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Keywords: Tension

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fractured family in the house of grief

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 June 2018
    1 Comment

    The pressure starts to get to Annie when she begins to suspect her mother is haunting her. This exacerbates pre-existing tensions; her husband is caring in a mildly condescending way, but is more concerned with the wellbeing of their children. Is the haunting real, then, or just a symptom of Annie's reluctance to let go?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remembering shared humanity on Anzac Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 April 2018
    22 Comments

    The tension between remembering those who died and celebrating those who fought makes the celebration of Anzac Day inherently controversial. It is seen by many to canonise military values. But the risk is less to glorify war than to sanitise it by allowing time and space to take away its physical reality, and with it the sadness of war.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Israel and Palestine's game of twos

    • Na'ama Carlin
    • 22 January 2018
    4 Comments

    These are volatile days in Israel and Palestine. From Trump's inflammatory statement on Jerusalem, to the arrest of the Nabi Saleh women, every gesture fuels tensions. In Israel and Palestine, division is etched into geography, captured by the separation wall. My family lives on one side of that wall; on the other, The Other.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Who killed Whitney Houston?

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 June 2017
    1 Comment

    Running parallel to this is Houston's intimate, long-time friendship with Robyn Crawford. Broomfield stops short of characterising it as romantic; others do not, and space is given to rumination about the difficulties of being a black, gay woman. In any case, the friendship sparks tension with Brown, and disapproval from Cissy. Crawford's abrupt departure from the tour is another turning point. In Broomfield's thesis, Houston's drug habit is a reaction to these various threats to her authenticity.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Egypt and Ethiopia river wars be dammed

    • Tuhimi Akebet
    • 16 May 2017
    2 Comments

    The building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile by a major Italian construction company remains a source of tension between Ethiopia and Egypt. Egypt sees the Nile as its sole source for the survival of its population and, historically, has seen itself as its sole natural guardian. Ethiopia argued in response, on the basis of unseen studies, that there would be no reduction of water downstream. Both are mindful of the disastrous war they waged against each other early in the 19th century.

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  • RELIGION

    Finding meaning in a chaotic/changing world

    • Frank Brennan
    • 08 May 2017
    1 Comment

    Our Church is presently a strained, outdated social institution with an exclusively male hierarchy and clergy. But it is also the privileged locus for us to be called to the banquet of the Lord sharing theology and sacrament which have sustained the hearts and minds of similar pilgrims for two millennia. Thank God for Pope Francis who is showing us the way, helping us to find meaning in our changing and chaotic world, putting a fresh spring in the step of all those Catholics holding in tension the prophetic and the practical, the theological and the humanist, the tradition and the contemporary reality.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The time-traveller's strife

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 22 March 2017

    All stories that deal with time travel will come up against paradoxes. Generally the success of the story will come down to how capably these paradoxes are dealt with, and how consistently with the story's internal logic. Otto Bloom turns on the concept of time as an extension of the physical dimensions. If time is as tangible as physical space, then all events in time are occurring simultaneously. That we perceive time as moving in a particular direction is a feature of our human consciousness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The problem of privilege in Australia Day billboard furore

    • Tseen Khoo
    • 24 January 2017
    16 Comments

    The removal of an Australia Day billboard featuring two girls in hijabs prompted a swell of support against Islamophobia. Alongside this was a backlash from those who read the action as forcing Muslim Australians to be complicit in the oppression of Indigenous peoples. My unease came from seeing intra-community tension manifest as dismissal and denigration of those who were considered not 'woke' enough to the politics and embedded racism surrounding invocations of Australian identity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    School walk in German winter

    • Tracy Ryan
    • 05 July 2016
    3 Comments

    Our one star has departed. We're wholly dark. The clouds are shedding pretension to friendliness, flake by flake. Which of us guides the other across this glassine surface that blanks every letter, deadening words. Who is that figure, globe-headed, dirndl-skirted, vacant hand-holder. The street-sign makes Mother, her little familiar. When you were born the ground had taken more than a dusting. We were locked in, but not forever. Now you are thirteen, age of reversible prime ...

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aboriginal footballers' MCG dreaming

    • Brian Matthews
    • 16 October 2015
    3 Comments

    In the recent AFL Grand Final, the performance of Aboriginal footballer Cyril Rioli seemed to be not much short of magic. Well, perhaps the spirit world did make a contribution. In 1844, a great throng of clans was camped on the site of what became the MCG. Perhaps, 170 years later, Aboriginal footballers, running down the race for the first time and steeling themselves for the noise, the space, the tension, find instead a great sense of intimacy as their feet hit the grass of the oval.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The contours of an extended child abuse royal commission

    • Frank Brennan
    • 03 July 2014
    17 Comments

    The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sexual Abuse has asked the Abbott Government for a two-year extension until December 2017 to complete its task. The good news is that the victims' groups seem to think they can wait that long, as anything sooner would be rushed.  The bad news is that we will all be waiting another three and a half years for answers about how to restructure institutions ensuring the better protection of children.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Workplace safety issues in South Korean ferry disaster

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 April 2014
    6 Comments

    It would be unfeeling and presumptuous to speculate on the causes of the disaster. But it may be helpful to enumerate the questions that have been asked, as they disclose a pattern. In travel by ship, as in many other enterprises, there are two sets of interests: the operational interests of those who provide the service, and the interests of those who benefit from the service. Companies ideally take both seriously, but they stand in tension.

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