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Keywords: Commander

  • AUSTRALIA

    Former terrorist pres a hard sell for Irish voters

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 20 September 2011
    5 Comments

    When it comes to leopards changing spots or terrorists turning into statesmen, former IRA chief-of-staff Martin McGuinnes is up there with Mandela and Mugabe. His entry into Ireland's presidential race on the weekend is significant, as the rest of the field is desolately dull.

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  • RELIGION

    Making friends not foes of rights and religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 September 2011
    5 Comments

    The Church of the 21st century should be the exemplar of due process, natural justice and transparency. While there can be little useful critique of the final decision of Pope Benedict to force the early retirement of Bishop Bill Morris, there is plenty of scope to review the processes leading up to it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Liberated Libya's fatal flaws

    • Anthony Ham
    • 12 September 2011
    3 Comments

    The disparate strands of Libya's revolution have been held together by a single unifying thread: a visceral desire to oust Gaddafi. Extremely effective as a rallying cry for rebellion, this anti-Gaddafi sentiment is deeply flawed as the unifying narrative for a new nation.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Myths of wartime good and evil

    • Zac Alstin
    • 15 August 2011
    22 Comments

    It is a weakness of human nature that we forgive in our friends what we despise in our enemies. If Germany or Japan had achieved a nuclear weapon and launched it on an Allied city, our condemnation would be unrelenting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Aung San Suu Kyi's inner freedom

    • Michael Mullins
    • 04 July 2011
    4 Comments

    Over the weekend, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd had the privilege of spending two hours with Burma’s pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi. In her Reith Lectures for the BBC, she explains that her release from house arrest last November was almost inconsequential. Freedom is something else.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Humiliating Gbagbo

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 14 April 2011

    Journalistic accounts of the defeat of Ivory Coast's Laurent Koudou Gbagbo seem to contain an unhealthy note of gloating. The Ghana Business News shows a more modest creature who posted his impressions on Twitter even as the crisis was unfolding. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Timor Diggers' guerilla war

    • Paul Cleary
    • 24 August 2010
    3 Comments

    Kevin Rudd's failure to embrace the Timor legend with more imagination and substance was a missed opportunity to connect with Labor's Second World War legacy. Wartime Prime Minister John Curtin saw the guerilla war in Timor as a unique and significant part of turning back the Japanese tide.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remember SIEV X before waging war on boat people

    • Tony Kevin
    • 06 July 2010
    14 Comments

    Julia Gillard has invited people to say what they feel on the issue of how Australia should manage its borders. It's worth recalling what happened when an Australian Government last instructed its defence force to vigorously repel asylum-seeker boats.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The real people of Afghanistan

    • Jan Forrester
    • 28 June 2010
    6 Comments

    I am struck by lurid online comment on whether Aussie troops should go or stay in Afghanistan, a miasma of old-left vs new-right trench exchanges, armchair military strategists and conspiracy theorists. As in the national game of Buzkashi, Afghanistan is a goat carcass fought over by a gaggle of teams.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How Balibo distorts history

    • Paul Cleary
    • 20 August 2009
    10 Comments

    The first feature length film about Indonesia's invasion of East Timor and the deaths of six Australian journalists fails to inform the audience of the diplomatic dirty tricks, and Australian and American complicity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The roots of Obama's Afghanistan strategy

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 10 July 2009
    4 Comments

    The current strategy is underpinned by a consensus on counter-insurgency that has gained ground since 2007. Marine Brigadier General Nicholson advocates drinking tea and eating goat with the locals, over and above firing bullets.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why people power won't reform Iran

    • Shahram Akbarzadeh
    • 23 June 2009
    3 Comments

    The disappointment of Iran's youths at the obviously rigged election results is now being played out in the streets in open defiance of the regime. Unfortunately the Islamic regime is in no mood to compromise.

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