“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” said Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. The United Nations’ human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperilling the enclave’s barely Continue reading »
politics
Lies and impunity paved the way for the worst time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hanan Ashrawi says Gaza is “worse than even the Nakba, because it is a wilful, deliberate, total genocide”. Continue reading »
As predicted in Pearls & Irritations earlier this month, an appeal by the two losing candidates in the 14 February Indonesian presidential election has been trounced this week by the Constitutional Court. Challenges to the result came from two former provincial governors: Dr Anies Baswedan (25 per cent), and Ganjar Pranowo, (16 per cent). The Continue reading »
As a gentile with an historical association with Israel, I must admit to being greatly puzzled by the double standard that is evident in the destruction of Gaza. In 1971-2 I spent five months at Kibbutz Misgav-am in northern Israel, situated right on the Lebanese border. I had earlier spent a year in Africa, and Continue reading »
As a China-watching think tank winds up after Morrison-era cuts, a respected analyst reviews government funding for security-related research and education. One Sunday morning nearly four years ago Kevin McCann was surprised to learn that an organisation he chaired was being hounded in the News Corp tabloids for being in “China’s grip” and “lobbying against Continue reading »
“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune” The tide – or maybe call it “the vibe” – is running in the direction of the Albanese government being pushed into changing its timid stance on negative gearing. Just as the eventual change to the stage-three Continue reading »
China knows that, if it has to, it can stand alone and that it can defend itself. It knows, too, that most nations of the world, other than America (which is, despite itself, somewhat conflicted), want to do business with it; to connect with its growing confidence and with its strengthening brand of non-threatening, non-coercive, Continue reading »
The 100 000 or so dead men and women in Australia’s overseas wars are symbolised by red poppies, on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, in shrines around the nation, on the more than 5000 war memorials in our towns and suburbs, in war cemeteries overseas, and worn on Anzac Continue reading »
The director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a lobby group for big tech and foreign agencies, claims that China’s alleged targeting of the agency “should be of concern to all Australians”. In an op-ed written for the Canberra Times, Justin Bassi said the “revelation” of a foreign government taking aim at an Australian institution “should be Continue reading »
The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. “We have to be ready for every possibility,” our trainers insisted. The best scenario, they said, is that our Continue reading »