Category: Australia

Australia, Big-pharma, Propaganda, Vaccine hesitancy, Vaccines

Vaccine hesitant or justified skeptic?

The following comments were originally posted on an article “Morrison’s over-hyping of vaccine delivery” by Jack Waterford. The comment was removed by the moderator under the justification of “spam”. The text has been amended for clarity and few points have been added in response to some helpful comments by a social media contact.

It is disappointing to see the easy dismissal of the opinions and views of a group of people that the author admits is now “perhaps a quarter of the population”. To blithely assume that such a vast number of people have no foundation for their skepticism and opposition to vaccines is arrogant in the extreme.

Continue reading “Vaccine hesitant or justified skeptic?” →
Australia, China, CIA, Empire, Geopolitics, Neoconservatism, Neoliberalism, Politics, Propaganda, Russia, US Empire, War, Zionism

Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 5. US decline and collapse

5. US decline and collapse — The end of empire

One of the great lessons of history is that all empires eventually collapse. Exceptional though many believe it to be, the US empire will be no different and there are many signs that having achieved a couple of decades of apparently unchallenged global domination following the fall of the USSR in 1991, the Anglo-US empire has hit its peak and the way forward lies in its decline. Although empires at their peak can look formidable and unassailable, their collapse can happen quite quickly and while there may be a final military denouement, this often happens in the context of a pre-existing collapse from within. In the end, it is the accumulation of a series of political, social, economic and military collapses combined with the inability of a delusional self-focused elite to face reality that leads to an overall collapse of empire.

Continue reading “Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 5. US decline and collapse” →
Australia, China, Empire, Geopolitics, Neoliberalism, New Zealand, Politics, Uyghur, Xinjiang

Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 4. Australia: Managing a dilemma

4. Australia: Managing a dilemma

The economic, geographic and geopolitical considerations for Australia are quite different to New Zealand’s. Where New Zealand is a remote, moderately small island nation with a relatively small population, Australia is a wealthy if massive sparsely occupied country with its main population centres concentrated on the eastern and southern coasts, it is rich in resources and poised on the southern periphery of Asia. With a GDP of USD1,432.2 billion its economy is nearly five times that of New Zealand’s and its population of 25.1 million is more than five times as large.

Continue reading “Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 4. Australia: Managing a dilemma” →
Australia, China, Geopolitics, Neoliberalism, New Zealand, Propaganda, US Empire, Uyghur, War, Xinjiang

Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 3. New Zealand: Pragmatic trader

3. New Zealand: Pragmatic trader

With an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of some 4 million km2 (and continental shelf rights that cover another 1.7 million km2 beyond), much of New Zealand’s air and sea defence resources are dedicated to monitoring and securing the fisheries and resources in its surrounding seas and also to providing civil defence and other support to its Pacific island neighbours. Significantly, of New Zealand’s top five trading partners, China accounts for 24.9% of New Zealand’s total exports (USD9.6 billion) with Australia coming in behind at 14.8% (USD5.7 billion), the USA at 9.6% (USD3.7 billion), Japan at 6.3% (USD2.4 billion) and South Korea at 3.1% (USD1.2 billion).

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Australia, China, Empire, Geopolitics, Neoliberalism, New Zealand, Politics, US Empire, War

Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 2. US saviour and defender

2. US saviour and defender — From one empire to another

After World War II, Britain was so depleted that these relatively young and militarily weak nations needed a new alliance that could protect them from possible invaders in the radically altered geopolitical landscape that came out of the war. The obvious candidate for this role was the USA which, in economic and geopolitical terms, was the only real winner of the two world wars. So, in 1951 Australia and New Zealand signed the Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty (ANZUS Treaty) with the USA “to protect the security of the Pacific”.

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Australia, China, Geopolitics, Neoconservatism, Neoliberalism, New Zealand, Politics

Australia and New Zealand — losing an empire, who will protect us now? Part 1. Early Days

It is readily apparent that the balance of power and geopolitical landscape is undergoing a period of rapid change where the uni-polar empire headed by the USA and its elites is being challenged by a combination of a resurgent and reinvigorated Russia and the rising economic and industrial might of China. Caught in this dynamic, Australia and New Zealand need to find a way to individually and perhaps collectively navigate their way from the past certainty of being a part of an apparently unchallenged dominant Anglo-US empire to a new multi-polar world.

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ABC, Australia, China, Neoliberalism, Politics, Propaganda, Uyghur, Xinjiang

ABC Watch: July 2019 China Blitz

Media critics Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky detailed in their Propaganda Model how propaganda and systemic biases function in corporate mass media. This work has been extended by David Edwards and David Cromwell of medialens.org in their critique of the UK media— particularly of supposedly liberal outlets, such as the BBC and The Guardian. It is therefore not unexpected that the Australian government owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) might fill a similar position in the media landscape. This article is based on a search of all ABC articles and news items during the month of July that related to the search terms China, Chinese, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Uyghur.

Analysis of this listing shows that ABC reporting on China in July 2019 saw a significant ramp up in tone and stridency of the anti-China reporting—firstly in relation to the protests in Hong Kong and then the focus turned to Xinjiang—the centre-point of which was an ABC 4 Corners documentary “Tell The World” that screened on 15 July. Other key themes in the reporting during the month centred on Chinese influence in Australian universities; Chinese militarism (South China Sea and spying on the Talisman Sabre war games); repression, censorship and corrupt legal system; the economic effects on Australia of the Trump administration’s trade war; and Chinese drug cheats and gamblers.

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Australia, CIA, Islam, Muslims, Neoliberalism, Politics, Refugees, Religion, US Empire

Are Muslims and Islam the problem?

As an atheist the Islam question, the role of Islamic militants and the spread of Islamic practice through migration are thorny questions  for me. The last thing I am keen to see is a resurgence of religiosity of any stripe in our society and consequent infestation of the legal system with religiously inspired laws. Frankly, we have spent the last 200 hundred years getting rid of the Christian influence and it would be a shame to see all of that lost though a similar set of laws from 14th century Islamic culture being imported in its place.

That said, religion is, and always has been, a tool of the powerful to corral and control the masses.  It is used to separate people from each other and provide the ideological mechanisms necessary to justify a small group retaining power over a larger majority, from whom they can extract wealth and use to expand their operations to conquer and take over the resources of neighbouring / competing elites (in country and internationally). Continue reading “Are Muslims and Islam the problem?” →