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Search Results: empathy

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Shedding light on elder abuse

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 23 February 2016
    7 Comments

    Elder abuse resembles child abuse in its iceberg qualities: both have received little attention until comparatively recently. In the case of elder abuse, very few cases ever come to court: old people are as helpless as children, similarly unable to plead their own cases, and afraid to: they have little power. The Yiddish proverb springs to mind: If you can't bite, don't show your teeth. The most consistent offenders, sad to say, are family members, who are often adept at exploiting the fear that is part of ageing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    To work for police is to stare into the abyss

    • Paul Coghlan
    • 17 February 2016
    6 Comments

    Having worked at Victoria Police for 25 years, I have great empathy for Wade Noonan, who stepped down as Victoria's Minister for Police to undergo counselling due to his exposure to traumatic incidents in this work. I have long felt that job advertisements for police should carry a health warning: This position may be dangerous to your mental, physical and spiritual health. Whether it be trawling through crime statistics or investigating crimes directly, police work means filling your soul with dark things.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    #LetThemStay reveals the political capital of compassion

    • Somayra Ismailjee
    • 12 February 2016
    8 Comments

    Since the first churches offered sanctuary to the refugees facing deportation to Nauru, a steady stream of voices have joined the call for compassion. As a political language, compassion is itself a reclamation of power. Extending safety, resources, or even a mere welcome to people in need proves that we have something to give. Strength is embodied by a capacity to aid and assist, rather than in cruelty. Empathy, care and compassion appeal to us on a level of emotion that runs deeper than mere rhetoric.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian of the Year's strong case for empathy

    • Justin Glyn
    • 01 February 2016
    9 Comments

    Australia woke on 26 January to the news that David Morrison had been named Australian of the Year. One of the most striking features he displays is empathy. It is a quality in vanishingly short supply in public discourse, yet is fundamental. Unless we can put the individual on a broader canvass, our world view is incomplete. I am important, but unless you are recognised as being just as important as I, then you are just a plaything for me. My rights are bounded by your rights, your value as a person.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ordinary heroes shine on suffering

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 29 January 2016
    9 Comments

    Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer often made his characters ask the eternal questions, chiefly Why do we suffer? I can't profess to have any answers to this, except that it is obvious that 'time and chance happeneth to all'. Two examples of such happenings are the huge numbers of ill-fated refugees fleeing Syria and other trouble spots, and the needless death of young Sarah Paino of Hobart, wife and mother, who was killed when a speeding stolen car crashed into hers.

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  • MEDIA

    The butterfly effect of online grief

    • Kate Mani
    • 27 January 2016
    2 Comments

    A few months ago, someone I know died. We had only met a couple of times, accepted each other's Facebook friend requests, and messaged each other on and off. But I grew to know him well. His face filled my Facebook newsfeed weekly. Now I see his family's farewells, and the preceding year of photos makes it even easier to picture their grief. Be it the loss of a friend or a city shattered by terror, the 21st century colossus that is social media has reinvented the wheel of commemoration.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    2015 in review: Melbourne medicos' refugee heroism

    • Justin Glyn
    • 11 January 2016
    4 Comments

    Health care professionals at the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital have begun to do what could not be achieved by reports from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Australia's Human Rights Commission. The doctors and staff are refusing to release children they treat back to the detention which caused their problems in the first place. By this brave act has begun the slow task of pouring daylight (always the best antiseptic) into this gaping wound in Australian society.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Grandmother activist's turbo charged climate passion

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 25 November 2015

    'The people who were most impacted were people in developing countries who I've cared about my whole life. And then I started having grandchildren too, so that passion to do something about climate change was turbo charged. The thought of little kids being swept out to sea because of a typhoon, or killed in a cyclone - they haunt me.' Thea Ormerod, President of Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, was arrested last year while protesting the Maules Creek mine site in NSW.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Pope Francis and climate justice

    • Frank Brennan
    • 06 November 2015
    1 Comment

    Francis does not pretend to have answers to the big questions which will confront world leaders when they gather in Paris. But he does think the science is IN, and the evidence is clear that much of the climate change, loss of biodiversity and water shortages are the result of human action. We are blessed to have a pope who speaks to all the world about the prudence, justice and empathy required so that more people on our planet might enjoy integral human development.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why Pope Francis is not an anti-Capitalist greenie

    • Frank Brennan
    • 23 October 2015
    4 Comments

    Francis knows there are all sorts of issues inside and outside the Church where for too long people with power have tried to keep the lid on, in the hope that the problems and complexities will go away, often by parodying those who see the problems or complexities as small 'l' liberals or cafeteria Catholics. He delights in being joyful and troubled while contemplating big problems, calling people of good will to the table of deliberation reminding them of the kernel of the Christian gospels. He has the faith and hope needed to lift the lid without fear and without knowing the answers prior to the dialogue occurring.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australians dogged by Pavlovian politics

    • Justin Glyn
    • 21 October 2015
    11 Comments

    While running a Royal Commission into domestic violence and a $30 million campaign against it, ringing the bell marked 'asylum seekers are queue jumpers' has allowed successive governments to abuse alleged rape victims with barely a word of protest from the public. Insofar as any feelings of empathy for asylum seekers exist, we tell ourselves brutality is inflicted 'to stop deaths at sea'. So successful has this Pavlovian policy been that Australian refugee policy is now the toast of German neo-Nazis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Melbourne medicos bring detained children into the light

    • Justin Glyn
    • 13 October 2015
    9 Comments

    Health care professionals at the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital have begun to do what could not be achieved by reports from the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Australia's Human Rights Commission. The doctors and staff are refusing to release children they treat back to the detention which caused their problems in the first place. By this brave act has begun the slow task of pouring daylight (always the best antiseptic) into this gaping wound in Australian society.

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