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Search Results: classics

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Different country, different culture (or how different legal systems view deal-making)

    • Frank Brennan
    • 12 October 2017

    In the 16th century it was the Dominican friars like Vitoria, Las Casas and Montesino in Salamanca who confronted the state and challenged public opinion about the rights of the indigenous peoples in Spain's newly colonised lands. Not even the most nostalgic and forgiving Jesuit would opine that the modern practitioners of Morality with a capital M challenging the powers of the market and the state would be found in a modern monastery.

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  • MEDIA

    Unmasking Elena Ferrante diminishes her radiant magic

    • Ellena Savage
    • 06 October 2016
    1 Comment

    Happily, I do not know who the 'real' Elena Ferrante is. Happily, I have blocked my eyes and ears to the unfolding, the unmasking of the Italian author whose anonymity allowed her the freedom from scrutiny to give us seven novels that document the slow burn indignities of poverty and sexism and ambition. How can we accept this gift, a woman writing about the most abject of female pleasures, the darkest impulses, and then demand that she answer inane questions at a writers' festivals?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Male spirituality in Kiwi portrait of mental illness

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 November 2014

    New Zealand filmmaker Robertson’s latest feature has been described as a cross between modern antipodean classics Once Were Warriors and Shine. Like Warriors, Dark Horse considers masculinity, violence and spirituality in the lives of urban Maoris. Like Shine, it offers a moving portrait of a character whose mental illness appears to be the dark reflection of esoteric, obsessive genius.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Greek consolations in stone

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 13 November 2013
    9 Comments

    Although the tourist season in Greece was better than expected, there is otherwise not much cause for cheer. PM Antonis Samaras says recovery will take six years: other people are more pessimistic. Suicide rates have risen alarmingly in a country where formerly they were very low. The youth continue to seek opportunities elsewhere. Strikes and demonstrations occur regularly. In the midst of it all, a new statue appeared in the city of Kalamata.

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  • RELIGION

    How can the Catholic Church contribute to a better culture for life?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 March 2013
    3 Comments

    Change is upon the Church. Just recall the scene when the new pope emerged on the Vatican balcony. He appeared with none of the papal trimmings of office, and did not once did he refer to the papacy. Could something of this new papal style help Catholics engage more creatively with their fellow citizens? Text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'How Can the Catholic Church Contribute to a Better Culture for Life?'

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  • MEDIA

    Justifying garden-variety torture

    • Max Atkinson
    • 12 July 2012
    6 Comments

    Any discussion of the morality of torture must distinguish two kinds of justification. The first is concerned with cases so exotic they have nothing to do with the ordinary affairs of mankind, such as the nuclear bomb ticking away in a New York basement. A real-life justification must provide a rationale for a wide range of common garden cases. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Abominable blood ties

    • Various
    • 07 February 2012
    1 Comment

    My crumpled iris-rim lip is her lip; the fine spoked wheel beneath my grimacing eye has etched itself deep with years upon her face. The wet red meat of my viscera is made of her, a shy-hood I cannot take off ... Why are you doing this to me?

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  • RELIGION

    Making friends not foes of rights and religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 September 2011
    5 Comments

    The Church of the 21st century should be the exemplar of due process, natural justice and transparency. While there can be little useful critique of the final decision of Pope Benedict to force the early retirement of Bishop Bill Morris, there is plenty of scope to review the processes leading up to it.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hating hipsters and bogans

    • Ellena Savage
    • 04 March 2011
    14 Comments

    We wear op-shop outfits, read classics, watch Q&A and sip lattes. There are puerile vanities here, but who doesn't entertain such vanities? Bogans, of course. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keith Richards' other church

    • Philip Harvey
    • 08 December 2010

    'When you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully — the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you,' writes Richards. Librarians know better than anyone that the library attracts the most unlikely clientele.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The mutant homeless

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 08 April 2010

    In comics, the X-Men's 'mutant' powers make them the target of bigotry. They function as a metaphor for homosexuals and other persecuted minorities. In Micmacs, Bazil, ostracised from his 'normal' life by a bizarre crisis, also finds himself on the margins of society.

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  • RELIGION

    Patient autonomy and the doctor's conscience

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 September 2009
    4 Comments

    In Life and Death: How do we honour the Patient's Autonomy and the Doctor's Conscience? Frank Brennan's Sandra David Oration at St Vincent's Clinic, Darlinghurst, Sydney, 17 September 2009.

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