Ian Parmeter
Ian Parmeter is a Research Scholar at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. He worked for twenty-five years in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, where his diplomatic postings included Lebanon (as ambassador). From 2004 to 2015 he was Assistant Director-General in the Office of National Assessments.
Though scarcely a teenager at the time, I remember clearly what I was doing when I heard the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. That was a seminal event for the baby-boomer generation – not only in the United States, but around a then barely globalised world. I suspect the equivalent event for young adults today is the horrifying television footage, rebroadcast countless times si ... (read more)