Vol 23 No 7

08 April 2013

INTERNATIONAL

Pilgrims in the landscape of lament
- Benedict Coleridge
- 19 April 2013
7 Comments
He was the same age as me and had the same name. But he looked old. He'd left Nigeria and walked to Macedonia; four years of walking. His feet were covered in callouses, dried and thickened. In the course of these wanderings he had been kidnapped, beaten and starved. The irregular migrants in Macedonia have come to the end of the road.
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RELIGION

Malaysia Solution is dead in the water
- Frank Brennan
- 19 April 2013
11 Comments
It is time for each side of politics to stop blaming the other for the increasing wave of boats and for Gillard to cease invoking the unreal prospect of a revised Malaysia Solution. A revised arrangement consistent with the recommendations of the Expert Panel is an impossibility before the election.
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AUSTRALIA

Maintaining empathy as Boston mourns
- Irfan Yusuf
- 18 April 2013
12 Comments
The image of the face of eight-year-old Boston victim Marty Richards will touch the hearts of all. Yet in his name, and depending on the outcome of the investigation, we might see calls for invasions of other lands. Such actions are hardly representative of the express wishes of terror victims and their families.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

How an advertiser toppled a dictator
- Tim Kroenert
- 18 April 2013
Pinochet's supporters are, with good reason, banking on the populace's fear and willingness to maintain the status quo. Enter brash young advertising executive René Saavedra. His rusted-on socialist colleagues are at first aghast but gradually persuaded by his conviction that rather than wallowing in negativity, they should be selling optimism.
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RELIGION

Positives of discrimination
- Andrew Hamilton
- 18 April 2013
5 Comments
The debate about the right of church organisations to discriminate in employment is usually framed in terms of exclusion. But it can be framed more positively. A religious background may be required not because it satisfies the demands of the church, but to ensure that those whom the organisation serves continue to be treated with great respect.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Greece's brush with linguicide
- Gillian Bouras
- 17 April 2013
8 Comments
The label 'crazy script' really infuriated me. The article suggested the Irish were all the better for having parted with their own 'crazy' Gaelic script in the 20th century. But an attack on a culture's language is an efficacious way of destroying the culture itself, and scrapping an alphabet seemed to me to be the thin edge of the wedge.
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AUSTRALIA

Australia in a sorry state as Gonski faces failure
- Ray Cassin
- 17 April 2013
6 Comments
If the states give Gillard's Gonski education proposals the thumbs-down, as is expected to happen at Friday's COAG meeting, it will not be the first time since Labor's return to office in 2007 that Australia's creaking constitutional arrangements have made fundamental reform impossible.
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CARTOON

Going, Going, Gonski
- Fiona Katauskas
- 17 April 2013
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AUSTRALIA

Did Australian authorities do enough to try to save asylum seeker lives?
- Tony Kevin
- 16 April 2013
8 Comments
We now have another distressing and perplexing case of possible Australian failure properly to use intelligence information to save lives. If the unnamed agency that briefed AMSA did have the relevant coordinates, and yet did not pass them to AMSA to pass to BASARNAS, it could be complicit in the deaths of up to 58 people last week.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

Perceval's delinquent angel
- Various
- 16 April 2013
1 Comment
... is up to something, but will not reveal that tricksy intention ... it listens for the starting gun in the hands of a distant God.
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AUSTRALIA

Taking the Mickey out of North Korea
- Duncan MacLaren
- 16 April 2013
9 Comments
We seem to think it is okay to publish pictures of Kim Jong-un with Mickey Mouse ears or refer to his late father Kim Jong-il as a 'pygmy'. Insulting a proud people, no matter how weird we think the regime is, does not win friends. The west would do well to remember this if it is to engage the regime in meaningful dialogue.
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AUSTRALIA

Exceptional Thatcher and the feminist fallacy
- Ruby Hamad
- 15 April 2013
26 Comments
Whereas feminism realises the inherent potential and worth in all women, Exceptional Women succeed because of their perceived likeness, not to other women, but to men. Consequently, they make things harder, not easier, for other women. Margaret Thatcher was many things, but she absolutely was not a feminist.
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AUSTRALIA

Turnbull's NBN will disempower the poor
- Michael Mullins
- 15 April 2013
15 Comments
Under the Coalition's version of the National Broadband Network, super-fast access is not lost for those who can afford the internet connectivity equivalent to a business class flight. Those who cannot however will make up the large new underclass of the digitally disadvantaged.
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RELIGION

The healing God of the Royal Commission
- Fatima Measham
- 12 April 2013
14 Comments
The Church is unique among the institutions under scrutiny from the Royal Commission. The trust laypeople hold in priests and other vowed religious is not the same trust held in teachers, doctors and coaches. It is sourced from the stories that feed their faith. This is the context in which the betrayal must be understood.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

'Naked Jihad' sacrifices feminism to racism
- Ellena Savage
- 12 April 2013
9 Comments
The phrase 'white men saving brown women from brown men' derides the use of western feminist tropes to further colonial expansion. The anti-Islamic reaction of some feminist activists to the death threats suffered by Tunisian 'naked protestor' Amina Tyler does nothing to promote global solidarity among women.
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AUSTRALIA

Turkey's Kurdish Spring
- William Gourlay
- 12 April 2013
3 Comments
A public letter from the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), declared that PKK insurgents should forego armed struggle against the Turkish military. An end to terror is one thing, but there is a way to go before Turkey's Kurds have the rights and freedoms they've long hankered for.
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AUSTRALIA

Gillard chalks up a win in China
- Tony Kevin
- 11 April 2013
4 Comments
The Rudd years, like the Howard years, were years of stasis, even regression, in Australia-China relations. Refreshingly, Julia Gillard chalked up a major foreign policy success this week, putting Australia-China relations back on the track trailblazed by Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke many years ago.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The Palestinian who would be Jewish
- Tim Kroenert
- 11 April 2013
1 Comment
A Rabbi informs Joseph that although he has been circumcised and celebrated his Bah Mitzvah, the revelations about his biological origins mean he must undergo 'cleansing' rituals to be accepted as a Jew. Religious institutions err when they elevate legalism over human need. In this instance the institution is found wanting.
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RELIGION

Francis right to break the rules
- Andrew Hamilton
- 11 April 2013
36 Comments
Pope Francis' Holy Thursday expedition to the juvenile justice centre to wash the feet of young people, male and female, Christian and Muslim, breached liturgical rules. But he was right to do so. Church and state laws are securely grounded only when there is a shared sense of the importance of human flourishing.
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CARTOON

Memorialising Thatcher
- Fiona Katauskas
- 10 April 2013
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AUSTRALIA

Margaret Thatcher versus the Scots
- Duncan MacLaren
- 10 April 2013
72 Comments
While any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind', I must admit to pouring a glass of good malt at the news of Thatcher's passing. The Southern English may laud her as the greatest prime minister after Churchill but for us Scots she was a hate figure who in the last days of her premiership scarcely dared to cross the border for fear of being assassinated.
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ENVIRONMENT

Tony Burke versus the invisible worm
- Barry Breen
- 10 April 2013
6 Comments
If poetry is the pulse of our cultural life, so too can it be seen as the pulse of our public decisions. Our poetry loving Minister for the Environment may find wisdom in the words of some of his favourite poets when it comes to decisions about the Murray Darling basin, Tarkine wilderness and Great Barrier Reef.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The last talker after Mass
- Brendan Ryan
- 09 April 2013
7 Comments
The straggly lines of his arguments follow cow paths ... He laughs as much as he spits. Veins in his cheeks, grey hair testament to frosty mornings, a bull bowling his wife over in the yard ... My father had developed a bad habit of listening.
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ECONOMICS

The truth about middle class welfare
- David James
- 09 April 2013
5 Comments
Commentary on the proposed changes to tax on super has created the impression that the truly needy will miss out on extra cash as politicians pander to middle class voters. This is almost entirely false. In terms of where tax dollars are allocated, Australia has definitely concentrated on lower class welfare.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

At the intersection of faith and culture
- Andrew Hamilton
- 08 April 2013
13 Comments
Adrian Lyons, founding editor of Eureka Street, died last week. In life he strove to go beneath the surface when reflecting on personal and public issues, and to attend to the unnoticed connections between culture and faith, and the surprising places where they come together in public life.
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EDUCATION

End of the education revolution
- Dean Ashenden
- 08 April 2013
9 Comments
The backsliding began before Gonski even got started: his riding instructions were to ensure that 'no school will be worse off'. Since then one backward step has followed another. What the prime minister wants now from the state premiers when they meet on 19 April is not Gonski but the appearance of Gonski. She may not get even that.
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Vol 23 No 7