Turning Tides: The US Congress and Julian Assange
“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” I.F. Stone The US Congress and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, have what can only be…
Dr Binoy Kampmark
Sparing the Athletes: Revising the Russia-Belarus Sporting Ban
Collateral damage? Deserving and worthy of their punishment? The exclusion and banishment of Russian and Belarusian athletes has become the acceptable prejudice of many governments and a slew of sporting…
Inglorious Inertia: The Albanese Government and Julian Assange
The sham that is the Assange affair, a scandal of monumental proportions connived in by the AUKUS powers, shows no signs of abating. Prior to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese assuming…
Calculated Exoneration: Command Responsibility and War Crimes in Afghanistan
Being the scapegoat of tribal lore cast out with the heavy weight of sins remains a popular political motif. Supposedly noble soldiers, by way of example, are punished for not…
A Hazardous Decision: Supplying Ukraine with Depleted Uranium Shells
Should they be taking them? Ukraine is desperate for any bit of warring materiel its armed forces can lay their hands on, but depleted uranium shells would surely not be…
AUKUS, the Australian Labor Party, and Growing Dissent
It was a sight to behold and took the wind out of the bellicose sails of the AUKUS cheer squad. Here, at the National Press Club in the Australian capital,…
Narendra Modi’s Cricket Coup
What a coup. Nakedly amoral but utterly self-serving in its saccharine minted glory. India’s showman Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who otherwise appears to have clerkish, desk-bound qualities, had what he…
Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific
For some time, Washington has been losing its spunk in the Pacific. When it comes to the Pacific Islands, a number have not fallen – at least entirely – for…
‘Israel is (Not) Back to Africa’: How African Countries are Challenging Israeli Plot on the Continent
The scene of Israeli Ambassador, Sharon Bar-Li, along with other Israeli delegates, being escorted out of the opening ceremony of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February…
From Balloons to AUKUS: The War Drive Against China
When will this hate-filled nonsense stop? Surveillance balloons treated like evocations of Satan and his card-carrying followers; other innumerable unidentified phenomena that, nonetheless, remain attributable in origin, despite their designation;…
Criminals at Large: The Iraq War Twenty Years On
The arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin came at an opportune moment. It was, if nothing else, a feeble distraction over the misdeeds and…
Spent Matters: The AUKUS Nuclear Waste Problem
When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like…
Trashing Asylum: The UK’s Illegal Migration Bill
He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street. The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country. According to UK Prime…
The Warring Peace: The AUKUS Submarine Announcement
History is filled with failed planners and plans, threats thought of that did not eventuate, and threats unthought of that found their way into the books. The AUKUS agreement is…
Disastrous Harvest: Silicon Valley Bank and the Anti-Regulation Bank Lobby
Before the financial collapse come the aggressive anti-regulation lobbyists. These are often of the same ilk: loathing anything resembling oversight, restriction, reporting and monitoring. They are incarnations of the frontier,…
The Ghost of Hugo Grotius: The UN High Seas Treaty
Ever so rarely, the human species can reach accord and agreement on some topic seemingly contentious and divergent. Such occasions tend to be rarer than hen’s teeth, but the UN…
War over Taiwan: Australia’s Gang of Five
Diligently, obediently and with a degree of dangerous imbecility, a number of Australian media outlets are manufacturing a consensus for war with a country that has never been a natural,…
Fish Killing Mania: Australia’s War Against the Common Carp
The scene is unforgettable and unforgivable: an elected official, the deputy prime minister of Australia, cutting loose about a fish species introduced into the country by his ancestors, and demanding…
India’s Education Market: The Next Neo-Colonial Frontier
Over the last week or so, Australian politicians and representatives of the university sector got busy pressing flesh in India, hoping to open avenues that have largely remained aspirational. It…
Doing Washington’s Bidding: Australia’s Treatment of Daniel Duggan
The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not…
The Rise of the Consultant Governing Class
They have become the outsourcing mandarins, consultancy companies which have served to degrade expertise in the public sector while diminishing the quality of services. Along the way, they have charged…
Energy Wars: Outing the Nord Stream Saboteurs
When news first emerged over explosions endured by the Nord Stream pipelines, known collectively as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, an army of guessers was mobilised. The accusation…
Irresponsible Politics: Australia’s B-52 Nuclear Weapons Problem
It is not farfetched to make the point that delivery systems capable of deploying nuclear weapons will lead to them carrying those very same weapons. Whatever the promises made by…
Ballooning Rhetoric: Aliens, Escalation and Airborne Surveillance
Things are getting rather bizarre at the US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Its increasingly prominent commanding chief, one General Glen VanHerck, has abandoned any…
ChatGPT: Boon for the Lazy Learner
Inside the beating heart of many students and a large number of learners lies an inner cheat. To get passing grades, every effort will be made to do the least…
Corrupt and Fraudulent: Laying bare the Adani Group
There is nothing Gautam Adani will not do for money. In this sense, he is admirably dedicated to greed, so much so he has become its foremost caricature worthy of…
Ballooning Paranoia: The China Threat Hits the Skies
Hysteria over balloons is a strange thing. Hot air balloons made their appearance during the Napoleonic era, where they served as delivery weapons for bombs and undertook surveillance tasks. High…
Ukraine’s Tank Problem
It seems to be a case of little provision for so much supposed effect. The debates, the squabbles, the to-and-fro about supplying Ukraine with tanks from Western arsenals has served…
Tempting the Banksters: Zelensky Courts US Companies
The transformation of Ukraine into untarnished, saintly victim, symbol of democracy and civil society savaged by brutish Russia, has been nothing less than remarkable. The endemic corruption of a state…
Doltish Ways: Biden’s Documents Problem
Through the course of his political life, the current US president has often been injudicious. He has stumbled, bungled and miscalculated. His electoral victory was fortuitous, aided by a number…
When Good Refugees Turn Bad
When the first Russian forces began entering Ukrainian territory in February 2022, the instant reaction from Europe, the UK, Canada and Australia, was one of open commitment to Ukraine’s refugees. …
A Picture of Global Complicity: Aiding Myanmar’s Military Regime
International relations remains the sum game of vast hypocrisies, a patchwork of compromises and the compromised. Every moral condemnation of a regime’s conduct is bound to be shown up as…
Nuclear Submarine Doubts: US Lawmakers and AUKUS
The policymaking apparatus behind the AUKUS security pact was shoddy from the start. It has raised questions about the extent US power will subordinate Australia further in future conflicts; it…
ExxonMobil, Suppressing Science and Climate Change
Villains often have the best tunes. In some cases, they also have the best evidence. The tendency in the latter is to suppress or distort that evidence if it is…
Joining the War Club: Australia’s HIMARS Purchase
Another needless, fatuous endeavour; another irresponsible drain on the public purse; another expression that the military-industrial complex Down Under is thriving in all its insidious stupidity. But Australia’s purchase of…
Prince Harry’s Great Afghan Shooting Party
What to make of it? History is filled with the deeds of blood-thirsty princes bold in ambition and feeble of mind. Massacres make the man, though there is often little…
Metaphors of Belligerence: Wars by and against Nature
Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else. Aristotle, Poetics (1457b) It all seemed familiar. Anthropomorphised Mother Nature in vengeful mood; humans wondering if they…
Vivienne Westwood: Activism and the Godmother of Punk
There was the punk scene, Malcolm McLaren, their racy clothes shop at 430 King’s Road that started out as Let it Rock, the creation of a look, and the gathering…
Country for Bad Dreams: Vandalism on the Nullarbor Plain
“This is quite shocking,” declared South Australia’s Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher. “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the…
Suing Meta in Kenya
Africa has been a continent exploited since the European scramble carved it out in lines of a draughtsman’s crude design. Its resources have been pilfered; its peoples enslaved for reasons…
The Year of the Botched Execution
There was never anything going for it, except political mileage and the desire for crude retribution. The putting to death of another human being by the legal sanction of a…
Baguette Listings: Why Food is Politics
On November 30, the French baguette was formally added to the United Nations’ Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The bureaucrats had finally gotten hold of a glorified bread stick, adding it…
The Raider Spirit: The Unveiling of the B-21
The US military industrial complex has made news with another eye-wateringly expensive product, a near totemic tribute to waste in a time of crisis. The $700 million B-21 Raider stealth…
Julian Assange and Albanese’s Intervention
The unflinching US effort to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange for 18 charges, 17 of which are chillingly based upon the Espionage Act of 1917, has not always stirred much…
Tuvalu, Climate Change and the Metaverse
When lost to climatic disaster and environmental turbulence, where does a whole nation go? History speaks about movements of people, whether induced by human agency or environment, finding sanctuary and…
Silicon Valley Fake: Elizabeth Holmes and the Fraudster’s Motivation
It has been one noisy time for the paladins of big tech. Jobs have been shed by the thousands at Meta, Amazon and Twitter; FTX, the second largest cryptocurrency company,…
Thuggish Ways: Mike Pompeo, Punishing Leakers and Getting Assange
Poor, silly, protuberant Mike Pompeo. The stocky, irritated former CIA director and former Secretary of State is rather upset that those who worked under him dared wag their tongues about…
The Polish Missile Narrative
Wars tend to bury facts. What comes out of them is often a furiously untidy mix of accounts that, when considered later, constitute wisps of fantasy and presumption. Rarely accepted…
Privacy Woes: Google’s “Location History” Settlement
It all speaks to scale: the attorney generals of 40 states within the US clubbing together to charge Google for misleading users. On this occasion, the conduct focused on making…
Saudi Blood Money, Golf and Adelaide
Peter Malinauskas, the South Australian Premier, has been the latest convert to the LIV Golf circuit, showing little to no awareness about where the lion’s share of funding is coming…
The Secret Wars of the US Imperium
To get to where they are, imperial powers will deceive, dissimulate and distort. The US imperium, that most awesome of devilish powers, has tentacled itself across the globe, often unbeknownst…
November 11: The Command of the Donkeys Continues
It’s a grotesque, ceremonial observance, marked by a degree of unpardonable acceptance. The First World War, which killed millions, extirpated classes in Europe, and destroyed monarchies, established a mawkish ritual…
Extradition Clouds: The Duggan Case and the Chinese Angle
Soon, the US government may be making waves regarding another extradition request for a figure connected with that oft exaggerated notion of national security. While the high profile and insidious…
Rishi Sunak: A Thatcherite in Downing Street
They are falling like ninepins, and the Tories have now given the weary people of Britain yet another prime minister. And what a catch: stupendously wealthy, youthful – the youngest…
The Bond Vigilantes Get Busy
While the levels of schadenfreude will be going through the roof given the unfolding farce in British politics, the resignation of Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister was troubling in…
Camelot’s Slurs: The Libelling of Adlai Stevenson
How do you bury responsibility for a decision inspired by a pilfered idea? Blame someone else, especially if that person came up with the idea to begin with. This tried…
Virtuous Hypocrisy: The Socceroos and the Qatar World Cup
For a time, the confused and muddled approach from Australian football (soccer to some) did much of a side-step regarding the human rights imbroglio and Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA…
Tactical Nuclear Fantasists
Bogeyman politics tends to be flatly unimaginative. The image of the nuclear-mad Russian President, counting his diminishing options, has caught the imagination of press and propaganda outlets across the West. …
Eric Schmidt: A Conflict of Interest
Ethics and Eric Schmidt are rare bedfellows. The former Google/Alphabet CEO/Chairman exudes a sense of predatory self-interest, always making the point that what he wants aligns with what is supposedly…
A Political Solution for Assange: Jennifer Robinson at the National Press Club
It was telling. Of the mainstream Australian press gallery, only David Crowe of the Sydney Morning Herald turned up to listen to Jennifer Robinson, lawyer extraordinaire who has spent years…
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