MDFF 9 June 2018 Men – reposted

This Musical Dispatch From the Front is edited from one first published 30 June 2012

Several Dispatches ago I told you about the plane load of bureaucrats that landed on Yuendumu airstrip. The bureaucrats attended an unattended meeting.
There’s a meetin’ here tonight…. http://youtu.be/-fECUAJ5H5M

 Last week I happened to be at Yuendumu airstrip when a charter plane landed which disgorged three passengers. I offered them a lift ‘into town’ that they gratefully accepted as ‘they’d made no arrangements’.

castlemaine gaol 101They had come to Yuendumu to inspect the Men’s Safe House.

At the beginning of the Intervention a contractor installed a converted shipping container as a ‘Men’s cooling-off place’. At the time I came to the conclusion that the ‘cooling-off place’ had been designed by the same architect that had designed Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. The several strands of barbed-wire at the top of the chain-wire mesh fence, the padlocked chain on the gate and the spotlights surrounding the Spartan building are reminiscent of TV images I had seen during the time that David Hicks was receiving similar consular assistance from the Australian Government as Julian Assange is currently receiving.

I also found it hard to envisage Warlpiri men embracing the facility as a ‘cooling-off’ place.

The intervention had tens of these so called ‘cooling-off’ places installed throughout the NT. The contractor made a killing.

The perceived and implied need for these “cooling-off’ places is yet another way remote Aboriginal communities have been stigmatized.

No discussion or consultation with locals preceded the decision to install these facilities.

One word: GRATUITOUS

I drove the two men and the lady that had emerged from the plane to the padlocked ‘cooling-off’ place. I found out it had been renamed the ‘Men’s Safe House’.

The lady exclaimed: “It looks like it has never been used!” Well spotted! It never has.

One word: SUPERFLUOUS           http://youtu.be/IKsTyGxrjGU

An hour later the charter plane took off on its way to another community made safer by the erection of an Intervention Safe House.

To pay a local organisation or individual to inspect the unused Safe House, take a few photos and knock a few walls to check for muluru (termites) would require a paradigm shift the Intervention is incapable of.

A much more likely scenario is that a plane load of experts, consultants, mentors and trainers lands at Yuendumu airstrip to run a course leading to a Safe House Inspector’s Certificate.

One word: VISIONARY

http://youtu.be/zoDIhxeZtKI

Early yesterday morning the Australian Parliament passed the Stolen Futures Legislation. One word: VISIONARY

In Brazil meanwhile they have introduced a scheme that allows prisoners to reduce their sentences by reading books.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-26/brazil-prisoners-to-read-books/4093762

“A person can leave prison more enlightened and with an enlarged vision of the world,” said Sao Paulo lawyer Andre Kehdi, who heads a book donation project for prisons. “Without doubt, they will leave a better person,”

Now that is what I call visionary!

So which is the Banana Republic ?

Mr. tallyman tally me-banana  

http://youtu.be/lciensCCWG4

Obrigado por ler esta expedição

 Francisco

 As long as I can see the light…..

http://youtu.be/IgH6N669OhE

 

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