keywords: Blame
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 03 May 2017
14 Comments
For various reasons, 'free' education in Australia has been qualified by HECS, which actually serves to wedge the liquid incentive of government and educational institutions on the one hand with the need for students to obtain affordable education on the other. Even that balance is now under threat, with a pre-budget announcement suggesting cuts to university funding and increasing costs to student degrees are in the offing. Universities are far from blameless in the present distorted funding model.
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AUSTRALIA
- Fatima Measham
- 16 October 2016
12 Comments
Much has been made about how Republicans benefited from the 'birther' campaign and the Tea Party. It suited them to have proxies undermine the executive branch. In other words, the political right only has itself to blame for the nihilism which now engulfs it - and potentially, the nation. But the failures of the left also bear examination. While Clinton's current lead cannot be attributed entirely to her virtues, the polling gap between her and Trump should have been much wider, earlier.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 03 October 2016
5 Comments
The main message of the 2016 election review delivered recently at the National Press Club by Tony Nutt, the federal director of the Liberal Party, was that Turnbull only failed to have a convincing victory because of the 'Mediscare' by the Labor Party. It is a message that deflects attention from the current and past weaknesses of the government and the prime minister. It is like a football coach who after a loss or a narrow win blames his team's performance on the dirty tactics of the opposition.
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AUSTRALIA
- Madeleine Hamilton
- 24 August 2016
14 Comments
The response from police and others in authority to recent cases involving the abuse or exploitation of adolescent female sexuality is depressingly reminiscent of attitudes held more than 50 years ago. While it was no defence to argue that the girl had consented, if it could be proven she had had consensual intercourse with other men previously, the offender could be acquitted. Consequently, in carnal knowledge trials, girls were frequently accused of having rich histories of sexual activity.
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EDUCATION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 August 2015
56 Comments
It seems absurd to hold schools responsible for the way Shorten, Abbott, Joyce, Pyne and Hockey behave. Schools have influenced them in good and bad ways, but ultimately they are their own men. So we Jesuits have no call to apologise, nor to take pride. We are not responsible for them. But we are responsible to them, as we are responsible to all our alumni, even if they languish in public life or public prisons.
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AUSTRALIA
- Mike Bowden
- 09 March 2015
8 Comments
Recently Cyclone Lam devastated large areas of Arnhem Land, resulting in much battered infrastructure in need of restoration. We can’t blame the cyclone itself. Instead, the fragmented way we approach the problem of addressing the needs of the locals is more the issue.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 26 November 2013
32 Comments
The Catholic Church hierarchy now seems more prepared to admit institutional and personal failures prior to 1996. They are yet to admit the pervasive, closed clericalist culture which infected the Church until at least 1996, but that will come. Let's hope that the Victorian police can also now move forward admitting past mistakes without manufacturing excuses which do not withstand the contemporary spotlight.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 01 March 2013
37 Comments
There is a temptation to see justice, compassion and transparency as the obsessive concern of western liberals. They are much more universal than that; they are the contemporary, institutional rendition of gospel values. The unaccountable hiddenness of Vatican clericalism has reached its use-by date.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 16 January 2012
9 Comments
It is arguable that, because she was one of the architects of the free market financial system that lacked protection for ordinary citizens, Margaret Thatcher shares responsibility for the widespread public harm caused by the GFC and the eurozone crisis.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 02 June 2011
21 Comments
The media said the US Catholic Bishops' John Jay report blamed the 1960s sexual revolution for church sex abuse. More significantly, it implied that the roots of the sexual abuse crisis instead lie in the shallow Catholic culture of earlier decades.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 21 March 2011
37 Comments
Those who defend the humanity of asylum seekers are often dismissed as bleeding hearts. It is tempting to respond by referring to those who defend the existing regime of detention as bleeding minds. The recent events in remote detention centres are deplorable, but predictable.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 23 August 2010
20 Comments
We are wrong to assume our involvement
in the political process ends with the casting of votes. If the experience of a fetid election campaign, of leadership abdicated
and of a hung parliament leads us to offer more modest
local forms of participation and leadership, all Australians will gain.
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