Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Australia’s part in the USA war machine, and the arms bazaar

Happy Christmas (the war is not over) The Drum,  Kellie Tranter 22 Dec 11 “……..You’ll be chuffed to know our country is doing its bit for ‘world peace’ this Christmas.

The Australian Army is preparing for longer “campaigns”; we voted against Palestine’s admission to the UNESCO and we lobbied to weaken the international ban on cluster bomb munitions.

We also decided to sell uranium to India, a country standing outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a country whose nuclear program is stimulated by its neighbour (Pakistan) having the fastest-growing nuclear weapons program in the world, and a country whose government has been prepared to bribe MPs to secure the votes for a nuclear future, as evidenced by the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008.

Last but not least, Australia was the fourth largest purchaser of US arms in the 2011 fiscal year.

Tune into the radio for the morning history trivia question. Seldom does a day pass when the answer doesn’t relate to the beginning of a war, the fighting of a war, the ending of a war or some remembrance of a war. Is mankind preordained to a fate of perpetual war mongering?

Mainstream media reports “voila”, the end of the Iraq war, as promised. But the public announcements don’t mention that the United States has left behind in Iraq the world’s largest “embassy”, housing 16,000 people. Or that private security contractors (which may include the infamous Blackwater, renamed Xe and now Academi) will be returning to Iraq because the United States government failed to negotiate immunity for its troops or to renegotiate the Status Of Forces Agreement which requires all US forces to be gone from Iraq by January 1, 2012. And we don’t hear a peep about the rules of engagement for private US security contractors.

But are the US soldiers going home? Or are they joining the US and NATO forces who allegedly have landed outside of Syria and are training militants to overthrow the regime of president Bashar al-Assad. Don’t worry about that – it’s Christmas time: we’ll just have to wait for the White House to spin the bottle on the world map to find out which country our young soldiers will go to next. Syria? Iran? China?

In the spirit of “dealing toughly with your banker” earlier this year the Pentagon revealed a new battle concept – The Air Sea Battle concept- which reportedly is the “start of what defence officialssay is the early stage of a new Cold War-style military posture toward China”.

Naturally Australia and the United States each attempted to reassure China that expanding military US ties with Australia are not aimed at containing China, and so far China has remained rather stiff upper lipped, but wars are fought on borrowed money so it will be interesting to see how US Treasury Bonds go (or don’t). Guan Jianzhong, the head of China’s biggest ratings agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, offered a fairly frank assessment of the US economy.

But fortunately we should be kept safe and warm this Christmas by the Australian Intelligence Community. ASIO costs us $438 million per year, but we have the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Office of National Assessments, the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and the Defence Imagery & Geospatial Organisation as well! And the list is growing: the relatively newCyber Security Operations Centre is housed inside the Defence Signals Directorate, an organisation that partners with the United States National Security Agency, now notorious for itsOrwellian domestic spying program…. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3742938.html

December 22, 2011 - Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war

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