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6 oeuvres 109 utilisateurs 4 critiques

A propos de l'auteur

Tony Kevin's previous books include A Certain Maritime Incident: the sinking of SIEV X (2004) and Reluctant Rescuers (2012) on Australia's well-resourced maritime border protection system. He published a travel memoir Walking the Camino (2007) about his long pilgrimage walk through Spain in 2006, afficher plus Crunch Time (2009) tackled issues, still unresolved, of framing an effective Australian policy against global warming. afficher moins

Comprend les noms: A. C. Kevin

Œuvres de Tony Kevin

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Partage des connaissances

Sexe
male
Nationalité
Australia

Membres

Critiques

Reading between the lines seems to suggest that Tony Kevin's thesis is the refugee boat SIEV X was deliberately sabotaged by its operator on behalf of Australian interests, either Federal Police or ASIS, and that this was a regular occurrence. But this time for reasons unknown the sabotage and sinking did not occur in the bay or off the coast where it could be easily rescued by Indonesian authorities, as had occurred with previous boats as part of a campaign to discourage refugees, but while far out to sea condemning the occupants.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
LamontCranston | Apr 7, 2019 |
If a school is a microcosm of society, then the travel itineraries of teachers are probably typical. In the staffrooms I frequented, there was always chat about travel plans: to the UK and US and all over Europe, especially to France, Spain; Italy, Ireland and Germany. Closer to home, to Bali, to Thailand, to Fiji, China, Vietnam and Japan.

But not Russia. In all my years of listening to (and envying) dinner party and staffroom travel plans and post-mortems, I’ve only ever once met someone who’d been to Russia.

Well, we all know why. We grew up during the Cold War, and we (thought we) knew what Russia was like because we watched James Bond movies and we read the dissident literature of Solzhenitsyn and Koestler. So we knew there was nothing touristy to see. Nothing but propaganda soviet art or perhaps intimidating parades of military might in Red Square. Bad food, bad service, woeful hotels, and scary grey-faced officials poised to frogmarch us off to Siberia if we infringed on the rules of the totalitarian state. Nobody I knew ever wanted to travel to the USSR…

Return to Moscow confirms these depressing Cold War images. When author Tony Kevin went there as a junior diplomat during the Cold War it was tagged as a ‘hardship posting’ because of the bleak conditions, and Kevin makes it clear that it wasn’t just the weather that was bleak. He also tells us that the reason Russians weren’t keen to socialise with Westerners was because of the risk of being sent to the gulags for fraternisation. Diplomats lived in a bubble of embassy life, for everyone’s safety…

Well, things change, yet even when The Spouse and I went to newly capitalist Russia in 2012, every time I made my pathetic attempts at speaking Russian, the response was an incredulous and delighted “Avstrarlya? Long way!” The people I met in the cafés, shops, restaurants and museums in Moscow and St Petersburg had never met an Australian before. Even the immigration officials at the airport seemed a bit startled to encounter Australian passports, and from what we could make out in the empty echoing hall we two were the only tourists on our flight: all the rest were locals coming home or transit passengers en route to the US, shuffled off to a transit lounge somewhere else.

While tourists and locals alike struggle with summertime hordes in the rest of Europe and the UK, Russian tourism is low-key indeed. Yet Russia could be a popular tourist destination: it’s an art-lover, lit-lover and history-buff’s paradise, the weather (in August-September) is mild, there are lots of good restaurants and hotels, public transport is excellent and the people are friendly and helpful. The only time we encountered ‘Soviet’ service was in St Petersburg when we went to the hilariously retro Kvartirka Soviet Café which deliberately recreates the Soviet era with a very rustic menu and gloomy waitresses barking orders. It was one of many examples of the Russian sense of humour.

But Russia’s potential as a tourist destination looks doubtful these days. Putin’s Russia is demonised on a daily basis and Russian relations with the West have deteriorated spectacularly. Even when Russian air support helped to liberate the historic heritage city of Palermo from ISIS, nobody had a good word to say about it. Because I’m interested in Russia, and because I think we owe our freedom from the Nazis to the Soviets turning them back at Stalingrad in 1943, I was curious about this disdain. When I heard on the ABC that Tony Kevin – former diplomat and author of Walking the Camino – had written a new book about just that, I asked my library to get me a copy of Return to Moscow…

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/04/02/return-to-moscow-by-tony-kevin/
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
anzlitlovers | Apr 2, 2017 |
This book contains a very detailed investigation into Australia’s intelligence-based border protection system. Tony Kevin seeks to uncover the truth about refugees and boat journeys, and discovers that much of what we are led to believe is simply not true – for example, politicians would have us believe that refugees put themselves and their families at great risk by putting them on boats to come to Australia. In fact, 97% of refugees who have come to Australia by boat since 1998, when the boats first started to arrive, have done so safely. However, as we know, there have also been some great tragedies at sea with boats sinking and disappearing and people’s lives being lost. Tony looks into Australia’s role in these tragedies and finds that Australian maritime border protection policy is sliding by degrees towards a callous indifference to the obligation to strive to protect all human life at sea. I found some of this hard to ‘hear’ but it is important information that all Australians should be aware of.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Chris-86 | Sep 1, 2012 |
Book Club from State Library February 2011
 
Signalé
deirdrebrown | Nov 6, 2014 |

Prix et récompenses

Statistiques

Œuvres
6
Membres
109
Popularité
#178,011
Évaluation
½ 3.3
Critiques
4
ISBN
10

Tableaux et graphiques