29 April 2025
If I were foreign minister... policy, politics, world
I don’t want to be Australia’s foreign minister, and here’s why: I would not be good at promoting Australia’s current foreign policy to the world. That’s also why I stopped being a diplomat in 1996.
29 April 2025
Six Easter days, 2025
Monday Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who became Pope Francis, died just after the Roman dawn. The news reached Australia as the evening newscasts began. His death dominated every bulletin. It seemed anomalous, a rent in time, even though rationally expected.
29 April 2025
Framing the future: Australia’s China policy in the lead-up to the 2025 election
In the lead-up to the Australia election, new research examines the ALP and Coalition messaging and policy on the People’s Republic of China.
Israel's war against Gaza
Media coverage of the war in Gaza since October 2023 has spread a series of lies propagated by Israel and the United States. This publication presents information, analysis, clarification, views and perspectives largely unavailable in mainstream media in Australia and elsewhere.
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29 April 2025
Aussie cardinals in short supply at papal conclave
The election to take place in the Vatican from next week is probably a lot more consequential than the one now taking place in Australia, even if there is a good chance that white smoke will be coming from the chimneys at the Australian Electoral Office earlier than those from the Vatican Apartments.
29 April 2025
Only a third of Australians support increasing defence spending: new research
National security issues have been a constant feature of this federal election campaign.
29 April 2025
Fossil fuels blamed as 84% of world's coral reefs hit by worst bleaching event ever recorded
The magnitude and extent of the heat stress is shocking, said one marine scientist.
29 April 2025
Are voters really dumb?
Why do our political parties treat voters as if they are all dumb? Surely we deserve better than l.c.d. (lowest common denominator) politics?
29 April 2025
The Fall of Saigon 1975: Fifty years of repeating what was forgotten - (Part 1-3)
The first demonstration I ever went to was at 12, against the Vietnam War. The first formal history lesson I received was a few months later when I commenced high school.
29 April 2025
The Palestine election
Why has an election 6000 miles from the Dome of the Rock become about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
29 April 2025
2025 is the crunch year in the scientific contest about accelerated warming
The record-breaking warming years of 2023 (1.5°C) and 2024 (1.6°C) were above expectations and shocked scientists.
28 April 2025
'Never again' not only for Jews, but for Palestinians and all humanity
Israel has no right of self-defence against resistance in lands that are illegally occupied.
Latest on Palestine and Israel
29 April 2025
The Fall of Saigon 1975: Fifty years of repeating what was forgotten - (Part 1-3)
The first demonstration I ever went to was at 12, against the Vietnam War. The first formal history lesson I received was a few months later when I commenced high school.
28 April 2025
'Never again' not only for Jews, but for Palestinians and all humanity
Israel has no right of self-defence against resistance in lands that are illegally occupied.
28 April 2025
The resilience of Gazan writing: Resisting temporal closure
One particular aspect of Palestinian resilience during Israel’s ongoing besiegement and genocide in the Gaza Strip concerns a prodigious amount of creative writing that, besides bearing witness to circumstance and personal experience, engages cultural resistance.
27 April 2025
Vote for humanity: Caring for Palestine
As Australians hear the repetitive, carefully scripted announcements of the two major parties, voters are turning away from the blatant bribery of millions of dollars for marginal electorates and personal promises of tax cuts and cheaper petrol.
26 April 2025
On ‘moral panic’ and the courage to speak: The West’s silence on Gaza
Palestinians do not have the luxury to allow Western moral panic to have its say or impact. Not caving in to this panic is one small, but important, step in building a global Palestine network that is urgently needed.
26 April 2025
If Einstein spoke today, he would be accused of antisemitism
In 1948, as the foundations of the Israeli state were being laid upon the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to the American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, condemning the growing Zionist militancy within the settler Jewish community.
25 April 2025
Even in sickness, Pope Francis reached out to Gaza's Christians
For months, the pontiff spoke by telephone almost every night with people sheltering in a Catholic church in the battered enclave, a ritual he tried to keep up in the hospital.
24 April 2025
The uniform public utterances of our days
British scholar Leonard Schapiro, writing on Stalinism, observed that “the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade. But to produce a uniform pattern of public utterances in which the first trace of unorthodox thought reveals itself as a jarring dissonance. And it seems that in the current sanctioned discourse, the jarring dissonance is speaking up against a genocide streamed live on our phones.
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29 April 2025
Framing the future: Australia’s China policy in the lead-up to the 2025 election china, policy, politics
In the lead-up to the Australia election, new research examines the ALP and Coalition messaging and policy on the People’s Republic of China.
28 April 2025
A hillbilly White House and the wisdom of peasants
In 2016, US Vice-President J.D. Vance published a best-selling memoir titled Hillbilly Elegy. Curiously, he explained on the Fox News network recently that China’s pivotal influence on American consumption was due to the US borrowing “money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture” (YouTube link here). Let’s consider the sort of individuals in question.
28 April 2025
Chinese president rallies neighbours as US tariffs imposed
From 14 to 18 April, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia conveyed a clear message: China’s engagement with Southeast Asia is rooted not merely in trade and infrastructure, but also mutual respect, strategic trust, and a shared vision for regional stability and prosperity.
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