Western leaders like to talk about values, shared values, common values. They talk about this a lot. America itself is obsessed with two things: conflict resolution through violence and moral preening. Nowhere is this contradiction more glaringly on display than in the genocide being committed in Gaza. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says Continue reading »
AUKUS
Grassroots anti-AUKUS campaign, Labor Against War, has called on the Federal Labor Government to come clean about just how much it is pouring into US and UK coffers to rebuild their ageing nuclear shipyards, both of which build nuclear-armed submarines. Marcus Strom, national convenor of Labor Against War, said: “It’s quite telling that the budget Continue reading »
Drinking the Kool-Aid is not only believing a foolish and dangerous idea but acting on it leads to unnecessary self-destruction. It refers to the 900 American cult members who drank cyanide-laced Kool-Aid at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978 in an act of “revolutionary suicide”. Critics of AUKUS on both sides of the Tasman think our Continue reading »
The AUKUS subs will come at an outrageous cost, but will also do little to deliver jobs, the UK experience shows.
The post AUKUS billions won’t deliver jobs bonanza for SA first appeared on Solidarity Online.
With Australian defence writers now arguing for society to be reimagined as an ‘input to defence capability’, we are witnessing further incursions in the Democracy – Defence Nexus. A recent article appearing on the website of Defence Connect claims a discovery: the identification of Australian society as a “fundamental input to defence capability.” In a Continue reading »
“Nothing Australia does – with or without AUKUS – will make any difference to the collective capacity to either deter or defeat China in the next decade, which is the time frame that counts. That means the only prudent choice for Australia’s military strategy is to prepare to defend ourselves from major powers such as Continue reading »
Thanks to Anthony Albanese’s prolonged refusal to change the Morrison government’s damaging policies that he has endorsed, Labor is struggling to stay around 30% in the opinion polls for the next election. One upshot is the latest OECD figures show low and middle income workers in Australia had the highest increase in personal income taxes Continue reading »
An invitation: imagine a country wherein, as a matter of policy orientation, its 41 universities have abdicated one of their principal founding roles – to be dominant sites of secular critique practised by people capable of living what they teach and committed to taking aim at the unequal, imperial, antidemocrática present. Imagine, too, that this Continue reading »
As Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines all move closer to US-led military architecture in the Asia-Pacific region, experts warn of the consequences. Political tensions are increasing in the Asian-Pacific after engagements in Washington produced statements pointing to New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines moving towards greater integration into US-led military blocs. Philippine President Ferdinand Continue reading »
Helen Clark, o how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister – the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory – gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held in Parliament’s old Legislative Chambers on April 18. Continue reading »