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Keywords: Commonwealth

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • INTERNATIONAL

    The Tampa legacy 20 years on

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 07 September 2021
    23 Comments

    It took 438 desperate human beings upon the overladen wooden fishing boat, the KM Palapa, to present Australia’s Howard government in August 2001 with an electoral opportunity. At first, there was feigned ignorance from Canberra about any signs of desperation. The vessel, lacking power, lay some 100km off Christmas Island. Despite a coast guard plane noting men jumping up and down on the roof in a frenzy, nothing was initially done.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Civilization as intervention

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 August 2021
    10 Comments

    The New York Times editorial on 15 August was all about tragedy in describing the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. ‘Tragic because the American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule proved to be just that: a dream.’

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Prison time for perpetrators but justice eludes victim of modern slavery in Australia

    • Rebecca Dominguez
    • 02 August 2021
    4 Comments

    Last month, a man and a woman were sentenced to between six and eight years in jail for intentionally possessing and exercising the right of ownership over a slave between 2007 and 2015 in Mount Waverley, Victoria. After arriving in Australia from the Tamil Nadu province in India on a 30-day tourist visa, the woman’s passport was taken from her and she was forced to cook, clean and care for the couple’s three children on an average $3 per day. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The amoral world of Donald Rumsfeld

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 22 July 2021
    13 Comments

    The late Donald Rumsfeld, twice US Secretary of Defense, a Fortune 500 CEO, and congressman for three terms, did not let evidence and the firmness of facts trouble him. If he had a cause to pursue he would. Morality was merely an impediment to service.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Murugappan family and the cynicism of refugee politics

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 24 June 2021
    27 Comments

    The Murugappan family have found themselves in the middle of this nasty tangle, their fates politicised and manipulated.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The High Court’s surrender to the Morrison-Dutton immigration detention regime

    • Frank Brennan
    • 24 June 2021
    11 Comments

    Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    India travel ban: citizenship comes a distant second place

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 11 May 2021
    10 Comments

    While the ban is unique in its severity, it is not divorced from a broader tendencies as to how citizenship has been appraised during pandemic times. Public health and safety have been prioritised over the standard liberties associated with citizenship.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Are we finally seeing action on Aboriginal water justice?

    • Cristy Clark
    • 15 April 2021
    4 Comments

    Recent research has documented some of the historical causes of the ongoing absence of water justice. When the land rights agenda emerged towards the end of the 20th century, deliberate decisions were made to restrict access mostly to land without water rights.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Adani imperils human rights, as well as the environment

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 13 April 2021
    2 Comments

    In May 2019, Adani Ports entered into an agreement to construct, operate and transfer land held by the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) military conglomerate for 50 years in an investment valued at US$290 million. Such corporate conduct has broader implications. Investing in Adani is not only environmentally unsound but imperilling of human rights.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Vaccine equity and the intellectual property wars

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 March 2021
    4 Comments

    The COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility) scheme, touted as a levelling measure against inequalities in vaccine access, is looking increasingly faulty. But one suggested mechanism to assist in achieving vaccine equity lies in the field of intellectual property rights.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A legacy worth leaving

    • Najma Sambul
    • 18 March 2021
    21 Comments

    I never had to confront the idea that the British monarchy — and the British Empire at large — was built on racist principles and benefitted from racist practices. Not until it came from the mouth of one of the Royal family’s favourite iconoclasts, Meghan Markle.

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  • MEDIA

    Unfriending Australia: Facebook takes action

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 23 February 2021
    2 Comments

    Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.

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