The video is deeply confronting. Even before your intelligence begins to make sense of it, there’s something instinctive that is repulsed by what you see: gross violence by one human against another. For me, as it went on, shockwaves rippled through my mind…this is not only upsetting, it’s disturbing. The footage challenges how we think […]
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Tag Archives: politics
“Long Walk to Freedom” by Nelson Mandela: Leadership, Apartheid, and Climate Activism
November 18, 2012 
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Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom is a stirring book. Autobiography already has something rich and intimate about it; in Long Walk to Freedom that is combined with the nobility and inspiration of a successful struggle against injustice. In reading it, I reflected upon a few things: leadership, apartheid, and climate activism. Nelson Mandela is […]
Read more Why is the Climate Movement Celebrating Obama’s Re-election?
November 7, 2012 2 Comments
Today Barack Obama was elected to a second term as President of the United States. Also today, as a consequence of global warming, our climate system gained an amount of energy equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. In the giddy celebrations following Obama’s success, climate activists jostled over a cursory mention given in his […]
Read more On Penny Wong and today’s Australian Labor Party
October 27, 2012 1 Comment
The decision at today’s South Australian Labor Party state convention to list Senator Don Farrell ahead of Senator Penny Wong on the party’s senate ticket represents everything that is wrong with the ALP today. Well, maybe not everything. But most of the things. It seems that Labor has learnt nothing from its mistakes. Despite the […]
Read more On the Accessibility of Feminism (revised)
June 23, 2012 18 Comments
The comments on this post have been really great for helping me to think more deeply about this. Some parts of the original post I’ve edited to reflect my meaning better, or to soften plain inflammatory statements. I’ve also added footnotes to indicate how others’ comments have added to my understanding and perhaps changed my […]
Read more Books 16,17,18: “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, Suzanne Collins
June 14, 2012 0 Comments
I read the three Hunger Games books in as many days. This was a bit awkward. The movie was so big and well-known, the books almost as much, and here I was being very mainstream and uncool. I guess that’s what happens when one is in Adelaide and not Melbourne. Because of the books’ popularity, […]
Read more Melbourne, 11 Months In.
June 8, 2012 1 Comment
I’m packing my room to move to my second Melbourne Sharehouse. Gradually emptying my bookshelf, sticking big A4 things into a calico bag, I come upon an A4 envelope from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition’s Meet Your Member Finale, July 2011. The consequence of open slather of Kris Kringle style good vibes, it contains lovely […]
Read more Book 13: “Infidel”, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
May 26, 2012 0 Comments
I’ve read very few biographies, auto- or otherwise. It’s not a form of writing that has appealed to me much previously. I think fiction can hold great insight in to the human condition, and that non-fiction books are a great source of learning about specific fields. Of course, my view is narrow and limited. Biographies […]
Read more Anna Rose Above It
April 27, 2012 3 Comments
So last night (April 26th) I had the pleasure of watching the ABC’s climate special. This involved their documentary, “I Can Change Your Mind…On Climate”, in which delayer Nick Minchin and advocate Anna Rose flit about the world talking to climate scientists who accept the climate science, and recreational bloggers or political pundits, who dispute […]
Read more Book 5: “Dracula”, Bram Stoker
April 25, 2012 2 Comments
It isn’t often that I’ve been motivated to read a book after watching a video trailer about it done entirely in LEGO. I feel it may be safe to say that very few books have video trailers about them done entirely in LEGO. Would you believe it, Dracula is the exception. There’s a certain strangeness […]
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