Month: April 2021

Posted on

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”

Posted on

All the news (apart from the Middle East issue) that’s fit to print

The Saturday Paper — as its name implies — is a weekend newspaper published from Melbourne, Australia. Given this, it rarely has any real news, but some of the features are well-written.

There is a column called Gadfly (again the name would indicate what it is about) which is extremely well-written and is one of the articles that I read every week. It was written for some years by one Richard Ackland, a lawyer with very good writing skills, and is now penned by one Sami Shah, an Indian, who is, again a good writer. Gadfly is funny and, like most of the opinion content in the paper, is left-oriented.

The same cannot be said of some of the other writers. Karen Middleton and Rick Morton fall into the category of poor writers, though the latter sometimes does provide a story that has not been run anywhere else. Middleton can only be described as a hack.

Continue reading “All the news (apart from the Middle East issue) that’s fit to print”

Posted on

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.
Continue reading “Afghan adventure was not in vain, claims former Liberal minister”

Posted on

Time for ABC to bite the bullet and bring Tony Jones back to Q+A

Finally, someone from the mainstream Australian media has called it: Q+A, once one of the more popular shows on the ABC, is really not worth watching any more.

Of course, being Australian, the manner in which this sentiment was expressed was oblique, more so given that it came from a critic who writes for the Nine newspapers, Craig Mathieson.

Hamish Macdonald: his immature approach to Q+A has led to the program going downhill. Courtesy YouTube

Newspapers from this company are generally classed as being from the left — they once were, when they were owned by Fairfax Media, but centrist or right of centre would be more accurate these days — and given that the ABC is also considered to be part of the left, criticism was generally absent.

A second critical review has appeared on April 5, this time in The Australian.

Mathieson did not come right out and call the program atrocious – which is what it is right now. The way the headline on Mathieson’s article put it was that Q+A was once an agenda setter, but was no longer essential viewing. He was right about the former, but to call it essential viewing at any stage of its existence is probably an exaggeration.

Continue reading “Time for ABC to bite the bullet and bring Tony Jones back to Q+A”