probably not interesting

MOVING ON OVER!

2007-03-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

from now onwards, my blog can be found at

http://probablynotinteresting.wordpress.com/

why have i moved??

it's prettier, and more user-friendly. that's good enough for me!

i hope you will keep reading :)

Electric shock therapy, anyone...?

2007-03-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

DIAC CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Authorising Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for mentally ill detainees.

Long term detainees in psychiatric hospitals whose mental state continues to deteriorate in detention are now being threatened with Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The treatment involves passing an electric current across part of the head, causing the brain to have a seizure (convulsion).

http://www.virtualpsychcentre.com/news.asp?artid=9017

ABSTRACT

“In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals' ability to function.
This study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings," the study notes.”

The most important side-effect of ECT is its effect on memory. During the course of ECT most patients will experience forgetfulness and loss of short-term memory especially around the time of treatment. Many people will also notice that they can't remember certain things that have occurred in their lives for up to 6 or 12 months before treatment. This type of memory loss does not always return fully. People contemplating ECT should discuss potential memory effects with their doctor before proceeding.

“Asylum Seekers in their interrogation by Immigration Department (DIAC) officers are expected to remember every detail of their lives and the reasons why they fled their country. In order to validate their stories, they are expected to be able details such as how many people were in the room in which they were tortured, all physical details of the room, times, dates of events etc.” says Pamela Curr of the ASRC “If their memories have been obliterated by ECT, how can they validate their stories, how can they make DIAC and the Refugee Tribunal believe them if they can’t remember what happened.”
“DIAC’s role in authorising treatment which diminishes the capacity of an asylum seeker to make a claim for asylum is a direct conflict of interest.”

Patient 1 in Toowong Hospital was recommended for ECT until DIAC stopped it after advocates expressed their concern and dismay in November 2006. He is still in hospital awaiting a decision. His treating psychiatrist has stated that he is too sick to travel.

Patient 2. The Minister has refused his visa however DIAC have decided not to tell him because he is suicidal. He remains in hospital under close observation.

Patient 3. This man has had 6 ECT treatments and now cannot remember if he has a 417 before the Minister or at what stage his process is. He now has confusion and memory loss. Before detention he was a highly qualified IT technician.

Patient 4. This woman collapsed into unconsciousness in Port Augusta Housing because no one had noticed that she was so depressed that she had neither eaten nor drunk anything for ten days. She is currently threatened with ECT.

"These patients who were well, stable individuals until they were placed in long term detention centres are now terribly depressed. Psychiatrists have written reports indicating that recovery is not possible while their futures are insecure. They have also advised that these patients are not fit to travel. Rather than release them from detention, DIAC are choosing ECT. DIAC are approving a course of treatment which places at risk the mental faculties of people whose very survival depends on their capacity to remember and convince bureaucrats by the acuity of this faculty. They are killing their chances of being believed,” Curr continues.
_______________________________________________

The Rot is Spreading...

2007-03-02T07:16:00.000-08:00

Hi there,

Well, one of my colleagues from Dublin has moved to Germany in the second semester of the Masters, and he has been asked to write an essay on refugee policy in Australia. Naturally, he called in support from his good friend Jessie! Anyway, I gave him a lot of documents and things to read, and he wrote me an email in an attempt to clarify some questions. He said "i'm sorry if these sound like stupid questions but I'm confused", and then hit me with the following very good questions...

----
Outsourced Detention Centres:
According to the Migration Amendment Bill (2006), the Australian government will use outsourced detention centres on Christmas Island, Manus Island, and Nauru.
1) Manus Island and Nauru are not signatories to either the Refugees convention nor the protocol on the status of refugees, therefore they are not obliged by conventional law to follow international standards for the treatment of refugees. However, according to the UNHCR, "States not signatories to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol do not have treaty obligations but still have obligations under international law regarding the treatment of refugees" ( http://www.unhcr.org.uk/info/briefings/basic_facts/obligations.html). What governs this "other" international law? What is it? And are Nauru and the Manus Islands still obliged to follow it?
2) During the Tampa Affair, the Tampa was barred from entering the waters of the Australian protectorate of Christmas Island; according to conventional law, doing so would oblige Australia to provide refugee status to the stranded boatpeople. And yet, now the Australian government wants to use Christmas Island as a detention centre. How is this possible? How will it not oblige the Australian government to provide protective visas and status?

General Malaise:
Help me out here. It seems that the Australian government has violated the following legally binding documents:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Article 14.1 "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
Convention on the Status of Refugees (28 July 1951), ratified by Australia on 22 Jan, 1954. Various violations including non refoulment, persecution, etc.
The Australian "Migration Act" of 1958. Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006, Australian refugee policy was in violation of its own laws, including: Section 4 – "Minors shall be detained only as a last resort" – and section 36 – "a non citizen in Australia to whom the Minister is satisfied Australia has protection obligations under the Refugees Convention as amended by the Refugees Protocol"
Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (4 October 1967), ratified by Australia on 13 Dec, 1973. See above stanza.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ('ICCPR') (1966), ratified by Australia on 13 Nov, 1980. Article 9 expressly forbids "arbitrary detention," which Australia started doing in 1992
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (2 Sep 1990), ratified by Australia on 17 Dec, 1990. Article 37 expressly forbids detention of children in all cases but as a last resort, which in the case of Australian detention centres it is not.

What am I missing?

----

An interesting email, full of good questions, I'm sure you'll agree! If you're interested, I'll post the answers in the comment section.

As you can see, Australia's behaviour is beginning to gain the negative attention of the international community.

I also wanted to point out this article in The Age today, which speaks volumes into the above questions....

----

Sri Lankans look set to be moved to Nauru

A GROUP of Sri Lankan asylum seekers looks set to be processed on the Pacific Island of Nauru after Indonesia said it would simply return them to their homeland if it were asked to deal with the 83 men.

The Howard Government was told from the start the Sri Lankans would be immediately repatriated and prevented from making asylum claims if they were transferred to Indonesia, senior Indonesian officials have stated.

Contradicting claims by Australian ministers that they were waiting to find out if Jakarta would allow the asylum seekers to make claims through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Indonesia Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra Percaya said Canberra knew this was never an option.

Asked why Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was yesterday still claiming he is awaiting Indonesia's decision, Mr Percaya said: "I would suggest you ask Mr Downer himself."

Mr Downer said yesterday the Government had not made a final decision on where to send the refugees if Indonesia formally refused, but Nauru was most likely.

"If they decide that they don't want the processing to take place in Indonesia then obviously one of the options for us is to have them processed in Nauru," Mr Downer said in Adelaide.

"These people will be processed according to law and according to Australia's obligations under the refugee convention," he said.

Mr Downer has repeatedly said Australia would not transfer the Sri Lankans to Indonesia if they could not claim asylum there. The men were intercepted off Christmas Island last week after sailing from Indonesia.

Last Friday, Australian officials proposed the plan to quickly send the 83 Sri Lankans home, via Indonesia, to avoid asylum claims — as Indonesia is not a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention.

Indonesia and Sri Lanka agreed to the proposal. Sri Lankan ambassador to Indonesia, Janaka Perera, confirmed Australian officials had provided details of the plans for quick repatriation.

Mr Percaya yesterday said Canberra knew then that Indonesia would not allow the Sri Lankans to have access to UNHCR procedures. "Between Canberra and Jakarta contact has been established right from the time the incident happened," he said. "We expressed our position, we made it very clear."

"We made it clear we are ready to receive them back in Indonesia with the understanding that they are going to be sent back to their country of origin and secondly we are not ready for international organisations to be involved."

As Indonesia was not a party to the refugee convention "we don't have any obligation under this convention to process them in Indonesia", Mr Percaya said.

At the meeting in Jakarta last Friday, Australian officials said Indonesia could justify returning the asylum seekers to Sri Lanka as they had arrived in Indonesia illegally. They also said the Sri Lankans should be returned as quickly as possible to prevent them lodging asylum claims.

When Canberra's plan was revealed in The Age, Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews guaranteed that Australia would protect their rights under the convention to seek asylum and they would not be forcibly returned to face persecution. Mr Downer arrives in Indonesia tomorrow and will hold talks on the Sri Lankan case and the broader issues surrounding people smuggling.

Australia is concerned about the prospect of a new flood of asylum seekers, with an estimated 5000 Sri Lankans in the region having fled.

Refugee groups fear for the men if they are returned to Sri Lanka because of the ongoing civil war between the government and rebel Tamil Tigers.

With AAP

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/sri-lankans-to-be-moved-to-nauru/2007/03/02/1172338882574.html
----

Some light relief!

2007-03-01T06:37:00.000-08:00

Hey,
So I think this is a bit unfair, to bash Americans so shamelessly... but serioulsy - this is SO funny! I love those Chaser lads :) I wonder if this would have turned out differently if it were on the streets of Sydney... I hope so... Anyway, enjoy!

France. I love/hate this place.

2007-02-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

Along the bumpy road of language learning, there are a few essential pitstops. These are designed to test you, to see how proficient you are, and whether you can hold your own in said language. They include (in vague chronological order):
- Being able to order food;
- Being able to hold a phone conversation;
- Being able to count to 100 (in french, instead of saying '97' you say '4 20 17', meaning (4x20)+17. ridiculous);
- Being able to begin a sentence without already having planned the end of it;
- Being able to watch (and understand) television;
- Being able to navigate oneself through the impenetrable maze of European higher education bureaucracy;
- Being able to follow courses in advanced international humanitarian law and geopolitics; and... my favourite...
- Being able to engage in a shouting match with a real estate agent.

These last three items have pretty much been the flavour of my time here thus far. Uni bureaucracy? Oh my gosh.. They make me laugh and make me cry (like the Hunters & Collectors song). Following the classes? Wow. I knew it would be tough but I had no idea. My brain hurts. Pretty much all the time. And the real estate agent... let's just say the other day I was sitting in my room and suddenly 3 total strangers walked in! The landlady has sold the house, and the future owners decide fairly often to come over to take photos / get the electricals fixed / install an alarm / show their friends. They have been here for at least an hour every day this week! They just randomly pop over and let themselves in with a key! So tonight my housemate Leila and I decided to request that they desist... Let's just say that hell hath no fury like a real estate agent scorned.

Here's a picture of the Law Faculty of the Université Paul Cézanne - Aix-Marseille III:

I know it's quite a lot prettier than my uni in Australia (Monash), but the utterly shambolic disorganisation leaves me yearning for the comfort and familiar surrounds of the concrete-covered Clayton wind tunnel. Anyway, I won't elaborate because I'll cry, and you'll hate me for coming to France and then whining about not having any handouts. And having 48 hours of class per week. And not getting the timetable for each week until the Saturday evening before. And finding out that I had a room reserved for me in the student housing for 140 euros a month instead of the 400 I'm paying now because the uni forgot to tell me. And having classes on Saturdays. And having days where there are 10 hours of class scheduled with no breaks. Whoops. I'm complaining...! I'll stop.

Obviously, living in France has its perks! *Everything* tastes better here. I love walking down the little narrow streets and looking upwards, to see what wonders await my investigation. There are crepe sellers on every corner. People speak French. There are new and exciting things in the supermarkets, including brands of sugar I recognise from when I was a kid. OH! And Ebly - which is wheat, but you cook it like rice and it is sooo good. Shown here:

OK I think that's enough random photographic entertainment for now. I'll try to be better at writing blogs!

And please - if you haven't taken any action on those Sri Lankan asylum seekers... get onto it!

A la prochaine,

:) Jessie

The Sri Lankan asylum seekers - please act now!

2007-02-28T03:41:00.003-08:00

Points to make:
* These are young men, most of whom are aged 22 & 23 years, the oldest
is 28 years;
* Some have been held, tortured and beaten in Camps in Jaffna because
they are Tamil;
See http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2007/2/12541.html
* In reality many are computer and accounting students and at least
one is a high School student aged 17years;
* Their families raised the money to send them to safety in an attempt
to save their lives;
Sri Lanka is in civil conflict

See
http://www.amnesty.org.au/news_features/news/refugee/sri_lanka_560,000_displaced_people_suffer_effects_of_intensifying_violence

* It is too dangerous to send them to India because the Sri Lankan Navy
sinks Tamil boats on the basis that they are all Tamil Tigers - not all are;
See http://english.people.com.cn/200609/25/eng20060925_306127.html

and http://www.colombopage.com/archive_07/February16140946CH.html
* If they are captured they are forced to serve in the Sri Lankan
military fighting Tamils; Understandably they do not want to do this;
See http://www.tamilnation.org/indictment/genocide95/gen9560.htm
* They came to Australia legitimately seeking asylum. Under the Refugee
Convention to which we are signatory, Australia is obliged to receive them
and assess their claim.
* They should be provided with legal advice and counselling immediately.
* Many are traumatised from beatings and torture received in detention
camps in Sri Lanka they need counselling and legal advice.
Please ring Kevin Rudds office urgently:

Tel: (02) 6277 4022
Fax: (02) 6277 8495

Email: Kevin.Rudd.MP@aph.gov.au

Tel: (07) 3899 4031
Fax: (07) 3899 5755

Labor must stand up for the Refugee Convention and demand that Howard
allow these young men to make their claims and to properly assess those
claims.

End this secret incommunicado detention!

Pamela Curr
ASRC Melbourne.

TAKE URGENT ACTION TO PREVENT APPALLING TREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS

2007-02-23T08:14:00.001-08:00

Hi there everyone,

We have a little bit of a situation which would benefit from 2 minutes of your time.

You may be aware that a few days ago, the Australian Navy intercepted a boatload of 83 Sri Lankan asylum seekers off the coast of Australia, just near Christmas Island.

In a massive contravention of customary international law, human rights law, humanitarian law and Australia's self-assumed treaty obligations, the Howard government has made secret arrangements with Indonesia to send the asylum seekers immediately back to Indonesia, from whence they will be sent back to Sri Lanka. (Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/deal-to-send-boat-people-packing/2007/02/23/1171734021096.html)

Howard has categorically refused to let the men so much as lodge their applications for asylum in Australia, which is their rights under the law of Australia AND international law. Remember, ***arriving in Australia unauthorised, by boat, even with no papers, is NOT illegal!

Sending people back to a place where they may suffer persecution is called 'refoulement', and it is strictly and unambiguously prohibited under international law as a fundamental principle aimed at protecting the rights and the lives of the world's most vulnerable people.

Let's also remember that the Government has just completed work on an 800-bed $360 million detention facility on Christmas Island. It is ready and waiting to receive these asylum seekers, and although i abhor the existence of such a facility, it is vastly preferable that it should be put to use while these men's claims are processed, rather than sending them back to a situation of grave danger.

It is a serious concern that our Government has decided that this kind of behaviour is OK, especially in light of the fact that it has been proven that at least 9 men and 3 children have been killed upon return from Australia to their homelands in recent years.

PLEASE TAKE A FEW MOMENTS TO SEND A BRIEF EMAIL TO PEOPLE WHO ARE MAKING THESE DECISIONS.

Here are a few points you may like to make:

* "Everyone has the right to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution" Article 14, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
* Article 33 of the 1951 Refugees Convention *ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITS* sending people back to a country or territory where they may face danger. This is exactly what we're about to do!
* These 83 people are the first asylum seekers to arrive by boat in Australia in over a year. Some areas in Europe get 1500 asylum seekers A DAY!
* Some of the poorest countries in the world are the most generous hosts of asylum seekers. Ethiopia, Eritrea etc... Iran and Pakistan both hold over 2 million refugees each. Australia takes 0.05% of the world's refugee burden.
* Historically, asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia are found to be genuine refugees in 92% of cases. Think about it like this: people don't uproot their lives, leave their families and get in a leaky boat for 10 days to travel to a strange country unless they are SERIOUS about the dangers that face them at home.

The Government:
PM John Howard - you'll have to contact him using this form: http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm
Kevin.Andrews.MP@aph.gov.au - Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews.

AND your local member of the Liberal Party:
using this form... http://www.aec.gov.au/esearch/main.htm

And Labor:
Kevin.Rudd.MP@aph.gov.au - (Labor) Leader. Let him know that you do not support Howard's approach, and you'd be interested to see what his approach would be. Encourage him to OPPOSE this stunt and provide a strong, principled alternative.
Julia.Gillard.MP@aph.gov.au - (Labor) co-leader of Labor party.
Tony.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au - (Labor) Shadow Immigration Spokesman. Would be immigration minister if Labor wins the election. He is generally very open to dialogue and reasonableness but we have yet to see what happens when the rubber hits the road! Encourage him, as well, to take a strong, vocal stand against this awful behaviour.

Thanks very much for reading. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me!

Jessie

Slightly off the topic...

2007-02-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

I know I'm supposed to be waxing lyrical about the beauty of southern France (and I will, I promise!), but I'm afraid this is taking precedence at the moment! This evening something landed in my inbox which I feel compelled to share with you all.

You may know that the Australian Government has just spent $360million on a shiny new detention facility on Christmas Island. Its capacity is 800 people, and it has purpose built rooms designed to hold children. Does the idea of imprisoning innocent, already traumatised children not quite sit right, or is it just me...?

Also, the figure of $360million is particularly interesting when you consider that EIGHT people have arrived unauthorised in Australian territory by boat in the last 12 months. (Those people - Burmese - are being held on Nauru, anyway, at an ADDITIONAL cost to Australian taxpayers). Anyway, if we divide these 8 people into the $360m, we come up with the princely sum of $45million per head. Woweee. That is some hella expensive accommodation, even if it IS in the name of border protection! Do you think it's worth it?

In fact, if we generously divide the $360m by 12,000 (the number of unauthorised boat arrivals over the past TEN YEARS - the entire duration of Howard's term in office), we come up with the not-insignificant figure of $30,000 per head. That might be worthwhile (at a stretch) if the 12,000 were dodgey brothers or terrorists, but remember that upwards of 90% of them have been found to be genuine refugees, fleeing persecution and in desperate need of protection. For a government which prides itself on good economic management, I have to say I think a preschooler of less-than-average intelligence would do a better job.

Anyway, here is a photograph of said detention facility. Can you imagine its isolation, and its separation from mainland Australia, legal assistance, community support, media, and the lifeline of visitors... This is a system purpose-built to traumatise and discourage people to the extent that they would rather risk torture and death at home, than wait out access to the rights they hold under Australian law, treaty law and customary international law. Deterrence has always factored highly in the government’s motivation. Julian Burnside QC often comments on this idea of deterrence, and his argument follows thus: "Mr. Ruddock and Mr. Howard have made it clear that the mandatory detention system, and the iniquitous Pacific Solution, are designed to "send a message". This decodes as: we treat innocent people harshly to deter others. The punishment of innocent people to shape the behaviour of others is impossible to justify. It is the philosophy of hostage-takers."

Although Burnside is accused from time to time of engaging in hyperbole, his rationale in this instance is difficult to fault. The Executive Committee of the UNHCR has also made a comment on the use of detention for anything other than a legitimate administrative purpose, concluding that "detention of asylum seekers which is applied… as part of a policy to deter future asylum seekers, or to dissuade those who have commenced their claims from pursuing them, is contrary to the norms of refugee law. It should not be used as a punitive or disciplinary measure for illegal entry or presence in the country".

What do we have to say about that, Messrs Howard & Ruddock...?

I'm in Europe at the moment, studying international humanitarian law, human rights and refugee law. More often that I care to mention, Australia is cited as an example of a country which drastically misinterprets an twists the meanings of the rights and obligations enshrined under international law in this field, and we are rapidly becoming a laughing stock and a worst-case-scenario when it comes to respecting human rights.

This is a Federal election year. Enough said. Let your ballot do the talking. This kind of (extremely expensive!) cruelty is not OK!

The Afternoon in Dublin...

2007-02-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

Well, today has been my last day in Dublin before moving to France early tomorrow morning. I wandered into college to meet up with some friends for a farewell hoorah. As sometimes happens around these parts, the light in the late afternoon was just beautiful and I wanted to take some photos. So here they are...

I won't write anything more now. Once I've finished writing this crazy essay I will get back into writing more often. See you in France!

Jess

Back in Europe, Back in Gear!

2007-02-10T09:06:00.000-08:00

Hey there,

I've taken a bit of an extended hiatus over my 2 month holiday in Australia. It was only supposed to be 3.5 weeks, but then my trip was extended due to unforeseen circumstances. I arrived back in Ireland yesterday, the plane descending over snow covered hills and through grey skies, so a not-so-welcoming temperature of 0 degrees celsius!

As an homage to Australian weather, I think I'll post some photos of my holiday, the things I got up to, the fun I had. Just to delay the whole having-to-write a substantial blog thing.

I'm off to France on Wednesday to start uni again. Not feeling terribly in the mood for school, but hopefully that'll change sooner rather than later. Only one semester of coursework to go in my whole life... come on!

I'll write more again soon! Enjoy the photos.

Love Jess

holidays in australia

2006-12-26T01:27:00.000-08:00

well... i've been home for almost 2 weeks now. have finished editing 'we will be remembered for this' (it'll be released soon! watch this space!), spent a few days down at the most beautiful secluded beach, and done the obligatory family christmas stuff. it has been great being home, even though my boasts to my european classmates have been rather disappointed - the weather here has been terrible! rain, wind, HAIL AND SNOW on christmas day! unheard of. still, it's nice to be home for a while.

strangely enough for this time of year, i have assignments to do! i have about 8,000 words due on 8 jan, and explaining this to friends and family is met with blank, puzzled looks, as in the southern (sensible) hemisphere, the word 'homework' is dropped from the lexicon between november and february!

anyway i'd better go. off to see a movie and have some dinner and continue the terrible hard slog of being on holidays.

very best wishes for the new year!

jess x x

2006-12-11T13:15:00.000-08:00

have just got off the phone from a friend in baxter. in the last 4 days, 6 men have hanged themselves at baxter, all in separate incidents, quietly, in private. some of them have also slashed themselves with broken glass and mirrors.

at least 4 of these men are people whom i know personally. right now, all i can think of is the deep sadness i have seen in all of their eyes, and how despised, betrayed and abandoned they must feel by Australia.

as far as i'm aware, they're in hospital in port augusta and adelaide but at the moment i don't know anything. the press doesn't seem to care.

this news comes on the same day as the news of the death of Wendy Foran, refugee advocate, faithful detention visitor, and wonderful surrogate mum to many asylum seekers. she fought cancer bravely but died yesterday.

Nobody could stop Wendy Foran from passing away, but the lives of 6 other men have been destroyed wilfully, deliberately, and they have been locked for years upon years in a prison specifically designed to drive them crazy.

some days it's all just a bit much.

Scruffy the Cat

2006-12-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of Scruffy the cat, helping me to study for my management exam. In actual fact, he was lying across my notes, almost entirely obscuring them. Which was actually more helpful than you might think.

Tomorrow morning is the exam, then I'll be on a plane, Melbourne-bound. Can't write more now because I have to go and "discuss and analyse the criteria to ensure effective budgetary control systems are in place for donor funded projects". gaaah.

jt

probably not interesting - and this time i mean it.

2006-12-08T08:24:00.000-08:00

hello faithful readers (both of you!),

just checking in to say hi, i'm still alive, and gaaaaah.
the gaaaah translates as "i'm in the middle of my exam period, have just done my third exam in 4 days, and i'm having trouble formulating complete sentences".

i had social anthropology on tuesday, geopolitics on thursday, and today (friday) was epidemiology (public health and medicine). the epidemiology exam was basically about flies, cockroaches, diarrhoea, dead people and latrines, so after writing the exam i feel a bit like i need to have a shower. delightful.

last weekend i moved out of my little house in Goatstown, and into a big, 5 storey historical mansion of some literary import to the city of Dublin (will elaborate with pictures in a few days), but due to the infernal wind and arctic temperatures, it hasn't really been a good base for studying. this has meant that i've been crashing on the (very accommodating) living room floor of 4 of my (very accommodating) classmates, studying with them, eating with them, going slightly mental from the cabin fever with them... this study period has felt like we've been in a nuclear bunker - we don't leave the house, our meals are quite repetetive (mmm rice cakes anyone??), and the most exciting thing i've done in the past week is to pop down to the shop to buy loo paper. oh stop!

I should probably give an update on the latest morcels of Taxi Driver Wisdom:
1 x "all ye need in this cold weather is a bottle of whiskey and a lad to keep ye warm"
1 x "even if ye've already a boyfriend, he's a million moiles away! ye should get ye'self a man to push around while you're in Dooblin"
1 x "i personally agree with capital punishment. i mean, without the death penalty, people just won't learn!"

.... i got nothin'.

it's been FREEZING cold here (maximum temps of 5 degrees, and winds like i have literally never experiences before in my *life*). but i'm going home to melbourne on tuesday, and the weather forecast for when i arrive on thursday morning is 34 degees. oh dear goodness i can hardly WAIT.

just one more exam - management. it's a bit of a nasty one, but i have saturday, sunday and monday to prepare. the exam is at 10am on tuesday, and then at 6pm i'll be on a plane home. nearly time for a holiday...

oh, in other exciting news, i got my results for my thesis / law degree etc, and I'm very happy. against all possible odds, I will graduate from Law with Honours, which is a relief! It's also made me quite philosophical but now is not the time nor the place.

OK i'm out of here. it's friday night and I'm going to go and put on a tight dress* and some impractically high heels**, and go out dancing*** til the crack of dawn****.

JT x

* pyjamas
** slippers
*** sit on the couch
**** til i fall asleep

Meanwhile, back on the farm...

2006-12-01T14:43:00.000-08:00

Thawt y'all might like to see what folks're readin' down here at the Ag Science faculty at UCD...

Front:

Back. I'm not joking:

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto...

"Iraqi Kid Runs for Water"

2006-11-29T02:56:00.000-08:00

This video speaks for itself. My God.

Temporary Protection Visas are Killing People: Exhibit A

2006-11-26T16:36:00.000-08:00

Shia refugee sent home killed as Aussie spy
Rebecca Weisser
The Australian
November 27, 2006

AN Iraqi asylum-seeker sent home by Australian officials was assassinated in Baghdad after being accused of being an Australian spy.
Immigration officials refused to allow Mohammed Sharif al-Saraf to stay in Australia when his three-year temporary protection visa expired in 2004, claiming the removal of Saddam Hussein meant it was safe to go back to his homeland.

But The Australian has learned he was back in Iraq for only a few months when he was killed, in Baghdad, in late 2004.

News of his murder was posted on the Shia website, YaaHosein, which said al-Saraf, a Shi'ite, had been murdered because he was wrongly charged with spying for the Australian forces in Iraq.

Last week the High Court upheld the TPV system, ruling that asylum-seekers asking for further Australian protection must prove their refugee status still exists after their initial three-year visa expires.

Iraqi Community Cultural Association of South Australia president Tariq al-Haris said al-Saraf was a Shia whose family came from Najaf, a hotbed of opposition to Saddam's Baath Party supporters.

After fleeing to Iran, where he left his wife and two children, al-Saraf travelled alone to Australia, arriving by boat in late 1999, shortly after the federal Government introduced TPVs for unauthorised arrivals.

He was detained in Woomera, South Australia, for about a year. His claims for refugee status were found to be valid, but under the terms of the TPV his status had to be reassessed at the end of three years. By the time his claims were reassessed in 2003, the regime of Saddam Hussein had been overthrown and he was found to no longer be in need of protection.

Friends say he was under stress from his uncertain status and the separation from his wife and children. He had a heart attack in mid-2003 and was treated at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

"He was deeply lonely and after his heart attack he missed his wife and children even more," said Mr al-Haris.

Mr al-Saraf gave up his battle to remain in Australia and in 2004 returned to Iraq.

"We don't know who murdered him, but at that time, most of these sorts of murders were being committed either by ex-Baathists or by al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Most likely it was one of these two groups that killed him," said Mr al-Haris. "For these people, anybody who comes back from Australia must be a spy and they target anyone who they suspect of working with the Coalition forces in Iraq."

When asked about al-Saraf's case, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said: "The limited details provided at this point do not enable any comment to be made on a specific individual case".

Circus of life charts one man's martial art of survival

2006-11-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

The Age
Andra Jackson
27 November 2006

AS A boy growing up in war-blighted Afghanistan, Hussain Sadiqi could not have known how far his passion for martial arts would carry him, literally and figuratively.

This week Sadiqi, 27, who came to Australia as a refugee in 1999, will draw on his martial arts skills when he makes his public debut as a circus performer in the National Institute of Circus Arts' production DiVino — on the same day he becomes an Australian citizen.

He had never seen a circus until this year, but decided to pursue a performance career after refugee lawyer Julian Burnside, QC, suggested it as a way of using his background as a martial arts champion.

Sadiqi said he became mesmerised with martial arts as a boy in central Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, where "learning something to defend ourselves" was a good pastime.

He mastered sholin (Chinese) kung fu and as Afghanistan's dual gold medal champion, he became a national hero.

Speaking at the circus institute's Prahran campus, where he has finished his first year on a scholarship, Sadiqi recalled his glory days: "The first time, I win a gold medal, there was a big celebration in the province."

But after the Taliban came to power, they began to hunt Hazaras, one of Afghanistan's four ethnic groups. Sadiqi's fame was his downfall and he was forced to flee.

He landed on Ashmore Reef with 147 other asylum seekers, and was taken to the now closed Port Hedland detention centre.

"It was depressing … I escaped from one hole and I put myself in another hole," he said.

However, other detainees recognised him and asked him to teach them martial arts. Training Afghans and Iraqis, Chinese and Bangladeshis gave his life renewed purpose.

The joy of his release was marred by the death of his mother in Afghanistan and the Immigration Department's refusal to let him attend her funeral. But he was comforted by his father's words of advice to "study and make her soul a bit happy with your future".

With his dream of representing Australia in martial arts at the 2008 Olympics, he hopes to fulfil his father's wishes.

DiVino, from November 30 to December 9, at Sidney Myer Circus Studio. For bookings, call EasyTix on 9639 0096.

http://www.nica.com.au

Who, me...??

2006-11-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

Today I was in my final Geopolitics class for this semester. The teacher is quite a character, and we have had some relatively spectacular clashes of personality and ideology over the course of our classes together.

Today during lunchtime it was just him and me in the classroom, and he commented on how much he'd enjoyed taking the class because we have no shortage of opinions. He said to me, "you're a bit of a bouncer, yourself!". I said "what's a bouncer??", and he told me a bouncer is basically someone who's a bit feisty and likes a good stoush in the classroom.

He then told me I am "intellectually combative", and meant it as a compliment.

Haha. I'll take that :)

Deaths in Detention Exposed

2006-11-25T06:23:00.000-08:00

Andra Jackson
The Age
21 Nov 2006

AT LEAST 10 people have died while held in immigration detention, a self-appointed public inquiry has been told.

The 18-month inquiry into detention centres found sick detainees sometimes had to wait days for medical treatment and weeks to see a doctor.

The co-convener of the inquiry, Professor Linda Briskman from Curtin University in Western Australia, said the inquiry had been told of at least 10 people who had died in detention since 1999, "but people are generally speaking of more than 10 deaths".

Among the deaths detailed in the inquiry's first report was that of a Thai woman, Phuongton Simplee, a heroin user who died in Villawood detention centre in 2001 of malnutrition. Despite losing a dramatic seven kilograms over just three days, management did not realise she needed hospital treatment.

Fatima Erfani, a mother of three detained on Christmas Island, died in January 2003 after being treated incorrectly. She was suffering from high blood pressure but was instead treated for a migraine and died from cerebral bleeding.

Tongan Viliami Tanginoa, who overstayed his visa, dived to his death from the top of a basketball hoop at Maribyrnong detention centre in December 2000.

Professor Briskman said yesterday details of the other deaths would be covered in the inquiry's second report next year.

The Age is aware of at least two other deaths in detention.

The report documented an attempt by a 12-year-old boy to hang himself.

A former nurse working for detention centre operator ACM told the inquiry a doctor attended Baxter detention centre five days a week but detainees could only have appointments on the day allocated for their compound. Sometimes the wait for an appointment on the "right day" could be up to three weeks, she said.

The People's Inquiry was set up by Professor Briskman and Professor Chris Goddard, director of the National Research Centre for the Prevention of Child Abuse at Monash University, on behalf of the Australian Council of Heads of Schools of Social Work.

It followed concern about the narrow focus of a Federal Government-appointed inquiry into the wrongful detention of the mentally ill Cornelia Rau.

The People's Inquiry, which has held public hearings around Australia and taken 200 written submissions, also found "needless cruelty" in how the detention centres were run.

Professor Briskman said former detainees, detention centre workers, visiting health workers and others reported a catalogue of petty cruelty, including people being addressed by their file number, repeatedly being woken at night for head counts, a four-month delay in posting mail to families overseas, and a lack of toilets (just two toilets for 700 people at Woomera).

The report also covered claims of beatings and humiliating actions by guards, including singing to Iraqis after a protection visa rejection: "I'm leaving on a jet plane, goin' back to see Saddam Hussein."

In his submission, Professor Goddard wrote that "detention centres generated universal mental ill-health never seen outside a psychiatric hospital".

An Immigration Department spokeswoman said: "Deaths in detention have been very few."

photos thanks to http://www.porthedland.nomasters.org

Equal Opportunity Commission Human Rights Day Oration

2006-11-25T04:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wanted to be a Circus Ninja Refugee...?

2006-11-22T02:54:00.000-08:00

Trashing a Tradition of Compassion

2006-11-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Age - 22 November 2006
Peter Craven

For the past two years Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has been attempting to deport to Sweden a man who has spent all but the first 27 days of his life in this country. As a consequence of a recent decision by the High Court, she will be able to do so.

The case is complex and exhibits plenty of alarming and pitiable features. The man in question, Stefan Nystrom, who first fell foul of the law at the age of 10, now faces further charges (including assault with a knife and wrongful imprisonment) and says he wants to be deported to Sweden even though he cannot speak the language and does not know his relatives there.

When he was remanded (to appear today) the Victorian Deputy Chief Magistrate, Jelena Popovic, said Nystrom would require special care, given his mental health.

Vanstone's victory in her High Court appeal in the Nystrom case came after a rebuff by the Federal Court last year, where Justices Michael Moore and Roger Gyles found that Nystrom, as someone who had lived in this country for more than 10 years, had an "absorbed visa" and could not therefore be deported because of a criminal conviction.

They also said Nystrom had behaved no more badly than many other Australians and that his not being formally "Australian" was fortuitous: "The difference is the barest of technicalities. It is the chance result of an accident of birth."

In other words Nystrom is Australian in culture, character and in everything other than the formality of his citizenship. His siblings were born here and are Australian citizens. One can only speculate at the grief Vanstone's decision would cause his family. Not to mention the eyebrows it would raise in Sweden.

Indeed, a Swedish news service reported baldly that "a serial criminal who was born in Sweden but spent all his life in Australia" could be heading back to Sweden's shores. It was precisely the irregularity of this that the federal judges underlined when they said, "Apart from the dire punishment of the individual involved, it assumes that Australia can export its problems elsewhere."

Well, the unanimous decision of the High Court now allows Vanstone to mete out the "dire punishment" of exile to people who have received prison sentences of 12 months or more even though they have spent their entire lives in this country.

Nystrom is at least in the position of being deported to a society similar to our own. In recent years Attorney-General Philip Ruddock deported Robert Jakovic to Serbia even though the Serbs refused to accept responsibility for him and he declared that he would starve to death on the steps of the Australian embassy. He is back in Australia, stateless and on a visa that runs out on January 7. The Immigration Department asked him to apply for Serb nationality. Then there was the case of Ali Tastan, a paranoid schizophrenic whom Ruddock was happy to dispatch to the streets of Ankara, screaming in his affliction. His permanent residence has been reinstated (because of his mental health), but not without Ruddock doing everything to keep him out.

One does not have to be a bleeding heart to find the Howard Government's attitude in deporting offenders both sickening and inhumane.

We may be inured to the detention camps and the incarceration of David Hicks, and we may even accept these things as more or less bipartisan responses to a complex situation - though we are, I think, a lesser society for doing so.

But it is difficult to imagine that most people in our society could tolerate the bloody-mindedness of what Vanstone wants to do with people convicted of crimes but who happen not to be protected by the figleaf of citizenship.

This country was, we should never forget, founded by people who suffered the torment of enforced exile. One would have thought an awareness of this fact went with a knowledge of Australian history and that the Howard Government, with its sensitivity to our historical heritage, would show greater care in not repudiating our own traditions.

Think of what the people closest to us culturally - the New Zealanders and British and European immigrants, many of whom have never taken out citizenship - would think of us saying that someone had no right to live among us because they had had the misfortune to go to jail.

And think, too, of the message it sends to the immigrants among us that we can throw back our rejects on a world elsewhere, as if they were so much garbage.

You would think that Vanstone might also remember that it was under her watch that Cornelia Rau, an "Australian" in all but citizenship, direly affected by mental illness, was illegally and inhumanely detained, to the shame of her ministry.

The Howard Government should also beware of this kind of issue. Geoffrey Robertson said once that only an inch divides conservative government from Labor government but that this is the inch in which we live.

Labor established the detention centres, Labor (in the person of Kim Beazley) failed to stand up to Howard at the time of the Tampa.

But when Beazley said of Robert Jovicic, the Belgrade deportee a year ago, "He's been in the country since the age of two, for God's sake. All his criminal activities and everything else have been things that are a product of our system and his decisions within it. You don't just go and dump him on the Serbs," he spoke for what is best in the people of Australia. He spoke on behalf of one of the only traditions we have worth spitting at, the tradition of mercy and the defence of the underdog.

Peter Craven is a Melbourne critic.

Farmer Jess...

2006-11-20T14:51:00.000-08:00

Some of you may know that by a bizarre twist of fortune (basically God is a wise-guy), my Masters here (in Humanitarian Action) somehow mysteriously falls under the banner of 'Agricultural Science'. That's right. I'm getting an MSc (Agr) HA. If you know me, you'll know that's quite funny. If I'd done first semester in France, I'd be graduating with a Masters in Law, but because I'm in Dublin (where the 2nd semester specialty is in Humanitarian Action and Rural Development), I'm getting a Masters in Agricultural Science. Even though I am moving to France in second semester to specialise in international law and geopolitics. It's actually kind of annoying actually!

When my mother found this out she laughed hysterically, called me Farmer Jess, and said that I couldn't even grow parsley if my little life depended on it. I was mildly offended, but couldn't really disagree. Do I look like a farmer?? (Don't answer that...)

Anyway, all my classes are in the agricultural science building at UCD (known to those in the 'hood as 'Ag Sci'). Every morning, the foyer is full of ruddy-faced, healthy looking outdoorsy-types. Or I may be projecting. Whatever. The point is... very early on in the course, I saw a poster up in the foyer of the building which made me do a double take, and laugh out loud! I finally managed to take a photo of it this week.

Farmers Journals! I don't know what a farmers journal is, but all I can imagine is "dear diary, today I milked a cow...". Hehe. This humour is clearly a reflection of my ignorance, but for heaven's sake. Agricultural science? I have to vent somehow!

I very much hope no farmers were offended in the reading of this blog :)

JT x

This. Is. Not. Possible.

2006-11-15T14:05:00.000-08:00

See article:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20763005-29277,00.html

Yesterday, the High Court of Australia decided that the Government is much more easily able to send home asylum seekers who have held TPVs. A couple of years ago, the Federal Court found that the it was the responsibility of the Government to prove that it is safe to send people home before doing so, but yesterday the High Court disagreed. Meaning that whensoever DIMA decides that the Taliban doesn't exist anymore (in spite of any overwhelming evidence to the contrary), they can just send people home. And this decision seems to have been made in complete disregard of the fact that this year the Taliban has made a major resurgence in the power vacuum left by the almost totally defunct government of Hamid Karzai.

As usual, Justice Michael Kirby dissented, and made a lot of sense. You can find a few (pretty damn valid) things which he said about this judgement in the article. " Justice Michael Kirby dissented, saying that in both cases Australian decision makers, safe in this country, might regard the beheading of 12 Hazaras as an unimportant or isolated incidents.

"But to a person whose experience had already invoked a well-founded fear of persecution, occasioning flight to Australia to seek refuge and official acceptance and recognition of refugee status, such an instance might be indicative of more widespread, systematic violent activity apt to occasion a well-founded fear of continuing persecution," he said."

This means that people on temporary protection visas have absolutely no guarantee of being given protection in Australia in future, further extending their period of displacement, uprooting and uncertainty. And decisions regarding their futures will be made by the Department of Immigration, which has approx a 50% margin of error for first-instance decisions on asylum cases, and a notorious level of hostility, suspicion and mistreatment of vulnerable people.

Just for fun, I feel like posting some photos of the extremely "safe" Kabul, seen here in the wake of the US attacks. Would you send your family here?

Let's remember all of this in the context of the Edmund Rice centre report released in August citing at *least* 9 examples of people who have been sent home by Australia and killed almost immediately. These people were sent homewhen Australia considered it "safe". Are we willing to take that risk again? I - for one - am absolutely, categorically NOT.

When will the calculated, malicious, cruelty stop? How much more blood needs to be spilled? How many more lives need to be destroyed before our country will take up its obligations and honour them with the respect and observance they deserve?

If you are not yet convinced or aware of what the Taliban is capable of, click here for pictures of the massacre at Yakawlang (Hazarajat) in 2001. Warning: there are some extremely graphic images. Extremely graphic images which have comprised the lives, the memories and the trauma of people whom Australia locks up in desert prisons and then deports whenever it feels like it. You are in a position to choose whether or not to see this stuff - many thousands have no such luxury. http://www.rawa.org/yakw-hrw.htm

I'm not very good at posting, am I...

2006-11-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to drop past and say hi. All is good here, but it's getting pretty damn busy! Last week had assessments due, tomorrow have a 90 minute group presentation on Management (yikes...) and Thursday have to do a presentation on my chosen topic for the Geopolitics report. So as you can see, it's all just boozing and nightclubs and sleep-ins for me! Haha.

I promise I'll try and write something a little bit more substantial when this week is over. Give me strength...!!!

Oh, we've also put together a synopsis for 'We Will Be Remembered'. There is a very pretty PDF copy available (email me if you want it!), but here is the text, anyway, in case you're interested. As the time draws nearer for me to come home and finish work on this film with Dave, I'm getting quite excited. I have had the opportunity to show it to quite a few people over here, and their responses have been so encouraging. I did notice with some degree of satisfaction that our video on YouTube has been copping some mild sledging, being accused of being "brainwashing" and "wishy washy liberal rubbish"! Ha. Gold. Anyway, here's the synopsis. Cheers! JT x

WE WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR THIS: A FILM ABOUT AUSTRALIA

In 2006, a group of young people of different nationalities, backgrounds, attitudes and political views took a trip to the Baxter Detention Centre. The stories of the people they met behind the razor wire surprised, moved and challenged them. ‘We Will Be Remembered For This’ documents their journey.

It is a film for everyone. It is a clear, rational and non-politicised look at the human issues of Australia’s mandatory immigration detention policy.

This film poses the essential questions surrounding Australia’s refugee policy. Who are the people behind the fences? How did they come to be there? What are the psychological and legal battles they now face? How much do average Australians know about this policy, and if they knew the truth, would they want it to change?

To create this film, the film-makers drew together a diverse group of people. A teacher, a nurse, a handful of uni students, travelers and an academic. Some who had never visited detention, others who had done so for years, and one who had experienced it for himself. Those opposed to the policy, those in support, and those as yet undecided. Some who had never really thought about it, another who thought about it for a living, and others in between.

The film-makers’ objective was almost experimental: to rise above social, cultural and political differences, to draw out common threads upon which all could agree. In other words, this film strips back politics and encourages viewers to see the issue for what it really is: profoundly human.

The film includes:
- interviews with former PM Malcolm Fraser, Julian Burnside QC, a clinical psychiatrist, a former detention officer, and many others;
- a simple, easy-to-follow illustrated outline of the legal process;
- detainees’ stories; and
- an exploration of if and how the current policy may be justified or necessary

This film was produced against a volatile political background, in full awareness that most people feel ill-prepared or unwilling to get involved in the asylum seeker issue. ‘We Will Be Remembered’ is a tool by which people can become more aware and informed, using this awareness and information to formulate the opinion of their choosing.

This film has been made for you, your grandparents, your teachers, your students and your friends. It's for politicians, prisoners, and school kids. This film has been made accessible for everyone, because the film-makers believe that everyone should see it. Its message is that regardless of politics and policy and international pressure, the people behind the fences are worthy of attention, even just for the hour it takes to watch this film. In the words of one of the visitors, “when I visit detention and hear people’s stories, politics is the furthest thing from my mind. When a baby has been killed in cold blood, or a family has disappeared, and when a young man’s face still bears the scars of torture, the fuss bother and noisy rhetoric of the Canberra machine could not be less important”.

The characters of ‘We Will Be Remembered For This’ have undertaken a journey. There were some laughs, some let downs, a few epiphanies, a lot of driving, discussions, debates and questions raised. The film-makers’ goal was reached - to unite this group of people, to rise above the things that divided them, and to identify and illuminate the things they shared in common, with each other and with the people behind the fences. Share their journey.

‘We Will Be Remembered For This’ is due for release in early 2007.
You can watch the trailer at www.myspace.com/wewillberemembered
For media inquiries, more information, to sign up to the mailing list or to pre-order your DVD copy, please email David Schmidt david_schmidt@mac.com or Jessie Taylor jessie@thejusticeproject.com.au

EastWeb Fundraiser - Funtimes for a Good Cause! Dec 7

2006-11-09T05:01:00.001-08:00

I Love Irish Taxi Drivers

2006-11-07T12:10:00.000-08:00

You can see by my woolly paraphernalia (shown here in photo) that it's getting right chilly in Ireland. Where as 2 weeks ago I would usually leave my jacket at home, nowdays I don't go *anywhere* without coat, hat, gloves and scarf. Yes yes, it's getting cold.

Now, if there is a sure thing in Ireland, it is that every time you get into a taxi, you'll be greeted by a driver with a character worthy of its own comic strip. I have been told the following things by Dublin taxi drivers (and I will do my best not to exaggerate at all. I hardly *need* to!):

- "The weather is remarkably cold for this time of year"
- "The weather is remarkably warm for this time of year"
- "The weather is completely normal for this time of year"
- "I was in Geelong (Australia) last week competing in a backgammon tournament"
- "Dere're far too many foreigners in Dooblin. All dese overseas students.... oh no I'm not talkin' about YE! I'm just talkin' 'bout de muslims. Dese muslims are ruining the world. I'm not being racist, I'm just saying..."
- "I've always wanted te go te Australia but I saw a fillum about all de tings dere dat can kill ye. Oh the poor wee Crocodile Hunter..."
- "Just ye make sure ye stay faithful to yer lad back in Australia"
AND my favourite all-time too-much-information quote from a taxi driver...
- "In the poob, ye can really tell the difference 'tween a lass who knows how te pull a point o' Guinness, and a lass who don't. And I'll tell ye where ye really tell the difference 'tween the two: in the jacks (toilet) the next mornin'. I'm sorry for givin' ye sooch a graphic picture but it's the sure way te tell. Oooohh Christ, ain't that the truth!"

Hehe i love these guys. Never a dull moment. I have had countless discussions about weather, politics, religion, the crowdedness of shopping centres, and although they seem like dull topics I usually get out of the cab shaking my head and chuckling to myself. I think the next time I have a particularly good encounter I'll take a photo. It'll last longer :)

J x

Our Big Day Out

2006-11-07T06:22:00.000-08:00

A group of us went to Croke Park this weekend to watch the Aussies whallop the Irish, both on the scoreboard and with their fists. It was also Karen Elisabeth's birthday, so she was lucky enough to get a birthday cake made of lollies in a tupperware container with a candle in the middle! Brian went for the harder stuff and brought a flask of whiskey, which he distributed liberally among us for the duration of the game, to warm us up on the inside! A picture is worth a thousand words so I think I'll just paste some below...

An Irish flag flying high over Dublin's Croke Park..

A birthday 'cake' with a difference!

Weird Norwegian lollies... if you look closely you'll see they are, er... gender... specific... Scary.

Brian and his trusty flask...

I love this photo. It includes people from Ethiopia, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium/UK, Norway, the Netherlands and Ireland. Aren't we a multicultural bunch!

Walking back into town over the O'Connell Street Bridge

Outside the *spectacular* Lebanese restaurant where we ate after the football... mmm... The Cedar Tree on St Andrews Street, Dublin.

With Sarah and Louisa at the restaurant.

The Christmas Lights are up...

We had a beautiful day, lots of fun, the Irish got trolloped at the football (ha!), and we had a delicious dinner with lots of fun people and good times. It was loverly :)

J x

'We Will Be Remembered For This'

2006-11-01T00:59:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Just thought I would post a blurb here that I wrote a few days ago on the 'We Will Be Remembered For This' website- www.myspace.com/wewillberemembered - just some thoughts about the film, the motivation behind it, and its enduring importance as a tool of creating awareness amongst Australians. If you have not yet seen the trailer, you can do so at the website mentioned above. Cheers.

Some Words for You to Read...

Hi there, friends of 'we will be remembered'. today i just had a couple of observations to make...

my name is Jessie, and I'm one of the producers of this film. firstly, i want to thank you all - on behalf of all of us involved - for your interest and support and encouragement, even before it has been released! it's been great, and the public airings the film has had have gone down a treat.

the work that has gone into it so far, the inspired shooting by adam and dave, the incredible interviews with people who shared their stories with extraordinary openness, the hours and HOURS of editing, the music, the thoughts, the reflection, the conversations, all of it is really inspiring and i'm so excited to be involved with this project. so thanks for your support and we promise to give you a rip snorter of a film! it's due early in the new year.

the second thing is... this past week i have spent a lot of time on the phone with people housed in detention in various places across Australia. there are lots and lots of people who have been locked up now for YEARS, and it's just getting to be too much... the people behind the razor wire of Baxter, Maribyrnong, Villawood (and don't even TALK to me about Nauru) are wasting away into nothing. their mental health is just crumbling, they are physically unwell, confused, disoriented and - perhaps worst of all - many of them have given up hope.

when i was living in Australia, it was easy enough to respond, albeit modestly. i could get in my car each sunday and go visit Maribyrnong, I could easily get on the phone to find them a lawyer or hassle the detention centre to get them an appointment with a doctor, or whatever was necessary. historically, these things are almost always met with some degree of frustration, but now that I'm overseas, studying in Dublin, there is an added 20,000kms of frustration. i have had messages and calls from guys this week asking me to do something for them, to write a letter to immigration for them, to find out whether they can get a lawyer to help with the next step of their case, and all i can think of is how far away I am, how disempowered I am to respond, and how denigrating it is for them even to have to ask for my help.

the very objective of 'we will be remembered' is to get rid of the conditions and circumstances which lead to this kind of problem. we do not have any kind of political axe to grind, but we feel deeply saddened by the stripping away of dignity, the deprivation of freedom, and the employment of racial fear in the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia. we are also deeply concerned about the future of human rights in Australia.

this film is for you, your grandparents, your teachers, your friends, the fruit and veg shop guy, your plumber and that girl at the bus stop. it's for politicians, prisoners, and primary school kids. this film is for *everyone*, because we believe that *everyone* should see it. the message we want to communicate is that regardless of politics and policy and international pressure, the human suffering which is going on in the name of border protection in Australia is unacceptable, and we believe that until Australian people say NO MORE, it will keep happening.

i have seen the long-term consequences of this policy with my own eyes, over a period of 4 years. please believe me that if you knew what was really happening, you would want to change the way things are done. regardless of your politics.

thanks a lot for reading.

jessie

Remember - Julian Burnside's Speech for Refugee Week

2006-10-30T02:53:00.000-08:00

LAUNCH OF REFUGEE WEEK, 22 October 2006

Remember what you were doing last night at 7.00 pm? When you try to reconstruct it, it’s quite a long time ago. Perhaps you had dinner with friends, a few drinks and a show, a cosy night in a warm bed; a long sleep-in and the Sunday papers, a relaxed breakfast and an easy day before battling with the traffic to get here. It’s 22 hours ago.
Twenty-two hours can seem quite a long time: try standing motionless for 22 hours without food or water.
When the SIEV X sank on the 19th October, 2001 it took 22 hours for 353 people to drown. Most of them were women and children. There were just 45 survivors.

Twenty-two hours is a very long time floating, crying, praying … drowning.

The Australian Government is responsible for those deaths. Of course they didn’t kill the 353 refugees, but they knew that they were setting out; they knew they were boarding a dangerous, overcrowded boat; they knew which way the boat would be heading. Operation Relex had the area under surveillance but, amazingly, did not see anything: it did not see the boat as it sank, it did not see 353 drowning over the course of 22 hours.

The reason those people embarked on their dangerous voyage was to join their husbands and fathers who were already living in Australia, already recognized as refugees, already on protection visas. But the protection visas they had were only temporary protection visas, which carried the condition that they were not eligible for family reunion. Despite their claimed support for family values, the Coalition Government denied these families the opportunity to be reunited and so the families did what families do: they tried to get back together by any means available. Three hundred and fifty-three people drowned as a result.

The Government recognized the responsibility it bore, so it lied. First it lied about the place where the boat went down, and then it lied about whether it knew the boat was coming at all.

Remember the 353 who died that day: they are our conscience.

Remember Shayan Badrie. Shayan Badrie was the little six year old Iranian boy who had been reduced to a state of helpless paralysis by his experiences in detention. Each time he got to the point where he could not eat or drink anymore, he would be removed from Villawood and sent to a psychiatric hospital. As soon as he was well enough, he was sent back to detention against the advice of psychiatrists. Shayan Badrie’s fate was first seen on television because a brave refugee advocate smuggled out secret video footage of Shayan, lying like a limp rag-doll in his father’s arms. He was a pathetic sight. Confronted with these images on public television, Mr Ruddock five times referred to Shayan as “it”. He said that “it” was like this not because of detention but because “it” had a stepmother. All that from the man who still has the effrontery to wear the Amnesty International badge.

Remember the Iranian family who were moved from Woomera to Maribyrnong in early 2002. They were moved because their experiences in Woomera had reduced them all to the point of psychiatric collapse. Worst in the family was the 11 year old girl who, as the psychiatrists had said, desperately needed immediate psychiatric care. Despite the advice of the psychiatrists, the Department did nothing to help that child and on a Sunday evening in May 2002, while she was alone in her room, she took a bed-sheet and hanged herself.

Remember the report of HREOC which condemned every aspect of Australia’s system of holding children in indefinite mandatory detention.

The two people who bear principal responsibility for these things are John Howard and Philip Ruddock. They personally oversaw, encouraged and took political benefit from the cruelest refugee regime this country has ever seen; a system crueler than that known in any other Western country.

Remember John Howard and Philip Ruddock.
Remember their role.
Remember the lies they have told and remember the truths they have concealed.
Remember them: they are our representatives.
Remember how hard it is to be a refugee, especially a refugee in a land which has treated you with open hostility until eventually, reluctantly it gives you temporary protection.
Remember the difficulties and confusion of dealing with a petty bureaucracy.
Remember the hardship of trying to live on a bridging visa E, denied the right to work or to study or to receive Centrelink benefits; denied even the right to do voluntary work for the simple dignity that work can bring.
Remember that getting out of detention is not the end, it is the beginning.
Remember the refugees in our community and remember what we have done to them.
Remember them: because they are our future.

As we launch into Refugee Week 2006, remember.

Remember.

Some Photos

2006-10-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Felicity is here visiting from Melbourne and we are having a great time! Today we saw Zach Braff's new movie, The Last Kiss, which was really amazing.

Last night we went out to the pub with a bunch of people from my course, including a couple of lecturers! Lots of fun. Anyway, I won't write much now, but here are some photos.

Oh and for those of you who have been requesting more about the course... I will definitely write some more soon.

Cheers!

:) Jess

Why my friend Fatima is a legend!

2006-10-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

This letter is at the top of The Age letters section today... Well said girl.

Why he must go

DEAR Sheikh Hilali. As a young Muslim woman, I have had to deal with the ubiquitous news reports that misquote Islam. I avoid trying to "make people understand" because I find reassurance in the belief that negative comments come from those who do not understand Islam. However, I am deeply angered by your views, on one level because they are out of touch with even the most Neanderthal society; on another because they come from a man holding a high position. How sad that you used your platform to preach these ideas. How useless that you hid behind the Arabic language and used a translator to give a different meaning to your words. Those who speak Arabic cringed at this disgusting ploy. Muslims face enough discrimination and misunderstanding. They need positive role models. You are not such a leader, and must resign immediately.

Fatima Abdullatif, Balwyn North

http://www.theage.com.au/news/letters/sheikh-hilali-why-he-must-go/2006/10/27/1161749315684.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Am I Normal...?

2006-10-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Whooookay. I just had an interesting experience! Rode a bike for the first time in 10 - 15 years. Yikes! I've purchased a rickety old bike (I didn't know quite HOW old or rickety...!) from a strange little bloke called Paddy, and today my bike and I were introduced for the first time. At first sight, I was beguiled by its cute blue frame and endearing skinny wheels, its rams-horn shaped handle bars held together with green electrical tape, and its antiquarian braking system. Then I tried to ride the little sucker! The gears are weird, my ass hurt within about 50 metres, and let's just say I'm not used to riding up hills.

Aaah but I really must tell you what Jessie-On-A-Bike looks like, for it is quite a spectacle. Up top we have a dashing pink, black and white zebra striped helmet which sits waaay too high on my head. Down low, we have the right pant-cuff tied securely around my leg with a shoelace so as to prevent it getting caught in the chain. HOT and ATHLETIC would be two words that should spring to mind. Unfortunately, though, the words that sprang to the mind (and lips) of my classmate Kelly were "off to the Special Olympics, are we??" Gold! I would have taken a photo, but I don't think my pride could have handled it. Maybe tomorrow :)

So, the "am I normal" title of this post owes its existence to my question to all of you cyclists out there: is it normal to be nervous (AKA borderline terrified) the first time one rides a bike in traffic? It was fine, I was safe, it's only a short distance, there are bikelanes all the way, and I know I'll get used to it, and I guess I can expect to feel a little underconfident at this stage. But by the time I was halfway home my heart was beating like mad, and I couldn't tell if it was adrenalin, or just the fact that I was trying to go up a hill in first gear! Anyway, I hope it will get easier and less scary soon. And I think I won't ride every day - just days that I know I'll be at uni until late.

School is getting quite full-on. Heaps of assessments due, and 4 out of 5 are group work, which is unusual, and not something I'm used to, as a law student. What happened to 'every potential articled clerk for himself'?! Thankfully that law school mentality is a thing of the distant past in this course. I had had a few nasty things going at home, and was a sorry little muffin for a fair chunk of the weekend. But on Saturday night, (the crapness pinnacle of the whole weekend) I *wanted* to go out and see my classmates, which I considered quite an indication of how great they are. Not only that, but they surpassed my expectations by being understanding and supportive and altogether lovely. They didn't even mind when I fell asleep on the couch. In fact, they even put a blanket on me! If you fell asleep on a couch at a law party you could expect to be woken up by people sitting on your head making out, or projectile vomiting, or by a loud, violent, shrill catfight (*all* things I have witnessed at Law students' parties... the latter two in the same night! Rool elegant...).

I was having a conversation with a girl in the cafeteria today, and we got around to discussing what is the difference. Why is this group of people so caring, nurturing, concerned with each other's wellbeing, and ready to look after one another? It took us about 2 seconds to realise it may be because they are all the kind of people who want to go and spend 18 months studying humanitarian assistance! There is such a richness and depth of compassion and concern in this group of people that it makes them all a pleasure to be around. To spend time in an environment with 20 people of 17 different nationalities (yes! that's right! unbelievable!) who are all bound by common goals and principles (otherwise known as brainless idealism and pie-in-the-sky do-gooder-ness!) is a privilege. When I should have felt far from home, lonely and homesick, I felt loved, looked after and cared about. To say that the people in my class restore my faith in humanity may be overstating the case (cue violins...!), but they certainly bolster my optimism in some way. I'm sad to be leaving them in February :(

Anyway I think that's it from me for now. I'm off to sizzle me up a chicken kiev and watch Commander in Chief (has it started in Australia yet?? I like it. Geena Davis for President!).

There you go, I finally blogged :)

JT x

Sorry!!

2006-10-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

whoa, major blogging hiatus. Sorry! My mum told me off this weekend for posting information about everything *except* myself and what i'm doing! But it's 11pm right now so now is not the time. But i do promise to post soon!

In the meantime I have attached a photo I took last weekend when my friend Meg came to visit me. This photo was taken at a bus stop, while we were waiting for a bus that never came. We had a great time together and it was lovely to see her after many months. This week I'll be receiving another glorious Melbournite - my friend Felicity whom I can't WAIT to see! yay :)

Anyway bed calls, I'm sorry for being so completely crap at blogging and I promise i'll be back soon!

Cheers

:) Jess

The 5th Anniversary of the Sinking of the SIEV-X...

2006-10-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

This is a day to be remembered for a long time. Arnold Zable has written a beautiful opinion piece on it. Here it is below. It made a tear run down my cheek in the computer lab at uni!

If you are interested in more info about events happening for Refugee Week (this week), you can go to http://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/docs/current/VIC%20RW%20events.pdf If you're somewhere other than Victoria, your state's Refugee Week activities can also be found by following the links on the Refugee Council website - www.refugeecouncil.org.au - go to news and events.

And now, a reflection by Arnold Zable...

---

A reminder of how we treat people who come to us for help

Five years ago 353 people died in the ocean trying to reach Australia, writes Arnold Zable.

TODAY marks the fifth anniversary of the largest maritime disaster off Australian waters since World War II. At 3.10 on the afternoon of October 19, 2001, a 19.5-metre fishing boat carrying 398 refugees sank en route to Australia. A total of 353 Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers drowned, including 146 children and 142 women desperate to join fathers and husbands living in Australia on temporary protection visas.

There were 45 survivors. On the morning of the fourth anniversary, I met one of seven Australian-based survivors, Amal Basry, at Melbourne Airport. We were to fly to Canberra to take part in an event marking the fourth anniversary of the tragedy. I had first met Basry in mid-2002 soon after her arrival in Australia. She saved her life by clinging to a corpse for hours.

As we waited to board the plane, Basry recounted an anecdote I had not heard before. She could not sleep the previous night because she was haunted by the memory of the sinking. When her son Amjed arrived home after midnight, they tried to remember what they were doing four years ago at that hour.

Basry recalled that in the early hours of October 19 the winds began to rise. The boat rose and fell in deepening troughs. Many passengers panicked. "God, save us. The ocean is angry," some cried. The cries of frightened children filled the air. Amal noticed a group of women on the crowded deck writing on a piece of paper. They were composing a letter to the angel of the ocean, they told her. "Angel of the ocean please protect us," they had written. "Angel of the ocean look after our children. Angel of the ocean, do not abandon us." They folded the letter and threw it into the water. That afternoon they were no longer alive.

This is one of many stories I have heard from survivors over the past five years. Each one records moments that sear the imagination. Survivor Faris Kadhem remains tormented by the memory of his seven-year-old daughter, Zahra, and wife, Leyla, slipping from his sight into the ocean.

Sondos Ismael lost three daughters, Eman, 8, Zahra, 6, and Fatimah, 5. As she grieved in Jakarta in the months after the tragedy, her husband, Ahmed al-Zalimi, was not granted a permit to join her, despite pleas to the Howard Government, since it would have breached the conditions of his temporary visa. Ahmed had arrived in Australia in 1999, in flight from Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. Like many other SIEV-X passengers, Ismael and her daughters were determined to reunite with him, even though he had begged them not to risk the sea journey.

In listening to these tales we come to know the human face of the tragedy. We learn the fate of individuals and come to know their aspirations and the reasons for their desperate flight from tyrannical regimes.

There also remain many questions to be answered. Why did the crews of three boats not respond to the screams of survivors who paddled towards them clinging to debris during the night? Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin contends the boat sank in international waters, 50 to 60 kilometres south of the Sunda Strait, in Australia's declared border protection zone. He asks what the Howard Government knew of the disaster.

Basry died of cancer in March this year. She was an ardent supporter of a project to erect a memorial on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin. The design features a life-size outline of the boat and a procession of 353 poles decorated by community and school groups in honour of each victim. Inspired by author Steve Biddulph and the Uniting Church of Australia, it is based on designs submitted by students in an Australia-wide competition in schools.

The SIEV-X sinking is our Australian story writ large. It highlights the trauma and dangers that flow from placing asylum seekers on temporary visas that prevent them from seeing their loved ones for years. It is a reminder of the good fortune of those who made it, and the tragedy of those who did not. It is a testimony to all who have undertaken perilous journeys in search of freedom, and it remains a searing reminder that we assess who we are as a nation by the way we treat those who come to us in a search of a better life.

---

Arnold Zable joins Actors for Refugees and Julian Burnside, QC, to commemorate Amal Basry's life and launch refugee week on Sunday at 5pm in the Carillo Gantner Theatre, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, University of Melbourne.

The Justice Project Forum - you may have missed it, but all is not lost!

2006-10-17T01:34:00.000-07:00

Last week on October 12th, Melbourne based organisation The Justice Project Inc. organised a forum with the title 'Human Rights in the age of border protection'. It was a hit, and there will be many more such events to come in future.

SBS radio covered the event, and has put excerpts from the speeches made by Julian Burnside and Malcolm Fraser up on its website at http://www9.sbs.com.au/radio/language.php?news=news&language=World%20View

You can go to that page and download 12 minute excerpts from each speech. Here are a couple of lines about their content. ENJOY!...

Human rights being eroded says top QC: 16.10.2006

The unpopular and the powerless are losing their human rights in Australia.
That's the conclusion drawn by human rights and refugee advocate, Julian Burnside Q.C.

Mr Burnside made those comments during a speech he delivered in Melbourne at a forum organised by The Justice Project.

In 2004, the Melbourne Q.C was among 12 individuals who established The Justice Project, which is a human rights lobby group that's particularly concerned about Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

Here's an edited portion of Julian Burnside's speech where he sets out the ways in which he believes people are losing their human rights.

Fraser rejects citizenship tests: 16.10.2006

An abomination is how the former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser sums up the federal government's plans to introduce citizenship and language tests for new migrants who want to become Australian citizens.
Mr Fraser criticised the proposed tests during a speech he delivered in Melbourne at a forum organised by The Justice Project.

In 2004, Malcolm Fraser was among 12 individuals who established The Justice Project, which is a human rights lobby group that's particularly concerned about Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

Here's an edited portion of Malcolm Fraser's speech which begins with his thoughts on multiculturalism.

FANTASTIC NEWS!!!

2006-10-15T10:25:00.000-07:00

Labor's big shift on refugees

Michael Gordon
October 16, 2006

THE Labor Party is set to abandon its policy of giving refugees who attempt to come to Australia by boat only temporary protection, in a fundamental shift in its attitude towards asylum seekers since the Tampa episode of 2001.

Opposition spokesman on migration Tony Burke is expected to announce today the shift to permanent protection — which represents a sharp contrast with government policy — after it is endorsed by the shadow cabinet.

The decision will mean Labor will go to next year's election opposing the two key aspects of the Government's policy — offshore processing in foreign countries, Nauru and Papua New Guinea, and temporary protection visas (TPVs).

More than 900 mainly Afghan and Iraqi refugees remain on the temporary visas after being found to have genuine fears of persecution if returned to their countries.

They are unable to leave Australia and return or seek to be reunited with immediate family members.

Labor's shift could also have implications for the small group of Burmese asylum seekers who were sent to Nauru for processing last month if their claims for protection are found to be genuine.

The decision will end several years of emotional internal debate within Labor on the visa system that was introduced in 1999 in a bid to deter unauthorised boat arrivals.

Mr Burke has refused to be drawn on the imminent shift, but gave a clue to his thinking at a Labor for Refugees dinner in July when he said: "If there is a reason for us to take a TPV policy to the next election, I am yet to hear it."

He declined to comment yesterday, confirming only that he had received a report from Labor's social policy committee. "I'll be responding to the report to the shadow ministry and will have more to say after that," he told The Age.

One of those rescued by the Tampa and living in Melbourne said yesterday the uncertainty about when he might be able to see his family had caused him to be treated for depression last year. The young man had suffered three years' offshore detention, been on a TPV for three years and has another two years before it expires.

Under the visa he has to pay full fees to study, with no certainty that he will eventually be granted permanency. "It's very hard," he said yesterday.

A push to end Labor's support for TPVs was defeated at Labor's last national conference by a vote of 226 to 164 after then leader Mark Latham put his authority on the line. Existing Labor policy provides for two-year temporary protection visas, with an expectation that permanent protection will then be granted.

The 14-page report of the policy committee, obtained by The Age, argues that TPVs should be abolished. "If an applicant is found to be a refugee that person should be given permanent protection immediately," it says.

The report challenges the Government's assertion that temporary protection visas are a deterrent to unauthorised boat arrivals, asserting the system encouraged women and children to risk their lives and follow their husbands and fathers.

The report also argues that uncertainty inherent in the temporary protection system has exacerbated mental health problems for many asylum seekers and that having to re-apply for protection when temporary visas expire forces the refugee to relive past trauma.

Sources say there is now a recognition on Labor's front bench that conditions have remained unsafe in Iraq and Afghanistan for several years, undercutting one of the Government's main justifications for the regime.

The Immigration Department's website justifies the system by asserting that recent experience of changing country situations shows the value of being able to reassess whether a person has a continuing need for protection before conferring permanent or continuing protection.

One source conceded that the policy shift was less radical than it would have been three years ago, when several thousand refugees were on TPVs. The source said Mr Burke had no plans to reconsider the other controversial plank of Labor's policy, support for the Government's excision of Christmas Island from Australia's migration zone.

As at October 6, 9875 temporary protection visas had been granted since 1999, an Immigration Department official said. In addition, 830 temporary humanitarian visas had been granted to unauthorised arrivals in Australia's offshore excised places, such as Ashmore Reef .

About 8450 of these TPV and temporary humanitarian visa holders have since been granted permanent protection.

The official estimated that about 1430 people still held temporary protection and temporary humanitarian visas.

Nauru makes it to Danny Katz's column!

2006-10-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Age Satirist Danny Katz has made a comment Australia's detention policy in his column this week. Katz was talking about the strange title of the comedy improvisation show 'Thank God You're Here', and decided on a few variations, including 'Thank Jehovah You're Here', 'Thank Buddha You're Here' and 'Thank Karl Marx You're Here'. The one i've taken an extract from here is the one I found interesting...!

Thank gods you're watching
By Danny Katz
October 12, 200
...
THANK ALLAH YOU'RE HERE
This zany new improvised TV show is staged in an Australian refugee detention centre, before a captive studio audience, who are locked behind 12-foot-high razor-wired cyclone fencing. Each week, a Muslim refugee enters the centre through a padlocked door, and is greeted by another Muslim refugee saying: "Thank Allah you're here! I don't know what horrors you're fl eeing from, but I'm telling you, it can't get any worse than this." Then the refugee must improvise their way through the rest of their stay at the centre, which can take anything up to seven years - and the winning refugee gets an all-expenses-paid longterm tropical holiday in Nauru.
...

Scathing! Gosh he's risque sometimes...!

A story about a friend...

2006-10-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

'Will This Man Lose the Will to Live?'
THE AGE - Opinion
By Michael Gordon
October 11, 2006

The funeral service for Olympian Peter Norman on Monday raised an intriguing question. Why is it that stories about some people capture the public imagination while others that may be just as compelling do not?

John Carlos, one of the black runners who shared the dais with Norman at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, observed that the sprinter should be as well known in Australia as Steve Irwin. Such, said Carlos, was the power of his role in their famous stand on human rights.

Yet while the image of the barefoot Tommie Smith and Carlos giving that black power salute is considered one of the most influential of the 20th century, the story of Norman's role in the protest is unknown to a great many Australians.

"You guys have lost of great soldier," remarked Carlos. "Go and tell your kids the story of Peter Norman."

A similar point can be made about Mohammed Sagar, an Iraqi refugee who has been detained offshore since he was rescued five years ago yesterday in the "children overboard" episode, and David Hicks.

While Hicks' detention without trial on Guantanamo Bay has, quite rightly, prompted expressions of outrage from a cross-section of Australians, from church leaders to former prime ministers, Sagar's situation has gone largely unremarked.

Of course, Sagar has not endured anything like the conditions that have been inflicted upon Hicks for 41/2 years and he is not an Australian. But his situation should alarm Australians who believe in notions of natural justice, the rule of law, compassion and a fair go.

After suffering physically and mentally under Saddam Hussein's rule and being found by Australian officials to have a genuine fear of persecution if he returned to Iraq, he has been held against his will on the tiny, near-bankrupt island of Nauru.

When I visited him on the island late last month, he told me how he wanted to have his life back, whether it be happy or sad. "I want to be alive, that's all, because now I'm feeling like a dead living thing."

Fran Kelly on the ABC's Radio National pursued the story for three days last week, culminating with an interview with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer about the $100,000-a-month visa fee Nauru has set for Sagar, to encourage Australia to find a solution for him.

When Kelly pressed Downer on Nauru's concern for Sagar and another Iraqi who had been held there, he displayed a singular indifference to their plight, observing that "one of them, I think, has been dealt with".

This was a euphemism for the decision several weeks ago to evacuate the second Iraqi, Mohammad Faisal, to a Brisbane hospital after his despair led him to become suicidal. He is said to be recovering well and may soon be released into a form of community-based care.

There are at least two explanations for the lack of pressure on the Howard Government to address the situation of Sagar on Nauru.

The first is that Nauru is a very long way away and communications are patchy at best. Sagar is out of sight and out of mind.

The second is that he, along with Faisal, received a negative security assessment from ASIO that meant Australia no longer had any obligation to offer him protection under the United Nations refugee convention.

While a lack of sympathy for a person considered a security threat by ASIO is understandable, neither man has ever been told what he is alleged to have done to warrant the assessment, so neither has had the opportunity to defend himself.

Neither Sagar nor Faisal had the benefit of any representation when they were interviewed on Nauru.

Both complain that an interviewing officer was very aggressive during the interview. Both are adamant they represent no threat to anyone.

And there is a bigger problem. There is no capacity for some outside authority, for instance a retired judge, to establish that ASIO's decision was soundly based.

Moreover, in their time on Nauru, neither man has caused any problems. On the contrary, both are highly regarded. Faisal was virtually adopted by a Nauruan family while Sagar has earned high praise for his voluntary work at the Nauru campus of the University of the South Pacific.

Indeed, while I was on Nauru he seemed to be regarded as a kind of voluntary help desk for the Nauruan Government and Australian officials working to tackle that country's considerable problems.

If there was a case to answer for some past deed or connection - and both men say there is not - their exemplary behaviour on Nauru surely should count for something.

Both men do have supporters in Australia who have been working hard on their behalf. Lawyer Julian Burnside, who characterises the treatment of both as "calculated cruelty", has launched a legal challenge to the ASIO assessments. But this is likely to be a very long process.

Susan Metcalfe, a researcher who has visited Nauru several times, has written letters to ministers pleading for some resolution and been a constant source of comfort. So have many others.

But time is running out. Recently, Sagar quit his part-time job at the university and withdrew from his studies. He likened himself to a dish that had been cooked and, instead of being removed from the stove, had been subject to even greater heat. "I'm done," he said.

It is time for some hard questions to be asked of those who have for too long considered the ASIO assessments a reason to do nothing.

The bottom line is whether the intention is to wait until Sagar, like Faisal, loses his will to live before someone decides he should be "dealt with".

Inside the world view of 'islamists'...

2006-10-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

I think this quote is an AMAZING little mind bender. i have never before come across something which so profoundly reveals the possible reasons underpinning a world view, and challenges us to think about them seriously.

OH! please note... 'islamist' doesn't mean 'muslim'... 'islamism' is a problematic and controversial term, but one which is typically taken to mean the adherence to the dictates of Islam in a way which is fundamentalist, extremist and potentially damaging. in *no way* does this article purport to equate all muslims to fundamentalist or extremist 'islamists'.

This article was written in response to the rage of Americans after 9/11, asking "what have we ever done to them? why would they want to harm us?". well, read it and see what you think...

"If by this stage we still find it hard to get inside the world-view of
Islamists, it may be helpful to listen to these words of an American,
Paul Kennedy, writing in the Wall Street Journal in October 2001 (a month
after 9/11), which represent a powerful appeal by an American to
fellow-Americans to ‘see ourselves as others see us’:

How do we appear to them, and what would it be like were our places in
the world reversed… Suppose that there existed today a powerful, unified
Arab-Muslim state that stretched from Algeria to Turkey and Arabia – as
there was 400 years ago, the Ottoman Empire. Suppose this unified
Arab-Muslim state had the biggest economy in the world, and the most
effective military. Suppose by contrast this United States of ours had
split into 12 or 15 countries, with different regimes, some conservative and
corrupt. Suppose that the great Arab-Muslim power had its aircraft
carriers cruising off our shores, its aircraft flying over our lands, its
satellites watching us every day. Suppose that its multinational corporations had
reached into North America to extract oil, and paid the corrupt,
conservative governments big royalties for that. Suppose that it
dominated all international institutions like Security Council and the IMF.
Suppose that there was a special state set up in North America fifty years ago,
of a different religion and language to ours, and the giant Arab-Muslim power
always gave it support. Suppose the Colossus state was bombarding us
with cultural messages, about the status of women, about sexuality, that we
found offensive. Suppose it was always urging us to change, to modernize, to
go global, to follow its example. Hmmm…. In those conditions, would not
many Americans steadily grow to loathe that Colossus, wish it harm? And
perhaps try to harm it? I think so."

Take some action for the Lombok Asylum Seekers... 5 years and counting...

2006-10-09T11:38:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, this is from Felicia di Stefano, Rural Australians for Refugees... I will paste the text of the letter she mentions below, so that you can copy and paste it into your own document. If you want a copy of the petition, EMAIL ME!! put the petition in your work kitchen, or pass it around your small group, anything!! jessie@thejusticeproject.com.au

J x

Dear All,

Thank you for your support in writing letters to politicians and returning signed petitions to help the asylum seekers
trapped on Lombok. With your help we sent in almost 3,000 signatures in support of the Lombok asylum seekers to
Amanda Vanstone via Senator Bartlett. "Pease say thank you very much to all those people who are helping us poor refugees".
writes Mohammad, our friend from Lombok.

Now we have a similar petition, this time addressed to the House of Representatives to enable it to be tabled in Parliament.
We also have a new form letter. Please find them attached. We desperately need your help again. Thank you to the
people who have already sent singed petitions. We have about 500 signatures so far.

October 2006 marks the fifth anniversary of the time the Lombok asylum seekers were towed from Ashmore Reef
to Indonesian waters by our navy. The 45 or so Afghan women men and children have been living in the Lombok
camp without basic human rights, on charity provided by Australia, for five years. The years of detention have taken
their toll. The people feel frustrated and often depressed.

The married men have been denied the means to provide for their families, the single men feel stranded.
All feel powerless as their fate is decided by others. They do not know from day to day what will happen to them.
Yet their lives are in grave danger if they return to Afghanistan. Please help us make our government realise the
inhumanity of keeping these people imprisoned on Lombok. Send in signed petitions, send off form letters, or write your own.

Thank you,

Felicia Di Stefano, member South Gippsland RAR, 125 Bateson Road, Glen Forbes, Victoria, 3990, (03) 5678 3294

Print name:

Print address

Date:

Senator Amanda Vanstone
Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Senator Vanstone,

I write to you in the hope that, in view of the recent increase of violence in Afghanistan, you will reconsider your policy towards the Afghan asylum seekers on Lombok. That you will allow them to return to Australia to live, work and study in our community while they are assessed for refugee status.

The 45 or so Afghan women, men and children remaining on Lombok, came to Australia to escape persecution and to save their and their children’s lives. October 2006 is the fifth anniversary of the time the Australian navy towed them back to Indonesian waters.

The five years the Afghan asylum seekers have lived in the Lombok compound on scant charity paid for by our government, without basic human rights of work, travel, family reunion or study, have taken their toll and the people are frustrated and often depressed. The married men have been denied the means to provide for their families, the single men feel stranded. All feel powerless as their fate is decided by others. They do not know from day to day what will happen to them.

I plead for compassion on behalf of the Afghan people trapped on Lombok. Their lives continue to be in grave danger if they return to Afghanistan, yet we cannot force these people to live in their present state of lack and uncertainty any longer. Please allow the Afghan asylum seekers to share their culture and work skills with the Australian society as they are assessed for refugee status and become valuable, contributing members of our community.

Sincerely yours,

Signature

KO-SO-VO: Laugh, Then Cry!

2006-10-07T10:06:00.000-07:00

OK I seem to have turned into the blogging QUEEN! Must be the weekend.

I want everyone to watch this video. Not only is it funny and clever and they clearly put in a lot of effort (oh the choreography...!), but it also makes a pretty valid point about what happens when things just sort of fall apart and an occupying (did I say occupying?) force withdraws from a trouble spot.

I apologise for the weirdness of the last 10 seconds of the video.. try to forgive that.

PS YouTube is completely amazing... I love it.

Where Am I???

2006-10-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

About fifteen minutes ago I was sitting on the couch in the lounge room of my house in Dublin, in front of the (fake) open fire, trying to do some homework. The doorbell rang. Curiosity won over wardrobe, and I decided to see who it was rather than simply hide because I was wearing pyjama pants. I opened the door on a cold, blustery day, to find two people standing on my doorstep. The younger was a little boy of about 5, with flaming red hair and freckles, wearing a blue parka and munching on a 'fun-size' chocolate bar. The older was clearly his mother. She same complexion and fiery hair, but looked stressed and drawn and impatient. She unleashed a gush of words in an accent so think I struggled to understand it, but the effect of it was that she was looking for "clothing, food, money, anything you can spare ma'am"... I was somewhat surprised because I'd never experienced this before - sure, kids come around door-knocking all the time for 40 hour famine, or MS readathon, and those kinds of things, but I had never experienced door-to-door 'begging' of this kind.

I hate being faced with beggars (good grief I hate that word) . I know most people do. But the reason is that I simply don't understand why my initial reaction is to make the situation go away! Why is my first instinct to say no?? Why is it that so many people immediately default to suspicion and distrust? I almost never say no to someone who is begging, regardless of what they ask me for, but when I was having lunch with my mum in Dublin last week, something happened. We were sitting at a table in a little italian street-cafe, when a woman walked past with a scarf over her head and a baby in her arms. She began asking us for money in that almost sing-song, chanting kind of way which always draws attention and makes people at nearby tables glad that it's not them being asked. My mother - seasoned traveller - replied brusquely "no, thank you. no", and the woman (only a girl, really) walked away.

That got me thinking. My mum and I disagree on a lot of things, and this is probably one of them. But my concern wasn't so much about my mother's and my divergent opinions - it was more about the fact that I am on a ridiculously generous scholarship studying humanitarian assistance in a great country, yet still struggle to deal with need, poverty and crisis in my own environment.

I don't think anyone would disagree that when you see a person 'begging' in your own home town or when travelling, it is an unpleasant thing to see. Whether you're gallivanting around Florence on a fun european holiday, or in Melbourne jabbering on your expensive mobile while rushing off to your expensive car to drive back to your expensive house, it always serves (for me, anyway) to highlight the massive gap between the haves and the have nots. And it is always uncomfortable to be so blatantly shoved in to the category of the haves, even if that's where you would ultimately choose to be. However, every time, you are faced with a choice. You can avoid eye contact, put your head down, grunt and rush past (to feel bad about it for at least the rest of the day, possiby longer), or you can smile, say hi, see if we've got a couple of bucks to spare, and walk away happy in the knowledge that the $5 you just handed over will not be missed in any significant way.

Obviously, when you get into the field of humanitarian assistance you need to have much more strongly developed boundaries. But what I am learning more and more from studying the philosophy of aid work and humanitarian assistance is that I had better bloody get used to my uneasy place among the 'haves'. As humanitarian aid workers in training, we are being told that we *need* to have boundaries. It is virtually impossible (not to mention horribly patronising) to enter a crisis situation, a warzone, a disaster zone or a refugee camp, and presume that we are all in the same boat, all been dished up the same crap-pie, and all "in it together". Because you know just as soon as the shit hits the fan we will be on the first UN plane out of there, and the locals will be left behind to deal with whatever's left. I think my colleagues and I would like to imagine that in the heat of the moment, we would be stronger and more committed than that. But who can tell? I guess you can't know until you've actually been there.

I'm not really sure what my point is here. I think I like my blog better when I write about spiders and bicycles! I guess I just want to challenge you (and myself) to think more carefully about the way we confront need. We have so much. Why do we find it so hard to part with just a tiny portion of it, even when faced with a desperate woman and a hungry baby? Can we close our eyes that easily? Does our selfishness know no bounds? Or are we worried that if we start giving, we won't know where, when or how to stop?

Anyway, I gave the woman and her son a loaf of bread and a bag of carrots. Two minutes after they left I wished I'd invited them in out of the cold for a hot cup of tea.

Reverse Spider Culture Shock!

2006-10-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

Well, after my arachnid-related post a couple of weeks ago I thought it fitting to let you all know that I am now the designated spider guru in my new house. My housemate Claire just said to me "I, er, don't suppose you're any good with spiders...?" and I was thus given the responsibility of getting rid of the one lurking just beside her bedroom door. I did it no worries. I can be tough when I want to :)

It's funny - Australia really does have a reputation for nasties! Donal (another housemate) was telling me that he was talking to someone recently and mentioned crocodiles, only to see that person become quite upset because their son or daughter had been devoured by one in Australia! Donal also told me that he's recently seen a show called something like '183 things that'll kill you in Australia'! good heavens! You can also participate in a kooky quizz of the same name... http://www.funtrivia.com/trivia-quiz/Geography/Things-Thatll-Kill-You-in-Australia-195533.html

Try it out! I got 8 out of 10. Yikes.

And I suppose the recent - incredibly globally recognised - passing of good old Steve Irwin does nothing to help this image.

It's quite extraordinary and makes me wonder how Australia has a tourism industry at all!

Must be pretty good to outweigh all that stuff :)

J x

My Room!

2006-10-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Some slightly less grandiose photography for you today... my room in my new house!!

I live in a little place called Goatstown which is very suburban... and i'm told it's the suburb of Dublin in which I am least likely to get murdered, so that's nice...! Haha. My housemates are nice and the place is clean and cosy and nice. I'll be happy here. Oh and I think I'm getting a bike! Maybe tomorrow! so that'll be fun, even though my mother is convinced that that won't end well! But it should be ok.

Alright i better sign off!

See you later :)

J xx

Some More Photos of the Weekend... Beautiful!

2006-10-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

'We Will Be Remembered For This'

2006-10-04T03:20:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon... www.myspace.com/wewillberemembered

Road Trippin' in Ireland

2006-10-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well, my mother and I are having an extremely hard time of it, sitting in front of an open fire and chomping on a kitkat. We are staying in this house you can see above - Coolclougher House, Killarney. We are the only guests here at the moment and basically have the place to ourselves. It's quite something! We have just returned from a gruelling day of touring some of the most beautiful scenery Ireland has to offer. Basically there's not too much point me yapping on about it, but will try to insert some photos here.... We drove down along the Dingle Peninsula, and did the Slea Head Drive. Here goes.

As you can see we had a beautiful day and we have seen some pretty extraordinary scenery! I'm sure you will be delighted with tales of our travels when next you see one of us :)

Cheers!

Jessie & Jillian

Watch This Space!

2006-10-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

OK I know i'm a terrible blogger and haven't posted in a while! But I have a good excuse! I'm currently in Killarney with me mam (that's irish for 'my mother') and have had little / no chance to post. But I will write a GOOD one in the next few days. In the meantime I shall placate you with a delightful picture of me surrounded by cold, damp, grey Irish countryside. It's pretty beautiful though! (the countryside, not me. check those under-eye bags! yikes.). I have a lot to post about when I get around to it, so I promise there shall be some good readin' right here, very soon.

Cheers!

JT xx

Conference Papers - Well Worth Reading!

2006-09-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

This is a bit random, but recently Monash University has published a bunch of very interesting, very accessible papers from the conference 'Seeking Asylum in Australia 1995-2005: Experiences & Policies'.

There are papers from Julian Burnside, David Corlett, Michael Gordon, Spencer Zifcak and many others... (including yours truly!)

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/public-history-institute/assets/asylum-forms/asylum-papers.pdf

Have a look and download it! It's a good little read.

Cheers!

Jess x

Photos of the Intensive Program in Sweden

2006-09-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone!

One of my colleagues from Dublin has put up all his photos on his website from the IP in Uppsala, Sweden (thanks Kelly!). If you're interested, go to this link and have a look! Uppsala is quite a beautiful place, and there are some very nice pics here.

Enjoy!

http://www.kellybradley.net/ip.html

JT x

(the above photo is a picture of the inside of one of the buildings at Uppsala University where we had our classes... not bad, eh??)

Spider-Induced Culture Shock

2006-09-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

OK so I didn't go to uni today. Woke up feeling, well, let's just say BAD. Spent 97% of the day in bed, except this evening I ventured downstairs to eat something and watch an angsty Gwyneth Paltrow film (Proof - i quite liked it, actually!). Then i decided it was time to retire. So I came upstairs and, as is my habit, proceeded to get ready to have a shower. I carried my towel (a luxuriously big lilac bathsheet) into the bathroom, put it down on the bench and put some toothpaste on my toothbrush. It was then that I saw 8 big hairy legs crawling out of the folds of my bathtowel! Ladies and Gentlemen, we had a BIGGUN' on our hands (it wasn't the biggest I've seen, but big enough not to be friends with). I don't know anything about Irish spiders so i scuttled downstairs and hoarsed (did I mention I lost my voice about 4 days ago??) "umm there's a spider in the bathroom, do you have any spray stuff?". Janet shuddered and said "Ciaran (her husband) will take care of it for you", and Ciaran looked wounded and said "surely you don't want to kill the little feller, do ye?". Anyway he came upstairs, we located the culprit and CIARAN PROCEEDED TO OPEN THE WINDOW, PICK UP THE SPIDER IN HIS BARE HANDS (all the while calling it "wee feller" and other such Irish endearments) AND GENTLY PLACE HIM OUTSIDE THE WINDOW. at this juncture i was squeaking (best I can do with my current vocal situation) and jumping up and down calling him a "crazy eejit" (and other such Irish insults)!

Well it turns out that he didn't die. After the kerfuffly (mainly from me) died down, I asked him what sort of spider it was. Perhaps i thought that some quasi-scientific inquiry would make me look like less of a total ditz. anyway, Ciaran calmly explained to me that there are no poisonous anythings in Ireland - snakes, spiders, nothin'. I'm sure my eyes widened in amazement. I sheepishly explained that I come from funnel-web land, and he laughed, said he knew and casually went back downstairs to keep watching the tv.

Chuh. Kind of embarrassing conduct from a girl who used to want to be an arachnologist...! I was something of a strange child...

Later!

Jess

OK I'm Sick. It's Official.

2006-09-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Waaaheeeeeyyy.... I have some kind of European Death Lurgy of Hell and Death (known to authorities as EDLHD). I've been ignoring it for a few days, but nay, the time has come to realise that I'm sick to the point of being quite unpresentable. Yikes.

Anyway, I am aware that I haven't written much since I arrived in Dublin, so I shall take advantage of my infirmity to remedy that.

Well, sometimes I feel like I'm at Monash Clayton (windy campus, big concrete buildings, long lectures, bad campus food), and sometimes I feel like I'm on another planet (THREE TIMES I asked for soy milk in my coffee on campus, got laughed at and told to go to starbucks!). A strange combination.

I've been having a great time staying with my aunt's friends. They are a family of husband and wife, three sons and another male cousin (all between the ages of 15 and 21), 2 dogs and two cats. From time to time, Janet goes out for the evening and leaves me alone with FIVE BOYS!!! Haha I tell you what - those dinnertime conversations are an eye-opener....! The house here is lovely and I'm being so well looked-after. All I have to do is walk to dogs, but in my current state it's really not been possible too often. I hope I get better soon so I can be less useless and walk the dogs more often.

Classes have started with a vengeance! So far we've had management, epidemiology and geopolitics. tomorrow is anthropology. We'll be doing international law in a big solid block in January.

I've been invited to a fantastic lunch tomorrow at James Joyce House here in Dublin. Brendan Kilty, a friend / associate of Julian Burnside, owns James Joyce House, and we were put in touch by JB before I left Australia. It sounds like an interesting event! The Tom Crean society is having a lunch, with a whole lot of the descendents of the Shackleton expedition!! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it. That's what I did...!). Unfortunately my state of health really doesn't render me fit for polite society, so I've had to decline the invitation. Very sad :(

ok i think it's time for dinner and i'm talking tripe, anyway. so i better go.

i promise to post again soon!

:) Jess xx

Hello Dublin!

2006-09-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

I’m sitting on the couch in my temporary home in Mount Merrion, Dublin, Ireland. Staying with friends of my aunty Libby, who have decorated their house in perfect Sydney style – big open spaces, lots of skylights, it’s beautiful! What a shame that this morning, the view from the skylight is a grey overcast sky! Welcome to Dublin ☺

The trip from Sweden was quite epic. We packed up our little red garden shed and checked out at midday. Then, seven of us piled into a minibus / taxi style thing with all our luggage and made for Stockholm Arlanda airport. We decided to check in as a group because there was some slightly inequitable distribution of luggage weight (Brian was leaving home for 10 days, I was leaving home for 10 months!), and we got through no worries. We hung around in the airport for a while, collected other random people who we knew, and eventually got on the flight. 2 hours 20 minutes later we landed in Dublin. There was a blue sky, beautiful sunshine, a light breeze and it was 22 degrees! At 5.20pm! Unheard of. Then I got a bus to meet the people I am staying with at the moment. And here I am!

Last night we went out to dinner chez the extended family. They live on a little street overlooking the bay in Blackrock – it was beautiful! The family is big and warm and slightly mad and they make the Symons family look like a collection of quiet, timid introverts! (those of you who know us and / or are a part of us will know how ***extreme*** these people must be!!) Unfortunately I was falling totally asleep and wasn’t able to enjoy the full benefit of the night – music, singing, amazing food, wine and the rest of it. Unfortunately I just wasn’t in a state to enjoy it!

This afternoon I’ve just got back from seeing the house where I’ll be living from October onwards. It’s a lovely little house in Goatstown (I love it!) with an Irish guy, an Irish girl and a Spanish girl. They seem cool, and the house is fantastic. I’ve got a decent sized upstairs bedroom with a built-in wardrobe thing, it’s big and light and airy and lovely. It’s got all the mod cons (including a HUGE backyard for barbecues on all those hot summer nights... oh no… hang on… gaaah!) and I’m really looking forward to settling in there. The room I have at the moment is great and the bed is comfy and the people are absolutely lovely, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve kicked someone out of their room…!

Anyway I better make a move. I’m off to meet my classmates at the front of Trinity College for dinner or a drink or something. Oh! And I got a digital camera! So very soon you’ll be seeing photos of stuff other than just my head! So you can all look forward to that!

Thanks for reading! See you later

☺ Jess

Goodbye Sweden!

2006-09-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

Well, today marks the end of the intensive program in Sweden! It's over! A few people have already left for the airport, so it's safe to say it's well and truly over. Gastronomically, I am not sad about that! Today, the administrator guy here handed me my meal ticket and said, "umm... are you vegetarian??" i said "no" and he said "good" and pulled a face!! i inquired further, and asked him if the food was bad, and he said that the sauce they put on the vegetarian meal today "tastes like smoked toothpaste"! haha. further investigation rendered further comment, including that the sauce "tasted like aeroplane seat". teehee. it was quite disgusting.

anyway, i'm leaving sweden tomorrow afternoon. in a way, i feel like i should go in to stockholm to look around for the afternoon, but can't quite muster the energy.

last night there was a big party and a few people made a couple of fires up on a hill near the campsite. everyone was up there making merry, with plastic bottles of plonk of all kinds of unfortunate flavours, lots of singing around the campfire, and general-rowdy making. it was quite fun. i went to bed early, but the cops were called at 5am...! whoops!

anyway i better go. will write more from ireland!!!

jess xx

Over it! Time for a break.

2006-09-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning. Ten days after arriving here in Sweden it's getting pretty much time for a break. I have literally spent no more than 5 minutes alone since getting off the plane, and it's taking its toll! I have actually - SERIOUSLY - taken to going to the bathroom a few times a day just to hide, chill out and get some peace and quiet!! Haha. Everyone is great and I really like them, but for someone who is used to spending a lot of time with me, myself and I, it's a recipe for grumpiness! So this morning I'm a bit of a scowler. Hence the no picture today - i fear that if I took a photo my computer would shut down in fear!!

On the other hand, of course, this is a pretty good preliminary indication of the intensity of being in the field! Except, in the field usually there'd be no running water or breakfast each morning... you'd be in a tent, it would be rainy and muddy and food would not just be served 3 times a day, with 3 coffee breaks! And it would last a hell of a lot longer than 10 days, and be MUCH more full on.

Good heavens I'm soft. Yikes.

J xx

My Dream Job: Prime Minister of a Swedish Paddock!

2006-09-13T04:08:00.000-07:00

(this photo is a picture of me concentrating very hard in class today… sorry for all the self portraits - the only camera i have is the one built into my computer!)

Whooooa nelly. Yesterday was one of the most extreme days of my entire life. The previous day, all 150 or so of us had been allocated roles: NGOs, medical personnel, food programs, security, media, guerrilla forces, political players, and of course a large refugee population. I was appointed Prime Minister of ‘Abenia’, the country bordering ‘Cedania’, into which tens of thousands of refugees were flooding after a major military strike by the Cedanian government on its own civilian population.

So… having no idea what we were getting ourselves into, we got on the buses at 8.30, like little humanitarian lambs to the slaughter! We were driven out to this huge paddock in the middle of the Swedish countryside, in the middle of which sat a big yellow tent. All the NGOs and governments etc came down into the region, and we were informed that about 20,000 refugees were on their way, many of them injured, traumatised, starving, carrying their sick and wounded. Well crap. So, everything swung into action. I had had a planning meeting with my government the night before (14 people in our cabin which is only just big enough for 4!!! Crazy!!), figuring out the structures of responsibility throughout various government departments and players. So immediately we met with all the heads of NGOs and informed them that they were to register with us, report to us and co-ordinate their efforts through us.

Anyway the day progressed crazily. I will not give you an entire narrative outline, however I will give you some bullet points of the stuff we had to deal with:

• Outbreaks of cholera
• Warring ethnic factions
• The overthrow of the Cedanian government by 2 rebel factions (while the government was out to lunch!)
• This meant that the Abenian government (my colleagues & I) began to negotiate the safe and secure repatriation of the refugees back over the border to Cedania
• The refugees cracked it and decided to leave the camp, hiking out over the mountains into Cedania before we had established a plan regarding food, health, sanitation, water, shelter, security etc.
• When they did this, there was a massive earthquake, and they were trapped in the mountains, with 2000 dead, and many more wounded.
• We then sent in some representatives over the border to retrieve the refugees and promise that they would be taken care of and safely repatriated in due course.
• The refugees eventually returned to the Camp and we began the repatriation process.

Things I personally had to deal with because some eejit designated me Prime Minister:
• Constant pestering by the press
• Threats by the Cedanian government that if we don’t extradite ‘terrorists’ (whom, incidentally, we considered to be refugees) back to Cedania, that government would attack the camp
• Corruption in my police force (sacked ‘em), and a corrupt Minister for Defence (whom I had trusted!), who had been ordering the rape, assault and murders of a number of the refugee population (sacked him too!)
• I ordered the arrest of the former Cedanian government for war crimes and crimes against humanity – they were taken to the International Criminal Court, but kept escaping from jail and raising hell (which I think was somewhat outside the rules of the game…!)
• … and much much more!

Anyway the day was absolutely massive. Crazy. I haven’t written much detail, because I was writing lots about it, and then my computer crashed and I lost the document. Annoying. Anyway, the day finished and we got on the bus and went to the Goteborgs Nations to eat dinner. Then a few of us went around the corner to another Nations for a quiet beer, and then we went HOME TO BED. Sweet! But… we were up again this morning and on the buses at 8.30am to come to class. It’s getting a bit much… heaps of people are getting sick, everyone’s tired, we’ve had a pretty full-on 9 days. It’s Wednesday now, and I’ve gotta say I’m hanging out for the weekend…!

Looking forward to getting settled and exploring the funness of Dublin.

OK that’s enough for now!

Oh one more thing – spending time in an academic setting with people from such diverse backgrounds (development, geology, medicine, anthropology, political science, etc) is making me realise how much I think like a lawyer. I had never really noticed, but now it’s becoming more and more clear to me… interesting.

No Rest for the Weekend!

2006-09-11T07:03:00.000-07:00

Monday 11 September 2006

Yesterday we had half a day off – my goodness. Better late than never! Sunday morning – I had a meeting at 7am (heck, I know) with a few people who wanted to talk about co-authoring a book. Then I got back to the camp and hung around a bit (did a bit of Persian study!) just in time to take the bus to Sigtuna. I basically napped all the way there on the bus. After about an hour, we arrived in this strange little town, had a couple of lectures and a cultural introduction to Sigtuna (the oldest existing city in Sweden). We then had lunch, and were unleashed into the town for a few hours. OK there’s no two ways about it – this town is creepy. It was like the set of the Stepford Wives – totally perfect. Perfect houses, perfect children with perfect teeth, perfect pets, perfect gardens. Totally creepy. You feel like something’s going to go horribly wrong at any moment. Anyway, I managed to find a (perfect!) chocolate ice cream and sit down in the sun with my new Scottish friend Jaq (she says ‘aye’ instead of ‘yes’, ‘wee’ instead of ‘little’, ‘fillum’ instead of ‘film’ and ‘gerrul’ instead of ‘girl’ and ‘laddie’ instead of ‘guy’! Oh, and people who are attractive aren’t ‘attractive’, they’re ‘fit’!). We sat there for a while, being pursued vigorously by wasps, and then meandered along to a little bookshop, where I managed to find a copy of Milan Kundera’s ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’ in FRENCH! Needless to say, I bought it. Yippee.

Then we went and sat by the lake for a while, snoozing, listening to music, enjoying the sunshine (see blue sky in picture above!!), before getting on the boat to cruise back to Uppsala. The cruise was so lovely – this big old boat, kind of quaint and creaky, and we ate delicious food and sat outside on the deck sipping a drink in the late afternoon sun. Then we got home and I went to BED!

On Saturday night (sorry – going chronologically backwards) there was ‘Cultural Night of Uppsala’. This meant that this sleepy, empty, quiet little hamlet came alive with rock bands, punky youths, lots of beer, dancers in funny olde costumes, stalls on the street along the canal and all sorts of other stuff. I seriously don’t know where all these people came from. I have seen hardly ANYONE in this town for the past week, but suddenly it was absolutely buzzing! I just went out to the Norlands Nation (‘Nations’ are almost like student unions, but for drinking! It’s like, your spiritual, alcoholic home. Quite funny) for a quiet beer before returning home to go to bed.

Already I’m getting sad, wide-eyed comments from my Irish colleagues who are a bit disappointed by the (small) amount I drink. They are all saying to me “where’ve ye been, little one? I thart Australians could hold their liquor. But ye’ve hardly been on the piss AT ALL.” Haha. I seem to be a massive disappointment. ☺

Anyway I better go. I think tomorrow we will be gallivanting around the Swedish countryside delivering imaginary emergency assistance to imaginary refugees in an imaginary humanitarian crisis. Bring it on!

See you soon!

JT x

A few days in...

2006-09-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

Day 5 - September 9, 2006

Well, we’re a few days in now, and everything is going swimmingly. Sweden is still a little strange, and I still feel like I’m on a weird, giant, international, academic school camp! The food is all just potatoes, fish and pork, mostly fried. And bread, bread, bread! If you can get your hands on a piece of fresh fruit you can pull millions for it on the black market! I want to know where the Swedes keep all their morbidly obese citizens. Because looking at the diet – there must be quite a few…

It was quite extraordinary that on the FIRST day of lectures, a representative from the UN mentioned Australia's rather embarrassing behaviour in front of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination! This guy was actually sitting on the Committee when Ruddock had a tantrum and insulted the whole UN treaty system in 2000. He mentioned how shocking Australia's treatment of asylum seekers and indigenous people is... it was amazing to cross the globe and be confronted in the first 2 hours of class with my country's human rights reputation in Europe. Gee whizz.

We’ve had some amazing lectures over the past 5 days. Some have been kind of annoying, theoretical and self-congratulatory, but some are really extraordinary. We had 2 guys come and speak to us a couple of days ago, one from Red Cross, and the other from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). They both had extensive field experience, in Rwanda, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and all over the place. They were massively challenging – they both spoke about the serious security issues of working as an aid worker in the field, and the fact that NGO workers are no longer protected by the symbols of the organisations. Particularly upsetting were their comments on how sometimes now NGO workers are specifically targeted because they are NGO workers. The MSF guy spoke about the murder of 5 MSF workers in northern Afghanistan in 2004, and the fact that he – as the head of mission there – had basically no choice but to pull out of Afghanistan after these killings. It was really, really awful. It’s extraordinary to see the statistics of aid workers who are killed in the field. I think in a 5 year period there were 375, which is quite high. It’s also a bit scary that since Day 2 of the course, we have been talking about the very real security risks, and the possibility of death in the field. Whoa. Talk about baptism by fire. No mucking around.

Anyway, time to lighten up, I think! It’s Saturday today and we are at school, talking about gender issues in humanitarian emergencies. I expected to hate this session, but it’s actually been really interesting and practical. It’s amazing how much emphasis there is on listening to people – refugee populations, people in humanitarian emergencies and crises, just go out there and listen to them, before attempting to respond. What’s going on for you? What are your needs? Importantly, what are your capabilities? I love this practical, real, interactive approach to relief. It’s great.

Tomorrow we are going to be doing some outdoors stuff, which I can’t wait for. Apparently the weather will be good, and we are going to Sigtuna (a place… I really don’t know where / what / why it is!). We will then take the boat back from there to Uppsala, and dinner will be served on board. It sounds kind of fun!

My sleep is settling down much more now. I went to bed at 9.30 last night!! Still pretty tired, I think probably from the weeks leading up to my departure, more than jetlag.

OK sorta have to go now. Internet access is very erratic!! Will post again soon.

Love love

J x

First few days in Sweden...

2006-09-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

Sept 7 – NOHA Intensive Program

It’s my third day here in Sweden and already I’m getting into the swing of things. I arrived at Stockholm Arlanda airport on Tuesday morning, after 24 hours of travel. After I got most of my public weeping out of the way, the trip was ok – a cumulative total of about 5 minutes turbulence, quite a lot of sleep, and good movies on the magic screen in my seat. I came through immigration at Arlanda, surrounded by hundreds of Thais (why were they all going to Sweden?! Why?! Why?!), and took a bus to Uppsala. This gave me my first glimpse of Sweden out of the window. It looks a bit like rural Czech republic – kind of green, a little bit bland, open, occasional very cute little houses among fields etc. I then got to Uppsala central station and got a taxi. The cab driver was Iranian, which was fun, so I got to speak my 5 words of Farsi to him while he laughed at me in surprise!

I got to the camping ground here at Fyrishov at 8.50am. Upon my arrival, I was informed that the buses to school were leaving at 9am, and as such I didn’t have time to go to my cabin! So, in dismay, I had to settle for a quick brush of the teeth in the loo adjacent to the reception area. Unfortunately my toothbrush had been in my bag next to a bottle of deodorant that had leaked, so I brushed my teeth with deodorant rather than toothpaste. Hmmm. Not great. I then took my foggy, stinky, crumpled, aeroplaney self onto the bus to uni. The uni building is so beautiful. Uppsala is a cute little town (about 40kms north of Stockholm), with lots of green trees, and pretty pink buildings. Swedish food is just HEAVY. Potatoes, bread and meat. Very little fresh fruit, and soy milk may as well be from outer space! We had classes til 5.30, then dinner, then a function at a museum, which meant that I got back to the camping ground at 9.30pm… a ridiculously huge day. I can’t remember ever being more in need of a shower and bed!

The cabins we’re staying in are smaller than most garden sheds, and sleep 4! One room with a bunk, and an L-shaped couch in a corner, upon which 2 (hopefully short!) people must sleep. The bathroom (including shower) is about as spacious as a bathroom on a bus. Hardly enough room to swing a loofah, let alone a cat! There are basically no cupboards or closets, so our suitcases are just piled on top of eachother, which makes jetlag-induced midnight toilet runs quite hazardous. Luckily, it seems that we 4 girls (me, and girls from Holland, Ireland and Guatemala) get along quite well. I’ll give you an update on that after we’ve lived up each other’s noses for 10 days…! ☺

The content of the course is really quite extraordinary. Some of it is kind of intellectually wanky, but some of it is amazingly interesting. Yesterday we had an address from Mary B. Anderson, who is basically the goddess of theory of humanitarian action. She spoke for hours and hours, but said so much, in a way that made sense and was completely fascinating and logical, even in the vacuum of my inexperience.

At the moment I’m really just looking forward to getting settled in Dublin. I think I have found a house (in Goatstown, of all the cute suburb names!), which is a good feeling. All the people who will be spending their first semester in Dublin are quite cool, laid back, and seem like fun. My kind of people! So that will be fun.

I keep being struck by the total randomness of the fact that I’m currently in Sweden! It’s funny – I’ve never particularly wanted to come here, and yet here I am! Anyway I should probably go and pay attention. I will write again soon. Miss you all lots!

J x

Aaah, Home Sweet Home!

2006-04-10T00:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it's 6pm on a Monday, and as usual my little house has become overrun by ten year olds learning the violin. At 5 o'clock the creep up the stairs, sheepishly seeking their lessons. My housemate, you see, is a violin teacher, and some afternoons she teaches from home. Usually I would make an effort to be far, far away from the house but unfortunately that was not to be, today. One day I was sitting at my kitchen table with Bec while one of these aural assaults was happening, and the light was such that the shadow of the little girl playing violin in the next room was cast, huge and angular, on the wall of the hallway, making her look like a giant, squealy stick insect! It was very Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'. Haha. Poor kids. I really hope they get better at violin, for their own sakes as well as mine. Hehe.

The reason I am somewhat home-ish today is because I've been struck with the obligatory get-home-from-overseas-get-a-cold cold. So here I am, head full of mush and drugged to my eyeballs on echinacea and panadol, trying to get my ideas together for my thesis (the topic of which i have just changed COMPLETELY, so i kinda should y'know, get a move on...), trying to get back into a bit of a work routine, having arguments with my telephone company, pretending my bedroom doesn't look like something straight out of Armageddon, and the rest of it.

Lots of fun. And now I'm off for dinner at my mum's house because i have also been struck with the obligatory get-home-from-overseas-and-have-no-money thing too.

Hmm. Good times!

See ya

JT x

confest info...

2006-03-28T05:21:00.000-08:00

unfortunately i had some trouble with the poster being too big for this page, so instead i will attach a rather becoming photo of the chai tent, which i think might have been taken by russ... i will also place this link here so that if you want to know more info about the 'fest you can simply click to your heart's content!

http://www.dte.org.au/NextFest.html

i always find it funny that on their website, the Down to Earth (the organisers) people sound like mean old school teachers. NO PETS! NO GLASS! NO DRIVING AFTER DARK! NO SMALL FIRES! YOU MUST VOLUNTEER FOR YOUR TWO HOURS!!! they sound so bossy, but when you get there it's really, really laid back and fun! strange that they make their website a bit mean. oh well. i'm going and it's gonna be GREAT! just ask bec rowe...! she's like, the most excited i've ever seen her. hehe :)

jess x

CONFEST IS IMMINENT!!

2006-03-28T04:18:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, it's that time again where we drag out our tents, cuss at the bentness of the poles and the dwindling number of pegs and guyropes, and drive to Confest! Aaah Confest, land of scantily-clad hippies, lazy days under a gum tree, in a hammock, beside a river. Yum fresh food, the chai tent, going to sleep to the sound of distant djembe drumming and waking up in the crisp morning air with the sun shining through the leaves. the way that time stands still, and somehow 4 days is long enough to forget a lifetime of stress.... Aaaah Confest!

There's quite a small crew coming along this year, which will be great. I'm really stoked that i'm going to be able to make it, because i thought I would be in Geneva. The two major bonuses of the UN Commission being reduced to a whopping 3 hours long are: going to hannah and tom's wedding, and CONFEST! yay. It's going to be great. I've posted some more info below so have a squizz....

J xxx

Where the *%@&"§ Hell Are Youse!?

2006-03-28T01:39:00.000-08:00

Hehe hi, well this post is a little bit out of left field, but I HAD to put this link on my site! Y'know those Tourism Australia ads, the "where the bloody hell are you" ones, which are causing consternation and puzzlement the world over?? Well somebody has taken it upon themselves to do a much, much more entertaining version...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkgZf8kej38&search=where%20the%20hell%20are%20you

Oh mercy! Haha. Enjoy.

J x

The Party's Over!

2006-03-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

Well we are definitely in work mode here in Geneva! As of yesterday, things have kicked off and we've been in briefings, meetings and group sessions. I guess this all means that there'll be less scope for doing fun adventuring every day, which may mean this blog gets a little yawnish. I hope not, though! Just to prove to you my committment to keeping it fresh, here is a picture of me and stuart jousting with icicles. That spelling really does look wrong, doesn't it? Icicles. IcYcles? Hmmm.

Also, perhaps I should refer you to my blog where I am writing more often about the work that we're doing at the UN, so if you're interested in that you can have a look... http://funatthechr.blogspot.com

OK big day tomorrow, so i'm out of here!

By!

Jess x

a chilly day in France

2006-03-14T02:52:00.000-08:00

Hello faithful reader!

Yesterday Stu, Aedan and I went to Annecy, a little village in France, just for the afternoon. It was lovely but so cold we hardly knew what to do with ourselves! So we jousted with icicles, slid down icy hills on a cardboard box we found, took novelty photographs, terrorised local kebab shops with our 100 euro notes and found ourselves greatly diverted.

As I write this i'm sitting in my room with Stuart awaiting the kick-off time for our briefing. We are both done up like a two-bob watch in our work clothes - a far cry from the beanies and chunky jumpers of our trip thus far! But we look faaaahn - oh yeah!

Anyway I'd better go. I feel a bit nervous actually! Oh - in other news - I've started to teach myself Persian! I've been spending at least an hour a day, and i can now READ PERSIAN! i'm still terribly crap at it, but will doubtless improve, and it's quite fun!

OK i'm outty. See you later!

Jess x

Aaaah Switzerland: Land of Cheese & Chocolate!

2006-03-12T04:43:00.000-08:00

Well, yodel-odel-ay-hee-hoo from Switzerland! I got to Geneva on Thursday evening (three days ago), and so far I’m having a blast. A quiet, peaceful, relaxing blast, but a blast nevertheless. I love doing little domestic things. I love going shopping for orange juice and pasta. I love looking at the foreign brands of shampoo and hot chocolate and yoghurt. I love walking up to my local little café to stand at the bar and drink an espresso – something I never do at home. The ability to diverge from my usual routine and emerge myself in the local vie quotidienne is so cool! It’s a freedom that I really cherish.

The family I’m staying with here is brilliant. For starters, it’s a family. I was expecting to be renting a room in a grumpy person’s flat, but it’s not like that at all. I feel so comfortable and welcome here, and it has been made abundantly clear to me that while I’m here I’m to act as though I’m part of the family. It’s really lovely. I’m sleeping on a mezzanine sort of thing but the bed is SO comfy that I’ve taken to describing it as sleeping on a cloud of singing angels. But that was mainly to irritate Aedan who spent his first night in a remote hippie commune in the forest, surrounded by prolific snorers and sleeping on a bed that broke three times during the night, causing him to clunk his head on the wall the first two times, and fall clear onto the floor the third time. Haha. The poor bugger. But as happens so often with these things, it’s already just a funny story.

Geneva seems so far removed from the Switzerland of Heidi and cuckoo clocks and chalets, until you squint a little bit and look into the distance, and remember that the whole city is surrounded by improbably high snow-capped mountains. The town is quite cute, and there are shops selling expensive watches, cuckoo clocks and Swiss army knives all over the place. I might get in trouble for saying this, but the place is remarkably like France. I can’t really explain how – it’s just the vibe...

We’re being briefed by the Australian Permanent Mission on Tuesday, and we start meeting delegates from the other countries on Wednesday. It looks like the Commission will start Monday week, and may even run for the full 6 weeks! It will be so funny if after all this to-ing and fro-ing everything just goes to plan. However in all the media reports, people are referring to the CHR as “the discredited United Nations Human Rights Commission” which doesn’t bode well…! Oh well. We shall see.

Anyway I’m going to go and read some more. I’m reading David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s book ‘Dark Victory’ – it’s a book about every tiny strategic move and the wheeling and dealing surrounding the Tampa, and leading through to the Howard government’s unlikely election victory 10 weeks later. It’s quite an amazing book – if you’re interested you should get your grubby mitts on it. You don’t have to be a lawyer or a political scientist to read it – it reads fairly easily and rather like a political thriller. Lots of suspense and antics on the high seas. The worst part of it is that it’s a true story…! Read more here : http://www.allenandunwin.com/Shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?ISBN=1741144477

See you later!

Jess x

Terezin Part III

2006-03-10T08:46:00.001-08:00

Anyway we got to the Small Fortress. The Small Fortress was a bit different to the town in that it served as a Gestapo prison, not just a ghetto. So there were all sorts of other people there – enemies of the Reich, resistance fighters, illegal communists and other such ‘undesirables’. During World War II, 32,000 inmates including 5,000 women went through the Fortress. We walked past the many headstones, the huge crucifix and the Star of David and in the front entrance, with its black and white striped archway. We were given a ‘program’ sort of thing – a little brochure with a suggested route through the Fortress. We started in the Administration Courtyard, which is adorned with the retrospectively ominous words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (work will make you free). There were little rooms off the courtyard where people were registered, made to strip and put on their prison garb, officers’ rooms, and a clothes store. There were cells where hundreds of people were crammed. There was a little ‘surgery’, and solitary confinement cells. Whoa brother. 8 seconds in one of those was plenty for me, thanks. There was a bathroom and delousing room which – because it was just a room with showers in it – looked exactly like an Auschwitz gas chamber. Creepy. There was also a Hospital block which was set up late in the war, somewhat in response to the typhus epidemic which swept through the prison in 1944. Here, imprisoned doctors and nurses were made to care for the sick.

The next part was one of the most horrible things I’ve ever experienced. The words ‘Underground Passage’ will usually inspire a faint sense of unease, but unfortunately we had no idea what was coming to us. Even the little warning placard at the entry of this tunnel warning us that it was half a kilometre long didn’t put us off. Turns out it should have. Turns out I am prone to FREAK OUT a bit in extremely long, bad-vibed, pitch-black-in-places underground tunnels haunted by the ghosts of thousands of murdered Jews. Oh cool.

Anyway that spat us out into daylight (freakin FINALLY) into the execution ground. There was a set of primitive looking gallows, and a patch of grass against a wall which I had seen a number of times in photographs of people being shot in the head. This was not a good feeling, and we continued on through the little wall leading to what was at one point a mass grave, where about 600 bodies had been exhumed and relocated to the cemetery after the war. Strangely, though, this are was so beautiful. It was surrounded by the rich dark orange brick walls, and it was lush and green. There was a stream running through it, in which there were lots of frogs and fish, either dead or frozen (or both?) in a state of suspended animation in the freezing water. It was so completely strange. There were these two frogs sort of facing eachother and with their arms and legs spread, and they looked like a photograph of two frogs ballroom dancing. I would say that Will got a stick and poked them, but unfortunately that was me. There is photographic evidence.

Anyway we then turned left and walked through another arched gateway, which is called ‘The Gate of Death’, where prisoners had to walk on their way to the place of execution. Directly on the other side of the Gate of Death was a swimming pool for the guards and their families, and a cinema built for their entertainment. Less that 20 metres from the execution ground and mass grave. What must the children of those guards have seen? Imagine the sights, sounds and smells of life surrounded by so much murder, in which their daddies were partaking! It’s unthinkable. Anyway we went into the little cinema, which was so cute. All wood panelled and quaint and charming, which of course made it 50 times more horrible. Will and I of course exchanged half-assed jokes about finding out the session times for Brokeback Mountain, but our hearts weren’t in it.

It was getting late by this stage, and we had to hurry. We continued along our little self-tour to see more solitary confinement cells, a couple more courtyards, and then the huge Fourth Courtyard, which I had seen many pictures of, fully equipped with its ‘warning gallows’. And was it just our imaginations, or did there appear to be a smattering of bullet holes at head and chest height on the wall in the far corner of the Courtyard? After 3 people tried to escape from cell 38 in March 1945, one of them and two other men and a woman selected at random were executed as a warning to others who would attempt to escape. The other two would-be escapers were caught and stoned to death in the first courtyard.

We then saw a museum of artefacts belonging to the SS and Gestapo, which finished off with some photographs of hangings of camp commanders. As we were looking at them, a little old lady sidled up to us and pointed out that those executions had happened just outside the window over there.

All in all it was horrific. The town was freezing cold, sad, lonely and all but deserted. Occasionally we would see three or four young children walking down the street together dressed in brightly coloured parkas and scarves, and we would ask ourselves how their parents could possibly live there. By the end of the day we both felt completely suffocated by the awfulness, and couldn’t wait to get back on the bus. We got back to Prague and had a meal together, and then had a couple of drinks with Neil before turning in for the night. I was (was?! AM!) still haunted by the feeling of the place. It is indescribable. I said to Will at one point that I had never been in a place that feels like it is actually God-forsaken. But this place certainly seemed to be. I don’t know about the theology of that idea, but there you.

I took heaps of photos, but I don’t have a digital camera! You will obviously be welcome to see them when I next am where you are.

If you have any questions or comments or anything please leave a comment!

Cheers

J x

Terezin Part II

2006-03-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve been putting it off and putting it off, but here I am to write some more about Terezin. Won’t that be fun. As I was saying, the bus drove us through the ramparts and into the town. We were unceremoniously booted off the bus and left standing opposite a big, empty square rimmed by trees that look like they’ve never been green. We saw a sign pointing to the Ghetto Museum, and decided to go and investigate. We bought our tickets and walked up a big white staircase into the museum. It was amazing – there was so much information we could have stood there for hours reading. There were clothes, artefacts, videos of survivors telling their stories of life in the ghetto. There were maps, drawings, letters, quotations, musical scores, photographs and an unbelievably comprehensive coverage of the whole strategy of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ (the lovely euphemism for ‘Getting rid of all those pesky Jews’). We then saw a sign advertising the museum’s cinema, and decided we would like to watch whatever film they wanted to show us about the place. So we went into a huge 400-ish seat theatre and sat down. Completely alone. Completely the only two people in the whole place. And watched a film entitled ‘Terezin: Chapters from History’. It was awful, we left feeling kind of soul-squashed and decided that before adventuring out into the cold we needed some sustenance. So we went down into the little cafeteria and had some lunch. I can’t explain what was strange about it – I guess it was just a bit surreal that the Coca Cola culture is so pervasive that it even has a place in a museum commemorating the greatest horror ever committed by mankind. Oh well.

So we had lunch and then began walking around the town. Our first destination was the Magdeburg Barracks which had been used to house internees during the war. We couldn’t find it due to the extreme confusion resulting from the discrepancy between the street names on the map and the street names according to the signs, so we wandered aimlessly for a while, and in doing so managed to become filled with the aura of the town. It was cold, grey and empty. And although I know there were occasionally cars and people and dogs, I remember an oppressive silence. We walked around this derelict town, broken, boarded-up windows everywhere and eventually found the Magdeburg Barracks. It was strange – this was the only part of the museumy stuff that we didn’t like, because they’d done up the barracks all cosy-like, and to be honest it all looked kind of like a cute room where you might go to stay for Year 7 camp. Hmmm. Maybe not exactly on the money, there. So we left the barracks and crossed the road to this strange strange strange little op shop. There were no lights on, and they sold strange things, but the worst of it was definitely a large pile of shoes in the back corner, next to a huge rack stuffed with old coats, which was unavoidably reminiscent of photos of abandoned belongings in a Holocaust museum. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough. And we didn’t buy anything.

Our next destination was the Crematorium and Ceremonial Room. We followed the signs emblazoned with a Star of David and the word ‘Krematorium’. The ground was covered with dirty ice and snowy sludge, and as we followed one of the roads around the perimeter we saw a man with a dog, up on a little hill next to the street. We risked life and limb to climb up the embankment, looking thoroughly ridiculous trying not to fall on our asses on the ice. When we reached the top, we realised we had accidentally stumbled upon one of the prisons. It’s hard to describe the layout of the town, but this barracks-style prison had a deep moat surrounding it, and the brown brick wall was high and impenetrable with very small windows every few metres. It wasn’t done up all museumy, and it was overgrown, dilapidated and hostile looking. Will recalls our accidentally finding that building as one of the more powerful and awful moments of the visits.

We eventually came to the Ceremonial room. For the first few months, at least, when someone died at Theresienstadt they were properly farewelled according to the custom of their religion, and buried in a coffin, in a civilised way. Needless to say those practises soon fell by the wayside as the mortality rate skyrocketed. In September 1942 the ghetto was at its most crowded, holding 58,500 people. In the same month, the Crematorium was completed, equipped with four modern furnaces, which were put to hard work as the death rate reached 131 people each day. We walked down a pathway into into the semi-underground Jewish Ceremonial chamber, which had been beautifully adjusted to tell the history of the place. There was a primitive sort of autopsy room, and then the space where burial ceremonies had been held. It was very dark, and the ceiling was low. I looked down through a metal gateway where I could see nothing but a long, black passageway, with many, many black metal doors, all sitting slightly ajar. I could only just make out their outlines in the darkness, and the empty black passage seemed to go on for kilometres, with door after door after door... It was like something out of a nightmare. It chilled me to the bone and we left immediately.

We walked down a long avenue (after Will stopped to play with some funny animals that were in the little canal / river / moat – they were beavers or otters or something, I don’t remember…), and there appeared at the end of it a huge black marble menorah. We had come to the Jewish Cemetery and Crematorium. I can’t really write much except to ask you to imagine what it’s like to walk into a big stone room with four 8-foot long huge metal furnaces, all with ashes and embers still sitting at the mouth of the machines. It’s horrible. It was so cold and silent, and we wandered around for a few minutes before just getting the hell out of there. In a tiny little side passage there was a room still set up for autopsies – the huge stone tables with drains and a big sink at one end. Brrr. Oh, and to add to the delight there was a little glass cabinet boasting some original implements – things to cut and grab and slice and remove and oh my gosh – it was a bit too much. Will walked into one little empty room and said “oh, there’s nothing in here, it’s just a little room”. I saw the plaque on the door and told him in a little voice that that was the morgue. We got out of there pretty quick after that…

As you can imagine, we were not feeling too chirpy at this stage of the day. We decided that we would just walk around to the Small Fortress (a 10 minute walk from the town), have a look around there and then get back on the bus to Prague. Nice, warm, safe, happy, comfortable Prague. It was SO cold. Bitterly, bitterly cold. I was wearing 3 pairs of pants – my leggings, my jarmie pants AND my jeans, and had about 6 tops on, as well as a coat. But dang, it was cold.

We bought a cup of hot chocolate from a lady who was sitting behind a counter cut out of the wall of a building near the entrance to the town. The cup was full and we were walking so I managed to slosh hot chocolate all over my gloves. First it burned, and then it was freezing cold. We walked back out through the ramparts leading into the town, and made our way around to the Small Fortress. We crossed over the Ohre, a raging, slime green coloured river with cliff-like banks lined with buildings we could tell used to be kind of grandiose. It was eerie. The only person in sight was a homeless man who was babbling incoherently and following us, asking for money. Everything was just deserted. It was like a plague had gone through and everyone had just dropped everything and left.

London is more funner than i remembered...

2006-03-04T00:39:00.000-08:00

hello to all and sundry. i know i still haven't done Terezin Part II - i'm trying to get myself geared up for it. In the meantime, i'm in London. Granted, not for long - I am getting the Eurostar to Paris this afternoon to begin the French section of my adventure. i'm really looking forward to hanging out with my Paris friends - i LOVE those guys! they're great.

well London's been a whirlwind. I haven't done any touristy stuff, I've just wandered around the streets and shops, spent time in cafes with a book, and had a frightening glimpse of the fact that somewhere just below the surface of me there lurks a person with rather a penchant for shopping in London. Gulp. Anyway I'm leaving today (can you hear my bank account sobbing with relief?).

Yesterday I was just wandering around Covent Garden market when i heard singing. of course, in Covent Garden market that is hardly unusual, but when i drew closer to the source of the singing, i found it to be a little bald man who looked quite a lot like Uncle Fester, dressed up like a VAMPIRE, in a red cloak and a big collar, a powdered white face, eyeliner and -i think - fangs. This was quite funny, but the best part was his repertoire! he was singing choicest excerpts from the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins! Haha as i was walking down the market he was just launching in to '...raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...' - i literally started laughing like a crazy person in the middle of the market. Haha and he was singing the songs with all the dramatic flourishes you'd expect from a vampire - swirling his cloak and doing sort of Batman impressions... it was SO funny.

Last night Alex (my cousin i'm staying with here) and I went out to a great cocktail bar called the Langley. We met Simon Hosking there- Ken's nephew - who's working in an investment bank in London. We had a few happy hour priced cocktails and then moved on to a pub called Ye Olde Chester Cheese - apparently the oldest pub in London, or something. Had a drink there, then went to Wagamama for dinner, with Alex, her friend Amanda and 4 or so of her other friends. There were 8 of us all up, and we were a little bit rowdy! Then after dinner we went back to the pub before being kicked out at 11.30 and coming home to bed!

Right well I should probably go. Must pack. I still don't know what's going on with Geneva - Aedan and I are sposed to be flying from Paris - Geneva on Thursday, and we still don't know if we're going to be required. It's a little bit strange, and when I think about it a little bit stressful. Lucky i don't think about it very much...! if you want to read more about the whole UN shebang, you can on my other blog - http://funatthechr.blogspot.com

Right that's it i'm outta here. Hope this finds you well! Cheers

jx

Terezin: Part I

2006-03-02T01:34:00.000-08:00

Well I’m in London now, writing this from under a doona in bed at my cousin Alex’s place in East Acton. I keep waking up really early – don’t know if it’s the remnant of jet lag or just the unfamiliarity of my surrounds, but I seem to be keeping an uncharacteristic acquaintance with the early hours of the morning!

It has been weighing on my mind that I need to write about Terezin. Going there was like remembering a nightmare that someone had told me about. The familiarity of its buildings, the names of the streets and squares and barracks, even the distinctive black and white striped paint above the entrance to a the Small Fortress was all like horrible déjà vu. Will and I caught the bus from the Metro station at Florenc out to Terezin. It’s a 61Kc 1-hour journey beyond the outer limits of Prague and into the countryside. It was bitterly cold, and the fields were a dirty white from the ice and snow. The sky was grey, and we had a sort of detached feeling that the day might be a little bit unpleasant. But as we drew near the town, my tension grew. When the Star of David-shaped walls and painted archway of the Small Fortress passed by the window of the bus, I began to realise what we’d got ourselves in for. We then drove over a bridge over the Ohre river, around a corner, and through the ramparts into the deserted Town.

For the uninitiated, the Terezin is a fortified town – a fortress – that was built in the 1780s by Emperor Joseph II and named for his mother, Maria Theresa. It was meant to protect against invasions from the north west by the nasty Prussians, but was never actually used in any combative military capacity. Terezin comprises a small, picturesque town meant to house the soliders and their families, surrounded by beautiful open planes and mountains in the distance. Its streets and squares are pretty and well laid-out. Few hundred metres from the Town is the Small Fortress, used to house political prisoners, enemies of the Habsburg Monarchy, and Prisoners of War during WWI. Because of its handy position between Western Europe and the extermination camps of the East, the Nazis pinpointed it as the perfect strategic place to gather or ‘concentrate’ some of the European Jews before sending them onwards to the Polish camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and others. So on 24 November 1941, the first transports of Prague Jews headed for Terezin - Theresienstadt, as the Germans knew it.

The conditions there were awful and many thousands of people died, but everything that is sad or evil or twisted about the town is made so much worse by what happened there in June 1944. After much to-ing and fro-ing between the Nazis and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, a Red Cross delegation was permitted to visit the camp. In preparation for this visit, the town underwent a ‘beautification’ process. To alleviate crowding, the top level of the 3-tiered bunks was sawn off, and one third of the detainees were sent to Auschwitz for immediate liquidation. The streets were cleaned and buildings painted. Children were given extra rations in order to appear healthy and robust to the delegates, and the camp commanders chose the fittest, best-looking young people to play a role on the day of the visit. Cafes, shops, a library and sporting events were concocted out of nowhere. There were musical performances and concerts, and many writers, thinkers and academics were briefed to discuss high-brow philosophical and intellectual topics within earshot of the visiting Red Cross delegation. Children were told to moan good-naturedly about going to school and having to eat high-quality imported sardines almost every day. Basically, the stage was set for one of the biggest shams in modern history – the conversion of Terezin into a Potemkin Village.

In summary, 23 June 1944 came and went, and the Red Cross took the bait hook, line and sinker. The report written by Dr Rossel is a stunning testament to the convincing charade, and his lack of further inquiry has been condemned by many after the fact. The Nazis were so pleased by the effectiveness of the sham that they took it upon themselves to make a propaganda film called ‘Hitler gives a Town to the Jews’. The fears of the international community were alleviated, they let themselves off the hook, and meanwhile thousands died at Theresienstadt, and many more thousands were funnelled through its walls and on to the Eastern extermination camps.

I will write more about this later. Stay tuned.

j x

a photo to pass the time..

2006-02-28T15:00:00.000-08:00

Well, we went to Terezin today - a concentration camp 60kms north of prague. It was extremely full-on, and rather horrible, and I can't really write much now because it's still digesting. I will, however, attach this photo of me, neil and ben at the bar on saturday night. that's definitely the happiest ben looked out of the whole night - the rest of it he spent quite grumpy and trying to pick fights with balding taxi drivers. haha. so funny.

anyway, here's a photo to pass the time. i will write about Theresienstadt soon. But not now. brrr. i'm off to have nightmares about the 500metre underground crypt-filled dark tunnel i had to walk through today. oh heavens.

'night!

j x

this weekend

2006-02-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

hi there,
well, lots of stuff has been going on this weekend. on friday everybody moved out of my room in the hostel, which gave me a beautiful peaceful night's sleep all alone in a big empty room. then 6.15am saturday morning heralded the arrival of my roommates, one of whom is now affectionately known as The Vomiting Belgian, for reasons i needn't go into... aaaah youth hostels. divine.

anyway, i eventually got up and went downstairs for breakfast. i must say i'm very much enjoying mooching around the hostel - in such freezing cold weather (yup - still snowin' it up outside) - a welcoming, warm atmosphere is a beautiful thing.

yesterday (saturday) i wandered around the marketplace before going in to the city to meet neil and his friend dan to go to a Jan Saudek exhibition. the market at Delnicka is interesting. it makes me feel quite uneasy. it borders on the most notorious red-light district in the city. at many of the stalls you can purchase a red lace g-string, AND a nice shiny pair of brass knuckles. the people are gruff, and there is certainly a menacing, inhospitable feeling to the place, even though objectively there's really nothing wrong with it, it's safe, and i'm probably just being precious. but frankly, whenever i go there i can't leave fast enough.

anyway, i was late to meet neil in old town square because my watch stopped. strange. but i got there, and we went to see this exhibition by this famous czech artist called jan saudek. his work is very full on, not a lot of clothing to be seen, but it was really beautiful. very confronting, quite twisted, but really, really, beautiful. google him. it's worth it. but he's strange.

then we went to neil's apartment. it is brilliant! 144 steps up to the top of this big yellow building, into their loft apartment. it's ramshackle and a bit falling apart, but has a lot of character and is comfortable and homey. but any mother (mine, his, anyone's!) would not find it such a treasure. a renovator's delight, indeed. :)

then we went for a few drinks at this underground pub, where the dutch barman, punk, did a lot of throwing-bottles-around tricks. it was quite cool. i'm quickly learning that going out in prague is an exercise in avoiding the ex-pat and american student communities. it's pretty damn difficult though - they're everywhere!

then we went to another bar (it was 2am by this stage), where on the door there was a sign advertising 'anglo-american collage party downstairs', so of course we were forced to make lots of jokes about wet newspaper and glue. hehe. anyway, it was a bit tragic (in a semi-nude 19 year old american college student let loose in a country where drinking is legal kind of way) but fun, then at 3am i came home and went to bed.

the most exciting thing i've done today is wash my hair. says a lot. oh - and i bought kurt vonnegut's 'breakfast of champions' at this little cafe where neil and ben and i had brunch. fun.

will's arriving tonight, which will be fun. cheerio!

j x

Prague Oddities

2006-02-24T07:07:00.000-08:00

- lots of things smell like soap. lots of things. rooms, shops, people, doorways, trams. all sorts. it's very strange.
- today a man walked past me carrying a tusk. i don't know if it belonged to an elephant, a water buffalo or a woolly mammoth but the mofo was as long as his arm and quite a bit wider
- another, older, man with a round moon-face and grey facial hair walked past me and hiccuped. he then gave me a very forlorn look and i began to concoct this story about his hiccups in my head. anyone who has ever had a conversation with me about hiccups will know that i have an irrational fear about them - each time i get the hiccups i get quite frightened that they'll never go away. ever. and i begin to think about the disastrous effect that would have on my life. so that's what i imagined had happened to this guy. he's had the hiccups for 27 years, and is so distressed by them he's even given up shaving. oh, the shame.

a melbourney day in prague

2006-02-24T06:46:00.000-08:00

it's 4pm on Friday afternoon and i've just had a day which closely resembles a lot of days I have in Melbourne. I received a phone call today, and the person on the other end of the phone asked me "what are you doing?", the answer to which was, "i'm just in a cafe, doing some work". those of you who know me a bit will know that that is a very typical thing for me to be doing, and I enjoyed it just as much here on the other side of the world today as I usually do in Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn. The only thing that's different is that it's a bit of a shame for me to have work to do while I'm here! But that's ok - it's 9 below zero today, so an excuse to stay inside is most welcome.

I've taken myself to the Next Level of seeing Prague as a tourist. I have all but banished myself from using a map, as I'm now at the stage where I know which tram sort of goes where, and how useful that is to me. There are a few key points in the city from which I know how to get home, and I am now taking great pleasure in getting completely lost between them. I love meandering into little side streets and finding restaurants, little shops and hidey holes that usually just get stampeded past by the tourist throng. I'm doing lots of walking around, lots of stopping and watching, resting against a wall or in a little sidestreet watching things unfurl before me. I think in Prague it's important to look up often. There are so many beautiful spires and ornaments and statues and decorations and little jokes and surprises that can be missed if you keep your consciousness at eye-level, like the statue of Lenin near Betlemske Namesti, hanging by his right hand onto a wire about 8 metres above the ground. Apparently it's a joke characteristic of the inimitable Czech humour - something to do with when capitalism fails he can just jump down from where he's hanging, and his right fist will already be raised in solidarity and strength. Apparently if you're Czech that's hilarious :)

The No 12 tram takes you from the Mala Strana side of the Charles Bridge to Delnicka, where I am staying. It takes you from the centre of Tourist Hell - postcard shops and crystal shops and McDonalds - through the middle of what looks like Czechs doing it hard. There are shitty housing commission flats, people living on top of each other in cardboard box-style housing, doing their shopping in the cold, and it throws into stark relief the contrast between Prague for tourists and Real Prague. I love seeing both. I love seeing how a city with such majesty and mystery and beauty and charm must also have a seedy underbelly. A mundane, grotty and difficult post-Soviet state of existence. I don't know why that makes me appreciate the place more, but somehow it does...

J x

Letter to The Age 24/2/06

2006-02-23T23:33:00.001-08:00

Teehee look at this letter my lovely friend Bec Rowe wrote...

Thank goodness we won't be embarrassed

WELL, I for one am so relieved to hear that, due to the new Victoria Police and State Government policy, there will be no "distressed" homeless people on our streets during the Commonwealth Games. I would be so worried if all the important international visitors thought that our homeless people were distressed about their living situations. How embarrassing that would be for our city!

And thank goodness for the 24-hour number that will direct homeless people to shelter. They can just whip out their latest model mobile phones, dial the number, and be hidden from sight in no time. Now, that's a load off my mind.
Rebecca Rowe, Thornbury

I'll refrain from quoting a little quip about something other being the lowest form of humour... hehe. Go you little sarcastic good thing, Miss Rowe!

:) j x

prague: city of snow and wonder!

2006-02-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

well first things first. it's freakin FREEZING! i woke up this morning after a jet-lagged tainted night of terrible sleep, looked out the window at the snow falling onto the streets, and suddenly the prospect of getting out in the cold was very exciting!

i want to go back to the beginning however. as i stepped out through the door of the aeroplane at heathrow, i was whacked in the face by a gust of cold northern-hemisphere air, with all the promise of a new morning. it was, after all, a little before 6am. walking through the arrivals hall at heathrow i experienced the first of a collection of uniquely european sensations - the smell of 35 smokers in a little glass box next to the departure lounges, and the novelty of 0 degrees celsius.

i changed terminals on the little bus, and had some time to kill, so i went downstairs into the shops sort of bit at heathrow and started looking around a shoe shop. within 1 minute i was enlisted as an interpreter for a french couple who were yelling about sizes at the poor indian sales girl. so that was fun. ha i also ordered a coffee, and the guys said to me "skinny milk, yeah?" and i said "no, why??" and he said "oh, you just look like you might be on a diet" and his boss started yelling at him. haha it was great. clearly a bit of a legend with the ladies, that one... :)

then my flight was called and we were all put on a little bus to go out to the plane. as i was standing on the tarmac under the grey sky with the wind and sleet and wearing insufficient clothing for the weather, I suddenly remembered the exhilaration that comes from travel. the idea that every moment is for discovery and adventure. that it is what you make it. and in that moment the next two months just opened up before me like the pages of a book waiting to be written in! very exciting.

so i got to prague and neil met me at the airport. it's funny to remember the basis of our friendship (in summary: we met in the hostel in may 2003, talked for 12 full hours one night, then shook hands and took a photo, and i went and took a flight to paris. then a year and a half later he was still here, and my mates richie and rusty were here, and they were hanging out with a whole lot of guys here. then one day one of them asked them "i know this is a ridiculous question because australia's kind of a big place, but do you know jess taylor??". haha. and it was him. so there you go.), because techically we really don't know eachother at all and are hideous at keeping in touch, but we've had some great conversations about very interesting stuff, not to mention sharing lots of interesting books, music etc. so it's been cool. it's good to see him again.

anyway, we had dinner last night, then i came back to the hostel and went to bed at about 9.30. i woke up again at about 12.15am feeling absolutely TERRIBLE - had a bit of a funny tummy, and was jet-lagged like a crazy byatch, so i got up and went downstairs, read a book for a couple of hours and then went to bed again at about 3. then woke up at 9.30 and went downstairs for breakfast, and then got enlisted to do a walking tour with this crazy, angry, hilarious german guy. i think he's an historian, but i really don't know. he's totally anti-establishment, anti-tourist, anti-everything, and uses a LOT of superlatives in his tours. "oldest, biggest, trendiest, first..." so it was funny. and the snow really does make this beautiful city even more so. although, having been here in summer i must say it really is a different experience entirely. prague is somewhat melancholy, or quiet, or reserved at the moment. there is almost a contemplative air to the city, whereas in summer it's just full of bloody brits and their 'stag-dos'. haha. shocking. anyway, i'm going to go and read a book. will write again soon, i'm sure...

j xxx

things i'd write more about if i didn't need to sleep right now

2006-02-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

hi.

wowee it's really late at night but i was overcome by an urge to do a post about books that i really love. hmm. excellent early-hours-of-the-morning prioritising, jessie.

anyway i'm not going to WRITE anything about these books right now, except that you should read them. particularly perfume. it's amazing in a way that when you enjoy it and find it fascinating its really quite macabre and you feel a bit grimy.

actually that's not fair. they're all amazing books.

oh alright one sentence on each book.

catcher in the rye - j.d. salinger: different that what you expect, study of a sad bastard, equally sad and comical.
master & margarita - mikhail bulgakov: if i say it's underground soviet allegorical fantasy you won't read it. so i'll just say it's a story about satan disguising himself and coming to moscow and creating utter chaos, it's hilarious, it's peculiar, and it was banned by the bolsheviks so it must have had something going for it.
female chauvinist pigs - ariel levy: interesting book about the fact that so many young women these days love to get their, erm, 'assets' out, and consider it to be empowering to behave in ways that tend to objectify them. really good book.
the bell jar - sylvia plath: particularly poignant in light of the author's suicide, which i believe followed very soon after the publication of her only novel. extremely insightful look into a 'normal' girl living with depression and suicidal ideation. hmm.
perfume- patrick suskind: sensual, rotten, putridly evocatic writing about a boy born under a table in a paris fishmarket on a stinking hot day and left to die. he doesn't, but gee does he end up a total whacko. if you want to be morbidly fascinated by a character in literature, this is the book for you. luckily it's been translated from the original german, so that might make things easier, eh?

'nuff said for now.

sleep needed

j x

number three with a bullet!

2006-02-15T00:18:00.000-08:00

well, it's official. I have three blogs. I may now legitimately be accused of being a scary old lady with too many cats who sits at home on a saturday night surfing the web for new and fabulous ways to fool my opponents on online backgammon. or not.

luckily i have three robust defenses to that accusation: 1. i have no cats 2. it's wednesday afternoon 3. i've never played a game of backgammon - online or otherwise - in my life.

i have just packed a backpack full of washing to do, and i'm going to mum's place to go and do it. i leave in 5 days, i'm very excited but also a bit stressed! as always there's lots of stuff to do, but unfortunately i have deadlines looming and all i want to do is have a snooze! i'm writing an article for a conservative migration journal called People & Place, on the Bridging Visa E. It's going well, but damn that's a complicated topic.

Anyway i have to go. Dirty laundry calls.

Later!

J x

probably not interesting

MOVING ON OVER!

Electric shock therapy, anyone...?

The Rot is Spreading...

Some light relief!

France. I love/hate this place.

The Sri Lankan asylum seekers - please act now!

***TAKE URGENT ACTION TO PREVENT APPALLING TREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS***

Slightly off the topic...

The Afternoon in Dublin...

Back in Europe, Back in Gear!

holidays in australia

Scruffy the Cat

probably not interesting - and this time i mean it.

Meanwhile, back on the farm...

"Iraqi Kid Runs for Water"

*Temporary* Protection Visas are Killing People: Exhibit A

Circus of life charts one man's martial art of survival

Who, me...??

Deaths in Detention Exposed

Equal Opportunity Commission Human Rights Day Oration

Have you ever wanted to be a Circus Ninja Refugee...?

Trashing a Tradition of Compassion

Farmer Jess...

This. Is. Not. Possible.

I'm not very good at posting, am I...

EastWeb Fundraiser - Funtimes for a Good Cause! Dec 7

I Love Irish Taxi Drivers

Our Big Day Out

'We Will Be Remembered For This'

Remember - Julian Burnside's Speech for Refugee Week

Some Photos

Why my friend Fatima is a legend!

Am I Normal...?

Sorry!!

The 5th Anniversary of the Sinking of the SIEV-X...

The Justice Project Forum - you may have missed it, but all is not lost!

FANTASTIC NEWS!!!

Nauru makes it to Danny Katz's column!

A story about a friend...

Inside the world view of 'islamists'...

Take some action for the Lombok Asylum Seekers... 5 years and counting...

KO-SO-VO: Laugh, Then Cry!

Where Am I???

Reverse Spider Culture Shock!

My Room!

Some More Photos of the Weekend... Beautiful!

'We Will Be Remembered For This'

Road Trippin' in Ireland

Watch This Space!

Conference Papers - Well Worth Reading!

Photos of the Intensive Program in Sweden

Spider-Induced Culture Shock

OK I'm Sick. It's Official.

Hello Dublin!

Goodbye Sweden!

Over it! Time for a break.

My Dream Job: Prime Minister of a Swedish Paddock!

No Rest for the Weekend!

A few days in...

First few days in Sweden...

Aaah, Home Sweet Home!

confest info...

CONFEST IS IMMINENT!!

Where the *%@&"§ Hell Are Youse!?

The Party's Over!

a chilly day in France

Aaaah Switzerland: Land of Cheese & Chocolate!

Terezin Part III

Terezin Part II

London is more funner than i remembered...

Terezin: Part I

a photo to pass the time..

this weekend

Prague Oddities

a melbourney day in prague

Letter to The Age 24/2/06

prague: city of snow and wonder!

things i'd write more about if i didn't need to sleep right now

number three with a bullet!

TAKE URGENT ACTION TO PREVENT APPALLING TREATMENT OF ASYLUM SEEKERS

Temporary Protection Visas are Killing People: Exhibit A