Australia’s landmark nuclear submarines deal has sparked an angry reaction from China, but the federal government remains hopeful the countries’ trade relationship will not be affected.
It’s all about Domestic Politicking not Foreign Policy
The report quotes Frances Adamson A.C., Governor of South Australia and former Australian Ambassador to China as saying that “deep knowledge of a country reduces the risk of strategic miscalculation – a real danger in an increasingly volatile world.” I think she’s right. I also think that kind of thinking needs a bit more priority in policy-making circles.
Nine Entertainment-owned papers have been talking up the prospects of Australia going to war with China while failing to declare that Nine chairman Peter Costello has made $millions in recent years lobbying on behalf of defence companies.
As Nine newspapers attempt to spread panic about a Chinese invasion, Professor John Quiggin explains why the logistics of such an event happening are unrealistic.
Peter Costello’s “Mainstream Media” Turns its back to reality for “Ratings”
The mainstream press is unashamedly beating the drums of war while deliberately turning away from what is actually happening, economically and politically in the region, writes Dr William Briggs.
Australia has spies but is not very good as far as the craft. Even our allies have been known to spy on us. Israel’s Mossad and America’s CIA to name two have been spying on us for years. We on the other hand spied on Timor Leste much to our shame and embarrassment. We got caught and tried to cover it up badly, It’s the very nature of ASIO to keep secrets misinform and practice the art of fakery. So is this what we are seeing being done here in the name of openness? It’s a pity our spy chief bears the name of Burgess another notorious Russian spy in the UK,
A hive of foreign spies busted by Australia’s intelligence agency in the past year was reportedly linked to Russia.
In what Austin journalist Christopher Hooks has called “one of the stupidest news cycles in living memory,” the entire American political/media class is having an existential meltdown over what the Pentagon claims is a Chinese spy balloon detected in U.S. airspace on Thursday.
Convenient News spread faster than any truth and it’s defended as Freedom of Speech
Disinformation is an old Russian government tactic. But this time Russia had help. Within days, Chinese officials and media outlets had picked up the lies and were amplifying and expanding on the biolabs yarn. The Chinese Communist Party tabloid Global Times created two splashy spreads, one sourced in part to Sputnik News, the other featuring a quote from Russian President Vladimir Putin. “What is the U.S. hiding in the biolabs discovered in Ukraine?” it screamed.
“China jumped on the biolabs conspiracy theory,” said Katja Drinhausen, an analyst with the Mercator Institute of China Studies in Berlin. Chinese officials and media outlets had spent the preceding months pushing the notion that the pandemic might have originated in a lab accident outside China. “It was like, here’s the perfect conspiracy theory coming out of Russia to support our ‘everywhere but China’ main talking point of the last year,” she said.
So now it’s Israel, the Saudis, China, and Trump screaming at the Israeli government
Al Jazeera reports that Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz on Thursday signed an agreement with visiting Chinese Premier Xi Jinping at the Yamama Palace regarding a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between the two countries. Xi announced that his visit to the kingdom would inaugurate a “new era” in the relationship of China to the Arab world, the countries of the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia itself.
We are being led in our anti-China hysteria by the United States which is not concerned that China will attack us, or even the United States, but is concerned that its world hegemony is being challenged.
Toward the end of 2019, an article titled Lessons in how to hate China was published in Pearls and Irritations. Those lessons have been learned and learned well. Three years is a short time but the collective memory is also short. China is now the accepted enemy and the likelihood of war is spoken of more openly.
climate crisis and of a hegemonic shift from the US to China. It was an uncertain time and fear was being promoted. Those conditions still exist. The only difference is that the threat from the US and its allies has become more intense. We have learned to hate China and may well suffer from the education we have received.
A recent Lowy Institute poll showed that just over half the Australian population is not in favour of supporting the United States in a war against China.
Meanwhile the demented idiots on Sky News Kenny and Dean were spruiking that the Conflict Islands, privately owned, are up for sale. “where’s Penny Wong where’s Wong” both screamed. In fact the islands aren’t up for sale and never were according to their owner. It seems Kenny and Dean were demanding Australia buy them and some 800 other islands between us and NG.
These claiming to be balanced news jocks just fall over and over every night for the amusement of the same audience of less than 30k half of which are probably their opposition and the other half sitting with their food trays in their laps with the TV on for their amusement.
In the wake of Scott Morrison and Marise Payne’s disastrous foreign affairs stewardship, Penny Wong jets to Timor-Leste today in what may be another rescue mission to save a Pacific neighbour from China’s expansion in the region. Rex Patrick has long warned the young nation might spurn Australia in favour of Chinese investment.
Opinion | China Suffers Through ‘Worst Heatwave Ever Recorded’ | Andy Rowell
In a year when climate records—from floods, fire, and drought—are being shattered daily like shards of glass, there is one country that bests them all: China. The country is experiencing a heatwave like no other.
It has lasted over seventy days, with record breaking temperatures at day and at night.
Over 100 million people are affected in an area covering 500,000 square miles of the country, experiencing record temperatures exceeding 104°F (40°C). To put this into perspective, this is equivalent to the size of Texas, Colorado and California combined.
Experts are calling it the “worst heatwave ever recorded in global history,” or “Worst heat wave known in world climatic history.”
The withdrawal of Kiribati, which switched its recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019, is being interpreted as a deepening of China’s influence. “Regionalism is playing such a big role,” Ms Dreaver said.
China sees Russia and Putin as a proxy satellite rather than a power unto itself and Putin is obliging them because without China’s silent support he couldn’t continue.
China has refused to criticise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or even to refer to it in such terms while accusing NATO of provoking Russia into attacking.
Democrats should make this an issue in the run-up to the 2022 midterms. While Republicans rail against the utterly fake danger to the United States of undocumented immigrants voting in American elections, Democrats should rail against the real danger to American democracy of foreign money affecting American elections through foreign investments in American corporations.
Restoring Radio Australia is just one of 6 changes planned. There is already a generation of islanders less attached to Australia because of the LNP
Broadcasting and publishing content into the region will promote “Australian identity, values, and interests”, while partnerships and training with Pacific journalists will be strengthened. Increased funding for the public broadcaster is one of seven key points in the party’s plan to step up in the Pacific.
Less than 3 years ago Morrison couldn’t have had a more different attitude to China and today Morrison Blames them for everything
Our relationship with China has many strengths.
Our trading relationship is flourishing, with two-way trade reaching a remarkable $215 billion in 2018, which benefits both countries.
Our cooperation with China through our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership goes well beyond economic issues.
We are working together across fields including health, education, and taxation, where Australia offers world-class expertise.
We’ve also been cooperating successfully to counter drug trafficking through Taskforce Blaze.
There is more we can do. That’s why we established the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations earlier this year.
“That is why we operate a non-discriminatory approach to investment screening.
And I note that all nations, including China, screen foreign investment.
The infrastructure needs of the region are enormous and Australia welcomes the contribution that the Belt and Road Initiative can make to regional infrastructure investment and to regional development.
We support regional investments with commercial merit that meet genuine market need and international standards, including on transparency and debt sustainability.”
Morrison is doing a lot of political whining about fairness in our Democracy just as Abbott once did when complaining against the ABC. “Why aren’t they supporting us” he cried and banned MPs from the from any interviews on our national broadcaster, cutting funding by a $1bn over the past decade. “We are the Government and we should be supported” has been Morrison’s catch cry as well. The LNP wants flag-waving, not questions. Morrison is doing an Abbott crying, and always loudly that nobody loves his government loves or supports him despite the fact that all he’s done for the past 3 years has been campaigning for this election and doing it badly.
1) Abbott closed down Radio Australia and created a vacuum in the region
2) Abbott was far more interested in Europe War Memorials, Knighthoods and Shirt-fronting Putin. Being a Friend of China was a political and economic advantage.
3) However Murdoch Media were constantly rubbing China the wrong way and China asked the Abbott government to intervene but they ignored it because Murdoch was a far more essential associate of the LNP. He was their publicist.
4) Morrison and Dutton have always known “impressing Murdoch in Australian politics was a must”. More so than being friends of China’s and so they set out to do just that as neither were really Murdoch’s picks. China simply ran second to Domestic politics, the next election was always in the front of mind. Without Murdoch Media the LNP were dead in the water. It’s Murdoch that makes MORRISON’s MIRACLES HAPPEN.
As the Coalition campaign seeks to revive the talking point that Labor always “takes China’s side”, Scott Morrison implored reporters to “just look at the record”. So we did just that and found the claims by the prime minister and his senior ministers are either factually inaccurate, misleading, or lack context.
Dutton and Abbott having a racist laugh with the weaselly Morrison whispering a warning ” the Boom is on, the boom is on”. When this event and picture exploded the truth about Abbott wanting Australia to be a part of NATO and not the PACIFIC. It was clear to the world he was America’s “Pillock” not the Pivot of the Pacific.
Dutton’s comments — reflecting a spectacular disdain for the existential threat many Pacific nations feel from climate change — came to mind on Friday. On morning television, he dismissed suggestions that the revelation that Solomon Islands was negotiating a security deal with China — which might eventually lead to a Chinese naval base being established in the small nation — meant the government had “dropped the ball” in the Pacific. “We have a fantastic relationship with the Solomon Islands and we’re there at the request of the government of the Solomon Islands at the moment
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is busy not so much with a conflict on the other side of the globe but finding a way to spin the misery of the people of Ukraine into anti-China propaganda. It’s just the kind of propaganda Scott Morrison wants, and the prime minister clearly thinks he needs, in the run up to a likely May federal election. For years ASPI has suckled at the teat of the weapons industry; but far and away the most generous of ASPI’s benefactors is the Morrison government.
Morrison and Dutton had no issue when we sent our air force to the Middle East to bomb and then call civilian death simply “collateral damage”. We killed, and are currently witnessing a court case on Australia’s criminal killings in Afghanistan. We support the Israeli IDF’s criminality in Gaza and the West Bank. But now the scream of “foul” is being trumpeted across our media! Foul for a simple laser warning on a RAAF plane by a Chinese cruiser. Morrison and Dutton really are a pair of theatrical clowns crying crocodile tears, and acting like Chicken Littles in order to impress us with their political prowess.
How quick was Morrison to brush the laser incident aside to reveal it’s real purpose an attack on the ALP and not on China? The man’s intentions are not misunderstood. It’s to say and do anything to “service” or mount Australia for another 3 years. He hasn’t managed anything but spin, his foot in his mouth, and playing the daggy dad for a full term.
Well Mr Morrison, great organizer, planner, and action man. Where are the agricultural workers you promised in June 2021 to pick and save the fruit Industry by 2021’s end. It’s approaching March Morrison and you haven’t provided any. Just as with the promised Covid Vaccines, the RATs ICAC, ADF deployment in aged-care and so many other things. Great management!!
“I can see it no other way than an act of intimidation, one that is unprovoked, unwarranted. And Australia will never accept such acts of intimidation,” Mr Morrison said, suggesting that China would react much more aggressively if Australia ever did that to a Chinese aircraft.
The United States presents itself as the beacon of democracy in contrast to the autocracies of China and Russia. Yet American democracy is in danger of succumbing to the same sort of oligarchic economics and racist nationalism that thrive in both these powers.
Singapore: Australian cattle farmers and abattoirs lost half a billion in exports to China in the last two years, cotton producers were down $870 million, copper exporters $1.5 billion.But the Chinese importers did not miss those products. Australia’s great Indo-Pacific ally, the United States, was happy to make up for the shortfall.The same happened with timber and coal. As Australia’s coal exports fell by $11 billion, the US added $1.8 billion to its usual load over the same period. Russia, Canada and Indonesia also sent more.Markets are unsentimental; when there is a gap they fill them. The US and Australia have made much of their united front on China’s economic coercion, but the truth is American exporters have been eating Australia’s lunch.
The LNP has used war as a weapon to maintain it’s political power domestically. Used it ‘against’ Australia not ‘for’ us. Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have been tools of fear to promote and retain power. The same can’t be said of the ALP who in most instances withdrew us from these conflicts. Should we be surprised at the degree to which we have attached ourselves increasingly to the American hip. Our domestic politics, our culture, every aspect of our post WW2 lives has the star spangled banner imprinted on it. Close examination shows it to be no accident much of the planet has been its pawns. They have 150 bases outside their borders.
Currently history has been a domestic struggle between Democracy and Autocracy between the Australian Labor Party and those that have always believed they were born to rule the LNP. Any true Liberal views in the LNP gone and swung Right. To attempt to mainframe our history in any other terms blurs the underlying reality. The Morrison government is certainly not a reflection of any Democratic progress being fine tuned or even imagined.
Paranoia about Chinese influence in Australia is on the rise — and the Australian ruling class is stoking tensions between China and the United States. For the sake of world peace and prosperity, they have to be stopped.
So much for AUKUS, CHUKUS seems a more apt term for this immediate agreement where China the UK, and the US are in step, Why? It’s patently clear. But not so for the A in AUKUS. However, given China hasn’t invaded anyone recently and the LNP has why are they acting as if China has? How embarrassing for Morrison whose been left out of the loop not advised of 30 secret meetings his besty has had. He will feel the sting of his do-nothing climate policy in the near future well before he gets any submarines. Because America China, and the UK will invest in climate cooperation which translates into much wider cooperation and they will leave the climate laggard, Morrison’s Australia, out in the wilderness.
The US-China competition is much more like European rivalries in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, as between France and Britain or Britain and Germany, where capitalist countries competed for entry into foreign markets on the most favorable terms and for diplomatic and military spheres of influence. Despite President Xi’s sabre rattling, China isn’t at the point where it has taken over other countries (as the US did most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan).
Why the blazes was Telstra slotted $1.6bn by Scott Morrison’s government to buy Digicel, and how is it Telstra shares slumped by one-third during the bull market when they are raking in billions in NBN money? Kim Wingerei checks on the charmed existence of chief executive Andy Penn.
As we can see the Chinese planes were undertaking a short flight in a southeast direction going into the bottom corner of what Taiwan has as its air defence identification zone, not its actual sovereign air defence territory. The fight path is clearly not heading towards the Taiwan coast. It has to be taken into account China is surrounded by U.S. military bases in Asia with a 23-kilometre range. U.S. M1 Howitzers are pointed at China on Kinmen Island, just a few kilometres from China’s coastal city of Xiamen. On reflection, it would be highly likely the U.S. would be flying into such an air defence identification zone if China had guns pointed at Long Beach, California, on Catalina Island, which is just 29 kilometres off the Long Beach coast. This is a perspective that is not taken into account. With this latest reporting of the October incident, there seems to be very little perspective. It seeks to paint a picture of Chinese aggression and arguably promotes war-inciting narratives
The LNP arguments about not being contributors to the world’s CO2 emissions are rather pathetic. By our exports we are contributors to the largest global emitters.
there is no denying the ugly. As is true almost everywhere else, coal goes hand-in-hand with corruption. The projects commissioned by provincial governments were characterised by crony capitalism, with officials being bribed to provide cheap capital and disregard environmental and safety requirements. Centrally directed anti-corruption campaigns have had limited effects, particularly in provinces like Shanxi and Inner Mongolia where coal mining and new power plants are concentrated. There is little we in Australia can do to influence China. Our only contribution at this point will be to manage a transition away from dependence on thermal coal as an export industry. Sadly, there is no sign that our leaders are willing, let alone able, to undertake this task.
On June 8, an internet blackout was precipitated by one customer updating their settings through a “valid configuration change”. With speed, 85% of the network of the tech infrastructure company Fastly began returning errors. A global outage ensued. “The downed sites,” according to Brian Barrett of Wired, “shared no obvious theme or geography; the outages were global, and they hit everything from Reddit to Spotify to The New York Times.”
If Rowan Dean were Katy Hopkins he wouldn’t be kicked out of the country he’d be kicked on to the Bolt Report to help Andrew Bolt out.
A Chinese ship that approached the Queensland coast in the hopes of undermining Australian democracy has packed it in after accidentally catching an episode of Outsiders. “We were planning to weaken the fabric of Australian democracy, but then we heard Rowan Dean do a segment on Dr Suess books and we thought, what’s the point? We might just leave you guys to it,” the commander said as he steered the boat around and headed back to Beijing.
Incredibly, a survey finds 42% of Australians believe China will attack Australia, this despite exports to China surging 36% over in the last six months, and despite there being no logical rationale for war with China, or an attack by China. Marcus Reubenstein analyses the ludicrous position of Australia’s China hawks and the mainstream media pushing their agendas.
olddogthoughts 