hawkeCanberra remains stuck in a debate that the rest of the world has moved on from 

It’s been a divisive and disappointing day for the environment, with attacks flying in every direction after the Coalition made several moves to bolster the fossil-fuel industry.

 

bin

The Biden administration decided to seize the assets of the Afghan central bank, which it had already blocked, to serve as a warranty in a trial relating to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The United States has never opened an investigation into those attacks. However, they successively accused Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network, then Iraq under President Saddam Hussein, then Iran and now Taliban-controlled Afghanistan of having organized them or having contributed to their organization.

So far, Washington had only accused the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 events, of refusing to hand over jihadist leader Osama bin Laden; now the US regards them as complices.

chem

When the United States first regulated industrial chemicals in the 1970s, policy-makers made a threshold decision: Rather than a “front-end” approach requiring proactive risk assessment before licensing a chemical for use, Congress chose a reactive approach of regulating chemical risks as they became manifest (1). This choice puts a premium on “back-end” research on exposure pathways and hazards of new chemical contaminants in situ.

 

incredible

Beijing said on Friday that the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad), a format for annual consultations between the US, Australia, India, and Japan, is “essentially a tool for containing and besieging China [in order] to maintain US hegemony.”

“It aims to stoke confrontation and undermine international solidarity and cooperation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters. “As the Cold War is long over, the attempt to forge a so-called alliance to contain China wins no support and leads nowhere.”

Zhao urged the four countries to drop the “antiquated Cold War mentality” and change their approach to China.

eu.

The European Union unveiled what it is touting as an “alternative” to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Called the “Global Gateway,” the EU claims it will deliver better alternatives consisting of “high standards, good governance, and transparency,” in a rollout almost indistinguishable from the vague and poorly received US “Build Back Better World” (B3W) proposal.

US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) would claim in its article, “Global Gateway: Can The EU’s Giant Infrastructure Plan Rival China’s Belt And Road?,” that:

 

pilger

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened.  Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. From John Pilger in London.

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

lie

The Coming War on China is John Pilger’s most recent film – his 60th documentary and arguably his most prescient. Completed in the month Donald Trump was elected US President, the film investigates the manufacture of a ‘threat’ and the beckoning of a nuclear confrontation.

 

Watch the film on Vimeo.

alex‘Deeply concerning’: British government picks Alexander Downer to review UK’s border force

 

Unions have condemned British home secretary Priti Patel’s appointment of the former Australian foreign minister and key architect of the Pacific Solution

 

clown

Most Australians had probably never heard of Alex Hawke until last month, when he spectacularly deported the unvaccinated world No. 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic on the eve of the Australian Open. Even amid that feverish affair he remained mysterious: as Immigration Minister, he signed the documents, but it was Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews who fronted the cameras and the world.

grub

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under fire from all sides on Q+A for using parliamentary privilege to label Deputy Opposition Leader Richard Marles a "Manchurian candidate" and using the issue of national security as a tool by which to smear the opposition.

australie

Given their recent history, it is ironic that Macron and Morrison will come up for election at very close to the same time.

The French presidential election is due to hold both rounds of voting in April. It is probable that the next Australian election will be in May.

The main purpose of this article is to assess the probability of a Macron victory in the French Presidential election.

The comparison with Australia is principally to illustrate the French situation, but given their recent history it is also interesting to examine Macron and Morrison’s respective prospects of re-election.

Of course, it is far too early to be very confident in either case. Polling is a notoriously imperfect guide to election prospects, but it remains the best guide we have.

In France, some trends are already clear.

no war

RISING TENSIONS (6)

 

Two interpretations of the Ukrainian affair

 

 

by Thierry Meyssan  

The choice of the Anglo-Saxons to ignore the Russian proposal for a treaty guaranteeing peace and to substitute it with the fantasy of a Ukrainian crisis is not bearing fruit. France is agitated, Germany is paralyzed, but Hungary is likely to lead its neighbors to a position identical to that of Russia: the defense of international law.

 

 

 

blinken...

It must be a sure handicap to be saddled with such a name when piloting a large government department, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shows no sign of that bothering him.  It has, however, become a hallmark of a policy babble that is markedly devoid of foresight and heavily marked by stammering confusion.

On his trip to Australia, Blinken showed us, again, how morality and forced ethics in the international scene can be the stuff of particularly bad pantomime.  He sounded, all too often, as an individual sighing about the threats to US power while inflating those of its adversaries.  Russia and China were, as they tend to be these days, at the front of the queue of paranoid agitation.

 

jew

The federal government will list the entirety of Palestinian group Hamas as a terrorist organisation, including its political wing.

voters

Scott Morrison is running out of time and plausible ideas to save his floundering government, with new polling confirming his worst fears.

Those fears led him to approach the 60 Minutes program late last year to help him launch a makeover of his image among many as an incompetent, dishonest bully who has a problem with women.

The Nine Network’s flagship current affairs program obliged, assigning a crew to go into the inner sanctum of the Morrison family and meet the Prime Minister’s “secret weapon”, his wife Jenny.

 

Desperate times demand desperate measures.