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Keywords: Authoritarian

  • MEDIA

    Sarah Hanson-Young's Zoo suit righteous

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 16 September 2013
    15 Comments

    Putting aside the outrageousness of 'jokingly' offering sanctuary to asylum seekers in exchange for an Australian senator posing for a lad's magazine, Zoo's actions simply tell us that mouthy women with an opinion can be dealt with by reducing them to sexual objects. And that objectification directly affects how women are perceived.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Military rulers bring Egypt into disrepute

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 August 2013
    11 Comments

    Disrepute and disaster are twins. If suspicion persists that football players were encouraged to take drugs whose long term effects are unknown, it would lead parents to discourage their children from playing the game at senior level, with incalculable commercial consequences. It is a much more serious thing to bring a nation's polity into disrepute. And that sadly is what the military rulers of Egypt have done.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election advice from ancient Rome

    • Dustin Halse
    • 12 August 2013
    11 Comments

    In 64 BC, the brilliant orator and lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero decided to run for the highest office in the Roman Republic. His younger brother Quintus, who possessed a penchant for the most outrageous acts of cruelty, penned a detailed memo outlining what his older brother needed to do to win the election. The current Australian federal election campaign would appear familiar to the Cicero brothers.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Civil liberties in a grave new world

    • Bill Calcutt
    • 09 August 2013
    1 Comment

    Since the turn of the millennium several major technology-enabled developments have significantly altered the balance between national security and civil liberties. In Australia, the hyper-politicisation of national security finds voice in the discourse on the issue of border security, turning a complex humanitarian and policing challenge (asylum seekers arriving by sea) into an enormously controversial and expensive imbroglio.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Turkish democracy gets the shake-up it needs

    • William Gourlay
    • 12 June 2013
    5 Comments

    Turkey's increasingly dictatorial prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid little heed to last week's violent demonstrations, dismissing protesters as looters and blaming social media for inflaming the situation. The protests are hardly on par with Egypt's government-toppling anti-Mubarak demonstrations, yet may still lead to a rejuvenation of Turkish democracy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Freewheeling fantasies of European citizenship

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 February 2013
    1 Comment

    Does citizenship need to be built upon close cultural, linguistic and historical ties, as in a national community? Or can a broader conception of citizenship be formed? In Brussels I spot a mural of a mosque on a garage door, surrounded by people from North Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, speaking French, Flemish, English and Arabic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2012: No lowly scapegoats in 'necessary' Royal Commission

    • Moira Rayner
    • 08 January 2013
    14 Comments

    One of the informing moments of my career as a lawyer came from the survivors of a family who disclosed that an authoritarian father had beaten and raped every one of his children — under the very eye of their mother. The Royal Commission isn't about punishing predators. It must find a way to institutionalise the right of every child to be heard. Tuesday 13 November

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2012: Thoughts on democracy from a martial law baby

    • Fatima Measham
    • 08 January 2013

    Today marks 40 years since martial law took effect in the Philippines. I was born during this time, part of a generation who grew up not knowing any other president. Given the numerous regressions that have occurred since, it is not surprising many Filipinos look back on the Marcos era with nostalgia. Friday 21 September 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No lowly scapegoats in 'necessary' Royal Commission

    • Moira Rayner
    • 13 November 2012
    58 Comments

    One of the informing moments of my career as a lawyer came from the survivors of a family who disclosed that an authoritarian father had beaten and raped every one of his children — under the very eye of their mother. The Royal Commission isn't about punishing predators. It must find a way to institutionalise the right of every child to be heard.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thoughts on democracy from a martial law baby

    • Fatima Measham
    • 21 September 2012
    11 Comments

    Today marks 40 years since martial law took effect in the Philippines. I was born during this time, part of a generation who grew up not knowing any other president. Given the numerous regressions that have occurred since, it is not surprising many Filipinos look back on the Marcos era with nostalgia.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How not to have a revolution

    • Justin Whelan
    • 23 August 2012
    6 Comments

    Syria was touted as an example of the limits of nonviolent struggle against a ruthless dictator. Now it is fast becoming a case study on the even greater strategic weaknesses of violence. As the nonviolent movement came under sustained repression, some people decided to take up arms, and opened a Pandora's Box.

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  • RELIGION

    Greater transparency will evolve the Church

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 May 2012
    44 Comments

    Bishop Morris wrote at considerable length to Archbishop Chaput, in a highly respectful and fraternal tone. To be fair to Chaput, I will quote his breathtaking response in full. It illustrates what still passes for due process and pastoral care in the Roman Church. We have to insist on something better. And with greater transparency, we will get something better.

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