Adam Hill – Indigenous Freak Activartistusician; the man, the legend, the world premiere documentary in Sydney next Monday.

Documentary World Premiere at Carriageworks

Between the Lines: The Initiation of Adam Hill

Monday August 6 at 7:00pm

After two years following Aboriginal urban artist Adam Hill, Spanish film-makers Esther Lozano & Monica Garriga premiere their long awaited documentary which will be presented by Performance Space at Carriageworks next Monday 6 August.

Defined by a mixed indigenous and white origin, Adam Hill goes on an artistic and personal journey of identity through his music, paintings and political activism.

In what is a unique and intimate glimpse into Australia’s identity through the critical eyes of the art activist, this documentary shows Hill confronting his frustrations and his commitment towards his own Aboriginality while struggling with the views held by the society around him and the people closest to him.

“By exploring Adam’s personal history, this documentary highlights the controversy around Australian identity and suggests it is an open concept,” says film-maker Esther Lozano. “It is not defined by the place where one comes from but by what one identifies most strongly with. Adam’s contradictions and frustrations are not unique to him, or to Aboriginal Australians, or to Australians. They are universal.”

Bob his father, was brought up with his white cousins after his mother died, never having any contact with his aboriginal family. The stark contrast between Adam and his father’s social identity is a moving insight into the individual’s search for meaning in a world dictated by imagery and stereotypes. It is a documentary that hits a raw nerve for us all.

About the film-makers:

Monica Garriga is the foreign correspondent for the Spanish News Agency EFE in Australia and has a post-graduate degree in Australian Studies from RMIT.

Esther Lozano, prior to starting this documentary worked for the Spanish TV network Localia where she was a director of current affairs.

Performance Space @ CarriageWorks 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh

7pm Monday 6^th August, 2007 – FREE

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Gunns, Assholes, Guns, Racism, and the best dick joke ever.

Quick news wrap of some Australian news you may have missed.

ALP MP Harry Quick has done what can by and large be expected of most mainstream Tasmanian politicians – put his own interests before anybody else’s. John Howard couldn’t even remember her name but Quick is campaigning for his opponent rather than his replacement at the upcoming election.

Queensland Aboriginal leader Richard Aken was raided by a SWAT team overnight . . . because of a toy gun.

And speaking of toy Gunns, John Gay has had a spray at former justice the Honourable Christopher Wright, over his temerity in attempting to conduct a genuinely independent assessment process when considering the Tasmanian pulp mill proposal. Yeah – working for the public interest and insisting on the appearance and practice of impartiality – what a bastard! Good thing he was criticized just hours before the 4Corners story last night, otherwise his word might have been taken seriously.

THE BOX SEAT: Cowboys, an Indian and a test of character – great opinion piece by Brian Johnstone at NIT looking at the Haneef case as part of a much broader pattern, rather than an isolated miscarriage.

“…My mental image was of a bunch of cowboys circling one hapless Indian.

Minister Andrews stoically refused to consider his decision to revoke the visa, claiming he had relied on information not provided at the bail hearing but refused to say what that was.

Ruddock, the grey eminence of the Howard Government, also refused to be drawn into this aspect of the case.

He had earlier hit the airwaves attacking Haneef’s lawyers for leaking the transcript of the first interview between the Australian Federal Police and their client.

He was urging the Bar Association of Queensland and the Australian Bar Association to consider whether Dr Haneef’s Barrister had committed any ethical breach by leaking the transcript of the first record of interview involving his client.

“There are ethical standards in relation to these matters,” he told anyone prepared to listen.

“You won’t get a fair trial for any individual if you have leaking of material and people endeavouring to influence the court of public opinion.”

This was all delivered with his usual poker face.

And thereby hangs one of the government’s problems.

Anyone who has closely followed the Aboriginal Affairs debate over the past few years knows this particular political prosecutor from the government has form….”

4 Corners – The Tassie Pulp Mill Process Exposed.

Tonight, 4 Corners ran Liz Jackson’s investigative floodlight, Grist To The Mill, looking at the Gunns pulp mill approval process in Tasmania. With so much material to have to choose from, the piece that made it to air focussed on getting up close and personal with the main players, viewpoints, and recent histories on the ground in Tassie.

It would have been a bastard of a job – all things, lies, dramas, and shady players considered. Ultimately, tens of thousands of tv sets tonight beamed a significant tale to a broader audience. They weren’t exposed to the detail of ongoing court battles, they weren’t forced to question their opinion of Malcolm Turnbull’s ecological sincerity, and they weren’t asked to consider where Peter Garrett has been in all this. The story was kept simple, but not stupid – and there is a big difference.

A racist and politically convenient land grab? In Australia?

First posted this with Mask of Anarchy a couple of days ago, as part of the ongoing grouse bonzer kulcherool exchange blogram.

However Australia is perceived globally at the moment I can only guess. I would assume that our identity is something in the order of cricket, racism, rugby, climate change denial, shane warne, big eyebrowed dickhead little sycophant Prime Minister mopping up White House jism, more rugby, kangaroos, beer, and cricket. Did I mention racism?

What we have going on right now is quite astounding. The quality of our domestic racism has really taken a battering. We have been shipping it, or intercepting shipping with it, globally but we’re finally getting back to basics at home. Thank goodness! I’d hate to think that yellow, black, and brown people outside Australia are feeling more persecuted or stereotyped than our own people of colour. The poor ones, that is. We’d never consider Ehud Olmert a murderer any more than we’d consider Mumia Abu Jamahl a scholar or Alberto Gonzales the bit his mama should have thrown away.

Quick Australian history – White Australia policy in effect until late 1960s. Aware of Aboriginal family groups and nations being connected by relationship to blood and to land, children are separated from families and brought up as servants or on missions hundreds or thousands of kilometres from both. A national referendum in 1967 sees Australians vote in favour of changing the Constitution to recognize Aboriginal Australians as human, rather than fauna. Seriously. Revolutions of sorts through the 70s – land rights, womens rights, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, all that good stuff.

As we moved through the ’80s toward the Bicentennial in 1988, more and more questions were asked about national identity, values, direction. Unfortunately a lot of unquestioning flag waving and firework shows drowned most of this out. Still, the idea of a Treaty was finally before the nation – acknowledgment that wrongs had been done, war had been waged, and healing and recognition could only happen through real commitment to make them happen. At this time, the leader of the federal opposition in Parliament kicked up quite a stink.

In fact, when the issue of a Treaty was raised he made a vow – a vow that if such a Treaty was ever made between the indigenous and non-indigenous people of Australia, the first thing that he would do if elected would be to tear it up. His name was John Howard. Yes. That one.

When he was eventually elected, he really delivered. Native Title legislation was amended to offset the pro-indigenous impacts of a significant court ruling. Howard attended the landmark national summit on reconciliation in 1997. Before the most significant gathering of indigenous leaders in Australia in well over a hundred years he praised Australia’s history. He acknowledged the ‘blemish’ of genocide, but made it clear that there would be no ‘Sorry’ – the one word for which so many people had campaigned. And just to rub glass in the haemorrhage, ATSIC – the only directly elected representation for indigenous Australians – has also been disbanded and abolished under Howard.

We Kill News Ltd. We Smashes Them To BITS!!!!

That title works on some levels, but not at all on most. Just announcing an unholy quasi partnership with the XLNT UK based political-angry-current-as-f#$% Mask of Anarchy. For a first offering, i’ve just posted the delightful bedtime story John Howard – Never One for a Racist & Politically Convenient Landgrab. Please go and check them out when you manage to pull yourself away from the Kama Sutrinator. . .

In the meantime… . . cyberdyne reverse cowgirl. . .

Some handy and interesting posts are in the works – recently revealed background on certain political support from certain Australians for logging generally and the Tasmanian pulp mill specifically, and the bigger nuclear picture for Australia, one which at both ends (mining and disposal) may intersect ‘neatly’ with the current Howard approach of seizing massive tracts of land in the Northern Territory. These will be up soon. There have been some delays and they’re now dissipating. So, as promised, here’s Terminator Kama Sutra

Great Ad!! Stupid Orwellian decay, but. . .

Great ad. The GetUp campaign is here so have a look for yourselves. It’s too diplomatically worded for my liking. My anti-misrepresentation-of-terrorism-as-a-political-weapon message would be more like

We acknowledge that thanks to a decade of increasingly racist and bullying foreign policy, and 7 years of the Australian government sycophantically and illegally partnering in numerous disasters and tragedies with the leadership of the United States this country may now be a target for terrorism. That’s something that needs to be handled.

But there’s an easy way to work out where all of this is going. Read 1984 or watch Children of Men. Then consider the alternatives. And finally, don’t let the door hit your legacy on the way out.

Fuck You Japan!!

Not all of Japan obviously. Just your government and your whaling fleet and any and all of their supporters. Turns out now that more than half of the whales killed in the Antarctic whale slaughter over December-January were pregnant. Way to go, Fukhed Maru.

And these dickheads are arguing for a resumption of humpback murder because the population is now ‘sustainable’. You stupid stupid pricks. For a nation that has deep cultural ties to appreciation of nature, that little bit of time your navy spent being demilitarized and harpoonically industrialized post-WWII really made you stupid. Species don’t thrive on the basis of hundreds of foetuses getting killed by dynamite.

HSI (Humane Society International) have been so wonderfully tenacious in the legal fight for the whales in Australia and it would seem shall continue to be so. It would be nice if they were more openly condemnatory of Malcolm Turnbull and the Howard Government’s deliberate sycophancy. Letting protected and endangered species get slaughtered in a nearby whale sanctuary because doing otherwise might harm trade relations for a week or two is bullcrap.

Check out this great anti-whaling site set up by Australia’s Blue Tongue Breweries, and visit Sea Shepherd as well – remember they aren’t the terrorists that dickheads make them out to be. Sea Shepherd are the hardcore anti-terrorists.

Go here for the transcript of an interview conducted when Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson hit land in Melbourne earlier this year. He is beyond ‘character’, and can only be fairly described as ‘legend’.

Check out this video which shows how people who support whaling should be handled. It’s both edutaincational and cathartic.

Australian Liberal Party, the nuclear landlord.

In early June, the Liberal Party Federal Council carried a variety of policy resolutions. Some are already clearly established, such as recognizing that Australia’s entire economic security and wellbeing is based on Kevin Rudd not becoming Prime Minister. Some are becoming increasingly obvious, such as the formal negation of customary law and manipulation of welfare and communal property for Aboriginal communities.

But here comes the kicker – not only because it radically expands an as yet unresolved debate, but because it goes against everything that Liberal ministers and uranium lobbyists have been telling Australians since the resolution passed.

George Bush hands power to Cheney – evil plot with John Howard exposed!!!

Turns out that George had to be sedated for a colon cancer exam (what year did General Sphincter cross into Delaware? When did Major Asshole take the Presidency? etc.) and while he’s sedated, power is officially passed to Cheney.

Read those last 6 words again – any sentence which ends in those words and does not involve an electric chair or a car battery is a baaad sentence.

It may well be that John Howard has had his face buried between George’s butt cheeks over the last 6 years for entirely different reasons than we assumed (you know – desperation). Renowned for talking nuclear shit, little Johnny may well have been dosing Dubya’s cornhole with sufficient gamma radiation to bring about another overthrow in the US. While the real fake president is sedated as brain surgery is conducted on his glowing green ass, Halliburton will finally officially incorporate the White House – most likely as a tax loss or swap for oil.

All the quality time Johnny spent with Dick in Sydney may have been over something far more sinister than two short bald men with bad eyesight having a beer in plain view.

Colon may yet see Bush swept aside by the rise of Dick.

Japan’s reactor and what will surely follow: New Clear Dangers in the Spinformation Age

Those bloody greenies just won’t give the nuclear industry a chance. As Dr. Helen Caldicott and Professor Ian Lowe were on ABC TV tearing Ziggy Switkowski and a generic uranium lobbyist a new one, a major nuclear reactor was being shutdown following an earthquake and prolonged fire in Japan.

It has so far emerged that several thousand litres of radioactive water escaped into the environment when stored barrels fell over, and that other radioactive isotopes may have escaped through cracks in cement.

The location of a faultline near the reactor was known at the time of building, but the earthquake was twice as intense as any for which the housing was prepared. As a result of the reactor being shut down, Japanese industry has been warned to use less power to avoid an overburdened power grid blacking out.

A Funeral Song For Cheney

it’s a celebration of human endeavour

Colin over at the illustriously compulsive Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe informs me that little Johnny BlahBlah’s get-in-touch-with-the-nano-generation effort on youtube has been pulled due to, well. . . let’s say an overly boisterous public response. I checked it out this afternoon and now wish that I’d taken a screenshot. Somebody with the ever so ambiguous username “PJKeating” had just left a single-word comment – “CUNT”. Hilarious. Both this bit of good news and Carnival of Australia No. 6 (also on now at AGP) deserve the following, in the most Montgomery inner-voice you can muster.

john howard on youtube – a video tribute to the man, the legend, segregation and Australia’s nuclear weaponry

John Howard’s actual Climate Change message on youtube

 

some Australian history that Gerard Henderson won’t necessarily deny, but may explain away

John Howard speaks coyly of his Gay encounter

Oh my duck in fog!

“Yes I did, I met him. And he’s a nice man and we had a pleasant discussion,” Mr Howard said.

“I had a pleasant discussion with other people. We talked about a whole range of things. It’s a free country and I’m entitled to meet anyone of good repute.”

“don’t you write the laws?” “no, no. we pass the laws.”

John Clarke & Bryan Dawe – like The Yes Men, they are purveyors not of identity theft, but of identity correction.

If you have slow download speeds, please to be enjoying figuring out of this picture while youwait for youtube.

always was, always will be…. blackfellas getting rorted by gubbas.

The latest issue of National Indigenous Times is an utter cracker-whacker. Turns out that Mal Brough might like spending Northern Territory money in his Queensland electorate, that the Howard government (pleeease let that phrase be a footnote soon) prefers spending indigenous money to spending its own, and that taking control of land might only be a really good solution for the problem of, “geez, how do we take control of all this land, eh?”.

Few Australian news sources consistently break the big inside stories the way NIT does and this one really goes hard in the face of adversity. Even if you don’t flip the whole issue, ABSOLUTELY check out this article – investigucational journalism at its best. A bit of history wouldn’t hurt you before the next election either.

and you think your mechanic sucks. . . . srsly. . wtf???…

You may have been expecting a rant, but no. This is a serious sign on serious business. The phone number and address are badly blocked out because I thought doing otherwise might be rude. And that would hardly be fair – this mechanic is obviously all about client satisfaction, holding on to that disappearing ethos of ‘the customer always comes first’. The acid bath sounds harsh but apparently nobody will set your valves quite like these guys – and that’s crucial. The last thing you need is a leaky cylinder or a cracked head, but these dudes will really go the extra mile to make sure that even under heavy conditions, your engine won’t drop its load. Oh yeah – if they get finished early, it’s probaly your fault…

atrocious alternative puns & innuendos welcome, btw

from the frontlines in Tasmania

Guest contributor Mike Bolan, a key mover in Tasmanians Against the Pulp Mill, has kindly sent in part 2 of his State We’re In series. It is an unfortunate truth that the power of Tasmanians to force change from within their state is limited by the many forces against which they now rail. The hope is that mainland Australians will see this matter for what it is and get involved however they see fit. Over to you Mike.

The State We’re In (2) by Mike Bolan

Schoolyard antics appear to have proceeded unchecked since my last article.

Forestry Tasmania has authorised its employees to attend a paid for attendance pro-pulp mill rally at public expense, even laying on buses for transport (again we get to pay). Presumably the results will demonstrate how many people you can get to turn up if you pay them to do so.

GetUp – voting begins for DIY Aussie election ads: check them out

‘Oz in 30 seconds’ is the very-short-video contest launched by progressive agitators GetUp earlier this year. Ads in a variety of styles and on a wide variety of themes – broken political promises, climate change, transparency, indigenous trauma, health, education, nuclear power, human rights, native forests, increased police powers, and even just direct insult – have been home made by Aussies, Kiwis, everybody all over and are now available here for viewing and voting.

Check it out – GetUp are web-1337 and user-friendly so voting is simple, relay speeds are fast, and with 6 ‘ads’ viewable per voting screen, you’re pretty much guaranteed to like at least one per set. The system has just gone online and some minor glitches are being smoothed right now. If you’re not real keen on the voting aspect, you can just check out the most viewed clips, and the highest rated clips.

Tassie Pulp Mill Approval 2007 – NOT one for the CV

originally posted July 11

The Tasmanian pulp mill powder keg to which Malcolm Turnbull finds himself bound by ministerial obligation is set to blow. Only so many scandalous certainties can fit into any political manouevre, and if this one hasn’t already begun imploding by the time 4Corners covers it in late July, it’s a sure bet that it shall soon after.

In March, shortly after Linda Hornsey, secretary to Paul Lennon’s Department of Premier and Cabinet, secretly informed logging giant Gunns Ltd that their submissions and impact statement were still inadequate and deficient, Gunns withdrew from a thorough, independent assessment process. This process had already run for over two years and was expected to run at least 9 months more.

Within a week, Lennon had replaced it with state legislation and a 6 week assessment process to be undertaken by two hired consultancies. The tricky bit is that in lengthy addresses to Parliament, public announcements, news interviews, and a 14-hour debate, it slipped his mind to mention that Gunns knew about this, or that his departmental secretary had told them, or that he, the Premier, knew about it.

John Gay sold out his stake in Gunns 3 weeks ago?

No, actually, he didn’t. The entry that follows today was posted at pace, given the apparent significance of the information and solid support for the conclusion. Wrong and wrong. Given the opportunity to further research this matter tonight, and the advice of a particularly good journo with experience in the financial sector – this seems to not seem to be what it seems to be. I am leaving the article as is for posterity’s sake,

July 14 – March on Parliament House to protest Howard’s NT Tampa land grab

this info just in – uncertain re author i.d.

Call to rally in protest at Howard’s military interventions on Aboriginal communities in the
Northern Territory – please forward to your networks and join us on 14th July 2007 at 11am, marching from the Tent Embassy to New Parliament House, Canberra.

When questioned about the detail of the Government’s plans for Indigenous communities in NT Howard said yesterday (Wednesday) that they were working on it?
and the legislation would be ready in a few days.? – Legislation?????

Howard Insider blows Climate Change whistle – and how!

Highly recommended by a number of prominent authors and enviro-politic commentators, High & Dry by Guy Pearse looks excellent. It’s just been released with enough time still to go before the election that even slow-reading Aussies might have a clue that Howard is Greenhouse Gollum when the next moment of democratic underwhelm rolls by.

Check out the website via the linked pic below. Features are excellent – extracts from the book, a ‘blog’ of sorts from the author, and updated stats and facts of the day. Nice to see that Alan Oxley, recently defecated upon here as a neocon propagandist and fake expert for hire (see the socio-economic report on the benefits of Gunns proposed pulp mill) has been named as number 2 batsman for the PM’s real XI.

Some handy ‘stats of the day’ from the High & Dry www

70 000 000 cars: By 2050, the Howard government’s own internal projections are that its policy will increase emissions by 70% – the equivalent of adding over 70 million cars to our roads.
11 times: Even factoring in his latest funding announcements John Howard is spending 11 times as much on the war in Iraq as he is on climate change adaptation programs.
81%: Of the funds allocated so far under the Howard government’s flagship greenhouse program (The Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund) 81 per cent has gone to subsidise fossil fuel companies
1 000 000 cars: We could take a million cars off the roads tomorrow and the emissions saved would be wiped out by just one new aluminium smelter.

Will hopefully have the book read and reviewed here within the fortnight. If any readers out there have already had the good fortune to read Pearse’s book, please send me your own ‘review’ through the comments section or email and it will be posted here shortly.