“i do know what it’s like to grow up feeling like you don’t belong.”
okay, Barack’s popularity might be rapidly declining with people living in the USA (due to the heinous media campaign against him), but i’ve got to say he is becoming one of my all time heroes. Who gets hold of the US presidency and makes a video like this, for gay and lesbian kids still at school?
Go Obama.
Watch and enjoy.
via YouTube – President Obama: It Gets Better.
Boxing Day (PS): i’ve just found one of the sequels, where White House staff add to this message with their own stories. It’s so good to see this kind of message coming out of the US government. They have a whole part of the wh.gov website geared toward the campaign. wh.gov/itgetsbetter Which is part of the larger campaign at itgetsbetter.org
PS: i know many people are probably angry with Obama’s administration for fighting to prevent a Judge making the decision to get rid of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military position.. even though they’ve said they want to get rid of it.
Sigh. Seems bizarre. They say they want the change, but when a judge gives it to them, they go, “ah no wait til we’re ready”.
Postscript, December’10: well Obama was good for it. The military, congress and the senate all worked together to repeal the DADT regime. Good news.
i wonder if this Bill Hicks video is offensive. Probably i shouldn’t post it without listening first, but my speakers aren’t working, so here goes.
Oh yeah, there’s a severe language warning on this one. NSFW!! And it’s likely to offend supporters of military personnel. Thank you Bill.
Dude you have no Qu’ran.
You’ve got to love the Autotune remixes.
i don’t know what’s going on in the USA at the moment. They’ve got a brilliant leader, and a whole bunch of intelligent creative compassionate people working for social change, but somehow there’s still idiots who want to burn Holy Books during a really ugly world war.
And then there’s the cool people who just run up and spoil the media event. On top of that, someone is going to make an autotune remix out of anything these days.
—————————————- Thinking:
One of the comments on the youtube video page was this: ‘so, let me get this straight: hippies love to burn flags but can’t stand to see the Koran get burnt?’
Interesting point.
i think it’s a bit like Jewish jokes. You can make all the anti-Jewish jokes you like, if you are in fact a Jewish person.
You can burn the US flag if you’re a US citizen. (okay, it’s not legal, i mean under my rules which i’m making up right now)
You can criticise the heck out of your own relationship, tear yourself to shreds, burn the Bible if you’re raised a Christian, find the weak spots in your cooking strategies, etc.
But lay off other people’s business.
. . . . .
Following the series of election videos comes this triumph from Taiwan. This is a must-watch video!! Especially for Julia’s laughter at the crucial moment. Yes the commentary is in Taiwanese (i think), but you get the picture.
And a very good turn from Paul Keating on Radio national breakfast, before the election (while Rudd was still at the helm). “Goodness of heart is a requirement for a good country”.
This is the ad that Gruen Nation pitched in their weekly competition. It was a strong winner, but because it now belongs to the ABC the Greens can’t show it on television. So you’ll need to watch it on the Greens site, on the ABC Youtubes, or right here!
Why am i so fascinated by the Australian election, in a year when the rest of the country is busy yawning?
i saw Alex Bhathal speak at the Greens campaign launch for Batman last night, at the Downunder Curry Cafe in Northcote. Very impressed with her dedication, passion and compassion. First and only thing that’s touched me this whole election. Alex spoke from the heart, which is such a rarity in politics.
(more after the break) Read the rest of this entry »
Politics is a messy business.
Some say Julia should have waited longer before calling the election, to give herself time to sort things out with Kevin. Oh well. Too late now. Kevin’s much chirpier since he had his gall bladder removed anyway.
Some say it’s just a circus, and if you live in a safe seat, you have no power at the ballot box anyway. You always have some power. There’s only 100,000 people in any given seat. That means you have at least 0.001% of the overall say. Yeah. And anyway, your senate vote is crucial – whether your in a safe or marginal seat. Here’s a great site showing what happens when you let the party decide your preferences. http://belowtheline.org.au/
There are some good videos doing the rounds too.
EG Tony’s views on women from GetUp
Some say there’s no difference between the Labor and the Liberal parties. i totally disagree. Maybe the Australian Labor Party does look like a centre-right populist party full of power-crazed hacks, playing it safe and following the polls. But i’d still rather have them in government than the Liberals who are determined to make an art-form out of deliberate ignorance and mean-spirited prejudice. And i’ll be voting for the Greens – the party of dreamers, who genuinely think we can make this place sustainable.
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Why wouldn’t Jesus be gay? Honestly.
So i guess you’ve noticed that Elton has done a John Lennon and made a comment about how Jesus is just like himself.
If you love theatrical hoax political campaigns,
Nice one Albert. i get an Einstein quote every day in my iGoogle feeds. This one made me jump. i think Albert spent much of his life regretting his contribution to inventing nucular weapons.
.
Daryl the lovely minister at Northcote’s heathen / community church, has pulled together a bunch of performers for a big event in support of bushfire sufferers.
$10/15 money goes to uniting church Victorian bushfire appeal.
Daryl says: “Please come and have a great time with us in solidarity with those who have not only lost so much but now contemplate a long physical and emotional rebuilding process.”
(Some moments of reflection involved.)
PS: i caught Heidi’s choir, and they were really good. Heidi sang solo and she was fab. Then Zeena and i fled the choir scene, over to Wesley Anne where “The Tiger and Me” were playing. They Were Good. Alt-Country-ish.
plus: get your Flyer here: Northcote-Concert-Flyer(pdf)
photo credit: alana jonez
i postponed the visit to Tuol Sleng as long as i could. Didn’t want to face reality and find out what happened. Strangely i felt conscious of the whole genocide thing as soon as we landed in Phnom Penh .. as though the soul of this country was still deeply wounded and grieving.
At the museum, i ended up stumbling on a small room, filled with dust and storage. i don’t think this room was meant to be open. There was a big box of skulls and bones, not organised for display, just sitting; this was more disturbing than viewing the skulls on proper display.
Many skulls in another room had been given proper display cabinets, with airholes so that the victim’s souls could enter and connect. This was a compromise between giving them proper burial, and allowing the world to see the evidence of what happened.
i took some photos in the not-display room, but felt like i shouldn’t .. so perhaps i won’t publish them here. i’ll put other people’s photos instead.
So the genocide researchers have found 389 burial sites .. most with 500-1500 people. There was one site with 150,000 people and the biggest site had 510,000 dead bodies. Tim and i tried to work out how big that would be.
Really Big.
At the start of the revolution, people were marched out of the cities into the country to become honourable peasants. If the inner bourgeoisie couldn’t be marched out of them, they were killed. Doctors, teachers .. anyone educated was killed.
Ironic, because Pot and some of his henchmen were teachers who’d had a very elitist education in Paris.
These days in Cambodge, they don’t kill people so much, just sell off land to developers and march the peasants off to another part of the city, possibly with a skerrick of compensation. This article at the bbc gives detail, via Kylie in Phnom Penh.
photo credit: blake_lennon
photo credit: tkelly7029
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