Following Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel that caused more than 1,200 fatalities, there was a barrage of injunctions from Western mainstream media, politicians, and pundits insisting that anybody wishing to express an opinion on the events and the ensuing Israeli war crimes and genocide in Gaza, first denounce Hamas before expressing any other view. Continue reading »
politics
One of the most memorable tales from Tony Birch’s 2006 debut collection, Shadowboxing, is The Butcher’s Wife. In this short story, the titular wife sensationally murders and dismembers her husband after he beats her in full view of everyone in the street. The physical distress of regular beatings is almost to be taken for granted in Continue reading »
As the New Zealand coalition government backs closer alignment with US geo-strategic interests, critics warn of instability and loss of sovereignty in a region militarisation is dividing. Concerns are rising for peace and sovereignty in the Pacific after strong signals from New Zealand’s new government that it wants to swiftly join the US-led military alliance Continue reading »
In the mid-1980s when I was at Boston College, a Jesuit university, one of the lecturers commented that the Catholic Church hierarchy was fearful of a schism in the church. Too late, he remarked, it is already here, informally. He pointed out that the majority of students at that Catholic university no longer believed the Continue reading »
The contempts highlighted by Justice Michael Lee in the recent defamation case between Bruce Lehrmann and Channel 10 are minor compared with the blatant leaking of phone transcripts. During the Lehrmann case, police handed to Lehrmann’s solicitors thousands of pages of texts and emails between the alleged victim and others, from nearly a year before Continue reading »
In the wake of the prosecution of David McBride something has emerged about our Constitution that should give every Australian cause for serious concern, this being that the oath taken by both our armed forces and our parliamentarians is one which obliges them solely to be loyal to a foreign monarch, not to the Australian Continue reading »
How long will it take for the many Jewish Israelis who support the current destruction of Gaza to see that what is unspeakable about the Holocaust lurks in their government and state’s actions there? Whatever valley-flower of moral cause it might put before the world, always of its own choosing, this is the fact we Continue reading »
The first step in fixing any problem is acknowledging it. And for Australia on climate change, that means admitting we are a petrostate. The paradox is glaring: while the UAE and Saudi Arabia are readily acknowledged and seemingly proud to be petrostates, Australia’s similar status is unspoken. It’s time to confront this uncomfortable truth – Continue reading »
Book recommendations from Intercept staffers, from musical lyrics to the un-denial of death.
The post What We’re Reading appeared first on The Intercept.
It’s time for governments around the world to condemn the injustice of Israeli apartheid and its brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, to put sanctions on Israel as they did for apartheid South Africa. Israel’s friends amongst Western governments, including Australia, must stop being complicit in Israel’s moral self-destruction. The US veto of Continue reading »