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Inside Story | Current affairs and culture

• Essays & reportage


• On relations with trees
• 24 June 2009

• Melissa Sweet returns to a life in the Australian bush


• Suburban mayhem
• 17 June 2009

• The Slap captures contemporary Australian life? Andrew Lynch isn’t so sure

• Politics & policy


• One man’s ambition
• 02 July 2009

• Norman Abjorensen previews Liberal Rule, the “best effort yet at coming to grips with these extraordinary years”


• The waiting game
• 29 June 2009

• That old diplomatic stand-by, “masterly inactivity,” might well be the best response to the events in Iran, writes Kevin Boreham

• Media & culture


• A revolution you can bet on
• 02 July 2009

• When the Communist Party bought a lotto ticket this week, Comrade Michael Lasky inevitably sprang to mind, writes Brett Evans.


• Nineteen Eighty-Four turns sixty
• 09 June 2009

• It hasn’t happened yet, but Nineteen Eighty-Four has enough threads of prescience to keep us alert, writes Brian McFarlane

• From the archive


• We have still not lived long enough
• 16 February 2009

• Testimony from the 1939 and 2009 fires suggests there is one thing we never seem to learn from history, writes Tom Griffiths


• The diaspora fights back
• 04 December 2008

• Rugby star David Campese, Victorian Labor MP Carlo Carli and Argentinean millionaire Luigi Pallaro (pictured) all took a keen interest in Italy’s experiment in democracy. But it looked a lot like politics as usual, reports James Panichi

• Podcasts


• Uniting the opposition in Iran
• 25 June 2009

• Ali Ansari, director of the Iranian Institute at the University of St Andrews, talks to Peter Clarke about the growing split in Iran’s ruling elite


• Democracy gains momentum in Iran
• 07 June 2009

• Ali Ansari describes to Peter Clarke how the economic downturn and the sidelining of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council have thrown open this Friday’s presidential election

• Asia & the Pacific


• Personal reasons
• 02 July 2009

• New Zealand’s National Party government has lost its first minister, while Labour easily retained Helen Clark’s old seat, writes Norm Kelly


• Getting serious about Pakistan
• 18 June 2009

• Pakistan needs a greater Australian investment in dollars and people, writes Geoffrey Barker

• The economy


• The American puzzle
• 28 May 2009

• A new book argues that inequality is bad for everyone. And even critics concede that the United States is both unusually unequal and a poor social performer, writes John Quiggin


• Another Budget lockup
• 13 May 2009

• How does the Budget look if you’ve been going into the lock-up since 1952? The Press Gallery’s longest-serving member, Rob Chalmers, reports from Canberra

• Europe


• In defence of rorting
• 04 June 2009

• The target of the public’s vengeance for the failure of the Thatcherite/Blairite compact has shifted from bankers to MPs, writes Frank Bongiorno in London


• The cruellest month
• 18 May 2009

• Everyone seems to have some sort of camera these days, as the British Police are discovering to their cost, writes Frank Bongiorno

• Africa


• The two Islamists
• 23 May 2009

• With two former allies battling for control of Mogadishu, Somalia’s transitional government faces a fresh challenge, writes Xan Rice


• Zuma unleashed
• 08 April 2009

• The less glorious traditions of the ANC have been on vivid display during South Africa’s election campaign, writes Nic Dawes

• The Americas


• Adjusting to change
• 17 April 2009

• Don’t expect a revolution in US foreign policy, writes Andy Butfoy


• The philosopher politician
• 10 March 2009

• Will another liberal intellectual lead a party to power, this time in Canada? Fred Fletcher profiles Michael Ignatieff

• Reviews


• Gulfs of desire
• 15 June 2009

• Peter Craven reviews Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn


• The new black
• 19 May 2009

• Sylvia Lawson reviews Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah and this year’s Message Sticks festival