The Decent Protester: A Down Under Creation
The Decent Protester, appropriately capitalised and revered is, from the outset, one who does not protest. It is an important point: to protest in the visage of such a person…
Dr Binoy Kampmark
Piggish Problems: African Swine Fever Does Its Worst
You cannot get away from it, at least in print or in Google land. African swine fever is doing its rounds, cutting through the swine population of Asia with remorseless…
A Coalition of Support: Parliamentarians for Julian Assange
Australian politicians, and the consular staff of the country, are rarely that engaged on the subject of protecting their citizens. In a couple of notorious cases, Australian authorities demonstrated, not…
The Politics of Funding: Cash Crisis at the United Nations
It remains one of the more unusual arrangements in terms of funding. Like a club filled with members of erratic disposition, the United Nations can never count on all dues…
Cynical Enterprises: The Kurds Await Their Fate
Big powers, as with the greatest of gangsters, have always had a certain, indulgent luxury; their prerogative is to make promises they can choose to abide by or ignore. A…
Colin Powell’s Trump Problem
When the compromised speak of judgment, the voice of credibility vanishes. In its place, a certain niggling sense of hypocrisy and weakness prevails. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell…
Internal Dissolution: Brexit and the Disunited Kingdom
While the European family seems to be having its internal spats – populist sparks within threatening to light the powder keg – the marshals and deputies, for the most part,…
Turning 70: Xi Jinping’s People’s Republic of China
During the era of Sovietology, experts would pour over images of the gathered politburo in Red Square, gazing with grey monolithic interest upon the military hardware moving across the forum. …
The President Did It: Donald Trump’s Phone Around
When the squalid, absurd and occasionally hilarious accounts are compiled by a sober mind, the Trump administration will stand out as much gargoyle with more than a touch of paranoia. …
Dangerous Detentions: Julian Assange and Remaining in Belmarsh
Much ink has been spilt in textbooks describing situations where autocratic states can behave badly. They abuse rights; they ignore international law and they ride roughshod over conventions. Liberal democracies…
When Convenience Counts: Leaking, Whistleblowing and the Democrats
The entire Trump presidency has been a sequence of “watch this space” moments. Dismissals and political executions; attacks and distractions; gestures of deal making and promises of apocalypse. Perhaps it…
Jacques Chirac: The Art of Being Vague
The tributes have been dripping in heavy praise: former French president Jacques Chirac and mayor of Paris, the great statesman; the man who said no to the US-led war juggernaut…
Scott Morrison and China
China has rattled Western observers for centuries, and the idea that it might be approaching a level of formidable heft is troubling to those who, condescendingly, see it as a…
Railroaded by the Judges: Boris Johnson fails in the UK Supreme Court
It delighted Labour supporters and party apparatchiks who had been falling over each other in murderous ceremony at the party conference in Brighton: Prime Minister Boris Johnson would come to…
Tempered Emergency: The Climate Change Summit in New York
It had a good deal of desperate scolding. Sweden’s Greta Thunberg assumed the role of punishing advocate, a Joan of Arc of fury. The main culprit in her speech at…
Normal Intrusions: Globalising AI Surveillance
They all do it: corporations, regimes, authorities. They all have the same reasons: efficiency, serviceability, profitability, all under the umbrella term of “security”. Call it surveillance, or call it monitoring…
Rotten in Tunisia: The Corrupt Rule of Ben Ali
He was the prototypical strong man softened by tactical reforms, blissfully ignorant before the fall, blown off in the violent winds of the Arab Spring. Having come to power in…
Extinction Rebellion: Leaving it to the Students
The protestor of school age sported a placard featuring a distorted caricature of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison: “Scomo was liking it hot”. A glorious spring day, and a gathering…
Strong Men in Europe: Tony Abbott Visits Hungary
“I extend a special welcome to Australia’s former prime minister. It is in part due to his tough policy that we regard Australia as a model country. We especially respect…
Lotteries and Rights in the Sporting Life
The pigeon flapped in desperation, moving across Melbourne’s lavish Capitol Theatre in fits and starts. It was more alarmed than anything else at the address being given by former Australian…
Fake Arguments on Fake News
The constipated tedium that follows each call, denial and condemnation after another round of fake news and its giddying effects has become daily fare. Entire episodes with the sanctimonious and…
Oiling for War: The Houthi Attack on Abqaiq
The attack on the world’s largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia southwest of Aramco’s headquarters in Dhahran had a few predictable responses. Given that the facility has…
Doctored Admissions: The US University Admissions Scandal as a Global Problem
Not so much a Desperate House Wife as a desperate mother, a contrite Felicity Huffman, known for playing Lynette Scavo, has been convicted for her role in the university admissions…
Improper Purposes: Boris Johnson’s Suspension of Parliament
There was something richly amusing in the move: three judges, sitting in Scotland’s highest court of appeal, had little time for the notion that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s suspension, or…
Spikes of Violence: Protest in West Papua
Like Timor-Leste, West Papua, commonly subsuming both Papua and West Papua, remains a separate ethnic entity, acknowledged as such by previous colonial powers. Its Dutch colonial masters, in preparing to…
Boris Johnson Trips: Duvets, Toothbrushes and the House of Lords
In 2017, MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Tory creature trapped in cold storage, suggested that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union was tantamount to fighting the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo…
The Courage of Saying No: Children, Rebellion and Greta Thunberg
There is something to be said of wariness when it comes to revolutionary voices. As Albert Camus argued in that beautiful tract of illumination and contradiction, The Rebel, “All modern…
World Systems and Capitalism: Immanuel Wallerstein’s Legacy
“The dead albatross that hangs around our neck is our legacy of arrogance, racism. And we must struggle to atone, to reconstruct, to create a different historical system.” So wrote…
Inevitable Withdrawal: The US-Taliban Deal
It took gallons and flagons of blood, but it eventuated, a squeeze of history into a parchment of possibility: the Taliban eventually pushed the sole superpower on this expiring earth…
Timor-Leste and Australia: A Loveless Affair at Twenty
Cringe worthy, a touch molesting in sentiment: this was the celebratory occasion of the gathering of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his East Timorese counterparts. During the course of…
Unhinged before the Fall: Boris Johnson, Parliament and Brexit
The Brexit no deal prospect is engendering an element of lunacy fast seeping into every pore of the British political establishment. As with all steeped in such thinking, some of…
Polishing Turds: Lord Bell’s Public Relations Revolution
“Morality is a job for priests. Not P.R. men.” Tim Bell, New York Times, Feb 4, 2018 Lord Bell is dead, but his public relations tinkering, with all its gloss…
Justifications for Inequality: The Neuroses of Kochland
One of the brothers Koch, David, has shuffled off this mortal coil, and the pious few looking at his passing may well think he is making it tough for camels…
The Naming Industrial Complex: The Stupidity of Smart Devices and Smart Cities
Insentience cannot have intelligence, but the modern public relations revolution would have you think otherwise. Smart phones, smart bombs, and, it follows, Smart Cities (capitalising such terms implies false authority),…
Imperial Sentiments: Donald Trump, Greenland and Colonial Real Estate
Haven’t the critics worked it out yet? US President Donald Trump chugs to the coal of nonsense that may come in the wrapping of some sense. Initial mad-cat comments, when…
No Deal Chaos: The Brexit Cliff Face and Operation Yellowhammer
Britain’s Boris Johnson is driving his country to the cliff face, along the way mouthing and spouting all manner of populist reassurances. Still fresh in the job, he declared that…
Condescension and Climate Change: Australia and the Failure of the Pacific Islands Forum
It was predictably ugly: in tone, in regret, and, in some ways, disgust. Australia emerged from the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting isolated, the true spoiler of the party which…
God, Guns and Video Games
The din struck by videos of the gaming variety; its forced causal link (always alleged, never proved) to altering conduct, continues its relentless march across the discussion forums in the…
Australia’s Pacific Play: Denying Climate Change and Boosting China’s Threat
Australia has always nursed a contradictory, repressive relationship with its Pacific neighbours. Being a satrap of great powers, it has performed the role of gate keeper and monitor of regional…
Conspiracy, Death and Jeffrey Epstein
Within minutes of news about his death in a Manhattan jail cell Saturday morning, theories spread with pestilential vigour. Was Jeffrey Epstein murdered? Accepting the premise without qualification, the next…
Caught in the Strait
It is clear that the United Kingdom could not have thought this through. Was it a touch of the Suez jitters, the haunting syndrome of 1956 leaving a false impression…
Cheering a New Arms Race: The End of the INF
US President Donald Trump is a master of the withdrawal method. That said, it is often forgotten that the United States remains that most fickle of creatures, joining, or abandoning…
The Retainer Solution: The European Union, Libya and Irregular Migration
There is a venom in international refugee policy that refuses to go away: officials charged with their tasks, passing on their labours to those who might see the UN Refugee…
Publishing Stolen Material: WikiLeaks, the DNC and Freedom of Speech
It may well be a finding of some implication should Julian Assange find his way into the beastly glory that is the US justice system. In its efforts to rope…
Militarising Australia: Talisman Sabre and the US Military Build Up
Deemed the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations strategy, the military method is a US Marine special, still spanking new, featuring “the amphibious landing of troops on islands for seizure and capture…
Mack Horton’s Anti-Drug Stance
The first rush of enthusiasm on looking at this is clear: a high-achieving swimmer on the circuit - the Australian Mack Horton – decides to take a stance. It’s not…
Olive Reincarnations and Elvis on Mars: Boris Johnson Becomes British PM
The BBC World Service took its listeners to the English cathedral town of Ely, set in picturesque Cambridgeshire, during the course of a hot July 23 in an effort to…
WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Decoding the National Security Commentariat
The Fourth Estate, that historical unelected grouping of society’s scrutineers, has become something of a rabble, and, as a confederacy of strewn dunces and the ongoing compromised, is ripe for…
Lunar Narratives: Landing on the Moon, Politics and the Cold War
Anniversaries are occasions to distort records. The intoxicated recounting of the past faces a record in need of correction. Couples long married hide their differences before guests. Creases are covered;…
Manus, Nauru and an Australian Detention Legacy
It could be called a gulag mentality, though it finds form in different ways. In the defunct Soviet Union, it was definitive of life: millions incarcerated, garrisons of forced labour,…
Donald Trump, the Democrat Squad and Failed Impeachment
Twitter has become policy. It is platform, direction and determination. It has served one particular person well, a hazy mechanism to fog up the lenses of law makers. When President…
Spying on Julian Assange: UC Global, CNN and Russian Couriers
History’s scope for the absurd and tragic is infinite. Like Sisyphus engaged in permanent labours pushing a boulder up a slope, the effort of making sense of such scope is…
Corporate Gangster: Adani’s Pursuit of Scientists
The Adani conglomerate should be best described as a bloated gangster, promising the earth even as it mines it. Like other corporate thugs of such disposition, it will do things…
The UN’s Free Speech Problem
Anyone willing to consult the international law book on the subject of free speech will find it heavy with protections for free speech. The UN Declaration of Human Rights features,…
The Resigning Ambassador: Sir Kim Darroch on Donald Trump
Rarely do ambassadors resign after an intense self-assessment of worth. Diplomatic immunity does not merely extend to protecting the official from the reach of local laws; it encourages a degree…
Juggling with the Authoritarians: Donald Trump’s Diplomatic Copy Book
Cue the shots, take the snaps: US President Donald Trump was back entertaining his fetish with firm handshakes proclaiming the making of history in the last round of discussions with…
Out of Kilter: National Security and Press Freedoms in Australia
Australian society relishes secrecy and surveillance. Forget the laid-back, relaxed demeanour that remains the great fiction of a confected identity; like all such creations, the trace should not be mistaken…
Dressed for the Fourth of July: The US Imperium Comes Out
The United States of Amnesia has occasionally found expression amongst those despairing at the state of historical consciousness in Freedom’s Land. Gore Vidal remains something of its high priest, his…
Going Nuclear in the Antipodes: Australia’s Megadeath Complex
The antipodes has had a fraught relationship with the nuclear option. At the distant ends of the earth, New Zealand took a stand against the death complex, assuming the forefront…
Facebook, Funny Money and Libra
In this squalid era of compromised data and hollowed privacy, it would be fitting that the company largely responsible for such mishaps would steer another technological innovation. Distractions are needed,…
Annual Subscription
Join Countercurrents Annual Fund Raising Campaign and help us
