taiwan

Modern-day gunboat diplomacy largely ignores the historical circumstances and emotive aspects of the divide of Taiwan and China.

The issue of Taiwan and China reunification has been narrated from a geopolitical perspective, and most arguments do not adequately address the sensitivities of the issue.

China’s intractable stand on reunification, which it considers an internal affair, cannot be fully comprehended without an attempt to see it from the emotive aspects of a divided country.

jake

President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan has declared the US is a resident power in the Indo-Pacific, telling Australians he rejects claims it doesn’t have the staying power to remain in Asia in the face of a rising China.

Mr Sullivan’s declaration that America is “not going anywhere” is in stark contrast to former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, who on Wednesday said while the US should remain in East Asia as a “balancing and conciliating” military power it would be significantly eclipsed by China over the coming years.

china

Two years ago, New Internationalist had a feature issue on China. It introduced its views: Since 1980, China has lifted over 800 million people out of absolute poverty. The four biggest banks in the world are Chinese. Between 2011 and 2013, China poured more concrete than the United States did in the entire twentieth century. The rise of China is perhaps the most important fact of our lifetimes. But what happens next? There are more than enough ‘red scare’ stories in the Western press that treat this nation of 1.4 billion people as a terrifying monolith. With the collection of articles below, we’ve tried to do something different.

Read more: https://newint.org/issues/2019/10/28/china-charge

win

Glasgow: Ambitions to kill coal and toughen 2030 emissions targets have been watered down in latest draft of the COP26 declaration, which provides the blueprint for international action to tackle climate change.

The draft released on Friday night (AEDT) sets the scene for a showdown between negotiators, after the document was weakened just as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pleaded with nations to strengthen their targets.

A push to make countries such as Australia that have not yet submitted new 2030 targets formally update their emissions reduction plans next year has also failed, with the new text only “inviting” them to do so.

ABC

When Tony Abbott got elected in 2013, with firm promises not to cut the ABC's nor the SBS budget, HE HAD LIED. lied. lied…. Within seconds of coming to power, Tony's Libs, via the then minister of communication, MALCOLM TURNBULL(?), slashed the ABC and SBS budgets, under the pretence of bringing the country "back into the black”… The public service got decimated as well, while the military engrossed. We all know (we all should) that countries' budget "into the black" is a moronic adventure as long as the US deficit stays in the stratosphere (actually it’s deeper than the Mariana trench, but in times of global warming, we’ve got to go atmospheric…)

 variants...

As everyone familiar with media operations is well aware, late Friday afternoon is the best time to release new information intended to attract minimal attention. A perfect example of this came a couple of days ago in the distribution of America’s newly declassified intelligence report on the origins of Covid.

gas...

Earlier this month, with great fanfare, Washington, London, and Canberra announced the AUKUS pact: a security arrangement meant to confront China. The deal was hailed as a “historic opportunity” by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison “to protect shared values and promote security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.”

millionaires 

You may not know it, but America is run by OLD PEOPLE. 

Not all senators and Congress representatives are old, but they all come under the spell of the old charming PELOSI woman. She controls the loot. Even Biden cannot escape her clutches and she is the one who is making political prisoners squirm, hidden away from the media. Pelosi is the female who keeps torturing Trump publicly about the 6th of January. Trump is an OLD nobody these days who can do nothing against the vengeful witch. 

scomo... 

Arriving in Melbourne at a dinner for the faithful it seems, ScoMo was upbeat. He had slayed the French Napoleon in a submarine Waterloo op, he’d made a pledge that “global warming is a major problem for humanity”, that COAL was good for the economy, that going "all the way with the damn Yankee” was the Australian way of the future and that electric cars were the salvation of the weekends. Life was beaut — pity he had to wait till next year to declare an election as time had run out in this fast disappearing calendar year.

TVkabul

More than ever, Australia is a suitable piece of real estate for the US espionage and war-gaming. A detailed analysis by Richard Tanter.

Commitment to the maintenance of the American alliance has consistently overwhelmed any other measure of Australian national or strategic interest. Two material elements of the wider impact of the US alliance on Australian defence and foreign policy are the habit of participation in US wars and silent acceptance of more ‘’joint’’ bases.

shredder

Seventy-four counties in Georgia have failed to produce original images of more than 17,000 ballots from the November 2020 election, according to VoterGA, a not-for-profit election monitoring organisation. Last year Joe Biden won the state by a razor-thin margin of 0.23 percent or 11,779 votes.

date 

The first Anzacs challenged the reasons for war, so the federal education minister’s insistence that Anzac Day cannot be ‘contested’ at school is political pantomime.

On Remembrance Day we will pause and offer some act of respect. And then we may think critically about war. We may ask how and why we get into war, and what exactly we fight for?

But not Alan Tudge, federal Minister for Education. He has been fuming at curriculum planners who have listed Anzac Day among historical subjects that can be “contested” in the classroom. Tudge has insisted that Anzac Day is “not contested”.

toothpicks

Former prime minister Paul Keating thinks Australia has lost its way in the region and is foolish to seek a new submarine deal to contain China’s military efforts.

In a scathing critique of Australia’s foreign and defence policy, the former Labor leader said the decision to work with the United States and United Kingdom on nuclear-powered submarines was “like throwing a handful of toothpicks at a mountain”.

He likened the deal – which came under the auspices of the new AUKUS pact – to “buying an old 747”, saying the most obvious choice would have been a French boat which used more modern technology.

fishing

Analyst: As Steele Dossier Source Charged With Lying, All Roads Lead to Hillary Clinton Campaign

By Ekaterina Blinova

Igor Danchenko, a key source for British ex-spy Christopher Steele, was arrested on 4 November in Northern Virginia on an indictment by Special Counsel John Durham, who is looking into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Why did Durham pick Danchenko as his next target and who's next?

Danchenko is charged with making false statements to the FBI, just like Michael Sussmann, former counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, who was indicted by a grand jury on 16 September.

oily

Several top oil-producing countries stacked their delegations to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow with oil and gas industry executives and officials from their oil ministries. In some cases, oil personnel represented significant portions of their overall country delegation, according to a DeSmog analysis.

The UK organizers of the COP26 climate conference very publicly declined to offer international oil companies any slots in the conference or any formal role in the event, and oil companies without credible climate programs were also barred from sponsoring events at the high-stakes international talks currently underway.