This week has not been a good one for the Australian legal system. For those who feel that an open justice process requires abuses of power to be exposed and held to account, it was particularly awful. It began with the Q&A program on the national broadcaster, the ABC, which supposedly gives an airing to the vox populi. The dominant theme of the conversation between the panellists was that of secrecy and the prosecution (read persecution) of lawyer Bernard Collaery and his client, a former intelligence officer known as Witness K. Witness K, using authorised channels, revealed his dissatisfaction of…
Author: Dr. Binoy Kampmark
When it comes to the touchy, violent matter of Kosovar affairs, history keeps company with the devils of nationalism and vengeance. Serbia remains scornful of the aspirations of the territory, whose legitimacy it does not recognise; Kosovo remains spiteful of Serbia’s continued interest, and attempts, at any given turn, to frustrate their neighbour’s effort at European integration. Blood tinged memories between the two sides reign with relentless fury. On the issue of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the dreaded term of genocide, the lion’s share of the blame was initially attributed to Serbian forces. Slobodan Milošević was seen as…
Accountability has always been a problem in the nuclear industry, despite praises to the contrary. Constantly keeping its muddled head above water with government handouts to remain competitive; ostensibly keeping a hand in the energy sector despite a sketchy record, there has always been a sense that “going nuclear” is a term that simply will not die. Even during the novel coronavirus crisis, those within the nuclear industry stressed their plumed credentials. The World Nuclear Association rosily describes the role of nuclear technologies in their use “to detect and fight the virus”. The body is insistent that nuclear reactors are…
There a few more spiteful things in political life than a security establishment attempting to punish a leaker or whistleblower for having exposed an impropriety. Such a tendency has no ideological stripe or colouring: it is common to all political systems. In Australia, it has become clear that secret trials are all the rage. The disclosure of their existence tends to be accidental, and trials held partly in secret are also matters considered necessary by the current attorney general. Last year, the case of Witness J made its way into the press like a threatening menace, a reminder that Australian…
It has long been said that countries in Southeast Asia take a dim view of the fourth estate. Various legal measures have been deployed against those irritable scribblers over the years: old, colonial-era security legislation; defamation suits; traditional forms of lengthy detention without charge. Such states have mastered the supreme sensibility of their colonial forebears: Maintain the appearance of propriety; inflict the harm under the cover of law. The Philippines has become something of an exemplar in this regard. According to Joshua Kurlantzick of the Council on Foreign Relations, the country is particularly dangerous, boasting “one of the highest numbers of…
When the superseding indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia against Julian Assange on May 23, 2019, there was one glaring omission. It was an achievement, it might even be said the achievement, that gave the WikiLeaks publisher and the organisation justified notoriety. Collateral Murder, as the leaked video came to be called, featured the murderous exploits by the crew of Crazy Horse 1-8, an Apache helicopter that slew 11 people on July 12, 2007, in east Baghdad. Among the dead were Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and a driver and fixer, Saeed Chmagh. As WikiLeaks announced…
Putting your destiny into the hands of a drug company is much like seeking reassurances from an opportunistic pimp. The returns are bound to mixed, dressed up in deceptive language. The promises, however, are always remarkable. The back-breaking pace in finding a vaccine for COVID-19 is something that is bringing out the pimps of industry, notably those in Big Pharma. One such candidate is the British-based AstraZeneca, which has busied itself with striking vaccine-agreements with alliances and countries across the globe. Last month, a bombastic press release from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was responding…
It’s all getting nasty. The urge to remove statues in hurried indignation; the lust to censor programmes now deemed offensive; the erasure of history, which, any sensible sort should know, is often a panoramic account of crimes and slaughter worth knowing rather than banning and hiding. This is surely not what the late George Floyd intended, but it hardly matters anymore. His death has propelled a movement that has capitalised on a publicised event of police brutality in the United States to re-order matters and sort out grievance across the board. Comedies have not been spared the punishing treatment. It…
Entering a university should be, to some degree, unsafe. Away from the gazing eyes of parents, institutional structures for the child, the entrant faces, or at least should face, the prospect of something truly daunting: To think, to entertain discomfort, to see old ideas and presumptions die gloriously in the inferno of learning. None of this is easy, but all of it should be encouraged. The modern university is, however, an infantilizing coddle of an experience, a managerial pit-heap, and a spreadsheet-directed mire of gobbledygook. It seeks cash. It has “alignments” with industries. It embraces “Five Year Plans” which would…
It’s the sort of thing that ruffled the image of a composed and tranquil existence. In some countries, doing away with political leaders is a periodic affair, deemed necessary to clean the stables. But in Sweden, change is barely discernible, stability nigh guaranteed and institutions revered. “It’s in the tradition of Sweden to put itself forth as a moral role model,” observes author Elisabeth Åsbrink. Then came that thorny, troubling issue of Olof Palme. Palme minted a reputation berating the bullying actions of great powers and forging an internationalist platform for progressive politics. He took issue with the crushing of the 1968…
Be wary of what you protest about. The modern moral constabulary are out, and they are assisted by their Silicon Valley friends in the Social Media Club. Should you dare take a stand on anything, especially in a dramatic way, you will be found out and eviscerated on the altar of hypocrisy. The latest round of huffing and strutting on moral causes came about with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. As this spirit of a man was being appropriated, packaged and adjusted for protest, anger and disgust, Gore Vidal’s words on Carl Sandburg’s treatment of Abraham Lincoln proved more poignant…
“I’ve been saying for the last several years … American policing is at a crossroads.” Mike Cutone, former Massachusetts officer, June 5, 2020 If you can envisage the commencement of a police force as a band of auxiliaries to keep slaves in check, capture escapees and sow much terror, it becomes that much clearer. Such men were not stewards to keep the people safe; they were there to protect a propertied status quo at the end of the whip and baton. In the southern US states, the modern police organisation that found form was the “Slave Patrol”, vested with powers to…
The “lost child” endures as motif and theme, the stalking shadow of much literature, the background to a society’s anxiety. The child often deemed innocent, becomes the ink blot of loss in such disappearance. In Australia, it was captured by Peter Pierce’s The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety (1999). In wide spaces, innocence has much room to go wrong in, to vanish and encourage judgment. Madeleine McCann was never merely a lost child who disappeared in the Algarve from her family’s holiday apartment on May 3, 2007. She remains a fixation of the British media stable, and, it should be…
George Floyd’s suffocating death at the end of a policeman’s knee in Minneapolis on May 25 has become an international protest movement. What endures beyond this is still to be written, and, in a more vital sense, acted upon. Black Lives Matter has roared back into public consciousness, finding form in protests in cities across the globe. In societies marked by colour, race and an assortment of complexes, the Floyd protests have also struck a note. That note, however, can be a problematic one. In the case of India, Bollywood has weighed in with twittering on the subject of Floyd’s…
The global student populace has become so passive it is a surprise to hear any stir of protest that issues forth from a campus. Generation Z tends to seek passes and certificates rather than knowledge and the examined life. So it came as something of a surprise to hear that one Drew Pavlou of the University of Queensland had actually stirred any interest whatsoever. That interest, one that has found itself plastered across international news outlets, was sparked by his concerted stance taken against the Chinese Communist Party, who, Drew argues, has emboldened itself on Australian university campuses and corrupted them. In Foreign…
Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam seemed to relish it before the cameras this week. The United States was enduring extensive shudders of internal instability in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Dubious proposals to deploy the military were on the books. This was a superb stage show. The Chinese move to crush or, to be more accurate, bring forward, the ultimate incorporation of Hong Kong into the PRC structure, had received some breathing space. It all had to do with a little matter called sovereignty. For years, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have seen…
It is the anxiety-inducing nightmare for the studious: A dream where you find yourself in an exam hall, which might, on ordinary days, be a gym or some other facility. It is repurposed for that most cruel of blood sports: sorting out the learned from the dolts, the prize winners from the dunces. The stern invigilators gaze as you like vermin to liquidate. You are seated on a firm stool, rarely comfortable. You have been checked to see if you have any cheating accoutrements. Permitted items: scrap paper, a pencil, an eraser. Before you, apart from the often blue-rinsed wonders…
It would be too simple to regard the latest space venture, funded by Elon Musk, as entirely a matter of vast ego and deeply-pocked adventurism. But it would be close. The successful delivery of astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken of NASA as part of the joint mission with SpaceX to the International Space Station by the Dragon capsule proved intoxicating for followers and devotees. Behnken was himself keen on the idea of travelling into the heavens away from a messy, trouble-torn planet. “This is still something that we are going to be successful at, and we’re going to do it in…
Mobs are unruly, headless things. The message is the action. The platform is often violence. But what is happening across the United States cannot simply be labelled as a looting-leads-to-shooting episode. It ranks as another chapter of enraged despair and untidy opportunism. It all began with a savage act in South Minneapolis, a killing grotesque for its indifference. The hunter in this gruesome Monday spectacle of cruelty proved to be a policeman from the 3rd Police Precinct, Derek Chauvin; the quarry, a black man by the name of George Floyd. As Floyd was held down by the knee for almost…
Leaving crises to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s management skills will never disappoint those who favour chaos and the attractions of vague direction. The double standard is to be preferred to the equal one. With the United Kingdom sundered by death and the effects of COVID-19 (the PM himself having had his battle with the virus), the population was hoping for some clarity. When, for instance, would the lockdown measures be eased? On May 10, Johnson delivered an address from his comically staged desk which had the appearance of being trapped in the door during a bungled removal effort. “We have been through…
Hell has, in its raging fires, ringside seats for those who like their spreadsheets. The seating, already peopled by those from human resources, white-collar criminals and accountants, becomes toastier for those who make errors with those spreadsheets. Even in their self-celebrated expertise, blunders will happen. Few errors are as magisterial as that of the Australian government’s on JobKeeper. In funding its job preservation scheme to cushion the shock of losses occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic, a miscalculation on the number of employees who should have been covered was revealed. The initial coverage was ambitious: 6.5 million employees. Treasury and the Australian…
It has been a withering time for the airlines, whose unused planes moulder in a gruelling waiting game of survival. The receivers are smacking their lips; the administration has become a reality for many. Governments across the globe dispute what measures to ease in response to the coronavirus pandemic; travel has been largely suspended, and the hope is that some viable form will resume at some point soon. For the low-cost airline EasyJet, a further problem has presented itself. Earlier in the week, the company revealed that it had “been the target of an attack from a highly sophisticated source”, resulting in…
The Australian press and a chorus of the country’s politicians painted a misguided, blotched picture: the Scott Morrison government had achieved its goal of convincing members of the World Health Assembly that an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 was a move worth taking. “More than 100 countries, including Australia,” observed the ABC, “had already co-signed the motion for the probe into the global outbreak.” The same network also noted that Australia “was the first nation after the US to call for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19.” Prior to Tuesday’s vote at the World Health Assembly, government MPs…
The “gate” suffix has been wearing thin since the break-in scandal that gave it its birth. Since Watergate, virtually anything dubious and suggestive, and much more besides, is suffixed. Which brings us to the issue of President Donald Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama. Finding himself in hot water (did he ever leave it?) Trump has been sowing the seeds of “Obamagate”, a fairly grotesque measure that serves to fill the shallow spaces of the social media verse. Obamagate is a show without much of a script, supported by the faintest of threads. Supposedly, they revolve around the merrily murky former national…
Australia matters little when it comes to international muscle. It is the retainer and pretender of power, a middle-distance runner who runs out of puff on the final stride. The big boys and girls look, agog. Why did you even bother? In the recent international relations shouting match (for Australia, shouting; for China, sotto voce with a touch of menace), you are left with a remarkable impression that Australia has the sort of heft to terrify opponents. It never has and never will, except when it comes to victimising refugees and bullying neighbouring states in the Pacific, whom they supposedly…
When he announced at the end of April that he would be retiring, thereby vacating the federal seat of Eden-Monaro, the Australian Labor Party’s Mike Kelly welled up. He noted persistent “health issues” from his time in the service of the Australian Defence Forces, including a worsening osteoarthritic situation and deteriorating renal condition. He had endured some ten invasive surgeries in recent times. He spoke, implausibly, of having made no enemies in politics. He had “stared into the face of true evil, whether it was genocidal warlords in Somalia, or murdering militia in Timor, or war criminals in Bosnia, or staring into…
When it comes to the politics of medicine and disease, the United States has always attempted to steal the limelight, while adding the now faded colouring of universal human welfare. In 1965, Washington pledged financial and technical support to the international effort to eradicate smallpox, though the initiative had initially been spurred by the Soviet Union at the behest of virologist and deputy health minister Victor Zhdanov in 1958. At that point in time, the World Health Organisation was not so much a punch bag as a vehicle for US foreign policy, to be cultivated rather than rebuked. As with the eradication…
When the novel coronavirus started to get stroppy and make its now global impression, one theme seemed to be common. Facemasks were, at least initially, a conceit, a sort of fashion or extra-medical accessory. To use it was a mark of vanity. Rushing out to stock up on such masks was also selfish: you were taking them from the medical profession who needed it more than you. From vanity and selfishness, masking up has become a necessity. Whole countries have been given the spanking of a lockdown, with consequential economic contractions. With the details of opening up and easing restrictions…
The Me Too movement was meant to be more than a howl or rage with a trending hashtag. It was a surge that threatened to pulverise all before it, arming accusers with weapons of merit and disarming predators who had, for decades, acted in beastly fashion from positions of power. It did net some mighty scalps and also, at stages, ruined careers without trial and tested evidence. But paradoxically, it failed to make an impression on the Trump phenomenon, where genital grabbing and locker room humour exhibited in the Access Hollywood tape made little impression upon his candidacy for the White House.…
Rounding up undocumented workers, migrant and refugees is part of a brutal order of things in Malaysia. When matters economic are going well, authorities turn the blindest of eyes. The money pours in; development goals are being met. During times of crisis, the eye sharpens in the search for scapegoats. With the enervating effects of the COVID-19 response, the vulnerable are easy fare. Malaysia has deemed it unnecessary to ratify the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its relevant 1967 protocol, a situation that has given officials a misplaced sense of confidence. The writ of the universal right to asylum, they…
