Armed Party Poopers

"Riot squad police have shut down an illegal dance party in Sydney's inner suburbs sending home 1500 disgruntled party-goers." Reports Livenews.
The party was pretty awesome, with about 7 different area's set up throughout the factory, which had a really nice vibe. 3 floors, video installations, lights, lasers etc.

The cops, needless to say, over reacted to this, using unwarranted physical force on people who had just had their party needlessly shutdown.
Obviously upset they'd not been invited, they proceeded to invite all their friends including "Numerous additional police, including the Public Order and Riot Squad, the Dog Squad, Polair and Police Rescue"

From an email posted on a public forum; "To the party people - Your approach to modern life is an inspiration to part time anarchists, 8-ball sharks, lovers of cutting edge underground and all the other miscreants."

Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they realized that they were naked

"Eurgh!" Was the general reaction by Tea Tree Gully Council to these works produced by Margaret Tuckey and Scott Eames.
According to the ABC "A painting of a nude woman by art lecturer Margaret Tuckey and a bust by emerging sculptor Scott Eames have been knocked back by Tea Tree Gully Council, in Adelaide's north-east.

The artists were told by organisers their pieces were inappropriate for an exhibition which was likely to be viewed by children"

Eames said he couldn't get his mind around the decision "in this day and age", whereas Tuckey commented on the "moral gaurdian" role assumed by the council. And in a post modern response Russel Starke of Greenhill Galleries said "I just think that it's astonishing in this day and age that these people may think that they're moral guardians".

Penrith
Penrith regional gallery will be hosting a number of different exhibitions between the 23rd of August and the 2nd of November, around the theme of Samoa, with both social history and visual arts looked at.
One of these that looks pretty amazing is "SAMOA MO SAMOA: SAMOA FOR SAMOA - THE STORY OF THE MAU:
This important exhibition, drawn from the Alexander Turnbull Photographic Archives of the New Zealand National Library, chronicles Samoa remarkable Mau Movement for Independence. Samoa was the first Pacific nation to achieve independence and the Mau strategy of highly organised passive resistance is a political model of great significance and an achievement of which older Samoans are most proud. This collection of historic photos records the leading figures and key events of Samoa's little known political history from colonial rule to independence."

Melbourne Students Recycle Buildings!
"STUDENTS have barricaded a Melbourne University-owned property demanding an end to the student housing crisis.

About 25 members from the Student Housing Action Collective [SHAC] have taken over a property in Faraday St Carlton that has been left vacant since 2005."
The super squatting students selected several sites left vacant by the university, which i believe are these sites here, nice find!

Sign their petition!

I hope their (SHAC) venture is more successful than ASHC who were involved in a similar action two years ago. Stay strong!

I too plan to squat a building in the near future, so stay tuned as I'll keep details a-coming.

Protests grow from the barrel of a gun

War Profiteers are heading to the small town of Adelaide. The scum intend to meet on the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One, presumably to mourn the 40 Million casualties, and also the fact that they were not around to personally profit from the business opportunities that presented themselves as much of Europe attempted to kill one another.
Some Punks reckon that "The profits of war are of course, huge and for every person who has their life destroyed by a gun, a mine, a bomb, a razor wire fence or a steel capped boot, for every child orphaned by and for every woman raped in war, there's an arms dealer making a tidy profit."
They go on to remind us that "The last time the world's arms peddlars held a show in Australia, AIDEX'91, the Australian people, churches, unions, solidarity and green groups showed them that they were not welcome here and successfully cancelled the proposed follow up show in 1993." So check these guys out.

This is what AIDEX'91 looked like:


While searching the interweb i stumbled across a link to this site, which i thought would be interesting for some of you. The Author says;

I've been planning this for a while now. Biking almost 4000 miles across the midwestern and eastern USA. If there's a definition of insanity I suppose that'd be it.

But I can tell you why I want to do this. Because I'm destined to live my life as a timid pencil pusher, at least until the day I get too old or too tied down to bike epic journeys. And I'm taking this opportunity to just say "F*** normality". I want to tell people that I did something so outrageous and insane, they wouldn't believe it.

I want to do it even if it kills me.

And if my bicycle breaks down midway, I'll walk.

We'll see what happens.

And you can see what happens, just check it out; http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/3510

Also! "SORRY Melbourne but Sydney is the only Australian city to be included in the first international version of the famous money board game, Monopoly.

The harbour city will appear on the game's red strip alongside New York and London, following a world wide poll on which cities should be included. " More.

Some sounds

Tape from Stockholm.
This band plays largely ambient instrumental tracks very worth listening to. I'm not too familiar with them, though after listening for a short time i have decided they definatly warrant a mention on here.
They have a myspace located here where you can listen to and download some tracks. And a kind blogger at http://3and4.blogspot.com/ has provided a link to access the album in its entireity - here.
It comes highly reccomended. I mean check out this review; "Tape stir up such forgotten feelings, they restore fading pictures we don’t really want to share with anyone else. Or in some cases have forgotten they were ever there in the first place. The aching slowness of these melodies awaken reluctant nostalgia; a forced sentimentality. And they do so without the aid of words, only with the purest music; the electricity in the air that surrounds the captured moment." – Andres Lokko

Something else pretty interesting is a project called Little People. I've always wanted to be shrunk, so it amazes me. Here are some photo's, but be sure to check out more from the official blog.

Good(ish) News and Suicide Attempts

So on the very same day that Chris Evans announced changes to the policy of imprisonment without trial of people likely to have committed no offence, a man in Western Sydney's detention center of Villawood attempted suicide, Jamal Daoud has more;

On the same day of this good announcment, we learned that Chinese asylum seeker, Hongfei Wen, 35 years old, tried to commit suicide around 12 pm, Monday 28 July by stabbing himself by knife. My understanding that he was approached in the kitchen by around 10 security guards with a notice of deportation. He managed to grab a knife and threatened to kill himself if they would try to deport him by force. The security guards did not care and tried to catch him to remove him from the detention centre. He immediately stabbed himself in the stomach. His blood was spilt everywhere. Then he fell unconscious, when he was taken away by security guards. His friend do not know anything about him at the moment. They are very worried about his survival.

Jamal Daoud

The prison has also recently come under scrutiny over allegations of drug use and trafficking between guards, visitors and detainees.
The Age claims that the picture on the right shows a detainee preparing to mainline ice, while other photo's they received apparently show bags of Marijuana next to GSL paper work.

GSL however deny the claims saying that "Keeping drugs out [of] a centre like Villawood is one of our highest priorities. We really encourage our staff to blow the whistle." Blowing the whistle obviously being some sort of underground drug slang for smoking ice.
Chris Evans has also rejected calls by the opposition to allow a full police investigation into the matter. The opposition hilariously mentioned that the government had "a duty of care". A duty of care that was never more obvious then when the kind hearted John Howard said of a group teenage suicide pact, that people "often make threats and I think it's important people in my position understand that."

Reffo's Let In

After years of suicides, self harm, hunger strikes, protests and breakouts, there is now reform that seems to perhaps be significant.
Chris Evans from the labor party suggests that "A person who poses no danger to the community will be able to remain in the community while their visa status is resolved".
The reform suggests that those who pose health or security risks will still face possible detention.
Though there is no mention of a change to who, the new ruling regime, will allow to stay. Those deemed by Rudd and company to be troublesome, liars or just not in that much danger at home, will presumably still be deported to war zones and poverty.

Advance Australia Fair!

But Chris isn't suggesting that this is the end of his great reforms saying that "A great deal more work needs to occur to develop a modern and robust system for management of people in immigration detention,"
However something about the words "modern and robust" and "management of people" don't seem to imply humane or compassionate.
Although Chris Evans is obviously a fucking saint, check out some of the cases which this suited bastard sitting in the halls of power on a healthy income in a Developed Nation thought weren't so bad;

* A single young woman from Ethiopia who was trafficked, enslaved by her employer and subjected to horrific abuse;
* An elderly couple from East Timor. Eight of their nine children are in Australia, and 6 of them are permanent residents. The couple fled violence and would be destitute upon return to Timor. The Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) flagged humanitarian considerations in this case as being appropriate for the Minister to consider;
* A family from a persecuted ethnic minority in the Ukraine whose 6 year old daughter was born in Australia. A suicide risk was flagged for the father. On Wednesday, after being told of his recent Ministerial refusal, he attempted suicide at the Asylum Seekers’ Resource Centre in front of his son.
* A young Kurdish man from Turkey who was detained and tortured in his home country. There is a real risk that he will be tortured upon return;
* A young man from China who was a member of an underground Christian church. There is a warrant for his arrest for his religious beliefs and he faces detention and torture upon return;
* A man from Sri Lanka who has been married to an Australian citizen for two years. He cannot return home to apply for a spouse visa because there is a warrant for his arrest as a result of his political membership;
* A woman from Sri Lanka whose nine siblings are all Australian citizens. Her daughter is a permanent resident of Australia. There are no members of her or her husband’s family remaining in her country country;
* A man of Tamil ethnicity from Sri Lanka who has been in Australia for 12 years and is the sole carer for his 91 year old mother. The mother is in the queue for an Aged Parent visa in Australia;
* A Sri Lankan father who has been in Australia for 10 years and whose immediate family, including his mother and three out of four siblings, are Australian citizens or residents. His wife’s two brothers and parents were killed during the tsunami;
* A 63 year – old East Timorese woman with a large extended family in Australia including her sister, two children and grandchildren. Due to the violence in her country she has not been able to locate her remaining family in East Timor

In not so surprising news, "AUSTRALIANS want to work less, saying they are overworked and their jobs interfere with their life."

Your Boss May be in Your Head

A proposed "new co-operative and constructive relationship" between Telstra management and workers seems even more a fairytale now than when it was dreamt up. The ACTU claims that Telstra Bosses used psychological profiles of workers in an attempt to exploit personal weaknesses and subtly push 15,000 staff onto AWA's.
The dodgy move by the scummy bosses at the shoddy telco came just a few days before AWA's were to be banned.
Telstra neither confirms nor Deny's the underhanded tactic instead suggesting that the Workplace ombudsman's report is Gospel and that the decision of the workers to sign should be respected - presumably under any circumstance. More here though.

DELINQUENTS!!
As part of their Art In Motion programme, Jay Katz and Miss Death of FBI fame will be screening some films that once struck fear into the heart of those with little else to fear.
These are the sort of high school "educational" films that were created using the most hippest and hoppest lingo and the most "radikool" directors, so that kids actually related very closely to them and really understood why the man was shovelling so much trash down their throats...
No just slamming, these films were and are hilarious and only get more and more so as time goes on - which is good because one of the films Why Vandalism is from 1955 (which must be almost a hundred years ago), and the other McGruff's Gang Alert is from 1990 (also a long time ago).
These two films look at the controversy that has surrounded urban youth artistic expressions and the different (or similar) ways the subject has been approached. The night sounds like it will be great.
Things start to get going at 7pm on the 2nd of August, which is a Saturday, and it's all going down at Penrith Regional Gallery. There are also some other film nights to follow which should be equally as good.
Now i leave you with some McGruff;