Unleashed presents diverse and robust opinion about politics, society, belief and behaviour.
Last Updated: 29/08/2008 11:34:20 AM
29 August 2008, 11:00
Active ignorance & the Champions Trophy withdrawal
Australian cricketers' decision to withdraw from the Champions Trophy worsens the alienation of Pakistani fans, writes Dileep Premachandran.
"Terrorists may lack essential human decency and have value systems drastically different from our own, but at the end of the day, they don't operate in a vacuum. Whether it's SIMI in India, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka or Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan, they know that targetting cricket is the quickest way to lose whatever little public sympathy they might have." More...
29 August 2008, 10:00
Student Power & mince pies
Joanna Mendelssohn reflects on the beginning of the study of fine arts at the University of Sydney 40 years ago and the innovative teaching that emerged from the new department.
"...there was a hunger for the discipline. Many older students, and even graduates, came to first year lectures. As a result of this our Fine Arts tutorials and lectures had a completely different atmosphere from the rest of the university's first year courses which were all jam-packed with school leavers. Indeed in 1968 the academic staff were so interested in their colleagues' activities that they all regularly attended the mass lectures." More...
28 August 2008, 17:00
A strong cop on the building beat
Wilhelm Harnisch, CEO of the Master Builders Association responds to the CFMEU's 'Rights on Site' campaign to dismantle - ahead of schedule - the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Unions argue the ABCC is "heavy-handed and and undemocratic assault on human rights".
"(The building unions) have been dishonest in presenting their case. They would have you believe that innocent peace loving union officials have been victimised by a Gestapo-like secret police. Anyone reading the building unions' version of the role of the ABCC would be alarmed. They claim that the ABCC is too powerful, and that its activities compromise workplace safety and strip away workers' rights." More...
28 August 2008, 10:00
The China Bubble
With the Olympics over, Ben Power sees trouble ahead for the fragile Chinese economy.
"China's amazing growth and looming global dominance are constantly hyped, but evidence is mounting the country won't avoid a financial and economic crisis." More...
28 August 2008, 09:00
Monarchies rule
As a republican, Bob Ellis has long struggled with his belief that the best countries in the world are monarchies.
"A constitutional monarch is less like a god, or a Caesar or a Great Dictator, and more like a Guardian Angel; and somewhere in the human psyche there is room for this idea." More...
27 August 2008, 11:00
A sceptical look at the 'dangers' of mobile phones
Bob Bruce, who makes something of a pastime of being a sceptic, debunks the dangers of using your mobile.
"Do our bodies react to radiation at mobile phone frequencies? Maybe a bit. Does it do much harm? Probably not. So while researchers are looking for cancers, maybe something completely different will happen." More...
27 August 2008, 10:00
The harmony of tyranny
As the Olympic afterglow fades Mustafa Qadri reflects on the darker side of the event wherever it takes place.
"Cities hosting The Games are transformed into sterile, open air hotels where brand names are jealously guarded and undesirables, mostly the poor and political agitators, are shunned or imprisoned. The Olympics transformed Sydney from a big town into a bustling, air-brushed postcard. Ever since, police powers and CCTVs have proliferated in the city." More...
26 August 2008, 16:00
Punishing parents won't stop truancy
Brian Burgess thinks the the federal government needs to re-think its plan to dock welfare payments of families whose children continually miss school.
"This Government initiative is lazy policy; is punitive and has behind it the assumption that in low socio-economic areas, the family is to blame. It smacks of punishing the victim and deflects attention from governments' responsibility to provide schools and other agencies with the resources to tackle this problem in a meaningful and sustained way." More...
26 August 2008, 15:30
The rise and rise of the Nanny State
Gregor Stronach rises to the defence of cartwheels and handstands.
"...I see a different Australia. I see a country caught in the powerful grip of paranoia - where a schoolyard scuffle that, in my day, would have ended with two red-faced young boys getting a rap on the knuckles with a ruler is more likely to wind up in court than the principal's office." More...
26 August 2008, 11:00
Sport or Art?
Gerard Oosterman can't understand why we admire our sports figures more than our artists and writers.
"The secret was out and went like wildfire through the whole train. The next thing, passengers were lining up to meet me, vodka was offered and Lilly unpacked some 'kuchen' with cubed sugar soaked in almond essence. (I remember it well.) I was almost carried around on shoulders and tears were flowing. I was feted like an emperor." More...
26 August 2008, 10:00
A vain attempt to get the rich to pay their tax
Ed Wright sticks out an olive branch to the rich: start paying your taxes and we'll name something after you.
"Although philanthropy is laudable it does not excuse the failure to pay a fair proportion of tax. In evading tax by stashing their riches in places like Liechtenstein, the rich prevent governments from funding the unsexy stuff like infrastructure, the old age pension and nursing homes. Afterall who is going to fund public transport when a chauffeur driven Mercedes picks you up from your private jet? Why worry about nursing homes when you can afford your own nurse?" More...
25 August 2008, 10:30
'If I can be half the athlete they were'
Dennis Phillips outlines the remarkable record of Australian women at the Olympic Games.
"Throughout most of the 20th Century, despite the fact that they made up, on average, only about 20 per cent of the membership of Australian Olympic teams, women consistently out-performed the men and maintained our nation's prominent position on the unofficial national medal count." More...
25 August 2008, 10:00
The corporate death rattle
The indispensable guide to when your company is likely to be dispensing with you, by Mike Jones.
"An epidemic of planning sweeps the firm. No actual implementation, just planning. Once a week the team is forced to come together to tell lies about how they personally will realise their part of the plan. The trick is to go second last..." More...
22 August 2008, 12:00
A Dog's Life: Nature or nurture?
He may just be chucking a ball for Luffy, his trusty dog, but to Chris Gregory it's the result of some extremely careful pet parenting.
"We rewarded the good things he did and ignored the bad. We socialised him as much as possible, with as many adults and children and other dogs as we could, but always in a controlled situation. We kept him stimulated, physically and mentally, as much as we could. And truly, you'd be hard-pressed to meet a happier, more confident dog." More...
22 August 2008, 11:00
Scheer madness from the left
Rick Moran takes aim at Robert Scheer, in direct response to his piece 'Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?' Unleashed, August 14.
"I am of the Carl Sagan school of empirical proof; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Sagan, the noted astronomer, used that common sense formulation to debunk claims of alien visitation. The only thing 'extraordinary' about Scheer's piece is his depraved indifference to the truth. The lengths to which he goes to make connections where none exist, extrapolate conclusions based upon nothing but his own spiteful biases, and posit guilt by association of the most rank and dishonest kind, gives yellow journalism a bad name." More...
22 August 2008, 09:00
A portrait of the Australian artist
As the story behind Dean Walsh's celebrated production Back From Front shows, Australian artists continually create innovative, challenging works that confound expectation. Don't expect this to last, he says, unless Australian artists get better support.
"[For Back From Front] I spoke to my grandfather about serving in Papua New Guinea at the age of 17, how he was left alone for three days having had his best mate's blood and guts all over him. It was so well known how violent he was within my family and how in turn my father was to my mother, brother and I. He wasn’t an evil man, he was capable of love, but his violence was often and intensive and terrifying." More...
21 August 2008, 11:00
A lie for a lie, a truth for a truth
Take right wing media behaviour, add some double standards in society and the delusion of party solidarity, and you have a recipe for political disaster, says Bob Ellis.
"[Private] used to mean those things you preferred not to talk about – the quarrels you had with your children over school marks and boyfriends, the quarrels you had with your wife over God's existence or the frequency of her orgasms. All those things are fair game now if the press merely asks about them, or so it would seem after Buswell, Edwards, Spitzer and Kilpatrick, who walked the plank because of them; and Belinda Neal and John Della Bosca who did what all of us have done, quarrel with a waiter and pretend in public afterwards it was nothing serious, and when they were asked about it fudged some details and were therefore laughed, or will be laughed, out of public life and into private misery forever." More...
21 August 2008, 10:00
Through a tube darkly, part 2
We're back in the surf for this second instalment of journalist and author Andy Martin's story.
"Now, when I look back on this strange love-hate relationship between two men, I see a couple of lessons to hold on to. One is that we inevitably define our identity by opposition. It is our most fundamental existential gesture, one that we can never entirely work around: I am not you or him or her or (especially) them. The other, oddly enough, is the converse. I need you and your gaze, your camera, to reassure me that I am really there. It's sad, it's kind of pathetic, it's possibly even tragic, but it's part of what we are." More...
20 August 2008, 11:30
Watching them watching us
As the 'Google-mobile' tips up on her street to take images on Rubbish Night, Helen Razer wonders if invasion to our privacy is the price we pay for uploading our lives.
"Australian privacy groups have been long been resourceful and eloquent in their censure of Big Brother. We have their lobbying to thank for a relative freedom from scrutiny. I'm glad someone can be bothered calculating the cost of my lost privacy. But I'm bothered there are other, more faintly imagined costs, that can barely be reckoned." More...
20 August 2008, 11:00
Settling Accounts: Latin American rage reaches the US
Latin American affairs specialist Rodrigo Acuña brings us the story of Immortal Technique, a rapper who, having left street violence behind to become a torch-bearing artist, seems set to become one of the voices of his generation.
"Born in Lima, Peru at the end of the 1970s, Technique and his family eventually fled from their war torn country. Growing up in Spanish Harlem, like countless youths Technique became involved in street violence and was incarcerated at the end of the 1990s. After legally defeating a potentially long prison stretch, the man that emerged from penitentiary made the world notice his rage. ." More...
19 August 2008, 12:00
Through a tube darkly, part 1
The surf movie was re-evaluated recently following the death of filmmaker Bud Browne. In this first instalment of a two-part story exclusive to Unleashed, journalist and author Andy Martin - a man who sees the world in and through surfing – explains how cameras arrived on the beach, draws parallels with our ‘look-at-me’ society and re-visits a deadly rivalry.
"The decade-long antagonism, the rivalry, and, it should be added, the philosophical dialogue between two great surfers, Ken Bradshaw and Mark Foo, shines a light on what is, in effect, a metaphysical crisis afflicting humanity. It is our inability to just be. Descartes defines rationality by the phrase, 'I think therefore I am'; our contemporary irrationality would have to be re-defined by 'I see myself on Facebook (or YouTube) therefore I am.' It is not enough to live any more, we have to take photographs and movies of ourselves to prove we are really alive." More...
19 August 2008, 10:00
Alma matters: Changes in Australian higher education
After a 27 year hiatus, Trevor Cook returns to study at the University of Sydney. Having spent three years on former education minister John Dawkins' staff during an Australian higher education 'revolution', he has a vested interest in the change he finds.
"One of the first things that struck me is how much more use the buildings get. Back in my undergraduate days, classes after 5pm or on Fridays were a pretty rare occurrence. Now, classes can even be scheduled on Saturdays. Quelle horreur." More...
18 August 2008, 11:30
Olympic Games: Week 1
Gregor Stronach takes Unleashed on a whistle-stop tour of the first week's events in Beijing.
"London’s 2012 opening ceremony is either going to have to last seven full days and detonate the equivalent of nine sub-atmospheric nuclear warheads as fireworks, or they are going to have to just cut the whole ridiculous waste of money right back to bare bones. Stick the athletes in the stadium, hand out half a dozen bowls of Spotted Dick and declare the Games open for business." More...
18 August 2008, 10:30
Superheroes in a time warp
The Dark Knight, the new Batman movie, has grossed over $450,000,000 at the US box office. The late Heath Ledger’s compelling, brilliant performance helped sell the tickets, but the Caped Crusader’s success is yet more evidence we are in the grip of a superhero revival. But though the effects may be better and the budgets bigger, Yvette Blackwood says the characters themselves seem stuck in a different age.
"Christian Bale’s Batman is in dire need of a little intimacy, whatever gender provides it. Bruce Wayne has plenty of money and power but he doesn’t have the girl. The character Rachel Dawes, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, is little more than a device - a commodity the two male characters wrestle over. The technology in The Dark Knight may be futuristic and impressive, but the female role is all-too archaic." More...
