Shortly after touching down in Berlin last week, I contact a friend who says she’s on her way home to Athens, to vote in this weekend’s cliff-hanger election, the most desperate since the defeat of military dictatorship four decades ago....
Read MoreIn The Fixed Period, the 19th-century English writer Anthony Trollope describes a university college where the professors are compulsorily retired at 67, given a year to contemplate the world, then peacefully extinguished from the ways of the world with a...
Read MoreFrom Tunis to Oakland, Madrid to Athens and Sydney, an estimated 900 major occupations of public places by citizens took place around the world during the past 12 months. The following notes probe their political significance. With apologies to Marx...
Read MoreEvery joke resembles a tiny revolution, George Orwell once wrote. He had a point. Even when they’re instantly forgotten, of little or no consequence or just plain silly, jokes momentarily disrupt the settled routines of our daily lives. The joker...
Read MoreJavier Cercas, Spain’s most celebrated contemporary writer, was recently in Sydney, where I had the great pleasure of interviewing him before an audience in the University’s Great Hall. For those who may not know his work, Cercas was born in Ibahernando,...
Read MorePirate Party campaign ‘ship’, Cologne, March 2008 Tobias Walter/flickr Is there life after conventional parliamentary politics? That’s the intriguing question on the lips of many German citizens this weekend as supporters of the Pirate Party assemble in the north German city of...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="237"] Keith Rupert Murdoch, 2011 DonkeyHotey/Flickr[/caption] When Rupert Murdoch gives further evidence to the Leveson Inquiry this week it will mark another turning point in his public disgrace. The legal noose around the neck of News International, on...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="237"] Bob Brown at the University of Newcastle, 1986 University of Newcastle Cultural Collections/Flickr[/caption] Archaeologists tell us that Sumerian kings had their face slapped once a year by a priest to remind them of the importance of humility....
Read More[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="237"] Günter Grass, at the New York Public Library, June 2007 Flickr[/caption] Günter Grass has dared say publicly in a poem what needed saying: the present Netanyahu government of Israel is a potential danger to its own people,...
Read MoreWednesday 4th April 2012: a funny old day, though my field notes record that it began well. An early morning message arrives from Athens, from Periklis Douvitsas. He’s the editor of the publishing house looking after Why Democracy. It’s shortly to...
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