War
Challenging relentless, misguided wars and military waste
The discussion here continues on from my commentary on the parlous state of civil liberties and the ill treatment of refugees in Australia, where the authoritarianism and lack of compassion shown by our governments, which so often are "justified" by fearmongering about national security & terrorism, actually illustrate the dark nature of our own leaders and institutions.
Ironically, even if one accepts that the West is fighting for a "free society", then as Australian and other global leaders repeat the same moronic slogans whilst curtailing our freedoms in the name of security, they essentially hand victory to the terrorists. Worse, as they pursue ineffective prevention strategies that attempt to "deradicalise" potential violent extremists, they continue a failed "war on terror" that actually encourages terrorism, whilst ignoring the true, underlying causes of terrorism (instead of listening to understand those who have turned to violence) — which is not Islam in itself, or Muslims, who defy ISIS in their millions (although we must support free-speech and also listen openly to understand the views of those who see "Islamic extremists" as a problem, as long as we avoid giving them a platform to incite violence).
Whatever the Quran says (I haven't read it but I understand it is principally a book of peace, at least as much as Christianity in practice), it just doesn't make sense to suggest that an otherwise reasonable person will decide to commit atrocious terror attacks because of what they've read in a book (& even if a terrorist claims they're motivated by their readings, the real problem is their mental health & potentially traumatic history, rather than a book).
Far more plausible causes of terrorist actions are decades of resentment built up from things like Western foreign policies that include the constant promotion of arms-sales to tyrannical governments supplying terrorists (which can then get turned back on the US) and the extended, far-reaching track record of disastrous (& strategically incompetent) Western interference, especially in the Middle-East — supporting revolutions/regime-changes and engaging in ill-conceived wars that have fuelled anti-Western feelings and ultimately spawned antagonistic governments and a series of new terrorist groups, whilst causing the death of millions of innocent people, particularly in countries such as Iraq & Syria, including, appallingly, and with stunning hypocrisy, from using chemical weapons against these countries from where President Trump sought to ban refugees (but with little interest from the media compared to the publicity they give to terrorist incidents with lesser deaths in Western democracies).
And we're supposed to believe that the Islamic motivation for retaliation is that "they hate our freedoms" & "culture"?! — rather than the much more understandable reasons actually articulated by Bin Laden, which are, of course, primarily opposition to US imperialism and oppression & exploitation of Muslims & resources in the Middle East, including US support for Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands (that was originally enabled by France & Britain).
But unrepentant & undeterred, the West's response is to launch further illegal wars based on lies, killing many hundreds of thousands of people in Islamic nations — possibly over a million people killed in Iraq & across the Middle East in retaliation for the 3,000 Americans killed in "9/11", with an additional 3.5 million people dying from indirect effects and over 38 million people displaced from their homes, whilst costing Americans at least $8 trillion.
And whilst US-led wars force some 7 million people from their home nations, Western politicians seek political advantage by demonising the desperate refugees & asylum seekers they've created — often based on lies & secrecy, with cruel and illegal treatment.
Then, having not been able to directly kill him, the US persecutes & tortures Julian Assange (aided by the UK, with the dishonest support of the Australian Government) for exposing US war crimes — including "assassination, torture and the casual killing of civilians" (whilst he protected his informers, contrary to what was claimed).
Next, through years of interference in Ukraine and NATO expansionism (breaking explicit reassurances the US gave to Russia), compounded by the damaging of relations through EU obstructionism to greater economic integration with Russia, the US provokes & wages another proxy war against Russia that could easily have been avoided (or stopped within a month) – sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to a pointless death, whilst severely damaging Ukraine & Europe's economy (not least from the US sabotaging Europe's gas supplies and probably destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam, with the cover of silence from Western media).
And in parallel, the West demonises and beats the drums of war against China (even as the US surrounds it with military bases and bullies Western allies to take sides), based on distorted accusations of a Chinese military buildup (even though China demonstrably poses no threat) and, as always, fully backed by mainstream media fearmongering.
US military bases (2016)
≈ 4,000 in the USA & 1,000 overseas
After a long history of European and especially British imperialism throughout the Middle East, Africa, India & elsewhere, the founding of Israel in 1947/48 marked a new phase of European settler-colonialism. Britain had already allowed a wave of Jewish European immigration into Palestine, under pressure from the 1933 Haavara Agreement between Zionists & Nazi Germany, which ironically undermined the Jewish-led 1933 international anti-Nazi boycott. After WWII, on the pretext of supporting Jewish refugees following the Nazi Holocaust, Britain offered up Palestinian lands (that it had no moral right to give away) to Jewish European migrants through an absurd UN Plan that left Palestine as three disconnected areas of land — which was rightly opposed in the UN by every single country in the region. The subsequent self-declared establishment of Israel as a Jewish State in 1948 inevitably led to war and ongoing resistance from the occupied Palestinians and (with varying commitment) their Arab allies.
Since 1948, the West has continued to use Israel as a vassal state for protecting Western interests (by resisting Arab dominance in the oil-rich Middle East), which has caused Western leaders to turn a blind eye to the decades of Palestinian oppression by Israeli Zionism (the racist political concept of an apartheid Jewish State of Israel) — which continues to be demonstrated by ongoing theft of land by illegal armed settlers (supported by the Israeli State) and the terrorising of Palestinian families by actively targeting children and the elderly (often with snipers), or imprisoning children for throwing stones (potentially for up to 20 years) after detaining & abusing them by the thousands through a "military justice system".
As the late John Pilger reported in 2002, the problem of colonial occupation of Palestine over the last century, and the continuing mistreatment of Arabs there, was and still is a major problem, or even "the issue" in the Middle East.
Israel's theft of land from Palestinian people
(following Ottoman & British rule)
Now in late 2023, any doubt about the true, self-interested motives of corrupt US elites (bought by Zionists) and the callous, psychopathic approach of the US & its subservient Western allies (especially in the UK, where foreign policy is devoid of humanitarian concerns and both sides of politics are bullied to follow the US line) must surely be dispelled for any right-thinking person, after witnessing the hypocrisy of their moral outrage and insincere advocacy for a broken, so-called "international rules-based order" when they become complicit in supporting or trying to hide untold war crimes by Israel (like these & these) as it escalates its war on Palestinians and pursues a clearly outlined plan for ethnic cleansing — led by the psychotic, religious Nazi, Netanyahu & his fascist Ministers, who openly & clearly indicated their intentions as they repeatedly called for the death of all Palestinian "animals" and "released all the restraints" on Israeli forces to embark on a new genocidal holocaust, using the convenient excuse of being attacked on 7 October 2023 by Hamas — the political/militant group that opposes Zionism, not Jews, and which Israel initially supported in order to divide the Palestinians and avoid a "two-State" solution (which Israel openly opposes), whilst they & the US ignored Hamas' overtures for a 50-year ceasefire.
Then although Hamas' attack was an inevitable eruption resulting from Israel keeping 2 million Gazans in "the largest concentration camp on Earth" (which Israel blockaded for 17 years, whilst periodically shooting & bombing civilians that Israel labels "human shields"), and was worsened by Israeli "friendly fire" at buildings & cars (without knowing who was in them or wilfully sacrificing Israeli captives to avoid them being held hostage), an intensely lobbied & captured mainstream Western media deliberately provides heavily biased pro-Israel coverage of events — purposefully keeping readers in the dark as it refuses to report the full story of what happened on 7 October, whilst using manipulative propaganda (subtly reinforced through selective content & deliberately biased language, with persistently unbalanced descriptions) and repeatedly & uncritically spreading Israel's constant, brazen lies, disinformation and exaggerated or completely untrue allegations of unevidenced atrocities (like fabricated claims of murdered babies and implausible / "debunked" mass rape stories based on discredited sources) in order to justify Israel's ferocious, murderous response carried out under the pretence of "self defence" (a legal right that the occupied Palestinians have, not Israel).
Manipulation of public opinion is further reinforced by spreading the West's own anti-Muslim racism and false accusations of antisemitism (backed by political leaders), whilst generally ignoring Israel's inhumane, sickening barbarity & sadistic atrocities — which has overwhelming support from Israel’s "mainstream", including the gleeful backing of a racist Israeli public and army, along with Rabbis who say the Torah demands they kill all Palestinians in Gaza, including infants, children, women and the elderly (and is also reflected by Goebbels-level Israeli propaganda that varies from the absurd to sickening snuff videos and material reminiscent of Hitler Youth).
All this deliberate control of mainstream media messaging then helps to provide cover for Western leaders who repeatedly refuse to condemn Israel's extreme response or demand restraint and back a ceasefire, and instead actively support crimes against humanity as warmongering US leaders continue to supply Israel with weapons (without proper scrutiny & approval) – as does a fully-supportive Germany (accounting for 30% of major arms sales to Israel), the UK (backed by its chief rabbi) & others (including support from Australia's secretive military exports).
This Western backing enables Israel to flagrantly break international laws and defy the UN (as well as killing over 150 of its aid workers in 3 months), as it reinforces its prior 17-year siege designed to make Gaza uninhabitable by blockading the supply of water, food, fuel, aid & medicines (supported by Western politicians) whilst proudly carpet-bombing Gaza with flesh-burning phosphorus bombs and explosives equivalent to nuclear bombs within just a few weeks (and 30,000 bombs in 3 months — 8 times more than the U.S. dropped on Iraq during 6 years of war).
Any notion that civilian casualties are legitimate collateral damage of war is clearly dispelled by Israel's deliberate and constant targeting of hospitals (even children's hospitals) and multiple refugee camps (full of children) spread all over Gaza, as well as many more refugees sheltering in schools (as it has done in prior years, repeatedly) and even kindergartens, along with mosques, churches & universities, plus water supply pipes and desalination plants, whilst killing more than 30k people (over 90% civilians, with about 40% children & 20-30% women) in 100 days, including 119 journalists (often in their homes – with more killed in just 7 weeks than in all of Vietnam or WWII). There's even reports of the Israeli army hunting civilians with armed quadcopters and luring them out of hiding to their deaths by playing recordings of crying babies and women screaming in distress.
The inevitable and clearly intentional consequence of this murderous terror campaign is to push the entire population towards "voluntary migration" or else death through ubiquitous starvation, famine & disease, if not through effectively indiscriminate destruction of civilian targets & entire neighbourhoods — "justified" as always with the lie that civilians are being used by Hamas as "human shields", even though Israel's supposed targets of Hamas militants are hiding underground (with Israel's lies further demonstrated by their use of an AI-enabled 'mass assassination factory' as an excuse to kill almost anyone – using surveillance and statistics to target as many as 37,000 Palestinian men, with human involvement of maybe 20 seconds for each target, and then applying AI rules allowing 15-20 civilian casualties during airstrikes on low-ranking militants & more than 100 civilians for top-ranking Hamas officials — because Israel prefers to use “dumb” bombs (not “smart” precision bombs) that destroy entire homes & families, as they "don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people", and anyway they consider that no-one in Gaza is innocent).
Alongside these atrocities & destruction in Gaza, Israel also simultaneously provokes further violence & killing of Palestinians in the West Bank (with soldiers killing "mostly children and teenagers"), as it locks down life for Palestinians there and extends illegal Jewish settlements through continuing & accelerating theft of Palestinian land in both the West Bank and in illegally occupied East Jerusalem, enabled by an Israeli Government policy of mass land appropriation/annexation that deliberately aims to undermine the possibility of an independent Palestinian state.
Moreover, whilst Israel & the West try to justify all these monstrous crimes by pointing to the 130 hostages taken by Hamas (who at least were kept alive in Gaza, until Israeli bombing killed many of them), they have nothing to say about the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners (including 200 children, or more in early 2024) that Hamas wanted released (which was their motivation for taking Israeli hostages, as a bargaining chip) — constituting 9,500 people held by Israel by April 2024 for actions as innocuous as raising a Palestinian flag or social media posts expressing empathy with victims in Gaza, with 3,660 "administrative detainees" arrested without charge or process and imprisoned in secret locations (where access is also blocked for international organisations such as the Red Cross) where they are subjected to inhumane treatment & torture, including acute & degrading physical & sexual abuse.
Then as Israeli jails become overcrowded, the solution advocated by Ben Gvir, the far-right national security minister, is to execute prisoners — bringing Israel another step closer to the Nazis' logical conclusion of gas chambers being the most efficient "final solution".
And throughout this most documented genocide in history, the US bullies the UN (see video from 10') as the West conflates criticism of Israel & Zionism with antisemitism (a stance influenced by extreme & unrepresentative Jewish organisations but rejected by many anti-Zionist Jews who support peace) and minimises reporting of Israel's crimes whilst trying to repress pro-Palestinian demonstrations (e.g. in the UK , Australia & France) along with any dissenting voices (whether artists, teachers, doctors, journalists, airline & government staff or politicians) – including by sacking actors and local & national politicians (on both sides of politics), as well as arresting those who speak out and, in France, threatening to contravene basic civil rights by imprisoning anyone who criticises Israel (through criminalising opposition to Zionism).
The climate of fear this creates, along with subtle propaganda that encourages denial of the truth, then minimises opposition whilst duplicitous & cowardly Western leaders (encouraged by prominent right-wing figures) stand by or support Israel's war on Palestinians, and fail in their obligations to hold Israel accountable, as they refuse to initiate or support actions through international institutions to prevent genocide (institutions that the US intimidates and Israel treats with contempt, as it does international law) — perhaps partly out of concern for being charged with similar crimes committed by the US in Iraq (which were even more hidden from the Western public, in the days before Twitter), such as the denial of food, water, electricity, medical care & humanitarian aid to civilians whilst attacking hospitals and using white phosphorous along with indiscriminate shelling of cities (not the ‘precision’ targeting claimed).
Instead of opposing Israel's actions (which the US could easily stop if it wanted), the West compounds its complicity as it bombs the Houthis (who are trying to stop Israel's genocide) in an already-devastated Yemen (due to previous bombing by the Saudis, with US & UK help), and then on the day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) orders "the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance" in Gaza, the US & its allies respond to allegations from an habitually lying Israel – based on flimsy, unevidenced & unverified claims (apparently derived from torture and not even supported by US intelligence agencies) – by immediately halting aid for Palestinians (following “reverse due process” that revealed "no evidence" even after rigorous inquiry) provided by the United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA, which Israel has long sought to destroy, not just to starve Gazans but also because UNRWA supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homelands, which Israel opposes).
Thus the West actively help to create a monumental disaster and directly contribute to the genocide by reinforcing Israel's long-running strategy of making Gaza uninhabitable — as if that wasn't already achieved by Israel's total destruction of Gaza and obstruction of aid with criminally spurious excuses (just as it said it would do), reinforced by its shooting of starving people (which it lies about to try and deny its crimes) and repeated attacks on food aid trucks (which are quickly ignored by the media as they become normalised, just like Israel’s relentless attacks on hospitals — destroying medical equipment, murdering staff & patients and bulldozing them amongst the wreckage of multiple hospitals into horrifying mass graves across Gaza, which Israel's military simply deny).
Then rather than acting to ensure Israel's compliance with international laws, an arrogant, failing and demonstrably untrustworthy US empire gaslights the UN & Western public by claiming the ICJ "has not ordered an immediate cease-fire", even though the ICJ ordered an immediate stop to "killing members of the group" for Palestinians in Gaza — and so with help from the media the US gives a green light (contrary to woefully late measures and insincere concerns expressed for political purposes, along with worthless, fudged, non-"ceasefire" motions and gaslighting that UN resolutions are not legally binding) with further illegal & unconditional military support for an out-of-control, fascist, Israel to continue the genocide in areas crammed with refugees where it told Gazans to flee to for safety, but bombed anyway (even striking the masses of refugees in tents). US support for Israel is then further backed up by open threats with explicit opposition to any Israeli being investigated by the already-compromised International Criminal Court (ICC) – a prospect that's absurdly deemed "antisemitic" by Netanyahu – with such gross misuse of that term reinforced by the suppression of political opposition in the US through violence against pro-Palestinian student peace protestors and unconstitutional new US laws banning free speech & assembly if someone criticises Israel.
Tellingly, only after Israel murdered several Western aid workers did US President Biden decide to force Israel to make changes (which they acted on within just hours of his phone call). Clearly, whilst the US Government cries for Israelis, Palestinian lives (that could have been saved just as easily) mean nothing to them, or to most other Western politicians and media, who had nothing to say about Israel's slaughter of nearly 200 Arabic aid workers and were only finally motivated to express outrage and condemn Israel when one of their own was killed (and even then only in the most lame, diplomatic way and without any real consequences). The striking imbalance in empathy is reinforced by the US establishment's crazy preoccupation with denouncing chants in support of Palestinian rights and other language that they falsely claim to be antisemitic, in order to distract from or excuse the ongoing horror of an actual genocide the US Government is enabling.
US disrespect for Palestinians is only further compounded by its insincere "support" for a "two state solution" (which seems mainly motivated by wanting to sell arms to the Saudis), whilst it pressures UN Security Council members and ultimately vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian State (which is of course opposed by a finger-pointing, genocidal Israel), based on the absurd condition that the Palestinian Authority must exert control over all of the Palestinian territories and negotiate statehood with Israel – even though the Palestinian Authority has no power in Gaza and Israel has made it clear it will never accept a Palestinian State.
But Western duplicity seems to have no limits, as its leaders cynically commemorate the Jewish Holocaust, saying "never again" whilst fully backing, or at least failing to apply international law to prevent the genocide & ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the sham of a "free democracy" that is Zionist Israel (which bans unfavourable media and arrests anyone who speaks out), and simultaneously demonstrating the most gobsmacking & nauseating hypocrisy through insincere statements against Islamophobia alongside tepid reactions to Israel's crimes & its provoking of out-of-control escalation (threatening total nuclear destruction) by bombing the Iranian consulate in Syria (killing multiple people), followed by swift condemnation of Iran for retaliating against Israeli military bases (injuring one person), before the US reverted to trading Palestinian lives for the stability of a one-sided conflict contained to Gaza. Then Western politicians acclaim "democracy, decency & freedom" whilst backing continued global wars and banning unfavorable media platforms that facilitate younger people's opposition to genocide, as police aggressively arrest university professors and attack student peace protestors with rubber bullets, tasers & teargas (& even target them with snipers), but do nothing to protect those in a peace camp from violent attacks by nationalist mobs.
Sadly Germany seems to have learned little from its past, as once again it behaves like a fascist state, when its police brutally assault peace protestors, having stormed & shut down a Palestine congress and arrested participants (including Jews) speaking out against the historic & continuing oppression of Palestinians and in support of universal human rights & peace, whilst, astonishingly, the Government detains & blocks the entry to Germany of prominent British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah (who was going to speak to the conference about his work in Gaza hospitals) and then even blocks him from entering France, having also banned the former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, from entering or conducting any political activity in Germany.
It all leaves me (& others) thinking that maybe "we're the baddies" (& that I should reject my inherited Jewishness, which makes no genetic sense anyway).
And as this war on Arabs increases their support for responding with armed struggle (since Palestinians will never give up their quest for dignity & justice) – which means the war may ultimately lead to the collapse of a Zionist Israel – I wonder when we will ever learn that violence begets violence and never-ending retaliation and war is not the answer (as was obvious from the start). But it seems Western leaders really are out of their minds, as they spurn restraint when it suits them – including opportunities at the UN to diplomatically address Israel's provocation of Iran – and instead demonstrate blatant inconsistency in their judgment of each side's actions & reactions as they pave the path for war to escalate across the Middle East, ultimately leading to the failure of Israel's claimed objectives and the end of all Western influence in the region.
Yet if we put as much effort into peace as war, the political-geographic solutions to the underlying problems – as I outline here – are really not that hard. However, we must also overcome the entrenched fear that Israeli society has been built on, because fear is what leads to the most destructive anger, hate & suffering.
With so much contempt shown for Arab & Muslim lives, it's also hard not to believe that aside from self-interest (particularly in relation to oil & gas), and despite all the woke obsessions of western society (not least with gender wars, which seem to be a deliberate distraction from the atrocities the media is determined to ignore, which are routinely committed in actual wars the West is backing), the actions or inactions of the West are at least partly influenced by racism (as well as millions of US religious zealots) — whether consciously or subconsciously.
Although I'm not persuaded by the "Critical Race Theory" that "race (is) a creation of society, not a biological reality" and that subconscious racism is systemically embedded in white societies' institutions (because ultimately I think the behaviour of society's institutions depends on the individual people within them), I do think there is a natural biological and evolutionary basis for subconscious racism, which is our inherent tribalism and fear of those who look different and we don't recognise (&/or those who speak an unfamiliar language). This means if we don't become familiar with faces of different "races" when we're young (when we can even learn to distinguish between individual monkey faces), then it becomes much harder to do so as adults, because we specialise in distinguishing between faces amongst those around us, whilst all faces of a different race tend to look rather similar & unfamiliar, and therefore an instinctive source of fear (albeit perhaps exhibited in a mild way as a relative reluctance to engage with those who seem different from ourselves). To combat this, we must try to become aware of such subconscious feelings and override them with conscious will — accepting that all people are essentially the same, with similar hopes & fears (albeit manifested in different ways according to their history), and equally deserving of the same basic rights and treatment.
Isn't it ironic that despite having a monument at Sydney Olympic Park paying tribute to the human rights and multiculturalism promoted by King Cyrus the Great of Persia (now Iran), we've yet to truly catch up with the world's first Charter of Human Rights he established more than 2,500 years ago? (which influenced Thomas Jefferson & the "self-evident truth that all men (& women) are created equal" in the USA's declaration of independence).
Instead, our lunatic leaders and warmongering media exploit, dangerously politicise and fan the flames of people's fears & racism, as they engage in the dangerous bravado of provocative (& very expensive) sabre rattling, whilst the "very, very expensive basket case that is @DefenceAust procurement" wastes untold billions of dollars on repeated failures in the selection & delivery of pointless high-tech "defence" systems (through the influence of a corrupt arms industry), such as "lemons" like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that are redundant before they've even been built, as they may have been suited to the wars of last century but are practically irrelevant & useless against terrorists or other modern threats to national security.
Even worse is the ramped up antagonism towards China, led by the "extreme fools" in NATO who's attempts to exert US/Anglo dominance in Asia through the new "AUKUS" alliance are "an accident on its way to happen”, with Australia playing the leading slave role to the US by wasting a staggering $368 billion on absurdly-expensive yet still obsolete nuclear submarines (that will support US nuclear missile capabilities) — an even more crazy and useless "con-job" than the previous plan to spend $90 billion on dated & "obsolete" French submarines.
Combined with the acquisition of threatening long-range missiles, Australia is somehow managing to fuel a new arms race that weakens regional stability and increases the risk of being targeted by a nervous foreign power, whilst simultaneously massively increasing military spending yet squeezing the budget that's left for potential truly defensive initiatives. And then our politicians try to justify the "mind boggling" waste with absurd arguments about job creation.
What should we do?
The warmongering behaviour of the US and its Western allies (including Australia, where the approach to human rights is determined by "interests" rather than principles), and especially the most blatant hypocrisy & dishonesty shown by its support for Israel's barbaric slaughter of Palestinians and its contempt for the United Nations, has "ripped the mask off" the West's true nature and revealed the lie of its claim to support a "rules-based international order" (rules that the US is least compliant with than any other country).
The US Government is shrouded in secrecy as it pursues a path to WWIII, and its democracy is corrupted by money and lobbyists – not least the military-industrial complex and Zionist groups, about which former President Jimmy Carter said in 2007,
"Not a single member of Congress could possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicise the plight of Palestinians, or even to call for peace talks.
If any did speak out, they would probably not be back in Congress the next term."
So what should we do about it?
US global leadership is over. Whilst it currently (in early 2024) still notionally leads an alliance of Western nations, it no longer has any global respect from the majority of the world's population or states, and clearly it's unconscionable for any nation that claims to stand for human decency and universal rights to remain in military alliance with such a depraved, morally bankrupt empire. All moral nations, and those threatened by US imperialism, must unite against the bullying US, isolate the fascist Israel, and dismantle NATO & AUKUS — to be replaced by regional security plans & agreements that can be genuinely supported and backed up by the UN (probably on the basis of a new regional UN structure).
And strident anti-China rhetoric needs to be replaced with a more effective diplomatic approach that reflects our strong, mutually-beneficial economic interdependencies, with any challenges that China's growing power represents being best addressed by Australia through smarter economic strategies, such as reducing the reliance on old resource-export industries and working in partnership with other countries (e.g. in the British Commonwealth).
However, given our current leaders are doing the exact opposite of these things, we need to tackle the fundamental problems in our democracies that are producing such failing governance — through the constitutional reforms that I outline here for Australia (& other nations).