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Keywords: Curse

  • AUSTRALIA

    Gerard Manley Hopkins on advocacy and pests

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 November 2019
    5 Comments

    Hopkins' words highlight how difficult it is for poets or lesser human beings to focus consistently on the particularity of each human being, let alone of each being in the world. Yet this is a necessary condition for recognising the claim that each person and the world make on us. It is no wonder that we sometimes falter in our commitment.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The crime scene that is Australia

    • Libby Hart
    • 11 November 2019
    1 Comment

    It's difficult to move in this landscape. Haunted and fragile and tragic, there's no place that is benign. A cursed house, the Greeks might say.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ismene in transit

    • Lisa Brockwell
    • 18 June 2019
    6 Comments

    The women are not veiled, the men don't stop to look at the golden boys kicking footballs on giant screens ... Each one I pass is a person, held here by decree, by a boulder placed across the mouth. If I walk through a temple built by slaves, sending a pittance home to countries too poor for anyone to bother waging war over ... then, who am I?

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  • RELIGION

    On love, money and Valentine's Day

    • Barry Gittins
    • 13 February 2019
    6 Comments

    Valentine's Day is built on some fairly shaky historical ground. Rather than honouring a prelate offering bridal trysts, or hoping for a good harvest, I'm inclined to spare a thought for the Greek philosophers and poets who set up shop well before Romulus and Remus; I like to muse over their various efforts to pin down love.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election year hope and hijinks

    • Eliza Berlage
    • 18 January 2019
    10 Comments

    Entering an election year is like coming home for the holiday season. It's full of hope and hijinks but also promises and pain. And like every family, each party has its quirks. Hopefully a post-election Parliament will green light some meaningful reform to improve people's lives rather than always culture warring. But don't hold your breath.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Suggestions regarding space and time

    • Robert Whalley
    • 11 December 2018
    3 Comments

    Curve it the way neck curves to shoulders, like the inside of an elbow, like a valley in spring. And send it out like glorious orphan; hovering in the style of infinite with no immediate purpose in mind in the unsubtle audacity of now.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Cue God's applause

    • Barry Gittins
    • 20 November 2018
    8 Comments

    I am holy, no, to discriminate? But by doing so, I self-incriminate. I doubt the loud denouncing will dissipate before the promised election falls.  

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The global push against refugees

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 12 July 2018
    16 Comments

    Cometh the time, cometh the exploitable prejudice. With millions of globally displaced persons, states are retreating from the business of actually treating the condition as one of dysfunction inflicted by war, famine and poverty. It has morphed from a matter of humanitarianism to one of social ill and unease.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Budget curses climate in name of growth

    • Francine Crimmins
    • 10 May 2018
    7 Comments

    With every passing year the government is siloing its building and expansion funding from the money needed to prevent the environmental consequences. In this budget, we see an environmental agenda hijacked to reinforce ideas of growth, using environmental buzz words which convince constituents it's for the earth.

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  • RELIGION

    Why clericalism matters

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 February 2018
    81 Comments

    In the Catholic Church clericalism is the whipping boy of choice. But what it embraces is less clear. It is a pejorative word, used by people of others but never of themselves, and is normally defined by reference to examples of it. It is worth pausing to reflect on clericalism and its significance for church and society.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Is Medicare-for-all an idea whose time has come?

    • Lesley Russell
    • 18 September 2017
    1 Comment

    Medicare-for-all is best seen as aspirational: it is shorthand for policy ideals and papers over political realities. With Republicans in control of Congress, there is obviously no immediate chance of Sanders's bill becoming law any time soon. But with Republicans and the President viewed as ineffectual in implementing their healthcare commitments and uncaring about voters' concerns, it is advantageous for Democrats to be seen to have solutions to the problems that confront their constituents.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Ahok is innocent and Indonesia needs him

    • Pat Walsh
    • 15 May 2017
    11 Comments

    Did he denounce Islam as 'evil' like the American evangelist Franklin Graham? Did he publicly denounce God as 'stupid' like Stephen Fry? On the contrary. Ahok is deeply respectful of Islam and has many Muslim supporters. The affair has done a serious disservice to Indonesia, presenting it as fanatical, racist and sectarian. While these perceptions are unfair, the affair also reveals some aspects of contemporary Indonesia that are obscured by Canberra's often lavish praise of our important neighbour.

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