Banned from entering Australia by the federal government, former United States intelligence analyst turned whistleblower Chelsea Manning instead delivered her message of hope to audiences in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane via video link.
The Australian immigration department denied Manning a visa on the basis of failing “the character test”, citing as grounds the time she spent in jail for leaking documents that exposed US war crimes in Iraq.
Deposed Liberals Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull described the factional implosion in his party as “a kind of madness”. It sure looked like it — and there may be even more “madness” ahead.
A lot of people are alarmed at the rate at which prime ministers get changed these days. Personally, I’d be happy to have a new PM every week so long as none of them torture any innocent people in isolated offshore prison camps, writes Carlo Sands.
Shortly after #libspill, United States President Donald Trump tweeted his congratulations to Scott Morrison, who replaced Malcolm Turnbull as Australian prime minister on August 24. The two have a lot in common.
With overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the new 2019 budget for the military is 13% larger than in 2017. It is even bigger than what Donald Trump had proposed, writes Barry Sheppard.
The US spends more on its armed forces than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Britain, France and Japan combined, according to the United Nations. About 17% of the nation’s entire US$4 trillion budget goes to the military.
Not long after the FBI raid on Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen’s office and home, journalist Adam Davidson made a bold prediction in the New Yorker: “We are now in the end stages of the Trump Presidency.”
It is now abundantly clear that the Donald Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy towards parents with children seeking asylum in the US involves separating children from their parents, keeping the children in the US and deporting the parents, writes Barry Sheppard in San Francisco.
Democratic Party politicians and media outlets that reflect their positions have attacked President Donald Trump on certain issues with arguments to the right of him.
One example is United States policy on North Korea. Trump has been taken to task for meeting with Kim Jong-un and initiating discussions with North Korea over its possession of nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.
The charge is that even meeting with Kim was wrong because it allegedly legitimises and “prettifies” him.
A meeting of 80 anti-racist and anti-war activists, unionists, students and Greens MPs launched a protest alliance on July 25 to prepare for US President Donald Trump's potential visit to Australia in November.
The alliance wants to create a strong, broad-based opposition to Trump and the Australian government's invitation for him to visit. It appears Trump plans to visit after the APEC meeting in November in Papua New Guinea, possibly on November 19.
The Washington insider crowd was absolutely outraged and appalled by Donald Trump’s performance at Helsinki, Juan Cole notes, as he violated all the principles of American hawkishness.
Trump sat next to Vladimir Putin, leader of a rival power, signaling that Russia is a peer. He sided with Putin over the assessments of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other US intelligence organizations.
Donald Trump is the rallying symbol for the new nationalist hard right globally. Andy Stowe writes that his visit to England and Scotland on the weekend of July 13 and 14 was an opportunity to gauge just how much he is loathed.
It was a test of strength between the left and neo-fascist right in Scotland as well as several English town and cities. It was a big victory for the left.
US President Donald Trump made a fool of himself when he stood next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that’s not the only thing he did in Europe. An editorial in US Socialist Worker, abridged below, says the left needs to keep its eye on the deeper threat.
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