Latest articles

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 …

Medu Art Ensemble (Botswana), Shades of Change, 1982. This two-man play, set in a prison cell, was written by Mongane Wally Serote. Credit: Medu Art Ensemble via Freedom Park

In the ancient time of national liberation, when partisans walked among the people in rural hamlets or small towns, they carried their message forward in the palms of their hands, their rifles slung over their shoulders, newspapers and pamphlets in their bags. Given the prevalence of illiteracy in the colonised world, partisans often gathered people around small fires and read these …

It is hard for those who have not lived through the shattering political assassinations of the 1960s to grasp their significance for today.  Many might assume that that was then and long before their time, so let’s move on to what we must deal with today.  Let some old folks, the obsessive ones, live in the past.  It is an understandable but mistaken attitude that this documentary will quickly shatter, visually and audibly.  The echoes of those guns that killed President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., …

Who pulls their strings?

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 time frame for the measure to take place.  It notes, …

How does one escape high-tech entrapments, and how does one provide evidence of escaping such entrapment?

Israel and the U.S. Empire are playing roulette. They are betting big on red, the color of blood, the worship of power and the logical outcome of ideological Zionism.

Zionism has always been, as pointed out by its critics from the beginning, an intellectual current that leads to racism, war and authoritarianism just like other forms of ethnic and/or religious nationalism. An “other” is necessary for any nationalism to prosper. As nationalisms grow more extreme, which seems an historical inevitability, especially for ones based on ethnicity or religion, ever worse treatment of …

Unnoticed, or more accurately, ignored by the corporate-state media.

Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion.  The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction.  But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets:  How to justify it?  Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence.

Such cover also takes the form of false fairness and forced balance. “We don’t have to choose between defending Israel and aiding Palestinian civilians,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote inanely in the Washington Post on October 31.  …

These are difficult, perilous, and frustrating times. Many cherished beliefs are coming unraveled. Many once-shared values are no longer shared. And distrust of unshakeable institutions is widespread.
Yet it was only a little more than three decades ago that North America and European intellectuals joined in acknowledging the triumph of the Western world’s “gift” to all: political and economic liberalism. For nearly half a century, Western liberalism had waged a “cold” war against the most serious challenge to its dominance. Apart from the fascist counter-revolution of the 1930s against political liberalism, no movement shook the Western liberal establishment and …

It was such a bucolic setting. Even now, more than fifty years later, I can still see little Opie (Ron Howard) in his rolled-up jeans scrambling beside Andy; both carry fishing poles as they head to the lake. It introduced every episode of The Andy Griffith Show, along with that catchy whistled tune. It’s what first comes to mind when I think of fishing…but that’s just the first thing. 

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 …

COP28, the UN Conference of the Parties in oil-rich Dubai currently underway will not resolve the issue of oil and gas companies agreeing to slow down oil production. To the contrary, all signals point to an increase according to formal plans already laid out by the industry, as stated by the International Energy Agency. Reuters November 2023 headline says it all: “Global Fossil Fuel Production Plans Far Exceed Climate Targets”.

Greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rip roar, snort, huff and puff higher ever higher post COP28. It’s guaranteed. The oil companies insist upon it. And a new kid on the …

The unsolved border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana sparked renewed tensions in recent weeks. The two governments have engaged in a war of words, military presence has increased, as well as fears of US intervention.

The following infographic recaps the main chapters of the longstanding controversy over the resource-rich Essequibo Strip.

During the past three years, the country has seen a dramatic increase in book bans at public and K-12 school libraries and in rightwing pro-censorship activism, usually targeting books that address race, gender identity, or sexuality.

In Texas, Suzette Baker was fired from her job as director of a rural public library for refusing to withdraw books about racial justice and the lives of LGBTQ people from circulation. A mob of neo-fascist Proud Boys descended on a Downers Grove, Illinois, school board meeting to demand that school libraries under the district’s control remove …