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politics
Today the global trade system faces three systemic challenges. None are new, but strategic competition between China and the United States has brought a dangerous edge to each of them. The first is the dramatic shift in the composition of international economic interaction. When the Bretton Woods system was first set up, global trade was Continue reading »
There is rising wrath, out there in Elderland. The Elders, it seems, are no longer happy to look on as a bunch of corporates and their political stooges pillage the planet and lay waste their grandchildren’s future. With growing resolve, resources and organisation, older people are fighting back. Rather than sitting meekly in their retirement Continue reading »
Documents publicly available make it clear that Saudi Arabian government officials assisted the two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar, who crashed an airliner into the Pentagon. Newly released testimonies further reveal that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was aware of the activities of the two hijackers before the 9/11 attacks and suggest that Continue reading »
Even without Chat-bot assistance, it is fun to look up quotations and their origins online and then discover, for example, this quote reportedly from Winston Churchill: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” And an earlier British prime minister from the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli, allegedly said there were Continue reading »
Australia is fast approaching a reckoning with its past, its present and the state of the nation’s soul. And if the last month is any indication to go by, we will be found wanting. A hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud wrote a paper called, Mourning and Melancholia. In it he mapped the divergent paths of Continue reading »
As a Hong Kong based columnist for much of his writing career Nury Vittachi was known for his persistent anti-Beijing slant. But no longer. What changed his mind was the mainstream media – the BBC in particular – coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots. Praised as democracy seekers, these riots for the most part Continue reading »
The judgement on Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case delivered a heavily damning summary of conduct. That would have come as little surprise to many; rumour abounded for a decade or more. Not only has Roberts-Smith been severely impacted. The ordure is spread widely but not thinly. It will stick perniciously to individuals (Roberts-Smith being just one), Continue reading »
Gareth Evans, the former foreign minister of Australia received the fifth annual Jeju 4.3 Peace Prize presented by the Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation. To achieve true reconciliation regarding the Jeju April 3 Incident, the US government must take responsibility for its historical wrongdoing in the same way as the Korean government, argues Gareth Evans, the Continue reading »
It was a day of triumph and a day of shame for The Age newspaper, the once-great Melbourne daily. On Friday June 2, 2023, with justifiable pride, the newspaper trumpeted its victory over the defamation suit brought by Ben Roberts Smith, VC. On the same day, the newspaper announced that it would “trial a reduction” Continue reading »