“We must never forget, this must never happen again.” Since the WW2 Holocaust, it is said genocide should ‘Never Happen Again’. But it is happening, again. Every genocide is different, yet the deliberate act of ethnic cleansing is devastating, every time. After the Red Army liberated Auschwitz Concentration Camp in January 1945, several thousand children’s Continue reading »
politics
What does the acquisition of iconic Melbourne independent Text Publishing by US-based multinational Penguin Random House tell us about the health or otherwise of the Australian book publishing industry? In itself, and without the details of the agreed financial terms having been made public, not a great deal. Text has been for most of its Continue reading »
What do Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and John Howard have in common with the Piltdown Man? They all managed to sell a hoax that lasted for decades, before it was exposed as completely false. But wait, their hoax is still central to transglobal neoliberal capitalism’s stranglehold on us all, whereas Charles Dawson’s 1912 forged ‘missing Continue reading »
At 7,688,287 square kilometres Australia is the sixth largest country in the world. It is the oldest continent, also home to the oldest continuing civilisation, the history of Aboriginal people reaching back some 75,000 years. Why then, has such a large nation, with such long existence and a civilisation, become so small in its thinking? Continue reading »
In the short period since his election, President Trump has started to tear down the edifice of western rules-based law and international order. Ironically this is the international political and economic system of which the USA has been its main beneficiary, definer and enforcer, and over which it has engaged in conflicts and wars around Continue reading »
It seems that with every utterance from certain members of the political landscape, the humanity bar is lowered. The latest from ABC News to catch the attention of anyone with a modicum of common sense is a speech at a Church by the Deputy Leader of a would-be Australian government, Sussan Ley. To use one Continue reading »
Cambridge Union I don’t believe the US has any right or any ability to put in place a democracy in any other country. Nor do I believe, by the way, that American democracy functions as a real democracy anymore on the life and death issues… This is not democracy. This is a game. And it’s Continue reading »
Mark Dreyfus wrote an article in, The Guardian (29 January 2025) entitled, ‘ For my great-grandparents, for all Jews, for all humanity, I say never again ‘. Here is my response. I write to make people, who are not Jewish, aware that the Jewish community is not only not monolithic, but that many dissent from Continue reading »
Israeli media has extensively discussed the implications of the recent prisoner exchange, emphasising the significant gains achieved by the Palestinian Resistance Movement, Hamas. Among the key figures expected to be released in the second phase of the deal are Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah leader (pictured above), and Ahmed Saadat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front Continue reading »