there's our catastrophe

Jun 17 2013

I did a show on higher education on leftist community radio (3CR) for like five years and the dude Aran who had the timeslot directly after me was just a real sweetheart who helped me solve technical programs and lent me blank cds and gave money to our donation drives and generally made me freak out a lot less

he did one of the tamil shows, Tamil Manifest (there’s a couple — there’s a big Tamil community in melbourne)

in the course of interacting with him for a couple of minutes a month or fortnight over a number of years I put together some basic facts about his life and it was horrifying, he’d been through some unimaginably brutal things, I don’t wanna repeat them here because that’s his story, but it was so so awful and I found it hard to reconcile that with the mild-mannered, helpful dude I saw in front of me

which was stupid, what I was expecting a trauma survivor to look and act like? was I expecting him not to be a cool guy and a good organiser and a good radio presenter? to be a foaming mess? why?

but seriously, the Tamil community in sri lanka has been through messed up, awful, very bad things, and you don’t hear that much about it in Australia, and it’s hard to get refugee status because Australia’s got trade links with Sri Lanka and is reluctant to publicly acknowledge that the government is perpetuating such brutal atrocities, like

Aran gets death threats all the time for doing his show, the station has even come under a lot of pressure from the sri lankan government to stop running it

you can listen to his show (Tamil Manifest) via audio on demand, it goes for half an hour, it’s well worth it

and it’s also worth donating some money to the station so that it keeps running and so Aran can meet his fundraising target for the year — just put a note on your donation saying it’s for Tamil Manifest.

there are a lot a lot a lot of great programs on 3cr but today, in the context of the 56 mostly Tamil asylum seekers in indefinite detention with no charge, I wanna give a shout out to Tamil Manifest

Jun 11 2013

The Everyday Violence In Our Detention Centres | newmatilda.com

Two years ago, when ABC journalist Wendy Carlisle asked the department’s media spokesperson Sandi Logan whether summaries of self harm and hunger strike incidents were released, his blunt reply was “no”. When Detention Logs asked for similar statistics of detention incidents two weeks ago the department once again refused.

Because the department won’t make this information accessible to the public we’ve put it together ourselves. Detention Logs has compiled the most comprehensive dataset ever collected about the lives of men, women and children in Australia’s immigration detention centres.

Detention Logs is an independent site that publishes documents and data about Australian detention centres. The first wave of data is a searchable database of 7632 reported incidents across immigration detention facilities from October 2009 to May 2011. These events range from self-harms, assaults and escapes to electric fence failures, complaints and aborted deportations.

when my mum was growing up in australia in the fifties stockings came in light pinkish beige “nude” but they also came in a dark brown shade called “n_____r”

like

the one is the flip-side of the other, really

May 20 2013

richard-dawkins:

my god

lol the dawkins fortune comes from slavery

(via monetizeyourcat)

Apr 23 2013

“MSG has been used for more than 100 years to season food. During this period, extensive studies were conducted to elucidate the role, benefits and safety of MSG. At this point, International and national bodies for the safety of food additives consider MSG safe for human consumption as a flavor enhancer. The “MSG symptom complex” was originally termed as the “Chinese restaurant syndrome” when anecdotally Robert Ho Man Kwok reported the symptoms he felt after an American-Chinese meal. Kwok suggested multiple reasons behind the symptoms, including alcohol from cooking with wine, the sodium content, or the MSG seasoning. But MSG became the focus and the symptoms have been associated with MSG ever since. The effect of wine or salt content was never studied.” Anyone who hates MSG is a racist and an enemy of savory. Never to be trusted. (via rgr-pop)

(via rgr-pop)

Apr 12 2013

“

All 27 of the strikers in detention at Broadmeadows have been assessed as genuine refugees. That means that the Immigration Department acknowledges that they faced persecution in Sri Lanka. But they can’t be allowed into the community because they have received adverse assessments from ASIO.

What do these assessments say? The refugees don’t know. They are not permitted to see the accusations against them, nor can they appeal. Though they have been charged with no crime, they now face detention without end.

” “Australia’s Guantanamo isn’t offshore: it’s in Melbourne”, Jeff Sparrow

Refugee supporters have started an ongoing vigil at MITA detention centre in Broadmeadows

“ASIO rejected refugees have started a dry hunger strike (no water) they have been detained for 3 to 4 years. Nothing has happened since the high court found it unlawful to detain refugees on ASIO findings. They all have refugee status. Today my dear friend was taken to hospital and a lot of the others are showing signs of weakness and kidney failure. Please show your support. Come down for as long as you like. If your going to stay bring sleeping bag and tents and water, please bring candles, banners, instruments etc. Our demands are clear. Immediate release of all ASIO rejected refugees.”

I am going to try and make it to MITA this weekend. Let me know if you wanna join. x x

Apr 8 2013

RISE says:

Refugees at the MITA detention centre are declaring a hunger strike. Please read below message…

MESSAGE FROM THE ASIO REJECTED REFUGEES:

We are 30 people here at Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (25 Tamils, 2 Burmese and 2 Iranian) and 56 people all over the Australian detention. We have been here for four years and more. We cannot tolerate it any longer. We need to be released to save our
lives.

At 2 a.m. today (Monday, April 8, 2013) we began a hunger strike together. All 30 of us plan to keep doing this until there is solution, one way or the other.

We will gather together in the grounds of the detention centre and stay there until we get a solution. If the Australian Government does not release us, we ask that they kill us mercifully.

We have painted banners as part of our protest. There is one that shows many people hanging. That is what we want to happen to us if we are not released. for life here.

People in here are jumping off rooves, they are going on hunger strikes, they are taking tablets, they are trying to hang themselves……It is a cruel and inhumane environment for everyone.

We plead with you, the Australian people, to help us. We are on the edge of life and don’t know how much longer we can stand it.

We ask Prime Minister Gillard, Immigration Minister O’Connor, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus Opposition leader Abbott and ASIO director David Irvine to stop this torture of all of us……. of
men, women and children, who have done nothing to warrant this cruel treatment that is destroying our minds.

We ask the authorities : You say we are a threat to this nation. So if we are such people why have they now put women and children and families in here with us? We are willing to be released into
the community under strict orders if they think we are threats, which we aren’t. But whatever they want we will do.

But we can’t keep living like this. We are not in detention. We are in a cemetery.

We don’t want to die. We left Sri Lanka, Burmese and Iran because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.

SIGNED.
ALL ASIO REFUGEES-AUSTRALIA.

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre comments: AUSTRALIA is the ONLY country which sees fit to lock up Tamil refugees as a security threat. UK , Europe and Canada have hundreds of thousands of Tamil people living and contributing to their communities.

Here are some of the banners they have painted to communicate with the Australian community as they sit on the Soccer pitch at the MITA in Broadmeadows on hunger strike.

there are actually quite a few countries that regularly reject Tamil asylum seekers (most recently, the UAE) but it’s certainly the case that Australia’s immigration detention regime is incredibly harsh; also that Tamil refugees face extra barriers to security clearance.

Apr 1 2013

rgr-pop:

remember when the Associated Press determined that Ann Arbor was the least segregated city in Michigan because its population was 7% black instead of 50% black or 80% black or 20 % black in a state that’s 15% black

by “segregation is a problem” we know everyone means “oh god there are a lot of black people in detroit” not “ann arbor is a majority white city just outside of the blackest city in the country and has been pretty strongly responsible for uneven distribution of resources in the region for a very long time now”

I think the context around the use of the term “segregation” when referring specifically to Black people in the USA, in a specific city, is really important. Having said that, I think it’s relevant that last year I read a lot of policy from Australia, North America and Europe that was concerned with “segregation” or “ghettoisation” or similar concepts in the urban environment. Without exception, an area was considered segregated and in need of a policy response if it had a large population of people of colour or otherwise ethnically marginalised people; without exception, disproportionately white areas were not considered “segregated”. This was also true of poverty: poor people living together are ghettoised and need to be broken out of that with gentrification, rich people living together is just the way of the world. Discourses of “integration” in urban policy are almost all progressive-sounding ways to talk about large groups of marginalised people as a problem. Basically you’re right and this is a huge issue in other places as well.

there's our catastrophe

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved. ⚑ ♀

The Everyday Violence In Our Detention Centres | newmatilda.com

Refugee supporters have started an ongoing vigil at MITA detention centre in Broadmeadows

work is its own cure. you have to like it better than being loved.

⚑ ♀