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Final Layout In this month's zine: - An interview with Nicola Joseph about the radical history of community radio in Sydney & elsewhere. - A skeptical look at the Kyoto protocol as a solution to climate change. - Investigation into the origins of the New Right in Australia. - News of Indigenous resistance in Chile, the G8 trial in Genoa, the writers strike in the USA, animal liberation in Malaysia & the sad death of long-time local activist Peter McGregor. - Reviews of Perdido Street Station, The Golden Compass & a Defiance, Ohio show. contact: [email protected] city to suit themselves. It’s ruled over by a Miéville is a socialist and this shows in his brutal government and organised crime. attention to social structures and class struggle. utiny began as a group exploring different ways to resist war at home Much of the pleasure of the book is the sheer & abroad. We started a monthly zine to explore different avenues of richness of detail and the complexity and scale Mdisobedience. We know there are lots of radical ideas around & we of the world within its pages. New Crobuzon want people to write about their experiences & opinions. The Mutiny collective is both a mutant refl ection of our own world is meeting regularly again: we’re looking at Australian imperialism & avenues of and a city with its own depth. To take just one resistance in the Pacifi c & the region. Contact us if you’re interested. episode: when the water dwelling vodyanoi dock-workers strike, the Guild of Human Dockers denounces them, and radical leafl ets (The mutiny zine collective does not necessarily agree argue for ‘an all-race union against the bosses.’ with all the opinions of contributors. Contributors do Encouraged, the vodyanoi use their ability to not necessarily agree with all the opinions of the mutiny sculpt water to carve a channel out of the river, collective. The mutiny collective doesn’t agree with all Scientists are magicians and engines are steam- blockading the docks. the opinions of the mutiny collective.) powered clockwork. Much scientifi c research and creativity goes into punishment: criminals Perdido Street Station had me torn between are Remade into hybrid creatures, part machine staying up late into the night to keep reading or part beast, in order to work, to fi ght, or to and trying to slow down, to ration the world entertain. The hero of the story is a renegade so it wouldn’t run out. Fortunately there are Editors for this month: scientist trying to harness the energy of chaos. sequels. Princess Mob, Angry But all the characters are monsters, even the Princess Mob Nerd, SourDough, good ones: the book is morally complex and Dumpstered Twin offers no simple hope. and Graf Cat. Front and back cover images from FLCL - front cover quote c/- po box 4, enmore, nsw, 22042,0442,2 aaustraliaustral from Cerebral Posse mutineers@graffiti.nnet Back issues off Mutiny can be found at: http://www.mpi-web.net/mutiny The Golden Compass (2007) Brief News (fi lm) Italy: 2001 G8 protestors sentenced The Golden Compass is 25 people were recently sentenced for charges relating to the G8 protests in Genoa in 2001: protests a typical holiday-season at which the police killed one man, Carlo Giuliani, and had severely beaten and tortured many more blockbuster: an epic activists. Prosecutors brought charges of ‘devastation and sacking’ against demonstrators and sought a adventure story based on fi ne of a hundred thousand Euros as compensation for the damage they alleged the demonstration did to a series of books by Philip the reputation of Genoa. The fi nal sentences amounted to 110 years of gaol, with people given between 5 Pullman aimed at teenagers. months to 11 years. However the hype around this fl ick – just as with the books Meanwhile, the court cases against police offi cers for the tortures in Bolzaneto and for the violent raid – centres on its supposed on protesters sleeping in the Diaz school move slowly forward (one had just ended and the other will end subversion of the usual ethics of many such around summer 2008) towards meek convictions and the possibility that the statute of limitations will adventure novels/fi lms. Particularly noticeable have expired before police can be found guilty. is the anti-religious sentiment of the fi lm. While other reviewers have claimed that a lot of the US: Ha! The pen IS mightier than the studio! anti-religious fl avour is lost in the transition The Writers Guild of America (WGA) started their strike on from book to fi lm, I still found the lines fairly November 5, 2007. The WGAE (East) and WGAW (West) are two clear. Admittedly though, I have not read the labour unions representing fi lm, television, new media and radio books. writers working in the United States. Over 12,000 writers joined the strike. In the fi lm, the dominant controlling order of society is the Magisterium, and the way they are The strike is against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television characterised and visually depicted can surely Producers (AMPTP), a trade organisation representing the interests of 397 American fi lm and television producers for a minimum set of standards in all writing contracts. only symbolise the Church in the minds of the fairly well depicted. One unfortunate aspect is viewers. The Magisterium values innocence that it still tends to rely on those in the higher- The Writers Guild has indicated their industrial action would be a “marathon”. The current strike has over knowledge, discipline and order over rungs of society, lords and kings such as the lasted 9 weeks and 6 days, as of January 13th. It is said that the strike will cost the media industry freedom and are willing to use their power with bear, Iorek Byrnison who must redeem himself US$21.3 million a day in ‘direct production spending’ if the strikes continue into February. quite brutal methods to ensure their way is the and reclaim his throne. only way. In opposition to their fundamentalist There have been numerous organised pickets throughout America at major studios including Warner Bros ways Pullman has written into this world much The scenery and location of the fi lm look (the devil), Fox Studios, Disney, CBS and Paramount. On day fi ve of the strike in 2007, 4000 strikers that exist which cannot be easily explained. amazing and are worth seeing on the big screen. massed near the offi ces of Fox Corp picketing to 20th Century Fox studios. There is the mysterious ‘Dust’ that surrounds all From the university and big city to the snow- life and is a possible gate to other dimensions covered northern frontier town and fi nishing The singer and the guitarist from Rage Against the Machine attended the rally singing a number of pro as well as (and most happily in regards to in the icy tundra of the far north it is also union songs while the people in the rally waved their red and black “Writers of America on Strike” signs. the conversion to fi lm) the animal daemons continually changing as Lyra’s quest advances. – companions for every person and which In fact one of my minor gripes about this movie Chile: First fatality over Mapuche Indian land struggle continually change form until some point in was that the plot advances so fast that some of Police shot and killed Matias Catrileo Quezada, a 22-year-old university student, and Mapuche supporter adolescence when they settle on the one animal the more interesting locations weren’t explored during a land re-occupation near the southern city of Vilcun. The indigenous Mapuche peoples of of that refl ects their human’s character the best. as much as I’d have liked them to be. southern Chile regularly clash with authorities over control of their ancestral lands but this is the fi rst SourDough fatality that has resulted from the confl ict since 2003. Thrown into this world is young teenager Lyra, The incident took place at dawn on Thursday when a group of about whose inquisitive nature leads her to realise Perdido Street Station something is amiss with the Magisterium’s 25 Mapuche Indians and their supporters raided a farm and burned the (2000) livestock feed. Police who had been charged with protecting the farm plans to ‘save’ children. Her quest to fi nd the China Miéville after a number of similar incursions, gave chase and fi red on the group truth is aided by her daemon Pantalaimon and (book) who retreated to a nearby school. Catrileo was shot in the stomach and an assorted crew of likable characters. Not so died at the scene. likable but certainly one of the best characters Perdido Street Station is a novel about monsters and is Mrs Coulter played perfectly by Nicole Activists rallied outside the La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago and dyed at least one of the a monstrous city. New Kidman as the icy and menacing ‘baddie’. It is Palace’s fountains blood red to protest the murder. Riot police clashed with demonstrators and made a Crobuzon is the world, another way that this story separates itself from number of arrests. many other similar fi lms in that the two most inhabited by humans and important characters are females and both are various non-humans who remake parts of the Dozens of Mapuche activists languish in prisons as a result of their resistance to the state in defence of their rights to land and acts of sabotage against corporations and businesses that pollute and poison the 4.
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