The Acanchi Effect 207


The financial position of ailing marketing firm Acanchi underwent a startling transformation in 2012 just as they started work on creating the fake grassroots movement “Vote No Borders”.

In 2011 Acanchi’s auditors noted “The Company made a loss in the current year of £197,003, and at the balance sheet date its liabilities exceeded its assets by £385,162”. The company had a turnover of £25,631 against cost of sales of £21,283 and “admin expenses” of £201,125.

In 2012 Acanchi started work in Cambridge and London on developing the “VNB” PR campaign against Scottish Independence, which is surprising given that BBC propaganda portrayed VNB as a spontaneous movement of local Scots. We know they started in 2012 because one of Acanchi’s staff, Jessica Quiney, posted it on her CV on Linked-in. The CV page was deleted yesterday but not before Wings Over Scotland grabbed a screenshot.

This work for the No campaign coincided with an amazing turnaround in Acanchi’s financial fortunes. In 2011 they made a loss of £197,003. In 2012 they made a profit of £103,292. The income from sales went from £25,631 in 2011 to £348,835 in 2012.

There is a very interesting explanation given in the Directors’ report to the Acanchi annual accounts for 2012. It is signed by Gary Waple, the man who registered the “Vote No Borders” domain and who now works for the Regulatory Commission of the Bank of England. Mr Waple states in the 2012 Acanchi Directors’ report:

The nature of Acanchi’s business is that the award of government contracts is subject to external delays beyond the Company’s control. As stated in last year’s financial statement, the Directors’ forecast that there would be a significant improvement in these financial statements. This was achieved as the result of the company being awarded contracts in the current period which had been the subject of long on-going discussions in the past.”

So what was young Jessica Quiney doing at Acanchi at this period? Well, in 2012 she:

“collated and formatted material promoting the pro-Union arguments in opposition to the SNP’s call for Scottish independence including development of narratives, a positioning strategy and a programme of micro-initiatives for this project.”

In 2013 Jessica was:

“Involved in the development and implementation of a proposal and subsequent micro-initiatives for a campaign supporting the No vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2014”.

Vote No Borders had nine adverts in one single edition of the Daily Record newspaper in Scotland this week, each giving the story of a single “grassroots” Scots punter and why they are against independence. These “narratives” were developed by Jessica Quiney, a Cambridge classics student, born in England and educated at Northampton High School. I can see no evidence she has ever been to Scotland. Interestingly the photographer, Claire Borley, who took all the photos of “typical Scots” for the No Borders campaign which are appearing in the newspapers, is also Cambridge based.

Claire Borley’s cv gives a stunning glimpse into just how real and gritty this “Scottish grassroots campaign” is:

Born and raised in Cambridge, my professional life has always been about communication.

After gaining an English degree and jumping in at the deep-end in Bermuda as a PA with limited shorthand but fast typing, I worked in television production in London. Here I built up a wide variety of skills working for the Walt Disney Company, Buena Vista International, Buena Vista Productions, Roger Bolton Productions, Wall to Wall TV and Windfall Films.

After spending a number of years on the production side of a visual industry I felt it was time to develop my own creative abilities. With this in mind I returned to Cambridge and continued to work successfully as a freelance photographer for advertising, editorial and corporate clients as well as private clients, musicians and performers.

My aim is always to capture the personality and essence of the individual moment and make each project unique for the client. This leads to much of my work being used for PR, marketing and multi-media broadcast. I enjoy working below the line (direct mail, flyers etc), above the line (mass media advertising) or through the line (bit of both).

Young Jessica Quiney has done nothing wrong. Despite the fact that Fiona Gilmore, 100% owner of Acanchi, was now by 2012 raking in 100 grand a year in profit, poor Jessica was not even being properly paid – she was an intern, an example of the appalling exploitation of our young generation and the total lack of respect in modern society for the value of labour against capital.

But what cannot be forgiven is the BBC’s extraordinary promotion of VNB as a genuine grassroots organization – in total just under 150 minutes were devoted to showing Gavin Esler’s puff piece on the BBC News Channel, not to mention at least 20 minutes on other BBC news programmes.

It has recently come to light that the UK government has been rocked by private polling costing £56,000 of taxpayers’ money, which shows a major fall in “No” support. It is incredible that the government even thinks it is legitimate to pay with taxes for private polling to be made available to only one side in the referendum campaign. It does make you wonder, what else do they think it is OK to pay for? My strong expectation is that the poll of which news has been leaked is only the latest in a series; polling statistics are the basis of PR strategies such as the one Acanchi has been developing for the No campaign.

I cannot leave the subject of Acanchi without referring to this report that:

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, in October 2008, it was the turn of British firm Acanchi, hired by the foreign minister “to craft the new image” (“Foreign Ministry, PR firm rebrand Israel as land of achievements,” 6 October 2008). The firm’s founder toured Israel as part of the mission “to create a brand disconnected from the Arab-Israeli conflict that focuses instead on Israel’s scientific and cultural achievements.”

I have deep contempt for Fiona Gilmore. To try to create a “brand image” for Israel that leaves out the Palestinians, is the moral equivalent of creating a “brand image” for the Nazis that leaves out the concentration camps. Anyone who can tour Israel as the guest of the Israeli foreign office to that end, is not somebody I would wish to associate with. She is however the ideal partner for Malcolm Offord, the Vote No Borders financier – and major contributor to the Tory Party and to Michael Gove personally – who argues that Britain needs much more drastic cuts to welfare benefits. There must be something about food banks that gladdens the Tory heart. The prospect of not having any in Scotland evidently terrifies them.


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207 thoughts on “The Acanchi Effect

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  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !

    Jemand

    Thx for that. I was actually thinking about the Aboriginals (I don’t know if that’s the correct word to use?) rather than refugees/economic migrants when I commented, because I thought it was mainly that which was being discussed between you and Herbie. I only referred to immigrants in my last comment in order to respond to a comment of yours. Relations between the original peoples and the European arrivals and racism in that connection, not immigrants. Sorry for any confusion.

  • doug scorgie

    Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !
    19 May, 2014 – 3:17 pm

    “…the history of the entire world is characterised by continual displacements (or exterminations) of indigenous peoples.”

    “What counts today, surely, is what govts do in terms both of making good (to the extent possible) past wrongs and combatting the racism which remains at the personal level.”

    Yes Habbabkuk and we can start with Israel in making good past wrongs.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Jemand.

    Remember how this spat began…

    Jemand. 4 05pm

    “An elegantly designed Union Jack based on a chocolate brown, not blue, background with nothing in the foreground. Brown symbolises the richness of its soil, the colour of its people, the substance of its national discourse and a clear vision of its future.”
    Over the following few hours several people understood what you were saying and challenged it for obvious reasons. Your consistant response was personal invective and avoidance of questions.

    I just stopped by and found this.

    Jemand. 9 42am

    ”Sofia, it appears to be you and Mary who are obsessed with the colour brown and the incontrovertible innocence of people of that hue. Your many, many, many combined comments are testimony to this observation.

    I am going to ask you some pointed questions in this reply and I expect that if you want to defend your intellectual honesty and moral integrity, then you will address them accurately, in good faith and without quibbling.”
    I don’t want to spend the whole evening answering the inquisition that follows but I’ll do my best to cover your main concerns.

    Re your denunciation of Mary for “… using the word “Jew” and various euphemisms on this blog many hundreds if not thousands of times.”

    I think if you check up on what she has written over the years you’ll find she has been pretty consistent in pointing out the brutality and illegality of the behaviour of a rogue state that for 65 years has stolen the land and blighted the lives of Palestinian people in the name of a Jewish people. That you have a problem with this an inability to distinguish between opposition to brutality and anti-semitism.

    “…how is it that you believe that some brown coloured person owns the riches beneath the soil of Oz, and I do not? were not born equal after all. Rather, he is the rightful landowner and I am …blah…blah …Please explain how that works WITHOUT being RACIST?”

    WTF?
    First Australians: 42,000 years inhabitation. No concept of “private property” and an undamaged landscape.

    European Conquerors: 200years occupation, widespread severe environmental destruction, genocide, “Neighbours”, etc, etc

    ”And where does the “right” to own anything come from?”
    Nowhere. It’s a pathological intellectual construct when applied to any landscape.
    “La propriété, c’est le vol.” Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
    You can inhabit it, live from it, make it, etc, you can organise how it gets distributed with your peers. You can have the expectation that no other fecker comes along and takes it from you. Let’s modernise our attitudes to the global commons and refine our attitudes to keep personal items secure. It gets easier now encrypted cyber currency is here to stay.

    “You have made a bold claim that I “clearly feel [my] pale skin gives [me] the right to occupy and exploit the land of others …blah…blah…What land do YOU think I have a “right” to “occupy” and “exploit”?”
    None, nether you or me. Occupation and exploitation are key words here. Try “inhabit” or “co-exist on” and we can have a proper discussion.

    “Sofia, you claimed that my “brothers” did bad things. Do you know my “brothers”? Or is that another racist euphemism for like-coloured people with whom I have no association whatsoever?”
    Come on Jemand. I don’t believe you are that thick. You know full well the obvious rhetorical sense in which I used the term.

    “And tell me more, Sofia, what do you mean by “Whether your descendants leave any long-term genetic presence ..”?
    I mean at present rates of destruction Australian settler culture is likely leave as much genetic trace on that continent as Norse settler culture left on Greenland. They tried to wipe out the Inuit rather than trade goods and ideas with them. Look where that got them.

    “So in the spirit of fair and open discourse are you prepared to identify your ethnicity?”
    No problem. May parents were white caucasian. I was lucky that they came from nations whose rulere had, over hundreds of years, persuaded their citizens to regard each other as enemies, so I got over the bullshit pretty early.

    Now Jemand, I know I’m in danger here of denting my reputation for sweetness
    but let me politely request that you to take your brown flag, pole and all, and place it firmly where the sun don’t shine.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella) !

    Mr Scorgie

    ““What counts today, surely, is what govts do in terms both of making good (to the extent possible) past wrongs and combatting the racism which remains at the personal level.”

    Yes Habbabkuk and we can start with Israel in making good past wrongs.”
    ______________________

    I was rather expecting you to come up with that comment, Doug (I wonder why 🙂 However, my comment was erga omnes.

    “start with Israel” – are you establishing a ranking there, Doug? It sounds as if you think that the wrongs committed against Palestinians rank higher in order of importance than those committed against, say, American Indians, Canadian First Nations or Australian Aboriginals? If that’s the case, why do you think so?

  • Herbie

    Jemand wondered why so many people were still coming to Australia if the place was so racist.

    What recent immigrants seem to be saying is that they like the place, but they don’t like the locals.

    They’re a bit racist, you see.

    What goes around, comes around, and then around again:

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/racism-on-the-rise-in-australia-migrants-report-cultural-shift-20140405-365a5.html

    Break the cycle!!

    Anyway, Coetzee’s novel “Disgrace” deals with these larger transitions and cycles as they impact personal relationships.

    The “Australian” film version is excellent too:

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445953/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_%28film%29

  • Mary

    Rachel Corrie’s parents are amazing people. RIP Rachel. You were inspirational.

    Rachel Corrie death: Activist’s family launch final bid to secure ‘justice’ from Israel over 2003 bulldozer death

    ‘The state is so aggressive in demonising us for pursuing this’
    19 May 2014

    The parents of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza, are preparing to launch the final chapter in their 11-year battle for accountability into their daughter’s death.

    But they are concerned the legal move is a course that Rachel would not have embraced.

    “She’d appreciate us moving forward, but she would have been concerned about the toll on our family,” says her father Craig Corrie. Legal battling is “the most emotionally difficult part of what we do,” adds his wife, Cindy Corrie.

    /..
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/rachel-corrie-death-activists-family-make-appeal-to-israeli-supreme-court-over-2003-bulldozer-death-9399620.html

  • Mary

    This is just one example of the flaw in the Zionist mindset.

    Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair under scrutiny for non-Jewish girlfriend Sandra Leikanger
    19 May 2014
    The couple, who met last year, are accused of being a “stain” on the Israeli Prime Minister

    ~~
    No you cannot have a pairing of two young people based on actual love. Zionist Israel is a racist state.

  • Jemand

    Sofia, thank you for clarifying your roots, however you have quibbled and evaded your way through the tough questions that precede it.

    Incidentally, my brown flag suggestion was intended to be facetious but it is interesting that you took one symbolism and focussed on it to the exclusion of the several that I presented. And I made no judgements about the new colour of your people, I merely observed it and watched the accusations come flying. Remember, inferences are not the same as implications. You inferred as if I implied – wrong.

    You, yourself, introduced the words “occupy” and “exploit” as if that were the mentality of the millions of Australians who were born in this land. And then you contrast it with notions of “inhabit” and “coexist” as if these ideas were alien to us. Can you see how ridiculous and offensive your argument now sounds?

    You stated that Oz indigenous people have inhabited this continent for 40,000 odd years. I am well aware of this fact and most appreciative of what it means – but not in the sense that you do. This implies that people inherit rights from their ancestors (like the royal family, you could say) and that indigenous people have a greater right than descendants of later arrivals. By that logic, I should have greater rights than recent migrants. Will that work?

    You also made the claims “First Australians: 42,000 years inhabitation. No concept of “private property” and an undamaged landscape.”

    That reads like a line out of Wikipedia (superlative source of information that it is, Amen). And it is meaningless for its lack of relevance and veracity. While the Aborigines have occupied this continent for millenia, my people have occupied this planet for over a million years. Do I now have a greater right?

    We could play this game of ‘who first occupied this or that land’ for hours with no conclusion. The fact is, a man will only live for several decades and he will take all of his “rights” to the grave with his soul. To selectively advocate for perpetual rights is to lay the foundations of future problems – remember Israel and the Jewish “right” to reoccupy their land? Your ideas aren’t working too well in that part of the world but you wish to apply them to another country in which you have no right or interest. ? .. ? .. ?

    Regarding “undamaged landscape[s]”, it is a fiction. Everywhere that man has gone, he has brought fire and an appetite for easy kill. These two factors alone radically reshape our landscapes. To say otherwise is political bullshit, not scientific fact. Aborigines of all lands have radically altered their respective landscapes over the course of hundreds of thousands of years and driven myriad animal and plant species into extinction. Australian Aboriginals are no different and all that you see in those pretty landscape pics is the end result of 40,000 years of burn and kill. Imagine what this land might have looked like BEFORE the arrival of man. So you might want to cut the ‘pristine environment’ bullshit out of your speech to avoid any further embarrassment.

    Sofia, you have also poignantly avoided the question of my rights. While you have rhetorically advocated on behalf of all the brown people of the world with a contradictory protestation that skin-colour is not relevant, you have explicitly marginalised me as a malignant entity that has no rights entirely on the basis of my skin colour.

    Let me ask you a difficult question that I expect you will be unable to answer without resort to hyper-generalised rhetoric. Where do I belong in your scheme of Justice?

  • Jemand

    Habbabkuk, we could say that relations between Oz indigenous people and the European arrivals started off with misunderstandings and an inability to communicate. The outcome was all very predictable, in hindsight.

    Imagine what an ignorant, embittered convict settler might have felt when his sheep were being taken by Aborigines. In the mind of the native, he sees a free roaming animal that is easily killed and tastes damn good. The idea that someone “owns” this animal is too silly to even contemplate. Nobody owns animals, they own themselves.. until we eat them. In the mind of the settler, he sees the product of his labours and therefore his livelihood being stolen. They don’t speak the same language so something bad must happen.

    From there, you have an escalation of bad relations for a couple of hundred years and today we have the challenge of untangling this original misunderstanding and burying the badwill of personal experiences.

    The government and individuals are doing something about it. Mistakes have been made, crimes committed and progress is slow.

    But predictably, there are actors with interests and conflicting agendas who compete for opportunities and play the ugly game of politics. This is what makes the progress so slow.

    Then we have the usual know-it-all outsiders who make things even worse. They make cursory judgements of complex arrangements and interject their version of the conflict to further inflame feelings and obfuscate potential solutions.

    And on top of this we have a new cultural concept pervading the Western world where people are no longer personally responsible for their own actions because everything is deterministic therefore prior injustices are blamed for contemporary misdeeds. I suspect this might have come from watching too many American TV shows about law and order.

    So, today we could say that the problem is about misunderstandings and an inability to communicate, but I think the truth is much simpler — people are just arseholes.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Jemand 7 15am

    “Where do I belong in your scheme of Justice?”

    I’ll happily share a space in here with you,

    https://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

    alongside the rest of us whatever the hue.

    I’ll say this of you too. The southern sun has given you stamina. Fair dinkum!

  • Ba'al Zevul (à bas Pangloss)

    I really ought to stay out of this as I know bugger-all about it. But it doesn’t seem to have stopped anyone else…

    One point. When Oz was looking for new Australians, back in the late 60’s, I remember seeing a short film about an Italian new immigrant, outlining the culture-shock aspect of moving there. I think it was an Australian government production. The take-home message was ‘when in Oz do as the Aussies do.’ Which seemed and seems eminently sensible, and not racist at all. When you’re buying into a new country, you’re buying into the accepted way of life. If you liked the old country’s way better, bloody stay there….

    Cue howls of outrage. But I think this philosophy still applies, and is wrongly interpreted by outsiders as institutional racism. Jemand?

  • Jemand

    Thanks, BZ

    The movie you are referring to is, I believe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They%27re_a_Weird_Mob

    I usually won’t watch Australian movies because they are mostly cringeworthy attempts at winning the affection of foreign audiences and the acting is typically dreadful. Hearing an Australian turn up the Strine is, by itself, enough for me to turn it off.

    And the above movie, if I recall correctly, had all of those silly ocker stereotypes which are more correctly portrayed in the excellent film below that gives a very accurate depiction of life outside of the cities. The Aboriginal experience is really with these kinds of people – a minority overall but common in the bush.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_in_Fright

  • doug scorgie

    More criminality by Israel:

    Israeli forces have cut and uprooted a large number of trees belonging to Palestinians in an attack on a village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

    According to local media reports, Israeli bulldozers on Monday leveled large tracts of Palestinian land in the village of Nahalin, uprooting olive and almond trees.

    On April 28, Israeli settlers uprooted more than 150 olive trees in the village of Huwwara, south of the West Bank city of Nablus. In a similar move a day earlier, the Israeli settlers destroyed over 60 trees.

    In January, Tadamun Foundation for Human Rights, a non-governmental organization, said in an annual report that an estimated 8,000 trees, some of them hundreds of years old, were damaged and destroyed altogether by the Israelis.

    “Settlers’ attacks include uprooting, burning and cutting down olive trees… Olive groves were also flooded by wastewater from the settlements,” said the rights group.

    “We have been unable to count the hundreds of trees damaged in groves close to settlements due to Israeli security measures.”

  • Jemand

    Sofia,

    A reasonable reply from you – somewhat short of what I hoped for but better than I expected. There are some inconsistencies between the document you link to and the narrative on this page, but that will have to slide.

    If anyone is really concerned about human rights, they should look at the population problem and the relationship between diminishing resources and social unrest. It is a problem that most people simply refuse to discuss, or have a set opinion based on the propaganda of vested interests, especially business and government.

  • doug scorgie

    LOL

    A top aide to the Turkish PM, Ysuf Yerkel, has been given a week’s sick leave for “leg trauma” he sustained after kicking a protester following Turkey’s worst mining disaster in history.

  • Ba'al Zevul (à bas Pangloss)

    Thanks, J.
    No, I don’t think it was that one, but it was a long time ago I saw it. I do remember there was a memorable scene illustrating the six-o-clock swill, set in a bar with tiled walls for easier hosing down, and the beer also dispensed by hoses (like petrol), so it can’t have been made much after 1966, I think.

    I’m not getting into the aboriginal thing. Much may be said for both sides, and it has been.

    I just think that ‘when in x, do as the xians do’ is a sound principle, and one which is unjustly maligned. And that was definitely the message of your government at the time, explicitly and specifically with respect to urban immigration.

    It occurs to me that to some extent, denying the concept of national identity plays into the hands of the globalist entrepreneurs, who aren’t too bothered about the cultural preferences of their rentaproles on zero-hours contracts, as long as they’re cheap. I ask myself how much of the demonisation of national identity, and its conflation with racism, comes from corporate sources…a partial clue being visible in Vote No Borders, of course.

  • Herbie

    “It occurs to me that to some extent, denying the concept of national identity plays into the hands of the globalist entrepreneurs”

    That’s currently the case, yes, but previously they encouraged national identity. Insisted upon it.

    “I ask myself how much of the demonisation of national identity, and its conflation with racism, comes from corporate sources”

    All of it.

    It’s a rewriting of the script.

    Best advice I can give is, try to live your whole life in the one play.

    Nic Roeg’s “Walkabout” is relevant here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkabout_%28film%29

  • Ba'al Zevul (à bas Pangloss)

    Herbie – Not all of it. A lot of it comes from perfectly well-meaning individuals who buy the spin, without necessarily buying the back story. I am trying to avoid the easy generalisations here. The script is continuously rewritten, and has been since the dawn of human existence. What is troubling is that human greed has increased continuously too, and there is neither any escape from globalisation nor the means democratically to amend it.

    I’m not sure what your advice is intended to mean, and/or how the film reference relates to it. But I am not acting in a play. I am here, now.

  • Herbie

    Ba’al

    The film is about people finding themselves worryingly off-script, but thriving in human fellowship.

    “I am not acting in a play. I am here, now.”

    And that’s very likely the answer.

  • Mary

    Is it safe to come out? Has he finished?

    ~~~

    Courtenay Barnett. If you are reading this and if you are able to access the BBC iPlayer, I recommend an episode of ‘Costing the Earth’ which I heard this afternoon. It was concerned with the destruction of the environment by the Turks and Caicos government whilst the FCO here look on. The plans for development include a large new port and a dolphinarium. Most of us accept that to keep mammals captive for the entertainment of humans is a cruel concept. We heard that the last captive dolphins in this country were taken to your waters for release.

    ‘Britain’s Overseas Wildlife
    Duration: 30 minutes
    First broadcast:Tuesday 20 May 2014

    Britain’s Overseas Territories from the Caribbean to the Falkland Islands contain a treasure trove of wildlife. A new report from the RSPB reveals that 94% of unique UK species live beyond our shores. But many of those astonishing creatures are at great threat from tourist development and invasive species.

    To discover whether we are doing enough to protect our secret garden of species Tom Heap visits the Turks and Caicos Islands, 150 miles to the east of Cuba.’
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b043x48q

    The FCO minister interviewed is Mark Simmonds, the subject of my previous posts, the last being http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/05/the-privatised-nhs/#comment-457008

    All the best.

    Ref. http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Turks-and-Caicos-government-promotes-ambitious-development-projects-16290.html

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Ba’al. 12 47pm

    Thanks for your angle on this.

    “I just think that ‘when in x, do as the xians do’ is a sound principle, and one which is unjustly maligned…”
    Exactly. Except that conquest and genocide, followed by settler culture, overlays what is done in a place with what is done in another place… the one which happens to have the guns and germs and the technology to strip the landscape of its natural wealth.

    If Europeans had arrived in Australia or the Americas with the attitude you mention then, after our germs had done their stuff, there could have unfolded an era of trade and cultural cross-fertilisation. Now how rich could that have been?

    “…denying the concept of national identity plays into the hands of the globalist entrepreneurs, who aren’t too bothered about the cultural preferences of their rentaproles…”
    Yes, apart from the inevitable small percentage of psychopaths don’t most servants of empire simply regard “the natives” as quaint and primitive and, if they are in the way, simply an irritant, certainly not a group that have anything of value apart from the minerals or topsoil under their feet?

    Herbie. 2 05pm

    Thanks for the reminder of the movie, “Walkabout”. One of those rare films which leaves images that linger and provoke questions. Must watch again.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Oops!

    Last post well colonised by italics, save for a small population of indiginous text at the bottom!

    Mod. Edit Button? For hasty posters like me. Go on.

  • Mary

    In the same vein as Walkabout, Rabbit Proof Fence, based on a true story. Very sad.

    ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence is a 2002 Australian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It is based on a true story concerning the author’s mother, as well as two other mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, Western Australia, to return to their Aboriginal families, after having been placed there in 1931. The film follows the Aboriginal girls as they walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong, while being pursued by a white authority figure and an Aboriginal tracker.

    The soundtrack to the film, called Long Walk Home: Music from the Rabbit-Proof Fence, is by Peter Gabriel. British producer Jeremy Thomas, who has a long connection with Australia, was executive producer of the film, selling it internationally through his sales arm, HanWay Films.’
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-Proof_Fence_(film)

    The funniest satirical Ozzie film I have seen was ‘Welcome to Woop Woop’ which I saw at a film festival. I should think it went down like a lead balloon with the Australian white audience.
    http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9402E0DA1431F930A25752C1A96E958260

  • Jemand

    And so we have Mary, the all-knowing outsider who has never visited Oz to see things as they really are, good and bad as it has always been, sifting through material and selectively posting politically fixed views of open sores and not those of people working together. If that does not convince others of her mischievous ways, nothing else will.

  • Jemand

    BZ, i can’t think of any other film that corresponds with your description. Are you sure you’re not confusing it with The Godfather?

    Re migration of people, I’m happy for Oz to facilitate hybrid cultures that progress our civilisation. It helps, tho’, if migrants participate in the Australian way first before introducing us to their ways. But, as everyone here already knows, i am not happy with the open invitation to 1500 year old fucked-up notions of society. But i am, after all, merely a squeak in a minority of people who give a shit.

    Hey! I’m a minority!!! Where’s my cheque?

  • Mary

    I am allowed to say which films I have seen and which I can recommend.

    Would you like a complete list? None are American from the propaganda machine. Most are Continental from France, Spain and Portugal and one from Palestine. One does not have to have visited the country from which a film comes to be able to like it. That sounds very insular!

  • Mary

    I would be obliged if you would desist from the ad hominems and attempts to blacken my name.

  • Ba'al Zevul (Bokonon Rastafari)

    Ba’al

    The film is about people finding themselves worryingly off-script, but thriving in human fellowship.

    “I am not acting in a play. I am here, now.”

    And that’s very likely the answer.

    No, still not with you. What was the question? Human fellowship and I are pretty distant acquaintances, btw. If you want to push the ‘script’ allegory, here’s mine:

    http://fuckyeahkurtvonnegut.tumblr.com/post/109175201/we-do-doodley-do-doodley-do-doodely-do-what

    Thanks, Kurt.

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