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Keywords: Rba

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Greek and American barbarians

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 11 December 2013
    7 Comments

    I knew nothing about Kavafis until I came to Greece, but his presence in my mental and literary life is one of the many presents migration has given me. He was part of the cultivated Greek diaspora in Alexandria, where he spent most of his life working at his day jobs: those of journalist and civil servant. He was a relentless perfectionist who polished and reworked his 154 poems, which were read initially only by his friends.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The bullet that stopped an illicit Irish Mass

    • Brian Doyle
    • 04 September 2013
    15 Comments

    The man loses his temper, and tells his son something he has never told a soul: that one day in Donegal, during the time when the penal laws forbade Catholics to assemble for Mass, he had shot and killed a priest just as he elevated the host. The son, himself a priest, covers his face, as his father shouts that he never regretted that shot, that the priest and his fellow conspirators had got what they deserved.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Neoliberalism in the swinging outer suburbs

    • Luke Williams
    • 03 September 2013
    20 Comments

    The outer suburban marginal seats will almost certainly swing to the Coalition on Saturday. I'm sure many of the Left intelligentsia think they have the reasons for this all worked out: voters in the outer suburbs are uneducated, 'aspirational', cashed-up bogans who only care about their mortgages, negating their working-class origins and keeping out asylum seekers. As a swinging voter from one such electorate, I can tell you the reality is not that simple.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abused girls' institution trauma

    • Madeleine Hamilton
    • 05 August 2013
    20 Comments

    Unlike their male counterparts, 'delinquent' girls who ran away from dangerous environments were frequently incarcerated because it was perceived that they might be sexually active and fall pregnant. Their stories demonstrate the wide-ranging effects of ruptured family life and subsequent institutionalisation, and warn against the future unnecessary incarceration of vulnerable youth.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    George Zimmerman in the Bizzaro world of US gun laws

    • Jim McDermott
    • 19 July 2013
    10 Comments

    Fearful men should not be able to walk suburban streets carrying hidden revolvers. Yet that's the Bizarro universe the US finds itself in. Politicians in the US and Australia take note: if you spend your time creating a climate of anxiety, whipping up hysteria or building walls in order to score political points, the eventual result is going to be children lying dead in your streets or drowned off your shores.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My theatrical encounter with Don Dunstan

    • Brian Matthews
    • 24 May 2013
    2 Comments

    One of the great monuments to the 'Dunstan Decade', the Adelaide Festival Centre marks its 40th birthday next weekend. It was the first capital city complex devoted to the performing arts, before even the Sydney Opera House. For me the anniversary triggers a flood of memories, including a theatrical encounter with Dunstan himself.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Freewheeling fantasies of European citizenship

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 February 2013
    1 Comment

    Does citizenship need to be built upon close cultural, linguistic and historical ties, as in a national community? Or can a broader conception of citizenship be formed? In Brussels I spot a mural of a mosque on a garage door, surrounded by people from North Africa, Eastern and Western Europe, speaking French, Flemish, English and Arabic.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Post 9-11 demon words too simple for Africa

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 January 2013
    3 Comments

    Behind the labels of undifferentiated militancy lie dangerous consequences. When it comes to the disturbances in Algeria and Mali the mistake has been to equate local troubles with international significance. Both al-Qaeda and Western powers are playing on this theme, and in doing so have created enormous suffering.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2012: Fear the politicians of the future

    • Ellena Savage
    • 11 January 2013
    1 Comment

    If my short tenure in university politics gave me anything, it is an appreciation for non-politicians. Not only did Barbara Ramjan's allegations against Tony Abbott not surprise me, the honest brutality of the act sounds preferable to the slow, steady harassment that sustains student politicians these days. Friday 28 September 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Going backwards after Abbott's 'urban Aboriginal' gaffe

    • Myrna Tonkinson
    • 19 November 2012
    15 Comments

    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.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fear the politicians of the future

    • Ellena Savage
    • 28 September 2012
    7 Comments

    If my short tenure in university politics gave me anything, it is an appreciation for non-politicians. Not only did Barbara Ramjan's allegations against Tony Abbott not surprise me, the honest brutality of the act sounds preferable to the slow, steady harassment that sustains student politicians these days.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Farewell to the concierge of Pitt Street

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 08 August 2012
    24 Comments

    Yassin made sure the bins were out for the garbage collectors, and that people had parking tickets on their cars in case the rangers passed by. He looked after the area so well that we nicknamed him 'the concierge'. Last Monday a security guard found him lying unconscious and without a pulse.

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