Update: My Flickr page where I have this photo stored is now showing ads for a flavoured lip plumper and long lasting, naturally flavored lip glosses! :-P
politics
I oppose the death penalty
Today Singapore executed Nguyen Tuong Van, a young Australian man. I oppose the death penalty. I always have: my abhorrence to the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia in 1967, when I was 13, is a very distinct and early political memory. In thinking about of Van Nguyen, it’s all too painful to remind oneself that the death penalty is considered acceptable and necessary in many countries, including the US, which is just coming up to the milestone of 1000 people executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Wear a yellow ribbon over the next few days to show your support for Van Nguyen and opposition to the death penalty.
(image: CUADP, and Amnesty International)
Updated links 2015
JM Coetzee: On moral barbarians
My heart gave a little lift this evening when I read that the Nobel winning novelist JM Coetzee had spoken out implying that John Howard’s proposed new anti-terrorist laws were similar to the human rights abuses under apartheid in his native South Africa.
“I used to think that the people who created (South Africa’s) laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time,” he told the Australian Book Review function.”
Detailing how South African police were able to do whatever they wanted, Coetzee ended with: “All of this
and much more during apartheid in South Africa, was done in the name of the fight against terror.”
(Via Articulate)
Laws for a secret state without any safeguards by Malcolm Fraser is also worth reading on the topic.
GetUp is a newish Australian online activist site, along the lines of MoveOn in the US. Their blog sure could use an RSS feed, though.
Updated links 2015
The Scott Parkin Case
Last week an American non-violent activist, Scott Parkin, was arrested and removed from Australia, after having his visa revoked. The Federal Attorney-General, Ruddock, said that the Minister for Immigration, Vanstone, revoked Parkin’s
visa based on an ASIO Security assessment. “I understand the decision was based upon a security assessment, and security assessments are notsomething about which I can comment in any detail.” SourceWatch has a detailed account.
According to a radio piece on the ABC’s The Deep End on Thursday 15th (which you can listen to) Parkin uses street theatre and puppetry. For instance, his groupdoes an act called Hallibacon, which features a large inflatable pig, and protesters wearing snouts and pig masks being fed cash from a trough of public money by Cheney.
Such protests have for a long time been regarded as freedom of speech here. In the absence of other reasons, we have to be worried that is being curtailed. On the other hand, there is speculation that our government was doing someone else’s bidding. Crikey outlines the scenario. On the ABC’s The National Interest on Sept 18th, Terry Lane claims that Kellogg Brown Root, subsidiary of Halliburton, donated $50,000 to both major political parties here, suggesting both a question mark over the opposition’s acquiescence, and an alternative avenue for foreign corporations to exercise power. The Law Report, broadcast Tuesday 19th, will talk to Parkin’s lawyer about the case.
Update: Scott Parkin’s own account of his experience
Updated 2015 – most links outdated.
Swamped
Street Art
Canberra has been convulsed over the naughtiness of one of the local government’s staffers who was caught doing a spot of anti-Howard stencil graffiti. You have to hand it to local politics for making mountains out of mole hills!
If you are interested in street art, take a look at The Wooster Collective: A Celebration of Street Art. They have some very cool images. For example, here is a Salvador Dali mural in Lima, Peru. They had an exclusive report on Banksy‘s activities in mid March, showing the works that he installed in four of the prestigious museums in New York.
There is also Wooster Mobile, ‘a Wooster curated art gallery of images which you can download onto your mobile phones in cities around the world’. The aim is to provide artists with a new revenue stream and at the same time generate funds for a non-profit organization called Keep A Child Alive, which provides life-saving drugs for AIDS sufferers in Africa.
Snuff Puppets
Here’s another election campaign protest involving large puppetry: Snuff Puppets took the form of one of their large Skull characters holding a jumbo jet to confront Howard and accuse him of creating terrorism.
The Skull originated as a character in the highly acclaimed Snuff Puppets production ‘Scarey’, ‘the story of a travelling troupe of giant puppets, their technical crew of skeletons and a group of exploited and neurotic humans who are a novelty act in the show’… which ‘ examines the fragility of human existence when the customary relationship between puppet and puppeteer is reversed.’
Snuff Puppets was established in the early 1990’s, having developed out of Splinters Inc, a company that produced large-scale outdoor visual works in Canberra in the late 80’s. Their reputation is for challenging, often grotesque, highly unusual and inventive works on a large scale. They also run Peoples Puppets Projects where they workshop with specific groups or communities to enable the making of ‘glorious puppet spectacles that express the joys, concerns and spirit of unique communities’.
Their web site is up-to-date and has lots of inspiring images of their puppets and productions for those of us unfortunately too far away to see their shows. Snuff Puppets and Polyglot Puppets both recently received some funding from the Melbourne City Council. Snuff Puppets will use theirs ‘to create an outdoor work for Reconciliation Week at Birrarung Marr in May 2005. It will be a collaborative work with playwright John Harding and choreographer Bernadette Walong, based on Victorian indigenous bunyip stories.’
Old Parliament House’s ‘Big Heads’ Puppets at Floriade
Floriade has been on for the last month in Canberra, and tomorrow is the last day. I went in last weekend hoping to see the Old Parliament House Big Heads. These are much-larger-than-life-sized body-suit puppets of parliamentarians from days gone by. Their usual home is Old Parliament House, which is now a parliamentary museum, where they stroll around bringing the past to life.
Last year I got photos of the original three Big Heads in the Scarecrow Drive at Floriade, having an encounter with The Fool Factory‘s alien, Solar Flare:
An altercation between Solar Flare and Andrew Fisher and Alfred Deakin.
Solar Flare and Andrew Fisher shake hands.
Sir Edmund Barton takes liberties with my John Howard Scarecrow
This year there are two new Big Heads, Doc Evatt and Bob Menzies. While they have been made by the same company, eRTH, these ones have a less stylised look about them, and are more realistically modelled on the historical figures they represent. I think they are really cool. I love the demeanor of Doc Evatt, and his brown suit is just right.
eRTH is a Sydney company that does innovative large-scale theatrical performances which include ‘giant puppets, huge inflatables, acrobatics, aerial and flying creatures, stilt-walking costumes and pyrotechnics’. I would have loved to see their Gargoyles clambering over the outside of buildings, or The Neds ranging through city streets. At Floriade this year, they were also present as the Waterheads, four people with their heads in tanks of coloured water, strolling through the beds of flowers.
The Lying Rodent
I’m in the same mind set as a net friend who recently said that he just wanted the electioneering to be over and to be able to cast his vote with grim determination. So I’m trying to let most of it pass me by. But the appearence of protestors in body suits added a couple of brief moments of levity this last week.
At the Perth campaign launch Howard was hugged by a large sheep, protesting the live sheep export trade. A few days later a large rat pestered Howard while he was electioneering on the streets in his home electorate of Bennelong, while other protestors called ‘Lying Rodent for PM’ from across the street.
The ‘lying rodent’ tag stems from a sworn statement a few weeks ago by a Queensland Liberal Party branch official, Russell Galt, that Liberal Senator Brandis said of Mr Howard in relation to the Children Overboard senate enquiry: “He is a lying rodent” and “we’ve got to go off and cover his arse again on this”. Senator Brandis denied the allegation on oath, but went on to explain with a barristor’s distinction:
‘He would only ever call Howard the rodent; never a rodent, because the former is a nickname, whereas the latter would be a pejorative term.’
According to the same article,
‘… the PM has been descriptively tagged as the rodent almost as long as he’s been ironically tagged as Honest John. The nickname dates from the long internecine war between Howard and Andrew Peacock some 15 years ago.’
It began as a reference to the way Howard ceaselessly gnawed at Peacock’s leadership, and was adopted by John Hewson supporters for much the same reason.
Some people in the Australian Rodents Fanciers Society are offended by the slur:
“We would have to say that it’s quite funny that it’s not technically correct,”
“Unfortunately, most rodents, we have around 30 at our place, actually have a little more integrity than prime ministers and politicians.”
