Category: Current Affairs
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A VOTE FOR COMPASSION
In November 1976 I got my first chance to vote in a US presidential election. I was a newly minted 18-year-old and eager to help shape the course of the nation. I voted for Jimmy Carter. And I’ve never regretted how I cast my first vote. Historians rate President Carter as being in the ‘middle-of-the-pack’
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ALONE IN HOTEL QUARANTINE
As Padma, Joseph and I hit the tarmac at the Perth International Airport on Tuesday night we knew our real adventure was only about to begin. The dreaded forced hotel quarantine awaited us. We had read online of so many experiences of Aussies in quarantine; so many folks just couldn’t cope with being locked up
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STRANDED!
Padma, Joseph and I have something in common with 19,000 … or 100,000 depending on who is counting … Aussies. We can’t get home. Yet there are plenty of airlines eager to fly us to Australia and no shortage of hotels who will quarantine us and who are desperate to fill empty rooms. In July,
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THE BATTLE OF VERDUN – A CENTURY LATER
As we turn our attention this weekend to the centenary of the signing of the armistice to end World War I, I look back at a visit that Padma, Xander, Joseph and I took this summer to a battlefield in France which proved to be the ultimate test of human endurance. The Battle of Verdun
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AN AUSSIE MEAT PIE TO SAY THANKS
I’ve been waiting 21 years to say ‘thank you’ to former Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer. Today I got that chance and bought him an Aussie meat pie to show my gratitude. In 1996, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his deputy Tim Fischer acted swiftly and decisively to launch a gun buyback program.
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AMERICA FIRST. EARTH LAST.
I’m not going to comment on why I feel Mr Trump’s announcement today of withdrawing from the Paris Accord was so reckless. Why bother? I’m preaching to the converted amongst (most of) my Facebook friends. Most of the ‘facts’ he presented today have already been debunked. He kind of just said ‘We’re out because I
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THE LION OF DAMASCUS AND HIS PRIDE
Like any father, Hafez al-Assad would be rolling over in his grave if he knew his son, Bashar, was being portrayed by the Trump Administration via Press Secretary Sean Spicer as worse than Hitler. Hafez (picture above in this 1993 photo I took near Qamishli) never envisioned that his youngest son, Bashar, would succeed him.
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WHATABOUTISM
For a number of weeks now as I’ve observed the political debate in the United States I’ve been searching for a certain term. A term used to describe a behaviour used by some in an argument to point out the opposing view’s hypocrisy. I found the term I was looking for: whatboutism or the UK’s
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AUSSIES IN VIETNAM WAR
“Australia, they fought alongside us in wars including losing over 500 brave Australians in the Vietnam War, which some of us remember.” US Republican Senator John McCain, 2 February 2017. I appreciate that Senator McCain spoke out on behalf of Australia. Some of us might not have known that little fact he delivered in his
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