“Limitation is essential to authority.  A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.” – Lord Acton

It is a study both troublesome and perplexing.  To what end can a state trample on human rights ostensibly to preserve such …

Scandalous underpayment has become common fare at Australia’s universities.  An inverse relationship can be identified here: the wealthier the institution, the more likely it will short change staff and avoid coughing up the cash.  If anything is coughed up, it …

Stop Golden Rice Network (SGRN) will be launching its week long activity to protest the possible commercialization of Golden Rice this week. The campaign will comprise different sets of activities per day and will conclude on August 8, the “International …

The state of Victoria is being sealed off from the rest of Australia.  On Tuesday, at 11.59pm, the border with New South Wales will be shut with publicised resoluteness.  It is happening at the insistence of politicians across the country …

It all looked like it was going so well for Australia and Victoria, in particular.  They could point to the mishandling of the Ruby Princess, a cruise ship that docked in Sydney and whose passengers disembarked chocked with coronavirus, precipitating …

There has been a lot of noise made in Australia about the need for broader protections when it comes to the fourth estate and the way it covers national security matters.  In a country lacking a backbone in terms of …

The British conservationist Gerald Durrell once remarked that the koala was “the most boring of animals”.  Its brain size, proportionally the smallest of any mammal, evolved to cope with its slow metabolism.  But the spectacle of these singed, toasted animals …

There are few sadder sights in international relations than a leadership in search of devils and hobgoblins. But such sights tend to make an appearance when specialists in threat inflation either get elected to office or bumped up the hierarchies …

It is one of the oldest professions, stacked with rules, conventions and protocols.  It is also tribal and hierarchical.  The law, presided over its executors, the judges, do not do transparency well.  It stands to reason: according to Charles Dickens, …

The death of at least 20 members of the Indian military during non-firearm clashes with China along their disputed frontier in Kashmir has been extremely demoralizing for this already distressed institution, but it’s all due to Modi’s major Himalayan mistake …

Tensions have risen sharply on the China-India border. The two countries – which have the largest populations and the largest armies in the world, as well as nuclear weapons – started a recent conflict in the Himalayas, causing the death …

It has long been said that countries in Southeast Asia take a dim view of the fourth estate.  Various legal measures have been deployed against those irritable scribblers over the years: old, colonial-era security legislation; defamation suits; traditional forms of …

Entering a university should be, to some degree, unsafe.  Away from the gazing eyes of parents, institutional structures for the child, the entrant faces, or at least should face, the prospect of something truly daunting: To think, to entertain discomfort, …

Pakistani Chief Of Army Staff (COAS) Bajwa visited the Afghan capital of Kabul earlier this week for talks with the country’s leadership as part of his country’s efforts to facilitate the ongoing peace process in the neighboring state, with the …

The recent outbreak of coronavirus has already entrenched approximately 74,281 confirmed positive cases, with 2,415 deaths in India. It is not the aggressive virus that is haunting the nation alone, but an artificially inserted strain of communalism within it, that …

Sixty years ago this month, in June 1960, the largest and longest popular protests in Japan’s modern history reached a stunning climax. At issue was an attempt by Japan’s US-backed conservative government to pass a revised version of the US-Japan …

Hell has, in its raging fires, ringside seats for those who like their spreadsheets.  The seating, already peopled by those from human resources, white collar criminals and accountants, becomes toastier for those who make errors with those spreadsheets.  Even in …

The Australian press and a chorus of the country’s politicians painted a misguided, blotched picture: the Scott Morrison government had achieved its goal of convincing members of the World Health Assembly that an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 was …

It promised to be bruising to both dignity and wallet.  However brazen Australian politicians have been drumming up support for an international inquiry into the origins of the novel coronavirus, the first ones to be slapped in anger would have …

After the warlord period of 15th century, Japan was united by a few families then by a shogun family.  The period is called Edo period.  They disarmed civilians and established a mild caste system.  The country was closed except for …

Introduction

The series of mass protests that have rocked Jakarta and other major urban centers in Indonesia in September and October of 2019 and the state’s repressive response to the protests are indicative of a worrying trend affecting Indonesian democracy.…

One Strong

Abe Shinzo has exercised extraordinary influence over the Japanese state. On 20 November 2019, as he passed his 2,587th day in office (over eight years) he became modern Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister. But what are the sources of …

Later this month, India’s Supreme Court will hold a lengthy hearing on the commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) mustard, which would be the country’s first GM food crop. The court has asked the chair of the Technical Expert Committee to …

Singapore, a small but well-armed island nation in Southeast Asia, with 72,000 troops in the army, was approved by the United States in early January 2020 to acquire 12 F-35Bs, along with necessary equipment such as spare engines, parts, electronics, …

A common claim is that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are essential to agriculture if we are to feed an ever-growing global population. Supporters of genetically engineered (GE) crops argue that by increasing productivity and yields, this technology will also help …

They are disgruntled and have every right to be.  Whatever one’s feelings about tennis, expecting athletes to perform in subpar conditions is a rank matter that should see officials taken to task. But administrators of a game are often distant …

India’s demand that thousands of Kashmiri detainees sign a bond that commits them to not to make any comments on “recent events” as a condition for their release after they were previously apprehended without charge for five months already is …

The Indian authorities are right in saying that the protesters are misled, but they’re wrong in claiming that this is because of fake news about the “Citizenship (Amendment) Bill” since the truth is that most of the country was duped …

Cocooned as it is from the world of science scepticism, the handling of the bush fire catastrophe unfolding in Australia is going to one of the more notable (non)achievements of the Morrison government.  They were warned; they were chided; they …

Tens of millions of Indian workers, youth and rural toilers joined a one-day nationwide general strike yesterday to protest the Bharatiya Jananta Party (BJP) government’s pro-investor and communalist policies.

Since winning re-election last May, with massive big business and corporate …

India’s Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu made a curious comment on 28 December. “Express dissent in a democratic way,” he said. Before he became the Vice President – a largely symbolic role – Naidu was the President of the …

In India, the ‘development’ paradigm is premised on moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like the number of jobs required. The aim …

We found an interesting Tweet thread, which has some very interesting facts about the Australian bushfires. For the sake of not distorting the thread as it’s not our Twitter account, this thread is published here unamended (apologies for the bad …

As 2020 approached, the sense that the barbarians were not only at the gates but had breached the walls of indifference had come to the fore.  But these were not conventional human forms; rather, they were the agents of conflagration, …

It might have come across as written by a killjoy, but geographer Amy Donovan’s observations on “volcano tourism” in Geo, published by the Royal Geographical Society in 2018, remain timely.  Be wary, her study suggests, of this particular brand …

Education has always been a political matter, whatever the apolitical advocates of it think it is.  In Australia, it has proven sectarian, ideological, and skewed, often on the issue of funding.  At the schooling level, private institutions receive more worldly …

The Prime Minister of Australia is fuming.  Having made his mark on Australian politics by being the mining sector’s most avid defender, Scott Morrison was disturbed by the week’s events in Melbourne that saw clashes between police and protesters …

The nationwide outrage that erupted following the mob lynching of a student who criticized his Indian-backed government’s recent lopsided deals with New Delhi earlier this month and the Bangladeshi military killing a member of the Indian “Border Security Force” in …

It was always a probable fact: the dark consequences of having what is termed in Australia a “racing” industry, where breeds do battle on the track, sponsored and watered by the money of an industry that sees no sign of …

Introduction

At the New Year’s public opening of the Imperial Palace on January 2 1969, a Japanese war veteran by the name of Okuzaki Kenzō (1920–2005) fired three pachinko pinballs from a slingshot aimed at Emperor Hirohito who was standing …

Abstract

Aotearoa New Zealand provides an important example of successful citizen activism in the form of anti-nuclear peace advocacy. The collective efforts by peace actors over several decades resulted in the successful demand for a nuclear-free nation. This paper highlights …

The remedial measures announced by the government in and after the 2019–20 budget reflect its limited understanding of the economy as the performance of the fi nancial markets alone. But, to revive the decelerating real economy, the state needs to …

The protestor of school age sported a placard featuring a distorted caricature of Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison: “Scomo was liking it hot”.  A glorious spring day, and a gathering was already fussing and buzzing outside the Victorian State …

The pigeon flapped in desperation, moving across Melbourne’s lavish Capitol Theatre in fits and starts.  It was more alarmed than anything else at the address being given by former Australian football (soccer to some) player Craig Foster.  Foster has …

The draconian controls imposed in contemporary Kashmir and the slow-motion ethnic cleansing taking place there in response to its indigenous people’s popular self-determination movement were first pioneered by what India did in Punjab 35 years ago when attempting to suppress …

Like Timor-Leste, West Papua, commonly subsuming both Papua and West Papua, remains a separate ethnic entity, acknowledged as such by previous colonial powers.  Its Dutch colonial masters, in preparing to leave the region in the 1950s, left the ground fertile …

Cringe worthy, a touch molesting in sentiment: this was the celebratory occasion of the gathering of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his East Timorese counterparts.  During the course of its history, the state has been pillaged and bombed, its …

Australian immigration laws have tended to be at the mercy of political, not legal, considerations.  Those arriving are at the historical mercy of the minister with that portfolio, one ever motivated by the expediency that position brings.  Judges, as far …

It was predictably ugly: in tone, in regret, and, in some ways, disgust.  Australia emerged from the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting isolated, the true spoiler of the party which saw 17 states facing the obstinacy of one.  It had …

The Sikhs For Justice’s legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannun released a video in which he reaffirmed his organization’s support for the Kashmiris’ self-determination struggle and called on all Sikhs in the Indian Army to refuse any orders they may be …

India’s revocation of Kashmir’s relative “autonomy” embodies everything that its new “Israeli” ally wishes it could do to Palestine such as eliminating its separate political status and giving non-residents of the UNSC-recognized disputed territory the right to buy property there …

India celebrates its Independence Day on 15 August every year, but that occasion isn’t seen the same way by its Sikh minority, which found itself victimized by the state ever since and even subjugated to a campaign of genocide against …

The self-professed “world’s largest democracy” is rapidly descending into fascism after the lower house of the Indian parliament passed a bill granting the government the right to declare anyone a “terrorist” without due process, with the potential promulgation of these …

Taro Yamamoto: A young, unconventional, new politician has appeared in Japan, becoming the eye of a typhoon, just as Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Jeremy Corbyn did.

He clearly stands for anti-globalism, anti-austerity, and anti-government, set out with 10 candidates, and …

A ‘climate crisis’ has been declared in a special session during the 5th Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) Leaders’ Summit and first Conference, echoing the global movement declaring ‘climate emergency.’

***

A ‘climate crisis’ has been declared in a special …

The Hindu, one of India’s leading newspapers, reported that an unnamed Vietnamese diplomatic source briefed New Delhi about their country’s latest bilateral dispute with China in the South China Sea. The outlet has a history of publishing unconfirmed statements but …