Top 5
Used for weekly email
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“I told you so”: No Aussie subs in 2030s, total reliance on the Yanks
The sweetest words in the English language: I told you so. Continue reading »
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Reversing Europe’s and Australia’s slide into irrelevance and insecurity
Europe and Australia are facing a common existential threat: a creeping irrelevance caused, on the one hand, by our failure properly to invest and, on the other hand, by our ill-considered slide from a strategic dependence on the United States to a non-strategic, self-defeating servility to Washington’s policy agenda. Continue reading »
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History will record that Israel committed a holocaust
It’s 8 pm in Gaza, Palestine right now, the end of my fourth day in Rafah and the first moment I’ve had to sit in a quiet place to reflect. Continue reading »
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Tea for two: Preparing for talks with China’s Foreign Minister
We shall never get anywhere with the Australia-China relationship if we are not pragmatic, as Bismarck famously said. While we must avoid over-ambitious goals, forthcoming official talks with China’s top foreign affairs official Wang Yi will present a unique opportunity to test the government’s relationship reset. Continue reading »
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What will it really take to become a Renewable Energy Superpower?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese makes great play of his ambition to establish Australia as a Renewable Energy Superpower, a laudable ambition if it can be pulled off. But if ambition is to become more than platitudes, the Prime Minister needs to fundamentally reset current climate policy. Rather than sticking to the government’s inadequate 2022 election Continue reading »
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Penny in Thunderland: Through the lurking glass
Like many APS officers I had dealings with ASIO on occasion. Following Mike Burgess’s playbook I cannot name specifics in the interest of National Security, but almost without exception I found ASIO activities to be conducted by a mob of arse-clowns; the old TV cartoon comedy of Spy-vs-Spy rang terrifyingly true. Continue reading »
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Siding with the oppressors: WOMAD defends Ziggy Marley, ‘uninvites’ Palestinian artists
Two significant acts invited to play WOMADelaide 2024 have been treated in vastly different ways in recent months by the Director, Ian Scobie. Continue reading »
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Can Australia trust Glencore with the Great Artesian Basin?
If you watch a TV channel that airs commercial advertising (my preference is SBS) no doubt you would have seen the recent advertisement by Glencore. The ad advises the viewing public: “The world needs natural resources to power our future. For 25 years Glencore has responsibly mined for metal and minerals that advance our everyday Continue reading »
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Housing battle lines for election 2025 begin to emerge
With last week’s announcements from the Coalition and Australian Greens, the contours of next year’s election housing debate have begun to take shape. It’s pretty clear that, as in four of the past six national polls, this policy area will be a flashpoint of the coming contest. Continue reading »
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Underestimating Albanese is a massive calamity for Australia
When Anthony Albanese said during 2022 he’d “always been underestimated… but here I am”, the message he was trying to convey was one of self-congratulation. He portrayed himself as a poor boy made good who deserved widespread public applause and appreciation for that achievement. Continue reading »
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PM Anwar Ibrahim rattles Australia’s cage on sinophobia and Gaza
Making the news in the mainstream western media around the world, but not in Australia which is hosting the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit 2024, was the forthright response from Malaysia PM Anwar Ibrahim during his press conference to a question from Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) journalist Stephen Dziedzic. Continue reading »
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Hiding in plain sight – Malaysian Airlines flight 370
As we approach the tenth anniversary of the 2014 disappearance of flight 370, Malaysian Airlines, we are getting the usual barrage of media speculation about the alleged mystery and its possible causes. Continue reading »
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Penny Wong rattles the China can
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. Continue reading »
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Australian Prime Minister referred to ICC for complicity in genocide
“The Australian government and its most senior officials have both failed to prevent or respond to the genocide committed by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza and been complicit in the carrying out of this genocide in a manner which falls squarely within Article 25 (3)(c) and/or (d) of the Rome Statute of the ICC,” state Continue reading »
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How did Australia get seduced by AUKUS?
AUKUS. The most disastrous defence-policy mistake in our history: In a class of its own as an exemplar of bureaucratic incompetence. Continue reading »
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Podcast: A rapacious America and the loss of Australian sovereignty
John Menadue, Editor-in-Chief of Pearls and Irritations, interviews Dr Mike Gilligan on the challenge of building a self-reliant Australian defence force, dealing with a rapacious America intent on its own interests, avoiding a US-proxy war with China, and the loss of Australian sovereignty under the 2014 Force Posture Agreement (FPA). Continue reading »
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‘A loss is a loss is a loss’
‘A loss is a loss is a loss’. The ever-astute Niki Savva bluntly summed up the significance of the Liberal Party’s loss in the Dunkley by-election despite the ‘denial and delusion’ of the party’s reaction to it. Back in the real world, the Labor Party will be relieved and quietly pleased with an outcome that Continue reading »
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ASIO needs a boss who can stand above the tumult
At the height of the argument about western conviction that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2002, Tony Blair’s minder, Alastair Campbell was accused of asking intelligence agencies to “sex up” what passed for evidence. The satirical magazine Private Eye published a cover with Alastair Campbell’s child asking, “What did you do in Continue reading »
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Show us the money! APU’s Australian Universities Accord response (Part 1)
The Australian Universities Accord Final Report (the Final Report) was made publicly available on 25 February 2024 by the Federal Minister for Education, the Hon. Jason Clare MP. It contains 47 recommendations for the reform of Australia’s higher education system over the next few decades. As one of us noted shortly after the Accord’s interim Continue reading »
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Horror in Gaza and the shallowness of Western civilisation
Modern Israel has existed for 860 months, yet the past 5 will define its culture, its values, and the very basis of its religious inspiration before the bar of history for generations to come. Continue reading »
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Palestinians in Gaza massacred, starved and raped
The Australian government remains silent, continues to call Israel “our friend”, and rewards Israel’s war machine in a new contract with the Israeli arms firm Elbit. The Federal Government sends more troops to the Middle East while starving Palestinians in northern Gaza are massacred as they desperately seek food for their families, babies in Gaza Continue reading »
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Melbourne’s F1 grand prix a financial car crash for Victoria
30 years ago, then Premier Jeff Kennett told Victorians the grand prix would not cost taxpayers a cent. $1 billion later, it is obvious he was wrong. This is what Victorian taxpayers have paid so far to host a four-day Formula 1 car race. And the bill just keeps growing. Continue reading »
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Traitors in our midst: Australia’s foreign interference laws are a political ruse
Leaving aside the issue of whether ASIO’s announcement that there is a ‘traitor in our midst’ is simply a ploy to get more funds in this year’s Federal Budget (something you can never rule out) why hasn’t ASIO and other security and law enforcement agencies in this country pursued the two greatest practitioners of so Continue reading »
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Asia, Government, Media, Politics, Top 5
The coming of the fear
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear. ― George Orwell (Eric Blair) Continue reading »
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I will no longer be complicit in genocide
My Name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the United States Airforce. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. (Caution: Graphic Content) Continue reading »
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Hugh White dismantles the AUKUS project
As opposition to AUKUS grows, the nuclear submarine project does not stand up to expert scrutiny. Continue reading »
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Australian Civil Society submits statement on Gaza genocide to the International Court of Justice
As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Australia is obliged to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people and failure to do so risks complicity in genocide. In the absence of a response from the Australian government to the ICJ ruling, at least 100 groups representing civil society are observing Continue reading »
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Electric vehicles will crush fossil cars on price as lithium and battery prices fall
If it wasn’t already clear, the writing is now well and truly on the wall for the fossil car makers: Just a week after BYD launched its $US15,000 “Corolla killer” and with the world’s largest EV battery maker recently announcing it’s on track to cut battery costs in half this year, new research suggests the decline in Continue reading »
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After Ukraine: US readies “transnational kill chain” for Taiwan proxy war
The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how. Continue reading »
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The despoiling of public life: Scott Morrison and authoritarian paranoia
There are few surprises regarding the final episode of Nemesis, the three-part account on how the Liberal Party, in partnership with the Nationals, psychotically and convulsively disembowel itself from the time Tony Abbott won office in 2013. Over the gore and violence concluding the tenures of Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, one plotter rose, knife bloodied Continue reading »