Feminism Friday: Humour as a tool for shaming and silencing
Last week’s Feminism Friday post was on why Rape Jokes Just Aren’t Funny, based on a series from Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, and Bernice made a telling comment. Humour – the final frontier of colonialisation. You really now you’ve co-opted someone into the frame of dominance from which you work, when you can get them [...]
Tracking The Intervention: Discarding and devaluing Aboriginal work
Jangari’s “Four Corners on the Intervention” pulls out a few key points from last night’s Tracking The Intervention show. You can watch the show for yourself here at the ABC. Jangari details the ways in which Aboriginal communities are being undermined, not assisted, by the invasion and recolonisation process. I’m just pulling out a couple [...]
Flounder of the week: Andrew Quah
[image source] The Herald reports: Mr Quah told the Herald yesterday he thought it was possible that he had posed for the compromising photographs. “I might have been drunk off my face or my political enemies might have drugged me.” One photo shows him exposing his private parts as he takes a picture of himself [...]
Maningrida Legal Challenge to Territory Invasion: The new Wik/Mabo?
Map of Arnhem Land showing Maningrida location [Image source: Burarra Gathering] I have a feeling the words “Maningrida” and “Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation” are going to be on everyone’s lips before long. The ABC and Age are now reporting that people from the Maningrida community in Arnhem Land are challenging the Liberal government’s forcible acquisition of [...]
Charles Perkins Oration: Marion Scrymgour
[Image credit: NT Labor Party] Via Aboriginal Art & Culture, the full text of Marion Scrymgour’s Charles Perkins Oration from last week. Scrymgour is the first female Aboriginal Minister in an Australian parliament. Whose national emergency?“¨Caboolture and Kirribili? or Milikapiti and Mutitjulu?“¨Charles Perkins Oration 2007“¨Marion Scrymgour MLA May I first acknowledge the Gadigal people of [...]
International Day of Action on the NT Invasion, November 17
From Fire Fly (at She Who Stumbles), the WOC blog, Vox ex Machina, Critical Bloggers, Automatic Preference, and Ubuntu: Call for Solidarity with Aboriginal People in the Northern Territory Stop the Invasion! International Day of Action, November 17th In June this year, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that there would be a ‘National [...]
Scorn as Art
I posted recently about the art of crafting political invective, in finding just the right term to throw at a political adversary to sink them in the public estimation, and how it’s an art that’s largely gone down hill in recent decades. But still sometimes someone gets it right. I’m talking about the recent coinage [...]
Pond’s White Beauty.
More from Unilever, makers of the Dove range and pushers of smoothified, hairless, almost-average-sized, cellulite-free “self-esteem” alongside Slim-fast and Axe/Lynx: Did you know that Pond’s “White Beauty” cream, pushed in India, Korea and Malaysia, is part of Unilever’s “international stable of skin lightening products”? That the “Pond’s White Beauty Detox range that gives a visibly [...]
Difference of Opinion – on the NT recolonisation
The ABC’s Difference of Opinion show this week (18 Oct 2007) examined the Northern Territory invasion and recolonisation of Aboriginal communities. You can read the full transcript of “A New Deal for Indigenous Australians?” here, or access partial video from the main Difference of Opinion page. (I’m not sure how long the video will be [...]
“I can’t believe I forgot!”
[JH part of the image clipped from here] Women for Wik has offered their opinion of the PM’s last-ditch effort to not be remembered as an imperialist, racist little weasel. (Good luck with that, Johnny!) MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – FRIDAY, 12TH OCTOBER 2007 Howard’s “Reconciliation” Slammed by NT Aboriginal Women Friday, 12 October [...]
Kate Harding plug
Kate Harding, one face of the “obesity crisis”. I haven’t done any Kate Harding plugs for a while, and that’s been a bit remiss of me. Kate has a delightful commentariat, no doubt through her excellently executed comments policy, and has been recently joined by fillyjonk and sweet machine. So here one is: go read [...]
GovThuggery round-up
Atticus has “Secret police inquiry a whitewash” at Larvatus Prodeo Here is the unsurprising conclusion of the investigation into badgeless APEC cops: Police commissioner Andrew Scipione ordered an internal inquiry by the Professional Standards Command, which found there were real concerns that pin-backed name tags could be used as weapons against officers. This is a [...]
Nurses speak out about the NT intervention
I’m blogging today’s CATSIN press release in its entirely, as I’m not sure how much play it will get elsewhere, and I believe it is important. CATSIN is the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses. This statement comes from Delegates at the 9th Annual CATSIN conference in Alice Springs. These are the people [...]

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