Contributors to the “War with China over Taiwan” horror show which began in the Nine newspapers this week assume that a war between China and the United States is likely, and some of them then explicitly say that Australia would be involved. Australia should instead regard the Taiwan issue as one for us to “sit Continue reading »
Defence and Security
In the latest instance of the Australian media’s deluge of propaganda geared toward manufacturing consent for war with China, Nine Entertainment-owned newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have brought together a panel of “experts” to assess how well-prepared Australia is for a hot war with its primary trading partner. The question of if Continue reading »
Hysteria over a supposed immediate China threat is being peddled by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in the first of a series of three reports titled Red Alert. Not since Menzies’s days, have we seen anything like the papers’ dramatic image of an air force fleet emerging from a supersized China to dominate Continue reading »
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age front page stories on Australia’s supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over fifty years of active public life. It is way worse than the illustrated sampans shown to be coming from China in the Continue reading »
Wars are started by political forces. They are promoted by propagandists, fought by soldiers and it is always the ordinary people that suffer. Wars are almost never about principle and almost always about profit in one form or another. The war in Ukraine, like all other wars has been sold to us as a struggle Continue reading »
In a recent article, the Hon. P.J. Keating berated the wretched Greg Sheridan for manifold errors in a typical The Australian Newsrag opinion piece. Only a fool provokes PJK on spurious grounds. Though enjoyable to witness the public dissection of a noxious Murdoch apparatchik, there is much more to note in Keating’s article. A phrase Continue reading »
A recent US Chamber of Commerce InSTEP program hosted three empire managers to talk about Washington’s top three enemies, with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns discussing the PRC, the odious Victoria Nuland discussing Russia, and the US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides talking about Iran. Toward the end of the hour-long discussion, Burns Continue reading »
Jon Stanford’s response to Brian Toohey’s criticism of his promotion of nuclear submarines for Australia deserves a response. Firstly, Stanford claims that Australian submarines must prowl off the coast of China. This begs the question: Why? Answer: To do the intelligence gathering bidding of the US. As Toohey rightly says this task could be done Continue reading »
Defence’s defeat on the French Submarine was an extraordinary victory for a small group of dedicated professionals. Defence’s counterattack with the nuclear submarines under the aegis of AUKUS reeks of the same old problems. It has been my privilege over the last five years to sit on the periphery of a small group of friends Continue reading »
The anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine war gives us pause to reflect on recent global shifts which affect our security. The first shift in unsurprising: the growth of strategic competition and accompanying tensions in the two main theatres, the North Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific. The Ukraine war has broken what little trust existed Continue reading »