Until last Friday, around twenty homeless people had set up camp in Melbourne’s City Square, creating shelter where it elsewhere eluded them, as a public petition for more secure, affordable housing in Australia’s second most populous city. The presence of the camp was also a visceral risposte to claims, which appeared in the mainstream media last week, that homeless people had been behaving unpalatably, including asking passers-by for money in an aggressive fashion.

Child abuse thrives in conditions of secrecy and cover-up. Disclosure is perhaps our greatest weapon in the limited armoury we have against it. Yet as of the 1 July 2015, the Border Force Act imposes a two-year prison sentence for any ‘entrusted person’ who makes a record of or discloses ‘protected information’. As there is no explicit exclusion of health workers reporting on child abuse, World Medical Association leaders have said they must assume that this ‘extends to doctors working in refugee centres who report on their observations arising from their work.’

Both films, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, explore the suffering, violence and personal and social rupture caused by the 1965-66 genocide in Indonesia.

I travelled to Turkey in late June to attend Global Power Shift, hosted by 350.org. It was about a month after the start of a nation-wide protest movement sparked by the proposed demolition of Gezi Park in Istanbul and I was intrigued to see what was going on. I went in with no idea about Turkish politics and little understanding of the movement. But through talking to activists and seeing it in action, I learnt a lot.

Besides, who can say with certainty that downloading academic papers has not crossed that terrorist line?

Republished with permission from Electronic Intifada and Kim Bullimore. In the largest show of support for the Palestinian-initiated boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign so far in Australia, more than 350 persons marched on 29 July in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle – and in opposition to an attempt by Victorian Police to criminalise Palestine […]

On Friday 1 July, 19 pro-Palestinian activists, including me, were arrested in Melbourne’s CBD for opposing Max Brenner, a chocolate store that sends care packages to some of the most brutal sections of the Israeli army. The arrests show just how far defenders of Israel will go to silence dissent. Furthermore, police intimidating and violently […]