Category: Global Politics
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The Mad World of Manipulative Mendacity
How The Australian’s breaking news website portrayed China’s response on Mar. 14. The boys are about with their tin drums again. They’re dressing in uniform and singing marching songs. The Australian’s breaking news service popped up this colourful fear-maker yesterday asserting that the Chinese have said we’re a target. They haven’t, and won’t, short of…
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There’s a lot of bull in this China shop
Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021 Well, forgetting the bull for the present, there’s a lot of blue water – literally in this case – between the fractious business of managing relations with China and doing the sort of pre-boy on the burning deck routine we’re seeing in Australia from the government and its fellow travellers. There…
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Goodbye and Thanks for All the Words
HECTOR’S DIARY Tasty and distasteful morsels from his regular diet of worms THE CAGE Bali Monday, Jan. 15, 2018 WE’VE had to say goodbye to Jewel Topsfield, who has been the Fairfax media correspondent in Indonesia for three years. It’s one of those rotational things: people get posted in, and then they get…
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Born Free
HECTOR’S DIARY The Cage, Bali Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017 His regular diet of diet of worms and other non-religious experiences THERE is a release, of sorts, in being relieved of the duty to write for a publication. You’re freer to write what you really think, in the patois of your choice, in…
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Belt and Braces
HECTOR’S DIARY His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare The Cage, Bali Wednesday, Jul. 12, 2017 DONALD Trump made a remarkable speech in Warsaw ahead of the economic summit he attended later in the historic Hanseatic League city of Hamburg, where he demonstrated exactly why the Group of 20 is now the…
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It’s a Scream
HECTOR’S DIARY His regular diet of worms and other non-religious fare The Cage, Bali Wednesday, Jul. 5, 2017 THERE are many ways to judge a man’s character. The gender is specific in this case, and the point is pertinent to the activities of the current president of the United States and, in this instance,…
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Beggaring Belief
HECTOR’S DIARY His regular diet of worms and other (usually) non-religious fare The Cage, Bali Wednesday, May 31, 2017 FAITH is a personal compact between a person and his or her deity. The faithful, of any ilk, should be honoured for their commitment to a life beyond secular concerns and for the higher…
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Law v Lore
HECTOR’S DIARY His diet of worms and other delicacies Bali, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017 THERE’S a great deal of misinformation about on the issue of Sharia law, particularly in western countries. So when Ubud identity Darsih Gede passed along a handy brief from a long-time friend, an American woman married to an Indonesian Muslim,…
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Waiting for the Last Trump
U.S ELECTION Sep. 29, 2016 Them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye and singing ‘this’ll be the day that I die’ – Don Maclean, ‘American Pie’ Update 10 Oct. 2016: This election sign somewhere in America says it all. THE 2016 American presidential election pits against each other two candidates for whom…
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