a) Why, it’s kicking off everywhere… except Melbourne It’s been a wild year. After two to three years of seeming paralysis after the GFC, things kicked off. Indeed, as Paul Mason’s timely canvassing of the issue says, it appears to be kicking off everywhere. Everywhere except Australia. A pedal through Melbourne’s leafy north-east the other [...]
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From the Worrier Pose to Narcissisasana (and Back): why it might be no bad thing if yoga wrecks you
We know how yoga can wreck your body. But I wonder: isn’t it more that we’ve wrecked yoga? In other words: ask not what your yoga is doing to you; ask what we are doing to our yoga. Responding adequately to that question would require knowing about how yoga ought to be, ideally. I have [...]
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Celebrate Australia Day, $3.99!
Australia Day used to be controversial. I kinda liked that. I remember going to the Big Day Out in Sydney 1996 on Australia Day and hearing Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha do a big rant about Invasion Day, and feeling stirred when the crowd roared in approval. I should add: no one, [...]
READ MOREFitter, happier, more productive: this yoga harms?
By this stage in January, your resolutions are probably in the process of being sorely tested. Especially when the tennis is on, the sun is shining, and the afternoons are just so dreamily endless and given to, well, drinking beer. Well, I speak for myself… I just finished an introductory course at a yoga school [...]
READ MORELest We Remember: reflecting on SIEV 221, one year on
What follows is the final in a three-part series of three related reflections on the anniversary of SIEV 221, the Christmas Island Boat Tragedy. Here are parts one and two. Part Three: Getting the message What is the message of border security, and who is its intended recipient? The imputed message is for the categorically [...]
READ MORELest We Remember: reflecting on SIEV 221, one year on
What follows is the second in a series of three related reflections on the anniversary of SIEV 221, the Christmas Island Boat Tragedy. Part Two: It *must* have been the weather… The ocean is inherently hazardous, yet our culture has no word for fortuna, or the Gods. After technology, the other general lesson the reports’ [...]
READ MORELest We Remember: reflecting on SIEV 221, one year on
What follows is the first in a series of three related reflections on the anniversary of SIEV 221, the Christmas Island Boat Tragedy. Part One: The integral accident In the dark reflection of the one-year anniversary of the shipwreck of SIEV 221 – the Christmas Island Boat Tragedy – it’s time to ask ourselves and [...]
READ MOREWho They are and what They do: what the current whereabouts of Julian Assange can tell us about how power works in 2011
In April 2010 David Harvey gave a lecture to promote his most recent book, the Enigma of Capital. Harvey is often painted as a grumpy, unreconstructed Marxist fuddy duddy. He is certainly grumpy; but his analysis of our post GFC woes is far more cogent than most of what passes for ‘analysis’ by most conventional [...]
READ MOREShips in the Night: what Jonathan Holmes, TT and border security can tell us about why transparency won’t save us
Several times over the past year, people have asked me some version of the following question: ‘Why is border security such a big issue in Australia, given the facts?’ It’s a complicated question, with no complete, easy answer. Anthony Burke has given one response, which I strongly suggest you read. He suggests that ours is [...]
READ MOREOccupicnic: Or, how to resist resistance and render harm harmless by decamping
Camping in City Square was almost sure to be seen as a provocation by a Lord Mayor whose tone over the past week has eerily channelled a private school headmaster’s pronouncements on ‘muck up day’ when he insisted that the protesters had ‘made their point’, on ABC radio, as reported in The Age.
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