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Keywords: Discrim

  • MEDIA

    Pub test is a kangaroo court for victims of racial hate

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 March 2017
    10 Comments

    Arguments for repealing 18C ignore the symbolic force of law in an imperfect society in which we live. In public life the One Nation Party, which is able to exert some influence on legislation in a fragmented parliament, regularly criticises Muslims. These views are also retailed by commentators in some mainstream media. They increase the anxiety of immigrants from Muslim nations. In such a context any weakening of 18C will be seen as the declaration of open season against such groups.

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  • PODCAST

    ChatterSquare S01E03: Turnbull, catharsis and scapegoating

    • Podcast
    • 07 March 2017

    In this episode, we feel a bit sorry for Malcolm Turnbull and wonder whether the electorate even cares who is leader anymore. We also discuss scapegoating and how attempts to discriminate lead to indiscriminate effects.

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  • RELIGION

    What the sharia is all the fuss about?

    • Rachel Woodlock
    • 24 February 2017
    29 Comments

    Once upon a time, a proud dad in Dandenong could name his son Jihad, with its ancient meaning of 'striving' in the path of God. Now he might choose a different name to avoid future discrimination. 'Shari'a' has come to mean the forced imposition of medieval punishments on cowering populations, while 'halal' is the torture of sheep and cows. These words have been stolen from ordinary Muslims, the vast majority of the world's second largest religion. I blame three groups for this.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Peru's indigenous language revival

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 24 January 2017
    4 Comments

    One indigenous language vanishes every two weeks, and Quechua, once the tongue of Peru's mighty Inca Empire, was one of those heading to extinction. That is, until last December, when the first ever Quechua language television news service went to air on the platforms of TV Peru and National Radio, the public broadcaster. According to one presenter it is a 'space that breaks all the paradigms of discrimination and inequality toward those who are speakers of indigenous languages'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Men's rights activists need to take a chill pill

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 27 October 2016
    24 Comments

    The 'men's rights' documentary The Red Pill has been pulled from Melbourne's Palace Kino cinema, sparking debate over censorship and what constitutes partisan reporting. The men's rights movement holds that 'feminism has gone too far', to the point that men are discriminated against. Since the internet and the third wave of feminism, the majority of MRA groups seem to be little more than a veil for misogynists to legitimise their sexism. It's a shame, because there are some MRA groups who raise real issues.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stand with heroic Gillian Triggs

    • Moira Rayner
    • 25 October 2016
    55 Comments

    This damnable pursuit of Gillian Triggs must stop at once. Triggs is an outstanding independent statutory office holder, one of the many appointed by governments over decades to remind them of Australia's international human rights obligations and to oversee the functions of laws to mitigate social wrongs such as age, race, disability and sex discrimination in public arenas. But no government likes watchdogs on the moral and legal limits on its power.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    History of disability discrimination is present in Australia

    • Justin Glyn
    • 29 March 2016
    9 Comments

    People with disabilities have lived on society's margins since biblical times. In 1939, extending eugenics and sterilisation campaigns developed in the US in the early 20th century, Hitler authorised the vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens ('the destruction of lives unworthy of life'). Unfortunately, not only has discrimination not been eradicated but those of us with disabilities, much like indigenous people, the poor, refugees and others with limited voice in society, continue to be seen as soft touches.

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  • RELIGION

    Liberation theology in modern Australia

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 February 2016
    23 Comments

    Liberation theology was once caricatured as Marxism with a Christian tinge, or the Bible plus Kalashnikov. In fact, thinkers identified with the movement were involved in a serious theological exploration. In public conversation in Australia the theological questions ut it raised are of marginal significance. But secular variants abound in which society is analysed in terms of the discrimination suffered by various minority groups at the hands of the majority or of those with power.

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  • RELIGION

    Free speech and the plebiscite on same sex marriage

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 December 2015
    39 Comments

    Chris Puplick, a former senator and former president of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, is one of a rising chorus expressing strong objections to the Australian Catholic bishops daring to evangelise and speak publicly about their views on same sex marriage. I too would be very upset if my bishops were saying, as Puplick claimed in an opinion piece in The Australian, that homosexuals are 'seriously depraved, intrinsically disordered, less than whole and messing with kids'. But they're not.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A Human Rights Day tribute to the Northern Territory's Tony Fitzgerald

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 December 2015

    I first met this Tony on my regular visits here to Darwin when he was working at the North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service and then when he set up the mediation services under the auspices of Anglicare. In later years I knew him when he was your Anti-Discrimination Commissioner. He was a quiet, considered, gentle, strong and principled man. On Human Rights Day, it is only fitting that I honour Tony by offering some reflections on the architecture for human rights in Australia, on the contemporary human rights controversies, and on the way forward for better protection of the human rights of Aborigines and asylum seekers, two marginalised groups who had a special claim on Tony's sympathies.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Not racist but

    • Barry Gittins
    • 01 December 2015
    5 Comments

    I'm not homophobic, but if you question my relished prejudice, satirise my hissy fits, you're not playing fair. I'm not racist, but don't you call out my revulsion, or reveal cultural discrimination (not here over there). I'm not sexist but your flaunting of sexual freedom, power, makes me long for lost hour ... If you peer quite closely you will notice I am mostly not a loving breathing person (that's rare).

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Education needed to overcome media superficiality

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 09 September 2015
    1 Comment

    Last week's image of Aylan Kurdi was emblematic of a range of current social crises: religious and ethnic conflict, discrimination and inequality, terrorism, the plight of migrants and refugees. Western Sydney University Humanities lecturer James Arvanitakis sees education as the key to grappling with them beyond the knee-jerk response to the disturbing images.

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