Keywords: First World War
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 29 January 2014
15 Comments
'Don't mention the war!' admonishes John Cleese as the hapless hotelier Basil Fawlty in the classic television comedy series Fawlty Towers. With a string of war-related anniversaries to take place over the next four years, beginning this year with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, we may soon find ourselves sharing Fawlty's sentiments.
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AUSTRALIA
- Megan Graham
- 16 October 2013
10 Comments
Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne wrote that the real tragedy of poverty is not that we do not care about the poor, but that we do not know the poor. As my memories of particular brushes with people living in poverty fade, feelings of empathy begin to lose their potency; a natural attrition when their reality, so distant from my own, is so lost among the 'First World Problems' of my inner city life.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Gillian Bouras
- 02 October 2013
12 Comments
The International Day of Non-Violence on 2 October coincides with the birthday of Gandhi, who pioneered the concept of political non-violence and the notion of passive resistance, and paid the highest price for his moral choices. A great many people, like Gandhi, desire a non-violent world, in which whistleblowers and thoughtful, idealistic individuals are honoured rather than punished.
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AUSTRALIA
- Walter Hamilton
- 28 August 2013
5 Comments
A source quoted on a TV news report said the forthcoming Liberal Party attack ads would 'make the Somme look like a Sunday afternoon picnic'. Crass and disrespectful of the victims of the First World War killing ground, the remark saw fit to compare our political process to a mindless slaughter. Similarly, in Labor's Grim Reaper style ads, hapless 'victims' of Coalition policies are consigned to oblivion.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 05 August 2013
14 Comments
If the last three years have been like the first three years of the First World War, now is the time for a final blitzkrieg. The treatment of people who seek protection in Australia is not simply one of many election issues. It is a measure of how far each political party will go, how much damage each will be prepared to do to Australia's honour, reputation, economic interests and relationships in order to gain and hold power.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins
- 05 December 2012
4 Comments
Hindrance Day was conceived as a means of commemorating the millions of acts of self-indulgence that marked the First Gillard-Abbott war on unAustralians. The concept of two minutes' ignorance was popularly adopted across what was left of the civilised world and became a key ritual of the annual celebrations.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 30 April 2012
4 Comments
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor's conviction by an international criminal court for crimes against humanity is the first conviction of a head of state since World War II. It does little to change the fact that it remains notoriously difficult to bring heads of state to trial for grave crimes.
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ENVIRONMENT
- Drew Taylor
- 12 January 2010
1 Comment
Australian online and wireless games constitute a rapidly-growing, billion-dollar industry, and sites such as Facebook increasingly dominate our social networks. Have we taken the first step towards 'trusting the computer' too much? October 2009
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ENVIRONMENT
- Drew Taylor
- 06 October 2009
10 Comments
Australian online and wireless games constitute a rapidly-growing, billion-dollar industry, and sites such as Facebook increasingly dominate our social networks. Have we taken the first step towards 'trusting the computer' too much?
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AUSTRALIA
- Nick Toscano
- 20 April 2009
43 Comments
Although it was a military disaster, the battle of Gallipoli was a defining moment in Australia's history. But that same battle also marked a nation's destruction: a campaign was underway to exterminate the Armenian race.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brenda Niall
- 18 April 2008
1 Comment
Many Irishmen volunteered to fight for Britain in the
First World War. Others took part in the 1916 Easter Rising and subsequent struggle for independence. Like Gallipoli the previous year, the doomed Rising became a legend more
powerful than a military success could have been.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Brenda Niall
- 22 February 2008
1 Comment
Irina Sibley experienced hunger, displacement and bewilderment as a child in war-torn Lithuania. But the first two sentences of her memoir are optimistic: 'A girl-child is born,' she announces. 'It is me.'
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