menu_open
Mark Beeson

Mark Beeson

The Conversation

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

It’s a pity Bernie Sanders isn’t the president

A few years ago, I gave a talk at the annual conference of the Australian Institute for International Affairs. Afterwards, one of the local luminaries...

07.04.2024 6

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

Asia, America or independence: Australians have decided, will politicians listen?

A recent poll conducted by The Guardian found that nearly twice as many people agreed with Paul Keating’s suggestion that Australia should be an...

14.03.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

Is ASIO’s paranoia hypocritical?

Some of my best friends are Chinese. This is entirely unsurprising given my frequent visits to the PRC, the Chinese students I have supervised and the...

05.03.2024 10

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

West Australia and the art of state capture

The idea of state capture is usually associated with the global south, but Australia, and Western Australia in particular, demonstrates that...

27.02.2024 6

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

The new Dark Age

Sometimes one event encapsulates the zeitgeist. Alexei Navalny’s death from what are almost certainly unnatural causes is one such moment. One of...

19.02.2024 6

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

Plutocrats and political elites: The way we do things in the West

Western Australia is famously a long way from everywhere. Given our isolation, it’s not surprising that politics can be a bit parochial. While this...

27.12.2023 9

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

Saving the world, one suburb at a time

Privileged people trying to save the world shouldn’t be dismissed as bourgeois virtue signalling. There are worse things to signal and it could make...

10.12.2023 6

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

Losing my religion

Theology has long been used to justify war. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it’s happening again in the Middle East. The defining difference between...

18.11.2023 10

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

The razing of the Warsaw Ghetto: Are our leaders incapable of learning from history?

If we are looking for historical parallels to the current destruction in Palestine, then the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazis is unfortunately...

25.10.2023 5

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

As good as it ever got? Hurtling towards the environmental abyss

As we collectively hurtle toward the environmental abyss, it’s worth asking whether we have definitively passed the highwater mark of human...

10.09.2023 8

Pearls and Irritations

Mark Beeson

9e7d594b0bd1cee0abc6ed783d0f1737