It looks as though everyone will be happy to sign the next global climate agreement, due in 2015. Why? Because there will be very little in the agreement that will force countries to act on climate change…
The Falkland Island may be cold, windswept and remote, but they retain major geo—political importance and this weekend’s referendum on sovereignty will define the relationship between the UK and Argentina for years to come.
Felipe Trueba/EPA
History is about to be made on the Falkland Islands, which holds its first official sovereignty referendum this weekend. Some 1,600 Islanders will be asked whether they wish to retain their current political…
Mourners accompany the remains of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez through the streets of Caracas.
EPA/David Fernandez
The recent death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez from cancer comes as no great surprise. The former military leader had rarely been seen in the public eye since December last year when he travelled…
Hugo Chávez was public persona was crafted over years of domestic revolution and international rebellion.
Boris Vergara/EPA
In Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has lost the most iconic leader the country has seen since Simón Bolívar fought for independence from Spain. The rest of the world has lost one of the most polarising leaders…
We were delighted to be elected to the security council, now we must make the most of our tenure.
AAP/Andrew Gombert
Now that Australia has taken its seat on the UN Security Council, it is worth considering how we might make a difference. Former diplomat Bruce Haig has recently dismissed Australia’s new role as chair…
Japanese voters are set to cast their votes next week – but will anything change?
EPA/Franck Robichon
It used to be said that Japan had a first-rate economy with third-rate politics. Ahead of the hastily announced general election later this month, it’s clear that the second half of this saying is still…
All eyes are on Doha, but most of the action is taking place in Asia.
almasudi/Flickr
The irony of the world’s climate change negotiators meeting in Doha this week cannot be lost on anyone taking an interest in climate change.
Qatar is hardly a model of the low carbon economy. With annual…
Global energy use must grow substantially every year to keep up with population – our decarbonisation efforts aren’t making inroads.
Carolyn Chan
The Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, announced on Friday that Australia is “ready” to join a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework…
Failing to reach a decision on protecting Antarctic waters doesn’t mean the process is over.
Dean Lewins/AAP
The annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) wound up in Hobart on Thursday last week without declaring a system of marine protected areas (MPAs…
Rape as a weapon of war needs to stop – but how can local and international communities help?
EPA/Nicolas Postal
During the chaos of war, rape is used by the powerful as a deliberate strategy to destroy any opposition. The law, seemingly, has little role to play. After all, during conflict the normal rules of law…
Humans as well as animals are affected by climate change. A treaty could keep them safe and reduce forced migration.
AAP
Climate change will lead to significant human displacement. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other groups warn that the effects – including rising sea levels, heavier floods, more…
On her recent visit to Thailand, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said her country had an urgent need for basic education.
EPA/Barbara Walton
On June 1, after decades of struggle to be a legitimate voice for the Burmese people, Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Bangkok. She did not raise a call to arms or popular…
Refugees are created by wars and persecution. People flee their homes because their governments will not, or cannot, protect them from harm and allow them to live in peace.
Under international law, as…
A simple desire to understand the way the world works has landed some Iranian researchers in hot water.
On a given day, your typical physicist is mainly preoccupied with trying to understand the intimate secrets of the universe. As with most academics, we get to visit one another in parts of the world to…
The coalition needs to tread more lightly when it comes to Indonesia.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
In his budget reply speech last week, opposition leader Tony Abbott said Indonesia was to be a “vital partner in Australia’s future”.
He’s right, and for now, at the government-to-government level, Australia…
Rudd’s commitment to Australia’s bid for a UN security council seat must continue under Bob Carr.
EPA/Jason Szenes
Now we have a new foreign minister, some have suggested it’s time for Australia to give up its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
During his time as prime minister and foreign minister…
The conflict in Sri Lanka has not captured global attention but remains one of the bloodiest since WWII.
EPA/STR
There is a growing danger that the political leaders responsible for the greatest single atrocity of recent years will suffer no consequences. Journalists, not governments, have taken a lead in raising…
A proposed United Nations panel could give biodiversity the same profile as climate change.
Dano/Flickr
It’s looking increasingly likely that this will be the year the United Nations introduces an Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) – a group similar to the IPCC, but…
Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is part of a renewed push to reclaim the Falkland Islands.
EPA/Leo La Valle
Argentinean wordsmith Jorge Luis Borges could be cryptic. But his powers of perception were always daunting. Borges came up with an excellent description of the 10 week conflict in 1982 that took place…
In Iceland, the whale is just another fish.
reutC/flickr
On December 7, three whaling ships set out from Japan and kicked off the 2011 whaling season. For the next few months, Australian eyes will be focused on conflict in the Southern Ocean as the annual ritual…
Mussolini made the trains run on time. But having a strong leader is risky.
Flickr/Galaxy FM
“If I Ruled The World” was a tune made famous decades ago by English comedian and singer Harry Secombe who sang of making every day the first day of spring as well as other miraculous improvements. It…
Solomon Island women were excluded from the peace-making process after the civil war.
AAP Image/Lloyd Jones
There is a profound silence in conflict. Women’s voices are absent. They are excluded from decision-making and peace processes across the world’s trouble spots.
This exclusion not only perpetuates political…
Taxing international aviation emissions could help pay our climate change bill.
Flickr/FatMandy
Wealthy countries have committed to mobilise up to $US100 billion a year by 2020 for climate change action in developing countries.
This is almost as much as the total amount of aid provided globally…
It’s wrong to assume that China makes no effort to reform its political system because its culture does not support such change.
Flickr/Katherina
The skepticism of contemporary China’s multilayered and painful efforts to achieve legal and political reform makes many wonder if democracy can really grow in the Chinese soil. This is such a haunting…
Barack Obama’s life may be fascinating, but he isn’t as powerful as we think.
AFP/Saul Loeb
Sarah Palin’s voice, both in sound and content, still has the power to stop me dead in my tracks with fear and bewilderment. Her game of will she/won’t she run for the US Presidency has ended, but not…
The East Asia Summit could be a useful start on the road towards a ‘concert of powers’.
EPA/Christophe Archambault/Pool
AUSTRALIA IN ASIA: In the eighth part of our series, Sandy Gordon of the Australian National University looks at the possibility of an agreement which would draw the key Asian states together.
The CIA…
French President Nicolas Sarkozy should be worried about the upcoming elections.
EPA/Yoan Valat
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has a tight fight on his hands. He’ll be taking on the Socialist Party’s Francois Hollande in the elections next year. And he could struggle to get a second term.
Four…
15-M started in Spain, but it has sparked protests around the globe.
EPA/Jesus Diges
This weekend Spain will see the return of its “revolution”. Those involved in the 15-M movement will once again take to the streets en masse to demand urgent reforms. Under the motto “united for a global…
Young people who feel excluded from mainstream politics often join extreme groups to ‘belong’.
AFP/Wojtek Radwanski
Many young people in Europe think violent protest can be a legitimate response to the political system they feel no connection to. They believe government pays very little attention to them and have very…
America and Australia have made moves towards defending against online attacks.
Johnson Cameraface
How worried should we be about cyber warfare?
The latest amendment to the ANZUS treaty between the US and Australia, announced at the end of last week suggests it’s a genuine threat to the national security…
We all think we know what a child soldier looks like, but we’d be wrong.
AFP/Georges Gobet
The commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda during the terrible conflict in the early 1990s has put forward legislation in Canada to help former child soldiers seek refuge there.
During…
The capture of Colonel Gadaffi’s son was celebrated by crowds in Benghazi.
EPA/STR
The effort to overthrow Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi appears to be reaching its climax with key elements of his military forces surrendering to the rebels and senior members of his regime* in rebel hands…
London’s burning: but the rioters had a point.
EPA/Kerim Okten
The powers that be describe the street violence and social upheaval which took place in England’s major cities last week as “mindless”. Yet it was anything but.
Prime Minister David Cameron, among others…
Change will again come to the White House. And it will come courtesy of another Texan.
EPA/Alex Jones/pool
We now know the name of the next president of the United States: Rick Perry. The range of poor choices facing Republicans – from the bland Mitt Romney to the polarising Michele Bachman – has been transformed…
Competing interest make Antartica’s future uncertain.
Martha de Jong Lantink
When does “national interest” equal “national sovereignty”? Apparently when Australia looks south.
That position seems to be emerging from think tanks and senior government officials in the stop/start…
Stock markets around the world plummeted after news of the US credit rating downgrade (EPA/FRANK RUMPENHORST)
Without the firing of a single shot in anger, a country has been, at least in a sense, brought to its economic knees. The capitalist system, with variations and aberrations, is now reacting.
Shares are…
The lawyer for the self-confessed Norway killer, Anders Breivik will enter a plea of insanity AFP photo/Facebook – Youtube.
Societies, if we are to take the Freudian line, prefer to subordinate chaotic urges in favour of dull order. Civilization implies stability. By the nineteenth century, human society was digesting a range…
Malaysia’s history with human rights spells disaster for its refugee deal with Australia AAP Image/Karlis Salna.
On Monday, Australia and Malaysia signed a deal that will mean 800 refugees that have arrived in Australia will be swapped with 4,000 verified refugees from Malaysia.
This deal from both Australian and…
The suspected killer, Anders Behring Breivik’s extreme views motivated his twin attacks on Norway AFP/Facebook.
As the self-confessed perpetrator of the Norway attacks, Anders Behring Breivik is due to face court today, The Conversation spoke with Dr Binoy Kampmark, lecturer in Global Studies at RMIT about whether…
Anti-US feelings run high after drone attacks in north-western Pakistan EPA.
Washington’s decision last week to suspend $800 million in military aid to Pakistan should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has been following recent developments in the US-Pakistan relationship…
The final edition of the News of the World carried a full page apology to its readers.
AFP/Ian Nicholson
The dramatic events around the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s London News of the World are unprecedented in a major news media organisation in an advanced industrial country. A newspaper closed…
India will need to look after its own slum areas, now Australia is starting to withdraw aid.
Flickr/lecercle
The Australian aid program is a multi-million dollar enterprise. It has doubled in size over the past five years to $4,836 million in the current budget, and it’s still growing.
A comprehensive look at…
Australians don’t know enough about Indonesia to judge its farming practices.
AFP/Sonny Tumbelaka
We need to learn more about the countries we are exporting livestock to, or swapping refugees with. Two recent publicly-funded television documentaries have revealed just how little most Australians know…
The phones of victims of the London bombings were allegedly hacked by staff at the News of the World.
AFP/Dylan Martine/WPA pool
The British newspaper The News of the World is being investigated over allegations of hacking into the phones of relatives of the victims of the bombings in London in July 2005. It’s also thought those…
Former Securency chief financial officer Mitchell Anderson, left, is facing foreign bribery charges.
The laying of charges against two Reserve Bank of Australia subsidiaries and six of their former senior managers for alleged bribery of foreign officials represents a truly historic moment in Australian…
Many Greeks are ashamed by what has happened to their country.
EPA/Orestis Panagiotou
Athens is no longer considered by scholars as the birthplace of democracy but all of a sudden it has become the epicentre of a powerful political earthquake rocking the foundations of every democracy in…
Colonel Gaddafi is a brutal tyrant, but his arrest warrant is a political move.
EPA/Sabri Elmhedwi
Arrest warrants have been issued for the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Seif al-Islam, and Libya’s intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi. It follows a referral by the United Nations Security Council…
Mexico’s Agustin Carstens is expected to lose out to France’s Christine Lagarde.
AAP
The International Monetary Fund executive board will complete interviews of the two leading candidates to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn this week, with the aim of picking a new managing director by June…
OPEC president Mohammad Aliabadi believes speculation in futures is inflating oil prices. He is wrong.
AAP
OPEC Conference president Mohammad Aliabadi recently joined a chorus of international observers to blame speculation as the source of ongoing volatility in the global oil market.
Speaking at an OPEC Conference…
The protest which started here in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid in mid-May has now swept throughout Spain.
AAP/Pedro Armestre
On 15 May 2011, one week before Spanish regional and municipal elections, young people gathered on Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square to start a protest known as 15-M movement.
It has since acquired a universal…
Israelis have a right to live in peace. But Israel has no ‘right to exist.’
AAP/Gali Tibbon
Since the 1970s, Israel’s leaders have insisted that their Palestinian interlocutors acknowledge Israel’s “right to exist” as a pre-condition for negotiations on a settlement of the conflict.
Amongst…
Greece would be better off defaulting on its debt than languishing under tough austerity measures.
AAP
A poll of international investors last month found that 85% expect Greece to default on its debt this year. As market expectations go, that is very high.
Moody’s has since downgraded Greece’s already…
Brown: “I’m not here to fear being bitten”
AAP and John Keane
Welcome to “In Conversation”, the first in a series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life.
Today Politics Professor John Keane is in conversation with Senator…
China can easily rouse its banks, but awakening its consumers will be tougher.
AAP
West Australian Premier Colin Barnett’s bold claim on Friday that his state was looking “over the horizon” past Canberra to forge stronger links with China capped off a few weeks of strong rhetoric from…
Christine Lagarde is the favourite to become the IMF’s new chief.
AAP
Speculation last week that Paul Keating and Peter Costello could nominate for the top job at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was a mere distraction, but the hoopla did manage to highlight a crucial…
Under the rule of law bin Laden should have been captured.
AFP/Jim Watson
In the extensive debate about the killing of Osama bin Laden there has been very little discussion of the legal (and possibly moral) aspects of the US operation. This is especially true in the United States…
