Speaking out strongly against AUKUS at the Press Club yesterday, Paul Keating’s concern is that Australia’s security has been laid limp upon the altar of small target politics by the two key Ministers – Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles. Australians have been denied knowledge and debate on existential matters, by Labor Continue reading »
Government
One of the best-known writers on public opinion, Walter Lippmann, tells us that every conflict is fought on two fronts: the battlefield and the minds of people via propaganda. ‘We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy’s side of the front is always propaganda, and what is said on Continue reading »
A Labor government has puts guns before butter… how extraordinary! Today, Pearls and Irritations has taken the unusual step of devoting our issue line up entirely to articles on the drive to war with China and the disastrous commitment of $368 billion dollars of Australia’s public funding to nuclear submarines. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Continue reading »
Hopefully, behind the scenes, policymakers are well into postwar preparations for Ukraine. The conduct of the fighting naturally absorbs most attention in a war, but conflicts come to an end one way or another and often that’s when the hard issues emerge. Another Afghanistan or Iraq debacle must be avoided. This planning probably is taking Continue reading »
Three hundred years ago, Britain narrowly escaped a disaster. Trapped inside a bubble, they needed radical changes to escape. There are parallels to our world today, where the logic of failure is woven into the very fabric of civilisation. We too, are trapped inside a bubble, but one is of far greater significance. The question Continue reading »
Ignorance and fear can be effective weapons in a manipulative politician’s arsenal. They’re guaranteed to pierce the armour of those least protected by doubt and most susceptible to flannel. ‘High tension’ and ‘social unrest’ are likely during the upcoming Indonesian presidential election campaign according to Moody’s investors’ service. That was the case in the 2019 Continue reading »
I have known Julian Assange since I first interviewed him in London in 2010. I immediately liked his dry, dark sense of humour, often dispensed with an infectious giggle. He is a proud outsider: sharp and thoughtful. We have become friends, and I have sat in many courtrooms listening to the tribunes of the state Continue reading »
Australian media are awash with reporting on the war-with-China propaganda series by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that I’ve been writing about for the last few days. Which is really quite extraordinary, because it’s not an actual news story. It really isn’t. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age just asked five warmongering Continue reading »
Australia supports, indeed resources, Ukrainian armed resistance to Russia’s invasion and its attempt to forcibly exert its sovereignty over Ukrainian soil. Very few Australians appear to find fault with this position. For what reason is Israel’s provocative and continuing colonisation of Palestine not seen in the same light? Human convenience is served through words that Continue reading »
There are echoes of Kevin Rudd’s 2009 essay in Jim Chalmers recent tome. Themes of social justice, equity and fairness still resonate. But this time around, Labor needs to think beyond the lofty ideas to confront what it all means for Australia’s schools. Both essays followed crises that exposed and exacerbated inequalities on a domestic Continue reading »