Complicity in Gaza: Holding US Foreign Policy Legally Accountable
On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged…
On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged…
Archivists can be a dull if industrious lot. Christmas crackers are less important than the new year announcement in Canberra, when the National Archives of Australia releases documents like the…
How delicious is political hypocrisy. Abundant and rich, it manifests in the corridors of power with regularity. Of late, there is much of it in the US Congress, evident over…
The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the…
It was praised to the heavens as a work of negotiated and practical genius when it was struck. The then Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had finally gotten those titans of…
The town hall meeting is the last throbbing reminder of the authentic demos. People gather; debates held. Views converge; others diverge. Speakers are invited to stir the invitees, provoke the…
The spectacle, if it did not say it all, said much of it. Planes dropping humanitarian aid to a starving, famine-threatened populace of Gaza (the United Nations warns that 576,000…
The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and…
The end of the Second World War was a calamitous catalyst, laying the bricks and mortar for institutions that were always going to look weary, almost comically so, after some…
If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. …
On February 21, the Royal Courts of Justice hosted a second day of carnivalesque mockery regarding the appeal by lawyers representing an ill Julian Assange, whose publishing efforts are being…
On February 20, it was clear that things were not going to be made easy for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who infuriated the US imperium, the national security establishment,…
He was sweet and well meaning, but he was old. He was hazy. His memory was poor. Doddering, confused, the self-proclaimed leader of the Free World seemed ready to check…
Legal challenges regarding the Israel-Gaza War are starting to bulk lawyers’ briefs and courtroom proceedings. South Africa got matters underway with its December application before the International Court of Justice…
Animals have, at times, been given the same dismissively nasty treatment humans love giving themselves. Be it detention, torture, trial, and execution, the unwitting creatures can be found in the…
Statistics are often given lanky legs that take their user far. But how they are used, and how they are received, is striking. The current figure of 27,500 dead is…
Times were supposedly better in 2022. That is, if you were a lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria, a busy Israeli arms manufacturer, or cash counting corporate middleman keen…
Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging. Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though…
The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one…
It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the…
The BBC’s characteristically mild-mannered note said it all: What is Tower 22? More to the point, what are US forces doing in Jordan? (To be more precise, a dusty scratching…
During the evening of January 25, Kenneth Eugene Smith, having failed to convince the US Supreme Court to delay his execution, became yet another victim of judicial, state-sanctioned murder. A…
Imperilled, tormented Palestinians in Gaza had little time to celebrate the January 26 order of the International Court of Justice. In a case brought by South Africa intended to facilitate…
On January 26, legal experts, policy wonks, activists and the plain curious waited for the order of the International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague. The topic was that…
His type should never be seen again. Born from the dark well of swill and advertising, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was always the apotheosis of politics’ worst tendencies:…
So much for that. Much had been promised by Florida Governor Ron De Santis to derail Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House. But the attempt to wrest…
Israel has been given enormous license to control the security narrative in the Middle East for decades. This is not to say it is always in control of it –…
On February 20, Julian Assange, the daredevil publisher of WikiLeaks, will be going into battle, yet again, with the British justice system – or what counts for it. The UK…
What a cowardly act it was. A national broadcaster, dedicated to what should be fearless reporting, cowed by the intemperate bellyaching of a lobby concerned about coverage of the Israel-Gaza…
There is something distinctly revolting and authoritarian about the royal prerogative. It reeks of clandestine assumption, unwarranted self-confidence and, most of all, a blithe indifference to accountability before elected representatives. …
Israel’s relationship with the United Nations, international institutions and international law has at times bristled with suspicion and blatant hostility. In a famous cabinet meeting in 1955, Prime Minister David…
What a show. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was promoting a message of calm restraint and firm control in limiting the toxic fallout of Israel’s horrific campaign in…
The role of the US State Department regarding Israel’s continued obliteration of Gaza is becoming increasingly clear. As the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces continue, the Secretary of State,…
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The now departed chief executive of the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) should know. Wayne LaPierre’s time had come to resemble a…
They are unlikely to be revelatory, will shatter no myths, nor disprove any assumptions. Cabinet documents exist to merely show that a political clique – the heart of the Westminster…
AUKUS, the trilateral pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, was a steal for all except one of the partners. Australia, given the illusion of protection even…
The killing of an Australian-Lebanese national Ibrahim Bazzi, his Lebanese wife Shorouq Hammoud, and his brother Ali Bazzi by the Israeli Defence Forces in a missile strike in southern Lebanon,…
If demography is destiny, as Auguste Comte tells us, then economics must be current, pinching reality. The Israel-Gaza conflict is invigorating a global protest movement against the state of Israel…
When war criminals can daub canvasses in blithe safety, rake in millions of dollars in after dinner speeches and bore governments to death with their shoddy words of wisdom, the…
Litigating against countries is the stuff of esoteric delight for international lawyers. Such matters become yet more complex when it comes to claims of genocide or broader crimes against humanity. …
As a private citizen, the options for suing an intelligence agency are few and far between. The US Central Intelligence Agency, as with other members of the secret club, pour…
The Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron is worried. He is keeping an eye on the ballooning costs of his country’s war against Gaza and the Palestinians. Initially, the Netanyahu…
The failure of the United States to convince the Australian government to send one vessel to aid coalition efforts to deter Houthi disruption of international shipping in the Red Sea…
Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, is rarely one to be cryptic. “Day X is here,” she posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter. For those who have followed her remarks,…
The time has come to treat the sequence of UN Climate Change Conferences, the latest concluding in Dubai, as a series of the failed and the abysmally rotten. It shows…
It was a policy that was bound to send a shiver through the policymaking community. The issue of nuclear energy in Australia has always been a contentious one. Currently, the…
Despite a focus on boxing China in the Indo-Pacific, US involvement in the Middle East continues to be widespread and problematic. While Israel is given its regular steroid diet of…
The cathedral of censorship is a vast, airy one. In its embrace, texts are abridged, images removed, ideas scrubbed. Historical inconveniences are filed and rendered inaccessible. The only sermons tolerated…
Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become…
Cunning, subtle, understated. Israeli policy in the Pacific has seen United Nations votes cast in its favour, the foreign policies of certain countries adjusted, and favours switched. While China may…
The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is:…
Camelot, the sweetly sentimental shorthand for a shortened US presidency, has generated a mythopoetry so rich it turns the stomach, clogs the intestines, and soils the historical record. With its…
Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution. If they are not facing barbed…
“‘He’ll have ye smilin’,” an old Irish saying goes, “while he takes the gold out of your teeth’.” Charles Glass, London Review of Books, Oct 20, 2022 The obituaries of…
One could earn a tidy sum the number of times the word “sovereignty” has been uttered or mentioned in public statements and briefings by the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. …
It resembles a chronology of desperation, shifting narratives, and schoolboy howlers. From the outset, the mass lethality of Israeli strikes against Gaza and the collective punishment of its populace needed…
The fossil fuel lobby has had a busy year on the eco-camouflage front. Earlier this year, interest started to rumble and rage against the stranding of humpback whales on the…
The unpardonable, outrageous trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride was a brief affair. On November 13, it did not take long for the brutal power of the Commonwealth to become…
The High Court of Australia is not known for its zealotry in protecting human rights, and certainly not when considering the persuasive pull of international law and conventions. The Australian…
Openly ignored by his incendiary, now ex-Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was left with few options. Retaining her would continue a process of blighting his already…
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