The Inevitable War - Keating goes bang

Remove this Banner Ad

Schneebly11 said:
Would have been good for Albanese to pressure Modi to stop supporting Russia, given apparently that’s why we are told we need to hate China. But he didn’t. Also Modi’s oppressive policies towards Muslims in Kashmir, given we’re meant to hate China for supposedly oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang. He didn’t.

Also sad to see him drawn into Modi’s domestic Hindu nationalism campaign against some Sikh groups.
Click to expand...
Modi can be criticized for many things. Getting discounted oil isn't one of them.
 

Log in to remove this ad.

Schneebly11 said:
Would have been good for Albanese to pressure Modi to stop supporting Russia, given apparently that’s why we are told we need to hate China. But he didn’t. Also Modi’s oppressive policies towards Muslims in Kashmir, given we’re meant to hate China for supposedly oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang. He didn’t.

Also sad to see him drawn into Modi’s domestic Hindu nationalism campaign against some Sikh groups.
Click to expand...
We have no sway, we're too small.

Hitch your wagon to the autocrat Modi or hitch your wagon to the other autocrat Xi
 
Schneebly11 said:
'We know where they (Iragi WMDs) are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad, and east, west, south and north somewhat..' - Donald Rumsfeld

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed" - George W Bush, 2003
Click to expand...

when looking at war, we shouldn't be looking at the credibility of super powers. The US, Russia, China and India all have examples demonstrating they either got it really wrong or simply lie through their teeth. They also have terrible current human rights issues which highlights they are dangerous.

what we should look at is the ingredients for war being:
  • capability; and
  • intent

Capability takes a decade or more to achieve, as building weapon systems and learning how to operate them isn't an overnight exercise. Where intent is simply a decision and that is instantaneous.

In the case of China they have been building a large capability and driving the largest naval build up, globally, in the history of man. No doubt the airforce and army stats would be the same.

They have also stated they will go to war to take Taiwan if need be and their SOEs are saying within 24 months (6 months ago).



I don't think we need to take sides (in a black and white manner of who's right and wrong as they all have right and wrong), I don't think we should or the media should ignore this otherwise we repeat the failings of the 1930s. We shouldn't have reckless and sensational media reporting and governments should be talking to mainstream media of the sensitivities.

What we should be doing is building our own capability, forging a global alliance and reducing our supply chain risk to ensure the economy can operate under the pressures of war. Wars are not won on the front line but rather the logistics and the engine room (the economy) to support the front line.

In our media we should be openly discussing the issue so individuals and businesses can make strategic decisions. This should also be for Chinese consumption, to highlight our preparations, that we are a reliable and steady hand, that we are in defence mode not attack, that we want trade not war and there is a significant cost for being reckless (China planning for war with Taiwan and their aggressive acts on the Philippines, Indonesia and others).
 
Schneebly11 said:
Would have been good for Albanese to pressure Modi to stop supporting Russia, given apparently that’s why we are told we need to hate China. But he didn’t. Also Modi’s oppressive policies towards Muslims in Kashmir, given we’re meant to hate China for supposedly oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang. He didn’t.

Also sad to see him drawn into Modi’s domestic Hindu nationalism campaign against some Sikh groups.
Click to expand...

We should be having these discussions behind closed doors.

Personally I would be surprised if Australia didn't say to a fellow member of the quad:
"India, your reliance on russian weapons is an issue. One what do you do in the case of war against china and russia is on china's side? Where do you get your weapons from? Where do you get your spare pasts from? would the russian people (a conservative white christian nation) support their government, in send their troops to help brown people (Indian governments own words by the way)?"

"India may want to consider building a defence platform on NATO based systems, where there are multiple suppliers (Korea, Japan, Germany, US, Oz, etc). we could open a defence industry here in India based on our technology. This would mean you have the world's best systems, integrated with the world's biggest forces and deliver India self reliance".


"your reliance on Russia's nuclear technology is a concern. We have seen this failing in the EU where they were reliant on russia gas and russian nuclear. Can I suggest........."


"human rights issues in India are a concern. We have our challenges here in Oz as well, be that race, religion, age discrimination and the treatment of indigenous people...........let's work towards improving our records on this matter"



A Rudd, Morrison and Abbott would have been big loud and dumb on the matter. In their own way trying to be self-righteous and the smartest person in the room, which is counter productive.

Our smarter PMs would have simply done it behind closed doors. I think Albo and his team (Penny) would be in the smart camp.
 
Schneebly11 said:
So just discovered this transcript of a Today Show (Ch 9) interview this week between host Sarah Abo, Bill Shorten and a 2GB host (O Keefe). We’ve reached a parallel universe where a 2GB host is the voice of reason, pointing out the obvious about ASPI which isn’t said enough in mainstream media, along with Shorten showing the current government isn’t buying into SMH/Age’s scaremonger campaign:

ABO: Well, I think none of this may even matter if the front page of the SMH is to be believed. If we're going to be at war with China in the next three years. I mean, there is a warning that our armed forces are woefully underprepared. It's quite alarming, Bill. The threat from China, it's always been there. It has been escalating, certainly. But do you see conflict in our very near future?

SHORTEN: Oh, I'm not going to start speculating or inflaming any war talk this morning over breakfast. I mean, we've got the Reserve Bank doing its thing. That's probably where my head's at and the local stuff. It's important that we stabilise our relationship with China. In the last few months, we've seen the Prime Minister and several ministers hold very constructive bilateral discussions. We've got to prioritise national security. Labor will always do that. In terms of China, we should, you know, engage where we can disagree where we must and of course try and find the points of common interest, but at all the time maintaining Australia's interests.

ABO: But the reality is we aren't prepared for war with China.

SHORTEN: Say that question again, sorry?

ABO: The reality is we simply aren't prepared for war. We just don't have enough ammunition. We don't have enough firepower.

SHORTEN: Well, Labor's doing a Defence Force review. That's a sensible thing. It hasn't been done for a long time. But I'm just not going to start fuelling this sort of pretty hot and fevered discussion that it was on the front page of the paper today. I don't think you know, I don't think that gets us anywhere.

ABO: It's alarming though, Chris, isn't it?

O’KEEFE: But it's a hysterical the reporting. Now, I know that Nine owns the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, so there our colleagues, but the reporting this morning is hysterical. Now, if you've got the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, who are the ones saying, ‘Oh, well, we could be going to war in three years’, well, they're funded by the Australian Defence Force, Lockheed Martin, Thales and Boeing. Defence material companies that provide, need money to provide, defence hardware to Australia. So, where's the bread buttered here? And I just think that it does Australia no good having discussions about going to war in three years. It's hysterical, it is over the top. And the CIA, the chief of the CIA said, well, President Xi actually has said we'll get your army prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027. However, they're thinking to themselves, well, maybe we can't do it. In that same article, it says the President Xi is now considering whether or not it's an achievable outcome, invading Taiwan. None of that's in the newspaper, but we're talking about going to war in three years. How is that good when someone wakes up in the morning and says, Oh, no. Everybody knows China is a threat, a strategic threat, but going to war in three years. Talk about scaring the pants off people for no reason.

ABO: I mean, it does seem a bit unrealistic. I guess the main point of it is that we aren't prepared. We don't have –

O’KEEFE: Prepared for what?

ABO: Well, we don't have any of the defence -

O’KEEFE: Prepared for what? Is this going to be, Kokoda Mach 2? Is that what we're talking about? Well, no one no one can explain to me what we're supposed to be prepared for. I mean, do you how big Australia is? Do you know how hard it’d be to attack?

ABO: There's a lot of people in China.

O’KEEFE: What are we supposed to do? Do we think their armada is going to show up in Darwin? Please. Come on. Can we just settle down a bit and have an adult conversation about this?

SHORTEN: Okay, listen, Field Marshal Christian, you know, Admiral Sarah, just. I think there was something Chris said. Look, I'm not going to wake up this morning and start saying Australians should be, you know, gigantically alarmed. We've got to work with China, but we always have to maintain our own national security and our own defence interests. I tell you what I think people want to hear this morning is the government doing everything we can in defence of national security? Yes. We also trying to maintain constructive bilateral relations with China? Yes. We'll engage where we can, but we'll always, we’ll disagree where we must. I don't think the speculation about all the other stuff's really going to take us too far, is it?

O’KEEFE: Do you think it's hysterical, Bill?

SHORTEN: Oh, listen, I certainly don't think it's helpful to speculate about, you know, the dramatic headlines in the paper. I don't see where that gets us, frankly.

O’KEEFE: Well said.

ABO: Well said. Oh, wow. Agreement. I like it. Let's have more of it. All right, Bill, Chris, thanks so much for your time today.

Minister Shorten Interview on The Today Show with Sarah Abo | Department of Social Services Ministers

ministers.dss.gov.au ministers.dss.gov.au

Watch it for real, starts at 7:14 (ignore the ASPI shill at the start

Click to expand...


I didn't like Shorten the potential PM but he has been great under Albo.

He shut this debate down without saying there isn't a threat.

The people of Australia can take comfort in his words "It's important that we stabilise our relationship with China" and "Labor's doing a Defence Force review."

perfect!
 
Schneebly11 said:
Would have been good for Albanese to pressure Modi to stop supporting Russia, given apparently that’s why we are told we need to hate China. But he didn’t. Also Modi’s oppressive policies towards Muslims in Kashmir, given we’re meant to hate China for supposedly oppressing Muslims in Xinjiang. He didn’t.

Also sad to see him drawn into Modi’s domestic Hindu nationalism campaign against some Sikh groups.
Click to expand...
Separate hating china from hating the leader of china.

China was on a path to be a good world citizen before Xi came along and broke the rules to become a dictator and went hardline with everything, undoing the work towards becoming an open free country since zedong fell off.

My hope is that Jinping is toppled and China gets back on the path to freedom.

Furthermore - its possible to simultaneously think Jinping is a c}#% AND Modi is a c}{{%…… a pair of c{}^’s if you will.
 
Baltimore Jack said:
So we are going to war with China in 3 years using Collins Subs
Or
We need to get Virginia Class subs in 10 years time to protect us from a rampant China

I think I see the problem
Click to expand...

yep (note I do believe China won't press the button in 3 years (or 2) if they believe Taiwan has a global support)

the inability to commit to modern standard equipment may prove costly to the lives of our submariners or simply compromise our capabilities and maintain our reliance on others
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

QuietB said:
No one does anything softly in this social media age we find ourselves in sadly.
Click to expand...
Yeah well heres the rub, we need China to finance our defence spending against china.

If china dont pay for all this expensive military shit we wont be able to defend ourselves against them so we gotta be nice to them so we can be nasty if needs be later.
 
kranky al said:
Yeah well heres the rub, we need China to finance our defence spending against china.

If china dont pay for all this expensive military s**t we wont be able to defend ourselves against them so we gotta be nice to them so we can be nasty if needs be later.
Click to expand...

how history repeats

Menzies and Pig Iron for Japan - Australian Society for the Study of Labour History

E.C. Roach Talk given at the Labour History Conference, Newcastle, 26 June 1993 The pig iron dispute occurred almost 55 years ago. It was an event that will go down in the annals of national and international history. The real political results of this struggle, I believe, have been played down...
www.labourhistory.org.au www.labourhistory.org.au
 
kranky al said:
Yeah well heres the rub, we need China to finance our defence spending against china.

If china dont pay for all this expensive military s**t we wont be able to defend ourselves against them so we gotta be nice to them so we can be nasty if needs be later.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, and equally China needs the raw materials to make the bombs we are protecting ourselves against.

This really is buzzaro world. Everyone is spending trillions on trying to neutralise each other 🤷‍♂️
 
QuietB said:
Hmmm, and equally China needs the raw materials to make the bombs we are protecting ourselves against.

This really is buzzaro world. Everyone is spending trillions on trying to neutralise each other 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...

Imagine a world where governments acted in the interest of people.

There are some good examples globally but not with any major power.

Perhaps large nations should be banned?
 
The other event that happened this week that should be discussed more - China brokering a resumption of diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The actual deal itself between the two may be limited - they’ll hardly become the best of friends but I’d expect the Yemen conflict to wind down now.

The real winner will be China. Now they’ll gain a lot of influence and respect in the region, from pretty much all nations bar Israel, for starting to bring the two regional players together without firing a shot, and without much fanfare or playing domestic politics with an international issue. China will shore up long term access to the ME resources and not be subject to US curtailing the flow of ME resources heading east. Remember the scene in Oliver Stone’s W where Dick Cheney admits having control of the whole Middle East will allow the US to use leverage over oil and gas flowing to China as pressure, making them subject to virtual American control? That potential scenario has pretty much been permanently ended this week.

China shores up western edges of the BRI to allow the flow of resources and trade overland to China. They already have Central Asia, the Stans and Pakistan in the sphere, the more nations they have overland means less pressure the USA can exert over Chinese trade routes by sea. Starting to render the AUKUS subs less useful already.

Plus the real boom for China, PR. Despite being told they are bloodthirsty warmongers hell bent on starting wars all over the globe, including Australia, in 3 years they’ve just shown they’ve maturely and peacefully begun a process to solve a long term geopolitical conflict without resorting to drone assassinating one side’s leaders. If they (I’ll admit this is unlikely atm but who knows in the future) can get Ukraine and Russia to agree to a ceasefire then nations outside of the West (ie the majority of the world) may begin to think they’re not the warmongers they’ve been told they are.

This certainly reduces the influence of the US in the region and their reputation in the rest of the world. Although it’s early days we could look back at this week and see a seminal turning point in global history.
 
Have you ever noticed that since WW11, the USA has always needed an Enemy that wants to "destroy our freedoms and remove our way of life"

After WW11 its been:
USSR
Korea
Vietnam
Iraq*
Afghanistan
Iran
China

All required a massive Military spend so as to protect us, yet none of those Countries have ever been defeated*

I wonder if the real goal here is to just spend mega bucks on the Military Industrial complex and to do that they need an enemy?

As Orwell said "Perpetual War"
 
Last edited:
Baltimore Jack said:
I wonder if the real goal here is to just spend mega bucks on the Military Industrial complex and to do that they need an enemy?
Click to expand...

It was spoken about in the 30s by US General Smedley Butler:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

It’s no secret. Dwight Eisenhower warned about the influence of the Military Industrial Complex in his farewell speech, and lamented that society had become more focused on spending money on weapons rather than social services:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

And now we get Spud Dutton itching to cut the NDIS and Aged Care to fund 5 submarines.

To me it’s very obvious. Governments influenced by weapons manufacturers find “enemies”

Is it not obvious they’ve switched to China after people got sick of hearing how Muslims in the Middle East were the existential threat, to the point we need to fight them over there before they come here?

It’s “yellow peril”, it’s a “red scare”. Media which gets more views, clicks and ad revenue from scaremongering about “the enemy”, and ASPI affiliated arms manufacturers who’s share prices have all risen despite recent Dow Jones falls because they know the government is focused on increasing military spending.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

The Inevitable War - Keating goes bang

Similar threads

nut
The war against employment
Replies
4
Views
693
Freomaniac
Freomaniac
anchor man
Gina the politician.
Replies
0
Views
263
anchor man
anchor man
Bunk Moreland
The major parties versus social media
2
Replies
41
Views
1K
peetoo
peetoo
M
How the coalition can win the next Victorian election
2 3 4 5
Replies
124
Views
6K
peetoo
peetoo
anchor man
The Nightly
Replies
8
Views
793
anchor man
anchor man
nut
The Nuclear debate
12 13 14 15 16
Replies
390
Views
17K
nut
nut
Aristotle Pickett
Vic The joke that is the Victorian Liberal Party.
4 5 6 7 8
Replies
182
Views
10K
The Punter
The Punter

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top