In our post-truth world, the art of messing with words has been perfected. When the Ramallah-based Ashtar Theatre issued a global call to creatives of all disciplines to join the cultural intifada in solidarity with the Palestinian people, I responded by writing a series of poems. Words under Occupation is an act of resistance and disentanglement. It comes in two versions: as text and as video. You will find the link to the video under the text. (more…)
Category: Arts
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Telling Chinese stories the Chinese way: Why is Ne Zha 2 more than a blockbuster?
One day in February, I had just finished watching Ne Zha 2 when I checked my phone and discovered that the animated film had already grossed more than US$1.38 billion globally – a figure I never imagined a Chinese animated film would earn. (more…)
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A chairman and a president walk into a bar: Review of Donald’s Inferno
Only in Australia could such an edgy political satire be put on stage. Sharp and witty, Donald’s Inferno, written and directed by Jon-Claire Lee, was launched in Sydney this month to a modest but discerning audience. Buried in its wacky story, the comedy pulled no punches in its description of current tensions between the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan. It concluded with a surprising message of hope.
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Leslie landscape prize attracts superb pictures
It’s astonishing enough that 403 landscapes by Australian artists were entered in this year’s John Leslie Art Prize. Even more surprising is the superb quality and diversity of the 52 shortlisted, which are exhibited in Sale’s Gippsland Art Gallery until 24 November. (more…)
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Political void: The end of the Wharf
Forty (40) years ago, the ALP ran its national conference at what was then called Noah’s Lakeside Hotel, with uranium, Timor, taxation, David Combe and south-west Tasmania prominent in discussions. But, who is this meeting up on the dancefloor after the day’s debates and double-crossings? (more…)
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John Olsen’s gift to the nation
My dear friend, the great Australian painter John Olsen was, at 77, the oldest artist to win the Archibald Prize. (more…)
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Scholar or ideologue?
The Economist, a leading British weekly, enjoys wide global readership. It recently covered the thoughts and written work of two scholars, both Chinese, one now government-based, in Beijing and the other based in an academic institution in the US. Only the former, was branded as an “ideologue” however. Paraphrasing Professor Julius Sumner Miller: Why is this so? (more…)
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Thinking intensely about the holocaust, Israel and Gaza
The vengeful, scheming, genocidal response unleashed since October last year in Gaza, by Israel, has prompted a profoundly intensified global review of the punishing history related to the establishment of the State of Israel and its colonial-settler expansion ever since 1948. (more…)
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A welcome new approach to economics
“The Alternative: How to build a just economy” by American author, Nick Romeo, that has been published by Basic Books UK in recent weeks, is a welcome arrival to a human world in crisis. (more…)
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When morality and loyalty pull in opposite directions
What to do if morality and loyalty pull in opposite directions: A review of Nicholas Jose, The Idealist (more…)
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Martin Flanagan’s ‘The Empty Honour Board’ draws us in to an unnatural world
The boarding students were far from home and the variable consolations of family life. They were shackled with priestly companions, pledged to lives of celibacy, who also had been removed from their families in their early teens and isolated from society in religious institutions from which they were then turned out, with scant proper preparation, as teachers. How could things not go wrong? (more…)
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Fred Smith: The Sparrows of Kabul
During the crush at the evacuation of Kabul airport in 2021, a little girl became separated from her mother and was inconsolable and could not be moved. Fred left her for a moment, during which CS gas caused a stampede of marines. When he looked for the girl, she had disappeared. (more…)
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Book review: The Next Civil War: dispatches from the American future
The United States is going through a profound transition to which there are only difficult and costly choices. In this latest book on America’s political chaos, we are taken deep into the future of an unacceptable but perhaps unavoidable breakup of the union. (more…)
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Carefully throwing stones
The human dynamic of subcultures was one of Anne Coombs’ preoccupations. She turned it into a skill that guided her activism and philanthropy. Both GetUp! and Rural Australians for Refugees, two of the causes for which she will be best remembered, relied for their success on mobilising people with shared values and beliefs. These movements grew from the deep knowledge of the transformative power of change, one person at a time. Just like the characters in Glass Houses (Upswell 2023). (more…)
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Searching for Elsewhere: Born into a cult. How to survive?
Graeme Johanson’s Searching for Elsewhere (Ginninderra Press, 2023) provides a compelling answer. His memoire, a gripping story from beginning to end, deals with the dangerous manipulation of young lives brought up in an extremely controlling sect with bizarre rules, destroyed families and strict separation from the World. (more…)
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“A narcissist always searching for a new niche?” Brendan Nelson’s autobiography: Part 1
Nelson has been described as a bullshit artist, a narcissist, a charlatan, oleaginous, and having a glass jaw. Each descriptor is incomplete, some even unfair. Yet, throughout his career he has been popular across the political spectrum. Why?
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Will prospects for long-term human survival improve in 2023?
What can we expect in 2023 about future human prospects? Will current threats to long-term human survival, continue to increase or will they begin to diminish as a consequence of responses to current threats?” (more…)
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Terry Irving, The fatal lure of Politics: the life and thought of Vere Gordon Childe
Certainly the best biography I read in 2022 and possibly the best non-fiction book in any genre, is Terry Irving’s comprehensive and incisive examination of the varied and controversial life of archaeologist, political theorist and leftist practitioner Vere Gordon Childe. (more…)
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Why Labor can’t be trusted with Australia’s security. It started with US Marines in Darwin
Basing nuclear capable B52 bombers at the Tindal airbase is an abrupt, unambiguous sign that our government believes it is Australia’s interest for China to feel threatened with American nuclear strike from our soil. At America’s pleasure. (more…)
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Dismantling global white privilege: Book by Chandran Nair-Equity for a post-western world
One of the few uplifting political trends of the past decade has been the growing strength of movements for gender equality and, even more surprisingly, the demand for racial justice. But a higher-level structure of discrimination governs both racism and sexism: The global dominance of a white power elite in virtually every arena of human activity. (more…)
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Infrastructure Australia should be abolished
A review of Infrastructure Australia risks putting the cart in front of the horse. It should consider whether the organisation should exist. (more…)
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Nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in historical context
The Tenth Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is underway at the UN in New York. The record of the treaty is not perfect but it is the major persisting arms control agreement. If peace means a continuing negotiating process with the other, as President Kennedy asserted, we need more of this. (more…)
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Defence reviews; what are they good for?
It is essential that the new Defence review not degenerate into the usual ritualistic orthodoxy. In these perilous times it cannot be allowed to become a narrow, jargon-laden, orthodox military consideration but must situate Australia’s strategy and military posture in the context of the important foreign policy issues. (more…)
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Remarks on the Australia-China divide at the AsiaLink launch of Happy Together, by David Walker and Li Yao.
The juxtaposition and interweaving of life stories from Australia and China make for endlessly fascinating reading. (more…)
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Keeping them honest: A book review
This book Keeping Them Honest: the case for a genuine national integrity commission and other vital democratic reforms puts solidly the case for a Commonwealth Integrity Commission known in the trade I’m told as a CIC. (more…)
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“South Flows the Pearl” Book launch speech about Chinese Australian voices
Chinese people have been in this country almost as long as the British. …Unfortunately, from the 1980s on, following an increase in immigration from Hong Kong, South-East Asia and mainland China, there have been new waves of racism, so that even today the Chinese community still feels marginalised. (more…)
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Crossword clues and bullying: the almighty power of the Australian pro-Israel lobby
The influence of Colin Rubenstein and his lobby group does not just limit what mainstream media outlets dare publish, it forces self-censorship on editors and journalists alike, writes John Lyons in his latest book. (more…)
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Review: The shock, horror and rage of Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces
Respected journalist Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces is imperative reading for its detonating exposé of Australian SAS war crimes in Afghanistan and the systematic cover-ups at varying levels of the Australian Defence Force operations.
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Answers to Trump questions about attacking China and Iran
The question of who would tell Trump the truth when needed and who would stop him if he tried to go to war with anyone became increasingly urgent as his presidency unfolded. On the matter of war, we now know the answer.
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Misreading Dark Emu
Criticisms of the book Dark Emu and its author, Bruce Pascoe, continue to appear, and to become more puzzling. It is as if the overwhelming popularity of Pascoe and his message have disturbed comfortable convictions about Australian history shared across a wide segment of Australian society.