Red Rag

I started work today for Senator Ruth Webber. I’m manning an ARM stall at the UWA O-day tomorrow, but starting next week I’ll be here on Thursdays and Fridays.

Apart from general constituent work, I’ve been given a couple of ongoing projects. One is to produce a weekly e-Newsletter to be sent to interested electors in O’Connor and Moore, and the other is to develop a network of student activists to campaign against the foreshadowed changes to the structure and funding of higher education.

It looks like I’ll get the chance to travel to Canberra soon, too, which will be very useful for my honours research.

If you want to get in touch with me, you can ring me at work on (08) 9409 9599.

The latest addition to the Ranters Network fold is Gary’s Cynicology. An excellent read.

First we had a columnist conjuring images of Tony Abbott’s leaky nipples, now it’s John Howard’s turn: Parliament sour on breastfeeding PM. Oh, thank god. They meant to write “MP”. [NB: they've fixed the typo now.]

Sunday night was probably the best night of my life.

Pearl Jam is, as Carita has suddenly discovered, the greatest band in the world, and on Sunday they played an absolutely awesome show. Their new stuff, like Love Boat Captain, 1/2 Full and Get Right blended seamlessly with classics like Daughter, Jeremy and Go.

One highlight was a plug for the Save Ningaloo Reef campaign (and, oddly enough, Geoff Gallop), which led into Do The Evolution (performed while Eddie wore a John Howard mask). Boom Gaspar’s organ was a welcome inclusion, and his solo on one track (can’t recall what it was, unfortunately) was incredible. I hope he sticks with the band.

Before the second encore we heard Crazy Mary, and when Eddie Vedder returned to the stage he announced that he had met Mark Seymour (formerly of Hunters and Collectors) during the day. They performed a duet version of Throw Your Arms Around Me, which was just unbelievable.

That led into an absolutely kick-arse rendition of Alive, which had the whole audience singing at the top of their lungs and waving their hands to the rhythm. Mike McCready’s solo was blistering. Finally, Johnny Marr (formerly of The Smiths) joined the band to cover Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son.

I’ve since had a few of my friends tell me, independently of each other, that it was the best encore they had ever seen. All I can say is, it would have to be pretty darned good to top what we saw and heard on Sunday night.

Still, the highlight for me, and the one image that has stuck in my mind, is Mike McCready leaping across the stage in a Pete Townshend-like flash of red.

Pearl Jam rocks.

PS: I reckon these lyrics are pertinent at the moment:

bombs dropping down
overhead, underground
it’s instilled… to wanna live
bombs dropping down, please forgive
our hometown in our insignificance

Read the rest of this entry…

If they can keep up this standard of humour, I can’t wait for CNNNN or the Election Chaser to return…

A few of my friends have been talking about putting out a tabloid along the lines of Melbourne’s The Paper. The more I think about it, the more it seems possible. And a good idea.

James Russell argues “that selling wheat to Iraq is technically also giving a form of comfort to Saddam, and yet they can’t exactly cancel the sale without pissing off the farmers…” Alternatively, you could argue that peace protests feed starving Iraqi children.

I’ve always been a bit cheesed off by people who claim George W Bush was not legitimately elected. My attitude has been that the ballot papers may have been poorly designed, but the Democrats signed off on them. The US electoral system is screwed, but Bush won fairly according to those rules.

However, I’m watching Unprecedented: How Bush Won Florida and it’s raised an issue I hadn’t heard about before:

One of the first indications that something was wrong came early on election day. Thousands of African-Americans who had voted in previous elections discovered their names were missing from the voter rolls. Investigators later uncovered an elaborate strategy that purged thousands of Democratic voters from the rolls. These voters were disproportionately African-American. It appeared that Governor Jeb Bush, Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, and other Republican state officials ordered the manipulation of a list of former felons to include thousands of legitimate voters who had no criminal history. In Florida, ex-felony offenders lose their right to vote. The manipulation of this list denied thousands of legitimate voters of their franchise. In an election that was determined by 537 votes, these purged voters would have reversed the outcome.

Stripping felons of their democratic rights is bad enough, but to deny people their vote based on a deliberately loose list of possible felons is another thing altogether.

If the allegations made in this documentary are true, and it seems to have been very well researched, then I’ll have to change my mind. If large numbers of Democratic voters were deliberately disenfranchised by Dubya’s brother and other Republican officials, then Bush is indeed a cheat and an unelected president.

UPDATE [10:19pm]: In the comments, c8to offered a link to an article by Gregory Palast that supports the allegations. It’s very interesting.

Listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker performing a scat version of “How High the Moon”. Amazing.

An interesting tidbit from The West’s Inside Cover today:

Young Libs wets as cold war at unis hots up

No thaw in the cold war between the WA University Liberal Students and the Young Liberals (IC February 11 and 17) judging by yesterday’s orientation day at Edith Cowan University’s Joondalup campus.

Representatives from the Liberal Party’s two warring youth divisions set up stalls 10m apart and proceeded to compete for the affections of any passing young conservatives.

Our spy tells us the WAULS group appeared to be doing the better in the recruiting stakes, possibly because of their home ground advantage.

We’re told the Young Libs also had to endure some student hijinks – some water bombing late in the day.

A case of the wets versus the drys?

It raises an important question — what am I going to do with the rest of the water bombs?

Grant points out an interesting experiment being conducted over at MetaFilter. Quite a large number of users has completed the Political Compass test, and a graph (popup) has been produced. He also notes that it is very similar to my Political Blogmap; I’d go further and say that the distribution is similar on both.

To me, that is a reasonable indication that they offer a fair estimate of the ideological distribution of the blogosphere (or at least the political blogosphere). However, I’m not convinced that Grants conclusion is accurate:

It’s quite interesting — Metafilter appears to have a far more left-leaning membership than you would imagine from reading the posts. I guess the right-wing nutters just shout louder.

That’s possibly true to a certain extent, but the test is also imperfect. There are a good few questions that lend themselves to a “leftist” response, when that’s not necessarily the case.

I’m not sure what it means, but it’s certainly very interesting.

I had lunch at the WA Parliament today with Legislative Council President John Cowdell, Sue Ellery MLC and Louise Pratt MLC. Man, that food is good. And the service! I don’t know how many wines I drank, every time I took a sip they topped it up!

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

I bought a mobile phone.

I’ve always maintained that mobile phones are evil — sure, they’re handy if you need to make a call, but not if people want to call you. Then, you’re supposed to drop everything and talk to them; failure to do so, or to get back to them quickly, is a horrific social crime. That’s not a world I wanted to buy into.

But I’m getting busier, and I’ve got a job now, so continuing to avoid the little bastard was getting more difficult. So I caved in and bought a Sony Ericsson T100 on a prepaid plan. (It’s a nice phone, and it has Solitaire.)

I figure that by way of penance, I can refuse to answer most calls, never ring people back and abstain from SMS.

The thing’s for my convenience, not yours…

It’s very good of Gareth Parker to point out the Perth print media’s coverage of Saturday’s peace protests. However, it’s bizarre that he reaches the conclusion that

The closer you look, the more it becomes apparent that, despite the weekend’s impressive show of numbers, this is not at all a broad-based anti-war movement. Instead, it comprises the same loose coalition of the usual suspects.

Clearly Gareth got a very close look, even though he wasn’t there. Which makes me wonder why the Sunday Times reporter, who was there, and upon whose report Gareth made his judgment, came to the opposite conclusion:

People from all walks of life including parents, children, senior citizens and students voiced their opposition to a war in Iraq by marching around the city centre chanting for peace. (Emphasis added.)

I, too, got a closer look than Gareth, and having attended numerous protests in the past (and thus probably counting among the “usual suspects”) I am reasonably well placed to say this was not just another Green Left, ISO, DSP, Resistance rally.

Sure, they were there; and sure, they had their banners. But for every one of those mass-produced Socialist Alliance placards, there were two or maybe three homemade placards or banners carried by people with no apparent connection to a political organisation.

Take a look at this family. Or two acquaintances of mine who are not members of any political party. There was this guy, walking his dog in the march. There was this family, with whom I caught the train and who are involved in CISV — hardly a group that turns up to every protest.

Before Gareth reinterprets the protest to suit his own agenda, he should take a “closer look”; before he shoots his mouth off after looking at the pretty pictures, he should read the text of the article.

James Russell is concerned about Peter Cosgrove’s comments about Australian troops and civilian targets:

So are we to make of this that plans are or were afoot in some quarters to seek out civilian targets? Nice to know our boys and girls won’t have to, but maybe someone else will…

Defence Minister Robert Hill’s comments don’t do anything to reassure me:

United States commanders in Iraq would not be able to order Australian troops to fire at civilians, bomb water supplies, or act outside the international conventions of war, Defence Minister Robert Hill said yesterday.

Senator Hill said that even when under US command, Australian troops would be following Australian rules of engagement, not those of the US. “We’ve accepted more of the restraints of the international conventions than the US have,” he said.

Is he suggesting that America’s rules of engagement are so loose as to include firing on civilians? Could we expect US commanders to issue such orders?

Given that Howard is now blaming Saddam Hussein for civilian deaths that haven’t yet occured (and which would be the result of US “smart” bombs, among other things), it’s clear that we’re no longer debating whether there will be massive civilian casualties. The spin machine is already trying to pretend that when the US (or Britain or Australia) launches a missile, it’s Saddam’s fault.

When the missile lands in a pharmaceutical factory, it’s Saddam’s fault. When a bomb lands on a wedding party, it’s Saddam’s fault. When a bomb kills a shepherd, it’s Saddam’s fault. And now, potentially, when a US commander orders troops to fire on civilians, it is Saddam’s fault.

Excuse me for a moment while I throw up.