In the lead up to the high-level UN meeting on universal health coverage (UHC) Australia has joined the US, UK and the EU in blocking any acknowledgement that ‘unilateral coercive measures’ (sanctions) can have negative impacts on the achievement of universal health coverage. The health consequences of sanctions include avoidable morbidity arising from increased barriers Continue reading »
Government
Okinawa governor Denny Tamaki has implored the UN for international backing in his opposition to the prefecture being overrun with US military bases. The Japan Times reports: “I am here today to ask the world to witness the situation in Okinawa,” Tamaki told a session of the world body’s Human Rights Council, arguing that the Continue reading »
President Ranil Wickremesinghe also derided the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ as an artificial framework with an inconsistent definition. He also countered recent claims by New Delhi that Beijing was sending ships to Sri Lanka to spy on India. Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday declared the Aukus security pact between Australia, Britain and the US “a mistake” Continue reading »
What do you think of when you think of Vienna? Probably not a model for affordable housing in Australia. More likely cafes, waltzes, music, art, the Ringstrasse, Lipizzaner stallions, spies and Harry Lime or the brilliance of post-war Austrian foreign policy in convincing the world that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian? Yet, Continue reading »
The official position of the church on the Voice referendum is curious, because, despite overwhelming support for a YES vote from an extraordinary range of Catholic agencies, religious orders and congregations, and voluntary Catholic organisations, the highest national church authority, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, has not followed suit. This is surprising because the whole Continue reading »
The Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ) has been in the Federal Court this week arguing that the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek has acted irrationally and unlawfully in her risk assessment of the expansion of 2 very large coal mines in NSW. The proponents of these mines, the Mount Pleasant Optimisation coal mine expansion and Continue reading »
A new US investigative report has excoriated the controversial Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program which included the USS Canberra – commissioned in very unusual circumstances with great fanfare by the US Navy recently in Sydney. Should its revelations about the manifest failures in the USN’s procurement performance – with former officers describing the LCS class Continue reading »
“War is good for business.” So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled “At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business” about Europe’s biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name Continue reading »
Magicians regularly use distraction to trick us into perceiving one thing while another is happening. Politicians use similar tricks to signal concern about public policy problems. Recently there has been an organised campaign to get us to believe that NAPLAN literacy results can all be explained by differences in the methods used to teach reading. Continue reading »