Humphrey McQueen (Pearls and Irritations, ‘The lucky Aborigines’ 26 January 2025), has reminded us of John Howard’s opinion that “the luckiest thing that happened to this country was being colonised by the British. Not that they were perfect by any means, but they were infinitely more successful and beneficent than other European colonisers.” Really? Infinitely Continue reading »
politics
In his address to the National Press Club on 24 January 2025, Prime Minister Albanese reflected on his Government’s decision announced a year earlier to change “the tax plan we inherited from the Morrison Government to make it better and fairer”. It is likely to be a major selling point in the coming Federal election. Continue reading »
For many government employees, merely owning cryptocurrency is off-limits. Not for Trump, who created a “very grifty” meme coin.
The post Trump Appointees Can’t Own Crypto. That Rule Doesn’t Apply to Trump Himself. appeared first on The Intercept.
The Alien Enemies Act provides sweeping powers to detain or deport foreign nationals. It’s ripe for abuse, experts say.
The post Trump Leans on WWII Japanese Incarceration Law to Deport Immigrants appeared first on The Intercept.
The buzz around Xiaohongshu and then DeepSeek has had an unusually high volume of westerners speaking positively about China for the last couple of weeks, which of course means we’re also seeing many westerners falling all over themselves to say “Well actually China is actually quite bad actually” in response. Western liberals who fancy themselves Continue reading »
For more than 40 years Hugh White has been an important analyst of Australian defence and foreign policy. After working in the Office of National Assessments he became an adviser to Defence Minister Beazley and Prime Minister Hawke, He was a deputy secretary in the Department of Defence and the first head of the Australian Continue reading »
At the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stood out as a voice of reason and diplomacy, presenting the Asian vision of peace, development, and regional cooperation. Representing a nation with one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing economies, Anwar showcased a pragmatic and authoritative approach to resolving disputes, emphasising dialogue and Continue reading »
"There is a moral responsibility by each global leader to think from the global perspective instead of from their own national-interest perspective."
Neither State Department nor MOFA is gonna like this piece. Wang Yi and Marco Rubio, the respective top diplomats of China and the U.S., held their first phone call on Friday, January 24, 2025. Below are a few points I want to make. First, the State Department, now under Rubio, misidentified Wang’s job title in Continue reading »
Well that didn’t take long. President Trump has said he wants to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to US client states Egypt and Jordan, which would of course be a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. It would also align perfectly with longstanding Israeli agendas to remove Palestinians from their homeland so that their Continue reading »