May
4
2013
Enthusiasm vibrating in his voice, the poet and activist A. Samad Said tells the Courier-Mail he is pretty sure the government in Malaysia will be booted out after tomorrow’s national election. “I feel very confident,” he said. “It’s been great, every day of the campaign has been great.”
Apr
13
2013
Horror years of slaughter and depravity linger in the minds of hundreds of Queenslanders. Refugees from the mindless brutality of Cambodia’s killing fields, they breathe the free air of Australia and remember a time of starvation and blood-soaked despair. And they watch as the leaders of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime escape justice one by …read more
Mar
24
2013
John Graham Harper crouches in his gym in southern China, bending his muscled legs and concentrating. Then he leaps up, using the power in his thighs and calves to shoot him up in a tremendous bounce. He lands neatly on a waist-high structure, an impressive feat. “It’s all in the explosive force,” he says with …read more
Mar
16
2013
Seeing the rows of small masked faces on the school bus made it all very clear for Sharon Carr. She had lived in Beijing for five years, and she loved the city and loved the people. It was home. She had a good job; her husband enjoyed his work. Her five-year-old son Matthew and her …read more
Feb
20
2013
The mayor from impoverished Gansu province, in China’s remote north, should have kept his hands in his pockets. In late November Yuan Zhanting, mayor of Lanzhou, became the latest senior official accused of corruption by ever-vigilant Chinese microbloggers. Photos of Yuan wearing a succession of luxury watches were posted on China’s Twitter equivalent, the popular …read more
Feb
14
2013
Always anxious to boost Myanmar’s struggling economy, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been taking advice from one economist in particular – the Australian academic Dr Sean Turnell. The effective leader of the opposition in the long benighted country, Ms Suu Kyi recently told CNN that Dr Turnell was her “favourite economist”.
Jan
19
2013
High up on a balcony of the ornately pillared Sofaer’s building in downtown Yangon, a woman is pegging out the washing. She ignores the spreading mildew that stains the building’s crumbling façade and the weeds that sprout from cracks in the masonry. Silhouetted against a century of history, she steps neatly round a jerry-rigged television …read more
Jan
18
2013
Five years ago it would have been unthinkable. International literary festivals, where writers and readers speak freely and exchange ideas, were not permitted in shuttered Myanmar.
Dec
31
2012
High heels give a kick to New Year’s Eve parties; sashaying through a night of cocktails and canapés. Worn at weddings and to wakes, to summits and to war-rooms, heels are the event wear for women who are stepping out. But are heels losing their lift? After decades of elongating women’s silhouettes, lengthening their legs …read more
Nov
11
2012
The mainland’s internet universe is a closed book to nearly all Westerners – few know even the most rudimentary basics of spoken Putonghua, let alone have a grasp of the written language. Yet an explosion of interest in mainland microblogging sites, known as weibos (” weibo” loosely translates as “micro-blog”), has lured even resolutely monolingual …read more
