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Jennifer and Jacques cover the latest events in the Middle East, with Israel's expansionism and its opportunistic bombing of Syria.They comment on the one-sided local response in the media and by our politicians, evidently cowardly responding to a strident Zionist lobby and to the demands of Australia's hegemonic 'biggest friend' the US.References:https://johnmenadue.com/how-the-us-and-israel-destroyed-syria-and-called-it-peace/ https://johnmenadue.com/endless-onslaught-would-israels-mordechai-be-attacked-as-antisemitic-in-australia/
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Looking back over an almost 40 years-long academic career, moving from Melbourne (Melbourne and Monash Universities) to the UK in 2016 (Bath University) and since 2022 in Germany, as Chair of the University of Cologne Research Hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities, Kate Rigby talks with Jacques about the evolution of her endeavours to integrate our ways and means of being and thinking as 'humans' into the relational reality of our ecology, of Mother Earth. The conversation implicitly also opens up questions about Australia's Tertiary Education and whether it remains fit and prepared to play its role in the necessary thinking and practice our times demand. Below are links to some of her publications. 2023: Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction, New York: Orbis Books. ('Day Three' available open access here)2020: Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization, London: Bloomsbury Academic (open access)2015: Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times, Charlottesville: U of Virginia P.(Chapter Two available open access here)2004: Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism, Charlottesville: U of Virginia P.Other links:Manifesto of Australian National Working Group for the Ecological Humanities (c. 2001)Environmental Humanities JournalUniversity of Cologne Research Hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH).Sophia's Spring Eco-feminist Church Community, CERES, Brunswick (if interested in attending service on December 22, at which Kate will be speaking, please contact the coordinator, Christina at [email protected])
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Jennifer and Jacques talk about how we have taken on the administration burden once carried by government bodies and companies, including utilities, services and financial institutions. This trend is being accelerated with new digital technologies working hand-in-glove with the neoliberalism of the last few decades and the mass marketisation of every aspect of our lives.This day-to-day admin burden has become part of the background wall paper of our lives, so Jacques and Jennifer thought it worth highlighting and exposing it, and putting it into the conversations we are having.
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Lew Zipin and Jacques have a conversation about the variety of politcal and economic and personal 'troubles' we experience presently and how a different more active, reflective and engaged approach to schooling and education more generally would assist innot only dealing with them but better prepare 'us' for changing the conditions under which those troubles arise...Below a full list of suggestions for further reading provided by Lew..Berlant, L. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press. Berlant, L. (2016). The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(3), 393–419. Boomer, G. (1999). Pragmatic radical teaching and the disadvantaged schools program. In B. Green (Ed.), Designs on learning: Essays on curriculum and teaching (pp. 49–58). Australian Curriculum Studies Association. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood. Eckersley, R. (2024). The US political system and its capitalist, imperialist agenda has failed. Pearls and Irritations. https://johnmenadue.com/the-us-political-system-and-its-capitalist-imperialist-agenda-has-failed/. Florida’s State Academic Standards – Social Studies, 2023 (2023). https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20653/urlt/6-4.pdf Freire, P. (1993/1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum. Gramsci, A. (1948/1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, editors and translators). International Publishers. Hall, S. (1988). Gramsci and us. In S. Hall (Ed.), Thatcherism and the crisis of the left: The hard road to renewal (pp. 161–173). Verso. Lowe, K. & Galstaun, V. (2020). Ethical challenges: the possibility of authentic teaching encounters with indigenous cross-curriculum content? Curriculum Perspectives, 40, 93-98. Marx, K. (1869/1991). The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. International Publishers. The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 (2023). Mandate for leadership: The conservative promise. https://archive.org/details/project-2025-mandate-for-leadership-full_202309-manifesto/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL/ Mayes, E. (2023). Young people learning climate justice: Education beyond schooling through youth-led climate justice activism. In J. Wy, H. Cahill, & H. Cuervo (Eds.), Handbook of children and youth studies (pp. 1–14). Springer Nature. Moll, L. (2014). L.S. Vygotsky and education. Taylor and Francis. Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 32, 132–141. Pusey, M. (1991). Economic rationalism in Canberra: A nation-building state changes its mind. Cambridge University Press. Pusey, M. (2003). The experience of middle Australia: The dark side of economic reform. Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1997/1926). Educational psychology. CRC Press. Wallerstein, I. (1998). Utopistics or, historical choices of the twenty-first century. The New Press. Wallerstein, I. (2013). Structural crisis, or why capitalists may no longer find capitalism rewarding. In I. Wallerstein, R. Collins, M. Mann, G. Derluguian, & C. Calhoun (Eds.), Does capitalism have a future? Oxford University Press. Yeats, W. (1919). The second coming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem) Zipin, L. (2009). Dark funds of knowledge, deep funds of pedagogy: Exploring boundaries between lifeworlds and schools. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30(3), 317–335. Zipin, L. (2020). Building curriculum knowledge work around com- munity-based ‘Problems That Matter’: Let’s dare to imagine. Curriculum Perspectives, 40, 111–115. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41297-024-00288-1 (open access) Zipin, L. (2024). Curriculum for living structural crises towards socially just futures: Bringing diverse funds of knowledge into participatory-democratic action around lifeworld problems that matter. Curriculum Perspectives, 44, 249–262. Zipin, L. (2024). Activist educative response to the Palestine crisis: A Jewish anti-Zionist perspective. Curriculum Perspectives, 44, 383-388. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41297-024-00288-1 (open access) Zipin, L. & Brennan, M. (2024). Opening school walls to funds of knowledge: Students researching problems that matter in Australian communities. In M. Esteban-Guitart (Ed.), Funds of knowledge and identity pedagogies for social justice: International perspectives and praxis from communities, classrooms, and curriculum (pp. 41–46). Routledge.
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Jacques and Jennifer do some post-Trump analysis, looking at how Trump's victory in the US elections could even happen.They argue that the rot has been there for centuries, with an individualist ideology embedded in the psyche of the people from the US's inception. Conditions have ripened for the triumph of a cult figure like Trump in more recent times, including a poorly educated populace, struggles with the cost of living, the dominance of neoliberal policies favourable to big business, desertion of the disenfranchised by the Democratic party, and the take over of electoral processes by big money (just to name a few).
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Andy Schmulow, Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of Wollongong, talks about the deliberate tax evasion strategies of mega rich corporations, robbing the public purse of much-needed billions of dollars. Meanwhile the Australia Tax Office (ATO) takes a softly softly approach to bringing these corporations to heel. In fact, Andy believes the ATO's approach could actually be encouraging corporate tax avoidance.Senator Barbara Pocock has described the situation as one law for the rich and well connected and another for the battling and intimidated. Certainly a different approach was taken to Centrelink recipients in the government's notorious 'Robodebt' scheme, and we seem to be at the beginning of NDIS 'crackdowns' in a similar vein.At the same time we are told that there are no funds to address the housing crisis, and other social necessities - and the climate crisis for that matter.ReferenceParliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial ServicesAction:Contact your local federal MP and Senator and tell them that this is a crucial issue and the recommendations from this report must be acted on.Find your local electorate and MPs
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Ben Rivers talks about the play he wrote and performs, 'The invaders' fear of memories: A play about the colonisation of Palestine'.The play is based on the diaries of his great-grandfather, Yousef Nachmani, who fled Tsarist Russia in 1907 for Ottoman Palestine. Full of Zionist ideals, he became complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinian people.Ben's father (Yousef's grandson) became a peace activist, and Ben continues his father's path with this play, believing that descendants have a responsibility to bring attention to history and tell the truth. As he points out, this history can help us understand what is currently happening in Palestine, and the ideology and conditions that have allowed the State of Israel to attack Palestine with such impunity. THE INVADERS’ FEAR OF MEMORIES: A PLAY ABOUT THE COLONISATION OF PALESTINETo buy tickets for the Melbourne performance, go to: https://www.themcshowroom.com/whatson/the-invaders-fear-of-memoriesDetails:The MC Showroom, Level 1, 50 Clifton Street, Prahran, VICFriday, 15 November 2024, 7:00 pm Saturday, 16 November 2024, 7:00 pm Duration: 75 minutes performance + post-show Q&A. (Doors open 30 minutes before the show).The production is being organised by the Loud Jew Collective with support and endorsement from the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) and the Averroes Centre of Arab Culture. Additional note from Ben: I would also like to mention that in each location I perform, there is a guest actor who performs excerpts of a poem called 'On This Land' by the renowned Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. The title of the play is taken from this poem. The poem is woven into the text towards the end of the play. The person performing this poem in Naarm, is Yousef Alreemawi - a Palestinian academic and musician and founder of the Averroes Centre of Arab Culture. Yousef will also be joining me onstage after the show for an audience Q&A.
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Jacques' guest, Suzan Saka, talks about the fascinating history and rich culture of the Alevi people, and their substantial presence in Australia. We wonder why we don't hear more about them!For those who want to learn more and have a good day out, there is an Anatolian Alevi Festival at Coburg Lake Reserve (metropolitan Melbourne) Sunday 17 November from 11am. You can also learn more about the Alevi culture and history here: https://www.alevi.org.au/eng/or go to facebook:https://www.facebook.com/share/12CvucJRtpz/?mibextid=9l3rBW Alevi Federation of Australia (AFA)28-32 Williams Road, North Coburg VIC 3058p: (03) 9354 8154e: [email protected]: www.alevi.org.auf: @Alevi Federation of Australia
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Jacques and Jennifer ruminate on the state of politics in Australia and the role of independents in disrupting the dominant duopoly of Labor and Coalition.They talk about how community development fits in with this, and they hark back to their very first program on relationality - the idea that we exist and thrive within a living network of relationships. This certainly explains a lot of the success of the grassroots campaigning by the independents.Cathy McGowan (2024 2nd edition) Cathy Goes to Canberra – Doing Politics Differently Melbourne: Monash University Press
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Jacques and Jennifer talk about Israel's denial of its genocidal onslaughts on the Palestinian people and the different ways it seeks to mask the truth in strategies of 'occlusion'.Examples include the planting of forests over 'emptied out' Palestinian villages in a mass exercise of 'green washing', the building of a 'Museum of Tolerance' on the site of the largest and most important Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, and the frequent declaration that Israel is a 'democracy' despite the opposite being obvious to millions around the world (and why 'we' need to support Israel against presumed 'terrorists' and presumed other 'non-democracies'...). ReferencesRashid Khalidi 2024, The hundred years’ war on Palestine: A history of settler colonial conquest and resistance, London: Profile Books.Saree Makdisi 2023, Tolerance is a wasteland: Palestine and the culture of denial, US: University of California Press.
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Jennifer and Jacques continue their conversation about the Australian political system as we approach municipal and state elections at the end of this month, and a federal election before May 2025.Our two-party system comes under fire, especially the unrepresentative nature of the two main parties, and their use of power to keep out other players. Jacques and Jennifer also express their disappointment in 'timid Labor' once more.
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Jennifer and Jacques discuss the dominance and convergence of the two main parties, and how neither are able or willing to make the substantial changes we so badly need.They give a potted history of bold reformist Labor policies of the past, and they contrast this with the current timid and skittish federal Labor Party, currently in government.
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We are meant to be living in a democracy. That means that 'we' the 'people', the 'demos' in democracy are meant to have a say in how we are governed. But, as main political parties in Australia and other western countries align in the interests of ruling elites, and the disparity grows between what the parties agree on and what the people want, we have to question whether we are living in a democracy at all. And we have to ask if we are being hoodwinked with a charade of 'democracy' as a political branding execrcise.
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Jacques and Jennifer discuss how the US is an Empire with vast extended territories and has been for a long time, and how we have a collective blindspot about this as we refer to a limited 'logo' map of the US, which in reality was only a true representation of its real shape and extent for a few years in the 1850s. This is certainly a hidden aspect of the US's imperial hegemony and power as Daniel Immerwahr explains in his How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States (2020; London: Vintage).The presenters ask why Australia is so uncritical and meek in following the US lead, supporting its warfare adventures and giving up sovereignty in our own policies. As former PM Paul Keating has warned, we are in danger of becoming the 51st state of the US, if we are not already there.Also, see Don Watson's (2024) Quarterly Essay (95): High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the brink
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In this conversation, Daryl and Jacques examine how the professions and their assumed expertise contribute to the systemic failure of institutions to meaningfully respond to the issues and problems they are supposed to 'deal with', particularly also through the ideological and hierarchical power accorded to professional expertise; indeed, how they often aggravate those issue and problems. We are looking at four social/systemic contexts - health, mental health, disaster responses and community development - based on Daryl’s and Jacques' experiences of working in such institutions and their professionals and on witnessing their collective and individual actions and behaviours; and the two of us sometimes being criticised for not ‘being professional enough’.
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Jacques and Deb Salvagno have a conversation about Timor Leste and the role and strengths of Women in that country's efforts to create a just and prosperous country for all; Deb is co-founder or East Timor Woman Australia (ETWA), an organisation that has worked in solidarity with women weavers' cooperatives in Timor Leste since the early-2000s. They talk about Timor Leste's (bloody) struggle for independence achieved 25 years ago. Deb talks about the importance of solidarity with the so-called 'developing world' and especially with the women who too often continue to be excluded from power but who have so much to contribute when given the chance to lead.ETWA and their Timor Leste cooperative partners are showcasing their achievements of more than 20 years at an exhibition 'Tais, Culture & Resilience: woven stories from Timor-Leste' at Melbourne University's Trinity College (Professor Sir Joseph Burke Gallery - 100 Royal Parade, Parkville), launching on Thursday 19th of September 6:30 - 8:30 (open till November) and a Symposium on Saturday 21st September at the same venue from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. ($20). For more info: www.etwa.org.auWe also need to correct some info we provided last week...The Multicultural Women’s Spring Bazaar is happening on the Sunday the 22nd September at the North Melbourne Community Centre in 49-53 Buncle StreetFor more information about att events, you can also call Borderlands on 03 9819 3239 or 0466 123 766
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Jennifer and Jacques talk about the need to de-grow the economy and change our fundamental way of life to save ourselves and the planet.The capitalist system has us on a downward spiral of mass exploitation and extraction, with the 'global south' supporting our privileged way of life through cheap labour and the devastation of local ecologies. The presenters look to the later Karl Marx (largely unpublished) for inspiration about more communal ways of organising ourselves that are socially and environmentally sustainable.ReferencesKohei Sato 2024, Slow down: How degrowth communism can save the earth, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Raj Patel & Jason Moore 2017, A history of the world in seven cheap things: A guide to capitalism, nature and the future of the planet, Berkely: University of California Press,Poem: For the land of my birth India, by Nandini Sen MehraInternational Organisation for Migration (IOM), https://www.migrationdataportal.org/resource/decade-documenting-migrant-deaths-data-analysis-and-reflection-deaths-during-migration
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Jacques talks about the ways that Australia continues to drop the ball on international justice, while defaulting to the (US) 'might is right' principle, and thus gradually losing its moral standing in the eyes of the rest of the world. It is a shameful contrast to our history of supporting international rules that all are expected to abide by, and forums of justice where errant nations are called to account. And we continue to cede the non-ceded Aboriginal lands to growing establishments of American weaponry and military bases.Jonathan Cook (https://substack.com/@jonathancook) ‘Nothing's changed since 1948 – except now Israel's excuses don't work’Mick Hall in Consortium News (https://mickhall.substack.com/p/change-on-way-abc-reviews-icj-ruling?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1996583&post_id=147507114&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1sqhym&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email)Eugene Doyle solidarity.co.nz. Stuart Rees https://johnmenadue.com/politicians-browbeaten-and-brainwashed-by-zionismpic/ Arthur Neslen Occupied Minds: A Journey through the Israeli Psyche (Pluto Press) Naomi Klein ‘Doppelganger: a trip into the Mirror World’ (2023 – Allen Lane publ.).Henry Reynolds: The military Americanisation of Northern Australia https://johnmenadue.com/the-military-americanisation-of-northern-australia/
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Jacques and Jennifer talk about the Palestinian conflict and its wider political and military context, especially the role of the US and the west in general, and the biased and woeful coverage in our news media.As asked by Stuart Rees quoted from Pearls and Irritations: 'Why can't an alleged human rights abiding country such as Australia name Israei policies as grotesque and genocidal?...'
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Jennifer speaks with Graham Matthews,Socialist, activist and person with disability, about the proposed reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).In late March Bill Shorten, Minister for the NDIS, introduced a Bill to Parliament, projected to save over $14 billion over the next five years, while giving the government a lot more control over what can be claimed for under the Scheme into the future. The Bill took many be surprise, especially as the government is yet to respond to the NDIS review. Many people with disability are fearful about the proposed changes, and the states are concerned about the lack of arrangements for 'foundational supports' they may be expected to provide for people not eligible for the NDIS.The Bill has not been passed into law, and there is still time to influence the outcome.
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