Free Republic

CHINA is waging a “campaign of psychological warfare” against Australia, an Aussie academic has warned. Professor Clive Hamilton, author of the controversial book Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, gave a talk to US Congress overnight in which he warned of dire consequences if Australia gives too much leeway to the rising superpower. “Beijing knows that it cannot bully the United States — in the current environment the consequences would be unpredictable and probably counter-productive — so it is instead pressuring its allies,” Prof Hamilton said. “Last week the PLA Navy challenged three Australian warships sailing through the South China...

[snip] ....What's going on? "The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton. He and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democrat gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign. From his big-windowed office overlooking the wooded campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades,...