Category: Politics

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In a remarkable and somewhat unprecedented rebuke of the US administration, India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has announced that India will not respect unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran and will recognize “only the UN sanctions.” Bound to raise tensions with Washington, India’s brave decision reflects both India’s political evolution and the primacy of her own national interests. It’s also another setback for the White House’s hawkish anti-Iran policy, which has already alienated key European allies who are struggling to preserve the Iran nuclear deal without the United States by offering Iran a package of incentives in the near future. Adding real bite to her major policy announcement, Swaraj then went on to meet Iran’s visiting Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who is seeking to shore up global sanctions-busting support through a flurry of diplomatic trips. (more…)

Waves of foreign investment and trade have been essential features of Australian development since 1788. The waves began with the UK, then the US, then Japan and now China. In each of these waves the Australian government has consistently managed the economic and strategic ties that were involved, despite difficulties from time to time . In our burgeoning relationship with China, we have for the first time an agency of the Australian government deliberately doing damage to our major trading partner.   (more…)

Scorching report on poverty finds ‘systematic attack on welfare program’ will leave millions deprived of food and healthcare.  (more…)

The country’s most right-wing government since Mussolini is determined to test the euro’s limits. (more…)

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PUTRAJAYA: Wan Azizah Wan Ismail’s childhood ambition was to become a doctor and cure disease. Now that she is Malaysia’s most powerful female politician, she says her mission is to improve women’s rights. (more…)

The United States has a China problem—and pundits and politicians are making it worse. China is an increasing problem for the United States. But the latest reactions and assumptions about China among America’s political-media leadership class hold every prospect of making China-related problems much worse. How can this be? It involves the familiar tension between short-term political shrewdness and longer-term strategic wisdom. (more…)

The “pre-negotiation process” going on between the US and North Korea is volatile and opaque, but a few points seem to have emerged.

James Bond novels used to feature a sinister Soviet organisation called SMERSH—short for “Death to Spies” in Russian. The twists and reversals in the process that may lead to a Trump-Kim summit have been so extreme that they could be called “Death to Forecasters”, or commentators. But a few points can be made.   (more…)

Iranian president to be hosted in Qingdao next month as Beijing and Moscow-led bloc looks to protect business interests. As European companies react with trepidation to the Trump administration’s efforts to blow up the Iran nuclear deal, pulling out of business deals in the face of looming sanctions, Chinese and Russian firms wait in the wings.  

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President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to run away from a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un should not be a surprise to anyone. The White House is encouraging the notion that China’s Xi Jinping is to blame for souring the notion of a U.S.-North Korean summit and for toughening Kim Jong Un’s negotiating position, and the mainstream media is doing its predictable best to validate such a self-serving explanation.  In actual fact, the Trump administration was never prepared to discuss any issue that resembled arms control and disarmament, and national security adviser John Bolton, the formidable chairman of the new “war cabinet,” was never agreeable to the idea of U.S.-North Korean diplomacy.

President Obama had to put a ‘gag order’ on Admiral Harris because of his anti China attitude. Harris was initially slotted to be the next US Ambassador to Australia (more…)

Our understanding that the Mayans and other civilizations once used human sacrifice in their ritual observances sits and contrasts uncomfortably with our sense of civilization. Apart from written history, we have access to more visceral experience of the horror: Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” depicts both the individual impact, and the larger scale trauma of the practice. Who, having seen it, can forget the scene of the terrified hero of the movie stumbling across a valley of literally heartless corpses, sacrificed to appease the angry gods? (more…)

The issue of China’s influence in Australia is complex. It ranges from worries about national security, political donations and media infiltration to concerns about scientific collaborations, Confucius Institutes, the patriotism of Chinese students, and allegiance of the Chinese community. The most recent trope is China’s so-called “debt trap” diplomacy with Australia’s neighbours in the Pacific.

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