Oh Lauren Berlant, you dreamy dream woman. On Sex & the City The Movie:
“It’s a good thing that they have each other … as they are incapable of talking about sex with their lovers. If any of these women had ever even walked by feminism on the sidewalk they would have learned that one of the points of sexual liberation was to put your mouth where your mouth is. Sex talk was to be part of sex, part of sex pedagogy, part of allowing fantasy and desire to produce creativity and improvisation in the now of the event. Sexual liberation culture gave skills and permission for not just resorting to reenacting the default expectation out of fear that sex talk would make sex disappear.(…). These women are so frightened of what’s uncontrollable and uncomfortable about sex that, rather than to talk well about it to lovers, they prefer to laugh and complain to each other about it.” (more…)
“A national framework for child protection is necessary, we can do better and must do better for the protection of our little children.” - Kevin Rudd.
Having worked with the child protection system I am much less excited about this comment than I should be were I to take the above comment at face value. A national framework has been advocated for years as a very basic policy intervention, and always seems to end up being hijacked for other violently paternalistic ends (if it’s not how such Interventions start off in the first place).
“Little children” really are the ultimate signifier into which to empty out all sorts of misdirected rubbish.
“Censorship and censorial debate are denials of our right and our capacity to explore and change our alienated and/or colonised selves and the discourse which continues to mystify our conditions.”
- Marica Langton, Well I Heard it on the Radio, and I Saw it on the Television …., 1989: 57.
1519: map of Brazil issued by Portuguese explorers.
30 May 2008: “Members of an unknown Amazon Basin tribe and their dwellings are seen during a flight over the Brazilian state of Acre along the border with Peru.” (Sydney Morning Herald).*
* (29 May 2008: “Funai fotografa índios isolados na fronteira do Brasil com o Peru” (National Indigenous Peoples Foundation, the government agency for “protection and education of indigenous peoples”).)
Is this for real? I’m sure I’ve got a drunkenly written film script sitting around somewhere that involves Mal Brough being presented, via Keith Windschuttle, with a medal from a society of the same name.
I couldn’t have scripted for this, though, so it must be true. See you all outside COAG next month.
I received the email below today which is funny for all sorts of reasons, not least that I had intended to go here today to protest the Mexican Government’s recent attacks on Zapatista territory; this also being the day that these protests were held.
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:49:52 -0600
From: Australian_Embassy_Mexico_City@dfat.gov.au
To: Undisclosed Recipients
Reply-to: embaustmex@yahoo.com.mx
Subject: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION - 24 NOVEMBER 2007 [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED] (more…)
Images on the front cover of Managing the Border: Immigration Compliance, DIMIA 2004-5:
1. Part of Harvey’s Isles, Queensland, 1802
2. Cape Jervis looking from Kangaroo Island, South Australia, 1802
3. Entrance of Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, 1802
4. North side of Cape Bowen, Queensland, 1802
5. Cape Schanck, Victoria, 1802
“William Westall was born in Hertford, England on 20 October 1781. In 1801 he was chosen by Sir Joseph Banks as the artist aboard Matthew Flinders’ Investigator expedition to explore the coastline of New Holland. His works chart the progress of Flinders’ circumnavigation of Australia from King George’s Sound in Western Australia, across the Great Australian Bight and on to Port Jackson and the Gulf of Carpentaria. He is best remembered as the first professional artist to depict the Australian landscape as well as Aboriginal Art. His works, 160 of which are held by the National Library of Australia, are considered of a very high standard. William Westall died in 1850, aged 68, while working on a painting of his shipwreck experience on the Porpoise.”
This man is the architect of the Intervention.
It just writes itself sometimes.