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Image: Huawei's Executive Board Director Meng Wanzhou attends the VTB Capital Investment Forum "Russia Calling!" in Moscow

Why China’s hostage diplomacy failed

On the face of it, the fact that Canada’s “two Michaels” — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor — boarded a Canadian government aircraft in Beijing at about the same time that Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was being released from her extradition hearing bail requirements in Vancouver might indicate to some that China’s “hostage diplomacy” was successful. There was a clear link between Meng’s plea bargain arrangement with the United States Department of Justice, her subsequent release in Vancouver and the release of the two Michaels after more than 1,000 days in captivity. Despite consistent Chinese denials over many months that their arrest was in retaliation for the detention of Meng under the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty, the fact that the two cases were resolved simultaneously (even before Kovrig had been sentenced by the Chinese court) stripped away any pretence that there was no connection. In the past, in cases involving detention in China of foreign nationals when there have been unrelated disputes with their country of origin, the release of the “hostages” has not come for several weeks or months after the resolution of the original dispute. That’s allowed China to maintain the fiction that it doesn’t detain people for retaliatory purposes and to argue that Chinese law must run its course. This time, even that fig leaf was removed. Deferred prosecution agreement In order to secure her release, Meng was given only the lightest of punishments, a deferred prosecution arrangement that required her to neither plead guilty nor pay a fine. All she was required to do was consent to a statement of facts that outlined the U.S. view of what happened when she allegedly misled global bank HSBC into believing that a Huawei subsidiary operating in Iran was not in fact controlled by Huawei. The deferred prosecution agreement will expire in 2022, and then the case […]

Media Unmade -Australia’s Most Disruptive Decade

By Tim Burrowes Media Unmade presents the definitive story of the decade in which big media in Australia was cut down to size – a decade that forever altered what had until then been perceived as the unbreachable foundations of the industry in this country. Drawing on insights from his ringside seat, independent journalist, commentator and Mumbrella founder Tim Burrowes knits together the big events and conversations with key players then and now to reveal the drama and tell the stories behind the changes that every consumer of Australian media has witnessed over the past decade. In this unprecedented account, Tim considers how the newspaper rivers of gold evaporated, TV viewers turned to Netflix, and radio listeners started streaming instead. He covers how networks went broke, the ABC came under sustained attack, and how News Corporation’s phone hacking drama in the UK delivered Rupert Murdoch to the most humble day of his life. Of course there is no drama without people and as much as Media Unmade is the tale of the fluctuating fortunes of some of the country’s best-known companies, it also presents the compelling stories of the powerful personalities who have shaped them – from the Murdochs, to Antony Catalano and Greg Hywood, to Kim Williams and James Packer, Gina Rinehart, Alan Jones, Michelle Guthrie, Justin Milne and Kerry Stokes. Against the existential threat embodied by Google and Facebook, Australia’s media companies remade their broken business models and plotted takeovers in a battle for survival. And just when the worst seemed to be over, COVID-19 delivered the biggest advertising recession of all time, pushing every media company to the brink. Tim Burrowes is the award-winning founder of Mumbrella. Working on newspapers, magazines and online, he has been a journalist for more than 30 years and has worked in the UK, Middle East and […]

20 years after 9/11, the American colossus has gone and the Middle East remains strife-torn

The 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington carries with it two punctuation marks. The first are the attacks themselves on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. These shocked a country that was both psychologically and physically unprepared for such a brazen assault on American soil. The second are the chaotic events of the past several weeks, in which America was forced to admit its two-decade mission in Afghanistan was, to all intents and purposes, an expensive – more than US$2 trillion ($A2.68 trillion) – failure. The merciless truck bombing on August 26 near Kabul airport, in which 13 US military personnel died as well as scores of Afghan civilians, underscored the futility of an unwinnable conflict in a country that has resisted outside influence for thousands of years. One of the most pressing issues now is where America stands in the Middle East, where its power and influence have receded as a consequence of its ill-fated decision to invade Iraq before completing its mission in Afghanistan. The two disasters cannot be separated, since they were driven by a global policy enacted by the George W. Bush administration under the rubric of the “war on terror”. This was used to justify a series of decisions that led to American forces and their allies being mired in post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. Together, they have cost more than 7,000 American lives, an estimated 900,000 war dead and expenditure of US$8 trillion (A$10.73 trillion). This does not include 30-40 million refugees who have been displaced in various conflicts across the Middle East and beyond. There are more to come judging by the rush in Afghanistan to escape the Taliban. William Galston of the Brookings Institution puts the case colourfully for the degree of self-harm America has inflicted on itself as a consequence of flawed decisions […]

Where to now Afghanistan?

In less than a week, the Taliban has captured nearly a dozen key cities in Afghanistan. With the departure of US forces, it is poised to take over the country from the embattled Afghan government. Over the past 20 years, the US has poured trillions of dollars into Afghanistan to oust the Taliban, an effort that was clearly unsuccessful. But a look at the country’s strategic geographic location and the politics of the region (including support for the Taliban) tells us that this outcome was inevitable. Afghanistan is strategically located between central and south Asia – a region rich in oil and natural gas. It has also struggled with efforts by different Afghanistan-based ethnic groups to create ancestral homelands. The Pashtun population (and to a lesser extent the Baluch population) are particularly implicated in this. For these and other reasons, Afghanistan has long faced constant meddling from the Soviet Union/Russia, UK, the US, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India and of course, Pakistan. Pakistan Afghanistan’s relationship with Pakistan has been fraught with tension ever since the former was recognised as a sovereign state in 1919. When Pakistan gained its independence in 1947, Afghanistan was the sole country to vote against its formation in the United Nations. Some of the tension emanated from Afghanistan’s refusal to recognise the Durand Line – the hastily drawn 1,600 mile border that cut across thousands of Pashtun tribes in 1893. Fearing calls from Pashtuns in both countries to create a national homeland that would cut through North Pakistan, Pakistan has long sought to turn Afghanistan into an Islamic client state – supporting an Islamic identity (over a Pashtun one) in Afghanistan to gain strategic depth against India. Pakistan helped to empower the Taliban in 1994 and has been Afghanistan’s most involved neighbour. Through its top intelligence agency the ISI, it has has bankrolled Taliban operations, recruited manpower […]

Amanda Lohrey wins Miles Franklin Literary Award

The winner of 2021’s Miles Franklin Literary Award is The Labyrinth, by Amanda Lohrey! Two of Lohrey’s previous novels (Camille’s Bread in 1996 and The Philosopher’s Doll in 2005) have been shortlisted for the prestigious $60,000 prize. Her latest has been recognised as the literary volume that best presents Australian life now. She is the second Tasmanian author to ever win the prize. As a long-time fan of Lohrey’s voice and eye, and someone with a lifetime of longing for more recognition of women’s achievements, I am thrilled to see her novel and her protagonist Erica achieve this standing. Prickly but appealing Erica is an often prickly but generous and appealing character. Though she grows up “in an asylum, a manicured madhouse”, her childhood is much happier than is the norm for characters in literary fiction. Her father, the chief medical officer of the hospital, trains his children in diversity. All of us are “lunatics”, he teaches them, in that “we are all affected by the moon”. “Evil,” he tells them, is no more than “a chemical malfunction in the brain”. This is an excellent foundation for someone who, in later life, finds herself with a son whose “chemical malfunction” leads him to commit an inadvertent but terrible crime. The beach shack she purchases to be near him, and far from everyone else she knows, is as disorganised and disreputable as her child. But it gives her somewhere to review her life and re-imagine a future. That future circles around the concept of the labyrinth. Much of the novel is a masterclass in types of these mazes and the meanings and feelings the various designs afford. A way through All this operates as a healing process following the agony of her son’s act, trial and imprisonment. She — or rather, her planned […]

Afghanistan on brink of unimaginable disaster

The withdrawal of US and allied forces, scheduled by President Joe Biden to be completed by September 11, threatens to precipitate the unravelling of the most pro-Western government in Southwest Asia. It also endangers the entire framework of the Afghan state that has been built up since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. Should this occur, the most likely results would be the establishment of a theocratic regime in Kabul, the collapse of swathes of the country into a civil war (with a distinctly transnational dimension), and attempts by millions of refugees to flee the country. In May 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to a visiting delegation of Afghan women that We will not abandon you. We will stand with you always. Yet abandoning the Afghans who relied on such commitments is exactly what the US has now done. When pressed about his approach last week, Biden angrily cut off a questioner by saying “I want to talk about happy things”. Afghans at this point are finding it very hard to identify happy things to discuss. Why the psychology of the public matters The mass psychology of the Afghan public will be key in determining how events evolve in the country. And this is something American political leaders have shown little sign of understanding. When regimes change in Afghanistan – as with the collapse of the communist regime in April 1992 or the Taliban regime in November 2001 – it is typically because key players deem it prudent to shift away from powerholders whose power appears to be decaying. While the Afghan government has left many people disappointed and disaffected – it is over-centralised, debilitated by patronage networks, and often extractive in character – the Taliban are anything but popular among Afghans. A careful 2019 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found 85% […]

You Don’t Belong Here: How three women rewrote the story of war

by Elizabeth Becker The long-buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the barriers to women covering war. Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine, and Kate challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war reportage for generations. In You Don’t Belong Here, Elizabeth Becker uses these women’s work and lives to illuminate the Vietnam War from the 1965 American buildup, the expansion into Cambodia, and the American defeat and its aftermath. Arriving herself in the last years of the war, Becker writes as a historian and a witness of the times. What emerges is an unforgettable story of three journalists forging their place in a land of men, often at great personal sacrifice. Deeply reported and filled with personal letters, interviews, and profound insight, You Don’t Belong Here fills a void in the history of women and of war.

The future of water should not start with water

Water as an enabler, not a competitor Driven by escalating competing demands, deteriorating quality (due to pollution), chronic under-investment, and exacerbated by the impacts of climate change, the world’s water resources constitute a system already pushed to the edge. Covid-19 only magnified its vulnerability, inequity, and insufficiency. As the world strives to bounce back from the social and economic toll of the pandemic, both the public and private sector will be forced to make tough decisions in prioritising and allocating resources across competing economic, social, and environmental commitments. Where in the growing line-up of priorities does water now stand? Before or after revitalising jobs, protecting the health of our citizens, promoting social justice, enhancing nature-positive economies, and achieving the Paris Climate Agreement in the “Race to Zero”? The key is not before or after, but “water stands together”. The question is not whether water is more or less important, but how can water be coupled together with other pressing issues to achieve multiple wins? Protecting against future pandemics Covid-19 will not be the last pandemic we face. The importance of water and hand hygiene are now well understood. Our ability to treat viruses however is also being compromised. Antimicrobial-resistance (AMR) – the human rejection of antibiotics – is a fast-growing threat, that diminishes the effectiveness of our healthcare system. Our growing use, direct and indirect consumption, and exposure to antibiotics is causing a rise in AMR. Across the main sources of discharge – hospital and community wastes, agricultural runoff, and by-products from pharmaceutical manufacturing – more and more active substances are finding their way into our aquatic environments without adequate wastewater treatment. Where access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities is limited, these waterbodies often serve as sources of drinking water or sanitation, leading to a perpetuating cycle. A forthcoming […]

What a difference a year makes in international diplomacy

A year ago, then-US President Donald Trump was obliged to abandon his plans for a G7 summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David outside Washington. Various excuses were advanced by participants, including the inadvisability of travelling across the world in the midst of a pandemic. But in reality few, if any, G7 leaders wanted to associate themselves with Trump in what was hoped would be the last days of an ill-starred presidency. A year later, these same leaders gathered at an English coastal retreat – in the shadow of a persistent COVID-19 pandemic – to celebrate the end of a disruptive chapter in diplomatic history. Relief was palpable in the interactions of representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada. America was back, not in its “America First” guise, but as the proclaimed leader of the free world, to use an old-fashioned description. However, in the four years of the Trump presidency, during which Washington effectively abandoned its global leadership role in favour of an inward-looking posture defined by its embrace of an America First doctrine, the world had changed, and shifted dramatically. In 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, the G7 summit in Japan focused on the issue of climate in the wake of the Paris Agreement signed in April of that year. Its other priorities were disputes in the South China Sea and, interestingly enough, the need to strengthen a global response to pandemics in light of experiences with the Ebola virus in Africa. That global response has been found to be inadequate. This prompts the question: what notice did global health authorities, principally the World Health Organization, take of the G7’s 2016 communique? Five years later, the challenges identified in the 2016 document have been vastly magnified. This has been brought about by a combination of lack of […]

Seismic climate wins show Big Oil, Gas and Coal are running out of places to hide

Three global fossil fuel giants have just suffered embarrassing rebukes over their inadequate action on climate change. Collectively, the developments show how courts, and frustrated investors, are increasingly willing to force companies to reduce their carbon dioxide pollution quickly. A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to slash its greenhouse emissions, and 61% of Chevron shareholders backed a resolution to force that company to do the same. And in an upset at Exxon Mobil, an activist hedge fund won two seats on the company’s board. The string of wins was followed in Australia on Thursday by a court ruling that the federal environment minister, when deciding whether or not to approve a new coal mine, owes a duty of care to young people to avoid causing them personal injury from climate change. The court rulings are particularly significant. Courts have often been reluctant to interfere in what is viewed as an issue best left to policymakers. These recent judgements, and others, suggest courts are more prepared to scrutinise emissions reduction by businesses and – in the case of the Dutch court – order them to do more. Court warns of ‘irreversible consequences’ In a world-first ruling, a Hague court ordered oil and gas giant Shell to reduce CO₂ emissions by 45% by 2030, relative to 2019 levels. The court noted Shell had no emissions-reduction targets to 2030, and its policies to 2050 were “rather intangible, undefined and non-binding”. The case was brought by climate activist and human rights groups. The court found climate change due to CO₂ emissions “has serious and irreversible consequences” and threatened the human “right to life”. It also found Shell was responsible for so-called “Scope 3” emissions generated by its customers and suppliers. The Chevron upset involved an investor revolt. Some 61% of shareholders supported a resolution calling for Chevron to substantially reduce Scope 3 […]

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