Tasmanian Author Promises Biggest "Civil Disobedience Campaign" In Decades For Anti-Pulp Mill Protests

The new Tasmanian pulp mill scored the approval of both Labor and Liberal, and saw conservationist Peter Garrett forced to toe the party line, and lose a rainforest worth of credibility while he was at it. We won't know until after the weekend just how much of an impact the controversial pulp mill's approval will have on the election, or in particular on the electoral choices of the voters of Wentworth, the seat of pro-pulp mill environment minister Malcolm Turnbull.

But activists against the mill are promising that it will never be built.

Here are some excerpts from a fiery speech given by author Richard Flanagan to a crowd of anti-pup mill protesters in Tasmania a few days ago.

While providing some solid background on the history of the massive corruption linking the Gunns woodchipping corporation and the Tasmanian state Labor government, Flanagan promises to join protesters in a civil disobedience campaign he declares will be the biggest since the successful protests stopping the damming of the Franklin River in the early 1980s, and claims the controversial pulp mill will never get the chance to destroy a forest or pollute the environment :

And if, in the end we have all other avenues denied us, if we are left with no other alternative, if it takes standing on the road to the pulp mill site and placing our bodies between their machines and our home, we will stand there, in peace and with pride, united against hate and greed, joined in our love for our island. And if we are arrested and thrown in jail, then we will go to jail in our tens, we will go to jail in our hundreds, we will go to jail in our thousands, and Paul Lennon will have to build seven new prisons to house all the people who will come and who will keep on coming before they even attempt to pour the foundations of one new pulp mill.

Now is the time for turning, now is the season for our change, now must come that moment when we no longer are cowed, when we cease to be silent, when we speak the truth to power and say no to this pulp mill and yes to a future in which we are governed in the spirit in which we live: with goodness, with the interests of others in our heart and not the leash of greed tearing at our throat. Now is that hour, now is our future. The journey is long, the road is dark and frightening, but together we can reach our destination: the Tasmania of which we all dream, where all are welcome and all prosper, made not of lies but truth, built not of rich men's hate but our love for our island and for each other. Our love. Our island. Let's take it back. Let's start marching.

Richard Flanagan brought the issue of the new Tasmanian pulp mill, and the long history of foul corruption linking Gunns and Labor and Liberal governments, to national attention in this shock-inducing article from The Monthly magazine. It is a story that every Australian should read.

Flanagan is the author of the novel, 'The Unknown Terrorist', which has become an international hit and has now been optioned for a movie by Steven Spielberg's company Dreamworks.

'The Unknown Terrorist' is so despised by Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, who haven't made clear that they've actually read the book they've dismissed as trash, that I had to read it myself. If they hated it so much, there was likely much on interest to be found in those pages. I'm halfway through, and it's a fast, interesting read, which successfully predicted the terror-related non-events of this year, where 'unknown terrorists' were rounded up, publicly prosecuted and then released.

Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt appear to be on a dedicated mission to trash Richard Flanagan as often as they can, but not so often as to raise suspicion to their motives.

Perhaps Bolt is annoyed at Flanagan's best-seller status, while his own book's sales stalled. Perhaps Blair is jealous that Flanagan has actually written books in the first place.

Naturally, Bolt and Blair seem to have absolutely no problem with what Gunns is doing to Tasmania's environment, and the further damage to come from the pulp mill, all against the will of the majority of Tasmanians. Flanagan remains their target of choice, even though there is a state Labor government involved that should be mocked and derided at every opportunity.

Flanagan's promised "civil disobedience" campaign will supply both Bolt and Blair with plenty of material to continue their mockery of those who choose to not sit idly by while a behemoth like Gunns mows down whatever, or whoever, gets in their way.

Expect the Tasmanian pulp mill issue to leap back into the headlines in the first few months of 2008.

By then, the pro-Gunns sate Labor government will probably be feeling cocky enough to try and stop the anti-mill protests and blockades using powers under the anti-terror laws. The powers that already allow for the prosecution of protesters who "interfere" with the smooth running of corporations, like Gunns.

The fear of Islamic terrorism was the bulldozer that rammed through the anti-terror laws, but the laws, and the definitions of what actually constitutes terrorist actions or terror support, are open enough to allow for the prosecution of pro-environment related protesters should a corporate entity like Gunns wish to do so. The bet is that they most certainly will.

If Richard Flanagan goes through with his plans for massive "civil disobedience", he may find himself in a very similar position to a key character in 'The Unknown Terrorist'. Except in his case, it will be his pro-environment actions that may see him fighting 'anti-terror' related charges in the courts.

Flanagan, however, appears ready and willing to fight that battle.

Aussie Circa 2007 : Cynical, Lacking In Empathy, Obsessed With Money And Property

Is This Really Australia Today? Or Just Sydney?

As is traditional, an Australian author has scored an English release for his new novel, so it's time to piss all over the homeland for the amusement of the Brits, many of whom still don't like the idea that "the worst of the worst" of England's prison ships built something close to paradise over the past two centuries in this sun-drenched land so far away.

Well, if not paradise, then something far less grim than most of England on a wet, misty winter's day, when the sun sets at 4pm, and nothing else to do but fuck, dance and drink.

The Australian author in question here is Richard Flanagan, who wrote a fairly interesting novel The Unknown Terrorist. It's one of the few novels to look at the effect of terrorism and the 'War On Terror' in Australia. But the true terror for Flanagan seems to be what he found on the streets and in the hearts of Sydneysiders when he decamped from his tree-crowded Tasmanian home to Sydney to write the novel.

Actually, Flanagan does make some valid, but troubling, points about what occupies the minds of many Sydneysiders today, and, as he explains in the quotes below, the new Australian exemplified by money-obsessed, property-focused Sydneyites, is the antithesis of the creature that once passed as the typical Aussie.

Blame John Howard? No, says Flanagan, we did it to ourselves :

"I wanted to make a mirror to what I felt Australia had become. I think it is a pretty bleak country at the moment. It was a land of such hope and possibility when I was younger, and in the past couple of years, like a lot of Australians, I've ended up feeling ashamed of what it had become. But we can't blame governments or parties or politicians; we have to accept in the end it was we as a people who happily went along with this.

"There was a loss of empathy. I don't know where that comes from. We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion."

On laying blame :

"...in my country, they're blaming Howard, but that's such an absurd and easy option. There is a crisis that is not political - an epidemic of loneliness, of sadness - and we're completely unequal to dealing with it. We're obsessed these days with believing that the answer is always individual, that it lies in ourselves. This takes every form of madness from self-help manuals to step aerobics, and is always about improving yourself. But the reality is, it lies in other people and making connections with them, yet it is a world where it's ever harder to make those connections."

The limits of truth :

"In Australia....we have a whole spectrum of media commentators who consistently argue that things like national security demand that individual freedoms be truncated, and we're also constantly told there are needs and necessities of the nation that mean there are limits on the truth. But there can be no limits on the truth. If there are limits on the truth, you've opened up the road to tyranny."

On David Hicks :

"To train with al-Qaida prior to 2001 is a different thing than to go and train with them now. One can understand how people like him might end up there. You don't have to agree with them, and I don't. I have a friend who died in the Bali bombing. I don't support the murder of innocent people anywhere by anyone, but what really matters is truth and individual freedom, and when those things start coming under such heavy attack as they have in recent times, then people should be very disturbed....there is nothing higher than individual freedom."

On terrorism :

"Terrorism is simply murder. What is it we dislike? We dislike murder and the use of murder to try to impose a repressive regime. But it's murder, that's what it is. The word terrorism has been misused for so long that it clouds our understanding of what happens. After the Bali bombing, you can make a lot of criticisms of the Indonesian authorities, but they treated it as a crime and they tracked down those people. That's what it was - a crime. The Americans saw September 11 as an attack on their national honour, and it led them into a madness that the world is now paying for".

The Full Story Here is a worth a read. As is Flanagan's novel.

Philip Adams : Australia Has Become Another Country....Almost