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Keywords: Middle East

  • ECONOMICS

    War is bad economics but very good business

    • David James
    • 09 May 2024

    There is money to be made in war, especially from making weapons, and what we are witnessing at the moment in Ukraine and the Middle East is simply the latest episode in a story that goes back centuries.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    An indelicate balance: Israel and Iran exchange blows

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 01 May 2024

    For decades, the major powers of Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia have kept a restraint on their hostile engagements, with preference given to battle waged via proxies. A recent Israeli air strike on Iranian offices in Syria and Iran's subsequent attack on Israel with 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 36 cruise missiles suggested that calculated restraint had been finally abandoned.

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  • MEDIA

    Influencing the influencers of Australian media

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 14 December 2023
    1 Comment

    Can a journalist responsibly undertake impartial reporting while receiving benefits? For an industry founded on the principle of publishing with neither fear nor favour, the acceptance of favours has possibly outweighed journalistic responsibility towards an Australian public seeking objective knowledge. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mates, spies and silence

    • Brian Matthews
    • 30 March 2021
    4 Comments

    The military police were waiting for us in Gallipoli and they were not happy. Approaching in darkness, when we rolled to a stop we were immediately surrounded by uniformed figures. A group of men playing cards outside a café watched this drama unfold and one shouted something which made them all laugh. The military police, however, did not laugh.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Crossing borders in a Kombi van

    • Brian Matthews
    • 16 February 2021
    6 Comments

    The border-obsessed times we live in reminded me of some really tough borders I encountered in years past. It is October 1961, the place: rural Turkey. Where you would have expected to roll on down the deserted dusty road, there is a boom gate and four sentries. This can’t be a border, however.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    UAE-Israel peace deal and the court of public opinion

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 25 August 2020
    5 Comments

    It is an open secret in the Middle East that many Arab governments have normal diplomatic and security relations with Israel. The taboo is in its public acknowledgment.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Idlib ceasefire holds for now in a not so civil war

    • Justin Glyn
    • 11 March 2020
    2 Comments

    Regardless of whether or not they are observed, the terms of the ceasefire are in themselves interesting. This is because they provide a healthy estimate of how two of the major external powers involved see the Syrian conflict at the moment.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Conflict in Middle East continues to heat up

    • Justin Glyn
    • 05 February 2020
    3 Comments

    The multi-front war in the Middle East continues to heat up. After the American assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the deputy leader of the Iraqi military’s Popular Mobilisation Committee at the start of the year, and the subsequent refusal of the US to heed the Iraqi Parliament’s request to end its occupation, the focus has recently moved back to the Syrian front.

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  • RELIGION

    New year epiphany in a burning world

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 15 January 2020
    7 Comments

    This New Year saw me becoming a Twitter tragic so that I could keep up with the news of disastrous fires in Australia, and fires of a different sort in the Middle East. It all seemed too much. On the day after Epiphany, a major feast day in the Orthodox Church, I found myself outside Kalamata's Church of the Archangels, and went in to light a candle.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Strategic blundering: Killing Soleimani

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 08 January 2020
    7 Comments

    With the killing of Soleimani, the US has signalled a redrawing of accepted lines in international combat and diplomacy. Most significantly, the killing will be a lightning rod for attacks this decision was meant to prevent even as it assists Iranian policy in expelling any vestige of US influence in Iraq and the broader Middle East.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hope and trepidation amid Lebanon unrest

    • Daniel Sleiman
    • 07 November 2019
    3 Comments

    Like many Lebanese Australians I've been watching the mass protests in Lebanon with hope and trepidation. Hope that government reforms, or a change of government, will bring about meaningful transformation in economic management, transparency and public services. Fearful because of the possibility of civil war.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Messiness unleashed by the attack on Saudi oil

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 16 September 2019
    9 Comments

    All of this has the hallmarks of danger. Previous US administrations have been cavalier with using stretched evidence, to justify military action. The region still labours with the fantasies that drove the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The dangers of misreading also extend to the cognitive failings of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

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