In April last year, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told the United Nations Security Council that “an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is under way, with serious implications for peace…
A stillborn agreement treated as thrivingly alive; an understanding celebrated as consensual and equal. The AUKUS security arrangement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, envisaging the transfer…
On January 6, the Pentagon announced that it had “resettled” 11 Yemeni men to Oman after detaining them over two decades without charge at the US naval facility of Guantánamo…
Climate change, like any crisis afflicting earth and humanity, is bound to bring out the best and the worst of a species that soils its nest, salts the earth, and…
It has been popular to see political and religious radicalisation as something oddly separable from institutions of state. State institutions are meant to cope and cure the condition, not foster…
Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard is in the news again. The release of Australian cabinet documents from 2004 – a supposed treat for historians of Australian history each new…
Moral evangelists in power preaching about democracy and human rights resemble dowdy advocates of family values. When given a chance, they will wander, leaving their principles aside like unwanted impediments. …
While international law can, at times, seem an ephemeral creature, vulnerable to manipulation, neglect and outright dismissal, its strictures can surprise. The evolving body of law stripping back the immunity…
The late centenarian, Jimmy Carter, occupied a difficult position in the line of imperial magistrates we know as US Presidents. Coming to power in the aftermath of murderous US adventurism…
History shows that empires acquire territories in various ways. Dynasties link arms through marriage, as the Habsburgs were famous for doing. Territories are pinched by means of arms or stolen…
Mike Pompeo’s role in the first Trump administration as both director of the Central Intelligence Agency and US Secretary of State will be forever associated with the venom and desperation…
On December 17, a number of Palestinians alleging human rights violations by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank filed a federal lawsuit pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)…
Mining magnates seem to have it all. Far more significant than royalty, such figures are the unelected captains of industry who know that governments will do whatever they can to…
The NSO Group, Israel’s darling of malware infection and surveillance for the global security market, was the brainchild of three engineers drawn from that busiest of cyber outfits in the…
Of late, a spate of incidents has taken place in Australia giving sheer delight to the simian-resembling Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton. On a visit to South Australia, he showed himself…
The justifications are always the same. We are moving into territory for security reasons. We are creating a temporary buffer zone from which tactical advantage can be gained against potential…
Since making what was likely a life-saving plea deal to spare himself from the medieval barbarities of the US prison system, Julian Assange, and his campaign intimates, are now focusing…
It was bound to happen. With continuing operations in Gaza, and increasingly violent activities being conducted against Palestinians in the occupied territories, human rights organisations are making increasingly severe assessments…
The reports through Western presses read rather familiarly. Joyful residents taking selfies on abandoned, sullen tanks. Armed men ebullient and shooting into the sky with adventurist stupidity. The removal of…
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan must be delighted about what is unfolding in Syria, though it is a feeling bound to be tempered by swiftly changing circumstances. Iran’s Shia proxies have…
FIFA has done it again. With its usual sparkle of inventive interpretation, amoral reasoning, and snappy bravura, the world football federation has deemed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fit for…
A new bloody phase has opened up in Syria, as if it was ever possible to contemplate another one in that tormented land. Silly terms such as “moderate” are being…
The comity of nations, at least when it comes to international humanitarian law, took a rather curious turn with the announcement by France that it would regard Israeli Prime Minister…
Be careful who you condemn and ostracise. They just might be supplying you with a special need. While the United States security establishment deems Russia the devil incarnate helped along…
There is something enormously satisfying about seeing those in the war racket worry that their assumptions on conflict have been upended. There they were, happily funding, planning and preparing to…
COP29 was always going to be memorable, for no other reason than the hosting country, Azerbaijan, is a petrostate indifferent to the issue of emissions and scornful of ecological preachers. …
Two more United Nations committee resolutions. Both concerning the conduct of Israel past and current. While disease, hunger and death continue to stalk the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank…
It is hard to credit one of the least impressive Secretary of States the United States has ever produced with any merit other than being a plasterwork that, from time…
The scene is memorable enough. November 2016. The Twin Peaks Tavern, Castro District. Men gathered, beside themselves. “It’s shocking how those people voted him in,” splutters one over a Martini. …
It was catastrophic, cataclysmic and all destructive. It wiped out empires and aristocracies and tore through the middle class. The First World War was a conflict that should never have…
Japan’s new prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, is stirring the pot – notably on regional security matters. He has proposed something that has done more than raise a few eyebrows in…
It takes some skill to make Donald J. Trump look good. Two Democrats have succeeded in doing so: Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024. The conceit of…
The BHP Group, as with other mining giants, has much explaining to do in the way it has approached the environment. It has become a master of the greenwashing experiment,…
Here is an AI-Generated Podcast based on the article The timing, as with so much in the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon, was most appropriate. The Israeli Knesset had…
The British cannot help themselves. They are a meddling island people who conquered huge swathes of the earth in a fictional fit of absentmindedness and remain haughty for having done…
The man has a cheek. Having lectured Iranians and Lebanese about what (and who) is good for them in terms of rulers and rule (we already know what he thinks…
Never let it be said that the European Union, whose officials self-advertise as staunch defenders of international law, that some bending can take place. Take, for instance, the recent revelations…
It was never a good look. Advertised as the world’s largest, complex and most colourful of democracies, India’s approach to certain dissidents, notably of a Sikh patriotic sensibility, has not…
The dangers should be plastered on every wall in every office occupied by a military and political advisor. Israel’s attempt to reshape the Middle East, far from giving it enduring…
The recent string of exaggerated military successes – or at least as they are understood to be – places Israel in a situation it has been previously used to: prowess…
The United Nations is an easy body to hate. At times, it seems to be effusion without substance, body with no backbone. It was conceived in a fit of post-war…
It was done for the Viet Cong in numerous countries during the US involvement in Vietnam. It was done for the African National Congress (ANC). It was done for the…
It was a spectacular example of a non-event, alloyed by pure symbolism and cynicism. Here was a British government offering – how generous of them – to return sovereignty over…
It was good to hear that voice again. A voice of provoking interest that pitter patters, feline across a parquet, followed by the usual devastating conclusion. Julian Assange’s last public…
Anura Kumara Dissanayake, known with convenient laziness as AKD, became Sri Lanka’s latest president after a runoff count focusing on preferential votes. The very fact that it went to a…
The ongoing Israeli operation against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia group so dominant in Lebanon, is following a standard pattern. Ignore base causes. Ignore context. Target leaders, and target personnel. See…
Here he goes again, cap in hand, begging for the alms of war. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been touring the United States, continuing his lengthy salesmanship for Ukraine’s ongoing military…
With each ludicrously diabolical move, Israel’s security and military services are proving that they will broaden the conflict ignited when Hamas breached the country’s vaunted security defences on October 7. …
Like eager lice on a ripe scalp, tourists have become a much-reviled feature of various economies. While cash and contributions come in their wake, such an industry depletes, drains and…
The Australian government has been in a banning mood of late. In keeping with an old, puritanical tradition, the killjoys and wowsers have seized the reins of power and snorting…
September 11. Melbourne. The scene: the area between Spencer Street Bridge and the Batman Park-Spencer Street tram stop. Heavily armed police, with glinting face coverings and shields, had seized and…
Invention is the mother of necessity, and Russia’s response to largely Western-imposed economic and trade sanctions has shown the extent of that inventiveness. While enduring attritive punishment in its Ukraine…
The government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late. While galloping to…
Between September 11 and 13, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will play host to a bazaar of networking and deal making as part of a show that really…
Despite much grandstanding in the Biden administration about halting specific arms shipments to Israel over feigned concerns about how they might be used (inflicting death is the expected form), US…
On August 12, 1949, the four Geneva Conventions were adopted, laying the basis of a normative standard in international humanitarian law. As Balthasar Staehelin, personal envoy of the International Committee…
The problem with satellite states and subject powers is that their representatives are rarely to be trusted, especially on matters regarding security. Their idea of safety and assurance is tied…
In 2007, the writer Tal Nitsán isolated instances where Israeli male combatants systematically used sexual violence against Palestinian women to the war of 1948. In essentially marking off such conduct…
The occasion sparked much in the way of visionary language and speculative musings. This month, one of the world’s most conspicuous and dominant behemoths of Silicon Valley was found to…
Ekecheiria, also known as the “Olympic Truce,” is a quaint notion dating to Ancient Greece, when three kings prone to warring against each other – Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of…
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