Foreign fighter with the ‘Anzac spirit’
It’s hard not to admire Reece Harding, who died in Syria fighting for the Kurdish peshmerga against IS. His sense of social justice, idealism and internationalism led him to take up arms against an organisation he seemingly believed lived up to Tony Abbott’s characterisation as a ‘death cult’.
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Why nobody is impressed by your faux humanitarianism and yes, your profile picture is racist
Social media is essentially a marketing platform people use to promote themselves—and their egos. One alarming trend involves people from first world countries taking selfies with poor children in places like Africa and South America. This kind of faux humanitarianism is self-serving and racist, argues Tim Robertson, and speaks volumes about the problem with so much of Western aid.
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Jihadi Jake: The product of a toxic Right and an impotent Left
It’s somewhat sobering to read Jake Bilardi’s final blog post—less manifesto, in parts, more expository essay—and find oneself agreeing with many of his views and opinions on the state of the world. He was revolted with the Israel–Palestine conflict, which he—echoing the title of Max Blumenthal’s latest book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel—characterises as ‘the ultimate David and Goliath story, where the world was wanting so desperately to turn the victim into the oppressor and the oppressor into the victim, with much success’.
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Triple threat: Hezbollah versus Israel and the Islamic State
Hezbollah is an organisation divided as it fights two “existential threats”. Is this all just rhetoric? Freelance journalist Tim Robertson reports.
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Banksy on Palestine’s broken walls: the medium really is the message
The politics and cultural value of street art have long been divisive topics because it pushes back against what has, for centuries, been considered ‘art.’ The idea that street art is at once both valuable — culturally and artistically — and a canvas for others to paint over, challenges long accepted notions of how art should be consumed and preserved. Artists have always re-used canvases, but they never painted over their masterpieces. Street artists, at least in the early days, didn’t discriminate.
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‘The end of the Middle East’: with IS closing in, Jordan on the brink
Jordan shares land borders with Syria and Iraq and is struggling to deal with the war. But things might get even worse if the Islamic State decides to try to expand its caliphate, writes freelance journalist Tim Robertson.
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