Keywords: Race
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 29 September 2022
8 Comments
Recently many people have expressed disquiet about the trend to authoritarian rule throughout the world. They have good reason for doing so. In the world we are entering, the freedom of citizens in the State depends on the will of Governments that will have no enforceable obstacle to withdrawing such freedoms on suspicion of future misconduct and not just for punishment of past, proven misconduct.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Ann Rennie
- 28 September 2022
1 Comment
We celebrate wordsmiths, minor and major, whose gift it is to write the world for us / To create the nourishing broth, the alphabet soup, of words to work their magic / Words that exhort and advocate / That calm and soothe / Words on which to float away / Words for strength on another day.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Binoy Kampmark
- 20 September 2022
7 Comments
When more nuanced commentary around the passing of Queen Elizabeth II came to the fore, it was hard to avoid the difficult realities of the British monarchy and an institution that has not, through its history, delighted those conquered in its name. With Elizabeth II, it was notable that she let an opportunity to engage the topic of empire in Britain’s collective memory go begging.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 16 September 2022
1 Comment
Joel Birnie’s short and admirable book provokes reflection both on what should have mattered in the relationships between colonial invaders and Indigenous peoples in the nineteenth century and on what matters in the relationships that constitute Australia today.
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RELIGION
- Tracey Edstein
- 14 September 2022
6 Comments
There is no doubt that the institutional Catholic church has lost ground in the last few decades. But unlike the institutional Catholic church, the parallel church is thriving. As people seek to engage with their beliefs and live their lives of faith more deeply, many have come to embrace a spirituality which, framed by authentic Catholic tradition, encompasses an expanded array of practices.
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INTERNATIONAL
- 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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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 25 August 2022
11 Comments
In most circles poetry doesn’t matter. It doesn’t put bread on the table, nor raise people to revolt nor even make news unless a grizzled footballer is outed for secretly writing poems. Even in churches poems and hymns are altered to improve their orthodoxy in matters of faith, gender, race or modernity, but rarely their poetic quality.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 17 August 2022
2 Comments
We need to be able to do more than simply give notional assent to the Uluru Statement. We need to be able to contribute to the hard thinking and difficult discussions to be had if the overwhelming majority of our fellow Australians are to be convinced of the need for a Voice in the Constitution.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins
- 12 August 2022
Journalist and author Elle Hardy spent 15 months researching and writing her 2021 work Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World. She notes the estimation that by 2050, one billion people around the world (one in 10 humans) will be a Pentecostal follower of Jesus (and their pastor).
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 29 July 2022
1 Comment
Daniel Mendelsohn lectures in classics at Bard College, a liberal arts institution in New York State. His retired father, aged 81 in 2011, regrets gaps in his own education, and asks to sit in on his son’s course of seminars on Homer’s The Odyssey. Professor Mendelsohn agrees, and Jay Mendelsohn joins a class of 18-19 year-olds. Later, father and son go on a cruise that retraces The Odyssey where they discover: is home a physical place, or something you carry around with you or within you?
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 21 July 2022
One of the tests by which we can judge political maturity is whether it gives due weight to complexity. It is easy to reduce political conversation to opposed statements between which we must choose. That will sometimes be appropriate. Often, however, discussion of policy raises several different questions, each of which needs to be considered.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 14 July 2022
1 Comment
The leaders of the past are often referred to as a measuring stick for evaluating the present. Australian prime ministers are routinely compared to John Curtin or Robert Menzies. This coming week calls to mind another leader against whom we might measure others. July 18 marks Mandela Day, an annual international day in honour of Nelson Mandela, the first Black President of South Africa. Mandela had the quality, rare today, of being born to rule.
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