We owe President Emmanuel Macron a debt of gratitude for yesterday’s speech in Paris. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” the French leader said.
“In saying ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others,’ you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: Its moral values.” (more…)
It is now nearly 60 years since the accelerated live sheep trade commenced from Australia to the Middle East. Early opposition to the trade came from the meatworkers union (AMIEU) in the 1970s, but has increasingly come from animal welfare groups and exposure of the cruelty in the trade (550,000 dead, 2000-2012?). After all this time it is more than evident the trade cannot be conducted without animal deaths and animal cruelty, either on ships or in slaughter by buying countries. (more…)
The most powerful message to emerge from Four Corners’ sad story about the tumult at the top of the ABC is that neither the former chairman Justin Milne nor the former managing director Michelle Guthrie appeared to be friends of the public broadcaster. (more…)
WASHINGTON — Top Saudi intelligence officials close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked a small group of businessmen last year about using private companies to assassinate Iranian enemies of the kingdom, according to three people familiar with the discussions. (more…)
That the mob always gets it right is cornerstone wisdom of Australian politics, often confirmed by polling that shows the public’s deeply rooted common sense. (more…)
Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean people don’t hate you. It sometimes seems that Malcolm Turnbull is being pursued by that old Andy Capp character Joe Btfsplk, who brought bad luck to everyone near him. (more…)
If you want a glimpse into the future of Australia’s relationship with China, with all the elements of competition and co-operation, and tensions and bridge-building, then this week is a good place to start. (more…)
Perhaps the greatest service the House of Representatives’ six independent MPs could do for themselves and the nation over the dying days of this Parliament is to take charge of progress with a federal anti-corruption commission. Good for them – indeed, all six have an excellent chance of being re-elected – and good for the country. They probably won’t have a balance of power over the next government, and anything Labor cooperates in putting on the statute book over the next three months is likely to be stronger than what it would initiate in government.
The talk in the US is of constitutional crisis. It’s been looming for a while, thanks to the Mueller investigation into suspected collusion between the Trump campaign and Kremlin efforts to swing the 2016 election. At some point – perhaps when special counsel Robert Mueller issues a subpoena, demanding Donald Trump answers his questions – a clash was bound to come. But it may already be upon us. (more…)
ScoMo’s blue bus is the perfect symbol of the man and his government – a brash, ostentatious cliché, non-functional and completely phony. (more…)
Political debate on foreign policy between Australia-China in conjunction with Australia-US relations is an important issue for the 1.2 million Chinese Australian community. It is also an important issue for Australia as this will dictate our future prosperity and leadership role in the Asia Pacific. It should not be trivialised by name calling and political posturing. In the current vernacular, we should put “Australia First”. (more…)
Border protection hardliner Scott Morrison has told a Lifeline fundraiser that he cried “on his knees” over the plight of young asylum seekers held on Nauru.
(Yet Scott Morrison has the power to end the suffering of the children on Nauru ,but does not do so.!!.John Menadue) (more…)
The U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty reflects Washington’s long-standing concern that the treaty constrained its ability to counter China’s fast-growing missile forces in the Asia Pacific.
This article was published by Carnegie Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy on the 7th of November 2018. (more…)
I’ll go to the Armistice Day service at the Balmain war memorial this November 11 because it will mark the centenary of the end of the Great War and because it will be the end of nearly five years of almost continuous remembrance. While the youthful nation of only 18 years rejoiced with good reason 100 years ago, the end of all the remembrance will be a great relief to many Australians today. (more…)
In 2014 publishers gave us some superb books describing the origins of the First World War including Christopher Clark’s spellbinding The Sleepwalkers. In the four years between 2014 and 2018 has the world moved towards peaceful coexistence? Do we learn from history? You must be joking (more…)
A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts covered in other media. (more…)
Smart people have long argued among themselves about what language does, and doesn’t do. But pretty much everyone agrees that, if nothing else, language evolves. Words and phrases that were perfectly serviceable for decades, or even centuries, take on fresh meaning or vanish altogether. Fifty years ago, “boss” meant “cool.” A hundred years ago, “fantastic” referred to what existed solely in the imagination. Five hundred years ago, “jumble-gut lane” was slang for a bumpy stretch of road.
This article was published by BLARB on the 7th of November 2018. (more…)
Experts have rubbished Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s claims that a proposed rollback of negative gearing will decimate the property market and send rents soaring.
This article was published by The New Daily on the 8th of November 2018. (more…)
In the run-up to Tuesday’s midterms, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) faced mounting condemnation over his openly white-supremacist politics. King has a long record of demonizing minorities, fulminating over the decline of white “civilization” and courting extremists who peddle racist conspiracy theories about the “replacement” of white Europeans by nonwhite immigrants. (more…)
Lest We Remember traces the history of how Australia was drawn into wars by the British and the Americans, and looks at how poorly the strategies had been thought out and how poorly the troops themselves have been treated. The hype and hoopla of the centenary of the end of the First World War will be used by the arms manufacturers and the politicians to cover the folly and indeed to perpetuate it. (more…)
I hail from a country (Norway) that doesn’t have mandatory voting, yet gets close to 80% of eligible voters turning up at the polling booths, around the same as in Australia. Although I am philosophically opposed to mandatory voting as a contradiction in terms of a free democracy, I am also not too fussed about it. It is not on my list of important democracy reforms.
The United States have a very different system of voter registration, obfuscation and various other means of limiting participation – let alone the strange notion of voting on a workday. Around 57% of eligible voters turned out in the 2016 Presidential election, but traditionally the number is much lower for the mid-term elections – last time (2014) it was 37%.
Early calculations by Time Magazine shows around 50% turned out on Tuesday. It may prove to be the highest ever mid-term turnout, but it still puts the US well down the list of voter participation in “true” democracies. (more…)
One hundred years ago ‘the guns fell silent’ or at least WWI ended. Since the end of the war to end all wars, however, 120 million more people have died as a result of armed conflict. Well might we remember, but what are we remembering and what have we learned along the way? (more…)
In a prominent article in The Weekend Australian’s ‘Inquirer’ section on 3/4 November, headed “Canberra alone must control our China ties”, the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, castigates the Victorian government, a large delegation of leading Australian businesses and the Australian Technology Network of Universities for having the temerity of engaging with Chinese counter-parts in pursuit of mutual interests. They are charged with being naive and operating outside their station. (more…)
Apparently, the selfevident truth that all people deserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is far from settled.
This article was published by The New York Times on the 7th of November 2018. (more…)
In 2014, the last year for which complete data is available on the Australian Research Council’s website, 20.7 per cent of applications for research grants were successful; 1,417 grants were made, at a cost of $1,018,017,312. The Australian taxpayer deserves to know if sums of such magnitude are being well allocated. (more…)
Paul Kelly’s recent article ‘Could disruption be the ruin of western liberal democracy?’ was a thoughtful account of the challenges facing western democracy, and I would agree with some of what he described. But in the spirit of the constructive engagement he laments as missing in current debate, I offer up a different line of causality. (more…)
Southeast Asia’s newest and poorest nation needs funds that Beijing is poised to provide to fuel what some see as Dili’s misguided oil and gas ambitions.
This article was published by Asia Times on the 2nd of November 2018. (more…)
Except it ain’t true. It was true once, but not for many years.
You might expect the Prime Minister to be better informed than the average punter, but Morrison is from the new breed of politician who see a leader’s job as to reflect the voters’ misperceptions back to them. Read the focus group reports, not the briefing notes.
Something Morrison clearly hasn’t read is the research briefs published last week summarising the findings of the Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research – an outfit funded by the federal government to ensure it (and the rest of us) are well-informed about matters such as the adequacy of the age pension.
