Vol 22 No 20

08 October 2012

AUSTRALIA

Dangers of gay conversion
- Luke Williams
- 19 October 2012
36 Comments
My first encounter with gay reparative therapy (GRT) was the day I summoned the courage to ask a friend about the cluster of scars on his wrists. The Australian Psychological Society recognises conversion therapy as harmful to individuals' mental health. Yet GRT of minors is unregulated, and in the case of Christian ex-gay groups often run by unqualified laypeople.
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EUREKA STREET TV

Arresting Australia's religious decline
- Peter Kirkwood
- 19 October 2012
4 Comments
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EUREKA STREET TV

Arresting Australia's religious decline
- Peter Kirkwood
- 19 October 2012
Since 2001 the proportion of the population that belongs to a Christian church fell from 68 to 61 per cent, while those reporting 'no religion' increased from 15 to 22 per cent. Uniting Church 'relationships' guru Adrian Pyle is one man working to analyse and address this problem for Australian Christianity.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Alone in Obama's America
- Tim Kroenert
- 18 October 2012
On a television in a grimy bar, Barack Obama waxes lyrical about the unity of the people. In the foreground, a brutal and enigmatic enforcer of the criminal underworld scoffs. America is not a community, he counters — it's a business. 'I'm living in America, and in America, you're on your own.'
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ECONOMICS

Ways out of economic depression
- Bruce Duncan
- 18 October 2012
8 Comments
Tony Abbott warned that Australia could go the way of Greece with excessive debt. Such claims reflect a climate of exaggerated concern about debt. Instead Australia could be taking advantage of historically low interest rates and embarking on major infrastructure projects, increasing employment and laying the basis for sustained growth in productivity.
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AUSTRALIA

Cat's eye view on Australia's poor
- Fatima Measham
- 17 October 2012
7 Comments
I went to a house in the northern suburbs to collect a cat. I departed with a new awareness of poverty that until then I had thought did not exist in my adopted country of Australia. It is disheartening that nearly a decade later, attitudes toward poverty remain unchanged and continue to shape public policy.
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CARTOON

After Gillard played her gender card
- Fiona Katauskas
- 17 October 2012
2 Comments
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AUSTRALIA

Worshipping Princes Romney and Obama
- Zac Alstin
- 17 October 2012
30 Comments
Whatever happened to American Christians concerns over Mitt Romney's Mormon faith? Like unease about Romney's conservatism and pro-life record, theological issues have been brushed aside in anticipation of November's US presidential election. Can a religious believer rightfully put their trust in either Romney or Obama?
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AUSTRALIA

Gender and class equality should go hand in hand
- John Falzon
- 16 October 2012
39 Comments
Last week we witnessed one of the most powerful articulations of gender equality by any prime minister. Sadly on the same day the Government and Opposition pushed through legislation to force 140,000 sole parents onto the inadequate Newstart Allowance. Gender analysis is mainstream; it is time for class analysis to become so too.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Scene from an Athens newspaper office
- Jena Woodhouse
- 16 October 2012
6 Comments
The pagemakers wear masks of chronic weariness, and stubbled cheeks: stoics conditioned by a heartless press ... Smoke rises from untidy desks as from a ship that's sinking fast, taking all hands on its burning deck ...
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AUSTRALIA

Bringing Parliament out from behind the school toilets
- Andrew Hamilton
- 15 October 2012
39 Comments
We have the right to expect our representatives in Parliament to discuss what matters to Australian society and to human beings. That they should waste their time talking about a radio announcer, the party leaders' appeal to the other sex, and the sexual behaviour of one of their members is a betrayal of whatever trust we have in them.
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AUSTRALIA

Communist China keeps a grip on the gun
- Jeremy Clarke
- 15 October 2012
3 Comments
Many people know Mao's famous dictum, 'Power comes from the barrel of the gun'. Fewer people know the second part: that 'the Party must control the gun'. The Party could allow last month's street protests because they unified the people against a hated enemy in Japan. But the protests were carefully controlled.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Historical precedents for Jones' Shamegate
- Brian Matthews
- 12 October 2012
10 Comments
The name Charles Hughes Cousens is not one that has been canvassed during the lamentable and often tawdry debate about the Alan Jones affair, but perhaps it should have been. Cousens' ordeal as the target of a treason-baying press lies in the distant but pointed background to Jones' assault on Julia Gillard.
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AUSTRALIA

Before and after Bali's searing flash
- Pat Walsh
- 12 October 2012
4 Comments
The bombing in Bali ten years ago today did not target Balinese directly, but they took the collateral damage to tourism, their bread and butter, very personally. Drawing his finger across his throat in a slitting motion, a smiling Balinese says he is happy the bombers have been executed.
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RELIGION

Defining Vatican II's rules of engagement
- Andrew Hamilton
- 11 October 2012
17 Comments
If four football teams ran out on to the field on Grand Final day, one might expect confusion until the rules of engagement were clarified. We should not be surprised by the debate about the legacy of Vatican II. Catholic discussion of Vatican II is about the legitimacy of different ways of being Catholic.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Mysticism and the Beatles
- Philip Harvey
- 11 October 2012
6 Comments
It has never seemed just an accident that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met at a church fete. The broad message of Christianity is at the very front of the lyric concerns of the Beatles, even if Christianity itself is rarely acknowledged. In art and belief, they were never interested in experimentation for its own sake but in how to make something new out of something old.
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RELIGION

An Anglican view of Vatican II
- Charles Sherlock
- 11 October 2012
15 Comments
My only contact with Catholics prior to 1963 was avoiding the local Catholic school when walking home, for fear of having stones thrown at me, in my state primary school uniform — sadly, some state schoolers did likewise to Catholic students. I remember it as a parable of pre-Vatican II Catholic-Protestant relationships in Australia.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The archbishop's last day
- Brian Doyle
- 10 October 2012
13 Comments
She admires him more than any other man she ever met, not because of his position but because of the way he handled the rapes and lies and bankruptcy hearings, he never shirked a moment, he never was anything but blunt about sin and responsibility, and even in the darkest hours he managed some thorny flinty tough cheerfulness and humour.
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AUSTRALIA

Rise of the Kurds in Syria
- Kerry Murphy
- 10 October 2012
4 Comments
It is not only Arabs that stand to benefit from the Arab Spring. Kurdish autonomy has long been a desire of the Kurds, who are spread through Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. In Syria, while the Assad regime is occupied by rebel groups in Aleppo and Damascus, the Kurds are establishing their own armed security in their areas.
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MEDIA

Hating Alan Jones
- Catherine Marshall
- 10 October 2012
51 Comments
The voices shouting down Jones are almost certainly not those of his listeners; the people most offended by his actions, it seems, are those who have never tuned in to his show. This debacle is steeped unashamedly in politics, with the outcry reinforced by various Labor politicians and dripping with as much contempt for Abbott and his party as Jones' diatribes do for the left.
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CARTOON

Tony Abbott's feminism
- Fiona Katauskas
- 10 October 2012
1 Comment
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Dead father's voice comes home
- Peter Gebhardt
- 09 October 2012
3 Comments
'Coming up to Canberra was the worst. We came through some pretty atrocious thunderstorm weather ... It really is a delightful aircraft to fly even in those conditions.' Voice of Stuart Graham Pearce, killed as a test pilot in 1976, as heard by his son Guy 36 years later.
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MEDIA

Only rationality will destroy Alan Jones' joint
- Michael Mullins
- 09 October 2012
32 Comments
Social media has outsmarted 2GB's Macquarie Radio Network management and forced them to cancel advertising on Alan Jones' program. But it is unlikely that the collective rage against Jones' behaviour will be sustained, respectable, and ultimately effective, unless the passion is accompanied by reasoned argument.
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AUSTRALIA

Back-pedalling on Vatican II
- Michael Kelly
- 08 October 2012
30 Comments
The fresh wind of Vatican II has been reined in, with the focus turned to shoring up 'the firm wall of religion' against threatening forces from a world that had grown tired of the Church. As Christianity faces minority status in Europe, the Pope offers an intellectualised version of the ghetto mentality that Vatican II sought to break down.
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MEDIA

Free speech beyond the pale
- Justin Glyn
- 08 October 2012
23 Comments
Free speech is fundamental to democracy because it protects public discourse and freedom of religion. But while the right to free speech must to be respected even if it causes offence, we need to question what purpose is served by Alan Jones' attack on Julia Gillard, and the French cartoons.
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Vol 22 No 20