Vol 18 No 6

17 March 2008


 

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An antidote to blokish certainties on religion

    • Andrena Jamieson
    • 28 March 2008
    3 Comments

    Adherents of many religious groups are interviewed about their beliefs, practices, ethical framework and attitude to contemporary Australian society. Their stories often try to make points of contact between religious practice and Western culture.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    2020 Summit leaves marginalised youth cold

    • Saeed Saeed
    • 28 March 2008
    6 Comments

    The Australia 2020 Youth Summit seems destined to be a chinwag of the 'haves' to the exclusion of the have-nots. Realistic solutions to youth violence and alienation can only be achieved through holistic community approaches.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Glamour returns to post-war Australia

    • Madeleine Hamilton
    • 27 March 2008
    3 Comments

    This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first showing of Christian Dior's New Look fashion designs in Sydney. After years of wartime material restraints the New Look offered Australian women a fresh way of expressing their individuality and sensuality through fashion.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The quirks and cares of Lars' dummy love

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 March 2008

    A socially awkward young man orders an artificial girlfriend over the internet. Despite this ostensibly bawdy premise, Lars and the Real Girl looks beyond lowbrow laughs in its focus on the responses of those in Lars' community.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The truth behind our heat plague

    • Brian Matthews
    • 26 March 2008
    2 Comments

    Camus' plague was a metaphor for the Second World War German occupation of France. Our plague is no metaphor. It's the truth of the planet's advancing impatience with its reckless colonisers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Revelations of a responsible literary citizen

    • Brian Doyle
    • 26 March 2008

    You find all kinds of books in people's cars — from novels and comics to atlases and bibles. The books people carry reveal something of their life and experiences.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conscientious athletes need support, not gag

    • Tony Smith
    • 25 March 2008
    1 Comment

    The great hope for the Beijing Olympics was that it would persuade China's government that human rights protection is good diplomacy and good business. The power of persuasion would be lost if conscience-bound competitors are prevented from commenting.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Power Point can make it zing

    • Chris Andrews
    • 25 March 2008

    We are all unique individuals but there aren't that many positions in the field.

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  • RELIGION

    Top cop confronts underbelly of corruption

    • Kylie Crabbe
    • 20 March 2008
    6 Comments

    It seems Victoria Police's Chief Commissioner, Christine Nixon, was fast-tracked to unpopularity by trying to be a thoughtful, discerning leader. The bitterness displayed by those she's locked horns with is testament to the danger of reforming a powerful institution.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Carey's 'unusual' novel exposes politics of disability

    • Gillian Fulcher
    • 19 March 2008

    The Unsual Life of Tristan Smith is an engaging if uncomfortable tale. But a closer reading reveals author Peter Carey as social critic. While themes of colonialism, migration, and identity are explicit, disability enters more subtly.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Honour killings an expression of immigrant alienation

    • David Rosen
    • 19 March 2008
    3 Comments

    The United Nations estimates that 5,000 honour killings occur annually. These killings are a rebellion against modernity, attempts to hold on to older traditional values, especially concerning social relations and sexuality.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    East Timor reparations both symbolic and material

    • Lia Kent
    • 18 March 2008
    4 Comments

    Australia could learn much from East Timor about the importance — and limitations — of acknowledging a painful past. East Timor's experience suggests the significance of both symbolic acknowledgement and material reparations.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fallen leaves toll for the life that's gone

    • Peter Matheson
    • 18 March 2008
    1 Comment

    The teacher gagged.. The friend betrayed.. The healer hung.. The saviour Torn.

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  • RELIGION

    Nonconformist Aussie anticipates traditional Greek Easter

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 17 March 2008
    3 Comments

    In the Orthodox Church, Lent is a fairly strict period of austerity, which is one reason for Carnival: traditional societies have long understood that sessions of high spirits are needed before and after difficult times. They are also undisturbed by the blurring of the sacred and the secular.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Protection mechanisms for climate change victims

    • Maryanne Loughry
    • 17 March 2008

    The international community reacts rather than anticipates. It was only when hundreds of thousands of people were displaced after the Bolshevik revolution, that protection mechanisms such as the 1951 Refugee Convention began to be developed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parents model responsible drinking

    • Margaret Rice
    • 17 March 2008

    Prime Minister Kevin Rudd plans to spend $53 million on the problem of binge drinking, including $19.1 million to target underage drinkers. It's hard to tell your teenager not to drink as you reach into the fridge to grab another sauv blanc.

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