Claims made by many Australian commentators are contested in Overland 171: Old wounds. In an essay documenting media bias, blindness and blunder, JEFF SPARROW examines the remarkable chasm between reportage and fact during the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and challenges columnists who declared both wars a success while chaos, trauma and human rights breaches still prevail. This issue also features:
• key players in the extraordinary series of events of the Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island) Bridge affair, unveiled by MARGARET SIMONS’s book, The Meeting of the Waters. STEPHEN GRAY discusses the book while STEVE HEMMING exposes the arch-conservative politics driving the SA Museum’s Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery and the consequent branding of ‘secret women’s business’ as ‘fabricated’. Ngarrindjeri spokespeople, SANDRA SAUNDERS and TOM TREVORROW describe the sustained attacks on their people’s spiritual and cultural beliefs.
• NAOMI PARRY presenting new evidence against some of the more outrageous Keith Windschuttle claims; CLAIRE TUKE exposes thuggery at one of Australia’s most prestigious institutions, Melbourne University’s Ormond College; and MONA BRAND pokes fun at the 379 pages of ‘Top Secret’ ASIO files about her life activities. BARRY HILL is interviewed by STEPHEN BENNETTS; the slippery ethics of the Sydney Push are revealed in an autobiographic story by MICHAEL WILDING; and MARTIN THOMAS casts light on the disappearing Aborigine in Eugène von Guérard’s Blue Mountains paintings. The wedge politics leading to the 2001 election results, documented in David Marr’s and Marian Wilkinson’s book, Dark Victory, are discussed by PETER MARES.