Australian Opposition leader, Peter ”Disappearing” Dutton, has sent out an angry missive to journalists reminding them that he does not work weekends. ”Yeah the bloody journo’s need to learn that Pete doesn’t do weekends, or questions,” said a Liberal Party... Read More ›
politics
Secret funding, offshore donors, control by the ultra-rich. Sorry, but this is not democracy. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 3rd May 2024 There’s a sensible rule in British politics: it should not be funded by foreign donors. Democracy is meaningless if a country isn’t run at the behest of its people. But the […]
The Guardian newspaper reports that history professor Allan Lichtman is known as the Nostradamus of US presidential elections since he has correctly predicted the results of nine of the past ten ballots. And even the one he missed in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore because thousands of black votes got rejected on a Continue reading »
The latest statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics paint a grim picture of a nation becoming more and more entangled in the web of incarceration. During 2022-23, the total number of people behind bars surged by three percent, accompanied by a one percent rise in the imprisonment rate. These figures not only reflect a Continue reading »
The disparity is vast and immoral. Emotional language touches souls, but in Indonesia it should also grab economics and politics. The new government could demand reform. It wont. We’ll call her Siti. Real name usage might threaten the uni graduate’s fragile job as an English teacher at a government school. She earns less than Rp Continue reading »
With a couple of minutes Googling, your favourite Martian could be well informed on the role of government in the Australian economy from the moment of the arrival of the British colonialists. It’s been big. Colonial and other governments have not only provided legal and economic frameworks within which private organisations can work, they’ve done Continue reading »
In just 7 days, a British court will decide whether to extradite WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange to the US where he will face trial on espionage charges. The Australian came up before the British High Court in a two-day hearing on 20 and 21 March but was too ill to even appear physically Continue reading »
Drinking the Kool-Aid is not only believing a foolish and dangerous idea but acting on it leads to unnecessary self-destruction. It refers to the 900 American cult members who drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978 in an act of “revolutionary suicide”. Critics of AUKUS on both sides of the Tasman think our Continue reading »
Right now, knowledge and understanding of China and its culture, its people and its history could help get relations back on a sound footing, but sadly teaching and research in schools and universities has fallen to a critically low level. Pioneers who helped established Chinese Studies some half a century ago feel that their efforts Continue reading »
Australia’s recent vote to increase the status of the State of Palestine in the United Nations General Assembly is as welcome as it is historic. The positive vote recognizes that Palestine is qualified to join and recommends to the U.N Security Council that it reconsider the matter favorably. Many human rights advocates were concerned that Continue reading »