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Keywords: Gm

  • AUSTRALIA

    Pragmatism: obscuring ideology in Australian politics

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 09 February 2021
    30 Comments

    The celebration of pragmatism in Australian politics obscures the role that ideology has always already played. In fact, one of the more stealthily ideological moves in Australian politics, generally made within that swirl of commitments people call ‘centrism’, is the de-politicisation of policy — the attempt to present policy as responsive to natural imperatives rather than to specific values and ideals.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Don’t blame 2020, blame pragmatism

    • Cristy Clark
    • 01 October 2020
    5 Comments

    It’s tempting at this point to blame 2020 for the almost comically bad situation we are facing right. But here’s the thing: this isn’t bad luck or even some kind of testament to the power of numerology. This dire situation was entirely predictable and even, sadly, entirely preventable. We walked right into it — or, at least, we allowed ourselves to be led here.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    UAE-Israel peace deal and the court of public opinion

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 25 August 2020
    5 Comments

    It is an open secret in the Middle East that many Arab governments have normal diplomatic and security relations with Israel. The taboo is in its public acknowledgment.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Finding fragments of a father

    • Brian Matthews
    • 02 July 2020
    3 Comments

    Daddy Cool is a thoroughly absorbing biography, witty, astonishing, often intensely moving, effortlessly in charge of a crowded and potentially confusing canvas (readers of a certain age will recognise names like Jack Davey, Roy Rene, Dick Bentley, Willie Fennell).

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  • MEDIA

    Lancet and the perils of peer review

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 June 2020
    5 Comments

    When a distinguished journal is caught unawares in its editorial judgment, others will cheer at the burning house. The academic business is a tough one, and at its core is an exaggerated virtue that often conceals core defects.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After eyes tight shut

    • Tony London
    • 12 May 2020
    1 Comment

    We have always lived thus, in our heads. Bone domes, impenetrable to others, we might project animus, animation, add to Duncan’s questioning. The mind’s construction in the face, enigmatic, Rubik cube with sixteen squares on each face, so any signs I give are laced, graced with ambiguity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    NATO is sanitising its intentions

    • Ramona Wadi
    • 30 April 2020

    After building a reputation for foreign intervention and collateral damage — the most recent example being Libya — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) is asserting its influence during the COVID-19 pandemic, this time by exploiting the humanitarian paradigm. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Good news from Greece

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 April 2020
    17 Comments

    In these troubled times of COVID-19, most news bulletins concentrate on the daunting figures from Italy, Spain, Britain and the USA. Little countries don’t get much of a mention. Greece is a little country.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Indigenous is not alien, High Court decides

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 17 February 2020
    8 Comments

    At its heart, the question was whether an Indigenous Australian who was eligible for citizenship but had never formalised it could be regarded as an alien and therefore subject to removal. In a landmark judgment, a 4:3 majority of the Court found that Indigenous Australians were not aliens, even if they were not citizens.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Small steps toward better mental health

    • Bree Alexander
    • 23 October 2019
    3 Comments

    There is still a long way to go before Australian society is free of mental health stigmas and adequate services are funded and accessible. This is especially important for Australians who are at the intersections of multiple oppressions. But there has been progress, as a number of recent initiatives illustrate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The cult of certainty caught by cricket chaos

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 September 2019
    3 Comments

    In a combative world where even sport is as joyless as was trench warfare in another age, the quirky ending of the Headingly cricket Test was an unexpected delight. The events prompt wider reflection on the broader quest for certainty in human affairs, and the consequent impatience with human judgment.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's illogic over Timor and West Papua

    • Pat Walsh
    • 13 August 2019
    8 Comments

    One wonders if the Prime Minister will be aware of the supreme irony of these two events, the lack of logic in Australia's conflicting policies on the fate of the two peoples, and Canberra's flexible approach to the much vaunted international rules based order when it does not serve pragmatic national interests.

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