Simon Copland is a freelance writer specialising in sex, culture and the environment. This is the second post in a six-part series examining the history of sex and the family. The first post can be found here. These posts and other work from Simon are available on his blog: http://simoncopland.com/blog. How did nuclear families become the […]
12 May
University of Sydney, 17-18 July 2015 Call for Papers The year 2015 marks a series of conspicuous anniversaries. Three books in particular celebrate significant milestones this year. Raewyn Connell and Terry Irving’s seminal Class Structure in Australian History was published thirty-five years ago, Louis Althusser and his students published Reading Capital fifty years ago, and Silvia […]
08 May
The sudden departure of Christine Milne as Greens leader — apparently kept so secret that even many of her staff didn’t know she was plotting a transition with Richard Di Natale, Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters — is a logical outcome of the party’s impasse since its electoral high point in 2010. Perhaps most significant is […]
07 May
Simon Copland is a freelance writer specialising in sex, culture and the environment. He previously wrote for Left Flank on the Left and Tony Abbott’s “inevitable downfall”. This is the first post in a six-part series examining the history of sex and the family. These posts and other work from Simon are available on his […]
18 Apr
It’s been less than 12 months since the last federal Budget, yet it seems like an eternity since Clive Palmer managed to break through the Right-Left partisanship that usually accompanies post-Budget discussion. This was the apex of Palmer’s influence on politics, a world away from the report in today’s Fairfax newspapers that then PUP senator […]
13 Apr
Two hostile intersecting axes are forming against the Syriza-led government in Athens. Together they comprise an increasingly cohered effort to destabilise and defeat the government, to usurp the democratically expressed hope of the Greek people to break from the iron cage of austerity. The first axis, from without, has been evident since before the 20 […]
12 Apr
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The Purge While on a visit in China, I have learned the habit of regularly checking the news for announcements of yet another corruption investigation by the government. Until recently, corruption involving Party or government officials had been treated as a politically explosive scandal, which the government preferred the public not to see. But now […]
31 Mar
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“Hope is coming. Europe is changing. Greece is going forward.” Two months into Syriza taking office after the historic victory of the Left at the polls on 25 January, dare we hope for a breach in the iron cage of austerity? Is hope even alive? My answer is an unequivocal “yes”. That’s not down to […]
28 Mar
KEVIN OVENDEN writes from Athens on continuing moves to re-legitimise the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn on the eve of their trial as a criminal organisation, and responds to voices that have tacitly defended some of the perturbing concessions to chauvinism coming from within the new Greek government. Following his essay is some background on the legal […]
23 Mar
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KEVIN OVENDEN wrote this report from Athens just after Saturday’s anti-racist day of action there. I’ve not seen the centre of Athens so black since August of 2012 and the massive protest against the onset of the Xenios Zeus anti-immigrant police sweeps. Not the black of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. Its party colour gives rise […]
15 May
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