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Keywords: Stranger

  • INTERNATIONAL

    US is no stranger to electoral meddling

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 10 March 2017
    4 Comments

    Each day is met by the same reports: electoral interference has supposedly taken place, instigated by Russian, or at the very least outsourced Russian entities, in the elections of Europe and the United States. Such claims assert, not merely the reality of these claims, but the nature of their influence. Such a stance detracts from one fundamental point: that the manipulation of electoral systems has been, and remains, common fare, irrespective of the finger pointing at Moscow.

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  • MEDIA

    Conversations about rape

    • Neve Mahoney
    • 09 March 2017
    5 Comments

    Last Monday, there was a Q and A discussion about feminism and women's rights. On the panel was Thordis Elva, an anti-violence campaigner known for hosting a TED Talk with her rapist Tom Stranger. The debate emulated my own internal monologue. Is there a place for rapists in the conversation about rape? Did I want to hear what a rapist had to say? At the time I was on the phone to someone close to me who had been sexually assaulted in the past. Would I want her anywhere near her rapist again?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A perfect stranger's perfect gift

    • Maureen O'Brien
    • 22 November 2016
    5 Comments

    Recently I went with a group of friends to see the musical Dusty. Afterwards, walking with one of my friends, I spoke about how special it had turned out for me seeing this musical on the day after my 54th wedding anniversary. Dusty Springfield's songs were ones my husband and I would have known well at the time. Just as I was reflecting on how some events have more significance than what appears on the surface, a young man on my right turned to me and handed me a large red flower.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Spring: Thirty short poems

    • Carol O'Connor
    • 21 November 2016
    6 Comments

    Counting angels dancing on a pinhead? How about, making count the stranger who stands right in front of me ... Love lies hidden. Quick! Look under the moss, hear the stone sing ... Mother Earth is groaning ... Dislocation. Disconnection. Displacement. Only you, only you, only you can take us home.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The heart heals itself between beats

    • Elizabeth Smither
    • 03 October 2016
    4 Comments

    I read it somewhere in a journal of cardiology. Sometimes I mention it at dinner parties. The use of time, the clenching of the heart that can be no stranger to the beats of a clock, and all that accompanies the emptying and filling of chambers where silence must be an unknown but still love sluices and cleans and restarts as the surgeons did in the old Middlesex.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Friendlier Ghosts of Australia Days Future

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 January 2016
    4 Comments

    The two major challenges facing the world have to do with kindness to strangers and care for the natural world. If the image of the beginnings of Australia is of a boatload of powerful Europeans coming to exploit the land occupied by a primitive people, a better image of future Australia Days might be of Australia sending parties to Indigenous settlements and other nations to discover how to cooperate in the great projects of reconciliation between people and people with nature.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Worn by remembering, mastered by great age

    • Grant Fraser, Ignatius Kim and Margaret Quigley
    • 24 November 2015
    5 Comments

    Not seven steps from the familiar geography of her room her bewilderment sagged on her walking frame as she shied away from the stern arm that was guiding her ... We composed ourselves upon the couch long enough for her to plead 'But I don't know who you are' as she trembled beneath the insult of my peering eyes and frowned away; and I felt a stranger's smile curdling on my face.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Mistaken for Jewish in cold, grand Moscow

    • Howard Willis
    • 19 February 2014
    6 Comments

    On the occasions I got into detailed discussions with strangers in Moscow, a pattern emerged. Saying I was Australian prompted a polite request for clarification: 'But your ancestry?' The reply that I was fifth-generation Australian was treated as an evasion, or met with the assumption that my ancestors were 'bandits'. Generally, Muscovites took a second look at me and the box they ticked was 'Jew'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rape and restorative justice

    • Ellena Savage
    • 18 January 2013
    8 Comments

    My friend was raped by a stranger at knife-point. When the police found the perpetrator she learned he had raped other women, and had murdered some of them. While he was being charged, she decided to opt out of the proceedings. She didn't believe prison would rehabilitate him, or aid her own survival.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Children breathe the air of protest

    • Various
    • 04 September 2012

    Children need to walk together, arm in arm with strangers, wear badges of hope and T-shirts with lifelines, sing words of wisdom and history, chant choric responses of camaraderie in a mass movement of human voices. Understand the justice of causes and the constant need for change.

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  • MEDIA

    Shane Warne and News Limited's hostility cycle

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 February 2012
    32 Comments

    As a cyclist who shares the pavement with pedestrians and the road with cars, I am constantly struck by how common is the unkindness of strangers. The relations between cyclists, drivers and pedestrians mirror the qualities I see as characteristic of News Limited commentary.

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  • RELIGION

    Best of 2011: Silence for Norway's dead

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 13 January 2012
    1 Comment

    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. Published 27 July 2011

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