The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard released a long awaited white paper Australia in the Asian Century yesterday, which has been “wowed” by the Australian media. The white paper basically affirms that Australia’s future lies with Asia and consequently immense economic opportunities exist for Australia to grab. The paper hinges the nation’s strategy of becoming a competitive force within the region through skills development, innovation, infrastructure, the tax system, regulatory reform, and environmental sustainability. However before a nation can become a competitive force, it must have an accepted place in the region. On this key strategy the White paper does little more than make a “rally call” to Australians to come out and make it happen.
Category: Japan
As President Obama confirmed in an interview with the Atlantic [3] on March 2, 2012, one of the strategic goals of U.S. policy in Syria has been to weaken and isolate Iran by removing or helping to remove its strongest Arab ally. Asked what the U.S. could do to accelerate the removal of President Assad, Obama replied, laughing, “Well, nothing that I can tell you, because your classified clearance isn’t good enough.” In practice, as President Obama implied, the U.S. government has played a “disguised, quiet, media-free” [4] but nonetheless significant role in the escalation of violence in Syria. As early as last December, even as a Qatari-funded YouGov opinion poll found that 55% of Syrians still supported President Assad [5], former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported [6] that unmarked NATO planes were delivering weapons and militiamen from Libya to Turkish air-bases near the Free Syrian Army (FSA) headquarters in Iskanderum.
Actually the celebrated “Romne[y]sia” of selective and non-memory, perpetual “etch-a-sketch” resets, denials of having said X, by Romney and his fellow Kool-Aid aficionados and Romne[y]siacs, is but a portion or slice of a broader syndrome…
Nuremberg Trials set precedent in International Law that is binding on all nations despite the hypocrisy in the fact that 380 U.S. Corporations Traded With Nazis throughout WWII The Nazis called the Jews of the…
During the last few days, events have unfolded in connection with the establishment of new evidence of unlawful activities against the so-called «opposition» in Russia (1), which have caused a furious reaction from…
Martin Jacques’ latest views on China An author shares his views on the growing clout of the world’s second largest economy. AUTHOR and academic Dr Martin Jacques released an updated and expanded second edition of…
Recently, I was boarding the C train in New York City where I encountered a woman who looked to be in her late 70’s sitting on the subway wearing a t-shirt which read: IS…
A former Chinese ambassador to Japan has accused the United States of using China’s territorial disputes to expand its own influence in the region. Chen Jian, who was posted in Tokyo between 1998 and 2001,…
Imagine if George W. Bush had stood on the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center and declared, “We are going to continue our pursuit of world domination and environmental destruction until the oceans rise,…
The Virtual Recovery Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Presstitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers. During the Clinton administration, Republican economists pushed through a change in the way the CPI is measured in order to save money by depriving Social Security retirees of their cost-of-living adjustment. Previously, the CPI measured the change in the cost of a constant standard of living. The new measure assumes that consumers adjust to price increases by lowering their standard of living by substituting lower quality, lower priced items.