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Keywords: Al Qaeda

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Civil liberties in a grave new world

    • Bill Calcutt
    • 09 August 2013
    1 Comment

    Since the turn of the millennium several major technology-enabled developments have significantly altered the balance between national security and civil liberties. In Australia, the hyper-politicisation of national security finds voice in the discourse on the issue of border security, turning a complex humanitarian and policing challenge (asylum seekers arriving by sea) into an enormously controversial and expensive imbroglio.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Obama no 'wuss' but at what cost to Syria?

    • Evan Ellis
    • 18 June 2013
    4 Comments

    Alluding to his own military style intervention in Kosovo, Bill Clinton warned Obama not to look like a 'wuss' on Syria. Still, Obama's decision to start providing arms to Syrian rebels is an enormous risk. Australia's history of state interventions to tackle Indigenous disadvantage provide surprisingly apt criteria for evaluating the decision.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Post-Saddam Iraq defined by division

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 March 2013
    1 Comment

    One Christian engineer remembers celebrating religious festivals with his Muslim neighbours. They in turn would celebrate Christmas with him. Such interfaith experiences are almost unknown now. Iraqis tell me that at least under Saddam you knew where the boundaries were. Now there is uncertainty and indiscriminate violence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Watching as Iraq crumbled

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 20 March 2013
    9 Comments

    I sat with my Iraqi friend in his photo store. I was his last customer, he said; the bombs would begin tomorrow. And then he began to weep. I remember thinking that his life, and the lives of others like him, would not be given a second's thought once the invasion started. The next day, the bombs began.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Post 9-11 demon words too simple for Africa

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 30 January 2013
    3 Comments

    Behind the labels of undifferentiated militancy lie dangerous consequences. When it comes to the disturbances in Algeria and Mali the mistake has been to equate local troubles with international significance. Both al-Qaeda and Western powers are playing on this theme, and in doing so have created enormous suffering.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How not to have a revolution

    • Justin Whelan
    • 23 August 2012
    6 Comments

    Syria was touted as an example of the limits of nonviolent struggle against a ruthless dictator. Now it is fast becoming a case study on the even greater strategic weaknesses of violence. As the nonviolent movement came under sustained repression, some people decided to take up arms, and opened a Pandora's Box.

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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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Insanity rules after ten years of war in Afghanistan

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 07 October 2011
    12 Comments

    Today is the tenth anniversary of the war on Afghan jihadists. We civilised Westerners decided we’d had enough of barbarians flying planes into our skyscrapers, killing thousands of our civilians. And hence we sent our own planes to drop huge bombs on their villages and towns.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What was left behind

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 09 September 2011
    2 Comments

    A soft toy. A restaurant menu. A business card. An agony so great it swamped the world. While America was busy hunting down Osama bin Laden, my son and his contemporaries, who were children at the time of the attack, grew up and inherited a world irrevocably changed. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The twin terrors of 2001

    • Michael Mullins
    • 05 September 2011
    8 Comments

    Before Tampa, refugees were regarded as a positive for Australia's economy and lifestyle. After Tampa they were a threat to our sovereignty that was somehow grafted on to the sense of public malaise prompted by the 9/11 attacks on the sovereignty of the United States.

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  • RELIGION

    Silence for Norway's dead

    • Bronwyn Lay
    • 28 July 2011
    8 Comments

    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.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Demystifying famine

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 26 July 2011
    4 Comments

    If one were to believe the news cycle, the current crisis in Somalia would seem to have arisen without warning. But it is part of a pattern we have had plenty of opportunity to observe and recognise. In fact Eastern Africa is historically well acquainted with famine.

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