Sunday, 22 August 2021

The Tampa affair, 20 years on: the ship that capsized Australia’s refugee policy

AND

Friday, 20 August 2021

Thoughts & Prayers

Thursday, 19 August 2021

The Voice of Cassandra - Bill Laswell Mixtape #6

Tracklist : 
Material - Mantra 
Iggy Pop & Bootsy Collins - Purple Haze 
Buddy Miles Express - All Along The Watchtower 
Arcana - Returning 
NIN - Vessel (mix 2) 
Ozzy Osbourne - I Don't Wanna Stop 
Afrika Bambaataa & Family - Kick Out The Jams 
Hasil Adkins - I Just Got Back From Mars 
Hector Zazou - I'll Strangle You 
Material - Words of Advice 
Jah Wobble & Bill Laswell - Virus B 
Ginger Baker - Mektoub 
Fanu + Bill Laswell - Bloodline

Primal Scream - Shine Like Stars (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Master Blaster: Kevin Richard Martin's Baker's Dozen

Cat Holes. That is the ?

BUY

HA!

Basinski Truth

Job Diversification (2021)

Thanks Stan/Lee

Spencer Ackerman's 'Reign of Terror HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP'

McChrystal: ‘Impossible to Argue’ War on Terror Was Worth It

'The Scariest Thing I've Ever Seen In My Life': How The 'Ground Zero Mosque' Meltdown Set The Table For Trump

The White Christian Nationalism Behind the Worst Terrorist Attack in American History

What a stolen motorcycle reveals about America’s failed strategy in Afghanistan



I've been reading The Attackerman  at least since the days of Danger Room at Wired as that is where his byline was a go to for me to read. I'm sure I had read his work before as he was covering beats that I had an interest in but slowly (actually it wasn't THAT slow) and surely I came to regard him as one of the most authoritive journalists writing about American Foreign Policy post 9/11. 

Hardcore? Yes! Spin? No! (Check his Rumsfield Obit)
I followed him over to The Daily Beast after his stint at The Guardian. Now Spencer has a substack and tho at the moment I am on the free list I think it may be time to end my Beast subscription and move it over to Forever Wars.  
Anyway I hope at this very moment my copy of his book is winging its way across the world to me here in Melbourne. I may just be an old disability pensioner with all the poverty that that entails but I tell you my mind is far the richer for reading Spencer over the years.

Five Decades After Evacuating The Embassy In Saigon The CH-46 Phrog Did It Again In Kabul

Be like Nick Cave

Via

Bec Taylor & the Lyrebirds - 'Adrift' (Album Lockdown Launch 21/8/21 UTC + 10)

Facebook Events Page 
Bec is my daughter-in-law (well with the COVID lockdowns the actual wedding still hasn't taken place but...) and is going to make me a very proud Grandad in November and oh yeah is a really good musician too. The first time that we met was in Melbourne when Bec was drumming with Glitoris and  Grandma-to-be and myself popped along to the Bendigo and had a great night...but now it's time for her debut album release with The Lyrebirds  
All I will say is that my son is a lucky man tho despite repeated attempts by his (very talented) multi instrumentalist partner to teach him even rudimentary uke stuff...just, just nah! 
Seems he has found his calling making guitar racks etc. tho
I hope their child has her mothers' genetics when it comes to playing music
Poster 2

Posters 1



I hadn’t done any scribbling for a couple of weeks. So last night I made these. 
One poster is from the This Is Your Brain On Eggs/Nancy Reagan school of drug education and the other is from the Just Say Know side. 
I still think a lot of the drug education whatevers would go with the first idea. That one came about when I started noticing these two designs (not any others) dumped here and there over the last few months. 
The second design is actually what I came up with when I did my Cert IV in Alcohol & Other Drugs oh at least fifteen years ago in the day when HepC treatment was NO fun. Trust me I remember and I was lucky to only have to do the Interferon course for six months. 
I had to get my first computer for going to TAFE which was a gawdsend in the end. However there was quite a few steep learning curves and frantic phone calls to my eldest kids back then I'm sure. Anyway there was not a hope in hell of me turning in a poster using photoshop I can assure you. (I still can't use it) So I handed in a sketch of that second design. Lettering would have been done using a lightbox and probably an old Letraset catalogue. I knew the copy was good and I was quite pleased with my HEPCats thang. 
Funnily enough tho I knew that I would lose marks for the amateur hour work handed in I didn't expect the lecturer to fawn over the winning work. 
That was a film (a very well made film) of shots of trains coming into Frankston Stn and trains leaving Frankston Stn...nice blending of scenes, a bit of slo-mo whatever and then the message (as this was a drug course) KEEP ON THE RIGHT TRACKS! 
I mean seriously WTF? 
He was marked on how well the film was made but this wasn't a fugn film course and that message? 
Strangely enough at the completion of that wee qualification I was actually offered a job at Frankston TAFE lecturing in the AOD Dept. 
Sadly my inability to speak in public put paid to that...
Well see my design #1 above