June 5, 2024

Grief & guilt by association

I have been grieving deeply not just since last October, but ever since I woke up to the reality of what Israel is, and what it stands for. First came my human empathy for the Palestinian people and what they have been suffering. Empathy was what gave me the initial push to start to speak out, twenty-three years ago. However, at the time I did not understand that I was a Zionist. My heart ached for the Palestinians. Israel’s behaviour seemed brutal, and unfair, but I was still just a typical ‘liberal’ Zionist.

April 22, 2024

UNRWA is facing a campaign to push it out of the occupied Palestinian territory

This is a time of seismic change in the Middle East. At the heart of this region, the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees – UNRWA – is a stabilising force. Today, an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is underway, with serious implications for international peace and security, says Philippe Lazzarini.

June 27, 2023

Time to heed the Global South

The so-called Global South does not feature much in Australian discourse. It should. It will impact on us.

May 20, 2023

Gun slaughter of Americans and Palestinians

Despite the horrors of conflicts around the globe, the United States and Israel compete for headlines about their latest killing sprees. These close allies have cultivated cultures of violence, have aided one another with weapons, with military mindsets, with a fascination with violence as the way to solve problems and eliminate opponents.

March 29, 2020

PETER SAINSBURY. Sunday environmental round up, 29 March 2020

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. How will a coronavirus-led recession affect CO2 emissions? Will health improve from cleaner air with fewer vehicles on the road? How can governments use stimulus packages to protect the vulnerable and hasten the transition to a low carbon, environmentally sustainable, just world? And good news for Torres Strait Islanders: $25m to cope with sea level rise.

June 19, 2024

America’s anti-China psyop programs a 24/7 menace to the Philippines

Major Western news outlets are currently reporting how the Pentagon ran a secret anti-vaccination campaign in order to undermine China’s life-saving COVID vaccination programme in the Philippines – and beyond – from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021.

May 3, 2024

American hypocrisy over Tibet and Gaza boggles the mind

The world would be a better place if US politicians exercised the same conscientiousness over Palestine as they have over the Chinese autonomous region.

August 30, 2023

Asean role stuck on Myanmar coup

President Joe Biden’s decision to skip Asean-related summits in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Sept 5-7 in favour of the G-20 leaders’ meeting in India just two days later has been greeted with howls of disappointment and criticism around Southeast Asian capitals and elsewhere that are concerned about America’s role in the region.

August 13, 2023

Hiroshima remembered: When will we ever learn?

To be here in Hiroshima, invited to perform at one of numerous peace concerts commemorating the destruction of the dropping on this city of the first atomic bomb, 6th August 1945, is somewhat special, though of course tinged with sadness that humanity could descend to such barbarism.

July 31, 2023

Why was Wang Yi brought back as China’s foreign minister after Qin Gang’s abrupt exit?

The Chinese Communist Party has a history of turning to senior figures to steady the ship in emergencies and Wang’s return may be in line with this precedent. Beijing will need someone to prepare the ground for some major diplomatic setpieces including a possible trip to the US by President Xi Jinping.

May 2, 2023

Reminder: the media once bashed Trump for transgressing the One-China Policy the US now spits on

The US has been increasingly treating Taiwan like a sovereign nation with whom diplomatic relationships and alliances can be formed, in violation of its longstanding One-China policy that has kept the peace for decades. And I just think it’s worth noting that the western media who’ve lately been condoning these moves became outraged at Donald Trump just a few years ago for doing the same thing to a far lesser degree.

April 4, 2023

Australia isn't a real nation, it's a US military base with kangaroos

One of the many, many signs that Australia is nothing more than a US military and intelligence asset is the way its government has consistently refused to intervene to protect Australian citizen Julian Assange from political persecution at the hands of the US empire.

February 14, 2021

It’s time to demilitarise America's democracy

After 20 years of endless war in which trillions were spent and hundreds of thousands died on all sides without the US military achieving anything approaching victory, the Pentagon continues to be funded at staggering levels, while funding to deal with the greatest threats — from the pandemic to climate change to white supremacy — proves woefully inadequate.

May 12, 2024

Protest and dissent can absolutely push the empire to retreat on Gaza

It is entirely possible for the surging anti-genocide protest movement and its accompanying zeitgeist in the general public to push the empire to retreat on Gaza. The imperial murder machine has many strengths, but it also has weaknesses.

June 22, 2023

Competing with the US and the West for discourse power

For a long time in the future, in the increasingly fierce and implacable competition between China on one side and the United States and the West on the other, the competition for global discourse power will be the decisive battlefield between them. And who can defeat the enemy on this battlefield will determine to a considerable extent which country will be the final winner in this strategic game related to the world’s future.

July 17, 2024

UK's Starmer should develop balanced foreign policy

On June 13, when the UK Labour Party issued its manifesto for the general election on July 4, its focus was domestic issues. This was understandable, as elections are won and lost on bread-and-butter issues. There were, however, some references to foreign policy, albeit nothing too beefy. Signed by the Labour Party leader (now prime minister), Sir Keir Starmer, the manifesto committed the party to working with the US, supporting NATO, enhancing the AUKUS pact, and backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, so no surprises there. They mirrored the policies of Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, and Starmer was trying to steal its clothes.

May 24, 2024

If you can't even elect a candidate who'll end a genocide, how real is your "Democracy"?

The Biden administration has reportedly approved of an Israeli assault on Rafah, the last slightly safe city in the Gaza Strip, and is openly preparing to work with Congress to punish the International Criminal Court for seeking arrest warrants of Israeli officials for war crimes. Biden is a monster who belongs in a cell at The Hague.

April 24, 2024

Israel is turning hospitals into mass graves while the West fixates on 'Antisemitism'

A mass grave created by the IDF has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre.

July 23, 2023

$1 trillion to replace the Taliban with the Taliban

The United States left Afghanistan in a state of dangerous and monumental disorder in 2021. Soon after, it made matters still worse by confiscating the meagre foreign exchange reserves of one of the world’s most deprived countries — shamelessly claiming that it was advancing certain human rights while doing so.

May 22, 2023

China should not be blamed for decay of 'liberal international order'

In recent years, to contain and isolate China, the United States has repeatedly accused China of continuously ignoring, abusing, distorting, undermining, or violating the rules and institutions of the “rules-based” “liberal international order” (LIO).

August 6, 2024

Australia’s economic security depends crucially on working with Asia

Australia has unveiled a new National Interest Framework which integrates security considerations into domestic economic policy, aiming to secure economic resilience and security amidst changing global power structures and increasing geopolitical tensions. But Australia has not yet placed strategic economic diplomacy at the forefront of the framework. Managing Australia’s security environment requires emphasising the importance of maintaining reliable international and domestic supply chains, managing foreign investment, and adapting to significant influences such as rising powers like China and the accelerating impacts of climate change.

July 29, 2024

Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination: Zionism as racism – UNGA resolution

Recalling its resolution 1904 (XVIII) of 20 November 1963 … that “any doctrine of racial differentiation or superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous” … [The General Assembly] Determines that zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." - United Nations, 1975.

June 21, 2024

Palestinians want liberation, not recognition

This commentary is part of a Century International series exploring a shared future for Palestine and Israel that guarantees the fundamental rights of both communities. The Gaza war has exposed the bankruptcy of the existing policy frameworks. Our “Shared Future” series intends to spur conversation and promote new, better options for security, rights, and governance—for Palestinians and Israelis.

June 17, 2024

"Back from the West Bank"

In answer to Chas Freeman’s devastating question: “Does Israel deserve to exist?”

May 20, 2024

Ðiên Biên Phú at 70: The best journalists report from “the other side”

How did the Vietnamese prevail at that world-historical moment? The answers shed light on the world we see outside our windows now.

August 6, 2023

Niger is the fourth country in the Sahel to experience an Anti-Western Coup

At 3 a.m. on July 26, 2023, the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum in Niamey, the capital of Niger. Troops, led by Brigadier General Abdourahmane Tchiani closed the country’s borders and declared a curfew.

May 5, 2023

The American version of "one country, two systems"

Over a period of decades, the US has refined and applied its own exceptional version of One Country, Two Systems. What is most curious is that this has materialised within plain sight yet it has largely remained undetected, as such.

August 18, 2024

Peace is not on the ballot in November

I keep seeing liberal commentators like George Takei trying to frame Kamala Harris as the best candidate to bring peace to the middle east, despite her coming directly out of the administration which has been lighting the region on fire with its insane warmongering.

August 2, 2024

'Nothing to eat': War-Torn Sudan faces mass famine as military delays aid

Both parties in Sudan’s civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military’s blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.

July 24, 2023

How do Chinese Australians view Australia’s foreign policy?

Since the Lowy Institute’s first Being Chinese in Australia: Public Opinion in Chinese Communities survey was published in 2021, Australia’s relations with China have undergone significant upheaval. The COVID-19 pandemic, the rupture in Australia–China relations, the election of a Labor government and the turbulence in both countries accompanying their re-openings after their COVID-19 lockdowns has placed Chinese Australian communities in the public spotlight.

May 14, 2023

Souls for sale – The Times interviews Noam Chomsky

In a society built on lies, the search for truth is a game.

April 10, 2023

The troubled love lives of China’s rural migrants

For the past decade or so, the Western media has been critical of the Chinese state, the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. This criticism has been made in the context of a small number of issues, such as human rights in Xinjiang, political dissent in Hong Kong and Western citizens detained in China.

February 13, 2020

ROBBIE GRAMER and COLUM LYNCH.Trump Seeks to Halve U.S. Funding for WHO as Coronavirus Rages(Brookings Report 10.2.2020)

The president’s new budget would cut more than $3 billion in global health programs.

July 30, 2024

No more silence

If Zionist ideology ever fit into the modern world, and I will leave this an outstanding question, it no longer does.

July 25, 2024

Sunday was earth's hottest day on record

“We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years,” one expert said.

July 8, 2024

In our make-believe politics, the strings pulled by the super-rich are all too visible

Biden wanders offstage or walks like a geriatric robot. Yet we are meant to believe he’s carefully navigating us through the nuclear tripwires of the West’s serial wars.

June 22, 2024

Criminal probe shines light on anti-China group's wide links

As US Investigators probe the transactions of Epoch Times finance chief Bill Guan, recently arrested on money laundering charges, the spotlight is spreading to associated groups and individuals.

August 1, 2023

Australia agrees to build US missiles; US dismisses Australian concerns about Assange

Two different news stories about US-Australian relations have broken at around the same time, and together they sum up the story of US-Australian relations as a whole. In one we learn that Australia has agreed to manufacture missiles for the United States, and in the other we learn that Washington has told Australia to go suck eggs about its concerns regarding the US persecution of Australian journalist Julian Assange.

June 4, 2023

Childhood trauma: protect the 2,000 Palestinian children Israel detains every year

From nighttime detentions without a court order, to blindfolding and beatings: the silence of Israeli mental health therapists in the face of severe harm to Palestinian children is particularly alarming.

April 9, 2023

Vatican renounces colonial era ‘Doctrine of Discovery’. Will US Supreme Court do likewise?

More than five centuries after it was formulated in a series of papal decrees, the Vatican issued a formal announcement on March 30 repudiating the Euro-supremacist “Doctrine of Discovery.” In essence, the “doctrine” said that all lands not occupied by “Christians” passed into the hands of the European conquerors as soon as they were “discovered,” and their inhabitants enslaved.

February 9, 2021

Just a sliver of a chance: the uncomfortable truth of insufficient climate action

We must stop celebrating trivial wins in this war of cataclysmic consequences. The pretence that we are making a significant difference may make us feel better but it lets us settle into the complacent delusion that one day someone will sort it out in time.

March 31, 2020

HUGH MACKAY: How will widespread social isolation change us?

Social isolation is hardly a new problem for us: it has been high on the list of concerns for social scientists and health professionals for many years. But the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing us to confront the potential for loneliness on an unprecedented scale.

July 22, 2024

Developing nations suffer for rich world’s climate complacency

If leading central banks can grow their balance sheets by billions of dollars during the pandemic, they can do the same to fight global warming.

April 11, 2024

Gaza asks us a question about what kind of future we want to have

The main reason I’ve focused so hard on Gaza these last six months isn’t so much because of how evil and horrific Israel’s mass atrocity is in and of itself, but because it’s so intimately intertwined with all our world’s other problems, and with the future of the human species.

September 14, 2023

The G20 returns to earth

The American diplomatic starship, USS Exceptionalism, fell to earth at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi.

June 30, 2023

Aging Iraq invaders keep accidentally saying 'Iraq' instead of 'Ukraine'

President Biden accidentally referred to Putin’s war in “Iraq” when answering questions from the press, a year after former president George W Bush made the same gaffe. Both men played crucial roles in the push to invade Iraq.

May 17, 2023

As Arab states seek peace, US insists that Syrians suffer

After the Arab League re-admits Syria, Washington threatens new sanctions to prevent reconstruction.

May 6, 2023

In a multipolar world, the ‘third pole’ is not Europe, but Global South

Ukraine war and new cold war against China have accelerated the re-emergence of the old non-aligned movement of developing nations.

February 24, 2021

Keeping an open mind: rules based order needs to be malleable

As countries like China continue to integrate into the world economy, the liberal “rules-based” order - centred around political governance and the military - needs to remain flexible.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal