Mass killings, massacres and general culling; butchering made normal, sanctified by State practice, and the scientific establishment. This is the killing of Australia’s national symbol, reviled and idealised in various…
The precipitous demise of China’s prototype space station, Tiangong-1, was the sort of event that took earthbound discussions to more heavenly matters. Human beings, as is their wont, tend to…
Finland, a country noted for deep felt suicides executed during long dark winter months, has become the happiest nation on earth. This statistical superstition, contrived to feed a social-media diet…
Fake news has not merely become a business but a designation. It is a way of silencing dissent, and questioning accounts. For the authoritarian, this is not merely a delight,…
Being a netizen, to use that popular term of sociological derivation, can be a difficult business. It presumes digital engagement, often of the sharper sort. To become a fully-fledged member…
“It’s really quite incredible how, at nearly every turn the New Zealand government has managed to mess up the legal case against Kim Dotcom.” Mike Masnick, Techdirt, Mar 26,…
It has given those in a permanent state of jitters greater reason to jump off the cliff to a certain fate, but John Bolton’s elevation to President Donald J. Trump’s…
There was an audacity about it, carried out with amateurish callowness. As it turned out Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft, besieged and vulnerable, had been egged on by Australian cricket captain…
The hacking community, like poets, tend to be irritable tribesmen and women. Their modus operandi functions on the stab, the enthusiastic penetration of insecure computer systems and mockery. Their role…
It might have made a bit more than a whimper had the US political scene not found itself in yet another paroxysm of the drama known as the Trump White…
Whether it creeps into politics, marketing, or simple profiling, the nature of surveillance as totality has been affirmed by certain events this decade. The Edward Snowden disclosures of 2013 demonstrated…
The policy of responding to assassinations on British soil is a near non-existent one. Her Majesty’s Government is certainly in the habit of huffing, and steam can issue from deliberations…
Let’s put it out there with suitable portions of provocation: free trade has never actually taken place. There is an uncomfortable, skirmish-ridden middle ground, where states compete for primacy over…
It takes much to make a figure like Rex Tillerson seem not merely sane but competent. The Trump administration, with its almost paranormal sense of revisionism and fantasy, has managed…
It says a lot that societies who are still part of what is rather weakly called the free world could do this. Technology, viewed as emancipating and rewarding, can actually…
The status of dissident offers a certain moral latitude in behaviour, and, in various cases, misbehaviour. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is one such figure. He is a feted figure…
“The Commission instead opted for the easiest way out, which is a shame as in my perception it reveals a lack of impartiality on your behalf!” Chief East Timorese negotiator,…
“To protect our Country, we must protect American Steel!” Donald J. Trump, Twitter, Mar 5, 2018 As an agent of chaos, US President Donald Trump is keeping busy. Last…
While the bibliophile and aphorist Samuel Johnson claimed that people of appropriate mental discipline could avoid talking about the weather, the British have found weather an irresistible topic of conversation. …
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, seemed perplexed, sticking to a drafted script. Politicians on the Hill were troubled. The Pentagon attempted to be reassuring. The Russian bear…
Oxfam has outdone itself. In the murky, squalid business where charity seems to chase, then embed itself in disaster zones like a dedicated virus, Oxfam ranks highly. In terms of…
With the icicles still glinting with the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic games, US President Donald Trump, like any disgruntled child, wanted to reassert his relevance. Little Rocket…
It had been in the works. Instead of engaging in the traditional revulsion associated with a mass shooting, or even digesting the grief of outraged students and grieving parents, US…
He may have been a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, but a component of John Perry Barlow’s activism and corpus will forever be associated with a concept fast losing its…
“We’ve been doing this kind of thing [electoral meddling] since the CIA was created in 1947.” Loch K. Johnson, New York Times, Feb 17, 2018 Electoral meddling has become the…
It’s the sort of thing to turn many an otherwise calm stomach, but the revelations that UN peace keeping staff have been involved in sexual assault has done its fair…
Tagged to the Trump presidency like an insistent limpet, the investigation into Russian interference in the US elections of 2016 provides constant fodder for the unimaginative political animals in the…
Justice is an elastic concept. Like other terms in law, it has room to expand and contract. But one weakness burdens legal strictures that supposedly have an objective reality to…
Mike Pence was a man with a mission. At stages through the opening parts of the Winter Olympics in South Korea, he looked like a man on a mission. With…
“Horse-trading determines who goes to jail and for how long. That is what plea bargaining is. It is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal…
Imperial arrangements require decent overseer of subjects. In the Pax Americana, which is, in fact, rather violent, Australia is indispensable in the Pacific theatre. It offers land, facilities, and the…
Holocaust history has never been far away from political manipulation. The deaths of millions tends to supply various causes: for those who survive, radicalisation can be imminent. For those who…
You only had to see him goggle eyed and enthusiastic beside France’s President Emmanuel Macron last Bastille Day. The tricolours were fluttering, the jets booming above in the manner usual…
As the Sunday news vine began getting heavy, that sole topic of all-consuming, toxic interest – Brexit – threatened to claim the casualty of the British Prime Minister herself, Theresa…
It seemed to be an act of counter-intuitive genius, one framed in a manner that could have been deemed both insulting and flattering. You, dear customer, would be the one…
In this age of reality television (or televised unreality), the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was not going to miss out. Unlike other chief spies who operate in habitual…
“I won’t even start with the old rule that when there’s a contract killing, it’s usually the killer who first offers their condolences.” Nenad Čanak, Radio Free Europe, Jan 22,…
Novak Djokovic, on returning to competitive tennis at the Australian Open, caused something of a a stir that a revolt in the game was brewing. Was it about ball boys…
It seemed so much busier, much more manic and crowded than the one year that had passed. Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump continues to excite the same headlines and…
It’s a cruel saga, and one that promises no immediate end. Turkey, considered one of the more potent of powers within the NATO alliance, has manoeuvred itself into a play…
Few documentaries have had quite this impact, so much so that it has ushered in the unfortunate combination of war and plastic, two terms that sit uneasily together, if at…
The more overtures, sudden but entirely appropriate, being made by North Korea to their South Korean counterparts, the more concern seems to emanate from quarters in Washington and Tokyo. A…
Since coming to power, Macron has given the impression of forging ahead with new agendas and ideas crafted from a novel perspective. This has been far from the case. True,…
Michael Wolff is laughing, if not gloating, all his way to the bank. Money bags are singing; bank accounts are being filled. Doubts about the free publicity his work on…
It has been said that what is required in dealing with the Trump administration is less an army of diplomats than keen and attentive psychiatrists. Those psychiatrists would have had…
Two’s a company; three’s a crowd. More? This issue is preoccupying political and policing figures in the city considered by the Economist Intelligence Unit the most liveable in the world,…
The attempt to tease, weave and develop a narrative against President Donald J. Trump over a Russian connection began almost immediately after his victory in November last year. This was…
The gloating over the forthcoming New Year celebrations has already commenced. The first big city to feature on the roundups in each news segment as the year is ushered in…
Conspiracies in the extraterrestrial department have always constituted the residue of superstition in a secular age. Chase away a Christ figure, or ward off God, and the mind still wanders,…
In what has been a nightmare at Christmas, the plight of refugees relocated to other sites on Manus Island after the closure of the facility at Lombrum Naval Base has…
It’s the season to be jolly, and the Trump administration has been busy doling out gifts. Sanctions seem to be top of the pile, derived from that trove of options…
It was something of a clanger for the ride hailing service that has made authorities across the globe sceptical and stroppy. Uber has lobbied, cajoled, and bullied its way into…
Seoul: Atrocity tourism and what might be termed the tourism of divisive obstacles (fences, barbed wire, mine fields) can be great money earners. Former concentration and extermination camps in Europe…
The worst of times, and the best of times. This must be a sentiment that filters through the Trump administration as it discusses, disagrees and fights itself on how best…
Being a moralist in the Olympics doesn’t carry you very far. Turn one way, and there are enterprising drug cheats; turn another, there are wads of cash in envelopes finding…
The overthrow of iniquitous power relations is a point many would celebrate. But such overthrows are themselves marked by the contradiction of their origins. Any revolution must, by its very…
It barely registered a murmur across the Australian press, though it caused the traditional ripples over the protester fraternity. Christian activists, collectively known as the Pine Gap Pilgrims, had received…
What ramifications and when? The recognition of Jerusalem as the natural capital for the State of Israel by US President Donald J. Trump was promised by the buffoonish steward of…
The crystal ball gazers, astrologers and tea leave readers have been suffering a lingering fever of late. Bitcoin recently romped through the $10,000 barrier, an event that sent speculators swooning…
It sent patrons and users into fits of puzzled anger. It numbed a good many more who had placed mistaken faith in its operations. Rapacious, predatory Uber, a ride-hailing company…
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