Tag: Australia

Join Jim and Greg as they welcome stronger ties among the U.S., UK, and Australia, as the U.S. promises to deliver nuclear-powered submarines to the Aussies made with Rolls Royce engines from Great Britain. How much of a check might it be on Chinese ambitions in the region. They also recoil as Moody’s downgrades confidence in our banking system from “stable” to “negative” while the Democrats try to blame the SVB collapse on GOP policies with a very weak argument. Finally, they shake their heads as President Trump asserts that Florida was already great before Gov. Ron DeSantis took office. But it’s his praise of Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist that is raising the most eyebrows. We’ll examine the progress made by multiple Republican governors there and why DeSantis deserves plenty of credit for his time in office.

The Present Discontents

 

Some weeks ago, John Anderson — former deputy prime minister of Australia — passed through Hillsdale and did an interview with me for his podcast. I thought nothing of it: I do this sort of thing from time to time. But John posted it on Friday, and I began getting email. Yesterday, on a whim, I watched it. At the time that it was taped, I thought that I had not done well. I remembered that the name Barack Obama chose for his administration suggested that he had a revolution in mind but I could not come up, on the spur of the moment, with the name: The New Foundation.

Yesterday, I watched the interview and thought, “This is not just good. Its posting is timely.” You might find it interesting as well.

China’s Vast Sovereignty Claims Are Becoming Reality

 

On June 13, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin held an extraordinary press conference in which he made a series of audacious statements about the sprawling reach of the Middle Kingdom’s territorial sovereignty. Placed in the context of China’s other recent actions and statements, the incredible size and shape of its regional ambitions are brought into sharp relief.

In simple terms, Beijing is determined to thoroughly dominate its region.

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Topher Field has a new documentary which I highly recommend. It describes the insane steps the Melbourne Premier Dana Andrews has taken against protestors. It’s hard to believe that this happened in a supposed democracy. My only criticism is that sometimes the background music is too loud and it’s hard to understand the speakers. Preview […]

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Exclusive Audio Interview with Monica Smit of Reignite Democracy Australia If Lockdowns were an Olympic sport, Victoria Australia would be hard to beat. It’s been attributed as the most locked down place in the world under COVID-19. Sadly, it’s also become the location where a once free society now target Civil Liberties. Take for example […]

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Join Jim and Greg as they welcome the partnership among the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia that will allow Australia to have nuclear submarines and hopefully pose a deterrent to China in the region.  They’re also glad to see special counsel John Durham is still alive and planning to indict a lawyer in connection with the 2016 effort to allege collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.  And we fume at the FBI once again as Olympic gymnasts explain how the bureau completely dropped the ball on investigating team doctor and serial molester Larry Nassar.

Join Jim and Greg as they welcome Sen. Joe Manchin’s warning that another massive spending bill would saddle our nation with a lot more inflation and debt. They also wince as the August jobs numbers come in far below expectations. Is it really all due to the Delta variant or is there more to it? And they refuse to throw any shrimps on the barbie for the Australian government as the country goes crazy with COVID lockdowns and crushing freedom.

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Hanlon’s Razor, attributed to computer programmer Robert J. Hanlon, is “Never Attribute to Malice That Which Can Be Adequately Explained by Incompetence.” It correlates to Occam’s Razor: when faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest is likely the correct one. Both rules of thumb point to the simplest of explanations, with the […]

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Toby is on the road doing his “footie reporter” thing and after a quick tour of the north country, he and James widen their scope to  take in the draconian measures elsewhere in the Commonwealth, namely that of Dan Andrews, the Premier of Victoria and Jacinda Ardern, the PM of New Zealand.

Of course they turn their sights to the unfolding disaster that is the fall of Afghanistan back into the hands of Taliban.

This week James reports in from an undisclosed location (his evil genius lair, no doubt) and he and Toby review the week’s doings, from the latest on the Covid lockdowns to the foolishness of the multi-culti wokeness of the BBC and their plans for this year’s Proms.

We get their views on the Biden-Harris ticket (or is that Harris-Biden?) and the prospect of Donald Trump’s re-election, plus our cultural reviews, highlighted by the very disappointing Greyhound with Tom Hanks on AppleTV.

Join Jim and Greg as they applaud Australia for ending its extradition agreement with Hong Kong and extending visas for Hong Kong residents in Australia over China’s crackdown on freedoms. They also discuss New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman urging Joe Biden to refuse debating President Trump unless Trump agrees to a couple of very unlikely demands. And they wince as CNN’s Don Lemon demonstrates just how little he knows about the most basic tenets of belief for tens of millions of Americans.

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America’s Ambassador to Australia has a strong Op-Ed on China in today’s Defence Connect online publication: This is the Unbreakable Alliance we have built, and it is the one the Indo-Pacific needs for the emerging challenges ahead. Even as I write this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has aggressively deployed its navy, coast guard and maritime […]

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Pass the Popcorn: China Threatens Australia

 

The Australian government under Prime Minister Scott Morrison has generally been restrained in its criticism of China, which is by far its top trading partner. This past week, however, the gloves came off.

In characteristic fashion, it began slowly with “ScoMo” steering a middle course, declining to follow President Trump’s lead into defunding the World Health Organization, but calling for an independent investigation of the origins of the virus and a reform of the WHO. This was too much for China, whose Ambassador Cheng Jingye strongly implied that Australia was acting as a US lapdog. He went on to suggest that China’s full-tuition-paying students might not feel so welcome in Australia anymore, and Chinese people might decide they don’t enjoy Australian beef and wine as much as they used to.

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The current Covid 19 crisis is going to place stress on health care systems in every country. At the end of it, we’ll all be looking at how we handled it, what worked well, what we could have done better and the impact of how we dealt with it on our lives going forward. Preview […]

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Honoring the Fallen: USAF Colonel lays wreath at Australian War Memorial Every day as the sun sinks below the horizon, the Australian Defence Force honors one person who gave their life in service to the country as a member of the armed services. Col. Raymond Powell, the senior U.S. defense official in Australia, laid a […]

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America toast the conservative upset in the Australian elections. They also note Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg keeps taking far left positions on issues, disproving the media myth of him being a moderate. And they react to Illinois conservatives wanting to separate Chicago from the rest of the state.

Hot Take: Electoral Shock and Awe in Australia

 

G’day from your friendly neighborhood Yank Down Under.

Australia went to the polls yesterday, and the result has the pundits in shock this morning. A Labor Party victory was widely expected after polls had indicated for well over a year that the country had soured on the right-leaning Liberal Party (yes, we’re talking classical liberalism Down Under) coalition. Conventional wisdom seemed to have coalesced around the idea that this was a change election. Not so much, it turned out.

Incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison was also thought to be burdened by the collective disgust of voters tired of the constant drama of leadership “spills” which had produced six different prime ministers since 2007, and most recently last August when Morrison emerged from the Liberal tussle that saw previous PM Malcolm Turnbull pushed aside by a party nervous about this very election. While it is true most Australians are embarrassed about these palace coups, it is also true that once the deed was done, “ScoMo” pulled out the upset.

Hope on the Islam Front

 

Two little pieces of what looks to me anyway like hopeful signs: that Europe is looking to Australia’s model for how to cope with immigration, and that there may be more atheist, agnostic or otherwise apostate Muslims than we know.

From Quillette, an interview with a Pakistani-Canadian Muslim writer, Ali Rizvi. A few good quotes to give the flavor:

Australia Strikes Back Against Beijing’s Influence Campaign (and America Should Pay Attention)

 

G’day, this is your intrepid American Canary reporting from the Coal Mine Down Under.

While Americans are trying to make up their minds about the little-league Russian interference in its recent politics, Australia has been fending off the major-leaguers from Beijing. Chinese Communist Party influence operations have swamped Australia in recent years, and from academia to media, business to politics, the CCP has encountered very little organized resistance.

Until now. The Aussies have awakened to the threat, and this week the Turnbull government passed two laws through Parliament aimed at turning the tide against China’s campaign of espionage and interference.