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Vol 18 No 22

27 October 2008


 

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sharing of wisdom under the Boab tree

    • Chris Laming
    • 07 November 2008

    After nearly 40 years living in Indigenous communities, Brian McCoy manages to move through difficult terrain with the sure-footedness of an ancient Aboriginal tracker, and a confidence founded on years of sitting, listening, observing and quietly healing.

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  • RELIGION

    The human cost of ideology

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 November 2008
    10 Comments

    All ideologies, including religions, can rot. They can neglect the view of the human world on which they are based and focus simply on implementing the consequences of their ideas. When this happens the costs in human misery are great.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A Gen X view of Obama as fiction

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 06 November 2008
    6 Comments

    If you see some Generation X’s out there in the street, smiling like drunk cats, forgive them their madness - it’s been a long time coming. We are letting our inner lives blend with the polis. We know it might all be fiction but like fiction; it makes us feel less alone inside.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Obama's victory for the art of the possible

    • Jim McDermott
    • 06 November 2008
    5 Comments

    Standing amidst the euphoric crowds in Times Square, it was like we were all in a fairy tale, waking from a horrible dream. That's not to say the problems our world faces are no less large or scary. But we've been reminded that more is possible than that which meets the eye.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    America electing a transformational president

    • Tony Kevin
    • 05 November 2008
    13 Comments

    After America's worst president, Obama may prove its greatest. Australians will have reason to celebrate his likely victory, although Obama has no reason to be impressed by Australia.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ode to the white cuppa

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 05 November 2008
    3 Comments

    First she gave up sugar in her tea. His Catholic guilt nagged him, and he followed suit. Then came fat-free milk. There is a puritan streak in today's narcissistic culture of gyms and dieting that makes anathema many of life's little luxuries.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Lawson long shot

    • Brian Matthews
    • 04 November 2008
    5 Comments

    It's 1996 and I'm saddling up to give the Sir Robert Menzies Lecture at London University. My topic is Henry Lawson and Manning Clark. 'Manfred who?' asks a baffled London colleague. The lecture's on Melbourne Cup Day. It could be an omen.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    China, with apologies to Ginsberg

    • Andrew Burke
    • 04 November 2008
    3 Comments

    too much America is not good for you ... Follow your own Confucius-Marx mix ... Let them learn Mandarin, China — you have enough people to swing it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian superwomen left holding the poison

    • Moira Rayner
    • 03 November 2008
    5 Comments

    Commentators predict the economic crisis will see firms fall back on tried-and-true experienced male managers. Women who mould themselves on men whose language and patterns of relationships were formed in the schoolyard will not last long.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Amrozi execution gets Rudd's gloat

    • Michael Mullins
    • 03 November 2008
    28 Comments

    The execution of the Bali bombers is imminent, and Kevin Rudd has encouraged Australians to have the 'last gloat'. The Muslim world will interpret our gloating as Australia's endorsementof the Bush Doctrine in its dying days.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The skeleton dance

    • Margaret Cody
    • 31 October 2008
    2 Comments

    Mexico's Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is not a gloomy celebration, it is a recognition of death as part of life. Skeletons lean precariously out of every doorway and window, smiling, bejewelled and ready for the party.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Obama masks and New York monks

    • Alexandra Collier
    • 31 October 2008
    1 Comment

    In Brooklyn, politics and Halloween overlap. On one house, a 'Vote McCain' sign abuts another, declaring, 'Haunted House'. As the West Village prepares for its annual parade, the homeless sit in a curve, supplicating to the wealthy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Aussie pollies are crumby speakers

    • Sarah Kanowski
    • 30 October 2008
    9 Comments

    Where Obama waxed lyrical about kings and pioneers, Rudd rhymed clumsily about Iced Vo Vos and getting on with the job. Australians don't do magnificence, and our national 'shyness' is nowhere clearer than in our political rhetoric.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hunger, pain

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 October 2008
    1 Comment

    In life and art Nick Cave is drawn to the potent territory where the sacred meets the profane. Steve McQueen's brutal, beautiful portrait of Irish republican prisoners of an uncaring Thatcher government achieves a similar transcendence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Forty and feeling fine

    • Jen Vuk
    • 29 October 2008
    3 Comments

    Turning 40 is like any age — unless you're a woman. French writer Anais Nin wrote that we 'are made up of layers, cells, constellations'. Is it any wonder that at 40 those layers and cells start to settle in places we'd rather they didn't?

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  • MEDIA

    The unreal news in detail about Britt Lapthorne

    • Jill Sutton
    • 29 October 2008
    16 Comments

    The sacking of Croation police chief Ivan Kresicin has seen Britt Lapthorne returned to newspaper headlines once again. Despite our burgeoning information technology, we are still putty in the hands of those who give us the details they choose about what is happening in the world.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Life of a perpetual migrant

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 28 October 2008
    4 Comments

    The Rudd Government's rationale for cutting migration to Australia is economic, rather than humane. Migrants are forever tapping at the window of the past, unable to ever truly go home.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Salvador Dali's moustache

    • Isabella Fels
    • 28 October 2008
    2 Comments

    I love the way you go from fat to thin ... Straight to curly

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Guantanamo's hero of conscience

    • Michael Mullins
    • 27 October 2008
    4 Comments

    It's likely the next US president will decide the fate of five Guantanamo Bay detainees. Their charges were dropped last week following an 'act of conscience' from prosecutor Lieut-Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, assisted by Jesuit peace activist John Dear.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Obama could face race vote melt

    • Jim McDermott
    • 27 October 2008
    8 Comments

    In 1982 African-American Tom Bradley ran for governor of California. He lost, despite polls that showed him to be up by 12 points. Since then, analysts refer to the percentage point melt for African-American candidates on election day as the 'Bradley Effect'.

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