Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Vol 19 No 23

23 November 2009


 

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Colombian clues to reconciliation

    • Leonel Narvaez
    • 04 December 2009
    2 Comments

    Following decades of socio-political conflict in Colombia, we have come to understand that a poor person with anger is twice poor; that forgiveness is a powerful way of transforming ungrateful memories into new languages; that in the face of irrational violence, victims must offer the irrationality of forgiveness.

    READ MORE
  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Death of fanaticism

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 04 December 2009
    1 Comment

    Religious bigotry, fanaticism, and associated violence are still very much with us. A central ethos of the Parliament of Religions is to honour, preserve and seek to understand the particularities of different faiths rather than try to make them all the same.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An almost true story about corporate crime

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 03 December 2009

    In the early 1990s Mark Whitacre, an executive at American agricultural powerhouse Archer Daniels Midland, became an informant for an FBI investigation into price-fixing. But Whitacre is not the 'white hat' he claims to be.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Parliament as conversation that gets things done

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 December 2009

    The job of parliaments is to pass legislation after debating its merits. They get things done. The Parliament of Religions, which begins in Melbourne today, offers religious perspectives on public issues including discrimination, poverty, indigenous welfare and care for the environment.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Tony Abbott's Machiavellian machinations

    • Tony Kevin
    • 02 December 2009
    23 Comments

    Turnbull's and Hockey's personal dilemmas are now great. Could they in good conscience stand as Liberals in the next election, which they will know was provoked by the machinations of climate change denialists and carbon lobbyists whose views now control the Liberal Party?

    READ MORE
  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    People are the answer, not the problem

    • Ruth Limkin
    • 02 December 2009
    7 Comments

    There are those who argue that the fight to stave off the negative impacts of climate change is a fight to save the world from humans themselves. Dialogue from population-control advocates fails to recognise the dignity of each person.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Two men marooned in a cab

    • Peter Rose
    • 01 December 2009

    late for a volley of meetings. Not much conversation. Same haircut, suits, even boots ... The older man is lethal. 'I can make things hard for you, much harder than you can for me.'

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Future dim for splintered Liberals

    • John Warhurst
    • 01 December 2009
    4 Comments

    The Liberal Party now contains deeper and wider ideological divisions than the Labor Party. This will be true regardless of who emerges as leader today. The question is whether the party can survive such deep differences without fragmenting.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    The perverse skills of climate change deniers

    • Charles Rue
    • 30 November 2009
    46 Comments

    Climate sceptics use proven lobbying techniques to confuse people and delay political action. That Cardinal George Pell allows himself to be aligned with them compromises the credibility of church mission to serve humanity.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Mental illness is the enemy, not its sufferers

    • Michael Mullins
    • 30 November 2009
    8 Comments

    Anthony Waterlow is the alleged killer of his father and sister. He lives with a mental illness. In the homily for Anthony's father Nick, Father Steve Sinn said the illness 'was hidden and it had captured Anthony'.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    New Moon and other dumb films for women

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 27 November 2009
    13 Comments

    It may be a box office boon, but critics have slammed the Twilight series, and feminists complain that lead character Bella is a subservient drip and the vampire she loves, Edward, is a stalking patriarch. Why are smart films for women in such short supply?

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Love and pastry

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 November 2009
    2 Comments

    The tragic events that lead John and Sabiha to establish a pastry shop in Melbourne arise from Sabiha's desire for a child. Author Alex Miller's eye is deeply humane, recognising the wildness of human beings and the consequences of driven behaviour.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gay yodellers' compassionate politics

    • Anthony Morris
    • 26 November 2009

    As gay yodelling country-and-western singers and political advocates, you'd think the Topp Twins might have struggled to achieve mainstream success. The Twins have mastered the art of being very funny without excluding anyone from the joke.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Reinventing our gathering places

    • Deborah Singerman
    • 26 November 2009
    1 Comment

    Just as architecture plays a role in community building, community building is important to architects looking to develop as creative innovators. A new breed of public spaces is helping put the flesh and blood back into 'community'.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Lessons in Greek prejudice

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 25 November 2009
    4 Comments

    My generation of Australians grew up with bigotry: the cordial loathing between Catholics and Protestants has faded only recently. But only when I married into a Greek family did I learn of the bitter and complicated antipathy of the Greeks for Albanians.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    'Depraved' videogames get serious

    • Drew Taylor
    • 25 November 2009
    14 Comments

    The media has labelled them 'murder simulators', linked them to depression and held them accountable for childhood obesity. But there's another side to videogames that the mainstream media doesn't seem to want you to know about.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Odd puzzles about sexual practice

    • Chris Wallace-Crabbe
    • 24 November 2009
    3 Comments

    Some kinds of issue offer themselves like particles becoming waves, where your elbows go in bed, acceleration into a curve, how to draw hands and especially feet, or who was up there before God.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Stressed islands no longer pacific

    • Maryanne Loughry
    • 24 November 2009
    6 Comments

    Visiting Kiribati and Tuvalu it is obvious that both populations are dealing with overcrowding, unemployment, poverty, pollution, and modernisation. Climate change is a driver for some of these stressors as well as a multiplier of their effects.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Protecting children from bullies and bureaucrats

    • Michael Mullins
    • 23 November 2009
    5 Comments

    A Wesley Mission survey of 1200 adults found that being bullied as children caused 70 per cent of them to suffer from low self-esteem and a lack of assertiveness later in life. Federal Labor must explain what has become of its promise to appoint a children's commissioner.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    Michelangelo and my kids will haunt me

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 23 November 2009
    14 Comments

      As Copenhagen looms on the horizon like a giant apocalyptic festival, I can’t get Michelangelo and my kids out of my mind. The image of the Pietá, the mother holding her dead son, keeps appearing.

    READ MORE
Join the conversation. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter  Subscribe