July 23, 2024

10 takeaways from the Central Committee of the CPC's resolution on deepening reform

The Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernisation and The Explanation of the Resolution were made public on Sunday. Below are my ten quick takeaways from the highly significant resolution.

July 13, 2024

Australian journalist Cheng Lei says China bashing ‘worrying’

Cheng Lei, who was imprisoned in China for three years, says Australians should not overreact over every bilateral issue with Beijing.

July 30, 2023

The star-spangled kangaroo

A new US warship has been ushered into service in Sydney. The ship is called the USS Canberra to honour the military union of the United States and Australia, and, if that’s still too subtle for you, it has a literal star-spangled kangaroo affixed to its side.

July 18, 2023

Thai elections without democracy

Although it may come across as dramatic and unprecedented, Move Forward Party (MFP) leader Pita Limjaroenrat’s ordeal in trying to take office as prime minister after winning the May 14 election is par for the course in Thai politics over the past two decades.

April 5, 2023

Chinese-Australians' political awakening was a big factor in Labor's win in Aston

A few acquaintances of mine decided to give up their Chinese citizenship before last year’s federal election after living on permanent visas for more than a decade.

September 18, 2022

Personality and power in Brazil’s elections

Brazil has the largest population and economy in South America and is a member of BRICS. It is as important to the continent as Indonesia is to South-East Asia. Brazil’s national elections will be on 2 October. Elections will select the President, the Congress, a third of the Senate, State Governors and State Legislatures. If there is no clear victor, there will be a final round of voting on the two leading Presidential candidates on 30 October.

February 12, 2021

Banks that listen to their customers will go places

Loyalty to banks used to be a big thing in the days of yore. But the Banking Royal Commission certainly skewered any reason to remain loyal. And there are options for those looking for an ethical bank that listens to their customers.

November 27, 2018

ANTHONY PUN. A response to Kim Wingerei -. It’s Time for Ethical Politics”

Lord Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is still valid today. Man is born innocent and in his acquisition of power, goes astray when unguided by morals and ethical principles. True wisdom is the ability to exercise power with moral and ethical dignity. If these abilities are lost, the people need re-education in moral and ethical philosophy.

September 17, 2023

Korean Catholics continue fight against coal power

South Korea is among the nations with the highest coal power generation.

June 13, 2023

Are human rights abuses of the Chinese judicial system worse than that of the land of the free? A difficult call

Doing the rounds on YouTube is the case of a black American Tyshon Booker arrested when he was 16 for being present (with a gun) at a murder which he did not commit (the murderer confessed). He was given a 51 year minimum sentence. This case is, of course, is only the disgraceful tip of the human rights abuses embedded in the US’s state and federal judicial systems. Given the penchant for US officials to persistently raise human rights abuse with their Chinese counterparts what level of hypocrisy is involved here?

September 26, 2022

Global university rankings: what function do they serve?

Under the influence of New Public Management, Australia’s public universities have increasingly engaged in ‘management by numbers’ for ’performance measurement’. The accompanying proliferation of metrics has been used to discipline academics, bolster the ranks of senior managers and build tens of billions of dollars in assets. One of the more prominent metrics to which universities now dedicate disproportionate time, energy and resources is global university rankings (GURs).

February 2, 2021

Inspirational heroes abound – discover and promote them

Gellibrand MP Tim Watts draws on his family experience – his children, Hong Kong Chinese wife and in-laws – for his book “The Golden Country: Australia’s Changing Identity”_. A modern response to Donald Horne’s 1960s “Lucky Country”, Watts see our future as a “golden country”, reflecting a largely Asian Australia._

March 27, 2020

ALEX MITCHELL: Mark Latham goes all nuclear – again!

Mark Latham, former Federal Labor leader who now sits in the State Legislative Council as head of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in NSW, is running a one-man campaign to end the ban on uranium mining which came into force in 1986. Is he flogging a dead horse?

May 9, 2024

Palestine is the ‘red pill’ for America’s Gen Z

Like the previous Vietnam generation of baby boomers, US university students are waking up to the atrocities their government commits or helps its client states to commit around the world.

April 15, 2024

How the left became cheerleaders for US imperialism

Figureheads like the Guardian’s George Monbiot have wrecked the left’s ability to think critically, encouraging an analysis of power politics more suited to the playground.

April 12, 2024

China’s property market is at risk of an overcorrection, not oversupply

There is no risk of China’s property sector woes spreading into a financial crisis but there is a policy-induced housing crisis and restrictions must be further eased. The property market must be stabilised to restore public confidence and spur private consumption, so economic growth can reaccelerate.

August 16, 2023

Indonesia has what we lack - a day of unity

It’s banners and bunting season in Southeast Asia as our neighbours celebrate independence. Singapore finished its wavings on 9 August and Malaysia’s moments of pomp will come on 16 September. Like Australia, both won sovereignty through diplomacy.

September 23, 2022

The Monarchy is facing a legitimation crisis

In monarchical systems there is always a legitimation challenge when the crown passes from one generation to the next. Whether it becomes a legitimation crisis depends on a number of factors.

August 3, 2021

Big pharma monopolies gauging over vaccination prices whilst refusing access to poor countries

_Wealthy nations including Canada, Australia , Germany, and the United Kingdom continue to oppose the TRIPS waiver

July 4, 2024

Jonathan Pie: 2024 Election Specials - the Conservatives

UK news reporter Jonathan Pie pulls no punches as he gives a brutally honest view of the UK Conservative party as the UK rolls into election day on Thursday 4 July.

April 19, 2024

Terra nullius 2.0 – what AUKUS means for First Nations peoples

Australia will essentially become America’s military launch-pad into Asia. However, Ben Abbatangelo writes, little has been said or written about the drastic and disproportionate impacts it will have on First Nations communities in Australia.

September 8, 2023

John Pilger: "America has hung a noose around the neck of China"

In March of 2016 the renowned Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger published an article titled “ A world war has begun. Break the silence.” which urgently warned of the US empire’s aggressive escalations against Russia and China. Re-reading parts of it in 2023 is like watching someone placing flags next to recently planted seeds that would eventually grow into the towering problems our world now faces.

June 24, 2023

The resurgence of China-Australia trade

Prosaic economic factors, not politics, are driving the growth in China-Australia trade, ensuring “China will only become more important as Australia’s trading partner of choice," writes James Laurenceson.

August 18, 2022

Anti-Chinese press vitriol in press gallery

From 2004 to 2014, I ran a program on behalf of Sydney University to send highly-motivated Australian media students to English-language newspapers around Asia. They were to work as professional journalists, researching and publishing their own stories about local events. On return to Australia, their experience was designed to equip those who joined Australian media outfits with a sophisticated insight of their host countries. Funding came from the Myer Foundation, then DFAT.

June 15, 2022

Sooner or later, the integrity commission will take out a Labor minister

One of the reasons why some of Labor’s old hands, particularly on the right, regard the prospect of integrity legislation with less than complete enthusiasm is that sooner or later – probably sooner than expected and maybe even before the next election – it will be the instrument of the downfall of a Labor minister.

May 13, 2022

The track record of Peter Dutton’s incompetence

_Failing up is a common phenomenon in many organisations - not least those concerned with national defence and security.

June 3, 2021

The digital media farce continues as nothing changes

Nine Entertainment is the latest of the old media companies to announce deals with Google and Facebook. For a fraction of what they once thought they deserved, and without any of the benefits to consumers which the Digital Bargaining Code bill purported to provide.

April 29, 2021

Perspectives from the floor of a medically supervised injecting centre

I have worked at New South Wales’ only Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (Uniting MSIC) for more than seven years and have been giving care to people who inject drugs for over a decade.

January 29, 2021

A “gas-led recovery” leads to dangerous atmospheric methane

A US study showed that children born within a mile or two of a gas well were likely to be smaller and less healthy. High levels of methane reduce the amount of oxygen breathed from the air, with health consequences. And still the Coalition pushes its fracking plans for the nation.

May 16, 2024

Israel’s willing executioners

Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee, once again, after more than half of Gaza’s population took sanctuary in the border town of Rafah. This is part of Israel’s sadistic playbook.

May 14, 2024

“Burn down the United Nations” chant Israeli mob in UNRWA HQ attack

This evening, Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the UNRWA Headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem.

April 18, 2023

Inequality on steroids: The distribution of economic growth in Australia

Since the global financial crisis there has been a fundamental change in the operation of the Australian economy. Since World War Two, the majority of the benefits of economic growth have flowed to the bottom 90 per cent of income earners. However, as shown in Figure 1, between 2009 and 2019 the top 10 per cent got almost all of the gains of the latest recovery: that group secured 93 per cent of the income growth in that period.

September 13, 2023

The paranoia of China going global

Empires are anxious creatures, run by those predatory types with egos vast and awareness minimal. The awareness only gets pricked when risks are posed to the financial returns, military security, what might be called, at a stretch, their way of living. Such risks can come in many forms, and for the US imperium, it’s less a warming planet and global poverty than the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China.

September 6, 2023

Everything you know about China being a threat is untrue

We, Westerners, impose our sense of individualism onto a society that has a sense of communalism. We are bothered by it. But this is not something the Chinese people need “rescuing from”. China is not your enemy, the people telling you China is your enemy, are you enemy.

July 20, 2023

An American system of “state sanctioned forced births”?

Labels have power. They shape the way we know the world. They allow people to see actions with greater clarity or distort our understanding to make things unrecognisable.

July 12, 2023

Yellen’s Beijing visit: US-China economic reality is starting to bite

On China, Biden is faced with both a political problem, represented by his secretary of state, and an economic reality, represented by the Treasury secretary. Yellen’s visit suggests economics may be starting to play a larger role in the bilateral relationship, but the US will need to demonstrate consistent sincerity to see improvement in ties.

July 4, 2023

Oh the weaponising: another symptom of decline

‘Weaponise’ is the word de jour in America. Aside from the crude partisan employment of the term by Trump and other American politicians, it has subtly found its way into mainstream publications. Such loaded terms corrupt analysis by imposing implicit judgements that obviate the need for serious thought. Once condemned for weaponising, it cannot then be conceded that the target of the accusation can have legitimate reasons for their actions.

May 29, 2023

China and the axis of the sanctioned: how America’s divide-and-rule strategy in the Middle East backfired

A photo Beijing released on March 6th of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign minister Wang Yi delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he was, standing between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an agreement to reestablish mutual diplomatic ties. That picture should have brought to mind a 1993 photo of President Bill Clinton hosting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn as they agreed to the Oslo Accords. And that long-gone moment was itself an after-effect of the halo of invincibility the United States had gained in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the overwhelming American victory in the 1991 Gulf War.

May 4, 2021

Please, no war with China

In an unprecedented speech, a senior public servant has floated the possibility, and even necessity, of Australia’s taking part in a war against China. This is profoundly shocking and worrying and is symptomatic of a new low in our relations with China.

December 20, 2020

Fever Pitch: Who’s an Enemy of the State?

“The character of our own government at present is imbecility,” said _Samuel Johnson_ to James Boswell.

February 21, 2020

ALISON BROINOWSKI. Organised violence: the US and China compared

The world has seen the rise and fall of some 150 empires. That number doesn’t even include the United States, whose unacknowledged empire includes more than 800 military bases in some 70 countries.

April 26, 2024

Worse than the Nakba: A wilful, deliberate, total genocide in Gaza

Lies and impunity paved the way for the worst time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hanan Ashrawi says Gaza is “worse than even the Nakba, because it is a wilful, deliberate, total genocide”.

September 3, 2023

Petrodollar be warned: Three Persian Gulf energy powers just joined BRICS

The BRICS revealed its geopolitical priorities when it added three Persian Gulf states to its once exclusive roster of members. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have been strategically included to put an end to the petrodollar.

August 15, 2022

Chegg, cheating and Australian Universities

The note on Radio National’s _Background Briefing_ on the morning of July 31 was sombre. A student, who did not divulge his real name (he is professionally pseudonymised as Ramesh), talks about services that aid him in his study. Aid is less accurate than do – given that he is working gruelling night shifts in the fast-food industry, he is incapable of making morning classes at the said unnamed university. Flipping burgers in greasy splendour takes precedent.

April 30, 2021

Killed and abandoned: the children of Afghanistan

US and Australian troops are preparing to leave Afghanistan with a debilitating legacy for millions of children. Simultaneous with news of troop withdrawals, Prime Minister Morrison has spoken of his taste for a laying on of hands as a means of healing. The children of Afghanistan would regard these events as at best confusing, and at worst, more betrayal and hypocrisy.

June 13, 2018

GREG HAMILTON. Little or no talent for getting it right.

A great Australian recently said: ‘we’re a helpless audience watching an awesome spectacle, powerless to act because we haven’t produced leadership with the courage to match the precipitous nature of the hour.’ The Rev. Ted Noffs got most things right. When his own church charged him with heresy, it proved the old axiom that a good deed never goes unpunished. Unfortunately, it’s the daily reality of our political system.

August 19, 2024

While the world discussed the Games, Israel was focused on rape

In the second and last week of the Paris Olympics, most of the world was discussing sporting performances and medal tallies.

June 24, 2024

What kind of people threaten prosecutors?

Without naming names, a joint statement by 93 countries in a show of support for the International Criminal Court is an unmistakable rebuke of the lawlessness of US and Israel.

April 9, 2024

Losers whinge, winners rule

A tip to take a wee shot at understanding the way of doing politics in Indonesia: Suspend rationality. Now imagine PM Anthony Albanese offering Scott Morrison a ministry - choice from five. Not such a smart move for Down Under but OK for next door.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal