Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: #Auspol

  • suffragette

    Good god, I just voted. By email in Queensland, which is currently in the grip of a miniature narcissist who’s funding his own higher-than-POTUS salary increase with cuts to essential services. It took me 45 minutes on the phone yesterday to organise and an hour today to complete the forms and scan and mail them back and forth to Australia to be witnessed by someone who is an enrolled Australian voter. And before that I spent twenty minutes on the phone to a man at the Berlin Australian Embassy last week: he professed himself baffled that the closest physical voting booth in this election was in Singapore. “For some reason,” he said, “we just haven’t received any electoral materials this time round. And it all seems to be being conducted in rather a hurry.” I said, “But I voted in the federal election… in 2013. In your embassy.” “Yes,” he said. “Anyone would think they were wanting to make it difficult for people to lodge their votes.” But I have voted. Totally worth it. Democracy, I adore you and I believe in us.

  • Martin Place

    How convenient for our struggling Government that a lone imbecile equipped with a gun has showed up in a Sydney cafe at last. It was beginning to seem no one would bother answering their call. Now perhaps we’ll all fall back into line & stop whining about petty distractions such as racial hatred and climate chaos.

    What is the difference between this guy and all the other guys who have held hostages at bay during a siege while they demanded the negotiation of a team of experts? Why is this the one we call “terrorism”? Is it just because the guy falsely claims Moslim beliefs to justify his narcissistic violence? Is it because maybe his ancestors weren’t all Northern European? Is it just because he got himself a banner printed? If IS or Al Qaeda are so influential they can plant well-organised agents on “our” soil (one’s language inevitably waxes purple) wouldn’t they be able to do better than a solitary weapon and sole unbalanced operator? Speaking of which, is our Prime Minister actually visibly grinning at the moment?

    I think in the ways we report and digest this event Australia’s media and media consumers can have the grace to want the safe & soon release of the people trapped in the Lindt cafe without rushing to offer ourselves and our hysteria to the service of disruptive cruelty.

  • how embarrassment

    Tony Abbott threatening to “shirt-front” Putin? And that meme that has the two of them side by side, Tony shirtless in his budgie smugglers and Putin shirtless on his horse? It arose the same day he made his remark and it says, “….wait.”

    I just explained all this to my immigrant boyfriend, a Berliner who has gleefully been singing out “Team Australia!” whenever he sees someone do something stupid. I acted out the shirt-fronting to show him what it was. Then I had to let him go because I was weeping with laughter. The aggression and arrogance of the gesture made it ridiculous. I am still laughing and he is shaking his head, muttering to himself in German. “Furchtbar ist es. Peinlich ist es. Unglaublich.”

    My stomach aches. My heart too, a little. “It’s so awful. It’s embarrassing. Unbelievable.”

  • lies over Baghdad

    Yesterday I entered into a conversation with someone asking, Why don’t the moderate Muslims speak out against terror? I provided link after link as her evasions & demands grew more particular. Those were Americans, how about an Australian. Oh but that’s an Australian woman, why aren’t the Muslim men speaking out? Oh, that was a young man, why don’t we hear from the Muslim elders?

    She discredited the testimony of one peace-loving Muslim because he was ‘wearing a Benneton t-shirt.’ I gave her a string of direct links to the Islamic Council of Victoria, the Council of Imams Queensland, and finally His Eminence, Professor Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, Grand Mufti of Australia, who said: ‘It is utterly deplorable for extremists to use Islam as a cover for their crimes and atrocities.’ At last she wrote to me privately. ‘I feel my heart filling with hate. Am I missing something? Why can’t the moderate Muslims speak out?’

    This plea from a stony-minded racist unable to hear direct replies which undid all her questions moved me. We must respect one another as human beings, no matter what. I left her with yet another google search turfing up dozens of investigative essays on the media’s stolid determination to ignore repeated denouncing of violence by peaceful Muslims, and turned away. Now: watch here as our Minister for Education deflects accusations with one ruse after another & the Opposition calmly, continually answer and defeat him. At the end of this mash-up his voice is heard, trebly and childishly gloating: ‘My comments get on the telly, yours don’t! You can’t be heard!’

    This government, this media are arrogant and they lie. Their arrogance and lies are damaging our climate, our community, our minds. The real jihad is the assault on our planet’s liveability, sidelined by these posturings of hatred. Read widely. Think deeply. Speak out.