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Is buying and wearing slogan t-shirts that acknowledge the existence of trans-women and their need for protection a valid form of activism? or is it simply a trend that helps us to absolve guilt without actually doing anything actionable to support and protect trans-women? Is this more than a palatable viral trend for celebrities and influencers alike? Or is it a meaningful act of solidarity during times in which trans rights are being repealed by governments?

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Can A ‘Protect The Dolls’ T-Shirt Really Save All?

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“People need to take action and remember that a shirt doesn’t save my life,” Hernandez says.

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In this Interview, JB states "I follow Chantal Mouffe or Angela Davis, both of whom say democracy is an ongoing struggle. We do not just live for the triumphs but for the power to renew and expand the struggle." JB's discussion of democracy is one that is timely and one I resonate with. JB questions " is it still possible to realise more democracy, to struggle for more?" Seeing politics and democracy not as static but as an ongoing struggle in which more can be done.

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A Q&A with Judith Butler: Gender fear, fascism and TERFs - Archer Magazine

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Judith Butler on how ‘gender’ has become a phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes, fascist formations and trans-exclusionary feminists.

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Jade Hurley's writing explores the intersections of gender presentation, performativity, sexualisation and white feminism makes me wonder where the line is to be drawn when it comes to adult expression of sexuality and performance vs. it's implications within mainstream culture? Is the "brand" of Sabrina Carpenter feminist and empowering or rather a reductivist stereotypical performance of femininity?

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your fave is selling a pedophilic fantasy

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sabrina carpenter doesn’t mind being your “sexy baby”

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A republic is officially off the ballot. Are we, as a country, still unwilling to break away from the archaic system of monarchy? So much violence has been perpetuated in the name of the crown, yet we merely accept our positions as subordinate citizens and still claim we care about equality...

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The PM has torpedoed the republic portfolio, but the movement says it understands why

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Days after he lost his job, the former assistant minister for a republic called the movement to offer reassurance.

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How do what young children aspire to do when their older reflect stereotypes being enforced in society? This article looks at the wide difference between what young girls and boys stated they wanted to do when they were older. The results finding the clear line of 'caring or killing'. This connection being found from the types of toys being advertised towards girls and boys. In the boys sections of a store you will find building and science toys whereas in the girls section you will find cleaning and nurturing toys. This push of stereotypical ideas on young children has found that young girls are less likely to pursue careers in STEM. What does this mean for the future of the workplace and are young girls still being pushed into a box of what they are capable of in the future?

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Gender stereotypes begin in early childhood. Bright pink "toys for girls" and blue "toys for boys" are sold on store shelves around the world.

In the boys' section you'll find science, construction and warfare toys - perhaps a motorised robot, or a telescope. In the girls' lane you'll get toys related to cleaning, prams, dolls, kitchens, makeup, jewellery and crafts.

Our research, published this week, shows by the early years of primary school, gender stereotypes from a variety of sources have already influenced children - leading them to aspire to "traditional" male and female vocations.

This flows into lower numbers of girls taking STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects at school. In turn, this means fewer women are going on to work in the sciences. Women make up only 28% of the STEM workforce.

The gender gap is particularly high in the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, such as computer science and engineering.

Read more: We must include more women in physics - it would help the whole of humanity

Gender-related aspirations are concerning

We spoke with 332 students (176 girls and 156 boys) from 14 schools and found 7- and 8-year-old children have already made up their minds about what jobs they want in the future. Girls overwhelmingly aspire to traditionally "feminine" jobs, while boys are attracted to "masculine" pursuits.

For example, the top three choices for boys include careers in professional sports, STEM-related jobs, and policing or defence. Meanwhile, girls either want to be teachers, work with animals, or pursue a career in the arts.

There are obvious patterns in girls' and boys' career choices which can be linked to gender stereotypes. Many girls talked about "feminine" ideas such as caring or helping others. They told us:

I want to work in a zoo because I want to take care of the animals - Sophie

I want to be a nurse because I want to help people if they are hurt and take care of my Dad, and other people - Kate

They also talked about love, another traditionally "feminine" ideal.

I want to be a mother because I love babies - Maddi

I want to be a teacher because I love little kids - Sara

On the other hand, the boys' reasoning for their career choices heavily featured "masculine" themes, such as making money and having power over others. For instance, they wanted to work in the police force because:

I get to arrest people - Dan

I want to shoot guns - Harry

I can put people under arrest - Josh

Or they wanted jobs that highlighted traditionally masculine attributes such as strength, dominance and physicality.

I want to be an assassin so I can kill people - Matt

I want to be an army commando because you can shoot tanks - Ben

Clearly, boys' and girls' career aspirations are very different, even at this young age. And young people's career aspirations are a good indication of job trajectories as they transition to adulthood.

But it's not just about gender

We also found differences in opinion that seemed to correlate with social class. Boys from affluent school communities (30%) aspired to STEM careers more than boys from disadvantaged school communities (8%), while girls from disadvantaged school communities had a greater desire to "help" and "care".

These values can be more important for female students whose families have more traditional work- and family-related gender beliefs. If these girls go into STEM, they may go into the medical and life sciences, rather than fields such as physics or engineering, which are viewed by society as masculine.

Our findings help explain how gender-related trends continue to be visible in workplaces and industries, and why men from more socioeconomically advantaged communities are more likely to become employed in STEM jobs.

Challenging old and outdated ideas

We have to challenge problematic beliefs about the roles of men and women in society. And we have to challenge them early. One way to do this is to end the sale of gendered and stereotypical toys, which research has shown can give young children the wrong ideas about gender roles.

Some stores and toy companies are finally under pressure to make this change. Due to a law passed last month, department stores in California are now required to display childrens' products in a designated gender-neutral section.

Although the law stopped short of entirely outlawing separate sections for "boys" and "girls", it makes California the first US state to work against reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes.

If you're thinking there are plenty of gender-neutral toys available already - hello, LEGO? - think again. One study found 76% of parents said they would encourage their son to play with LEGO, but only 24% would recommend it to a daughter.

LEGO, the world's largest toy-maker, this week announced its future products and marketing will be free of gender bias and harmful stereotypes.

The company's recently launched Ready for Girls campaign will celebrate girls who rebuild the world through creative problem-solving. This is a start. Hopefully more companies will follow suit.

We should stop telling children that what constitutes acceptable play depends on their gender. Let's let girls be scientist and boys be carers, if that's what they want.

Read more: Lego's return to gender neutral toys is good news for all kids. Our research review shows why

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Caring or killing: harmful gender stereotypes kick in early - and may be keeping girls away from STEM

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Gender stereotypes begin in early childhood. Bright pink "toys for girls" and blue "toys for boys" are sold on store shelves around the world. In the boys' section you'll find science, construction and warfare toys - perhaps a motorised robot, or a telescope.

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Thatcher’s idea that “there is no such thing as society, there are only individual men and women… and their families” is pretty ridiculous. Not is it inconsistent with the way humans have been living for thousands of years, going back to villages 12 thousand years ago, but its also self-contradictory – what is a family if not a tiny social group? What is a village if not a bigger family? What is a nation if not the biggest family?

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Is it almost curtains for modern feminism? With conservative values rising, intersectionality reduced to marketing tactics, and more women feeling failed by it, maybe it is. If your feminism centres only one type of woman, that’s not progress. It just feels like a new way of being exclusionary.

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“Diversity Within”: The Problems with “Intersectional” White Feminism in Practice

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Abstract. In intersectionality studies, debates about the additive versus constitutive nature of intersectionality are long-established. This article attem

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Jerry Seinfeld says “political correctness crap killed comedy.” Has PC culture gone too far and is it impeding on freedom of speech? Should art get extra leeway or is being offensive never acceptable? #FreeSpeech #Comedy #HasCancelCultureGoneTooFar?

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Are complaints about wokeness in comedy valid or just the usual ‘the olds don’t get it’ issue?

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Jerry Seinfeld has been in the news for his recent remarks, but political correctness has long been criticized for interfering with jokes

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France’s abaya ban isn’t “secularism”, it’s state control. Forced unveiling isn’t freedom. A country built on “liberty, equality and fraternity” should know better. #HijabBan #Islamophobia #Feminism

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Move comes after months of debate over wearing of abayas in French schools, where women have long been banned from wearing hijab.

France banned headscarves in schools in 2004 and full face veils in public in 2010, angering many of its five million-strong Muslim community [File: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images]

France will ban children from wearing the abaya - the loose-fitting, full-length robe worn by some Muslim women - in state-run schools, the country's education minister has said ahead of the back-to-school season.

France, which has enforced a strict ban on religious signs in state schools since 19th-century laws removed any traditional Catholic influence from public education, has struggled to update guidelines to deal with a growing Muslim minority.

Keep reading

French public schools do not permit the wearing of large crosses, Jewish kippas or Islamic headscarves.

In 2004, the country banned headscarves in schools, and in 2010, it passed a ban on full face veils in public, angering many in its five million-strong Muslim community.

"I have decided that the abaya could no longer be worn in schools," Education Minister Gabriel Attal said in an interview with TV channel TF1. "When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn't be able to identify the pupils' religion just by looking at them."

The move comes after months of debate over the wearing of abayas in French schools, where women have long been banned from wearing the hijab.

The right and far right had pushed for the ban, which the left argued would encroach on civil liberties.

Unlike headscarves, abayas occupied a grey area and faced no outright ban until now.

The French Council of Muslim Faith (CFCM), a national body encompassing many Muslim associations, has said items of clothing alone were not "a religious sign".

Defending secularism is a rallying cry in France that resonates across the political spectrum, from left-wingers upholding the liberal values of the Enlightenment to far-right voters seeking a bulwark against the growing role of Islam in French society.

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France to ban wearing abaya dress in schools: Minister

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Move comes after months of debate over wearing of abayas in French schools, where women are banned from wearing hijab.

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Neutrality or bias? They say “neutrality”  but somehow only one side keeps getting erased. Why does speaking up for Palestine turn you into a pariah?

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The media doesn't even try to keep up the illusion of being unbiased anymore. If Kneecap had backed the other side, it’d be plastered everywhere. But because what they support doesn’t fit the agenda, it barely made the news. Public figures backing Palestine are being shadow banned under the guise of neutrality. This feels a lot like censorship to me! #FreePalestine #MediaBias #Coachella2025 #Kneecap

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While I love this protest, I'm disappointed that the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom was dissolved following the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Marriage equality did not mark the end of LGBT+ oppression in Australia - it was one step of many along the long and enduring road to queer emancipation.

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The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands

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Does the liberal party’s idea of equality, where everyone is treated the same, turn a blind eye to how gender shapes one’s experiences. Liberal is proposing policies that display no understanding of women’s realities, like the failed WFH ban. Equality doesn’t mean everyone is the same, it needs nuance. #WhatIsGenderEquality.

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When ‘equal’ does not mean ‘the same’: Liberals still do not understand their women problem

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The Liberal Party’s idea of equality means treating everyone the same, rather than addressing structures loaded against women. It’s doing the party enormous damage.

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The new Netflix show ‘adolescence’ takes a powerful look into toxic masculinity, the manosphere and the radicalisation of teen boys. This show strikes a conversation that this is happening in real life, and action needs to be taken, in media, schools, households and online. #ToxicMasculinity #IncelCulture #AdolescenceNetflix

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Adolescence is a technical masterpiece that exposes the darkest corners of incel culture and male rage

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At the centre of the new Netflix show is a devastating truth: the most dangerous place in the world for a teenager is alone in their bedroom.

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Are we moving backwards? From Hungary banning Pride events and using facial recognition to target participants and organisers to the state of Utah banning Pride flags, LGBTQ+ rights are under attack and increasingly marginalised. This is a dangerous setback for equality, freedom, and the safety of queer people.

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Hungary deepened its repression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people on March 18 as the parliament passed a draconian law that will outlaw Pride and similar events, thereby penalizing public support for LGBT people in the country.

The law, which curtails the right of assembly when it pertains to supporting LGBT rights, also authorizes authorities to use facial recognition technology to identify event organizers and attendees, with both groups facing fines of up to €500 for exercising their freedoms of assembly and expression. The prime minister made clear the intention of the law is to ban Pride.

Submitted and signed into law by the president over just one day, the lightning speed of the law's adoption is the latest disturbing example of the ruling party's blatant disregard for the rule of law and democratic checks and balances.

The law is also the Hungarian government's latest move to scapegoat LGBT people. In 2021, the government adopted a repressive law banning the "portrayal" and "promotion" of LGBT content to children. The law resulted in anti-LGBT smear campaigns, leading the EU Commission to bring a case against Hungary before the EU Court of Justice.

The new law again misuses rhetoric around protecting children to justify repression of freedom of assembly and speech and to promote discrimination. Children need no protection from exposure to diversity. But they and their families do need protection from violence and discrimination.

The law comes alongside proposed changes to the fundamental law (constitution) currently pending before parliament, stating that the protection and care of a child's "proper physical, mental, and moral development" shall supersede all other fundamental rights, with the exception of the right to life. Other proposed amendments would further curtail transgender people's right to legal gender recognition.

The anti-Pride law has sparked widespread criticism. On March 18, thousands gathered on the streets of Budapest to protest it and the ruling party's attacks on the rule of law. Despite the ban, organizers plan to go ahead with Pride in late June and Budapest's Lord Mayor said that Pride will happen in the city. Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O'Flaherty called on the Hungarian president to veto the law.

The EU Commission should call on the Orban government to repeal the discriminatory law and launch new legal action against Hungary's government for its brazen assaults on the rights of LGBT people and freedoms of assembly and expression.

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Hungary deepened its repression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people on March 18 as the parliament passed a draconian law that will outlaw Pride and similar events, thereby penalizing public support for LGBT people in the country.

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This #InternationalWomensDay, many are asking what there is to celebrate when the safety of women remains unobtainable. In Papua New Guinea, the tragic killings of three women at the hands of men overshadowed the day. This just reminds us that there is still so much more work to do. Real, lasting change needs to be achieved urgently.

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Violent deaths of women overshadow International Womens Day in PNG - ABC Pacific

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Tomorrow 8 March, International Women’s Day will be celebrated in the Pacific and around the globe. In Papua New Guinea, there’s a sombre note to the day, with the recent brutal killings of three women still raw on people’s minds.

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Women are being murdered by men who are known offenders, due to the justice system not addressing this matter effectively. This is not just an example of violence and gender inequality, it’s a national emergency that needs real action to stop.

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Q+A and RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas

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Australia shouldn’t tolerate terrorism — but our normalisation of ‘intimate partner terrorism’ has become a national emergency

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Our leaders agree that violence against women is a national crisis — an emergency. But a national emergency requires an emergency response.

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I find it disturbing that 'free and fair' nations so openly treat prisoners as second-class citizens - especially when marginalised groups such as Indigenous peoples are overrepresented in our justice system. Qualifying a person's vote based on their social status is antithetical to democracy.

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Just 274 prisoners voted at the last election. Inmates say the process feels dehumanising

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Just 274 prisoners voted at the last federal election. Former inmates say the barriers to voting can feel dehumanising.

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Gender based violence should be a key issue for voters this upcoming election. Australians must elect MPs that are going to advocate for funding towards survivor support/frontline services as well as community education if we want to see women’s safety prioritised and violence mitigated.

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Kayla Carrea, Sara E. Davis, Asher Flynn and Jacqui True

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Election report card: Where do the major parties stand on addressing violence against women?

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We sought to find out what the commitments of each major party are to end violence against women in the lead up to 3 May.

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It's shocking to see that in 2025, no country provides women the same opportunities as men in the workforce. The global gender gap rate remains significantly high with its leading factors being childcare and safety issues for women. Gender equality is a fundamental human right which needs to be taken more seriously.

#Equality Matters #HumanRights

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No country in the world affords women the same opportunities as men in the workforce, according to a new report from the World Bank, which found the global gender gap was far wider than previously thought.

Closing the gap could raise global gross domestic product by more than 20%, said the report.

For the first time, the bank investigated the impact of childcare and safety policies on women's participation in the labour market in 190 countries. It found that when these two factors were taken into account, women on average enjoyed just 64% of the legal protections men do, down from the previous estimate of 77%.

Report author Tea Trumbic said childcare and safety issues particularly affected women's ability to work. Violence could physically prevent them from going to work, and childcare costs could make it prohibitive.

The 10th edition of the women, business and the law report, published on Monday, also for the first time assessed the gap between laws and the policies put in place to implement them. It found countries had, on average, established less than 40% of the systems needed for full implementation.

While 95 countries enacted laws on equal pay, only 35 had measures in place to ensure the pay gap was addressed. Globally, women earned just 77 cents of each dollar earned by a man.

Many sub-Saharan African countries had seen rapid progress in the reform of laws in recent years, said the study, but had the largest gap between legislation and implementation.

Togo had the highest number of laws in sub-Saharan Africa, giving women 77% of the legal rights of men, but had structures in place to implement just a quarter of them.

"We've seen a consistent reform effort from several African countries ... this year the report really highlights Togo and Sierra Leone that had really big shifts in the last three to four years," said Trumbic. "But the supportive frameworks are largely lacking. So that's why the implementation gap is even larger in countries that reformed recently because they've raised the standard in their laws, but they don't have the supportive mechanisms to implement them."

Addressing the childcare gap would immediately lead to a 1% increase in women's participation in the labour force. The report said less than half the countries had financial support or tax relief for parents of young children and less than a third had quality standards in place for childcare that could assure parents of their children's safety.

In 81 countries, a woman's pension benefits do not account for periods of work absences related to childcare.

The report said that while 151 countries had laws against sexual harassment in the workplace, only 40 had laws that covered abuse in public areas or on public transport, meaning women were not protected on their way to work.

"All over the world, discriminatory laws and practices prevent women from working or starting businesses on an equal footing with men," said Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank Group. "Closing this gap could raise global gross domestic product by more than 20% - essentially doubling the global growth rate over the next decade - but reforms have slowed to a crawl."

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No equality for working women in any country in the world, study reveals

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Global gender gap is far bigger than previously thought, as annual World Bank report takes childcare and safety issues into account for first time

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20 women killed in Australia in 2025—and it's only April. But sure, let's keep lighting candles and holding vigils while the government offers 'thoughts and prayers'. Real action? Still pending.

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In less than 72 hours this week, four Australian women were lost to violence. These are the women erased by alleged male violence between March 14 and March 17, 2025.

KIM DUNCAN

On April 14, 65-year-old grandmother Kim Duncan was murdered when men drove by her home and sprayed it with bullets. Her son and a young woman were home. They both survived and were not physically injured. At the time of writing, the killers had not been caught. Kim was murdered in Ambarvale, NSW. She is the 17th of 20 women killed in 2025.
I wish I could tell you more about Kim, but that will come another day.

LOUISE HUNT

Just four hours later - on April 15 - marketing professional and anti-domestic violence advocate Louise Hunt was allegedly murdered by her husband at her home in Geham, Queensland. It's alleged he killed Louise and set her home on fire. Her two children were in the building - they were not physically injured.
Louise is the 18th woman killed this year.
Within hours of Louise being killed - news outlets started rolling out the same old template - the one where they carry on about his career, his achievements and his life.
Louis was adventurous, fun-loving, down-to-earth, kind, caring, an animal-lover, a good mate to many and a much-loved mum, daughter and sister.
"May is Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Month and we have a candlelight vigil," Louise's friend close friend Amanda Dalton says.
"Lou would have been there, supporting others and now it's her that we're having to remember."
"She just had the most gorgeous, friendly, cheeky smile like she was just always smiling and always helping people."

CLAIRE AUSTIN

Also on April 15, Claire Austin died in hospital. She had suffered catastrophic injuries at her home in Randwick on April 12. Her life support was turned off three days later. Her former partner claims Claire ran through a plate glass door after an argument. Police put a DVO on the male. He has since been released and a special taskforce is investigating her death.
Claire is the 19th woman killed this year.
Again, the Media published stories that were practically resumes for his next job. Claire's career and life achievements were left to the end.
Claire was a marketing professional. A woman who cared for others. A trusted colleague. A human with dreams and the will to achieve them.
"Claire was a beautiful human in every sense of the word," her former employer Ben Walker said.
""With kindness in her heart and a generous spirit, she had a warmth that we all gravitated to. Her compassion for others was evident in the way she worked and lived.
"To those who knew her, Claire wasn't just a colleague at The Do Collective, she was a friend.
"Her presence uplifted the team and her endless determination made a lasting impact on every client she touched.
"She will be deeply missed, but her legacy of kindness and warmth will live on in all of us who had the privilege of knowing her.
"With love, we say goodbye but never forget."

THI KIM TRAN

On April 17, five masked men broke into the home of 45-year-old mum Thi Kim Tran. They bashed her eight-year-old son with a baseball bat. They they made Thi remove her clothes, forced her out of the home at gunpoint and put her in their car. That car was driven away and torched. Thi's body was found in the backseat by police. She had no chance of surviving. Thi is the 20th Australian woman killed this year.
No one has been charged at the time of writing and information about Thi is scant.

EPIDEMIC OF VIOLENCE

As I write, we have lost 20 women to violence this year. However, I am currently monitoring multiple other suspicious deaths so I expect the real femicide toll for 2025 to be much higher.
Since January 1 of 2024, we have seen the lives of 123 women erased.
I've been documenting femicides and child deaths of 10 years. My work shows an increase in violence against women year on year - but in the past 15.5 months that increase has been staggering.
How many more women do we have to lose before we hit tipping point?

❤️ PLEASE SUPPORT MY WORK ❤️

I need your support to continue documenting murdered women and children. Please buy a RED HEART t-shirt. 100% of profits fund The RED HEART Campaign and Australian Femicide Watch.
❤️Donate: https://australianfemicidewatch.org/support/
❤️Shop: https://australianfemicidewatch.org/shop/

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HOW MANY MORE FEMICIDES BEFORE WE HIT THE TIPPING POINT?

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In less than 72 hours this week, four Australian women were lost to violence. These are the women erased by alleged male violence between March 14 and March 17, 2025. On April 14, 65-year-old grandmother Kim Duncan was murdered when men drove by her home and sprayed it with bullets.

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Kneecap performed at Coachella this year with a strong pro-Palestine message. In a political climate where speaking out against the settler-colony Israel can be career-suicide, it's important to acknowledge who raised their voice regardless, and in turn those who threw their weight behind Israel despite being witness to their war crimes

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Hearing info recently around Israel dropping nuclear weapons on Syria back in Dec; further digging revealed the sources seem to be from anti-Jewish extremists, and is disinformation. the pro-Palestine movement must guard strictly against Nazi movements seeking to capitalise on anti-Israel sentiments and co-opt them for anti-Semitic purposes. #punchnazis

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It’s sickening to watch a so-called democracy reduce human lives to disposable objects. ICE detention centres aren’t about law — they’re about control and cruelty. People are caged, stripped of dignity, and treated like objects, its dehumanisation and deeply shameful, treating human lives like cargo.

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US seeks to turn deportations into an efficient business ‘like Amazon’

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The world’s largest immigration detention system is on the cusp of explosive growth as President Donald Trump pursues his signature campaign promise of mass deportations.

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‘Hands off’ protesters across all states of the US call out Trump and Elon Musk backed by civil rights organisations, labour unions, climate groups and LGBTIQ+ advocates. Thousands of Americans in the US as well as overseas demonstrating resistance against Trump’s administration moves including policies on immigration, education, funding for health programs and of course the recent tariffs. Protesters have characterised Trump’s attacks ‘personal’ not just ‘political’ after administration has targeted minority groups such as immigrants and trans people. While protesters in San Francisco formed a human banner saying, ‘HANDS OF DEMOCRACY’, American democrats living abroad protested in Mexico, Canada and Europe. Is the ‘left’ starting to fight back? Will this have any political effect? To me it seems hopeful that Americans can come together and say no to fascist policies.  Although it is only one day of protests, it is a major mobilisation that unified Americans across the continent as well as abroad. It is certainly not enough, but it is a start.

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Thousands protest Trump and Musk in ‘Hands Off!’ rallies across US

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Tens of thousands of protesters take part in an anti-Trump protest across 1,200 locations in what is expected to be the largest single day of protest against Mr Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk.

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Wondering just how impactful Bernie Sander's remarks at Coachella were. Although the crowd did boo the mention of Trump, it seems funny to deliver a message warning climate change and criticising billionaires to an audience that is participating in a festival with a huge carbon footprint and massive environmental impacts. Not to mention the influencers that are paid thousands of dollars to be there to perpetuate fast fashion and consumerism trends. Can the bourgeoisie be self reflective here?

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Bernie Sanders Issues Stark Warning About Trump at Coachella

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“He’s dangerously wrong,” Sanders said, as he appealed to the younger generations to “stand up” and fight for justice.

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Where do we draw the line when advocating for the rights of others, becomes speaking for them? Despite good intentions, researches intentions that those with disabilities can't give consent, or will struggle to follow instructions, is actually inhibitng rather than helping them. If research aims to improve health outcomes for everyone, it must involve all populations, particularly the 1/6th of the global population that disabled people make up.

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1 in 6 New Zealanders is disabled. Why does so much health research still exclude them?

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When people with lived experience contribute to the design and delivery of health care and research, it means services are used more and fairer outcomes achieved.

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Ah! The 'Woke Agenda'! Historically speaking, universities have always been places of innovation and new ideas, challenging preconceived notions. Now the Coalition wants to impose conditions on the 'agenda' that universities are 'indoctrinating', though little detail can be found on what this actually refers to...

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Students and union groups fear the Coalition's crackdown on "woke" ideology in schools and universities could threaten freedom of speech.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has offered little detail about his plan to fight "indoctrination" in schools, but signalled cuts to "wasteful government spending" within the federal education department if elected.

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National Union of Students (NUS) president Ashlyn Horton said she feared Mr Dutton was "trying to target reconciliation" with First Nations Australians.

"All progressive movements we've had in this country in the past term of government, he's tried to completely push back," she said.

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Ms Horton described universities as "little cultural ecosystems" where students could learn about new ideas and enjoy experiences beyond the degree.

"This crackdown - which is essentially a crackdown on free speech - is just going to hinder university life,"

Adrian Murdoch is the acting CEO of the Minus 18 Foundation, which delivers inclusion training for education staff to support LGBTQIA+ students.

While it's unclear what the Coalition would target in its "woke" agenda blitz, Mr Murdoch said he feared inclusion training could be on the list.

"It's a real slap in the face for the parents of the two-in-three LGBTQI+ young people who still experience discrimination," he said.

"I think Australians really want schools that are safe and welcoming."

National Tertiary Education Union national president Alison Barnes linked the Coalition's position to US President Donald Trump dismantling the US Department of Education.

"Every Australian should fear the prospect of Peter Dutton deciding what does and does not get taught in schools and universities," Dr Barnes said in a statement.

Coalition vows to target 'activism' in classrooms

The Coalition's education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson declared a Dutton government would "take action" if elected, raising concerns about how universities are training teachers.

"We don't believe there is any room for activism or ideological agendas in education institutions," she told ABC News.

"Universities have got to be places of higher learning and not indoctrination."

Senator Henderson said the Coalition would "leave no stone unturned" and use existing powers to request the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) make recommendations about the quality of higher education providers to ensure students were put first.

At a Sky News pub event earlier this week, Mr Dutton was asked how his government would tackle the "woke agenda" in schools.

In response, he said his government could impose conditions on education funding to ensure state schools focused on the curriculum, rather than "an agenda that's come out of universities".

He told the crowd he thought there was a "silent majority" on the issue.

Asked for an example of wokeness, Senator Henderson pointed to Macquarie University.

She said the university was reviewing "certain requirements for law students that they've got to complete a privilege walk, that they've got to perform a thoughtful and culturally respectful Acknowledgement of Country before they undertake an oral law exam".

"We are concerned about some of these requirements," Senator Henderson said.

"We want to get back to the basics."

A Macquarie University spokesperson confirmed an Acknowledgement of Country, or Welcome to Country, was "part of the marking rubric for one assessment task within the Macquarie Law School".

"It was considered relevant both to the specific task and to the overall learning outcomes of the unit, Age and the Law," the spokesperson said in a statement.

"This unit addresses Indigenous young people and their relationship with the legal system in Australia."

Education Minister Jason Clare hit back, saying parents did not raise "woke agenda" concerns with him.

"They don't talk about 'indoctrination'," he said.

"This is straight out of the United States. This is 'Cut and Paste Pete'."

Coalition to change 'impossible' curriculum

Senator Henderson also flagged further announcements about the size of the school curriculum, saying it was far too big for teachers to manage - although she admitted it was designed by the former Liberal government.

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"Primary school teachers are saying, for instance, that the curriculum is impossible to teach," she said.

She referenced the 3,500-page maths curriculum for foundation to Year 10 as one example of it being too cumbersome.

The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority disputed that figure and said the curriculum was at most 273 pages.

The discrepancy appeared to stem from different views on what was considered part of the curriculum, and the way the information is copied from the online format into a printable document.

"Teachers are not coping," Senator Henderson said.

"The curriculum is imposing many additional hours of work, and we don't think that's good enough, and we'll have more to say about that during the campaign."

Coalition looks to 'consolidate public service'

The Coalition plans to cut 41,000 public servants, with Canberra's "bloated" bureaucracy in its sights.

Senator Henderson would not say what the cuts would mean for the education department.

"We will be looking, if elected, to sensibly consolidate the public service with a focus on protecting essential services, but making sensible reductions where there is duplication or excess capacity," she said.

But Mr Clare warned there would be cuts to both the department and schools under the Liberals, to fund their nuclear power plan.

"This bloke [Mr Dutton] is not a joke, he is a threat," Mr Clare said.

He added among their responsibilities, the 1,700 departmental staff were in charge of compliance of childcare centres.

But Senator Henderson assured voters the school funding agreement between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments will be safe under the Coalition.

Earlier this year, following the establishment of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the United States, Mr Dutton installed a government efficiency spokesperson in his shadow cabinet.

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Free speech fears over Coalition's 'woke' education pledge

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Students and union groups fear their interests could be targeted under a Coalition crackdown on "woke" ideology in schools and universities.

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https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/04/la-cooperacion-represiva-entre-eeuu-y-el-salvador/.

This article by Amnesty International is extremely interesting, we are able to see more of the atrocities against human rights. They criticise both El Salvador and the United States amid President Nayib Bukele's visit to the White House, warning of a worsening human rights crisis. US’s cooperation to these repressive practices is disgusting.

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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-12/us-and-pakistan-threaten-afghan-migrants-with-deportation/105169336

Thousands of Afghans in the U.S. are at risk of being deported to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan after the Trump administration ended their Temporary Protected Status (TPS), affecting around 14,600 people. Trump Strikes again. His continuous and swift changes to law keeps no one safe.

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"Western countries don't take enough refugees!"- The gulf states, probably, while building another skyscraper in the desert.

According to @VOANews, "no room"- but there's always room for luxury malls and mega-project.

Meanwhile, Gaza's people are stuck between two fences and a world full of excuses. Funny how everyone loves Palestine.... until it's time to open border.

So, who gets to decide who deserves a better place to live?

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As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don't take them in.

The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan has a large Palestinian population.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, "but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to ... migrate to Egypt." He warned this could wreck peace in the region.

Jordan's King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, "No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt."

Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries' 40-year-old peace treaty.

Here is a look at what is motivating Egypt's and Jordan's stances.
A history of displacement
Displacement has been a major theme of Palestinian history. In the 1948 war around Israel's creation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, Arabic for "catastrophe."

In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.

The refugees and their descendants now number nearly 6 million, most living in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further, with many refugees building lives in Gulf Arab countries or the West.

After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Since then, Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a return of refugees as part of a peace deal, arguing that it would threaten the country's Jewish majority.

Egypt fears history will repeat itself and a large Palestinian refugee population from Gaza will end up staying for good.
No guarantee of return
That's in part because there's no clear scenario for how this war will end.

Israel says it intends to destroy Hamas for its bloody October 7 rampage in its southern towns. But it has given no indication of what might happen afterward and who would govern Gaza. That has raised concerns that it will reoccupy the territory for a period, fueling further conflict.

The Israeli military said Palestinians who followed its order to flee northern Gaza to the strip's southern half would be allowed back to their homes after the war ends.

Egypt is not reassured.

El-Sissi said fighting could last for years if Israel argues it hasn't sufficiently crushed militants. He proposed that Israel house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbors the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.

Egypt has pushed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Israel said Wednesday that it would, though it didn't say when. According to United Nations, Egypt, which is dealing with a spiraling economic crisis, hosts about 9 million refugees and migrants, including roughly 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fleeing their country's war.

But Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect Israel might use this opportunity to force permanent demographic changes to wreck Palestinian demands for statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967.

El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to "eliminate the Palestinian cause ... the most important cause of our region." He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now.

Arab countries' fears have only been stoked by the rise under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hard-right parties that talk in positive terms about removing Palestinians. Since the Hamas attack, the rhetoric has become less restrained, with some right-wing politicians and media commentators calling for the military to raze Gaza and drive out its inhabitants. One lawmaker said Israel should carry out a "new Nakba" on Gaza.
Worries over Hamas
At the same time, Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt's military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.

Egypt has backed Israel's blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.

El-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel's 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai "would become a base for attacks on Israel.

Israel would have the right to defend itself ... and would strike Egyptian territory."

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Why Egypt, Other Arab Countries Are Unwilling to Accept Refugees From Gaza

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Main concern is that Israel wants to force permanent expulsion of Palestinians

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The neoliberal individualisation extending into politics is really harmful and distortive, as if any prime minister of israel isn't inherently fascistic, oppressive and violent because the state is the problem, not who's ruling it

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This is not ‘Netanyahu’s war’, it is Israel’s genocide | Israel-Palestine conflict | Al Jazeera

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It is refreshing to see a politician make an effort. I was worried sick that El Salvador had killed Mr Garcia under the direction of the Trump administration. Hugely courageous of this US politician to enter foreign soil to confirm his wellbeing, at some risk to his own.

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If the peak neoliberal right is the right to gain selfishly from the market, and the extent of responsibility goes no further than to do no active harm to another, it is no wonder that tax is seen as a personal violation. Individual competition under capitalism destroys humanity.

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The AFL’s embellishment of its history and image to make it one of championing reconciliation and equality is a shallow surface-level approach towards addressing racism and inequality without doing the work or addressing past missteps and normalisation of racist violence.

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The latest failure of the AFL to resolve allegations of racism in the sport it oversees provides a cautionary tale of what happens when we do not listen to Indigenous people, when their hurt is marginalised and ignored, and when polite requests for just resolutions are shut down.

St Kilda player Nicky Winmar points to his skin in response to a racist taunt from the crowd in 1993. Credit: Wayne Ludbey

The ineptitude that has come to characterise AFL efforts to resolve incidents of alleged racism stands in stark contrast to the league's effective public relations agenda that has seen it become almost universally applauded as an exemplar of reconciliation and improved race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Such popular understandings of the AFL are the result of a PR strategy that first emerged in the 1990s after high-profile incidents of on-field racism involving Indigenous footballers Nicky Winmar and Michael Long. As the number of Indigenous players increased, the AFL went to work reconstructing the past; one in which the AFL and its predecessor, the VFL, had always embraced Aboriginal contributions to the sport.

The PR campaigns revised the history of past Aboriginal players including Joseph Johnson (Fitzroy FC 1904-1906), Sir Douglas Nicholls MBE (Fitzroy FC 1932-1937), Graham Farmer (Geelong FC 1962-1967) and Sydney Jackson (Carlton FC 1969-1976), emphasising the role football had played in their liberation from racism and discrimination.

Indigenous leader and hero Sir Douglas Nicholls was refused a rub down after training with Carlton because, as an Aborigine, he was unclean and "stunk". Credit: Age Archives

In retelling the stories of these players, the AFL significantly downplayed or excluded important aspects of their experience as Indigenous men. Johnson played as a white man at a time when state protection law that applied to Aborigines threatened the forced removal of his children.

Nicholls was refused a rub down after training with Carlton because as an Aborigine he was unclean and "stunk".

Farmer did not advertise his Aboriginality for fear that it would again undermine his freedom as it had in his childhood when an inmate of Sister Kate's Home in Perth.

Jackson, unable to hide his Aboriginal identity, was weekly subjected to vile racist attacks by those on the field and in the stands. In a highly decorated career, his most vivid recollection of playing football is being called a "black bastard" by Collingwood supporters in the 1970 grand final.

The appalling treatment of Indigenous champion Adam Goodes, that drove him out of the game, needs no further explanation.

AFL efforts to reinvent itself as the leading anti-racism institution in Australia have been underpinned by a determination to control the media. This has been assisted by the league's powerful and influential in-house publishing arm. In 2008, this arm published an official history of Australian football that largely excluded Indigenous authors.

Adam Goodes was repeatedly vilified by some AFL fans towards the end of his playing career. Credit: Getty Images

The success of the public relations campaign has not only been effective in deceiving the public into believing Indigenous players have a safe workplace in a sport now free from racism, it has also been successful in fooling the Boys' Club, the white men from privileged backgrounds who run the AFL with their own agendas at the forefront. Racism and discrimination have become a secret those controlling the sport have come to hide from themselves.

It is therefore unsurprising that this week the AFL moved to rewrite the recent history of alleged racism at Hawthorn FC. After shocking claims by players and their wives and partners, Hawthorn last year commissioned an external review of the treatment of Indigenous players at the club. Indigenous former player Phil Egan submitted his report to Hawthorn in September 2022. The same month, ABC journalist Russell Jackson reported the review's key allegations, four days before the grand final. One past Indigenous player alleged staff including head coach Alastair Clarkson had urged him to have a pregnancy terminated, "get rid" of his partner and move into the home of an assistant coach. Clarkson and other former Hawthorn staff named in the report strenuously deny the allegations of racism.

The allegations were shocking because they extended beyond the experience of racism directed at Indigenous players to include how the football industry had impacted wives and partners and their private and family lives. In these allegations, racism and misogyny intersected. The form of gendered racism alleged is particularly offensive to Indigenous people given the history of non-Indigenous interventions in Indigenous parenting responsibilities. This history includes the forced removal of Indigenous children; the role of eugenics in efforts to "breed out the colour" that included suggestions to sterilise Indigenous women, and finally state laws that disempowered Aboriginal people from making free decisions about how they could marry.

Hawthorn handed these findings over to the AFL, which responded by commencing an investigation of its own. Neither the Indigenous families who made the allegations nor the Hawthorn staff whose alleged actions caused distress believed the investigation was independent. As a result, the investigation proved incapable of completing the task the AFL had set it.

Many of those involved never got to tell their side of the story. If ever there was a need to reconfirm the AFL is utterly incompetent and out of its depth when it comes to dealing with matters of racism, this is it. On May 30, after months of stalemate, the AFL announced it would close the eight-month investigation, that there were no adverse findings against the former Hawthorn staff and that it had signed a settlement agreement with several of the Indigenous families involved. Some of those families will now pursue claims through the Australian Human Rights Commission.

In the end, the AFL and its investigation achieved nothing except an agreement that absolved itself from any responsibility and liability in the matters raised by the Indigenous families. Through their public relations machine, the AFL has again effectively situated themselves in the public imagination as the leading public institution in progressing national reconciliation and combating racism. In reality, the boys club that controls the AFL and how we imagine the national game past, present and future wouldn't know how to enact meaningful reconciliation or tackle racism appropriately if they tripped over it.

Professor Barry Judd is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous) at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of the Hawthorn FC and a member of the RAP Committee of the Richmond FC. He has previously been commissioned to undertake research work by the AFL. Professor Marcia Langton is foundation chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.

Professor Barry Judd is Pro Vice Chancellor (Indigenous) at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Marcia Langton AM is an anthropologist and geographer, and since 2000 has held the Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is Associate Provost and is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor.

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Don't be conned by the PR spin: The AFL is no exemplar on racism

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The AFL's ineptitude in dealing with racism stands in stark contrast to its effective public relations agenda that has seen it widely applauded as an exemplar of reconciliation.

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Interesting mix of responses at the moment to this space flight. It feels like propaganda to be real. Are we really celebrating a 10 minute trip in the name of feminism... The women on board such as Amanda Nguyen have in many ways positively progressed womens rights, but it does feel a bit dystopian to celebrate a tech billionaire for this, while wealth inequality and womens rights in many ways worsens.

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Lauren Sanchez’s all-female space flight is about to blast off – and will challenge Elon Musk’s SpaceX

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Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket blasts off on Monday, with his fiancee, Katy Perry and three others on board. But is it more than just a stunt?

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This article highlights the lack of acknowledgement, apology or resources being used to solve the problem of indigenous targeted attacks. However the authors comments such as this issue 'ruining Australia's international reputation' can be extremely damaging. It implies that the main reason to address this issue is to protect our international reputation, this to me seems performative and not a genuine call to action to help indigenous Australians who face this issue everyday.

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Family, friends and members of the public gather during a vigil for Cassius Turvey, a 15-year-old Indigenous boy who was allegedly bashed with a metal pole while walking home from school and later died, at Midland Oval in Perth, Australia, October 31, 2022. Photo: IC

The recent killing of 15-year-old indigenous boy Cassius Turvey in West Australia has evoked memories of the mistreatment and discrimination against indigenous people across Australian history. So far, the Australian government has failed to truly address this hundreds-year-old problem. Statistics show that in some parts of the country indigenous people are six times more likely to be assaulted than non-Indigenous people. Their rights are not respected, and racism exists with disastrous effects on society and on Australia's international reputation. In her I-Talk show, Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen talked to Hannah McGlade (McGlade), a Noongar human rights lawyer, academic from Western Australia, about the human rights quandaries Aboriginals in Australia face.
GT: The most recent incident that raised the concern of international public opinion was the death of 15-year-old Cassius Turvey. Even Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was "clearly racially motivated." There have been many murders against Aboriginal people and the perpetrators have not been punished. Why is racial violence against Aboriginal people unresolved for so long in Australia?
McGlade: I think because we had such a racist colonial past and the way that Australia was colonized was quite unlawful and brutal. Typically around the world, there were treaties made with indigenous peoples. That didn't happen here [in Australia] and aboriginal people were really treated not as humans, [but] as people to be violently dispossessed and to be exploited for labor in a way that was similar to slavery.

So we have this very long, violent, racist and brutal history that hasn't been tackled yet in Australia. Racism has bubbled away - racist violence, and even killing of aboriginal children and youth has happened. Perpetrators haven't been held to account. We're not actually implementing our fundamental human rights commitments to end racism. Although we've signed the treaty, it's not happening in practice, and non-indigenous people are still acting in a very oppressive way, including through institutions, including through the legal bodies that are established to address racism.

So we will be engaging in some very important national dialogue about these issues and hopefully making progress. We need to campaign and I'm doing that now for proper laws to prohibit and punish perpetrators of racist violence. We haven't done that in my state.

GT: There has been a systematic cleansing of Aboriginal culture throughout the history of both the US and Canada. Does similar cleansing exist in Australia?

McGlade: We certainly have had a history officially recognized as genocidal. That's a very serious finding against a country, but it was justified on the basis of the evidence, particularly in relation to the systematic removal of aboriginal children from their families and their communities. The purpose of those policies and laws which took place for over 100 years was really to end the aboriginal people as a race of people. So it certainly was the form of genocide. Although the assimilation policy has been rejected since the 1970s, many aboriginal people experience systemic and structural discrimination, racism and also some kind of expectation very often that they be just like white Australians, which is very wrong in this day and age.

GT: You were involved in opposing the destruction of the Juukan Gorge shrine in 2020. What are the dilemmas facing the protection of Aboriginal lands and cultures in Australia?

McGlade: The main issue is Aboriginal people's human rights to protect culture, which is very closely linked to land and sacred sites. The spirituality and culture is embedded in our land and our mother earth in the dream time. The laws and legislation in Australia do not give aboriginal people the right to actually say no when a site is so important and significant that it really mustn't be destroyed for mining or development. In West Australia, it's believed that well over 1,000 Aboriginal sacred sites or heritage sites have been destroyed against the wishes of aboriginal custodians from those lands. And indigenous people say we won't be able to keep our culture alive and to have the relationship with this country as indigenous people when we don't have any of our sacred important lands left.

We have gone to the UN to complain about or communicate about the Western Australia Heritage Act to try to improve the situation so that there can be a more balanced approach to mining development and indigenous rights and indigenous people's right to cultural survival.
GT: As an Aboriginal, have you personally experienced any unfair treatment?
McGlade: Yes, I have. It begins when you're a child in school and you are called names. Nowadays, these racist names may not be as common, but it's the exclusion and bullying that Aboriginal children experienced. As you get older, it's more like attitudinal issues. For very dark-skinned people, it can be another experience of actually being watched in shops and followed around as if they're thieves. That's a very common one. Once I experienced being abused by police. I experienced that when I was taking part in a demonstration to protect an Aboriginal significant site linked to the Wagyll rainbow serpent, who's the creator spirit for our country here. But police can be very rough in their interactions with Aboriginal people. And we've had people actually die in custody sadly.

I'm also a descendant of early Chinese. My surname is from Ireland, but my great grandfather was not allowed to be married to my grandmother, because this was prohibited for a non-indigenous white man to be married to an indigenous woman. So they had to live away in high secrecy. The father of my great grandmother was an indentured laborer from China. There were Chinese people who came here, who were indentured and who also experienced very harsh treatment as well.

Hannah McGlade. Photo: Courtesy of McGlade

GT: You are a human rights lawyer and academic who has been advocating justice for indigenous peoples for many years. Can you share one of the cases you have been involved in?

McGlade: My first case as a new law graduate was against a Liberal federal senator in parliament, Senator Ross Lightfoot, who opposed the introduction of Aboriginal studies in Western Australia primary schools. He used very racist and derogatory language publicly in parliament, but also outside to a journalist. These comments were broadcast widely in the media.

I was really shocked because I thought that was how it was when I was a girl in school. But this kind of really overt and ugly racism against our culture is still out there. And in fact, it's a senator who's making these statements. I really believe that children should have a good, multicultural education and should know about the indigenous cultures.

So I started a complaint under the new race vilification laws. There were federal laws introduced in the race discrimination act. They were reflecting our UN commitments to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It actually took me five years before that case was finalized.

I was successful in proving racial vilification against the senator. There were some trials though, because the human rights body actually threw the case out or dismissed it at one point saying it lacks substance or merit. It certainly did not and that decision shocked people. And I had an excellent lawyer represent me in that case. We set aside the decision of the human rights commission, and we had it heard in the federal court. It was finally upheld after five years. It was the first successful prosecution by an Aboriginal person under these new laws.

GT: Statistics show that the prison rate of Aboriginal people is more than 10 times that of non-Aboriginal people. Nearly 500 Aboriginal people have died in custody over the past 30 years. How do you feel about this data? What is the human rights situation faced by indigenous Australians?

McGlade: This is a really shocking issue that indigenous people, including children from the age of 10 years old, can be incarcerated and are being incarcerated. We even have children now in an adult maximum-security men's prison in Perth. That is a very wrong thing. It's absolutely inhumane. It is a human rights violation to put children in adult prisons, because the message that you are sending to those children is that they don't deserve any better in life, plus you're putting them at risk of adult offenders or perpetrators.

Now, there has been a situation of racial profiling and systemic racism and discrimination against Aboriginal people throughout the decades and from the point of colonization.

The first public building in the city I lived in Western Australia was a very unique architectural building that was a prison for indigenous people who resisted the indentured labor system that was being imposed. It was akin to slavery, even our children were subjected to it.

The deaths that are happening in custody are a national shame. We've had a royal commission into aboriginal deaths in custody over 25 years ago. And we have key recommendations from that inquiry that haven't been implemented to this day. In particular, that incarceration should only be a matter of last resort. Our legal services are aware of children and young people who have stolen food because they're hungry and have been incarcerated for such crimes. We haven't had a reparations process in Australia. There was unlawful dispossession, and many Aboriginal people are still living in poverty. And crime rates do reflect that as well as the racial profiling and the discrimination. These are issues that we must address and have much more attention to. It is really the most serious human rights issues in this country - the violence to women, the removal of children, and the incarceration of Aboriginal people, including women and children.
GT: While the Australian government often accuses other countries of human rights violations, do you think such accusations are convincing?
McGlade: The Australian government does have a duty to acknowledge human rights issues, but I think they have a duty equally to increase the recognition and responses to these very serious human rights issues that are happening in Australia. What we see is Australia taking part in United Nations processes at one stage where it was considered to be a leader. When we signed the universal declaration on human rights, at the same time, indigenous people were considered legally as second-class citizens and children were able to be are removed at a whim for assimilation purposes.

So certainly Australia needs to increase respect for human rights and not just verbally, but ensuring that there's investment into the realization of those rights, particularly indigenous people. There certainly is, unfortunately, a level of hypocrisy in failing to do that properly to date. At this point, we haven't signed the [UN] Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That's very worrying when actually aboriginal children are being incarcerated at such high rates. An aboriginal child in my state is actually 15 times more likely to be incarcerated than a non-indigenous child. They're very young, they're not fully developed. The medical professionals realize how dangerous this is to children and they oppose it. But our governments are dragging their feet. They don't care because it's not their children, and that's simply not good enough.
GT: Some scholars believe that colonialism played an important role in the injustices suffered by indigenous peoples. What do you think of the impact of colonialism on Australian society? How can this systemic problem be solved?
McGlade: The colonial history was so violent and abusive to indigenous people. Australia was colonized on the basis that it was a Terra nullius country, an empty land, or a land belonging to no people. And we haven't made the proper effort yet to overcome that history of dispossession and violence to indigenous people. We've had important processes such as a reconciliation process that went on for 10 years and recommended that we enact treaties with indigenous people and that we amend our constitution to prohibit race discrimination. We're at another juncture now where our new federal government has promised to reform the constitution, to ensure that indigenous people now have a voice to parliament protected in the constitution. We also negotiate treaties finally with indigenous people, and that we have a process of truth telling and a Makarrata Commission.

So it is now somewhat exciting times, but the challenges are still so huge because of these serious human rights issues and violations that we've been talking about.

GT: Has the Australian government provided enough assistance? How can the Australian government tackle the problems indigenous people face?

McGlade: I have, along with many indigenous people across the country, an expectation that we must see better from our governments. Particularly our federal government, we feel, has more integrity to indigenous people generally. In West Australia where I live, we don't see the commitment from my government at all and aboriginal people feel that it's a very outdated, paternalistic, dismissive attitude to indigenous people, which is very much inconsistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that Australia has endorsed for over 10 years now.

We will continue to be strong advocates for human rights and call on Australia to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including through a national action plan, to uphold our human rights obligations and the advice of the UN treaty bodies, and to increase our commitment where we need to in law, including through, for example, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We've recently had a UN body come to investigate prisons and detention centers. Some states did not allow them into the detention centers, and they suspended their visa to Australia. This was very sad, a very poor reflection on our country. The governments today have not actually properly influenced the states with their respective requirements to understand those requirements and to give respect. We really should be treating with the human rights commitments seriously.

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Brutal colonial past still lingers in Australia hundreds of years later

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The Australian governments today have not actually properly influenced the states with their respective requirements to understand those requirements and to give respect. We really should be treating with the human rights commitments seriously.

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Imagine dying on your way to the hospital to give birth to your child because of not being accompanied by a male. This is the reality for 24 mothers every day in Afghanistan, dying from preventable causes. It's shocking to see how the UN's Security Council is allowing women's human rights to be violated and how gender inequality keeps getting worse.

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It was the middle of the night when Zarin Gul realised that her daughter Nasrin had to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Her daughter's husband was away working in Iran and the two women were alone with Nasrin's seven children when Nasrin, heavily pregnant with her eighth child, began experiencing severe pains.

Gul helped Nasrin into a rickshaw and they set off into the night. Holding her daughter's hand as the rickshaw jolted over the dirt road, Gul says she prayed they would not encounter a Taliban checkpoint.

"I kept thinking, if only Nasrin's husband were here. If only I could ease my daughter's pain," she says. Her prayers were not answered. The rickshaw's small lamp was spotted by Taliban fighters who signalled for them to stop and demanded to know where they were going.

As a frightened Gul explained that her daughter was sick and needed urgent medical attention, they asked why the women were travelling without a male escort, or mahram. Even though Gul explained that Nasrin's husband was working abroad, the fighters refused to allow them to pass and continue their journey to the hospital.

"I begged them, telling them my daughter was dying. I pleaded for their permission," says Gul. "But they still refused. In desperation, I lied and said the rickshaw driver was my nephew and our guardian. Only then did they let us pass."

By the time they reached the hospital it was too late. Nasrin's baby had already died in her womb, and her uterus had ruptured. The doctors said Nasrin needed to be transferred to another hospital and so Gul helped her daughter into another rickshaw and they set off again, towards a government hospital an hour away. On their way they were stopped at two more Taliban checkpoints, each time detained for long periods because they were travelling alone.

They did finally reach the hospital, but Nasrin had not survived the journey. "The doctors told us that due to excessive bleeding and the ruptured uterus, both the baby and the mother had died," says Gul. "We buried them side by side."

The Guardian and Zan Times, an Afghan news agency, has interviewed dozens of women and healthcare professionals across multiple Afghan provinces. Their testimonies build a picture of a maternal and child healthcare system dangerously compromised and eroded by the Taliban's draconian policies towards women.

An overcrowded maternity ward at the Zabul provincial hospital in the city of Qalat, in southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Kiana Hayeri/Kiana Hayeri for Carmignac Foundation

Their refusal to let women travel to hospitals unaccompanied, combined with increasing rates of early marriage, poor access to healthcare, unsafe roads and a cultural neglect of women's health will inevitably contribute to increased maternal deaths in Afghanistan, according to UN agencies.

Even before the Taliban took power, Afghanistan had a maternal mortality rate three times higher than the global average, according to the last official World Bank figures from 2020.

Experts warn that maternal health is likely to deteriorate further, compounded by the Taliban's decision in December 2024 to close all medical training to women, including prospective midwives.

According to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), 24 mothers and 167 infants already die every day in Afghanistan from preventable causes. It is estimated that more than 20,000 villages across the country lack basic healthcare services, affecting 14 million people.

A recent UN Women report estimated that by 2026, a woman's chance of dying in childbirth will have increased by 50%.

This 22-year-old midwife has helped deliver nine babies during her 13-hour shift at the Zabul provincial hospital in the city of Qalat, in southern Afghanistan. Photograph: Kiana Hayeri/Kiana Hayeri for Carmignac Foundation

Hospital staff in provinces across Afghanistan have reported that women have been persistently prevented from accessing maternal healthcare because they were not accompanied by a man.

Most arrive in critical condition, and some die simply because they were brought in too late

A medical professional at Mirwais regional hospital in Kandahar says the hospital receives female patients from across Kandahar but also from neighbouring provinces.

"Most arrive in critical condition and some die simply because they were brought in too late," they say. "Some babies die in the womb, while others pass away within minutes of birth." According to staff, the hospital recorded at least 800 maternal deaths and more than 1,000 newborn deaths last year.

"A young woman arrived at the hospital after giving birth in a taxi," says Samina, a midwife working in a government hospital in Kandahar. "Her baby had died on the way due to a lack of oxygen. When I asked her why she hadn't come to the hospital sooner, she replied, 'I had to wait for my husband to return from work. I had no other male guardian.'"

Two women told the Guardian they had experienced miscarriage due to inability to access care. One interviewee reported the death of a family member during labour.

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"My sister died yesterday during childbirth," says 35-year-old Pashtana* from Kandahar province. "Her husband was not at home when she went into labour, and she could not go to the doctor alone."

Pashtana said if her sister had travelled to the clinic alone, "she would not be treated because she did not have a mahram ".

Several women told the Guardian that they were denied treatment and prescriptions in the absence of a male guardian or because they lacked the permission of one.

"I don't get to see the doctors or get medicines unless I am accompanied by my son or grandson," says Qandi Gul*, a 50-year-old woman who had travelled to a clinic for an eye exam.

A female doctor from the eastern province of Nangarhar says: "Since the Taliban takeover, women don't visit the doctor unless the sickness develops to the point of being unbearable.

A midwife holds a baby girl at Zabul provincial hospital. She is one of eight midwives at the hospital, which also has two female doctors and one senior female doctor. They were trained before the recent Taliban ban on women attending nursing and midwifery courses. Photograph: Kiana Hayeri/Kiana Hayeri for Carmignac Foundation

"One reason is because of financial hardships, but sometimes the reason is because the men of the families are careless and do not bring the woman to the doctor sooner. And since they can't travel on their own, their condition worsens," she says.

Already, a growing shortage of qualified medical professionals and midwives is putting the lives of women and children at serious risk, particularly in rural areas where few trained doctors are available.

Doctors interviewed by the Guardian estimated that "more than half" of their female colleagues had quit their jobs, particularly in smaller cities and villages.

"Most of my colleagues have left Afghanistan and this has severely affected the healthcare sector in the country," said Dr Sima*, who chose to stay along with her husband, also a doctor. "We are both specialists, and we realised we would not be able to do this work abroad so we stayed to serve the country."

A midwife from Takhar province says officials from the Taliban's ministry for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice constantly harass and humiliate female medical staff. "We try our best to do our jobs, but the pressure is unbearable. Many of us just want to quit. Sometimes, they insult us, claiming our clothing is 'un-Islamic'.

"One day, our emergency ward was overwhelmed with patients. That section is for women only, and men are not allowed. But Taliban enforcers barged in and took away three female nurses, claiming their uniforms were inappropriate. They made them sign a pledge to wear longer clothing before letting them go. Even in life and death emergencies, instead of letting us treat patients they are instead arresting us over our clothing."

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'I begged them, my daughter was dying': how Taliban male escort rules are killing mothers and babies

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The need for women to be accompanied by a man in public is blocking access to healthcare and contributing to soaring mortality rates, say experts

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There's something deeply problematic with the priorities of the USA. It is deporting lawful refugees and asylum seekers unlawfully, but its leadership is far more concerned with annexing Greenland. Why would any person want to join a state that disrespects the law to this extent?

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Inside Trump’s Plan to ‘Get’ Greenland: Persuasion, Not Invasion

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The island’s population might not be easily convinced as the president tries to clinch what he may see as one of history’s greatest real estate deals.

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Trump’s new tariffs are here to remind you that “America First” actually means your wallet last. Higher prices on food, clothes, electronics—all so he can flex on China while you foot the bill. It’s economic cosplay, and Americans are stuck paying for the costume.

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We found out how much Trump’s tariffs are expected to cost you this year

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Economists and supply chain experts told BI consumers will spend about $4,000 more this year due to cost increases caused by Donald Trump’s tariffs.

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The media always assumes that Israel's account of events is accurate, even when they have zero evidence of their claims. They always discredit Palestinian accounts, even if it's based on literal footage (and they know what they saw) The double standards around reporting the genocide are disappointing but unfortunately not surprising.

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Headlines that read "Israel strikes kill 32 in Gaza, medics say, as Netanyahu flies to Washington to meet Trump

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Capitalism and feminism are so intertwined now, though shouldn't they be incompatible? The ways that production, labour, profit etc in the world have been organised i feel perpetuate class oppression and exclusion. I mean even corporations profiting off of like women's day campaigns is kind of inherently violent and controlling, but also some women participate in consuming material objects and some women contribute to the production of those items... and then also is it actually women making that profit?

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Just had someone tell me to stop spreading ‘identity politics’ by advocating for economically marginalised racial minorities. At the end of the day, it seems like the dividing line between ‘economic issues’ and ‘identity politics’ is whether it affects cishet white men or not. If calling out injustice in society is divisive and controversial, it seems more like a problem with society than with me.

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Opposition leader Peter Dutton has condemned the plan to enshrine a constitutional Voice to Parliament as "a symptom of the madness of identity politics which has infected the 21st century".

As debate on the historic referendum legislation - introduced by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in March - began in the House of Representatives on Monday, Dutton claimed the Voice would "re-racialise our nation."

"At a time when we need to unite the country, this prime minister's proposal will permanently divide us by race," Dutton said.

But Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney told the house: "Constitutional recognition through a Voice to Parliament is about giving Indigenous Australians a say in the matters that affect us.

"It means delivering structural change that empowers Indigenous communities. It means getting better advice, so we get better policies and better outcomes."

The debate in the house is expected to continue all week and into next week, with about 70 speakers listed at the moment. When the vote comes, the votes of all MPs will be recorded, even if there is not a division called, because it is a referendum bill. The legislation's passage is assured because the Liberals are not opposing it.

Dutton condemned the Voice as "regressive, not progressive".

In the referendum, Australians "will be voting as to whether they should change, or to preserve, our Constitution - our nation's rule book.

"It's one of the most important decisions Australians will make in their lifetime.

"Because if Australians vote for change, then our nation, our democracy and their lives will be fundamentally altered - and, in this case, not for the better," Dutton said.

"The Voice would be the most radical and consequential change to the way our democracy operates in our nation's history."

Read more: Word from The Hill: Government should set date for Voice to start talking

Dutton said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wanted people to vote for the Voice "on a vibe".

He said Albanese was "seeking to conflate two separate issues. One, the constitutional recognition, and two, enshrining the Voice in the Constitution.

"He wants to leverage the overwhelming public support for constitutional recognition to piggyback his poorly defined, untested and risk-ridden Canberra Voice model."

What was needed was a "bottom-up approach", Dutton said, rather than "another top-down one". "We believe that local communities know best."

Burney accused Dutton of putting into one speech "every bit of disinformation and misinformation and scare campaigns that exist in this debate".

She said the Voice had been "a grassroots movement, the culmination of years of discussion, consultation and hard work by so many".

Recognition through a Voice was about "making a practical difference".

"The purpose of the Voice is to improve outcomes for our people," she said. "It is symbolic - and practical."

Burney said that after a successful referendum "we will work to link the national Voice in at a regional level, in a way that works for local communities".

"Everyone agrees that the Voice needs to be connected to grassroots communities.

"It's why regional voices that can plug into a national Voice are so important. And why the investment set by the former Liberal government for regional arrangements remains in the budget."

Burney said the Voice was constitutionally sound and got the balance right, as the solicitor-general's opinion made clear.

Read more: View from The Hill: Albanese should not try to make the Voice the only game in town in Indigenous affairs

But this was "not enough for those hell-bent on dashing the hopes of a people. Not enough for those hell-bent on stoking division.

"It's not enough for those trying to play politics with an issue that should be above partisan politics," Burney said.

Liberal backbencher Bridget Archer, who is campaigning for the yes case, strongly rejected Dutton's argument that the referendum was dividing the country by race.

"This referendum provides an incredible chance to begin righting so many wrongs and to bring about tangible differences in quality-of-life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I think most Australians would agree that the status quo isn't acceptable and that we as a country must do better. Here is our chance."

Speaking earlier on the report of the parliamentary inquiry on the Voice, Andrew Gee, who defected from the Nationals to the crossbench because of their opposition to the Voice, said while the committee had heard some differing legal opinions, "I found the evidence that the proposed words are legally sound to be highly persuasive".

The evidence had showed it was "ridiculous to suggest that the Voice [...] could or would imperil Anzac day, federal budgets or nuclear submarine contracts".

Meanwhile, Cricket Australia has thrown its weight behind the Voice, joining a number of other sporting bodies. Former NSW Premier Mike Baird, who chairs Cricket Australia, said: "The board is proud of cricket's powerful and unique history with First Nations people".

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Dutton condemns Voice as symptom of 'identity politics', as Burney says it will bring 'better outcomes'

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As debate on the historic referendum legislation, Dutton claimed the Voice would 're-racialise our nation'.

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Despite holding legal protection from deportation he was still deported due to Trump administration “error”.  This shows the danger of careless immigration enforcement polices that ignore individual rights. Immigration policy must prioritise accuracy and justice over rushed racist political wins.

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The US must return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison, a judge says

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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to arrange for the return of a Maryland man to the United States after he was mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvador prison.

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"Go back where you came from".

Imagine fleeing war, crossing oceans and surviving it all only to be told to go back home.

Refugees don't need our pity...... all they need is policies, protection, and a proper place to call home.

Maybe these refugees are able to flee these problems but are their problems over once they make it to a so called "Safe country"?

This article sheds light on how refugees especially women face gender based violence in detention centres and how these women keep quiet fearing retaliation from the authorities.

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Sexual and gender-based violence in the refugee crisis

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Sexual and gender-based violence in the refugee crisis

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While sexism doubtless factors in, I found this liberal discourse around the election incredibly limiting and minimising, not accounting her/the dems pivotal role in Palestinian genocide and structurally violent role in the legal system. These narrow identity lenses omit major power relations

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Kamala Harris: why does the US struggle with the idea of a woman leader, when other countries don’t?

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Kamala Harris has been subjected to sexist insults and questions about her electability as a woman running for president. But what is the “woman problem” in US politics?

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If democracy is rule of the people, by the people, for the people, then where do corporate donors fit in? When major parties accept millions of dollars to fund electoral campaigns, the needs of the people come second to corporate political favours. Can a corporation be a citizen?

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Loved this reading from a few weeks ago- it highlighted how exclusionary feminism backslides feminist progress for all women. While imperial feminism is focused on the vilification of minorities, attention is diverted from productive work to address entrenched gender inequality

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SA’s First Nations Voice to Parliament after two years do feel they are being heard, however they are facing internal structural issues and lacking funding. The government should be doing all it can to support this legislation however it feels like it has been put on the back burner. How are effective changes like reducing indigenous incarceration rates significantly if it is not being properly supported?

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Has Australia’s first Voice to Parliament been a success?

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It’s been two years since South Australia’s Parliament passed historic legislation establishing a First Nations Voice. How is it working?

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Several US states have passed influencer child protection laws, but Australia lags behind with none. Two Aussie tiktoker’s Fidan and Aims don’t show their husbands faces as they don’t consent to being posted online. And yet their kids age face & names are posted regularly, so deeply unethical and unsafe

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A grey zone: Protections for the rights of child influencers - Law Society Journal

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Child influencers have commercial power through promotion of brands on social media channels, but their rights need further protection

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Hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Istanbul following the the arrest of mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the main political rival of Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The jailing of Imamoglu is the finish line of Turkey’s walk towards authoritarianism during the past decade; an “electoral democracy” where the people can vote but there is no freedom of thought and speech. With the arrest of the most popular candidate, who would have likely won the majority votes in the next election, more and more people are joining the protests leading to more and more arrests. 2,000 people including students have been detained in the last week and have been kept in detention centres without even being told the charges against them. Despite the likeliness of this arrest backfiring by making Imamoglu even more popular or even resulting in the jailing of Erdogan, Erdogan’s control over the institutions and the media has him convinced no actions will follow.  This is extremely distressing to read considering this is a country that is a member of NATO. What’s even more horrifying is that the government has ensured that scenes of violence from police to the protesters are not visible to the wider public.

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I’ve never seen such clampdowns in Istanbul. Turkey’s democracy is fighting for its life | Orhan Pamuk

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The jailing of President Erdoğan’s main political rival is the low point of a decade-long march towards autocracy – but the protesters aren’t done yet either, says writer Orhan Pamuk

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Thinking about how so many people think that being pro-Palestine is being antisemitic, and how antisemitism has been conflated with anti-Zionism. I didn't know what Zionism was before folks like Nevo Zisin and Elsa T. Rose on Instagram talked about how it's ingrained in their culture.

The double standards of the government telling everyone that antisemitism is not okay (true) but ignoring Islamophobia is telling.

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Antisemitism: What is the IHRA definition and why is it controversial?

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Dozens of countries have adopted or endorsed the IHRA’s antisemitism but critics say its adoption by universities could curtail free speech on campuses

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173 children were killed by the settler-colony Israel on 18/03/2025, deemed the 'deadliest day' for minors during the genocide. Unofficial death counts for Gaza are between 500,000-800,000, though official western sources put the total at 50,000

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"If you are reading this, I have been killed."

Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, the latest two journalists to have been murdered by the settler-colony Israel. Hossam was only 23, and had been reunited with his mother only 6 weeks prior to his death, after one year apart.

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Press Pictures of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour

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I really enjoyed reading some of Kimberle Crenshaw's piece this week "Mapping the Margins , Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of colour". I think that it was bold to call out the reluctance of anti-racist discourse to call out gendered violence in minority communities, and explore the links between patriarchy and racism. I like that she concludes by noting that WOC don't have to wait for racism to be addressed to live violence free lives. (page 1256-1258)

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Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color on JSTOR

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Kimberle Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color, Stanford Law Review, Vol. 43, No. 6 (Jul., 1991), pp. 1241-1299

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that this warrants censorship but the public and institutions deem it obviously right to denounce the holocaust shows how what's defined as unacceptable vs permissible speech is situated in the specific social, political climate of that time, and that that rigid binary is in deconstruction

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Orchestra attempts to silence pianist Jayson Gillham on Palestine a second time

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International classical pianist Jayson Gillham, who was cancelled after speaking out for Palestinian journalists during a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra recital, is seeking a public apology and compensation. Paul Gregoire reports.

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The history of American authorities targeting citizens is very concerning. As Trump expands efforts to deport even legal permanent residents, one must ask, what's the point of American citizenship and lawful immigrant status if the government can decide that you're a criminal with no due process?

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Some Americans Have Already Been Caught in Trump’s Immigration Dragnet. More Will Be.

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Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps.

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What affect is the Trump administration having on teens? The conversation released an article on the era of polarised teens in America. The study found that most white male students supported Trump whilst female Latino, African American or Asian students disapproved Trump. This has led to the investigation of the rise in discrimination within schools in the US. After Trumps first election 28% of teachers reported an increase in discrimination towards minority groups. More students making derogatory remarks towards immigrants, muslims, the LGTBG+ community and African Americans. This is a major issue as due to Trumps hostile rhetoric minority students are feeling more at risk at school. Where will the line be drawn on the deadly effects of Trumps presidency???

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Trump’s first term polarized teens’ views on racism and inequality

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A social scientist tracking adolescents’ beliefs and behaviors over time was uniquely positioned to document changes in teens’ worldviews after Trump’s 2016 election.

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Tiktok narratives are often false and i fell for this one. Family vologgers are not fleeing California because of a new law, but one person started the discourse and it was something people wanted to believe and further hate on family creators for. Power to fact checking.

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No, family vloggers are not fleeing California over a child labor law

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A viral TikTok conspiracy theory claims that family influencers are moving because of a new law that claims to protect child influencers. It’s not true.

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Oscar-winning Palestinian director Basel Adra was violently attacked by Israeli settlers while filming the demolition of his own village in the occupied West Bank. His camera was smashed. His face was bloodied. And when Israeli forces showed up?

They arrested him.

Not the settlers. Not the people carrying out violence. Not the ones destroying homes. But the man documenting it all — the filmmaker whose only “weapon” was a lens capturing truth.

Because in the warped logic of occupation, filming your ethnic cleansing is somehow more threatening than committing it.

Basel just stood on the world’s biggest stage and told the story of his people. Now he’s in handcuffs for doing exactly that. This is how apartheid silences resistance — not just with bullets and bulldozers, but by targeting the storytellers.

This isn’t about “security.” It’s about erasing evidence.

It’s about fear — fear of the world seeing what’s really happening on the ground. Because when truth gets out, the mask slips.

#FreeBaselAdra
#JournalismIsNotACrime

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Hamdan Ballal: Oscar-winning Palestinian director attacked by Israeli settlers and arrested

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No Other Land’s Hamdan Ballal attacked by armed settlers in West Bank and handed to Israeli military, witnesses say

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I read Shari Franke's memoir and deeply respected her choice to protect her younger siblings names & story from further exploitation. Young children cannot consent to being influencers/posted constantly. The amount of parents exploiting their children online for money disgusts me

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From ultrasound photos to family blogs: How ethical is posting children online?

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Shari Franke’s memoir is the first by a former child influencer. While extreme, her story raises questions about the implications of sharing content of kids online.

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Whether it’s immigrants from Mexico or refugees from conflict zones in the middle east, people of colour have historically faced discrimination in the United States. It’s striking how a black person born in America is often labelled as “African American,” while someone like Elon musk, born in South Africa, is simply referred to as an “American”.

Take Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S resident, detained in an immigration facility for expressing his political opinions. Despite being legally established in the country, he was denied the right to free speech because he’s not a U.S citizen. Is this because his views didn’t align with ruling party? Or is it because he is a non-white migrant?

Khalil’s account of the suffering of refugees in U.S detention centres shines a light on the systematic issues within the immigration system. His story is a harsh reminder of the injustices faced by migrants, especially those colour, who seek a better life but are instead met with discrimination and denial of basic rights.

Take a look at the article where he explains the sufferings of the refugees in the immigration detention centre.

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‘I am a political prisoner’: Mahmoud Khalil says he’s being targeted for political beliefs

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Exclusive: Palestinian activist and green card holder speaks out from Louisiana detention for first time

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The demand to demolish a 17th-century Muslim ruler's tomb reflects the deepening religious divide in India, particularly the escalating violence and discrimination towards Muslim communities. Erasing parts of history only fuels division and undermines the values of unity and respect for all communities.

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Indian city sets curfew after Hindu groups demand demolition of 17th century Muslim ruler’s tomb

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Tensions over the Mughal ruler have intensified in India after the release of Bollywood movie “Chhaava,” an action film based on a Hindu warrior who fought against Aurangzeb.

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Victoria’s epidemic of teen crimes has been severe, and many are asking for a change. However, this media release by the Australian Human Rights Commission provides a concerning outcome to the current actions taken. How efficient will the amended bail laws be in deterring the ongoing issue?

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The National Children's Commissioner says the Victorian Government's new bail laws will not make communities safer because they are not based on evidence of how to prevent crime by children.

The new laws, which were passed last night, will mean detention will no longer be a 'last resort' for children, as is required under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, to which Australia is a signatory. This and other new bail-related offences will likely lead to a significant increase in the incarceration of children.

National Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds: "We should all be able to live in safe communities, including children who themselves are victims of crime.

"The data shows the number of children involved in crime has actually decreased in Victoria by 3%, with most of the crime currently involving repeat child offenders who typically become involved with the criminal justice system very young.

"Most of these children have unmet needs such as disabilities, health and learning problems, and trauma. Many are themselves victims of violence and maltreatment. Research shows that if we ignore the unmet needs of children who come into contact with the justice system between the ages of 10 and 13, it's more likely they will continue to commit more crimes.

"Locking up these children does not rehabilitate them. It costs $1.3m per annum to lock up a child, and this is not making our community safer.

"Following Queensland and the Northern Territory, Victoria is the latest jurisdiction to respond to youth crime in a reactive way. The NSW and South Australian governments are also in the process of implementing discredited punitive measures, moving in the opposite direction to that of other developed countries.

"Instead of building a roadmap for reform based on evidence of how to prevent crime by children, these governments are reacting to public concern with short-term punitive measures that do not prevent crime by children, because crime by children is a symptom of underlying issues that we are failing to address.

"These are children in the most vulnerable of circumstances, and our 'early warning systems' of health, education and social services have failed to help them and their families.

"Governments across the country are looking for a quick political fix rather than acting on evidence from experts in Australia and from around the world showing that we need to improve therapeutic treatment and support for children and their families, and take a preventative rather than punitive approach.

'We need all state and territory governments to prioritise significant investment in early intervention and diversionary programs which have been shown to prevent youth offending, and improve access to housing, co-ordinated health and education, and family support services. This is what keeps children and communities safe.

The Commission's report ' Help Way Earlier!' How Australia can transform child justice to improve safety and wellbeing, tabled in Parliament in August 2024, provides a roadmap for reform of Australia's child justice systems based on evidence and human rights.

Read the report: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/childrens-rights/publications/help-way-earlier

ENDS | Media contact: media@humanrights.gov.au or +61 457 281 897

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National Children's Commissioner condemns new Victorian bail laws as a backward step

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The National Children's Commissioner says the Victorian Government's new bail laws will not make communities safer because they are not based on evidence of how to prevent crime by children.

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The debate over the 2019 religious discrimination bill is such a perfect example of the ‘paradox of tolerance’ Karl Popper talked about in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Even though both sides of the debate over the bill tried to frame the debate to portray themselves as the ‘tolerant’ side, when you examine the arguments for the bill it really comes down to the idea that we should for some reason tolerate religious intolerance

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On March 21, the federal government will release the Australian Law Reform Commission's report on ensuring religious schools cannot discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students and staff.

But the political debate is already well under way - and has been going on since 2017. So how did we get here?

The current debate started with marriage equality

When same-sex marriage was legalised in late 2017 following a successful postal survey on the issue, conservative religious groups were promised a "religious freedom" review as a consolation prize.

That review, led by former Liberal minister Philip Ruddock, found Australia does not have a religious freedom problem. However, it did recommend new legislative protections against religious discrimination. In response, in December 2018, the Morrison government promised a Religious Discrimination Act.

What the Morrison government ended up proposing - in multiple versions over several years - was laws that would both prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of religion (which was not particularly controversial) and allow discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people and others by taking away existing anti-discrimination protections (which was very controversial). These draft laws never passed.

Before the 2022 federal election, Labor leader Anthony Albanese promised to change federal law to ban discrimination against LGTBQIA+ students and staff by religious schools, and to protect people against discrimination on the basis of their religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs.

Read more: Future of Anthony Albanese's religious discrimination legislation is in Peter Dutton's hands

There are actually two distinct issues at play

The debate we've been having over the past few years is actually a debate about two issues.

The first issue is about religious discrimination. This means ensuring people are not discriminated against on the basis of their religious beliefs, or lack of religious beliefs.

All states and territories (other than New South Wales and South Australia) already have laws banning this kind of religious discrimination. But there is no federal law banning religious discrimination - apart from a constitutional provision banning religious discrimination in federal government jobs.

It's standard practice for there to be complementary federal and state anti-discrimination laws on the same topic. For example, if a person is discriminated against on the basis of their race, that person can choose to take action under either federal or state law.

One proposal is for there to be a federal Religious Discrimination Act.

The second issue is religious exemptions, which involves allowing discrimination on the basis of sexuality, gender identity, marital status and so on where the discrimination has a religious motivation. For example, the Sex Discrimination Act currently prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, sexuality, gender identity and marital status, but also includes an exemption that allows religious schools to discriminate against students and teachers.

So, if a non-religious private school expels a student for being gay that would contravene the Sex Discrimination Act. But if a religious school did the same thing for religious reasons, that would not contravene the Sex Discrimination Act.

Some states and territories already ban religious schools from discriminating against students and teachers for these kinds of reasons. So if a religious school in Victoria expels a student for being gay, that would not breach federal law as it stands but it would breach Victorian law. The practical result is that the school can't expel the student for being gay.

A second proposal is to modify the religious exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act.

Read more: Why Australia does not need a Religious Discrimination Act

The Morrison government's first draft of the legislation

The Morrison government held a consultation during 2019 on a first draft of its promised legislation. This draft legislation included standard anti-discrimination provisions to prohibit discrimination against people on the basis of their religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs. It also included highly controversial additional provisions.

The controversial provisions included:

a provision about "statements of belief" - motivated by the Israel Folau controversy - which would have overridden all other federal and state anti-discrimination laws to allow derogatory statements to be made by doctors, schools and employers against women, people with disabilities and LGTBQIA+ people.

a provision allowing healthcare practitioners to refuse to provide care to people, such as allowing a pharmacist to refuse to fill prescriptions for a divorced woman or a nurse to refuse to dress a gay man's wound.

In effect, these provisions would have created a "sword" allowing harm to be inflicted on people by taking away existing anti-discrimination protections. Anti-discrimination laws are meant to be a "shield" protecting people from harm. This is why the issue has been so controversial.

The Morrison government's second draft

The controversy over the first draft led to consultations in 2020 on a second draft.

The second draft was very similar to the first. It too included the override provisions on "statements of belief" and refusal to provide health care.

However, it reduced the number of healthcare professions entitled to refuse to treat patients. It also included some additional measures about:

allowing religious hospitals to "preference" people of the same religion as the body in hiring decisions. For example, a Catholic hospital could give priority to Catholics in hiring new staff

allowing religious camps and conference centres to take faith into account when hiring out their campsites.

The bill fails

The Morrison government introduced legislation based on the second draft into parliament in 2021.

During debate, several Liberal backbenchers crossed the floor to vote in favour of amendments the government did not want. One of those amendments - to remove the ability of religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students - succeeded, with five Liberal MPs crossing the floor.

The amended bill passed the House of Representatives with the support of both major parties. However, it did not come to a final vote in the Senate because people on all sides of the debate were unhappy with the bill and it was causing internal tensions in the Liberal Party. The bill lapsed.

So why is it back in the news?

After the Labor Party won the 2022 federal election, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to advise on what amendments to federal law would be necessary to deliver the Labor Party's election promise. Labor's promised legislation would:

ensure religious schools cannot discriminate against LGBTQIA+ students or staff under federal law.

ensure religious schools can give preference to people of the same faith as the school when hiring staff under federal law.

ensure the legislation will be drafted in a manner that does not remove existing legal protections against other forms of discrimination.

The commission delivered its report to the attorney-general in December 2023.

In anticipation of the report being released on March 21, senior politicians on both sides of politics, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, have already started the politicking. The debate may not be over yet.

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Why are religious discrimination laws back in the news? And where did they come from in the first place?

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Religious discrimination laws have been highly controversial in Australia in recent years. Here's where they started, and where we are now.

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Australia prides itself on being "one and free", yet this proposal would only worsen double standards on rights afforded to citizens. Never mind that the power to strip dual nationals of citizenship is already held by the judiciary... when will this pointless fearmongering end?

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Dutton’s deportation referendum would see some Australians become second-class citizens and cruelly target former refugees

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Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to change the Australian constitution to give Ministers discretionary power to extinguish the citizenship of

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this is just one article out of many that explore the media’s focus on Palestinian women and children as victims. While they are vulnerable, Palestinian men are too; many of them not being affiliated with Hamas (and frankly, who are we to police their liberation efforts?)

Entire bloodlines have been wiped!!

Often it’s the men who have to carry victims out of the rubble. Doctors and patients who have to do their best without anaesthetic, in health facilities that are specifically targeted by ‘Israeli’ air strikes, of all ages and genders. Don’t people realise they’re grieving too?

“The image of children and women as helpless victims also ignores their active role in the Palestinian national struggle…” it was children who held a press conference begging the international community to see their pain; and in English, an additional language to them, to make it more accessible for us. The dichotomy of women and children as vulnerable and men as terrorists shouldn’t sit right with us.

This article was written in 2021; without the later context of October 7 2023 - and the media, human rights orgs etc still insist on covering it this way; and continues the IDF’s beliefs that Palestinian &/ Muslim men are just human shields; dehumanising is an understatement.

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Palestinian Men’s Lives Matter: The Problem with Singling Out Children and Women

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International media coverage of casualties in the Gaza Strip tends to single out children. Their suffering, and the loss of their lives, are placed front and center. Often, Palestinian women are also mentioned. And a similar focus on “womenandchildren”—a

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I find it fascinating how voraciously Australian Christians call for religious freedom, where for them it entails the right to discriminate in the name of their God. The only way this country could be more tailored to Christianity is if it finally admits its a Christian country!

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I have to read this book! I wasn't aware of the effects anti-trans feminists have on fuelling attacks on trans people from the American 'religious right'. Crazy how some people's notion of feminism, notably being one that includes Trump, could not be further from others (including my own).

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‘It’s a scary time’: Sophie Lewis on the ‘enemy feminisms’ that enable the far right

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In a new book the scholar traces a line from reactionary tendencies in history to anti-trans feminists today

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Emphasising 'women and children' portrays Palestinian women as agency-less, with an unspoken implication men are suspect at best, vilified at worst. And does the focus on 'civilian deaths' create an unnuanced binary where some Palestinians are acceptably pitied and others not?

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UN says nearly 70 per cent of those it has verified killed in Gaza are women and children

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The UN Human Rights office has criticised what it called a “systematic violation” of international humanitarian law, while Israel rejected the report’s findings.

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This article from The Guardian talks about the mass protests that took place in Greece on the 28th of February marking the 2-year anniversary since the deaths of 57 people in a train crash. This ‘accident’ was crime of social murder that the current government has covered up in efforts to protect the guilty. On 28 February 2023, 57 people, mostly university students, died when their passenger train collided with a freight train due to the absence of automated safety controls. Within 24 hours following the crash authorities were ordered to remove debris from the scene leading to loss of evidence.

Two years later, there has been no trial, the government has taken no responsibility for the absence of basic safety controls, or for the cover up. On the 28th, the crowd outside the Athens Parliament shouted ‘resign’ while the MPs inside called the prime mister a ‘danger to democracy’. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks protested in the streets in a 24-hour national strike in numbers that have not been seen in decades. The protest was described as the biggest outburst of dissent since the collapse of military rule as it united Greeks of all political views; many of which were supporters of the prime minister. The second article I’ve linked below talks about the political significance of this protest. This public outburst is really a response of the young generation to every attack on the working class over the last 15 years. But Greece is just an example of many countries’ working class that struggles under global capitalism and the threat of dictatorship. The response to this crisis is mobilising the working class on a global scale against the capitalist elite. What more is it going to take before every young person and worker takes action?

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/03/05/ejlp-m05.html

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Grief and anger over rail disaster brings protests back to Greece’s streets

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Kyriakos Mitsotakis survives vote of confidence but sense of a cover-up grows two years after 57 died in head-on collision

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Is cancel culture out of control? Sam Jones says her baby wombat cruelty does not merit thousands of death threats and online abuse. Social scientists claim public shaming can be effective when there are shared social values and the chance for reintegration, but can we forgive her?

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"Cancel culture" has a bad reputation. There is growing anxiety over this practice of publicly shaming people online for violating social norms ranging from inappropriate jokes to controversial business practices.

Online shaming can be a wildly disproportionate response that violates the privacy of the shamed while offering them no good way to defend themselves. These consequences lead some critics to claim that online shaming creates a " hate storm" that destroys lives and reputations, leaves targets with " permanent digital baggage" and threatens the fundamental right to publicly express yourself in a democracy. As a result, some scholars have declared that online shaming is a " moral wrong and social ill."

But is online public shaming necessarily negative? I'm a political scientist who studies the relationship between digital technologies and democracy. In my research, I show how public shaming can be a valuable tool for democratic accountability. However, it is more likely to provide these positive effects within a clearly defined community whose members have many overlapping connections.

When shaming helps

Public shaming is a " horizontal" form of social sanctioning, in which people hold one another responsible for violating social norms, rather than appealing to higher authorities to do so. This makes it especially useful in democratic societies, as well as in cases where the shamers face power imbalances or lack access to formal authorities that could hold the shamed accountable.

For example, public shaming can be an effective strategy for challenging corporate power and behavior or maintaining journalistic norms in the face of plagiarism. By harnessing social pressure, public shaming can both motivate people to change their behavior and deter future violations by others.

But public shaming generally needs to occur in a specific social context to have these positive effects. First, everyone involved must recognize shared social norms and the shamer's authority to sanction violations of them. Second, the shamed must care about their reputation. And third, the shaming must be accompanied by the possibility of reintegration, allowing the shamed to atone and be welcomed back into the fold.

This means that public shaming is more likely to deliver accountability in clearly defined communities where members have many overlapping connections, such as schools where all the parents know one another.

In communal spaces where people frequently run into each other, like workplaces, it is more likely that they understand shared social norms and the obligations to follow them. In these environments, it is more likely that people care about what others think of them, and that they know how to apologize when needed so that they can be reintegrated in the community.

Communities that connect

Most online shamings, however, do not take place in this kind of positive social context. On the social platform X, previously known as Twitter, which hosts many high-profile public shamings, users generally lack many shared connections with one another. There is no singular "X community" with universally shared norms, so it is difficult for users to collectively sanction norm violations on the platform.

Moreover, reintegration for targets of shamings on X is nearly impossible, since it is not clear to what community they should apologize, or how they should do so. It should not be surprising, then, that most highly publicized X shamings - like those of PR executive Justine Sacco, who was shamed for a racist tweet in 2013, and Amy Cooper, the "Central Park Karen" - tend to degenerate into campaigns of harassment and stigmatization.

But just because X shamings often turn pathological does not mean all online shamings do. On Threadless, an online community and e-commerce site for artists and designers, users effectively use public shaming to police norms around intellectual property. Wikipedians' use of public "reverts" - reversals of edits to entries - has helped enforce the encylopedia's standards even with anonymous contributors. Likewise, Black Twitter has long used the practice of public shaming as an effective mechanism of accountability.

What sets these cases apart is their community structure. Shamings in these contexts are more productive because they occur within clearly defined groups in which members have more shared connections.

Acknowledging these differences in social context helps clarify why, for example, when a Reddit user was shamed by his subcommunity for posting an inappropriate photo, he accepted the rebuke, apologized and was welcomed back into the community. In contrast, those shamed on X often issue vague apologies before disengaging entirely.

Crossing online borders

There are still very real consequences of moving public shaming online. Unlike in most offline contexts, online shamings often play out on a massive scale that makes it more difficult for users to understand their connections with one another. Moreover, by creating opportunities to expand and overlap networks, the internet can blur community boundaries in ways that complicate the practice of public shaming and make it more likely to turn pathological.

For example, although the Reddit user was reintegrated into his community, the shaming soon spread to other subreddits, as well as national news outlets, which ultimately led him to delete his Reddit account altogether.

This example suggests that online public shaming is not straightforward. While shaming on X is rarely productive, the practice on other platforms, and in offline spaces characterized by clearly defined communities such as college campuses, can provide important public benefits.

Shaming, like other practices of a healthy democracy, is a tool whose value depends on how it's used.

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In the age of cancel culture, shaming can be healthy for online communities - a political scientist explains when and how

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There is no shortage of horror stories about online shaming, but it's not always a bad thing. It comes down to who is doing the shaming and how cohesive the online community is.

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Just read this article on Closing the Gap progress- which is that only 4 of the 19 participants are on track. It is extremely concerning the lack of improvement and care for indigenous incarceration. These statistics aren't just numbers but they are people!! The overall concern and effort put into indigenous issues is appalling and needs to be acknowledged and dealt with within parliament.

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Closing the Gap data shames states, who are all too willing to ignore it

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Those in the Indigenous community have become used to hearing dire statistics, all for them to be ignored or not acted upon, time and time again.

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Time and time again have I gone online and been exposed to the hateful comments and content about feminism and truly you forget how these behaviors so easily reflect into real life action from misogynists and deviants.

This reminds me of Dora Moono Nyambe, and for those who don't know this beautiful woman was a humanitarian who focused her efforts on protecting children from child marriage in rural Zambia. She unfortunately passed in 2024 with no known causation, though there was speculation from her following that is was not without accident as her believes fell within direct contradiction to retrograde beliefs held by traditionalist-leaning men in her home.

The sheer quantity of hate speech made against her, both before and after death, make it feel these accusations were not so unknown after all. The fact this very article reflects on the increase of political prisoners that are women & women's rights defenders really just says it all.

There are so many discriminatory beliefs that are escaping into mainstream media and they influence populaces beyond our recognition and I fear that there is already so many women that have been reduced to statistics because of the way misogynistic people are able to so easily connect and feel confident in their discrimination.

It is such a difficult political environment now for women's, or even simply human, rights defenders and even now as I fight the dread that is the increasingly accessible "manospheric" communities that attempt to reduce these efforts I stand strong that the fight for equality will continue on this front.

#feminism #socialjustice

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Online ‘manosphere’ is moving misogyny to the mainstream

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A decline in democracy and harmful content spread on social media platforms are helping to drive a backlash against feminism, and the growth of misogynistic and retrograde ideas about the roles of men and women and society.

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Is cancel culture out of control? Sam Jones says her baby wombat cruelty does not merit thousands of death threats and online abuse. Social scientists claim public shaming can be good when there are shared social values and the chance for reintegration, but will she be forgiven?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Cancel culture" has a bad reputation. There is growing anxiety over this practice of publicly shaming people online for violating social norms ranging from inappropriate jokes to controversial business practices.

Online shaming can be a wildly disproportionate response that violates the privacy of the shamed while offering them no good way to defend themselves. These consequences lead some critics to claim that online shaming creates a " hate storm" that destroys lives and reputations, leaves targets with " permanent digital baggage" and threatens the fundamental right to publicly express yourself in a democracy. As a result, some scholars have declared that online shaming is a " moral wrong and social ill."

But is online public shaming necessarily negative? I'm a political scientist who studies the relationship between digital technologies and democracy. In my research, I show how public shaming can be a valuable tool for democratic accountability. However, it is more likely to provide these positive effects within a clearly defined community whose members have many overlapping connections.

When shaming helps

Public shaming is a " horizontal" form of social sanctioning, in which people hold one another responsible for violating social norms, rather than appealing to higher authorities to do so. This makes it especially useful in democratic societies, as well as in cases where the shamers face power imbalances or lack access to formal authorities that could hold the shamed accountable.

For example, public shaming can be an effective strategy for challenging corporate power and behavior or maintaining journalistic norms in the face of plagiarism. By harnessing social pressure, public shaming can both motivate people to change their behavior and deter future violations by others.

But public shaming generally needs to occur in a specific social context to have these positive effects. First, everyone involved must recognize shared social norms and the shamer's authority to sanction violations of them. Second, the shamed must care about their reputation. And third, the shaming must be accompanied by the possibility of reintegration, allowing the shamed to atone and be welcomed back into the fold.

This means that public shaming is more likely to deliver accountability in clearly defined communities where members have many overlapping connections, such as schools where all the parents know one another.

In communal spaces where people frequently run into each other, like workplaces, it is more likely that they understand shared social norms and the obligations to follow them. In these environments, it is more likely that people care about what others think of them, and that they know how to apologize when needed so that they can be reintegrated in the community.

Communities that connect

Most online shamings, however, do not take place in this kind of positive social context. On the social platform X, previously known as Twitter, which hosts many high-profile public shamings, users generally lack many shared connections with one another. There is no singular "X community" with universally shared norms, so it is difficult for users to collectively sanction norm violations on the platform.

Moreover, reintegration for targets of shamings on X is nearly impossible, since it is not clear to what community they should apologize, or how they should do so. It should not be surprising, then, that most highly publicized X shamings - like those of PR executive Justine Sacco, who was shamed for a racist tweet in 2013, and Amy Cooper, the "Central Park Karen" - tend to degenerate into campaigns of harassment and stigmatization.

But just because X shamings often turn pathological does not mean all online shamings do. On Threadless, an online community and e-commerce site for artists and designers, users effectively use public shaming to police norms around intellectual property. Wikipedians' use of public "reverts" - reversals of edits to entries - has helped enforce the encylopedia's standards even with anonymous contributors. Likewise, Black Twitter has long used the practice of public shaming as an effective mechanism of accountability.

What sets these cases apart is their community structure. Shamings in these contexts are more productive because they occur within clearly defined groups in which members have more shared connections.

Acknowledging these differences in social context helps clarify why, for example, when a Reddit user was shamed by his subcommunity for posting an inappropriate photo, he accepted the rebuke, apologized and was welcomed back into the community. In contrast, those shamed on X often issue vague apologies before disengaging entirely.

Crossing online borders

There are still very real consequences of moving public shaming online. Unlike in most offline contexts, online shamings often play out on a massive scale that makes it more difficult for users to understand their connections with one another. Moreover, by creating opportunities to expand and overlap networks, the internet can blur community boundaries in ways that complicate the practice of public shaming and make it more likely to turn pathological.

For example, although the Reddit user was reintegrated into his community, the shaming soon spread to other subreddits, as well as national news outlets, which ultimately led him to delete his Reddit account altogether.

This example suggests that online public shaming is not straightforward. While shaming on X is rarely productive, the practice on other platforms, and in offline spaces characterized by clearly defined communities such as college campuses, can provide important public benefits.

Shaming, like other practices of a healthy democracy, is a tool whose value depends on how it's used.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In the age of cancel culture, shaming can be healthy for online communities - a political scientist explains when and how

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There is no shortage of horror stories about online shaming, but it's not always a bad thing. It comes down to who is doing the shaming and how cohesive the online community is.

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How a Columbia Student Activist Landed in Federal Detention

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A horrific precedent is being set here. Of course, free speech doesn't mean no consequences but what's the point of liberalism, especially in the USA with its 1st amendment, if it's used to prosecute and to try to deny due process with deportation of legal permanent residents?

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The New York Times has released a list of words and terms that the Trump administration have banned the use of.  This list included words such as activism, climate crisis, bias, race, diversity, transgender, mental health, women and sex. This ban is not absolute but instead should be limited or avoided by US government agencies under the Trump administration. Due to vast number of terms directly related to the the LGBTQ+ community, this group is readily facing a huge amount of discrimination. The words gay, gender, trans and the list go on have been included in this ban. This ban indicates the major threat for people within marginalized groups to receive representation or represent themselves with the use of these words being censored. What does this mean for freedom of speech and the protection of rights for people within minority communities??

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Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White and Lazaro Gamio

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The Words Federal Agencies Are Discouraged From Using Under Trump

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Federal agencies have issued guidance to employees on hundreds of terms to limit or avoid using. An analysis of government websites shows many of the same words being removed.

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'deadliest strike since ceasefire began'

Let me rephrase, the Israeli government has breached the ceasefire by killing 9 Palestinians, three of which are confirmed to be journalists by Al Jazeera. How many Palestinians have to be murdered for the world to call it what it is? Which is that Israel VIOLATED the ceasefire.

Once again western media is biased towards Israel by using ambiguous wording.

#freepalestine

#stopisraeliwarcrimes

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Nine killed in Israeli attack in northern Gaza

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At least nine people have been killed and several others injured in an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, northe…

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The impact of the US 2025 election was evident almost immediately once President Trump came into office.

The executive orders regarding foreign aid and its review have resulted in several organisations having to stop their work forcefully due to the lack of support. This caused many migrants and asylum seekers to be in a distressed situation, stranded in Mexico.

The mass deportation that is occurring is presently happening in front of the international and social stage. While many voice out their concerns and condemn this violation of human rights, there are little to no actions being taken to stop it with very little support reaching the deportees.

This research briefing by Amnesty International has examined this breach of human rights, providing an interesting perspective about what changes we need to see.

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USA: Lives in Limbo: Devastating impacts of Trump’s migration and asylum policies - Amnesty International

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This briefing presents Amnesty International’s findings and observations from a week-long research trip to Tijuana, Mexico, in February 2025, whose purpose was to document the human rights impacts of changes to US migration and asylum policies since President Trump took office on 20 January 2025.

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Are gender equality laws equal in imprisonment?

The female population in prison has reached almost one million globally, increasing by 57% in the past 25 years, comparing to a 22% rise in male prisoners. Due to the global rise of far right ideologies, an international backlash against women’s rights is expected posing more women to experiencing poverty, abuse and discriminatory laws in prison. But why are women jailed twice as fast as men?

Thousands of women are being arrested, detained and labelled as criminals due to actions imposed by poverty such as minor theft and unauthorised economic labour to support their babies. Financial support as well as community service should be provided for those in need. It must be traumatising for women who are wrongfully imprisoned to be separated from their children and live in poor conditions because the community failed to help them when experiencing financial hardship. As noted on the following report, Sabrina Mahtani's perspective to stop criminalising marginalised and vulnerable women could pose the solution to this crisis.

These women's offences are often misinterpreted and despite the fact that many of these regulations seem gender-neutral, patriarchal norms and institutionalised gender discrimination cause them to disproportionately affect women. In countries such as Iran and Afghanistan women are facing severe punishments if they don't comply with the harsh laws on how to dress and behave, resulting to extremely long prison sentences or the death penalty. In cases where women's human rights are violated we need to determine how imprisonment practices can be re-evaluated globally.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/mar/12/biased-laws-poverty-debt-abortion-female-prisoners-penal-reform-report

#EqualityMatters #HumanRights

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Biased laws and poverty driving huge rise in female prisoners – report

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First such study finds laws on abortion, debt and dress help increase rate of women being jailed twice as fast as for men

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Raising immigration doesn’t cause a housing crisis—poor housing policy does. Immigrants contribute to our economy, fill essential jobs, and strengthen communities. The real problem? Outdated zoning laws, lack of affordable housing, and big corporations hoarding land. Instead of blaming people who come here for a better life, let’s priorite practicle and equitable solutions not throwing blames and blantant lies. Immigration is beneificial, not the cause of our housing issues.

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Aussie dad on brink of homelessness urges PM to do one thing on immigration

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A father-of-three facing potential homelessness has suggested closing Australia’s border to slow migration rates amid the lack of housing around the country.

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Found this podcast clip interesting in considering the struggles that disabled employees face in returning to the workplace. Found it hopeful to see those advocating in our government despite recent changes in the same area by one of our closest allies… https://www.sbs.com.au/news/podcast-episode/hire-higher-advocates-call-for-increased-numbers-of-disabled-australians-in-public-service/wnr5uamfl

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I found this article really intersting! It feels that even the word feminism is picking up negative connotations when mentioned in mainstream rhetoric. The pervasive nature of these threats exist in casual media commentary like from Marty Sheargold, to the popularity of Andrew Tate, and then all the way up to the Oval office. But I do worry that in trying to combat the complete undermining of women’s rights and autonomy, white feminism resist in a manner that leaves little room for diverse women to also pursue equality. That once, (if ever), gender equality is reached, only then can people even begin to digest other issues too. If presidents are openly receding women’s rights, perhaps the fight back for basic rights will subordinate the fact that not all women are being impacted in the same way, and not everyone will be brought to the same place without conscious effort. Is it too much to want more for everyone? No, of course it isn’t, but history shows that white feminists can make concessions regarding race, religion, sexuality, when in pursuit of their rights.

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The significance of International Women’s Day 2025 cannot be overstated

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The world must resist mounting attacks on gender justice

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I'm reading the entry on 'feminist standpoint theory' in Carolyn D'Cruz's 'Democracy in Difference.' Linked to epistemology, it informs the work of feminists like Aileen Moreton-Robinson, who coined the concept of 'white patriarchal sovereignty.'

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super interesting that the UN released this report regarding systematic reproductive and sexual violence perpetrated by Israel in occupied Palestine like two days ago and our government still hasn’t said anything about it 🤔🙃 #colonyforcolony #freepalestine

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"More than a human can bear": Israel's systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023

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The rising controversy around migration, particularly in Europe and western nations, has sparked a debate: Are immigrants/asylum seekers the main cause of rising terrorist attacks in these regions?

The following article mentioned explains EU’s recent proposal to deport rejected asylum seekers to centres outside its borders raises pressing ethical and legal questions. In an era of rising immigration, how do we effectively balance national security with our duty to protect human rights. Is outsourcing asylum processing a viable solution, or does it undermine international law and humanitarian obligations? But those individuals fleeing their undemocratic countries for a better life have been affected by these anti-immigration policies, Like Australia’s controversial use of Christmas Island for detaining asylum seekers where people have tragically died while awaiting their asylum decision, such policies raise concerns about the treatment of vulnerable individuals fleeing undemocratic regimes.

As global migration challenges grow, it’s crucial to rethink how can we create policies that both secure and fair. How can we ensure the rights of the refugees are upheld while addressing the concerns of national security?

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BRUSSELS, March 11 (Reuters) - The European Commission on Tuesday proposed that member countries be allowed to set up centres in non-EU countries where migrants whose asylum claims were rejected would await deportation.

EU member countries struggle to ensure that asylum seekers whose claims are rejected leave their territories. The proposal aims to address the problem by sending the migrants to centres called "return hubs" in countries outside the EU while they await deportation proceedings.

Sign up here.

"The EU has some of the highest asylum standards in the world...But this is not sustainable if people who don't have the right, abuse the system," EU Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner told a press conference on Tuesday.

"One out of five people who are told to leave the EU, actually leave the EU and that is not acceptable."

The new plan aims to create common regulations across the EU, so that an order to a migrant to leave one member state will be considered an order to leave the entire EU.

The proposal, which still requires approval from the European Parliament and EU member states, is part of the migration and asylum pact agreed upon in late 2023.

Immigration remains a highly sensitive topic in most of the bloc's 27 member states, even though migrants entering the EU illegally dropped by 38% last year, the lowest level since 2021.

The proposal has faced heavy criticism from rights groups, who argue that it could lead to human rights violations and the extended detention of migrants on vague and punitive grounds.

"The European Commission has capitulated to the unworkable, expensive, and inhumane demands of a few vocal anti-human rights and anti-migration governments," said Eve Geddie of Amnesty International in a statement on Tuesday.

The proposal would also allow member states to detain individuals for up to two years if they pose a security risk.

Reporting by Amina Ismail, Tiffany Vermeylen and Julia Payne; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

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EU proposal would send rejected migrants to centres outside the bloc for deportation

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The European Commission on Tuesday proposed that member countries be allowed to set up centres in non-EU countries where migrants whose asylum claims were rejected would await deportation.

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Representation and speaking for others: is it a problem?

Representation of marginalised groups is needed in a diverse democracy. But who should be allowed to represent whom? Political representation typically refers to our representatives in government, but it also includes anyone who represents and speaks for marginalised groups, not representatives in government, nevertheless still political representatives. That kind of representation can be seen anywhere around us. For example, Greta Thunberg as the spokesperson for her generation on the campaign of climate change is an informal political representative. The article linked below on philosopher Wendy Salkin’s point of view on speaking for others lists more examples of informal political representatives.

Informal political representatives may or may not belong to the group they are representing. This brings up the same questions; What is the problem with speaking for others? Does speaking for others imperil real representation? Why do we allow representatives to speak for others? A political representative, formal or informal who belongs in the group that they are speaking for is a better person for that role than someone not belonging in that group. A member of the group would be more knowledgeable on the groups’ values, interests and preferences and most importantly would have lived themselves similar experiences with the group that they are representing, giving them a perspective than a non-member would not be able to understand.

Having established that having a member of the group as a representative is the better option, it is not always possible. Even though the representation of marginalised groups by non-members can be seen as ethically wrong due to the need for self-representation, members still benefit from the opportunity to publicly express their interests. In contexts where having a member representative is not possible, non-members can give a voice to minority groups.

https://humsci.stanford.edu/feature/philosopher-wendy-salkin-tackles-ethics-speaking-others

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Are fly-in politicians really able to speak for electorates to which they have no connection? Wouldn’t it be better for big parties to raise local representatives with actual connection to communities? Or do they care less about the people than they do about collecting votes?

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International Women's Day 2025 campaign theme: #AccelerateAction

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#AccelerateAction highlights the importance of never taking feminism for granted. Significant development in women’s education, economic freedom and safety/welfare must continuously be prioritised, as we cannot accept “full gender parity” being five generations away!

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme

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International Women's Day 2023 campaign theme: #EmbraceEquity

For International Women's Day and beyond, let's all fully #EmbraceEquity.

Equity isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have.

A focus on gender equity needs to be part of every society's DNA.

And it's critical to understand the difference between equity and equality.

The aim of the IWD 2023 #EmbraceEquity campaign theme is to get the world talking about Why equal opportunities aren't enough. People start from different places, so true inclusion and belonging require equitable action. Read more about this here.

All IWD activity is valid, that's what makes IWD inclusive.

So give equity a huge embrace

We can all truly embrace equity.

It's not just something we say. It's not just something we write about.

It's something we need to think about, know, value and embrace.

It's what we believe in, unconditionally. Equity means creating an inclusive world.

And we can all play a part

Each one of us can actively support and embrace equity within our own sphere of influence.

We can all challenge gender stereotypes, call out discrimination, draw attention to bias, and seek out inclusion.

Collective activism is what drives change. From grassroots action to wide-scale momentum, we can all embrace equity.

Forging gender equity isn't limited to women solely fighting the good fight. Allies are incredibly important for the social, economic, cultural, and political advancement of women.

Everyone everywhere can play a part.

All IWD activity is valid.

That's what makes IWD so inclusive.

Collectively, we can all forge positive change.

Being included, and a sense of belonging, feel right

When we embrace equity, we embrace diversity, and we embrace inclusion.

We embrace equity to forge harmony and unity, and to help drive success for all.

Equality is the goal, and equity is the means to get there.

Through the process of equity, we can reach equality.

Embracing equity is the right thing to do

Don't just say it. Think it. Be it. Do it. Value it. Truly embrace it.

Embrace equity in all its forms.

How will you embrace equity?

Share the passion and excitement that comes from valuing and supporting difference.

Reflect on how we can all be part of the solution, not the problem.

Encourage and rally your friends, family, colleagues, and community to embrace equity.

Together we can work collectively to impact positive change.

Together we can all help forge an equal world.

Let's all embrace equity today, and always.

Strike the #EmbraceEquity pose

Are you in? Will you embrace equity?

Show the world your huge embrace. Strike the IWD #EmbraceEquity pose to show solidarity.

Share your #EmbraceEquity image, video, resources, presentation, and articles across social media using #IWD2023 #EmbraceEquity to encourage others to help forge an inclusive world.

Send in your #EmbraceEquity images

2022 saw thousands of people across the world send in images showing their support and solidarity for the International Women's Day #BreakTheBias campaign theme that served to elevate a global focus on identifying and calling out conscious and unconscious bias in order to help drive positive change for women worldwide.

Let's forge that tremendous worldwide unity and support again for 2023.

Check out just some of the many #EmbraceEquity images from across the world coming in.

Be part of the movement: Engage & participate for IWD

Know your mindset and actions count. You can make a difference for women in the world.

All IWD activity is valid. IWD is inclusive, not exclusive.

Everyone, everywhere can build on IWD's century-plus history.

Be part of it.

Let's all step forward and commit to #EmbraceEquity.
#IWD2023 #EmbraceEquity embrace - verb - ɪmˈbreɪs - to willingly and enthusiastically accept, adopt, and espouse
Want to reflect on the IWD 2022 #BreakTheBias campaign theme? Click here.

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International Women's Day 2023 campaign theme: #EmbraceEquity

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For International Women's Day and beyond, let's all fully #EmbraceEquity. Equity isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have. A focus on gender equity needs to be part of every society's DNA. And it's critical to understand the difference between equity and equality.

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Anyone else read this article from the Guardian? Seems super relevant with the rise of right-wing populist movements in many countries across the world. Now more than ever people seem to be coming to their own conclusions about who ‘the people’ are, and excluding anyone different from themselves, be it immigrants, asylum seekers, LGBT people, or god forbid anyone of a different religion to themselves.

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When populism appears in the media, which it does more and more often now, it is typically presented without explanation, as if everyone can already define it. And everyone can, sort of - at least as long as they're allowed to simply cite the very developments that populism is supposed to explain: Brexit, Trump, Viktor Orbán's takeover of Hungary, the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The word evokes the long-simmering resentments of the everyman, brought to a boil by charismatic politicians hawking impossible promises. Often as not, populism sounds like something from a horror film: an alien bacteria that has somehow slipped through democracy's defences - aided, perhaps, by Steve Bannon or some other wily agent of mass manipulation - and is now poisoning political life, creating new ranks of populist voters among "us". (Tellingly, most writing about populism presumes an audience unsympathetic to populism.)

There is no shortage of prominent voices warning how dangerous populism is, and that we must take immediate steps to fight it. Tony Blair spends his days running the Institute for Global Change (IGC), an organisation founded, per its website, "to push back against the destructive approach of populism". In its 2018 world report, Human Rights Watch warned democracies of the world against "capitulation" to the "populist challenge". The rise of "populist movements", Barack Obama said in a speech last summer, had helped spark a global boom for the "politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment" that pave a path to authoritarianism. "I am not being alarmist. I am just stating facts," Obama said.

When populism is framed this way, the implication is clear. All responsible citizens have a responsibility to do their part in the battle - to know populism when they see it, understand its appeal (but not fall for it), and support politics that stop populism in its tracks, thereby saving democracy as we know it. "By fighting off the current infection," writes Yascha Mounk, until recently executive director of Blair's IGC and a prominent anti-populist writer, "we might just build up the necessary antibodies to remain immune against new bouts of the populist disease for decades to come."

But as breathless op-eds and thinktank reports about the populist menace keep piling up, they have provoked a sceptical backlash from critics who wonder aloud if populism even exists. It is now relatively common to encounter the idea that, just as there were no real witches in Salem, there are no real populists in politics - just people, attitudes and movements that the political centre misunderstands and fears, and wants you, reader, to fear too, although without the burden of having to explain exactly why. Populism, in this framing, is a bogeyman: a nonentity invoked for the purpose of stirring up fear. This argument has even made its way to the centrist mainstream. "Let's do away with the word 'populist,'" wrote the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen in July. "It's become sloppy to the point of meaninglessness, an overused epithet for multiple manifestations of political anger. Worse, it's freighted with contempt, applied to all voters who have decided that mainstream political parties have done nothing for their static incomes or disappearing jobs or sense of national decline these past two decades."

It is hard to deny that much talk of populism obscures more than it illuminates, and tells us more about anti-populist crusaders than any real live populist parties or voters. But long before populism became an object of transatlantic media fascination - before it became a zeitgeisty one-word explanation for everything - a small group of academics was studying it, trying to figure out exactly what it is and what lessons it holds for democratic politics. The debate they have produced is, like many academic debates, knotty and self-referential - and will always live in the shadow of the muddled media and political discourse. But it helps us see that the idea of populism is something more than just a centrist fairytale.

Thanks in large part to the persistent failure of governments across the west to enact anything resembling a credible vision of shared prosperity and security in the post-manufacturing era, we are now living through a time when familiar webs connecting citizens, ideologies and political parties are, if not falling apart, at least beginning to loosen and shift. As a result, the question of populism is not going away. The coming years are likely to include all of the following: more movements being labelled as populist, more movements calling themselves populist, more movements defensively insisting that they are not populist, and more conversations about the extent to which populism represents the problem or the solution.

The academic debate on populism shows us that making sense of this landscape requires more than just a usable definition of the P-word. In short, it shows us that we can't really talk about populism without talking about our conflicting conceptions of democracy - and the question of what it truly means for citizens to be sovereign.

It may be telling that very little of the public discussion of the alleged populist threat to democracy has been devoted to the workings of democracy itself. Perhaps we assume, without much thought, that democracy is such a self-explanatory idea that we already know all there is to know about the subject. Or perhaps we have come to regard democracy in its existing western form - basically liberal democracy - as the only possible endpoint for the evolution of politics. Populism, though it comes in many forms, always reminds us that nothing could be further from the truth.

In 2004 a young Dutch political scientist named Cas Mudde published The Populist Zeitgeist, a paper that proposed a new and concise definition of populism - one that would become the backbone of academic populism studies, a field that hardly existed at the time. Mudde was convinced that populism was a useful concept, which meant something more specific than "democracy, but practised in a way that I find distasteful". He was especially keen to challenge two common intuitions about populism: that it is uniquely defined by "highly emotional and simplistic" rhetoric, and that it primarily consists of "opportunistic policies" that aim to "buy" the support of voters.

Populism, Mudde argued, is more than just demagogy or opportunism. But it is not a fully formed political ideology like socialism or liberalism - it is instead a "thin" ideology, made up of just a few core beliefs. First: the most important division in society is an antagonistic one between "the people", understood to be fundamentally good, and "the elite", understood to be fundamentally corrupt and out of touch with everyday life. Second: all populists believe that politics should be an expression of the "general will" - a set of desires presumed to be shared as common sense by all "ordinary people". (Implicit in this belief is another: that such a thing as this "general will" exists.)

A populist movement, then, is one that consistently promises to channel the unified will of the people, and by doing so undercut the self-serving schemes of the elite establishment. As the National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen put it in 2007: "I will give voice to the people. Because in democracy only the people can be right, and none can be right against them." (Note how, in this formulation, there is no disagreement among "the people".) Or, in the more recent words of Donald Trump, speaking at his inauguration: "We are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the people ... The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country." (Note how members of "the establishment" are implicitly excluded from "the citizens".)

For decades, attempts at clear-headed conversations about populism had been stymied by the question of how it could be attributed to parties and politicians that were so obviously different: how can Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, for example, both be called populist? In what way are Occupy Wall Street and Brexit both possible examples of populist phenomena? Mudde's simple definition caught on because it has no trouble answering this type of question. If populism is truly ideologically "thin", then it has to attach itself to a more substantial host ideology in order to survive. But this ideology can lie anywhere along the left-right spectrum. Because, in Mudde's definition, populism is always piggybacking on other ideologies, the wide variety of populisms isn't a problem. It's exactly what you would expect.

"The people" and "the elite", Mudde wrote, are groupings with no static definition from one populist movement to another. These categories are, first and foremost, moral: people good, elites bad. The question of exactly who belongs in which group, though, depends on the character of the populist movement, and which "thick" ideology the populism ends up attached to. A populist "people" can define itself by an ethnic identity it feels is under threat, but just as easily by a shared sense of being victims of economic exploitation. What matters is that it blames a perceived class of corrupt elites; in the case of rightwing populisms, it may also heap scorn on some underclass, whether immigrants or racial minorities, whom the elites are accused of favouring with special treatment as part of their plot to keep power away from "real people".

When The Populist Zeitgeist was published, populism wasn't a hot topic: in all of 2005, Mudde's paper was cited only nine times. But as the field of populism studies has ballooned alongside mainstream interest in the subject, the paper has become widely recognised as a classic. By a wide margin, Mudde is now the populism scholar most likely to be cited or interviewed by journalists - as often as not, for articles in which his definition intermingles with the same old sloppy generalisations he set out to overturn.

Today, no academic disputes the dominance of Mudde's definition, especially among the growing number of scholars hoping to be part of the conversation about populism as a global phenomenon. One major factor in its success, in fact, is the way that it anticipated events in world politics. The market crashes of 2008 led to the emergence of anti-austerity movements - such as Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and Occupy worldwide - motivated by rage at financial institutions and the small class of people who benefited from their profits. These movements were obviously animated by a sense of opposition between "the people" and "the elite" - but old theories of populism that defined it specifically as rightwing, racist or anti-immigrant were insufficiently capacious to describe these new developments in populist politics.

The thin-ideology definition is also extremely congenial to the landscape of contemporary academic political science, which places a considerable premium on broad frameworks that enable young scholars to do empirical, quantitative work. Many new scholars of populism no longer feel the need to argue over definitions. Instead, they perform textual analyses designed to detect how often populism's core ideas, as laid out in Mudde's 2004 article, pop up in party platforms, political speeches, manifestos and tweets. Or they administer surveys designed to track the prevalence of the core tenets of populism in different populations, searching for profiles of archetypal populist voters.

Every time another paper relying on the ideological framework is published, it becomes a little more entrenched - a matter of some frustration to the minority of academics who still think it misses the point.

The rise of the thin-ideology definition, and its increasing influence in the still-ballooning public conversation about populism, has consistently provoked the objections of a small but persistent camp of dissenters within populism studies. These academics think defining populism in terms of core beliefs is a deep methodological error: many of them also think defining populism as an ideology runs the risk of making effective and worthwhile political strategies seem irresponsible, even dangerous.

These academics are likely to stress the extent to which mainstream political parties in the US and Europe have converged in recent decades, narrowing the range of opinions that find real purchase in national decision-making. They take as a given that this has swelled the ranks of people who feel that what gets called democracy responds to their concerns much less than it caters to the whims of a small, wealthy, self-dealing class of elites - elites who vigorously deny their own complicity in this state of affairs, often by insisting that there is no alternative.

As you might expect, these scholars tend to be most interested in challenges to the status quo that come from the left - from "the 99%" of Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign, to the "many not the few" of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party - and foreground an insistence that politics is not yet serving the correct constituency. They are also instinctively alert to the possibility that the self-preserving centre will try to defang outsider challenges by making anyone who endorses them appear unreasonable, frightening and constitutionally unequipped for the sober task of governance.

This makes them suspicious of any suggestion that there is an identifiable ideology called populism that has fundamental similarities no matter where on the political spectrum it appears. For this crowd, talk of an essence of populism - however thin - shades too easily into a charge of guilt by association, which inevitably has the effect of saddling leftwing populist movements (or even populist- looking movements) with the baggage of their xenophobic and racist rightwing counterparts. More specifically, they are likely to worry that the emphasis on exaggerated moralism as a defining feature of populism makes it too easy to depict legitimate opposition to elite power as irrational mobs.

Most objections to the thin-ideology definition owe a substantial debt to a duo of leftist political theorists: Chantal Mouffe, a Belgian who teaches at the University of Westminster, and her late husband, the Argentine Ernesto Laclau. Both thinkers have directly informed the new European left populist movements, including Syriza, Podemos and Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France Insoumise.

Mouffe and Laclau's writings on Marxism and populism - some of which they produced together, and some separately - are famously dense and sometimes resistant to summary. But at their core is the idea that conflict is an inescapable and defining feature of political life. In other words, the realm of politics is one where antagonism is natural and unavoidable, in which consensus cannot ever be permanent, and there is always a "we" and a "they".

"Political questions are not mere technical issues to be solved by experts," Mouffe insists. "Properly political questions always involve decisions which require us to make a choice between conflicting alternatives." This emphasis on conflict produces a vision of democratic life that looks more radical than typical mainstream accounts of liberal democracy - but, Laclau and Mouffe would argue, one that more accurately describes the actual logic of politics.

In this view, any existing socio-political order (or "hegemony" in Mouffe and Laclau's preferred formation, borrowed from the Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci) is subject to challenge. Every status quo - however sturdy - is only temporary, and can always be challenged by a movement that seeks to replace it with something new. Political change, in other words, is the result of demands against the existing order, which must be fused together in a movement to change it - a movement that may look a lot like populism.

When my demands and your demands and our neighbours' demands are brought together in such a movement, they can become the basis for a new political "we": a "people" insisting that the current arrangement of power be altered in their name. To the extent that such a movement succeeds, it creates a new hegemony - a new baseline - which itself becomes open to challenge over time.

From this perspective, populism is just another word for real politics: for people ("us") creating together, live on the ground, a sense of how our dissatisfactions relate, who is to blame ("them"), and how to force a change.

But those who benefit from the status quo don't want it to change; to this end, they might champion toothless approaches to collective decision-making: bipartisan consensus as an end in itself; the elevation of "rational" experts over hot-headed partisans; "Third Way" centrism that shuns ideological conflict in favour of "what works" or mediation by liberal institutions. These approaches (Mouffe calls them "non-politics") may for a time become dominant, as they did in the Anglo-American 1990s and early 2000s. But nothing lasts for ever, especially when the number of people who feel politicians are making their lives more precarious is rising. And then politics - real politics, which is to say populist politics - make a return.

According to Mouffe and Laclau, the only inherent connection between rightwing and leftwing populist movements is that both embrace the same fundamental truth about democracy: that it is an ever-shifting contest over how the default "we" of politics is defined and redefined, in which no one definition can be guaranteed to last. The goal, they argue, should not be placid consensus but "agonistic pluralism": a state in which opposition and disagreement are accepted as the norm, and in which people maintain the capacity to disagree intensely without demonising each other, or descending into war.

Mouffe, in particular, has in recent years argued that the political question of the immediate future is not how to fight populism, but rather which type of populist you want to be. It's about who you're with (who belongs in your "chain of equivalence"), who you're against (who is causing the problem, and how), and where to take your stand. Populism isn't the problem: instead, leftwing populism is the solution.

Not all the academics who take inspiration from Mouffe and Laclau go quite this far, especially in the sober pages of peer-reviewed political science journals. But their work is palpably motivated by a sense that the real threat of "populism" is that our panic over the word will foreclose the possibility of new kinds of politics and new challenges to the status quo - and that fear of populism on the left could enable the victory of populism of the right.

These scholars' preference is for definitions in which it has no ideological essence - not even the "thin" one posited by Cas Mudde. For them, even though the thin definition readily recognises populism's ideological portability, it is still irrevocably tainted by pejorative overtones that push participants in debates about populism to take a position "for" or "against" all populisms. With no internal essence, populism is harder to categorise as inherently good or bad. Paris Aslanidis, a Yale political scientist, calls populism a "discourse" - a mode of talking about politics, rather than a set of beliefs - one that frames politics in terms of the "supremacy of popular sovereignty".

Benjamin Moffitt, a senior lecturer in politics at the Australian Catholic University, refers to populism as a "political style", the presence of which "tells us very little about the substantive democratic content of any political project". Under definitions of this type, the central question is not whether a given political actor or group is or isn't populist. It is instead whether, from moment to moment, they are "doing populism", and how, and with what impact.

Of course, these disputes aren't really about the difference between a "thin ideology" and a "discourse." They are about whether "populist" is always an insult, and if the project of defining populism can ever be disentangled from the concept's pejorative baggage. Ultimately, they are disputes about which types of politics make us suspicious, and why.

The current discussion of populism in the west is strongly coloured by the populist far-right parties that emerged in Europe in the late 1980s and early 90s, such as the Austrian Freedom party, the Danish People's party and the French National Front. What most people knew about these parties, at first, was that they were openly nativist and racist. They talked about "real" citizens of their countries, and fixated on the issue of national and ethnic "purity," demonising immigrants and minorities. Many of their party leaders flirted winkingly with antisemitism, and their electoral victories coincided with a resurgence of extreme right-wing violence in Europe, such as the 1991 attack on immigrant workers and asylum seekers in the east German town of Hoyerswerda.

When journalists and politicians started calling these parties and their supporters populist, the term was an expression of alarm at a problem and, simultaneously, a euphemism that made it possible to gloss over that problem's exact qualities. This was especially useful for journalists who feared being viewed as anything less than politically neutral. Populist was obviously not a compliment, but it sounded less alarming than "extreme right" or "radical right". What the term seemed to communicate more than anything else was backwardness: a juvenile incapacity to bring your preferences to the political arena and engage in the complex give-and-take of rational compromise. The populist combination of immaturity, emotional resentment and intolerance was widely held to constitute a threat to postwar European democracy.

In one respect, the thin-ideology definition popularised by Cas Mudde dismantled this view of things, freeing populism from its exclusively far-right connotations, and cautioning against the conflation of populism with the other -isms it was often paired to.

Mudde and many other scholars who use the ideological definition have in fact repeatedly argued that neither Trump nor Brexit should be regarded primarily as populist phenomena. Of course both Trump and Brexiters used ample populist rhetoric; but in both cases, they argue, the majority of support was motivated not by passion for populism's core ideas, but by other ideological factors. After the Cambridge Dictionary declared populism 2017's "word of the year", Mudde wrote a Guardian column criticising the decision. ("It has become the buzzword of the year," he noted acidly, "mostly because it is very often poorly defined and wrongly used.") For the radical-right parties whose electoral campaigns in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria raised alarms across Europe, "populism comes secondary to nativism, and within contemporary European and US politics, populism functions at best as a fuzzy blanket to camouflage the nastier nativism", Mudde concluded.

And yet, despite these caveats, the thin definition nonetheless positions populism as always posing at least something of a majoritarian threat to liberal democracy. It is this judgment, more than any other, that keeps the fight going between scholars who adopt the ideological definition, on one hand, and their Mouffe- and Laclau-inspired critics, on the other.

Liberal democracy, in this context, has almost nothing to do with contemporary distinctions between left and right. It refers, instead, to the idea that government should facilitate pluralistic coexistence by balancing the never fully attainable ideal of popular sovereignty with institutions that enshrine the rule of law and civil rights, which cannot easily be overturned by a political majority. (In this regard, as Mudde writes in his original paper, liberal democracy is "therefore only partly democratic".) Today, liberal democracy is what most people mean when they talk about democracy - and therefore, to be deemed a threat to liberal democracy is, in the context of most political discussions, a devastatingly negative judgment.

Because populism, as described by the ideological definition, involves a moralised conception of an absolutely sovereign "people" - whose verdicts are regarded as practically unanimous - it is inevitable that populist movements will come into conflict with the liberal aspects of liberal democracy.

If all "real" people think the same way about the things that matter most in politics, then the idea of institutional protections for a dissenting minority are are at best superfluous and at worst nefarious. For the populists, they are just another wall that the corrupt elite has built to keep real power away from the people. The same is true for the independence of judges or regulators, or checks and balances between branches of government - especially when they appear to stymie the plans of a populist leader. In this account, the most basic elements of liberal democracy become both kindling and fuel for the populist fire.

No one who studies populism seriously - and not even the most opportunistic participants in the cottage industry of anti-populist alarmism - denies that populist movements can raise valid critiques of the status quo, and of the very real anti-democratic power of elites. Many take a viewpoint similar to that of the Mexican political theorist Benjamin Arditi, who described populism as a drunken guest at democracy's dinner party, one who disrespects the rules of sociability and, along the way, brings up the failure and hypocrisies that everyone else in the room has agreed to ignore. In Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Mudde and his frequent co-author, the Chilean political scientist Cristóbal Kaltwasser, describe contemporary populism as an "illiberal democratic response to an undemocratic liberalism" - one that "asks the right questions but provides the wrong answers".

Reading critics from the left, however, one often gets the sense that for them this adds up to so much lipstick on a pig: a sprinkling of nuance and restraint that still leaves populism, no matter its ideological stripe, with an undeserved taint of inherent danger. The unhappiness of these critics is magnified by the fact that populism rarely appears in mainstream discussion as anything but an insult - often in the mouth of pundits and politicians who regard the left and the right as an equal threat.

The fear in these circles is that saying anything negative about "populism"- however qualified and analytical -simply hands more ammunition to the very people who helped make politics such a hollow, undemocratic mess in the first place. Positioning any populism as fundamentally antithetical to liberal democracy, in this view, simply reinforces the association between populism and mob psychology, and stokes fears that individual rights will always be trampled by group identities.

Some scholars in this camp now argue that we should be talking less about populism and more about the centrist "anti-populism" that fears and demonises it. "Just as the adulterous spouse is always the one most suspicious of their own partner," wrote the Italian sociologist Marco d'Eramo in New Left Review in 2013, "so those who eviscerate democracy are the most inclined to see threats to it everywhere. Hence all the to-do about populism betrays a sense of uneasiness, smacks of overkill."

For each side in this debate, the obvious temptation is to simply dismiss the other - or to insist that what the other side calls "populism" isn't really populism at all, but just something populist-ish. But to conclude that the two camps are simply talking past each other would be to miss the extent to which they are in agreement -and what, taken together, they tell us about the current political moment.

In 1967, when political theorists from around the world gathered at the London School of Economics for the first ever academic conference on populism, they had a hard time figuring out exactly what they were supposed to be talking about. The word came from the "prairie populists", an 1890s movement of US farmers who supported more robust regulation of capitalism. But in the intervening decades it had been used for a wide and varied grab bag of phenomena from around the world, from McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts in the US to charismatic Latin American leaders.

In the end, the conference proceedings failed to clarify the matter at hand. "There can at present be no doubt about the importance of populism," read a summary report. "But no one is clear what it is."

Over half a century later, there has been some progress. Populism, specialists now agree, is an ideologically portable way of looking at politics as a forum for opposition between "people" and "elites". This definition creates more questions: is the conceptual "people" of populism inherently defined in a way that spells danger to pluralistic coexistence? Or, less menacingly, is the idea of "the people" a necessary but always malleable concept - simply part of what it means to do politics?

But populism, whatever it is, is not a chemical: no scientist will ever come along and reveal its exact, objective composition. Populism is a lens for looking at our politics, including - down a long hall of mirrors - the politics of what gets called populist, and with what implications.

The questions of populism would have little urgency were it not for the widespread agreement about the shortcomings of the political status quo: about the abyss between the shining ideals of equality and responsive government implied by our talk about democracy and the tarnished reality of life on the ground. The notion that "the people" are being poorly served by politics has vast resonance across the political spectrum, and for good reason.

But what is the remedy? Among the proponents of the ideological definition, some decline to provide an answer, claiming that they are looking only to define and measure populism, not take a stance on it. Others admit that, in the case of populism, the options for producing a description without forming a judgment are basically nonexistent. The order of the day, in their view, is to convince citizens to recommit to liberal democracy and its institutions.

There is, however, widespread recognition in this camp - more than they are credited with by their critics on the left - that it will no longer suffice to insist that there is no acceptable alternative to existing liberal democracy. Writing in the Guardian in 2017, Mudde argued that responding to populism required more than "purely anti-populist campaigns"; it would take, he claimed, "a return to ideological politics". Even liberals who want some issues to be "depoliticised" - to be removed from the realm of democracy and handed over to experts - will have to, at a minimum, remake the case for those decisions. Nothing can stay depoliticised for ever; that's politics.

If you squint just a little, this looks more than a bit like what you would expect from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, with their insistence that there is no space "beyond left and right" and no way to put political decisions - decisions about our collective fate - outside the reach of politics. Arguably, you might say that the defenders of liberal democracy are being suddenly reacquainted with the need to construct a democratic "we" - a people - around their demand to protect liberal institutions and procedures, in opposition to radical rightwing parties who are happy to see them discarded.

The corresponding challenge for anyone further on the left is to figure out the relationship between their long-term goals and the ideals of liberal democracy. There have always been critics for whom liberal democracy is sham democracy: a nice-sounding set of universal principles that, in practice, end up functioning as smokescreens that normalise the exploitations and inequities of capitalism.

Other theorists, Mouffe included, view something like the European social democracy of the 60s and 70s as the precondition for whatever comes next - for "radical democracy" that forces liberal democracy to make good on its promises of equality. But even Mouffe is no longer optimistic about our ability to revive our democratic prospects. Two years ago she wrote: "In 1985 we said 'we need to radicalise democracy'; now we first need to restore democracy, so we can then radicalise it; the task is far more difficult." What that task will look like on the ground is an open question.

The media framing of populism almost always sounds like a discussion about the margins: about forces from outside "normal" or "rational" politics threatening to throw off the balance of the status quo. But the scholarly discourse makes clear that this is backward: that populism is inherent to democracy, and especially to democracy as we know it in the contemporary west. It finds life in the cracks - or more lately, the chasms - between democracy's promises and the impossibility of their full, permanent realisation.

The question of populism, then, is always the question of what kind of democracy we want, and the fact that we will never stop arguing about this. Anxiety about populism can be a smokescreen for people who don't want the world as they know it to be disturbed. But it also flows from the core insight that we can never know exactly where democracy is going to take us - not this time, nor the next, nor the time after that.

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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'We the people': the battle to define populism

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The long read : The noisy dispute over the meaning of populism is more than just an academic squabble - it's a crucial argument about what we expect from democracy

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TOPIC: Free Palestine Movement

Would this film be socially acceptable and institutionally approved if it lacked Israeli co-authorship? Or does Palestine only become palatable when it has proximity to ‘legitimate’ identities – and does this actually unsettle the status quo then or reinforce it?

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‘No Other Land’ wins Oscar for best documentary feature film

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“No Other Land” has won the best documentary feature film Oscar.

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Within Australia 33% of our male prisoners are indigenous men, even though our indigenous population is 3%. Looking at this statistic and others similar, such as 17% of all incarcerated people in Australia are indigenous, it is obvious that indigenous people are making up a big proportion of our prison systems. It has to be considered why this is the case, is it that indigenous people are being heavily targeted by the police? There are lots of cases of this as discussed in an article linked below by Harvard International Review. Or could it be that indigenous children are not receiving as much education and opportunity therefore turning to crime? Which is supported in an Australian Human Rights commission report linked below outlining that indigenous Australians suffer grossly disproportionate rates of disadvantage in Australia. Australia has never given back the rightful sovereignty to indigenous Australians however they have tried to first abolish, then assimilate indigenous people and their culture into western culture. Now the stigma around indigenous people particularly in regional areas of Australia is that they are people with high crime rates, drug problems and violence. This impacts the way that other Australians view indigenous people and communities, particularly police and people working within the justice system. So, is it fair to say that Australia's democracy that boasts equality, freedom of speech and representation is failing or even targeting its indigenous people in which they colonised in our justice and incarceration systems?

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/the-voice-offers-new-way-forward-to-end-australias-appallingly-high-incarceration-rates/

https://hir.harvard.edu/police-violence-australia-aboriginals/

https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/pdf/social_justice/submissions_un_hr_committee/3_indigenous_disadvantage.pdf

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EXAMPLE MOCK TWEET: Reflecting on the im/possibilities of representation and 'the coloniaity of knowledge' that structures so much of our collective capacities to respond to and understand what is going on with regard to debates over democracy, war, economic mis/management, ecological crises etc...

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Here is where we'll meet to post and engage with others for the first Assessment. Remember to stick to guide - short posts, include links if want to/can, and engage with others.