Month: January 2026

Foreign Minister Penny Wong chants “rules based order” like a sacred hymn. Order? In reality, it’s a squalid, pseudo-legal jargon for a world where might is right. While the US drops depleted uranium on Iraqi […]

When remote islands start to interest chatterboxes in think tanks and bureaucrats in foreign ministries, we can only assume that some matters will be exaggerated over others. With the Chagos Islands, there is one matter […]

By Walt Zlotow   In word and deed, President Trump appears on the cusp of attacking Iran to decapitate its regime and destabilize the entire country of 93 million. Trump threatens war and moves massive military […]

The day the slide broke, it felt, absurdly, disproportionally, like the end of something. It wasn’t a dramatic break. No screaming child. No ambulance. No headline. It was just a council park on an ordinary […]

Trump’s Ponzi War Machine: The US Empire Eats Itself From Caracas to Tehran, the self‑devouring logic of perpetual conflict; and why the blowback will be biblical In my previous piece, I depicted a US on […]

Is free speech a shield for open discourse or a vehicle for hate speech? This piece examines where reason should guide our understanding of that boundary. This article explores how free speech sits between liberty […]

By Denis Hay   Description How China war on poverty and development contrasts with US militarised wars, revealing different uses of power and human outcomes. This article was inspired by Jerry Grey from “Jerry’s Take […]

In an era of complex global challenges, a blueprint for the radical restructuring of the United States government and its role in the world has moved from the fringes of policy workshops to the centre […]

The first thing I remember is the smell. Chlorine, yes, sharp and medicinal, like a promise that the water won’t kill you. But also, sunscreen warmed on skin, hot concrete, wet towels, the faint sweetness […]

ACOSS Media Release New data shows Australia’s housing and homelessness crisis is worsening, prompting calls to curb property investor tax breaks and build more social homes. The Productivity Commission’s Report on Government Services released today […]

There is a curious phenomenon in modern politics whereby leaders rejected by voters at home are reborn as sages abroad. It is a kind of political reincarnation, except instead of coming back as something wiser, […]

Right now, this minute, the USS Abraham Lincoln and nine escort warships; 5,700 sailors, 75 aircraft, 1,200-plus Tomahawk missiles, 7,500 tons of ordnance, are sitting in the Persian Gulf like a firing squad aimed at […]

In Australia, we have, we ‘enjoy’, sometimes ‘suffer’, freedom of religion. Freedom of religion: What does that really mean, especially in the context of the urgent call to somehow inscribe restrictions on that in the […]