Vol 22 No 16

13 August 2012

EDUCATION

Villains of Australian education funding
- Dean Ashenden
- 24 August 2012
6 Comments
Teacher organisations have advocated for one sector rather than opposing the whole flawed structure. Catholic bishops have insisted on public subsidies for avowedly exclusive schools. Governments have adopted policies which have entrenched a socially counter-productive organisation of a major public institution. How many more generations has this scheme of things got left to run?
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The many holy faces of humanity
- Tim Kroenert
- 23 August 2012
8 Comments
One moment he is an elderly beggar woman, so stooped that all 'she' sees is stones and feet. Next he is a monstrous vagrant, who crawls out of a sewer and terrorises passers-by with hilarious ferocity. He integrates seamlessly with his environments, and others interact with him as if this — this — is his true face.
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AUSTRALIA

How not to have a revolution
- Justin Whelan
- 23 August 2012
6 Comments
Syria was touted as an example of the limits of nonviolent struggle against a ruthless dictator. Now it is fast becoming a case study on the even greater strategic weaknesses of violence. As the nonviolent movement came under sustained repression, some people decided to take up arms, and opened a Pandora's Box.
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CARTOON

Labor's education equality
- Fiona Katauskas
- 22 August 2012
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AUSTRALIA

Hail to the climate geeks
- Frank O'Shea
- 22 August 2012
27 Comments
The word geek has changed from a term of derision to one of smiling respect and even a badge of honour. The members of the Climate Commission would no doubt be happy to be called geeks. Unfortunately there is far too little 'geek' representation in the halls of power.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

My life as a Florence tour guide
- Benedict Coleridge
- 22 August 2012
6 Comments
All is not quite lost. There's still Michelangelo's David in the Academia — that's 'famous' and always makes for a good Facebook album cover. But after queuing for two hours, you feel rather underwhelmed — David isn't the 20m high statue of a ripped male you had been expecting, and there isn't a secret passageway leading from his gluteus maximus to a torture chamber beneath the Vatican.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Confronting the shadow within
- Stuart Barnes
- 21 August 2012
1 Comment
Dark shadow, I don't love you anymore. (You're deadly, the sea of Ezekiel; the flame forever roiling the bush ...) I don't think I ever did.
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RELIGION

Vatican prefers tanks to talks to achieve unity
- Andrew McGowan
- 21 August 2012
53 Comments
The Personal Ordinariates established this year in the UK, the USA, Canada and Australia have failed in their stated aim at promoting untity between Catholics and Anglicans. They suggest that the real position of the Vatican on Christian unity is about absorption rather than convergence.
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AUSTRALIA

Fitzgerald's proof that politics can make a better world
- Michael Mullins
- 20 August 2012
5 Comments
On Friday evening, Eureka Street's inaugural Discerning Conversation took place between former prime minister Kevin Rudd and Fr Frank Brennan. It was the end of a week during which federal Parliament enacted legislation for offshore refugee processing. But the Rudd-Brennan conversation began with the recollection that Queensland politicians rejected individual greed following the Fitzgerald Inquiry in '89.
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AUSTRALIA

Assange tests British diplomatic principle
- Tony Kevin
- 20 August 2012
21 Comments
Julian Assange sits securely in the Embassy of Ecuador in London, as Cardinal József Mindszenty did for years inside the US Embassy in Communist-ruled Hungary. This is a benefit of the Vienna Convention. If Britain violated this principle by storming or cutting off utilities to the Embassy, the diplomatic protection of its officials and their families around the world would be weakened immediately.
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RELIGION

Refugee on the road to Jericho (a parable)
- Andrew Hamilton
- 17 August 2012
29 Comments
On the morrow when the Samaritan departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the innkeeper, and asked him to take care of the recuperating fugitive. But the innkeeper thought unto himself, 'Too many fugitives have died along this road. They greatly anger the people and must be prevented.'
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The trams revolt
- Brian Matthews
- 17 August 2012
6 Comments
Like a uniformed and undirected army, they queued end to end, an implacable wall of yellow and green. The trams seemed to squat somehow lower on their shiny rails — and all their lights went out. For more than a month they paralysed the city and everyone could see the government had entered its last days.
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RELIGION

Australia takes the low road on asylum seekers
- Frank Brennan
- 17 August 2012
26 Comments
All major political parties now hope they can confine people in Nauru for years on end without any prospect of court supervision and without any need for Parliament to revisit the matter. We have reached a fork in the road between decency and deterrence. As a nation we have taken the low road, inviting the newest signatory to the Refugees Convention to emulate our indecent behaviour.
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AUSTRALIA

Houston report's significance for deaths at sea
- Tony Kevin
- 16 August 2012
8 Comments
A boat disappeared on 28 June, the 67 people on board presumed dead. The usual dysfunctional patterns of official behaviour followed: tardy response to families, insensitive language, political exploitation. Hopefully the Houston report's quiet hints that all is not well might lead to a more compassionate and timely response in future.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Shaking Australia's 'brutal sexual economy'
- Jen Vuk
- 16 August 2012
15 Comments
Author Kathy Lette recalls: 'We girls were little more than a life support system to a pair of breasts ... Once I realised Germaine Greer wasn't just rhyming slang for beer, I wanted to write down our story.' Puberty Blues is what you get when teenage girls with a grudge show the world what they're made of.
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CARTOON

Putting the boot to boat people
- Fiona Katauskas
- 15 August 2012
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RELIGION

The truth about the Vatican's money
- Paul Collins
- 15 August 2012
35 Comments
People often talk about the 'enormous wealth of the Vatican'. Some think the Vatican owns all the Church's worldwide real estate, others that all that art could be sold for the poor, others that the Vatican is corrupt and busy laundering vast sums of Mafia money through the 'Vatican Bank'. Now for the first time we have some hard facts.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

After Greece's party ended
- Gillian Bouras
- 15 August 2012
3 Comments
Things were speeding up. Greece entered the European Community, banks were throwing money at every Tom, Dick and Spiro, credit cards seemed a form of modern magic. The party is over now, and the ones who have survived in the best shape are the older villagers who never expected a party and so did not join in the spree.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Car crash requiem
- Philip Salom
- 14 August 2012
Death is different at night ... A cool light we gently call dawn enters the tree tops and so enters me. I am entering the next world ... Can it be in some secret way I am dead?
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RELIGION

Houston report's high cost of deterrence
- Frank Brennan
- 14 August 2012
27 Comments
Amending the Migration Act to make the old style Pacific solution less susceptible to judicial review errs on the wrong side of decency. The Coalition and the Greens should unite in the Senate to oppose it. In the protection of the human rights of asylum seekers, deterrence must come second to decency and accountability, even when we are trying to beat people smugglers.
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AUSTRALIA

Regulation as solidarity not censorship
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 August 2012
10 Comments
The Prime Minister has demanded states regulate the price of electricity. News Ltd continues its campaign against further regulation of newspapers. Regulation brings into play two values that stand in tension: individual freedom and solidarity. The trick is to regulate so that personal freedom is enhanced in a way that serves the good of all.
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RELIGION

Islam's depression tension
- Irfan Yusuf
- 13 August 2012
11 Comments
An Australian Muslim suffering from depression told his imam about being prescribed anti-depressants. The imam responded: 'You don't need to take these. I will tell you some special prayer formulae which will help you.' He followed the imam's advice. In the next six months, he had attempted suicide twice.
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Vol 22 No 16