Thirty-seven countries have imposed economic sanctions on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The breadth of this campaign has few precedents in recent history. The sanctions covering finance, energy, technology, travel, shipping, avionics and commodities are aimed at one of the 10 largest world economies. (more…)
Category: World
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Darkness: nuclear winter – fire, ice, famine
The Ukraine conflict, and the nuclear threats uttered by Vladimir Putin have made the risk of nuclear war as high as it has ever been. The current position of the Doomsday Clock hands at 90 seconds to ‘midnight’ is the closest ever. Nuclear Winter, together with tech-ending EMP, is one of a number of civilisation- ending things we’ll have to deal with if the hands ever reach midnight. (more…)
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Ukraine: Taking leave of our senses
My first article published here at Pearls and Irritations, titled Built on a tower of lies, described how positive feedback loops have created at a societal level an enormous tower of lies that guide public discourse. I further warned that if we failed to dismantle this tower the consequences would be traumatic. Unfortunately, the horrifically traumatic war in Ukraine has driven these positive feedback loops into overdrive. The inability for us in the ’collective West’ to unwind these lies, or in other words to be honest with ourselves, is a major reason why I believe we are witnessing the demise of the West as a major power bloc. (more…)
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China ‘giving up’ on Biden team – Asian Media Report
In Asian Media this week: Chinese see Biden Admin as ‘incompetent and ignorant’. Plus: China ready to sign no-nuke zone treaty; spending on nuclear weapons surging; Beijing, Delhi expel each other’s journalists; ambassador slams Seoul’s foreign policy; China passes 50pc non-fossil fuel power supply (more…)
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Why is America so reluctant to acknowledge China’s economic power?
The statistical evidence clearly shows that China is the world’s number one economy. Unfortunately, the US and many commentators are unwilling to acknowledge that reality, but the future stability of the region depends on acceptance that we are living in a multipolar world. (more…)
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The compulsion to intervene why Washington underwrites violence in Ukraine
Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in its upcoming, widely anticipated, sure-to-happen-any-day-now spring counteroffensive. (more…)
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Paul Keating, Confucius and the CCP – understanding China
Misunderstanding China has a long and distinguished history. Much of that misunderstanding has been generated by western media going right back to the Qing dynasty. (more…)
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Our greatest blunders
Ten years ago Anthony King and Ivor Crewe published their book – The Blunders of Our Governments. (more…)
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Requiem for our species
The effects of the climate crisis intrude with increasing regularity into our lives and yet we do not act. We are as paralysed as past civilisations were when facing catastrophic destruction. (more…)
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The mass media used to publish perspectives on Ukraine they would never publish today
The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war” by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. (more…)
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War crimes? Don’t forget Jeju
Admitting guilt for war crimes doesn’t come easily to many nations, as Australia knows from our extended investigations of the activities of some ADF soldiers in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. (more…)
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Does the shift in influence in Southeast Asia betoken something more global?
A Lowy Institute survey issued in April this year showed that the balance of Chinese-American influence in Southeast Asia had shifted in China’s favour over the last few years. Specifically, in overall diplomatic, defence, economic and cultural influence, the balance was 52 to 48 in China’s favour in 2018 but its lead increased to 54 to 46 in 2022. Two points in the survey are worth adding. One is that the countries where the U.S. lost out most in overall terms included Malaysia and Indonesia. The other is that the areas favouring American influence are military and cultural, while those favouring Chinese are economic and diplomatic. (more…)
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Harvard China academic takes on the Economist
Even without Chat-bot assistance, it is fun to look up quotations and their origins online and then discover, for example, this quote reportedly from Winston Churchill: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” (more…)
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China – US: Buy America and subsidies mix with national security to see off the rules based order
Today the global trade system faces three systemic challenges. None are new, but strategic competition between China and the United States has brought a dangerous edge to each of them. (more…)
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Coming to terms with the ‘China Threat’
Is it not a great irony that the Chinese are now more supportive of the post-war Bretton Woods system than the Americans? (more…)
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China and US power in Southeast Asia
China’s power has replaced the United States’ in the eyes of most of our Asian neighbours, according to the latest Lowy Institute Asia Power Snapshot. What are the implications for Australia? (more…)
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China has no need for the United States, for now
In ordinary anticipatory history the game is waiting for Trump. (more…)
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Aukus leaders prefer posturing and provocation over dialogue
Shangri-La Dialogue was a missed opportunity for talks as defence chiefs Austin and Marles insisted on belligerence and doublespeak. (more…)
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AUKUS and the security pathology of colonial racism
Today, there are strong arguments that Australian security and defence thinking, which was historically race based, is now culturally embedded; that the current situation is close to what race theory describes as ‘racism without racists.’ How, then, might Australian colonial racism have conditioned our security culture to put the ‘A’ in the AUKUS nuclear powered submarine (SSN) deal? (more…)
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A climate of betrayal
“All grimly true, but they can be sure that they won’t be recorded for their crimes in history – because there won’t be any history” (Noam Chomsky) (more…)
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Australia catching up with the Asian century at last?
Every word of Anthony Albanese’s address to the Shangri-La dialogue on 2 June was chosen with care. It was a balancing act, with the Prime Minister poised between peace and war, defence and diplomacy, the US and China, in a high-wire performance his Coalition predecessors wouldn’t have attempted. (more…)
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The real world shatters the myth of personal choice
When a government proposes a policy to improve our diet, it can trigger a gag reflex. Some people feel that deciding what to eat is purely a personal choice, and the ‘nanny state’ should stay out of the way. No-one wants to be lectured, shamed, or forced to eat their greens. Perhaps it goes all the way back to battles for autonomy when we were toddlers, strapped into a high-chair and being force-fed peas. (more…)
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How psy-ops warriors fooled me about Tiananmen Square: a warning
The myth of the “Tiananmen Square massacre” is arguably the most successful disinformation campaign of modern times, according to western and eastern sources—so much so that proud psychological warfare specialists recently used it to ADVERTISE their news manipulation skills. We’ll get to that below. (more…)
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Shirtfronting Australia
Australians are more used to pointing the accusing finger at other countries than having it pointed at us. (more…)
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Be a man, consume till it kills. It will
The World Health Organisation’s No Tobacco Day last month had Australia announcing tough new ways to get smokers to quit. Next door the fag makers were doing the opposite. (more…)
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15 reasons why mass media employees act like propagandists
If you watch western news media with a critical eye you eventually notice how their reporting consistently aligns with the interests of the US-centralised empire, in almost the same way you’d expect them to if they were government-run propaganda outlets. (more…)
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The earth has Bipolar Disorder: and so do we
World Environment Day – June 5 – demands some sober reflection about the mess we humans have got ourselves into. And how the hell we get out. (more…)
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How to translate Western diplomatic jargon
Such terms and phrases as a rules-based system, de-risking, democracy vs autocracy, and coercive behaviour are not exhaustive but still expose obfuscation and double standards. (more…)
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Knowing who we are: coping with Artificial ‘Intelligence’
We are at an existential turning point in the human story and, with it, the habitability of our planetary home. (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.