Australia has various advantages as an island continent. It is monumental and only accessible in the most impractical ways. It is discouragingly far and almost impossible to invade without a huge investment of personnel and material. The decision to place convicts on the island by the British was audaciously cruel […]
Tag: COVID-19
Yuletide Lockdowns And Cancelling Christmas
The mind changer in Downing Street has struck again. With UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the helm, changes of direction are compulsive, natural and sudden. The U-Turn has become the prosaic expectation. “Too often it looks like this government licks its finger and sticks it in the air to […]
Hoarding The Jabs: The Inequalities Of Vaccine Distribution
Public health is no excuse to keep business and patriotism at bay. Not a very humanitarian sentiment, but then again, healing the sick and preserving the healthy can become parochial, nationalist objectives. The least convincing language of the pandemic has been this baffling and trite notion that “we” and “all […]
The Future Of The Belt & Road Initiative In The Dual Circulation Era
China’s new development paradigm of dual circulation is not a repudiation of its prior BRI-driven model of globalization, but is actually complementary to it. Observers shouldn’t forget that many of the hundreds of billions of dollars of BRI-related loans are for long-term infrastructure investments. The Financial Times published an article […]
Julian Assange: Covid Risks and Campaigns for Pardon
Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities while being menaced by a COVID-19 outbreak. From November 18, Assange, along with inmates in House Block 1 at Belmarsh […]
Jab Me If You Can: How Political Endorsements Defeat Vaccinations
Will they ever learn? When former US Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton announced that they would publicly take a vaccine against COVID-19, National Public Radio seemed impressed. “Who better to promote a product than a former president? How about three?” On SiriusXM’s The Joe Madison Show, […]
Deglobalisation
The virtual G20 summit highlighted the death of globalisation, despite all the conscientious efforts of those involved, and it highlighted that deglobalisation in the post-COVID world has already taken place. This isn’t about some conspiracy against the conventional “American unipolar world” (in the form of a Pax Americana) or an […]
Russia’s ‘Vaccine Diplomacy’ Is The Basis Of Its New Global Outreach Campaign
Russia is arguably beating the US, the Gates Foundation, and every other competitor by far in in the so-called “vaccine race”, especially as regards the growing number of partnerships that it’s clinched across the world to produce and distribute the Sputnik V vaccine, which is entirely due to it prioritizing […]
Covid Offices And The Religion Of Remote Work
Masks can prove liberating. The hidden face affords security. Obnoxious authority breathes better, hiding in comfort. Behind the material, confidence finds a home. While tens of millions of jobs have been lost to the novel coronavirus globally, security services, surveillance officers and pen pushers are thriving, policing admissions to facilities, […]
A Dedicated Obsession: Washington’s Continuing Iran Sanctions Regime
One dogma that is likely to persist in US foreign policy during a Biden presidency will be the sanctions regime adopted towards Iran. Every messianic state craves clearly scripted enemies, and the demonology about the Islamic Republic is not going to go begging. Elliot Abrahams, the current US special representative […]
Fur Trades And Pandemics: Coronavirus And Denmark’s Great Mink Massacre
“The worst case scenario is a new pandemic, starting all over again out of Denmark,” came the words of a grave Kåre Mølbak, director of the Danish health authorities, the State Serum Institute. According to the Institute, COVID-19 infections were registered on 216 mink farms on November 6. Not only […]
The SCO Council Of Heads Of States Summit
Under Russia’s SCO Chairmanship 2019-20, The Summit of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is scheduled to be held on November 10 as a video conference due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The SCO leaders will deliberate the strengthening and further Development of cooperation […]
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