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Keywords: Totalitarian

  • AUSTRALIA

    Is democracy going down the drain?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 November 2021
    31 Comments

    There is much discussion about the future of democracy, freedom and other aspects of liberal institutions. Mainly in the United States, under the pressure of a polarised public life. But also to a lesser extent in Australia, in the face of the evasive and authoritarian behaviour of governments and the manifest priority of winning elections over addressing the existential threats of global warming and gross inequality. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Outgrowing apartheid: FW de Klerk

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 November 2021
    51 Comments

    The passing of South Africa’s last apartheid president, FW de Klerk, raises pressing questions about a complex historical character who, according to his brother, Willem de Klerk, slowly outgrew apartheid. In a critical sense, he was bound, understandably, by both time and context: race, the need to defend a racial hierarchy, the historical role of a segregationist system that saw his all-white National Party retain power for decades. 

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  • ECONOMICS

    The battle for the future of money

    • David James
    • 07 September 2021
    4 Comments

    There is a three-way battle looming over the future of money and the stakes could scarcely be higher. Conventional money, mainly debt created by banks — the ‘folding stuff’ is only a tiny proportion of the total — is in trouble. Total global debt is now so large relative to the world economy it cannot be serviced, which is why monetary authorities have resorted to dropping interest rates. When they almost hit zero, the next step was quantitative easing (QE): printing money by getting the central bank to buy back government and corporate bonds and putting them on its ‘balance sheet’. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    New voices of protest in Myanmar

    • Anonymous
    • 02 March 2021
    6 Comments

    The young in Myanmar have no personal memory of those events of 1988 and 2007. They are Generation Z, raised on the internet and with new ways of communicating. Their emotions overcome fear. Gen Z meets the deadly threat with humour and creative protest.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Wikileaks, Assange and freedom of speech

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 January 2021
    10 Comments

    A serious discussion of freedom of speech must move beyond it as an individual right to see speech as communication. It will then consider all the relationships, personal and public, involved in communication. It presupposes that people share a common commitment to truth. Freedom of speech flows from that deeper human responsibility and freedom to seek truth.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Insecurity in a COVID world

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 May 2020
    6 Comments

    But insecurity breeds insecurity. In the face of insecurity we can feel insecure. Our identity as persons can be shaken by the insecurity of our circumstances. This is not inevitable. Nor is it necessarily lasting. Some people will be temporarily or lastingly paralysed by anxiety; others will be more resilient.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What Auschwitz means for the modern state

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 03 February 2020
    11 Comments

    This is cosmically far from saying that these are equivalent matters to the death camps of the Holocaust. But if we are to be serious about acknowledging the depravity of Auschwitz, we can at least take the lead from Katz on starting the conversation on why such events take place and do remain chillingly relevant.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Common ground amid polarised China debate

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 December 2019
    5 Comments

    If China spies upon Australia, Australia spied on East Timor. If China detains Uighurs in harsh conditions, so has Australia detained people in brutal and demeaning conditions on Manus Island. If China lays out money to nations on our region to secure its national interests, so does Australia, most notably to Nauru and PNG.

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  • RELIGION

    Silence has two faces

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 30 October 2019
    12 Comments

    It may seem paradoxical that one of the most effective ways of imposing silence is by imposing noise. The Romans did it with bread and circuses. More modern totalitarian regimes have done it with military processions and massive rallies. Governments in contemporary democracies do so by controlling what is fed to the media.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Kafka in Australia: the trial of Witness K

    • Susan Connelly
    • 06 April 2019
    18 Comments

    Our own version of Kafka's The Trial is being played out under our very noses. 'Witness K' and his lawyer Bernard Collaery have been charged with making known Australian state secrets in connection with ASIS spying on Timor-Leste. The similarities between the plights of Kafka's Josef K and Witness K do not end with their names.

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  • MEDIA

    Despite ructions, we still need the ABC

    • Fatima Measham
    • 27 September 2018
    9 Comments

    These events cannot be scrutinised in a vacuum. Fairfax and Nine might still merge. Sky News has made a deal with WIN to broadcast across its regional networks. We will need a robust national and public broadcaster if we are to have an alternative to entertainment posing as news, propaganda as analysis, and advertising as fact.

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  • RELIGION

    Rising from the ruins of 2010 Mass translation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 February 2018
    46 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of liturgy is always contentious. Fr Gerald O'Collins' latest book deals with a relatively small and domestic issue: the ingeniously engineered launch and spluttering subsidence of a revised English Catholic Mass translation. Though small, the events carry a large symbolic weight.

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