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Keywords: Asio

  • AUSTRALIA

    Fraser Anning's enemy twin

    • Susan Connelly
    • 17 August 2018
    3 Comments

    We see the occasional extreme Muslim cleric railing against the west. This week we witnessed a similar incident in Parliament, with a senator calling for a return to the White Australia policy and a ban on Muslim immigration. An insight of René Girard's assists in interpreting this incident and the resentment and fear which lies beneath it.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Redrawing the lines of Nicaragua solidarity

    • Ann Deslandes
    • 25 July 2018
    6 Comments

    In the 1980s, the international solidarity movement for Nicaragua had thousands of supporters, including many in Australia. The nation was undergoing severe repression at the hands of dictator Anastasio Somoza. Fast-forward 30 years and a Nicaraguan rebel movement is again calling for international solidarity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    History taints Turnbull's fight against corruption

    • Brendan Byrne
    • 01 May 2018
    10 Comments

    While it is a matter of public record the Turnbull government blocked attempts to establish a royal commission into the financial services sector on multiple occasions, the question as to why, especially when it expeditiously facilitated a similar inquiry into corruption within the union movement, is of more than academic interest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conversations about China need more nuance

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 12 April 2018
    3 Comments

    While no-one expects nuanced discussions on Twitter, the name-calling does none of the participants any favours. What does become apparent in the conversations around Clive Hamilton's The Silent Invasion is how entrenched 'yellow peril' rhetoric is in the way people talk about 'the Chinese'.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Undermining NZ: Dutton's refugee ploy

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 20 November 2017
    9 Comments

    These sprinklings of poison through the press, with occasional mentions in New Zealand, serve two purposes: to show Australian refugee policy as sound, and offshore detention and resettlement in an unsuitable third country as appropriate; and to deflect attention from the discharge of obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Preserving and pillaging privacy

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 May 2017
    7 Comments

    In each of us is a personal centre able to reflect, to wonder, to explore the world and to evaluate it, to long and to love, to make decisions, and to engage freely with other human beings. Privacy is the gate that allows us to leave and others to enter the garden of our deepest selves. If it is torn off its hinges we shall live on a shallow level, preoccupied with defending ourselves. That is why the invasion of our privacy by governments and corporations in order to control our lives is unjustifiable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Don't underestimate the politics of hate

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 March 2017
    15 Comments

    The Prioress in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales had a brooch alluding to Virgil's phrase, 'love conquers all'. In her case, her love for her two lapdogs beat her affection for mere people. But in public life one wonders about the truth of the epigram. Indeed a good case could be made that hatred conquers all, and that it is stronger than love. The advent of Donald Trump with his individual style has occasioned lament that the public world is now dominated by hatred and contempt. But there is nothing new in it.

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  • RELIGION

    Luther’s challenge to the Church then and now

    • Bill Wright
    • 06 March 2017
    4 Comments

    Speaking of reform in the church can mean many things. Often it's about practical matters: sorting out the Vatican Bank, changing how bishops are chosen or clergy trained; that sort of thing. Occasionally, however, reform is about seeking real religious change. Martin Luther, I want to suggest, is one of those reformers who was not concerned with tinkering with structures of the church but with reforming the Christian message so that it might reform the believer.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The power of persuasion in confronting fascism

    • Daniel Nicholson
    • 24 February 2017
    9 Comments

    In the footage of one violence protest, I was shocked to see a handful of my homeless clients, draped in Australian flags, engaged in street battles with anti-racists. These young men had experienced alienation, exploitation and poverty - all the things the Left is supposed to fight against. Long, uncomfortable conversations don't make for good social media content, yet if Australia is to stare down the threat of a rising alt-right it won't be done by yelling at right wing fringe groups across a police barricade.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Catholic Church's view on human rights

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 September 2016
    1 Comment

    'I am a Jesuit amongst Dominicans contemplating the Church's view of human rights. I am a human rights practitioner rather than a theologian, aware that human rights discourse is increasingly more universal and secular. Contemplating, preaching and enacting human rights in the 21st Century Church and World, I come asking two questions.' Frank Brennan's keynote presentation in Salamanca Spain to the International Congress of Dominicans in the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights: Past, Present, Future on the occasion of their 800th anniversary.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Recent reflections on Iraq War ignore key ethical questions

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 August 2016
    2 Comments

    The recent Chilcot report on British participation in the Iraq War elicited embarrassing responses by British and Australian leaders and apologists of the time. Specious justifications were accompanied by a failure to take responsibility. The defects of the invasion and the moral irresponsibility of those who collaborated in it did not flow solely from its procedural inadequacies. The crudity now attributed to Donald Trump and his obiter dicta on war flourished before him among Washington insiders.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Beyond the myth of the rational voter

    • Fatima Measham
    • 01 July 2016
    8 Comments

    When the democratic exercise is no longer the aggregate of informed, reasoned choices, but a matter of mood, then the business of persuasion - politics - becomes far less about ideas and more about momentary catharsis. This shifts the function of politicians and government, from leading and dispensing equity to masturbatory aid. Even so, there are questions worth asking. But at whose expense are public moods assuaged? After catharsis, what happens next?

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