Understanding the ASEAN-Australia summit

The ASEAN-Australia leaders’ summit in Melbourne offers the opportunity for Australia to embrace ASEAN’s ‘inclusive regionalism’ and the organisation’s centrality in mediating the Indo-Pacific struggle between the great powers.

I feel no peace

The plight of the Rohingya people of Myanmar is often relegated to the small print of the foreign news page, but the suffering of thousands under a brutal military regime and the unwillingness of regional neighbours and international agencies to help them is a continuing stain on the world.

Make room, make room

The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022, up from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, adding 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998.

He will not die in vain

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”

Death of a hero

Alexei Navalny had the courage to stand up to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and offer Russia a path out of barbarism. His reward was to be persecuted, exiled, poisoned and now die in a Siberian prison.

The year of the fake election

Eight of the ten most populous countries in the world – Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia and the United States – will hold elections in 2024, but far from celebrating democracy, many of these exercises will merely rubber stamp the governing regime in polls which are neither free nor fair.

Where is Alexei Navalny?

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is reported to have disappeared from the Russian prison colony in which he has been serving a lengthy sentence for opposing the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin.

One man, one vote

The ‘election campaign’ in Russia has already begun, but in an authoritarian terror state, there’s truly only one man with one vote.

Peace depends on defeating Hamas

A truce that leaves Hamas in control of Gaza will not be a permanent solution but merely a temporary pause in which Gazans remain controlled by a terrorist group that will abuse civilian infrastructure and resources to rebuild, rearm and return to its stated objective of destroying Israel.

Better health by 2030

The world needs more and better skilled health workers to attain the United Nation’s sustainable development targets and continue to foster global health beyond 2030.

Hunting down Hamas

Israel’s armed forces are tightening the noose around Hamas in Gaza, but urban warfare is always slow and bloody, and clearing the terrorists’ tunnels will be a difficult job.

No middle way in the Middle East

The current horrors in the Middle East were precipitated by a terrorist attack whose vicious cruelty explains why Israel fights so hard to survive – if it ever lost a war, the Israelis would lose everything, including their lives.