Perrorist 
I fell out of bed last night, first time ever. It wasn’t my regular bed. One of our grand-daughters had taken up that space, and I was relegated to a spare room. The mattress is long past its use-by date, and there’s diminished support at the edges. I rolled over in my sleep and got a rude awakening when I landed on the floor, hurting my right hip. That was our previous … Read more
Recently I’ve experienced an upsurge of spam email in my inbox. Out of curiosity, yesterday I decided not to delete any but to allow them to fill up my Junk Email folder. By the end of the day I had received 41 items, the most I could remember. The main culprits were spammers promising to provide drinks that would reduce my waistline or drop my dress size (oi, watch it!), pills to … Read more
Seagulls wheeling and crying overhead, waves breaking against the shore, his body embraced by the warmth of the sun, Erik yielded to the creeping languor and stretched out on his beach towel, hands folded over his stomach, cap shielding his eyes. Lynda lay face down alongside him, bikini top unhooked, reading a paperback she’d borrowed from the library. As he was drifting off, he caught snatches of an argument in a foreign … Read more
I bought a FitBit a few months ago to help me stay fit. I set a target of 6000 steps a day, a modest total if you’re in the prime of life, less so when you’re my age. I manage to achieve this most days, but I can’t deny its effect on my daily activities. The FitBit counts steps by the swinging of the arm bearing the watch, so I avoid riding … Read more
If you believe the mainstream media you could be forgiven for thinking that Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez’s victory in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th Congressional district against the 10-term incumbent Representative Joseph Crowley was merely reactionary, a need for change. In fact, it was more reflective of her constituency and its rejection of the status quo. Ms Ocasia-Cortez is a young socialist activist. She’s a third-generation New Yorker whose family has roots in Puerto … Read more
One more thing about the creeping erosion of liberty in the name of security: underlying public acceptance of these measures is the assumption that we will continue to live under a benign government. History gives the lie to that. Look at Turkey, for example. Or Italy and Germany in the thirties, where the expectation that embracing authoritarianism would make everyone much safer. Except it didn’t.
Yesterday I was concerned about a federal bill to limit the right to protest freely. Today I discover that the New South Wales Parliament has just issued a regulation that provides public officials with broad power to “direct a person” to stop “taking part in any gathering, meeting or assembly” that takes place on public land, e,g. roads, squares, parks. The only exception is “in the case of a cemetery, for the … Read more
The Foreign Espionage Bill (or, to give it its full name, National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Bill) going through parliament at the moment is a threat to not-for-profit (NFP) organisations in that it could make peaceful protests punishable by up to 20 years in jail. Hundreds of thousands of people around Australia took to the streets to protest against Australian involvement in the Iraq war. Potentially, they could all be … Read more
