Painting Fakes

Back in 1904, Peter Kropotkin published the anarchist classic Mutual Aid.   He wrote it as a response to the prevailing pseudo-Darwinian notion that life, both animal and human, was defined by a perpetual struggle for survival - a view that drove the ravages of colonialism, the exploitation of labour by capital, and the wars which engulfed Europe in the years after its publication.   For Kropotkin, this view is a mistake.  He starts in the animal kingdom, going through ants and bees forming huge cooperative colonies, birds forming flocks for food gathering, protection and navigation across migrations, mammals forming packs for cooperative hunting and herds for mutual protection.  Throughout the animal kingdom, he says cooperation is the norm.  For mammals and birds, certainly, it is solitary competition which is the exception.   He then moves on to spend most of the book talking about cooperation and mutual aid as a driver of human history, from p...

Our media is in a spin about the One Nation victory in the Farrer by-election recently, following hot on the heels of the big gains made by Reform (and also the Greens) in recent UK local government elections.  It seems to me that political journalists are flailing about, trying to explain what is going on.  The predominant narrative is that this is about punishment, and that voters are blaming the major parties for the fact that they are struggling to pay the bills.  The far-right parties, with their outspoken leaders and taboo-smashing statements, seem to offer an alternative.   David Farley is the first One Nation member of the lower house. Will these parties make our lives better?  You only need to look at the US to see they won't.  The far-right Trump administration is actively making the lives of poor people worse while Trump and his billionaire cronies cash in.  Reform and One Nation would do the same if they got the chance - why else do yo...

This Lent I've been thinking about one of the stories of Jesus' life, found in Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39, with a different, abridged version in Matthew 8:28-34. The story concerns a man whose name we never learn.  He lives in 'the region of the Gerasenes' (with variations on the place name in the other gospels), part of the Decapolis on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.  This region was a set of multi-ethnic towns, with many residents being veterans of the Roman Army as well as local ethnic peoples including some Jews.  We don't know if this man was a Jew although it seems likely - none of the gospels tell us one way or the other. What we do know is that he had an 'impure spirit' - that is, he was inhabited by a demon.   "This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue...

"Who is Edward Bellamy?", I hear you ask.  I would have asked the same until a few weeks ago, when I saw his book, Looking Backward: 2000-1887,  in one of our suburb's little street libraries .  I was intrigued and brought it home, and I thought I would share it with you before I put it back. Bellamy was born in Massachusetts in 1850 and came from a well-off family, going to university and eventually qualifying as a barrister.  He soon quit the law, convinced it was just there to uphold the plutocracy.  He could have been a classic 1960's 'angry young man', but born out of time.  From early in his life he was appalled at the slums just a short walk from his own well-off neighbourhood, and after quitting the law he worked as a writer and journalist, criticising child labour and labour laws that allowed prices to rise but wages to stagnate.  He was appalled by poverty and suffering, and was convinced there must be a better way. Looking Backward was the c...

I keep stumbling across something I find really perplexing, a vision of Australian unity which sounds innocuous, but is not. Because it's summer, let's start with a cricket tale.  You have probably heard of Usman Khawaja, a Pakistani-born Australian cricketer who has just announced his retirement at the age of 39 after a long, successful career playing Test cricket for Australia.  He is the first Pakistani-born player, and the first Muslim, to play cricket for Australia.  He is devoted to his Islamic faith, not in the sense of thinking everyone else should be a Muslim, but in the way it orders his life - he reads the Koran and prays every day, attends Friday prayers and fasts during Ramadan when cricket schedules permit, refrains from alcohol, is devoted to his family and generally tries to live by the tenets of his faith.  As he's got older he's also been more prepared to speak out on wider issues - combating racism in sport and elsewhere, calling out racist abuse i...