Australia Defence Association

Australia's independent, non-partisan, national public-interest watchdog org for strategic security, defence & wider national security issues since 1975.

[Australia Defence Association @austdef]

Neil James: "Noise around Afghanistan inquiry risks distracting from need to prevent future war crimes". #ausdef #auspol #CivilControlOfTheMilitary #WarCrimes #ADF https://t.co/ZbCtaCoRuX via @aspi_org

[Dr Elizabeth Buchanan @BuchananLiz]

great AUKUS commentary

💪🏻 Lavina Lee @DrMichaelJGreen

https://t.co/w6dr0xznu3

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

It’s not a case of a few Hamas terrorists moonlighting as journalists.

This was a systematic STRATEGY of passing off terrorists as members of the press.

And the press went along with it uncritically.

[The Diplomat @Diplomat_APAC]

The 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown reinforced a political order in China that made independent worker organizing nearly impossible. The effects have been felt across the global economy. https://t.co/yTQL8b8KU2

[Freedom House @freedomhouse]

The Chinese government works tirelessly to erase the memory of June 4, 1989 from the internet. The CCP's censorship of Tiananmen is not just about the past—it's about controlling the present. China remains the world's worst environment for internet freedom, with pervasive censorship, surveillance, and punishment for peaceful online expression. Explore Freedom House's latest findings from our #FreedomOnTheNet report: https://t.co/eJIefVoHmo

[Australia Defence Association @austdef]

Islamism is an extremist and often violent ideology based on bigoted interpretations of Islamic theology.
(Which is why the ADA always notes the distinction between Islam (the religion) and Islamism (the ideology) when discussing Islamist extremism and Islamist terrorism.
The attached theological argument is therefore interesting because it discusses a key difference between Sunni and Shi'te approaches to Islamist bigotry.
Also worth noting that the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), the purported peak body of Australia's Islamic theologians, but a body in complete denial about the theological roots of Islamist extremism, is dominated by Sunni Imams.

[Dan Burmawi @DanBurmawy]

If we’re forced to choose between Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims in today’s geopolitical landscape, then as a former Sunni, I can tell you, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second:

I would choose the Shia every single time.

Hezbollah has devastated Lebanon for over 30 years. They’ve hijacked the country’s sovereignty, dragged it into needless wars with Israel, dealt drugs across continents, and trained militias from Syria to Yemen.

Iran’s regime has exported chaos to the entire region.

I am not here to sanitize the destruction caused by Shia Islam.

But there is no comparison, none, between Sunni jihad and Shia jihad when it comes to the barbarity, monstrosity, and nihilism at their core.

Shia wilāya is a political-theological project rooted in eschatological hope, the belief in a coming world of justice, peace, and divine order under the awaited Mahdi.

This doesn’t make their actions justifiable, but it does mean their violence is directed, however twistedly, against what they interpret as tyrannical regimes or ideological threats.

When they target civilians, it’s typically selective, an assassination of a perceived enemy of the movement, not wholesale slaughter for religious cleansing.

This vision stems from their Muʿtazila-influenced theology, which still gives weight to human reason and moral evaluation alongside the sacred text.

Sunni jihad, by contrast, is a black hole.

It recognizes no moral hierarchy, no ethical filter, no gradation of violence.

There is no distinction between soldier and child, between combatant and teacher, between state and street.

Any non-Muslim, or even any “wrong” kind of Muslim, is a legitimate target.

Bombing a wedding, beheading an aid worker, enslaving Yazidi girls, torching churches, shooting up schools, this is not collateral damage. It is the goal.

Sunni Islam’s dominant theological school, Ashʿarism, rejects reason as a tool for understanding good and evil.

Morality, in this view, is whatever Allah commands, even if it contradicts logic, conscience, or compassion.

If the Qur’an says to kill the unbeliever, then killing is not just allowed, it is good. Period.

This is why Sunni jihadis can burn people alive, blow up their own children, or massacre entire villages, because they believe Allah said so, and that’s the end of the story.

Shia Islam, for all its flaws, is still institutional, hierarchical, and clerically mediated.

You don’t see Shia suicide bombers popping up in random countries every week because violence is still (relatively) controlled from above.

But Sunni jihad is chaotic, decentralized, and viral. Sunni theology is deontological, Shia theology is teleological.

Sunni terrorism is a Frankenstein of Wahhabism, Deobandism, Salafism, and Muslim Brotherhood ideology that teaches followers to reject all modernity, all compromise, and all mercy.

[薔薇 @Jenn5791]

一语成谶。1989年天安门广场，一位学生对记者说：“我们坚持这么多天，恐怕这个国家还要在专制下再走十年、二十年，甚至几十年……”37年转瞬即逝，这句话却愈发沉重。当年无数人相信，经济发展、对外开放和全球化会引领中国走向政治自由。然而天安门枪声过后，历史走向了反面。这个政权不仅延续至今，更在经济、科技、军事和全球影响力上远超当年的苏联。其崛起很大程度上得益于西方的资金、技术、市场和善意支持。西方曾深信“接触即变革”，却换来最彻底的幻灭。如今，面对这个借全球化壮大、却强化威权并敌视西方的超级对手，西方仍未找到有效应对：困惑者有之，修正者有之，妥协谄媚者更众。那位学生的预言，早已超越“几十年”。现实与期待的巨大落差，铸就了今天深切的无奈与失落。

[Australia Defence Association @austdef]

First combat on D-Day, 06 June 1944.
Pegasus Bridge.
By glider-borne forces (not paratroops).

[The Rifles @RiflesRegiment]

82 years ago today, D-Day took place. At 0015 hrs, our antecedent regiment, the 2nd Ox and Bucks, carried out the first action of the invasion. In this 1986 recording, Major John Howard recounts the glider assault on Pegasus Bridge, Codenamed OPERATION DEADSTICK.

[The Diplomat @Diplomat_APAC]

Thirty-seven years on, the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy still rests on suppressing the truth of what happened on June 4, 1989. https://t.co/4jo3g6BLET

[Select Committee on China @ChinaSelect]

In 1989, Chinese General Xu Qinxian refused to lead his troops into Tiananmen Square. This courageous decision to stand on the side of democracy and peace against the tyranny of the CCP earned him a court martial and five years in prison. In new video of his trial, General Xu said he didn’t want to be “a sinner in history.” For his bravery, he will always be remembered on the right side of history. https://t.co/w4twPL5web

[Isabella Anderson @IsabellaAn67]

Video of Chinese communist security forces killing hundreds of protesting students on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 4th, 1989

A regime that can be so brutal & ruthless to it's own people, imagine what can it do to others!

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Good piece: So many young Chinese have quietly asked me what happened at Tiananmen, knowing that I was there but not quite sure what the "6-4 incident" entailed. As Lu Xun wrote a century ago: "Facts written in blood cannot be erased by lies written in ink."

[Today In Socialism @2dayinsocialism]

On June 5th, 1989, a day after the Chinese People's "Liberation" Army gunned down hundreds if not thousands of protestors, the still unidentified "Tank Man" briefly stopped a column of PLA tanks. The CCP still tries to censor references to him and the #TiananmenSquareMassacre.

[John Hemmings @JohnHemmings2]

The original sin was to use violence against peaceful protestors who loved their country and wanted reform - not destruction. The second sin has been the effort to suppress our memories of that sin, to blame foreigners, the CIA, anyone but the CCP - who pulled the trigger.
#NeverForgetTiananmen

[#FreeJimmyLai @SupportJimmyLai]

Every June 4 as a boy, Sebastien Lai held a candle beside his father in Hong Kong's Victoria Park, remembering Tiananmen. Those vigils are banned now, and his father, Jimmy, sits in solitary confinement at 78.

"Will you bend to tyranny or stand unbowed?"

Read here: https://t.co/ZFpwhVrOWO

#FreeJimmyLai

[Denise Wu @denisewu]

🇹🇼’s MAC released the latest poll

• 79.7% disagree 👎 “one country, two systems”
• 72.6% agree 👍 “ROC (Taiwan) and PRC (China) are not subordinate to each other”
• 88.6% agree 👍 “the future of Taiwan must be jointly decided by 23 million people (Taiwanese).
• 71.9% agree 👍 the government to increase the national defense budget and strengthen self-defense.

https://t.co/5JDMIUKaIH

[Fergus McLachlan, AO @FMcL2020]

@latikambourke @AlboMP @thenightlyau the government should allow senior ADF leaders to communicate directly with the people of Australia occasionally. Admirals Meade and Hammond have been highly credible when allowed to do so. Getting three submarines of the same build configuration is a significant advantage.

[茶色い🐶ワンワン🐶 @takigawa_w]

19890604
#六四天安門

[Sarah Ettedgui @SarahEttedgui]

We do not talk enough about United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379.

Especially on the left.

Progressive spaces often treat the United Nations and international law as the gold standard. As if a claim becomes more serious, more legitimate, or more authoritative once it appears in the language of international law.

But international law is not above politics. It is one of the most political fields of law that exists.

States make it. States invoke it. States ignore it. States enforce it selectively. Voting blocs shape it. Alliances pressure it. Ideological campaigns move through it. Institutions do not float above politics. They operate inside politics.

Resolution 3379 proves the point.

In 1975, only thirty years after the Holocaust, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism to be “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”

Thirty years.

That is all it took for the language of anti-racism to be turned against Jewish self-determination. The national movement of the Jewish people was called racism.

Jewish sovereignty was treated as colonialism. Jewish liberation was described as supremacy. And it was not shouted from the margins. It was voted on in the halls of the United Nations.

That did not happen by accident.

After 1967, the Soviet Union pushed the equation of Zionism with racism as part of its campaign against Israel and the West. Arab states and the PLO advanced the same line because it transformed Jewish sovereignty from a national movement into a racist project. Parts of the Non-Aligned movement absorbed the argument through the language of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-apartheid.

By the time the resolution reached the General Assembly, the groundwork had already been laid.

That is why Jews do not treat institutional language as neutral simply because it comes from the United Nations. Institutions can carry prejudice. They can process it. They can formalize it. They can give it a resolution number, translate it into six languages, and call it international consensus.

Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991 by General Assembly Resolution 46/86. But the libel survived.

It still lives in the claim that Zionism is racism. It still lives in the idea that Jewish sovereignty is uniquely illegitimate. It still lives every time people invoke international law as if the phrase itself ends the conversation.

International law can protect minorities. It can also be used against them.

Resolution 3379 is proof.

[Denise Wu @denisewu]

Free advice: Since this day (June 4, 1989) doesn’t exist in CCP’s eyes. Posting photos from the #TiananmenSquare8964 keeps the Little Pinks out of your business posts.

[Jan Jekielek @JanJekielek]

The Tiananmen Square Massacre itself was monstrous.

But hope died twice that year.

First in blood on the streets of Beijing.

And again when the United States responded not with sustained accountability, but with quiet accommodation.

Just weeks after the killings, the US administration at the time secretly dispatched its National Security Advisor and Deputy Secretary of State to Beijing.

Their mission was to signal to the Chinese leadership that America would ride out the storm of public outrage and work to restore the strategic relationship.

Most Americans never knew this backchannel effort had taken place.

For decades we pursued a policy of engagement, telling ourselves the comforting story that trade and money would change China—that economic integration would liberalize the regime and make it a responsible stakeholder.

The opposite happened.

The Chinese Communist Party changed us.

It turned our openness into vulnerability, captured influence in our institutions, and made us economically dependent on a system built on lies, repression, and brutality.

I was honored to be invited to speak tonight at @VoCommunism’s candlelight vigil remembering June 4.