Darkness at Noon

Well, the festive season is finally upon us. Today is my last day at work for the year so I’m feeling pretty good about life.

The Australia Centre for Democracy and Justice is now 6 months old and seems to be going strong. It will get bigger and better yet and I suspect next year will be a big one for us with lots of campaigns/forums and so on.

I doubt I’ll be blogging again until next year so thank you to all who read this blog and particularly those that link here.

The Centre wishes you a really great festive season, what ever it is you do.

This article is worth a read on the recent elections in Bolivia.

There’s an article in today’s Age about the vlogs.

I must confess I haven’t really seen any vlogs (recommendations please) and I can’t really see how they would work. However this is what I find exciting about them. I know I lack the technical and creative ability to have a vlog. I know that to make a vlog any good, it will require a good film making abilities. This is why I’m excited at the prospect. It opens up a whole new domain for people to creatively explore and, while I can’t see them replacing your standard blog, with technology as it is today, the possibilities are endless – not to mention all the remixes!

It’s interesting reading this (sub needed):

The news is better for the world’s 50 least-developed countries, which will get access for their farm products into rich nations by 2008.

…and then reading this:

The main sections of this annex that are really scary are paragraphs 2 and 7. Together these paragraphs introduce plurilateral and sectorial negotiations on services (ie, a group of countries could approach a small country are ask them to open up negotiations on liberalizing their education or water system). The other thing that is included in paragraph 7(b) is a mandatory element to these requests. The paragraph states that when requested, parties “shall” negotiate – meaning that a country would not be allowed to refuse a request to negotiate over the liberalization of their services. This is significant, because whenever these negotiations have gone ahead, most countries have ended up being pressured into liberalization – and this would be compounded when the negotiations become plurilateral rather than bilateral.

CCH (first quote) are generally pretty good but they have obviously missed the mark here somewhat. Yes, it is fantastic that Majority World Countries will have better access – although I can’t help but remain skeptical – but if it comes at the cost of the privatisation of rain water (as happened in Bolivia) then it is a cost that is too high.

Over at Stoush, Liam has beaten me to the punch with the news that Bolivia has, as expected, elected a Chavez-like government.

This is fantastic news (in my opinion). I believe the new leader, Morales, is indigenous. My understanding is that the majority of Bolivia’s population are indigenous are second class citizens. This make the election of such a leader somewhat inevitable.

The other thing I find interesting about a lot of South American politics, is that they are electing union leaders with socialist-type politics. However they also seem to be a distinctly new breed of Socialist with, what I believe, are considerably improved doctrines.

I’m actually a bit of a fan of Kristin Hersh and am quite impressed to see that her band 50 Foot Wave is releasing it’s latest stuff under a Creative Commons License.

As they say:

With “Free Music” 50FootWave is seeking new earballs. We thought it’d be interesting to ask for your energy & enthusiasm rather than your money and see what happens. To that end, please share this music in any and every way you see fit. Burn CDs, post the mp3s, seed Torrents — whatever’s comfortable for you.

I suspect that something like this is a privilege that a more established group can afford, but it is admirable none-the-less.

(via the Creative Commons blog

This is VERY funny

I’ve registered the domain name darknessatnoon.com.

My thought was that we could rename this blog Darkness at Noon. Why? Well I’ve never really liked this blog being called the “Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s Blog”. It’s just a little boring and way too long.

Darkness at Noon is my favorite book. It was written by Arthur Koestler, a contemporary of George Orwell’s. It is the story of Rubashov, a man who was very senior in the early days of the Russian revolution but is now being tried for treason.

In many senses it outlines his ideological rebirth as he moves away from Communism, and more importantly, away from totalitarianism in his last few days.

For all of these reasons I think it would be a fitting title. However there is some conjecture between the ACDJ directors about this. The concern being that it might not be as obvious that it is the Centre’s Blog. I disagree as the site would still be heavily branded with an explanation about the centre and why it is called what it is.

So I thought I’d put it to the people. Please feel free to comment on the name change.

This is once again disgusting.

Iranian-born Sheikh Mansour Leghaei has been deported as ASIO have deemed him a ‘directly or indirectly a risk to Australia’s security’. To make matters worse we have no way of knowing why.

The burden of proof is shifting away from those in power as they assure us that they are doing the right thing. I’m sorry if I’m a little skeptical.

I’ve been thinking more about the riots in Sydney of late – in particular the roll of race in them.

It seems clear to me that racism was a factor in the riots and this is probably the most disturbing element of it. But was it really what caused them? It is to some extent but I can’t help but feel it would be foolish to limit our analysis to “they’re a bunch of racist dickheads”. No doubt they are, but that’s not the whole story.

Over at GetBlogged Lachlan says:

I have seen the pictures, read the text messages, and heard the commentary, but I am not buying these race riot claims. It’s not because I don’t believe Australia is a racist society. A quick read of the comments below will quickly establish that it is. And it’s not because I don’t think there is tension between different ethnic groups in Sydney, because the undeniable fact is, there is.

The reason I have rejected the description of the violence in Sydney as race riots is because it is a description that is too kind to the people who have taken part.

The young men who rampaged through Cronulla and Maroubra, and a few of the suburbs in between, were not interested in anything as abstract as their race. They were simply exercising their own capacity to hurt and destroy when there is no danger, and run and hide when there is.

That crowd in Cronulla on Sunday didn’t care about the Shire, or any of the people who live in it. They simply indulged themselves in a gratuitous orgy of mob violence for the simple reason that they could. They weren’t defending Australian values; they were defending the brittle skeleton of self-esteem that holds their vanilla flavoured existence together.

I think he has a point. There were skinheads involved but they might have been 100 at most of the 5000 strong crowd.

Kate over at Moment to Moment makes a similar point:

My reaction to this mess is mostly a mix of puzzlement and disgust. But beyond that, I wonder how much of this is really about ‘race’. Yeah yeah, the 5000 boofheads at the beach were chanting about “keeping the Lebbos out” — but if it weren’t the “Lebbos”, wouldn’t it be someone else?

I’m not denying there’s a problem with a subset of Lebanese young men who act like dickheads. But there seems to be quite a subset of Anglo young men who act like dickheads too, and all this seems less about race and racism and more about young men + time on their hands + booze and drugs = violence. Pissing wars between groups of young, angry blokes are nothing new, and the divisions can be as minor as which footy team you go for, to what country your grandparents came from.

There are non-violent, anti-racist rallies in Sydney and Melbourne this weekend (the Melbourne one is 5 pm Friday (16th) @ Bourke St Mall). I’ll be attending the Melbourne one as it is particularly important to publicly display my disgust at the riots and to send a clear message that Australians aren’t racist and join in solidarity with our brothers and sisters from around the world.

However, it is worthwhile considering the other factors involved in these acts.