Open Dialogue Research Journal
In the unpardonable ecosystem of graft, favours and corruption that is defence contracting, defence conferencing and all matters tanking over the thinking – in short, the world of defence – the convenient delusion will always have truck over the inconvenient empirical. Phantoms are elevated and celebrated; bogeymen are treasured by […]
Australia’s commitment to the AUKUS security partnership has once again become the subject of intense political debate following confirmation that Canberra will acquire secondhand Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the United States instead of a combination of new and existing vessels. While the government insists that the revised arrangement strengthens national […]
It remains a prickly reminder that Australia remains an embarrassed vassal of power, annexed to the security interests of another state basking in imperial and fast diminishing splendour. Pine Gap, known more technically as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), is a largely US-operated effort in Alice Springs, Central […]
He can hardly be blamed for being given the brief by his Prime Minister. King Charles III is in the United States on a repair job, playing diplomatic handyman and mender for Sir Keir Starmer and the US-UK alliance so long regarded as special. On the occasion of the 250th […]
With each dragged out day, President Donald Trump begins resembling a mad emperor who has not only taken leave of his senses but leave of everything else. Having hitched his wagon to the Israeli program of chaos and destabilisation in the Middle East, he is stuck in a war he […]
There were never the sharpest negotiators in the room, resembling a facsimile of Bertie Wooster in desperate need of the good advice of his manservant Jeeves. The Australian defence establishment has yet to find a wise head who will finally tell them that the A$368 billion AUKUS pact between the […]
On the surface, abducting a Head of State is a piratical act eschewed by States. A Head of State enjoys absolute immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction, known as ratione personae, at least till the term of office concludes. The International Court of Justice was clear enough about this principle in […]
Over the past two decades, the digital revolution has transformed childhood in ways no previous generation experienced. Smartphones, social networks, and constant connectivity have become a normal part of teenage life. At the same time, diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have risen sharply across many countries. This parallel […]
It has become a wallowing cringe. The extolling of multi-culti values, the incessant self-praise of diversity, variety and cosmopolitanism, only to then impose, in the name of such values, a restrictive regime of speech, language and conduct seemed suitable to – who else? – the jerky authorities. In diversity we […]
The Swedish police have promised it will go nowhere, but the attempt by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to draw attention to the inappropriateness of María Corina Machado as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient raises a few salient matters. On December 17, Assange submitted a criminal complaint to the Swedish Economic […]
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