July of 1969 was a big month. Whilst the ‘civilized’ world was focused on the deployment of three men to the moon, Indonesia was finalizing steps to wrest control of…
The criminal justice system consists of three main parts: (1) Legislative (create laws); (2) adjudication (courts); and (3) corrections (prisons, probation, parole, fines, community service). In a criminal justice system,…
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…
Crimes against humanity, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions -- all of those human rights norms are defined by actions. They're not defined by whether the perpetrator is a human…
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…
Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And…
Racial classification today is commonplace; people routinely catalogue each other as members of this or that race, and seem to assume that everyone can be thus classified Bernard Boxill, "Introduction"…
In the late afternoon of May 22, 1787, a group of a dozen men officially assembled at James Phillips' bookstore and printing shop located at 2 George Yard, London. While…
The TNI under Suharto was seen as different from other armies because: Indonesian army sees itself as quite different from other armies in the world, because it was never created…
These feelings which we Cubans have already acquired will have to be shared by someday. Today it hurts us if a Cuban is hungry, if a Cuban has no doctor,…
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…
Employers have a legal responsibility to take ‘reasonable steps’ to prevent harassment and discrimination occurring in the workplace. Employers may also be held ‘vicariously liable’ for the actions of their…
Following is a response to the statement published by Ernst & Young. People with things to hide generally sneak around, aiming to placate those who can advance their situation. They…
As most readers of Blak and Black, indeed as most readers of any daily paper in Australia will be aware there has been an ongoing dispute between Fortescue Metals Group…
'Poetry, like the law, is a fiction’, wrote William Hazlitt in a critical essay of 1816. Hazlitt the critic took as his subject all aspects of his society’s culture, including…
The ACT Government isn’t so much corrupt as it is immoral – Senior ACT Public Servant I had lunch in Canberra yesterday with Paul, a former colleague from my public…
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…
I have been arguing since 1996 that it is unlikely that David Eastman is responsible for the murder of Colin Stanley Winchester APM (18 October 1933 – 10 January 1989).…
For very many Aboriginal Australians the phrase 'Australian justice system' is an oxymoron. There are any number of reasons, many of which are justified, why we as Aboriginal Australians think…