I wonder how many Australians know where the Ayungin Shoal/Second Thomas/Ren’ai Jiao is? Do they know that their Navy has been deployed to this atoll, ostensibly to defend their “national interest”! Do Australians know that the sovereignty of the Philippine occupied shoal (since 1998), is being disputed by China, Vietnam, and Taiwan? Do they know Continue reading »
Defence and Security
In March of 2016 the renowned Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger published an article titled “A world war has begun. Break the silence.” which urgently warned of the US empire’s aggressive escalations against Russia and China. Re-reading parts of it in 2023 is like watching someone placing flags next to recently planted seeds that Continue reading »
The British billionaire-owned newspaper The Telegraph has an appalling new article out which reads like a paid advertisement for a missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The title even sounds like it was written by a marketing team: “A war-winning swarm missile will knock China out of Taiwan — fast”, subtitled “Rapid Dragon is a military gamechanger that Continue reading »
The narrative about the inevitability of a war with China began to dominate US strategic thinking in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The extraordinary growth of the Chinese economy in the first decade of this century deeply worried the neocons who control US foreign policy. As the size of the Chinese economy threatened Continue reading »
The Australian government has reneged on its 1984 commitment to the UN “that it had no intention of making the Cocos (Keeling) Islands into a strategic military base or of using the Territory for that purpose.” Will the Labor government ignore the warnings of the late Richard Woolcott and make the Cocos Islands a militarised Continue reading »
Australia needs an arms industry like it needs a hole in the head. It will only contribute to flooding the world with more weapons of destruction when we are already being killed by floods, fires and irresponsible politicians through human induced global warming. My childhood years coincided with the last phase of British colonial rule Continue reading »
In the wake of communist collapse we have been presented with a new paradigm in international affairs. No, it is not a tinkering with the standard communism versus democracy we have had to tolerate for more than half a century of war. By strange twist of fate it is democracy which is seen as creating the Continue reading »
The cracks in Labor ranks over AUKUS won’t be going away despite Albanese staring down dissenters at Labor’s national conference. A pitched battle over the choice of submarine base is guaranteed — and now we discover that Albanese has suffered the mother of all brainsnaps: Australia has agreed to set up a weapons-grade nuclear waste Continue reading »
There is a curious Chinese saying that cautions against “calling a stag, a horse”. As the Qin empire disintegrated, the wily Prime Minister Zhao Gao fed the second Qin dynasty Emperor (221-206 BC) false reports of imperial military victories. Lining up all the ministers at court, Zhao showed them a stag and demanded that they Continue reading »
Two years after the heart-breaking Kabul Moment that saw the withdrawal of US-led Western troops from their illegal invasion and occupation, the United States has been urged to assume liability for humanitarian sufferings of Afghanistan people. Amid chaos that caused civilian casualties directly from leaving US military planes, the United States pulled out its final forces from Continue reading »