“Lula’s win was a win for the Amazon,” one global human rights leader said of his environment and Indigenous ministers. Environmentalists and rights advocates around the world are celebrating Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s selection of Marina Silva and Sônia Guajajara to serve as the nation’s environment and Indigenous ministers, respectively. Lula, who Continue reading »
politics
Propaganda is a dark and devious art. It exploits ignorance to peddle dogma. It violates truth, logic and right reason. It is the negation of philosophy and science. It confines understanding in a straight-jacket of faux dictionary definitions. Like a woke lexicon, it is precious, politically correct and distorts language. For as Orwell well knew, Continue reading »
Restoring the “tattered relationship” between Australia and China will take a long time. But “there is a much-increased optimism among the Chinese community” in Australia after the visit to China by Foreign Minister Penny Wong. The recent policy and diplomatic turnaround between Australia and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) provided a welcome boost to Continue reading »
The Liberal Party’s problem with Chinese-Australian voters became apparent after its loss in the May 2022 federal election. Post-election number-crunching reveals that in 15 seats with large concentrations of Chinese-Australian voters, the swing against the Liberals was 6.6 percent, in contrast to 3.7 percent in other seats. And for those who were still not convinced Continue reading »
The call for a steady state global and national economy and even degrowth is a distraction unhelpful to the environmental cause. The challenge is to inspire and sustain ingenious strategies to decouple economic growth from environmental harm. The sorts of programs championed by Environment Minister Plibersek are heading in the right direction. Stephen Williams praises Continue reading »
America’s confected strategy to contain China for its own ends has to be separated from Australia’s self-reliant defence, with clarity. The Strategic Defence Review must staunch the bleeding. It’s too easy to mislead Australians on their security. Kim Beazley, a former ALP Defence Minister, was at home when addressing the Ramsay Centre in Sydney last Continue reading »
Is Ukraine's spin getting threadbare?
A recently-passed law is designed to help servicemembers who suffered toxic chemical exposure at Camp Lejune finally get compensation.
..in ten handy points, which I thought was not a bad summary:... Read more
The US military has been showering CNN’s retiring Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr with effusive thanks and praise for her lifetime of service, giving some insight into the cozy working relationship between the media and the war machine inside the US empire. “Today closes a remarkable career for CNN’s Barbara Starr, a leader in the Pentagon Continue reading »