The secretive Australian government just cannot help itself. Clamouring and hectoring of other countries and their secret arrangements (who can forget the criticism of the Solomon Islands over its security pact with China for that reason?) the Albanese government is a bit too keen on keeping a lid on things regarding the withering away of Australian independence before a powerful and spoiling friend. A degree of this may be put down to basic lack of sensibility or competence. But there may also be an inadvertent confession in the works here: Australians may not be too keen on such arrangements once…
Author: Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Like a bank with branches everywhere, the Catholic Church will go after its own when circumstances permit, wherever they are. In other instances, it will take the opposite tack, shielding the detractors or deviants from local scrutiny, and concealing them from the burden of accountability. Italian Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, former adviser to Pope Francis and the second ranking official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, could not count on the latter, though his prosecution had a pungent whiff of scapegoating to it. After some two-and-a-half years of tense church drama and institutional intrigue, a Vatican court sentenced the Pope’s…
The time has come to treat the sequence of UN Climate Change Conferences, the latest concluding in Dubai, as a series of the failed and the abysmally rotten. It shows how a worthless activity, caked (oiled?) with appropriately chosen words, can actually provide assurance that something worthwhile was done. Along the way, there are always the same beneficiaries: fossil fuel magnates and satirists. COP28, which featured 97,000 participants, including the weighty presence of 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists, was even more of a shambles than its predecessor. Its location – in an oil rich state – was head scratching. Its chairman…
It was a policy that was bound to send a shiver through the policymaking community. The issue of nuclear energy in Australia has always been a contentious one. Currently, the country hosts a modest nuclear industry, centred on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), nuclear medicine and laboratory products. But even this has created headaches in terms of long-term storage of waste, plagued by successful legal challenges from communities and First Nation groups. The advent of AUKUS, with its inane yet provocative promise of nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy, adds yet another, complicating dimension to this…
Despite a focus on boxing China in the Indo-Pacific, US involvement in the Middle East continues to be widespread and problematic. While Israel is given its regular steroid diet of murderous arms, US military personnel find themselves scattered throughout a myriad of bases and countries. Recently, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul decided that Syria should not be one of them. In his bill to the Senate, Paul called for “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Syria that have not been authorized by Congress”, leaving a 30-day timeframe for the measure to take place. It notes, among…
Cunning, subtle, understated. Israeli policy in the Pacific has seen United Nations votes cast in its favour, the foreign policies of certain countries adjusted, and favours switched. While China may be considered the big, threatening beast competing alongside that large, clumsy figure called the United States, the small state of Israel is directing its expertise, and charm, in very specific ways in the Indo-Pacific. When it came to voting for a nonbinding resolution in the United Nations General Assembly on the subject of a “humanitarian truce” regarding the conflict in Gaza in October, 14 countries were steadfastly opposed. Of those…
The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip in their profits and ultimate obsolescence. Call it a drugs summit for narcotics distributors promoting clean-living; a convention for casino moguls promising to aid problem gamblers. The list of wicked analogies is endless. Reading the material from the gathering that is known in its longer form as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, one could be forgiven for…
In most instances, the justice system of a liberal democracy presumes absence of arbitrary and cruel treatment by the State. Punishment, when levelled, is finite. It might see out the term of a convict’s natural life, but that would only be for the most extreme cases. Even then, the whiff of parole, while far off, might still be possible. On being released, the usual assumptions apply. Time served is time done. Past punishment will not be revisited upon you; the State will not send its hounds and officers of the thin blue line after you. This would only happen in…
Camelot, the sweetly sentimental shorthand for a shortened US presidency, has generated a mythopoetry so rich it turns the stomach, clogs the intestines, and soils the historical record. With its effacing tendencies, its soppily loyal hagiographers, its ghastly, moist worshippers, anniversaries are the best occasions to shine. Six decades have passed since President John F. Kennedy was slain in Dallas, and the miasma of psychic doubt and veneration has only slightly abated. As with each decade, the conspiracy behind the death of the Republic’s youngest Caesar is always revisited with a pilgrim’s myrrh perfumed dedication. The energy with which this…
Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution. If they are not facing barbed wire barriers in Europe, they are being conveyed, where possible, to third countries to be processed in lengthy fashion. Policy makers fiddle and cook the legal record to justify such measures, finding fault with instruments of international protection such as the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951. A very dramatic example of roughing up and violence is taking place against Afghans in Pakistan, a country that, despite having a lengthy…
“‘He’ll have ye smilin’,” an old Irish saying goes, “while he takes the gold out of your teeth’.” Charles Glass, London Review of Books, Oct 20, 2022 The obituaries of criminals, masterful or otherwise, are always going to be sordid matters. Either one has time for the deeds, giving column space to their execution and legacy, or one focuses on the extraneous details: voice, accent, suit, demeanour. “He may have killed the odd person or two, but he did have style.” Much of the Henry Kissinger School of Idolatry is of the latter propensity. The nasty deeds are either misread…
One could earn a tidy sum the number of times the word “sovereignty” has been uttered or mentioned in public statements and briefings by the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But such sovereignty has shown itself to be counterfeit. The net of dependency and control is being increasingly tightened around Australia, be it in terms of Washington’s access to rare commodities (nickel, cobalt, lithium), the proposed and ultimately fatuous nuclear-propelled submarine fleet, and the broader militarisation and garrisoning of the country by US military personnel and assets. (The latter includes the stationing of such nuclear-capable assets as B-52 bombers in…
It is a particularly quotidian breed in the modern, management-driven university. The desk clerk who pretends to be an academic and researcher but is neither. The desk clerk who admires rosters, work plans and “key performance indicators”, thinking that the process of knowledge is quantifiable by productivity targets and financial returns. The desk clerk who pilfers the work of undergraduates, sports a dubious doctoral thesis, and who rarely sets foot within the sacred surrounds of a library. The rise of such a figure in the global university scene, one neither fish nor fowl, is no accident. As universities have declined,…
There was no better example of Australia’s politicised public service than its Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo. In most other countries, he would have been the ideal conspirator in a coup, a tittletattler in the ranks and bound to brief against those he did not like. Give him a dagger, and he was bound to use it. His rise to power paralleled that of the emergence of that super amalgam of a ministry that arose during the Turnbull government. Falling for the fatal error that centralising power assures the consolidation of efficiency, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was swayed by arguments…
It resembles a chronology of desperation, shifting narratives, and schoolboy howlers. From the outset, the mass lethality of Israeli strikes against Gaza and the collective punishment of its populace needed some justification, however tenuous. If it could be shown, convincingly, that Hamas and its allies had militarised such civilian infrastructure as hospitals, they would become fair game for vengeful air strikes and military assault. Thus, could Israel’s soldiers demonstrate, not merely the animal savagery of Hamas, one indifferent to humanity and suffering, but the virtue of Israel’s own military objectives. The forces of pallid light would again prevail against swarthy…
The fossil fuel lobby has had a busy year on the eco-camouflage front. Earlier this year, interest started to rumble and rage against the stranding of humpback whales on the east coast of the United States. Suddenly, opponents of wind turbine technology – and renewable technology more broadly – had identified an invaluable, if tenuous nexus: a link between whale mortality and offshore wind farms. One true enthusiast for the proposition proved to be Donald Trump. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina in September, for example, the Republican presidential contender suggested that these “windmills” were driving whales “crazy”, inflicting…
They can be a serious lot in New Zealand. They got upset at – forgive this author such reference – the use of a rule in cricket back in February 1981 which led to expressions of misty anger from the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Muldoon. While permissible within the laws of cricket, sides are generally not meant to bowl underarm. This, Greg Chappell’s Australians did. “I thought it most appropriate that the Australian team was dressed in yellow,” Muldoon fumed. Recently, mild tempers were stirred by what could be regarded as a form of ballot interference, this time…
The unpardonable, outrageous trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride was a brief affair. On November 13, it did not take long for the brutal power of the Commonwealth to become evident. McBride, having disclosed material that formed the Australian public about alleged war crimes by special forces in Afghanistan, was going to be made an example of. McBride served as a major in the British army before becoming a lawyer for the Australian Defence Force, serving two tours in Afghanistan over 2011 and 2013. During that time, he gathered material about the culture and operations of Australia’s special forces that…
The High Court of Australia is not known for its zealotry in protecting human rights, and certainly not when considering the persuasive pull of international law and conventions. The Australian Parliament is usually given a generous hand in making policies that tend to outrage such conventions, a freedom made that much easier by an absence of any bill of rights. A grim example of this was the 2004 High Court decision of Al-Kateb v Godwin, which gave the Commonwealth full assurance that policies on indefinitely detaining unwanted, designated “unlawful” arrivals were entirely within its power. The case concerned the application…
Openly ignored by his incendiary, now ex-Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was left with few options. Retaining her would continue a process of blighting his already precarious prime ministership, suggesting weakness and a distinct lack of authority. Kicking her off the Cabinet front bench would, while reasserting some measure of control, permit her to foment discord on the backbenches. In defiance of collective cabinet responsibility, Braverman roguishly challenged his wisdom, and that of the Metropolitan Police she was meant to control, in permitting pro-Palestinian protests to take place on Armistice Day. Prior to that, she had…
For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out. Call it a higher education institution. Call it a university. Even better, capitalise it: the University. This is certainly the case in Australia, where education is less a pursuit of knowledge as the acquiring of a commodity, laid out spam for so much return. On that vast island continent, the university, dominated by a largely semi-literate and utterly unaccountable management, is a place where secrets are buried, concealed with a gleeful dedication verging on mania. In its submission to what will hopefully…
Armistice Day is one of those disturbing occasions of the year when humanity’s folly is laid bare. It should be an occasion to remind said humanity about the stupid waste occasioned by war and its war-crazed planners who generally elude the dock; instead, it’s an occasion to extol its virtues and remind the reactionaries that war can be a mighty fine thing to pursue in the name of an ideology, cock-eyed belief or a sense of self-worth. Unquestioning solemnity, medals and tears are the order of the day, the ritualistic plat du jour. These occasions are never challenged, nor impugned. …
At the conclusion of the Second World War, debates raged on how best to regulate the destructive power of the atom. Splitting it had been used most savagely against the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, thereby ending, to date, the globe’s costliest war. Visions also abounded on the promise and glory of harnessing such energy. But the competitive element of pursuing nuclear power never abated, and attempts at international regulation were always going to be subordinate to Realpolitik. Yet even at such a tense juncture in human relations, it would have been absurd, for instance, to have…
It may be time to reconsider the use of such words as “humanitarian” and “humanitarianism”. There has been little of that sort evidenced in the Israel-Hamas War, marked by industrial-mechanised atrocities, enforced deprivation and starvation, orders to evacuate (read expulsion and banishment), preceded by massacres most haunting and visceral. Its constant evocation by various sides of the conflict have given it a diminishing quality, leaving international relations stirring with cant. Mind you, the term humanitarian had already been pipped and emptied of any solid meaning in the aftermath of the Cold War. Humanitarian intervention became a vicious, evangelised concept, enchanting…
Banished Prime Ministers are an irritation. They clog the airwaves of punditry with their views about how things were and how things should be. But even there, degrees of severity and competence should be observed. The more noble sorts would pursue the goals of peace, even as they bag large wads of cash in stating the obvious. With former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and his disgraced counterpart from the UK, Boris Johnson, the cash is being forked out for war. That Israeli authorities thought it suitable to invite these two men to bolster their war against Hamas shows a…
There are many reasons why Australian foreign policy can be viewed from the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe. For one, it is largely dictated, in terms of security, by the competitive, acquisitive urgings of the United States. Fictional reassurances are offered to supposedly calm nerves in Canberra against phantom threats: extended nuclear deterrence, the furnishing of nuclear-powered submarines, the need for a satellite intelligence base. In return Uncle demands cash, blood and loyalty; and Uncle shall receive. The other perspective is economic. Here, Australia relies on China’s voracious appetite for such commodities as iron ore. We dislike you and…
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks as much a deep fake projection as a thin, superficial representation of reality. His robotic, risible awkwardness makes a previous occupant of his office, Theresa May, look soppily human in comparison. But at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, the nervous system of code breaking during the Second World War dominated by such troubled geniuses as Alan Turing, delegates had gathered to chat about the implications of Artificial Intelligence. The guest list was characterised by a hot shot list of Big Tech and political panjandrums, part of an attempt by the UK to,…
For years, John J. Mearsheimer, that seemingly ageless, if somewhat chilly presence at the University of Chicago, has been a thorn of irritation to certain establishment ideas. With his pugnacious sense of realist politics, he has little time for the sentimentality that accompanies what he calls the “liberal delusions” of power. It’s all good to feel anguish and worry at the predations of power, but why encourage them when there is no need to? This somewhat crude summation only does some justice to JJM’s thought process. But it does provide an interesting backdrop to the recent revelations regarding the Ukraine…
A country broken by constant foreign interventions, its tyrannical regimes propped up by the back brace of the United States (when it wasn’t intervening to adjust it), marred by appalling natural disasters, tells a sad tale of the crippled Haitian state. Haiti’s political existence is the stuff and stuffing of pornographic violence, the crutch upon which moralists can always point to as the end, doom and despair that needs change. Every conundrum needs its intrusive deliverer, even though that deliverer is bound to make things worse. Lately, those stale themes have now percolated through the corridors of the United Nations…
The main press stable was keen to see the scrappy benefits of the 31-hour visit to Israel by US President Joe Biden. On National Public Radio (NPR), Scott Neuman expressed the view that the “largely symbolic” visit did yield a few “concrete accomplishments” including an announcement of $100 million in Palestinian aid, convincing Israel to permit humanitarian aid into Gaza and persuade Egypt’s strongman president Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi to open up an access route via land into southern Gaza. If these were seen as achievements, one dare not look at the picture of bright success. On an individual level, sharing the…
