Military posturing in the Asia-Pacific also risks nuclear war and the potential extinction of the human species. (more…)
John Menadue asks whether the Greens can avoid the perfect obstructing the good. The Teals will force the Greens to Get Smart. (more…)
Chris Bowen has announced reconfiguration of the energy generation system will not ‘commence until 2025’. Can Labor and Australia wait that long? (more…)
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has sharpened philosophical and epistemic differences over speech and content moderation. He will create an interesting natural experiment between different moderation approaches on platforms, if he is successful in changing the philosophical attitudes at Twitter. (more…)
Madison: Federalist #10 … the trouble with parties
Right about the time the first fleet was sailing to Botany Bay, three of the American founders, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote a series of articles designed to explore the most controversial issues encountered by the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. They were published and widely read, as the authors intended, and they have been very influential ever since, whenever there’s reason to think hard about problems of popular sovereignty and democratic theory. In the piece usually known as essay number 10, Madison addresses something he saw as a particularly acute problem for the new republic – how to tame the tendency of people to clump together into ‘factions’. (more…)
If you aren’t a long-term energy policy news junkie, you’d be forgiven for thinking today’s crisis arrived fairly suddenly. But we arrived here thanks to a series of policy decisions under previous governments – state and federal – that left Australia’s energy system ill-equipped to cope with the demands placed on it.
A United Nations study finds that Russia’s war on Ukraine and the intensifying climate emergency have pushed the number of people facing famine globally to an all-time high. (more…)
Universities should take an expanded leadership role in regional development, the Distributed University model provides a mechanism. (more…)
An artificial atmosphere of hostility, sustained by geopolitical agendas, double standards, fake news and skewed narratives has made it difficult to tackle specific human rights problems particularly in Xinjiang. (more…)
The web of international trade has been lauded for a century as a positive binding force connecting nations, making the world a safer place. Who would think it could also do the opposite. (more…)
Another highly engaging Classic 100 music countdown came to a close at 4pm on Sunday, enthralling many thousands of Australians, linking them like maybe nothing else, to their ABC. Crucially, younger Australians engaged like never before with the Classic 100, according to the network’s website. Altogether, 215,486 listeners took action and voted—a record, with an increase in younger voters. Translate that via the multiplier effect to listeners and you scoop up huge numbers of Australians, clearly many converts for the first time, judging by the wonderful recorded feedback. (more…)
June 7 was a bad day for Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS). During the ninth Summit of the Americas, a young man declared to him what he is: an assassin and puppet of the White House, instigator of the coup in Bolivia. He said that Almagro cannot come to give lessons on democracy when his hands are stained with blood. In another room at the summit in Los Angeles, Secretary of State Antony Blinken seemed to be doing no better: several journalists rebuked him for using freedom of the press to provide cover for the murderers of journalists and for sanctioning and excluding certain countries from this meeting. “Democracy or hypocrisy?” could be heard over the loudspeaker that day. (more…)
Thanks to the Australian Electoral Commission’s age profile for each electorate it is possible to analyse how younger and older voters across the nation appear to have taken different paths. (more…)
One of the regular refrains from the Israeli government is that they have “the most moral army” on Earth. (more…)
When it comes to the question of achieving peace in the Middle East, Labour is clear: in government, we would immediately recognise the state of Palestine. We want to see a two-state solution, with a sovereign and secure Palestine and Israel existing in peace alongside one another. But we must acknowledge how far away that goal is. (more…)
The Federal election showed that despite appearances, including the anti-vax rallies and the best efforts of the press, the working class has shifted to the left rather than the right during the last two years of crisis. The election delivered a severe blow to the project of consolidating far right politics through electoral processes. The Liberal Party is hopelessly split due to the ruling class divisions over climate change. It has effectively lost its base in the upper middle classes of the cities. The far-right minor party vote largely did not eventuate. (more…)
A 21-year old Russian tank commander, Sergeant Vadim Shysimarin, has been tried and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Ukraine for the murder of a civilian. This is the first war crimes trial arising out of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ – a label which does not exempt any of the combatants from the law of ‘armed conflict’. (more…)
In my distant memory, when in 1960, I was a grade 2 student at St James’s Primary School in Gardenvale, I have a vague recollection of a newly ordained priest coming to visit the school and talk to us. I also have a similar recollection from 1959, in Grade 2, when Michael Parer likewise had come back to his old parish. The first mentioned must have been Eric Hodgens, although I couldn’t remember his name that far back. At the time, Paul Willy, of YCW fame, was the parish curate, and much later Brighton postman! I certainly can remember his friendly and engaging nature, coming to talk to us, and giving me a kick of the footy at Elsternwick oval, as I had no interest in violent engagement of contact sport, being one of the smallest in the class! (more…)
Winning a ‘climate election’ where neither major party presented nor discussed their policy details with electors has generated a blank screen of individual expectations. Can Anthony Albanese’s government satisfy their diverse hopes. (more…)
A new Australian prime minister flying to Indonesia to “reset” relations is now so routine it would probably raise hackles in Jakarta if it didn’t happen. (more…)
The disasters of war in Ukraine have not yet found their Francisco Goya, but the reporting of journalists conveys a graphic picture of the death and destruction there. This war, like all its predecessors, is hell. Writing about the putatively good war of 1939-1945, Nicholson Baker in Human Smoke described its beginnings as the advent of civilisation’s end with the records of both sides marred by the most horrific war crimes. The reporting of Nicholas Turse in Shoot Anything that Moves about the war in Vietnam and of Vincent Bevins in The Jakarta Method about Washington-backed massacres worldwide in the Cold War showed Americans in these two cases as arch perpetrators of war crimes. Chalmers Johnson in the Blowback trilogy and Dismantling the Empire compiled long lists of American enormities in what he called our obsessive wars of empire in Iraq and Afghanistan. (more…)
The murder by an Israeli sniper of the Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shirin Abu Akleh, and the police attack on mourners at her funeral, are not incidental to Zionism, but integral to it. The ‘Green Line’ that bounds the territory the rest of the world regards as belonging to Israel is purely provisional, with no formal border ever having been announced or acknowledged. (more…)
Our household rooftop solar panel network helps fulfil international commitments of the Australian government, yet it also represents a hidden taxation that citizens do not seem to recognise. Can the new Labor government rectify this and other larger taxation anomalies? (more…)
In the recent election, aided by a febrile Murdoch press, the right-wing campaign to smear Australia’s opposition as ‘antisemitic’ and ‘anti-Israel’ reached fever pitch. With Labor now in power, it’s time to set the record straight. (more…)
Industrial relations issues were front and centre when federal Labor last won office from opposition in 2007. The backlash against John Howard’s “Work Choices” reforms cost both his government and his own seat. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s detailed “Forward with Fairness” policy provided a blueprint for the Fair Work Act that is still in force today. (more…)
Reinvigorating multilateralism has been a growing concern of the United Nations (UN) for many years. The maintenance of international peace and enhancing the global rules-based order are core responsibilities under the UN Charter. A major problem is that many Member States are no longer, if they ever fully were, practicing what they say they believe. Multilateral cooperation through the UN institutions has been eroded. (more…)
One of the great chants of Latin American protest marches, is the phrase: “El pueblo unido jamas será vencido”, meaning: “a united people will never be overcome.” (more…)
“The Panel recognises that the negative impacts that arise from the over consumption of liquor in the NT, laid out in detail in this report, are off the scale, not just by Australian but by international standards. The resulting costs in terms of human suffering and social and economic costs cut right across the NT community and are not confined to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Territorians. They cannot be ignored.” Gilbert Review into the proposed Dan Murphy Store in Darwin, (2021). (more…)
The hidden legacy of AUKUS is that Australia is on a path to attract thermonuclear attack from China, against which it is defenceless. In April I could only wonder about the illogicality of AUKUS, that peculiar agreement struck in September last year with the US and Britain, for Australia to build nuclear submarines to save the Indo-Pacific. (“AUKUS and submarines – a slippery slope”, P&I, 27 April 2022). AUKUS and its emblematic eight budget-crippling nuclear submarines make no sense against Australia’s defence policies, or economic sanity. AUKUS has to be opened intellectually, its innards exposed, to find the risks it’s pushing Australia into. (more…)
Objective and anecdotal evidence shows that activity in the Australian arts sector declined significantly during the pandemic. Performances closed, venues shut, exhibitions were cancelled and many artists were forced to abandon their artistic careers — hopefully temporarily. The sector’s demise produced the occasional news item, but otherwise it has aroused little reaction from the public or public policy makers. (more…)