I’m a woman; here are some things I’m thinking about today: 1. Mary Poppins and that feminist sub-plot:   2. The war being waged on women and their reproductive rights (which, in many countries, like the vote, were won long ago): • In ‘Lucky girl’, Bridget Potter recounts what she went through to get an […]

Egypt. A revolution on the scale of the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, the Women’s Revolution. Millions are changing everything because they can’t bear the oppression any longer; because they’ve captured the imagination of another way. Iran, Yemen, Bahrain … Egypt’s imagination inspired by Tunisia. Tunisia inspired by … Facebook? Well, clearly Facebook is just […]

Last week media theorist and writer Jay Rosen coined a new genre; ‘Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators’, it’s called. The genre takes some knowns: • Since the invention of social media there have been uprisings and revolutions: Iran, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and more • Social media helps ‘sex up’ the reporting of these situations through its […]

For eighteen consecutive days I was glued to Al Jazeera English and Twitter, watching and tweeting in awe as the Egyptian revolution unfolded. As Hosni Mubarak stepped down from the Egyptian presidency handing power to the military, an email alert drew me to a story from Tunisia: People streaming into a house to congratulate the […]

your transaction has been processed by paypal this purchase will appear on your credit card bill as item: revolution number of items: 1 cost: $AUD priceless the revolution thanks you for choosing itself the revolution is downloading onto your ipad & being transferred onto your iphone it is an irevolution the revolution is i i […]

They are: The tyrant’s strategy seems clear. After 30 years of brutality, repression and feathering the nest of his globetrotting fellow elites, at the moment his regime is in peril he will act as the reasonable one. He will act to reverse the ‘chaos’ and ‘anarchy’ in the streets as gangs of violent thugs attack […]

Great to wake up this morning to see that the Egyptian army is publicly stating it won’t use force against the protesters. Of course this could just be part of buying time for the regime, but it goes to the scale of the crisis facing Mubarak and his allies: ‘The presence of the army in […]

For those following events in Egypt, this al-Jazeera interview with the US State Department’s PJ Crowley is essential viewing. I’ve taken the liberty of transcribing some of the highlights: AJ: ‘But we’re not talking in general terms here. Egypt is not letting its people protest peacefully. It’s deploying the full ranks of its US-backed $1.3 […]

At the recent joint meeting between Australian and British foreign and defense secretaries, Britain’s Liam Fox made an astonishing confession. ‘In terms of having adequate manning, in terms of having adequate equipment,’ he said, ‘we’ve really only been in Afghanistan for the last year.’ Get that? The previous nine years (nine years!) had been, according […]

The life of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara has lately been receiving revived interest. There were the movies about parts of his life: Motorcycle Diaries, and the two-part Soderbergh movies, featuring four hours of Che as a guerrilla. These were followed by the revision and updating of Jon Lee Anderson’s massive, authoritative, and highly praised biography, Che […]

When the Overland editors posted an off-the-cuff list of songs for a soundtrack for the revolution a couple of weeks ago, the comments board, which usually moves between the sedate and the lively, went berserk. Music videos were posted by the score, ranging from the Dead Kennedys’ ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ to Melanie’s ‘Psychotherapy’. Maybe […]

I came across this online Age newspaper article by Kylie Northover, ‘Graffiti is enough to give a critic an art attack’ (8 May 2010), a response to ‘Hey Banksy, graffiti is vandalism not art’ by Charles Purcell (4 May 2010). I was duly horrified. Purcell concludes his smug, ignorant rant with the following outrageous suggestion: […]

When the revolution comes, it will more than likely be on a Monday. But we’ll need the weekend to prepare. And a soundtrack. Here are some suggestions; feel free to add your own. When the revolution comes – The Last Poets Jailbreak – Yothu Yindi (We don’t need this) Fascist groove thang – Heaven 17 And […]

In 2009, a choreographer from the television programme So you think you can dance said his routine involved ‘a bit of a peep show’ explaining, ‘They’re such hot looking girls, why wouldn’t I portray them as sex kittens?’ I then pulled the face that causes my teenaged daughter to exclaim, ‘I hate watching television with […]

It seems like just yesterday. Of course, in all the celebrations, no-one will raise the rather embarrassing fact that, throughout the Apartheid era, most Western governments entirely supported the racist regime’s assessment of the ANC leader as a dangerous criminal. Indeed, it was only in 2008 that the US removed Mandela from its terrorist watch […]