ANZAC comments, Censorship of Fan-Fic, Lots of Gaming, East Timor Presentation

[tcpip]

Let's see, roadworks over digger's graves, being told to go away by Australian veterans from East Timor for taking their oil, snubbing the NZ ceremonies and now trying to tie the ANZAC spirit with an invasion? Proud of that Mr. Howard? How low can he stoop? Well, he claims that the invasion of Iraq is part of the ANZAC spirit. We really have a scumbag for a leader in this country.

At least Michael Leuning remembers why we should have ANZAC memorial services - and the reason that I don't attend the state-sanctioned ANZAC celebration ceremonies. Apart from the fact that the ruling powers twice tried to force people to kill and be killed. That's the real message behind ANZAC, that what we should remember, not what we should celebrate.

Oh, and here's something very special. Just released so that we really can see what Gallipoli was like. Remember the computer game Lemmings? Well here's the ANZAC cove version. Just released;

Gallipoli: The Game is a stunning recreation of Australia's greatest military adventure. As a commander in the Great War (WWI), you take on the role of leading the prime of Australia's armed forces as they launch an all-out assault on the Central Powers (the Germans, Austrians and the Ottomans). Gameplay is similar to the hit PC game, Lemmings, except, instead of trying to save your soldiers, your mission, as an authentic WWI commander, is to wipe out as many diggers as possible ... the more gruesome the better!

Get it from here; Gallipoli - (sorry people, it's just for *nix users).

greylock (locked, friends-only) and bar_bar_rella (see this post) have been engaging in a debate over the legal mores of fan-fiction which may, depending on your point of view, be of questionable taste - specifically slash fan-fiction involving Harry Potter characters. As an example of good timing and good reasoning, strangedave makes this related post on how free speech advocates should react.

Last weekend was gaming heaven for me. Finished off Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter which, despite mostly lacking in story, does have a good ending. Later, managed to play and old classic - Battletech!. Ahh, those giant killer robots. They are so silly. But a game which is like chess with dice inevitably attracts. Later played another session of caseopaya's solo campaign of Call of Cthulhu/Nephilm which involves a murder mystery (what else?) in an isolated Victorian town and finally, completed Scene Eight of the Ten Thousand Islands game. Oh, I should mention apart from the aforementioned Gallipoli, I've also downloaded and compiled FreeCiv2 and Pingus (required for Gallipoli) and given them some testing.

Somewhere among all that I managed to see Joan Coxsedge at the Unitarians speaking on the role of clandestine organisations in foreign affairs. The former radical MP is a great speaker, but unfortunately I felt that the message was hidden too far in the rhetoric. Also managed to squeeze in a lunch meeting with West Australian MLC Louise Pratt, in her role as organiser for Labor for Refugees (WA). I used to do student politics with in the late 80s and hadn't seen her since those times.

Service this week at the Unitarians is very important:

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MAY DAY SERVICE
Melbourne historian Clinton Fernandes will be speaking at the Melbourne Unitarian Church (110 Grey Street, East Melbourne) at 11 am on "Reluctant Saviour: Australia, Indonesia and the Independence of East Timor"

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Seeming that there's probably noone on the planet who knows this topic better than Clinton, if you're ever going to attend a Unitarian service, this is the one to go to.

Pet-excitement of the week. In a moment of territorial grumpiness achievable only by old rats that prefer to be left alone, especially in the company of young, bouncy versions of the same species, Monte bit off Rogue's toe on his fore-paw! Little Rogue, toeless but wiser, has fully recovered.

Both John Brumby and Robert Clark are pandering to populist nonsense on land tax. It annoys me greatly to see politicians ignoring the sensible advice by leading economists that we need more land tax, not less. Something positive; Spain legalises gay marriage. Something negative. Didn't we "liberate" Afghanistan to prevent this? Woman stoned to death for adultery.

Something stupid. Brain-breaker of the week is from catbiscuit and splodgenoodles - ummm, that's why it's called "disability pension".

Comments

[cvisors.livejournal.com]

I liked the Michael Leuning, commentary. I always found that the services that I went to with my grandmother in the uk for armisticeday (november 11th) were not the glorification of war but the remembrance of those who fell, and not for the politics, though it has been a very long time since I went to one of these (23 years probably) and I remember them through the eyes of a child.

Who knows how they have been perverted since.

-B

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Did you see Macfarlane's latest speech on East Timor?

It's probably nothing you haven't heard before, but it boils down to:
1. Ian Melrose is a dirty rotten lying bastard
2. We've been turning a blind eye to East Timor stealing money from us!

I remain uncommitted to either camp, but the way the Government is handling the issue is appalling.

Not that the Timorese are aquitting themselves with honour either.

[curufea.livejournal.com]

Howard has actually compared the ANZACs to the Iraq "wars"? Is he a complete bastard?

[evil-genius.livejournal.com]

Battletech.... <3

I think I have played every video game that board game has spawned.
The cresent hawks revenge
mechwarrior(the EGA verion)
mechwarrior 2
mechwarrior 3

Are there any others?

[darkstardeity.livejournal.com]

Regarding the sole parent and disability pension "reforms", I remember the last time the "let's get these lazy single mums back to work" political rally-cry was raised (about 5-6 years ago), there was an article with Centrelink's own aggregate statistics which showed that the majority of sole parents were on the pension for 6-12 months (less, it was noted, than the average time spent on the dole), which basically corresponded to the first 6-12 months following a relationship breakdown. *

According to that article, these "reforms" would be totally unnecessary as sole parent pensioners tend to move into paid work of their own accord fairly quickly.

So either this ... a high proportion of sole parents switched to unemployment benefits, rather than work, once their parenting payment ended is totally untrue, a stretching of the facts (what do they consider a "high proportion" - 70%, 50%, 10%?) or the profile of the average sole parent pensioner has changed dramatically in that time.

It is possible that the profile has changed because of a number of factors, the main one being the lack of availability of affordable childcare - already critical 5 years ago, now terminal (in the sense that it is actually preventing parents, sole or otherwise, from moving into the workforce when they wish to) - which this government has determinedly ignored**, and the policies pursued by this government to promote the stay-at-home mother as the model for Australian families, to the detriment of working mothers and all other family models in the community.

The upshot of this is that this political hand-waving exercise is either unecessary, or doomed to failure in any meanigful way in the same way that WFTD is a failure. It will cause unecessary stress to individuals at already highly-stressful times in their lives, for no gain. It is a cynical exercise in punishing the poor and vulnerable for being poor and vulnerable.



* As an aside, the article above also showed that most sole parents were in their thirties, the vast majority (90-something percent) were single because of the breakdown of a long-term relationship, and the majority of those had been actual marriages rather than de-facto, scuppering the myths of the teenage mum, the woman-who-can't-keep-her-legs-shut and that de-facto relationships were more likely to breakup than marriages.

** And I'm not holding my breath for the government's promised reforms to childcare regulations to increase availability either.