The birth of Israel on 14 May 1948 is said to be based on three related claims. Some people regard these claims as questionable. They form the basis for why Israel’s birth is said to be illegitimate. Firstly, a claim much set in concrete is that Israel is the “promised land” of the Jews. However, Continue reading »
politics
The Australia Institute has recently argued for the introduction of a system for measuring the extent of poverty in Australia, pointing out that the government’s recently established wellbeing measurement framework, Measuring What Matters, does not measure the number of Australians living in poverty. Greg Jericho and the other researchers at the Institute have argued that Continue reading »
Biden wanders offstage or walks like a geriatric robot. Yet we are meant to believe he’s carefully navigating us through the nuclear tripwires of the West’s serial wars. We live in a world of make-believe politics, a world where strings pulled in the interests of the super-rich are ever more visible. And yet we are Continue reading »
Twice in a fortnight, the president of the Heritage Foundation has declared that America is experiencing its second revolution. The revolution would remain bloodless (because their side is “winning”) “if the left allows it to be.” The two bodies whose acts provoked the announcements are leading Atlas Network partners. They are also spending millions of Continue reading »
Reflecting on some relevant aspects of just war thinking that I mentioned in my recent contribution to Pearls and Irritations on “Why Israel’s war violates just war principles” I decided it would be worth addressing some of those issues further and also broaching some important ones that I then did not discuss. I do so Continue reading »
The essential difference between Senator Fatima Payman and the rest of the federal Labor caucus – and the Coalition caucus as well – is that she opposes genocide and wants the federal parliament to take effective action against it. She is a minority of one in the federal Labor-Coalition political class. Everything that has occurred Continue reading »
Overall it was a spectacular night for Labour, with the party winning a landslide victory.However, in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters the party performed badly. Labour has lost a handful of former strongholds to independent candidates campaigning on pro-Gaza platforms. In one of the biggest shocks of the night, shadow minister Jonathan Continue reading »
In Southeast Asia, hedging is a pragmatic policy that maintains options and mitigates risks. While some ASEAN states, like the Philippines, are aligning more closely with the United States, most are pursuing a more inclusive and selective approach to partnerships, ensuring concurrent engagement with China and the United States. This approach is more desirable in Continue reading »
Russia is not Putin, though you’d hardly know it in current media coverage. Nor is it an autarky. On the contrary, for centuries Russia has interacted with both the East and the West, whose influences have shaped, and confounded, the country’s sense of identity. The US policy of isolating Russia is not only perpetuating the Continue reading »
Racism arrived with the First Fleet. It’s had time to put down very deep roots.. Continue reading »