Stan Grant is always intelligent, insightful and provocative. He demonstrated this in his extraordinary farewell piece last Monday night on the ABC’s Q+A. (more…)
Category: Religion
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Unity: Living together with a more ‘Sympathetic Imagination’
The spirit of the age seems to foster division more than it nurtures unity.
The G7 Summit is meeting in Hiroshima where thousands were killed at breakfast time on a summer’s morning, August 6, 1945. The G7 leaders meet as a hostile imagination fuels a terrifying arms race. How can we yet pull out of this spiral? (more…)
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Long live the Palestinian resistance
A song that goes out to the courageous Palestinian people and their supporters around the world. (more…)
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The march of death
Ever since the six-day war of 1967, when Israel occupied the whole of Jerusalem, a triumphant march of conquest, called ‘Jerusalem Day March’ takes over the Holy City. How would you feel if this was your home, your neighbourhood and you and your family were faced with hoards of religious fanatics, waving the Israeli flag, chanting ‘Death to all Arabs’ and ‘Your Second Nakba Is Coming’. Last year a new curse was added, “May Your Village Burn” and, of course, the usual cry repeated over and over, “Kill Them All”. (more…)
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The Palestinian catastrophe (Al-Nakba) and Australia’s responsibility
Yesterday, 15th May marked the 75th anniversary of the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland, known as “the Nakba” or “the Catastrophe.” (more…)
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The Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, should speak out
The Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS) stands firmly against the extra-judicial killings of militants by Israel and the high number of civilian casualties- including children – in Gaza. This adds to what the AJDS has been saying for many years with respect to Israel’s disastrous relationship with the people and government of Gaza. (more…)
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The ongoing Palestinian Nakba
Today, May 15th, is the 75th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe). And counting. I say ‘and counting’ because the theft of our land, the occupation, the siege on Gaza, the disposition of our people, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and replacement of the Palestinian nation, with Jews, often of dual nationality, from around the world, continues more aggressively than ever. So does the building of illegal settlements to house those interlopers. They too are still going on apace with no end in sight. (more…)
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A reflection in federal budget week that is cost-neutral!
It is a big week for ‘but’ and ‘however’, delivered with some vehemence in responses to the Federal Budget. It is also a timely reminder that simple things matter, like our tone of voice in private and public conversations. (more…)
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An open letter to Benjamin Netanyahu
At what point did you lose your empathy and compassion towards those outside your circle? Why are you able to feel for those around you yet not for other human beings who live close by and who have exactly the same wants and desires from life as you and your family? (more…)
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Abundant life: honouring the discovery of Mungo Lady
On Wednesday I met with a wonderful Australian geologist, Jim Bowler, famous for discovering the Lake Mungo remains – ‘the oldest human remains in Australia, dated to 40,000 years ago.’ ‘Mungo woman’; Mungo Man’. Jim and I will dream dreams on Sunday, within the abundance of the divine. Asking, against the backdrop of nuclear bombs and submarines: what might Australia yet become? It will be a joy to thereafter share where our dreaming takes us. (more…)
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Fulfilling human potential and saving the planet
Australia, and my Party too, must make a commitment to restoring the primacy of reason, rejecting a paranoid view of history and ‘telling truth to power’. Our blind adoption of irrational policies, supine and unquestioning acquiescence to anything the United States proposes must end. Our species, facing an existential threat to civilisation from climate change, is infinitely complex, infinitely precious, infinitely vulnerable, infinitely destructive, but also infinitely capable of the sublime and transcendent. (more…)
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Antisemitism and the IHRA definition
In a positive development, the University of Adelaide has rejected the adoption of the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, because to adopt it would have been potentially counter to “the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech”, according to the University Council. (more…)
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Does the Vatican’s road to Beijing run through Hong Kong?
An invitation to visit Beijing was issued late last year to Stephen Chow, Sau-yan, the Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong. His recently completed visit is the first by a Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong to the Mainland since the recovery of Hong Kong by China in July, 1997. It may help provide a strengthened framework for the continuing dialogue between the Vatican and Beijing as they each proceed with their diplomatic long-game. (more…)
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National day of prayer for just peace in Mayanmar
After years of cruelty to their own people (whose safety it is their duty to protect), just after Easter, the Myanmar junta’s airforce dropped multiple bombs on a civilian gathering of several hundred people in Sagaing Region while attack helicopters strafed the crowd. Later the same day jet fighters returned to kill anyone left. (more…)
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“It’s armageddon, but not as we know it”
Why are tens of millions of Christians supporting the expansion of Israel and the oppression of the Palestinians? It’s an important question because the answer has serious consequences for the stability of the Middle East. (more…)
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In thy God I don’t trust
I don’t indulge in religion, but in this instance and at this particular time of the year, I feel I must. Let us agree from the start that we are all accidents of birth. None of us had a choice as to our parents, in what country we were born or into what religion. This, I think, will save us a lot of argument about indoctrination, belief, piety and fanaticism. (more…)
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Blast from our sectarian past
Recently a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald claimed to have solved the mystery of why Sr Liguori fled her convent in Wagga Wagga one frosty evening in July 1920. In its day the Liguori affair was one of the most sensational episodes in Australia’s sectarian history. As the Herald writer notes, ‘It seems every newspaper in Australia was fascinated with the story’. (more…)
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Nihilism in Israel, what possible response?
April 5, in Jerusalem, Israeli police using stun grenades and firing rubber coated steel bullets invade the Al Aqsa Mosque. Hundreds of worshippers are arrested. Fourteen Palestinians are wounded by bullets, beatings and tear gas inhalation. (more…)
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A fizzled campaign to muzzle free speech
Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, is a scourge and Australia has not been immune to it. Traditional antisemitism is not hard to identify or call out whether it is in graffiti, slogans or slurs. However, when it comes to debate over Israel and Palestine, what is or is not antisemitic is a highly political issue. (more…)
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An Easter reflection: dreaming dreams, hoping against hope
Easter is a time for dreaming dreams and for hoping against hope. Pragmatists, even if they be religious believers, are unlikely to expend too much energy doing so. But with the state of our troubled world in Ukraine, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Somalia, and Myanmar, it behoves us to take a breather and contemplate what peace might look like, or how we might get there. (more…)
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Easter: A new beginning for wounded humanity and our depleted planet
An Easter reflection on romantic weddings, love, and our global context. Towards a ‘Calming of souls’ and a ‘lightness of being’. (more…)
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Easter Message: Power, control, autocracy, Empire…
…. not the path to a life of harmony and peace.
The 1924 Hibbert Journal published what appears to be the earliest printed version of a very well-worn joke with the final punchline: “a gintleman with a face like your honour’s can’t miss the road; though, if it was meself that was going to Letterfrack, faith, I wouldn’t start from here.” (more…)
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Exposing Israel’s violations upset the Israeli lobby
The main Israeli lobby operating under the name of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), a well-financed private group, is worried. (more…)
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Netanyahu’s nakedness: democracy – whose democracy?
“Look at the King! Look at the the King! Look at the King, the King, the King! (more…)
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Wake in fright but fear not; Ramadan’s here
It’s 1444 on the Islamic calendar and the holy month of Ramadan is well advanced with four weeks of fasting, prayer, introspection and goodwill. All commendable – though in the land next door the noise spoils the values. (more…)
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Anti-Christian hate crimes in Jerusalem soaring this year
Church sources accuse Israeli police of downplaying acts of violence towards them, and attribute Jews’ vandalism to a growing national legitimisation of discrimination. (more…)
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Slowing “the roaring river of violence”
‘Avulsion’ refers to river science and how a number of little incidents can slow the river’s flow and, over time, cause the river to go in a different direction – a fallen tree, for example, that slows down the river’s flow, causing further deposits until the resistance to flow leads to change. If enough of us resist the roaring river of violence by dropping our little deposits of prayers, meditations, songs, conferences and public advocacy, can we too help the river of life to flow in a healthier direction? (more…)
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Palestinians are not terrorists
Australia supports, indeed resources, Ukrainian armed resistance to Russia’s invasion and its attempt to forcibly exert its sovereignty over Ukrainian soil. Very few Australians appear to find fault with this position. For what reason is Israel’s provocative and continuing colonisation of Palestine not seen in the same light?
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The sin of Robodebt
What appears to be absent from the politicians and public servants appearing in the Robodebt Royal Commission is an understanding that it was a moral failure – a sin. Finding the sinners to punish in atonement might make us feel better for a moment, but it might not fix the sin. (more…)
