Do You Speak My Culture?

To put it simply, Tony Abbott put his foot in it. After all the speculation surrounding the Tent Embassy, I think we can come to the conclusion that there is still a serious sense of miscommunication between white Australia, and indigenous Australia. The first example of this miscommunication was Tony Abbott’s comment “we need to move on from the Tent Embassy,” which was interpreted by the Aboriginal and TI community in the area as being entirely literal. Then Tony Abbott suggests that perhaps the need for Tent Embassy is outdated. Whether or not Abbott actually meant that he believed Australia had reached its goals in terms of ‘bridging the gap’ is still somewhat under speculation. However, he didn’t make an attempt to clarify his comments in a way that was directly aimed at the Aboriginal and TI community. He could have firstly explained that by moving on, he didn’t mean that the group at the Tent Embassy should be moved out of the area as many members of the Aboriginal and TI community are often used to hearing. Nor did he make much of an effort to properly explain why he thought that the Tent Embassy was no longer relevant to modern Australian society.

I think this is a perfect example of the gross miscommunication that occurs constantly between the government and the indigenous peoples of this country. White people, or I should probably more accurately say, European people, throughout history have always that mentality that the best to create equality between themselves and indigenous people’s of any given colonized country is by imposing their way of life upon them and expecting them to follow in line just because they where given the same amount of food stamps. However, I don’t see this as true, and rightful equality, because in a political sense, it can be argued that all equal things must share the same value. With the constant ‘nanny-stating’ that has been happening in this country lately, has the government stopped to ask what the indigenous people value most? It seems as though what the western democratic world wants is what everyone else wants too. Am I the only one that thinks it’s time the government learns to jump off it’s elitist ‘working class Australian’ horse, and starts learning to communicate better? Or even more importantly starts learning to care more about the wants, needs, values, and culture that Indigenous Australians have struggled to preserve.

Women Are From Earth....And So Are Men

Something that has been plaguing me a lot lately is the great women and men divide – I’m from Venus, and he’s from Mars and all that. I have spent a lot more time lately attempting to understand the workings of the male mind. After spending so much time digging through the mess of my analytical brain, and attempting to truly figure out what makes the male mind tick, I think I can come to one conclusion. Ladies, pay attention to this one because it may come useful for the future. Men are human beings. Shocker! I know. They are insecure, they’re dumb, smart, emotional, fragile and everything that you have ever been. I can’t help but think sometimes that women love to put men into a different singular category, because it helps them to deal with the fact that they are afraid of being vulnerable. For example, if “all men” do something then it wasn’t a human being with thoughts, feeling and emotions that just completely writed you off, it was “all men.” So to women everywhere, wake up to yourself, stop using this stupid categorizing system and get on with it!

SIDENOTE: I apologize for the content of this blog, I am aware that, bar a few terrible puns, I may as well be Sarah Jessica Parker right now – this was just something I had to get off my chest.

SOPA Who?

So, the past few weeks when it comes to the proposed SOPA and PIPA laws in the US have completely taken off. I couldn’t believe when I first heard that a new law was going to effect online pirates, and any website that is consorting with online pirates. Now, with the risk of sounding like a typical, naïve, ‘me me me’ Gen Yer, what does anyone use the Internet for more than social media, and other forms of user generated websites such as Youtube? Sites such as Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook are hugely dominated by copyrighted materials. I understand that online piracy is a serious problem and steals billions of dollars from content creators, but the proposed legislation aimed to shut down any site that had just about ANYTHING to do with online piracy. Perhaps, I’m overreacting here, but, to me, that, that seems the equivalent of shutting down an entire office building just because one guy was stealing staplers.

Of course, by now, we have all come to the realization that the Internet isn’t the Utopian global community many predicted it would be. Us humans have managed to find a way to economize nearly everything on the net, and fill nearly every user-generated site with references to our own shit - literally! However, sites such as Youtube, and Twitter have played an important role in furthering democracy and re-installing it. I was personally disgusted that the United States of America – “land of the free” hand on my heart, ‘God bless our cunntry!’ and all that would be willing to jeopardize the status of these sites just to catch a few nine-year-old kids uploading Robot Wars on the weekend. I’ve done a Journalism degree, so I’ve had this sort of thing drilled into me, but I think it is very important for everyone to remember that freedom of information should not be seen as a privilege it should be seen as a right. Censorship jeopardizes our rights, and especially, in America where this is a foundational part of the constitution. The US government has dropped the proposed legislation for now, but I don’t see this going away just like that. Believers in a free and open Internet should continue to fight for our right to freedom of information.

The Black March against Internet censorship will take place between the 1^st and 31^st of March. Hit media companies were it hurts and refrain from buying any products or seeing movies etc. legally or illegally. Help send the message that the world’s biggest corporations cannot jeopardize our liberty.

Thatcher: The Iron Lady

Well, the holidays for me currently have been predominantly filled with attempting to restore my fried brain after what felt like a never-ending marathon of uni work last year. This of course means doing things like going to the cinema, and spending a lot of time relaxing near beaches attempting to use as little willpower as possible. One of the most recent films I watched was the Iron Lady. I thought this might be a good film to watch for several reasons – it’s British (I’m an anglophile), it has Meryl Streep, and politics is fun. Margaret Thatcher simply as a leader, and a politician has also always fascinated me. One of the, I believe, more controversial points of the film was the fact that the filmmakers portrayed Margaret Thatcher, in her later days, as (putting it simply) losing her mind. She is slowly succumbing to dementia in the film. I wondered what the point might be of portraying her in this way. She is certainly humanized, there is no doubt about that.

However, I found that I still couldn’t let go of the fact that, in reality, I know Margaret Thatcher to be an awful public figure. She enforced and stood for some of the most disgraceful legislation and human rights violations in Britain to date. Yet, she was a feminist. In the film, we are not encouraged to take a good hard look at her political life, but we are encouraged to see her taking a good hard look at it. In other words, no matter what atrocities she has committed she was a woman with a conscience. Many of us would like to draw a black and white veil over political life, but anyone that has spent the least amount of time following any forms of national or international politics would know that this impossible. I believe that film would have us believe that Margaret Thatcher was a product of this. She is not a black and white public figure, nor is she a black and white human being. No liberal British person today would tell you that Thatcher was correct in her actions, but she was an interesting person, and I think that it always pays to attempt to understand what is behind the veil of public life.