Think Again

Lew Zipin and Jacques have a conversation about the variety of politcal and economic and personal 'troubles' we experience presently and how a different more active, reflective and engaged approach to schooling and education more generally would assist innot only dealing with them but better prepare 'us' for changing the conditions under which those troubles arise...Below a full list of suggestion...

Jacques and Jennifer do some post-Trump analysis, looking at how Trump's victory in the US elections could even happen. They argue that the rot has been there for centuries, with an individualist ideology embedded in the psyche of the people from the US's inception. Conditions have ripened for the triumph of a cult figure like Trump in more recent times, including a poorly educated populace, strug...

Andy Schmulow, Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of Wollongong, talks about the deliberate tax evasion strategies of mega rich corporations, robbing the public purse of much-needed billions of dollars. Meanwhile the Australia Tax Office (ATO) takes a softly softly approach to bringing these corporations to heel. In fact, Andy believes the ATO's approach could actually be e...

Ben Rivers talks about the play he wrote and performs, 'The invaders' fear of memories: A play about the colonisation of Palestine'.The play is based on the diaries of his great-grandfather, Yousef Nachmani, who fled Tsarist Russia in 1907 for Ottoman Palestine. Full of Zionist ideals, he became complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinian people. Ben's father (Yousef's grandson) beca...

Jacques' guest, Suzan Saka, talks about the fascinating history and rich culture of the Alevi people, and their substantial presence in Australia. We wonder why we don't hear more about them! For those who want to learn more and have a good day out, there is an Anatolian Alevi Festival at Coburg Lake Reserve (metropolitan Melbourne) Sunday 17 November from 11am. You can also learn more about the A...

Jacques and Jennifer ruminate on the state of politics in Australia and the role of independents in disrupting the dominant duopoly of Labor and Coalition. They talk about how community development fits in with this, and they hark back to their very first program on relationality - the idea that we exist and thrive within a living network of relationships. This certainly explains a lot of the succ...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about Israel's denial of its genocidal onslaughts on the Palestinian people and the different ways it seeks to mask the truth in strategies of 'occlusion'.Examples include the planting of forests over 'emptied out' Palestinian villages in a mass exercise of 'green washing', the building of a 'Museum of Tolerance' on the site of the largest and most important Muslim cemete...

Jennifer and Jacques continue their conversation about the Australian political system as we approach municipal and state elections at the end of this month, and a federal election before May 2025.Our two-party system comes under fire, especially the unrepresentative nature of the two main parties, and their use of power to keep out other players. Jacques and Jennifer also express their disappoint...

Jennifer and Jacques discuss the dominance and convergence of the two main parties, and how neither are able or willing to make the substantial changes we so badly need. They give a potted history of bold reformist Labor policies of the past, and they contrast this with the current timid and skittish federal Labor Party, currently in government.

We are meant to be living in a democracy. That means that 'we' the 'people', the 'demos' in democracy are meant to have a say in how we are governed. But, as main political parties in Australia and other western countries align in the interests of ruling elites, and the disparity grows between what the parties agree on and what the people want, we have to question whether we are living in a democr...

Jacques and Jennifer discuss how the US is an Empire with vast extended territories and has been for a long time, and how we have a collective blindspot about this as we refer to a limited 'logo' map of the US, which in reality was only a true representation of its real shape and extent for a few years in the 1850s. This is certainly a hidden aspect of the US's imperial hegemony and power as Danie...

In this conversation, Daryl and Jacques examine how the professions and their assumed expertise contribute to the systemic failure of institutions to meaningfully respond to the issues and problems they are supposed to 'deal with', particularly also through the ideological and hierarchical power accorded to professional expertise; indeed, how they often aggravate those issue and problems. We are l...

Jacques and Deb Salvagno have a conversation about Timor Leste and the role and strengths of Women in that country's efforts to create a just and prosperous country for all; Deb is co-founder or East Timor Woman Australia (ETWA), an organisation that has worked in solidarity with women weavers' cooperatives in Timor Leste since the early-2000s. They talk about Timor Leste's (bloody) struggle for i...

Jennifer and Jacques talk about the need to de-grow the economy and change our fundamental way of life to save ourselves and the planet. The capitalist system has us on a downward spiral of mass exploitation and extraction, with the 'global south' supporting our privileged way of life through cheap labour and the devastation of local ecologies. The presenters look to the later Karl Marx (largely u...

Jacques talks about the ways that Australia continues to drop the ball on international justice, while defaulting to the (US) 'might is right' principle, and thus gradually losing its moral standing in the eyes of the rest of the world. It is a shameful contrast to our history of supporting international rules that all are expected to abide by, and forums of justice where errant nations are called...

Jacques and Jennifer talk about the Palestinian conflict and its wider political and military context, especially the role of the US and the west in general, and the biased and woeful coverage in our news media. As asked by Stuart Rees quoted from Pearls and Irritations: 'Why can't an alleged human rights abiding country such as Australia name Israei policies as grotesque and genocidal?...'

Jennifer speaks with Graham Matthews,Socialist, activist and person with disability, about the proposed reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).In late March Bill Shorten, Minister for the NDIS, introduced a Bill to Parliament, projected to save over $14 billion over the next five years, while giving the government a lot more control over what can be claimed for under the Scheme...

Jennifer and Jacques continue their theme of pre-election issues, leading up to the federal election and some state elections. For this program they talk about the history of 'multicultural' policies and living realities in Australia and where we are headed with them and whether we really deserve to be called and advertised as a 'success story'. They finish with some reflections about what multicu...

Jennifer and Jacques discuss some international issues merging with domestic ones leading up to the elections.... 'systemic collusion' at work...In particular, they focus on the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza, perpetrated by the State of Israel with considerable international support. On the domestic front this has led to the squashing of protest and dissent on a variety of levels....

Simon Reeves talks with Jacques about his work as a peace and community development activist, including 'love as a force for change and good'. Simon is involved in 'disruptive' peace activism and in the development and empowerment of local communities, especially in an empoverished neighbourhood in Norlane, North Geelong, Victoria.

Jacques has a conversation with Marisa Holmes, one of the organisers of the 2011 Zucotti Park Lower Manhattan 'Occupy Wall Street' protest movement which soon spread to over 1000 other 'Occupy' protests and 'occupations' across the world... She discusses learnings from the organising of these events all questioning and addressing the meanwhile popular inequality-juxtaposition of the '1%-ers' vs th...

For this Radiothon fund-raiser special, 11 guests from the past year talk about their work in activism, community development, social analysis and creating a better future.  

Heading toward the next election cycle, Jennifer and Jacques lament the state of public discourse, with superficial polarised positions reflected through the lethal triangle of two main parties and the mainstream media. To address this they raise issues of where we are going as a society, including migration, racism, housing, universities, wage-poverty, AUKUS, and the downward spiral of certain 'd...

Jennifer speaks with Lew Zipin who has had a career in education programs and been a union activist across three Australian universities. He talks about some devastating trends that have taken hold of our universities over the past two or three decades, invoking a few concepts of Karl Marx that seem more relevant than ever. One such concept is the 'alienation' that academic staff experience when t...