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Writing in Slate, Christopher Hitchens makes sense of the North Korean regime:

Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

Read it.

It’s 20 years tonight since the first shock TV advertisements by Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission were aired. Visitors from overseas are often surprised at the brutality of these adverts, which have been credited with a 50% reduction of the Victorian road toll over the last two decades.

This montage will be screened tonight at 8:30pm on all free-to-air channels in Victoria. It’s quite graphic in parts but gives an indication of the types of campaigns that have been run.

(This posting goes on a bit. Sorry about that.)

Some time ago I wrote a cranky email to Senator Chris Evans, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, in response to media reports that a Bangladeshi couple may have to have sex in front of witnesses to prove they are gay, as they had claimed on their refugee visa application.

This is the same Senator Chris Evans I wrote about last year, when I called him ‘Australia’s best immigration minister in a dozen years’.

When I heard about what these two Bangladeshi fellows were going through, I felt a bit cranky. When I read the history of the case as outlined in the published findings of the Federal Court appeal on 18 September 2009, I was incensed.

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These are my remarks for the launch of World AIDS Day 2009 this morning at Parliament House in Melbourne.

Since its inception in 1988, World AIDS Day has provided a moment for all of us to reflect on the impact HIV has had in our lives and communities, to recommit ourselves to ending the HIV epidemic, and to remind the broader community that, while HIV may have almost disappeared from the headlines, it is still with us.

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New in the Buggery Emporium, a selection of fine wearable T-shaped items.

(Click the images for larger version, or click below to buy):

• I ♥ Apostrophe’s (14 colour choices, from A$30)
• HIV Positive (22 colour choices, from A$25)
• Dancer Danger (22 colour choices, from $30)

My favourite Australian building turns 75 today. On 24 November 1934, the Anzac Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park was officially opened. Not many people know the story of how the building’s design was altered by prudishness and homophobia.

It’s a stunning, simple and understated building that is often, and rightly, referred to as Australia’s only pure expression of Art Deco. I fell in love with the building as soon as I saw it, and when I learned more about the building while studying architecture at UNSW in the early 1980s, this deepened my appreciation.

The building was designed by architect C. Bruce Dellit (his granddaughter, Wendy Dellit, was in my year at uni) with sculptures by Rayner Hoff, who also has the distinction of being the designer of the Holden logo. Dellit’s design was the winning entry in an architectural competition, and is widely accepted as his finest work.

There is so much to love about this building. The design is classical, understated, simple and reflective. The sculptures and friezes, inside and out, are stunningly executed. The most striking is Sacrifice, the bronze, at the centre of the building.

I have been taking visitors to see this sculpture for nearly 30 years and every one of them has been struck by the beauty and the raw emotion of the piece. A youth, deceased, lies on a shield and sword supported by a three-figured caryatid representing his mother, his sister and his wife. It’s a stark and confronting image of the tragedy of war.

And, of course, he’s naked.

The untold story is that Hoff was a gay man, and his sculptures created a scandal in unenlightened 1930s Sydney. Dellit and Hoff had to fight to see their joint vision realised, against the politically powerful (then and now) Catholic Church, who objected to the nudity. We are fortunate that the architect and sculptor got their way with Sacrifice, but unfortunately the outside of the building was never finished.

Hoff and Dellit had planned a pair of additional bronzes, one of a man and one a woman, to go on the outside of the building, on the two big plinths on the East and West sides of the building. They were also intended as nude figures.

Unfortunately the wowsers got their way and the external bronzes were never completed. Even more tragically, Hoff had actually completed the moulds for the two monumental bronzes, and these were kept in storage for some years after the building was opened, but they were eventually destroyed. All we have left are some of Hoff’s drawings.

Sydney’s Anzac memorial is one of the greatest examples of the Art Deco movement, anywhere in the world. But it is an unfinished masterpiece, and all thanks to the prudishness and homophobia of a few 1930s-era wowsers.

CC-licensed images on this post from Wikipedia

This is my attempt at video blogging, made as part of a workshop at the Making Links Conference last week. It’s a response to the This is Oz anti-homophobia campaign.

Untitled from SYN Media on Vimeo.

Thanks to the lovely people at SYN Media for a great workshop.

Below is the text of my President’s address to the Annual General Meeting of People Living With HIV/AIDS Victoria, on 18 October 2009.

The last year has been a busy one for PLWHA Victoria, and there is much we can be proud of. Our organisation is strong, highly professional and our dedicated staff and volunteers deliver work of high quality that makes a real difference to people’s lives.

But I don’t want to use these few minutes listing our achievements: our Executive Officer, Sonny Williams, will cover the year’s activities in greater detail. You can also read about them in the Annual Report, which will be available at the end of this meeting.

Instead, I want to ask a question: why are we here?

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Tom Coates has put together a brilliant Flickr gallery of images from today’s dust storm in Sydney. Awesome stuff.

CC-licensed image above: Dustday in Laundry 2 by Mezza.

British artist Luke Jerram’s glass sculptures of microbes including HIV, SARS, H1N1and smallpox are strikingly beautiful.

Says the artist:

These transparent glass sculptures were created to contemplate the global impact of each disease and to consider how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomena. Jerram is exploring the tension between the artworks’ beauty and what they represent, their impact on humanity.

Hat-tip: babycakesjase

"I will make it quite clear…F..I..S..K..A..L."

→ AAP: Fielding criticises Rudd’s ‘physical’ policy

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When I was growing up in Bega I probably wished more than once that the town would be obliterated by some kind of natural disaster – a meteorite, volcano or perhaps a flood. I wanted to be somewhere else.

But now it looks like my idle childhood wishes might come true. Seems like global warming will continue to accelerate, with the world’s big economies playing a game of ‘Chicken’ and refusing to act until someone else does. With global warming comes rises in sea levels, and the experts reckon there will be anything from 19cm to several metres of sea-level rise this century. Some have argued that, with positive feedback effects accelerating the process, sea level rises of 10m or more before 2100 are possible.

Here’s an animated projection of the effect of sea level rises of between 0 and 14m on my old home town:

Looks like it might be a smart time to open a water-skiing supply shop in Bega. Get in early.

You can see how sea level rises will affect your home town (or anywhere else) at http://flood.firetree.net/.

Yesterday I spoke at an ARCSHS forum on HIV and the media – Reckless Transmissions: Engaging with the news media around sexual health – along with Michael Hurley, Daniel Reeders and Abi Groves.

An interesting discussion looking at the way the media reports on HIV, especially the way gay men are presented as ‘complacent’ (Reeders) or, when they come before the law, as members of a ‘seedy underbelly’ or ‘sinister subculture’ (Hurley). My presentation focused on the ways that community organisations can try to have positive stories about people with HIV reported in the media, as a counter to all the ‘bad’ news. Abi Groves introduced the AFAO media guide, Reporting HIV in Australia: Information for Journalists 2009.

There will (probably) be a podcast of the event at some point in the future. In the meantime a copy of my slides is below in PDF form.

Image from faggotz.org, via Kellan on Facebook.

Catherine Deveny’s column in the Age today is lovely. This is an abridged version:

YOU know you’re from Melbourne if …

• When diarising anything in September you first consult the footy fixture.
• You know Sunshine, Rosebud and the Caribbean Gardens are not as good as they sound.
• You consider yourself a socialist yet you drive a European car and have a cleaner.
• You’d rather sit next to Guy Rundle on a plane than Guy Pearce.
• You think the slogan on our licence plates should be “Melbourne. The Coffee Is Shit Anywhere Else”, “Melbourne. Go To Sydney. We Hate Tourists” or ” Melbourne. What School Did You Go To?”
• You know the word ”Moomba” means Up Your Bum, White Man.
• You’re not happy Melbourne has been voted the World’s Most Liveable City. You’d prefer it was voted “Most Enigmatic, Tortured And Slightly Dangerous City”.
• Any music by Paul Kelly makes you suddenly think of the Nylex sign and something about making gravy.
• Jon Faine shits you but you can’t switch him off.
• Pot, cantaloupe, potato cake and hook turn. Build a bridge and get over it.

The John Faine line is a classic. And totally true in my case.

CC-licensed Flickr image above: Lady Luck™

…or something like that.

There are 52 towns in Victoria which are at high risk for the 2009-10 fire season, according to a list issued by the state government today. Here is a map (click to enlarge) showing the towns listed:

• Download this map as a Google Earth Placemark File

The Victorian Government says the nominated centres will be its priorities for developing township protection plans.

“The work that we’ve been doing over recent months has identified a number of areas … 52 towns, which for a variety of reasons are more at risk or more vulnerable to fire, should it occur in the next fire season,” Mr Brumby said.

“These could be towns that are built in the middle of bushland, they could be towns that are on the coast that have a huge holiday population and only one road in, and one road out.”

“We’ve got a fire season coming up, that on all the evidence we’ve got… is going to be worse than the one we’ve just experienced.” — ABC

Lynne Kosky kills the W-Class tram:

MELBOURNE'S remaining vintage W-class trams will be phased out on all routes except the City Circle line, despite a new campaign to get hundreds of the dilapidated trams restored and back on the tracks.

The National Trust has begun lobbying to save the trams, introduced in 1923.

Just 12 W-class trams run on the City Circle route. Another 25 run along Chapel Street in South Yarra, Richmond's Church Street and on La Trobe Street in the city.

Nine weeks ago, Yarra Trams stopped running the W-class trams in South Yarra and Richmond on weekends, replacing them with newer models.

And 178 of the vintage trams are slowly deteriorating in the Government's Newport and Preston workshops.

→ The Age: W-class trundling into history

This is sad news. The old W-class trams are part of the fabric of Melbourne and without them the city becomes one step closer to generic. It says a lot about the absence of imagination that is characteristic of most politicians that Kosky can’t see this.

She should take a trip to San Francisco and see the way that city has transformed the F-line by using historic, beautifully restored streetcars from cities around America and the world (including a W-class Melbourne tram!). People come to San Francisco to experience San Francisco, and part of that is the light rail systems.

Likewise Melbourne, but it seems we have to be humourless and unimaginative about it.

IT WAS the heart of gay Sydney - but now Oxford St is going straight.

The one-time bastion of Sydney's gay community is giving way to more straight venues and is even home to the most heterosexual institution of them all - a wet T-shirt competition.

There are now just three openly gay venues along the strip - the Stonewall Hotel, The Palms and the Oxford Hotel. These are outnumbered more than three to one by straight venues such as Oxford Art Factory, Havana and Spectrum.

The change raises fears the colourful atmosphere that attracted people to what was Sydney's premier entertainment strip is being driven away.

And with the switch has come concerns of an increase in violence.

Rainbow Labor convenor Michael Vaughan said while Oxford St had always welcomed straight and gay alike, there needed to be a balance.

→ Daily Tele: Sydney’s gay heart Oxford St plays it too straight for some

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The collapse of unfettered capitalism should have been a golden opportunity for the left. So where did it all go wrong?

→ The Guardian: Has the left blown its big chance of success?

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