After Japan’s ruling party suffered an electoral setback in October, Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru also has to deal with the return of Donald Trump. Japan’s role as a US client state puts it on the front line of an escalating confrontation with China. (more…)
Tag: International relations
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Israel’s contradictory statecraft
When Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed his disdain for international law and his contempt for the leadership of the United Nations, he implicitly recalled an ancient tradition of the origins of Israel. He asserted that Modern Israel was not formed in 1948 by the United Nations, but by the Israeli war against the Arabs, in the settled region of Palestine, the Nakba (disaster). The very mention of the word Palestine had become an ideological affront to Israel. (more…)
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Does Israel have a right to exist? The impact of Statehood
Last month, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur, was asked: “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” (more…)
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The Australo-German conundrum
Australia and Germany are quite literally a world apart, and expecting to find many parallels between the two countries might appear counter-intuitive. But as secondary powers in the Anglo-American sphere of influence, many of the resulting challenges the two nations face are indeed identical. Most significantly, the severe curtailment of national sovereignty by a foreign power. (more…)
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Zio-Judeo-Conflation? No Thanks!
Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism and Judaism with Zionism are two dangerous misconceptions that play into the hands of those who are justifying apartheid and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. They inhibit us from using our critical faculties to apply our findings with clarity and consistency. (more…)
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Chinese-Australian and Chinese-American views on news: A comparative study
In recent years, media speculation about a possible conflict between the PRC and the US — and Australia’s role in the war as an ally of the US — has gained significant momentum in both countries. Both Chinese-Australians and Chinese-Americans face the geopolitical reality of living in a country that increasingly sees the PRC as a hostile nation. Possibly for this reason, they share a range of sentiments and views. (more…)
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Canberra’s cowardice leaves Australian women and children stranded in Syria
US diplomat Peter Galbraith insists the Australian Government and Opposition are exaggerating the dangers of even trying to bring 10 Australian women and 30 children home from Syrian camps. In an affidavit to the Australian High Court, Galbraith explained he had made 20 visits to camps in north-east Syria and had helped to extract several women and 29 children. (more…)
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American supported Israeli settlers erode what is left of Palestine
Israel continues to destroy what is left of Gaza with American bombs, slaughtering 50 or more souls daily as they try to survive in flimsy tents on a starvation diet of bread and water, if they are lucky. A genocide is happening now with media silence. After invading Lebanon and killing and maiming thousands of innocent civilians, an emboldened Israel has bombed another sovereign country, Syria. (more…)
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Thorpe to take Australia’s genocide regime to the ICC, as Regev case struck down
The private prosecution that Krautungalung elder Uncle Robbie Thorpe launched against Mark Regev, a former senior advisor to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, that charged the Australian Israeli with advocating genocide was taken over by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions late on the afternoon of 9 December and the case was then officially dropped in court the next day. (more…)
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Consumption is driving global greenhouse gas emissions
Patrick Mazza has offered a valuable analysis of China’s contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and what it is doing, and still needs to do to reduce them. However, like the vast majority of scenarios on mitigating GHG emissions, it doesn’t address the elephant in the room, the growing growth in consumption in China and in the whole planet. Economic growth is closely correlated with the growth in consumption of energy and emissions. (more…)
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Are we the terrorists?
It’s ten years since the Lindt Café siege by a member of Islamic State who, despite multiple warnings, was not of concern to ASIO or the police. Yet Man Haron Monis’ attack had all the commonly accepted characteristics of terrorism. (more…)
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Stand with the Hibakusha to end nuclear weapons
Honour, remember, act, and support the atomic bomb survivors. (more…)
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The dismemberment of Syria is a crime
What we are witnessing is not just the end of a regime but quite possibly the destruction of the Syrian state. We are being told by the Western media that we should join Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden and the Europeans in celebrating what risks being the creation of yet another failed state in the Middle East/West Asia. (more…)
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How Israel lost its soul
If anyone still believed that political Zionism’s objective was anything less than ethnic cleansing The Fall of Israel would surely disabuse them of that delusion. (more…)
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Before 1770, produced, written and directed by Sheikh Wesam Charkawi
In 2019, I was Australia’s Consul-General in Makassar, and I remember meeting a group of Muslim Australians from western Sydney: they were planning to make a film about the Makassar-Northern Australia relationship. Their leader was Sheikh Wesam Charkawi, a tall, bearded man of middle-age, in haji cap and long white robes. (more…)
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Who benefits from an attack on the synagogue in Melbourne?
In my condemnation of the attack on the synagogue in Melbourne, I said, “This is not acceptable by any means. Unlike the Zionists who kept silent and never condemned Israel’s destruction of 819 mosques and 3 churches in just over a year in Gaza, many of which are historic, Palestinians do not condone attacks against holy places.” (more…)
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History repeats in the most chilling of ways
Earlier this month, the Sydney Morning Herald published a cartoon by the irrepressible Cathy Wilcox. I gazed at the image for a long time. My first thought was that she’ll pay a price for this, and so might the Herald. And, true to form, there was indeed a strong reaction in some quarters. (more…)
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Adass Israel synagogue is not your political football
The Adass Israel synagogue in Ripponlea, Melbourne was firebombed this week in a horrific attack. (more…)
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President Prabowo’s plan for joint development with China hits a snag
A non- prejudicial clause can end internal bickering. (more…)
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Syria falls
I have yet to fully understand how the collapse of the Syrian government could happened at the speed it did happen: Syrian government falls in stunning end to 50-year rule of Assad family -AP, Dec 8 2024 (more…)
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Options for global trade
Australia and the United States believe China is hegemonic. China uses a different approach to international engagement, and that means Australia fails to understand China’s appeal to the region and the global south. (more…)
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A Christmas truce in Ukraine
There should be a Christmas truce/ceasefire (Orthodox Christmas or western doesn’t matter) in the war between Russia and Ukraine. (more…)
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Can Australia and Indonesia provide leadership on climate change?
Almost certainly not, but someone really ought to try while it’s still possible. (more…)
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West Papua, an Australian and UN crime scene
I have a friend Julian King, who Duncan Graham reports has been subjected to a stun grenade as our Australian Federal Police burst through his door to seize his PhD research, phone and computers. Reportedly, the AFP are concerned about OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka _Free Papua Organisation), the indigenous independence movement in West Papua. (more…)
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The continuing ‘struggle for Syria’
The dramatic ‘rebel’ advance into Aleppo dominates the headlines. In history rather than headlines, however, the importance of current events shrinks into relativity, as the ‘West’ and its regional allies have been tearing apart, or trying to tear apart, Syria for more than a century. This is what the journalist and historian Patrick Seale called “the struggle for Syria” back in the early 1960s. (more…)
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Absent justice: Australia’s Afghanistan war crimes investigations thin out
Small to middle-sized states often crow at undertaking what are vulgarly described as “world firsts”. Australia is certainly one of them, with governments and news outlets keen to announce on a weekly basis that something never previously done has been initiated, implemented, or discovered. A closer inspection shows such declarations to be premature. (more…)
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A necessary reckoning of bloodletting in Gaza
The premeditated bloodletting in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and many other largely forgotten parts of the world speaks hauntingly of the normalisation of death and destruction, largely for cruel, self-serving and illusory reasons. (more…)
