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contents info vomit page 24 - featured story: US military buildup’s in australia, further steps to war? page 9 - syria: who’s who, what’s what, and how this conflict af- fects the rest of the world. page 6 - “Slashing Bar- ry’s” budget, financial necessity, or conserva- tive money hoarding? pages 4-5 and pages 20-23 - opinion: the monthly moron, BAMF of the hour, moments of madness, corporate cock - ups. beats page 34 - word of mouth: interviews with extortion, wil wagner (the smith street band), and local resident failure. page 29 - reviews page 42 - gig guide scrawled on the wall page 45 - uncovered: Unknown australian artists at their best. page 50 - street art: the best seen this month. page 52 - DIY: how to do your own graff piece. 1

Civil Disobedience issue 1

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This is the first Issue of my zine "Civil Disobedience" the idea of this zine is to take news, events, music, and art that is largely being ignored by mainstream media sources and give them some exposure. This issue includes an 11 page feature on the syrian conflict, a feature on US military build - ups in Australian territories and the Asia pacific region, as well as having interviews with musicians such as Rohan (lead singer) from extortion, local resident failure, and Wil wagner (lead singer) from the smith street band. This issue also has a section covering art, showing off some talented local artists as well as a DIY street art tutorial. Enjoy!

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Page 1: Civil Disobedience issue 1

contents

info vomit

page 24 - featured story: US military buildup’s in australia, further steps to war?

page 9 - syria: who’s who, what’s what, and how this conflict af-fects the rest of the world.

page 6 - “Slashing Bar-ry’s” budget, financial necessity, or conserva-tive money hoarding?

pages 4-5 and pages 20-23 - opinion: the monthly moron, BAMF of the hour, moments of madness, corporate cock - ups.

beats

page 34 - word of mouth: interviews with extortion, wil wagner (the smith street band), and local resident failure.

page 29 - reviews

page 42 - gig guide

scrawled on the wall

page 45 - uncovered: Unknown australian artists at their best.

page 50 - street art: the best seen this month.

page 52 - DIY: how to do your own graff piece.

1

Page 2: Civil Disobedience issue 1

info - vomit 2 3

- featured story: US military buildups in

australia, further steps to war?

- syria: who’s who, what’s what, and

how this conflict affects the rest of the

world.

- “Slashing Barry’s” budget, financial ne-

cessity, or conservative money hoard-

ing?

- opinion: the monthly moron, BAMF of

the hour, moments of madness, corpo-

rate cock - ups.

Page 3: Civil Disobedience issue 1

\

Subsequently, on the 13th of august an anonymous user on 4chan posted a thread notifying other 4chan users of the contest and calling for others to vote names like, diabeetus, fapple, gushing granny, Hitler did nothing wrong, and (no joke this was in the top twenty) “what the apple did you just appleing say about me, You little apple? Ill have you know I graduated top of my class in the navy seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous raids on al-Qaida.”

Inevitably the site was promptly taken down the following day but not before the home page was hacked, which then made it so that when a person entered the page they would be greeted by the title “mtn dew salutes the Israeli mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!” and a small pop up saying “le 9gag are legion.”

I think we can safely assume that a bit of forward thinking on this one might have helped.

5corporate

cock-ups.

4

This is a section where i’d like to focus on marketing and PR, more specifically i’m going to focus on examples of when corporate campaigns in these fields blow up in their faces.So on that note, lets look at online interactive marketing.

Interactive marketing is quite simply a marketing cam-paign where the target audi-ence is in some way involved with the campaign, companies have been doing them for years, there’s absolutely noth-ing new about them.

However what is new are “trolls” - that is, a culture of online pranksters origi-nating from the forum site 4chan who can range from someone de-liberately aggravating a person online, to an organised mass of people pulling a en masse prac-tical joke on a specified site or person.

So, what happens then when the two meet? well let’s take a look at mountain dew’s recent “dub the dew” campaign as an example.The idea of the campaign was to have a online competition where mountain dew drinkers would sub-mit an idea for the name of their new apple flavored mountain dew, and the rest of the people would vote for it, and whichever name had the most votes would win.Well, they asked the internet, and the internet responded.

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7When asked why these cuts are necessary and why particularly these cuts have been levelled at education and health, the member for Newcastle, Tim Owen stated that the state government were really “stuck between a rock and a hard place” when they were elected, and he gave four major factors as to why that was.

Firstly, Owen insists that when the liberal party took power that they found a “$5.8 billion gap in what labor had outlined pre-election in terms of budget” as well as the federal treasurer apparently cutting their GST receipts for the next four years cutting $5.2 billion from the state budget leaving the govern-ment with $11 billion less than they thought they had.

Secondly the member for Newcas-tle outlines that “Education and Health are over 50% of the state budget of approximately $60 bil-lion, so over $30 billion is spent on those two portfolios” thirdly Owen claims that from a statistical perspective, “while the population of NSW has grown approx. 9% in the last decade, the public service has grown over 30%!”

Slashing barrys budget - fInancial

neccessity, or conservative

money hoarding? (as of october 15th)

Recently the state govern-ment has come under fire on all fronts for its budget plan for the next 4 years and it’s fail-ure to return the NSW treasury to surplus with the budget plan claiming thousands of jobs in the public service, as well as bil-lions of dollars in budget cut’s levelled particularly at educa-tion and health. These cuts have subsequently caused widespread outrage and a loss of faith in “slashing Barry” as he has been referred to.

Why wouldn’t they be? He was elected into office under the premise of returning the budget to surplus and instituting a “transport master plan” neither of which he has achieved, instead the people of NSW are now facing the doom and gloom of huge cutbacks to public services. But these are things that the various media outlets have already informed us of, what I want to explore is WHY these cuts have been put in place, and HOW these cuts will actually affect the services in question that are being cut.

Let’s start with the why, it seems like cutting $3 billion from health and $1.7 billion from education, the two most widely used necessities for the country would be not only hugely detrimental to the people of NSW but a total political blunder for the liberal party.

6 also adding that this equates to “over $8B in ad-ditional wages over the past 10 years.”

Finally the member for Newcas-tle alleges the previous govern-ment had in fact been borrow-ing money to pay for the public sector because the income of “$60B is not enough to meet all the services we are required to deliver.”

So given the previous state-ments, it would seem fairly inevitable that the state gov-ernment would probably have to reel in spending if they ever hoped to return the budget to surplus like they promised, but it’s not simply enough to cut the funding and leave the sys-tem to right itself, the mark of a good government is the abil-ity to make cuts and trim the fat but to also ensure the con-tinued quality of the services in question to the best of their ability.

So how then do the state govern-ment intend on ensuring this continued quality of public services?

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8Well the official party statement on the matter is that they are “redirecting funds to frontline services” but judging by the previous statements of Tim Owen, we can reasonably conclude that this “redirection of funds” is not happening. Not because they’re keeping the money from the public, but simply because there is actually no money to redirect. All that is hap-pening is that the funding is being removed from these services to pay off the government’s debt.

But then how will that actually affect services? When asked for his opinion on the subject Dr Phillip atkin, a veteran emergency department doctor remarked that it “Depends if they cut the bu-reaucracy or real services. Administration has for a long time been the fastest growing section of public health, soaking up lots of money for no real improvement in service.”

Furthermore Dr atkin expressed little optimism for the future of public health overall in the face of these cuts, especially re-

garding the identification of where exactly the “frontline” of these public services is when the new budget is put in place, stat-ing that “I have little confi-dence that they will get it right. It is entirely possible that the bureaucracy will recommend to government that patient services be cut because the alternative is that they recommend they be cut”

He is by no means alone there ei-ther, there has been an outcry of similar feelings from the opposi-tion as well as various doctors and hospitals,

9with opposition leader john Rob-ertson proclaiming a decrease in the standards of care in health right across the board.

Though despite all the doom and gloom in the health sector, there is still a possibility for improvement, Dr Atkin indicated that if the new budget was al-located correctly and any and all cuts made are allocated to areas that actually need cut-ting then this new budget may even actually help some sectors of public health back to pro-ductivity.

SYRIA: who’s

who, what’s

what, and

how this af-

fects the rest

of the world

The syrian revolution is quickly becoming a decisive conflict for the political and military situation in the middle east, but what’s really going on? who is fighting this revolution? why are they fight-ing? why are the countries that are involved in this involved? and how does this conflict impact on the world stage?

The revolution itself began on the 15th of march 2011, with nationwide anti-regime protests as part of the far wider reach-ing “arab spring” movement, the protestors were demanding the immeadiate resignation of the countries president Bashar Al-Assad as well as ending nearly 50 years of Ba-ath party rule in the country.

The syrian government responded by deploying the syrian army and ordering them to shoot civilian protestors.As such, eventually peaceful pro-test evolved into an armed rebel-lion that has now engulfed the country into one of the bloodi-est civil wars so far this decade, leaving an estimated 40,000 dead and hundreds of thousands dis-placed.

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active combatantspro - regime

Syrian Arab RepublicSyrian Armed ForcesSyrian ArmySyrian NavySyrian Air ForceRepublican GuardGeneral Security DirectoratePolitical Security DirectorateShabiha

IranRevolutionary GuardsBasijHezbollahIraqi Shi’ite militiasAbu al-Fadhal al-Abbas brigadePFLP–GC

rebels

Syrian oppositionFree Syrian ArmySyrian Liberation ArmySeveral Palestinian militias

supported by:TurkeySaudi ArabiaQatar

MujahideenAhrar al-Shamal-Nusra Frontal-Qaeda in Iraq

supported by:QatarSaudi Arabia

Syrian areas of control (as of november 2012)

Ongoing conflicts

controlled by op-position/kurdish forces

controlled by the syrian government

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reported atrocities (examples)

governmentaugust 2012300 - 600 people were killed in the Damascus suburb of Daraya over several days in a killing spree by troops and pro-regime militiamen who stormed the town.

june 14th 2012Dozens of people were killed in the town of Haffa after Assad’s forces overran it as part of a major offensive to recover rebel-controlled territories.

june 6th 2012At least 78 people were shot, hacked, or burned to death in the central Syrian village of Mazraat al-Qubair.

may 12th 2012men in civilian clothes gunned down people in the streets and stabbed women and children in their homes at least 108 people were killed, including 34 women and 49 children.

April, 2012at least 100 people, most of them civilians, were killed in a govern-ment offensive in the villages of Taftanaz and Killi in the north-ern Idlib province.

rebelsnovember 2nd 2012A video appeared to show Syrian rebels killing a group of captured soldiers, spraying them with bul-lets after kicking and beating them as they lay on the ground.

september 10th 2012A video showed what appeared to be the extrajudicial executions of 21 government soldiers in Hanano in the city of Aleppo.

august 2nd 2012A video showed several bloodied prisoners in Aleppo being led into a noisy outdoor crowd and lined up against a wall as men carrying assault rifles shouted slogans and sprayed them with bullets.

july 2012Twenty-three Iraqi Shiite Muslims were killed in Syria, some of them by beheading, according to the Washington-based Shiite Rights Watch. In one gruesome case, the U.N. said an Iraqi family of seven was killed at gunpoint in their Damas-cus apartment.

major battlesHomsLate last year the Free Syrian Army (FSA) dramatically changed their guerrilla tactics and launched an all out offensive in the city of Homs.The attack on the Syrian armed forces home ground came after months of violent oppression and military crackdown by the armed forces against the city’s civilian population. The fighting began on the 28th of October, when fierce clashes between the Syrian army and the FSA broke out in the Bab al-sabaa district of the city, the fighting quickly spread in the following days to the Baba Amr and Al-Qusur districts of the city, with the total casualties from the initial fighting numbering 37 dead and 53 wounded.

The fighting escalated on the 25th of November when the FSA launched an ambush on a Syrian airbase killing six elite pilots, one technical officer and three other personnel.In response to this, Syrian government representatives on the state television network vowed to “cut every evil hand” of the at-tackers as a result.Since then there have been repeated government offensives, espe-cially against the Baba Amr district with ground continually be-ing lost and then regained by the FSA at high costs to both sides. There was also occasional sparks of violent retribution against the civilians in the district. Namely on the 5th of December when a large group of shabiha [pro-government militia] abducted an estimated 61 civilians from “anti-regime neighbourhoods”, all of said civilians were killed and strung out for show in the main square of the pro regime neigh-bourhood of Al Zahra.

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The fighting in Homs is continuing to worsen, there appears to be no ces-sation of government offensives and bombardment, and FSA counter bombard-ment and guerrilla strikes continue unabated. Recent video evidence also indicates that government artillery strikes have been directly targeting civilian apartment blocks.

The conflict seems to largely be a stalemate with both sides simply re-taining the same ground and as many observers have pointed out at huge casualties, with journalists like Paul Conroy describing it as an “indiscrim-inate massacre” and a “slaughter”.

ALEPPOThe battle for Aleppo began on the 19th of July 2012, and is quickly becoming the most crucial and decisive battle in the syrian conflict to date.

The city is Syria’s commer-cial capital and is home to some 2.5 million inhabitants making it the largest city in syria.For these two reasons, the battle of Aleppo is believed to be the battle that will de-cide the outcome of this war.

The city is divided between three major combatant forces, The regime’s army, the Free Syrian Army, and the Kurdish PYD.

In the opening days of the battle the Rebel forces man-aged to capture the eastern suburbs of the city, It is unclear whether the district already had a strong rebel presence before the battle began, or it was captured by opposition fighters coming from the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, thousands of rebel soldiers from Aleppo’s

Rebel controlled areas

areas under kurd-ish control

rebel controlled areas

government controlled areas

unclear situations

northern and eastern countryside began to move towards the city.

On the 24th of July, the FSA launched an offensive to take the city center, lead-ing to heavy fighting near the gates of the Old City, a UN World heritage site known for its ancient structures. Mean-while, rebel forces on the eastern front continued to push westwards.

The syrian armies immeadiate response of massive reinforcements to it’s garri-son in the city has now caused a mas-sively blood soaked stalemate across the city, which has now led to the mass evactuation of the city by it’s civilian population, and a death toll of roughly 2,497 civilians, and around 1449 soldiers,

(compiled number from all sides of combatants)

This battle has attract-ed a huge amount of international media at-tention as it has given rise to the classifica-tion of syria as a civil war, in the sense that it’s no longer just the incredibly poor and oppressed areas of the country that are in-volved in the fight, but also the far more economically prosper-ous cities, msaking the civil war into a coun-try wide, total war.

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Syria on the world stageThe civil war in Syria while being localized to one particular region has had a international fallout politically, in the wake of some of the earliest violent government reprisals against the ci-vilian population, many international organizations began trying to figure out ways of reducing or stopping such violence.

This caused a division of world opinion, particularly in the united nations security council, where any and all UN military interven-tion in Syria was openly vetoed by Russia and China, the official statements from Moscow and Beijing, detailing the backing of a pol-icy of self determination of the conflict, and totally condemning foreign intervention in the conflict, under the logic that foreign intervention in this conflict will only aggravate the situation.

Ironically Russia is one of a few different countries who have show open and willing support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime, these coun-tries notably include Iran and China.

Russia’s support of Al-Assad and the Baath party is for a myriad of reasons linking back as far as the cold war.Russia has maintained close diplomatic ties to Syria since 1956 when arms trade between the two countries began, with said ties rapidly solidified during the course of the Suez war.These ties have continued into the post cold war period, and are one of many motivations for Russian support of the Syrian regime.

Other reasons notably include for instance the continued sale of arms to the regime. State owned Russian arms company rosoboronex-port makes around 10% of their total arms exports to Syria alone, accounting for millions of dollars of trade.Despite the exponentially worsening humanitarian crisis in Syria, Russia has continued to ship large amounts of arms to the Syrian regime.This particularly has caused a large backlash against Russia from the international community, and it has been speculated that the -

supplying of arms to a regime committing war crimes may also account for a accountability for said crimes committed.

Furthermore Russia needs the Assad regime for strategic reasons, since the end of the cold war Syria has provided Russia with it’s only remaining naval base outside of the territorial boundaries of the former USSR, this naval base at tartus is also russia’s only Mediterranean naval base, which allows for Russian naval influ-ence over the Mediterranean region.

Interestingly, in the last few years the naval base at tartus has had fudning injections for its expansion and modernization of equipment there, with speculation that the base is being extended so it can be upgraded from it’s original role as a resupply station for the soviet mediterranean fleet to a fully functional naval base.

Adding fuel to this fire, under the direct command of russian presi-dent vladimir Putin, russia has deployed an estimated 200 marines to guard the base.

It should also be taken note of that this is the first time since the collapse of the soviet union in 1992 that russia has directly opposed the united states on a military crisis like this. But they almost certainly would not have openly vetoed UN inter-vention without china to back them up.

China’s motivation to act on the syrian conflict is unclear Beijing has the same official statement as russia, but it is possible that china is going along with russia here as a means of improving re-lations that have reanged from poor to near outright warfare since the sino-soviet split of the 1970’s for purposes trade and excava-tion of minerals and lumber in siberia.

However the most immeadiate and major ally stepping in over syria is by far Iran.

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Iran has, over the course of this conflict provided thwe syr-ian regime with a monumental amount of arms and munitions and have even recently stepped it up by sending over a task force of the infamous revolutionary guard to help the regime main-tain control of its people and crush the rebellion.

Iran’s reasons for this are simple. Since Iran’s revolution of the 1970’s it hasn’t had a lot of friends, they do however have syria as an ally, and particularly in the political climate of tension today with the US, Iran feels that it can’t afford the loss of one of its few remaining friends.

Also notably, Iran has used Syria as a training ground and stag-ing area for their terrorist organization Hezbollah, using them particularly to try and destabalize and attack Israel.

For this purpose Iran has been using their friendship with Syria for decades, and the removal of the Assad government would prob-ably end that, and effectively cut off their major means of try-ing to destabilize the widely hated Israeli regime, which is also causing increased tensions between the two countries as well, with Iran threatening that any strike against Iran by israel will be met with the total annihilation of the Israeli state.

This conflict as a result of these kinds of supports and political backdrops has become a huge mexican standoff between major powers in the region and the world.

As such military support for the rebels is just as politically motivated, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey providing material support to the rebels.Primarily it appears that the overall motivation for Saudi Arabia, and Qatar is that the Assad regime has become a liability in the region.

Turkey however has a far more deep seated motivation to help to

destabilize the syrian regime.

Syria, since the cold war has been responsible for the funding of a group known as the “kurdistan workers party” or as it is more commonly known, the “PKK”, this organization is a marxist revolu-tionary group motivated for the independence of kurdistan, a region that covers southern turkey, northern syria, northern iran, and norther iraq.

This organizations movement in turkey particularly howver has primarily been a guerrilla group fighting to destabilize the turk-ish government, who throughout the cold war was a direct ally of the US and allowed for the placement of large amounts of nuclear armaments in their territory, which in the event of nuclear war would have provided for the obliteration of major russian cities before the soviets could defend themselves ( this also lead to the cuban missile crisis of 1962).

As a result, the Syrian government and soviets throughout the cold war and just syria after the collapse of the USSR have been funding this group to try and fight the turks.So naturally when the events in syria escalated Turkey jumped on board and supplied the rebels in the hope that a new government in syria would mean the de-escalation of guerrilla operations by the PKK.

The rest of the world in regard to syria has for the most part just condemned the actions of the Assad regime, some groups like the eu-ropean union have placed trade sanctions on the country but par-ticularly the UN has found itself strung up and proved impotent by its own system.

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moment of madnessOften i find myself immersed in hypothetical thought, weird mood swings and i just generally spend alot of my time thinking about things that are pretty irrelevant in the big scheme of things. But somehow i end up spending hours if not days obsessing over a sub-ject trying to figure it out, so i find the best way to avert that is to write, and when i say write take that in the loosest form possi-ble because it’s just terrible, terrible poetry.So i thought hey, why not put it in here with the rest of my terri-ble attempts at writing? as such the following segment is just my thoughts vomited on apage.’

“god”there is no reason for us to exist.We simply do.There is no reason to feel.We simply do.There is no reason not to see.We simply do.There is no reason to ignore.We simply do.there is no reason not to act.We simply do.We are bound by rules with no reason.Reason is a concept.Not a reality.Reality is chaos, disorder.Reality is your body suddenly exploding when you’re hit by a truck.Your stinking, gastric entrails being consumed by bacteria.Reality is natural selection.Natural selection is god.And god doesn’t give a fuck about you.

20

the monthly moron

This is a section where i’d like to look at what the world has to offer in the way of malicious idiots and their poorly thought out actions.

as such lets jump straight into the story of A woman from Des Moines, iowa, who was arrested recently in relation to an arson in her town, it was reported that Jennifer Christine harris allegedly set fire to nikki and jim rasmussen’s house while they slept, the reasons for the arson apparently were in response to events that unfolded via facebook.

Allegedly harris asked Rasmussen to create an event on facebook for a party that the two were organizing, then later on as the party appeared to have increasing numbers of declines and was looking like a bit of a bust, harris blamed Rasmussen and began a string of defammatory statements about her on facebook, which then created a falling out between the two, and Rasmussen like any nor-mal person, unfriended her.

Harris’ response to this however was a little less than normal, she then decided that her being “unfriended” on facebook justified Harris to then in turn in the dead of night set fire to their home with the Rasmussen’s asleep inside, nobody was hurt and everybody escaped but with the loss of a detached garage and fire damamge to their home.

Harris was arrested in relation to the arson, and then charged with first degree arson with bail set at $100,000.

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It actually amazes me a little bit how quickly this escalated from being a bit of a prick on the internet to trying to kill your former friend.

I think at the point where trying to kill your friend seems like a justifiable possibility that you should probably get off the inter-net.

This woman in my opinion passes the criteria for our monthly moron with flying colours, I cannot think of a more picture perfect case of taking yourself way too seriously.

Harris is now in jail for her actions.

harris (right) and the damamge her arson caused (left)

22 BAMF of the hour 23

This section is the exact op-posite of the previous, here i’d like to focus on acts of goodness, charity and just generally focus on good peo-ple doing good things.

This issues BAMF of the hour takes us to Brooklyn, New York, where 7 year old autis-tic child Keyla McCree who after slipping out through an open window, began dancing on their apartments third story air conditioning unit.

This innocent ignorance of the danger she was in, was suddenly cut short when sud-denly she fell from the air conditioning unit, it was then that just in the nick of time that bus driver, Steven Saint Bernard leapt forward and caught the little girl in his arms and broke her fall, sav-ing her life.

This whole scene was caught on video by a mobile phone in the adjacent building, Bernard in response to being called a hero,

simply replied that his actions were “just his paternal instinct” he fur-ther stated that all he could think was “Please let me catch her, please let me catch her, that’s all I could say. Let me catch the little baby, that’s all”.

Amazingly both parties left the inci-dent nearly unscathed with Bernard only suffering a torn ligament in his arm, a price he claimed which was well worth it to save a life.

Okay so just a recap of this, this guy Bernard, sees a little girl falling, risks life and limb to catch a girl falling to her death, manages to do so with no injury to her and a mini-mal injury to himself, and when he’s called a hero is totally humble about it and says that it was just his in-stinct as a parent? If that doesn’t qualify for being our BAMF of the hour I seriously don’t know what could, that dude even lives up to the standard of his middle name.

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US military buildups in australian

territory, further steps to war?

Over the course of the past year, the australian government has been in fairly quiet talks with the US governemnt regarding the in-creasement of a US military presence in the region, most well known of which is the accomodation of roughly 2,500 marines to the robert-son barracks in darwin.

Alone this placement of marines would be by no means any cause for concern or feelings of unease, but what the australian public is largely unaware of is the scale and magnitude of the accompanying US military expansions in not only australia, but the entire asia - pacific region.Firstly, in australian territories the US and Australian militaries have jointly organized the following military expansions:

- The afore mentioned placement of 2,500 marines in darwin, other-wise known as the US Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) the Task Force will consist of command, ground combat and air combat ele-ments available for rapid deployment for expeditionary combat. The Robertson Barracks in Darwin will effectively be a permanent joint base, and the organisational heart of the Task Force.

- The construction of a new US space surveillance sensor, supposedly to “locate space debris orbiting the earth and threatening the sat-ellites on which our networked society depends.” militarily however the sensor can be used to detect objects in space for the offensive and defensive aspect of war fighting in space.Data from the sensor will go to the US Joint Space Operations Cen-tre (JSpOC) that manages the US Space Surveillance Network at Van-denberg Air Force Base in California. It will be part of a new space fence made up of US Air Force-operated radars, located at Kwajelein Atoll in the Pacific or Ascension Island in the South Atlantic (or both).

US marines at mt bundy training camp. PICTURE: NT News

- expansions to the Coco’s is-land air force base to accom-modate US surveillance ( and possibly attack) drones.

As much as these buildups are alarming by anyone’s means, we are by no means alone in these kinds of joint operations.These military expansions by the US in the asia pacific region are part of a far larger strategy of “containment” of China’s growing geopolitical influence.

This has been especially so for the past two years as china has become more forceful regarding it’s ter-ritorial claims in the china sea, with these claims now becoming a chinese “core interest” as officials have put it.

the clearest examples of this shift in priority can be shown in the july placement of a garrison of the People’s Liberation Army on the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, which are also claimed by Vi-etnam, as well as statements such as this one expressed by chinese president, Hu Jintao: “We should enhance our capacity for exploit-ing marine resources, resolutely safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests, and build China into a maritime power.”

- The expansion of the Naval Communications Station Har-old E Holt at North West Cape to house joint American and australian attack submarine operations, with the capacity to sustain a nuclear submarine presence.

- Expansions to the The Aus-tralian Defence Satellite Com-munications Ground Station (ADSCGS) by building a separate facility in the ADSCGS grounds for Ultra-High-Frequency satel-lite communications, enabling secure all weather and all terrain 3-G mobile telecommuni-cations. Kojarena will be one of four such ground stations worldwide.

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the USS Hawaii attack submarine. PICTURE: the financial review

These acts by the US could easily be interpreted as the death throws of a dy-ing empire trying to stifle the growth of its successor, simi-lar to many military actions by the USSR in the later days of the cold war.

whatever these actions by the US are, we can be certain about one thing, in the forseeable future there is likely to be a confrontation with china, the means of that confrontation is not clear. but in the past (with the exception of taiwan) when china has had a territorial claim on a nation, like for instance tibet, they have taken what they feel is theirs and have not at any stage backed down from whatever initiative that may be.

If we then apply this to say china occupying islands in japanese territory that they lay claim to, what then? does the US back down, or retaliate? which has the lesser or worse consequences?Of course this is all hypo-thetical and may never happen, but regardless, it’s going to be an interesting century for the status quo of world power.

As a result of these new moves by china in the asia - pacific, they have now found themselves in increasingly heated territorial disputes with their neighbouring nations, particularly india, south korea, vietnam, the phillipines, and japan.

These kinds of moves by china have been interpreted then by the west and the US particularly as a strate-gic attempt to bring chinese mili-tary power and influence forward on a far broader stage, as a result they have begun military buildups in our territories as well as at-tempting to re-open military bases in the phillipines, beefing up their military presence at major pacific bases like guam and kwajalein, and solidfying their already large mili-tary presence in japan and south korea.

sourcesUS military buildups :

- The financial review- NT news- Brisbane times- The gaurdian (australia)- world socialist web site (wsws.org)

Syria :

- Washington post- Herald sun- The atlantic wire- LA times- Star tribune- Pittsburgh Post - Gazette- The telegraph (UK)- Bloomburg business week- TIME- CNN- Wikipedia- Al Arabiya news- FT.com- The Australian

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beatsreviews

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Flight to dubai’s recent release ‘“Dun goof’d” with it’s funky basslines, occaisionally snarly vocal stylings and semi-comical subject matteris a musical paradox fluctuating between feelings of aggression,and euphoria.

The opening track, “Dun goof’d” tells the tale of a bloke named jeremy smithe, and his unfortunateend at the hands of a steak knife wielding mexican dwarf.with funky bass and guitar backing it up, the track and its remi-niscence of william shatners version of pulps “common people’sets the tone for the remainder of the record.

this tone is continued by the second track, “original recipe” with a definite nostalgia to the early sounds of the red hot chilli peppers.it’s both sharp and semi aggressive with more of that comical sub-ject matter sprinkled on top for seasoning and flavour.

The rest of “Dun goof’d” continues with this kind of theme, becom-ing more snarly as the record goes on, with the vocal style in the later tracks “deep end” and “protein coke shake” similar to that of john lydon.

“Dun goof’d” is highly recommendable to anyone who enjoys music that’s both easy listening, but also edgy and possibly a fan of

flight to dubai - dun goof’d

Frenzal Rhomb - Smoko at the pet food factoryThe newest release from Aussie punk legends frenzal rhomb, “smoko at the pet food factory”differs from their usual feeling of just taking the piss out of everything.

If you listen to frenzal for that reason however don’t despair! about half the album still has that classic frenzal rhomb humour! but interestingly in tracks like “when my babay smiles at me i go to rehab” and “back to the suburbs” their subject matter seems to be dealing with far more serious issues, giving the audience a feeling of the band almost growing up? I’m not sure if that was the intention, but eitherway i love it, it works. It works very well, It’s catchy, relatable, and leaves you wanting more.

I sincerely hope that frenzal rhomb keep releasing stuff like this, especially if they’re gonna be making music videos like the one for “when my baby smiles at me i go to rehab” ( if you havent already seen it, look it up on youtube, i garuntee you won’t be dissappoint-ed,).

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brinkworth ghost - self titled EPbrinkworth ghosts self titled EP is by far one of the best butmost depressing local releases i’ve heard in months.

Their sound throughout the release reminds me of any number of early 90’s grunge bands, with guitars and vocals feeling like they were written whilst sittingin a dark room listening to the foo fighters and nirvana on repeat while punching cones.

However brinkworth ghost should not be simply written off and cast into one particular genre category, despite their influ-ences being fairly obvious they have managed to create their own unique sound in amongst this release.

This is not to say that their sound is flawless, after a few songs they kind of leave you feeling slightly drained, not simply be-cause the music feels dark and depressing but just because the first five tracks guitars all go along the same lines, there’s not a huge feeling of variety there...

Regardless though after listening to this release I would defi-nitely recommend this band to others and buy any future releases

family values - BMHCFamily values debut EP “BMHC” (beta male hardcore) is a fast paced aggressive 6 tracks with a weird lyrical mix of actual social issues and sarcastic commentary on the local music scene,

They quite obviously have a large amount of influence in 80’s and early 90’s hardcore, but i can’t quite put my finger on a particular band they remind me of.

I can’t quite decide whether or not i like this EP, lyrically i like it, it’s compelling and funny, but instrumentally it’s a bit sloppy, still these guys have promise for some good stuff in the future!

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word of mouth

gig wise, which do your prefer? AA or 18+? Why?

I love playing venues that aren’t really venues. House/garage/weird art space/shop front/storm drain shows are always the funnest and by the very nature of them are all ages. Obviously, we’d play only all ages shows if we could we want to play to as many people as possi-ble, but finding good D.I.Y venues that are able to stay open for more than a few shows seems hard-er and harder nowadays, which is a really disappointing thing. So many great spots pop up and last a month or so and get shut down for bullshit reasons.

At the end of the year you guys are going overseas for The Fest, are there plans for much interna-tional touring after this?

Yeah we are playing some shows in China on the way to America and then a few shows around the states in the lead up to Fest. We are talk-ing to a few people about maybe heading to Europe next year but it’s all in the very early stages at the moment and we have

wil wagner:

the smith ]

street band

Aus tours either side of China and America so just trying to sort them out at the moment!

What are some of the differences between No One Gets Lost Anymore and Sunshine & Technology?

We had more time in the studio for Sunshine & Technology than we did for NOGLA (sorry just be-ing an abbreviation bad arse!), so we spent more time getting the tones right and focusing on everything sounding just how we wanted it to. I also wrote most of the songs whilst being in the band, whereas the first album was mainly solo songs that the band had adapted, so there is -

- more of their influence on this album.

One of the songs that has been re-leased for your album already is Why I Can’t Draw, which appeared on Wil Wagner’s album ‘What Start-ed Off With Tresspassing’, what was the reasoning behind re-doing it for the new album?

Honestly, my parents really love that song and always told me that Smith Street should play it and we jammed on it and thought it worked out. I like how the electric version turned out super poppy its good fun to play!

out of all of your releases, what are you most proud of? Why?

Being Amazing!! - The Perfect Male Specimen.

what are some of your biggest in-fluences musically?

I really like big epic bands like Fucked Up, Prawn, Modest Mouse, and Titus Andronicus and also weird poppy stuff along the lines of Neutral Milk Hotel, Built To Spill, Pavement, Pixies, Bomb the Music Industry,

The Front-Bottoms, etc. But my main influences, without trying to sound pretentious, are weird hip hop, like Astro-natualis, Death Grips, MF Doom, P.O.S and my friend’s bands!

how did you guys come start out as a band?

We formed in 2009 on the back of my solo stuff. The band I was playing with had disbanded and I met Chris, our drummer, at a show and we just clicked straight away. When we first played we were called Wil Wag-ner and the Smith Street Band, but it became apparent pretty quick that it was more than just me and a backing band and that it was far more of a collabo-rative effort so we have been just The Smith Street Band ever since!

if you could voice heard in the political arena and change one thing in Australia what would it be?

Wow... Can my answer be the en-tire political arena? I don’t know Australian politics is just so bland and kind of embarrass-ing it all seems -

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- either totally meaningless or drawn from such cynicism it’s unbelievable! The fact that gay marriage is illegal is just so strange, as there is basically no argument against it. The religion hat gets thrown into the ring in this debate but there are so many things from the bible that get ignored (committing anyone who cheats on their partner to death is a pretty good example). I just can’t think of one reason that it is even a debate besides blatant homophobia. Obviously white settlers treatment of in-digenous people from the moment they set foot in Australia has been straight up evil and abso-lutely fucking abhorrent, as is the pitifully small amount of refugees we let into this coun-try, and the MASSIVE deal we make about it when we do. It’s pretty scary to think of how backwards a lot of the things Australia does as a nation really are.

What is the craziest thing that’s ever happened at one of your shows?

We once had a kid in Brisbane who we first met out the front of the venue when we were loading in at like 6pm

and he was absolutely shit-faced! I’d tried to talk to him a few times throughout the night but he’d seemed pretty aggressive and intense... Anyway about a song and a half into our set he tried to do a back flip off the stage, stacked it and landed head first onto a cement floor. We stopped playing and the first thing I heard was some one yell, “He’s not breathing” and I tell you what it was the longest few minutes of my life until he sat up and was O.K. He got taken to hospital after that and we heard later in the night he was to-tally fine. Still, fucking terri-fying! No one do that at a show ever again please!!!

check out the smith street band’s new album sunshine and technol-ogy available in stores now!

how did extortion get together initially?

Extortion started because the original drummer, Rhys, had stat-ed he wanted to drum in a band, having had played guitar in all the previous bands we’d been in together. I myself had only play bass in bands previously and de-cided to try my hand (and throat) at “singing” (vocals is probably a more appropriate word i sup-pose). I had some songs left over that i’d written for a band i’d been in previously called Nailed down that had broken up before we got a chance to use them. Wrote a few extra songs and we had a set together in no time.

what are your biggest influ-ences? Predominantly fast hardcore,metal and punk. Nowa-days the influence can just boil down to trying to get a feeling of panic, frustration and a gen-eral sense of being overwhelmed, regardless of what genre the music can be slotted into. I re-alise that sounds like a lot of wank, but then we are a bunch of wankers, so it probably makes sense really.

Rohan :

extortion

how did you get into hardcore? I had been a big fan of rough nasty punk as a teen in the 90’s and after slowly finding and hearing more hardcore bands through “entry level” bands (such as minor threat, discharge, etc) friends mix-tapes and recommen-dations (it was a much harder to hear about underground bands in the pre-internet age (i am like a billion years old)) i found it had what i liked about punk, with the addition of being faster, nastier and angrier. Right up my alley.

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any new releases in the works? Just finished recording our side of a split LP with Austrian band Cold World (which is incidentally a great format, each band effec-tively gets to write a whole EPs worth of material for each side). Also in the works in is split 7”s with hatred surge, low threat pro-file and agoraphobic nosebleed. We also aim to record a new LP of our own by the end of the year.

what is the best show youve ever played? why?

I really couldn’t say. There’s been a tonne of great shows and we’ve played in a bunch of places i’d always dreamed of playing (Gil-man st being a big one). Though i could probably say some of the best and most memorable have been house shows. In particular a lot of the shows at 208 in Perth. I suppose this has a lot to do with having lived and practiced there, making shows there feel like a real comfortable experience.Other memorable shows include the Sydney show in 2008 (where a guy in a wheelchair was lifted on stage during the chaos and promptly wheeled himself off-stage, straight onto the floor)

The many chaotic shows at the Hyde park hotel in perth. Stockholm on our European tour really sticks in my mind for some reason. And both US tours were a lot of fun.

gigs wise, what do you prefer to play, AA or 18+?

I don’t really mind either way, but we seem to do better with 18+ gigs, attendance and participa-tion wise. I guess we have an older audience. pension violence. That said, all ages shows are a lot better for us nowadays than they were a few years back, but 18+ shows are probably still where the majority of our “fan-base” can be found.

is there any groups or people you aspire to?

Its strange, for reasons i can’t fathom I’ve actually received positive feedback and contact from a lot of the musicians in-volved in the bands that in-spired me to play this style of music in the first place. I actu-ally find it absurd that Barney from Napalm death asked to sing a song on one of our records and that we’d been asked if we’d like to do a split with Low threat -

- profile (members of Lack of in-terest, Infest and No comment(!!)). If you’d told me that this would happen before I’d started Extor-tion i probably would’ve laughed in your face. My mind still bog-gles.

which of your albums are you most proud of? why? The control EP. This record came together pretty much exactly as it had been envisaged when writ-ing for it. Whilst I feel the other records came out well and have their own merits, but none of the finished material/records were as complete and true to the original vision as control.

favorite band in your local scene?

At the moment my favourite band in Melbourne would have to be Internal Rot. Killer grind-core in the vein of those 90’s west coast US bands such as Excruciating terror, Phobia, Despise you, etc.

question 10: what in your opinion is the best album of the last two years?

Fuck, that’s a tough question. I guess the record I’ve listened to

most in the last year would have to be the Royal head-ache LP? Of course theres also been a tonne of great fast hardcore in the last few years as well. Too many to name (AKA too many to be bothered writing an answer that isn’t a cop out (so that I don’t have to write a list of records that i totally enjoyed but didn’t spend enough time listening too because i’m so god-damned lazy))

any east coast/ Newcastle shows in the near future? We’re taking a break from play-ing live at the moment to con-centrate on writing and record-ing for the record mentioned in question 4, but should be playing live again later in the year, maybe July. We’ll definitely be touring for the split LP, so is just a matter of time before we’re up that way again.

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Local

resident

failure

How did local resident failure start out as a band?we all met through the Newcastle hip hop scene about 5 years ago. We were all sitting in the nose bleed section watching the hill-top hoods at the wallsend rsl one evening, where we all turned to each other at the same time and said “let’s start a hip hop crew”... The rest is history.

gig wise, which do you prefer, AA or 18+? Why?AA shows never seem to go well for us. I think the kids are too grown up these days. People need a few drinks to loosen up and to numb their ear drums before they can take in our noise.

After a five year wait you’ve re-cently released your debut album a breath of stale air, why did it take so long?everything costs money today, and we don’t have any. We could have had the thing done 2 years ago if we had some cash. So we just did it in dribbs and drabs. Luckily punk rock timeless right?

what are the plans for the future of local resident failure now that you’ve released your debut album?

we wanna tour the world, sell out and move into the country. But first we are playing a show in rockhampton to 3 lo-cals and their dogs.

are there any bands or people that you aspire to?we aspire to always be at least one album behind our friends’ the Decline’ ... We believe in learning from their mistakes.

what is the funniest thing that has happened to you at a show?Dal once had an attack of ex-plosive diorreaha.. That’s what I call a sticky situation.

any tips for new bands start-ing out in the Australian punk scene?

punk rock has been dead for about 15 years, so I would ad-vise you to start a HC metal band instead.... it’s only been dead for 12.

where is your favorite place to play in Australia?

best place to play is Perth!

best gig you’ve ever played? Why?

our album release show was pretty fun. We had all our friends play/ show us up, and Giles hurt himself.... It was a good night.

If you could drop acid with any famous person, dead or alive, who would it be? Why?

um I don’t like acid, so I would rather have some drinks and share a bag of coke with Brendan Kelly from the Law-rence Arms. I know he likes to party and share a story or two.

check out local resident failure’s debut album “a breath of stale air” in stores now!

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gig guide

HARDCORE VICTIMS 2012 FEATURING: extortion, iterismo, and split teeth.

16th-18th november bendigo & gasometer hotels - melbourne $54 total, $22 for each bendigo show, $10 for gasometer.

Ten foot pole and liberation front.Thursday 22nd - Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle $29

suicidal tendencies - supported by unwritten law and the dudesons.UNSW roundhouse14th december - $81.60 (ticketek)

refused - enmore

theatre, 13th

november$74.20

(ticketek)

the beards- metro theatre2nd november$22 (ticketek)

the owls9th november

the greatnorthern hotel

$11.25 entry

sea shepherd operationzerotolerancefundraiser

featuring captain’s Paul Watson and Peter hammarstedt

$81 entryparliament of NSW8-11pm

Boulevardof brokenscreamsrollerderby.

voodoo dollsvs sugarskulls

EPIC skate rink - 20/23 Enterprise Ave, South Tweed Heads

starts 5.15pm - $5 entry

of montsters and men

Thurs

31 Jan 2013

8pm

at The Northern

35 Jonson St, Byron Bay

the hivesmetro theatreMon 07 Jan 2013 8:00PM AA $83 entry(ticketek)

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scrawled on

the wall

uncovered

UNCOVERED is a segment where I want to show off the talent that local artists have to offer,

This issue’s UNCOVERED i’d like to focus on art students from the hunter st TAFE cam-pus, recently these students have become the frontline for the states $1.7 billion education budget cuts and are facing the possibility that next year their courses will cease to exist.

So on that note I feel that these students deserve a chance to atleast show that their work is worht funding.

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emily breadner

Emily is a 19 year old art student at the Hunter st TAFE campus, she’s currently undergoing a diploma of fine arts course, she plans to ex-tend on this course next year with an advanced diploma of fine arts, which allows her to then transfer to uni and only do one year there to achieve a fine arts degree.

Emily wants to pursue a career in illustrations or tattooing, but she also has an interest in simply open-ing an art studio with a collective of like mined artists after complet-ing her course at Hunter st.

Emliy’s artistic influences are in-credibly broad, with large amounts of political and musical influences as well as artists like Sineater, Cloven hoov, Jemma Jones and Char-maine Olivia.

She has been interested and pas-sionate about art as far as she can remember, having grown up in an ar-tistically motivated home Emily has found art to be her life’s calling, we’ll hopefully be seeing a lot more of her art in years to come!

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kate sweetman

Kate is a 19 year old art student at the Hunter st TAFE campus, she’s currently undergoing a di-ploma of fine arts course.

While Kate is unsure as to where she would like to take her skills in regards to a career, she defi-nitely intends to become a prac-ticing artist even if that’s on the side from teaching art,

Kate’s influences artistically largely comprise of artists like Andy Warhol and other such pop culture artists, as well as 1950’s fashion, tattoo cultures, and early 20th century propaganda designs.

Kate first became interested in art during high school, she found that art was a subject she was skilled in and interested in, so in turn as this was the subject that she found a personal love in kate is now pursuing art as a career, which evidently she has ample ability and skill’s to do so.

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street art: the best of

this month

left column (from top): MAUS, POAS, POAS

right column (from top): COMPS, O’LES

left column (from top): TIEM, POAS, ELMS, cadillac (sten-cil)right column (from top): BOWS. LIKS, KIDS (AMF)

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DIY tutorial: how

to do your own

graff piece

Street art as a concept is entirely based on being inclusive and everyone be-ing able to do their own thing, so on that basis, why not show you how to do your own graff pieces?

step 1 - paint your undercoat. that is paint the site of your piece with a thick one colour base layer of paint, it acts kind of like a canvas, it gives you borders to stay in, you’re probably best off using a roll-er for this job.

step 2 - outline your piece, draw up how big and what your your design will be, (e.g some artists only do tag pieces, oth-ers like to do characters, that is a drawing of usually things like people or soldiers, etc whatever you feel like really.)this can be done with whatever tool you want to use, but a spay can is probably your best bet.

step 3 - fill in your outline, quite literally fill in the let-ters (or characters) with what-ever paints you’ve decided you like.

piece turotial -

continued

step 4 - now that you have your piece outlined and filled, you can add details to your piece, in our case we defined the borders and created a 3D lettering effect, but legitimately at this stage of your design you’re only limited by your own imagination in what you can do.

step 5 - finalize and sign your work.This section is optional, but alot of artists do go over and fix up any mistake and sign their piece with small hand style tags, usu-ally saying who did the piece and when.It’s not a necessary addition but if you want to do it then by all means! Next month: we teach you how to turn a fire extinguisher into a long range paint can.

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contact

big boss man - will

PH: 0407802011

Email: [email protected]

Zine facebook: www.facebook.com/exampleURL

Zine blog: exam-pleURL.tumblr.com

cover art: shelli pyke

shelli’s art blog: http://shellimae.tumblr.com/

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