As always, Crikey's prestigious end-of-year awards nominees are a mixed field of arsehats and heroes.
Right-wing pin-up boy Milo Yiannopoulos has been scandalised by an email leak, which, unless you're inclined to his brand of politics, is a delicious, early Christmas treat.
Til his last, Harry Leslie Smith was shouting from the abyss, reminding us just how much unnecessary suffering there had been, the filth and the hate of it.
Call him as “post-modern” or obscurantist as you like, Baudrillard, who died in 2007, sure left his signifying chain hanging around in the popular imagination.
Despite the provocation of an attack on what we love, of the killing of a man who was, in a small way, in our souls, we have retained a spirit lost to other cities.
Governments assume giving public spaces like the Opera House and Federation Square to commercial interests will not harm them. It will.
Our sites of power and authority — the parliaments, courts and cathedrals — remain, while vast amounts of what made up the best parts of people's lives vanish without trace.
This embarrassing international incident highlights not only Australia’s stubborn refusal to act on the urgency of race, but the media's stubborn refusal to even listen.
We are small nation, but punch well above our weight when it comes to blithe racism.
Laurie Carmichael has died, the trade unionist who was for decades driven by one big idea: that Australian labour could not simply bargain for "more" but had to transform the conditions of life and society to create better jobs, better conditions, better lives.