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Keywords: Myths

  • AUSTRALIA

    Terrorist fear exposes Dutch intolerance

    • Ashlea Scicluna
    • 20 May 2008
    19 Comments

    The popular perception of the Netherlands as a tolerant country is only a half-truth. Most Dutch rarely mix with the Islamic population, fearing Islam will encroach upon the traditional values of Dutch identity. The nation has failed to understand and accept its Muslim population.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Anzac a 'politically pliable' legend

    • Tom Cranitch
    • 28 April 2008
    16 Comments

    With Anzac Day over, and the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign just under a decade away, it's time to re-examine, re-frame, and hopefully tame the Anzac legend. You don't need to be an expert to understand that 'Anzac' has a stranglehold over Australian public life.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    History of prejudice ignites modern Indonesian conflict

    • Caz Coleman
    • 20 February 2008
    2 Comments

    Conflict began just over seven years ago in the Maluku Islands, Indonesia. While long-term peace strategies must involve a range of government and non-government players, the role of civil society in overcoming prejudice cannot be ignored.

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  • RELIGION

    Delivering the mentally disabled from evil

    • Scott Stephens
    • 19 September 2007
    7 Comments

    Superiority and the benevolence of modern science and the health-care system, versus the cruel, more ancient practice of ostracising the sick from civic life.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    ‘Lazarus with a triple bypass’ could well become Harry Houdini

    • John Warhurst
    • 22 August 2007
    6 Comments

    While this election is still there to be won or lost, Labor is rightfully the hot favourite. But changes of government are rare in Australian politics, and there are four reasons why Labor might still lose.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Further challenge to historical record on Aboriginal massacres

    • Tony Smith
    • 11 July 2007
    2 Comments

    A 19th century dispute over rights to whale on Victoria’s western coast saw a massacre of local Aboriginal people. The image of uniformed, white officers appearing in Aboriginal communities, supposedly to restore order and protect children, gives eerie timeliness to an uncompromising new account by Bruce Pascoe.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A comfortable nation afraid to get off the couch

    • Scott Stephens
    • 05 June 2007
    3 Comments

    John Howard’s "relaxed and comfortable" approach to national life, then, was not simply a rejection of Paul Keating’s aggressive, deliberate reforms. It represented a vile pandering to our cultural inertia, an affirmation of our basest tendencies.

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  • RELIGION

    Book Review: Frank Brennan answers atheist manifestos

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 June 2007
    6 Comments

    There can be no peace unless believers and atheists share an equal place in the public square of a free and democratic society.

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  • CONTRIBUTORS

    Mark Byrne

    • Mark Byrne
    • 17 May 2007

    Mark Byrne is a senior researcher at Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre, where he occasionally writes and gives talks on race relations in Australian cinema.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The myth of belonging masks our insecurity

    • Colin Long
    • 02 April 2007
    2 Comments

    The Prime Minister has used myths surrounding Gallipoli and racial politics to tap into our felt, but barely understood, craving for belonging. The tenuous nature of our sense of community make us susceptible to the fear campaigns that have dominated Australian politics over the past decade.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rudd and Gillard enjoy the bounce

    • Jack Waterford
    • 23 December 2006

    Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are enjoying their bounce, and their honeymoon, as John Howard predicted they would. Early polls suggest a marked upsurge in the Labor vote, in approval for the Labor leadership change, and in comparisons between the performance of Rudd and the Prime Minister. Were an election to be held now, one might think Labor would romp it in.

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  • RELIGION

    Throw out the baby, keep the bathwater

    • Scott Stephens
    • 11 December 2006
    2 Comments

    Instead of all those Baroque paintings of the baby Jesus in arms, the work of art that best captures the spirit of Christianity is arguably Andres Serrano's controversial Piss Christ.

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