By a spokesperson for the eSafety Commissioner:

Yesterday the Federal Court granted an interim injunction compelling X Corp to hide Class 1 material on X that was the subject of eSafety’s removal notice of 16 April, 2024.

In summary, eSafety’s removal notice to X Corp required it to take all reasonable steps to ensure the removal of the extreme violent video content of the alleged terrorist act at Wakeley in Sydney on 15 April. The removal notice identified specific URLs where the material was located.

X Corp has 24 hours to comply with the Court’s interim order, beginning from the time the court issued the interim injunction order on Monday evening.

eSafety expects a further hearing to take place in the coming days during which the Court will be asked to decide whether it will extend the interim injunction.

It is expected this second hearing will be followed by a final hearing at which eSafety will seek a permanent injunction and civil penalties against X Corp. The date of the final hearing will be determined by the Court.

To be clear, eSafety’s removal notice does not relate to commentary, public debate or other posts about this event, even those which may link to extreme violent content. It only concerns the video of the violent stabbing attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.

Following the events of 15 April, eSafety worked cooperatively with other companies, including, Google, Microsoft, Snap and Tik Tok, to remove the material.

Some of these companies have taken additional, proactive steps to reduce further spread of the material. We thank them for those efforts.

While it may be difficult to eradicate damaging content from the internet entirely, particularly as users continue to repost it, eSafety requires platforms to do everything practical and reasonable to minimise the harm it may cause to Australians and the Australian community.

Last Tuesday, April 16, eSafety issued Class 1 removal notices to Meta and X Corp, formally seeking removal of this material from their platforms. In the case of Meta, eSafety was satisfied with its compliance because Meta quickly removed the material identified in the notice.

In the case of X Corp, eSafety was not satisfied the actions it took constituted compliance with the removal notice and sought an interim injunction from the Federal Court.

eSafety will continue using its suite of powers under the Online Safety Act to protect Australians from serious online harms, including extreme violent content.

Further information about eSafety’s powers in relation to the Online Content Scheme, including enforcement action, is available here: Online Content Scheme Regulatory Guidance.pdf (esafety.gov.au). Under the Online Safety Act, the maximum civil penalty for non-compliance with a removal notice for a body corporate is $782,500 per contravention.

Federal Court judgements, hearing details and information about accessing Court documents are available from the Court: Federal Court of Australia (fedcourt.gov.au)

By Roger Chao 

Not in my name

In this quiet hour, I summon words, a humble man amidst shadows long,

To speak of wounds not my own, to voice a plea so loud and strong.

For streets that haunt with harried silence, for whispers in the dark,

For the women who carry nightmares in the hollows of their hearts,

I say, not in my name, shall this darkness be just fate.

Not in my name, will the long night prowl with fears that speak untold,

Where sisters, mothers, daughters, wives, brave the icy streets so cold.

Each step a story of caution, each shadow a stifling cage,

In their eyes, an unshackled resilience, a silent but building rage.

Not in my name, shall safety be a treasure locked by sun’s last light.

A father’s heart, a brother’s vow, to guard and cherish life so dear,

Yet, lurking in the darkness’ shroud, a haunting, pervasive arc of fear.

For every woman who dares to dream, of simple walks in moon’s embrace,

Finds not the peace of starlit streams, but wary steps she must retrace.

Not in my name, shall fear strip their freedoms bare.

From park to bus stop, from alley to the open market’s sprawl,

There’s a vast trembling unspoken, a siege without a single wall.

Why should freedom wear curfews, tied down by heavy cords of threat?

Why must half the world’s hearts beat loud and their foreheads bead with sweat?

Not in my name, shall freedom’s price be paid with fear.

Hear the voices rising now, a chorus grown too loud to mute,

Of those refused their evening walks, a jog, a simple forest route.

See the power in their marching, in their signs, and in their tears,

Resisting the violent silences that have spanned through many years.

Not in my name, shall the violent claim their gruesome deeds are just.

Oh, how can it be in age so bold, where justice claims its ever reach,

That women young and women old, must cautiously move and freedom beseech?

It is not just, it is not right, this burden heavy they must bear,

To shrink beneath the veil of night, feeling eyes that linger, stare.

Not in my name, shall this blight persist its dawn.

From my own steps, unburdened, free, I wander paths both far and near,

Yet ponder deep this irony, that half the world moves gripped with fear.

What creed or colour matters not, when shadows threaten, chilled to the bone,

For we are kin, this truth forgot: a woman’s fight for safety – our own.

Not in my name shall this imbalance further propagate.

Let not the blame rest upon the shoulders of those who merely live,

Who seek only the liberty that the light of day can give.

The burden is on us as men, men to stand, and men to hear,

To hold our brothers accountable, to lend our voice clear.

Not in my name, shall passivity be our spirit’s stance.

I call upon my brothers, to break the chains we see and don’t see,

To challenge each cruel whisper, each injustice, with fervent plea.

For in our silence, we speak volumes; in inaction, we consent,

To the perpetuation of fear, of loss, the freedoms rent.

Not in my name, shall I walk this path in silence, nor in blame.

This is our moment, forged in the glowing courage of those who dare

To reclaim their nights, their rights, to breathe free the sweet evening air.

Together, let us rewrite the longstanding rules of night and day,

Where every soul can wander free, where strident fear dissolves away.

Not in my name, not in my name, shall this world remain the same.

To walk in peace, to jog alone, should not be acts of courage told,

But everyday by sunlight shown, in stories both bright and bold.

So here I stand, a man, a shield, against the dark that preys unchecked,

Until the streets at night are healed, with dignity and respect.

Not in my name, shall women grip their keys between braced knuckles.

Thus, I stand before you, a man amidst the now turning tide,

To declare, through poetic lines, where my convictions do abide.

For every single woman’s right, for every life restrained by dread,

I’ll raise my voice, I’ll fight their fight and not leave a word unsaid.

Not in my name, shall the shadows rule; we demand the dawn.

So I will stand, and I will call, and raise my voice in this grim tide,

To challenge night, to build a wall of solidarity wide.

For every time a woman shrinks within herself to hide her fear,

A piece of our humanity sinks, lost within this frontier.

Not in my name, shall women glance in fear o’er their track.

I stand beside, not in front, my voice a quiet but growing hum,

For this is not my story to tell, but I will not be numb.

The dark history of battles, scored deep in silent welling tears,

Calls me to a solemn duty that transcends all gendered fears.

Not in my name, shall women carry the weight of blame.

For too long, the lingering night has claimed them, a shadowy domain,

Where whispered threats and clutching fears form an oft recurring chain.

Each news cycle spins its stories, the headlines all too stark and clear:

Another one assaulted, raped, more violence for women to fear.

Not in my name, shall these grievous events stir.

We talk of change, we talk of rights, in buildings both large and small,

But talk must move to action now, to change this once and for all.

It’s not just about the alleys, or the dangers lurking late,

It’s about the homes, the offices, where power seals their fate.

Not in my name, shall this abomination pursue its prey.

No more, they say, and no more, I echo, standing by their side,

No more using strength to smother, or secrets to further divide.

No more culture that dismisses, no more brushing off the pain,

No more turning blind eyes, allowing these horrors to remain.

Not in my name, not in my name, not in my name.

Let this refrain, not in my name, echo through the streets and time,

A call to change, from every man, and in every single clime.

May it carry the weight of justice, may it break the chains of fear,

May it be heard, may it be lived, until no one must adhere.

Not in my name, no, not in my name, shall we permit this night to last.

With every single line penned, with every chorus that we recite,

Let us mend the fabric torn, of humanity’s vast, vibrant site.

For all the world’s daughters and sisters, for justice, bright and bold,

Not in my name, shall the story of fear ever be retold.

Not in my name, not in my name, with these words, I stake my claim.

Not in my name, not in my name, not in my name.

By James Moore

“We need the tonic of wildness. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and un-explorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, un-surveyed and unfathomed by us because it is unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” – Thoreau

I once rode up to the headwaters of two rivers in one day. Motorcycles can simplify such accomplishments. The Guadalupe I knew well and had traveled much of its length in a canoe and raft, and I had seen it in a fierce flood that had taken innocent lives. Upstream where the river moves placidly over shining limestone beds it is not easy to imagine murderous rushes of water leaving float piles of debris a hundred feet up in the branches of an ancient cypress, but it is not uncommon.

Riding over the low water crossings of the river on my way west I was still unable to imagine such flooding. The Guadalupe is a languorous, spring-fed flow that offers mostly shallow pools and views to clear, stony bottoms. The crystalline reflection of a spring sun was almost blinding but offered no evidence nature might wrest such a tragedy from such an idyllic setting.

The big BMW motorbike was nearly as silent as a trickling river and took me up a slow rise to a box canyon that had long ago birthed another river. A visitor follows the water back up to a limestone cliff where hundreds of springs leak from the rock and gather into a flow that becomes the Frio River. Once known to beer marketers as the “Land of 1100 Springs,” a 10,000-acre ranch was worked along these headwaters by descendants of Stephen F. Austin’s sister.

The Frio River

Oma Bell Perry, who had never married, and her sister, deeded the land over to Gary Priour, the poet-philanthropist who has devoted his adult life to raising children broken by unfair circumstances of their birth. Invisible hands, Priour has always claimed, guide his work, and when visitors see children playing in the water beneath the Texas sun, they understand why the ranch’s location is now referred to as “The Canyon of Angels.”

The highway through Frio Canyon unspools from the hill country twists to an easy run toward Uvalde. The hills are almost Irish green and treed with live oak and cottonwood and the tall cypress that always find the water. I slow the bike and stop for pictures without thinking I might be keeping a friend waiting down on Highway 90. Leakey and Utopia, dreamy little country towns, demand lingering but I pass through as quickly as though I were watching a movie and roll the throttle up.

Jake and I connect and move in the direction of the sun, riding parallel to the Rio Grande. His bike shines and rumbles in the southwestern glare as we get west of Del Rio. The sky must be as clear and blue as the day the world began to spin. Bluebonnets and paint brush spread out over the rocky hills and color the desert. Water from Lake Amistad is backed up into what ought to be dusty arroyos that have been transformed into canals and waterways that are settings for large vacation homes owned by wealthy Mexicans. The vistas are improbable after the urban franchise sprawl of Del Rio, an unusual border town that is surrendering to American homogenization.

Highway 505, South Toward Mexico

Jake is an excitable boy in his 70s and cannot wait for the Davis Mountains to rise in front of us. He has spoken vaguely about cross country motorcycle rides but I am not certain he has experience with longer trips. His enthusiasm suggests this is certainly the first time he has gotten on two wheels for a run to the Texas Trans Pecos. Always energized by this ride, I am, nonetheless, affected by Jake’s garrulousness on our stops and become enamored anew with familiar sights. Being a lobbyist in the state capitol and living in the tropical Rio Grande Valley has kept him from such scenery most of his life.

The sky gets bigger and consumes the countryside. We catch glimpses of Lake Amistad between the low mesas until U.S. 90 points down toward a river bridge. The Pecos, rarely much wider than a city sidewalk, has cut a deep canyon on approach to the lake. Water appears to be hardly moving but from above it is clear and shimmering in the breeze. The watercourse of the Pecos, which is mostly through the arid ranch country along the eastern perimeter of the Chihuahua Desert, has made it one of the most disputed water sources in the civilized world. Thousands of years before we motored across the river, indigenous peoples lived in the canyon below, possibly some of the first in North America, and they have left stone paintings and petroglyphs on the walls of caves and rock overhangs down where the Pecos meets the dammed up Rio Grande.

Pecos River Canyon

There are still lawsuits over the diversion and consumption of the Pecos and when you stand on its bank and taste the sweetness of the water in 100-degree heat, surrounded by rock, sand, and cactus, you understand why it has been treated as sacred by every human who has lived within its watershed. Encircled by ocotillo and pinon and cholla in the rising spring heat and staring down at the Pecos from the bridge, I end up thinking about the delta down on the Gulf Coast where the Old and the Lost River sweeps to the sea. Those two waterways always have looked to me as though they have the capacity to slake the thirst of all eight billion souls on board our little ship even as we shoot at each other across a stream like the Pecos.

The world continues to confound me.

When the road levels out farther west, we see the green and white Border Patrol vehicles dragging tires behind them on a long rope. A dirt track has been bladed beside the highway beyond the bar ditch and up next to the fence line. The dusty line runs west to Sanderson and then beyond toward Marathon and Van Horn and there are several of the government SUVs pulling tires and covering their tracks.

Unless you know the border, there is no context for such an absurd endeavor. River crossers with the right gear and water and food often come to these remote spots to enter the U.S. They are sometimes carrying backpacks with marijuana or other “contradbando,” but mostly they are just determined spirits that believe they can survive anything if they just get to America. The soil itself holds a magic for them. They are often wrong, though. The Border Patrol drags the dirt to make footprints visible and to know where to go to capture the transgressor.

“Seems to me we ought to want those guys here,” I heard an acquaintance say over breakfast in Marathon. “Anybody gets that far; they are pretty damned determined and might be useful in a country like ours.”

There were just Jake and I at a nearby table, each with a full head of hair, and not a single strand showed any color. We only looked like we might have a touch of wisdom. Such a judgment was only marginally accurate.

“Just seems to me like an insane waste of money,” I said, aware that we had both overheard the nearby conversation. “Doesn’t appear to offer much of a return on investment by catching a few pounds of marijuana or the lone border runner.”

“Well, Jimmy, we don’t have much say about it either way,” Jake said. “It’s just the way it is along that river.”

“They’ve been doing that drag and detect foolishness since I was a kid,” the man at the other table said, having picked up our exchange. “No way of knowing if it’s effective.”

“It’s effective at spending government tax money and keeping people employed,” I told him. “And I suspect that’s what matters more than few pounds of pot being confiscated. Makes politicians feel better, too. Secure the border!!”

Jake and I sped south toward the national park after breakfast and watched the clouds shred themselves on the Glass Mountains. The sky above was clear and blue but the pretty people on the motel TV had said rain was likely before sundown. I was skeptical as we began the sharp climb up to the Chisos Basin a few hours later because we stopped and looked behind us to the north and the air was pure enough to almost make visible McDonald Observatory about 150 miles distant.

The park road curled so sharply it almost felt as if it were twisting back onto itself and we slowly rose to altitude past the signs warning about bears and panthers. The ancient world was visible from up there and looking through “The Window” that opened up between two mountains at the desert floor, I had no trouble imagining great prehistoric species stalking the far plains along the shores of ancient, inland seas.

The Window, Chisos Basin, Big Bend National Park

We ended up on the porch of the general store in Terlingua, a ghost town that thrived briefly during a global demand for mercury. There is now the little store and the Starlight Restaurant and rustic adobes turned into pricey bed and breakfast establishments. A few cantinas and burger joints are along the bumpy road up the hill. The predominant feature, though, is the graveyard with Spanish surnames cut crudely into stone or desiccated wood crosses, many of them tilted by weather and time.

I went to the icebox in the general store and got two Tecates and came back out to sit on the bench that spans the front of the building and looks out over the long slope back to the river. The Chisos cut a ragged line across the horizon as we looked eastward toward the park and leaned against the wall to talk with the assembled strangers.

“Where’d you two ride from?”

The question was from a young man in a dirty baseball cap, jeans, and work boots. His dark tee shirt was sweated through and dirty but it was not torn.

“Different places. Austin and the Rio Grande Valley,” I said.

“I need to get to Austin some day,” he said. “But it’s just another big, corporate city now, I suppose.”

“There’s more than just a touch of that, for sure,” I said. “Whatever we used to like about it thirty years ago is slipping away. Where are you from?”

“Oh, Connecticut.”

“Really? What in the hell got you out here?”

“I just wanted to get as far away from corporate bullshit as I could and this looked like the best spot on the map.”

“You don’t look old enough to be fed up with climbing the corporate ladder.”

He cut his eyes at me but then smiled. “Well, I am. I hated it. I had a good job. But it was all politics and caring about shit that seemed pretty stupid to me. Out here, I work when I want, do what I want, and nobody cares what I think or do.”

“I guess that’s worth more than a corporate salary.”

“It is,” he said, and then pointed to the Chisos. “The light at the end of the day on those ranges never gets old to me. Ain’t it funny? This is probably the only place in America where people come to sit and see the sunset by looking east at those mountains.”

The people who live in the desert around the ghost town all have a story about wanting to be away from the world. They move up into the remote stretches and build adobes and survive off the grid but never have to impress another human or answer any questions. I have met government agents and truck drivers and drug runners sitting the sun on that general store porch and they all view privacy as Terlingua’s most precious commodity.

We got back on the bikes and went north toward Alpine. Crossing deserts on a motorcycle always leaves me with a sense that even the most mundane human act takes on epic proportions. Closing a door or simply walking across a street feels like it has a connectedness to some grander endeavor, which cannot immediately be known. This is mostly delusional, I suppose, but no one ever seems to simply watch the rain as it falls after a storm arrives in a desert; they appear to be battling the elements before an incomprehensible backdrop. I have ridden across the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahua deserts many times and up and down the Great Basin and have always expected the universe to reveal secrets as the road endlessly extends.

More than an hour out of Alpine we had ridden under a black sky and left the sun shining behind us on the canyons of the Rio Grande. Lightning shot across our view in sharp-edged bolts and the thunderclaps were disturbing even above the wind and engine noise. When we rode into the rain, we were drenched in minutes, and as we came over each rise I looked to the north for a break in the sky and a furtive hope our destination might yet be dry.

Curtains of rain hung over the high mesas to our east and the inky black in some parts of the cloud cover faded to gray. Rain sways as belts in the far wind. Immediately, small breaks appeared in the storm and the sun found a few white basalt hills and dried out ranges and illuminated them in the afternoon darkness. A spotlight was cast across our front and onto a scene as old and eroded as it can be made by time and the elements. The show was almost more than could be imagined because the light and the dark and the rain and the desert offered such contrasts in microcosm.

“I prayed all the way through that storm, Jimmy,” Jake said later. “I got us some good mojo.”

We are eating thick steaks at the Reata and trying to dry out over dinner. Friday night was working hard to be exciting outside in Alpine.

“I guess you got us some magic then, Jake. Here we are. Wet but alive. And you’ll remember that stretch of Texas highway, I bet.”

“Yeah, but let’s not do that again real soon, pardner.”

“Let’s see what the ride looks like back to Marathon.”

The storm was rolling east as we ate, and we lingered to give it time enough to pass but as we went back down U.S. 90 the lightning lit our way. We did not hear thunder, but the cell was curling back on its own cloud tops and peeling away toward Del Rio, leaving great flashes of light across the night as it receded. We slowed enough to let the weather guide us down the road, but we were still surrounded by momentary brightness and daggers of light that seemed like cannon shot and were frequent enough that they might eventually find their targets.

We had dined also the day previous in Marfa at the old Paisano Hotel, and I was confident the ghosts of Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Dennis Hopper were shuffling the halls looking for their rooms and wondering what had happened to the desert ranch town they had left behind after filming Edna Ferber’s “Giant.” I worried greatly about the monsoon and lightning also turning us into something incorporeal.

Almost biblical rain had fallen in Marathon by the time we parked our bikes. Six to eight inches running across the rock and finding the dry arroyos, eventually reaching the Rio Grande.

Jake took off his helmet and smiled in the dim light from the cabins. “Got ya more mojo there, too, brother. Kept ya safe all the way in.”

“Yep, you are, from here on, Lightnin’ Jake.”

The magical desert sky and the western landscapes had fooled me yet again. And made me believe we were immortal.

Jacob Fuller, Dec. 1940 – Mar. 2024 RIP

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

“Can we still see universities as places to learn and produce knowledge that, at the risk of sounding naïve, is for the greater good of humanity, independently transient of geopolitical skirmishes?” Wanning Sun from the University of Technology, Sydney, asks in hope. “The history of universities during the Cold War era tells us that it is precisely at such times that our government and our universities need to fight tooth and nail to preserve the precarious civil society that has taken millennia to construct.”

History can be a useful, if imperfect guide, but as its teary muse, Clio, will tell you, its lessons are almost always ignored. A recent investigative report published in Declassified Australia gives us every reason to be pessimistic about Sun’s green pastured hopes for universities untethered from compromise and corruption. Far from preserving civil society, the Australian university sector is going the way of the US model of linking university research and innovation directly to a gluttonous military industrial complex. More importantly, these developments are very much on the terms of the US imperium, in whose toxic embrace Australia finds itself.

Over 17 years, the authors of the report found, US defence funding to Australian universities had risen from (A)$1.7 million in 2007 to (A)$60 million annually by 2022. The funds in question “are backing research in fields of science that enhance US military development and the US national interest.” 

To justify this effort, deskbound think tankers and money chasing propagandists have been enlisted to sanitise what is, at heart, a debauching enterprise. Take, for example, the views of the United States Studies Centre (USSC), based at the University of Sydney, where university-military collaboration under the shoddy cover of learning and teaching are being pursued in reverie. For those lovely types, universities are “drivers of change within society.” 

The trilateral security pact of AUKUS, an anti-China enterprise comprising Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, has added succour to the venture, drawing in wide-eyed university administrators, military toffs and consultancy seeking politicians keen to rake in the defence scented cash. 

With salivating enthusiasm, a report by members of the USSC and the University of Nottingham from March 2024, noting the findings of a joint University of Sydney and Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, opens with a frank enlisting of the education and research sector “as enablers of operationalising the strategic intent around AUKUS.” No less than a propagandising effort, this will entail “building social license for AUKUS” through “two primary inputs: (1) educating the workforce; and (2) Pillar II advanced capability research.”

This open embrace of overt militarisation entails the agreement of universities “across the three countries” to “add value to government through strategic messaging and building social license for AUKUS.” This is no less an attempt to inculcate and normalise what is, at heart, a warring facility in the making. 

The authors admit their soiling task is a challenging one. “Stakeholders agree the challenge of building social license for AUKUS is particularly acute in the Australian context, where government discourse has been constrained by the need to reestablish diplomatic relations with China.” Diplomacy is such a trying business for those in the business of conflict. 

The raw note here is that the Australian populace is ignorant of the merits of the belligerent, anti-Beijing bacchanal between Canberra, Washington and London. They are ignorant of “the nature of strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific and its place in Australian regional strategy for AUKUS.” Concern is expressed about that most sensible of attitudes: a decline of popularity for the proposed and obscenely expensive acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, costing A$368 billion. “USSC’s own polling, released in late 2023, finds that support for Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines has fallen below majority (49 per cent).” 

Such terrifying findings – at least from the USSC’s barking mad perspective – had also been “corroborated by other major Australian polls, including the Lowy Institute and The Guardian, which find that support has weakened, rather than firmed since the optimal pathway announcement.” The Australian public, it would seem, know something these wonks don’t.

When the warmongers worry that their wares are failing to sell, peacemakers should cheer. It then falls on the warmongers to think up a strategy to reverse the trend. An imperfect, though tried method is to focus on the use of that most hideous of terms, “social license”, to bribe the naysayers and sceptics.

The notion of “social license”, framed in fictional, social contract terms, should propel those with a scintilla of integrity and wisdom to take arms and rage. The official literature and pamphleteering on the subject points to its benign foundations. The Ethics Centre, for instance, describes it as an informal arrangement whereby an informal license is “granted to a company by various stakeholders who may be affected by the company’s activities.” Three requirements must be accordingly satisfied in this weasel-worded effort: legitimacy, by which the organisation “plays by the ‘rules of the game’”; credibility, by which the company furnishes “true and clear information to the community”; and trust, where the entity shows “the willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of another.” These terrible fictions, as they come together, enable the veil to be placed over the unspeakable. 

When the flimsy faeces encasing such a formulation is scraped away, the term becomes more sinister. Social licensing is nothing less than a tool of deceit and hoodwinking, a way for the bad to claim they are doing good, for the corrupt to claim they are clean. Polluting entities excuse what they do by suggesting that the returns for society are, more broadly speaking, weightier than the costs. Mining industries, even as they continue to pillage the earth’s innards, claim legitimacy for their operations as they add an ecologically friendly wash to them. We all benefit in the harm and harming, so why fuss?

To reverse this trend, a few measures should be enacted with urgent and acceptable zeal. Purging university vice chancellors and their simpering toadies is a healthy start. Trimming the universities of the spreadsheeting grafters and the racketeers, percolating through departments, schools and colleges, would be another welcome measure. All are accomplices in this project to destroy the humane mission of universities, preferring, in their place, brands, diluted syllabi, compliant staff, and morons for students. All in all, a clear wall of separation between the civic goals of learning and knowledge should be built to shield students and staff from the rapacious, murderous goals of the military industrial complex that continues to draw sustenance from deception, delusion and fear.

By Roger Chao

The Silent Truth

In the tumult of a raging battle, beneath the echoing cries,

Where shadows merge with fading lights, the silent truth belies.

A world not split by borders, nor by rifles drawn in dread,

But bound by shared existence, in the spaces tear-stained red.

We gather here as fragments of a once harmonious whole,

Diverse in thought and creed, yet one in heart, in soul.

For pain, it knows no language, nor sorrow a flag does claim;

In every mother’s weeping eyes, the tears fall just the same.

The earth beneath our feet, soaked with the ages’ cries,

Does not discern the victor, nor the truth amongst the lies.

It absorbs each drop of blood as if to cleanse our skin,

Hoping perhaps that from this soil, peace might grow within.

Can you hear the echoes of the fallen, whispering in the breeze?

Their voices carry stories across the oceans, through the trees.

They speak of dreams unfulfilled, of lives too swiftly taken,

They sing a sombre lullaby of the lost and the forsaken.

For what is war but a mirror reflecting our darkest fears,

A testament to what is lost through forgetting our common tears.

A child’s laughter silenced before it can fully form,

A lover’s bed left cold and empty, never to be warm.

Imagine now a world untouched by the scourge of war’s design,

Where the morning dew whispers of peace, and all our hopes align.

Where children’s laughter fills the air, free from the shadow of fear,

And the old are left to ponder life, with no more need for tears.

Let us then lay down the arms that serve only to divide,

And walk the path of understanding, with our hearts open wide.

For we are one beneath the stars, in the sun’s eternal light,

Divided not by our differences, but bound by our shared plight.

So remember this silent truth, not anger, hate or blame,

That the dreams and hopes and fears we share, are proof we are the same.

And never again shall division, see the light of day,

For in unity, we find strength, and in humanity, our way.

UNSW Media Release

Australia’s rising cost of living is squeezing household budgets, and with high fuel prices and public transport costs increasing, many Australians face the reality that the expense of commuting to work may no longer be financially sustainable.

The Australian Commute report showed that the average daily cost for an Australian to get to and from work is $20, totalling $5020 annually. Collectively, this translates to a national expense of $43.2 billion a year. The cost of public transportation is also increasing; Opal fares rose by 3.7 per cent in October 2023, as reported by Transport for NSW.

Associate Professor Evgenia Dechter from the UNSW Business School says that the complex relationship between commuting costs and salaries is primarily based on preferences and household constraints.

“Individuals make choices based on their preferences, budgets and time constraints,” she says.

“Subject to constraints, some prioritise shorter commutes by living closer to work hubs, even if it means higher housing costs and lower quality housing. Others prioritise better living arrangements and may accept longer commutes.”

This raises the question: With rising economic pressures and commuting costs, will Australian cities transform to be more commuter-friendly, or will work arrangements undergo a fundamental shift?

The economic impact of commuting

While salaries may indirectly reflect commuting choices, A/Prof. Dechter acknowledges the growing economic pressure on workers as well as the current cost of living crisis combined with high inflation rates.

“For many households, the current economic conditions imply tighter budget constraints, putting immense pressure on workers, which may in turn affect their commuting and employment choices,” says A/Prof. Dechter.

“Traditionally, commuting costs haven’t been directly factored into salaries, but some employers are starting to explore ways to compensate for them.

“Employers offering remote work options are a positive development in mitigating commuting costs.

“Remote, hybrid and flexible work arrangements may not only alleviate the financial burden on employees but also potentially broaden the talent pool for firms struggling to find workers,” she says.

While salaries may indirectly reflect commuting choices, A/Prof. Dechter acknowledges the growing economic pressure on workers as well as the current cost of living crisis combined with high inflation rates.

“For many households, the current economic conditions imply tighter budget constraints, putting immense pressure on workers, which may in turn affect their commuting and employment choices,” says A/Prof. Dechter.

“Traditionally, commuting costs haven’t been directly factored into salaries, but some employers are starting to explore ways to compensate for them.

“Employers offering remote work options are a positive development in mitigating commuting costs.

“Remote, hybrid and flexible work arrangements may not only alleviate the financial burden on employees but also potentially broaden the talent pool for firms struggling to find workers,” she says.

City infrastructure is not designed for everyday commuting

The travel-to-work challenge is further amplified by the design of Australian cities, with urban sprawl leading to longer commutes and a need for more suitable housing options near workplaces.

“The ugly truth of the matter is the shape of our cities is far from ideal to support sustainable and efficient commuting,” says Professor Philip Oldfield, a leading expert in architecture from the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture at UNSW.

According to the Regional Movers Quarterly Index released in late 2023 by the Commonwealth Bank and Regional Australia Institute, this trend is reflected in a significant shift in migration patterns. The report highlights a 12.6 per cent increase in the population moving from capital cities to regional areas compared to pre-pandemic figures.

The rising cost of living may not be the only reason why it’s harder for Australians to travel to work. Prof. Oldfield says that cities are expanding outwards with residential densities decreasing.

“It’s often cheaper and easier to build housing on the edge of cities rather than trying to ‘infill’ gaps in the city. In Sydney, 21 per cent of homes built in Greater Sydney were on the city edge across the last decade. We call this urban sprawl, and it’s apparent in virtually all cities worldwide,” says Prof. Oldfield.

Using Sydney as an example, Prof. Oldfield says we don’t see enough family-friendly and three-bedroom apartments built near city centres and places of work.

“This is because developers are creating apartments for those who purchase them – which tends to be owner-investors, and not those who ‘actually’ live in them, which includes families with children. Owner-investors prefer one- and two-bedroom apartments and that’s why these get built.

“The impact of this is that families may want to stay in centrally located neighbourhoods, but because of a lack of family-friendly apartments, they either have to ‘cram in’ to two-bedroom units not suited to the family dynamic or move further afield where more ‘conventional’ and affordable detached homes are located,” says Prof. Oldfield

Prof. Oldfield explained that the knock-on effect is if they move further away, commute times increase, which can increase costs and lost time and subsequently make working at home more attractive.

The power of hybrid and flexible work

With the economic and urban landscape placing a strain on wallets, hybrid work arrangements are becoming increasingly popular.

Dr Andrew Dhaenens, an expert in workplace relationships from UNSW Business School, says that working from home and with more flexible hours is increasingly becoming more attractive.

“For those with longer commutes and caregiving responsibilities, working from home offers a significant financial benefit,” he says.

“There’s also a perception among employers that remote workers are more productive, further incentivising flexible work models.”

Dr Dhaenens says employers are becoming more accommodating to hybrid and flexible work patterns, yet employees are facing new pressures to spend more time in offices.

The Hybrid & Flexible Working Practices 2023 report showed that almost half of the employers say that they have a minimum requirement for full-time employees to be at the workplace between three and five days a week, up from 37 per cent during the same period in 2022.

Dr Dhaenens says that hybrid and flexible work is key to easing financial pressures and believes that hybrid models will likely stay the norm.

“Employees save on commuting costs, lunches out, and public transport fares, but they also gain time back from their commute to spend more time with friends and family.”

“Additionally, we know that work-life balance is key to employee wellbeing and productivity,” says Dr Dhaenens.

While some employers require employees to be in the office for a set number of days, Dr Dhaenens emphasises the negative impacts of return-to-office mandates and believes hybrid models will likely be here to stay.

“Both employers and workers are still adjusting to remote work, and new management strategies will emerge to ensure effective collaboration and communication, but an additional day in the office often comes at a direct cost to employees,” says Dr Dhaenens.

Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress. Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, told Sky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson found the mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”, hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.

On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia. “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”

Last month, the UK High Court gave what can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed. Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty. That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.

On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind. Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimed with aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”

Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed. “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”

The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange. The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.

In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, told the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.

That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling. Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions. As Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept observed with bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”

The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals. “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.” These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.

A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provided a neat and damning summary of the embassy note. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”

Whether the justices are duly satisfied by the latest diplomatic manoeuvre, one non-binding in any tangible or true sense on prosecutors and judges in the US, awaits testing in the hearing on May 20. For Assange, the wheels of judicial torture have been prolonged.

By Frances Goold

Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?

25 November 2023 – 28 April 2024*

Art Gallery of New South Wales

North Building

Lower level 2

Lower level 4, The Tank

Hovering resplendent over the forecourt of the old sandstone building (now the South Building) is Louise Bourgeois’s giant spider, Maman. This surreal, sci-fi giant sculpture provides a paradoxically protective, almost balletic entrée to an astonishing exhibition of sculptures, paintings, sewn works, and drawings by the late French American artist, scheduled to close at the end of this month after a five-month run.

Smaller spiders of similar grace robust beauty are to be found elsewhere: in The Tank, located on Level 4 of the new North Building, where the ‘Night’ section of the conceptually divided show is exhibited, and on Level 2, where works associated with ‘Day’ are exhibited in rooms of almost Zen quietude.

Louise Bourgeois, Maman, Art Gallery of NSW

But it is Maman which theatrically announces the first solo exhibition to be held at the revamped and extended art museum, Sydney Modern, artfully linking the two buildings following a long gestation and difficult birth – much like Bourgeois’s own.

Growing up in France in a family of tapestry restorers she is said to have learned to use a needle and thread when other kids her age were learning to use a knife and fork. But it was also a dysfunctional and disturbed household during the post-WW1 years until she found refuge at the Sorbonne at nineteen, attracted to mathematics and geometry as subjects valued for their stability and “rules nobody could change”.

Upon her mother’s death in 1932 Bourgeois switched her intellectual focus to art, attending artist studios and academies until, after graduating from the Sorbonne in 1935, she opened her own gallery in Paris where she met her future husband, the art historian Robert Goldberg. They relocated to New York in 1938, where they raised a family, she resumed her studies, and both re-established their respective careers.

There is no way to sum up the intense creativity of Louise Bourgeois other than to urge you to see some of her vast legacy before it disappears. Given the harrowing and traumatic events of the past week in Sydney, its imminent closure and departure is a fittingly sober exit from the building of a body of work but not the spirit of an artist whose unique practice sought to express and transform her own personal emotional trauma and to inspire others to do the same.

With so little time remaining there are, however, one or two fragile pathways to comprehending some of Bourgeois’s psychological and aesthetic concerns and convictions. One poignant example is to be found amongst her ‘Day’ collection on Level 2, where the viewer can slow down and peruse the gentle flow of her exquisite ‘samplers’, annotated paintings, and drawings.

Here Bourgeois tells the story of a boy caught inside a terrible fight between his parents:

“He kept alive. And he went over to the closet and brought back a broom and he started cleaning. At that point something broke inside of me and I started crying and you know, I never cry. Something broke inside.”

She describes how making art is about a moment when is performed “a symbolic action…you begin to work on the sculpture” as a means of redirecting and channelling the feeling state into something else, something constructive and transformative. She adds:

“… there are many symbolic actions of course, the different qualities are everything. The symbolic action can take many many forms. Some people will become perfectionists in whatever they are doing or they can write, they can write a story or they can work on the house.”

In the next picture she concludes, “We are talking about sublimation and the gift of sublimation.”

Topiary 4 1999

How timely are the artist’s reminders of how we can somehow, sometime, begin to bear the unbearable and find other ways to express our feelings and emotions when words fail – a methodology now standard practice in art therapeutic work with distressed and traumatised children incapable of putting their overwhelming experiences into words.

In its other more searing and confronting aspects it’s an adult show – both visually and conceptually – but there is much to surprise and intrigue the young if only for its rambling, unpredictable scale, and the myriad feelings evoked in a place of safety. The architectural and institutional robustness of the buildings in which the works are housed allows for moments of deep contemplation of a particular work to a point of intimacy, as if in private conversation with the artist; in that moment one may be struck by a disarming sense that the artist is in direct communication with you as viewer. And there is something oddly comforting about this, leaving even her monsters tenderised and approachable. Perhaps in this lies both the particularity and universality of Louise Bourgeois’ special magic.

This is an important show, spanning seventy years of a disciplined, fiercely independent artist’s creative life, which began in France in 1911 and ended in New York in 2010. It spans the productive years of a compulsive yet contemplative artist whose artmaking was inextricably entwined with family trauma and random tragedy, that ultimately made its way from ‘darkness’ to ‘light’ through the sheer persistence of her uniquely gifted and unorthodox expression.

By our glistening autumn harbour is the final week of a big show by a tiny woman who has not simply created monumental art but, in an abiding, maternal, tetchy, spidery way, produced both great and small works that make profound and moving statements about what it means to be vulnerable and, it follows, what it means to be human.

* * * * *

*For this final week or so a special 2-for-1 offer is available for visits after 5pm on Wednesdays 17 and 24 April during Art After Hours when the whole Gallery is open until 10pm, and after 5pm on Friday 26 to Sunday 28 April when the exhibition and shop will remain open until 10pm for the final weekend of Louise Bourgeois, with curator tours and a pop-up bar on the Friday and Saturday nights.

Despite growing momentum to increase female representation in Australia’s national parliament, it continues to be a male dominated domain. New research from Monash University explores why young women still feel reluctant to become a member of the national parliament. 

The research, Investigating the ambitions of young women to run for national parliament: the case of Australia, found that for many young women the appeal of becoming an MP was significantly curtailed by beliefs that the institution maintains stereotypical gender norms as well as a masculine, misogynistic culture. Many women were also more likely to doubt their ability to participate in politics than their male counterparts.

Dr Zareh Ghazarian, Head of Politics and International Relations at Monash University, said gender-based inequality of opportunity is diminishing the political ambition of young women.

“Our research shows that young women feel parliament is not a place for them. Social constraints, sexism and toxic parliamentary culture is contributing to entrenched gender disparity,” Dr Ghazarian said. 

The research utilised data from the Our Lives longitudinal research study that follows a large cohort of young Queenslanders from adolescence into adulthood. The cohort of 28–29 year olds were interviewed in the weeks prior to the May 2022 election. Of the 47 participants, 27 were female and 20 were male. 

The interviews focused on participants’ views on Australian politics as well as their thoughts on women’s representation. The interviews also explored the ambitions of young people to be active in Australian politics.

With misogyny and gender-based violence prominent issues in the lead up to the 2022 election, participants were deeply concerned about how safe the national parliamentary workplace was, particularly for women. Recent allegations of sexual misconduct in parliament was the issue that most concerned women and had a significant impact on their political ambition. 

While the research found participants were critical of the status quo, there was a concerning degree of acquiescence about the situation. Participants were reluctant to stand up to, and tackle, the issues from within. Instead, they preferred to avoid such a toxic environment altogether.

“This highlights a deeply unhealthy element in Australian politics whereby individuals, especially women, are choosing not to participate in democratic processes. It is critical that greater efforts be made to advance the political ambitions of women to stand for election to the Australian Parliament,” Dr Ghazarian said. 

The research concluded that greater efforts be made to advance the political ambitions of women to stand for election to the Australian Parliament. This may be done through building the confidence and opportunities for women to participate, while changing broader attitudes to the role of women in politics. Recommendations included targeted school-based education programs, as well as advocacy projects that empower young people, particularly women, to engage with, and participate in, politics from an early age.  

“Without addressing these entrenched issues, women’s political under representation and an exclusionary masculine culture will continue to mar young people’s political ambitions and the practical operation of Australia’s liberal democracy.”

Monash University Media Release

Shaping the future of health across Asia and the Pacific

The World Health Summit Regional Meeting 2024 in Melbourne, Australia from 22-24 April will bring together stakeholders from all relevant sectors of global health – under the theme ‘Shape the future of health across Asia and the Pacific’.

For the first time the World Health Summit Regional Meeting is being held in Australia, and the three-day meeting is hosted by Monash University, Melbourne. With more than 40 sessions and over 150 speakers from around the world, the goal will be to address strategies to improve global health and health inequities in the Asia-Pacific region.

Topics include:

• The health of Indigenous Peoples
• Achieving health equity for women and girls
• Accelerating towards sustainable and resilient health care services
• Clinician-led health system reform
• Putting lived and living experience at the centre of mental health care
• Priorities for education, training and a future-proof health workforce
• The impact of AI when ancient ways of knowing and new technology collide
• Protecting and improving health in an increasingly divided world
• Global preparedness for the next pandemic
• Leadership opportunities in SDGs and health
• Misinformationitis: the impact of tech on health (open public session)

Speakers include:

• Saia Ma’u Piukala, Regional Director for the Western Pacific, World Health Organization (WHO)
• Ged Kearney, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care
• Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Former Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme
• Titilola Duro-Aina, Pacific Chief of Health, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
• Atonio Rabici Lalabalavu, Minister of Health and Medical Services, Fiji
• Papaarangi Reid, Deputy Dean Māori & Head of Department, Te Kupenga Hauora Māori, University of Auckland
• Michael Marmot, Director, UCL Institute of Health Equity
• Adeeba Kamarulzaman, President and Pro-Vice Chancellor, Monash University Malaysia
• Ajay Tandon, Lead Economist, World Bank
• Tay Choon Hong, CEO, Health Promotion Board, Singapore

Co-Presidents of the WHS Regional Meeting 2024, Professor Sophia Zoungas, Head of the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University said the calibre of people attending the Summit “gives us real hope that we will be able to address some of the health inequities that exists in the Asia-Pacific region so that we can move towards the SDG of universal health care,” she said.

Co-President, Professor Christina Mitchell, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, added that “the Summit Regional Meeting comes at a pivotal time – of serious geopolitical conflict, climate change, infectious disease outbreaks, ongoing health equity challenges facing Indigenous communities globally, and a diminishing healthcare workforce, all hugely important issues that will be tackled at the meeting,” she said.

Monash University Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Sharon Pickering, said Monash was proud to be convening the Summit as an important opportunity to make progress on addressing the world’s public health challenges.

“We are delighted to host the 2024 World Health Summit Regional Meeting that will bring together world leaders in public health to strengthen international collaboration on addressing our urgent global health challenges,” Professor Pickering said.

“As a top-50 global university and a leader in medical and health research, Monash is committed to working in collaboration with our partners for community benefit, and I’m hopeful the Summit will lead to strong commitments towards improving health access and equity in the Asia-Pacific region. I wish all our expert speakers and attendees safe travels and a warm welcome to Melbourne.”

Monash is a founding member and key contributor to the M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centers, Universities and National Academies that is the academic foundation of the World Health Summit.

All information on speakers, program, participation is available here: www.whsmelbourne2024.com

If you are unable to join in person: All sessions will be available as recordings afterwards here.

Plan International Press Release

One year on since the conflict in Sudan began the country faces a “catastrophic humanitarian crisis”, according to girls’ rights organisation Plan International.

The conflict, which began on 15 April last year, has now killed over 13,900 people and left 25 million people in need of humanitarian assistance – 14 million of these are children. Over 8.4 million people have been displaced, of whom 1.7 million have fled to neighbouring countries, this includes refugees who had previously sought safety in Sudan.

“A year into this devastating conflict, children in Sudan, especially girls, continue to live through a catastrophic humanitarian crisis every day. They’ve witnessed unimaginable horrors, and many have lost family or friends. Most children have not been able to attend school for nearly a year. Ongoing fighting also means that Sudan could be in famine within a month – we are witnessing malnutrition levels rise at alarming speed’ says Mohammed Qazilbash, Country Director for Plan International Sudan.

“This crisis is not isolated to Sudan – our offices in Chad, CAR, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Egypt are responding to the consequences of this conflict. If a political solution to the crisis in Sudan is not found, the entire region could be destabilised. In Chad for example, this is the first time we are seeing so many schoolteachers settling there as refugees which is concerning because these are the people you count on to rebuild a country and its population.”

As the conflict spreads to new areas inside Sudan, families are constantly on the move, seeking safety. The high numbers of people fleeing their homes means that after facing unimaginable trauma, many are enduring overcrowding and poor conditions at displacement camps.

Plan International is particularly concerned that schools across Sudan have been closed for a year, with more than 170 school buildings now being used to shelter displaced people. This means that an entire generation of 20 million children – a population close to the entire size of Australia – is missing out on their right to an education.

The consequences of this conflict will have a devastating impact on the development of children and their mental well-being. Children out of school are at increased risk of sale, sexual abuse, exploitation, family separation, abduction, trafficking, and recruitment and use by armed groups. 

“The biggest concern for the children is their unclear future, they don’t know if they will have the chance to go back to school again, or back to their homes,” says Hawa Eltigani, Plan International Sudan’s Child Protection in Emergencies Specialist.

“The language spoken by many children is what I would call ‘conflict language’. Children are just talking about guns, shooting. They now know different types of guns, of planes. There’s also a lot of retraumatising because adults are constantly speaking about the conflict in front of the children who are now not hearing anything else.

“Most of the children are moving from one place to another as the war spreads. As soon as they have settled somewhere, the conflict starts there, triggering trauma [once again].”

Since the start of the conflict, which has created the world’s largest displacement of children, Plan International has responded by providing mobile, child friendly spaces, where children are encouraged to play, draw, sign and use techniques such as storytelling to support them process their trauma.

In the regions of North Darfur and South Kordofan, Plan International has recently launched a project designed to provide classrooms for informal education at a gathering point for displaced people.

14-year-old Mai has been able to attend these classes; “I started learning the basic subjects included mathematics, Arabic, English and Islamic. I received a school kit, a mat for sitting on in the classroom and food for me and my friends. I want to continue studying to reach my dream of becoming a great person that can help my people.

“I believe that with a space for learning, we will shine and do our best to succeed. I will never stop going to my lessons as it’s a new space for me and my friends. I enjoy chatting about new things, apart from the conflict. I’m enjoying being back in school and making new friends.”

The humanitarian and girls’ rights organisation is appealing for €11million in funding from donors, to continue to reach children and their families with life-saving humanitarian assistance.

In Australia, humanitarian organisations including Plan International Australia are calling on the Australian Government to urgently provide $50 million in new and additional funding to the humanitarian catastrophe occurring in Sudan. Australia’s peers have recognised the urgency and scale of this crisis. The European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany having all committed more than $160m each to the Sudan response, compared to Australia’s $20.45 million to date.

We are calling on the Australian Government to double its contribution to the humanitarian emergency fund, from $150 million to $300 million, to meet the needs of hundreds of millions of people impacted by the massive increase in emergencies, conflicts and disasters that have unfolded around the world in recent years.

Plan International Australia has also launched an emergency Sudan appeal to help children and families engulfed in this invisible crisis.

By James Moore  

The first criminal trial of an American president is likely to bring more division, and even suffering, to the country he proposes to once more lead. The salaciousness of the story that has brought him before the bar of justice will further demean the highest office in the land, which tends to bear the imprimatur, “Leader of the free world.” The nation’s entire population, already agape over the reportage, will hear details of sex with an adult film actress while the future first lady was home with a new baby, and how money was paid to keep the porn star quiet about a tryst with the man who would be president.

I wonder if a $130,000 payoff to cover up extramarital sex can make our political divisions even more acutely dangerous. The accused’s anger is not likely to be constrained by a courtroom and he will send out emails to supporters, many who are struggling to pay their own bills, to give him money because none of this is fair and he’s a victim, and they will send their cash and credit and debit card payments to a man who claims to be among the world’s richest. Even our horror and embarrassment will become transactional, which is unsurprising for a president who has specialized in bankruptcies and failed businesses. Pollsters say a felony conviction for cooking his books to hide the bribe will cost him support, even among his red-hatted minions.

The former president laces his reelection rhetoric with terms like “bloodbath” and phrases suggesting “all hell will break loose,” determined to suggest a dystopia awaits Americans if they do not end his prosecutions and restore him to the White House. Little imagination is required to envision a scenario where the republic comes undone, at least partially, after a conviction of the serial adulterer and the reelection of the incumbent. Anger on the right might manifest in violence, though the notion of a civil war seems improbable. Putting on camouflage clothes, grabbing a gun, and shooting fellow citizens randomly only makes you a criminal, not a patriot. Our differences cannot be resolved by an internal American conflict involving combat, but they are too stark to be simply swept from the room by an electoral vote.

I do not understand how any citizen can support a man who ridicules the handicapped, calls members of the military “suckers and losers,” fails to pay the vendors who work on his projects, demeans women with blunt sexual allusions and brags about taking away their right to control their bodies, continues to claim he won an election that more than 60 courts said he lost, and lied, according to the Washington Post, more than 30,000 times during his four years in office. What does it take to disqualify him from the job in the minds of MAGA men and women? Is it okay for a president to pathologically lie and believe in a reality that exists only in his troubled mind? There is no remaining rational right wing when every Republican officeholder hurries to Florida to politically genuflect before a man who sprays his face orange and brown when he arises in the morning.

The verdict in the New York trial, and the outcome of November’s election, will not end the great American political rift. In fact, it will likely deepen. New theories of stolen votes will circulate, regardless of the lack of proof, and MAGA warriors will add fanciful implications to the hackneyed mantra of, “Take our country back.” Who took it from us? Perhaps, we gave it away to a conman. The former president’s campaign operatives are already scheming methodologies for challenging the vote while there are, undoubtedly, Q-Anon clowns and angry incels just waiting to take to the streets with their patriotic delusions. We might all be Americans, but we are of different types, and the middle ground has been washed away by a sea of vitriol.

The idea of a new Civil War seems preposterous to me. A more likely scenario that occurs over the course of decades is a kind of “Balkanization” of this country, a breakup into regions that are each independently governed and influenced by relationships with foreign powers. Imagine the traditionally liberal Northeast aligned, economically and politically with Europe, the West with Asia-Pacific influences, Mexico and cartels might gain some control in the Southwest, and Central and South America pull strings in Dixie and the Southeast. That’s a movie I’d like to see, and not completely improbable if we cannot reconcile deep differences in our politics and public discourse.

Alex Garland’s new movie, Civil War, suggests a modern version of the War Between the States is not impossible. The trailers make the film appear more like a war movie than an examination of how failed political debates can lead to catastrophe. Audiences are more compelled by bang, bang and explosions than watching politicos argue until guns are pulled, I suppose. There is one scene in the trailer, however, which implies a contemporary cause for the fictional conflict. Austin actor Jesse Plemons, one of the combatants, confronts a small family on the run from the violence, and decides he needs to know their allegiances. When he is told, “But we’re Americans,” Plemons is not satisfied.

“Yeah,” he says. “But what kind of Americans are you?”

The idea that there is more than one kind of American is as disturbing as it is factual, and violence and brutality related to our politics has been inescapable. Some of this can be passed off as the growing pains of a nation, but almost thematically, killing each other over what we believe is the best for our country, has never abated. There is no better example of this than the American life of Robert Todd Lincoln, the slain president’s eldest son, which presents a thread that connects numerous historical tragedies. The only son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln to survive into adulthood was present at three presidential assassinations, and they were not the only sorrows and heartbreak attendant to his life.

On April 14, 1865, Lincoln had been invited by his parents to attend the play, “My American Cousin,” but declined the offer, claiming he needed rest. The Harvard trained lawyer had often publicly lamented that he’d had no more than ten minutes conversation with his father while he was serving as president, and that may have added more tears and emotional weight the next morning as he knelt crying by the bedside where his father had died. The president, of course, had taken a bullet to the head from Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln had led the nation through a great battle to save its union of states and end human slavery, an idea incomprehensible to most Southerners of influence.

Robert Lincoln had dropped out of law school while hoping to serve in the Army during the war. His mother refused to countenance his plans and compromised with the president that their son might serve on the staff of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, which put the young Lincoln at Appomattox Court House when the articles of surrender were signed by Robert E. Lee. What he must have seen even at the edges of the war’s great battlefields was a loss and sadness wrought of politics and compounded by his family’s tragedies. Edward Lincoln, Robert’s younger brother, died at age 4 from consumption, a name given to tuberculosis prior to proper diagnosis; sibling Willie Lincoln died from typhoid fever at age 12 while living in the White House, and the youngest Lincoln child, Thomas, known affectionately as Tad, passed at age 18 from an undisclosed illness.

Robert Lincoln had moved to Chicago with his widowed mother and his youngest brother to practice law before he was cajoled into returning to Washington by President James Garfield. He was serving as Secretary of War and meeting with Garfield as the president departed the train station in the national capitol city on July 2, 1881. Lincoln was only 40 feet distant when the president was gunned down by Charles Guiteau, just sixteen years after Robert’s father had been slain. Garfield passed 80 days after being shot from surgical complications. Contemplating the loss of his three brothers who were already deceased, his presidential father, and Garfield, Lincoln was quoted by a New York Times reporter as asking, “My god, how many hours of sorrow have I passed in this town?”

Robert Todd Lincoln at the Dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, May 1922

He was to accumulate more hours of sorrow, losing his own son, Abraham Lincoln II, to a post operative infection at just 16 years of age. Robert, at that time, was serving President Benjamin Harrison in England as Minister to the Court of St. James. After returning to the states, Lincoln went to work for the Pullman Palace Car Company, a manufacturer of passenger cars for trains, and eventually became CEO. He was traveling with his wife from New Jersey to Chicago and decided to stop in Buffalo at the Pan-American Exposition, a type of World’s Fair promoting trade between North American countries. A messenger was waiting for the Lincoln’s with a telegram when the train arrived that said McKinley had been shot twice in the abdomen a few hours earlier at a public appearance in Buffalo and was in serious condition. Lincoln went immediately to the president’s bedside and was assured the would-be assassin, Leon Czolgosz, had failed to take down McKinley. Unfortunately, the president died seven days later, also of infection.

Lincoln, though, lived a long life and was present for the dedication of the memorial to his father on the Washington Mall in 1922, and died four years later just shy of his 83rd birthday. Almost exactly a century after the murder of his father in Ford Theater, another president was killed by the country he was serving. The assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is still rending the garments of American politics because the facts of what happened are seemingly unknowable after botched investigations and misinformation, a process now borne digitally to voters with the express purpose of distorting their perceptions of reality. We are a nation that often seems to kill its best and brightest, or at least have found no way in our body politic to deploy effective means of prevention. Who knows what kind of country we might have become had JFK, RFK and MLK lived to inspire and guide our government and its policies? There is sufficient cause to wonder how the republic itself has survived.

Which may not happen if we fall again for the lies of 2016.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

Charles Darwin University Media Release

Compulsory income management (CIM) in the Northern Territory is perceived to be ineffective in reducing harm, can contribute to situations of family violence and is incompatible with the needs of welfare recipients, a new study led by Charles Darwin University (CDU) has found. 

The study, conducted by members of CDU’s Faculty of Health alongside Monash University, interviewed 26 participants who are experts in social welfare programs or policies, highly experienced in providing support to welfare recipients, or have an in-depth understanding of CIM in the lives of welfare recipients.

CIM was established in the Northern Territory in 2007 and restricts a portion of a participants income support payment which cannot be used to gamble, purchase alcohol and other prohibited products. The BasicsCard is still active in the NT, alongside the Enhanced Income Management program launched in March 2023. 

The participants were asked a series of questions about their thoughts on the long-term role and impact of CIM in the Northern Territory.

The findings explored the impact of CIM on social harms, regional and remote areas, the administrative burden it places on individuals and organisations, CIM as the dominant source of welfare provision, and CIM as a method of social control.

Lead author and CDU Senior Lecturer in Professional Practice – Families and Communities Dr Steven Roche said the study concluded CIM was considered a punitive approach to reducing harm and was incompatible with the needs of welfare recipients. 

“The findings detail CIM’s negligible impact on behaviour change around social harms and suggest that CIM can exacerbate issues such as family violence, where CIM is weaponised by men who use violence in situations of family violence,” Dr Roche said. 

According to Dr Roche, study participants detailed how welfare recipients found ways to bypass CIM to purchase prohibited items, how CIM doesn’t prevent or reduce family violence, and how it doesn’t address the underlying issues of harm from alcohol and other drugs. 

“A key theme also identified among participants was the challenges that CIM could create for welfare recipients residing in regional and remote areas,” Dr Roche said. 

“CIM was viewed by participants as exacerbating the existing cost of living pressures, particularly in remote areas where consumer choice is limited, and travel is expensive.”

Dr Roche said participants considered CIM a “top-down approach” with little effort made to work with communities to identify ways to address social harms among welfare recipients. 

“A policy reform agenda involving genuine community consultation is desperately needed to better understand the complexities of CIM in the NT that holds principles of community-based policy development at its heart,” Dr Roche said. 

Perspectives on the ongoing impact of compulsory income management in the Northern Territory was published in The Australian Journal of Social Issues. 

Walking stiffly, largely distracted, and struggling to focus on the bare essentials, US President Joe Biden was keeping company with his Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, when asked the question. It concerned what he was doing regarding Australia’s request that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange be returned to Australia. 

Assange, who has spent five tormenting years in Belmarsh Prison in London, is battling extradition to the US on 18 charges, 17 tenuously and dangerously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.

The words that followed from the near mummified defender of the Free World were short, yet bright enough for the publisher’s supporters. “We’re considering it.” No details were supplied. 

To these barest of crumbs came this reaction from from Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on ABC’s News Breakfast: “We have raised on behalf of Mr Assange, Australia’s national interest, that enough is enough, that this needs to be brought to a conclusion, and we’ve raised it at each level of government in every possible way.” When pressed on whether this was merely an afterthought from the president, Albanese responded with the usual acknowledgments: the case was complex, and responsibility lay with the US Department of Justice.

One of Assange’s lawyers, the relentless Jennifer Robinson, told Sky News Australia of her encouragement at Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set.  So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, also told Sky News that the statement was significant while WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson thought the utterance “extraordinary”, cautiously hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by “those in power” and the press corps.

The campaign to free Assange has burgeoned with admirable ferocity. The transformation of the WikiLeaks founder from eccentric, renegade cyber thief deserving punishment to prosecuted and persecuted scribbler and political prisoner has been astonishing. 

The boggling legal process has also been shown up as woefully inadequate and scandalous, a form of long-term torture via judicial torment and deprivation. The current ludicrous pitstop entails waiting for a UK Court of Appeal decision as to whether Assange will be granted leave for a full reconsideration of his case, including the merits of the extradition order itself. 

The March 26 Court of Appeal decision refused to entertain the glaringly obvious features of the case: that Assange is being prosecuted for his political views, that due process is bound to be denied in a country whose authorities have contemplated his abduction and murder, and that he risks being sentenced for conduct he is not charged with “based on evidence he will not see and which may have been unlawfully obtained.” The refusal to entertain such material as the Yahoo News article from September 2021 outlining the views of intelligence officials on kidnapping and assassination options again cast the entire affair in a poor light.

Even if Assange is granted a full hearing, it is not clear whether the court will go so far as to accept the arguments. The judges have already nobbled the case by offering US prosecutors the chance to offer undertakings, none of which would or could be binding on the DOJ or any US judge hearing the case. Extradition, in other words, is likely to be approved if Assange is “permitted to rely on the First Amendment”, “is not prejudiced at trial (including sentence) by reason of his nationality” and that he “is afforded the same First Amendment protection as a United States citizen, and that the death penalty not be imposed.” These conditions, on the face of it, look absurd in their naïve presumption. 

Whether Biden’s latest casual spray lends any credibility to a change of heart remains to be seen. In December 2010, when Vice President in the Obama administration, Biden described Assange as a “high-tech terrorist” for disclosing State Department cables. He failed to identify any parallels with previous cases of disclosures such as the Pentagon papers. 

Craig Murray, former British diplomat and Assange confidant, adds a note of cautious sobriety to the recent offering from the president: “I’m not going to get too hopeful immediately on a few words out of the mouth of Biden, because there has been no previous indication, nothing from the Justice Department so far to indicate any easing up.”

For all that, it may well be that the current administration, facing a relentless publicity campaign from human rights organisations, newspapers, legal and medical professionals, not to mention pressure from both his own party in Congress and Republicans, is finally yielding. Caution, however, is the order of the day, and nothing should be read or considered in earnest till signatures are inked and dried. We are quite a way off from that.

By James Moore  

We were young when we lived near the Rio Grande and sometimes on Fridays the boss took us out on his boat and a few of my colleagues were pulled on water skis. I mostly remember the children sitting on their haunches in the canebrakes and how they stared at us with dark confused eyes. I assumed they wondered about the strange world along the north bank and the people who had boats for toys and never worried about food or where they might sleep at night.

There were times we slept on the beach down where the big river meets the Gulf, and we drank cold beer and watched the gulls as they whirled around the shrimp boats. In the mornings before the sun was above the coastline, I ran along the levees that were filled with water to grow the orange and grapefruit trees and I saw the open gates that let the water into the aloe and vegetable fields. When it got too hot, I jumped off the levee into the canal and swam with the slow current, kicking with my running shoes.

Our first season in the sub-tropics of Texas a moderate hurricane spun up from the Bay of Campeche and flooded the valley with torrential rains for a few days. Roads were closed and in the big colonias the farmworkers were washed out of their houses and into the mud. In the summer, giant thunderstorms rose across the fields and the humid air felt too thick to breathe. Wind across the Gulf and up through the palm rows felt like a hot, fuzzy cloth on the skin.

There seemed to be water everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley, though I never saw a lake, which was more than confusing. There were resacas, small bodies of water like ponds that were oxbow lakes cut off from the river, but the nearest big inland body of water was northwest up the border toward Laredo. Falcon Lake, however, was a reservoir that had been backed up behind a dam on the Rio Grande. During a long drought I took a small motorboat out on the water there with a camera crew, and we floated through an old stone church that had been disappeared beneath the water off the shore of the town of Zapata.

My childhood had been spent surrounded by water. The Great Lakes were in every direction, except to the south, and there were recreational lakes in such abundance it often felt like there was one at the end of every street. My parents found jobs in a factory town when they came up from the South, but we were of very modest means and I did not see a Great Lake until I was 18 and hitchhiked over to stand on a shoreline, even though we lived only an hour from Huron. In school, I had stared at pictures of the freighters filled with iron ore that moved across the big waters and I had always wanted to see one of the leviathans as a boy. Instead, on those rare days when my parents had time and the slightest amount of residual energy, we might go to a nearby lake for relaxation. There were untold thousands of crystalline blue bodies of water, too many, in fact, for each to have a name.

I always assumed an abundance of water was available in the world, but as I moved my journalistic and peripatetic soul around Texas, I came to the crushing comprehension that water was more precious than oil. All the water that will ever be is the water that exists presently, and it is readily apparent Texas was a bit shortchanged by geology. During a 250-million-year period of the Paleozoic Era, 600-350 million years ago, Texas was awash in vast inland seas to the West of the Llano uplift, which is in the central part of the state. Today, there are only rivers that have been dammed to create reservoirs. Underground aquifers also provide water, but they are increasingly mismanaged and endangered.

The rivers I knew in my youth ran mostly wild and free and we rented or found old and dented aluminum canoes to ride their rapids on weekends from college. The White River, Pine, and Au Sable moved placidly and sometimes rapidly through birch and white pine forests, running past cabins and under country roads toward the big lakes. There was no need for dams with such an endless surplus of water, but every river in Texas seems to be stopped to provide water for communities and agriculture, and even offer flood control. I believe the state’s only remaining unimpeded rivers are the Devil’s and the much fought over Pecos, which is a timid stream coming down from New Mexico and across the Chihuahua Desert to the Rio Grande at Lake Amistad.

Even barricaded, though, Texas rivers can be deadly. The weather seems too often to be about extremes, almost bombast in this state. Biblical floods and epic droughts torture the landscape of Texas. Rainfall in extreme amounts has its power amplified by the characteristics of runoff. The ground west of the Balcones Escarpment, a geographic break in the land that runs from near San Antonio to Fort Worth, is mostly rock and does not adequately absorb moisture. Water races downward to arroyos that feed rivers and can generate giant waves racing down riverbeds.

I saw the consequences of hard rain on rock many years ago when floods moved through the watersheds of the Pedernales and Guadalupe Rivers. In 1983, young campers in Pedernales Falls State Park were swept away by a flood in the night, and five died. Warning horns were later installed on the riverbank to let people know downstream of approaching high water. The sedate Blanco River, which lowers itself out of the Texas Hill Country through tall stands of cypress trees and long limestone cliffs, rose 28 feet in 90 minutes in late May of 2015, and killed more than a dozen people, many sleeping in riverside vacation homes. The water crested at 40 feet above flood stage when 13 inches of rain had fallen in the upstream watershed.

The most tragic flash flood incident in recent memory, however, was in 1987 on the Guadalupe River near Comfort. A group of campers from a Dallas church were cut off from safety as the water rose. An attempt to cross a low concrete bridge in their bus turned deadly when the engine stalled. A young student athlete named John Bankston Jr. rescued several of the smaller children by carrying them out on his back as the water kept climbing up the side of the bus. He was unable to save himself, however, and was taken away by the rushing water and died with nine of his friends that morning. His body was the only one not recovered.

I will never forget flying up and down the river in a helicopter with John Bankston Sr., convinced he was going to find his son alive, clinging to a tree, even five days later. Thirty-seven years after the tragedy, the river has not given up all of its dead and no trace of Bankston Jr. has ever been found.

Texas is, however, as deadly dry as it is wet. Historic droughts are becoming dangerously recurrent as the state’s population dramatically increases with in-migration from the West and North. Newcomers, accustomed to green lawns and irrigation systems for their yards, move up into the arid Hill Country and plant thirsty St. Augustine grass. Every new home is another straw sipping from the reservoirs, which, increasingly in the added heat of climate change, have turned into what a Texas drought expert refers to as “giant evaporation ponds.” In fact, evaporation rates of surface water in the Hill Country are approximately 57 inches per year.

A significant portion of water in Texas that is not consumed by lawn sprinklers, washing cars, or getting flushed down toilets, is evaporating from the surface of lakes. The city of Las Vegas, Nevada is trying to stop the waste of water on what it describes as “ornamental grass.” The definition does not include front lawns but put an end to watering medians on roadways and grass berms between sidewalks and pavement. The Southern Nevada Water Authority says there are eight square miles of “non-functional turf” in the Vegas area and eliminating its irrigation will reduce water consumption by about 15 gallons per person, per day.

A similar policy would help Texas conserve water.

“The easiest and quickest thing you can do – after patching up leaks – is restrict ornamental lawns,” said Alyssa Burgin of the Texas Drought Project. “Our major cities are growing so fast – we have to restrict it NOW. Folks who come here from elsewhere, where there is water, are just going to have to adapt. Heck, people who move to San Antonio from Bell County, where HOA/deed restrictions against xeriscaped lawns are enforced even when state law now states otherwise – are just going to have to adapt, because when the aquifer goes down, you’re going to go brown. Period.”

Storing water below ground, protected from summer heat in the Southwest, is also an effective strategy. The practice of aquifer storage and recovery is being used in San Antonio and Kerrville with considerable success. A billion gallons of fresh drinking water are stored in the Kerrville aquifer facility, which was the first deployed in Texas and only the third in the entire country.

The frenzy of dam building that began after the historic drought of the 1950s has not solved our water problem in Texas. There are more than 200 dams in the state but every year they seem to approach dangerously low levels of storage. Because of our southern geographic coordinates on the map, Texas did not experience the southward movement of the ancient ice masses and, consequently, there are no glaciated bodies of water in the state, just small freshwater ponds, and little lakes, which has prompted a dependence on reservoirs.

The other problem, which legislators refuse to confront, is Texas does not have a uniform statewide water usage policy. We rely on outdated frontier water laws that preserve claims of “first in time, first in right,” and the “right of capture.” The latter expression, almost self-explanatory, means you own whatever water is under your land if you have a pump to bring it up. The right of capture empowers you to pump dry an aquifer you share with a neighbor simply because you might have the resources to buy a pump, and she does not. Obviously, there is no argument to be made that this approach serves a common good in the parched American West.

The Ogallala Aquifer, as an example, is being pumped dry by farmers pulling up water from beneath their land to irrigate crops that would not otherwise survive. Ogallala, a vast inland and underground sea that stretches from South Dakota to the South Plains of Texas, might take millennia to recharge if it is drawn down toward dry. Without the Ogallala, the cotton and wheat fields stretched across the Texas Panhandle and down through the Cap Rock will disappear, if the rains don’t come.

The Ogallala Aquifer

I remember an exploratory trip through Western Nebraska that led to reporting on an irrigation project in the sand hills. Center pivot rigs were crawling up and down the low hills, spitting out water and nitrate fertilizer. The project seemed absurd, but a western beef producer had decided to vertically integrate its business and grow its own corn for cattle feed, and the sand hills were close to operations, easily fertilized, and abundant water in the form of the Ogallala was just below the surface. The operation, even through my youthful eyes, seemed astonishingly stupid. The nitrates leached into the groundwater, polluted the aquifer, reduced its volume, and became health risks for anyone drinking water from an Ogallala source.

Why do we allow such things to happen?

My personal belief is that the north and the Midwest will undergo an economic and population resurgence in the coming decades because of water. Single states with thousands of lakes can support businesses and families far more affordably than the desert Southwest. Phoenix and Los Angeles consume most of the water of the Colorado River and leave nothing more than a sand bar at the Gulf of California because the river is used up before its arrival. Arizona diverts Colorado River water into the Salt River Project canals for delivery to Phoenix, one of the hottest, driest, and fastest growing cities in the entire world.

Why has America not devised a sustainable strategy for water use? I cannot understand the lack of attention to such a critical issue, though, I am a desert rat now, drawn for decades to the high, dry expanses of the American West, the long, jagged horizons, and impossible sunsets. The bright red buds of an ocotillo in spring or a blooming prickly pear will make anyone believe it is possible to thrive in an arid land. Even glorious desert flora need water, though.

We are all haunted by waters.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.