Monday, August 16, 2004

Why John Howard must go

John Howard must be kicked out so Australians can draw a line in the sand and move away from the arrogance, fawning stupidity and sleaziness of his government.

From Crikey:

"I'll accept responsibility for what happens under my Government," the Prime Minister told Laurie Oakes on Sunday.

Fine. So that means he accepts responsibility for:
* Politicisation of the public service
* Degradation of the office of Governor-General
* The inappropriate appointment of a churchman as head of state
* Ministerial attempts to intimidate the judiciary
* Bailing out his a company his brother had an interest in while ignoring others
* Accepting inappropriate donations from business
* Defining "core" and "non-core" commitments
* The "never, ever" GST - implemented with a $200 voucher to help small business
* Increased small business red tape
* Introducing then ignoring the Ministerial Code of Conduct
* Failure to ignore standards of ministerial accountability - Peter Reith and the Telecard, Wilson Tuckey's interventions in support of his son
* An unwillingness to stop the concentration of media ownership
* An unwillingness to allow the proliferation of new forms of media
* Tampa
* SIEV X
* Kids overboard
* Detention of children in interment camps
* Indefinite imprisonment of adults ditto
* Permitting the vilification of 43 loyal Australian elders for exercising their right to disagree with his policies
* Former ministers with potential conflicts of interest - Peter Reith with Tenix, Richard Alston with Austereo, Michael Wooldridge with the Royal College of General Practitioners
* Suspension of habeas corpus for David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib
* The possible subornment of testimony by intelligence personnel over Iraq and weapons of mass distractions
* "Another rule" for his son when it comes to working in the United States
* A free trade agreement that may not be in Australia's best interests
* Supporting God-bothering hypocrites
* More expensive office and official residence arrangements; and
* Displaying an autocratic style - and a vindictive nature to individuals and groups who seek to cross him."

Thursday, August 12, 2004

SIngapore Idol! Go Jeassea!!

I went to Singapore Idol Last night at Mediacorps studios to watch my friend Jeassea sing like the star she is.

Tonite we're going again to check out the opposition.

I'll write more on this tomorrow or the next day.

Today DPM Lee became PM.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Lost

Excerpts from Charles Taylor in Salon on rootlessness :

"It's as if our anxieties about the headlong pace of technology, of living under the threat of terrorism, of an economy that leaves most of us unsettled long past the age when our parents and grandparents had achieved some semblance of security, about being overwhelmed with choices we're not sure we even want to avail ourselves of, had risen from us like a collective ether and permeated the screen. We are overwhelmed with choices we're not sure we even want to avail ourselves of."

"...the feeling of being lost as the unavoidable consequence of a world in which we can go almost anywhere -- instantly, through virtual means, or in a few hours thanks to air travel. "

"... filter the saturation of images and information, to make some time for contemplation."

"its sense of impermanence as a permanent state, of travel as being a never-ending process, of human connection as both fleeting and profound, of any sense of home having to be achieved in spite of (or because of) an overwhelming sense of rootlessness. "

"It's that peculiar and specific mixture of uncertainty and reassurance, of staking any sense of security on ground that is always shifting, that is at the bottom of these movies. In the beginning of William Gibson's novel "Pattern Recognition" he writes, "She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that the mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage." The experience of standing at the baggage carousel, fearful that some vital part of us has missed the flight, is the beauty and sadness of these films. "


The nature of our age.

The deception that choice is equivalent to freedom. That volume and speed equals joy. That television sitcom equals friends. That technology replaces relationships.

The Emperor's New Clothes show everything.

Boris, lost but not unhappy.

Berlin 1995.

London 1995.

Singapore needs a David Lynch to reinterpret it. To reveal the strangeness beneath the suburban surface. The ear in the grass.

Thats what is needed to be written.

Friday, August 06, 2004

Friday Yeah yeah!!

Bruce Springsteen stands up for what he believes in an article in the NY Times reproduced in the Guardian.

Fahrenheit 9/11 begins showing in Singapore today.

I've put a few
Shanghai photos on the web.

The photographer as
violater of enjoyable times.

In the streets the
bras are drying.

And in the parks on sunny days they wear
pyjamas.

Tonite I am going over to
Charlie and Lilys place to play indoor golf, eat pizza and watch DVDs.

Thursday, August 05, 2004

Goodbye Henri

Henri Cartier Bresson, Goodbye at 95. Thankyou for your inspiration.

"I'm not interested in my photographs, nor other people's,"

"There is something appalling about photographing people. It is certainly some sort of violation; so if sensitivity is lacking, there can be something barbaric about it."

"I'm not an actor," he insisted. "What does it mean, 'celebrity'? I call myself an artisan. Anyone with sensitivity is potentially an artist. But then you must have concentration besides sensitivity."

"My contact sheets may be compared to the way you drive a nail in a plank," he said. "First you give several light taps to build up a rhythm and align the nail with the wood. Then, much more quickly, and with as few strokes as possible, you hit the nail forcefully on the head and drive it in."

"A velvet hand, a hawk's eye - these we should all have."

"I adore shooting photographs. It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians - which is my relationship to photography."

"I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to 'trap' life - to preserve life in the act of living," ... "Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was unrolling before my eyes."

"God is a world of guilt. With original sin we are guilty for being alive, it's monstrous. In any case I have never believed,"


Henri Cartier-Bresson

In the NY Times:

"A few years ago, Mr. Cartier-Bresson went to the Pompidou Center in Paris to sketch a Matisse portrait. Balanced on his favorite shooting stick, nose buried in his drawing, he paid no attention to the tourists who snapped his picture and videotaped him; they seemed unaware of who he was but charmed simply by the sight of an old man sketching."

"When he got up to leave, he noticed a couple sitting side by side on a bench, a child resting on the man's shoulder. "A perfect composition if you cut out the woman," Mr. Cartier-Bresson said, and made a brisk, chopping gesture toward her. The woman looked baffled. "Why didn't I bring my camera?" he asked. Then he clicked an imaginary shutter and left."



Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Boris Influences

Boris advises what made him the man he is today:

1) The films of Woody Allen & Wim Wenders. In particular Manhattan and Annie Hall.

2) The short stories of J D Salinger, the teaching of Sue Woolfe, the otherness of Paul Auster and Haruki Murakami.

3) Leica Photography, Capa and daido moriyama photos.

4) The places Coromandel Valley , Kiribilli & McMahons Point.

5) The feeling of England 1977 to 1979. Pre Thatcher. Strikes. A cold winter and a drought. The Silver Jubilee. I am alive.

6) Thailand 2000 to 2002. Restructuring Thailand's worst company. Riots, haircuts and fake smiles. Grey safari suits. rocket grenades adn body guards' stories of the Lao Cambodian border. Gem stone stories.