2005

This year that reflects itself, 2005, started for me at Confest, sitting with some younger campers, playing the parlour games popular with the intelligent youth of today, sharing entertainment, conversation and amusement with strangers, and playing my descant recorder into the night. Living with humans beyond the confines of family/tribe/caste/class/sub-culture/familiarity/ or established bonds.

This theme continued for me this year, as the media and other authorities continued their sensationalist campaign to heighten our fear of strangers, and in particular the targetted enemies of the American war-mongers.

I had joined the group organising Queeruptions in Sydney in 2004 simply because they had advertised a picnic on a Sunday when I was looking for alternatives to the commercialised/consumerist social scene, and seeking to widen my social network. The only people I had regular contact with at this stage were workmates and colleagues, my friends having exited life or Sydney. (There are some adverse consequences to being a survivor: You can find you've been left all alone. But, this is just an opportunity to build again!)

Queeruptions erupted in February, and I was slightly hopeful that the Sex Party would facilitate me breaking a drought of affection. Well, you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need. Instead of meeting a sex partner, I met a person intent on befriending me in a long-term way, and he has become my best friend. On one hand, I am his mother's age. On the other hand, we are the same age mentally and emotionally.

And 2006 has begun with so much intensity that I won't have time to polish this post, so I'm just bunging it up as is. Cheers!

Cronulla

The media were certainly quick to fan the initial incident into an ongoing racist confrontation. According to a close source, this was just a bunch of yobbo young men aggressively displeased about being told by the lifeguard they couldn't play ball games (because there were too many other people around, and this would be unsafe), so they roughed him up, and a common dispute between arrogant young men and an authority figure trying to keep the peace and amenity for others became "lebs" vs "aussies".

I'm still laughing at our brave and fearless leaders' denial of the racism inherent in this nation founded by genocide, twisted by the White Australia policy, and shaped by the dog whistle politics embraced since Pauline Hanson appeared. Yobbos are often the enforcers of society's unspoken rules, and where once they would be out poofter-bashing, now they are targetting the people whose countries we have gone to illegal war against.

Mainstream White political and media orchestrators have been sowing the wind for some time now...

The Killing of Van Nguyen

The Killing of Van Nguyen

by P. (Kim) Walker-Beaumont

At the moment writing this, Van Nguyen’s body will be lying on a slab in Changi Prison, Singapore, having just been certified dead by a prison doctor, and having been formally identified by a member of the Australian High Commission.

From all we know about executions by hanging, his neck will be broken. That is, it will be broken if the hangman was ‘skilful’ and ‘efficient’ at his job. His neck will bear some marks of the rope but there will be no bruising unless his heart was slow to stop. If it was slow to stop it means he was slow to die, his last moments struggling at the end of the rope. He will have urinated, defecated and possibly ejaculated as his body and mind went through his death-throes.

This was Van, a vibrant young man. Now he is dangling dead at the end of a rope.

If this makes unpleasant reading for you, "Tough!" Try to imagine the unimaginable: what it was like, just an hour ago, for Van.

Van was judicially murdered at 6.00am Singaporetime, 6.00 am Perthtime, 9.00am Sydneytime.

I was one of those able to stand in Martin Placeholding a yellow daisy, looking at a large photo of Van, and knowing all the while our utter uselessness. Van was being killed and we could do nothing, absolutely nothing to prevent it. We stood there totally useless in the face of the power of the barbaric outcome of a barbaric law instituted by a barbaric government.

I arrived to join the others at 8.30am, knowing that at that moment Van would be in the hanging area, handcuffed, waiting, knowing, wondering………who knows what………

At three minutes to 9.00, I knew Van was standing on the trapdoor. He was in darkness because a black hood was over his head. He was hearing the sounds of his executioner preparing to kill him.

He was there, but I was here, safe, and useless. He would be smelling the smells of the cloth of the hood, feeling the heat of his trapped breath, and ………I have no idea. I could have simply no concept of what, at that moment, it was like for him, and neither can you.

A the Post Office clock struck 9.00 I knew he was hearing the sound of the leaver being pulled, that he was hearing the deafening bang of the trapdoor opening and …….. .

For the next minute I knew Van’s body, conscious, semi-conscious, un-conscious…?...
would be writhing, twitching, struggling at the end of the rope. At two minutes past the hour I guessed he was probably unconscious but alive, and at three minutes after the hour I thought he might be, mercifully, dead.

Every person in Singapore who supports the death penalty bears full responsibility for this killing, for Van’s murder, as does every person who supports the death penalty in any country which maintains this obscenity: the USA, China, Burma; more than sixty countries.

An individual person can not hide their primitive lust for vengeance behind the cover of ‘the Law of the State.’ A person who supports a law of a state is personally responsible for the consequences of that law.

If it is wrong for one person to murder another with intent and premeditation, then it is wrong for a state or a nation to judicially kill a person with intent and premeditation. Every citizen who supports judicial killing, the execution of a person by the State, must take personal responsibility for this act every time it happens. If the State does something in your name, on your behalf, and you agree to that act, then you are responsible for that act exactly and precisely as if you have committed it yourself. If you support the killing of someone by the State, then you are a killer, and you must take responsibility for that murder.

If you do not support judicial murder then you can not remain complacent and let another person die by default for want of action.

Those people with whom I stood in silent vigil, and those who similarly stood in cities and towns around Australia, will not be silent on this matter, and we will not be silenced.

P. (Kim) Walker-Beaumont
Friday, December 2nd, 2005.

VSU (Voluntary Student Unionism)

This following is the basic text of a submission to independently minded Senators as the Howard Regime rushes to slip VSU through while we are distracted by state terrorism enablement and SerfChoice..

The society we grew up in had as fundamental unchallenged principles individual liberty and universal respect for human life and freedom of speech. Sadly, for reasons best known to themselves, our leaders are increasingly adopting the agenda of our supposed enemies, the terrorists who supposedly envy our freedoms, (so our tactic is to give up those freedoms???!!!), clamping down on freedom of movement and association and expression.

When those who would have us return to totalitarianism are so vocal, now, more than ever, defending and protecting the sources of honest free and fearless expression is essential to the democratic nature of our society.

Student associations are one such source, and should be protected against the iniquity of VSU legislation. Please, stand up for the right of young and fresh and diverse and dissenting voices to be heard and encouraged. Stand up against the erosion of civil liberties and freedom of expression and association. Stand up against VSU.