The War on Terror and democracy’s faustian bargain
FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus. Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease,…
FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus. Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease,…
Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too,…
The Samoan Government has announced that Australian Governor-General, Quentin Bryce, will visit the country next week as part of a Pacific tour that also includes Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Solomon…
Yesterday, Thursday I received a phone call from Captain Fred Martens, the man who spent a 1,000 days in jail, having been wrongly convicted of an offence under Australia’s Child…
Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty is both famous and obscure. A twentieth-century political theory, containing two canonical sentences: "Sovereign is he who decides on…
…the threats we face are no longer from known enemies, nations that have fleets or missiles or bombers that we can see come to the United States, nations that can…
On 18 January 2012 the Solomon Star reported that RAMSI apologist and the former Solomon Islands Finance Minister and Member of Parliament for West New Georgia and Vona Vona, Peter…
The following is an extract from a news article titled Keelty's rage at Moti manoeuvres which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on October12, 2006. Mr Keelty said yesterday he…
Congratulations Julian Moti QC on your well-deserved win over Australian racism and hypocrisy! "If the criminal justice system is corrupted, or otherwise interfered with, a community is left with few…
There are many reasons behind Blak and Black’s decision to attempt to identify and expose Australian Federal Police (AFP) corruption where we can, the main reason however is the relative power…
Since writing my article Australia in the Solomons: A case study in 21st Century Gunboat Diplomacy I have had the opportunity to do some more research into AusAID and its…
Update: Subsequent to writing this post the Solomon Start has published an article which confirms much of what Blak and Black has been arguing concerning RAMSI's role in the Solomon…
““Many dangerous youths would normally yell and scream at us “we do not need you RAMSI, go home”. Mr Onisimo said there is a failure to regain the trust and…
Post update The Australian Government has today 28 September, 2011 at 7:30PM announced that it has invoked its right to immunity from prosecution in the Solomon Islands over a secret…
When we look at a map of the world’s major trouble spots we see or at least I see, a white footprint superimposed over each and every one of these…
The progress of human society, has in different ages, presented abundance of horrors and abundance of vices, which in treating history properly, we are obliged to pass over gently, and…
The following is a modified version of an article which first appeared in the Fiji Sun on 12 September, 2011 and which Blak and Black has linked to since publishing…
“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris” (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.) I have long loved John Donne’s Meditation XVII; it remains pause for…
I have borrowed the title from Michael Stolleis' oxymoronically titled book Justice within Injustice which is about, oxymoronically, justice in the Third Reich. After having read Stolleis' essays, in which…
In the 1960s Donald Horne observed, "Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck." This observation was followed in the 1990s by Paul Keating when…