The prospect of another military deployment in the Middle East is real. After the strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the executive cannot be trusted to make that decision alone.
The fact that finding yourself on a police watchlist can lead to a death penalty meted out on the other side of the world should worry our attorney-general. Why doesn’t it?
i. cause The rice paddy on the edge of Iitate village is 30km back from the coast, framed by steep forested hills, and we stop here briefly because the scene is so strangely heraldic. At first glance, this looks like any other rural Japanese town in late summer, but it isn’t any more. The precise geometries of the fields are softened with neglect and waist-high weeds. Two empty police cars sit out front of the vacant community hall. Crickets hum in the mid-day humidity, in sleepy counterpoint to the rumble of diesel engines. A work team of several dozen
The Prime Minister’s speech on Afghanistan at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) included some surprising and welcome concessions to the two thirds of Australians who believe it is time for our military forces to leave the country.
This is a lightly edited diary of the Parliamentary Defence Exchange 3-13 April 2012 to Al Minhad, Tarin Kot, FOB Mirwais and Kandahar Air Field. Thanks in particular due to Captain Simon Petie, whose patience and generosity in looking after four special needs individuals made this trip so valuable. Day 1 – Al Minhad Airbase, UAE It’s about 8:30pm local time, on a bunkbed with the sound of an air conditioner and the roar of cargo planes for company.
In introducing a document of this kind, the first thing to note is that the text speaks for itself. This is not a work of analysis or opinion, but a straightforward chronology of accident, incompetence and disaster spanning seven decades. The key unifying theme here is nuclear technology, roaring into modern history out of the blinding singularity that lit the sky over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The twin industries of nuclear weapons and civil nuclear power hold a unique and forbidding place in our lives as the 20th century recedes and the forgotten struggles of the Cold War
Much of the debate around uranium sales to India – inside the ALP and in the broader community – will be viewed through the lens of the self-evident interest in maximising revenues from a commodity that Australia already sells to a dozen other nations. I suspect most people, if they’re interested at all, will wonder what the fuss is about. We sell the stuff to a nuclear-armed communist dictatorship and the organised crime syndicate formerly known as Russia, so why not sell it to the world’s largest democracy?
So, I’ll admit it. I got just as carried away as everybody else on the occasion of United States President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia. I was looking forward to the chance to see him up close and to get a sense of the rhetorical power that first caught the attention of the world at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. In that regard, he didn’t disappoint. His speech to the Australian Parliament was beautifully crafted, holding 226 Australian parliamentarians and a packed public gallery spellbound. After the oration he worked the room with ease, flashing his smile and
Judging from the extraordinary outpouring of editorial anguish over the Australian Greens’ cautionary uranium mining policies, it seems we might have hit a nerve. Ranging from simple name calling to paranoid hysteria, one thing missing has been any analysis – any at all – of why we believe the nuclear industry should be phased out.