Begins: It was Kipling, born 1865 India and died 1936 London, who famously said ‘East is East, West is West and never the Twain shall meet.’ Kipling seemed proved right when the honeymoon relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China in the fifties erupted into the vicious Sino-Soviet dispute
MoreRussia and Ukraine Vladimir Putin rarely uses English in his speeches. So if in his speech to the recent BRICS meeting in Kazan he insisted the reason for Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine was that he was ‘duped’ (he pronounced it ‘dooped’) by Germany and France in the 2014-5 Minsk
MoreWhat an Aborigine Lady can teach us, Remember the fuss about the ‘stolen generation’ – aborigine children being taken away from their mothers to be raised in Australian families? Conventional thinking at the time said this was a denial of the child’s aborigine culture, not to mention the feelings of
MoreThe invitation said: ‘Global Multinational Corporations Summit.’ Main Topic: ‘An opening China and the World.’ So I dutifully packed my bags and headed tor Beijing. There on the 70th floor of the luxurious Shangri-la hotel I found bosses and representatives of about 30 Chinese multinationals who wanted to talk about
MoreRemember the fuss about the ‘stolen generation’ – mainly mixed-race, aborigine children being taken away from their mothers to be raised in Australian families? Thinking at the time saw this as a denial of the child’s aborigine culture, not to mention the feelings of the mother. But a recent article
MoreVladimir Putin rarely uses English in his speeches. So if in his speech to the recent BRICS meeting in Kazan he insisted the reason for Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine was that he was duped (he pronounced it ‘dooped’) by Germany and France in the 2014-5 Minsk Accords then he
MoreWe are told the AUKUS ‘security partnership’ with the US and UK requires Australia to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) to accompany AUKUS. They will operate mainly in the South China Sea, allegedly to deter China’s ‘expansionist’ goals. Alarmed, I set out to discover those expansionist goals. I
MoreWhat a difference a day (or a week) makes. What a difference the mere translation of a word makes. As the war against Japan in the Pacific began to close, the Potsdam Conference, which decided to call for Japan’s unconditional surrender, began on July 17, 1945. On the day before,
MoreThe Kremlin needs a new PR agent. Moscow would have us believe it is fighting a life and death struggle in the muddy trenches of Donbas. But what do we get to see on the inauguration of its president? Glittering gold chambers and goose-stepping soldiers. No doubt there is some
MoreAs we approach the tenth anniversary of the 2014 disappearance of flight 370, Malaysian Airlines, we are getting the usual barrage of media speculation about the alleged mystery and its possible causes. Yet for me at the time, as a contributor to an Asian news service, there was no mystery.
MoreBetween years 2000 and 2018 the North Korea and South Korea governments issued three joint declarations all promising South Korean economic aid to North Korea and North Korean moves to denuclearisation. Year 2002 saw the Japanese-inspired Pyongyang Declaration promising even more of the same. But each time subsequent conservative governments
MoreWhere fear of China is involved there is no conscience for the mistakes of the past. Nor can we expect any sensibility in the plans for the future. As we move into the new year, two foreign policy mistakes need to be corrected. First is the idea that Israel needs
MoreHenry Kissinger’s death has brought a flow of predictable judgements: ‘He created some evils – 1973 Chile, for example. But overall he helped end the Cold War.’ And as a beneficiary – the 1971 opening to China, for example – Australians should be grateful. His non-Anglo background and his experience
MoreBy chance, US president Biden’s goodwill visit to Vietnam’s communist government in Hanoi came just 50 years after the notorious 1972 Christmas bombings. These bombings saw more than 200 American B-52s flying 730 sorties and dropping over 20,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam over a period of 12 days
MoreJapan is a member of the Quad – the grouping that claims it is working for a free, open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region. But in its relations with North Korea, Tokyo is not working for anything free, open, prosperous and inclusive. Former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, created a bizarre
MoreSo US-sanctioned, Hong Kong Chief Executive, John Lee, will not be allowed into the US to attend the forthcoming APEC annual conference. This is US unilateralism gone mad. We have seen it before, of course, with the US unilaterally refusing admission to national leaders it dislikes who wish to attend
MoreThe Ukrainian war could be headed for a dangerous stalement, and at least some of the blame lies with Moscow and its supporters. From the beginning there was too much emphasis by Moscow supporters on the NATO question. Nothing was going to change in Ukraine by harping on broken NATO
MoreThe New York Times has in recent years tried to redeem its reputation with a mea-culpa admission over its coverage of the blatantly transparent Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction myth that enabled the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But over its key role earlier in cementing the Tiananmen Square horror story
MoreThere is only one way to stop politicians and bureaucrats from beginning stupid and immoral wars. Before his recent death Daniel Ellsberg went out of his way to deliver an important message. This was the need to stop US empire-building wars before they start. His Pentagon Papers were not released until 1971
MoreThe Western hope that Taiwan could serve as a catalyst for an attack of China seems likely to remain the fantasy it always was. I first knew Taiwan in the sixties – dirt poor and brutally oppressive. A well-known lawyer, Duan-Mu Kai, I came to know spent his time rescuing
MoreThe ugly situation developing in Kosovo, formerly a province of Serbia, has parallels with Ukraine. The result could be just as bloody. But is anyone listening? The legal status of Kosovo remains obscure. Originally it was an autonomous province within Serbia. But the Albanian majority in the province claimed Serb
MoreAs a Hong Kong based columnist for much of his writing career Nury Vittachi was known for his persistent anti-Beijing slant. But no longer. What changed his mind was the mainstream media – the BBC in particular – coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots. Praised as democracy seekers, these
MoreHow do we end up with an ALP government stupid enough to sign up for the ludicrous AUKUS proposal and the accompanying bogus, China threat scare? Clearly part of the answer has to be the inability to understand Asia. And this is confirmed when we look at the background of most
MoreIn 2015 a BBC documentary on You Tube showed us the remarkable scene of a Ukrainian military unit trying to enter the outskirts of Slovyansk in the Donbas. Old men, young boys, large women came out to stop them. Some climbed on the tanks and other armoured vehicles. Some seized
MoreOver Ukraine, Russophobia has gone too far. Moscow deserves criticism for the crudity of its attacks on Ukraine (though I am not sure that it is a crime if a nation is not well prepared for war). But the reason for the attacks has been there, and valid, for eight
MoreAs a nation Japan would not win many Nobel peace prizes. For centuries its pirates pillaged Chinese coastal towns. In the 19th century carve-up of China, Japan gained Taiwan, the Liaodong peninsula and later Manchuria. In 1910 it colonised Korea. In 1937 it began its attack into China proper, killing close
MoreMoscow has now warned that Japan’s ‘openly unfriendly positions’ make delayed peace treaty talks impossible. Australia has some connections with those ‘unfriendly positions.’ They include joining in sanctions against Moscow over the war in Ukraine. Sanctions are an ugly business and Moscow is right to react against them. They can
MoreWith Russian armies attacking into Ukraine, many have assumed Taiwan faces a similar threat from Mainland China. Similarities exist. Over Ukraine, Moscow mainly attacked because the Kiev government refused to honour the promise to grant autonomy to pro-Russian districts. Over Taiwan, Beijing has threatened to use force because the government
MoreBETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES To The Limits of Cruelty 1. The ‘Dangerous’ Fretelin2. The Canberra Debates3. A Voice of Reason, Bill Pritchett4. The Whitlam Apologists5. Crunch Time 6. Going Public7. The Renouf Factor8. The Devious Mr Renouf9. The Remorseful Mr Woolcott? The
MoreBETWEEN FOUR WORLDS: CHINA, RUSSIA, JAPAN AND AUSTRALIA.BETWEEN FOUR CAREERS and FOUR LANGUAGES. Learning the Hard Way 1. More Shangrila2. The Land Boom is Coming3. I Will Complain4. The Lockwood House5.The ‘Freddy’ Factor6. Becoming a Builder7. IWNC in trouble 8. Changing Directions9. More Problems10. Rural versus Urban Japan11.The Bankruptcy Factor12. Financial
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