On August 30 last year Blak and Black lodged a petition on the GoPetition website calling for a Royal Commission into the Australian Federal Police (“AFP”). Blak and Black has…
Complicity takes many forms, as discussed in posts by both Bakchos and me. Many believe that silent complicity is the least culpable, but to my mind if the silence enables…
The idea of human dignity consists in recognizing that man is a being that has ends proper to himself, his own ends, to be freely complied with by himself. Or…
Indigenous people in Australia are subjected to more aggressive treatment by the criminal justice system compared with other Australians.
Following on from the discussion of belonging and what the Australian flag represents to many Indigenous Australians, this post gives consideration to the current debate about acknowledgement of Australia's Aborigines…
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…
On the request of a friend, this post offers some insights as to why someone would wish to burn the Australian flag as an act of protest. The events in…
What is self-determination? The notion of self-determination as a universal principle, whether viewed through a political, moral, or legal lens, has been and continues to be imprecise and in dire…
"The essence of the demand for freedom is the need of conditions which will enable an individual to make his own special contribution to a group interest, and to partake…
The current humanitarian crises in West Papua, formally West New Guinea (“WNG”), has at its roots Western colonial greed and paranoia over Soviet influence in the region. WNG was and…
“Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex Australians are part of our community we’re not nameless, faceless people who live on the margins of society. We deserve the respect and the…
I have spent the last few weeks travelling around remote Indigenous communities collecting signatures in support of a Royal Commission into the AFP and statements in support of my application…
Do we want to bequeath the next generation a society where those with money and influence are exempted from the legal accountability?
Recurrent themes in Australian politics since the events of 9/11 and the beginning of the euphemistically though erroneously named ‘war on terror’ have been national security, border protection and exporting…
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…
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 article appeared in Friday’s Jakarta Post: Maj. Gen. Wisnu Bawatenaya has been appointed to become commander of the Indonesian Army Special Forces (Kopassus) replacing Maj. Gen. Lodewijk F…
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…
Callahan and colleagues (2002)[i] suggested that organizations must focus on three trust-building tactics – accountability, reliance, and aspiration – to cultivate helpful internal whistleblowing procedures. These principles provide people and…