Media Circus: Gaza edition
What has piqued your sociopolitical media interests lately? Please share your bouquets and brickbats.
Me and my suspicious mind
I just really hope that the film producers planning to turn a profit by telling of the horrors visited on one group of disadvantaged children had the grace to pass on those very robust film set buildings that they were so very proud of to people who could turn them to good use for other disadvantaged children.
Lessons from My Lai & The Extras
How can we raise our children to be willing to take a stand against injustice in favour of integrity? Where do we start?
Lest We Forget
Because it’s Anzac Day, I’ve spent much of my time looking over the various diaries/letters of my greatuncles who took part in the Great War.
An extraordinary woman
Eileen Nearne was never appreciated by her male superior officers. The way they speak of her is awful. Mark Dunton, contemporary history specialist with the National Archives, said a none-too-subtle sexism seems to blame. “Her training officers completely underestimated her,” he said. “They say she’s unable to concentrate, that she’s very feminine, lots of attitudes [...]
Remembering Anzac Day: stark lessons squandered and myths reinforced
I have little to add to these quoted comments below from Paul Norton’s Anzac Day post at LP, which focuses on the militaristic myth side of Anzac Day. As usual, there are some illiterates objecting to the use of the word “myth” as if the word means “untrue in its entirety”. The usage of “myth” when discussing recent history always, of course, nearly always refers to the meanings 2b and 2c below:
Women on the front line
Guest Hoyden Mindy also blogs for ecelectic group blog For Battle! This issue is back in the news again, with the announcement that the DSTO is looking at the combat roles available in the army, previously denied to women on the basis of gender, to see whether gender restrictions could be replaced with physical competency [...]
Lest We Forget: three images for ANZAC day
All over Australia and New Zealand, communities will gather around war memorials to remember those who have died in military service. We will listen to a speech, we will watch the laying of wreaths, we will recite the Ode to the Fallen, and we will listen to the Last Post. Later in the day we will watch those who survived, and those in service today, march to honour the dead. We will be reminded that such sacrifices should never be for unworthy causes.
Rape in the military
One of the signs of changing attitudes towards rape, and sexual coercion generally in Western society, where it is harder for men now to openly claim that rape is sometimes OK or to believe that sometimes coerced sex is not rape than it was before feminism exposed such claims as callous entitlement, is that Western [...]
Careful there voters! You can’t return the Boogieman like an unwanted Christmas present, you know! But Unca John can keep your economy safe…why won’t you trust me?
Now our Prime Minister is treating voters like heedless children who simply haven’t thought carefully enough about what change might mean. Mr Howard says there is always a risk with changing Government. And he warns voters flirting with the idea that a Labor election victory is not like an unwanted Christmas present, that can be [...]
Rwandan rape victim photo wins prize
That’s the headline from Reuters, and its starkness is almost compulsory in light of the story behind the portrait. The woman below, Joseline Ingabire, is embracing her second daughter Leah, conceived after months of repeated rapes, while her first daughter Hossiana, with whom she was pregnant when the rapes began, looks on. The photo was [...]
Enough
Bob Ellis on the Coalition of the Willing: For we’ve been in Iraq for longer than World War I, and in Afghanistan for longer than World War 2, and in that time we’ve killed half a million people, more than six Hiroshima bombs, and subdued three suburbs, perhaps, in each of them; in the same [...]
Neat graffiti
Via counterclockwise at Flickr, a neat bit of street art.
Sometimes, sarcasm is the only possible response
This news headline – Iraq now ranked second among world’s failed states – seems to have left many in the blogosphere lost for words. But as Amanda Marcotte points out, if we don’t talk it up, it can be spun as people not really caring that the whole venture in Iraq is a clusterfuck. The [...]
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