Australia is a vassal state of the US. That will never change

The craven manner in which Australia continues to bow before the US is borne of a deep-seated fear that Washington will again choose to interfere in Australian politics as it did in 1975.

That year, the late Gough Whitlam, who was prime minister, hinted that he might have second thoughts about renewing a lease for Pine Gap, a base in Australia’s northern parts which the Americans use for spying on other countries.

Whitlam was sacked by the governor-general John Kerr shortly thereafter. A full account of the affair is here; the CIA’s involvement has never been in doubt.

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Serena Williams has become an object of pity

In August, no doubt, Serena Williams will turn up at the US Open, the last tennis Grand Slam event for 2021, in the hope that she will be able to, at last, equal Australian Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam titles.

The odds are stacked against Williams, given that she has been unable to win a Grand Slam event since January 2017. That year, she won the Australian Open.

After that, she has played in 18 Grand Slam events and been unable to win any of them. In some, she has even managed to make it to the final, but then stumbled at the last hurdle.

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The world has become the domain of liars

There’s a common element to much, if not most, of the news that flits across the TV screens: lies.

People attempt to add a touch of sophistry to lying, by trying to create classes of lies, but in the end it all adds up to the same thing: saying one thing when knowing that the opposite was correct.

One well-known example: the current president of the United States, Joe Biden, came to office promising a US$15 minimum wage for the country. He also promised to provide medical services for all and forgive at least a part of the billions in student debt.

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Afghan pullout: ASPI lines up to run interference for its defence sponsors

It is hardly surprising that the head of a defence lobby group like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute — which claims to be an independent, non-partisan think-tank — would be a trifle perturbed at the thought that a major arms market was going to be disturbed.

Peter Jennings, a former member of the Australian department of defence, was out early on Tuesday morning, calling US president Joe Biden’s decision to pull American forces out of Afghanistan by September 11 this year “his first big blunder in office”.

“This could cost the US dearly in future years and should give America’s friends and allies pause to ask if Biden has the grit for the tough road ahead,” wrote a clearly ruffled Jennings, not mentioning whether he expected the Americans to spend another 20 years in a country which has never allowed itself to be subjugated by any foreign force. Continue reading “Afghan pullout: ASPI lines up to run interference for its defence sponsors”

Afghan adventure was not in vain, claims former Liberal minister

Former Australian foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer is an expert when it comes to revisionism, and he regularly indulges in these exercises using the Australian Financial Review, where he is a columnist (God knows why!) to do so.

His latest exercise is to try and whitewash the sorry 20-year war in Afghanistan as some kind of necessary adventure. Right through his exercise, one can spot the little twists and turns he does to paint a narrative that is sharply at odds with reality.

First, Downer claims to have been an “important part” of the decision taken by prime minister John Howard to join the US in invading Afghanistan in 2001. It seems more likely that Howard was just told he would have to send Australian troops to act as cannon fodder for the Americans as has always been the case. The US was aiming to go into Afghanistan in order to exact revenge for the bombing of the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, an act that was said to have been planned by Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.
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Something fishy about Trump’s taxes? Did nobody suspect it all along?

Recently, the New York Times ran an article about Donald Trump having paid no federal income taxes for 10 of the last 15 years; many claimed it was a blockbuster story and that it would have far-reaching effects on the forthcoming presidential election.

If this was the first time Trump’s tax evasion was being mentioned, then, sure, it would have been a big deal.

But right from the time he first refused to make his tax returns public — before he was elected — this question has been hanging over Trump’s head.
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When will Michael Hayden explain why the NSA did not predict 9/11?

As America marks the 19th anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers by terrorists, it is a good time to ask when General Michael Hayden, head of the NSA at the time of 9/11, will come forward and explain why the agency was unable to detect the chatter among those who had banded together to wreak havoc in the US.

Before I continue, let me point out that nothing of what appears below is new; it was all reported some four years ago, but mainstream media have conspicuously avoided pursuing the topic because it would probably trouble some people in power.

The tale of how Hayden came to throw out a system known as ThinThread, devised by probably the most brilliant metadata analyst, William Binney, at that time the technical director of the NSA, has been told in a searing documentary titled A Good American.

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Serena Williams, please go before people start complaining

The US Open 2020 represented the best chance for an aging Serena Williams to win that elusive 24th Grand Slam title and equal the record of Australian Margaret Court. Seeds Bianca Andreescu (6), Ashleigh Barty (1), Simona Halep (2), Kiki Bertens (7) and Elina Svitolina (5) are all not taking part.

But Williams, now 39, could not get past Victoria Azarenka in the semi-finals, losing 1-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Prior to this, Williams had lost four Grand Slam finals in pursuit of Court’s record: Andreescu defeated her at the US Open in 2019, Angelique Kerber beat her at Wimbledon in 2018, Naomi Osaka took care of her in the 2018 US Open and Halep accounted for Williams at Wimbledon in 2019. In all those finals, Williams was unable to win more than four games in any set.
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A small step for Australian women, a giant leap for Tracey Spicer

A year and nine months after she founded NOW Australia claiming it was meant to focus on the problem of women being sexually harassed in the workplace, former TV newsreader Tracey Spicer is once again avoiding public appearances in order, she claims, to focus on her own mental health.

Spicer has retreated like this on earlier occasions too: she disappeared after actor John Jarratt was cleared of harassment charges and also when actor Geoffrey Rush won a case against the Daily Telegraph that had accused him of sexual harassment.

After a series of incidents that can only lead to one conclusion — Spicer’s embrace of the #MeToo movement was meant more to embellish her own image than anything else — the women’s movement in Australia has been put on the back foot and left wondering how it will recover from the Spicer show.
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Saudis want US to fight another war for them

On 3 August 1990, the morning after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Saudi Arabian government was more than a bit jittery, fearing that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would make Riyadh his next target. The Saudis had been some of the bigger buyers of American and British arms, but they found that they had a big problem.

And that was the fact that all the princes who were pilots of F-16 jets, considered one of the glamour jobs, had gone missing. Empty jets were of no use. How would the Saudis defend their country if Baghdad decided to march into the country’s Eastern Region? If Hussein decided to do so, he would be in control of a sizeable portion of the world’s oil resources and many countries would be royally screwed.
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