June 12, 2022

Is Americas Strategic Ambiguity over Taiwan a thing of the past?

During President Bidens recent visit to Tokyo for the Quad meeting, he said the US would intervene militarily in defence of Taiwan, if China were to attack it.

August 19, 2022

Bill Armstrong: National security through community engagement. Fail to honour people and they will fail to honour you. (Lao Tsu 2000 years ago)

We are living through a change of era on planet earth. Huge changes are ongoing. There is no doubt that the recent federal election gave a mandate to the incoming Government to RESET the way we do business at many levels.

October 12, 2021

Fool's gold: Australia counts the cost of NSW's Covid arrogance

Gladys Berejiklian’s petulant leadership and disregard for the rest of the country undermined national efforts to control the virus.

October 6, 2020

Hydrogen, but not for the Hindenburg

In Mafia folklore, when faced with an existential crisis, the mobsters would go to the mattresses a euphemism for dropping everything to engage in a life and death struggle with their enemies.

May 30, 2022

Its back to diplomacy as destiny

While some commentators hoped that the new Albanese government might immediately reset ties with Beijing, such expectations were both undefined and unrealistic.

August 8, 2020

The UKs Russia Report on the Londongrad Laundromat (Counter Punch July 29 2020)

The UK parliaments Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), drawn from MPs and peers of all parties, last week published its report on possible Russian interference in UK politics.

May 11, 2022

Small business post offices call for public Post Office Bank

The group representing the interests of Australias 2,850 small business licensed post offices (LPOs) has issued a federal election statement, Protecting the future of your community post office"

June 13, 2022

Charalambous: Israels occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is a fundamental barrier to peace

When it comes to the question of achieving peace in the Middle East, Labour is clear: in government, we would immediately recognise the state of Palestine. We want to see a two-state solution, with a sovereign and secure Palestine and Israel existing in peace alongside one another. But we must acknowledge how far away that goal is.

October 24, 2020

Pope Francis on just wars, capital punishment and voluntary assisted dying

_Pope Francis and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have recently made pronouncements on these life and death issues. The Church’s teaching on the taking of human life has never been particularly coherent.

March 20, 2018

BRIAN TOOHEY. Teresa May's rush to judgment on nerve agents

The British Prime Minister Teresa May failed to produce any evidence that the Russian state used a nerve agent called Novichok before she announced measures to punish the Kremlin. At least Tony Blair famously produced a “dodgy dossier” claiming Saddam Hussein possessed a deadly arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. The Bush White House peddled similar nonsense masquerading as “intelligence. Politicians and journalists around the world promptly accepted this rubbish as justification for the disastrous invasion of Iraq 2003. There is a risk a new rush to judgement could now be occurring.

September 16, 2022

The West fought a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine 100 years ago and failed

One hundred years ago, a Western proxy war against Russia had just been lost. It was fought in Poland, Ukraine and in Russia. That war has lessons for us today.

October 25, 2020

Morrison: How to market denialism on climate change

Scotty from marketing may now be the common Scott Morrison descriptor. When it comes to climate change it is more and more spin.

February 17, 2020

GREG McCARTHY. Searching for a humane response to the coronavirus. (EAF16.2.2020)

The coronavirus (COVID-19) has served to magnify political, economic and cultural tensions within and between Australia and China.

May 29, 2022

Crimson with embarrassment about Teal results

Teals prove real, despite not making deals

May 16, 2018

Profit trumping professionalism! All too often the case in Australian pharmacies

On May 3, Health Minister Greg Hunt spoke at a conference organised by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia. This is the pharmacy owners association (all pharmacists) which in 2011, notoriously, entered into a deal with the vitamin and supplement provider, Blackmores, to have 5000 pharmacies try and sell a Blackmores product to clients picking up prescription medicines. Once revealed the subsequent opprobrium, of course, resulted in the deal being cancelled.

October 31, 2020

Vote for the Trump vision and not the person! (National Catholic Reporter Oct 26, 2020)

No one ever said Michael Warsaw was stupid. The chairman of the board/CEO of EWTN and publisher of the National Catholic Register penned a column about the forthcoming election entitled, “Voting for a Vision, Not a Person.”

June 14, 2018

MICHAEL PASCOE. RBA awakes Australia is not getting the wage rise it needs

The laws of supply and demand for labour are broken. The Australian economy is not getting the wage rises it needs and theres no sign of that changing.

February 25, 2020

AVI SHLAIM. Palestine and the West: A century of betrayal.(M.E. EYE 17.2.2020)

Noam Chomskydescribedsettler-colonialism as the most extreme and sadistic form of imperialism.

May 22, 2022

The ASEAN-US summit: rhetoric versus reality

When the US-ASEAN Summit was first announced, there were great expectations on both sides.However fond hopes foundered on the rocks of reality.

August 8, 2020

Another Hiroshima is ComingUnless We Stop It Now (Counterpunch August 4, 2020)

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.`

June 13, 2022

American exceptionalism: Our gun culture at home and abroad

There is an insidious and unspoken connection between our gun culture at home and abroad. U.S. politicians and pundits believe that huge defence budgets provide international security for the United States, and many Americans believe that personal weapons provide safety at home. We dont question the use of deadly weaponry in unnecessary wars overseas; Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are the most recent examples. At home, there are more guns than people 120 guns for every 100 people. The United States is exceptional because some of the same weapons designed for war are available to teenagers fighting their personal demons.

March 2, 2020

DARON ACEMOGLU. Social Democracy beats Democratic Socialism(Project Syndicate17.2.2020)

_Now that US Senator Bernie Sanders has emerged as a leading contender for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, his brand of democratic socialism warrants closer scrutiny.

May 29, 2022

Japans peaceful foreign policy is under siege from right-wing militarism

Seventy-five years ago, Japan adopted a constitution that ruled out ever using war as a tool of state policy. The countrys conservative leaders now want to ditch that commitment as they embrace the dangerous role of a militarised US client state.

August 22, 2020

The Decline in Power of the Oil States (Counter Punch August 17, 2020)

President Donald Trump is cock-a-hoop over the United Arab Emirates becoming the first Arab Gulf state to normalise its relations with Israel. He needs all the good news he can get in the months before the US presidential election.

January 31, 2018

JOHN MENADUE. We are joined at the hip to a country perpetually at war. Part 3

Next week I will be posting articles asserting that we are running great risks in being tied to what Malcolm Fraser called “our dangerous ally”, an ally almost always at war. The risks, disasters and dangers pre-date Donald Trump. Think Vietnam and Iraq.

In recent issues of P & I, I have posted many articles about how America has never had a decade without being at war, how it has subverted and overthrown numerous foreign governments and has a military, industrial, and intelligence and political complex that depends on continual wars. We have become part of that complex.

I repost below an article that I initially posted in July 2016 “Is war in the American DNA?”

July 28, 2022

Mark Warburton: Time to revisit integrity in the Australian Public Service

_There is a malaise in APS integrity, accountability and transparency. Robodebt was only one manifestation of the problem. Officials now mislead Parliament and there is little effective accountability.

April 15, 2022

Brett Wilkins: Jimmy Carter says that the US is the 'Most warlike nation in the history of the world'

The only US president to complete his term without war, military attack or occupation has called the United States the most warlike nation in the history of the world.

May 11, 2022

New voices for a new parliament

At first, the 2022 election looked like being another fake contest between two major parties which offered voters little new, and little choice, particularly on foreign affairs and defence.

September 16, 2022

What Philippines Marcos Jnr can learn from Singapore and Indonesia about balancing ties with China, US

With respect to our place in the community of nations, the Philippines shall continue to be a friend to all. And an enemy to none, declared President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, in hisfirst state-of-the-nation address. We will be a good neighbour always looking for ways to collaborate and cooperate with the end goal of mutually beneficial outcomes, he added, setting the tone for his foreign policy for the next six years.

September 25, 2021

Sunday environmental round up

The pressure rises before the Glasgow COP meeting. The end of coal may be on the distant horizon but 80 per cent of the worlds energy still comes from fossil fuels and corporate America is preparing to fight Bidens climate action plans.

June 14, 2018

AURELIA MULGAN. Deja vu all over again in USJapan trade.

From the late 1970s until the 1990s, US-Japan trade relations were marred by regular bouts of economic friction. These periods often peaked in tandem with rises in the United States trade deficit with Japan and ended in voluntary Japanese concessions to US pressure.

May 27, 2022

Albanese hastens 'in an orderly way'

After nine years in the wilderness, the new Labor Party government will have a massive to-do list, notwithstanding the relatively modest policy proposals it took to this election its so-called small target strategy. For just a moment, when Anthony Albanese announced that he and four colleagues would be sworn in as the new government just two days after the election, it looked as though it might try to emulate Gough Whitlam after his 1972 election win when he established, with deputy Lance Barnard, a two-man government to instantly implement a huge range of policies that didnt need legislation.

November 14, 2020

A Harold Evans postscript

What sort of obituary do you think The Sunday Times would publish about probably its greatest editor, Harry Evans?

May 17, 2022

Election coverage: ridiculous questions, irrelevant answers

There has been justified criticism of journalists’ fondness for gotcha questions. But there is a broader and more costly crisis in the way that election campaigns are structured and covered by media.

May 11, 2022

What a new Minister should do about trade policies and trade justice

_As you go to the polling booth on May 21, your candidates will be asking for your vote to repair an economy hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, floods, and fire. But before you entrust them with your vote, you should also ask how their party’s trade policies will help or hinder the national recovery.

May 18, 2022

If I was minister for the environment, my one crucial reform would offer a sustainable future for Australia

The most urgent and vital decision that the Minister could make to help secure a sustainable future for Australia would be to establish a scientifically based national independent Environmental Protection Agency with statutory powers.

June 22, 2022

What now for government in Australia?

Now that the ALP has formed a government, we should ask what it can practically do to restore governance in Australia and convince the Australia public of the massive task it, and the public confront, in the face of so many festering problems. This task will not be easy, but a comprehensive narrative will have to be developed and communicated, laying down unequivocally the nations problems and their solutions.

September 16, 2014

Tessa Morris-Suzuki. The CIA and the Japanese media: a cautionary tale.

When Japan surrendered at the end of the Pacific War, the occupation authorities pledged to democratise the country. They carried out many reforms and introduced a new peace constitution, guaranteeing human rights and freedom of expression. The reforms had a profound and lasting effect, but there was also a less democratic side to US-Japan relations in the immediate postwar era.

It has long been known that the occupation authorities chose to retain media censorship for their own purposes. But new dimensions of US media manipulation in postwar Japan have come to light in a large number of CIA documents declassified over recent years.

September 10, 2022

We urgently need to give Ukraine peace talks a chance

Six months ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States, NATO and the European Union (EU) wrapped themselves in the Ukrainian flag, shelled out billions for arms shipments and imposed draconian sanctions intended to severely punish Russia for its aggression.

May 4, 2022

Alan Pears-Energy productivity and efficiency improvement: Australias forgotten fuels

Whether you focus on climate policy, energy market transition, social justice, health or business competitiveness and innovation, improving energy productivity and efficiency is a winner.

July 14, 2019

ROBERT MICKENS. Francis continues to make us all a bit uncomfortable - From his stance on migrants to his encyclical Laudato si', the pope causes controversy

Pope Francis is an equal opportunity offender. No matter where you place yourself along the Catholic Church’s broad spectrum right, left or center; conservative or liberal; traditional or progressive if you are not challenged and even disturbed by some of the things this pope says and does, then you are not paying attention.

November 18, 2020

Senior Trump Admin. official says politicians get 'very rich' by supporting Israel (Haaretz, Nov 14, 2020)

Douglas Macgregor, one of several Trump loyalists recently installed at the Pentagon, says the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States is trying to drag America into war.

June 23, 2021

Dissecting the controversy around Medicare reform and a disappointing response from the ALP

Any plan to change Medicare especially if it comes from a Coalition government is bound to attract controversy. So when health minister Greg Hunt announced a fortnight ago that more than 900 items on the Medicare benefits schedule would be changed with just a months notice, the reaction was immediate.

April 16, 2022

An unexpected Easter in Ukraine

On Easter night and for the entire season, Ukranians will greet one another with the faith affirmation: " " (Khrystos voskres). (vo-ee-stynu voskres) and the Russians with their own: ! (Kristos voskrjes!) ! (Vaistinu voskrjes!). Christ is Risen, He is risen indeed.

March 30, 2018

UTA MIHM. How to avoid excessive surgery out-of-pocket costs

Tips on negotiating with your doctor and shopping around for a surgeon who doesn’t charge excessively.

October 24, 2020

When does incompetence become a crime? (Counter Punch Oct 20, 2020)

Instead of relying on experienced public health experts with a successful record in finding, containing and isolating people infected with HIV and TB, the government handed the project over to the private sector, pouring great sums of money into the creation of a new but, in Sages judgement, dysfunctional system.

June 6, 2022

The most moral army in the world in pictures

In what world is this okay? Israeli soldiers hold guns to young Palestinian children. This is never okay.

June 15, 2022

Julian Schultz searches but does not find the soul of the nation

When a book called The Idea of Australia: A search for the nations soul is touted as A brilliant successor to Donald Hornes The Lucky Country, and as A triumph of art, politics, literature, history, and the deepest scholarship, one would expect a truly exciting read that clarifies or refocuses the idea of Australia.

September 11, 2022

There is more to Sri Lanka than boats and the Rajapaksa family

In the past 15 years, Australians have become used to thinking of Sri Lanka mainly as an island from where boats filled with asylees - and other venturesome folk - seek illegally to reach our shores.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal