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Keywords: Remembrance

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grandchildren are your children twice over

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 22 August 2016
    7 Comments

    When we were all younger, I wrote about my three sons. In the words of Sir Thomas More, their characteristics strangely tugged at my heart, and like More, I fed them cake, ripe apples and fancy pears. Among other things. But eventually there was a mild rebellion about the writing, in the course of which my eldest threatened to send me a bill. Now I write about my grandchildren, three boys and a girl, who are too young as yet to be so commercially minded.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    2015 in review: Contemplating war in France

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 14 January 2016
    3 Comments

    As I marched for Remembrance Day in our small village in France, I wondered, 'How long will these villages keep these ceremonies? When will someone decide these wars are too long ago or too far away?' Two days later, Paris was attacked. The news came like war does: sudden and violent. Then came declarations of a state of emergency and the closing of borders. My eldest daughter was over the border in Switzerland without a passport. War starts in increments, in the small ordinary worries of families.

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  • RELIGION

    'Equal laws and equal rights ... dealt out to the whole community'. How close 161 years on?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 December 2015
    1 Comment

    'Tonight, gathered here in the Southern Cross Club in the national capital, gathered as Eureka's children. We affirm that there is room for everyone under the Southern Cross. I hope you will return to Canberra carrying the Southern Cross flag when we proclaim the Australia Republic on 1 January 2020 which will be two elections after Australia last had a monarchist leader of a major political party. Tony Abbott is the last of his type. Whether the prime minister honoured to witness the proclamation is Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten or another matters not.' Annual Dinner for Eureka's Children, Southern Cross Club, Canberra, 3 December 2015.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Contemplating war in ordinary France

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 16 November 2015
    16 Comments

    As I marched for Remembrance Day in our small village in France, I wondered, 'How long will these villages keep these ceremonies? When will someone decide these wars are too long ago or too far away?' Two days later, Paris was attacked. The news came like war does: sudden and violent. Then came declarations of a state of emergency and the closing of borders. My eldest daughter was over the border in Switzerland without a passport. War starts in increments, in the small ordinary worries of families.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Muslim children showed respect by not singing anthem

    • Justin Glyn
    • 30 October 2015
    11 Comments

    Muharram is above all a month of mourning for Shi'a. One of the ways in which the month may be mourned is by avoiding joyful music. For the pupils of Cranbourne Carlisle Primary School, singing of the national anthem was therefore recognised as a potential problem, not because of any disrespect but for precisely the opposite reason. It was respected as a song of hope and gladness, a delight in a common national identity. It was on these very grounds that the children did not want to sing it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What's an older person's life worth?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 August 2015
    12 Comments

    NT Health Minister John Elferink recently argued that the money spend on the health of the elderly — a million dollars for each person — would be better spent on children. Many Australian politicians and health administrators would secretly sympathise. But underlying this is the twin assumption that the life of an older person is of less value than that of someone who is younger, and that people’s value is measured by their economic contribution.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Complicity in Turkey's wilful forgetting of the Armenian Genocide

    • Michael Mullins
    • 27 April 2015
    11 Comments

    The British commanders used the Australian troops who landed at Gallipoli as cannon fodder. The Turkish Government is doing something similar with the Australian visitors whom it is welcoming with open arms, in that it is using them to help smother the memory of the Armenian Genocide, which also occurred 100 years ago this week. In connection with Genocide, Pope Francis said recently that ‘concealing or denying evil is like allowing a wound to keep bleeding without bandaging it’.  

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  • Anzac observance amidst life's rituals

    • Jim Pilmer
    • 23 April 2015
    3 Comments

    Attendances at ceremonies on ANZAC Day are increasingly supported and are prime examples of symbolic respect. There is probably no more moving experience than to be in the midst of thousands of totally silent people at a Shrine of Remembrance as the sun rises. How can so many people be so still? Such an act of speechless bonding is beyond description.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    As politicians evoke conflict a century past

    • Various
    • 21 April 2015
    4 Comments

    In airport lounges, off to foreign hells... They come and go like fatigued FIFO workers day and night; partners waiting for their safe return, might be the only show. No protest march, no ticker tape parade.

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  • Non-judgmental remembrance of two gay men and their love for each other

    • Garry Eastman
    • 09 April 2015
    26 Comments

    I looked down at the two coffins resting at the edge of the sanctuary and shed a tear for the tragic loss of two great friends. I shed another tear also to see such public recognition of the love these two young men had for each other, to see that it was embraced by the public face of the Church which said clearly, 'Who are we to judge, they are our brothers.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grieving women rock immutable Islam

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 20 November 2014
    2 Comments

    The three recently reunited sisters are immersed in whispered conversation, during the second day of mourning at the house. In the next room, older men in ceremonial garb chant a mourning ritual. Suddenly, the sisters get the giggles, only to be angrily shushed by one of the men in the next room. But grief can't be stage managed, and it seems only natural that the process should be guided by normal human interaction.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A faithful woman visits me weekly

    • Ian C. Smith
    • 18 November 2014
    1 Comment

    Supplying food, whisky, news, loving sex. All this on a pine-scented mountain. I trim my stark white beard, shampoo, sweep, spray, squeegee and swipe. The hour you drive up our steep hill I open our front gates like a greeting.

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