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Keywords: Bash

  • 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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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Pitfalls of Putin troops in Syria

    • Justin Glyn
    • 06 October 2015
    6 Comments

    The Syrian government are no angels, and any more bombing raids on an already heavily bombed and traumatised population is unlikely to improve the situation for civilians. However, the American claim that the Russians have a poor record in this respect smacks of hypocrisy, given the US's admitted destruction last week of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Afghanistan at the cost of 22 lives. Moscow's policy at least has the merits of legality, intelligibility and consistency.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Brown ban helps parents talk about domestic violence

    • Jen Vuk
    • 02 October 2015
    6 Comments

    Fairfax columnist Clem Bastow has raised concerns about the campaign to ban US rapper and convicted woman basher Chris Brown from touring here: 'The use of immigration law to "send a message" is something any feminist should be profoundly uncomfortable with,' she wrote. Well, as a feminist and a mother of two young boys, I welcome the ban. I've come to realise that in the dialogue I have with my sons about violence against women, rhetoric, posturing, and even hypocrisy have their uses.

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  • MEDIA

    Ashley Madison leak exposes a prurient and uncaring society

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 26 August 2015
    15 Comments

    The media has greeted the infidelity website leak with unabashed glee. We could instead ask why so many ordinary people are seemingly so discontented with their marriages, and what might be done to alleviate the wretchedness both of those who cheat and those who don't.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The death of bullying victim Vangelis Giakoumakis

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 08 April 2015
    7 Comments

    Here in Greece, a 20 year old youth was subjected to concentrated and constant bullying, and eventually he could bear no more. Who knows, really, what triggers bullying? Except that bullies, who are always cowards, invariably select as victims people who seem weaker and thus vulnerable to pressure, both physical and psychological. Vangelis seems to have been the sort who could not or would not fight back.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Avoiding the other 'F' word

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 04 February 2015
    12 Comments

    To prevent arguments, I have given up using the word 'football' for any code. I now almost exclusively use the terms soccer, Aussie rules, rugby (union) or league. What matters is not the shape of the ball, but whether a sport can provide great stories and spectacles on the field.   

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fighter who found community on the streets

    • Steve Sinn
    • 10 December 2014
    26 Comments

    Sue will always be for me flesh and blood, her trust I will forever cherish. Hers was a wretched life from the beginning to the end. But for some reason I feel impelled to lift her name out of the anonymity narrative that includes the vast numbers of people who have gone before us. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    New Year at the Killing Fields

    • Tony Page
    • 29 April 2014
    1 Comment

    The children go holiday wild, swarms of them drenching us with holy water. Skin soaked, we fall off our bikes, flattened by their rabble-roused blessing ... Inside it's a garden, well-kept trails between the mounds, fooling us they were designed to please the eye ... Look, that tree, so graceful — against which babies' heads were bashed ... I check for red-handed stains but they have long since dissolved into complicity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sex, lies and political theory

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 20 March 2014
    3 Comments

    A new film follows the experiences in 1961 of German-American Jew and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who coined the phrase 'the banality of evil' in relation to Nazi 'desk-murderer' Adolf Eichmann. The cerebral nature of Hannah Arendt provides a counterpoint to another current film about a strong, flawed woman: Gloria is remarkable for the way it unabashedly honours the emotional and sexual lives of its older characters.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Africa and US worry the frayed edges of international criminal justice

    • Nik Tan
    • 06 November 2013
    2 Comments

    The African Union has asked the United Nations Security Council to suspend the trials of sittings Kenyan heads of state. Meanwhile Amnesty International has claimed that any killing of civilians by United States' drones violates the laws of war. Both cases call into question whether the International Criminal Court can end impunity for the most serious international crimes.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Torn by Chopper's inner torment

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 23 August 2013
    3 Comments

    Chopper's a racist, self-billed sociopath with acknowledged mental and physical health issues and a highly evolved if bizarre set of moral principles. A raconteur ever-ready to discuss the robbing, bashing, torture, murder and disappearance of various peers and colleagues. Yet he is also a man who recognises the damage done by the spiritual, emotional and physical abuse he took as a child.

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  • RELIGION

    Community fear feeds Fox News Muslim bashing

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 02 August 2013
    10 Comments

    The now notorious Fox News interview in which host Lauren Green quizzes academic Reza Aslan as to why he, a Muslim, 'would be interested in the founder of Christianity', is mind-boggling in its casual persecution. A similar mistrust of Muslims is evident in Australia, as the Ed Husic debacle demonstrated. Even I, a non-practising Muslim at best, encounter hostility when I write on certain issues.

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