An Australian member of the Special Air Service Regiment, Corporal Ben, has received the Victoria Cross For Australia, the nation’s highest military honor. In October 2010, the SAS launched an assault against a large group of Taliban fighters who were moving to attack Australian and Afghan forces. The troops flew into action on U.S. Blackhawk helicopters, but on landing were immediately pinned down by three heavy machine guns. As a result of a previous action in December 2006, Corporal Ben had already won the Medal for Gallantry. In that battle, …
So America’s first “Asia-Pacific President” who brought America “back” to Asia after eight years of supposed neglect under the Bush Administration has canceled his Indonesia-Australia-Guam trip yet again. That makes an unprecedented four cancellations (“postponements”) for this particular Presidential trip. Indonesians fully expected him there in November of last year at the end of his visit to South Korea, Japan, China, and Singapore (APEC host). The expectation was strong enough that Obama had to personally tell Indonesian President Yudhoyono that he couldn’t make it. And the drama over the March trip is well known. Two cancellations …
Now that that the massive healthcare bill has been signed into law, President Obama can no longer make excuses for neglecting foreign affairs. Just last week, he postponed an upcoming trip to Indonesia and Australia for one final push to pass Obamacare—a trip he had already pushed off a year ago for the same reason. Australians are among many foreign publics complaining that Obama is taking their support of the U.S. “for granted” and wonder if they are still on Obama’s foreign policy radar. For the recent Iranian new year, …
For those who thought the exposed emails from Britain’s University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit would come and go without much play, think again. Surely the skeptics and even the agnostics wouldn’t miss an opportunity to jump on such devastating revelations, but the fact is ClimateGate is having immediate and possibly long-lasting effects all over the world. In Australia, the emails could literally shift political powers in the land down under: “Australian Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has been replaced by a climate sceptic, Tony Abbott, after ten of its …
This week marks the one year anniversary of the president’s election to commander chief, but it seems more like an occasion for concern than for slapping high-fives. It is not hard to craft comparisons between Carter and the current occupant of the Oval Office. Both entered office with high expectations; both vowed to change the tone in Washington and remake the world. Carter had a terrible sophomore slump. America’s enemies took stock of his foreign policy in his first year in office. The next year they exploited the weaknesses they found. …
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has a problem. His Labor Party government wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 60 percent from 2000 levels by 2050, but opposes building nuclear power plants– the one clean, abundant, and affordable energy source known to this planet. Ziggy Switkowski, head of the nation’s main nuclear research institute, says that will soon change: As more and more Australians get involved in the whole climate change debate, as they learn about what’s happening around the world where the uptake of nuclear power is increasing quite strongly, …
The administration recently released its Treaty Priority List, designating the treaties for which it supports – and those for which it does not support – Senate action. The U.S.-U.K. Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty, and its U.S.-Australia counterpart, is on the List. The treaties permit the U.S. to trade most defense articles with these nations without an export license or other written authorization. Currently, the U.S. reviews export license requests on a case-by-case basis. In 2006, the U.S. Department of State reviewed more than 7,000 licenses for defense exports to the …
Bob Carter is the first speaker during the last event of the conference. Professor Carter is a geologist at James Cook University and is widely known for his global warming skepticism. In his 2006 article, “There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998,” he said, The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies …
In what has been an unusually and welcoming warm week in the District and with that comes the “What’s so bad about global warming?” or “I love global warming!” facetious remarks. The funny thing is these comments are made by both global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. As most Foundry readers know, the science behind global warming is anything but certain; 650 dissenting scientists took their case to the United Nations global warming conference in Poznan, Poland last December. Cutting carbon unilaterally would have negligible environmental benefits, as would …
… which country would it be? Just so we can all wrap our heads around how big President Obama’s Trillion-Dollar Debt Plan is, this graphic compares the pre-Senate debt plan costs with the GDPs of major nations: Just think of it: The deficit-spending package passed by House Democrats already is bigger than 168 of the 180 national economies measured by the World Bank. Now, in the Senate, it threatens to break into the Top 10 by catching up with Russia (No. 11) and then Brazil (No. 10).
