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Keywords: Wikipedia

  • AUSTRALIA

    Bursting Australia's monolingual bubble

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 15 January 2018
    6 Comments

    Over 250 languages were spoken across Australia at the time that English arrived with British colonisation. Since then, English has been a strict marker of the contours of Australianness. Were it reframed as a lingua franca rather than the mandatory language, the linguistic diversity in this nation would have more room to breathe.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2017: Left ignores S.44's racist legacy

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 09 January 2018
    4 Comments

    It seemed enough for many 'progressives' that the majority of the people who had fallen by the dual citizenship wayside were Coalition members, with the added bonus of Malcolm Roberts. I began to wonder why what is essentially an issue of racism and discrimination was not considered a priority for those who state they believe in social justice.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Left fails to confront S.44's racist legacy

    • Celeste Liddle
    • 13 November 2017
    11 Comments

    It seemed enough for many 'progressives' that the majority of the people who had fallen by the dual citizenship wayside were Coalition members, with the added bonus of Malcolm Roberts. I began to wonder why what is essentially an issue of racism and discrimination was not considered a priority for those who state they believe in social justice.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    How artists can rewrite the climate story

    • Greg Foyster
    • 08 November 2017
    8 Comments

    Much artistic response to the environmental crisis is negative , either criticising the excesses of the present, or predicting destruction in the future. Where are the positive stories of a new, sustainable culture? This is the greatest contribution art can make, yet for every vision of a better world there are a hundred bleak dystopias.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lament for the powerless

    • John Cranmer
    • 16 October 2017
    1 Comment

    Born into a world that knows how to hate, that holds sweet vendetta through the generations, relying on the local functionaries of a faraway Shah, to maintain a semblance of festering order, but never heart-reconciliation ...

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The renewables debate is won, but we may still lose the war

    • Greg Foyster
    • 17 August 2017
    9 Comments

    In the last few years, vested interests have changed their strategy for opposing action on climate change. Where they once focused on denying the problem, they’re now putting their efforts into sabotaging the solutions. Instead of funding fake experts to say the ‘science isn’t settled’, fossil fuel companies and their political backers have been running a smear campaign against renewable energy technologies like wind turbines, solar panels and batteries.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The evils of the weapons industry

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 August 2017
    14 Comments

    Defence Minister Christopher Pyne recently called for an expansion of the Australian weapons industry. It would enable Australia to join the United States and Britain as a major exporter of weapons and further Australia’s strategic goals. The move has a logic: if you want weapons it is cheaper to make them than buy them; if you make them it is more profitable to sell them to others than to keep them all for yourself; if you sell them it is best to sell them to your friends.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Bitcoin revolution is a matter of trust

    • David James
    • 30 June 2017
    2 Comments

    One of the more interesting recent developments in finance has been the creation of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. They are being touted as a revolution in how we think and use money. Alternately, there are many who want to go in the opposite direction, back to the gold standard. Both sides have a common enemy: money whose value is determined by government dictate. Allowing governments to dictate in this way, they argue, is the core of the problem. To a significant extent, they are wrong.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Artificial womb has many possible futures

    • Kate Galloway
    • 09 May 2017
    6 Comments

    One of the big science stories in the last month has been the invention of an artificial womb. The device has successfully assisted a number of lamb foetuses to term, and scientists are hopeful it will also assist premature human babies. What a wonderful development, to alleviate the health complications for those tiny babies and reduce the heartache for their parents. But the potential of the invention does not stop there. Like all tools, humans could choose to put it to use in ways that are good or bad.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Asian women breaking free of the stereotype straitjacket

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 21 March 2017
    7 Comments

    Last week, an interview by the BBC with a scholarly expert on Korea was interrupted by the scholar's young family. What fascinated me most was the assumption in certain commentaries that the woman in the video was the nanny. Or, even when that was resoundingly countered, that there would be trouble for her when the interview was over. Because she is Asian, and her husband is white. And we all know what that means, right? Whether she's the nanny or the wife, she must be oppressed.

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  • RELIGION

    Larger principles underpin Pope's beggar belief

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 March 2017
    27 Comments

    We often find ourselves invited to respond to people who ask us for money on the street - beggars, homeless people and so on. We can respond in different ways: give them something, decline as a matter of course, decline as a matter of principle, or not notice them. Last week Pope Francis recommended that we always give coins. To many this will seem to be too categorical. However as has so often been the case, Francis' throwaway lines illuminate much larger social issues.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hansonism is normal and everything is not fine

    • Tim Robertson
    • 17 February 2017
    11 Comments

    This is not the beginning of the normalisation of Hanson and One Nation: it's the end. In a piece for The Monthly, Dominic Kelly highlighted how large swaths of the rightwing commentariat have embraced the 'more mature', 'disciplined' and 'principled' Hanson 2.0. Despite this rhetoric, for the Right, appeasing One Nation has always been a balancing act. They're guided by one question: How much racism is permissible before it has to be condemned?

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