The Adelaide Writers’ Week saga was about lobby groups, false equivalence and pressure on cultural institutions to bend to political demands, Louise Adler writes.
#PearlsAndIrritations #auspol #ArtsIndependence #WritersFestivals #CulturalPolitics #FreeSpeech
The Israel lobby and its stenographers in the media dislike context so last night at the Adelaide Town Hall I set the record straight on the #AWW26 debacle.Given the continuing misrepresentation and fact free reporting an edited version of the speech is now up on the Pearls & Irritations website.
Another brilliant programme , yet again this star investigative journalist exposes corruption , greed and profound misogyny.
I love the term “fucknuckle”, you’ve made my day Wendy !
My grandfather handed this carving through the barbed wire at Beaune La Rolande to my father who was 14 . They would never see each other again . My grandfather was then deported to Birkenau where he died. As a secular Jew he recognised the scourge of antisemitism. That is my inheritance.
The South Australian Premier on ABC radio “ I absolutely made it very clear to the board that I did not think it was wise to have someone who has been accused of antisemitism at best or done it at worst , appearing at Writers’ Week”.
No Adelaide Writers Week for me. I can’t in any good conscience now appear at a festival seeking to mute a very necessary public conversation … Randa Abdel-Fattah is an important voice. Here’s something I published from her on, guess what, Palestinian marginalisation. meanjin.com.au/latest/the-g...
In the name of “social cohesion” Zionists will soon have their own exclusive armed special forces on Australian streets, in addition to special oversight of Australian media, arts, culture, and education by way of the Zionist envoy, Jillian Segal. Cool and normal.
Police quietly drop all charges against Bondi F*** Israel t-shirt man, Andrew Brown after a year of legal hell
#auspol
michaelwest.com.au/charges-drop...
A trip down memory lane , thanks Wendy x
This explicit celebration of death went unremarked, although clearly an incitement to violence .
It was promoted as “fun for all ages, including a battle game with toy NERF guns and Krav Maga training ,the a self-defence system developed by the Israeli military”.
A week before the Bondi shooting the Lions of Zion held a “ family friendly” party in a Melbourne park, celebrating the Mossad pager attack which killed 42 people and injured 4000.
It may not be obvious but the give away is when he invokes the Jewish sage Hillel’s famous aphorism in the Pirkei Avot ( Ethics of the Fathers) “if not me , who? If not now, when?”. Hillel was referring to Moses. Geddit ?
Frydenberg bloviating, in an Oscar winning performance @fergusonnews.bsky.social at the reasonable question regarding the possibility he might be exploiting the Bondi atrocity in the service of his own political ambitions.
But did anyone on this train know who Leavis was? Would anyone care if he’d met his end in a train’s toilet ? Finally after way too long he emerged. I didn’t have the courage to ask him about his conviction that the text is everything . And we went our separate ways.
What if his briefcase held his last ms? What if he’d changed his mind and decided that context and history mattered and might actually enrich our textual analysis. Of course “appropriating” his ms would be a delicious post-modern response but to a nice girl from Melbourne it wasn’t ethical .
On the Reading train is a trip down memory lane. Last century sat opposite F.R.Leavis .He disappeared into the toilet, leaving his briefcase on the seat. What was a young English Lit student to do ? What if Leavis had joined God’s other Great Critics in the sky?
‘That Germany has a responsibility to remember the Holocaust is beyond question. But it’s striking how little concern there is for other populations that have experienced racial discrimination or violence at the hands of the Germans.’
@adamshatz.bsky.social in Berlin: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Nothing new about letters / phone calls being used to intimidate arts orgs & silence artists.Lobby groups simply ramped up efforts in the last 22 months. hhttps://www.theage.com.au/culture/books/letter-to-bendigo-writers-festival-emerges-flagging-concern-over-palestinian-writer-20250818-p5mnpd.html
Two scenes. Scene 1: man beside corpse wrapped for burial with PRESS flak jacket on top, Netanyahu on other side. Man says, “Why did you kill him?”.Netanyahu replies, “Because he was Hamas.” Scene 2: same set up, man says, “How do you know he was Hamas?” Netanyahu says, “Because we killed him.”
Killing journalists.
My @smh cartoon.
Shame on me , a book person , failing to spell an author’s name correctly . Forgive me @charlottemendelson.bsky.social
I was in my element.https://observer.co.uk/style/gardens/article/have-you-seen-my-hair-nothing-pecky-with-claws-flies-near-me
I was asked to Adelaide for the glory that is Writers’ Week. The festival was an unalloyed sunny joy: stately Australian women in either long stylish dresses and therapist jewellery, or short dresses with multiple piercings; clever readers; loads of fruit.
@Charlottemendelsnon.bsky.social thanks for this tribute to Australia’s best literary festival .It was a joy to have you join us . “My uneasy relationship with birdlife continued, until Australia.
Sad news today of the death of Rose Wight , a brilliant Director of Adelaide Writers’ Week and the co-founder of the Festival of Ideas . She was a passionate advocate for writing and reading and her festivals were unmissable for everyone in the book business.
‘It hasn’t escaped Palestinians’ notice that Israel’s strikes against Gaza have been far less precise than its strikes against Iran and Lebanon: a measure of the contempt in which they are held.’
Adam Shatz on the world since 7 October: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Read this to understand the playbook that underpins the Segal report and the proposed “report card” to assess the compliance of Australian universities to the lobby’s edicts . www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Exhibit A re Israel’s policy of mass starvation? Oct 9th,
2023 then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
