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Category: Asia Pacific

02/03/2025

AUKUS- where now for Australia’s Defence Strategy?

2 March 2024

The Chinese incursion into Australia’s area was frankly predictable. Australia has sailed through the Taiwan Strait to please the USA.

China has the fastest growing navy in the World, and wants to be taken seriously as a world power. The way to send us a message is to send some ships through Torres Strait, Timor Sea and Bass Strait. The pathetic inadequacy of our naval defence was there for all to see. NZ got is act together better than we did.

We have dithered about a defence strategy for years, becoming ever more mendicant to the USA and integrated into their anti-China world view as China became our major trading partner and source of wealth. We survived the Global Financial Crisis because China kept buying our stuff, not because our government was particularly clever. The US is declining as a world power. We will have to get used to the idea that China is a growing power and adapt to it.

Our defence strategy has been to put all our money into AUKUS, attack submarines to scare China into not attacking us. Yeah right.
This might be a tiny fraction of a US ‘defence’ strategy, but it is foolishness for us. The US will act in its own interest and protect us to the extent it suits its interest at the time and with the priorities it has at the time.

We might learn from history. When Britain was at war in Europe it did not defend us. It demanded that we keep our soldiers in North Africa and said Australia would be recaptured from the Japanese when the European war was won. Curtin insisted on bringing our soldiers home, but raw recruits, ‘chocos’ (=chocolate soldiers from song of the time) were needed in Papua New Guinea in the meantime. We appealed helplessly to the US. The US came to Australia as an unsinkable aircraft carrier for the assault on Japan. General MacArthur’s contempt for the Australian Army is something historians gloss over.

The US, for its part has always had a strong isolationist streak. It did not enter WW1 until very late and after the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine killed a lot of Americans.

They did not join WW2 until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.
Since WW2 they have behaved as a global power, putting bases everywhere, but being very selective where they support democratic movements. They let the Indonesians have West Papua and Portuguese East Timor. They have supported appalling authoritarian governments in many countries such as Iran under the Shah, Saudi Arabia, and many South American governments. They talk free trade, but exclude agricultural products, which has hugely disadvantaged Australia. They also want copyright laws enforced, so that their products such as drugs and software can be sold at prices immensely higher than production costs for very long periods.

Their self interest has always been there, it is just more extreme and more naked than it was. The increase in the US national debt and the decrease in their share of world GDP are giving them an unpleasant reality check, Trump’s hubristic bluster notwithstanding.

Trump appears willing to sacrifice Ukraine. Presumably if it suited US priorities, they would sacrifice Australia also, like the British did. Trump is aware of the US deficit, but doesn’t even recall AUKUS.

The new AUKUS ‘deal’ is likely to be ‘We cannot make enough submarines for ourselves, let alone you. You cannot defend yourselves. We will let you have our nuclear submarines in your bases- take it or leave it.’

Which Prime Minister will sit in Zelenskyy’s chair in the Oval Office to sign the deal?

Alternatively, we might recognise that China has no real need to invade us, is unlikely to do so, and probably could not be stopped if they really tried. That is probably the same situation as many countries in the world, so we need to free ourselves from the binary American world view.

We need to junk AUKUS and get ourselves a more independent defence strategy.

C:/Users/chest/Downloads/Extra_Page_38.pdf

14/02/2025

A Visit to East Timor- and New Year’s Eve at the Presidential Palace

2 January 2025

I have always been fascinated by the story of East Timor. It was very much a colonial backwater, a historical remnant of the Portuguese, who had first arrived in 1529 and fought with the Dutch until treaties in 1869 and 1893. Up till 1850, it had been under the Portuguese administration in Macau.

Timor was invaded by the Japanese during WW2, and East Timorese fought with the Australian and Dutch against them, running a guerilla campaign. Between 40-70,000 Timorese were killed as the Japanese seized food supplies and burned villages.

After WW2 it remained a Portuguese colonial backwater with minimal education or infrastructure development. In 1960 it gained the right to Independence, but was still under Portugal. Indonesia, under Sukarno, which was trying to get hold of West Papua specifically stated that it had no interest in East Timor. The small Viqueque revolt resulted in some improvements in education and some Timorisation of the civil service.

There was a revolution in Portugal in 1974 and the decolonisation of Mozambique and Angola speeded the decolonisation process, with a new Governor legalising political parties. Two groups emerged, the left-leaning Fretilin and the Right-leaning UDT (Democratic Timor Union), which was more a party of the elite and initially favoured continuing ties with Portugal. Indonesia had just eliminated the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) in a bloody struggle, so were concerned about Fretilin. Whitlam. the Prime Minister in Australia, who supported the Indonesian takeover of West Papua, was concerned that there would be a non-viable state in the region.

Fretilin and the UDT were initially in coalition, but the Indonesian military made it clear the to the UDT that they would not tolerate a Fretilin government and the coalition broke up. On 11 August 1975 UDT mounted a coup, as they were concerned at the increasing popularity of Fretilin and asked for union with Indonesia and the Indonesians to help them.

Indonesia immediately invaded, and five Australian journalists, who were covering the story in Balibo disappeared without trace. It had been claimed that Fretilin were communists so the Australian and US governments took no action, either against Indonesia or in pursuit of the journalists’ fate. They became known as ‘The Balibo Five’. Only the Australian Democrats supported the right of the East Timorese for self-determination, and some sections of the Left of the ALP, who were held to silence, of course.

Fretilin campaigned in the UN for recognition, particularly Jose Ramos Horta and after 24 years in 1999 and in the presence of an economic crisis the Indonesians agreed to a referendum on self-determination. The referendum result, which was widely expected, favoured independence from Indonesia by almost 80%. But gangs of pro-Indonesian youth, helped by the Indonesian government went on a killing spree. It was estimated that 200,000 Timorese had died during the 25 year Indonesian occupation, many ‘disappearing’; and about a third from malnutrition. But immediately after the vote, the militias killed about 1,400 people and forced about 300,000 into West Timor.

The UN intervened quite quickly with UNMET, the UN Mission to East Timor, in which the Australians were first to arrive and helped stabilise the situation.

Once East Timor achieved independence in 2002, they had the problem of economic survival. Australia held negotiations about where the boundary would lie, which was critical because there is a lot of gas in the Timor Sea and it would depend who owned it. Australia bugged the room where the East Timorese cabinet were deliberating and insisted on the border being very close to their coast. A whistleblower revealed this bugging in 2004 and the Timorese appealed successfully to the International Court.

Australia withdrew from the Court process, but then in 2012 agreed to the border being the midline between the countries, which is the international norm. Thw whistleblower, codenamed Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery, the ex-ACT Attorney-General, were pursued by the Australian government in the courts and convicted of breaching national security.

So I have always wanted to visit Timor Leste, and have finally made it for a10 day trip (not really long enough).

It is a 3rd World country, but seems to have a great sense of hope. It is an hour and half flight from Darwin, and about the same from Bali. There is not much information available to tourists, though a Lonely Planet and some other guidebooks are now available.

I have taken advice from a diplomat friend and will be going in a car with a guide, (the expensive rich person’s way to go that I have always despised) so I will not be giving advice on the cheap local buses that go between the major cities and are quite cheap.

Our guide, Guido (short for Egidio Da Purificatcao Soares of Timor Sightseeing) was brought up on a farm in the western part of the country and recalls as a 14 year old his whole family were threatened by gangs immediately after the referendum. The gang asked his father did he want to go to West Timor or stay in East Timor. He says that he father wisely said that the family wanted to go, because if he hadn’t they would have been assumed to be in favour of independence and massacred on the spot. They had had 14 cows and had already sold some, but took a few in a truck as they went to West Timor. He said that at the border the Indonesians threw them out of the truck as if they were sacks of potatoes, searched the truck then threw them back in in the same way. They sold the cows for a pittance and lived in a tent in Indonesia for 3 weeks until the UN had negotiated with the Indonesians and the ‘refugees’ were allowed to return. He said he was pleased to see the Australian forces at the border.

He commented that in the Portugese times there was no electricity except in small parts of Dili and the Portugese generated their own on their properties. The Indonesians had improved infrastructure and electricity and introduced universal education, but anyone who was thought to support Fretilin or independence simply disappeared.

As we were here on New Years Eve, I wondered what to do and assumed that we would watch the fireworks on the beach. Guido suggested we go to the Presidential Palace. I assumed that this was impossible for a tourist. Not so, the Presidential Palace is open to all on New Year’s Eve. So we went. It has a large concreted area about the size of 3 football fields in front of it, with lawns about twice that size again. There was a stage set up and a dozen life size nativity scenes all the way up the wide drive. The military at the gates welcomed us and said that they would be giving out free food and drinks at 9pm. There were quite a lot of people, but it was not crowded early, with a lot of young families and kids with balloons and flashing lights. The state had popular local singers, with replays on some big TV screens like at a football match. There was a wonderful festive atmosphere. I held my phone up and started to take a video pan to try to capture the atmosphere. As I did so a man came close and thrust something into my spare hand. I stopped filming and looked at him. It was the Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao handing out ham and salad rolls and fruit juice. He had 3 young minders in T shirts merely carrying boxes of rolls and drinks. Naturally I pursued him and asked for a photo, and he very courteously asked me my name and where I came from. The event went on with presentations to people who have obviously done good, and also what seemed like a very long sermon, but of course, apart from the MC breaking into English to welcome foreign visitors, the whole thing was in Portugese. At about 9pm, some military wandered around and urged us to get some of their free food from the trucks near the gates. They obviously have a very good relationship with the populace. The President Jose Ramos Horta arrived with the Cardinal and about 20 ambassadors and made a speech at about 11 followed by one from Xanana Gusmao.

They had a table in the middle of the open area with seats for the dignitaries. At midnight there was the countdown, a lot of fireworks (no, not quite as good as Sydney), and the broke out large amounts of champagne and cut a huge 2025 Fruit cake and gave some to those nearby including us. It was like going back 50 years, where everyone was trusted, there was no security and the largesse was universal.

East Timor is in an interesting time. The population is very young and full of hope. They want to develop tourism and also the Sunshine gas project which is being done by Woodside and the Australians in the Timor Sea. Obviously this will be a financial lifeline, but not good for a warming planet. I asked Guido if we could go to the south of the country where all this is to happen. He said, ‘Yes, but there is nothing to see, it is just coastline at present’. He took some Spanish folk there a short while ago who were doing a feasibility study for a gas platform. So I will see the sights including Balibo and the Museums of the Revolution in Balibo and Dili, which was not open this week. I may revise this post after those visits.

East Timor is currently the least visited country in Asia. This is worth changing.

04/08/2024

Gains by Rebel Groups in Northern Burma/Myanmar

4 August 2024

The struggle in Myanmar has dropped out of the news, but it goes on.

I visited Myanmar in 2017-18. There were almost two societies. The people said very little and seemed about 80% of the population. They obviously hated the army but no one said so. The army and their ilk seemed to be about 20%. They knew that they were hated, but were defiant and aggressive.

The government was theoretically under the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Ky, the Nobel laureate, but the army had kept all the major portfolios so she could not act much. Arguably the Junta had accepted her 2015 win only because of sanction pressure on the country.

Yangon (ex-Rangoon), was a pretty dirty 3rd world city, with almost no expensive hotels and diesel generators outside even modest hotels, shops and restaurants because of the unreliability of the power. As the old capital, Yangon had a building that should have been the Parliament, but the capital had been moved north 3 hours drive to Naypyidaw, away from the population centres.

Naypyidaw was a very modern city with 6 lane modern roads and almost no people, built largely with Chinese money. You could have played tennis on the main highway. There were a number of big modern 5 star hotels in an enclave away from where the locals lived which were remarkably cheap, around $US25 a night and had almost no guests at breakfast and few lights in the rooms in the evenings. The ‘National Library’ was small, modern and served by a infrequent bus service. There was almost no one there. The staff spoke good English but did not say much beyond information about the library.

In Mandalay, the second city, there is an old and not-well-maintained palace in a large fortified compound complete with moat. Tourists are vetted at the gate by surly military and may only walk up the central drive to the palace- all the rest of the compound is for the military and it is mostly neglected lawn.

They were trying to develop a tourist industry and there were a lot of new vehicles, mostly right hand drive in a country where they drive on the right. i.e. the drivers are on the wrong side. This was apparently because cheap cars were available from Japan. This industry has largely collapsed since.

There was an election in November 2020, which resulted in a huge victory for the National League for Democracy and Aung San Suu Ky, but there was a military coup immediately after. Aung San Suu Ky was arrested on trumped up charges, one of which was having walkie-talkies for her staff that were not able to be eavesdropped by the junta. Some people were killed in ensuring demonstrations but more systematic military resistance has continued ever since. There are a lot of different ethnic groups and unity within the country is a long-term problem that no one wants to talk about, but they all oppose the military junta and are cooperating against it.

www.irrawaddy.com/news/war-against-the-junta/myanmar-junta-surrenders-third-town-to-tnla-in-northern-shan-state.html

07/03/2024

AUKUS- time to make a RUcKUS

6 February 2024

The decision to buy Australia nuclear submarines was one of the worst military decisions ever taken in Australia, not to mention the opportunity cost of $360 billion in terms of the useful things it could do to improve Australian society.

Nick Deane of the Marrickville Peace Group punches well above his weight because of the dire state of peace activism in Australia. He writes excellent material in a very understudied area.

He makes the point that a few submarines cannot defend Australia if it were in danger of a serious attack. But of course that much money could buy a lot of other military material, so we are actually a lot weaker for having the subs.

The other reason given is ‘deterrence’. Presumably this relates to China, but given the huge arsenal the US already has, whether a few submarines are Australian-flagged or US-flagged will not change their thinking one iota. China is a power that is going to rise whether we like it or not, their current economic problems notwithstanding. Anwar Ibrahim, the excellent Malaysian Prime Minister has pointed this out at the ASEAN meeting in Melbourne.

We are not going to stop China’s rise and we should try to get the US to accommodate this as they will not be able to stop it either. We should simply deal with China as a trading partner, not sell them our strategic assets and get a fair price for our wares. Their interest in the Eurasian continental mass will be far greater than invading a farm and a quarry of far less economic significance.

My own view is that it quite dubious whether a nuclear submarine will be of any use in any case. The battleships that fought in WW1 were rendered totally obsolete by their vulnerability to seaplane attacks in WW2. Submarines can currently hide because changes in water temperature make them hard to detect. Conventional submarines get found when they come up for air, but nuclear submarines can stay submerged for very long periods. But nuclear submarines produce a lot of hot water from their reactors, which they cannot turn off. If they stay in the same place quite a plume of hot water goes up from them. It is hard to believe that satellites will not be able to notice this temperature difference. The Russian Black Sea fleet is being sunk by numerous relatively cheap drones, and it is difficult to believe that a pattern of surface drones guided by a satellite would not be able to locate and then destroy a submarine twenty years hence.

The UK wants to sell us submarines and wants to lock us in on their side in a confrontation with China. But the US has other objectives. Apart from selling us submarines at vast profit, we will have to have a base capable of supporting them. Then they will be able to use that base, presumably at minimal cost, so we are locked into having US nuclear warships in our ports at our cost and becoming targets for China in the confrontation.

The pro-nuclear lobby has also pointed out that Australia will also have to hugely expand our nuclear knowledge capability with at least another reactor larger than our modest one at Lucas Heights. We cannot just have submarines and not be able to operate and maintain them.

The defence procurement has been an a mess for years, one suspects because some of our strategic planners want us to ‘operate seamlessly’ with the US, which assumes that our military policy is in total lockstep with theirs, and other planners want an independent Australian capability, fearing the US under Trump might go into isolationism as it did just before both world wars. What do you procure if you have not solved this internal wrangle?

So along comes Morrison whose popularity is sagging just before an election and makes a big decision that allows him to pretend he is a big statesman with a US President and a UK Prime Minister. Photo op a bargain at $360 billion!

Labor, ever-fearful of being criticised by the Liberals for being ‘weak on defence’ (or border security or tax cuts) has just gone along with this. And of course decades of dithering for the reasons above have meant that there is no properly thought out and costed alternative.

We need to recognise that the US will always act in its own interest as it did in delaying its entry to WW1 and WW2 and in selling arms now. We need our own defence policy and to recognise that the US may help us, but only if it has the resources available at the time and there are not other priorities. Once we have a defence policy, we can fix the muddled thinking and get a defence procurement strategy. But we will have to make enough noise to get rid of the AUKUS deal, which will tie up so much money that nothing else will get a look in.

Here is Nick Deane’s article from John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations:

How did Australia get seduced by AUKUS?

16/12/2023

Power: the 50-25-25 rule

16 December 2023

When I was in Parliament someone said to me that big business had 50% of the power, all governments together 25%, and every other power group 25%.

It seemed a strange concept at first, but on reflection, I think it is about right.

Only after revolutions does it change much and historians argue over for how long.

Senator David Pocock, the Canberra independent, spent a lot of time trying to get the Government to release documents between Santos and themselves about the Barossa gas development in the Timor Sea.

THe reason for this was the Environmental Protection (Sea Dumping) Amendment (Using New Technologies to Fight Climate Change) bill 2023.

Santos is the front partner and 50% owner of the Barossa gas field with SK E&S, a Korean company having 35% and JERA, a Japanese company, 15%. They wanted to develop the largest fossil fuel project in Australia, (natural gas), just when Australia is supposedly getting towards net zero carbon dioxide. Quite apart from the fact that methane burns to carbon dioxide, natural gas, having been formed from the decay of carbon products, is usually found with large amounts of carbon dioxide in with the methane. The Barossa gas is worse than usual at 16-20% carbon dioxide. Santos therefore wanted a permit to separate the carbon dioxide, capture it and store it.

Jennifer Rayner of the Climate Council is one of the many environmentalists who point out that CCS, Carbon Capture and Storage has never been done successfully and is just a fudge to continue fossil fuel use. But it gets worse. When the carbon dioxide is supposedly all captured, it is to be piped to a supposedly exhausted gas field, Bayu-Undan, in East Timor 100 km away and injected into the wells there. What could possibly go wrong? East Timor is not a signatory to the Paris Climate agreement. And if that were not enough, the pipeline to East Timor will not be finished until 5 years after the methane is being shipped, so 5 years worth of carbon dioxide waste is simply to be exhausted to the atmosphere.

All thai was pointed out in Parliament by Pocock and the Greens. There is a carbon offset scheme, where Australian Carbon Offset Units (ACCUs) could be bought, but estimates have been that not enough of these could possibly be created to offset the amount of gas produced by projects currently in the pipeline and the price of ACCUs would rise. The Sea Dumping bill was passed with support from the Coalition. The Greens and Pocock held out, unsuccessfully.

The government resisted releasing the Santos correspondence until after the bill was passed and the correspondence said that Santos’ decisions had already been made and considerable investments undertaken and it would upset the Korean and the Japanese investors if the project were stopped or delayed. It seems that the Koreans and Japanese pressured Penny Wong and the Foreign Affairs Ministry and overcame Chris Bowen and the Environment Ministry. .

All this happened at the same time as the COP28 (28th Conference of the Parties of the 1992 Agreement)in the UAE (United Arab Emirates). UAE is the second largest economy in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and exports 3 million barrels of oil a day. The president of the COP meeting was Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also Minister of Industry of the UAE and head of the Abi Dhabi National Oil Company. How anyone could have expected a resolution to phase out fossil fuels to come from a meeting so constituted defies understanding. The whole setting seemed beyond satire. The final text, which seems very hard to get actually agrees to phase down fossil fuels but gives no timetable and allows gas as a transition fuel, which is effectively a loophole to increase gas production.

Environment Minister Chris Bowen said that it was ‘no small thing’ to agree to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels. But what is all this worth with no timetable and no commitment to phase them out?

Pocock is an ex-Rugby player. My local rugby club has the motto ‘Facta non Verba’= ‘Deeds not Words’ and Pocock is true to the breed.

He said ‘As a country we’ve got to make the choice. Do we put our futures and the ..future..ahead of the short-term profits of a handful of companies like Santos?’

The answer it seems is ‘Yes’. Santos tells the Labor government what to do, and the Labor government does it. The Liberals opposed initially as they usually oppose everything, but when they found out about what Santos and the Japanese and Koreans wanted they quickly came on board.

The rule about 50-25-25 seems to hold good. 50% quickly became 75%, then 100%.

It is very hot today, and summer is not yet here. It would be nice to think that next year will be better, but it won’t, maybe ever…

Here is the story in The Saturday Paper. You might wonder why it is not in the other papers.

www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2023/12/16/emails-reveal-labor-caved-santos#mtr

23/11/2023

Climate Change- a Depressing Update

23 November 2023

In Australia the Labor government struggles mightily to get legislation through to allow Woodside to pipe carbon dioxide to East Timor’s territorial waters for supposed CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) to allow them to develop a new gas field. East Timor is not a signatory to the Paris Accord- convenient eh? Supposedly the carbon dioxide will be pumped into a reservoir that used to have gas, but Woodside has a track record of not meeting its CCS targets; if you think CCS is a real thing and not a cop-out farce.

Evidence suggests that the world is on target for a 3 degrees temperature rise, which may make human life unsustainable in its present form. Petrostates are installing lights at beaches so that people can go for a night swim to cool off because it is too hot in the daytime!

The graphs below show world energy consumption tripling since 2000 and continuing that upward trajectory. If one considers that the production of energy by a human is about a kilowatt a day, one realises that the amount of energy consumed now per person is many times that, and far higher in developed countries, the situation is unsustainable. The invention of the steam engine in 1690 and the internal combustion engine in 1872 and the use of fossil fuels, which has resulted in the energy and carbon dioxide stored as carbon over tens of thousands of years being released in a century. It is ridiculous to think that reforestation can capture this amount of carbon as the total area of forests in the world is still declining.

COP28 (the 28th Conference of the Parties) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), will start on 30 November in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the UAE state oil company ADNOC. How much good is this likely to do?

COP-out: Why the petrostate-hosted climate talkfest will fail

23/11/2023

Myanmar- some hope in Rebel Victories.

23 November 2023

Three groups in northern Myanmar have joined together in Operation 1027, after the day they launched their offensive (27 October). They have been very successful against the hated military dictatorship. The question is whether this will be the beginning of the end for the junta, who have been helped a great deal by the Chinese, presumably for economic concessions. But the Chinese may not be happy with the regime, as it has tolerated a ‘scam industry’ near the Chinese border, and it may also be that the Chinese are not sure that the junta have enough control of the country to allow a rail line to be built to a port on the Myanmar coast, which the Chinese want to use to export via the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean without needing to go around the Malay peninsula.

It is speculated that the Chinese have given tacit support to the rebels, and if this is the case the junta will have more trouble.

I visited Myanmar in 2017 when Aung San Suu Kyi was theoretically in power, but with the unpopular military junta still really in control. (There are a number of posts on my website, chesterfieldevans.com if you search ‘Myanmar’).

There was a coup in 2021 and Aung Sang Su Kyi was forced from her figurehead power and charged with treason because she had a few walkie talkies to talk to her staff, which were made ‘illegal’ because the junta could not eavesdrop on them. There was some resistance to the coup and unarmed people were shot, but it has led to more organised resistance.

Myanmar is a very divided country so there are different ethnic groups and armies resisting with varying success in different parts of the country. Not much news of this has been in the mainstream media here, until this rebel success. The military are universally feared and hated, which was evident even to the most casual tourist. They are not done yet, but if they lose Chinese support and the people believe that they can be overthrown, they will be.

https://thediplomat.com/2023/10/operation-1027-a-turning-point-for-myanmars-resistance-struggle/

09/11/2023

Burma/Myanmar Sportswashing

9 November 2023

I visited Myanmar (Burma) in December 2017.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace prize winning daughter of the founder of modern Burma, who was immensely popular with the people had been elected in a landslide in 2015. She and her party had boycotted the 2010 elections as farcical, but the military dictatorship had allowed her to stand in 2015, where she had won with 86% of the parliamentary seats.

Despite this win, the military junta still refused to yield power and kept the critical portfolios in the Cabinet, so she was nominally in charge and trying to change the system but her hands were largely tied. It was hard to get anyone to talk about politics, and few spoke English, but I had enough contacts to let me in on the situation.

It was a third world country trying to develop tourism. It had some relatively modern tourist buses but few hotels of a reasonable standard. (This did not bother me as a lifetime backpacker). Most cars were old, but there were a significant number of modern ones. The only feature of these was that they were right hand drive in a country that drives on the right, so the drivers were on the wrong side when it came to overtaking. It was because Japan had made a number of recent model second hand cars available and these had been snapped up.

Yangon, the biggest city and historical capital had a building that should have been the Parliament and it was in quite good condition but mothballed and currently not used for anything. The city was third world, crowded and prone to blackouts, so many buildings had diesel generators in the street outside, which were turned on when the blackouts came, making pretty bad pollution worse.

The people were friendly and courteous, and keen to develop the new tourism industry that had opened up under the same pressure on the military government that had led to the elections. There was a palpable tension between the population and the military, who moved around with surly expressions as if they knew that they were hated, but were not going to give ground.

This was very evident in Mandalay, the second largest city, which has an old palace in a large fortified area, complete with a moat. The military have taken control of all but the central palace with signs forbidding anyone walking in the extensive (neglected) gardens. They have a large depot within the grounds and a surly military guard post at the gate that inspects passports.

The other major expression of this separateness was in Naypyidaw, the capital. This city was recently built with Chinese money and is in the mountains about 3 hours drive from Yangon, presumably to make it less vulnerable to possible revolution. It is very modern with 8 lane highways with absolutely minimal traffic. The foreigners were in a cluster of large modern hotels, again Chinese-built. The hotels were remarkably cheap for their standard, but I noted that at 9pm there were almost no lights on in any of the rooms and there were only about 20 people for breakfast in our large international-standard hotel. The foreign hotel area was a bus ride from where the people lived, and that was not a large area. The National library was a modern air-conditioned building, not partially large. We were about the only people in it apart from the staff. It was on a bus route, but nowhere near any population centre.

Four years later, in February 2021, there was a military coup and Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested on a number of charges related to national security. She has been in prison ever since on charges that the western countries have called politically motivated. It seems that her major crime was to use a two-way radio phone network that was not accessible to the military junta. Her economic advisor, Australian Professor Sean Turnell was also tried without an interpreter and gaoled. He was released in November 2022 after 21 months in detention and representations from the Australian government. There was some resistance to the coup and some people were killed. Resistance is ongoing and almost certainly widely supported, but it has had minimal publicity in the western or Australian media since Prof Turnell’s release.

The reason for this post is that a soccer team from Myanmar with strong junta connections is to play Macarthur FC in Sydney shortly. This looks like a sportswashing exercise to legitimise the government and lessen its isolation.

I suggest that you write to Penny Wong and ask that they not be given visas www.pennywong.com.au/contact/, and to Macarthur FC and ask that they not play them, email: admin@macarthurfc.com.au. Here is the request from the Australian Coalition for Democracy in Burma:

https://scontent.fsyd3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/384547058_856337555857136_1438592052866809960_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8cd0a2&_nc_ohc=d416jFlBrW8AX8aY4cQ&_nc_ht=scontent.fsyd3-1.fna&oh=03_AdQLV1CGyViy42LJ37Vj04hsMufoe42jxyxxt5uM6PUNPg&oe=6573B503

24/05/2023

Modi’s Melbourne Rally has Australia Kow-Towing Again.

24 May 2023

The spectacle on tonight’s ABC news of visiting Indian Prime Minister addressing a rally in Melbourne sent shivers up my spine.

I had realised that Modi was acting as a Hindu nationalist, and doing quite bad things to Muslims Sikhs and other minority groups. He was and is using religion as a way of increasing his vote as over 80% of Indians are Hindu. But in a country of 1.3 billion people are lot are not Hindu, and areas in the North of the country have been suppressed, with the historic separation of Pakistan and Bangldesh (formers called East Pakistan), as well as problems in Sikh Kashmir, where the people actually want independence from both Hindu India who controls them and Muslim Pakistan who wants to.

Modi has used very authoritarian tactics, but has got away with it because the Indian economy has done well.

Australia is very pro-India at present as the China trade embargos have meant that we are looking to diversify our markets and a rising nation with 1.3 billion people looks just the ideal partner. Not to mention defence ties, though India has traditionally tried to create a group of non-aligned nations to cool whichever Cold War is going on at the time.

But the rally in Melbourne as shown on ABC News tonight had a huge stadium shouting with Modi in the centre like a rock star. Our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said that the last time he saw this was a Bruce Springsteen Concert and the crowd were more adoring of Modi than they had been of the Boss, Springsteen. They also hugged, like footballers after scoring. But it went on. Modi stood alone in the centre and addressed the crowd in their own language. It was doubtless staged for the Indian elections which are next year. It seems that our government was complicit. It is very hard to think that they were unaware of what was being organised, and their part was as direct an endorsement of Modi personally as could have been done.

Having kow-towed to the US on defence last week, and mumbled a few platitudes about Julian Assange, this was another example of the Albanese government being very weak on human rights, or even standing up for anything. We should have been friends with India without such a party-political statement.

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15/03/2023

Keating Attacks the AUKUS Submarine Deal at the National Press Club

15 March 2023

Paul Keating attacked the AUKUS submarine deal at a conference at the National Press Club today. He was at his scathing best, and put together the arguments well, as he always does.

In essence he said that a scare campaign had demonised China with a lot of Cold War rhetoric from the ‘spooks’ and convinced Morrison, who was always happy for a headline to get some publicity for his flailing government.

Labor was scared to losing the election by being ‘soft on defence’ so went along with whatever the Liberals wanted. So Labor has been conned by the spooks and the Liberals as well.

Keating says we have a defence policy, rather than a foreign policy, and Senator Wong running around the Pacific ‘handing out money with a lei around her neck’ is not a foreign policy.

The US wants bases here, to lock Australia into their side in the confrontation with China and to sell expensive submarines. As Keating points out, at the circus in San Diego, only one country was actually paying- Australia.

He also ridiculed Australia for involving Britain, pointing out that in 1942 they left Singapore and in 1968 announced an ‘East of Suez’ policy that meant that they would not do much here. They then joined the EU, leaving the Commonwealth to its economic fate, and would have stayed with the EU, but for the mistake of Brexit, created by Boris Johnson et al who had silly dreams of bygone Empires. Since the UK has left the EU they are trying to have a ‘global strategy’, but they do not have much choice. But this is not economic relevance, and Australia is just being silly to go back to there for its military security.

As far as the submarines are concerned, he points out that the cost of 9 nuclear submarines would pay for about 45 conventional ones. If one about 1 in 3 can be at sea at the same time, which is what most navies manage, that means 3 nuclear at sea rather than 15 conventional ones. And even if the 15 have to surface, this is only about every 3 days if they are cruising, and there are 15 for an enemy to worry about. The nuclear subs are 8,000 tonnes as opposed to 4,000 tons, so are likely to be able to be found almost as easily as the conventional ones as detection technology evolves. They will also only carry the same torpedoes as the conventional ones, so their strike power will be 3 v 15.

Some years ago, I read an excellent book, ‘The Secret State’ by Richard Hall published in 1978 which looked at the reports from the spy agencies during the Cold War in the 1950 and 1960s and contrasted these with the conventional media editorials and opinion pieces of the time. The spy analyses were full of paranoia and worries about the Russian threat if we did not immediately spend a lot of money on defence. The major newspapers looked at what was happening and made more sanguine comments about economic and trade relations. Years later, things had panned out much as was expected in the major media. The spy scare stories were almost absurdly laughable. It seems that in this case the spies have convinced Morrison, who has taken the Liberals, now Labor down this absurd path that we and our children will pay for.

The Liberals have said that they will be bi-partisan as Labor makes budget cuts to pay for it. What will go? Stage 3 tax cuts? Jobseeker pay rises? Pensions? Medicare? NDIS? Subsidies to private schools or private health insurance? Tax exemptions to religious organisations or Super contributions? The Liberals were happy to cut all social welfare, but no doubt having made the initial commitment to bipartisanship will still criticise any actual cuts as they come along.

The Chinese, presumably will now continue to make our trade difficult. They are a rising power that is unlikely to invade us, and we should work within this framework. It is called realism.

Here is an article on SBS: ww.sbs.com.au/news/article/former-colonial-master-paul-keating-launches-astonishing-attack-on-labor-aukus-deal/we38qsi9s

Here is the interview on youtube: