When Canberra told us we had to join the US in its cruel attempt to prevent a Vietnamese peasant army from overthrowing a US-armed Saigon government, some of us thought the politicians were plain stupid. When they told us the men on bicycles wearing rubber sandals were the puppets of a China seeking to thrust Continue reading »
Australian foreign policy
The Australian Government’s bipartisan planned war on China must dominate the next election. Australia’s democracy is currently dead to war, and to America. But the ballot box is the only recourse for Australians. Foreign Affairs Minister Wong recently gave a long interview with historian James Curran. She revealed some guiding principles for how Australia’s foreign Continue reading »
Hamas is the excuse for the Israeli attack on Gaza. The real intent is to expel all Palestinians not just from Gaza but from the West Bank as well. Or as Jonathan Cook put it ‘Israel is not primarily eradicating Hamas. It is eradicating Gaza’ Professor Richard Falk said .. ‘In Gaza, the west is Continue reading »
We need much more than the “Gaza Pose”. We’ve seen the furrowed brows and sorrowful looks. We’ve heard the regretful tones, the exhortations, the warnings, the carefully studied words. Often that’s all there’s been: words and more words. So the question for Anthony Albanese and his Minister for Steely Gazes, Penny Wong, is this. Have Continue reading »
After two years of bloody trench warfare and aerial annihilation the economics of the war in the Ukraine are putting the means to end it yet further out of reach. With an avalanche of armaments being poured into the military vortex, the consequences of the unacceptably large losses of life and further massive destruction of Continue reading »
It doesn’t take much to encourage Penny Wong, sporting her ‘deeply concerned’ frown, to rattle the China can – a can she gave a good shake to yesterday. But before she did the rattling, the resident conjuror, Mike Burgess, who runs ASIO, gave us a week’s worth of spy mysteries – only for us to Continue reading »
The mass media got itself into a flap this week (28, 29 Feb & 1 March) over ASIO Director, Mike Burgess’ claim that a former Australian politician “sold out their country, party and former colleagues” after being recruited by spies of a foreign regime. “Name the traitor,” former Treasurer and former Ambassador to the US, Continue reading »
“If wars can be started with lies, peace can be started with truth,” Julian Assange: Petition EN5846 to the House of Representatives calls on the Australian government to suspend Australia’s ‘autonomous sanctions’ on Syria. A considered, conscientious response to the petition could have major implications for Australia’s foreign and defence policies. The US-led unilateral coercive Continue reading »
It matters for Australia that Biden not be re-elected to the US presidency. A Trump administration might mean domestic chaos, violence, and division for the Republic, however, the danger is that Biden would be more likely to lead the world into catastrophic war. Another Trump imperium would be sadly the least worst, yet still terrible, Continue reading »
The standard media news bite is that Yang Hengjun is a Chinese born Australian pro-democracy writer who was unlawfully detained and now jailed for life in China. But the full story is murkier than that. One take on Yang is that he was a Chinese communist spy who defected to the west where he became Continue reading »