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Keywords: Taliban

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Paying tribute without creating war narratives

    • Justin Glyn
    • 24 March 2015
    9 Comments

    The emotional parades welcoming troops home from the end of 'Operation Slipper' in Afghanistan leave us contemplating the horrific effects of war on veterans and their families. It is absolutely right, indeed imperative, that we grieve with them and count the costs. In doing so, however, we should beware the danger of selective empathy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Asylum seeker Ali's successful day in court

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 13 February 2015
    23 Comments

    Former Immigration Minister's Scott Morrison's ruthless determination to prevent refugees arriving by boat from getting permanent residence has been successfully challenged. On Wednesday, the High Court ordered the current Immigration Minister to grant a permanent protection visa to a Pakistani Hazara 'S297'. Such an instruction is almost unheard of, as usually the Minister is asked to re-make the decision lawfully.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Kabul love story

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 October 2014
    1 Comment

    Orphan Abdul loves Fatemeh, but her father is demanding a prohibitive dowry for her hand. The financial wrangling between Abdul's guardian Mahboba and Fatemah's father Nik, and all this implies about the ways in which young women's futures can be sold and traded as part of an archaic cultural norm, seems crass and is more than a little disturbing to witness.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Overplaying the Immigration Minister's trump card

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 29 October 2014
    7 Comments

    Former Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans once expressed concern about how much personal power was vested in his position when making decisions about particular cases. The current Minister, on the other hand, is trying to increase the number of such powers, and is much more likely to use the ministerial trump card to avoid judicial scrutiny. In a parliamentary system that relies on the checks and balances between the Parliament, Executive and Judiciary, one arm of government should not be able to overrule another.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What are we walking into in Iraq?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 15 September 2014
    7 Comments

    President Obama's decision to take military action against ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria has been applauded. But it should give us pause that this is the outcome desired and provoked by ISIL itself.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Telling good Kurds from bad

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 05 September 2014
    4 Comments

    A debate about arming, and reinforcing the Kurds, is not an open and shut case. European powers and the United States draw the false distinction that there are good Islamic militants and bad ones, with the bad ones supposedly against the Western military program. The game of backing and supporting misunderstood – and dangerous – groups persists.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Sowing dragon's teeth in Iraq

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 August 2014
    19 Comments

    The vagueness of what is envisaged in the call for military action against the Islamic State makes it difficult to establish whether the harm caused would be proportionate to the good achieved.The record is not good suggesting strongly that Western military intervention will make things worse.

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  • 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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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesia gives a Gonski

    • Pat Walsh
    • 24 July 2013
    3 Comments

    Like Australia's Gonski reforms, Indonesia's initiatives are designed to give its economy a competitive edge by upgrading its human resources. But the changes also have the potential to radically transform Indonesia in other ways. Future generations who have been encouraged to think for themselves, to question and to criticise will be very different citizens to their forbears.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pragmatic answers to the asylum seeker question

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 June 2013
    10 Comments

    'I want to outline the contours for a better approach — better than forcibly turning around boats, better than transporting people to Nauru and Manus Island or to Malaysia to join an asylum queue of 100,000 or permitting people to reside in the Australian community but without work rights and with inadequate welfare provision.' Frank Brennan speaks at the Australian Catholic University National Asylum Summit 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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  • RELIGION

    A feminist reading of the Koran

    • Ruby Hamad
    • 23 October 2012
    33 Comments

    For centuries, Muslim women have accepted the fallacy that they are inferior to men. Sadly, the jahaliyyah (ignorance and irascibility) Mohammed railed against is alive in the Muslim world, notably in the mentality that sees the Taliban try to justify shooting a 14-year-old child for supporting women's education. 

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