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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.
In her tweed skirt and sensible shoes, 60-something church elder, Sigrid, doesn’t look like a revolutionary. She carries neither iPhone nor gun. But revolutionary she is, having been at the heart of a movement that toppled an oppressive regime, thawed the Cold War and brought down the Berlin Wall.
Last week’s tragedy of another mass loss of life at sea between Indonesia and Christmas Island focuses our minds yet again on an intractable public policy problem for Australia – our search for a coherent, workable and moral asylum policy.
The US pursuit of Assange is being played out with the cooperation of other western democracies. Last week a British court rejected his appeal against extradition to Sweden. The UK government could overrule this, as it did for Chilean dictator Pinochet in 1998. But it looks as if they won't repeat the favour for Assange.
Australian aid worker David Savage was severely injured by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. The Taliban tried to kill him in revenge for the shooting of 17 unarmed Afghan civilians by a deranged American soldier. In more innocent times aid workers were regarded as angels by all sides.
In high school, I'd hack my hair into asymmetrical experiments, dye it impossible colours, and layer myself with kitsch op-shop garments. I was another precocious teenager who wore her individuality on the outside. Right now in Iraq, teenagers like I was are being murdered as 'homosexuals'.
The High Commissioner for Refugees has warned Australians about 'populist explanations ... and fears that are overblown'. He clearly had the Coalition in mind. One-liners and slogans don't make for credible refugee policy. Neither does recycling failed policies of the past.
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.
Despite Obama's insistance that the use of drones in Pakistan 'is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists', civilian casualties are inevitable. Australia is also phasing in the use of drones.
I don't think for one minute that Abbott, in saying it was time to 'move on' from the Tent Embassy, meant it should be ripped down. The ensuing riot occurred because 'moving on' is an imponderable phrase, a synonym for sticking one's head in the sand.
He presided over a starving nation, created an unstable nuclear state, and terrified his neighbours. But the death of Kim Jong-il should cause neither terror nor concern as much as the experts would have it.
We'll miss his intellectual rigour, self-deprecating humour, unpredictable political perspectives, unforgiving character evaluations, and iconoclastic appetite for scrutiny and transparency — even those of us appalled by his vicious and discriminatory anti-religious bigotry.
181-192 out of 200 results.