Holding Pattern

When Donald Trump executes his mass deportation of unauthorised migrants to the US it will not be the first mass deportation to occur in US history. Between 1929 and 1939, it is estimated that anywhere from 500,000 to 2 million people of Mexican descent were deported or pressured to leave the United States. This included […]

Hunter-Gatherers Most (possibly all) hunter-gatherer societies imbue the land with spirituality, viewing it as sacred, alive, or imbued with spiritual forces. Many practice animism, the belief that the land, animals, plants, and even inanimate features like rocks and rivers possess spirits or consciousness. Hunter-gatherers usually see themselves as part of the land rather than separate […]

In 1900, my maternal grandmother, Ilse Englesmann, was born in Brno, Moravia, then part of the Hapsburg Austria- Hungarian empire. The empire dissolved in the wake of WWI and Brno then became part of the newly formed Czechoslovakia. Ilse Englesmann In 1921 Ilse made the short journey just across the border from Brno to Vienna, […]

Introduction This is the story of the Englesmann siblings’ flights from Nazi occupied Austria and Czechoslovakia. The siblings were the children of Gustav Englesmann and Frederica Stein- Felix (3/6/1885 to 15/2/50), Stefanie (1/4/1887 to 1956) and Ilse (19/10/1900 to 1951). The story draws on the history of Margret Holding’s family written by Dr Sue Silberberg, […]

Supporter’s of Israel’s right to exist, and it’s right to respond militarily, following Hamas’s October 7 attack, have often been too slow to conclude that Israel’s response has been disproportionate and breaches customary international humanitarian law. Part of the problem here is undoubtably the difficulty of describing what a proportionate response would have looked like […]