Quiet Revolutions
What a fun week it was. Homophobes falling off stages, teenage scooter gangs and boat arrivals that don’t.
On this show we also hear from Alan Ward’s A Brief Introduction to Anarchism with Jepanarchy at the end to test your knowledge. Bad Cop No Donut and refugee news.
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Watch homophobes fall off stage at a same sex marriage debate here.
BAD COP NO DONUT
Teenage scooter gang takes over Brisbane CBD.
Police in New York City accused of violently sexually assaulting and raping a teenager in custody claim she consented to sex.
The woman under the pseudonym Anna Chalmers was in a car which was pulled over and searched for drugs. 2 detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins allegedly found drugs but only detained Anna, not her two male friends.
Taken away in a van Anna was allegedly forced to perform oral sex and was raped before being dumped by the road.
A DNA rape kit tested positive for the officers’ DNA on Chalmers.
Both officers have been suspended and will go before a grand jury.
Astro Labe who became a cult hero after head butting former Prime Minister and all round nob Tony Abbott faced court on Monday.
He appeared at Hobart’s magistrates court, didn’t enter a plea and had his bail continued.
The charge has now been amended to causing harm to a Commonwealth public official, a federal charge which if heard in the Supreme Court would see Mr Labe face up to 10 years in jail. Many Australian voters would rather he was given 10 years free beer for this act of defiance.
The case will return to court on January 18.
REFUGEE NEWS
Two noteworthy things happened during the Senate Estimates hearing. One was Immigration and Border Protection chief Mike Pezzullo making a joke about ‘torture’ when being questioned by Senator McKim about the situation for refugees on Manus the second was reminiscent of the BBC tv series Yes Minister.
Labour Senator Kim Carr in Senate Estimates questioning ABF personnel.
“Peter Dutton has stated we haven’t had a successful boat arrival in now over 1100 days.
KC: Did a boat arrive on Sabo Island on the 20 August?
ABF: Yes.
KC: And did it involve six Chinese nationals?
ABF: Yes.
KC: And was there a New Guinean people smuggler involved?
ABF: There was a New Guinean on board, yes.
KC: Why is that not arrival in Australia?
ABF: It’s not an arrival under the scope of Operation Sovereign Borders.
KC: Oh, I see. So, I want to be clear. Just so that we understand what 1,000 days means, it doesn’t mean Chinese, it doesn’t mean east coast?
ABF: We get illegal arrivals all the time and have for years, as you know.
The reason OSB was set up was not to deal with Papua New Guinea. As I articulated, it was to do with people arriving on the high seas, primarily out of Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Sometimes when a boat arrives, it actually doesn’t. It depends on where it comes from.
KC: Good to talk to you. Thank you.
Canstruct a Brisbane based civil engineering firm and Liberal party donor have been named as the successful tender to take over delivery of services to refugees on Nauru.
As of the time of writing they had not signed a contract.
Broadspectrum – previously Transfield – opted not the renew their contract which finishes at the end of the month. Actually when they were taken over by Spanish company Ferrovial they were keen to withdraw earlier but the govt extended the contract.
A strong No Business in Abuse and divestment campaign was a factor.
This is ridiculous and arbitrary and mean and degrading.
Refugees on bridging visas will now have to ask the government’s permission to get a pet.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald the department declined to clarify whether goldfish, guinea pigs or birds were included in the crackdown, or whether it would apply retrospectively, forcing asylum seekers to obtain permission for pets they already own.
Neither would the department provide a list of criteria for assessing whether an asylum seeker should be allowed to buy a pet.
A Brief Introduction to Anarchism
Q – The revolutionary alternative to the status quo today is not collectivised property administered by a ‘workers’ state’ whatever that means, but some kind of anarchist decentralisation that will break up mass society into small communities where individuals can live together as variegated human beings instead of as impersonal units in the mass sum. The shallowness of the New Deal and the British Labour Party’s post-war regime is shown by their failure to improve any of the important things in people’s lives – the actual
relationships on the job, the way they spend their leisure, and child- rearing and sex and art. It is mass living that vitiates all these today, and the State that holds together the status quo. Marxism glorifies ‘the masses’ and endorses the State. Anarchism leads back to the individual and the community, which is ‘impractical’ but necessary – that is to say, it is revolutionary
A – What was journalist Dwight McDonald’s most quoted paragraph?
Q – First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not a sex commodity.
Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation.
Only that, and not the ballot, will set women free . . .
A – Emma Goldman The Tragedy of Women’s Emancipation
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