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Keywords: Guantanamo

  • AUSTRALIA

    The public, the Church, and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 August 2013
    1 Comment

    'Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term, as a stop-gap measure. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There’s only one thing worse than shock and awe; that’s shock and awe that doesn’t work because you haven’t done your homework.' 43rd Barry Marshall Memorial Lecture, Trinity College Theological School, 14 August 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Maintaining empathy as Boston mourns

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 18 April 2013
    12 Comments

    The image of the face of eight-year-old Boston victim Marty Richards will touch the hearts of all. Yet in his name, and depending on the outcome of the investigation, we might see calls for invasions of other lands. Such actions are hardly representative of the express wishes of terror victims and their families.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Labor excises its moral compass

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 31 October 2012
    12 Comments

    In politics, hypocrisy is a natural condition. On Tuesday, it became evident that refugee policy is the last thing that should be made by the Australian government. Gillard has now achieved something Howard could only dream of, and shown Labor can play the game of hypocrisy as well as any.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What the Conventions didn't tell us about November's US election

    • Jim McDermott
    • 10 September 2012
    3 Comments

    The US finished Act One of its quadrennial orgiastic political kabuki last week with the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Originally conventions were intended to choose candidates, but today they’re more about motivating the parties’ bases, but really just a total schmozzle.

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  • MEDIA

    Justifying garden-variety torture

    • Max Atkinson
    • 12 July 2012
    6 Comments

    Any discussion of the morality of torture must distinguish two kinds of justification. The first is concerned with cases so exotic they have nothing to do with the ordinary affairs of mankind, such as the nuclear bomb ticking away in a New York basement. A real-life justification must provide a rationale for a wide range of common garden cases. 

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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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  • MEDIA

    Assange receives Hicks treatment

    • Tony Kevin
    • 14 February 2011
    24 Comments

    Rudd's cold rebuttal of Assange's mother's appeal to him is most unworthy. To say Assange has been offered consular assistance does not answer her. David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib received similarly worthless consular access. 

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  • MEDIA

    Raising Julian Assange

    • Lyn Bender
    • 09 December 2010
    10 Comments

    Who is this Assange? Is he a messianic hero, larrikin, renegade, terrorist, or just a very naughty boy? As a psychologist my interest lies in history, as this is frequently re-enacted in our lives. And Julian Assange had a very unusual childhood.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Andrew Hamilton and Peter Steele: boys with writing in their blood

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 03 December 2010

    As I reflect back now, I can see the difference between Peter's urge to write and my own. My hero was the master of terseness, Tacitus. But Peter wanted to find words, and ways of putting words together, that could unfold the shape of what lay beyond words.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The morality of violent films

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 19 August 2010
    7 Comments

    'Anyone watching this saying it in some way supports or encourages violence is watching the film in a very perverse way.' UK filmmaker Michael Winterbottom has a point, but one must wonder what scenes of brutal violence against women contribute to the betterment of the public imagination.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Asylum seekers good for Australia's soul

    • Irfan Yusuf
    • 14 August 2009
    11 Comments

    According to P. J. O'Rourke, today's asylum seekers are tomorrow's 'really good Australians'. Australia has established Uighur and Turkish communities and could easily accommodate the few remaining ex-Gitmo Uighurs.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A soft voice for China's wild west

    • Paul Rule
    • 09 July 2009
    3 Comments

    It is hard to imagine any solution to the discontent in Xinjiang without a general change in the political culture of China. That seems a distant prospect indeed. For Australia's part, a soft and friendly voice may do more than condemnation or contention.

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