Tag: Social issues

  • Your Enemies Destroyed One Palestine; My Wounds Populated Many Palestines

    Malak Mattar (Palestine), A Life Stolen Before It Had Begun, 2023. The indecency of the phrase ‘humanitarian pause’ is obvious. There is nothing humanitarian about a brief interlude between bouts of horrendous violence. There is no true ‘pause’, merely the calm before the storm continues. We are witnessing the bureaucratisation of immorality, the use of […]

  • Actuarial Justice: Released Refugees and Secondary Punishment

    In most instances, the justice system of a liberal democracy presumes absence of arbitrary and cruel treatment by the State. Punishment, when levelled, is finite. It might see out the term of a convict’s natural life, but that would only be for the most extreme cases. Even then, the whiff of parole, while far off, […]

  • Banished from Pakistan: Islamabad Moves on Afghan Refugees

    Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution.  If they are not facing barbed wire barriers in Europe, they are being conveyed, where possible, to third countries to be processed in lengthy fashion.  Policy makers fiddle and cook the […]

  • The Dangerously Appealing Style of the Far Right

    The Dangerously Appealing Style of the Far Right

    Emilio Pettoruti (Argentina), Arlequín (‘Harlequin’), 1928. Before he won Argentina’s presidential election on 19 November, Javier Milei circulated a video of himself in front of a series of white boards. Pasted on one board were the names of various state institutions, such as the ministries of health, education, women and gender diversities, public works, and culture, all recognised […]

  • The White House Goes Rogue: Secret Surveillance Program Breaks All the Laws

    The White House Goes Rogue: Secret Surveillance Program Breaks All the Laws

    The government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t believe it. It doesn’t matter whether you obey every law. The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding […]

  • Coming to Terms with a Lifetime of Trauma While in Prison

    I am a Black man in prison, and I want to talk about trauma. I want us all to be able to talk about trauma. I’m here because when I was a teenager and young man, I made many bad life choices involving drugs and violence. Living with the consequences of my actions is not […]

  • What If the Constitution No Longer Applied?

    What If the Constitution No Longer Applied?

    We are approaching critical mass, the point at which all hell breaks loose. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis. What makes the outlook so much bleaker is the utter ignorance of the American people—and those who represent them—about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate. As […]

  • Gaza Water 2023

    Gaza Water 2023

    Before the genocide, Palestinians in Gaza struggled to access clean water, with 97% of Gaza’s freshwater resources contaminated due to the Israeli blockade and repeated bombardments. Many families in poverty were forced to spend a third or more of their income to purchase water from unregulated sources, with the hopes that it is safe. Now, […]

  • The Politics of Indefinite Detention in Australia

    The High Court of Australia is not known for its zealotry in protecting human rights, and certainly not when considering the persuasive pull of international law and conventions.  The Australian Parliament is usually given a generous hand in making policies that tend to outrage such conventions, a freedom made that much easier by an absence […]

  • Authoritarians Drunk on Power

    Authoritarians Drunk on Power

    There is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? […]

Generated by Feedzy