In this article in The Nation, George Grandin of New York University comments
Obama’s recomposition of American exceptionalism was tactically successful, at least as measured by his 2012 reelection, which expanded the multiracial and cross-class coalition that had given him the White House four years earlier. (more…)
“Responsible gambling”, like “responsible drinking”, is a clever-sounding way of deflecting attention away from the product. (more…)
There are many indicators of GP over-supply in Australia. … One consequence has been an escalation in the cost of GP rebates to the taxpayer. … Better distribution of GP services could be achieved by restricting new provider numbers to under-supplied districts.
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Human rights work has a cost, and we need to remember the cost and the toll that it takes on the people who are doing it. Those who are paying the price need the support of those who are not paying so much.
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The importance of our relations with Indonesia in the future and in the wider context of the Asian century cannot be overstated. It is essential that each country acts to know more about its neighbour.
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For Pope Francis, peace has been a constant theme, as it was for his name-sake, St Francis of Assisi. His message for 1 January 2017, his fourth such message, draws on the major documents of his pontificate as it focuses on the role of nonviolence in building peace. (more…)
Chris Sidoti recounts the context for the establishing of the AHRC, (formerly called the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) and records the frequent conflicts over the years between the AHRC and the government of the day.
This is an edited first half of the speech. The second half will appear in the next P&I. (more…)
Pine Gap has capabilities that could genuinely contribute to the defence of Australia. This would depend on the will and resolution of an Australian government capable of identifying these. (more…)
We need to change the way we do charity and welfare; we’re out of kilter: lots of giving and receiving of things, but too little giving of ourselves – we just don’t have the time. It hardly needs saying, “People need people.” (more…)
We should not refer to ISIS as a state. It Is not a state. It has no Air Force or navy. It has no fixed boundaries. It is really a series of militant groups. It behaves in a ruthless manner, as does Saudi Arabia and its agents in Yemen. (more…)
In August 2016, Japan’s Emperor Akihito took the highly unusual step of asking publically to be relieved of his duties – to be able to abdicate. The government is still mulling over its response many months later. The article below is a repost from August 9, 2016. (more…)
In this interview, reported in The Wire on 31 January 2016, Noam Chomsky talks about the ravages of neoliberalism. this is a repost from 21 February 2016. (more…)
This is a repost from November 3, 2016.
“Across Sydney students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) regularly make up 80% or 90% of enrolments in selective schools.”
The bias in the treatment of the Syrian conflict by the mainstream media is not accidental or due to laxity on the part of the media. Rather, it is the result of the opposition groups’ exclusion of independent reporting, coupled with western governments’ financial assistance to the opposition for media production. (more…)
‘Taking sides’ is a schoolyard conception of how a nation’s strategic interest is to be calculated and diplomacy shaped. Standing on the sidelines of a fight, pointing an accusing finger at other barracking spectators and crying ‘you’re taking sides’ is merely a way of avoiding the more challenging task of assessing the rights and wrongs of an issue and how it might, sooner or later, directly involve others. This is a repost from 20 September 2016. (more…)
I decided to become a photojournalist to help refugees tell their stories, and to show their plight. I was stunned by the lack of compassion and the outright racism I saw in my countrymen. I was angry as only a teenager can be with the politicians who fanned the flames of xenophobia. (more…)
Yet we are set to see our aid commitment as a percentage of national income drop to a record low level. Already since 2012 it has slumped from 0.36% of national income to 0.23%. This relegates us to the lower half of OECD countries in terms of generosity despite being near the top for economic capacity. In fact we were roughly three times as generous in the 1960s, even though today we are roughly three times as wealthy. (more…)
Henry Kissinger‘s renascent role in US-Russian diplomacy
Remarkably, 93-year old Henry Kissinger is still making judicious and fruitful public and private interventions in Russia-US relations. It seems his moment may have come again to make a difference as an East-West peace-broker, as he did in the Nixon-Brezhnev years ( for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1973). (more…)
The dead refugee had a name. But even in death Australia did not want to humanize him. For years now he had been no more than a registration number — BRF063 — under the country’s cruel refugee deterrence system known as “offshore processing.” (more…)
The Australian servicemen who left behind mixed-race children during the postwar Occupation of Japan set in motion changes that are chipping away at a nation’s stubborn myth of racial homogeneity. (more…)
Australians, Americans and Japanese have been ‘fighting monsters’––the monsters of war remembrance––since 1945. A high-profile visit to Pearl Harbor during the week seemed to suggest another monster was being laid to rest. But while that piece of theatre left much to be desired, especially in its aftermath, another recent attempt, away from the spotlight, gives us reason to hope. (more…)
The unfolding Western effort to preach to the Chinese and paint a picture of a shining and benign America and contrasting that with a threatening and malign picture of China is, among other things, a complete distortion of the historical truth.
This is a repost from 15 November 2016.
Just over two years ago I was in New York working with Larry Summers and Ed Balls to prepare a report for the Center for American Progress on inclusive prosperity. One morning I had the opportunity to walk the High Line and on the side of an old brick building was a large advertisement which read “the French aristocracy never saw it coming either.”
It was yet another reminder of the ground swell of support sweeping around the world for a more inclusive form of prosperity and it’s been an image seared in my mind ever since.
In early 2015 the Inclusive Prosperity Commission Report was published. Its first paragraph concluded that growing inequality is a threat to “the political system and for the idea of democracy itself”. (more…)
In parliament, forty years ago on 27 September 1967, Gough Whitlam described the factors driving up the high cost of healthcare in Australia. The same vested interests drive up costs in Australia at the expense of the taxpayer and the community. John Menadue. (more…)
In this article in the Bangkok Post, journalist Alan Dawson writes of a trend by the Thai government to improve relations with China at the expense of the US. Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ is having difficulties in the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. See link below to Bangkok Post article.
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/general/1167845/end-of-an-era-
A repost from the New York Times, Sunday Review, 17 September 2016.
A Chinese student once described his country’s globalization strategy to me. China, he said, opened a window to the world economy, but placed a screen on it. The country got the fresh air it needed — nearly 700 million people have been lifted from extreme poverty since the early 1980s — but kept mosquitoes out. (more…)
‘The world’s refugee crisis knows no more sinister exercise in cruelty than Australia’s island prisons.’
In this long, searing account in the New York Times, Op-ed columnist, Roger Cohen, describes what he found on a recent visit to Manus Island. (more…)
US forces left Thailand in 1975-76 at the request of Thai authorities. SEATO was disbanded in 1977. Australia’s forward defence doctrine was quietly forgotten.
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A woman ahead of her time. (more…)