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By Bruce Mountain, Victoria University and Mark Lintermans, University of Canberra The controversial Snowy 2.0 project has mounted a major hurdle after the New South Wales government announced approval for its main works. The pumped hydro venture in southern NSW… Continue Reading →
There have been lockdown protests around the world, and numerous academics and pundits querying government responses to Covid-19, from the ever populist Fox News to highly credentialed epidemiologists. The Australian government, with its inconsistent messaging and highly confusing fear mongering,… Continue Reading →
Australia’s Transport Workers’ Union is calling on the Federal Government to implement a national plan to lower the risk of infection and spread of COVID-19 in aviation as Qantas announces changes which the union claims fall short of measures of… Continue Reading →
By Alan Austin The Coalition won the 2013 federal election beating their chest about Labor’s “debt and deficit”. Thanks to COVID-19, we’re unlikely to see a surplus in our lifetime or our children’s. But, let’s not forget that the current… Continue Reading →
By John Stapleton The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work by photographer Edward Burtynsky, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and cinematographer Nicholas de Pencier. The project’s starting point is the research of the Anthropocene Working Group, an international body of… Continue Reading →
It’s not every day you get to interview one of the world’s most famous authors, someone who created an expression which entered the English language. Catch 22. The Oxford dictionary defines a Catch 22 as: A dilemma or difficult circumstance… Continue Reading →
Kurt Iveson, University of Sydney The Commonwealth government says if enough of us download its COVIDSafe app, restrictions on our movements and activities can be lifted more quickly and life can return to normal. As important as it is to… Continue Reading →
The authorities hounded Billie Holiday to death. Almost 60 years later, venal self-serving governments continue to promote moral panic and public hysteria perpetrating policies they know perfectly well don’t work. The same policies that achieve nothing but empowerment of thugs… Continue Reading →
By John Varano The COVID-19 pandemic has ignited new debate on China’s flagship foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Against the official position of the Australian federal government, the state of Victoria has recently signed on. The Victoria… Continue Reading →
By TOTT News A magazine that publishes about complementary therapies, alternative medicines and protection against 5G was recently taken down from supermarket shelves across the country. Coles and Woolworths bowed to pressure from radio host Ben Fordham to pull ‘What… Continue Reading →
Phfen Shock. The words kept repeating through his head, although he could find no definition, no logical reason. That was the sensation, he discovered, when you arrived at a new place expecting welcome, the village beyond the veil, only to… Continue Reading →
America’s Secret Military Base in Central Australia Tom Gilling Des Ball, or Professor Desmond Ball as he was officially known, passed away from cancer in October, 2016. An Australian expert on defence and security, he was admired within the international… Continue Reading →
By Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur Human beings are family- and community-oriented social animals. Sharing food and drink at home or in restaurants, enjoying the cinema, watching cricket, or appreciating a concert or a play are not optional add-ons but fundamental… Continue Reading →
The Tartan Pimpernel Walter ‘Whacky’ Douglas looked like he was having a fine old time when he was arrested and deported from Thailand in 2014. Douglas, known as “The Tartan Pimpernel” and once described as one of Britain’s ten wealthiest… Continue Reading →
By Ramesh Thakur Cockwomble: A person, usually male, prone to making outrageously stupid statements and/or engaging in inappropriate behaviour while generally having a very high opinion of their own wisdom and importance. Presently exemplified by Agent Orange who dwells in… Continue Reading →
Government spending on EY, Deloitte, PwC and KPMG persists at nosebleed levels although millions of Australians have lost their jobs. New data shows a damaging blow-out in contracts to the four firms, which are also among the largest donors to… Continue Reading →
By John Stapleton Maintain radio silence. There is a Rat. While the rest of us have been waiting for this. Entropy in decaying forms made the mission, well this mission, urgent. From a parallel world. Everything became possible. To be… Continue Reading →
It was the least expected consequence of hyper-connectivity. I need you to do something for me. No one could have predicted any of it. There had always been the rumours. They had always walked amongst us. Down the millennia, spilling… Continue Reading →
Elisabeth Wynhausen was a battle hardened campaigning social justice journalist of the old school of whom in the end, despite our sometimes spirited disagreements, I became enormously fond. In those final years, not long before I, too, departed that cesspit,… Continue Reading →
By John Stapleton This week ten people were arrested in Melbourne for attending a protest against self-isolating, social distancing and tracking apps, the only real political protest in the country since climate demonstrations earlier in the year. The government perpetrated… Continue Reading →
Reporters Without Borders This is an interview with infamous whistleblower Edward Snowden, conducted on behalf of Reporters Without Borders by Filipino journalist Maria Ressa to mark World Press Freedom Day. Maria Ressa: it is a decisive decade for journalism. Edward… Continue Reading →
By John Stapleton With Australia’s economy tilting into collapse and numerous questions now arising over the government’s management of the Covid-19 response, the question of surveillance of whistle blowers, journalists and dissidents is now front and centre of the debate…. Continue Reading →
By John Stapleton The signs were flashing. Like a sea anemone, they spread their tentacles far and wide. And withdrew in an instant. The first sign of danger. For there was always danger He had moved up an echelon. There were… Continue Reading →
By John Stapleton Visitors to Thailand are not warned by travel agents, airlines or their own governments that their passports are highly prized in Thailand, and stand a very good chance of being stolen. Depending on the nationality, a passport… Continue Reading →
By Michael Tanner with Michael West Media Yesterday, the Treasurer warned that restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus are costing Australia $4 billion a week. Is it fair for the younger generation to cop this economic fallout plus shoulder Australia’s biggest economic… Continue Reading →
The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones, Confronting A New Age of Threat, by security experts Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum of the Brookings Institute and Harvard University Law School respectively, brings the reader into a very… Continue Reading →
Reporters Without Borders Launched by Reporters Without Borders, “Tracker 19” is a tool made for an unprecedented global crisis. So named in reference not only to Covid-19 but also article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this project aims… Continue Reading →
Hunting the Famous Everything came in torrents from the past; always disturbed, always flung to the four winds, good times non-existent. The world had become a flat, monochromatic place, leaden grey, terrifying. There was no coherent, single personality. The grey was… Continue Reading →
By Ramesh Thakur with Pearls and Irritations When did the world’s media and politicians become collective versions of Lance Corporal Jones in the British comedy series Dad’s Army, screaming: Don’t panic! Don’t panic!? Colour me contrarian, but since the 2003 Iraq… Continue Reading →
Bernard Collaery exposes the Timor Sea betrayal Witness K is in court this week, in closed-court proceedings nobody is meant to know about. He is on trial for doing the right thing. With the release of his book, Oil Under Troubled… Continue Reading →
An overwhelmed and distrusting Australian population, repeatedly betrayed by their own government, is now being fined and threatened with jail if they gather in public in groups of more than two people. Covid-19 has provided the perfect cover for the introduction… Continue Reading →
Hunting the Famous “Malcolm McLaren is dead. Cancer.” The mother of my children relayed the news in 2010. We were lounging in the muggy heat by a Phnom Penh pool. We were behind 20 foot high mansion walls; the chaos of… Continue Reading →