Keywords: Cultural Revolution
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Hurley
- 24 February 2022
1 Comment
Gambling is now a core national industry providing significant employment, profit for private providers and revenue for governments. All good but, as with every form of industry, there are ‘externalities’. In the case of the gambling industry, it is the personal and social costs of ‘problem’ or ‘addicted’ gamblers that must be taken into account.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ben Rich
- 17 February 2022
11 Comments
Today we see a resurgence of digital tribalism, a glorification of disingenuous engagement online and humiliating those of a different perspective. Everywhere we see simplistic and belligerent narratives of ‘us versus them’ over more nuanced explanations that might impart a greater sense of shared humanity and common purpose. So what happened?
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 17 August 2021
10 Comments
In his 83 years, social psychologist, researcher and author Hugh Mackay has seen the sun rise and set on regimes, ideologies, cults, fads, movements and manias. He has also seen language used to clarify and build common ground, or to confuse and demoralise. One constant throughout these years has been his fascination with how human beings treat each other and their planet, and why.
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MEDIA
- Jeremy Clarke
- 10 September 2020
7 Comments
The China story, described this week by the ABC’s Director of News Gavin Morris as ‘the story of our times’, defies simplistic renderings, however much a significant part of Australian-based commentary masquerades as such. The rapid revolutions of the modern media cycle do not permit much nuance or lengthy historically informed pieces.
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ECONOMICS
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 August 2020
6 Comments
Amid the disruption of predictable life wrought by the coronavirus, governments have focused on jobs. Jobs lost in the response to the virus, and jobs created as we emerge from the crisis. The focus is worthy — behind each job lost is a person whose life has become anxious and uncertain. The language, however, is concerning. Defining the challenge as one of creating jobs expresses an understanding of work, the inadequacy of which the coronavirus has laid bare.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 25 June 2020
14 Comments
The larger questions posed by the destruction of the statues, and indeed of reputations, that they symbolise, concern how to handle complexity.
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RELIGION
- Rita Tognini
- 28 January 2020
5 Comments
It's definitely the flesh and blood you, Thérèse, not the Little Flower of church statues and holy pictures, milky with sanctity. It's the frank-faced-child-in-lace-trimmed-dress-and-sturdy-boots you. It's the fourteen year old, hair-atop-head-in-a-bun-to-look-older-for-the-Bishop-so-he'll-let-you-take-the-veil you.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 26 August 2019
11 Comments
The democracy movement in Hong Kong, with its ideal of political freedom and its embodiment of it in spontaneous and decentralised organisation, is one of many such revolutions, most of them short lived. It is inspiring because of its idealism, and poignant because its precedents demonstrate the power of the forces arrayed against it.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Michael Kelly
- 08 August 2019
9 Comments
The betting among many observers is that the current chaos will end in tears. The massing of troops at the border is one sign. But the biggest thing that suggests that the PLA will march in and declare martial law is that the Chinese Communist Party has what we call 'form'.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 12 September 2018
This book is a warning of the terrible price we shall pay if we do not follow Pope Francis' leadership. Frank Brennan launches Anthony M. Maher's The Forgotten Jesuit of Catholic Modernism: George Tyrrell's Prophetic Theology. Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 11 September 2018
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 06 August 2018
How are we to honour the commitment to peace of these Japanese and Maralinga survivors of nuclear conflagrations unleashed maliciously or negligently last century? We need to renew our commitment to painstaking negotiation of international treaties and agreements designed to ensure peace and security for all, insisting on the dignity and human rights of all.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 11 April 2018
1 Comment
The commentary around the film's appropriation of Japanese culture has been sustained and substantial. At least these allusions are for the most part detailed and respectful; that the hero is named after a defunct American video game company is less palatable. Trickier still are the creative decisions related to language.
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