The sabotage in the Baltic Sea was the result of a long-standing US policy of driving a wedge between Russia and Western Europe. Thursday marks one year since I reported President Joe Biden’s decision in the fall of 2022 to send a signal of resolve to Vladimir Putin by destroying Nord Stream 1 and 2, Continue reading »
International Relations
A lie travels around the world before the truth puts on its boots. 120 days since the Australian Jewish Association AJA, alleged pro-Palestine, antiwar protesters chanted “Gas the Jews”, the truth arrives with boots and all. The NSW Police investigation into the chant “Gas the Jews” has now delivered their conclusive findings that there is Continue reading »
The standard media news bite is that Yang Hengjun is a Chinese born Australian pro-democracy writer who was unlawfully detained and now jailed for life in China. But the full story is murkier than that. One take on Yang is that he was a Chinese communist spy who defected to the west where he became Continue reading »
The 26 January findings of the International Court of Justice relating to South Africa’s genocide claim against Israel, do not only have bearing on that state, but they trigger the obligation to prevent genocide required of all 153 state parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention, including Australia. In finding that it’s “plausible” that Israel’s massacre Continue reading »
We need to be careful with the outrage over the sentencing of Yang Hengjun in China. Yang was a former member of the security (intelligence) services, working for China’s Ministry of State Security. On leaving China, he became a trenchant critic of his former employer and an advocate for the overthrow of the Chinese Government. Continue reading »
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell, 1984. On the opening day of the bombing last week, I had to work hard to find out what the Iraqi government thought of the wave of attacks on Iraq by the USA. Think about that: a country undergoes Continue reading »
Those following the U.S. Republican presidential race will have noted from the voter polls that the issue of foreign affairs ranks amongst the lowest or is the lowest of the priority concerns that the American public sees as critical to themselves and their country. A variety of polls held before the recently concluded nomination battles Continue reading »
Current Australian defence policy involves close integration with the United States military in all areas, making an independent foreign policy impossible and ensuring Australia’s automatic involvement in US-instigated wars such as a war with China, our major trading partner. A policy of neutrality would free Australia from involvement in such disastrous military adventures and enable Continue reading »
Détente would be good. Dialogue and diplomacy would be better. An end to US-led covert actions and cold wars would be better still. And what about an enduring peace that balances interests of all concerned? Such a peace, surely, is the end to which the détente statement, led by former Foreign Ministers Carr and Evans Continue reading »
Around two decades ago, the Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, took an increasingly close interest in the wretched condition of Palestinians living under punishing Israeli domination. What he saw convinced him that Israel was maintaining an apartheid state very like those he had previously visited, at length, in Southern Africa. Readers may be familiar, from television, Continue reading »