EARL, Greg (editor), "Disruptive Asia. Asia’s Rise And Australia’s Future"

Gideon Polya, "Review: “Disruptive Asia. Asia’s Rise And Australia’s Future”, edited by Greg Earl" ( originally published as

Gideon Polya, “Review: “Disruptive Asia. Asia’s Rise And Australia’s Future” – Exceptionalist Australia & Resurgent Asia”, Countercurrents, 10 July 2017: https://www.countercurrents.org/2017/07/10/review-disruptive-asia-asias-rise-and-australias-future-exceptionalist-australia-resurgent-asia/ ).

On its 20th anniversary, the Asia Society of Australia has issued a very important collection of essays by over 20 scholars and other professionals that considers future mutually beneficial interactions between rich and peaceful Australia (the Switzerland of Asia) and South Asian, East Asian and South East Asian countries, notably India, China, Japan and Indonesia. Despite some major key omissions this is a must-read book for policy makers that makes a major contribution to Australia-Asian dialogue and mutual advancement.

There is a Central European saying that “Asia begins East of Vienna” that was true when the Austrian capital was besieged by the Turks in 1526. These days many consider that Africa ends with Egypt and that Asia begins in Turkey on the Eastern side of the Bosphorus that divides Istanbul. However in isolated Australia we are repeatedly told that “Australia is part of Asia” and that this “Asia” excludes the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia and is confined to South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia. This latter definition is adopted in “Disruptive Asia”. The essays are largely about Australia and China with some also addressing India, Japan and Indonesia.

In its own words “Asia Society Australia is Australia’s leading national centre for engagement with Asia and a part of Asia Society, a global non-profit organisation and the leading force in forging closer ties between Asia and the West through arts, education, policy and business. Asia Society Australia was launched in 1997… Founded in 1956 by [billionaire] John D. Rockefeller 3rd, Asia Society is a non-partisan, non-profit institution with headquarters in New York, and centres in Hong Kong, Houston, Los Angeles, Manila, Mumbai, San Francisco, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, Washington, DC and Zürich. Across the fields of arts, business, culture, education, and policy, Asia Society provides insight, generates ideas, and promotes collaboration to address present challenges and create a shared future” [1]. Given this goal of collaboration and dialogue “Disruptive Asia” falls into the Mainstream paradigm of “aren’t we nice”, avoidance of the unpleasant, and “don’t talk about the war” (as in John Clease’s “Fawlty Towers” comedy). I am sorry to spoil the party but accurate assessment means that some Elephant in the Room matters simply cannot be avoided in useful discussion of Australia and Asia (indeed my insistence on this has meant that despite being a 5 decade career scientist committed to unfettered free speech and the good of Humanity I have no effective free speech in my liberal democracy home country, Australia).

Thus in 1956 - when the Asia Society was founded in America- was only 11 years after WW2 that had ravaged the following regions (civilian and military deaths from violence or deprivation in brackets): Western Europe (10 million) Eastern Europe (30 million) [2], North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia (6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British with Australian complicity) [3-5], South East Asia, and East Asia (3 million in Japan, 35 million in China, 1937-1945) [2, 6]. In 1956 Communist-ruled China (aka “Mainland China” or “Communist China” in the West) was rigorously excluded by the US-led West, North Korea was recovering after American bombing that had killed 28% of its population [7], Japan was economically resurgent and the US was commencing a violent involvement in Indo-China that would last 20 years and kill 23 million people through violence or war-imposed deprivation [8]. Australia had critically changed its de facto allegiance from the UK to the US after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the fall of Singapore in1942. Indeed as a subservient US lackey Australia has been complicit in all post-1950 US Asian wars (from Korea to the Middle East), atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence or deprivation [8].

From the 19th century Australians had always had a fear of being “swamped by Asians” this translating into the violent Sinophobia of “Chinaman hunts” and persecution and expulsions of Chinese in the mid-19th century. On Federation in 1901 Australia adopted what became popularly known as the “White Australia Policy” that excluded non-Europeans from Australia and lasted until 1974 when it was abolished by the reformist Whitlam Labor Government that was in turn abolished in a US CIA-backed Coup in 1975. The threat of Japanese invasion in WW2 reinforced this White Australian fear of the so-called “Yellow Peril”. This xenophobia persists despite expert evidence that the Japanese did not intend to invade Australia [9], that the key UK success in WW2 was getting the US to force Japan into WW2 and that both the UK and US had foreknowledge of the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack [4]. Indeed the US role in the rise of Nazism and the genesis of WW2 is murky – thus George Bush’s grandfather and US corporations were intimately involved in the rise of Hitler [10].

Unfortunately, despite the abolition of the White Australia Policy (1974), subsequent massive Asian immigration to Australia and an explosion of Australian trade and education links with Asia as outlined by “Disruptive Australia”, Mainstream, Australia clings to a false anti-Asian mythology and an increasingly dangerous and blinkered US lackey militarism. Doug Ferguson and Philipp Ivanov correctly state in their prefatory words that “Populism and intolerance are on the rise” in Australia (page 2, [1]) but it is not just due to the Far Right as exemplified by the anti-Indigenous, anti-Asian and anti-Muslim rhetoric of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (e.g. Hanson’s sentiments “We are being swamped by Asians” and “Stop Islamic immigration before it is too late”) . The Australian Mainstream media - dominated by the right-wing US Murdoch media empire that has captured 70% of Australian city newspaper readership - plug a US-loyalist, pro-war, pro-Zionist, anti-science, pro-fossil fuels, climate criminal line that not only endangers Australian-Asian relations but also endangers Australia, Asia and Humanity.

Australians will endlessly declare that they are not racist but can be legitimately described as “politically correct racist” (PC racist) because they back dangerous and deadly US wars (genocidal war being the ultimate in racism), deadly and dangerous differential global wealth, and deadly and dangerous greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. The world is existentially threatened by nuclear weapons (nuclear winter from a nuclear exchange will wipe out most of Humanity and terrestrial life but Australia opposes nuclear disarmament and is intimately involved in US nuclear terrorism) [11] , poverty (17 million people die from deprivation each year on Spaceship Earth with the neoliberal rich, including wealthy Australia, in charge of the flight deck) [8, 11], and man-made climate change from GHG pollution (0..4 million people die annually from climate change, 7 million die annually from air pollution, and 10 billion people will perish this century in a worsening climate genocide unless requisite action is taken [11, 12] – but Australia is among the world leaders in invading other countries, per capita GHG pollution, climate change inaction and exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat) [11-21].

Unfortunately the acute and existential threats of nuclear weapons, global poverty and climate change, while of major concern to the Australian Greens (10% electoral support) and the socialists (1% electoral support) , are largely ignored by Australian Mainstream journalists, politicians and academics. In vain did the late Malcolm Fraser (conservative Australian Liberal Party-National Party Coalition PM from 1975 to 1983) declare in relation to US threats to China:“Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia. To participate in a conflict with China is totally contrary to our interests” [22]. Economist, former leader of the Liberal Party and former leader of the Coalition Opposition, Dr John Hewson, is a world leader in demanding divestment from fossil fuels [23] but there is bipartisan Australian Lib-Lab (Coalition Government and Labor Opposition) support for unlimited exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat.

The key problem in Australia (and elsewhere in the West) is massive censorship, lack of effective free speech and Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission [24- 32]. A properly informed electorate is vital for democracy, but as correctly observed by French economist Professor Thomas Piketty, the steadily expanding wealth inequity in the Anglosphere is bad for democracy (money buys ignorance and votes) and for the economy (the poor cannot buy the goods they produce) [33-35]. Australian democracy has become kleptocracy, plutocracy, lobbyocracy, corporatocracy and dollarocracy in which Big Money buys people, parties, policies, public perception of reality, votes, more political power and more private profit. Only now that Big Money is increasingly perceived to be Chinese (rather than White Australian, White Zionist, White British or White American) has the PC racist White Australian Mainstream seem to have woken up to this core problem with the “Yellow Peril” being politically correctly re-jigged in 2017 as Chinese “foreign political donations”, “foreign ownership of key infrastructure” and “foreign ownership of Australian land”.

Of course Big Money per se – whether Chinese or American – is the fundamental problem. The neoliberal ideology, that dominates Australia and the West, demands maximal freedom for the smart and advantaged to exploit natural and human resources for maximal private profit, with an asserted trickle down of benefit to the poor and disadvantaged. However the worsening global resource depletion and worsening climate genocide must inevitably demand national and global social humanism (socialism, democratic socialism, ecosocialism, the welfare state) which demands maximizing human happiness, opportunity and dignity for everybody through evolving national and international social contracts [36, 37]. The mendacious Mainstream journalist, politician, corporate and academic presstitutes have made “socialism” a dirty word in the West but the mass support for the socialist policies of Bernie Sanders in the US and of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK suggests that large numbers of decent, informed people have finally seen through neoliberal lies [38, 39].

However victory for Humanity over the neoliberal One Percenters will not be easy. Thus Polya’s Second Law of Economics - based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics that states that the entropy (disinformation, disorder) of the universe increases to a maximum - asserts that deception about Cost of Production strives to a maximum (Polya’s First Law is that Price minus Cost of Production equals Profit and his Third Law states the obvious: no jobs on a dead planet) [40]. Neoliberal economics simply ignores the huge environmental and human cost of economic activity. Democracy ultimately means expression of the fundamental wishes of the people (e.g. survival of children, good health and education, long life expectancy, happiness, dignity and opportunity), and thus can include philosophically altruistic one-party states such as Cuba, China and Singapore that in this sense are more “democratic” than One Percenter-dominated, multi-party kleptocracy India e.g. annual avoidable deaths from deprivation are zero (0 ) in one-party China, Cuba and Singapore but total 4 million in ostensibly democratic India) [8]. The collective wishes of the people can overcome the wealth gap and homicidally greedy neoliberalism, with one ready mechanism being via an annual wealth tax that already applies in France and has applied as a 2.5% annual wealth tax (zakkat) in the Muslim World for 1,400 years [41].

Unfortunately, most of the above key matters are ignored by the Mainstream culture in considering Australia and Asia and are also ignored in “Disruptive Asia” that adheres to the dominant “aren’t we nice” paradigm. Finally, before considering the essays in detail, the most glaringly obvious, Elephant in the Room reality in relation to Asia and the racist, pro-war, US lackey, serial invader of Asian nations, Australia [13], is that there are 3,000 million Asians and 1,500 million Muslims between White Australia and Mother England, and, humanity aside, reason demands that Australians should be nice to them rather than invading them as a craven US lackey.

1. “Welcome “ by Doug Ferguson (Chairman, Asia Society Australia ) and Philipp Ivanov (CEO, Asia Society Australia ). This brief but well focussed introduction sets the tone and context of this timely and important assessment of “Australia in Asia”: “2017 marks the 20th anniversary of Asia Society Australia. It is a significant milestone and an opportunity to reflect on our achievements and the work ahead. Much has changed since our founders – [mining magnate] Hugh Morgan AC and [senior diplomat] Richard Woolcott AC - led the development of Asia Society’s Australian Centre. The share of the global GDP for developing and advanced Asian economies has grown from 25 per cent in 1997 to a projected 38 per cent in 2017. Australia’s total trade with Asia has nearly quadrupled and is now almost 63 per cent of all trade compared with 48 per cent. China’s trade with Australia alone has increased by 1500 per cent. In permanent immigration, Asia accounted for 33 per cent in 1997 and 47 per cent in 2016. Approximately 16 per cent of Australian students study abroad, and a third of them head to Asia, while in 1997 the number was negligible. Yet despite the progress we have made, there is still much to be done. Our investment in Asia continues to be disproportionally low and our trade lacks sectoral diversity. The teaching and learning of Asian languages has declined since 1997. Populism and intolerance are on the rise. Our Asian Australian community is underrepresented in the leadership of our institutions” (p2, [1]).

2. “Australia disrupted” by Philipp Ivanov (CEO, Asia Society Australia). Philipp Ivanov provides a succinct history of the post-WW2 Australian engagement with Asia, this successively involving development of massive trade with Japan, the Colombo Plan (Asian students coming to study at Australian universities), Australian recognition of China by the 1972-1975 reformist Whitlam Labor Government (1973), abolition of the White Australia Policy (1974),) massive Asian migration to Australia after the end of the Indio-China War (1975), burgeoning trade with China, and massive, fee-paying, overseas Asian student enrolment at Australian universities. Philipp Ivanov: “Australian society in 2017 also looks markedly different from 1956. Asian-born migrants now make up a third of the overseas-born population. Over the last two decades Australian education has been transformed by globally nomadic students – mainly from Asia – seeking education opportunities outside their high-pressure competitive societies. Australia now educates almost half a million international students, and almost ten per cent of all Chinese students abroad”. PM Bob Hawke wept over the students killed in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 ( known in China as the June Fourth Incident) and opened the doors to Chinese students to stay in Australia. At about the same time the Hawke Labor Government re-introduced university fees that had been abolished by the reformist Whitlam Labor Government. University education can and should be free (as now recognized by 24 nations) [42] but overseas students have been prepared to wear the huge financial rip-off of university fees by the promise of concomitant immigration to rich, democratic and domestically peaceful Australia. Heavily driven, Ponzi-style, by immigration and population growth, Australia has had a globally extraordinary 26 consecutive years of economic growth.

Philipp Ivanov: “By 2017, six of Australia’s top ten two-way trading partners were in Asia (excluding the US and New Zealand), with China leading the pack with a staggering trade value at $150 billion in 2015-16, representing almost a quarter of Australia’s total global trade. In the last three years, Australia has struck free trade deals with China, Japan and Korea, smashing tariffs and barriers and providing further incentives to business to unlock these markets. In 2015, seven of Australia’s ten highest-value countries for inbound tourists were in Asia, and Asian markets are expected to continue driving growth in tourism” (page 4, [1]). However Australia faces (a) the down turn in raw commodity prices and an end to the Mining Boom, (b) decline in conventional manufacturing, (c) relative decline in full-time employment, (d) a looming problem of the need for smart economic restructuring in the context of an ageing population, (e) a worsening climate emergency, and (f) China being the biggest trading partner of an Australia that is militarily tightly and cravenly allied with an America that has become dangerously anti-China and anti-Muslim, most blatantly under Trump (described as “barking mad” by Bill Shorten, the pro-US Labor Opposition leader).. Philipp Ivanov sensibly and critically, albeit diplomatically, concludes: “In the medium term, our focus should be on education and our capacity to understand Asia, harnessing the potential of our multicultural community and pursuing bold, creative and independent diplomacy” (page 6, [1]).

3. “Time for a Plan B on living with China” by Linda Jakobson (founder of China Matters). Linda Jakobson is concerned with the Australia-China trade versus Australia-US military alliance dichotomy especially under a Trump presidency: “We must

prepare for heightened US-China tensions. Trump antagonised China even before he took office. But equally importantly, Australia needs to invest time, money and know-how to increase the power of its voice in Beijing… The government in Canberra needs to prepare for the volatility of Trump’s presidency by exerting its efforts on China and every other consequential country in the region in a manner it has never done before” (page 12, [1]). However diplomatic exertion is simply not enough. Australia is presently disproportionately complicit in US and US Alliance nuclear terrorism via key electronic spying facilities such as Pine Gap, visits by nuclear-armed US warships, the basing of thousands of US Marines in Northern Australia, opposition to nuclear disarmament and support (second only to that of Trump America) for nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel. Given the existential threats to Humanity from nuclear weapons, poverty and climate change [11], Australia needs to urgently re-consider its long-held policies of (a) complicity in US nuclear terrorism and US wars, (b) meagre foreign aid (now 0.2% of Gross National Income versus Sweden’s 1.4%) [42, 43] and (c) its climate criminal position as a leading country for climate change inaction, per capita domestic GHG pollution and unlimited exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat [14, 15]. Unfortunately, such sensible, humane and concrete propositions are not publicly discussed in cowardly, craven, look-the-other-way, Zionist-subverted, US lackey, racist White Australia.

4. “No longer at the centre: Australia’s real relationship with Asia” by David Epstein (a former executive of Qantas, BHP Billiton, and Optus and an adviser to 3 Australian PMs). David Epstein delicately but correctly notes that the “recent economic growth in China and India could be described as a return to historic norms; a resurrection after an unusual period of relatively lower rankings in economic league tables” (page 14, [1]) . Before Western imperialism devastated India and China in the 18th and19th centuries, China and India led the world in economic production (circa 50% of global GDP) , civil administration, metallurgy and textile technology. The Awful Truth is that present economic resurgence of India and China has come as a result of the post-WW2 liberation from 2 centuries of crippling subjugation by the West. Thus India suffered 2 centuries of genocidal British rule in which avoidable deaths in India from British-imposed deprivation in the period 1757-1947 totalled 1.8 billion, an Indian Holocaust and an Indian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention. Using census and other estimates of Indian population in these periods, post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths) from deprivation totalled 0.6 billion, 1757-1837; 0.5 billion, 1837-1901 under Queen Victoria; and 0.4 billion in 1901-1947; this being 1.5 billion in total and 1.8 billion victims if the carnage in the various royalty-ruled Indian British Protectorate States are included [44]. The annual avoidable death as a percentage of population was a genocidal 2.4% in the 1940s under the British but fell post-Independence to 0.4% by 2003 [4, 8, 44]. However in one-party state China annual avoidable death as a percentage of population is zero (0) as compared to 0.4% today in ostensible democracy India, this corresponding to about 5 million avoidable deaths from deprivation annually in the world’s biggest democracy, One Percenter-dominated kleptocracy India, as compared to zero (0) in Communist Party-ruled but pluralist China (Economics Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen has noted this appalling India versus China discrepancy [45]).

David Epstein dismisses “Australia’s misguided Asian exceptionalism” and asserts that Australia “does not own a unique place on the doorstep of Asia”, noting that Berlin is actually closer to Beijing than is Sydney. Epstein draws attention to “Australia’s prevalent inattention to Indonesia” which he incisively attributes to “money”: “The reality of Australia’s prevalent inattention to Indonesia may not be the mystery Evans [former Australian Foreign Minister and proponent of the obscene R2P justification for US Alliance invasion of other countries] ponders. It seems in the end, money talks, or at least the more apparent riches to be had in shipping resources, and now increasing amounts of energy, to North Asia. We are still a little short-sighted. Australian officials have estimated that by 2050, four of the five largest economies will be in Asia: China, India, Japan, and Indonesia. The fifth will remain the US. Despite geographic proximity to South East Asia, Australia cannot claim any particular advantage, other than as a resource and energy supplier, over other advanced western economies when it comes to insights or entree into wider Asia” (page 16, [1]). Epstein cogently concludes: “Without sustained and dramatic improvement in productivity, the coming decade is likely to see much less growth in living standards than Australians have come to expect… This could create a difficult scenario for the average middle-class Australian to contemplate. Asian societies are becoming wealthier, western economies are treading water and becoming more unequal, while our middle-class are feeling more insecure and being asked to become more productive´ (pages 16-17, [1]). Not mentioned in this essay but surely significant is US lackey Australia’s ferocious and genocidally violent anti-Arab anti-Semitism as a fanatical partner in the US War on Muslims aka the US War on Terror (32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity) [30, 46]) – yet the Muslim population in China, India and Indonesia is 138 million out of 1,378 million (China), 266 million out of 1,329 million (India) and 228 million out of 259 million (Indonesia) [47]. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” [49] crucially involves being nice to them.

5. “An Asia policy for Australia in the Trump era” by Richard Woolcott (former Secretary of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, eminent ambassador and Founding Director of Asia Society Australia). Richard Woolcott commences: “Australia must pursue more balanced and appropriate defence, security, trade and immigration policies that are linked to its own real national interests, rather than the interests of any political parties of the moment – Australian or foreign” (page 18, [1]) , an obvious statement but also an extraordinary implicit admission of foreign political interference in Australia and especially so in the context of the Trump era. Richard Woolcott continues in the light of potentially apocalyptic East Asia tensions: “A US role in the Asian and South West Pacific region, which genuinely acknowledges China’s right to have substantial influence in an area of major interest to it – the South China Sea – is needed. But this approach continues to be opposed by several of our political leaders, whose priority remains support for US policy, even when it was failing. Australia should not exaggerate a Chinese threat to the South China Sea region, including the Spratly and Paracel lslands, and we should avoid any provocative activities there. In the present debate in Australia, some assume that we have no option but to support continuing American supremacy in Asia, against a rising Chinese hegemony. This is a simplistic approach which has been challenged by former prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke, by the late Malcolm Fraser, and by many prominent academics” (page 19, [1]).

Australian hero Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks has revealed details of a secret exchange between then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which he describes himself as a ''brutal realist on China'', this brutal realism involving ''integrating China effectively into the international community and allowing it to demonstrate greater responsibility, all while also preparing to deploy force [i.e. war] if everything goes wrong'' [50]. WikiLeaks also released a cable, classified as confidential and not to be disclosed outside the US government, that gave the following summary of remarks made by Australian Ambassador to the US and former Labor Opposition leader, Kim Beazley, in a meeting in 2006 with the then US ambassador, Robert McCallum: ''In the event of a war between the United States and China, Australia would have absolutely no alternative but to line up militarily beside the US. Otherwise the [ANZUS] alliance would be effectively dead and buried, something that Australia could never afford to see happen'' [51]. The late Malcolm Fraser, former conservative PM of Australia, commented on Beazley’s appalling assurance: “The idea that we should participate in such a conflict [with China] is unconscionable and totally contrary to Australia's interests and indeed to Australian security… We don't have to choose between America and China, but America needs to understand that on several issues Australia's national objectives will not coincide with hers… But in the middle of the 1950s, only a year or two after the [Australia, New Zealand and US] ANZUS treaty had been signed, then Australian prime minister Robert Menzies told the US that if it went to war with China over Taiwan, Australia would not be part of it. Menzies had a longer-term understanding of the necessity of Australia's future than has been shown by any current leaders. The US President cannot go to war unless both houses of Congress have passed an appropriate resolution under their war powers. It is time Australia adopted the same practice” [22].

Re foreign political influence in Australia that is currently the subject of Sinophobic speculative hysteria, one notes that Malcolm Fraser became Australian PM after a US CIA-backed Coup removed Labor PM Gough Whitlam in 1975. Labor leader Mark Latham was effectively vetoed in the 2004 elections by the US Ambassador Schieffer (“Shiefferbrains” according to Mark Latham in his memoirs [61]). Australia has been horribly perverted and subverted by racist Zionists – agents of nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, Australia-violating Apartheid Israel - with an evidently insufficiently pro-Zionist PM Kevin Rudd being replaced as PM in a US-approved, Mining Corporation-backed and pro-Zionist-led Coup in June 2010 [52-58].

6. “Asia’s democratic dividend is hard to bank” by Greg Earl (national affairs editor of the respected Australian Financial Review). Greg Earl raises the key issue of handling political culture differences between parliamentary democracy Australia and its Asian neighbours that have various degrees of authoritarianism from military dictatorship (Thailand) and one-party states (Vietnam and China) to parliamentary democracies with various degrees of purity, populism, rule-of-law, human rights observance, subservience to the US, corruption and nepotism. Greg Earl concludes: “Unofficial interchanges between broad groups of non-government figures from Australia and individual regional countries are a modest but practical way to increase communication and understanding of social trends which can impact on diplomatic relationships. Australians need a deeper understanding of the cultural, political and economic forces at play in emerging Asian societies to avoid knee-jerk reactions which undermine our ability to co-exist in the longer term with neighbours that are generally getting richer and more powerful” (page 24, [1]).

One notes that the reformist Whitlam Government was essentially complicit in the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor that led to US-backed military dictator Suharto’s East Timor Genocide (200,000 East Timorese killed out of a population of 600,000) [8]. Human rights activists supportive of East Timorese independence have been critical of former Australian Labor PM Paul Keating’s friendship with the bloody, US-backed Indonesian dictator Suharto [62] who was responsible for the massacre of Chinese, socialists and progressive elements in 1965 (0.5 million killed, 0.5 million imprisoned) , the East Timor Genocide (0.2 million killed) and an Indonesian Holocaust from massive corruption-based deprivation (33 million Indonesian avoidable deaths from deprivation under Suharto) [8, 63]. Conversely, parliamentary democracy Australia is among world leaders in invasion of other countries, climate change inaction and per capita GHG pollution [14-21], whereas China has only invaded 2 countries ever (compared to Australia 85) [13] and it is expertly argued by Professor Jorgen Randers (a co-author of the seminal 1972 “The Limits to Growth”) [64] that the only hope for Humanity may lie in top-down action by one-party China on the worsening climate emergency, with requisite action by conventional democracies hamstrung by short-term political expediency [65].

7. “Thinking outside the box with India” by David Brewster (senior research fellow, National Security College, Australian National University). David Brewster makes some very sensible comments about the limited economic engagement of Australia with India: “In many ways Australia and India are the odd couple of the Indian Ocean region. For decades, divergent geopolitical perspectives, ideological differences and weak economic links led them to look past each other. Although history gave the two countries a shared language, similar civil and political institutions and, of course, a love of cricket, this history often seemed to divide them as much as bring them together. But major changes in our region – the emergence of India as a major economy and military power and the rise of China – are bringing the two countries together more than ever before…. Although perspectives are slowly changing, many in Delhi still see Australia as a country that is too small, too wedded to the US alliance and too economically dependent on China to be a priority strategic partner for India. For their part, many in Canberra continue to see India as a country strong on rhetoric and too weak on execution to be a dependable regional partner for Australia… India, in particular, does not yet consider Australia to be an important defence partner in comparison to major partners such as the United States, Japan, Russia, Israel and France… Bilateral trade with India grew quickly in the first decade of this century, reaching around A$19 billion in 2008, but growth has since stalled, totalling only A$20 billion in 2015 (which compares with A$150 billion in Australia’s bilateral trade with China in the same year)… The biggest reason for lack of progress on a comprehensive trade agreement is that, unlike Australia, Indian decision-makers have simply not drunk the Kool-Aid of free trade. We in Australia sometimes tend to forget that free trade is not uncritically accepted as a good thing in every corner of the globe… In short, Australia may need to approach its economic relationship with India quite differently from other Asian economic partners. Australia will need to be more innovative in thinking about how to best use some of its comparative advantages with India, including relying more on services, technology and Australia’s large and well educated Indian community. Australian businesses must also be more prepared to operate in what may be a relatively difficult and risky environment” (pages 25-28, [1]).

There is a large, growing and well educated Indian community in Australia that was boosted by refugees from the 1987 bloodless Coup in Fiji [66, 67] (were the US and its lackey and South Pacific Sheriff, Australia, complicit in this racist violation? [68]), business migration and the tertiary education-immigration nexus. Indians and Chinese are disproportionately well represented in the huge growth “industry” that is the Australian health system, from carers and nurses in Aged Care homes to hospital staff and medical specialists. The White Australia Policy was abolished in 1974 but the influx of Colombo Plan university students meant a growing slippage in this regard a decade earlier.

However extremely well hidden from Australian perception is White Australia’s involvement as a UK lackey in Britain’s 2 century Indian Holocaust involving 1,800 million untimely Indian deaths from deprivation [44] and culminating in the 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons (Australia was complicit in this “forgotten holocaust” through withholding grain in its huge wartime stores from starving India) [3-5, 8, 44, 45]. Australia is a world leader in coal exports and presently coal burning pollutants kill about 1.1 million Indians each year [69-71]. It is estimated that pollutants from the burning of coal from the Australia-approved proposed Indian Adani coal mine in Australia will kill about 35,000 Indians each year and 1.4 million over the lifetime of the mine [72]. However a worsening Climate Genocide, in which Australia is disproportionately complicit, is set to kill 10 billion people this century including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis [12]. By “India” Western economists and political scientists really mean the homicidally greedy neoliberal One Percenters running kleptocracy India in which 4 million ordinary Indians die avoidably from deprivation each year [8]. The Indian Establishment is aware of the worsening Climate Genocide which is why it has constructed the huge wall enclosing global warming-impacted Bangladesh and designed to keep out scores of millions of Bangladeshi climate refugees [73]. The visit of pro-Apartheid Indian PM Modi to nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel is seen as a profound regression by progressive Indian editor Binu Mathew : “In Modi’s embrace of Netanyahu we see the marriage of two evil ideologies, Hindutva and Zionism. Israel with its tried and tested military technologies and tactics to subdue the freedom strugglers of Palestine, will be ever ready to pass on their know how to Modi. Muslims, dalits and other minority groups in India, beware of this deadly embrace” [74]. However these appalling past and present realities are air-brushed from public discussion and public perception in India and abroad [4]. Outstanding Indian writer Arundhati Roy has stated “The ultimate privilege of the élite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience” [75].

8. “How Japan and Australia can fill Asia’s security gap” by Tomohiko Satake (a senior research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies, Tokyo, Japan). Tomohiko Satake notes that “In Australia, there has already been growing anti-

America or anti-alliance feelings since the Trump victory. A number of Australian intellectuals – not only liberals or alliance sceptics, but also pro-alliance conservatives – advocate that Australia should keep its distance from the US under the Trump administration or at least seek a more independent foreign and defence posture” and observes that it is too early to conclude that a strong US-Japan alliance will continue due to the good personal relationship between two leaders [Abe and Trump]. Japan’s optimism could quickly decline once it sees any symptom of changes in US Asia policy under the Trump administration. Specifically, there remain deep concerns in the Japanese policy community that the Trump administration could make a deal with China, such as allowing Chinese reclamation of artificial islands in the South China Sea in exchange for decreased Chinese exports to the US” (page 30, [1]). Tomohiko Satake concludes that “Finally, both Japan and Australia should seek to expand their cooperation with other regional like-minded democracies, especially South Korea and India. Such cooperation is useful not only to counterbalance against the growing Chinese influence, but to gain greater leverage to collectively influence on US policy to Asia. It is also important to prepare for and mitigate the impact of any future “strategic shocks”, including a sudden change of the US policy to the region. Japan and Australia can be the centre of such a network of regional cooperation” (page 32, [1]).

As a present example of this dangerous uncertainty is the Trump threat to apply economic sanctions against China if it does not economically cripple North Korea that reportedly has 4 nuclear bombs and has just tested what in reality may be an intermediate range ballistic missile rather than as claimed an intercontinental ballistic missile (genocidal Apartheid Israel reportedly has up to 400 nuclear bombs as well as multiple delivery systems of intermediate-range ballistic missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, aircraft, and submarine-launched cruise missiles) [11]. This led the Deputy PM of Australia, Barnaby Joyce, to express “sympathy” for this US position, notwithstanding the reality that China is Australia’s biggest trading partner. The Labor Opposition Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, Penny Wong, described Joyce’s dangerously stupid comments as “utterly irresponsible” and stated: “What he needs to recognise is that the empty threats he makes would only serve to punish and harm Australian businesses, Australian exporters, including agriculture, and damage Australian jobs” [76].

9. “Making our own luck” by Andrew Parker (Partner, Asia Practice Leader at world-leading Price Waterhouse Cooper and an Asia Society Advisory Council member). Andrew Parker sensibly warns that “Australia has done tremendously well over the last 25 years exporting our commodities to Asia. Our agricultural products and mineral resources have benefitted from economic growth in the region and fed a rapidly growing middle class. But how long will the good times last? When, exactly, will the “lucky country” run out of luck? Some say it started with the end of the resources investment boom; others believe it began when productivity growth started to slow in the early 2000s” (page 33, [1]). Australia is huge on resources but small on development capital. Australia has been happy with huge historical UK, US and European investment but Chinese investment has elicited paranoia reminiscent of the traditional “Yellow Peril” xenophobia of White Australia. Andrew Parker critically observes that “Despite reassurances behind closed doors, Chinese investors must be wondering how welcome they are in Australia. Almost every major transaction involving China in the past year – Ausgrid, Port of Darwin, S. Kidman & Co, Van Diemans Land – has ignited a slew of poorly informed and inflammatory commentary, and led to understandable confusion and disappointment among Chinese investors. Nothing kills investment quicker than uncertainty or inconsistency. Wherever there’s a cloud over the rules, we also leave ourselves wide open to accusations of xenophobia and populism, whether warranted or not.” Andrew Parker concludes: “Our world is changing, and Australia needs to respond now if it wants to be a positive part of that change. The next 25 years could be spectacular for our country, but we can’t take that for granted. We need to ask ourselves: are we satisfied with the status quo; are we prepared to let this opportunity pass us by?” (page 36, [1]).

10. “Connect don’t compete with a rising region” by Martijn Blanken (Group Managing Director, Global Enterprise and Services at Australian telecommunications giant Telstra). Martijn Blankens wants a high technology future for Australia with this involving Australia joining with the Asian “technology ecosystem” and training a sophisticated workforce (especially in relation to Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)). A key part of this will involve more sophisticated trade negotiations that include “tackling behind-the-border trade barriers like licensing and regulatory processes in areas like technology services, telecommunications and IT” (page 40, [1]). As discussed elsewhere in this review, every nation needs a complement of scientific and scholarly experts but circa 20-year old university students should not have to pay for it. All education can and should be free and free university education (transiently available in Australia under the reformist Whitlam Labor Government) is now available in 24 countries [77]. High technology has made free university education available to all capable of undertaking it and it is extraordinary that Australia continues to reject this in the face of an inevitably high technology future. This option – a key policy of both Democratic presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders in the US and Labor Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn in the UK – is simply off the table for Mainstream public discussion in neoliberal, look-the-other-way Australia.

11. China’s innovative nation and what it means for Australia” by Bruce McKern (corporate advisor on innovation and strategy and a Professor in the UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney). Bruce McKern states that the huge rise of the Chinese economy in recent decades “is in large measure attributable to the very clear ambition of China’s government following its opening up in the late 1970s, the unleashed energy and drive of its private-sector companies and the vast unfulfilled market demands of the Chinese people. A key priority of the Chinese government throughout this transformation has been creating an innovation ecosystem” with innovation being defined as “creation of a commercially useful product, process, service or business model that serves human needs in a new or improved way” (pages 42-43, [1]). Crucially, Mc Kern observes that “Manufacturing in Australia has steadily declined, to 6.5 per cent of GDP in 2015 with a heavy toll on companies and workers. Given our relatively high labour costs, a focus on high-tech manufacturing is the only way the sector could enjoy a renaissance. The goal should not be to bring back labour-intensive industries, but to build advanced manufacturing through innovation… Areas for focus should obviously be based on intellectual property rather than unskilled labour. An example where Australian firms are already active is engineering and architectural consulting. Local firms also have experience in agriculture, food safety, managing hospitals and medical systems and specialised fields of health, such as blood, plasma and vaccines. These are all priorities for China” (pages 45-46, [1]). As discussed above in section #10 , high technology innovation must surely include high technology-facilitated, free university education [77].

12. “Full house: how property pressures impact intercultural relations” by Dallas Rogers (University of Sydney), Jacqueline Nelson (University of Technology Sydney) and Alexandra Wong (Western Sydney University). These authors explore the perception of the Australian public that foreign investment in property, especially Chinese, is driving up housing prices. After WW2 the widely-realized dream of ordinary Australians was to own their own home but soaring prices mean that this dream now requires a well-paid job and/or the generosity of rich parents. However foreign investment in housing will increase housing stock (and hence tend to lower prices) and a major source of the house price rise is so-called negative gearing and generous associated capital gains rules whereby prosperous Australians can invest in rentable housing, write off expenses against their taxable income and benefit from the increasing value of their asset. Whereas the only (and very remote) hope of poor Australians to become a millionaire is via massively popular lotteries, for even modestly prosperous Australians, negative gearing can lead to the equivalent of winning a $1 million lottery 3 times in their working lives. The authors point to the ugly history of White Australian anti-Chinese sentiment (for a succinct account see [4]) that is presently being exploited by racist populists like the One Nation party which` profoundly offended many by talk of “Asian invasion” and “We are being swamped by Asians”. The anti-Asian and anti-Muslim One Nation now has an appalling 10% electoral support. Bipartisan political reaction by the Lib-Labs (conservative Liberal Party-National Party Coalition and Labor) has involved measures to confine foreign investment to new homes and apartments and heavy fines for not renting rentable accommodation. The authors point out that “[over] 8 per cent of Australia’s population was born in Asia. This is a much higher percentage than in other Anglophone countries such as the US (4 per cent) and the UK (2 per cent)… Despite and at times in the face of the periodic revival of a marginal but nonetheless familiar troupe of anti-Asian “invasion” or “takeover” discourses, significant migration from China occurred from the early 2000s. Between 2001 and 2011 182,836 or 57.3 per cent of all China-born immigrants came to Australia, and in 2014 there were 447,370 China-born people living in Australia, accounting for 1.9 per cent of the country’s total population. Australia’s skilled migration and foreign student programmes were important drivers with many Chinese international students gaining permanent residency in Australia following their tertiary studies” {pages 48-49, [1]).

13. “Don’t look back, Asian Studies has a positive future” by Kent Anderson (Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Community & Engagement), The University of Western Australia). Kent Anderson states that “Asian Studies is not just Asian languages, but I use this as a proxy for the overall health of the discipline and also a marker for a deep knowledge of Asia. Over the past 5 years, many university language programs have been threatened (La Trobe, Curtin, Western Sydney and the Australian National University) or closed (Indonesian at UNSW and all language programs at University of Canberra). The situation is equally bad in the school’s pipeline where the most recent measure has only 6 per cent of Year 12 students currently studying an Asian language and spot surveys suggest that it is declining” (page 52, [1]). Kent Anderson makes out a case for Asian Studies being financially profitable for fee-charging institutions and concludes: “The case for the importance of Australia’s engagement with Asia remains overwhelmingly convincing. By 2030, two-thirds of the world’s population will be in Asia. By 2030, five of the top ten economies will be in Asia. And, even today, Asia remains the most vibrant and dynamic region in the world in the face of an ageing and stagnating Europe and North America. In an environment where we have faced some setbacks, I remain positive that we can leverage the good to build a relevant and rich Asian Studies for tomorrow” (page 55, [1]). Asian studies are very important for an Australia engaging with Asia as enunciated by Asia Society CEO Philipp Ivanov (who speaks Chinese, Russian and English): “In the medium term, our focus should be on education and our capacity to understand Asia, harnessing the potential of our multicultural community and pursuing bold, creative and independent diplomacy” (page 6, [1]). However Kent Anderson’s argument for Asian Studies based on financial profit for universities is misplaced - as mentioned above in sections #2, #10 and #11, every nation needs a complement of scientific and scholarly experts but circa 20-year old university students should not have to pay for it. University education can and should be free, and indeed is presently free in 24 countries [77].

14. “Embracing Asia starts at home” by Tim Soutphommasane (Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission). Tim Soutphommasane has raised the ire of the intrinsically xenophobic Right in Australia as Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission, ire that is no doubt compounded by his non-European and Asian ethnicity in a country that only stopped massacring Indigenous Australians 90 years ago (i.e. within living memory), only started counting its Indigenous subjects as Australians 50 years ago and only abandoned the White Australia Policy a mere 33 years ago. Tim Soutphommasane: “Most Australians understand that the fortunes of their society are tied to those of Asia. This is more than just about trade and economics. It is the reality of multicultural Australia that about 10 per cent of our society have Asian backgrounds; China and India now represent the two largest source countries for immigrants. In one sense, Asia is not something that resides outside Australia – it is also something that exists within it” (page 56, [1]). He is blunt in his assessment: “It is easy to be overly optimistic, however, about the depth of Australia’s engagement with Asia. Australia’s Asia literacy remains alarmingly under-developed. Part of the reason for our lack of Asia literacy is that our framing of regional engagement is so nakedly mercantilist. Where once Australians may have spoken in hysterical terms about the teeming yellow hordes, we now endlessly marvel at the billions-strong middle class emerging in Asia. People talk about how we can maximise the “rent” from our relationships with the region, of how we can capitalise on Asian growth. We have adopted an instrumental mindset towards Asia. We should not be surprised if we have failed in the area of Asia literacy. Cultural engagement cannot be sustained by economic ambition alone. If Australia is to embrace its Asianisation, it must be thoroughly cultural in nature. We must be willing not just to see Asian neighbours as economic partners, but also be open to learning from them” (page 59, [1]).

15. “Cultural diversity in politics and media will create national prosperity” by Dai Le (founder of DAWN) and Katie Calvey (a director of DAWN). These authors commence their essay with some hard truths: “Australia’s culturally diverse population is drawn from more than 300 ancestries and is visible in everyday life. This is why Australia is often lauded by its political leaders and commentators as one of the most successful and harmonious multicultural nations in the world. While there is much truth to that statement considering all of Australia’s successes made in the context of its diverse population, this confident veneer also disguises an inconvenient truth. As soon as one views the leadership circles of many major institutions in Australia, the rich tapestry of cultures and ethnicities of representation suddenly disappears. Instead, the leaders of Australia continue to be dominated by people, mostly men, of Anglo-Celtic background. The Australian Human Rights Commission identifies that no more than five per cent of leaders across Australian businesses, politics, government and civil society are people from non-Anglo-Celtic or European background. This contradiction is notably acute in Australia’s most public and visible institutions: politics and the media” (page s 60-61, [1]). This Anglo-Celtic male dominance can be referred to by feminists as “the corporate boy’s club”, and in context of academic and societal censorship (an entrenched problem in look-the-other-way Australia) I have described these dominant men as Pacmen (Prosperous Anglo-Celtic Men” [32] but 50 years ago they would have been Prosperous Protestant Anglo-Celtic Men. The authors conclude that “For the vital debate to mature and be inclusive, our political and mainstream institutions must reflect the population that we have. Just as the gender conversation has shifted the dial for representation of women in leadership and has helped shape policies that impact women’s lives, so too can a conversation on culturally diverse leadership help innovate Australia’s policies in areas such as multiculturalism and strategic priorities in the Asian Century” (page 63, [1]).

16. “Read this: Chinese language media is part of the story” by Wanning Sun (Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Technology Sydney). “Among the various Asian diasporic communities in Australia, Chinese-speaking migrant communities present a distinct set of challenges and opportunities to Australia’s political, economic, social, and foreign relations agenda. For many years, Australia’s Chinese communities have been the most diverse and complex in terms of dialect, linguistic competence, place of origin, history of migration, political allegiance, and socioeconomic status. Now the growing scale and influence of the local Chinese language media is posing challenges to how the Australian government (and the mainstream media) respond to the country’s Chinese diaspora... In Australia, as elsewhere, China’s state media have made significant inroads into the space of Chinese-language media over the past few years” (pages 64-65, [1]). This raises concerns of so-called “China soft power” in the context of Trump American Sinophobia with knee-jerk US lackey Australian support coupled with rising populist xenophobia, notwithstanding China being Australia’s largest trading partner. Professor Wanning Sun: “It is this paradoxical situation – Australia’s economic dependence on China, hand-in-hand with its perception that China’s political, ideological, and cultural values are incompatible with Australia’s – that explains the prevailing feelings of fear and anxiety that many Australians have about China… Most worrying of all is the tendency, evidenced in some recent media reports, to accuse Chinese migrants of being agents of influence on behalf of the Chinese government, thereby conflating the Chinese government with the Chinese people, and Chinese citizens with diasporic Chinese communities” (pages 65-66, [1]). The long-suffering Australian Muslims already legitimately ask “Are we the new Jews?” Will the Chinese be next? One hopes that there will not be a resurgence of Mainstream Australian Sinophobia as the major party Lib-Labs (Coalition and Labor) compete for the votes of disaffected racist xenophobes.

17. “Fast train coming: what we can learn from Asia” by James Rosenwax (Market Sector Director for Cities at AECOM, a major engineering corporation). James Rosenwax raises some key areas in which Australia and China can share positive and negative experiences for their benefit e.g. massive China High Speed Rail (HSP) and other massive infrastructure; tourism; the $19 billion annual Australian education exports; Australia being the third most obese country in the world; aging populations and health care in both countries; and economic agility. Re the $19 billion in annual Australian education exports one must reiterate the argument presented in sections #2 , #10, #11 and #13 that tertiary education and indeed all education can and must be free [77].

With a one-party system capable of resolute top-down action for the general good, China made a huge mistake by following the West in permitting deadly cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 1 million Chinese die smoking-related deaths each year and 200 million are set to die thus this century [79]. Over 0.3 million Chinese die alcohol-related deaths each year [80]. China may view its air pollution as a necessary temporary imposition (1.1 million Chinese die annually from ambient air pollution [18]) but leads the world in renewable energy uptake and has an annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution in tonnes CO2-equivalent per person per year of 7.4 (as compared to the world average of 8.9 and climate criminal Australia’s Domestic 52.9 and Domestic plus Exported 116) [14, 15]. Ambient particulate matter pollution causes the following annual deaths (in thousands): China 1,108.1 , India 1,090.4, USA 88.4, Indonesia 78.6, Brazil 52.3, Pakistan 135.1, Nigeria 50.9, Bangladesh 122.4, Russia 136.9, Japan 60.6 [18, 81]. China’s mistake of permitting the fossil fuel-powered private car will soon be nullified by the impending mass uptake in the next decade of the rentable, electric, and driverless car.

18. “Digging deep into Asia for new ways to design cities” by John Endicott (a Fellow of major engineering corporation AECOM). John Endicott provides a fascinating account of massive underground developments in burgeoning Asian cities that are potentially applicable to highly (75%) urban Australia: “Cities are to be enjoyed. Surely doubling a city should also double the amenities, including open space? City planners in Asia have already realised that there are myriad fantastic opportunities underground. Many facilities can be put below ground, freeing above ground space for activities that really need the sky above them. Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo have extensive occupied underground space. People use the space to commute, to work, to eat, to go shopping, to be entertained, to enjoy life – without giving a thought as to whether they are below or above ground” (page 74, [1]). John Endicott concludes: “The lead time for any large development can be decades. Planning must be in place now for what will be needed later. Above all, cities should prioritise below ground development wherever feasible in order to preserve ground level space for other uses” (page 76, [1]).

19. “Making Asia fit for new growth” by Anushka Patel (a cardiologist, a professor of medicine at Sydney University and chief scientist at the George Institute for Global Health). Anushka Patel makes the important point of some major negative health consequences of increasing prosperity in Asia: “Traditionally, the health crises of developing countries have been driven by maternal and child mortality, as well as communicable diseases. Malaria, tuberculosis, and those caused by unclean water, such as cholera and typhoid, are enormous challenges. And new infectious disease threats like Zika and bird flu add additional strain… The world’s attention has rightly been focused on fighting communicable diseases. But demographic, environmental and socioeconomic changes throughout Asia, due to rapid economic growth, are driving a new normal of non-communicable diseases (NCDs): especially heart disease and stroke, chronic lung diseases, diabetes, and mental illness, requiring immediate attention. According to the World Health Organization, eight in 10 NCD deaths now occur in LMICs [Low to Medium Income Countries]” (page 78, [1]). However while Anushka Patel mentions that “Australia has led the world in public health policy for tobacco and is following up with action on food. Poor diet now kills more people than anything else in the world” (page 79, [1]), what is not mentioned is the huge morbidity and mortality in rich and poor Asian countries (including Australia) due to air pollution, smoking, and alcohol as outlined for China in section #18 above.

These preventable deaths occurring in rich, Developed countries can be exampled by those in rich Australia where 85,000 Australians die preventably each year from various causes. In contrast to only 3 jihadi terrorism deaths ever in Australia, 85,000 Australians die preventably each year from a variety of causes, the breakdown (involving some overlaps) including (1) 26,000 annual Australian deaths from adverse hospital events, (2) 17,000 obesity-related Australian deaths, (3) 15,500 smoking-related Australian deaths, (4) 10,000 carbon burning pollution-derived Australian deaths, (5). 4,000 avoidable Indigenous Australian deaths, (6). 5,600 Australians die alcohol-related deaths, (7) 2,100 Australian suicides, (8) 1,400 Australian road deaths, (9) 630 Australian opiate drug-related deaths with 570 linked to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry, and (10) 300 Australian homicides (80 being of women killed domestically) [82-85]. However the Australian Government commits about $10 billion each year (budgeted cost plus long-term accrual cost) to the Zionist-promoted US War on Terror and killing millions of Muslims (32 million Muslim deaths so far from violence, 5 million, or from deprivation, 27 million, in 20 Asian and African countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity in 2001) [30] , this fiscal perversion being inescapably causally linked to 85,000 Australians dying preventably each year – helping to actively or passively kill 32 million Muslims abroad since 2001 instead of trying to avoid 1.4 million Australian preventable deaths in the same period. China has a population of 1, 410 million and an annual per capita income of $8,100 as compared to Australia’s population of 24.5 million and an annual per capita GDP of $51,000 [86, 87]. Assuming China “catches up” with Australia in terms of affluence and fiscal perversion one could estimate 85,000 pa x 1,410 million/ 24.1 million = 5.0 million preventable Chinese deaths annually, noting that already each year 1.1 million Chinese die from ambient air pollution, 1 million die smoking-related deaths and 0.3 million die from alcohol-related causes (see section #17 above).

Further, what is not mentioned in the essay (nor indeed effectively by the Western Mainstream in general) are avoidable deaths (avoidable mortality, excess death, excess mortality, untimely death, premature death, deaths that should not happen) due to deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease. Avoidable death for a country can be measured from UN data as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics. Avoidable deaths as a percentage of population is about 0.0% for North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, China, Japan and South Korea, but is a shocking 1.0% for non-Arab Africa, 0.4% for South Asia, 0.4% for India and 0.3% for South East Asia [8]. Thus on this basis, essentially zero (0) Chinese die avoidably each year from deprivation whereas about 5 million Indians die thus each year [8] (for expert comments on this deadly China versus India discrepancy by Economics Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen see [45]).

20. “From food bowl to health food store” by Dermot O’Gorman (WWF-Australia chief executive officer). It was predicted 2 decades ago that a burgeoning China would end up seriously competing with the world for food and other resources [ 88]. Dermot O’Gorman of the World Wildlife Fund Australia presents some stark numbers: “Food production currently uses 40 per cent of global land area, 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water, generates 20 per cent of greenhouse gasses and uses 30 per cent of global energy. This is even more alarming when we consider that, with a projected population of more than 9 billion by 2050, the world will need to produce 70 per cent more food than we do today. Further, the rapid emergence of middle-classes, especially across Asia, is accompanied by an increasing demand for resource-intensive animal protein… For a brief period, some Australian political and business leaders looked at Asia’s economic growth as an opportunity for Australia to become the “food bowl” of Asia. This idea promised new economic opportunity, particularly for Australia’s north. However, it was dismissed by all but its most fierce advocates when it was rightly pointed out that even if we doubled our food production, we still wouldn’t be able to feed half of Indonesia’s current population [of about 260 million] (page 82, [1]). Dermot O’Gorman of the World Wildlife Fund reports a presently commenced, very profitable but obscene “let them eat cake” approach adopted by dog-in-the-manger White Australia: “Increasingly, Australian politicians, businesses and farmers are starting to position Australia instead as Asia’s delicatessen, recognising the opportunity for innovative producers to provide high quality, value-added, specialty food to Asia’s discerning middle classes… perhaps it is more apt to see this as an opportunity to position Australia as the region’s healthy food store…. Some Australian companies, like Blackmores, have embraced this opportunity, becoming the leading health brand in Thailand and China now accounting for a third of their market. It is notable that Blackmores is also ensuring that its products support a healthy environment, partnering with WWF to safeguard the sustainability of its seafood supplies and supporting marine conservation projects throughout the region” (page 82, [1]).

Some key concerns must be stated here:

(i) Properly assessed, annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions presently total 64 billion tonnes CO2-equivalent with methanogenic livestock production contributing over 50%. With annual emissions of CO2 per se from industry at a record high, and with Humanity and the Biosphere existentially threatened by the Methane Bomb of the warming Arctic in coming decades, we must all urgently adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet to help save the Planet [14, 15, 89, 90].

(ii) In between the current profligacy and a universal vegan diet there is a middle way based on the notion that some meats have less environmental and social impact than others. Thus consider the following conversion efficiencies (kg grain to produce 1 kg gain in live weight): herbivorous farmed fish (e.g. carp, tilapia, catfish; less than 2), chicken (2), pork (4), and beef (7) [91]. Eating meat in a hungry world is an obscenity that matches the “food for fuel” Biofuel Genocide obscenity [92].

(iii) Annual per capita meat consumption (in kg per person per year) [93] very roughly correlates with national annual per capita income [87, 89]. The starving, malnourished or hungry billions cannot afford meat. The profligate eaters of methanogenically-produced meat are complementing the Methane Bomb threat of the thawing Arctic [94-98].

(iv) Some vitamin supplements have proven benefits e.g. folic acid supplements to minimize occurrence of babies with spinal bifida, and vitamin D for mostly in-doors-dwelling nursing home residents. Health food supplements that do not have a rigorously proven health benefit are a waste of money. Thus widely used multi-vitamin supplements can be seen as simply a way of generating very expensive urine.

(v) My huge, 860-page, encyclopaedic book “The Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” [99] concludes with a warning: “Herbal medicine still represent a major therapeutic resort for a large part of humanity but the potential for deleterious effects of plant bioactive compounds means that expert medical advice should be sought before use of herbal extracts for medical conditions” (page 601, [99]).

21. “A new ‘normal’ for Australia and Indonesia on climate change” by Arjuna Dibley (Sir John Monash Scholar and a research fellow at Stanford University). Humanity is existentially threatened by nuclear weapons (a nuclear war and the subsequent nuclear winter would wipe out most of humanity and terrestrial life) [11], poverty (17 million people die avoidably from deprivation on Spaceship Earth each year with homicidally greedy, nuclear armed, neoliberal One Percenters in charge of the flight deck) [8], and climate change (that may kill 10 billion people this century if not requisitely addressed )[12]. The threat of nuclear weapons is implicit in Australia’s fervent commitment to US nuclear weapons and its blind commitment t to the US Alliance that has been sensibly queried in this book (e.g. see sections #2 and #3 above) . Avoidable death from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease was briefly mentioned in #19. Finally climate change is considered in Arjuna Dibley’s essay which critically states: “Indonesia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. People living in regions near the equator are already living near the upper ranges of temperatures in which humans can survive. Increases in temperature, which Indonesia is already experiencing and will continue to experience, from climate change, will, at a minimum, make it much harder for people to work productively. If temperatures rise enough, parts of Indonesia may become uninhabitable. A 2013 study suggests for instance, that Jakarta may become uninhabitable sometime between the period of 2029 and 2042, depending on the level of greenhouse gas mitigation. The reason why some regions may become uninhabitable is because increases in temperature are also expected to compress Indonesia’s already high levels of rainfall into shorter time periods. At the same time, increases in global average temperatures are expected to continue to result in increases in sea levels” (page 87, [1]). Crucially, Indonesia is archipelago of some large islands and 17,000 small islands. Tropical island nations (like Indonesia, the Philippines and numerous small island nations) are acutely threatened by climate change and are already suffering the effects of climate change, as are mega-delta countries such as Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Myanmar, and China. The main impacts are changes to precipitation, more intense storms, sea level rise, storm surges, and negative effects of temperature rise on cereal production [12, 94-97, 100].

However this climate change threat is effectively ignored in Indonesia (which continues as a major exporter of coal and of palm oil, the latter enabled by massive deforestation) and Australia (which is among world leaders in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution [14,15] , climate change inaction [19] and unlimited exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat that are fervently backed by both the Coalition Government and the Labor Opposition. The revised annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in tonnes CO2-e per person per year and taking livestock and land use into account, is 53.6 for Indonesia and 52.9 for Australia as compared to 8.9 (the world average), 7.4 for China, 2.7 for Bangladesh, 2.5 for Pakistan and 2.1 for India [13]. The horrible reality ignored by look-the-other-way Australia (except for scientists, the Greens, socialists and climate activists) is that a catastrophic plus 2C temperature rise is now unavoidable and we are bequeathing a disaster to our children and future generations. However we are presently obliged to do everything we can to make the future “less bad” for future generations.

Dr Chris Hope from 90-Nobel-Laureate Cambridge University has put a damage-related price on carbon of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent [101] (i.e. GHG pollution taking all GHGs except for water, H2O, into account) [102]. The Historical Carbon Debt (aka Historical Climate Debt) of a country can be measured by the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) it has introduced into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century. Thus the total Carbon Debt of the world from 1751-2016 is about 1,850 billion tonnes CO2. Assuming a damage-related Carbon Price of $200 per tonne CO2-equivalent, this corresponds to a Carbon Debt of $370 trillion, similar to the total wealth of the world and 4.5 times the world’s total annual GDP. Using estimates from Professor James Hansen of national contributions to Historical Carbon Debt and assuming a damage-related Carbon Price in USD of $200 per tonne CO2-e, the World has a Carbon Debt of US$370 trillion that is increasing at US$13 trillion per year, and Australia has a Carbon Debt of US$7.5 trillion (A$10 trillion) that is increasing at US$400 billion (A$533 billion) per year and at US$40,000 (A$53,000) per head per year for under-30 year old Australians [103]. This Carbon Debt is utterly ignored by the Mainstream but unlike ordinary debt (that can be evaded by default, bankruptcy or printing money), Carbon Debt is inescapable e.g. unless metres-high sea walls are built cities will drown and rich agricultural land will be inundated and salinized.

Final comments.

On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the Asia Society Australia has issued a timely book in “Disruptive Asia. Asia’s Rise And Australia’s Future”, a collection of essays by over 20 experts with a wide range of expertise. This is an important book, should be in all school, local and university libraries, and is a must-read for policy makers and all interested in the future of Asia and Australia and the economic and cultural interactions of Asia and Australia. The obvious criticism of the book – that must also be made about intellectual life in Australia as a whole – is that it avoids the stark realities of past and present wars, the ongoing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust (that kills 17 million people annually in the Developing World minus China) and (except for the last essay) the worsening Climate Emergency and worsening Climate Genocide. One could speculate that the origins of this look-the-other-way Australian culture lie in Australia’s English heritage, its convict past, its affluence and peace as the Switzerland of Asia, and its ongoing involvement in the appalling US War on Terror that can also be seen as a US War on Muslims and a US War on Asians. However too big to be ignored and variously commented on in “Disruptive Asia” is the immense danger to Asia and Australia from the Donald Trump Bull in a China Shop – a number of the essayists indicate, albeit circumspectly, the need for a presently US lackey Australia to adopt a more independent foreign policy. Present Trump threats of a hot war or an economic war against China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, are alarming even conservative Australians.

Asians have had a low political profile in Australia which is hardly surprising given White Australia’s past racism and xenophobia that is now stirring again due to populism exploiting and mis-directing the anger of poor and economically sidelined Australians who can’t afford a house let alone join in the licence to print money that is the housing-based negative gearing rort of prosperous Australians. However the Australian Senate now contains 3 very articulate Labor Senators, Penny Wong (Malaysian Chinese origin), Sam Dastyari (Iranian origin) and the endlessly and marvellously human rights-advocating Lisa Singh (Fiji Indian origin). Asian studies and Asian languages at Australian schools and universities will help further Australian-Asian dialogue and engagement as will Australia’s large, growing, hard-working, prosperous and well-educated Asian population. Australia must dissociate itself from the dangerous primitivism of appalling US imperial violence and instead further engage in mutually beneficial, friendly, smart, agile, culturally-rewarding, critical and inventive collaboration with the multi-faceted Asian giant now well and truly awakened from centuries of Western imperialist subjugation.

References.

[1]. Greg Earl, editor, “Disruptive Asia. Asia’s rise and Australia’s future”, June 2017: http://asiasociety.org/files/uploads/496files/AsiaSociety_DisruptiveAsiaBook_WEB.pdf .

[2]. “World War II casualties”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties .

[3]. Gideon Polya (2011), “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[4]. Gideon Polya (1998), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008 that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ .

[5]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[6]. “Backgrounder: China’s WWII contributions in figures”, New China, 3 September 2015: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-09/03/c_134582291.htm .

[7]. . Michel Chossudovsky, “Know the facts: North Korea lost close to 30% of its population as a result of US bombings in the 1950s”, Global Research, 27 November 2010: http://www.globalresearch.ca/know-the-facts-north-korea-lost-close-to-30-of-its-population-as-a-result-of-us-bombings-in-the-1950s/22131 .

[8]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a succinct history of every country and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .

[9]. Roger Pulvers, “Celebrations and commemorations of war”, ABC Radio National Ockham’s Razor, 29 June 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/celebrations-and-commemorations-of-war/5546628#transcript .

[10]. Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell, “How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power”, Guardian, 26 September 2004: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar .

[11]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[12]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm.

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Revised Annual Per Capita Greenhouse Gas Pollution For All Countries – What Is Your Country Doing?”, Countercurrents, 6 January, 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya060116.htm .

[15]. Gideon Polya, “Exposing And Thence Punishing Worst Polluter Nations Via Weighted Annual Per Capita Greenhouse Gas Pollution Scores”, Countercurrents, 19 March, 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190316.htm .

[16]. Gideon Polya, “Australia commitment to unlimited natural gas exploitation threatens planet & invites global blowback”, Countercurrents, 8 April 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/08/australian-commitment-to-unlimited-natural-gas-exploitation-threatens-planet-invites-global-blowback/ .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “Latest Lancet Data Imply Adani Australian Coal Project Will Kill 1.4 Million Indians”, Countercurrents, 21 April 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/21/latest-lancet-data-imply-adani-australian-coal-project-will-kill-1-4-million-indians/ .

[18]. “Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths .

[19]. German Climate Watch Index 2015: https://germanwatch.org/en/download/10407.pdf .

[20]. Gideon Polya, “Australia 's Huge Coal, Gas & Iron Ore Exports Threaten Planet”, Countercurrents, 15 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150512.htm .

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Country By Country Analysis Of Years Left Until Science-demanded Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, Countercurrents, 11 June 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya110611.htm .

[22]. Malcolm Fraser, “Slavish devotion to the US a foreign policy folly for Australia”, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2010: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/slavish-devotion-to-the-us-a-foreign-policy-folly-for-australia-20101213-18vec.html

[23]. “Divest from fossil fuels”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/divest-from-fossil-fuels .

[24]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The One Day Of The Year” – Australian Anzac Day Jingoism Hides Genocidal War Crimes”, Countercurrents, 30 June 2017: https://www.countercurrents.org/2017/06/30/review-the-one-day-of-the-year-australian-anzac-day-jingoism-hides-genocidal-war-crimes/ ). [6]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home .

[25]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[26]. Gideon Polya, “Australian ABC and UK BBC fake news through lying by omission”, Countercurrents, 2 May 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/05/02/australian-abc-and-uk-bbc-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission/ .

[27]. Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media: fake news through lying by omission”, Global Research, 2 April 2017: http://www.globalresearch.ca/mainstream-media-fake-news-through-lying-by-omission/5582944

[28]. Gideon Polya, “One Anzac Day Australia ignores its complicity in horrendous war crimes & climate crimes”, Countercurrents, 24 April 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/24/on-anzac-day-australia-ignores-its-complicity-in-horrendous-war-crimes-climate-crimes/ .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Cambridge History Of Australia” Ignores Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides”, Countercurrents, 14 October, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm .

[30]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[31]. Gideon Polya, “Yassmin Abdel-Magied censored on Anzac Day – jingoists trash Australian free speech”, Countercurrents, 28 April 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/28/yassmin-abdel-magied-censored-on-anzac-day-jingoists-trash-australian-free-speech/ .

[32]. Gideon Polya, “Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities”, Free University Education: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/academic-censorship .

[33]. Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” ( Harvard University Press, 2014).

[34]. Gideon Polya, “Key Book Review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” By Thomas Piketty”, Countercurrents, 1 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[35]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”, Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[36]. Brian Ellis , “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics” , Routledge , UK , 2012.

[37]. Gideon Polya, “ Book Review: “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics” by Brian Ellis - last chance to save Planet?”, Countercurrents, 19 August 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190812.htm .

[38]. Gideon Polya, “Canadian academic: “”F--- neoliberalism”, MWC News, 14 May 2016: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/58847-f-neoliberalism.html .

[39]. Simon Springer, “F--- neoliberalism”: https://www.academia.edu/23908958/Fuck_Neoliberalism?auto=view&campaign=weekly_digest .

[40]. Gideon Polya, “Polya's 3 Laws Of Economics Expose Deadly, Dishonest And Terminal Neoliberal Capitalism”, Countercurrents, 17 October, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya171015.htm

[41]. “1% ON 1%: one percent annual wealth tax on One Percenters”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/1-on-1 .

[42]. “List of development aid country donors”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors .

[43]. “FactCheck: What are the facts on Australia’s foreign aid spending?”, The Conversation: http://theconversation.com/factcheck-what-are-the-facts-on-australias-foreign-aid-spending-71146 .

[44]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna, Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire Indian Poverty”, Countercurrents, 20 November 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[45]. J. Dreze and Amartya Sen,“Hunger and Public Action” , Clarendon, Oxford, 1989.

[46]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[47]. “Muslim population in the world”: http://www.muslimpopulation.com/asia/ .

[48]. Gideon Polya, “Riyadh speech: state terrorist Trump’s fake news ignores Muslim Holocaust & American Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 26 May 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/05/26/riyadh-speech-state-terrorist-trumps-fake-news-ignores-muslim-holocaust-american-holocaust/ .

[49]. Dale Carnegie, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, Simon and Schuster, 1936.

[50]. Geoffrey Garrett, “Rudd’s Chinese whispers have been heard loud and clear”, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 December 2010: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/rudds-chinese-whispers-will-have-been-heard-loud-and-clear-20101206-18mpa.html .

[51]. Philip Dorling and Richard Baker, “Beazley pledged troops help US in a war with China”, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 2010: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/beazley-pledged-troops-to-help-us-in-a-war-with-china-20101207-18obt.html .

[52]. Antony Loewenstein, "Does the Zionist Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?": http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-blood-on-its-hands-in-australia/ .

[53]. Francis Enden, “Treating Australia with contempt”, Countercurrents, 4 December 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/enden041210.htm .

[54]. Gideon Polya, "Pro-Zionist-led Coup ousts Australian PM Rudd", MWC News, 29 June 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/3488-pro-zionist-led-coup.html .

[55]. Gideon Polya, “US & Zionist perversion – Labor is finished Downunder”, MWC News, 26 February 2012: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/17132-zionist-subversion.html .

[56]. Middle East Reality Check, “I've been to Israel too”: http://middleeastrealitycheck.blogspot.com.au/2009/03/ive-been-to-israel-too.html .

[57]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Zionist, Pro-war, Anti-Asian Australian Labor Government Threatens Anti-racist Jews”, Countercurrents, 15 March, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150312.htm

[58]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Zionism and Israeli State Terrorism threats to Australia and Humanity”, Palestinian Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli .

[59]. Gideon Polya, “Australian Universities Complicit With Pro-Zionist Censorship And Genocidal Israeli Militarism”, Countercurrents, 24 May, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya240512.htm

[60]. Vacy Vlazna, “Israeli Hawkademia in Australian Universities”, Palestinian Chronicle, 05-02-2012: http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19268 .

[61]. Mark Latham, “The Latham Diaries”, Melbourne University Press, 2005.

[62]. “Paul Keating”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Keating .

[63]. Gideon Polya, “Mass Murderer Suharto Dead. US-backed Indonesian dictator killed millions”, MWC News, 29 January 2008: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/mas-murderer-suharto-dead .

[64]. “The Limits to Growth”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth .

[65]. Jorgen Randers, “Systematic short-termism: Climate, capitalism and democracy”, Climate Code red, 2012: http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/11/systematic-short-termism-climate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimateCodeRed+%28climate+code+red%29 .

[66]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “Tears In Paradise. Suffering and Struggle Of Indians In Fiji 1879-2004” by Rajendra Prasad – Britain's Indentured Indian “5 Year Slaves”, Countercurrents, 4 March, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya040315.htm .

[67]. Kavita Ivy Nandan, “Stolen Worlds. Fijiindian fragments”, Ivy Press International, 2005.

[68]. William Blum, “Rogue State”.

[69]. World Health Organization (WHO), “7 million premature deaths annually linked to air pollution”: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ ).

[70]. “Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths .

[71]. Aaron J Cohen, Michael Brauer et al., “Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015”, The Lancet, 10 April 2017: http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30505-6/fulltext .

[72]. Gideon Polya, “Latest Lancet Data Imply Adani Australian Coal Project Will Kill 1.4 Million Indians”, Countercurrents, 21 April 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/04/21/latest-lancet-data-imply-adani-australian-coal-project-will-kill-1-4-million-indians/ .

[73]. Jared P. Scott, “The Age of consequences”, ABC TV, Four Corners: 20 March 2017: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2017/03/20/4637278.htm .

[74]. Binu Mathew, “Modi’s’ visit to Israel: embrace of 2 deadly ideologies, Zionism and Hindutva”, Countercurrents, 5 July 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/07/05/modis-visit-to-israel-embrace-of-two-deadly-ideologies-zionism-and-hindutva/ .

[75]. Arundhati Roy and David Barsamian, “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile”, Harper Perennial, New York, 2004.

[76]. Gabrielle Chan, “Barnaby Joyce expresses “sympathy” for US trade sanction threat against China”, Guardian, 6 July 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/06/barnaby-joyce-expresses-sympathy-for-us-trade-sanction-threat-against-china .

[77]. “Free university education”: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/home .

[78]. Gideon Polya, “50 reasons for free university education as we bequeath the young a dying planet”, Countercurrents, 19 March 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/19/50-reasons-for-free-university-education-as-we-bequeath-the-young-a-dying-planet/ .

[79]. “The bill China cannot afford”, WHO, 2017: http://www.wpro.who.int/china/publications/2017_china_tobacco_control_report_en.pdf?ua=1 .

[80]. Heng Jiang, Robin Room and Wei Hao, “Alcohol and related health issues in China: action needed”, ”, The Lancet, Volume 3, No. 4, April 2015: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(15)70017-3/fulltext?rss%3Dyes .

[81]. Aaron J Cohen, Michael Brauer et al., “Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2015”,The Lancet, April 2017: http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30505-6/fulltext .

[82]. Gideon Polya, “Australian State Terrorism – Zero Australian Terrorism Deaths, 1 Million Preventable Australian Deaths & 10 Million Muslims Killed By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 23 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230914.htm .

[83]. Gideon Polya, “Coalition Climate Crimes & 200 Reasons Why Australia Must Dump Pro-coal, Pro-war Coalition PM Malcolm Turnbull”, Countercurrents, 1 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya011115.htm .

[84]. Gideon Polya, “Horrendous Cost For Australia Of US War On Terror”, Countercurrents, 14 October, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141012.htm .

[85]. Gideon Polya, “Pro-Apartheid Australia’s New White Australia Policy & compulsory Australian values statement”, Countercurrents, 12 May 2017: http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/05/12/pro-apartheid-australias-new-white-australia-policy-compulsory-australian-values-statement/ .

[86]. “List of countries by population (United Nations)”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations) .

[87]. “List of countries by GPD (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .

[88]. Gideon Polya, “Global warming and the unthinkable world of 2050”, Chapter 16 in “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/jane-austen-and-black-hole-chapter-16.html .

[89]. Gideon Polya, “Worsening climate emergency and record CO2 emissions demand vegetarian diet for all to help save planet”, Countercurrents, 20 June 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/06/20/worsening-climate-emergency-and-record-co2-emissions-demand-vegetarian-diet-for-all-to-help-save-planet/

[90]. Robert Goodland and Jeff Anfang. “Livestock and climate change. What if the key actors in climate change are … cows, pigs and chickens?”, World Watch, November/December 2009:http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf .

[91]. Gideon Polya, “Biofuel famine, biofuel genocide, meat & global food price crisis”, Global avoidable mortality:http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com.au/2008/05/biofuel-famine-biofuel-genocide-meat.html .

[92]. “Biofuel Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/biofuelgenocide/ .

[93]. “Current worldwide annual meat consumption per capita”, ChartsBin: http://chartsbin.com/view/12730 .

[94]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[95]. “Methane Bomb Threat”: https://sites.google.com/site/methanebombthreat/ .

[96]. "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[97]. “Nuclear weapons ban, end poverty and reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/nuclear-weapons-ban .

[98]. ““Big bang” and “pillar of ore” as latest of two new craters forms this week in the Arctic”, The Siberian Times, 2 July 2017: http://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/big-bang-and-pillar-of-fire-as-latest-of-two-new-craters-forms-this-week-in-arctic/

[99]. Gideon Polya, “The Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds. A pharmacological reference guide to sites of action and biological effects”, Taylor and Francis and CRC Press, London and New York, 2003.

[100]. Pacific Islands Development Forum 4 September 2015 "Suva Declaration on Climate Change": http://pacificidf.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/PACIFIC-ISLAND-DEVELOPMENT-FORUM-SUVA-DECLARATION-ON-CLIMATE-CHANGE.v2.pdf .

[101. Chris Hope, “How high should climate change taxes be?”, Working Paper Series, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, 9.2011: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/workingpapers/wp1109.pdf .

[102]. “2011 climate change course”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course .

[103]. “Carbon Debt Carbon Credit”: https://sites.google.com/site/carbondebtcarboncredit/ .

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .