A collage of panic-inducing anti-China headlines from the New York Times and other major publications can be seen as a factor in the rise of anti-Asian hate seen in western countries.
John Menadue
-
Marise Payne and Kurt Campbell believe their own propaganda about economic coercion by China
The Australian Government and our tame media complain continually about China’s ‘economic coercion of Australia. But the conflict with China has in many cases been provoked by Australia. The US has not looked at the facts and stumbles in blindly. (more…)
-
Will the Alaska meeting ease tensions or worsen relations between the US and China?
There is an important face to face meeting between the US and China on Thursday in Alaska. But our media seems disinterested.
-
QUAD: A public relations exercise to disguise Big Pharma’s obstruction and to combat Chinese vaccine successes
QUAD (US, Japan, India and Australia) was regarded as a strategic bloc to contain China. However, the recent virtual meeting between President Biden and Prime Ministers Suga, Modhi and Morrison ,whilst highlighting the provision vaccines to the region was really about curbing Chinese vaccine successes- an expression of soft power. (more…)
-
The Iraq war, the Murdoch war and media culpability
The media here thought the terrorism in Australia fell from the deep blue sky and had no relationship to the help John Howard gave to George Bush in the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. The Australian media continue to fail us badly over its coverage of the Middle East wars, terrorism and the continuing human disaster and political and sectarian confusion. (more…)
-
Why dental care was excluded from Medicare and why it should now be included (an edited repost)
In 1974, the Whitlam Government decided to exclude dental care from Medicare for two reasons. The first was cost. The second was political. Whitlam felt that combatting the doctors would be hard enough without having to combat dentists as well. Forty-six years later, with Australia much richer and the proven success of Medicare, it is now time for dental care to be progressively included in Medicare.
-
The French submarine boondoggle is Australia’s biggest defence blunder and compounded by media failure
Our corporate media has failed to hold the government to account in its scandalous handling of the $90 billion French submarine purchase. For five years, the media has failed us. It is now rewarded in the new Media Code with 90% of the tax on Google and Facebook to be handed over to the three failing monopoly media companies. (more…)
-
Our C18th health workforce structure is riddled with demarcations, inefficiencies and antique work practices. (An edited repost)
Casual workers are fair game but the government is not prepared to tackle the very serious workforce inefficiencies in our large and growing health sector.
-
Two decades after 9/11, US war machine is in 85 countries
Since 2018, the US has provided “counterterrorism” training or assistance in 79 nations and its troops have carried out bombing or ground attacks in 10 countries, according to a new interactive map. Meanwhile, China has one official overseas base, in Djibouti.
-
Japanese Ambassador rapped over the knuckles by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
But did he get the message? (more…)
-
What is the Japanese Embassy in Canberra up to?
Is it trying to stoke anti-China sentiment in Australia? (more…)
-
People in glass houses should be careful about throwing stones
A group of Australian journalists in their never-ending hostility to China keep throwing stones at China for human rights breaches in Xinjiang, but largely ignore Australian and other breaches. Their ignorance of China explains a lot. (more…)
-
Australia: Clinging to a declining and aggressive US. An updated repost
Declining empires never go gracefully. And neither will the US empire – addicted as it is to a belief in its ‘exceptionalism’ and its grounding in aggression both at home and abroad.
The attack on the US Capitol reminds us how fragile our ally is. The civil war is unfinished business.Western media have sought to minimise this constitutional crisis- a democratic blip and nothing more!
Joe Biden will smooth a few rough edges but he won’t do much to arrest the decline. He will keep telling us that ‘America is back’ and leading again!
-
Murdoch and his role in the Trump Presidency
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd dissects Rupert Murdoch’s role in creating the Trump presidency. “Donald Trump may have lit the match that detonated his country’s turmoil but it was Rupert Murdoch who diligently crammed the joint full of explosives.”
-
China’s vision of hegemony: the view from India – Vijay Gokhale
China speaks of the ‘community of the shared future for mankind’, and ‘win–win cooperation’; it plays balance-of-power politics and acts in ways that take advantage of others in adversity. China’s aim is to establish its supremacy in areas of productive technology, trade networks and financing options in ways that shut out competition. (more…)
-
Rupert Murdoch’s faulty memory. (edited repost from 21 Dec, 2016)
Rupert Murdoch has asserted many times that he has never asked anything from a prime minister yet the Guardian has proof that contradict that claim, as do I.
-
How Murdoch, Abeles twisted the arm of the Hawke Government to help Ansett at the expense of Qantas. (Edited and reposted from 1.1.2019))
Rupert Murdoch repeatedly says that he has never asked a prime minister for anything. That is quite brazen. I know, from personal experience, that this claim is just not true.
-
The Matthew Fisher Sarcoma Research Fund
My granddaughter Naomi’s husband, Matt Fisher, died of an aggressive sarcoma cancer earlier this month. He was aged 39. The sarcoma was diagnosed in February last year.
A research fund has been established to promote research at the Garvan Institute.
Would you consider making a donation? Click here.
-
Media concentration in Australia and the Murdoch damage
It is important that any arrangements made for Facebook/Google/Twitter to pay media companies for content are made transparently and equally available to ALL online media publishers who meet (a very low) bar and wish to participate.No government should ever facilitate the handing over of money to tax shy oligopolies. (more…)
-
The love affair that made America grate
Between rides and walks on the Trump Golf Course and embracing at the White House, Murdoch and Trump have debauched democracy.
-
There’s a term for what happened at the Capitol this week: ‘whitelash’ (Politico 9.1.21)
The whiplash from the Georgia elections to the storming of the Capitol mirrored a familiar pattern in US history of Black advancement followed by white backlash. (more…)
-
What do our political leaders stand for?
Good government must be based on broadly shared values that inspire and enthuse us. (more…)
-
Words matter: Was the attack on the Capitol a rally, protest or insurrection? (Center for Public Integrity)
What happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6? Depends on whom you ask. To some, the attack by hundreds of mostly white men and women was an insurrection. To others it was a coup. (more…)
-
Drug policy reform series – a repost
Attached is a collection of articles on drug policy reform, which were published as a series on Pearls and Irritations between 6 and 11 August 2018. This series is designed to draw attention to this important issue, and to the failure of our current policies. (more…)
-
The Confederacy stormed the Capitol. The unfinished civil war.(The Nation 7.1.20)
And then, because the rioters were white, they were allowed to walk away. But just imagine if they had been Black…Authorities would remove and arrest Trump—if he were Black. (more…)
-
Asian language learning in Australia was a disgrace 40 years ago. It is now much worse.
An important issue we worked on in the Department (of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs) was foreign language learning. We set the pace in the early 1980s, with not many supporters. I felt quite lonely. (more…)
-
Blending electoral democracy with political meritocracy: Michael Lyons
“Democracies” come in many shades of grey, from liberal to illiberal, authoritarian to “managed”, and more. A convergence of East and the West towards something akin to “post-democracy” might bring a much-improved world order, and a safer planet. (more…)
-
Ian Robinson: Changing one word doesn’t fix the National Anthem but makes it worse
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is deluded if he thinks changing one word can fix our deeply flawed National Anthem. There are too many things wrong with it. Tinkering around the edges cannot save something that is rotten at the core. (more…)
-
The perils of outsourcing (privatisation) – a repost
In Pearls and Irritations last year we posted articles about the serious erosion in the quality of care and services in many fields – disability care, vocational education and training, child care and particularly aged care, where more than 650 older people have died in private, for-profit “homes”. All too often service quality has been sacrificed for profit. Political ideology has become more important than quality services for the public.
