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 »
politics
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 »
Anzac Day. We mark it respectfully. True respect demands that we also not forget the essential question about the first ‘Anzac Day’ – 25 April 1915. Why were Australian soldiers at Anzac Cove in the first place? In fact, Gallipoli provides a stunning lesson in the disasters that can follow from unwavering loyalty to a Continue reading »
At the levels of public ritual and private observance, the ANZAC narrative is much about processing loss and assuaging grief. But let us recall here its nature as an imperial romance, and what that might mean for our place in the multi-polarity of the current world order? With its genesis in imperial war, the Anzac Continue reading »
The Department of Education is probing claims that the school discriminated against Palestinian and Arab students amid Israel’s war on Gaza.
The post “Kill All Arabs”: The Feds Are Investigating UMass Amherst for Anti-Palestinian Bias appeared first on The Intercept.
A mass grave created by the IDF has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre. “Bah, that’s old news Caitlin,” you may be saying. “We already know about the massacre and mass graves which were discovered a few weeks ago at the al-Shifa Continue reading »
Unlike virtually every non-Anglophone country on the planet, Australia still has no mandatory teaching of foreign languages in its schools. Why do we assume, as a matter of colonial entitlement, that people from non-Anglophone countries will understand us, but it is not even a matter of decency to make the same effort to understand them? Continue reading »
In the oceanic commentary on the Bruce Lehrmann cases, little attention seems to have been given as to how he got into Minister Linda Reynolds office in the first place. If he hadn’t all could have been spared the terrible things that have happened as a consequence of his admission – the catastrophic ignominies he Continue reading »