Political Consciousness and Geography, We Are One Day, Ten Thousand Islands, Red Friday, and The Bla

[tcpip]

orethule's gathering went well last Thursday. Main concerns raised was the loss of community in the outer suburbs meaning that individual households are highly suspectible to the influences of mass propaganda and mass media. I raised the somewhat leftfield suggestion that land taxes (primarily a state government responsibility) would significantly help reduce this. Simply put, I suggest that urban geography has a great deal to do with mass political consciousness and that outer suburbia is intrinsically orientated towards the self-interested lower-middle class. Just the people I loathe the most.

Sunday was an very impressive turnout at the Unitarians for Elizabeth Young, a highly compassionate and idealistic youngster who has formed the international organization We Are One Day (yes, I have offered to fix the website). Elizabeth emphasized the need for unity among all peoples (even those we dislike) and the use of reason to stop people engaging in pathological acts. She's on a collision course with power and money, methinks. But still, the idealism of youth was a pleasure to behold. The presentation was joined with work from the Pheonix Choir who had a Macedonian Xmas Carol, a Congolese capella homily about Johnah, a Georgian style hymn of the Beatles' "Yesterday", an Arabic hymn of peace and a some US Gospel-style performance.

I have started a new roleplaying play by email roleplaying campaign, entitled Ten Thousand Islands. It was inspired from my experiences in East Timor and travels through the Malay archipelago. As a fairly open campaign, people are free to join up pretty much at any time now that I have the requisite number of initial players. I have drafted a fairly complete overview of the "world". It is also intended that this provide the foundation for a new roleplaying system. About time I actually wrote my own, methinks. I've been talking about it for years.

It must have been a week for starting things. I also started distribution of a little e-zine entitled "Red Friday" (in response to the more maudlin Blue Monday") with news and opinion in the information and communication technology. It has been generally well received and I do have this utopian idea of turning into a serious webmagazine. After all, I can write (if little else). All I need to do is find more ICT writers.

Congratulations are due to strangedave to his election to the board of Electronic Frontiers Australia. Dave did so in response to the election of Family First and their plans to levy Internet users to pay for a ring of firewalls (like Saudia Arabia) to keep pictures of naked people out of God-fearing Australia. Onya Dave. And I joined EFA simply because of his planned nomination (apart from the fact I probably agree with everything they say).

This week also saw the visitation of a certain little black dog. He drops by every several months and I usually dispense of him quite easily. This time he was rather tenancious, probably caused by reciting state-by-state election figures to me and mocking my average performance at the Excom interview. It's can a difficult thing when the country which you voluntarily adopted citizenship turns out to have little civic consciousness. It is personally disappointing when you make mistakes on matters that you know about.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Most of the time it's relatively easy to dispense with the black dog because it's barking about personal issues and I can usually simply scold it for not looking at the bigger picture.

At least in part, this recent visit is about a bigger picture :/

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

At least in part, this recent visit is about a bigger picture :/

And for the moment there isn't that much that we can do about it - I think that's what makes it worse.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well that's not quite true. We must remember that the government went against its own interests with regards to intervention in Timor. And also we do have coast-to-coast state Labor governments. If only they had the courage to implement land taxes we could kill souless and environmentally damaging cancer that is the outer suburbs.

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

And also we do have coast-to-coast state Labor governments. If only they had the courage to implement land taxes we could kill souless and environmentally damaging cancer that is the outer suburbs.

True - I hadn't really thought of that. Here is hoping that the state governments actually pull together for a change and stop the coalition from totally destroying the country.

One thing that might stop them - and correct me if I am wrong here (you know my knowledge isn't that great in things political) - is the fact that they lost a lot of the state revenue raisers with the introduction of the GST and have thus become more reliant on the handouts of the federal government, who in turn has been giving out less and less, in part (my opinion) because the state governments are Labor governments. But I guess this is where the land taxes could help if they had the guts to introduce them

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure of the net figures of revenues previously raised by state governments versus receipts achieved through the GST. In fact, I was completely oblivious that they had lost any revenue sources.

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

I was completely oblivious that they had lost any revenue sources

Unfortunately I can't recall the exact details, but they did loose some sources of revenue. I think it was something to do with stamp duties and some other state based taxes....