No fog, no war. Hegseth’s war crimes put Australian soldiers at risk.
by Michael Pascoe | Dec 3, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/no-fog-no-war-hegseths-war-crimes-put-australian-soldiers-at-risk/
Australian service personnel are embedded with a rogue military force committing war crimes. It is testimony to the Australian Government’s lack of integrity that they are not being recalled.
Australian service personnel are embedded with a rogue military force committing war crimes. It is testimony to the Australian Government’s lack of integrity that they are not being recalled.
As an American Admiral, Frank “Mitch” Bradley is at least likely to know of the episode that made Eck and co infamous – murdering the survivors of a Greek freighter their U-boat had sunk. Their victims were in lifeboats and clinging to wreckage in the South Atlantic night as they were machinegunned and attacked with hand grenades and small arms. Two of them had been taken aboard the U-boat for interrogation before being returned to the water and their death.
Eck, Weispfennig and Hoffmann were convicted at Nuremberg and executed by firing squad in October 1946.
Bradley, following Hegseth’s orders, didn’t use anything as primitive as small arms to kill the two survivors of a Venezuelan speedboat that had been hit by an American missile in international waters. From the comfort and safety of Fort Bragg in North Carolina, he sent another missile to blow them apart.
Since the Washington Post reported the crime on Friday night, the Trump administration has flipped and flopped between straight denial, outrage and careful wording as even some Republican politicians sensed a bridge too far.
Any denials by Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and Hegseth, of course, have all the credibility of Trump, Leavitt and Hegseth. The MAGA mob can be guaranteed to roll on to its next scandal, increasingly misusing the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen as its supra-legal hit squad, broadcasting snuff movies to prove it.
Fog of war?
Overnight, as the denials and obfuscations could not be sustained, Trump and Hegseth confirmed and defended murdering the survivors of the original strike.
With enormous gall, Hegseth is citing “fog of war” and criticising journalists sitting in air-conditioned offices planting “fake stories”. Bradley and the cowards who carried out his orders were in air-conditioned comfort themselves, nowhere near any frontline or danger.
Hegseth is working his way through the usual pattern of a worm caught in scandal: first denial, then distancing as denial falters, penultimately defending, relying on Trumpistas being above the law. Beware the usual fourth step, distraction.
It’s taken the major Australian media outlets a little while to begin to cotton on to the depravity of murdering helpless survivors. As Todd Huntley, the director of the National Security Law program at Georgetown University Law Center and previously a judge advocate in the US Navy for more than two decades, told The New Yorker:
“Basically, this is the one strike that we know about where even if you accept the Administration’s position that the United States is in an armed conflict with these drug cartels, this would still be unlawful under the laws of armed conflict, because the individuals were out of the fight and shipwrecked, and thus owed protection.”
The ”even if” in that sentence is one that nobody outside the MAGA diehards and their apologists accepts. The overwhelming legal opinion is that blowing up civilian boats – the summary executions – are criminal actions. There’s been plenty written on what the theatre off the Venezuelan coast is really about; the one sure thing is
it has nothing to do with stopping fentanyl reaching the US.
Australians embedded
It’s become trite to quote Lieutenant-General David Morrison, saying as chief of the Australian Army that “the standard you walk by is the standard you accept”.
Besides, the Australian Government of Albanese, Marles and Wong doesn’t walk past the Trump slime, it embraces it, welcomes it, pledges allegiance to it, pays it protection money,
pimps out our nation for it and sends Australian men and women to serve it.
The last is ethically unsustainable. We have moved well beyond the merely cringing embarrassment of smiling Marles and Hegseth photo ops to questions of complicity as we facilitate America’s armed forces’ criminal acts
Distinguished former US officers have publicly warned troops not to follow illegal orders from the Trump gang and have been threatened by Trump for doing so. What has Australia’s Chief of Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, told his people before handing them over to the likes of Admiral Bradley?
It is time to show just a little spine by bringing our troops home. That we are incapable of prosecuting our own war criminals is not an excuse for potentially creating more.
Marles mute on troops embedded
How many people are we putting in harm’s way? I don’t know. An email request to Marles’ defence media office has gone unanswered for more than 24 hours as I write. I wanted to know how many Australians are embedded or on exchange with the US military and in what areas.
In response to a question by Senator Jacqui Lambie in July, Defence answered that there were 193 ADF and APS personnel embedded in the US just for the first phase of AUKUS.
Instead of pursuing inane beatups about where Chinese ships in the Philippine Sea might be sailing for Christmas, maybe a press gallery with a clue could ask Marles at his next media performance if any Australian personnel are embedded with US Navy SEAL teams, the units carrying out Hegseth and Bradley’s illegal orders to murder.
Questions for the Government
For that matter, any Australian Government politician at any occasion should be asked if we share America’s values on war crimes, to what extent our nominally Australian Pine Gap and Exmouth facilities are being used for illegal military action against civilians off Venezuela, if we would support US military action against Venezuela, if they think Hegseth is even fit to return to his gig as a Fox News weekend clown, let alone remain as the US “Secretary for War”.
There are so many good questions to ask, but hey, watch the gallery stick to safe Sinophobia baiting and the usual horse race politics.
I can already hear the argument that the US has always been like this, fond of extra-judicial killings. True, there’s more than a century of invasions and covert and overt action overthrowing governments, good and bad, usually replacing them with something worse.
There are legal niceties, though, in the rules of war. Those rules have been bent and twisted to suit, most recently in the “War on Terror”, but this is something different, a different level of state evil.
Context was provided in The New Yorker’s interview with Todd Huntley:
“I think it’s the intentional nature of it. In most of those other situations where U.S. attacks have killed civilians, the deaths were due to either faulty intelligence, a faulty assessment of the facts, or an accident. This one seems to have been very clearly intentional. I think that is one thing that makes it much different, and on some level worse, because if you’re looking at the use of force in an armed conflict and you have violations, not everything rises to the level of a war crime.
This is a war crime.
And by keeping silent, by pursuing our policy of enmeshing our military with the US military, we are making Australia complicit.
Michael Pascoe
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.
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Government backflips on nuclear-capable submarines under AUKUS
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has warned of escalating nuclear risks after Senate Estimates confirmed the government would not stand in the way of US Virginia-class submarines entering Australian waters while armed with nuclear weapons.
The Australian Government has acknowledged it would permit visits by US Virginia-class submarines that may carry nuclear weapons in future—a direct contradiction of Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s assurance at the National Press Club in April 2023 that AUKUS submarines visiting Australia would be conventionally armed.
During Senate Estimates on Wednesday night, senior Defence officials acknowledged that there is “no impediment” under Australian policy or treaty obligations to the visit of dual-capable platforms—an aircraft, submarine or missile designed to carry either conventional weapons or nuclear weapons—and that Australia would continue to respect the US policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons.
This means Australians could unknowingly host US or UK nuclear weapons offshore—with no right to be told.
Gem Romuld, Director of ICAN Australia, said:
“The Foreign Minister’s assurance that nuclear weapons won’t be rotating through Australia is now dead in the water. It’s taken just two years for expectations of an AUKUS partner to shift, so what will come next?
If AUKUS is ‘not about nuclear weapons’, then Australia’s numerous assurances must be backed up with legal commitments. The best way to draw the line on nuclear weapons is to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
The Estimates exchange centred on the United States’ nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile program (SLCM-N), which the US Congress has directed the Navy to develop. Experts, including CNA analyst Decker Eveleth, have publicly confirmed these weapons can be deployed on Virginia-class submarines, the same class Australia is preparing to host at HMAS Stirling as early as 2027.
National Labor policy commits the government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Successive Labor conferences have reaffirmed this commitment, and more than 300 federal, state and local parliamentarians have signed the ICAN parliamentary pledge.
Romuld said:
“Australia is a strong proponent of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), an essential multilateral agreement but one that is no longer fit for purpose. The TPNW extends the work of the NPT to meet the challenges posed by today’s nuclear risks, and in finally comprehensively outlawing these weapons of mass destruction,”
“National Labor policy commits to signing and ratifying the TPNW in government, a promise yet to be delivered. It’s time for Australia to move on from just engaging with this treaty to putting pen to paper. The Prime Minister championed it and now has a responsibility to enact his policy before Australia becomes a launchpad for nuclear war.
“Both of our AUKUS partners are heavily armed with nuclear weapons. As a nation opposed to nuclear weapons, signing the TPNW puts essential protections and future-proofing in place for our country and our region.”
Australia’s New Censorship Is Voluntary – and That’s Why It’s Dangerous
Is a journalist free if they must first seek permission to tell the truth?
4 December 2025, David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/australias-new-censorship-is-voluntary-and-thats-why-its-dangerous/
When journalists internalise the state, the state no longer needs to silence them.
Australia has discovered the most polite form of censorship ever devised. No jackboots, no warrants, no midnight raids; just a quiet conversation, a “national security” reminder, and journalists voluntarily silencing themselves. Why pass laws when you can persuade the press to behave as though they already exist?
This is not satire. It is policy. And its blueprint comes straight from Whitehall.
The Quiet Request
Three weeks after Labor took office in June 2022, officials in Attorney‑General Mark Dreyfus‘s department reached across hemispheres to Britain’s Ministry of Defence. Their purpose was not military cooperation, intelligence sharing, or treaty work. It was media control; specifically, how to make censorship unnecessary by convincing journalists to do it to themselves.
The model: Britain’s Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee (DSMA).
The tool: a pre‑publication vetting mechanism disguised as collaboration.
The tone: “voluntary.”
The effect: silent.
DIY censorship? Brilliant.
Not a Draft. An Import.
Freedom of Information documents show this was not curiosity. It was a virtual IKEA flat‑pack – imported, piece by bureaucratic piece, from the mother country to its former colony. The assembly instructions came straight from London. A spare Allen key always comes in handy.
- 2019: Days after Federal Police raided ABC and News Corp offices over war‑crimes reporting, red‑faced Australian officials began attending DSMA sessions in London.
- 2021–2022: Bureaucrats refined plans for a “similar role” in Australia.
- May 2022: Secret roundtables with major editors were held. No minutes. No attendee lists. No sunlight.
- June 2022: Dreyfus’s department formally requested London’s assistance.
The continuity is chilling. Liberal ministers started the project. Labor ministers continued it. Bureaucratic inertia was the constant.
This isn’t a partisan conspiracy. It’s worse: a bipartisan agreement that journalists must learn to censor themselves politely.
How Britain Silences Without Silencing
DSMA is a masterpiece of bureaucratic subtlety. It issues “advisories,” not bans. Journalists “consult” before publishing, rather than submit for approval. A discreet military officer suggests what to omit “for national security,” while the state never dirties its hands with formal censorship laws.
The committee’s proceedings are confidential.
Its members are hidden.
Its advice is non‑binding.
Yet it boasts a 90% success rate persuading journalists not to publish.
Dissent hasn’t been criminalised; it has been professionalised. To ignore DSMA advice invites prosecution under the Official Secrets Act – or, more immediately, career suicide. The threat is legal, but the engine is cultural.
This is what Canberra admires: not censorship, but managed consent. The state doesn’t punish critics. The critics simply internalise the state. Intuit the boss’ wishes, a bit like a Murdoch editor.
The Dreyfus Paradox
Mark Dreyfus once helped chisel the High Court’s implied freedom of political communication into Australia’s constitutional framework. He argued that democracy depends on journalists criticising power freely.
Journalist training programs
And now? His department has chased a censorship model whose brilliance lies in never admitting it exists.
This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s absorption. Dreyfus didn’t renounce principle; he was subsumed by machinery. You don’t have to betray your beliefs if the institution performs the betrayal for you.
He thought he was protecting national security. What he safeguarded was secrecy itself.
The Machinery
This project did not dissolve when ministers changed. It doesn’t depend on elections. The relationships with UK Defence persist. Editors who attended closed‑door sessions still hold their seats. Bureaucrats continue to discuss frameworks for “voluntary advisory mechanisms.”
And the scaffolding grows stronger through parallel controls:
- Harsher secrecy offences that criminalise public‑interest reporting.
- Online misinformation laws with ministerial discretion over speech.
- Digital identity requirements for internet access.
- Discussion papers on journalist registration systems.
Individually, each seems modest. Together, they form something like a velvet‑lined cage.
The Respectable Mask
Systems like DSMA need legitimacy. Enter Peter Greste: a journalist jailed in Egypt, a symbol of press freedom, a moral compass. Conference transcripts show him engaging with advocates of reviving the Australian D‑Notice system, DSMA’s predecessor.
The argument attributed to him is seductive: pre‑publication consultation protects journalists from prosecution. Ask permission; avoid jail.
And in the process, a core civic principle collapses quietly under manners and moral suasion.
The Question
Australia must stop asking whether a DSMA system will be adopted. It already has been – culturally.
The question is whether Australians still believe freedom of political communication is a public right or whether it has become a regulated professional privilege.
Is a journalist free if they must first seek permission to tell the truth?
That’s the moment democracy becomes polite enough to disappear; and the risk now confronting every newsroom in the country.
* * * * *
CLARKE & DAWE: HOW TO SILENCE A COUNTRY WITHOUT LAWS
SETTING: Parliament House lawn.
BRYAN DAWE holding freshly printed FOI documents.
JOHN CLARKE appears as a senior official from the “Department of National Information Harmony,” calm, courteous, and utterly terrifying.
BRYAN DAWE: John, your department has been in discussions with the UK about its Defence and Security Media Advisory system.
JOHN CLARKE: Yes, Bryan. Very sensible. A voluntary censorship system.
BRYAN DAWE: Voluntary censorship?
JOHN CLARKE: Correct, Bryan. It’s censorship that journalists choose.
BRYAN DAWE: Why would journalists choose to censor themselves?
JOHN CLARKE: National security, Bryan. Also career security. Also avoiding prosecution. And staying in the good books.
BRYAN DAWE: So the government isn’t forcing them?
JOHN CLARKE: No, Bryan. That would look terrible. We simply provide advice about what not to publish.
BRYAN DAWE: And the journalists follow it?
JOHN CLARKE: Over 90% of the time, Bryan. Very cooperative species.
BRYAN DAWE: Doesn’t this undermine press freedom?
JOHN CLARKE: Not at all, Bryan. The press is free to comply.
BRYAN DAWE: FOI documents show your department approached the UK three weeks after Labor was elected.
JOHN CLARKE: Correct. But the previous government started it. It’s bipartisan secrecy, Bryan. The safest kind.
BRYAN DAWE: So both sides agree on this system?
JOHN CLARKE: Absolutely. It avoids embarrassment across the aisle. Truly unifying.
BRYAN DAWE: What is the advantage of a voluntary censorship system?
JOHN CLARKE: You never need to admit you’re censoring anything. The media does it for you. It’s very efficient.
BRYAN DAWE: And what if journalists refuse?
JOHN CLARKE: They are still free to refuse, Bryan. Then they can be prosecuted. Freely.
BRYAN DAWE: John, isn’t democracy supposed to rely on an independent press?
JOHN CLARKE: Yes, Bryan. Which is why the press must work closely with the government.
BRYAN DAWE: That sounds like dependency, not independence.
JOHN CLARKE: Independence is most reliable when it is professionally supervised, Bryan.
BRYAN DAWE: So transparency is preserved?
JOHN CLARKE: Entirely, Bryan. We always encourage transparency; provided it has been cleared with us first.
BRYAN DAWE: John, is this censorship?
JOHN CLARKE: No, Bryan. It’s voluntary. Only the consequences are compulsory.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
Towards a transparent and responsible management of radioactive waste (a view from Canada)
Ottawa, December 4, 2025, www.ccnr.org/release_radwaste_transport_2025.pdf
Bloc Québécois spokesperson for the Environment and Climate Change, Patrick Bonin, held a press conference on December 2 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, alongside Lance Haymond, Chief of the Kebaowek First Nation, Lisa Robinson, Chief of the Wolf Lake First Nation, and representatives of several environmental and anti-radioactive-pollution groups to co-sign a letter along with more than 80 environmental associations, elected officials, trade unions, and First Nations representatives in Ontario, Quebec and the Rest of Canada, calling for a moratorium on the transport of radioactive waste over public roads and bridges to the Chalk River site located beside the Ottawa River. [See the letter in English and French at www.ccnr.org/letter_e_f_2025.pdf ]
The signatories are calling on the federal government to ban, among other things, all imports of radioactive waste from other countries, including disused medical sources, expired tritium light sources, and irradiated nuclear fuel.
They are also calling on the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to conduct a strategic assessment of the transport of high-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste on public roads.
Quotes:
Ginette Charbonneau, spokesperson for the Coalition Against Radioactive Pollution, deplores the fact that “it is irresponsible to transport all radioactive waste under federal jurisdiction to Chalk River. It is doubly dangerous to transport the waste twice: once for temporary storage at Chalk River and a second time to its final destination.”
Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., president of the Nuclear Watchdog Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, states that “The Age of Nuclear Waste is just beginning. It’s time to stop and think. First, we must stop moving the waste. This only increases the costs and the risks without solving the problem. Second, we must think of the need for three things – justfiication, notification, and consultation – before moving any of this dangerous human-made cancer-causing material over public roads and bridges.”
Jean-Pierre Finet of the Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie (Alliance of Environmental Organizations on Energy) states, “We wholeheartedly support the call for a moratorium on the transport and importation of waste and the request for a strategic environmental assessment. We believe that Chalk River must cease to be our government’s nuclear waste dump.”“
“In 2017, Ottawa residents were denied a regional environmental impact assessment of radioactive wastes accumulating alongside the Ottawa River. Given all the proposed waste transfers underway and yet to be implemented, a strategic assessment is more urgent than ever,” explains Dr. Ole Hendrickson of the Ottawa River Institute.
“The government is willing to accept unacceptable risks, to silence affected nations, and to operate without any transparency or accountability,” says Lance Haymond, Chief of the Kebaowek First Nation. “We have learned long ago: Silence is Consent. We will not be silent.”
Lisa Robinson, Chief of the Wolf Lake First Nation, Canada, says, “We are all calling on Canada to do better with the nuclear situation in storage and transportation, and we call on all Canadian to insist on complete accountability for the tens of billions of dollars of public money that is being spent by those hired to manage these indestructible radioactive wastes.”
Contacts :
English
Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Montreal
– ccnr@web.ca 514-839-7214
Ole Hendrickson, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area, Ottawa
– oleqhendrickson@gmail.com 613-735-4876
Brennain Lloyd, Northwatch, We the Nuclear Free North, North Bay, Ontario
– brennain@onlink.net 705-493-9650
French/English
Ginette Charbonneau Ralliement contre la pollution radioactive Oka (Québec)
– ginettech@hotmail.ca 514=246-6439
Jean-Pierre Finet, Regroupement des organismes environnementaux en énergie, Montréal
– pierre.finet@gmail.com 514-515-1957
Eva Schacherl, Council of Canadians – Ottawa
– evaschacherl@gmail.com 613-316-9450
Article: Transferts de déchets radioactifs à Chalk River | Le Bloc québécois reçoit de
nombreux appuis et ravive son appel à un moratoire | La Presse
Watch the press conference : Le Bloc demande un moratoire sur le transport de matières nucléaires | À la une | CPAC.ca
Link to the letter:letter_e_f_2025.pdf
Signatories of the letter…………………………………………………………………….
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 