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Keywords: Under There

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Monster in the car park

    • Prue Gibson
    • 27 November 2013
    1 Comment

    The car park is a concrete cave, a holding cell, a sarcophagus. From the outside, it looks like other buildings, but inside, there are darker, deeper modalities. I wind down to sub level four. Free spaces, empty rows: I savour the desolate and bare space. 'Hey you,' shouts someone from up ahead. A man, in well-groomed suit pants with a snappy vest, strides towards me. I glance around at level four. There are almost no cars to be seen.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    JFK and the myth of American innocence

    • Ray Cassin
    • 22 November 2013
    10 Comments

    The assassination of John F. Kennedy 50 years ago elicited a particular quality of grief. It was not only a matter of mourning the violent death of a world leader who, at the time, was much admired. The notion also stuck that something called innocence had been lost because of what had happened in Dallas. That sense has withered under reassessments of Kennedy's character and record in office but it has never been extinguished entirely.

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  • RELIGION

    Cardinals meeting consultative Pope

    • Brian Lucas
    • 01 October 2013
    14 Comments

    As a specially selected group of cardinals prepares to meet with Pope Francis, there is eagerness among the world's press for access to the meeting and clear expectations of radical shifts in church policy. Some have tried to hose such hopes down. Yet the cardinals have a unique opportunity and a serious responsibility to help Francis understand what the people of God are thinking and expecting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rudd's boats blunder is shocking, awful

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 August 2013
    8 Comments

    Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia, with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There's only one thing worse than shock and awe; that's shock and awe that doesn't work because you haven't done your homework.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Corruption and other stumbling blocks to PNG solution

    • Walter Hamilton
    • 26 July 2013
    11 Comments

    A constitutional challenge in PNG to the resettlement agreement could quickly destroy any disincentive value as far as people smugglers are concerned. Under the country's constitution, foreigners may not be detained unless they have broken the law in entering the country. Since the asylum seekers are being sent there against their will they cannot be held to have entered illegally.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Post-Saddam Iraq defined by division

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 March 2013
    1 Comment

    One Christian engineer remembers celebrating religious festivals with his Muslim neighbours. They in turn would celebrate Christmas with him. Such interfaith experiences are almost unknown now. Iraqis tell me that at least under Saddam you knew where the boundaries were. Now there is uncertainty and indiscriminate violence.

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  • RELIGION

    Inspirational Abbott's Indigenous aspiration

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 February 2013
    15 Comments

    Let's not underestimate the significance of John Howard's successor giving credit to Paul Keating for his Redfern speech, before invoking New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi and calling for atonement. Still there is plenty of work to be done to attain proper constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Love and euthanasia

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 February 2013
    4 Comments

    There are moments that highlight the misery of Anne's condition, the slights rendered against her dignity. She awakens in a puddle of brown urine; labours excruciatingly over every syllable she speaks, but is misunderstood; howls in pain as she is showered. Her husband can do little but tend dutifully to her needs. Is it enough?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A global perspective on American child deaths

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 18 December 2012
    15 Comments

    'You come from a culture where it is okay to kill children,' the Iraqi woman said. We were sheltering against the wall of a building in Fallujah while the city was under attack by US forces. What could I say? There were several little bodies at my feet, bloodied remains laid out on the footpath and covered with thin sheets.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My life as a Florence tour guide

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 August 2012
    6 Comments

    All is not quite lost. There's still Michelangelo's David in the Academia — that's 'famous' and always makes for a good Facebook album cover. But after queuing for two hours, you feel rather underwhelmed — David isn't the 20m high statue of a ripped male you had been expecting, and there isn't a secret passageway leading from his gluteus maximus to a torture chamber beneath the Vatican.

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  • RELIGION

    Malaysia solution is not there yet

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 August 2012
    9 Comments

    Next week Parliament reconvenes; meanwhile the boats keep coming. Chris Bowen will be armed with a report from an expert panel that has been hearing from the community. We're still awaiting an answer on unaccompanied minors under the Malaysia solution. Until one is provided no one in good conscience can give it the tick.

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  • RELIGION

    Crisis of trust in the Vatican

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 July 2012
    34 Comments

    The many bad stories about the Vatican raise questions about how central authority is exercised. Some critics focus on arrogance and misbehaviour there in the way that others see these behaviours in News Limited, the Greens, the Unions, and elsewhere. To address the way people in any organisation behave, you must first understand why they act as they do.

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