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At 7:55 PM +1100 19/12/2001, Chris Jones wrote: >A supervisor (for my research degree) hung out a banner saying: >refugees welcomed here; over a highway bridge and that was considered >by others to be a brave act! Oh, how I cringe with shame to think >this would be considered a brave act! Yes. And right with you there also on the opportunistic use of affect. And our culture is wholly complicit in its pusillaminity. I noticed Mncouchkin cancelled her plans to tour here, though she later renegotiated them, as a protest against the way we treat refugees. (Has she cancelled again, after the recent riots?) And last night in conversation I tried to imagine all of Australian theatre going on strike: no more theatre, no more entertainment, no more opera, ballet, until these things are addressed. It was strikingly difficult to imagine such an action being possible. Which is why, if by some miracle it was, it would make absolutely difference. If you get the curls in my argument. And of course these things are connected to what is happening elsewhere, though discussion tends to elide this (part of the effect, I suppose, of having The World on Page 9 in a special section in the morning papers). The only re-action really admitted is that because of September 11 we have John Howard for another term. A line of Dransfield's keeps popping into my head - ' in the cold, in the cold cold cold / in the cold of something as pitiless as apathy ' ... ( forgive misquotation) As a ps, there's a nw Quarterly Essay out, this one a rant by Don Watson against the colonisation of Australia by the US. As the US govt says of Osama bin Laden, Americans are "mad". (He wrote this down). Together with the last, a mediocre rant against Howard by Guy Rundle, I feel the usual creeping disappointment of an opportunity lost. Just reflecting the right ideas is considered to be enough protest: it's not as if you have to construct cogent arguments, or analyse (the essay is supposed to be the space for a 20,000 word piece by intellectuals on contemporary politics, problem is, it's our "intellectuals") And for me anyway these lazinesses not only insult my intelligence, they betray the fine tradition of critique and dissent, and neutralise it as effectively as any propoganda. -- Alison Croggon Home page http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/