The banking crisis that hit Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week has spread. We recall with a shudder two recent financial contagions: the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which led to a deep Asian recession, and the 2008 Great Recession, which led to a global downturn. The new banking crisis hits a world economy already disrupted by pandemic, war, sanctions, geopolitical tensions, and climate shocks. (more…)
Category: World
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Marles… At least get the spin on the subs right!
As the Government seeks to respond to an increasing number of questions about what it extolls as the game-changing decision to purchase nuclear powered submarines (SSN’s) it has been tweaking the spin about the reasons it has taken for this budget shaking decision. (more…)
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To justify nuclear submarines as protecting trade routes is nonsense
We just need to look at the facts to see how foolish the assertion is that SSNs have the capacity to prevent disruption to our trade in the event of a war. Forty percent of our exports are to, and 20% of our imports are from, China. Throwing money at submarines weakens the national economy. Investment for war is a global and national negative. (more…)
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The geopolitics of peace in a post-Western world
We are in the midst of an extraordinarily dangerous and destructive hot war in Ukraine, and there is now daily talk about the prospects of a US-China war in Asia, perhaps over Taiwan. We cannot afford a continuation of the current war, and we cannot afford a war between the US and China. That would be the end of civilisation. (more…)
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We’ve long said no to US. A yes now could be nuclear
It’s Parliament House, Canberra, on a Sunday afternoon. There is a meeting of the national security committee of cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, about a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, where the US and China are in air and naval combat. There’s an inflection point when someone – a minister or the PM – uses the fatal locution: ‘‘Well, we’ve got no alternative . . .’’ (more…)
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Albanese a pale shadow of Keating, even on subs
Paul Keating did all Australians, and all the world, an important favour over the past week. (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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Two decades on, history should condemn the real ‘butchers of Baghdad’
The warmongers in the Anglophone countries of Britain, the USA and Australia today cause great concern with their AUKUS treaty and the not very subtle stirring of frenzy against China. It was similar in 2003 except that Iraq was the country being demonised. (more…)
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To all who care about humanity’s and the planet’s future
Humanity has reached a tipping point. It is time for governments, international institutions and people everywhere to take stock and act with renewed urgency. (more…)
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AUKUS: Submarines on the never never, or castles in the sky?
AUKUS has landed – well, sort of. (more…)
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Who stands for freedom?
I was recently sent an interesting article titled “Who Stands for Freedom” by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. The article is a review of the book “The Big Myth” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It raised a fundamental question: Does China have more true freedom than the United States? (more…)
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The return of the paranoid American foreign policy
When a severe political cancer returns after a period of remission, we have a recurrence. In serious cases, cells from the original cancer regrow and spread virulently. One of America’s best-known commentators, Fareed Zakaria, recently compared the current grave dysfunctionality and panic-driven decision making in Washington to the worst of the McCarthy era in the 1950s. (more…)
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The Australian media cries wolf
The major Australian media, SMH and The Age, are crying wolf again. Whether they will lose their credibility depends on whether Australians’ rationale prevails over their prejudices. (more…)
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Time to change the story on war
Last week we witnessed some extraordinary interventions by two mainstream media mastheads, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in pursuit of both headlines and an agenda. The three part “Red Alert” series begins with a paragraph that could have been found in Edward Bernays book, Propaganda: (more…)
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Rainbow alerts for peace, not red alerts for war
In their Red Alert for War, doom laden experts assembled by the Sydney Morning Herald forecast a war with China. Preoccupied with cybersecurity, biosecurity, with the weaponry available in military alliances, the experts speak the language of militarism and war but have nothing to say about peace. Yet the language of peace can inspire, not red alerts but rainbow visions to enhance life, not destroy it. (more…)
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Existential threat? It’s China that faces the prospect of annihilation
Members of a key US House committee wanted anti-Beijing antagonism and that was what they got – together with the spectre of armed conflict. (more…)
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China: decoupling from the West and winning the long game
With the re-opening of China and with the ending of Covid restrictions, a new confidence seems to be surging through the country. While the next two years are seen to be a particularly dangerous time, with the real prospect of armed conflict with the US, beyond that it is felt that China’s time will have come. Australians are now largely denied this view since the timorous Australian media is no longer present in China. (more…)
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The cost and unnecessary suffering of military spending
The authoritative Peterson Foundation calculates that last year the US spent more on its military than the next nine countries together. This means more than China, India, Russia, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea combined. In 2023, the US allocated $US 858 billion to military spending compared to China’s $US224 billion. China’s spending is 1.7% of GDP compared to 2% for Australia and 3.5% for the US. (more…)
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Environment and the South Seas Bubble: “nature will demand payment”
Three hundred years ago, Britain narrowly escaped a disaster. Trapped inside a bubble, they needed radical changes to escape. There are parallels to our world today, where the logic of failure is woven into the very fabric of civilisation. We too, are trapped inside a bubble, but one is of far greater significance. The question is, can we avoid collapse? The first step is to accept that we have a problem. (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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Thank heavens for the FPA! Our very own Force Posture Agreement…
Just what’s needed to get me standing up straight, proud and strong! A session with a kindly chiropractor. (more…)
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AUKUS: A greedy pup
It seems that poor old Albanese has been sold a very greedy—though only virtual—pup. Think of the comparison with another Labor PM, Ben Chifley. Albanese doesn’t come out of it very well. (more…)
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We are being led to war with China to satisfy American hegemonic interests
As the American Empire is attempting to open up another war front with China and dragging us into it, the Doomsday clock is now 10 seconds to midnight. Can we resist? (more…)
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Attack of the “Pro-Ukrainian Group”: notes from The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
The latest New York Times report on the Nord Stream pipeline bombing is something else. According to NYT’s anonymous US government sources, the pipelines were blown up by a “pro-Ukrainian group” who had no known connections to any military or intelligence agency, but somehow had all the information, skills, diving equipment and military explosives necessary to carry out such an attack. (more…)
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For Australia, horror of war over Taiwan is not inevitable
Contributors to the “War with China over Taiwan” horror show which began in the Nine newspapers this week assume that a war between China and the United States is likely, and some of them then explicitly say that Australia would be involved. Australia should instead regard the Taiwan issue as one for us to “sit out”. (more…)
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Red Alert? Follow the money instead: ASPI is a front for US propaganda
What is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), what are its sources of funding, and why does it so consistently advocate for positions favourable to the United States and the weapons industry? Follow the money trail.
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In praise of women’s work: reflecting on International Women’s Day
Failure to appropriately value the work women do perpetuates their subordinate status. (more…)
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End-game for American exceptionalism?
The march to maintain hegemony is pursued with a sense of ‘exceptional America’. But it is now taking place in a world without elbow room. The planet is imperilled. We have to call out folly, not run with it. I cannot see how, without regime change in Washington, trust in high level relations can be restored. (more…)
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Politics, not science, fuelling debate about the origin of COVID-19
Last week 4.8 million people contracted Covid-19 and 39,000 died as a result. The pandemic rages on around the world with, globally, cumulative cases of 675,565,574 and 6,873,798 deaths documented. (more…)
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Ukraine and Western media: The death of free thought
Wars are started by political forces. They are promoted by propagandists, fought by soldiers and it is always the ordinary people that suffer. Wars are almost never about principle and almost always about profit in one form or another. The war in Ukraine, like all other wars has been sold to us as a struggle between the forces of good and evil. A simple message is repeated and in Goebel’s world, a lie, if big enough and if repeated loudly enough will be believed. (more…)