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There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
2001: Two planes slammed into the World Trade Centre. A Pakistani refugee self-immolated in front of the Australian Parliament. Asylum seekers were accused of throwing children overboard. These events had nothing to do with me, but I absorbed them. I am brown-skinned. I have an Arabic name.
On a quiet Sunday night 25 years ago Julian Knight committed Australia's first urban massacre on the street outside my home. The next morning, strangers — made mute — stood and met the silence of the dead. It is powerful to watch the Norwegian people meet the silence of their dead.
One day a stranger knocks on the door. 'Help!' he shouts. 'The people in my house are trying to kill me!' Instinctively, you reach for the door handle. A wrinkled hand, old yet firm, grabs your wrist. You look up and see your landlord, a bald man with thick rectangular glasses and bushy eyebrows.
Rape takes away the victim's free will and builds around them a wall of connotation and innuendo. For 40 minutes, American journalist Lara Logan was rendered silent by the mob that sexually assaulted her in Cairo. Little wonder when finally she spoke it came out like a roar.
It would be easy to cast a donkey vote or a vote for a minor party and to thus wash your hands of the responsibility for our governance for the next three or so years. In a representative democracy, a vacuous election represents a lazy polity.
'This election', says Tony Abbott, 'is about you.' Recently, passengers on a Perth bus found themselves involved in an impromptu social experiment. 'This guy has no money and tried to give me a ticket that's two days old,' the bus driver said, 'What do you reckon? Should I let him on?'
It is 30 years this week since Catholic radical Dorothy Day died. She was a quirky woman who lived on the margins of Church and United States society. Her life was lived in harsh conditions, but the way she put its elements together was sweet and attractive.
The living are burdened with responsibility for those who have died. New Zealand can take strength from Cambodia, a country to whom tragedy is no stranger, reaching out in communion as each of them comes to terms with the torment of loss and bereavement.
When my grandparents died earlier this year, I barely cried at their funerals. While reading aloud at my grandmother's, I glanced out at the congregation and saw my grandfather's face shiny with tears, looking up at me ... My voice cracked, but I'm a good girl so I held it together.
'Excuse me,' the young man says. I meet his brown eyes. Pondering how many coins I have in my pocket I note his tidy hair, olive T-shirt, well-fitting jeans, coloured sneakers. Maybe he just wants to ask about the next train. He is perspiring a little. 'Can I talk to you?' he asks.
The election result shows that we the people are not happy and we are not confident about the way forward. Frank Brennan's Occasional Address at the Ecumenical Service for the Opening of Parliament, Wesley Church, National Circuit, Canberra.
133-144 out of 200 results.