More than six decades after his plane crashed it remains the great Cold War mystery: Was UN secretary-general (1953-61) Dag Hammarskjöld killed by sabotage, a technical fault, pilot error or air attack? If he was assassinated who was the mastermind? (more…)
Category: History
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Australia is addicted to fighting other people’s wars
How do we explain that half the Australian community thinks we should go to war with China? After twenty years of conflict in the Middle East, will our addiction to war and our insouciance about its consequences finally catch up with us in an American war over Taiwan? (more…)
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A plan for Australia worthy of our wartime heroes
In the desperation of WWII, Australia established a department of post-war reconstruction that drove far reaching change in how the country was governed. After the jolt of the pandemic, a similar department could be an engine room of a new type of government. (more…)
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In Ukraine, Australia has forgotten the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan
When a new Labor government was elected in May of this year there was a degree of optimism that their reform agenda would extend to foreign policy. Those hopes were not to be realised. The last Labor government to show a measure of independence in its foreign policy was the Whitlam government that ruled from 1972 to 1975. Among its brave foreign policy initiatives was to withdraw Australian troops from the Vietnam war. (more…)
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Startling events at the Australian War Memorial
Small but significant metaphorical explosions have reverberated recently around the building that some Australians know as our most sacred site. (more…)
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Ukraine: Western missteps lead to something much worse
When even our media of conscience lose interest in the details of emerging East West crises the results can be tragic. (more…)
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Queen Elizabeth II: The palace is winning the propaganda war
Queen Elizabeth II is dead and ‘the Palace’ is working assiduously to shore up her legacy and the institution of Monarchy. Polls show they are winning the hearts and minds in a propaganda war, with the mass media complicit in its hyperbolic, adulatory, blanket coverage. Debates about the Monarchy are cancelled, demonstrators in the UK moved on by police, politicians universally agreeing it is not the time to question what the Monarchy represents. ‘Tomorrow is another day’ as Scarlett O’Hara famously said. Meanwhile the Queen’s persona is emerging as heroic and mythical. (more…)