Asylumseekers. Easttimor. Hipsters. To-read 2. To-read 3. To-read 4. To-read 5. To-read 6. To-read 7. To-read 8. To-read 9. To-read 10. To-read 11. To-read 12. To-read 13. Transsexual in Malaysia: A Life Without Identity. With her tight jeans, elaborate makeup and flowing hair, Tasha looks for all the world like a striking young woman. But her all-important Malaysian ID card declares she is a Muslim man. “In Islam, there are only men and women, there are no transsexuals, and this is an Islamic country so that makes life very difficult for us,” says the 28-year-old who has been cross-dressing since she was a child.
Like many transsexuals in Malaysia, a conservative and mostly Muslim country, the clash between ID card and appearance means Tasha is shunned by employers, and forced to make her living as a sex worker. “It’s a hard life, people don’t like us, they’re always making fun of us,” she says as she prepares for another night in the grimy alleyways of Chow Kit, the red-light district of the capital Kuala Lumpur. Sex workers are sent scattering on their high heels, and those who are caught and hauled off face jail or intensive “counseling” sessions like a two-week interrogation Tasha once endured. Mamamia: Medical abortions have been suspended in Queensland. What does this mean?
Abortion laws fast-tracked. Al Jazeera English - Asia-Pacific - E Timor defends Indonesian's pardon. The government of East Timor has defended its decision to release an Indonesian man indicted for crimes against humanity during the country's struggle for independence in 1999. Martenus Bere was moved to the Indonesian embassy in Dili on Tuesday following an official pardon. Jose Ramos-Horta, East Timor's president, said restoring good relations with Indonesia was more important than "prosecutorial justice" and has promised not to let his country be used as an "experiment" in international justice.
Teuku Faizasyah, an Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman, confirmed the embassy was already processing Bere's return home. The move came in advance of national celebrations commemorating 10 years since East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, won independence from Indonesia in a UN-backed referendum. Bere was detained about five years after being indicted in 2003 for his role in the Suai church massacre in which up to 200 people were killed. Violations. Ten Years Of Freedom In East Timor. Bronwen clune » Blog Archive » Bad news for newspapers, great news for journalism. A few weeks ago Rupert Murdoch announced News Corp new sites would begin charging for content in the near future. “Quality journalism is not cheap,” Mr Murdoch said. “An industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.” The Punch (owned by News Corp) looked at the issue of paid content with a few pieces, one by Paul Colgan Psst, Twitter: You might want to help save Big Media , another by Leslie Nassar (better known as fake Stephen Conroy ) Not all media dinosaurs have small brains and some comment from UTS journalism students about how they see the future of journalism.
David Penberthy also asked readers if they would pay for content. Of the 177 comments (at the time I wrote this) on the Punch thread, most people say they would NOT pay for content, and Penberthy conceded that “we don’t have the answers,” which is probably why he asked the question in the first place. It’s not all bad news though.
As Umair Haque so eloquently puts it: Homecomings | Harvard Magazine January-February 2005. I think the enormity of my decision hit me when the plane flew out of Sydney airport and I watched the famous Opera House, its distinctive half arcs shining in the sunlight, shrink to a little white dot by the frilly tide of the Pacific Ocean. I burst into tears. What on earth was I doing? On a whim, I had applied to Harvard, and now, bound for a country I had never seen, that old chestnut about being careful what you wish for had never seemed so apt. As the flight attendant handed me a tissue, I was reminded of the postcard from my soon-to-be freshman roommate that I had received just before leaving home: a map of the world, a cheery greeting (“Hello from Cambridge!”)
, and a gaping hole in the corner of the map where Australia should be. I was leaving this shimmering mirage, so wonderful that we try to keep it secret from the rest of the world, to begin four years of study just about as far away as one could possibly get. Applying to Harvard had definitely been a left-field idea. Racism, Australian-Style. For all Kevin Rudd’s fantasies of international leadership, Australia rarely impinges on the consciousness of the wider world.
We are neither sufficiently powerful nor sufficiently strife-torn to command global attention. Our prime minister can slip in and out of a foreign country – even a major trading partner such as Japan – without arousing more than a trickle of media coverage. There are exceptions, but they are scarcely flattering. Consider the recent events that have thrust us forward for international contemplation.
Sport aside, two moments stand out: the Cronulla riots and Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations. One was a moment of national disgrace, while the other elicited admiring editorials in the international press. For much of the world media, Australia seems only to warrant attention to the extent that it can be presented through the prism of racism. There is something desperately unfair about this state of affairs.
In private, we are not so reticent. Bachelor Of Communication at Andrew McMillen. Is it arrogant for me to state that my Bachelor Of Communication is worthless? Probably. Aside from being a physical reminder of my ability to (somewhat) focus on a goal for three-plus years, a degree is only useful if a potential employer needs to check that box before hiring me. Since I don’t see myself applying for a job that requires a résumé ever again, can you see why I feel this way? Andrew McMillen became Andrew McMillen, BComm on July 24 2009. An old dude who speak at the ceremony said to my fellow graduands something along the lines of: “Having invested years of your life studying here at the University Of Queensland, you understand that a university education is more than simply attending lectures and handing in assignments.”
Cue sniggers, because that’s exactly what I found my university education to be: a matter of attending lectures and handing in assignments. Essentially, doing enough to pass, without extending myself. Why didn’t I extend myself? Why didn’t I quit? We're failing to nurture wisdom, uni chief asserts - National - smh.com.au. Indonesia's quiet revolution bodes well for the relationship | theage.com.au. Our next door neighbour is booming politically and economically. THIS year, most of the world's economic growth will take place in China. Much of the rest will be in India. But the third biggest source of global growth will be right next door: Indonesia. We don't think of Indonesia as a rising economic power. Yes, there was a terrorist attack in Jakarta last month, but that was the first in four years. Advertisement A decade ago president B. And as the global financial crisis has flattened most countries, Indonesia has flourished.
Indonesia has no lack of problems. Indonesia never will be a giant on the scale of China and India. China is much bigger, much mightier. Indonesia is different. And we have. People-to-people relationships are improving, if underdeveloped. The commercial relationship, however, could be much bigger. Indonesia's democratic revolution has put down deep roots. Tim Colebatch is economics editor. Mamamia: Oh look. A Christian group is 'curing' homsexuality. On banning the burqa « The Dawn Chorus. As has been widely reported in the last few months, French President Nicholas Sarkozy has the burqa in his sights. In June he announced to his compatriots that France would not accept a garment that made prisoners of the women who wear it.
The latest controversy has seen a woman banned from wearing a burqini in a French public pool, ostensibly on hygiene grounds. Sarkozy is the latest in a long line of politicians who have attacked aspects of Islamic dress in the name of women and their rights. These moonlighting feminists, by headlining their stance with a women’s lib tag, I think mask the true scope of their agendas – which in Sarkozy’s case could be to protect a certain aspect of a country’s cultural identity, or to marginalize another, or to assert authority. There are, no doubt, some women who are forced to wear this all-encompassing garment by their families, just as there are non-Muslim French women who are mistreated by their families in other ways.
Like this: Like Loading... With Jobs Scarce in Japan, Women Become Professional Flirts. The Insider: Beyond The Death of The Critic. In the latest edition of The Insider, the art of criticism in the world of Web 2.0 is put under the microscope. With the recent news that streams are likely to eventually be included in some form of combined chart, the concept of launching new artists becomes even more difficult. Given that the rise of iTunes and other download services has altered the charts radically since the days when everything was geared towards a six week build culminating in a blazing entry into the charts, this additional layer of information is undoubtedly going to push new releases in general even further down the chart. Is this a bad thing? Well, no doubt debate will range and I for one was hoping for a more sensible approach from labels, artists and managers to the new reality where the change in purchasing patterns would lead back to a world I remember in the 1980s where artists climbed the chart rather than entering one week and dropping like a stone from thereon in.
Peter Doherty: a life of strife - Times Online. Sarah Palin, meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | Salon. Is Sarah Palin America’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? The two differ in many key respects, of course, but it is remarkable how similar they are. There are uncanny parallels in their biographies, their domestic politics and the way they present themselves — even in their rocky relationships with party elders. Both are former governors of a northwest frontier state with great natural beauty (in Ahmadinejad’s case, Ardabil). Both are known for saying things that produce a classic Scooby-Doo double take in their audiences. Both appeal to a sort of wounded nationalism, speaking of the sacrifice of dedicated troops for an often feckless public, and identifying themselves with the common soldier. They are vigilant against foreign designs on their countries and insist on energy and other independence.
But above all, both are populists who claim to represent the little people against wily and unscrupulous elites, and against pampered upper-middle-class yuppies pretending to be the voice of democracy. The Dead Weather Interview (Part 1) | Clash Music Exclusive Interview. Sumbul Ali-Karamali: Stoning Soraya, Murdering Neda, and the Hope of Muslim Women. A review of the new movie, The Stoning of Soraya M, reminded me of a story I read in junior-high school. "The Lottery," by Shirley Jackson, described an American small town in which one person was selected by lottery each year to be stoned to death. The victim in the story was a young boy, and what I still remember decades later is the mob bloodlust that transformed him from a child whom the townspeople had known all their lives into an inhuman, impersonal object of aggression. Soraya's story doesn't seem so different; the real Soraya was apparently killed because of village men fabricating charges, fueling the mob mentality, and using religion to legitimize their crimes.
The video-captured death of Neda Agha-Soltani, also Iranian, also Muslim, struck me the same way. Her fiancé says she wasn't protesting, but returning from a music lesson, and that her murderers were armed but not in uniform. Nothing. It's not religion that keeps women back. Take Soraya's stoning, for example. Look at This Fucking Hipster Basher by Robert Lanham. Late last year, while the country was in the midst of a generation-defining election, the financial system was about to collapse, and the Congo was on the brink of genocide, I exited the subway on Bedford Avenue to discover hundreds of drunk twentysomethings dressed as panda bears.
These self-proclaimed “anarchist cyber-pandas” in skinny jeans were part of a “costumed-roving-street-party-apocalyptic-dance-rock-battle” called Pandamonium. Equipped with all the accouterments you’d expect from such an occasion—face paint, booze, glow sticks, and a misguided notion that wearing animal costumes outside a Chuck E. Cheese is a good idea—the panda posse had effectively brought all traffic to a standstill. But this was no political rally organized to protest genocide, economic disparity, or anything approaching profound.
It was performance art masquerading as activism. This was Williamsburg, after all. The trendy Northside of Brooklyn. If anyone has hipster fatigue, it’s me. Here’s the thing. What the World Didn't See in Tehran. Iranian state television yesterday broadcast the soap operas and covered the news about Rafael Nadal's withdrawal from Wimbledon and Pakistani operations against the Taliban as if they were the most important stories in the world. Meanwhile, arriving over the Internet transom, rough and insistent and bloody, were the tiny electronic dispatches from protesters forced off the streets in Tehran, shaky videos from a city screaming for help. For outsiders tuned in to the blog posts, Facebook updates, Tweets and YouTube videos, the torrent of information was compelling and confusing, emotional and rife with rumors, full of sound and fury signifying ... what we do not yet know.
Shut out by the near totalitarian powers of the Islamic republic, the mainstream media tracked the stream of consciousness produced by new media. Some of the material is powerful, even indelible. But who shot her? A soldier? It's unclear how many people showed up to protest. Welcome to Your Quarterlife Crisis - EYE WEEKLY. Unity in diversity at Vespa festival. The back of Kohir’s Vespa is a mobile Dayak art gallery. (JP/J.B Djwan) The original manufacturer of the iconic Italian Vespa scooter, Enrico Piaggio, would have been overwhelmed with pride last weekend as thousands of extreme Vespa enthusiasts swarmed on Ubud in central Bali. He could never have dreamed his little scooter, nicknamed the wasp when it first rolled off the assembly lines in 1946 would, 60 years later, end up as the cultural icon binding together scooterists across an archipelago on the other side of the world.
Never would Piaggio, a former aircraft engineer, have imagined the myriad ways his little wasp would morph into Madurese mollusks, mobile Dayak galleries and perfect candy pink and mauve classic Vespa confections amid a rolling armada of artistic variations of the original Vespa design. These brave little bugs put-putted their way across thousands of kilometers, sailed seas and jumped potholes to get to Ubud for the international meeting of Vespa scooters. Remember when it used to rain? Apologies all – the water use thread has sparked some thoughts. I have many fond memories of growing up in Canberra. One of my favourites was walking in the rain when I was delivering junk mail. I used to get sopping wet walking around O’Connor and Lyneham – but I was a kid and didn’t really care. I knew that a warm shower and trakky daks were waiting for me at home. I remember the lead up to sports or swimming carnivals and the like.
Riding around the place was great in the rain. We’d all crane our necks in the car when passing over bridges to see how full the stormwater drains were. Rain meant the half-pipe at the Belconnen skate park wasn’t an option – you’d slip over too much, so you’d think of something else to do. The base of Bruce Ridge had a permanent reed bed pond that was always full of water and we’d trap tadpoles in glass jars and watch them grow legs at home. Mum used to be annoyed by ‘grass stains’ on our clothing. I used to own and regularly use a rain jacket.
Keep Calm and Carry On: Jon Henley on the poster we can't stop buying. Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? Gene Weingarten Reports. We need to talk about Pete: Carl Barat on the tragedy of Doherty. RIFF MARKET: RE HIPSTER RUNOFF'S ANIMAL COLLECTIVE POST. New Yorker: Logic of Excess: of Montreal, by Sasha Frere-Jones. Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com >> Blog Archive » Why I Copyfight. 29 Thoughts About the Apparent Sexiness of Conor Oberst by Adam Boyle - Nerve.com Screening Room. Above the fold: Blue day 2008. A Gen X response to Barack Obama | Salon Life. Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll. Answers About Living Cheaply in New York - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog. NxE’s Fifty Most Influential ‘Female’ Bloggers at Weekly Articles About Blogging - NxE. Features | Everyone is (Still) Gay.
Patd: Article/interview in The Guardian's (UK) Film&Music supplement. 50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do | Marc and Angel Hack Life.