The Australian Defence White Paper released in February 2016 makes an increase in Australian Defence Force expenditure from about 1.6 per cent of GDP to 2 per cent. The 2 per cent is the percentage of GDP that NATO recommends for NATO nations. There is no guarantee that future Australian governments will adopt this spending.…
It took an international agreement, negotiated between the United States and Russia, to create the first hope in years of an end to the Syrian civil war in which the superpowers have thrown their weight behind the two warring sides. Bashar al-Assad The Syrian civil war is nominally about the succession to President Bashar al…
After years of providing moral, military and political support to Syrian rebels, the Obama Administration has conceded that military force alone will not overthrow the regime of Bashar al Assad in Syria, bringing about the tentative beginning of negotiations to end the bloody civil war. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. In April 2011 –…
-Saudi oil facility attacks expose Australia’s reliance on imported oil
-Australia still does not have 90 days of fuel stocks in reserve
-Experts agree that Australia would be crippled if a serious disruption to oil imports occurred
New medicines derived from cannabis plants are likely to be the outcome of legislation to regulate the cultivation of the plants in Australia. The Victorian Government’s recent report on medical cannabis and the media release of October 17 by Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley propose to allow the commercial growing of marijuana and manufacture of…
In the run-up to the Paris meeting of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in December, the United States and the European Union (EU) are pushing flawed plans to pressure other countries to sign up to an international agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Last August, U.S. President Barack Obama announced his…
