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Keywords: America

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Revisiting American Dirt

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 04 November 2021
    14 Comments

    Writers inevitably learn bitter lessons, including one about readers who will be wounded, hurt, or at least deeply offended by their work. There is usually more than one group of these, for people become upset for reasons that are many and varied. Such is the case in the reaction to Jeanine Cummins’ fourth book, American Dirt. Cummins has been variously accused of stereotyping, racism, narcissism, and of lacking in empathy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Civilization as intervention

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 August 2021
    10 Comments

    The New York Times editorial on 15 August was all about tragedy in describing the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. ‘Tragic because the American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule proved to be just that: a dream.’

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Western withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the beginning of an uncertain future

    • Justin Glyn
    • 13 July 2021
    5 Comments

    The atrocities committed in the Taliban siege of Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s have not been forgotten. Nevertheless, the ‘progress’ brought by the invading forces — after twenty years’ hard fighting against the forces which they themselves had previously armed and trained against the Soviets — is equally debatable.

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  • RELIGION

    The Eucharist is a schooling for sinners, not a reward for the just

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 July 2021
    38 Comments

    Looking from outside at the debates among American Catholics about whether President Biden should be refused communion has been a little like watching the crowd in a Rangers v Celtic game in Glasgow. Much that was said and done fervently in the name of faith showed little familiarity with it. To understand the issue we must enter the Catholic imaginative world in which the Eucharist is central.

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  • RELIGION

    The weaponised Eucharist

    • Chris Middleton
    • 01 July 2021
    87 Comments

    The debate among American bishops around whether President Biden and other Catholic politicians should be denied Holy Communion because of their policies on abortion is an important and unsettling one. Let me say I think it would be a tragedy if the bishops were to venture down this path.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why I wish I'd never met Philip Roth

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 01 July 2021
    53 Comments

    While we can’t conflate accusations against Roth’s biographer with his subject, this recent Blake Bailey scandal invites us to revisit, through a 21st century lens, the world of someone considered one of the definitive writers of the 20th century.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    It's the end of the world as we know it

    • Sandra Renew
    • 25 May 2021
    3 Comments

    On the day of the millionth case and half million deaths I drink coffee in a warm, morning living room, walk a small dog at our national Arboretum, eat lunch of seafood and avocado at a local outdoor café, buy two likely looking books on Amazon, tune into a Zoom poetry reading and listen to podcasts from America. I realise it’s the end of the world, as we know it.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Halki Summit highlights care for creation amid pandemic

    • Stephen Minas
    • 18 February 2021
    2 Comments

    The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked difficult questions about the links between the simultaneous health and ecological crises. These questions were examined in late January at the virtual Halki Summit, the latest in a long series of environment-focused events convened by the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarchate.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    On the beach, in the storm

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 February 2021
    15 Comments

    It was all very quiet, and the waterfront was practically deserted. But I suddenly noticed a sole woman right at the water’s edge. She had her back to me, but I saw her lift what was clearly an icon, which she then venerated. I couldn’t hear her precise words, but it seemed obvious she was repeating the forms of the liturgy to herself.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump impeachment trial risks further division

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 January 2021
    54 Comments

    I fear that as the process plays out, it will be seen by a divided nation to symbolise and embody the polarised politics of the previous years and of the incapacity of the organs of government to comprehend or address the causes of the anger and despair that foment division. It will hinder, not free, the new president.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Masks save lives

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 21 January 2021
    8 Comments

    What will it take, I wonder, to change these people’s minds? In an era as politically divisive as the one Americans (and Australians, for that matter) are living through, nothing is likely to convince detractors that COVID is an omnipresent threat — except perhaps the only thing with tangible currency in this whole blasted catastrophe: the visceral consequences of the pandemic itself. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Biden's middle class in a divided America

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 November 2020
    9 Comments

    The priority given to the middle class was not new — Biden stressed it in speeches through the primaries and again as a candidate. And it is no doubt important. But when seen in the light of the passionate polarisation of the campaign, the closeness of the results, and the continuing mutual antipathy of the supporters of each party, rebuilding the middle class seems an unlikely source of healing.

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