I doubt if any Australia political leader was watching the International Court of Justice President Judge, Joan E Donahue (United States of America) deliver the ruling in South Africa’s case alleging Israel has committed genocide on Palestinians in Gaza. The hour-long detailed assessment by Judge O Donahue should certainly be compulsory viewing for every Federal Continue reading »
World Affairs
On 10 January, Port Moresby was rocked by riots, looting and arson on an unprecedented scale. Rioting also occurred in Lae and several other towns. More than twenty people died and there has been extensive damage to property. During the course of 2023, Papua New Guinea signed security agreements with Australia and the US and Continue reading »
The underbelly of contemporary violence is colonialism, the politics of disposability, religious fundamentalism, neoliberalism, and raw militarism. Violence seems to have engulfed the earth like a blinding sandstorm. Women and children are being killed en mass in Gaza, homelessness is increasingly spreading among youth in many countries, inequality exists at staggering levels, and a culture Continue reading »
The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity. The White House claims the designation is an appropriate response to the group’s attacks on US military vessels and commercial ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying those attacks “fit the textbook definition Continue reading »
Missing cabinet documents relating to the 2003 Iraq war are unlikely to reveal the impulses that drove John Howard to a disastrous foreign policy decision. Sometime around mid-2003, a colleague of then-secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ashton Calvert, asked after the cabinet submission authorising Australia’s commitment of military forces to Iraq. Continue reading »
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has visited on Australia the whole spectre of terrorism, through his craven and ill-judged support of the United States and its invasion of Iraq. Now we live perpetually with the spectre of terrorism and racial strife, visited upon us by his prejudices and lack of judgment. This statement was Continue reading »
The outcome of US-led conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia will have a profound impact on the developing world order. Washington has already lost the former, and its major adversaries are vested in making sure it loses the latter too. Republished from The Cradle, 2 January 2024 Geopolitical analysts broadly agree that the war in Continue reading »
Western nations are always ready to proclaim their system of governance as superior, particularly in regards to China, dismissed as being authoritarian. Increasingly however, ‘western liberal democracy’ finds itself under scrutiny with trust in government falling. Growing numbers feel alienated, believing that the democratic system has been taken over by elites with little or no Continue reading »
The final months of 2023 pierced our sense of hope and threw us into a kind of mortal sadness. Israel’s escalating violence has killed more than twenty thousand Palestinians to date, wiping out entire generations of families. Horrifying images and testimonies from Palestine have flooded all forms of media, stirring a deep sense of anguish Continue reading »