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Commentary Burchill: What exactly are we witnessing?

Commentary, September, 17 2004 Scott Burchill
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Politically motivated violence which accepts no limits or constraints and makes no distinction between combatants and civilians is indefensible, both morally and tactically. Public horror and outrage at recent events in the Caucasus and again in I...

Commentary Burchill: Resistance, Collaboration And Terrorism

Commentary, July, 13 2004 Scott Burchill
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They were called "dead-enders," then "Saddam loyalists" and "remnants of the old regime." This was when the Pentagon was in denial about the insurgency it faced in Iraq. Later it was "foreign terrorists," whom we were told it was better to confron...

Commentary Burchill: Public Amnesia And Hypocrisy Needed To Justify War On Iraq

Commentary, October, 12 2002 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

Trying to convince a sceptical population why Australia could soon be at war with Iraq is proving a major test of opinion management for the Howard Government.

Commentary Burchill: If Weapons Were Found

Commentary, September, 15 2002 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

The English historian A.J.P. Taylor once argued that the principal difference between the methodologies of the lawyer and the historian was that "the lawyer aims to make a case; the historian wishes to understand a situation." According to Taylor,...

Commentary Burchill: Australia and Indonesia Reach an Understanding

Commentary, February, 20 2002 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

The surprise decision by the Indonesian Government to propose a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Australia for combating international terrorism, is one of the cleverest diplomatic initiatives ever made in South East Asia.

Commentary Burchill: Australia's Nightmare

Commentary, January, 24 2002 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

When US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz announced recently that "going after al Qaeda in Indonesia is not something that should wait until after Al Qaeda has been uprooted from Afghanistan", a shiver must have gone up the collective spine ...

Commentary Burchill: The End of Cosmopolitanism?

Commentary, November, 22 2001 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

If it didn't have such disastrous consequences for some of the world's most desperate people, it would be amusing to watch the advocates of economic globalisation suddenly start championing border protection.

Commentary Burchill: Corrected: Mad, Bad, Dangerous To Know

Commentary, October, 26 2001 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

WASHINGTON'S decision to renew friendships with the Northern Alliance for its war against al-Qa'ida and the Taliban provides clues as to what George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard mean by "our values".

Commentary Burchill: The US, Indonesia, and Terror

Commentary, October, 01 2001 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

In a bid to build its coalition for a war against terrorism, the United States has demonstrated that it is keen to have on side the world's biggest Islamic nation, Indonesia. Support from Indonesia, an ally of the United States from the late 1960s...

Commentary Burchill: Megawati's Indonesia and US regional policy

Commentary, August, 21 2001 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

Following the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, security issues in the East Asian region are starting to look much clearer. A widespread belief that Indonesia is edging towards disintegration s...

Commentary Burchill: The East Timorese of Western Sahara

Commentary, March, 02 2001 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

1975 was an extraordinary year for revolutionary upheavals in the Third World. The Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh in April just two weeks before the US puppet regime in Saigon collapsed. The Pathet Lao took control of Laos the following month...

Commentary Burchill: Australia & East Timor: Senate Passes Judgement

Commentary, December, 22 2000 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

Largely unnoticed last week amongst the publicity splash produced by the release of a new Australian Defence White Paper, another significant parliamentary report quietly entered the public domain. The Australian Senate Committee enquiry into Aust...

Commentary Burchill: Heroes and Villains

Commentary, August, 16 2000 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

In his first lecture on Indonesian soil after being banished for 26 years, Benedict Anderson spoke about the bewildered expression on the faces of his Indonesian students over the years at Cornell University whenever he asked them "who in Indonesi...

Commentary Burchill: The Problem With Panic Merchants

Commentary, July, 06 2000 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

Some just never learn. From the same people who told us that East Timor should not and would not become independent, now comes the argument that the people of West Papua should also be denied the right to determine their political arrangements.

Commentary Burchill: New Rules of Engagement

Commentary, May, 18 2000 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

In the first weeks of September last year, 70% of all public buildings and private residences in East Timor were destroyed. At least 75% of the population of the territory was displaced, with over 260,000 people being driven across the border into...

Commentary Burchill: The Limits of Thinkable Thought

Commentary, February, 04 2000 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

In societies which like to call themselves free and open, liberty is usually defined in contrasting terms. State propaganda and indoctrination, for example, are said to be exclusive characteristics of unfree or totalitarian states at both ends of ...

Commentary Burchill: A Fresh Start

Commentary, November, 05 1999 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

Sometimes statistics tell a grim tale. In the first weeks of September this year, 70% of all public buildings and private residences in East Timor were destroyed. At least 75% of the population of the territory was displaced, with over 260,000 peo...

Commentary Burchill: Marx on Globalization

Commentary, July, 24 1999 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

In the 1850s, Karl Marx believed that the spread of capitalism, or what today we would call globalization, was transforming human society from a collection of separate nation-states to a world capitalist society where the principal form of conflic...

Commentary Burchill: The Transition to Democracy in Indonesia: Australian Perspectives

Commentary, June, 14 1999 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

By propping up the Suharto dictatorship for over three decades, both sides of Australian politics clearly demonstrated what they thought about the prospect of democracy in Indonesia.

Commentary Burchill: Kosovo and East Timor

Commentary, April, 20 1999 Scott Burchill
Burchill's ZSpace page

The arrest of Care Australia's Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace by Serb authorities exposes more than the risks faced by aid workers in a war which masquerades as "humanitarian relief". It also reveals the perils faced by good people as a result of t...

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