keywords: Winston Churchill
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INTERNATIONAL
- Jeff Sparrow
- 09 December 2019
29 Comments
If the dark days of 1940 provided an opportunity for a chancer and publicity hound like Winston Churchill to emerge as an inspirational leader and reputed giant of the 20th century, why hasn't the catastrophic breakdown of the natural world done something similar for the likes of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Scott Morrison?
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AUSTRALIA
- Barry Gittins
- 20 September 2018
6 Comments
How best to extract them from their cozy dens? Whispering endearments and professions of love does not produce the desired results. Nor does opening curtains, turning on the lights, singing annoying songs, turning on a television or radio, or serenading them on a tuba. These strategies have all been unsuccessfully trialled.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 10 March 2017
4 Comments
Each day is met by the same reports: electoral interference has supposedly taken place, instigated by Russian, or at the very least outsourced Russian entities, in the elections of Europe and the United States. Such claims assert, not merely the reality of these claims, but the nature of their influence. Such a stance detracts from one fundamental point: that the manipulation of electoral systems has been, and remains, common fare, irrespective of the finger pointing at Moscow.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 01 March 2017
18 Comments
It is a commonplace that our political discourse is much impoverished. Speeches are built around sound bites. The Trump administration is experimenting with letting go of speeches and communicating within the limits set by Twitter. In such a world there is little space for more complex rhetoric, for cultural reference, for reflection on historical precedents, or for wondering. Our politicians' words leave no echoes. It is worth musing on what may be lost in the thinning of public discourse.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 27 September 2012
2 Comments
The book is essentially misogynistic. Women are objects of hedonistic possibilities in the same way that drugs are. Even the Kerouac figure Sal's self-deprecating account of failing to impress a virginal lover manages to marginalise the woman in question. The film seeks to rectify this by giving flesh to its female characters.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Philip Harvey
- 05 January 2012
1 Comment
Gallipolli was a disaster and a relatively minor conflict, but it is upon such 'minor' conflicts that Empires are built. These songs go to the heart of a contradictory dilemma: the love of country on the one hand and the ugly extremes of patriotism on the other. Published 23 February 2011
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 22 August 2011
8 Comments
Walls are not merely concrete manifestations but cultural and psychological ones. One East Berlin native recalled his mother 'cried for hours when the Wall fell'. Israel, in constructing a wall around Jerusalem, faced a host of issues as complex as those that faced East Germany.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
To attempt, to begin, is really to dream, to envision, to speculate, and then to work like a burro to implement, to create, to make real. How is it that a word like entrepreneurship, which means vast and amazing things, has become so commonplace and thin?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Philip Harvey
- 23 February 2011
3 Comments
Gallipolli was a disaster and a relatively minor conflict, but it is upon such 'minor' conflicts that Empires are built. These songs go to the heart of a contradictory dilemma: the love of country on the one hand and the ugly extremes of patriotism on the other.
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AUSTRALIA
- Moira Rayner
- 18 January 2011
22 Comments
I am bloody tired of journalists comparing one woman against another, as if there were a competition to find the 'real' woman leader, a winner and losers. That isn't how women tend to use power: it can be shared, and used for the common good. We saw Bligh and Gillard doing it, and didn't get it.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Went to return a book the other day and it refused to go
in the BOOKS ONLY slot. I tried again, thinking
perhaps I had suddenly aged beyond belief and could not muster the
muscle to cram it through the wall, but no, it was the book itself,
adamant, recalcitrant, bristling and ruffling indignantly, that would
not allow itself to be returned.
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RELIGION
- Yannick Thoraval
- 14 December 2009
8 Comments
When the Dalai Lama appeared, people flocked to
the stage, mobile phone cameras in hand, so
they too could own a piece of the Dalai Lama. As a measure of our cultural values, it is interesting to consider that the Dalai Lama has become a commodity.
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