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Keywords: Famine

  • AUSTRALIA

    Nuclear weapons the biggest threat to our security

    • Sue Wareham
    • 12 March 2015
    9 Comments

    Competing for attention with the Gallipoli landing centenary is this year’s 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New evidence suggests that even a nuclear war involving a very small fraction of the world’s arsenals would result in the atmospheric accumulation of so much particulate matter from burning cities that there would be reduced sunlight, agricultural decline and famine affecting possibly two billion people.   

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia's siege mentality viewed from Greece

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 04 June 2014
    17 Comments

    Here in Greece we are still digesting the results of last week's Euro elections. Worry about immigration has contributed to the continuing rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, which polled 9 per cent, and has won seats in the European Parliament for the first time. And what of Australia? Frankly, I'm baffled, so baffled that visiting Antipodeans take me to task. 'The Australia you grew up in has gone forever.' So it would seem.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Old men playing bocce

    • Shane McCauley
    • 20 May 2014
    2 Comments

    Muffled exclamations send Italian syllables into the far pale blue... the small cannon balls bounce across the peaceful green... the men huddle convene for a verdict.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Furze fires cast a pall over the coast

    • John Kinsella
    • 22 April 2014

    You can see them cover the red sandstone range and spread over bogs from a vantage point high on Clear Island, furze fires that heat winter to spite itself. And leaving the island you catch an old man igniting a hedgerow, fire sucking light and throwing its carpet of smoke — no yellow flowers, just flame against itself.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Is our morality at sea with the refugees?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 April 2014
    8 Comments

    'We should abandon talk of taking Australia off the table. We should also abandon talk of taking the sugar off the table. The collateral damage of that is too great. The best we can do ethically and practically is to put the sugar out of reach while leaving it on the table for those who make it here with a visa or in direct flight from persecution.' Frank Brennan contributes to a Palm Sunday panel at St Michael's Uniting Church, Melbourne.

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  • RELIGION

    Chords of community in a country church protest song

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 March 2014
    9 Comments

    The conflict began with falling church attendances and a decision by the Koroit parish priest to rationalise resources. Although Regina Lane describes in detail the battles to save St Brigid's, her book is far more than a protest song against the power of the Catholic Church. The larger stories embodied at St Brigid's, the immigrant groups who formed the first congregation and their relationship to the first Australians, have continuing importance.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thoughts from a sanctimonious expatriate

    • Ellena Savage
    • 21 February 2014
    9 Comments

    There is a difference between immigration and expatriatism. The term 'expat' seems only to refer to the affluent, particularly those with Caucasian ancestry. The expat has no obligation to learn the language and customs of the place they live, and always has a home they can return to. Since taking a job in publishing in South East Asia, I am the kind of person who gets to be thought of as an expat. It feels weird.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Devil in the detail of asylum seeker directive

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 February 2014
    23 Comments

    In the clamour of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers, an almost unnoticed government direction struck a revelatory chord. It affects people who came to Australia by boat and have been found to be refugees and have protection visas, stating that any applications they have made to bring family members to Australia must remain at the bottom of the pile. The brevity of the direction belies its enormous effects on the people affected by it.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Al Shabaab's grisly PR pitch

    • Evan Ellis
    • 27 September 2013
    3 Comments

    Last week most Australians had not heard of al Shabaab. But after a grisly four-day 'performance', complete with social media strategy, this has changed. The Nairobi shopping mall massacre was made for media consumption. Kenya might be tempted to simply seek revenge, but a measured, discriminate response that prioritised the safety of all Kenyans would allow the government to draw a line between the 'bad men' and themselves.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The sinister side of African Aid

    • Ellena Savage
    • 23 November 2012
    5 Comments

    The picture disturbed me: a small child, my own age, sitting beside an infant on the stoop of a simple wooden house with a dirt floor. I cried at their hopelessness, and my helplessness. The point was to make Australian kids aware of their economic privilege. But I wonder if it also made us believe in the weakness of others. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What Australia doesn't want East Timor to know

    • Pat Walsh
    • 05 April 2012
    10 Comments

    The famine of 1977–79 cut a swathe through East Timor's civilian population. Having failed to subdue the Timorese, the Indonesian military opted to starve them out. Details from that little-understood period are contained in cables that Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has blocked from public access.

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  • RELIGION

    St Patrick's Day talk

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 March 2012

    Text is from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's St Patrick's Day Celebration talk at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture, 17 March 2012.

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