“Fascism rears its head.” That was the caption the Commonwealth Security Service (CSS) – the precursor to ASIO – placed on a clipping from Smith’s Weekly dated 27 March 1943. The article discussed the Institute of Public Affairs, recently convened by leaders of business and industry and underwritten by the Collins House group of mining companies.
We live in a winter of disconnect. As the permafrost melts and global warming accelerates, bringing us to the cusp of catastrophic environmental changes, governments and corporations continue their campaign of denial.
Earlier this year, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) announced plans for a porn site intended to highlight animal cruelty. Overland asked Katrina Fox and Stephanie Honor Convery for their thoughts on the relationship between sexualised imagery and political advocacy.
Michael Brull makes two key claims that lead him to confusing issues of principle and strategy for a Left forced to deal with political Islam’s influence. First, he argues that while ‘[p]olitical Islam can take many different forms’, it is not anti-imperialism, it is not feminism, and it is not socialism – and he backs this with examples of reactionary policies and betrayals by various Islamist formations.
The wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab world represents a sharp break from almost a decade of defensive struggle against triumphant neoliberalism and neo–conservatism. Philosopher Peter Hallward calls it an opportunity to break the pattern of TINA (the notion that ‘there is no alternative’ to the relentless assault by ruling elites on their peoples), while Slavoj Žižek celebrates the revolution’s appeal to the ‘eternal idea of freedom, justice and dignity’.34
Read 'Michael Brull versus Tad Tietze, ′That political Islam is not a friend of the Left′'
The question of whether or not women should have the right to extended paid parental leave and the right to return to work has been, as Eva Cox argued last week in The Conversation, the subject of a long and bitter fight by feminists and the broader Left for decades. What then do we make of an apparently generous paid parental leave policy scheme coming from the Liberal Party? And how should we respond?
Continue reading 'On paid parental leave, the Right and the Left' 3
Helen Razer’s broadside against ‘the Left’s’ obsession with symbolic politic – dumb articles on newsreaders, rainbow-painted street crossings – got a strong vote of support when it appeared on Crikey last week. It was difficult not to join in. These mini-debates that flare up around gestures or dumb remarks, frequently related to gender and sexuality, sometimes seem to have become the only thing that resembles politics in a society where, more than perhaps anywhere in the world, the material/economic question has been written out of daily discussion and struggle.
Continue reading 'Reply to O’Shea and Razer on cultural politics and the Left' 18
There’s been much debate among politicians, university staff and the Muslim community about the gender-segregated seating at a lecture at the University of Melbourne organised by Islamic education group, Hikma Way. Responding to the Australian’s inquiry about the event, Melbourne uni gender studies academic Sheila Jeffreys described it as ‘gender apartheid’ and ‘ritual humiliation’. Opposition leader Tony Abbott responded with the all-too-familiar label, ‘un-Australian’.
Helen Razer’s piece about the failures of the ‘Left’ is a political version of an Escher drawing. Chastising what she sees as vacuous symbolism and disintegration into individuality, Razer appears wholly unaware of the intense irony in calling this out in the exact manner she decries. Her criticism doesn’t take you anywhere; you just end up talking in circles of pithy cynicism.
Ross Perot ran a one-man party, based on his software fortune, in 1992, thus ensuring the election of Bill Clinton. More recently, billionaire financial services broadcaster, Michael Bloomberg simply bought the mayoralty of New York with a massive outspend of his opponent, while Vegas property developer and ultra-zionist Shelton Adelson pumped tens of millions into the one-man crusade of Newt Gingrich (in return, Gingrich’s speeches would veer alarmingly from the structural economic problems of the US to a demand that the country’s Israeli embassy be moved to Jerusalem).
Continue reading 'Clive Palmer and the plutocratic impulse' 1
More than a decade has passed since the September 11 attacks occurred and the subsequent War on Terror was launched. In that time, 12 sovereign nations have been subject to military invasion or interference, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and injured and millions displaced, and an unprecedented amount of laws have been proliferated radically expanding state and police powers, including intense surveillance of communities and zones of exception such as Guantanamo Bay – all of which have become disturbingly normalised.
At time of writing there’s still no further information on either the Boston marathon bombing, or the Texas fertiliser plant explosion (yet another C and W song title in waiting) and it would be foolish to build a firm case on ‘what-ifs’.
Sex discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick recently called for tougher sentencing of people convicted of intimate partner violence. She argues incidents of partner violence should not be treated as ‘just a domestic’ but should attract ‘a premium penalty’. Broderick is not alone. Her more punitive approach parallels similar calls from feminist writer Clementine Ford.
Continue reading 'When social and punitive justice intersect' 0
Eric Cantona, who can probably make a strong claim to being Manchester United’s finest ever player, once said, ‘I have never, and will never, find the difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the World Cup of 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud.’
Continue reading 'Reasons to hate football and Manchester United' 29