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Keywords: Soldier

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My pop's Anzac nightmares

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 24 April 2014

    As a stretcher bearer, he tended to two landmine victims, including one who had lost his leg. He spent the night darting between the two men, providing physical aid, and whatever comfort and assurance was possible. Turns out he was lucky that he didn't end up laid out alongside them: the next morning he discovered that the entire narrow ridge was riddled with mines. 'That was fairly close,' he admitted. It was an understatement.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Anzac myths beyond the Alan Bond test

    • Ray Cassin
    • 24 April 2014
    14 Comments

    In 1983, when his yacht Australia II won the America's Cup, Alan Bond hailed the feat as the greatest Australian victory since Gallipoli. His ludicrous misspeaking shows that by the 1980s the mythmakers' interpretation of the significance of Gallipoli was dominant. But the notion that the Diggers of Gallipoli and their successors in subsequent wars are somehow the paramount exemplars of Australian virtues does not survive scrutiny.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My brother the silent veteran

    • Julie Kean
    • 23 April 2014
    7 Comments

    I was 13 when he went to Vietnam. There was a kind of perverse status to be derived from having a brother called up for national service, and for him to head north of the equator was a further plus. When I participated in a Moratorium March it remained my secret. What did he see over there? What did he manage to forget over his subsequent 34 years? We'll never know because he never said. And he never participated in Anzac Day.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Philosophy of falling

    • Ailsa Piper
    • 18 September 2013
    9 Comments

    Waters fall. So does night. We fall asleep, sometimes because staying awake is too painful. Soldiers fall, and we mourn them. They are boys, many of them, so fall-able. We fall into love, and out of it again, like it is some dark hole. We forget that love should be about rising, because we have fallen back onto cliché. We go through life as though we will always be upright, and when we fall, it hurts.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    International law cannot justify attack on Syria

    • Justin Glyn
    • 30 August 2013
    7 Comments

    For the second time in a little over ten years, the US and its allies seem about to launch hostilities against an Arab country on the basis of the possession or use of chemical weapons. They have made clear that while they may seek a Security Council resolution, they do not consider themselves bound by it. This is worrying.

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  • RELIGION

    Why I still love the Catholic Church

    • Frank Brennan
    • 15 July 2013
    6 Comments

    Sean Faircloth, a US director of one of the Dawkins Institutes committed to atheism, raised what has already become a hoary old chestnut, the failure of Francis when in Argentina during the Dirty Wars to adequately defend his fellow Jesuits who were detained and tortured by unscrupulous soldiers. Being a Jesuit, I thought I was peculiarly well situated to respond. I confess to having got a little carried away.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My family connection to Aboriginal genocide

    • Paul Newbury
    • 30 April 2013
    24 Comments

    My great-grandfather John Eckersley Newbury was a convict and a squatter who became wealthy through a generous land policy and because his wife's family helped set him up on the land. During this period, the Kamilaroi of northern NSW fought a guerilla war of resistance against the British.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court hedges bets on free speech

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 26 April 2013
    5 Comments

    In 2011 the US Supreme Court found it was not unlawful for members of Westboro Baptist Church to stage inflammatory protests at the funerals of US soldiers, whom the church believes are killed by God to demonstrate disapproval at tolerance of gay people. You might say 'only America', but recently something similar nearly happened here. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's ten wasted years of war

    • Tony Smith
    • 19 March 2013
    14 Comments

    Gone are the days when Australians believed everyone deserved a fair go: the principle that 'might is right' has replaced the ideals of equity and justice in the national psyche. It is not surprising that after engaging in costly military actions over a decade Australians are more fearful now than when we invaded Iraq in 2003. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Child soldier learns murder and motherhood

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 March 2013

    Komona is just 12 when she is brutally conscripted by rebel soldiers. Before long she falls pregnant under horrific circumstances. The best that can be said about her situation is that it offers fragile hope that life may be made to flourish even in a landscape of violence and death.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Amish psychopaths and Gandhian action heroes

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 08 November 2012
    1 Comment

    A grief-stricken Amish man stalks and psychologically tortures the man who murdered his daughter. A Vietnamese veteran seeks vengeance on the American soldiers who slaughtered his fellow villagers. But for one alcoholic writer, the idea of absolving violence through violence jars with his pacifistic leanings.

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  • EUREKA STREET TV

    Conflict resolution through the arts

    • Peter Kirkwood
    • 07 September 2012
    1 Comment

    The tragic deaths of five Australian soldiers last week in Afghanistan highlights yet again the ongoing cross-cultural and interreligious violence that is very much a mark of our times. Usually we look for solutions to conflict through talking and negotiations. However interfaith minister Helen Summers does it through promotion of cultural activities.

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