It is odd, how we think of democracy these days – as something ordinary, inherent to the West, something to strive for yet something taken for granted, also. It is a concept that has plagued the politically vexed mind since time immemorial, well, at least since our ancient forebears. Aristotle envisioned it, Plato feared it […]

At the age of 50, Norman Finkelstein is without a job and lives alone with his books and computer in Coney Island, New York. He was hounded out of his job as a professor at De Paul University, New York by the machinations of Professor Alan Dershowitz and his supporters. In Beyond Chutzpah, Finkelstein aroused […]

One of the things about working with very young children for a long time is that when another 21st-century catastrophe is revealed to us, the first thing one tends to visualise is the actual concrete effect on children. And the thing about these catastrophes – wars, economic meltdowns, terrorist attacks, illegal occupations and so on […]

I have an article up at Drum about the Melbourne International Film Festival and their cultural partner, the state of Israel. It begins: The Melbourne International Film Festival is receiving Liberty Victoria’s free speech award, the Voltaire award, for its “refusal to buckle in the face of intense pressure from a foreign government and a […]

More than ten people have been killed after Israeli forces attacked a flotilla bringing aid supplies to the besieged people of Gaza. Details are still sketchy – some sources claim twenty people are dead – but it seems that IDF commandoes stormed the vessels and then opened fire with live ammunition. The flotilla was part […]

A few days ago, we received a letter (published below) signed by six Australian academics: Professor Bernard Rechter, Professor Douglas Kirsner, Professor Andrew Markus, Dr Bill Anderson, Dr Nick Dyrenfurth and Associate Professor Philip Mendes. They were, they said, collectively writing to the board of Overland and to its patron, Barry Jones, about ‘recent editorial […]

In Overland 198, Michael Brull replies to Ned Curthoys and Dennis Altman on how Australian Leftists should respond to Zionism: This is an intervention, of sorts, into the disagreements between the dissident Jews Ned Curthoys and Dennis Altman (see Overland 187, 196 and 197). Given the scarcity of those publicly distancing themselves in any way […]

Sometimes you have those days where thought is drowned out by all the other noise and you’re simply moving in circles. So I’ll let these writers use their words to say everything better. 1. ‘In creeps political conservatism’ by Marieke Hardy And they put it out there, they set it out amongst us and let […]

Some Monday afternoon links, skirting around the edges of murder, which may have earlier escaped your attention. 1. On Mossad and murder – ‘Meir Dagan: the mastermind behind Mossad’s secret war’. 2. On Australian soldiers and their use of drones in Afghanistan – ‘The law of instant death’. [There exist] big flaws in the training […]

(I should preface this post with a disclosure: I’m a long-time Melbourne International Film Festival [MIFF] attendee, and am quite partial to cinema.) This week we learned that Richard Moore’s position as executive director of the Melbourne International Film Festival will not be renewed. Finally, I thought, there is some kind of justice in Melbourne. […]