Top 5
Used for weekly email
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The rise of Trussonomics
It’s impossible to know whether the new British Prime Minister is genuinely serious about constructive policy or not. She is certainly interested in greasing palms and calming the storms, if only to delay the inevitable. Having proven herself the shallowest of candidates to succeed her disgraced, not wholly banished predecessor, Liz Truss has leapt into Continue reading »
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The best journalists are persecuted and despised
The best western journalists are overwhelmingly despised while the worst are acclaimed millionaires. Western civilisation is built on lies, dependent on lies, powered by lies. Don’t seek widespread approval. It’s worthless. Continue reading »
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Who are the war criminals?
One of the few heartening things to come out of Russia’s war against Ukraine is the renewed emphasis on how it’s a crime for national leaders to start a war of aggression. Putin is not the only one who can reasonably be accused of committing war crimes. Most US president since World War II have Continue reading »
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Taiwan “is not a vital Australian interest — we do not recognise it as a sovereign state”. A repost from November 17, 2021
Peter Hartcher has a lot to answer for, writes Paul Keating in a response to the Nine columnist that did not make it to print. Continue reading »
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Is China Expansionist?
China’s emergence as a great power has prompted many fears that it will start to become aggressive and militaristic. But while European powers have acted this way historically, China’s own long history tells us that it wields power in a very different manner. Continue reading »
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Morrison joins hard right IDU’s embrace of Viktor Orban
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has joined the advisory board of the International Democrat Union. It is an organisation that is much more radical than its self-declared defence of the “centre right” spin suggests. Continue reading »
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The Queen complained that Gough Whitlam was rude to the lesser Royals
In 1974 in Kingston, Jamaica, aboard her yacht The Britannia, the Queen told me that ‘your Prime Minister had been ‘rude’ to my family.’ I was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet at the time. Continue reading »
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The incautious, entitled, ‘meddling’ King Charles III of Australia: Can he stay out of politics?
When, according to the self-appointed guardians of public decency and royal decorum, is it ever ‘appropriate’ to speak about the future of the monarchy let alone, dare I say it, a republic? Not while the Queen was alive – because, disrespect. And not now that the Queen is dead – because, also disrespect. And of Continue reading »
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Australia trashes the ‘international rules based order’ over AUKUS and nuclear proliferation
We have another entirely Australian own goal to China. Continue reading »
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The Defence Strategic Review – We are becoming a proxy or is it a patsy for the US in a possible conflict with China
The Defence Strategic Review must warn Minister Marles about the dangerous path he is committing Australia to. We are becoming a spear carrier for the US. Continue reading »
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Prince Charles and John Kerr – the odd pair in PNG planning the dismissal of Gough Whitlam-A repost
In the heat of early spring 1975 in the New Guinea highlands, the Governor General, Sir John Kerr sidled up to Prince Charles and suggested a quiet chat. Their topic? The possible dismissal of the Prime Minister. Continue reading »
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Immigration Inquiry – A new beginning?
At last, a government that recognises where immigration and the contribution of immigration sits in our national life. For some ten years we have endured the demonisation of migration, the systematic downgrading of immigration policies and procedures that has left us worse off. Continue reading »
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America the great? How the decline of the US will affect Australian policy
Courtesy of the Financial Times early last year, we ran what I regarded as the graph of the first two decades of this century. Continue reading »
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Modi’s India gets a free pass on Human Rights – but not China!
The people of Jammu-Kashmir are at a critical juncture in their struggle for justice. Despite the fact that they live in the most militarised region on earth, experience shocking human rights abuses, and have been given a genocide warning by Genocide Watch, few Western countries have acted. It’s time for the Australian government to speak Continue reading »
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Defence Strategic Review – Read all about it
According to the terms of reference Defence Security Review is now required to ensure that Defence has the right capabilities that are postured to meet the growing strategic challenges that Australia and its partner countries will face in the world in coming years. Continue reading »
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The Defence Strategic Review – we need to urgently reduce conflicts and global warming
Cabinet needs to insist Marles’ return to Labor’s previous support for an independent foreign policy and recognise there is no guarantee an arms build-up won’t lead to a calamitous war. Crucially, the Albanese government needs to give a clear priority to helping reduce conflicts and global warming that cause horrendous suffering to innocent people around Continue reading »
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The Defence Strategic Review and the loss of our strategic autonomy to the US
Over the next two weeks we will be running a series of articles to focus on the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) which is headed by Sir Angus Houston and the Hon. Stephen Smith. In becoming a US proxy, even patsy, we are on a risky and dangerous path. Continue reading »
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What a contrast in professionalism and civility. The 7/30 Report
You have to admire the PRC Ambassador, Xiao Qian. After the uncivil behaviour, and gotcha questioning, and the visible personal animus journalists gave him at the National Press Club four weeks ago, he’d have been forgiven if he declined to make himself available to speak to Australian media for a while. Or at least, if Continue reading »
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Justice Kelly’s speech on racism – a response
Northern Territory Supreme Court Justice Judith Kelly’s widely publicised speech on August 26th delivered to a Women’s Lawyers function in Darwin and which covered racism and family violence in Indigenous communities, delivered to a Women Lawyers, needs a response. Continue reading »
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On Ukraine and Taiwan we are not using diplomacy; we are using weaponry
We are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that led to the war in Ukraine. We’re organising alliances, building up weaponry, trash-talking China, having Speaker Pelosi fly to Taiwan, when the Chinese government said, “Please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions.” We say, “No, we do what we want,” and now send more arms. Continue reading »
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Pakistan floods -The wealthy pollute the world and the poor suffer
Global capitalism is ‘a giant poverty producing machine, masterful in its methods of pitting the poor against the very poor or flinging crumbs to the wretched so that they dissipate their energy fighting one another.’ Continue reading »
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Biden’s China policy, US business and Australia
Washington’s concern about China is real and not just threat inflation, which seeks an enemy to promote military Keynesianism: the traditional method of transferring public money to private corporations in the military industrial sector. Continue reading »
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The Australian War Memorial goes AWOL
The little world of Australian military historians is talking about Daniel Lane’s The Digger of Kokoda and the resurgence of the debate over whether the Australian War Memorial should recognise Frontier Conflict. The two are connected by the Memorial’s reprehensible silence. Continue reading »
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Massive secret network was pushing the western narrative
The huge disinformation campaign ran for almost five years. The reputation of Chinese, Russians and Iranians was blackened..Falsified accounts pushed stories in tandem with US govt media VOA, RFE and others. Continue reading »
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CPAC Australia and Murdoch
One of the most unsavoury events on the Trumpist right is CPAC. This is an organisation that stages Conservative Political Action Conferences in America, as well as internationally. CPAC Australia has been operating since 2019 and the 2022 event is due to take place in Sydney this October. Continue reading »
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Our Air Force is already ‘operating against China’
Australia is seemingly as eager as ever to be pushed out on a plank by our American friends, professionally. Ever the faithful “patsy”. Continue reading »
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Australian politics and the banality of immorality
One of the most striking aspects of the public response to the revelations about former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s secret self-appointment to multiple ministries was that, after the initial expressions of incredulity, there was so little surprise that such an outrage could have occurred. Continue reading »
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Moves began in 2018 for Morrison’s secret government
Scott Morrison and/or his officials prepared the way for the Prime Minister or a Minister to secretly administer a government department in August 2018, just four days after Morrison took power after disposing of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Continue reading »
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The west’s false narrative about Russia and China
The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an Continue reading »
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The Chinese non-threat
Our resident non-Chinese speaking, non-Chinese informed but bitterly ‘China is expansionist-aggressive’ commentators in the mainstream media in Australia don’t have,or even want to have, any idea about China? Continue reading »
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