Antinuclear

Amid the Iran chaos, war over Taiwan just became less likely

by Marcus Reubenstein | Apr 15, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/amid-the-iran-chaos-war-over-taiwan-just-became-less-likely/

Last week’s meeting between Beijing and Taiwan’s main opposition leader is a bad sign for the China hawks and a sign of rapprochement. Marcus Reubenstein reports.

The combination of the US-Israel war on Iran and the anti-China media narrative in Australia has meant the visit of the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, to China has largely been ignored. Cheng chairs the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and she spent five days in mainland China from the 7th until the 12th of April.

Her public pronouncements indicate a belief that it is not in Taiwan’s interest to pin all of its hopes on an economic and military alliance with the US, and its future is better served with a pivot towards Beijing.

A significant proportion of Taiwan’s population does not want armed conflict with China. More importantly, Taiwan’s political leaders are acknowledging the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly unhinged and unreliable ally.

As reported by NBC News, Cheng points to Ukraine, saying,

“People do not want to see Taiwan become the next Ukraine.”

Add to that mix that Taiwan gets 70% of its oil from the Middle East, there is sentiment in Taiwan that the US bombing of Iran has been disastrously thought out and delivers Taiwan massive economic pain. Will Taiwan risk becoming the centrepiece of a future US military disaster?

In December, Cheng told the New York Times, “Could it be the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn strategically opposing the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?”

Taiwan’s ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) had attempted to push a $US40B arms deal with the US through parliament in March, but that was sunk by Cheng’s KMT. The ruling DPP was eventually able to get a deal worth just $US11B through – around one third of an AUKUS submarine.

Cheng’s China visit

The visit to China by Taiwan’s opposition leader took in three very significant cities, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing, as financial and political capitals, were logical, but Nanjing is of great historical significance.

She visited the Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum in Nanjing with a large Taiwanese delegation, a site honouring the founding father of the Republic of China, revered in both Taiwan and mainland China. Nanjing is also the site of one of Japan’s greatest wartime atrocities, the so-called Rape of Nanjing.

A small number of hardline figures in Japan’s ruling LDP continue to deny Japanese participated in any wartime atrocities. The LDP’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, stating that Japan would send in its military to aid Taiwan in any conflict with China, has dramatically escalated tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

Takaichi is one of Japan’s most pro-US leaders, and Cheng’s visit to Nanjing would not be lost on the US. By extension, Cheng’s point of visiting Nanjing could be seen as a backhanded message to Japan, which hosts 55,000 US troops, to stay out of Taiwan’s affairs.

Implications for Australia

Cheng’s trip to China has implications for Australia and our foreign policies towards both our biggest trading partner and most important strategic partner.

The Albanese government has gone all in on the US’s East Asia military push, and now the US is showing clear signs of stress. The US has redeployed Thaad missile systems from South Korea to fight its war with Iran, while supercarrier naval vessels based in Japan, and operating in the South China Sea, have also been sent to the Gulf. Despite being the greatest military power in global history, it’s obvious it doesn’t take much to wear US forces thin.

Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, nor Defence Minister Richard Marles has deviated from Australia’s blind support for the US war on Iran.

The question is, will they follow the US into an inevitably disastrous war against China or, worse still, act as a proxy in a future war?

Australia’s tilt towards offensive military capability, also enthusiastically supported by the LNP opposition, and the billions committed to submarines which may never arrive, do not augur well.

If the US cannot defeat Iran, there is no path to victory against an equally determined China, far better equipped, with the world’s second largest economy, and that is not a pariah state.

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Last week’s meeting between Beijing and Taiwan’s main opposition leader is a bad sign for the China hawks and a sign of rapprochement. Marcus Reubenstein reports.

The combination of the US-Israel war on Iran and the anti-China media narrative in Australia has meant the visit of the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, to China has largely been ignored. Cheng chairs the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and she spent five days in mainland China from the 7th until the 12th of April.

Her public pronouncements indicate a belief that it is not in Taiwan’s interest to pin all of its hopes on an economic and military alliance with the US, and its future is better served with a pivot towards Beijing.

A significant proportion of Taiwan’s population does not want armed conflict with China. More importantly, Taiwan’s political leaders are acknowledging the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly unhinged and unreliable ally.

As reported by NBC News, Cheng points to Ukraine, saying,

People do not want to see Taiwan become the next Ukraine.

Add to that mix that Taiwan gets 70% of its oil from the Middle East, there is sentiment in Taiwan that the US bombing of Iran has been disastrously thought out and delivers Taiwan massive economic pain. Will Taiwan risk becoming the centrepiece of a future US military disaster?

In December, Cheng told the New York Times, “Could it be the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn strategically opposing the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?”

Taiwan’s ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) had attempted to push a $US40B arms deal with the US through parliament in March, but that was sunk by Cheng’s KMT. The ruling DPP was eventually able to get a deal worth just $US11B through – around one third of an AUKUS submarine.

Cheng’s China visit

The visit to China by Taiwan’s opposition leader took in three very significant cities, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing, as financial and political capitals, were logical, but Nanjing is of great historical significance.

She visited the Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum in Nanjing with a large Taiwanese delegation, a site honouring the founding father of the Republic of China, revered in both Taiwan and mainland China. Nanjing is also the site of one of Japan’s greatest wartime atrocities, the so-called Rape of Nanjing.

A small number of hardline figures in Japan’s ruling LDP continue to deny Japanese participated in any wartime atrocities. The LDP’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, stating that Japan would send in its military to aid Taiwan in any conflict with China, has dramatically escalated tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.

Takaichi is one of Japan’s most pro-US leaders, and Cheng’s visit to Nanjing would not be lost on the US. By extension, Cheng’s point of visiting Nanjing could be seen as a backhanded message to Japan, which hosts 55,000 US troops, to stay out of Taiwan’s affairs.

Implications for Australia

Cheng’s trip to China has implications for Australia and our foreign policies towards both our biggest trading partner and most important strategic partner.

The Albanese government has gone all in on the US’s East Asia military push, and now the US is showing clear signs of stress. The US has redeployed Thaad missile systems from South Korea to fight its war with Iran, while supercarrier naval vessels based in Japan, and operating in the South China Sea, have also been sent to the Gulf. Despite being the greatest military power in global history, it’s obvious it doesn’t take much to wear US forces thin.

Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, nor Defence Minister Richard Marles has deviated from Australia’s blind support for the US war on Iran.

The question is, will they follow the US into an inevitably disastrous war against China or, worse still, act as a proxy in a future war?

Australia’s tilt towards offensive military capability, also enthusiastically supported by the LNP opposition, and the billions committed to submarines which may never arrive, do not augur well.

If the US cannot defeat Iran, there is no path to victory against an equally determined China, far better equipped, with the world’s second largest economy, and that is not a pariah state.

Respected US political scientist Professor John Mearsheimer says, US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is “manna from heaven” for China. He argues the war on Iran has made the US an irresponsible stakeholder in the international system and that China looks like the “adults in the room.”

China’s carrot and stick

China’s approach to Taiwan, and more broadly to much of its global diplomacy, has been a mix of carrot and stick. Beijing is still dangling carrots in front of Taiwan. Reunification with Taiwan remains the endgame,

“but the overwhelming desire is that it should be achieved peacefully.”

Cheng was warmly received by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and following Cheng’s visit, the Chinese government announced a list of ten new policies to promote economic and travel initiatives to strengthen ties between Beijing and Taiwan.

In the background, a looming stick could be an easily achievable Chinese blockade of commercial shipping around Taiwan. As Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates, it doesn’t take a great deal of military firepower to cripple an economy. 

What would, or could, Australia do to intervene? Hypothetically, that is a question which may face Australia, but a reconciliation, indeed possible unification between Taiwan and China, would render moot Australia’s current strategic policy. 

Taiwan’s future?

While opinions in Taiwan about Cheng are divided, she has a realistic chance of becoming Taiwan’s next president at the 2028 election. To win, she doesn’t only have to run on China policy; there are plenty of domestic issues facing voters. Also, there is no suggestion that a reunified Taiwan would be considered as a province of China. Instead, it would become a special administrative region, citizens would keep their Taiwanese passports, and the New Taiwan Dollar would remain the official currency.

The line in the sand for Beijing would be separatist movements and their sympathisers speaking out publicly. Taiwan would also be prohibited from entering into any military alliances or agreements with other nations. 

While this is the same set of conditions imposed on Hong Kong, Taiwan hardly has a tradition of democracy. For its first four decades as a territory, it was governed under martial law, and it wasn’t until 1996 that democratic presidential elections were held. 

Current president, Lai Ching-te, is unpopular with his approval rating sinking to 33% in late 2025, having recovered to the low 40% mark in the most recent polls. Cheng’s approval rating is lower, reflecting the distrust Taiwanese people have for their political leaders.

In terms of specific issues, concerns over the economy rank first for Taiwanese voters. 

The Chinese, that is to say those of Chinese ethnicity, are by and large very pragmatic. Cheng is betting on a belief that close ties with China represent the future and that the

“Taiwanese people will come to distrust Washington more than they distrust Beijing.” 

April 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

At last, a hint of backbone in Australia’s foreign policy

9 April 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/at-last-a-hint-of-backbone-in-australias-foreign-policy/

For months, many of us have watched in frustration as our government responded to Gaza with caution, equivocation, and a reluctance to break from the familiar script of deference to powerful allies. It has felt, at times, like moral clarity was being carefully managed rather than clearly expressed.

Which is precisely why Anthony Albanese’s sudden intervention on Lebanon lands with such force.

By urging that Lebanon be included in any Middle East ceasefire, the Prime Minister has done something rare in modern Australian foreign policy: he has stepped, however briefly, out of line. Not dramatically. Not defiantly. But unmistakably.

This is not just a policy position – it is a signal.

A signal that Australia may be willing to acknowledge what much of the world can already see: that this is not a series of neatly contained conflicts, but a widening humanitarian crisis stretching from the ruins of Gaza Strip to the streets of Beirut. A signal that civilian suffering is not selective, and that our concern for it should not be either.

And yet, it is impossible to ignore the contrast.

Because while this newfound clarity extends to Lebanon, the same certainty has too often been absent when it comes to Gaza. The language has been softer, the urgency more muted, the moral line less clearly drawn. For many Australians, that inconsistency has not gone unnoticed – or unchallenged.

And perhaps most striking of all, it is a signal that the Prime Minister has finally “read the room.”

Because the room has changed. Public patience has thinned. Across Australia – including among Labor’s own supporters – there has been a growing unease with the language of balance when the images on people’s screens tell a far more unbalanced story. People are not asking for perfection, nor for reckless gestures. But they are asking for something that feels increasingly rare in public life: honesty, consistency, and the courage to apply our values evenly.

In that context, this moment feels different.

It feels like a government, or at least a Prime Minister, beginning to find his footing – beginning to speak not just as an ally, but as a representative of a public that expects more than quiet alignment and careful phrasing.

Whether this is the start of something more substantial, or merely a brief departure from the script, remains to be seen. Governments have a way of snapping back into old habits. The gravitational pull of alliance politics is strong, and Australia has rarely resisted it for long.

But for now, credit where it is due.

In choosing to speak up for Lebanon – and in doing so, gently but clearly diverging from the positions of allies such as the United States under Donald Trump – Anthony Albanese has shown a flicker of something Australians have been waiting to see.

Not a break with our allies. Not a dramatic realignment.

Just something quieter – and, perhaps, more important.

A willingness to stand, at least for a moment, on our own two feet.

April 14, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Ignoring genocide. The bill for Australia’s silence has arrived

by Andrew Brown | Apr 7, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/ignoring-genocide-the-bill-for-australias-silence-has-arrived/

There is a bitter truth that must be spoken before we can talk honestly about what is happening to us now. Andrew Brown on Australia’s quiet complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, fourth in a series.

When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.

When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.

Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.

There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.

Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.

Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.

The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.

The cost of silence

That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with. A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.

It never does.

Over 72,000 people killed so far. Over 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.

Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck. Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.

Australia expressed concern.

“Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.”

And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by eighteen months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.

Warnings ignored

The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.

“They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.“

Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.

If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force. And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.

Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.

The war came home

Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.

The pain is no longer abstract.

When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.

Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue

“without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.”

That fiction is now dead.

The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.

business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.

The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it. Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.

Australia’s complicity

Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.

When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.

The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.

Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.

“The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for eighteen months.”

But a forty percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.

The people who protested Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.

Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.

This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.

And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.

That shelf life has expired.

April 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Name it, blame it, shame it. Israel and Trump must be stopped

by Andrew Brown | Apr 8, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/name-it-blame-it-shame-it-israel-and-trump-must-be-stopped/

TACO or not, ceasefire or not, the repercussions from the Iran war will be with us for a long time, and Australians who are done being managed need to resist. Final article on Australia’s complicity in the war on Iran by Andrew Brown.

This is where we stop being polite, because being polite has not worked.

Polite got us a Prime Minister who calls an illegal war of aggression constructive. Polite got us a media landscape that blames the Energy Minister for a conflict that blocked the Strait of Hormuz. Polite got us a political class so thoroughly captured by Washington and Tel Aviv that it cannot find the most basic, elementary words to say that what is happening is wrong, that it is costing us, and that we did not consent to it.

Four articles into this series, we have laid out the case in full. The economic cost. Forty per cent fuel price increases, supply chain disruption, business collapse, and job losses are arriving now and worsening in the months ahead.

The men responsible. A criminal defendant in Tel Aviv prolonging a war that keeps him out of prison, a convicted felon in Washington trailing the shadow of the most significant blackmail network in modern political history, and an Australian Prime Minister who looked at both of them and said: constructive.

The media running cover. Murdoch’s empire pointing your anger at Chris Bowen while the actual cause of your pain, an illegal war fought by Israel and America, goes unnamed in the pages of papers that exist to protect the order, not interrogate it.

And the silence that enabled all of it. Eighteen months of Australia watching a genocide in Gaza, saying nothing of substance, and discovering now that the impunity it excused did not stay in Gaza.

First: Name it.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is illegal. That is not an opinion. It is the assessment of international legal scholars, former UN officials, and the framework of the United Nations Charter that Australia itself helped draft and has repeatedly invoked as foundational to its foreign policy.

There was no Security Council authorisation. There was no act of self-defence as defined under Article 51. There was no imminent attack. There was a decision, made in Washington and Jerusalem, communicated to allies as a fact rather than a request, to bomb a sovereign nation-state because they had the weapons to do it and had calculated that the international community, as currently constituted, lacked both the will and the mechanism to stop them.

That calculation was correct. And it was correct in part because governments like Australia’s, governments that routinely invoke the rules-based order, that send representatives to UN proceedings, that sign international legal instruments with great ceremony, have made it correct through years of unconditional deference that have taught the architects of this war that there are no real consequences.

Name the war for what it is. Say it plainly, in public, without diplomatic hedging. Illegal. Unjustified. Conducted in violation of the international legal framework that Australia claims as a cornerstone of its foreign policy. Say it to your MP. Say it at your workplace. Say it in the letters you write to newspapers that have not said it themselves. The first act of any movement worth the name is

“the refusal to accept the sanitised language of the people responsible for the thing being named.”

Second: Blame it

The blame in this matter is not complex. It is specific, traceable, and attributable to specific decisions made by specific people with names, titles and addresses.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, criminal defendant on charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust, subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, made the political decisions that drove Israel’s regional escalation. His personal legal and political incentives to prolong conflict, to prevent the ceasefire that might accelerate his criminal reckoning, are documented and discussed openly within Israeli civil society.

The suggestion that those incentives have had no bearing on the character or duration of this war is not a serious position.

Already, ceasefire just struck between the US and Iran, Israel’s PM has refused to abide by it, maintaining hostilities in Lebanon.

Donald Trump, President of the United States, convicted felon, a man whose documented relationship with Jeffrey Epstein’s network of influence and leverage has never been fully or honestly examined by the institutions responsible for examining it, authorised the strikes on Iran. He did so without UN authorisation.

Without defined objectives. Without the consent of allies, now absorbing the economic shockwave.

And he did so as a man whose own vulnerability to leverage, whose own history of proximity to an intelligence-connected blackmail operation, raises questions about whether American foreign policy in this period is being conducted in the American national interest or in the interests of something rather darker and harder to name.

Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia, leader of a government elected on a promise of principled and independent foreign policy, endorsed the war on national television before its objectives had been defined, described Australia’s contribution as constructive, and has since managed the domestic economic consequences of that endorsement by allowing the media to redirect public anger toward his own Energy Minister.

These are the people responsible. Blame them. By name. Publicly. Specifically.

Third: Shame it.

Into the public record. Permanently. Without apology and without a single concession to the people who would prefer you look away.

Shame the government that called a genocide concerning for eighteen months and then called the next war constructive. Shame the press that covered the economic consequences of an illegal war without once naming the war as the cause. Shame the political class that invokes the rules-based international order at every opportunity except the specific, concrete moment when invoking it might cost them something with Washington.

And shame the lobby infrastructure that has made honest public discussion of Israeli state conduct so professionally dangerous that elected representatives self-censor in real time, on camera, in ways they would never do on any other topic involving any other government.

Shame requires naming. And naming requires the willingness to absorb the inevitable accusation. Antisemitism, naivety, conspiracy theory, whatever the silencing vocabulary of the moment happens to be. The answer to that accusation is simple: these are questions about governments, intelligence agencies, and specific individuals. They are being asked by legal scholars, former diplomats, investigative journalists, and the International Criminal Court.

They are not fringe questions. They are the most serious questions available in the current political moment. And the people deploying the accusation are, without exception, people who cannot answer the questions and are therefore trying to end the conversation.

Do not let them end the conversation.

Build the movement

Not a fringe movement. Not an activist movement that can be dismissed with a wave and a label. A mainstream movement of small business owners and tradies and nurses and teachers and families around kitchen tables looking at bills they cannot pay and asking why.

A movement with a single, clear demand: that this government act in Australian interests, not American or Israeli ones, and be

“held accountable when it fails to do so.“

Concretely, that means demanding the following from your MP, from candidates seeking your vote, from any politician who wants to claim the mantle of representing the Australian people.

Formally condemn the US-Israeli war on Iran as a violation of international law and call for an immediate ceasefire and negotiated settlement. Honour the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu. State clearly, as sovereign Australian policy, that a man under international indictment for war crimes is not a partner to be accommodated but a defendant to be treated as the court’s warrant requires.

Establish and publish an independent economic inquiry into the full cost to Australian households and businesses of this conflict, with clear attribution, so that every Australian knows exactly what they are paying and exactly why. Suspend all defence and intelligence cooperation that makes Australia complicit in operations it did not approve, and that would not survive public scrutiny if disclosed.

And tell Washington, firmly, as a matter of principle and sovereign policy rather than private diplomatic discomfort, that this alliance has terms. And one of those terms is that you do not commit Australia to your wars without consent and then leave Australians to absorb the damage.

These are not radical demands.

“They are the demands of a country that takes its own sovereignty seriously.”

They will be called radical. They will be called dangerous. They will be called antisemitic.

That word again, the last refuge of those who cannot answer the argument. Ignore it. The charge of antisemitism is not an argument. It is a silencing tactic. You can oppose antisemitism completely, genuinely, without reservation, and oppose the conduct of this war. You can value the American alliance and question the terms on which we have surrendered our independence within it. These are not contradictions. They are the positions of a free people governing themselves.

The pain is coming. For many, it is already here.

Job losses. Business collapses. Families who cannot make rent. Superannuation funds exposed to volatile markets. A small business economy that did nothing to cause this shock and had no voice in preventing it, being asked to absorb consequences that flow directly and traceably from decisions made in Jerusalem, Washington, and ratified by silence in Canberra.

When that pain arrives at your door, and it will if it has not already, remember this.

It was not caused by bad luck. It was not caused by market volatility operating in a benign vacuum. It was not caused by Chris Bowen. It was caused by a war. A specific, illegal, unjustified war of aggression.

A war that the international community, including Australia’s own former diplomats and independent legal scholars,

“warned repeatedly was coming and begged their governments to prevent.”

It was caused by Netanyahu’s impunity, sustained by Trump’s belligerence, enabled by Epstein’s shadow and Mossad’s reach, and ratified by Albanese’s obedience.

And if we do not say that, clearly, publicly, without apology, we will have learned nothing. We will absorb the pain, accept the cover story, and watch it happen again. Because it will happen again. This is what unconditional deference to American and Israeli power produces. Not security. Not prosperity. Not the rules-based international order we were promised.

Your actions to take

So here is the ask. It is not complicated.

Write to your MP. Your name. Your circumstances. Your specific question: what did you do to prevent this, and what are you doing now to protect us from it?

Talk about it. At work, at the table, at the local, at the school gate. Say the quiet part out loud. Say: This war is costing us; our government supported it, and we are going to hold them accountable for that.

Vote accordingly. The politicians who called this constructive, who endorsed it before its objectives were defined, who stayed silent through a genocide and then supported the next war, must answer for it. Not with anger that dissipates into abstraction. With the cold, clear-eyed precision of people who know exactly what was done to them and who did it.

“And refuse, from this moment forward, to accept the managed version of events.”

Managed consent has a shelf life.

The story that all of this is just global complexity, market volatility, regrettable conditions beyond anyone’s control, that story is finished. Australians are not stupid. They are angry. And they are starting, finally, to understand exactly why and at whom that anger should be directed.

They thought we weren’t watching. We were. We just didn’t yet know that the invoice was being issued in our name.

>>> Name it: an illegal war of aggression, enabled by Washington, prosecuted by Tel Aviv, ratified by Canberra.

>>> Blame it: on Netanyahu’s impunity, Trump’s belligerence, Epstein’s shadow, Mossad’s reach, and Albanese’s silence.

>>> Shame it: into the permanent public record, without apology, without concession, and without a single backward step.

The movement starts now. Not with a rally or a petition or a hashtag, though all of those will follow. It starts with each person who reads this and decides, from this moment, that they are done being managed. That they are owed the truth. And that they are going to insist on it.

That is how this ends differently. That is how Australia stops being a footnote in someone else’s war. That is how we become, for the first time in a long time, a country that governs itself in its own interests and has the courage to say so out loud.

The price is being collected at the checkout, at the bowser, and in the quiet ruin of small businesses across this country. The genocide was real. The complicity was real. The bill is real. And we are just getting started.

April 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

The high costs of Albo’s rubber-stamp war in the Middle-East

by Stuart McCarthy | Mar 19, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/costs-of-albos-rubber-stamp-war-in-the-middle-east/

While the “Iran war” is fuelling Israel’s desire for Middle East chaos, Australia finds itself in strategic quagmire of confused priorities and escalating energy costs. Stuart McCarthy reports.

According to the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, Australia is confronting the “worst strategic circumstances since WWII.” A need to “pivot” from pointless “forever wars” in the Middle East towards the Indo-Pacific and counter a rapid build-up of Chinese military power evidently warrants an overhaul of our “not fit for purpose” defence force, expenditure of up to $368B on AUKUS submarines and a plan to enter the “missile age.”

No mention is made in that “strategic” document of this country’s most serious vulnerability. Namely, our systemic exposure to exactly the kind of global oil shocks triggered by the latest Middle East military fiasco.

Our lack of preparedness for these shocks is the result of at least two decades of inexcusable incompetence across the political spectrum.

The reality we face is that Australia has been caught with its pants down during a seismic but foreseeable shift in the global geopolitical landscape. The fallout from the current Middle East war will hit us hard, and we are not prepared.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz – the vital artery for 20% of global oil supplies – is miraculously reopened to merchant shipping within the next few weeks, an economic recession is already a safe bet. The 1979 oil shock saw a severe recession across industrialised countries. Australia saw a double-dip recession, and unemployment rose to more than 10%.

Oil dependency

Australia produces less oil now than it did in 1979, but demand has doubled over the same period, in line with economic growth. We are now 90% dependent on imported petroleum fuel.

The 20 years needed to transform our road transport fleet have been squandered, and we are at the tail end of a jet fuel-dependent global air transport system. The demand-led Covid recession saw a 7% decline in domestic petroleum fuel consumption, mostly as a result of the near total shut down of the aviation sector, but we now face a collapse in the availability of globally traded petroleum fuels, affecting the entire transport sector.

And there’s more. As much as two-thirds of the Urea fertiliser used by Australian farmers also usually comes through the Strait of Hormuz. There are already shortages of some essential medicines and other manufactured goods, which rely on fragile, just-in-time global supply chains.

The stability of our financial system remains as dependent on the assumption of perpetual economic growth as it did before the 2008 financial crisis. Oil supply and economic shocks such as these are blithely dismissed as “externalities” in business-as-usual finance and economic models. Much of the financial capital we need to properly transform our economy to a sovereign resilience model is sure to evaporate in equities and finance markets.

This shock will undoubtedly be much worse than what we saw in 1979.

“And who will pay the price? In short, we all will.”

The cost of war

Since the end of WWII, the human costs of Australia’s wars have been carried solely by the tiny proportion of our community who serve in the defence force, their families and the populations of countries “over there.”

For most of us, mere curiosities on the evening news or social media feeds.

Within military circles, Australia’s contributions to US-led wars in the Middle East and elsewhere have often been disparaged as niche wars. Relatively small contingents of “niche” capabilities were assigned to US-led military coalitions with little impact on overall strategic outcomes other than legitimising US hegemony, while minimising domestic political risk and accountability in case things went wrong.

Given this government reflexively committed us to this war with even less forethought than previous governments in the last several wars, it would more accurately be described as Albanese’s rubber-stamp war.

Within hours of the first Israeli and US air strikes against Iran on 28 February, Albanese regurgitated the Israeli pretext that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat. This pretext has already been publicly debunked by the US Director of National Intelligence.

Unprovoked attacks

For the second time in less than a year, the attacks were launched even as US officials were negotiating with the Khamenei regime over its uranium enrichment program. Iran would be irrational to come back to the negotiating table because that is now proven indicator of the next Israel-US aerial bombardment campaign.

“The degree of Israel-US incompetence on display here is breathtaking,”

even before any moral or legal considerations are made.

Now facing a direct existential threat, the Khamenei regime, on the other hand, has responded with a coherent strategy of lateral escalation, for which they have been preparing since at least 2003.

From their perspective, to “win” this war, all they need to do is survive.

Their strategy is to inflict severe economic pain on the global economy by closing the Strait of Hormuz until the US eventually comes to its senses, and to drive a wedge between the US and the Gulf states, which host permanent US military bases that project power across the region.

These bases have been a growing source of tension in the Middle East since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan later in the same year. The US at the time saw a Russian presence in Afghanistan as a threat to its vital national interests in maintaining access to Middle East oil exports, responding with a permanent military presence in the Gulf states under its “Carter doctrine.”

Over time, this US support also allowed the Gulf states and Israel to contain the perceived threat to regional stability from the Iranian regime.

Now, almost fifty years later and with the NATO-led Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the rear view mirror, US bases nonetheless remain, part of a self-perpetuating escalatory spiral with Iran.

Iran will not be content with Israel and the US merely stopping their attacks. They are now demanding that US bases in the Gulf be shut down permanently. The Gulf states – despite their serious diplomatic efforts to establish stable relations with Iran – are trapped in the middle of a war they didn’t want, and they have no clear way out.

War out of control?

On Wednesday night, Israel bombed South Pars, the world’s largest gas field jointly owned by Qatar and Iran. Iranian officials have vowed to launch retaliatory strikes against gas and oil infrastructure elsewhere in the region. This marks the next step up the escalatory ladder, and it means the duration of the energy and economic shock will be measured in years, not months.

Trump no longer has control of the situation, even if he ever did. Netanyahu has for many years envisaged not merely regime change but the fracturing of the Iranian state as a strategic win for Israel, and he – not Trump – is calling the shots.

For Australia’s part, our rubber-stamp contribution of an air force Wedgetail surveillance aircraft, ostensibly to help defend the United Arab Emirates from incoming Iranian missiles, has actually played into the hands of the Iranian strategic narrative.

Regardless of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s nauseating semantics over this aircraft playing a “defensive” role,

“Australia is now party to the war with Iran,”

from our own base at Al Minhad in the UAE, which has already been targeted by the Iranians at least twice. We are one of only a small handful of Western countries with a permanent military presence in the Gulf, a presence that in and of itself is helping to fuel the escalatory spiral.

While all this plays out “over there”, for the first time in almost a century, some of the human cost of this war will be carried by the wider public here at home. Costs for fuel, food and utilities will continue to soar, as will mortgage payments and rents. Savings and investments will take a hit. Many people will lose their jobs. Some will lose their homes.

Among them are those who used to be considered Labor’s core constituents –  the “Aussie battlers” who work hard but struggle to make ends meet – before the “workers’ party” abandoned its principles in favour of banal neoliberal economic rationalism, political careerism and mindless identity politics.

We can only hope that this shock might at last see a consensus emerge for a rational, sovereign, independent national security and foreign policy. Our policies of vassal state subservience to the US and, in this case, Israel are beyond unfit for purpose. They are directly undermining our vital national interests. In the meantime, we’re in for a rough ride.

Stuart McCarthy

Stuart McCarthy is a medically retired Australian Army officer whose 28-year military career included deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Stuart is an advocate for veterans with brain injury, disabilities, drug trial subjects and abuse survivors. Twitter: @StuartMcCarthy_

March 27, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

The Iran war is Australia’s margin call

the Greens’ Senator Larissa Waters captured the mood of many when she warned:

‘…every day Trump and Netanyahu’s demands of Australia keep growing.’

She accused Labor of having ‘no red lines’. Australia’s significant Iranian, Israeli, Lebanese, and broader Middle Eastern diaspora communities bring both personal grief and political intensity to the debate.

By Vince Hooper | 19 March 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-iran-war-is-australias-margin-call-,20830

Operation Epic Fury is exposing the true cost of alliance dependence, energy fragility, and strategic distraction from the Indo-Pacific, writes Vince Hooper.

ON 28 FEBRUARY 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. As the war enters its third week, the scale is staggering: at least 1,348 Iranian civilians killed and over 17,000 injured, 3.2 million displaced, approximately 6,000 U.S. strikes, and a new supreme leader – Mojtaba Khamenei – vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.

The International Energy Agency warns of the ‘largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market’. Oil has breached US$100 (AU$142.11) a barrel. More than 820,000 have been displaced in Lebanon as Israel–Hezbollah hostilities reignite.

For Australia, geographically distant but entangled through alliance commitments, intelligence infrastructure, energy dependence and a 115,000-strong diaspora in the Middle East, the ramifications are immediate. In financial economics, alliance membership functions like a call option — the right to draw on a protector’s military power, but at a price paid in sovereignty foregone, bases hosted, and conflicts joined.

The Iran crisis is Australia’s margin call. The price is suddenly, painfully visible.

The alliance reflex

The Albanese Government endorsed Operation Epic Fury with speed that surprised even American officials, while insisting Australia was “not participating” offensively.

By 10 March, that distinction had eroded: Albanese deployed an E-7A Wedgetail early warning aircraft, air-to-air missiles for the UAE, and 85 Australian Defence Force personnel to the Gulf. The Wedgetail’s capacity to map missile launch locations and coordinate battle management in real time makes it far more than a passive shield — the line between defensive and offensive enablement is, as one analyst observed, a blurry one at best.

It has since emerged that three Royal Australian Navy sailors were aboard the U.S. submarine that torpedoed the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena near Sri Lanka on 4 March — the first U.S. submarine torpedo attack since the Second World War.

Albanese confirmed their presence but insisted they did not take part in offensive action. Meanwhile, the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap near Alice Springs – now hosting 45 satellite radomes and dishes – continues to provide real-time intelligence across the Middle East. A former NSA analyst confirmed in 2023 that Pine Gap was collecting data on the Gaza conflict and “surrounding areas”.

That intelligence flows to Washington and, in turn, to Israel. Having invested decades in this facility, Australia cannot credibly claim neutrality. It is infrastructure that commits the country irrevocably — a strategic investment with no exit clause.

The Indo-Pacific opportunity cost

Here is the dimension that should concern Australian strategists most. In what economists call “real options” theory, the value of an investment depends on keeping the opportunity alive until conditions are ripe. AUKUS is precisely such an option: a ticket to a credible submarine deterrent, but only if the U.S. industrial base and technology transfers remain available. The Iran conflict is degrading every one of those conditions.

The U.S. submarine industrial base produces around 1.2 Virginia-class boats per year against a combined requirement of 2.3.

An Iran war that diverts Navy priorities means no spare construction capacity for Australian boats. Congressional approvals, State Department licences, and Department of Energy support all stall when those agencies are managing Iran’s nuclear fragments. Australia’s planned 2030s submarine delivery could slip to the 2040s. We know the cost of American distraction: between 2001 and 2020, while Afghanistan and Iraq consumed U.S. bandwidth, China militarised the South China Sea, developed carrier-killing missiles, and built the world’s largest navy.

The U.S. has already spent over US$11 billion (AU$15 billion) in Epic Fury’s first week. As the Hudson Institute’s Zineb Riboua has argued, every dollar spent defending Red Sea shipping lanes is a dollar unavailable for Pacific basing or Taiwan contingency planning.

Fat tails at the fuel bowser

Australia imports roughly 90 per cent of its refined liquid fuel. The Strait of Hormuz, carrying a fifth of global petroleum, has been reduced to what the IEA calls ‘a trickle’ — global supplies down an estimated eight million barrels per day. IEA members have agreed to release 400 million barrels from emergency stockpiles, the largest coordinated release in history, but analysts warn this only partially offsets prolonged disruption.

For anyone who studies what statisticians call ‘fat-tailed’ distributions — events that are rare but devastating when they occur — this is a textbook case. Australia’s fuel supply architecture is built for normal times: 36 days of strategic reserves against an IEA benchmark of 90.

According to Westpac’s modelling, a one-month Hormuz disruption lifts the Australian CPI by approximately 1 percentage point; a three-month closure spikes it by 1.5 points and reduces GDP by 0.5 points. Petrol prices could rise 40 cents per litre. LNG prices have surged 12 per cent, and Qatari production remains halted. These pressures compound: higher oil costs flow through shipping, fertilisers, and manufacturing into broader inflation, landing on an economy where the RBA is already navigating delicate disinflation.

115,000 reasons to worry

An estimated 115,000 Australians were in the Middle East when the conflict erupted.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said:

“This is a consular crisis that dwarfs any that Australia has had to deal with in terms of numbers of people.”

The closure of airspace across Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait, and Syria stranded thousands.

By 10 March, over 2,600 had returned on 18 flights from the UAE.

Tens of thousands remain, with Smartraveller now advising against all travel to the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, and Lebanon. Bus convoys to Kuwait and Bahrain, overland routes to Oman, and limited commercial flights have been the improvised lifelines. Canberra also granted asylum to five members of Iran’s women’s football team who were in Queensland for the AFC Women’s Asian Cup — a gesture that only hints at the potential for larger refugee flows if the conflict deepens further.

The rules-based order — selectively applied

Operation Epic Fury was launched without UN Security Council authorisation. Ben Saul the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, has stated that Iran had not enriched uranium to the point of building a nuclear device — the case for self-defence, in his words, “does not fall anywhere close”.

Australia’s refusal to address the strikes’ legality places it in what ANU’s Don Rothwell calls a “say nothing” posture — conspicuously at odds with its willingness to assert the illegality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In my own work on alliance behaviour, I model geopolitical commitments using the same frameworks that price financial options. International law functions as a hedge — an insurance policy limiting everyone’s downside. When a country lets that insurance lapse for allies while enforcing it against adversaries, it is strategically exposed.

For a middle power whose influence rests on normative authority rather than military mass, this shapes standing in ASEAN, the Pacific Islands Forum, and every multilateral setting where Western double standards are a live issue.

Domestically, the Greens’ Senator Larissa Waters captured the mood of many when she warned:

‘…every day Trump and Netanyahu’s demands of Australia keep growing.’

She accused Labor of having ‘no red lines’. Australia’s significant Iranian, Israeli, Lebanese, and broader Middle Eastern diaspora communities bring both personal grief and political intensity to the debate.

The energy transition as strategic hedge

If the conflict carries a silver lining, it may be in strengthening the case for energy transition. Renewables and storage now provide nearly 45 per cent of electricity on Australia’s main grid and contributed to halving wholesale power prices in late 2025. Renewable energy is a natural insurance policy against geopolitical oil shocks: its fuel cost is zero and its supply chain is overwhelmingly domestic.

Accelerating electrification of transport, homes, and industry reduces exposure to precisely the kind of extreme energy price events that the Strait of Hormuz crisis illustrates. But the transition is capital-intensive: a one-year delay in wind or transmission projects could increase residential power prices by up to 20 per cent. The conflict sharpens both the urgency and the stakes.

The margin call

The Iran conflict is a stress test for Australian strategic policy on every front: alliance dependence, energy fragility, consular capacity, and commitment to international law. Most importantly, it reveals the opportunity cost in the Indo-Pacific.

Every month of Middle Eastern entanglement is a month in which AUKUS – and a credible deterrent posture in the Western Pacific – loses value. The conflict is not just consuming Australian resources. It is consuming the strategic future those resources were meant to buy.

For policymakers, the lessons are uncomfortable but clear. Diversification – of energy sources, strategic relationships, and economic exposure – is not merely desirable but urgent. The capacity to make independent strategic judgements, rather than reflexively aligning with allied positions, must be cultivated alongside the alliance itself. International law must be applied consistently, not selectively invoked when adversaries breach it and quietly set aside when allies do the same. The margin call has arrived. The question is whether Australia can pay it without liquidating the portfolio.

Vince Hooper is a proud Australian-British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

March 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Still no China invasion despite ‘red alert’ predictions

7 March 2026 AIMN Editorial, War Powers Reform https://theaimn.net/still-no-china-invasion-despite-red-alert-predictions/

Today marks three years since a widely criticised media series predicted Australia would be at war with China within three years.

The Red Alert series was published by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, and featured a panel of national security experts who claimed war was just around the corner and Australia was woefully unprepared.

“As it turns out all five “experts” were wrong and the authors of the series, Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, were also wrong,” said AWPR President and former Senator Andrew Bartlett.

No doubt all of Australia is breathing a sigh of relief today as the threat of annihilation recedes.

While it is easy to make fun of this laughable series of reports, it is depressing to think that the views expressed in the articles are common among establishment defence commentators.

We have had years of fearmongering about imminent threats to Australia, all of which have been shown to lack any credibility. Yet this is what currently passes for mainstream defence expertise.

Rarely does a day go by without a news article featuring a so called expert, demonising our largest trading partner and demanding that Australia spends billions more on the military.

This is despite the fact that the government’s own Defence Strategic Review in 2023 found that there is very little risk of an invasion.

Many commentators regularly suggest that if a war over Taiwan erupted, Australia would be compelled to get involved.

This is a dangerous suggestion and should be rejected outright. The Australian government has the right to decline any US request to join foreign wars.

This is why Australia should urgently re-visit War Powers Reform, which would ensure the whole parliament gets a say on overseas wars.

The John Howard-style ‘captain’s call’ decision-making, which we saw over the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is no longer acceptable in modern Australia” Mr Bartlett concluded.

March 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Australian PM Anthony Albanese gave Donald Trump model nuclear submarine on golden plate at White House

Prime minister also presented Melania Trump with a $3,000 Paspaley pearl pendant

Josh Butler, Guardian, Thu 5 Mar 2026

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, gave Donald Trump a gift of a model nuclear submarine with golden plates and finishes, internal documents reveal, during his visit to the White House last year which sealed the president’s support for the Aukus pact.

The prime minister also presented the US first lady, Melania Trump, with a A$3,000 Paspaley pearl pendant.

The information, obtained by Guardian Australia from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet after a four-month freedom of information process, revealed more about the delicate diplomatic planning and charm offensive that went into Albanese’s long-awaited first face-to-face meeting with Trump.

“Gift form” documents from the department reveal Albanese came to the White House bearing a two-foot-long model Virginia-class submarine, mounted on a base with gold plates, and a pearl necklace from one of Australia’s most famous jewellers.

Albanese had previously stated he’d given the Trumps a model submarine and jewellery, but at the time neither Albanese’s office nor his department would reveal any further information about the gifts.

Other world leaders and business titans have showered Trump with expensive gifts – often gold. The Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, presented Trump with a gold medal and golden trophy for a newly created “Fifa peace prize”; the Apple CEO, Tim Cook, gave Trump a glass disc with a golden base; South Korea’s president gave him a golden crown; while a group of Swiss billionaires gave him a golden clock and engraved gold bar………………….https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/05/australian-pm-albanese-trump-white-house-visit-gold-submarine-gift

March 9, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Decolonisation V – Can Australia Ever Be A Middle Power?

Or, Why Australia chooses to live in the lies of an American world

Burning Archive, Substack, Mar 07, 2026

Australia feinted on the global stage this week when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Canberra. Offered dignity as a middle power, the Australian Government acted the pawn in another USA-run war.

Disappointing, but what I have come to expect, and we have to deal with the world as it is, right? Or, so the realist fictions say. But let me tell you a stranger history of the plural Australian experience, and how this decolonised nation came to be that way.

Contemporary Australia’s muddled national sovereignty is the product of three botched decolonisation projects:

• Federation as White Dominion, 1890-1920;
• USA Agent in a British Commonwealth, 1930-50;
• Deputy Sheriff and Starlet in the USA’s Liberal Empire, 1968-1999.

You may not have heard these labels; I devised them for this essay. But don’t worry: I explain the history and evidence behind them at the end of this post on Australia’s experience of decolonisation.

Mark Carney’s Wake-Up Call to Independence

In each of the three botched decolonisation projects, Australians – both élites and masses – chose belonging to an empire, which claimed global supremacy, over modest, gregarious co-existence as a middle power of one earth.

Now, in 2026, another historic opportunity for decolonisation has arisen. It was announced to the Australian Parliament by the Prime Minister of another decolonised dominion, Mark Carney of Canada.

“Yes, the world will always be driven by great powers, but it can also be shaped by middle powers that trust each other and act with speed and purpose.

Mark Carney, Address to Parliament, Hansard, 5 March 2026

Will Australia seize the moment? Will we act with speed and purpose? Will Australia ride, or get dumped by, a fourth wave of US American decolonisation, by the unravelling of the USA Empire?

My hunch is: we will get dumped, and then sucked out with the rip into the most dangerous waters. Like a bad cocky swimmer in rough surf, we have not been paying attention to the world “as it is” around us, and not even swimming between the flags.

At least, the mainstream élites in politics, business and culture in Australia have not been paying attention. The omens of this opportunity for a new decolonisation have been noticed in the Great Southern Land, for a decade or more, by a few dissident, reviled voices. Like antipodean Havels, we have tried to live in the truth, and point out the lies and slogans our leaders ask us to hang in our shop windows, like the indispensable American Alliance, our great and powerful democratic friend, and the ‘liberal rules-based international order,’ exposed as a sham by Mr Carney at Davos. But Australian leaders have suppressed all readings of the omens. They have blocked their ears and masked their eyes. They refuse to see Australia as anything but the Deputy Sheriff of the USA’s Empire or some B-grade celebrity starlet aspiring to be enriched by Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire.

The Closing of the Australian Mind

The Australian mind is closed and colonised, like few around the world. It may be because Mr Murdoch has so successfully counter-colonised the political and cultural networks of imperial masters, Britain and the USA. It may be because we botched our past three attempts at decolonisation, and the gulfs have washed us down. It may be that we have been unlucky in our leaders. But I suspect, most deeply, it is because, in each attempt at independence, we neglected one crucial truth: colonisation begins and ends in the mind.

Few of our intelligentsia see the opportunity for decolonisation that so many other countries have seen around the world with multipolarity, the redistribution of power, and the redirection of the currents of global exchange of people, resources and ideas. Even this week the admirable Korean-US American commentator, KJ Noh, saw this opportunity amid the disasters unfolding around the world……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://jeffrich.substack.com/p/decolonisation-v-can-australia-ever?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=247469&post_id=189618000&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

March 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Australia and the “Epstein Coalition”. Invasion of Iran a disaster

by Michael West | Mar 4, 2026 https://michaelwest.com.au/australia-and-the-epstein-coalition-invasion-of-iran-a-disaster/

It’s only Day Five of the war, but surely the epic stupidity of Australia so cravenly backing the US-Israeli invasion of Iran is evident by now. Michael West reports.

We are led by fools and sycophants. The illegal, unprovoked invasion of Iran is not just garden-variety stupidity. This is stupidity on a grandiose, stratospheric scale.

The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.

Instead of bringing freedom and democracy – ‘regime change’ – we have brought chaos, possibly a world war, and definitely the destruction of the Middle East. The world economy is being hit hard as we write; oil prices spiralling, energy prices about to soar, and the inexorable spectre of inflation and recession.

“And it didn’t have to happen.“

This was a war of choice. Even without the “Epstein Coalition” – as the Iranian media so aptly dubs their invaders – murdering 168 Iranian school girls on day one, ‘peace through strength’ was never going to happen.

Quite the contrary. The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran has hardened the resolve of Iranians, who are massing in their hundreds of thousands across the country to mourn their dead and chant Death to America, to back their regime.

Where was the advice?

The Epstein Coalition killed the Ayatollah, who was actually against nuclear power; he was a moderate. Did Albo and Penny Wong not seek advice from Foreign Affairs that attacking Iran was folly, that the anti-regime protestors were a minority, that the pre-invasion protests were a Mossad and CIA psyop, that Iran might attack US proxy states in the region, that invasion would be a Brobigdadgian mistake?

Or did they ignore the advice in favour of a Washington regime compromised by the Epstein pedophile scandal?

And now, we see the feeble, hypocritical whining by Israel and its supporters about Iran attacking the Gulf states. Is that our only moral defence? Decades of supporting these regimes: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – US proxy states all – regimes now unravelling, the oil price is soaring, inflation and recession are beckoning globally.

Images are emerging from Bahrain of locals cheering on the Iranian missiles. Were DFAT and our politicians unaware of popular angst in the Gulf states against American imperialism?

And what did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat? Not blow up American bases and infrastructure while the US attacked them; after the US betrayed them at the very negotiating table when they were offering significant concessions on nuclear enrichment, all to avoid war? This war.

Australia, the US flunkies

Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.

“Operation Epstein Fury”, it was fast labelled. The soaring, craven stupidity is hard to grasp. Both major parties backing it. Albo first, then Angus Taylor rushing to tow the Donald’s line. Then, Pauline Hanson, too, who even congratulated and praised Netanyahu. We are led by fools and sycophants.

The flawed defence of atrocity

To address the empty rhetoric of the pro-war lobby, criticism of this war does not equate to support for the regime in Iran. Defenders of the US-Israel atrocity are busy with their swarms of social media bots peddling the argument that “you are an Islamist terror supporter” if you criticise the invasion. 

This is the 2026 version of “You are a Hamas supporter” if you argue against genocide in Gaza.

The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared – even winning the war – that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.

“This is a war which has already been lost.“

The obvious reality is that regime change wars are a demonstrable failure. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq – a million dead, irretrievable regional stability. In Afghanistan, 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, four US presidents, six Australian PMs – all to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.

And here we are, the world’s busybodies, doing it again. 

Who would ever negotiate with the US in good faith again, or Israel for that matter? Iran did not want this war. Iran has not attacked another country in 300 years.

The US lured them to the negotiating table, then, without warning, murdered their leadership. This echoes last year’s 12-day war, where Israel and the US lured them in on the premise of good faith talks, then murdered them and now play the victim.

What did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat?

The record speaks for itself. The US is the biggest invader of other countries in history. Israel has, last year alone, attacked Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Malta, and Greece.

Six illegal attacks of sovereign nations, as well as three illegal attacks in international waters equals 9 all up. In one year. And now they are invading Lebanon again, seizing more territory as their puppets, America, fight their campaign against Iran.

Albo, what are you doing?

We know who the war mongers are. We are the war mongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.

The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.

Apart from the common sense, why would Iran commit an act of terror on a deli in Bondi? Senior police have conceded that there is no evidence of this.

The nuclear furphy

We know who the war mongers are. We are the war mongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.

The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.

Apart from the common sense, why would Iran commit an act of terror on a deli in Bondi? Senior police have conceded that there is no evidence of this.

The nuclear furphy

Then there is the age-old claim that Iran is about to produce nuclear weapons. The US and Israel’s nuclear risk claims have been so roundly discredited it’s a joke.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to instigate a war against Iran for 30 years – claiming Iran is days away, weeks away, months away from nuclear missiles.

And they were at the negotiating table again when the Epstein forces murdered them.

The propaganda

We are now seeing mainstream media decry the ‘illegal attacks’ on Israel and the Gulf states. Yet the ‘victim card’ is tapped out. Around the world, outside the legacy media propaganda, there is little sympathy for Israel having razed Gaza and slaughtered between 72,000 and 700,000 Palestinians while stealing more land in the West Bank daily.

It will continue. The media and political classes have failed so majestically that they can only try to salvage their authority with more propaganda.

The deplorable coverage of the murdered schoolgirls in Iran is a case in point. The “40 beheaded babies” and the “mass rapes” of Hamas filled the headlines in the West on October 8, 2023. Yet real murders – 170 murdered schoolgirls – have hardly rated a mention. Yes, a mention perhaps, but a side story, buried, no headlines of outrage.

Can’t handle the truth?

Is the truth too hard to handle? Is it not evident to everybody except the most brainwashed advocate of the Epstein lobby that Israel – the government, the state – is the problem here?

Netanyahu has won his ambition to drag America into a war against Iran, and if you follow the money, while world stock markets teeter, the stock market in Tel Aviv is surging, replete with weapons companies as it is.

Meanwhile, the ASX is tanking, ergo our savings. Oil prices are surging, ergo higher energy prices and inflation. The Houthis, Iran’s allies, are shooting again in the Red Sea while, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, Iran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz, choking off a large chunk of the world’s oil supply.

Higher prices in India and China will mean higher prices for imports and inflation around the world.

The lessons of history have not been learnt; in fact, they have been discarded in spectacular fashion.

March 7, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Is Australia-US Alliance Hurting Australia?

27 February 2026, By Denis Hay 

Criticism of the Australia-US alliance examines whether unquestioning support for the US undermines peace, sovereignty, and regional stability.

Introduction – Asking the Question Australians Rarely Hear

For decades, Australia has treated close alignment with the United States as the unquestioned foundation of its foreign and defence policy. This article advances criticism of the Australia-US alliance in a calm, factual way, asking whether that loyalty still serves Australian interests or exposes the country to unnecessary risk. This is not an argument against the American people. It is an argument for honesty about power, history, and Australia’s place in the region.

The Problem – A History That Is Rarely Acknowledged

1. US power and coercion are not new

US pressure on other nations did not begin with Donald Trump. Across its history, the United States has used sanctions, economic coercion, regime change, and military force to advance strategic and corporate interests. Trump did not invent this behaviour; he removed the diplomatic language that once softened it. This matters because Australia often treats US actions as benign by default, even when they undermine international law or regional stability.

2. US military influence on Australia

The influence of the U.S. military-industrial system extends beyond policy advice to Australian territory itself. Through joint facilities, force posture agreements, and rotational deployments, US military assets run on Australian soil with limited transparency and little public scrutiny. Although described as cooperative, these arrangements often leave strategic control and escalation decisions primarily with Washington.

This creates a clear danger for Australia. In any conflict involving the United States, Australian bases may be considered legitimate targets, regardless of whether Australia has made an independent decision to participate. Hosting foreign forces therefore increases Australia’s exposure to war while reducing its ability to stand apart from US strategic choices.

The Impact – How Fear Shapes Policy and Public Debate

3. The China threat narrative in Australia

Public discussion of China in Australia is dominated by fear-based framing. China is routinely portrayed as an inevitable military adversary, despite being Australia’s largest trading partner and a country whose primary focus has been economic development and internal stability. This narrative leaves little room for diplomacy, cooperation, or recognition that China has not pursued global military dominance as the United States has.

4. Why politicians rarely challenge the US

Australian politicians across both major parties rarely question US behaviour because the costs of dissent are high. Defence integration, intelligence sharing, media pressure, and elite political incentives all discourage independence. Challenging the US risks being labelled reckless or weak on security, even when the concern is evidence-based and aligned with Australian interests.

The Alternative – A Clearer View of Australia’s Interests

5. Seeing China without fear or fantasy

Viewing China in a more positive and realistic light does not mean ignoring disagreements. It means recognising that China poses no credible invasion threat to Australia and that stability is better served through engagement than confrontation. A mature foreign policy distinguishes between legitimate concerns and manufactured fear.

6. An independent foreign policy grounded in peace

Australia keeps full sovereignty over its choices. Independence does not need abandoning alliances, but it does require the courage to say no when US actions increase the risk of war. Reducing automatic alignment would strengthen Australia’s credibility in the region and lower the chance of being drawn into conflicts that do not serve Australian citizens

Practical steps include:

• Prioritising diplomacy and regional institutions
• Limiting foreign military exposure on Australian soil
• Encouraging genuine parliamentary debate on alliance commitments
• Investing in peace building rather than perpetual deterrence……………….

Final Thoughts – Choosing Independence Over Reflex

Australia-US alliance criticism is not about turning away from allies. It is about recognising that blind loyalty carries real dangers. Australia is better served by calm engagement with its region, a realistic view of China, and a clear-eyed assessment of US behaviour. Peace, not fear, should guide Australian foreign policy https://theaimn.net/is-australia-us-alliance-hurting-australia/

March 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

China’s Retaliation: when will it happen?

And more appropriately, what form will it take?

Jerrys take on China, Feb 18, 2026, https://jerrygrey2002.substack.com/p/chinas-retaliation-when-will-it-happen?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1744413&post_id=188346536&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A few comments about why China is like it is – first of all, in the last 45 years, there has been no invasions, despite what people like little Marco Rubio of the US and Richard Marles the Australian Defence Minister might say, China is not and does not pose a threat to any of these countries – Japan might think there is a threat, China does not agree, in fact the opposite is true, Japan poses a much larger threat to China than China has ever posed to Japan.

China is concerned about, and in fact does feel threatened by Japan’s military expansion because the last time it happened literally millions of Chinese were murdered by the Japanese. Australia’s defence minister, Marles, asks us to consider why China has the world’s largest military expansion but he’s wrong – we have to hope he’s wrong because he’s been misinformed and is too dim to check out for himself, but more likely he knows he’s lying about this as China spends considerably less money than the US, in terms of not only its population but its geographical size, it’s quite entitled to spend more cash, when on a per capita basis, the amount is tiny compared to the US, on a ratio to GDP, it’s smaller than the US, it’s one third or less than NATO has been required to spend in terms of percentage of GDP and there’s one more very important factor that the US with only two neighbouring countries doesn’t have – that is 14 neighbouring countries with a shared land border.

Here’s another thing. China was invaded when they were weak, the British did it, the Americans did it, the eight nations alliance did it, Britain carved up part of Burma and took away some of China, it carved up India and took away parts of China, the Russians carved up Mongolia and Heilongjiang, taking away parts of China, the Japanese invaded and occupied China for 14 years. The classic twists and mental gymnastics people like Marles make would have us believe that the hundreds of US bases around China are to prevent China from doing what they’ve NEVER done – going out to invade other countries.

He, and several pundits would like us all to believe is that the US is keeping the world safe from China by arming their neighbours, interfering in the Provinces, Regions and the SARs but the reality is, China is building a military that will defend Chinese people inside China and Chinese land that belongs to China now – it’s not looking to reclaim land back, except in disputed regions.

Those disputed regions include parts of Tibet that the British took away and gave to India, parts of the South China Seas that the Japanese took away and both the US and UK, at the end of the Second World War, agreed would come back to China. There’s one military base in Africa, which is in a region shared with many other countries, including the USA, Japan, France, Italy, Germany Spain and even Saudi Arabia. Taiwan is NOT one of these disputed regions – the entire world whether they recognise Beijing or Taipei as the capital, recognises that there is one China and Taiwan is part of it – anyone who suggests that Taiwan is a country is either a liar, deliberately misleading us, or is far too dim to read the Constitution of the Republic of China, which not only claims all of the Chinese Mainland, it also wants those disputed regions back too.

China has something else which its detractors hate to admit and will lie about – that’s a policy of non-interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation – when it invests in another nation, it doesn’t call for democracy or elections, it doesn’t even ask that Communism or Socialism are accepted, it doesn’t send military to protect its assets, it won’t send missionaries to convert their subjects and it won’t impose conditions that force countries to give up their national assets or utilities if they can’t make the payments – if that sounds familiar and if it’s because you’ve been hearing that China will do all of those things and, if you think they have, I’d implore you to find me an example of where it’s happened, outside of opinion pieces written by people who want you to believe they have, almost every incident where we can find any of these things alleged, will be speculative – they’ll tell us what China might do, what China could do, what China may be doing, is alleged to have done or suspected to be involved in.

We might find individual cases of rogue Chinese people, Chinese criminals even and they use these tiny individual examples to tell you that this is “what China does” when that person who has broken the law has usually already been punished by the time they report it in western media and, if they mention that at all, it’ll be after the third paragraph where most of us have stopped reading.

On the other hand, I can find literally hundreds of examples where the USA is doing these things, where the UK and France have done these things, where Germany, Belgium, even Spain and Portugal have done them.

So then some of the comments I have been getting relate to the Port in Darwin, the ports in Panama and the Pirelli saga in Italy. Just for some background here, Sinochem owns 37% of Pirelli, the big Italian tyre company which wants to expand into the USA, of course the US won’t allow that while China has such a controlling interest. The share of Sinochem hasn’t changed, the only change is that the board, and remember Sinochem had controlling interest being the largest single shareholder, has declared that Sinochem no longer has control, giving the board more autonomy, – Sinochem agreed to this, so this isn’t a situation where anything has been taken from China, merely an agreement that the board retains control which a Chinese corporation retains more shares.

Erich, one of my followers said this: “if China doesn’t protect its assets it will lose them like Pirelli in Italy, the Ports in Panama, etc. Maybe at some point China will start caring about these things.”

My response is that it’s not just Erich, it’s literally hundreds of people, probably thousands but many in my responses who are misunderstanding China. China cares very deeply about the assets its people and corporations invest in, particularly overseas, but it will not break international laws, or contractual Agreements in order to protect them from people or governments which do break laws.

China will react to this in the same way it reacts to every other illegal action against it, by negotiations, and where they fail, arbitration, it will, when all else fails, take the appropriate legal action, which might be appeals to the WTO and perhaps even the UN or more likely the local courts – it knows there will be no satisfaction from those appeals but they are the legal mechanisms open to Chinese corporation. China as a government participates in legal and lawful bodies and does not want to overthrow them, to do so, makes China another USA – so the actions China takes, which will definitely be retaliatory, will be legal, they can, and probably will reduce purchases from offending countries, and of course, they will be much more careful in the decisions when investing in those countries both of which are well within their legal rights.

What China will not do is: unilaterally sanction anyone, any country or even any organisation within the country, it will not militarily defend its assets, it will not interfere in the internal affairs of another country but there is no doubt in my mind that if any country persists and acts on threats to China’s investments, there will be repercussions, probably it’s best not to call them retaliations, they are simply normal responses to a situation of risk.

In Australia for example, if they persist with this challenge to the legal investments Landbridge has made, investments that are compliant in every way and even beneficial to the people of the Northern Territory in jobs and payroll taxes, as well as increased business going through it’s port and beneficial to the people of Australia in 4.5 million income tax paid last year, those are the people who will suffer – China will find other suppliers for the things Australia sends – so far, the only one which is not directly sourced elsewhere is iron ore and, if China stops buying that in any great quantity, it will kill Australia’s economy.

Just continuing to use Darwin Port as an example, it is a critical trade hub in Northern Australia, handling minerals, agriculture, and livestock, with 2,295 vessel visits recorded in 2024-25, marking a 31.07% increase on the previous year. Darwin serves as a key gateway to Asia, managing significant exports of manganese, titanium, iron ore, and livestock. Given that China is the major trading partner of Australia, a huge proportion, unfortunately, there’s no way I can find out, would be Chinese owned, flagged, operated or destined ships, they would be travelling between China and Darwin – that’s 44 ships a week, many of which will simply divert to other ports, or, if the asset has been seized they’re more likely to simply stop coming altogether – how can that possibly benefit the warehouses, the truckers, the waste management, the catering and hospitality venues that the sailors use, the customs brokers, the security and surveillance companies – there’s an entire eco-system of industries deriving their income from a well-operated port and Darwin, which is a small city will feel a very heavy impact from no Chinese ships arriving and departing there. There will also be a lot of farmers, miners and other suppliers using that port to ship to China – it will all stop.

So, to think China will just sit back and do nothing is wrong, they are very mindful that their investments are not just at risk but under threat – business leaders in China understand this and are already taking action – there’s an April 2024 KPMG report, that’s almost 2 years old now showing that China’s investments in Australia have declined from a peak in 2016, just after the Free Trade Agreement was signed to the lowest level since 2006. It’s well worth a read if you’re interested, the report defines all kinds of factors but fails to mention the obvious one – Australia simply doesn’t want Chinese investment, they feel threatened by perceptions given to them by media which are completely false.

In keeping with the maxim that one person’s loss is another’s gain, the vast majority of China’s Overseas Direct Investment is now going to One Belt One Road countries – these are safe destinations, they are countries that welcome trade with and investments from China. In the Western world, that’s not many countries. Leaders of Canada and the UK were recently in China seeking investment opportunities, in both cases, they returned to their home countries to media criticism. It remains to be seen how they will handle this but they, as leaders, and their business leaders all know the truth – the media is lying, a few politicians who are actually paid by Washington to further lie about China are losing influence. Some people will assume that I’m either exaggerating about this but the reality is there for all to see, if you don’t believe me, go look up who are the main funders of the Inter Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). It states clearly on its website that it does not accept funds from governments. But then lists the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican movement, Hello Taiwan the National Democratic Institute and others, all of which are government funded and almost all of which can trace their funds back to Washington DC and congressionally approved expenditure.

The vast majority of the Non-US aligned world realises – there is no threat from China and, once again I reiterate something I’ve said many times, the people telling you China is a threat are more likely to damage your economy and your global standing than China ever will – China isn’t a threat, it’s those people telling you it is, who are.

February 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment