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Keywords: Afghanistan

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Justifying Bin Laden's execution

    • Tony Kevin
    • 03 May 2011
    43 Comments

    Obama was admirably honest that Bin Laden had been killed after, not during, the firefight. Why wasn’t Bin Laden taken alive and returned from Pakistan to face US courts? Here is a case where the cutting of the Gordian knot through an on-the-spot execution may be justified as the lesser evil.

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  • MEDIA

    Defending defence

    • Jim Molan
    • 21 April 2011
    8 Comments

    Defence has the same problem as society in relation to young people's attitudes to sex, alcohol and social media. I wonder if we handle it better than most. The firestorm of ignorant criticism of the ADF and its 'culture' and leadership was mostly undeserved and could be counterproductive. 

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  • MEDIA

    Cyber traps for young players

    • Chris Middleton
    • 11 April 2011
    6 Comments

    The use of Skype to demean a young female trainee at the Australian Defence Force Academy once again demonstrates that the internet can damage young people’s sense of self. It also points to the need for an educational program that builds an awareness of our culture and an ability to question information and critique forms of communication.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Asylum seekers testing Labor's conviction

    • Susan Metcalfe
    • 07 April 2011
    22 Comments

    Paul Keating said: 'Governments that wander along uncertain about where they are, looking over their shoulder, invariably get run over themselves.' If Labor doesn't stop looking over its shoulder on asylum seekers, it will miss another opportunity to stand up for what it says it believes in.

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  • RELIGION

    Vindicating Islam

    • Herman Roborgh
    • 30 March 2011
    9 Comments

    Two political leaders in Pakistan were murdered for speaking out against blasphemy laws that had been used to oppress religious minorities. Disturbingly, many Muslim intellectuals stayed silent regarding this injustice. Why were they so defensive?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Blame detention centres, not detainees

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 March 2011
    37 Comments

    Those who defend the humanity of asylum seekers are often dismissed as bleeding hearts. It is tempting to respond by referring to those who defend the existing regime of detention as bleeding minds. The recent events in remote detention centres are deplorable, but predictable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Invisible Indonesia

    • Ruby J. Murray
    • 15 March 2011
    34 Comments

    You'd never know it, but just above Darwin and sort of to the left, there are 17,000 islands with roughly 240 million people living on them. There's more to this 'Indonesia' place than Bali, Balibo, Bintangs, and bombings. We forget Indonesia at our peril.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Non Anglo-Saxon Australians deserve an apology

    • Michael Mullins
    • 21 February 2011
    24 Comments

    Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's speech on multiculturalism could be seen as laying the ground for a formal apology for the White Australia Policy. The parallels with the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations and the 2009 Apology to the Forgotten Australians are striking.

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  • MEDIA

    Shit doesn’t just happen

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 February 2011
    55 Comments

    While it is refreshing to hear politicians speak in unguarded colloquial language from time to time, any human misfortune is demeaned if we believe it is a sufficient explanation to say, as Tony Abbott said of the death of a soldier serving in Afghanistan, 'shit happens'.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2010: To Kill A Mockingbird and asylum seeker justice

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 13 January 2011
    1 Comment

    Atticus works within the system and hopes thereby to reform it. He wonders 'why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro come up'. Many lawyers will understand the challenge of working for the unpopular 'other': just replace 'Negro' with asylum seeker or 'Muslim woman in burqa'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2010: Tony Abbott's missing moral core

    • Neil Ormerod
    • 11 January 2011
    18 Comments

    Tony Abbott has been in public life for a long time. Most recently there has been his meteoric rise to leadership of the Liberal party and to a hair’s breadth from the prime ministership itself. Charming and disarming as he can be, there is something deeply disturbing in the way he carries out his public role.

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  • RELIGION

    Christmas in Islam

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 December 2010
    13 Comments

    The Gospels describe Christmas as a time of great happiness that a saviour has been born. But they also intimate the murderous business through which salvation will come. This Christmas many Christians in Muslim nations will be shadowed by fear.

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