Speeches, Services, Conferences, and New Zealand!

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Last Friday was the Troops Out rally in Melbourne. Along with Andrew Wilkie and Kevin Bracken, I gave a speech. The rally was, of course, a lot smaller that the one's at the start of the war. About 1500 compared to 100,000 smaller; the ruling class who benefits from this monstrous bloodshed has learned it's lesson from Vietnam - don't introduce conscription. An interesting aside was Scott Burchill's article in the Australian Financial Review that morning which compared the strategy employed by Hans Morganenthau against the Vietnam war, who concentrated on an aggressive presentation on the criminal and immoral nature of the war, against a relative neophyte to the movement, who was quiet, careful, didn't make moral appeals, and spoke only of the facts. That was 1965. The neophyte was Noam Chomsky.

On Sunday at the Unitarian's Deb Salvagno of East Timor Women Australia gave a presentation on their work. I gave the service. Afterwards, because Deb gave a presentation that was visually intensive, we recorded a radio interview about the work the organisation does. It will be played on 3CR (855am) this Saturday at 10.00am.

For the last two days I've been at the Global Action to Prevent War conference. Speakers included Joseph Camilleri, Professor of International Relations, La Trobe University, Assoc Prof Spence Zifack, La Trobe University, Prof Stuart Rees, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Iris Welders, also of the Centre, and finally Dr. Tilman Ruff and Dimity Hawkins, Medical Association for the Prevention of War. There was a healthy turnout and a good combination of local-community versus international-plenary content. Deep concerns were expressed over the current push in Australia to further develop uranium mining, the refusual of nuclear powers to further reduce their arsenals despite being signatories to the NNPT, and the possibility of reform of the United Nations. I corrected a clown (I'm not joking, she is a clown) who claimed that violent behaviour was due to violent video games.

In about twelve hours time I'll be hopping on the big silver bird and flying to Christchurch for the Australia-New Zealand Unitarian Association. True to their form, the Melbourne Church has motions up supporting a treaty with Australia's indigenous people, opposing uranium mining, and use of depleted uranium in war. Hopefully whilst in NZ I'll be able to catch up with arohanui, aayande, amphigori, amarynth, pftqg, elizabetsy (all Wellington) and pinque in Auckland. Pretty sure I'll see beagl and kimeros ;-) Emails and comments people! Will be in Wellington from the eve of Monday 28th to the morn of Tuesday 31st. After that, Auckland on 1st, and 2nd.

Other events of the week including completing the material for the next SAGE-AU journal, and collecting four bookcases from Ikea and a futon couch-bed. My office now looks like an office! There are no boxes of books on the floor! You can see the floor! I also have an entire bookcase which has nothing but roleplaying games. I'm such a nerd. On a related nerdy topic, I picked up a book on Delphi and have really enjoyed it. They even have a game designers forum! I used to program a lot in Pascal, with pleasure, and am now regretting have let the knowledge slide in favour of more esoteric things like C++ and Perl.

Also on topic, from patchworkkid, Andre Norton has died.. This is a perfect quote from her: Norton said detailed research matters in fiction because today's education is so inadequate that many people must get their history from novels. If an author makes historical detail interesting, a reader might be inspired to research the subject more.. Well, glad to see someone gets it!

More branch stacking in the ALP, quelle surprise, and some people don't like the media attention. Police investigation is coming soon. Meanwhile, it is now evident that the case for the war in Iraq was fixed. When are we going to put these war criminals in the dock?

Also from patchworkkid, the brain breaker for the week. Getting dark? That's global dimming for you.

Comments

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Yes, as I wrote in response to patchworkkid, I feel the same every time I pick up a d20.

It's too easy and too false to "create" a quasi-Tolkien-Conan-feudal swamp. It has no authenticity.

People read fantasy literature and play rpgs because they are fun and they learn from them.

I'll miss Andre. She's part of my late-childhood/adolescence, to be perfectly honest. Rendez-vous on Rama!