Keywords: Remembrance Day
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AUSTRALIA
- Peter Craven
- 24 April 2024
For those born in the wake of World War II, war stories seemed the greatest fun on earth. But the pity of it is monumental and we come to take it – if not for granted – then at least as part of the fabric of minds that had met with all that was terrible in human experience and all that called out for reverence.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 04 January 2024
Throughout recent decades of Australian history, the stance every government has taken on asylum seekers has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- David Halliday
- 30 November 2023
2 Comments
Why another Christmas Carol and why now? This version takes a detour from Dickens’ original delving deeper into Scrooge’s past, painting him not just as a villain, but as a victim of circumstances. It suggests that behind every act we hastily label as ‘cruel’ lies a story of fear and anxiety, and a flesh-and-blood human being. And forgiveness, then, becomes an acknowledgment of our shared human frailty.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Warwick McFadyen
- 08 November 2023
1 Comment
This November 11, for many at ceremonies around the nation, the clocks will stop, the breath will pause for a minute to remember the dead and injured of war. And like the poppies in Flanders fields, the lists of names of men killed in action continues to grow: in Africa, in Europe and Asia. If history is our teacher, then we are very poor students.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 28 July 2023
How has Australia's asylum seeker policy changed over the past thirty years? The approach of every government has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge.
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AUSTRALIA
- Jim Curtain
- 24 April 2023
4 Comments
Amidst gratitude and remembrance to those who have served, we would do well to look with ambivalence on the toll beyond the battlefield; on families, soldiers' mental health, and questions about government transparency. Anzac day serves as a poignant reminder to acknowledge sacrifices and damages of war.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- David Rowland
- 10 November 2022
3 Comments
When people gather on Remembrance Day, commemorating the cease-fire at the end of the First World War, people take great pains to remember; a small acknowledgement of the horror of war, its loss, sacrifice and suffering. And in that time, it’s also worth pausing to reflect on those for whom wartime sacrifices and suffering are a daily reality. What do these people wish to remember?
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerrie Handasyde
- 03 May 2022
7 Comments
Mother’s Day was a religious event, as was the older English tradition of Mothering Sunday in which worshippers returned home to their ‘mother church’. But as this new celebration of Mother’s Day spread around the English-speaking world, it preserved in public and private ritual a particular idea of womanhood. It asserted that true womanhood was motherly.
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RELIGION
- Simon Smart
- 04 February 2022
10 Comments
How are your New Year’s resolutions going? One that probably didn’t make the list was: forgive more. But maybe it should have. I recently met a couple, Danny and Leila Abdallah, who have a compelling story to illustrate that, while challenging, forgiveness offers unexpected rewards. I interviewed them for a podcast and can’t stop thinking about them.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Justin Glyn
- 30 November 2021
8 Comments
Global warming, much in the news of late, has been accompanied by another unwelcome thaw. The ‘frozen conflict’ in the East of Ukraine between a Western-backed, Ukrainian nationalist government and Russian-speaking rebels with cultural affinity with Moscow, has been heating up alarmingly.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 10 November 2021
13 Comments
Aficionados of United Nations Days and Weeks will know that this is the Week of Science and Peace. In the middle of it, perhaps deliberately and certainly paradoxically, sits Remembrance Day. Initially called Armistice Day, it marked the end of the First World War and of the industrial scale killing involved in it. The events of 1918 and what they might say about the relationship between war and science merit reflection today.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 25 March 2021
15 Comments
We recently celebrated World Poetry Day, which gives poets, both public and private, a day in the sun. It also renews old conversations about why poetry might be important and whether all poems should rhyme.
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