Ravens and cravin's

this is an experiment to see if blog will work cos if it does will save a lot of sending pix in emails etc etc
love Ariel

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Reject Howard’s Christmas presents!
Unite to give each other support
Friday 2 December 2005 – 12 noon on Parliament lawn, Canberra

Million Mothers March begins with one step...and one mum! and we will keep going until we can see a future where fairness, freedom and "for all Australians" means caring and compassion for each other - not callous competition

10 years ago the Million Man March of protest and unity converged on Washington DC.

Now it’s the turn of all Australians who don’t accept the Howard’s government’s proposed laws on Workplace Relations, Welfare and Terrorism to show our faces and our feelings.

Why Mothers? Many of us are mothers. Most of us had mothers. Mothers will be disproportionately damaged by the Welfare and Workplace changes. But not only mothers. Millions of people in Australia will be adversely affected by these unmandated inhumane laws.

And with the Terrorism sedition provisions you will lose the right to even read about it!

Mothers, fathers, kids, people will have to work in even more substandard conditions and for even less money. Individual workers will lose their rights to get together and act for each other.

The Government wants to push all of these changes through by Christmas.
What a wonderful selection of presents for mothers, children, and people who are disabled, pensioners, workers, or unemployed!

Unwrap the packaging and what do you get? All this legislation has horrible consequences – not unforeseen either. Anyone can see the disadvantages sole parents and their children will suffer under the wicked Welfare to Woe package. It won't just mean losing out on payments. People will lose current benefits such as health care cards, transport concessions, and access to public housing. Parents in particular -will end up being minus almost everything except the kids they are trying to look after!

Anyone who has a heart – anyone who had a mother or has been a child – anyone who is half way human – come and march on Parliament House Canberra this Friday 2 December 2005. We will convene at high noon – 12 midday on the lawn outside the public entrance.

If you want to help with transport or discuss this idea, please contact me, Ariel, by email at mongrielle@bigpond.com or phone 02 9326 2960 or 0411 852 452
revised 1 December 2005

Sort of Follow up to Dim and DIMIA in New Matilda issue #59.

We have become accustomed to being ruled by bullies: in government, at work, and (too often) at home. We don’t produce the “loud roaring noise of sadness and despair” which could be expected from a population of Pooh bears who got their heads stuck in the honey jar of promised economic prosperity. We can manage a few muffled protests which will soon be totally silenced if the Counter-Terrorism laws come into force. And I mean Force. A Fraser or two (Andrew, Malcolm) may turn on a taunting bully but he will get done over by a system that cares more about suppressing emotion and partying on than it does about alleviating pain and preventing deaths.

Why on earth do we need even more repressive laws? Why do employers need to be encouraged by government to show their worst bullying tactics – and actually forbidden to devise more humane agreements? All this in the name of letting the market do its thing. Why do divorced fathers, no matter how violent and vile they may have been, be given even further licence to beastify their families under the changes to family Law?

What is it with us? We don’t seem to care if we get done over as long as some other poor bugger cops it even worse. The great Australian Masochistic Resentment streak that I noticed back in the 70’s has become a way of life.

Who holds the power in this country? It is not refugees, asylum seekers, single mothers, people on welfare (apart from corporate), the unemployed and people in public housing. Loud, bullying pollies pass repressive and inhumane laws and their media mouths beat up verbally on the most vulnerable in our society. Our public (and contracted) services do their dirty work.

The old French Foucault had it right: ”It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight them.” [1]

The instruments of government bullying are often public servants. As in “Serve you right, bloody public”. I am a coward and I know what it’s like to work as an instrument (no matter how ineffectual) of an unreasonable and despotic regime. I was an employee of the Department of Immigration for more than 12 years (viz New Matilda #59 Dim and DIMIA)

DIMIA is only a microcosm of the other organisations – public, private and community – perpetrating bad policies and worse practices. It is not one lone deviant, it is part of an overall grim picture. The immigration portfolio has long been used as a stalking horse for unpalatable legislation and policies. Like experiments on animals who can’t fight back.

Detention without charge or trial, privative clauses which stop people getting access to the courts, forcing the use of registered migration agents, imposing personal liability for costs on legal representatives[2], withdrawing government funding from NGOs who ‘advocate’, disadvantageous retrospectivity: all these democratic practices were well-honed by Immigration.

But we didn’t want to know about all that and we still don’t.

Many people in deteriorating situations (eg bully-run workplaces) try not to be noticed and even feel a certain schadenfreude of relief that it wasn’t them – this time.

But masochistic resentment is beyond schadenfreude. It actively seeks to put someone else down and possibly stand on them. Masochistic resenters don’t think that they may one day be affected by the strictures they gleefully apply to others.

Cowardice will destroy us unless we stand together and help each other. Surely anyone who knows anything about Pol Pot, Saddam, Nazi Germany, Chile under Pinochet, Argentina under the Generals, Ukraine under Stalin etc etc would understand something of what Pastor Martin Niemöller was saying in the 1940’s:
They came first for the Communists,and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.Then they came for the Jews,and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.Then they came for the trade unionists,and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.Then they came for the Catholics,and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.Then they came for me,and by that time no one was left to speak up.[3]
It would be a great leap forward for Australia if all of us appealed to those in power - in government, in bureaucracies, in politics, in business, in families and elsewhere – to feel ashamed of the bullying they’ve perpetrated or condoned. If only we could encourage each other to come out fighting for people who are worse off than ourselves, instead of bullying, victimising and resenting them.

[1] Michel Foucault Human Nature Souvenir Press London 1974
[2] (see article in SMH 06/10/05 by George Newhouse: Immigration reform reaches a dead end )
[3] The version on the Boston (U.S.) Holocaust memorial

By: AJ JohnsonWednesday 12 October 2005 I was an employee of the Department of Immigration (now DIMIA) for 12 years. It was a sick system when I joined in 1985, and it hasn't got better. In writing this I am not taking the lathe (as in Latham) to the wonderful creatures I worked with. Some people were very kind, some were tolerant, many were patient, others super-supportive. We had many laughs, generated great ideas and there was a lot of fun, friendship and even some work satisfaction. But I feel it's time to speak out about the Department as I knew it. The immigration program itself is made up of a migration and refugee stream. The theory is that these are different breeds — migrants positively choose to come here; whereas refugees are propelled from their countries by negative forces. The Department is also pretty much a reflection of this — many people choose to migrate into the public service for positive reasons like job security, 'making a difference', even serving the public; whereas others are driven there by personal problems or the inability to survive in the outside world.
Thanks to Scratch
For a short but sweet six weeks in 1986, I was seconded to another department, processing applications from graduates wanting to work in the Commonwealth public service. Graduates in the humanities often wanted to join (as I did in my ignorance) for reasons related to improving people's lot, and possibly Australia's multiculturalism.Once employed, some of us semi-humanists tried speaking up about what we thought was amiss with the 'culture' of the Department. But before long, most of us learned to keep quiet. For some, fatty degeneration of the conscience set in and gradually smothered any urges, while drowning the inner voice resulted in cirrhosis of the soul.If few of us were brave enough to speak out about the inhumane things being done to our fellow workers, then we certainly weren't going to say much about the unconscionable things that were done in the name of 'protecting our borders'. Almost anything seemed to be excusable on the grounds of keeping the country 'a local shop'. I heard one officer say to an applicant who wanted to stay in Australia because it was peaceful and harmonious: 'That's because we don't let your sort in here.' The League of Gentlemen crossed with The Ministry of Fear.Until some tricky government minister thought of designating places like Outer Mongolia 'inside the migration zone', Australia's borders used to be mainly pre-ordained by geography and girt. This side of the border, what exactly were we protecting? A country where even people who had permanent employment were afraid to speak out? 'Border protection' encouraged us to be borderline sociopaths. As in other organisations, many evils were attributable to bad management, and I became a union delegate to try and support my fellow workers. In those days, before I grasped that there is bad will in the world, I naively thought that if workers were treated more humanely some goodwill might trickle down to the Client. Ah, the Client!They may be called Clients but their 'business' is certainly not valued. Many DIMIAns wished fervently that the Clients would all get lost. Those who worked in Compliance (or Enforcement, as it was called when I first started there) were in the unenviable position of being able to help the Clients on their way. This could be done by spiriting them out of Australia to some country they had never lived in, or worse, to one they were desperate not to revisit. Some DIMIAns would listen, apparently unmoved, to dreadful tales of how a Client had suffered: house bombed, children killed, etc. Same officer would later pass an hour complaining about their personal tragedy, such as having caught a cold or lost a bet. Still, a person without a visa is not a person.Besides, us DIMIAns were so busy with the snags and ladders of survival within the Department that we didn't have much time for dealing with the actual public. Our days were well occupied with the scrabbling of claws on the slippery slope of the 'career path', the scribbling of endless job applications, and other aspects of selection processes including currying favour with people we hoped had influence. To me, Yes Minister was no longer funny. There were some admirable Departmental officers but I was often appalled at the attitudes, ignorance and prejudice of some decision-makers. Surely, to make an informed decision it is necessary to consider more than one side of the issue. These people were making decisions on other people's lives and, by extension, on the future of Australia while having no clue that people who thought, lived or behaved differently from themselves could still be human. Periodically, the media notices that immigration officers have more power than the police in being able to enter and search premises, haul off suspects, and eventually deport them. Imagine the effect of possessing such power on someone who is not very mature or compassionate. If you can't imagine it read The Position of Her Power by Fauzia Rafiq, a Canadian author. Perhaps it's only a minority of people with power who abuse it, but far too many others are silent, and condone by their silence. Minister Vanstone is promoting the idea of a training college for DIMIAns. During my time, there were waves of training. In the positive periods, we had enjoyable 'generic' courses such as Negotiation Skills. At other times we would get Document Fraud and Dealing with Difficult Clients. On occasion there were attempts by top management to broaden our understanding of the world and ourselves — with courses about conflict resolution, time management and one notable effort to analyse 'DIMIA-culturalism'. A well-known guru of human resources came to 'reculturalise' us. She asked the assembled pack who, among their colleagues, they admired. As I recall, the hall of fame/rogues gallery consisted mainly of compliance 'cowboys' and maybe one good State Director. Nobody (certainly not me) mentioned someone like X — a departmental officer who went public with his condemnation of the Department's refugee/asylum-seeker processing as biased and racist. His career came to a bad end and he was never mentioned again in polite company. He died not long after. Most of these courses were great fun because we usually enjoyed each other's company and the break from 'real' work. But concepts like conflict resolution, negotiation, client service, cross-cultural training didn't really stick because they were as unfamiliar to most of us as 'Introduction to Computing' would be to a person who's never used a computer and won't see one again for three months.I'm writing about the Department of Immigration as I knew it (I left in 1998), but things are the same now, as they are in many other organisations — government or not. I am ashamed that I have not spoken up before this, even into the void. I am ashamed that I was and am a coward. I have a bad case of survivor guilt.
About the author AJ Johnson is the author of The Mongrel’s Management Manual (a work in progress), based on a wide experience of workplaces and dis-organisations

Judgemental – or what? By A. J. Johnson 15 November 2005
Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alastair Nicholson, was criticised by the Attorney General Philip Ruddock for having the audacity to comment on the legality and other aspects of the Counter- Terrorism legislation.

To quote the Chief Justice as reported on ABC Radio on 4 November: “ It overrides so many accepted individual liberties that it's difficult to know where to start. It's in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It's in breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It runs contrary to all of our historical approach to criminal law. It creates a power to detain without having committed an offence. The whole of it is surrounded in secrecy, so it can never be challenged. The people involved are unaccountable.It shows a complete lack of sensitivity to the importance of the judicial process in Australia.”
Talking to ABC reporter David Marks, Minister Ruddock said” Family law judge? ..Knows all about counter terrorism, does he, as well? He's a human rights specialist, as well as a family law judge?”A reporter said “Well, he's schooled in the judicial process, and he says…”To which Ruddock replied: ” No, he's schooled in being able to comment on a wide range of public interests from a particular perspective that he holds”.I would like to remind the Minister that anyone who has been a judge in the Family Law Court understands only too well what terrorism is. Remember David Opas, a Family Court judge who was shot dead in NSW in 1980. Remember Pearl Watson who, in 1984, was killed by an explosion apparently aimed at her husband, a Family Court judge. In the same year, a bomb exploded at the home of another judge, Richard Gee.
I have three points to make here – and there are many more, I’m sure.
First, if the incidents described above - plus all the murders of women and children by estranged partners – are not terrorism, what is?
Second, is being a family court judge incompatible with being a human rights specialist? I would have thought it was an essential requirement.
Third, Ruddock is giving us – as if we needed it – a really brilliant demonstration of what might be considered sedition after the Counter- terrorism bill becomes law. We will have to be licensed to comment on any topic, publicly interesting or otherwise.
As it is, this once ‘clever’ country has been becoming stupid for years because of the obsession with ‘sourcing’. An idea should be considered on its merits – or lack of them – regardless of who said it or where it comes from. And people should not be classified into speakable and unspeakable. Except Mr Ruddock, who every day increasingly resembles Mr Burns from The Simpsons in more ways than one cares to imagine.

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dogsatdawn as well as dogs there are ravens croaking and craving – here’s the latest croak:

Food for oil program

With the price of petrol surging up higher and faster than a Texan gusher, when is the government going to realise that some of us can’t afford to feed the appetites of both cars and children? Let alone adults and pets.

Many people need to drive to get to work, where they hope to earn enough to feed, clothe and house their family. This especially true when equipment, people and other items have to be carried and/or where public transport isn’t an option. How are carers, contractors, peripatetic community workers and others supposed to pay for the gas they have to spend (and most of them don’t get ‘mileage’ or if they do, it nowhere meets costs) out of their often minimal wages?

Of course, transporting food from the farm or wherever to the consumer will be much more expensive especially in a circuitous system such as ours where tomatoes and turnips may travel on a sort of cook’s tour (ha ha) from regional and rural field to suburban warehouse to country town shop. This last may be quite close to where the veggies were actually born in the beginning. As for those poor farmers who’ve been sucked in to the ‘farmers’ market’ system, I don’t know how they make a cent anyway but having to journey to and fro accompanied by business class beetroots won’t boost their incomes!

It seems that government garners an excise tax (38 cents a litre?) and then the 10% GST on top of the total price (which includes the levied excise). In other words- a tax on a tax. The federal Treasurer reckons that the states are raking in the GST so they could reduce that. But last I heard NSW, for example, didn’t seem to be to getting back the amount of GST that was paid in NSW and ended up with the feds.

Whatever, governments -state and federal between them -could do something to water down the effect of petrol prices (today around 37.9 cents a litre). But then, by all accounts, water will soon be more expensive than petrol so maybe we should stop topping up our glasses with Chardonnay skins and top up our tanks instead.

There is a lot of talk about how President Bush should have done more about a pre-emptive strike on the effects of Hurricane Katrina. But the oil companies apparently knew Katrina was hoving into their orbit at least a week before she did because the hoicked up the prices 10 cents litre in that week. Then in a post-emptive rationalization, the oil companies said oh wow! Prices will really have to go up now because Katrina has inadvertently knocked over a large tract of Gulf oilers.

Is there any hope that the UN will step in to provide relief to people suffering from the sanctions of economic rationalism and outright government and corporate gluttony? Isn’t it time we had a Food for Oil program??

From Mongrielle Australia 12/09/05

Hey – I got a letter in the paper at last… Re: Hunters or Collectors SMH News review 10/9/05:

When the director of Taronga Zoo, Guy Cooper, remarked "I'm afraid the last thing you'd ever float on the Australian Stock Exchange is an elephant", he'd apparently forgotten about the white one...Telstra.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Us dogs are taking a fence at the invasion of yet another cyclone (nothing like Katrina but still a curse in its small way) circumferating and cur-tailing our freedom and frolics. Someone said it was because kids might fall in and get drownded or poisoned. If that’s so – first – the beach is only 10 yards or metres from this photo spot and 2nd - these ponds have been around unfenced for many years. How many kids have fallen in? Don’t parents have any responsibility to make sure their offspring don’t wallow in the water unless they can take care of themselves? That’s why it’s easier to have dog children…are there no workhouses?? Or maybe that question goes with another rave…

doggers delight
posted by mongrielle at 5:27 PM 2 comments
This cemetery was such a blooming superb and scented example of how life goes on…until the tidy freakers got going and started mowing and chopping everything that’s not already dead. A few outcrops of flowers and plants survive but for how long o Lord?
life goes on
posted by mongrielle at 5:26 PM 0 comments
at least 2 dogs are allowed - the Irish Celtic corner
posted by mongrielle at 5:25 PM 1 comments
coast geranium loves these graves
posted by mongrielle at 5:25 PM 1 comments
Freesias and alyssum in their season are some of the most sweet-smelling and courageous plant critters the natural flowering things in Waverley cemetery - a tribute to life and lives
posted by mongrielle at 5:24 PM 0 comments
Bouquets and bush blessings to the wonderful workers who have not only preserved but revived the native plants in this most marvellous Malabar Headland. And congratulations and thanks also to Danny and Sally from Randwick Council who led us on a 4 hour bushwalk round the headland on Wednesday 8 September. Some of us would have learned a lot – even I id if I cd remember it! But for sure I hadn’t realised just how much of the apparently eternal natural flora was only around thanks to the efforts of Friends of Malabar Headland, Magic Point and others who battled with the beastly bitous and other evil invaders (such as the VeeBee jeebies who break beer bottles for fun) you can see Illawarra escarpment from here at south west malabar
posted by mongrielle at 5:23 PM 0 comments
what flower is this?
posted by mongrielle at 5:21 PM 0 comments
a beautiful thing or 2
posted by mongrielle at 5:19 PM 0 comments
fuschia and marvellous moss
posted by mongrielle at 5:16 PM 0 comments
rabbit art
posted by mongrielle at 5:14 PM 0 comments
Magic and Boora
posted by mongrielle at 5:13 PM 1 comments
towards Panther rock at magic point
posted by mongrielle at 5:11 PM 0 comments
spiky start to spring flowers walk at malabar
posted by mongrielle at 5:10 PM 0 comments
Sunday, September 04, 2005
rui says - just try and keep ME out!
posted by mongrielle at 1:22 AM 0 comments
sudoku? sudogu?
posted by mongrielle at 1:21 AM 0 comments
hey we used to be able to run free ...like dogs
posted by mongrielle at 1:20 AM 0 comments
another piece of man's work
posted by mongrielle at 1:20 AM 0 comments
still life ..bodies in a landscape
posted by mongrielle at 1:19 AM 0 comments
what a piece of work is man's
posted by mongrielle at 1:18 AM 0 comments
native sculcha or rusticating ratbags
posted by mongrielle at 1:18 AM 0 comments
parched earth policy
posted by mongrielle at 1:01 AM 0 comments
and seek
posted by mongrielle at 1:00 AM 0 comments
and hide
posted by mongrielle at 1:00 AM 0 comments
rui and gui play hide and seek
posted by mongrielle at 12:59 AM 0 comments
gui finds Buulldogs cap but he is a Swannies supporter
posted by mongrielle at 12:59 AM 0 comments
omigawd a cyclone has struck Malabar Headland but it's kinda eclipsed by Big Easy doin it so hard
posted by mongrielle at 12:58 AM 0 comments
still green after all these years
posted by mongrielle at 12:56 AM 0 comments
recycle the goddamn cyclists
posted by mongrielle at 12:56 AM 0 comments
Friday, September 02, 2005
ephemeral all right - butterflies at the bay
posted by mongrielle at 11:04 PM 0 comments
last look at the real world
posted by mongrielle at 11:03 PM 0 comments
that's me on the far right
posted by mongrielle at 11:01 PM 0 comments
the railers have landed
posted by mongrielle at 11:01 PM 0 comments
Whitehaven on Whitsunday
posted by mongrielle at 11:00 PM 0 comments
Hideaway heaven
posted by mongrielle at 10:59 PM 0 comments
if stones could speak ..to the white shoe brigade
posted by mongrielle at 10:59 PM 0 comments
Hideaway beach but not for long
posted by mongrielle at 10:57 PM 0 comments
on the level at Hideaway...
posted by mongrielle at 10:57 PM 0 comments
the low road to hideaway
posted by mongrielle at 10:56 PM 0 comments
closer look at the residents
posted by mongrielle at 10:56 PM 0 comments
current residents - can you spot them?
posted by mongrielle at 10:55 PM 0 comments
end of the road...so far
posted by mongrielle at 10:54 PM 0 comments
open slathering to Hideaway bay
posted by mongrielle at 10:53 PM 0 comments
Hideaway soon to be cutaway and concreted
posted by mongrielle at 10:52 PM 0 comments
fast forward to Pentecost
posted by mongrielle at 10:47 PM 0 comments
eagle's view
posted by mongrielle at 10:36 PM 0 comments
panted up to Passage Peak - it's breathtakingly worth it!
posted by mongrielle at 10:36 PM 0 comments
lowering like the lowland isles
posted by mongrielle at 10:34 PM 0 comments
mystic moments
posted by mongrielle at 10:33 PM 0 comments
lone mangrove winking at Catseye beach
posted by mongrielle at 10:32 PM 0 comments
towards Whitsunday
posted by mongrielle at 10:31 PM 0 comments
not canary coloured but a cart worthy of Toad
posted by mongrielle at 10:30 PM 0 comments
all roads lead to ...construction zone!
posted by mongrielle at 10:29 PM 0 comments
far shore - see it before it goes to concrete
posted by mongrielle at 10:28 PM 0 comments
wonders of the waterworld
posted by mongrielle at 10:27 PM 0 comments
Hamilton ho to the islands
posted by mongrielle at 10:26 PM 0 comments
a dogless sunset
posted by mongrielle at 10:25 PM 0 comments
Friday, June 24, 2005
dogsatdawn
Us dogs want to share some of the excellent adventures we have around our patch every morning early. Sometimes the moon is shining as bright as day and we trip (well I do..) along the shining paths of sand and rock like urban gorillas. Other times it is dark as a dungeon and we cavort through the cemetery singing and graufing to entertain the dead.In our expeditions we often meet wild(er) creatures - mostly not the dreaded human - rabbits, foxes, possums, owls, hawks, herons and other birds, squids, rays, and fish.We smell fresh wild plants and flowers, grasses, seas and ...sometimes the sewage from the local plant.We see all manner of beautiful things - sunrise over the city, the harbour, the open sea, the cliffs, the rock steps, the trees and native bushes and trees.Hope you can join us even if only in doggerblog land.
posted by mongrielle at 11:48 PM 1 comments
Sunday, May 22, 2005
stairdogs
posted by mongrielle at 10:26 PM 0 comments
Previous Posts
· doggers delight
· life goes on
· at least 2 dogs are allowed - the Irish Celtic cor...
· coast geranium loves these graves
· the natural flowering things in Waverley cemetery ...
· you can see Illawarra escarpment from here at sout...
· what flower is this?
· a beautiful thing or 2
· fuschia and marvellous moss
· rabbit art
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