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Anyone interested in social justice knows that structures and systems can bolster the worst tendencies of human nature, can incubate 'social sin'. Korean friends, when asked if they live in fear of North Korea, almost always tell me 'we fear America more'. To me that seemed a bit of an overstatement. Now I understand their response.
Assange's latest court appearance coincided with the launch of the Right to Know campaign, backed by the major press organisations in Australia as well as the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. To its immense credit, the MEAA has consistently defended him. But many prominent Australian journalists have not.
Ruling out an individual's efforts simply because they aren't perfect seems to be a fantastic way of discouraging people from joining what is an incredibly important movement. But climate action doesn't have to be about perfectionism — it's about doing the best you can, and sometimes even small changes can make a big difference.
Of English saints the newly canonised John Henry Newman is the most intellectual and active in public life since Thomas More. When conversation turns to faith it is common to regard the gift of finding good words as no more than a decoration on the hard reasoning that faith demands. Newman stands as a reproach to that view.
No-one should be fooled: the politicians and commentators who condemn civil disobedience are the same politicians and commentators who attack the UN for passing resolutions on carbon; who tell scientists to get back to the lab when they speak out on politics; who do everything they can to keep climate out of the parliament.
The Pope's speech was newsworthy because in Australia sentences to a lifetime in prison without parole are becoming less contentious and more used. His approach to prisoners and their criminal behaviour is in such strong contrast to strands of Australian culture in which exclusion and the denial of hope are an instinctive response.
In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert explains that we have placed animals in a lethal double bind: they have to move due to the effects of climate change and habitat destruction, but their pathways are blocked by roads or occupied by humans. Some might ask why this mass extinction should matter to us, but we ignore it at our peril.
It is easy to blame the financial sector — and the governments that were supposed to oversee the financial system but instead just washed their hands of it — for creating this global debt debauch. They certainly bear much of the responsibility. But in many ways the financial misbehaviour is as much symptom as cause.
Anyone at Friday's climate strike couldn't help but notice just how much the terms of the debate have shifted in recent years. The crisis is one of being. Climate change denialism isn't simply a political position anymore. To deny the science is to embrace nihilism; it is to be complicit in one's own extinction.
The visual language of climate change has become predictable and stunted. In the 1980s activists used an image of a polar bear adrift on a floe of ice to tell the story of global warming and rising sea levels. It's become visual shorthand for the topic — useful for quick categorisation, but stale and easily dismissed.
From overly sheltered baby boomers to millennials too fatigued with the state of the world to care, the reality of climate change can be a lot to handle. Here's a snapshot of the people living with their heads in the sand, employing tactics including pessimism, cognitive dissonance and deflections to stay where they are.
The Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass has published a damning report of the use of isolation for children in Victorian justice centres. Those acquainted with the administration of juvenile justice in Australia will find nothing new in the report. Therein lies its scandal.
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