John Martinkus

Paulie Stewart’s autobiography All the Rage nails it. He explains how the death of his brother Tony Stewart – one of the five Australian journalists killed by the Indonesians in Balibo in October 1975 – changed his life. The actions of …

Escalating violence in Papua has led to the deaths of more than 30 student protesters, echoing the military’s brutality in Timor-Leste and Aceh in previous decades.

The roots of the tension between the Australian government and the Timorese stretch far beyond the bugging scandal exposed by Witness K. Many believe John Howard’s peacekeeping initiatives at the end of the ’90s were too little and too late.

West Papuan rebels have declared their province a war zone and appealed to the United Nations for assistance, as they vow to violently resist Indonesian rule until independence talks are entered into.

The Indonesian military has employed airstrikes in West Papua – suspected to include the banned chemical weapon white phosphorus – as a retaliation for murders following a flag-raising protest.

As bombs from Russian and Syrian government forces rain down on Aleppo, the city has become an ‘apocalyptic battlefront’ with civilians as collateral damage and foreign aid unable to get through.

“Nauru is a client state of Australia and does exactly what Canberra orders. For the prime minister to claim otherwise is downright fanciful.”

A rare visit to the Manus Island detention centres to interview and photograph refugees revealed the violence awaiting them in the community and the obstacles to reporting this black spot.

How did the Georgian-born Chechen Omar al-Shishani, killed in Iraq this month, come to be one of Daesh’s key commanders in the ‘caliphate’ in Syria and Iraq?

The harassment, beating and jailing of independence protesters by Indonesian authorities in Papua continues, while Australia turns a blind eye.

Mismanagement of Tasmania’s once-abundant hydroelectric resources combined with the driest year on record see the state on the brink of wintertime power cuts.

Tasmania’s wilderness fires are an environmental disaster, a foreshadowing of climate change conditions – and a point of political contention.

January’s Jakarta terrorist attacks have their roots in the oppression and unrest of Aceh’s hidden war.

As Indonesian troops fired on a compound of refugees in Dili, John Howard directed the AFP to withdraw. Had they followed orders, they would have left 3000 people to certain death.

When armed insurgents kidnapped the author in Iraq, they interrogated him on building a propaganda machine. A decade later, they became Daesh.

Michael Ware's hair-raising documentary Only the Dead explains how he reported the beginnings of the Iraq insurgency that begat Daesh.