Is war inevitable? The short answer, for any peace activist or anyone wanting to inhabit a world that can sustain life must be no! Is war an imminent possibility, then the short answer is, regardless of the hopes, wishes and desires of the people, an unfortunate yes. (more…)
Category: World
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China spy cases sound like more Western paranoia
The China threat has much more to do with the insecurity and indecision of the West towards the country, the emerging multipolar world and the erosion of Western dominance. (more…)
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From America’s IRA to China’s eco-civilisation, a new global consensus is emerging. Globalisation and growth are out, redesigning society is in
This summer saw the hottest average global temperatures in the last 125,000 years. Europe is embroiled in war, with other conflicts raging around the world. The global economy is still reeling from the impacts of the first global pandemic since 1919. Experts are warning against the threat posed by our most advanced technological creation–artificial intelligence (AI). However, to piece together how we got here as a species and secure societies for the future, we need a heavy dose of BI–basic intelligence. (more…)
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China, innovation, and competition with the US
The real American terror is not that the Chinese economy will grow bigger than the American economy – if it is not already – but that the Chinese mixed economy model will prove superior to the rampant free-market, greed model US billionaires and their peddlers promote. (more…)
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Wilful ignorance drives civilisation collapse
In May 1971, I published a full-page letter in The Australian addressed ‘To Those Who Shape Australia’s Destiny’. It was signed by 730 Australian scientists including Sir Mark Oliphant and Sir Macfarlane Burnett. (more…)
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Earth System Treaty: Towards a positive human future
It is easy to be pessimistic about prospects for our children, in the face of the climatic events that are now confronting humans everywhere. But there is also some very good news around the idea of developing a Global “Earth System Treaty” (EST) that could radically alter the trajectory we humans are currently on. (more…)
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The paranoia of China going global
Empires are anxious creatures, run by those predatory types with egos vast and awareness minimal. The awareness only gets pricked when risks are posed to the financial returns, military security, what might be called, at a stretch, their way of living. Such risks can come in many forms, and for the US imperium, it’s less a warming planet and global poverty than the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China. (more…)
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G-7 and BRICS visions of the future: Coercive unipolarity or cooperative multipolarity
When the Cold War ended in 1991, the West, and particularly the United States, found itself at a fork in the road. One road led to peace, justice, cooperation, nuclear disarmament, a revitalised UN, inclusiveness, pluralism, human rights, multilateralism, fair trade, regulated markets, food security, energy transition, sustainability, and humane governance. The other road led to militarism, intervention, warmongering, nuclearism, conflict, sanctions, regime-changing interventions, multiple trends toward inequality, predatory neoliberal globalisation, hegemony and geopolitical primacy. (more…)
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John Pilger: “America has hung a noose around the neck of China”
In March of 2016 the renowned Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger published an article titled “A world war has begun. Break the silence.” which urgently warned of the US empire’s aggressive escalations against Russia and China. Re-reading parts of it in 2023 is like watching someone placing flags next to recently planted seeds that would eventually grow into the towering problems our world now faces. (more…)
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A new national agenda for multicultural Australia
The Australian Government’s current Multicultural Framework Review is looking at ways for government and the community to work together to support a cohesive multicultural society and advance a vibrant and prosperous future for all Australians. (more…)
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Channel 7 fostering fascist politics
The Right is obsessed with gender. This deep paranoia comes out of America and international far right movements. It harms straight people and LGBTQIA+ people differently, and we need to fight it before our copycat Right entrenches it here too. (more…)
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Think Tanks are information laundering ops for war profiteers
The British billionaire-owned newspaper The Telegraph has an appalling new article out which reads like a paid advertisement for a missile manufactured by Lockheed Martin. The title even sounds like it was written by a marketing team: “A war-winning swarm missile will knock China out of Taiwan — fast”, subtitled “Rapid Dragon is a military gamechanger that provides the US Air Force with a crucial edge in the Pacific”. (more…)
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Climate action: there is no time left
Loud warnings of climate disaster continue. We could be in for a catastrophe from which there is no recovery. But we are dawdling along. It is time for more decisive action. (more…)
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Breaking the suicidal impasse
In the last few months events have occurred globally which indicate an astonishing, but not unexpected, acceleration in the pace of climate change. The world has now entered a new era of extremely dangerous climate impacts which are already proving catastrophic in many parts of the world. The factors which hitherto have constrained warming, such as the inertia of the climate system and the cooling effect of atmospheric aerosols, are fading, pushing the global climate system into uncharted territory. (more…)
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Expanded Brics will continue to chip away at US dollar’s dominance
How the US has used its dollar privilege for its own interests, without regard to the damage it causes others, has not gone down well with developing countries. The BRICS’ formation and expansion must be seen for what it is: a rallying cry for a fairer world order. (more…)
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China’s artificial intelligence is a great leap forward: Australia’s opportunity?
Australian entrepreneurs and investors are already looking to the new developments in our region for inspirations and opportunities. They might look no further than China. (more…)
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The empire means widening our circles of compassion
In trying to get people to care about warmongering and imperialism what we’re really trying to do is get people to widen their circle of compassion to the furthest extent possible. To extend their care for the people around them to include caring about violence and abuse against people even on the other side of the world. (more…)
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David Bradbury, lifetime war abolisher, wins award for Anti-AUKUS efforts
The cracks in Labor ranks over AUKUS won’t be going away despite Albanese staring down dissenters at Labor’s national conference. A pitched battle over the choice of submarine base is guaranteed — and now we discover that Albanese has suffered the mother of all brainsnaps: Australia has agreed to set up a weapons-grade nuclear waste dump. At the heart of the resistance to this militarism has been David Bradbury’s documentary film The Road to War (more…)
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The US economic war on China
China’s economy is slowing down. Current forecasts put China’s GDP growth in 2023 at less than 5%, below the forecasts made last year and far below the high growth rates that China enjoyed until the late 2010s. The Western press is filled with China’s supposed misdeeds: a financial crisis in the real-estate market, a general overhang of debt, and other ills. Yet much of the slowdown is the result of US measures that aim to slow China’s growth. Such US policies violate World Trade Organisation rules and are a danger to global prosperity. They should be stopped. (more…)
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AUKUS as morbid “Deterrence”
There is a curious Chinese saying that cautions against “calling a stag, a horse”. As the Qin empire disintegrated, the wily Prime Minister Zhao Gao fed the second Qin dynasty Emperor (221-206 BC) false reports of imperial military victories. Lining up all the ministers at court, Zhao showed them a stag and demanded that they swear the stag was a horse. Most agreed. The few who boldly refused were executed. (more…)
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The climate doesn’t care who builds batteries
Like it or not, the structure of global trade in green technologies and the raw materials required for their manufacture is being decided in an era when geopolitics trump markets, and the WTO’s credibility to check the abuse of national security exceptions is near rock bottom. (more…)
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Why we need an Earth System Treaty
“Humanity created its current dire trajectory. It is now time to change course with a binding global treaty designed to empower individuals, institutions, and policymakers, and through this shared effort, reduce the existential threats to civilisation. The Earth Systems Treaty is potentially a major step forward, a step towards a healthy future for all.”–Paul R. Ehrlich, Emeritus Professor, Stanford University (more…)
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An Australian Holocaust: greenhouse gas emissions and mass deaths
Australian governments and mining firms are cold-bloodedly contemplating the needless deaths of 5.3 million human beings – many of them our own citizens – from climate causes resulting from new Australian fossil fuels developments. (more…)
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China: Perspectives beyond the mainstream media
China looms large in the Australian psyche. On a practical level, what happens in China largely determines the success of global action to deal with climate change, the profitability of our rural economy and the financing of our universities. Our national leaders are concerned about rising tensions in our region and the interplay of US-China relations. How are we to find our way through media doom and gloom and come to grips with the reality of China? (more…)
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Behind the ‘Red Curtain’: Decoding China’s institutional logics
Instead of simply aligning their interests with the US, it is critical for US allies such as Australia to find a new balance in the great power rivalry between Washington and Beijing, and to develop their own strategic approach toward China. Among other things, this will require an understanding of how policy is formulated behind China’s ‘red curtains’. (more…)
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What do we want? War! When do we want it? Continually!
Post 9/11 the US embarked on a series of wars to ‘make the world safe’ and more importantly settle old and new scores. (more…)
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Evil, scary China refuses to passively let us encircle it: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
It’s not the big, glaring, obvious lies that get you. The New York Times is the world’s most destructive propaganda outlet not because it publishes giant ham-fisted whoppers, but because it appears trustworthy. Its reporting looks authoritative. Children are taught in school that it’s what credible news media looks like. This lets the well-crafted propaganda slide into people’s minds, undetected and without resistance. (more…)
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US economic policy and a great march backwards
There is a spectre haunting the world. It is the spectre of economic crisis. How the world responds will shape all of our futures. To borrow from Carl Clausewitz; war is the continuation of politics by other means. The famous military theorist might have added that economics is politics which is war by other means. (more…)
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Australia could be leading the way on human survival: Will Albanese act?
Our human species is drifting rapidly towards extinction, and there is not yet in place, a process to prevent it. (more…)
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A refusal to see: Blindness to the global order
The accepted norm of Western dominance of the global order is now over. The difficult matter for those in the West to accept is that the mantle of leadership is not being passed from one Anglo-Western power to another of the same ilk, but rather one neither Anglo, nor Western, and dare I say it, not caucasian. (more…)