politics

Whoo-hoo!

Posted by hil

It sure was a happy night last night – after all the nail biting of the last few days and the start of the count last night, the John Howard era has come to an end!

Shan sent me his last election puppetry video, Howard’s Way, yesterday, but I must admit it felt too much like tempting fate to post it then!

Shan might have the first Rudd puppet out there:

Of course, now I have to decide what to do with my own two Howard puppets. They are too toxic to burn (just like the real thing, really!). I’m going to close my Vigil blog, but the puppet, which started out as an anti-war one, remains, as does the scarecrow one I made as a protest against the Howard government’s refugee policies. Any suggestions?

Previously:

Mick Jagger of Australian politics

Posted by hil

Mick Jagger of Australian politics

Shan Jayaweera’s John Howard has been pressing the flesh in Melbourne. I love this, especially where he describes himself as the Mick Jagger of Australian politics! Jemila McEwan made the puppet.

Previously:

Pollies masks

Posted by hil

The GreensBlog has some politician masks you can download and print. They were intended for halloween, but, you know, they might come in handy in the next few weeks!

Here in Canberra this time around we have a unique opportunity to alter the balance of power in the Senate immediately. The Coalition parties hold 20 of the 40 seats in the Senate, and it only requires the loss of one of their seats to a progressive to bring some accountability back to the Senate. In the ACT we can do that immediately if only 11,000 people change their vote to a progressive one in the Senate. GetUp! is running a campaign and unique multi-party ad to this effect.

Stronger and smarter

Posted by hil

Chris Sarra is enlightening.

He says the proposed government ‘management’ of the welfare payments of indigenous parents whose children are repeatedly absent from school doesn’t address the heart of the matter: that schools must be places that the kids want to go to, that address their and their communty’s needs, and provide them with top quality education to become stronger and smarter. For Australia to do less by our indigenous kids is a form of racism. In all the depressing commentary around the Howard government’s indigenous intervention, this interview is the wisest opinion I have heard.

Search for a Scapegoat

Posted by hil

Notsorry

I’ve written previously about Shan Jayaweera’s John Howard puppetry satires. Now with an election looming later in the year, ‘Australian Prime Minister John Howard needs to find something
new to blame and scare the voters into voting for him’. Follow his efforts in a welcome new series, John Howard – Search for a Scapegoat:

  • Episode 1: Howard looks at former grand Mufti Sheik Taj el din al Hilali.
  • Episode 2: John Howard goes into the music world to find two potential scapegoats to help him win the next election. There is also an advertisement for the latest Liberal Party
    Reception centre.

Breakfast reading 5.10

Posted by hil

Murdoch turning his empire green: ‘Although some of his newspapers were once sceptical about global warming, he said that although he was no scientist, he knew how to assess a risk. “This one is clear. Climate change poses clear,
catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction,” he said.’

Diggers speak about Iraq ambush: Did anyone else see this last night? Its been covered in the papers too. It seemed like something new to me, interviewing soldiers giving accounts of their activities as if they were policeman, sportsmen or celebrity. I can’t quite work out why I found it so disquieting – anyone else feel it was inappropriate or different?

The fine print in the university endowment scheme: The Howard government proposes centralised control of universities with a view to privatisation. It has wedge politics written all over it, too. Chilling.

Blogging Was Just the Beginning: Women’s Voices are Louder Online: Chris Nolan on political commentary and feminism online. (via Doc). I hope to get to other articles in S&F Online’s Blogging Feminism issue, too.

The SMH ran true to bumbling form (when it comes to its coverage of new media) the other day with this ‘lesson’ about blogging, which conflated the opening question “Isn’t blogging just for people who are stupid and lonely?” with women bloggers, gender inequity and ambivalence in Australia! “Of the 8000 women’s blogs listed at BlogHer.org, just 96 are of Australian or New Zealand origin. By comparison Canada, a country with 36 per cent more people, lists 82 per cent more women’s blogs.” I think its silly to take membership of BlogHer as a real statistic on the ratio in Australia. I’m not listed at Blogher, for instance.

Doc, who always gets a real buzz out of flying and seeing whats below, has some wonderful photos of Greenland from the air. Check out his other sets for Scotland, the Hebrides, England and others, too.

Breakfast reading 5.05

Posted by hil
  • Turnbull says IPCC report backs government position: The government asserts black is white (again). Breathtaking. Peter Garret, the Opposition Environment Minister, is not hitting back hard enough with things like this. I’m not sure why, because he is articulate and knows his stuff. On present form his predecessor, Anthony Albanese would be better. I was quite impressed with how well Albanese had a handle on global warming before he was replaced.
  • Turnbull’s hypocrisy on climate: Ian Dunlop (formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive; Chair of the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88; and the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000) pulls no punches.
  • Schwarzenegger signs a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Victoria to share environmental expertise. “Sometimes if the federal government is a little slower than the states are, then we have to step up to the plate and we have to create the leadership. It is common that a lot of times the states provide the leadership and then eventually the federal government picks up with it and carries it on. So, what we are doing basically is in California we want to show the leadership and we want other states to join us in the United States, but also overseas.”
  • To treat the dead: An intriguing new theory that after a heart attack people don’t die from irreversible cell damage due to lack of oxygen, but rather from an active biochemical event triggered by the resumption of oxygen supply. The cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with
    oxygen, and triggers the death of the cell.
  • In a flat world imagination is the key: edited version of a speech by Thomas Friedman (from The New York
    Times)     to the Sydney Institute. “The world is flat – it has been flattened. We are going from a
    world of vertical silos of command and control to a world where value is created horizontally by who you connect and collaborate with… In this new flat world, there is one iron rule of business and one rule only. When The World is Flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you.”
  • Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace: Danah Boyd (2006) looks at how and why kids use MySpace, a welcome voice of reason amid the hyped MSM coverage of MySpace following the tragedy of the Victorian girls. I like her analysis that relates it to public and private space.

Prediction

Posted by hil

I predict that, fore-going anything out of left field like 9/11, Howard will lose the next election because of his refusal to take global warming seriously. And it will be because the business end of town has already calculated the risks and wants action for their own stability. Businesses, states, unions, industries, universities and ordinary people are already starting to take action on their own, bypassing government; but they want and need to see the same kind of commitment from government.

Pratt!

Posted by hil

Ah, yes! The wonderful irony of Canberra Liberal MLA, Steve Pratt, calling in the media to record him heroically scrubbing off graffiti, only to find that it was a legally commissioned work, and now he will be charged with vandalism of public art. It’s pure gold! I will refer you to Ampersand Duck’s full account, since she does it so well. The artwork was done by byrd, and I was fond of it; it was relatively close to where I live.

Byrd

The irony is no doubt especially sweet for the Labor Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, following the brew-ha-ha when he was forced to fire one of his aides for doing some anti-Howard stencil work behind the Ainslie shops a couple of years ago: