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Vol 20 No 12

21 June 2010


 

  • AUSTRALIA

    Church implicated in Canada's reconciliation project

    • Tom Clark and Ravi de Costa
    • 02 July 2010
    1 Comment

    Survivors of the Indian Residential Schools who testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission complained of shocking treatment, violence and sexual abuse. Testimonies left no doubt that Canada's churches were heavily culpable.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    The 'Julia Gillard' of theology

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 02 July 2010
    3 Comments

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Repressed matriarch's unsafe sex

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 01 July 2010

    Risk is titillation for the buttoned-down Emma. Close-ups of stinging insects are juxtaposed with microcosms of human carnality; fingers and mouths traversing yards of stretch-marked, pocked and freckled skin.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard sustains population myth

    • Ruby J. Murray
    • 01 July 2010
    24 Comments

    I don't know about you, but last time I got on an outrageously late, over-crowded train at peak hour full of apparently longstanding Aussies in business suits, the first thing I thought was: I really wish Australia accepted fewer immigrants.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    How my English teacher saved my life

    • Fiona Douglas
    • 30 June 2010
    18 Comments

    It occurred to me to approach my school English teacher. This would be normal enough, if not for the fact that she had been my teacher some three decades prior. From the fog of my depression medication I somehow found my phone and emailed her from my bed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Campaigning to Christians

    • John Warhurst
    • 30 June 2010
    6 Comments

    Christians rarely agree on what they want from government. The Australian Christian Lobby jumped the gun last week with its forum for political leaders to address Christian voters: the elevation of Julia Gillard means it now needs to engage afresh with a new Prime Minister.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Lost and found

    • Paul Scully
    • 29 June 2010
    2 Comments

    He pushed the bulges of his shoulder blades .. into the worn padding and realised how stooped he was — too much sitting, hunching forward in expectation? .. No crane would admit to a neck like that! .. But skin still smooth, like his father's, in his nineties what's more.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Anti poverty protesters miss the language of justice

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 29 June 2010
    16 Comments

    The latest G8 meeting sparked new protests at the failure of rich countries to honour their promises to increase aid. The protest pointed not only to the failures of the G8 governments, but also to the limitations of the mantras 'make poverty history' and 'an end to poverty'.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The real people of Afghanistan

    • Jan Forrester
    • 28 June 2010
    6 Comments

    I am struck by lurid online comment on whether Aussie troops should go or stay in Afghanistan, a miasma of old-left vs new-right trench exchanges, armchair military strategists and conspiracy theorists. As in the national game of Buzkashi, Afghanistan is a goat carcass fought over by a gaggle of teams.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian Jesuit's gambling defence

    • Michael Mullins
    • 28 June 2010
    13 Comments

    Everybody knows that problem gambling, just like binge drinking and illicit drugs, destroys lives. But should governments be aiming to eliminate gambling altogether? The Australian Jesuit Michael Kelly thinks not.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    It's a girl!

    • Moira Rayner
    • 25 June 2010
    25 Comments

    The importance of a woman getting the highest political post in the land is not in its being a 'first', but that Gillard is her own woman. She has not turned into an 'honorary bloke'. Gillard's singular attribute is her sincerity and the genuineness of her public conversations. And she can laugh.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Goodbye Kevin, hello Julia

    • Tony Kevin
    • 25 June 2010
    15 Comments

    We have just experienced a Shakespearean moment. There is real excitement in the land, a sense of new beginnings, as the Elizabethan figure of Julia Gillard takes the reins as Prime Minister. Rudd, to his credit, has accepted the inevitable with grace and dignity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gillard's win a loss for feminists

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 25 June 2010
    35 Comments

    Rudd's eviction should strike fear into the hearts of feminists everywhere. For this is how the Labor Government operates, unsheathing the swords, wrenching power, cutting down a leader before he has had time to really prove himself. Imagine what it will do when that leader is a woman.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Moving forward with Gillard

    • Tony Smith
    • 25 June 2010
    4 Comments

    If there is any vestige of democratic socialism left in Labor, the Gillard Government needs to raise taxes without apology, knowing its social welfare policies are just and necessary. It also needs to remain committed to redistributing wealth to eliminate huge discrepancies in living standards.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Remembering Rudd

    • Emily Millane
    • 25 June 2010
    7 Comments

    In early 2008, 89 per cent of us thought Rudd to be a 'man of vision'. Recall his essay on Bonhoeffer in The Monthly; the promise of a politics of decency and equality; the Apology; the ideas summit. After that it all goes a bit foggy.

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  • RELIGION

    If your income was quarantined

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 June 2010
    6 Comments

    If we look at income quarantining as an ethical and not as a political question, it raises many questions. To answer them we would need to look beyond its effectiveness in preventing excessive expenditure on socially undesirable goods like alcohol and pornography.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cat Stevens' call to prayer

    • Anne Doyle
    • 24 June 2010
    17 Comments

    In 1975, during a near death experience, Cat Stevens called out to God. 'The moment I became a Muslim I found peace,' says the man now known as Yusuf Islam. He appears, solitary at the microphone, and begins an older man's rendition of a younger man's songs.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Football and my father's ghost

    • Adrian Phoon
    • 23 June 2010
    6 Comments

    When Switzerland scored with a crazy goal against the heavily favoured Spain, I could almost hear my father leaping from the couch and cheering. Before he died, he was a football fanatic. I have learned to love it. It's my way of communing with him.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    CEOs in sleeping bags

    • John Falzon
    • 23 June 2010
    13 Comments

    Last week CEOs across Australia 'slept out' to raise awareness and funds for homelessness. The kindness expressed through such charity makes us a richer nation. But charity is no substitute for the justice needed to prevent homelessness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What women don't want

    • Moira Rayner
    • 22 June 2010
    14 Comments

    David Jones acted promptly upon complaints of sexual harassment against its CEO Mark McInnes. But most women pay in blood for making sexual harassment complaints against powerful men in high places.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My brother slid away

    • John Falzon
    • 22 June 2010
    4 Comments

    Does anybody think we'll go away from here just because they've sanctioned us and breached us, preached at us, acquired our country, stolen our yesterdays, the silk and hardy timbers of them .. Do they really think they've crushed our silvers and our souls by managing our sturdy little incomes?

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Reviving climate hope

    • Tony Kevin
    • 21 June 2010
    9 Comments

    The new Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres is well qualified to help heal the wounds of Copenhagen. If the West can learn the lessons of those failed talks and move forward with modesty, flexibility and sensitivity, we may hope for progress.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Multiculturalism steps aside for advertising on SBS

    • Michael Mullins
    • 21 June 2010
    5 Comments

    SBS TV's world renowned Subtitling Unit is about to lose one third of its staff. It's perfectly valid for SBS to jettison its subtitlers if it determines that SBS is fundamentally no longer a multicultural broadcaster. It's up to SBS management to come clean on its current purpose.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Memories of refugees

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 June 2010
    5 Comments

    I remember the 250,000 Cambodians in Site Two by the Thai border, and among them Chea, the sister of a friend, who died when the camp was shelled. I remember the many who spent years in Australian detention centres, and the sadness of watching as the light went out of the eyes of those detained for more than six months.

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