Why Are Labor Governments So Gutless?

The collapse of the Adelaide Writer’s Festival brings into stark relief the cowardly actions of governments and public boards in Australia in the face of Zionist threats. Pro-Israel influencers in the legal sphere are running censorship campaigns to control who has a voice in Australian cultural life. South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas is the latest leader to kow tow to Zionist pressure in having Palestinian Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah removed from the Adelaide Writer’s Festival lineup for 2026. This has resulted in 4 board members resigning and hundreds of writers pulling out of the biggest writer’s festival in Australia. Why are Labor governments so gutless?Continue Reading

Why Are Americans So Stupid?

Why would working class Americans vote for a political party that has done nothing for them over the last 44 years? Why are Americans so stupid? The Republican party, the GOP, has been feathering the nests of the wealthy, billionaires and oligarchs, since Ronald Reagan was president. Look at the facts and the reduction in wealth of the middle class over this period. The majority of Americans have been going backward economically, whilst the super-rich have been rolling in clover on steroids. How can a population of adults be gulled time and time again by lies and empty promises? Now, they have reached the nadir of conmen and grifters in Donald J Trump.Continue Reading

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It is incredible to ponder on how obsessed America has been with one individual for the last decade. This republic, this land of the free, has been messed up in the Trump cult of personality. Hundreds of millions of Americans have had their lives upset and f***** with by one, fairly sordid, son of a second rate property developer. Celebrity is the weakness of this people. Their unhealthy fondness for the faux familiarity of celebrity. So much for progress, for the democratic journey over decades and centuries. So much for the American Experiment.Continue Reading

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Laocoon and the Trojan Horse

I don’t know if you have ever heard of the Trojan Horse? This is a device contained within the ancient story known as The Iliad. Whether it actually existed is debatable but it has become a popular symbolic metaphor down through the ages. Basically, it was a very large, hand constructed, wooden horse like tower. The story goes that the invading Greeks built it, hopped inside, and had it moved in front of the gates to the city of Troy. Eventually, the Trojans were intrigued enough to move it inside their city gates and later that night the Greeks snuck out and opened the gates for their army – final outcome the fall of Troy. Why someone would want a bloody big wooden horse structure, I don’t know. There are reasons given that the Trojans thought that it might be a gift from the gods. ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ – is one of many sayings to emerge subsequent to the reading of this chapter of The Iliad. What is today’s Trojan Horse?Continue Reading

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Stoicism: above, suicide Seneca; middle

I could begin with a brief history lesson about Stoicism but this is not the essence of it. Being Stoic: What is it? Doing stuff you don’t want to do but know that you have to do anyway. The expression ‘soldiering on,’ invariably comes to mind, as soldiers have to do a lot of shitty things they really would rather not. Duty is a big one for Stoics. Virtue, even, more so. WTF is virtue anyway? It is a word, which has not stood the test of time. It exists as an anachronism, a term draped in cobwebs and an echo from the ancient world. This is old stuff and does it truly having any bearing on our lives today?Continue Reading

focused african american researcher conducting biochemical experiment in clinic

I have been reading some interesting stuff about how the Black Death shaped humanity. Plague has been with humankind at least 5, 000 years and has been one of our most efficient killers.

“Plague is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, a zoonotic bacteria, usually found in small mammals and their fleas. It is transmitted between animals through fleas.”

(https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/plague#:~:text=Plague%20is%20an%20infectious%20disease,transmitted%20between%20animals%20through%20fleas.)

Yersinia pestis is the official name of this malevolent bacteria, which has a predilection for human victims. It manifests in bubonic and pneumonic ways to spread death and disease. It has been found in ancient DNA by scientists and looks to have originated on the steppes of Eurasia.Continue Reading

serious man reading book in dark room

Formless, genderless, and yet, a teller of stories. A narrator to the nation but anonymous. The Ghostwriter rides the apostrophes and semicolons like a grammarian hustler. Tipping her, or his hat, to the invisible mores of our cultural inclinations. A wordsmith without peer on the frontiers of our literary appreciation. Now you see him and now you don’t. Can you hear the inflection of the author? Do you perceive the true voice of your hero? Do you know the difference between an allusion and a lie? Wherefore art thou Romeo? Who is stirring your pot on the stove in this reading hour?Continue Reading

Killers Of The Flower Moon movie

Everybody is talking about Killers Of The Flower Moon because it is now a Hollywood movie. The book, written by David Grann, was published some 6 years ago in 2017. This is a great story and more importantly a true story. It tells us about the nature of human beings and how white people have treated those who have come before them. It is an American story involving native Americans and their displacement by European settlers. It is an American story, also, because it is about money and get rich quick schemes at any cost. It has something to say about how First Nations people were treated by white colonising powers in the creation of the New World.Continue Reading

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paper cutouts on a blue surface

Watching The Whale I was struck by several insights into the issues raised by this film. Firstly, by how un-American this movie was. Where were all the beautiful people? American celluloid and TV is, generally, characterised by a smug self-confidence with everybody sensing that they are the bee’s knees. The Whale watcher: Barfing about blubber. Holding up a mirror to a nation with a massive obesity problem is not normal fare on American screens. The clever use of intertextuality with that god awful American novel Moby Dick called attention to the theatrical roots of this production. The play/movie grappled with those age old American themes so densely inculcated within Moby Dick. God, religious belief, and questions of morality fill the pages of the great American novel. If you have ever attempted to read Moby Dick, the actual white whale is rarely sighted within its pages, rather Melville subjects readers to endless tracts on earnest searches for meaning within the Christian paradigm. It is a book that tries too hard to be morally deep and meaningful.Continue Reading

Robert Sudha Hamilton

Big question and the answer to this changes regularly. Right now, I am immersing myself in cosmology, biology and particle physics via Brian Cox and John Gribbin. I love to feel my mind being expanded by the ideas and knowledge within a book being shared with the reader. Recently, I have enjoyed Yuval Noah Harari, and Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu – I think that every Australian should read Dark Emu. Continue Reading