At last! While cowardly Australian corporate media fawns all over the nuclear submarine deal – New Zealand has the guts to criticise it.
the Australian order will be filled with a new and advanced SSN® model still in development. This is where the British come in. In a sense, Australia will be (a) serving as a test run and (b) will be creating extra economies of scale for the British Navy’s plans to develop and build SSN( R) models to replace its Astute class submarines by the early to mid 2040s.
On AUKUS And Australia’s Decision On Nuclear Subs
Monday, 13 March 2023, Scooop, Gordon Campbell
China may well regard Taiwan as a renegade province. Yet the invasion of Taiwan – as the Australian economist and commentator John Quiggin points out – would pose massive challenges for the forces or Xi Jinping……………………………………………………What Quiggin is getting at here is that a concerted campaign is currently being waged by sections of the Aussie media with the aim of scaring the pants off the Australian public about the imminent threat from China in the Pacific, in the South China Sea and with regard to Taiwan.
The aim of this campaign is to justify a sky-high level of new defence spending by the Australian government. New Zealand is at risk of being carted along by the same momentum into authorising increases in our own defence spending that we don’t need, and can’t afford.
Acting the part
The campaign kicks into high gear today. As the Oscars get handed out in Los Angeles, another pantomime of power will be playing out on the docks just down the coast, in San Diego. Anthony Albanese, Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden will be standing shoulder to shoulder as they announce the first concrete manifestation of the AUKUS pact – a military alliance between Australia, Britain and the Americans that has China as its common target……………………………………
. As Reuters put it:
….[The] AUKUS pact, will have multiple stages with at least one U.S. submarine visiting Australian ports in the coming years and end in the late 2030’s with a new class of submarines being built with British designs and American technology, one of the officials said….after the annual port visits, the United States would forward deploy some submarines in Western Australia by around 2027.
In the early 2030’s, Australia would buy 3 Virginia class submarines and have the option to buy two more. AUKUS is expected to be Australia’s biggest-ever defence project and offers the prospect of jobs in all three countries.
That last bit is very important. Like his predecessors, Albanese will be treating Australia’s defence policy as a cutting edge ingredient of its manufacturing policy.
Australia’s defence policy as a cutting edge ingredient of its manufacturing policy. For Australian politicians, military policy and defence spending is as much about (a) creating jobs for Aussie workers, (b) gaining technology upgrades for Aussie industry and (c) scoring lucrative contracts for Aussie goods and services firms as it is about the actual defence of the nation.
…………………………………………………………………. In a worst case scenario, the Australians could well invite New Zealand to join AUKUS and assign us some “friend of AUKUS” status, as an observer. Our anti-nuclear legislation would complicate such a role. That aside, and given the ocean currents and prevailing winds, New Zealand has every good reason to feel nervous about the prospect of our near-neighbour learning on the job about how to build and maintain the nuclear reactors on its new submarine fleet.
Luckily, most of the new Aussie subs won’t be delivered until the early to mid 2030s. That means these massively expensive new purchases probably wouldn’t arrive in time to deter China from invading Taiwan, given that this is supposed to be imminent.
In the US, the building of Virginia-class subs are shared between two shipyards, one in Groton Connecticut and the other in Newport News, Virginia. Reportedly, the design variant that Australia has in mind will have been a three-headed upgrade project to the Virginia-class that will have been co-designed by Britain and the US, as amended to Australian specifications, with at least some of the subs being built by US-trained Australians who had no prior experience in this sort of construction. On top of these complications, all participants will be coming under pressure to deliver every stage of the project at the lowest cost possible. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with such a design and construction plan? And in this case, I don’t just mean the danger of cost blowouts.
Attack and defence
AUKUS is likely to make New Zealanders feel more unsafe in a number of other ways as well. For starters, AUKUS is not a “defend the homeland” pact. It is a forward projection alliance, to attack enemy targets and stifle the enemy’s ability to defend itself and respond. (Enemy = China.) Before we bow to the pressure coming from our traditional allies to join in with their chest-bumping rivalries with China, it is probably worth looking at the Aussie nuclear submarine deal in more detail.
The Albanese government has said the Aussie subs will not be nuclear-armed. (Not yet, anyway) However, the roughly 40 Tomahawk cruise missiles (the final design will limit the number) that each submarine will carry can all carry nuclear warheads. Only previous treaty commitments with Russia have prevented the cruise missiles carried on Virginia-class subs from being nuclear-armed.
Yet with the scrapping of nuclear proliferation treaties with Russia in the wake of the war in Ukraine, we could well be sailing in a few years time into “neither confirm nor deny” territory with our Australian neighbours. Regardless of their potential for carrying nuclear tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles alongside the usual torpedoes, mines, autonomous undersea drones, etc etc ….Would these nuclear-powered Australian subs be barred from docking at New Zealand ports under the terms of our anti-nuclear legislation? Yes, they would.
Therefore, it would be good to know if our current political leaders share a bi-partisan agreement to preserve our anti-nuclear stance in its current form and thereby ban those Aussie subs from our ports, now and forever more. Even if Labour and National did agree, the reality is that our new and expensive Poseidon anti-submarine surveillance aircraft will still be taking part in exercises which will increasingly have (a) a nuclear component and (b) an anti-submarine (ASW) component, courtesy of our ANZAC buddies. Lest we forget. (The growing ASW role for Virginia-class SSN category subs is mentioned on page 9 of the Congressional Review Service evaluation of the SSN programme. )
From what can be gleaned at this point i.e. prior to the formal announcement, the Australian order will be filled with a new and advanced SSN® model still in development. This is where the British come in. In a sense, Australia will be (a) serving as a test run and (b) will be creating extra economies of scale for the British Navy’s plans to develop and build SSN( R) models to replace its Astute class submarines by the early to mid 2040s.
To repeat: It would be unwise for New Zealand to be stampeded by the “defence” lobbyists both here and offshore into making significant increases to the allocations for Defence in the May Budget. If nothing else, the Aussie subs saga is a useful reminder that the regional tensions in the Pacific and the China bogey are both being driven and monetised by firms within the military-industrial complex, via the pork barrel politicking (lucrative jobs and contracts for our neighbourhood! ) that is so rife among our traditional military allies.
Footnote: While we spend billions on a fleet of new Poseidon anti-submarine aircraft, and the Aussies buy their fleet of mega-expensive nuclear submarines, the future of underwater warfare is seen by some observers to rest with unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Apparently, the Australian military has a programme to develop UUVs called Ghost Shark, cutely named after the US Ghost Bat programme.
UUVs are being developed to do some of the dirty and dangerous work previously done by crewed submarines under their ASW air cover. Some see UUVs as an adjunct to conventional below- surface warfare. Others see UUVs as making those conventional tools redundant. You can read about these unmanned underwater military drones here. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2303/S00018/on-aukus-and-australias-decision-on-nuclear-subs.htm
Benjamin Cronshaw Submission – nuclear power a bad choice – would delay real climate action
No. 46 Submission to the Inquiry into the Removal of Nuclear Prohibition
(Federal)
I note that this Bill seeks to remove the federal prohibition on nuclear installations in Australia.
There are also state prohibitions that would also need to be removed for any nuclear installations
to proceed in a state, but removing the federal prohibition would be a step towards promoting the
nuclear industry in Australia.
My main point would be – regardless of the potential benefits and potential of nuclear industry in
Australia, which would need to be considered against the costs, risks and community sentiment –
that it is a distraction from the urgent action that needs to happen now.
Nuclear energy would conservatively take some 15-20 years to become operational. In the
meantime, there would be tremendous public debate and opposition (whether nuclear energy can
be determined to be safe, and arguably it could, public sentiment is still tough and perhaps
insurmountable hurdle). Moreover, there would be immense costs in the construction of any
nuclear installations, likely requiring much government support. For all that, there is the potential
for something coming online perhaps in 2040 or later. Liberal governments have flirted with the
idea of nuclear energy off and on for decades. Perhaps if they really committed to it back under
John Howard and had a successful push for it, nuclear power would be coming online soon or be
an option. However, the time has passed on nuclear energy being a realistic option.
While I would usually applaud long-term visionary thinking from members of Parliament,
looking at starting up nuclear activities seems like a far off plan that can do little to address the
challenges that we are facing – including the need to have a speedy transition to a low-emissions
economy now. Where countries already have an established nuclear industry, it provides an
important source of energy & will be a key part of their transition to a Net Zero economy. Once
constructed, nuclear energy can operate with very few emissions. However, for a country without an established nuclear energy industry, such as Australia, it is not something that can be
constructed simply.
Renewable energy is the cheapest, and fastest to build, source of new energy. With battery
storage and transmission lines, renewable energy will be poised to assume an increasingly
prominent role in the energy makeup in Australia. The decarbonisation of the energy sector will
require a variety of strategies and technologies and creative solutions. However, renewable
energy will clearly be key (and arguably largely sufficient) to transitioning to a more affordable
and sustainable energy system. As economist Ross Garnaut writes, “I now have no doubt that
intermittent renewables could meet 100 per cent of Australia’s electricity requirements by the
2030s, with high degrees of security and reliability, and at wholesale prices much lower than
experienced in Australia over the past half-dozen.”1 I note that there is a concurrent Inquiry into
Australia’s Transition to a Green Energy Superpower, which provides a good (and more
relevant) window into the opportunities Australia can take up for our energy future.
My key point is that is where our focus should be, on supporting low-cost and sustainable green
energy technologies that we have now, such as solar and wind, rather than being distracted by
big academic debates about the potential (and unlikely) viability of nuclear energy. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submissions
Australia to buy 5 nuclear-powered submarines as part of AUKUS in violation of previous commitments to China.
But Western leaders while discussing AUKUS have taken pains to avoid calling out China directly, but it’s clearly aimed at countering Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, and certainly China sees it as directly impacting its own defense priorities – and has accused Australia of severely violating prior commitments to not introduce nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to its military.
BY TYLER DURDEN, 12 Mar 23, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/australia-buy-5-us-nuclear-powered-submarines-deal-counter-china
In a major expansion and overhaul of its navy, Australia is planning to buy up to five US Virginia class nuclear powered submarines beginning in the next decade, Reuters and others are reporting. US as well as European officials have disclosed the future deal as part of a “landmark defense agreement between Washington, Canberra and London, four U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in a deal that would present a new challenge to China.”
The impending agreement is seen as central to the relatively new AUKUS partnership, and the major sub deal is expected to be announced when President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet in San Diego Monday.
When the partnership was first announced and formalized eighteen months ago, President Biden said of it, “We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” and that “We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.”
The nuclear submarines at center of the expected deal cost $3 billion each and will initially be built in Virginia and Connecticut. But sources say other submarines could be built in the UK and Australia while utilizing US technology and assistance.
The AUKUS partnership has multiple defense components components, chief among them the development of the nuclear submarine capability for Australia. This has been known since the AUKUS agreement was announced in Sept. 2021, but this week marks the first time specifics have been revealed.
Other components include security cooperation in cyberspace, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and undersea capabilities. While the US, the UK and Australia already take part in common security arrangements, and all three participate in the Five Eyes alliance, an intelligence-sharing arrangement that also includes Canada and New Zealand, the AUKUS security structure provides for the technology cooperation needed to share nuclear submarine technology and other common efforts in a region where China poses growing security concerns.
But Western leaders while discussing AUKUS have taken pains to avoid calling out China directly, but it’s clearly aimed at countering Beijing’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, and certainly China sees it as directly impacting its own defense priorities – and has accused Australia of severely violating prior commitments to not introduce nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to its military.
Ocean discharge is the worst plan for Fukushima waste water — IPPNW peace and health blog
Japan may soon start dumping radioactively contaminated waste water from the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean, despite warnings from neighboring countries, marine scientists, and health experts. As soon as within a month or two, Japan could begin dumping into the Pacific Ocean 1.3 million tons of treated but still radioactively contaminated wastewater […]
Ocean discharge is the worst plan for Fukushima waste water — IPPNW peace and health blog
As soon as within a month or two, Japan could begin dumping into the Pacific Ocean 1.3 million tons of treated but still radioactively contaminated wastewater from the stricken Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant. Construction of the kilometer long undersea discharge tunnel and a complex of pipes feeding it commenced last August.
This cheap and dirty approach of “out of sight out of mind” and “dilution is the solution to pollution” belongs in a past century. It ignores the significant transboundary, transgenerational and human rights issues involved in this planned radioactive dumping, projected to continue over the next 40 years.
Concerns about Japan’s ocean dumping plans have been strongly voiced by China and South Korea, and by numerous Pacific island nations. Multiple UN Special Rapporteurs have severely criticised the plan, which has also been opposed by the United States National Association of Marine Laboratories and many regional and international health and environmental civil society organisations.
Australia bears a particular responsibility in relation to the aftermath of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster, since fuel fabricated with uranium from Australia was in each of the Fukushima reactors which exploded. Yet my letters to the relevant Australian federal ministers on this matter have gone unanswered for seven weeks, and no evidence is publicly available that the Australian government has supported our Pacific neighbours in raising concerns about the planned discharge with its Japanese counterparts.
We are in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-30). As Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Secretary-General Henry Puna reminded us in his piece in The Guardian on 4 January, in 1985 the Forum welcomed the then Japanese prime minister’s statement that “Japan had no intention of dumping radioactive waste in the Pacific Ocean in disregard of the concern expressed by the communities of the region.” The current plan is inconsistent with this commitment.
In a public event organised by the PIF in Suva on 18 January, Puna noted Prime Minister Kishida’s reassurance during Japan’s regular meeting with the Forum in July 2022 of the need to progress this matter consistent with international law and verifiable science. The Secretary-General reiterated his request on behalf of Forum members for postponement of the planned discharge in order to allow adequate consideration of alternative options and to engage in respectful and full evidence-based consultation with Pacific nations in planning the best course of action. His calls have been ignored.
The most authoritative independent scientific assessment of the planned discharge has been conducted by a five-member independent international scientific panel appointed by the PIF. The experts were unanimous in their conclusions and recommendations. Their main conclusions:
- TEPCO’s knowledge of the specific radionuclide contents of all the tanks is seriously deficient. Only roughly one quarter of the more than 1,000 tanks at the site have been sampled at all, and in almost all cases only nine or fewer of 64 total radionuclides are measured in the data shared with PIF. TEPCO’s assumptions of consistent ratios of various radionuclides across different tanks are contradicted by the data, with show many thousand-fold variation.
Sampling and measurements have been unrepresentative, statistically deficient and biased, and have not included the debris and sludges, which Japan has acknowledged are present in at least some of the tanks. Sludges and debris are likely to be most radioactive, particularly in relation to harmful isotopes like plutonium and americium.- More than 70% of the tanks which had gone through ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System), designed to remove most of the radioactive contaminants, will require re-treatment. For some isotopes, the levels after treatment are up to 19,900 times higher than the regulatory limits for discharge. There is no evidence confirming that even repeated processing through ALPS can provide consistently effective purification.
- There has been no adequate consideration of the behavior of radioactive elements in the ocean, with transport by ocean currents and organisms, accumulation in biota and sea floor sediments, or the behavior of organically bound tritium in an ocean environment. The seafloor off Japan’s east coast still contains up to 10,000 times the cesium concentration as before the disaster, before any planned discharge.
- Neither TEPCO nor the IAEA acknowledged or addressed the many serious scientific questions raised by the panel. For example, TEPCO reported that tanks sampled in 2019 contained tellurium-127, an isotope with a half-life of only 9 hours. This signifies either that accidental criticality with fission reactions are occurring on an ongoing basis in the molten reactor cores, which would be very significant, or that the measurements are wrong. However no satisfactory answers were provided. Indeed the IAEA cut off contact with the panel.
- Neither TEPCO, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nor the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority have properly considered several viable alternative approaches, including storage in purpose-built seismically safe tanks, possibly after initial purification, subsequent use in concrete for structural applications with little or no potential for contact with humans and other organisms, and bioremediation for some important isotopes such as strontium-90. All the proposed alternatives would have orders of magnitude less impact and avoid transboundary impacts.
The argument that the site is running out of room to store water is spurious. Contaminated water will continue to be generated for many decades hence, and there is plenty of nearby space available that will be unfit for other uses for a very long time and is already being used to store large amounts of contaminated soil from around the prefecture. There is in fact no urgency to begin ocean discharge.
The independent expert panel recommended unanimously that the planned ocean dumping should not proceed. Their overwhelming case, based on scientific evidence and the need to minimise transboundary and transgenerational impacts, is that new approaches and alternatives to ocean dumping are needed and are the responsible way forward.
This matter requires urgent attention. Construction of the pipeline through which the ocean discharge is planned to occur is well underway, and the discharge may commence as soon as this month. Given that the discharge is planned to continue over 30-40 years, reconsideration could still be undertaken even after ocean discharge commenced. However it would be far better if the planned discharge were postponed until better alternatives were properly considered and implemented.
Now is the time for the Australian government, scientists and citizens to join with our Pacific neighbours in calling on Japan to stop its irresponsible plan to use the Pacific Ocean as a radioactive waste dump.
US Navy Wants to Turn Australia Into a Full-Service Submarine Hub
Australia is set to spend over $100 billion over the coming decades on submarines under the AUKUS dealby Dave DeCamp , more https://news.antiwar.com/2023/03/09/us-navy-wants-to-turn-australia-into-a-full-service-submarine-hub/
The US Navy wants a full-service submarine hub in Australia that can oversee all underwater activity in the Asia Pacific, including production and repairs, Defense News reported Thursday.
The report cited comments from Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro, whose vision will be possible under AUKUS, the military pact signed between the US, Britain, and Australia in 2021 as part of an effort to build alliances against China.
AUKUS focuses on technology-sharing and will give Australia access to American and British nuclear-powered submarine technologies. Del Toro said that AUKUS is about “being able to repair our submarines much further out, being able to build them in Australia as well, too, and create that much more presence in the Indo-Pacific where we need it the most.”
President Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are expected to unveil the details of AUKUS submarine deals on Monday during a meeting aboard a submarine in San Diego. Australia is expected first to purchase American Virginia class attack submarines, which will be delivered in the early 2030s.
Australia will then purchase a new British-designed submarine, called the SSN-AUKUS, that’s expected to arrive in the 2040s. The ultimate goal is for Australia to be able to build its own SSN-AUKUS submarines with US or British-provided nuclear propulsion. Over the next few decades, Canberra is expected to spend over $100 billion on the plan.
The submarines Australia will acquire are not expected to be armed with nuclear weapons, but that could always change. Either way, China views the submarine buildup as a provocation since the underwater craft will be used to patrol the waters of the South China Sea. The US also has plans to deploy more troops and aircraft to Australia as part of its buildup, including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers.
‘Red Alert’ is a paper tiger
Independent Australia, By John Quiggin | 10 March 2023,
As Nine newspapers attempt to spread panic about a Chinese invasion, Professor John Quiggin explains why the logistics of such an event happening are unrealistic.
“…………………………………………….We are being told that within the next few years, a seaborne invasion that would dwarf D-Day is going to take place. The most extreme version of this claim is the ‘Red Alert’ series now being published by the Nine newspapers.
China, it is claimed, plans to invade Taiwan, a country with 290,000 soldiers under arms and reserves of 2.3 million. To achieve the kind of numerical superiority seen on D-Day, China would need to land nearly a million men in the first days of an invasion.
But unlike D-Day, there could be no element of surprise. With modern technology, any attack would be detected before the ships left port. They would have to travel 170 kilometres across open water, within range of air attack and anti-ship missiles for the entire voyage. On arriving, they would have a choice of eight small beaches, all of which have been fortified over many decades. Assuming the troops somehow got ashore, they would deal with terrain that makes the bocage look like an open plain.
And to achieve this, the PLA Navy has less than 50 operational landing craft, many dating from the 1970s. The rest of the invasion is supposed to be undertaken by converted ferries, which would be virtually defenceless even against small-arms fire.
Any attempt at grinding down defences with a preliminary bombing campaign would be doomed to failure. Taiwan’s air and missile forces are dug deep into mountains. And retaliatory strikes would impose huge costs, even assuming that the U.S. did not take part.
A variety of other strategies (decapitation attacks, blockades and so on) have also been canvassed. All were tried by the Russians in Ukraine and all failed.
How do the fearmongers of the ‘Red Alert’ series respond to this widely known analysis? The answer is that they don’t. Instead, they canvass every possible scary scenario they can come up with (germ warfare, cyber-attacks, even a nuclear strike on Pine Gap) in the hope that Australians will be terrified enough to back a big increase in military spending. The striking contradiction is that the conventional weapons they are pushing for would be of no use in countering the threats they are talking about.
Of course, the idea of an invasion of Taiwan isn’t just a fantasy of the Nine newspapers. It suits all the main players to pretend that it’s a realistic possibility. Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn’t last five minutes as China’s dictator if he renounced the idea of forcible reunification. U.S. Navy figures like Admiral Michael Gilday, who says an attack might come this year, want an increased share of the U.S. defence budget. And, obviously, the Taiwanese Government has no incentive to understate the threats it faces from the Chinese regime.
The ‘Red Alert’ series marks a new low in Australian journalism, rivalling anything the Murdoch press has produced. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be effective in pushing a message that is convenient to so many in positions of power. https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/red-alert-is-a-paper-tiger,17311?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Australian corporate papers call for war with China, nuclear weapons and mass conscription
Oscar Grenfell, SEP candidate for NSW Legislative Council, 10 Mar, 2023, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/10/tutm-m10.html
In a militarist barrage, Nine Media and its main mastheads—the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age—published a major series this week insisting that Australia must prepare to fight an imminent war against China.
“Red alert” called for the stationing of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles in northern Australia, the introduction of mass conscription and preparations for the country to host as many as 200,000 US military personnel.
The articles are a demand for total war, not far off in the future, but as an immediate practical order of business. The series stressed that a war will be fought in the Indo-Pacific, not in twenty years or a decade, but within the next three years.
The multi-part series was not published in response to any specific development. Over the past week, there has not been a major geo-political occurrence in the region. China has not carried out any acts of aggression.
Instead, “Red alert” is part of a coordinated onslaught by those sections of the US and allied media that speak directly for the American military-intelligence apparatus. In concert, publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have published frothing condemnations of China. It is as though someone in the White House, the Pentagon or both flicked a switch that sent out an alert to their lackeys in the media.
The provocative attacks on Beijing come as the US and NATO escalate their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It is becoming ever more open that the war effort in Eastern Europe is one prong of a far broader militarist project. The US is seeking to inflict a crippling military defeat on Russia, as the essential prelude to war with China, which is viewed as the chief threat to American imperialist interests.
“Red alert” was couched as an “independent” review by five “experts” of Australia’s capabilities to fight a major war over the coming years. It was timed to precede the release of an official review commissioned by the federal Labor government, due out later this month. The claims of “independence” are a violation of the most basic journalistic ethics and standards related to disclosure.
One is employed directly by the Australian government, four are employed by or contribute to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, one of the most hawkish government-funded think tanks, or the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, which is among the most militaristic Washington think tanks. In other words, they could not be any less independent. They are mouthpieces of the state apparatus, as well as of private arms manufacturers that are making a fortune on the back of the military build-up.
The contents of the “Red alert” review are no less false than its purported independence. The series is a compendium of the lies, double speak and incendiary accusations used by Washington and its allies in the Australian political establishment to justify an aggressive military encirclement of China.
The timeline featured by “Red alert,” of a war with China within three years, comes straight from the American military. It is simply a promotion of views advanced by US Air Force General Michael Minihan, who earlier this year forecast an American war with China by 2025.
The supposed cause of such a war advanced by “Red alert” is identical to that put forward by Minihan. The Chinese government would purportedly launch an invasion of Taiwan, compelling US intervention and rapidly spiralling into an all-out war.
“Red alert” tries to present the US, as well as its allies, such as Australia, as engaging in a defensive effort on behalf of “little Taiwan,” as they have supposedly done in defence of “little Ukraine.” This depiction is a fraud on every level.
The US has been carrying out a vast military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific since it unveiled the “pivot to Asia” in 2011. The Pentagon has outlined an “Air Sea Battle” plan as to how an aggressive US war against China would be waged. Chief US strategists have openly acknowledged that this is motivated by fears of China’s economic rise, and American imperialism’s relative decline.
Taiwan is simply a pretext. The US and its allies have sought to transform it into a flashpoint. Successive US governments, beginning with Obama, have undermined the status quo. Since the 1970s, the international community, including American administrations, de facto acknowledged the Chinese Communist Party as the sole legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan, located just 160 kilometres from mainland China.
But now, Biden has repeatedly declared that the US would fight a war to defend Taiwanese “independence.” His administration has tripled US forces on the island, while directly providing military aid and expanding diplomatic ties with Taipei. The aim is to provoke a Chinese response, which would serve as the justification for longstanding US war plans.
“Red alert” asserts that such a war would immediately become region-wide. Australia would be involved from the outset and within 72 hours of such a conflict, there would be Chinese attacks on Australian cyber networks and critical infrastructure. The US Pine Gap spy and military coordination base in central Australia would be a target, as would other Australian-US installations.
The series declares that in the event of such a war, as many as 200,000 American troops would descend on Northern Australia. That is, 47,000 less than the entire population of the Northern Territory, meaning the entire region would be transformed into a massive US base.
“Red alert” links this scenario to a call for the acquisition of major missile systems and other offensive weaponry. This is in line with a rapid build-up already underway, which is being dramatically accelerated by the Labor government. Virtually every week, there is a new announcement of military acquisition, be it sea mines, US HIMARS or naval strike missiles.
Conscious of the historic opposition to war among workers and young people, the document cites the necessity to break the “taboos” of conscription and nuclear weapons.
Perhaps the one note of truth in the series is its description of what a major war in the Indo-Pacific would involve. It would be a “whole of nation” effort, essentially requiring the militarisation of the entire society.
Along these lines, the “Red alert” series calls for the introduction of conscription. This would involve not only teenagers and young adults, but potentially anyone required for the war effort in what would be a war economy and the militarisation of society.
The series also advocates the stationing of US nuclear weapons in Northern Australia, on long-range missile systems that could fire them into the Indo-Pacific. As is the case whenever such proposals are made, the “experts” assert that this would serve as a “deterrent.” But they contradict themselves because in the previous parts of the series, the “experts” insisted that war is inevitable. The inescapable conclusion is that they are calling for nuclear war.
“Red alert” serves several purposes. It comes amid a debate within the Australian ruling elite, over Australia’s full alignment with the US war drive against China. A minority wing has voiced concerns over the implications of this. It is not anti-war or anti-imperialist, but fears that war with Australia’s largest trading partner will devastate the economy while provoking mass social and political upheavals.
The dominant sections of the political establishment, however, are all the way with the US. Australia, as a middle-order power, has always functioned under the umbrella of the dominant power of the day to prosecute its own imperialist interests. Australia, moreover, is completely integrated into the US war machine, meaning its participation in a conflict with China would be automatic.
This integration is only deepening. Next week, Labor Prime Minister Albanese will stand alongside President Biden in San Diego, as they announce that Australia will purchase US nuclear-powered submarines. The Labor government has already permitted nuclear-capable American B-52 bombers to “rotate” through northern Australia, meaning American nuclear weapons may already be stationed here.
The primary target of the “Red alert” series is the population itself. Its authors write about the need to change Australian “psychology.” They know that their mad plans for war are deeply opposed by the vast mass of workers and young people.
Conscription provoked massive social upheavals, both in World War I and during the Vietnam War. There is likewise a long history of broad opposition to nuclear weapons.
The propaganda blitz is aimed at bulldozing these popular sentiments by asserting that there is no alternative but to fight a war. A conflict is inevitable, so the population will simply have to accept it.
But the response to “Red alert” itself shows that this will not happen. The series has received a torrent of hostile commentary on social media. The Sydney Morning Herald posted the final part, containing the recommendation for nuclear weapons and conscription, to its Twitter account yesterday. The tweet has been viewed by 161,000 people. But only 20 of them hit the like button. While proclaiming the need for an “open” and “bold” discussion, the Herald has hidden all responses to its Twitter post.
The type of war that “Red alert” advocates is incompatible with democracy. That is the real meaning of the comments by the “experts” on the “Zelensky test.” They are referencing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a front man for the US and NATO. The “Zelensky test” is a willingness to place the entire country on a war footing. In Ukraine, this has involved the banning of all opposition parties and the promotion of fascist and Nazi forces.
The working class must take a sharp warning from the “Red alert” series and the broader turn to war with China. Longstanding plans for a catastrophic conflict are being activated. Governments and their mouthpieces are not only asserting that war is near. They are making it so.
This is a product of the deepest crisis of the profit system since the 1930s. The alternative to the catastrophe that is being prepared is the fight to build an international anti-war movement of the working class directed against the capitalist system itself and fighting for the socialist reorganisation of society.
Meet the man who uncovered the scandal of nuclear testing in South Australia
https://aeon.co/videos/meet-the-man-who-uncovered-the-scandal-of-nuclear-testing-in-south-australia
In the 1950s and ’60s, the British government conducted nuclear tests in Maralinga, a remote region of South Australia, with little understanding or forethought of the public health problems the fallout might cause. The harmful, sometimes deadly impact of these tests not only affected military conscripts, roped in without any real warning of the potential dangers, but private Australian citizens as well – and especially Indigenous peoples. Accounts of a Nuclear Whistleblower details this dark, somewhat forgotten chapter in Australia’s history via a firsthand account from Avon Hudson who, as a member of the Royal Australian Air Force, was stationed in dangerous proximity to these detonations, and later worked to expose their devastation and enduring threat. Hudson’s activism would ultimately help to precipitate the establishment in 1984 of the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia.
Via Director’s Library Director: Naveed Farro 7 March 2023
Aukus submarine deal: Australia expected to choose UK design, sources say
Rishi Sunak said to have been ‘buzzing’ about result of 18-month negotiations, part of Aukus defence pact with US
Kiran Stacey and Dan Sabbagh, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/08/uk-to-unveil-nuclear-submarines-deal-with-australia-sources-say
An enthusiastic Rishi Sunak has told ministers to expect a positive outcome next week when he travels to San Diego to unveil a deal to supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as part of the Aukus pact with the US.
Multiple sources said they believed the UK had succeeded in its bid to sell British-designed nuclear submarines to Australia, a deal that will safeguard the long-term future of the shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness.
A senior minister said Sunak had told colleagues he was delighted by the outcome of the negotiations, which have been going on for 18 months and have presented Australia with a choice between a British or a US design, based on the existing Astute or Virginia class submarines.
“The deal has definitely gone our way. The prime minister was buzzing about it when he told ministers, smiling and bouncing on the balls of his feet,” the minister said.
A second source outside government with knowledge of the talks said they had also been told to expect a British design success when the deal is announced on Monday, although any final submarine will also make heavy use of US technology.
Sunak is due to travel to the west coast for a trilateral summit with Joe Biden, the US president, and Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, on Monday, where he also expected to unveil a refresh of Britain’s integrated review of defence and foreign policy in the light of the war in Ukraine.
Supplying Australia with a nuclear-powered submarine was the centrepiece for the Aukus defence pact, announced in September 2021, with the US and UK agreeing to share secret reactor technology in a surprise deal, so Canberra could dump an alternative diesel-powered design from France.
The expectation, one source indicated, was that Australia would work jointly on a design for a next generation submarine with the UK, evolving from the existing Astute submarine design, although it may not be seaworthy until the 2040s because of the complexity of the work.
Further reports last night suggested that the short-term gap could be plugged by Australia buying up to five Virginia-class submarines from the US as part of the three-way deal.
Meanwhile, an alternative plan that the UK could even be willing to sell or lease the two Astute class submarines yet to be completed at Barrow, HMS Agincourt and HMS Agamemnon, is wide of the mark. Naval analysts say the UK’s submarine fleet is already stretched and could not afford a sudden reduction.
Australia will become the seventh country to have a nuclear-powered submarine, relying on an enriched uranium reactor, propulsion technology that will put the country’s diesel-powered navy on a technological par with China.
But it will require Australia, which is not a nuclear power, to be supplied with a reactor, a move that Beijing has argued is a breach of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. The three Aukus powers say that is not the case, and that any reactors will be supplied “welded, shielded and sealed shut” according to Australian officials overseeing the effort.
The new submarines will not carry nuclear weapons. But James Acton, a nuclear expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it was not yet clear how the nuclear waste generated by the propulsion reactors will be dealt with – and whether that will happen in Australia or the UK or US.
Defence experts said the time it would take to build the new submarines meant that there may be some related short-term developments. The US is keen to be able to base its nuclear submarines in Australia, making it easier to patrol the South Pacific, as it seeks to retain naval parity with China.
A UK government spokesperson said: “When we announced the Aukus partnership in September 2021 we said there would be an 18-month scoping period to determine the optimal path to procuring Australia nuclear-powered submarines. The outcome of the scoping period is due to be announced soon.”
A No 10 spokesperson said they could not pre-empt any future announcements.
War over Taiwan: Australia’s Gang of Five
Australian Independent media March 8, 2023 Dr Binoy Kampmark
Diligently, obediently and with a degree of dangerous imbecility, a number of Australian media outlets are manufacturing a consensus for war with a country that has never been a natural, historical enemy, nor sought to be.
But as Australia remains the satellite of a Sino-suspicious US imperium, its officials and their dutiful advocates in the press seem obligated to pave the way for conflict.
The latest example of this came in articles run in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age of Melbourne. The premise is already clear from the columnists, Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott. Australia faces a “Red Alert”, and, to that end, needs a warring fan club. Not since the domino theory bewitched strategists and confused military planners have Australians witnessed this: a series of articles featuring a gang of five with one purpose: to render the Australian public so witless as to reject any peaceful accommodation.
First, the provocative colouring for the article, “How a conflict over Taiwan could swiftly reach our shores.” The Australian continent is shown bathed in a sea of red. Various military bases and facilities are outlined. For good measure, there is a picture of Australian soldiers firing an artillery piece in “military exercises in 2018 at Shoalwater Bay, Queensland.”
Then, the blistering opening lines of terror. “Within 72 hours of a conflict breaking out over Taiwan, Chinese missile bombardments and devastating cyberattacks on Australia would begin. For the first time since World War II, the mainland would be under attack.” The authors already anticipate a good complement of US troops to occupy the Australian north, some 150,000 “seeking refuge from the immediate conflict zone.”
The Red Alert panellists, anointed as “defence experts”, brim with such scenarios. All, as they state in a joint communique, agree on one thing: “Australia has many vulnerabilities. It has long and exposed connections to the rest of the world – sea, air and undersea – yet is incapable of protecting them.”
Leading the gang of five is Peter Jennings, who has had an unshakeable red-under-the-bed fantasy for years. A former deputy secretary for strategy in the Australian Defence Department, and steering the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) for a decade (that’s Canberra’s revolving door for you), Jennings is adamant and steely. “As I think of a conflict over Taiwan, what I’m thinking about is something that very quickly grows in scale and location.”
There is no reason at all why such a growth in scale or location should happen, but this is not the purpose of the exercise. The point of the Red Alert fantasy is to neutralise the significance of Australia’s natural boundaries – some of the most formidable on the planet – and dismiss them in any conflict with Beijing. “Distance is no longer equivalent to safety from our strategic perspective,” ponders Jennings.
Jennings inadvertently reveals the case against war, which can only be an encouragement to activists and officials keen to reverse the trend of turning Australia into a US imperial outpost of naval and military bases that would be used in any Taiwan conflict. “If China wants to seriously go after Taiwan in any military sense, the only way they can really contemplate quick success is to pre-emptively attack those assets that might be a threat to them. That means Pine Gap goes.” Pine Gap remains that misnamed joint US-Australian signals facility that has facilitated illegal drone strikes in foreign territories most Australian politicians would fail to find on a map.
……….. Lavina Lee, another Red Alert panellist, is also into the business of softening the Australian public for war,………
Australia’s former chief scientist, Alan Finkel, dolls out his own catastrophic scenario………..
Retired army major-general Mick Ryan makes his contribution by wishing Australia to be readied for war. In a message common to most military officers, the civilians should really do more about giving his brethren more cash. ……………
Lesley Seebeck, former head of the Australian National University’s Cyber Institute, completes the crew of five, …………
A few things are worth noting in this frothy mix of fantabulation and establishment fire breathing. In the quest to gather such a panel, no effort has been made to consult the expertise of a China hand. That lobby, able to provide a more nuanced, less heavy-footed approach, is being shunned, their advice exorcised in any effort to encourage war.
Bizarrely, the panellists offer an increasingly popular non-sequitur that has creeped into the warmonger’s manual: Would Australia’s leaders, in war, pass the Zelensky test? This somehow implies that the Ukraine conflict offers salient lessons over a war over Taiwan, an absurd comparison that muddled strategists are fond of making.
Most of all, Beijing’s own actual intentions over Taiwan are to be avoided. The presumption in ASPI-land is that a war is imminent, and that Beijing would want to go to war over the island as a matter of course. China’s President Xi Jinping’s main advisor on the subject, veteran ideologue Wang Huning, suggests an approach at odds with such thinking.
The Red Alert exercise has drawn necessary and important criticism. Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating did not mince his words in a fuming column for Pearls and Irritations. “Today’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age front page stories on Australia’s supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over fifty years of active public life.” One might even go further back than that. The war times are coming, and as are those gangs seeking to encourage them. https://theaimn.com/war-over-taiwan-australias-gang-of-five/
For Australia, horror of war over Taiwan is not inevitable
Pearls and Irritations, By Geoff Miller, Mar 9, 2023
Contributors to the “War with China over Taiwan” horror show which began in the Nine newspapers this week assume that a war between China and the United States is likely, and some of them then explicitly say that Australia would be involved. Australia should instead regard the Taiwan issue as one for us to “sit out”.
Mick Ryan, for example, says that “we have made our choice. If the United States goes to war with China over Taiwan, we are going to support them one way or the other”. Lavina Lee speaks of “the outbreak of war and Australia’s inevitable participation”.
They speak so glibly that one wonders whether they have thought at all about what a war between two nuclear powers, the biggest and second biggest economies in the world, would be like. Nor do they seem to have given any thought to what various government Ministers have said is Australia’s prime strategic goal in the Asia-Pacific, and that is to prevent war.
Why all this drama at this time? There are some events coming up which may have an influence; the releases of the Defence Strategic Review and the nuclear submarine study are two of them, and the coming budget is another. They will all involve spending very large sums of money on defence projects, and both the Defence organisation and firms which stand to benefit from Government spending may well welcome some “preparing of the audience”.
Our ally, the United States, may also have an interest. Under various defence arrangements we can expect to see an increasing amount of United States basing and military involvement in Australia. This has not been universally welcomed in the past, and the United States Government, and its defence firms which would be involved in an expansion of the US military presence in Australia as well as in an increase in our own defence spending, could well welcome the dramatisation of the “China threat” the Nine newspapers are providing this week.
How real is the China threat? It’s certainly seen as real by some Americans, who see China as the “peer competitor” they cannot tolerate. According to some accounts China is already clearly ahead of the US in a number of key technologies, which gives added emphasis to the military in US eyes, since the US is clearly superior militarily; despite the recent planned increase of 7% in Chinese military spending the US increase is even bigger, at 8%. The urge to maintain their predominance in the Pacific, and elsewhere, is probably why some very senior American military commanders seem to be anticipating and even looking forward to a war with China before long, with Taiwan as its probable rationale.
Australian Ministers and senior officials, on the other hand, have frequently spoken of the need to find a balance in the Pacific which gives appropriate place and weight to both the United States and China…………………………………………………………….
Taiwan is a very special case. We have no formal obligation to it. We recognised China, acknowledging that it maintained there is only one China, and that Taiwan is part of that. The current situation is complex and complicated: for example despite all the mutual abuse China and Taiwan have a substantial economic relationship; many people from Taiwan live and work in China. Recent polls show that a large proportion of Taiwanese believe that in the end Taiwan will be re-united with China, and are not keen to fight China to prevent that. The current state of affairs has come about as the result of the struggle for predominance in the Asia-Pacific between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies, both nuclear-armed and themselves in a complex and many-sided relationship.
We want the US to continue to play a major role in the Asia-Pacific, but there must be an appropriate place for China as well. As the former Secretary of DFAT, Peter Varghese, wrote in September last year: “If we tether ourselves to the cause of US primacy we leave ourselves exposed to US policies that may make sense for the US but not necessarily for Australia. We risk structuring our defence forces to fight alongside the US rather than primarily for the defence of Australia. We risk buying into a narrative of democracy versus autocracy which, however inspiring, misreads the strategic and historical drivers of China’s actions and has little resonance in our region.”
Australia, with its small and presently ill-equipped armed forces, could contribute almost nothing to a clash between the United States and China that has nothing to do with us. The US is such a large and globally important country that its relationships can in the end be repaired even with countries with which it has been in conflict. That does not apply to us, and if we joined the US in fighting China over Taiwan, not only would we not make any appreciable difference but our relationship with our biggest trading partner would be destroyed for years.
We should regard the Taiwan issue as one for us to “sit out” https://johnmenadue.com/war-over-taiwan-is-not-inevitable-for-australia/
Australia ‘to buy up to five US nuclear submarines’ under AUKUS pact
By Richard Wood • Senior Journalist, Mar 9, 2023 https://www.9news.com.au/world/aukus-update-nuclear-powered-submarines-deal-to-create-ten-thousands-jobs/f2b65469-d7ca-468b-938b-e67c131a3aaa
Australia is expected to buy up to five US Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines in the 2030s under the AUKUS defence pact between Washington, Canberra and London, reports say.
US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said after the annual port visits, the US would forward deploy some submarines in Western Australia by around 2027, the Reuters news agency reported today.
Australia would buy three Virginia class submarines in the early 2030s and have the option to buy two more, the sources said.
Australia’s new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines will be based on a modified British design with US parts and upgrades, the report said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to the US next week to unveil the choice of submarine design for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).
More than 10,000 jobs will be created from Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS defence pact, according to the country’s navy.
Australian Media Are Outright Telling Us They Are Feeding Us War Propaganda About China
Caitlin’s Newsletter, 8 March 23
The mass media in Australia have been churning out brazen propaganda pieces to manufacture consent for war with China, and what’s interesting is that they’re basically admitting to doing this deliberately.
Australians are uniquely susceptible to propaganda because we have the most concentrated media ownership in the western world, dominated by a powerful duopoly of Nine Entertainment and the Murdoch-owned News Corp. Both of those media megacorporations have recently put out appalling propaganda pieces about the need for Australians to rapidly prepare to go to war with China in defense of Taiwan, and in both of those instances have straightforwardly told their audiences that there’s an urgent need to effect a psychological change in the way all Australians think about this war.
Nine Entertainment’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have been busy flooding the media with testimony from a panel of war machine-funded “experts” who say Australia must hasten to get ready to join the United States in a hot war with China in the next three years. Yesterday’s dual front-page propaganda assault featured imagery of Chinese war planes flying straight at the reader, awash in red and emblazoned with the words “RED ALERT” to help everyone understand how evil and communist China is.
“Today’s Sydney Morning Herald and Age front-page stories on Australia’s supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life,” former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating opined in response to the publications.
“Apart from the outrageous illustrations of jet aircraft being shown leaving a profiled red-coloured map of China, the extent of the bias and news abuse is, I believe, unparalleled in modern Australian journalism,” he added.
In the first installment of their “Red Alert” propaganda series, SMH and The Age share that their empire-funded panelists believe there’s a need to bring about a “psychological shift” in the public’s attitude toward war with China, with one panelist asserting that “the nation’s leaders should trust the public enough to include them in what can be a confronting discussion” about the need to prepare for that war.
In the second “Red Alert” installment, this same message is repeated, saying that “Australia’s vulnerabilities are not only physical, but psychological,” and again repeating the need to get everyone talking and thinking about the possibility of war with China.
“It is a real national taboo to think about the likelihood of a conflict in anything other than the most remotely theoretical perspective,” says Peter Jennings of the war machine-funded propaganda firm Australian Strategic Policy Institute, countering that “we will sleepwalk into disaster unless we openly discuss unpalatable scenarios.”
Saying that the real threat is “complacency rather than alarmism,” think tanker Lavina Lee urges Australia to confront “the possibility that we might go to war and what would happen either way. We should talk about what the world would look like if we win and what it would look like if we lose.”
Over and over again they are telling us that something must be done to change the way Australians think and talk about a war with China, in articles designed to change the way Australians think and talk about war with China. They are doing the exact thing they say must be done, while explaining why it needs to be done. They are brainwashing us with propaganda while explaining why it is necessary to brainwash us with propaganda.
Last month Murdoch’s Sky News Australia released an astonishingly propagandistic hour-long special titled “China’s aggression could start new world war,” which in its attempts to show “China’s aggression” hilariously flashed a graphic of all the US military operations currently encircling China. The segment features footage of bayonet-wielding Chinese forces overdubbed with ominous cinematic Bad Guy music, and in Sky News’ promotions for the special all the footage from China was tinged red to help viewers understand how evil and communist China is.
Toward the end of the special, Sky News’ empire-backed “experts” tell their audience that Australia needs to double its military spending, and that those in power need to explain to them why this is so important…………………………………….
Again, they’re saying there’s a desperate need to explain to Australians why they need to make sacrifices to prepare for war with China, while explaining to Australians that they need to make sacrifices to prepare for war with China. They are openly telling us that we need to be propagandized for our own good, while filling our heads with propaganda.
They’re not just filling our minds with war propaganda, they are openly telling us that war propaganda is good for us.
………………………….. This latest propaganda piece says that in the event of a hot war with China, our nation may be struck with intercontinental ballistic missiles, we may find ourselves cut off from the world while the fuel supplies we rely on dry up in a matter of weeks, and we may find our infrastructure rendered useless by massive Chinese cyberattacks.
The empire-funded “experts” acknowledge that this will not be because China is just randomly hostile to Australia, but because we are a US military and intelligence asset who will support the US empire in its war:
But why would China use its limited resources to attack Australia instead of focusing solely on seizing Taiwan? Because of the strategically crucial role Australia is expected to play for the United States in the conflict.
“Our geography means we are a southern base for the Americans for what comes next,” Ryan says. “That’s how they’re seeing us. They want our geography. They want us to build bases for several hundred thousand Americans in due course like in World War II.”
Interestingly, the article contains a rare acknowledgement in the mainstream press that the presence of the American surveillance base Pine Gap makes Australia a legitimate target for ICBMs:
At no time is it ever suggested that the fact that going to war with China could cost Australia its shipping lanes and infrastructure and even get us nuked means we should probably reconsider this grand plan of going to war with China. At no time is it ever suggested that riding Washington’s bloodsoaked coattails into World War Three against our primary trading partner might not be a good idea. At no time is it ever suggested that de-escalation, diplomacy and detente might be a better approach than rapidly increasing militarism and brinkmanship.
And at no time is it ever suggested that we should reconsider our role as a US military/intelligence asset, despite the open admission that this is exactly what is endangering us. We’re not being told to prepare for war with China because China is going to attack us, we’re being told to prepare for war with China because our masters in DC are planning to drag us into one. We’re not being told to prepare for war to defend ourselves, we’re being told to prepare for war because our rulers plan to attack China.
We see this in the way Australia is assembling its war machinery, buying up air-to-ground missiles that cannot possibly be used defensively because their sole purpose is for taking out an enemy nation’s air defenses. We see it in the way Australia is buying up sea mines, which as journalist Peter Cronau has noted is less suitable for protecting our 34,000 km of coastline than for blockading the shipping lanes of an enemy nation you wish to lay siege to. We see it in the fact that China’s military budget remains steady at around one and-a-half percent of its GDP, while the US spends 3.4 percent and Australia is being persuaded to double our share from two to four percent.
We’re not being prepared for a war to defend ourselves, we’re being prepared for a war of aggression to secure US unipolar hegemony — one that has been in the works for many years. We must resist this, and we must resist the tsunami of mass media propaganda that is designed to manufacture our consent for it. China https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/australian-media-are-outright-telling?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=107109488&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
The British-American coup that ended Australian independence
Guardian, John Pilger, Thu 23 Oct 2014
In 1975 prime minister Gough Whitlam, who has died this week [Oct 2014], dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price.
Across the media and political establishment in Australia, a silence has descended on the memory of the great, reforming prime minister Gough Whitlam. His achievements are recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. But a critical reason for his extraordinary political demise will, they hope, be buried with him.
Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.
Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.
……………………………………… Whitlam demanded to know if and why the CIA was running a spy base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, a giant vacuum cleaner which, as Edward Snowden revealed recently, allows the US to spy on everyone. “Try to screw us or bounce us,” the prime minister warned the US ambassador, “[and Pine Gap] will become a matter of contention”
Victor Marchetti, the CIA officer who had helped set up Pine Gap, later told me, “This threat to close Pine Gap caused apoplexy in the White House … a kind of Chile [coup] was set in motion.”
Pine Gap’s top-secret messages were decoded by a CIA contractor, TRW. One of the decoders was Christopher Boyce, a young man troubled by the “deception and betrayal of an ally”. Boyce revealed that the CIA had infiltrated the Australian political and trade union elite and referred to the governor-general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as “our man Kerr”.
Kerr was not only the Queen’s man, he had longstanding ties to Anglo-American intelligence. He was an enthusiastic member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, described by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal in his book, The Crimes of Patriots, as “an elite, invitation-only group … exposed in Congress as being founded, funded and generally run by the CIA”. The CIA “paid for Kerr’s travel, built his prestige … Kerr continued to go to the CIA for money”.
When Whitlam was re-elected for a second term, in 1974, the White House sent Marshall Green to Canberra as ambassador. Green was an imperious, sinister figure who worked in the shadows of America’s “deep state”……………………………..
The Americans and British worked together. In 1975, Whitlam discovered that Britain’s MI6 was operating against his government. “The Brits were actually decoding secret messages coming into my foreign affairs office,” he said later. One of his ministers, Clyde Cameron, told me, “We knew MI6 was bugging cabinet meetings for the Americans.” In the 1980s, senior CIA officers revealed that the “Whitlam problem” had been discussed “with urgency” by the CIA’s director, William Colby, and the head of MI6, Sir Maurice Oldfield. A deputy director of the CIA said: “Kerr did what he was told to do.”
…………………………….. On 11 November – the day Whitlam was to inform parliament about the secret CIA presence in Australia – he was summoned by Kerr. Invoking archaic vice-regal “reserve powers”, Kerr sacked the democratically elected prime minister. The “Whitlam problem” was solved, and Australian politics never recovered, nor the nation its true independence.
John Pilger’s investigation into the coup against Whitlam is described in full in his book, A Secret Country (Vintage), and in his documentary film, Other People’s Wars, which can be viewed on http://www.johnpilger.com/
Fixing a fatal, nuclear flaw in AUKUS
With an AUKUS announcement imminent, nonproliferation expert Alan Kuperman says there’s still time to make sure Australian subs use less dangerous low-enriched uranium and make the world safer.
In Australia, the admiral who leads the AUKUS task force disclosed on national television last month, when asked if Australia wanted HEU or LEU, “We will accept the reactor they give us.”
Since Australia cannot obtain its first nuclear submarine until “well into the 2040s,” according to the US Navy’s top admiral, there is still time for the United States to design that ship’s reactor for LEU fuel.
(Jonathon Mead probably does not understand the significance of this)
By ALAN J. KUPERMAN March 07, 2023 https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/fixing-a-fatal-nuclear-flaw-in-aukus/
In coming days President Joe Biden is expected to host a much-anticipated summit to announce how the United States and United Kingdom will provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia – the centerpiece of the trilateral AUKUS partnership dramatically unveiled 18 months ago.
When first publicized in September 2021, the deal sounded like a win for all three countries. The United States would get Australia to buy submarines that effectively would come under US command. Australia would increase the likelihood of the United States defending it from China. And the United Kingdom would bolster its ship-building industry.
However, the current implementation plan, as confirmed recently by a senior Australian official, contains a fatal and unnecessary flaw: Australia’s submarines would be fueled by tons of nuclear weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU) – an amount sufficient for hundreds of nuclear weapons – setting a precedent that would foster nuclear proliferation.
President Biden can and should insist on a safer nuclear fuel that could preserve both AUKUS and nonproliferation.
Weapons-grade uranium is arguably the most dangerous substance on earth. Terrorists could make a Hiroshima-sized bomb from just 100 pounds of it. Using more advanced methods, a country could produce an equivalent explosion from only 20 pounds [PDF]. Yet, Australia would acquire up to 10,000 pounds of it [PDF] – in reactors for “at least eight nuclear-powered submarines” under AUKUS.
Because HEU is so dangerous, the United States has striven for half a century to eliminate its use globally, except in nuclear weapons, by converting domestic facilities to use safer, low-enriched uranium (LEU), and then persuading other countries to follow suit. Around the world, some 71 nuclear reactors and all major producers of medical isotopes have already switched to LEU. In 2018, the United States also declared that Army reactors would use LEU fuel, and in 2020 expanded that to NASA reactors [PDF].
The only US exception has been for Navy reactors in submarines and aircraft carriers, which still rely on HEU fuel. However, in a 2016 report to Congress [PDF], the Navy said that it too could probably switch to LEU fuel. Yet the Navy has failed to do so, dismissing proliferation concerns on grounds that the United States already has nuclear weapons.
That excuse clearly does not apply to Australia, a country that has pledged under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) never to acquire nuclear weapons.
The precedent of such a state acquiring tons of weapons-grade uranium could unravel the global nonproliferation regime, because other countries would demand the same right. If the United States refused to provide them bomb-grade fuel, they could construct their own uranium enrichment facilities to produce it for naval or other reactors, on grounds that Australia had sundered the decades-long international taboo against HEU fuel.
Several countries rang the alarm last summer at the United Nations’ NPT review conference. Indonesia warned that “HEU in the operational status of nuclear naval propulsion” would endanger “the global non-proliferation regime” [PDF]. China asserted that it “sets a dangerous precedent for the illegal transfer of weapons-grade nuclear materials from nuclear-weapon states to a non-nuclear-weapon state” [PDF]. Even close US allies — the Netherlands, Norway, and South Korea — admonished the AUKUS countries by reaffirming that, “Efforts to reduce stocks of HEU and to minimize and eventually eliminate the use of HEU are a form of permanent threat reduction.”
The good news is that nuclear submarines do not require – and Australia has not demanded – weapons-grade fuel. France and China use LEU fuel in their submarines even though they possess HEU for nuclear weapons. Even the United States has been researching LEU naval fuel since 2016 [PDF], which also could be applied to British submarines that depend on US reactor designs and fuel.
In Australia, the admiral who leads the AUKUS task force disclosed on national television last month, when asked if Australia wanted HEU or LEU, “We will accept the reactor they give us.” Since Australia cannot obtain its first nuclear submarine until “well into the 2040s,” according to the US Navy’s top admiral, there is still time for the United States to design that ship’s reactor for LEU fuel.
That means it is entirely up to Biden to determine whether the AUKUS submarines will undermine the international nonproliferation regime by needlessly using tons of weapons-grade uranium fuel, or instead will reinforce that regime by complying with the international norm against HEU.
The wrong decision would set a precedent that many countries could exploit to produce HEU ostensibly for reactor fuel but in fact for nuclear weapons. In that case, AUKUS would create many more problems than it possibly could solve.
Alan J. Kuperman is associate professor and coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (www.NPPP.org) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.
1 This month.
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
19 May – Webinar- Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-05-19 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-05-19 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 