A Brutal Punishment: The Sentencing of David McBride
Sometimes, it’s best not to leave the issue of justice to the judges. They do what they must: consult the statutes, test the rivers of power, and hope that their…
Sometimes, it’s best not to leave the issue of justice to the judges. They do what they must: consult the statutes, test the rivers of power, and hope that their…
It truly is pushing the envelope of lunacy to assume that this latest revelation was revelatory. US weapons, the wonks in Washington find, are being used by the Israeli Defense…
“I find it rather difficult to make it clear to my children why we are not eligible, for from one point of view it isn’t quite clear to me.” X,…
Despite being described in some circles as such, the latest vote in the United Nations General Assembly on Palestine’s status is hardly extraordinary. For one, it does not vest the…
“Politics,” as the harsh, albeit successful German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck claimed, “is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.” To that should…
The International Criminal Court is a dusty jewel, a creation of heat, tension and manufacture in the international community. Various elements have gone into its creation. As with any international…
In his 2021 annual threat assessment, the director-general of ASIO, the Australian domestic intelligence service, pointed to an active spy ring operating in the country, or what he chose to…
What a stinking story of inhumanity. A country intent on sending asylum seekers to one whose residents have actually applied for asylum and sanctuary in other states. But the UK-Rwanda…
The rage and protest against Israel’s campaign in Gaza, ongoing since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, has stirred student activity across a number of US university campuses and beyond. …
On April 25, along Melbourne’s arterial Swanston Street, the military parade can be witnessed with its bannered, medalled upholstery, crowds lost in metals, ribbons and commemorative decor. Many, up on…
The Israeli authorities, in their campaign of remorseless killing, doctoring and adjusting the numbers of the Palestinian populace for whatever future awaits, have been found wanting on accusations that Hamas…
It is unfortunate that column space should be dedicated to Britain’s shortest termed prime minister and, arguably, one of its most imbecilic and cringingly juvenile. But given that some people…
On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued with authoritarian glee legal notices to X Corp and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to remove material within 24…
The attitudes down under towards social media have turned barmy. While there is much to take Elon Musk to task for his wrecking ball antics at the platform formerly known…
“Can we still see universities as places to learn and produce knowledge that, at the risk of sounding naïve, is for the greater good of humanity, independently transient of geopolitical…
The skin toasted Australian Minister of Defence, Richard Marles, who resembles, with each day, the product of an overly worked solarium, was adamant. Not only will Australians be paying a…
Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange…
The Middle East has, for some time, been a powder keg where degrees of violence are tolerated with ceremonial mania and a calculus of restraint. Assassinations can take place at…
While the Australian government continues to pirouette with shallow constancy on the issue of Israel’s war in Gaza, making vacuous utterances on Palestinian statehood even as it denies supplying the…
Walking stiffly, largely distracted, and struggling to focus on the bare essentials, US President Joe Biden was keeping company with his Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, when asked the…
Remorseless killing at the initiation of artificial intelligence has been the subject of nail-biting concern for various members of computer-digital cosmos. Be wary of such machines in war and their…
Can it get any busier? The World Court, otherwise known as the International Court of Justice, has been swamped by applications on the subject of alleged genocide. The site of…
The occasional burst of candour from US diplomats provides a striking, air clearing difference to their Australian and British counterparts. Official statements about the AUKUS security pact between Washington, London…
The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, was distraught and testy. It seemed that, on this occasion, Israel had gone too far. Not too far in killing over 32,000 Palestinians in…
Eulogies should rarely be taken at face value. Plaster saints take the place of complex individuals; faults transmute into golden virtues. But there was little in the way of fault…
The curved course of the ubiquitous banana has often been the peel of empire, its sweetness masking a sharp, bitter legacy. Arab conquerors introduced it to the African continent as…
What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to it, notably when it comes to dealing with political charges? The record is not good, and the ongoing…
Two British ministers, the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, paid a recent visit to Australia recently as part of the AUKMIN (Australia-United Kingdom Ministerial Consultations)…
Be wary of what Washington offers in negotiations at the best of times. The empire gives and takes when it can; the hegemon proffers and in equal measure and withdraws…
The heralded arrival of the Internet caused flutters of enthusiasm, streaks of heart-felt hope. Unregulated, and supposedly all powerful, an information medium never before seen on such scale could be…
On March 15, the next stage of an intriguing legal process seeking to hold the Biden administration accountable for its failure to prevent, as well as being complicit in, alleged…
Archivists can be a dull if industrious lot. Christmas crackers are less important than the new year announcement in Canberra, when the National Archives of Australia releases documents like the…
How delicious is political hypocrisy. Abundant and rich, it manifests in the corridors of power with regularity. Of late, there is much of it in the US Congress, evident over…
The steady and ruthless campaign by Israel to internationally defund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is unravelling. The lynchpin in the…
It was praised to the heavens as a work of negotiated and practical genius when it was struck. The then Australian treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, had finally gotten those titans of…
The town hall meeting is the last throbbing reminder of the authentic demos. People gather; debates held. Views converge; others diverge. Speakers are invited to stir the invitees, provoke the…
The spectacle, if it did not say it all, said much of it. Planes dropping humanitarian aid to a starving, famine-threatened populace of Gaza (the United Nations warns that 576,000…
The starvation regime continues unabated as Israel continues its campaign in the Gaza Strip. One of the six provisional measures ordered by the International Court Justice entailed taking “immediate and…
The end of the Second World War was a calamitous catalyst, laying the bricks and mortar for institutions that were always going to look weary, almost comically so, after some…
If only we could say that Peter Dutton, Australia’s federal opposition leader and curator of bigoted leanings, was unusual in assuming that granting humanitarian visas to Palestinians might be problematic. …
On February 21, the Royal Courts of Justice hosted a second day of carnivalesque mockery regarding the appeal by lawyers representing an ill Julian Assange, whose publishing efforts are being…
On February 20, it was clear that things were not going to be made easy for Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who infuriated the US imperium, the national security establishment,…
He was sweet and well meaning, but he was old. He was hazy. His memory was poor. Doddering, confused, the self-proclaimed leader of the Free World seemed ready to check…
Legal challenges regarding the Israel-Gaza War are starting to bulk lawyers’ briefs and courtroom proceedings. South Africa got matters underway with its December application before the International Court of Justice…
Animals have, at times, been given the same dismissively nasty treatment humans love giving themselves. Be it detention, torture, trial, and execution, the unwitting creatures can be found in the…
Statistics are often given lanky legs that take their user far. But how they are used, and how they are received, is striking. The current figure of 27,500 dead is…
Times were supposedly better in 2022. That is, if you were a lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria, a busy Israeli arms manufacturer, or cash counting corporate middleman keen…
Holding the foreign policy of a country accountable in court, notably when it comes to matters criminal, can be insuperably challenging. Judges traditionally shun making decisions on policy, even though…
The release of the Vault 7 files in the spring of 2017 in a series of 26 disclosures, detailing the hacking tools of the US Central Intelligence Agency, was one…
It was a struggle to see how a child’s welfare was relevant in the latest, shrill debates about technology taking place on The Hill. The Senate Judiciary Committee and the…
The BBC’s characteristically mild-mannered note said it all: What is Tower 22? More to the point, what are US forces doing in Jordan? (To be more precise, a dusty scratching…
During the evening of January 25, Kenneth Eugene Smith, having failed to convince the US Supreme Court to delay his execution, became yet another victim of judicial, state-sanctioned murder. A…
Imperilled, tormented Palestinians in Gaza had little time to celebrate the January 26 order of the International Court of Justice. In a case brought by South Africa intended to facilitate…
On January 26, legal experts, policy wonks, activists and the plain curious waited for the order of the International Court of Justice, sitting in The Hague. The topic was that…
His type should never be seen again. Born from the dark well of swill and advertising, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was always the apotheosis of politics’ worst tendencies:…
So much for that. Much had been promised by Florida Governor Ron De Santis to derail Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House. But the attempt to wrest…
Israel has been given enormous license to control the security narrative in the Middle East for decades. This is not to say it is always in control of it –…
On February 20, Julian Assange, the daredevil publisher of WikiLeaks, will be going into battle, yet again, with the British justice system – or what counts for it. The UK…
What a cowardly act it was. A national broadcaster, dedicated to what should be fearless reporting, cowed by the intemperate bellyaching of a lobby concerned about coverage of the Israel-Gaza…
There is something distinctly revolting and authoritarian about the royal prerogative. It reeks of clandestine assumption, unwarranted self-confidence and, most of all, a blithe indifference to accountability before elected representatives. …
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