On 30 January 2025, CNN carried a long, detailed article, accompanied by photographs entitled Suicidal tendencies and ’80s battlefield tactics: How North Korean soldiers are operating in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The article, by a team led by senior journalists Nick Paton Walsh and Rebecca Wright, offered an insight into “the brutal and near-suicidal tactics of North Korean soldiers” fighting the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk region. (more…)
Tim Beal
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On the verge of WWIII?
‘Joe Biden allows Ukraine to use long-range US-supplied ATACMS missiles on targets in Russia, prompting threat of world war’ – so runs the ABC headline of 18 November. Serious stuff, not to be lightly discounted, and yet perhaps what we are seeing is primarily performative politics, viewed through the smoke of uncertainty and reflected in the distorting mirrors of propaganda. In short, whilst the consequences could not be more dangerous, when we unpack the narrative, it seems that, at the moment at least, the situation is not so critical as it might appear. (more…)
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A contrived myth? North Korean troops battling the Ukrainians in Kursk
At the beginning of World War I, when the British Expeditionary Force in France was being battered by the advancing German army there was great anxiety in Britain. Then the Russians magically came to the rescue. (more…)
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Lowy’s dangerous fantasy of a stable bipolar Asia
Lowy’s fudge doesn’t work – Australia has to choose between peace with China or following the US towards war. (more…)
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Resisting US pressure for NZ to sacrifice itself to defend US hegemony against China
Twenty years’ ago the then leader of the conservative New Zealand National Party, Don Brash, got into hot water when a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) official reported that he had assured a visiting delegation from the US Senate that if his party were elected to office NZ’s ‘nuclear-free policy’ would be ‘gone by lunchtime’.
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New Zealand nearly sanctions the United Nations
The Bank of New Zealand blocks a donation to UNRWA, then thinks again. (more…)
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Putin warns the West: Russia is ready for peace in Ukraine
On the eve of the Russian election, Vladimir Putin exudes confidence, discounts nuclear war, but warns West on the dangers of escalation. Meanwhile the mainstream western media obfuscates and misleads as usual. (more…)
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False flag: Asian NATO under a new guise
The ‘United Nations Command’ provides the US with the perfect camouflaged vehicle for a global military alliance against China and North Korea. (more…)
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The Washington curse
America’s huge role in international affairs is undisputed but one aspect that tends to get overlooked is the way its support of local actors tends to inflame the situation. Indigenous political forces, be they governments or regimes in power, or movements or individuals seeking power, have their own agendas and motivations. If these objectives are compatible with American strategy a relationship can appear advantageous to both sides. Proxy relationships are not confined to the US of course, but America is by far the largest and most aggressive power in the world – who else even contemplates fighting a war on two, three or more fronts? (more…)
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The enemy within: Democracy and ‘Boys’ in the backroom
The US national security establishment has long-standing, pervasive and influential linkages with civil and military bureaucracies throughout the world who see their primary role not as serving their own governments but subordinating them to the interests of the United States. There is need for constant vigilance against this enemy within. (more…)
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“Red line”: Overshadowed by Gaza, Ukraine drifts beyond proxy war
The news that Ukraine has begun to use US-supplied long range ATACMS missiles against Russian forces has been overshadowed by the Palestine-Israel crisis, but it is an escalation that has profoundly dangerous implications. (more…)
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From one fire into another
New Zealand academic Robert Patman advocates back peddling on confrontation with China to focus on fighting Russia, but both promise disaster. (more…)
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Self-destructive stupidity, New Zealand style
‘Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad’
What a pity it is that we no longer believe in capricious gods because that would offer a good explanation for the otherwise quite perplexing habit of governments, with intelligent and informed people theoretically at their disposal, to embrace policies which are manifestly an example of self-destructive stupidity. Clever people doing stupid things. (more…) -
Is there a place for an honest person in the mainstream media?
It is becoming increasingly unlikely. Julian Assange is in prison; the dissenting voices of Seymour Hersh, John Pilger, Glen Greenwald and Tucker Carlson have been excluded from the mainstream, moving into self-publishing; and Mick Hall has resigned from Radio New Zealand after it tightened control to safeguard the pro-American narrative.
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Global NATO – bringing extra danger to our neighbourhood
On the eve of the Vilnius summit Foreign Affairs published an article by long term, and recently reappointed, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg entitled ‘A Stronger NATO for a More Dangerous World: What the Alliance Must Do in Vilnius—and Beyond’. Foreign Affairs is the bible of the American foreign policy establishment, being the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and NATO is a major instrument of US power, so the article is significant. That does not mean it should be taken literally; it is a travesty that distorts and inverts reality in a way that would leave Orwell bemused. Nevertheless what Stoltenberg says here, the way he says it, and what he omits deserve careful scrutiny. (more…)
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War propaganda: Western media suspends editor for publishing facts on Ukraine
If truth is the first casualty in war, then truth-seekers are surely next. (more…)
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Layers of deceit: exposing the hidden histories of our wars
There are distinct parallels between I F Stones’ exposé of the ongoing Korean War and both the Ukraine War and preparations for a second war with China. Izzy Stone did not travel to war zones like the intrepid Wilfred Burchett, nor had he the whistleblowing ‘sources’ that Sy Hersh uses. His approach is different and one that that we can all use to some degree. He read the official accounts and the mainstream press closely and carefully, revealing discrepancies and peeling back the layers of deceit.
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NZ and China’s Defence Dialogue: no news is bad news
On 10 May New Zealand and Chinese military officials met in Xi’an, China for their 11th Strategic Defence Dialogue, the first after a Covid gap of three years. The press releases from both sides were brief, anodyne and uninformative. (more…)
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The Ukraine war – lessons for Australia and the Asia/Pacific
We often look to history or contemporary events to help explain issues and to seek guidance. Thus Graham Allison went back millennia to explain America’s current drive to war with China in his Thucydides Trap. Recently Gregory Clark joined others in making the natural comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. Analogies are admittedly fraught with danger – parallels are never exact, the present never fits easily into the past and superficially similar events may be essentially very different – but they can be fruitful. (more…)
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Taiwan: two journeys, two roads, war or peace?
Despite all the determined, and well-funded, efforts of Greg Sheridan, his mates at ASPI and in the media to beat the war drums and the legal shenanigans around the role of the Governor General in declaring war, it is by no means inevitable that Australia will go to war against China. (more…)
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Goodbye to Ukraine? US prepares public for defeat
The New York Times report of 8th March that ‘Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say’ elicited two sets of responses. (more…)
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“Instrumentalist hypocrisy”: concepts of territorial integrity in Ukraine and Taiwan
The different way in which the concept of ‘territorial integrity’ is applied by the West in Ukraine and Taiwan sheds light on the instrumentalist hypocrisy at the heart of American foreign policy, and the role of the media in obscuring that hypocrisy.
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RAND: Ukraine procrastination unwise for American imperialism – Biden must negotiate
The unravelling military situation in Ukraine means that Biden’s best option is to negotiate, a new RAND report argues. The sooner the better. There is the awful danger that continued procrastination will propel the hapless Biden administration into precipitating nuclear war. (more…)
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Pride, power and exorbitant privilege: There’s more to US decline than loss of face
It is not just pride which motivates the US elite’s fear of China and of multipolarity. Their ‘exorbitant privilege’ rests on power conferred by hegemony. The struggle of Australia, and countries around the world, to reclaim sovereignty in resistance to that power will be difficult because so much hinges on it. (more…)
