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Keywords: Tragedy

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Inter-racial marriages finally get some attention

    • Megan Graham
    • 03 August 2017
    3 Comments

    About one in six newlyweds in the United States is involved in a ‘mixed marriage’, according to the Pew Research Center. At home, the percentage is higher; in 2009 approximately 42 per cent of marriages involved at least one partner who was not born in Australia.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Grenfell Tower laying inequalities bare

    • Saman Shad
    • 28 June 2017
    4 Comments

    The Lancaster West Estate, which contains Grenfell Tower, is among the top ten per cent of the most deprived areas in England, but is located within the wealthiest local authority. As a former resident of the area the disaster has validated what I knew all along: that events such as these bring out both the best and the worst in people, and that this little corner of West London is a microcosm for greater society and an increasingly unequal world where the poor suffer while the rich increasingly prosper.

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  • MEDIA

    Shielding kids from Grenfell Tower televised trauma

    • Barry Gittins
    • 16 June 2017
    4 Comments

    An article focusing on the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings reported that people 'exposed to more than six hours of daily media coverage of the tragedy were more likely to experience symptoms of acute stress than those directly affected by the event'. News junkies, or those who saw extended coverage, were found to be worse off than those who actually survived the bombings. This is sobering as we consider how we deal with our children's exposure to traumatic events playing out on TV news.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Who killed Whitney Houston?

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 June 2017
    1 Comment

    Running parallel to this is Houston's intimate, long-time friendship with Robyn Crawford. Broomfield stops short of characterising it as romantic; others do not, and space is given to rumination about the difficulties of being a black, gay woman. In any case, the friendship sparks tension with Brown, and disapproval from Cissy. Crawford's abrupt departure from the tour is another turning point. In Broomfield's thesis, Houston's drug habit is a reaction to these various threats to her authenticity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Storycatcher - 17 of the best of Brian Doyle

    • Brian Doyle
    • 30 May 2017
    3 Comments

    Brian Doyle was the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, the author most recently of the essay collection Grace Notes, and a long time contributor to Eureka Street. Brian died early Saturday morning 27 May 2017 following complications related to a cancerous brain tumour, at the age of 60. Here we present a collection of some of Brian's best pieces from the past 12 years.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Strong women heroes of grim abduction parables

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 24 May 2017
    1 Comment

    If two current Australian films are anything to go by, then one social issue weighing on local filmmakers in 2017 is the danger to women of emotionally and physically violent men. Neither film is a mere portrait of victimhood. The heroes of Cate Shortland's recent Berlin Syndrome and Ben Young's upcoming Hounds of Love - in the former, an Australian traveller in Europe, in the latter, a teenage school girl in suburban Perth - are ordinary women with both the will and capacity to fight back against their assailants.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Life before suicide

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 March 2017
    1 Comment

    A film about a lonely widower who repeatedly attempts suicide seems like a grim proposition. Ove has suffered one too many blows in his life, the latest being the loss of his job. He finds himself at a loose end, if not purposeless. He is the self-appointed overseer of the gated community where he has lived for years, enforcing protocols of behaviour among his terrorised neighbours. Now he's had enough, and decides to join his beloved wife Sonja, in eternity. But dying doesn't come easily to Ove.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The time-traveller's strife

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 22 March 2017

    All stories that deal with time travel will come up against paradoxes. Generally the success of the story will come down to how capably these paradoxes are dealt with, and how consistently with the story's internal logic. Otto Bloom turns on the concept of time as an extension of the physical dimensions. If time is as tangible as physical space, then all events in time are occurring simultaneously. That we perceive time as moving in a particular direction is a feature of our human consciousness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Japan's Olympic dream disrupts disaster recovery

    • Pepi Ronalds
    • 06 March 2017
    3 Comments

    This week marks the anniversary of the triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown) that hit northern Japan on 11 March 2011. The event took over 18,000 lives, and initially displaced 470,000 people. Six years on, 127,000 are still without a permanent home. Delays have been caused by the sheer physical scope, pre-existing regulations and other restrictions. These are all understandable. What is less easy to accept are the disruptions caused by the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Race, addiction and sexuality by moonlight

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 01 February 2017
    2 Comments

    The chaos embedded in these characters' world is made clear through physical symbols - Chiron flees from bullies into an abandoned drug den, where he finds a used syringe and holds it up to the light like a talisman - and by the camera, which trails and circles the characters, or locks onto their faces, a conduit for their grief or desperation or lust or rage or joy. Bursts of actual violence or dramatic confrontation are rare. Where they occur it is their emotional content that is most confronting.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Timorese have had a win but could still lose big-time

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 January 2017
    17 Comments

    Without any media fanfare, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop published a statement on 9 January 2017 announcing that Australia and Timor Leste had agreed to terminate the 2006 Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea. This news is more welcome to the Timorese government than to the Australian government. But the uncertainty created by this Timorese win might in time impact more adversely on Timor than on Australia. Only time will tell.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Fall of Aleppo caps off wretched 2016

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 16 December 2016
    12 Comments

    Assad's victory epitomises, in a sense, the reactionary tide prevailing just about everywhere in this, the Year of the Donald. The hopes raised during the Arab Spring have, it seems, been crushed, with the Syrian regime consolidating its grip over a nation it has oppressed for so long. Yet Aleppo also illustrates how little the Right's victories have actually settled. The Right's biggest asset is often the Left, with progressives seemingly determined to validate all the smears levelled against them.

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