September 11. Melbourne. The scene: the area between Spencer Street Bridge and the Batman Park-Spencer Street tram stop. Heavily armed police, with glinting face coverings and shields, had seized and blocked the bridge over the course of the morning, preventing all traffic from transiting through it. Behind them stood second-tier personnel, lightly armed. Then, barricades, followed by horse-mounted police. Holding up the rear: two fire trucks. In the skies, unmanned drones hovered like black, stationary ravens of menace. But these were not deemed sufficient by Victoria Police. Helicopters kept them company. Surveillance cameras also stood prominently to the north end…
Author: Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Invention is the mother of necessity, and Russia’s response to largely Western-imposed economic and trade sanctions has shown the extent of that inventiveness. While enduring attritive punishment in its Ukraine campaign, the war remains sustainable for the Kremlin. The domestic economy has not collapsed, despite apocalyptic predictions to the contrary. In terms of exports, Russia is carving out new trade routes, a move that has been welcomed by notable powers in the Global South. One of the chief prosecutors of sanctions against Moscow was initially confident about the damage that would be caused by economic bludgeoning. US President Joe Biden,…
Power should only ever be vested carefully, and certainly not in the hands of mining magnate Gina Rinehart, a creature so comically absurd as to warrant immediate dismissal in any respectable commentary. But Australia’s richest human being demands to be noticed, given the insensible influence she continues to exert in press and policy circles. Rants of smelly suggestion become pearls of perfumed wisdom, often occasioned by large amounts of largesse she disgorges on her sycophantic following. Of late, she has been busy in her narcissistic daftness. At the National Bush Summit held last month, she proved particularly unstoppable. While advertised…
The government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late. While galloping to victory in the July elections, leaving the British Labour Party a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper could be found among the ranks on his attitudes regarding Israel’s war in Gaza. Mish Rahman, a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, summed up the mood by professing embarrassment “about my affiliation with Labour” in light of the party’s response to the killings in Gaza. “It was hard even to tell…
Between September 11 and 13, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will play host to a bazaar of networking and deal-making as part of a show that really ought to be called The Merchants of Death Down Under. And the times for these merchants are positively bullish, given that total global military expenditure exceeded US$2.4 trillion in 2023, an increase of 6.8% in real terms from 2022. The introductory note to the event is, typically in the lingo of the industry, mildly innocuous, even dull. “The Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition is the premier platform for interaction…
Despite much grandstanding in the Biden administration about halting specific arms shipments to Israel over feigned concerns about how they might be used (inflicting death is the expected form), US military supplies have been restored with barely a murmur. In a report in Haaretz on August 29, a rush of weapons to Israel has been noticed since the end of July. August proved to be the second busiest month for US arms deliveries to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase since the October 2023 attacks by Hamas. This has taken place alongside an increased concentration of US forces in the region since Israel’s…
The tiltrotor V-22 Osprey has a plagued, bloodied history. But blighted as it is, the aircraft remains a cherished feature of the US Marines, regarded as vital in supporting combat assault, logistics and transport, not to mention playing a role in search-and-rescue missions and delivering equipment for the Navy carrier air wings. In March this year, V-22 flights were again permitted after a three-month pause following a fatal crash on November 29 of an Air Force CV-22B off Yakushima Island, Japan and the grounding of all V-22S aircraft in early December. Col. Brian Taylor, program manager for the V-22 Joint…
On August 12, 1949, the four Geneva Conventions were adopted, laying the basis of a normative standard in international humanitarian law. As Balthasar Staehelin, personal envoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president to China, stated at an anniversary event at the Swiss Embassy in Beijing, “In the past 75 years, the four Geneva Conventions have been fundamental in protecting persons affected by armed conflict, and international humanitarian law remains as relevant today for contemporary armed conflicts, as sit was 75 years ago.” The very first Geneva Convention, inspired by the activism of Swiss businessman Henry Dunant…
It began as a devastating, confined storm off the coast of Sicily, striking the luxury yacht Bayesian in the form of a devastating water column resembling a tornado. Probability was inherent in the name (Thomas Bayes, mathematician and nonconformist theologian of the 18th century, had been the first to use probability inductively) and improbability the nature of the accident. It also led to rich speculation about the fate of those on the doomed vessel. While most on the sunk yacht were saved (the eventual number totalled fifteen), a number of prominent figures initially went missing before being found. They included…
The problem with satellite states and subject powers is that their representatives are rarely to be trusted, especially on matters regarding security. Their idea of safety and assurance is tied up in the interests of some other power, one who supposedly guarantees it through a promised force of arms come the place and come the time. The guarantee is often a sham one, variable in accordance with the self-interest of the guardian. In the case of the United States, the island continent of Australia is only useful as an annexure of Washington’s goal: maintaining less the illusion of a Pax…
In 2007, the writer Tal Nitsán isolated instances where Israeli male combatants systematically used sexual violence against Palestinian women to the war of 1948. In essentially marking off such conduct from more contemporary practices, she relied on media accounts, archival sources, the reports of human rights organisations and the testimony of 25 Israeli reserve male soldiers. Seven years later, the American feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, following a lecture in Israel in 2014, had this to say: “I spoke to Palestinian women, and they testified that there are no attacks of rape by Israeli soldiers. And that, again, is an…
The occasion sparked much in the way of visionary language and speculative musings. This month, one of the world’s most conspicuous and dominant behemoths of Silicon Valley was found to be operating an illegal monopoly in internet search and advertising markets, thereby breaching the Sherman Act which renders monopolisation, attempted monopolisation and conspiracy to monopolise unlawful. In a Memorandum Opinion ruling running into 286 pages, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia found that Google acted as a monopoly in its “general search” and “general search text advertising” markets and had breached…
Be happy. Think of your wellness. Across organisations, private and public entities, government bodies and social clubs, the cult of contrived happiness abounds with ritualistic, clotting repetition. In such cases, the forced grin, the pressured smile, the affected giggle, have become part of a project of puppeteering, manipulation and manufacture. Critics of such approaches are ostracised, treated as leprous reminders of reality. The cult of orchestrated happiness is intended to veil, covering the moonscape scars and lingering mutilations of life. The forced smile, as it has so often been, repels reality. It is also intended as a transferral of responsibility…
Ekecheiria, also known as the “Olympic Truce,” is a quaint notion dating to Ancient Greece, when three kings prone to warring against each other – Iphitos of Elis, Cleosthenes of Pisa and Lycurgus of Sparta – concluded a treaty permitting the safe passage of all athletes and spectators from the relevant city-states for the duration of the Olympic Games. The truce had a certain logic to it, given that many of those granted safe passage would have been serving soldiers or soldiers in waiting. In 1894, the founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Pierre de Coubertin, fantasised about the…
The philosophy of the dunce, and the politics of the demagogue, often keep company. And Peter Dutton has both of these unenviable traits in spades. The Australian opposition leader, smelling weakness in his opponent, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has again gravitated to something he is most comfortable worth: terrifying the kaka out of the Australian public. The method of doing so is always unimaginatively dull and almost always inaccurate. Select your marginal group in society. Elevate it as a threat, filling it with a gaseous, nasty fantasy. Condemn said group for various fictional and misattributed defects. When all is done,…
The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning. A blood-filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel. That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religious texts to be on their side. Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace. In his July 24 address to the US Congress,…
From his own redoubt of critical inquiry, the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has made fighting the imperialising leprosy of the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the United States a matter of solemn duty. In March 15, 2023, he excoriated a Canberra press gallery seduced and tantalised by the prospect of nuclear-powered submarines, calling the Albanese government’s complicit arrangements with the US and UK to acquire such a capability “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War…
There is much to loathe about the AUKUS security agreement between Canberra, Washington and London. Of the three conspirators against stability in the Indo and Asia Pacific, one stands out as the shouldering platform, the sustaining force, the political and military stuffing. But Australian propagandists and proselytisers of the US credo of power prefer to see it differently, repeatedly telling the good citizens down under that they are onto something truly special in being a military extension, the gargantuan annexe of another’s interests. Give them nuclear powered submarines, let them feel special, and a false sense of security will follow.…
While the Kamala Harris coronation for Democratic presidential nomination continues in its safely shielded path, her sacred status among party members growing with each day, the decision to select Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as Vice Presidential running mate had all the hallmarks of unbearable caution. Caution for being secure from any ambition on his part (Presidential contenders tend to pick running mates unlikely to go off the reservation or eclipse them during their time in office.) Caution, as well, from other factions in the party that may make things interesting at the Chicago Democratic Convention slated to start on…
Bureaucrats tasked with protecting national security are often inclined to encourage insecurity. It’s all part of the job prescription. The imperative is understandable if chillingly amoral: increased budgets are demanded to counter threats, however spectral; justifications for existing budgets needlessly bloated are always sought. In the Cold War, an old favourite was the teeth-chattering concern that the other side might just steal a march on the other in terms of nuclear missiles. Legendary “missile gaps” were confected to frighten lawmakers. In any logical sense, such distinctions were always superfluous, even idiotic: one can only destroy the planet once, and claiming…
The fact that the Democrats currently occupy the White House has done little to ruffle the equation of blood and gore in the Middle East, notably regarding the fate of the Palestinians. The ongoing Israeli campaign of stunning ruthlessness against the Gaza unfortunates is certainly a worry for some Democratic strategists, if only because certain voters are finally expressing an opinion on the subject. Israel, right or wrong, is no longer an entirely plausible proposition. In swing states such as Michigan, the cranky and disgruntled on the issue, certain given the potential role of Arab American voters, is not negligible. …
How aristocratic it all sounds, if only in a playground, papier-mâché sense. The language of the estates, the “crowning,” the “coronation,” words repurposed for republican politics, is much in evidence with Kamala Harris, who is all but guaranteed formal nomination at the Democratic Party Convention as US presidential candidate. She has now secured the necessary votes from Democratic delegates, without running a single primary, let alone engaging any rival contenders in her party. She has also garnered support despite her abysmal efforts to secure presidential nomination in 2020. Her tenure as Vice President has been far from glorious, a point…
The sordid story on the CIA-backed operation against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange during his time cramped in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy continues to froth and thicken. US officials have persisted in their reticent attitude, refusing to cooperate with Spain’s national high court, the Audiencia Nacional, regarding its investigation into the Agency’s espionage operations against the publisher, spearheaded by the Spanish security firm Undercover (UC) Global. Since 2019, requests for assistance regarding the matter, including querying public statements by former CIA director Mike Pompeo and former head of counterintelligence, William Evanina, along with information mustered by the relevant Senate Intelligence Committee,…
It is a point verging on the trite: an arms corporation suspected of engaging in corrupt practices, spoiling dignitaries and officials and undermining the body politic. But one such corporation is France’s Thales defence group, which saw raids on their offices in France, the Netherlands and Spain on June 26 and June 28. The prosecutors are keen to pursue charges ranging from standard corruption and attempts to influence foreign officials to instances of criminal association and money laundering. It is clear in this that even the French Republic, despite having a narcotics grade addiction to the international arms industry, thought…
Another entertainingly corrupt sporting event has just started in Paris, opening with a barge packed ceremony on the Seine. Thousands of simpering commentators, paid-up media gawkers and bored influencers have been ready with their computers, phones and confected dreams. As always, the Olympics throws up the question about how far the host city has managed to come through on the issue of facilities, infrastructure and organisation. Few would have doubted that Paris has the facilities, but there was always going to be grumbling about the choice of opening, mode of execution and most importantly, the cost both financial and social.…
Rwanda has become a curiosity as an African state. The mere mention of its name tugs the memory: colonial tragedy, ethnic violence, genocide. Then comes a stable rule, for the most part. It is assured, iron-fisted, and corporate. Since being elected in April 2000, the country has known one leader. Paul Kagame has kept matters running as smoothly much like a well-oiled corporate machine, aided by his Rwandan Patriotic Front. At times, he treats his country as such. His model of economic inspiration is no less the city state of authoritarian Singapore, while such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation…
Having been endorsed as the only viable candidate to battle Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential elections, Joe Biden was subsequently browbeaten and harried into leaving the way open for another candidate. It involved some movement of political furniture, but nothing more. The process resulting in Biden’s decision had increasingly bulked over the last two months. With each day, another Democratic figure would come out to suggest he pass the torch to another appropriate appointee of the establishment. Whispers became roars. Former President Barack Obama, whose deputy Biden had been, also joined the camp of dissent. Former House Speaker Nancy…
The International Court of Justice has again deliberated over the thorn-bloodied subject of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Its latest advisory opinion, sought by the UN General Assembly early last year, was unremarkably conventional though nonetheless affirming: a finding that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with “the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.” Given the avalanche of international opinions, deliberation and understanding on the status of the settlements that arose after 1967, the ICJ was merely revising homework and reiterating home truths of international law. As Eitay Mack,…
Bring out the bon bons, the bubbles, and the praise-filled memoranda for that old alliance. At the three-quarter century mark of its existence, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is showing itself to be a greater nuisance than ever, gossiping, meddling, and dreaming of greater acts of mischief under the umbrella of manufactured insecurity. It is also being coquettish to certain countries (Ukraine, figures prominently in the wooing stakes) making promises it can never make good. Its defenders, as is to be expected, see something very different before the mirror. They call the alliance a call for freedom, its enduring importance…
Politics and facts are not necessarily good dinner companions. Both often stray from the same table, taking up with other, more suitable company. The Australian opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has never been discomforted by facts, preferring the chimera-like qualities demagoguery offers. His vision for Australia is admirably simple and simplistic. In foreign policy, he supports US interventions in any theatre of the globe without question. Ditto such allies as Israel. To the distant north, the evil Yellow Horde is abominated. Domestically, matters are similarly one-dimensional. Irregular boat arrivals are to be repelled with necessary cruelty. And then there is a…
