By Bill Frilay 2009 was a year of hope for nuclear disarmament. After many fruitless years there seems to be a will by the key players – especially the Obama administration – to take real action. But there is a long way to go, and there are many problems. As Copenhagen and Doha have demonstrated, […]
By Bruce Duncan The papal World Day of Peace on 1 January each year has become a landmark reflection on the state of the world, capturing feelings of good will during the Christmas season, and focusing hopes about human wellbeing, peace and development. However development experts may not be entirely happy with the 2009 statement. […]
By Bruce Duncan Taking seriously their convictions to oppose unjust violence and war, a small group of people continue to employ non-violent methods to oppose Australia’s involvement with arms manufacturers and organisations involved with the Iraq war. The group, ‘Christians Against ALL Terrorism’, this year have staged a number of protests outside Raytheon offices in […]
By Bruce Duncan, Eureka Street, (November 2003), 22-23. The failure by the United States to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq raises disturbing questions for Australians. Our intelligence agencies should be reeling from the massive failure in US and British intelligence. Why was their advice so wrong? Was it simply incompetence, or was […]
Bruce Duncan CSsR, Interface 6, 2 (October 2003), 38-54. President George W Bush in 2002 formally enunciated as part of US foreign policy a claim to a right to pre-emptive strike against countries that posed a threat or challenged its military superiority. The claim raised concerns internationally that the United States was adopting a more […]
by Bruce Duncan, Catholic Weekly, 20 April 2003,11. Pope John Pail II’s opposition to the Iraq war has been raising difficult questions for Catholics, especially in the United Stats itself. The Wall Stree Journal editorialised that “a strain in John Paul’s thinking…. Sits uncomfortably with 1500 years of Catholic teaching on the legitimate use to […]
by Bruce Duncan CSsR Sydney: Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, [March] 2003, pp.56. Catholic Social Justice Series no. 47. The debate about whether western countries should intervene militarily in Iraq has been difficult, even at times heated, with powerful vested interests and political careers at stake, not to mention the lives of tens of thousands […]
By Bruce Duncan, Canberra Voice, (September 2002). Truth is the first casualty in war, according to the old adage, as memories of Australia’s experience of the Vietnam War might confirm. Hence recent statements by members of the government talking up the prospects of war with Iraq invite a searching scrutiny. It is not `appeasement’ to […]
