Amid continuous news that the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in June is not going as hoped, The New York Times has published an article titled “Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say.” Reporting that Ukrainian efforts to retake Russia-occupied territory have been “bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant Continue reading »
Defence and Security
The morning of the ALP National Conference on 18 August, ABC online news led with two ‘Bad China’ stories. One about whether China is building an airstrip on a contested island, the other likely to cause great discomfort and anxiety to Australians because it showed the level of China’s spying on Australia via hundreds of Continue reading »
The sexual connotation of support for AUKUS should be obvious. An apparent fascination with phallic symbols as large as nuclear submarines, plus language describing how to dominate and penetrate enemies shows notions of security which reflect a top down, masculine interpretation of power. The AUKUS fanning of an us and them idea of opposing forces, Continue reading »
I hesitate to stray into the florid world of military strategists, senior public servants, cabinet ministers and assorted think tanks, but what on earth is going on with Australia’s so-called defence policy? The Albo government seems hellbent on turning Australia into a militarised outpost of the US whose ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific region has led Continue reading »
Government ministers and senior officials are conditioning Australians to become frightened, very frightened. The Home Affairs minister Clare O’Neil warns they face a “dystopian future” from cyber-crime, foreign interference and threats to our democracy. What she didn’t say is that Australia can no longer be called a liberal democracy because it has numerous harsh laws Continue reading »
Japan is a member of the Quad – the grouping that claims it is working for a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. But in its relations with North Korea, Tokyo is not working for anything free, open, prosperous and inclusive. Former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, created a bizarre abductee issue to derail chances Continue reading »
The consultancy-military-industrial complex continues to reveal its sinister nature as serious questions are raised over conflicts of interest in the tender process for KPMG’s $46 million REDSPICE contract with the Australian Signals Directorate. In recent reports, one of the big four consultancy firms has been implicated in a gross conflict of interest in advising and Continue reading »
The biggest enemy of AUKUS is not the resistance of ALP branches and unions but its own over-engineered grandiosity, its naive ambition. A vote wrung from a conference doesn’t deliver the cash for what is the biggest transfer of wealth outside this country in its history. The government places the cost between $268 billion and $368 Continue reading »
There’s a lot of controversy over what China is doing in the South China Sea, but there seems to be very little in the way of perspective. The recent “water attack” on Philippines vessels was not a hostile act by a military nation, it was a Chinese Coastguard ship deterring another nation from building on Continue reading »
For the first time since the US achieved global domination economically and militarily after WWII, the military industrial complex and Biden administration fear the rise of China. They have decided that it must be crushed. The US, NATO and its compliant states have whipped up a frenzy of fear and loathing for the Chinese. This Continue reading »