With the Ukraine War and the retreat of the United States from what has routinely been called Europe’s security architecture, states are galloping to whatever point of presumed sanctuary is…
The time has come for arguably the sporting world’s most famous mafia organisation to select its new chief. The various turf-conscious representatives of the International Olympic Committee will be busy…
We live in dangerous times, and politicians are happy to be cheerleaders of that supposed fact. They do not care to reassure; they merely care to strike fear into hearts…
The critics are utterly beside themselves in trying to understand the bruising odds and turns of Donald J. Trump, the reality showman and business tycoon who became US president twice. …
The singular antics of US President Donald Trump, notably towards supposed allies, has stirred the pot regarding national security in various capitals. From Canberra to Brussels, there is concern that…
There is something deeply moving about the ignorance and scatty nature of politicians. At points, it can even be endearing. In the apparently wide wake left by the mauling of…
There was a revolting tabloid quality to the Oval Office reception given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28, but then again, President Donald Trump is a tabloid brute,…
Guantánamo Bay has been a fiendish experiment in US law for decades. The fiendishness lies in the subversion. Operating as a naval base in Cuba, this contentious facility has been…
It has the feeling of a ghastly ending, one pushed along by desperation and eagerness. First, levelling Gaza and turning it to an uninhabitable moonscape, with the promise of a…
This is Pablo Picasso the way he is rarely seen – at least in so far as the hundred or so pieces at the British Museum’s Picasso: Printmaker have been…
The US aid program began in earnest in the early stages of the Cold War, with an intention to beat off the contenders from the Soviet bloc in the postcolonial…
The rampaging antics of a querulous, sociopathic tech oligarch as he busies himself identifying which government departments to raid, trim, if not abolish altogether, understandably concerns those in the business…
President Donald J. Trump likes teasing out the unmentionable, and the Israel-Palestinian situation was hardly going to be any different. With a touch of horror and the grotesque, he offered…
On October 23, 2023, the British Library, one of the world’s finest repositories of knowledge, was subjected to a cyber-attack. Some 600GB of files, including the personal data of Library…
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. Wilfred Owen, “Strange Meeting” (1919) There have been politicians who have fancied themselves as poets. …
Twinning the terms “ceasefire” and “Gaza” seems not only incongruous but an obscene joke. This is largely because the ceasefire announced on January 15 between Israel and Hamas could have…
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…
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