From the river to the sea, the world is becoming the Gaza laboratory

During the Vietnam war you couldn't say 'fuck' on a theatre stage, but you could make the political proposition that an army our own soldiers were fighting should prevail. Now pro-Palestine marchers pass bus stops in which government-run anti-HIV ads feature men talking about how they fuck, chanting a geopolitical opinion that the government may well ban. What has occurred?

The Hollow Myths of a ‘Maverick’ Empire

Ironically Star Wars was produced towards the end of a historical period of idealised counter-cultural iconography. Its heroes were rebels. In Top Gun: Maverick the earlier film’s dynamics are appropriated in support of the American empire.

Big History for World Revolution?: Karatani’s and Graeber and Wengrow’s very different new perspectives

If, for almost all of our history, humans have creatively and continuously improvised new ways of living in common and wilfully abandoned experiments that failed, why has that process stagnated so completely in the modern world?

Save Humanity! In 30,000 AD! With Crypto!

Simon Cooper

3 May 2024

What is ‘good’ or of ‘value’ is a complex question, one radically narrowed by the utilitarian, quantitative approach, which assumes that what is good is what can be measured.

The Mask of Curfew in Alice Springs

The recent execution and looming possibility of a reinstated youth curfew are unlikely to quell well-established divisions between the town’s Aboriginal and settler-Australian populations.

Degrowth and the Technocratic turn?

Despite its claim to de-naturalise economic growth, environmentalism’s reliance on naturalist metaphors obscures a technocratic thread, which risks obviating its stated political commitments to democracy.

Reply to Robinson on ‘Degrowth?’

Disturbingly, the inference is that Robinson believes in economic development, growth and technology, even consumptionism.

Los Alamos to Neuralink

Albert Einstein issued a dire warning: that we were living under threat not only from the atomic bomb and the spectre of extermination in nuclear war, but also from a second weapon, one he considered just at dangerous for humanity and the planet—‘the Information Bomb’.

It’s the voice of ‘rural nullius’ on ABC’s Jim Crow Country Hour

Farmers in the south of Israel were granted nearly as much ABC air-time in the four weeks before the Voice vote as all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations across all of Australia.

Israel as the Abyss: On Antony Loewenstein’s ‘The Palestine Laboratory’

Ned Curthoys

11 Apr 2024

The reality of Jewish suprematism, the grind of occupation and the constant harassment and humiliation of Palestinians by Israeli police generated shame as to what was being done in his name as a Jew.

From the Archive

‘Fire’ may be an appropriate way to think and talk about the climate-change emergency, not just because we are literally dealing with a burning world but also because it does not bring with it the concerns associated with ‘rule by emergency’.

From the Archive

There is a curious and seldom-told backstory and parallel story to the high-profile Cambridge Analytica scandal, one that makes the notorious firm seem like the tip of the democracy-sinking iceberg.

New Zealand’s AUKUS Capabilities

The agreement may have locked the country into an alliance with the declining superpower for decades while taxpayers subsidise its massive ‘national security’ budget.

Much More than a Mirror Man: John Pilger’s life of truth-telling, remembered

Pilger’s lengthy career marked the high-water mark for a certain type of journalism that could still at the time make it into various mainstream outlets. This eventually altered.

Mongrel Mobs? The Gang Crackdown in Aotearoa

Emerging out of postwar state- and church-run institutions, early gangs were a social and cultural response to shocking abuse perpetrated predominantly upon Māori and Pacific Islander children.

Monsters from the Id: On ‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956)

The luminous sheen of progress and technological advance, which promised the Krell an endlessly ascending future, was undermined at last by atavistic impulses, sprung from roots sunk in their evolutionary past.

Editorial: Prometheus Unhinged

The announcement that Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corporation has succeeded in implanting a microchip capable of working with a human brain has hit the news just as I write this editorial. By the time you read this, it may have vanished again into the news-ether, or it may be all anyone is talking about. It is […]

Perpetrators: Israel under The Zone of Interest

Where were your grandparents during the war? The question sits upon my tongue when I meet a German. Israelis will soon find that a similar gaze will descend upon them.