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By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog As the prosecutions of prominent whistleblowers are slowly proceeding through the courts in Canberra, a growing number of citizens are questioning why this nation’s authorities persecute and penalise those who expose corruption, while… Continue Reading →
By Alice Gorman, Flinders University Sixty years ago, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space when he completed his historic orbit of Earth on April 12, 1961. It was an extraordinary achievement, but created a… Continue Reading →
The Craft and Art of Jupuul Mari Mehi means girl in the gamilaraay dialect Miyaay. Moree is Mari and Mari means man. That is just the way whitefellas take our language and put it in their phonetic context. Because our… Continue Reading →
By Brian Toohey This the Preface from Brian Toohey’s latest book Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State. Step by step, a succession of new laws and policies have provided the building blocks for Australia to become a country in… Continue Reading →
The picture above was taken in 1909, at the height of the what was known as the Three Mile Rush. The bicycle polisher rigged up in the centre of this picture was being used to rub down opal. The commercial… Continue Reading →
By Francis De Lauro In the year then of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague… Giovanni Boccaccio introduces his acclaimed collection of novellas, the Decameron, with a reference to… Continue Reading →
Jonathan Zecher With some communities in rebooted lockdown conditions and movement restricted everywhere else, no one is posting pictures of their sourdough. Zoom cocktail parties have lost their novelty, Netflix can only release so many new series. The news seems… Continue Reading →
Civil Disobedience: The Ten Best Quotes of Henry David Thoreau Although the essay was written 168 years ago, the subject of Civil Disobedience is more relevant than ever. As people debate the scope of government power in regards to Covid-19 lockdowns, some… Continue Reading →
Hannah Arendt From its first publication in 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism has been considered a masterpiece of scholarship and historical research, a devastating insight into humanity’s potential for terror. To labour the obvious, it has an uncanny and yes,… Continue Reading →
By Bruno David, Chris Urwin and Lynette Russell, Monash University, Jeane-Jacques Delannoy, Universite Savoie Mont Blanc and Russell Mullett, Indigenous Knowledge New collaborative work at an Aboriginal cave in eastern Victoria, just published, shows the stark difference between contemporary archaeological… Continue Reading →
Maralinga: The Best of 2020. If the current ABC TV drama series Operation Buffalo piqued your interest in the British atomic tests in the South Australian desert in the 1950s and 60s, Frank Walker’s book ‘Maralinga’ reveals the true horror… Continue Reading →
By Tara June Winch One I was born on Ngurambang – can you hear it? – Ngu–ram–bang. If you say it right it hits the back of your mouth and you should taste blood in your words. Every person around should learn the word… Continue Reading →
Amazing to me, now that I’m old, is that for such an impatient person I was able to devote the thousands of hours to playing guitar that it takes to become competent on the instrument. It seemed when I was… Continue Reading →
A TRULY VICIOUS HANGOVER fogged every sense, the morning I interviewed Anthony Burgess in London back in the 1980s. There was no better place to be than the English capital, which was spinning through a centrifugal moment of cultural incandescence…. Continue Reading →
Death triumphs over the mundane. An army of skeletons raze the Earth. All life is extinguished. The background is a barren landscape in which scenes of destruction are still taking place. In the foreground, Death leads his armies from his… Continue Reading →
Apart from walking, one of the slowest ways to travel the 794 kilometres from New Delhi in the state of Uttar Pradesh to Varanasi on the Ganges is the Kashi Vishwanath Express. Multi-award winning Australian news photographer Russell Shakespeare first… Continue Reading →
Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance “When two truths meet the most courageous one wins.” Chinese proverb. In the years since Falun Gong was launched in 1992 it has attracted millions of followers in more than 60 different countries. As evidenced by the… Continue Reading →
Crisis turns into salvation at every step. For Tim Ritchie it is literally true. “I am a diabetic and eight years ago my doctor told me to walk 10,000 steps a day, but even then my blood sugar levels were… Continue Reading →
Serious breaches were breaking through the fabric of things. Back in London in the 1980s, I was using my new found status as a freelance journalist to pursue literary idols. The interview with Salman Rushdie took place in the same… Continue Reading →
By Alastair Blanshard, The University of Queensland Why do bad things happen to good people? It is a question that seems particularly pertinent during times of pandemic. Disease is no respecter of virtue. It is just as likely to strike… Continue Reading →