Articles by Robin Cameron

A brief comment on the KONY 2012 that has flooded social media over the last two days. I would suggest exercising extended  critical reflection on the issue before further circulating it. The issue is not as black and white as it is painted nor will any good solution come easily. Invisible Children’s suggestion of a [...]

The lack of agreement on the question of whether undue criticism of Gillard is sexist boils down to how we think about sexism. Is sexism something we view at an individual level or a wider social structural level? Is it still sexism, when gender discrimination occurs at a structural level? Before addressing this, I’d just [...]

Airing on Sunday nights is a new TV drama, Homeland, which explores the phenomenon of ‘sleeper cells’. Understandably, this show seeks to position itself as something other than an alarmist Bush-era program about terrorists. In this case the potential sleeper agent is a serving marine. Ultimately, however, this plot innovation is really just an elaborate [...]

Last week, comedian Stephen Colbert announced his entry into mucky world of American electoral politics with a satirical bid for nomination in the Republican South Carolina primary. In this short space of time Colbert was able to momentarily overshadow the deep banality of the Republican nomination process and cast attention on the absurd system of [...]

Amidst an increasingly nasty lead-up to the upcoming South Carolina Republican primary, yesterday saw the release of an attack ad accusing the overwhelming favorite candidate Mitt Romney of being a serial killer. If this campaign ad seems a little bit odd or over the top it is because it was released to support Stephen Colbert, [...]

It says a lot about a major political party when their shadow spokesperson for ‘Citizenship’ comes out with a statement about migrants predicated on offensive racism. Gambaro attempted to reignite national debate over Australian multiculturalism with a statement about migrants on skilled working visas needing ‘cultural awareness training’ on hygiene and social etiquette, including being [...]

The hierarchy implicit in the decision to provide climate aid to developing countries is not one that is reflected in Australia’s role in the global harm to the environment. Perhaps we should be more humble about our own environmental credentials. At the Durban climate change discussions Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet [...]

Why is that so many awe-inspiring feats of engineering are so hard to separate from deliberate mass death and misery? President Obama’s recent visit to Canberra reminded me of when I first had this thought. I was doing an internship at the Royal Australian Air Force think tank, then the Aerospace Centre (now the Air [...]

Conspiracy (noun): A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful Naomi Wolf has caused a tremendous imbroglio by writing an article that sought to alert fellow Americans to the dangers of a co-ordinated crackdown on Occupy protesters. She has argued that not only have local mayors met to plan an array of [...]

I feel like I’ve become accustomed to stomaching hypocrisy. Contemporary politics is rife with it. It rarely shocks. Even when I am outraged by hypocrisy, my friends seem busy being outraged by a different hypocrisy, so we can’t get together and talk about it. I can’t remember exactly when this happened. I remember shocked at [...]