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Grace is both a character and a state of being. As the lead supervisor of a foster care facility, she oversees her charges with a combination of firmness and friendship. She strictly enforces rules and protocols while remaining unerringly empathetic, easily glimpsing the pain and trauma that lies just beneath the hostile or eccentric facade. But her power of empathy has its roots in past experience that threaten to smother her present.
Hot-button topics such as economic management and asylum seekers are best seen from a wide lens, yet we seem determined to keep the rest of the world out of the frame. It is a sea-girt mentality that our politicians don't care to take apart because it is too hard to convince the average voter that there are in fact other people on the planet. Such denialism will inevitably leave us ill-prepared for significant challenges.
One of the intriguing features of Pope Francis is the contrast between his earthy and free way with words and the laboured earnestness of those exploring his words for hidden meanings. It is like watching Martians deploy a bomb disposal unit to deal with the football a kid has kicked into their spaceship. The incongruity is humorous but it also points to a sclerosis in public conversations.
Those who object to Indigenous people being called 'apes' and to white men painting themselves black are dismissed as being politically correct and denying free speech. But how can Adam Goodes choose not to be offended by comments conceived for the very purpose of justifying crimes against the racial group to which he belongs?
Casting a Victorious PM Abbott as a puppet of Pell and Howard, or a fiddler with women's rights, seems risible; Abbott is bound by social restraints after all. Nonetheless, there is something ominous in David Marr's droll observation: 'His values have never stood in his way.'
The battle of words about what constitutes Aboriginality, sparked by Tony Abbott's ill-conceived remarks about Liberal Party member Ken Wyatt, has been discomfiting. References to Aboriginal 'blood' conjure up the absurd measurements that were used to classify and separate Aboriginal people in the past.
It is not Abbott's prerogative to tell people how they should react to the truth. The electorate can now never know when he is attempting to be honest. Apparently, he would happily accept electoral support even while knowing he has deceived the people.
Gordon Brown's campaign has hit rock-bottom thanks to an inadvertent remark being whipped into a huge story by mischief-making reporters. He is to Tony Blair what Pope Benedict is to John Paul II — shy, serious, and a little too 'heavy' for our sound-bite culture.
Abstinence and fidelity win little public support in Western discourse, but are increasingly included, even favoured, in national AIDS strategies in Africa. Culture counts, and a condom is more than a piece of latex.
Pacifist and radical Christian Ammon Hennessy said that courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness. The longer the war in Iraq continues, the more the decision to invade looks to have been made on the basis of this sort of courage.
United Nations relief coordinator Jan Egeland has condemned the destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes in Beirut as a 'violation of humanitarian law'. Meanwhile the website of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert leads with his proclamation to the Members of Knesset: 'This is a National Moment of Truth'.
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