i-eclectica.org

1. let’s start with the shadow: whatever lurks in it needs to be dragged into the full glare of light.
2. sometimes though subversiveness is needed to make the hidden public.
3. lighting up shadows is a tour de force, an act drenched in fearlessness and the will & determination to revolutionise, to replace, to transform.
4. the past has one prime function: to be the instructive motivator for a bold, intrepid creation of the future.
5. there is no history as a definable sequence of events in the fourth dimension; stories are just expressions of momentary emergences. (right now we can learn more from hip hop than from beethoven.)
6. order is arbitrary and based on convention; it can have temporary importance.
7. even where life is adaption, transformation is at its core: as an active forward movement, a letting go for whom nothing is sacred.
8. there are no wayfarers or leaves in the wind - we need new metaphors, which reflect constant uncertainty, surprising emergences, and expected as well as unexpected possibilities & probabilities.
9. the new is constantly renewed and therefore subject to never-ending inquisitions.
10. inquisition is not limited to the new; it is universal: question everything, deconstruct everything.
11. in the world of duality, everything is personal and subjective, because everything is perception and interpretation.
12. the personal though is not a fortress but a responsibility to dialoguing and self-questioning.
13. awareness is of ultimate importance, and listening is awareness.
14. one way to explore reality is to assume the paradoxical.
15. change is neither fast nor slow - it just is.
16. thinking is an important luxury (sometimes); emotions are great teachers and sources of inspiration.
17. life can be moist (e.g. teary & sweaty) and full of drum rolls.

For a few hours late last week, visitors to the Bank of India Web site had their browsers covertly redirected to a site hosting malicious exploits. This real-time video capture shows what happened when someone accessed the Bank of India site.

[to get a hi-res version of the same clip, click here]

I’m not sure when or even whether this movie will be released here; it’ll certainly come out on DVD at one stage. Starhawk’s thoughts on the films though are interesting enough for me to post them here:

Due to a series of odd events and a couple of generous invitations, I was able to see a new film at the Toronto Film Festival: In the Valley of Elah. Written and directed by Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for Crash, it’s a very powerful and tragic story of the toll that the war in Iraq takes on those who wage it. A young soldier, Mike Deerfield, goes missing on his first weekend back from Iraq. His father, Hank Deerfield, played superbly by Tommy Lee Jones, is a retired military man and investigator, and when he sets out to find his son, one grim layer of truth after another is peeled back. Mike, it turns out, has been brutally murdered. As Hank tracks the murderers, he is both helped and hindered by Charlize Theron in the role of a woman police officer with a young son whose sweetness and vulnerability play off perfectly against Hank’s toughness and bottled-up emotions. For Hank, who truly believes in America and all it is supposed to stand for, the horror of what has been done to Mike is slowly eclipsed by the horror of finding out what his son has seen and become in Iraq.

In the Valley of Elah is not the Iraqis’ story. That story needs to be told and heard, although probably Hollywood won’t tell it. Elah is a story about Americans, told from an American perspective, aimed at an American audience. But it is also a story we desperately need to hear, the counterpoint to the drumbeats of endless war, for it faces us with the real price of our militarism, and the real limitations of its power—that the violence of war also destroys those who wield the weapons, and poisons the society that sent them forth.

One of the pleasures of watching thrillers and mysteries is akin to waking up from a bad dream. We all have secrets, things we’re ashamed of and things we fear being found out. When a fictional killer is tracked, his murderous secrets revealed, we can squirm vicariously and then wake up with that bright sense of relief we get when a nightmare proves to be only a phantom. Whatever we might be concealing, generally it’s not a corpse, and whatever we’ve done, we probably haven’t committed a heinous crime. Murder stories put our sins and troubles into perspective.

But with this film, there’s no easy waking. Because we are culpable. The horrors are real, and they are still going on in Iraq, and all our efforts have not stopped them. Whatever we have done, we’ve clearly not done enough.

The Queensland Government’s Cape York Peninsula Heritage Bill 2007 is a major breakthrough that provides a new cooperative framework for conservation and ecologically sustainable land use on Cape York.

The package includes incentives for landholders to protect conservation values on their properties and provides resources and support for Indigenous land and sea management, including co-management of existing and new National Parks.

It also ensures that Native Title rights are recognised and provides an Indigenous economic and employment package, including confirmation of 100 Indigenous ranger positions and support for Indigenous arts, culture and tourism enterprises.

While this Heritage Bill provides the opportunity to formally protect the outstanding conservation values of Cape York, final protection of the wild river and World Heritage values still requires hard work and goodwill from all levels of politics over the next few years.

This is where you can help.

GO TO Cape York Peninsula Special Site

Fact - If the whole of Cape York Peninsula was listed as World Heritage, it would become the largest land-based World Heritage Area on the planet. Read more about what World Heritage listing

For more information, please contact:

Cécile van der Burgh
Cape York Campaigner
Email Cécile van der Burgh
Fax: 02 9282 9553

Gunns Ltd and the Tasmanian and Federal Governments have chosen to ignore the environmental, economic and health impacts of Gunns Ltd’s proposed pulp mill - a mill that will affect the future of all Tasmanian families. This movie, produced by The Wilderness Society, examines those impacts, presenting the scientific facts about this proposed pulp mill in a clear and objective manner.