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Author: Justin Glyn

  • INTERNATIONAL

    A new narrative after Christchurch & Colombo

    • Justin Glyn
    • 26 April 2019
    10 Comments

    No security measures will ever be able to suppress inclinations to hatred or violence which grow in the depths of the human heart. And yet there is a difference between Colombo and Christchurch which might be worth exploring. Paradoxically, the most useful things that governments can do are those which are least often tried.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hypocrisy in Australian-Turkish chest puffing

    • Justin Glyn
    • 25 March 2019
    7 Comments

    The stoush between Erdogan (who said New Zealanders and Australians visiting Turkey would leave it 'in coffins ') and Morrison (all options to erase this insult were 'on the table') amounts to less than meets the eye. But it speaks volumes about what a toxic brew hypocrisy and the prospect of a forthcoming election can produce.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    People with disabilities need royal commission

    • Justin Glyn
    • 06 March 2019
    3 Comments

    Last month, Parliament mandated a royal commission into the treatment of people with disabilities. Now we hear it will not proceed before hearing from all states and territories. People with disabilities are most in need of strong centralised protections. The federal government, while giving with one hand, has been taking with the other.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Trump, turtles and the new nuclear threat

    • Justin Glyn
    • 24 October 2018
    5 Comments

    While nuclear weapon stockpiles have reduced massively since the 1980s, the major arms controls treaties have been gradually eroded. At the same time, and even more dangerously, the world has seen a repudiation of the diplomacy which limited the numbers of nuclear weapons and which has prevented their accidental use.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Iran sabre-rattling is not in Australia's interest

    • Justin Glyn
    • 27 September 2018
    4 Comments

    Australia has too many security and diplomatic interests in Iran to squander lightly. The fact its officials are willing to jettison these without getting anything in return vindicates the suggestion that the rather nebulous fact of relationship with the US features much more heavily in Australia's security calculus than its own interests.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Bad habits die hard in Australia and Syria

    • Justin Glyn
    • 18 September 2018
    4 Comments

    What do the Liberal leadership spill and the Syrian War have in common? Both demonstrate how force of habit, like any other force built up over a long period of time, is very difficult to stop, even when the results are plainly self destructive.

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  • RELIGION

    What canon law is for

    • Justin Glyn
    • 08 August 2018
    21 Comments

    Canon law, not usually a household term, has come into the public eye of late, especially in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse. Given this newfound prominence, it seems a good time to have a look at what canon law is — and what it isn't.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Russian spy games: a Novichok fact check

    • Justin Glyn
    • 19 March 2018
    15 Comments

    It's like the plot of a John Le Carre novel: A former double agent found unconscious on a park bench; allegations Mother Russia poisoned him with a secret nerve agent; diplomatic repercussions. Before assuming life imitates art, it would be well to check our facts, not least because stumbling into war with a nuclear power is a silly thing to do.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Belle of the ball: A Syrian morality tale

    • Justin Glyn
    • 23 January 2018
    1 Comment

    Assuming the world is a stage upon which we are the pre-eminent player is problematic when applied to real life, particularly if we happen to have some advantage which allows us to get away with the illusion for a time. The perils of such hubris can be seen particularly acutely in the current Syrian situation.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Best of 2017: The rationality of Kim Jong Un

    • Justin Glyn
    • 11 January 2018
    1 Comment

    The ongoing talk of war with North Korea and the threat of nuclear weapons has everybody dusting off their copies of Dr Strangelove and rewatching that classic black farce of innuendo, misunderstanding and paranoia in an age of Mutually Assured Destruction.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Rights are a luxury in the age of national security

    • Justin Glyn
    • 06 October 2017
    7 Comments

    In this time of austerity I am pleased and proud that Our Glorious Leader has decided to curtail the luxuries which we had formerly enjoyed ... for our own good, of course. I refer, of course, to our rapidly diminishing pool of civil liberties.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What we think we know about the Syrian war

    • Justin Glyn
    • 19 September 2017
    8 Comments

    You could be forgiven for never having heard of Deir ez-Zor. There is virtually no mention of it in the Western press, except by British journalist Robert Fisk. Yet this ancient Syrian city of just over 200,000 people on the banks of the Euphrates is the site of what looks to be the final defeat of the dream of ISIS of creating an ethnically cleansed, sectarian caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

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