Was ABC’s firing of Antoinette Lattouf influenced by a pro-Israel group? | Real Talk – Online.
23 Jan 2024 Real Talk
Australian-Lebanese presenter Antoinette Lattouf was fired by Australia’s ABC just three days after she started. It has now surfaced that her firing may have been orchestrated by a pro-Israeli WhatsApp group. Now she’s fighting back, and she joins us to speak about it on Real Talk online. (Note: After this interview was recorded, ABC issued a statement saying that Lattouf was not fired. Lattouf responded on Twitter, saying: “If I wasn’t sacked, what was it?”) #RealTalk is a Middle East Eye interview show hosted by Mohamed Hashem that delves into the stories and experiences of a diverse range of guests.
Lockheed Martin deletes Australian F-35 ties
The world’s biggest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, has deleted from its website details about Australia’s key role in building F-35 fighter jets, which Israel is using to bomb Gaza.
MICHELLE FAHY, JUN 05, 2024 https://theklaxon.com.au/lockheed-martin-australian-government-joined-at-the-hip/
Among the details quietly scrubbed from Lockheed Martin’s website are that Australian businesses are supplying components ‘for the entire F-35 fleet’ and that, ‘Every F-35 built contains some Australian parts and components’.
The material was included in the section ‘Industrial Partnerships’, which was deleted entirely between March 15 and April 7 this year.
Around that time, Lockheed Martin and the Albanese Government were under heavy scrutiny following a February Senate hearing in which the supply of ‘weapons’ to Israel was hotly contested, specifically F-35 parts and components.
The deleted ‘Industrial Partnerships’ section of the Lockheed Martin site states: ‘As a programme partner, Australian businesses are supplying components for the entire F-35 fleet, not just Australian aircraft.’
It continues: ‘In total, more than 70 Australian companies have been awarded export contracts valued at AU$4.13 billion.’
Web archive Wayback Machine, which sporadically screenshots webpages, shows the ‘Industrial Partnerships’ section was on Lockheed Martin’s site until March 15, but had been deleted by April 7, the next time it screenshot the page.
Also deleted from the site is a profile of Melbourne F-35 parts manufacturer Marand Precision Engineering, which supplies the F-35 ‘global fleet’ with an ‘engine removal and installation mobility trailer’ comprised of ‘around 12,000 individual parts’.
The Marand article was on the Lockheed site when the Wayback Machine took a screenshot of the page on March 28, but it had been deleted by the time of the next screenshot taken on May 9.
Lockheed Martin’s Australian F-35 page now contains only information relating to the Australian Defence Force’s F-35 program.
On March 25, Greens Senator David Shoebridge tried (and failed) to move a motion in the Senate that accused the Federal Government of being ‘content to send weapons and weapons parts to Israel to literally fuel the genocide’.
On February 14, participating in a Senate committee, Shoebridge asked Hugh Jeffrey, a Department of Defence deputy secretary: ‘Do you consider parts of an F-35 fighter jet, such as the parts manufactured in Australia and used on Israeli Defence Force fighter jets to open the bomb bay doors, to be weapons?’
Jeffrey responded: ‘A pencil is used for writing. It’s not designed in and of itself to be a weapon, but it can be, if you want to use it as a weapon.’
Shoebridge said: ‘Bomb bay doors are generally used to release bombs.’
Jeffrey said that under the UN definition, ‘weapons are defined as whole systems’, such as ‘armoured vehicles’, ‘tanks’ and ‘combat helicopters’.
The Albanese government has repeatedly said that no ‘weapons’ have been sent to Israel for at least the past five years.
Focusing on the word ‘weapons’ enables the government to ignore exports of ‘ammunition/munitions’ and ‘parts and components’, all of which are covered by the 2014 Arms Trade Treaty, which Australia championed at the United Nations and ratified in 2014.
The Albanese government is coming under increasing pressure, with concerns mounting that Australia will be found to be complicit in genocide because it has not ceased military exports to Israel.
More than 800 public servants last week released a signed open letter calling on the government to immediately stop all military exports to Israel.
The Department of Defence has admitted it approved two new export permits to Israel after the October 7 attack.
In a Senate estimates hearing on February 14, the Defence Department‘s Hugh Jeffrey said: ‘Two export permits have been granted since the time of the last estimates’, the date of which was 25 October 2023. The permits were approved between October 25 and October 31. Mr Jeffrey refused to say what items the new permits covered.
The Defence Department and DFAT have also refused to answer questions about whether approved military export permits that were in place before the Hamas attacks have been suspended.
Australia’s key role in the F-35 fighter jet program
More than 70 Australian companies supply parts and components into the global supply chain of the F-35.
Several of the companies are the sole source of the parts they produce. Without them, new F-35 jets cannot be built, nor can parts be replaced.
In December last year a US Congressional hearing revealed that the F-35 joint program office had been moving ‘at a breakneck speed to support … Israel … by increasing spare part supply rates’. (Emphasis added.)
On October 30, the Defence Department issued a media release trumpeting the important role played by Australian industry in the production and maintenance of the global F-35 fleet. The release announced that Melbourne company Rosebank Engineering had established an important repair depot under the F-35 global support solution for aircraft operating in or deployed to the Indo-Pacific region. Rosebank Engineering and the Defence Department had partnered with the US F-35 joint program office and Lockheed Martin to establish the new facility.
Rosebank has been part of the F-35 supply chain since 2004 and now manufactures more than 150 components for the landing gear and weapons bay systems on the F-35, including the components that enable the bombs to be dropped on Gaza. Rosebank (formerly RUAG Australia) is the sole source global supplier of the F-35’s ‘uplock actuators’ that open and close the F-35’s weapons bay doors.
Sydney-based Quickstep Holdings is another long-term supplier to the F-35 program. In December 2020, it announced it had produced its 10,000th component – just 20% of its commitment to the program. Quickstep manufactures more than 50 components and assemblies, worth about $440,000 in each F-35, it says.
Lockheed Martin also acknowledged Queensland’s Ferra Engineering in providing products for the F-35 since 2004 and said it remained a vital partner.
Rosebank Engineering, Quickstep Holdings and Ferra Engineering have all supplied parts and components into the F-35’s supply chain during the past five years.
No nuke waste down under: Nuclear Free Local Authorities spokesperson receives assurance MOD still committed to decommissioning British nuclear subs at home
Nuclear Free Local Authorities, 4 June 24
Defence chiefs have written to the NFLA Spokesperson on Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning reassuring him that ‘the Ministry of Defence remains committed to disposing its decommissioned submarines, including the waste they produce, within the UK’.
Councillor Brian Goodall, who represents the Rosyth Ward in Scotland where decommissioning is currently taking place, wrote to the outgoing Defence and Foreign Secretaries on 17 May seeking their assurance that redundant British nuclear submarines will not be sent to Australia for disposal.
In Australia, in relation to the AUKUS defence pact, legislators have proposed a new Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2024, which appears to provide under Clauses 7 and 12 of the Bill for the disposal of high level radioactive waste from British and American submarines on Australian soil, and also for the storage of such materials in Australia from ‘a submarine that is not complete (for example, because it is being constructed or disposed of)’.
Councillor Goodall is concerned that this could theoretically mean the British Government ‘permitting towing redundant UK boats from Rosyth and Devonport down under for disposal’. Councillor Goodall fears that, were this to become practice and not just theory, local expertise and the jobs of his constituents could be lost.
In their response, defence officials say they continue to work on completing the decommissioning of the submarine Swiftsure at Rosyth by 2026 ‘by adopting a unique approach that will maximise the amount of the submarine that can be recycled and minimise the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of’. Radioactive waste will be taken to Capenhurst, Cheshire for interim storage until a Geological Disposal Facility is completed for its eventual disposal. This includes the reactor from each dismantled submarine.
Knowledge acquired as a result of the submarine decommissioning work will be shared by the MOD with Australia.
The letter sent to Lord Cameron and Grant Shapps on 17 May read:……………………………………………………… more https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/no-nuke-waste-down-under-nflas-spokesperson-receives-assurance-mod-still-committed-to-decommissioning-british-nuclear-subs-at-home/
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