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Keywords: Thoughts

  • INTERNATIONAL

    A Peloponnesian Anzac

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 21 April 2022
    9 Comments

    The lives of migrants often consist of divisions and collisions at the border between the old life and the new. But sometimes both lives come together in unexpected ways, and one such conjunction is about to happen to me. On Anzac Day my granddaughter will join the great flow of Orthodoxy, but I hope one day she will know about her little trickle of Australian blood. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Russian view on Ukraine: An international law perspective

    • Justin Glyn
    • 07 March 2022
    26 Comments

    Ukraine, a site of conflict over many centuries, is once again the scene of battle. First thoughts must be with the civilian population and Pope Francis’ call for prayer is probably the most practical course for most of us far from the action. Unfortunately, while it is clear that there have been casualties, both military and civilian, on both sides, the fog of war makes it very difficult to say more. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Tolstoy’s war

    • Philip Harvey
    • 03 March 2022
    17 Comments

      One of the most memorable scenes in Russian literature relates the thoughts of a man lying on the ground staring at the sky in the middle of a major European battle. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky is wounded. He is placed in a situation where, instead of running, fighting, and thinking every moment might be his last, he is suddenly met with silence, grandeur, tranquillity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Across the machair

    • Lorraine Gibson
    • 15 February 2022

    Fellow traveller, I urge you / do not simply skirt the margins: / stride out across the machair, touch / freedom’s fruitful fabric. / By all means mosey / around the material: But, / for the love of God, always / digress, digress, digress.

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  • ECONOMICS

    The rise of the machines

    • David James
    • 31 January 2022
    5 Comments

    There is a great deal of commentary about the growing importance of artificial intelligence, or AI, especially in business circles. To some extent this is a self-fulfilling prophecy — if people think something will have a seminal effect then it probably will. But if the supposed commercial benefits are significant, the dangers are potentially enormous.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    On remembering the First Fleet

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 25 January 2022
    24 Comments

    In recent years, Australia Day has been a holiday without title. It has been marketed as a day for all Australians, but is held on a date is seen increasingly as the beginning of the dispossession and humiliation of the First Australians. As a result it is generally received as an opportunity to laze around undisturbed by serious thoughts about Australia.

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  • RELIGION

    Assessing the Plenary: A work in progress

    • Geraldine Doogue
    • 15 November 2021
    61 Comments

    How do I assess our Plenary Council thus far? Or make sense of its related word-of-the-moment, synodality? With apologies to Churchill, dare I hope it is the ‘end of the beginning’? But of what precisely? A priest-friend distilled the challenge rather well last week to me: what would success look like?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Decadence

    • Thuy On
    • 08 November 2021
    1 Comment

    You’re a scavenger / so restless in your wakings / picking remnants in the hours / thieving at the doorstep / to sleep-this threshold / I turn to your profile / mussed hair dark on grey / we are always touching.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Your poetry questions, answered

    • Philip Harvey
    • 04 November 2021
    10 Comments

      Although I teach poetry and do occasional workshops, the following is written in response to one such workshopper, new to writing poetry, who in lockdown would message me on social media with fairly open-ended questions about poetry. My answers are written after the wry manner of the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska; wry, but generally helpful. They are not the launch pad for a new poetics. I have stopped for now at 12 questions, but the questions keep rolling in.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Hoping for hope

    • Barry Gittins
    • 09 September 2021
    1 Comment

    What does it take to lose hope? For the 4,000 people who attended the anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne last month, an odd coalition of the frustrated, the scared, the angry and the hurt, it takes 18 months of pain and the ensuing changes in employment status, isolation from family and friends, and losses in lifestyle and individual liberties.

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  • RELIGION

    The Plenary Council: Consulting the faithful

    • Bill Uren
    • 30 August 2021
    31 Comments

    One might submit that a Plenary Council is a cumbersome instrument to ascertain the genuinely representative views of the Catholic Church in Australia. Many of the canonical strictures regarding the membership, agenda and process of the Council will dampen the original enthusiasm for the Council that provoked over 17,500 submissions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Voluntary assisted dying via telehealth is another step down a perilous path

    • Hoa Dinh
    • 10 June 2021
    4 Comments

    In legislatures around Australia at present euthanasia is a staple item. It is vital that euthanasia legislation ought to balance the liberty of the invulnerable against the safeguarding of the vulnerable, especially the elderly and people with disabilities.

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