Irfan Yusuf has the money quote on all the World Youth Day imbroglios, writing in today’s New Matilda:
I guess it really boils down to values. Cardinal Pell once accused Muslims of having difficulty separating Church from State. Unless he openly distances himself from (and not just denies involvement in) increased police powers designed to protect pilgrims from annoyance, his own secular credentials might look compromised.
Read more »
I was interested to read of the loud condemnations by Morris Iemma and Kevin Rudd of the cover of the latest issue of Art Monthly Australia. The cover features detail from a print of Polixeni Papapetrou’s Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs. In this artwork, the artist’s then six year old daughter, Olympia Nelson, is portrayed naked. Read more »
When I read about Andrew Leigh’s departure from academia into the pointy end of the social policy world on secondment to Treasury for six months, my first thought was that it was a mixed blessing - no doubt Andrew will do good things in the public service, but taking him out of the mix of commentary in the blogosphere and the pages of the Fin deprives us of one of the far too few provocative and interesting and informed writers on public affairs we have in this country. Read more »
To be fair to Morris Iemma and his bunch of clowns masquerading as a government, New South Wales isn’t alone in imposing risible and over the top security regulations for major “public events”. We’ve seen similar things in finance talkfests with Melbourne and CHOGM in Queensland saw Peter Beattie invent preventive detention for “known public nuisances”, as well as going to ludicrous lengths to prevent protest. Read more »
Last year I wrote that Dr. Mohamed Haneef was an Australian Dreyfus. This year, Turkish trade unionist Meryem Özsögüt is a Turkish Mohamed Haneef.
Ms. Özsögut, a member of the management board of a Turkish public sector union, has been detained for six months allegedly in connection with “being a member of a terrorist organisation” and “for making propaganda in favour of the terrorist organisation”. Read more »
This sort of thing was probably always going to surface in the media just before Pope Benedict XVI came to Sydney for World Youth Day, but I’m sure Cardinal Pell is annoyed that he’s been accused of lying to a victim of clerical sexual abuse in order to protect a priest who was later convicted. Read more »
Christopher Hitchens actually had himself waterboarded by the US Military to see whether it felt like torture to him. It did.
via Pharyngula, who has links to video.
I gave up on the farce that is Big Brother 2008 almost before it started. But it’s been worth keeping an eye on commentary about the show, because, like it or loathe it, this particular piece of reality tv is a very good barometer of all sorts of cultural and social trends, good and bad. Read more »
Thanks to Jeremy (and NIC in the comments) for raising these amendments to the World Youth Day Act 2006. Read more »
A lot has been made of the fact that the corpse of a dead Catholic priest will be guest starring at World Youth Day. Sure, to a lot of us (myself included) it’s weird. Indeed, perhaps very weird.
Aside from the weirdness, what can be taken from the phenomena that is this corpse veneration. Read more »
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