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Keywords: Socialism

  • AUSTRALIA

    Losing Chavez the indispensable

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 06 March 2013
    16 Comments

    With Hugo Chavez's death Latin America has arguably lost the most influential political leader of the last two decades. Chavez was one of those men that Bertolt Brecht called the 'indispensible ones'. He has been the champion of the socially and economically marginalised since he came to power in 1999.

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  • EDUCATION

    Gillard's education pipedream

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 20 December 2012
    16 Comments

    In setting a target of Australia reaching the OECD's top five school systems by 2025 the Prime Minister has made a rod for her own back. It is difficult to see our present way of organising, funding and governing schooling getting us anywhere near that target. But what kind of system might?

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  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's pension fund perversion

    • David James
    • 03 October 2012
    7 Comments

    The demise of Gunns, Tasmania's biggest paper and pulp mill, has been greeted as a triumph of environmentalists over business. The saga encompasses much more than that. It poses some deep questions about ownership and accountability in Australia's financial system which are yet to be answered persuasively.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    George Orwell's example for Australian journalists

    • Sarah Burnside
    • 20 September 2012
    9 Comments

    BBC director general Mark Thompson turned down a proposal to erect a statue of Orwell on the broadcaster's premises because the writer was 'too left-wing'. But political animals of all stripes have long sought to claim Orwell. His political writing transcends both time and ideology.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Life after Hitler

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 20 September 2012
    9 Comments

    How does a German teenager, the daughter of a Nazi perpetrator, face up to the fall of the Third Reich, and the revelation of the regime's true nature? 'It wasn't like the war ended, Hitler committed suicide and everybody stopped loving him,' says Australian-Jewish filmmaker Cate Shortland.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sandal-wearing pinkos of the modern era

    • Brian Matthews
    • 25 May 2012
    7 Comments

    George Orwell lamented that socialism attracted 'fruit-juice drinkers' and 'sandal-wearers'. Former prime minister Paul Keating accused Sydney mayor Clover Moore of being a sandal-wearer and 'muesli-chewer'. 'Sandal wearing' survives nearly a century to be the star insult for each of them.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Economics as if people mattered

    • Chris Middleton
    • 08 November 2011
    8 Comments

    Whatever the merits of Occupy Wall Street, it is far too early to speak of any substantial challenge to the dominance of capitalism. Yet there is a real taste for exploring alternatives. The most influential of faith-based approaches to economic theory is that of distributism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reflections on Gillard's atheism

    • John Warhurst
    • 17 October 2011
    10 Comments

    Gillard's atheism puts her in stark contrast to her immediate predecessors Kevin Rudd and John Howard. We consider several implications of Gillard's position, including her relations with church-state issues and community attitudes towards gay marriage and euthanasia. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Behind Berlin's and Israel's walls

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 22 August 2011
    8 Comments

    Walls are not merely concrete manifestations but cultural and psychological ones. One East Berlin native recalled his mother 'cried for hours when the Wall fell'. Israel, in constructing a wall around Jerusalem, faced a host of issues as complex as those that faced East Germany.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The religious beliefs of Australia's prime ministers

    • John Warhurst
    • 11 November 2010
    12 Comments

    Nine prime ministers have been observant Christians. Two have been conventional Christians. Ten have been nominal Christians. Five have been articulate atheists or agnostics. One was a nominal atheist or agnostic.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Remembering the other 9/11

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 14 September 2010
    24 Comments

    At least those of us who survived Chile's 9/11 didn't have to stomach the phoney sombre Australian journalists 'live from New York' or the sight of a former Prime Minister crossing the Brooklyn bridge wearing an ACB tracksuit. But more than 30 years on, the Chilean people are still waiting for the United States' admission of guilt.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Benedict's greed-free capitalism

    • Paul Oslington
    • 15 July 2010

    Some commentators have latched on to Benedict's encyclical Caritas in Veritate as a new 'third way' between socialism and capitalism. This is a remarkably bad idea.

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