Tag: Governance

  • Uneasy Locations: The Russian Embassy Site in Canberra

    They think we are mugs – and it’s insulting. It’s all fine for politicians to be swimming, swerving and tossing about in the goo of paranoia that is surveillance, chatting to the ghost called foreign interference; but to expect the rest of the citizenry to be morons is rather poor form. But the formula has […]

  • The Emergency State’s Plot to Override the Constitution

    The Emergency State’s Plot to Override the Constitution

    Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow. — Justice Neil Gorsuch We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency. Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers […]

  • Australia, Biden, and Cancelling the Quad Visit

    Much needless fuss has been generated by President Joe Biden’s cancellation of his visit to Australia for the Quad meeting, a now regular gathering of leaders from the US, Japan, India and Australia. He had other things on his mind: dealing with fractious debt ceiling negotiations taking place back in the United States. Students of […]

  • Scott Morrison and Australia’s Lobby Complex

    The former Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has been somewhat of an absentee in the Federal seat of Cook. Since losing the May 2022 election, he has been aggressively chasing up contacts and deals on the consultancy circuit, bellyaching about the usual talking points: the gruesome China menace; defence matters; and, just to round it […]

  • Approximately 26% of U.S. Government Spending Goes to Weapon-Makers

    Approximately 26% of U.S. Government Spending Goes to Weapon-Makers

    The vast majority of the U.S. Government’s purchases are for the military, and most of that is paying for weapons and for enabling America’s troops to use them. For example, in the 3 April 2018 “OMB and Congressional Budget Office estimates of discretionary new budget authority” that “The President signed … into law on March […]

  • Be a Capitol Hill Citizen on Your Congress

    Spring, the season of renewal, is here. The ants are diligently building their little symmetrical ant hills. The robins are in their nests occupied with posterity. And the anointed members of Congress, after a long recess, aka vacation, return to work on April 17. The next day, April 18, is the deadline for filing taxes. […]

  • Listening to the Chronicle of Higher Ed

    Listening to the Chronicle of Higher Ed

    Note: I am not attacking people personally, or their right to opinions. However, I have been in this rodeo since 1983, academia, with the deans, chairs, provosts, VPs and presidents, and plethora of others, who hands down (not all) got it wrong about the value of and reason for education, K12 and higher ed. This […]

  • Inglorious Inertia: The Albanese Government and Julian Assange

    The sham that is the Assange affair, a scandal of monumental proportions connived in by the AUKUS powers, shows no signs of abating.  Prior to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese assuming office in Australia, he insisted that the matter dealing with the WikiLeaks publisher would be finally resolved.  It had, he asserted, been going on for […]

  • The Two Sessions | Explained

    The Two Sessions, or Lianghui in Mandarin, are the simultaneous meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The National People’s Congress is a legislative body and the highest authority of the Chinese state. The Consultative Conference is a united front political advisory and consultation organization with no legislative or […]

  • Doing Washington’s Bidding: Australia’s Treatment of Daniel Duggan

    The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not quite worth the material it’s printed on. In January this year, Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court heard that Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accepted a request […]

Generated by Feedzy