On Saturday, March 18, a small rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War gathered in a park outside the Lismore Memorial Baths. The Iraq War was an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, Iraq, by a group of nations who called themselves the ‘coalition of the willing’: Australia, the UK and the Continue reading »
Defence and Security
As the Government seeks to respond to an increasing number of questions about what it extolls as the game-changing decision to purchase nuclear powered submarines (SSN’s) it has been tweaking the spin about the reasons it has taken for this budget shaking decision. Our two AUKUS partners – the US (and even the British) – Continue reading »
Our Defence Minister said that Australia has not given any guarantees to the USA about what we would do with our submarines in the case of war but would take our own decisions at the time. This is welcome but what are the implications? Does it only apply to the submarines? As always, the devil Continue reading »
We just need to look at the facts to see how foolish the assertion is that SSNs have the capacity to prevent disruption to our trade in the event of a war. Forty percent of our exports are to, and 20% of our imports are from, China. Throwing money at submarines weakens the national economy. Continue reading »
The New York Times report of 8th March that ‘Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say’ elicited two sets of responses. The mainstream US media dutifully replicated the story without curiosity or challenge, carefully sidestepping questions of plausibility or context, and often, as with the Washington Post, managing to avoid mentioning the name Continue reading »
HERE WE STAND: We are standing here, as people were in Melbourne yesterday, to recall one of Australia’s worst days: the start of our first war of aggression. We joined a small coalition to invade Iraq. We left that country in physical, social, economic and political ruin. No Australian government has inquired into why we Continue reading »
At this stage there is little interest in how to dispose of the high level uranium waste from AUKUS SSNs, let alone put First Nations voices to the fore. This is unlikely to change while the nation’s most prominent journalists see it as their job to promote the dominant military doctrine and boost the demonisation Continue reading »
Paul Keating did all Australians, and all the world, an important favour over the past week. That he has significantly enraged some people from his old party may underline the lasting service he has done for the public interest, and, perhaps for peace in our time. It was also a reminder of his capacity for Continue reading »
It’s Parliament House, Canberra, on a Sunday afternoon. There is a meeting of the national security committee of cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, about a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, where the US and China are in air and naval combat. There’s an inflection point when someone – a minister or the PM Continue reading »
We are in the midst of an extraordinarily dangerous and destructive hot war in Ukraine, and there is now daily talk about the prospects of a US-China war in Asia, perhaps over Taiwan. We cannot afford a continuation of the current war, and we cannot afford a war between the US and China. That would Continue reading »