OF COMEDY REALITY!!!!

George Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed "the dean of counterculture comedians".

He was known for his dark humor and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects. The first of Carlin's 14 stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977, broadcast as George Carlin at USC.

From the late 1980s onwards, his routines focused on sociocultural criticism of American society. He often commented on American political issues and satirized American culture. He was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era and hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975.

His final comedy special, It's Bad for Ya, was filmed less than four months before his death from cardiac failure. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The audio in this video is from George Carlin's 1990 HBO special, "Doin' it Again".

SEE MORE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZAo_dUbh9s

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

P&I Editorial:

Conflicts of interest at the heart of AUKUS and the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) – including the principal author of the DSR benefitting from US State Department funding designed to build support for AUKUS and the US alliance – demand independent investigation.

Australia’s independently-led Defence Strategic Review will shortly be released to the public.

Announced on 3 August 2022, the DSR examined “force structure, force posture and preparedness, and investment prioritisation, to ensure Defence has the right capabilities to meet our growing strategic needs.” It was delivered to government on 14 February 2022 in a highly constrained timeline.

Two ‘independent’ leads were appointed by the government: former Defence Minister Stephen Smith and former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Angus Houston.

New information provided to Pearls and Irritations raise serious questions regarding conflicts of interest relating to staff appointments made by the independent leads that put into question the integrity and independence of the DSR.

We outline the information received below and invite further clarification of these matters by the independent leads and the Government.

Prior to his appointment as Independent Lead of the DSR, Stephen Smith was a senior advisor to The Asia Group (TAG) and a Professor of Public International Law at the University of Western Australia (UWA). TAG’s March 2022 press release listed Smith’s concurrent roles as “a Distinguished Fellow and Board Member of the Perth USAsia Centre based at UWA” and “Chair of the UWA Defence and Security Institute, which he helped establish.”

These roles would not be problematic, except for the fact that, following the establishment of the DSR, Professor Peter Dean, the United States Studies Centre’s (USSC) Director of Foreign Policy and Defence, was appointed as principal author of the DSR and Co-Lead of the 2023 DSR Secretariat.

Prior to his appointment to the USSC in August 2022, Peter Dean was a Professor at the University of Western Australia, Chair of Defence Studies, a director of the UWA Defence and Security Institute (DSI), and a Senior Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre.

Neither Smith, nor Dean, are currently listed as board members or fellows at the Perth USAsia Centre. Smith, who was appointed High Commissioner to London on 30 September 2022, is no longer the Chair of UWA’s DSI. Dean retains a role as an Honorary Fellow with DSI.

According to The Australian, Dean received $283,000 in taxpayer-funded consulting fees for his DSR assignment.

Mack Williams recently reported in Pearls and Irritations that Dean also “currently leads two US State Department-funded public diplomacy programs on the US-Australia Alliance”.

The two US State Department-funded public diplomacy programs on the US-Australia Alliance that Dean runs appear to be the $150,000 USD, ‘Regional Workshops on the Future of the U.S. – Australia Alliance, Department of State’ (2018) and the $200,000 USD, ‘Looking to 2040: Developing Next-Generation Leaders and Policy Thinkers of the U.S.-Australia Partnership in the Indo-Pacific Region’ (2019). Dean features prominently on the Regional Workshop and Alliance Network project outputs, delivered in collaboration with several other institutions.

Mack Williams correctly identifies this as problematic. US government grant documents quoted by Williams outlined the objectives of the projects Dean runs as follows:

“Young Australians tend to be skeptical of the importance of the U.S.-Australia bilateral relationship …. To address these trends … the U.S. Embassy in Australia seeks to fund a program … [that will] identify a diverse network of next-generation leaders who … could build public support for the alliance … [and] develop awareness among younger Australians about policies that support the alliance.”

In contrast, Australia’s Defence Strategic Review was initiated by the Labor government to “prepare Australia to effectively respond to the changing regional and global strategic environment and ensure Defence’s capability and structure is fit for purpose and delivers the greatest return on investment,” and will, according to Defence Minister Richard Marles, “underpin our Defence policy for decades to come”.

It was designed to enable the incoming government to independently review whether defence policies and planned acquisition of US nuclear powered submarines announced by the previous Coalition Government, at an eye watering cost of $368 billion, were either value for money or compatible with Australia’s national interests and defence needs.

Can the DSR be seen to perform this function if the principal author is, at the same time, benefitting from US State Department public diplomacy funding designed to promote support for AUKUS and the US alliance?

What role did Smith, a professor at UWA, former Chair of the DSI and a former board member of the Perth USAsia Centre, have in the appointment of Dean, a former professor at UWA, inaugural director of the DSI and a former Senior Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre, to a taxpayer-funded role as principal author of the DSR?

Was any conflict of interest declared or identified by the Defence Integrity Division during the recruitment process for the DSR in Dean’s appointment as a principal author of the report? Who else was considered for the role?

Most critically – why did the independent leads appoint Dean to author the report rather than selecting from the far larger number of Australian defence experts not benefitting from funding by the US State Department?

These questions follow sustained investigation into conflicts of interest in AUKUS by the Washington Post – not by any Australian MSM – showing how retired US naval officers advising the Morrison government benefitted from a series of overlapping interests in the Australian government’s cancellation of the French submarine deal and purchase of US submarine technology under AUKUS, while concurrently holding positions with companies that were set to benefit from the Australian government’s purchase of that technology.

With the imminent release of the DSR, these questions lie with the Australian government and the Independent Leads to answer.

The serious questions over conflicts of interest under both the Labor and Coalition governments demand an independent investigation to restore public confidence in how Australian defence policy is made.

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-defence-strategic-review-a-tainted-report/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

by Rex Patrick | Apr 23, 2023 | Government, Latest Posts

The Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, has proclaimed the AUKUS submarine program is a national building endeavour when, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Rex Patrick pulls apart the Admiral’s claim.

About a month before Prime Minister Albanese went to San Diego for his threesome with President Biden and Prime Minister Sunak, I decided to warn Michael West Media readers that, in due course, Defence would roll out the “nation building” slogan in support of AUKUS. But I got distracted and last week the Chief of Navy invoked the phrase. So, I’m left kicking myself. 

How did I know the claim was coming? Well, the admiral was singing from a very well thumbed hymn book.  

My first recollection of the words “nation building” and “submarines” being used together was in 2010 when former head of the Submarine Institute of Australia, retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, was throwing it around in the backchannels. At the time he was pushing for Australia to build a locally designed “Son of Collins” to meet the needs of our future submarine force.  

National building quickly became a cliché in Defence circles for those who wanted to sell a grandiose submarine project to government.  

By 2013, a decade ago, “nation building” had made its way into the Defence White Paper.

“… the Future Submarine Program represents the largest and most complex project ever undertaken in Australia’s history. This project represents a true nation building endeavour which presents both challenges and significant opportunities for Defence and Australian industry.”

The rhetorical combination has been rolled whenever anyone raises a concern about project cost, like a decoy designed to stop a torpedo hitting its target; “National building” has been deployed a lot in the past decade; South Australia’s Defence Industry Minister before the Senate in July 2014, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds in a November 2020 keynote speech to the Submarine Institute of Australia and now Admiral Hammond.

Admiral Mark Hammond pulled at patriotic heart strings last week when he “implored Australians to see [the AUKUS submarine program] as a nation-building endeavour on par with the original creation of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric scheme”.

Unfortunately, his comparison just doesn’t stack up.

The Snowy Mountains scheme was a very large and complex engineering project that diverted the waters of the Snowy River through tunnels in the mountains and stored it in dams, which were then used to create electricity. It involved the construction of nine power stations, 16 major dams, 80 kilometres of aqueducts and 145 kilometres of interconnected tunnels. 

Snowy stimulated the Australian economy and created an industrial base for national security after World War Two. The Labor government of that era implemented plans for full employment, created public housing and announced it would take in 70,000 immigrants each year. It harnessed the impetus of wartime manufacturing to encourage post-war industrial production. 

It has delivered Australians with an enduring economic workhorse. It’s 33 turbines can generate a maximum of 4,100 megawatts and produce on average, 4,500 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity each year.

To this day the Snowy Mountains Scheme is still considered to be one of the greatest engineering achievements in the world, however the project is also a story of social, cultural and political changes in Australia. 

Admiral Mark Hammond pulled at patriotic heart strings last week when he “implored Australians to see [the AUKUS submarine program] as a nation-building endeavour on par with the original creation of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric scheme”.

Unfortunately, his comparison just doesn’t stack up.

By contrast, what we know about AUKUS is that it will provide investment in US shipyard expansion, to be followed at a later date by an investment in UK shipyard expansion.

As Australian politicians point to a 2040 workforce (20,000; far short of that employed in building Snowy) that will purportedly see submarines being built in Australia, General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, are actively recruiting 5,700 and 1,000 people, respectively, to work on AUKUS right now.

The flow of Aussie dollars to the UK will likely start occurring around the early 2030s about the same time as Collins class submarine workers at Osborne in Adelaide are finding out their jobs are gone, bearing in mind that from 2033 there’ll be no further need to conduct Collins Full Cycle Docking or Life of Type Extension work.

And while that’s all happening, Australian taxpayers will be investing billions in upskilling our engineers and technicians in nuclear technology that will have no use beyond AUKUS. Unlike the US and UK that can amortise and leverage their Defence investment in their civil nuclear industries, we don’t have one of those. 

Furthermore, we must expect that US restrictions attached to the use of their submarine nuclear technology will not allow the knowledge gained in the AUKUS program to be used anywhere else in the Australian economy.

AUKUS might be a partnership, but it’s an unequal partnership and it well remain so with Australia as the dependent partner. And all for the price of just $368 billion.

There will of course be some submarines, of an unknown type, an unknown capability, at an unknown date. Does that qualify as nation building?

I know Admiral Hammond well. I’ve served with him. I’ve socialised with him. I even offered him a job about a decade ago. He’s a smart guy who has credibility in the capability and naval operations space. He’s a strong leader, but he’s made a significant tactical error by wading into the political space with a shallow argument, in the shadows of a patriotic slogan. Sadly, he risks undermining his hard-earned credibility in doing so.

There is an economic and defence case for spending Defence money in Australia. It generates local economic activity, it builds technical and industrial capability and adds to our advanced manufacturing critical mass, it develops skills that can be employed elsewhere in the economy, it assists with critical mass and it builds the expertise necessary to sustain military capability throughout its life and in conflict. But no matter how you look at it, building foreign designed equipment under ‘licence’ for local use is not nation building. 

The truth is that Defence spending is largely a sunk cost. It’s an insurance cost. Admirals, Air Marshalls and Generals would do well to appreciate that, whilst some benefit to the general economy can flow from Defence acquisition and sustainment, Defence projects, the way they are conducted in Australia, do not offer nation building opportunities. 

Nation building would be taking our billion dollar lithium export business and turning it into a trillion dollar battery export business, which we have not done. 

National building is investing early into Industry 4.0 to become a manufacturing powerhouse, something Germany has done, but we haven’t. 

Nation building is taking royalties from your finite resources and investing in industries that will outlast the resource demand, something the United Arab Emirates has done, and we haven’t.

Nation building would be establishing modern semiconductor manufacturing capability onshore, our two AUKUS allies are actively encouraging development of their onshore industries, sadly again we’re standing idly by.

In November of 2021 Senator Penny Wong asked the Navy how much money had been allocated to the Nuclear Submarine Task Force; $300m over two years was the answer. For that significant investment we’re seen a ‘Kabuki Show’ in San Diego where no detail on the program were provided and a pathetic nine FAQ sheets uploaded to the government’s AUKUS website.

First and foremost, if a project is going to be truly nation building, the nation needs to know about it, understand it and embrace it. This means there has to be a plan and that plan needs to be publicly available, it cannot be entirely shrouded in secrecy, known only to the select few. As we can see there is no published industrial plan, there are no published workforce plans. Any details on AUKUS beyond top level have had to be extracted from Government under Freedom of Information laws.

Against that backdrop, and in circumstances where most people rightly see the AUKUS program as a completely unjustifiable nation crippling spend of their money, and a spend that, on the best view, only brings us new defence capability in two decades time, Vice Admiral Hammond must be expecting to draw fire for his repeating the inaccurate and misleading characterisation.

People are right to question him, no matter the gold aiguillettes he wears on his right shoulder. 

I guess he just really wants his ‘Ferrari’.

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/aukus-submarines-nation-building-says-admiral-no-theyre-not-says-rex-patrick/

READ FROM TOP.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....