The former Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has been somewhat of an absentee in the Federal seat of Cook. Since losing the May 2022 election, he has been aggressively chasing up contacts and deals on the consultancy circuit, bellyaching about the usual talking points: the gruesome China menace; defence matters; and, just to round it off for good measure, additional[Read More…]
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 HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) batteries from the United States can be put down to loneliness – or the feeling of being left out. And history shows that loneliness[Read More…]
A new Australian Labor Government was elected in May 2022, replacing an appalling Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Government. However after a mere 6 months decent, progressive, pro-environment and pro-peace Australians have already been disappointed by a cowardly and unprincipled Labor Government not meeting its pre-election rhetoric on matters ranging from banning nuclear weapons to strong action on climate change. Set[Read More…]
Australia was recently number one in the world for median per capita wealth. However, presently about 100,000 Australians die preventably each year from life-style choice and political choice reasons. Of these an estimated 23,000 die from poverty. Yet these horrible realities are effectively ignored by rich Australia that is blindly committed to neoliberalism that demands maximum freedom for the smart[Read More…]
Australians were astonished by the revelation in August that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison had secretly been appointed by the Governor General, General David Hurley, as a Minister for Health, Minister for Treasury, Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Finance, and Minister for Resources and Water. These extraordinary and secret actions, while legal, have grossly violated the core principles of[Read More…]
Never trust anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth in an election year. Pledges are made to be broken; promises are made to seduce, not convince. When the subject matter involves fictional submarines, even greater care should be taken. The prolonged, costly nightmare of Australia’s submarine policy took another turn on March 6. The Defence Minister Peter Dutton could[Read More…]
The history of humanitarian or policing missions is a history of taking sides, disruptive partiality and the forfeiture of the very object powers claim when intervening in another country. Things become particularly absurd when the individual or government pleading for such help to an outside force is struggling to survive yet making grand statements about democracy and the like. Take[Read More…]
Every time you start to believe that West is your model of morality, you get a jolt. Recent revelations of horrific war crimes committed by the Australian soldiers in Afghanistan where innocent men, women and children were deliberately and gruesomely killed are a rude reminder that West’s claim to morality is not just outright falsehood, their colonial habits of abuse[Read More…]
Australia has been rocked by the release of a heavily redacted report about the killing of 39 unarmed Afghan civilians or prisoners by some 25 elite Australian Special Air Services (SAS) soldiers. Any prosecutions will take years and will violate the scientific principle of truth and systemic change rather than knee-jerk blame and shame. There is already huge Australian[Read More…]
War crimes committed by the losers are punished and pilloried in news articles, books documentaries, movies while military coverups of atrocities by the victors are standard issue for evading justice. And cover-ups generally work – Australian war crimes against civilians are rarely exposed unless you happen to stumble across them such as the barely known 101 year old ANZAC massacre of Palestinian male[Read More…]
These are proving testy times for Australian-Chinese relations. Last week, Chinese authorities announced that an investigation would be conducted into claims that Australia has been using unfair dumping practices for its wine on the Chinese market. This was not what Australian wine makers wanted to hear, given that exports of Australian wine to China grew from AU$268 million in 2015/16[Read More…]
It promised to be bruising to both dignity and wallet. However brazen Australian politicians have been drumming up support for an international inquiry into the origins of the novel coronavirus, the first ones to be slapped in anger would have to be those in agriculture. Barley exporters find themselves facing a suffocating, and potentially market killing tariff, of 80.5 percent. [Read More…]
And they fell like ninepins. Weeks of predictions, optimistic readings, and hopeful signs were dashed as the members of the highest court of Australia laid waste to members of Parliament. Citing a section in the Australian constitution that has become something of a heavy footnote in popular consciousness, the judges ruled five out of seven applicants ineligible to sit in[Read More…]
It was never spectacular, but the Australian media scape is set to become duller, more contained, and more controlled with changes to the Broadcasting Services Act. In an environment strewn with the corpses of papers and outlets strapped for cash, calls for reforming the media market have been heard across the spectrum. The foggy deception being perpetrated by the Turnbull[Read More…]
It’s a pretty curious thing to see: marriage being defended at all. Like slavery, and not necessarily inconsistent with it, marriage is an institution. It embraces codes. It imparts obligations, duties, and rights. And it creeps up on you. In Australia, flawed campaigns are being waged in its name. This has been occasioned by an absence of parliamentary will. Abdicating[Read More…]
It has been a week of bollards. And defence barriers. And hedges and vegetation. No, not the radio garden hour, or the herbaceous borders special featured on prime time television, delivered by a bearded man with a facial forest so vast it could regenerate several lost species. This is the anti-terrorist flick of the week, and given that Australia’s Turnbull[Read More…]
In the classroom of international security, Australia remains an infant wanting attention before the older hands. During the Paris Peace talks, Prime Minister William Morris (“Billy”) Hughes screamed and hollered Australia’s wishes to gain greater concessions after its losses during the Great War, urging, among other things, a more punitive settlement for Germany. In the post-September 2001 age, recognition comes[Read More…]
“In terms of prize money, the Melbourne Cup is worth more than the Grand National or any race in America, and it is far more popular in terms of national identity.” Richard Waterhouse, ABC Radio, Nov 3, 2015. An inspection of the hungry, jostling crowds gathering at the gates of the Flemington Race Course, Melbourne, gives a false sense of[Read More…]
A recent Essential Research poll had found 49 per cent of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration, including 60 per cent of Liberal-National Coalition voters, 40 per cent of Labor voters and 34 per cent of Greens voters agreed with the proposition that Muslim Australians were not integrating (assimilating) into “Australian culture” and pose a threat to Australia. It is[Read More…]
Each country needs its exceptionalist message, its sui generis theme. We do something here no one else does, and such like. In Australia, there are many things deemed exceptional. Compulsory voting, on pain of a fine, is one such case. Compulsory voting in a census is another extension of that same philosophy. To not submit, and be damned by the[Read More…]
“Do I have to kill myself to go to Australia?” Asylum seeker, Nauru, March 2, 2015 Human sensibility has been given another sound beating with the leak of 2,116 incident reports from Australia’s remorseless detention camp on Nauru. The reports total some 8,000 pages covering the period of May 2013 to October 2015 and were published by the Guardian on[Read More…]
A virus of populism, as it has come to be called, has rattled established classes across the countries of Europe, the United States, and, to a lesser extent, Australia. The latter case remains striking for the return of the reactionary Pauline Hanson to office last month in the July 2 elections. Much of this was the subject of the documentary Pauline Hanson: Please Explain!, which aired on the SBS network on July 31.
“What we’re changing is a culture in an organisation within the youth detention system and I think we’ve come a long way in that time.” Adam Giles, NT Chief Minister, ABC News, Jul 26, 2016 It was an image that would not have been out of place in the sickly procession of pictures that came out of Abu Ghraib and[Read More…]
What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can, (b) urge and apply zero tolerance for racism and lying, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, companies and corporations that are actively or passively complicit in racism and lying. Decent, anti-racist Australians will vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last.
The term “mandate” has been sluicing through the Australian electoral system in its predictable wash-up. In that particular country, it never matters whether one wins by one vote or a hundred thousand: everyone has a “clear mandate” to do what they damn well wish they think they were encouraged to do. It is worth remembering that the Australian prime minister,[Read More…]
In July 2016 a substantially ignorant, greedy, racist, pro-Zionist, US lackey, extreme right-wing and neoliberal Murdochracy Australia re-elected (albeit by a wafer-thin margin) a mendacious, corrupt, anti-equity, anti-science, anti-environment, pro-war, war criminal, pro-coal, climate criminal, human rights-abusing, pro-Apartheid and child-abusing Coalition Government. Those supporting the Coalition are on a continuum from egregious ignorance and stupidity to homicidal greed. Responsibility[Read More…]
He was the kingpin of the whole affair by suggesting it. In December 2015, the US Republican presumptive nominee for President, Donald Trump, came up with that daft suggestion which seems so utterly devoid of informed meaning. Ban Muslims from entering the United States and the phenomenon of terrorism would somehow be abated. His prepared statement was characteristically dramatic in[Read More…]
Strike ends in Belsonika with reinstatement of 10 suspended workers 
A Man Without a Strategy: How Netanyahu Is Provoking Armed Intifada in the West Bank 
The Ancient Patterns of Migration 
Seven Reasons Why the Present Phase of Imperialism is the Most Dangerous Ever 
Unmasking Tourism’s Roadblocks 
Metro authorities humiliating ordinary commuters 
PLI Scheme- Do subsidies to profit-earning private manufacturers yield commensurate societal benefits? 
World Environment Day in India: Doing Justice with the Day 
Ben Roberts-Smith: The Breaking of a Plaster Saint 
Do we All need Religion? An Introspection 
Obama, Kissinger and the Nobel Peace Prize 
The Politics of Erdogan and Western Anxieties 
The Compulsion to Intervene – Why Washington Underwrites Violence in Ukraine 
Just War and Just War Theory 
Stolen Heirloom or poppycock 
‘Simply Inconceivable’ to Dump Fukushima Water in Pacific, Critics Say After Latest IAEA Report 
Eradicate Dowry, Eliminate Dowry Violence 
Growing number of elderly homeless in the US 
Rise Up in Solidarity with Protesting Wrestlers 
Plastic Pollution in Destinations: A Growing Threat to Environmental Sustainability 
The US Censors Dissenting Voices: On the Attacks Against the Midwestern Marx Institute 
The US Government Should At Least Listen to this Wisdom of its Top Experts on the Ukraine Crisis 
Indigenous Australians & Palestinians: Treaty, Truth, Voice, Referendum & Senator Lidia Thorpe 
Kya Sharmsaar hai hindustan……are wrestling champions of India going the Mohammed Ali way? 
Legislative Gaps Helping Overseas Shell Companies? 
Book Review: Marginalised but not Defeated 
When Will US Join Global Call to End Ukraine War? 
AUKUS, Congress and Cold Feet 
The Wars We Don’t (Care to) See – Aggression Made Easy 
Raising the Palestinian flag in Daley Plaza Center, Chicago: A powerful symbolic gesture 
Shocking Lack of Concern for World’s Safety by War Mongering Elite 
Has Hindutva been defeated in Karnataka? 
UN Agencies Warn ‘Acute Food Insecurity’ Likely to Worsen in 18 Hunger Hot Spots 
Meta and Privacy: The Economy of Data Transgressions 
A Response to The New York Times’ Ritualistic Denunciation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution… 
GM Crops Likely to Worsen Climate Change Related Problems for Farmers 
Symbolism of Sengol 
Forget GDP growth, it’s sustainable wellbeing we need to aim for 
Supremes Declare War on Wetlands 
Kings Coronation, Victory Day Parade and Perverse Values 
Our beloved K.P.Sasi is no more. Filmmaker, cartoonist, writer, mentor, friend and above all tireless activist championing the cause of every underdog, Sasi breathed his last, mid-afternoon this Christmas day – after battling a medical condition for months. I remember the last time I met him, almost exactly a month before he passed away, at the ayurvedic healing center in[Read More…]
