Progressive culture since 1954
And you thought you had stumbled into paradise — the word virgin on your lips, blind to the giant kapok’s ancient life. Your arrival has disturbed my dreaming, frightening the anteater who’s been searching for worms all day. Leave Amerigo, we are not a discovery.
In late October 2020, towards the end of Victoria’s second lockdown, I logged into the discussion forum on essentialbaby.com.au. That day, a short post appeared in the forum from editor Letitia Rowlands informing members that the forum would close on 30 October. Essential Baby, along with the millions of posts, mostly by Australian women, on myriad topics, would be deleted just over a week later.
Young people like Hayat should not have to commit suicide because of the current policies and Australia’s refusal to resettle us. The ban on the resettlement of asylum seekers who registered with UNHCR in Indonesia after 1 July 2014 must be reversed. All that refugees here want is their freedom. They want to make their way in this world, create a life for themselves.
The death of Mhelody Bruno and the court’s acceptance of Mr Toyer’s evidence regarding the manner of her death are further evidence of the racism and transphobia at the heart of Australia’s justice system.
It may well be a law of nature that when you defeat the empire, you become the empire. Cobain and Nirvana had challenged corporate power from within, but the adaptability of those structures saw them drawn unwittingly into the middle of the machine. Cobain was too honest to give in, but also too exhausted to keep running ahead. The more successful Nirvana became, the less he was able to control his own message, to represent something other than the symbol he had become – the constructed symbol of a rock’n’roll star, a polite focus for suburban rebellion, even in spite of the challenging art he made.