Your three-weekly selection of interesting reading material is a bit late this week, since (with a lot of other people) I’ve been fully occupied on the Victorian election. But here are some links to worthwhile things that I’ve found on the internet recently.
Laurie Oakes at Inside Story gives a lovely appreciation of the career of Alan Reid, one of the greats of Australian political journalism.
Also in Inside Story, Erin Handley reports from Cambodia on the verdict in the genocide trial of the Khmer Rouge.
New Daily’s obituary for Larry Pickering, a great Australian cartoonist in the 1970s and ’80s who went on to become a conspiracy theorist, con man and all round dreadful human being.
I didn’t bother doing a postmortem on the Fijian “election” because everyone knew the result in advance (here’s my preview), but Dominic O’Sullivan has a good one at the Conversation.
From the leadup to the now-concluded Victorian election, an encouraging story by Jack Latimore and Nyadol Nyuon in the Guardian about political involvement in the African-Australian community.
A short but fascinating piece by Rosie McCall in IFL Science on findings that suggest MDMA (the active ingredient in ecstasy) can promote co-operative behavior.
Jim Baker and Sarah Grant at Lawfare with a careful analysis of Watergate’s lessons on the relationship between the president and the justice department – a topic with some contemporary relevance.
Speaking of which, Jon Chait at New York magazine is very sensible on the subject of impeachment and the real importance of the Mueller investigation.
This one’s a couple of weeks old now, but Antony Funnell at Radio National provides a really good explanation of the layers of ambiguity in western relations with Taiwan, as captured in the phrase “One China”.
Finally, an interview with A.C. Thompson at Democracy Now! about his research on the links between America’s military adventurism and the rise of right-wing and white supremacist terrorism.
The World is Not Enough 