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Keywords: Stalin

  • AUSTRALIA

    Deakin and the parting of names

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 September 2023
    4 Comments

    As the legacy of historical figures is reevaluated, Alfred Deakin, Australia's second Prime Minister, finds himself under recent scrutiny. A champion of Federation, Deakin also held views towards Indigenous Australians now regarded as abhorrent. But is erasing his name from a university the right step? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Here Be Monsters

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 June 2023
    2 Comments

    As we tread the thin line between technological progress and ethical responsibility, King's urgent appeal is for critical reflection on the unchecked march of technology – a timely reminder of the need to retain our intrinsic human characteristics amid relentless digital advancement.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Celebrating needling humour

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 February 2023
    3 Comments

    The plot of Kate Solly’s very enjoyable first novel, Tuesday Evenings with the Copeton Craft Resistance turns on the conflict between good and evil, represented respectively by the generous desire to turn Catholic property over to refugees and the vicious desire to prevent the project by portraying refugees as Muslims and Muslims as sinister and alien.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Democracy – Fraternity = Catastrophe

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 September 2022
    3 Comments

    To say that democracy is under threat is now a truism. And to sustain democracy is a complex task. People need to believe in it and experience its benefits. This demands a deep grounding, founded on our shared human dignity and on our shared responsibility to shape our own lives within the community on which we depend.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Holy fools and flawed titans: The legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 September 2022
    3 Comments

    Greatness for the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, was not to be found at home. Commentary on his passing is as much a statement of positions, endorsed by admiring beneficiaries, and loathed by those who fell off the train of history.  The millions who delighted seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union and, as a result, a power vacuum and weaker Russia, toast him, eyes filled with emotion. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the name of Kyrill

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 May 2022
    4 Comments

    Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow has received much justified criticism for aligning his Church alongside Vladimir Putin in the invasion of Ukraine. If we are to understand how he could think it is right to do so, however, it is helpful to know how he came to be Kyrill. The story of his earlier namesakes illuminate the conduct of the present Patriarch of Moscow. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Stalin’s patriarchate

    • Stephen Minas
    • 23 May 2022
    2 Comments

    ‘We removed him from the mausoleum’, wrote the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. ‘But how do we remove Stalin from Stalin’s heirs?’ The poem was published in 1962 but it’s still a good question. Today one of Stalin’s heirs commands a barbaric war against Ukraine with the enthusiastic cheerleading of another such heir – the leader of the Moscow Patriarchate reestablished by Stalin.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Power but no glory

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 31 March 2022

    People who understand more about international affairs than I do tell me that the Ukrainian/Russian matter is complex, but to me the matter seems simple enough, involving the obsessions of a powerful man, and the suffering of an innocent population. As usual, it is the women and the children who are bearing the brunt of the conflict, while President Putin remains supremely indifferent to their fate. And, as so often, I wonder what makes him tick.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    When poetry purifies

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 March 2021
    15 Comments

    We recently celebrated World Poetry Day, which gives poets, both public and private, a day in the sun. It also renews old conversations about why poetry might be important and whether all poems should rhyme.

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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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  • 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

    The gifts of poetry and Down syndrome

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 26 March 2019
    6 Comments

    To devote the same day to reflection on both Down syndrome and on poetry, though probably unintended, was a very human thing to do. Precisely because one is so commonly regarded as a defect and the other as an idle activity, we need to be reminded that both are a gift.

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