November 3, 2022

NDIS: What do soaring costs tell us?

The budget has seen shock headlines about the increase in NDIS costs. The AFR screamed in its headline “…the NDIS will blow out to $50 billion”. It didn’t mention that this was in nominal terms - but the real increase of 17% over the next four years is serious enough.

December 10, 2024

Manufacturing consent with a pivotal signifier

Most of the world believes, today, that the Western use of the term, terrorism, is wilfully warped to advance a destructive political agenda. This same manipulative usage remains indispensably effective in the West, however. It fundamentally underpins, for example, the monstrous process lately identified by Stuart Rees as the “normalisation of atrocity.”

March 31, 2024

A vibrant media landscape will ease fears over Hong Kong’s Article 23 law

People in Hong Kong, particularly the media, should still be allowed to voice diverse opinions and criticism without fear of retribution – as long as it is fair and fact-based. This will help mitigate the concern of people considering a move to the city and show ‘one country, two systems’ is still alive and well.

February 4, 2024

30 bound and 'executed' Palestinians found at Gaza School after IDF Exit

“This is precisely why Israel was taken to the International Court of Justice with the accusation that it is committing genocide,” said one legal expert.

February 3, 2024

Democrats are demented genocidal war sluts

President Biden is reportedly preparing to begin a new weeks-long bombing campaign in the middle east in retaliation for a drone attack which killed three US troops this past weekend. These strikes are expected to include Iranian targets, tempting the nightmare scenario of a full-blown war with Iran, despite the public acknowledgement that there’s no evidence Iran was behind the drone strike.

January 6, 2024

Dialogue between civilisations needed more than ever

Today, the modern world is convulsed by geopolitical tensions and faces problems from the growing divergence of the national interests of states. The growing trust deficit and the reemergence of the Cold War mentality mean that constructive dialogue is at a premium.

October 19, 2023

You reap what you sow in Israel

“Freedom is never given. It must be taken.” (Ursula Le Guin) . You cannot be well in a home you stole.

February 27, 2023

Yemeni officials assess damage to ancient sites bombed by Saudi-led coalition

The Saudi-led coalition and its allies on the ground have been accused of systematically targeting Yemen’s cultural heritage through indiscriminate strikes and looting campaigns.

January 5, 2023

Propaganda isn't something that only happens to others.

One of the empire’s strongest assets is the widespread assumption that propaganda is something that only happens to other people. Another is the widespread assumption that propaganda only comes from other countries and other political ideologies.

December 2, 2022

China keeps aggressively surrounding itself with US bases: notes from the edge of The Narrative Matrix

It still amazes me how many people who fancy themselves anti-establishment critical thinkers will spend all day mindlessly regurgitating mainstream media lines about China.

February 2, 2025

Where have all the liberals gone?

The new liberal consensus, born of a shared “exhaustion,” is that it is time to “tune out,” or “take a break,” or simply close one’s eyes and ears.

December 12, 2024

China holds the world's climate future in its hands

China has experienced “the greatest development surge in human history driven above all by an unprecedented and spectacular surge in urbanisation,” writes historian Adam Tooze. “As a physical productive apparatus China completely dwarfs the United States (and any other comparator)". It is the nation that holds the world’s climate future in its hands, writes Patrick Mazza.

March 24, 2024

South Australia’s world-leading renewable transition is attracting flood of new industry

Will a grid based around wind and solar kill manufacturing and industry? It’s what the naysayers – the Coalition and conservative agitators – want you to believe, but the experience in South Australia, which leads the world in the uptake of wind and solar, proves the opposite.

March 11, 2024

China and America in the Middle East

An interesting essay that takes a critical but well-informed look at the development of China’s Middle East policy-settings recently appeared in the journal Foreign Policy. You can read the article - written by Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington-based Stimson Centre.

February 18, 2024

Why human beings prostitute themselves to corporations, billionaires and foundations

The power of money to distort humanity’s view of our situation only works because human beings prostitute themselves to corporations, billionaires and foundations. If you know anyone who works for the biggest companies of the world in media, finance, and technology, then ask them why aren’t they rebelling inside those companies, to make it less easy for rich white men to fuck up people or planet?

February 9, 2024

Quite literally, China builds while America bombs, and this study proves it

On Washington’s telling, Beijing is spreading authoritarianism through producing goods and building infrastructure around the world while the US is promoting freedom and democracy by bombing and selling weapons.

November 8, 2023

Why is the US so reluctant to ratify UN conventions?

The US is reluctant to ratify international conventions despite endlessly expounding on the importance of all countries abiding by the vague Rules Based International Order (RBIO).

October 22, 2023

Gaza genocide exposes fundamental bias in the state-corporate news media

On BBC Newsnight, host Kirsty Wark listened to Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, describe how six of his family members had been killed by Israeli air strikes. Wark reacted oddly: ‘I’m sorry for your own personal loss. I mean, can I just be clear, though, you cannot condone the killing of civilians in Israel, can you?’ This captures an essential element of western media coverage in the region.

January 18, 2023

Militarised Japan and the Biden-Kishida summit signal moment in the New Cold War

Across the Indo-Pacific, as well as in the escalating Ukraine War, humanity stands an accident or miscalculation away from the calamity of nuclear war.

November 28, 2022

China just announced a new social credit law. Here’s what it means

The West has largely gotten China’s social credit system wrong. But draft legislation introduced in November offers a more accurate picture of the reality.

November 16, 2024

Western values, what Western values?

The death and displacement of millions of Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen mean little. But if they are Muslims in Xinjiang, suddenly, their lives take on phenomenal value – propaganda value.

April 5, 2024

Western hawks continue to see North Korea as a target for attack

With Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, assassinated, Japan’s current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has been saying he wants direct talks with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un -a reversal of Abe’s position.

March 20, 2024

The sordid geopolitical saga of TikTok

The US considers TikTok a national security threat. It wants to ban TikTok or transfer its ownership to an American company. In doing so, it is displaying the very behaviour that that it ascribes to China and of which it does not approve.

February 10, 2024

The US keeps bombing people while saying it doesn't want to fight

One of the weirdest things happening in the world today is the way US officials keep insisting that they are not at war with the groups they’re dropping bombs on in the middle east, and that they do not seek conflict with the people they are attacking.

February 8, 2024

The Western press are just printing straight up Nazi propaganda about Middle Easterners now

Mass media outlets like The Guardian, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have been allowing the publication of some amazingly racist pieces these last few days. All are directed at middle easterners and those of middle eastern descent, just as the western empire drops more and more bombs on more and more countries in the middle east.

December 3, 2023

China’s electric vehicle surge will shock global markets

The transition to electric vehicles (EVs) promises massive dislocation. Conventional cars have twice as many parts as electric vehicles, translating into far fewer assembly hours. Striking for wages and security against Detroit’s ‘Big Three’ car manufacturers, the United Auto Workers trade union claims that the transition endangers 35,000 jobs among its 150,000 members.

October 1, 2023

People are dying for inches in Ukraine, the "world's largest arms fair"

There’s a heartbreaking graphic going around right now showing the almost microscopic changes that have occurred to the frontline of the war in Ukraine this year despite nonstop death and destruction of unfathomable horror the entire time.

December 15, 2024

The Biden family of liars

Given Joe Biden’s apparently intimate involvement in Hunter’s dealings, it follows that his intent in pardoning his son is effectively to secure a pardon for himself.

November 26, 2024

"A position of fear": Economics, security, and Australia’s China debate

I feel like I have been operating from a position of fear in Australia’s China debate, and I don’t want to anymore. I don’t want my country to be operating from a position of fear, and we have, writes Amy King.

April 3, 2024

Worrying development as Australia absent from Boao Forum, eschews regional engagement

Just a week ago, Wang Yi was in Australia and it appeared to be something of a reset. Australian media were happy(ish), barley is back, wine sales looked set to be back (and was formally confirmed that the tariffs would be dropped only a few days later). Only lobsters left on the list, there are still a few issues with food health concerns and meat from some abattoirs but everything appeared good. At least that was the hope a week ago.

March 7, 2024

UNRWA is at a breaking point

It is impossible to adequately describe the suffering in Gaza. The death toll in Gaza is staggering. More than 30,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in just 150 days. 5% of the population is dead, injured or missing. Doctors are amputating the limbs of injured children without anaesthetic. Hunger is everywhere. A man-made famine is looming. It is a stain on our collective conscience that for 75 years UNRWA has had to fill a vacuum left by the lack of a political solution and a genuine peace. And yet UNRWA is now facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them, writes UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

January 19, 2024

When Yemen does it it's terrorism, when the US does it it's "The Rules-Based Order"

The Biden administration has officially re-designated Ansarallah — the dominant force in Yemen also known as the Houthis — as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity.

November 29, 2023

David McBride and our retreat from the lessons of Nuremberg

The trial of the war crimes whistleblower shows how very far the dial of democracy has shifted in Australia.

October 2, 2023

Militarising exclusive maritime zones – a new global US security doctrine?

International law of the sea is set to be subverted as America seeks to exercise extraterritorial defence claims over foreign exclusive economic zones beyond those of three Pacific island states.

December 14, 2022

House report on big oil greenwashing shows 'Big Tobacco Playbook All Over Again'

“These companies know their climate pledges are inadequate, but are prioritising Big Oil’s record profits over the human costs of climate change,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

December 13, 2022

The biggest obstacle to real freedom is the belief that we already have it

If you live in one of the so-called free democracies of the western world, the worst mistake you can make is to buy into the hype. To believe you are a free individual in a nation that respects and protects your freedom and individuality.

November 23, 2024

Are APEC and G20 irrelevant?

There are 21 members of The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and its purpose is to ease trade throughout the member countries. The aims of APEC are noble and good, they are to create greater prosperity for the people of the region by promoting balanced, inclusive, sustainable, innovative and secure growth and by accelerating regional economic integration. Mark those words because we’ll come back to them. Since the creation of APEC, tariffs have been drastically reduced and trade restrictions eased. But all that has changed.

November 4, 2024

Facing an aging population and financial challenges, hospitals in China are converting to senior care facilities

I have always had an interest in reading local official research documents. First, compared with the central level document, it provides a more “grassroots angle” of viewing problems and the way they get things done. Second, it is enriched with cases rather than theories. It’s just more practical. Third, it has a specific format and is easy to read after you get familiar with it. For today’s episode, I bring the study made by the Luoyang government in Henan province (in the very middle of China). It studies the transformation of “Secondary hospitals“ in the region and gives some policy suggestions to the Luoyang government.

February 26, 2024

Washington is the supporter of genocide who sits in judgment of others

China’s contrasting political repression and economic development in Tibet and Xinjiang does not hold a candle to US-sponsored state terrorism by Israel against the Palestinian people.

December 19, 2023

Saving Australia from China?

Talks in public forums of saving Australia from China are disappointingly unrealistic.

January 20, 2023

Russia consolidates in East Mediterranean

The curtain is coming down on the brutal 11-year old Syrian conflict, which former US President and Nobel Laureate Barack Obama initiated, as the Arab Spring swept through West Asia two decades ago. The United States has suffered yet another big setback in West Asia as the year 2022 draws to a close. The unfolding Turkish-Syrian reconciliation process under Russian mediation is to be seen as a saga of betrayal and vengeance.

December 9, 2021

States of chaos: internal border closures a disaster during pandemic

Free movement between the states is central to the Constitution — long-term lockdowns and officious regulation will have dire consequences.

November 30, 2024

Feng Yujun on the prospects of Russia-Ukraine war after Trump's reelection

The leading expert on Russia says Trump’s bold claim to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours is highly unlikely to materialise, and only a just peace can lead to lasting peace.

April 2, 2024

Rabindranath Tagore: A man for a new Asian future

Archishman Raju is a scientist based in Bengaluru, India. He is associated with the Gandhi Global Family and the Inter civilisational Dialogue Project who are commemorating 100 years of Tagore’s trip to China in several cities in India.

March 7, 2023

Ukraine and Western media: The death of free thought

Wars are started by political forces. They are promoted by propagandists, fought by soldiers and it is always the ordinary people that suffer. Wars are almost never about principle and almost always about profit in one form or another. The war in Ukraine, like all other wars has been sold to us as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. A simple message is repeated and in Goebel’s world, a lie, if big enough and if repeated loudly enough will be believed.

February 28, 2023

Young Afghan women are pivoting to online education after the Taliban ban

It has been over a year and half since girls’ secondary education was banned by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and recently, they banned women from studying at universities too - which led the future of many women and girls to darkness.

December 1, 2022

As the world fixates on Ukraine, another war is brewing in the Middle East

As war rages in Ukraine, another conflict is ready to explode in the Middle East as the US and its allies confront Iran over its nuclear programme, supply of drones to Russia, and repression of anti-government protests.

January 27, 2024

Modi set to remake India as a Hindu nation

One of the sure bets this year is for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to win a third term in federal elections which are scheduled to take place in the first half of 2024.

January 14, 2024

We need to reverse the culture of decay and march on the street for a culture of humanity

The final months of 2023 pierced our sense of hope and threw us into a kind of mortal sadness.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal