Australia’s top court decides in favor of trade detention centers

On a flight back from Moscow in 1992, following meetings with parliament members and the late Mr. Yegor Gaidar, then finance minister, I wrote up the tongue-in-cheek conversation I had with them at the time, when they all complained about Russia having only its natural resources to sell.  Please bear with me how this episode is linked to Australian highest court recent decision to export “asylum seekers” to detention centers in Nauru, a minuscule, isolated island with few thousand inhabitants in the midst of the Pacific. Nauru became rich when it sold its pure phosphates (formed from birds’ droppings over millennia), but then spent the easy-come money on “national airline” (?) and British musicals.  Easy-come, easy-go.

...Reuven Brenner holds the Repap Chair at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management.  His last books were World of Chance and Force of Finance.

Read full article: Asia Times, 8 February, 2016