Housing 

....seems to be a constant issue, in our neck of the woods. But it is not just the 'Ville struggling to keep a roof over everyone's heads. How do we find solutions, permanently? How do we address once and for all, the social issues faced by tropical areas - often prone to cyclones and heavy winds? 

We innovate. We use Bio Mimicry. Bio mimicry - put simply, is the use of nature's ways, to our advantage. If we work with nature, we have a much better chance at creating lasting living spaces, and global longevity. I must ask the question: If we destroy this planet, where are we going to live? 

As the warm weather edges towards summer, lets talk about SOLUTIONS, and focus less on problems. 

Recognition where it's due

A great article by Evan Morgan in today's Bulletin about local legend Brian Doolan - it affords him the position and space that he deserves and most importantly, it affords him the respect as an artist that he seems to have no trouble attracting in southern Europe but that has been a long time coming at home.

Source:  The Townsville Bulletin

Billy says it all really:

"The pride that came out of me when the respect was shown from halfway across the world ... I haven't experienced a lot of it here in Australia and to get it over there was amazing.

That my friends is one hell of an indictment of Townsville!!

And what a man - his plan to change a few Palm Island kids lives and world view by taking then with him on his next trip to Italy is fantastic and, I reckon, right on the money - I dearly hope it can be made to happen.

All-in-all, a much better effort than The Bulletin's last attempt to write about the man!  Worth a read.

Libya. Viva la Revolution!

Yet again, Mr Fish gets it in one:

The coppers get it right

News just in from the 7 News site:

Police officer sacked over alleged Indigenous alcohol breach  Kim Lyell, ABC February 17, 2011, 2:42 pm

A central Queensland policeman has been sacked over allegations he took alcohol into a 'dry' Aboriginal community.

The Queensland Police Service says a 44-year-old senior sergeant from the central region has been dismissed.

It has issued a statement saying the dismissal followed allegations he transferred an "excessive" amount of alcohol into a community subject to restrictions.  More...

It might not exactly balance the ledger but a damn good response (and a damn good message) I reckon

Young Australians changing the world - with skateboards

I first got wind of this story via Truthdig -

... As soon as Australian skateboarders Oliver Percovich and Sharna Nolan dropped their boards in Kabul in 2007, they were surrounded by the eager faces of children of all ages who wanted to be shown how to skate. Stretching out the three boards they had brought with them, they developed a small skate school...

The founders’ success with their first students prompted them to think bigger: by bringing more boards back to Kabul and establishing an indoor skateboarding venue, they would be able to teach many more youth, and also be able to provide older girls with a private facility to continue skateboarding.

Check out skateistan.org and (coming soon to the Sundance Film Festival) the movie:



Following on from the theme developed in a previous post, the basis of their intervention is nothing new (in essence a youth development model), but goddamn it's a good one.  And the Doco don't look as if it'll be 'arf bad either.

All power to them, I reckon!  Fantastic stuff!

Update:  My 15-year old just nonchalantly told me that she's known of this mob for a year or two!!  Doh!

Labour market policy 101 - victimise the most vulnerable

From Paul Norton's letter to the Fairfax press - published in Larvatus Prodeo today:

The Federal Government’s response to the National Welfare Rights Network’s call for an increase in the unemployment benefit is, predictably, to reject this call on the grounds that the best way to help the unemployed is to help them to find work. This is humbug, for two reasons.

The first is that the unemployed are hindered, rather than helped, in their job seeking efforts by things such as undernourishment, lack of medical care, poor mental health, bad teeth, underspending on clothes and grooming, and unstable housing situations, which are all predictable consequences of having to live on the current level of unemployment benefit.

The second is that the Federal Treasurer is on record as claiming that an unemployment rate of 4.75 per cent – that is, about 500,000 people on the dole – is “consistent with full employment”.

The result is that the unemployed are currently being crucified between two metaphorical thieves which have robbed modern Labor of its intellectual and moral fibre – on one side, economic policy orthodoxy based on neoliberal dogma concerning the supposed “non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment”, and on the other, tabloid and focus group mythology about “dole bludgers”.

I also liked this contribution by 'Huggybunny' at comment #8 to Paul's post:

When I started work the unemployment rate was about 1%, Menzies was in power and all the “reffos” were working two shifts. You could walk out the gate of one factory and into the gate of the next and change jobs in five minutes.
Now you need an email account, a CV, a resume and a degree in Horde(Horse?)Management as well as some smart clothes. Nice tits and teeth help if you are a female.
Oh yes it was a brave new world back then, the free market and Capitalism had triumphed over despotism and despair.
It was to be only a matter of time before the socialist revolution took over and we would all be free.
So what have we got?
Despotism rules in most of the globe.
Imperialism runs rampant.
The bees are dying
The fish are dying
The wildlife is dying
The water is polluted
The air is polluted
The climate is on the cusp of thermal runaway.
Sorry Pandora, Ben, Meg and Nell, I will do my best to fix it before I go.
Huggy

The Bulletin does good

Credit where credit is due!

I thought the headline on the Bully's story this morning about the horrific and wretched deaths on the cliffs of Christmas Island yesterday was both sensitive and respectful. 

Full recognition that these were/are people seeking freedom and security and none of the "illegal immigrants" "people smugglers" or "queue-jumpers" we normally hear so much of from the MSM.  It also happens to be a beautiful construction. 

Well done to the sub-editor who wrote it.

PS: Compare the Bully's effort with this little trash piece from (surprise, surprise) Dennis Shanahan in (surprise, surprise) The Oz:   NO politicians wanted to be seen to be taking political advantage from the tragic sinking of the people-smuggling vessel.

Of Magnetic Island, Julian Assange and a Statue

Further to my earlier posts about Wikileaks, Magnetic Times has a great piece on Julian Assange's connection to the Island.  The comments that follow are worth a read too.

I wonder what would happen if someone set-up a facebook donations page for a statue of Julian Assange to be erected on Maggie Island ...? 

I'd probably contribute - after all, he's the only man who I can think of who has taken on the prevailing power-structures on a truly global scale - and won, I suspect!

Also worth a look - Planet Irf's regularly updated WikiLeaks hysteria ... post.

A good news story worth recognition

News last week of the Federal Court's granting of native title to their Country for the Waanyi people is a real good news story.

I know a little of both the Waanyi's fight for their Country and Century Zinc's approach to recognising the claims of, working with, and providing opportunities for the Traditional Owners of 'their' mine site. I'm sure it wasn't smooth sailing for either party but the outcome really does seem to be a real win-win outcome that should be celebrated as an example of the resilience, determination and power of the surviving first nations and a mining operations intelligent (and as it happens, just) response to the traditional owners of country they want to exploit.

All I could find with a quick google were variations on this story by Darren Cartwright at AAP: Win-win for Waanyi people and miners.  If anyone can recommend a link with more on the history of the Waanyi people's struggle, please post it in a Comment.

Congratulations to the Waanyi people and particularly to Jane Ah Kit, Edith Medwin, and Glenys Saltmere – threeWaanyi women I had the pleasure of working with a while back.  I bet there were some good parties at Lawn Hill and in the Isa and on Mornington and across the North-West last week!!

In case you haven't seen it

Doing the rounds in the blogosphere and no doubt soon to be seen in the email in-tray (The TSA is the US Transportation Security Administration - think full body searches at US airports)

Which reminds me - anyone want to take a bet on who the rich and powerful capture first - Osama Bin Laden (apparent cause of at least two wars) or Julian Assange (very apparent cause of much nakedness amongst the ruling class)?  Funny that - not!

Flying free, making a racket and crapping all over Townsville's "opinion makers"

The Towsville blogosphere is exploding and The Townsville Bulletin and a few other of Townsville's high-and-mighty should be afraid - VERY afraid!!

Check out The Magpie's Nest:

What, The Magpie Finished?!  FARK NO!

The old bird has simply moved to a new nest in the blogosphere, a universe where both you readers can move your lips while you peruse his regular load of old cobblers, or `column’ as it is known in some circles. In this smarty pants techno world, it’s now officially a `blog’, with regular `posts’ and guess what? You readers – yes, both of you – can have a say too. Just stick the tongue out of the corner of your mouth, crinkle the brow in concentration and – hey, knock yourself out, use two fingers if you like - tap out a message in the comment area provided. It will be published if it gets past the battalion of lawyers on alert for legal naughtiness.

The Magpie blog is also a work in progress, and will expand as the weeks go by with new links to some very interesting places. If you like, The Magpie will give you an email alert whenever he posts a new load of drivel, which will be at least every week, possibly more often. Just email him requesting same at townsvillemagpie@gmail.com

I know that The 'pie has been around the town a lot longer than I, has much better connections, knows a lot more about racing and punting and front-bar stuff and has a bit more time on his hands that I do - so expect to see his scoops regularly cross posted here.

Or better still, just get on his email list at townsvillemagpie@gmail.com

Welcome to the blogosphere Magpie - I'm looking forward to this!

Howard deseves more...a LOT more

Peter Gray explains why he felt compelled to throw his shoes at John Howard on QandA:

Well said!  But he deserves to have a lot more than shoes thrown at him - like "the book"

Our Generation in our Townsville

Reader Kaylene sent this link for the film Our Generation, announcing that she will be organising some community screenings and fundraising in Townsville soon - stay tuned for more details, but in the meantime check out the trailer:



You could also check-out this article in the Cairn Post - interesting that we've seen nothing similar ion Townsville so far !!!  Go Kaylene

What a damn good idea

Although, given our experience in Townsviile, I'd suggest that candidates in Council elections should also be similarly banned from accepting money from the alcohol industry! 

And then, if industry advertising was banned we might also finally get some balanced reporting on the real costs to taxpayers of the alcohol industry.



An Indigenous woman speaks out

The following posted by Ken Parish at Club Troppo first caught my attention because it mentioned a common old firend - when I saw Bob Durnan's name I knew the piece would be worth reading.  Turns out it is a must read and is cross-posted in full below:

An Indigenous woman speaks out

Bob Durnan is an old ALP colleague who has worked in Indigenous communities in central Australia for the best part of 30 years. Like me, he has witnessed the tragic deterioration of living conditions in many if not most remote communities and town camps in the Northern Territory over that period of time. As such Bob is a strong supporter of many aspects of the Howard government-initiated NT Intervention, especially the income management system.
Bob has just emailed me a copy of what I think is a very important speech delivered to the Australian Alliance of Lawyers last Friday in Alice Springs by Bess Price, a senior Warlpiri woman from Yuendumu.

The background is the release last week of the Bath Report into children’s services in the NT, which revealed that not much had improved in that area since the “Little Children Are Sacred” report which triggered the Intervention in 2007. NT Minister Kon Vatskalis said last week:

“The communities out there are in total collapse. There is a crisis in the communities,” Mr Vatskalis said.

“Yesterday, I was thinking, I said where is the person like Martin Luther King to come out and say ‘I’ve got a dream?’, because I can’t see anybody in the Indigenous community at the moment coming out and saying ‘I’ve got a dream’ and lead the communities. There is no leadership.”

Ms Price is certainly an Indigenous leader whose voice needs to be heard more widely.

My mother and father were born in the desert. They lived their childhood out of contact with whitefellas. They were terrified when they first saw a whitefella. They taught me the Old Law that our people lived by. That Law worked when we were living in tiny family groups taking everything that we needed from the desert. It is Sacred Law. There was strong Law for sacred business. If the sacred Law was broken both men and women could be killed. There was strong Law for who we could marry. Men had the power of life and death over their wives. Young girls were forced into marriage. Men too had no choice in who they married. There was no law for property except that everything must be shared. There was no law for money because we didn’t have any. There was no law for houses, cars, grog, petrol or drugs – we didn’t have any except for bush tobacco which was shared like everything else we had. The only way to punish was physically, by beating or killing the law breaker. They couldn’t be fined, we had no money or wealth to take. They couldn’t be locked up, we had no jails.

Everybody knew what they had to do to make sure that everybody survived. We all knew how to make a living from our country. We lived from day to day. Everybody was taught to fight. We only had our family to defend us. We had no army, no police, no courts. Everybody needed to know how to use a weapon, women and men both learned to fight and knew they would have to do that sometime. We also believe that our Law Man can make magic, they can heal the sick but they can also make people sick and die by magic. That is what all my people believe. We kept the peace by fear of violence and magic.

Now we live in a world ruled by a new law that is not sacred, that doesn’t accept that magic exists. Now we are all equal citizens with human rights. Now we have property, houses, cars, grog, drugs, pornography. Now we live off welfare, other people’s money or we need to get a whitefella education and get a job. We still share everything and this keeps us poor. We can’t say ‘no’ to our family even when we know they are drinkers and gamblers and will waste our money or destroy themselves with it. Now too many of our men still think they have the power of life and death over their wives. My people think all property should be shared and we think whitefellas are just greedy and stingy. We don’t plan for the future, we don’t budget or invest – we share and consume. All this has happened too quickly.

The Bath report on the failure of child protection in the NT tells us that our kids live in a chaotic world where they are at terrible risk. My community of Yuendumu has been torn apart by feuding. These problems show us that government has failed but is also shows us that Aboriginal Law has failed too. Aboriginal organisations have failed as well. Aboriginal politics that focused on the ‘Stolen Generation’ and ‘Deaths in Custody’ also failed. Aboriginal politicians forgot about our women and kids, forgot about the violence on the remote communities, forgot about the problems we are causing for ourselves. We can’t just keep blaming the government without taking our share of the blame. That is the only way we can find our own way out of these problems.

Our old Law worked really well in the old days but it was not about human rights. It was about unconditional loyalty to kin, to family and following the sacred Law. It was about capital and physical punishment. There were wise old people who tried to make sure that there was justice. But they are all dying now. Those like my own parents who were born and grew up in the bush, are all getting very old and passing away. But even they could not stop the grog and the violence that came from the new world we were living in. There is nothing in our old Law that helps us deal with grog and drugs. All these new things that whitefellas brought in we have no law for. But we still respect our ancestors and we still want to keep our culture. The Two Laws, whitefella and blackfella, are based on opposing principles. My people are confused. If they go the blackfella way they break whitefella law, if they go whitefella way they break blackfella law. Our young men are caught in the middle, they are still initiated into the old Law but they live in a world run by the new law, that’s why they fill up the jails.

Con Vaskalis is right when he says that we don’t have effective leadership. We have wonderful old people who know the old Law but are confused and worried by the new. They are truly wise when they have real authority, when they are in small, family based communities away from towns. They are ignored by the drinkers and the young people who are rushing to take the benefits of the whitefella way without learning whitefella law. Too many don’t know either law now. We have Aboriginal people who speak out all the time but don’t live in the communities and don’t speak an Aboriginal language – who don’t have any idea what life is like for my people. We have Aboriginal people who others call leaders who we know are only looking after their own families, their own interests and not those of the whole community. We have very good people who want to do the right thing but are too worried and confused and who are continually grieving over the deaths of their loved ones.

We have white radicals and NGO’s with their own agendas who want to use us like political footballs. When we women talk out about our problems they either ignore us or tell the world that we are liars and trouble makers. Some of my people who carry on about human rights and attack governments every time they try to do anything new run away from their own kin and communities when there is trouble. They never find it hard to find a gullible human rights lawyer to back them up in public but they don’t do anything in their own communities to make things better for their own people.

Too many lawyers are only interested in the rights of the perpetrators. Because they are worried about racism and they don’t like a particular government they will do what ever they can to make sure that murderers and rapists and child abusers are protected from the new law. They will only advocate acknowledging traditional law when they think it will work better for their clients, the perpetrators. But they don’t know how the old Law worked. They never worry about the victims who are also Aboriginal and victims of racism, who have had their basic human rights ignored and trampled on by members of their own communities, their own families. It seems to us that human rights lawyers only worry about the black victims when the perpetrators are white. It is not somehow more acceptable to be raped, abused and murdered when the one doing it to you has the same colour skin.

Our problem is that we want to keep our culture. We want to respect our ancestors and their Law but we also want to be equal citizens and we want human rights. We can’t do that without changing our Law. But we need to change it ourselves, others can’t do that for us. Only we can solve our own problems and we will do it in our own way. But we really need the support of governments and our fellow citizens. You need to listen to the voices that are usually drowned out by the strong, the noisy and the powerful. You need to find a way to listen to those who don’t speak English, who are the most marginalised and victimised in our own communities. You need to listen to our own women and young people, the ones who don’t have a voice under the old Law. If you really want us to have human rights then you have to find ways to protect the victims of black crime as well as white crime.

There is no such thing as a Vegan

Via Gizmodo

Friday funny

An attack add of the likes we ain't seen in Australia - yet!


via Truthdig

Setting Sons

Mr Fish has to be one of the sharpest cartoonists around.  This piece, both beautiful and profound, truly makes U think - exactly as a good editorial cartoon should!

Setting Sons by Mr Fish:

Powderfinger in Townsville tonight

It was good!  Thx my GGG

How to neutralise an idiot

At first I though that this cartoon by Rex Babin from the Sacramento Bee was the ultimate statement about the US "Christian" "Pastor" who has been stirring up hatred across the world with his publicity seeking threats to burn the Qur’an (no! it's not spelt Koran - well only by white Christians anyway)

But then this morning comes the ultimate statement about the 'affair' by a local Queensland lawyer - it puts the whole thing into perspective and makes the US attention seeking "christian" look like the hate-mongering fool he is: