There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked difficult questions about the links between the simultaneous health and ecological crises. These questions were examined in late January at the virtual Halki Summit, the latest in a long series of environment-focused events convened by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Each of us has our own experience of the first COVID year. We do all share some of the best results in supressing the virus anywhere in the world. Talk, though, of social cohesion and government competency is loaded here in Melbourne.
Now, for a few days it seems something new is happening. Can we name it? Thousands, even millions of people have come to the streets in almost a hundred townships and cities across Myanmar. They reject the coup. The young have glimpsed a new light.
The size and spread of government payments in past 12 months has held steady, and to some extent, improved the circumstances of many on low incomes or government support. The withdrawal of that support risks returning many to payments that do not provide for basic human needs.
Despite talk against ‘vaccine nationalism’ the pharmaceutical companies are ultimately beholden to investors and shareholders. Their effectiveness percentages are pitches. They will sell to those who can afford to buy. And naturally that’s wealthy countries.
All three of us are parents, we’ve all been adversely impacted by COVID-19, and prior to that we’ve shared the usual rough and tumble dynamics of male friendships and bridal party affiliations. We have been in and out of each other’s good books, hard conversations, interpersonal dynamics and orbits. We’ve been through a lot as mates. COVID-wise, though, that affinity has been at a remove.
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.
It’s a tradition of mine to undertake my own “media watch” experiment following the annual Invasion Day rallies. I ended up being pleasantly surprised.
What will it take, I wonder, to change these people’s minds? In an era as politically divisive as the one Americans (and Australians, for that matter) are living through, nothing is likely to convince detractors that COVID is an omnipresent threat — except perhaps the only thing with tangible currency in this whole blasted catastrophe: the visceral consequences of the pandemic itself.
What does Christmas mean for you? What does it have in store? Preceding and in the midst of the annual celebration of life and hope that is Christmas, we will always have those, as H L Mencken noted, are obsessed with the ‘haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy’.
Many refugees in Australia live in conditions that the rest of the population would find unacceptable. Most of the 192 refugees who were transferred to Australia under the Medevac legislation between February and December 2019 are currently held at hotels in Melbourne and Brisbane, known as ‘alternative places of detention’ (APOD), where they have had no access to the outdoors or fresh air for more than 12 months.
It’s usually January that white blindfold think pieces around Invasion Day start, but this year they’re getting in early. I cannot help but think this has a lot to do with the right in Victoria feeling completely dishevelled and disempowered at this point in time and lashing out.
97-108 out of 200 results.
x
Subscribe for more stories like this.
Free sign-up