shall perish. No, the answer is clear. Take Saddam Hussein, the city of San Francisco, and Tasmania, and blow them to bits with a nuke. Heck, we'll still have 3290983 more.
Plus, I was in wrestling for five years, and I have glasses so she couldn't hit me, so I would win.

The golden days of m3r and Ludowyke

2005-01-09T01:08:00.000+11:00

Well I was looking through my nedstats for the m3r site as I do every now and then to see if people still go there and I found this little link as a referral site. Following the links off this site I was pleasently reminded of an amusing incident with the man himself.

I must say looking back at the archives, there was some funny funny stuff in there. *reminisces*

I'm afraid this may be a series of nostalgic reposts. So much funny stuff, needs to be exposed to a wider audience but if there isn't much response I'll have to acknowledge that i'm being way too self indulgent and just post a few links instead.

Ludowyke Discriminates

Ok here's the deal. Fregmonto and i having been let out of italian early, ventured downstairs to see what was hapenning. And there was like this eating disorder resource manual for schools being lauched in the theatre. There were in fact two ministers attending this event,the honourable Bronwyn Pike minister for health and the publicity hungry Jacinta Allan the minister for Education Services and Employment & Youth Affairs. So anyway Freg and i sneak in there and check out what's going on. I grab a pamphlet type thing to see what its about. We've arrived at the end of the presentation. But there's still all these TV cameras there interviewing people, they were at that moment interviewing Bronwyn, So Freg and I walk past behind her. and lo and behold there's a split second clip of me walking behind her on the news that night. But anyway we go over and hang out with Claire and Pearl and such who were there to look pretty for pictures. Now here's the descrimination. So we're all in the theatre waiting to be interviewed for channel 7, the token male student has nicked off, so its left up to me or Freg to fill his place. Freg says this to Ludo, and hes all like 'sure just line up behind Claire and stuff'. Then i'm like, i know i'm using the word like a lot, its like totally hilar, anyway i step in but then I realise i have to go do some chem homework with Alex or i'll get killed by the crazy croatian teacher who likes to tell us that she's very disapointed with us at whatever opportunity she gets. So i say 'Hey Fregs more articulate anyway, i'll be off' So I walk off and Freg takes my place. And at this moment unbeknownst to me Ludowyke realises that Freg is actually kind of scruffy looking, carrying round his shostakovich CD with a stale bread roll and an orange balanced on top, tearing off pieces of the roll and getting crumbs all over himself. So anyway Ludowykes like 'fuck I can't give the TV people this weirdo to interview' so he makes up this bullshit excuse that, Freg needs parental permission to be interviewed. Obviously this is a fallacy as Claire was shown on the news later that night getting interviewed and she tells me that Ludowyke just grabbed her off the stairs and told her to come and be part of it that day. Discrimination I say.

2 Comments:

lokomotiv moscow said...: Max got Ludowyke's reason completely wrong, but he did discriminate. The real reason that he did so, was he saw the shostakovich CD and he thought "Ahh, he supports the communists in Russia (Ludowyke's still stuck in the cold war) I better not let him talk to the eating disorder people or he'll expose our seedy connections to the corporate junkfood behemoths" All true, and connected to the young liberals and maths too. More information will come.

As an interesting footnote to the government ministers part of this post see here. Also I regained my respect for Jacinta Allan after I witnessed her laying the smackdown on the opposition education spokesman, whoever that fat fuck is.

communists Mcdonalds and young liberals

As reported by Max I was discriminated against by Ludowyke because of my links to soviet composers (See my comment on his post) . I have since done some research and found that the school has been hijacked by young liberals who want to make us all fat with junk food.

1.Teishan's young liberals are influencing the staff and are getting media to come to the school next term.

2. Reports on the news have shown footballers have been sponsoring mcdonalds in school

3. The recent film Super size me has exposed the link between conservative governments and fastfood

4. John Howard doesn't want to do anything about junk food

Ludowyke knows that communists are all fit because otherwise Stalin and Mao would have killed them and that fatness is a symptom of capitalism. The Liberals are making us fat so that our brains will slow down and we'll vote for thwem.

posted by lokomotiv moscow at 6/25/2004 05:27:03 PM

Fully % Hilar

Hey chek this out guys. If Ludowyke tries to google himself look what page comes up as number 1.

Well my friends now if Ludowyke tries to google himself look what comes up as number one. This. Yes our dear principal is leaving us to go to a better place. He will be missed (especially if the mother of coat hanger girl takes over, grrrr) Apparently Hart's parents know his replacement though and she is fresh.

Also have left a new post on m3r, only really of interest to old m3r fellows.

Old rice and monkey nuts

2005-01-08T20:56:00.000+11:00

Hahahahahaha.

MTV

2005-01-08T15:05:00.000+11:00

I became a a little obsessed with this woman whilst in Vietnam.

Other things to mention about MTV include the scorchingly brilliant lyrics of the song that was number 1 on the charts whilst I was in the country. I can only put this down to the poor english of many of MTV Asia's viewers, those people with english as their first language who enjoy this song should be ashamed of themselves. Here is a sample:

Do you ever feel like breaking down?
Do you ever feel out of place?
Like somehow you just don't belong
And no one understands you

Do you ever wanna run away?
Do you lock yourself in your room?
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you screaming

No you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels alright
You don't know what it's like to be like me

To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked
When you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like

Welcome to my life

I feel sick.

Back!

2005-01-07T22:28:00.000+11:00

Well I'm back from nam. Flew in around midday today. And goddamn is it cold. It's like winter out there. I was expecting temperatures in the high 30's but my sources tell me that its been like this all summer. It is a welcome change from the humidity of the tropics. I always get a great feeling when arriving home from overseas. Its not as if there weren't any Aussies in Vietnam, there were, lots of them. But it's just something about the light in Australia that you don't get anywhere else. So Vietnam was excellent. I really have a lot of respect and admiration for the vietnamese people, after going through what was practically a genocidal war they've emerged from it still dragging behind some unpleasent politics but overall they're the friendliest most accomdating best humoured people you could imagine.
Initially from reading the paper I got a favourable impression about the direction the governement was heading. Poverty down economic growth up etc. But the newspaper was a propaganda piece, nopt entirely of course, I'm sure 95% of it was actually true but you didn't see a whole lot of bad news reported in there. The most striking thing about the politics in Vietnam is the massive north-south split, there is still a sense of a northern occupation of the south and the douth vietnamese are either old south vietnamese army fighters, people that have been adversely affected by the communist takeover or betrayed NLF fighters who've been forced to cede power to the North and then we have their children who on the surface are only interested in economic development issues rather that democracy or any political idealism, but the fact is Democracyh is coming to Vietnam its inevitable. They have MTV. Whcih I must write about tomorrow.
Sorry for the lack of editing, I'm tired.

In Hanoi

2004-12-10T20:48:00.000+11:00

I'm in Hanoi, writing this blog post from the internet cafe at the end of our street. This is my third day here. Not really sure what to say... We went here for lunch today. It was a great place with a great purpose. Here is a picture of the staff. One of the guys that works there is a blogger: Our man in Hanoi. Feels like a complete othere world. Apart from email, I'm completely out of touch. If anything important happens in Australia you'll have to let me know.

Discussion/Vietnam

2004-12-07T19:45:00.000+11:00

I've had an interesting debate/discussion over at Darp's blog. Have a look here. young lib brigade's view was roughly one I had until a few years ago. I remember a clear point of revelation being the finding of this article. And afterwards of course doing more research.

I probably will not post much if at all in the next month as I'm going to Vietnam. So to my 5 regular readers I say please do not abandon this blog. I will be back. Maybe with some pretty pictures for you.

Furl it

2004-12-07T17:53:00.000+11:00

Have found this great site via Barista. You can set up your own archives of websites. I love it. You may view my nascent archive here.
Other sites I've found via bloggers today include:
Pornolize via Ruth
Fully % hilar.

Crazy people in cars

2004-12-07T14:23:00.000+11:00

This story brought back some bad memories. Of course this woman is a complete psycho but I think a few people are when it comes to their cars. My first run in with an insane driver was when I was in about grade 5. I wrote about it for some school assignment thing so take into account that it was for a conservative school teacher. And I'm not going to be bothered re-editing it to make it any better than the B+ it got.

One of the scariest moments in my life happened one fine spring day in that wonderful year of our lord nineteen hundred and ninety eight. My friend Christopher and I were walking back to my house from school. I cant remember what the weather was like it may have been a tad warm.

So as Christopher and I were walking casually, leisurely down my street I plucked off a large flower from one of the bushes protruding through a fence. Holding this flower in my hand we both spotted a white van coming down the street towards us. Christopher dared me to throw the flower at the van. I was keen to show off my skills so I did but I threw the flower just a bit too soon as I was eager to get a direct hit rather then throwing the flower at the empty space behind the van. Unfortunately the flower was thrown out into the space in front of the truck and for a moment it hung in the air suspended in time. And Wham! The windshield of the van smacked straight into the flower or vice versa depending on your interpretation of various rules of physics.

Screeeeeech! The van screeched to a halt as it rolled past us. Holy shit we both said to ourselves or maybe aloud Run! Fortunately my house was a block or so away. We ran as fast as we could faster than wed ever run in our lives. Pure adrenaline pumping through our veins, minds going crazy with fear. We ran up to my house inside the gate as the van reversed, following us. I plunged my key into the lock of my front door turned and opened the door. Me the idiot that I was couldnt get the key out of the lock the guy in the van was almost right up along side my house. Chris was already inside the house yelling at me to get the key out and get inside I was so scared that I just couldnt get the key out so scared that I just abandoned all hope of ever getting it out and left the key inside the front of the lock I came inside and closed the door behind me. You idiot max! Chris yelled at me he opened the door and went outside to wrestle with the key. The guy in the van was just outside our house watching. It seemed that Chris was wrestling with that key for an eternity it was probably only ten seconds. But the guy in the van got a good look at him and Chris got a good look at the guy in the van. Chris later told me that the guy was bald. Finally Chris got the key out, came inside and closed the door. I locked it hurriedly. But in my eyes we were still not out of danger. The guy any second now was going to get out of the van and try and break in I thought.

Chris and I ran out to the back yard and hid behind the shed in the snakey grass for about half an hour. Nothing much happened after that the guy probably rang the doorbell a few times but probably went home angry. As for Chris and I both our nerves were shot for that day and we were probably in shock for a couple of days.

For about a year after this I walked along the street parallel to mine to get home and then sprinted up the closest side street to my house to get home. And I still have a terrible fear of bald guys in white vans.

The second incident was also kind of scary. It was quite recent. Me and a couple of friends were walking down a small street with road bumps in it. So as you can imagine the cars driving past were going quite slow. We were eating some cold pizza and one of my friends unbeknownst to me chucks it in the air and it lands on this guy's windscreen who's driving past. He brakes and gets out and starts yelling at us. I think he's a complete nutter as I didn't see the offending bit of pizza being thrown. We just denied throwing anything (me quite genuinely) and he was very angry but he ended up just calling us cunts and driving off.

The third incident was possibly the most disturbing. Me and some friends once again were walking down Moreland road on the way home from school. I for some reason as we were crossing a street behind a car turning into Moreland rd tapped my knuckles against the back of the car on one of those absurd bumper/spoiler I have no idea what they are things on the back of' sporty' cars. So I knock on this then keep walking. The woman pulls up a bit ahead of us, gets out and starts going absolutely psycho. 'Which one of you did this?' anyway events are a bit blurry but she realised it was me and started going completely off at me. I told her to inspect her car and see that there was absolutely no damage whatsoever. But anyway she ended up giving we a really hard wack on the arm. What a bogan. She was probably on her way to the western suburbs to suck some dick for some heroin.

Another vaguely amusing incident like this happened to a guy at our school. There were a bunch of kids on the Lygon st tram coming home and one, this dickhead stoner guy threw a sandwich or something from the tram window at this guy either riding a bike or in a pink car or something, the story has gone around a bit. But the crazy thing was. The guy got all pissed off so he gets off his bike or out of his car or whatever, gets on the tram and tries to find out who threw it. For some reason he settles on this goofy kid called Bryce and proceeds to punch him really hard in the face.

Stats

2004-12-04T01:47:00.000+11:00

I'm so bored. Its 1 am again and because of my fondness for sleeping until midday I won't get to sleep until 4 am. But from about now until then I will be very tired and will lack the ability to think or take in information. So this time is dead time. And it's the holidays and I'm going to Vietnam on tuesday so I should be using my time as effectively as possible. Damn frustrating. So I came upon this interesting little thing in blogger profiles. Because I am bored I will be assessing the stats of various blogger/blogspot blogs.

Disclaimer: These assessments are only of bloggers whose profiles I could access. It would include Weezil but his blog does strange things to my computer ie. makes it crash. Also these stats are kind of dodgy especially considering the average posts per week number as this is only assessed in whole numbers.

Ms Fits
Words written- 47,897
Total posts- 204
Average posts per week- 8
Average words per post- 235
Average words per week- 1878

Me
Words written- 14,211
Total posts- 112
Average posts per week- 4
Average words per post- 127
Average words per week- 508

Le Driver
Words written- 9,245
Total posts- 26
Average posts per week- 2
Average words per post- 355
Average words per week- 711

Just went to Andrew Bartlett's blog to see his stats and found this
'Meanwhile in the Senate, a law was being passed which empowered police to intercept the private emails, SMS and voicemail of Australians without needing a warrant. This new law, which is directly relevant to the vast majority of Australians, received no television coverage at all that I'm aware of - I guess it just wasn't entertaining or funny enough.'
Good lord what the hell happened there? Warrants (hahahaha no pun intended) more investigating, but on to more statistics.

Knifey
Words written- 34,063
Total posts- 108
Average posts per week- 21
Average words per post- 315
Average words per week- 6,623

Semptember 23rd was quite an amazing (blogging) day for Knifey by the way.

Jeremy/Melbourne Lefty
Words written- 70,794
Total posts- 346
Average posts per week- 17
Average words per post- 205
Average words per week- 3,478

Darp
Words written- 195,795
Total posts- 277
Average posts per week- 5
Average words per post- 707
Average words per week- 3,534

Suki Lombard
Words written- 6,534
Total posts- 63
Average posts per week- 2
Average words per post- 103
Average words per week- 206

mscynic
Words written- 26,096
Total posts- 78
Average posts per week- 2
Average words per post- 335
Average words per week- 670

Clem Bastow
Words written- 19,361
Total posts- 76
Average posts per week- 1
Average words per post- 255
Average words per week- 255

David Murray
Words written- 44,976
Total posts- 174
Average posts per week- 17
Average words per post- 258
Average words per week- 4394

la nadine
Words written- 20,002
Total posts- 100
Average posts per week- 3
Average words per post- 200
Average words per week- 600

Fulmination Dave
Words written- 24,034
Total posts- 60
Average posts per week- N/A
Average words per post- 400
Average words per week- N/A

ccr
Words written- 13,981
Total posts- 82
Average posts per week- 8
Average words per post- 171
Average words per week- 1364

Lee Lee
Words written- 8,958
Total posts- 38
Average posts per week- 6
Average words per post- 236
Average words per week- 1414

Polywise
Words written- 31,275
Total posts- 117
Average posts per week- N/A
Average words per post- 267
Average words per week- N/A

kate/ Is this anything?
Words written- 2,324
Total posts- 14
Average posts per week- 7
Average words per post- 166
Average words per week- 1162

Buck Fudd
Words written- 5,810
Total posts- 27
Average posts per week- 2
Average words per post- 215
Average words per week- 430

Book Book Cheep Cheep
Words written- 3,230
Total posts- 27
Average posts per week- 3
Average words per post- 120
Average words per week- 358

Sherriff
Words written- 7,057
Total posts- 28
Average posts per week- 4
Average words per post- 252
Average words per week- 1008

kranki
Words written- 64,679
Total posts- 215
Average posts per week- 1
Average words per post- 300
Average words per week- 300

And the winners are...

Words written- Darp with 195,795
Total posts- Jeremy with 346
Average posts per week- Knifey with 21
Average words per post- Darp with 707
Average words per week- Knifey with 6,623

Correct me if I made any mistakes. Goodnight.

On Holidays

2004-12-03T19:57:00.000+11:00

This holidays have been very very lazy. I've been doing hardly anything. I've had very little in the way of social interactions. I did this last week. I was one of the zombies who got kicked out of David Jones by some plain clothes heavies. Just out of interest have a look at this interview with Kalle Lasn (the adbsters guy). He has a cool accent.
I had a party the other night with a couple of friends. It was meant to be an anti-war/ anti-american themed movie marathon. We had picked out this selection. But we only ended up watching this. Which was fantastic but hardly anti-war or anti-american it was maybe pro-new zealanders or anti-zombies/aliens though. Not sure quite what happened after this. We drank lots of cask wine and various other drinks. We did this and this. We ended up watching this and half of this and a few episodes of Alan Partridge. The rest of the week i've been occupying myself with this and this and precious little else. I've been trying to read that bastard Chomsky but it's helluz depressing. I started reading A doll's house in the hairdressers the other day. She wanted to know why I was going to Vietnam (holiday) and if they celebrated christmas there. 'The asians don't celebrate christmas do they?' I replied ' i'm sure the christian ones do' . To be honest i'm looking forward to not being in this country for christmas for once. Christmas sucks.

Does noone else think that the Ukrainian thing is a little dodgy. Excuse me if I hate freedom but shouldn't we be very wary of any political movement funded and endorsed by the US. John Quiggin seems not to think so, meh. I guess this is more of a cold war type of thing where American interests do actually coincide with democratic movements' interests.
Other things worrying me are; probably just because of that new Che Guevara movie. What is the truth about him? Did he really do these "terrible things". I can't find any information that I could say is reliable. I remember someone saying that he killed homosexuals.

UPDATE: You can always trust the socialists to give an unbiased portrait of the true situation in Ukraine (I'm being 90% serious).

partying

2004-12-01T19:34:00.000+11:00

Max
Originally uploaded by maxibonk.

A good night had by all last night.

Have a look at some photos

2004-12-01T16:15:00.000+11:00

2004-12-01T15:38:00.000+11:00

Us as consumer zombies for buy nothing day. Read more here.

Bolt

2004-11-26T18:57:00.000+11:00

take a look at his latest column. The man is a psycho. He's stopped talking like a rational human being and relies on racist innuendo to make his dubious points . Why would anyone pay the man to write this kind of non-sensical babble. Check out his new blog aswell: Thoughts from my anus

Books

2004-11-25T21:19:00.000+11:00

I finished Bush in Babylon and it was quite an interesting read. Tariq Ali is a very good writer. Some of the tangents are quite beautiful. But the book is basically a short history of modern Iraq and for what it is its very good. There's also an excellent Appendix to the book about Christopher Hitchens which was at once intellectually stimulating and very amusing. So i'd highly reccomend it. But now of course I have a dilemma. What book to read next? I' have a very large stack of unread books on my shelf and i need your help to choose which to read.

Vote below

The weasels are closing in

2004-11-23T17:52:00.000+11:00

Hello Australian Department of Defence, Canberra, Australia

Imitation of Gatsby

2004-11-22T01:33:00.000+11:00

For my Literature class one of the assignments we had to do was an imitation of 'The Great Gatsby' by F Scott Fitzgerald. As you can imagine this being one the greatest novels of the 2oth century it was very difficult. But my teacher gave me an A for it so with my confidence bouyed I present my imitation. I'm not sure if this story stands alone without being merely an imitation. I'd say to those that haven't read The Great Gatsby first of all to read it and second to keep in mind that this is an imitation of another writer's style so i'm only partly to blame for how awful you may think it is.

Very poor Imitation of
The Great Gatsby

It was in a curious manner that Fraser went about his business after that weekend. He gave up his position on the board and began writing a novel. Fraser had been on the board of a very large manufacturing company: Hike Industries. He was defined by his work. He was known to many as simply Fraser from Hike Industries and had thus far refused to present a personality worthy of the bestowment of an individual identity. His family were middle class and not particularly proud of it. He spent most of his youth imbibing enormous amounts of alcohol either alone or with a small bunch of friends; one would generously describe as unsuccessful. He had decided to change rather suddenly as if realising that he would no longer play a part in his family’s meagre fortunes. He was a grave adult - even as he found his way up the steps of the corporate ladder his reputation was as an unhappy man. He managed his ascent through a fanatical workaholism and a charm he could turn on when he needed it but faded away violently when he had no more use for you. Why he came back south I don’t know.

He would be staying here by the sea for a long time, Fraser said to me one summer evening- I was inclined to believe him- he had made himself at home in here and I could not see him being attracted back to his old grey world again.

Something had been worrying me about him since the first time I met him. The expression in his voice when we first met that morning on the beach, inspired feelings of anxiety. The word I answered him with came out disturbingly artificial and over generous- and so it happened that I would go visit him in such a friendly manner whilst I scarcely knew him at all.

Fraser’s house was as near to a beach shack you would have seen in our affluent neighbourhood, it seemed well apart from him and the rest of the houses nearby- it seemed the only thing linking Fraser and it was that he slept there. However he was not at all self conscious about it. It was modest yet not as ugly as to be unpalatable.

That evening I walked over to his house after an afternoon inside with a bottle of whisky and Francine keeping me company. We sat and talked on his porch for a few hours. ‘How is she keeping, Francine? ,’ He said looking ahead to the sea and then quickly down to his shoes. She was managing well I replied. ‘Would you like something to drink?’ He got up slowly and walked inside past his glass doors reflecting the moonlight. He returned with drinks for us both. ‘When I was younger I always felt more of an affinity with our rich neighbours than my own family’, Fraser told me as he gulped down his drink. 'I was good friends with the boy next door, we went to school together. His name was Max Applebaum and his family were the kindest people you could imagine. I would have spent more time there than I did at my own home. His mother would cook us pancakes after school, and his older sister Miriam would always join us as we ate. By the time I was sixteen, I was quite in love with her. I would go with the Applebaums on family excursions to the zoo etcetera. How I miss those times. The Family moved away pretty soon after Max and I graduated from high school. We had a going away party for them. Max, Miriam and me were drinking very heavily; we were sitting out side on the grass outside of their house, gazing up at the stars and the moon. I rolled over and gave Miriam a kiss goodbye. Then I must have run back to my house. I remember feeling nauseous and I probably threw up and then I must of fallen asleep.’

Hobnobbing

2004-11-21T23:48:00.000+11:00

So the Bronwyn Pike thing. It went quite well. The first amusing thing that happened was just by coincidence we ran into Bronwyn Pike's son who our teacher knew somehow. He told us to get stuck into her about the nurses and paramedics. Once we got into the city, we were a bit early so we went to get some coffee. I didn't have any money so I just had water. But we had an amusing conversation with our teacher ( a very strange woman).
So we got inside parliament house and we were met by Bronwyn Pike's electorate officer Melanie Mcgrath. She was a charming youngish woman. Who told us a bit about parliament and the work of the minister etc. Then Bronwyn Pike arrived and she took us for a tour around Parliament. A very nice building but as Bronwyn explained to us, not really suitable for the running a state in the 21st century. Their offices were very small. Bronwyn's office was smaller than my bedroom with only a table with The Hun, The Age and The Melbourne Times on it and two desks on either side of it.
We walked past a few of the other MP's offices. The liberals had anti-tolls stickers and posters stuff stuck to their walls, and Dennis Naphine had the cover of an issue of the Melbourne Times stuck to his door. The title being 'State Labor chickens out' with a picture of a chicken wearing an ALP badge. The funny thing about this being I don't think Napthine bothered to read the article as it was a firm attack on Labor from the left; attacking the state government on it's social welfare policies.
We ended up going into a dining room area where Bronwyn bought us some soft drinks. Whilst we were there having a nice little chat who should walk in but Robert Doyle. John and I make a few snide comments to ourselves. Then Robert Doyle starts looking at us, for what reason nobody knows. So he sits down to lunch with his blonde lackey but as we're leaving he gives us another look. John and I resolve to come back to Parliament for question time after grabbing some lunch.
We both got pasties and consumed then outside Sweet Mama's cafe. Then we walked back up to Parliament. And got into the lower house for question time. And lo and behold Robert Doyle keeps giving us the eye. John eventually gives up and gives him the finger. Which shocked him back in his place. Bronwyn gave us a wave as she exited the house after question time. So we caught the train home and came away with Bronwyn Pikes card and an invitation by Melanie Mcgrath to contact her if we wish to talk about anything etc.

Independent reporting in Iraq

2004-11-18T15:32:00.000+11:00

One of the only unembedded reporters in Iraq is Dahr Jamail. You can read his weblog here.
Here he talks to Amy Goodman from Democracy Now about among other things political and media censorship in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Which brings up the issue of what kind of news is getting out of there. You have got embedded reporters with the U.S. military, and then the two major Arab satellite networks, Al Arabiya, the reporter detained by the U.S. military, and Al-Jazeera, forbidden to report from Fallujah. Could you explain what's happening and what you know of this Al Arabiya reporter, what has happened to him?

DAHR JAMAIL: Well, as you mentioned, he did go to Fallujah to try to get inside the city, to report on what was really happening, and he was promptly detained by the military, and he is still being held. That's all the news that we have. He's essentially disappeared at this point, which is the typical case when anyone is detained here. They vanish. There is no contact with them. And so he’s had -- no one has been able to contact him, nor him anyone else. I should add also that as of yesterday, U.S.-backed Prime Minister Allawi made a statement that any Al-Jazeera journalists caught trying to report in Iraq will be detained. So, they remain under the gun, and the media crackdown here has really been beyond belief. They have made announcements prompting media to report, quote-unquote, “accurately,” meaning they only want the U.S. military side of the story. And this crackdown on the Arab media has been very pronounced because stations like Al-Jazeera have consistently done a very good job of reporting extremely accurately what is happening here on the ground in Iraq. They do very good war reporting. They do show the graphic images, as they should, because this is a war, and this is what's happening here. This is why they continue to catch so much flack from the United States, particularly Defense Minister Rumsfeld. This is why their office in Baghdad was bombed during the initial invasion of Iraq, even though they specifically gave their coordinates to the Pentagon to avoid that happening. So, it keeps continuing on into the occupation. Of course, when the fighting rages and reports come out that don't play in the best interests of the U.S. military here, or the U.S. government, of course, the hammer gets dropped once again on the media that's doing their job.

What book should I read next?
	A Doll's House by Ibsen -which I have to read for Literature
	Travels with my aunt by Graham Greene
	One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey
	The electric kool-aid acid test by Tom Wolfe
	The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck
	Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
	For whom the bell tolls by Ernest Hemingway
	The ginger man by J.P. Donleavy
	On the road by Jack Kerouac
	Power without glory by Frank Hardy

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