A history of the culture wars
Australia has an active and influential right wing movement, despite having one of the strongest social democratic movements in the world. Inciting racism against refugees, Indigenous people, African youth and others is their stock in trade, as is promoting “family values” and opposing mar...CONTINUE READING
Australian government lashes out over East Timor spying scandal
The Australian government has laid criminal charges against Witness K and lawyer Bernard Collaery over their exposure of the bugging of the East Timorese cabinet. The first court hearing has just been postponed until 12 September in Canberra. If the two are convicted, the maximum sentence...CONTINUE READING
Liberalism and empire
New York Times contributor and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman had a column a few weeks ago called “Fall of the American empire” about Donald Trump’s repudiation of “the values that actually made America great”. It is worth analysing, because it is amusing and illustrative. Krugman believe...CONTINUE READING
Why we need radical change in Australia
If there was ever a time to put to the test the capitalist maxim that a rising tide lifts all boats, it’s Australia in 2018. After 27 years of non-stop economic growth, capitalism here is as good as it’s ever going to get. So imagine what a shock it must have been to defenders of the statu...CONTINUE READING
Losing Santhia, part two: from cubs to Tigers
Along the Pannai causeway linking Jaffna peninsula with Mandaitivu and Kayts islands, egrets, black-headed ibises and Eurasian wigeons bathe in the shallows of the Palk Strait, which stretches to Tamil Nadu, India. “They have no passport or visa”, the translator says. “But they have more f...CONTINUE READING
The hidden history of the women who rose up
Like all colonial societies, Australia has secrets. The way we treat Indigenous people is still mostly a secret. For a long time, the fact that many Australians came from what was called “bad stock” was a secret. “Bad stock” meant convict forebears: those like my great-great grandmother, M...CONTINUE READING
Losing Santhia. The death of a Tiger and the fate of a nation, part one
Half a dozen young men, ex-cadres dedicated to national defence, sit on plastic chairs beneath the seven-storey Marian Shrine of Graha Maria Annai Velangkanni (Our Lady of Good Health), an imposing Indo-Mughal-styled Catholic temple in Medan, northern Sumatra. In turn, each bares his wound...CONTINUE READING
The truth about the 1965 Indonesian massacres
As Indonesia commemorates 20 years since the fall of the New Order military dictatorship, the foundation myth of the regime (and, indeed, the post-New Order state as well) remains stubbornly in place. According to official state narratives, the military was forced to step in to save the na...CONTINUE READING
Karl Marx, journalist
Perhaps the most surprising thing about these writings is that Marx was published in a US newspaper. How did Marx come into his journalism phase? Marx was a journalist more or less all of his adult life. He started writing for the Rheinische Zeitung (“Rhenish Newspaper”) in 1842, and found...CONTINUE READING