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Search Results: beggars

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The disarming force of humour

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 March 2023
    2 Comments

    A response to a man begging on the street leads a group of friends to consider the power of humor and humility in difficult conversations. Can these qualities can help guide conversations about difficult topics like banning and censorship?

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Surviving the cold, small hours

    • Barry Gittins
    • 07 June 2022
    3 Comments

    There’s nothing wrong with us enjoying a quiet breakfast and admiring the beauty of a winter city steeped in recovery. If we can’t also see the people sleeping on cold concrete, or sitting half-dressed, with no hope, peering through unfocused eyes, then we’re not getting the whole picture. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rule of lucre

    • Martin Pike
    • 01 June 2021
    13 Comments

    The fact is that money still buys a better service from the legal system, and to claim otherwise is to throw out the most basic principles of an economy. After all, if there were no benefit to be gained from backing up a truck full of money and tipping 30 or 40 grand a day into a team of silks, junior barristers and top tier solicitors, why would those with the means do it? To argue the contrary beggars belief. And if the observation is accepted, what does that tell us about the rule of law?

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  • RELIGION

    Wash Day at Le Carmel, Lisieux, circa 1895

    • Rita Tognini
    • 28 January 2020
    5 Comments

    It's definitely the flesh and blood you, Thérèse, not the Little Flower of church statues and holy pictures, milky with sanctity. It's the frank-faced-child-in-lace-trimmed-dress-and-sturdy-boots you. It's the fourteen year old, hair-atop-head-in-a-bun-to-look-older-for-the-Bishop-so-he'll-let-you-take-the-veil you.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shaking faith: the Taylor and Westpac scandals

    • Joe Zabar
    • 04 December 2019
    4 Comments

    In light of the banking royal commission and the government's work in developing a plethora of transparency and integrity measures, it beggars belief how Brian Hartzer and Angus Taylor could bring upon themselves and their respective institutions so much unwanted publicity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hope and trepidation amid Lebanon unrest

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 07 November 2019
    3 Comments

    Like many Lebanese Australians I've been watching the mass protests in Lebanon with hope and trepidation. Hope that government reforms, or a change of government, will bring about meaningful transformation in economic management, transparency and public services. Fearful because of the possibility of civil war.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Qunun warmed hearts, Araibi still in the cold

    • Erin Cook
    • 11 January 2019
    5 Comments

    The world sat gripped as Rahaf al-Qunun live-tweeted her mad dash to freedom, then cheered when photos of her being escorted from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport by UN workers emerged. Hakeem al-Araibi has not been so lucky. His current nightmare is emblematic of the bureaucratic mess forced on refugees worldwide.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rights, obligations and the art of caring

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 07 March 2018
    1 Comment

    Last year Brooklyn Museum exhibited radical 20th century works by American women of colour alongside The Dinner Party, a 1970s Second Wave feminist piece noted for its white, middle-class preoccupations. The resonance of this pairing illuminates the plight of Christian, hero of the Swedish art-world farce The Square.

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  • RELIGION

    Aid work grounded in good relationships

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2018
    9 Comments

    The reports of sexual exploitation by officers of aid organisations illustrate the truth of Aristotle's dictum that the corruption of the best is the worst form of corruption. The factors that contribute to such behaviour are complex. They illustrate the constant need for self-reflection personally and in organisations, especially when doing good works.

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  • RELIGION

    It seems Mother Teresa was a Mother Teresa after all

    • Tony Thompson
    • 24 August 2017
    14 Comments

    I kept getting lost in Kolkata. North and south were somehow inverted in my head and I had to consciously avoid going the wrong way every time I stepped out of my hotel.

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  • RELIGION

    Larger principles underpin Pope's beggar belief

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 March 2017
    27 Comments

    We often find ourselves invited to respond to people who ask us for money on the street - beggars, homeless people and so on. We can respond in different ways: give them something, decline as a matter of course, decline as a matter of principle, or not notice them. Last week Pope Francis recommended that we always give coins. To many this will seem to be too categorical. However as has so often been the case, Francis' throwaway lines illuminate much larger social issues.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Woody Allen's sexist society

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 26 October 2016
    8 Comments

    Perhaps it is the high egocentricity of Woody Allen's films that makes it difficult to separate the man from his work. More so even than Roman Polanski, the allegations of sexual abuse that have been levelled at Allen in life lend an unsavoury flavour to his art. Even revisiting Annie Hall these days, Allen's classic and endlessly innovative 1977 romantic comedy is tainted retrospectively by a sneaking sense of sexism, if not outright misogyny. The same is true of Café Society.

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