Blog
Here we provide a platform for the exchange of information, ideas and analysis on the existential threats that hang over humanity and the planet at this time. The aim is to go beyond the symptoms of our predicament as we try and make sense of the powerful currents that have brought us to the present impasse. Importantly, we explore options for creative policy advocacy and imaginative social action.
Palestine, Iran, and Populist Resistance: The Limits of Law, Morality, and the UN
An interview with the Qods News Agency (Qodsna), the first specialized news agency in Iran, focusing on issues related to the Palestinian cause. The interview was published on 23 April 2024 in Iran, and is reprinted in modified form that seeks to take account of the Palestinian struggle as connected with wider regional and global conflict patterns, and is giving rise to worldwide student protests against genocide and complicity with genocide, as well as a tidal wave of global consciousness sweeping away the cobwebs of political and moral complacency.
A looming China-US collision – can détente come to the rescue?
The call issued by Bob Carr and Gareth Evans for a ‘comprehensive détente between the US and China is timely and constructive. But as with all things to do with peace and war, the issues are complex and the way forward strewn with difficulties.
SHAPE Statement on Gaza
SHAPE Statement on Gaza - The barbaric conduct of the Israeli state must be stopped and the dignity and freedom of the Palestinian people must be upheld
GAZA: South Africa Seeks Justice
The leaders of post-apartheid South Africa were among the most vocal in the Global South to denounce inhuman Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu realized that Israeli discrimination and marginalization of the indigenous Palestinians was akin to apartheid. Mandela who described the Palestinian struggle for self- determination as one of the greatest moral issues of our time even observed that South Africans will not be truly free until the Palestinians are free.
Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide
Declaration of Conscience and Concern of Global Intellectuals on Gaza Genocide initiated by the Action Committee For Call to Conscience About Gaza
Five Good Reasons that Nuclear-Powered Submarines Do Not Make Sense for Australia
The push-back against nuclear-powered submarines for Australia is gaining strength, and for good reason. The AUKUS security pact, with the United States and the UK, negotiated by Scott Morrison in September 2021, controversially includes a provision to provide nuclear-powered submarines for Australia; and both the conservative Coalition and the new Labor Government have endorsed the agreement. But the opposition is growing.
Globalising NATO to Preserve US dominance
Much has been made of the creation of AUKUS and the agreement to provide Australia with eight nuclear powered submarines. Many have rightly decried Australia’s loss of independence. AUKUS, however, is part of a bigger story, a multi-layered US-led “Indo-Pacific strategy” whose clear aim is to contain China and preserve US regional and global dominance.
An Asia-Pacific NATO: Fanning the Flames of War
There’s something profoundly disheartening about the politics of our countries right now. The deep madness, I’m afraid, is a British Imperial thinking taken over by the United States. My country, the U.S., is unrecognisable now compared even to 20 or 30 years ago. I’m not sure, to tell you the truth, who runs the country. I do not believe it is the president of the United States right now. We are run by generals, by our security, establishment. The public is privy to nothing.
Why is Australia so Scared?
The world has just spent two decades paralysed by fear. Ever since 11 September 2001, the ‘war on terror’ has changed the lives of most people for the worse. Millions have been killed, either by terrorists or by militarists fighting them. Fearing violence, many people have fled their homelands as refugees. Others have absorbed repeated warnings about Islamist terrorism, and fearfully accepted that the response to it has to be militarism.
Celebrating an Extraordinary American Life: Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg’s death like his life occurred with flair and purpose. Dan (a cherished friend for more than 65 years) had taken the unusual step of sharing with the world the deeply personal news that he had only a few months to live, and even less to be active, as he was diagnosed as suffering from inoperable pancreatic cancer.
Preparing for War with China while the Planet is Already on Fire
Not a day passes without a China-related news item, typically an ominous one. This focus on Chinese matters is perhaps understandable, given China’s sheer size with a population larger than the North American and European populations combined, but it often veers into alarmist and largely fabricated frenzy about an imagined Chinese threat.
The war in Ukraine was provoked— and why that matters to achieve peace
By recognising that the question of NATO enlargement is at the centre of this war, we understand why U.S. weaponry will not end this war. Only diplomatic efforts can do that. George Orwell wrote in 1984 that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Governments work relentlessly to distort public perceptions of the past.
Reviving the Spirit of Bandung as a New Moral Force
“Moral” and “force” do not sit quite well together in my mind. However, motivating men and women, children, youth, and adults of diverse conditions for a sound imperative may result in a world force for the good. That said, in any domain, including the moral one, force has -- ethically -- to be held under permanent scrutiny.
War Prevention Depends on Respecting Invisible Geopolitical Faultlines
If we look back on the major wars of the prior century and forward to the growing menace of a war fought with nuclear weaponry, there is one prominent gap in analysis and understanding. This gap is to my knowledge rarely acknowledged, or even discussed, by political leaders or addressed in the supposedly independent main media platforms in the West.
Australia Adrift and a Foreign Minister All at Sea
On Monday, Penny Wong delivered her much awaited address to the National Press Club. What a disappointment! So many words, and so little substance. One could dismiss the episode as just another case of a minister who’s not up to the task. Unfortunately, the speech points to a deeper ailment – a government oblivious to the dangers ahead, and incapable of steering the ship to safer waters.
On Regaining our Lost Humanity
Never has there been a moment when the future of humanity has been on such a knife edge of destruction in the face of imminent nuclear and ecological threats. Scientists’ warnings on fossil fuels’ existential danger are 40 years old and are eloquently and repeatedly echoed today by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Scientists’ similar longstanding warnings of nuclear disaster are more urgent than ever as fighting continues around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
Reconciling Saudi Arabia and Iran: The Significance of the China Effort
It would be wrong to view the restoration of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran as something that happened suddenly. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, ties between the two important Muslim neighbours have been strained. For the Saudi elite the Revolution was not only anti-monarchical but also a boost to the Shia sect within Islam. For the Iranian revolutionaries, Saudi opposition was motivated largely by its intimate relationship to American and other Western elites and their interests.
Xi Jinping in Moscow: A Historic Partnership in the Making
Since 2010, Xi Jinping has met Vladimir Putin on 40 separate occasions, but this last visit may prove to be their most significant meeting yet. The stakes for both have never been higher. Conscious of the rising risks of confrontation with the United States, Russia and China are intent on nurturing their comprehensive partnership. Each sees it as crucial to strengthening its security and economy and to advancing the idea of a multipolar world.
World BEYOND War: What the United Nations Should Be
I want to begin with three lessons from 20 years ago. First, on the question of launching a war on Iraq, the United Nations got it right. It said no to the war. It did so because people around the world got it right and applied pressure to governments. Whistleblowers exposed U.S. spying and threats and bribes. Representatives represented. They voted no.
Empowering People at a Time of Global Emergency
The unfolding Ukraine War that began in February of last year produced an increased global awareness that the political forces dominating the history of our times are dangerously out of touch. They are not in tune with a set of circumstances threatening the future wellbeing of humanity and the natural habitat of planet earth upon which the survival of the human species depends.