Tag Archives: Australia

A Sane Voice Amidst the Madness, by Joe Lauria

Posted on March 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Australia desperately needs its former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, back in office. This is the most honest (and funny at times) series of public utterances that I’ve ever seen from a politician, or former politician. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. (ABC screenshot)

Paul Keating, a former prime minister of Australia, has boldly contested the establishment consensus that Australia needs to spend A$368 billion to buy nuclear submarines as protection against a China Keating bluntly says is not a threat.

The former Labor premier has defied the conventional wisdom, saying the U.S. opposes China only because Beijing has committed “the high sin in internationalism – it has grown as large as the United States,” a fact the “exceptional state” can’t accept.  By subordinating itself, Australia is forfeiting its sovereignty to rely on Britain, which abandoned its former colony years ago, to build nuclear submarines that serve U.S. — and not Australian — interests.

“China does not present and cannot present as an orthodox threat to the United States. By orthodox, I mean an invasive threat,” Keating said in a speech to the Australian National Press Club on Wednesday. He said:

“The United States is protected by two vast oceans, with friendly neighbours north and south, in Canada and Mexico. And the United States possesses the greatest arsenal in all human history. There is no way the Chinese have ever intended to attack the United States and it is not capable of doing so even had it contemplated it. So, why does the United States and its Congress insist that China is a ‘threat’?

The US Defence department’s own annual report to Congress in late 2022 said ‘the PRC aims to restrict the United States from having a presence on China’s periphery’. In other words, China aims to keep US navy ships off its coast. Shocking.

Imagine how the US would react if China’s blue water navy did its sightseeing off the coast of California. The US would be in a state of apoplexy.”

Keating said China is integrated into the international system as a member of the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the World Bank, the G20 and other organizations and has a “vested interest in globalization.”

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On War With China, Australia Is Caught Between A Rock And A Pentagon, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 14, 2023 | Leave a comment

Militarily, Australia and the U.S. are joined at the hip. Economically, Australia and China are joined at the hip. It makes for an interesting situation because China and the U.S. view each other as adversaries. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

As part of Australian media’s relentless onslaught of war–with–China propaganda, the government-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation just aired a radio segment on RN Breakfast about the newly revealed details on the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, featuring two guests who are enthusiastic supporters of the deal, and hosted by another enthusiastic supporter of the deal.

One of the guests, Australia’s former treasurer and ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey, made some interesting remarks.

“This locks us in with the United States for decades to come; is there a risk, as the smaller partner in this deal, we’ll just have to do what the US tells us when it comes to future wartime engagements?” host Patricia Karvelas asked Hockey.

“Well we’re already fully integrated with the United States military, and arguably have been for more than one hundred years,” Hockey replied. “We’re the only country in the world that has fought side-by side with them in every major battle for the last one hundred years. And already today a lot of our navy has the Aegis Combat System, which is an American combat system; our current Collins-class submarines use American torpedoes… and in every major way, communications systems and integration, we already have American technology, and we’re integrated with American systems. So there’s nothing new here in that regard.”

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They Work So Hard To Manufacture Our Consent Because They Absolutely Require It, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 10, 2023 | 1 comment

Remember, there are a lot more of us than there are of them. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

Australian media are awash with reporting on the war-with-China propaganda series by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that I’ve been writing about for the last few days. Which is really quite extraordinary, because it’s not an actual news story.

It really isn’t. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age just asked five warmongering China hawks what they think about war with China, wrote down their very predictable answers saying Australia must prepare for war with China within three years, and then passed it off as journalism. Obviously if you ask a bunch of China hawks if they think Australia should prepare for war with China they’re going to tell you yes; that’s not news, that’s just you reporting that five random warmongers think warmongery thoughts.

Yet SMH and The Age stretched this ridiculous non-story into a multi-part series titled “Red Alert” — all without ever noting the massive conflict of interest posed by the extensive ties its “panel” of “experts” have to US-aligned governments and the military industrial complex — and now it’s being covered like a real news story by the rest of Australian media. TV news segments have filled the airwaves reporting on the opinions of the most wildly biased people you could possibly find on this subject, the most appalling of which appeared on the Australian government’s ABC.

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No, Australia Does Not Actually Need To Prepare For War With China, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 7, 2023 | Leave a comment

Does anybody think that China is going to invade Australia? It wouldn’t be rational, and the Chinese are quite rational. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

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.

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Australians Aren’t Allowed To Know If There Are American Nukes In Australia, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on February 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

Why would anyone care about a few nukes in their country? From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

The US government is permitted to have nuclear weapons in Australia. What’s more, Australians are not permitted to know whether or not this is happening. What’s more, not even Australia’s elected senators are permitted to know whether this is happening. It’s assumed to be none of Australia’s business whether there are foreign nuclear weapons in Australia.

This was clarified during a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday, when Greens senators were condescendingly admonished by the Australian foreign minister for the very normal and appropriate attempt to clarify the government’s policy regarding the presence of US armageddon weapons on Australian soil.

ABC News reports:

During a Senate estimates hearing on Wednesday Greens senators sought details on whether visiting American aircraft such as the B-52s operating out of the Top End are ever nuclear armed.

The committee was told the United States had a longstanding policy of “neither confirming or denying” the presence of nuclear weapons under its practice of maintaining global operational unpredictability.

US bomber aircraft have been visiting Australia since the early 1980s, with nuclear-capable B-52s and B2 Sprits regularly operating out of northern Australia.

Defence Department secretary Greg Moriarty said the “stationing of nuclear weapons” in Australia was prohibited under the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, but the treaty did not prevent visits by the US bombers.

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Murdoch Propaganda Pushes Australia To Double Its Military Budget For War With China, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on February 16, 2023 | Leave a comment

Australia has the same relationship with the U.S. as Europe does: vassal. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

In the latest escalation in Australia’s increasingly forceful campaign to manufacture consent for war with China, the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia has aired a jaw-droppingly propagandistic hour-long special which advocates a dramatic increase in the nation’s military spending.

Australians are uniquely vulnerable to propaganda because our nation has the most concentrated media ownership in the western world, the lion’s share of it by Rupert Murdoch, who has well-documented ties to US government agencies going back decades. The propaganda campaign against China has gotten so aggressive here in recent years that I’ve repeatedly had complete strangers start babbling at me about the Chinese threat in casual conversation, completely out of the blue, within minutes of our first meeting each other.

The Sky News special is one of the most brazenly propagandistic things I have ever witnessed in any news media, with its opening minutes featuring footage of bayonet-wielding Chinese troops marching while ominous cinematic Bad Guy music plays loudly over the sound of the marching. In its promotional clip for the special, Sky News Australia tinged all footage pertaining to China in red to show how dangerous and communist they are. These are not decisions that are made with the intention of informing the public, these are decisions that are made with the intention of administering war propaganda.

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Australian Senator Takes Hard Stand Against Covid Jabs by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on December 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

Once in a great while you run into a politician who has decided to cut through the bullshit that is endemic to the class. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at lewrockwell.com:

The Canadian Independent video1 above features an early-December 2022 Parliamentary speech by Gerard Rennick, senator for Queensland, Australia, and a member of the Liberal National Party.

As noted by Rennick, Australia had logged more than 10 million COVID-19 cases by September 2022, at which point the Australian Health Department stopped counting — a decision made out of embarrassment, Rennick suggests, seeing how more than half the country caught COVID despite the fact that 20 million out of Australia’s total population of 26 million2 got their COVID jabs.

Rennick goes on to highlight the rising excess death rate. In 2021, Australia had 8,706 extra deaths above norm, even though New South Wales remained in lockdown for three whole months. “In theory, the deaths should have been lower, like they were in 2020,” Rennick says.

When Will COVID Jab Injuries Be Addressed?

Then there are the jab injuries, which according to Rennick now number around 140,000, “more than all the injuries reported from vaccines since 1971.” Yet despite this shocking discrepancy, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) — just as the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S. — refuses to look at or even acknowledge the signal.

“[That’s] the whole point of having a database where doctors report these injuries, where they tick the box ‘Suspected [vaccine injury]’ — and as the doctors say, they don’t fill these forms out because they have spare time … no, they’re ticking these boxes because they believe the vaccine caused the injury they’re reporting — and yet the TGA wants to pretend that there’s nothing to see here.” Rennick says.

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US Warns Australia Against Anti-Nuclear Treaty, by Julie Conley

Posted on November 10, 2022 | 1 comment

Is war the only thing the U,S. government can do? From Julie Conley at consortiumnews.com:

Disarmament activists condemned Washington’s effort to intimidate the Albanese government from shifting its position on a treaty that the vast majority of Australians, according to a poll in March, support signing and ratifying.

Nuclear test survivor from Kazakhstan addressing the first meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna in June. (UNIS Vienna, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Anti-nuclear weapons campaigners rebuked the Biden administration on Wednesday over its opposition to Australia’s newly announced voting position on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which could signal the country’s willingness to sign on to the agreement.

As The Guardian reported, the U.S. embassy in Canberra warned Australian officials that the Labor government’s decision to adopt an “abstain” position regarding the treaty — after five years of opposing it — would obstruct Australia’s reliance on American nuclear forces in case of a nuclear attack on the country.

Australia’s ratification of the nuclear ban treaty, which currently has 91 signatories, “would not allow for U.S. extended deterrence relationships, which are still necessary for international peace and security,” the embassy said.

The U.S. also claimed that if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government ratifies the treaty it would reinforce “divisions” around the world.

Australia “should not face intimidation from so-called allies under the auspices of defense cooperation,” said Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. “The TPNW offers the best chance for lasting global peace and security and a clear road map for nuclear disarmament.”

The TPNW prohibits the development, testing, stockpiling, use, and threats regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

The Australian chapter of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) noted that Albanese’s vocal support for achieving nuclear disarmament puts him in line with the majority of his constituents — while the U.S., as one of nine nuclear powers in the world, represents a small global minority.

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Vaccine damaged in Australia, by Tyson Illingworth

Posted on October 22, 2022 | Leave a comment

Another heartbreaking story of vaccine injury, from Tylson Illingworth at rwmalonemd.substack.com:

The Australian medical and health system has failed me and is now actively destroying the right to choose a treatment and the Doctor/Patient relationship – and what is concerning is they are now coming for you too.

www.tydicomposer.com
www.instagram.com/tydi

My name is Tyson Illingworth, and I am an award winning, international DJ, composer, songwriter, and sound designer. The music industry and my fans know me by my artist’s name ‘TYDI’, and I have been a musician/composer for 20 years, and I’m only 35. Music is one of the most important and powerful things in my life and I am eternally grateful that I get to live my dream. I wake up every day excited about creating music for my millions of fans and clients around the world.

Never in my wildest dreams or more precisely my nightmares did I expect that I would find myself where I am today, instead of touring and being interviewed for my latest show, track or album, I am receiving daily media invitations to talk about my fight to regain my health after being injured and paralyzed by the Moderna vaccine.

It is important to know that I am pro-evidence-based science and thought the vaccine was safe for me. I believed whole heartedly that I was doing “the right thing” by getting vaccinated. I had complete faith and trust in my country’s (Australia) leadership and medical system – that is until I suffered a severe adverse reaction that left me helpless, paralyzed, and with no help from doctors or my government.

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Vanishing vaccine mandates, by Rebecca Weisser

Posted on July 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Covid commissars went crazy in Australia, and now they’re walking it back without apology. From Rebecca Weisser at spectator.org.au:

No apology from our once-so-zealous public health officials

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This week, with hardly a whisper from its chief public health officers, Australia largely abandoned its vaccine mandates. For the most part, they remain in force only for those working in health and aged care or with those with disabilities. There has been no explanation given as to why unvaccinated workers can now be ‘welcomed back’ into workplaces. There has been no apology to those who lost their jobs for refusing to be jabbed, or who lost their lives, or their good health, following vaccination. So far, 889 deaths have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) which may have been caused by vaccination and almost 133,000 people have reported a vaccine injury including more than 140 heart attacks, 360 myocardial infarctions, 500 strokes, 1,400 cases of deep vein thrombosis and 1,500 pulmonary embolisms.

So, why the sudden change in policy? Here’s one possibility. An Israeli study of 5.7 million people, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in June, shows that unvaccinated people who gained immunity through infection, were far better protected from Covid than people who were double vaccinated. And while the study did not have enough cases of severe Covid to be definitive, it showed that unvaccinated people with natural immunity were also better protected from severe Covid.

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