Asia
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Australia hesitated after the successful party room coup against Liberal Party prime minister Tony Abbott on September 24. The lumpen columnists who had barracked incessantly for “The Mad Monk” resented the arrival of Malcolm Turnbull and, quite frankly, they were disoriented. Which way should they jump now? Once the message…
To save his own political skin and to win next month’s khaki by-election in Canning, WA, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is on the brink of ordering the RAAF to bomb Syria. Any bombing raids would be illegal and they are not sanctioned by a UN resolution. The rationale will be that it is a humanitarian…
According to the Mad Monk, aka Prime Minister Tony Abbott, every single Australian is now a potential target of the “death cult”, i.e. ISIS, ISIL, IS or Daesh. There could be a bomb attack on any crowded venue in our capital cities at any time, he says. Australians should place themselves on a war footing…
The late Australian journalist Peter Smark is recalled with affection and respect by Vietnam’s most honoured spy, Pham Xuan An, whose double life made a major contribution to the NLF’s 1975 victory. Smark was a war correspondent in Saigon in the early 1960s when An worked for Reuters (later he became a senior reporter with…
A royal commission remains the only way to establish the facts about the complicity of John Howard’s security committee, the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and ASIS in the arrest the Bali Nine drug smugglers and this week’s execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Senator Nick Xenophon’s well-meaning parliamentary committee inquiry should not become an…
Two polls published this week came to conflicting conclusions. One said Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his scabrous federal government were clawing their way back while the other said Abbott remained unpopular and Labor would easily win an election if held now. The first conclusion to draw is that the polls are rubbish. Their modelling…
Who’s speaking here? “We are a free and fair nation. But that doesn’t mean we should let bad people play for us for mugs, and all too often they have. Well, that’s going to stop.” Amazingly, it was the Mad Monk speaking during his weekly broadcast, a PR concept he’s borrowed from the White House….
Prime Minister Tony Abbott is swinging from the yardarm like a piece of carrion; his party will cut him down and toss him into the sea when the smell becomes intolerable. Liberal MPs prefer to “give a man another go” so the fatally wounded corpse may hang around for a few months longer. Labor ruffians…
Terry Moran AC was secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra from March 2008 to September 2011 during the turbulent chaos of Kevin Rudd and his successor Julia Gillard. Trained in nation-building and policy execution, Moran found himself managing a political crisis desk for politicians trying to survive the relentless pathological…
Prime Minister Shinto Abe’s right-wing government in Tokyo has announced military spending of $270 billion on drones, submarines, fighter jets and armed patrol boats. It is a military provocation against China at the instigation of militarists in the US State Department and the Pentagon. It forms part of their policy of “encirclement” and “containment” of…
