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Keywords: Despair

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

  • RELIGION

    Easter as an enduring story of loss and hope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 10 April 2020
    15 Comments

    In Christian churches the celebration of Easter this year will look more like Lent or Passion week. All Australians, too, will be without football, concerts, interstate and international travel and family gatherings. The atmosphere, too, will be one of constraint, not freedom. Instead of celebrating the present, we may be weighed down by fear and anxiety about the future. We are all captive to COVID-19.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Illness and the indescribable

    • Brian Matthews
    • 03 April 2020
    3 Comments

    Illness, so apparently explicit and ever more obvious as it progresses, in fact defies definition: submitting apparently to scientific and medical description, it escapes into a quality of pain, exquisite loss or appalled helplessness that is often most clearly captured at the heart of great works of art.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stateless and the inhumanity of detention

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 18 March 2020
    12 Comments

    I've been watching Stateless, the ABC drama about Australia’s immigration detention system, with some reluctance. Not because it is poor, but because it is so powerful. 

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  • CARTOON

    A monumental error

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 25 February 2020
    7 Comments

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    It's Christmas and I'll dance if I want to

    • Barry Gittins
    • 16 December 2019
    5 Comments

    Dance and music are as innate as breathing. Babies dance while in the womb, and the Yuletide can be prime time for 'playing music, singing and dancing [as a] healthy outlet for their emotions'. As William Stafford observed, kids dance 'before they learn there is anything that isn't music'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gerard Manley Hopkins on advocacy and pests

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 November 2019
    5 Comments

    Hopkins' words highlight how difficult it is for poets or lesser human beings to focus consistently on the particularity of each human being, let alone of each being in the world. Yet this is a necessary condition for recognising the claim that each person and the world make on us. It is no wonder that we sometimes falter in our commitment.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hong Kong Church silent as the people sing

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 04 November 2019
    12 Comments

    That the Catholic Church in Hong Kong has not only chosen to remain silent, but also enforce this silence through the banning of a song, is itself a political act. Considerations as to whether this silence is a consequence of the Vatican's recent agreement with the PRC about the appointment of bishops within China do seem to have merit.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Paul Kelly and the lighthouse in the sky

    • Julie Perrin
    • 14 October 2019
    7 Comments

    The musicians stepped forward, heads close around one microphone. The words of the 23rd Psalm were familiar and re-cast all at once. They met us in hope and in despair in 'the middle of the air'. There was a space of yearning there; the space where artists, songwriters and psalmists send us. That is the place we can be met.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    While Thunberg creates hope, Trump stymies it

    • Jim McDermott
    • 01 October 2019
    10 Comments

    When Nancy Pelosi announced the House of Representatives would open impeachment proceedings, it seemed that finally the Trump Administration would be forced to reckon with its repeated disregard for the rule of law. Except, as Saturday Night Live's Kenan Thompson says in a hilarious sketch, 'Ain't nothin' gonna happen.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The secretive business of detention dirty work

    • Meg Mundell
    • 21 August 2019
    8 Comments

    If you're not burdened by a conscience, it's a perfect get-rich-quick scheme: offer 'garrison' services to governments reluctant to get their hands dirty. Ensure the vulnerable people you 'manage' are hidden, demonised by politicians and right-wing commentators. Hire cheap labour, minimise your tax, and make millions.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Power in Rebellion's civil disobedience

    • Jacinta Bowler
    • 15 August 2019
    7 Comments

    Extinction Rebellion is the biggest environmental movement we've seen in Australia in years, and the group is well aware of the disruption they are causing — it's baked into their strategy. Is the inconvenience, disruption, and vitriol worth it? Is it actually going to turn public opinion one way or another? History suggests it just might.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    El Paso shooting and the rise of eco-fascism

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 07 August 2019
    4 Comments

    The widespread despair about climate change, and the seeming inability of progressives to offer a solution, provides fertile soil for ecofascism to grow. In a sense, given the scale of the crisis, their apocalyptic vision of an environmental race war can sound more realistic than the pallid centrist nostrums that everyone knows won't work.

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