Keywords: Empire
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 13 March 2014
1 Comment
'If you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements and it's as if they never existed,' implores art scholar Frank Stokes. He subsequently leads a team of academics and artisans into World War II Germany on a mission to rescue important works of art from the Nazis. Great art possesses the power to move and inspire, and to document and critique a culture. But is the deadly mission worth the risk to life?
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 06 March 2014
37 Comments
To call someone a bleeding heart is an insult, not a description. It has no meaning but does have connotations. Those who call advocates for asylum seekers bleeding hearts usually dismiss ethical arguments. Although they may accept in the case of personal relationships that it would be wrong to inflict pain on people in order to deter others, they usually claim without supporting argument that governments are not bound by this ethical principle.
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AUSTRALIA
Tony Abbott's 'We warn the Czar' statements were ludicrously over-the-top, though clearly he was responding to a Washington appeal to friendly allies to say something. I hope Australia will not continue to overplay its hand in the Security Council. There is no point in gratuitously offending Moscow on an issue that is outside our strategic area of interest and raises no human rights concerns whatsoever.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 27 February 2014
14 Comments
Augustine wrote of the Roman Empire, 'Without justice, states are robber bands.' His mordant comment aimed to strip away the self-congratulatory rhetoric of empire from the reality of a Rome concerned purely with asking how to achieve desired goals uncontrolled by respect for human dignity. If we appreciate how robber bands work we can better understand what states do, including Australia.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 29 January 2014
15 Comments
'Don't mention the war!' admonishes John Cleese as the hapless hotelier Basil Fawlty in the classic television comedy series Fawlty Towers. With a string of war-related anniversaries to take place over the next four years, beginning this year with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, we may soon find ourselves sharing Fawlty's sentiments.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 23 January 2014
5 Comments
If ultimately Belfort's comeuppance for his innumerable evils is modest, and his lessons remain unlearned, it is deeply and frighteningly ironic, in a way that has parallels in the real world. The global financial crisis resulted precisely from the kind of unbridled amorality that the characters in The Wolf of Wall Street gleefully embrace. Money is their morality. Lives are left battered and bruised, but the Wall Street party keeps raging on.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ailsa Piper
- 22 January 2014
17 Comments
I'm fifth generation Australian, but I don't have a word to describe the emotional malnutrition I feel at our leaders' lack of vision. Maybe there are words for such feelings in Yamatji, or Eora, or Noongar, but most of us wouldn't know. This was a place with more linguistic individuation than Europe, before our boat-people ancestors arrived, but they didn't take the time to learn its words or hear its stories.
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AUSTRALIA
- Paul Newbury
- 21 January 2014
23 Comments
New Zealand, our partner in the Anzac legend, has no problem commemorating the Maori Wars of 1845–1872. Yet the Australian War Memorial refuses to honour Aboriginal warriors who fought and died defending their lands and their people against white invader settlers in the Frontier Wars of 1788–1928. This is a moral issue, and has the effect of excluding a whole people from commemoration based on a trifle.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins, Michael Sharkey and Chris Wallace-Crabbe
- 02 December 2013
3 Comments
The diggers' catchcry, liberty, saw fascism a'yawning/ enfranchisement followed suit, with racism adorning/ its streamlined passions for the cause — White Australia Policy a'borning.
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RELIGION
- Moira Rayner
- 15 November 2013
22 Comments
If it happened then, it could happen now. Unless we take children seriously as people, it will. Unless individuals within the culture of their institution see it as a duty to stick their necks out and challenge its culture, it will. Unless bishops and archbishops and cardinals and religious supporting them take personal responsibility for protecting vulnerable people ahead of protecting the reputation of their institution, it will happen again.
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AUSTRALIA
- Tony Kevin
- 20 September 2013
6 Comments
Under the US revolving door model, top public service jobs are held by staff who are openly politically affiliated. When government changes, they go back to their jobs as special interest Washington lobbyists. Australians have made clear we don't like that system. It is open to corruption, and when our governments flirt with it, they usually come to regret it.
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AUSTRALIA
- Peter Stanley
- 26 August 2013
66 Comments
The NSW Parliament recently passed a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide, conducted by Turkey in 1915. The Turkish Consul-General in Sydney, the foreign ministry in Ankara and even the city council in Gallipoli immediately responded. The resolution disrupts the astoundingly successful charm offensive Turkey has conducted in Australia for years, fostering a positive relationship with Australia through the shared ordeal of Gallipoli.
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