Tag: Australia

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Circus of Champions

Hey look over there!
the shock jocks screech
roll up, roll up, punters
at today’s imperial circuses
Cecil the lion is sacrificed
on millions of web pages
may the dentist be devoured!
all together, outrage!
(slash the minimum wage
there’s a TTIP to push through
rotten Bouffant Bronwyn’s
helicoptering soon forgotten
no need for scrutiny by you).

I stand with Adam Goodes
and cheer his imaginary spear
in the arena of discontent
where all the rules are bent
a lawyer sneers at racist masses
in Murderdoch’s business rag
the ruling class has free passes.

Same time tomorrow, folks –
delectably unethical
the news cycle will supply
another glorious spectacle.

July 2015

Related Links

The New Imperialism of Globalized Monopoly-Finance Capital
Fascist Ideology of the Self: Mailer, Rubin and Hoffman
The “lawyer article” referred to in the poem.

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Dealing with Climate Change from a Health Perspective

Possums are survivorsInformative presentation at WOMADelaide Planet Talks 2015 presents an excellent panel discussing some of the proactive things we can be doing to mitigate the health effects of climate change – divest from fossil fuels, reduce population by educating girls, sustain biodiversity, get engaged with bottom up community-based solutions and much more.

Can Human Beings be Well When The Planet is Sick?

  • Dr Paul Willis
    Director, RiAus.
  • Dr Ingo Weber
    practising anaesthetist, former chair SA Doctors for the Environment.
  • Emily Johnston
    PhD student, University of SA, co-founder Adelaide’s ‘Science in the Pub’.
  • Moderator: Bernie Hobbs
    science writer and broadcast, ABC Science Online.

This session of Planet Talks is also available as a Radio National podcast.

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IWD 2015 in Asiotrailya

Rainbow Beach Despoiled

Gawdess save us from elitist wankers,
corporate executives and merchant bankers
boasting swimming pools and private schools,
swanking white saviours, all the right neighbours,
property profiteering, negative gearing,
life’s a long beach posing with boat and 4WD
for collaborators whose feminism screams
upward mobility in the patriarchal tree,
if you’re rich and white, the Grabbits don’t bite
no worries about wealth inequality,
in this lucky country of opportunity
they’ll spy on them but never on me,
pass the glass, celebrate the short history
of the brave settler women of Society.

March 2015

Related Links

All Feminists Are Created Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

A History of International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day has a revolutionary history

“The idea that working class women have more in common with their boss because she is woman than with working class men is criminal and absurd. Gina Rinehart’s call today for a big dose of Thatcherism in Australia highlights that the essential contradiction in society today is not gender but class. Gender itself is a class construct.

The bourgeoisie and those women who have positions of power in bourgeois society celebrate the day precisely to paper over the class differences and to give the impression that becoming a boss is what liberation is about.”

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Invasion Day 2015

Australian Settler Coat of Arms

Acknowledging white settler supremacist destruction of Indigenous people and habitat. It is telling that the white settler Abbott rewards Prince Phillip when there are millions of Australians who deserve an award before him. What has Prince Phillip ever done for Australians except cost us money?

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Cane Toad Time

Toadscape

You know it’s summer in the Sunshine State
when from beneath your desk
there’s a shuffling sound
a gruffly plop and scrape
then you look down
straight into the gloating gob
of the most gruesome pest around here
worse than the pollies, rats and mice
it’s the common cane toad,
that dastardly settler-borne scoundrel.
Out, out, you damn hopping creep
before for the five iron I reach
and augment your next ungainly leap.

Jinjirrie, December 2014

For anyone who hasn’t seen the definitive cane toad movie: