The dollar is going to hell

As seemed mathematically inevitable, the enormously wasteful pouring of US Dollars into the wholesale destruction of a whole country for the benefit of a few Halliburton shareholders has devalued that dollar, now rather predictably on the verge of collapse. And there actually seems to be a fair and growing number (if still tiny proportion) of folk becoming aware of and angry about this and willing to change the system that has brought us to this foreign murder and domestic despair.

And we can change this.

We can change why we do what we do. Yes, worker strikes, yes, solder strikes, but also take some time to do what we want to do as humans. Be nice to each other. Be nice to strangers. Be loving humans. Turn your back on consumerism and disasterous warmongers. Open your heart to what really matters to your humanity. The dollar is going to hell, but we don't have to follow it. In fact, we can head in the opposite direction...

Radical Uncompromising Unconditional Love.

Whatevah, good luck to us all!

Quit me dayjob

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Quit me dayjob today!
Current mood: jubilant
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers


I woke up this morning knowing that the time for change had come, crystallising the feelings I've contemplated much of late, and so I have resigned from ACON/ SWOP, effective as of Close of Business today.

'Tis done!

And, 'tis done!

It's been a great ten years, and I'm not going away. and I'm very much part of the queer and sex-positive and liberationist and libertine communities in Sydney, so you haven't gotten rid of me, my pretties, but I am FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Like a bird, I've outgrown this nest, and I have gotten tired of banging my wings on the sides. Its time to fuck off and fly!

Thank you to all the the wonderful and gifted and dedicated people I have worked with over the last ten years with SWOP/ACON.

But it's like a relationship, it's over now, and time for me to pack my bags and redirect my mail and kiss you goodbye while I am able to, rather than hang around until we're throwing things at each other! Love you! See You! Bye!

Don't ask me what I'm doing next. I don't know. I think I'd like time to think about that. And.. the sky's the limit!

And I couldn't hold back from leaving my job just because I didn't know what was next. What sort of trust in the universe would that show?


Bon Chance!

Winning the War Of Terror

The Generation That Bought More Shoes

I got this piece of offensive generational propaganda by mass email today, and my response is under it..---------------------------------------------------

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.


They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.


Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright
colored lead-based paints.


We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks some of us took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a Ute on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.


Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops,
McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Red Rooster.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner
store and buy Fruit Tingles and some fire crackers to blow up frogs and lizards with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! [sorry, have to interject here.. by "playing" they mean "KILLING, horrificly", blowing up small animals with fireworks]

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape or DVD movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.


Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter
time.......no really!

We were given BB guns and sling shots for our 10th birthdays,

We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing at Maralinga in 1956. [Got cancer?]

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

Footy had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bully's always ruled the playground at school. [Obviously this stopped you learning the difference between the plural and the possessive form of words. The plural of "bully" is "bullies".]

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents got married before they had children and didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade'.....

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

norrie mAy-welby (born 1961) replies:
We are the generation that bought more shoes, and we'll get what we deserve.

We are the generation that re-elected the government that supported the slaughter of over half a million people in Iraq. We are the generation that supports overpolicing and armies and our actions are sending our children, our children, to be killed in battle.

We are the generation that banned gay marriage, because we think so poorly of love.

We are the generation that has mid-life crises, because we lived most of our lives unconsiously or to please other people, and not in accordance with our inner truths. Few of us have been honest with ourselves and our close partners for all our lives, and there are consequences of that fundamental cringing dishonesty that will not be healed overnight.

I am happy that humans are so well made that I survived the hateful, sexist, and violent environment my parents saw fit to inflict on me as a young child, and more that I was so blessed that I survived the homophobia, sexist, sex-phobia, pleasure-phobia, anglo-centrism and delusions of cultural superiority that killed all of my peers. I am the last person standing from the queer/intellectual/sensitive crowd I knew as a young adult. You, the generation born in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's, killed them all, ALL, every single one but me.

Don't ask me to bond with you generationally. The vast majority of people my age and older are no better than hairless apes who think using violence is acceptable. You beat me as a child, you bullied me as a schoolkid, you bashed me as a young adult. After years of cultural revolution, you may finally agree that homophobia is bad. Why were you so complacent and unempathetic that you once thought it was okay to hit someone or allow them to be hit?

And you are no doubt finding out, or will very soon, the health effects of all those things inflicted on you before the young people, and the ahead of our time people, pointed out how dangerous these things are.

You lioinise the defects of our history. I hope for this you just get your children laughing at you, rather than being taunted by a desolate lifeless future when the last dollar has been made from the last death.

The future of our species needs fearless honesty, not nostalgic delusions.

PS: I have your children. You can't get them back until you stop being selfish and play nice, you fat fucks.

Chaser Wins War on Terror!

With their transparently fake cavalcade’s easy entry in to the “high security” zone for APEC, aided by the blustering Police Commissions Pythonesque rendition of “That’s not funny! That’s not funny at ALL!”, the Chaser team have definitively won the war on terror. Laughter beats fearmongering, ridicule beats stupidity. Thus was the War OF Terror waged by our brutal militarist governments punctured by a bit of larrikin smartarsery.

This is what democracy looks like.

The Chaser’s irreverent stunts. Bums Not Bombs, the browneye salute to Bush. Ghost Dance, the high camp dance of death for dollars. The winning response to the ridiculous water cannon: the Bubble Cannon, sending streams of bobbing happiness through the rallies and marches. My favourite response to overpolicing and heterosexist morality: The Tranny Cops, tiny girls with huge handlebar moustaches and Cop This Sweet written on their blue overalls.

I think these things helped keep the huge Saturday demo more about our human connection (which is what brings us out to protest the killing of over half a million of our fellow humans in Iraq, amongst other atrocities committed for corporate interests) than expressing anger in ways that may have escalated violence.

Yes, there was one troubled soul who attacked a police officer, but this is inevitable when the police treat so many people badly. One such incident of excessive police violence happened at the rally was caught by the seething ravenous media throng, an unprovoked attack on a respectable bespectacled middle aged accountant, married father of three, and now even the right wing commentators are complaining the police have gone too far!

According to police, there were 3000 demonstrators, 3500 cops, and 1500 army troops.

This is what hypocrisy looks like.

3000 is about the number of Americans killed in 911, which is now exceeded by the number of Americans killed by Bush by sending them to Iraq.

The local newsagency was held up while the armed forces of the state were keeping old people with full bladders blockaded in Hyde Park. A few hundred metres from the Police Station, it took one and half hours for police to respond to this armed robbery. This is what hypocrisy looks like.

But Happiness beats Fear, Campness beats Pomposity, Love beats Terror, Ridicule beats Stupidity. I believe we win the War on Terror, which is mostly caused by the State, when we bring our full humanity, our joy, our bubbles, our bums, our vulnerability, our laughter, and our love, to the fight!

Boo to Bombs, Poo to Police, and Hooray for Humour and Humanity!

Bums not Bombs

I'm in the red stockings, and my Best Friend is next to me

Sydney APEC peace demonstrations

The homily in church this morning was so apt for a social justice acitivist serving radical compassion that I had to ask the minister for permission to post it here. He said yes, God bless him ; ) and so without further theist twaddle, and a note for atheists to just substitute "Uncompromising Radical Love" for "Jesus", here's the homily...

by Andrew Collis

Homily
Sunday Ordinary 23 C
South Sydney Uniting Church
Luke 14:25–33

'Skirmishes don't help – discipline is what we need'


"US Gov't says Yes to Torture"

"No: Black List, Yes: Civil Liberty"

"Howard's End"

"Our Right to March"

"Bush-Howard: Axis of Evil"

"Justice Not Destruction"

"We Are Allied with Torturers – How Sad"

"Peaceful Protest, Violent World Leaders"

"We Can Stop the War"

"Solar & Wind, Not Coal or Nuclear"

"Reject Bush on Character Grounds" ...

I noticed these banners while marching toward Hyde Park with ten to fifteen thousand others, all kinds of people, ordinary people – in spite of the rain, and in spite of threats from governments, police and some media representatives over the past month or more – intimidations de-legitimating peaceful assembly, demonizing people who protest what they regard to be injustice as criminals, as violent "ferals."

The march was one of the best organized I have attended. Marshals repeatedly called for non-violence. A spirit of constructive co-operation prevailed. Marshals and First Aid officers were conspicuous.

The speakers at the Town Hall were quite inspiring. Matt Howard, a former US Marine who'd fought in Iraq in 2003–4, is now a member of a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War. He made the simple point that citizens resist violent military powers that invade their country. "We are the ones causing violence in Iraq," he said, citing 600,000 deaths in Iraq since 2003. He went on to cite the example of people protesting and bringing to an end the war in Vietnam. Soldiers actually put down their weapons, and pilots dropped bombs into the ocean rather than upon the Vietnamise with whom they'd come to identify. He confessed that, in 2003, he'd followed orders to bury humanitarian aid rather than help distribute it!

Greens senator Kerry Nettle made the connections between concerns about imperial violence, and concerns for Indigenous rights, workers' rights (in the context of free-trade agreements which drive down working conditions across the Pacific), and climate change (in the context of APEC's undermining international efforts toward specific targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions). Nettle expressed concern over so-called nuclear "solutions" to global warming, warming instead to prospects of renewable technology like wind and solar power.

All the speakers expressed outrage at the barriers erected and the excessive security in the city, wondering at the message such symbols send – world leaders afraid of ordinary people; world leaders ashamed to meet face-to-face with Sydney-siders; world leaders haunted by ghosts in Iraq and Afghanistan; world leaders indifferent toward ordinary people; capitalism in a cage?

A marshal stressed again the virtues of non-violence and discipline – long-term alternatives to violence and greed. "Don't be provoked by those who want our demonstration to fail," she said, referring to some neo-Nazi and other potentially aggressive groups present. "Skirmishes don't help. Discipline is what we need."

I don't readily like crowds. They make me nervous. And yet there was something undeniably positive going on. The police presence was scary – giant cameras, microphones, guns, helicopters trained upon the crowd ­– and that made the courage and care of the protestors all the more striking. I was walking with people I didn't know, but singing along ("Show us what democracy looks like/This is what democracy looks like"), actually feeling safe in a vulnerable presence of courage and care.

And so, at about 12 o'clock when the marchers were settling in for speeches and music at Hyde Park, and I was walking back along Park Street toward Town Hall Station, it was frightening to witness the police riot squad with water cannon making its way toward Hyde Park, pushing us out of the way. Dorothy, Trevor and I stood stunned. What need was there for this? It made me think what it must be like for those who regularly feel intimidated by authorities; who feel unsafe in their own country; who refuse to play along with the game of the mainstream, be it nationalism or privatization, nuclear physics or nuclear families. That tension creates an expectation of violence.

In today's Gospel Jesus addresses a large crowd. What he says amounts to a harsh wisdom, a gritty realism in the face of expectations of violence. "If any of you come to me without turning your back on your mother and your father, your loved ones, your sisters and brothers, indeed your very self, you can't be my follower. Anyone who doesn't take up the cross and follow me can't be my disciple."

In other words, real love involves discipline, and real risks. "Real love always lies beyond our comfort zones [including the comfort zones of family, nation, generation].

"And [yet] a new community founded on risky, socially controversial, deep love is worth whatever discomfort and disrepute it takes. Jesus has gone that way before us, and as we gather around this table we are reminded that he was broken for it.

"… we are also reminded that on the other side of the deep waters of disrepute, scandal and death lies the 'promised land' where the new wine of mercy and peace is poured. And with the bread and wine of scandalous love, we are nourished for the unpopular journey into the ultimate love" (Nathan Nettleton).

What I felt yesterday had to do with people committing to something positive in the face of violence and derision. We often talk in the church about bearing crosses, and I suspect we often are not so clear on what we mean by that. Crosses can become merely the inconveniences of life, merely difficulties. But the cross of Jesus, if it is anything, is firstly an instrument of torture, a state-sponsored terror. It stands, firstly, for the attempt, on the part of political powers, to frighten and silence the one whose courage was/is born of love divine. I sensed something of that courage yesterday. People saying, "I choose to be courageous and to love, whatever the consequences." Amen.

--------------------------------

South Sydney Uniting Church every Sunday 10am 56a Raglan St Waterloo, we're obviously very queer anarchist friendly, and we give good service! ~ N

Snipers targetting Sydney schoolkids

Here we are with "our" government colluding with armed foreign troops to put our schoolchildren in their targetting sights. Of course things will look uglier and uglier as the old order festers and bursts. But take hope! We have the technology and numbers to expose their atrocities and widen public support for peace and rejection of militarisation. Chant with me now: The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people...



Spread these photos far and wide. This is what the New World Order wants to look like, with weapons pointed at the populace to stop us protesting and keep us in line with the economic interests of the obscenely wealthy. This is what we're fighting, and why we're fighting it. All those extra troops and weapons only increase the likelihood of an innocent being shot.



Is cheap Iraqi oil for your SUV worth a gun pointed at our kids?



9:55 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove

APEC on the cheek can be quite Condaleeza

But fawning is a soul's worst end...

Here in SydAPECLOCKDOWNney, I realise that the revolution has started, with the people rising against the government that is sending their children to war, and against the police fencing off their city in a foolish attempt to silence their protest (but which only focuses mass dissent and resistance).

At the Student Strike rally, a prominent activist thanks me for the Christmas card I made last year, and says it still inspires her. I can thank the "Christian" Right Wing for making me look again at the Jesus stories to check my recollection that they are about absolute unconditional love, social justice, and radical compassion, not about interfering with people's love, or using public resources to secure private property, or waging war and killing over half a million innocent people in Iraq.

I see bubbles streaming across the marching crowd from the side furthest from me, and then I realise it's my Best Friend carrying the bubble machine, which he has retagged the Bubble Cannon. These are our tools, love, human connection, and ruthless ridicule. An intelligent human with a killing weapon is a sad joke against their own intelligence, and the sooner they realise that, put down their tools of violence, and join humanity with humanity, the happier we can all be.

I see my young friends shining in their roles leading the Love Revolution, and I realise I have been ideally placed to help nurture this astounding change in human society, from being about having stuff and supremacist views and defending that stuff and those views, to living freely as loving and compassionate and intelligent and creative and autonomous humans.

I realise I can upload my political songs onto the web, no longer held back by lack of resources or corporate approval, for anyone can publish now, and it will find its audience.

I LOVE the future! (As my innerchild sees the present times.)

I see the people's surveillance photos of snipers trained at the civilian population. Here we are with "our" government colluding with armed foreign troops to put our schooldchildren in their targetting sights. Of course things will look uglier and uglier as the old order festers and bursts. But take hope! We have the technology and numbers to expose their atrocities and widen public support for peace and rejection of militarisation. Chant with me now: The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people, well networked, will never be defeated! The people...


Cheers


From an old but reborn and regenerating and rejuvenated hippy!

&=^D

Have Your Say on the APEC Fences

A lovely bit of agitprop from SaintFletcher, a seditiously inspirational Guru

China: Cops hassle lovers, public hassle cops, love wins

In this great story, we see what happens when ordinary people question the bullies who police our love lives in the name of authority. Authority does not come from the state. Authority over human society comes from human society, that is, from you and me and all our other fellow humans.

Briefly, the cops (in laughable theory the servants of society, but actually the servants of those who profit by the way the state is now, and thus poised to oppose any change the people want), ahem, BRIEFLY, the cops hassled folk for being affectionate, and then people who heard about this protested, and then the cops got disicplined, and perhaps now less state resources will be used to punish human happiness in the future!

Here's the story from

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSHER15330720070831?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

Police punished after lovers fined for a hug
Fri Aug 31, 2007 12:47PM EDT(9)

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has punished three policemen for detaining and fining two young lovers 5,000 yuan ($660) for hugging in public on the Chinese version of Valentine's Day.

The couple paused to embrace while taking a stroll along a river in Jinshi in the central province of Hunan, the Shanghai Daily said.

"As we hugged each other, three policemen came and separated us so they could ask questions. They brought us to the police station and didn't free us until we paid a 5,000 yuan fine," the paper quoted female detainee, Xiao Hong, as saying in an Internet posting on a local news portal.

The police were in plain clothes and many other couples were out strolling on the evening of "Qi Xi" -- a local festival often dubbed Chinese Valentine's Day, the Beijing News said in a separate report.

Internet users poured derision on the police, which "forced officials to look into the case," the paper said.

"The three policemen have been punished. We have never dealt with such a case before," the paper quoted a clerk at the police station as saying.

Police had refunded the money to Xiao Hong's boyfriend and apologized, the paper said.

Police in China have previously taken a dim view of public displays of affection. Last October, volunteers offering "free hugs" in a shopping street in Beijing were hauled away for questioning.

Generation War

Here in Sydney we ready for the APEC demos. The cops claim the huge barricade and foreign soldiers with guns are necessary because they found a booklet from a student "Mutiny" group about how to wear a gas mask.

Sometimes I think this is a war between the generations.

All the old people have to lose is their stuff and values and faculties, and those are doomed anyway, as their stuff gets superceded, different, more intelligent values evolve,and win favour from all but the old and entrenched, and their closed minds close their senses to the world.

All the young people have at stake is their life and the life of their offspring, trying to save the planet before the rich idiot's destroy the biosphere to mine a dollar.

My money is on the young.