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For decades, the UN issued non-binding resolutions and condemnations regarding Israel’s colonial expansion over Palestinian territory. As Israel gears towards implementing its annexation plans, which will see around 30 per cent of territory from the occupied West Bank falling under Israeli sovereignty, Palestinians stand to continue the cycle of territorial loss, internally forced displacement, and a deterioration of what remains of their rights.
Ideology is a powerful presence in our lives. It works its way into our consciousness through the dominant discourses of government, media, institutional religion, legal frameworks, popular culture, advertising, all the means at the disposal of the powerful. Once we learn to recognise it we see it everywhere. If it feels like we were born into it, it is because we were.
The larger questions posed by the destruction of the statues, and indeed of reputations, that they symbolise, concern how to handle complexity.
Already the ideological die-hards of neoliberalism are working out how the pandemic might be manipulated to lower wages and to snap back to the old economic normal. So now is when collectively we need to take over the framing and the forming of the future. Not to snap back but to spring forward.
Was I a settler? What did it mean to be a settler? I began asking my non-Indigenous friends around me what their thoughts were on the matter: did they identify as settlers? Some reacted with intrigue and were open to discussing it with me, and others reacted with strong distaste. ‘No’, they would say, ‘I just don’t like the word — it doesn’t describe who I am’.
Despite claims to the contrary, the decision in Love and Thoms affirms the standing of the common law, including the unassailable power of the Australian State to make and enforce law. It upholds the centuries-long common law principle of accommodation of Indigenous laws in a colonial context.
At what point is the media going to realise that the Invasion Day rally, which has been going on in some form or other since 1938, is not going away and, indeed, is growing? I'm convinced the media don't want to report Invasion Day, as reminding the public to fear Indigenous people and our rights has been their practice for centuries now.
Anyone interested in social justice knows that structures and systems can bolster the worst tendencies of human nature, can incubate 'social sin'. Korean friends, when asked if they live in fear of North Korea, almost always tell me 'we fear America more'. To me that seemed a bit of an overstatement. Now I understand their response.
With Widowo's decision to reconsider the proposed updates, policymakers should seek to initiate balanced and nuanced reforms that help liberal lifestyles and conservative values coexist. While appeasing the conservative portion of the electorate is a good tactic, ignoring a diverse electorate is a recipe for disaster in the long term.
Intersectionality describes the experience of overlapping oppression faced by black women. Criminologist Chris Cuneen discusses the double jeopardy faced by Indigenous women in Australia who live under both colonialism and the patriarchy. Throw in capitalism and you get a sometimes-lethal triple threat.
During Poson, a celebration of the entrance of Buddhism into Sri Lanka, I passed three tents presenting free sago, tea and jaggery. Though the fanfare of past years did not exist, it appears the country, though still damaged, is limping through to recovery. But can this recovery be sustained if the emotional pain is still to be unpacked?
One trick used by those opposing the boycott of Eurovision is to describe Israeli colonialism as a 'conflict'. Instead of emphasising the importance of decolonisation, 'compromise' is celebrated. But compromise between the coloniser and the colonised is a dangerous political game.