West Africa is emerging as a highly unstable region and massive over-population is at the heart of the problem. Until 1960 Niger was part of French West Africa and is now the largest country in the region. Named for the Niger River which rises in the Loma Mountains in Sierra Leone, it eventually reaches the Continue reading »
politics
Few nation-states have been shaped by their underlying physical geography and location in the world quite as much as Australia. Since notional foreign policy independence was uneasily embraced during the second world war, Australia’s policymaking elites have had trouble deciding whether it was a curse or a blessing to be in possession of an entire Continue reading »
The Biden Administration is implementing a plan to draw Taiwan into a direct military confrontation with the People’s Republic of China. The plan bears many similarities to the strategy that was used in Ukraine where Russia was goaded into invading the country in response to emerging threats to its national security. In this case, Beijing Continue reading »
Pakistan has imposed a media blackout over the deposed prime minister and thousands of new political prisoners incarcerated in appalling conditions. Condemnation in the U.K. and U.S. has been non-existent. Given the large population in the U.K. of Pakistani origin, the lack of serious media coverage of the overthrow and incarceration of Imran Khan, and Continue reading »
Melissa Parke has been announced as the new Executive Director of the ICAN international office in Geneva. Melissa Parke is a former MP for Fremantle WA, government minister and human rights lawyer for the UN. She has been an ICAN Ambassador for many years, championing Australia’s signature and ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition Continue reading »
My 82 years of active feminism started when I was refused a drum in the kindergarten because I was a girl. So, I went home a very longterm cross activist. A few years later Simone de Beauvoir explained we were The Second Sex which offered an explanation why we were not in control. So I’ve Continue reading »
Dutton may be leading the Liberal Party to a pyrrhic victory; Our future manufacturing sector – dispel Holdens and Bonds underwear from your mind; and how the “small government” idea is stifling the nation. Read on for our Weekly Roundup of links to articles, reports, podcasts and other media on current political and economic issues Continue reading »
It has been overlooked during Garma festival that, under current policies, global warming would render aboriginal lands in central and northern Australia unliveable and the top-end a nuclear target… In his classic book The Fate of the Earth speaking for humanity Jonathan Schell describes the horror of a full-scale nuclear holocaust where human beings and Continue reading »
We are under constant bombardment. Hardly a day goes by without some news of a military nature. If it is not about sending more equipment to prolong the war in Ukraine, it is about Australian minerals being domesticated to serve Americas military interests. It may shift to the Talisman Sabre Exercises, with the expectation that Continue reading »