Friday 4th of April 2025
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a run to the bottom.....

The back and forth about Australia’s desire for an exemption from Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium tells a sad tale about our country in this election year of 2025. We’re a wealthy, highly urbanised, industrialised, modern G20 nation. But there remains something of the colony about Australia – a far-flung place constantly looking for older, more powerful friends to look after us economically and militarily.

 

Trump is the US president Australia had to have

BY Shaun Carney

 

Trump is brazenly upending the world order, threatening mostly America’s friends at this early point in his presidential restoration. He may be about to blow up Gaza again at the weekend. He’s been having private talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine that could well result in a dramatic transformation of Europe’s security and military arrangements. His unilateral edict on the steel and aluminium tariffs came just days after our Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, met Trump’s defence secretary and handed over $800 million to boost America’s submarine building capacity.

That was a down payment on the AUKUS pact with our greatest friends, the United States and the UK – a bipartisan policy. How’s that stroke of multi-generational policy genius looking right now? AUKUS didn’t mean a thing to Trump, at least as far our economic interests are concerned. Not even the fact that we buy considerably more from America than we sell to it mattered in the moment. The best that our biggest protector would come up with in his Tuesday phone call with Anthony Albanese was that he’d think about an exemption.

It’s an act of utter disrespect to a faithful partner, but out of his chaos, Trump could well end up doing us a favour by forcing us to confront our new reality. Don’t expect our politics industry to call out Trump, though; given how much we’ve leaned into our dependence on America, the major parties are scared of Trump – as well they might be during his more ferocious, cult leader-style second presidency. They don’t know what to say about him or which way to look right now.

 

Take Peter Dutton. Under the circumstances, it seems that Albanese did as well as he could in the call. After learning that Albanese had not messed up, Dutton emerged to warn the US president that there was a bipartisan position here on the tariffs, and if we are not exempted, the America-Australia relationship would be damaged. This mild finger-wagging in the direction of the White House came just days after Dutton had responded positively to Trump’s prescription for Gaza as a Middle Eastern Surfers Paradise cleared of Palestinians. Trump was, Dutton said, shrewd and a big thinker.

Naturally, Dutton’s bipartisan stance had its limits. He also declared that Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and ambassador Kevin Rudd had already hurt the relationship with America with their past criticisms of Trump. This conveniently ignores the fact that J.D. Vance’s past description of Trump as reprehensible and an idiot did not preclude him from becoming Trump’s chosen 2024 vice-presidential running mate.

In any event, having established the bipartisanship fig-leaf, the Coalition and its media friends are hell-bent on setting up the tariff exemptions as a test because Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister extracted exemptions in 2018. It’s not a fair comparison. Turnbull’s success came when Trump was still unfamiliar with power and mostly employed regular people who put some guardrails around him. Now, of course, he has surrounded himself with advisers and a cabinet who praise his every utterance and try to normalise all of his flights of policy fancy. He is the planet’s most powerful man, set on holding the rest of the world hostage. By definition, every test is based on rational principles, and Trump is in the process of reducing rationality down to his whims and self-interest. The idea of anyone passing a Trump test is fast becoming absurd.

What we’re getting is only a taste of what’s to come, but in just a few weeks, compassion and a broad commitment to multilateralism have already been jettisoned from the American government. Much more is to come. This is especially concerning for Australia because of the depth of our ties to America.

With no more than three months to go before Australians decide whom to elect – Labor or the Coalition or various minority government versions of one of them – are we equipped within our political system to respond meaningfully to four years of Trump’s combination of capriciousness and ideologically driven extortion and their consequences?

Clearly, the world is changing quickly and in profound ways. But you don’t get any real sense yet that this needs to be confronted and made part of our national debate; our political leaders only acknowledge it inferentially at best. So much of our contemporary politics is insular and that is unlikely to suffice from here on. Just one example: artificial intelligence is about to drive one of the great industrial, social and cultural revolutions. French President Emmanuel Macron is a spent force, but even he has convened a two-day conference on it. Should it not be an important subject at a leaders’ level in our political conversation? Are we going to be just takers rather than makers as this revolution changes our lives? It’s hard to imagine AI being an easy subject for Albanese or Dutton. They are, for the most part, political journeymen – veteran parliamentarians both. Neither of them has ever been accused of being policy visionaries.

With the election campaign under way in all but the official sense, it’s difficult to accept that the political debate thus far is the best we can do. Of course, the standard of living will always be central to any political contest, but politics works best when the debate deals with not just our todays but our tomorrows as well. Instead, the leaders have their lists: Albanese on cost-of-living measures already introduced and Dutton on a few uncosted side issues and his trademark resentful tough guy stuff.

Donald Trump could well be inadvertently doing us a favour, forcing us to think seriously about a changing world and how we will navigate it. And it might lead us to demand that either our political leaders do better or we’ll get some better ones.

 

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist.

 

https://www.smh.com.au/national/trump-is-the-us-president-australia-had-to-have-20250212-p5lbm0.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

pan-african values....

 

Hard times await the enemies of the multipolar world order in Africa

Mikhail Gamandiy-Egorov

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Whether they like it or not, all the forces that continue to rely on the opinion of Western regimes in Africa will observe an unpleasant situation for themselves, i.e. the strengthening of pan-African values and the multipolar world order on the African continent.

 

The obvious must be acknowledged. Projects such as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), fighting for pan-Africanism and the multipolar world, are like never before a thorn in the side of the regimes of the Western global minority, as well as their vassals and subcontractors. By the way, this is also the case for those who obey the West without question and those that position themselves as ‘open to multipolarity’, though prioritising and orienting themselves towards Western regimes.

 

Certainly be right to reconsider the situation where a number of Western Russophobic propagandists continue to walk the streets of Moscow and other Russian cities....

 

 

Shedding insecurities is difficult for some

The fact that Western propaganda is working overtime in the African direction, particularly the Sahel, unsuccessfully trying to undermine the mass support of citizens of AES countries for the ongoing liberation processes in their countries and the region is neither new not surprising. This is the same propaganda that does not hesitate to provide information support for terrorist groups operating in the region. But today it is worth paying attention to some African media outlets, which for one reason or another repeat the theses of Western propagandists.

In West Africa, especially in countries like Côte d’Ivoire – one of the last ardently pro-Western regimes on the continent – this is not particularly surprising. However, considering the work of some media outlets in North Africa, and particularly in the Maghreb, then it becomes obvious how much the pro-Western lobby is still heavily involved in the work of local ‘journalists’. This is despite the fact that these countries profess their desire to actively develop relations with China, Russia and the BRICS bloc.

In principle, there are objective reasons for this. Many editors and journalists in these countries are associated with the interests of the Western planetary minority. Hence the sometimes completely primitive approach to information, where French and other Western representatives of the political and military establishment are invited as ‘experts’ (those very figures who not only did nothing in the fight against terrorism and chaos, but were themselves actively involved in the mass dissemination of these problems).

This looks especially anecdotal when some North African ‘journalists’ spread the propaganda theses of the West, including the weak French regime, against all African countries that have relied on true pan-African values and on an alliance with the main defenders of the multipolar world order, primarily Russia and China, without even bothering to acknowledge the great successes of cooperation (in various African countries, from the CAR to the Sahel).

On the other hand, this is the function of subcontractors. The French vassal regime relies on its agents, of which there are still quite a few, in its former colonies and protectorates, still hoping to regain ground lost rapidly.

Conclusions and necessary action

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in a number of these countries there are figures who understand everything perfectly. In one way or another, they are also inspired by the strategic moves of a number of countries on the continent, including the AES. In any case, current events have the great advantage of soon showing clearly which countries can claim the status of having real and full-fledged sovereignty and who does not.

The latter group will include not only outright vassal regimes, but also the subcontractors acting in the interests of the Western planetary minority. In the end, it is not just a question of some ‘figures’ being afraid of losing financial interests with the West, or the possibility of obtaining visas to France and the Western world, but also of being insecure. After all, some people still want to be more French, American or Israeli than the French, Americans and Israelis themselves.

There is one more important point: a number of truly free and independent African countries today are inspirations for many other states in the region and the continent and not only. With their actions, perseverance and determination they can inspire the main forces of the multipolar world. For example, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger do not dance around the tools of Western propaganda, including the French, Americans, Brits etc., and their agents.

It would certainly be right to reconsider the situation where a number of Western Russophobic propagandists continue to walk the streets of Moscow and other Russian cities. It is time to adopt the experience of our African allies. As for the figures of some African media outlets that are strictly oriented towards the West, it is worth remembering this fact when they try to change their colours and become ‘friends’ of Russia and China. As the great former leader of Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara, who was killed by agents of the French regime and inspires the current leadership, said: “the slave who cannot organize his own revolt deserves no pity for his fate”. There is no doubt that the enemies of the multipolar world will soon face even more difficult times.

 

Mikhail Gamandiy-Egorov, entrepreneur, political observer, and expert on Africa and the Middle East

https://journal-neo.su/2025/02/12/hard-times-await-the-enemies-of-the-multipolar-world-order-in-africa/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.