Literary magpie. Latest book -- The Age of Fibs: fiction, memoir, microlit -- (see in linktree below). Green lefty - she/her/dr.
Guringai land/DarkinjungLC NSW
Joined September 2010
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Kind of blown away by this article by Helen Elliot in the March issue of @TheMonthly - themonthly.com.au/issue/2023…
#TheAgeofFibs
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
One day, we will look back at this time in Australia's history where the entire nation went to a vote and denied Indigenous people a direct voice to parliament while directly after that, the government of the day walked away and gave that voice to Israel - without a single Australian vote being cast or a person being asked.
One day we will wonder how we allowed Australia to be captured and ruled by a foreign nation, for our thoughts to be policed and our rights to artistic expression and freedom of speech curtailed by an unelected, South African born, multi-millionaire white woman from eastern Sydney who answers to lsrael.
One day we'll have to tell our children and grandchildren that this woman thought that protesting against a war where children are bombed and burnt alive in their beds is an evil thing to do, but marching with a Nazi protest sign is nothing worth worrying about.
One day we will have to explain this upside-down madness, this state-captured think speak we all allowed to happen and wonder why we didn't do more.
One day, everyone will have always been against this.
#SackSegal
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Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
I've been in politics for a quarter century. It's hard to express how staggering it is to see a conversation like this on corporate US media. The Morning Joe panel gobsmacked by the directness of @AbdulElSayed's points.
(clip via @DropSiteNews)
Over at S-ub-stack a memoir piece about sharing a flat in an amazing decaying mansion at 8 Alfred Square St Kilda in 1977. My room had clouds painted on the ceiling, the sea out across the road, and the sound of the roller coaster from Luna Park. bethspen.substack.com/p/just…
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
'The Special Envoy's updated report on antisemitism is so misguided, conspiratorial, and frankly, Orwellian that it's hard to know where to start.' Our response highlighted in the @australian today.
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
'The Australian' tried a gotcha on new Greens leader David Shoebridge and it didn't go as planned 😎
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
Migration should work for Australia.
Our plan cuts the numbers, raises the standards and puts Australia’s needs first.
Read our plan here:
liberal.org.au/our-plan/migr…
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
18 years ago, scientists drew up 9 planetary boundaries not be transgressed if the world is to remain safe and secure. Today they report we have crossed a record seven - with ocean acidification joining others like climate change and biodiversity loss.
oceanographicmagazine.com/ne…
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
Kids, you don't see it much in the world today, just so you know, this is what integrity looks like.
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
People shouldn’t be shocked Pauline Hanson is mean. She's never hidden it. She voted against free TAFE, pension increases, affordable housing and stronger workplace protections. Every one of those votes made someone's life harder. None of them made yours easier.
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
Some didn't bend. Some didn't shake. That's the only reason abusive power has not yet become total power.
The genocidal cult that in 2026 occupies the highest seats of might can be defeated - by numbers, not miracles.
Grow bigger, grow stronger, multiply, anti-genocide front.
Breaking: Zionists legal proceedings against me have been withdrawn after a 2 year battle.
This is a win for every Australian who values our democratic right to freedom of political expression. Zionist zealotry has had to beat a retreat from what was going to be a highly damaging trial.
I have spent 2 years doing nothing but preparing my defence in a case aimed at silencing me - a case that would have cost the average Australian their home.
I want to thank my fellow Australians who recognised the significance of what we stand to lose, stood with me and stepped up to assist me to launch my defence.
The purpose of journalism is to get to the truth - fearlessly - and to hold power to account. This is a win for press freedom, which has prevailed.
I want to thank my legal team, XD Law led by Mark Davis assisted by Jack Vaughn, and the formidable Sheryn Omeri assisted by Richard Reynolds, who took on board the full national and international dimensions that the case warranted, and my husband for his unflinching moral clarity.
Watching a people live stream their own genocide while the international community responsible for creating this mess offers the victims sympathy and the perpetrators bombs, diplomatic cover and impunity, has been disgusting. Thank you to the Jewish and Israeli people all over the world raging against this in recognition our common humanity trumps any form of tribalism.
Australia must stop disregarding the Orders of the International Court of Justice which were clear: we are obliged under international law to take meaningful action to prevent genocide in Palestine and to do all in our power to bring about an end to apartheid. Hypocrisy, double standards and a lack of courage are aiding the destruction of a framework intended to protect against the worst excesses of state power.
So it was a classic SLAPP case (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) after all, & he basically admits this-- ie even though @MaryKostakidis didn't back down, many watching were silenced out of fear, & vast resources of time and money were exhausted to defend the case.
STATEMENT RE MARY KOSTAKIDIS AND THE ZIONIST FEDERATION
After 2 years of utterly pointless legal proceedings against Mary Kostakidis, Alon Cassuto of the Zionist Federation pulled up stumps and ended the case on Friday.
There were no deeds, undertakings or apologies. There was an agreement that he would not be pursued for costs and he simply walked away.
In the interests of social cohesion we gave him a dignified exit and basically said nothing. Instead of taking a deep breath before trying to explain to his backers how profoundly he had failed, he put out a press release. One of the most deceptive we have ever seen. The short correct version is Alon lost. Badly. He achieved nothing of any legal consequence. Australians are still relatively free to speak their minds without being overly concerned about what Mr Cassuto thinks. Mary stoicly never ceded an inch to him and she will continue to say as she wishes on all public events.
Alon’s solemn legal proceeding didn’t begin 2 years ago with a court filing, it began with a bells and whistles press conference and a single compliant journalist at the ready. Mr Cassuto, then freshly appointed as the CEO of the Zionist Federation of Australia, announced he had taken offence to two tweets Mary had made in the midst of the bombardment of Gaza. So offended that Mary would have to answer for it in the Federal court under the Racial Discrimination Act. It now seems that the Act was just a handy prop for Mr Cassuto’s objectives. A man with no reputation was going to launch himself bringing down a woman who had one. So he thought.
Mr Cassuto’s legal proceeding to ventilate his hurt over tweets began with nothing more than slurs about Mary and ended in the same vacuous way. For two years he wasted the resources of the Federal Court and the Human Rights Commission, the time and expense of half a dozen lawyers putting on claims and defences circulating around Alon’s hurt and offence. And then on the verge of the trial he withdraws with a self serving flourish:
“My objectives in bringing this proceeding have been substantially satisfied.”
Really. Did he ever have a proper purpose in bringing this court proceeding? Or was it just a monumental waste of time resources and money until Alon breezily decides that his objectives have been met. If his objective was to pointlessly fan political and religious tension he may have a point. Or perhaps it was to encourage a schoolyard pile-on to Mary Kostakidis. Well done. Or was it to bring disrepute to the Zionist Federation by portraying them fundamentally as thin skinned and enemies of free speech.
In his account of his legal objectives Mr Cassuto infers that one of his accomplishments was that ‘Ms Kostakidis has publicly apologised’ That was 18 months ago. And nothing to do with you Mr Cassuto. Various meanings were being taken from her posts. Mary didn’t agree with those interpretations but under her own steam apologised if any hurt was taken. That is because she is a nice person, a class act and not a windbag. Every dollar spent, all the wreckage and all the vitriol since then, was for the vanity of Mr. Cassuto. He wanted a few more words added that were to his liking and he wanted a Federal Court proceeding to force Mary to say them. She wouldn’t be bullied to say your words Mr Cassuto and she will not be in the future.
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
Please share widely.
My paper has just been published in Clinical Psychologist: “Arguing the need for Aboriginal specific testing of attachment theory as a foundation of culturally informed child protection and attachment best practice.”
This paper, I believe is critically important to reducing Indigenous child removals.
The gap it documents is this: Aboriginal child removals have increased 119% over a decade. Non-Indigenous removals are down 12%. And the primary scientific tool used to assess infant attachment — Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedure — has been validated in more than 40 countries. Never with Aboriginal Australians.
That is not a footnote. That is a foundation missing from every child protection decision made about Aboriginal families by a workforce that is 94% non-Indigenous.
Based on over two decades of original research and clinical work, this paper presents new models for understanding culturally informed attachment — including collective caregiving, kinship obligation, skin and avoidance relationships, race-mediated trauma, and Black Identity Formation — and what it means for assessment and treatment.
The Westerman Jilya Institute has secured funding to do what this paper argues is urgently needed: validate the SSP with Aboriginal children for the first time, and build the first evidence-based attachment program designed from within Aboriginal culture.
tandfonline.com/eprint/BBRMB…
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
The penny will drop soon. There will be mass panic and the media will be fighting to say they weren’t warned how bad it was. They were. Like here:
Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 retweeted
Wow! I forgot how many trolls there are on X. After tweeting about how many current politicians have qualifications relevant to their portfolios (in response to Pauline Hansons appalling political record)-what followed was a barrage of arguments that relevant expertise is somehow bad for the country —classic Trumpism and Hansonism.
Revealing. And terrifying.
Trump literally said he loves the uneducated — at a rally — and got cheered for it. That’s the playbook: manufacture resentment toward expertise so that incompetence becomes a virtue and accountability becomes elitism.
The really dangerous part isn’t Hanson or Trump themselves — it’s that their supporters have been successfully convinced that being against knowledge and evidence is somehow authentic and brave. That questioning a politician’s relevant expertise is snobbery rather than basic accountability.
You’d never apply the anti-expertise logic anywhere else. Nobody says “I don’t want a qualified surgeon, I want someone who just gets it.” Nobody says “I don’t care if my engineer has credentials, I care about his character.” As if Hanson’s character is to be admired.
But somehow when it comes to the people managing the economy, health policy, and Indigenous affairs — suddenly expertise is suspicious.
It’s not anti-elitism. It’s anti-accountability — and Hanson has made a 30-year career out of it without fixing a single thing she complains about.
