Beyond the fact that the burden will disproportionately be borne by young people, a society built on an edifice in which debt is widely accepted and forced upon people is not only potentially unstable both financially and socially, it’s also ethically problematic.
The coronavirus pandemic is a perfect storm in which the failure of the state is only dwarfed by the failure of the nation to provide any kind of unified, collective response.
In March 2008 the largest anti-Chinese protests since perhaps the 1959 Uprising broke out in Tibet. Monks initially led the demonstrations, but they were soon joined by laypeople as unrest spread across the plateau. They called for freedom and independence and some defiantly marched with the Tibetan national flag, an act of immense courage since the last monk to carry the flag in protest, in 1988, was shot through the head. With the Beijing Olympics…
'Can a great nation, liberal by tradition, allow its institutions, its army, and its system of justice to degenerate over the span of a few years as a result of the use of torture, and by its concealment and deception of such a vital issue call the whole Western conception of human dignity and the rights of the individual into question?' So begins Pierre Vidal-Naquet's classic study of the Algerian War, Torture: Cancer of Democracy…
For all the book's flaws, Albert Camus' Myth of Sisyphus remains one of the best encapsulations of what it means to engage in political struggle. Faced with insurmountable adversity, in Camus' meaningless world the only answer is to make resistance one's raison d'etre. How, then, does one square the injunction to 'imagine Sisyphus happy' with the almost certain death of those Tibetans who, in protesting Chinese rule, self-immolate?
It's somewhat sobering to read Jake Bilardi's final blog post - less manifesto, in parts, more expository essay - and find oneself agreeing with many of his views and opinions on the state of the world. He was revolted by the Israel - Palestine conflict, which he - echoing the title of Max Blumenthal's latest book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel - characterises as 'the ultimate David and Goliath story, where the world…
Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a celebrated Syrian writer and political dissident who spent sixteen years and fourteen days in jail at the behest of Hafez al- Assad's regime for being a member of the Communist Party. He, like Tony Abbott, believes there needs to be a 'religious reformation in Islam'; however, his progressivism couldn't be more different from Abbott's reactionary divisiveness.
