Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian who resides in Chicago. As the co-founder of the essential Electronic Intifada website, his goal is to give voice to the Palestinian cause and challenge the dominant Zionist narrative of our time. Leading Jewish blogger Phil Weiss writes that people like Ali should be seriously considered as a major figure in the American debate, yet he remains marginalised. Why? Read more »
Just published (2008-05-15) in Nature (doi:10.1038/453257a) is The Next Big Climate Challenge, which argues that significant funding is needed for climate modellers, indeed so much that climate modelling and the supercomputing grunt it requires, should be considered as international "big science", with projects funded internationally in the same manner (although hopefully more effective) than CERN’s hadron smasher and space telescopes. Read more »
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey:
Antony Loewenstein, author of My Israel Question, writes: Read more »
If we'd been looking for a substantial reason for moving to Rural and Regional Australia, the last couple of days have provided it.
Two days ago Offspring No 2 left her phone at a suburban shopping centre in the leafy western suburbs. Result: exit one phone, not the first time Offspring No 2 has lost a phone under such circumstances.
Then this afternoon I had a couple of beers with a mate at
Back in 2004, I interviewed a stateless refugee housed on Manus Island by the former Australian government. Aladdin Sisalem was a kind, quietly-spoken man who simply craved a better life for himself, but John Howard’s system wanted him to suffer for this desire.
I met with Aladdin a few times in Melbourne after his release. He seemed to be struggling with his new life, unsure what he would do and without a clear directive from the government on his legal status. Read more »
Australia’s Next Top Model is on again. These models were put on the spot, asked to name name five things that made them a better model than the woman standing next to them.
Alexandra identifies her strengths:
“I’m taller, I’m whiter…” [silence] “uhh….. I have longer legs, I have better style.”
Read more »
When politicians call for increased teaching of Asian languages (presumably with an emphasis on Chinese), I wonder if they have thought of the difference between written and spoken capabilities.
For one thing, there seem to be genetic differences between populations that use pitch as part of the spoken language (tonal languages, e.g. Mandarin), and those that don’t (non-tonal languages e.g. Proto-Indo-European). Occidental populations thus face significant hurdles to learning spoken Mandarin.
The following advertisement, sponsored by Australians for Palestine, appeared in newspapers across Australia today, including the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian. Read more »
Talking honestly about Palestine in Australia is clearly too challenging for some:
The decision by a Sydney library to dump an exhibition about Palestinian refugees after a visit by counter-terrorism police the night before it opened has been criticised as an act of censorship. Read more »
Via Webdiary, Lee Iococca, once CEO of Chrysler, delivers a finely crafted rant about what he sees is wrong with the USA.
I suspect many of us in Australia don't 'get' the US. We certainly may not be convinced by Manifest Destiny and I'm certainly one of the many who rail against the continuing Americanisation of our language and culture.
Offspring No 2 'gets' the US: she's seen the best and
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