September 16, 2023

Authoritarianism rampant

The primary site of the authoritarian cancer is the embrace of abusive power as the way to govern.

June 9, 2023

U.S. allies look for their place in the emerging global order

America and the West are more isolated from the rest of the world than at any time since WWII.

May 9, 2023

‘Red scare’ in US causes multi-year flood of refugees with PhDs to China

OECD data shows China sustains net gain of scientists while US suffers net loss as ethnic Chinese researchers fear US government surveillance and prosecution.

July 30, 2024

The future of UNRWA and Hamas in Gaza

How Israel wants to replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

April 12, 2021

In NDIS there is a lack of genuine consultation with disability advocates.

The Morrison government is prioritising its branding as a low taxing, small government party over its obligations to the aged population and people with disabilities. It seems to have already forgotten the lesson of the COVID pandemic – that Australians are quite happy to welcome a larger role for government in a good cause.

February 28, 2020

ALEX MITCHELL: Ex-NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell quits for India

_When Barry O’Farrell became NSW Liberal Party leader in 2017 his mission was to turn the Liberals into “the natural party of government”.

August 5, 2024

US military admits ‘missteps’ for anti-vax propaganda

US operations exploiting foreign vaccine programmes have time and again caused untold damage to the public health of countries targeted.

August 1, 2024

Civil war in Israeli army, Parliament as MPs detain soldiers for gang rape of Palestinian prisoners at vault of horrors

The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reports that on Monday, military police raided the Sde Teiman detention centre where Palestinian prisoners are being held, detaining nine Israel soldiers suspected of gang raping and severely sexually torturing detainees. One further suspect was not apprehended. The soldiers belong to the Force 100 unit, which has been detailed to Sde Teiman as prison guards.

July 10, 2024

Europe's tariffs on Chinese EVs could be a boon for Australia

Moves by other countries to impose higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles could benefit Australians shopping for a new car.

August 13, 2023

The US fails to recruit Taiwan’s neighbours to a proxy war

If we learn anything from history it should be that the many efforts to destabilise countries by the USA have had very limited success. Taiwan is no different, it is being misread, misinterpreted and consequently, the “international community” are being misled. Having failed to recruit Taiwan’s neighbours to a proxy war against China, this leaves only Australia; a willing participant in every US war.

July 23, 2023

Narendra Modi is using brutal repression to silence the people of Kashmir

For decades, the Indian state has suppressed the democratic rights of Kashmiris. Narendra Modi’s hard-right government is taking this pattern of repression to new extremes, with the complicity of Indian intellectuals who seek to toxify the cause of Kashmir.

August 26, 2020

Torturing Assange: An Interview with Andrew Fowler

Andrew Fowler is an Australian award-winning investigative journalist and a former reporter for the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners programs. and the author of The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ Fight for Freedom.

September 24, 2024

Northern militarisation overlooking Indigenous rights: Prof Henry Reynolds, History, University of Tasmania

Indigenous Australians have extensive land rights across Northern Australia where large scale militarisation is being undertaken, raising questions about processes of consultation and underlying Indigenous rights endorsed by Australia under international treaty arrangements.

July 28, 2024

Awakening: Stories of grace and inner peace

“Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way… On a quiet day, if I listen carefully, I can hear her breathing” - Arundhati Roy.

June 19, 2024

Putin's offer of peace

President Vladimir Putin has laid out a clear Russian position on how the fighting in Ukraine could stop immediately, says Jeffrey Sachs in an interview with Judge Napolitano.

June 7, 2023

How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning

The myth of the “Tiananmen Square massacre” is arguably the most successful disinformation campaign of modern times, according to western and eastern sources—so much so that proud psychological warfare specialists recently used it to ADVERTISE their news manipulation skills. We’ll get to that below.

May 17, 2023

Limits, damned lies, and perception management

At a reconstruction site in Mariupol during President Putin’s visit in March, a woman cried from the back of the crowd, ‘It’s all lies’. Her comment was later taken down from social media, though it wasn’t clear who did that, nor whose lies she meant.

April 17, 2023

Hong Kong is being untwinned

It seems that Hong Kong is at risk of losing its twin city status! Travel around almost any part of the UK and Europe and you will pass innumerable signs saying that such and such a city/town/village is twinned with a similar city/town/village in another country.

April 11, 2023

Why Zelensky will NOT take back Crimea

Seventeen months ago the US State Department officially _declared_ the US will “NEVER” recognise Crimea as part of Russia. Three months ago Ukrainian President Zelensky vowed to “take back” Crimea. Is this possible?

August 10, 2024

Japan - Hiroshima and Project Hula

What a difference a day (or a week) makes. What a difference the mere translation of a word makes.

May 9, 2024

The 1984 anti-Sikh genocide

It’s almost 40 years since Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards. A year earlier she’d ordered the Indian army to storm Sikhism’s holiest site, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, after extremist separatist Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had taken refuge there.

June 19, 2023

Asian economic heft keeps Russia’s economy afloat

Thirty-seven countries have imposed economic sanctions on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The breadth of this campaign has few precedents in recent history. The sanctions covering finance, energy, technology, travel, shipping, avionics and commodities are aimed at one of the 10 largest world economies.

June 8, 2023

The G7 is copying China’s homework

Many of the G7’s hopes and wants for the world appear to have been lifted directly from official documents of the Communist Party of China (CPC). There’s no real benefit to debating whether the G7 is copying the CPC’s policy program, although it smells of plagiarism. China is pleased that more countries are willing to study, absorb and even copy China’s experience. There are so many similarities between the G7 communiqué and China’s propositions, there is no reason to be unhappy.

June 5, 2023

In the 1800s, colonisers attempted to listen to First Nations people. It didn’t stop the massacres

Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images. Words attributed to them and images in the article are already in the public domain. Also, historical language is used in this article that may cause offence.

August 4, 2022

Katrina Watson: How to save General Practice

_I’m a recently retired specialist doctor and I keep an eye on medical affairs. They affect all of us, especially as we get older, and people still ask what I think.

March 4, 2020

JOCELYN CHEY: Turbo Charge or Tough It Out? The New Board for the Foundation for Australia-China Relations

One important category of Chinese Australians is not represented, and some choices seem calculated to prejudice improving relations with the People’s Republic of China.

September 19, 2024

Cartoon commentary

August 21, 2024

Campaign to keep Israeli cycling team out of Tour Down Under

Earlier this year the Adelaide-based Australian Friends of Palestine Association planned and delivered a campaign to protest WOMADelaide, Adelaide’s premier music festival. The board of this festival had defended and lauded Zionist supporter, Ziggy Marley, and promoted political activism from a Ukrainian group. Meanwhile a Palestinian group, 47 Soul, was disinvited from this event. Our protest of this shameful prejudice galvanised considerable support within the confines of the event in the local community and even built international connections with political activists in New Zealand where Ziggy Marley was an invited guest of WOMADNZ.

May 14, 2023

Will America decline peacefully?

There are numerous signs that the United States is undergoing a secular and irreversible process of decline, especially relative to China and other powerful developing nations.

September 15, 2022

The need for a social contract to create voter trust

What happened to sustainable democracy’s social contract?

March 19, 2020

PATRICK COCKBURN.-Covid-19 and the battle for the Saudi Royal Crown(CounterPunch 16.3.2020)

_Trump is visibly self-isolating the US and undermining the hegemonic role it has played since the Second World War. Even if Biden is elected as the next president, the US will have lost its undisputed primacy in a post-pandemic world.

September 12, 2024

The long arc of India-Russia relations

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia on 8 and 9 July and embraced President Vladimir Putin. The outcome of the visit included mutually beneficial substantive agreements, but damaged India’s reputation in the West at a time when President Joe Biden hosted the NATO summit in Washington. The BBC featured an analysis under the title “ Modi’s balancing act as he meets Putin in Moscow”. On 23 August Modi went to Kyiv, the first visit to independent Ukraine by an Indian PM. The BBC headlined it as ‘ "Diplomatic tightrope for Modi as he visits Kyiv after Moscow".

July 4, 2023

On inclusivity in English and Australian cricket

Last week, English cricket was hit by a bombshell in the form of a report entitled ‘ Holding Up a Mirror to Cricket’. Commissioned by the England and Wales Cricket Board, the report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC) found that the game in the land of its origin was riven by racism, sexism, elitism and class-based discrimination.

April 18, 2023

Home Affairs' culture of getting things wrong

The minister for Home Affairs and the department have been given extraordinary powers, including significant power to hurt and oppress others. For good or ill, the legislature has authorised and permitted their determined cruelty to asylum seekers over many years, their beliefs about stripping citizenship from our nationals, deporting our home-grown criminals and establishing the need for a national surveillance system that would make a Chinese dictator blush. If they must have such powers – despite their manifest want of judgment, detachment and decency, it should be subject to some external review.

April 23, 2024

‘National emergency’: Why Korean voters handed 192 seats to opposition parties

By stopping short of 200 seats, the electorate sent a message that both ruling and opposition lawmakers to make more use of dialogue and negotiation.

May 5, 2021

Tudge fudges school results and funding

The Minister for Education, Alan Tudge, was fudging figures to denigrate Australia’s school performance at the The Age education summit last week. He claimed the UK as the new benchmark for education performance, but ignored serious flaws in the reporting of its results. He also fudged data on school funding and student results in Australia.

July 6, 2024

Why AUKUS fails us – leaving us defenceless

If, as the US military, Pentagon and congress hawks obsess, a war against China is likely in 2027, AUKUS will leave Australians defenceless in the event of any retaliation to US aggression.

May 24, 2024

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s treacherous gambit is doomed to backfire

Taiwan’s new leader, Lai Ching-te, delivered his inaugural speech on Monday, comprehensively expounding his stance on “Taiwan independence”. Unlike his two predecessors, Chen Shui-bian and Tsai Ing-wen, Lai failed to clearly refer to the 1992 Consensus and the one-China principle, indirectly indicating his rejection of both crucial notions. Instead, Lai unabashedly referred to the notions of “two Chinas” and “one China, one Taiwan”, calling the island a “sovereign and independent country”.

June 25, 2023

Ukraine and the battle for Skaro

Over the past eighteen months, I’ve often found myself under scrutiny for not outrightly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Any acknowledgment of Russia’s stance—that the hasty expansion of NATO played a role in the current conflict—earns labels: indifferent to Ukraine’s plight, a “Putin” apologist, a victim of Kremlin misinformation.

May 30, 2023

I work on Q+A's social media and I see racist abuse every day. You might be shocked by who's writing it

For the past few years, I’ve worked as the social media producer for a high-profile show, one that has made headlines the past couple of weeks after our beloved presenter had to take a break.

May 1, 2023

How (hard) They Fought: sophistication of First Nations' resistance

The push to recognise the Frontier Wars at the Australian War Memorial, the teaching of this history in many high schools, and growing commemoration of Frontier War incidents is seeing parallels being drawn between the heroism of First Nations’ warriors and that of the ANZACs.

April 9, 2023

For Palestine, “peace processes” have meant expansion of Israeli occupation

Successive Israeli governments have pretended to engage in a ‘peace process’, but in reality they have continued to consolidate and expand the occupation. While our unelected representatives pontificate they, the Israelis consolidate.

September 18, 2024

Vale Dr John Coulter

Dr John Coulter, who has died aged 93, had been suffering for months from VEXAS syndrome, an adult-onset autoinflammatory disease caused by a mutation of a gene in blood stem cells. It is perhaps ironic that he had himself worked on mutagens — the agents that cause mutations — at the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in Adelaide in the mid-1970s.

July 21, 2024

Religion and the census – seeking accuracy and truth

Based on the response to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) proposed change to the religion question for the 2026 census, religious groups are singing from the same misprinted hymn sheet.

May 22, 2024

Australia 'Gone Missing' on preventing genocide

Newly declassified documents reveal how early and how much Australia knew of Israel’s genocide in Gaza after 7 October - and how it is failing to uphold its international obligations.

April 13, 2024

Janet Yellen came - China was polite

Janet Yellen came, she pontificated and postulated, ate some nice Chinese food, drank a beer with Nicholas Burns, a man that Chinese people loathe and hold little respect for; then she left. This tells the world all about her trip, what she ate and drank was more important than what she said and did.

June 28, 2023

The West must prepare for a long overdue reckoning

Five major trends illustrate how the world is changing, and that the West must grapple with the reality that it can no longer impose its “leadership” on the world as it once did.

June 4, 2023

Consultants like PwC are loyal to profit, not the public. Governments should cut back on using them

The PwC scandal reveals appalling behaviour by an individual consultant and his company that provided consulting services to the federal government.

July 4, 2021

The untold story of Apple Daily: deception, misogyny and quiet Americans

The Western media will repeatedly report that Beijing is to blame for Apple Daily’s problems in Hong Kong, hoping and praying that no one will point out the key fact that demolishes the argument: The newspaper group has been even more of a disaster in Taiwan, where it has stopped all its print publications, despite the island allegedly having glorious USA-Style True Democracy. USA! USA!

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal