ideas for change

2010-05-05T21:19:00.009+10:00

Haha so here i am again. appearing from behind a beige partition to take my part in all this.

Emerging from my phone-answering, spreadsheet-utilising, keynesian stimulating, statistics finding, status quo-sustaining self to again stand up, smile - and facilitate something looking a bit like change.

Tonight at Smiths bookshop on Alinga Street in Civic we held the first in what we hope will be a series of "Open Spaces" Knowledge Swaps. A very small crowd of seven all in all- two people coming of their own volition, one person herded off the footpath outside to come in from the cold by yours truly, two employees of Smiths, myself, and a French guy taking advantage of the Wifi.

So I presented on community organising, with a workshop I had prepared the week before in Perth but never given; we also had a general discussion about fair trade, to which nearly all contributed- The French guy entered our talk exactly on cue and was surprisingly knowledgeable -giving us a run down of fair trade in France and how those who buy fair trade are more likely to plan their shopping and spend less at the supermarket. And we discovered that three of the group had spent substantial time in Africa.

The only slight tension was when the woman I had convinced to come in - a student at UC - proceeded to tell us about Jesus- which was great seeing that I do want to celebrate all religions and had asked her to express her passions. But she kept saying 'um' reflecting the slight tension in the room, which was partly caused by her framing of the discussion.

She read a small passage from 1 Peter (I didn't even know there was a Peter chapter in the Bible), and prompted by me we talked about the Early Christians and their lives. I wish she could have presented some more context because to me the passage itself sounded all pious, and I sympathised with those who didn't relate to it. But I think she was brave- seeing she had laid her heart bare in some ways for us all. I made almost apologetic comments about Catholicism and how priests interpret texts rather than the parishioners and how Constantine corrupted Christianity.

Overall surprisingly I think it went really well- considering I hardly put any effort at all into promoting it- and next time I will invite people with more confidence, which I think others will as well. We already have a tentative program of 5 workshops-

WHAT FUN!

Small business with Peter Strong,

Zimbabwe show and tell, prompted by the book An Elegy for Easterly with Steph,

The Female Image in Australian media, given by Amy,

How to Write a Song with Conor.

Maybe even a knitting workshop!

2009-02-09T21:54:00.016+11:00

The spectacle of poverty- poverty-as-image, poverty-as-a-means-of-shocking-oneself, poverty-as-medium-of-immersion-and-empathetic-experience, poverty-as-object-of-foreigner's-thinking-about-how-life-is-hard-for-others. This attitude of piety-in-being-with-the-poor is resisted through poetry such as this on a train in Manila: And Debated here in relation to the film Slumdog Millionaire And debated in my mind throughout my Jesuit immersion in the Philippines. I went with my brother, who is involved in a program called Magis. The first time the Jesuits have ever focused on post school youth in Australia, which is pretty important, considering that Jesuits are the Catholic intellectuals. The 'immersion' style of retreat is modelled on the Pastoral Cycle- the process of "See-Judge-Act" or Praxis developed by Joseph Cardign and the Young Christian Worker Movement, and the process advocated by Paulo Friere. That process is about solidarity- as in- being with and acting with others- identifying -not so much empathetically- but rather in a sense of common experience and common grievances, and committing to act together. (actually that would be my main criticism of the event that we actually didn't commit to an ongoing collaborative work). Ideally the process involves accompaniment, analysing the situation and being active participants in intervening in situations that are not right. However, in travelling so far away to the Philippines, and in being in a position of short term observer- and accompanier- it was difficult to establish the kinds of relationships that could lead to true solidarity. So I found myself grasping for something profound- something that prompts spiritual reflection- some strands I could grab from each day- and I would lean on all the intellectual frameworks in my mind- analysis of imperialism, of factory labour, of oppression of trade unions and livelihood campaigners, of ecology, of geography, of gift economies. I would also try to connect the experience with scripture, but would find it hard- Only the outrage of the righteous Jewish Old Testament prophets can do justice to such abject poverty. Some other themes I could grasp were about The Gift- the importance of hospitality to the Filipina/os, and the biblical injunction to give, to appreciate Grace (the providence and fecundity of nature etc). Like the words on the wall of the house in Payatas where I had lunch with a local family- a beautician who manicures the nails of those who scavenge all day through the mountain of rubbish- it said "God's gifts are flowing in abundance everywhere". And I just don't know what to say. And yet, my position throughout the trip was awkward, uncomfortable. I was told by Father Ed and Father Pedro that discomfort is part of the experience: that you NEED to feel on edge to go outside your comfort zone, that those ambivalent feelings can be very important for the process. Exactly getting to the core of my discomfort about the politics of my trip: the poor as icons of religious veneration- In Catholicism sometimes we seek God through the poor and dispossessed. We speak in hushed tones about vulnerability, about people who are small in means but extremely generous. But we essentially remain hopelessly disconnected, alienated and unable to bridge these gaps. Here is a portrayal of The Last Supper by Joey Velasco, a Filipino artist, portraying street children in downtown Manila and Quezon City: (source here This could also be interpreted as 'exemplary poverty' but then on the other hand it could be also showing the poor as the preferred company of Jesus -ie almost 'the chosen people'. What does all this mean? What kind of change is needed? What place does political and ethical transformation have? What does this Last Supper image mean? Is this solidarity?

We are conflicted as a culture. 2008-04-14T23:29:00.003+10:00 Is that voice telling us that DECADENCE is ESSENTIAL? But wasn't it telling us yesterday that we should save water? Is decadence the only way to affirm fragile female self-esteems? Does this woman represent our ideal (feminine) self??? Is she aware of being observed in the photograph (as John Berger, the great art critic, points out) Canberra 2008-03-20T22:44:00.003+11:00 So now it has been two months since I have left that City of my birth- Sydney. The city of jacarandas and incessant, impatient traffic. I have left many of my friends behind, and started anew, in Canberra, in a wonderful sharehouse with two art students. I now ride a bike to work, and have much better quality of life. This city - our Capital - is made up of geometrically orientated suburbs, with median strips full of trees and wide enough to have picnics in. I am reading many books, including one by Barack Obama, and I am hoping to start practising 'The Artists Way' soon. More updates to follow! Kevin Annett and Canada's genocide 2008-02-10T13:03:00.001+11:00 I just watched the film Unrepentant: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide, a very important and harrowing documentary about the dispossession of Native people in Canada. It adds new dimensions to what I already know about North American indigenous frontier history. [when i first heard lyrics of Ani DiFranco's song tis of thee, i was proud that i knew what the reference to small pox blankets was- the two edged sword of charity: "Above 96th street they hand out small pox blankets so people don't freeze and the old dog's got a new trick, it's called criminalize the symptoms while you spread the disease I hold on hard to something between my teeth when i'm sleeping i wake up and my jaw aches and the earth is full of earthquakes"] What i realised is that it was a quite wide practice by church people- (including the missionaries working for the Catholic Church) to do such things, and to treat the Indigenous people as worthless... OUTLINE: In the early 1990's - maybe late 1980's- Kevin Annett, a United Church of Christ Minister, attempted to get to the bottom of why native people did not come to his church. By inviting these people, who made up 30% of the population of his town, and allowing an 'open pulpit' policy- where anyone could speak after the sermon, the long hidden stories of trauma and suffering emerged. The shocking revelation that various churches -through the residential school system- had willingly and officially pursued the annihilation of Native American civilisation- emerged. The participation of churches in eugenics policies- in forced sterilization, in deliberate infection of people with smallpox and TB through giving contaminated blankets and failing to isolate TB patients was revealed. The story goes on- and shows the lengths to which church officials would go to cover up, to silence him and to do damage control. There were drastic consequences of all these revelations for Arnett's life. He lost his marriage, his career and his future. You should watch it, and think about what it means for us in Australia. I actually feel quite emotional listening to all the testimonies and the travesty of the different ways the UCC worked to prevent natural justice. voting and abstention 2008-01-21T18:01:00.000+11:00 I was driving back in my shared car-bubble from a mega shopping centre today, (having been to a beautician, and tried on some clothes- how superficial am I!!??) past the blank stares of so many young people. I was thinking about the way that there is a fine line in wearing clothes between being dignified, and in establishing standards of dress that set you apart from others, and hence distance you from others who can't afford or don't have the taste that you have. I started to think about the post that my friend Simon Reeves wrote on his blog some time before the election- about voting and abstention. Simon is a guy who just radiates warmth and justice- so he's someone i really respect. Simon does not vote. But I started to think there was something profound in the fact that he doesn't vote. His justification and his action were both profound. In other cases- several anarchists I know, and the case of the Exclusive Bretheren, their abstention slightly annoys me as a signal of their negativity towards our society in general. But in Simon's case, it is clear that he has a lot of love for society - as it is, in its incomplete and imperfect form. But his statement in not voting says to me that he is not complacent about society and the way it is today. There is something seriously wrong with our current system of structuring public decisionmaking and participation. By not voting, Simon is making a statement about the need for democratic participation that goes far deeper than writing numbers in boxes. In my opinion, the public must become Pro-active rather that simply Re-active. Simon is making an 'embodied' statement, making a symbolic and actual sacrifice in his democratic participation, saying 'that's not adequate for us'. If i did similarly, it would force me out of complacency- to make a serious effort to resuscitate our passive political culture until I see real structural results. I might consider it next time. The real agenda 2007-09-04T19:45:00.000+10:00 Overshadowed by George W Bush, the US Trade Representative is in Sydney today. She is one of the people driving the real agenda. The agenda of APEC is to implement trade liberalisation- zero trade barriers in the Developed World by 2010, zero trade barriers in the Developing World by 2020. At each APEC meeting, countries must file reports on their progress in corporatising and privatising and deregulating their health, education, knowledge, environments, financial sector etc. Yet much of this information slips between the cracks and never gets heard. What we do hear is a distortion of the reality. An article in today's Sydney Morning Herald- from a speech to APEC- is so hypocritical -once you know the real story- it is beyond belief. Appearing to be supporting the public sector, this article is entitled "Good public sector institutions essential for growth". But upon closer scrutiny, it is actually just a whitewash. It is promoting "well managed, accountable and ethical public institutions". Yet APEC's policies of privatisation and deregulation, promoted through its acceleration of bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations -has crippled public institutions and their funding bases worldwide. In this context, the call for ethical and effective practice is a mere platitude. 2007-08-29T16:17:00.000+10:00 Here are some photos from the last few weeks: at the environment collective cake stall at sydney university: In the SRC: 2007-08-28T16:43:00.001+10:00 sooooo... job searching is crap!! it is sometimes so humiliating to justify oneself to future employers-- especially when you know you have so much to contribute to the world through working on projects that MATTER!!! anyway. navigating through different treadmills- stepping from one treadmill to the other, and all the while taking on the machine mentality of working for someone else, in their frame of mind... i guess that's just that simple experience of alienation that all the socialists and the existentialists articulated all those years ago. Oh to have some control over your labour!! and some respect in your workplace!!! and some recognition of your skills and some support from managers! 2007-08-13T18:25:00.000+10:00 Here is an excerpt from a Chomsky interview in Le Monde Diplomatique, translated by Harry Forster for Z Magazine. Thankyou to Michael J. lafrate: DM: Critics tend to lump you together with the anarchists and libertarian socialists. What would be the role of the state in a real democracy? NC: We are living here and now, not in some imaginary universe. And here and now there are tyrannical organisations - big corporations. They are the closest thing to a totalitarian institution. They are, to all intents and purposes, quite unaccountable to the general public or society as a whole. They behave like predators, preying on other smaller companies. People have only one means of defending themselves and that is the state. Nor is it a very effective shield because it is often closely linked to the predators. But there is a far from negligible difference. General Electric is accountable to no one, whereas the state must occasionally explain its actions to the public. Once democracy has been enlarged far enough for citizens to control the means of production and trade, and they take part in the overall running and management of the environment in which they live, then the state will gradually be able to disappear. It will be replaced by voluntary associations at our place of work and where we live. DM: You mean soviets? NC: The first things that Lenin and Trotsky destroyed, immediately after the October revolution, were the soviets, the workers' councils and all the democratic bodies. In this respect Lenin and Trotsky were the worst enemies of socialism in the 20th century. But as orthodox Marxists they thought that a backward country such as Russia was incapable of achieving socialism immediately, and must first be forcibly industrialised. In 1989, when the communist system collapsed, I thought this event was, paradoxically, a victory for socialism. My conception of socialism requires, at least, democratic control of production, trade and other aspects of human existence. However the two main propaganda systems agreed to maintain that the tyrannical system set up by Lenin and Trotsky, subsequently turned into a political monstrosity by Stalin, was socialism. Western leaders could not fail to be enchanted by this outrageous use of the term, which enabled them to cast aspersions on the real thing for decades. With comparable enthusiasm, but working in the opposite direction, the Soviet propaganda system tried to exploit the sympathy and commitment that the true socialist ideal inspired among the working masses. DM: Isn't it the case that all forms of autonomous organisation based on anarchist principles have ultimately collapsed? NC: There are no set anarchist principles, no libertarian creed to which we must all swear allegiance. Anarchism - at least as I understand it - is a movement that tries to identify organisations exerting authority and domination, to ask them to justify their actions and, if they are unable to do so, as often happens, to try to supersede them. Far from collapsing, anarchism and libertarian thought are flourishing. They have given rise to real progress in many fields. Forms of oppression and injustice that were once barely recognised, less still disputed, are no longer allowed. That in itself is a success, a step forward for all humankind, certainly not a failure. 2007-08-12T23:29:00.000+10:00 Edward Said perceptively writes about the way that people's METHODS reveal their unconscious intentions, in his landmark work of literary criticism Beginnnings: Intention and Method: "Intention, despite its conscious formulations, is never inconsistent with method, although conscious intention- when is it ever exclusively conscious? Is frequently at odds with method". page 13. By being self-reflective, and scrutinising the WAY that we do things, we can reveal unconscious intentions operating just beneath the surface of our apparent intentions. (kind of like Freudian slips: you actually intended to do that accidental thing) This self knowledge is important to improving ourselves and becoming better as human beings, and in critically analysing the way that society shapes us, and how we participate in this process of shaping ourselves. I guess that I notice people's methods a lot - I am sometimes an extremely harsh judge of leftists who say one thing and do another- supporting values of social justice, yet their methods are overwhelmingly negative and disrespectful to other people etc. I especially notice it in pathological forms in organisational cultures of sectarian groups. Yet what this says about individual intentions is beyond me. Perhaps it means that their greatest desire is to belong- to fit into a group rather than to bring about justice. The ties that bind 2007-08-11T17:54:00.000+10:00 This advertisement in today's Weekend Australian illustrates the uncomfortable ties that the mining industry forges between itself and affected communities. In this case, it is art: one of the main alternative sources of economic development for remote Aboriginal communities other than mining that does not compromise the integrity of Country, and often encourages self-determination. Note the language used: "Emerging young artists": does this fit into the cultural role of art in Aboriginal communities? who is emerging, and who are they being judged by? Is it the Western Romantic figure of the unique and inspired artist-individualist, detached from their communities, and climbing that precarious ladder to fame? For me, its funny that the word 'emerging' carries associations of 'entering into the light': like a miner does at the end of a shift (the old fashioned form of board and pillar coal mining, that is). Funny that a coal company is doing this. Like so many other 'community projects' that mining companies facilitate, the prize increases the dependence of Aboriginal communities on mining companies. (to play on words, it binds them to the mining underworld, and prevents their emergence into other more diverse and sustainable economies). (graphic from the Sydney Morning Herald, 2006) When I studied the role of companies such as Coal and Allied in Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter Valley, I saw the role of the companies in 'conspicuous generosity'- sponsoring the local sports teams, the local school gifted and talented program, the local rotary branch- and before long, the company has created a dependent relationship- at least, psychologically- in which it is unthinkable to imagine the town without the donations of the company- all the institutions would collapse, because they have forgotten how to sustain themselves independently! Such dependence presents extra challenges for planning just transitions towards more sustainable economies. beds are burning- thanks Rawan! 2007-07-25T18:45:00.000+10:00 patience!!! and environmental education 2007-07-20T15:24:00.000+10:00 i can be impatient sometimes, which my mum says is my greatest vice when it comes to education. The best teachers, she says, are patient- they do not flinch when a student asks the same question 4 times, and calmly can explain a complex idea again and again. When engaging with others on the topic of environmentalism, i am often taken aback by the ignorance of many people- and this becomes a barrier to me being able to stoke their fires of interest in environmentalism. I have had friends who understand much about postmodernism, for example, but do not know about ecology. As I said in a previous post- i think that this state of mind is rootless- it is like having a cart without the horse- since i believe that the generative impulse of postmodernism- (the consciousness of and valuing of complexity and diversity)- is ecology. An environmental consciousness stripped of an understanding of ecology is a thin, apocalyptic one. It is one of helplessness- of being fearful and overwhelmed by nature, rather than understanding and marvelling in it. For me, to understand the biogeochemical cycles (eg water, carbon, phosphorous, energy etc) that support us through interaction- is to see myself as a social being in an absolute sense- and to see myself as being supported by the world in general. Teaching people about global warming WITHOUT teaching them about interconnectedness is extremely problematic- and will lead to more problems than it will solve. Mining: The real motive behind the wacky 'children are sacred' legislation 2007-07-10T18:04:00.000+10:00 From: Vikki John Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:49:50 +1000 Subject: [GlobalJusticeSydney] FW: [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] Land Grab by Mining Companies page 4 of the Explanatory Memorandum of Brough's legislation to amend the Aboriginal Land Rights Act reads: "The principal objectives [of this bill] are to improve access to Aboriginal land for development, especially mining..." ( LINK ) Now why would anyone claim that was a land grab? -- Kinds regards Chris Graham Editor National Indigenous Times 1300 786 611 1300 786 622 (fax) STREET: 5/7 Sangster Place, Wanniassa ACT 2607 MAIL: PO Box 696, Woden ACT 2606 http://www.nit.com.au PS. Here's a link to some more reading on the issue... Admittedly from a slightly different perspective! LINK Environmentalism as the renewal of the Left. 2007-07-04T20:20:00.000+10:00 I think that environmentalism, rather than postmodernism, has renewed the Left over the last 20 years, and has been the point of departure for many who were recruited to the social justice cause subsequentially, and the main analytical framework through which people have recognised diversity as vital to society. Few academics recognise the importance of environmental thought as a world view, (many see the left as having been renewed by postmodernism) -they see their own agency, and hence, glory reflected in the complex jargon of postmodernism- which in reality has been a hall of mirrors solipsistically reflecting itself rather than connecting with the world. (actually- perhaps i am being too harsh... i actually really enjoy using literary techniques of analysis in deconstructing texts- it can be really empowering). Since when has the world EVER been entirely united by narratives? I only need to read the newspaper or listen to religious stories to see that grand narratives remain with us today, and they have never provided a total remedy to a feeling of being disconnected. The postmodernist belief that the loss of stories that structure our existence is the cardinal feature of our era, is little more than a nostalgic groping towards long lost childhoods rather than a realistic assesment of the human condition of our age. Narratives are only one mechanism of unity for human cognition. Other forms of unity include physical connectedness: 'sense of place', organisation etc. However, if history and cultural studies focus on narrative more than material reality, they can become overly focused on symptoms rather than causes; ideology rather than structure- whereas geography and government have focused more on causes. In this way, geography and government have been far more capable of coming to terms with the nature of our era in terms of production and causality: grounding postmodernism in materialism, rather than discourse. The sense of loss that postmodernists attribute to the fragmentation of narratives is something that has been with us for a long time, but has accelerated due to the greater penetration of the capitalist economy into our everyday lives. It is directly related to capitalist alienation- a feeling of loss of control over our work, which has become accelerated due to the faster pace and greater demands of the global economy. Many environmentalists go a step further than marxists in their analysis of alienation. Like the Arts and Crafts movement that reacted to the Industrial Revolution, Many environmental movements value work that is meaningful, and an existence that identifies itself more closely with the land, recognising the land as the source of sustenance, and the main means of production. The practice of recognition is a major feature of ecological thought. An ecological thinker will look at land in an entirely different way to an untrained eye. They will recognise systems and resources in a landscape that few urban people will. They will notice the water cycle, the carbon cycle; the ways that energy from the sun is captured, stored and cycled. They will recognise fecundity, and see productiveness where the conventional economist will see barrenness. This is how their paradigm of thought is fundamentally different to neoliberal thought, providing a way of thinking that is essentially redemptive. Ecological thought animates the revolutionary imagination because it enables the recognition of productive sites that exist independently of centralised power relationships. In this way. the capitalist paradigm is destabilised as the sole means of survival for humans in this era. 2007-05-30T15:44:00.000+10:00 Rabbi Michael Lerner, speaking about Cindy Sheehan's resignation from leadership of the US Anti-War movement: People tell me that they believe most of my generation "sold out" after the 60s because they wanted the material advantages of the society. But in my experience the most talented, caring, sensitive and creative people I met in movement activities, particularly those who were willing to take the extra personal risks involved in becoming leadership and spokespeople for peace and justice, left the Left not because of a desire for material success, but because they felt abused by others on the Left and in the liberal world who, while agreeing with their ideas, nevertheless found ways to be inhumane, insensititve, and put-downish to others in their movement. Rumors were spread that claimed that the most idealistic of these people were "really" just out for power, fame or ego-gratification of some sort, and that undercut the effectiveness of these leaders because others responded to them not by listening to their ideas, but by treating them as suspect because of "what they had heard." Few of those who spread these negative stories really bothered to get to know the people about whom they gossiped, and few ever bothered to acknowledge how destructive this behavior was. But for those who were the objects of this kind of abuse, the feeling of being undercut by people who should have been allies caused personal pain and eventual despair that anything really could ever change. A few of us hung in and remain involved, in my case at least sustained by a personal spiritual practice, but for each 60s activist still involved, there are thousands who are not, who could not stand this way of being treated, and who, when they stick their nose into the dynamics of the present movements of the first decade of the 21st century, quickly discover the same kind of dynamics operating in the Left and in the liberal world. 2007-05-29T15:55:00.000+10:00 another sad death. Here is a prayer- Dietrich Bonhoffer: God grant me the Serenity to accept the things i cannot change Courage to change the things i can and Wisdom, to know the difference. Here are some very sad poems from Seamus Heaney: Mid Term Break: I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At ten o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying - He had always taken funerals in his stride - And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to shake my hand And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble' Whispers informed strangers that I was the eldest, Away at school, as my mother held my hand In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops And candles soothed the bedside I saw him For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple. He lay in a four foot box, as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four foot box, a foot for every year. from Wilfred Owen Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -- - The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. 2007-05-20T22:25:00.000+10:00 who am i to judge these people? who am i to judge these people? who am i to judge these people? will they ever judge themselves? History will judge them. But by that time, it will be irrelevant. their bleached bones will wash up on the shores of the sea of knowledge. and nothing will have been learnt. space and judgement 2007-05-19T20:53:00.001+10:00 Space belongs to, and is taken up by those people who stand in judgement of others. John Berger was always sensitive to this fact, the way that, for example, male chauvinism in Western cultures is maintained by the cultural norm that the male gaze towards a woman is a relationship of domination through objectification : . . . . . . . . (Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing Essay 3, p. 46). Berger describes the Western portrayal of women since the European Renaissance in nudes, magazines and pornography, and points out how 'men act and women appear': . . . . . . . . . . . (Berger 1972, p. 55) But in a much broader sense, beyond gender, the gaze of judgement, and the awareness of being watched can create an uncomfortable power dynamic in everyday life. For sensitive people like me, even walking down a street in Sydney can be a harrowing experience- our city in general is one in which interactions are overwhelmingly visual, and people - especially women- size eachother up, and look eachother up and down. I used to feel self-conscious on King Street when i lived ten metres from it- the whole street was such a catwalk- and busloads of bored commuters would continually be staring at you. Some people loved the attention, and making such bold statements on it, but i sometimes felt judged when i walked down in daggy clothes from hanging out at home- perhaps i should have seen it as a 'statement' but to get away with such counter-cultural things and wear pjs or something, but sometimes you need to have a particular approach... and this can even happen within the home- if i live with people who are viewing me critically, there is much tension- I experience this as a constriction of space. When I explain the situation to other people, spatial metaphors and 'breathing' metaphors always emerge- "I feel trapped", "I need fresh air" "I am constricted". You know how sometimes a person can walk into a room and the whole atmosphere changes for the negative? There is often an unacknowledged power dynamic of fear going on... I'd like to know how to intervene in this, and transform this power dynamic creatively... Anyway. There was a quote at the end of an email I just received- that was about acceptance and judgement... by a Swami (are they Hindu gurus or some other religion?) And the passage probably offers a greater insight than I have given here: that self acceptance is a necessary prerequisite for acceptance of others. "To accept one-self means to accept others. Understanding others presupposes understanding oneself. To give freedom to others means to have freedom oneself. To make others happy means to make one-self happy. To forgive others, means to forgive one-self. Just as the cause is found only within our-self, so too is the solution to our problems." - His Holiness, Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda That really, our problem with judgementalism in Sydney is a problem with insecurity and a lack of self acceptance... Utopian worldviews 2007-05-17T13:11:00.000+10:00 There is a lot of psychological commonality between Utopian world views and Consumerist world views - in that the 'NOW' is always lacking. IN the consumerist world view, you cannot fix the bed or the couch- you have to throw it out and buy a new one. You cannot work with what you have- because you have no idea how to. The biggest symbol of this that I have ever seen, was in an episode of 'queer eye for the straight guy', when the fashionable men advising the unfashionable man threw his white leather couch off his 3 storey balcony, and bought a new couch. It reaffirmed how the 'metrosexual identity' is inherently a consumerist one, constructed by advertising companies to fuel male consumerism. The real estate section of the newspaper, as well as the 'home beautiful' and 'Vogue living' magazines are the main modern generators of utopian thought. People create their private paradises at home... Projected onto an activist canvas, utopian worldviews can mean that we are unable to recognise good in the 'now'- we cannot recognise resources and tools from 'now' that help in the journey towards a better society. crazy warehouse guy 2007-05-16T18:20:00.000+10:00 You know, that I think that the 'crazy warehouse guy' from the Chaser's War on Everything is a satire on the monologues of fundamentalist left wing people- you know those people who don't stop talking AT you in an aggressive way, who have lost basic social skills in their ideological initiation process-who monopolise space and don't listen to your ideas or tactful suggestions. Seeing that the Chaser boys cut their teeth in student politics at sydney university, i think that the 'trot figure' haunts their imaginations, a constant source of frustration, particularly at the time of the "Walk against the war coalition", when the antics of different people (from both sides) at the coalition meetings precipitated the split- that continues today. another anvil hill challenge!! 2007-05-16T13:16:00.000+10:00 Hopefully you are all coming up to the Hunter Valley on the weekend of June 2-3 to confront the Anvil Hill coal mine!!! Lots of people will be there (there is much local opposition!!!) for more info, go to the Anvil Hill Alliance website. xA. From the EDO: Dear All, Today in the Federal Court the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) - acting for Anvil Hill Project Watch Association Inc - will commence a new legal action against the proposed Anvil Hill coal mine. The case relates to the decision by the Commonwealth govt to not declare Anvil Hill a 'controlled action' under the Federal EPBC Act. The EDO will argue that the Commonwealth was wrong to find that a measurable impact on matters of national environmental significance was necessary, above and beyond the contribution that the Project's greenhouse gas emissions will make to climate change. We believe that this is the first time a coal mine in NSW has faced such a challenge. For details of the case please contact Christine Phelps, President of Anvil Hill Project Watch Association on: 0418 478 011 Regards, Ian Ratcliff Acting Principal Solicitor ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENDER'S OFFICE (NSW) LTD Level 1, 89 York Street SYDNEY NSW 2000 ph 61 2 9262 6989 fax 61 2 9262 6998 www.edo.org.au/edonsw 2007-05-14T21:19:00.000+10:00 A relevant poem from the Open Spaces e-list: this is an excerpt from a new work just completing, "Conscious Becoming". Whether we like it or not, Whether we approve of it or not, whether it makes sense or not, things are the only way they can be given all that came before. And if in the process we realize that what we do right now is what will come before next, we discover our power, and dwell in a calm sense of possibility. Jack -- Jack Ricchiuto Facilitating learning & engagement with organizations & communities Author of the recent "Mountain Paths: A Guide On Our Journey Toward Discovering Our Potential" www.DesigningLife.com / social change.... how does/can it happen? 2007-05-08T21:43:00.000+10:00 how can activists stop being the dull noise in the background? or the 'squeaky wheel' - that always complains when given an opportunity... You know, I think there is a massive disconnect between the public image of activists and their self image. And i don't even know which one is more accurate. The self-image of activists is constructed by the urgency of the situations they find themselves in. "I am holding the fort: I am holding the dam wall to stop if from bursting; I am the one who makes the difference." This is the kind of motivational talk we give ourselves all the time: "If i just do one more task, one more meeting, ten more leaflets... And i clicked into that frame of mind again yesterday. I had been avoiding it for such a long time!! I sat with Diana in the cafe, and she offloaded all her troubles and challenges onto me. She is organising BUSES to PERTH, and fundraising for poor students to get there! and whilst doing this, she is also grieving for her deceased father!!! And i really felt the weight of all her troubles (I had to organise buses to Perth a few years ago). And it all came flooding back- the feelings of hopelessness (i was slightly incompetent)- and desperation that desirable social change would happen soon. and all of a sudden i felt so tired. i came home after being in the SRC for a few hours and mumbled something to my mum - and she got all worried about me, and gave a defensive speech to me, thinking i was annoyed at her. it's all so dysfunctional!! Analysis by anecdote 2007-05-05T17:27:00.000+10:00 What is reality? A lot of it is relational. I think we can gain a good understanding of everyday interactions through thinking about relationships. This is through thinking through our interactions with others, and gaining insight through interpreting what this means about society, relationships and our place within these. I am very interested in embodied knowledge: in the knowledge that people can gain through a thoughtful approach to everyday life, that prompts questions and deeper intellectual inquiry. This knowledge becomes manifest through people skills: in being able to listen to and engage with other people in their difference and incompletion. There is so much that is revealed by body language!! i just wish i knew how to enter into dialogue better with people about their beliefs, anxieties and values, based on their body language. The closest intellectual discipline i have encountered that values this approach is phenomenology, a discipline within philosophy, that sees 'reality' as something dynamic, constituted through intersubjective interaction. (this was prompted by speaking to Phil McShane, an Irish philosophy professor (who writes books about economics), who teaches by anecdote. Mum convinced us to go to his talks at Riverview, at which we were among the only people in the audience... he had some pretty hilarious anecdotes, made funny through his sharp observation skills. He spoke about the example of a man who invited a woman on a date, but conveys his disinterest through having three beers by the time she meets him. Thus, he is not sensitive to how she is : he does not listen to her: all he wants is to come across as relaxed and not to betray his anxieties- which is really a very self-centred approach, that cannot result in a deeper connection- rather it builds barriers!!) and another thing... Reflecting on his wonderful, very human (what a funny adjective) way of educating, It is a constant puzzle for me to understand why such large sections of the Left have such authoritarian educational methodologies, when for many decades a major project of liberatory people has been to create liberatory methodologies, such as this man. I guess some people think that commitment and discipline precludes the possibility of non-authoritarian educational practices. Militarism and government policy 2007-05-05T16:18:00.000+10:00 here is an ad for recruiting British Aerospace employees from The Australian newspaper that says a thousand words! It is within the domain of military that the parameters of foreign policy debates are defined. You can see this working by comparing different policymaking institutions in the US. The US congress is underfunded. It only has around 600 employees, who deliberate on policy. The place where the bulk of policy deliberation takes place is the Pentagon, with tens of thousands (i think 30 000 employees). BAE (British Aerospace) is one of the largest military companies in the world. It influences global geopolitics through providing military capability that supposedly stimulates economies, in a way that is beneficial to the broader big business corporate sector. The ad depicted above implies an even more concerning dimension of the above situation of underfunded policy development: that policy innovation in 'determining the future' is in several ways 'outsourced' to military companies themselves. US government representatives often make it clear to companies that their operation is on their behalf. For example, the Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen was quoted in the magazine Covert Action as saying "The prosperity that some companies such as Microsoft enjoy could not occur without having the strong military that we have". (see Anup Shah's article). Noam Chomsky has a lot to say about this kind of thing, explaining the relative benefit of social spending and military spending to corporate and political elites: here in the interview on morality and humanism, Chomsky talks about war as the preferred means of stimulating economies, rather than public spending: Social spending vs. military spending. 1998 (you can see that it's dated by the hypothetical talk of war!!!!!!!!!) TOR WENNERBERG: Given the risk that the world economy might spin out of control completely now, and considering that last time, in the 1930s, it took a world war to overcome the depression, how worried do you think we ought to be about the prospect of war? NOAM CHOMSKY: "The prospect of war is much less, but for other reasons. Europe is, in modern history at least, the most violent part of the world. One of the reasons why Europe conquered the world is that it created a culture of war, based on centuries of mutual massacre and slaughter -- both a culture of war and a technology of war. But that largely came to an end in 1945, and for a very simple reason. Everybody could understand that the next time we play this game, we're all dead. The techniques of destruction had reached such a point that war is simply not an option for rich and powerful countries. If they try it once more, that's the end. Now, somebody may be irrational enough to do it anyway, but within anything remotely like the domain of rationality, where you can at least begin to talk about prediction, there isn't going to be war among the powerful countries. And this is understood. "For example, right in the middle of the Gulf War, somebody at the Pentagon leaked to the press -- which buried it -- an interesting document. When any new administration comes in, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and so on give them a kind of intelligence assessment of the world, a strategic analysis of the world. Someone leaked part of the Bush administration strategic analysis (this would have been from early 1989), and one part of it dealt with war. Here is approximately what it said: "In case of a conflict with "much weaker enemies" (implication: that's the only kind of conflict we're ever going to get into), we must defeat them "decisively and rapidly," because anything else will "undercut political support." So no more bombing of South Vietnam for fifteen years, and certainly we don't go to war with any major power. This was well before the Gulf War. In fact at that time Saddam Hussein was a great friend, so he wasn't contemplated as a target -- but that's what you can do. You can invade Panama, kidnap Noriega and get out in a couple of weeks, bomb the Sudan, bomb Libya, bomb Iraq from a distance, very fast, and don't get involved in more than a few days of fighting. That kind of thing you can do with a much weaker enemy, rapidly and decisively, but nothing else. So as long as you're within the domain of rationality, the chances of war involving major powers I think, are extremely slight, unless they're fighting a much weaker enemy. And even that's not so simple anymore. "But to return to your other point, what actually overcame the depression was not so much the war as the semi-command economies. The British economy started to pick up in the late 1930s, when it semi-deliberalized and became a kind of semi-command economy. The U.S. was barely at war. But the wartime economy not only overcame the depression, it flourished as industrial production tripled, and so on. But that was a semi-command economy, highly coordinated from Washington, run by corporate executives, with wage and price controls, industrial policy deciding what would be produced, and so on. And that worked like a charm. Just like it worked in England -- England in fact out-produced Germany and came close to the United States. "So the mobilization of the economy did overcome the depression. The war was taking place and that was the justification for it, but the war was not what overcame the depression in itself. This was pretty well understood. The consensus among American economists and businessmen and others in the mid-forties was that with the government-coordinated economy declining, after the war, they were going to go right back to the depression due to market failures. And so there was an interesting discussion in the late forties, quite open. It's on record in the business press, and I've quoted from it at times. There was recognition that we've got to do something to get the government to stimulate the economy again or else we'll go back to the depression. "It was understood -- you didn't have to read Keynes to figure it out -- that you could stimulate the economy in a lot of different ways. You could stimulate it with social spending, or you could stimulate it with military spending. There was a perfectly sane discussion, in Business Week actually, of which to do. And the conclusion was: social spending is not a good idea, and military spending is a great idea. The reason is that social spending has a downside. Yes, it can pump the economy. But it also has a democratizing effect, because people are interested in social spending; they want to know where you're going to build a hospital or a road or something, and they become involved. They have no opinions about what jet plane to build. Social spending also gives people more security and better conditions, better education, more means of communicating, more ability to withstand threats of unemployment. It makes people, workers, more powerful, that is, and thereby better able to win higher wages and better conditions. "So social spending has a democratizing, redistributive effect, and it's not a direct gift to corporations. Military spending, however, has none of those defects; it's non-democratizing -- on the contrary, people are frightened and they shelter under the umbrella of power. And while it aids corporations it doesn't directly improve the lot of workers; it rather tends to reinforce workplace discipline. So it's a direct gift to corporations. It redistributes upward. And it's easy to sell if you terrify the public. So what emerges is a Pentagon-based industrial policy program, one which is now buckling a bit, due to the excessive liberalizing of capital movements, and thus, one which has to be repaired a bit, so that it once again benefits the rich, as intended." Ethical dimensions of climate change 2007-05-02T19:29:00.001+10:00 Debates that shouldn't be had 2007-04-28T17:39:00.000+10:00 The contours of history are defined by the debates that take place at each historical event. Each new debate is a stepping stone. Each polarity forges the direction of change. Unfortunately the nuclear debates is not one of the debates that should be happening today. Today, we are faced with the logistical and systemic challenges posed by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%-90% by 2020. Nuclear is a distraction to the main intellectual task at hand. However, today, I stood outside the Australian Labor Party conference to defend the party's current 'No New Mines' Policy. The ALP voted it out. To give the illusion of some action happening on the climate change front. For Lou Micallef 2007-04-27T21:40:00.000+10:00 Louise, You were alway curious, but i never thought you would find out what lay that side of death until many years hence. so it feels peculiar to talk about you as one lost from this moment, this world, this biosphere i know that you meditated often, but you were always present here in the 'now'. it feels so wrong to speak about you in the past tense. Can't we meet up again? I want to see you. and talk. I want you to come, and we can watch the ducks and marvel at the blades of grass and the coincidences of life. I want you to embody that joy that i see in you everywhere you go closing your eyes, holding the precious moment in your embrace of the world. You died, a sheet of metal wrapped around a tree. A victim of that which you love, and the drudgery of long country roads. That image is too much one of cruel finality. i can't leave it there- I can't accept that to be true. You left your trace- spreading your spirit like glitter everywhere you went. I'll retrace those steps, and try to spread it all further, so that the world glints like wet pavements in the sun. --------------------------- I have a story. Last month, I sat in the Fair Trade Cafe in Glebe with Lou, - we were wet from rain and had taken shelter from a thunderstorm that had evicted us from sitting beside the pond in Victoria Park. Lou was telling me a story about their work with farmers in the Hunter bioregion (as the BeansTalk co-operative obtains regional fresh food.) Bek Spies and Monique Wicks came in to the cafe, so I asked Lou to repeat the story to them. It goes like this: The BeansTalk food co-op has established such strong links with farmers, that they know when farmers are in distress. With the drought, there was an organic strawberry farm in the Hunter that was in crisis, to such an extent that they could not afford to employ strawberry pickers to take the crop. So what did the BeansTalk co-op people do? They piled in a minibus and brought everyone up to the farm. They picked the strawberries themselves, and paid the farmers for them. The farmers were soooo grateful. isn't that beautiful??? (maybe someone else knows the details of the story better, so fill in the blanks!) 2007-04-20T19:01:00.000+10:00 I just started a collaborative community wiki about our local reserve, Warraroon Reserve!!! I'm hoping that it will animate local residents, of all ages, to get involved with their local bushland reserve. Here is the web address: http://warraroonreserve.pbwiki.com. It's with PB Wiki, which is a free web-based wiki that anyone can create an account with. They asked me to put their little ad on this blog. So here it is: 2007-04-15T20:05:00.001+10:00 I've never been to the Sydney Writers Festival before, but it sounds exciting!! Reading the Spectrum section (Sydney Morning Herald Saturday intellectual liftout), there is the program, and an interview with the director of the festival, Angela Bennie, who has invited Bei Dao, the most revered poet in China (whose verses were being recited by students in Tiananmen Square) as well as lots of other interesting people. 2007-04-12T18:59:00.000+10:00 If you wanted any evidence that the unrestrained market is forcing us to sleepwalk to the edge of a cliff (like that crazy drug stillnox), this photo on the front page of The Australian is it. action alert 2007-04-12T09:26:00.001+10:00 Dear Global Solidaridadders, URGENT ACTION ALERT: Write to Tony Burke and Kevin Rudd! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ LABOR KEEPS CHRISTMAS ISLAND GUANTANAMO +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In just two weeks time, the Labor Party will have its National Policy Conference at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre in Sydney, and while many good policies will be promoted and hopefully endorsed during that weekend, Labor will maintain the horrendous Christmas Island Detention Centre and the Orwellian Excision Zone amongst its policies, because it supports a policy of "stopping the boats" - as if this is the "normal state of affairs". Australia, in signing the UN Refugee Convention, has promised to keep its borders open to unannounced asylum seekers, also those arriving by boat. See http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm +++++++++++++++++++++++++ LABOR KEEPS EXCISION ZONE +++++++++++++++++++++++++ By maintaining the Excision Zone, people who land on one of the 4,600 islands inside the zone, do not have to be treated in accordance with the obligations Australia has under the Refugee Convention. They do not have to be provided with independent lawyers to help them with their refugee claim. They can be deported by Australia to "anywhere", such as Nauru, Manus Island, Indonesia, or any other country that does Australia's bidding. See http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm Even while Labor promises not to do that, and says that they will process everyone on Christmas Island, we should not feel too relaxed about this. The new Christmas Island detention centre is a maximum-security Guantanamo-style prison, microwave controlled, with doors and compounds remotely lockable - wait for it - from Canberra! See http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm This is the reason we at Project SafeCom have launched our biggest ever e-campaign from our website. Through one of our familiar "form pages" you can now compose your own letter to the Opposition leader Mr Kevin Rudd and Immigration spokesman Tony Burke MP. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 500 LETTERS within 36 HOURS +++++++++++++++++++++++++ Since our campaign started 36 hours ago, almost 500 people sent their letter to the ALP via KEvin Rudd and Tony Burke - please join them! Several paragraphs have already been written, and while we recommend you include all these paragraphs also in your letter, you can preclude them from being added to your own writing. For both MP's you can add your own additional paragraphs in the two boxes provided. We have provided a background page also to inform you why it's so important to write your letter. See http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ LABOR WANTS TO "STOP THE BOATS" - WE SAY "THEY MUST COME" +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ We embarked on this campaign to help Labor see that mandatory detention seriously undermines several International conventions, and to help them undo the horrors we created during "the Howard years" when we punished "boat-arrivals" for the way they come to our country. Australia, in signing the UN Refugee Convention, has promised to keep its borders open to unannounced asylum seekers, also those arriving by boat. See http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm This e-campaign is the largest one we at Project SafeCom have launched in our 5½ year history, and by participating you can help it grow even more. At Project SafeCom we are fully prepared for this fight, and we cannot stop our work before Australian social justice policies and asylum seeker policies are fully compliant with the United Nations Refugee Convention and all other conventions. http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm Please help us to end these shocking laws. Since the 2001 "Tampa stand-off" we have seen, heard and read thousands of awful stories of the suffering of asylum seekers and refugees on TV, Radio and in newspapers, magazines, and even at the movies. We do not want this kind of Australia any longer. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ No more Horror Stories of the Howard Years under Kevin Rudd!! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Australia, in signing the UN Refugee Convention, has promised to keep its borders open to unannounced asylum seekers, also those arriving by boat. Please visit this web page and click on the red button to write your letter: http://www.safecom.org.au/alcatraz-downunder.htm best regards Jack H Smit Project SafeCom Inc. http://www.safecom.org.au/ P.O. Box 364 Narrogin WA 6312 2007-04-09T09:52:00.000+10:00 This is what I think about religion, and my relationship to my Catholic identity. I can't change it, and i think that the people who berate and denigrate religion, are at best ignorant and irrelevant, and at worst hypocritical and destructive. Edward Said writes thus: I have an equal amount of intolerance, on the one hand, for manifestos of delight in the culture, history, and tradition of a given society, and, on the other hand, for vehement attacks on culture, history, and tradition as instruments of outright repression. Both these moods- and they are scarcely more than that- are irresponsible; worse, they are uninteresting. Occasionally they are useful as reminders- of the fact that the tradition somehow continues to exist and that it can sometimes also be repressive. More often, however, it is better not to treat such attitudes simply as objects of praise or blame at all- in order, as Merleau-Ponty says of a verbal phrase, to hear what they say. -Edward Said Beginnings: Intention and Method, p.19. Hugh Mackay has an interesting response to Richard Dawkin's book 2007-04-06T23:06:00.000+10:00 Here is a video excerpt of George Galloway on British Sky News last year, that is difficult to tire of: interesting person : William Hazlitt. 2007-03-26T21:18:00.000+10:00 Since I first read about Hazlitt in Heat 12, in James Ley's wonderful essay, I've been wanting to learn much more about him. Hazlitt was part of the English Romantic Movement, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, and was a committed Radical all his life, in contrast to his friends Coleridge and Wordsworth. He wrote essays that were widely revered as the best of his time. As Ley states, 'Although he was a believer in objective truth, Hazlitt saw truth as an active principle. 'The mind strikes out truth by collision', he wrote, 'as steel strikes fire from the flint'. He argued that pure rationality was, in fact, a form of irrationality, because it was lifeless and inhuman. In this he is quintessentially Romantic: he valued energy and spontaneity; he lothed any attempt to deny the importance of the emotions as a vital, defining part of existence.' later Ley writes: 'he was fascinated by the way character informed opinion. When he addresses his subjects he is looking to understand not only their ideas but also their psychology.' In other words, a very interesting person. So here are my first attempts at discovering more: wikipedia article The Hazlitt Society sacrifice and the climate 2007-03-24T18:16:00.000+11:00 i think that the majority of people in Australia care about climate change to the extent that they are willing to make sacrifices and take austerity measures to prevent the worst of it from happening. We as a society need to take such measures stoically and determinedly, pouring our resources and support together. There is a beautiful call to action here, that uses the urgent words of Martin Luther King as its point of departure. However, many people are, understandably, wary of making sacrifices alone, especially where they cannot be assured that it will make a difference, and when freeloading has been made acceptable by the actions of Australia and the US. In the words of Nicholas Stern (in the SMH on the Weekend) Kyoto "was an important symbol of international collective action and responsibility, and any one country not signing - particularly a big country like the United States or a respected country like Australia - encourages others to think freeloading is unavoidable". By freeloading he means getting the benefits of slowing climate change without signing up for the costs. Take for example, voluntarily reducing household emissions, or buying green energy. If an economic unit (say a company or a household) decides to buy clean energy (in the absence of a bigger plan to reduce energy use), of course they are setting themselves back economically, in a market that is based on spending on investments that grow. But if everyone does it, there is a collective ethic of 'this is the right thing to do'. Unless there is a broad, society-wide consensus on a plan of action, and punishment measures endorsed by many (both formal, eg fines and informal eg public shaming), it will feel pointless to take individual action. On the same token, there has to be the same commitment by the corporate world to reducing emissions as there is among society. For too long, society has borne the burden of 'externalities'- all that bad stuff (such as pollution) that economic activity generates. Company directors should no longer get away with taking ever-rising profits, whilst spreading out the losses to society and the environment. Everyone has to be willing to shoulder similar economic burdens from the adaptation and mitigation of climate chaos. 2007-03-12T23:19:00.001+11:00 Russ Grayson from the community gardens network has a great article about relocalisation on Online Opinion... Here is an extract where he talks about peak oil (the proposition affirmed by many energy experts that in the next few years, the global rate of consumption of oil will outstrip the rate of supply): Four qualities needed for success Peak oilers act in a competitive marketplace for ideas, and to be successful they will have to carefully craft their key messages to have three qualities. First of all, they need to distance themselves from apocalyptic thinking, from the doom-and-gloom messages associated with past pseudo-disasters. Going back to the late-1960s, these include Paul Erlich’s “population bomb” scenario, nuclear winter, environmental collapse and the Y2K computer glitch. Being seen as yet another disaster scenario does little to empower citizens to act in their own lives and to take the kind of collective action necessary to make positive changes. Another quality is that of not putting full responsibility for adaptation to peak oil and global warming on the shoulders of households and individuals. It is unlikely that peak oil and global warming will be successfully dealt with without concerted government and industry action. To put responsibility onto individuals and the community alone is to ignore the reality of policy and international accords and the responsibilities of government and industry. The third quality is that the ideas relocalisers propagate need that difficult-to-define property that makes them “sticky” enough to capture the public imagination and adhere to it. In this, the relocalisers have done reasonably well so far, given that they are really only a proto-social movement at this stage. Their message now needs to be taken further into mainstream society. Oh, and also, I found the official website of open spaces!! yay for that! 2007-03-09T13:33:00.000+11:00 i had to reproduce a picture from the greencampusnow website. It's just so cute!! its of greenies in the quadrangle at Sydney Uni saying that Research, that sacred cow, won't stop climate change. shock and horror!! and i can't help thinking that the white thing dangling from the umbrella is a lightening bolt! here are some more greenies, at O-week for Sydney Uni last week. Fifty people turned up to the first environment collective meeting on Monday, apparently, which is extremely exciting! Newcastle Rising Tide and the Gotan Project 2007-03-06T22:36:00.000+11:00 I feel like crying with joy for the brilliance of some climate activists in Newcastle, whose parody website of the NSW Minerals Council advertising campaignhas just been resuscitated (SMH article) by an Afghan webhost.... or maybe i'm just overcome by the beauty of music, because I just came back from the Gotan Project at the Opera House!! the delicate activist flame 2007-03-03T21:27:00.000+11:00 One of the most common topics that seasoned environmental activists talk about is burnout. It's related to something that Don Alexander writes about in this article - that activists, (if they've got a martyr complex), sacrifice more than they get back from activism. A good analogy of the difficult side of activist experience is being dumped by a wave, and struggling to reach the surface to breathe- that kind of disorientation that comes when the pace of change is fast, and everything in your worldview is questioned and turned on its head. I guess that's why i've been treading warily amid the student activist milieu since i've come back from overseas- wary of committing to anything that will consume me and drag me under. So i've been a bit of a contemplative for the last few months- valuing time alone to think- especially walking long distances (eg sydney uni to town hall), and the commute to work and from uni... Videos from Labor Party coal action! 2007-03-03T19:21:00.000+11:00 Here are two videos of the action blockading the ALP offices on Tuesday morning, for crimes against the climate: One from me: If you observe the barrier that the woman sitting down is locked on to by her neck- that's a big slab of plywood that was carried up NINE FLOORS in order to get to the office! just shows the commitment of Rising Tide folks. We sang a few Paul Spencer songs when there, eg Banner drops and lock on pipes: "I hate the liberal party with a passion deep and hearty so i voted for the labor party man, but the lying little weevil turned out just as bloody evil, its clear they're out to get us if they can...." as well as some other songs. Another (better) video is on the Sydney Morning Herald website (Windows media- can't be viewed on Macs). here is the article that accompanies this on the SMH website. No more coal power, says NASA 2007-02-28T16:13:00.001+11:00 From correspondents in Washington February 27, 2007 A MORATORIUM on coal-fired power plants is key to cutting carbon dioxide emissions that promote global warming, NASA's top climatologist says. "There should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until the technology to capture and sequester the (carbon dioxide emissions) is available," said James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "This is a hard proposition that no politician is willing to stand up and say it's necessary," he said at the National Press Club in Washington. The build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases in the atmosphere increases the so-called greenhouse effect, which warms Earth by letting light in, but blocking the heat from escaping the atmosphere, much like glass in a greenhouse. Mr Hansen said the technology to capture carbon dioxide "is probably five or 10 years away". By then, "all coal-burning power plants that don't capture the CO2 will have to be bulldozed". Electric power plants and transportation are top emitters of CO2, which has been largely responsible for increasing Earth's temperature since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, which brought a sharp increase in the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil. Recent dramatic photographs of Earth's melting polar ice caps have convinced many sceptics that global warming is here to stay. "The assumption that it takes thousands years for ice sheets to change is very wrong," Mr Hansen said. "Because of the melting of the ice sheet, the sea level is now rising at the rate of about 35cm per century," he said. "But the concern is that it is a very non-linear process that can accelerate," he said. "The West Antarctic ice sheet in particular is vulnerable and if it collapses, that could make the sea level rise by 5 or 6m - possibly on a time-scale of a century or two." Other articles: Palestine: How to live with Hunger Irish Bishops: Israel has turned Palestine into a large prison (Haaretz) Julia Butterfly-Hill 2007-02-20T14:08:00.000+11:00 This is a wonderful short video of Julia Butterfly Hill talking about sustainable solutions in our world. I know of many exuberant environmentalists in Australia, who embody their love of life in their actions. Julia reminds me of them. Glimpses of a better world 2007-02-17T20:12:00.000+11:00 I'm planning to maintain a list of inspiring initiatives that create better social relationships, that I will add to as time progresses: 1. Initiative:Alternative currencies in Europe Why? Because this currency encourages local consumption, and discourages the accumulation of funds, and supports local NGO's. There are fundamental problems with our current monetary systems, which i will outline at a later date. 2. Initiative:Community garden networks in Australia. Why? Community gardens fulfil many purposes: encouraging urban agriculture, building local communities among them. 2007-02-17T15:36:00.000+11:00 Some recent Indig articles: John Tracey: Greenies and Murries. Paradigm Oz. John Pilger: Mourning a secret Australia Z Magazine. ANTAR : winding back native title rights- again InterContinental Cry Gould's Book Arcade 2007-02-16T10:53:00.000+11:00 Here is a composite picture of Goulds Book Arcade in Newtown: amalgamated from 6 photos. And see if you can spot Bob Gould himself (it's like wheres wally!) Actually I just found an excellent article by Bob about the rally against the bombing of Lebanon last year... creativity 2007-02-13T18:11:00.000+11:00 here is an interesting article about the power of creating new worlds through acting in the world. George Bush and many other movers and shakers have learnt a lot from Marx: that whilst the philosophers have interpreted the world, the point is to change it. By changing and acting on the world, you alter reality (often in unexpected ways). But (perhaps) in contrast to Marx, the basis of Bush's success was to recognise that logic is relatively unimportant in shaping human aspirations and understanding of the world (maybe i'll take that back- actually... Marx was quite an artist- it was his followers who were ultra-rationalist). In many ways, the intellectual tools needed for living and acting in the world are quite different to what the enlightenment logic toolbox equips us with. In terms of global power relationships, surrealist theatre can sometimes depict a recognisable reality better than empirical analysis. Most human thinking is associative rather than rational. And that's not necessarily bad. Most people's motivations for doing things are not primarily rational- usually people act because of their relationships with other people, their gut reactions, or because of a common consciousness. Yet this doesn't mean such motivations are non-valid. They just need to be grounded from time to time with feedback and evidence. Effective activists can be like ARTISTS in many ways- deepening or interrogating peoples' associative frameworks (making them better connected to the world), and creating the imaginative and practical infrastructure needed for possible futures. This is where utopian thinking has played a role in the past... One example is a collective of activists who see themselves as artists (in their role in developing peoples' associative logic) : the group "Platform London". A. 2007-02-02T23:21:00.000+11:00 On The Australian's opinion page: just about all ideologically right wing (especially global warming deniers) articles except perhaps one: Editorial: Cool heads needed on red-hot topic Pamela Bone: The Left is onside with hate Nick Minchin: Prosperity is no accident Mike Steketee: Iemma's banana republic Cut & paste: Tim Flannery's baseless hysteria over global warming Editorial: Judges should not be their own juries John Hirst: An unaffordable luxury Daniel Donahoo: Kindy no place for the three Rs Wesley Aird: Key to unrest is policy failure Jennifer Marohasy: Reef may benefit from global warming Cut & paste: How a right-wing, pro-Howard cabal is stifling debate sydney... 2007-02-02T19:08:00.000+11:00 Sydney has been described as possibly the most vacuous city in the world!!! I always knew we would make the grade. here is an article (smh) about it (and another one, and below are some quotes from the smh blog: Of course there are grounded, generous, happy people in Sydney - I'm sure I met one once - but, generally speaking, I think James has hit the nail on the head. I've lived in cities all over the English-speaking world - in London, in Cape Town, in Auckland -and I can truly say Sydney is the most beautiful, and the most vacuous. Posted by: John at February 2, 2007 7:13 AM "It reminds me of a quote from Clive Hamilton (didn't his Affluenza book come out 2 years ago?) about "people doing jobs they hate, to buy things they don't need, to impress people they don't like". That's Sydney isn't it? I have been living outside of Australia for a couple of years now. From the outside looking in, the perspective is frightening. However, even leaving the shores is no guarantee of immunity. I find it funny that you meet ex-pats who are overseas expressly to make enough cash to go home and get a mortgage!" When my husband and I first moved into the neighbourhood, I baked cakes and offered it to various neighbours hoping to make friends and to get to know my neighbours. People were happy to accept the cake and ocassionaly the organic home grown herbs but never once we were invited for a drink or a BBQ. It has been more than two years now and we still don't know our neighbours. People are polite and civilised but there is no real interest to interact as neighbours. I have lived in many big cities much much bigger than Sydney and in all these places I have always known my immediate neighbours. We socialised. I have a personal relationship with my fruit and veggie vendors as well as the people at the bank. It felt like living in a community. I feel very alienated here in Sydney to the point that I want to move back overseas. I grew up in Sydney, left for 16 years, came back couldn't stand it because of the pinning of meaning onto possessions, contacts or activities driven by a fear that any sort of meaning to life would collapse under scrutiny. There is a lso a terrible rigidity of thought and people think they are sophisticated if they order the right sort of coffee. Nobody questions anything and ignores what doesn't suit them. without a doubt sydney is the most vacuous city i have ever been to. just getting out and travelling makes you realise how shallow and pointless most sydneysider's lives are. Oh he is so right. Combine that with the vacuous generation Y and wow what a sad city. And why on the subject of vacuous there is Iemma to consider as well. Sydney has so far to go till it becomes even remotely sophisticated and world class. Posted by: Paul at February 2, 2007 6:28 AM Years living in Sydney as well as the other capitals have convinced me that it the most vacuuous city in Australia. Some overseas, however, cities would be much worse; Hong Kong is a prime example. Posted by: PCN at February 2, 2007 6:30 AM Yep. Or at least, one of them. Wherever you find a city, or a country for that matter that is being run by a bunch of deluded economists, who operate on the highly flawed theory of infinite growth in a finite world, then you will have a profound lack of humanity, as evidenced in Sydney. Time for a big change human race. A big change. Posted by: daz at February 2, 2007 7:01 AM train of intention 2007-02-02T14:26:00.000+11:00 in the library, at a desk. They are typing, the aircon a constant white noise. pursuing their rational endeavours. balancing on the narrow track of their academic disciplines. perhaps one day emerging from the long tunnel but submitting to what rationality prescribes for them today. may i interrupt? may i interrupt your silence? can i say the unthinkable? can i involve you in a common subjectivity? can i bring into being the 'we' that still does not recognise itself? "What are we going to do?" what are we going to do? what can we do? what do we have the motivation to do? what kind of work is to be done? the question buzzing between the lines of the newspapers the question in the hopeless naming of crisis. the question of madmen in train carriages. can we democratise the train carriages? can we animate the libraries? can we live and let live? can we emerge from this hole? Australia: fundamental problems 2007-01-21T14:26:00.000+11:00 An article on Frews blog talks about the fundamental faults with the Australian legal system, being based on Positive Law, rather than Natural Law. It's very interesting for me at this time, because i've been thinking about the temperament of Australians, their lack of idealism, and their strong cynicism, taking for granted a 'lowest common denominator' view of humanity and of the world- being willing to sell out our values for money and privilege, when we see it as inevitable that someone else will. (My sister told me about a recent article in the Herald by an Australian woman bemoaning the observation that all her fellow countrymen and women at Harvard became those in their year who most willlingly took the unethical big corporate jobs, rather than jobs to help people). I've been talking to my sister about the role Australia has been playing internationally, as the secretly evil one, who plots away behind the scenes to undermine important legislation such as the Kyoto Protocol, and the UN convention on the rights of indigenous peoples. We are SUCH a machiavellian society- I just can't believe it. Some other observations from another intellectual friend, Christina, who is fleeing this redneck country- (who I fortuitously ran into on the bus at 1am last night), is that 1. it is hard to meet intellectually interesting people in Sydney. (or rather, to find spaces where the 'interestingness' of people can be expressed). Appearance of 'normality' is valued highly by many. [There is also a strong sense of an 'ingroup thought police', that i experience as the 'judgemental gaze'- that looks you up and down in the street- I notice this when feeling ultra-sensitive, and feel much more at ease in this regard in Melbourne]. 2. Sydney has a Mediterranean climate, but a Nordic streetlife- we go inside at about 7pm, and don't celebrate life on the streets as many people in mediterranean cultures do.- Except, i must say, at Sydney Festival time. I went to Symphony under the Stars last night, and it was wonderful, as always. But so beautiful!! i'll post a picture of sydney i took 2 years ago here. 2007-01-18T20:31:00.000+11:00 This extract is from a statement by the Commission of Venezuelan Indigenous peoples in Defense of the Land. Translated by the indigenous solidarity working group of Rising Tide North America, a climate action group. The statement raises issues of the inherent contradictions of OIL, -funding good social programs in the Bolivarian Revolution, but having serious environmental and social implications. Addiction to oil must be addressed if social justice and environmental sustainability is to prevail. We Are Native Venezuelans, And We Want To Continue Existing As We Are. Our words summoning Help with our independent struggle to Defend our Land, to realize our Right for self-determination, to Unmask and Defeat the neo-liberal, genocidal energy policies of the "Bolivarian Revolution." Written by Wayuú (native Venezuelan) professor Jose Angel Quintero with the Commission of Venezuelan Indigenous Peoples in Defense of the Land, representing Wayuú, Barí, Yukpa, Pumé, and Pemón indigenous Venezuelan nations The loneliness of our struggle becomes big and heavy, because we have to fight against the imposed silence of our words and protests in the mainstream news networks. We've had to fight against the campaigns of defamation on the part of the mining and oil companies that try to discredit us and our leaders, and try and take our land by way of concessions given out by the government of the fifth republic. We fight against the ignorance of those who merely do not know- but at other times we must clearly confront the accomplices, the intellectual sectors, the social movements, and even brother and sister natives, indigenous blood, in other countries, who have not been able to understand how it's possible that a government whose main reputation is its popular discourse against Bush and imperialism, and at the same time, internally, yields to the appetites and impositions of imperial multi-national corporations, including those that the Bush family has stock and interest in; capital. And if that wasn't enough bitter ironies, all this comes at the detriment of us, the indigenous- us who Hugo Chavez publicly says he is "defending." full article here. 2007-01-16T18:59:00.000+11:00 a litmus test indicator of the GORE that drives newspaper sales in australia is the top 10 articles on the sydney morning herald website: Many distressing words and themes: 'revenge', 'beheading', 'decapitate', 'rape', murder, etc. Less celebrities than usual... except one good thing- i like the 'Burquini' story... Members of my family always threaten to cancel our newspaper subscription, cos they get too upset from it all. personally, i don't think that murder stories and the like should be on the news. The rate of murders and crime in sydney apparently is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago- yet we keep on hearing about crime all the time, and thinking the world is so dangerous. TODAY'S TOP 10 ARTICLES 1. iPhone skins irk Apple 2. The Queen is crowned 3. 'Burqini' comes to Aussie beaches 4. Prostitute's revenge on farmer who wouldn't pay 5. Charged star loses rich radio job 6. One MP's very dirty laundry 7. Vet's beheading motive mystery 8. Saddam's brother decapitated in hanging 9. Teen charged over rape and murder of baby 10. Why didn't Shawn try to escape? Quoting from 'Against Paranoid Nationalism' 2007-01-16T16:25:00.000+11:00 I found a great passage from Ghassan Hage's book Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for hope in a shrinking society.. Until recently, the capacity of the great majority of migrants to settle in Western societies was dependent on the availability of a Western 'surplus of hope'. This surplus is the precondition of all forms of hospitality. But it is clear today that while the West is producing a surplus of many things, hope is not among them. As Bordieu points out, while society is certainly defined through its capacity as distributer of 'meanings of life', any society's actual capacity cannot be taken for granted at any time, and hope and meaningfulness are not always offered. Capitalist societies are characterised by a deep inequality in their distribution of hope, and when such inequality reaches an extreme, certain groups are not offered any hope at all. 'One of the most unequal of all distributions, and probably, in any case, the most cruel, is the distribution of symbolic capital, that is, of social importance and of reasons for living,' he tells us. For him, 'there is no worse dispossession, no worse privation, perhaps, than that of the losers in the symbolic struggle for recognition, for access to a socially recognised social being, in a word, to humanity'. ... What characterised neo-liberal economic policy in his eyes was not that it was shaped by a society marred by inequality, but that the very idea of society, of commitment to some form of distribution of hope, was disappearing. This has been perhaps the most fundamental change that global capitalism has introduced to Western and non-Western societies alike. In the era of global capitalism, the growth of the economy, the expansion of firms and rising profit margins no longer go hand in hand with the state's commitment to the distribution of hope within society. In fact, what we are witnessing is not just a decrease in the state's commitment to an ethical society, but a decrease in its commitment to a national society tout court. Many social analysts today debate the decline of national sovereignty and national identity as a result of 'globalisation'. Yet the greatest casualty, and the one that has most bearing on the quality of our lives, is the decline neither of sovereignty or identity as such, but the decline of society. This is hardly ever mentioned. When the society of the past saw the possibility of social death, the welfare state intervened to breathe in hope, for there was a perception that all society was at stake wherever and whenever this possibility arose. Today, not only does the state not breathe in hope, it is becoming an active producer of social death, with social bodies rotting in spaces of chronic underemployment, poverty and neglect. We seem to be reverting to the neo-feudal times analysed by Norbert Elias, where the boundaries of civilisation, dignity and hope no longer coincide with the boundaries of the nation, but the boundaries of upper-class society, the social spaces inhabited by an internationally delineated cosmopolitan class. Increasingly, each nation is developing its own 'third world', inhabited by the rejects of global capitalism. From Hage, G. (2003) Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for hope in a shrinking society. Pluto Press, Sydney, pp.17-18. 2007-01-14T19:46:00.000+11:00 It's exciting to discover a book that records the debate between Chomsky and Foucault about human nature. So many ideological debates actually come down to different view points on what is human nature. Chomsky's position in this debate is close to my own. I believe that there are universal notions of justice that are hard-wired to human development (just like Kant's 'categories' of causality etc that naturally emerge in the human brain). Chomsky's position coincides with the idea of the 'justice motive' that psychologist Melvin Lerner writes about (I discovered this book whilst hanging out in the library all year for honours)- Yet I don't know whether i'd call myself a Cartesian as Chomsky does. It sounds too linear to me!!! BTW in the course of a google search, I found a biographical site for Noam Chomsky. It's really interesting. ... From Amazon.com: The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature Editorial Reviews: Book Description: Two of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers debate a perennial question. In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War and at a time of great political and social instability, two of the world's leading intellectuals, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault, were invited by Dutch philosopher Fons Edlers to debate an age-old question: is there such a thing as "innate" human nature independent of our experiences and external influences? The resulting dialogue is one of the most original, provocative, and spontaneous exchanges to have occurred between contemporary philosophers, and above all serves as a concise introduction to their basic theories. What begins as a philosophical argument rooted in linguistics (Chomsky) and the theory of knowledge (Foucault), soon evolves into a broader discussion encompassing a wide range of topics, from science, history, and behaviorism to creativity, freedom, and the struggle for justice in the realm of politics. In addition to the debate itself, this volume features a newly written introduction by noted Foucault scholar John Rajchman and includes additional text by Noam Chomsky. About the Author: Noam Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at MIT and a world-renowned political thinker and activist. The author of numerous books, including On Language and Understanding Power (both available from The New Press), he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Michel Foucault (1926-84) held a chair in the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. The New Press has published three previous volumes of his work as well as a collection, The Essential Foucault. John Rajchman is a professor of philosophy at Columbia University and author of Michel Foucault. He lives in New York City. Foucault's Chomp, November 27, 2006 Reviewer: Mr. Bloom It is now widely conceded among post-modern/post-structuralist circles that Foucault broke the back of linguist-political scientist Noam Chomsky in this televised debate on Dutch television. Perhaps this conception further contributed to Chomksy's disdain with the French intellectual community entire in subsequent years. Nevertheless, regardless of one's political/philosophical disposition, this is an endlessly fascinating debate, between two thinkers working as "tunnellers through a mountain working at opposite sides of the same mountain with different tools, without even knowing if they are working in each other's direction" (2), to use the moderators' description. The debate begins technically, Chomksy addresses his discoveries within the domain of cognitive linguistics, and Foucault outlines his historical research into the sciences in Western civilization. Chomsky is a self-described rational `Cartesian,' a philosophical disposition largely rejected by post-modernity after the detruktion of Western philosophy by Martin Heidegger. Foucault, on the other hand, (who began as a major Heideggerian) seems to adopt a Nietzschean disposition; he rejects Chomsky's assertion that a genuine concept of human justice is rooted biologically in the human species. Rather, that our knowledge of morality and human nature are always necessarily rooted in social conditioning. Chomsky actually fails (here as well as elsewhere) to really confront the philosophy of Nietzsche, who necessarily put a dent in all forms of socialism, whether democratic, libertarian, or totalitarian. To illustrate Chomsky's elusiveness: "FOUCAULT: it seems to me that the idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power as a weapon against that power. But it seems to me that, in any case, the notion of justice itself functions within a society of classes as a claim made by the oppressed class and as justification for it. CHOMSKY: I don't agree with that. FOUCAULT: And in a classless society, I am not sure that we would still use this notion of justice" (54-55). But Chomksy replies by reasserting his belief that there must be an absolute basis in which notions of human justice are "grounded" (ibid), however, he relies once again solely on his partial knowledge of what `human nature' is. 2 Comments on this Review J. D. Shockley Ridiculous. Foucault got owned. Scientists like Marc Hauser have proven that we do have a moral grammar wired in the brain. Foucault's belief that every action driven by our sense of justice, freedom, love etc is in reality a "will to power" is so simplistic and idiotic, that any 12-year-old kid can refute it. Chomsky has proven over and over again that most intellectuals are servants of power. Those French elitist intellectuals have to spout fancy words and engage in endless mental masturbation and obscure/pretentious/complicated rhetoric to appear like they're smart and maintain their status, but Chomsky kicked their behind hands down, and exposed their game to their face (that's why he's hated) Like Chomsky says, the notion of human beings as selfish blank slates is one that appeals to authoritarian ideologies. Reply Variations on a Theme: urban nature 2007-01-11T15:26:00.000+11:00 Today in the US-based online Grist magazine there is an excellent article about the need for nature writers to focus on urban areas. I will willingly comply with this writer's hopes- in photography. Already on this blog i have documented the proliferation of organisms in my front and back yards!! Perhaps i will continue with this, and post pictures on this theme!! ... a kookaburra: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Some native Flannel flowers on the ceiling at Petersham 2007-01-10T22:26:00.000+11:00 More media commentary, this time on the US escalation of bombing. From this Reuters newsfeed from SMH, US launches new air strike on Somalia US forces hunting al-Qaeda suspects launched a fresh air strike on southern Somalia today, a Somali government source said. "As we speak now, the area is being bombarded by the American air force," he told Reuters, giving no further details. The latest attack followed a US strike in the area on Monday which Somali officials said had killed many people, prompting criticism from around the world including new UN chief Ban Ki-moon. oh, so they've gone hunting in Africa, have they? And it's a 'fresh' set of bombs- i mean, 'air strikes'. How considerate. One could almost forget that there are human beings being bombarded and their lives threatened. Mystery crustaceans 2007-01-08T22:24:00.000+11:00 These crustaceans appeared spontaneously in a bucket in our front yard, after rain!! They measure about 8mm long. Aren't they amazing? Christopher Pearson: 'Real Christians are social conservatives'. 2007-01-07T22:03:00.000+11:00 It's very interesting to note that some of the most strongly conservative, pro-market, anti-Left commentators/ politicians these days used to be trotskyites or had some involvement with the radical left in Australia. What is wrong with the Australian Left? - It creates such monsters- such bitterly sectarian, legalistic and insensitive people !! For example, Michael Costa used to be a trotskyist. So did Paddy McGuinness. On the Leftwrites blog, there is an excellent dissection of Christopher Pearson's article on Kevin Rudd. Pearson is a conservative cheerleader in The Australian. Yet he cut his political teeth campaigning for law reform on homosexuality in South Australia, before converting to Catholicism. Yet his style of catholicism is foreign to me, seeming deeply symptomatic of self-hate. His tirade against Kevin Rudd's Christianity ("Rudd needs to learn real Christians are social conservatives") is bizarre to say the least, considering Pearson identifies as Gay: There are other important issues where Rudd so far hasn’t let his faith inform his values. In the same interview he told Doogue that: "On the question of homosexuality, I can’t find a single teaching of Jesus of Nazareth which rails against homosexuality." Any competent theologian – and most educated laymen – could have told him that 2000 years ago the Jews took a very dim view of homosexual acts and the fact that they deplored them went without saying. ... On the other hand, Tim Costello, director of World Vision Australia welcomes Rudd's moderate Christianity. Other Sydney Anglicans worth reading are Rachel's friend Byron, whose post on corporate growth as cancer is gold! Also, the review of the film The Queen (that I saw on Friday night) on the Sydney Anglican website is excellent. 26 Jan- Sovereignty Day 2007-01-07T12:11:00.000+11:00 yay! 2007-01-01T19:03:00.000+11:00 I just got back from Peats Ridge festival, and it was a lot of fun. here is one picture of the oconnell street crew: Response to my sister 2006-12-29T00:08:00.000+11:00 My sister just sent me this message: An interesting article by Paul Gray in the Australian today. I like his point about the need for grounding in metaphysical and historical awareness to interpret the signs of the times. -------------------- My response: Dear L, Whilst i agree that middle class intellectual culture is somewhat empty, I don't believe that the ABC has much bias in that way, and if anything, is an antidote to that. (Think Geraldine Doogue and Father Bob, and the excellent content on Radio National). I think it is dangerous to be passive or to endorse the agenda by Howard and News Limited etc to water down the critical content of our media. I think the most important programs that the ABC airs are those that encourage thought outside the box, especially those programs that expose Australian government policy, when it is causing injustice. There is a strong tradition within journalism, especially investigative journalism, to side with the underdog and to encourage empathy within the general public for the cause of oppressed people. Think about the journalists who were murdered in East Timor, for their heroic work in alerting the Australian people to the injustices of the Indonesian military, that Australia was complicit in, by training soldiers and giving political support to Indonesia and to the US. If there is no critical thinking in this area, where will it be? -In the history lessons? Oh no- that's a 'black armband view of history'. -In English lessons? Oh no - that's the 'postmodern menace'. -Through universities and student protests? Oh no- student organisations have lost most of their funding, because they use student funds to campaign against government policy, and pull down fences at Woomera Detention Centre. -In Non-Government Organisations such as Greenpeace? Oh no- due to recent legislation, they get their 'charity status' revoked if they are 'political' and disagree with the government. -In other media outlets? Oh no the cross media ownership laws will further concentrate Australia's media ownership (it is already the most concentrated in the world). See Friends of the ABC submission to the cross media ownership Inquiry. If you don't usually notice the agenda by Howard and Co to remove the critical infrastructure of Australian society, then you will not understand the urgency with which I approach life, and the grave responsibility of our generation to take action. Can we win against global warming if we have an uncritical media like FOX/ Murdoch that is favourable to the agendas of oil companies? Can we free the refugees from indefinite detention on Lombok, Manus Island, Christmas Island, etc when our ABC is silenced? Can we revoke the Work Choices legislation if the media is a cheerleader for it? x, A. Spectator culture and the internet 2006-12-27T17:23:00.000+11:00 I think we all need to give up our addictions to the internet. Until around eight years ago, I successfully resisted all aspects of 'spectator culture': I never watched TV (and campaigned against my siblings watching TV); I rarely went to sports games or theatre: I prefered to spend my time participating rather than watching. The internet has changed this. The internet is 'interactive' to a small degree, however I believe it is overwhelmingly passive. Since I gained my first hotmail address in 1998, I have been glued to the computer screen. Early on, I subscribed myself to email lists that sent voluminous tracts of mail to my slow computer, occupying me sometimes for eight hours at a time. The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator List was the worst, sending many threads exploring idiosyncratic commonalities between us INFP's, spread across continents and mainly in North America. Since then, being on many different activist lists has sometimes felt like I was taking action, when in reality I wasn't doing much. In its most recent issue, The Ecologist explores this phenomenon, describing the gadgets that surround us as "Electric Cabaret", allowing easy access for marketers to make their presence known in our spare time, and enabling us to take refuge from the problems of everyday life. The author writes of the role of Cabaret in Weimar Germany, when 'Cabarets provided refuge from social ills fomenting in the streets, at home and at work, where the bourgeoisie could escape the apocalyptic horsemen on the horizon.' Such is the state of denial in our world today. (to be continued) 2006-12-27T11:24:00.000+11:00 A PALESTINIAN VIEW OF JIMMY CARTER'S BOOK Ali Abunimah, The Wall Street Journal, 26 December 2006 here (electronic intifada) Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse" (Metropolitan Books, 2006). Dame Edna's Christmas Message 2006-12-23T23:02:00.000+11:00 Here is Dame Edna's excellent Christmas message: (from The Age). This is the best part: For a woman who, apparently, hasn't even heard of Princess Mary, the Queen then shows that she has her finger on the pulse and her ear to the ground in other respects. "Will Shane and Simone get together again?" she enquiries caringly. "And Schapelle. Will she be publishing another riveting volume of her memoirs?" Above all, she anxiously asks: "Has that nice Naomi Robson saved little Wah-Wah yet? Or will he be replacing the turkey and mince pies at his family's Christmas dinner in New Guinea?" I put down the phone, a bit tearful and emotional. It's a long time now since my husband Norm passed away and I recall our last Christmas in his private suite at the Dame Edna Memorial Prostate Foundation. George Monbiot and air travel 2006-12-23T22:47:00.000+11:00 In response to the vicious comments slamming George Monbiot for his air travel: In these times, the cynical couch commentator has arisen to claim his place as the premier judge of right and wrong. HYPOCRITE!!! is his gleeful cry, slamming yet another person who advocates principles and holds people accountable to them. Such people take great pleasure in trampling 'tall poppies', especially those who state inconvenient facts, making people uncomfortable. Yet a hypocrite is hardly the worst thing you can be. If you dare to have ANY principles in this world, you are a hypocrite, since as citizens, we are all complicit through our insufficient action, in massive, unprecedented injustice. (hence, the equation goes, you should not publicly advocate any principles if you don't want to be a hypocrite). Renowned cancer scientist was paid by chemical firm for 20 years 2006-12-19T19:39:00.000+11:00 From The Guardian:: Sarah Boseley, health editor Friday December 8, 2006 The Guardian A world-famous British scientist failed to disclose that he held a paid consultancy with a chemical company for more than 20 years while investigating cancer risks in the industry, the Guardian can reveal. Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business. While he was being paid by Monsanto, Sir Richard wrote to a royal Australian commission investigating the potential cancer-causing properties of Agent Orange, made by Monsanto and used by the US in the Vietnam war. Sir Richard said there was no evidence that the chemical caused cancer. continued.... zinc mine 2006-12-13T22:38:00.000+11:00 .So, are we trading the Rainbow Serpent Dreaming for sunscreen? Well, a zinc mine to be more specific... Seems so, in relation to the expansion of the McArthur River zinc and lead mine in the NT, operated by Xstrata, one of the biggest mining companies in the world, based in Switzerland. My task at the moment, is to tell the story of the Traditional Owners and to motivate you to act to stop such environmentally preposterous decisions. The mine violates the Traditional Owners wishes, destroying sites and ecosystems that are sacred. The Native title situation is as follows: While Traditional Owners have a Native Title claim over the mine site, they still have no formal veto rights over the new project. On meeting with many of the traditional owners in Borroloola it was clear that there were many concerns about the possible impacts of the project. In 2003, Harry Lansen, a senior traditional owner for the mine site opposed the expansion on ABC television's Stateline program saying "It is no good. I will be sick if they cut the place, because my spirit is there. All my songs are across the river.I don't want to see that thing happen in the McArthur River." (Environment Centre Northern Territory website). Here is a picture of locals who travelled 1000 km to Darwin, to take their protest to NT's parliament: . . And here is a map showing where the site is in relation to Darwin: I remember looking at that region on Google Earth last year (when i was overseas), and marvelling at the beautiful winding rivers in the Gulf of Carpentaria- you should look!!. As the open-cut pit will be located at the current site of the river bed, there are big problems for the functioning of the watercourse. Here is a diagram of the proposed location of the mine: One of the reasons why this crazy expansion decision was approved, was that John Howard put pressure on Claire Martin (the NT chief minister) in a letter that was leaked to Lateline (I think- i need to find more about this). So, go to the Environment Centre NT's website, and take action, OR if there is an Xstrata office near you, take your complaints directly to them. 2006-12-13T16:17:00.000+11:00 from Joseph Toscano, whose Anarchist Age is sometimes interesting: STOP PRESS OVERFISHED It is hard to believe that Australian fisheries are in danger of being wiped out. How can a country with the third largest fishing zone in the world, covering nearly 9 million square kilometres, extending 200 kilometres from the coastline, find itself in such a parlous situation? Australia has currently allocated 1200 commercial fishing licenses. They catch about 72,000 tonnes of fish a year to generate a $500 million income. Things have become so bad, commercial fishing licenses will be decreased from 1,200 to 600 during the next 12 moths, through license buy back schemes that will cost about $150 million. It seems that both Federal and State governments have taken little notice of the lessons of the past. Within a decade of the beginning of white colonisation, Australia's abundant seal supplies disappeared. Commercial whaling had the same effect on the country's whaling stock. The problem is not just a local problem; it is a world wide problem. The world's fisheries have come under sustained attack from commercial interests over the past few decades. Larger ships that are able to stay out longer and refrigerate larger catches have depleted the world's fisheries stocks. The tragedy about the coastal fishing industry is that the situation has arisen because governments have done little to ensure that fishing stocks are rested. Resting coastal fisheries and allowing the fish to breed, can overcome the severe pressure many find themselves in today. Like any renewable resource, management is the key to maintaining adequate supplies of fish. Water, the forests and now fisheries find themselves in this situation because State governments have over allocated licenses, believing there is no tomorrow. The fate of the country's fisheries in an indictment on an economic system that forces people to stay in jobs that do damage to the environment because their livelihood is tied up in that industry. It makes little sense to continue to pursue economic initiatives that have caused so much irreparable damage in such a short time. Joseph TOSCANO / Libertarian Workers For A Self-Managed Society. 2006-12-12T16:17:00.000+11:00 I've been thinking about middle-class angst, what makes it middle class, whether it is socially useful, etc. I was talking to Rachel (i forget her last name) today in the food coop about how 'existential crisis' is a sign of privilege, of the fact that you actually have options with your life (rather than working class people who feel like they don't have many options. Also, i notice how many privileged people have 'issues'. Middle Class Angst/ existential crisis: WHAT IS IT RELATED TO? lack of social solidarity, competitive environments, urban alienation, productive alienation (cannot see tangible results from work), overwork, underwork, narcissism, 'the figure of the artist', peer groups, high expectations, a lack of 'meaning', a lack of a narrative structure (such as a struggle for survival) giving order to ones' life, the inability to express freedom in meaningful ways. anyways- something to think about... 2006-12-04T13:14:00.000+11:00 Here is a short film on You Tube about the Anvil Hill campaign to stop an open cut coal mine near Wybong in the Upper Hunter Valley. Christine Phelps, an amazing community advocate, is featured in the film. I was lucky enough to meet her and interview her for my thesis- she spoke to me about the efforts she has made over the years to try to keep coal companies accountable to local people. Also, today, Kevin Rudd was elected as leader of the opposition. I'm actually really excited about this. He recently gave an excellent speech critiquing Hayek's neoliberal ideas at that bastion of neoliberal thought, the Centre for Independent Studies. My grandma (my mum's mum) died this morning. We just got back from the Nursing home, where we said a few decades of the Rosary (Hail Marys) around the bed. She was clutching her wooden rosary beads. It was also my parents' 35th wedding anniversary, and my youngest brother (John)'s birthday. G20 2006-11-29T12:17:00.000+11:00 I actually missed the G20 protests, but came to the Melbourne Social Forum. By the time i got to melbourne by the slow train on Saturday night, (i had missed my plane due to a slow trackwork train the day before), i got there in time to greet everyone hanging out and dancing to music outside the parliament on Spring Street. Tired faces, who had obviously been through euphoria and trauma in the day, greeted me. The next day, media outcry and repetition of a few images of cracked police windscreens prevailed. Some guy from Monash, was able to fit the (now prevalent) media archetype of a crazed protester, to become the face of the protest. Again The Age, Australia's most reputable newspaper, and the Herald Sun stooped to the low levels of claiming that protesters threw urine at police. Same lie that they told six years ago. Their only source was treasurer Peter Costello. -just goes to show how newspapers bend the truth a lot when they feel they have to. There is a good discussion on Melbourne Indymedia about the G20 protest, and the media representation of it. And for the record, I have a real problem with the arrogance of the arterial bloc callout that said: 'We have no time for violent macho fantasy or delusions about Ghandi (sic). It goes on. The problem i have with it is that i am not convinced that there were not violent macho fantasies at play. I think the idolisation of the Italian tutti bianchi can be problematic if their tactics are transplanted to an entirely different context, in which they are not understood by others. In this case, the images are received as threatening by everyone except those who understand the leftist subcultural allusion. Protesters in this way were able to dehumanise themselves: the media did not have to make any effort to do this, this time around (in contrast to the protests at the World Economic Forum in 2000. In addition, in relation to Gandhi, I actually think the far left has just as many delusions about Gandhi as liberals who idolise him. In general, I think both are problematic. Gandhi is poorly understood, and it would do us much good (in terms of strategy) if we understood Nonviolence (Ahisma) and the Truth-Force (Satyagraha) better. Whilst the far left in general interprets Nonviolence as a moralistic discourse, the Environment movements throughout Australia, understand nonviolence in more practical terms, and I think we have a lot to learn from them. Organising for social change: non-authoritarian institutions 2006-11-27T13:46:00.000+11:00 Currently, I'm really interested in institutions, and how they facilitate participation and engagement with the world. There is a problematic history of coercive, authoritarian and inadequate approaches to activist and citizen learning and political practice in Sydney, that is ingrained in many of our activist cultures. You cannot really point the finger and make accusations, because it is actually very difficult to overcome the authoritarian cultural obstacles to useful and liberatory activism. There is a fine line between having an efficient operation, and excluding members from decisionmaking. How can we distinguish non-authoritarian methodology? This question is connected to educational methodology, which is key in social change. Paulo Freire's analysis of the 'banking method of education' (oppressive) versus the 'problem-posing method of education' (liberatory) is relevant in this regard. When I read pamphlets, or any textual artifact of the Left in Sydney, I often sense that the writer is coming from a rigid position, seeking to 'politicise' me, or 'implant knowledge' into me, rather than to enter into dialogue about the world together. Funnily enough, I notice a very different, more open-minded and reflective/reflexive writing style in Melbourne. (sorry i'll have to find examples- just give me some time- i'll update this post) Politics in Sydney can be divided thus: Authoritarian: Most parts of the Liberal party, most parts of the Labor Party (including the former DLP), Marxist-Leninist groups, Stalinist groups (ex CPA groups), some Anarchist groups that have insular 'in group' tendencies, some top-down environmental groups, many NGO's, most unions. Non-Authoritarian: Most environmental groups, The Greens, small parts of the Labor and Liberal Parties, Aid/Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, some unions, some Anarchist groups. Usually, to overcome an authoritarian culture requires that a support network is strong, and that it promotes a different, more inclusive culture than the mainstream. The most famous social movements in Sydney: BUGAUP, Aboriginal reconciliation, and The Green Bans, were all non-authoritarian. Unfortunately, non- authoritarianism is the best descriptor of these groups (rather than a positive descriptor such as left 'libertarian' or 'democratic') because they were usually unable to articulate a positive pro-active program for democratic social transformation. When groups overcome authoritarianism, they are more likely to be successful, since a less coercive attitude encourages participants to realise their creative potentials. Yet overcoming authoritarianism is hard. It requires sharp analysis and good group process/ facilitation, that recognises the impact of inequality. Our society is inherently hierarchical, and different people have different levels of privilege, exerting power over others easily when they are stereotypically 'normal' people (ie anglo macho males). Yet the particular type of authoritarianism that Sydney-based activism suffocates from is particularly bad, because it promotes political relationships that derail EVEN those initiatives that ordinary people without any activist expertise can initiate. There are so many examples of keen, open-minded people with much organiser potential who I have seen ultimately turned away by the antics of the Sydney Left. The collapse of the Sydney Walk Against the War Coalition is a prominent example of this. This is related to our track record with coalitions. Last week, I sat in on the development of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in Melbourne. I've been reflecting on coalitions in Australia. I actually think we suffer from a 'coalition deficiency'. There are very few examples of successful coalitions operating in Australia. Our political culture is affected by this. Anyway. I remembered that many organisations in North America (even GRASPE McGill, which was a collective of students) begin from the assumption that they are coalitions, that must be bridges of difference, and hence begin by coming to consensus on principles of unity. We neglect this step. We assume that members are broadly 'left', and hence the basis of unity does not need to be explicit. I think this is a problem. In other words, in addition to the predominant representation of coalitions as platforms of unity, I believe that the most important aspect of coalitions is their ability to create political space for difference. Journalistic commentary on political methodology? Journalistic commentary on political methodology is sparse, and is usually limited to the ways that politicians market themselves to the populace. The predominant commentaries on politics in the Australian press and literature neglect activists as political agents. There are very few recent books or articles on the methodologies of the 'left' in Australia. Apart from Amanda Lohrey's essay on the rise of the Greens in Australian politics (and even then, as far as I can remember, her analysis focuses on the parliamentary sphere, and the attempt to gain a majority, as the single type of political subjectivity that can be attained in politics). Actually, I think the best book on political methodology in Australia is Meredith and Verity Burgmann's Green Bans, Red Union. A few months ago, upon attending the launch of the magazine 'New Matilda', I expressed my frustration thus: I think they (along with most australians) are a bit 'liberal' and politically naive, in that they believe that by launching an extensive policy platform in time for the federal election, they can change Australian politics, without the help of social movements (I see social movements as an enforcement mechanism). Yet there needs to be some discussion on the HOW (ie methodology- theories of social change) as well as the WHAT (policy debate... ) This is what I really like about many US-based left publications, in that they understand movement building and popular education. At the moment, the main political agents in the current world view of New Matilda are the politicians and the policy writers, the politicians listen to the policy writers if they frame their ideas in the right way... a bit simplistic me thinks... There is a worthy research project to be undertaken (maybe by me) to understand what methods of organising enabled mass-participatory social movements in australia despite prevailing authoritarian approaches to politics. a. ash 2006-11-26T22:02:00.000+11:00 i've been away from (my sharehouse) home for over a week, so when i return, a fine dust of ash from the bushfires covers the bed. Ash is also in the tap water. Last night, the sliver of moon was red. it was beautiful. Tonight i went to a local community group meeting on global warming. Mark Diesendorf was there, answering questions about the best forms of sustainable energy for NSW, which include biomass (from sugar and wheat crops), wind, hot dry rock geothermal, solar hot water systems. In the next few years, solar PhotoVoltaic panels will become more cost effective. Australia- the country of lost children 2006-11-26T12:36:00.000+11:00 My mum just took me and my sister Claire to coffee at this cute place at greenwich. it has some excellent second hand books there, and i always find myself discovering many gems - there are often books about iconography and symbolism in western and other cultures. In this case, i found a very interesting book by Peter Pierce, called "The Country of Lost Children: an Australian Anxiety". I have only read about 15 pages, but so far i find it fascinating. The stages of colonial anxiety are reflected in this motif in Australian art and literature. Early examples include Fredrick McCubbin's images of the lost child, and Picnic at Hanging Rock. These reflect the relationship between colonialists and the land, in particular, land tenure, and an anxiety about entitlement to the land. More modern examples in Australian popular culture include the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain. The Stolen Generations are the corrollary of this. The dispossession of indigenous children in this way was the main vector of cultural destruction of Aboriginal nations in the 20th Century. What I find interesting is the way that this motif continues to be played out, now with the unresolved disappearance of the toddler from an immigrant Muslim family in Campbelltown through the window/ flyscreen of her own home several months ago. (and on that point - yesterday there was a 'peace train' from Bankstown to Cronulla organised by their local youth councils to commemorate the 1 year anniversary of the racially-oriented disturbances there- I want to find out how it went!) At the moment I am really excited to be reading books. I haven't been able to do this unhindered for a long long time. I finished George Monbiot's Heat a few days ago, and fully recommend it to everyone. I am hoping to read it over again, this time extracting useful information we can use in our campaigns to avert global warming. 2006-11-14T16:14:00.000+11:00 Major General Jim Molan, from the Australian Army: "Everyone else with troops in Iraq is making money. The Poles, the Ukranians, the Brits, the Dutch. Everyone except Australia. It's time we turned that around." - July 2006 Last night I went to an excellent information session about Australia's role in Iraq. I learnt more not only about the AWB (Australian Wheat Board) Scandal, but more broadly, about the role of Australian bureaucrats in the Iraqi Provisional Authority. Molan is also the person who directed the military operation in Falluja, which was extremely brutal. Redback spider 2006-11-14T14:32:00.000+11:00 this was in our backyard... 2006-11-12T17:49:00.000+11:00 Is this the image of hope for the Australian quarry economy? This image was in a special coal promotion section of The Australian earlier this year, with the headline "hope of sustained growth" or something like that. This is slightly ironic, seeing that Australia's dependence on coal (our electricity is 90% coal powered), and our rapidly expanding coal exports represent our biggest contributions to climate change (and hence are the opposite of hope). The promotional images of mining always seem to be silhouettes against magnificent sunsets (created through all the particulates from the coal dust, that create so many health problems for locals). What is hopeful is the growing movement to overcome coal dependency throughout the Hunter Region and beyond, most visible in the campaign to save Anvil Hill from an open-cut coal mine. The most recent indication of this is the vote by Newcastle City Council to oppose coal mining (or something along those lines). The locals involved in this campaign are so energetic and inspiring!!! Dennis Shanahan, the political editor of The Australian has called anti-coal mine campaigners 'green jihadists', whilst harping on about the 'jobs versus the environment' false dichotomy ("Green jihad a disastrous idea", 10/11/06). This is despite the fact that his boss, Rupert Murdoch, has changed his position on climate change, seeing it as an important issue to confront. emissions 2006-11-12T12:33:00.001+11:00 The question of this era is: "In what way can my energy best be spent over the next ten years in order to avoid global warming?" Can I dedicate my life over the next ten years to averting this disaster? We need to place all our human and economic resources at our disposal to this, and we need to do it justly, so those most affected have a prominent voice in it all. This could be by campaigning for just transition out of coal dependence for affected communities; consulting to organisations to reduce their emissions, by setting up local taskforces to reduce emissions; by fundraising for local schools to get solar panels; by setting up solar cooperatives, by encouraging community supported agriculture. Some ideas are here (Climate Change Balmain-Rozelle), or here (US Climate Emergency Council). Or, can I devote a large chunk of my salary to supporting another person who has made this life choice? Can I convince another person to devote their salaries to supporting such action? I've been subscribed to Forests.org email lists since i was in high school. Occasionally there is something useful (whilst other times i disagree with it). Here is one useful post : November 11, 2006 OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Dr. Glen Barry, Climate Ark The journal Nature reports "Global carbon emissions are now growing by 3.2% a year... That's four times higher than the average annual growth of 0.8% from 1990-99... We are not on any of the stabilization paths." We are well beyond Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of the emissions levels needed to prevent damaging climate change. International negotiations are lagging. China currently contributes some 16% to global emissions, but accounts for 40% of the growth in world emissions. What in the hell is going on here? Clearly humanity as a whole must start acting soon -- it's urgent. It's beyond urgent. It is life threatening. The greatest test of humanity ever. Without immediately placing all intellectual, financial and societal resources at the disposal of those studying climate change science, developing sufficient policy responses, and those advocating for the necessary social change; the Earth is going to burn. All countries must in earnest participate in negotiations to set mandatory carbon emission caps for each nation based upon many factors including each country's wealth, past emissions, and potential to grow uncontrollably. We need to start yesterday, and the U.S. and Australia must end their criminal defense of fossil fuels. g.b. more: click here ************ Speech on economic democracy 2006-11-12T11:07:00.000+11:00 I just uploaded a speech i gave at Students of Sustainability at Monash University, about economic democracy last year, if you are interested. I had been trying to compress .wav files like this (from a digital dictaphone) for a long time into .mp3 format, and then downloaded a program and figured out how to do it. So here it is. The geographies of conquest 2006-11-12T10:09:00.000+11:00 Here is an excellent flash animation of empires in the Middle East throughout History. It really surprised me to see how many empires have conquered the middle east from 3000 BCE to 2000 CE. the usefulness of alarmism? 2006-11-07T17:55:00.000+11:00 This picture is from the blog "Its Getting Hot in Here". When I was in North America, I noticed that among climate activists in the US and Canada, the story of emergency (and impending doom) is more prominent than in Australia, (the doom bit being most prominent in Canada). However, my friend Kristin (Super climate campaigner from the US) emphasises the importance of POSITIVE, happy stories. Negative stories are only empowering if they are combined with awareness of how grassroots social change has occurred in the past, and drawing from that, a tangible, believable plan to take action (and to win). The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK has just released a report cautioning against alarmist language, arguing that such language moves the attitude of the public from apathy to despair, without stopping halfway (at action), as Al Gore says. If you want to read the report, you can download it here. They argue that in order to implement the Precautionary Principle effectively requires a calm and rational attitude to the challange of global warming. I think my dad would agree with this. The medical/ pharmaceutical professions, which have implemented the precautionary principle extensively in relation to clinical trials etc perhaps are good models to follow. ------- On the other hand, here is an email from the Chesapeake (North Eastern US) Climate Action Network, an email list that i am still on. It raises an interesting point- that environmentalists and scientists have spoken of ecological disaster with an attitude of calmness that does not match the urgency of the need for change. This, for me, suggests something about human communication in general- the importance of body language, and the way that our messages are embodied in a holistic way in the way we speak with other people, (something that Husserl's phenomenological theories taught me). Grist: If Global Warming Is An “Emergency” Then Let’s Act Like It’s An Emergency Why I Helped Occupy the Entrance to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration By Mike Tidwell uni 2006-11-06T10:24:00.000+11:00 okay. now that i'm finished seven years of sydney uni, (i finished last thursday with my final presentation!) i can summarise all my favourite courses and recommend a few lecturers. FAVOURITE COURSES 1. 3rd year philosophy: Kant (Jane Johnson- a lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science- she is AWESOME- you have to try to get in her courses) 2. 3rd year english: Metaphor and discourse (Antonina Harbus, who has now left for Macquarie Uni) 3. 3rd year geography: South East Asia Field School (Phil Hirsch, who is amazing) 4. 2nd year government: Consultation: Community, Business, Government (Lyn Carson) 5. Geography Honours, because i learnt a lot (Phil McManus- my supervisor) 6. 1st year political economy (Frank Stilwell, who if you are not from sydney uni, Frank is a veteran of the 1970's campaign to create an alternative economics department) And of course, I loved studying one semester at McGill university in Quebec. what have your favourite courses been? 2006-11-06T10:18:00.000+11:00 an article on the SMH website: "Homebodies raise the drawbridge to avoid an out-of-control world" The study on the mood of the nation by Australia SCAN found scepticism about business and government, a gloomy economic outlook and constant erosion of time and energy are leading to a sense of a loss of control. To offset this, people are spending more time eating at home, doing household chores and planning family activities than they were a year ago. The report's author, David Chalke, said people were saying: "The focus is home. It is the place where I'm more in control than anywhere else; it's where my friends and family are … it's the centre of my universe." ...You cannot dismiss the influence that money has at the moment. They are all worried about it. Clearly, it costs less to stay at home," Ms Dangar said. Australia SCAN also found 70 per cent of homes had DVD players, up from 4 per cent six years ago. Watching DVDs was the second most popular leisure activity after television viewing. You can view the original article here. books! 2006-11-05T23:42:00.000+11:00 okay, now, here is a booklist of excellent books i discovered in the course of doing my thesis (both unrelated and related to my topic) ... John Bellamy Foster (2000): Marx's Ecology: materialism and nature Nicholas Low and Brendan Gleeson (1998): Justice, Society and Nature: an exploration of political ecology Greg Mallory (2005) : Unchartered Waters: Social Responsibility in Australian trade unions. Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett (2005) : Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality J.K. Gibson-Graham (2006): A Postcapitalist Politics Daniel Faber (ed) (1998) The Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Environmental Justice Movements in the United States. John Bellamy Foster (2006) Naked Imperialism: The US Pursuit of Global Dominance Peter Bachrach and Aryeh Botwinick (1992): Power and Empowerment: A radical theory of participatory democracy. Michael Ross and Dale Miller (eds) (2002): The Justice Motive in Everyday Life William Blum (2004) Killing Hope: US Military and CIA interventions since World War II Richard Kazis and Richard L Grossman (1982) Fear at Work: Job Blackmail, Labor and the Environment 2006-11-05T23:34:00.001+11:00 yeah so. having been freed from the preoccupation of thesis land, i will now establish a regular presence on this blog. but learning from previous blogging efforts: some rules... i must not be introspective, or else i will keep deleting past posts in embarrassment. and maybe that's it. a break in the writing of a thesis 2006-08-29T19:57:00.000+10:00 The top picture is of the Mt Arthur coal Mine near Muswellbrook (courtesy of Greens MP Lee Rhiannon) and the lower picture is of the (operational) Bluescope Steel Port Kembla steelworks in Wollongong. (taken by yours truly). So I have been immersing my mind in coal dust and steelworks smog over the last few months, in order to complete my geography thesis. It's called "Just transitions in the Hunter: Entitlement and Obligation in the BHP steelworks closure, and lessons for the future of the Hunter coal industry." My questions really are about potentiality, and whether a successful model can be transplanted to a different set of political circumstances, in a similar industry in the same region (The Hunter Region). These are my research questions: 1. What factors led to the achievement of a just transition during the closure of the steelworks in Newcastle? 2. To what extent can the “Pathways Project” and its associated policies be used as a model for future industry closures? 3. What lessons can be applied to coal industry restructuring and closures in the Hunter? Hence there is a complex array of variables that I confront in asking this question, that in themselves are very interesting to think about.