Iraq

Address to the US President

Comment

By Don Watson

Mr President, Thank you for making room in your busy schedule to see me while you are in Darwin. In the short time I have at your disposal, let me welcome you to our shores. I trust you have found your soldiers in good spirits and enjoying their vital role as guardians of our joint regional security. I hope they’re putting on plenty of sunscreen, Mr President. Our Aussie sun really burns. I

Afghanistan a Decade on from September 11

How We Lost the War

By Sally Neighbour

"The vast majority of the Taliban hadn't been driven anywhere," says Lieven. "They went back to their villages to wait and see what would happen. That was our opportunity to make a change in Afghanistan, to ensure they didn't re-emerge. But over the next few years we made such a shambles of it on the ground that they all took up arms again." The American-led effort, enthusiasticall

Geoffrey Robertson’s Life in the Law

Knight in Shining Armani

By Paola Totaro

Robertson has 13 books under his belt, among them The Tyrannicide Brief (2005), the story of John Cooke, the lawyer who prosecuted King Charles I in the treason trial that led to his execution. David Williamson and Robertson are now collaborating on turning the book into a play. Most recently, last year – on the eve of the first papal visit to the UK in nearly 30 years – Robertson published the fiery The Case of the Pope, arguing th

Chariots of Fire: Tony Blair’s Legacy

By Lindsay Tanner

Ten years later, Blair stepped down, exhausted and diminished. Bullied out of office by a relentless rival, a ravenous media and the accumulated weight of many disappointments, he moved on. Now that the government he led is also gone and Blair has recently published his memoirs, it’s an opportune time to examine his legacy.Few modern political figures have

David Lee’s 'Stanley Melbourne Bruce' and David Bird’s 'JA Lyons'

Balancing Acts

By Hugh White

Most of us think that for much of Australia’s history we have not really had a foreign policy. We assume our approach to the world has always been determined for us by our great and powerful friends – that Australia’s leaders have passively accepted poli

Julian Assange

The Cypherpunk Revolutionary

By Robert Manne

Julian Assange has told the story of his childhood and adolescence twice, most recently to a journalist from the New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian, and some fifteen years ago, secretly but in greater detail, to Suelette Dreyfus, the author of a fascinating book

Julian Assange

The Cypherpunk Revolutionary

By Robert Manne

Julian Assange has told the story of his childhood and adolescence twice, most recently to a journalist from the New Yorker, Raffi Khatchadourian, and some 15 years ago, secretly but in greater detail, to Suelette Dreyfus, the author of a fascinating book on the first g

Robert Manne on John Howard’s 'Lazarus Rising'

Man of Wood

By Robert Manne

Having wrestled with this long and boring book for six entire days, I was astonished when I finally realised how little I had discovered about John Howard or his government. Apart perhaps for Howard’s version of his testy relationship with Peter Costello, th

Damascus

Secret Worlds

By Robert Dessaix

For days I’ve just been mooching around the Old City in a dream, cocooned within its walls, time-travelling through the maze of its gloomy laneways, in and out of ancient mosques and palaces and churches. After all, that’s why you come to Damascus: to time-travel. W

Liu Xiaobo

A Nobel Affair

By Linda Jaivin

When I last checked, over 1 million readers had viewed this cryptic message. Among the more than 25,000 comments, the multiple effusions (“Love you!”) and myriad confusions (“Huh?”), was one that quoted from the first volume of Marx and Engels’ Colle

Our Intelligence Services

Hidden Agendas

By Sally Neighbour

This grand edifice is to be the new home of Australia’s premier spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Costed at a staggering $585 million, the building has been called a “monster” by the architect of Parliament House. Yet

The Defence Minister

Comment

By Hugh White

Why is defence so toxic to its ministers? It should be an easy job to look good in – hobnobbing with the Australian Defence Force (ADF), managing weighty matters of national security and spending a lot of money. Of course the portfolio has an unparalleled capacity to

Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks

The Man Who Fell to Earth

By John Birmingham

Semantics aside, it remained a benighted sinkhole, although nearly 1300 years of fierce parochialism and independence shone through even after Rahman’s conversion of the locals. During the Soviet occupation (1979–89), the area was renowned as a graveyard for Red Army conscripts. American forces pushed deep into the region after toppling Mullah Omar’s r

The States of the Nation

By David Malouf

It had of course, in history and in the history books, and we had a constitution to prove it, but not in the many places where Australians actually live: in Cunnamulla or Queenstown or Port Hedland, and not in those even more numerous places, the hearts of those of us who, without hesitation or doubt, call ourselves Australians, and have a vivid sense of what the country itself is, but in our dail

The Battle for Bennelong: Round Two

By Nick Bryant

An affectionate type, she embraces a couple of familiar-looking locals and sits down for a quick natter with a group of elderly ladies before taking the microphone to a ripple of appreciative applause from the mainly grey-haired audience. As you would expect f

'War' by Sebastian Junger

By John Birmingham

It might seem strange and contrary, but among the many surprising truths in Sebastian Junger’s brilliant evocation of 15 months, on and off, spent at the front in Afghanistan is the presence of love at the heart of war. The strong bond that can develop betwe

UK Elections

Comment

By John Keane

Last month’s hung parliament in the British election confirms a basic rule of modern politics: whenever markets fail, representative democracy falters. Not just in the UK, but throughout the European Union, the near collapse of the credit and banking system is fuellin

Swinger

By Dennis Altman

At one point in Hitch-22: A Memoir (Atlantic Books, 352pp; $35.00) Christopher Hitchens writes: “As 1968 began to ebb into 1969 … people began to intone the words: ‘The personal is political’. At the instant I heard this deadly expression I knew … that it was – cliché is arguably forgivable here – very bad news.” But what is the point of writing memoirs if the personal is irreleva