Not Always Diplomatic: An Australian Woman’s Journey Through International Affairs (University of Western Australia Press, 2020)
I first met Sue Boyd in Hanoi, where she was Australia’s Ambassador to Vietnam. She was an intriguing figure, combining a razor-sharp intellect, calm professionalism and a sense of command in official settings, and an irreverent wit in more relaxed contexts. She was observably highly effective as Australia’s representative in Vietnam: businesslike, personable and lacking in the pomposity that infected other diplomats.
Now retired, Boyd has produced a memoir,
Not Always Diplomatic: An Australian Woman’s Journey Through International Affairs. For anyone interested in Australian diplomatic history it will be an informative and entertaining read.
E-Club Caraibe Martinique donation of wheelchairs, walkers
March 1, 2021
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St. Lucia’s sister island of Martinique has once again lent its efforts to the war against COVID-19.
The Department of External Affairs recently received a variety of medical items from the E-Club Caraibe Association of Martinique on behalf of the Ministry of Health & Wellness. The donation included wheelchairs, canes, tripods and walkers.
Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Department of External Affairs, Guillaume Simon, notes the expression of generosity is not the first from the island of Martnique nor its home-grown organization.
“The E-Club Caraibe has donated previously to the government of St. Lucia and specifically to the department of health. So we are extremely grateful to the E-Club Caraibe of Martnique and of course through our consulate in Martinique for those donations to the Ministry of Health to help in the fight against COVID-19”
Ongoing state support for East European émigré groups with deep fascist roots
by Richard Sanders / January 21st, 2021
For decades the Canadian government has been supporting East European émigré associations whose much-revered founders, leaders and war heroes include veterans of Waffen SS divisions and other fascist military formations, perpetrators of the Holocaust and other ethnic-cleansing campaigns, officials from and apologists for Nazi puppet regimes, postwar CIA propaganda assets, proponents of Cold War terrorist groups like the US-armed Nicaraguan
contras and Afghan
mujahideen, and other virulently anticommunist “freedom fighters” and their ideologues.
Over the past few years alone, the most influential of these ethno-nationalist émigré organizations those representing the right-wing Ukrainian diaspora have received millions of dollars in Canadian government grants and contributions. For many decades, the Canadian government’s financial largesse has hel
Mother and baby homes report fails to fully address the issue of illegal adoptions
It is estimated that 15% of children born in Ireland s mother and baby homes were illegally adopted, but this week s report has left the issue officially at least hidden in plain sight
Newspapers in the 1950s were able to report that hundreds of children were being flown to the US and the work of researchers including Conall Ó Fátharta and Mike Milotte make it clear that Ireland was the centre of a vast international forced adoption ring. Picture: iStock
Thu, 14 Jan, 2021 - 11:00
Neil Michael
It’s easy to see how Tuam defined public perceptions of mother and baby homes.
80 years ago: Nazi warplanes over Newbridge as bombs hit Ballymany
Historian Liam Kenny recalls how a stray German aircraft triggered a diplomatic war when it unloaded bombs near the Curragh racecourse in January 1941
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It was a New Year’s gift as unwelcome as it was unexpected. In the early hours of January 2, 1941, as the people of Newbridge slept under the thin security blanket of Irish neutrality, a stray Nazi plane droned overhead and unleashed a torrent of bombs to the west of the town.
High explosive projectiles plunged earthwards, scouring craters in the ground on the edge of the Curragh racecourse and in the pastures of Ballymany Stud.