Priti Patel and the Death of Asylum
Nothing makes better sense to the political classes than small time demagoguery when matters turn sour. True, the United Kingdom might well be speeding ahead with vaccination numbers, and getting…
Dr Binoy Kampmark
The Adani Business Formula: Dealing with Myanmar’s Military
Corporate morality can be a flexible thing. Some companies see tantalising dollar signs afloat in the spilt blood of civilians and dissidents. Military governments, however trigger crazed, offer ideal opportunities;…
Cancelling Art, Dark Mofo and the Offended Classes
Last week, Australians found themselves delighting in another fit of cancel culture, this time in the art world. Tasmania’s Dark Mofo art festival prides itself on being gritty but the…
Increasing Nukes and Trimming the Military: Global Britain’s Skewed Vision
Campaigners for the abolition of nuclear weapons had every reason to clink glasses with the coming into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in January. Nuclear…
Confused in Afghanistan: The Biden Administration’s Latest Trick
The Biden administration continues to engage in that favourite activity White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki can only describe as “circling back”. And much circling is taking place in the…
Green Passes and Dark Inequalities: The Push for COVID Immunity Passports
Sensible, ideal, wonderful – if you happen to be in the European Union. This is the air of confidence surrounding the March 17 proposal for a digital COVID immunity passport,…
The University Deception: Rankings and Academic Freedom
Forget the global university rankings of any list. The global university promotion exercise is filled with snake oil and perfumed refuse, an effort to corrupt the unknowing and steal from…
Eyes on China: The Quad Takes Scattered Aim
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has had its fits and starts, but nothing encourages such chats than threats, actual or perceived. In 2017, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono felt that it…
COVID-19 Vaccines, Access and the Intellectual Property Wars
By now, anybody speaking about vaccine equality and equity of access must surely be coming across as slightly deranged. In the field of COVID-19, traditional proprietorial instincts remain. Add to…
Brawling over Vaccines: Export Bans and the EU’s Bungled Rollout
The European Union has been keeping up appearances in encouraging the equitable distribution of vaccines to combat SARS-CoV-2 and its disease, COVID-19. Numerous statements speak to the need to back…
Biden, Afghanistan and Forever Wars
The papers are full of suggestions on what US President Joe Biden should do about his country’s seemingly perennial involvement in Afghanistan. None are particularly useful, in that they ignore…
Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria
Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it. On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria. The premise for…
Culpability and Recalibration: MBS and the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi
It was a brutal way to go, and it had the paw prints of the highest authorities. On October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian insider turned outsider, was…
War Mongering for Artificial Intelligence
The ghost of Edward Teller must have been doing the rounds between members of the National Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The father of the hydrogen bomb was never one too…
Refriended in Defeat: Australia Strikes a Deal with Facebook
The Australian Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, was unconvincing in his efforts to summon up courage. The Australian government had been left reeling in the wake of Facebook’s decision to scrap and…
Facebook Unfriends Australia: The Triumph of Epistemic Chaos
Creepy and ruthless Facebook has again impressed with its steely indifference to civic responsibility, as if a company established by a sociopath could ever be a model of human improvement.…
The “Return” of America: Biden’s Maiden Foreign Policy Speech
Few could have been slack-jawed at the first significant foreign policy speech of US President Joe Biden. It can easily be filed under the “America is back” label. Back as…
Missions to Mars: Mapping, Probing and Plundering the Red Planet
In the first month of 2020, Forbes was all excitement about fresh opportunities for plunder and conquest. Titled “2020: The Year We Will Conquer Mars”, the contribution by astrophysicist Paul…
Trouble in Vaccine Land: The Wiliness of South Africa’s Coronavirus Variant
It began as a shudder through the scientific and public health establishments. A new variant of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 had been found, mutating in South African climes, potentially outwitting…
Continuing Prosecutions: Assange and the Biden Administration
With changes of presidential administrations, radical departures in policy are always exaggerated. Continuity remains, for the most part, a standard feature. It is precisely that continuity being challenged by groups…
Information Interruptus: Bing, Google and the News Media Bargaining Code
It’s looking a touch quixotic, but the News Media Bargaining Code has become Australia’s weapon of choice in attempting to redistribute proceeds from big tech into the coffers of a…
Let the Investigation Begin: The International Criminal Court, Israel and the Palestinian Territories
International tribunals tend to be praised, in principle, by those they avoid investigating. Once interest shifts to those parties, such bodies become the subject of accusations: bias, politicisation, crude arbitrariness. …
Coronavirus Education: Learning and Teaching from the Margins
The coronavirus student, a species brought forth in the world of education by a pandemic that has killed over 400,000 people in the United States and 100,000 in the United…
Cowardly History: Australia Day and Invasion
It’s the sort of stuff that should have been sorted years ago in Australia: a murderous, frontier society ill disposed to the indigenous populace; the creation of a convict colony…
Boris Johnson and the Deaths of the Hundred Thousand
Not exactly Thermopylae. Not even close. The hundred thousand who have now been taken by COVID-19 in Britain were not determined warriors holding up the forces of a mighty empire…
Immortal Wins: India Defeats Fortress Australia
It was never meant to be like this. After the Indian cricketing team met misery and disaster in the first test match at Adelaide, registering a paltry 36 in its…
Trigger Finger for Armageddon: Trump and the Thermonuclear Monarchy
It is the sort of breezy, skimpy and careless reasoning that is laying the ground for the Biden Republic. A person, kicked off a social media babbling platform and having…
Encircling China and Praising India: The US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific
The feeling from Rory Medcalf of the Australian National University was one of breathless wonder. “The US government,” he wrote in The Strategist, “has just classified one of its most…
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Australia’s Complicity
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, said little in the statement from her department, which was a good thing, as it might have been dangerously useful. The finding of a UK…
Twitter Nukes Trump
This was Twitter Safety’s January 8 post, full of noble concern: “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them - specifically how they…
Trump, Insurrections and the 25th Amendment
How strange it must have seemed for US lawmakers to be suddenly facing what was described as a “mob”, not so much storming as striding into the Capitol with angry…
Proxy Jailor: Denying Assange Bail
History, while not always a telling guide, can be useful. But in moments of flushed confidence, it is not consulted and Cleo is forgotten. A crisp new dawn can negate…
In Diversity We Trust: Joe Biden’s Cabinet Choices
Perfumed and tailored for a certain brand of folksy, identity politics, Pete Buttigieg hoped to blast his way to the White House having run a community of 102,000 constituents in…
“It’s not as bad as Iwo Jima, I suppose”: The Julian Assange Extradition Verdict
The barrister-brewed humour of Edward Fitzgerald QC, one of the solid and stout figures defending a certain Julian Assange of WikiLeaks at the Old Bailey in London, was understandable. Time…
Tinkering with National Anthems: Australia’s Patriotic Song for Children
It was a New Year gimmick that would have warmed advertising executives across the country. For the first time since it was proclaimed as Australia’s national anthem on April 19,…
The Julian Assange Pardon Drive
The odds are stacked against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who faces the grimmest of prospects come January 4. On that day, the unsympathetic judicial head of District Judge Vanessa…
UK Parliamentarians, the British Press and Julian Assange
The number of figures extolling the merits of Britain’s Westminster system and how it supposedly embodies a glorious model of democracy are too numerous to mention. This is despite exploits…
Abuse on the Mainland: Australia’s Medevac Hotel Detentions
Governments that issue press releases about the abuse of human rights tend to avoid close gazes at the mirror. Doing so would be telling. In the case of Australia, its…
Fish Wars and Brexit
Warring over fish in the twenty-first century might seem an unlikely proposition. But the deployment of four Royal Navy ships to deter European fishing vessels from encroaching on British waters…
Julian Assange: Covid Risks and Campaigns for Pardon
Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities…
“I Told You So. You Damned Fools”: 75 Years of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Leafing – or in this case scrolling through – the commemorative issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists after 75 years of publication is a tingling exercise of existence. …
Think Tankers Against China: The Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Security think tanks are the leeches of industry. Attached to their appropriate field, they compile analysis that is supposedly masterful, insightful and even useful. Reports can recommend courses of action,…
Trump Exits Somalia
These are things that might have been done earlier. During the last, flickering days of the Trump administration, activity is being witnessed across countries which have a US troop presence. …
Imperfect Releases: Andrew Hastie, War Crimes Reports and Australia in Afghanistan
If one were to get into the head of Australian government MP Andrew Hastie, a security tangle of woe would no doubt await. Having been a captain with the Special…
The David McBride Case: Whistleblowing, Afghanistan and Australian War Crimes
Much complaint can be had of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry Report. It exempts political actors of responsibility for alleged atrocities and war crimes. It suggests…
Not Adding Up: Australia, Iran and the Release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert
Australia’s ambassadorial offices and political leaders have a consistent record of ignoring their citizens in tight situations. David Hicks, Mamdouh Habib and Julian Assange are but a few names that…
Biden’s Promise: America is Back(wards)
With President Donald Trump all but conceding to the transition team that will take over after January next year, interest now shifts to President-elect Joe Biden’s choices for cabinet. On…
Keeping the Empire Running: Britain’s Global Military Footprint
A few nostalgic types still believe that the Union Jack continues to flutter to sighs and reverence over outposts of the world, from the tropics to the desert. They would…
Skewed Responsibility: Australian War Crimes in Afghanistan
The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry was always going to make for a gruesome read – and that was only the redacted version. The findings of the…
The Yemen Civil War Arms Bonanza
“Making billions from arms exports which fuel the conflict while providing a small fraction of that in aid to Yemen is both immoral and incoherent.” So thundered Oxfam’s Yemen Country…
Dim Halos: Suppressing the Cult of Pope John Paul II
As chief conductor of the saint factory, Pope John Paul II was always going to be, in time, canonised. Almost 500 saints were created under his watch. The previous 600…
Covid Offices and the Religion of Remote Work
Masks can prove liberating. The hidden face affords security. Obnoxious authority breathes better, hiding in comfort. Behind the material, confidence finds a home. While tens of millions of jobs have…
A Dedicated Obsession: Washington’s Continuing Iran Sanctions Regime
One dogma that is likely to persist in US foreign policy during a Biden presidency will be the sanctions regime adopted towards Iran. Every messianic state craves clearly scripted enemies,…
Rolling Heads at the Pentagon: Trump as Sacker-in-Chief
A sense of redundancy might encourage calm. The job is done, however well or poorly. The legacy charted. But in the case of President Donald Trump, there is still much…
Petitions, Probes and Rupert Murdoch
Australia has given the world two influential and disruptive exports in the field of media. One, currently in London’s Belmarsh Prison, is facing the prospect of extradition to the United…
Fur Trades and Pandemics: Coronavirus and Denmark’s Great Mink Massacre
“The worst case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” came the words of a grave Kåre Mølbak, director of the Danish health authorities, the…
The US Presidential Election: The View from Outside
It was now the turn of other states to vent about, and at, the United States. The 2020 US presidential elections were coming down to a razor sharp wire. The…
Trump, Blue Mirages and False Polls
The great bard remarks in Henry VI: Part II that all the lawyers ought to be killed. In entertaining this homicidal formula, William Shakespeare had yet to encounter that barnacle…
Sawing the Sacred: Felling the Djab Wurrung Directions Tree
“Djab Wurrung women are in an abusive relationship with Victoria’s government.” Sissy Eileen Austin, The Guardian, Sep 14, 2019 It was a penultimate day in the Australian state of Victoria. …
Factionalising Antisemitism: The British Labour Party Suspends Jeremy Corbyn
Whatever stance taken by followers of the British Labour Party on the subject of antisemitism within its ranks, the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn must be seen as an exercise of…
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