smh says that the federal govt used riot police to quash protesters peacefully demonstrating against the inhuman baxter refugee camps.
“One male protester was punched in the head by a riot squad officer and another, a woman, was grabbed by a policeman by the hair, pulled to the ground and had her face forcibly pushed into the red dirt and scrub.”
i guess howard’s moves towards a kinder stance on refugees were just a wedge attempt, as crikey said last week.
hilariously enough, vanstone is saying that protests outside her house are making it personal. what does she think she’s involved in… a game of bridge?
whether she’s right or wrong, she needs to take personal responsibility for her actions as top dog on immigration.

travelling through the balkans shows me just how easy it is to stir up nationalist/racist fervour. and it’s not just there. the uk is getting fired up, and right wing parties are gaining power throughout europe.
i guess it makes it clear just how fine the line is: between comfortable friendly relations and bitter enmity and division. there’s only so long that the australian government can keep using race as a tool to win elections before it starts to infect the electorate.

here is a mix i did a while ago. it got played on triple j’s club show in australia, as well as fbi in sydney and pbs in melbourne. hope you like.

there must be some kinda underground, subculture-y thing here in bulgaria. but i’ve been looking and i’m yet to find anything. not speaking/reading the cyrillic bulgarian can’t help. no good record shops so far, which everyone seems to attribute to the heavy local servers – internet is slow, but each town has a local server with very large quantities of music and video, meaning that retailers of those things struggle to sell them. i did go to a cool hip hop party last night at 3 Ushi (the djs used cdjs and burnt cds). these people put on some bigger parties with guys like a guy called gerald, the orb and mike patton, not sure if there’s anything while we’re here though.

the road out of sarajevo winds up past the ski fields and through some wild territory. where else could you look out one window and see a pig hanging by its hind legs being skinned and through the other a wartorn cityscape dominated by the city’s rebuilt twin towers. the bus curls through the mountains surrounded, and sometimes covered by snow.
fortunately i seem to have equilibrated to that peculiarly european style of driving, the most notable feature is a tendency to overtake any vehicle (bus, truck, etc) no matter what kind of vehicle you’re driving (scooter, bus, land train), or the state of the road. winding mountain roads covered in ice are fine for dare devil overtaking on hair pin turns, even when you can see oncoming traffic.
maybe i’m not totally over it. an old rickety bus that felt like it was unfit for the school round. every time we went over any kind of topography the bus would be overrun by a wheezing that seemed to alternately drift from the front and rear of the bus. looking around i realised it wasn’t the geriatrics – they were taking care of the throaty coughs – but the failing hydraulics. we spent most of the trip travelling at 40km/hr or less.
anyway, 24 hours later and things are feeling better.
hard to believe, but michelle grattan in the age has reported howard’s softening his line on refugees with plans to release long term detainees… a chink in the armour? who knows, good to hear anyway.

my face is red. mostly my forehead, cheeks and nose, though there’s a conspicuously unburnt patch around my eyes. we’re just back from jahorina, a ski resort 25 km out of sarajevo. the snow was a little slushy, runs short, skis pretty bad. but it was still great. so cool to be on the slopes, stifling a laugh at others, for a change, spending runs on their backs. glad we weren’t up there any longer though, there aren’t that many runs and i think we pretty much exhausted them.

no wonder typhonic – the canberran dj with bosnian blood – has such an affinity for heavy breakbeats. i’m in bosnia now, and heavy beats are everywhere you look. in mostar the clubs advertised a combo of ragga, garage and drum’n'bass. here in sarajevo, there are a few house and minimal techno events, but most of the clubs swing between dancehall, dub, ragga, garage and drum’n'bass. even the dodgy western cafe we wandered into the other day was playing heavy dub reggae. looks like the best places to check are access (on marsala tito), the art depot, maybe the bar and bock too. haven’t found much sign of experimental music, or jazz (beyond the lounge bar variety).

woah. riots in campbelltown? that definitely hasn’t been reported on cnn. it’s pretty much impossible to get any papers here in bosnia, so cnn’s all i’ve got for now. when i’m through posting i think i’ll do a little surfing.

reminds me of a story i heard the other day about tension in brisbane during WW2, called ‘the battle of brisbane’ between stationed us troops and the locals. an aust film director i met in zagreb says he wants to make a short film about it. i might write it all up if i get more computer time.

we had our first sunny days in dubrovnik, a revelation, seriously. life is suddenly looking great. found a great indie club where we saw a local hip hop crew.

caught the bus over to bosnia today, and have spent the afternoon wandering about mostar. it feels like the war between the croats and muslims only finished moments ago. half the buildings are wrecked. it’s a pretty stark contrast between shiny outfitted euro kids, begging children and limbless ex-soldiers.

off to sarajevo tomorrow…

that leonard cohen tribute at the opera house seems like a whole other world, one that i keep thinking about flying back to. it is very cold here. the coldest it’s been in 18 years. though i’ve been feeling a lot warmer since i picked up a coat from an outlet in vienna yesterday.

we’re in croatia now. spent a bus trip from vienna shivering about spending the rest of the night on the streets. the hostel we booked earlier emailed yesterday to say we couldn’t stay. to cut a long story short, we went there anyway. and it was all fine.

zagreb is more beautiful than i was expecting. very cool things happening, especially music – ken vandermark, balanescu quartet, jeff mills, jonathan richman. hordes of kids hurtling down slopes in home-made sleds or bits of plastic, couples walking down the lanes, parents dragging the sleds back up the slopes.

have moved on to pula in the istrian top of croatia. we’ll be here for a few days, then dubrovnik, then…

i’ve been listening to new beats by a crew from budapest. check realistic crew‘s site for some samples. it’s a double ep by members of the crew – krizo and chabz. i met krizo (aka christian) at afrofill records in budapest, where he’d arrived with the cds direct from the pressing plant. his side is definitely the most interesting. broken beat and jungle flavoured hip hop beats packed with experimentation. chabz’ side is pretty steady boom bap hip hop, with a bit of krush-style melancholy. worth checking out.

otherwise i’ve been listening to b. fleishman (beautiful electronics from vienna), modern lovers and the care (velvets-influenced off kilter pop), kpt (killer post rock/electronic dirge pop!), and the high llamas (dileep clued me in on a great ep that came free with their album hawaii). unfortunately missed bright eyes in vienna, but looking forward to berlin.