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Keywords: Soviet

  • AUSTRALIA

    George Orwell's example for Australian journalists

    • Sarah Burnside
    • 20 September 2012
    9 Comments

    BBC director general Mark Thompson turned down a proposal to erect a statue of Orwell on the broadcaster's premises because the writer was 'too left-wing'. But political animals of all stripes have long sought to claim Orwell. His political writing transcends both time and ideology.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What's the point of the Olympics?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 01 August 2012
    16 Comments

    The games are an escapist spectacle, where the flags of Iran, Palestine and Syria flutter without irony alongside those of the US, Israel and Turkey, and delegates from Spain and Greece wave as if their nation's economies have not fractured the Eurozone. The dissonance between the games and reality has become hard to ignore.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to re-imagine the Australian flag

    • Philip Harvey
    • 11 May 2012
    50 Comments

    The readiness of Australians to design a flag that is agreed to and honoured ought to be on the agenda of any forward-looking party. Otherwise a day will come when a design will be foisted on us that no one likes and has no distinctive meaning. One only has to listen to the national anthem to know Australians are capable of embracing second best.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Catholic writers' agnostic appeal

    • Lucas Smith
    • 29 February 2012
    7 Comments

    The priests are ineluctably compromised: one has capitulated to state pressure to marry; the other has fathered a daughter and drugs himself with alcohol. But the author's achievement, and a mark of his faith, is his ability to 'distinguish ... between the man and the office'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Russia's concern for besieged Syrian Christians

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 14 February 2012
    12 Comments

    Russia's opposition to military intervention or orchestrated regime change in Syria runs deeper than mere contemporary strategic interest. Its interest in Syria and the broader Middle East stems also from its historical conception of itself as the protector of eastern Christians.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    If Dickens were alive today

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 08 February 2012
    6 Comments

    If Dickens wished to address the deprivation and discrimination suffered by Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers today, he would need to turn to the popular media. But even though he was superbly gifted for the genre, his telly series would most likely flop. 

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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

    Palestine takes a stab at statehood

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 September 2011
    8 Comments

    It has been said that giving certain countries independence was like giving a razor to a child. As Palestine makes its bid for full membership of the UN, it may do well to remember that any successful strategy should focus not on statehood but on rights.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Myths of wartime good and evil

    • Zac Alstin
    • 15 August 2011
    22 Comments

    It is a weakness of human nature that we forgive in our friends what we despise in our enemies. If Germany or Japan had achieved a nuclear weapon and launched it on an Allied city, our condemnation would be unrelenting.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Good journalism and Murdoch's pie-gate

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 July 2011
    1 Comment

    Rupert Murdoch's News International has found itself with more than egg on its face over the News of the World scandal. As this case reveals journalism at its most prurient and base, a new film pays tribute to journalism at its most noble and courageous. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    History continues in Egypt and Libya

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 13 March 2011
    6 Comments

    Political and social ideas are a means of conceptualising people's inner urgings and desires. Does the movement towards political change in the Middle East constitute an 'absolute moment' which forecasts the realisation of democratic governments across the Arab world?

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  • RELIGION

    A spiritual reading of the Egyptian Revolution

    • Henri Boulad
    • 08 March 2011
    2 Comments

    It is an absurd confrontation. On one side, a man with empty hands; on the other, a well organised force equipped with batons, helmets and shields. I can still see the young man, like a lion, throw himself against the wall of shields, face tensed, eyes flashing, heart steeled.

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