Accord nostalgia, Labourism and the fact challenged ‘economic debate’
A number of intriguing trajectories of argument have crossed over recently, as the Labor government continues to be under great pressure. In leaving the Gillard Cabinet, Martin Ferguson called for an end to ‘class war’ politics (see previous post by [...]
PJK’s True Believers
We shouldn’t let the 20th anniversary of the Victory of the True Believers pass without comment. It was two decades ago that Paul Keating led the Labor Party to a famous win over John Hewson’s Coalition. Keating, of course, is [...]
How the Wivenhoe engineers fell foul of the Floods Commission
As I outlined in the first post, in February this year the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry reconvened as a result of reporting in The Australian by Hedley Thomas which suggested there had been a major breach of the flood [...]
Invasion Day/Australia Day: Unity/Disunity
I think everyone of a certain age can remember a certain mantra from John Howard. Symbols, he intoned, are not important. “Symbolic Reconciliation” is not important, he couldn’t say Sorry. The Republic was just a symbol, of interest to “elites”. [...]
Quick link – 60th anniversary of the Slansky Trial: Stalinism, anti-semitism and “anti-Zionism”.
Here is a very interesting article about the emergence of anti-semitism (parading as anti-Zionism) as a key element of Soviet and Eastern European Stalinism after WWII.
Occupy Australia and the Antipodean “bubble”
After the Occupy Melbourne event was forcibly (and it appears, disproportionately violently) cleared by the Victorian Police at the instance of Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle, Dr_Tad has been reflecting at Left Flank on some of the criticism of the actions [...]
Weekly Whimsy
This week’s whimsy is brought to you by archaeologists discovering an enormous gladiatorial compound buried near the banks of the Danube outside Vienna. Please share any bits and pieces you have come across recently that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.
Overproduced, Overwrought, from Over the Ditch
A few years back we had a very entertaining thread titled Cheezy Listening. Posts #17 and #48 of that thread referenced the bathetic “Tell Laura I Love Her”, and specifically the 1974 version by New Zealand band Creation. I have [...]
Twenty years since the death of communism
It was twenty years ago today that a clique of Soviet political and military officials attempted a coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev with the aim of “saving” the USSR. Their actions had exactly the opposite result – the coup [...]
Nancy Wake, RIP
New Zealand born, Australian raised Nancy Wake, awarded just about every decoration under the sun for her work with the French resistance in the Second World War, has died of a chest infection. Her wartime exploits were widely recounted, for [...]
Hairspray the Musical: Cultural politics of the 60s, now, and race
What interests me in this post is the cultural politics of Hairspray. One of its marketing themes is 60s nostalgia. That nostalgia is by necessity a collective re-imagining of what the 60s ‘meant’, whether or not we were around to form our own judgements.
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