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Author: Justin Glyn

  • AUSTRALIA

    Government delivers lacklustre response to Disability RC

    • Justin Glyn
    • 14 August 2024

    The Federal Government response to the Disability Royal Commission is in. Out of 172 recommendations, only 13 have been fully accepted. These included many reforms that were already partially in progress. Disability advocates can, perhaps, be forgiven for being underwhelmed. 

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  • RELIGION

    Everyone agrees we should protect the vulnerable, but who exactly are they?

    • Justin Glyn
    • 03 July 2024

    None of us — even those experiencing vulnerability, whether temporary or resulting from a permanent infirmity of some kind — should be perceived as an object of protection; instead, each one of us is a collaborator in our own care, and in the care of others.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Darkness in the forest: Revisiting L’Arche after Jean Vanier

    • Justin Glyn
    • 08 February 2023
    4 Comments

    Despite the revelations of abuse by its founder Jean Vanier, the communities of L'Arche have remained intact and welcoming with safety protocols in place. The challenge for L'Arche has been in transcending its founder and facing a painful process of re-evaluation, with the aim of living an ethos of equality and inclusivity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The shadow side of connectedness

    • Justin Glyn
    • 02 February 2023

    No matter how much one might wish for an end to the pandemic, Covid is transmitted aerially, especially through close human interaction, and the virus itself remains stubbornly immune to optimism as a coping strategy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2022: Does the 'Let it Rip' approach have a eugenics problem?

    • Justin Glyn
    • 05 January 2023

    In the early part of the twentieth century, Francis Galton (a cousin of Charles Darwin) used the latter’s work to argue that human breeding stock could be improved. He would weed out the weakest and the less able and produce a sturdier race. Until recently, the crematoria of Hitler’s death camps were enough to remind most that this was not an idea consonant with actual human flourishing.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Russian view on Ukraine: An international law perspective

    • Justin Glyn
    • 07 March 2022
    26 Comments

    Ukraine, a site of conflict over many centuries, is once again the scene of battle. First thoughts must be with the civilian population and Pope Francis’ call for prayer is probably the most practical course for most of us far from the action. Unfortunately, while it is clear that there have been casualties, both military and civilian, on both sides, the fog of war makes it very difficult to say more. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Does the 'Let it Rip' approach have a eugenics problem?

    • Justin Glyn
    • 27 January 2022
    12 Comments

    In the early part of the twentieth century, Francis Galton (a cousin of Charles Darwin) used the latter’s work to argue that human breeding stock could be improved. He would weed out the weakest and the less able and produce a sturdier race. Until recently, the crematoria of Hitler’s death camps were enough to remind most that this was not an idea consonant with actual human flourishing.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The thawing of a frozen conflict

    • Justin Glyn
    • 30 November 2021
    8 Comments

    Global warming, much in the news of late, has been accompanied by another unwelcome thaw. The ‘frozen conflict’ in the East of Ukraine between a Western-backed, Ukrainian nationalist government and Russian-speaking rebels with cultural affinity with Moscow, has been heating up alarmingly.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Western withdrawal from Afghanistan marks the beginning of an uncertain future

    • Justin Glyn
    • 13 July 2021
    5 Comments

    The atrocities committed in the Taliban siege of Mazar-i-Sharif in the late 1990s have not been forgotten. Nevertheless, the ‘progress’ brought by the invading forces — after twenty years’ hard fighting against the forces which they themselves had previously armed and trained against the Soviets — is equally debatable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Does identity politics commodify us?

    • Justin Glyn
    • 04 May 2021
    32 Comments

    The Prime Minister has recently denounced ‘the growing tendency to commodify human beings through identity politics‘. In doing so, he raises a number of important questions. The claim of ‘commodification’ of human beings and their relations is a powerful one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Disability RC hears how criminal justice system fails people with disabilities

    • Justin Glyn
    • 02 March 2021

    Hearing 11 of the Commission has looked at how Australia’s justice system treats people with disabilities. The intersection between disability and the criminal justice system is, unfortunately, not a happy one.

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  • RELIGION

    St Francis Xavier, disability, and examining our limits

    • Justin Glyn
    • 02 December 2020
    10 Comments

    3 December has a couple of interesting resonances for this blind Jesuit. It is the feast day of St Francis Xavier — Jesuit missionary extraordinaire. It is also the International Day of Persons with a Disability. It seems to me that the two anniversaries have more than a little in common — both in what they tell us about the limits and the promise of human life in the image of God.

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