During last week’s Sydney Writer’s Festival, I was involved in a fantastic event about World War One Poetry with Tony Birch, Colin Friels, Judy Davis, Jennifer Mills, Omar Musa and Maxine Beneba Clarke. It was organised by Jeff Sparrow at Overland magazine. I read the following piece: My father’s father, Fred Loewenstein, was born in…
Jeremy Scahill in Australia
Last week I had the honour to meet and spend time with US investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill. He was here for the Sydney Writer’s Festival (photos from the event here) – our panel together discussed the importance of indy journalism in the face of corporate reporting – and it was unique hearing somebody speak clearly…
How to consider identity, pride and country
My weekly Guardian column: I rarely feel proud to be Australian. Perhaps it’s a personal distaste for any form of nationalism, or my long-held belief that human rights abuses increasingly define our nation as brutal, petty and racist. It’s hard to feel pride when we… lock up children in Pacific detention camps… and incarcerate indigenous men at… record…
ABC Radio discussion on faith, belief and politics
Last weekend I spoke at the Sydney Writer’s Festival and one of my panels was this fantastic event (recorded and played on ABC Radio’s Sunday Nights yesterday): A Muslim-Christian-Muslim, a Jewish-Atheist and a Scientist-Atheist-Humanist walked into a room… for a conversation with John Cleary of Sunday Nights. Writers Reza Aslan, Antony Loewenstein and Jim Al-Khalili…
What #MarchinMay showed about community spirit
The hugely successful #MarchinMay rallies were held last weekend across Australia, calling on equal access to health, education and a fair go. I spoke at the Sydney rally. Here’s a wonderful video of the event, by Italian film-maker Claudio Accheri and Peta Ding, and shows the vibrancy of the day: MARCH IN MAY from LittleShoulderProd…
Why there are growing corporate attacks on public broadcasting
My weekly Guardian column: The war on public broadcasters by corporate media is currently enjoying a resurgence. Britain’s Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has long loathed the BBC, accusing it of supporting “cultural marxism”. In a… 2007 lecture, he said the organisation attempted to undermine “the values of conservatism, with a small ”˜c’, which, I would…
Noam Chomsky speaks at launch of Glenn Greenwald's new book
The following event took place this week at Harvard and contains… a discussion of Greenwald’s latest book, No Place to Hide:
My #MarchinMay speech to thousands in Sydney
Yesterday thousands of Australians marched around the country to reject the extremism of Tony Abbott’s government. I was asked to speak in Sydney to a crowd of around 10,000 people (some great photos by Jaroslaw L Gasiorek here). This video features 15 minutes of highlights (I appear at 7.24): A slightly expanded version of my…
Little scrutiny of mining companies in Greenland
My weekly Guardian column: This is a story about an Australian company you’ve never heard of, operating in a nation that rarely enters the global media: Greenland. It’s a story about the intense search for energy sources in a world that’s… moving away… from the dirtiest fossil fuels. Aleqa Hammond, the prime minister of Greenland, is the…