Open Letter to Antonio Guterres on the Australian Government’s failure to publicly defend the office of the United Nations Secretary General. Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations UN Plaza, NEW YORK USA Email undesa@un.org Dear Sir, We write in shame that the Australian Government has failed to join over 100 Member states Continue reading »
International Relations
As Vladimir Putin deploys mobile missile launchers throughout the Siberian Taiga armed with Yars heavy duty ICBMs, while making nuclear threats and claiming that these forces have been placed on a higher level of alert (though this isn’t necessarily so), NATO seems intent on compounding what seems already threatening and dangerous enough with the performance Continue reading »
One thing which was crystal clear from the vigils in Australia on 7 October 2024 was the almost complete unanimity between the Labor-Coalition political class at federal and state levels to only attend vigils solely commemorating the deaths of Israelis, while simultaneously completely ignoring vigils commemorating the deaths of Palestinians, or vigils commemorating the deaths Continue reading »
In 1949 Australia’s Dr H.V. Evatt was described as: “The most brilliant and effective voice of Small Powers – a leading statesman for the world’s conscience.” When will another Australian voice speak up in the name of humanity at the United Nations? If the Australian Government valued its historic role in the establishment of the Continue reading »
Newsweek has recently (Oct 7) reported that Russian mobile nuclear missile launchers have been placed on combat alert. This could mean nothing – Russian mobile missile launchers do regularly go on patrol, both for scheduled alerts and for training purposes. However, the way in which the move has been telegraphed does suggest that Russia means Continue reading »
In a world of simultaneous military and environmental crises our capacity to finance both has become unsustainable. Globally, military expenditure over the past decade has been rising at double that of GDP reaching an all-time high of $2.4 trillion in 2023. Continue reading »
“This complaint is not only the largest ever submitted to the ICC, but it is also a milestone in documenting Israeli war crimes for future generations.” A Belgium-based advocacy group on Tuesday announced it “filed an unprecedented and historic complaint with the International Criminal Court against 1,000 Israeli occupation forces soldiers for war crimes, crimes Continue reading »
Peter Job’s article in P&I, ‘Palestine – The Lessons of East Timor’, is an interesting foray into the link between international law and moral condemnation as offering a possible insight into the future of Palestine. As Job argues, one generally does need international law to be on one’s side if a just resolution is to Continue reading »
Moving to China has opened my eyes in a way I never expected. The stories I grew up hearing, the ones I accepted without much thought, started to unravel. One of the toughest things I’ve had to face is realising that the West, where I’ve spent most of my life, might not always be the Continue reading »
Like most of the US allies, Australia is caught between a rock and a hard place. The rock is Israel’s intransigence and the implacability of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s coalition partners. The hard place is the immense suffering of the Palestinian and, now, the Lebanese people. “Acceptance” of Israel’s extreme brutality in the assertion of its right to national Continue reading »