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Keywords: Catastrophe

  • AUSTRALIA

    Watching as Iraq crumbled

    • Donna Mulhearn
    • 20 March 2013
    9 Comments

    I sat with my Iraqi friend in his photo store. I was his last customer, he said; the bombs would begin tomorrow. And then he began to weep. I remember thinking that his life, and the lives of others like him, would not be given a second's thought once the invasion started. The next day, the bombs began.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fear is the enemy of democracy

    • Michael Mullins
    • 04 March 2013
    22 Comments

    Opposition Immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison called for a suspension of asylum seekers being released into the community, on the basis of a single violent incident. Fairfax Media showed these people are about 45 times less likely to be charged with a crime than members of the public. A fear mongering politician appears to have more credibility than the facts.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Practical solutions to climate despair

    • Lyn Bender
    • 13 December 2012
    21 Comments

    The Doha climate talks have come and gone, and it is all business as usual. Actually, it is full steam ahead with coal, despite dire warnings from the World Bank that if we don't turn down the heat we face clear threats to our great god, The Economy. While denial and despair are tempting options at this point, there are healthier ways to respond.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Minority Government stands the test of time

    • John Warhurst
    • 07 December 2012
    13 Comments

    Whatever happens now there will be no election until March 2013 at the earliest. This means the Gillard Labor Government will go almost full term despite relentless pressure from the Opposition, a hung parliament and a raft of controversies. But survival is not the same as victory. It has come at a cost.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rembrandt's denial of Christ

    • Grant Fraser
    • 30 October 2012
    5 Comments

    Peter, I gave you such handsome possibilities, had your face shining like a saint, and yet still, on this third occasion, you can only find a lie.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A day in the life of a nun

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 03 October 2012
    6 Comments

    The convent has a history of catastrophe at the hands of invaders like the Franks and the Turks, not to mention the earthquake of 1986 and fires of 2007. There are now only two nuns in buildings designed to hold 100. One announces that she would rather someone plunged a dagger in her heart than be forced to leave.

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  • EDUCATION

    Teachers are wrong about performance pay

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 14 June 2012
    19 Comments

    The Victorian Government plans to introduce performance pay for teachers. The teachers' union has objected on the grounds that teachers are special. Its argument is faulty. Performance pay is not wrong for teachers because they are special, but because it is wrong for everybody.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Letter from a lost soldier

    • Brian Matthews
    • 27 April 2012
    5 Comments

    'I wish this war was finished for I am fed up. My dear Ann, you and the children try to be as cheery as you can. I feel all buggered up but I shall just have to carry on the best way I can ... we are on another front now and it is actually hell ...' Whatever ambiguous solace Annie could derive from Alex's letter, it was soon lost.

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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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  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Australia underwater

    • Selma Sergent
    • 07 September 2011
    13 Comments

    A lot of people refused to leave. Sydneysiders with waterfront properties could not fathom that the mansions that had cost them millions of dollars were going to be under water. There were stories of eastern suburbs socialites loading their antiques into boats. And drownings. Lots of drownings.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    North Korea's human rights time bomb

    • Lucas Smith
    • 15 July 2011
    4 Comments

    As the world watches the ongoing catastrophe in Syria, state-sponsored destruction of a much quieter but no less brutal kind is afflicting North Korea. Even while the country anticipates next year's 100th birthday of state founder and 'Eternal President' Kim Il-sung, NGOs are reporting that it may have run out of food.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sketching an icon of refugee resilience

    • Vacy Vlazna
    • 06 July 2011
    11 Comments

    I first saw Handala in a painting in the wretched Bourj al Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut. In Palestine, Handala is loved and cherished as a symbol of steadfast resistance. But he transcends Palestine: he represents every suffering child.

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