Defence and Security
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John Menadue. Alcohol and junk food – winning at the expense of our health.
If you seriously follow almost any major Australian sport as I do, you will be conscious of the saturation alcohol and junk food advertising. And in the run up to the centenary of Gallipoli there are no holds barred to link heroes and booze… VB now have a new television advertisement filmed at Melbourne’s Shrine Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Who and for what are we fighting in Iraq.
Australia has sent troops to fight in Iraq Wars I, II and III. Our participation has been disastrous in each. The latest news tells us that in the battle to oust IS from Tikrit the victory belonged to the Shiite militia controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp. So our ‘allies’ in Iraq against IS Continue reading »
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Defence and Security, Human Rights, Immigration, refugees, Indigenous affairs, Politics, Tributes, World Affairs
Tributes to Malcolm Fraser.
See below, tributes from Fred Chaney and Robert Manne on Malcolm Fraser’s achievements in public life. John Mendue. Fred Chaney in The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/malcolm-fraser-a-leader-who-believed-there-is-a-moral-compass-in-our-nations-life Robert Manne in The Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/frasers-great-conservative-achievement-cementing-whitlams-progress-on-race Continue reading »
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David Stephens. Anzackery in the time of Anzac
Anniversaries sharpen sensations and heighten moods. Christmas brings on good feelings, New Year provokes resolutions, siblings’ faults are set aside on their birthdays. Centenaries accentuate this quite normal process. The centenary of Anzac has brought on a welter of commemoration, slopping over into celebration, with a good lashing of commercialisation as well. Honest History revived Continue reading »
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Tony Kevin. A Confused Military Endgame in Tikrit
In an effort to understand what is happening in the very important battle to retake the Sunni city of Tikrit in Iraq, now approaching its climax, I consulted yesterday’s news and editorial coverage in the Washington Post, (‘Iraqi forces break militants’ hold on Tikrit in major battle against Islamic State’), http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-forces-battle-islamic-state-in-streets-of-strategic-tikrit/2015/03/11/a0dca5c0-c778-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html CNN, (‘Battle for Tikrit: Continue reading »
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Spencer Zifcak. The Martin Place Siege
I first came across Man Haron Monis, the Sydney siege gunman, in early 2013. The High Court of Australia had just handed down an important new decision on the breadth of the protection the Australian Constitution provides for freedom of expression. The facts of the case centred upon offensive letters sent to the parents of Continue reading »
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Spencer Zifcak. Proportionality Lost: Australia’s New Counter-Terrorism Laws. Part 2
The Foreign Fighters Bill The second tranche of counter-terrorism legislation introduced by the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, late last year was contained in the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill. This Bill (now passed into law) amended several Commonwealth Acts, most notably the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The primary purpose of these new laws is to enable Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. Australia will not be safer.
Australia’s upping the ante in Iraq is a recipe for disaster. It is hard to see anything positive coming out of it. Mr. Abbott said the request came from the Iraqi Government and the USA. As in the past, the request from the USA was almost certainly what it is all about plus the domestic Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Here we go again – more mission creep in Iraq.
We seem unable to learn from the history of past centuries and decades as we plan to send another 300 Australian troops to Iraq to train forces fighting IS. To show his patriotic fervour Tony Abbott needed eight Australian flags as a backdrop for his announcement yesterday. I don’t recall seeing a Prime Minister wrapped Continue reading »
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Stuart Harris. China is not seeking to break the rules of global order.
Australia’s foreign policy, and notably its relations with the US and China, has been a mix of positives and negatives under the Coalition government, as was true of the previous Labor government. This reflects the lack of a broad strategic vision of Australia’s geographic realities and the evolving relationships involved. Former prime ministers, Gough Whitlam Continue reading »
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Ukraine: Watch This Space
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his decision to send a contingent of 75 trainers to Ukraine as a demonstration of support for Kiev in its fight against Russian supported rebels in South Eastern Ukraine. The deployment will provide instruction in command procedures, tactical intelligence, battlefield first aid and logistics. Continue reading »
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The frontier wars – best we forget.
I have posted many blogs about our refusal to acknowledge the frontier wars, when we suffered the largest death toll in war in our history in relation to our population at the time. In the SMH on February 12, see link below, Tim Flannery draws our attention to the valour of 52 indigenous people Continue reading »
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Don’t arm Ukraine.
In July last year, Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop were eager to commit Australian police and Australian troops to Ukraine in the aftermath of the shooting down of MH17 by Russian separatists. Their plan didn’t work out as they hoped. I have carried blogs by Richard Butler and Cavan Hogue about the geopolitical risks of Continue reading »
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Climate, Defence and Security, Economy, Education, Health, Human Rights, Immigration, refugees, NBN, Politics, World Affairs
John Menadue. Fairness, Opportunity and Security – Filling the policy vacuum
I sense that there is great public concern that both the government and opposition keep playing the political and personal game at the expense of informed public discussion of important policy issues. We have become concerned about the trustworthiness of our political, business and media elite. Insiders and vested interests are undermining the public interest. Continue reading »
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Walter Hamilton. Ships and Boats and Please Explains
If the main aim of building ships in Australia for the Royal Australian Navy were to keep locals in work, then the South Australian-based Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) would be a pretty good model. It spent around $400 million on salaries last year, about half its budget. If the aim, however, is to build on Continue reading »
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Henry Reynolds. Militarisation marches on.
This article by Henry Reynolds was initially posted in September last year. John Menadue Australia is obsessed with war. For a generation, federal governments have funded an intense program highlighting the importance of our military history. It has reached into every part of the country. Books, films and research projects have been subsidised. Old monuments Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Mission creep in Iraq again
I have reposted below my blog of September 1 last year about the developing pattern of mission-creep in Iraq. Now, four months later, we are seeing it happening again. Last week in Iraq Tony Abbott made it clear that Australia was receptive to any further requests to send more Australian military to Iraq. Tony Abbott, Continue reading »
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Richard Butler. Russia.
Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have been playing loosely in our relations with Russia even thought those relations are quite modest, at least as far as the Russians are concerned. Threatening to ‘shirt-front’ President Putin is not a dignified way to behave with a major nuclear power. Our recent behaviour towards Russia underlines that prejudices Continue reading »
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Malcolm Fraser. Australia’s dangerous ally.
The National Interest, in its January/February 2015 edition has just published an article by Malcolm Fraser, ‘Australia’s dangerous ally’. The National Interest is not sold on news stands in Australia, but it is available online. Malcolm Fraser concludes his article by suggesting several steps that Australia should take to address problems in our relationship with Continue reading »
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Brian Johnstone. Terrorism and torture – the Catholic tradition.
In Australia today, we accept that a person who has expressed ideas that justify terrorism may be restrained from acting out those ideas. But we would not justify torturing a person suspected of harbouring such notions to force him to reveal them or to reject such ideas. However, surveys in the Western world find that Continue reading »
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Is religion the cause of war and violence in the Middle East and elsewhere?
We are consistently seeing the ghastly side of Islam with public beheadings but we also need to keep in mind the ghastly side of Christianity which was so evidence during the Crusades. Many conclude that religion, now and in the past, is the cause of so much violence. Karen Armstrong has just written ‘Fields of Continue reading »
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Brian Johnstone. How to Respond to Terrorism?
How can we make sense of the contemporary situation of increasing violence? Some groups engage in terrorism against other groups and these engage in torture as a means of defeating the terrorism of the others? In liberal states torture is condemned as immoral; some seek to prohibit it by law, others defend it as a Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The Sydney seige and social misfits. Will we ever learn?
I posted the following blog ‘Will we ever learn?’ on 27 October this year. Amongst other things it highlighted the domestic risks that would result from the Abbott Government’s decision to join the war in Iraq and Syria. Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association has today described the hostage taker and killer as a Continue reading »
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Rethinking the cost of Western intervention in Ukraine.
In the Washington Post on November 25, Katrina vanden Heuvel had a very interesting article on the mistakes that Europe, NATO, and the US have made in their approach to Russia over the Ukraine and Crimea. She quotes Henry Kissinger as saying ‘Nobody in the West has offered a concrete program to restore Crimea. Nobody Continue reading »
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Walter Hamilton. Japan and China: agreeing to disagree
In diplomacy, sometimes a nod is as good as a wink. You can argue later over the question of who nodded first (if at all). The leaders of Japan and China are maneuvering towards their first face-to-face meeting after two years of chilly and occasionally belligerent relations. To enable the meeting to happen officials on Continue reading »
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ISIS and Vietnam.
In an op ed column in the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman spoke of the parallels between the war in Vietnam and the conflict now in Iraq and Syria. He mentions how the executive of foreign journalists is designed to provoke Western intervention. See link below for Thomas Friedman’s article. John Menadue http://nyti.ms/1vcTEK5 Continue reading »
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Annabelle Lukin. When governments go to war, the Fourth Estate goes AWOL.
A year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a postmortem of the media coverage of the so-called “Iraq war”. The conference included academics, journalists, UN weapons inspectors and diplomats. UC Berkeley also invited Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long, whose job it had been to prepare journalists to be embedded with Continue reading »
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Hugh White on Australians and War from Honest History.
In my blog of 20 October ‘It is becoming much easier to go to war’ I highlighted the reasons and the background to developments since the Vietnam War that are making it much more likely that we will commit ourselves to war. In an earlier posting of March 23 – see below – I carried Continue reading »
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The Italian solution.
Last night the ABC program, Foreign Correspondent, carried a remarkable and moving account of the work of the Italian Navy in rescuing ‘people fleeing conflict or economic despair in the Middle East and Africa’. The Italian Admiral in charge of the operations in the Mediterranean said ‘We have the duty in these cases when we Continue reading »
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Cavan Hogue. The new Vietnam.
We seem to be rushing forward to the past in the Middle East and it looks increasingly like a rerun of Vietnam which began with a request from the Saigon Government (that we had to ask for), initial popular support for intervention against the Communist bogey, followed by disillusionment and defeat. A domestic political asset Continue reading »
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