Dear Scott,
Although this email wasn't directed to me, and I haven't looked at your
magazine yet, I think you've raised some interesting questions about the
impact of the Olympics on Sydney. Is it true that housing rental prices will
skyrocket and that many locals couldn't get tickets at all, even if they
could afford them?
Maybe, just maybe, the Olympics will put more pressure on Howard to
apologise to Aboriginal communities, depending on how the media handles
things. Or is this hopelessly naive of me?
Best wishes,
Cassie
On Thu, 6 Jul 2000 09:07:36 -0700 (PDT), [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Andrew Burke wrote:
> Let the Games commence ...
>
>
> Hello all, I'm new to this list, I'm a Kiwi poet and
> editor of a little magazine (online at
> http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~mbellard/) and I'm
> unfortunately going to be starting off with a bit of a
> grumble. I'm responding to Andrew Burke's posting on
> the Sydney Olympics...I hope that the games will NOT
> commence. I think it's unfortunate that Andrew does
> not mention the very strong opposition to the event
> emanating from many parts of Australian society (I'm
> getting the vibes from over here, across the ditch).
> The Aboriginal community, especially, is deadset
> against the Olympics, which is not a genuine sporting
> festival but a commercialised farce with an entry fee
> unaffordable to the vast majority of Aussies.
> Aboriginal Australians are bitter about the fact that
> the right-wing Australian government has consistently
> refused to apologise for the genocidal crimes against
> Aboriginals committed by its predecessors. It is also
> worth noting that the Aussie government has, in an
> effort to 'beautify' Sydney for visiting Olympic VIPs,
> ordered the bulldozing of a number of poor
> neighbourhoods - neighbourhoods populated by
> Aboriginals, in the main - in the vicinity of games
> sites. Anyway, things are looking like they will be
> pretty explosive come September in Sydney, and most of
> the action looks like being off the track. Protests
> will be given an extra spur by the fact that, at the
> same time, a group called the World Economic Forum
> will be meeting in Melbourne to make decisions about
> free trade and aid cuts to third world countries. For
> months now groups have been planning activities
> designed to make this meeting into the 'Seattle of the
> South Pacific.' Last year a big meeting of leaders -
> APEC - took place in my hometown, Auckland. The
> group(let) of poets centred around my little magazine,
> Salt, tried to orient its activities around the dozens
> of protests which were taking place against the APEC
> gathering. We published anti-APEC poems (no, they were
> not horrible Brecthian propaganda pieces!) and
> information on our website, for instance, and
> leafletted for demos. The question I want to raise
> here is: should Andrew Burke's zine and the poets
> around it be doing the same sort of thing, instead of
> getting caught up in the media-inspired hoopla
> surrounding the Sydney games? Obviously giving an
> answer to this question will entail giving an answer
> to a whole host of curly questions about the
> relationship between poetry and political and social
> issues. I think that these are important questions,
> which is why I have made this post, which will
> hopefully not be viewed as entirely grumpy in tone :)
>
> Cheers
> Scott Hamilton
>
>
>
>
> X-Apparently-To: [log in to unmask] via
> web803.mail.yahoo.com
> X-Track: 6: 40
> Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 18:16:58 +0800
> Subject: SNAKESKIN Announcement
> From: Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> X-Unsub: To leave, send text 'leave poetryetc' to
> [log in to unmask]
> Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
> Sender: [log in to unmask]
>
> To All -
>
> Speaking of sport, due to the upcoming Olympics in
> Sydney, SNAKESKIN has
> gone far afield and called Andrew Burke off the bench
> to edit a Special
> Inside Sports edition for September.
>
> Please submit previously unpublished, original poems
> on aspects of ANY
> sports to "George Simmers" <[log in to unmask]> by
> August 20th. They do
> not have to relate to the Olympics in anyway - We're
> just using that as an
> excuse to go sporty!
>
> Even though I am editing it, please send all material
> through George
> Simmers as he is controlling it.
>
> Let the Games commence ...
>
> Andrew
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Andrew Burke Copywriting
> [log in to unmask] Creative Writing
> http://www.bam.com.au/andrew/ Editing
> ----------------------------------------
>
>
>
> =====
> "Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the
moon? And how
> could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that
perhaps I have
> been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it,
nothing be
> explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in my life...
Philosophical
> problems occur when language goes on holiday. We must not separate ideas
from life,
> we must not be misled by the appearances of sentences: we must
investigate the
> application of words in individual language-games" - Ludwig
Wittgenstein
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://im.yahoo.com/
_______________________________________________________
Say Bye to Slow Internet!
http://www.home.com/xinbox/signup.html
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|