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Vol 29 No 22

03 November 2019


 

  • ENVIRONMENT

    A view from Africa of Australia burning

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 14 November 2019
    10 Comments

    As fires obliterated large swathes of Australia, I was largely oblivious to the news — though tenuously connected to events as I travelled through oven-hot, tinder-dry national parks in Southern Africa. It was only when I reached the airport in Johannesburg that the extent of the catastrophe became apparent to me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Economic correctness gone mad

    • John Falzon
    • 13 November 2019
    30 Comments

    It's gone too far. The minute you voice even the smallest doubt about the Current Way of Things you get hammered. If, for example, you ask why large multinationals should profit from aged care, the guardians of Economic Correctness look at you funny. Either they don't get it, or they do and they cast you as an enemy of democracy.

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  • CARTOON

    Playing with fire

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 12 November 2019

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  • RELIGION

    Light and life found in humiliation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 November 2019
    22 Comments

    Might the experience of humiliation open the possibility of turning out to others instead of in on oneself? Might it seed compassion for others in their humiliation, and lead in turn to a society more sensitive to the wounds that humiliation causes both to the humiliated and the bystanders?

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  • MEDIA

    'Radical' Q&A should be heard not silenced

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 12 November 2019
    15 Comments

    On their own, Eltahawy's words are confronting, yet within the context of her argument, the questions were about flipping the balance of power on its head for a moment. It's not a call to action, but rather a thought exercise. What if men were as scared of violence from women, as women are taught to be of men?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Migration hardline is selling Australia short

    • Bree Alexander
    • 12 November 2019
    3 Comments

    Due to this stance, immigration is arguably not being leveraged to actually benefit the country, including its flailing economy. This is despite a government report released last year stating that immigrants increase GDP and helped avoid the 2008 financial crisis.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The crime scene that is Australia

    • Libby Hart
    • 11 November 2019
    1 Comment

    It's difficult to move in this landscape. Haunted and fragile and tragic, there's no place that is benign. A cursed house, the Greeks might say.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor pain and uncertainty

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 November 2019
    10 Comments

    The Labor Party's dismal performance this year has been bookended by May's election loss and this month's campaign review report. As it reflects publicly on the devastating election loss, discussion has also begun among Labor supporters about whether it has chosen the right leader for the future in Albanese.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Greenies and miners don't need to be at war

    • Tim Hutton
    • 08 November 2019
    6 Comments

    Miners are not the enemy. In fact, those who once worked in mining are key to implementing change. After all, renewable energy isn't going to build and maintain itself. Our coal-fired power stations are starting to reach the end of their life cycle, and many countries are rapidly divesting from coal. We owe it to our nation’s workers to plan for the future.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate clues beyond the four seasons myth

    • Katherine Wilson
    • 08 November 2019
    9 Comments

    Any Australian who believes in four seasons is engaged in a form of climate denial. Spring, summer, autumn and winter are colonial constructs, not an objective truth. I recently visited a school which has the largest Indigenous student population in Melbourne. The kids made a mural depicting the eight seasons of greater Melbourne.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hope and trepidation amid Lebanon unrest

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 07 November 2019
    3 Comments

    Like many Lebanese Australians I've been watching the mass protests in Lebanon with hope and trepidation. Hope that government reforms, or a change of government, will bring about meaningful transformation in economic management, transparency and public services. Fearful because of the possibility of civil war.

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  • CARTOON

    Taking care of business

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 06 November 2019
    1 Comment

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need better care to relieve birth trauma

    • Nicola Heath
    • 06 November 2019
    2 Comments

    In our foetal-centric antenatal model, the health and wellbeing of the person giving birth are secondary considerations, stemming in part from a belief that suffering is a defining characteristic of childbirth. But what if a 'safe delivery' meant not just a healthy baby, but a healthy mother too?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Class and climate drive Melbourne Cup hostility

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 06 November 2019
    27 Comments

    I can't imagine how anyone could look at the Melbourne Cup and see a vision of the 'fair go'. On the contrary, much hostility to horse racing — this year's Cup attracted the smallest crowd since 1993 — stems from a perception that its rituals celebrate grotesque inequalities.

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  • RELIGION

    El Salvador reality upends justice romance

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 November 2019
    16 Comments

    Thirty years ago this month, the Salvadorean Armed Forces murdered two women and six Jesuits at the Universidad Centroamericana El Salvador. For me it was a significant stage on the journey from fascination with the romance and the rhetoric of the struggle for justice to recognition of the hard, unyielding daily reality that it involved.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Stories about the Russia you thought you knew

    • Justin Glyn
    • 06 November 2019
    9 Comments

    A casual reader, picking up Tony Kevin's book without much background knowledge on the events which it covers, might assume that the work was alarmist conspiracy theory, so wildly is it at odds with the standard fare which one reads in the papers about Russia and contemporary politics in general. Frighteningly, it is not.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Environmental boycotts and the free market

    • Kate Galloway
    • 04 November 2019
    5 Comments

    It is up to business to determine what the market wants. And business is being given a very clear message of market sentiment, through people protesting. For government to attempt to regulate this is a burden on freedom of speech and a significant imposition on the market mechanism, the very thing Morrison says he is trying to protect.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In praise of the rituals of others

    • Jane Williams
    • 04 November 2019
    1 Comment

    Thank God for Bollywood and daytime TV. For the all night partyers and marathon love makers. For the hash brownie bakers, the nut crackers and pot-stirrers ... the drum-beating banjo-twanging wannabe musicians ... the incense wafting up from the first floor through our bathroom vent — frankincense I'm tempted to think.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hong Kong Church silent as the people sing

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 04 November 2019
    12 Comments

    That the Catholic Church in Hong Kong has not only chosen to remain silent, but also enforce this silence through the banning of a song, is itself a political act. Considerations as to whether this silence is a consequence of the Vatican's recent agreement with the PRC about the appointment of bishops within China do seem to have merit.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    On power and Koreans' American fear

    • Christine Burke
    • 04 November 2019
    4 Comments

    Anyone interested in social justice knows that structures and systems can bolster the worst tendencies of human nature, can incubate 'social sin'. Korean friends, when asked if they live in fear of North Korea, almost always tell me 'we fear America more'. To me that seemed a bit of an overstatement. Now I understand their response.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate science for the birds

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 November 2019
    3 Comments

    The scene I have described was more than purely peaceful. In these iron days, to write about or seriously discuss the world of nature and its phases and complexions can be a political act, 74 years after Orwell wondered about that very same point in 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Making safe spaces for reporting harassment

    • Alana Schetzer
    • 01 November 2019
    4 Comments

    The message from these cases is clear: if you report sexual harassment, you will be punished for it. It's not enough that #MeToo has created a space for women to openly discuss the systematic harassment and discrimination they have experienced. We also need to create a safe environment for them to report these behaviours.

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