$14 Billion US Aid Package for Israel Crafted to Prepare for ‘Multi-Front War,’ Not Just Gaza
The $14 billion is included in the $95 billion foreign military aid that was recently passed by the Senateby Dave DeCamp February 22, 2024 at 1:26 pm ET CategoriesNewsTagsIsrael, Palestine
The $14 billion in additional military aid for Israel that President Biden is seeking was designed not just for operations in Gaza but also to prepare Israel for a “multi-front war,” The Times of Israel has reported.
A senior Biden administration official told The Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the $14 billion is “for Israel to defend itself in a multi-front war and to be sure it can deter a multi-front war.”
Israel has been escalating airstrikes in Lebanon against Hezbollah, though many strikes have killed civilians. The fire across the border risks a full-blown war, and there are no signs tensions will ease anytime soon. Israeli officials have been threatening to invade if Hezbollah doesn’t move back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
US officials have acknowledged to The Washington Post that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might view war in Lebanon as key to his political survival, as polling has shown Israelis want him to step down after the current conflict.
Israel also appears to be attempting to provoke Iran as several members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Syria since October 7. According to The New York Times, Israel was also behind a covert attack on two natural gas pipelines inside Iran.
The $14 billion is packed into the $95 billion foreign military aid bill that passed through the Senate but has yet to be brought to the House floor for a vote as Republicans are still looking for a border deal. The legislation also includes about $60 billion for Ukraine, and $4.8 billion for Taiwan and other spending in the Asia Pacific.
The $14 billion for Israel is on top of the $3.8 billion the country receives from the US each year. According to The Times of Israel, It includes $5.2 billion to go toward Israeli missile defense, which is seen as a critical necessity for a war with Hezbollah.
Another $3.5 billion will replenish munitions Israel has used in Gaza. The US will use $4 billion US to refill its own stockpiles, including a contingency stockpile located in Israel that the Israeli military has been allowed to use for its operations in Gaza.
Since October 7, the US has been shipping bombs and other types of weapons on a near-daily basis. According to the Israeli news site Ynet, the US has shipped over 25,000 tons of military equipment to support the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, which has killed over 29,000 Palestinians.
Nuclear Power Advocates Accused of Spreading Misinformation
https://www.miragenews.com/nuclear-power-advocates-accused-of-spreading-1180602/ 24 Feb 24,
Opponents of cleaner, cheaper renewables have used a particularly spectacular contortion of logic to claim the recent catastrophic storms in Victoria and the resulting power outages as evidence of the folly of acting on climate change and boosting renewables.
Predictably, nuclear energy advocates seized on the Victorian events and temporary power outage to re-energise their campaign for Australia to start a nuclear energy industry.
Let’s be clear upfront. Nuclear is not being pushed as a genuine alternative to renewables. It’s being used as a distraction and a delaying tactic.
It’s also quite the feat to assert that had it been nuclear rather than renewables, a coal-fired electricity generator in Victoria wouldn’t have shut itself down as protection against surges from storm-damaged transmission. It’s an even greater leap essentially to assert that a grid under the LNP would involve no distribution – given the vast majority of outages were caused by extreme damage to the distribution network – including from the half a million lightning strikes in eight hours.
Will nuclear powered electricity be transmitted by osmosis? By Bluetooth? By a vibe? Whether your energy comes from coal, nuclear, gas or renewables, if poles and wires are down, electricity won’t get where it needs to go.
The pro-nuclear argument is two-pronged. That the world has realised the perils of renewables and is experiencing a nuclear renaissance, and Australia is missing out.
And that nuclear is much cheaper than renewable energy, once upgrading and expanding the grid is factored in.
Both these arguments collapse faster than a tree in a lightning strike when exposed to the facts.
Global investment in renewable energy sources constitutes three quarters of all power generation investment.
Take just solar, for example. Last year, the world installed 440GW of renewable capacity. This is more than the world’s entire existing nuclear capacity built up through decades of investment. By early 2025, renewable energy will surpass coal as the planet’s largest source of energy, while coal, gas and nuclear will all shrink their market share.
Nuclear and coal combined, however, account for only 16 per cent of new global power investment. In 2005, electricity companies in the US pledged to build more than 30 reactors. Only four ever commenced construction. Two were abandoned due to massive cost and time delays.
The alleged boom in Small Modular Reactors is also a mirage. China and Russia are the only two countries to have installed them. The US has now abandoned its “flagship” commercial-scale pilot SMR (promised back in 2008), wearing 70 per cent cost blowouts without having started construction on a single reactor.
We know the Russian SMRs have extraordinarily low load factors and that nuclear waste from the SMR process is disproportionate to their output. The Chinese data is more opaque, but given SMRs generate about 300MW (compared to a coal-fired power station at 2000MW), we have no reason to believe there is anything approaching a serious contribution to China’s energy demand from their two units.
My shadow minister predicted that last year’s Dubai COP would be remembered as the “nuclear COP”. Not so much. Twenty three countries have pledged to triple nuclear energy by 2050, while 124 countries pledged to triple renewable energy investment within the next six years, before the nuclear dream even gets started.
Then there is cost. Contrary to myth, GenCost does include the cost of transmission and storage, and the CSIRO-AEMO GenCost conclusions about the chasm between nuclear and renewables costs could not be clearer.
But if you don’t want to accept eminent and independent practitioners at those organisations, then you can have a look at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which estimates it will cost $US15 trillion to triple nuclear capacity. Or University College London, which recently found that “new nuclear capacity is only cost effective if ambitious cost and construction times are assumed”.
And if you don’t like University College London’s research, ask the merchant bank Lazard, which shows levelised cost of nuclear to be four times higher than utilityscale solar and wind.
Then look at how many nuclear projects are falling over because of cost and time overruns. The UK’s Hinkley C nuclear plant was promised to be “cooking Christmas turkeys by 2017”. It’s yet to warm a single drumstick, with latest costings at more than $86bn. Who in Australia does the opposition energy spokesman expect will be footing those kind of bills?
Like many things in the climate debate, the push for nuclear power has taken on a singular importance in the culture wars. It’s striking that a party that once prided itself on economic rationalism could embrace a frolic so spectacularly uneconomic. This is the triumph of culture wars over climate pragmatism in the alternative government.
The LNP has been promising to reveal the details of its long nuclear fairytales soon. It can’t come soon enough.
No plan for nuclear power in Australia will survive contact with reality. The Australian people deserve more than hot air to power their homes and businesses.
This opinion piece was first published in the Australian on Saturday, 24 February 2024.
Ralph Nader: What the Mass Media Needs to Cover Re: Israel/Gaza Conflict
By Ralph Nader, February 23, 2024
Last October 27, I suggested subjects the mainstream media needed to cover relating to the saturation bombing of Gaza and its defenseless civilian families and infrastructure. Looking at these topics now, four months later, despite massive reporting, the attention to these subjects is still thin and more deserving of reporting than ever.1. How did Hamas, with tiny Gaza surrounded by a 17-year Israeli blockade, subjected to unparalleled electronic surveillance, with spies and informants, and augmented by an overwhelming air, sea and land military presence, manage to get the weapons and associated technology for their October 7th surprise raid? Readers still do not know how and from where these weapons entered Gaza year after year.
2. What is the connection between the stunning failure of the Israeli government to protect its people on the border and the policy of P.M. Netanyahu? Recall the New York Times (October 22, 2023) article by prominent journalist, Roger Cohen, to wit: “All means were good to undo the notion of Palestinian statehood. In 2019, Mr. Netanyahu told a meeting of his center-right Likud party: ‘Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy.’” (Note: Israel and the U.S. fostered the rise of Islamic Hamas in 1987 to counter the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)). Readers still need more information about the context of Netanyahu’s declared support for Hamas over the years and his connection to the buildup of Hamas funding and weaponry.
3. Why is Congress preparing to appropriate over $14 billion to Israel in military and other aid without any public hearings and without any demonstrated fiscal need by Israel, a prosperous economic, technological and military superpower with a social safety net superior to that of the U.S.? USDA just reported over 44 million Americans struggled with hunger in 2022. This, in the midst of a childcare crisis. Should U.S. taxpayers be expected to pay for Netanyahu’s colossal intelligence/military collapse? As an elderly Holocaust survivor told the New York Times “It should never have happened” in the first place.
4. Why hasn’t the media reported on President Biden’s statement that the Gaza Health Ministry’s body count (now over 7000 fatalities) is exaggerated? Indications, however, are that it is a large undercount by Hamas to minimize its inability to protect its people. Israel has fired over 8,000 powerful precision munitions and bombs into Gaza so far. These have struck many thousands of inhabited buildings – homes, apartments buildings, over 120 health facilities, ambulances, crowded markets, fleeing refugees, schools, water and sewage systems, and electric networks – implementing Israeli military orders to cut off all food, water, fuel, medicine and electricity to this already impoverished densely packed area the size of Philadelphia. For those not directly slain, the deadly harm caused by no food, water, medicine, medical facilities and fuel will lead to even more deaths and serious injuries.
Note that over three-quarters of Gaza’s population consists of children and women. Soon there will be thousands of babies born to die in the rubble. Other Palestinians will perish from untreated diseases, injuries, dehydration, and from drinking contaminated water. With crumbled sanitation facilities, physicians are fearing a deadly cholera epidemic.
Israel bombed the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border. Only a tiny trickle of trucks are now allowed there by Israel to carry food and water. Fuel for hospital generators still remains blocked.
The undercount of fatalities/injuries is far greater now. The official figure is about 30,000 lives lost, with hundreds dying every day under the rubble. There is too little media interest in more realistic estimates. Undercounting lessens the pressure on Washington officials’ co-belligerents in the White House to call for a permanent ceasefire.
5. Why can’t Biden even persuade Israel to let 600 desperate Americans out of the Gaza firestorm?
6. Why isn’t the mass media making a bigger issue out of Israel’s long-time practice of blocking journalists from entering Gaza, including European, American and Israeli journalists? The only television crews left are Gazan-residing Al Jazeera reporters. Israeli bombs have already killed 26 journalists in the Gaza Strip since October 7th. Is Israel targeting journalists’ families? The Gaza bureau chief of Al Jazeera, Wael Al-Dahdouh’s family was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday. Israeli commanders now have killed over 100 journalists in addition in some cases to their entire families and continue to block foreign journalists except for a few brief “guided tours” in Israeli armored vehicles.
7. Why isn’t the mainstream U.S. media giving adequate space and voice to groups advocating a ceasefire and humanitarian aid? The message of Israeli peace groups’ peaceful solutions are drowned out by the media’s addiction to interviews with military tacticians. Much time and space are being given to hawks pushing for a war that could flash outside of Gaza big time. Shouldn’t groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the Arab-American Institute, Veterans for Peace and associations of clergy have their views and activities reported? Still being underreported are the activities all over the country of the Veterans for Peace and large labor unions demanding a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian aid.
8. Why is the coverage of the war overlooking the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations Charter and the many provisions of international law that all the parties, including the U.S., have been violating? (See the October 24, 2023 letter to President Biden). Under international law, Biden has made the U.S. an active “co-belligerent,” of the Israeli government’s vocal demolition of the 2.3 million inhabitants in Gaza, who are mostly descendants of Palestinian refugees driven from their homes in 1948. (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). Coverage has expanded to include the U.S. vetoes on the Security Council and to global reporting on the International Court of Justice proceedings on South Africa’s calling for the Court to address Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
9. What about revealing human-interest stories? For example: How do Israeli F-16 pilots feel about their daily bombing of the completely defenseless Gazan civilian population and its life-sustaining infrastructures? The reporting on the military orders given to Israeli soldiers in Gaza who are slaying indiscriminately thousands of innocents of all ages and snipers attacking people and children in hospitals is inadequate. Why are no Hamas fighters taken as prisoners of war? Is there an order of “take no prisoners” even after capture? What are the courageous Israeli human rights and refuseniks thinking and doing in a climate of serious repression of their views as a result of Netanyahu’s defense collapse on October 7th? The open letter to President Biden on December 13, 2023, by 16 Israeli human rights groups appeared as a paid notice in the New York Times but received very little notice to its clarion call to stop the catastrophe in Gaza. (See the letter here).
10. Where is the media attention on the statements from Israeli military commentators, who, for years have declared high-tech US-backed, nuclear-armed Israel to be more secure than at any time in its history? Israel is reasserting its overwhelming military domination of the Middle East region, fully backed by U.S. militarism. The Israeli government is putting ads in U.S. newspapers wildly exaggerating long-subdued Hamas as an “existential” threat. Without Netanyahu strangely failing to keep the border guarded on October 7, 2023, what followed would not have happened!
Historians remind us that in a grid-locked conflict over time, it is the most powerful party’s responsibility to lead the way to peace.
Establishing a two-state solution has been supported by many Palestinians. All the Arab nations, starting with the Arab League peace proposal in 2002, support this solution as well. It is up to Israel and the U.S., assuming annexation of what is left of Palestine is not Israel’s objective. (See, the March 29, 2002 New York Times article: Mideast Turmoil; Text of the Peace Proposals Backed by the Arab League).More media attention on this subject matter is much needed.
The Rebellious CEO by Ralph Nader was published on November 14th. For more information go to: rebellious.ceo
The Growing Environmental Footprint Of Generative AI
tech companies have been reporting whatever they choose, however they choose, about their AI impact
a great deal remains unrevealed about the millions of gallons of water used to cool computers running AI…… The same is true of carbon.
Undark, BY DAVID BERREBY, 02.20.2024
AI runs on power-hungry equipment that uses millions of gallons of fresh water. Policymakers are weighing the costs.
TWO MONTHS after its release in November 2022, OpenAI’s ChatGPT had 100 million active users, and suddenly tech corporations were racing to offer the public more “generative AI.” Pundits compared the new technology’s impact to the Internet, or electrification, or the Industrial Revolution — or the discovery of fire.
Time will sort hype from reality, but one consequence of the explosion of artificial intelligence is clear: this technology’s environmental footprint is large and growing.
AI use is directly responsible for carbon emissions from non-renewable electricity and for the consumption of millions of gallons of fresh water, and it indirectly boosts impacts from building and maintaining the power-hungry equipment on which AI runs. As tech companies seek to embed high-intensity AI into everything from resume-writing to kidney transplant medicine and from choosing dog food to climate modeling, they cite many ways AI could help reduce humanity’s environmental footprint. But legislators, regulators, activists, and international organizations now want to make sure the benefits aren’t outweighed by AI’s mounting hazards.
“The development of the next generation of AI tools cannot come at the expense of the health of our planet,” Massachusetts Senator Edward Markey said in a Feb. 1 statement in Washington, after he and other senators and representatives introduced a bill that would require the federal government to assess AI’s current environmental footprint and develop a standardized system for reporting future impacts. Similarly, the European Union’s “AI Act,” approved by member states last week, will require “high-risk AI systems” (which include the powerful “foundation models” that power ChatGPT and similar AIs) to report their energy consumption, resource use, and other impacts throughout their systems’ lifecycle. The EU law takes effect next year.
Meanwhile, the International Organization for Standardization, a global network that develops standards for manufacturers, regulators, and others, said it will issue criteria for “sustainable AI” later this year. Those will include standards for measuring energy efficiency, raw material use, transportation, and water consumption, as well as practices for reducing AI impacts throughout its life cycle, from the process of mining materials and making computer components to the electricity consumed by its calculations. The ISO wants to enable AI users to make informed decisions about their AI consumption.
Right now, it’s not possible to tell how your AI request for homework help or a picture of an astronaut riding a horse will affect carbon emissions or freshwater stocks. This is why 2024’s crop of “sustainable AI” proposals describe ways to get more information about AI impacts.
In the absence of standards and regulations, tech companies have been reporting whatever they choose, however they choose, about their AI impact, said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside, who has been studying the water costs of computation for the past decade. Working from calculations of annual use of water for cooling systems by Microsoft, Ren estimates that a person who engages in a session of questions and answers with GPT-3 (roughly 10 t0 50 responses) drives the consumption of a half-liter of fresh water. “It will vary by region, and with a bigger AI, it could be more.” But a great deal remains unrevealed about the millions of gallons of water used to cool computers running AI, he said.
“Data scientists today do not have easy or reliable access to measurements of [greenhouse gas impacts from AI], which precludes development of actionable tactics,” a group of 10 prominent researchers on AI impacts wrote in a 2022 conference paper. Since they presented their article, AI applications and users have proliferated, but the public is still in the dark about those data, said Jesse Dodge, a research scientist at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, who was one of the paper’s coauthors.
AI can run on many devices — the simple AI that autocorrects text messages will run on a smartphone. But the kind of AI people most want to use is too big for most personal devices, Dodge said. “The models that are able to write a poem for you, or draft an email, those are very large,” he said. “Size is vital for them to have those capabilities.”
Big AIs need to run immense numbers of calculations very quickly, usually on specialized Graphical Processing Units — processors originally designed for intense computation to render graphics on computer screens. Compared to other chips, GPUs are more energy-efficient for AI, and they’re most efficient when they’re run in large “cloud data centers” — specialized buildings full of computers equipped with those chips. The larger the data center, the more energy efficient it can be. Improvements in AI’s energy efficiency in recent years are partly due to the construction of more “hyperscale data centers,” which contain many more computers and can quickly scale up. Where a typical cloud data center occupies about 100,000 square feet, a hyperscale center can be 1 or even 2 million square feet.
Estimates of the number of cloud data centers worldwide range from around 9,000 to nearly 11,000. More are under construction. The International Energy Agency, or IEA, projects that data centers’ electricity consumption in 2026 will be double that of 2022 — 1,000 terawatts, roughly equivalent to Japan’s current total consumption.
However, as an illustration of one problem with the way AI impacts are measured, that IEA estimate includes all data center activity, which extends beyond AI to many aspects of modern life. Running Amazon’s store interface, serving up Apple TV’s videos, storing millions of people’s emails on Gmail, and “mining” Bitcoin are also performed by data centers. (Other IEA reports exclude crypto operations, but still lump all other data-center activity together.)
Most tech firms that run data centers don’t reveal what percentage of their energy use processes AI. The exception is Google, which says “machine learning” — the basis for humanlike AI — accounts for somewhat less than 15 percent of its data centers’ energy use…………………………………………………………………………………….
If global electricity use can feel a bit abstract, data centers’ water use is a more local and tangible issue — particularly in drought-afflicted areas. To cool delicate electronics in the clean interiors of the data centers, water has to be free of bacteria and impurities that could gunk up the works. In other words, data centers often compete “for the same water people drink, cook, and wash with,” said Ren.
In 2022, Ren said, Google’s data centers consumed about 5 billion gallons (nearly 20 billion liters) of fresh water for cooling. (“Consumptive use” does not include water that’s run through a building and then returned to its source.) According to a recent study by Ren, Google’s data centers used 20 percent more water in 2022 than they did in 2021, and Microsoft’s water use rose by 34 percent in the same period. (Google data centers host its Bard chatbot and other generative AIs; Microsoft servers host ChatGPT as well as its bigger siblings GPT-3 and GPT-4. All three are produced by OpenAI, in which Microsoft is a large investor.)
As more data centers are built or expanded, their neighbors have been troubled to find out how much water they take. For example, in The Dalles, Oregon, where Google runs three data centers and plans two more, the city government filed a lawsuit in 2022 to keep Google’s water use a secret from farmers, environmentalists, and Native American tribes who were concerned about its effects on agriculture and on the region’s animals and plants. The city withdrew its suit early last year. The records it then made public showed that Google’s three extant data centers use more than a quarter of the city’s water supply. And in Chile and Uruguay, protests have erupted over planned Google data centers that would tap into the same reservoirs that supply drinking water……………..more https://undark.org/2024/02/20/ai-environmental-footprint/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=01eaa0c93b-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
TODAY. Alexei Navalny – the paradox of his legacy
Whatever you think of Alexei Navalny, he didn’t deserve what was done to him. I’ve written before on how the USA government prefers to kill people slowly, with finesse – as in the case of Julian Assange, (.and way way back, Wilfred Burchett.)
The czarist way is more blunt and definite, as in the case of Alexander Litvinenko – a cruel poisoning.
Now Alexei Navalny, a determined opponent of Vladimir Putin, has died suddenly at 47. We’re supposed to believe “of natural causes” – yeah, right, when you’ve been persecuted and ill-treated for years, you might die of a heart problem, anyway. But who believes the Kremlin?
Navalny fought courageously against corruption, and the rule of Putin. He has the guts to come back to Russia, and keep up the fight, even after a previous near-fatal poisoning.
There is another side to the Navalny story. He was an ultra-right racist and Russian nationalist, who railed against immigration and compared Muslims to “flies and cockroaches”. He joined in the fascist “Russian March” along with Monarchist, fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant organizations.
In earlier years he worked on the stock market, aligning himself with the liberal pro-market party “Yabloko” (The Apple), known for its long-standing relations with Washington’s State Department and the CIA. He had close links with influential bankers, and the support of a wealthy right-wing movement against Putin, which would be aimed at installing a pro-US puppet regime.
So, the traditional Czarist cruel and clumsy removal of Alexei Navalny has played right into the hands of the USA government. A very timely occasion for much propaganda for Ukraine’s irrational and doomed military fight against Russia, – and for buckets of crocodile tears.
Well, the pro Russisan propagandists will keep bleating about Navalny as a puppet of the USA.
And the “respectable” corporate English-language press will regurgitate the glorious pro – Zelensky and Ukraine stuff coming from Biden etc, (the Navalny death a boon to their story)
But the truth must be somewhere in between, and Navalny has to be remembered as a brave man, who fought for what he believed in, – but by no means as a model of a true democrat.
Australian defence: from self-reliance to subsidising US war with China
Pearls and Irritations, By Mike GilliganFeb 23, 2024
Our leaders have rendered us America’s pawn, contractually. Australia has abrogated the right to choose peace with China. Dumbly. Unnecessarily. Deceitfully. For political ends. We once had a leader who put Australia’s security before the desires of a distant, powerful protector. What is the prospect of chancing upon another of Curtinian quality?
Periodically, it is fashionable among Australia’s geostrategic glitterati to ask what to do about America, as if that’s never really been addressed. Of course, the question has dogged Australian governments and officialdom at least from the day Foreign Minister Percy Spender signed the ANZUS treaty in San Francisco in 1951. Having obtained a treaty we then wondered what it meant?
As a face-saver America agreed to a “treaty” with a non-committing clause – to “consult” should one or other party be threatened. But ever alert to political opportunity, PM Menzies acclaimed ANZUS to the Australian public as if it contained NATO’s Article 5 security for Australia. The bluster and deceit has been maintained by Australian governments and media to this day. Today most Australians believe that the US guarantees our security.
At the time even the hard-heads in Defence and Foreign Affairs were hopeful that the treaty might be interpreted generously by the Americans. But it didn’t take long for that optimism to evaporate. Repeatedly, over the first twenty years, America made it clear that it saw the treaty running in its direction. On issues with Indonesia (eg konfrontasi) Australia had unambiguous signals that we were expected to deal with regional issues independently. Meanwhile we were sending our forces into faraway situations created by the US, suffering heavy consequences viz Korea, Vietnam.
The unlikely choice of self reliance
Then in 1969 President Nixon announced the Guam doctrine – each US ally nation in Asia was considered by the US to be in charge of its own security. After two decades of Australia faffing over ANZUS, clarity emerged. The major political parties were at one that Australia should take responsibility for its own defence.
Looking back, that was an extraordinary step for Australia. We acted promptly by restructuring the defence assets – the three military arms were folded into a Defence Force with the organisation overseen jointly by a civilian and military head. Which portended a revolution in thinking.
By 1976 a comprehensive blueprint was ready. Australia’s first ever White Paper on Defence spelt out the intellectual, practical and financial basis for an Australia secured by self-reliant defences:
“A primary requirement is for increased self reliance… we no longer base our policy on expectation that Australia’s forces will be sent abroad to fight as part of some other nation’s force.
we believe that any operations are much more likely to be in our own neighbourhood than in some distant or forward theatre… we owe it to ourselves to be able to mount a national defence effort that would maximise the risks and costs of any aggression.“
For the transformation to work clarity was necessary around America’s role. Our concepts would be directed to defence of Australia. Our scarce resources would not be applied to anyone else’s priorities. It was agreed that American forces would have no operational role in our defence planning. Should America request armed assistance from us and it was judged in our interest, any contribution would be drawn from assets acquired for our own defences. But only after any competing Australian needs were met.
America fully supported this regime throughout the decades.
Australia’s defence policy unambiguously pursued self- reliance over many and varied governments. The objective was articulated in every government review and white paper – until the ascent of PM Abbott. ………………………………………………………………………………………….
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AUKUS, DEFENCE AND SECURITY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, POLITICS, TOP 5
Australian defence: from self-reliance to subsidising US war with China
Our leaders have rendered us America’s pawn, contractually. Australia has abrogated the right to choose peace with China. Dumbly. Unnecessarily. Deceitfully. For political ends. We once had a leader who put Australia’s security before the desires of a distant, powerful protector. What is the prospect of chancing upon another of Curtinian quality?
Periodically, it is fashionable among Australia’s geostrategic glitterati to ask what to do about America, as if that’s never really been addressed. Of course, the question has dogged Australian governments and officialdom at least from the day Foreign Minister Percy Spender signed the ANZUS treaty in San Francisco in 1951. Having obtained a treaty we then wondered what it meant? It fell short of what we asked for, which was one just like NATO’s with Article 5, please. But what Spender obtained was most unlike NATO. ANZUS holds no assurance that America will assist with armed force if Australia is attacked. It was no oversight. America tenaciously rebuffed such commitment.
As a face-saver America agreed to a “treaty” with a non-committing clause – to “consult” should one or other party be threatened. But ever alert to political opportunity, PM Menzies acclaimed ANZUS to the Australian public as if it contained NATO’s Article 5 security for Australia. The bluster and deceit has been maintained by Australian governments and media to this day. Today most Australians believe that the US guarantees our security.
At the time even the hard-heads in Defence and Foreign Affairs were hopeful that the treaty might be interpreted generously by the Americans. But it didn’t take long for that optimism to evaporate. Repeatedly, over the first twenty years, America made it clear that it saw the treaty running in its direction. On issues with Indonesia (eg konfrontasi) Australia had unambiguous signals that we were expected to deal with regional issues independently. Meanwhile we were sending our forces into faraway situations created by the US, suffering heavy consequences viz Korea, Vietnam.
The unlikely choice of self reliance
Then in 1969 President Nixon announced the Guam doctrine – each US ally nation in Asia was considered by the US to be in charge of its own security. After two decades of Australia faffing over ANZUS, clarity emerged. The major political parties were at one that Australia should take responsibility for its own defence.
Looking back, that was an extraordinary step for Australia. We acted promptly by restructuring the defence assets – the three military arms were folded into a Defence Force with the organisation overseen jointly by a civilian and military head. Which portended a revolution in thinking.
By 1976 a comprehensive blueprint was ready. Australia’s first ever White Paper on Defence spelt out the intellectual, practical and financial basis for an Australia secured by self-reliant defences:
“A primary requirement is for increased self reliance… we no longer base our policy on expectation that Australia’s forces will be sent abroad to fight as part of some other nation’s force.
“we believe that any operations are much more likely to be in our own neighbourhood than in some distant or forward theatre… we owe it to ourselves to be able to mount a national defence effort that would maximise the risks and costs of any aggression.“
For the transformation to work clarity was necessary around America’s role. Our concepts would be directed to defence of Australia. Our scarce resources would not be applied to anyone else’s priorities. It was agreed that American forces would have no operational role in our defence planning. Should America request armed assistance from us and it was judged in our interest, any contribution would be drawn from assets acquired for our own defences. But only after any competing Australian needs were met.
America fully supported this regime throughout the decades.
Australia’s defence policy unambiguously pursued self- reliance over many and varied governments. The objective was articulated in every government review and white paper – until the ascent of PM Abbott. With bipartisan acceptance, even though it meant hard, big decisions from governments. The Hawke government scrapped Navy’s aircraft carrier, to reorient our focus to land-based defences. Large expenditures went preferentially to new equipment, infrastructure and bases across the north. Our ports were a focus for anti-mining measures. We developed a peculiar hybrid of technology which overcame the tyranny of vast maritime surrounds making them a singular strength -our over- the- horizon radar network is unique, unmatched anywhere. Our confidence in detecting air movements all across our northern approaches and beyond went from zero to 95%. Similar numbers apply to ships. A profound increment in the fundamentals of maximising risk for any aggressor, with pervasive synergies.
Three decades after embarking on the self-reliance journey Australia had created a formidable capacity to “maximise the risks and costs of any aggression”. We did it our way, overcoming seemingly insurmountable barriers. With political unity generally.
Sadly, no Defence Minister ever took the trouble to explain to Australians what had been achieved – how and why we should be confident of our security without American forces.
Receding self reliance
Things changed abruptly with the Obama presidency, and its geostrategic “tilt to Asia”. President Obama’s visit here in 2010, grasped as electorally advantageous by the waning Gillard government, put an end to pursuit of self- reliance. The principles of our hard-won independence were eroded almost overnight. Unsaid. Infused with political gratuity. Obama was applauded by our Parliament in announcing that henceforth the US would rotate marine soldiers through northern Australia in increasing numbers.
At the time it looked like a US attempt to turn Australia to joining US competition with China. Ever since it has looked more and more exactly that. We are now fourteen years on from the Gillard capitulation. That period has seen continual sly, escalating obeisance to Americas objectives against China. With no heed to the contradiction that while America identifies China as its chief strategic opponent, it is both the centre of our region and Australia’s foremost trading partner.
In 2014 Foreign Minister Julie Bishop signed a “Force Posture Agreement” (FPA) with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who dines on foreign ministers. The FPA permits US naval and air forces to be based in Australia, to mount operations into our region. At America’s discretion and sole direction, with token consultation. The obvious object being China. The stationing of B52 bombers at Tindal equipped with long stand-off nuclear tipped cruise missiles (near impossible to intercept), makes the devastation of China’s big eastern cities achievable any day, by lunchtime, with confidence, on a signal from Washington.
China must now see that Australia is a permanent threat to its existence, and we have no say in that role. Because America can attack China freely from our shores the FPA effectively means that if US operations are mounted against China, from anywhere, Australia will find itself automatically at war with China.
The Abbott government knew what it was conceding to America in the FPA. Peter Dutton later as a minister of the Morrison government observed that it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join a US conflict against China. Yet not a murmur was heard from our Parliament following Bishop signing away our sovereignty. Or even since, ten years on. PM Albanese recently made virtue of the acquiescence saying national security was purposely quarantined from criticism when Labor was in opposition.
A profound blunder by Abbott and Bishop, impossible to overstate. Compounded by a decade of Parliamentary ignominy.
No longer is our defence spending solely for Australia’s priorities. Increasingly since the Obama visit, funds appropriated for Australia’s defence have been directed towards subsidising US confrontation with China. Alongside American staff being internalised here.
The zenith of our conservative governments’ distorting profligacy is the nuclear submarine of AUKUS. Designed to attack China’s nuclear submarines in and around its waters, it is said that PM Morrison created the arrangement in order to “make a meaningful contribution” to US operations against China. All of this project is madness- most obviously the cost borne by us. The project could only be confected by an authentic fool. Any number of credible authorities condemn it. See Hugh White recently
The Albanese government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) was drafted by a US- educated academic without experience of Australia’s defence or its intellectual capital. Necessarily delivering a view built on books and American perspective; now at the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University, underwritten by our Defence outlays and US patronage.
That DSR recommended that our Army be developed for amphibious attack operations -such as is embedded in US plans for combat in the Island Chain off China with US marines. One wonders how Australia’s Army greets this role- itself deeply encultured with the primacy of the direct defence of Australia.
Minister Marles then appointed a former US admiral to further review Australia’s naval future. The criteria are withheld but it’s a sound bet that the China strategy of the Pentagon was more a factor than was Australia’s self- defence. That report is in and only just responded to by government.
One could go on. Enough has been said to demonstrate that every Australian government since Gillard’s has led Australia into an embrace of US Indo- Pacific re-posturing against China – quietly, slyly, progressively conceding sovereignty and diverting effort and scarce resources from our own hard-won and capable sovereign defence prowess. Without ever frankly saying that the days of self- reliance are over: ie that Australian defence policy is now consumed by something else, contradictory to the policy of preceding decades, which essentially we have no control over……………………………………………………………………….
Australia’s leaders have deceived us into America’s service. Dumbly. Unnecessarily. For political ends. We once had a Prime Minister who, against formidable might, put Australia’s interests before the desires of a distant, powerful protector. John Curtin knew when a new time had to come. What is the prospect of Australia finding another of Curtinian quality? Able to discern and protect Australia’s interest above all others’, against the tide. The rest would follow.
(Postscript: I had the privilege of a working career in the body created to steward the transformation of the 1976 White Paper, “Force Development and Analysis Division” in Defence.) https://johnmenadue.com/australian-defence-from-self-reliance-to-subsidising-us-war-with-china/?fbclid=IwAR0fPj_1371XgvhwCoMD5-mqO8TFydpNE6a84LWapaC94FV27vJlyBOZLTM
The United Nations Refugee Agency and its partners are providing cash assistance so people can buy food, fuel, medicine and warm clothing.
Australia for UNHCR Media Release
Australia for UNHCR is appealing for renewed support for Ukrainians as conditions worsen two years on from Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Since the war began on 24 February 2022, two million homes have been bombed, at least 70,000 people have been killed, and millions have been forced to flee.
“Fierce attacks continue, destroying homes, hospitals and energy infrastructure,” Australia for UNHCR CEO Trudi Mitchell said.
“Families are sheltering in crowded accommodation centres or badly damaged houses with no piped water, gas or electricity, while a bitter winter increases the need for life-saving aid.”
More than 14 million people need humanitarian assistance in Ukraine, a staggering 40 per cent of the population.
In frontline areas such as Donetsk and Kharkiv, constant bombardment means people are forced to spend their days in basements. Children cannot play outside, let alone attend school.
“The fighting has escalated and the humanitarian situation in the country is dramatic and urgent,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said during a recent visit to the country.
“Millions have been forced to flee the war and Russian attacks, and they are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.”
The United Nations Refugee Agency and its partners are providing cash assistance so people can buy food, fuel, medicine and warm clothing.
Teams are also providing repairs to homes, legal aid to help people obtain civil documents damaged or lost in the war, and counselling to help families deal with trauma.
“UNHCR’s dedicated teams have been on the ground since the beginning. We will stay and deliver for the people of Ukraine for as long as is needed – but we can’t do it alone,” Ms Mitchell said.
“When the war first broke out, Australia for UNHCR received record donations. I’m asking Australians once again to think of the people of Ukraine and to donate what they can.”
Donations welcome at Ukraine Crisis Appeal.
February 2024: 10th anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine
Russia preferred to maintain the Ukrainian state and did not recognize the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. It strove to find a solution that would protect the rights of Russian speakers (language, administrative autonomy) without removing them from Ukraine. The Minsk I (September 2014) and Minsk II (February 2015) agreements were neutralized by the Western signatories who later admitted having signed them only to give themselves time to arm and train the Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s categorical refusal to the inclusion of Ukraine into NATO since this would be followed by the installation of American missiles on its southern flank.
February 24, 2022, was not the beginning of a war with Ukraine but the last stage of the war that had begun in 2014.
Used as a disposable tool by the United States and NATO against Russia, Ukraine is in ruins and its future is in jeopardy.
22.02.24 – Europe – Samir Saul – Michel Seymour https://www.pressenza.com/2024/02/february-2024-10th-anniversary-of-the-conflict-in-ukraine/
In the coming days, we will surely hear about the so-called second anniversary of the war in Ukraine. Western governments, corporate media broadcasting the official pro-US line all day long, and “experts”-propagandists of this line will deliver their pseudo-analyses. All will be based on the double premise that the conflict in Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, and that it consists of a Russo-Ukrainian war unilaterally provoked by Russia to satisfy the expansionist ambitions of “dictator” Putin.
According to the US/NATO/Kiev “narrative”, everything was peaceful and normal before February 24. On that day, without the slightest justification and warning, like lightning in a blue sky, a Russian invasion descended on innocent Ukraine. As good Samaritans, the USA and its camp rushed to the aid of the victim by becoming its source of dollars and weapons, not to mention mercenaries and NATO “advisers” to operate these weapons systems. The conflict was supposed to last at most a few weeks, which was all the time that was needed to bleed Russia, while economic “sanctions” would bludgeon it and open the way to a “popular uprising” on the model of the “colored revolutions” (i.e. a putsch sponsored by the Western camp to carry out regime change and install a new leadership which would place Russia under the control of US imperialism).
That is the official “story”, rehashed ad nauseam, by “major” media, with all analysis of what is happening shut out. Only pro-US/NATO/Kiev propaganda is permitted because it would not survive if serious analyses were also allowed. It turns out that censorship, presented as the practice solely of “authoritarian regimes” against which Western “democracies” are leading a worldwide struggle in the name of “values”, is very much at home in the West. It is endorsed, sometimes hypocritically, sometimes proudly.
In propaganda and the now culture, there is no history. Events occur as sudden appearances or random occurrences based on spontaneous impulses. The “good guys” (the US and those who are aligned with them) and the “bad guys” (those who stand up to them) are known in advance, nothing else. With this simplistic and distorting grid, a conflict only begins when the “bad guys” retaliate, and never before, when the “good guys” have taken the initiative to threaten or attack them, leading to the retaliation. These initial actions are simply erased from memory.
Choosing February 24, 2022 as the starting date of the conflict in Ukraine shows bias, myopia and ignorance. It is equivalent to becoming a sounding board for the official “narrative”, the primary aim of which is to conceal the central role of Western governments as initiators of the conflict in Ukraine. Their aim is less Ukraine itself than the utilization of Ukraine, first against the Soviet Union, then against Russia.
A conflict that dates back to 1945
The Ukrainian question went through four phases: from 1945 to 1956, it was a war of sabotage and terrorism; from 1956 to 1990, there was a lull; from 1990 to 2014, a new conflict was brewing; in 2014, the war began.
As early as 1945, well before February 24, 2022, the ancestor of the CIA recruited German Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators. Surrendering to the Americans, Reinhard Gehlen put his network of agents in Eastern Europe at the service of the US. Ukrainian ultranationalist collaborator Stepan Bandera joined Gehlen in Germany and, with his organization, waged a bloody war against the USSR in Ukraine, a Soviet territory. The USSR won and the KGB assassinated Bandera in 1959. It was in 1954 that Khrushchev transferred the Crimean peninsula to the Republic of Ukraine, then part of the USSR.
Latent tension since 1991
Continue readingAssange’s final appeal – Your man in the public gallery, part 2
Craig Murray, Sott.net, Wed, 21 Feb 2024
Comment: This is the continuation of Craig Murray’s coverage of Julian Assange’s final extradition hearing in the UK Royal Court on February 21, 2024. Read the first part here.
Julian Assange is a person in political conflict with the view of the United States, who seeks to affect the policies and operations of the US government.
Section 87 of the Extradition Act 2003 provides that a court must interpret it in the light of the defendant’s human rights as enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. This definitely brings in the jurisdiction of the court. It means all the issues raised must be viewed through the prism of the ECHR and from not other angle.
To depend on the treaty yet ignore its terms is abuse of process and contrary to the ECHR. The obligation in UK law to respect the terms of the extradition treaty with the USA while administering an extradition under it, was comparable to the obligation courts had found to follow the Modern Slavery Convention and Refugee Convention
(quotes given here)
Mark Summers KC then arose to continue the case for Assange. A dark and pugnacious character, he could be well cast as Heathcliff. Summers is as blunt and direct as Fitzgerald is courteous. His points are not so much hammered home, as pile-driven.
This persecution, Summers began, was “intended to prohibit and punish the exposure of state level crime”. The extradition hearing had heard unchallenged evidence of this from many witnesses. The speech in question was thus protected speech. This extradition was not only contrary to the US/UK Extradition Treaty of 2007, it was also plainly contrary to Section 81 of the Extradition Act of 2003.
(quotes given here)
This prosecution was motivated by a desire to punish and suppress political opinion, contrary to the Act. It could be shown plainly to be a political prosecution. It had not been brought until years after the proposed offence; the initiation of the charges had been motivated by the International Criminal Court stating that they were asking the Wikileaks publications as evidence of war crimes. That had been immediately followed by US government denunciation of Wikileaks and Assange, by the designation as a non-state hostile intelligence agency, and even by the official plot to kidnap, poison, rendition or assassinate Assange. That had all been sanctioned by President Trump.
This prosecution therefore plainly bore all of the hallmarks of political persecution.
The magistrates’ court had head unchallenged evidence that the Wikileaks material from Chelsea Manning contained evidence of assassination, rendition, torture, dark prisons and drone killings by the United States. The leaked material had in fact been relied on with success in legal actions in many foreign courts and in Strasbourg itself.
The disclosures were political because the avowed intention was to affect political change. Indeed they had caused political change, for example in the Rules of Engagement for forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and in ending drone killings in Pakistan. Assange had been highly politically acclaimed at the time of the publications. He had been invited to address both the EU and the UN.
The US government had made no response to any of the extensive evidence of United States state level criminality given in the hearing. Yet Judge Baraitser had totally ignored all of it in her ruling. She had not referred to United States criminality at all.
At this point Judge Sharp interrupted to ask where they would find references to these acts of criminality in the evidence, and Summers gave some very terse pointers, through clenched teeth.
Summers continued that in law it is axiomatic that the exposure of state level criminality is a political act. This was protected speech. There were an enormous number of cases across many jurisdictions which indicate this. The criminality presented in this appeal was tolerated and even approved by the very highest levels of the United States government. Publication of this evidence by Mr Assange, absent any financial motive for him to do so, was the very definition of a political act. He was involved, beyond dispute, in opposition to the machinery of government of the United States.
This extradition had to be barred under Section 81 of the Extradition Act because its entire purpose was to silence those political opinions. Again, there were numerous cases on record of how courts should deal, under the European Convention, with states reacting to people who had revealed official criminality.
In the judgment being appealed Judge Baraitser did not address the protected nature of speech exposing state criminality at all. That was plainly an error in law.
Baraitser had also been in error of fact in stating that it was “Purely conjecture and speculation” that the revelation of US war crimes had led to this prosecution. This ignored almost all of the evidence before the court.
The court had been given evidence of United States interference with judicial procedure over US war crimes in Spain, Poland, Germany and Italy. The United States had insulated its own officials from ICC jurisdiction. It had actively threatened both the institutions and employees, of the ICC and of official bodies of other states. All of this had been explained in detail in expert evidence and had been unchallenged. All of it had been ignored by Baraitser.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Political persecution was also apparent in the highly selective prosecution of the appellant. Numerous newspapers had also published the exact same information, as had other websites. Yet only Assange was being prosecuted. Baraitser had simply ignored numerous facts which were key to the case, and therefore her judgment was plainly wrong.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Separately, the Secretary of State had failed in her specific duty to obtain assurances that the death penalty would not be implemented, before agreeing an extradition. The United States could add further charges at any time were Assange in the US, including aiding and abetting treason or other Espionage Act charges which attract the death penalty. It was routine in these circumstances to obtain assurances against the death penalty, and it was sinister they had not been obtained.
The law on this point was very clear; in the absence of assurances against the death penalty, the extradition must be stopped by the Home Secretary and the defendant discharged.
On this rather sombre point, Judge Sharp called the end of the day, and we staggered out into a wet London evening. It was a huge amount to pack into our heads in a day for those of us with brains smaller than Mr Fitzgerald, and the large crowd that roared its approval as we emerged hardly registered with me at all.
It had gone better than I expected……………………………………………. https://www.sott.net/article/489199-Assanges-final-appeal-Your-man-in-the-public-gallery-part-2
DAY ONE: Assange Timeline Exposes US Motives
February 20, 2024
Julian Assange’s lawyers on Tuesday argued before the High Court about why the imprisoned publisher must be allowed to appeal against his extradition order, reports Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria, in London, Consortium News
On Day One of Julian Assange’s attempt to appeal Britain’s order to extradite him to the United States, his lawyers laid out a timeline that exposed U.S. motives to destroy the journalist who revealed their high-level state crimes.
Before two High Court judges in the cramped, wood-paneled Courtroom 5 at the Royal Courts of Justice, Assange’s lawyers argued on Tuesday that two judges had seriously erred in the case on a number of grounds necessitating an appeal of the home secretary’s decision to extradite Assange to the United States.
High to the left of the court, next to oak shelves with neat rows of law books, was an empty iron cage. The court said it had invited Assange to either attend in person or via video link from Belmarsh Prison, where he has been locked up on remand for nearly five years. But Assange said he was too ill take part in any capacity, his lawyers confirmed.
Vanessa Baraitser, the district judge who presided over Assange’s 2020 extradition hearing, and Jonathan Swift, a High Court judge, came in for heavy criticism from Assange’s lawyers. Baraitser in January 2021 ordered Assange released on health grounds.
But she refused him bail while the U.S. appealed. On the basis of assurances that it would not mistreat Assange in the United States, the High Court reversed Baraitser’s decision. The U.K. Supreme Court then refused to take Assange’s challenge of the legality of these assurance and the home secretary signed the extradition order.
Assange’s last avenue of appeal is of the home secretary’s order as well as Baraitser’s 2021 decision, in which, on every point of law and many of fact, she sided with the United States. The application to pursue this appeal was rejected by a single High Court judge, Swift, last June.
He permitted his rejection of the application to itself be appealed. That two-day hearing began Tuesday before Justice Jeremy Johnson and Dame Victoria Sharp.
The Timeline
Assange lawyer Mark Summers made a forceful argument that the United States in essence is treating Assange no differently than any authoritarian regime would deal with a dissident journalist who revealed its secret crimes.
“There was evidence before the district judge that this prosecution was motivated to punish and inhibit the exposure of American state-level crimes,” Summers told the court. “There was unchallenged evidence” during Baraitser’s 2020 extradition hearing “of crimes that sit at the apex of criminality,” he said.
He said there was a direct nexus between Assange’s work to expose U.S. crimes and the U.S. pursuing him. “This is a prosecution for those disclosures,” he said. “There is a straight-line correlation between those disclosures and the prosecution, but the district judge (Baraitser) addressed none of this and neither did Swift.”
Summers then sketched out a timeline of events showing successive stages of motivation for the United States to go after Assange. “There was compelling circumstantial evidence why the U.S. brought this case,” he said.
First, he said, there was no prosecution of Assange (despite the Obama administration empaneling a grand jury) until 2016, when the International Criminal Court announced it would look into possible U.S. crimes in Afghanistan, following Assange’s disclosures. The U.S. then denounced him as a political actor.
Summers said “that morphed into plans to kill or rendition Assange” from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had asylum, following the Vault 7 release of C.I.A. spying tools in 2017.
The then new C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo, in his first public appearance in that position, denounced WikiLeaks as a hostile, non-state intelligence service, a carefully chosen legal term, Summers said, that permitted taking covert action against a target without Congressional knowledge.
Because these plans to kill or rendition Assange, asked for by President Donald Trump, raised alarms with White House lawyers, a legal prosecution was pursued as a way to determine where to put Assange if he were renditioned to the U.S., Summers said.
“This prosecution only emerged because of that rendition plan,” he said. “And the prosecution that emerged is selective and it is persecution.” It was selective because even though other outlets, such as Freitag and cryptome.org,, had published the unredacted diplomatic cables first, Assange was the only one charged.
“This is not a government acting on good faith pursuing a legal” path, he said……………………………………
Assange lawyer Edward Fitzgerald called espionage, with which Assange is charged, a “pure political offense.” The issue is crucial to Assange’s defense because the U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty bars extraditions for political offenses.
However, the Extradition Act, Parliament’s implementing legislation of the Treaty, does not mention political offenses. Baraitser ruled that the Act and not the Treaty should take precedence.
Assange’s team has been arguing that he is wanted for a political crime and therefore the extradition should not proceed. They argued that the Act bars extradition for “political opinion,” which they equate with “political offense.
A considerable amount of time in the five-hour hearing was thus spent by Assange’s lawyers making the point that Assange’s charges are political. Fitzgerald argued that Britain has extradition treaties with 158 nations and in all but two (Kuwait and the UAE), political offenses are barred.
Assange’s work was to influence and change U.S. policy, Fitzgerald said, therefore his work was political and he could not be extradited for his political views or opinions.
Informants!
Justices Johnson and Sharp appeared to be not extremely well-versed in the Assange case and seemed at times surprised by what they were hearing from Assange’s lawyers. But they had been prepared on the U.S. view of Assange allegedly harming U.S. informants.
What they didn’t know is that Assange had actually spent time redacting the names of U.S. informants from the Diplomatic Cables, while WikiLeaks‘ mainstream partners in 2010 did not.
Justice Johnson asked before lunch whether there were cases where someone had published the names of informants and were not prosecuted. After the break, Summers offered the example of Philip Agee, the ex-C.I.A. agent who revealed undercover agents’ names, some of whom were harmed, but he was never indicted for it.
Summers also mentioned The New York Times publishing names of informants in the Pentagon Papers. “The New York Times was never prosecuted,” Summers said. However, Richard Nixon indeed empaneled a grand jury in Boston to indict Times reporters but after it was revealed the government tapped whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg’s phone — and thus also the reporters’ — the case was dropped.
Despite their apparent unfamiliarity with the Assange case both judges seemed intrigued by its serious political, legal and press freedom issues. They are senior judges who might be less susceptible to political pressure.
The Death Penalty
The judges may also have been surprised to learn that under U.S. law and practice, (in this case with agreement from the British government), new charges could be added to Assange’s indictment after he would arrive in America. The Espionage Act, for instance, carries a provision for the death penalty if committed during wartime.
Britain does not have the death penalty and cannot extradite someone who could face capital punishment. Though the U.S. could offer Britain diplomatic assurances that it would not seek the death penalty against Assange, so far it has refused.
Fitzgerald also seemed to shock the courtroom by speaking of instances in U.S. courts where someone convicted for one crime could at sentencing receive time for another offense he or she was never tried for.
He expressed concern that though Assange was never charged with the Vault 7 C.I.A. leak, he might still be sentenced for it. He also said that at sentencing the rules of admissibility could be discarded, for example to consider evidence that was obtained through surveillance.
First Amendment
The judges may have been surprised to hear that the U.S. prosecutor in Virginia has said he may deny Assange his First Amendment rights during trial on U.S. soil because he is not a U.S. citizen. Pompeo stated more categorically that Assange would be without First Amendment protection.
Stripping the right of free speech is a violation of Article 10 of the European Court of Human Rights, Assange’s lawyers argued.
What Strasbourg Would Do
Summers brought the court through a scenario in which the European Court of Human Rights had tried Chelsea Manning, instead of a U.S. military court. He said whistleblower protection laws in Europe had advanced to the point where he believed the court would have weighed the harm done by breaking a confidentiality agreement and the harm prevented by blowing the whistle…….
The overall strategy of Assange’s lawyers appeared to be to make it obvious to these judges that there are vast grounds for appeal as well as arguments to toss the case (such as evidence of C.I.A. spying on Assange’s privileged conversations with his lawyers)
Forseeable
Assange’s lawyers also argued that Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights says someone must foresee that their behavior is a crime before he or she could be charged with it.
They said Assange could not have known that publishing his classified disclosures could have led to prosecution under the Espionage Act because no journalist or publisher had ever been charged under it for possession and publication of classified material. Therefore a violation of Article 7 should bar extradition, they say……………………
The hearing continues on Wednesday with lawyers representing the United States presenting their arguments about why Assange should not be allowed to appeal. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/20/day-one-assange-timeline-exposes-us-motives/
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Why Australia should ditch the AUKUS nuclear submarine and-pivot-to-pitstop-power
Dr Elizabeth Buchanan is an expert associate of the ANU National Security College. This is an excerpt from the latest issue of Australian Foreign Affairs.
There is an elephant in the room, even though it is not a concern for current AUKUS leaders and key backers because it won’t need attention for a decade or so.
Nonetheless, the quandary exists, and we should acknowledge it: the SSN-AUKUS probably won’t materialise. Domestic tensions in both the US and UK are simmering away, with Washington already stating it has no plans to ever operate the boat.
Pillar One does have elements worth salvaging. The sale by Washington to Canberra of at least three Virginia-class SSNs from as soon as the early 2030s is reasonable. As is the exchange of expertise through the embedding of personnel and injection of capital into shipyard infrastructure. Increasing SSN visits to Australian ports by our UK and US partners via the Submarine Rotational Force West is also sensible. Indeed, the SRF-W should be put on steroids.
But the design and attempted construction of a future submarine – the SSN-AUKUS – should be scrapped. This would save us time and money, given the high likelihood the SSN-AUKUS won’t eventuate. With the US not intending to operate the SSN-AUKUS and committing to the SSN-X instead, Canberra is left to rely on London. This is precarious to say the least.
Canberra should focus its efforts on interoperability with the US in our maritime backyard. After all, Washington is geographically wedded to the same Pacific arena. It is clear our long-term regional maritime interests align more with Washington than with London.
We should acquire as intended the three Virginia-class subs and get behind the US’s SSN-X. If the UK fulfils the ambitious SSN-AUKUS project, it will likely share similar elements to the SSN-X in any case – not least the weapons and propulsion systems. Theoretically, Australia would provide maintenance and support for the UK’s SSN-AUKUS via SRF-W, as we will for the Virginia-class subs and probably for the SSN-X too.
This more sensible AUKUS pathway takes advantage of Australia’s pit-stop power. Our value proposition to partners is our enhanced ability to maintain and host their SSN capabilities, while also bringing our own capabilities to the table. Come 2030 and through to the 2040s, Australia’s SRF-W is likely to contain no less than five different submarine classes. We could see our trusty but aged Collins-class aside a single visiting British Astute, up to nine Virginias, as well as the SSN-X and, of course, the mystical SSN-AUKUS.
This is surely more submarine capability housed in the Indo-Pacific than the AUKUS partners could poke a stick at, which is good news for Canberra. Keeping the waters of the Indo-Pacific free from coercion and potentially armed conflict is a binding mutual interest for Australia, the US and the UK. This is also true for Australia’s global partners and allies, as maritime security challenges originating in the Indo-Pacific ripple across the globe. Of course, our competitors – and states we don’t see eye to eye with – also want the continued facilitation of maritime trade throughout the world. But the capabilities to marshal and control the world’s seas are strengthening and not necessarily in our favour, with vast military modernisation processes under way in our neighbourhood.
In the wise words of Sean Connery’s naval captain in The Hunt for Red October, “one ping” tells us only part of the picture. The optimal pathway tabled by AUKUS leaders is merely one approach to SSN capability for Australia. There are many options for achieving the right capability. We’ve committed to a pathway that has welcomed extremely limited consultation or public debate. One ping, one approach, offers only part of the picture.
Defence acquisition is an enduring process, involving constant review and revision. But even a capability novice must accept that pursuing a “Frankenstein” approach to delivering an SSN is beyond the pale in terms of risk. This is not a call to walk back on the plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
As the island continent smack bang in the middle of the Indian and Pacific Ocean theatres, Australia cannot bunker down and avoid the fallout of sharpening competition on its doorstep. But nor should Canberra expect to sidestep the competition. As a net beneficiary of the extant rules-based order, secured and administered primarily by our partners, namely Washington, Australia ought to be providing security too.
For our allies and partners, Australia’s geography is unbeatable in an era of Indo-Pacific strategic competition. Our pit-stop power is a potential solution to a glaring problem: the SSN-AUKUS might not ever eventuate. While this would not necessarily be detrimental to Australia, we need an SSN capability. We can arrive at one by putting SRF-W at the centre of AUKUS, making the most of our pit-stop power to support the enhanced operation of partner SSN presence in our backyard, while continuing efforts to acquire and operate our own SSN capability. Any optimal pathway surely needs to be sensible too.
Swarming Our World. What Happens When Killer Robots Start Communicating with Each Other?
“Emergent” AI Behavior and Human Destiny
What Happens When Killer Robots Start Communicating with Each Other?
Tom Dispatch, Michael Klare, FEBRUARY 20, 2024
Make no mistake, artificial Intelligence (AI) has already gone into battle in a big-time way. The Israeli military is using it in Gaza on a scale previously unknown in wartime. They’ve reportedly been employing an AI target-selection platform called (all too unnervingly) “the Gospel” to choose many of their bombing sites. According to a December report in the Guardian, the Gospel “has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a ‘factory.’” The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claim that it “produces precise attacks on infrastructure associated with Hamas while inflicting great damage to the enemy and minimal harm to noncombatants.” Significantly enough, using that system, the IDF attacked 15,000 targets in Gaza in just the first 35 days of the war. And given the staggering damage done and the devastating death toll there, the Gospel could, according to the Guardian, be thought of as an AI-driven “mass assassination factory.”
Meanwhile, of course, in the Ukraine War, both the Russians and the Ukrainians have been hustling to develop, produce, and unleash AI-driven drones with deadly capabilities. Only recently, in fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created a new branch of his country’s armed services specifically focused on drone warfare and is planning to produce more than one million drones this year. According to the Independent, “Ukrainian forces are expected to create special staff positions for drone operations, special units, and build effective training. There will also be a scaling-up of production for drone operations, and inclusion of the best ideas and top specialists in the unmanned aerial vehicles domain, [Ukrainian] officials have said.”
And all of this is just the beginning when it comes to war, AI-style, which is going to include the creation of “killer robots” of every imaginable sort. But as the U.S., Russia, China, and other countries rush to introduce AI-driven battlefields, let TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, who has long been focused on what it means for the globe’s major powers to militarize AI, take you into a future in which (god save us all!) robots could be running (yes, actually running!) the show. Tom
By combining AI with advanced robotics, the U.S. military and those of other advanced powers are already hard at work creating an array of self-guided “autonomous” weapons systems — combat drones that can employ lethal force independently of any human officers meant to command them. Called “killer robots” by critics, such devices include a variety of uncrewed or “unmanned” planes, tanks, ships, and submarines capable of autonomous operation. The U.S. Air Force, for example, is developing its “collaborative combat aircraft,” an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended to join piloted aircraft on high-risk missions. The Army is similarly testing a variety of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), while the Navy is experimenting with both unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned undersea vessels (UUVs, or drone submarines). China, Russia, Australia, and Israel are also working on such weaponry for the battlefields of the future.
Michael Klare, Swarming Our World
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 20, 2024
Make no mistake, artificial Intelligence (AI) has already gone into battle in a big-time way. The Israeli military is using it in Gaza on a scale previously unknown in wartime. They’ve reportedly been employing an AI target-selection platform called (all too unnervingly) “the Gospel” to choose many of their bombing sites. According to a December report in the Guardian, the Gospel “has significantly accelerated a lethal production line of targets that officials have compared to a ‘factory.’” The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claim that it “produces precise attacks on infrastructure associated with Hamas while inflicting great damage to the enemy and minimal harm to noncombatants.” Significantly enough, using that system, the IDF attacked 15,000 targets in Gaza in just the first 35 days of the war. And given the staggering damage done and the devastating death toll there, the Gospel could, according to the Guardian, be thought of as an AI-driven “mass assassination factory.”
Meanwhile, of course, in the Ukraine War, both the Russians and the Ukrainians have been hustling to develop, produce, and unleash AI-driven drones with deadly capabilities. Only recently, in fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky created a new branch of his country’s armed services specifically focused on drone warfare and is planning to produce more than one million drones this year. According to the Independent, “Ukrainian forces are expected to create special staff positions for drone operations, special units, and build effective training. There will also be a scaling-up of production for drone operations, and inclusion of the best ideas and top specialists in the unmanned aerial vehicles domain, [Ukrainian] officials have said.”
And all of this is just the beginning when it comes to war, AI-style, which is going to include the creation of “killer robots” of every imaginable sort. But as the U.S., Russia, China, and other countries rush to introduce AI-driven battlefields, let TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, who has long been focused on what it means for the globe’s major powers to militarize AI, take you into a future in which (god save us all!) robots could be running (yes, actually running!) the show. Tom
“Emergent” AI Behavior and Human Destiny
What Happens When Killer Robots Start Communicating with Each Other?
Yes, it’s already time to be worried — very worried. As the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have shown, the earliest drone equivalents of “killer robots” have made it onto the battlefield and proved to be devastating weapons. But at least they remain largely under human control. Imagine, for a moment, a world of war in which those aerial drones (or their ground and sea equivalents) controlled us, rather than vice-versa. Then we would be on a destructively different planet in a fashion that might seem almost unimaginable today. Sadly, though, it’s anything but unimaginable, given the work on artificial intelligence (AI) and robot weaponry that the major powers have already begun. Now, let me take you into that arcane world and try to envision what the future of warfare might mean for the rest of us.
By combining AI with advanced robotics, the U.S. military and those of other advanced powers are already hard at work creating an array of self-guided “autonomous” weapons systems — combat drones that can employ lethal force independently of any human officers meant to command them. Called “killer robots” by critics, such devices include a variety of uncrewed or “unmanned” planes, tanks, ships, and submarines capable of autonomous operation. The U.S. Air Force, for example, is developing its “collaborative combat aircraft,” an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) intended to join piloted aircraft on high-risk missions. The Army is similarly testing a variety of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), while the Navy is experimenting with both unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned undersea vessels (UUVs, or drone submarines). China, Russia, Australia, and Israel are also working on such weaponry for the battlefields of the future.
The imminent appearance of those killing machines has generated concern and controversy globally, with some countries already seeking a total ban on them and others, including the U.S., planning to authorize their use only under human-supervised conditions. In Geneva, a group of states has even sought to prohibit the deployment and use of fully autonomous weapons, citing a 1980 U.N. treaty, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, that aims to curb or outlaw non-nuclear munitions believed to be especially harmful to civilians. Meanwhile, in New York, the U.N. General Assembly held its first discussion of autonomous weapons last October and is planning a full-scale review of the topic this coming fall.
For the most part, debate over the battlefield use of such devices hinges on whether they will be empowered to take human lives without human oversight. Many religious and civil society organizations argue that such systems will be unable to distinguish between combatants and civilians on the battlefield and so should be banned in order to protect noncombatants from death or injury, as is required by international humanitarian law. American officials, on the other hand, contend that such weaponry can be designed to operate perfectly well within legal constraints.
However, neither side in this debate has addressed the most potentially unnerving aspect of using them in battle: the likelihood that, sooner or later, they’ll be able to communicate with each other without human intervention and, being “intelligent,” will be able to come up with their own unscripted tactics for defeating an enemy — or something else entirely. Such computer-driven groupthink, labeled “emergent behavior” by computer scientists, opens up a host of dangers not yet being considered by officials in Geneva, Washington, or at the U.N.
For the time being, most of the autonomous weaponry being developed by the American military will be unmanned (or, as they sometimes say, “uninhabited”) versions of existing combat platforms and will be designed to operate in conjunction with their crewed counterparts. While they might also have some capacity to communicate with each other, they’ll be part of a “networked” combat team whose mission will be dictated and overseen by human commanders. The Collaborative Combat Aircraft, for instance, is expected to serve as a “loyal wingman” for the manned F-35 stealth fighter, while conducting high-risk missions in contested airspace. The Army and Navy have largely followed a similar trajectory in their approach to the development of autonomous weaponry.
The Appeal of Robot “Swarms”
However, some American strategists have championed an alternative approach to the use of autonomous weapons on future battlefields in which they would serve not as junior colleagues in human-led teams but as coequal members of self-directed robot swarms. Such formations would consist of scores or even hundreds of AI-enabled UAVs, USVs, or UGVs — all able to communicate with one another, share data on changing battlefield conditions, and collectively alter their combat tactics as the group-mind deems necessary.
“Emerging robotic technologies will allow tomorrow’s forces to fight as a swarm, with greater mass, coordination, intelligence and speed than today’s networked forces,” predicted Paul Scharre, an early enthusiast of the concept, in a 2014 report for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). “Networked, cooperative autonomous systems,” he wrote then, “will be capable of true swarming — cooperative behavior among distributed elements that gives rise to a coherent, intelligent whole.”
As Scharre made clear in his prophetic report, any full realization of the swarm concept would require the development of advanced algorithms that would enable autonomous combat systems to communicate with each other and “vote” on preferred modes of attack. This, he noted, would involve creating software capable of mimicking ants, bees, wolves, and other creatures that exhibit “swarm” behavior in nature. As Scharre put it, “Just like wolves in a pack present their enemy with an ever-shifting blur of threats from all directions, uninhabited vehicles that can coordinate maneuver and attack could be significantly more effective than uncoordinated systems operating en masse.”
In 2014, however, the technology needed to make such machine behavior possible was still in its infancy. To address that critical deficiency, the Department of Defense proceeded to fund research in the AI and robotics field, even as it also acquired such technology from private firms like Google and Microsoft. A key figure in that drive was Robert Work, a former colleague of Paul Scharre’s at CNAS and an early enthusiast of swarm warfare. Work served from 2014 to 2017 as deputy secretary of defense, a position that enabled him to steer ever-increasing sums of money to the development of high-tech weaponry, especially unmanned and autonomous systems.
From Mosaic to Replicator
Much of this effort was delegated to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s in-house high-tech research organization. As part of a drive to develop AI for such collaborative swarm operations, DARPA initiated its “Mosaic” program, a series of projects intended to perfect the algorithms and other technologies needed to coordinate the activities of manned and unmanned combat systems in future high-intensity combat with Russia and/or China…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
To obtain both the hardware and software needed to implement such an ambitious program, the Department of Defense is now seeking proposals from traditional defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon as well as AI startups like Anduril and Shield AI. While large-scale devices like the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft and the Navy’s Orca Extra-Large UUV may be included in this drive, the emphasis is on the rapid production of smaller, less complex systems like AeroVironment’s Switchblade attack drone, now used by Ukrainian troops to take out Russian tanks and armored vehicles behind enemy lines.
At the same time, the Pentagon is already calling on tech startups to develop the necessary software to facilitate communication and coordination among such disparate robotic units and their associated manned platforms. To facilitate this, the Air Force asked Congress for $50 million in its fiscal year 2024 budget to underwrite what it ominously enough calls Project VENOM, or “Viper Experimentation and Next-generation Operations Model.” Under VENOM, the Air Force will convert existing fighter aircraft into AI-governed UAVs and use them to test advanced autonomous software in multi-drone operations. The Army and Navy are testing similar systems.
When Swarms Choose Their Own Path
In other words, it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. military (and presumably China’s, Russia’s, and perhaps those of a few other powers) will be able to deploy swarms of autonomous weapons systems equipped with algorithms that allow them to communicate with each other and jointly choose novel, unpredictable combat maneuvers while in motion. Any participating robotic member of such swarms would be given a mission objective (“seek out and destroy all enemy radars and anti-aircraft missile batteries located within these [specified] geographical coordinates”) but not be given precise instructions on how to do so. That would allow them to select their own battle tactics in consultation with one another. If the limited test data we have is anything to go by, this could mean employing highly unconventional tactics never conceived for (and impossible to replicate by) human pilots and commanders.
…………………………………… In military terms, this means that a swarm of autonomous weapons might jointly elect to adopt combat tactics none of the individual devices were programmed to perform — possibly achieving astounding results on the battlefield, but also conceivably engaging in escalatory acts unintended and unforeseen by their human commanders, including the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure or communications facilities used for nuclear as well as conventional operations………………………………………………..
What then? Might they choose to keep fighting beyond their preprogrammed limits, provoking unintended escalation — even, conceivably, of a nuclear kind? Or would they choose to stop their attacks on enemy forces and instead interfere with the operations of friendly ones, perhaps firing on and devastating them
……………………………….. Many prominent security and technology officials are, however, all too aware of the potential risks of this “emergent behavior” in future robotic weaponry and continue to issue warnings against the rapid utilization of AI in warfare.
Of particular note is the final report that the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence issued in February 2021. Co-chaired by Robert Work (back at CNAS after his stint at the Pentagon) and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, the commission recommended the rapid utilization of AI by the U.S. military to ensure victory in any future conflict with China and/or Russia. However, it also voiced concern about the potential dangers of robot-saturated battlefields……………………………………………………………..
When the leading advocates of autonomous weaponry tell us to be concerned about the unintended dangers posed by their use in battle, the rest of us should be worried indeed. Even if we lack the mathematical skills to understand emergent behavior in AI, it should be obvious that humanity could face a significant risk to its existence, should killing machines acquire the ability to think on their own…………… more https://tomdispatch.com/emergent-ai-behavior-and-human-destiny/—
Utility EdF Writes Down $14B Loss on Delayed UK Nuclear Megaproject
By Peter Reina, February 20, 2024, https://www.enr.com/articles/58180-utility-edf-writes-down-14b-loss-on-delayed-uk-nuclear-megaproject
Following recent news of additional delays and cost hikes on the U.K.’s 3,260-MW Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, the project company has reported an impairment of $14 billion on its assets.
French state controlled utiilty firm Electricité de France (EdF), which controls project financing and construction, last month updated Hinkley Point C’s forecast completion to between 2029 and 2031, with costs rising to a range of $39-43 billion. The previous completion target set in May 2022 was June 2027. EdF is currently financing all project construction costs.
Announcing its 2023 annual report, the utility also set this March as the expected target date for fuel loading at its 1,650-MW Flamanville 3 nuclear power plant on the north French coast. When work started in 2007, fuel loading was forecast for 2011.
What comes after Rafah
By David Donovan | 22 February 2024, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/what-comes-after-rafah,18353
What will happen after Israeli forces raze Rafah? Founder and director Dave Donovan discusses the ongoing genocide in Gaza and its likely aftershocks.
THIS IS a very important Independent Australia editorial because the world is at a crucial stepping point, a junction, a crisis, where whichever path is chosen will dictate the next 30, or maybe 50, years for global peace.
The crisis is Gaza. The choices are clear. A messy, indeterminate peace or a walk through the tombstones. On from which this world will be – for at least some, and maybe the rest of us – irrevocably altered. A world in which murder and death reign.
Currently, as these words are written, Israel stands on the brink of launching an offensive into the last desperate holdout of the Palestinian people: Rafah.
Israeli nationalists – let’s not dignify their objectives with their favoured demonym, Zionists – weaponise the extremely loaded term, anti-Semitism, to accuse any who object to their expansionary doctrine and indisputable war crimes.
And let us be clear: opposing war crimes is not anti-Semitism. It is not even anti-Zionist or anti-Israel. It is pro-humanity. Our position has been plain and consistent, ever since we began publication. We have indeed held all parties to account in this sphere. We are anti-violence and anti-war.
It is undeniable that not all Jewish people or Zionists are comfortable with the actions of the Israeli Armed Forces in this conflict; nor do all Palestinians endorse Hamas or its actions.
Racism and bigotry are evil but using past wrongs – admittedly horrifying, brutal and evil genocidal wrongs – does not excuse an ongoing mass slaughter, a genocide we have witnessed unfolding night after night on our TV screens, including images of burned and dismembered people, even most distressingly, of babies and small children. No past sin, no sense of self-righteousness, not even the horrific and evil October 7 actions by Hamas, no matter how callous and disgusting, can excuse wholesale slaughter.
But we are on the verge of exactly that.
Let’s make no bones about it, Israel is a rogue state. Netanyahu, Israel’s Far-Right Prime Minister, has repeatedly refused to recognise international law – most recently via the International Court of Justice, which has declared Israel’s current onslaught in Gaza an ongoing genocide – and plans to raze Rafah until the last Hamas fighter is killed.
No one is safe — not refugees, not journalists, not medical professionals, not aid workers.
And so the last of the Palestinians in Gaza will die, even the smallest children, just in case there is a Hamas fighter left among them.
That Australians may be okay with this ethnic cleansing beggars belief. Yet, at best we are complacent onlookers and sadly, more accurately, we are compliant cronies.
And what happens next?
WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN NEXT
The United States should intervene to halt the Israeli Defence Force’s invasion of Rafah. The U.S., the closest ally of Israel, is the only power that could turn it back from its murderous, genocidal intent.
WHAT WILL LIKELY HAPPEN NEXT
After Israel crushes Rafah and sends what remains of the Palestinian people fleeing to refugee camps, perhaps in Egypt, then Israel will, under the guise of eradicating the remaining Hamas terrorists, continue its grand campaign into the Middle East.
Probably first in Lebanon, which it has already begun bombing but wherever territory can be acquired. Then a massive international Islamic force will be mobilised to take on Israel. The U.S. and its allies, including Australia, will step in. World War III.
Total victory in Gaza might be the spark that ignites a global war which has been looming for decades. Russia appears to be spoiling for a war. Global outrage over Israel’s actions is such that the forces which are inclined to oppose America, including Russia and China, will likely use this confrontation to finally mobilise against Israel and the United States.
And if such a war were to occur, which seems likely given any pyrrhic Israeli victory, it would finally end the Zionist dream. One thing is quite certain, irrespective of how such a catastrophic conflagration might end, Israel would be no more.
Israel may win this “battle” against the Palestinians, but it will lose the war. That is what beckons.
Sadly for Australia, when our imperial masters dictate, we will be active participants.
And it would mean that we would once again be needlessly spilling the blood of our children over the “holy land”, as we have done over and over again in numerous conflicts for more than a century.
This is not just a crucial editorial, this is a wake-up call.
Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Day in Court
The defense must convince the two judges that the District Judge made serious legal errors to see an appeal granted.
They argued that espionage is, as a matter of law, a political offense and that the extradition treaty with the U.S. prohibits extradition for political offenses. They focused on the extensive UK law, common law and international law that defines espionage as a “pure political offense” because e it is directed against a state apparatus. For this reason, those charged with espionage should be protected from extradition.
The hearing was, after those in 2020 that focused on Julian’s mental and psychological health, refreshing in that it discussed the crimes committed by the U.S. and the importance of making them public.
Julian Assange’s lawyers — in a final bid on Tuesday to stop his extradition — fought valiantly to poke holes in the case of the prosecution to obtain an appeal.
By Chris Hedges https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/21/chris-hedges-julian-assanges-day-in-court/
LONDON — By the afternoon the video link, which would have allowed Julian Assange to follow his final U.K. appeal to prevent his extradition, had been turned off. Julian, his attorneys said, was too ill to attend, too ill even to follow the court proceedings on a link, although it was possible he was no longer interested in sitting through another judicial lynching. The rectangular screen, tucked under the black wrought iron bars that enclosed the upper left hand corner balcony of the courtroom where Julian would have been caged as a defendant, was perhaps a metaphor for the emptiness of this long and convoluted judicial pantomime.
he arcane procedural rules — the lawyers in their curled blonde wigs and robes, the spectral figure of the two judges looking down on the court from their raised dais in their gray wigs and forked white collars, the burnished walnut paneled walls, the rows of lancet windows, the shelves on either side filled with law books in brown, green, red, crimson, blue and beige leather bindings, the defense lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC, addressing the two judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Johnson, as “your lady” and “my lord” — were all dusty Victorian props employed in a modern Anglo-American show trial. It was a harbinger of a decrepit justice system that, subservient to state and corporate power, is designed to strip us of our rights by judicial fiat.
The physical and psychological disintegration of Julian, seven years trapped in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and nearly five years held on remand in the high-security HM Prison Belmarsh, was always the point, what Nils Melzer the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture calls his “slow-motion execution.” Political leaders, and their echo chambers in the media, fall all over themselves to denounce the treatment of Alexei Navalny but say little when we do the same to Julian. The legal farce grinds forward like the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. It will probably grind on for a few more months — one can’t expect the Biden administration to add the extradition of Julian to all its other political woes. It may take months to issue a ruling, or grant one or two appeal requests, as Julian continues to waste away in HM Prison Belmarsh.
Julian’s nearly 15-year legal battle began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — including footage showing a U.S. helicopter gunning down civilians, including two Reuters journalists in Baghdad. He took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police in 2019 who were permitted by the Ecuadorian embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh.
Julian did not commit a crime. He is not a spy. He did not purloin classified documents. He did what we all do, although he did it in a far more important way. He published voluminous material, leaked to him by Chelsea Manning, which exposed U.S. war crimes, lies, corruption, torture and assassinations. He ripped back the veil to expose the murderous machinery of the U.S. empire.
The two-day hearing is Julian’s last chance to appeal the extradition decision made in 2022 by the then British home secretary, Priti Patel. On Wednesday the prosecution will make its arguments. If he is denied an appeal he can request the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a stay of execution under Rule 39, which is given in “exceptional circumstances” and “only where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm.” But the British court may order Julian’s immediate extradition prior to a Rule 39 instruction or may decide to ignore a request from the ECtHR to allow Julian to have his case heard by the court.
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January 2021, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, refused to authorize the extradition request. In her 132-page ruling, she found that there was a “substantial risk” Julian would commit suicide due to the severity of the conditions he would endure in the U.S. prison system. At the same time, she accepted all the charges leveled by the U.S. against Julian as being filed in good faith. She rejected the arguments that his case was politically motivated, that he would not get a fair trial in the U.S. and that his prosecution is an assault on the freedom of the press.
Baraitser’s decision was overturned after the U.S. government appealed to the High Court in London. Although the High Court accepted Baraitser’s conclusions about Julian’s “substantial risk” of suicide if he was subjected to certain conditions within a U.S. prison, it also accepted four assurances in U.S. Diplomatic Note no. 74, given to the court in February 2021, which promised Julian would be treated well. The “assurances” state that Julian will not be subject to Special Administrative Measure. They promise that Julian, an Australian citizen, can serve his sentence in Australia if the Australian government requests his extradition. They promise he will receive adequate clinical and psychological care. They promise that, pre-trial and post-trial, Julian will not be held in the Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.
Continue reading1 This month
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/2352741955560
15 April – Zoom –Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 