Keywords: South East Asia
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- John Falzon
- 17 December 2010
4 Comments
Syd Tutton, national president of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia, died on Sunday. He was a fighter for social justice, uninterested in personal recognition, making light, for example, of the Papal Knighthood he received in 2009, threatening to ask the Vatican for a horse to go with the title.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Mark Raper
- 17 November 2010
3 Comments
May I tell you about one refugee whom I met during the 20 years I lived and worked JRS? The story has no happy outcome, indeed far from it. But it may help to communicate some of the feelings that inspire many who accompany the refugees.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Jan Forrester
- 22 October 2010
11 Comments
The situation in Afghanistan is far more complex than the Australian parliamentary debate seems to credit. The international community and the Afghan government should be starting a bigger conversation about how a more transparent and accountable political culture can be encouraged.
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EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD
- Bill Collopy
- 25 August 2010
11 Comments
X people work hard. Y people are natural athletes. Z
people treat the world like they own it. Q people are violent. R people
are drunkards. S people mistreat women. V
people are queue jumpers. Racial generalising becomes racist only if we
accept its false premise.
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AUSTRALIA
- Paul Cleary
- 24 August 2010
3 Comments
Kevin Rudd's failure to embrace the Timor legend with more imagination and
substance was a missed opportunity to connect with Labor's Second World
War legacy. Wartime Prime Minister John Curtin saw the guerilla war in
Timor as a unique and significant part of turning back the Japanese
tide.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Mark Carkeet and Graham Kershaw
- 17 August 2010
They're elderly, unstable, probably a couple, their cheerful eyes sprung like steel against the cold, their hands arthritic, resigned; their grip carrying no conviction. Concentration lapses. People fail to see. This has never been a Labour town.
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AUSTRALIA
- Bruce Duncan
- 06 August 2010
The election has been plagued by trivial spats and personality conflicts, to the neglect of policies based on the values of equity and social justice for everyone. This reinforces the importance of church and community groups
being more active in their social advocacy.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Ben Coleridge
- 29 June 2010
16 Comments
The latest G8 meeting sparked new protests at the failure of rich countries to honour their promises to increase aid. The protest pointed not only to the failures of the G8 governments, but also to the limitations of the mantras 'make poverty history' and 'an end to poverty'.
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AUSTRALIA
- Brian Toohey
- 03 June 2010
9 Comments
An earlier generation of politicians feared impoverished Asian hordes would pour down and eat our lunch.
Current PM Kevin Rudd worries their offspring can now afford to come armed with the latest weapons and steal it. His fretting comes at great cost to the nation.
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AUSTRALIA
- Simon Roughneen
- 24 May 2010
Standing amid the burnt-out ruins of southeast Asia's second biggest
shopping mall, it becomes clear the
Land of Smiles has become a land of snarls. The uncompromising quashing of the anti-government
redshirt rally by the Thai army may have sown the seeds for more
conflict later on.
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AUSTRALIA
- Bruce Duncan
- 10 March 2010
12 Comments
In July 1953, the Vatican's agent Rosemary Goldie — who died on 27 February — met Santamaria but was unable to convince him of the need to keep Catholic Action out of direct political involvements. She was dismayed by the Movement's defiance of clear directives from the Holy See.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 03 March 2010
6 Comments
In June last year a solitary Uighur from Xinjiang province arrived in Phnom Penh seeking asylum. On 18 December he and 21 other Uighur asylum seekers were praying when Cambodian police entered their safe house and abducted them at gunpoint.
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