…our list is a genuine plea for you to bring us a greatly improved integrity-related system that addresses all the shortcomings in the current arrangements. Dear Santa, I am writing this wish list on behalf of the vast majority of Victorians. Please don’t think we are being greedy as that is not our intention. Rather, Continue reading »
politics
Is there any light in the Christian message in the face of the horrors in the Ukraine and Gaza? Apart from wishing peace on Earth does Christian belief actually change anything? Well, along with Nick Cave, I don’t believe in an interventionist God. At least not a God sitting above our lives pulling the strings Continue reading »
A Meditation for Those who are Grieving Loss during this Christmas Season, 2023 To write about grief at any time is difficult. To write about grief, as we migrate into the Christmas season, even more so. The character of Christmas as a season of enchantment, makes grief an ill fit. The character of Christmas as Continue reading »
Mark J. Valencia, an internationally renowned maritime policy analyst focused on Asia, passed away on 6 December 2023 in Hawaii, surrounded by his family. A regular author for Pearls and Irritations, Mark was an Adjunct Senior Scholar at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Haikou, China; and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Huayang Continue reading »
All sides of Australian politics have sustained pressure on the United States to drop the charges against Julian Assange. While the Cheng Lei experience might provide an instructive lesson on how to negotiate with what is a political charge, this may have to wait until after the 2024 election. 2023 was the year when the Continue reading »
Why was Christ born in a stable? Because the Israelis bombed all the houses. Truly. Every year Jesus is born, dies and is reborn. He is reborn into our world – that is part of what makes Christian symbology meaningful. This year Christ is a brown skinned Middle Eastern man about to be born in Continue reading »
Out of our hearts can come thoughts that are pure and beautiful or “evil intentions, murder…” What we think and let influence our thinking shapes our words and actions, for good or ill. How important therefore are the choices we make! The choice to nurture love with words and actions that bring healing as compared Continue reading »
After the birth of Jesus, there was the flight into Egypt. Benjamin Netanyahu’s 1st Century predecessor, Herod, had decreed the slaughter of all the male children under the age of two – not Gaza this time, but West Bank Bethlehem. You don’t say “No’ to God – nor to God’s messenger, the angel Gabriel. To Continue reading »
The victimisation by Israel of Palestinian children is so profound that Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkain, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem law professor, has described it as “Unchilding,” that is, in order to “eliminate the next generation of Palestinians, Israel treats Palestinian children as both nobodies who are unworthy of global children’s rights and as dangerous and killable Continue reading »
“The fact that one of the least populated countries on Earth contains the world’s second most expensive housing is a national calamity, and a stunning failure of public policy,” writes Alan Kohler, in the latest Quarterly Essay. He doesn’t mince words. We are in a housing crisis – and it is a public policy failure Continue reading »