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Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.
What will it take, I wonder, to change these people’s minds? In an era as politically divisive as the one Americans (and Australians, for that matter) are living through, nothing is likely to convince detractors that COVID is an omnipresent threat — except perhaps the only thing with tangible currency in this whole blasted catastrophe: the visceral consequences of the pandemic itself.
The coronavirus pandemic has been utilised by Latin American governments — prominent examples being Brazil and Chile — to militarise societies, criminalise resistance and normalise violence.
Every time I need to read an article that deals with climate change, I can feel a tightness in my body. It’s a physical response, the churning in my stomach and my shoulders hunching over, as though I’m trying to protect myself from the information.
A child approaches the casket, reaches within to try to lift my folded hands, to make sure, as she tells her mother later, that I am not just sleeping.
There are others here on the beach, standing and staring at the border wall as the ocean tides crash and spray. I've met so many now who have been separated from their partners, parents, and children, those physical bonds forcibly torn with little possibility of reconnection.
When government corruption is chronic and the streets are ruled by armed gangs, there are no collective funds for quality health care or education. The thousands of migrants at the US border are fleeing the effects of climate change, wide-scale government corruption, brutal state violence, and flourishing non-state gang rule.
In the 1980s, the international solidarity movement for Nicaragua had thousands of supporters, including many in Australia. The nation was undergoing severe repression at the hands of dictator Anastasio Somoza. Fast-forward 30 years and a Nicaraguan rebel movement is again calling for international solidarity.
Yiayia Aphrodite always practised frugality. She cut old dresses into strips and wove cotton rugs out of them, and used matches twice if she could. When plastic bags came into supermarkets, she immediately made use of them: I think every house in the neighbourhood received presents of circular blue and orange bathmats and doormats.
In 2012, a pregnant woman and two of her children were killed in their own home in Tampakan, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Tampakan is the site of a new mine with Australian interests. The woman was the wife of a B'laan tribal leader agitating against the mine. Over recent years indigenous peoples of Mindanao been harassed, displaced and killed by militias, some allegedly with the imprimatur of the Philippine army. Much of this has passed without notice in Australia.
An important power shift occurred in Rome at the weekend, and it has a genuine Australian connection. The nuncio in Canberra Archbishop Paul Gallagher was named Secretary for Relations with States, which will put him third in charge at the Vatican. He has been popular here because he has kept in touch with pastoral life, having volunteered to help out in the far-flung western NSW of Diocese of Wilcannia-Forbes during his first Easter in Australia.