Within 72 hours of a conflict breaking out over Taiwan, Chinese missile bombardments and devastating cyberattacks would begin pummelling Australia. For the first time since World War II, the mainland would be under attack. Meanwhile, 150,000 American troops would descend on the Top End seeking refuge from the immediate conflict zone.

These are the scenarios Peter Jennings, a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department, says the nation needs to prepare for.

“As I think of a conflict over Taiwan, what I’m thinking about is something that very quickly grows in scale and location,” says Jennings, who led the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) for a decade after leaving the Defence Department. “That matters to Australia. It could very quickly find its way down to our shores.”

READ MORE CRAPPPPPPPPP: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-first-72-hours-how-an-attack-on-taiwan-could-rapidly-reach-australia-20230228-p5cod1.html

PLEASE, AUSTRALIA, DON'T GET INVOLVED IN THIS SHIT. WE TEND TO FORGET THAT CHINA BUYS IRON ORE AND COAL OUT OF ITS GOOD HEART (WITH SOME BUSINESS SENSE) AND IN RETURN WE GET CHEAP TV SETS....

In 2021, China had a trade deficit of approximately 97.35 billion U.S. dollars in merchandise trade with Australia. This trade deficit was mainly driven by Australian mineral exports to China.

DOES THIS MEAN WE DID NOT BUY ENOUGH TV SETS?

NO BUT: The annual goods-trade US deficit with China widened 8% to $382.9 billion, the biggest on record after the $419.4 billion shortfall in 2018.

THAT IS TO SAY THAT CHINA CAN EASILY PAY AUSTRALIA FOR THE DIFFERENCE IN THEIR SURPLUS US DOLLARS....

BUT!

BUT CHINA COUD STOP IMPORTING ANYTHING FROM AUSTRALIA IF THE CHINESE CHOSE TO.

YEP. THERE ARE PLENTY OF SUPPLIERS WHO ARE RADY TO DIG BIG HOLES IN THEIR LANDSCAPES FOR CHEAPER THAN AUSSIELAND. AND ON TOP OF THIS, DESPITE WHAT WE MAY THINK, CHINA IS SELF-SUFICIENT IN EVERYTHING, IF IT DARES TO EXPLOIT FULLY ITS OWN RESOURCES..... WHILE HELPING A FRIEND IN NEED: RUSSIA..... CAPICE?

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By Jocelyn Chey

Hysteria over a supposed immediate China threat is being peddled by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in the first of a series of three reports titled Red Alert. Not since Menzies’s days, have we seen anything like the papers’ dramatic image of an air force fleet emerging from a supersized China to dominate a tiny Australia. This is ridiculous beyond belief.

I could take issue with almost every point in the first report, including its summary, which is cutely titled Communique, implying that it has official status. Common advice about how to identify fake news is to check the source of any suspicious news item, to watch for fake photos, to check whether the story appears in trusted sources, and to measure your own heart rate – if the story makes you angry, it is probably designed to make you angry.

Red Alert brings together five experts including Peter Jennings, former head of ASPI. None of the five is a China scholar, yet their report is aimed squarely at that country.

Peter Jennings main take-aways are that China has greatly increased military spending, and that it is likely to invade Taiwan. Wang Chao, spokesperson for the National People’s Congress that is meeting this week in Beijing, told the press a few days ago that an increase in the defence budget would be appropriate and reasonable and “would not pose a threat to any country”. Reunification with Taiwan is certainly a central political goal for President Xi Jinping but observers have noted that political theorist Wang Huning is now the key person advising Xi on Taiwan policy, indicating that a military solution is likely to be adopted only as a last resort.

Retired Major General Mick Ryan served in many roles in the ADF. He retired as Director of the Australian Defence College, and his book War Transformed: A Review focusses on how the military need to be responsive to change. No one would argue with that, or with his contribution to the Red Alert report – that we cannot afford to be complacent. The evaluation of risk however should be based on the teaching of Sun Zi’s Art of War:

Know the enemy and know yourself;

Then you can fight a hundred battles undefeated.

Lavina Lee’s recent research concerns maritime security and strategy in the Indo-Pacific. In a 2020 Lowy Institute paper, she emphasised the positive role that the Quad can play to strengthen the international rules-based order. Her contribution to Red Alert is to note the potential international consequences of US export controls affecting Chinese use of semi-conductors. These certainly merit further study. It cannot be assumed however that all, or even some, of these consequences will make China a greater threat to Australia.

Alan Finkel was Chief Scientist 2016-20. His 2021 Quarterly Essay Getting to Zero was well-received. Just before Covid, he visited a joint UNSW-Kohodo Energy Hydrogen research and development laboratory in China. He is well aware of the potential for research collaboration between Australia and China in environmental and other scientific fields. For Red Alert he chose to hype how Artificial Intelligence in applications such as ChatGPT can be used for good or bad, for instance, in spreading fake news. Red Alert fails to mention that the US is the leader in this field, not China.

Lesley Seebeck is the head of the Cyber Institute at the National Security College. Writing recently for the ASPI Strategist, she plugged the role of AUKUS technology programs, noting that this would need a large allocation of funds in this year’s budget.

The government will make two major announcements over the next few weeks: the report of the Defence Strategic Review will be released to the public, and shortly after that the Federal Budget will be handed down. The Defence establishment, its various associated enterprises and think tanks, are hoping for a large slice of the pie. Some of the figures being cast around are astronomical. The submarine program alone will be tens of billions.

Ordinary citizens, worried about rising living costs, increased bank charges and static wages, might well object to their taxes being allocated to the defence budget. The blow could be softened if they could be made to fear China as a grave and immediate threat.

As the Goons memorably said, “There’s more where that came from.”

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-defence-establishment-and-fairfax-take-on-china/

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By Stephen FitzGerald

In the name of all the good and honourable politicians who have gone before them in crafting a relationship with our giant and, yes, challenging neighbour and partner, I ask Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to call out this rubbish, repudiate it, and forcefully assert that it is wrong.

The shrieking warmongering of the SMH and The Age in today’s papers debauches the memory of the once-fine investigative journalism of two once-responsible newspapers. The illustration, with aircraft streaming out of a red-coloured China towards Australia, is worse than anything I’ve seen since the 1950s and 60s, and recalls the cartoon from the 60s of a white Australian ex-serviceman pulling a rickshaw in which is seated an evil-looking Chinese, his face in a distorted grimace, showing both triumph, and hatred. And we all know what the wellsprings of that idea were!

Some colleagues have asked, where did this spray in today’s papers come from, and why now? How can they justify these claims? Oh, of course, they must be privy to the deliberations of the Standing Committee of the Chinese Politburo, or the military heads, or Xi Jinping and his inner, inner circle of most influential advisers. But that patently is not true, nor could it be.

Given that this blanket coverage of the so-called war risk offers no evidence or substantiation for its claims, and that not one of the so-called experts is a China specialist, we can but speculate. The least frightening possibility is that, like the Head of ASIO and his ‘hives of spies’ a few weeks ago, this is an exercise in ‘softening up’ Cabinet, in the scramble for more funding in the forthcoming budget.

More frightening is the possibility that the people behind this and their performing bears who dance to their tune actually want war, court it, welcome the whole idea of having a war with China.

But why would that be? Which leads to the most frightening possibility, for me at least, which is that these people are back drinking at the wellsprings of that 1960s cartoon, nourishing the ‘race memory’, of anti-Chinese White Australia, channelling Menzies, and B.A. Santamaria, and the terror of “the downward thrust of China (both red and yellow) between the Indian and Pacific Oceans” (this time by air and missiles), which now, as then, is without foundation. If they want war, it’s because they feel threatened by “the heathen Chinee”

In the name of all the good and honourable politicians who have gone before them in crafting a relationship with our giant and, yes, challenging neighbour and partner, I ask Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong to call out this rubbish, repudiate it, and forcefully assert that it is wrong. In the meantime, I’d like to apologise to all Chinese Australians who will be hurt and damaged by the race nastiness that always accompanies such anti-China tirades, and, if I may, to the PRC Ambassador and the many other Chinese diplomats here who I know to be dedicated to trying to keep this relationship on an even keel.

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https://johnmenadue.com/will-albanese-and-wong-repudiate-this-war-hysteria/

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SHOULD "CHINA INVADE TAIWAN (ITS OWN CHINESE TERRITORY)", TRYING TO STOP IT FROM THE DELUSIONS OF KANBRA, WOULD RESULT IN OUR PANTS BEING PULLED DOWN, A FEW CITIES LIKE SYDNEY AND MELBOURNE BECOMING NUCLEAR RUINS — AND SOME MIGHTY BOILS ON OUR MORAL ARSE.

AND OUR SUBMARINES STILL BEING IN THE DREAM PIPE OF STUPIDITY.....

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By Paul Keating

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age front page stories on Australia’s supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over fifty years of active public life.

It is way worse than the illustrated sampans shown to be coming from China in the build up to the war in Vietnam in the 1960s.

Apart from the outrageous illustrations of jet aircraft being shown leaving a profiled red-coloured map of China, the extent of the bias and news abuse is, I believe, unparalleled in modern Australian journalism.

And the arch villain in this is the provocateur and warmonger, Peter Hartcher, and his compliant editors.

The thinness of the narrative is built around five supposed ‘experts’, three of whom are regular anti-China commentators – each firmly and long identified with the strategic interests of the United States.

Their views form the basis of this exclusive ‘Red Alert’.

Not anyone of the so-called ‘experts’ has any comprehensive knowledge of China – especially in matters of war and peace. A point Hartcher and his editors well know.

Locking five people up in a room for a day asking for an articulation of their views or biases on China’s attitude to Australia – does not represent either revelation or responsible journalism.

The illegitimacy of the publication is manifest even to a moderately informed reader. The management and board of Nine Group will have much to answer for should it allow further publication of this wantonly biased and inflammatory material.

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 SEE ALSO: https://johnmenadue.com/strategists-admit-west-is-goading-china-into-war/

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In response to the United States’ trade war and military escalation against China, Chinese officials warned that the relationship between the world’s two largest economies is “derailing.”

“Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented grave challenges to our nation’s development,” Xi said.

On Tuesday, China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, followed up with a warning that unless the U.S. changes course “there will surely be conflict and confrontation.”

“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing and there surely will be conflict and confrontation.” 

Over the past year, the United States has initiated a multipronged campaign of stifling China’s economic growth through trade war, arming Taiwan as part of its military buildup in the Pacific, and whipping up a racist and xenophobic campaign to demonize China among the US population.

These actions of “soft” power turned kinetic last month, when the United States shot down what China claimed was a non-maneuverable research balloon that had been blown over the United States, against the backdrop of a nonstop media hysteria accusing China of spying. 

Responding to the statements by Chinese officials, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied that “there is nothing about our approach to this most consequential bilateral relationship that should lead anybody to think that we want conflict.”

Kirby’s public statements are completely at odds with actual US military doctrine, which calls for the United States to prepare, in the words of the latest NATO strategy document, for full-scale war with nuclear-armed “peer competitors.”

“We will ... deliver the full range of forces ... for high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors,” declares NATO’s strategy document published on June 30.

Last October, Biden said that the United States is in the midst of a “decisive decade” in which the country must “win the competition for the 21st century.”

In March of last year, Biden declared that the world is on the brink of a “new world order” and that “we’ve got to lead it.”

In January, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, sent a letter to his subordinates stating, “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” and urging them to get their “personal affairs” in order in preparation for a conflict with China.

While the doctrine of “great power conflict,” first initiated in 2018 with the Trump administration’s national defense strategy, has largely been put into practice without public knowledge, more and more the US media is beginning to speak openly of the potential of a “two-front war” between the US and NATO on one hand, and China and Russia on the other. 

In a long article entitled “The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict With China and Russia,” Michael R. Gordon, the notorious propagandist who peddled false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, documents the ongoing war games being played out by the US military in preparation for a war with China:

When the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies ran a wargame last year that simulated a Chinese amphibious attack on Taiwan, the U.S. side ran out of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles within a week.

Godon’s article continued, 

If a conflict with China gave Russia the confidence to take further action in Eastern Europe, the U.S. and its allies would need to fight a two-front war. China and Russia are both nuclear powers. Action could extend to the Arctic, where the U.S. lags behind Russia in icebreakers and ports as Moscow appears ready to welcome Beijing’s help in the region.

In his response to statements by Chinese officials, Kirby continued, “We do not support independence for Taiwan. We’ve been very clear about that. We also don’t want to see the status quo cross across that strait changed unilaterally.”

Kirby was very well aware of the fact that he spoke these words following the passage of last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which for the first time made provisions for the United States to directly arm Taiwan—which it had for decades treated as part of China—effectively ending the one-China policy. 

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States plans to quadruple the number of troops stationed on the island and to directly train Taiwanese troops on US territory. 

Last week, the House of Representatives Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party held its first hearing, in which committee Chairman Michael Gallagher declared, “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century—and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.” 

On Wednesday morning, the committee will hold another hearing, this time aimed at promoting the false claim that COVID-19 was created by scientists in China. The hearing will invite as a star witness Nicholas Wade, a notorious advocate of racist pseudoscience, who claimed the genetic “adaptation of Jews to capitalism,” and whose work was hailed by former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke.

READ MORE:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/08/qoep-m08.html

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PLEASE AUSTRALIA, DO NOT GET INVOLVED IN THE US NEFARIOUS PLAN OF SHIT FIGHT....

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By Michael McKinley

Embedded within the foreign policy debate in Australia is the claim that an epochal shift of Copernican significance is underway. So disturbing is this transformation in world politics – seemingly from light to darkness, from joy to woe – that its troubling possibilities have dissolved the sense of national self. 

The consequence: an almost medieval response to a quintessentially modern conundrum, which Martin Heidegger phrased as, “Only a God can save us now.” The high priesthood of this new dispensation are the Austral-Americans, a policy elite which relegates Australia’s national interests to a position considerably inferior to those of the United States.

Former Prime Minister, Paul Keating (among others), defines them as “little Americans,” those who not only place their “exclusive faith” in the US, but cannot see past the US and its interests. In so doing so they disclose their ambivalence as regards their identity and allegiance, and sacrifice Australia’s sovereignty.

While accurate and apposite, this state of affairs demands further understanding of its underlying causes. And they indicate a diseased mindset composed of two interrelated conditions.

First, a regard for the Australia-US alliance as a civil-religious agreement to submit to a higher power by way of a sacramental relationship.

Second, a fusion of national personality disorders arising from dependency and a cultivated inability to understand the self.

Neither claims are to exaggerate the condition of the Austral-Americans: in 2004, Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, when addressing a meeting of Australian and American politicians and academics in Washington, used the term “sacred” to describe the relationship.

In Australia, Hugh White is well aware of this and his outline of the consensus gatekeepers of the alliance, and the problems they create for any possibility debate to be entertained, is exceptionally relevant:

[These] people – some of whom I admire . . . believe Australia’s commitment to its alliance transcends the ebb and flow of events. For them, the US alliance is more than just a policy instrument, to be kept while it works and discarded when it doesn’t. For them, the alliance is an end in itself, an object of loyalty, part of our identity. For them, an Australia that abandoned the alliance would no longer be Australia. For them, no price is too high to pay to keep it going.

Essentially, White describes a disposition to reflexively commit to wars and expeditionary forces ordained, essentially commanded, and controlled by the United States, without any reference to the history of past involvements or whether they were ethical or just.

It is again curious, therefore, that the conclusions White reached in 2005 regarding Australians and war provoked little reaction in policy circles and the ‘strategic studies community’ in Australia.  He found that:

¥   ‘Soft’ wars – defined as low cost conflicts in terms of casualties – have made Australians more bellicose.

¥   The perceived need to preserve the American alliance makes most wars acceptable in Australia.

¥   Australians are reluctant to focus on the purposes of war.

¥   Australians celebrate the experience of war – with ANZAC being central – while downplaying the reasons for fighting particular wars.

¥   Romanticising war makes future wars more likely.

In sum, the only rule that matters is to follow and fight. Memories are either erased or regarded as impedimenta. Ignorance is embraced and knowledge of the unpalatable is discounted.

And given that our waking moments in general, and our moral calculations are derived from the interplay of memory and anticipation, if the former is radically incomplete, the personality required is that of a Rambo with dementia.

Richard Lichtman is most apposite when he concludes that “not only can individuals be dysfunctional and pathological but that societies can be irrational, self-destructive and given to denial, self-deception and violent self-contamination.” What reigns is immature nationhood and triumphant reflex over any latent reflection and self-doubt.

Questions such as: why trust the US given its serial strategic failures, and why trust the Austral-Americans who advocated Australia’s commitment to them are judged to be impertinent. Worse, the empirical record of the past is regarded with contempt.

Why? Because to understand it under the conditions just outlined would only exacerbate the feeling of hopelessness and the lack of confidence in one’s own abilities to comprehend the world from the standpoint of where one actually lives and to negotiate a sensitive and sensible place within it.

The choice is existential – between a condition loosely defined as Liquid Bowel Syndrome, or its putative antidote, an alliance patented numbing agent.

In a formal, conceptual sense this disorder conforms closely to the underlying demeanor of Australia in international politics that the former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Alan Renouf, used as a central theme in his book, The Frightened Country. And formally it is categorised as Dependent Personality Disorder, the symptoms of which include:

• Has difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive amount of advice and reassurance from others.
• Needs others to assume responsibility for most major areas of life.
• Intense fear of abandonment and a sense of devastation or helplessness when relationships end; often move right into another relationship when one ends.
• Pessimism and lack of self-confidence, including a belief that they are unable to care for themselves.
• Placing the needs of their caregivers above their own.
• Goes to excessive lengths to obtain nurturance and support from others, to the point of volunteering to do things that are unpleasant.
• Feels uncomfortable or helpless when alone because of exaggerated fears of being unable to care for themselves.
• Urgently seeks another relationship as a source of care and support when a close relationship ends.
• Is unrealistically preoccupied with fears of being left to take care of themselves.
• Over-sensitivity to criticism.

At times the condition is so pronounced that the observable symptoms are those of what is known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, a pathology in which the sufferer experiences “two clear identities or personality states, each of which has a fairly consistent way of viewing the and relating to the world.”

Thus “frightened” Australia can find itself unrecognisable in the mirror when it is celebrated as a close and victorious ally of the United States.  Indeed, a phrase commonly used by Australian political leaders of late is that the country “punches above its weight” – a term referring to a boxer fighting successfully way above his weight division, which is to say in an alliance venture which would never have been entered into had the United States been absent from it.

To this extent the true power-political position of the country is derealised by an illusion of sovereignty; worse, the mechanisms by which Australia travelled to this imagined state – and the crude calculations of imagined benefits which are held to flow from the US – become casualties of the necessary lapses in memory.

How then to understand the Austral-Americans beyond their betrayal of the national interest?

One answer is to see them as religious refugees seeking sanctuary – essentially heretics opposed to the credo of the Realism they claim to espouse, but in collective denial of Hans Morgenthau’s resigned pessimism that we live “under an empty sky from which the Gods have departed.”

Another is to recognise them as modern-day Visigoths of the type that dominated Western Europe between the 4th and 6th Centuries CE.  They were an energetic lot, horsemanship being what they are most positively remembered for.

Basically, they were brutal, crude, and shallow barbarians, unsubtle in language, destructive of other, more sophisticated cultures, and inhumane in their politics.  Knowledge, for them, was purely instrumental, being measured in terms of the profit, or the power over others, it realised.

They nevertheless adhered to the familiar conceit that the world revolved around their doings and that their ways should be the ways of all mankind.

Before they were overturned their wake of destruction was so extensive that they are seen as responsible for the Dark Ages.

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https://johnmenadue.com/understanding-the-austral-americans/

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By Paul Keating

The Sydney Morning Herald’s prominent series of provocations, urging Australia into a war with China, concluded its third instalment today.

At Item 20 of its presentation, apart from its advocacy of the reintroduction of compulsory national service, it wantonly urges that Australia should further consider ‘basing US long-range missiles armed with nuclear weapons on Australian territory’ and goes on to say ‘if the US were interested in doing so’.

In the following point at 21, it refers to ‘the threat from China’.

The first point is, there is no threat from China, in any strategic sense. There has never been such a threat from China, either implicit or explicit. But for the Herald’s notion of it, it is urging Australia into a war with China armed with nuclear weapons on our territory to be provided by the United States.

Do Hartcher, Jennings, Lavina Lee and Mick Ryan believe that were we to be party to a nuclear attack on China, that China would just sit there and take it – and not respond with a nuclear attack on Australia and possibly its cities?

Peter Hartcher has now been into war talk and urging war on China for years courtesy of his stewardship of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Foreign Affairs editorship.

People should get this straight. The Sydney Morning Herald and the Age are editorialising in favour of a war between Australia and China.

The Herald and the Age, unbelievably, are countenancing a war with China. And not just countenancing, urging a war with China.

The editor of the Herald, Bevan Shields, should hang his head in shame for encouraging the publication of this provocative and dangerous rubbish.

But the intellectual source of it is Peter Hartcher. He has now picked up, as ‘experts’ a group of known pro-American, anti-Chinese commentators to back his manic views about the Chinese Communist Party.

Peter Jennings, perhaps the worst of the pro-American, anti-Chinese commentators, is the person who told us three years ago that we would be at war with China within months. Three years have gone by and none of his predictions has come to pass. But he occupies pride of place in Hartcher and Shields’s council of war.

Along with Jennings, there is Lavina Lee, a perpetual critic of China, who is married to John Lee, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and a former adviser to Liberal foreign minister, Julie Bishop. And then there is Mick Ryan. One of scores of former army Generals, who has spent most of his career focused on Afghanistan, the Middle East and Ukraine. Hardly people of independent and judicious mind.

Neither Alan Finkel or Lesley Seebeck traffics in the anti-China vitriol which is Hartcher and Jennings’s stock in trade, but they have loaned their names to this infamous group, either out of naivety or simply not knowing the manic people they were obliged to fit in with.

The key point is that not any one of the five of them has any experience or expert understanding of China. Their views about China represent nothing more than uninformed bias and one could live with this stupidity if the representations they are making were not so damaging to Australia’s interests. Urging your country into a war is wicked, by any measure. But this is what Hartcher and the Sydney Morning Herald have been up to now for five or six years.

There are any number of people who are indeed experts on China, most of them even competent in Mandarin. People who have served as ambassadors, general foreign policy advisers, ex-Office of National Assessments officers etc. But Hartcher and Shields pick the most rabid anti-China commentator in the country, Peter Jennings.

And when I took the Herald (and the Age) to task on Monday for their egregrious and provocative, page upon page, news presentation, Shields and the Age editor refused to run one line of my criticism. This is the low point the Herald and the Age have now reached.

It is exceptionally important that the readership of these two capital city newspapers understands that the papers and their editors are urging war with China, over of all things, Taiwan. An island, off the Chinese coast, an island Australia does not recognise as an independent state.

And has never recognised as an independent state. And a war employing nuclear weapons. With the absurd assumption that were Chinese assets to be attacked with nuclear weapons the Chinese would not similarly attack Australia employing the same weapons.

In such a wicked scenario, how would the Herald and the Age report Chinese reprisals against Australia as nuclear weapons smash into Australian targets? But this is the game the fool, Hartcher, has urged the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age to be in. God help us. 

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https://johnmenadue.com/news-organisations-urge-nuclear-war-by-australia-against-china/

GUS IS A RABID ATHEIST: GOD CANNOT HELP US. WE'VE GOT TO DENOUNCE THE HORRIBLE AMERICAN HEGEMONY AND NOT PARTICIPATE IN IT....

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsun8e4E4Gk

https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/belmarsh-tribunal-calls-on-albanese-to-truly-take-action-on-assanges-death-by-process/

https://progressive.international/movement/action/the-belmarsh-tribunal-sydney-7ba6e0ac-e63f-4460-986f-3af370e37046/en

By Greg Barns

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have failed to publish, except in the most cursory sense, the current or recent past associations of their gang of five experts who apparently believe Australia could be at war with China in as little as three years. 

While it is not a court of law where the ethical and sometimes legal obligation of expert witnesses is to declare potential or actual conflicts of interest so that their evidence can be placed in context, the Nine Newspapers use of a panel of ‘experts’ to publish an extraordinary series of articles arguing Australia must prepare for a war with China raises the issue of whether the media should, in the interests of transparency, follow suit. In the same way that medical journals are now required to publish the funding sources of researchers and doctors who write articles, why shouldn’t the media do the same when they engage ‘experts’ to comment on serious issues such as defence policy?

That the answer to this question is that they should is made stronger by virtue of the fact media outlets use experts in areas such as defence and foreign policy to ensure their stories are taken seriously by readers and the broader community. Remember that during the Covid pandemic every news outlet had their ‘resident’ medical or epidemiology expert on hand to pronounce on the latest developments.

And when the subject matter of the news stories is as serious as whether a nation is facing the prospect of a war on its doorstep surely we are entitled to full disclosure by the media outlet about the background of the experts it is using to push this view?

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have failed to publish, except in the most cursory sense, the current or recent past associations of their gang of five experts who apparently believe Australia could be at war with China in as little as three years. This failure is of great consequence given the alarmist nature of the expert consensus and its consequences for our community.

It is one thing for a fringe group or two to peddle war threats and call for national service, and quite another for major media outlets with wide reach and influence to do so.

According to The Age and SMH the five experts they have engaged are “respected” which is, of course, generally in the eye of the beholder. There is no empirical standard. These experts are, in turn, former defence bureaucrat and head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Peter Jennings, a Macquarie University criminologist (since when did the study of criminal behaviour make you a defence policy expert?) and ‘strategic studies’ scholar, Lavina Lee, former chief scientist of Australia Alan Finkel, National Institute of Strategic Resilience chair Lesley Seebeck who is also labelled an independent consultant by ASPI and a retired Army major general Mick Ryan who uses the twitter handle ‘Warinthefuture’.

What four of these individuals have in common is their connection to ASPI. Jennings ran it, Lee is a member of its council, Seebeck and Ryan write for ASPI. Lee, Seebeck and Ryan are also connected with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) based in Washington.

There is nothing untoward about these connections and collaborations of course. However the funding arrangements of each organisation suggest they are deeply embedded in a world view that is hostile to China, and where there is interest on the part of defence companies which fund ASPI and CSIS in nations spending big on military equipment to deal with the perceived China threat.

ASPI receives funding from well known defence companies Lockheed Martin and Thales. The Department of Defence contributes one third of its funding. Similarly the CSIS receives defence corporates funds and money from governments such as the US, Taiwan and Japan.

It is not suggested that Jennings, Lee, Seebeck and Ryan are themselves being funded by these companies or governments, it is important though to know they are connected with organisations who depend for their existence on those who either benefit from increased military spending or who are governments hostile to China.

We are also entitled to know if any of the Age and SMH experts have consulting arrangements with the Defence Department or defence contractors. Again, there is certainly nothing untoward about this it is simply that the community should be able to make an informed judgement about the prognostications of this group of experts.

Unrelated, but worth noting is how bizarre it is that all members of the panel agreed with the bellicose views which we know Mr Jennings to hold. There was no dissent. Surely The Age and SMH would have been better served having a panel which reflected the diversity of views on the issue of China and perceived threat? Why have a chorus line of neo-cons?

Or was that the idea of the journalists and editors involved in the exercise?

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Funding for national security research will be reviewed and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Washington office will no longer receive public funding, on the recommendation of former bureaucrat Peter Varghese.

ASPI is known for its critical stance on China, which was a sticking point with Chinese diplomats at the low point of bilateral relations, and some in Labor circles are uneasy about its posture under ex-Liberal staffer Justin Bassi.

The Coalition has criticised the move, saying the closure of the Washington DC office is poorly timed given the impending inauguration of Donald Trump.

A prominent Australian think tank known for its critical stance on China will have its taxpayer funding cut after a sweeping government review of public support for national security research.

The Albanese government has released a report by former bureaucrat Peter Varghese, who recommends an overhaul of funding for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and other institutions.

One of the key recommendations states the government should also "cease funding for ASPI's Washington, D.C. Office" by this financial year, despite being opened by Defence Minister Richard Marles only two years ago.

Mr Varghese said funding for ASPI and other national security research should be subject to competitive evaluation every five years, which the government has accepted.

"Government should adopt a five-year cycle for providing operating funding to the sector, commencing in 2027-28," the review states.

"The new funding cycle should involve a performance evaluation in year three and an open tender process in year four."

The government has accepted eight of the report's 14 recommendations in full.

Public funding for "anti-China" think tanks was one of Beijing's 14 grievances revealed during the diplomatic low pointbetween China and Australia.

Ahead of the official release of the Varghese report, ASPI's Executive Director Justin Bassi slammed the recommendations from the former DFAT secretary.

"I can say that the early impressions that this review was an effort to clamp down on ASPI and the contestability that it provides on national security policy have been confirmed," Mr Bassi said.

"Even more importantly, it sends a clear signal to all Australian national security think tanks that the government will exercise greater command and control over their work,' he added.

"Every think tank will have to stop and ask themselves whether criticising the government or seriously challenging its national security agenda will affect their chances of receiving future funding."

Mr Bassi is a former Liberal staffer who was appointed as head of the think tank by then-defence minister Peter Dutton in 2022.

Inside Labor circles, there has been growing disquiet at the direction of ASPI under Mr Bassi's leadership, particularly his decision to hire numerous former Liberal Party staff members and to publish research highly critical of Labor policies.

During Mr Bassi's tenure, several highly experienced defence analysts left the organisation, while other employees privately told the ABC of poor morale inside the think tank.

In a statement, Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson and Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie said the review recklessly undermined the nation's national interest.

"The recommendations of the Labor–commissioned [review] … would see ASPI neutered, silencing an influential voice in the national security debate at a time when it is most needed," the statement said.

"The Albanese Government's agreement to the recommendation to defund ASPI's office in Washington D.C. could not come at a worse time ahead of President Trump's inauguration next month."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-19/aspi-set-for-public-funding-cut/104746248

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