Two recent news stories say it all. On the 4th of April the Sydney Morning Herald carried a report of an interview with Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, in which he claimed that Australia was a vital partner in the organisation’s campaign to confront the security challenges posed by China and in particular Continue reading »
International Relations
April 5, in Jerusalem, Israeli police using stun grenades and firing rubber coated steel bullets invade the Al Aqsa Mosque. Hundreds of worshippers are arrested. Fourteen Palestinians are wounded by bullets, beatings and tear gas inhalation. While the world looks on, how do we explain, how might this latest example of violence as policy be Continue reading »
Australia is inventing an unheard-of way to go to war at the invitation of a ‘non-sovereign nation’ – an obvious reference to Taiwan. The Government’s intent seems to be to have it ready for the conflict with China that US Generals keep telling us is coming. When it reported on 31 March, the Inquiry into Continue reading »
In September 2014, in the aftermath of the Maidan coup that saw yet another in the distressingly long list of US-engineered regime change coups in foreign lands where the government proved insufficiently deferential to the ruling Washington foreign policy elite, I argued that NATO’s mission creep had become a threat to European and world peace. Continue reading »
Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, is a scourge and Australia has not been immune to it. Traditional antisemitism is not hard to identify or call out whether it is in graffiti, slogans or slurs. However, when it comes to debate over Israel and Palestine, what is or is not antisemitic is a highly political Continue reading »
When the ALP Government led by Anthony Albanese came to power in 2022 it was confronted by the AUKUS minefield laid by its predecessor, the LNC Government led by Scott Morrison. It did, however, have options, one of which was to reject outright the Babylonian extravagance and complexity of arrangements consequent to a process marked Continue reading »
Reform has its limits. Even as the Labor Government makes good several of its promised changes in economic and social policy, the boom-gate has dropped on defence and foreign affairs. Anticipated by Labor in Opposition since 2018, a review of how Australia goes to war began last September. A Parliamentary Committee worked hard for six Continue reading »
One of the many, many signs that Australia is nothing more than a US military and intelligence asset is the way its government has consistently refused to intervene to protect Australian citizen Julian Assange from political persecution at the hands of the US empire. In a new article titled “Penny Wong moves to dampen expectation Continue reading »
Why is Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong vocal about Australian-Chinese journalist Cheng Lei, jailed in China, but silent on Australian journalist Julian Assange, jailed in the UK? Senator Wong tweeted on 31 March 2023, “It is one year since Australian citizen Cheng Lei faced a closed trial in Beijing on national security charges. She is Continue reading »
China’s calls for calm stand in stark contrast to US provocations. “No war really comes unexpectedly; the drums are beating long before a single shot is fired,” said Margaret Case Harriman, the American author, and history bears her out. In the run-up, for example, to the Great War in 1914, belligerence was in the air. Continue reading »