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Search Results: factions

  • INTERNATIONAL

    The uses of violence: The Israeli-Hamas war

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 26 October 2023
    5 Comments

    Following the Hamas attack on October 7, the world is forced to grapple with the profound complexities of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a mire of historical grievances, selective narratives, and devastating violence. With both sides weaponising the weight of their tragedies for the international stage, the tragedy's core remains: innocent lives lost in a perpetuating cycle of violence. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A Voice divided

    • David Halliday
    • 26 September 2023

    In the lead up to the Voice referendum, there's a subtle yet seismic undercurrent at play: How do we sustain a meaningful democratic conversation when the foundational truths seem so fragmented? Our ability to connect, converse, and find consensus could be the real referendum of our times.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Holy fools and flawed titans: The legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 September 2022
    3 Comments

    Greatness for the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, was not to be found at home. Commentary on his passing is as much a statement of positions, endorsed by admiring beneficiaries, and loathed by those who fell off the train of history.  The millions who delighted seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union and, as a result, a power vacuum and weaker Russia, toast him, eyes filled with emotion. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Morrison shadow government and the romantics of convention

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 September 2022
    8 Comments

    The most striking note in the tempestuous outrage regarding Scott Morrison’s self-appointment (technically, appointment with the Governor-General’s approval) to five ministerial portfolios other than his own, is the search for the illegal. Such a search is fruitless in a system that thrives on the principle of convention, perennially uncodified and therefore susceptible to breach.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Inconsistency in the treatment of foreign fighters

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 12 April 2022

    In a space of 40 years, Russia has been our enemy, then our friend and now is an enemy again. Russia is again attacking Ukraine. We are convinced the Ukrainian cause is just. But we also know that we face a domestic far-Right terrorism threat at home. What if young impressionable foreign fighters with little knowledge of Ukrainian history, politics and internal conflicts find themselves fighting with and influenced by anti-Semitic and Islamophobic neo-Nazi groups?

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  • RELIGION

    When Pope Francis comes of age

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 16 December 2021
    4 Comments

    Pope Francis turns eighty-five this week. His pontificate has seen him emerge from obscurity in Argentine Church politics to become, late in life, a global cultural icon and one of the most popular popes in living memory. Over the past nine years he has invigorated the Church and, according to papal biographer Austen Ivereigh, has made the papacy ‘much more human, much more accessible, much less remote’.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The satisfactions of homeliness

    • Brian Matthews
    • 06 October 2021
    2 Comments

    I’m reminded of George Orwell in smashed-up thoroughly locked-down, wartime London welcoming the first signs of spring amidst the ruins and winter’s lingering cold but wondering whether he should. ‘Is it wicked,’ he asks, ‘to take a pleasure in spring and other seasonal changes? To put it more precisely, is it politically reprehensible?’ 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How do you measure a human?

    • Barry Gittins
    • 11 May 2021
    28 Comments

    How do you measure a human? Can you determine their worth by vivisecting the actions of a potentate or a serf? Do we judge by what they’re consuming? Are we truly labelled from birth? Are we assessed by our factions? The absence or presence of mirth?

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  • MEDIA

    Media matters for the good of the Church

    • Peter Donnan
    • 19 November 2020
    66 Comments

    Author Gideon Goosen estimates the percentage of those involved in reform groups in Australia is 5 per cent or less. Given the passivity of the laity, his view is that reform proponents should seek to engage the 40 to 45 per cent who might change their thinking. What forums or media, with sufficient audience reach and influence, facilitate respectful discussion of change in the Catholic Church?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The US presidential election: democracy, threats and transition

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 10 November 2020
    7 Comments

    With Joe Biden securing the electoral college votes necessary to win the White House, the concern is whether the transition of power will be one marked by paroxysms of rage and disruption. Donald Trump is promising not to go quietly.

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  • RELIGION

    Factions and ginger groups within the church

    • John Warhurst
    • 10 September 2020
    66 Comments

    What is happening at the moment is that certain bishops are condemning members of the church renewal movement as pressure groups pushing an agenda, while ignoring the well-known fact that groups with other agendas are widespread within the church.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The problem with taking politics out of climate change

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 21 February 2020
    15 Comments

    The common-sense enthusiasm for depoliticising environmentalism — voiced most recently in relation to the bill proposed by the conservative independent Zali Steggall — pushes in entirely the wrong direction.

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