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Keywords: Borneo

  • AUSTRALIA

    By the world forgot

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 10 April 2024

    For the men in these conflicts, there was an expectation they would resume the lives they had left behind as if nothing had happened, as if they had been on an extended business trip. It calls to mind a phrase that has become common in recent years: unexamined trauma.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Gratitude needs ambivalence on the costs of war

    • Jim Curtain
    • 24 April 2023
    4 Comments

    Amidst gratitude and remembrance to those who have served, we would do well to look with ambivalence on the toll beyond the battlefield; on families, soldiers' mental health, and questions about government transparency. Anzac day serves as a poignant reminder to acknowledge sacrifices and damages of war.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The pity of war

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 26 May 2022
    11 Comments

    In the photo I have just seen Vadim Shishimarin is in the dock, hanging his head. He is 21, but looks about 15 as he stands there in the polycarbonate box, the first Russian soldier to be charged and tried in Ukraine for a war crime. He holds the rank of sergeant and was a tank commander. At 21? (I’m embarrassed to recall how immature I was at 21.) It is likely he has a mother: I wonder how she is feeling right now, but think I can make a good guess.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A Peloponnesian Anzac

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 21 April 2022
    3 Comments

    The lives of migrants often consist of divisions and collisions at the border between the old life and the new. But sometimes both lives come together in unexpected ways, and one such conjunction is about to happen to me. On Anzac Day my granddaughter will join the great flow of Orthodoxy, but I hope one day she will know about her little trickle of Australian blood. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Bali nightmare on Mick Shann Terrace

    • Bee Spencer
    • 26 September 2018
    10 Comments

    Day by day, home owners in this Canberra street scout out potential wealth and children walk to school, unaware of who they've attached their names to. Mick Shann wasn't just any public official and his legacy lives on in other places. In scars carved into the backs of miraculous survivors. In empty coffins and overflowing graves.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    No rest for Borneo's indigenous rights warriors

    • Fiona McAlpine
    • 17 March 2017
    6 Comments

    One year ago, a remarkable win for indigenous rights took place in a little-reported corner of Asia. On the island of Borneo, rainforest communities won a long fight against a hydroelectric dam that was to be built on their land. After more than two years of muddy resistance, the dam plans were shelved, and land rights were restored to the indigenous population. This was a landmark win, in more ways than one.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remembering forgotten wars as fallen soldiers return

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 June 2016
    5 Comments

    Thirty-three bodies returned to Australia last Thursday in the country's largest repatriation of dead servicemen and their dependents, including six children. All of the dead were connected with Australia's involvement in overseas conflicts which have been archived and, in some cases, forgotten altogether. Returning the fallen has been a contentious matter. In some cases, the issue has been politicised, with dead soldiers discarded for being the immoral instruments of disputed foreign policy.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Blessed are the whistleblowers

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 02 October 2013
    12 Comments

    The International Day of Non-Violence on 2 October coincides with the birthday of Gandhi, who pioneered the concept of political non-violence and the notion of passive resistance, and paid the highest price for his moral choices. A great many people, like Gandhi, desire a non-violent world, in which whistleblowers and thoughtful, idealistic individuals are honoured rather than punished.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Anzac revelations

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 20 April 2011
    9 Comments

    My father was just 23 when he saw action. He is now nearly 90, and his recent description of the Borneo beach landing, which he had never mentioned to his offspring before, made my brother's blood run cold.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Anzac a 'politically pliable' legend

    • Tom Cranitch
    • 28 April 2008
    16 Comments

    With Anzac Day over, and the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign just under a decade away, it's time to re-examine, re-frame, and hopefully tame the Anzac legend. You don't need to be an expert to understand that 'Anzac' has a stranglehold over Australian public life.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Individuals can offset their own carbon emissions

    • Tim Thwaites
    • 02 April 2007
    2 Comments

    Pollution released by high-flying jets directly into the atmosphere is up to four times as damaging as the same amount released at ground level. Increasingly people are prepared to spend significant money to salve their consciences over flying.

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  • RELIGION

    On stopping Sauron

    • Ormond Rush
    • 05 July 2006

    Winston Churchill is usually portrayed as one of the few people who recognised the evil potential of Adolf Hitler and was willing to go to war to stop him.

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