Paul Sheehan
The Sydney Morning Herald
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Yet the Americans continue to ignore us. Twice in the past year, President Obama postponed a visit to Australia; now he’s canceled it altogether. “I don’t blame him” for having other priorities. I just wonder why our leaders can’t assert Australian priorities as well, rather than being “star-struck by the pomp of imperial Washington.” It is time to “stop wasting Australian lives on oiling the wheels of American favor.”
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Iraq: Al Qaida on the rise in Anbar provincefeature Last week, an al Qaida group—the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS—took control of the restive Sunni cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
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Nuclear deal: Iran celebrates while Israel grumbles
feature Is the deal with Iran a good one?
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Iraq: Undermining the sanctions on Iran
feature The Iraqi prime minister has become Iran’s proxy.
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Syria: Will the conflict widen to Turkey?
feature The Turkish parliament authorized cross-border raids into Syria after Syrian shells landed in Turkey and killed five people.
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Middle East: What comes after Syria’s collapse?
feature The quicker the Assad regime crumbles, the better off the whole region will be.
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Israel: Killing protesters in the Golan Heights
feature Israeli troops killed at least 20 people when they opened fire on hundreds of unarmed protesters who crossed into the Golan Heights.
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Can Syria’s president survive the Arab Spring?
feature Street protests, which started in mid-March in the conservative town of Daraa, have turned into the biggest crisis President Bashar al-Assad has faced since he succeeded his father 11 years ago.
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Brazil: The army takes on the drug gangs
feature It’s official: The army and the police have “reconquered” two of Rio de Janeiro’s worst slums, reclaiming them from the drug gangs that have run them for years, said Rodrigo Rötzsch in Brazil’s Folha.