Public Meeting – Glebe Town Hall
Sunday 9 March,
7pm – 8.30pm
Bookings – via Eventbrite
Tag: World Affairs
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Never has violence been initiated by the oppressed
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognise others as persons – not by those who are oppressed, exploited and unrecognised.
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A five-minute scroll
Justin Trudeau eloquently calls Trump’s tariffs a trade war. Miko Peled questions why the allies aren’t liberating the concentration camp that is Gaza, Jeffrey Sachs asks how many wars China has been in in the last 40 years. Peter Cronau lists our eclectic list of defence priorities. (more…)
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Daniel Levy: We are all people, we are all born equal
Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, addressed the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. (more…)
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The egg and I
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they boil an egg for breakfast. I’ve made a study of it. The conservatives wait till the water’s boiling before they put the egg in and hit the three-minute timer. (more…)
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Just how bad can Trump 2.0 get?
Even those of us who feared the worst have been astounded by the Trump administration’s attack on the rule of law, democratic principles and even morality – not to mention America’s long-suffering allies, of course. (more…)
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What US wants for Ukraine must serve as a warning to Taiwan, Australia and others
So, US Secretary of Defence Hesgeth has made it clear that what most of us knew three years ago will come to pass. (more…)
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USAID withdrawal: Rethinking how we tackle poverty
The withdrawal of USAID has sent shockwaves through the NGO sector in Cambodia, sparking concern about the future of vital programs. (more…)
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Peace, both for Ukraine and North Korea too?
As President Trump seeks to bring an end to the Ukrainian conflict, at the Asian end of the Eurasian continent some similar but much less known peace-restoring movements are underway. (more…)
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A five-minute scroll
The BBC has bowed to pressure and removed the documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone”. An Israeli soldier shows affection to a Hamas fighter on release. The Jewish Council of Australia shares an excerpt from the interview between Dr Gabor Maté and Emeritus Professor Andrea Durbach about Zionism, trauma and the Palestinian experience. Owen Jones exposes leaflets dropped on Gaza. (more…)
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Israel-India partnership kills off self-determination for Palestine and Kashmir
For more than 75 years Kashmiris and Palestinians have suffered at the hands of colonial powers – genocide, human rights abuses and denial of fundamental rights feature in their shared history. While the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination rarely makes the headlines it deserves to be not only supported but also understood in terms of the Indian Government’s policies and actions that result in death and suffering for Palestinians as well as Kashmiris. (more…)
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Pope Francis and zero tolerance of child sexual abuse
Since his election in 2013, Pope Francis has publicly claimed eight times that the Catholic Church practises “zero tolerance” towards child sexual abuse by clergy. At worst, this is simply untrue, and at best, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, he makes the expression mean whatever he wants it to mean. (more…)
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A five-minute scroll
The US renounces NATO membership for Ukraine. The implications of Trump’s plans for Gaza. Palestinians moved from one refugee camp to another in the West Bank. The late Robert Fisk’s experience with Western media. (more…)
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Army was ordered to kill Israelis on 7 October, defence minister confirms
Israeli troops were ordered to shoot and kill captive Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, Israel’s then defence minister has admitted, the Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley reports. (more…)
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Did North Korean troops disappear in the fog of the Ukraine war?
On 30 January 2025, CNN carried a long, detailed article, accompanied by photographs entitled Suicidal tendencies and ’80s battlefield tactics: How North Korean soldiers are operating in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The article, by a team led by senior journalists Nick Paton Walsh and Rebecca Wright, offered an insight into “the brutal and near-suicidal tactics of North Korean soldiers” fighting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk region. (more…)
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Niger, stolen billions and the uranium-fuelled lights of Paris
This story is about vast quantities of uranium, stealing squillions of dollars, how to screw desperately poor people and what an outstanding job the mainstream media does in keeping us all blithely ignorant of this. (more…)
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Barghouti, Saadat set for release in second phase of deal: reports
Israeli media has extensively discussed the implications of the recent prisoner exchange, emphasising the significant gains achieved by the Palestinian Resistance Movement, Hamas. (more…)
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Gaza’s unbreakable resistance: A historical perspective on the war and its aftermath
The problem with political analysis is that it often lacks historical perspective and is mostly limited to recent events. (more…)
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A five-minute scroll
The West Bank attacks continue since the Gaza ceasefire. In India, poor Muslim’s shops are being bulldozed. In the US, Caroline Kennedy speaks of her concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr leading the HHS. (more…)
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Asian vision of peace a bulwark against “America First”
At the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stood out as a voice of reason and diplomacy, presenting the Asian vision of peace, development, and regional cooperation. (more…)
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Why did they shoot? Pakistan’s unprecedented incident of state-sanctioned violence
Of the two billion voters who set out to vote across 60 countries last year, 33 percent were from the Commonwealth, a 56-member union with 2.7 billion citizens. In 2024, demands for democracy and human rights characterised elections worldwide. But many voters within the Commonwealth faced more dangerous political environments, where peaceful resistance was met with brute force. (more…)
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Help defend the Jewish Council’s anti-racism work against Murdoch press smear campaign
Today marks 237 years since the commencement of the violent dispossession of First Nations peoples from this land. It represents a day of mourning and protest. We are reluctant to email you about anything other than this today, but we feel it is important to keep you informed about the vicious and escalating attacks on the Jewish Council and our Executive Officer, Sarah Schwartz, in response to Sarah’s anti-racism work. (more…)
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Will Trump’s hard line on Beijing ‘blow up’ Canberra’s China policy?
Canberra insiders fear the second coming of Donald Trump could bring pressure on Australia to disown its “stabilisation” policy with Beijing. (more…)
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Humpty Dumpty and the Rules Based International Order
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”Lewis Caroll-Through the Looking Glass.
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Can Trump trump China (or vice versa)?
Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other country has the capacity to resist his predictable antagonism with the same degree of strength and tenacity, and none arouses more hostility and outrage among MAGA Republicans. In short, China is guaranteed to put President Trump in a difficult bind the second time around: he can either choose to cut deals with Beijing and risk being branded an appeaser by the China hawks in his party, or he can punish and further encircle Beijing, risking a potentially violent clash and possibly even nuclear escalation. How he chooses to resolve this quandary will surely prove the most important foreign test of his second term in office. (more…)
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The fragility of South Korean democracy
South Korea is in a dangerous political mess. President Yoon Suk-yeol has been arrested, but his dismissal and imprisonment are far from certain. His toxic ambition to eliminate ‘despicable pro-North Korean and anti-state forces’ has numerous supporters. As have his hostility towards China and his plans to develop nuclear weapons. (more…)
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“Barbarians and their accomplices”- Israel and Western media
The year just past, and we had all better face this, will be remembered as the year the Zionist regime in Israel dragged the Western post-democracies into a state of barbarism we, the inheritors of “the Judeo–Christian tradition,” were supposed to have left behind many centuries ago. I offer this assertion after lengthy reflection. In its suggestion of the historic magnitude of our moment, I do not consider it in the slightest hyperbolic. (more…)
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How the West destroyed Syria – Interview with Former UK Ambassador to Syria
Peter Ford served in the UK Foreign Ministry for many years including being UK Ambassador to Bahrain (1999-2003) and then Syria (2003-2006). Following that, he was representative to the Arab world for the Commissioner General of United Nations Relief and Works Agency. He was interviewed by Rick Sterling on Jan 6, 2025 (more…)
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Entering the ‘Pyrocene’: Devastation in California is the harbinger of the apocalypse
Wildfires in California replicate the massive fire storms in the boreal forest in Canada and Siberia, the lungs of the earth. Our addiction to fossil fuel has ignited an age of fire. (more…)
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The US war on terror strikes home
Americans were shocked by two fatal events in the United States on New Year’s day 2025, and one was quickly called ‘Islamist terrorism’. Yet the US supports Muslim terrorist groups in Syria.