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Pearls and Irritations |
Politicians are increasingly using the word to justify bad policy initiatives and fend off criticism of their decisions. I doubt if you’re...
A lobby group representing the $600 billion property industry is determining state housing policy in NSW. On the 29th April, when the NSW...
The ABC now faces an awful dilemma. If, as now seems certain, it loses the media bargaining code revenue it has been receiving from Facebook, now...
Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr sues New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters for defamation over AUKUS comments. The defamation...
Patriotism, they say, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Judged that way, there seem to be a large number of scoundrels around within the Australia...
Washington’s attempts to attack and impair the workings of the ICC on Israel’s behalf merely serve to further isolate a declining America. It...
The blood is on your hands Biden. We can see it all, and fuck no, I’m not voting for you in the fall. It’s too late, we’ve seen the truth, we...
Israel has begun a ground assault on Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge from the brutal war on Gaza. International observers...
Like the previous Vietnam generation of baby boomers, US university students are waking up to the atrocities their government commits or helps its...
It’s almost 40 years since Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards. A year earlier she’d ordered the Indian army to storm...
Ill health, perhaps especially mental ill health, is generally seen as a personal issue, requiring diagnosis and treatment. But at the population...
Over the last few years, I have wondered about what drives the relentless Western animosity towards China. It seems a very logical question to ask...
Australia is one of six western countries that are complicit in the ‘genocidal erasure’ of the Palestinian people by continuing to supply Israel...
Heralded as the largest this century, the pro-Palestinian student demonstrations in the US and globally are putting into stark relief the systemic...
“Nothing Australia does – with or without AUKUS – will make any difference to the collective capacity to either deter or defeat China in the...
Catherine Russell, the head of UNICEF, said this week that of the 600,000 children in Rafah, southern Gaza, all of them are either injured, or...
It’s not often that you find someone writing about open source software and not bothering to make mention of the licences being used. But...
Australia once thought of itself as a country of opportunity and innovation – economically and socially. Like most countries self-beliefs, the...
Twenty-three years ago, a Chinese-Australian solar scientist moved from Sydney to Wuxi to build China’s solar panel manufacturing industry from...
There is no bigger news on the current Thai political scene than corruption among the top echelons of the police force. At issue is the tussle...
May 6 2024, marks an important birthday for Asif Ali Bangash, who turns 34 years old. But instead of celebrating with gifts, he has decided to be...
In 1964, the first US Surgeon-General’s report on smoking and health was published. The tobacco industry could veto the proposed members of the...
In an essay entitled “Australia’s Choice” published in Australian Foreign Affairs in 2022, the leading Singaporean commentator on...
The stars do not exactly seem to be aligning for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he bids for a third term in office with the Royal Canadian...
Inches upon inches of press releases have heralded how Build to Rent (BTR) is coming to Australia to provide affordable and stable rentals....
Promoting culturally sensitive oral health care for elderly Muslim migrants is vital to address disparities in oral health among cultural and...
A sense of crisis now pervades discussion of what to do about violence against women, made obvious by recent marches demanding action, statistics...
Criminal justice is an area of public policy where the disconnect between evidence based solutions and political responses is depressingly wide....
There are some things in our ‘shrinking nation’ that are not shrinking. There are the obvious ones that have dominated the news – petrol prices,...
Many members of the Albanese Government, including Anthony Albanese himself, recall the problem that presented itself when Julia Gillard took the...
What follows is the end of a journey by one citizen of Israel – a retired high-ranking IDF officer – who has had his view of the world vastly...
Last Sunday, Israel closed Al Jazeera’s office in occupied East Jerusalem, confiscating broadcast equipment and taking the channel off air....
Blinken knew exactly what he was doing, he could have delayed the release but he chose, instead to release the State Department’s “2023 Country...
Is capitalism capable of long term meaningful reform? This is perhaps the most import of issues to address, given that environmental disaster is...
Thousands of people from countries around the world have joined the war against Palestinians. The US recently threatened to impose sanctions on...
“But… did he say it on a college campus? Otherwise, it’s just not news. Sorry, them’s the rules,” said one journalist sardonically. In just...
The Westminster Town Hall Forum in Minneapolis in the US recently hosted the leading economist, Professor Keyu Jin, from the London School of...
This was not always my view. Like most people I examined where I could minimize my tax – where there were offsets to be gained through education,...
In the coming year, there will be an election for the Australian Parliament, at a time when the very future of human civilisation is precarious....
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, 1905. In the summer of 1968, I was assigned to the...
Australian university students are setting up encampments in universities across Australia. They are not only calling for an end to the war on Gaza...
I am extremely alarmed by information that Dr. Adnan Albursh, a well-known surgeon at Al Shifa Hospital, has died while detained by Israeli forces...