November 1, 2024

The role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in breaking trade barriers and fostering multilateralism

As the world faces increasingly complex challenges—from economic downturns to geopolitical tensions—regional organisations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are becoming ever more important in promoting multilateral cooperation.

February 8, 2024

Myanmar revolts against dictatorship

When Myanmar’s military coup took place three years ago, few thought it would turn out this way. Never has a military in Southeast Asia staged a successful coup and then failed to consolidate power afterwards. Yet this is precisely what’s happening in Myanmar. A fierce and determined coalition of resistance forces is in the process of prevailing over Myanmar’s battle-hardened army.

March 22, 2025

Tensions over Taiwan

Ma Ying-jeou warns that William Ching-te Lai is leading cross-strait relations into “a major crisis”.

February 7, 2024

The Nord Stream Pipelines and the perils of containment

The sabotage in the Baltic Sea was the result of a long-standing US policy of driving a wedge between Russia and Western Europe.

November 1, 2023

A call for empathy

A friend of mine in Israel, sickened by the events of the past few weeks, when asked what we outside the country could do suggested we begin with empathy.

October 26, 2023

An unholy alliance is defending Israels slaughter of Palestinian civilians

The Hamas raid into Israel on October 7th, and pounding of the Gazan population that has followed, has seen an unholy alliance reunite: not, or not merely, between Washington and its client states resisting UN calls for a ceasefire, but also in the media, between the Murdoch and Jewish press.

March 2, 2025

There will always be an enemy

The English often sing There’s Always Been an England. For America the song would probably be something along the lines of there will always be an enemy.

December 22, 2024

US exceptionalism

The US bloviates incessantly about its exceptional status.

February 4, 2023

Is it really about international religious freedom?

Many well meaning participants genuinely opposed to religious oppression at the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit this week in Washington will not realise that they are pawns in a US State Department geopolitical game.

January 29, 2025

Yoon’s fall sets up a comeback for South Korea’s progressives

South Korea is on the brink of major political upheaval following Yoon Seok-yeol’s declaration of martial law and subsequent impeachment. While there is a chance Yoon could be reinstated, his removal would pave the way for a new presidential election likely to be won by Lee Jae-myung. Lee’s sweeping parliamentary support could drive substantial domestic reforms, including implementing an unconditional basic income. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s return to the White House complicates Seoul’s foreign policy, especially as Trump may seek to cut Seoul out of North Korea negotiations. If Yoon remains in office, political turmoil could deepen, though foreign relations may see less immediate disruption.

December 11, 2024

President Prabowo’s plan for joint development with China hits a snag

A non- prejudicial clause can end internal bickering.

October 21, 2024

Powder keg in the Pacific

While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America’s national defence for endless decades.

February 26, 2024

Australia's India bet: Not a lay down misre yet

When do shared values become shared interests? Australia’s relations with India have accelerated exponentially. The nearly century-long pattern of discovery and rediscovery of India by the Australian polity is now history. Durable knots are being tied across the spectrum of political, economic, and social issues.

November 19, 2022

What Kevin Rudd got wrong on China: Taiwan and the great rejuvenation twenty five years ago

The renowned China hand mistook Beijing’s linking of Taiwan and the “great rejuvenation” as a recent development and failed to trace the origin of the “great rejuvenation” of the Chinese nation back to at least 1997.

March 3, 2025

Australia needs a new flag to start constitutional renewal

The creation of a new flag may well be the first step to re-commence constitutional renewal, something that sadly seems to have been avoided altogether by the Albanese Government.

February 17, 2025

Free meals threatened – and threatening

Before the 18th century Enlightenment, church and state in Europe were one. In Indonesia, fears that Islam will infiltrate civic affairs go back to the founding of the Republic. Instead, the threats are not from the mosques, but the military.

February 16, 2024

Negative Gearing: bad policy, fastened by a wedge - Weekly Roundup

_Fuel standards weaponised, to imagine a Dutton government look at the way he ran Home Affairs, if you’re struggling financially and have private health insurance drop it, re-imagining Australia, and the case for withdrawing negative gearing._Read on for the weekly roundup of links to articles, podcasts, reports and other media on current economic and political issues.

February 3, 2024

Calling all pacifists

We are called to live in the virtue of that life and power that takes away the occasion of all wars. Do you faithfully maintain our testimony that war and the preparation for war are inconsistent with the spirit of Christ? Search out whatever in your own way of life may contain the seeds of war. Stand firm in our testimony, even when others commit or prepare to commit acts of violence, yet always remember that they too are children of God. Advices and Queries

January 26, 2024

Australia Day 2024 poses more than the usual challenges

January 26 poses more than the usual challenges in 2024. Barely 100 days since the failed referendum there is the real prospect of the respective advocates and supporters reigniting a process, the only real outcome of which was community division. There is the risk of stirring more pain for some and a sense of triumphalism for others. More than ever Australia Day is the nations enduring puzzle.

December 28, 2023

Why does the "Christian" West ignore Palestinian Christian's plight?

Israel may well wipe out Christian presence in Gaza as part of its genocide, and Western leaders would not care less.

November 12, 2023

What prevents Australia from showing empathy to Syrians?

Australian foreign policy makers seem not to realise that the demographic makeup of Australia means increasing numbers of us are connected to victims of wars instigated by the United States. Australians support for future US wars cannot be relied on from huge sections of the community.

November 21, 2022

How the Supreme Court likely handed control of the House to Republicans

Democrats had a surprisingly good election night last week. They held on to a number of critical Senate seats, won key gubernatorial races, and, shockingly still, had a slight avenue to hold on to control of the House of Representatives, despite historic headwinds and virtually no margin for error. Still, Republicans are currently forecastto win control of the House by a small margin, carrying the chamber by one to 10 seats. If that projection holds, it will be no overstatement to say that the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court_took_control of the House of Representatives for Republicans.

November 29, 2021

Indo-Pacific concept is outdated, time is ripe for separation

As China’s influence grows and India revives an Indian Ocean forum, it might be time to do away with the whole concept of the “Indo-Pacific” region.

October 25, 2021

The reasons Australia's US alliance has persisted Part 3

Australia’s relationship with the United States has unusual longevity, adapting through successive wars and terror threats.

February 13, 2025

Breaking barriers: The transformative impact of people-to-people exchange

American talk show host Jimmy Fallon humorously remarked, “Americans would literally rather learn Mandarin than use Instagram Reels!” Recently, more than 700,000 users who call themselves “TikTok refugees” from the United States flocked to a popular Chinese social media app named RedNote (or Xiaohongshu). This unexpected “migration” has connected netizens from the two great nations like never before.

January 27, 2025

I'm going 'Trump sober' in 2025

Pearls & Irritations have graciously published the many articles I have written over the last five years on Donald Trump. I’ve written about his inciting the insurrection on 6th January 2021; examined his lack of moral virtue using Aristotle’s taxonomy as a template, contrasted him with other world leaders; and critiqued his negative influence as a pseudo-transformational leader. I’ve spent time and energy thinking about this man, and the possible implications for leaders elsewhere apart from the good olde US of A. However, from now on, I’ve decided to go ‘Trump sober.’

December 19, 2024

Albert Littler - Master Painter, trade union leader and activist

Albert Littler, a Master Painter, senior union official of the OPDU and CFMEU, and fierce advocate for the industrial rights of painters and decorators, died in September 2024, after years of suffering with asbestosis. Among Albert’s many claims to notoriety were headlines in the Herald Sun calling him an Art Bully and that he was the only trade union official that Jeff Kennett had taken a swing at.

November 28, 2024

Orban and Netanyahu: the transnational Right's pervasive Islamophobia

Viktor Orbán’s obsequious letter to Benjamin Netanyahu offering him sanctuary from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hungary is not a surprise. It is another red flag in the Islamophobic world of the transnational Right. The mass and prolonged slaughter of Palestinian Muslims (and Christians) cannot be seen as a crime committed against other humans in this worldview. The bloodshed must be revered as a form of “moral courage” in defence of the West.

November 23, 2024

ICC arrest warrants demonstrate urgent need for Australia to cut ties and sanction Israel

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes relating to the Gaza war.

April 3, 2024

Appointment of Samantha Mostyn as Governor-General

I congratulate Samantha Mostyn on her appointment as Governor-General. Such an appointment is a great honour.

March 26, 2024

Russia: A steel wall against the West

In 1942, a Finnish sound engineer Thor Damen, secretly recorded 11 minutes of a conversation between Finland’s Commander-in-Chief, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim and Adolf Hitler, without the latters knowledge.

March 16, 2024

Questioning ones views as circumstances evolve can be a good thing

Economics has achieved much; there are large bodies of often nonobvious theoretical understandings and of careful and sometimes compelling empirical evidence. The profession knows and understands many things. Yet today we are in some disarray.

January 10, 2024

John Pilger, maverick journalist (1939-2023)

In a speech he made in Sydney in 2011, defending Julian Assange, John Pilger recalled how it was always impressed upon him when he was young that Australia was a brave country: that we stood up to authority, and we stood up for justice. Such national myths were at best half-truths, Pilger said, but in our political life, there was scant evidence of this. But now and then, an Australian came along who made such myths seem true. Julian Assange was such an Australian, he said.

March 7, 2023

The cruel impact of US sanctions on earthquake affected Syria

The unilateral coercive sanctions Australia and its allies impose on Syria make us complicit in a war on the people of Syria, and arguably complicit in policide__, if not genocide. To lift the cruel sanctions, we must come to the realisation that Syrians are human, like us.

November 18, 2022

Is the US serious about negotiations on Ukraine?

The U.S. presidents remarks about territorial compromise could be a sea change, but is the White House serious about negotiations? asks M.K. Bhadrakumar.

November 16, 2022

Ideology second best as pragmatic Scholz of Germany leads way on China

The German chancellor has made it clear that decoupling from China is not the answer, and other European leaders should remember this following his first state visit to Beijing.

November 25, 2024

Time to take China and Latin America more seriously

The invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’

December 23, 2023

Western governments must stop being complicit in Israels moral self-destruction

Its time for governments around the world to condemn the injustice of Israeli apartheid and its brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, to put sanctions on Israel as they did for apartheid South Africa. Israels friends amongst Western governments, including Australia, must stop being complicit in Israels moral self-destruction.

January 24, 2023

UK needs to drop its colonial pretence to Hong Kong

British governments latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong should in the name of ending blatant hypocrisy be its last.

January 6, 2023

Eurasias middle corridor: An Atlanticist frenzy to stifle Europe-Asia integration

Geopolitical interests between the Anglo-American establishment and the Sino-Russian-led axis will clash over the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.

January 12, 2025

The Sunbird by Sara Haddad

While it is perfectly legitimate and understandable to engage with books for relaxation, some works of literature leave us better informed but unsettled.

December 29, 2024

Humiliation and gratuitous violence: The racial logic of Israel’s right to unaccountability

When we hear of so many incidents in which Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank detain Palestinians and gratuitously ransack their homes (if not completely destroy their homes), one tries to understand what role humiliation plays in the way in which the soldiers orient themselves to their victims.

January 20, 2024

The politics of emergency time and the emerging threat of fascism

The underbelly of contemporary violence is colonialism, the politics of disposability, religious fundamentalism, neoliberalism, and raw militarism.

November 20, 2023

Is a re-set likely in our medias China coverage?

Andy Park, the host of Drive on ABC Radio National, asked one of his guests the following question about Albaneses visit to China: Scoring an invitation to go to Beijing is obviously a coup for Mr Albanese. Obviously, much was said and done under the table diplomatically speaking. Do you think the average Australian thinks its the right direction for Australia? This is a good question indeed.

March 18, 2023

"Billion-dollar coffins": detection tech to render AUKUS submarines useless

Speaking at a summit in San Diego on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a decades-long strategy to deliver the most costly defence project in Australias history.

December 23, 2022

The Liberal Party a broad church or a house divided?

The results of the ANUs 2022 Australian Election Study confirm that the Coalition was undone by the pandemic, the economy, and a highly unpopular Prime Minister. However, they also suggest that the Liberal Partys broad church is an increasingly untenable edifice.

March 25, 2025

China's solar space station: A game-changer in renewable energy

China is making the once sci-fi dream of space-based solar power a reality and leaving the West scrambling to keep up. Imagine a kilometre-wide solar array orbiting Earth, harvesting limitless, uninterrupted solar energy and beaming it back home, day and night, without the interference of clouds or darkness. The China Academy of Space Technology is spearheading this geostationary solar power station and with a 2028-2050 roadmap, Beijing is set to redefine the global energy game.

January 8, 2025

An Islamist regime takes shape in Damascus

On a winter night in 2014 I stood by the side of a highway outside Damascus as a Syrian army officer shone a torch over the contents of my suitcase he had ordered me to empty onto the grey dirt.

December 6, 2024

Google faces verdicts from anti-trust trials as Trump term approaches

Search behemoth Google is under pressure in the US after three anti-trust trials concluded, with one of the remedies proposed being a call for it to be forced to sell off its web browser, Chrome, an app that dominates the browser space.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal