HUMAN RIGHTS
Australian invasion anxiety in adolescent fantasy
September 09, 2010
Tony Kevin
What do young Australians take away from John Marsden's novels - and now, the film Tomorrow, When the War Began? They are more than escapist fantasies. They convey value messages, calling on young Australians to cherish our country, not to take it for granted, and to be prepared if necessary to kill and die for it.
FILMS
Not just war as teens fight back
September 09, 2010
Tim Kroenert
The characters voice implicit moral concerns about the right to kill in self-defense, and rationalise why it might be right to take up arms against the invaders. When Ellie is confronted by a mural depicting an encounterbetween Captain Cook and a group of Aboriginal Australians, she ismomentarily arrested.
CARTOON
Embracing the new paradigm
September 08, 2010
Fiona Katauskas
POLITICS
Welcome back Julia, now do it differently
September 08, 2010
Moira Rayner
Three Independents, belittled as 'The Three Amigos' but riding into the sunset nonetheless, have won the trust of their electorates and been able to exercise a little, meaningful power about how Parliament should work. This may not last, now that the decision has been announced.
BY THE WAY
Political farce aboard the Starship Ostracise
September 08, 2010
Brian Matthews
Lieutenant Yoo Hoo Hoo leans forward to read the
tape: 'Gillard offers Katter trip to Russian Space Station'. Our voices are drowned out by a persistent beeping sound. The specially
engineered Windsor-Oakeshott Thrusters have split and the Ostracise is going into reverse.
POETRY
In search of she who waits
September 07, 2010
Various
somewhere, .. on a dusty stump .. or parched rock ... far from here on the road inside myself .. patiently fanning flies .. and hoping that I'll have the heart .. to travel on and not look back.
HISTORY
Forgotten Jewish refugees demand recognition
September 07, 2010
Philip Mendes
International concern with Middle East refugees focuses on the approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs who left Israel
during the 1947–48 war. Far less attention has been paid to the nearly
one million Jews who left Arab countries in the decade or so following that war.
EDITORIAL
The politician who can't be bought
September 06, 2010
Michael Mullins
Newly-elected Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie is basing his quest for power on ethical conduct. There’s nothing new about politicians talking about doing the right thing. Wilkie’s point of difference is that he quickly follows his words with action.
POLITICS
Utopianism could fix politics
September 06, 2010
Colin Long
On the most important issues facing the nation, indeed the world —
climate change — we have had a Prime Minister who vaguely recognises
the problem but resists doing anything about it, and an opposition
leader who trivialises it to a question of tax.
VIDEO
Art prize tests religious convention
September 03, 2010
Peter Kirkwood
Art prize tests religious convention
September 03, 2010
Peter Kirkwood
The annual Blake Prize for Religious Art has never been far from controversy. Works honoured this year include Sydney artist Rodney Pople’s Cardinal with Altar Boy, which is a provocative painting dealing with clergy sexual abuse. Its setting is the interior of a beautiful baroque church, and it portrays a headless prelate dressed in ecclesiastical finery, with an altar boy in his lap.
POLITICS
Churches standing up to 'pro-Israel' politicians
September 03, 2010
Antony Loewenstein
The Australian Jewish News has condemned the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA) for calling on Australians to boycott Israeli goods made in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. The NCCA is supporting a campaign of groups determined to act where western political leaders have failed. Leaders including Barack Obama, Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott refuse to acknowledge what they are backing when they declare they are ‘pro-Israel’.
FILMS
Toppling the idyls of youth
September 02, 2010
Tim Kroenert
A barroom brawl is transformed in Boy's head into a version of Michael
Jackson's 'Beat It' music video. It's 1984 and Jackson is at his artistic and popular peak: pre-surgery, pre-child
abuse allegations. Boy's worship is pure, but as an audience watching in
2010 we know the purity is transient.
POLITICS
No equal voting opportunity
September 02, 2010
Moira Byrne Garton
Many of us value our participation in the election and have been excited by the resulting hung parliament. But some adult citizens cannot be placed on the roll at all, with a significant number of
Australians with intellectual disabilities or mental illness disenfranchised.
EULOGY
Man of faiths
September 01, 2010
Peter Kirkwood
On his return to Europe after many years absence, Raimon Panikkar said: ‘I left as a Christian, I found myself a Hindu, and I return a
Buddhist, without having ceased to be a Christian.' This statement of
his own multiple religious belonging is just one of many challenging
insights and ideas that he wrote about with passion and eloquence.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Natural disaster and human greed in Pakistan
September 01, 2010
Simon Roughneen
The name Sukkur is derived from the Arabic word for intense. For aid workers, the epithet seems apt. This disaster seems as vast as the swollen country-long lake that the Indus River has become. But the real human suffering and loss can be obscured by or sanitised into mere statistics.
CARTOON
Independent thinking
September 01, 2010
Fiona Katauskas
RELIGION
Father James Chesney and Ireland's religious war
August 31, 2010
Frank O'Shea
Throughout more than 30 years of killing and maiming in Northern
Ireland, the media and governments maintained that the unrest was a political conflict. Though virtually everyone on one side was Catholic and those on the other were
Protestant, nobody dared call it a religious war.
POETRY
The angel's telling smile
August 31, 2010
Michael Healey and Grant Fraser
He is Gabriel, delicately boned, familiar, .. he has turned towards the Virgin .. who stands in her long solemnity, .. amongst the sober prophets, .. and the proper saints.
POLITICS
The perils of holding the balance of power
August 30, 2010
John Warhurst
Though the Independents are raising
expectations about a 'new politics', the forces behind the status quo are strong and the public is fickle. If
they fail to deliver they might eventually suffer a
backlash, like Kevin Rudd and the Democrats before them.
EDITORIAL
Why we're slow to help Pakistan
August 30, 2010
Michael Mullins
The Australian public is being delivered a profoundly misleading
subliminal message that, because the Taliban are active in the region, they
are tied up in providing relief for flood victims. We need to forget politics for a while and
think about the part we can play in helping Pakistanis through their
crisis.