Australia added 518,100 people through net migration in the 2022-23 financial year, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This is a record high by a very wide margin. The strain is obvious to all, in the rental crisis and infrastructure crowding. The Albanese government knows this is both unsustainable and Continue reading »
politics
The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip has surged to 20,674, the Health Ministry in the territory said yesterday. Some 1,000 children have had limbs amputated without anaesthesia in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its brutal bombing campaign on 7 October, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said. It Continue reading »
Events of the last three months or so will shape the way large cohorts of the Australian population assess the character, integrity and fitness for office of federal politicians and parties on issues of fundamental importance to them, much as happened during the years of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. But whereas the Vietnam Continue reading »
In January, 2023, Ezra Klein from the New York Times interviewed Yuen Yuen Ang. Professor Ang is a widely published, China scholar at Johns Hopkins University in the US. Towards the end of this long interview, Ang provided an acute summary of what US-China competition came down to. What matters most, she argued, is: Which Continue reading »
As Americans, our money is paying for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. How much did you give?
The post I Calculated How Much of My Money the U.S. Sent to Kill Palestinians. You Can Too. appeared first on The Intercept.
Despite its failure to isolate Cuba and overthrow its government, and its near unanimous opposition from the international community, the 62-year old US embargo seems likely to endure into the foreseeable future. When President John Kennedy issued the first executive order implementing the US embargo against Cuba in 1962, the Cold War was at its Continue reading »
Israel may well wipe out Christian presence in Gaza as part of its genocide, and Western leaders would not care less. Since October 7, Israel and its allies have tried to put the war in Gaza within the “war on terror” framework, actively comparing Hamas to ISIS. Many who instinctively equate Palestinians with Muslims have Continue reading »
The recent Senate Interim Report on ‘The issue of increasing disruption in Australian school classrooms’ has attracted the usual short-term media indignation followed by the ever-present indifference from our education leaders and politicians. This is not the first time there is an acknowledgement that severely disruptive kids exist. Statistics such as: almost a quarter of Continue reading »
The fear that the world is falling apart is not new. It stretches back into antiquity. End of the world fears have manifested over thousands of years. For almost all recorded history, and no doubt beforehand, there have been wars, violence, greed, and cruelty committed in the name of some collective cause. For most of Continue reading »
In these sad, anxious times, pearls of hope are rare and truly valuable. Thankfully, here are a couple to contemplate… In 1988 a group of Israeli and Palestinian women got together and did something extravagantly unlikely: they founded a peace movement. Women In Black. Regularly standing together in sombre clothes, their silent vigil sent out Continue reading »