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Keywords: Humanitarian

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Let slip the dogs of war: A tale of futility and bloody-mindedness

    • Dorothy Horsfield
    • 22 March 2022
    8 Comments

    Moscow-based Director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC)Dr Andrei Kortunov warned of its tragic consequences for Russia in an article published four days before the launch of his country’s invasion of Ukraine. The de facto partition of Ukraine, he said, as a result of the Kremlin’s recognition of the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, will signify ‘the final formalisation of the division of Europe’ from which there may be no easy retreat.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When ‘Good Refugees’ are admitted

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 21 March 2022
    12 Comments

    While Australia has developed into a multi-ethnic, cosmopolitan state based on immigration and humanitarian intakes, the country has never gotten away from the sense that some are simply more welcome than others. Be they migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, preferential treatment abounds.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope Francis in war and peace

    • Miles Pattenden
    • 15 March 2022
    19 Comments

    Even as he sustains the papacy’s now traditional opposition to all forms of war and its emphasis on the extreme suffering war brings, especially to the innocent, Pope Francis has, in recent weeks, taken a different, more partisan approach which he and others must feel is justified.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Is democracy going down the drain?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 24 November 2021
    31 Comments

    There is much discussion about the future of democracy, freedom and other aspects of liberal institutions. Mainly in the United States, under the pressure of a polarised public life. But also to a lesser extent in Australia, in the face of the evasive and authoritarian behaviour of governments and the manifest priority of winning elections over addressing the existential threats of global warming and gross inequality. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Revisiting American Dirt

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 04 November 2021
    14 Comments

    Writers inevitably learn bitter lessons, including one about readers who will be wounded, hurt, or at least deeply offended by their work. There is usually more than one group of these, for people become upset for reasons that are many and varied. Such is the case in the reaction to Jeanine Cummins’ fourth book, American Dirt. Cummins has been variously accused of stereotyping, racism, narcissism, and of lacking in empathy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    In the shadow of SIEV-X

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 November 2021
    38 Comments

    Two decades ago, an Indonesian vessel given the name SIEV X sank with loss of life that should have caused a flood of tears and a surge of compassion. Instead of being seen in humanitarian terms, the deaths of 353 people became a form of rich political capital, placed in the bank of opportunism to be amortised at a federal election.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    From persecution to protection and the purgatory in between

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 28 October 2021
    6 Comments

    Mark Twain is reported to have said ‘history does not repeat, it rhymes.’ Watching a US helicopter evacuating people from the US Embassy in Kabul, that was rhyming. Many have seen this picture before, 30 April 1975, but then it was Saigon. The massive confusion, mixed messages, terrified people, lack of human rights protection happened in 1975, and still happens in 2021.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Nuclear submarines surface questions of government spending

    • Vincent Long Van Nguyen
    • 28 September 2021
    12 Comments

    The Australian Government’s decision to buy nuclear-powered submarines has brought to the surface once again big questions around how governments should spend money, particularly during a pandemic. The Government has ditched a $90 billion plan for French submarines in favour of even more expensive boats from the United Kingdom or the United States.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What’s next for Afghanistan?

    • Hava Rezaie, Hayat Akbari, Zaki Haidari
    • 28 September 2021
    6 Comments

    It has now been over a month since the Taliban seized Kabul. As attention inevitably shifts elsewhere, the painful question arises: What's next? Is this another 'back to the future' moment? The signs are grim. Over the last two weeks, the Taliban have issued a number of edicts which demonstrate that their attitudes to women have not changed.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Tampa legacy 20 years on

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 September 2021
    23 Comments

    It took 438 desperate human beings upon the overladen wooden fishing boat, the KM Palapa, to present Australia’s Howard government in August 2001 with an electoral opportunity. At first, there was feigned ignorance from Canberra about any signs of desperation. The vessel, lacking power, lay some 100km off Christmas Island. Despite a coast guard plane noting men jumping up and down on the roof in a frenzy, nothing was initially done.

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  • CARTOON

    Friends in need

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 24 August 2021
    1 Comment

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  • RELIGION

    Cry of the Earth

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 August 2021
    11 Comments

    Last week the annual Catholic Social Justice Statement was launched. Entitled Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, its theme is care for the environment. In the same week the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report warned of the need for immediate and radical effort to minimise emissions and of the likely effects of their existing growth.

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