For a country experiencing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence in 1948, the picture of a touring team pampered and fussed over might cause consternation. But the Australian cricket tour to Sri Lanka has only been met by praise from the country’s cricket officials, where logic is inverted, and the gaze of responsibility averted. Not even a shortage of foreign currency, precipitating a dramatic fall in medicines and fuel, along with demonstrations that have left nine dead and 300 injured, prompted second thoughts. A good deal of this crisis was helped by the coming to power of former defence…
Author: Dr. Binoy Kampmark
The platinum jubilee will bore and cause some to yawn. It might certainly agitate the republican spleen in the fourteen countries where Queen Elizabeth II remains a constitutional head of state. But the question remains: How does the institution this figure represents endure, if it should at all? A rash of countries have expressed an interest in severing ties with the monarchy. In November last year, Barbados did so with some pomp, swearing in its first president, Sandra Mason, a former governor general. “Today,” Mason proclaimed, “debate and discourse have become action.” Through 2022, the royals made visits to the…
After having a few lunches with Australia’s then opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, John Shipton felt reason to be confident. Albanese had promised Assange’s father that he would do whatever he could, should he win office, to bring the matter to a close. In December 2019, before a gathering at the Chifley Research Centre, Albanese also referred to Assange. “You don’t prosecute journalists for doing their job.” In December 2021, he also expressed the view that the “ongoing pursuit of Mr Assange” served no evident “purpose” – “enough is enough”. That said, prior to winning office, the Labor opposition was hardly…
Complacency has been the hallmark of NATO expansion. Over time, it has even become a form of derision, notably directed against Russia. As with many historical matters, records ignored can be records revisited, the second time around sometimes nastier than the first. With the Ukraine conflict raging, a few of Russia’s neighbours have reconsidered their position of military non-alignment and neutrality. Last month, both Sweden and Finland submitted membership applications to formally join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This reconsideration must be taken with the heaviest of qualifications. Sweden and Finland, while they have claimed neutrality and non-alignment status, have…
When it comes to the tawdry, hideous business of politicising the right to asylum, and the refugees who arise from it, no country does it better than Australia. A country proud of being a pioneer in women’s rights, the secret ballot, good pay conditions and tatty hardware (the Hills Hoist remains a famous suburban monstrosity) has also been responsible for jettisoning key principles of international law. When it comes to policy Down Under, the United Nations Refugee Convention is barely worth a mention. Politicians are proudly ignorant of it; the courts pay lip service to the idea while preferring rigid…
The devastation wrought on Australia’s Coalition government on May 21 by the electorate had a stunning, cleansing effect. Previously inconceivable scenarios were played out in safe, Liberal-held seats that had, for decades, seen few, if any challenges, from an alternative political force. But the survival of one figure would have proved troubling, not only to the new Labor government, but to many Liberal colleagues lamenting the ruins. The pugilists and head knockers, however, would have felt some relief. Amidst the bloodletting, hope. As he has done before, Peter Dutton, former Queensland policeman and failed university student, high priest of division…
Death, remarked Gore Vidal about Truman Capote’s passing, was a good career move. The novelist Saki also considered the good qualities of shuffling off the mortal coil. “Waldo,” he writes in “The Feast of Nemesis”, “is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.” But what of those instances when death is foiled, the Grim Reaper cheated? Former US President George W. Bush has had the good fortune of facing such a foiling, though the claims remain fresh. On May 24, Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, an Iraqi national living in Columbus, Ohio, was arrested and charged with…
Societies generate their own economies of tolerable cruelties and injustices. Poverty, for instance, will be allowed, as long a sufficient number of individuals are profiting. To an extent, crime and violence can be allowed to thrive. In the United States, the economy of tolerable massacres, executed by military grade weapons, is considerable and seemingly resilient. Its participants all partake in administering it, playing their bleak roles under the sacred banner of constitutional freedom and psychobabble. Just as prison reform tends to keep pace with the expansion of the bloated system, the gun argument in the US keeps pace, barely, with…
Could it have been just another case of bumbling poor judgment, the mind softened as the mouth opened? A question was put to US President Joe Biden, visiting Tokyo and standing beside Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida: “You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” The answer: “Yes. That’s a commitment we made.” Biden was again flatly committing the US to a conflict over Taiwan should China deploy its forces. He has done so on two previous occasions, showing…
Rarely in Australian history has a governing party suffered such loss in the face of an opponent unable to claim complete victory. It said much about the disillusionment, and plain disgust, from that nebulous centre of the country’s politics. That centre roared on May 21, consuming sitting government members and inflicting a bloody reckoning. That reckoning was made in traditional inner-city seats that have never known anyone other than conservative members. It was part of a “teal” electoral tsunami, comprising candidates who would not necessarily wish to vote for Labor or the Greens, but who had found the Liberal-National government…
All elections are filled with the half-truths, mistruths and full-fledged lies. Victory is rarely bought on a platform of complete honesty. But the road to the current Australian federal election has been potholed by more deception than most. This is bound to happen when policy platforms are weak and rickety, leaving the opponents large scope to undermine each other. The personal prevails over the substantive; ideas play little to no role. Much of the influence of misinformation and its more aggressive twin, disinformation, is given a legendary status ahead of time. Commentaries abound about how to spot “fake news” from…
It’s the last week of an election between the uninspiring and the unspeakable. Australia’s conservative incumbents – the unspeakable ones – are even desperate enough to concede to a lack of popularity. Dislike us, but for heaven’s sake, vote us in. The times are wretched, the cost of living is rising, and we are going to look after you in the spiral. The opposition, in contrast, is being stingy on detail and sparing on scope. Memories of 2019 continue to traumatise the Australian Labor Party. Scouring the election platforms, statements, and town hall debates, is a glaring absence of one…
The occasions when an activist, writer or commentator triumph over defamation lawsuits launched by a thin-skinned politician are rare in Australia. When it comes to matters regarding the law of reputation, Australia remains a place where parliamentarians, as a species, thrive in the knowledge they can use favourable provisions to protect their hurt feelings and soiled reputations. The country, in also lacking a bill of rights protecting free speech and the press, has further emboldened politicians. At best, the Australian High Court has only left an anaemic implied right “to protect freedom of communication on political subjects”, which should really…
Never underestimate the potency, and deceptive malice, of the British political mind. In responding to the threat posed by Imperial Germany during the First World War, the British propaganda campaign made much of the atrocity tale, the nun raping German and the baby bayoneting Hun. The effectiveness of the campaign was so impressive it sowed doubt amongst a generation about the reliability of war crimes accounts. In its efforts to try to win US support for its cause against Hitler in World War II, the train of British propaganda again operated with a concerted effect, demonising isolationists and denigrating supporters…
It has dominated news cycles, debates and policies since 2020, but COVID-19 continues to exercise the interest of number crunchers and talliers. While the ghoulish daily press announcements about infections and deaths across many a country have diminished and, in some cases, disappeared altogether, publications abound about how many were taken in the pandemic. The World Health Organization, ever that herald of dark news, has offered a revised assessment across of the SARS-CoV-2 death toll associated either directly or indirectly with the pandemic. Between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021, the global health body suggests that the mortality figure…
Weapons, lacking sentience and moral orientation, are there to be used by all. Once out, these creations can never be rebottled. Effective spyware, that most malicious of surveillance tools, is one such creation, available to entities and governments of all stripes. The targets are standard: dissidents, journalists, legislators, activists, even the odd jurist. Pegasus spyware, the fiendishly effective creation of Israel’s unscrupulous NSO Group, has become something of a regular in the news cycles on cyber security. Created in 2010, it was the brainchild of three engineers who had cut their teeth working for the cyber outfit Unit 8200 of…
Always looking, and sounding, a touch unhinged, the beetroot-coloured Barnaby Joyce, leader of the Australian Nationals and, for a time now, deputy prime minister, has made a splash. With the federal elections being held on May 18, he does not have much time to commit mischief and befuddle the political vultures. But the National Press Club gave him a chance to make some trouble, a task accomplished with some success. At stages during his address, it seemed that trouble had followed Joyce. There was sniffing and sniffling. Then a nosebleed, brief intermission and tissues. The Twitterati thought this ominous; political…
As with previous breakaway religions thrilled by the prospect of the new, breakaway sporting competitions offer a chance to reassess doctrine, administration, and philosophies. It has happened in football, cricket, and rugby, often controversially, and almost always indignantly. The attempt to create a rival competition is now taking place in a sport famously described as the spoiling of a good walk. The LIV Golf Invitational Series is set to run from June to October and promises to be an extravaganza played on three continents. The chief executive of the enterprise is the man of the eternal tan, golfer turned businessman…
Children should not pay for the sins of their parents. But in some cases, a healthy suspicion of the offspring is needed, notably when it comes to profiting off ill-gotten gains. It is certainly needed in the case of Filipino politician and presidential candidate Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, who stands to win on May 9. Bongbong’s father was the notorious strongman Ferdinand Marcos, his mother, the avaricious, shoe-crazed Imelda. Elected president in 1965, Ferdinand Marcos indulged in murder, torture and looting. He thrived on the terrain of violent, corrupt oligarchic politics, characterised by a telling remark from the dejected Sergio…
The US Supreme Court Chief Justice was furious. For the first time in history, the raw judicial process of one of the most powerful, and opaque arms of government, had been exposed via media – at least in preliminary form. It resembled, in no negligible way, the publication by WikiLeaks of various drafts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the forerunner to the current Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. The subject matter was positively incendiary: the potential overturning and judicial eradication of Roe v Wade, a 1973 decision which has generated a literature both for and against its merits of…
For years, the Australian wind farm has been reviled as ugly, noisy and unendearing by a certain number of prominent figures. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott pathologized them, calling wind turbines the “dark satanic mills of the modern era”, being not merely aesthetically problematic but damaging to health. The latter view has been rejected by the National Health and Medical Research Council, which found “no consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects in humans” though it accepted at the time “that further high quality research on the possible health effects of wind farms is required.” Literature examining the…
He has been seen, not always accurately, as the more moderate in an otherwise conservative Liberal Party, which has governed Australia since 2013 in an at times troubled alliance with the Nationals. He has served as party deputy to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and proudly promotes his role as the country’s treasurer during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Josh Frydenberg is nervous. There is also reason to suggest that he might even be panicking. The electorate he represents – that of Kooyong – is not quite so warm towards the sitting member as it has been in the past. The sitting…
The hysteria in Canberra and Washington over the Sino-Solomon Islands security pact has shown, again, how irrelevant the individual affairs of Pacific Island states are in the chess game of geopolitics. The one thing conspicuously missing has been the issue of climate change, near and dear to those whose lands are gradually being inundated by rising sea levels. In a desperate attempt to understand why Honiara courted Chinese interest in defiance of Australian wishes, opposition Labor figures pointed the finger at climate change. Australia’s sniffly approach to such a vital issue was key in pushing the country into the arms…
The Queensland Nationals Senator Matt Canavan is a jewel of parochialism, a darling of nutty consternation. As a member of a party historically hostile to cutting fossil fuel emissions, he has been, for the most part, at home. But some of his colleagues have had environmental conversions, hammering out an understanding with their Liberal counterparts about a net zero emissions target by 2050. This understanding was only reached after much hollering and fuss prior to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s visit to the climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021. But Canavan was having none of it and was delighted by…
April 25, 2022 was one of the less edifying days in the annals of commemorating the fallen. The day is regarded as special for Australians and New Zealanders for being a solemn occasion, a moment to consider those who gave their lives up for King (or Queen) and country. In recent decades, militarists and organisers of the occasion have found greater merit in focusing on that nebulous notion of “mateship” – friendship and collective spirit under fire. This serves as a suitable distraction from those malignant ignoramuses who put them there in the first place. Barely credible and competent commanders…
Secular religions are hard to battle in terms of their misplaced assumptions. In some ways, they are even harder to fight than those based on mythical gods and superstitious foundations, many drawn from desert religions and sandy practice. ANZAC, the name of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps, hardly sounds promising as the basis of a religion. But since the needless, bungled operation in the Dardanelles that led to the slaughter of Australian and New Zealand Troops in April 1915, along with Turkish, British and French soldiers, the acronym has become scented, meaningful and powerful. At first, it all seems…
Visits to Honiara, part plea, part threat. Delegations equipped with a note of harassment. That was the initial Australian effort to convince the Solomon Islands that the decision to make a security pact with Beijing was simply not appropriate in the lotus land of Washington’s Pacific empire. Despite an election campaign warming up, Senator Zed Seselja found time to tell Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that Australia remained dedicated to supporting the security needs of the Solomon Islands, and would do so “swiftly, transparently and with full respect for its sovereignty”. The Pacific country remained a friend, part of the “Pacific…
In terms of labyrinthine callousness and indifference to justice, the treatment of lawyer Bernard Collaery by the Australian government must be slotted alongside that of another noted Australian currently being held in the maximum-security facility of Belmarsh, London. While Collaery has not suffered the same deprivations of liberty as publisher extraordinaire Julian Assange, both share the target status accorded them by the national security state. They are both to be punished for dealing with, and revealing, national security information compromising to the state in question. Assange’s case is notorious and grotesque enough: held in Belmarsh for three years without charge;…
It was a dastardly formality. On April 20, at a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, Julian Assange, beamed in via video link from Belmarsh Prison, his carceral home for three years, is to be extradited to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 based on the US Espionage Act of 1917. The final arbiter will be the UK Secretary of the Home Office, the security hardened Priti Patel who is unlikely to buck the trend. She has shown an all too unhealthy enthusiasm for an expansion of the Official Secrets Act which would target leakers, recipients of leaked material,…
This month, the government of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined an ignominious collective in announcing a refugee deal with Rwanda, seedily entitled the UK-Rwanda Migration Partnership. The fact that such terms are used – a partnership or deal connotes contract and transaction – suggests how inhumane policies towards those seeking sanctuary and a better life have become. In no small measure, the agreement between London and Kigali emulates the “Pacific Solution”, a venal response formulated by the Australian government to deter asylum seekers arriving by boat and create a two-tiered approach to assessing asylum claims. The centrepiece of the…
