Ten years ago Anthony King and Ivor Crewe published their book – The Blunders of Our Governments. They ranged over the Millennium Dome; the 20 billion pounds wasted on a failed scheme to upgrade London’s Underground; punishing tens of thousands of single mothers into poverty; massive IT disaster’s such as the Blair Governments NHS scheme; Continue reading »
World
Misunderstanding China has a long and distinguished history. Much of that misunderstanding has been generated by western media going right back to the Qing dynasty. The Australian ‘Times’ correspondent of the era George Ernest Morrison was unable to speak Chinese and so depended on Sir Edmund Backhouse as a source of primary information. Sir Edmund Continue reading »
The algorithm used for the cash relief program is broken, a Human Rights Watch report found.
The post Algorithm Used in Jordanian World Bank Aid Program Stiffs the Poorest appeared first on The Intercept.
Admitting guilt for war crimes doesn’t come easily to many nations, as Australia knows from our extended investigations of the activities of some ADF soldiers in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. On 30 May, former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans challenged the United States to admit that that actions of its armed forces 75 years Continue reading »
Joe Biden kept Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions — discouraging even legal, humanitarian trade.
The post Children Are Dying Because Companies Are Too Scared to Sell Medicine to Iran appeared first on The Intercept.
The war crimes trial of a Malian rebel is the first test of new tools that could become central to justice efforts in Ukraine and beyond.
The post How 3D Models and Other Technology Could Make it Easier to Convict War Criminals appeared first on The Intercept.
A Lowy Institute survey issued in April this year showed that the balance of Chinese-American influence in Southeast Asia had shifted in China’s favour over the last few years. Specifically, in overall diplomatic, defence, economic and cultural influence, the balance was 52 to 48 in China’s favour in 2018 but its lead increased to 54 Continue reading »
Today the global trade system faces three systemic challenges. None are new, but strategic competition between China and the United States has brought a dangerous edge to each of them. The first is the dramatic shift in the composition of international economic interaction. When the Bretton Woods system was first set up, global trade was Continue reading »
Even without Chat-bot assistance, it is fun to look up quotations and their origins online and then discover, for example, this quote reportedly from Winston Churchill: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” And an earlier British prime minister from the 19th century, Benjamin Disraeli, allegedly said there were Continue reading »
Is it not a great irony that the Chinese are now more supportive of the post-war Bretton Woods system than the Americans? There is a hole in public discourse and strategic analysis regarding the so-called “China Threat”. Concerned that his critics in the West are blithely unaware of the correlation of China’s values with the Continue reading »