Welcome to Eureka Street
Looking for thought provoking articles?Subscribe to Eureka Street and join the conversation.
Passwords must be at least 8 characters, contain upper and lower case letters, and a numeric value.
Eureka Street uses the Stripe payment gateway to process payments. The terms and conditions upon which Stripe processes payments and their privacy policy are available here.
Please note: The 40-day free-trial subscription is a limited time offer and expires 31/3/24. Subscribers will have 40 days of free access to Eureka Street content from the date they subscribe. You can cancel your subscription within that 40-day period without charge. After the 40-day free trial subscription period is over, you will be debited the $90 annual subscription amount. Our terms and conditions of membership still apply.
When she felt she could not fulfil her duties as a leader with the energy and commitment that it required, Jacinda Ardern stepped away from the job. She made a point of saying that though there will be speculation about her walking away, it was nothing more complicated than the job required more commitment than she felt able to bring.
The strange thing is that those chest-beating about terrorism rarely made an issue of when terrorists of the modernist Islamist variety (such as al-Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and ISIL) attacked mosques, Muslim shrines and Muslim congregations. Nor do they report of just how fringe and hated these groups are in their own countries where the bulk of their attacks take place.
The widespread despair about climate change, and the seeming inability of progressives to offer a solution, provides fertile soil for ecofascism to grow. In a sense, given the scale of the crisis, their apocalyptic vision of an environmental race war can sound more realistic than the pallid centrist nostrums that everyone knows won't work.
When Jacinda Ardern uttered the words 'They are Us' in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, a powerful vision hovered over the impending debates on the meaning of what had happened. Something hitherto invisible came into view and was repudiated: a conceptual structure underlying the operations of social power.
The troubling feature of this move is that governments are urging online companies to become vigilant gatekeepers and policing agents of internet material. In doing so, an undue degree of importance is placed on the devil of technology rather than the weakness of humanity.
No security measures will ever be able to suppress inclinations to hatred or violence which grow in the depths of the human heart. And yet there is a difference between Colombo and Christchurch which might be worth exploring. Paradoxically, the most useful things that governments can do are those which are least often tried.
As I wait to be reunited with my fiancée from Afghanistan, my discomfort is heightened by New Zealand's involvement in her country, and by an awareness of her sense of persecution, as a Muslim, after the Christchurch massacres. I do not feel able to partake in any traditional ANZAC service, as if nothing has changed.
The nationalist values purported to be Australian and to have flowed like blood from Anzac Cove will not do. Australians celebrating Anzac Day this year cannot assume that New Zealanders share all the values that are deemed Australian. Indeed, this Anzac Day New Zealanders might recall Australians to its more authentic meanings.
I was on a train in Melbourne's CBD when word came through there was a suspected gunman at Flagstaff Station. It turned out to be a false alarm. After Christchurch and One Nation's attempts to cosy up to the NRA, it is not surprising guns are on our minds. For most Australians this is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. That's the way it should stay.
The thrust of the Morrison government's changes is one of heavy handed and forced deferral, outsourcing government policing by vesting it in social media platforms. Israel's Cyber Unit, by way of contrast, has been seeking the same object via more subtle means, collaborating with Facebook and YouTube to remove errant posts and content.
How is it that with so few people 'on the ground', with sharp divisions among its spokespeople, and with the flight of PHON candidates, once elected, to continue to hold their seats as 'independents', the party may sneak into a position where, as Ashby and Dickson mused, they 'hold the balls of the government' in their sweaty little hands?
The difficulty for journalists reporting emergencies is they're having to make important and hugely impactful ethical decisions right in the moment. In balancing those tough decisions, how often does the common good start drowning in what will draw the most attention from an audience, and away from competing news organisations?