We need much more than the “Gaza Pose”. We’ve seen the furrowed brows and sorrowful looks. We’ve heard the regretful tones, the exhortations, the warnings, the carefully studied words. Often that’s all there’s been: words and more words. So the question for Anthony Albanese and his Minister for Steely Gazes, Penny Wong, is this. Have Continue reading »
politics
The US considers TikTok a national security threat. It wants to ban TikTok or transfer its ownership to an American company. In doing so, it is displaying the very behaviour that that it ascribes to China and of which it does not approve. This is clearly reflected in the statement of the US ambassador to Continue reading »
What has changed since 2003? Nothing, except for the worse. Australian governments continue to accept the US enemies as their own, and shoot whoever the sheriff says. All but two of the missing Iraq War Cabinet papers have now been released to the long-suffering public. But those of us who remember the Howard government’s secretive, Continue reading »
From Joe Biden on down, liberals denounce anti-Muslim bias to avoid mentioning the scourge of hate against Palestinians.
The post Let’s Name It: Not Just Islamophobia, but Anti-Palestinianism appeared first on The Intercept.
The Chinese Foreign Minister, Mr Wang Yi, is in Australia this week to participate in the China-Australia Foreign and Strategic Dialogue with his Australian counterpart, Foreign Minister Penny Wong. This is a good development and very much to be supported. While observing the reporting of this upcoming dialogue from the distance of my office in Continue reading »
On the eve of the Russian election, Vladimir Putin exudes confidence, discounts nuclear war, but warns West on the dangers of escalation. Meanwhile the mainstream western media obfuscates and misleads as usual. There is no better purveyor of unobtrusive, misleading propaganda than Reuters. With most mainstream Western media outlets the agenda is obvious even when Continue reading »
Faith leaders should stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and should call on the Australian government to condemn all violence that threatens a just future for the people of Palestine, Israel and the Middle East. This call comes from Pax Christi, an ecumenical Christian organisation. Pax Christi Australia has sent the following appeal to all Continue reading »
David Marr’s recent book, Killing for Country, confronts the reality of the dispossession of Aboriginal lands in Queensland by the Native Police Force. It is a recounting of wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of “natives” in order to settle the land that never was Terra Nullius. Most confronting for Marr is the realization that it was Continue reading »
Australians frozen out of the housing market cannot expect that government is going to do anything that effectively closes the gap between current house prices and what most of the unhoused could afford as a deposit. Modern politicians of all stripes are all agreed that their political survival depends on doing the maximum to sustain Continue reading »
“Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate” – historian Alfred W. McCoy. On March 14, The New York Times published an article by Ivan Nechupurenko entitled “Shunned By West, Russia Pivots South For Trade: Skirting Continue reading »