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Isobel Blackthorn

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  • It’s unequivocal – Uranium is our salvation!

    It’s unequivocal – Uranium is our salvation!



    It pleases me to announce that Australia will be selling uranium to India. They are a stable democracy with a growing economy and much need for power. This government is happy to expand into the vibrant market of India with this valuable resource, giving a timely boost to our own economy. Our nation stands to gain many benefits from this gesture of goodwill. Profits all round. It’s a win win win. Yes, I’ll chink flutes with you.

    Tailing ponds? Oh, don’t worry about
    ...
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  • Mauritania and curly haired dudes from Harvard

    Mauritania and curly haired dudes from Harvard



    I woke this morning with Mauritania on my mind. I heard the nation mentioned yesterday and realised I had forgotten where in Africa it was located. I was shocked at this, normally priding myself on knowing more or less where every nation in the world is.
    ...
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  • Downhill to Galilee

    Downhill to Galilee

    BREAKING NEWS FROM THE GREENS: The Abbott Government has just approved Australia’s LARGEST coal mine, two weeks after abolishing the country’s first climate laws. They just don’t get climate change. The coal from Adani’s Carmichael mine would be equivalent to almost one quarter of Australia’s total emissions – a climate disaster! This mega mine would also destroy 20,000 ha of native bushland, use 12 billion litres of Queensland’s groundwater per year and threaten the endangered black-throated finch with ...
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  • Absolute Power begets Absolute Nutters: Ideas are more dangerous than guns.

    Absolute Power begets Absolute Nutters: Ideas are more dangerous than guns.

    I have known since the eighties when I learned of Ronald Reagan’s association with The Rapture that there exists a section of the power Elite who hold dear some whacky ideas. It occurred to me last night that it is entirely possible if not probable that there are prime movers within this Elite who believe in something more sinister still than fundamentalist Christian beliefs in an end-time event and second-coming of The Christ, a ludicrous set of beliefs based on Scripture taken as literal tru...
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  • Waking up to the Third World

    Waking up to the Third World



    Back in the 1980s I enrolled in a course as part of my undergraduate degree with the Open University (UK) entitled Third World Studies. I was twenty-four and full of awe and amazement and outrage as I learnt about India’s Green Revolution, issues for the Tuareg of Niger, and of the economies of the newly-industrialised countries (NICs) of south-east Asia. I learnt about the problems created for poor economies by big business. I learnt about the IMF and the World Bank. I studied the
    ...
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  • Spiders in scandals

    Spiders in scandals



    I am developing an aversion to spiders. There is something disturbing in that.

    Consumed by an oil spill caught in a slow-moving storm.

    Sending wave upon wave of Special defilement on virgin shores.

    Moral outrage it is good, it is just, it is true.

    And manipulated.

    Obfuscating outrages conjured by those in charge.

    Whose violations are devastating my soul.

    What happenstance conspired to cause
    ...
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  • The whole world as we know it now.

    The whole world as we know it now.



    Waking at four every morning seems to provide me with a reflective perspective on life, as if the pre-dawn hours are meant for contemplation. While the world around me sleeps and only the cock crows prematurely, I can think. And my thoughts have settled today on the will-to-empire.

    For it occurs to me that humanity has now entered a new era, certainly the new age has dawned but not on a lovely sunny day, more on a scene from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

    This
    ...
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  • In a social democracy welfare is a right

    In a social democracy welfare is a right



    Another critical piece showing that the Abbott government’s reforms to Newstart and Youth Allowance will simply not work can be found here in The Saturday Paper,

    Welfare changes ‘more about prejudice than policy': Hewson

    In the article, Mike Seccombe highlights former Liberal party leader John Hewson’s comment that our incumbents are driven not by a sense of humanity but by ideology. I agree with Hewson that these reforms reveal not a measured rational response to
    ...
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  • Totalitarianism is wearing a new coat.

    Totalitarianism is wearing a new coat.



    It might seem extreme to talk of totalitarianism in the same breath as America. Totalitarianism belongs to the twentieth century, to Stalin and Mussolini and Hitler. It smacks of despots wielding absolute power through state control. America is nothing of the sort. America is a democracy. Or is it?

    When I think of what occurs in the world today, what has gone down since 9/11 2001, that pivotal day that changed America, I begin to wonder. The aftermath of 9/11 saw the formation
    ...
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  • Hard Attitudes for Hard Times

    Hard Attitudes for Hard Times

    Despite the grandiose speeches and the spin, across western democracies post-GFC austerity seems to have little to do with reducing government debt and everything to do with controlling populations largely through the expansion and oppression of the underclass – the dalits of western civilisation – the guts sucked from the welfare system leaving a wizened carcass of a once plump beast. Welfare services are corporatised, sold off to the lowest bidder whose sole concern is profit. Corporations or quasi-co...
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  • Re: Should our troops be re engaged in Iraq?
    by Isobel Blackthorn
    Iraqi Civil War



    As Iraq breaks down into civil war our Prime Minister is making noises that we may have to take part in an 'allied' resolve to interfere again.

    What do you think?
    I think we should never have taken part first time round. Either the US and its allies are profoundly stupid in that they could not envisage the mayhem they would cause given the initial conditions, or profoundly clever, since last I heard of the $2 Trillion the US spent in Iraq, 90...
    21 August 2021, 09:58 PM
  • RESPECT at Pave Festival
    by Isobel Blackthorn



    When musical duo Savannah Rose invited me to speak at their RESPECT show I was honoured and baffled all at once. What would I talk about? With their smooth and dulcet harmonies, Suzanne Diprose and Bree Cleal sing dark and old-school country. Their awareness-raising show depicts how women are portrayed in song lyrics. They are joined by Moonshine Coalition, Heidi & Jules, and The Borrowed Boys. I needed to fit into all that and I dont have a country bone in my body. ...
    16 March 2017, 03:27 PM
  • Isobel Blackthorn speaking at Belgrave library – feat. Savannah Rose
    by Isobel Blackthorn
    What does an audience expect an author talk event will be like? Will there be a powerpoint presentation? A slide show of images of old drafts, with bits of text crossed out and heaps of writing in the margins? Will the author explain her writing process and provide insights into her creative journey?
    ...
    24 February 2017, 11:30 AM
  • The Cabin Sessions in Fear Front’s Spring line up!
    by Isobel Blackthorn
    When Fear Front offered to publish my first horror novel, The Cabin Sessions, a few days ago, something in my personal universe shifted, as though a cog turned and I was moving forward again.
    ...
    8 February 2017, 05:14 PM
  • A Perfect Square reviewed by Kate Braithwaite
    by Isobel Blackthorn
    I am delighted to share this warm, 5 star review of my novel, A Perfect Square, from Kate Braithwaite, author of Charlatan.


    A Perfect Square is a clever, thoughtful literary novel which also manages to have a cracking plot and complex characters.
    ...
    20 January 2017, 01:40 PM
  • Lovesick re-released!
    by Isobel Blackthorn
    My memoir, Lovesick, came out in 2011 to popular acclaim. I decided to re-release the book and give it a new lease of life after a friend and high school teacher told me he thought it should be much more widely read.
    ...
    7 January 2017, 12:46 PM
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