It’s difficult from afar to grasp the depressing scale and depth of European disintegration, so let me try from close range to convey something of what’s going on by using a simple method: extracting snippets of randomly-chosen local political news...
Read MorePerhaps the only bright democratic light in this dark crisis surrounding Syria is the unexpected growth of a cross-border, large-scale and ultimately global denunciation of the follies and horror of war, writes John Keane. Does democracy have anything to do with...
Read More‘No bourgeois, no democracy’ is the racy formulation penned half a century ago by the American historian Barrington Moore Jr. It’s a well-known political maxim, one that’s often used in support of the view that to be middle class is...
Read More‘No bourgeois, no democracy’ is the racy formulation penned half a century ago by the American historian Barrington Moore Jr. It’s a well-known political maxim, one that’s often used in support of the view that to be middle class is...
Read MoreIn the midst of a two-party dominated and heavily-scripted federal election campaign, I spoke with the widely-respected and independently-minded Senator Scott Ludlam (Greens, Western Australia) about his life-long interest in urban thinking and city life as a laboratory of new...
Read More[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkd6_duJHoc[/youtube] In our age of monitory democracy, as Rupert Murdoch is once again learning to his cost, rascals and rogues are finding it hard to conceal from public attention their private wheeler-dealing. The latest ‘we will hit back’ revelations published by the...
Read MoreMy first moments with His Holiness last week were not quite what I’d expected. In pulled the police-escorted motorcade, sirens wailing, blue lights flashing, bang on time, according to plan. As the motorcade drew to a halt, the small welcoming...
Read MoreAn earthy citizen of a country led by politicians and journalists bugged by “boat people”, Chin Jin fits no standard categories. Now the foremost democrat in Sydney’s thriving Chinese community, he first set foot on the north-west shores of Australia...
Read MoreReaders interested in some of the big political ideas and trends of our time may like to listen to a recent talk on the greening of democratic politics. Hosted in Sydney by the newly-foundedInstitute for Democracy and Human Rights, it aimed...
Read MoreThis talk aims to provoke discussion about the long-term, ‘deep’ effects of green politics on the language and institutions and ‘imaginary’ of democracy. Some of these effects are more obvious than others, he points out. In half a generation, green-minded...
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