The US president’s controversial decision signifies a well-crafted political and diplomatic move aimed at ending the 17-year conflict
One of the few issues that many Americans can agree on in 2018 is, improbably, marijuana legalization. Pot is now legal in thirty-three states and Washington, D.C. In April, John Boehner, the former Republican Speaker of the House, made the rounds of the morning TV talk shows to announce that he now supported decriminalization. Boehner, a former Big Tobacco lobbyist, had declared in 2015 that he was “unalterably opposed” to making pot legal. Now, perhaps hoping to cash in on the marijuana “green rush,” he sits on the advisory board of Acreage Holdings, a New York City–based marijuana startup headed by investment bankers. Acreage hopes to be to Big Pot what R.J. Reynolds, Boehner’s other employer, is to Big Tobacco. Acreage’s CEO, Kevin Murphy, optimistically predicts a “massive consolidation in this business” that will earn his company billions by 2020. (more…)
Only weak and compromised Liberal Party leadership would put up with the behaviour of Barnaby Joyce and the Nationals who have influence way out of proportion to their numbers and on policy issues, are a blank page or even worse. As Ian McAuley said yesterday Barnaby Joyce is an albatross around Malcolm Turnbull’s neck. It is getting worse every day. (more…)
I no longer think that anyone in America, including Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters, can afford to put off the consideration of the central question of this administration: What if Donald Trump or those closest to him were compromised by the Russians or colluded with them? (more…)
Climate change is worsening the drought now affecting huge swathes of the continent, bringing gut-wrenching misery for farmers and the communities they support. And what have some of the parliamentary representatives of those regions been up to? They have been trying to convince the Japanese to invest in more coal-fired power generation in Australia. (more…)
“Well, they killed King.” The matter-of-fact statement hung in the air of the kitchen where a roomful of women—including my mother (I was the lone child)—had gathered on that April day in 1968 to learn to make hot tamales for sale at church fund-raisers. Our herald, the adult son of the kitchen’s owner, delivered the news after pushing through the swinging door from the living room where the men had settled to watch television while we worked. His face—downcast eyes, furrowed brow, pursed lips—showed the resignation of one who had long suspected this would happen—a painful but near-inevitable outcome.
This article was published by The New York Review of Books on the 8th of November 2018. (more…)
In Soviet times, Russia’s Jews told a joke about a man named Rabinovitch who was distributing pamphlets in Red Square. In a matter of minutes, the KGB had found him and taken him to headquarters. Only there did the agents realize that the sheets of paper were completely blank. “But there’s nothing written here,” one of them said. Rabinovitch said: “They know quite well what I mean.”
For two months, the French government has been unable to make head or tail of the blank sheets of paper handed out by the gilets jaunes, or Yellow Vests, this decentralized, leaderless movement that has no explicit agenda or demand apart from the abolition of a fuel tax. While Emmanuel Macron’s government has blindly concluded that this sudden, violent movement bereft of any clearly articulated purpose has no other goals, movements don’t block major intersections just to protest hikes in gas costs. (more…)
I posted the following on Pearls and Irritations mid-year. I have been involved in Middle Eastern affairs for more than 30 years and, like many others, have clung to the notion of two states like a life-line. Letting go is painful, it creates even greater uncertainty. But to suggest that there is the slightest chance of two states happening ignores the realities both of today and the past 70 years. For our Prime Minister to use the two-state solution as “cover” for his foolish and pointless decision on Jerusalem is nothing more than a cheap marketing trick. (more…)
Rarely has there been a more comprehensive dissection and damnation of a government policy founded on misinformation than economist Stephen Roach’s analysis of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Roach, who traded his job as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia for faculty membership at Yale University in 2012, was masterful in his use of humour, satire, irony and hard facts to tear apart the arguments put by Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to justify US protectionism. (more…)
There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. Global companies such as Airbnb have recognized that their business practices must reflect international condemnation of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Natalie Portman, Lorde and other celebrities have declined appearances in Israel, acknowledging the call to boycott the Israeli government on account of its human rights violations. And The New York Times published a column arguing, with unprecedented forthrightness, that criticism of ethno-nationalism in Israel (for example, defining Israel exclusively as a “Jewish state”) isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic. (more…)
Traditional party of the bush wracked by personal scandals, leadership instability and a raft of new competitors on their turf.
In a year in which the Church we cherish has been shaken to the core,
what has the Christmas story have to offer our understanding of faith? (more…)
With 100 days to go until the United Kingdom officially leaves the European Union, the British government is in crisis, political parties are riven by deep divisions and Parliament is gridlocked. Without something to break the deadlock, caused by politicians who hold such different views on Brexit that we are unable to agree on any of the options available, we will leave the EU with no deal at all on 29 March 2019, and the economic consequences will be severe. (more…)
Last year, 165 Indigenous Australians died as a result of suicide. Despite continued efforts to improve suicide prevention programs, there has been no no appreciable reduction in the suicide rate in ten years. (more…)
John and Susie wish you a peaceful Christmas and a meaningful new year.
We do appreciate the help that we have received from contributors, readers and supporters.
There will be no posts on 24, 25 and 26 December.
It looks like the times will suit Bill Shorten. Voters don’t love him, yet in a year in which the feral rump of the Liberal Party hopelessly botched a coup that felled a Prime Minister but failed to install his self-anointed successor, by-election after by-election and poll after poll showed Shorten’s party poised to take power. (more…)
With the appointment of Scott Morrison as Prime Minister we will witness again the repetition of the myth that the Coalition and Operation Sovereign Borders stopped the boats. They did not.
I expect that many in the media will also climb aboard again to continue the myth about the stopping of the boats. Perhaps being careless in the first place the media finds it embarrassing to admit error.
If the opinion polls are correct, Australia will have a new federal government around May 2019. A new prime minister will likely take charge, which would make seven in the past decade, compared to four in the previous 32 years.
This instability has long prevented consistent domestic decision making. Now it is starting to change Australia’s relationship with Asia. (more…)
Let’s call a spade a spade. The efforts by western powers, Australia included, to cut Huawei out of major telecommunications projects such as 5G, where Huawei is arguably the world’s leader, are aimed at containment of China (of course, we don’t officially call it this – we call it “push-back”). Much has been reported recently about the so-called technology war between China and the west (“Huawei: Australia fears the Canadian Club, AFR, 16 December 2018). Huawei is clearly at the centre of this battle. The recent arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, is the latest – and most dramatic – development in this saga (“Meng arrest is part of America’s economic war on China”, AFR 13 December 2018). (more…)
| More frequent extreme heat events and marine heatwaves, an increase in extreme fire weather, and declining rainfall in the southeast and southwest of the continent are some of the key observations showing Australia’s changing climate, as detailed in the latest State of the Climate report released today by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. |
On Monday night, late in the evening after Labor’s national conference had debated asylum seeker and refugee policy, I sat at a bar with a mix of refugee advocates, conference delegates like myself, people seeking asylum and refugees. (more…)
We have to hand it to Scott Morrison. He has been at the heart of two major shifts in Australian political life. One made him Prime Minister, the other overturned a sensible long-standing approach on Jerusalem. Yet the new PM struggles to offer a coherent explanation how either development benefits Australia. His approach on Jerusalem exhibits a rare talent to combine the stupid with the pointless. (more…)
Rejection of competition complaints wasn’t what the Australian was hoping for. Plus: Ray Hadley sees the light.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has used an address to the Labor national conference to deliver a fresh swingeing attack on the Murdoch media, declaring “it is not a news organisation, it is a political party”. (more…)
Christmas time is both very predictable and inexhaustibly mysterious. (more…)
With his weekend announcement of a $6.6 billion affordable rental construction program, Bill Shorten has dramatically reinforced Labor’s emphasis on housing as central to the Party’s 2019 election policy pitch. The initiative, Labor’s first significant housing investment pledge in four federal elections, aims to help qualifying low-to-moderate income earners increasingly squeezed out of urban housing markets. It builds on Chris Bowen’s vow, ahead of the last federal contest, to restrict landlord investor negative gearing tax handouts to those helping to expand supply through newly-built housing acquisition. (more…)
Visitors to Australia are drawn to this country’s iconic coastline. After landing in Sydney early in the morning I went straight Bondi’s famous Icebergs ocean pool to do a few laps. It was spectacular. A gorgeous pool in the depths of the sea, a symbol that it’s not just infrastructure, but well-designed infrastructure that makes a difference: public value that public and private actors can create when they get the mix right. Icebergs is one of around 150 ocean baths in the state of New South Wales. Some are licenced to private operators, others are run by local government. If Icebergs is any indication, they are all a unique public realm – long-lived investments that provide access to the natural environment, a base for local business, and a place for communities to come together. (more…)
Legal wheels are turning fast in Malaysia and US to jail the ex-premier and hold the American investment bank responsible for money laundering and fraud worth billions of dollars (more…)