September 11 – 17, 2021
News
Comment
Comment
Karen Middleton
After the war on terror
“After the September 11 attacks, America was a nation bent on revenge. What is less understandable is why, in its planning for a war that lasted two decades, there was no reflection on anything but that. Now the same absence of reflection looks like prevailing again.”
Letters, Cartoon & Editorial
Culture
The Influence
Jazz Money
Poet Jazz Money talks about how Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria has inspired her work and paved the way for other Indigenous writers.
Fiction
Local giant
“Children between the ages of six and nine are randomly selected for the giant with an app developed by local entrepreneurs. In May last year, a group of children calling themselves Extermination Rebellion concealed the whereabouts of eight of the selected for several weeks, but the siege ended when the children were discovered hiding in an abandoned shearing shed. Twenty-two children were arrested but they were all too young to be charged with a crime.”
Books
Life
Puzzles
Quotes
Gender
“There is still an attitude, a culture that excuses, justifies, ignores or condones gender inequality that drives, ultimately, violence against women.”
The prime minister addresses the National Summit on Women’s Safety. He’s proof you can turn up as a man at a feminist conference and still draw exclusively on personal experience.
Rules
“Caught a couple of magic waves ... all ridgy didgy, even under the current, rather oppressive regime.”
The former prime minister explains that he was acting within the rules after being photographed without a mask in Manly. The man really did dismantle a carbon price in pursuit of his endless summer.
Drugs
“What I didn’t know was that premier Gladys Berejiklian’s in a sprint while the rest of us are supposed to do some sort of egg and spoon thing.”
The Victorian premier vents his frustration at the division of Pfizer doses from Britain. Just a note to the premier: if there’s a spoon involved, it’s probably not a vaccine in your needle.
Politics
“I am on the side of the kids who are being kicked out of the classroom.”
The disgraced former Victorian Liberal leader and current Victorian Liberal leader makes his pitch for the state. School is as good a place as any to start for a man who looks as if he is the victim of a particularly spiteful wedgie.
Faith
“I am obligated to respect the decision of those members of the clergy who have a conscientious objection.”
The Catholic Archbishop of Hobart asks that priests who have refused to be vaccinated still be able to offer ministry in aged-care homes. Jesus was a fisher of men and who’s to say he didn’t use a dragnet.
Sport
“First he takes your legs … Then he takes your soul.”
The retired tennis star describes playing against Novak Djokovic. The world No. 1 will take anything, frankly, except the vaccine.
