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Showing posts from July, 2015

On Bob Ellis

Yes he was perhaps the Piers Akerman of the left and could be a bit grumpy and crazy at times (I have seen this first hand and can attest) and yet. When I read "First Abolish the Customer" at 19, it was a political awakening, a fundamental shift in my consciousness, and it set me on the political path I continue today, and my enduring hatred of the stifling parasitic cancer of economic rationalism. (Studying social science, then social work, at university, I think I have referenced that book in every essay I've written). And so it went: Ellis's words and books have been there to illuminate and enlighten every major political event in the nearly 20 years (dear god, so long) since, the proudly defiant Ellis shelf on my bookcase. And now he is dying, and it feels like the pending loss of a grumpy uncle. perhaps, whom you nevertheless had great affection for, and the liver cancer he says will kill him means he will never see the end of the Abbott government. Not here to m

The Most Important Pro-choice Argument

So many arguments between the pro- and anti- choice movements on abortion come down to a key issue - what is a human life and when does it begin? When sperm meets egg, which considering that 50% of all conceptions never implant, which means a sexually active women should probably hold a funeral every time she menstruates, just in case? At the quickening, as was church teaching throughout history? At birth? Here's the thing. When we're talking about abortion, it doesn't matter when life begins. That's not the point. Even if you believe that human life, in all its worth, begins at conception, in denying an abortion to a woman who wants one, in forcing her to use her body to protect a human baby, you are forcing her to use her body to sustain another life. We don't do that in any other circumstance. We don't even do that after death, seeing that organ donation is not compulsory; you can choose to be buried or cremated with your organs even if it means the death of