Regular readers of this journal will be dismayed at the breakneck speed at which Australia is party to the goading of a potentially catastrophic war in our region. With Western mainstream media in anti-China mad dog mode, both sides of the aisle in Canberra sleepwalking, and with nothing at all to win and everything to Continue reading »
International Relations
Iraq’s trauma is regarded in some quarters as an ill-gotten remnant of the past: something to be air-brushed from history. But not so for those experiencing the ravages of imperial power. On the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq – March, 20, 2023 – the people of Iraq await a historical reckoning. How Continue reading »
Last week we witnessed some extraordinary interventions by two mainstream media mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in pursuit of both headlines and an agenda. The three part “Red Alert” series begins with a paragraph that could have been found in Edward Bernays book, Propaganda: Within 72 hours of a conflict breaking out over Taiwan, Continue reading »
A Labor government has puts guns before butter… how extraordinary! Today, Pearls and Irritations has taken the unusual step of devoting our issue line up entirely to articles on the drive to war with China and the disastrous commitment of $368 billion dollars of Australia’s public funding to nuclear submarines. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Continue reading »
Ignorance and fear can be effective weapons in a manipulative politician’s arsenal. They’re guaranteed to pierce the armour of those least protected by doubt and most susceptible to flannel. ‘High tension’ and ‘social unrest’ are likely during the upcoming Indonesian presidential election campaign according to Moody’s investors’ service. That was the case in the 2019 Continue reading »
It seems that poor old Albanese has been sold a very greedy—though only virtual—pup. Think of the comparison with another Labor PM, Ben Chifley. Albanese doesn’t come out of it very well. In 1948, at a time when energy was a major issue, Chifley launched the expensive Snowy Hydro Scheme to provide the country with Continue reading »
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have failed to publish, except in the most cursory sense, the current or recent past associations of their gang of five experts who apparently believe Australia could be at war with China in as little as three years. While it is not a court of law where the ethical Continue reading »
What is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), what are its sources of funding, and why does it so consistently advocate for positions favourable to the United States and the weapons industry? Follow the money trail. Editor’s note: Jocelyn Chey argued in Pearls and Irritations yesterday that hysteria over a supposed immediate China threat is Continue reading »
Embedded within the foreign policy debate in Australia is the claim that an epochal shift of Copernican significance is underway. So disturbing is this transformation in world politics – seemingly from light to darkness, from joy to woe – that its troubling possibilities have dissolved the sense of national self. The consequence: an almost medieval Continue reading »
The comparison between Australia’s response to China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims with India’s treatment of Kashmiris highlights that a commitment to human rights is not the driving force in determining Labor’s position on foreign affairs matters. Last September when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Bali for the G20 Summit he tweeted “So wonderful to see Continue reading »