Watts Riot of 1965 — how the rioters treated ‘their’ community then This is the original text of an article commissioned by ABC’s The Drum, which was published yesterday and can be found here. The riots in the United Kingdom, mainly involving school age and unemployed youth, have provoked a backlash that seeks to paint them […]
25 Jul
Comments Off on Terror in the eye of the beholder? Norway, the far Right & the state-media complex
This weekend was a salutary lesson in how terrorism is treated by the media and political establishment. The lesson may surprise you, because there are two narratives constructed: Firstly, with outrage, linking of associations on the basis of zero evidence, calls for continued military action and tightening of domestic security (read: curtailing civil liberties) to […]
18 Dec
The horrifying deaths of refugees near Christmas Island this week produced two notable responses. The first, recycled endlessly in recent times, was the call for people to not use the tragedy to gain political advantage, a ridiculous idea given that Australia’s current refugee policy has few reasons for existing except in the service of politics. As Left Flank […]
11 Dec
What is the nature of elite rule and how can it be challenged? This is the real question behind the political crisis caused by the WikiLeaks revelations. Compared with other leaks, the scale and breadth of the information being released makes it impossible not to reassess how state and citizens interact. Despite the attempts at […]
14 Sep
There has been much discussion in the left-leaning blogosphere about the stridency of the Murdoch media campaign against the “legitimacy” of the Gillard minority government. As Left Flank noted on the weekend, The Australian has editorialised that it is committed to having the Greens “destroyed at the ballot box”. In the AFR on Friday (paywalled, […]
03 Aug
Comments Off on Welcome to the desert of the real: early requiem for our postmodern election
If postmodernism represents the philosophical and aesthetic logic of late capitalism, then we have certainly scored ourselves the ultimate postmodern election. Fragmentary policy announcements, a lingusitic turn on the messaging front and, of course, such self-reflexive narratives that it’s hard to tell what is “real” anymore. Actually, hold that thought, because there is nothing real, just […]
31 Jul
Comments Off on Apologist overload: Wikileaks and Australia’s Afghanistan non-debate
While Australia’s political class and media were obsessing over leaks from within the Labor cabinet this week, an altogether more important set of leaks found its way to the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Sourced by Wikileaks, over 90,000 military documents around the war in Afghanistan were released simultaneously by The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. They catalogue a […]
13 Aug
Comments Off on Intended or not, the consequences of riots are not always negative