Keywords: Acu
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AUSTRALIA
At a time when we are preoccupied with the shock and immorality of the budget, the Australian Catholic Bishops issue a direct and forceful challenge to current government policy. 'The time has come to examine our conscience.' But it seems no-one is listening.
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AUSTRALIA
It took John Howard until his third term before he let his personal leanings completely off the leash. It led to his electoral demise. Abbott is doing much the same in his first term, over-reaching, thinking himself invulnerable to a political backlash. Whereas Machiavelli's prince could rule through force, Abbott must face an electorate whose trust in political promises has been completely eroded. Our political system will take a long time to recover.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Catherine Marshall
- 12 May 2014
7 Comments
It would be foolish to believe that female liberation can occur in a vacuum: as long as there are girls and women being brutalised in the DRC, schoolgirls being sold into slavery in Nigeria's border regions, girls around the world are being subjected to female genital mutilation and women being supressed by religious ideology, then the acquisition of our own freedoms — flawed as they are — is a hollow victory indeed.
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RELIGION
- Neil Ormerod
- 03 April 2014
21 Comments
Damage was done to the reputations of Pell's secretary Dr Michael Casey, and to the solicitors from the his chosen legal team Coors, who would have heard clearly the warning of Justice McClellan that saying they were following their client's instructions would be no defence. There is the damage done to the Australian Church as a whole, and, of course, the damge to Pell himself. This is not how he wanted his reign in Sydney to end.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 20 March 2014
3 Comments
A new film follows the experiences in 1961 of German-American Jew and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who coined the phrase 'the banality of evil' in relation to Nazi 'desk-murderer' Adolf Eichmann. The cerebral nature of Hannah Arendt provides a counterpoint to another current film about a strong, flawed woman: Gloria is remarkable for the way it unabashedly honours the emotional and sexual lives of its older characters.
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RELIGION
- Neil Ormerod
- 13 March 2014
10 Comments
No one can deny the impact Francis has had. The question remains whether the differences between him and his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI are a matter of style or substance. Francis has downplayed the prospects of major doctrinal changes, yet the rehabilitation of liberation theology and the bringing in from the cold of outspoken 'extreme centrist' theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper do reveal a fundamental shift.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Ellena Savage
- 21 February 2014
9 Comments
There is a difference between immigration and expatriatism. The term 'expat' seems only to refer to the affluent, particularly those with Caucasian ancestry. The expat has no obligation to learn the language and customs of the place they live, and always has a home they can return to. Since taking a job in publishing in South East Asia, I am the kind of person who gets to be thought of as an expat. It feels weird.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 09 January 2014
TV viewers are alarmed that they can so easily identify with Ja'mie King, Chris Lilley's studiously unlikeable comic creation in ABC1's Ja'mie: Private School Girl. In a previous incarnation, Ja'mie was sponsoring underprivileged Third World children about whom she knew little and cared less. People like Ja'mie have a pathological disability to feel the needs of others.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 05 December 2013
As high school students they are too young to have begun the cultural revolution. But they try to fan its flames and bring its ideals to bear. Their idealism is at times tested against the cynicism or jaded moral certitude of older revolutionaries, one of whom chastises them for entertaining legitimate doubts about the means employed by Mao Zedong. There clearly is a gulf between healthy skepticism and wilful blindness.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 28 October 2013
18 Comments
TV viewers are alarmed that they can so easily identify with Ja'mie King, Chris Lilley's studiously unlikeable comic creation in ABC1's Ja'mie: Private School Girl. In a previous incarnation, Ja'mie was sponsoring underprivileged Third World children about whom she knew little and cared less. People like Ja'mie have a pathological disability to feel the needs of others.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Ailsa Piper
- 18 September 2013
9 Comments
Waters fall. So does night. We fall asleep, sometimes because staying awake is too painful. Soldiers fall, and we mourn them. They are boys, many of them, so fall-able. We fall into love, and out of it again, like it is some dark hole. We forget that love should be about rising, because we have fallen back onto cliché. We go through life as though we will always be upright, and when we fall, it hurts.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 04 September 2013
25 Comments
Over a meal with church members and local party officials in a small village outside Xian in China, a local asks after Lù Kèwén (Kevin Rudd). He had heard that Mr Murdoch was being very tough on him! This unsurprisingly is the only mention of Australian politics the whole week. But they were surprised to learn that yet again Australia was likely to lose its only Mandarin speaking PM. They have no idea of the alternatives.
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