Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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inflating the aussie balloon of self-importance......

Australia has been persuaded, enticed and strongarmed into taking gravely dangerous decisions. But Australia is a sovereign state and its fingerprints are, ultimately, all over the formation of its terrible abdication of national independence.

We need to pay particular attention to a definitive insight advanced by Paul Keating: Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. In fact, it is an entity that could help unravel decades of remarkable, positive development in Australia, if we allow this to happen.

 

By Richard Cullen

 

We know that the US is now a deeply disturbed super-power. Last year, the respected American commentator, Tom Plate, writing in the South China Morning Post, emphasised the “unseemly primal lust” with which the US jumped into the Ukraine war converting a “regional crisis into an increasingly global one”. Plate added that only the US had been able to parlay “its exceptional brand of American exceptionalism into a preposterous permanent innocence”.

The profound dangers arising from Australia’s far too close association with Washington’s global-control agenda have been stressed for over 50 years, first by Gough Whitlam, as he became Prime Minister in 1972, and even more emphatically by his once arch-rival, (former Prime Minister) Malcolm Fraser, who published a lengthy book in 2014 arguing that, “[G]iving America the power to say when Australia goes to war is the most dangerous position that Australia can bear.” He added that, “If America [unilaterally] uses forces deployed out of Australia, how can an Australian Prime Minister say we are not involved?”

Sensing the rising risk of grave danger, former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, around two years ago, argued with customary clarity that: “Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. We have no alliance with Taipei”.

The former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell said, in 2004, that: “Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation”. Almost 20 years later, Taipei enjoys dwindling recognition, now in the low-teens, from a handful of smaller states. Beijing is recognised as the sole, ultimate sovereign of China (including Taiwan) by the vast majority of nation-states, some 170 of whom recently reaffirmed their commitment to this centrally important One China principle.

Keating stressed that Australia should not be drawn into a military engagement over Taiwan, “US-sponsored or otherwise”, and said Taiwan was “fundamentally a civil matter” for China. These comments, predictably, were not well received in Taipei. If anything, the distressed nature of this response implicitly confirmed the position Keating outlined. Taiwan has been an intrinsic part of China for over 300 years, at least, since well before the French Revolution and the creation of the US and long before Australia was first settled by Europeans.

As for Japan’s leaders, Keating calls them the Bourbons of the Pacific – they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, we’re still trying to find our security from Asia rather than in Asia. Furthermore, Professor Ravina, from the University of Texas, reminded us last year that, “Japan looks a lot like a one-party state” adding that, “the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost exclusively since the end of World War II”. Declassified CIA documents, Ravina says, have confirmed that the LDP was covertly supported by the US “with millions of dollars” after it was established.

Japan is now avidly re-militarising at great expense, with a malevolent eye fixed on China yet again. Canberra has recklessly adopted Japan as a new primary military ally, despite the active veneration of Japan’s military history – which embodies an almost unparalleled record of military barbarism – by certain influential elite-factions.

Meanwhile, the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) leadership in Taiwan refuses to endorse the One China principle (unlike the main opposition Kuomintang Party (KMT)) and it keeps testing how far it can push a pro-independence stance short of moving audaciously in that direction. This is combined with much mutual cross-strait political glaring – even as the economic coupling continues to deliver outstanding reciprocal benefits, year after year. Within the DPP, the more extreme faction is anxious to keep pushing the independence project. Any sort of candid negotiations with Beijing over this fraught relationship are simply off the agenda for the DPP. There is at least an even-chance that the DPP will retain power, at the expense of the KMT, at the next Presidential Election in January, 2024.

Although the US ritually claims it still supports the One China principle it does so within the context of persistent, Taiwan-separatist dog-whistling. This was highlighted in a recent Common Dreams article by the prominent peace activist, Joseph Gerson, who insisted that the US should “cease encouraging Taiwanese independence”.

Malcolm Fraser told the ABC, in 2014, that he saw no difference between the Abbott Coalition Government in Australia and the Labor Governments led by Rudd and Gillard in their misguided, excessively pro-Washington policy setting, when he criticised the way Gillard had put American troops into Darwin. Fraser also forcefully highlighted the acute danger posed to Australia by the presence of US spy-bases in Australia in his book – especially Pine Gap.

In 2018, Prime Minster Turnbull, flicked the switch to serious China-thumping over Huawei (without any “smoking gun” evidence, in Turnbull’s later, own words). Since then, we have witnessed the desperately ill-conceived, uncertain and hugely expensive AUKUS nuclear submarine decision and the latest agreement to station nuclear-capable US bombers near Darwin. Very recently, the new Labor Government in Canberra has eagerly announced a plan to acquire an expensive set of the latest mobile missiles from the US.

Arguably worst of all, is the shocking Force Posture Agreement (FPA), signed with the US in 2014 by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, which provides the legal basis for, as Bevan Ramsden recently revealed, “the comprehensive US militarisation of Australia, especially the Northern Territory, thus setting up Australia as a US forward base from which to launch its next war”.

Meanwhile, Australia and its mainstream media outlets have happily played host to diplomatically disgraceful, ongoing levels of China-threat war-drumming from the Japanese Ambassador in Canberra. John Menadue recently told us that, “The Japanese Embassy in Canberra is leading the anti-China campaign in Australia.”While Allan Behm wonders if this particular Ambassador, who describes himself a former spymaster, aspires “to be a legend in his own lunchtime”. One can be forgiven for wondering if this Canberra-based, Japanese campaign may be part of a wider US-shaped project to guard against any back-sliding on China-glaring, following the change of government last year in Australia.

Then there is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), which maintains a constant focus on advancing the grand China Threat narrative. John Queripel recently argued persuasively that, when you follow the money you discover that ASPI is a “front for US propaganda”.

As one stands back from all of this, it become very clear that Canberra has completely ignored Malcolm Fraser’s vital warning that, “Giving America the power to say when Australia goes to war is the most dangerous position that Australia can bear”. And, in the course of doing so, they have made the severe geopolitical risk faced by Australia far worse. Canberra has now placed the essence of the decision on when Australia may go to war against China into the hands of the three least trustworthy, triggering-parties one can imagine: Washington, Tokyo and Taipei. In all three places, reckless Anti-Beijing elements enjoy inordinate influence.

What a catalogue of cringe-making, very expensive, immature belligerence Australia has racked-up. And let’s not forget that all of this, piled-on, antagonistic military activity and expenditure is primarily directed at Australia’s leading current and best-ever, long-term trading partner. It takes one’s breath away.

Any shooting war with China will very likely be a war that has ultimately been provoked by Washington to serve US interests. It is equally likely that the US will deafen us all with a propaganda onslaught claiming that any Beijing military action responding to provocations was unprovoked – and don’t dare think otherwise. Any such war will almost certainly visit extreme harm on the global economy and surely prove to be catastrophic for the Australian political-economy and devastating for Taiwan, just for starters. US arms suppliers can be expected to power onwards and upwards, however.

Australia has certainly been persuaded, enticed and strongarmed into taking the gravely dangerous decisions outlined above. But Australia is a sovereign state. It has agency. Australia’s fingerprints are, ultimately, all over the formation of this terrible abdication of national independence.

If matters are ever to be put right, we first must not forget that America is, as Professor Adam Tooze argues, addicted to greatness and haunted by its loss and it has crafted “an extraordinarily aggressive techno-military objective” to champion its superiority over China.

Next, we have to remember how, once-upon-a-time, 50 years ago, we began growing up as a sovereign state within Asia. We must recollect what we have been told so clearly by Whitlam and Fraser and avow that Australia’s national interest is our paramount concern. We can be entirely sure that Washington, Tokyo and Taipei are never going to tell us this: they will each work to advance their own dangerously tilted agendas.

Finally, we have to pay particular attention to the conclusive insight provided by Paul Keating: Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. In fact, it is an entity that could very much help unravel decades of remarkable, positive development in Australia, if we allow this to happen.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/how-australia-created-the-taiwan-nightmare-for-itself/

 

 

 

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the american terrorist.....

 

By William Briggs

 

General Mike Minahan, head of the United States Air Force’s Air Mobility Command has sent a message to the world. It is blunt, threatening and sinister. ‘My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.’ The General sent his message as a memorandum to the leadership of the 110,000 strong USAF, with the unambiguous title, ‘February 2023 Orders in Preparation for – The Next Fight.’

That fight, in the view of this key military leader, will be against China. Minahan’s belligerent tone is set with his order for personnel to ‘consider their personal affairs’ and if that was not blunt enough, to ‘fire a clip into a 7-meter target, with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.’

The Pentagon offered what was intended to be a more diplomatic position. A spokesperson stated that ‘China is the pacing challenge for the Department of Defence and our focus remains on working alongside allies and partners to preserve a peaceful, free and open Indo-Pacific.’ Unsurprisingly, the Chinese are not entirely soothed by this line of reasoning.

The sabre rattling between China and the US and its allies goes on. Kevin McCarthy, the new US Republican House Speaker has formalised his position as a continuation of the drum-thumping posture of Nancy Pelsosi. ‘There is bipartisan consensus that the era of trusting Communist China is over.’ McCarthy has indicated that he intends visiting Taiwan. Nobody is in any doubt as to how Beijing will view such a visit.

The rhetoric has never been more threatening. The ‘doomsday clock’ has been re-set to just 90 seconds to midnight. War and potential nuclear destruction have never been so close at hand. The planet is threatened. The economies of the world are on the brink of catastrophe. The US seems hell-bent on ignoring all rational behaviour, but their allies, rather than offering sane counsel, are vying with each other to stoke the fires.

Less than 12 months ago, the then British foreign secretary, and soon to be short-lived prime minister, Liz Truss made an incendiary speech that called for the ‘globalisation’ of NATO, as part of the push against China. The wheel turns, but ever so slightly. Truss is gone, but British select committee chair, Tobias Ellwood, has been less than diplomatic, insisting that he wants to see AUKUS and the Quad merge. He sees this as a ‘NATO-lite’ structure. Such a move would see the UK more closely engaged in the region. This can only further destabilise a part of the world that is so much on edge at the best of times.

At the same time, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong were in Europe, talking up relationships with the UK and France. They did not get the chance to get the ear of NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg, who was visiting South Korea and Japan. Not meeting with the NATO Secretary General is hardly a problem, as all are focusing on the perceived China ‘threat.’

Stoltenberg, for his part, has hardly been mincing his words. NATO once had little direct interest in this part of the world. After all it is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. But, as he now states that ‘we have come a long way when it comes to China … we are very clear that China poses a challenge to our values, to our interests and to our security. China and the rulers in Beijing, they don’t believe in democracy, freedom of speech, our democratic values … And then China, with its rising capabilities, with its coercive behaviour not least in the South-China Sea and lack of respect for the values that we believe in, is an increasing challenge to our values, our security, to our interests.’

The ‘interests’ that are spoken of so reverently by all western leaders are, in the final analysis, economic ones. The USA cannot conceive of a rival economy that will surpass it as global hegemon.

War between the world’s two leading economies would completely destroy an already corpse-like global capitalist structure. But war is not simply being considered in the abstract, but in the concrete. Time Magazinerecently wrote of China’s obvious attempts to mend fences, both at the Davos talks and in Xi’s New Year address. Even so, the drums of war are being beaten ever more loudly.

China is engaging in a significant arms build-up. Whether this is defensive or offensive is neither here nor there. The Chinese naval capacity is set to grow by nearly 40 per cent by 2040. Its nuclear arsenal is also growing.

While this may sound threatening, it needs to be remembered that the US spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined and that includes the spending by China. Its military budget for this year, a year marked by global economic downturn and recession has hit a record high figure of $858 billion. This is only part of the story as the US is working tirelessly to see that its regional allies in the Quad and AUKUS continue to ‘pull their weight.’ Joint US-Australian developments in Australia continue. A new base on Okinawa is in the pipe-line. The US has just been granted access to Philippines bases.

The head of the Marine Corps, Commandant David Berger, during his visit to Australia in late January, added one final worrying note when he stated that ‘we can’t slow down, we can’t back off, we can’t get comfortable with where we are because the risk then is the other side moves a half step and we’ve lost the deterrent value.’

Nobody with eyes to see can take such a statement at face value. The US and its allies have moved far beyond any ‘deterrent’ tactics. General Minahan and his ‘gut’ has said it all.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-drive-to-war-against-china-just-got-worse/

 

 

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IS THIS THE END OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE USING PROXIES AND ASSOCIATED TERRORISTS TO FIGHT ITS WARS? DIRECT THREATS AND CONFRONTATIONS? IS THE AMERICAN EMPIRE DELUDED AND CHEWING A MUCH TOO BIG HAMBURGER? ARE ALL AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS NUTS? ARE THE AUSTRALIAN MEDIA ASLEEP AT THE OFFICE AND GETTING THEIR PRESS RELEASE DIRECT FROM THE PENTAGON? CAN WE, THE LITTLE BOURGEOIS AND WORKERS ALIKE DO SOMETHING TO BREAK THE LEGS OF OUR POLITICIANS?

 

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and B-21s......

America's next-generation B-21 bomber could be sent to Australia to "accelerate" national security under a congressional proposal put to the US secretary of defense.

Key points:
  • The B-21 Raider is expected to make its first flight this year
  • A high-ranking US politician flagged sending the stealth bombers to Australia
  • Any arrangement could fall under the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the US and UK
 

Influential Democratic congressman Adam Smith, who until recently was the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has also flagged leasing or deploying "legacy" American submarines here as part of the AUKUS partnership.

The long-range nuclear-capable B-21 Raider was publicly unveiled by the United States Air Force in December. It is expected to make its first flight this year, eventually replacing the country's B-1 and B-2 bombers.

Before losing the committee chairmanship in January, Mr Smith formally pushed for a study into the possible "conveyance of B-21 bombers" along with "leasing or conveyance of legacy United States submarines for Australia's use".

In a resolution contained in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023, the Democrat requests that US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin launch an independent assessment of the "challenges" to implement AUKUS and to explore other alternatives to help America's ally.

"Alternatives that would significantly accelerate Australia's national security, including — (A) interim submarine options to include leasing or conveyance of legacy United States submarines for Australia's use; or (B) the conveyance of B-21 bombers."

Mr Smith represents Washington state, where four dry docks have been abruptly taken offline over earthquake fears, making it harder for the US Navy to field, maintain and then decommission nuclear-powered submarines.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-07/long-range-b-21-bombers-could-be-sent-to-australia/101936772

 

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B-21s? LIKE ROTTEN MEAT ATTRACTING FLIES.....

 

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all killed for profits.....

 

BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

 

In the latest instance of the Australian media’s deluge of propaganda geared toward manufacturing consent for war with China, Nine Entertainment-owned newspapers The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have brought together a panel of “experts” to assess how well-prepared Australia is for a hot war with its primary trading partner. The question of if that war is necessary or should be prepared for is left completely unexamined.

In a report titled “Australia faces the threat of war with China within three years – and we’re not ready,” we learn the names of the five “experts” SMH and The Age have recruited to make the titular claim, and you’re never going to believe this but it turns out they tend to work in professions that are intimately intertwined with the western imperial war machine.

This first “expert” is Mick Ryan, whom I have written about repeatedly because he seems to feature in literally every single Australian news media piece geared toward propagandizing Australians into accepting war with China as an inevitability which must be prepared for. Ryan is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is funded by military-industrial complex entities like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and is also directly funded by the US government and its client states, including Australia and Taiwan. SMH and The Age make no note of this immense conflict of interest.

The second “expert” is Peter Jennings, who is a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), where he was the executive director for ten years. Like CSIS, ASPI is a think tank that is funded by US-aligned governments and the military-industrial complex. It has played a major role in manufacturing consent for the foreign policy agendas of the western empire, particularly in escalations against China. ASPI has been described as “the propaganda arm of the CIA and the US government” by Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh.

The third “expert” is Lavina Lee, an academic who is a Council Member with ASPIand an Adjunct Fellow with CSIS, so when it comes to pro-war punditry she’s what they call a twofer.

The fourth “expert” is Australian defense insider Lesley Seebeck, a regular ASPI contributor. Seebeck is the chairperson of a swampy warmongering think tank of unclear funding called the National Institute of Strategic Resilience, which publishes woke-imperialist articles with titles like “First Nations Drone Network Project Initiation,” “Solomon Islands – time to take an Indigenous perspective,” “Building Australia’s Strategic Resilience: A Spotlight on Military and Gender in the Pacific Region,” and “Key to Australia’s Strategic Resilience: An Australian Feminist Foreign Policy,” the latter two authored by Seebeck herself.

The fifth is Alan Finkel, a scientist who works for the Australian government.

Again, none of these conflicts of interest were mentioned by The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, which as we’ve discussed previously is an egregious act of journalistic malpractice. This is a little like gathering Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and the Taco Bell chihuahua to discuss whether the government should employ fast food outlets to supply school lunches. Except these guys aren’t selling junk food — they’re selling mass murder, human suffering, ecological disaster, and the violent deaths of our children.

There are rivers of tax money at stake here; delicious, Reserve-backed dollars straight into the old bank account, mountains of them! And essentially these people are the forward-facing public representatives of those companies whose job it is to sell the public on an outcome that directly benefits their backers. This is an elaborate advertorial and it is incredible that The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age not only ran it as news, but hosted it.

These five “experts” conclude that Australia needs to do much more to rapidly prepare for a hot war with China, saying that “The need to dramatically strengthen our military and national security capabilities is urgent, but Australia is unprepared.” They say Australia must make these dramatic changes not to defend itself from a Chinese invasion, but to fight a war over Taiwan.

“The war Xi is preparing for, they say, is one fought over Taiwan, a prosperous self-governing island of 24 million people that sits about 160 kilometres east of mainland China,” the report reads.

This is entirely in line with the appalling propaganda piece put out by Murdoch’s Sky News last month, which said Australia must double its military budget to prepare to back the US in a hot war over Taiwan.

The panelists paint Australia’s participation in this war as a settled matter, an inevitability should the US wage war on China.

“We have made our choice. If the United States goes to war with Taiwan, we are going to support them one way or the other,” says Mick Ryan.

“Neither the Australian military nor the public are presently truly prepared for the outbreak of war and Australia’s inevitable participation,” says Lavina Lee.

These military industrial complex-funded pundits are lying. Australia’s participation in an American war against China is not an inevitability, and is not necessary.

In reality, the best way Australia can protect itself from China is not to prepare for war with China. A hot war with our primary trading partner would destroy our economy and would likely cut off most of the imports we require to function as an island nation. We’ve got no business preparing to throw our nation’s sons and daughters into such a conflict, and we’ve got no business stealing from our nation’s most needful in order to effect that preparation.

An unresolved civil war between two adjacent bodies who both call themselves “China” is none of Washington’s business, and it is certainly none of Canberra’s. Let the Chinese sort out China, because China poses no threat to us.

That last point isn’t actually debatable, by the way. As Antiwar’s Daniel Larison recently noted on Twitter, China’s military budget consistently sits at around 1.5 percent of its GDP, which is less than half of the USA’s. If China were preparing to conquer the world as so many hawks falsely claim, this would not be the case. The US is a nation with an interest in global domination, and its military budget reflects this. China is not a nation with an interest in global domination, and its military budget reflects this.

In reality the US has been encircling China with more and war machinery for years in ways it would never permit itself to be encircled, and has been preparing for a confrontation with Beijing for a very long time. The US is plainly the aggressor here, and Australia now has an existential interest in militarily uncoupling from that aggressor before it gets us all killed.

The report by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age — which former Prime Minister Paul Keating just called “the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life” —  actually comes close to actually admitting that there’s a concerted propaganda campaign designed to increase hysteria about China and manufacture consent for war. The “expert” panel asserts that there needs to be a “psychological shift” in the public toward this direction which they must be actively persuaded to accept.

“Most important of all is a psychological shift,” the report says. “Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs, but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over.”

The report cites Seebeck as saying “the nation’s leaders should trust the public enough to include them in what can be a confronting discussion,” and that the public must be regarded as “smart enough to talk about defence and national security.”

The reason they are saying the public needs to be spoken to and persuaded to psychologically accept hawkish escalations against China is because no sane person would consent to such madness if they weren’t psychologically manipulated into it. No sane person would consent to agendas which threaten to kill our sons and daughters, impoverish us all, and even turn us into nuclear targets without copious amounts of propaganda.

That’s why we’re seeing all these “news” reports about how urgent it is to prepare for war with China all of a sudden. Not because China poses a threat to us, but because we are allied with an empire that is planning to start a war of unfathomable horror.

_________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/07/no-australia-does-not-actually-need-to-prepare-for-war-with-china/

 

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