Category Archive: POLITICS
Water, water every where, nor any chance to Think
Section 18C of the Australian Commonwealth’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975 makes it unlawful to publically say, write or draw anything that is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of a certain race, colour or national or ethnic origin. You only have to read that sentence carefully to see the potential problems with it. (There doesn’t seem to be a corresponding protection in the federal sex or disability discrimination legislation.) In 2009, columnist Andrew Bolt produced articles in the Herald Sun newspaper on what he thought was an important social issue: the subjective self-identification of…
Continue Reading →Fraying of the Golden Thread
Sword of Damocles by Felix Auvray
(The 15th International Law Congress, Adelaide 12-16 October 2016) At the Congress on Thursday 13th, David Edwardson QC explained (with some warmth) that he had been able to take part in the congress’ panel discussion on varied perspectives in the criminal law because his trial scheduled for most of the month had gone off, as the Crown had delivered some 5 lever arch files of (hitherto called-for-but-not-produced) evidence to his chambers, a matter of a day or so before ‘the bounce’. No doubt the inevitable adjournment is added to the South Australian Attorney-General’s stats on intolerable delays, which he will…
Continue Reading →Evil’s So Banal
Undated File Photo: Nazi Criminal Adolph Eichmann In His Cell In Galami Prison, Near Haifa, Waiting For His Trial To Open. (Photo By Gpo/Getty Images)
The Varnished Culture continued to mix incognito with the great and the good of the criminal law, at the 15th International Criminal Law Congress in Adelaide, October 2016. Here’s the retort of a layman to some of the contentions aired during this stimulating, engrossing and profound conference. Global Crime got in-depth treatment today, when we heard from Felicity Gerry QC on Human Trafficking and Criminal Justice, Alex Ward on the disparate criminal approaches among the Commonwealth nations, and William Smith on International Courts and Tribunals. These speeches were really interesting and very depressing on a myriad levels. One only has to hear…
Continue Reading →Weiner
Get it up proudly (photo by Thomas Good)
(Produced & Directed by Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg) (2016) Is a Great Man not also a Man? Think of the Emperor Tiberius, or John F. Kennedy. The flesh is weak, and our moral standards can’t harden when some slack should be cut. In 2011, 7-term congressman and Democratic attack-dog Anthony Weiner (a kind of American Sam Dastyari) resigned office over salacious ‘sexting’, featuring close-up photographs of his bulging underwear, weiner prominent. After the dust settled from that, Mr Weiner (a scrappy, combative, demonstrative Weiner) decided to run for Mayor of New York City in 2013. This documentary follows that campaign, with what seems…
Continue Reading →Self-Victimisation
We see it everywhere and who can lay blame? It signifies our times and times past, which we thought were dead, but were only coughing up yet more blood. Recently, we reviewed Pascal Bruckner’s The Tyranny of Guilt and in the present context, it is worth quoting from that eloquent, thoughtful and largely instinctive (rather than empirical) book, in the current context: But there is also the danger of transforming these groups’ suffering into a kind of sanctuary, if necessary by embodying it in a law, of making it an impenetrable bastion…We no longer create our own lives, we repeat…
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