I don’t expect that Donald Trump, presidential candidate, or Trump, elected president, gives a toss whether Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton is prime minister of Australia after the next Australian election. (more…)
Category: USA
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The ill-starred consequences of America’s Chinese chip war
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Trump and Vance’s theocratic republic of America
A Trump-Vance administration would likely enthusiastically embrace the Project 2025 agenda. No surer path exists for the fracturing of American society. (more…)
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Jeffrey Sachs: “US Subservient to Israel”
A MUST-WATCH 29-minute interview in which Jeffrey Sachs tells it like it is and as few others dare to tell it. (more…)
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Under the spell of denial: the Khmer Rouge in New York and Netanyahu in Washington
Few alliance nations would ponder how the cadence of Netanyahu’s speech inside Congress put them under the spell of denial. This is akin to the Khmer Rouge (government in exile) that was invited to hold a seat in the United Nations until 1993. (more…)
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The sudden collapse of the Biden puppetry
Joe Biden has finally agreed to quit his re-election pursuit. I, for one, am not celebrating. Biden could have become a great American president, but instead he chose a foreign policy trajectory that effectively made him the most inept American president in modern history. (more…)
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New England wind project shelved as local MP Barnaby Joyce takes anti-renewable vitriol to new low
Plans to build a 340MW wind farm and a big battery in the New England Renewable Energy Zone in NSW have been shelved by developer Ark Energy, following a “change of mind” from some of the landowners involved in the project. (more…)
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US presidential races hide the criminality of the US empire
The thing I hate about western electoral politics in general and US presidential races in particular is that they take the focus off the depravity of the US-centralised empire itself, and run cover for its criminality. (more…)
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Kamala is still the underdog
The withdrawal of Joe Biden and the selection of Kamala Harris has transformed the presidential election of November. It will now be argued on different issues and on different battlegrounds, not all of former president Donald Trump’s choosing. His planned strategy has been much weakened and try as he might he will have difficulty in fixing Harris with the blame for any of Biden’s sins, real or alleged. (more…)
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Donald Trump and God: not a match made in Heaven
One of the more noteworthy features of the recent Republican convention was the reverential reception of Donald Trump. Even before Trump’s brush with death, eighty per cent of evangelical Christians supported him. What does this say about their beliefs and motives? (more…)
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Playing the Trump card
In the theatre of politics, Trump has always upstaged. Whether cast as hero or villain he insatiably dominates the spotlight. A diviner of public sentiment, throughout his various professional iterations, Trump has elevated his unique gift for performance into an artform. In his incarnation as a politician, he has perfected the knack of cannibalising American statesmanship into American showmanship.
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Will the Republicans end deep state wars of imperial aggression? Don’t bet on it…
The prospect of another Trump presidency and a JD Vance vice-presidency is welcomed by some and dreaded by others. A Democrat ‘October surprise’, and a presidency for Kamala Harris are possible. Even Trump in power may get Australia off several hooks. What neither of them is likely to do before election day, however, is commit to doing away with the unachievable AUKUS, the unwelcome Asian NATO, and the unwinnable war over Taiwan, as a RAND report described it in June . (more…)
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American obeisance
I have just witnessed the most pathetic and humiliating hour which I, as an American, have experienced in my lifetime. (more…)
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Republican immigration policies foretell mass deportations, tent cities and razor wire
The Republican Party are intent on making immigration their key issue in the forthcoming US Election. The 2024 Republican Party platform and Trump’s nomination acceptance speech make that abundantly clear. But what would Donald Trump’s immigration policies look like in practice? (more…)
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Overproduction is OK as long as it’s done by anyone except China
It makes sense for Beijing to expand the services sector, but none for the US to transfer higher productivity in services to lower one in manufacturing. (more…)
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The American psychodrama
President Joe Biden says only God will prevent him running for re-election. Should Biden drop out of the race, and would Vice President Kamala Harris turn potential defeat into a viable contest between Democrats and Donald Trump? (more…)
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Martyrdom transforms Trump
Anyone watching the Australian diplomats at the Republican national convention would have quickly seen the backslapping, the warm handshakes with the republican tree people and the Australian understanding that, more likely than not, Donald Trump will be elected president in November. Our diplomats, and those with whom they have intercourse, can read the signs as well as, if not better than anyone else. Australia doesn’t have a vote at the election, and must get on, as best as it can, with the person and the players chosen by the American electoral system. (more…)
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What happens now that Israel has formally rejected a two-state solution?
Given the Israeli Parliament’s overwhelming rejection of a two-state solution the world needs to recognise that it is no longer possible, at least in the short and possibly medium term. It’s a mirage that opinion polls show most Israelis and Palestinians don’t want. Given their long acrimony, the sad truth is that each side wants to overpower the other and have only one nation. (more…)
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How Ronald Reagan started the ruination of the USA
The continuing descent of the United States into polarisation and violence is widely lamented. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 marks the inflection when the descent began in earnest. (more…)
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The drums of war
The drums of war have been beating loudly from successive U.S. administrations for decades. They are getting louder and louder as the thin layer of power-hungry, greedy and heartless elite push and push in an attempt to get us all to the brink of war-minded madness, be it civil or foreign. (more…)
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The Trump assassination attempt: An inevitable result of toxic polarisation?
It is ironic that a past and would be President who has been a strong supporter of 2nd Amendment freedoms to own assault rifles was nearly killed by one. (more…)
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NATO and the deadly strategy of neoconservatism
For the sake of America’s security and world peace, the U.S. should immediately abandon the neocon quest for hegemony in favour of diplomacy and peaceful co-existence. (more…)
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Trump is the old man most likely to win the US election
For most of the past year, Joe Biden has been calming panickers in the inner circles of the Democrat Party, persuading them that the campaign was under control, that things were moving his way, not least because of Donald Trump’s criminal law problems. The big reveal at the first presidential debate showed an emperor without clothes, incoherent in his own attack, seemingly almost incapable of taking the battle to the enemy. It accentuated any impulse to feel that he’s already a dud and would be worse if re-elected. (more…)
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Vassalise allies, destabilise the rest is now US strategy in Indo-Pacific
Divide and conquer, well-honed in Middle East and Latin America over decades, is being applied to only real growth engine of world economy. (more…)
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“Dark foreboding”: Democratic Party campaign confirms skeptics’ fear of US global role
The Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing on two themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to bring to the presidency, centring on the destruction of American democracy if elected, and secondly, a positive domestic record of the Biden years with several notable benefits for the American people including jobs and wages, climate, energy policy, social protection, gun control, and a stock market at record highs. What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so from Democratic Party advocacy is neither claims nor explanations of foreign policy, only a deafening silence.
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Biden: ‘I’m running the world’
The comment by the sitting U.S. president in Friday’s interview has been ignored by the mainstream, but its megalomania is at the heart of why Joe Biden is defying his party and remaining in the race, writes Joe Lauria. (more…)
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American exceptionalism and the rule of law
There is an oft-quoted legal dictum known as “The Rule of Law” that posits that all people are equal before the law regardless of status or standing, and that all must obey the law. How then (one must ask) does such a widely-held principle conform to the recent ruling of the US Supreme Court that a President (such as Donald Trump) should be immune from prosecution for acts that would normally be considered to be illegal? (more…)
