Every summer I forget how much I fucking love spiders I’ve drunk one every day this week

Drinking spiders??!

You put ice cream in a glass and pour soft drink over it. It creates a thick layer of delicious foam on top of a sweet, creamy drink with ice cream in it.

And yes I did attempt to get a picture by googling “Australia spider” like a fucking moron.

I think that’s called a float in the states. Although we usually plop the icecream into the glass after the soda. Similar effect though.

We wouldn’t be able to call it that because the word is way too easy to confuse with a floater, which is a meat pie floating in a bowl of pea soup. It is every bit as delicious as a spider though. I should get some pies and pea soup.

I would like to announce that this is not a standard Australian food, it’s exclusively a South Australian one and the rest of Australia is just as appalled as the rest of the world.

It’s not our fault that the rest of Australia is incorrect about food.

#WE HAVE SPIDERS IN AOTEAROA and they serve CUNT#im gonna steal ice cream from work this weekend and make spiders with it. i will steal the fizzy from work also#i fucking hate my boss 

Living your best life I see

“average person eats 3 spiders a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in South Australia and BADLY misinterpreted our survey question,,

yep, "children driving forklifts" is definitely the radical, forward thinking kind of action that might just turn this whole thing around!

[image id: @gays-of-the-lost-cities asks "I'm sorry can I have some context?" end id]

you know, I was going to just be lazy and snarky and link to a news article about the announcement... but... fuck it. i need to vent.

for the last two years, australia has had what was generally accepted to be one of the best pandemic responses worldwide, using lockdowns, health advised mandates, and income support, to very successfully contain and limited outbreaks, keeping infection, deaths, and disability from the virus low. we were no NZ, and there were still issues, mostly with the federal government refusing its responsibilities regarding quarantine facilities and under sourcing pfizer vaccines because government MPs had investment in astra zenica, and they cut unemployment payments in half at the end of 2020.... but overall, we did a good job as a country, especially compared to the two big empires that usually set our policy.

well, late last year, that changed. scott morrison, the prime minister, decided we were going the american route of "fuck you all, actually" and declared there would be no more lockdowns, no more mask mandates, no more income support, everyone get back to work. he told us it's time to "live with the virus."

so everyone went back to work, and because the government said it was safe, also went back to partying and socialising and holidaying and travelling all over. just in time for omicron to come along and infect everyone at christmas and nye, all while the federal government refused to even suggest people should be careful or limit holiday gatherings. the PM assured us it was "mild". state governments seemed to have their hands tied by the federal, and health experts' pleas for everyone to be careful were barely heard in the face of federal encouragement to enjoy the holidays. "live with the virus," and enjoy a big christmas lunch.

what happened next was entirely predictable; we went from hundreds of cases, to thousands, to ten thousand... the case numbers rocketed up so fast that they stopped being counted. not that it mattered, our PCR testing capacity was quickly overwhelmed so we have no idea how many cases there are truly; although the reliable estimate put us in the top ten most infected countries per capita, ahead of the usa and uk.

with so many people infected and forced to isolate, workplaces started becoming understaffed very quickly, so scott morrison quickly called a national cabinet to shorten isolation periods and allow negative at home rapid antigen tests (RATs) to be an acceptable benchmark for returning to work. no attempt to contain or limit the spread was made. "live with the virus." the economy demands it.

this resulted in two outcomes: RATs quickly sold out absolutely everywhere, because it turns out the federal government ignored health/logistics advice given to them in september past year about the need to stockpile rats if they were refusing to lock down, meaning there literally aren't enough physically in the country to meet demand. so nobody could really know if they were infected, and asymptomatic carriers were back at work... which is the other outcome. more people back at work while contagious, infecting more and more people. even if you're sick, there's no income support, so if you have to pay for luxuries like avacado toast, or rent, or medicine... back to work, it's the american way, which means it's the australian way now. "live with the virus."

now every system is crumbling as a result of the PM's decisions. supermarket shelves are bare, not because of panic buying but because the supply chains that stock them simply don't have enough workers. perishables are rotting in warehouses, deliveries are backing up, palettes remain unloaded, shelves unstacked, because too many people are dangerously sick to work, and the mildly sick aren't allowed to isolate long enough to protect the as yet uninfected workers.

school goes back in a few weeks, even though vaccinations for under 12yos has only just been authorised. there is not enough time for the kids (and by extension their families) to be protected, even if there were enough vaccines available. it appears that the federal government didn't actually do anything to increase our supplies of vaccines before expanding the age range. keeping kids back at home has been ruled out, because that would require keeping parents home with income support, and they have decided there will be no more spending on helping people, only back to work and back to school. "live with the virus."

as for hospitals... it's grim. ICUs are over capacity, outpatient wards are converted to covid wards, ambulances are taking over 12 hours to reach critical cases, all elective medical procedures are cancelled because every available staff member and then some are being put on full shifts at covid wards without time for bathroom breaks, and even vital surgeries for terminal illnesses are being cancelled because there are no beds to care for them if there are complications. the death rate is chilling. the hospital staff that dare speak out paint a shockingly dark pictures of the mental and physical health of themselves and their coworkers, to the point that many are quitting despite the overwhelming guilt and shame of leaving even less staff, because resignation is better than suicide. they all speak anonymously, and if you believe what i hear from my ex nurse friends, it's because they've been threatened with criminal and/or civil legal action if they blow the whistle. because we wouldn't want the public's morale to drop, it's an election year.

the country is in a state of despair, everything we worked so hard for and sacrificed throughout 2020 and 2021 had been lost in less than four weeks. the most vulnerable are sick and dying, the systems designed to support them beyond limit. people are terrified, and angry, and desperate for leadership. nurses and doctors are working themselves to the brink of suicide to desperately try and prevent as many people as they can from dying, and they are failing.

and it is against this backdrop that the prime minister, scott morrison, announced his grand plan to ease our pain, that he would take to the national cabinet and beg the premiers et al to support:

he asked the states to allow under 18's to operate forklifts in factories, to speed up supply chain operations.

scott morrison's solution to the disastrous human suffering born of his own callousness and reverence for profit over life and health.... is weakening child labour laws.

scott morrison is a fundamentalist pentecostal christian that admits he lets his faith and belief guide his policy. he believes in wealth prosperity gospel and the rapture, and that illness and suffering are punishment for sin.

"live with the virus."

he means die with the virus.

and hey, get some kids to work in the warehouse while you're at it.

Holy fucking shit…

On an average night in 2019, there were 949 children behind bars in Australia – more than half of them were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. 

Of all 10-year-olds incarcerated, 80% were Aboriginal children.

Aboriginal kids make up only 6% of all 10- to 17-year-olds in Australia but they are 54% of the juvenile detention population.

They are jailed at 22 times the rate of non-Indigenous young people. And they are jailed younger. In 2019 nearly 65% of children under 14 in detention were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

Study after study has shown that contact with the criminal justice system at a young age can do lasting damage to children, their families and communities. […]  According to a 2016 report by the Sentencing Advisory Council, 94% of children in detention aged 10 to 12 returned to prison before they were 18. […]

Aboriginal children are also disproportionately targeted by punitive policing. In New South Wales, for example, Indigenous kids are significantly overrepresented in the number of strip-searches conducted by police.

NSW police have also been operating a secretive blacklist known as the suspect target management plan, or STMP, largely made up of Indigenous children – 72% – deemed to be at risk of committing crimes. The NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission found that many of the children, some as young as nine, had not been charged with a crime and were not aware they were a target.

Between 2017 and 2019 the state’s highest concentration of kids subject to the STMP were in the western Sydney suburb of Mount Druitt. At 13 [I.S.] was strip-searched by police on his way to the shops in the suburb. [I/S/] says he was told to strip down to his underpants on the side of a busy road. “It was embarrassing,” he says. “I didn’t know what to do so I just complied.” [I.S.] doesn’t know if he was on the STMP but says there were periods when police stopped him almost daily. One day he was stopped twice, by the same officers. The first time he was strip-searched. […]

Increasing the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 could lead to a decrease of about 15% in the number of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in detention, according to the 2020 Productivity Commission report […]. But governments – with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory’s – are reluctant to act […]. Queensland’s attorney general […] said bluntly: “There are no plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility in Queensland.” […]

All but one of the 32 kids now in juvenile detention in the NT are Aboriginal boys.

There have been numerous times over the past decade when every single child in detention in the territory is Aboriginal.

The restorative justice program is available in 12 NSW local courts. The magistrate works with Aboriginal elders, victims and the offender’s family to determine an appropriate sentence. […] Some states also have their version of the NSW youth Koori court […]. But the youth worker [D.D.] says […] “I want to stop people from ever going to court. I want to stop us focusing on having culturally safe courts, when really we need to have culturally safe communities […].” [T.W.] says therapeutic approaches are needed […].

“When do we lose our compassion for a child who is being abused or traumatized […]?” she asks. “Well, effectively Australia says we lose that compassion at [age] 10.”

——-

Headline and text published by: Lorena Allam and Laura Murphy-Oates. “Australia’s anguish: the Indigenous kids trapped behind bars.” Guardian Australia. 17 January 2021.

Australia is in a bind. It’s the last developed English-speaking nation not to have legalized marriage equality – even though a majority of voters support it – but issues within the government have kept officials from being able to legalize it.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced what he believes is a solution: to hold a “non-legally binding voluntary public postal vote” over the next few months to determine public opinion on marriage equality, followed by a potential formal vote in Parliament. 

Here’s how it would work:

There are so many opinions about this all over the internet that my head is spinning. Pals in Australia, what do you make of this?

lotta yall canadians, europeans, australians, etc. who are always saying shit we say is happening regarding classism and racism and misogyny and whatever else here in the united states, doesn’t happen in your country, are probably just … willfully ignorant and don’t actually recognize it yourself to see that your countries are just as fucked up as ours.

If you’re not from Australia you probably haven’t heard this but it’s very important.

Today The Guardian released a cache of files called The Nauru Files.

This contains 2,000 reports from Australia’s detention centres which detail the abuse, self harm, mental illness and many terrible things that are happening to asylum seekers who come to Australia in hope of a better life but are instead detained offshore in conditions that violate human rights.

If you do read them, even shortened versions, prepare to be disgusted and shocked.

This is physical evidence that the Australian government is sitting back while they detain children and imprison asylum seekers while subjecting them to torturous conditions and every kind of abuse.

Don’t let The Nauru Files be forgotten or covered up. 

Don’t let the people in Australia’s offshore detention’s centre be forgotten.

It’s illegal here to even speak about what happens on these islands so that another country has been able to get these should really help raise these issues amongst the general public.

These files were leaked by someone involved in the system at Nauru (like, ofc) to the Guardian and since then, multiple doctors social workers etc have said “yeah we know but we couldn’t tell you” because it’s i l l e g a l for them to do so. All crimes that take place there are considered matters for the local police, so the Aus govt is washing their hands of it and saying “these are just allegations” like … The reports are horrible but this deserves a lot of attention there are 49 children in detention on Nauru living in squalor being tortured right this second

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention

Australia Day: The Main Event in the National Sport of Denial

Note: The following text was written by some unknown activists who redecorated several ‘ADSHELL’ corporate advertising spaces in the city of Melbourne, in so-called Australia on 26.01.16 in protest against the ‘Australia Day’ national public holiday and it’s accompanying ‘official’ celebrations.

Australia Day: The Main Event in the National Sport of Denial

Today, advertising across the city of Melbourne has been replaced with messages that confront “Australia Day” for its inherent celebration of invasion and the genocide that continues to be perpetrated against First Nations Peoples of this land.

This act of protest seeks to highlight that so-called “Australia” was invaded under false pretenses, and that the sovereignty of its First Nations was never ceded, whilst simultaneously reclaiming public spaces from commercial entities for use as a public forum.

For many Indigenous people, today is a day of anger and mourning. In the wars that followed the initial invasion 228 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal people lost their lives in defense of their homeland. Countless more have died since as a result of the national narrative of denial and neglect that has since been perpetuated by governments, businesses and schools. To uphold this narrative through the celebration of Australia Day, is to continue the genocidal mindset of the first invaders and to uphold their actions.

The private entities that pay to control our public spaces know this history. They have helped perpetuate this patriotic myth because they profit from denial. These companies are the same companies that are responsible for the displacement of Aboriginal people from their lands, the pollution of environments and the destruction of cultures. They would have Aboriginal people assimilate or be wiped out and they would have you, the individual, conform or disappear.

We stand against all private entities that would seek to colonise our minds for profit and we stand in solidarity with all Aboriginal peoples fighting to decolonise this continent.

History is shared. Reflect and acknowledge.

‪#‎ThereIsNoPrideInGenocide‬ ‪#‎InvasionDay2016‬

Photo Caption: Australia, pre invasion.

Indigenous Australians occupied the continent for more than 65,000 years before the Europeans invaded on January 26th, 1788.

The population of Indigenous Australians was approximately 750,000 spread across 250+ nations.

Violence and diseases brought by the British immigrants caused the native population to decline by 90%, nearly killing all aboriginal people from the continent.

Today marks the day of an ongoing genocide.

90% of women with intellectual disabilities have been sexually abused (Frohmader, 2002).  US stat: Only 3% of sexual abuse cases involving people with developmental disabilities are ever reported (Valenti-Hein and Schwartz, 1995). Victorian state Police data shows just over a quarter of all victims were identified as having a disability.

An inquiry could literally save me and any disabled person I know/don’t know from being raped in the future. Please sign and share the petition. Feminists and left wing people, ableism is not a fringe issue, and it has everything to do with your movements. 

If you’re not Australian and you want to sign the petition, you can use the postcode 2000.

Four Corners report (link)

These are the facts: This is what domestic violence looks like in Australia

Australian Photoset #22

More? 

German photoset #21

Australians, listen up.

In light of the recent rise in racist attacks on Muslims (particularly Muslim women) in Australia since the new Terror laws were created and the killing of Abdul Numan Haider, I would just like the make one thing very, very clear.

Australia is using (forms of) terror tactics domestically, in response to terrorism that is not happening in Australia or to Australia, to try and quash any potential ISIL-related terrorism that might be happening within our borders.

After the 'terror-raids' in Sydney the other week, in which 800 “anti-terror” police officers stormed the houses of Muslims suspected of being involved in terrorism, only two men were arrested, and only one was actually charged. (The link above is to a live blog from ABC news detailing how the 900 police in both Sydney and Brisbane have so far arrested 15 people suspected of terror offences. More raids were carried out today in Melbourne, Victoria, and so far one man has been taken into custody.)

Just let that sink in though. 800 police officers to charge 1 man who may not have even committed a crime. In a country where we haven’t had a single terror attack related to ISIL and no terror attacks domestically since the year 2000 (the Australian embassy in Jakarta was bombed in 2004, but that killed 11 Indonesians, not Australians). In fact, the most significant terror attacks post-2000 that have killed Australians were the Bali Bombings of 2002 and 2005, which were not targeted at Australia. 

If you see ANY Muslim being racially targeted, you have a responsibility to get help or be help to stop it. If you hear ANYONE, including your family or friends, praising the actions of the Australian Police or the Australian Government, you educate them. 

What we are doing is blatantly racist, and far more like terrorism than anything ISIL is doing in Australian territory.