Vol 30 No 2

26 January 2020

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ARTS AND CULTURE

Time for nuanced Asian representation
- Carolyn Cage
- 06 February 2020
8 Comments
Growing up I cringed at Asian representation in film and television. More often than not we were cast as nerds, martial artists or second to the plot. We had little depth to our characters, which continuously perpetuated racial stereotypes — stereotypes that still exist today.
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ENVIRONMENT

Writing in the apocalypse
- Brian Matthews
- 06 February 2020
3 Comments
I’d never heard of McKenzie Funk until I came across his marvellous review essay, 'Smoked Out'. I eagerly read on beyond the genial opening paragraphs and almost immediately, I found myself on familiar, if deadly, ground.
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INTERNATIONAL

Conflict in Middle East continues to heat up
- Justin Glyn
- 05 February 2020
3 Comments
The multi-front war in the Middle East continues to heat up. After the American assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the deputy leader of the Iraqi military’s Popular Mobilisation Committee at the start of the year, and the subsequent refusal of the US to heed the Iraqi Parliament’s request to end its occupation, the focus has recently moved back to the Syrian front.
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AUSTRALIA

Honours reflect our shifting values
- Andrew Hamilton
- 05 February 2020
7 Comments
The great significance of the change may lie in its confirmation that the churches no longer have the central place in Australian society they once enjoyed. This is now being reflected in public ceremonial. The public sphere is now more thoroughly secular and loosed from the moorings of its historical traditions.
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CARTOON

All the mod cons
- Fiona Katauskas
- 04 February 2020
1 Comment
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INTERNATIONAL

Sham Palestinian peace plan is business as usual
- Daniel Sleiman
- 04 February 2020
8 Comments
The Palestinians, and Arabs more generally, have gotten used to this sham of semantics and pretences of peace, watching on as America continues to fund and support Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its projection of military power in the region with impunity.
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ECONOMICS

How climate change is remaking finance
- David James
- 04 February 2020
3 Comments
A shift is afoot in the west's financial markets that represents the most important economic change since the emergence of the new financial instruments in the 1990s that ultimately led to the global financial crisis. It is likely to result in a new way of thinking about money, which will change the substructure of developed economies.
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MEDIA

Media needs ethical bushfire coverage
- Monika Lancucki
- 04 February 2020
5 Comments
The media serve an important role in keeping people informed in times of disaster and the social media campaigns to spend with businesses in fire-affected communities are having a helpful impact. But the nature, extent and motivation of media coverage of disasters such as the bushfires this summer needs to be considered.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Fellow creatures
- Ross Jackson
- 03 February 2020
With blazes nearby, TV news bars well on fire, we human animals are panicked, feel the shudder of rotors above our roofs. Very soon thirsty helitankers will thunder down to drink from our neighbourhood lake. May we remember tomorrow, nothing will be more worried than pelicans in broken reeds, the night heron in its naked tree.
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INTERNATIONAL

What Auschwitz means for the modern state
- Binoy Kampmark
- 03 February 2020
11 Comments
This is cosmically far from saying that these are equivalent matters to the death camps of the Holocaust. But if we are to be serious about acknowledging the depravity of Auschwitz, we can at least take the lead from Katz on starting the conversation on why such events take place and do remain chillingly relevant.
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INTERNATIONAL

A sign of hope for the Rohingya people
- Bree Alexander
- 31 January 2020
On 23 January, the International Court of Justice handed down an unprecedented unanimous decision on provisional measures in the case of The Gambia v Myanmar. While the judgement has given hope to some, the Rohingya population still remains largely in dismal and precarious refugee camp conditions.
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AUSTRALIA

Choosing to be childless is more than okay
- Vivienne Cowburn
- 31 January 2020
18 Comments
The modern 'old maid' is no longer confined to the attic. She's in the workforce, the senate, leading in the community. Yet while gender norms are being deconstructed and cultural ideas of femininity are evolving, the idea women exist only to procreate still persists. Women are not only supposed to have children, they're supposed to want to.
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MEDIA

Why the media downplays Invasion Day
- Celeste Liddle
- 30 January 2020
20 Comments
At what point is the media going to realise that the Invasion Day rally, which has been going on in some form or other since 1938, is not going away and, indeed, is growing? I'm convinced the media don't want to report Invasion Day, as reminding the public to fear Indigenous people and our rights has been their practice for centuries now.
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CARTOON

Bad sports
- Fiona Katauskas
- 28 January 2020
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AUSTRALIA

The bastard subsidiarity of bushfire responses
- Andrew Hamilton
- 28 January 2020
11 Comments
The crisis brought to a head this ambivalence of governments. It underlies the attack by three NSW government ministers on the community groups responding to the fires. The ministers criticised them for doing ineffectually what the government was not doing and for spending money on administration that it should have provided.
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RELIGION

Australian bishops have a transparency problem
- John Warhurst
- 28 January 2020
57 Comments
Australia's bishops have yet to demonstrate the new openness to the Catholic community necessary for a successful Plenary Council. Their inclination to secrecy remains an impediment. They just don't get transparency as a virtue and they have twice demonstrated their adherence to old ways of doing things in recent months.
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ENVIRONMENT

When will they listen? A school striker's lament
- Gracie Ryan
- 28 January 2020
11 Comments
Among the bustle of hundreds of thousands of teenagers with clever signs, mild sunburns, and a palpable disdain for major party politics, there was a sense that we could change the world. The noise we made felt so deafening that no one could ignore it. And then we were promptly ignored.
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RELIGION

Wash Day at Le Carmel, Lisieux, circa 1895
- Rita Tognini
- 28 January 2020
5 Comments
It's definitely the flesh and blood you, Thérèse, not the Little Flower of church statues and holy pictures, milky with sanctity. It's the frank-faced-child-in-lace-trimmed-dress-and-sturdy-boots you. It's the fourteen year old, hair-atop-head-in-a-bun-to-look-older-for-the-Bishop-so-he'll-let-you-take-the-veil you.
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INTERNATIONAL

Kiribati: What makes a 'climate refugee'?
- Binoy Kampmark
- 24 January 2020
10 Comments
New Zealand's judicial channels found against the Kiribati national, claiming he did not satisfy the definition of refugee within international law. He was deported. This month, the UNHRC did not find the deportation unlawful, a move that former Fleet Street editor Damian Wilson said had 'piled on the misery in the climate change mess'.
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RELIGION

Pondering God from the dunny
- Sue Stevenson
- 24 January 2020
8 Comments
As I sat I noticed some graffiti: 'What you are seeking after is seeking after you. — Rumi.' A beautiful, soulful verse for the alienated children of late capitalism, right? An invitation to live in expectancy, as if you belong in the world. But underneath, someone had struck through What and written Who, and Rumi and written God.
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INTERNATIONAL

The sacred secular in China's 'Spring travel'
- Jeremy Clarke
- 17 January 2020
More than three billion single trips are taken during the extended period of travel. It is to China's great credit that these journeys occur incredibly smoothly, and on the whole with a convivial spirit. There is too often a tendency to minimise any praise about China's achievements, to the anger of Chinese citizens at home and abroad.
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Vol 30 No 2