Supporting genocide. Australian funds risk breaking international law.

by Stephanie Tran | Nov 14, 2025,  https://michaelwest.com.au/supporting-genocide-australian-funds-risk-breaking-international-law/

Australian fund managers who continue to invest in companies that supply weapons to Israel may be in breach of international law and risk prosecution. Stephanie Tran with the story.

Leading international law experts say Australia’s sovereign wealth fund could be complicit in genocide in Gaza if they continue investing in companies supplying weapons and technology to Israel.

Former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti, who was a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine and Israel, told MWM that both the government and private sector have clear obligations to avoid complicity in genocide.

“States like Australia, and the private sector too, are now on notice,” Sidoti said. “A UN Commission of Inquiry has found war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide, and they have responsibilities arising from that.”

Tim McCormack, Professor of International Law at the University of Tasmania and former Special Adviser on War Crimes to the International Criminal Court, said the government must confront the legal implications of its inaction.

“We need a government that’s prepared to say we believe in the international legal order, and that means certain implications for us about having to draw lines in the sand when we see international law being violated egregiously,” he said.

Future Fund complicity

The Future Fund, Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, continues to hold shares in Elbit Systems despite extensive evidence that the Israeli weapons manufacturer is a key enabler of the IDF in the commission of genocide in Gaza as Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer.

During a Senate Estimates hearing last month, Future Fund CEO Raphael Arndt and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Will Heatherton were grilled about why the fund still invests in Elbit, whose drones are believed to have been used in the Israeli strike that killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom.

Elbit Systems was added to the Fund’s exclusion list in 2018 for producing cluster munitions but was reinstated in April 2023 after what Heatherton described as a process of “due diligence, review and testing.”

“Through our process of regular due diligence, review and testing – as I mentioned, every six months – in 2023 it was identified that Elbit Systems was no longer involved in the activities that led it to be taken out of the portfolio, so it became investable once again,” said Heatherton.

When pressed about the concerns raised by several UN reports regarding the complicity of Elbit Systems in genocide, Heatherton stated that under the board’s policy “there is no reason to exclude the company, on the basis of conventions and treaties the Australian government has ratified”.

“In this particular case, Elbit is not subject to Australian or US sanctions and is not excluded under the exclusions framework adopted by the board,” he said.

Documents obtained via Freedom of Information provide insight into the Future Fund’s decision to maintain its investment in Elbit Systems following a MWM investigation on the matter.

Sidoti said the Fund’s position exposed deep flaws in how it applies ethical and legal standards to its investments.

“If the statements made by the senior people in the Future Fund are correct, then, firstly, there needs to be a complete change in the membership of the board, and secondly, there needs to be a change in the legislation to make sure that the Future Fund acts lawfully under international law and ethically.”

Sidoti pointed to the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund as an example of a fund that has aligned its investment strategy with its obligations under international law. The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund banned investments in Elbit Systems in 2009 due to its supply of surveillance technology to Israeli forces in the West Bank. In August, the fund also terminated all contracts with asset managers handling its Israeli investments.

“If the largest fund in the world can act ethically and be concerned about acting ethically, why can’t a relatively small one like ours? If the board can’t ensure that that occurs, then the legislation needs to be changed. It is an institution that is part of the state, and so it bears the responsibilities under international law that the state bears far more than any private corporation,” Sidoti said.

Australia … “a very real risk”

Sidoti warned that the Australian government may be in breach of its obligations under international law due to its inaction after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it was “plausible” that Israel’s acts in Gaza could amount to genocide.

“There is a very real risk that Australia is breaching its international legal obligations. I’m not saying at this stage that we are definitely in breach, but from what the Australian government has said and done in response to the situation in Gaza and in response to decisions already made by the International Court of Justice, I have to say that we are at real risk of being in violation of international law the court.”

He said the government had failed to implement even basic steps to ensure it is not aiding or assisting Israel’s unlawful activities.

“I would have expected Australia to undertake a major review of all aspects of its relationships with Israel… but I am not aware of any such comprehensive review having been undertaken.”

“The [ICJ] have said that all states have an obligation not to aid or assist the continuation of Israel’s unlawful activities in the occupied Palestinian territory. The first step of not aiding and assisting is to know exactly what we’re doing, the aspects of the relationship and what we should be stopping. But that doesn’t seem to have been done.”

Jerusalem defence and trade office

Sidoti also called for the immediate closure of Australia’s defence and trade office in Jerusalem, which promotes cooperation with Israel’s arms industry.

“To have that office still operating and promoting defence cooperation is nothing short of scandalous. It is absolutely scandalous that under these circumstances, we are promoting defence cooperation between Australia and Israel,” he said.

Between March 2019 to June 2025, Austrade paid WeWork Israel $218,115 to lease the premises for the West Jerusalem Trade and Defence office. In July 2025, the lease was extended until December 2025 for a further $26,185.

While the government maintains a ban on arms exports to Israel, Sidoti said the government’s continued defence contracts with Israeli weapons manufacturers such as Elbit Systems fund the development of weapons and surveillance technology used against Palestinians.

“The Australian government is hiding behind the fact that for five years it has had a prohibition on the export of arms and munitions to Israel.”

“But when we buy drones or surveillance technology from Elbit, we are, in fact, funding research and development of the Israeli armaments industry, and in particular the development of surveillance technology that is used against Palestinians. There is no excuse whatsoever for any form of arms trade between Australia and Israel.”

McCormack added that Australia’s participation in the supply of components for the F-35 stealth strike fighter programme continues to implicate us in the atrocities committed in Gaza.

“We know those aircraft … are being used to drop incredible amounts of ordnance on Gaza,” he said.

Obligation to prevent genocide

Sidoti said Australia’s legal duty to prevent genocide was triggered in January 2024 after the ICJ ruled that genocide in Gaza was ‘plausible’. Under the Genocide Convention, states have an obligation not only to punish genocide after it occurs, but to actively prevent it. The ICJ’s ruling activated this obligation, requiring states to use all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide from happening.

“The critical legal issue is the obligation to prevent genocide; that obligation is not dependent on genocide having actually occurred, it is triggered by a reasonable risk that genocide may occur,” he said. “The obligation to prevent is a real and present obligation that has existed at the latest, since January 2024, yet we seem to have done very little, and certainly almost nothing meaningful in response to that obligation.”

In September, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine and Israel found that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“Our UN Commission of Inquiry has been looking closely at the situation in Palestine and Israel for four years now, and we’ve focused particularly on the situation in Gaza for the last two years. … In a series of reports, eight in all, we found war crimes, crimes against humanity and most recently, based upon all of our earlier findings, the crime of genocide,” Sidoti said.
Chris Sidoti will be speaking in a series of public events organised by the Association for the Promotion of International Law in conjunction with Amnesty International, ANU Law School and the International Commission of Jurists. He will be in Victoria on 19 November, Hobart on 20 November and Sydney on 27 November.

November 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Google on Christmas Island: Data Centres and Imminent Militarisation

12 November 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/google-on-christmas-island-data-centres-and-imminent-militarisation/

Google has become something of a fixture in digital infrastructure in the Pacific. In late 2023, Canberra announced a joint project with the US, Google and Vocus, an Australian digital infrastructure firm, to deliver the A$80 million South Pacific Connect initiative. The object: to link Fiji and French Polynesia to Australia and North America, with the hopeful placement of landing stations in other South Pacific countries.

Interest in Google’s relationship with the Australian government was also piqued this month by promised activity on Christmas Island, located 350 kilometres (220 miles) south of Indonesia. The Indian Ocean outpost of exquisite environmental beauty has often been sinister in its secrecy. Unwanted refugees and asylum seekers have periodically found themselves as detainees on the island, victims of Australia’s sadistic approach to undocumented naval arrivals. In August 2016, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre claimed that the Christmas Island Detention Centre had all the brutal features of “a high security military camp where control is based on fear and punishment and the extensive internal use of extrajudicial punishment by force and isolation is evident.”

The goal of the Silicon Valley behemoth lies elsewhere. Occasioned by the signing of a cloud deal with Australia’s Department of Defence earlier in July, the company promises to build what Reuters describes as “a large artificial intelligence data centre” on the island. Advanced talks are being held on leasing land near the island’s airport that will be used for the site. This will include an arrangement with a local mining company to deal with any necessary energy needs for the 7-megawatt facility, which will be powered on diesel and renewable energy.

The scale of the project, let alone its broader significance, is not something the company or government wonks wish others to know about. “We are not constructing ‘a large artificial intelligence data centre’ on Christmas Island,” came the sharp response from a Google spokesperson to Data Center Dynamics. “This is a continuation of our Australia Connect work to deliver subsea cable infrastructure, and we look forward to sharing more soon.” Planning documents further show the company’s vision for an “additional future cable system” that will connect Christmas Island to Asia.

The Australian Department of Infrastructure has confirmed the Google project, which includes plans to link the island to Darwin using the services of US-based contractor SubCom. The bureaucrats were also quick to gloss over what disruptions might arise to the 1,600 residents heavily reliant on diesel to patch up inadequate renewable sources. “The department is in discussions with Google to ensure energy requirements for the proposed project are met without impacting supply to local residents and businesses.” A spokesperson also stated that, “All environmental and other planning requirements will need to be met for the project to succeed.”

The same cautionary note has not been struck by enthusiasts who see the military potential of the island outpost. Former US Navy strategist Bryan Clark, fresh from being involved in a tabletop war game involving personnel from the US, Japanese and Australian militaries, was keen to inflate the importance of the data centre. That importance, he stresses, lies in the field of conflict. “The data centre is partly to allow you to do the kinds of AI-enabled command and control that you need to do in the future, especially if you rely on uncrewed systems for surveillance missions and targeting missions and even engagements.”

He considers the use of subsea cables more reliable in frustrating any mischief that might arise from China (who else?), notably in attempts to jam Starlink or any satellite communications. Such cables also provided more bandwidth for communication. “If you’ve got a data centre on Christmas, you can do a lot of that through cloud infrastructure.” Again, American power uses Australian territory as a conduit to maintain the imperium.

Google’s ties with the military tendrils of several nations continues the ongoing penetration of Big Tech companies into the industrial complex. The circle between military Research and Development pioneered by government agencies and their partnering with private contractors is complete. Indeed, digital-military-industrial complexes are now battling in steady rivalry (the two most prominent being China and the United States). “This is contributing to the blurring of state-corporation boundaries even more than what was observed during the second half of the twentieth century with the rise of transnational corporations,” write Andrea Coveri, Claudia Cozza and Dario Guarsacio in Intereconomics.  

This blurring has served to diminish company accountability and government independence, however well-dressed the issue of planning approvals is. Christmas Island residents will be left to the mercies of unimaginative officials easily seduced by the promise of investment and returns. “There is support for it,” says a convinced Steve Pereira, Christmas Island Shire President, “providing this data centre actually does put back into the community with infrastructure, employment and adding economic value to the island.” As for the military dimension? “We are a strategic asset for defence.” What a comfort for the local citizenry.

November 14, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape

Brian Berletic. https://sovereignista.com/ November 11, 2025

What was once a theoretical discussion in U.S. military journals about blockading China’s oil supply is now steadily turning into a tangible, multi-layered strategy aimed at containing Beijing and preserving American global dominance.

In 2018, the US Naval War College Review published a paper titled, “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China—Tactically Tempting But Strategically Flawed.” It was only one of many over the preceding years discussing the details of implementing a maritime blockade as part of a larger encirclement and containment strategy of China.

At first glance the paper looks like US policy thinking considered, then moved past the idea of blockading China. Instead, the paper merely listed a number of obstacles impeding such a strategy in 2018—obstacles that would need to be removed if such a strategy were to be viable in the near or intermediate future—and obstacles US policymakers have been removing ever since.

More contemporary papers published, including those among the pages of the US Naval Institute (here and here), have updated and refined not just an emerging strategy to theoretically confront and contain China, but a plan of action taking tangible shape.

Cold War Continuity of Agenda

Throughout the Cold War and ever since its conclusion, the US’ singular foreign policy objective has been to maintain American hegemony over the globe established at the end of the World Wars. A 1992 New York Times article titled “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring no Rivals Develop” made it clear the US would actively prevent the emergence of any nation or groups of nations from contesting American primacy worldwide.

In recent years this has included preventing the reemergence of Russia as well as the rise of China. It also involves surrounding both nations with arcs of chaos and/or confrontation—either through the destruction of neighboring countries through political subversion, or the capture of these nations by the US and their transformation into battering rams to be used against both nations.

Ukraine is an extreme example of this policy in action. The US is also transforming both the Philippines and the Chinese island province of Taiwan into similar proxies vis-à-vis China.

Beyond this, the US seeks to prevent the majority of nations currently outside US dominion from joining with and contributing to the multipolar world order proposed by nations like Russia and China.

This strategy of coercion, destabilization, political capture, proxy war, and outright war has been used to target both Russia and China directly, their neighbors, and a growing list of nations far beyond their near abroad.

The US is demonstrating a clear, unwavering commitment to a multi-layered strategy of containment, coercion, and confrontation designed not just to prepare for conflict, but to make that conflict both inevitable and successful for the singular goal of maintaining global American hegemony

Strengths and Weaknesses of American Primacy 

Enabling this strategy is America’s global-spanning military presence facilitated by its “alliance network.” This network of obedient client regimes both hosts US military forces and serves as an extension of US military, economic, and increasingly military-industrial power. US “allies” often pursue US geopolitical objectives at their own expense.

Again, an explicit example of this is Ukraine, which is locked in a proxy war with Russia, threatening its own self-preservation as a means of—as US policymakers described in a 2019 RAND Corporation paper—“extending Russia.”

While conflicts like that unfolding in Ukraine or the US-backed military build-up in the Philippines or on Taiwan has exposed a critical weakness of the United States—its lagging military industrial capacity vis-à-vis either Russia or China, let alone both nations—the US has demonstrated the ability to compensate through geopolitical agility the multipolar world is struggling to address.

This includes the ability of the US to mire a targeted nation in conflict in one location while moving resources across its global-spanning military-logistical networks toward pressure points in other locations, overextending the targeted nation and achieving success in at least one of the multiple pressure points targeted. The US successfully did this through its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which tied Russia up sufficiently for the US to finally succeed in the overthrow of the Syrian government, where Russian forces had previously thwarted US-sponsored proxy war and regime change.

It also includes the ability of the US to target partner or potential partner nations of Russia and China through economic, political, or even military means in ways Russia and China are unable to defend against—including through political subversion facilitated through America’s near monopoly over global information space.

These advantages the US still possesses also make potential maritime blockades very difficult for Russia and China to defend against.

Russian Energy Shipments as a Beta Test for Blockading China 

France recently announced seizing a ship accused of being part of Russia’s “ghost” or “shadow” fleet—ships refusing to heed unilateral sanctions placed by the US and its client states on Russian energy shipments.

This was just one of several first steps toward what may materialize into a wider and more aggressive interdiction or blockade of Russian energy shipments. This may also be a beta test for implementing a long-desired maritime blockade on China…………………

Setting the Stage for a Blockade of China Has Already Begun  

The 2018 US Naval War College Review paper lays out the realities of a potential blockade against China in 2018, noting the various opportunities and risks associated with such a strategy…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Since the paper was published, the US has pursued both continued preparations for a maritime blockade of China itself, as well as build up a number of regional proxies to wage war against China, as the US wages proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and, increasingly, through the rest of Europe……………………………………………………………………..

To understand Washington’s strategy toward China, one should not look to the political rhetoric of “retreat” or “homeland defense” in the Western Hemisphere, but rather to the tangible actions taking place across the Asia-Pacific and beyond—the meticulous encirclement of China’s periphery, the sustained attacks on its critical overland energy and trade links (BRI/CPEC), the calculated incapacitation of Russia as a potential energy supplier, and the establishment of local proxy forces (the Philippines, Japan, separatists on Taiwan) prepared to wage war.

Far from an abstract or “flawed” concept relegated to think-tank papers, the maritime oil blockade—or wider general blockade against China—is being incrementally prepared in real-time. By systematically removing the very obstacles noted in the 2018 Naval War College Review paper, the US is demonstrating a clear, unwavering commitment to a multi-layered strategy of containment, coercion, and confrontation designed not just to prepare for conflict, but to make that conflict both inevitable and successful for the singular goal of maintaining global American hegemony. https://sovereignista.com/2025/11/11/us-plans-for-china-blockade-continue-taking-shape/

November 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment