2008

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2007

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2006

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2005

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2003

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2002 and earlier

• December 2002
• November 2002
• October and earlier

• Australia’s pro-Israel media fights facts and ends careers
  By Peter Manning | On 10 July 2020 The day after Scott Morrison set the date for the mid-May 2019 federal election, Labor lost one of its star women performers. International lawyer Melissa Parke, the Member for Fremantle, a shrewd “get” by Kevin Rudd back in 2007, announced her resignation from politics. She had once been the Minister for International Development, the parliamentary secretary for Mental Health, Homelessness and Social Housing, chair of the Australia-UN Parliamentary Group, and the co-recipient of the Parliamentary Integrity Award from The Accountability Round Table (awarded once every three years). Before that, she served as an international lawyer with the UN for eight years in Kosovo, Gaza, New York and Lebanon. This time she was hoping to occupy Julie Bishop’s prize seat of Curtin for Labor. But it was not to be. A few weeks earlier she had given a speech about her experiences in Gaza to a new internal group in WA Labor – the WA Labor Friends of Palestine. A hail of what she later called “vitriol” descended on her in the local and Melbourne media denying her claim that, when in Gaza, an Israeli soldier made a pregnant Palestinian refugee woman drink from a bottle of bleach – an action that caused serious injury to the woman’s throat and internal organs. Her reference to the incident last year was immediately condemned in print as “a lurid claim”, “inflammatory”, “a laundry list of slanders”, “downright falsification”, a “vivid concoction” and “a medieval trope against Jews”. But the incident was a fact. The action was reported to Melissa Parke in February 2003 as an international lawyer working in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) by a British Operations Support Officer. UNRWA reported the incident to the Israeli Defence Forces and the soldier was later charged. It was also reported in the Fairfax Melbourne “Age” and “Sydney Morning Herald” on 23 June 2003. [Australia] [Israel] [Ant-Semitism card]
• Criminalising Journalism: Australia’s National Security Craze
  by BINOY KAMPMARK JULY 6, 2020There has been a lot of noise made in Australia about the need for broader protections when it comes to the fourth estate and the way it covers national security matters. In a country lacking a backbone in terms of constitutional free speech, journalists are left at the mercy of authorities when it comes to exposing egregious abuses of power. Consider, for instance, the exposure of war crimes committed by Australian forces via what has come to be known as the Afghan Files. As Dan Oakes and Sam Clark, the two ABC journalists involved in putting together the file material wrote in July 2017, “Hundreds of pages of secret defence force documents leaked to the ABC give an unprecedented insight into the clandestine operations in Australia’s elite special forces in Afghanistan, including incidents of troops killing unarmed men and children.” The material, published in seven parts, should not surprise students of war. In the brutality of the Afghan conflict, the killing of civilians became a casual, cruel matter. [Australia] [Afghanistan] [War crimes] [Censorship]
• The way Boris Johnson has eased lockdown sends all the wrong messages
  Stephen Reicher The reduction of the 2-metre rule in England tells people we’re out of the woods, and they’ll behave accordingly Stephen Reicher is a member of SPI-B, the Sage subcommittee advising on behaviour Wed 24 Jun 2020 13.25 BSTLast modified on Wed 24 Jun 2020 17.55 BST Shares 361 Comments 551 The new face of pubs as they prepare to reopen on 4 July following Boris Johnson’s announcement The new face of pubs as they prepare to reopen on 4 July following Boris Johnson’s announcement. Photograph: Adam Smyth/Greene King/PA At the last daily press conference on Covid-19, Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, pleaded with the public: “If people don’t take mitigation seriously, if people hear a distorted version of what’s been said – that says ‘this is all fine now, it’s gone away’ – and start behaving in ways that they normally would have before this virus happened, yes we will get an uptick for sure. So it is absolutely critical that people stick to the guidance that has been given.” Papers indicate Robert Jenrick rushed through planning decision so Tory donor could reduce costs by £50m – as it happened Read more It was a candid admission that behavioural issues are central to what happens next, and that the good sense of the population is all that stands between us and disaster. After all, the virus hasn’t gone away, infection levels are roughly where they were shortly before lockdown, and if we return to business as usual we will rapidly waste all the sacrifices of the last three months. [UK] [Coronavirus]
• Support for Brexit is collapsing as poll finds big majority of British people want to be in the EU
  Adam Bienkov Jun 26, 2020 A newly released survey found just 35% of British people supporting Brexit, with 57% wanting to rejoin the European Union. The nearly 60% of people who told the European Social Survey that they wanted Britain to be in the EU was far greater than the 48% who backed Remain in 2016. Support for EU membership has risen across Europe, the survey said. There has been a surge in support for European Union membership among the British public since the Brexit referendum, a major new survey found. The European Social Survey, conducted every two years, found that support for the EU had risen across the continent and in Britain. The survey, completed in 2019 and released this week, found that 57% of Brits said they would vote to be inside the EU, compared with 50% who said the same in the previous survey, released in 2018. By contrast, just 35% said they would vote to be outside the EU, compared with the 52% of people who voted to leave in 2016. Eight per cent of Brits said they would not vote in such a referendum. The findings have been released four years after Britain voted to leave, as the country faces an increasingly gloomy economic outlook amid the coronavirus pandemic. [Brexit] [Public opinion]

• Step Up Our Struggle to Free Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia Chan Han Choi
  8 June 2020: Left-wing political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi continues to languish in prison. He has been jailed since December 2017 on charges of trying to help the people of North Korea to evade UN economic sanctions. Even if the claims against him turn out to be true, he is no criminal from the working class standpoint. Quite the opposite! It would simply prove that he is great humanitarian aiding people who are being ground down by the most severe sanctions ever imposed on any country. [Australia] [Sanctions] [Political prisoners]
• New UK Laws Could Criminalize Journalism
  May 30, 2020 The British government is pursuing “espionage legislation” that could criminalise the release of public information as part of an “epidemic of secrecy,” reports Richard Norton-Taylor. By Richard Norton-Taylor Declassified UK British journalists and their sources are facing an unprecedented assault on freedom of speech, including the prospect of criminal prosecution. Threats aimed at whistleblowers and journalists were evident before the coronavirus crisis struck, but went largely unnoticed. The government’s Queen’s Speech in December included plans for new “espionage legislation”. It stressed the need to combat “hostile state activity” and make the UK “a harder environment for adversaries to operate in” – an indirect reference to the poisoning in Salisbury of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. But it also insisted that the Official Secrets Act, drawn up in 1989, must be “updated” and confirmed that the Law Commission, the body that reviews the law in England and Wales, has been commissioned by the government to do this. Yet proposals drawn up by the Law Commission to review the Official Secrets Act pose major dangers. Whistleblowers and journalists could be convicted for revealing information about defence, international relations or law enforcement, even if it was unlikely to cause harm. They would make it easier to secure convictions by weakening the existing tests for proving an offence. Neither would someone revealing danger to the public, abuse of power or serious misconduct be able to argue that they acted in the public interest. In addition, maximum prison sentences on conviction, currently two years under the Official Secrets Act, would be increased. Moreover, it would not be a defence to show that the information had already lawfully been made public – unless the information had also been “widely disseminated”. How would that be determined? Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, has warned that the Law Commission’s proposals could criminalise the release of a vast amount of additional information. [UK] [Censorship] [Whistleblower]

• The illusion of a middle power moment
  12 May 2020 Author: Andrew Carr, ANU To be a middle power requires a modest disbelief in power. These states take their medium-sized resources and direct them towards big objectives. This may be reactive, searching for self-preservation in the face of a hostile larger power. It might also be proactive, trying to shape institutions and norms to build a more hospitable environment. [Australia] [Middle power]
• The reasons Johnson should sack Cummings are the reasons he won’t
  by Alastair Campbell So Matt Hancock was “speechless” (though possessed of sufficient faculties to say so) when scientific adviser Neil Ferguson was exposed as having broken the government lockdown guidelines he had helped devise. The Health Secretary went further, and suggested the police should get involved. Tory MPs flocked to social media to condemn Ferguson’s hypocrisy, and to warn of the life-endangering damage his “selfish, callous, stupid” breach would do to the message that everyone “should stay home, protect the NHS, save lives.” Tory-supporting newspapers found in the destruction of Ferguson yet another excuse not to lead their papers on death rates that had the UK racing past Spain and Italy in the Covid mortality league tables. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted simply a link of the Telegraph scoop on Ferguson with the words: “That’s a hell of a story.” Well, yes it was. But if it is a “hell of a story” when it concerns a scientist not directly on the government payroll, it is a lot more of a hell of a story when it involves someone widely seen, not least by Boris Johnson, as the Prime Minister’s closest adviser. Yet, as the Mirror and the Guardian broke the story last night that Dominic Cummings had travelled with his family and his coronavirus to stay at his parents’ home in Durham, Hancock was silent. [Boris Johnson] [Dominic Cummings] [Coronavirus]
• Johnson risks party wrath to back aide who crossed UK during lockdown
  Costas Pitas, Elizabeth Piper LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson backed his senior adviser Dominic Cummings on Sunday, despite calls from within his own Conservative Party for the aide to resign for driving 250 miles during the coronavirus lockdown. Cummings, architect of the 2016 campaign to leave the EU, came under pressure when newspapers reported he had travelled from London to northern England in March when his wife was ill with COVID-19 symptoms during a nationwide lockdown. With Johnson’s words that he had acted with integrity, Cummings was safe, at least for now. But the row in the governing Conservatives looks set to rumble on. “I’ve had extensive face-to-face conversations with Dominic Cummings,” Johnson told a news conference, saying his aide had followed the “instincts of every father” when he travelled with his wife for help with childcare while isolating. “I believe that in every respect he has acted responsibly and legally and with integrity.” Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, described Johnson’s decision to take no action against Cummings as “an insult to the sacrifices made by the British people”. [Boris Johnson] [Dominic Cummings] [Coronavirus]
• China bans beef from Australian slaughterhouses in feared tit-for-tat move
  China has blacklisted four red-meat-processing plants in Australia, suspending beef imports from them. The move is being widely seen as retaliation amid a bilateral dispute over the COVID-19 pandemic. A general view of Cedar Meats abattoir in Brooklyn on May 05, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia Beijing has suspended imports of beef from four major slaughterhouses in Australia, amid fears that it is taking revenge after Australia called for an independent investigation into the COVID-19 outbreak, which originated in China. Three of the facilities are in the northeastern state of Queensland and one in the southeastern state of New South Wales. According to one analyst interviewed by national broadcaster ABC, the three plants combined produce some 35% of beef exports to China, Australia's largest trading partner. Beef exports to China bring Australia some $1.7 billion Australian dollars ($1.1 billion; €1 billion) each year. Suggested boycott China's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday denied any link with the COVID-19-related dispute, saying that it had discovered violations in health certificate regulations at the plant. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Allegiance] [Response][Consequences]
• London "pub-on-wheels" pulls pints on people's doorsteps
  Natalie Thomas LONDON (Reuters) - Britain’s pubs may be shut, but one east London brewer has found a novel way to keep the beer flowing - by packing his kegs into a van and pulling pints on people’s doorsteps. Director of Forest Road Brewing Co Peter Brown pours a customer a pint of beer from the Forest Road Brewing Co pub on wheels vehicle during his delivery round in Hackney, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread continues in London, Britain, May 12, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay Driving a white van with the slogan “tactical beer response unit” on the side, Peter Brown, the director of Forest Road Brewing Co., spends his day fulfilling delivery orders. But rather than delivering boxes of cans or bottles, Brown fills pint glasses for his customers out of taps on the side of the van. [Coronavirus] [Beer]
• ‘Complacent’ UK draws global criticism for Covid-19 response
  Opinion writers from Italy to Australia attack ‘stupidity’ and label Boris Johnson incompetent Jon Henley and Guardian correspondents @jonhenley Wed 6 May 2020 15.51 BST Last modified on Wed 6 May 2020 20.45 BST Boris Johnson is ‘not Trump, though there is something similar in their approaches’, one Italian columnist wrote. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/10 Downing Street/Crown Copyright/PA From Italy to Australia, critics have accused a “complacent” British government of “massively underestimating” the gravity of the coronavirus crisis after the UK reported the highest death toll in Europe. While Rai Uno, the Italian state broadcaster’s flagship channel, gave prominent play to the news that Britain had recorded “more than 32,000 deaths, the highest total in Europe exceeding even Italy”, the Corriere della Serra daily went a good way further. The situation in the UK was “like a nightmare from which you cannot awake, but in which you landed because of your own fault or stupidity”, the influential liberal-conservative paper said, adding that Britain seemed “a prisoner of itself”. The country that was “the most reluctant in Europe to impose a lockdown has become the most cautious to start reopening”, with public opinion frightened of the consequences and Boris Johnson eager to avoid breaking Italy’s “sad record”. [UK] [Coronavirus] [Boris Johnson]
• Covid-19, China and the WHO: Quo Vadis Australia?
  By Mack Williams | On 1 May 2020 A long time American UN observer in the US publication Foreign Policy ( “ WHO Becomes Battleground as Trump Chooses Pandemic Confrontation over Cooperation” 29 April 2020) has claimed that “fighting the coronavirus has become secondary as the US seeks to hamstring the WHO, turning it into a 2020 election issue along with Chinese trade”. It revealed more information about President Trump’s campaign against the attacks on the WHO and China and also about the role Prime Minister Morrison has been playing than so far reported in the Australian media. For some months, according to this report, the US has been seeking to enlist support for the restoration of Taiwan as an observer at the WHO in the certain knowledge that this would present fresh confrontation with China. In so doing, it claims that the US has placed a higher priority on fuelling criticism of China than seeking ways China and the US could collaborate in preventing the spread of Covid19. While there is support from foreign governments for the restoration of Taiwan’s observer status some reportedly fear Chinese reprisals and suspect it is part of a broader Trump plan to try to keep the focus on the failings of China and the WHO to distract attention from his own shortcomings in managing Covid19. And all of this in the context of the upcoming US elections. It reports that US diplomats in Geneva, New York and around the world have “invested enormous political capital” to bolster this campaign but it is struggling to gain international support. It also reported that on 29 April the US distributed to some countries a proposal to: “ immediately initiate an independent expert evaluation, in consultation with Member States, to review lessons learned from WHO-coordinated international health response to Covid19…(and address) the adequacy of WHO and Member State actions…. since the outbreak began: a full assessment of the timeliness, accuracy, and information sharing aimed at continuing the outbreak of the source”. The US has little to show for its efforts – with stiff opposition from allies as well as rivals to lay the blame on Beijing or the WHO for the disease’s spread. Despite protestations to the contrary, it has been no coincidence that in this period the Morrison government “launched” what it claimed as its own initiative for an independent review of the origins of Covid19 – clearly aimed at both China and the WHO. John McCarthy JOHN McCARTHY. COVID-19 , Trump, Xi and Canberra(AFR 22.4.2020)pointed out in his comprehensive commentary in Pearls and Irritations the “initiative” was seriously deficient in both process and substance. It was greeted with no enthusiasm (and even disdain) by the French, German, the EU and British. Little wonder as they all were heavily involved within the WHO in preparations for a major multilateral initiative on establishing rules urgently needed ( for Australia too) for the global development on Covid19 vaccines. [Coronavirus] [WHO] [Diversion] [China confrontation] [Allegiance] [Australia]
• Flights From The USA Should Have Been Shut Down Earlier
  By Robin Boyle | On 1 May 2020 Australia should have restricted arrivals from the USA on the 11 March, in the same way as it did for Italy. Failure to do so has caused extra immeasurable cost and trauma to the Australian economy and people. In fact, basic logic tells us that the decision about the USA could have been made as early as the 7 March. Was the decision to hold off for another few weeks a result of obliviousness to the data or a conscious diplomatic decision not to upset our major ally? The Ruby Princess might not be the principal mistake The failure to place a strict embargo on flights from the USA seems to more than match the Ruby Princess debacle. While on 11 March Italy joined China, Iran and South Korea as being subject to severe Australian restrictions on arrivals, such a restriction was never imposed on foreign nationals from the USA. It was not until 28 March that all arrivals were forced into mandatory hotel quarantine. It is estimated from government sources that the number of infections (direct and indirect) attributable to US arrivals could be somewhere between 1,600 and 2,300 of our total of approximately 6,700. [Australia] [Coronavirus] [Allegiance]
• U.K. Virus Tests Surpass Target, but Britain’s Deaths May Overtake Italy’s
  There was good news and bad news for Britons on Friday in the statistical barometers of the pandemic, which experts say have become an understandable but misplaced fixation in the country. By Mark Landler and Stephen Castle May 1, 2020 LONDON — For Britons looking to judge their government’s desperate response to the coronavirus pandemic, the verdict has increasingly come down to two numbers: 100,000, the number of tests that officials promised to conduct every day by the end of April; and 27,510, the latest death toll. On Friday, there was good news and bad news in the numbers: The government announced it had exceeded its testing target, carrying out 122,347 tests on the last day of the month. But with 739 more people dying from the virus that same day, Britain was also poised to soon overtake Italy in a few days as the hardest hit country in Europe. The fixation on numbers is understandable but misplaced, experts said. Just because Britain can carry out more than 100,000 tests a day does not mean it has built an effective testing and contact tracing program, which experts say is needed to avert another spike in infections if the government eases the lockdown. And while there would be grim symbolism for Britain in passing Italy in the total deaths, drawing direct comparisons between any two countries is extremely difficult, given differences in population, demographics, population density, and how the authorities collect the statistics. [Coronavirus] [UK] [Testing] [Italy]

• COVID-19 , Trump, Xi and Canberra
  John McCarthy (AFR 22.4.2020) Posted on 22 April 2020 by Callum Foote Australia’s decision to spearhead an international enquiry into the origins of the Covid19 pandemic –read China’s lack of transparency and the WHO’s mistakes –is a nice hoary bellow from our domestic political ramparts, but it is a policy mistake. The Opposition’s support for the decision does not bathe the policy in divine light. It merely doubles the weight of the mistake. Whichever country had decided to initiate such a policy, it would have been a bad idea. True, the initial Chinese response to the virus, both in terms of policy blunders and deliberate obfuscation was reprehensible. The position of the WHO was different. It had to make calculations–as does any international organization –about working with big nation-states in the interests of getting results and making just criticisms of those states with the prospect of having future cooperation curtailed. The WHO continues to do much good on the ground. But as a policy body, a case can be made that it failed to show the requisite leadership in the early days of COVID-19. [Australia] [Allegiance] [Coronavirus] [Diversion]
• COVID-19 challenges Downing Street’s post-Brexit Asia ambitions
  22 April 2020 Author: Oliver Turner, University of Edinburgh What implications does the COVID-19 pandemic signal for the United Kingdom’s role and presence in Asia? The Conservative UK government’s post-Brexit vision for a ‘Global Britain’ identifies the Indo-Pacific as one of three ‘centres of the global economy and political influence’ crucial to national prosperity and security. But the Global Britain vision is criticised for lacking substance and for being grounded in the problematic logic of — and nostalgia for — the British Empire.
  China’s government — which is transitioning from international rule-taker to rule-maker — attracted criticism for hindering early efforts to contain COVID-19, including censoring medical professionals. COVID-19 is harming Beijing’s reputation as a responsible global leader. Even efforts to support Europe during the crisis have backfired. This could make attempts by the United Kingdom to pursue post-Brexit trade deals with China more problematic and controversial than before, internationally and domestically. This is especially true if such deals come with increased involvement in areas of UK infrastructure or the economy which recently proved contentious [UK] [Asia] [Imperial nostalgia] [Coronavirus] [China confrontation]
• The battle at the heart of British science over coronavirus (FT 15.4.20)
  Posted on 17 April 2020 by Callum Foote When it came to foot-and-mouth and Sars, we used to be the ones telling China how to respond, but now the boot is on the other foot. The Asians are in the lead and they’ve responded well. We’ve done poorly. In the spring of 2001, Britain was wracked by its first large scale epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease since the late 1960s. The country’s livestock farmers were still embroiled in the lockdown that accompanied Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), a neurological disease of cattle, that would slash beef consumption and exports for a decade. Now they faced the risk of further curbs on animal sales, and the possible mass culling of their herds. Much depended on whether the government got on top of the outbreak fast. Concerned at blithe official statements that the disease was under control, with the implication that aggressive countermeasures would not be needed, one official suggested turning to a novel source to investigate the course of the infection. Sir John Krebs, then chairman of the British Food Standards Agency, encouraged the government’s new chief scientific adviser, David King, to recruit epidemiologists at three universities — Imperial College London, Cambridge and Edinburgh — to model the evolution of the disease. It wasn’t the first time that computer models had been built to study epidemics. The innovation was to try to do it in real time, in order to guide the response. [UK] [Coronavirus] [Epidemic] [Science]
• JOHN PILGER: Freedom From Fear
  April 9, 2020 T.J. Coles interviews the world-renowned journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, about the coronavirus crisis in the context of propaganda, imperialism, and human rights. Pilger On Coronavirus Propaganda, Imperialism, and Human Rights By John Pilger and T.J. Coles Green Left People are being told to self-isolate because of coronavirus, but Julian Assange has been isolated by successive British governments for years. Can you tell us what’s going on with his case and how he was doing, last time you saw him? On 25th March, a London court refused Julian Assange bail even though he was convicted of nothing and charged with nothing in Britain. The Trump administration wants to extradite him on a concocted indictment of “espionage” — so ludicrous in law it should have been thrown out on the first day of the extradition hearing in February. It wasn’t thrown out because the magistrate, Vanessa Baraitser (she is described as a judge but is actually a magistrate) has made it clear she is acting on behalf of the British and US governments. Her bias has shocked those of us who have sat in courtrooms all over the world.
  Can you talk about the propaganda of corona as a ‘Chinese virus’? Let’s take one example. When the coronavirus emerged in China and Australian tourists of mainly Chinese descent flew home, they were quarantined in a remote mining camp and an offshore detention centre. When a cruise ship, the Ruby Princess, docked in Sydney with mostly white Australians and infested with the virus, the passengers were allowed to disembark without so much as a temperature check, let alone quarantine. As a result, 662 people linked to the ship have fallen ill and at least 11 have died. The difference here is race and racist propaganda. A virulent anti-China campaign has consumed the Australian media in a country whose biggest trading partner is China and the universities depend largely on Chinese students. At the same time, no country is as integrated with the U.S. as Australia: its military and “national security” agencies and bases, its politics and media. [Assange] [Coronavirus] [NHS] [Australia] [Yellow peril] [Allegiance]
• ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Assange Not Infected But Says Many in Belmarsh Are
  April 10, 2020 In a phone conversation with Vaughan Smith, Julian Assange, apparently uninfected, says the virus is “ripping through” Belmarsh prison and that he spends 30 minutes a day in a crowded prison yard. Consortium News Julian Assange has told a friend in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that he is living in a prison in which the coronavirus is “ripping through” the population. He told photojournalist Vaughan Smith, founder of London’s Frontline Club, that he is isolated 23 1/2 hours a day and spends 30 minutes in a prison yard packed with other inmates. More than 150 Belmarsh guards are in self-isolation and the prison is barely functioning, Smith said. [Assange] [Coronavirus] [Prisoners]
• The Chaotic Government Response to COVID-19 Resembles the Failures of 1914
  April 7, 2020 by Patrick Cockburn Government leaders everywhere are calling for their people to wage war against the coronavirus outbreak, recalling past victories in an effort to boost public morale. In Britain, politicians cite the Second World War as a suitable example of determined and successful resistance to a terrifying enemy. Yet the faltering response of the British authorities to the Covid-19 pandemic so far is much closer to the failures of 1914 than anything that happened in 1940. The parallels are striking between the crisis today and the one that exploded on the world just over a hundred years ago. Then as now there was poor leadership – inadequately prepared and hampered by an initially mistaken strategy – sending frontline forces over the top to suffer massive losses. The difference is that then the casualties were in the British army and today they are in the NHS. “Lions led by donkeys,” was the phrase used to condemn the waste of lives by incompetent First World War generals and their political masters. The same words could be used again today: once the shortages were of machine guns and artillery shells while now they are of ventilators, surgical masks and testing kits. The common feature is that in both cases the shortage will kill or disable a proportion of those who do not receive essential equipment. [Coronavirus] [UK] [Incompetence]

• Response to ‘Red Flag: Waking Up to China’s Challenge’ by Peter Hartcher
  Wanning Sun Posted on 25 March 2020 Following the logic of his own argument, can we assume that Hartcher now wants to recant the position he has advanced in the Quarterly Essay? On my first reading of Hartcher’s ‘Red flag’, the following passage leapt out at me: ‘In other words, we understand that you have ties of sentiment and bonds of kinship to other countries, and we’re unconcerned. We know it takes time to put down roots in new social soil. This is part of democratic pluralism and it’s an enrichment of a society. But a nation cannot tolerate acts to advance a foreign political movement with hostile intentions’. (pp. 63-4) Further down in the essay, Hartcher argues that the Australian government should consider ‘changing the composition [of Australia’s immigration profile] in favour of Chinese immigrants from places other than mainland China. Screening must still apply, of course, but prima facie ethnic Chinese immigrants from Taiwan or Hong Kong are more likely to value Australian liberties. … [Therefore,] preference should not only be given to immigrants with the most suitable work skills but also to those with the most compatible values. (p. 83) Hartcher also makes it clear that he is making this recommendation in order to ‘improve the balance of risks’ (p. 83). [Australia] [Yellow Peril] [Diaspora]
• Australia ups the ante to counter China
  Tindal airbase upgrade and purchase of long-range anti-ship missiles signals greater leadership role in the region by Dave Makichuk March 14, 2020 A US$1.1 billion upgrade to the Royal Australian Air Force base at Tindal, will lengthen the runway so that US B-52 strategic bombers can gain access. Credit Reddit. Message to Beijing, loud and clear. The friendly folks Down Under are stepping up their military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, and make no mistake, the crosshairs are entirely pointed at the growing power of China, says a special report from Prof. Paul Dibb at Real Clear Defense. The first action is the announcement by Prime Minister Scott Morrison of a US$1.1 billion upgrade to the Royal Australian Air Force base at Tindal, to lengthen the runway so that US B-52 strategic bombers as well as RAAF KC-30 air-to-air refuelling aircraft can operate from there, writes Dibb, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University. It goes without saying, it would also benefit Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider long-range strategic stealth bomber, which could enter service in 2025. The second is the announcement by the US State Department that Australia has been cleared, at a cost of about US$1.4 billion, to purchase 200 AGM-158C long-range ship-killing missiles (LRASM), which can be fired from F/A-18 Super Hornets and F-35s, the report said. Clearly, the coincidence of these two developments at the same time should not be underestimated by Chinese military analysts. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Allegiance]
• I’m an epidemiologist. When I heard about Britain’s ‘herd immunity’ coronavirus plan, I thought it was satire
  William Hanage Vulnerable people should not be exposed to Covid-19 right now in the service of a hypothetical future Sun 15 Mar 2020 12.33 GMT Last modified on Mon 16 Mar 2020 09.47 GMT Shares 39,444 Patients in a temporary overflow building at Brescia hospital, Italy. ‘In Italy, the choices of whom to save and whom to allow to die are real.’ Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images Your house is on fire, and the people whom you have trusted with your care are not trying to put it out. Even though they knew it was coming, and could see what happened to the neighbours as they were overwhelmed with terrifying speed, the UK government has inexplicably chosen to encourage the flames, in the misguided notion that somehow they will be able to control them. When I first heard about this, I could not believe it. I research and teach the evolution and epidemiology of infectious disease at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health. My colleagues here in the US, even as they are reeling from the stumbling response of the Donald Trump administration to the crisis, assumed that reports of the UK policy were satire – an example of the wry humour for which the country is famed. But they are all too real. Britain goes it alone over coronavirus. We can only hope the gamble pays off Let me take the arguments on their merits. The stated aim has been to achieve “herd immunity” in order to manage the outbreak and prevent a catastrophic “second wave” next winter – even if Matt Hancock has tried to put that particular genie back in the bottle this weekend. A large proportion of the population is at lower risk of developing severe disease: roughly speaking anyone up to the age of 40. So the reasoning goes that even though in a perfect world we’d not want anyone to take the risk of infection, generating immunity in younger people is a way of protecting the population as a whole. [Coronavirus] [UK] [Herd immunity]
• Ex-NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell quits for India
  Alex Mitchell Posted on 28 February 2020 When Barry O’Farrell became NSW Liberal Party leader in 2017 his mission was to turn the Liberals into “the natural party of government”. This dream status had been achieved by Labor under Premier Neville Wran (1976-1986) and Barry O’Farrell desperately wanted the Liberals to claim the same honour. So why is he quitting now? Prime Minister Scott Morrison left the announcement to late in the daywhen Canberra’s media was preoccupied with the floods and hail storms that followed the weeks of catastrophic bushfires and choking smoke. The single page press release, largely ignored by the media, stated that Mr Barry O’Farrell had been appointed as Australia’s High Commissioner to India. In the league table of diplomatic postings, New Delhi isn’t as impressive as Washington, London or Beijing. But with more than one billion people and central to the tug-of-war between the US and China, Mr O’Farrell’s appointment to India is overtly political and highly significant diplomatically and militarily.
  Scott Morrison has previously adopted a policy of trading with “good” China but ignoring “bad” China and its human rights violations. Mr O’Farrell’s appointment is a clear indication that the Federal Coalition has decided to toe Washington’s line by dumping China as a trading partner and replacing it with coal-fired India. In the coming days and weeks, Scott Morrison can be expected to wedge Labor’s Anthony Albanese by committing the Coalition to the Adani project in central Queensland and backing coal exports to India. The diplomatic snub to Beijing could not be more pointed. Australia has downgraded its diplomatic posting to China and conflated its diplomatic presence in India. To Beijing’s old guard this represents a “loss of face” which will not go unanswered.[Australia] [India] [China confrontation] [Allegiance]

• Burberry Disinvited Korean Celebrities from London Fashion Week
  By Han Kyeong-jin February 19, 2020 10:55 Burberry canceled invitations to Asian celebrities for London Fashion Week just five days ahead of the event as fears of coronavirus infection spread. "Due to safety concerns, headquarters canceled business trips by Korean staff and invitations to actors Gong Hyo-jin and Yoo Ah-in as well," a Korean Burberry staffer here said. The rude snub was a desperate measure since the purveyor of beige check clothes and accessories makes much of its money from label-obsessed Asians. This year's Burberry shows in London started last week and lasted until Tuesday. Instead, Burberry invited other Asian trendsetters who live in Europe. The coronavirus scare has also prompted other luxury brands to cancel fashion shows. Chanel postponed a show scheduled in Beijing in May, while Prada put off a show in Japan in May as well. Chinese fashion houses Angela Chen, Ricostru and Hui also canceled fashion shows that had been planned for Milan Fashion Week from Tuesday until next week. [Coronavirus] [Collateral] [Racism]
• Hawija: Iraqi bomb victims demand Dutch compensation
  In 2015 at least 70 people were killed in an air raid on the town of Hawija. The bomb was dropped by a Dutch plane. The victims are now suing the Dutch government for compensation. Could this set a precedent? A man pointing towards a building "We hate the Netherlands for what happened," says Fatima Dawoud. Thirty-five members of her family were affected by the bomb that hit the city of Hawija, south-west of Kirkuk, in July 2015. Dutch media have established that a Dutch plane dropped the bomb as part of the operation of the international coalition against the Islamic terror group "Islamic State" (IS). All of the 20 or so men and women who have gathered in a cold room in Hawija's partly reconstructed town hall are victims of the air raid on an IS bomb factory. They survived the inferno that destroyed a large part of their town, but lost family members, homes and incomes. That's why they're demanding compensation from the Dutch government. [Netherlands] [Imperialism] [Iraq] [Civilians]
• Pilger, Burchett and Assange: Three Extraordinary Australian Journalists That Spoke Truth to Power
  Australia, writes Rick Sterling, should be proud of its three native sons that were willing to speak truth to power no matter the consequences. by Rick Sterling February 07th, 2020 By Rick Sterling Australia has produced extraordinary journalists across three generations: Wilfred Burchett (deceased in 1983), John Pilger (80 years old but still active) and Julian Assange (48 years old, currently in London’s Belmarsh prison). Each of these journalists made unique contributions to our understanding of the world. Although Australia is part of the western world, each of these journalists exposed and criticized Western foreign policy. [Burchett] [Pilger] [Assange] [Australia]
• Global coronavirus scare sparks racist sentiment toward people of Asian descent
  Posted on : Jan.31,2020 18:06 KST Modified on : Jan.31,2020 18:06 KST People in France report cases of racial slurs and insults in public places Images of French of Asian descent launch a hashtag campaign called #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I’m not a virus) on social media in response to racism against Asians amid the current coronavirus outbreak. (Twitter) As more cases of the novel coronavirus turn up not only in Asia but also in Europe and North America, including France, Germany, the US, and Canada, xenophobia aimed at Asians is popping up around the world. The fact that the virus originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in Hubei Province, has aggravated aversion for Chinese, and people from other Asian countries are suffering as well. A post titled “I got called a [derogatory word for a woman] on the street today” went up on a South Korean online message board on the morning of Jan. 30. “An older man called me a ‘dirty Chinese [expletive].’ A guy who looked like a high schooler got in my face and told me to ‘get lost.’ I really lost it for a moment when a homeless person walking down the street even called me a [derogatory word for a woman],” wrote a woman who’s staying in France. “Even when I explain I’m Korean, people tell me that all Asians should leave. I’d been afraid this might happen, but experiencing it personally has shown me how hard it is to bear such hatred. It makes me afraid to go to crowded places.” That’s not the only example of Asians facing hatred since the outbreak of the coronavirus. “I was walking down the street wearing a mask when some guy shouted ‘virus’ and pretended to sneeze,” a South Korean studying in Canada posted on a different online message board. On France’s BFM TV, a French person of Asian descent said, “When I was coming out of a sports stadium in downtown Paris, a boy made fun of me by shouting, ‘Here comes the coronavirus.’” A local newspaper in France was accused of racism against Asians after recently printing the expressions “alerte jaune” (yellow alert) and “le péril jaune” (yellow peril) on its front page, referring to the coronavirus. Reuters reported that petitioners asked a school board in Toronto, Canada, on Jan. 28 to keep students whose family had been to China away from schools. Asians who are living in or visiting foreign countries are calling for such hatred to be stopped. “This hatred affects not only the Chinese community but also all ethnic Asians living in France. Such irrational discrimination is particularly bad on mass transit. Please stop,” an association of Chinese young people in France said in a statement released on Thursday. French of Asian descent have also launched a hashtag campaign called #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus (I’m not a virus) in which they share their experiences with discrimination on social media. By Bae Ji-hyun, staff reporter [Coronavirus] [Racism] [Collateral]
• The Australian media and the alleged Douma chemical weapons attack.
  Paul Malone Posted on 30 January 2020 The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inspector who led the team investigating the alleged Douma chemical weapons attack in Syria in April 2018 has gone public saying that his investigation team “had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred.” The supposed attack prompted the United States, British and French governments to mount airstrikes on Syria on 14 April 2018. To justify the airstrikes, US government representatives claimed to have “excellent intelligence” that sarin and chlorine gas had been used by the Syrians.
  ustralian media has largely ignored the leaks and mounting evidence that call into question the chemical weapons attack. But a number of UK newspapers have covered the story and Russian TV RT has reported the Security Council hearing. [UNUS] [OPCW] [Douma] [Australia]
• Opinion: Little Britain drifts into insignificance
  And so it's official. The UK can have its cake crumbs and eat them. The divorce proceedings with the EU have been tortuous, but they're likely to pale in comparison with what lies ahead for the UK, writes Rob Mudge. Just over three and a half years ago, on the morning of June 23, 2016, I forced myself to forego my daily news junkie ritual of checking my constant news feed drip and traveled into work blissfully unaware at that stage of what had happened. I had prepared two opinion pieces for the day. One for the highly unlikely event that the UK had voted to leave the EU, the other that we would — naturally — be remaining in the bloc. I'm no friend of using these terms lightly, but I really was in a state of shock when I walked into the newsroom. My German colleagues told me later that I looked as if I'd seen a ghost. Over the past couple of years the Brexit apparition has taken on a corporeal form. Even then I — naively as it turns out — clung to the hope that the country would come to its senses and reverse the decision. While friends and colleagues around me were applying for German citizenship, I put it off more or less until the last moment. While I fully accept the outcome of a democratic vote, I still refuse to acknowledge the process that got us here: a plot based on misconceptions, lies and disinformation. Many of those who had the wool pulled over their eyes by the solipsistic and self-serving leaders, from Brexit architect David Cameron to current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are proponents of a UK stuck in the past. The notion that a nation that once boasted an empire of colonies that it oppressed needed to rid itself of the EU's shackles is ludicrous. Those rules and regulations so despised by government figures both past and present were shaped and formed in some form or another by the UK. And if it didn't like them, it opted out. No other EU member state has enjoyed so many exemptions and rebates. [Brexit]

• Iran warns Europeans of 'consequences' in nuclear dispute
  Move to launch dispute mechanism may spell the end of historic 2015 nuclear deal and reimposition of more sanctions. 6 hours ago Iran has long accused the Europeans of reneging on promises to protect its economy from US sanctions [Atta Kenare/AFP] Iran has long accused the Europeans of reneging on promises to protect its economy from US sanctions [Atta Kenare/AFP] more on Iran Iran warned the United Kingdom, France and Germany about "the consequences" of their decision to launch a dispute mechanism against it under the 2015 nuclear deal. The European nations announced on Tuesday they triggered the dispute mechanism provided for in the landmark nuclear agreement in order to force Iran to honour its commitments under the accord. Triggering the mechanism was a "strategic mistake", Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. "The usage of the dispute mechanism is legally baseless and a strategic mistake from a political standpoint," Zarif was quoted by the semi-official Fars News Agency as saying. Analysts say the move may mean the end of the nuclear accord and the reimposition of more sanctions on Tehran. "Of course, if the Europeans ... seek to abuse [this process] they must also be prepared to accept the consequences," Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement. Tehran suggested it had little faith in the declaration by the Europeans that they were determined "to work with all participants to preserve" the historic deal. "On the contrary, it once again signals to everyone - in particular to the three European state parties to the agreement - that it will respond seriously and firmly to any disloyalty, ill will, or unconstructive action," the statement added. [Iran confrontation] [Nuclear deal] [Renege] [Victim] [EU] [Subservience]
• Australian student says North Korea forced him to admit spying
  Posted : 2020-01-15 16:15 Updated : 2020-01-15 16:17 An Australian student arrested for spying and expelled from North Korea last year said he was forced to write a false confession while held incommunicado. Alek Sigley was studying modern Korean literature at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang when he went missing in June, sparking international alarm. Canberra has no diplomatic representation in Pyongyang and turned to Sweden, the protecting power for its citizens. Stockholm sent an envoy and Sigley was released after nine days in detention ? a much shorter period than some foreigners arrested in the authoritarian North. Sigley had written articles for a number of publications while in Pyongyang and North Korean authorities accused him of espionage, saying they released him on grounds of "humanitarian forbearance". Writing in South Korean academic journal Monthly North Korea, Sigley said he was forced to admit guilt during an "unpleasant" nine-day interrogation "completely cut off from the outside world". "From my point of view, I was not guilty but was falsely accused by the authorities," he said. "They continuously made me write 'apologies' as if they wanted to teach me a lesson." He did not accuse authorities of physically mistreating him. [Alek Sigley]
• The cost of Brexit – £200 bn in ‘collateral damage’ and counting
  13th January 2020 Brexit has cost the UK £130bn in 'collateral damage' since 2016 Brexit has now cost the UK £130bn in what is termed as “collateral damage” since the referendum, a new study suggests. And this number is set to rise another £70bn by the end of 2020. Bloomberg Economics said Britain’s economy had been “lacklustre” over the three-and-a-half years since a majority of voters backed Leave in the EU referendum in 2016. Its analysis shows British companies performed poorly, even accounting for the weaker global economy by international standards It predicted Brexit would continue to hold back national output, forecasting a further £70bn hit in lost opportunities for growth this year. “Even the boost BE expects from prime minister Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory in December won’t stop a further £70bn being added this year,” wrote its chief UK economist and former Treasury official Dan Hanson. [Brexit] [Cost]
• The Trumpet shall sound, And we shall be razed!
  Cavan Hogue Posted on 9 January 2020 Australia’s response to US Trumpeting in Iraq has been muted and said nothing about whether we agree in principle that it is acceptable to assassinate foreign nationals in other countries. Russia in Britain? US policy designed to protect American live and assets has had the opposite effect including on Australia. Trump’s bellicose rhetoric is disturbingly like that of Teddy Roosevelt and George W Bush both of which led to aggression. Will Australia be dragged into yet another fine mess? This raises questions not just about what interest we have in the Middle East and how we protect them but also leads to heretical thoughts about the value of the American Alliance. We have been found wanting on climate change. Will we also be found wanting on geopolitical change? Fine articles from Bob Bowker and Mike Scrafton in Pearls and Irritations have examined the details of the current Iran/US imbroglio which understandably has tended to be burnt out in the media by the bushfire crisis. I want to look at some of the more general implications. What does this tell us about American policy and about Australian policy? It is hardly news that Trump is unpredictable and has been getting increasingly belligerent. To a large extent he sees the world through American domestic concerns no doubt including his desire to be reelected. He seems also to be strongly influenced by hawks like Pompeo, Pence and John Bolton. Patriotism of a jingoistic kind is nothing new in the USA. Theodore Roosevelt and the Hearst press spring to mind as an earlier incarnation of emotion driving aggression. The failure of US decision makers to clearly analyse the implications of their actions is also nothing new as the Coalition of the Willing illustrated. [Australia] [Assassination]
• Fires. Are they Australia’s Potemkin Moment?
  Evan Jones Posted on 4 January 2020 The French economist and social critic Frédéric Lordon recently penned an article on his blog at Le Monde Diplomatique titled “The Potemkin Moment”. Lordon explains :‘How to trigger a mutiny? As with all uprisings, by the abuse of power. On the Battleship Potemkin, the arrogance of the officers, their aristocratic contempt and their brutality still don’t succeed to set off the sailors. It’s the meat that does the trick. Or rather the maggots. The meat is so infested that it can take to the railings by itself. One reaches the tipping point, but the superior officer hasn’t woken up. He thinks simply to be able to re-establish order in barking commands as per usual. The ship’s doctor comes to impose his scientific authority in certifying that the meat is perfect – thus will everything return to normal. Close-up of the meat: it’s swarming. The doctor: these are not maggots. ‘Édouard Philippe [Prime Minister, on 12 December praising the hugely controversial proposed one-size-fits-all retirement system ‘reform’ over which the whole country is on strike]: “The ambition pursued by this government is that of social justice … and above all, the only thing that counts, it is justice”. ‘The ship’s doctor: this meat is very good, so there’s nothing to talk about. ‘Édouard Philippe: “Women will be the major beneficiaries of our universal retirement system … the guarantees given justify that the strikes should be called off”. ‘When it reaches a critical point, a political order holds symbolically only by a hair, or by a word. After which, of course, it relies on the police. … ‘There is, however, a sentiment, a particular mark of this power [the Macron Presidency], which arises not from an innocent or merry insult nor even a shameful lie but something else, infinitely more breathtaking: the Potemkin words – the words “these are not maggots” and “this meat is excellent”, with the maggots and the meat under one’s nose. One says the Potemkin words but these words are Orwellian. ‘Édouard Philippe: “We propose a new pact between generations, a pact faithful in spirit to that which the National Council of the Resistance (CNR) devised and put in place after the war.” [The CNR is sacred to all but neoliberal-driven French elites, so this claim is effectively blasphemy.] ‘At this level of the perversion of words, it is to shit on things. When Édouard Philippe wraps himself in the CNR, when he coolly destroys all the CNR’s social gains, he shits on the political history of the Resistance. Here is ultimately the measure of this government: it is a government of desecrators. … Buzyn [Agnès, Minister of Solidarity and Health] closes hospital beds “to improve the quality of care” – shits on the sick. … Pénicaud [Muriel, Minister of Labour] destroys the labour code “to protect the workforce” – shits on the workers.’ [And so on.] Does all this sound familiar? Prime Minister Scott Morrison, declining to raise the pitiful Newstart allowance: “The best form of welfare is a job.” [Macron] [Scott Morrison]
• As Australia burns, no change to climate policy
  Prime minister dismisses ‘reckless’ calls to curb coal industry, which produces one-third of global exports By Andrew Beatty Under-fire Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday rejected calls for “reckless” and “job-destroying” cuts to the country’s vast coal industry in the face of a deadly climate-fuelled bushfire crisis. Morrison’s conservative government has fiercely defended the lucrative coal industry in Australia, which produces a third of global coal exports and provides work in key swing electoral districts. “I am not going to write off the jobs of thousands of Australians by walking away from traditional industries,” Morrison told the Seven Network, in one of several morning interviews rejecting calls for further action. [Australia] [Climate change] [Coal] [Scott Morrison]
• How Nationalism is Transforming the Politics of the British Isles
  by Patrick Cockburn Nationalism in different shapes and forms is powerfully transforming the politics of the British Isles, a development that gathered pace over the last five years and culminated in the general election this month. National identities and the relationship between England, Scotland and Ireland are changing more radically than at any time over the last century. It is worth looking at the British archipelago as a whole on this issue because of the closely-meshed political relationship of its constituent nations. Some of these developments are highly visible such as the rise of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) to permanent political dominance in Scotland in the three general elections since the independence referendum in 2014. Other changes are important but little commented on, such as the enhanced national independence and political influence of the Republic of Ireland over the British Isles as a continuing member of the EU as the UK leaves. Dublin’s greater leverage when backed by the other 26 EU states was repeatedly demonstrated, often to the surprise and dismay of London, in the course of the negotiations in Brussels over the terms of the British withdrawal. [Brexit] [UK] [Nationalism]

• Australia rejects ICC Palestine probe; Germany warns against politicization
  After Canberra says court lacks jurisdiction, Israel’s FM Katz praises its ‘principled stance’; Berlin says it is confident pre-trial judges will ‘address issues of admissibility’ By Raphael Ahren Today, 10:49 am 3 Australia rejected the effort by the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to launch an investigation into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, arguing that the matter must be resolved by the two parties at the negotiating table. Germany, in a more nuanced stance, said it had full trust in the court, was confident the ICC’s judges would “address issues of admissibility,” and cautioned against politicization. “Australia is concerned by the ICC prosecutor’s proposal to consider the situation in the Palestinian Territories, subject to a ruling by the court’s pre-trial chamber on the scope of the court’s territorial jurisdiction in the matter,” a spokesperson for Canberra’s Foreign Ministry told Australian-Jewish news site, J-Wire on Tuesday. [Israel] [ICC] [Australia] [Human rights] [Palestine] [Scott Morrison]
• Quiet Australians wait for the truth
  Alison Broinowski Posted on 18 December 2019 Forty-four Australian servicemen have been killed in action or have died in accidents since our forces went to Afghanistan in 2001, and since the deployments to Iraq and Syria. But in that period, at least ten times that number of Australians serving or no longer in the military have died of suicide. This week, former Commander Kevin Frost was the latest. His story became familiar when he confessed to the ABC in 2016 that he had been complicit in covering up the alleged murder of a prisoner, shot through the forehead in Afghanistan. He fully expected that for revealing this and other alleged crimes he would be severely punished. Nonetheless, he gave evidence about ADF behaviour to the Brereton inquiry, which continues. Frost did not live to see its conclusion. The 45 year-old former Commando disappeared from his Busselton, WA home on Tuesday 10 December, and his body was found the following Saturday. This was reported on 16 December by the Daily Telegraph, which has been campaigning for a Royal Commission into serving military and veteran suicides for six months. Warriors Return reported on Facebook that 412 such suicides had occurred between 2001 and 2016. But 85 were recorded between 2017 and 2018, making the total of those known about, and counted as suicide, much higher. [Australia] [Afghanistan] [Suicide]
• German think tank calls for ‘climate tariffs’ in response to US sanctions on Nordstream 2
  December 23, 2019 The EU should enact “climate tariffs” against the US in response to sanctions against the bloc for the construction of the deep sea gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, an economist at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), a German think tank, says. [Nord Stream 2] [Russia confrontation] [German] [Friction] [Environment]
• LETTER FROM BRITAIN: Why Labour Lost
  December 17, 2019 Post-election commentary speaks of Corbyn’s party achieving “its worst result since 1935.” Alexander Mercouris shows why that is a serious misrepresentation. Labour’s Defeat Is Being Overstated By Alexander Mercouris in London Special to Consortium News The Conservative Party’s election victory is a personal tragedy for Jeremy Corbyn, whose quest to lead a transformative Labour government has ended in failure. It is also a tragedy for Britain, which has lost the opportunity offered by a transformative Corbyn-led Labour government. It may also become a tragedy for the Labour Party, but only if it takes away the wrong lessons from its defeat. The last point needs to be emphasized, all the more so since some of the reporting shows that there is quite clearly an agenda to overstate the extent of Labour’s defeat. Most of the commentary speaks of Labour achieving “its worst result since 1935.” This is a serious misrepresentation of the facts. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn during campaign debate. (Screenshot) Labour’s vote share in the election was 32.2 percent. That compares with the 30.4 percent it achieved in the general election of 2015, just before Corbyn became leader, when the Labour Party was led by Ed Miliband. It is also higher than the 29 percent vote share the Labour Party achieved in the general election of 2010, when it was led by the then incumbent Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. Going back further, Labour’s vote share in earlier general elections was 27.6 percent in 1983; and 30.8 percent in 1987. [Election] [Corbyn]
• Corbyn’s Defeat Has Slain the Left’s Last Illusion
  December 16, 2019 The reality is that the corporate class – the 0.001 percent – has been in control of our political life uninterrupted for 40 years, writes Jonathan Cook. Stencil of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. By Jonathan Cook Jonathan-Cook.net This was an election of two illusions. The first helped persuade much of the British public to vote for the very epitome of an Eton toff, a man who not only has shown utter contempt for most of those who voted for him but has spent a lifetime barely bothering to conceal that contempt. For him, politics is an ego-trip, a game in which others always pay the price and suffer, a job he is entitled to through birth and superior breeding. The extent to which such illusions now dominate our political life was highlighted two days ago with a jaw-dropping comment from a Grimsby fish market worker. He said he would vote Tory for the first time because “Boris seems like a normal working class guy.” Johnson is precisely as working class, and “normal,” as the billionaire-owned Sunand the billionaire-owned Mail. The Sun isn’t produced by a bunch of working-class lads down the pub having a laugh, nor is the Mail produced by conscientious middle managers keen to uphold “British values” and a sense of fair play and decency. Like the rest of the British media, these outlets are machines, owned by globe-spanning corporations that sell us the illusions —carefully packaged and marketed to our sectoral interest — needed to make sure nothing impedes the corporate world’s ability to make enormous profits at our, and the planet’s, expense. The Sun, Mail, Telegraph, Guardian and BBC have all worked hard to create for themselves “personalities.” They brand themselves as different — as friends we the public might, or might not, choose to invite into our homes — to win the largest share possible of the U.K. audience, to capture every section of the public as news consumers, while feeding us a distorted, fairytale version of reality that is optimal for business. They are no different to other corporations in that regard. [UK] [Election] [Media] [Corbyn]
• The Biggest Threat to Boris Johnson Isn’t Jeremy Corbyn
  The British prime minister isn’t afraid of the Labour party’s leader. To retain his parliamentary seat in an increasingly diverse west London district, Johnson is facing a tight race to fend off Ali Milani, a 25-year-old immigrant from Iran. By Stephen Paduano December 10, 2019, 3:55 AM Ali Milani, the British Labour Party's parliamentary candidate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, speaks to campaign volunteers before canvassing in the Eastcote area of London on Dec. 7. Ali Milani, the British Labour Party's parliamentary candidate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, speaks to campaign volunteers before canvassing in the Eastcote area of London on Dec. 7. Niklas Halle'n/AFP via Getty Images LONDON—As night sets in just after 4 p.m. and only a few Christmas lights illuminate the streets, Ali Milani, the local Labour Party candidate, affixes his headlamp and keeps canvassing. He and his volunteers had already knocked on 3,000 doors on a recent, rainy weekend as they approached the corner of two quiet Conservative Party strongholds: Church Lane and Church Close. Milani reassured his supporters, a team that ranges from teenagers to pensioners, not to worry if the feedback was stiff. But as the first door cracked open, an elderly woman on the other end lit up and exclaimed: “Anything to oust Boris!” If Milani succeeds, he will do what has never been done in British history: win the parliamentary seat of a serving prime minister. Optimism and surprise have defined the long-shot parliamentary bid of Ali Milani, a 25-year-old immigrant who came to the United Kingdom from Iran when he was five. If he succeeds, he will do what has never been done in British history: win the parliamentary seat of a serving prime minister. Although the constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip was long considered a Conservative safe seat—safe enough for Johnson never to have to worry about local challengers—that sense of certainty has been slipping away. The best available projections, based on national polls, still show Milani to be trailing Johnson 37 percent to 50 percent, but an upset is within the margin of error. In a statistically foreseeable reversal of fortune, YouGov’s latest research says, Milani may best Johnson with 44 percent of the vote to the prime minister’s 43 percent. Onward, a right-wing think tank, says the constituency’s high ratio of young people has made the seat “vulnerable.” Conservative Campaign Headquarters have reportedly labeled the prime minister’s seat at risk as well. There has even been talk within Johnson’s party of relocating the prime minister to a safer constituency. Now, with just days to go and a wave of Labour activists buoying Milani’s campaign, the race here has become even more uncertain. [Election] [Boris Johnson]
• The Contract on Corbyn
  Gideon Levy (Haaretz 28-11-19) Posted on 3 December 2019 Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. His real sin is to fight against injustice in the world, including the version Israel perpetrates. The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get. On Tuesday it reached its climax in an article by the chief rabbi of Britain, Ephraim Mirvis, in an article in The Times. Mirvis has decided that the anxiety of British Jews over Corbyn is justified and he is not fit to be prime minister. He called on Jews not to vote for Labour in the election on December 12. Born in South Africa and a graduate of Har Etzion Yeshiva in the settlement of Alon Shvut, Mirvis is the voice of British Jewry. In Capetown, Johannesburg and Har Etzion, he should have learned what apartheid was and why one should fight it. His parents did so, but one doubts that he learned the moral lesson from the regions of disenfranchisement in which he lived in South Africa and the West Bank. As opposed to the horrid Corbyn, Mirvis sees nothing wrong with the continued occupation; he does not identify with the struggle for Palestinian freedom, and he doesn’t sense the similarity between the South Africa of his childhood, Har Etzion of his youth and Israel of 2019. That is the real reason that he rejects Corbyn. The Jews of Britain also want a prime minister who supports Israel – that is, supports the occupation. A prime minister who is critical of Israel is to them an exemplar of the new anti-Semitism. [Corbyn] [AS card]
• Rating a defecting spy!
  Paul Malone Posted on 2 December 2019 There’s a basic system for intelligence agencies to assess the credibility of someone, such as Wang Liqiang, who purports to be a defecting spy – a simple matrix running on one axis from say 1 to 6 and on the other from A to F. A known source would rank as a 1 and an unknown source as a 6. So, for example, Vladimir Petrov was a known employee of the Soviet embassy in Canberra in 1954 when he sought political asylum and could at least be granted a 3, or possibly a 1 or 2 if ASIO was confident that he was not just a diplomat but was working in Australia as a Soviet agent. Wang Liqiang, on the other hand, is an unknown and hard to rank as anything other than a 6. On the other axis is the quality of the information the defector is able to provide. Again, based on what 60 Minutes has broadcast, there is nothing that anyone quickly skimming the internet could not find. You don’t have to go any further than Wikipedia to find a long account of the Causeway Bay Bookshop closure and the owners’ disappearances. And who needs to do any research to make the claim that the Chinese government is seeking to interfere in the politics of Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Australia? More complex grids can of course be constructed and microscopic examination of the defector’s every statement employed before reaching a final conclusion on his worth. General observations can also tell us a little. Strangely Wang spoke no English in the broadcast interview. So are we to believe that a highly placed Chinese spy — as he claims to be — speaks no English? [Defector] [Credibility] [Australia] [China confrontation]
• To reach this Canadian island, mail crosses through Maine. Now U.S. agents are opening it.
  The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge connects Campobello Island, New Brunswick, left, with Lubec, Maine, right. When the summer ferry isn’t running, the bridge to the United States is the only way on or off the island. (DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images) By Amanda Coletta Dec. 8, 2019 at 2:00 a.m. GMT+13 The parcel was sent from Niagara, Ontario, shipped via Canada Post, and addressed to Campobello Island, New Brunswick. But when it arrived at Dale Calder’s home, he found it had been opened by agents of a foreign government. “EXAMINED BY U.S. CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION,” read the bright green tape that now resealed the package. Campobello Island, a 15-square-mile outpost of some 900 souls, hangs low off the Maine coast, closer to the United States than to Canada. During the summer, a ferry connects the community to the rest of New Brunswick. But the rest of the year, the only way anyone or anything gets on or off the island is a bridge to Lubec, Maine. For islanders, it’s part of daily life: To visit their doctor, buy their groceries, even gas up their cars, they must travel to a foreign country. But in recent months, islanders say, U.S. border officials have added a disturbing new wrinkle: They’re opening the mail. “I was not very happy,” said Calder, a retired Canadian government official who lives on the island year-round. “It’s just one more thing on the heads of the people.” [Imperialism] [Arrogance] [Extraterritoriality] [Canada] [Exceptionalism]
• Delicate diplomacy: Australia needs to understand its neighbours better
  Anthony Milner (The Strategist, 26 November 2019) Posted on 29 November 2019 Scott Morrison likes using the phrase ‘delicate moment in time’ to describe the international dynamics Australia is now faced with. It’s a time to build friendships on many fronts, as the government understands well. But the task is challenging—even in the case of countries that we expect to be ‘natural partners’, such as India. The Australia–India Roundtable held in Melbourne this month highlighted the need for a sophisticated knowledge of the different players in our region—something which Australia still has to develop. [Australia] [Asia] [India]
• Need to reimagine strategic narratives about China
  1 December 2019 Author: Jacob Taylor, ANU International strategic thinking aims to balance national economic and security interests, and de-emphasise myriad subjective narratives about the world. But does this formula actually work if nations like the United States and China are prone to misapprehending each other’s motivations and actions? US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer speaks across from China's Vice Premier Liu He during the opening of US-China trade talks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House in Washington DC, 30 January 2019 (Photo: Reuters/Leah Millis). Reality is that the human mind is more storyteller than factual analyst. It filters information to support narratives about the world and is less attuned to evidence than to the persuasiveness of characters who deliver it. These facts justify the view in international strategic thinking that objective and quantifiable interests should take precedence over subjective values and narratives in international affairs and saw institutionalised diplomacy entrenched to ensure that rational calculations dominated outcomes. Research in neuroscience and psychology demonstrates, however, that narratives are not so easily abandoned when thinking strategically. Narratives are physically embodied in patterns of neuronal, emotional and psychological activity. Attempting to confine international strategic thinking to security and economic interests is unlikely to stop subjective narratives from overthrowing strategic thinking. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China]

• In 2020, Britain will be divided, damaged and diminished
  Whatever the outcome, Brexit will suck the country’s political lifeblood like a giant squid Britain BRITISH POLITICS is in such a state of flux that it is impossible to predict what the next week will bring, let alone the coming year. The next 12 months may see any of the following, depending on who, if anyone, wins the general election on December 12th 2019: a grudging Brexit deal, a no-deal Brexit, no Brexit at all thanks to a second referendum, a hung parliament leading to further paralysis, or even a referendum on Scottish independence leading to the break-up of the United Kingdom. But one thing can be predicted with certainty: in 2020 Brexit will act like a giant squid that has attached itself to the face of the nation, sucking its lifeblood and refusing to let go. Brexit’s impact can be summarised by three ds: divide, damage and diminish. [Brexit]
• Taking the Fight to China?
  Nick Deane Posted on 19 November 2019 The call for Australia to ‘take the fight to China in the South China Sea’ by a retired, senior bureaucrat is surprising. It fails to take account of China’s expressed defence strategy. In a recent edition of the glossy on-line publication ‘Defence Connect’, it has been reported that a former head of the Defense Department, Mr Dennis Richardson, has called on the Navy to “take the fight to China in the South China Sea”. Leaving aside the irresponsibility of a senior ex-bureaucrat promoting such aggressive and provocative action, it is instructive to look at some of the thinking that might lie beneath it. According to the article, Richardson argues that China is ‘determined to dominate and control access to the South China Sea’. He is not alone in holding suspicions about every military move that China makes, but that betrays a level of fear and, possibly, a failure in analysis. There is no denying that the fortification of islands in the South China Sea was an assertive, military move – one that would have been calculated to challenge the dominance of the USA. But to regard this is an act of aggression, as opposed to an act of assertive defence, carries with it the assumption that China behaves in an imperialistic manner, trying to extend its ‘empire’ wherever it can, through the use of military power. In other words, it rests on the assumption that China will behave in much the same way as the colonial powers of the West have behaved over the last couple of centuries. It rests on projecting onto China strategies that the West (and the USA in particular) have long used, to material advantage. In this connection, it is instructive to contrast the USA’s ‘National Defense Strategy’ (2018) with China’s ‘National Defense in the New Era’ (2019). As official, government documents, both are intended to outline their respective nation’s defence strategy. Both have a similar appraisal of the global situation, highlighting the growing complexity and military competition in the world at large, and in our region in particular. Their responses to the situation do not, however, run parallel. The USA’s document is extrordinarily open and honest about its military strategy. It makes no pretense about the fact that military power works to ensure the USA’s prosperity. “…the Department of Defense will be prepared to defend the homeland; remain the pre-eminent military power in the world; ensure the balances of power remain in our favor, and advance an international order that is most coducive to our security and prosperity.” And “A dominant Joint Force will protect the security of our nation; increase US influence; preserve access to markets that will improve our standard of living…” What could be clearer? On the other hand, China’s document announces that China will pursue a defence policy that is defensive in nature. It states:- “Though a country may become strong, bellicosity will lead to its ruin. The Chinese nation has always loved peace.”… “History proves and will continue to prove that China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony. No matter how it might develop, China will never threaten any other country or seek any sphere of influence.” And “China advocates partnerships rather than alliances and does not join any military bloc.” The cynic’s view would be to say that neither document can be taken at face value and that actions speak louder than words. However, each document can be relied upon, by senior officials in their respective governments, to justify any action taken. The USA’s stated position of ‘maintaining military pre-eminence’ results in it feeling itself obliged to challenge any nation that approaches it in military capacity. The USA has a tendency to project its own image onto other nations – viewing all to be in pursuit of entirely self-interested ends, by any and all means, including military. When viewed in this manner, of course China’s establisment of fortifications in the South China Sea becomes a ‘threat’. [Australia] [China confrontation] [South China Sea]
• Thinking about economics
  Jerry Roberts Posted on 8 November 2019 Whether anybody — anybody at all — understands the workings of the world economy, or even the national economy, is a moot point but there are lots of interesting theories. In her remarkable book, “Central Banks, Democratic States and Political Power,” Jocelyn Pixley praises Nugget Coombs for his “eclectic” approach to economic theory. Dr Coombs would pick and choose among the economic options, even those provided by the dominant theorist of the times, John Maynard Keynes, whom he knew personally as a member of the exclusive club of central bankers and whom he admired. Indeed, Coombs began his autobiography with a hymn of praise to The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. [Economics]
• Schmoozing America, antagonising China
  Allan Patience Posted on 6 November 2019 The Morrison government is cleaving ever more closely to the USA, asserting that the two countries have shared values and aligned interests. Meanwhile it has taken to lecturing China about human rights abuses and emphasising how the values of the Chinese Communist Party are anathema to Australia’s cultural values and democratic politics. “Our alliance with the United States is our past, present and our future. It is the bedrock of our security”. These words were spoken by Scott Morrison towards the end of his Lowy Lecture on 4 October 2019. Subsequently, on 29 October, the Foreign Affairs Minister endorsed the Prime Minister’s unequivocal commitment to the ANZUS alliance: “Our relationship with the United States is firmly fixed in our history and our values – across successive governments and leaders on both sides of the Pacific. […] We reflexively look to the US to take responsibility when there is a problem. That is still the case”. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham has now fallen over himself to echo both the PM and the Foreign Minister. In each case, the politicians seem determined to take for granted Australia’s status as a dependent middle power – which means it is a fake middle power. At the same time, the statements are illustrative of an increasingly outdated orthodox consensus that has been at the core of Australian security policy since 1951. However, as China rises and America, under Trump, appears bent on pulling back from its commitments in the Asia Pacific, the question that needs asking is: Are the politicians really speaking up for Australia’s contemporary regional and global interests? Or are they mindlessly parroting slogans about a reality that is fading into irrelevance as new challenges rapidly confront the country’s foreign and security policy-makers? In his account of the WikiLeaks revelations about American diplomatic activity, Professor Clinton Fernandez makes the point that the evidence from those revelations show that “Australia remains relatively unimportant in US thinking” [Australia] [Scott Morrison] [Allegience] [China confrontation]
• Never Again? Can We Stop the War When Big Business Profits from it?
  By Michael Welch, Ajamu Baraka, and Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels Global Research, November 09, 2019 Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. – John McCrae, In Flanders’ Fields [1] November 11th marks Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth countries. Also known as Veterans’ Day (U.S.) and Armistice Day, falling as it does on the anniversary of the Armistice that ended the First World War, this day is intended to inspire reflection on the sacrifice of soldiers who died on the battlefield while serving their country in one of the major global conflicts.[2][3] An indelible part of Remembrance Day memorials in Canada is the wearing of the red poppy, in turn inspired by the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae, the Canadian poet and physician who served as a medic during World War I. As detailed by former Globe and Mail editor Richard Doyle in a November 1984 article, the iconic phrase “take up our quarrel with the foe” appearing in the final stanza was not likely intended as a reference to the German or Austrian armies, but rather to the spirit of war itself. The torch represents the will to realize an end to war, a motivation for many Allied soldiers on the front.[4] Unfortunately, the stanza quoted above would come to be understood as pro-war propaganda and even a recruiting tool luring more patriots to the killing fields. [5] [Imperial War] [Peace] [Canada]
• How Brexit Put a United Ireland Back on the Map
  Sadhbh walshe. (The New York Review of Books 22-10-19) Posted on 31 October 2019 The Irish have long been said to have a way with words—and there has been no shortage of them expended in the argument over the possibility of a Brexit-induced reinstatement of a border partitioning the island of Ireland. Since the 2016 referendum, numerous books have been published on the subject; thousands of newspaper articles have been written; famous Irish actors have taken to reciting poems to plea on the border’s behalf; and the border itself has a popular Twitter account, providing daily commentary—sometimes wry, sometimes raging—on the debate about its future. More than three years into the Brexit mess, it would seem that our war of words may have finally gotten through to the British prime minister. After floating various options that could have resulted in a hard border or two soft borders, Johnson eventually settled on an over-easy variation, involving a customs border in the Irish sea, in his “great new deal.” Thanks to a procedural vote in last weekend’s “Super Saturday” sitting of Parliament, by which MPs asserted their right to debate and approve the deal line by line, Johnson’s plan didn’t, in fact, get put to a vote. Nevertheless, what the new deal demonstrated was that Britain’s prime minister had conceded in his agreement with his Irish counterpart, and thus with other EU leaders, that any kind of land border in Ireland was unacceptable. [Brexit] [Ireland] [Unification]

• Australian Regime Rejects Bail for Leftist Political Prisoner!
  October 24, 2019 22 October 2019: Last Friday, NSW Supreme Court Judge Lonergan rejected a bail application made by a political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi. Choi has been imprisoned for the last 22 months for his sympathies for the socialistic DPRK, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (i.e. “North Korea”). For most of that time he has been imprisoned at Long Bay jail – one of the Australian regime’s most notorious prison camps. On 29 December 2015, in the very same section of Long Bay where Choi is imprisoned – the Prison Hospital/remand centre – Aboriginal prisoner, David Dungay, was killed by six members of the prison riot squad. The heavy set guards crushed Dungay with their combined weight while dismissing Dungay’s repeated desperate cries of “I can’t breathe” as the 26 year-old Dunghutti man gasped for breath. Nearly four years on, the family of David Dungay still have not received any justice, with the coroner only handing down his findings next month. The same racist, rich people’s regime in this country that commits such brutal oppression of Aboriginal people and which oversees the exploitation of the working class by the big end of town has trampled on the rights of Chan Han Choi for nearly two years. Their rejection of Choi’s bail bid is just the latest example of this. [Australia] [Political prisoners] [Chan Han Choi] [Sanctions] [US dominance]
• President Tsai pledges to deepen Taiwan-Netherlands ties
  Publication Date: October 25, 2019 President Tsai Ing-wen (right) enjoys a conversation with Henk Krol (left), member of the Netherlands’ House of Representatives, Oct. 24 at the Presidential Office in Taipei City. (Courtesy of PO) President Tsai Ing-wen said Oct. 24 that the government will continue to strengthen Taiwan-Netherlands exchanges by expanding cooperation across a range of areas including trade and technology. The Netherlands House of Representatives is a consistent and staunch supporter of Taiwan, Tsai said. This includes a bipartisan motion passed by an overwhelming majority earlier this month urging the Dutch government to back the country’s international participation, she added. Other examples of bilateral partnership are a mechanism for vice-ministerial dialogue on economic affairs, a mutual assistance agreement on customs and a memorandum of understanding on science and technology collaboration, Tsai said, adding that a Dutch firm was a key partner in designing the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in southern Taiwan. Tsai made the remarks at a meeting with lawmakers and think tankers from the European country held at the Presidential Office in Taipei City. The delegation led by House of Representatives Member Henk Krol included Senator Martine Baay-Timmerman; Han ten Broeke, director of political affairs at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies; Rene Cuperus, senior associate fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations; and Guy Wittich, representative of the Netherlands Trade and Investment Office. According to Tsai, the visit can serve as a platform to kick-start negotiations with the EU on a bilateral investment agreement. Given both countries share the values of freedom, democracy and rules-based order, they should work to boost cooperation on combating disinformation and boosting information security, she said. Statistics from the Ministry of Economic Affairs show that the Netherlands was the largest foreign investor in Taiwan in the first eight months of the year. The total of US$2.158 billion accounted for 33.11 percent of such investment. (YCH-E) [Netherlands Taiwan] [China confrontation] [Junket]
• How Boris Johnson Fell For America
  Britain’s prime minister is a lifelong admirer of the US. How will Brexit change his—and his country’s—special relationship? By Jon Allsop October 14, 2019 In April 2003, Boris Johnson stood, awestruck, in Baghdad, staring into the remnants of a house blown apart by an American bomb. He was in Iraq on a fact-finding mission: He had voted for the invasion in his capacity as a Conservative Party lawmaker and was there to check out the aftermath. He was also working there as a journalist, documenting his experience in the British weekly The Spectator. “Crumbs,” he recalls thinking as he surveyed the scene. “Crumbs” is an affected British expression meaning “gosh.” It also referred to the fragments left of the house; Johnson explained the wordplay, in case we didn’t get it. The ruins, he went on, were a neat metaphor for what the United States had done to the Iraqi regime, as well as the broader “range and irresistibility of America.” The “liberated” Iraqis he saw in Baghdad “were skinny and dark, badly dressed and fed.” The Americans “were taller and squarer than the indigenous people, with heavier chins and better dentition,” resembling “a master race from outer space, or something from the pages of Judge Dredd.” These days, Johnson has made himself known as an opportunistic charlatan who campaigned for Brexit in order to become prime minister, became prime minister, then embarked on a reckless bid to throw the United Kingdom out of the European Union. Because of his bald careerism, his critics characterize him as a vacuum of beliefs—a black hole into which principles disappear. But one narrative has come up consistently in his writings and public statements over the years: Johnson is in genuine awe of the raw global power of the United States. [Boris Johnson] [US] [Imperialism] [Special relationship]
• Going Dutch? Low interest rates rattle 'world's best' pension system
  Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - When Frans Kolkman hung up his police badge in 2017, he was looking forward to a comfortable retirement. Two years later he’s among millions of Dutch pensioners facing a cut and fearing there may be worse to come. FILE PHOTO: A Dutch flag in the port of Volendam near Amsterdam, Netherlands February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo The planned reductions, due to take effect from January 2020, have shaken a country renowned for having one of the world’s strongest pension systems, and are an early warning to others about the impact of record low interest rates. [Netherlands] [Pensions]
• Weep for Catalonia, Weep for Liberalism in Europe
  October 16, 2019 As Catalans are imprisoned for democratic efforts guaranteed by the UN, the EU should be condemned for ignoring an obvious breach of human rights, says Craig Murray. By Craig Murray CraigMurray.org.uk The vicious jail sentences handed down today by the fascists (I used the word with care and correctly) of the Spanish Supreme Court to the Catalan political prisoners represent a stark symbol of the nadir of liberalism within the EU. That an attempt to organize a democratic vote for the Catalan people in pursuit of the right of self-determination guaranteed in the UN Charter, can lead to such lengthy imprisonment, is a plain abuse of the most basic of human rights. I was forced to withdraw my lifelong personal support for the EU when, in response to the vicious crushing of the Catalan referendum by Francoist paramilitary forces, when the whole world saw grandmothers hit on the head and thrown down stairs as they attempted to vote, all the institutions of the EU – Council, Commission and Parliament – lined up one after the other to stress their strong support for the Madrid paramilitary action in maintaining “law and order.” Today we see the same thing. As the Catalans are imprisoned for efforts at democracy, the EU Commission stated that it “respects the position of the Spanish judiciary” and “this is, and remains, an internal matter for Spain, which has to be dealt with in line with its constitutional order.” The commission here is simply ignoring what is very obviously a fundamental breach of basic human rights. This is far worse than anything Poland or Hungary have done in recent years, and the commission is also showing a quite blatant hypocrisy in its relative treatment of its Western and Eastern members. [Catalonia] Double standards] [Democracy] [Spain]
• Reality Check: Chris Williamson WON his legal challenge
  The media and the PLP are spinning their own gamesmanship as victory Kit Knightly Unless you’ve been paying close attention, it’s probably hard to keep up with just how many times Chris Williamson MP has been suspended from the Labour Party. For those of you keeping score, it’s three times. That number likely surprises some of you, but we’ll get to that. Here’s a quick timeline: FEBRUARY 2019 – A video emerges of Chris Williamson speaking at an event for Momentum in Sheffield (above). In the video Williamson claims that Labour have been “too apologetic” in dealing with accusations of antisemitism, and that they should stand up for their record as an anti-racist party. The press portrayed this very dishonestly – and still do to this day – summing it up as “Williamson claimed Labour too apologetic over antisemitism”. He is suspended before the end of the month, pending an investigation. [AS card] [Labour Party] [Witchhunt] [Israel]
• U.S.: Military Carried out Aerial Resources Survey of Greenland
  VOA News October 11, 2019 08:12 The U.S. military has conducted an aerial survey of Greenland to assess the vast arctic island's mineral potential as part of agreement between the two governments, a top U.S. diplomat said on Wednesday. The memorandum of understanding for cooperating on developing the mineral sector there was inked in June before a diplomatic flap between the United States and Denmark, to which Greenland is linked as an autonomous territory. [Greenland] [US military] [Resources]
• Catalan separatist leaders to get up to 15 years in jail: judicial source
  MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s Supreme Court plans to convict and sentence Catalan separatist leaders to a maximum of 15 years in prison over a 2017 bid for independence, a judicial source said on Saturday. FILE PHOTO: People hold a giant "Estelada" (Catalan separatist flag) at a rally during Catalonia's national day 'La Diada' in Barcelona, Spain, September 11, 2019. REUTERS/Albert Gea The most prominent of the 12 Catalan leaders on trial would be found guilty of charges of sedition and misuse of public funds but none would be convicted and sentenced for the more severe charge of rebellion, the source told Reuters. The decision was taken unanimously by the seven members of the top court, the source added. The verdict is expected to be signed by the judges and made public next week, most likely on Monday, the source said. The trial’s top judge, Manuel Marchena, declined to comment on the media leaks. However, he added that “everything is open (because) a ruling will not be completed until it is signed by every single judge.” Marchena was speaking to reporters at an event celebrating Spain’s national day in comments quoted by several Spanish media, including La Vanguardia and ABC newspapers. A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to comment. Major Spanish newspapers including El Pais, La Vanguardia and El Mundo have published similar information about the court’s verdict, also citing sources. The ruling could provoke a strong reaction in Catalonia, where a secessionist push two years ago triggered Spain’s biggest political crisis in decades. It could also complicate Spanish politics in the run-up to the fourth national election in four years. [Spain] [Democracy] [Separatism]
• Britain’s Secret Saudi Military Support Program
  October 8, 2019 By mistake, the U.K. recently revealed the budget size of multibillion-pound program that it manages to support the royal family’s de facto protection force, which is also active in the devastating war in Yemen, report Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis. By Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis Daily Maverick The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence has accidentally admitted for the first time the budget size of a multibillion-pound program it manages for the Saudi Arabian royal family’s de facto protection force, which is also active in the devastating war in Yemen. It can also be revealed that this program, which is embedded in the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) but paid for by the Saudi regime, employs 10 times more people than the British government publicly admits, raising questions about ministers misleading the parliament in Westminster. The Saudi Arabia National Guard Communications Project (known as Sangcom) has operated since 1978, when the British government signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the authorities in Riyadh. The project provides military communications equipment to the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) but the MOU, which is itself secret, stipulates complete secrecy on the budget. In July this year, however, the MOD advertised for the position of a Sangcom project manager based in Riyadh. The job was open only to male applicants and the advert stated: “The UK MOD SANGCOM Project Team is responsible for the delivery of a £2bn programme to modernise the Saudi Arabian National Guard’s communications network.” [UK] [Saudi Arabia]
• 40,000 toy soldiers highlight plight of injured British veterans
  MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - An installation of 40,000 miniature toy soldiers in a shopping center in Manchester, northern England, highlights the plight that many British soldiers face if their careers are ended by injury. The small green plastic figures represent the number of veterans that have been medically discharged over the last 20 years and campaigners say more should be done to support them. Seven of the figures, placed at the front of the installation in Manchester’s Arndale Center, are models of real veterans who have had amputations or been left in wheelchairs after serving in the armed forces. “Injuries have ended 40,000 military careers in 20 years and every day this number grows. Many of them tell us that their transition impacted significantly on their health, wellbeing and family,” Mel Waters, chief executive of Help for Heroes, said in a statement. “The medical discharge process is seriously failing those who are let down by major inconsistencies in support, so we’re calling on the government to commission an independent review of the process to close those gaps.” British troops have been deployed in countries including Iraq, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone over the last 20 years. However, Help for Heroes says that over 10,000 men and women have been discharged on medical grounds since the end of combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, even though British Armed Forces have not been engaged in active conflict in that period. [Imperialism] [UK] [Military]
• Canada–China relations remain on the rocks
  Author: John Kirton, University of Toronto 5 October 2019 The deepening diplomatic dispute between China and Canada that began in December 2018 marks a fundamental change in their longstanding and relatively benign relationship. The conflict is having a damaging effect on both countries. The dispute also compromises China’s claim to be the new champion of the open, rules-based multilateral order, at a time when the United States is retreating from the role. Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou returns to British Columbia supreme court after a lunch break during a hearing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 30 September 2019 (Photo: Reuters/Lindsey Wasson). In December 2018, Canadian police arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver at the request of the United States. The United States is seeking her extradition to answer questions over alleged violations of sanctions against Iran. China, for its part, has called the move politically motivated. They view the arrest as baseless discrimination against China’s businesses and citizens. During her public extradition hearing in Canada, expected to last another year, she has had access to her legal team, lives in her Vancouver home and travels freely in the city during the day. Her treatment supports Canada’s claim that it is following the rule of law, even if some accuse the Trump administration of taking advantage of Canada. [China Canada] [Meng Wanzhou] [China bashing]
• E.U. rejects Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposal, raising prospect of chaotic break within weeks
  Corbyn says Johnson's Brexit proposal is a ‘cynical attempt’ to ‘shift the blame’ British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said Oct. 3 that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proposals for a new Brexit deal would be rejected by the European Union. (Reuters) By Michael Birnbaum October 3 at 12:36 PM BRUSSELS — European policymakers said Thursday that a new Brexit proposal from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was unworkable, heightening the prospects of a chaotic British departure from the European Union within weeks. Although leaders, politicians and negotiators did not dismiss Johnson’s plan out of hand, they made clear the current offer would not win support from the 27 countries that need to sign off on any withdrawal deal, and they were downbeat about it serving as the basis for serious negotiations. [Brexit]
• Financial services industry slowly abandons Britain ahead of Brexit
  3rd October 2019 / United Kingdom The EU is London’s biggest customer when it comes to financial services with exports worth £26 billion in profits. As the EU and Britain failed to agree a deal, the industry’s hopes of largely unfettered access to the bloc, banks began moving around a trillion pounds of assets from London to new EU hubs, while trading worth around €240bn a day in eurozone government bonds has moved to Milan and Amsterdam. The EU’s markets watchdog has ruled that under a no-deal Brexit, euro shares must be traded inside the bloc, a signal that Brussels may want to deepen its own capital markets union by being tougher in granting equivalence (whereby the EU deems Britain’s financial markets rules to be aligned closely enough to its own). The result – three UK-based pan-European platforms in London, Aquis, Turquoise and Cboe have already opened hubs in Amsterdam and Paris for EU customers to trade shares listed on other exchanges. A report by a London based think tank that focuses on capital markets has published the most comprehensive analysis yet of the impact of Brexit on the banking and finance industry in London. It has determined that more than 250 firms in banking and finance have moved or are moving business, staff, assets or legal entities away from the UK to the EU – and these numbers are likely to increase significantly in the near future. In total, it also agrees that approximately £1 trillion of assets have already been relocated – with more expected. [Brexit] [Finance]
• Thanks to guest editor, Ramesh Thakur
  John Menadue
  Posted on 2 October 2019 by John Menadue During our three weeks holiday in the UK, Ramesh Thakur has been guest editor for Pearls & Irritations. Susie and I greatly appreciate his contribution. In considering the future of Pearls & Irritations, we may find that guest editorship provides a possible way forward. Guest editorship provides a means of continuing the broad direction of Pearls & Irritations as well as providing an opportunity for guest editors to draw on their own unique background and experience. Ramesh Thakur is currently Professor Emeritus at the ANU in the Crawford School of Public Policy. He was formerly the Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in the Crawford School. Educated in India and Canada, he was the Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago in New Zealand. From 1998-2007 he was Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. Many thanks to Ramesh and also to Ian McAuley who assisted on the sidelines.
• Morrison’s visit to the US shows his common ground with China
  James Laurenceson (AFR 25-9-19) Posted on 1 October 2019 by Ramesh Thakur Scan the headlines generated by Scott Morrison’s trip to the United States and you could get the impression that the Australian government is increasingly tilting towards supporting Washington in its economic war against Beijing. Yesterday the Prime Minister attracted attention for telling an audience in Chicago that he no longer regarded China as a ‘developing country’. Rather, it was a ‘newly developed economy’. Such assessments would have pleased his hosts. The Trump administration has made much of China being able to declare itself a ‘developing country’ under World Trade Organisation rules, potentially entitling it to so-called ‘special and differential treatment’. Rather than aggregate economic size, the Chinese government prefers to draw attention to per capita incomes in China still not having reached one-third of those in the US. In reality, a good deal of the bluster around China’s developing country status is overblown. For example, it is countries such as the US, not self-declared ‘developing countries’, that get to choose which WTO members can benefit from any preferences they decide to offer. China’s status also has no bearing on needing to fully meet the commitments made in the accession agreement it struck with other WTO members, including the US, in 2001. During his visit Morrison has also spoken in support of other US grievances against China, including those relating to theft of intellectual property. But here’s the truth bomb for Washington and excited sections of the local commentariat: despite all the pomp and pageantry of a state visit, none of what Morrison has said these past few days goes beyond what he told an audience in Sydney back in June. Delivering an address at Bloomberg, Morrison called out the fact that China’s most successful provinces had reached the economic sophistication of their global competitors and yet could compete on terms that were ‘not available to other developed countries’. And aside from intellectual property, he added that other US concerns about China, such as those relating to forced technology transfer and industrial subsidies, were also legitimate. Yet far from reacting angrily, China’s foreign ministry said it ‘appreciated’ that Morrison’s speech had on the whole welcomed China’s economic growth, as well as his ongoing commitment to deepening the Australia-China comprehensive strategic partnership. Morrison hasn’t gone weak-kneed in the US: rather, he doubled down on that position in Chicago, and in the White House before that. In remarks that were less widely reported, Morrison made plain to his American interlocutors that Australia wouldn’t be viewing China through a Washington lens. Instead, he stated plainly that ‘the first thing to do is acknowledge that Australia and the US come at this from a different perspective’. [Australia] [China] [Scott Morrison] [Allegiance]
• Australia offered help in May for White House probe of Mueller inquiry
  Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia offered assistance in May for U.S. President Donald Trump’s investigation of the origins of a damning report about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a letter reviewed by Reuters shows. FILE PHOTO: Australia's Treasurer Joe Hockey holds a news conference after a meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors during the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Washington October 10, 2014. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst The New York Times said Trump had asked Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison for the help, in hopes of discrediting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s campaign to aid Trump in winning the 2016 national election. An Australian government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the two leaders spoke by telephone in September. Trump’s request, however, was preceded by an Australian offer of help, with its ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, writing to U.S. Attorney-General William Barr in May to offer Canberra’s assistance. “The Australian government will use its best endeavors to support your efforts in this matter,” Hockey wrote in a May 28 letter, referring to Trump’s May 24 announcement of plans to investigate the origins of the FBI investigation. [Russiagate] [Downer]

• Saving the dynamic ecosystems of the Dutch dunes
  The Netherlands is home to vast stretches of coastal dunes that shelter natural biodiversity and human life. But only careful management can keep them alive. Sand dunes and shrubs The Netherlands is famous for its canals, tulips and quaint towns with steep-gabled houses. Less iconic are the dramatic dunes that make up some two-thirds of the Dutch coastline. Yet these rolling seaside hills are a defining aspect of the country's natural beauty and integral to human life, protecting land from sea and sheltering some of its most biodiverse habit [Netherlands] [Environment]
• An insidious tragedy
  Kim Oates. Posted on 26 September 2019 by Ramesh Thakur Imagine what would happen if a fully laden 747 airliner crashed in Australia every week for a whole year. There would be public outcry, an outrage, swift political action and an enquiry at the highest level, possibly a Royal Commission. What most people don’t realise is that the number of people dying in that fearful scenario is the same as the number who really do die each year in Australian hospitals due to avoidable error. Reliable estimates suggest that 18,000- 27,000 such deaths occur annually, with an additional 50,000 suffering permanent injury. But unlike an aircraft tragedy, this tragedy is insidious. Quite apart from the human tragedy, it is estimated that the costs to the health system in terms of extra time needed in hospital, drugs and equipment approximates to $4 billion/year. We are proud of the Australian health system. There is universal health cover. No one is denied treatment. Most of the outstanding hospitals are government funded, where patients need pay nothing for excellent care. But we still have error that harms patients. This problem is not unique to Australia. Figures from other countries with well developed healthcare systems all report avoidable adverse events ranging from 8-12% of hospital admissions. [Australia] [Health]
• Australia’s Place in the World
  Ian Bowie Posted on 25 September 2019 by John Menadue In geopolitics, Geography matters. Dimensions such as distance, relative location, area, terrain and economic reach between countries all influence how countries are positioned in the shifting sands of global power. Australian perceptions of geographic dimensions are often distorted by the manner in which our continent is shown on maps of the globe. A useful corrective to these perceptions is available online in Tom Epperly’s tool for generating azimuthal maps at https://ns6t.net/azimuth/azimuth.html. An azimuthal equidistant map shows all points on the map at proportionally correct distances from the centre of the map, along azimuths or lines from the centre; north (0/360°) need not be toward the top. Thus, an azimuthal map centred on Canberra with azimuths projected out to include the entirety of the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans and the land areas draining into them shows Australia to be towards the centre of an oceanic hemisphere and geographically remote except from the nearby islands of Indonesia and the south west Pacific. [Australia] [Defence] [Geography]
• Morrison joins the conga line.
  Mungo MacCallum. Posted on 24 September 2019 by Peter Menadue And so back to Mark Latham’s conga line of suck holes – Scott Morrison goes to Washington. The regular obeisance is hardly unexpected, but it is no less embarrassing for that. Morrison has made it clear that the main purpose of his visit is to shmooze. He will continually tell The Donald how grateful and obedient Australia has always been to its great and powerful friend. We have been in every war America has instigated for more than 60 years – probably longer, but living memory will be sufficient for the moment. We share the same values – well, perhaps not guns, but we like trade, at least when we are winning. We are worried about the Pacific, we are good at racist dog-whistling about the horrors of asylum seekers and we are at one in denying climate change. Actually we won’t even mention it – after all, it would be tactless to do so when millions of children and adults around the world are demonstrating about it, and just down the road the United Nations is running an emergency session on the subject, a session neither of the recalcitrant leaders will attend. So back on with the slobber: Morrison fawned that Trump’s approach to his trade war was entirely justified and within the rules – Trump’s rules, at least. And anyway Americans know they have no better friend than Australia – 100 years of mateship. We cringed back in 1966, when Harold Holt declared on our behalf: “We will be all the way with LBJ.” In 2019 we await a similar promise: “We will go up the rump of Donald Trump.” [Australia] [Subservience] [Scott Morrison]
• Tension looms large over Chinese enterprises about Brexit outcome
  By Sun Wei in London Source: Global Times Published: 2019/9/17 17:13:40 A view of the first phase of ABP development, opposite City Airport on the northern edge of Royal Albert Dock in London on September 12 Photo: Sun Wei/GT The much anticipated ABP Royal Albert Dock in London is shadowed by the uncertainties of Brexit. The project is being hit by a dampened sales and lettings activities, although its £1.7 billion ($2.1 billion) development's first phase, which was completed earlier this year, has been placed in the top 10 percent of sustainable commercial building design after it was awarded an "Excellent" rating by sustainability body Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM). "We have delivered a high quality and highly efficient output, but the government hasn't honored its promise," Xu Weiping, ABP Chairman told the Global Times, adding that the uncertainties brought by the Brexit stalemate have made business partners and clients reluctant to make progress. The crossrail, which is running two years behind schedule, is another case of the government's undelivered instance. The first phase of ABP was slated to match with the crossrail timetable, with the nearest stop only 3 minutes away; however, it turns out the crossrail project is delayed until 2021. The Chinese property developer signed the deal in 2013 with then mayor of London Boris Johnson, to turn the historic Royal Albert Docks into an "Asian Business Port." The project was believed to regenerate the royal docks in east London, and become a platform for financial, high-tech and knowledge driven industries looking to establish and further business in the UK and European markets. Uncertainty kills Brexit has been delayed twice, from March 29 to April 12, and then to October 31, the Anglo-Saxon festival of witches and pumpkins. [China UK] [Brexit] [ODI]
• Germany, UK, France blame Iran for Saudi oil attacks
  Three signatories to Iran deal issue joint statement as more signs emerge pointing to collapse of 2015 agreement. an hour ago Iran was responsible for the attacks on two Saudi oil facilities earlier this month, leaders from the United Kingdom, France and Germany said in a joint statement, drawing a sharp response from a senior Iranian military official on Tuesday. The three countries, all signatories to the Iran nuclear deal, issued the statement on Monday as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hinted that the UK may withdraw from the 2015 agreement. [Iran confrontation] [US dominance]
• White Helmets, Black Lies
  David Macilwain This is the story of my challenge to Australia’s SBS TV over their role in passing on criminal disinformation about Syria, chemical weapons and the White Helmets. On the 8th of April last year, SBS television broadcast a report claiming sixty people had died in a chemical weapons attack in Douma on their evening world news bulletin. It was substantially the same as reports in all Western and West-friendly countries, though with an SBS commentary added. SBS – the “Special Broadcasting Service” was set up by the Australian government in the ‘70s to serve the many different ethnic communities here; it also broadcasts foreign language news bulletins from many countries, including Russia and Turkey but not Iran or Lebanon. While SBS remains partly government funded, it claims editorial independence – including from its commercial sponsors. Its current promotional slogan is “We tell stories – with a difference”, supported by appealing testimonies from the story-tellers, who no doubt believe this delusional claim. Not only are SBS stories on the chief issues of contention no different, or even sourced from other Western media, they are mostly just stories, with a loose or non-existent relation to the truth. Challenging the SBS narrative is therefore problematic, but SBS has a well-defined Code of Practice on balance and bias against which one can make complaints for up to six weeks following a broadcast. Complaints are assessed by the “SBS Ombudsman” Sally Begbie, and a verdict delivered within sixty days. I have gone through this process a few times over the last decade, and the result has been the same regardless of the case – “SBS has found that the broadcast complied with the Code, etc. etc.” So it was that at the time of the Douma Incident, complaining to SBS for spreading the same lies as everyone else was not the highest priority! I was also preparing to head off for a holiday starting in Syria and struggling with a visa. In addition though, it was not until later that there was substantive evidence on which to build a case for a complaint that might succeed. It’s easy to forget this, and that people in Douma knew nothing about a “chemical weapon attack”. [Syria] [Australian media] [SBS] [Propaganda]
• China Slaps Britain: You Can’t Afford Hostility
  Finian Cunningham September 13, 2019 China gave Britain a stern warning this week that any naval maneuvers conducted with the US near its declared territories in the South China Sea will be met with a military response. Beijing rapped London further, telling it to dump its “colonial attitude” with regard to Hong Kong. However, the ultimate leverage, was the caustic reminder to Britain that if it wants to trade with China in the future, then it better mind its manners. Given the deepening turmoil over Brexit and the uncertain economic prospects once Britain quits the European Union, the British government is going to need every trading opportunity around the world it can muster. Keeping on good terms with China, the globe’s second-biggest national economy, will therefore be crucial for Britain’s post-Brexit survival. Since taking office in July, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been quick to talk up a future golden era of bilateral trade relations with Beijing. He has expressed an interest in China’s Belt and Road Initiative for global trade, and he has even dared to ruffle US President Donald Trump by calling for an end to the tariffs and trade war with Beijing, thus implying the White House’s hardball policy is wrongheaded. But here’s the tricky balancing act facing Britain. In trying to ingratiate itself with both Washington and Beijing for future trade deals, London is caught in an awkward contradiction. To do Washington’s bidding, Britain will be obliged to join forces for fomenting aggression against China. [UK] [China confrontation] [Allegiance]
• Open Letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison Regarding the Imprisonment of Chan Han Choi
  Dear Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Late last month you pledged to “stand up” for an Australian citizen, Yang Hengjun who has been detained in China on suspicion of espionage. Moreover you strongly implied that Yang Hengjun’s human rights were being violated in China saying that: “I am concerned [about his treatment], and those concerns have been raised directly by the Foreign Minister on several occasions now.” You also said to China that, “we do expect Australia, and indeed all citizens, to have their human rights appropriately looked after.” Meanwhile, your minister for foreign affairs, Marise Payne has said that she is "very concerned" about Yang, claiming that: “"Dr Yang has been held in Beijing in harsh conditions without charge for more than seven months. Since that time, China has not explained the reasons for Dr Yang's detention, nor has it allowed him access to his lawyers or family visits." We do not here wish to comment on the case of Yang Hengjun, especially since the evidence in the case and the specific charges that he faces are not yet available and are to be released at a future date. However, we must point out that while you and your foreign minister have been quick to attack China over the detention of Yang Hengjun, right here in Australia, an Australian citizen and political prisoner Chan Han Choi has been imprisoned in far harsher conditions than Yang Hengjun. Chan Han Choi is a humanitarian who Australian authorities have imprisoned for his sympathy for - and efforts to aid the people of - the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).
  Australia-DPRK Friendship & Cultural Society [Political prisoner] [Sanctions]
• Julian Assange to stay in prison after jail sentence ends over absconding fears
  Tim Baker Julian Assange will remain in prison after his jail sentence finishes because of fears he may run away. The WikiLeaks founder was told this morning that he would not be freed when his current term for skipping bail expires on September 22. Assange, 48, was handed a 50 week jail sentence in May following his seven year stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which ended when he was dragged out of the Knightsbridge property by the police. Then home secretary Sajid Javid signed an order in June allowing Assange to be extradited to the US over computer-hacking allegations. Westminster Magistrates Court heard this morning that there were "substantial grounds" for believing that Assange would be at risk of absconding. The WikiLeaks founder appeared by video-link from HMP Belmarsh wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser told Assange: "You have been produced today because your sentence of imprisonment is about to come to an end. "When that happens your remand status changes from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition. "Therefore I have given your lawyer an opportunity to make an application for bail on your behalf and she has declined to do so. Perhaps not surprisingly in light of your history of absconding in these proceedings. "In my view I have substantial ground for believing if I release you, you will abscond again." Assange was asked if he understood what was happening, and replied: "Not really. I'm sure the lawyers will explain it." Another administrative hearing will take place on October 11 followed by a case management hearing on October 21, the court heard. [Assange] [WikiLeaks] [Political prisoner] [Extradition]
• The World’s Most Important Political Prisoner 155
  15 Sep, 2019 We are now just one week away from the end of Julian Assange’s uniquely lengthy imprisonment for bail violation. He will receive parole from the rest of that sentence, but will continue to be imprisoned on remand awaiting his hearing on extradition to the USA – a process which could last several years. At that point, all the excuses for Assange’s imprisonment which so-called leftists and liberals in the UK have hidden behind will evaporate. There are no charges and no active investigation in Sweden, where the “evidence” disintegrated at the first whiff of critical scrutiny. He is no longer imprisoned for “jumping bail”. The sole reason for his incarceration will be the publishing of the Afghan and Iraq war logs leaked by Chelsea Manning, with their evidence of wrongdoing and multiple war crimes. [Assange] [WikiLeaks] [Political prisoner] [Extradition]
• Don Dunstan in Perspective: A Review
  Lionel Orchard Posted on 11 September 2019 by Louisa Gunning ANU historian Angela Woollacott has written a major biography of Don Dunstan reflecting on his place in the pantheon of reforming Australian Labor politicians. A review of the biography follows. In social analysis including biography, perspective and balance are difficult to achieve at the best of times. It is much more so when complexity and controversy cloud the picture. In the case of charismatic, reforming South Australian Labor politician Don Dunstan, commentary and analysis has suffered from lack of perspective given polar positive and negative assessments. Treatments of his political and policy achievements have run alongside forensic accounts and criticisms of his personal life. The latter have often swamped the former. Any politician who successfully challenges orthodoxies in the way Dunstan did is bound to generate opposition and criticism but he had more than his fair share of both. It is against this background that historian Angela Woollacott’s new biography Don Dunstan: The visionary politician who changed Australiais very much to be welcomed. At last we have a comprehensive, balanced and well-judged treatment of Dunstan’s life in all its dimensions – his formative influences; his emergence and growth as a reforming politician; his political, social and cultural leadership and progressive achievements at a time of great change in Australian society in the 1960s and 1970s; the complexities and controversies surrounding his personal life; and the price he paid throughout but particularly at the end of his life. [Don Dunstan]
• Canada seizes & sells $30mn worth of Iranian assets to ‘compensate US victims' of terrorism
  Published time: 13 Sep, 2019 23:50 Edited time: 14 Sep, 2019 15:31 Get short URL Canada seizes & sells $30mn worth of Iranian assets to ‘compensate US victims' of terrorism Canada has seized and sold some $30 million worth of Iranian assets, court documents indicate. The funds were transferred to American families seeking compensation over terrorist acts that were all pinned on Tehran. The confiscated assets include two buildings – the Iranian Cultural Center in Ottawa and Center for Iranian Studies in Toronto – as well as some $2.6 million seized from Iranian bank accounts and a couple of vehicles. The two properties have been sold for $26.5 and $1.85 million respectively, while the proceeding were transferred to several families in the US, who sought share of the assets as a compensation for various acts of terrorism they blamed on Iran. Court documents confirming that the funds have been distributed are dated August 7, yet only caught eye of local media on Friday. [[Canada] [Iran confrontation] [US domination] [Legality] [Extraterritoriality] [Softpower]
• Europeans once hoped the British would reverse Brexit. Now, many can’t wait for them to leave.
  By Michael Birnbaum September 11 at 11:32 AM BRUSSELS — Wistful Europeans once hoped Britain would reverse itself on Brexit, abandoning its European Union divorce in favor of kissing and making up. As months of departure negotiations dragged into years, devoted Anglophiles in Europe fantasized about a second referendum in which all was reconsidered, then forgiven. They seized on the ups and downs of the Liberal Democrats in Britain, the party that is most unabashedly pro-European. They cheered as Labour Party activists overwhelmingly supported a do-over vote at their party conference last fall. European Council President Donald Tusk said in April he’d been warned against dreaming Brexit could be reversed. Still, he resisted, saying, “At least I will not stop dreaming about a better and united Europe.” But some of those who once wished for a change of heart now just want to finalize the breakup and move on. [Brexit]
• ‘End of Western hegemony’: Why does Macron want Russia at Europe’s side?
  Published time: 27 Aug, 2019 13:11 Edited time: 28 Aug, 2019 12:38 French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Western nations against the “strategic mistake” of alienating Russia – but in doing so, he seeks a bigger role for himself in international politics. “We are living the end of Western hegemony,” Macron told diplomats on Tuesday, after hosting the G7 meeting in the city of Biarritz on France’s Atlantic coast over the weekend. He named the rise of Beijing and Moscow as signs of a shift on the world scene. Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic mistake. President Macron went further, even saying that the main problem in the world is no longer Russia but instead the United States Op-ed by John Laughlandhttps://t.co/DzdF0khoh0 — RT (@RT_com) August 20, 2019 Pushing Moscow into Beijing’s arms? “We’re either pushing Russia into isolation, which increases tensions, or to ally itself with other major powers like China, which would not be in our interest,” Macron said, calling for the “rethinking” of relations with Moscow. Otherwise, Europe will be stuck with being “a theater for strategic struggle between the US and Russia.” Also on rt.com Is Europe coming around to Putin’s Munich warning, or is this yet another false dawn? France has long feared a Russia-China alliance, believes Evgeny Osipov, a senior fellow at the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. What has changed recently is the nature of relations between Moscow and Paris. Macron’s rhetoric has somewhat softened in recent months – to the point that during talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, he vowed to do his best to rebuild trust between Russia and the EU. The ties have “stabilized” over the past two years, Osipov, a PhD in history, believes. “Moscow and Paris openly state their differences … yet, they are now ready to gradually promote dialogue and move forward towards full normalization of relations,” he said. Macron even called Russia a “deeply European” country with a future “tied” with the rest of Europe. [Macron] [France Russia]
• The Dutch War on Tourists
  Outnumbered by drunk and disorderly visitors, the Netherlands fights back. Rene Chun September 2019 Issue The Dutch have suffered some brutal occupations, from the Roman empire and Viking raids to Spanish and Nazi rule. But now they face an even larger army of invaders: tourists. In the era of cheap flights and Airbnb, their numbers are staggering. Some 19 million tourists visited the Netherlands last year, more people than live there. For a country half the size of South Carolina, with one of the world’s highest population densities, that’s a lot. And according to the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, the number of annual visitors is projected to increase by 50 percent over the next decade, to 29 million. Urban planners and city officials have a word for what the Netherlands and quite a few other European countries are experiencing: overtourism. With such an influx of humanity comes a decline in quality of life. Residents’ complaints range from inconvenience (crowds spilling from sidewalks to streets) to vandalism to alcohol-induced defilement (vomiting in flower boxes, urinating in mailboxes). Amsterdam, with its museums, guided canal tours, and picturesque architecture, sees much of this collateral damage. To combat it, the city recently passed various pieces of legislation, including a moratorium on new hotel construction in much of the city; new fines (140 euros for public urination or drunk and disorderly conduct); new restrictions on Airbnb rentals (30 nights a year per unit); and a combination of bans and restrictions on new tourist-centric businesses, such as bike-rental outfits and donut shops, in the historic city center. Guided tours of the city’s Red Light District will be banned in January 2020, and thanks to new government regulations, many of its cannabis “coffee shops”—the first of which dates back to 1967—have closed. There’s even talk of charging day-trippers to set foot in the city, a bold policy recently enacted in Venice. Perhaps most telling, earlier this year the Dutch tourism board officially shifted its mission from “destination promotion” to “destination management.” [Netherlands] [Tourism]
• PSV Eindhoven apologizes for using design of Japan's Rising Sun flag
  Posted : 2019-09-08 14:56 Updated : 2019-09-08 17:41 PSV Eindhoven used the design of Japan's Rising Sun flag in promoting a new player. PSV's Instagram and Facebook By Jung Min-ho PSV Eindhoven, a popular Dutch football club, has apologized for using the design of Japan's Rising Sun flag ? a symbol of Japan's wartime aggression ? in promoting a new player last month. After signing a contract with Japanese midfielder Ritsu Doan, 21, on Aug. 28, PSV posted his photo decorated with the flag design on social media, which drew a torrent of complaints. "We posted the image that many people found unpleasant," PSV said in a Korean statement Sunday. "Some people pointed out that it was an inconsiderate, unwise choice (of image) … We'd like to tell you that it was never our intention to upset any of our fans." After hundreds of people complained, the club removed the flag pattern from the image. Since its defeat in World War II, Germany has strictly banned the use of any patterns or designs that invoke the swastika flag ? a symbol of Hitler's Nazi era. [Japanese colonialism]
• Scotland Has Only One Move to React to Boris Johnson’s Maneuvers
  September 8, 2019 The prime minister’s coming suspension of parliament means Scotland must move swiftly with a vote on independence, writes Craig Murray. By Craig Murray CraigMurray.org.uk Prime Minister Boris Johnson crossed the Rubicon by suspending Parliament at a crucial time. The United Kingdom has found itself with the most right-wing government in nearly two hundred years. I still find it hard to believe that Chancellor Sajid Javid, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Home Secretary Priti Patel hold great offices. Even that minority of those voting who put this Tory minority government in place did not expect that. Now that right wing coup is being doubled down on by the deliberate suspension of the Westminster parliament just as the most crucial and divisive issue in several generations is being resolved. There is an irony here. Johnson has been able to take over without facing the electorate because of the polite constitutional fiction that it is the same Conservative government continuing and nothing has changed. Yet he justifies the prorogation of parliament by the argument that it is a new government and a new Queen’s Speech is thus needed. Johnson is of course famously in favor of having cake and eating it, but the chutzpah of this is breathtaking. As countries slip to the far right, the failure of the more decent forces in society to unite and to react with sufficient vigor is crucial. Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats, and others need to stop their caviling and get behind opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn’s no-confidence plans. Here in Scotland, it ought to be a matter of deep shame if we do not now immediately move decisively to claim Independence. The Scottish National Party needs to stop prattling on as if keeping the U.K. in the EU was the priority. No. The priority is Independence, and Independence Now.[Brexit] [Johnson] [Scotland] [Independence] [Monarchy]
• A Trump Brexit Threatens
  September 6, 2019 Rapacious U.S. interests lurk behind Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit bluster, which would imperil Britain’s welfare state & move the UK even closer to U.S. Empire, says John Wight. By John Wight in Edinburgh, Scotland Special to Consortium Trump’s otherworldly vice president, Mike Pence, has just said more in one short sentence to unravel the complexities of the Brexit crisis that continues to bedevil the UK, than the ocean of column inches that have been devoted to the subject since the referendum was held in 2016. Speaking at a black tie event in London on Thursday night, attended by an array of business executives, Pence proclaimed, “The minute the UK is out, America is in.” Pence, a man who stands as living proof that human evolution is not wedded to an ever upwards path, delivered these words with the bombast of a Roman proconsul addressing the notables of a soon-to-be client state. Thus let there be no doubt that the hard no-deal Brexit advocated by the UK’s newly installed Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his supporters is to all intents a Trump Brexit – one that will see the UK economy opened up to the tender mercies of U.S. corporations on terms set not by London but Washington. [Brexit] [US domination] [Scottish Independence]
• Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament is an affront to democracy
  MPs must pass a no-confidence vote in the government and trigger a general election The editorial board WORCESTER, ENGLAND - MAY 16: Boris Johnson MParrives in Stafford to board the Vote Leave, Brexit Battle Bus on May 17, 20016 in Stafford, England. Boris Johnson and the Vote Leave campaign are touring the UK in their Brexit Battle Bus. The campaign is hoping to persuade voters to back leaving the European Union in the Referendum on the 23rd June 2016. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Boris Johnson's protestations that he is doing nothing abnormal are as disingenuous as the claims plastered across the bus from which he fronted the Leave campaign in 2016 © Getty The editorial board August 28, 2019 Boris Johnson has detonated a bomb under the constitutional apparatus of the United Kingdom. The prime minister’s request to the Queen to suspend parliament for up to five weeks, ostensibly to prepare a new legislative programme, is without modern precedent. It is an intolerable attempt to silence parliament until it can no longer halt a disastrous crash-out by the UK from the EU on October 31. The seat of British democracy, long admired worldwide, is being denied a say on the most consequential decision facing the country in more than four decades. So, too, are the British people — in whose name Mr Johnson claims to be acting. It is time for parliamentarians to bring down his government in a no-confidence vote, paving the way for an election in which the people can express their will. [Brexit] [Parliament] [Suspension]
• Revealed: How a secret Dutch mole aided the U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet cyberattack on Iran
  Kim Zetter and Huib ModderkolkContributors ,Yahoo News•September 2, 2019 For years, an enduring mystery has surrounded the Stuxnet virus attack that targeted Iran’s nuclear program: How did the U.S. and Israel get their malware onto computer systems at the highly secured uranium-enrichment plant? The first-of-its-kind virus, designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, effectively launched the era of digital warfare and was unleashed some time in 2007, after Iran began installing its first batch of centrifuges at a controversial enrichment plant near the village of Natanz. The courier behind that intrusion, whose existence and role has not been previously reported, was an inside mole recruited by Dutch intelligence agents at the behest of the CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, according to sources who spoke with Yahoo News. An Iranian engineer recruited by the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD provided critical data that helped the U.S. developers target their code to the systems at Natanz, according to four intelligence sources. That mole then provided much-needed inside access when it came time to slip Stuxnet onto those systems using a USB flash drive. The Dutch were asked in 2004 to help the CIA and Mossad get access to the plant, but it wasn’t until three years later that the mole, who posed as a mechanic working for a front company doing work at Natanz, delivered the digital weapon to the targeted systems. “[T]he Dutch mole was the most important way of getting the virus into Natanz,” one of the sources told Yahoo. [Stuxnet] [Cyberwar] [Netherlands] [Traitor]
• Mike Pence accused of humiliating hosts in Ireland: 'He shat on the carpet'
  The vice-president’s comments on Brexit while visiting Ireland and his stay at his boss’s golf course did not go down well Edward Helmore Thu 5 Sep 2019 16.26 BST Missteps during Mike Pence’s visit to Ireland that included controversial praise of the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, have led to accusations of betrayal and “humiliation”. One Irish Times columnist concluded that the vice-president, a “much-anticipated visitor”, turned out to have “shat on the … carpet”. [Pence]
• Germany needs to ban Hezbollah, US Ambassador Grenell says
  The US ambassador to Germany called for the German government to completely ban the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah as violent terrorists, warning that the group is recruiting members and soliciting donations. US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell on Friday demanded the German government ban Hezbollah in its entirety, saying that the Lebanese paramilitary organization sponsors terrorism and anti-Semitism. In an op-ed published in the German daily Die Welt, Grenell called Hezbollah Iran's "most-violent terrorist representatives," who have "murdered innocent people" for 37 years. It is not the first time Grenell has asked Germany to ban the organization. The op-ed comes ahead of a scheduled visit by the mayor of Tehran, Pirouz Hanachi, to the German capital on Friday. In 2013, the EU banned the military arm of Hezbollah. But in many EU countries, including Germany, the political section is recognized. [US dominance] [Germany] [Hezbollah] [Israel] [Resistance]
• American realism versus Australian independence
  Allan Patience Posted on 2 September 2019 by Susie Menadue During his recent visit to Australia, the American International Relations scholar, Professor John Mearsheimer, warned his Australian hosts that the United States superpower would not tolerate any serious deviation by Canberra away from the ANZUS alliance – for example, by aligning with China against the USA. He was echoing George W. Bush’s warning that “you’re either with us [the USA], or against us.” Mearsheimer’s message was brutally clear: Australia has no choice other than to remain a loyal ally of the USA, come what may, even in the Trump era. His policy prescriptions were absurdly simplistic and morally repugnant. In academic circles Mearsheimer is known as an “offensive realist,” a believer that global affairs are driven primarily by powerful states – might may not be right, but at the end of the day, it is all that matters. Reiterating the central theme of his 2001 book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, he noted with cocksure confidence that the United States is economically and militarily the greatest power on earth and will remain so for the foreseeable future. As with all “great powers” in history, he enthused, the USA therefore will always seek to consolidate and extend its power, aggressively if necessary. That’s the way of international politics, like it or lump it. Mearsheimer noted that the only power challenging America’s hegemony in the contemporary Asia Pacific is China. He believes that a major conflict between the two powers is all but inevitable. He is nonetheless confident that China would come out second best from such a war. But will it? Consider, for example, major wars instigated by America since World War II. Think of the Korean War. For all Mearsheimer’s bluster about America’s military supremacy, the Korean War ended in stalemate (although whether it has “ended” is a moot point). The North Koreans and their Chinese allies pushed the Americans and their allies back to the 38th parallel. That festering stalemate persists to the present day. This was no great victory by a great power. It was a significant American failure of strategy and over-reach. [Australia] [Imperialism; US dominance] [Realism] [Mearsheimer]
• Cardinal Pell’s guilty verdict is deeply troubling
  Ramesh Thakur Posted on 2 September 2019 by John Menadue In 2017, Cardinal George Pell became the highest ranking Catholic Church official to be charged with sex offences as Archbishop of Melbourne (1996–2001). His first trial produced a 10-2 hung jury in favour of acquittal. In the second trial, on 11 December 2018 he was convicted of five charges of sexually assaulting two boys in a sacristy of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne in 1996 on two separate occasions. On 21 August Victoria’s Court of Appeal upheld the conviction by a split 2-1 decision. The alleged misconduct by Pell is deeply unsettling, but his conviction is also deeply disquieting. The suspicion persists that the jury was not so much persuaded of Pell’s guilt by a careful evaluation of the evidence, as swayed by the nature of the alleged offence amidst a climate of abhorrence at the systemic coverup by the church (in which Pell seems to have played a significant part) of priests’ predatory behaviour. Allegations of historical sexual assault are among the easiest to make but the hardest to refute. It must be the only category of crime where inconsistencies, gaps and uncertainty are taken as proof that the alleged incidents did occur and failure to recall, or even actual denial by the supposed victim as with the second boy in the Pell case, is taken as proof of the depth of the victim’s trauma. I write as a non-Christian, non-religious atheist. As someone who went to two different boarding schools between the ages of 5 and 18, run by Italian and Australian Jesuits, I have some insights into the devotion with which most priests dedicate their lives to the selfless service of humanity, amidst the few who sometimes fall off the moral pedestal. The case is that in 1996 Pell abused two choristers. One complained to the police in 2015. As well as the very real danger of false memories, many steps in the sequence of events as described were individually improbable, albeit not impossible. Their cumulative ‘compounding improbability’ stretches credulity beyond reasonable doubt. The allegation that a newly-installed archbishop, interacting with his flock in a crowded public congregation, would wander off into the sacristy and sexually attack two boys whom he had not previously met and not groomed beforehand, despite open doorways and in an extremely tight timeframe, is inherently implausible.....
  Already its most consequential lesson is that any one of us can be convicted on the uncorroborated testimony of a single complainant recalling events as a child, decades after they are alleged to have happened, no matter how implausible the alleged offence and how improbable the concatenation of circumstantial evidence. We all have fathers, brothers and sons. Inverting the fundamental canon of criminal justice into ‘guilty unless proven innocent’ could destroy any of our families. There but for the grace of God indeed. [Pell] [Sex] [Paedophilia] [Evidence]

• Cannabis trial: Dutch cities picked for cafe supply experiment
  By Anna Holligan BBC News, The Hague 30 August 2019 Cannabis cafes in the Netherlands are to be supplied legally with drugs from regulated producers as part of a trial aimed at tackling the black market. Under Dutch law, cannabis can be sold over the counter in licensed coffee shops, but it is currently illegal to produce and supply the drug. The country's loose policy on cannabis has seen criminal enterprises flourish. From 2021, cafes in 10 cities will get a legal supply of "quality" cannabis as part of a four-year experiment. Cultivating cannabis is a contentious issue in the Netherlands, a country famous for its liberal drug laws. Image copyright Willem/Toermalijn coffee Image caption The owner of the Toermalijn coffee shop in Tilburg said quality control "would be great" Cafe owners who provide over-the-counter cannabis have long relied on the illegal market for their supply, and industry insiders have accused the government of facilitating a nonsensical backdoor culture. It is an issue that has often led to large-scale police operations in the country. How will the experiment work? The "weed trials" are aimed at providing a controlled and legalised supply of cannabis, making the industry more transparent and testing whether that will free up police officers to focus on other crimes. The cities chosen, and still to be approved, are: Arnhem, Almere, Breda, Groningen, Heerlen, Hellevoetsluis, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Tilburg and Zaanstad. [Netherlands] [Drugs] [Cannabis]
• Parliament had failed on Brexit long before this prorogation
  Vernon Bogdanor MPs had three years to come up with an alternative to no deal – and they failed Thu 29 Aug 2019 18.29 BST “A constitutional outrage”, declared the Speaker, John Bercow; “a very British coup”, said the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. Not to be outdone, Nicola Sturgeon added “the day any semblance of British democracy died”. Some have compared the situation to 1628, when Charles I prorogued parliament before dispensing with its services entirely. But Charles I was not, unless the history books are grievously mistaken, faced with the problem of implementing the outcome of a referendum. It is time perhaps to tone down the rhetoric and consider the facts. The five-week prorogation appears longer than it is because it includes the three weeks of the party conference season, when parliament does not normally sit. Parliament therefore loses two weeks. In 2014 there was a longer prorogation of 20 days, though that included the period of the European parliament elections and the Whitsun recess. But of course the objection to prorogation has less to do with the time lost than its alleged purpose, frustrating the will of parliament. That the prime minister has unreasonably used his prerogative power to advise the Queen will, no doubt, form the basis of an approach to the courts. Whether that approach succeeds or not, the political dilemma remains: that parliament has willed the end of Brexit without willing the means. MPs have rejected the government’s flagship policy without providing any alternative In 2017, parliament empowered the prime minister to invoke article 50 by the massive majority of 384 votes when MPs passed the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act. But in 2019, the Commons rejected the withdrawal agreement three times. The EU has responded that the agreement cannot be renegotiated. In logic, therefore, the only way to implement Brexit is without a deal. Since every member of the cabinet except for Priti Patel and Theresa Villiers voted at least once for the deal, they can hardly be blamed for the fact that a no-deal Brexit now seems the only logical alternative. [Brexit] [Parliament]
• The Queen Can’t Do Anything About Brexit
  The suspension of Parliament is outrageous—but it’s all Boris Johnson’s fault. By James Palmer | August 29, 2019, 12:18 PM Queen Elizabeth II welcomes the newly elected leader of the Conservative party, Boris Johnson on July 24, 2019 in London, England. Queen Elizabeth II welcomes the newly elected leader of the Conservative party, Boris Johnson on July 24, 2019 in London, England. Victoria Jones/WPA PoolGetty Images Following a request from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Queen Elizabeth II has prorogued the U.K.’s Parliament—temporarily shutting down the United Kingdom’s deliberative body just weeks before the deadline for a no-deal Brexit hits. The move has caused fury, with Speaker of the House John Bercow calling it a “constitutional outrage” and Ruth Davidson, the extremely popular leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, resigning in protest. Foreign Policy explains just what all this means. [Brexit] [Suspension] [Monarchy]
• Defence exports – what are we subsidising?
  Kellie Tranter Posted on 30 August 2019 by John Menadue Last month Australian defence company, Electro Optic Systems (EOS), again denied its weapons system was being used in the Yemen war when photographs surfaced of four consignments of its Remote Weapons System for export in June and July to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. But what slipped through in relation to EOS is its February 2019 media release confirming its collaboration with Israeli company, Elbit Systems to develop a turret that ‘adds a next generation, medium calibre turret to the EOS family of weapon systems and has been designed to meet a rapidly emerging global market worth more than AUD$4 billion.’ To the uninitiated Elbit System, Israel’s largest privately-owned arms and security company, is a long standing target of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement because of Palestinian human rights concerns. It has resulted in divestment from global sovereign funds, banks and investment firms. This week the Intercept reported that Elbit Systems has frequently touted a major advantage over competitors because ‘its products are “field-proven” on Palestinians.’ It further reports that ‘The company built surveillance sensors for Israel’s separation barrier through the West Bank, which has been deemed illegal under international law, as well as around the Gaza Strip and on the northern border with Lebanon and Syria.’ The Government has provided more than $36 million in financial assistance to EOS. Why? What for? Would taxpayers be comfortable with its collaboration with a company that ‘produces internationally banned cluster munitions, white phosphorus bombs and most of the drones the Israeli military uses to attack Palestinian civilians.’ [Arms sales] [Yemen] [Israel] [Repression] [Australia]
• Is Pine Gap for Arms Control or the US fighting machine?
  Brian Toohey Posted on 29 August 2019 by Peter Menadue Labor governments surrendered Australian sovereignty in other ways by agreeing in 2008 to renew the lease on North West Cape without any conditions on how US nuclear attack submarines could use the base[i]. This could include undermining China’s ability to deter a nuclear war.[ii] Labor subsequently agreed to let the US install long-range ground sensors at NWC to help conduct space warfare against Russia and China in violation of Australia’s support for a treaty outlawing the militarisation of space.[iii] The public were not told about the significance of these developments, nor about similar changes at the Pine Gap satellite base near Alice Springs. The US National Security Agency essentially runs Pine Cap’s role in intercepting a wide range of electronic signals providing real-time targeting information for battlefield use by US forces. It also helps detect data on heat emissions from missiles, jet engines and ground explosions that feed into military operations, including space warfare, regardless of whether Australia opposes a particular US war. [iv] [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Pine Gap] [Surveillance]
• Australia’s strategic folly: lessons from Barbara Tuchman.
  Dennis Argall Posted on 29 August 2019 by Louisa Gunning We arein a situation where decisions that seem simple can commit Australia to fundamental errors of strategic judgement. The decision to send a ship and a plane and headquarters staff to a new venture with the United States in the Middle East is foolish. It is described in isolation by the government but is additional to ongoing ADF operations in the Middle East, which have lacked legality since 2003. The late US historian Barbara Tuchman wrote two books of great relevance: about the lack of non-military options in 1914, and the tendency of governments to make decisions contrary to their core strategic interests. The first of those, The Guns of August, saved us from nuclear war in 1962, the second, The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, is less well known because… well, because statesmen are not foolish and don’t make mistakes. In early 1962, American historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the beginnings of the First World War: The Guns of August, UK title August 1914. It quickly appeared in the best seller list of the New York Times. President John Kennedy read it and urged his National Security Council to read it. Then in October 1962 came the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is generally recognised that Kennedy’s reading of The Guns of August was a major factor in the rejection by his National Security Council of advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to go to war. Tuchman’s lesson was that the war went as it did because of the absence of alternatives to war in strategic thinking. But Tuchman’s lesson was forgotten well before the 9/11 events of 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Not only did the invasion fail, but our vocabulary, our benchmarks and capacity for debate and strategic though have been shifted dramatically. Military options rule and strategic advice in Australia as in the US has come to mean the advice of the military, intelligence and security industries. Trump’s first National Security Advisor, A R McMaster rose to his brief fame as author of Dereliction of Duty, which begins with a diatribe against Kennedy for rejecting the advice of the Joint Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1984 Tuchman published The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, setting out as commonplace the paradox of governments adopting courses contrary to national interest. Less popular than The Guns of August: who wants to acknowledge folly? Apart from Tuchman we should take note of Clausewitz, so often quoted for observing that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. What is generally forgotten is Clausewitz’s advice that statesmen should be aware that war, once embarked upon as an instrument of policy, tends to drive out policy and pursue its own ends. As has happened in Afghanistan and the Middle East and now with China, where policy arises significantly from navy heroics in the South China Sea, where we are supposedly entitled to venture, though China makes scandalised headlines sending a surveillance ship to observe US-Australian exercises in Australia. [Australia] [Militarisation] [Allegiance] [Folly] [US dominance]
• Battles, campaigns, and wars
  Mike Scrafton Posted on 26 August 2019 by John Menadue The United States Studies Centre’s latest publication, Averting Crisis: American strategy, military spending and collective defence in the Indo-Pacific, contrary to its title, offers up a path to crisis. While the report draws attention to the fading of the previously unchallengeable military dominance of the US, the recommendations for Australia are flawed. Averting Crisis reiterates the US’s National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy views of China and Russia as rising strategic competitors. It highlights the shift in the mission of the US military’s from being prepared to fight two middle level regional wars to being able to ‘comprehensively defeat one great power adversary’. The report’s premise is that the Pentagon is unlikely to meet its new mission. [Imperialism] [Indo-Pacific] [US global strategy]
• 3 European nations condemn North Korea’s missile launches
  This Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019, photo provided Sunday, Aug. 25, by the North Korean government, shows the test firing of an unspecified missile at an undisclosed location in North Korea. North Korea fired two suspected short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Saturday in the seventh weapons launch in a month, South Korea’s military said, a day after it vowed to remain America’s biggest threat in protest of U.S.-led sanctions on the country. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) (Associated Press) By Associated Press August 27 at 8:13 PM UNITED NATIONS — Three important U.S. allies on Tuesday condemned the “repeated provocative launches” of ballistic missiles by North Korea, saying they violate U.N. Security Council resolutions banning any such activity. The United Kingdom, France and Germany issued a joint statement after a closed council briefing by U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo that they requested because of serious concerns at the series of missile launches in recent weeks by North Korea. The three European council members urged North Korea “to engage in meaningful negotiations with the U.S.,” as President Donald Trump and its leader Kim Jong Un agreed to on June 30 at their meeting in the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. [EU] [US dominance] [US NK Negotiations] [Inversion]
• Is Britain Becoming a Failed State?
  Aug 20, 2019 Chris Patten Failed states used to be largely the preserve of the developing world, where the institutions of democracy do not have deep roots. But given the extent to which the Brexit campaign has undermined Britain's institutions through lies, it is reasonable to worry that the country will soon come to resemble a tinpot dictatorship. LONDON – What is a failed state? Not so long ago, when I was Britain’s Overseas Development Minister, and later European Commissioner for External Affairs, I would probably have tried to answer the question by pointing to specific examples, including several countries in Latin America and Africa. I would have highlighted tribal conflicts, military coups, economic failure, extremes of poverty, and high mortality rates. I might have referred to the failure of more prosperous societies to ensure that globalization helped everyone and did not leave some communities trapped in deprivation. In addition, I would certainly have mentioned systems of government that had ceased to deliver what they were intended to do, and certainly what outside well-wishers hoped and assumed they would do. By these latter criteria, one no longer needs to travel to Latin America or Africa to discover failure. Indeed, many of us in Britain worry that failure is increasingly evident within our own borders – which are soon to be clogged after Brexit – and particularly in the way the country is governed. [Boris Johnson] [Brexit] [Failed state] [Conservative Party] [Establishment]
• From Diplomat to Defector Thae Yong-ho & Anna Fifield
  Thae Yong-ho is one of the highest-ranking officials to defect from North Korea. What can he tell us about the secrets and lies of one of the world's most repressive regimes? Hosted by Peter Hartcher. In the Drama Theatre | View Seat Map Talks & Ideas | Antidote Pre-sale and on-sale information One event on Sunday 1 September, 2019 Standard tickets from $33 + $8.50 Booking Fee This talk will run for approximately 60 minutes. In English | Audio loop available & wheelchair accessible | Live captioned talk Suitable for all ages “There was no hope for this regime.” Thae Yong-ho Share this Event The inner workings of a totalitarian state In North Korea, Kim Jong-un's dictatorship ensures tight control. TVs and radios are tuned to state channels, leadership respond to threat by bloody purges, and hundreds of thousands of dissenters and their families are sent to labour and prison camps. Thae Yong-Ho, once the deputy diplomat in North Korea's British embassy, defected to South Korea in 2016, making him a target for assassination. He joins us to give deep insight into his former life, from escorting dictator Kim Jong-un's brother to an Eric Clapton concert in London, to methods of finding food for a starving population. Yong-ho is joined by journalist Anna Fifield, who recently released her behind-the-scenes story of the rise and reign of Kim Jong-un, The Great Successor. This will be a brilliant opportunity to get the inside word on one of the world's most secretive and strange totalitarian states. [Propaganda] [Australia] [Thae Yong Ho] [Judith Neilson] [Oligarch]
• Germany spends millions of euros on US military bases
  The United States has put pressure on Germany to increase defense spending and has threatened to pull troops out of the country. The German government has provided €243 million ($270 million) over the past seven years to support US troops based in the country. The sum accounts for costs such as benefits for former workers and operating costs associated with maintaining buildings and other properties. Read more: US military in Germany: What you need to know Another €480 million in financial support has gone toward contributing to NATO-related construction costs in Germany, "almost exclusively" on account of the United States. The numbers were revealed in a parliamentary response from the Finance Ministry to the Left party that was seen by the dpa news agency. Germany is the European country where most US troops are posted, with 35,000 soldiers deployed there along with 17,000 American civilians. Around 12,000 German civilians also work in jobs connected to the US military. [US Germany] [Bases] [Russia confrontation] [Tribute] [US dominance] [Imperialism]
• Latest Australian Foreign Policy Venture in the Middle East a Symptom of a Much Wider Problem
  James O’Neill Posted on 23 August 2019 The announcement by the Prime Minister that Australia would be sending a military force to the Middle East is the latest in a series of foreign policy blunders that fails to recognise Australia’s foreign policy interests. The Prime Minster has announced yet another commitment of Australian forces, this time to the Persian Gulf. A small Australian naval contingent will join British and US forces to protect shipping from what is being labeled as “Iranian aggression” in the region. The small Australian naval contingent is of little or no military value, being far too small to have any relevant military impact upon the hundreds of ships that traverse the waterway on a daily basis. It could be sunk with minimal effort by the Iranian Navy should the latter so choose to do so. [Iran confrontation] [Australia] [US dominance] [Subservience]
• Forging a national consensus on Australia’s external security
  (The Strategist, 19 Aug 2019) John McCarthy. Posted on 23 August 2019 With the federal election out of the way, and some welcome stability in the leadership of the major political parties in prospect, Australia now faces the challenge of forging a national consensus on an external security policy that reflects our self-confidence and maturity as a nation. There’s been an upsurge in debate in this country on our foreign and defence policy settings, the quality of which has been mixed. (It is ill-advised, for example, to mention Munich or the Nazis other than in a precise reference to history.) However, some of it has been very good. The important thing is that Australians are now engaged in thinking about our external posture. For example, in recent weeks Australian National University Professor Hugh White and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer (on one occasion appearing together) have spoken on China–US issues to audiences whose size would have been unimaginable a year or so ago. Irrespective of where Australians actually sit on the subject matter, we could be beginning to recognise that the strategic challenges we face as a nation today are as important as the questions we faced over immigration and the Cold War in the generation after World War II, or with the challenging external conditions that gave rise to the economic reforms of Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard in the 1980s and 1990s. But the debate has been wanting in two important respects. First, security is not just about guns. It’s also about butter. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was being facile when he said, ‘You can sell your soul for a pile of soybeans, or you can protect your people.’ It’s not an either-or choice. You need to sell butter (or soybeans) to buy guns. Sensible external security policy often exacts an internal cost. For example, we are rightly putting a major emphasis on the South Pacific. However, as we have recently seen, South Pacific leaders are not just interested in money for climate change remediation. They want us to change our own policies, which the current government doesn’t want to do. And some of the responses we make to Chinese actions might well involve retributive costs to us. But, in the end, it makes no sense to debate a binary choice about prosperity versus security. It has to be about how to enhance and manage both because one is interlocked with the other. This task involves the constant balance of risk and opportunity. [Australia] [Foreign policy] [Allegiance] [Guns and butter]
• China policy drowning in empty rhetoric – time for an informed public debate
  Joseph Camilleri Posted on 21 August 2019 China is in the news and rightly so. If it’s not events in Hong Kong, it’s the China-US trade dispute, or tensions in the South China Sea, Beijing’s expanding influence in the South Pacific, the prospect of a Chinese military base in Cambodia, China’s treatment of the Uighur minority, or China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). For Australia, this is a time for uncomfortable soul searching. Sadly, much public commentary to date has been less than helpful. Some are bent on treating each development in isolation, others use evidence selectively to paint a crude picture of the Chinese threat. Andrew Hastie’s alarmist and incoherent outburst is but the tip of the iceberg. The confusion inevitably filters through to any discussions of policy options. Some stress the need for an even closer military alliance with the United States. Others float the idea of acquiring a nuclear arsenal. Others still think we can have our cake and eat it – maintain our lucrative trade with China, while actively seeking to contain China’s rise, whether in the South Pacific, the South China Sea, or Southeast Asia. Much of this rests on the obsession with the ‘Chinese threat’, even though China’s capacity to project military muscle pales in comparison with America’s global military reach. China, it is true, now has the world’s second largest military budget, as part of an extensive modernisation program. Its current defence spending has risen steady year in year out over the last two decades, and is estimated by SIPRI to have reached US$240 billion in 2018. It remains nevertheless well below the Pentagon’s 2018 US$640 billion budget. Over the last decade the US military budget as a percentage of total government spending has hovered between 12 and 9 percent. China’s has fallen sharply from 12 percent in 2001 to 5.5 percent in 2018. As for claims that China is about to gain a string of military bases from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, little has yet come to pass. As of now China has just one military base on foreign soil, in Djibouti which also hosts US, French and Japanese bases. [China confrontation] [Australia]
• Our China Threat is based on a fundamental error
  (Australian Financial Review, 19 August 2019) Geoff Raby Posted on 20 August 2019 Andrew Hastie’s intervention on the China Threat helpfully highlights the extent to which Australia’s intelligence, security and defence establishment (ISDE) is running Australia’s China foreign policy. In stark language he has laid out many of the assumptions that underly the supposed Threat. Contrary to the Prime Minister’s assertion, as Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, his is no mere private view. Hastie’s dog-whistle invocation of the Maginot did not need him to compare China with Nazi Germany, which he did not. But when Germany overran France it was run by a Nazi Government. His implication was clear. China needs to be confronted at every turn. But the assumptions underlying the China Threat are contested, as are the historical analogies used to support it. Hastie has done little more than repackage the tired fare from the US China Threat people, for which there is so much appetite among Australian conservative think tanks and media. Echoing the sentiments of Vice President Pence from his Hudson Institute speech of October last year, Hastie’s main point is that this is an ideological struggle with China. Most of Hastie’s assertions derive from arch-China hawk Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Hastie’s reference to a “ten decade” struggle is based on Pillsbury’s math. Of the many refutable assumptions underlying Pillsbury’s influential book, perhaps the most flimsy, which Hastie hangs his hat on, is a type of buyer’s regret. It is asserted that China has welched on an implied understanding that as its economy grew and its people prospered through greater integration into the international system, China’s political system would become more liberal and democratic. It is not China’s fault if some in the US deluded themselves. China never indicated that “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” meant anything other than the Communist Party remaining in power. If neo-conservative ideologues in the US didn’t understand that, then the same wishful thinking was never a serious premise for Australia’s and just about everyone else’s engagement with China. Engagement of China in the international system was because the alternative of not doing so would be potentially far worse, and for the economic benefits that would and have flowed. As with all sound foreign policy, it was based on self-interest as, of course, was the decision by China itself to engage. China’s becoming a liberal democracy was not part of the deal. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Allegiance]
• Things haven’t been this bad between Australia and China in 30 years
  Michael Sainsbury (Crikey, 14 August 2019) Posted on 19 August 2019 The Morrison government’s increasing ties to the Trump administration is, by consequence, achieving quite the opposite of its previous goal of “resetting” Australia’s relationship with China. This has only been exacerbated over the past week by a string of Liberal Party figures including Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security chair Andrew Hastie and, tellingly, still-influential former prime minister John Howard speaking out against China’s authoritarian regime in the wake of ongoing and increasingly violent anti-Beijing protests in Hong Kong. But it is now clear that the government is split on China. It is stuck between Canberra’s hardline and increasingly powerful security departments, and the firm middle-way rest led by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Beijing will be more than aware of this and the concomitant rise of security hawks in Canberra with Defence Signals chief Mike Burgess named as the next chief of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Tony Abbott’s former foreign affairs adviser and China hawk Andrew Shearer, dumped by Malcolm Turnbull, returning to favour as cabinet secretary. [Australia] China confrontation] [Allegiance] [ASIO] [DFAT]
• Talk of Moving UK’s Embassy in Israel
  August 21, 2019 As things stand, the EU prohibition on relocating embassies to Jerusalem will fall on Nov. 1, writes Craig Murray. Brexit could open the way for a U.K. embassy in Jerusalem. (Christoph Scholz, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons) By Craig Murray CraigMurray.org.uk Following U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton’s talks with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his ministers in London last week, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has been asked to speed up contingency planning for the U.K. to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with an eye to an “early announcement” post Brexit. The U.K. is currently bound by an EU common foreign policy position not to follow the United States in moving its embassy to Jerusalem. As things stand, that prohibition will fall on Nov. 1. FCO officials had previously been asked to produce a contingency plan, but this involved the construction of a £14 million new embassy and a four-year timescale. They have now been asked to go back and look at a quick fix involving moving the ambassador and immediate staff to Jerusalem and renaming the consulate already there as the embassy. This could be speedily announced, and then implemented in about a year.
  Firstly, they anticipate that Labour opposition to the move can be used to yet again raise accusations of “anti-Semitism” against Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader. [Brexit] [Boris Johnson] [Israel] [US dominance] [Anti-Semitism] [Corbyn]
• Australian-Dutch comfort woman passes away at age 96
  Posted on : Aug.21,2019 18:03 KST Modified on : Aug.21,2019 18:03 KST Australian-Dutch human rights activist Jan Ruff O'Herne passed away on Aug. 19. O’Herne was among the women forced into sexual slavery under the Japanese imperial army during World War II, those who were referred to as the “comfort women.” O’Herne passed away in Adelaide, Australia, under the care of her family. She was 96 years old. After spending decades in silence about her past, O’Herne became inspired by Korean comfort women who spoke out about their experiences in the 1990s and spent the rest of her life campaigning against wartime sexual violence. The photo shows O’Herne with South Korean comfort women survivors in a hearing organized by the US House of Representatives’ subcommittee of Asia, the Pacific, and Nonproliferation in Washington, DC, in February 2007. [Comfort women] [Dutch]
• Australia says it will join U.S.-led defense effort in Strait of Hormuz
  Colin Packham SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia will join the United States in a coalition of countries protecting oil tankers and cargo ships from threats posed by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during a joint press conference at the Istana Presidential Palace in Singapore, 07 June 2019. Wallace Woon/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Global commodity trading has been rocked in recent months after a series of attacks on international merchant vessels, which the United States has blamed on Iran, and the seizure of a British tanker. Tehran has denied the accusations. “This destabilizing behavior is a threat to Australia’s interests in the region,” Morrison told a news conference in Canberra. “The government has decided that it is in Australia’s national interest to work with our international partners to contribute. Our contribution will be limited in scope and it will be time-bound,” he said. Morrison said Australia will send a P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane to the Middle East for one month before the end of 2019, while an Australian frigate will be deployed in January 2020 for six months. Australia’s deployment will expand U.S-led efforts to secure the strait, which lies between Oman and Iran, after tensions spiked between Iran and the West. [Iran confrontation] [Australia] [US dominance] [Subservience]
• ‘Australia agrees to everything’
  Alison Broinowski Posted on 14 August 2019 Australia and the United States see the world through the same eyes, Scott Morrison told sailors on USS Ronald Reagan during the Talisman Sabre war games on 12 July.But after hearing what Mike Pompeo and John Joseph Mearsheimer had to say in Australia in recent days, we might conclude that if our eyes are the same, the world we see is different. Professor Mearsheimer is a former US airforce officer turned academic, and a ‘realist’ in foreign policy. Now at the University of Chicago, he absorbed from Columbia University’s Kenneth Waltz the idea that because there is no higher authority over states, the world is anarchic. The need for security in such a lawless world, he argues, leads nations to try to maximise their capacity for aggression. They need alliances with others, but they don’t last. Aggressive war is a legitimate instrument of statecraft, to be used when another major power threatens a region of importance to a hegemonic state. This is what Mearsheimer calls ‘offensive realism’. [Realism] [US global strategy]
• British government braces for economic, social chaos in event of a ‘no-deal Brexit,’ leaked memo shows
  By Karla Adam and Hannah Knowles August 18 at 5:53 PM LONDON — An increasingly likely “no-deal” Brexit could wreak havoc on Britain’s economy, infrastructure and social fabric, the government says in classified documents leaked to a British newspaper. The costs of food and social care would rise, while medicines could be delayed, the Sunday Times reported. Border delays would interrupt fuel supplies. Ports would suffer severe disruptions and recover only partially after three months, leaving traffic at 50 to 70 percent of the current flow. Those are some of the effects predicted by “Operation Yellowhammer,” which the newspaper said was compiled this month by Britain’s Cabinet Office and available to those with “need to know” security clearances [Brexit] [No-deal]
• A urinal in a Scottish pub reveals why toilets matter in international politics
  June 6, 2019 12.41pm BST Authors Rhys Crilley Post-Doctoral Researcher, The Open University Robert A Saunders Professor of History, Politics and Geography, Farmingdale State College The Lismore is named after a Scottish island where the inhabitants were forcibly evicted during the Highland Clearances. Author provided If you wanted to see international politics in action, where would you go? Maybe the UN headquarters in New York to see diplomats debating resolutions of global import? Or drop in on one of the world’s many financial hubs, where trading shapes international markets and determines the success or failure of nations. But you probably wouldn’t visit a toilet in a Glasgow pub, would you? Our research analyses the political significance of the urinal in the Lismore – a traditional Scottish pub in the Partick area of Glasgow – and argues that mundane spaces like this are important for understanding contemporary international politics. In January 2018, a Canadian visitor to The Lismore tweeted a picture of a plaque that sits above the urinal in the male toilet, adding in colourful language that the Scots don’t mess around when it comes to calling things out. The tweet went viral, and was featured in local and national press. “Brutal reason this pub really wants you to make use of their urinals”, read one headline. That reason is the Lismore’s urinal is dedicated to three perpetrators of the Highland Clearances – the brutal sweeping of crofters from the land to make way for sheep farming in the 18th and 19th centuries – a series of events often claimed to be Britain’s first act of ethnic cleansing. Pissing on the past In the Lismore, male patrons are invited to “pay their respects” to those responsible for the Highland Clearances by urinating beneath plaques featuring the names of three agents – George Granville (the infamous Duke of Sutherland), Patrick Sellar and Colonel Fell – all key figures in the forced eviction of Highlanders from 1750 to the mid-1800s. [Highland clearances] [Capitalism]
• China Hysteria Down Under
  by Binoy Kampmark August 13, 2019 The blinkered security establishment is standard fare in politics. From Washington to Manila, we hear of terrors and concerns which tend to more spectral than not. Legitimate concerns such as catastrophic environmental failure, or a nuclear accident, are treated with a sigh, its warners doomsday advocates rather than reasoned citizens. It is the unseen demon that preoccupies. One such blinkered devotee is Andrew Hastie, an Australian member of parliament who prides himself as something of a security sage. (Suffice to say that experience serving as a member of the Special Air Services Regiment does not necessarily qualify you as an expert in world politics.) He chairs the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security, a grouping of parliamentarians that has done more harm to Australian civil liberties than most institutions. Lacking an inner cabinet role, he has the freedom to mouth some of his richer views, possibly with promptings from the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. Best get the lowly man to do the damage if you want a view known widely. [China confrontation] [Australia] [Yellow Peril] [Hastie] [MISCOM] [AMB]

• Morning after: Boris Johnson recovers from Lebedev’s exotic Italian party
  Exclusive: New prime minister refuses to say if he abandoned security for 2018 night in billionaire’s castle Nick Hopkins Fri 26 Jul 2019 12.00 BST Last modified on Fri 26 Jul 2019 19.05 BST A trip Boris Johnson made to Italy for a party held by a billionaire socialite ended with the then foreign secretary at an airport “looking like he had slept in his clothes”, struggling to walk in a straight line and telling other passengers he had had a heavy night, the Guardian has been told. Pictures of the now prime minister along with an account from a fellow traveller shed further light on Johnson’s weekend away at the home of the media owner Evgeny Lebedev, who is known for hosting uproarious parties for the rich and famous at his converted castle near Perugia. Johnson has refused to answer questions about the visit in April last year, including whether he flew to Italy against the advice of his officials and without the 24/7 security detail usually assigned to the foreign secretary. [Boris Johnson]
• A Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite: Children Abandoned in the Night Woods
  It may sound extreme, but it’s normal in the Netherlands. By Ellen Barry Photographs by Dmitry Kostyukov July 21, 2019 In the Dutch scouting tradition known as “dropping” groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base.CreditDmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times ImageIn the Dutch scouting tradition known as “dropping” groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base. In the Dutch scouting tradition known as “dropping” groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base.CreditDmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times AUSTERLITZ, the Netherlands — Shortly after 10 p.m. on a recent night, a car came to a stop at the edge of the woods. The door opened to release three children: towheaded boys of 12 and 15, and a 12-year-old girl with dark pigtails and an emoji-covered backpack. Then the driver threw the car into gear and sped away, gravel crunching under its tires. They were tiny figures at the foot of the forest, miles from the summer camp they were attending, with only a primitive GPS to indicate the right direction. Darkness was falling. And they were alone. They peered into the night: Was this the path? “Could be,” said Thomas, the 12-year-old team leader. And then, because there was nothing else to do, they plunged into the woods. Sign up for The Interpreter Subscribe for original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week, from columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub. This is the Dutch scouting tradition known as a “dropping,” in which groups of children, generally pre-teenagers, are deposited in a forest and expected to find their way back to base. It is meant to be challenging, and they often stagger in at 2 or 3 in the morning. [Netherlands] [Media]
• Putin Confirms: Sergei Skripal Wanted To Go Back To Russia
  Filmmaker Oliver Stone recently interviewed the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. The transcript was published yesterday evening. Most of the interview is about Ukraine. A separate piece will cover that country. There is also a passage about the U.S. election. But the most interesting bits from Putin are about the Skripal affair. The British and Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia were impaired by some chemical substance in early March 2018 in Salisbury. Britain blamed the incident on Russia. CIA Director Gina Haspel, a former CIA station chief in London, used fake pictures of the incident to deceive Trump and to push him to kick out 60 Russian diplomats. (The NYT later ran cover for Haspel.) We have speculated since the very beginning of the Skirpal case that the 'former' spy wanted to go back to Russia. Putin now confirms, to my knowledge for the first time, that this was the case (underline added): Oliver Stone: What has happened to Skripal? Where is he? Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. He is a spy, after all. He is always in hiding. Oliver Stone: They say he was going to come back to Russia. He had some information. Vladimir Putin: Yes, I have been told that he wants to make a written request to come back. Oliver Stone: He knew still and he wanted to come back. He had information that he could give to the world press here in Russia. Vladimir Putin: I doubt it. He has broken the ranks already. What kind of information can he possess? [Skripal]
• Andrea Camilleri, beloved creator of Inspector Montalbano, dies aged 93
  One of Italy’s most popular authors, Camilleri wrote 23 novels starring his Sicilian detective, selling more than 30m copies around the world Alison Flood Wed 17 Jul 2019 09.24 BST One of Italy’s most popular authors and creator of the Inspector Montalbano series, Andrea Camilleri has died at the age of 93. Camilleri, who was born in Sicily in 1925, was taken to hospital in Rome in June after going into cardiac arrest. The author had written a handful of historical novels when, in 1994 at the age of almost 70, he wrote The Shape of Water, the first book starring his now famous Sicilian detective. Set in the fictional town of Vigata, Camilleri was originally going to call his central detective The Commissioner, but decided to pay tribute to the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the Spanish author of novels about the investigator Pepe Carvalho.
• Diplomats Fear Chilling Effect of British Ambassador’s Resignation
  Worries over leaks could curtail the flow of frank information from foreign embassies in Washington. By Robbie Gramer | July 9, 2019, 5:46 PM British Ambassador Kim Darroch speaks to guests at the ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2017. British Ambassador Kim Darroch speaks to guests at the ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C., on April 28, 2017. Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Capitol File Magazine The humiliation of British Ambassador to the United States Kim Darroch, who until a week ago was hosting senior Trump administration officials at dinners and parties but who resigned Wednesday after being cut off by an angry U.S. president, could make foreign diplomats think twice before offering honest assessments of the Trump administration to their governments, veteran diplomats say. The United Kingdom’s envoy to Washington, who has been in his job since 2016, found himself on the receiving end of blistering tweets from U.S. President Donald Trump after the leak of Darroch’s confidential cables to London, which cast a negative light on the inner workings of the Trump administration. Beyond back-and-forths on Twitter between Trump and the British foreign secretary, the leaking of a massive trove of diplomatic cables could have other lasting impacts, causing diplomats to self-censor their cables and policy recommendations. [Darroch] [Leal] [WikiLeaks]
• Not quite Custer’s last stand, yet
  Jack Waterford Posted on 9 July 2019 Australia must have an independent defence policy as American power in Asia and the Pacific wanes. But there’s no reason to think us friendless. Hugh White is travelling the nation’s highways and byways trying to scare Australians out of their complacency about the nation’s security — not least by raising again the prospect of Australia’s being naked and abandoned, particularly by our once great and once powerful friend, our bones being picked over by China, or perhaps Indonesia. He is right to be doing so, and some of his critics are misinterpreting his warnings as prophecies or statements of what he wants. His new book, How to defend Australia, (Latrobe Uni Press) should be read by anyone keen to be well informed about our national interests and how they should be secured, as well as the new situation in which we find ourselves. We have to decide what sort of a power we want to be — a middle power of influence, or perhaps an also-ran hoping no one nasty notices us. Whichever, we need to plan a new independent foreign and defence policy, and come to an appreciation of our geography, not least as both an island and a continent. American power is on the wane in Asia and the western Pacific. Its influence is in decline because of the rise of China as an economic superpower, with a GDP soon to move past the US. India too, and perhaps Indonesia in 50 years time, will pass American output. [Australia] [Allegiance] [Defence]
• Johnson has thrown US ambassador under the bus, say top Tories
  Theresa May said to be considering controversial step of appointing new envoy Kim Darroch: urbane diplomat who knew how to throw a party Peter Walker , Patrick Wintour, Rajeev Syal, and Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington Wed 10 Jul 2019 20.17 BST First published on Wed 10 Jul 2019 12.03 BST Kim Darroch (right) is understood to have made his decision after Boris Johnson stopped short of backing him on Tuesday. Boris Johnson is under pressure over his role in Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation as British ambassador to Washington, with critics accusing the likely next prime minister of throwing the envoy “under the bus”.
  Meanwhile, a renewed focus also fell on the identity of the leaker, with Foreign Office permanent under-secretary Simon McDonald telling MPs: “We will pursue the culprit with all the means at our disposal. The leaker is guilty of the worst breach of trust in our service in my career.”
  • No 10 said that discussions had begun with police over an investigation into the source of the leak. [Darroch] [Leak] [Boris Johnson]
• Boris Johnson’s Cartoon Englishness Is a Dangerous Joke
  The likely British prime minister doesn’t take anything seriously—even the country’s future. By Henry Hitchings | July 9, 2019, 12:12 PM Conservative Party leadership candidate Boris Johnson gestures during a visit to the construction project to expand Terminal Two at Manchester Airport in England on July 9. Conservative Party leadership candidate Boris Johnson gestures during a visit to the construction project to expand Terminal Two at Manchester Airport in England on July 9. Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images Crikey. Gadzooks. Crumbs. Top hole, chaps. Um, gosh. These are the exclamations of a mythic Englishman, the sort of person who excels at slaughtering small animals (tally-ho!), driving old cars at improbable speed (how spiffing!), and upsetting lily-livered foreigners (Frogs and Krauts and whatnot). In practice, no one in real life speaks like this, except in moments of parodic theatricality or out of a risible desire to be thought la-di-da. No one apart from Boris Johnson, that is. [Boris Johnson]
• S. Korea to become global test case in its trade dispute with the EU
  Posted on : Jul.5,2019 16:14 KST Modified on : Jul.5,2019 16:14 KST SK established FTA with EU after the latter started linking external trade with human rights The EU has requested that South Korea convene an expert panel regarding the latter’s violation of the two parties’ FTA. The European Commission’s request on July 4 to convene a panel of experts in its dispute with South Korea over labor issues means that South Korea is becoming a major global test case – and not in a positive sense. It is the first of the parties with which the EU has a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to proceed as far as panel of expert procedures, which represent the final stage of the resolution of disputes concerning violations of labor conditions. The key issue is the fact that the South Korean government has so far failed to ratify four of eight International Labour Organization (ILO) core conventions as pledged to the EU, even after the FTA between the two sides went into effect in July 2011. South Korea has not ratified Conventions No. 87 and 98 concerning freedom of association or Conventions No. 29 and 105 concerning forced labor. On Dec. 17 of last year, the European Commission announced that it was initiating dispute resolution procedures against the South Korean government. In addition to the issue of the four conventions’ ratification, the EU also raised an issue at the time concerning failure to honor the ILO’s “Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work” from 1998, which South Korea also promised to abide by in the agreement. Additionally, the EU alleged violations with the excessively narrow scope of the “worker” concept in the Trade Union Act, which excluded individuals in “special employment” categories; the denial of legal recognition to trade unions admitting members who are not workers; the arbitrary operation of a trade union establishment reporting system; and judicial practices punishing peaceful strikes as criminal “obstruction of duties.” This suggests the issue is not something that cannot be put to bed simply through ratification of the core conventions. [EU SK] [Trade] Labour] [Pretext] [ILO]
• Alek Sigley speaks out since rescue from North Korea detention, friend says he’ll probably return
  Samantha Dick Perth man Alek Sigley has released a statement after being rescued from detention in North Korea, saying he is looking forward to returning to “normal life”. But what happened between his disappearance more than a week ago and Thursday morning when he was released remains a mystery – and could stay that way. Mr Sigley, 29, was reunited with his wife in Japan on Friday morning (Australian time) after travelling out of North Korea with the help of Swedish diplomats. [Sigley]
• Who is Ursula von der Leyen, the surprise compromise as European Commission president?
  German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has been named as a candidate for the post of European Commission president. Would she be suitable for the job? DW profiles the doctor and mother of seven, born in Brussels. She was born in a Brussels suburb a little more than 60 years ago. Now the pursuit of her political career could lead her back to the Belgian and European capital. Discussing key job nominations, the EU's heads of state and government have come up with the name of Germany's Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. So now the Christian Democrat politician, who was introduced to the Berlin stage by Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2005 — and who was once briefly treated as a potential successor to Merkel — is apparently set to become head of the European Commission. She would be the Commission's first-ever female chief, although the actual decision will only be taken by the European Parliament in a couple of days. A good command of languages Von der Leyen spent the first 13 years of her life in Brussels. Her father, Ernst Albrecht, who would later become state premier in Lower Saxony, was a high-level official at the EEC and EC, the EU's predecessor institutions. In contrast to many of her colleagues in the government, von der Leyen speaks English and French fluently and has always acted with self-confidence on the international stage. [EU][ Ursula von der Leyen]
• Australia to build port expressly for US Marines
  New strategic facility will be based 40 kilometers from Darwin, where a Chinese firm holds a controversial 99-year lease at the city’s main port ByJames Broadbent Australian officials have said they will build a new port to support US Marines on the country’s northern coast, a move that will assist mounting US efforts to counter China’s rising influence over the contested South China Sea and western Pacific. The “secret plan” was revealed on Monday by the government’s Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which quoted defense and state officials confirming that a commercial port facility would be built for American use at Glyde Point, a site with relatively deep-water about 40 kilometers northeast of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. Australia and the US announced an agreement in late 2011 for US Marines to be based in northern Australia, with then-president Barack Obama flying in to make a joint announcement with then-prime minister Julia Gillard. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Allegiance]
• Australian student released from North Korea says he's 'very good'
  Colin Packham, Tom Westbrook, Chris Gallagher SYDNEY/TOKYO (Reuters) - An Australian student who was detained in North Korea was freed and safely left the country on Thursday, arriving in Tokyo via Beijing later the same day after Swedish officials helped broker his release. Alek Sigley, 29, who was studying in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, had been missing since June 25. “I’m OK. I’m good, I’m very good,” Sigley told reporters after arriving at Beijing airport. He declined to comment about what happened to him in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang where he had been living. He made a peace sign as he walked through the airport. [Sigley]
• The great antisemitism witchhunt: McCarthyism redux
  John Wight This article was first published on March 1st of this year, however, it is given fresh relevance in the wake of Labour’s reinstatement, and then re-suspension, of Derby MP Chris Williamson The period concerned, commonly referred to as McCarthyism, illuminated the parameters of free speech and expression in a country and culture which prides itself on both. It drilled home the profound truth that tyranny is less the by-product of totalitarian political systems and more the product of totalitarian ideas and nostrums that sustain political orthodoxy in a given space and time. And, too, whenever those ideas and nostrums come under challenge, said democracy is exposed as a cloak behind which mendacity resides, ruthlessly seeking malcontents to expose and miscreants to punish. In Britain in 2019 we need no longer turn to US history for an understanding of McCarthyism and its execrable fruits. For in Britain in 2019 McCarthyism is with us and among us, corroding our public and political discourse, poisoning it with the untruths, lies and mendacious smears of some of the most malignant political forces that ever existed in these islands. Reds under the bed has been replaced with antisemites under the bed; this with the full and open complicity of a mainstream media whose dread over the prospect of transformational political change is entwined in tight embrace with that of an Establishment — political and security — in ensuring nothing but nothing will ever change in this country apart from the colour of the curtains on the windows in Downing Street. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has to intents been usurped by his deputy Tom Watson, a man for whom Shakespeare’s “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!” line from The Tempest could have been written with in mind. [Anti-Semitism] [Israel] [Jeremy Corbyn] [IO]
• Antisemitism: what does that even mean?
  Philip Roddis It pains and embarrasses me that I used to admire Dame Margaret Hodge. Her steely grillings of millionaires, in her capacity as chair of the select committee on tax avoidance, had once warmed me to her. Since then I’d given her little thought, until she made that foul-mouthed, slanderous and – in any other context than a McCarthyesque circus whose real target is the first Labour leader in living memory to challenge ‘austerity’ – outlandish attack on Jeremy Corbyn last July.[1] Then came Giladgate and the suspension of Labour MP Chris Williamson for defending Israeli Jewish musician – and vehement critic not only of his own state but “a particular subset of Jews” – Gilad Atzmon. [Anti-Semitism] [Israel] [Jeremy Corbyn]

• “Ulysses” Truthers Are the Latest Threat to Corbyn
  By Dawn Foster Jeremy Corbyn recently mentioned that he’d read James Joyce’s Ulysses and liked it. It triggered a deranged uproar from Britain’s elite cultural gatekeepers. They’re just mad we’re coming for their stuff. [Jeremy Corbyn]
• Australian, Japanese 'Arrested in N.Korea'
  By Kim Myong-song June 28, 2019 13:14 North Korea appears to be resorting to its old tactic of taking foreigners hostage when things do not go its way, with reports of the arrest of an Australian and a Japanese man in Pyongyang. Alek Sigley (left) and Kenji Fujimoto Alek Sigley, identified as a 29-year-old Australian student in Pyongyang, has been missing since Monday, ABC reported Wednesday. And Kenji Fujimoto, the garrulous former sushi chef of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, may also have been arrested there, Japanese media reported earlier. Australian authorities are "urgently seeking clarification" of his fate through the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which serves as a conduit for countries that have no formal diplomatic relations with the North. Sigley had been studying on a graduate course in Korean literature at Kim Il-sung University since April last year and also runs a company providing guided tours of the North. His latest blog post on Monday showed a photo of the notoriously unfinished Ryugyong Hotel with the caption, "New signage above the main entrance to the Ryugyong Hotel bearing its name and logo. A sign that it will soon be open for business?" In public statements Sigley has generally talked up conditions in the North, so it is unclear how he could have fallen foul of the regime. [Sigley]
• Britain and Oman’s Special Relationship
  June 25, 2019 Amid a looming succession question concerning the current sultan, Mark Curtis reviews how the Gulf state became, in effect, a giant British military and intelligence base. By Mark Curtis British Foreign Policy Declassified Sixty years ago, Britain won a long-forgotten war in Oman, setting the special relationship between the two countries that is still being boosted today. The anniversary falls as the head of the British army recently visited Oman, and as the two countries signed a “Comprehensive Joint Declaration on Enduring Friendship” and a new Joint Defence Agreement. Last year, the two cooperated on the U.K.’s largest military exercise in the Middle East in 20 years. The U.K.’s growing support for Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos, is as extensive as it is ignored in the British media. But a key question looms: who will succeed the sultan after his death, and will London then continue this special relationship? The 1957-9 war in central Oman defeated an uprising threatening the rule of Sultan Said bin Taimur, one of the most repressive regimes ever seen in the Middle East. Declassified files show Britain’s chief diplomat in the region, George Middleton, recognizing that: “The condition of the people is miserable, the Sultan is unpopular, there is no central administration … and, under the present regime, not a great deal of hope for the future.” Sultan of Oman Qaboos bin Said Al Said meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Muscat, Oman, 2013. (U.S. State Department) But that didn’t stop Britain from coming to the aid of the sultan, who kept hundreds of slaves at his palace in Salalah, deploying the Royal Air Force (RAF) to bomb the rebels from the air “to show the population the power of weapons at our disposal” and to convince them that “resistance will be fruitless and lead only to hardship,” the files show. Former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan approved the bombing of water supplies and agricultural gardens – civilian targets that constitute war crimes – to “deter dissident villages from gathering their crops” and to promote “denial of water supply to selected villages by air action.” The Special Air Service was also deployed in late 1958 and captured the rebels’ final stronghold the following year. The rebellion that broke out a few years later in Dhofar province in southern Oman also prompted British intervention. The Dhofar uprising was “an indigenous rebellion against the repression and neglect” of the sultan, the Foreign Office later privately noted. With barely any schools or health facilities in the country, even by 1970 it was forbidden to smoke in public, to play football, to wear glasses, or to talk to anyone for more than 15 minutes. The sultan’s response to the uprising was to use even greater force – largely from British officers, who controlled Oman’s military. When the British realized the sultan might not win the Dhofar war, their military advisers in Muscat overthrew him in a palace coup in 1970 and installed in power his son, Qaboos, who has remained there ever since. Oman became, in effect, a giant British military and intelligence base. [British Empire] [Oman] [Imperial nostalgia]
• BorisGate is Beneath Us Whatever you think of BoJo, we mustn’t normalise smear tactics and tabloid nonsense
  Kit Knightly Three days ago the police were called round to the flat shared by perspective Tory leader, and likely future Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds. There had apparently been reports of a loud argument, banging and yelling etc. The police talked to both the people present and then left. No one was detained, charged, cautioned. Legally speaking, there was no incident. It would not warrant a mention most of the time. However, the same neighbours who called the police also recorded the argument and sent the recording to The Guardian. The Guardian, who have all the class of the Daily Mail, but none of the honesty, duly published it. Red banner. Shrieking tabloid headline. At least The Sun admits what it is. And so we have Borisgate, or rather #BorisGate. Boris refused to answer questions about the incident the next day, and Jeremy Hunt has been piling on the pressure to produce “an explanation”. Apparently “we had a row, it’s none of your business” isn’t enough of an explanation.
  This scandal breaking just days before Johnson is expected to become Prime Minister is odd timing, especially when it comes hot on the heels of ex-MI6 man (and media favourite) Rory Stewart getting kicked out of the race. [Boris Johnson] [Rory Stewart; [MI6]
• Potentially historic and deadly early summer heat wave to roast Europe from Wednesday through Friday
  Temperatures are likely to be 20 to 30 degrees or more above normal in the heat this week. (WeatherBell.com) By Ian Livingston and Jason Samenow June 25 at 1:06 PM An intense heat wave is set to bake Europe in coming days, and it could be historic, potentially shattering records across a large portion of the continent. The heat wave is expected to peak between Wednesday and Friday, when a swath from Spain to Poland is expected to see temperatures at least 20 to 30 degrees (11 to 17 degrees Celsius) above normal. Actual temperatures should surge to at least 95 to 105 degrees (35 to 40 degrees Celsius) over a sprawling area. Some locations could be even hotter, especially within cities where a “heat island” effect from asphalt and concrete increases temperatures. [Climate change]
• Absenting Ourselves From the World.
  Dennis Argall Posted on 21 June 2019 This is mainly about China, but more. We have excluded ourselves in many ways from the engines of modernity in Asia and more widely by our recalcitrance on so many issues and our unwillingness to engage with the new. We are not of such weight for others to care. We demonstrate an incapacity to maintain a progressive society in Australia. That fact and its consequences for our standing are the greatest threats to our national security. We need to be aware of and sensitive to large issues affecting China. Recent events in Hong Kong may have serious impact in China. The news will not fail to arrive throughout China. It is difficult to know what the consequences will be. A break-up of the Chinese state would be dangerous for the world, destructive of peace, the environment and climate, destructive of the world economy. Many of those who speak ill of China these days seem to have attachment to fissiparous causes that would eat China from the edges or in social fabric. Some are caught in the disease of military competition. Some seem driven simply by psychological impulses, apprehensive of Yellow Peril: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril A lot of interpretation of China and future China is projection by people from inside their heads, imagining China in their own form or that of other great powers, such as the US or Russia. This is naive and dangerous. It is also odd to consider the future in terms of a zero-sum game, a world in which there is no gain, just a win-loss between competitors. There are lots of accessible facts which could illuminate the perspectives of the willing. To begin, a simple comparison of Chinese life in the winter of 1978-9 with the winter of 2018-9— see these two videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxpnlWFS2pA —Democracy Wall 1978, also a glimpse of life in the streets in Beijing very much as we saw it back then, discussed in my previous essay at http://cephalophoria.blogspot.com/2019/06/tiananmen-in-context.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJcxCxi8T_E —Xi Jinping’s New Year Address, 2018-9. To whatever extent one discounts such a presentation as government propaganda (like the Queen’s Speech) it’s impressive and reflective of what is officially labelled Xi Jinping Thought. I am not and have never been an apologist for China; I am an advocate of looking and thinking, starting from facts. [Australia] [China confrontation]
• Anthony Albanese and the People’s Republic of China: an overview
  Elena Collinson (Australia-China Relations Institute, UTS) Posted on 21 June 2019 Following the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP) federal election defeat on May 18 2019, Bill Shorten stepped down as leader of the party. Anthony Albanese, a long-term ALP frontbencher, became the ALP’s leader-elect on May 27 after an uncontested leadership ballot, and was formally endorsed as Opposition Leader on May 30. While Mr Albanese is supportive of Australian engagement with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and of strengthening bilateral economic ties, he has also positioned himself as having due regard to the need to balance this against security considerations. All told, the new Opposition Leader seems broadly set to follow the foreign policy course charted by the ALP under Bill Shorten. On May 30, during a press conference in Canberra, it was put to Mr Albanese that he had “been associated with the left wing of the Labor Party for [his] whole life” and that that was “a bastion of anti-Americanism”. The same journalist then asked Mr Albanese to “elaborate what your views on the importance of the American alliance [sic], and how the policy under you will balance China and the US.” Mr Albanese dismissed the first observation wholesale then went on to outline an enduring political and personal commitment to the US alliance and engagement with the US, listing, among other examples, his “active” participation in the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. Mr Albanese also characterised himself as a “mainstream politician”, including on foreign policy issues. He expounded on his views on Australia’s management of its relationships with the US and the PRC during another press conference on June 10: “The US is our most important ally…China is an important trading partner for Australia…We don’t have to see friends as being somehow more in terms of – you can’t have a relationship with China if you have a relationship with the United States.” These statements are in keeping with the ALP’s foreign policy as outlined by Bill Shorten last year, and in line with the broad “three pillar” foreign policy framework the ALP has operated within since at least 2004. [Australia] [Allegiance] [ALP] [Albanese]
• Australia has a China problem and we can’t leave it to faceless spooks
  Tony Walker (Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 2019) Posted on 18 June 2019 Australia has a China problem. It’s not in Beijing. It’s not on the streets of Hong Kong. It’s in Canberra. China policy is in flux, under stress and confused. Australia’s meek response to the pro-democracy mass demonstrations in Hong Kong contrasts with attitudes in its own security establishment that are redolent of a Cold War era. One week Prime Minister Scott Morrison is venturing into the South Pacific to “confront’’ China, according to a ridiculous headline in a national newspaper, the next his government is missing in action on an issue of fundamental rights. Along with “stepping up’’ to China in the Pacific, Morrison needs to address China policy weakness in Canberra. Are policymakers driving policy or is it the country’s spooks and their ideological soulmates in the so-called security establishment whose views are amplified in the conservative media? Chaotic scenes have erupted in Hong Kong as tens of thousands of demonstrators stormed key roads next to government offices to protest against a proposed extradition bill that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial. The part taxpayer-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute has emerged as the repository of some of the more tendentious and, it seems, influential views on how to manage the China “threat’’. I’m using the word “threat’’ advisedly, since the institute’s dystopian world view makes little room for viewing China as a potential partner in seeking to develop a new security architecture in the Asia-Pacific. Just this past week, one of the institute’s more forward-leaning voices released a new “forward in defence paper’’ that would commit Australia to a hostile partnership in a formalised “trilateral defence alliance’’ with the United States and Japan to confront China. [Australia] [China confrontation]
• Australian TV show causes stir over offensive BTS comments [VIDEO]
  Posted : 2019-06-20 17:11 Updated : 2019-06-20 17:11 An Australian television program has sparked controversy after its hosts and panelists made offensive remarks about K-pop boy band BTS. Courtesy of Big Hit Entertainment, capture from YouTube account of "Eloise Lastname" By Dong Sun-hwa An Australian television show has ignited controversy after its hosts and panelists made derogatory comments about K-pop titan BTS Wednesday. Australian broadcaster Channel 9 aired an episode about the seven-piece boy band on its pop culture program "20 to One." Australian comedian Alex Williamson co-hosted the show, with stars including U.K. comedian Jimmy Carr appearing as panelists. The program introduced BTS as "the biggest band you've never heard of." A female host said the team's wins at the Billboard Music Awards (BBMA) in 2018 and 2019 were surprising because "only one member actually speaks English." She was presumably referring to RM, the band's leader. [K-pop] [Australia] [Racism] [English]
• Marinelli: Disinformation campaigns are one of the main challenges for the Alliance
  By EWB - 18.06.2019 BELGRADE – Disinformation campaign is one of the challenges the Alliance is facing in Serbia, said Cesare Marinelli, Head of the NATO Office in Belgrade, reports N1. He said that there are misleading or inaccurate information about NATO, which limits the debate and aggravates the objective examination of security cooperation in a wider context. Commenting on the latest research that shows that 89% of citizens of Serbia oppose membership in the Alliance, Marinelli said that the past should not be forgotten, but it should be learned from it. He added that partnership between Serbia and NATO today is beneficial to both sides, but also for the entire region. [NATO] [Balkans] [Serbia] [Enlargement]
• Germany says there is 'strong evidence' Iran behind tanker attacks
  Chancellor Angela Merkel has said there is "strong evidence" Iran carried out attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. She also warned Iran of consequences if it violated the 2015 international nuclear deal. Watch video00:27 Merkel 'There is a lot of evidence' German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday there is "strong evidence" Iran was behind the twin tanker attacks near the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The United States has accused Iran of attacking the Japanese and Norwegian flagged tankers and released video and pictures purporting to show a Revolutionary Guard boat removing an unexploded limpet mine. Read more: Iran-US tensions flare in the Persian Gulf: What's at stake The EU said yesterday the video was not enough to blame Iran, while German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany was still evaluating the evidence before coming to any conclusions. Watch video01:49 US releases video of mine being removed from tanker Speaking at a news conference in Berlin alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Merkel called for a peaceful solution to tensions in the Persian Gulf. "We take these acts very seriously, there is strong evidence," she said, referring to the US allegations that Iran was behind the attacks on the two tankers. "It is a very serious situation," she said, adding that Germany would tell all sides and especially Iran, "that the situation should not escalate." Iran has denied it was behind last week's twin tanker attacks and a similar attack on four vessels of the coast of the United Arab Emirates last month. Iran said the video and still images released by the United States proved nothing. [Iran confrontation] [Tanker attack] [False flag] [Merkel]
• The Hitlerization of Jeremy Corbyn (Among Others)
  C J Hopkins
  June 13, 2019 Every time you think the corporatocracy’s manufactured anti-Semitism hysteria cannot possibly get more absurd, they somehow manage to outdo themselves. OK, stay with me now, because this is a weird one. Apparently, American Hitler and his cronies are conspiring with some secret group of “Jewish leaders” to stop British Hitler from becoming prime minister and wiping out all the Jews in Great Britain. Weird, right? But that’s not the weird part, because maybe American Hitler wants to wipe out all the Jews in Great Britain himself, rather than leaving it to British Hitler … Hitlers being notoriously jealous regarding their genocidal accomplishments. No, the weird part is that everyone knows that American Hitler does not make a move without the approval of Russian Hitler, who is also obsessed with wiping out the Jews, and with destroying the fabric of Western democracy. So why would Russian Hitler want to let American Hitler and his goons thwart the ascendancy of British Hitler, who, in addition to wanting to wipe out all the Jews, also wants to destroy democracy by fascistically refunding the NHS, renationalizing the rail system, and so on? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it? In any event, here’s the official story. [Jeremy Corbyn] [Antisemitism]
• The Empty Promise of Boris Johnson
  The man expected to be Britain’s next Prime Minister makes people in power, including himself, appear ridiculous, but that doesn’t mean he’d dream of handing power to anybody else. By Sam Knight 5:00 A.M. Johnson, an immediately recognizable figure in English culture, combines self-belief with self-sabotage. Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn In the spring of 1989, the Daily Telegraph sent Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to Brussels to cover what was then the European Economic Community. Johnson, who was twenty-four, knew the city well. His father, Stanley, had been one of the first British bureaucrats appointed to work at the European Commission after the United Kingdom joined the bloc, in 1973. Johnson, his parents, and his three younger siblings moved to Belgium when he was nine years old, joining a sleepy community of expats. Johnson was a clever boy. He learned to speak French without an accent. When Johnson returned, his father invited an experienced Brussels correspondent, Geoff Meade, to lunch at the family’s large house near Waterloo. Meade and his wife, Sandra, were having drinks when a taxi pulled up. “We hadn’t been led to expect anyone else so it was a surprise to see this outstandingly blond chap jump out in the loudest pair of Bermuda shorts possible. I’ll never forget it,” Meade recounted in “Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition,” Sonia Purnell’s haunting biography, from 2011, of the man expected to be Britain’s next Prime Minister. “But it became clear over lunch that I had been invited there as the established hand to meet and help Boris.” [Boris Johnson]
• WATCH: The Plot Against Harold Wilson 2006 BBC Documentary Newly Relevant In Wake of Pompeo Leak
  Kit Knightly In 2006, to mark the 30th anniversary of Harold Wilson’s retirement, the BBC release the above documentary: The Plot Against Harold Wilson. It details how, throughout Wilson leadership, MI5 and the CIA were engaged in plans to undermine Wilson – even to the extent of having plans in place for a full-blown military coup should the need arise. The tactics included attacking Wilson’s staff and key allies, accusing him of being compromised by the Kremlin, and labelling him as “soft on the IRA”. These probably sound very familiar to anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to British politics. Given Mike Pompeo’s recent comments about America’s willingness to overthrow Corbyn, if they deem it necessary, these past events take on a new significance. Perhaps the greatest lesson we can take from this is just how far our media has fallen in only thirteen years. [Harold Wilson] [Coup] [Corbyn] [Pompeo]
• Pompeo’s promise to intervene against Corbyn should surprise no one
  Catte Black The alt media-verse is currently on fire with the news that the US State Dept’s answer to Al Capone, Mike Pompeo, has been caught promising “Jewish leaders” to send the boys round to Jeremy Corbyn if he should get elected and subsequently prove to be uppity and out of line. [Pompeo] [UK] [Jeremy Corbyn] [Interference] [Regime change]
• The Quds Day Panic of 2019
  C J Hopkins
  June 5, 2019 So it appears we managed to survive another terrifying Quds Day in Berlin. It was certainly touch and go there for a while, what with the media issuing hysterical warnings about the hordes of “Hamas and Hezbollah supporters, neo-Nazis, and conspiracy theorists” that were going to materialize out of the ether, goose-step down the Kurfürstendamm, and reenact Kristallnacht, or something. The city was braced for an all-out Perso-Palestinian Quds Day Pogrom, which is always a threat on Quds Day in Berlin, but the hysteria level this year was elevated, due to the Anti-Semitism Pandemic that mysteriously erupted in 2016 for no apparent reason whatsoever. OK, what, you’re probably asking, is Quds Day? It’s an annual event initiated by Iran to show support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism. It takes place on the last Friday of Ramadan, in opposition to Israel’s Jerusalem Day, the national holiday commemorating Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. In Berlin, there’s an annual Quds Day march, which the German media typically respond to by whipping up anti-Semitism hysteria and fanatical, guilt-ridden support for Israel. This year was no exception … on the contrary. A week or so before the event, Felix Klein, Germany’s “Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism,” warned Jews not to wear kippahs in public, on account of the unprecedented explosion of anti-Semitism throughout the country. According to the interior ministry, there were 62 violent anti-Semitic attacks in Germany during 2018, compared to 37 in 2017, which, in a nation of 83 million people, and with a history of real-life, goose-stepping Nazis, and of perpetrating the Holocaust, and so on … well, you can understand the Commissioner’s alarm. [Israel] [Palestine] [Germany]
• How can the UK honestly view their healthcare as better than that of the US?
  June 4, 2019 This question was recently featured on Quora, and we thought it was efficiently and effectively answered by Dr Alfred St Joseph. Here it is. We should note that for years the rightwing & establishment capitalists, including their whore media, have been surreptitiously picking the NHS apart, little by little, chiefly by simply underfunding it. Thatcher, true to her brutal character, tried to kill the system in a more aggressive way, but she was beaten back by an irate public, aided by many doctors and nurses working for the institution. These days the NHS remains an island of socialism in a vicious capitalist ocean, with monsters under the waves constantly figuring new ways of wiping it out. —Editor How can the UK honestly view their healthcare as better than that of the US? Alfred St Joseph Alfred St Joseph, Orthopaedic surgeon and self-confessed Anglophile. Updated May 6 · Upvoted by Ramesh Subramanian, lived in The United States of America (1988-1998) I worked in the NHS for about 7 years, so I have some insight that I’ll share here. You don’t need to hold health insurance in any form. You don’t need to give details of your health insurance to be seen by a doctor. You may be the richest or the poorest person, but if you have a heart attack or a stroke or a bad car accident, you will only be treated in an NHS hospital. Almost no private medical facility is equipped to deal with such emergencies. You will always be treated courteously and with consideration no matter your background. You get the same great healthcare whether you pay a million in taxes per year or if you’ve never earned a penny in your entire life. There is no such thing as ‘pre-existing’ diseases not being covered. There is no co-pay. You don’t need to pay back a fixed percentage or an excess no matter how much your treatment cost. If only car insurance were the same… You will almost never be chased by whichever company to pay money back to a hospital or insurance company. You will never become bankrupt because of steep medical bills. You will never have to sell your home to cover your medical bills....... [NHS] [Health] [UK US]
• The centre cannot hold.
  Henry Reynolds Posted on 31 May 2019 In a recent article in the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat drew attention to the Australian elections and the cotemporaneous triumph of Narendra Modi in India and of Nigel Farage in Britain’s European elections. Each represented a surge in supporter for right wing populism and what he called’ the global fade of liberalism.’ This view from outside helps us see our politics from a global perspective. It is often assumed that, with our deeply rooted institutions, stable party system and entrenched democratic habits, we are immune from what is happening in many parts of the world. These assumptions must now be reconsidered. The utterly unexpected Coalition victory did have similarities with Trump’s triumph and the Brexit result. Morrison’s signature slogan about stopping the boats is in tune with Trump’s own one about building the wall. Both introduce into the debate fear of aliens as did Farage’s threatening caravan of unwanted refugees. All three draw on the deep currents of white-race nationalism. But the most telling feature of the election was the growing importance of the radical right parties and their embrace, albeit furtive, by both the Liberal and National parties. They have, as a consequence, been brought in from the fringe and blessed with mainstream recognition and even respectability. The Liberal’s preference deal with Palmer’s United Australia and the Queensland National’s one with One Nation were the main story. Of greater significance was the fact that the deals worked and there was no obvious backlash from the electorate. Such arrangements are presumably here to stay. And then there were the hidden threads of co-operation linking the Government with the far right factions including Frazer Anning and his supporters. These links were apparently of considerable importance in the dark undergrowth of social media. But so too was the electoral support won by the far right parties in the electorate, particularly in Queensland. In the Senate Palmer, Hansen and Anning received, between them, 14% of the vote. This is within reach of the vote across Europe for far right parties but achieved here with little notice and less concern. Clearly what has happened is that the barriers between the major centre right parties and the far right have been dismantled with far reaching consequences for the country as a whole. As the lurch to the right was taking place the Greens were being demonized and rhetorically cast out beyond the boundaries of legitimate politics. The two developments were intimately related. How many times did we hear coalition speakers declare that the Greens were a greater danger to the country than One Nation? Often enough it was done as an immediate campaign tactic understandable given the exigencies of the moment. But there was much more to it than that. It is indeed the clearest illustration that the centre of gravity of national politics is tipping towards the right. This will present a significant challenge to the new leadership team in the ALP. Will they stand where they are or shuffle to the right? The attack on the Greens has been spearheaded by the News Limited papers and significantly by some of their most experienced and respected journalists. It has the appearance of a concerted campaign but may just be the coalescence of like minds. The celebrated business columnist Terry McCrann provided us with the most colourful and extreme comments immediately after the election. Under the headline: ‘Pauline,Clive just saved our economy’ he wrote: Thank you Clive. Thank you Pauline. Thank you Queensland. For saving yourselves and the rest of us from the utter lunacy of a Labor-Green” Road to Venezuela” government. [Australia] [Election] [Greens] [Vituperation] [Venezuela]
• Hawke and Keating set Australia, and Labor, up for failure
  Geoff Davies Posted on 31 May 2019 Labor failed, again. It took on the most riven, brutal and monumentally incompetent rabble since Federation and still could not manage to beat them. This is a profound failure that requires a profound explanation. There is one, though it goes against decades of received wisdom. The problem is the economic ‘reforms’ imposed by the Hawke-Keating governments are a failure. Our anaemic economy and divided society are their continuing legacy. These claims are of course heresy. They sully the revered memory of Larrikin Bob. They contradict the economic and political mantras of the past thirty five years. Yet the evidence is clear and has been readily available for some time. A few numbers tell the story. The average GDP growth rate in the 1950s and 60s was over 5%. Average unemployment was 1.3%. Those numbers should have set off raging inflation, according to current dogma, but average inflation was a moderate 3.3%. The numbers are from Ungoverning the Economy by economist Stephen Bell, published in 1997. The economy has never approached that performance in the whole neoliberal era initiated by Hawke and Keating in 1983. Growth has rarely exceeded 4% and is currently struggling to reach 2%, while unemployment is routinely around 5%. [Australia] [Neoliberalism]

• EU’s China policy is no longer just carrots
  25 May 2019 Author: Justyna Szczudlik, Polish Institute of International Affairs March 2019 saw Chinese President Xi Jinping journey to Europe, specifically Italy, Monaco and France. Meanwhile the European Council met to work out a joint stance for the EU–China summit that took place on 9 April. The following month saw the eighth China–Central Europe (16+1) summit in Dubrovnik and the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. Have these diplomatic meetings and summits tangibly developed China–EU relations or the EU’s stance on China? Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker pose with hinese Minister of State Administration of Market Regulation Zhang Mao, European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, Zhang Jianhua, Chinese Minister of Energy and European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete after the signing ceremony at a EU-China Summit in Brussels, Belgium, 9 April 9 2019. (Photo:Stephanie Lecocq/Pool via Reuters). It seems a significant change is palpable on the EU’s side. The European Union is becoming tougher on China by reformulating its policy of ‘reciprocity’. For years, ‘reciprocity’ meant calling on China to adapt to the EU’s rules and norms. The European Union asked China to open its market by lifting non-tariff barriers, state industrial subsidies and forced technology transfer, and at the same time protect intellectual property rights. In return, the European Union remained open for China, with transparent and non-discriminatory rules for market access. There was a mindset in the European Union that its rules (including liberal norms such as the rule of law and human rights) would be naturally adopted by the Chinese side. [EU China] [Market access]
• Spare us the details!
  John Menadue Posted on 24 May 2019 In the last election campaign I agreed with almost all of the ALP program, but clearly not enough of the public did. There was just too much to explain and communicate. The ALP did not succeed in telling it’s story or a ‘narrative’ as it is often called. As a result the program was prone to exaggeration and exploitation by the Coalition , predatory vested interests like the property spivs and many in the media who did not ask hard questions of the Government with its policy vacuum. With that policy vacuum Scott Morrison set about to scare the electorate about the ALP program. He succeeded. Behavioural economists tell us that we are usually confused if we have too many choices. I must confess that I get confused by the range of products when I visit Coles or Woolworths. I also prefer a limited choice on my restaurant menu. I think the ALP offered too many choices, and disregarded the advice of behavioural economists to limit the range of choices and keep them simple. It was even harder for Bill Shorten to tell the story when politicians generally are not trusted. This meant that Bill Shorten and the ALP were struggling because they were asking the community to trust them with large-scale change. The electorate was reluctant to buy their story. Even Paul Keating might not have been up to the task of explaining such a detailed and complicated program. Jacinda Adern showed how trustworthiness and authenticity are critical. They are essential starting points. The ALP was found wanting on this. The election data also point to some tentative and interesting correlations, if not causations. The following were more likely to vote for the Coalition: Non-university educated voters. The ‘Howard battlers’. Trump had the same appeal. Voters in electorates with a higher percentage of home renters. Voters in outer metropolitan, provincial and rural areas but not in inner metropolitan areas People with low weekly incomes The unemployed as in parts of Queensland and Tasmania. Christians [Election19]
• The bodgie.
  Mungo MacCallum Posted on 21 May 2019 Bob Hawke did not suffer from false modesty. He always knew he was the smartest person in the room – and, unlike many egoists, he was usually right, which is saying something, given the stellar ministry over which he presided for most of is time as prime minister. His colleagues called him Little Caesar – the cartoonist Patrick Cook invariably portrayed him as lugging a statue of himself wherever he went. But such was his insouciance he simply accepted it as his due, as did so many of the public. Hawke frequently spoke of his love affair with the Australian people, and the boast was a true one – he loved, and he yearned to be loved back. And by and large he was, and now still is. And he will be remembered not just with affection, but with deep gratitude for his achievements, which were, like Cook’s statue, monumental. However he was not the founder of modern Australia – the credit for that goes to Gough Whitlam, who dragged the country out of the long twilight of the coalition years. Whitlam’s huge program of reform covered almost all the bases – health, education, welfare, foreign policy environment, the legal system, consumer protection, urban renewal, Aboriginal rights, women’s rights and human rights in general, communications, the arts .– the list goes on. And perhaps most importantly of all, he laid the framework for the multicultural society that is Australia’s greatest and noblest post-war legacy. [Bob Hawke]
• Debt is the Hidden Issue in The European Elections
  The Undebted World The citizens of the European Union are called to vote this week for the European Parliament. It is not a real parliament, and it lacks prospects for becoming one, since all important decisions are taken by the unelected heads of the European Commission and the European Central Bank, dubbed “the worst-run Central Bank in the world”. These elections capture however the general mood of exasperation with current policies. Conservative and extreme Right parties will rise, reflecting widespread scepticism as to the economic course of the EU and its lack of benefits for the common people. The mainstream Left unfortunately neglects these issues, and it will pay the price. The conservatives generally blame the weak and scapegoat the refugees, the immigrants, the women, and the poor, while promising to save the middle class from the onslaught of big capital. They create false hopes of easy reform, and they never denounce the exploitation inherent in today’s system. History shows however that small owners manage to resist financial stranglehold only when they make common cause with workers and the poor, and they are not afraid to fight. [Debt]
• Milkshakes: a delicious drink, or the new symbol of the resistance?
  You may think that flavoured milk is just a tasty beverage – but flavour is not the only thing pushing sales Mon 20 May 2019 15.24 BST Last modified on Mon 20 May 2019 18.05 BST Name: Milkshakes. Age: First described in the 1880s. Flavour: Vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, banana, the list goes on. Mmm. I want a milkshake now. Can I ask what you plan to do with it? Drink it through a straw while groaning with pleasure, I expect. What else would I do? Let’s just say you can’t be too careful nowadays. Look, I know that a minority of milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard – but that’s not dangerous, surely? I’m more worried about the growing craze for tipping milkshakes on to rightwing politicians. I did hear about this. Someone did it to that nasty bloke, didn’t they? You’re going to have to be more specific. Nigel Farage was hit by a milkshake in Newcastle today. So was the far-right activist Tommy Robinson (twice), while he was campaigning for the European elections – and the Ukip candidate Carl Benjamin (four times in the past week). [Protest]
• US ban won’t derail Huawei’s European 5G rollout
  High-ranking European government officials say that Washington’s latest move does not threaten the Chinese telecoms giant By David P. Goldman Two high-ranking European government officials told Asia Times in background discussions that a US ban on sales of electronic components to Huawei Technologies wouldn’t stop the Chinese telecom firm from rolling out 5G mobile networks in Europe. Europe doesn’t really have a choice in the matter, the officials emphasized in background briefings, because the United States doesn’t offer a competing product, and Huawei’s competitors – Ericsson and Nokia – don’t have the capacity or the knowledge to replace the Chinese giant. The two Scandinavian firms don’t offer serious competition to Huawei, but rather work in close cooperation with the much larger Chinese firm. Huawei’s research and development budget is roughly double that of Ericsson and Nokia combined, according to public sources. So intertwined were the activities of Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia in European telecom infrastructure that it is impossible to ban the sale of parts to one of them without affecting the others, an official explained. The official, who oversees telecom policy for one of the Group of 10 economies, doubted that Washington’s action would have much impact. [Huawei] [China confrontation] [US dominance] [EU] [Friction] [Allegiance]
• One-third of EU firms hit hard by US-China trade war
  The ongoing trade tensions between the world's two largest economies and tit-for-tat tariffs have adversely affected the fortunes of many European companies in China, a new survey reveals. The outlook remains gloomy. The increasingly bitter trade dispute between the US and China is hurting one-third of EU companies operating in China, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said on Monday. The industry body commissioned a survey to find out how recent tariff hikes were affecting business. The study, which received replies from 585 firms, was conducted in January and February, as trans-Pacific trade tensions eased following a truce between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Read more: How much damage are Trump’s tariffs doing to the Chinese economy? But the tensions ratcheted up again in early May with Washington and Beijing slapping steep increases in tariffs on each other. The survey said its results are "contrary to expectations that European companies would benefit" from the duties. [China trade war] [[EWU] [Collateral]
• Chinese Australian Community Tribute to the late Hon Bob Hawke, AC.
  Anthony Pun Posted on 17 May 2019 On 16 May 2019, the nation mourns the loss of a great Prime Minister the Hon Bob Hawk, AC. The Chinese Australian community also felt the sad loss of a great humanitarian benefactor who almost single handedly, made a decision to allow 42,000 Chinese students to remain in Australia, despite stiff opposition from his colleagues. Beneficiaries of his legacy and magnanimous gesture should bow their head in silence for a minute to pay respect to the great Australian statesman and Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. The Chinese Australian community is saddened by the death of an eminent Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon Robert James Lee HAWKE (Bob Hawke) and immediately put out a media comment in the SMH to express our sentiment:” The CCCA’s Vale to Bob Hawke appeared in the SMH blog on 16 May 2019 as follows: Vale to Bob Hawke. It is a sad moment for our nation to lose a great Labor PM at this critical moment in history. Bob is known for his warm personality and always greets you with his hand on your shoulders and most importantly, he remembers your name. From ACTU to one of the best Prime Ministers, was a great achievement. The Chinese Community Council of Australia acknowledge his magnanimous gesture together with Nick Bolkus (Immigration Minister), in allowing thousands of Chinese students to remain in Australia in the 1990s. The 1.2 million Chinese Australian community will mourn the loss of a great friend and benefactor and will remember forever the deed of this kind-hearted statesman. Our condolence to the family and may he Rest in Peace. [Bob Hawke] [China] [Diaspora]
• There are “Nutters” and then there are “Nutters”
  James O’Neill Posted on 14 May 2019 In interview given to Australia’s ABC network former Prime Minister Paul Keating referred to the Australian intelligence agencies as “nutters”. The comment was in the context of the advice that those intelligence agencies were giving the government on relations with China, Australia’s most important economic partner by a considerable margin. There were the usual expected expressions of outrage from several quarters, and Labor leader Bill Shorten hurriedly confirmed his faith in the said agencies, his good relationship with them, and the value he attached to their advice. It was perhaps too much to expect during an election campaign, one currently devoid of appearances by the Foreign and Defence Ministers, that Mr Keating’s remarks might be discussed beyond his colourful adjectives as to the state of their alleged sanity or lack thereof. The absence of such a discussion is greatly to be regretted because there have been a number of events in the world of strategic significance to Australia and repercussions within Australia since the election date was announced last month, almost none of which have received any significant media coverage, let alone discussion and analysis. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Allegiance] [Intelligence community]
• Engaging Asia after Australia’s election
  12 May 2019 Author: James Curran, University of Sydney Regardless of who wins office in Australia on 18 May, the new government will face once more the challenge of achieving security in a turbulent strategic environment. An electoral officer puts together ballot boxes and voting booths (Photo: Reuters/David Gray). Since the 1970s — when both sides of politics began comprehensively engaging with Asia — Australia has been able to conduct its regional diplomacy largely in the knowledge that economic growth and prosperity does not necessarily come at the expense of strategic stability. The assumption that failure in Vietnam would precipitate a US withdrawal proved a mirage, and Washington retained military predominance in the region when China’s economic rise accelerated in the 1990s. But disruptive trends have been clear for some time. The United States, while still in the region, can no longer call all the strategic shots and is looking for its allies to do more. China is steadily and intentionally making clearer its goal of achieving regional strategic predominance. Other powers are also rising rapidly — especially India and Indonesia with demographics on their side. Australian diplomacy is getting harder. The one constant for any new government is that, issue by issue, it will get harder still. The Australian Labor Party has already signalled that, should it win office, its primary difference will be what shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong has termed the ‘clarity and consistency’ of its messaging, especially where this concerns relations with China. There will be no more of what Wong calls ‘disjointed megaphone diplomacy’. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Election]
• In response to Bob Carr on China
  John Fitzgerald Posted on 8 May 2019 . Professor Bob Carr singled me and a few others out for criticism on the Menadue blog. Fair cop. Along the way however he made demonstrably false claims about my stance on China and Chinese Australians which have since been reproduced on official sites of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on 30 April in Beijing’s premier international propaganda journal, The China Daily. This is going a bit far. I respectfully ask that my corrections are published in all three places. In his post of 16 April in this blog, Carr rightly points out that I supported the publication of Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion, a book he deplores. The major public comment that I have made about the book appeared on its cover, so that is presumably what Carr is alluding to. In that eight-word cover blurb I describe the book as very important, which of course it is, in content, in evidence, and in argument. The book is significant for another important reason to which Carr makes no reference. A number of Australian publishers declined to publish the book, not on its merits, but for fear that publishing it would harm their commercial dealings with China. Ironically, these anxious judgements confirmed the book’s core argument: that the Chinese Communist Party is exerting undue and disturbing influence over key institutions in this country. The board of Melbourne University Press was especially craven, with one member expressing concern to me at the time that publication of the book would compromise the University’s Chinese student recruitment program. Hamilton devotes a chapter and more to the claim that the government of China exercises improper influence over Australian universities. Melbourne University sealed his case. [Australia] [Yellow Peril] [Influence] [China confrontation]
• Shooting the Whistleblowers
  David Macilwain It has just been announced that Facebook is banning some “dangerous people” from its platforms, particularly those promoting and allowing “hate speech” of various colours, but also including “conspiracy theorist” Alex Jones. This action follows on from measures taken after the Christchurch gunman used Facebook to screen his incendiary Islamophobic attack, and the sudden recognition of the threat posed by “White Supremacist” ideology. At that time I wrote an article for the Australian blog “Pearls and Irritations”, which drew an uncomfortable comparison between “two Australians abroad” – the “Firearm terrorist” Brenton Tarrant, and the “Cyber terrorist” Julian Assange. It’s not of course that I think Assange is a terrorist of any description – but given the treatment he has been afforded by the Australian government he may as well be. The reason I made this comparison, aside from the fact that the two men are both Australian citizens in prison for offences committed abroad, was because there is something else that connects their perceived crimes, and which sprang to mind following the Christchurch massacre – the live vision of men being gunned down in Baghdad by US soldiers, screened around the world thanks to Wikileaks. It was not immediately after the massacre of unarmed Muslims in the Christchurch mosques that this similar show of White Man’s brutality some 12 years earlier came to mind, but rather following the draconian legislation rushed through the Australian Parliament shortly afterwards. The circumstances around this, described in more detail in my article, were frankly suspect – though it was dangerous to say so [Whistleblower] [Assange] [Australia]
• The Furor Over the Cambridge Slave Trade Inquiry Proves Why It is Needed
  by Patrick Cockburn May 7, 2019 The outrage expressed by various establishment figures and institutions at the decision by Cambridge University to hold a two-year inquiry into its historic links to the slave trade demonstrates the continuing sensitivity and relevance of the topic. Critics of the inquiry claim that such focus on slavery is simply bowing to a trend, the suggestion being that there is little to be regretted and to apologise for. The Times has a leader with the flippant title “Slave to Fashion”, quoting with approval the conservative historian Elie Kedourie as saying that a common fault of the great powers is “imaginary guilt”. A clutch of letters in the same newspaper make similar claims about the inquiry, one writer wondering if the issue is being raised “at a time when western mistreatment of the ‘colonised’ is news”. Others believe that much can be excused because racist opinions were common in the past, citing Charles Darwin as an example. The very volume and venom of the abuse of Cambridge over its inquiry is proof, if such were needed, that the British role in the slave trade remains a highly contentious topic which stirs deep feelings. Of course, it is splendidly, if absurdly, self-contradictory for commentators who accuse Cambridge of unnecessarily raising a dead issue to then write thousands of furious words arguing why Britain’s role in the slave trade has no significance in the modern world. An explanation for the near-hysterical reaction is probably that the critics view Britain’s past role in the world as benign and respond with hostility to anybody they see as besmirching it. A fallback position for them is to say that, bad though slavery may have been, it all happened a long time ago so why rake up dead embers of the past? This defensive gambit depends rather on those who it aims to convince to be ill-informed about the horrors of slavery and unable to understand why it has left a living legacy with profound influence on the contemporary world. One way of evoking the terrible evils of slavery is to remember that its crimes were repeated very recently by Isis when they enslaved, raped and murdered thousands of members of the Yazidi community whom they had captured in Iraq in 2014. Conditions endured on the slave plantations of the Caribbean and the American South were very similar to those suffered by the Yazidis. It is an insult, explained but not excused by ignorance, to pretend that Cambridge’s concern about who benefited from their sufferings is a whim of fashion, as irrelevant as the policies of the Roman emperors or Henry VIII. One of the best-informed and most shocking contemporary accounts of the true nature of slavery in the 18th century is by James Ramsay, a Scottish surgeon formerly in the Royal Navy who became a clergyman in St Kitts and Nevis where he treated slaves on the sugar plantations. [Slavery]
• Australia’s China–US choice is three dimensional, not binary (Part 2)
  Ramesh Thakur Posted on 3 May 2019 By framing the choice as a binary one, most Australian analysts typically explain the threat from China as including its challenge to the rules-based international order. This has been true, for example, of several recent defence and foreign policy white papers. A major advantage of framing Australia’s foreign policy dilemma as three-dimensional is that it allows us to grasp how threats to our interests and values along the third dimension can come from both China and the US. Thus in 2013 China rejected the ruling of the international arbitration court in its maritime territorial dispute with the Philippines. Yet even in that, the surprising element was the extent to which the Chinese believed they were merely mimicking well established US behaviour and attitudes towards international law. Similarly, China’s evaluation of the Five Eyes countries’ wariness of Huawei is inevitably coloured by the Julian Assange and Edward Snowden revelations of the rise of the surveillance state in Western democracies and criminalisation of whistleblowing. How receptive should Beijing be to Canadian representations on Canadian citizens jailed in China when they look at the tepid Australian representations on Assange? [Allegiance][Australia] [Assange]
• Zionism and Terra Nullius: a haunting parallel between Israel and Australia
  Ron Witton Posted on 30 April 2019 When I was growing up in Sydney in the 1950s, I knew that I came from a Jewish family and I was aware of the little blue and white Jewish National Fund money boxes collecting funds for Israel. Recently I have remembered a phrase from my childhood, “A land without a people for a people without a land” which I had unquestioningly accepted as justification for the establishment of Israel. It is only now that I have realized that the phrase bears a haunting resemblance to the notion of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”), the principle that posited that Australia was “a land of no people” and that legally justified British colonisation. This false and destructive principle was, thankfully, overthrown in 1992 by the High Court Mabo case. [Israel] [Terra nullis] [Colonialism] [Australia]
• Jeremy Corbyn, Hobson’s Imperialism, and antisemitism
  Donald Sassoon and Robin Prior respond to reports about and comment on the Labour party leader’s foreword for a 2011 reissue of John Atkinson Hobson’s 1902 book Letters Thu 2 May 2019 12.37 EDT Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 12.45 EDT ‘I only wish people who disagree with Corbyn dealt with his policies and cease this ridiculous hunt for possible anti-semitism in everything he does,’ writes Donald Sassoon. ‘I only wish people who disagree with Corbyn dealt with his policies and cease this ridiculous hunt for possible anti-semitism in everything he does,’ writes Donald Sassoon. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images The campaign about antisemitism in Corbyn’s Labour party is getting absurd (Corbyn urged to explain his praise for antisemitic book, 2 May). Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study has been taught for years in universities up and down the country (I taught it myself). No one has ever felt the need to highlight the 10 lines or so, in a book of 400 pages, which are antisemitic, but Corbyn was expected to do so. Anyone who had not heard of this text would be forgiven for thinking this is antisemitic text. It is not. It was an extremely influential study of imperialism (it even influenced Lenin) and has always been read as such. I do not remember any article in scholarly journals making a point about that paragraph on the Rothschilds and the “race” which, Hobson claims, was so influential. The paragraph is completely marginal to the text. Far less marginal are Hobson’s comments about the “lower races” (ie black Africans) and what to do with them – also very common at the time (Part 2, Chapter 4). So why expect Corbyn (did he really read the entire book, it’s heavy going, believe me) to even mention that passage? [Corbyn] [Anti-Semitism] [Smear]
  • Jewish leaders demand explanation over Corbyn book foreword
    Before becoming Labour leader he called 1902 book containing antisemitic tropes ‘brilliant’ Heather Stewart and Sarah Marsh Wed 1 May 2019 09.54 EDT First published on Wed 1 May 2019 04.38 EDT Jewish leaders have written to Jeremy Corbyn to express “grave concern” and demand an explanation after it emerged he wrote a glowing foreword for a century-old political tract that includes antisemitic tropes. The book, Imperialism: A Study, written by John Atkinson Hobson in 1902, claimed European finance was controlled by “men of a single and peculiar race”. Corbyn described the book as “brilliant” and “very controversial”, the Times first reported. He wrote the foreword when the book was reissued in 2011, four years before becoming Labour leader. Jeremy Corbyn is either blind to antisemitism – or he just doesn’t care | Jonathan Freedland Read more Hobson describes the financial system as controlled by people “united by the strongest bonds of organisation, always in closest and quickest touch with one another, situated in the very heart of the business capital of every state, controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to control the policy of nations”. In a strongly worded letter, the Board of Deputies of British Jews expressed “grave concerns” about the emergence of the foreword.
• UK Local Election Propaganda: “Significant Losses for Both Sides”
  The local elections have been a complete disaster for the Tories. They have lost over 1100 seats (as of 7pm today). They have lost nearly forty councils. They have been destroyed. It’s a humiliation. However, if you just read the headlines, you might not get this impression. The BBC has gone with this: Main parties hit with Brexit backlash” The Financial Times went with: Pressure Mounts on May and Corbyn over Brexit deal: Tories and Labour suffer losses The Guardian likewise is misrepresenting the situation, with an even stronger focus on Labour: Their headline points out Labour’s “heavy losses”, there’s a Freedland opinion piece criticising Labour and even a special write-up about Labour losing control of Bolsover council. Just for a quick reality check, here are the actual results: Have Labour gained a whole bunch of seats? No. But the media effort to conflate Labour’s minor losses with the complete trouncing the Conservatives have taken is totally dishonest. Especially bearing in mind the disparity in press coverage – Labour routinely have smear campaigns run against their members and their leadership, including fresh (preposterous) allegations of “antisemitism” the DAY BEFORE the polling for these seats....
  Reply Francis Lee May, 4, 2019 Yes, there was ONE reference to Rothschild – p.57 – and no reference to Jew, Jews, or Jewish throughout a book of nearly 400 pages. Moreover, J.A.Hobson along with his contemporary L.T.Hobhouse both wrote for the MANCHESTER Guardian. Both were affectionally referred to as ‘The 2 Hobs’ They were well liked by Guardian editor of the time, C.P.Scott....
  M Le Docteur Ralph May, 3, 2019 I agree, however what I also noticed was: FIRST practically no news coverage beforehand AIM low turnout RESULT turnout 36.3% down from 65% when the same seats were last contested on the same day as the general election Labour always does far worse on a low turnout SECOND The latest anti-semitism smear. Nick Robinson on the Today Programme gave the latest smear away when he asked why Corbin could not be bothered to look up Hobson on Wikipedia. The view history tab the on John A. Hobson page on Wikipedia shows that it was edited Icewhiz and Philip Cross between 5:05 am and 8:08 am on 1 May to include for the first time the anti-semitism accusation against Hobson. Philip Cross needs no introduction. Icewhiz was awarded The Israeli Barnstar of National Merit. This “story” had originally been broken on 30 April by Murdoch crony Daniel Finkelstein in The Times THIRD Labour’s losses in its North East heartland. Who lost – Blairite local councillors Who won – Independents who were former members of the Labour party Evidence of a vote for Brexit – hardly New independent Middlesbrough Mayor Andy Preston headed the Britain Stronger in Europe the campaign’s business ambassador for the Tees region, but you won’t see that mentioned anywhere in the MSM. [Local elections] [Media] [Anti-Semitism] [Smear][False balance]
• An American Reporter in Belfast: How a New Yorker Writer Got So Much Wrong in His Bestselling Book On The Troubles
  by Ed Moloney May 2, 2019 Photograph Source: Kenneth Allen – CC BY-SA 2.0 About two-thirds of the way through Say Nothing: A True Story Of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe’s much reviewed, much lauded account of the IRA’s disappearance of Belfast housewife, widowed mother-of-ten and alleged British Army spy, Jean McConville, the author describes the day in 2011 that I learned that the US Department of Justice had served a subpoena on Boston College purportedly in a bid to find her killer. The subpoena had been delivered on behalf of the British government and the police in Northern Ireland, and it sought access to an oral history archive that I had helped to create. Conceived in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, the archive was devoted to collecting the memories of republican and loyalist paramilitary activists involved in the Troubles and it had been funded by, and was lodged at Boston College.[Ireland] [Troubles] [Ireland] [Independence] [Anti-colonialism]
• Australia moves to enforce North Korea sanctions
  2 May 2019 Defence is deploying a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to Japan, from where it will conduct maritime surveillance operations to monitor and deter ship-to-ship transfers of sanctioned goods. As part of its current deployment to the region HMAS Melbourne will also conduct surveillance patrols with international partners. “Since 2018, Australia has supported international efforts to deter and disrupt illicit trade and sanctions evasion activities by North Korea and its associated networks,” Defence said in a media release. These deployments support ongoing economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea “These deployments support ongoing economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea.” [Australia] [Sanctions]
• Tipping Point: The Gilets Jaunes are winning, what’s next?
  David Studdert The weekend just gone, Manifestation 23, marked a seismic shift in the five month battle between the Gilets Jaunes and the French state. The Notre Dame fire has brought into the open the strategic shift in public opinion that has occurred over the winter; shifts all to the advantage of the Gilets Jaunes. While the cold winter months with their looming darkness only allowed us to glimpse two equal parties grinding away at each other in the gloom, the advent of spring and its clear light, reveals how the Gilets are gathering reserves of strength all over France, and how, now, they are slowly winning in Paris as well. The sight of French police surrounding Notre Dame and denying access to its ‘own’ population, starkly illustrates what the state seeks to deny. After all, these sort of monuments are the materiality through which states demonstrates their connection to the population, their right to rule and their own power. The Neo-liberal state is crumbling and Macron is going be the sacrificial lamb. At this stage he will be lucky to last two months. His clumsy handling of the Notre Dame blaze has outraged and enraged more sections of the French population. Indeed throughout the five months of protest, and despite the wall to wall media propaganda, opinion polls consistently show continued and unwavering sympathy and support of the Gilets Jaunes. [Gilet jaunes] [Macron]

• Tony Kevin Speaks Out on Assange
  by Tony Kevin, 26 April 2019 These are the speaking notes Tony Kevin delivered at a a street rally at the UK High Commission, Commonwealth Avenue, Canberra, at 12 noon Friday 26 April, for Julian Assange. My thanks to Christine Assange, Julian’s mother in Australia, to Lorese Vera, and to their colleagues, for inspiring and calling this public meeting. We live in dangerous times. US imperial power is flailing around in its death throes , making trouble for people and nations all over the world. Blocking real action on climate change, trying to foment regime change in Venezuela and Iran, troublemaking in the South China Sea, illegally maintaining military presences in Syria. The US governing elite remains obsessively Russophobic. The nuclear arms race is slipping out of control under dangerous American illusions of global military supremacy. We are living through the most perilous moment since the Cuban missile crisis; more perilous even, since in the craziness of Russiagate, the US government is not currently even speaking to Russia. And here in Australia we have a crucially important election underway, whose outcome will be vital to our young people and other disadvantaged communities. So why bother about this person called Julian Assange? This one weird early middle-aged guy who seems to have a knack for getting up the noses of so many powerful people and governments? Aren’t there bigger things we need to think about than the fate of this one particularly troublesome person? Should we not just think of him as ‘collateral damage’ of the past 20 years, and move on to more important and current debates and causes? The fact that some of us are here today for this demonstration, in a city not big on demonstrations, shows we do not accept that argument. We recognise that Julian is pivotal to so much that is happening around us. [Assange] [Australia]
• WATCH: Very Funny Video Ridiculing the Assange Travesty
  This article from our archives was first published on RI in April 2019 RI Staff Thu, Apr 18, 2019 | 110 words 5,983 27 Free Assange! This post first appeared on Russia Insider Two more years of this sort of thing, which is how long just the UK stage of Assange's legal battle will likely last, and the Deep State will be done for good. The Assange arrest might just be the best thing to happen for the cause of truth and justice in a long time. Very well done. Enjoy. The videos are made by an Australian man and wife team, and the story of how they got started in the video below is very interesting. They have 1600 donors on Patreon, and that number seems to be growing quickly. Please support them if you can with $1 per month, we need more of this! [Assange] [Satire] [Australia]
• Energetic Protest Demands Freedom for Socialist Political Prisoner in Australia
  Sydney, 13 April 2019: More than 40 people participated in a united front protest action today in support of a left-wing political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi. An Australian citizen who migrated from South Korea some 31 years ago, Choi has been incarcerated for the last 16 months. The Australian authorities have refused to give him bail because of his sympathies for North Korea. They have also stripped him of many of the legal rights that should be accorded to other prisoners. The Australian regime has restricted visits to see him, cut off his phone calls, prevented his son from visiting him in jail and blocked visits by his lawyers for several months. Underscoring the reality that this cruel repression flows very much from the nature of Australia’s racist, rich people’s regime is the fact that Choi is being imprisoned in the very same wing of Sydney’s Long Bay jail where 26 year-old Aboriginal man, David Dungay, was murdered by racist prison guards on 29 December 2015. [Australia] [Diaspora] [Political prisoner] [Sanctions]
• Do the US Marines in Darwin pose a risk to our peace and security?
  Bevan Ramsden Posted on 19 April 2019 A recent US war exercise involving US Marines landing, capturing and securing an island off the coast of Okinawa is touted as a new US military strategy to use in its challenge to China in the South China Sea. Is the imbedding of US marines in war exercises on HMAS Adelaide, which has been fitted with amphibious landing gear, part of US strategy to involve Australia in future hostile actions in the South China Sea ? The agreement between the governments of the United States and Australia which under- pins the annual stationing of up to 2,500 US Marines in Darwin is called the Force Posture Agreement (FPA). The concept was first announced by US President Obama in 2011 in a visit to Australia and was presented as part of the new US military strategy called the “Pivot to Asia”. A clearer explanation of this strategy would be “the relocation of a major part of the US military forces including naval forces to the Asia/Pacific area to confront and contain China”. Our politicians in Canberra, including then Prime Minister Gillard, enthusiastically applauded Obama when he made this announcement. [China confrontation] [Allegiance] [Pawn] [Australia]
• A response from the Chinese Community Council of Australia (CCCA)
  Anthony Pun Posted on 17 April 2019 The Chinese Australian community warmly thanks Prof Bob Carr for speaking out for the Chinese Australians and giving a detailed analysis of China panic over a period of more than 2 years. Prof Carr’s suggestion of a community response based on the Jewish model is a great suggestion and plans can be made to initiate the implementation. However, the successful implementation would depend on the unity of the 1.2 million Chinese Australian diaspora. The CCCA is indeed indebted to Prof Bob Carr on his summary on China Panic and his emphasis for the need of unity among the Chinese Australian (CA) community particularly on the issue of Chinese Australians’ loyalty being questioned. [Diaspora] [Australia] [Yellow Peril]
• Two Australians in trouble abroad.
  David Macilwain Posted on 17 April 2019 The law to censor violent content rushed through Parliament last week connected dots between two Australians abroad, when Julian Assange was “extradited” from Ecuadorian territory, in London. I examine the linkages. When new draconian legislation to censor violent content in social media and elsewhere was rustled through Parliament at the end of the last session, practically unopposed except by the Greens’ Adam Bandt, the dangers it posed to investigative journalism were ignored. Why exactly the Labor party had agreed to this self-serving last act by the Coalition government before its predicted demise in the coming election is unclear, and worrying. This is particularly so given what happened in strangely similar circumstances before Christmas, when the Labor party was blackmailed into agreeing to intrusive new powers in anti-encryption legislation, on the basis these could be reviewed and amended when Parliament returned; such a review was finally dismissed as unnecessary by home affairs minister Peter Dutton – as had clearly always been the Government’s intention. The passing of the new laws to prosecute companies and individuals who allow violent content to appear on the web came about, or was enabled, by the Christchurch atrocity. The extreme nature of the new laws drew the attention of international media, who also highlighted the lack of opposition in the Australian parliament. Given that the criminal was “one of our own”, perhaps this was appropriate. In what seems like a strange twist of fate, or to some like an unlikely coincidence worth investigating, the threat to whistle-blowers from this legislation prohibiting the screening of graphic videos like that recorded by Brenton Tarrant’s head-cam, brought a specific example to mind – the video recorded by US marines targeting and killing civilians from a chopper in Iraq, whose release caused such a scandal. The callous and total disregard for innocent lives revealed in the marines’ audio commentary drew particular attention......
  At its crudest, it’s a choice on which of these two notorious Australians we would choose to represent us abroad – firearm warrior Tarrant or cyber-warrior Assange? [Assange] [WikiLeaks] [Censorship] [Tarrant]
• Australians with Chinese origins need to come together.
  Bob Carr Posted on 16 April 2019 A new burst of messaging on China Panic has been unleashed by Four Corners and newspapers, again giving the impression that hostile forces are threatening Australia. Last month former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans noted “a new form of Sinophobia is emerging.” He said this is one of the reasons Chinese-Australians are underrepresented in senior leadership. Sometimes there have been legitimate concerns lying beneath the surface of China Panics. I have not criticised the Australian government for banning foreign campaign donations or requiring representatives of foreign governments to register. On Huawei, I am neutral. Who knows what evidence was considered by the National Security Committee of Cabinet to justify the ban on the world’s biggest telco as supplier of 5G equipment? But, as Evans says, a lot of the publicity has been conflated, even tinged with racism. Take the following examples: · In 2017 former China correspondent for Fairfax John Garnaut alleged that China was exporting “racial chauvinism” to our universities. This generated a raft of headlines and bought warnings from then-foreign minister Julie Bishop to Chinese students. But a careful survey by James Laurenceson of the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at UTS of media stories on the subject showed that, with about 130,000 Chinese students in Australia, there were a mere four incidents. And in not a single case was freedom of expression compromised or classroom discussion stifled. [China confrontation] [Yellow peril] [Diaspora] [Australia]
• Australia and the United States more than joined at the hip?
  Mack Williams Posted on 15 April 2019 The recent Morrison Budget and the subsequent public commentary had precious little new to add to policy debate about future foreign policy directions for Australia other than to cut again our overseas aid budget – to an accumulated 27% since this government has been in office. Sadly neither did the Shorten Budget Reply. But tucked away in the DFAT Portfolio Budget was a reference to an Australia: United States “joint work plan” which represents a significant strengthening of our linkage with the US. The recent DFAT Portfolio Budget paper revealed the following : “Australia has committed to working closely with the United States towards this objective. Arising from AUSMIN 2018, an Australia–US joint work plan – which includes a range of diplomatic, security and economic initiatives – is advancing shared strategic interests in the region.” The “objective” was described in the previous paragraph in the paper as: “Ensuring the (Indo Pacific) region evolves peacefully, without an erosion of the fundamental principles on which the region’s cooperative relations are based, is one of the department’s central objectives. The department will promote an open, inclusive and prosperous region in which the rights of all states are respected.” All of which tracks back to the Australia: United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) 2018 joint communique which stated that: “The Secretaries and Ministers emphasized both nations’ strong and deepening engagement in the Indo-Pacific. They made clear their commitment to work together – and with partners – to shape an Indo-Pacific that is open, inclusive, prosperous, and rules-based. A key outcome of discussions in Palo Alto is a joint work plan that advances our shared strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific, which has diplomatic, security, and economic dimensions.” [Australia] [Subservience] [Allegiance] [FOIP] [China confronation]
• They raised a beetroot in the air and shouted f*** capitalism: Minute by minute, ANDREW PIERCE reconstructs Jeremy Corbyn's four-hour meeting with hate-filled group that mocks Judaism
  By Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail Published: 08:55 AEST, 4 April 2018 | Updated: 00:45 AEST, 5 April 2018 As the 100 or so guests arrived for their Passover feast, a rumour swept the room that they were to be graced by the presence of a prominent politician. After around 30 minutes of singing traditional Jewish songs, and a few short speeches, the doors to the Anglican church hall opened. Amid loud apologies for being late, Jeremy Corbyn and his wife Laura joined the seder, a Jewish ritual dinner held on the first or second night of Passover. The couple had been invited by the organisers – Jewdas, a far Left group founded by young Jews in 2005. Traditionally, seder is a dinner of chicken soup followed by lamb for family and friends. [Corbyn] [Smear] [Anti-Semitism]
• The Crippling of Britain in the Age of Brexit
  by Patrick Cockburn April 9, 2019 Future historians will look back at Britain in the age of Brexit and seek to explain why its people reduced their power and influence in the world in the belief that they were doing the exact opposite. But historians will have to move quickly if they are to have a say because the most important consequences of Brexit are already with us. People do not see this because UK membership of the EU is wrongly discussed as an economic issue when it is primarily a political one. [Brexit]
• Korean Peninsula Peace Forum: Prospects for Lasting Peace
  12 April 2019 - 10:30am to 5:15pm Chatham House | 10 St James's Square | London | SW1Y 4LE Moon Chung-in, Special Advisor to President Moon Jae-in Enna Park, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United Kingdom Lord Peter Ricketts, UK Ambassador to France (2012-16); Strategic Adviser, Lockheed Martin Paul Beijer, Distinguished Associate Fellow, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI); Ambassador of Sweden to the DPRK (2001-05) This one-day conference will discuss the prospects for peace on the Korean peninsula following the second US-DPRK summit held in Hanoi in February 2019. It will consider prospects for denuclearization and the US' role, the future of inter-Korea relations under President Moon Jae-in, as well as how other parties, including China and Russia, might contribute to stability on the peninsula. This conference is supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the UK. This conference will be followed by a drinks reception. Event documents [Moon Chung-in] [Military-industrial complex]
• The Media Smoothed the Path to British Soldiers Using Corbyn as Target Practice
  by Jonathan Cook April 5, 2019 It is time to stop believing these infantile narratives the British political and media establishments have crafted for us. Like the one in which they tell us they care deeply about the state of political life, and that they lie awake at night worrying about the threat posed by populism to our democratic institutions. How do they persuade us of the depth of their concern? They express their horror at at the murder of an MP, Jo Cox, and their outrage at the abuse of another, Anna Soubry – both victims of the frenzied passions unleashed by Brexit. But the political and media elites don’t really care whether politicians are assaulted, vilified or threatened – at least, not if it is the kind of politician who threatens their power. They aren’t seriously worried about attacks on democracy, or about political violence, or about the rottenness at the core of state institutions. Their outrage is selective. It is rooted not in principle, but in self-interest. Is that too cynical? Ponder this. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t faced just shouted insults from afar, like Soubry. He was recently physically assaulted, hit on the head by a man holding an egg in his fist. But unlike Soubry, our media expressed no real concern. In fact, they could barely hide their sniggers at his “egging”, an attack they presented as little more than a prank. They even hinted that Corbyn deserved it. [Corbyn] {media]
  • British Army 'could stage mutiny under Corbyn', says senior serving general
    Generals would not 'allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of the UK' Caroline Mortimer @cjmortimer Sunday 20 September 2015 13:27 A senior serving general has reportedly warned that a Jeremy Corbyn government could face "a mutiny" from the Army if it tried to downgrade them. The unnamed general said members of the armed forces would begin directly and publicly challenging the labour leader if he tried to scrap Trident, pull out of Nato or announce “any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.” He told the Sunday Times: “The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security. “There would be mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.” [Corbyn] [Coup]
• China’s President Xi Jinping in Italy: It’s the Maritime Ports!
  By F. William Engdahl Global Research, April 02, 2019 To the concern of Germany, France, Holland and other EU countries, Italy’s coalition has just signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China to join China’s Belt Road Initiative, the so-called New Economic Silk Road. Italy is the only industrial G7 country so far to opt in to the BRI. The China deal has the potential to change the geopolitics of not only the EU but also most of the world. It’s about who controls which major maritime ports of world commerce. While much attention has focused on the role of high-speed rail infrastructure as the backbone of the ambitious China BRI project, little attention has been so far given to what may be a far more strategic geopolitical development in China’s BRI, namely China’s ability to own or control the most vital ports of Asia, of Africa, major parts of Latin America and now,evidently, of the European Union. During Xi Jinping’s Italy talks, the two sides signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for various business deals between Italian and Chinese state companies in agriculture, finance and energy. The actual deals signed totaled $2.8 billion for 29 projects, with possible expansion up to $20 billion, hardly yet a game-changer for economically distressed Italy. The heart of the MOU for China, however, is the potential for Chinese investment in Italian ports, notably Genoa, possibly Palermo and Trieste where China’s Communications and Construction Company will be given access to the port of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea to enable links to central and eastern Europe. [China] [Italy] [Belt and Road] [Ports] [ODI] [Hysteria]
• Italy Looks to China
  April 1, 2019 By Andrew Spannaus in Milan Special to Consortium News Italy caused a political firestorm in mid-March when it announced that it would be joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative by signing a memorandum of understanding during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Rome from March 21 to 23. As the first G-7 country to accept a formal agreement to participate in the initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, Italy found itself under instant pressure from both the United States and its allies in Europe, all of which worried that it represented an expansion of China’s economic foothold in the West. The populist government led by the Five-Star Movement and the League was caught off guard by the rapid backlash, which began with a pointed tweet from the U.S. National Security Council on March 9. Italy is a major global economy and a great investment destination. Endorsing BRI lends legitimacy to China’s predatory approach to investment and will bring no benefits to the Italian people. — NSC (@WHNSC) March 9, 2019 Garrett Marquis, confidant of U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton and former Security Council spokesman, followed up with a threat to stop intelligence-sharing between the two countries. Prior to the Chinese leader’s arrival, Giancarlo Giorgetti, the secretary of the Council of Ministers, a post equivalent to chief of staff in the U.S., confirmed the signing of the memorandum to exploit new economic opportunities, but said important restrictions would be placed on cooperation with China, and that it was “ridiculous to speak of detachment from the United States.”[Italy China] [Allegiance] [Belt and Road]
• Soft Brexit, second referendum among the options up for vote in Parliament
  By William Booth and Karla Adam April 1 at 1:11 PM LONDON — After voting “no” so many times, the British Parliament may be ready to vote “aye” on something. On Monday, Parliament will again try to seize the steering wheel from Prime Minister Theresa May, as the House of Commons stages votes on four proposals on how to exit the European Union. Among the top options are two that would call for much softer Brexit than May has envisioned. The two proposals would see Britain remain in closely tied to European trade rules and tariff regimes. One option would essentially mean that Britain would surrender its ability to control European immigration. The other would likely keep Britain from setting off to strike its own independent trade deals. Trade experts, describing the two options, say they could deliver a kind of “ultra-soft” Brexit, that sees Britain “take back a bit of control.” Another popular option may push the government to stage a second referendum to take the questions of how or whether to leave back to the people. Theresa May faces pressure as Parliament votes on Brexit plans As Parliament prepares for indicative votes on Brexit alternatives April 1, British Prime Minister Theresa May faces increased pressure. (Reuters) And the fourth essentially seeks to cancel Brexit. These will be non-binding “indicative votes,” expressing the will of Parliament. An earlier round of votes failed to produce a majority for any of eight proposals last week. But a big shift by the Labour Party and other political maneuvering may change the math on Monday evening. All this comes amid growing signs that the British prime minister has lost control of Brexit, her party and her cabinet. [Brexit]
• Britain does not back Huawei spying claims
  A cyber security agency found technical issues, but no evidence of state interference by Beijing ByAsia Times staff Britain has identified “significant technical issues” in Huawei’s software engineering that could create risks in the country’s telecommunication networks, but has not supported US claims that the Chinese firm poses national security and espionage threats. The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) said there there would only be “limited assurances” that such long-term risks could be managed in Huawei’s telecoms and electronics equipment. However, the British agency took a more lenient line than the Americans, concluding that it was “unlikely” these issues were a result of “Chinese state interference” and suggesting that the Shenzhen-based company’s plans to address security flaws “could in principle be successful”. The report also found no evidence that Huawei was giving the Chinese government backdoor access, a key accusation leveled by the US. In short, the NCSC said any security risks could be managed. Washington has charged that Huawei offers China the ability to snoop on internet and smartphone users who use the company’s products. It has been lobbying allies in Europe to lock Huawei out of their new 5G telecommunications infrastructure. [Huawei] [Cybersecurity] [UK] [Friction]
• British House Speaker Bercow on His Brexit Role
  He has become legendary with his calls for "order! orderrr!" In an interview, John Bercow, the speaker of Britain's House of Commons, discusses the never-ending Brexit drama and his good luck that people holding his position are no longer subjected to beheadings. Interview Conducted By Jörg Schindler? April 01, 2019 12:13 PM DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Speaker, some of your predecessors were decapitated. Is it a relief for you that this kind of punishment is out of fashion? Bercow: I suppose it is a relief. No fewer than seven of my predecessors met their end on the executioner's block. Luckily, we have abolished the death penalty. So whatever else happens to me, I'm not likely to lose my head. DER SPIEGEL: There might be a few people out there who would like to reintroduce severe punishments in your case. Bercow: That may well be so. My responsibility is simply to do what I think is right. [John Bercow] [Brexit]

• The Brexit delusion of taking back control
  Martin Wolf (Financial Times 27.3.2019) Posted on 29 March 2019 From Beijing, where I now am, the UK looks small. It also looks as if it has fallen into the hands of lunatics engaged in an astonishing act of national self-harm. But this, Brexiters will say, is an illusion. The UK is going to “take back control”. The slogan was brilliant. But it was the biggest delusion of all. Control is different from sovereignty. As I argued during the referendum campaign, the UK was already sovereign: it could, if it wished, vote to leave the EU. It did so, but promptly discovered that, while it was sovereign, it was not very powerful. Yet control is about power. In the post-referendum negotiations with the EU it has turned out, as informed people knew it would, that the EU was more powerful than the UK. This was so for a simple reason: it could impose far heavier penalties on the UK than the UK could on the EU. Britain sends 47 per cent of its exports of goods to the EU, while the rest of the EU sends 15 per cent of its exports to the UK. For the EU, the UK market is important. For the UK, the EU’s is vital. Welcome to the harsh world of international relations. We have been frequently reminded that the UK is the fifth (soon to be sixth) largest economy. That is true, but misleading. The world contains three economic superpowers: the US, the EU (without the UK) and China. These generated about 60 per cent of global output last year. The UK’s contribution was 3 per cent. It is large for a minnow, but still a minnow. So what might “control” mean for a small island country about to separate itself from its neighbours and closest economic partners? In some areas, it will be able to exercise control. But these are where it has always been able to do so. [Brexit] [Self-delusion]
• The Golan Heights: Whose rules?
  Mike Scrafton Posted on 29 March 2019 President Trump has recognised the 1981 Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights. Whatever Trump’s motives—genuine concern for Israel’s security, geostrategic positioning in the struggle against Iran, fulfilling a divine mission, or domestic politics—his act raises important geopolitical issues and questions of international law. Trump’s move should force the Australian government to revisit its prioritisation of defence of the rules-based global order in its foreign and defence polices. Following the 1967 war in which Israel occupied part of the Golan Heights, the Security Council unanimously passed resolution 242 which emphasised ‘the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’. Following the hostilities which again broke out on the Golan Heights in 1973, the Security Council reaffirmed the principles of resolution 242 through resolution 338. Of all the international laws in the rules-based global order that should be supported in the interests of peace and security, the prohibition against acquisition of territory by war is the most fundamental. In the case of straight out aggression that is indisputable. But generally conflict between states is more complex. [Australia] [US] [Trump] [Rules based international order] [Israel]
• A response to Gareth Evan’s article on the bamboo ceiling.
  Anthony PuN Posted on 27 March 2019 Our former foreign minster, the Hon Gareth Evans, has written an excellent piece about the bamboo curtain. His thesis is focused on institutional covert and overt discriminatory practices. To be fair, the fault is not entirely due to discrimination but also the psyche and cultural conditioning of Chinese Australians. The way forward is to create increased awareness of the short-comings of Chinese Australians, an opportunity to present Chinese Australian community views and a change of cultural thinking in taking up positions of power whether it is community, business, or political governance. Gareth Evans has identified correctly the reasons for the existence of the “bamboo curtain” particularly inherent covert and overt racism in Australia. Memories of wrongdoings during the goldfield days and the White Australia policy do leave a big scar in the psyche of Chinese Australians whose ancestors came to settle in Australia during the gold rush. Their descendants are “conditioned” not to rebel against authority nor were they were permitted to express dissent in the country, a situation very similar to Chinese citizens during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). The influx of new immigrants of Chinese origin outside China but born in British colonies like Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong in the 1950s onward, were a different breed. Despite their British influence, the “political psyche” has not changed because, under British rule, you are not to participate in dissent. In addition, joining the police force, the armed forces or even the scout movement was not encouraged by parents. The next wave of immigrants were Vietnamese of Chinese origin and their cultural attitude towards power politics is no different from British colonial Chinese. The 1990s onwards brought the next wave of immigrants from China, who are highly educated, followed by “rich” Chinese business immigrants in the last decade. The bamboo ceiling is not caused just by discriminatory practices alone and it also has to do with cultural attitudes or psyche towards “power positions”. [Australia] [Immigration] [Racism] [China] [Diaspora]
• British Foreign Policy in the Middle East: A Secret History of Self Interest
  March 29, 2019 The idea that Westminster is the “mother of all parliaments,” representing a democratic model for the world, is a cultivated myth, writes Mark Curtis. By Mark Curtis British Foreign Policy Declassified On Tuesday in the British parliament, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry asked an urgent question relating to allegations that British troops have been covertly fighting in Yemen and supporting the Saudi-led coalition. As reported in the Mail on Sunday, five British special forces troops from the elite Special Boat Service (SBS) were injured while “advising” Saudi Arabia on their deadly campaign in Yemen. The commandos were injured in gun fights as part of a top-secret campaign, and other reports have claimed British troops have been killed in such battles. British soldiers from the Special Air Service (SAS) have reportedly been secretly deployed and operate “dressed in Arab clothing.” Responding to Labour’s questions, Mark Field, a minister in the U.K.’s foreign office, said that he would seek to get to the bottom of these “very serious and well sourced” allegations. The presence of British soldiers in Yemen, secretly fighting a war that has brought death, famine and destruction to millions of innocent civilians, raises an age-old question: why does British foreign policy in the Middle East support dictatorships, abuse human rights and prioritize Britain’s power status? Member of Women in Black, the global movement against militarism, Jan. 31, 2018, Central London. (Alisdare Hickson via Flickr) Member of Women in Black, a global movement against militarism, Jan. 31, 2018, Central London. (Alisdare Hickson via Flickr) It’s tempting to say the reasons are simply geopolitics, oil and other commercial interests. But there is a deeper explanation: Britain, far from being a true democracy, is in reality an oligarchy that promotes the interests of a privileged domestic elite. The idea that Westminster is the “mother of all parliaments,” representing a democratic model for the world, is a cultivated myth. [UK] [Yemen] [Covert] [British Middle East policy]
• Exclusive: EU to drop threat of Huawei ban but wants 5G risks monitored – sources
  Foo Yun Chee, Robin Emmott The European Commission will next week urge EU countries to share more data to tackle cybersecurity risks related to 5G networks but will ignore U.S. calls to ban Huawei Technologies, four people familiar with the matter said on Friday. FILE PHOTO: People walk past a sign board of Huawei at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2018 in Shanghai, China June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo European digital chief Andrus Ansip will present the recommendation on Tuesday. While the guidance does not have legal force, it will carry political weight which can eventually lead to national legislation in European Union countries. The United States has lobbied Europe to shut out Huawei, saying its equipment could be used by the Chinese government for espionage. Huawei has strongly rejected the allegations and earlier this month sued the U.S. government over the issue. Ansip will tell EU countries to use tools set out under the EU directive on security of network and information systems, or NIS directive, adopted in 2016 and the recently approved Cybersecurity Act, the people said. [Huawei] [5G] [EU] [Resistance] {China confrontation] [Friction] [Cybersecurity]
• Brexit Chaos Theresa May's Days Are Numbered. Now What?
  Even if British Prime Minister Theresa May's last attempt to get her much-maligned withdrawal agreement through parliament succeeds, she is unlikely to keep her job. But whoever comes next probably won't manage to defuse the crisis. By Jörg Schindler html Wolfgang Rattay / REUTERS A poster of Theresa May: Few believe the Brexit problem will be easier to solve once the British prime minister is out of office. March 22, 2019 07:20 PM Boris Johnson recently had his hair cut short. In the past few weeks, he has visibly lost weight. He has even learned to hold his tongue. When the former British foreign secretary left parliament in Westminster last Tuesday, he was, as always, confronted by journalists. But the man who otherwise never avoids a microphone pushed his ski hat down and walked off. Since then, London's political pundits have been convinced that Johnson is up to something. They claim he's merely waiting for the right moment to catapult himself back into the spotlight. That day, it seems, is not so far away. After another bruising week in the United Kingdom, the end game has started. Not only for Brexit, but also for the prime minister. Theresa May herself pointed out in front of parliament on Wednesday that her days as prime minister might soon be numbered. That much was already clear to anyone who saw Theresa May's unabashedly populistic televised address on Wednesday, with which she tried to deflect any blame from herself. Or who has read her listless letter to European Union leaders, in which she almost beseechingly requested an extension to the misery. Or who has listened to her level-headed fellow party member Dominic Grieve, who said that, because of her, he has "never been more ashamed to be a Conservative." "She may stagger through London for another few months," says a long-time ally, predicting that, even if she manages to push through the widely hated withdrawal agreement at the last moment, "she can longer save herself." During the biggest crisis in postwar United Kingdom history, many leading politicians are ever more blatantly positioning themselves to succeed May. This includes a handful of incumbent ministers, who should have their hands full preventing their country from drifting into chaos. It reflects the situation's core problem: While Brexit is a foreign-policy issue for the rest of Europe, in London it revolves primarily around a battle for domestic power. Backstage at Westminster, a shameful performance is taking place. No matter what happens, everything suggests that this power struggle will make the perpetual-motion machine that is Brexit harder to solve. Considering the way things are going, the second phase of negotiations with the EU -- should they, at some point, occur -- will likely be carried out by a Brexit hardliner. Europe needs to prepare itself for the worst. [Brexit] [Boris Johnson] [Theresa May]
• Beware Foreign Policy ‘Experts’ Who Are Shills for Imperialism
  By Yves Engler Global Research, March 21, 2019 Yves Engler 20 March 2019 Aside from government officials the dominant media is fond of quoting “experts” from foreign policy think tanks when discussing Canada’s role in the world. While presented as neutral specialists, these opinion shapers are generally entangled with powerful, wealthy, elites. Take the case of Venezuela and Canada’s leading foreign policy ‘ideas organization’. Recently Canadian International Council President Ben Rowswell has been widely quoted promoting Ottawa’s regime change efforts in Venezuela. After 25 years in Canada’s diplomatic service, including stints as chargé d’affaires in Iraq and ambassador in Caracas, Rowswell joined the CIC in November. Rowswell’s move highlights the close relationship between Global Affairs Canada and this corporate funded think tank, which has deep imperial roots. Formerly the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, CIC has 15 (mostly university based) regional branches that hold dozens of conferences and seminars annually. The head office publishes International Journal, Behind the Headlines as well as reports and books. It also does media outreach. Officially formed in 1928, CIIA’s stated aim was to promote “an understanding of international questions and problems, particularly in so far as these may relate to Canada and the British Empire.” [Canada] [Think tanks] [Pundits] [Front] [Shills]
• Daley’s Asian blunder … And beyond
  Clive Kessler Posted on 22 March 2019 Yes, Michael Daley’s Asian blunder was a bad choice of words —— and more. But when we have finished fulminating about his “racism”, consider this. What he is talking about to people in “the stressed and stalled lower middle” of Australian society touches upon a deep reversal in their, and most Australians’, long-ingrained attitudes, assumptions and expectations. Expectations arising from our long-held “elevator” or “successionist” ideas about immigration and integration. The underlying idea, long held and tacitly assumed here, is that you come in, start to move up, and that, as you do, other later arrivals then come in behind you to occupy your former niche and “take their turn”. There is a tenacious idea lurking within these assumptions that there is, if not an orderly immigration entry and social mobility queue, then a rough and ready and well-known one. That has long been a fundamental “Oz” idea and assumption. It is one that has been put in question and overturned by current immigration patterns and policies: the giving of priority to middle and upper-middle class profession and enterprise visa immigrants. And that is what disquiets the “decent middling battlers”. [Migration] [Australia] [Social mobility] [Myth]
• Why Defamation Lawsuits Are Crucial for Protecting Rule of Law: A Comment on the Chau Chak Wing Case
  Colin Hawes Posted on 19 March 2019 Following the recent success of Dr. Chau Chak Wing’s defamation lawsuit against Fairfax and John Garnaut, Liberal MP Andrew Hastie stated that the judgment will be “carefully analysed”: “The ability to report freely and fairly on national security is a vital part of our democracy,” and “we are concerned about the impact that defamation laws in Australia are having on responsible journalism that informs Australians about important national security issues.” One can only hope that Hastie and related national security hawks do actually read the Federal Court’s 100-page meticulously reasoned judgment before jumping to conclusions about protecting “democracy” and “responsible journalism”. Justice Wigney provides detailed and fascinating evidence demonstrating the numerous reporting errors and unfounded biases that led to Garnaut’s defamatory characterization of Chau as a bribery suspect seeking to avoid extradition by “bunkering down” in China. Of particular interest to Mr. Hastie should be Justice Wigney’s conclusion that Garnaut had “no rational or reasonable basis” for his “extraordinary, if not outlandish and paranoic, statements or theories … that Dr Chau may have [been] ‘an agent of … the Chinese State’ or … ‘an actual asset of the Chinese intelligence system.’ Mr Garnaut did not … shed any light on how and why Mr Ashe’s appearance at a conference organised by a group of non-government organisations somehow advanced the interests of the Chinese State or its intelligence services” (judgment para 147). Prior to writing the impugned article, Garnaut had already formed a negative bias against Chau based on “speculative and exaggerated” misinterpretations of their earlier interactions, including Chau’s invitations to his estate in China, gifts of wine and offers of further hospitality. As Wigney notes: “It is difficult to see why Dr Chau’s explanation that these were simply incidents of politeness and traditional Chinese culture was in any way implausible” (141-2) This negative bias led Garnaut to overlook the serious errors and misleading assumptions in his account of Chau’s alleged connection to a United Nations bribery case. The first error was to misread the indictment in that case to conclude that Chau was under investigation and risked extradition to the United States, which was false (171, 178). The second error was to rely on unattributed statements by the husband of Sheri Yan, an accused person in that case, which clearly were conflicted, and an “attempt to shift the blame from Ms Yan to Dr Chau” (197). [China confrontation] [Australia] [Hysteria] [Garnaut]
• Brexit’s Imperial Nostalgia
  March 18, 2019 Anis Chowdhuryand Jomo Kwame Sundaram confront the notion that British rule helped “develop” the empire. By Jomo Kwame Sundaram in Kuala Lumpur and Anis Chowdhury in Sydney Inter Press Service As the possible implications of Britain’s self-imposed “no-deal” exit from the European Union loom larger, a new round of imperial nostalgia has come alive. After turning its back on the Commonwealth since the Thatcherite 1980s, some British Conservative Party leaders are seeking to revive colonial connections in increasingly desperate efforts to avoid self-inflicted marginalization following divorce from its European Union neighbors across the Channel. Part of the new Brexit induced neo-imperial mythology is that its colonies did not provide any significant economic benefit to Britain itself. Instead, it is suggested that colonial administrations were run at great cost to Britain itself. The empire, it is even claimed, was long maintained due to a benevolent imperial sense of responsibility. To revive patron-client relations neglected with the turn to Europe in the 1980s, the new mantra is that British rule helped ‘develop’ the empire. As the sun never set on Britain’s far flung empire, acquired by diverse means for different reasons at various points in time, few generalizations are appropriate. Nevertheless, there is already significant research indicating otherwise for many colonies, but India, of course, was the jewel in the crown. Empire Strikes Back Former Indian foreign minister Shashi Tharoor has debunked many imperial apologetic claims, including those made by former Oxford and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson. Probably the most prominent, Ferguson famously insisted decades ago that countries progressed thanks to imperialism in an influential TV series and coffee table book sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), “Empire.” [Imperial nostalgia] [Brexit]
• Dutch authorities arrest suspect in shooting on Utrecht tram that left 3 dead
  Terror level rises in Netherlands after tram shooting Several people were shot in a tram in the central Dutch city of Utrecht March 18, an incident police said may have had a "terrorist motive." (Reuters) By Michael Birnbaum March 18 at 3:20 PM BRUSSELS — A man opened fire Monday on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht, killing three people and injuring five in a shooting that authorities said may have been motivated by terrorism. After an hours-long manhunt across Utrecht, police arrested a 37-year-old Turkish-born man, Gokmen Tanis, who they said was the main suspect. They also took into custody another person they said was connected to the attack, although they offered no further details. [Netherlands] [Terrorism]
• Waning winters: In the Netherlands, an iconic skating race — and a way of life — faces extinction from climate change
  The Elfsteden monument bridge goes over a canal outside Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. The Canterlandse Bridge has thousands of tiles with pictures of competitors and winners of the Elfstedentocht race and is the last bridge the skaters go under before the finish line. Story by Rick Maese Photos by Jonathan Newton March 7, 2019 LEEUWARDEN, Netherlands On a balmy winter day, Klaas Einte Adema lugged his ice skates from car to rink to continue his training for a race that might never come. The 36-year-old has spent the better part of his adult life doing this — showing up at the rink six days a week, skating laps, honing technique and waiting for the weather to someday cooperate. “When it’s coming, I’m ready,” he says of the country’s most storied and near-mythical sporting event. The Elfstedentocht translates to “eleven cities tour.” It’s an ice skating race that measures about 135 miles and takes place on the canals that connect the 11 cities in the Friesland province of the Netherlands. The 110-year-old event is wildly popular — the next race is expected to attract 26,000 participants, 2 million spectators and 3,000 journalists and will surely draw the attention of nearly every person in the country — largely because of the long wait and grim forecast associated with it. Game Changer This series will examine the impact climate change is having on the world of sports, from elite competitors to recreational athletes. The race only takes place when conditions allow; when extreme winter bowls over the region, the temperatures drop, and the canals freeze over. But the Netherlands is no longer a romantic wintry wonderland, and there hasn’t been an Elfstedentocht since 1997, marking the longest drought ever between races. Climate change has endangered the race and is slowly dousing hopes across the province. [Climate change] [Netherlands]
• Soon, Americans will have to take an extra step to travel to some European countries
  By Lindsey Bever March 9 at 1:57 PM Starting in 2021, Americans and travelers from other visa-free countries will have to take an extra step when visiting more than two dozen countries in Europe. The European Union announced last year that before travel, visitors from all visa-free countries, including the United States, will need to complete an online application and pay a small fee using the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) designed “to strengthen security checks on those persons who travel visa-free to the EU,” according to a fact sheet from the European Commission. It applies to people traveling to Europe’s Schengen Zone, an area comprising 26 countries, including France, Germany and Spain, but not Britain. [Travel]
• Labour’s Fight Over Israel Long Time in Coming
  March 7, 2019 The party is being dragged into the modern world by Corbyn’s anti-racist leadership towards Palestinians, writes Jonathan Cook. By JonathanCook Jonathan-Cook.net An announcement this week by the Jewish Labour Movement that it is considering splitting from the British Labour Party could not have come at a worse moment for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is already besieged by claims that he is presiding over a party that has become “institutionally anti-Semitic.” The threats by the JLM should be seen as part of concerted efforts to oust Corbyn from the leadership. They follow on the heels of a decision by a handful of Labour MPs last month to set up a new faction called the Independent Group. They, too, cited anti-Semitismas a major reason for leaving. On the defensive, Corbyn was prompted to write to the JLM expressing his and the shadow cabinet’s “very strong desire for you to remain a part of our movement”. More than 100 Labour MPs, including members of the front bench, similarly pleaded with the JLM not to disaffiliate. They apologized for “toxic racism” in the party and for “letting our Jewish supporters and members down.” [Zionism] [Israel] [Jeremy Corbyn] [Anti-Semitism]
• Will Brexit happen? When? And how? The uncertainty is maddening for business.
  An Airbus employee works on the production line at the assembly factory in Broughton, England. Airbus has warned that a chaotic Brexit could force it to move. (Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg News) By Karla Adam and William Booth March 9 at 9:28 AM Britain is set to leave the European Union in less than three weeks — and it’s still not yet clear how it will exit, or whether its departure will be delayed, or if it will leave at all. From the board rooms to the factory floors, there is consensus: This is no way to treat the world’s fifth-largest economy. [Brexit]
• Australia’s China debate
  James Laurenceson Posted on 5 March 2019 Australia’s China debate is frequently cast in terms of ‘doves’ versus ‘hawks’, with the former also receiving the tag of being ‘pro-China’ and the latter designated ‘anti-China’. In fact, the common ground between these two groups is expansive. For example, last month Geoff Raby, a former Australian ambassador to China, wrote a scathing commentary on China’s foreign policy under Xi Jinping. He said it had made other countries ‘more suspicious of its intent’ and that they have ‘begun resisting and pushing back’. Yet Raby is widely regarded as being one of Australia’s foremost ‘pro-China’ voices. Australia’s China experts across the so-called pro-/anti-China spectrum have also lent their support to causes such as when Beijing detained two Canadian citizens in retaliation for Ottawa acting on its extradition treaty with the US. Similarly, there is an overwhelming consensus that economic engagement with China is in Australia’s national interest. With China now buying AUD $134 billion of Australian goods and services each year and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs, it would be hard to sensibly argue any other position. [Australia] [China Australia]
• Stupid, Stupid, Stupid English
  by Patrick Cockburn March 5, 2019 I was sitting in a cafe on the Falls Road in heavily nationalist West Belfast when a local radio reporter came in looking for residents to interview about the effect of Brexit on Northern Ireland. She said that the impact was already massive, adding: “Stupid, stupid English for getting us into this pickle. We were doing nicely and then they surpassed themselves [in stupidity].” It does not take long talking to people in Northern Ireland to understand that almost everything said by politicians and commentators in London about the “backstop” is based on a dangerous degree of ignorance and wishful thinking about the real political situation on the ground here. Given how central this issue is to the future of the UK, it is extraordinary how it is debated with only minimal knowledge of the real forces involved. The most important of these risks can be swiftly spelled out. Focus is often placed on the sheer difficulty of policing the 310-mile border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland because there are at least 300 major and minor crossing points. But the real problem is not geographic or military but political and demographic because almost all the border runs through country where Catholics greatly outnumber Protestants. The Catholics will not accept, and are in a position to prevent, a hard border unless it is defended permanently by several thousand British troops in fortified positions. The threat to peace is often seen as coming from dissident Republicans, a small and fragmented band with little support, who might shoot a policeman or a customs’ official. But this is not the greatest danger, or at least not yet, because it is much more likely that spontaneous but sustained protests would prevent any attempt to recreate an international frontier between Northern Ireland and the Republic that wasn’t backed by overwhelming armed force. [Brexit] [Ireland]
• The Skripal Case: One Year On
  An Open Letter from Rob Slane of The Blogmire Dear Assistant Commissioner Basu, It is now a year since the events in Salisbury that shocked the nation, and indeed the world. Since then, your organisation has conducted an investigation into the case, and has laid out a case about what happened in a series of statements, notably those made on 5th September (no longer available on your website), in which two suspects were formally accused, and another on 22nd November, following the screening of the Panorama documentary: Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack — The Inside Story. To those who have a superficial interest in the case, the explanations you have presented for what happened on 4th March 2018 may appear credible, especially since the British media has largely repeated them verbatim, even when they have been self-evidently flawed and contradictory. Indeed the press has steadfastly refused (or been refused) to ask some very obvious and much-needed questions about them. But to those who have spent time looking at the incident, the explanations you have set out contain glaring omissions, factual errors (see here for more detail), and at least one scientific impossibility (more on this below). What I wish to do in this letter, is to set out some of the most important, and which I believe you owe it to the public to explain. Why have we heard nothing from Sergei Skripal? The most glaring problem with your case is the disappearance of Mr Skripal himself — and yes “disappearance” is the right word. It is now 12 months from the original incident, and about 11 months since it was announced that he had recovered. During that time there have been zero public appearances and — curiouser and curiouser — not even one public statement put out in his name. Additionally, it is known with certainty that he has not been in contact with his mother back in Russia — not on her birthday, not at New Year and not at Christmas — which has caused her great distress. This is not just odd; it is highly disturbing, especially given that Mr Skripal was said to be in the habit of contacting his mother every week prior to 4th March. If I were to ask how you can account for this, I would anticipate an answer that includes the claim that any such statements, appearances, and contact are deemed dangerous to his security. Certain reports in the media have indeed stated or implied this. However, it will not wash, for two reasons: [Skripal]

• Anti-semitism is cover for a much deeper divide in Britain's Labour party
  Jonathan Cook 20 February 2019 16:30 UTC | Last update: 4 days 19 hours ago Breakaway MPs hope that smearing Corbyn will obscure the fact that they are remnants of an old political order bankrupt of ideas Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks in London on 19 February (AFP) The announcement by seven MPs from the UK Labour Party on Monday that they were breaking away and creating a new parliamentary faction marked the biggest internal upheaval in a British political party in nearly 40 years, when the SDP split from Labour. On Wednesday, they were joined by an eighth Labour MP, Joan Ryan, and three Conservative MPs. There are predictions more will follow. With the UK teetering on the brink of crashing out of the European Union with no deal on Brexit, the founders of the so-called Independent Group made reference to their opposition to Brexit. The report decisively undercut their claims – not only of endemic anti-semitism in Labour, but of any significant problem at all The chief concern cited for the split by the eight Labour MPs, though, was a supposed “anti-semitism crisis” in the party. The breakaway faction seemingly agrees that anti-semitism has become so endemic in the party since Jeremy Corbyn became leader more than three years ago that they were left with no choice but to quit. Corbyn, it should be noted, is the first leader of a major British party to explicitly prioritise the rights of Palestinians over Israel’s continuing belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories. [Anti-Semitism] [Labour Party] [Pretext] [Corbyn] [Brexit]
• Cold War Witch-Hunting Returns … Mixed With White Australia Racism
  February 25, 2019 From Labelling Chinese Students as Communist “Spies” to Persecuting a Socialist Political Prisoner: Cold War Witch-Hunting Returns … Mixed With White Australia Racism 21 February 2019 – Seven months ago, the Australian government granted a visa for Canadian white supremacist, Lauren Southern, to come here on a speaking tour. Southern calls to keep out people from Asia and Africa, ridiculously claiming that immigration leads to “white genocide.” In late 2017, the government also allowed racist provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, to tour. A misogynist who calls for women to be banned from driving, Yiannopoulos used this tour to brand Muslims as “rapists” and to insult the art produced by Aboriginal people as “really shit.” Emboldened by his rants, neo-Nazi groups unleashed violent assaults against the African community living in the Kensington suburb where his Melbourne event was held. Yet while the government has allowed the likes of Southern and Yiannopoulos to enter, two weeks ago they banned Chinese-Australian businessman, Huang Xiangmo, from re-entering Australia. Unlike the far-right figures that the Australian regime have allowed in, Mr Huang, has not been inciting racial hatred. In fact, he has been involved in events supporting racial unity. Moreover, while the likes of Southern and Yiannopoulos have no residency status here, Huang is actually a permanent resident of Australia – one whose wife and son live here. So why is Mr Huang being treated much worse than purveyors of racial division have been? For the Australian government to revoke the permanent residency of a person who has committed no criminal offence is not only highly unusual: it is, perhaps, completely unprecedented. So why has the Morrison government – with the ALP’s acquiescence – banned Huang? It is because he has made statements sympathetic to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The ASIO spy agency cited his past leadership of the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Re-unification of China – a group that shares Beijing’s views on the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tibet issues – as one of the main reasons why it ordered the cancellation of Huang’s residency. The media claim that Huang has used large political donations to push this pro-PRC agenda. Even if that were actually true – and it is far more likely that Mr Huang’s donations are merely yet another case of wealthy businessmen protecting their interests by currying favour with politicians – then so what! It is not illegal to express sympathy for political positions held by Beijing and it is not illegal for people who hold those views to make political donations. To strip a person of permanent residency based on their advocacy for positions held by Red China is an outrageous attack on democratic rights. The decision amounts to asserting that a person who expresses sympathy for a socialistic country should not be accorded the rights of other residents. Right-wing politicians and the mainstream media will speak forever about protecting “freedom of speech” when they defend the “right” of extreme racists to whip up hatred against racial and religious minorities. Yet they want to curb any “free speech” that involves sympathy for the Peoples Republic of China! There is another irony to this saga. The PRC is, by far, Australia’s largest source of export income. Yet, while the ruling class is happy to make a fortune selling goods to the PRC they are determined to stop anyone saying anything positive about her! Now as a billionaire businessman Huang Xiangmo is hardly our cup of tea. All capitalist businessmen – including Mr Huang – are the class enemies of working class people. However, Huang is certainly not being attacked by the Australian ruling class because he is a capitalist exploiter (or else it would be the likes of Andrew Forest, Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer who would have had their rights stripped long ago). [China confrontation] [Diaspora] [Australia]
• Canberra’s growing silence on US leadership in Asia
  18 February 2019 Author: Hugh White, ANU Sometimes what is left out of a major policy speech is as important as what is said. This was certainly true late January when Australia’s Defence Minister Christopher Pyne spoke about regional security in a keynote address to a prestigious audience in Singapore. Australian Defence Minister Christopher Pyne attends a news conference at the Australian embassy in Beijing, China, 24 January 2019 (Photo: Reuters/Jason Lee). The subject of Pyne’s presentation was the challenge that China’s growing power and influence and the escalating US–China contest (which he described as the ‘defining great-power rivalry of our time’) poses to the ‘rules-based order’ in Asia. Most of the speech was devoted to explaining what Australia believed should be done about this. [Australia] [Allegiance]
• Bad legal arguments against Meng Wanzhou’s arrest and indictment
  20 February 2019 Author: Julian G Ku, Hofstra University Despite the vociferous attacks on Canada and the United States for detaining Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, critics — including the Chinese government — rarely base their criticism on legal grounds. But a notable exception criticises the US legal charges against Meng and Huawei as unsubstantiated, selective and a violation of international laws against extraterritoriality. It even accuses Canada of participating in ‘extraterritorial kidnapping’. This line of argument, which has been echoed in Chinese government talking points, is badly mistaken in its analysis of the legal rules governing US criminal prosecutions and the nature of international law regulating extraterritoriality and extraditions. US Attorney Richard P Donoghue for the Eastern District of New York is flanked by US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Acting US Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Christopher Wray as he addresses a news conference to announce indictments against China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, several of its subsidiaries and its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, at the Justice Department in Washington, the United States, 28 January 2019 (Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts). The claim that Canada arrested Meng without any evidence ‘to substantiate’ US allegations against Meng badly misconceives the legal standard for evidence needed to arrest a suspect. At the time of Meng’s arrest, the United States had already provided Canada with a sworn affidavit from a federal prosecutor describing the charges that the United States planned to bring against her. The affidavit explained that Meng would be charged with committing bank fraud against US banks in violation of US law and it detailed the evidence that would be provided to a court to substantiate this charge. [Meng Wanzhou] [Extraterritoriality] [Legality]
• Pompeo, Pence & the Alienation of Europe
  Patrick Lawrence February 19, 2019 If the objective was to further isolate the U.S., the two officials could not have done a better job last week, writes Patrick Lawrence. What a job Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did in Europe last week. If the objective was to worsen an already critical trans–Atlantic rift and further isolate the U.S., they could not have returned to Washington with a better result. We might have to mark down this foray as among the clumsiest and most abject foreign policy failures since President Donald Trump took office two years ago. Pence and Pompeo both spoke last Thursday at a U.S.–sponsored gathering in Warsaw supposedly focused on “peace and security in the Middle East.” That turned out to be a euphemism for recruiting the 60–plus nations in attendance into an anti–Iran alliance. “You can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran,” Pompeo said flatly. The only delegates this idea pleased were Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and officials from Gulf Arab nations who share an obsession with subverting the Islamic Republic. Pence went on to the annual security conference in Munich, where he elaborated further on a few of the Trump administration’s favored themes. Among them: The Europeans should ditch the nuclear accord with Iran, the Europeans should cut off trade with Russia, the Europeans should keep components made by Huawei and other Chinese companies out of their communications networks. The Europeans, in short, should recognize America’s global dominance and do as it does; as if it were still, say, 1954. [US EU] [Friction] [Pompeo] [Pence] [Incompetence] [Iran confrontation] [Huawei]
• Britain managing Huawei risks, has no evidence of spying – official
  Jack Stubbs, Foo Yun Chee Britain is able to manage the security risks of using Huawei telecoms equipment and has not seen any evidence of malicious activity by the company, a senior official said on Wednesday, pushing back against U.S. allegations of Chinese state spying. FILE PHOTO: A 5G sign is seen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo Ciaran Martin, head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said Britain had yet to decide on its security policy for national 5G networks, but that Huawei equipment was subject to detailed oversight and strict government controls over where it was used [Huawei] [UK] China confrontation] [Friction]
• Australia and the Taiwan contingency
  6 Feb 2019|Paul Dibb Of all the credible contingencies facing Australia in the foreseeable future, the most challenging would undoubtedly be our involvement with the US in countering a major Chinese attack on Taiwan. For obvious reasons, our politicians have refused to be drawn into public discussion about such a serious conflict. They prefer instead to resort to the ‘we do not discuss such theoretical contingencies’ as an understandable let-out. Discussion of this subject in academic publications in Australia has invariably tended to paint only the downsides of our involvement with the US in a war with China over Taiwan. This article takes a different line and argues that if China were attacking US forces in a major military conflict across the Taiwan Strait and Australia refused to be involved, the very existence of the ANZUS alliance would be at risk. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Taiwan] [MISCOM]
  • Comment on Hugh White’s response to Paul Dibb on ANZUS and Taiwan
    Cavan Hogue . Posted on 15 February 2019 Hugh White has made an effective rebuttal of Paul Dibb’s claim that we should join the US if China takes military action against Taiwan. It is important to stress that ANZUS does not require us to join with the USA in defending Taiwan. The relevant sections of the Treaty follows The bits in bold are mine. Article III: The Parties will consult together whenever in the opinion of any of them the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened in the Pacific. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Taiwan]
  • The US shouldn’t go to war with China over Taiwan—and nor should Australia (ASPI: THE STRATEGIST, 13 Feb 2019)
    Hugh White. Posted on 14 February 2019 Paul Dibb, in his recent Strategist post, writes that America’s strategic position in Asia would be fatally undermined if it didn’t go to war with China if China attacked Taiwan, and that Australia’s alliance with America would be fatally undermined if we didn’t then go to war with China too. The conclusion he draws is that, in the event of an unprovoked Chinese attack on Taiwan, America should go to war with China, and so should Australia. I think Dibb’s premises are correct, but his conclusion is wrong. Failing to come to Taiwan’s aid would seriously weaken and perhaps destroy America’s position in Asia, and our alliance with America would be seriously weakened if not destroyed if we failed to support the US. But it doesn’t follow that either America or Australia should therefore go to war with China to defend Taiwan. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Taiwan]
• Imperialist Aggression and What We Can Learn from the Attempted Coup Against Venezuela
  By Alison Bodine Global Research, February 13, 2019 On January 23, 2019 Juan Guaido declared himself to be the “acting President” of Venezuela. He was immediately recognized as the interim President of Venezuela by the United States government, followed in quick succession by the government of Canada, and right-wing governments in Latin America. In order to achieve his new-found executive status, Guaido didn’t need to win the support of the majority of the people in Venezuela, let alone even run in any election. In order to get this appointment, all that he had to do was pledge allegiance to his bosses at the U.S. capital, Washington, DC.
  Canada’s Vicious Role Against the People of Venezuela The government of Canada is complicit in the imperialist war against the people of Venezuela and their democracy. Armed with their own set of interests in Venezuela’s natural resources, the government of Canada has effectively served as a proxy for the U.S. government in the international arena where the U.S.’s own history in Latin America would be an obstacle to their imperialist project to overthrow the government of Venezuela. The government of Canada does so consciously and willingly. Chrystia Freeland, the Foreign Minister of Canada, exposed the government when she said, “We have a very direct interest in what happens in our hemisphere, that’s why we have been so active and will consider to be so active,” during a Press Conference on Venezuela on January 28. It is with this same reasoning that Minister Freeland has taken up her role as a leader in the illegitimate Lima Group, which was formed by the U.S. government in order to pursue further intervention against Venezuela, when their efforts in the Organization of American States failed. [Venezuela] [Canada] [Freeland]
• Bikes put spanner in works of Dutch driverless car schemes
  Report highlights problems bicycles cause to self-driving cars’ detection systems Daniel Boffey in Brussels Wed 13 Feb 2019 13.05 GMT The varying sizes and agility of cyclists and loose adherence to road rules present challenges to detection technology. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian The Dutch love affair with the bicycle has emerged as an obstacle to government plans to introduce driverless cars to the roads of the Netherlands. A report on the levels of preparedness around the world has crowned the country as the leader in efforts to get ready for the new technology. The Dutch government is working with Germany and Belgium on establishing “truck platooning” – where one human-driven vehicle leads a convoy of autonomous ones — on major roads. Under the plans, about 100 driverless trucks would drive the “Tulip corridors” at night – from Amsterdam to Antwerp, and from Rotterdam to the Ruhr valley – fully maximising the routes through which the Netherlands distributes its goods using 5G technology and 1,200 smart traffic lights. The Dutch infrastructure minister, Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, has announced a “driving licence” for self-driving cars, through which it would certify new autonomous models, and a framework of legislation – known as the Experimenteerwet zelfrijdende auto’s – is being prepared. But a report by the professional service company KPMG highlights a major problem for Dutch ministers in introducing the technology to urban centres, where the bicycle is increasingly king. Driverless cars detect other road users using a variety of cameras or laser-sensing systems to ensure that they stop if an object is detected in their path. But the varying sizes and agility of cyclists, with their sudden changes in speed and loose adherence to the rules of the road, present a major challenge to the existing technology. [Bikes] [autonomous vehicles]
• U.K. Economy Falters as Brexit Looms. Amsterdam Sees Risks, and Opportunity.
  New data for 2018’s fourth quarter shows the British economy growing at its slowest pace since 2012, bringing the broad impact of a no-deal split from the European Union into sharp relief. Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, a major hub for air cargo. People in the Netherlands, Britain’s third-largest trading partner, have been nervous about the implications for their country since the June 2016 referendum that set Brexit in motion.CreditCreditJussi Puikkonen for The New York Times By Peter S. Goodman Feb. 11, 2019 AMSTERDAM — If anyone in the Netherlands is happy about Britain jilting the European Union, they keep that sentiment to themselves. The country has been built on trade, with huge volumes of goods flowing from its ports across the English Channel. Brexit, as the divorce is known, has proved disruptive. But if Brexit is going to happen, the graceful, canal-lined city of Amsterdam is intent on exploiting what opportunities present themselves. The deputy mayor has been leading a team that is courting global companies abandoning Britain. “I’m very sad about Brexit, but I’m happy about how things are going for Amsterdam,” said the deputy mayor, Udo Kock, adding that at least 30 companies had already chosen to relocate. “It is such a nice city to live in. Who wouldn’t want to live in Amsterdam for a few years?” As Britain slides toward a tumultuous exit from the European bloc, cities on the Continent are looking on with a mixture of opportunism and dread. From Amsterdam to Paris to Frankfurt, officials have been wooing companies seeking refuge from an increasingly uncertain United Kingdom. Yet many are bracing for Brexit-related chaos at ports. [Brexit] [Netherlands]
• The country I walked through deserves better than Brexit
  Mike Carter A trip across England in 2016 revealed a nation broken by neoliberalism. For it to heal, this above all has to change Mon 11 Feb 2019 06.00 GMT Last modified on Mon 11 Feb 2019 09.57 GMT In May 2016, a few weeks before the EU referendum, I walked 340 miles from Liverpool to London to see what was happening to my country. I was travelling in the footsteps of a 1981 march against unemployment that my late father had helped to organise. In that year, Tory policies had devastated industry and sent unemployment skyrocketing. In 2016, Tory austerity was putting the final nail in the coffin of those broken communities. Even so, on my walk I was shocked by the level of poverty, by the sheer number of homeless people in doorways and parks, and by the high streets of boarded-up shops and pubs, full of payday loan outlets and bookies. People in those former industrial towns spoke of their anger and betrayal, of having being forgotten by Westminster politicians, of their communities having been destroyed as the manufacturing that had sustained them either folded or moved to low-wage economies. Nearly everyone I spoke to in those towns said they were going to vote for Brexit. There was a lot of talk of “taking back control”, and in the context of the industrial wastelands, that sentiment made a lot of sense. But the EU issue was, for a majority, a proxy for their pain. [Brexit] [Decline] [Alienation] [False consciousness]
• Secret Trials: The illegal bugging of the Timor Leste Cabinet and the extraordinary prosecution of Bernard Collaery and Witness K
  Ernst Willheim Posted on 7 February 2019 Australians reading about secret trials in foreign countries tend to content themselves in the belief that in Australia we have an open court system and an independent judiciary. After all, freedom of speech, the rule of law and an open and independent court system are basic bulwarks of our democracy. Aren’t they? This brief paper challenges that comfortable assumption. The many Australians who seek to keep themselves informed by reading foreign news media on line may have been surprised to read foreign news media reports that on 11 December 2018 a prominent Australian public figure was convicted in a Victorian Court of sexual abuse offences. The foreign media reported the conviction but went on to report that, because of a suppression order made by the Victorian Court, the charges, the trial and the conviction could not be reported in Australia. Assuming the reports in the foreign media to be correct, many Australians will be properly concerned that an Australian criminal trial involving a prominent Australian public figure was apparently held in secret and apparently the outcome cannot be published in Australia. Surely this only happens in those foreign countries whose human rights records we proudly criticise? Another criminal trial is apparently proceeding in secrecy in Canberra. This trial involves the prosecution of another prominent public figure, Canberra lawyer and former ACT Attorney-General Bernard Collaery and a former ASIS agent identified only as witness K. The details of the charges have not been made public. They are widely understood to relate to disclosure of illegal bugging of the Timor Leste Cabinet, bugging carried out by an Australian intelligence agency, ASIS, on behalf of the Australian Government, during the course of bilateral negotiations between Australia and Timor Leste over the sea bed boundary between the two countries and allocation of oil and gas revenues in the area often referred to as the ‘Timor gap’. [Timor Leste] [Oil] Australia] [Criminality] [Bugging] [Whistleblower]
• Brexit's Corporate Refugee Numbers in Netherlands Set to Swell
  By Ruben Munsterman February 9, 2019, 5:00 PM GMT+13 Updated on February 9, 2019, 11:45 PM GMT+13 250 candidates still in talks about potential move, NFIA says Amsterdam picked by speed traders, media, drug regulator EMA Brexit is driving companies out of the U.K., and the Netherlands is raking in the corporate refugees. About 250 companies are in talks with the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency to potentially relocate activities to the country, according to a statement published on Saturday. The candidates would join 42 companies that made the move last year, and the 18 early birds in 2017. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the largest Brexit wave is yet to come,” Jeroen Nijland, who heads NFIA, said in a telephone interview. “It normally takes about six months to two years from the first conversation we have with a company before it makes a decision, and our pipeline is now bigger than in earlier years.” The Netherlands has emerged as one of the winners in securing businesses that seek to leave the U.K. because of Brexit, vying with countries like Germany, France and Ireland. The country, which bagged the European Medicines Agency -- an EU agency moving from London to Amsterdam -- is initially luring corporate entities in the financial and media sectors, both of which require permits to operate in the bloc, Nijland said. “Without it, they simply can’t operate in Europe,” he said. [Brexit] [Netherlands]
• Huawei splits Australia on pro and con lines
  Canberra has banned the Chinese tech giant on security grounds, a move critics say will raise costs and undermine competitiveness just as a new 5G age is dawning ByLachlan Colquhoun, Sydney In the emerging new technology “cold war” between the United States and China, Australia has perhaps the most at stake. Taking sides against China risks offending Australia’s biggest trading partner, a relationship worth more than A$100 billion a year which has driven the success of the Australian economy for over two decades. The flip-side, of ignoring US concerns about Chinese surveillance, would undermine a half century of commitment to the US alliance and membership in the so-called “fives eyes” intelligence-sharing group with the US, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. If China chooses tough retaliation against Australia, there would be a significant economic cost to pay, one that depending on the measures deployed could tip the economy into recession for the first time in over two decades. [Australia] [Huawei] [Allegiance]
• How Brexit Distracted the UK From Its Real Problems
  While British politicians expend all of their energies on Brexit, the country's already troubling levels of inequality have only gotten worse. This could have dramatic consequences for the UK's lawmakers and for its citizens. REUTERS An anti-Brexit sign is seen as protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament in London January 25, 2019 06:29 PM In early January, the British parliament debated one of the country's most pressing problems. Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur responsible for extreme poverty, had made a harsh accusation against the United Kingdom's government at the end of last year. After a two-week journey through the fifth richest country in the world, Alston, who mostly focuses on Africa and Central America, had argued that Theresa May's government had systematically pushed countless British citizens into poverty. He said, "this is not just a disgrace but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one," and went on to also highlight the country's rising child poverty rates This accusation had to be addressed. When the debate in the lower house took place on a Monday evening, only 14 of the 650 parliamentarians were present in the Commons Chamber. The minister responsible sent a deputy in her place. He promised to take Alston's report "seriously." Then the 30 minutes dedicated to the agenda point were over. This coming Tuesday, the British parliament will once again debate Brexit. Many of the lawmakers will struggle to get even standing room space in the lower house. The discussion will once again stretch on for hours. Although everything has already been said, not everyone has spoken. If things go as expected, it will then be even more likely that Brexit, which is currently scheduled for March 29, will be pushed back once more. Maybe a few months. Maybe even a year. What do the two debates have to do with one another? More than one might think. The contrast between the empty and the full chamber reveal what this country and its politicians still have energy for -- and for what they don't. The more time and energy are absorbed by Brexit, the black hole of British democracy, the more likely it becomes that voters will take their revenge. [UK] [Inequality] [Brexit]
• Huawei open to European supervision: executive in speech
  Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Chinese telecoms giant Huawei wants cybersecurity to be viewed as a technical rather than ideological issue and is open to supervision by European governments to prove the point, a senior company executive is expected to say on Thursday evening. The comments due to be delivered in a speech by Abraham Liu, Huawei’s chief representative to EU institutions, come as the company finds itself under fire over ties with the Chinese government and suspicion that Beijing could use its technology for spying, which the company denies. [Huawei] [China confrontation] [Cybersecurity] [EU]
• A Plague of Rats: How Years of Austerity Prompted Many Britons to Vote for Brexit
  by Patrick Cockburn February 5, 2019 Thanington is a deprived district on the outskirts of Canterbury which used to be called “Little Beirut” because of its high levels of crimeand violence. Caroline Heggie, a local resident, says: “When I moved in in 1998, half the houses [in my street] were empty. Out of 40 houses, 20 were empty because of antisocial behaviour. I moved into my house which had a broken window where a crossbow bolt had been fired.” Di Hutchinson, a teacher’s assistant who has lived in Thanington for 59 years, agrees with her, saying: “We had a terrible reputation.” There were no facilities for communal activities and the toys for a children’s play group had to be kept in the gravediggers’ hut next to the cemetery. Anger over poor social conditions grew so intense that it provoked a riot in the late 1990s. A local social activist who objected to youths smashing bottles on the road and handed a bin bag full of broken glass to the mother of one of those responsible says he had bricks thrown at his house and firecrackers pushed through the letterbox. Paul Todd, a former resident who works on housing and homelessness issues, says: “About 20 years ago it was regenerated when it got a large dose of money out of the European regeneration budget.” The funding was used to make extensive renovations such as putting new roofs on the council houses and renewing bathrooms and bedrooms so the homes of council tenants looked better than those privately owned. In addition, the regeneration money funded a community centre, known locally as the Resource Centre, which provides space for sports and recreation, as well as accommodation for children doing homework which they could not do at home. Paula Spencer, who has managed the centre since it was built, adds that the EU “spent £2.5m in doing up the estate and getting rid of the rat-runs. It used to be that they would nick your video machine and disappear down an alleyway.” Crime and antisocial behaviour dropped by 50 per cent as the regeneration measures took effect. As a newly arrived council tenant, Heggie says that she had been worried by the crossbow bolt incident but “apart from one broken car window on my driveway I have had no trouble since”. The EU intervention enabled Thanington – which I previously featured in the first instalment of this series – to lose its nickname of “Little Beirut”, but its residents complain that they have lacked public investment ever since, and that this is beginning to show. The 2,794 people who live there work mostly in low-wage jobs, often as cleaners or in supermarkets in and around Canterbury, or they are on benefits. Educational standards are low, illiteracy is high, and many single-parent families are headed by women. Nevertheless, residents and outside observers agree that Thanington retains a strong sense of communal solidarity. “It’s largely retained its village identity,” says Todd, whose relatives still live there and who has great affection for its people. “Everyone knows everyone else’s business.” The only state institution to help preserve this small and vulnerable community was the EU, so it is worth asking why so many of those living in Thanington voted Leave in the 2016 referendum. A [Brexit]
• France, Germany announce first deals for future warplanes
  Julie Carriat France and Germany on Wednesday announced a 65 million euro ($74 million) contract financed equally by both countries over two years as the first act of the joint program to design a next-generation combat jet system. A view shows a Safran logo at the Safran Aircraft Engines plant in Gennevilliers, France, February 6, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier Dassault Aviation and Airbus will build the system which is expected to be operational from 2040 with a view to replacing over time Dassault’s Rafale and Germany’s Eurofighters. “This contract is entrusted to Airbus and Dassault who are the prime contractors of this ambitious system,” French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said in a speech alongside her German counterpart Ursula von der Leyen. “This contract is the very first brick of a stupendous building.” The French and German governments awarded the companies involved additional contracts to advance technologies and work to have the first demonstrators flights by 2025. [Military-Industrial Complex] [Fighter]
• Corbyn’s great betrayal would never be forgiven
  Matt Kelly PUBLISHED: 11:42 06 February 2019 | UPDATED: 13:24 06 February 2019 Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn together in bed over Brexit? This week's front page illustration by Chris Barker. Let’s play a little game, shall we? See if you can spot which of the following quotes came from the mouth of Nigel Farage, and which from Jeremy Corbyn: 1: “If you succeed in getting a No vote… it will be such a boost to people like us who do not want to live in a European empire of the 21st century.” 2: “I’ve just got a feeling they’re going to [make you] keep on voting until they get the answer they want.” 3: “Europe will become subservient to Nato… we are creating for ourselves here one massive great Frankenstein, which will damage all of us in the long run.” The cynical amongst you (and if you aren’t cynical by now you really should give your head a wobble) will be way ahead of me. They’re all Corbyn. His clear expression of hatred for the European Union came in a 2009 speech in Ireland, a video of which emerged this week. He was trying to cajole the Irish into voting against the Lisbon Treaty. [Corbyn] [Brexit]
• Denmark expels 2 Huawei staff over work permit issues
  Posted : 2019-02-05 11:39 Updated : 2019-02-05 16:19 A picture taken on Feb. 4 shows the Huawei logo above the entrance of a Huawei store in Paris. Denmark has ordered the expulsion of two employees of the Chinese telecoms giant because their residence and work permits were not in order. AFP Denmark has ordered the expulsion of two employees of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei because their residence and work permits were not in order, Copenhagen police said Monday. "On Thursday, the Copenhagen police carried out a routine check of the residence and work permits," at Huawei's offices, a Copenhagen police source told AFP. "In two cases, the people didn't have the proper paperwork." The pair, who were not identified, were ordered to leave the country, the source said. [China confrontation] [Denmark] [Huawei] [US dominance]
• Canada’s Left Party Blinks at US-led Coup in Venezuela
  Canada's New Democratic Party has failed to take a principled stand against the Trudeau government's pro-US regime change agenda in Venezuela, argues Yves Engler. By Yves Engler Global Research, February 04, 2019 Venezuelanalysis.com 2 February 2019 What should the leader of Canada’s left wing party say about what’s happening in Venezuela? Here are a few suggestions: “Canada should respect international law in its dealings with Venezuela.” Or, “Canada shouldn’t select the president of Venezuela.” How about, “The US has a long history of overthrowing governments in Latin America and Canada should never take part.” Any (or all) of these statements would be clear, reasonable positions for a social democratic party that claims to be in favour of international law and to represent the interests of ordinary people, rather than billionaires, to express. Instead, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has issued vague, contradictory words about the Liberal government’s aggressive effort to topple Venezuela’s elected president. Over the past two years, Justin Trudeau’s government has steadily ramped up its campaign to oust Nicolas Maduro’s government. Ottawa has adopted illegal sanctions, supported opposition groups, built an anti-Venezuela regional coalition, pressured Caribbean countries to join their campaign and taken a complaint about the Venezuelan government to the International Criminal Court. Last week, it recognized a little-known opposition politician — who has never garnered even 100,000 votes — as president of the country. And before making this Trumpian, anti-democratic, over-the-top-interference-in-another-country’s-internal-affairs decision, Canadian diplomats spent months preparing the move with the opposition to ratchet up tensions in the South American country. It seems the “Trudeau Doctrine” has been proclaimed, similar in purpose to the USA’s “Munroe Doctrine” first issued in 1823. All of which should have offered a wonderful opportunity for a political party of the left to differentiate itself from the pro-big business, pro-American, pro-imperialist Liberals [Canada] [Left] [Imperialism]
• WeChat, the Federal Election, and the Danger of Insinuative Journalism
  Wanning Sun and Haiqing Yu. Posted on 1 February 2019 A story appeared recently in The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) with an eye-catching title: ‘Warning WeChat could spread Chinese propaganda during federal election’. By linking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda with a forthcoming Australian election, the story draws heavily on views from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and represents a new and dangerous development in the China influence narrative. The story recites a now-familiar litany of concerns, including the lack of regulation of WeChat, Huawei, China’s desire for influence through the Chinese diaspora, China’s human rights record, and the issue of foreign donations—all of which are, to some extent, valid. Yet, despite its best efforts to breathe new life into these matters, the article still amounts to little more than a non-story at its best and fear-mongering at its worst. We see a number of problems with the story. First, a lack of tangible evidence. To suggest that Beijing may be seeking to influence the outcome of Australian elections implies that Beijing wants to see one particular party win, as was apparently the case with Trump and Facebook. However, as Greg Austin is quoted as saying in the story, ‘It [the CCP] doesn’t seem to have any particular favourite between the Labor Party and the Coalition’. Similarly, Richard McGregor says, ‘It’s not clear to me that they have a hard preference, in which case any notions of interference are pointless to begin with’. So, why this new attempt to whip up fear about the spread of Chinese propaganda in the lead-up to the Federal election? [Australia] [China confrontation] [Influence] [Yellow Peril] [Diaspora]
• Liberal Elite Still Luring Us Towards the Abyss
  January 31, 2019 We have so little time, but still the old guard wants to block any possible path to salvation, writes Jonathan Cook. By Jonathan Cook Jonathan-Cook.net A group of 30 respected intellectuals, writers and historians has published a manifesto bewailing the imminent collapse of Europe and its supposed Enlightenment values of liberalism and rationalism. The idea of Europe, they warn, “is falling apart before our eyes,” as Britain prepares for Brexit and “populist and nationalist” parties look poised to make sweeping gains in elections across the continent. The short manifesto has been published in the liberal elite’s European house journals, newspapers such as the Guardian. “We must now fight for the idea of Europe or perish beneath the waves of populism,” their document reads. Failure means “resentment, hatred and their cortege of sad passions will surround and submerge us.” Unless the tide can be turned, elections across the European Union will be “the most calamitous that we have ever known: victory for the wreckers; disgrace for those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, and Comenius; disdain for intelligence and culture; explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism; disaster.” The manifesto was penned by Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher and devotee of Alexis de Tocqueville, a theorist of classical liberalism. Its signatories include novelists Ian McEwan, Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie; the historian Simon Shama; and Nobel prize laureates Svetlana Alexievitch, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk and Elfriede Jelinek. Though unnamed, their European political heroes appear to be Emmanuel Macron of France, currently trying to crush the popular, anti-austerity protests of the Yellow Vests, and German chancellor Angela Merkel, manning the barricades for the liberal elite against a resurgence of the nationalist right in Germany. Let us set aside, on this occasion, the strange irony that several of the manifesto’s signatories – not least Henri-Levy himself – have a well-known passion for Israel, a state that has always rejected the universal principles ostensibly embodied in liberal ideology and that instead openly espouses the kind of ethnic nationalism that nearly tore Europe apart in two world wars last century. Instead let us focus on their claim that “populism and nationalism” are on the verge of slaying Europe’s liberal democratic tradition and the values held dearest by this distinguished group. Their hope presumably is that their manifesto will serve as a wake-up call before things take an irreversible turn for the worse. [Liberalism] [Populism]
• The rise and fall of Britain’s political class
  From Westminster to Whitehall, elites are failing and our political system is collapsing. By Jonathan Powell The British political system used to be seen as one of the wonders of the world. A hundred years ago last month, Max Weber, the great German sociologist, gave a seminal lecture on “The Profession and Vocation of Politics” in Munich. Speaking in the chaotic and revolutionary aftermath of the First World War, he expressed his admiration for the British system and the way its politicians and officials managed to maintain prosperity and stability while allowing a working democracy to flourish. We were reputed around the world as the cradle of democracy, tolerance and downright decency. No longer. My work nowadays requires me to travel from conflict zone to conflict zone to meet elected leaders and guerrilla leaders. A strange thing has happened in the past six months. After half an hour discussing the Farc in Colombia or Mozambique’s Renamo or North Korea, they will turn to me and ask, “What on earth has happened to Britain?” They are not enquiring about the latest on Brexit, but rather the complete collapse of our political system. It is painful to see people engaged in real civil wars pitying us for the deep division in the country and the inability of our political leaders to resolve it. In the words of Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde, “Continental Europe has watched with bewilderment, despair and exasperation as the world’s oldest democracy… a former empire, winner of two world wars, aspires to become Singapore upon Thames.” [Brexit]

• Unravelling the fabric of the Australia/US alliance.
  Nick Deane Posted on 22 January 2019 John Menadue has articulated the problems with the Australia/US alliance very clearly. Those who are concerned to change its nature need a weak point at which to challenge it. To unravel the fabric of the alliance, start by opposing the presence of US marines in Darwin! In his excellent article of 15 January (http://www.johnmenadue.com/john-menadue-joined-at-the-hip-to-a-very-dangerous-ally-that-is-almost-always-at-war-an-update/#comment-60343), John Menadue has given us an array of arguments that justify calling into question Australia’s alliance with the USA.
  In a speech in 2013, ex-PM Malcolm Fraser (author of ‘Dangerous Allies’) asked his audience to consider the possibility that the US marines might engage in some sort of military action on orders from Washington, from their base in Australia. He said: “They’ll do it and we’ll read about it in the newspapers. Our prime minister will be told about it after the attack is made. Because that’s the way these things work. That, for me, is a total denial of Australian sovereignty and if we were ever independent, it’s a denial of Australian independence.” [Allegiance] [Bases] [Marines]
• Greetings to Governor-General of Australia
  Date: 27/01/2019 | Source: Rodong Sinmun (En Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, sent a message of greeting to Peter Cosgrove, governor-general of Australia, on Jan. 26 on the occasion of the Day of Australia. The message hoped that the bilateral relations would develop in line with the trend of the situation on the Korean peninsula toward the new atmosphere of peace and prosperity and in the interests of the peoples of the two countries, wishing the governor-general good health and happiness. [NK Australia]
• China demands US drop Huawei extradition request with Canada
  Posted : 2019-01-23 10:59 Updated : 2019-01-23 15:45 China on Tuesday demanded the U.S. drop a request that Canada extradite a top executive of the tech giant Huawei, shifting blame to Washington in a case that has severely damaged Beijing's relations with Ottawa. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Meng Wanzhou's case was out of the ordinary and Canada's extradition treaty with the U.S. infringed on the ''safety and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens.'' Hua said China demands that the U.S. withdraw the arrest warrant against Meng and ''not make a formal extradition request to the Canadian side.'' She is wanted for allegedly lying to banks as part of an effort to evade sanctions on Iran. [Meng Wanzhou] [Canada]
• North Korea in back-door bid to split Canada from US-led efforts to push denuclearisation
  Pyongyang has complained that Ottawa was following Washington and not acting as an independent nation in its relations with their country The US is pushing for ‘maximum pressure’ in the form of sanctions on North Korea until it gives up its nuclear weapons PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 January, 2019, 8:05am UPDATED : Thursday, 17 January, 2019, 8:37am 17 Jan 2019 North Korea has mounted a back-door bid to peel Canada away from United States-led efforts to apply “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang through sanctions until it relinquishes its nuclear weapons. Inkstone: China News Briefing Get updates direct to your inbox E-mail * By registering you agree to our T&Cs & Privacy Policy North Korean officials complained that Ottawa was following Washington and not acting as an independent nation in its relations with their country during a rare visit to Canada, the South China Morning Post has learned. Canadian media reported earlier this month that a five-member delegation from North Korea quietly met with Canadian officials in September, but details of the North Korean side’s perception of Ottawa have not been revealed until now. Civil society representatives who held a round table with North Korean officials after their discussions with Canadian bureaucrats said they expressed frustration over Canada’s support for US efforts to isolate Pyongyang. [Canada] [Subordinate]
• Scholars and Ex-Diplomats Warn of Chill After Canadians Detained in China
  The Canadian embassy in Beijing, this month. Dozens of former diplomats have signed a letter warning that China’s recent arrests have made their work “unwelcome and even risky in China.”CreditRoman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock Image The Canadian embassy in Beijing, this month. Dozens of former diplomats have signed a letter warning that China’s recent arrests have made their work “unwelcome and even risky in China.”CreditCreditRoman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock By Chris Buckley and Catherine Porter Jan. 21, 2019 BEIJING — Warning that China’s arrest of two Canadians has created a dangerous chill for people working on policy and research in that country, more than 100 academics and former diplomats have signed an open letter calling for the two men to be immediately freed. Made public on Monday, the letter was an international cry of concern from people who work and study in China, saying the arrests threaten the flow of ideas with Chinese academics and officials that is essential for policy work and research aimed at narrowing international rifts. The letter warned China that the detentions will result in “greater distrust.” Its signatories included 27 diplomats from seven countries and 116 scholars and academics from 19 countries. “Meetings and exchanges are the foundation of serious research and diplomacy around the world, including for Chinese scholars and diplomats,” the letter said. The arrests, though, “send a message that this kind of constructive work is unwelcome and even risky in China.” Timothy Brook, a professor of Chinese history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and one of the signatories, said in a phone interview, “If China wishes to be seen as a full and responsible member of the international community, it needs to set itself a much higher standard than this.” “To punish Canada,” he added, “is really for China to say: ‘We have no friends in the world and we want no friends in the world. We will do just what we want on the terms that we want.’” The Chinese police detained the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, last month as officials in Beijing scrambled to press Canada to free Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese technology executive, arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1, and held for possible extradition to the United States on fraud charges. The Chinese government was incensed by Ms. Meng’s arrest, and officials have called the case against her an illegal, baseless vendetta. The arrests of the Canadians, as well as a death sentence for drug trafficking given to a Canadian man by a Chinese court last week, have plunged Canadian-Chinese relations into their worst tensions in decades. Editors’ Picks The 20 Best TV Dramas Since ‘The Sopranos’ Where 518 Inmates Sleep in Space for 170, and Gangs Hold It Together The Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Very Litigious Bikini But the roster of signatories shows that the arrests of the two men have sent shivers far beyond Canada, and well beyond diplomatic concerns. “The letter is important as a forum for China specialists to stand up and be counted, to speak up to defend one of our own,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who studies Chinese politics and who also signed the letter. “We know it could be any one of us.” [China confrontation] [Meng Wanzhou] [AMB] [Hypocrisy]
• Major powers 'largely absent': HRW wants more from Merkel
  The head of Human Rights Watch appeals on DW for Germany and Angela Merkel to do more for rights abroad. Kenneth Roth noted that "the traditional powers" on the world stage, the US and UK, "were largely absent" of late. Watch video 05:49 Watch: Full HRW Kenneth Roth interview Human Rights Watch (HRW) Executive Director Kenneth Roth had good reason to present his organization's annual report in Berlin on Thursday. Roth told DW, "If you look around the world, the traditional powers were largely absent" when it came to championing human rights over the past year. Roth praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, noting her work on applying pressure on rights abuses in Hungary and ending arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Most importantly he said that Merkel had helped prevent a bloodbath in Syria: "In a step that probably saved more lives than anything else, Chancellor Merkel was at the forefront of pressing Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire in the Idlib Province in Syria, where 3 million civilian lives were at risk because Russia and Syria were about to begin an indiscriminate bombardment there." [Human rights] [Humanitarian intervention] [Imperialism] [HRW]
• China's envoy to Canada says Huawei 5G ban would have repercussions
  Dale Smith China’s envoy to Canada on Thursday warned Ottawa there would be repercussions if it banned technology firm Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL] from supplying equipment to Canadian 5G networks, the latest blast in a deepening bilateral dispute. FILE PHOTO: China's Ambassador to Canada Lu Shaye delivers a speech during the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Conference at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, December 14, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo Ambassador Lu Shaye, speaking at a news conference, did not give details. Canada is currently studying the security implications of 5G networks, but unlike some allies has not announced Huawei equipment will be excluded. “If the Canadian government does ban Huawei from participating in the 5G network, then as for what kind of repercussion there will be, I’m not sure, but I believe there will be repercussions,” Lu said through an interpreter, urging Ottawa to “make a wise decision on this issue”. [China confrontation] [Canada] [Huawei] [US dominance] [5G] [Consequences]
• Europe's patience with Iran wears thin, tiptoes toward Trump
  Robin Emmott, John Irish In Tehran on Jan. 8 [Bob's birthday!]during a meeting with European envoys, Iranian officials abruptly stood up, walked out and slammed the door in an extraordinary break with protocol. FILE PHOTO: Iranian-made Emad missile is displayed during a ceremony marking the 37th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, in Tehran February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi//File Photo The French, British, German, Danish, Dutch, and Belgian diplomats in the Iranian foreign ministry room had incensed the officials with a message that Europe could no longer tolerate ballistic missile tests in Iran and assassination plots on European soil, according to four EU diplomats. “There was a lot of drama, they didn’t like it, but we felt we had to convey our serious concerns,” one of the diplomats said. “It shows the relationship is becoming more tense,” a second said. An Iranian official declined to comment on the meeting. The next day, the European Union imposed its first sanctions on Iran since world powers agreed the 2015 Vienna nuclear arms control deal with Tehran. [Iran confrontation] [Satellite] [EU] [US dominance]
• Brexit vote: British Parliament rejects Theresa May’s Brexit deal, leaving withdrawal from E.U. and prime minister’s political future in doubt
  Brexit deal defeat means May faces a no-confidence vote The Post's Adam Taylor explains why British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing a no-confidence vote after Parliament weighed in on her Brexit deal Jan. 15. (Sarah Parnass, Karla Adam/The Washington Post) By William Booth , Karla Adam and Michael Birnbaum January 15 at 6:25 PM LONDON — With just 73 days to go until Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union, lawmakers Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected — by a vote of 432 to 202 — the withdrawal deal painstakingly negotiated between Prime Minister Theresa May and her European counterparts. The landslide vote was pure humiliation for a British leader who has spent the past two years trying to sell her vision of Brexit to a skeptical public, and her failure raised serious questions about how — and if — Britain will leave the E.U. as promised on March 29. Hardcore Brexiteers, such as former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, cheered the result as increasing the chances of Britain leaving the European Union with no deal and no compromises — or with a much, much better deal than May or E.U. leaders say is realistic. At the same time, those who want to see a second referendum on Brexit, and who want to stay in the union, think May’s loss gets them closer to their goal. The political turmoil heightened fears among European leaders that Britain will crash out of the bloc in a chaotic, no-deal departure that would have harsh economic and humanitarian consequences on both sides of the English Channel. “The risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom has increased with this evening’s vote,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement. “While we do not want this to happen, the European Commission will continue its contingency work to help ensure the EU is fully prepared.” In the House of Commons on Tuesday, May stood almost alone, flashing defiance and frustration, as many in her own party abandoned their leader. Historians had to go as far back as the Victorian age to find a comparable party split and parliamentary defeat — to Prime Minister William Gladstone’s support for Irish home rule in 1886, which cut the Liberal Party in two. [Brexit]
• Gilets Jaunes in 2019: French Democracy Dead or Alive?
  By Diana Johnstone Global Research, January 12, 2019 Or perhaps one should say, buried or revived? Because for the mass of ordinary people, far from the political, financial, media centers of power in Paris, democracy is already moribund, and their movement is an effort to save it. Ever since Margaret Thatcher decreed that “there is no alternative”, Western economic policy is made by technocrats for the benefit of financial markets, claiming that such benefits will trickle down to the populace. The trickle has largely dried up, and people are tired of having their needs and wishes totally ignored by an elite who “know best”. President Emmanuel Macron’s New Year’s Eve address to the nation made it perfectly clear that after one unconvincing stab at throwing a few crumbs to the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protest movement, he has determined to get tough. France is entering a period of turmoil. The situation is very complex, but here are a few points to help grasp what this is all about. The Methods The Yellow Vests gather in conspicuous places where they can be seen: the Champs-Elysées in Paris, main squares in other cities towns, and the numerous traffic circles on the edge of small towns. Unlike traditional demonstrations, the Paris marches were very loose and spontaneous, people just walking around and talking to each other, with no leaders and no speeches. The absence of leaders is inherent in the movement. All politicians, even friendly ones, are mistrusted and no one is looking for a new leader. People are organizing their own meetings to develop their lists of grievances and demands. In the village of Commercy, Lorraine, a half hour drive from Domrémy where Jeanne d’Arc was born, inhabitants gather to read their proclamation. Six of them read in turns, a paragraph each, making it quite clear that they want no leaders, no special spokesperson. They sometimes stumble over a word, they are not used to speaking in public like the TV talking heads. Their “Second appeal of the Gilets Jaunes de Commercy invites others to come to Commercy on January 26-27 for an “assembly of assemblies”. [Gilets Jaunes]
• French Warship to Prevent N.Korea Smuggling Oil, Arms
  By Shon Jin-seok January 14, 2019 12:07 France will dispatch a warship and patrol aircraft to Japan to prevent North Korea from smuggling in oil by ship-to-ship transfer on the high seas. The foreign and defense ministers of France and Japan met at a naval base in Brest, France on Friday and agreed to dispatch the frigate Vendémiaire and patrol aircraft to Sasebo Airbase in southern Japan in April. The aim is to stop North ships smuggling in petroleum or weapons. The AFP news agency reported that another aim of the measure is to keep China from strengthening its control of Asian waters. [France] [Sanctions] [Imperial nostalgia]
• The Integrity Initiative was involved in the Skripals Incident
  The Skripal case was totally bogus and made up by British intelligence and wonders of wonders the Integrity Initiative. It was just one more false flag event to get various results. More money for the U.K.’s defense budget. More sanctions on Russia. And getting lots of Russian Federation personnel kicked out of numerous countries. Sergei and Yulia Skripal Now ‘Working for British Security Services’ Other disturbing allegations have also surfaced recently around the Skripal incident in relation to the British government-funded Integrity Initiative, including evidence that suggests advanced planning of a ‘catastrophe’ which could be used to then expel Russian diplomats from the UK and US, as a re-run of Cold War play executed by UK intelligence in 1971 under the heading of Operation Foot. Watch this video and see how far back the incident was cooked up and the reasons why it was. In another somewhat bizarre news release this week, British authorities are claiming that the roof of the home of former UK-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is to be dismantled by “military teams,” who will then replace the wooden roof as a “precautionary measure” to guard against “residue contamination” according to a report filed by the BBC. However, UK officials still insists that the Skripals first came into contact with the alleged deadly Russian-made chemical weapon nerve agent when it was sprayed on the front door handle, so it’s difficult to see why the British military are going to rebuild the roof of of Skripal’s modest semi-detached home in Salisbury. Remember how many stories we were told about this? Novichok was put in the car’s air system. No it was on the car door handle. No it was put in the food. Finally we were told that it was on the outside door handle at his house. But then how did Yulia get exposed? Did both of them close the door? Remember that this incident with the Skripals happened just before Russia was going to be hosting the Soccer World Cup. And that it occurred after the Winter Olympics where a Russian contestant was accused of drugging and kicked out. Funny how the media didn’t spend as much energy on reporting that he didn’t actually do that. (or was it during the summer ones?) oh well it did happen. False allegations were made just to get at Russia. F’ck the Olympics if this is allowed to happen. [Skripal] [Integrity Iniative]
• Jacques Hogard: Europe has died in Pristina
  Colonel Jacques Hogard in the European Parliament, via GeoStrategy Conference: “KOSOVO AND METOHIJA – A EUROPEAN CASE OF VIOLENT SECESSION” Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to be here today, in the European Parliament, at the invitation of the Center for Geostrategic Studies in Belgrade. As a senior French officer, I served in Macedonia and then in Kosovo in the first half of 1999. When I was assigned to the French Special Operations Command, I was appointed as the head of the joint special forces group that intervened before the French KFOR Brigade’s deployment under the command of NATO. It is for this reason that I am speaking today, having published a few years ago a book with a deliberately provocative title: “Europe has died in Pristina”. If you have not read it, I recommend you to do it! There you will find my testimony on this tragic period. If one speaks of Kosovo, its full name Kosovo-Metohija, it is indeed not possible to ignore the past of this region, the ancient past, the cultural and religious history, the history of the Serbian and Orthodox identity always present through the innumerable and very old monuments, churches, Serbian monasteries found throughout the province, but also the recent past, and especially the events of the 1990s that culminated in 1999 during the war that was imposed on Serbia, with the support of NATO and the European Union to the Albanian KLA rebellion. It is in this context that I myself intervened in Kosovo at the head of French special forces under British command. [Kosovo] [Serbia]
• British think-tanks call for “US leadership” in Europe
  “Rebuilding US leading role is the key for European security” say British experts, but the new political realities inspire doubts Jeremy McCoy January 4, Anonymous hackers released the new batch of documents from the Integrity Initiative – a government-funded program run by the London based Institute for Statecraft. The Institute for Statecraft describes itself as “an independent body dedicated to refreshing the practice of statecraft, to improving governance and to enhancing national security”. The Integrity Initiative: Defending Democracy against Disinformation is one of the Institute’s projects aimed at countering Russian propaganda as well as all kinds of “attempts to influence the policies and undermine the societies of the West”. The released batch inter alia contains the files on the Integrity Initiative efforts in the USA. These documents worth being examined more carefully because they show a questionable approach to European security shared by some British think tankers. The experts believe a reassertion of the US political and military domination in Europe is the only way for the West to counter Russia, China and Daesh/IS. “The West is badly in need of a reassertion of US leadership. The EU has been unable to generate any strategic thinking or to exercise convincing leadership. Russia (& China) are successfully driving wedges between EU Member States and between Allies within NATO. Brexit has added to the confusion. [Integrity Initiative] [US dominance] [Subservience] [Special relationship]
• Dutch government assures residency of UK citizens in event of no Brexit deal
  Any British national with right to live in the Netherlands on 29 March can continue to live there Jennifer Rankin in Brussels Tue 8 Jan 2019 18.20 GMT Last modified on Tue 8 Jan 2019 21.08 GMT British citizens in the Netherlands have been told they can stay in the country in the event of a no-deal Brexit, as the Dutch government became the latest to offer guarantees to worried residents. Any British person who has the right to live in the Netherlands on 29 March 2019 would be able to continue to live, work and study there, even if the UK crashes out of the European Union, according to a statement on the website of the Dutch ministry of justice. An estimated 45,000 British adults in the Netherlands could expect a letter to arrive before Brexit day from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) that would serve as a temporary residence permit, in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal. [Brexit]
• Did Iran plot four attacks in Europe? The Dutch government thinks so.
  Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok speaks to journalists in The Hague on Jan. 8. (Bart Maat/AFP/Getty Images) By Adam Taylor January 8 at 12:55 PM The European Union imposed sanctions on Iran’s intelligence ministry and two Iranian nationals on Tuesday as the Dutch government accused Iran of likely involvement in two assassination plots in the Netherlands. The allegations were contained in a letter released by the Dutch government to parliament. The letter indicates Iran is suspected in at least four assassination and bomb plots in Europe since 2015, which will probably bolster the Trump administration’s calls for greater international isolation of Tehran. The investigations of the two killings led to the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from the Netherlands in June 2018, the letter said, a move that was not disclosed at the time. The diplomats were not expelled over any confirmed personal involvement in the killings, the letter stated, “but as a clear signal that the Netherlands regards Iran’s probable involvement in these serious cases as unacceptable.” According to the letter, signed by Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren, Iranian officials denied any involvement in the killings when contacted. [Iran confrontation] [Netherlands] [US dominance]
• What is Corbyn thinking?
  Bernard Porter 31 December 2018 Jeremy Corbyn is getting a lot of stick just now – certainly on the anti-Brexit Facebook pages I subscribe to – for not coming out clearly in favour of a second referendum, and for Remain. The Guardian is especially critical: but when hasn’t it been, of this untidy bearded radical who flouts even liberal standards of political respectability? I have to say, a part of me is disappointed too. I’d have liked Labour to have taken more of a pro-European lead. But then I think again. There are three reasons for suspending judgment on Corbyn until the whole sorry affair has worked itself out. First, he is at least being consistent in his career-long Euroscepticism, which is more than you can say for Theresa May: pro-Europe one day, leading the anti-Europe charge the next. What would the press have made of a similar volte-face by the famously principled Corbyn? Second, he has always been a Eurosceptic, not an anti-European; and for totally different reasons from the right-wing antis: he sees the EU as having been taken over by global capitalism and so an obstacle to the democratic socialism he wants for Britain. That’s why he must be against a form of Brexit that releases Britain from the hands of Brussels only to send it into the claws of Trump, and America’s lower product and labour standards. The emphasis in Corbyn’s speeches has always been on jobs and workers’ rights; which could be secured either within a reformed EU (there are plenty of Leftists there to help him) or by a ‘soft’ Brexit arrangement that kept Britain within the single market. In the present chaos it isn’t clear which is more likely. So Corbyn is – sensibly and intelligently – holding his fire. Of course the Manichaean tabloids are too thick to see this; or else assume their readers are. The third reason for giving Corbyn the benefit of the doubt is that he has his Northern working-class and other ‘left-behind’ voters to think of. Insofar as they and others voted against Europe (and they may not have been as solidly Brexit as the popular press makes out), it was largely for all the wrong reasons; but they don’t like being told this, especially by ‘elitists’ and ‘experts’, and so are building powerful and expert-resistant barricades – ‘You lost, accept it’; ‘What part of democracy don’t you understand?’; ‘We’re not idiots, we knew what we were voting for’; ‘Brexit means Brexit’ – against any sign that they might be about to be ‘betrayed’ by the ‘Establishment’. At the very least it may be wise for Corbyn not to come out as a Remainer until the practical flaws in the Brexit enterprise have been clearly revealed to everyone, as well as the cheating on the Brexit side.[ [Brexit] [Corbyn]
• The Dutch love to plan. But even they may not be able to avoid the chaos of a no-deal Brexit.
  By Michael Birnbaum January 6 at 3:27 PM ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — The Hook of Holland, a stretch of land outside Rotterdam sliced by canals, functions in many ways like Britain’s backyard. Greenhouses stretch for miles, nurturing tulips, tomatoes and other supermarket specialties. The bounty is gathered into warehouses and sorted under signs denoting destinations such as Sheffield and Gateshead. Then trucks whisk it all onto ferries headed across the North Sea. Thanks to this precisely calibrated ecosystem and the European Union’s borderless trading zone, British shops can order fresh produce early in the morning and receive it by the end of the day. But a no-deal Brexit threatens to throw it all into chaos, resulting in trucks backed up for miles, vegetables spoiled and economic pain for everyone. [Brexit] [Netherlands]
• Pine Gap: Cabinet Papers.
  Mack Williams. Posted on 3 January 2019 Lost in the flurry of media comment on the Cabinet papers released on 1 January was an extremely important( if not the most) submission formerly highly classified and titled as “Establishment of a Joint Australia-United States Relay Ground Station at Pine Gap”. As of writing, seemingly only the ABC has picked up on the submission with the major print media choosing not to report it – for reasons one can only speculate about! While the Cabinet submission has been significantly redacted in parts, it provides an invaluable insight not only of the case for Australia agreeing to the US approach on the RGS at Pine Gap but also of the domestic political judgment of the incumbent government and a snapshot of the Cabinet processes through which it passed. The submission also establishes the direct linkage of the opening of the RGS to the closure of a previous joint facility at Nurrungar. Several years earlier the US Air Force (USAF) had signalled it wanted to close Nurrungar and move to the next level of satellite-based operations at Pine Gap but negotiations about that transfer had been dragging on. The submission implies that the Government had some serious concerns about how they could present the implications for the future viability of Woomera township ( 1200 people) to the public (especially in South Australia)). Vague possibilities for separate space research at Woomera in the future were noted but without much optimism. Fast forward to 2018 and finally, we see the positive signs in that direction! Despite what might be contained in a key redaction, the Submission states that the Australia-United States Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap “should be regarded as a new joint defence facility that we will host for many years”. And that it will replace Nurrungar which was a “satellite ground station of the United States Defense Support Program (DSP) which is the primary US system for providing first warning of ballistic missile launches worldwide.” It went on to provide more detail ( heavily redacted) about the”existing” DSP satellites which “were designed to perform a single function: the early detection of the launch of large intercontinental ballistic missiles”. From which it contained the following argument that this “made possible the launch of a retaliatory strike before warheads struck their targets in the US. The inevitability of retaliation played a central part in deterring a first strike…the DSP satellites complemented other systems ( redaction) to give the US greater certainty that a nuclear attack was indeed underway….therefore made an important contribution to the avoidance of a nuclear war, a compelling Australian interest”. [Pine Gap] [Surveillance] [First strike] [Allegiance]
• Trump and Syria
  Richard Broinowski Posted on 1 January 2019 While Prime Minister Morrison was visiting Australian troops in Iraq this month (but not Afghanistan -‘ too dangerous’), President Trump was preparing to pull US ground forces out of Syria. Nothing Morrison said indicated that he or Joe Hockey, our Ambassador to the United States , who is supposed to have special access inside the Washington beltway, appeared to know that this was going to happen. Once again, Australia was treated with the lack of respect that our subservience to American military policy deserves. And it is a sad commentary on both the Australian Opposition and the Australian media that Morrison’s ignorance has not been roundly criticised and held up to derision. Why has the Labor Party not condemned Morrison or at least demanded an explanation? Why has not one newspaper or one television program on foreign affairs focused on the prime minister’s ignorance? [US Syria policy] [Withdrawal] [Australia] [Sidelined]
• Oceania-DPRK Solidarity Committee [on detention of Chan Han Choi]
  4 January The British tabloid newspaper, Daily Mail have run an article on the case of pro-DPRK political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi where they quote his brave statements from prison. Although this is surely not the intention of the paper's editors, Choi comes off sounding good to any class conscious worker or other staunch leftist reading the article. It is also the first time that a mainstream English language newspaper has published Choi's photograph. Chan Han Choi is an Australian citizen who has been jailed for over a year in one of Australia's most notorious prison camps. Although he has not been convicted and is yet to face trial, he has been denied bail. In the latest outrage, the authorities are now not allowing him to call either his supporters or his own lawyers. They have also prevented his lawyers from visiting him in prison with a Korean translator. This is the reality of "democracy" in capitalist Australia. [Political prisoners] [Chan Han Choi] [Sanctions] [Diaspora]
• What a French Doctor’s Office Taught Me About Health Care
  I moved to Europe because I couldn’t afford to be a cancer patient in America. I’d rather have been able to stay home. By Erica Rex Ms. Rex is a science writer. Jan. 2, 2019 TOURS, France — A dozen of us sit expectantly in the orthopedic surgeon’s waiting room. We’re here for follow-ups. Some, like me, have had bunions removed. Others have had hips or knees replaced. Most are older women. The copies of Paris Match and Le Monde on the table are at least six months old. The only artwork is a framed print of Claude Monet’s “Poppy Fields Near Argenteuil.” Since I’m only two weeks out from surgery and can’t drive, I came by taxi. The fare was underwritten by the French social security system, known familiarly as la Sécu, which also provides health insurance for all residents. The woman seated opposite me tells me she’s on her second bunion surgery. Her doctor, a top orthopedic surgeon, charges more than the normal Sécu compensation, as do many specialists. Most French people purchase a supplementary insurance plan to cover costs not picked up by la Sécu. As a French resident and taxpayer, I have one too. Another woman is recovering from a hip replacement. Medical chat is common in French waiting rooms. If the wait is long, everyone comes to know everything about one another’s complaints. To my friends in the United States, this casual attitude seems foolish, even risky. But in France, medical privacy is irrelevant. No one will lose her job because of a lengthy convalescence. There is no possibility that pre-existing conditions will make insurance unaffordable. Unemployed people still receive treatment. Huge medical bills do not reduce ordinary citizens to a state of existential terror. [Health] [US] [France] [Human rights]

• Fake Islands Bring a Dutch Lake Back to Life
  Visitors at Marker Wadden, the first of the five artificial islands to open to the public on the Markermeer, a once sediment-choked lake.CreditANP, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Image Visitors at Marker Wadden, the first of the five artificial islands to open to the public on the Markermeer, a once sediment-choked lake.CreditCreditANP, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By David Shimer Dec. 26, 2018 LELYSTAD, Netherlands — Wildlife is flourishing inside an artificial archipelago on a lake just northeast of Amsterdam. Red clover, reeds and more than 100 other plant species grow, while thousands of birds fly overhead, feeding on the insects and small fish below. More than 40 years after the authorities in the Netherlands, a country that takes pride in its innovative methods of water management, caused an environmental calamity on what is now a lake known as the Markermeer, an ambitious if costly solution is bringing it back to life. The Dutch government built a dam in 1976 sectioning off the lake, one of Europe’s largest and shallowest bodies of freshwater, but the dike trapped sediment, muddied its waters and damaged its wildlife. The future of the Markermeer became a contentious issue, and the government is employing a creative response to a self-inflicted wound: the construction of five islands on a man-made archipelago. [Netherlands] [Water management]
• ‘What an absolute disgrace’: E.U. citizens react angrily to British government’s Brexit settlement video
  British government video urges registration for E.U. citizens The British Home Office released a video on Dec. 27 stating that E.U. citizens in Britain would need to register if they wished to stay. (British Home Office) By Karla Adam December 28 LONDON — Well, that didn’t go down well. The British government on Friday was criticized for poor taste and bad timing after posting a video informing European Union citizens of the steps they will need to take if they want to “continue living” in Britain after the country leaves the E.U. “EU citizens and their families will need to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme to continue living in the UK after 31 December 2020,” the Home Office said in a tweet posted Thursday. Glad tidings, it was not. A group called the3million, campaigning for the rights of the 3 million E.U. citizens who live in Britain accused the government of “poor timing” by announcing, over the holidays, that they will have to register and pay if they wish to stay. [Brexit]
• Germany mulls introducing 'mosque tax' for Muslims
  The idea, similar to Germany's church tax, would aim to make mosques independent of foreign donors. Germany's government and progressive Muslim leaders have supported the idea. Lawmakers from Germany's grand coalition government said on Wednesday that they were considering introducing a "mosque tax" for German Muslims, similar to the church taxes that German Christians pay. Thorsten Frei, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) told Die Weltdaily that a mosque tax was "an important step" that would allow "Islam in Germany to emancipate itself from foreign states." In Germany, church taxes are collected from practicing Catholics and Protestants in order to fund church activities. They are collected by the state and then transferred to religious authorities. [Islam] [Germany] [Turkey] [Saudi Arabia]
• Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'
  A man and woman arrested in connection with drone sightings that grounded flights at Gatwick Airport have been released without charge. The 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman, from Crawley, West Sussex, had been arrested on Friday night. Their release came as Sussex Police said they were relying on eye witnesses and there may have been no "genuine drone activity in the first place". Det Ch Supt Jason Tingley said no footage of a drone had been obtained. He said there was "always a possibility" the reported sightings of drones were mistaken. [Drone] [Hysteria]
• In a war against Huawei, we are the likely losers.
  Colin Heseltine Posted on 21 December 2018 (AFR 20.12.18) Let’s call a spade a spade. The efforts by western powers, Australia included, to cut Huawei out of major telecommunications projects such as 5G, where Huawei is arguably the world’s leader, are aimed at containment of China (of course, we don’t officially call it this – we call it “push-back”). Much has been reported recently about the so-called technology war between China and the west (“Huawei: Australia fears the Canadian Club, AFR, 16 December 2018). Huawei is clearly at the centre of this battle. The recent arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, is the latest – and most dramatic – development in this saga (“Meng arrest is part of America’s economic war on China”, AFR 13 December 2018). Ms Meng’s detention, extraordinary as it is, looks to be part of a longstanding campaign against the company which emanates from the United States. As a country traditionally known as a technology leader, the United States has been slow to develop new advanced technologies in telecommunications, in particular 5G technology, compared with companies like Huawei, Samsung, Ericsson and Nokia. It’s hard to avoid the observation that US companies are now playing catch-up, and that trade protectionism is a key element in the campaign against Huawei. [China rising] [China confrontation] [Huawei] [Meng Wanzhou]
• Detained ex-Canada diplomat in China said to lack lawyer access
  Bloomberg - December 21, 2018 3:04 PM A member of the Chinese People’s Armed Police salutes departing delegates in front of the Great Hall of the People following a group session at the fifth session of the 12th National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing, China on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. (Bloomberg pic) BEIJING: The ex-Canadian diplomat detained in China this month as Beijing fumed over the arrest of a Huawei Technologies Co. executive is being denied a lawyer and limited to one consular visit a month, according to a person familiar with the situation. The conditions are among the first details of Michael Kovrig’s detention since the International Crisis Group senior adviser was taken into custody by China’s spy agency on Dec. 10. The case — along with that of another Canadian citizen detained on the same day — have plunged Canada’s ties with its second-largest trading partner into crisis. Kovrig is being held at a secret detention facility where he’s questioned three times a day and unable to turn off the light, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing the case. He’s been allowed one 30-minute visit by Canadian Ambassador John McCallum in Beijing, in which he appeared stressed but unharmed, the person said. [Meng Wanzhou]
• Help for Michael [Spavor]
  Canada’s own Michael Spavor is being detained in China, and there is no clear timeline for his release. Michael ran a small organisation that promoted exchanges with North Korea: he’s put on hockey tournaments, helped renovate historic sites and brought students from Canada and elsewhere for study trips. This episode could seriously affect his livelihood, possibly result in deportation and loss of possessions. Michael’s friends are trying to raise funds to help with any legal, medical or transportation bills once he’s out. The last anyone heard from him was an upbeat message that he was coming to Seoul and wanted to go out for a beer. We’re hoping we get to have that drink sooner rather than later. You can donate anonymously. (Note the target amount is in Canadian dollars, so please adjust accordingly).
• Australia’s diplomatic course between China and the United States
  16 December 2018 Author: James Curran, University of Sydney One feature of the Australian government’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper was the balance struck between tough talk on China’s challenge to US hegemony in Asia and the message that regional military modernisation posed no threat to Australia. Despite the dysfunction roiling Australian politics since then, this judgment still holds. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pictured during talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Darwin, Australia, 16 November 2018. (Photo: Michael Franchi/Pool via Reuters). Both the current Morrison government and the Labor Party opposition are showing signs of finding a strategic path through this era of sturm und drang. They know that keeping faith with the American alliance requires scepticism towards aspects of President Trump’s foreign policy, and that the United States is being tested in Asia as never before. They know too that despite Trump’s warmth towards Prime Minister Morrison at the recent G20 Summit — where he channelled Vietnam-era rhetoric by saying that ‘we will be with Australia all the way’ — that his words do not convey the gravitas of old. Accordingly, political leaders in Canberra have rediscovered the tradition of asserting, where necessary, greater self-reliance within the alliance. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation]
• KCNA Commentary Condemns Australia for Going against Trend of Peace
  Date: 16/12/2018 | Source: DPRK Today (English) Pyongyang, December 15 (KCNA) -- Of late, Australia decided to dispatch a sea-patrol plane to the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula under the pretext of keeping a close watch on the DPRK's violation of "sanctions resolution." The minister of Defense of Australia said that Australia would maintain the pressure upon north Korea until the latter takes measures for CVID, noting that the recent step is aimed at blocking the evasion of sanctions and illegal dealings of north Korea and organizations involved. This cannot but be called into question as it is a very unreasonable act of going against the trend of peace created on the Korean peninsula and the region. Thanks to the DPRK's proactive measures, a good atmosphere has pervaded the Korean peninsula this year in line with the aspiration and desire of humankind for peace and stability. Now the neighboring countries and many other countries actively support the hard-won trend of détente, hoping this trend would be lasting and durable. It is evidence of positive acts to further develop the trend of the situation that voices calling for detente or lift of sanctions on the DPRK rang out at the recent G-20 summit. But Australia, contrary to the efforts of the international community, is chilling the peaceful atmosphere created on the Korean peninsula and the region regardless of the time. It dispatched a P-8A Poseidon patrol plane and two AP-3C patrol planes to Japan in April and September. It was for the purpose of watching the sea-borne trade of the DPRK's vessels. In October it took the lead in committing acts against the DPRK by dispatching a guided-missile cruiser to the waters off the Korean peninsula while talking about "economic and diplomatic pressure on north Korea". If it seeks to get its status acknowledged by infringing upon the sovereignty of an independent country in the region of weighty significance in preserving peace and security of the world, it would be little short of pricking its own eyes with its own fingers. The authorities of Australia should not forget the bitter lesson of history which they were taught in Korea for kowtowing to the U.S. in the 1950s. Is it reasonable for the Australian regime to think about the status and influence it is keen to secure, as it falls into contempt not only by other countries but also its own people for going against the trend of the times without its own principle? Australia had better use reason, instead of becoming modern-day Don Quixote for blindly kowtowing to the U.S. line. [Australia] [US dominance] [Sanctions]
• The Transition of Pearls & Irritations
  John Menadue Posted on 14 December 2018 To readers and supporters With good content and only word of mouth promotion we have over 6500 subscribers and about 5000 daily readers. There is steady growth. P and I helps set the agenda on important public issues.It will not come as a surprise to you that we are looking to migrate P & I to a safe home, either an individual(s) or an organisation that shares our values and beliefs. P & I doesn’t attempt ‘balance’. It has a point of view. The reason for the ‘migration’ are fairly obvious. Susie and I rely on writers, family and friends who generously provide extensive and free personal and technical support. We are not getting any younger! Our work load is rapidly increasing . That increase has been in part self inflicted as well as by the very encouraging response to the blog. About half the articles come in unsolicited. P & I is not a commercial enterprise. We have deliberately steered clear of advertising and subscription revenue. We do not pay contributors. We have no paid staff. In future, that non-commercial approach may need to change as a new operator(s) takes over. [Pearls and Irritations]
• On the back of the great crime against humanity in Iraq.
  Greg Lockhart Posted on 14 December 2018 It was ‘a bloody mess’. So said one Iraq veteran heavily involved on the logistics side of things and quoted in Dr Albert Palazzo’s recently declassified studies The Australian Army and the War in Iraq 2002-2010 (572 pages, 2011) and Deploy, Sustain, Return: Australian Logistics and the War in Iraq (156 pages, 2008). But note well that therein the term ‘bloody’ was meant metaphorically. In Australia’s Iraq, there was very little fighting. In eight years, two Australians were killed. One, Warrant Officer David Nary, died as the result of a vehicle accident. Another fatal casualty was Private Jake Kovco, who accidentally shot himself in the head while playing with a 9mm Browning pistol. Later, the official reception of his coffin at Richmond Air Base near Sydney would become a significant episode in the official quest to disguise the most carefully guarded secret of the war: its virtual nature. Palazzo does not pick up this episode. But I remember from the 2006 press reports how Kovco’s coffin got mixed up with that of a Bulgarian NGO worker and was lost for some time. When we got it back and flew it the 7,000 kilometres home to Richmond, Defence Minister Dr Brendon Nelson dramatically postponed a state visit to the US to attend its reception. The Chief of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) also met the coffin with a stiff salute; the Principal Chaplain made the sign of the cross. A band provided musical support for the company of soldiers that mounted the guard of honour. Prime Minister John Howard as well as the Chief of the ADF attended Kovco’s private funeral. Rarely, in the annals of Australia at war, could such a high-powered display of official sentiment have been showered on a single coffin. [Australia] [Iraq] [John Howard] [Allegiance]
• The moment that forever changed my perspective on Anzac mythology
  Paul Daley The Surafend massacre shows that the core business of good history must always be the preservation of memory @ppdaley Sun 9 Dec 2018 17.00 GMT Last modified on Sun 9 Dec 2018 17.02 GMT One winter’s morning a decade ago while in the late stages of archival research for a book about the Australian Light Horse in the Middle East during the first world war, I came across a file that would forever alter my perspective on Anzac mythology. I was about to look elsewhere when another sentence caught my eye: “New Zealanders and Australians went to Bedouin village and killed the men with bayonet and broke up the buildings.” [ANZAC] [Massacre] [Palestine]
• War and the national Interest
  Andrew Farran Posted on 10 December 2018 Since the Korean War in the early 1950s, the US has committed a series of political and strategic misjudgements in its war decisions. Does this give us confidence about its future decisions and for a policy of going along with those decisions even when they do not directly involve our national interests? Nationalism and irrationality are on the rise, increasing the chances of conflict today more than for decades. Reflecting on the recent commemorations of the Armistice of the Great War of 1914-18, the huge loss of life and injuries in that conflict was a reminder of how easily or even casually a whole nation can be entrapped in warfare, ostensibly in the national interest – an imprecise term too readily asserted by national governments. Since Korea, Australian governments have gone out of their way to engage in US wars of opportunity, mostly unsuccessfully. It is thus imperative that decisions to engage in foreign conflicts should be thoroughly scrutinised before commitment. [Australia] [Allegiance] [Imperialism]
• Prominent North Korea consultant missing in China since Monday: sources
  Unclear whether Michael Spavor's disappearance linked to DPRK-related work, however Oliver Hotham December 13th, 2018 A prominent consultant on North Korean business issues has been missing in China since early Monday, sources confirmed to NK News on Wednesday. Michael Spavor, a Canadian citizen who was due to arrive in Seoul on Monday, never arrived at his destination, multiple people familiar with his itinerary said. He was set to attend a conference in Seoul at the Royal Asiatic Society on Tuesday night, according to a post he made on social media. Spavor is a well-known figure within DPRK-watching community, with his privately-run NGO Paektu Cultural Exchange (PCE) frequently bringing delegations in-country to examine business opportunities in North Korea. [Spavor]
• China Detains a 2nd Canadian, Escalating Diplomatic Feud
  By Steven Lee Myers and Dan Bilefsky Dec. 12, 2018 BEIJING — China appeared to intensify its punitive campaign against Canada over the arrest of a top Chinese technology executive as a second Canadian working here was detained by security officials and dropped out of contact with his government. The second case involves Michael Spavor, a writer and entrepreneur who operates a cultural organization that promotes trips into North Korea. A newspaper linked to the provincial government in Liaoning, along the border with North Korea, reported that he had been detained by security officials there on charges of “engaging in activities jeopardizing China’s national security.” Mr. Spavor gained prominence for helping arrange the visits to North Korea by Dennis Rodman, the former N.B.A. star. During one of those visits, Mr. Spavor met the country’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-un, and in appearances in Beijing he would fondly speak about their friendship, though the extent of it was not clear. He posted notes on Twitter and Facebook on Sunday that he planned to travel to South Korea on Monday for several days of consulting work. He did not appear, as planned, at a lecture organized there by the Royal Asiatic Society, according to members of the group.[Spavor]
• Canada Arrests Meng Wanzhou, CFO of HuaWei, China’s Global Cell Phone Competitor
  By Christopher Black Global Research, December 08, 2018 It is clear the US is pushing the battle line to our door … We can completely regard the US arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a declaration of war against China.” So read an editorial in the Global Times of China on December 6, the day after Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese company Huawei was taken hostage by the Canadian and American governments on December 1. The daughter of the founder of China’s largest telecommunications company was arbitrarily arrested and detained by Canadian police in Vancouver in transit between planes on December 1 on the pretext of a US extradition request. The arrest has shocked and angered China while in Canada the large Chinese population must wonder how safe they are. The background to the arrest is fairly simple. Huawei has become a global competitor in the global phone market and their 5G phones are cutting edge technology and so not welcomed by competing phone companies in, US, Japan, South Korea, France, and Sweden, who are so afraid of the competition that they and their governments have spread stories that the phones are loaded with spyware and are “a danger to national security.” The company has even been threatened by the US and allied governments with criminal charges in America’s increasingly hostile economic war against China alongside its increasing military pressure, provocations and insults. It’s one way to control the market. But now, acting as a mafia they have kidnapped, detained, and hold hostage a Chinese woman whose simple crime is going to work every day. The lack of outcry from women’s rights groups in the west is not surprisingly, deafening. [Canada] [Meng Wanzhou] [Huawei] [US dominance]
• Academics fight suspension of lecturer over swastika image
  By Jordan Baker 7 December 2018 — 6:46pm Sydney University academics have criticised the suspension of an academic who showed students material featuring the Nazi swastika imposed over Israel's flag, saying it was a body blow to academic freedom. By Friday afternoon 30 academics, including several emeritus professors, had signed the open letter arguing that academic freedom was "meaningless if it is suspended when its exercise is deemed offensive." Sydney University lecturer Tim Anderson during a recent trip to North Korea. The academic at the centre of the controversy, senior lecturer in political economy Tim Anderson, has also been criticised by federal ministers for visiting Syria and North Korea, where he expressed solidarity with their dictatorial regimes. Earlier this week, Sydney University served Dr Anderson a termination notice, saying the swastika material amounted to serious misconduct that was "disrespectful and offensive, and contrary to the university's behavioural expectations". Dr Anderson was given a week to show why he should not be sacked and has been barred from entering the university in the meantime. He is appealing the decision, describing the complaints as petty and absurd. The academics, mostly from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, said employment should not be dependent on their work remaining within the bounds of "contested and intrinsically indefinable constraint". Some of the signatories of the letter are also vocal opponents of a proposal by the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to fund a course in western tradition at the university. They argue that the proposal also compromises academic freedom. "The suspension of Dr Tim Anderson pending the termination of his employment is an unacceptable act of censorship and a body-blow to academic freedom at the University of Sydney," the academics wrote in the open letter. "There can be no better-known or more banal occurrence in intellectual history than the suppression of ideas on the grounds of their offensiveness to powerful interests." [Repression] [Academic freedom] [Israel]
• China’s Rise and the rules-based liberal order: Implications for Australia
  Mark Beeson Posted on 6 December 2018 The prosperity of millions of Australians has become dependent on the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This unambiguous material reality explains why Australian policymakers and commentators spend so much time fretting about how to manage the relationship. The sheer material importance of the Chinese economy to Australia means that policymakers in this country have no other option other than to try and get the relationship right – even if they are not happy about what China’s so-called rise may mean for other elements of Australian foreign policy. In some ways, this relationship presents new and novel problems for Australia. In some ways, it reflects longstanding debates about ‘our’ relationship with Asia and the region of which we are a significant, but perhaps increasingly less important part. If we want to understand why Australia’s relationship with China (and the region) is so controversial at times, we need to put it in historical context and think about the different, often contradictory foreign policy goals that have been pursued over the years. I shall suggest that there are some encouraging aspects of recent policy, but there are also some familiar and perennial problems when it comes to relations with China in particular. There are also some potential solutions as well though. Recently, a growing number of commentators have been spruiking the merits of a more ‘independent’ foreign policy, which is a potentially good idea, for reasons I’ll explain. However, it’s easier said than done – not least because there’s a residual ambivalence and nervousness about ‘our’ place in the region and the associated belief that we need to cultivate what Bob Menzies famously described as ‘great and powerful friends’. For generations of Australian policymakers, it has been literally unthinkable that Australia should do anything other than rely on one great power or another for its security – as long as they were like ‘us’ of course. Even in the era of the most unpredictable and potentially damaging President in modern American history that reality is unlikely to change. [Australia] [China rise] [Allegiance]
• China calls on Canada to free Huawei CFO or face consequences
  Ben Blanchard, David Ljunggren BEIJING/OTTAWA (Reuters) - China warned Canada on Saturday that there would be severe consequences if it did not immediately release Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s [HWT.UL] chief financial officer, calling the case “extremely nasty.” FILE PHOTO: Meng Wanzhou, Executive Board Director of the Chinese technology giant Huawei, attends a session of the VTB Capital Investment Forum "Russia Calling!" in Moscow, Russia October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Alexander Bibik Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s global chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada on Dec. 1 and faces extradition to the United States, which alleges that she covered up her company’s links to a firm that tried to sell equipment to Iran despite sanctions. The executive is the daughter of the founder of Huawei. If extradited to the United States, Meng would face charges of conspiracy to defraud multiple financial institutions, a Canadian court heard on Friday, with a maximum sentence of 30 years for each charge. [Meng Wanzhou]
• Australia Deploys P-8A Poseidon to Japan to Enforce North Korea Sanctions
  Australia will deploy the maritime patrol aircraft to Japan to conduct maritime surveillance to prevent sanctions evasions. By Franz-Stefan Gady December 07, 2018 The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is dispatching one of its Boeing P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa this week in support of the international effort to enforce United Nations Security Council resolutions on North Korea. Australian Defense Minister Christopher Pyne said in a November 30 announcement that the deployment was part of Australia’s support of the international effort to enforce UN sanctions on North Korean vessels and stop their illegal activities in the East China Sea. “This is part of Australia’s commitment to deter and disrupt illicit trade and sanctions evasion activities by North Korea and its associated networks,” Pyne said. “This deployment follows on from Defense’s previous contribution of a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in April, and two AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft in September this year.” Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full access. Just $5 a month. The Boeing P-8A Poseidon, the military variant of Boeing’s Next-Generation 737-800 commercial aircraft, is one of the world’s most advanced maritime patrol aircraft in service. Australia currently operates four P-8A aircraft, with the remaining 11 aircraft slated to be delivered by March 2020 with full operating capability to be achieved by 2021. “Australia continues to work with partners to maintain pressure on North Korea until it takes concrete, verifiable and irreversible steps to denuclearization,” Pyne added. “A stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific remains Australia’s priority.” [Australia] [Sanctions] [US dominance]
• An effort to understand Australian Sinophobia
  7 December, 2018 by stalinsmoustache Since I spend my holidays in Australia, I find a need to understand the extraordinarily vicious Sinophobia thereabouts. In our time, perhaps New Zealand is the only country where it is worse, but that is not by much. Russophobia is part of the picture as well, but not as bad as in that very weird country, the United States. So let me suggest the following: 1. The weakness of Australian governance, especially at a national level. No matter what party has been in power over the last decade or more, it has characteristically been weak and torn by inner strife. They spend most of their time turfing out one leader and finding another, so much that elections are a waste of time and money. When a government is weak, it likes to find an external threat. 2. There are two caveats here. To begin with, the general populace is largely positive with regard to China. Survey after survey indicates around 65 percent are positively disposed. Further, the political subclass is split, with significant portions across the limited political spectrum engaging with China. For now, the Sinophobic element is able to set the agenda, making use of a gaggle of rabid ‘commentators’ and ‘advisors’ who do not realise they are being used. Australia also has a compliant corporate and state-owned media (ABC and SBS) playing the same tune. 3. At a deeper level, the Sinophobic narrative – with its distortions and deliberate misinformation – taps into a vast storehouse of Australian racism from the past. This comes form a time when the population was less than 10 million and was largely descended from British immigrants. In this context, the ‘yellow peril’ was invoked, an obviously racist trope and part of the white Australia policy. This is really nasty material, which many of us thought had been left behind. [Australia][China confrontation] [Yellow peril] [Allegiance]
• Huawei CFO arrested in Canada for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran: report
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Canada has arrested Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver, where she is facing extradition to the United States on suspicion she violated U.S. sanctions against Iran, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on Wednesday. Meng Wanzhou, who is one of the vice chairs on the Chinese technology company’s board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested on Dec. 1 and a court hearing has been set for Friday, a Canadian Justice Department spokesman said, according to the Globe and Mail. Representatives of Huawei, one of the world’s largest makers of telecommunications network equipment, could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters. Officials for the Canadian and U.S. Justice Departments did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. authorities have been probing Huawei since at least 2016 for allegedly shipping U.S.-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of U.S. export and sanctions laws, sources told Reuters in April. [China confrontation] [Extraterritoriality] [Iran confrontation] [Legality] [Rules based international order] [Canada] [Subservience]
• Britain’s Naive Exceptionalism
  by Patrick Cockburn December 3, 2018 The anniversary of the sinking of two great capital ships off Singapore, one of the great British defeats of the Second World War, falls unnoticed between the proposed May-Corbyn debate on 9 December and the House of Commons vote on the Brexit agreement with the EU on 11 December. This is a pity because the miscalculations that go into producing first rate disasters, both political and military, have a lot in common. Seventy-seven years ago, on 10 December 1941, Japanese planes found and sank the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse when they unwisely sailed north of Singapore without air cover in a bid to attack the Japanese forces invading Malaya. Describing his reaction to the sinking, in which 840 sailors died, Churchill said: “In all the war, I never received a more direct shock.” The ingredients that led to this naval calamity were similar in general terms to those producing most disasters: inadequate resources for the task in hand, over-optimistic assessment of the risks, and self-destructive ignorance of the obstacles to be faced. The two ships went to their doom because the British had no more forces to send and underestimated the threat of Japanese air attack. Supporters of Britain leaving the EU will bristle and say that it is far too apocalyptic to draw any parallel between a military reverse in the last century and Brexit today. They will say that this is one more exaggerated example of “Project Fear” and “Project Hysteria”, and all that is needed is to keep our nerve and exercise greater willpower until those EU leaders and negotiators come running, because they know that their countries would lose out, though not as much as the UK, from a failure to reach an agreement. [Brexit]
• New Revelations About Australia and the Iraq War
  James O’Neill Posted on 30 November 2018 A new ABC report reveals, quoting from a previously classified document, that the Australian government decided in early 2002 to join the American led Iraq War, but failed to disclose that to Parliament or the public. A newly declassified document, originally compiled by Dr Albert Palazzo of the Australian Army’s Land Warfare Studies Centre, has been publicized on the ABC’s news website. Professor Clinton Fernandes of the University of New South Wales obtained the 156-page report. There are two key paragraphs in the ABC report. It quotes Professor Fernandes as saying that the Palazzo Report discloses that the Howard government had decided in early 2002 that Australian Defence Force personnel would be dispatched to the United States Central Command headquarters in Florida to begin planning the Iraq War. Fernandes goes on to say that the Howard government has already decided, in early 2002, to join the US operation in Iraq. This decision was kept from Parliament, the ADF at large, and the Australian public. [Australia] [Iraq] [US dominance] [Deception]
• ‘Friends in Australia’ – a message from Sutan Sjahir, the Prime Minister of the newly declared Republic of Indonesia, November 1945.
  Ian Burnet Posted on 30 November 2018 On 17 August 1945 and two days after the Japanese surrender, Soekarno and Hatta unilaterally declared Indonesia’s Independence and became the first President and Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia. Brothers and Sisters All! I have asked you to be in attendance here in order to witness, an event in our history, of the utmost importance. For decades we, the People of Indonesia, have struggled for the freedom of our country- even for hundreds of years!
  The Dutch East Indies government in exile was based in Brisbane, Australia and the Dutch prepared ships to carry arms, munitions and troops to re-occupy Indonesia and re-establish their colonial state. Indonesian seamen living in voluntary exile in Australia during the war, together with other Asian seamen, and Australian Waterside Workers, imposed a ‘black ban’ on loading Dutch ships bound for Indonesia in Australian ports. The efforts of the Indonesian seamen, the support of ordinary Australians for Indonesian Independence and the actions of the waterside workers who, maintained the ‘black ban’, caused Dutch efforts to quickly re-occupy Indonesia to falter. The Australian government did not support the Dutch in their efforts to re-establish their colonial state and instead took the side of the new Indonesian nation. [Australia] [Indonesia] [Independence] [Dutch colonialism]

• S. Korea, Australia to extend free English program for young N. Korea defectors
  By Yonhap Published : Nov 28, 2018 - 10:39 Updated : Nov 28, 2018 - 10:39 South Korea and Australia agreed Wednesday to extend a free English-language training program for young North Korean defectors as part of efforts to help them sharpen their competitive edge in the global community, the unification ministry said. The unification ministry signed the agreement with Australia's foreign ministry and UTS Insearch, a language school of the University of Technology Sydney, to extend the 30-week language course for another three years through 2021.
• Why the Brexiteers May be More Dangerous Than Trump
  by Patrick Cockburn November 27, 2018 When a majority of the British people voted to leave the EU in 2016, I was struck by the similarity between the Brexiteers’ plans for their perilous voyage and those of Edward Lear’s characters in The Jumblies as they set to sea in their sieve. The analogy became more apt as the proponents of Brexit showed that they did not know nor care very much about the nature of the world into which they were proposing to sail other than to hope that everything would be alright on the night. The Jumblies, like the Brexiteers, were swift to dismiss critical comment predicting a disastrous end to their venture, saying: “Our sieve ain’t big / But we don’t care a button, we don’t care a fig! / In a sieve we’ll go to sea!” The water did indeed come in, but the Jumblies were not downhearted “because they wrapped their feet / in pinky paper all folded neat”. For extra safety, they pass the night in a crockery jar where they sang of their wisdom as they set their pea-green sail for lands where, among other things, they secured an owl, a pig and some green-Jack-daws, and “a lovely monkey with lollipop paws”. The Brexiteers’ alternative to the EU is just as imaginary as that described by Lear as a habitation for the Jumblies. The reason why the Leavers have failed to negotiate the sort of settlement they said they wanted from the EU is simple: what they said in 2016 was based on the proposition that the EU got more out Britain than Britain got out of the EU. Had this been true, the British departure would be easy enough, because Britain could genuinely have threatened to walk away. But because Britain needs the EU more than vice versa, the outcome of the negotiations were always going to be heavily skewed in favour of Brusse [Brexit]
• French official Benoit Quennedey arrested, accused of spying for North Korea
  Thomas Maresca, Special to USA TODAY Published 4:19 a.m. ET Nov. 28, 2018 A senior civil servant who works for the French Senate is under investigation for spying for North Korea, a French judicial official said. French intelligence agencies arrested Benoit Quennedey, a senior administrator in France’s upper house of parliament, on Sunday on suspicion of collecting and delivering sensitive information to Pyongyang, the unnamed official told news agency AFP on Tuesday. Quennedey was head of the Franco-Korean Friendship Association and has written books and essays on North Korea and traveled extensively to the isolated nation since 2005, according to the website of his publisher, Delga. His latest book was “North Korea, the Unknown,” published in 2017. Quennedey, an administrator in the Senate’s Directorate of Architecture, Heritage and Gardens, is reportedly being held at the headquarters of the Directorate General for Internal Security, France’s domestic intelligence agency, outside of Paris.
  It is unclear how what kind of sensitive secrets Quennedey would have been able to gather in his position in the Senate. French newspaper Le Parisien quoted his book publisher as saying that Quennedey “had no access to strategic information.” [France] [Espionage] [False flag] [Bizarre]
• Swedish envoy concerned about collateral humanitarian damage of sanctions on DPRK
  Source: Xinhua Published: 2018/11/22 9:42:46 Sweden's UN envoy on Wednesday expressed concern about the collateral damage of the Security Council's sanctions imposed on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the country's humanitarian situation. "Despite humanitarian exemptions that exist in the resolutions in the sanctions regime, there are still reports of adverse, indirect impacts of the sanctions on the humanitarian situation (in the DPRK)," Olof Skoog, the Swedish permanent representative to the UN, told reporters after the council held a consultation on the work of its committee monitoring the sanction scheme. Skoog further said the process allowing for exemptions to deliver aid is "a bit cumbersome," adding that humanitarian agencies are concerned about the delays in the committee for approving such exemptions. At Wednesday's consultation, the UN relief wing, or OCHA, briefed the council members on the humanitarian situation in the country. "The humanitarian situation is dire," said the Swedish envoy, noting the international community needs to do its utmost to provide life-saving support for the population. Chronic under-funding is hampering the humanitarian effort in the DPRK, Skoog said, urging all countries to come in with financial support to OCHA and to the agencies operating in the country and beyond. "No one is supporting sanctions that are hurting the civilian population," Skoog said. In July, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock said during his trip to the DPRK that the country has made a lot of progress in improving on the humanitarian front since 2012, although challenges remain regarding child malnutrition as well as the lack of safe water and medical supplies. [Sweden] [Hypocrisy] [Aid] [Sanctions]
• The latest hobgoblins
  Alison Broinowski Posted on 19 November 2018 On the eve of an APEC meeting, with impeccable timing, Australia’s lack of foreign policy independence was once again on display for our Asian neighbours: mimicry of US decisions, militarism abroad, securitised borders, containment of China, and fear of Islam. Indonesians and Malaysians recognise the pattern from long experience. Another terrorist event in Melbourne could not have been better timed to reinforce it. The Australian pattern is repetitive and consistent. At regular war commemorations, our leaders go on about how brave we have been as a nation. The mantra compensates for the fact that fear of one enemy after another – Britain’s or America’s – has always sapped our courage. Dread of abandonment has eaten away at such independent impulses as we have. Successive governments have known this and exploited it. The aim of all politics, as HL Mencken said, is to ‘keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary’. The pattern was familiar to John Howard when he advised Australians to be ‘alert but not alarmed’ about the threat of terrorism after 2001. Having risen to ‘probable’ it has never declined. Howard won the next election on it, and he and his successors introduced more restrictive ‘national security’ legislation than any other country. The ‘global war on terror’ has rewarded the military-security-industrial complex enormously, at the expense of public health, education, and social services in all the countries waging it. It has bogged Australia down in failed wars that breed more terrorists. Those who survive their attacks repeatedly say their motivation was vengeance for our assaults on their fellow Muslims. When former AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said this, he was forced by Howard to retract it. Boat people, our governments warned, could include terrorists, which justified locking them away in offshore perpetuity. Returning foreign fighters could re-invade us, intelligence agencies predicted, which justified more surveillance. ‘Self-radicalised Muslim migrants’ appeared in full-page shooting gallery format in the Murdoch media, inviting hostility. The public responses were contradictory: some demanded deportation to keep them out and others wanted passport-deprivation to keep them here. Ritually after every terrorist event, the whole Muslim community is both blamed and excused for the sins of a few. [Australia] [Islam] [Blowback]
• Swedish ambassador to UN stresses need for humanitarian aid to North Korea
  Posted on : Nov.23,2018 15:47 KST Modified on : Nov.23,2018 15:47 KST Olof Skoog says sanctions must not interfere with helping North Koreans in need Swedish Ambassador to the UN Olof Skoog stresses the need for humanitarian aid to North Korea after a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Nov. 21. On Nov. 21, the UN Security Council convened at the UN Headquarters in New York and was briefed on the situation in North Korea in connection with humanitarian aid. After this meeting, Swedish Ambassador to the UN Olof Skoog stressed the need for humanitarian aid to North Korea and said that conditions in the North are severe. Skoog met with the press after being briefed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday. Skoog was quoted by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency as saying that there’s a great need for humanitarian aid to North Korea. Skoog expressed concern that the UN Security Council’s sanctions against the North could have a negative indirect impact on the North Korean people and said that specific products should be exempted. In connection with this, the Voice of America reported that Skoog cited reports indicating that sanctions are having a negative indirect effect on humanitarian aid even though the UN Security Council’s resolutions contain an exception for such aid. Skoog said that while the North Korean regime bears the primary responsible for the worsening humanitarian situation in the country, that does not relieve the international community of its responsibility to provide North Koreans with the support they need to stay alive. [Aid] [Hypocrisy] [Sweden]
• Australia joins US in rejecting UN migration pact
  Posted : 2018-11-21 09:40 Updated : 2018-11-21 13:58 Australia's conservative government announced Wednesday it would reject a UN migration pact already denounced by the United States and several European countries. Adopting the pact "would risk encouraging illegal entry to Australia and reverse... hard-won successes in combating the people-smuggling trade", Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a joint statement with his home and foreign ministers. Morrison was an architect of Australia's hardline policy of detaining asylum-seekers trying to reach the country by boat on remote Pacific islands. The policy choked off what had been an active people-smuggling trade that saw hundreds of people die at sea trying to reach Australia. But hundreds of people have since been held for years in Papua New Guinea and Nauru under the program, which has been harshly criticised as inhumane by the United Nations and human-rights groups. "We believe that the compact is inconsistent with our well-established policies and not in Australia's interest," the ministers said. They added the pact "would also be used by those who have sought to undermine Australia's strong border-protection laws and practices" in a jab at opposition parties which have been escalating calls for refugees to be released from Nauru and PNG's Manus Island. The UN Global Compact for Migration was agreed in July after 18 months of negotiations and is due to be adopted next month. It lays out 23 objectives to open up legal migration and better manage migratory flows as the number of people on the move worldwide has increased to 250 million -- three percent of the world's population. [Migration]
• Pro DPRK Political Prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi Speaks
  TrotskyistPlatform Published on Nov 16, 2018 16 November 2018: Left-wing political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi had to mark his 60th birthday today locked up in harsh conditions in an Australian prison camp. He has been denied bail since his arrest 11 months ago for his support for socialistic North Korea. In this video, Choi speaks about a few of the many injustices that he has been subject to since his arrest. In the latest outrage, Choi's lawyers have suddenly been blocked from visiting him. They have been told that since he is a "National Security Interest" they must go through a criminal history check ... that could take an "indefinite" period to complete! This despite the fact that they have visited him twice before and the fact that his previous lawyers were able to visit him without going through such a check. In a still more sinister development, Chan Han Choi and his lawyers recently received letters from Legal Aid implying that Choi had sacked his lawyers. Yet Choi did no such thing and has indeed had absolutely no contact with Legal Aid in this period! The letter from Legal Aid showed that they were not keen on him sacking his existing lawyers and this suggests that a shadowy third party masquerading as Choi had sent Legal Aid a false flag communication. The Australian spy agency ASIO, the Australian Federal Police and the South Korean spy agency, the KCIA, are the prime suspects. For more details on the latest developments in Choi's case, please see this link: http://www.trotskyistplatform.com/lef... In this video, Choi also outlines his attitude to U.N. economic sanctions on North Korea and the reasons for his sympathy for North Korea. He said that when he meets North Korean people, the honesty and humanity of their society warms his heart. He contrasts this with the cold, money obsession of capitalist societies like Australia. [Australia] [Sanctions] [Political prisoners]
• Left-Wing Political Prisoner Turns 60 in Aussie Jail
  November 17, 2018 16 November 2018: Leftist political prisoner in Australia Chan Han Choi turned 60 today. We pass on our greetings to this brave supporter of socialistic North Korea. However, we can hardly say, “Happy Birthday” to him. Choi remains locked up in harsh conditions in one of Australia’s most notorious prison camps. Chan Han Choi has been locked up since last December and is still being denied bail. He is jailed because of his support for socialistic North Korea. He is accused of trying to help North Korea’s people by facilitating the sale of their produce abroad in violation of UN sanctions. Given the pro-capitalist bias of Australia’s legal system we wouldn’t be surprised if he is simply being persecuted because of his vocal support for North Korea. Yet, even if the claims against him turn out to be true, he is no criminal from the working class standpoint. Quite the opposite! This would simply demonstrate that he was merely aiding people who are being ground down by the most severe sanctions ever imposed. That he was boldly standing by a socialistic state. [Australia] [Sanctions] [Political prisoners]
• How Brexit Broke Up Britain
  Fintan O’Toole. (New York Review of Books, 13.11.18) Posted on 17 November 2018 So, at long last, it seems that the negotiations on Brexit between the United Kingdom and the European Union have produced a draft agreement. We do not yet know what it contains but it will be a compromise that falls far short of the high expectations of June 2016 when the British voted to leave. It will tie Britain to the EU’s customs union and single market for an indefinite but probably very long time. Instead of making a glorious leap to independence, Britain will become a satellite orbiting the European planet, obliged to follow rules it will have no say in devising. This is an exercise in damage limitation, not a bold break from the recent past. But the question is whether the British political system is capable of resigning itself to this least bad outcome. Theresa May will put the draft deal to her cabinet Wednesday and thereafter try to cobble together a parliamentary majority for it at Westminster. Can a chaotic political establishment find a way to swallow a complex, ambiguous, and deeply disillusioning necessity? Nothing in this story so far suggests that this will be easy. Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell did not quite say that when a government loses its mind it may be regarded as a misfortune but when the opposition does so as well, it begins to look like carelessness. But had she been around for Brexit, she might well have done. The British government’s journey toward Brexit is like a ride in Disneyland: every bout of soaring optimism is followed by a vertiginous plummet into despair. It is easy to blame May and her bitterly divided Conservative Party for creating a situation in which a deal has been done with just four months to go before the UK leaves the EU, and in which nothing is yet certain about its fate. Easy because entirely justified: the Tories have plunged their country into its biggest crisis since World War II and seem utterly incapable of providing a credible or coherent collective leadership. But what makes that crisis all the more profound is that what we would usually expect in a parliamentary democracy—that the main opposition party provides a distinct alternative to a failing and flailing government—is patently not happening either. The Labour Party’s members are overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit: a poll in September showed that 86 percent of them say they want a second referendum. In a recent large-scale national survey for Channel 4 News, 75 percent of Labour voters said they want the UK to retain a close relationship with the EU. Surveys show that in Labour’s old industrial heartlands, where working-class voters strongly backed Brexit in 2016, opinion is swinging sharply toward a rethink. Yet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told the German newspaper Der Spiegel last week that Article 50 (the clause in the European treaty that allows a member state to leave and that May triggered in March 2017) is irrevocable and that his party had to “recognise the reasons why people voted leave.” He was then almost immediately contradicted by both his chief foreign affairs spokeswoman Emily Thornberry and by his senior Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, both of whom insisted that a second referendum is still possible. The party’s divisions are now as public as the Conservatives’. [Brexit] [Labour Party] [Corbyn]
• Sacrifice is being politicised. Militarism is becoming the norm.
  John Menadue Posted on 17 November 2018 Remembrance is morphing into acceptance of conflict. The culture war about remembrance being waged by conservatives and the military is winning with little opposition. The never ending stories of Gallipoli, the Western front and Armistice go on and on. We are celebrating war on a scale that no other country does. Government ministers, Veterans Affairs, the Australian War Memorial and the media imbedded in the military complex can’t contain themselves. Public occasions are invariably backgrounded by numerous flags and the military, often regardless of the subject at hand. So that we won’t ask the hard question WHY we fight in so many futile wars we immerse ourselves in HOW we fight. We are deceiving ourselves. Australia Day should be a civilian celebration of our multicultural success. But even then the military are there on queue. They back the citizenship celebrations in Canberra with a gun salute and march past. The Navy is conspicuous on Sydney Harbour and we have an RAAF fly past. The military drown out all the mixed groups around Australia who quietly celebrate our real successes, the richness of our civil society with its diversity and social harmony. [Australia] [Militarisation]
• PM Hughes said ‘I bid you go fight for White Australia in France’- WW1 as the war for White Australia
  Peter Stanley Posted on 15 November 2018 Peter Stanley reviews Peter Cochrane’s Best We Forget: The War for White Australia, 1914-18 Australians’ racial anxiety towards Asia in general and Japan in particular in the decade before 1914 made Australians’ political leaders prepared to underwrite an imperial war in the hope of securing British support for the security of White Australia. The Great War centenary has seen a goodly trickle – though not the flood we anticipated – of books about Australia’s part in the Great War. We have seen important books on the operational side of the war (Meleah Hampton on the Australians on the Somme, say, or Lucas Jordan on ‘stealth-raiding’) and on the experience of war (Greg Raffin exposing the 1st Battalion protest to scrutiny or Joan Beaumont and her co-authors in Serving Our Country revealing the war experience of Indigenous communities). Yet, no one (not even Beaumont in her prize-winning 2013 Broken Nation) has fully answered the biggest question of all: why did Australia become involved in such a ruinous conflict, seemingly without a second thought? The conventional answers to that question have been ‘because as a part of the British Empire Australia had no choice, and anyway went willingly’ or ‘no one could have known what the war would bring’. Both of those responses are true, but only up to a point. [WWI] [White Australia]
• Immigration worries drove the Brexit vote. Then attitudes changed.
  By Karla Adam and William Booth November 16 LONDON — When the British voted to break away from the European Union — the historically gutsy or spectacularly reckless decision, take your pick — they said they wanted to “take back control” of their money and laws and they expressed a deep anxiety over immigration. But in the two years since the referendum, something remarkable happened: The British stopped worrying so much about foreigners. Pollsters have uncovered a mellowing of attitudes about immigration, expressed by both those who voted to leave the European bloc and those who voted to remain. “I have been studying this for years, and there’s never been a move this big in such a short period of time,” said Rob Ford, a politics professor at the University of Manchester. The shift highlights how mercurial the topic of immigration can be — a hot-button issue one year, a yawn the next. And it may suggest something about what the public will support, as Prime Minister Theresa May tries to sell the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with E.U. officials and her plans for what comes next. In exchange for obeying trade rules from Brussels, May is promising the British people that she will slash the country’s post-Brexit immigration levels. The 3 million Europeans already living in Britain will be allowed to stay, but the government will set new guidelines for how many foreigners will be allowed into the country, with what levels of income and from which countries. [Brexit] [Migration] [Public opinion]
• Pence says US will join Australia on plan to redevelop Pacific naval base
  By Jesse Byrnes - 11/17/18 06:26 AM EST 83 5 Vice President Pence announced Saturday that the United States would join Australia in bolstering a naval base on the Manus Island of Papua New Guinea. The plan, which Pence unveiled during a speech at an Asia-Pacific forum hosted by Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby, comes amid increasing tensions over China's influence in the Pacific and potential to develop infrastructure there. "Today, it’s my privilege to announce that the United States will partner with Papua New Guinea and Australia on their joint initiative at Lombrum Naval Base on Manus Island," Pence said during a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. "We will work with these nations to protect sovereignty and maritime rights of the Pacific Islands as well," he added. Pence did not offer additional details on the extent of the U.S. contribution for the efforts. Australia's federal government has been working with Papua New Guinea to bolster the Lombrum base. Australia announced a $5 million contract in September to update wharf and shore-area infrastructure there, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The U.S. has long voiced issues with China concerning maritime routes in the South China Sea, though concerns have expanded to the Pacific that China is pushing for access to infrastructure such as deep-water ports and wharfs that could be used for military purposes. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Allegiance]
• N.Korean Slave Laborers in Poland Paid Just $27 a Month
  By Cho Yi-jun November 12, 2018 11:18 North Korean slave laborers are paid only US$27 a month on average working 12 to 16 hours a day in Polish shipyards, according to a Dutch academic. Most of their nominal wages go straight into the coffers of the North Korean regime. Prof. Remco Breuker of Leiden University in the Netherlands told Voice of America on Saturday, "After the obligatory expenses, they would be left with about 27 dollars a month. That's what they would be able to send home." A former North Korean worker at a shipyard in Poland is suing a Dutch shipbuilder over the slave-like conditions under a Dutch law that makes profiting from exploitation a crime even if the alleged offender is not the victim's direct employer, which has turned the spotlight on the abuses. The North Korean regime typically takes 70 to 90 percent of the wages of laborers it sends overseas to earn hard currency. "North Korea can give something to Poland that it desperately needs, which is welders. The best Polish welders are no longer to be found in Poland because they left Poland for better paying jobs in Norway or the U.K.," Remco said. He said the North Korean workers also undergo daily self-criticism and peer-criticism sessions. "You have to do it all the time. It's like the North Korean system exported to Poland," although Poland is in the EU. [Overseas labour] [Poland]
• A Note on the Paris Peace Forum
  by Patrick Howlett-Martin November 12, 2018 France is convening an international forum in Paris from November 11 to November 13, 2018 to promote peace. Intended to be an annual event, the Paris Peace Forum is part of France’s commemorations marking the 100th anniversary of the Armistice, the ceasefire signed on 11 November 1918 ending the Great War which caused 18 million dead.The gathering will be inaugurated by heads of state and representatives of more than 80 countries Warning that peace was again in danger, President Macron called for ‘concrete proposals’ to drive forward multilateralism and international cooperation. France is the the world’s third arms suppliers and its exports increased by 27% compared to 2008-2012, according to SIPRI Arms Tranfers Database. Faulkner’s best known line never goes out of date: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” [Macron] [Arms sales] [Hypocrisy]
• In a Netherlands Museum Director, the Nazis Found an Ally
  By Nina Siegal Nov. 11, 2018 ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — In 1943, an official of an art clearing house the Nazis set up in the Netherlands to sell looted Jewish property, approached the director of the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam. He had four works he wanted to sell, including a lovely oil painting, “Woman Seated on the Grass at the Edge of a Meadow and Reading,” by Nicolaas van der Waay. The museum director, Dirk Hannema, may not have known the painful specifics of the painting’s provenance, that it had belonged to Izaak Leefsma, a Jewish paint manufacturer, and his wife, Helene Leefsma-Meijer, who had been deported and, only months before, murdered at a concentration camp. Image As museum director, Mr. Hannema agreed to buy this painting that had been looted from a Jewish family.CreditStichting De Joodse Invalide, Amsterdam But Mr. Hannema, who served as the top museum official for the Dutch shadow government set up by the Nazis, must have known what sort of ugly business the art clearing house, the Mühlmann Agency, was up to, historians say. [Collaboration] [Nazis] [Netherlands]
• What is it to be with China – cooperation or conflict? A response to Peter Jennings of ASPI.
  Andrew Farran Posted on 9 November 2018 In a prominent article in The Weekend Australian’s ‘Inquirer’ section on 3/4 November, headed “Canberra alone must control our China ties”, the director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, castigates the Victorian government, a large delegation of leading Australian businesses and the Australian Technology Network of Universities for having the temerity of engaging with Chinese counter-parts in pursuit of mutual interests. They are charged with being naive and operating outside their station. Jennings writes: “Unless our federal government better explains the national security risks, Australia’s relations with China will be driven by groups interested in economic engagement, not national security”. As for the Victorian government in particular, don’t they realise, he asserts, that “the states and territories have no responsibility for national security and little or no access to the intelligence information that informs national judgments about Beijing’s strategic aims”. [China confrontation] [Australia] [MISCOM] [Allegiance]
• N.Korean Laborer Sues Dutch Firm Over Slavery
  By Jung Ji-sup November 09, 2018 13:26 A North Korean laborer who worked in a shipyard in Poland for several years accuses a Dutch shipbuilding company of exploitation in "slave-like conditions." Dutch law firm Prakken d'Oliveira said Thursday that it filed a complaint on behalf of the laborer against the shipbuilder, whose name was not revealed, taking advantage of a Dutch law that makes profiting from exploitation a criminal offense even if the company was not the victim's direct employer. Reuters reported that this is the first time ever that a North Korean laborer has taken legal action in a third country. To protect the laborer, the law firm did not reveal his identity. The laborer claims that he was forced to work 12 hours a day in slave-like conditions for Polish shipyard Crist SA, but the Dutch shipbuilder, despite knowing the situation, continued to place orders with the shipyard. The laborer is believed to have escaped and sought asylum. Poland has been a European hub for North Korean labor exports. European human rights organizations have exposed the dire working and living conditions of North Korean workers in Poland on multiple occasions, but this is the first time legal action has been taken, and activists hope the landmark lawsuit will create momentum to turn the international spotlight on the gross human rights violations suffered by North Korean laborers abroad. The UN estimates that there are 50,000 to 60,000 North Korean laborers around the world who earn hard currency for the regime. [Overseas Labour] [Bizarre] [Agency]
• Norwegian reporter apologizes over 'racist' question for Korean actress
  Posted : 2018-11-09 21:12 Updated : 2018-11-09 21:14 A Norwegian reporter based in Los Angeles has apologized to Korean actress Kim Soo-hyun after her "racist" question during a recent interview angered many of her fans. Screengrab of Flaa's Instagram By Jung Min-ho A Norwegian reporter has apologized for a "racist question" she asked Korean actress Kim Soo-hyun, also known as Claudia Kim, during a recent interview. Kjersti Flaa, who is based in Los Angeles, apologized on Instagram Thursday after her "offensive and ignorant" question enraged many of Kim's Korean fans. "Since I posted my interview with her and Ezra Miller I have realized that something I asked her came off in a way that was never intentionally meant as being anything else but curiosity, but it has later been brought to my attention that it sounded ignorant," Flaa wrote. "I am a Norwegian myself and English is not my first language and I was really impressed that Claudia could read Harry Potter in English at a very young age (since she grew up in Korea and I know that English is not her first language)." This came a week after Flaa had an interview with stars in the film, "Fantastic Beasts 2." In an interview video released on Nov. 7, the reporter asked Kim and Miller about their first encounters with the Harry Potter books. After Kim responded that she read the books when she was a middle school student, Flaa had a surprised look on her face and asked whether she was able to speak English at that age. "Ooh, but you read it in English, then? So you did speak English? That's cool," Flaa said. [Racism] [Bizarre]
• A 69-year-old man asks to be declared 49, claiming age is as fluid as gender
  Emile Ratelband is petitioning a Dutch court to change his date of birth to make him 20 years younger. (Emile Ratelband) By Isaac Stanley-Becker November 8 at 6:15 AM In the quixotic battle against old age, some people use skin care and spin class. That’s not enough for Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old who feels like he’s in his 40s. The Dutch pensioner is asking a court in his hometown of Arnhem, southeast of Amsterdam, to change his birth certificate so that it says he took his first breath on March 11, 1969, rather than on March 11, 1949. The judges heard his case Monday and promised they would render a verdict in the next several weeks. [Netherlands] [Bizarre]
• The Global Economy and Political Murder: Why Trudeau Won’t Stop Arms Sales to Saudis
  by Robert Fisk Almost 5,000 miles from the city in which his corpse was secretly buried – in one piece or in bits – by his Saudi killers, Jamal Khashoggi’s murder now rattles the scruples and the purse-strings of yet another country. For Canada, land of the free and liberal conscience – especially under Justin Trudeau – is suddenly confronted by the fruits of the bright young prime minister’s Conservative predecessors and a simple question of conscience for cash: should Trudeau tear up a 2014 military deal with Saudi Arabia worth $12bn? [Canada] [Saudi Arabia] [Arms sales] [Hypocrisy]
• Emmanuel Macron calls for creation of a ‘true European army’ to defend against Russia and the US
  French president makes new appeal for force in run-up to First World War Armistice centenary Jon Stone Europe Correspondent @joncstone Emmanuel Macron has called for the creation of a “true European army” to allow the EU defend itself from threats ranging from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin. The French president has pushed for closer EU defence union since coming to power last year but has been so far met with limited success amid foot-dragging by other member states. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” Mr Macron told France’s Europe 1 radio in an interview. [Macron] [Friction] [EU]
• NATO and Russia are flexing their military might right next to each other — here are the 25 most powerful militaries in Europe
  Christopher Woody Nov 3, 2018, 2:27 AM NATO member and partner forces are in Norway for a sprawling military exercise called Trident Juncture – the largest since the Cold War, officials have said. Russia is not happy with NATO’s robust presence next to its territory and has decided to put on its own show of force. From November 1 to November 3, Russian ships will carry out rocket drills in the Norwegian Sea, west of activities related to Trident Juncture, which runs from October 25 to November 7. The exercises come at a time of heightened tension in Europe, home to some of the world’s most capable armed forces, based on the 2018 military strength ranking compiled by Global Firepower. The ranking aims to level the playing between smaller countries with technical advantages and larger, less-sophisticated countries. Additional factors – geography, logistical capabilities, natural resources, and industrial capacity – are taken into account, as are things like diversity of weapons and assets, national development, and manpower. NATO members, 27 of which are European, also get a boost, as the alliance is designed to share resources and military support. The US military has a massive presence in Europe – including its largest base outside the US – but isn’t included here as the US isn’t part of Europe. Below, you can see the 25 most powerful militaries in Europe. [Military balance] [Russia confrontation] [Media]
• Migrants Bring Cricket (and Victory) to Life in Northern France
  By Elian Peltier Nov. 3, 2018 ST.-OMER, France — The players erupted in joy, dancing and shouting in Pashto, celebrating their second victory in a regional cricket tournament. It might have been a familiar scene in parts of Afghanistan or Pakistan, but it was far less so here in northern France. The St.-Omer Cricket Club Stars, known as Soccs, had just won a tournament on their home turf, a new cricket field next to a cow pasture. For their captain, Javed Ahmadzai, however, the sweetest triumph lay elsewhere. “The best victory is off the pitch,” said Mr. Ahmadzai, 32, a stonemason who arrived in France from Afghanistan in 2005. “When we teach cricket to children in local schools and they won’t let us go, or tell their parents: ‘You see, Mom, migrants aren’t all mean.’ ” Bringing cricket to life in St.-Omer is about far more than sports for Mr. Ahmadzai and his teammates. It is an opportunity to be part of the community, to be thought of as local champions rather than just as foreigners. [Cricket] [Refugee]
• Time to ground Australia’s China fear in facts
  Geoff Raby . Posted on 30 October 2018 (AFR 29.10.18) As December draws near, thoughts turn to annual anniversaries and remembrances. This December marks the 51st anniversary of one of the more bizarre events in Australia’s political history. On December 17, 1967, then prime minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming at Portsea beach. He was alone at the time and the surf was rough. He was a good swimmer and was familiar with conditions in the area. His body has never been found. To lose even one prime minister like this would be considered by Oscar Wilde as carelessness. Many theories were advanced, but the wackiest of all gained some traction in the media. Australia was deeply involved in the disastrous Vietnam War, justified to prevent “dominos” falling to Chinese communism in East Asia. It was asserted that Holt may have been taken by a Chinese submarine. Many years later this idiocy was still being repeated. When China was supposed to have sent a submarine all the way to Portsea to pinch the serving Australian prime minister, it was embarking on the destructive Cultural Revolution. Domestically absorbed by internal political struggles within the Communist Party and externally in grave fear of the Soviet Union. In those days, China probably did not even have one functional submarine. If it did, it would have been incapable of such a long cruise. False news was not invented with Donald Trump. The Australian media has form in whipping up sensational stories that serve a larger purpose. Last week, Professor James Laurenceson of UTS’ Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) published a detailed and considered study probing Australia’s latest bout of China Fear. The report, Do the Claims Stack Up, Australia Talks China, looks forensically at the evidence to support claims of China’s purported growing influence over Australian politics and universities, the Chinese diaspora as agents of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s attempts to undermine Australia’s security and even the balance achieved in the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Yellow peril]
• False Flag Terror Acts Press Europe To Sanction Iran
  By Moon Of Alabama November 01, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Israels secret service Mossad, with the CIA behind it, is framing Iran with alleged assassination plots in Europe. In September a terror attack killed some 30 people in Iran. Two entities, an Arab separatist movement as well as the Islamic State terror group ISIS, took responsibility. After an investigation Iran found that it was ISIS which was responsible. It took revenge against the identified culprits. Six weeks later Denmark claims, without providing evidence, that Iran tried to assassinate a leader of the Arab separatist movement over the incident. Iran denies any such attempt. The right wing Danish government uses the claim to urge other European countries to sanction Iran. It is unlikely that Iran would take action in Europe, which it urgently needs to reduce the damage of U.S. sanction, over an incident for which it already punished the Islamic State. The Danish claims are allegedly based on information provided by Mossad. That only increases the suspicion that the assassination plot is a false flag operation similar to a recent one in Belgium. More likely though is that the CIA is behind such false flag incidents. [Iran confrontation] [False flag] [Mossad] [Denmark]

• Iranian spy service suspected of assassination plot in Denmark: security chief
  Emil Gjerding Nielson, Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen Denmark said on Tuesday it suspected an Iranian government intelligence service had tried to carry out a plot to assassinate an Iranian Arab opposition figure on its soil. Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen speaks during a news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, October 30, 2018. Martin Sylvest/Ritzau Scanpix/via REUTERS The alleged plot, which Denmark’s foreign minister said he believed the Iranian government was behind, prompted the Nordic country to call for fresh European Union-wide sanctions against the Islamic Republic. A Norwegian citizen of Iranian background was arrested in Sweden on Oct. 21 in connection with the plot and extradited to neighboring Denmark, Swedish security police said. Related Coverage • Denmark will push for fresh EU-wide sanctions against Iran: Foreign Minister The Norwegian has denied the charges and the Iranian government also denied any connection with the alleged plot. The attack was meant to target the leader of the Danish branch of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz (ASMLA), Danish intelligence chief Finn Borch Andersen said. ASMLA seeks a separate state for ethnic Arabs in Iran’s oil-producing southwestern province of Khuzestan. Arabs are a minority in Iran, and some see themselves as under Persian occupation and want independence or autonomy. "We are dealing with an Iranian intelligence agency planning an attack on Danish soil. Obviously, we can’t and won’t accept that,” Andersen told a news conference. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi dismissed the accusations. “This is a continuation of enemies’ plots to damage Iranian relations with Europe at this critical time,” Tasnim news agency quoted him as saying. [Iran confrontation] [Separatism] [Diversion] [Deep state]
• Postcard home
  Brief report from Australian on visit to DPRK for 70th celebrations
• Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron clash over Saudi weapons
  French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel clashed on Friday over the future of arms exports to Saudi Arabia. Merkel reiterated that Germany would not supply weapons to the key arms buyer until the facts behind the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey were clear. "The case of journalist Khashoggi is, of course, something incredible, I told the Saudi king yesterday in our telephone conversation," Merkel said at a press conference with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis. "We need to clarify the background of this horrible crime and until then, we will not supply weapons to Saudi Arabia." She also called on Riyadh to "do everything to solve the urgent humanitarian situation in Yemen, there are currently millions of hungry people, we are witnesses of one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes." [Saudi Arabia] [Khashoggi] [Arms sales] [Yemen] [Hypocrisy]
• Chinese Australians are the silent minority on foreign policy
  Bob Carr. (Australian Financial Review, 25.10.18) Posted on 26 October 2018 Imagine the crucial byelection had not been in Wentworth but in another Sydney electorate, Barton. Instead of a 12 per cent Jewish population, it is one with a 34 per cent Chinese population. And imagine that, in the context of this byelection and after lobbying by the Chinese community, the federal government had announced it was considering a shift in Australia’s position on the South China Sea. Perhaps by way of an article in a Chinese language paper. Imagine that the Prime Minister confirmed we would indeed now acknowledge on-the-ground realities in the region. In this spirit we would consider accepting progress in management of the maritime territorial disputes between the various states like China and the Philippines. As a result we would consider no longer insisting on the applicability of the UN Convention on the Law on the Sea. Then imagine the howls of outrage triggered by this blatant attempt to secure electoral support – to buy votes – by dangling the prospect of a shift in an Australian diplomatic position.
  Striking, therefore, that I cannot recall a Chinese community organisation coming to talk about Australian policy towards China – striking, because the Chinese community is larger than any of these others (even after allowance for those with HK, Taiwanese or south-east Asian backgrounds). [China Australia] [Influence] [Diaspora]
• Australian universities and China
  Reg Little Posted on 26 October 2018 Comment on Australian universities and China needs to correct the universal Western oversight of the reality that China’s past, present and future can only be understood in the context of its unique classics and millennia of recorded history. [Confucianism] [Culture]
• Rodong Sinmun Warns Australia against Its Reckless Moves
  Date: 25/10/2018 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) Pyongyang, October 25 (KCNA) -- Australia sent a frigate to the waters around the Korean peninsula, talking about support for the "implementation of sanctions". A senior military official of the country announced this fact at a press conference. The official said that the said frigate would be aided by reconnaissance planes based in Japan and that it shows the efforts of Australia to put economic and diplomatic pressure on the DPRK. In this regard, Rodong Sinmun points out in a commentary Thursday that Australia is seeking to destroy the hard-won peaceful atmosphere of the Korean peninsula and the region. It has become clear that Australia is displeased with the trend of peace in the Korean peninsula and the region, the commentary says, and goes on: When many countries raise their voices at the United Nations that anti-DPRK sanctions should be relaxed or lifted, Australia is going against it. This fact shows that Australia has not abandoned its force of habit as a puppet. Australia should clearly know that the DPRK is a dignified socialist state advancing by dint of self-development and science and technology and that economic sanctions or diplomatic pressure can never work on it. If Australia is interested in the regional situation even a bit, it should behave itself, squarely seeing the trend of the times. In case the affirmative atmosphere created on the Korean peninsula is wrecked owing to the riffs-raffs such as Australia, they must be held wholly accountable for it. -0- [Australia] [Sanctions] [US dominance]
• University Backed by George Soros Prepares to Leave Budapest Under Duress
  The Central European University in the Hungarian capital. The school portrayed itself as a victim of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s efforts to vilify Mr. Soros and to stifle dissent and academic freedom.CreditCreditBernadett Szabo/Reuters By Benjamin Novak and Marc Santora Oct. 25, 2018 BUDAPEST — In 1989, as the Soviet Union crumbled and countries across Eastern and Central Europe emerged from decades of political oppression, a group of intellectuals led by the Hungarian-born philanthropist George Soros proposed a university that would help in the transition to democracy from dictatorship. Two years later, Central European University was founded in Prague, dedicated to educating a new generation on the foundations of a free society, including a respect for the rule of law and universal human rights. In 1993, it moved to Budapest. Now, as Hungary drifts toward authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the university says it is being forced to close its Budapest campus, portraying itself as a victim of Mr. Orban’s efforts to vilify Mr. Soros and to stifle dissent and academic freedom. On Thursday, university officials said they would stop admitting new students in Budapest after failing to resolve a dispute with the government over a new law that appeared to require it to open a branch in the United States. Central European University is accredited in Hungary and the United States. [Soros] [Education] [Subversion] [Softwar]
• Police warning: Korean weed smokers in Canada to face criminal charges
  Posted : 2018-10-22 15:17 Updated : 2018-10-22 15:32 Tweet Follow @koreatimescokr A Toronto woman smokes a bong on the day Canada legalized recreational marijuana on Oct. 17. Reuters By Jung Min-ho Korean police have warned Korean residents in Canada not to smoke marijuana, saying those who ignore the warning could face criminal charges when they return to their home country. Yoon Se-jin, head of the Narcotics Crime Investigation Division at Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency, warned earlier this week that smoking pot is treated as a serious offense here and Korean smokers, subject to the laws of their country, could face up to five years in prison. "Weed smokers will be punished according to the Korean law, even if they did so in countries where smoking marijuana is legal. There won't be an exception," he said. Last week, Canada became the second country to legalize weed for recreational use. Only Uruguay in South America did so earlier. (Despite its reputation for being open and liberal, the Netherlands has not legalized it fully.) [Extraterritoriality] [Marijuana] [Bizarre]
• Moon gets support in peace process, but tasks ahead
  Posted : 2018-10-21 16:16 Updated : 2018-10-21 16:17 President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook wave after returning from their five-nation European tour at a military base in Seongnam, Sunday. Cheong Wa Dae assessed that Moon's visit to France, Italy, the Vatican, Belgium and Denmark helped raise issue about easing international sanctions on North Korea. Yonhap By Kim Yoo-chul BRUSSELS/COPENHAGEN ? President Moon Jae-in's efforts to persuade the EU and permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) to help North Korea get some relief from UNSC sanctions faces challenges following "differing thinking" between Moon and his European counterparts on the matter. Moon wrapped up a nine-day trip to European capitals including Paris, Rome, Brussels, Copenhagen and the Vatican. He attended the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) held in Brussels and received a conditional yes from Pope Francis for his possible visit to North Korea. The President arrived in Seoul, Sunday (KST). [Moon Jae-in] [EU] [Sanctions] [Rebuff] [Wishful thinking]
• Moon asks ASEM member states for support to peace on Korean Peninsula
  Posted on : Oct.20,2018 16:05 KST Modified on : Oct.20,2018 16:05 KST S. Korean president emphasizes “co-prosperity” of Asia and Europe in case for lifting UN sanctions South Korean President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with German Prime Minister Angela Merkel following the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels, Belgium, on Oct. 19. (Blue House photo pool) South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who visited Belgium to attend the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), said on Oct. 19 that “peace on the Korean Peninsula will lead to the co-prosperity of Asia and Europe” and asked ASEM member states to lend their support to peace on the Korean Peninsula. “During my three meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, I have confirmed his commitment to denuclearization and to peace on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea and the US have also ended their 70-year hostile relationship and are sitting down together to discuss peace,” Moon said during general remarks in the ASEM summit, which was held in Brussels on Friday. [Moon Jae-in] [EU]
• [Photo] Moon unable to attend ASEM group photo shoot
  Posted on : Oct.20,2018 16:01 KST Modified on : Oct.20,2018 16:01 KST South Korean President Moon Jae-in failed to attend to the group photo shoot of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Oct. 19. After his bilateral summit with UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Moon had to prepare for his scheduled speech at the ASEM luncheon and Retreat Session, causing him to miss the shoot. The above photo shows the ASEM heads of state who were able to attend the photo shoot. After hearing that the photo shoot was being held at 1:30 pm that afternoon, he tried to take the elevator to the lobby floor, where the shoot was being held, but the elevator wasn’t working properly, causing his delay. Moon was told upon arrival that the shoot had already concluded. [Moon Jae-in] [Sidelined] [EU]
• Moon asks UK's backing to ease sanctions on NK
  Posted : 2018-10-19 18:26 Updated : 2018-10-19 22:32 President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with British Prime Minister Theresa May during a meeting on the sidelines of an EU-ASEM summit in Brussels, Belgium, late Friday (KST). President Moon asks Merkel for Korean steel products to be exempted from EU safeguard measures By Kim Yoo-chul BRUSSELS, Belgium _ President Moon Jae-in asked British Prime Minister Theresa May to support Seoul's initiative to partially ease sanctions on North Korea to get the reclusive regime to speed up the dismantling of its nuclear capabilities. "In order for the talks on North Korea's denuclearization to move forward and be sustained, providing some sanctions relief and humanitarian aid is needed. Within that context, I want the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to start discussing this matter," Moon told May at their summit held here late Friday (KST). The U.K. is a permanent member of the UNSC. The President wants to get sanctions on Pyongyang eased by persuading the five permanent members of the UNSC to discuss a possible revision. Moon is using his nine-day trip to European capitals to build a consensus and persuade the permanent members to take a step that "will make a real difference" in the ongoing denuclearization talks. Chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan didn't specify whether May accepted Moon's request. [Moon Jae-in] [Theresa May] [Sanctions] [US dominance] [Rebuff]
• Pomp and circumstance. The Royal tour
  Jerry Roberts Posted on 18 October 2018 There is some debate whether it was H.L. Mencken or P.T. Barnum who said that nobody ever went broke under-estimating the intelligence of the public. Either way, the executives of Australia’s self-proclaimed Royal Network followed the advice faithfully when preparing for the current Royal tour. They assumed that the entire population of our continent is brain-dead. Judging by Channel Seven’s coverage of the visit by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the assumption was warranted. When a royal visit is on the drawing board the protocol divisions of the States’ Premiers’ Departments work with police, main roads, airport and harbour officials and local government to plan, rehearse and time in fine detail, down to the precise minute, every aspect of the visit. A booklet is then printed and it reads like this: At 10.37 am the Royal motorcade will turn off St George’s Terrace into the driveway of Government House. At 10.39am the Royal limousine will pull up in front of the main doors. At 10.40am a Boy Scout and Girl Guide will step forward from the Guard of Honour and open the rear door of the limousine on the left-hand side…. At least that is how it was done before Al Qaida. [Australia] [Monarchy]
• Macron Was Right to Snub Moon Over N.Korea Sanctions
  October 17, 2018 13:29 President Moon Jae-in has told French President Emmanuel Macron that North Korea's denuclearization needs to be stimulated further by easing UN sanctions if the North's measures to scrap its nuclear program are believed to have reached an irreversible level. But North Korea has not remotely reached a point where denuclearization is irreversible. It has not even started. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flatly refused to give the U.S. even a partial inventory of its nuclear facilities and stockpiles when visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pleaded with him, and instead demanded that the U.S. officially declare an end to the Korean War to "build trust." The first step to denuclearization must be reporting all nuclear facilities and fissile materials, because how else will anyone know whether North Korea is scrapping anything? This is a no-brainer. Yet the North is vehemently protesting before taking even the first step, claiming that the demand is tantamount to "mafia-like tactics." Yet the South Korean president labors under the delusion that North Korea's denuclearization has progressed significantly. During his summit last month with U.S. President Donald Trump, Moon even said the North’s denuclearization had almost reached an "irreversible" level already. U.S. nuclear experts, by contrast, say Pyongyang's gestures so far -- dismantling a moribund nuclear test site in Punggye-ri and a static missile launch pad it no longer needs -- do not qualify as denuclearization at all. Moon hopes that North Korea's denuclearization can reach an irreversible level in a few months and is going around the world asking global leaders to stimulate the process by easing sanctions. Macron quite rightly brushed him off, saying sanctions must continue until "concrete denuclearization steps are taken." [Moon Jae-in] [Macron] [Intermediary] [US dominance] [Conservatives] [Rebuff]
• Moon to Push Pope Over N.Korea
  By Lee Min-seok October 17, 2018 12:54 President Moon Jae-in in an article for the official Vatican newspaper on Tuesday pledged to turn division and confrontation on the Korean Peninsula into prosperity through peace. "I hope exchange between the Vatican and North Korea will further increase," he wrote in L'Osservatore Romano. "I hope the Vatican too will pay special attention and support our efforts." Moon was writing on the eve of his meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Thursday that will also see him deliver an invitation to North Korea from leader Kim Jong-un. His visit comes on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Seoul and the Vatican. [Moon Jae-in] [Intermediary] [Pope]
• Italy backs CVID of North Korea
  Posted : 2018-10-17 22:33 Updated : 2018-10-17 22:33 By Kim Yoo-chul ROME _ Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte expressed full support for President Moon Jae-in's drive for complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) of North Korea. "Prime Minister Conte expressed full support for the diplomatic initiatives undertaken by President Moon through the three inter-Korean summits to advance inter-Korean relations, and achieve complete denuclearization and permanent peace in the Korean Peninsula. The two leaders shared the view that denuclearization must be achieved in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner," Conte said in a joint press statement after the two leaders' summit in Rome, late Wednesday (KST). [Moon Jae-in] [Italy] [Rebuff]
• Moon emphasizes importance of easing UN sanctions to Macron
  Posted on : Oct.16,2018 17:25 KST Modified on : Oct.16,2018 17:25 KST During a state visit to France, South Korean President Moon Jae-in emphasized the urgency of practical measures to ease UN sanctions on North Korea to French President Emmanuel Macron on Oct. 15. The two leaders held a summit this day at the Elysee Palace in Paris. Moon asked Macron, the president of a key EU nation, to help garner the support of the European community in the effort to achieve permanent peace and denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap News) [Sanctions] [Macron]
• Sharing the Defense Burden: What Europe No Longer Can – or Knows How to – Do
  By Isabella Martinez Global Research, October 14, 2018 Cracks are forming within the Western alliance: but they are not of a political nature. Western European countries are struggling to remain in line with their American ally, and a change in strategy has nothing to do with it: they simply can’t keep up. Financial resources necessary to fund defense efforts are increasingly difficult to find and industrial standards are slipping across the continent. The most visible kink in the European part of the NATO armor is, of course, financial. With military budgets pressed into the ground in most nations of Europe, armies across the old continent have been forced to mothball projects, outright cancel others, and drastically reduce the scale of those which remain. This meager funding is a problem for the United States, which heads the Atlantic alliance. As a primus inter pares, but a member nonetheless of NATO, America is expected to pay its share – albeit the bulkiest one, given its hegemonic economy. But even with regards to proportionality, European countries are nowhere near financial par. [Military expenditure] [NATO]
• North Korea: Diplomatic life inside Pyongyang can be 'superficial, difficult, and controlled'
  By Tasha Wibawa Posted about 10 hours ago An embassy building with gates and a security post in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo: Sweden was the first Western country to establish an embassy in 1975. It also represents consular interests of Australia, Canada and the US. (Wikipedia Commons: Gsalomonsson) Related Story: North Korea says it won't disarm nukes until sanctions end, Trump says he 'fell in love' with Kim Related Story: 'Socialist fairyland': Reflections from visiting North Korea as a young Chinese traveller North Korea is the last place many would consider as an international diplomatic hub, but the world's most isolated country has a surprising number of foreign embassies. Key points: Foreign embassies in North Korea are mostly in a special section of Pyongyang Embassies are sovereign territory, and diplomats receive immunity However, safety cannot be guaranteed due to unpredictability of the regime Despite a record of human rights abuse and nuclear testing, the 'hermit-kingdom' still maintains diplomatic relations with 164 countries — 25 of them with embassies in the capital of Pyongyang, including the United Kingdom and Sweden. John Blaxland, head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University, said diplomatic work in North Korea was unlike working in any other country. "Diplomatic relationships with North Korea are superficial, difficult, and not very deep," he said. Mr Blaxland added that there were very few opportunities for foreign diplomats to engage constructively with counterparts in the country. "It's very arms length — controlled and very frustrating to those people involved," he said. [Australia] [Diplomats]
• Understanding American Freedom of Navigation Operation(FONOP) in the South China Sea
  Sam Bateman. Posted on 5 October 2018 The recent encounter between American and Chinese warships in the South China Sea could be the fore-runner of more serious incidents unless both parties show more restraint. In a recent incident in the South China Sea, a Chinese destroyer came close to the American guided-missile destroyer USS Decatur allegedly forcing the latter vessel to alter course. Canberra has been reported as joining Washington’s criticism of China for adopting ”aggressive tactics” and for the Chinese destroyer launching an ”unsafe” challenge to the American warship. The Decatur was sailing within 12 nautical miles of the Gaven and Johnson Reefs in a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP).
  US FONOPS are inherently provocative. The leading American scholar of Southeast Asia, Don Emmerson, has questioned their value in the South China Sea on the grounds that they are ineffective and feed suspicions that American support for UNCLOS, while it is not a party to the Convention, is conditional at best and hypocritical at worst. He would prefer to see an actual US strategy for the South China Sea based more on the coinciding interests of Americans and Southeast Asians alike. [China confrontation] [South China Sea] ][Australia] [FONOP] [Legality] [Provocation]
• Over reaction in the South China Sea when US influence is waning and Chinese influence is rising
  Richard Woolcott Posted on 4 October 2018 The present and recent Australian Governments seem to have become victims of their own China and Russia phobias. In a situation in which China is rising to – or has already attained – super power status ; and in which the United States is losing influence,but is,as yet,unwilling to accept this great change in the global situation, the Australian Government should accept that China is simply demonstrating its rightful place on the world stage. The Australian Government is reported in the media today as criticising China for adopting ” aggressive tactics ” and for a Chinese destroyer launching an ” unsafe ” challenge to a US warship in the South China Sea. This implies that, while the Australian Government has no problem if the US behaves in this way,we regard it as dangerous,if a Chinese naval ship behaves in the same manner. Such an approach is of course illogical ! Can you imagine the reaction in Washington if a Chinese naval ship,or Chinese aircraft,were to encircle Hawaii and the Florida keys ,or to sail inside the US 12 mile limit,as US has done in relation to comparable areas of close interest to China. US defence officials urge Australia do so,but at least,so far,we have wisely declined. We – like Indonesia – are not one of the five claimants,which include both Taiwan and China. We are indeed placing ourselves in a very curious situation because Trump is clearly a unilateralist.So where does this leave Australia, as an ally of a United States which, under Trump ,does not welcome being in alliances ? Richard Woolcott is a former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [South China Sea]
• Rethinking Australian Strategic Thinking on China
  Reg Little Posted on 2 October 2018 Disarray and confusion amongst the values, ideals, narratives and mythologies of the English-speaking peoples will increasingly press Australia to choose between a familiar past tending to decline and disarray and a challenging and daunting China-focused future. Australian defence interests are increasingly shaping a variety of policy decisions in other areas, notably in respect to various forms of Chinese investment and influence. Most recently, Chinese activity in the Pacific has been used to raise rhetoric in this area. Much of the comment takes as authoritative the unexamined assertions of Australian values and interests and as unquestioned the competence of these defence interests in their interventions. Issues of a much deeper character, however, need to be examined and evaluated if Australia is to avoid debates and actions that only serve to lead it trapped in a variety of blind alleys. Fundamentally, the global order is undergoing numerous poorly understood but profound changes that are rendering past certainties and comforts anachronistic and harmful. [Australia] [China rise] [Allegiance]
• Australia assigns warship to enforce North Korean sanctions
  By rod mcguirk, associated press CANBERRA, Australia — Oct 12, 2018, 7:35 AM ET Australia has assigned a guided missile frigate to the East China Sea to boast international efforts to enforce sanctions against North Korea, an Australian officer said Friday. The Australian Defense Force chief of joint operations, Air Marshall Mel Hupfeld, said the warship with a crew of 230 will be supported by two Australian AP-3C Orion surveillance aircraft based in Japan. "Despite the easing of tensions on the Korea Peninsula, Pyongyang continues with its nuclear weapons and ballistic weapons programs in defiance of ... United Nations Security Council resolutions," Hupfeld told reporters. "The occasional deployment of ... maritime patrol aircraft and surface vessels to the region ... adds weight to Australia's ongoing economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea and enhances the capacity of ongoing multinational enforcement efforts," he added. The Australians would work in cooperation with the Japanese, United States, Canadians and the South Koreas to enforce sanctions, Hupfeld said. He likened detecting illegal ship-to-ship transfers of goods from among the many legitimate transactions in the East China Sea to finding a needle in a haystack. Hupfeld would not say whether the frigate HMAS Melbourne's role would be intercepting suspect cargo ships. "I won't go into a great deal of depth on those aspects, that's very much an operational matter," Hupfeld said. "An airplane flying over the top can't stop anything from occurring," he added. The Sydney-based warship was currently in South Korea taking part in a fleet review, he said. [Australia] [Sanctions] [US dominance]
• The Skripal Case: Fifteen Facts and Some Logical Conclusions
  20:51 09.10.2018(updated 20:53 09.10.2018) Get short URL Neil Clark The curious case of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury continues to puzzle. So let's get the key, undisputed facts down and approach it logically, without fear or favor, and see what conclusions we come to... Here are fifteen facts in relation to the Salisbury poisonings case: 1. We haven't seen any photographs or heard anything from Sergei Skripal since 4th March. The last confirmed images we have of Skripal is CCTV footage of him in a shop in Salisbury at 12.47pm on 27th February. We haven't seen Yulia Skripal, Sergei's daughter since a short video statement featuring her was released on 23rd May. 2. Investigative website Bellingcat contends that the two suspects identified by the police, and traveling under the names Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, are in fact Anatoliy Chepiga, a highly decorated colonel from Russian military intelligence, and Alexander Mishkin, a doctor working for Russian military intelligence. 3. We haven't seen any CCTV footage of the Skripal's house on 4th March, or of the Skripals on the bench where they were found at around 4.15pm. [Skripal]

• Sex abuse scandal in German Catholic Church sparks celibacy debate
  German bishops have begun meeting in Fulda to discuss a study on widespread sex abuse by Catholic priests. Some are calling for celibacy to be overhauled, while others want the church to focus on victim compensation. German Cardinal Reinhard Marx opened a widely-anticipated meeting of the Bishops' Conference on Monday by saying that the issue of sexual abuse had reached an "important turning point for the Catholic Church" both in Germany and beyond. "I feel we have reached a turning point about the issues such as prevention and the treatment of victims, but also about how the Church will deal with its own future," Marx said in the German town of Fulda. [Catholic Church] [Paedophilia] [Celibacy]
• The Netherlands, a Tax Avoidance Center, Tries to Mend Its Ways
  The headquarters of Warner Bros. in Amsterdam. The Netherlands has become a magnet for international corporations — especially American ones.CreditCreditMarcel Wogram for The New York Times By Jack Ewing Sept. 20, 2018 THE HAGUE — The Netherlands wants you to know that it is not a tax haven. But Menno Snel, the country’s No. 2 finance official, grudgingly acknowledges that the Dutch have become experts at something else: aggressive tax planning. That’s backed up by the amount of money pouring across its borders. For tax avoidance purposes, the Netherlands offers the status of a European country, while allowing big multinationals, like Google and Ikea, to move global profits through Dutch subsidiaries, drastically lowering their tax payments. The atrium of the Dutch Finance Ministry, where Mr. Snel works, is even adorned with full-grown potted palms that give it a whiff of a tropical tax haven. The suggestion of any parallel is probably unintentional. In any case, the Dutch position as a tax avoidance center could be about to change. In a major reversal, the Finance Ministry this week submitted proposals to Parliament that would shut down the benefits that made the Netherlands a magnet for international corporations — especially American ones, like Netflix, Nike and Uber. Debate on the measures is expected to continue through December. [Netherlands] [Tax]
• Trump Finally Makes a Friend
  Maureen Dowd (New York Times, 15.09.18) Posted on 18 September 2018 by Peter Menadue The president may be shunned nearly everywhere but at the bottom of the world he has finally found a loyal mate. CANBERRA, Australia — President Trump has admitted he feels “amazingly alone” in the midst of all his scraps with allies and snarls with undermining advisers. But he can’t follow the usual advice for presidents suffering the vertigo of isolation: If you want a friend in politics, get a dog. As his first wife, Ivana, wrote in her recent memoir, “Donald was not a dog fan.’’ Indeed, it’s a favorite insult. But there is someone — at the very bottom of the world in the land of Mad Max — who wants to play ball with the Mad King. In the Trump era, we can rewrite the maxim to be: If you want a friend in politics, get an Aussie. “I think we both get it,” Australia’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison, cheerily told me in his office in Parliament House. Even though Australia did not get rocked by a recession like the U.S. did, Morrison says some people feel forgotten, left off the globalism gravy train. “And that’s what we get. The president gets that. I get it.” For those not familiar with the Canberra cascade of prime ministers — six in the last decade — the latest brutal leadership “spill” is best explained with a comparison to a famous sporting spill. In 2002, ice skater Steven Bradbury became the first Australian to win a Winter Olympic gold medal when his three top rivals crashed in a last-minute pileup. The right-wing Peter Dutton kicked off the coup that felled Malcolm Turnbull, but then the slimy Dutton and the soignée Julie Bishop crashed in a pileup that allowed the unprepossessing Morrison to glide across the finish line. ScoMo, as the Antipodean prime minister is nicknamed, was not particularly well known but had clearly had his skates laced up for some time. He got off to a fast start, flying to Indonesia to negotiate a trade deal; visiting the outback to spotlight his focus on the drought (even though he absurdly told me about climate change that “I just don’t think it’s relevant to the discussion about how we’re helping farmers” and urged drought victims to “pray for that rain”); and vowing to pass a religious freedom bill in determinedly secular Australia, where Pentecostals are commonly referred to as “happy clappers.” “We don’t want all this political correct nonsense telling people they can’t have an Easter hat parade” or a Christmas play in a public school, Australia’s first Pentecostal prime minister told me. “In my maiden speech, I talked about the voices of faith being driven from the public square.” I wonder if, like Karen Pence, the devout Morrison was bothered by Trump’s flouting of the Commandments. (Thou Shalt Not Covet All the Playmates and Porn Stars at a Lake Tahoe Golf Tournament.) [Trump] [Scott Morrison] [Pentecostal]
• ScoMo, ProMo, Status QuoMo
  Mungo Maccallum Posted on 18 September 2018 by Peter Menadue We still don’t know just who or what the new Prime Minister is, but he is determined to tell us whether we like it or not. Our manic leader is seldom lost for words and this is just as well as he appears chronically short of ideas. So far almost anything that can be described as a policy is just a reprise of something dreamed up by one or both of his immediate predecessors – plenty of continuity, but very little of the change which might legitimately be expected after the trauma of political assassination. Apart from calling another Royal Commission, a ploy which he used to deride as a distraction, just about the only innovation Scott Morrison has produced is yet another three word slogan: Strong, Safe, Together. Apart from being all but meaningless, it is pretty hard to justify even in its own terms.[Scott Morrison]
• Britain: the Anti-Semitism Debate
  by Conn Hallinan Photo Source DAVID HOLT | CC BY 2.0 Does the British Labour Party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, have an “anti-Semitism problem,” or has the Party’s left wing been targeted by the Israeli government for its support of the growing boycott and divestment movement that challenges Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land? A group of Israeli lawyers and social activists would like to know the answer to that question and have filed a Freedom of Information action in an effort to find out. Spearheaded by Israeli human rights activist Eitay Mack, the request targets Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “verify that these play no part in the de-legitimization waged in recent years on the UK Labour Party and Mr. Corbyn.” [Corbyn] [Israel] [Smear]
• Dutch government faces legal trouble after aiding terrorists
  by FWMstaff, Free West Media The “moderate” rebels in Syria were not moderate at all, the recent scandal in the Netherlands has demonstrated yet again. Faced with mounting legal problems, the Dutch government has been forced to cut loose the jihadists. At least one prosecutor seems to believe that the government committed a crime. According to Public Prosecutor Ferry van Veghel, the so-called “moderate” Ahrar al-Sham is indeed a terrorist organisation. He says that the Public Prosecutor has indicted Dutch citizens for participation in the movement. According to Van Veghel, there is no difference between jihadist, extremist and terrorist organisations. “All organisations whose purpose is to establish a caliphate in Syria, which aim to frighten civilians, they can be regarded as a terrorist organisation according to the law.” And the presence of these armed groups at “democratic conferences” organised by the United States and its allies, makes no difference he says: “I think it is always good to judge organisations mainly on their actions and not so much on their words.” Ahrar al-Sham was no longer considered “radical” in December 2015, even though the officials of ministers Koenders reported on the human rights violations committed by the combat group. The group on May 12, 2016, together with ally Al-Qaida, was responsible for a bloodbath in the village of al-Zara. A picture of the slaughter shows how two fighters, with camouflaged hats on and with machine guns in their hands, stand on the bodies of at least two women. The women were shot dead shortly before. Human Rights Watch reported this massacre. A month later Ahrar al-Sham committed a suicide attack in the province of Aleppo. [Jihadist] [Netherlands] [Outsourcing]
• Commentary: Was there another target in the Skripal poisoning?
  Steven E. Halliwell The poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia has taken yet another dramatic turn. After UK authorities named two Russians – both said to be from the GRU military intelligence service – as suspects in the attack, Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that the pair were civilians, not criminals, and that he hoped they “will turn up themselves and tell everything.” While Moscow has denied involvement in the Skripal attack, the evidence of Russian complicity seems convincing. The Russian suspects were tracked arriving from Moscow, traveling briefly to Skripal’s home town of Salisbury at the time of the poisoning and returning to Russia within hours. Putin’s latest comments, which became top news on Russian TV, add another dimension to the mystery. Russian intelligence agencies presumably must have realized that the poison attack in Salisbury would be traced back to Russian actors, given the origin of the toxin and how publicly the assault was executed. On one level, that might have been intended to serve as a warning from Putin to any other spies thinking of changing sides that Moscow could find them anywhere. But the Russian government may have had a broader target in mind as well. Those most likely to suffer from the consequences of the poison attack are not the small group of agents like Skripal, but the thousands of rich Russians living in elegant London neighborhoods, sending their children to the best schools, collecting major works of art and traveling the world in style. These Russians are now under increasing pressure from the UK government to explain the source of their wealth. [Skripal] [Emigres] [Media]
• Salisbury novichok suspects say they were only visiting cathedral
  British officials say Russian TV interview with men about Skripal poisoning is risible • Analysis: Unlikely story only makes UK’s case stronger Andrew Roth in Moscow and Vikram Dodd in London Thu 13 Sep 2018 15.11 BST First published on Thu 13 Sep 2018 10.53 BST Men claiming to be Salisbury novichok attack suspects speak to Russian state TV – video The two men identified as suspects in the Salisbury nerve agent attack have appeared on Russia’s state-funded TV station RT, claiming they visited the “wonderful” English city as tourists to see its cathedral. In their first interview since being charged in the UK with attempted murder, the men said they may have approached Sergei Skripal’s house by accident on 4 March, but denied carrying any poison or committing any crime. “Our friends had been suggesting for a long time that we visit this wonderful town,” said a man who identified himself on air as Alexander Petrov. He and the other man, Ruslan Boshirov, resembled men shown in stills from CCTV cameras released by British police investigating the attempted murder of Skripal, a Russian ex-spy who passed information to the British. [Skripal] [Media]
• Skripal Suspects Interviewed on RT
  For those of you who missed it – the Skripal suspects came forward, approaching RT to tell their story. The whole interview is embedded above and available here, with a transcript here. A quick rundown of their claims: They are civilians, not GRU officers. They are tourists, who travelled to Salisbury to see the cathedral and visit Stonehenge. They are were not carrying, and have never seen, the Nina Ricci perfume bottle. They did not know Sergei Skripal lived in Salisbury and had never heard of him before he was in the news. They urge the UK police to show the CCTV footage from Salisbury cathedral, which they claim serves as their alibi. [Skripal]
• The Strange Russian Alibi
  13 Sep, 2018 Like many, my first thought at the interview of Boshirov and Petrov – which apparently are indeed their names – is that they were very unconvincing. The interview itself seemed to be set up around a cramped table with a poor camera and lighting, and the interviewer seemed pretty hopeless at asking probing questions that would shed any real light. I had in fact decided that their story was highly improbable, until I started seeing the storm of twitter posting, much of it from mainstream media journalists, which stated that individual things were impossible which were, in fact, not impossible at all. The first and most obvious regards the weather on 3 and 4 March. It is in fact absolutely true that, if the two had gone down to Salisbury on 3 March with the intention of going to Stonehenge, they would have been unable to get there because of the snow. It is therefore perfectly possible that they went back the next day to try again; and public transport out of Salisbury was still severely disrupted, and many roads closed, on 4 March. Proof of this is not at all difficult to find. [Skripal]
• Dutch funded ‘jihadist’ group in Syria, terror trial may now falter
  Politics Society September 11, 2018 Photo: Depositphotos.com The Dutch government has been supporting an armed group in Syria which has been branded a terrorist organisation by the public prosecution department, current affairs show Nieuwsuur reported on Monday night. The Netherlands provided uniforms and pick-up trucks to the group known as Jabbat al-Shamiya in 2017, the programme said. Next week, a Dutch jihadi faces court for being a member of the same group. The equipment was sent to the group as part of a secret programme providing ‘non-lethal’ assistance to 22 rebel groups in Syria from 2015 to the beginning of this year. According to the public prosecutor Jabbat al-Shamiya is ‘salafist and jihadistic’, ‘strives for the setting up of the caliphate’ and can be qualified as nothing else but a ‘criminal organisation of terrorist intent’. The fact that the government has supported the organisation in the past could upset the court case, according to legal experts. ‘A court could easily say that it would not convict someone for doing something which had been facilitated by the state,’ Geert-Jan Knops told broadcaster NOS. Michiel Pestman, who represents the man facing trial in three weeks, told NOS the Nieuwsuur claims undermine the public prosecution’s case. [Netherlands] [Syria] [Jihadists] [Hypocrisy]
  • Netherlands supported Syrian jihadist group: report
    By Janene Pieters on September 11, 2018 - 08:22 The Dutch government supported Jabhat al-Shamiya, an armed group in Syria that the Public Prosecutor labeled terrorist, according to research by Nieuwsuur and Trouw. A Dutch man is currently being prosecuted for participating in this group. The indictment states that Jabhat al-Shamiya is "salafist and jihadist", "strives for the establishment of a caliphate", and "can't be otherwise qualified" than as a "criminal organization with terrorist intent", Nieuwsuur reports. Last year the Netherlands provided Jabhat al-Shamiya with uniforms and pickup trucks, among other things. The logistics equipment was sent to the group in the context of the state secret NLA program, which stands for 'non lethal assistance', according to Nieuwsuur. Through this program the Netherlands provided 'non-lethal goods' to 22 combat groups in Syria from 2015 until early this year. The research also showed that there was insufficient supervision on the aid provided to the Syrian groups and that the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, was barely informed about what was going on. Parliamentarians have been asking for information about the NLA program for years, but until now the government has kept the names of the supported groups and specifics about the aid given to them secret. NIeuwsuur and Trouw managed to discover which groups were involved and which goods they received from the Netherlands. They talked to about 100 Syrian rebels over the past months and identified six specific armed groups that received Dutch support. One of them was Jabhat al-Shamiya. Other groups that received Dutch support also appear to have been guilty of serious human rights violations and cooperating with extremist groups, according to the news agencies. Their investigation also showed that the Netherlands supplied Toyota Hilux and Isuzu Dmax pickup trucks, uniforms, satellite telephones, laptops, mattresses, backpacks and cameras to the Syrian groups. The rebels told Nieuwsuur and Trouw that they are very satisfied with the Dutch aid and that they are using the Dutch goods in the armed struggle.
  • Dutch government faces outcry over reported support for Syrian rebels
    Netherlands allegedly assisted a rebel group which prosecutors had labelled a 'terrorist' organisation Monday 10 September 2018 23:03 UTC Last update: Tuesday 11 September 2018 9:41 UTC The Dutch government faced a storm of protest from lawmakers on Monday after a news report said it supported a Syrian opposition group which Dutch prosecutors had labelled a "terrorist" organisation. Parliamentarians demanded answers after the report aired by the national public broadcaster said the Netherlands gave "non-lethal assistance" (NLA) to 22 armed opposition groups battling Syrian government forces. The television programme, which worked together with the respected Trouw newspaper, identified one group as Jabhat al-Shamiya, which it said had been supplied with pick-up trucks, uniforms and other equipment last year. But at the same time, Dutch officials in the port city of Rotterdam were prosecuting a suspected militant for belonging to Jabhat al-Shamiya, which they labelled in court papers as a "Salafist and jihadist movement striving for a caliphate".
  • Dutch Authorities Reportedly Aided Syrian Armed Groups Recognized as Terrorists
    01:23 11.09.2018(updated 05:43 11.09.2018) MOSCOW (Sputnik) - According to an investigation conducted by the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation (NOS) and the Trouw newspaper, the authorities sent equipment, uniform and trucks to members of the Jabhat al-Shamiya, which was recognized as a terror organization in the course of the case against a Dutch citizen, who was a member of this group. The prosecutor's office's spokesperson told reporters that the office still adhered to its position, but could comment on the fact that the group was recognized as a terrorist one only within the framework of a specific criminal case. The media reported that apart from Jabhat al-Shamiya, the authorities also assisted other armed groups that were involved in "serious human rights violations" and "cooperation with extremists." The names of the other groups are not named. It is noted that the list of groups and organizations that received assistance was classified, but journalists were able to find out their names after interviewing about a hundred witnesses. Dutch lawmakers said they were "shocked" by the news. The country's Foreign Ministry said that they treated the information "very seriously," and stressed that this only strengthened them in the decision to stop assistance programs for armed opposition, which were adopted last week. Earlier in the day, the government of the Netherlands announced the complete cessation of assistance to opposition groups and other organizations in Syria due to the inefficiency of the program. According to them, the program did not bring the expected results, while the troops of Syrian President Bashar Assad, in their opinion, "will soon win."
• Australian filmmaker's new source of inspiration: North Korean propaganda
  Posted : 2018-09-10 18:24 Updated : 2018-09-10 18:42 Tweet Follow @koreatimescokr Filmmaker Anna Broinowski, center, speaks to a North Korean director in this photo taken in North Korea in September 2012. / Courtesy of DocForest By Park Jin-hai Anna Broinowski, an Australian film director, who traveled to North Korea in 2012 to learn Pyongyang-style propaganda filmmaking which resulted in her 2013 comic documentary "Aim High in Creation," visited Seoul prior to her film's release in the country. "Back in 2010, I started to read this book (The Cinema and Directing by Kim Jong-il) and the minute I read it, I was fascinated. For me, even though Kim Jong-il wrote a book about how to make a social propaganda movie, you can tell how much he loved Hollywood cinema. I found that very interesting," said Broinowski during her press conference in Seoul, Monday. "Here was a dictator whose job was overthrowing capitalism. He loved Elizabeth Taylor movies and James Bond. He used all the techniques of Hollywood thrillers and rom-coms and monster movies to make his own style of his filmmaking." At the time in 2010, there were multinational companies in her homeland that upped their propaganda for the development of coal seam gas, towards the Austrian residents concerned about its threats to the environment and communities. [Propaganda]
• Germany mulls joining US-led airstrikes in Syria – report
  A report suggests Germany's Bundeswehr could soon be called upon to take part in airstrikes on Syria, if another chemical attack were to occur. The controversial move would face resistance in the government. The German Defense Ministry is reportedly in talks with its US counterpart to hammer out details for the Bundeswehr to join possible airstrikes by US, British and French forces on Syrian targets, Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on Monday. The report suggests Germany's conservative defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, has responded to a US request, which was followed by a meeting of high-ranking ministry and military officials from both countries. German tornado jets could take part in combat missions alongside their US, UK and French counterparts, according to the article. [German remilitarisation] [Pretext]
• Britain's showdown with the Chinese military in the South China Sea is threatening to derail a post-Brexit trade deal
  Will Martin Sep 7, 2018 An incident between the British Navy and the Chinese military in the South China Sea could derail UK-China talks over trade after Brexit. That’s the claim of an editorial in China’s state-run China Daily newspaper. A British warship, HMS Albion, angered Beijing after it sailed through waters claimed by China in late August. Britain is seeking to strike trade deals with nations around the world as it leaves the EU. A showdown between the British and Chinese navies in the disputed South China Sea could derail the two nations’ trading relationship after Brexit, the state-run China Daily newspaper has said. The incident saw a British warship, HMS Albion, sail through waters claimed by China close to Chinese-occupied territories in the Paracel Islands in late August. The Chinese navy instructed the British vessel to leave the area, and the situation did not escalate further, according to Reuters. The episode caused outrage from Beijing, which accused the UK of violating international law. [UK] [SCS] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Imperial nostalgia]
• Reasons aplenty for China’s ban of the ABC
  Wanning Sun 8 September 2018 As a form of symbolism, banning a website works much more effectively than conventional expressions of official displeasure such as flexing military muscles, cancelling a trade deal, recalling a country’s ambassador or refusing a foreign correspondent’s visa. On Monday, the ABC reported that China had banned access to its news website in the country. China gave no reasons for the ban. China does not have to justify its decision, nor does it see it as necessary to specify the nature of Australia’s offences. The ban happens right in the middle of a federal government inquiry into the role of the national broadcaster in the Asia Pacific, particularly the ABC’s role in this endeavour. But the ABC’s attempt to speak directly to China has met with myriad obstacles. Launched in 2014 to replace the Australian Network, Australia Plus, a multi-platform service targeting the Asia-Pacific region, was criticised for publishing only soft stories in order to get around China’s censorship. Australia Plus was closed down in April this year. A country’s national broadcaster is usually charged with the role of promoting a country’s public diplomacy to the world, but China’s ban of the ABC’s website has thrown further doubt on the ABC’s capacity to perform this role. As far as public diplomacy via media goes, this is disastrous. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Response] [Censorship] [Public diplomacy]
• Canberra’s new PM Morrison has little foreign policy, Pacific interest
  By PMC Editor - August 29, 2018 Prime Minister Scott Morrison will not be at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru next week. He needs to rely heavily on the experience of his new Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, and deputy leader, Josh Frydenberg. Image: Andrew Taylor/The Conversation/AAP By Susan Harris Rimmer in Brisbane With all the focus this week on new Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s domestic challenges, less attention has been paid to the international impact of the leadership change and any new directions for Australian foreign policy. Morrison’s foreign policy credentials are slim and his interest in foreign policy is low, not rating even a mention in his first speech to the nation as PM. As immigration minister, Morrison presided over the “stop the boats” policy that was so unpopular with Australia’s Asia-Pacific neighbours and negotiated the disastrous and expensive Cambodia asylum deal. He may also be perceived by Muslim-majority nations as unfriendly to Muslims after the 2011 shadow cabinet leak that he urged his party to capitalise on the electorate’s growing concerns about immigration and Muslims in Australia. It is therefore a good idea indeed that Morrison will make his first trip overseas as prime minister this week to Jakarta to hasten the Australia and Indonesia free-trade agreement and shore up one of our country’s most crucial relationships….
  In many ways, Morrison’s foreign policy positions are unlikely to be different from Malcolm Turnbull’s. He will likely be perceived as friendly to the US and unfriendly to China on foreign investment, but a realist and pro-free trade. Morrison made a dramatic intervention in 2016 to block Chinese companies from bidding for the NSW electricity distributor, Ausgrid, on national security grounds.[Morrison] [Foreign policy] [Allegiance]
• World Court weighs Britain's claim to Chagos Islands
  Stephanie van den Berg Mauritius tried to persuade judges at the World Court on Monday to find that it was illegally stripped by Britain of another Indian Ocean archipelago, the Chagos Islands, now home to a major U.S. air base. FILE PHOTO: Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago and site of a major United States military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean leased from Britain in 1966./File Photo The case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague is a test of whether colonial-era deals struck by great powers and small states that later gained independence are legitimate, given the power imbalance. Britain in 1965 detached the Chagos Islands from its colony of Mauritius, which became independent three years later while the sparsely populated Chagos remained overseas British territory. The United States has leased the Chagos Islands’ biggest island, Diego Garcia, since 1966 and has built an air base there, while the entire population of around 1,500 people was forced to leave. Sponsored In 2017, Mauritius petitioned the United Nations to seek an ICJ advisory opinion on the legality of Britain’s colonial-era move. Despite opposition from Britain and the United States, which views the Diego Garcia base as a vital military asset, the U.N. General Assembly referred the matter to the ICJ, commonly known as the World Court, in 2017 for an advisory opinion. Although ICJ opinions are not binding, they carry weight under international law. The case was argued by elder statesman Anerood Jugnauth, 88, who served for nearly 30 years during four stints as prime minister or president of Mauritius from 1982-2017, and now holds the post of “minister mentor” in a cabinet led by his son. “The choice we were faced with was no choice at all: it was independence with detachment (of the Chagos archipelago) or no independence with detachment anyway,” Jugnauth told the 14-judge panel. UK solicitor general Robert Buckland told the court it should decline to issue any opinion on the matter, which he argued was better suited to bilateral negotiations. The people displaced from the Chagos Islands have lobbied for years to be able to return. In 2016, Britain’s Foreign Ministry extended Diego Garcia’s lease until 2036, and declared the expelled islanders would not be allowed to go back. Outside the court in The Hague, a small group of Chagossians gathered to protest. They unfurled banners denouncing “modern slavery” and called for Chagossians to be allowed self-determination. “I want the world to see that we are still suffering,” Isabelle Charlot, whose father was born on Chagos, told Reuters. Buckland accepted that the removal of the Chagossians and their treatment thereafter “was shameful and wrong”, but said it had already been resolved in a 1982 agreement on compensation. More than 20 interested parties, including the African Union, have asked to take part in the hearings. No date has been set for a decision. Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, Editing by Jane Merriman, Ed Osmond and Peter Graff [Imperialism] [Legality] [Bases]
• National Party and Climate
  Peter Small 1 September 2018 Why farmers who are at the forefront of the impact from climate change, continue to support the National Party, a party of climate sceptics? After a week of unfathomable machinations in Canberra, a decade of climate wars and the “death” of five Prime Ministers we are no nearer to a policy on climate or energy than we were 10 years ago. As a 77 year old farmer, who has lived amongst Country and then National Party and Liberal supporters all my life, I will try and shed some light on this complex and intriguing issue. [Farmers] [Climate change]
• New challenge to Israel’s effort to undermine Jeremy Corbyn
  Asa Winstanley Activism and BDS Beat 24 August 2018 Israel is targeting the Labour leader as one of its main enemies. (Yannis Mendez) Human rights activists have lodged a freedom of information request under Israeli law seeking documents about the state’s ongoing disinformation campaign against UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack on Sunday sent a letter on behalf of 18 Israeli citizens to the ministries of foreign affairs and strategic affairs. They include Palestine solidarity activists Kobi Snitz, Sahar Vardi and Ofer Neiman, as well as academic Neve Gordon. Some of the signatories are supporters of of Boycott From Within, a group in present-day Israel which advocates boycott, divestment and sanctions – or BDS. “In the past two years, it has been revealed that the two ministries carry out activities against critics of the State of Israel in the UK,” the letter to the ministries states. [Israel] [Corbyn] [IO]

• Australia, China spar on new trade war front
  Australia's ban on Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE Corp from supplying its 5G telecom network threatens to spiral into a wider commercial conflict By Alan Boyd Sydney, August 27, 2018 The shells of the Sydney Opera House are seen through a Chinese flag. Photo: AFP/Torsten Blackwood China has warned Australia that its recent decision to ban Huawei and ZTE Corp from supplying equipment to 5G telecommunication networks on national security grounds will have a negative impact on Australian business. State-run media groups went even further, with the Global Times accusing Canberra of “stabbing China in the back” and the China Daily describing the decision as “disappointing and poisonous to bilateral cooperation.” The ill-advised move again casts a shadow over bilateral ties which had been showing some signs of improvement recently,” China Daily added. Scott Morrison, who is now the prime minister, issued a directive late last week excluding suppliers that were subject to “extrajudicial directions from a foreign government.” He briefly served as home affairs minister following the breakup of Malcolm Turnbull’s cabinet on Thursday. [Allegiance]
• France plots new European military crisis force outside EU
  John Irish, Andrea Shalal The French government will in June launch a deployable European military crisis force outside of existing European Union efforts, French Defence Ministry sources said on Wednesday. FILE PHOTO: A French soldier patrols in a VAB (Vanguard Armoured Vehicle) during the regional anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane near Tin Hama, Mali, October 20, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo Paris has been in touch with a dozen countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Denmark, about the initiative, holding a working group to outline the idea in March. The idea aims to bring together European countries with a military capacity and political desire to collaborate on planning, carry out joint analyses of emerging crises and to react to them quickly. [France] [Imperial nostalgia]
• Corbyn’s Labour is Being Made to Fail – by Design
  August 22, 2018 • 0 Comments Besieged for four years with charges of anti-semitism, Jeremy Corbyn’s allies in the Labour leadership have largely lost the stomach for battle, one that was never about substance or policy but about character assassination, says Jonathan Cook. By Jonathan Cook The Labour party, relentlessly battered by an organized campaign of smears of its leader, Jeremy Corbyn – first for being anti-semitic, and now for honoring Palestinian terrorists – is reportedly about to adopt the four additional working “examples” of anti-semitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Labour initially rejected these examples – stoking yet more condemnation from Israel’s lobbyists and the British corporate media – because it justifiably feared, as have prominent legal experts, that accepting them would severely curb the freedom to criticize Israel. The media’s ever-more outlandish slurs against Corbyn and the Labour party’s imminent capitulation on the IHRA’s full definition of anti-semitism are not unrelated events. The former was designed to bring about the latter. According to a report in The Guardian last week, senior party figures are agitating for the rapid adoption of the full IHRA definition, ideally before the party conference next month, and say Corbyn has effectively surrendered to the pressure. An MP who supports Corbyn told the paper Corbyn would “just have to take one for the team.” In a strong indication of the way the wind is now blowing, The Guardian added: The party said it would consult the main [Jewish] communal bodies as well as experts and academics, but groups such as the pro-Corbyn Jewish Voice for Labour have not been asked to give their views. No Stomach for Battle The full adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism will be a major victory both for Israel and its apologists in Britain, who who have been seeking to silence all meaningful criticism of Israel, and for the British corporate media, which would dearly love to see the back of an old-school socialist Labour leader whose programme threatens to loosen the 40-year stranglehold of neoliberalism on British society. [Jeremy Corbyn] [Israel]
• 'Europe should not allow the US to act over our heads': Germany is challenging the US's financial monopoly as the Iran row deepens
  Michael Selby-Green • Germany's foreign minister has challenged the US monopoly on the global payments infrastructure. • Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt on Tuesday, Heiko Maas said: "It is indispensable that we strengthen European autonomy by creating payment channels that are independent of the United States." • "It is high time to re-evaluate our partnership," hesaid. • European businesses have been caught between the European Union and the US over trade with Iran amid US sanctions. • The French energy giant Total officially pulled out ofthe country on Monday under US pressure. The US monopoly over the global payments infrastructure has been challenged by Germany's foreign minister, Heiko Maas, who ha ssuggested that the European Union should set up its own payment system that would give Brussels independence from Washington. Maas wrote in the German daily Handelsblatt on Tuesday that the EUshould "strengthen European autonomy by creating payment channels that are independent of the United States — a European Monetary Fund and an independent SWIFT system." Swift is a global payment management system based in Belgium thatallows financial institutions to send and receive information about transactions. Swift claims political neutrality, but it has reportedly bowed to US influence in the past, blocking transactions to Cuba and Iran. [Reserve] [Resistance] [Germany] [Iran deal]
• As Austerity Helps Bankrupt an English County, Even Conservatives Mutiny
  By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura Aug. 17, 2018 NORTHAMPTON, England — It was a seething, stomping protest in this ordinarily genteel medieval town: Throngs of residents, whistling and booing, swarmed the county hall. “Criminals!” they shouted. They held up banners that read: “Tory councilors wanted for crimes against people in Northamptonshire.” The crime? The bankruptcy of their Conservative-led local government, which has a budget deficit so big that councilors are stripping away all but the minimum services required by law. Inside the county hall, the besieged council debated the latest round of cuts — it had already voted to close libraries and stop repairing roads — as disgusted residents jeered. “Your guilt should keep you awake at night,” Patrick Markey said at the meeting earlier this month, his voice trembling with rage. “It’s criminal incompetence and criminal politics.” Usually, local government finance is a dull affair. But Northamptonshire has become a warning sign of the perilous state of Britain’s local governments. A Conservative Party bastion, Northamptonshire is leafy and affluent, littered with aristocratic estates — yet in February its local authority became the first in two decades to effectively run out of money. Britain is already in upheaval over Brexit, its looming withdrawal from the European Union, with many experts warning of economic hardship ahead. But Northamptonshire is foreshadowing another potential fiscal crisis: Local governments drained of resources, cutting services to the bone. [UK] [Austerity] [Conservatives]
• Crony capitalism and corruption in our midst.
  Michael McKinley. 16 August 2018 Revelations of corruption and actions that look suspiciously like corruption shock us but they shouldn’t: look for corruption in Australia – as in many western democracies – and you will never be disappointed. It’s as common as other national institutions – the barbecue or the Akubra – indeed, it’s been normalised. It’s been exceptionally easy to acquire an education in corruption in Australia because the opportunities abound. In my own case, I was blessed in this regard by teaching politics for six years in Western Australia in the 1980s leading up to the Royal Commission of Inquiry known colloquially as WA Inc. It was especially instructive to find one’s former students receiving mentions in the despatches. This education has also been greatly enhanced by well over thirty years in the university system but whereas corruption in the former was high end – criminal and frequently to the financial benefit of friends, family relatives, trusted colleagues and supportive organizations, the latter is more circumspect. It is far more subtle and curial, especially where official favour is an ongoing sensitivity and perhaps best exemplified by habits of mind still to be found in my own academic home, the Australian National University. From its earliest days, it maintained such close relations with government that its Vice-Chancellor, in 1955, could assure the Minister for External Affairs (who, in turn, assured the Prime Minister, but urged him nevertheless to pressure the Vice-Chancellor), that the ‘right type of man’ would be sought for appointment to the Chair of International Relations. Specifically and importantly, he was someone who would be selected on the basis of ‘qualifications other than professional.’ Yet, in the words of Shakespeare’s Mark Antony, they were “all honourable men.” [Australia] [Corruption]
• The Jewish establishment’s ‘War Against Corbyn’ risks bringing real antisemitism to Britain
  July 28, 2018 by Robert A. H. Cohen Greetings from Britain, where the Jewish community is facing an “existential threat to Jewish life”. At least that’s according to an editorial shared by all three of our Jewish community newspapers this week – the Jewish Chronicle, The Jewish News, and the Jewish Telegraph. You’re probably thinking that Her Majesty’s Government must have just introduced the equivalent of Hitler’s Nuremberg race Laws of 1935. Perhaps it’s worse. Perhaps the round-ups have already begun. Don’t worry, you haven’t missed a major global news story. Britain remains one of the safest places to live as a Jew on the entire planet. That doesn’t mean there’s no anti-Jewish prejudice here. It’s just that there’s a great deal less of it than some people want you to believe. That’s true for now, but how long will it last? Thanks to a Jewish communal leadership and a Jewish press which have merged Jewish interests in Britain with the need to defend the interests of the State of Israel, we are set on a path that risks turning fake antisemitism into real antisemitism. What we are witnessing could be an on-coming, self-inflicted tragedy for the Jewish community in Britain. Calling it out now is the best way to stop it happening. [Anti-Semitism] [Israel] [Jeremy Corbyn] [Counterproductive]
• Foreign Policy on Auto-Pilot: In Spite of the Weather
  Richard Butler. 11 August 2018 Every week now, we are presented with another reason to think hard about exactly what our “joined at the hip” relationship with the US obliges us to do. July Bishop’s Foreign Policy White paper doesn’t meet that need. Indeed, it urges us to deepen our relationship with the US as the way ahead. Our relationship of dependence on the US renders us unable to address effectively the key current and foreseeable determinants, of politics among nations. During the last few weeks, it was the reports that the Trump administration is planning an armed attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and that senior Australian military sources have been discussing what might be the involvement of Pine Gap in the planning and execution of such action. Malcolm Turnbull judged it necessary to react. He described those reports, publicly, as “speculation”. As this was the best word he could choose, a word, which carefully does not address substance, it thus appears that the veracity of the reports was confirmed. Nine months ago, following a relatively exhaustive process of discussion and invited public input, Foreign Minister Bishop issued the Foreign Policy White Paper, 2017. It is designed to cover the next 5-10 years. As we should be able to expect, the paper was well written and researched. And as also could be expected from Bishop and the Government she represents, it embodied an indelibly conservative outlook. They key conclusion of the White Paper was that the US Alliance was and will remain indispensible to our continuing life and security as a nation. [Allegiance]
• In Italy, There are 12,000 American Soldiers and 500,000 African Refugees: Connect the Dots
  by Aidan O'Brien August 10, 2018 Dublin, Ireland. Why? Because the Italians are unable to do so. Euro-skepticism is thriving in Italy. However NATO-skepticism or US-skepticism is missing. Trump, the individual, might be a concern but the presence of the US military on the Italian peninsula is a sacred cow. The US war machine is expanding in Italy at the same rate as the expansion of the refugee numbers – the numbers that are infuriating Rome. However, the connection between one and the other is redacted from the Italian debate. Indeed in Europe as a whole, the link between US military bases and refugees is ignored. Blindness, it seems, is the preferred response of official Europe to the refugee crisis. As a result, the vulgar hostility shown to the North African and the Middle Eastern migrants in Europe contrasts with the sacred silence surrounding the presence of the American army in Europe. It’s as if the refugee crisis is a metaphysical mystery – as if it has no cause. You would think that the wars that caused the movements of people into Europe would encourage the Europeans to question and check the war markers. But this thought is too rational for Europeans today. Instead, Europe questions the bona fides of the victims of war, rather than the intentions of the warmongering USA. [Italy] [Refugees] [AFRICOM] [US imperialism]
• Fool on the Hill: the Bombast of Boris Johnson
  by Patrick Cockburn August 7, 2018 Self-absorption is the dominant theme of contemporary British and American politics. In Britain, the focus is exclusively on Brexit and other developments are marginalised or ignored. In the US, political battles revolve around Donald Trump who gets wall-to-wall coverage in the US media –ferociously hostile though much of it is towards him – which previous US presidents could only dream of. Self-absorption by any country leads it to take a skewed and unrealistically optimistic view of its place in the world. The current populist nationalist wave is a worldwide phenomenon, but Britain is more damaged than the US by the excessive expectations it generates because it is already a far weaker power than the US and more likely to pay a high price for political miscalculations. [Boris Johnson]
• Firms face legal risk over Iran sanctions
  Simon Jack Business editor @BBCSimonJack on Twitter European banks that deny companies access to dollar-based bank accounts because of US sanctions against Iran could find themselves being sued by their own customers. This potentially puts international banks between a big rock and a very hard place. Fearful on the one hand of the heavy fines and restricted access to the US that flouting Donald Trump's sanctions could incur. Vulnerable to lawsuits from its own customers for flouting EU law if it abides by the President's new rules. The US announced in May it would re-impose sanctions against Iran that were previously lifted under an international deal brokered by Barak Obama in 2015. Not only do the sanctions bar any company which does business in Iran from doing business in the US - under far reaching secondary sanctions - it also forbids any company that does business in the US from doing business with any company that does any business with Iran. New EU laws that come into effect today are designed to limit the potential damage to European companies conducting legitimate business with Iran directly or indirectly. [Iran confrontation] [EU] [Friction] [Sanctions] [Renege]
• UK poised to ask Russia to extradite Salisbury attack suspects
  Exclusive: Kremlin certain to reject request that will reignite simmering diplomatic row Nick Hopkins, Ewen MacAskill and Luke Harding Mon 6 Aug 2018 16.00 BST Last modified on Mon 6 Aug 2018 20.35 BST The British government is poised to submit an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians suspected of carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack that left one person dead and three injured, according to Whitehall and security sources. The move comes after months of painstaking investigation by hundreds of officers from the police and the intelligence agencies. They have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from their entry into the UK through to their departure. The Crown Prosecution Service, which prepared the extradition request, has completed the process and is ready to file, the sources said. [Skripal] [Russia confrontation]
• Do we have a problem with refugees – or war?
  Stephanie Dowrick 4 August 2018 In scrambling for solutions to the “refugee problem”, too few are contemplating the pervasively deadly “war problem” that plagues our global family. The article that follows is one of three I had published in July in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, filling in for regular columnist Elizabeth Farrelly in the Saturday editions. I find such columns more than challenging to write. How can I do justice to the subject matter? Yet I was and am also immensely grateful to have the chance to write this article in particular because Australia’s – and the world’s – indefensible spending on “defence” is something that goes too often unremarked and certainly unquestioned. And questions abound. Why do we spend months, years, debating trivial, self-serving tax cuts while giving so little thought as to how vast public funds are spent? Why are we willing to accept the argument that the best way to “keep the peace” is to spend more and more on readiness for war? The sums spent on actual peace-keeping, peace-studies, conflict resolution at all levels both domestically and internationally, and on research at the highest levels of the causes of war and how to avoid those depths of collective disturbance, are negligible. They do, though, accurately reflect the contempt with which “peace efforts” are frequently regarded. In ten years of writing my own regular column (in Good Weekend magazine), I was most attacked for my naïve idealism when I wrote about peace. No other topic came near it. Some of those attacks were overtly hostile, to me personally but even more to the very notion that as a vast, diverse global family we could learn to resolve social injustices and conflict more intelligently and successfully; that we need not slaughter one another; that we need not sufficiently forget the intrinsic dignity of other human beings to justify the horrors through generations that war brings. [Australia] [MISCOM] [Liberal]
• The Book Everyone in the Netherlands Is Talking About Is Finally Coming to the U.S.
  By Nina Siegal Aug. 3, 2018 AMSTERDAM — Astrid Holleeder is a household name here in the Netherlands. If you’ve never heard of her, that’s about to change. Ms. Holleeder’s memoir, “Judas: How a Sister’s Testimony Brought Down a Criminal Mastermind,” will be released in the United States and Britain this month. It tells the story of her life as an unwilling confidante to her brother, Willem Holleeder, a notorious Dutch crime boss, with flashbacks to their childhood in a home with an alcoholic and abusive father.
• The Ongoing Decline of British Power
  by Patrick Cockburn August 2, 2018 The British government purports to be re-establishing the UK as an independent nation state by leaving the EU, but British power and ability to decide its own policies are continuing to ebb in the real world. The latest evidence of this is the decision by the Home Secretary Sajid Javid to give precedence to the US in putting on trial two alleged Isis members from London, who belonged to the notorious “Beatles” group in Syria that specialised in torturing and beheading their captives. The humiliating admission by a country that it is incapable of dealing effectively and legally with its worst criminals is normally made by states like Colombia and Mexico, which extradite drug lords to the US. Their governments are implicitly confessing that they are too feeble and corrupt to punish their most powerful lawbreakers. The British authorities are encouraging the Syrian Kurds holding El Shafee Elsheik and Alexanda Kotey to extradite them to the US rather than Britain. The declared motive for this is that there is a better chance of a speedy trial and exemplary sentence before a US court than in a British one, though the record in the US since 9/11 makes this a dubious argument. What does come across is that Britain is in a messy situation regarding Isis prisoners and the return of jihadis to UK, with which it is unable to cope. The decision is now being reviewed by a judge in the UK. As with Mexico and Colombia, the overall impression left by Javid’s actions is one of weakness and incapacity. [ISIS] Legality] [POW] [US dominance] [Subservience] [Extraterritoriality]

• Massacres on Australia’s colonial frontier climb to 250
  Lyndall Ryan. (Media Release, University of Newcastle) 27 July 2018 The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander massacres verified and recorded on an online digital map has risen to 240, following an influx of valuable information and evidence from regional communities around Australia. University of Newcastle research academic, Professor Lyndall Ryan, said the response from the Australian public had been overwhelmingly positive since the launch of stage one of the research project a year ago. More than 200,000 page views have been recorded since the site went live in July 2017 and thousands of comments have appeared on media articles about the site. [Australia] [Colonialism] [Massacres]
• Who is in charge of Australia’s relations with China? The Australian Prime Minister or ASIO?
  John Menadue. (Repost from 28/5/2018) 27 July 2018 ASIO is on a roll in co-ordinating the attack on China and its alleged covert operations in Australia. Only last Friday we learnt that super patriot Andrew Hastie, formerly an officer in SAS and currently Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, cleared his parliamentary speech with ASIO but not his own Prime Minister. That is extraordinary for a person supposedly in parliamentary charge of supervising the activities of ASIO. It is becoming clear that over recent months, ASIO has been a key player in the anti-China campaign. Its Head, Duncan Lewis, has become quite a media fixture. The Australian security complex, as a branch office of the US security complex, has decided that in the national interest, as it sees it, it should brief a range of journalists, exjournalists and writers about the China ‘threat’ and what the government should do in Australia’s relations with China. [China confrontation] [Australia] [Deep state] [ASIO] [Interference]
• The Battle for the South Pacific
  Anthony Pun 26 July 2018 The Battle for the South Pacific is on! China is already in Australia’s backyard, the South Pacific, wooing and cultivating friends with soft power. As part of China BRI initiative, Chinese investment with the South Pacific nations totalled US 1.78 billion outstripping Australia’s AUD137M for subsea internet cable connecting Australia-PNG-Solomon Islands. The current scorecard is China 10 nations and Australia 2 nations. Is Australia’s or New Zealand’s security being threatened? Would the formation of a South Pacific block a risky option for Australia or New Zealand economic health? Or if you can’t beat them, join them? According to the wiki tribune report (China fills a vacuum in South Pacific from Fiji to Australia 8Feb2018), China has invested in a total of 9 countries in the South Pacific. These countries are listed below with USD in parenthesis. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Diaspora] [South Pacific] [ODI] [Allegiance]
• ASSOCIATION D ’AM I T I É F R A N C O - C O R É E N N E BULLETIN TRIMESTRIEL n°135
  
• An Open Letter to Emmanuel Macron on the Japanese Rising Sun Flag on Bastille Day
  by Comfort Women Justice Coalition
  The Hon. Emmanuel Macron President of France Palais de l’Élysée Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré 75008 Paris France
  Re: The Display of the Japanese Rising Sun Flag on Bastille Day, 2018. Mr. President, It was to our great astonishment, consternation, and shock that we perceived the Japanese Self Defense Forces display the Rising Sun Flag in front of the gathered crowds during the military parade on Bastille Day, 2018. Not since the Nazis paraded the Swastika on June 14th, 1940 has there been such a sight on the Champs Elysées. As you know, the Rising Sun banner is the war flag of the Japanese Imperial Military and the global symbol of Japanese Imperial Terror from 1894-1945. This is the emblem of the military empire that murdered, tortured, enslaved, raped and terrorized their way through Asia and the Pacific, brutally invading and subjugating entire countries and peoples, while perpetrating innumerable crimes of aggression, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The leaders of the Japanese Military High Command, representing command responsibility for the Japanese military, were ultimately found guilty and hanged for these crimes. Article R 645-1 of the French Criminal Code, rightly prohibits “the public exhibition or wearing of such insignia, symbols/emblems, uniforms that recall those used by…organizations…or persons found guilty of one or multiple crimes against humanity by…a [competent] international tribunal”. We also remind you of the ineffaceable, irrevocable, inviolable right to redress (“imprescriptibilité“) regarding crimes against humanity, codified in French Law (Law No 64-1326, December 26th, 1964). We further draw your attention to the fact that these leaders were found guilty of multiple Crimes Against Humanity in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, convened on April 29th, 1946. We therefore assert that the members of the Japanese contingent parading the Rising Sun were in clear violation of R 645-1. We request that they be charged and prosecuted according to the law. Technically, on their own soil, the Japanese SDF are allowed fly the Rising Sun, due to a 1955 accommodation arising from the US SCAP designs of cold war geopolitics. However, it staggers the imagination and shocks the conscience that Republican France—to whom we ascribe higher ethical standards and a demonstrated history of banning symbols and actions like this–would, within the heart of the French Metropole, on the very occasion of its commemoration of opposition to Absolutism and celebration of Universal Human Rights, permit the display and flaunting of a flag that represents the worst excesses of Imperialist Absolutism, unmitigated human rights atrocities, and genocidal and femicidal violations of international law. We refuse to believe that French standards of governmentality, morality, decency, and common sense allow the public flaunting of the Rising Sun. We refuse to believe that France allows the symbolic legitimation and normalization of Japanese Imperial Militarism with its long, unimaginable train of irrefragable, but unacknowledged, unatoned-for atrocities. We refuse to believe that a public holiday also constitutes a moral holiday, where the historical oppressor is dispensed legal exemption to parade violent, traumatic, racist symbology at the cost, shock, and mortification of all its survivors and victims. We live currently in chaotic, troubled, and morally unsettling times. Symbols have power: the power to incite or to calm, to divide or bring reconciliation, to heal or to harm. The inflammatory public display of the Rising Sun is a symbol of everything that is harmful, divisive, violent, and destructive of human decency, morality, society, and peace. We urge you to consider our concerns and request prompt and rapid action and redress. With Deepest Respect, Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC) [Japanese colonialism] [Japanese remilitarisation] [France]
• What Boris Johnson Doesn’t Know About British History
  by Patrick Cockburn Photo by EU2017EE Estonian Presidency | CC BY 2.0 What will be Britain’s standing in the world compared to other nation states after Brexit? Sane analysis has been overwhelmed by vituperative debate as we get closer to the day of the great rupture. Boris Johnson claimed in his resignation speech that after a full-throttle Brexit, Britain will be in a good position to become “one of the great independent actors” on the world stage. He feared only a failure in the necessary will-power and self-confidence “to believe in this country and what it can do”. But what can this country really do? How far will greater independence outside the EU be real rather than nominal? Will strength of will in pursuit of self-determination make much difference when we will always be holding a weaker hand of cards than our neighbours? This imbalance of forces is highlighted every day in the Brexit negotiations, and there is no reason why this should change in our favour after we leave. Supporters of Brexit discount such realpolitik, saying that they are inspired – and seek to emulate – a past in which Britain as a fully independent state won victories against the odds. Critics often deride this approach as self-indulgent nostalgia, but there are real lessons to be learned from past British experience. The problem is that Brexiteers, when they take a serious view of British history that is not coloured by Shakespeare’s plays or Errol Flynn movies, have never shown much understanding of the roots of Britain’s successes. The British only stood alone during the centuries when they had miscalculated the political wind direction, or had been left with absolutely no alternative. At the heart of British strategy was the drive to join or create alliances with other countries powerful enough to overcome any enemy. It was this formula that put Britain on the winning side in the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War and the Second: the three great conflicts that shaped the contemporary world. [Brexit] [Boris Johnson] [Alliance]
• Why are Australian defence correspondents so quiet about complaints to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on the use of Australian and Latin American mercenaries by UAE in the war against Yemen (Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK)
  John Menadue 20 July 2018 ANCILE Avocats French law firm filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the use of an army of mercenaries trained in the UAE and sent to participate in the ongoing war in Yemen. The war in Yemen has torn the country apart since March 2015. The Saudi-led coalition has committed war crimes according to many international human rights sources (UN, HRW and Amnesty International): from bombing hospitals, to indiscriminate attacks and alleged mass torture. In the period between March 2015 to August 30, 2017, civilian casualties were documented to be at least 5,144 persons killed and more than 8,749 injured. Of those killed and injured, 1,184 and 1,592 were children, respectively. Information was acquired confirming that in May 2015 the UAE sent mercenary troops, with nationalities from Australia, South Africa, Colombia, El Salvador, Chile and Panama, to participate in the war. There have been numerous calls to refer the case of Yemen and the horrific crimes committed there to the ICC, but there have been two obstacles: the refusal of the Security Council; and the fact that Yemen is not a member of the ICC, nor are any of the coalition countries involved in the war. However, the participation of mercenaries who belong to member states of the ICC, poses an obligation upon the ICC to open an investigation. [Saudi Arabia] [Yemen] [Aggression] [Mercenaries] [ICC]
• France sends medical aid to Assad's Syria after deal with Russia
  John Irish France sent 50 tonnes of medical aid to government-controlled eastern Ghouta in Syria on Friday after Russia agreed to facilitate its delivery, raising hopes for future aid efforts, French officials said. FILE PHOTO: A member of Syrian forces of President Bashar al Assad stands guard near destroyed buildings in Jobar, eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria April 2, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki/File Photo The aid, which will arrive on a Russian plane to a Russian military base in northwestern Syria from France on Saturday, comes after an agreement between President Emmanuel Macron and Russian leader Vladimir Putin following talks since May. “This operation is very significant because it shows a willingness from the Russians to work with us on a matter of priority,” said the French diplomatic source. “This area is crying out for help.” A joint Franco-Russian statement confirmed the accord. [France Russia] [Syria] [Inversion]
• Get-tough rhetoric has denied us any sway with Beijing
  Bob Carr. (AFR, 10/07/18) 14 July 2018 As foreign minister I recall an irritating flare-up in our relations with one of the Pacific states. There had been a “misunderstanding” at Sydney airport that upset the island state’s prime minister. The anger ran strong and the state contemplated a big anti-Australian gesture: terminating an arrangement under which we trained their police. And, here’s the rub, inviting China to fill the gap. More interesting was the Chinese response, captured by one of our agencies. China rejected the notion of moving in because it knew it would antagonise Australia. At the time we had differences with China over Huawei and US Marines, but still managed a mutually respectful, pragmatic relationship. Last week there were reports of Australia and New Zealand sponsoring a Pacific Pact to include, among other things, agreement on police training. It may be a useful initiative. But if our relationship with China were in something approaching normal working order we could go further and contemplate negotiations toward shaping its policy in the Pacific. We could tell China we would send a team of federal and state treasury officers to each of the Pacific Island states to advise on debt management and help ward off any unsustainable aid deals. We could offer to jointly fund aid projects with China that meet OECD guidelines for overseas development assistance. We could seek an agreement from the Chinese that all their aid in the region would meet the same Western profile. Right now New Zealand could open such a dialogue with China, or for that matter Canada or France. But one price we pay for becoming, since early 2017, so flamboyantly anti-China in our rhetoric is the missed opportunity to forcefully press China about its behaviour in a part of the world more important to us than for them. By adopting the language of “China containment” in official speeches beginning in January last year we were giving up this option. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Turnbull]
• The Holes in the Official Skripal Story
  By Craig Murray Global Research, July 13, 2018 In my last post I set out the official Government account of the events in the Skripal Case. Here I examine the credibility of this story. Next week I shall look at alternative explanations. Russia has a decade long secret programme of producing and stockpiling novichok nerve agents. It also has been training agents in secret assassination techniques, and British intelligence has a copy of the Russian training manual, which includes instruction on painting nerve agent on doorknobs. The only backing for this statement by Boris Johnson is alleged “intelligence”, and unfortunately the “intelligence” about Russia’s secret novichok programme comes from exactly the same people who brought you the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programme, proven liars. Furthermore, the question arises why Britain has been sitting on this intelligence for a decade and doing nothing about it, including not telling the OPCW inspectors who certified Russia’s chemical weapons stocks as dismantled. If Russia really has a professional novichok assassin training programme, why was the assassination so badly botched? Surely in a decade of development they would have discovered that the alleged method of gel on doorknob did not work? And where is the training manual which Boris Johnson claimed to possess? Having told the world – including Russia -the UK has it, what is stopping the UK from producing it, with marks that could identify the specific copy erased? The Russians chose to use this assassination programme to target Sergei Skripal, a double agent who had been released from jail in Russia some eight years previously. It seems remarkable that the chosen target of an attempt that would blow the existence of a secret weapon and end the cover of a decade long programme, should be nobody more prominent than a middle ranking double agent who the Russians let out of jail years ago. If they wanted him dead they could have killed him then. Furthermore the attack on him would undermine all future possible spy swaps. Putin therefore, on this reading, was willing to sacrifice both the secrecy of the novichok programme and the spy swap card just to attack Sergei Skripal. That seems highly improbable. [Skripal] [Amesbury]
• Joining Some Dots on the Skripal Case: Part 6 – Tying up the Loose Ends
  Rob Slane, the Blogmire Yulia Skripal allegedly making voluntary statement May 23 2018 Over the last five pieces (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5) I have, slowly but surely, advanced a theory of what happened in the Skripal case. I must confess to having done so with a fair amount of unease. I don’t want to believe that my Government has been stating a case that is false. I don’t want to believe that the public have been lied to. I don’t want to have to think that there has been a lot of effort made to present an explanation that hides the truth. And yet, given the fact that the Government story contains self-evident fallacies, and cannot be made to add up, I don’t think that there’s much alternative than to be hugely sceptical about their claims. [Skripal]
• Second Salisbury Alleged Poisoning: Still More Questions than Answers
  James O’Neill It is symptomatic of the level of desperation being felt by the British government that the illness of two known drug addicts (Rowley & Sturgess) in the town of Amersham, Wiltshire, only a few kilometres from Porton Down and the site of the Skripal incident in March of this year, is immediately attributed to Russia by the British Home Secretary Sajid Javid and the Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace. Speaking in the House of Commons on 5 July Javid referred to the “decision taken by the Russian government to deploy [chemical weapons] in Salisbury on March 4 was reckless and callous……. It is now the time for the Russian state to come forward and explain exactly what has gone on.” Wallace for his part suggested that Russia “fill in the gaps” of what happened to allow the United Kingdom authorities to pursue their investigation and keep people safe. What we most need to be kept safe from are the bizarre and groundless allegations made about the Skripal incident on 4th of March 2018 and the even more bizarre attempts to link that event with what may have happened to Rowley and Sturgess on 30 June 2018. Making unfounded allegations, blatantly false statements, giving rapidly changing ‘explanations’ as to how the Skripals became affected, and disregarding all the basic rules is to evidence, logic, scientific principles and the fundamental precepts of what used to be called ‘British justice’ were certainly characteristics of the Skripal case.[Amesbury]
• The Hidden History of the Women Who Rose Up
  July 7, 2018 Save John Pilger asks where the spirit of rebellion has gone that once led to numerous uprisings at a female prison factory in Australia where his great-great grandmother was once interned. By John Pilger Like all colonial societies, Australia has secrets. The way we treat Indigenous people is still mostly a secret. For a long time, the fact that many Australians came from what was called “bad stock” was a secret. “Bad stock” meant convict forebears: those like my great-great grandmother, Mary Palmer, who was incarcerated here, at the Female Factory in Parramatta in 1823. According to nonsense spun by numerous aunts – who had irresistible bourgeois ambitions — Mary Palmer and the man she married, Francis McCarthy, were a lady and a gentleman of Victorian property and propriety. In fact, Mary was the youngest member of a gang of wild young women, mostly Irish, who operated in the East End of London. Known as “The Ruffians”, they kept poverty at bay with the proceeds of prostitution and petty theft. The Ruffians were eventually arrested and tried, and hanged — except Mary, who was spared because she was pregnant. She was just 16 years old when she was manacled in the hold of a ship under sail, the Lord Sidmouth, bound for New South Wales “for the term of her natural life”, said the judge. The voyage took five months, a purgatory of sickness and despair. I know what she looked like because, some years ago, I discovered an extraordinary ritual in St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. Every Thursday, in a vestry, a nun would turn the pages of a register of Irish Catholic convicts — and there was Mary, described as “not more than 4ft in height, emaciated and pitted with the ravages of small pox”. [Oppression] [Resistance] [Australia]
• Joining Some Dots on the Skripal Case: Part 5 – An Educated Guess
  Rob Slane, the Blogmire c I want in this piece to start joining some dots together on this case, using some of the facts, clues and suppositions that I have set out in the previous parts. I said at the end of Part 4 that there would be one more piece. That has turned out to be wishful thinking on my part, and there will in fact be a further article after this one. In this piece, I want to propose a theory — or maybe educated guess is a better term — for what I think may have happened on 4th March. Then I will need one final piece to show why I think this theory helps to explain a number of other events and incidents connected with the story. Think of that final part as tying up some loose ends. So what of the theory? [Skripal]
• UK mounts fresh offensive against Russia following second alleged novichok poisoning
  By Chris Marsden 6 July 2018 Britain’s Conservative government has used a second alleged novichok nerve agent poisoning incident in the Salisbury area of England to launch a fresh provocation against Russia. Based solely on previous and unproven accusations that the Putin regime was responsible for the attempted assassination of double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Julia, Moscow is now accused of responsibility for a “collateral damage” incident that has left two British citizens in a reportedly critical condition.
  What is certain is that the UK government has every reason to put a fire under its fast-fading and discredited Skripal provocation. Javid’s citing of the World Cup indicates the degree to which the Tories have been embarrassed by the tournament’s success. With all the main parties, including Labour, and the Royal family boycotting proceedings, the government now faces the prospect of England in the quarter finals and possibly even playing Russia in the semi-finals, with no official presence. More serious still are the growing concerns that President Donald Trump will seek a new modus vivendi with President Vladimir Putin at a summit meeting scheduled for July 16 in Helsinki, Finland, just one day after his long-delayed trip to the UK and a week after July 11-12 NATO summit to discuss reinforcing the military alliance’s eastern operations on the Russian border. Two days before the events in Wiltshire, on June 28, the Guardian ’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, wrote, “The UK, through choice and circumstance, has been the western power most hostile to Putin, and now risks finding its position badly undercut…the fear is that the Trump-Putin summit will echo his summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Will he make an impulsive gesture that blindsides Europe, or will he be impatient at the Nato and May meetings, just as he was at the G7 ahead of his bilateral with Kim?” [Amesbury] [Russia confrontation] [World Cup 2018] [Trump_Putin_July18]
• The Amesbury Mystery
  5 Jul, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig We are continually presented with experts by the mainstream media who will validate whatever miraculous property of “novichok” is needed to fit in with the government’s latest wild anti-Russian story. Tonight Newsnight wheeled out a chemical weapons expert to tell us that “novichok” is “extremely persistent” and therefore that used to attack the Skripals could still be lurking potent on a bush in a park. Yet only three months ago we had this example of scores from the MSM giving the same message which was the government line at that time: “Professor Robert Stockman, of the University of Nottingham, said traces of nerve agents did not linger. He added: ‘These agents react with water to degrade, including moisture in the air, and so in the UK they would have a very limited lifetime. This is presumably why the street in Salisbury was being hosed down as a precaution – it would effectively destroy the agent.'” [Amesbury]
• Italy says won't buy more F-35 fighter jets, may cut existing order
  Reuters Staff Italy will not buy more Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter jets and is considering whether to stick to the order to which it is already committed, Defence Minister Elisabetta Trenta said on Friday. FILE PHOTO: Italian Defence Minister Elisabetta Trenta arrives at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium, June 8, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo Trenta comes from the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement which has always been critical of NATO member Italy’s order for 90 of the planes, saying the money could be better spent to boost welfare and help the sluggish economy. [F-35] [Italy] [Tribute]
• Witness K and foreign interference hypocrisy
  Lizzie O’Shea. (Eureka Street 2/7/2018) 5 July 2018 ‘This Parliament will not allow interference in our elections or in our democratic processes,’ Senator Penny Wong declared recently. ‘We will not allow these to be subject to foreign interference, and we will not allow the covert subversion of our politics by foreign interests.’ It sounds like a perfectly reasonable aspiration, but not if you happen to be East Timor. Over this last week, two remarkably contradictory things happened in Canberra. The Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter shepherded through Parliament some of the most significant changes to foreign interference laws in recent times (the subject of Senator Wong’s speech). It was also reported that he signed off on charges laid against Witness K, a former officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, and his lawyer, former ACT Attorney General Bernard Collaery. Witness K and his lawyer are alleged to have conspired to share information about ASIS’s illegal bugging of East Timorese offices during negotiations over natural resources in the Timor Sea. East Timor complained the bugging contravened section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act in a case brought in the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague. [Espionage] [Timor] [Legality]
• Australian laws should avoid hurting China
  Source: Global Times Published: 2018/6/29 23:28:48 Australia's Senate on Thursday approved a package of new laws aimed at "preventing espionage and foreign interference." Given that the laws came out at a time when some Australian political forces are hyping "interference" and "penetration" by China, and suspecting that the Chinese government is controlling Chinese businesspeople and students in Australia, Australian and other Western media all link the new laws to China. Australia is therefore considered the first Western country moving to prevent Chinese "penetration" through legislation. Australia and China have no historical or territorial disputes, and have maintained close economic ties. China is Australia's biggest trade partner. Canberra's legislation has given a negative example to Western countries on how to deal with China. [Australia] [China confrontation] [ Interference]
• Korea: the forgotten war and Australians still missing
  Ian Crawford 4 July 2018 Understandably, the agreement of the Singapore Summit on the recovery of the bodies of US military from sites in North Korea has attracted less public interest than the denuclearisation issue. Ian Crawford, National President of National Korea Veterans Association, points to the significant losses Australia suffered in the harsh conditions of the Korean War and particularly attention to the 44 Australians killed in the war in its various phases whose bodies have still to be located. Some could well be discovered in the process of implementing the Singapore agreement. Ian has been actively engaged in the long running working groups between Australia and the relevant US authorities on this issue. In the outcome of the Singapore summit it is relevant to recall the strategic circumstances leading to the Korean War, very well covered by Dr Robert O’Neill in Australia in the Korean War 1950-53, and how the factors, some of them of longstanding relevance to East Asia, may still need to be considered. Factors which encouraged Kim Il-sung to believe that America was not committed to the security of South Korea were the line taken by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in a speech where he defined the defensive perimeter in the Pacific that did not appear to include Korea and the Congressional blockage of an aid Bill. Could the prospect of the removal of American troops encourage a similar perception?
  With the commencement of truce negotiations in July 1951 HMAS Murchison was one of the force of British, New Zealand, Colombian and South Korean ships assigned for a show of force through naval bombardment of the area in the vicinity of the Kaesong truce talks from the Han River estuary. The operation was amongst the most hazardous of the Korean War. [Australia] [Korea war] [MIA]
• Open Thread: The Amesbury Couple and the Reborn Novichok Saga
  Obviously, by now, we’ve all read the news. Novichok is back, and this time it’s…even weirder than last time. The “facts” so far: Dawn Burgess and Charlie Rowley were admitted to hospital on Saturday June 30th. Just as with the Skirpals, Burgess and Rowley were initially treated for drug abuse. In the former case fentanyl, in the latter either heroin or crack cocaine. On July 2nd, the police reported that the two hospitalised people may have taken “tainted” drugs. On July 4th Porton Down reported that the couple had been exposed to an “unknown agent”. Allegedly novichok, although no official statement has been made on this subject as yet. On July 5th Sajid Javid MP, the Home Secretary, demanded Russia “explain” the latest nerve-agent incident. The Russian government have yet to officially respond. As yet, no specific theory on how Burgess and Rowley are supposed to have come in to contact with this “unknown agent” has been released. We don’t know where, when how or why this (entirely hypothetical) event is meant to have taken place. That said, the following questions need answering: Are we supposed to believe that this “novichok” incident is directly related to the alleged poisoning of the Skripals? How so? If this IS the same chemical, why is it suddenly affecting new victims four months after the initial “attack”? How come the emergency services and medical personnel, who spent ten weeks treating the Skripals and DS Bailey, didn’t recognise the symptoms of novichok poisoning immediately? Why was nerve agent poisoning mistaken for drug use AGAIN? Why and how did Porton Down get involved in this case? Is it usual for them to test the blood of suspected drug abuse victims? And finally, what on Earth is going on? [Amesbury]
• UK demands Russia explain nerve attack after two more people struck down
  Alex Fraser, Henry Nicholls Britain demanded on Thursday that Russia provide details about the Novichok nerve agent attack on a former double agent and his daughter after two British citizens were struck down with the same poison. The two Britons, a 44-year-old woman and a 45-year-old man, fell critically ill after handling what police called a contaminated item near the site of the March attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. [Amesbury] [UK] [Russia confrontation] [Diversion] [Chutzpah]
• Trump got a dose of Dutch bluntness from visiting prime minister
  by Rebecca Tan July 3 at 3:13 PM Email the author Most state leaders would avoid saying no to President Trump in a room full of reporters. But Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte isn't like most leaders. Rutte, a liberal straight-shooter known for mopping up his own coffee spills and cycling to the Dutch King's palace in The Hague, met Monday with Trump amid rising trade tensions between the United States and the European Union, of which the Netherlands is a member. In a five-minute news conference in the Oval Office, Rutte spoke significantly less than Trump. But when the Dutch prime minister interjected, he made himself heard. About a minute into his remarks, Trump suggested that leaving the trade dispute unresolved could still be “positive.” Rutte responded by raising his eyebrows, laughing and cutting in to say, “No.” When Trump kept going, Rutte said while smiling to reporters: “It's not positive ... We have to work something out.” Here's the full exchange, according to the White House transcript: Trump: We are very close to making some very good trade deals. Fair trade deals — I didn’t want to say “good,” I want to say “fair.” Fair trade deals for our taxpayers and for our workers and our farmers. And a lot of good things are happening. I think the E.U., we’re going to be meeting with them fairly soon, and we want to see if they can work something out. And that will be good. And if we do work it out, that’ll be positive, and if we don’t work it out, that’ll be positive also. Because - Rutte: No. Trump: We're just thinking about those cars that pour in here. Rutte: It’s not positive. Trump: And we'll do something, right? Rutte: We have to work something out. Trump: It’ll be … it’ll be positive. While Rutte's concise interjection tickled many in the Netherlands, his remarks reveal a deeper tension growing between the United States and its European allies. [Trump] [Rutte] [Protectionism]
• Wheel Out the Skripal Story Again
  Craig Murray 4 Jul, 2018 Just as the World Cup had forced the British media to grudgingly acknowledge the obvious truth that Russia is an extremely interesting country inhabited, like everywhere else, by mostly pleasant and attractive people, we have a screaming reprise of the “Salisbury incident” dominating the British media. Two people have been taken ill in Amesbury from an unknown substance, which might yet be a contaminated recreational drug, but could conceivably be from contact with the substance allegedly used on the Skripals, presumably some of which was somewhere indoors all this time as we were told it could be washed away and neutralised by water. Amesbury is not Salisbury – it is 10 miles away. Interestingly enough Porton Down is between Amesbury and Salisbury. Just three miles away from Muggleton Road, Amesbury. The news reports are not mentioning that much. [Amesbury] [Skripal] [World Cup]
• Joining Some Dots on the Skripal Case: Part 4 – The Dodgy Dossier
  Rob Slane So far in this series of pieces, I have attempted to demonstrate why I believe the official story of the poisoning of the Skripals doesn’t add up (Part 1). I have then pointed to some of the most significant pieces of the jigsaw, which have either been largely ignored or quietly forgotten (Part 2). And I then went on in Part 3 to show what I believe to be perhaps the key to the whole case; that Mr Skripal became agitated in Zizzis restaurant, not because he was physically unwell and suffering from the effects of poisoning hours earlier, but rather because he had an appointment to keep. But before coming on to propose a theory of what may have happened, I need to first present a theory of why it might have happened. I emphasise the word theory, because that is all it is — neither more nor less. And of course, it could be well wide of the mark. Make of it what you will! In a recent blog, Craig Murray, the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, linked to a very interesting piece by Paul Gregory that appeared in Forbes in January 2017. Mr Gregory is Professor of Economics at Houston University, and research fellow at both the Hoover Institution and the German Institute for Economic Research, and he also has extensive knowledge about Russia and the Soviet Union. Here’s what he had to say about the so-called Trump Dossier, just a few days after it was published by Buzzfeed: [Skripal]
• Cameras capture every angle of Canadian couple’s snack-throwing, ceiling-shattering arrest
  by Amy B Wang June 30 at 5:00 PM Like a Charlie Chaplin film, modern-day surveillance videos can unspool a story without making a sound. And in the case of an attempted criminal activity at a convenience store in Canada, footage from that incident tells . . . quite the tale. The bare facts of the case, as laid out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, are as follows: On Monday afternoon, the owners of the Spruce Grove Reddi Mart in Alberta called police after encountering a couple who had apparently tried to use stolen credit cards. An officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived at the convenience store. In the video, the officer can be seen talking with the couple, before the male suspect shoves the female suspect toward the officer.
  If this silent security camera footage doesn't win an Academy Award for Best Editing, nothing should. (Do watch the whole thing.) https://t.co/aFU719xD0r
• Calls to boost military spending add to U.K.'s growing sense of unease
  A former defense chief says the U.K. faces a hard choice: increase the defense budget or accept a diminished status as a military power. by Alexander Smith / Jul.01.2018 / 9:05 PM ET British Prime Minister Theresa May visits The Mercian Regiment near Salisbury, England.Matt Cardy / Getty Images file LONDON — Over the past century American and British troops have fought side-by-side in two World Wars, Korea and the conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. But some lawmakers and experts in the United Kingdom are warning that the British military could soon be seen as irrelevant by the United States unless it receives a colossal funding boost. "There is a concern that the U.K. is falling ever further behind and becoming even more useless from a U.S. point of view," said Andrew Dorman, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a think tank in London. Britain has traditionally seen itself as one of the world's leading military powers, and its annual defense spending of 35.3 billion pounds (around $46.6 billion) is still the largest in Europe. [MISCOM] [UK] [Special relationship] [Allegiance]
• Belgium Honors Congolese Leader It Helped Overthrow
  By Milan Schreuer June 30, 2018 BRUSSELS — The Belgian authorities imprisoned Patrice Lumumba as a rabble-rouser. When, shortly afterward, he became the first prime minister of an independent Congo, once their largest and most profitable colony, they supported a military coup that culminated in his killing. On Saturday, they named a square in Brussels after him. The former Square du Bastion — which lies near the city’s 14th-century walls, and leads to the Matonge neighborhood, home to a large Congolese diaspora population — became Square Patrice Lumumba 58 years to the day after Mr. Lumumba declared his country’s independence. The cheering crowds at the ceremony on Saturday, however, masked Belgium’s complex relationship with its former colony. Belgium’s rule over what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo is a sensitive topic here. Most Belgians have at least one ancestor who played some role in colonial-era Congo, and Belgium has officially admitted involvement in Mr. Lumumba’s death. [Imperialism] [Belgium] [Congo] [Lumumba] [Coup]

• In Less Than a Minute, E.U. Tells Britain to Get ‘Realistic’ on Brexit Image
  By Stephen Castle June 29, 2018 BRUSSELS — Divided over their other pressing problems, European Union leaders on Friday took less than a minute to unite over a warning to Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, that she risks a disorderly and disruptive British exit from the bloc unless she breaks months of political deadlock in London and makes “realistic” proposals. With Britain planning to end more than four decades of European integration in March, crucial questions remain unresolved. Mrs. May’s divided cabinet is constraining her power to negotiate, and the thought is dawning in some capitals that Britain might end up, accidentally, leaving the bloc without any deal at all, which most experts say would be an unmitigated disaster. After a marathon negotiation on migration that began Thursday and went well into Friday morning, the leaders dispensed with the British withdrawal, known as Brexit, in less than 60 seconds, according to the Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat — though they devoted longer to venting their frustration at the glacial pace of progress. [Brexit]
• Joining dots on the Skripal Case: Part 2 – Four “Invisible” Clues
  Rob Slane Having stated in Part 1 why I believe the official story does not hold water, I want in this piece to take a look at four important aspects of the case. However, what is particularly remarkable about them is not so much the aspects themselves, but rather the fact that they seem to have been either: Ignored altogether or Quietly forgotten Yet in each instance they are clearly significant aspects, and so the fact that they are being ignored or forgotten, together with the official story being implausible, only goes to arouse suspicions that they may be crucial pointers to what really happened on 4th March. Below are four of what I would consider the most important aspects that fit into this category: [Skripals] [Evidence]
• Malcolm Turnbull issues emphatic endorsement of Donald Trump's North Korea approach
  By Fergus Hunter 13 June 2018 — 12:37pm Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has strongly endorsed Donald Trump's efforts to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula, praising the US President as a "very persuasive, very powerful dealmaker" taking a fresh approach after decades of failed negotiations with North Korea. Amid mixed global reactions to this week's summit in Singapore, which saw North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un commit to dismantling his nuclear weapons program but no specific timeline or requirements, Mr Turnbull said Mr Trump deserved credit for giving denuclearisation a "red-hot go". "He has sat down with Kim Jong-un and he's offered him an alternative vision, a chance to chart a better future for his country. And he's made a strong pitch for that and time will tell how persuasive or how compelling it is but we know what the alternatives are and none of the alternatives are attractive," the Prime Minister said on Wednesday. [Singapore summit] [Australia] [Turnbull] [Subservience]
• Why the Trump-Kim summit matters to these Australians
  Five Australians with a special connection to North Korea tell SBS News what they're hoping the historic summit will achieve. Updated Updated 1 day ago By Rosemary Bolger When US President Donald Trump meets his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un on Tuesday in Singapore, the eyes of the world will be on them. SBS News spoke to members of Australia's Korean community and others with a connection to North Korea about their hopes for the summit. [Kim_Trump_talks18] [Australia]
• The Uffizi Gallery Gathers Some Heavy Hitters in a New Room
  By Elisabetta Povoledo June 8, 2018 FLORENCE, Italy — Last Sunday evening, soon after the final visitor had trickled out of the historic Palazzo Pitti, Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi Gallery, gathered with other museum officials in the palace’s main picture gallery. They were there to remove two of its most illustrious occupants: portraits that Raphael painted around 1504-1505. The two canvases, which show a Florentine merchant, Agnolo Doni, and his wife, Maddalena Strozzi, were gingerly carried through a nearly half-mile-long passageway that links the Pitti to the Uffizi. They were hung in Room 41 of the gallery which, as of Monday, became the museum’s “Raphael and Michelangelo Room.”
• Australia’s China policy: who rules, who governs and the SAS connection
  Michael McKinley 9 June 2018 Australia’s China policy in recent days has moved from being a subject of heated and understandable debate and controversy based on argument and evidence, to a target of bureaucratic and organisational guerrilla warfare. From within the state and parliamentary system, attacks of one type or another come without warning, raising questions about who is ruling and who is merely governing. Recent events concerning the threat, real or imagined, posed by China to Australia, raise five vexing questions. The FIRST emerges in the wake of Andrew Hastie’s use of parliamentary privilege to make allegations (of bribing a senior United Nations official) against a wealthy Chinese businessman who is also accused of being an agent of the Chinese Government. The Liberal Party Member for Canning’s source, apparently, was privileged intelligence he had received in his capacity as Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. The PJCIS’s main functions are administrative and expenditure review and oversight of Australia’s primary intelligence agencies including importantly, ASIO. Prior to making his allegation he is reported to have contacted a junior officer of one of the agencies under his committee’s oversight, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). This had the effect of alerting that organisation’s Director-General, Major-General (retired) Duncan Lewis, of what was to proceed. It is also reported that, on this matter of extraordinary significance and sensitivity to Australia’s foreign policy, neither the Prime Minister, nor the Foreign Minister, nor the ten other members of the PJCIS were given any advanced notice. [China confrontation] [Australia]
• What country seeks to go to war with its banker?
  Michael Keating. (Repost from 30/1/2018) Posted by John Menadue This article supports Hugh White’s conclusion that the US is unlikely to succeed in fighting China for primacy in Asia. The US has been living beyond its means for a long time, and has depended on foreign finance, and especially Chinese finance, to sustain its living standards. Challenging China would require sacrifices from the American public that they are ill-prepared to make. Accordingly, it is very risky for Australia to continue to base its foreign and defence policies on the presumption that the US can be counted on to maintain its position in Asia without substantial change. What country seeks to go to war with its banker? In a recent article (Pearls & Irritations, 23 January), Geoff Miller contrasted the conclusions from the Government’s recent Foreign Policy White Paper and those from Hugh White’s Quarterly Essay, Without America. As Miller points out, the two views are in direct contradiction. The Government’s whole future international strategy is based on the presumption that the United States will continue to carry out its traditional roles in the Indo-Pacific, and with its traditional effectiveness. On the other hand, White argues that ‘America has no real reason to fight China for primacy in Asia, shows little real interest in doing so and has no chance of succeeding if it tries’. In this article I want to elaborate on White’s last point that the US is unlikely to succeed if it refuses to adapt to China’s rising power and accept some changes in the present rules-based system, which the US originally developed for its own benefit and to establish its own hegemony. Indeed, as the Government’s White Paper itself recognises, ‘In the Indo-Pacific, the economic growth that has come with globalisation is in turn changing power balances’. But I wonder whether the true extent of that shift in power, and how much further that power shift will go in the next decade, is fully appreciated by policy makers in the US and Australia. [Australia] [Allegiance] [China confrontation]
• The European Union can play a role on the Korean Peninsula
  2 June 2018 Author: Silvia Menegazzi, LUISS The inter-Korean Summit held at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) in April 2018 saw a most unexpected handshake between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The international community is now waiting for the meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump planned again for 12 June in Singapore. Following the April summit, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, declared full support for the denuclearisation process. In what capacity could the European Union assist in the peace process on the Korean Peninsula? [EU] [US NK Negotiations] [Sidelined] [Wishful thinking]
• Is there a problem with Australia’s China narrative?
  Stephen Fitzgerald and Linda Jakobson. 1 June 2018 Australia’s China policy is flawed. Diplomatic relations between Canberra and Beijing are strained, to the extent that Australia’s prime minister and foreign minister have not been welcome to visit the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Yet at a time when Australian leaders have been frozen out, leaders from countries experiencing far more serious issues with the PRC than Australia have been visiting Beijing. The poor state of the relationship is a result not so much of what Australia has done as what Australia has said and signalled. The PRC has become more assertive, a consequence of the increase in its economic, political and military power. But the Australian government has mismanaged its reaction. Australia needs a robust and realistic policy to respond to this assertiveness, to ensure that Australia is not marginalised as the PRC strives toward its goal of being the dominant power in the region. For that policy to take shape, however, there must be a narrative, a clear and comprehensible story line that shows the way forward. It must explain why, despite our likes and dislikes, we have to get along with the PRC. This is imperative for Australia’s security and prosperity. Politicians and business leaders need to have the courage to spell this out, as well as both the positives and negatives about our relations with the PRC. The narrative that we have now has lost relevance because it approaches the PRC as if it was still part of yesterday’s regional order rather than as the soon- to-be dominant power in the current, dramatically transforming region. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Assertiveness]

• 50th Anniversary of May 1968, Paris: Memories of an Illusory Revolution
  May 29, 2018 At the time it seemed that Paris had yet again become the center of a world revolution, but in time a quite diffferent legacy has emerged, recalls Diana Johnstone fifty years later. By Diana Johnstone Special to Consortium News in Paris Nineteen Sixty-Eight began with the Têt offensive, when the Vietnamese national liberation struggle suddenly showed its strength as a military force, though it was eventually beaten back into guerrilla warfare. The images of burning villages and burning children were seared into the consciousness of millions of people around the world. In the United States, Martin Luther King, whose call for an end of the war clearly linked the anti-war cause to the battle for civil rights, was assassinated on April 4. In France, reactions to the U.S. war in Vietnam, a former French colony, were viscerally linked to the war in Algeria, which was fresh in people’s memories. For those who had supported Algerian independence from France, achieved only six years earlier, the Vietnamese people’s struggle for independence was a natural follow-on. If anything, the Vietnamese victory was even more clearly just and inevitable. On the other side were a smaller number of diehard colonialists who hated Charles de Gaulle for giving Algeria away and dismantling the French Empire. The youth group “Occident”, rooted mainly in the law faculty in the rue d’Assas, organized commando groups to defend ill-defined “Western values” which they considered under threat. One evening, to my great surprise, I turned out to be one of those “threats.” As I arrived late to take part in an anti-war panel in Saint Germain en Laye, near Paris, I smiled at a small group of men standing at the entrance who proceeded to knock me flat and bleeding, leaving a few of my teeth loose. That was my informal introduction to “Occident”. This sort of encounter heightened tensions, and leftist groups strengthened their services d’ordre in self-protection. Such minor incidents concerning Vietnam helped set the mood for the street fights that inflamed the Latin Quarter in the early days of May 1968. The revolt broke out on May 3 after police entered the sanctuary of the Sorbonne and arrested student leaders protesting the shutdown of the university at suburban Nanterre. I don’t think that at the time many people cared about the problem at Nanterre. But the sight of police occupying the Sorbonne aroused protests, and in the streets, police charged protesters. Some ran for cover, but many fought back with surprising determination. After several days violent skirmishes grew between groups of students and baton-wielding security policy, the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS), which was met with the slogan “CRS SS!” [May1968]
• Don’t Panic! Lighten Up! Smiley Skripal case forces scientists to revise everything they thought they knew about Novichok
  Warning: This article is likely to contain traces of satire. In the aftermath of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March, scientists are currently re-evaluating their understanding of A-234 – or Novichok as it is more commonly known. Prior to the poisoning, it had been thought that the substance was around 5-8 times more toxic than VX nerve agent, and therefore that just a tiny drop would be likely to kill a person within minutes or possibly even seconds of them coming into contact with it. In the unlikely event of a person surviving, it was believed that their central nervous system would be completely destroyed, and that they would suffer numerous chronic health issues, including cirrhosis, toxic hepatitis, and epilepsy before dying a premature and miserable death, probably within a year or so. However, according to an anonymous source at the Porton Down laboratory, which is located just a few miles down the road from Salisbury, scientists now believe they may have completely misunderstood the properties and effects of the chemical: “All the available information we had about Novichok before March this year suggested that it was by far the most lethal nerve agent ever produced, and we had assumed that even the tiniest drop would kill a person within minutes. However, after studying the movements of the Skripals after being poisoned, we have now revised our understanding, and we now believe that one of its primary effects is to generate in its victims a strong desire to go out for a beer followed by a pizza.” [Skripal] [Novichoks] [Efficacy] [Satire]
• Chinese Expansion Has Germany on the Defensive
  The German economy has grown dependent on China in a development that is now coming back to haunt it. With a global trade war brewing, it will be impossible for the government in Berlin to please both Beijing and Washington. It's time for a new strategy. By DER SPIEGEL Staff May 24, 2018 06:03 PM China has already taken a significant step into Germany. In the Rheinhausen district of Duisburg, trains are now rolling across the site where steelworkers once fought unsuccessfully to save their mill in 1987 while shipyard cranes stack up containers on the banks of the Rhine River. This is the precise point where the New Silk Road, China's massive infrastructure project, comes to an end. The site in Duisburg is known as Logport I and it is one of the largest container ports in Europe. Twenty-five trains arrive each week at Terminal DIT, also known as the China Terminal, after having traveled the more than 10,000 kilometers from Chongqing across Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland. Four years ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the inland port. The engine of a train that arrived from China that day was decorated with red paper dragons for the occasion and Erich Staake, CEO of the Duisburg port, was also on hand. Staake, who, like the Chinese president, was born in 1953, sees the rail connection as a boon both for the port and for the entire region, which badly needs it. "We want to grow," he says. "China and the New Silk Road offer us great potential." One way of seeing it is that the trade route brings China and Germany that much closer together. [China competition] [B&R] [Germany] [China confrontation]
• Some Russians Are Money Chasing Traitors – Get Over It!
  Written by Adam Garrie on 2018-05-24 2018-05-24 The forever strange Sergey and Yulia Skripal saga has taken a new and increasingly absurd turn. Yulia who was allegedly poisoned alongside her father, an allegedly retired British spy of Russian origin in March of this year, gave an interview to Reuters that one could be forgiven for confusing with a commercial for America’s Next Top Model. The Reuters video, complete with a dramatic entrance in the middle of what looks to be some sort of forest shows a very healthy looking Yulia who by any objective standard appears to be far more attractive than she did in any of her “pre-poisoning” photos. In the video she briefly states that she went through a dramatic ordeal, feels fine now, doesn’t want to talk to the Russian Embassy in London and has no immediate desire to return to Russia. Taken as a whole, she more or less regurgitated the official western narrative on the alleged poisoning in a very succinct manner. Because so little is actually known about what happened to Sergey and Yulia Skripal yet nevertheless much has been blamed on the Russian state, it should not be surprising that the Russian Embassy in London has released the following statement, “The United Kingdom has a responsibility to give us the opportunity to communicate directly with Yulia to make sure that she is not kept [in the UK] against her will and does not make statements under pressure. So far we have every reason to suspect the opposite. Clearly, Yulia read out the pre-written text. Moreover, judging by a number of expressions, it was a translation from English, and the original was written by a native speaker. The published in two languages Julia’s handwritten letters prove this impression”. While I have no doubt that – as the Embassy officials point out – Yulia was reading out a pre-written text that was almost certainly written originally in English, what I do question is whether Yulia and Sergey Skripal are being held “against their will”. I think that it is highly likely that not only are they not being held against their will but that they are instead likely accomplices in one of the less imaginative false flags in recent memory. [Skripal]
• Interview with Joschka Fischer: 'The U.S. President Is Destroying the American World Order'
  In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer talks about the danger of war against Iran, the deterioration of trans-Atlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump and the serious need for Germany to invest massively in the European Union's future. Interview Conducted By Mathieu von Rohr and Christoph Schult May 22, 2018 04:54 DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Fischer, you were -- together with your French and British colleagues -- among the first to embark on negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program in 2003. The 2015 agreement was to some extent your legacy. How did Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Iran deal affect you? Fischer: I don't take this personally, but I am very concerned about the disastrous consequences of Trump's decision. They will be much more dramatic than portrayed in most of the comments so far. The aim of the agreement was to prevent a second disaster after the Iraq War, namely a large-scale land war in Iran. After the Iraq War, the Iranians tried in vain to divide Europe and the United States. Donald Trump has now managed to do just that. DER SPIEGEL: Are you afraid that there will now be a war against Iran? Fischer: I can't imagine that Trump could want that. One of the reasons Trump came into power was the frustration over these unwinnable, endless wars. DER SPIEGEL: His national security adviser John Bolton wrote ... Fischer: Enough with Bolton! DER SPIEGEL: You remember Bolton from your time as foreign minister. Fischer: I know him very well. He is one of the people responsible for the Iraq disaster. DER SPIEGEL: Bolton once wrote: "To stop Iran's bomb, bomb Iran." Fischer: Bolton has only one answer to everything: bombing. I wouldn't pay too much attention to that. But if Iran starts enriching uranium again, we would certainly be in a very dangerous situation. The confrontation between Iran and Israel has already begun militarily in Syria. DER SPIEGEL: Back then, before the invasion of Iraq, you famously told the Americans: "I am not convinced." Does the current crisis in trans-Atlantic relations remind you of 2003? [Anti-Trump] [Germany] [Bolton] [Iran deal]
• Australia’s split identity
  22 May, 2018 by stalinsmoustache While I do not pay much attention to the sheer childishness of what passes for ‘politics’ in Australia, I am intrigued by its split identity. Let me put it this way: about 60,000 years ago a planned migration took place. Those who became the first peoples in Australia came from south-east Asia, heading southward across a series of islands to the mainland. They were homo sapiens, while Neanderthals still roamed Europe. But their arrival made it clear that the country was part of south-east Asia. Some 240 years ago – by comparison a very short period of time – some Europeans arrived, tried to wipe out the most ancient continuous culture in the world, and tried to shape this part of the world as a western European outpost. It worked for a while, when the immigrants were mostly from the UK. For example, after the Second World War, the total population was 7 million, of which the vast majority were from the UK. Since then, the shift has been dramatic. Waves of wider European immigration took place, and after 1972, more and more people emigrated from the Middle East, Africa and especially Asia. At the time of writing, the population is almost 25 million. Now those of English ancestry are a clear minority, and in the not too distant future those of European ancestry (like me) will also be a minority. Why? Each year almost 200,000 immigrants move to Australia – apart from those who come to Australia to study and work. Of these, more than half come from Asia. Indeed, as I write, more than 2 million people who are Australian citizens were born in Asia, let alone those born in Australia of Asian parents over the last few decades. Some time soon, the country may well revert to its former identity, but in the meanwhile it faces a continuing problem of split identity. Is it a ‘western’ European country that somehow – by a quirk of geography – found itself in another part of the world? Or is it really part of Asia, or perhaps the Asia-Pacific? [Australia] [Cultural identity] [Allegiance] [Ambivalence]
• Trump’s Iran Move May Swamp Greece
  By Nikos Konstandaras Mr. Konstandaras is a columnist at the newspaper Kathimerini and a contributing opinion writer. May 18, 2018 Image A march on the Israeli embassy in Athens to protest the U.S. decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem and to condemn the deaths of Palestinians killed along the Gaza border.CreditYorgos Karahalis/Associated Press After eight years of being kept afloat by loans from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund, Greece suddenly risks being swamped by waves caused by President Trump’s unilateral stirring of the Middle East’s caldron of tensions and conflicting interests. Compared with the immediate danger of regional conflict and even greater bloodshed, the danger to Greece may seem secondary, but it illustrates the unforeseen consequences of impetuous American actions. Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran and its decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem could trigger a chain of events that would jeopardize Greece’s fragile economic recovery. [Trump] [Iran deal] [Renege] [Consequences] [Greece]
• The Palio di Siena: A Survivor’s Tale
  Crowds and chaotic thrills at the thunderous, lawless, medieval-style horse race in Siena, Italy. Crowds gather in Siena as horses are selected for the race.CreditAndy Haslam for The New York Times By Dwight Garner April 16, 2018 When Hunter S. Thompson took the English artist Ralph Steadman to the Kentucky Derby in 1970, he tried to prepare him for the chaos into which they were descending. “Just pretend you’re visiting a huge outdoor loony bin,” Thompson said. He added, because he was rarely out of character, “If the inmates get out of control we’ll soak them down with Mace.” “Huge outdoor loony bin” is not the most precise description of the Palio di Siena, the thunderous, lawless, bareback, medieval-style horse race held twice each summer in front of tens of thousands of spectators on a track of packed clay laid down in the downtown heart of Siena, in Tuscany. But it will do for the moment.
• Merkel heads to Sochi: Russia-Germany détente on the horizon?
  Published time: 17 May, 2018 05:55 Edited time: 17 May, 2018 16:43 German Chancellor Angela Merkel's working visit to Sochi on Friday could signal a positive shift in EU-Russia relations, as the European bloc reassesses its fealty to Washington. Merkel has been to Russia only once since 2014, which marked the rapid deterioration of relations between Russia and Europe. The German chancellor visited Sochi in early May 2017. Now, she is trekking out to Sochi once again – about a week after the US President Donald Trump announced that he would be withdrawing his country from the Iran nuclear deal, of which Russia and Germany are both signatories. Read more © Ralph Peters Washington’s Iran sanctions bite: Germany trying to ‘minimize’ damage, France wants exemptions The US leader’s decision has infuriated Europe, with Merkel going so far as to suggest that Europe can no longer rely upon the US to ensure its security and maintain international norms. With Merkel heading to Sochi, it appears that Europe, increasingly disillusioned Washington, will seek closer cooperation with Moscow in hopes of salvaging the Iran deal and making headway on a number of other critical international issues. [Germany Russia] Merkel] [Allegiance] [Iran deal]
• Australia, China and three fragments of militarisation in context.
  Michael McKinley 18 May 2018 The term ‘militarisation’ is the new portmanteau expression for describing China’s initiatives in the South China Sea; it is at once accusatory and exculpatory: China is the instigator, the Western powers and those Western-aligned (defensively-minded, and innocent) are exonerated from any guilt their reactions might attract. The term, however, is misused in the current context, dangerous, and a form of bubble-gum for a distracted strategic imagination. Fragment 1: Militarisation-as-Amnesia: To begin, let us concede what China has done, and is doing, overall, and especially in the South China Sea – within a warfighting strategy aimed at preventing an adversary from occupying or traversing an area of land, sea, and air from which attacks against China could be launched – it is extending the range and modernising its armed forces in general, and might even be taking the lead in some technologies (such as hypersonic anti-ship weapons, air-to-air missiles, and drones). In some areas these represent serious challenges to the strategic dominance over China that the US has enjoyed since the PRC came in to existence. [China confrontation] [South China Sea] [Australia]
• Julie Bishop – Foreign Minister or Senior Consular Officer
  John Menadue 16 May 2018 In this blog and elsewhere, Geoff Raby, a former Australian Ambassador to China, has pointed out that Australia’s relationship with China is unlikely to improve until Julie Bishop is sacked as Foreign Minister. The departure of Julie Bishop as Foreign Minister is necessary, but it is unlikely that Malcolm Turnbull will act. If he did so, it would imperil his own tenuous hold on Liberal Party leadership. Almost two years ago on 14 June 2016, I wrote about Julie Bishop’s continual and serious failings as Foreign Minister. Those failings have increased since then particularly with the management of our relations with China and more and more major cuts in ODA That article of two years ago is reproduced below Foreign ministers can hide their failures more easily than other ministers because ‘foreign affairs’ has no serious domestic constituency. Appearances on the public and world stage can also hide a lack of substance – for a while. But the failures of Julie Bishop are now clear. Most of her media appearances are now about ‘consular’ problems – Australians involved in airline crashes, terrorism, or other disasters. Normally these matters would be left to officers of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. But our foreign minister doesn’t want to miss these media opportunities. It is easier than explaining let alone understanding complicated foreign policy issues. On her watch as foreign minister there have been major problems for which the media has not held her accountable. The most serious and potentially dangerous mistake has been in mismanaging our alliance with the US and the rising power of China. [China confrontation] [Australia] [Julie Bishop] [Allegiance]
• Canadian general to become No. 2 at UN Command in Korea
  Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre will be first non-U.S. general officer to hold the post Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: May 14, 2018 1:18 PM ET | Last Updated: 10 hours ago Lt.-Gen. Wayne Eyre, right, who was a brigadier general at the time of this photo, speaks with Lt.-Gen. Paul Wynnyk, commander of the Canadian army, left, in the Wainwright Garrison training area in 2016. Eyre has now been appointed deputy commander of the UN Command in Korea. (DND Combat Camera/Master Corporal Malcolm Byers) 257 comments A senior Canadian officer will become the deputy commander of the United Nations force in Korea, Canada's Department of National Defence said Monday. [US military] [Military presence] [UNC] [UNUS] Canada]
• If Europe Wants to Remain on the World Stage, It Must Resist Trump on Iran
  by Patrick Cockburn “Iraq is at the muzzle of the gun,” says Ali Allawi, Iraqi historian and former minister, speaking of the increased turmoil expected to follow the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. It is not only Iraq which is in danger: an escalating confrontation between the US and Iran will affect the whole region, but its greatest impact will be in Syria and Iraq where wars have long been raging and Washington and Tehran are old rivals. The US will rely at first on the reimposition of economic sanctions on Iran to force it to comply with US demands and hopefully bring about regime change in Tehran. But, if this does not work – and it will almost certainly fail – then there will be a growing risk of military action either carried out directly by the US or through “green-lighting” Israeli airstrikes. Iran is for the moment reacting cautiously to Trump’s denunciation of the 2015 accord, portraying itself as the victim of arbitrary action and seeking to spur the EU states into taking practical steps to resist imposing draconian sanctions along the lines of those that were imposed before 2015. Even if this does not happen, it will be important for Iran that the Europeans should only grudgingly cooperate with the US in enforcing sanctions, particularly on Iranian oil exports. [Iran deal] [Renege] [EU]
• Trump and Iran Europe Stuck Between a Bomb and a Hard Place
  With U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to violate the Iran nuclear agreement, Europe finds itself facing an almost unsolvable diplomatic challenge: It must save the Iran deal while avoiding open confrontation with Washington. A Commentary by Christiane Hoffmann May 09, 2018 12:23 PM Now, it is up to Europe. U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran in the most brusque possible manner. There is no waiting period, no attempts at mitigation. The marching orders are clear: the greatest confrontation possible. For Europe, the stakes are enormous. It is no longer merely about ensuring that Iran doesn't get the bomb. Rather, the world is faced with an uncontrolled, global nuclear arms race. The already tenuous stability in the Middle East is likewise in grave danger. And finally, Europe is facing the potential loss of what has been the most important, most reliable and most beneficial constant of European foreign policy for decades: the partnership with the U.S. and the trans-Atlantic relationship. The U.S. has chosen a path of confrontation with Europe. Neither Macron's advances nor Merkel's sternness were able to prevent Trump from taking this step. In the seven decades of the postwar trans-Atlantic relationship, there has never been such a violation of European interests, never such deep-seated discord. When France and Germany elected not to follow U.S. President George W. Bush into Iraq in 2003, the dissent came within the framework of an intact partnership. It was a serious disagreement, to be sure, but it didn't threaten the foundation of the relationship. This time, it is different. This conflict has the potential to escalate into a real confrontation between Europe and the United States. In a worst-case scenario, Trump could force Europe to make a choice between the U.S. and Iran. If you're not with us, you are against us. Europe finds itself facing a diplomatic challenge that is almost impossible to solve. On the one hand, Europeans must seek to prevent the Americans from further escalation. On the other, they are tasked with convincing Iran not to give up on the deal themselves. [Iran deal; [Renege] [EU] [Friction] [Tribute]
• Reality Check: Europe Won't Roll Over on Iran
  U.S. allies will continue to do business, despite the threat of sanctions. by Leonid Bershidsky 38 May 10, 2018, 6:00 PM GMT+12 Driving a wedge between the U.S. and Europe has long been a top policy goal for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Now, another oil regime, Iran, shares that ambition. And even though Iran and Russia don’t have a realistic shot at success, President Donald Trump’s ham-handed treatment of his European allies brings them just a little closer to achieving their objective. Trump’s attitude toward Europe is clear: He considers the European Union a collection of puffed-up small countries dependent on the U.S. for economic survival and military protection. In Trump’s view, these little nations will always cave to pressure. That stance was conveyed by the imperious tweet from the the newly arrived U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who ordered German companies that do business in Iran to “wind down operations immediately.” Grenell has since explained that the tweet followed “the exact language sent out from the White House talking points” on Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. The furious reaction to the tweet in Germany’s political circles hasn’t elicited so much as an apology from the U.S. Nor was Trump too worried about the joint statement by Germany, France and the U.K. indicating that these countries intend to stick to the Iran agreement. It’s clear from a background briefing by two senior State Department officials that the U.S. didn’t have a detailed discussion with the Europeans before reneging on the agreement. Asked if the U.S. was prepared to sanction French and German companies that do business in Iran, one of the officials said the “discussions” were just starting. The Putin government, which, like the Europeans and the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, announced it would stick to the nuclear agreement, just loves this kind of thing. Ivan Danilov, a columnist for the government propaganda outlet RIA Novosti, used the occasion to predict a “big Middle Eastern war” and claim that “the so-called transatlantic solidarity is the first victim of this conflict” as Trump “approaches a state of proud solitude on the international stage.” That view is probably as delusional as the Trump team’s apparent conviction that Europe will always roll. There is little respect for Trump in European capitals, except, perhaps, in Warsaw and Budapest, which don’t call the shots on trade. [Iran confrontation] [EU] [Friction] [Wedge]
• WATCH: More Skripal-weird: even head of OPCW doesn’t seem to have a clue what Novichok is
  Raising the serious possibility even the director-general of the OPCW doesn’t really know what Novichok is supposed to be, Ahmet Uzumcu, incumbent of that post, claimed May 4 that a “quarter cup to a half cup” of Novichok had been used to attack the Skripals in Salisbury. This, of course, would be enough to kill every man. woman and child in the city. This led into an even odder “clarification” from the OPCW within hours, which didn’t so much correct Uzumcu’s strange claim as pretend it had never happened and replaced it with the statement that the amount used in Salisbury was presently unknown but would be measured in “milligrams”. [Skripal]
• UK media told to conceal connections between Sergei Skripal and MI6
  5th May 2018 By Thomas Scripps: Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has published evidence suggesting that a D-notice has been issued to the press to protect MI6, hiding its connections to the Russian double-agent, Sergei Skripal. According to the Conservative government and a pliant media, Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by Russia with a “novichok” nerve agent. A D-notice (Defence and Security Media Advisory Notice) is used by the British state to veto the publication of potentially damaging news stories. Formally a request to withhold publication, the slavishness of the mainstream media ensures these notices function for the most part as gag orders. Murray initially reported the claims of famous whistleblower Clive Ponting that a D-notice had likely been issued in relation to some aspect of the Skripal affair. He then noted Channel 4 journalist Charles Thomson’s confirmation that a D-notice had, in fact, been issued and that it related specifically to censoring the identity of Skripal’s MI6 handler. Get Briefed, Get Weekly Intelligence Reports - Essential Weekend Reading - Safe Subscribe Murray suggests that the MI6 agent in question is called Pablo Miller. As Murray notes, the specific attempt to protect Miller’s identity is highly significant. Miller is an associate of former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, first in espionage operations in Russia and more recently in the activities of Steele’s private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence. Steele was responsible for compiling the Trump–Russia dossier, comprising 17 memos written in 2016 alleging misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Putin administration. The dossier, paid for by the Democratic Party, claimed that Trump was compromised by evidence of his sexual proclivities in Russia’s possession. Steele was the subject of an earlier (unsuccessful) D-notice, which attempted to keep his identity as the author of the dossier a secret. [Skripal] [MI6] [Censorship]
• Tens of thousands stage anti-Macron protest in Paris
  2018-05-05 19:46 Paris - Depicting the object of their ire as Napoleon, Dracula, Jupiter, a banker-king and Margaret Thatcher, tens of thousands marched through central Paris on Saturday to protest against President Emmanuel Macron's sweeping reforms, a year after he took office. Some 2 000 security forces including riot police were deployed just in case a generally good-natured rally went the same way as May Day protests hijacked by anarchists. Marchers gathered from midday in warm early summer sunshine in the central Opera square for a protest dubbed a "Party for Macron", a tongue-in-cheek "celebration" of the 40-year-old centrist and former Rothschild banker's first anniversary in power. Paris police put the number of marchers at 40 000 but organisers said it was 160 000. [Macron] [Protest]
• Trump’s comments about gun laws in Britain and France prompt anger and rebukes
  by Adam Taylor May 5 at 4:34 PM President Trump is scheduled to visit Britain to meet Prime Minister Theresa May on July 13 for a long-delayed visit. Meanwhile, it was only last month he had warmly received French President Emmanuel Macron in Washington. But despite the outward appearance of warm ties with Britain and France, traditionally two of America's strongest European allies, Trump managed to stoke outrage and anger in both London and Paris this weekend — and he did so with a single speech. Speaking to the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas on Friday, the president had used the rising number of knife attacks in Britain while speaking in support of gun rights in the United States. “I recently read a story that in London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital — right in the middle — is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds,” Trump said about halfway through his 50-minute speech. “Yes, that’s right, they don’t have guns. They have knives, and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital. They say it’s as bad as a military war zone hospital.” “Knives, knives, knives,” Trump added as he made a stabbing motion. [Trump]
• Russian spy poisoning: Watchdog backtracks over Novichok amount
  The chemical weapons watchdog has backtracked on its suggestion 100g of Novichok nerve agent was used in the Salisbury spy poisoning. The head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told the New York Times that amount may have been used. The OPCW later said the amount should have read "100mg". Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a bench on 4 March after being exposed to the nerve agent. The UK accuses Russia of being behind the attack, but Russia strongly denies this. Aerosol spray Speaking to the newspaper, OPCW director general Ahmet Uzumcu said that an inspection of various sites in Salisbury indicated "50, 100g or so" had been used. He added that amount was more than was needed for "research activities", which would only require "five to 10g". However, the OPCW then released a statement saying it "would not be able to estimate or determine the amount of the nerve agent" used in Salisbury. It added: "The quantity should probably be characterised in milligrams." When asked by BBC to clarify whether Mr Uzumcu had meant to say "milligrams" in his first estimate or genuinely thought 100g had been used, the OPCW merely stated that milligrams "should have been used". [Skripal] [Uzumcu] [Novichoks]
• Pell and the course that took him to the top
  Eric Hodgens. 3 May 2018 Nothing if not always controversial, and some would say divisive, George Pell is now at a decisive fork in the road. One way could lead to gaol after being sent to trial on May 1st to face multiple charges of sexual abuse. In Pell, we see an ideologue in action. How did he get to here? During the 1960s a liberal movement swept the Catholic Church. Pope John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council. It opened the gates of a fortress church to new ideas, new liturgy, new rules. It was a pastoral council. It reversed the tight church control that had become entrenched over the years following the 16th century Council of Trent. As is well documented, an opposing movement developed, working hard to retain the pre-council policies and rules. So, the progressive/conservative culture wars began in the late 1960s. During the ‘70s, the liberal movement grew strong. But during the ‘80s the conservatives regained lost ground. Karol Wojtyla, who was elected pope in 1978, was focussed on dismantling the liberal changes. He wanted a disciplined church with crystal clear policies in doctrine and action like the one that sustained him in the dark days of communist Poland. George Pell was ordained for the diocese of Ballarat in 1966. His bishop, Jim O’Collins, was a committed conservative and strongly aligned with Bob Santamaria, the leading lay conservative voice in church and political affairs since the 1940s in Australia. [George Pell] [Catholic Church] [Australia]
• Whatever happened to the Skripals? UK media and authorities fall silent on Salisbury poisoning
  Published time: 1 May, 2018 16:43 Sergei Skripal, the poisoned ex-Russian spy, and his daughter Yulia dominated headlines a few weeks ago. Now they’ve vanished from the public eye, leaving many to wonder what exactly happened. Yulia apparently recovered enough to leave the hospital and is now thought to be in a safe house, and there have been no updates on Sergei’s condition since his daughter walked out of Salisbury District Hospital in early April. Since then, Syrian bomb attacks have dominated British headlines, followed by the Windrush scandal that ended with the shock resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd. Some argue the British media just had its attention diverted, but others suggest something else is at play. A number of bloggers have spent months questioning the government’s narrative on the Skripal attack. Among them is former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray. Murray pointed out a tweet by Channel 4 journalist Alex Thomsen, who said the only “decisive public move by the authorities has been to censor MSM (mainstream media) via a D Notice… from identifying Mr Skripal’s handler living nearby.” About the only decisive public move by the authorities has been to censor MSM via a D Notice last week from fully identifying Mr Skripal’s MI6 handler living nearby... — alex thomson (@alextomo) March 12, 2018 For those who may not know, a D-notice is a British government request that particular information is not reported by the media on grounds of national security. The media does not have to agree, but almost always does. READ MORE: Skripal attack: Still no suspects, admits UK national security adviser but still blames Russia Now, police and intelligence agencies have revealed that they have still to identify a suspect in the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. It’s one thing for someone who supposedly poisoned an old man and his adult daughter with a chemical weapon in the middle of Britain’s sleepy countryside, but another for them to then disappear into thin air in a country with more CCTV coverage than any other. And how can Britain point the finger so firmly in Russia’s direction if they have exactly zero suspects? Almost 2 months since #skripalpoisoning and now it emerges that there are no suspects. One of the largest police operations of recent times in one of the most watched [cctv] societies and nothing... #salisbury — Rupert Evelyn (@rupertevelyn) May 1, 2018 So many questions, so few answers. Apparently frustrated with the lack of closure, many have taken to social media to raise their digital eyebrows about the lack of Skripal updates… and lack of suspects. It is now 3 weeks since we last had any update on the condition of #sergeiskripal or his daughter #YuliaSkripal As Russia is keen to point out neither have been seen since the fell ill 2 months ago — Rupert Evelyn (@rupertevelyn) May 1, 2018 None of that seems to matter though, as UK National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill knocked down any hope that the police were closer to catching the bad guys who attacked the Skripals. Asked by an MP at a Commons defence committee hearing if they knew who the individuals responsible were, his response was simple: “Not yet.” Even though Sedwill lacks any suspects, he still insists that Russia is the UK’s biggest threat. Sir Mark Sedwill, the national security adviser, tells the Defence Select Committee: "Russia is the primary strategic threat to the United Kingdom." Says he agrees Russia poses an "existential threat". — Jack Maidment (@jrmaidment) May 1, 2018 So will Sergei Skripal recover? Where’s Yulia? Who did it? Mysteriously, the updates on the Skripal saga have dried up. [Skripal]
• RussiaPhobia and the Skripal Affair: Where They Tell You Not to Look
  By Craig Murray Global Research, May 02, 2018 At the very beginning of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian. Gordon Corera, “BBC Security Correspondent”, did not name the source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a nice picture of MI6 Headquarters. MI6’s most important media conduit (after Frank Gardner) is Luke Harding of the Guardian. A number of people replied to Harding’s tweet to point out that this was demonstrably untrue, and Pablo Miller had listed his employment by Orbis Business Intelligence on his Linkedin profile. That profile had just been deleted, but a google search for “Pablo Miller” plus “Orbis Business Intelligence”, without Linkedin as a search term, brought up Miller’s Linkedin profile as the first result (although there are twelve other Pablo Millers on Linkedin and the search brought up none of them). Plus a 2017 forum discussed Pablo Miller’s Orbis connection and it both cited and linked to his Linkedin entry. [Russia confrontation] [Skripal] [Luke Harding]
• Corbyn should learn his lesson: compromise with the devil is not an option
  by Kit There are two kinds of compromise: the strong compromise, and the weak. The former is where you cede an interest to uphold a principle, the latter when you ignore your principles to further your interests. The first is an important tool in all aspects of life, the second should almost always be avoided. Jeremy Corbyn should learn that lesson. Twice in recent weeks Corbyn’s leadership has faced an opportunity to cede a point of principle in order to further – as they apparently see it – the interests of their party. Both times they have done so, both times were a huge mistake. [Jeremy Corbyn] [Appeasement]

• The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has become a ‘go to’ organisation for anti Chinese commentary
  John Menadue 28 April 2018 The important agents of influence in Australia are organisations linked ‘hip to hip’ to the US and its military/industrial complex. One of these is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute which is an enthusiastic supporter of almost all things American including its hostility to China. It pretends it is an independent think tank. It pretends it has China expertise. See below a slightly edited post of mine of September 6 2016 concerning ASPI . [China confrontation] [Australia] [Think tanks]
• Admiral Harris is not coming: does it matter?
  Richard Butler 26 April 2018 The decision by incoming US Secretary of State Pompeo, to withdraw the nomination of Admiral Harry Harris as US Ambassador to Australia, is something within his gift. Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull had fervently welcomed the proposed appointment. Presumably she and Malcolm Turnbull will now formulate ways in which to suggest that it’s of no particular consequence. Is it or does it reflect what America really thinks of us? [Harry Harris] [Australia] [Subaltern]
• After the hugs and kisses, Macron rips Trumpism
  Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN Updated 2027 GMT (0427 HKT) April 25, 2018 (CNN)Some bromance. France's President Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump skipped through Tuesday kissing, hugging, holding hands and rubbing each others' shoulders. On Wednesday, before a joint session of of Congress, the charismatic French leader turned around and repudiated the US President's political philosophy and worldview. The startling contrast between Macron palling around with Trump on a state visit and his velvet hammer speech -- effectively defending the world order from "America First" nationalism -- encapsulated his intricate US strategy. Trump signals possible breakthrough on Iran deal as US, Europe continue talks Trump signals possible breakthrough on Iran deal as US, Europe continue talks Macron wants to bind the Trump administration into the existing Western international system, to convince it to dive back into multilateral efforts to shut down Iran's nuclear program, to battle climate change and to safeguard globalization and free trade.
  But his capacity to maintain a friendly relationship with Trump will be severely tested if the President decides, despite his entreaties, to pull the US out of the current Iran nuclear deal and to press ahead with a trade war with Europe. In that sense, Macron's speech could also be seen as a possible attempt to insulate himself from any future political damage back home following his stunning love fest with Trump -- who is deeply unpopular in Europe -- on Wednesday. In remarks that will not be missed in London meanwhile, Macron, emerging as Europe's most dynamic leader, said the United States and France were locked in "this special relationship" -- using a term long adopted by America and Britain to define their close ties. [Macron] [Iran deal] [Special Relationship]
• What It Means When the U.S. President Conspicuously and Publicly Removes a Speck of Dandruff from the French President’s Lapel
  by Gary Leupp April 26, 2018 In their joint press conference Tuesday afternoon, President Trump initiated the event by noting the “special relationship” between the U.S. and France, and Emmanuel Macron and himself, adding, “In fact, let me get that little piece of dandruff off you,” as he used one of his famously small or large hands to do so. “We have to make him perfect,” said Trump, as though grooming a Mr. Universe. “He is perfect.” What does this fleeting moment in time mean? 1. It means that Trump likes to touch younger men on camera. That itself is not problematic in 2018. The cheek-kissing and Macron’s overt gesture of walking away from the press conference with his arm over Trump suggest a bromantic rapport which would not be problematic nor anybody’s business were it not based on layers of geopolitical strategizing. The question is why Macron submits so smoothly on the Iran language etc. 2. It means Trump is not germophobic. Real germaphobes typically don’t playfully flick off other men’s dead skin cells from their suit jackets. They think, Ew. 3. It means Trump feels the U.S. president can patronize allied leaders, and that they will respond with good-natured resignation recognizing global power realities. [Trump Macron]
• Sadiq Khan reacts to Donald Trump's planned visit as thousands pledge to take to the streets of London in protest
  • Robin De Peyer Sadiq Khan has warned Donald Trump he is set to face protests in London as thousands pledged to take to the streets after a date was set for the US President’s visit to the UK. Mr Trump will come to Britain on Friday, July 13, for a working visit rather than a full-blown "state visit" previously expected, it was announced on Thursday. The US President and London Mayor Mr Khan have publicly clashed over issues including terrorism and Islamophobia since Mr Trump took office. And after the date for the visit was revealed, Mr Khan suggested the Republican president should be braced for demonstrations against him. "If he comes to London, President Trump will experience an open and diverse city that has always chosen unity over division and hope over fear," Mr Khan said. "He will also no doubt see that Londoners hold their liberal values of freedom of speech very dear." Thousands of people have already pledged to take to the streets in protest when the President visits London in July. [Trump] [UK] [London]
• Will President Trump ever go to London? The saga of the special relationship’s long delayed visit.
  by Adam Taylor April 22 at 6:00 AM British Prime Minister Theresa May speaks alongside President Trump at a news conference Jan. 27, 2017, in the East Room of the White House. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News) Since he entered office last year, there has been persistent talk of President Trump visiting Britain. The United Kingdom is one of the United States’ strongest allies, and a trip to London is often on the schedule for any president. Like many of his predecessors, Trump has familial ties to Britain: His mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was born in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. But as his presidency approaches its 16th month, Trump still has not visited Britain. A Trump visit to Britain has never been officially scheduled. The problem may be a widespread animosity to Trump within the country. Despite his recently saying he was “very popular” in Britain, 67 percent of the British populace thinks he has been a “poor” or “terrible” president, according to one poll. [Theresa May] [Trump] [Special relationship]
• Greg Hamilton. Not much ado about a helluva lot.
  21 April 2018 A stage play that wouldn’t make it into an Australian theatre today caused a helluva stink back in 1962 and said some wise and courageous (aka shocking) things about the ‘most sacred day’ in our national calendar. The reasons it wouldn’t make it today say something tragic about us as a society of people. [Anzac Day] [Imperialism] [Subservience]
• Corbyn & the anti-semitism question
  by W. Stephen Gilbert It’s more than time to try to unpick the shemozzl of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party 1. Self-harming is ever Labour’s favourite activity, and those MPs determined to keep the row going have lost sight of the danger that what they wish for will hurt them more, that unseating Jeremy Corbyn will cost some of them their own seats and condemn us to Tory rule for the forseeable future. It is essential to get this thing back into perspective and to halt the misinformation over the issue both current and retrospective. It seems to me that there are five propositions on the table, four of which are simply not sustainable. They are: 1) anti-Semitism is rife throughout the Labour Party; 2) the left is innately anti-Semitic; 3) Jeremy Corbyn is complicit in anti-Semitism or at best complaisant in face of its incidence; 4) this controversy has been whipped up now in order to damage Corbyn; 5) charges of anti-Semitism in the party are wholly fabricated. Propositions 1) and 5) are mutually exclusive and, I submit, both untrue. The last is foolish and insensitive but needs to be put into focus. Anti-Semitism is never acceptable, any more than any other stance along a continuum from discrimination through irrational fear of difference to prejudice and hatred. The present tummel may make some agnostic voters imagine that anti-Semitism is peculiar to Labour. It is not. Other parties will be whispering to themselves “there but for the bias of the media go we”. None of this means that Labour have no job to do. But using Trumpian rhetoric such as “draining the swamp” is absurd. [Jeremy Corbyn] [Anti-Semitism] [False flag]
• Theresa May’s husband’s Investment Firm made a financial killing from the bombing of Syria
  By Tom D. Rogers - 17th April 2018 Theresa May's husband's Investment Firm made a financial killing from the bombing of Syria It is common knowledge that Theresa May’s husband Philip essentially acts as the unofficial advisor to the Prime Minister – a fact proven by the former Conservative MP for Chichester, Andrew Tyrie, who said during a Newsnight profile of the PM’s husband that “Philip is clearly acting as, informally, an advisor to Theresa. Probably much like Denis did to Margaret Thatcher.” Whilst it is pretty obvious that almost all married couples act as informal advisors to each other in come capacity, Tyrie’s admission that the Prime Minister’s husband has such a great influence over his wife’s decisions is made all the more worrying by the fact that Mr May – who is a Senior Executive at a £1.4Tn investment firm – stands to benefit financially from the decisions his wife, the Prime Minister, makes. The fact that Philip May is both a Senior Executive of a hugely powerful investment firm, and privy to reams of insider information from the Prime Minister – knowledge which, when it becomes public, hugely affects the share prices of the companies his firm invests in – makes Mr May’s official employment a staggering conflict of interest for the husband of a sitting Prime Minister. However, aside from the ease at which he is able to glean insider information from his wife about potential decisions which could go on to make huge profits for his firm, there is a far darker conflict of interest that has so far gone undiscussed. Philip May is a Senior Executive of Capital Group, an Investment Firm who buy shares in all sorts of companies across the globe – including thousands of shares in the world’s biggest Defence Firm, Lockheed Martin. [Theresa May] [Military Industrial complex] [Lockheed Martin] [Hype]
• Salisbury Nerve Agent Attack Reveals $70 Million Pentagon Program at Porton Down
  By Dilyana Gaytandzhieva Global Research, April 17, 2018 South Front 27 March 2018 The Pentagon has spent at least $70 million on military experiments involving tests with deadly viruses and chemical agents at Porton Down – the UK military laboratory near the city of Salisbury. The secretive biological and chemical research facility is located just 13 km from where on 4th March former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench following an alleged Novichok nerve agent poisoning. The Porton Down Lab is located just 13 km from the site where Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found and from where they were rushed to hospital. Information obtained from the US federal contracts registry reveals that the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has funded a number of military projects performed at the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), or Porton Down, over the last decade. Among them: experimental respiratory infection of non-human primates (marmosets) with Anthrax, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Western equine encephalitis virus, and Eastern equine encephalitis virus. The US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has also funded experiments on animals which were exposed to chemical agents such as Sulfur Mustard and Phosgene gas. Phosgene gas was used as a chemical weapon during World War I where it was responsible for about 85 % of the 100,000 deaths caused by chemical weapons. DTRA has also been granted full access to DSTL scientific and technical capabilities, and test data under a 2011 contract for the collaboration and exchange of scientific and technical capabilities with the UK Ministry of Defence [cbw] [Porton Down]
• Understanding Korea: Presentation & Launch
  Patriots, Traitors and Empires The Story of Korea's Struggle for Freedom Stephen Gowans
  Baraka Books is pleased to invite you to a presentation by Stephen Gowans and the launch of his new book, Patriots, Traitors and Empires, The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom, on Monday, May 7, at 7 pm at the Centre Saint-Pierre, Salle 200, 1212, rue Panet, à Montréal. For more than a century, Koreans have fought to free their country from foreign empires, first Japan, then the US. Gowans tells the story from the point of view of view of those who have fought for freedom: from the anti-colonial guerrilla war, through the partition of Korea engineered by the US and the conventional war (1950-53) up to the current confrontation…
  “Stephen Gowans has written a marvellous and incisive study of modern Korea.” — Professor Tim Beal, author of Crisis in Korea [Korea] [Imperialism] [History]
• Jeremy Corbyn calls Syria airstrikes legally questionable
  PM should have sought parliamentary approval before taking military action, says Labour leader Guardian staff Sat 14 Apr 2018 15.56 BST Parliament should have been consulted on Syria strikes, says Jeremy Corbyn – video Jeremy Corbyn has described airstrikes on Syria as legally questionable and accused Theresa May of “trailing after Donald Trump” in an attack that could escalate the conflict. The Labour leader was responding to the news that the US, UK and France launched airstrikes in Syria early on Saturday morning. Corbyn, who has called for an independent UN-led investigation of last week’s chemical weapons attack, said the prime minister should have sought parliamentary approval before launching the action. “Bombs won’t save lives or bring about peace,” Corbyn said. “This legally questionable action risks escalating further, as US defence secretary James Mattis has admitted, an already devastating conflict and therefore makes real accountability for war crimes and use of chemical weapons less, not more likely.” [Jeremy Corbyn] [Syria] [Attack180414] [Legality]
• Theresa May faces anger over Syria raids as Trump declares ‘mission accomplished’
  UK opposition leaders insist that parliament should have been consulted before airstrikes Toby Helm, Martin Chulov, Sabrina Siddiqui and Michael Savage Theresa May is facing a furious backlash from MPs after she ordered UK forces to join the US and France in targeted airstrikes on Syrian chemical weapons facilities early – without having gained the consent of parliament. Hours after four RAF Tornado GR4 fighter jets launched Storm Shadow missiles at a military facility 15 miles west of Homs, where the Assad regime is believed to stockpile the lethal weapons, the prime minister issued a passionate defence of the action, which she said had been taken for humanitarian reasons. Having been briefed by military advisers at Downing Street after the 2am strikes, May said that she was “confident” they had been successful. A Downing Street spokesman said May spoke to President Macron and President Trump yesterday afternoon and that they agreed the military strikes had been a success. “The prime minister welcomed the public support which had been given by fellow world leaders for the strong stand the UK, France and the United States had taken in degrading Syria’s chemical weapons capability and deterring their use, defending global rules, and sending a clear message that the use of chemical weapons can never become normalised.” Donald Trump struck a more triumphalist note. In a tweet he said: “A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine military. Could not have had a better result. Mission accomplished!” [Jeremy Corbyn] [Syria] [Attack180414] [Legality]
• Vanuatu : Chinese Cargo Cult ?
  Mack Williams 14 April 2018 Fairfax Media’s awakened interest in the South Pacific would have been only too welcome if it had not been sparked by a leak from the all too familiar ‘senior defence sources’ in Canberra and Washington which so distorted the scene. Apart from the speculative story suggesting an imminent agreement between Beijing and Port Vila to allow China to establish a “military base” in Vanuatu most of the reporting of Chinese activity in Vanuatu had been on the public record ( and recognised as background to the DFAT White Paper). The prominence which the reporting achieved and the “reds under the beds” impact it had on the Australian public needs to be assessed against the facts – as also do the reasons for the inspired leak . Michael O’Keeffe’s recent comprehensive article in The Correspondent has provided an excellent basis. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Vanuatu] [Base] [Evidence]
• . Response to rumours of a Chinese military base in Vanuatu speak volumes about Australian foreign policy
  Michael O’Keefe 13 April 2018 Rumour has it that Vanuatu has agreed to a Chinese request to establish a military base. The substance of this rumour is highly speculative at the least and disingenuous at most. Regardless of the truth, the fact that it raises alarm about the threat of Chinese military expansionism speaks volumes about Australian foreign policy, particularly toward the Pacific.It looks like another beat up in the anti China phobia [Australia] [China confrontation] [Vanuatu] [Base] [Evidence]
• Australian PM says foreign interference bill has soured ties with China
  Colin Packham Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged on Thursday that legislation aimed at preventing foreign interference in politics had soured ties with China, after a report Australian ministers were being denied Chinese visas. FILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ahead of G20 Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, September 4, 2016. REUTERS/Wang Zhao/Pool/File Photo Relations between Australia and its largest trading partner have been strained over the past year, partly over Australian concern about rising Chinese influence, which led to the introduction of legislation banning foreign political donations. The Australian Financial Review, citing unidentified sources, said this week China had denied visas to Australian government officials to attend a major annual trade show, denting close economic ties between the two countries. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Influence] [Allegiance]
• Macron Needs to Attack Syria: With or without the United States.
  By Benjamin Haddad | April 9, 2018, 8:17 PM “When you set out red lines, if you are unable to enforce them, then you decide to be weak,” French President Emmanuel Macron declared last summer. “Such is not my choice.” Macron’s repeated warnings that France was prepared to strike in case chemical weapons were used in Syria will be tested this week as at least 42 people have been found suffocated to death in rebel-held suburb of Douma by a chlorine like substance. On Sunday, President Donald Trump and Macron spoke on the phone and “agreed that the Assad regime must be held accountable for its continued human rights abuses.” Trump’s promises must be considered against the background of his recently stated intention to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria as soon as possible. It’s not clear whether France can count on the United States to commit to the enforcement of any red lines against the Assad regime. But this should only concentrate Macron’s mind. If the United States abstains, he should prepare, for the sake of not only his personal credibility, but French national interests, to strike alone. Since the beginning of his presidency, Macron has struggled to define a policy on Syria. He has generally been critical of his predecessors’ “neoconservative” interventionism, criticizing the 2011 intervention in Libya, in which France played a key role alongside the United Kingdom and the United States, and warning against the risk of failed states in the Middle-East. Macron has also rebuked the sweeping Syria policy he inherited. [Macron] [Syria] [False flag] [Bizarre]
• Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Muslim-Australian Activist, Denied Entry to U.S.
  By Isabella Kwai April 11, 2018 Photo Yassmin Abdel-Magied, center, at a literature festival in Jaipur, India, last year. Credit Vishal Bhatnagar/NurPhoto, via Getty Images SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s most prominent female Muslim activist, an outspoken critic of her country’s immigration policies, was denied entry into the United States on Wednesday. Yassmin Abdel-Magied, 27, an award-winning author and broadcaster, was scheduled to speak next week at the Pen World Voices Festival in New York. When she arrived in Minneapolis around 4 p.m., she said on Twitter, she was detained by border agents. “I’m currently at the border and they’ve said I’m being deported,” Ms. Abdel-Magied wrote on Twitter. “This should be fun. What are my rights?” The agents, she said, told her they had canceled her visa and required her to return to London, where she currently lives. [Islamophobia] [Free speech] [Incompetence]
• Video: Dr. Chris Busby on Novichoks and the Skripal Russia Poisoning Affair
  By Prof. Christopher Busby Global Research, April 09, 2018 Dr Busby says a few words about the Russian Nerve Agent issue. He speaks as an expert in this area. Chris worked for several years at the famous Wellcome Research laboratories in Beckenham, London as a Senior Scientist in the Department of Physical Chemistry. His job, at the basic level, was to help determine the structure and origin of pharmaceutical compounds. So, he is an expert in this area. He also carried out similar work at Queen Mary College London for his first PhD and synthesised complex organic chemicals. From that, he relates that the synthesis of a specific small organic chemical like the supposed Novichoks is not very difficult. Most synthetic organic chemists could knock up small quantities of the 234 compound, given the structure. Mainly, there is no way that the compound that was detected in the Skripal attack could be traced to a Russian laboratory (or any laboratory) by any lab unless the lab already had a sample known to come from the Russian laboratory (or the source laboratory). The determination and identification methods mainly depend on mass spectrometric fragmentation patterns, and include the spectrum of stray molecular fragments from impurities associated with the synthesis route. This is how Wellcome located Patent jumping, and took this evidence (from Busby and colleagues) into the courts. All chemists know this, and that is why the Porton head said what he said, as any chemist would have been able to raise this issue and show that he was lying, if he said anything else. It is basic physical chemistry. So, the new headline in the Times, about a secret Russian laboratory is also bogus. What is also clear is that the mass spectrum of the A234 compound was put on the NIST database in 1998 by a worker from the USA chemical warfare laboratory. Chris therefore concludes that this whole affair is a tissue of lies and misdirection, rather like the WMD Iraq scenario and is aimed at creating a war with Russia that no one can win and where all life will lose. Why is this being done? Because the only way for the rich and powerful to escape the coming US Economic catastrophe caused by the destruction of the petrodollar is to pull the house down and hope to escape in the general confusion and disaster from the wreckage. [Skripal] [Evidence]
• The Skripal syllogism
  "There is no other plausible conclusion" Theresa May This is how the government used evidence and logic to conclude that Russia is guilty. 1. WHEN did the Skripal poisoning occur? Don't know. The Skripals were, according to Theresa May, poisoned by a military grade nerve agent. They were found slumped on a park bench after four in the afternoon on Sunday 4 March. There has been much speculation in the media, filling the vacuum left by the absence of facts. It has been suggested that they were poisoned at Mr Skripal's home, which they left at nine in the morning. If this is the case, they were infected by a military grade nerve agent, eight times more toxic than VX, which would have affected them virtually instantaneously and killed them in less than two minutes, and yet remained symptom-free for over seven hours. Other suggestions include the air conditioning unit in Mr Skripal's car, or on a city street, or in the pub they visited or in the restaurant where they had lunch. All of these share the problem of the delayed effect. Another suggestion is that they were poisoned at the park bench. This has the merit of getting rid of the miraculous delay, but it does not explain why they did not die, nor does it explain the fact that the doctor on the scene did not become ill. The simple fact is that Theresa May does not know when the Skripals were poisoned. It could have happened any time between before nine in the morning and four in the afternoon. That's a seven hour window. [Skripal] [Evidence]
• Skripal case: Russia counter-attacks; Britain responds by tightening access to Yulia Skripa
  by Alexander Mercouris Britain struggles to respond to Russia’s diplomatic counter-offensive, stonewalls all Russian attempts to gain access to Yulia Skripal If during the first three weeks of the Skripal crisis it was the British who made the running, over the last two weeks the initiative has slowly shifted to the Russians. As is often the way, the Russians – caught by surprise by a crisis that seemed to come out of nowhere – initially responded reactively. However as the weeks have passed they have gradually found their footing, and are now starting to score points. By contrast it is the British – who apparently assumed that following the diplomatic expulsions the crisis would subside – who now look increasingly on the blackfoot as, contrary to their expectations, the Russians refuse to let the matter rest. The result has been bitter recriminations in the British media – with much of the blame being placed on Boris Johnson – a flood of not always very consistent or convincing leaks to the media trying to bolster the British case, and ever more shrill denunciations of the supposedly ‘useful idiots’ who express doubts about it. With hindsight the Russians took one step in the early days of the crisis which has paid handsome dividends. This was their insistence – made as early as the UN Security Council session of 14th March 2018 – that Britain follow the procedures of the Chemical Weapons Convention and obtain confirmation from the OPCW of the nature of the poison used in the attack. [Skripal] [OPCW]
• Viktor Orban, after soaring to reelection win in Hungary, to target George Soros and NGOs
  Hungary's anti-migrant leader Orban wins a third term Hungary's right-wing, anti-migrant prime minister, Viktor Orban, was reelected on April 8 after his Fidesz party took two-thirds of the seats in parliament. (Reuters) By James McAuley April 9 at 2:39 PM Email the author BUDAPEST — Almost immediately, the fear and anxiety were palpable. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s strongman, right-wing prime minister, soared to reelection victory on Sunday with a powerful supermajority in parliament — precisely the margin he needed to continue an overhaul of the country’s democratic constitution and system of checks and balances. On Monday morning, hours after the election results were announced, Orban’s representatives announced one of the first orders of business: What they are calling the “Stop Soros” bill is designed to crack down on liberal nongovernmental organizations, think tanks and other institutions that, in the eyes of the government, have worked against their agenda and on behalf of the migrants Orban seeks to keep out. “Soros” refers to George Soros, the Hungarian American and Jewish financier, government-accountability advocate and pro-migrant philanthropist, whom Orban has cast as an evil puppet master, pulling strings that spell Hungary’s demise. [Hungary] [Orban] [Soros]
• UK’s Russia Narrative: A Verdict in Search of a Crime
  April 7, 2018 British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is on increasingly shaky ground when it comes to his bombastic accusations against Russia in the Skripal case, comments Caitlin Johnstone By Caitlin Johnstone Two weeks ago, the Right Honourable Boris Johnson was asked by a German journalist how the UK government could be so very certain so very early on that the Kremlin was behind the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury. “When I look at the evidence, the people from Porton Down, the laboratory, they were absolutely categorical,” Johnson replied. “I asked the guy myself, I said: ‘Are you sure?’ And he said: ‘There’s no doubt.’ So we have very little alternative but to take the action that we have taken.” The “action that we have taken” include the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats from the United Kingdom, a cold war escalation in which they were joined by many allied governments around the world in the largest collective ejection of Russian diplomats in world history. It would also include Johnson’s personal campaign to unite the EU behind a more aggressive stance against Russia. [Skripal]
• April 6, 2018 The Economics Behind the Skripal Poisoning
  by The Hudson Report Left Out, a podcast produced by Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri, and Dante Dallavalle, creates in-depth conversations with the most interesting political thinkers, heterodox economists, and organizers on the Left. The Hudson Report is a new weekly series produced by Left Out with the legendary economist Michael Hudson. Every episode we cover an economic or political issue that is either being ignored—or hotly debated—that week in the press. In this episode we discuss the economic and political implications of the attempted murder of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. We also touch upon the long history of collaboration between Russian oligarchs and Western banks and how it fits into the larger neoliberal project pursued after the collapse of the Soviet Union. [Skripal] [Russia confrontation] [Banking]
• The Rapidly Evolving Skripal Story: Evidence of the Destruction of an Anglo-American Plan
  by James O’Neill On 4th of March 2018 former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were found on a park bench in Salisbury England at 16. 15 hours in an unconscious state. They were tended to by a number of passers by who included a doctor, an off duty nurse and some civilians. It was not known at that stage what had caused the Skripal’s illness. No one had any reason to believe that they were the victims of any nerve agent, and accordingly took no precautions against such a possibility. Despite the very well documented dangers of even casual contact with nerve agents, none of those helpful citizens suffered any ill-effects. [Skripal]
• A Very British Farce
  Mark J. Doran wrote this very British farce.
  SERGEI: I'm not dead!
  MORTICIAN: What?
  CUSTOMER: Nothing - here's your ninepence.
  SERGEI: I'm not dead!
  MORTICIAN: Here - he says he's not dead!
  CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. The 'Times' said so. March 12th. Front page. Trust me: he's dead.
  SERGEI: I'm not!
  MORTICIAN: He isn't.
  CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. It was a Novichok nerve agent. There's no treatment, and no recovery is possible.
  SERGEI: It was just the prawns, that's all! I'm getting better!
  CUSTOMER: No, you are not. It was 'military grade', 8 times stronger than VX. You were dead in seconds.
  MORTICIAN: Oh, I can't take him like that - it's against regulations.
  SERGEI: How's my daughter? And what about my pets?
  CUSTOMER: Oh, don't be such a baby.
  MORTICIAN: I can't take him ...
  SERGEI: I feel fine! I want to go back to Russia!
  CUSTOMER: Oh, do us a favor ...
  MORTICIAN: I can't.
  CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won't be long. We've someone coming over ...
  MORTICIAN: I think I'll write a letter to the 'Times'.
  CUSTOMER: No you bloody won't. Look at the trouble the last one caused.
  b adds: Yes, the scene is somewhat familiar. Thank god that the 'morticians' at the Salisbury District Hospital were less bribable than Monty Python's medieval undertaker. [Skripal]
• Update to briefing note ‘Doubts about Novichoks’
  Posted on April 1, 2018 by timhayward The following is an update to the briefing note of 14 March 2018 from the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and media. (Readers’ comments on this update can be made here.) Authors: Paul McKeigue, Jake Mason and Piers Robinson Introduction In view of the seriousness of the rapidly worsening relations between the West and Russia, and the quickly evolving military events in the Middle East, especially Syria, we have taken the step to publish relevant evidence-based analysis with respect to the Skripal incident of 4 March 2018. This update to our earlier briefing note covers new material that has become available. We welcome comments and corrections which can be sent to piers.robinson@sheffield.ac.uk or provided in the Comments section below. Key Points There is no corroboration of Mirzayanov’s story of a secret Russian “Novichoks” programme to develop a new class of nerve agents, although the compounds described in his book in 2008 are real structures. There is evidence that the US government has concealed what it knows about these compounds: specifically A record in a public database showing that one of these compounds had been synthesized around 1998 by the US Army’s chemical defence lab (Edgewood) has been deleted When the structures of these compounds were published in 2008 the US government sought to discourage discussions of the matter at OPCW and another international forum for chemical weapons prohibition. The UK government has asserted that “No country bar Russia has combined capability, intent and motive” to carry out the Salisbury poisonings. Published studies show that these compounds can be synthesized at bench scale (sufficient for an assassination) in other countries. The UK government’s declared case therefore rests only on subjective judgements of “intent and motive”, which are open to question. [Skripal] [Evidence]
• How did ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter survive nerve-agent poisoning?
  By William Booth and Karla Adam April 6 at 2:55 PM Email the author LONDON — It is an indelicate question, but why aren’t the Skripals dead? The former Russian double agent attacked by a military-grade nerve agent a month ago is no longer in critical condition, his doctors said Friday, having joined his daughter in a recovery that could lead to the pair helping investigators solve the mystery of exactly how, where and by whom they were poisoned. Sergei Skripal, 66, is “responding well to treatment, improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition,” said Christine Blanshard, medical director at Salisbury District Hospital. The ex-spy’s 33-year-old daughter, Yulia Skripal, was also poisoned, but her condition had improved to stable last week. Yulia Skripal is speaking, issuing statements and allegedly talking to relatives back home in Russia on the telephone. 3:38 How the world learned about Novichok, Russia’s secret, deadly nerve agent In 1992, two Russian scientists approached The Post’s Will Englund, then the Moscow correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, with news of a secret nerve agent. (Joyce Lee, Will Englund/The Washington Post) “As Yulia herself says, her strength is growing daily and she can look forward to the day when she is well enough to leave the hospital,” her doctor said. How can this be? As the Russian government has asked, in its campaign to discredit British assertions that Russia was behind the attack, why didn’t the Skripals collapse immediately if they were poisoned by a powerful nerve agent? If they came into contact with the agent at their doorstep, how did they have the ability to first go to a pub and a restaurant before they succumbed [Skripal]
• Russia 'tested using nerve agent which poisoned spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on door handles'
  Russia has explored carrying out assassinations by using Novichok on handles Police have already said they believe nerve agent was smeared on Skripal's BMW British intelligence agencies have evidence of the tactics being used previously Agents claim to know Moscow also tested the lethal poison on ‘everyday objects’ By Larisa Brown Defence And Security Editor For The Daily Mail Published: 08:23 AEST, 5 April 2018 | Updated: 10:13 AEST, 5 April 2018 Russia has explored carrying out assassinations by placing nerve agent Novichok on door handles, the Daily Mail can reveal. Police have already disclosed they believe Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury after the poison was smeared on the double agent’s front door. Now British intelligence agencies have evidence that Russia had been testing the deadly agent specifically on door handles in the run-up to the attack on March 3. Agents also have highly sensitive information showing Moscow tested the poison on other ‘everyday objects’, it emerged last night. A security source said: ‘We have intelligence that goes beyond Russia made Novichok and stockpiled it. 'We have evidence that they also explored using it as an assassination weapon including on areas such as door handles and everyday objects.’ The detail was one of several crucial pieces of evidence that led the UK government to determine that it was ‘highly likely’ that Vladimir Putin’s regime was behind the attack. Sources also revealed last night that foreign intelligence agencies have been passing top-secret information to the UK that pointed the finger at the Kremlin. While it is not known what intelligence has been given to British agencies, or which countries supplied it, the information was said to have added further weight to the UK’s dossier on the attack. Sources said all the evidence amassed by intelligence agencies, the military, and the Government laid the blame firmly at Russia’s door. They would not say when the evidence of Russia testing Novichok on door handles had come to light for security reasons – confirming only that the details had been unearthed in ‘recent times’. A source said this key evidence had been handed over to Britain’s allies in a move described as unprecedented intelligence sharing. [Skripal] [Intelligence]
• The Skripal case and the misuse of ‘intelligence’
  by Alexander Mercouris at the Duran As the Novichok ‘evidence’ collapses, the criminal investigation into the Skripal attack has become corrupted The events of the last few days in the Skripal case provide an object lesson of why in criminal investigations the rules of due process should always be adhered to. The reason the British now find themselves in difficulties is because they have not adhered to them. This despite the fact that – as they all too often like to remind us – it was the British themselves who largely created them. The single biggest unexplained mystery about the Skripal case is why it attracted so much attention so quickly. Within hours of Sergey and Yulia Skripal being found passed out on a bench the British media were feverishly speculating that they had been poisoned by Russia. [Skripal]
• Skripal's Niece Alleges UK 'Must Have Something to Hide' After Being Denied Visa
  UK authorities have denied an entry visa to the niece of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal saying her visa application as it "did not comply with the Immigration Rules." Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said to Rossiya 1 TV channel that Moscow wants London to explain why it had refused to issue a visa to Victoria Skripal, who sought to visit her cousin Yulia who's in hospital in the UK town of Salisbury. The Russian Embassy has also commented on the issue, saying that the UK authorities' justification to reject Victoria Skripal's visa application doesn't hold up against criticism. Commenting on the reports that Russian state was looking to use Yulia Skripal's cousin as a "pawn," Zakharova dismissed insinuations that Victoria Skripal was linked to the Kremlin. "Although this is utter absurdity, but we have already heard hundreds of such absurd statements from Britain," she said. A government source said Victoria Skripal was refused a visa under established processes. "It appears the Russian state is trying to use Victoria as a pawn," the source said. "If she is being influenced or coerced by the Kremlin, she has become another victim." — James Landale (@BBCJLandale) 6 ?????? 2018 ?. The UK authorities denied issuing a visa for Victoria Skripal on "the grounds that her application did not comply with the Immigration Rules." Following the announcement, Viktoria Skripal alleged in an interview with the Sky News that "the British must have something to hide." The former spy's niece earlier said she had doubts that the UK government would grant her a visa. She said on Rossiya 1 TV channel's 60 minutes program on Thursday that she would like to go to Britain and take her cousin Yulia back home. [Skripal] [Coverup] [Human rights]
• What exactly is happening at Salisbury hospital?
  The UK has public said it is looking for “transparency” in the Skripal investigation. Currently this seems no more true than any other part of the UK’s narrative. In fact the opposite would seem to be the case. The situation with the Skripals in regard to Salisbury NHS Trust hopsital is particularly opaque as things stand. Just to quickly recap. 1. The March 22 High Court judgment by Mr Justice Williams makes it clear the UK govt lawyers were trying to minimise or even deny the existence of the Skripals’ Russian relatives, claiming there was very little evidence there even were any such relatives, even after Sergey’s niece Viktoria had been interviewed by UK media outlets, and using this fabricated “lack of evidence” as a reason for not contacting the relatives or involving them in considerations of Yulia Skripals’ welfare. 2. The Russian embassy has repeatedly said it is being illegally denied access to the Skripals, and there is evidence the pair have been denied due process. 3. There are claims Yulia’s Russian cellphone has been disconnected or denied service. 4. The alleged phone call (on a “temporary phone”) from Yulia to her cousin Viktoria on April 4, if genuine, implies this reluctance to involve the relatives may be extending into discouraging or even denying Yulia access to her family in Russia. 5. The alleged statement issued by the Metropolitan Police on Yulia’s “behalf” only hours after the details of the above phone call were published has puzzled some people. It is quite generic and broadly similar in terms of sentiment (thanks to hospital and people of Salisbury, request for privacy etc) to the statement allegedly made by DS Bailey after his alleged recovery in late March. Did Yulia contribute to that statement? Does it reflect her real feelings or opinions? Why can’t we hear her own words? [Skripal]
• The Empire Strikes Backwards
  by John Helmer, Moscow, April 5, 2018 Empires are just like everything else going down the toilet. Bits always stick on the porcelain which require more flushing. Embarrassing bits. Now in its fifth week since the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on March 4, the bits that cannot be flushed away are producing an odour whose obviousness is embarrassing for Salisbury Hospital and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The hospital is treating the Skripals for their medical welfare and is required by hospital policy and UK law to be accountable to their next of kin. Their rights of access to and from the hospital are also required by European Human Rights Convention. The evidence now accumulating is that the hospital is detaining and isolating the Skripals against their will, preventing contact with their family. Requested to explain this and identify her legal authority, the response of the hospital’s chief executive, Cara Charles-Barks, is to stonewall. [Skripal]
• Yulia Skripal phone call to Viktoria
  Transcript of recorded conversation Viktoria: Hello? "Yulia": Hello. Can you hear me? Viktoria: Yes, I can hear you. "Yulia": It is Yulia Skripal. Viktoria: Oh, Yulka [diminutive of Yulia] it's you! I can tell it's you from your voice but I don't understand. So, they gave you a telephone, did they? "Yulia": Yes, yes. Viktoria: Thanks God! Yulyasha [diminutive of Yulia], is everything okay? [Skripal]
• The Empire Strikes Backwards
  by John Helmer, Moscow, April 5, 2018 Empires are just like everything else going down the toilet. Bits always stick on the porcelain which require more flushing. Embarrassing bits. Now in its fifth week since the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on March 4, the bits that cannot be flushed away are producing an odour whose obviousness is embarrassing for Salisbury Hospital and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The hospital is treating the Skripals for their medical welfare and is required by hospital policy and UK law to be accountable to their next of kin. Their rights of access to and from the hospital are also required by European Human Rights Convention. The evidence now accumulating is that the hospital is detaining and isolating the Skripals against their will, preventing contact with their family. Requested to explain this and identify her legal authority, the response of the hospital’s chief executive, Cara Charles-Barks, is to stonewall. [Skripal] [OPCW] [UNUS]
• Sergei Skripal's cat and guinea pigs die after police seal house
  Two guinea pigs found dead at Salisbury home of ex-spy while a cat needed to be put down Haroon Siddique and Luke Harding Fri 6 Apr 2018 14.05 BST First published on Fri 6 Apr 2018 10.46 BST Two guinea pigs belonging to Sergei Skripal died and his cat was put down after the Salisbury nerve agent attack, the government has revealed. A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the dead guinea pigs and a “distressed” cat were discovered when a vet was able to enter Skripal’s home, which had been sealed off during the police investigation. Defra said it believed the guinea pigs had died of thirst. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain in hospital more than a month after the attack on 4 March. In its latest update, NHS England said the former Russian spy’s condition was critical but stable.
• Russia's envoy comments on statement for UNSC and London's 'dirty games'
  April 06, 8:15 UTC+3 Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a so-called Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident Matt Dunham UN, April 6. /TASS/. Moscow has prepared a draft statement for the UN Security Council, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said Thursday, adding that London and its allies would demonstrate their reluctance to get to the truth with regard to the episode in the British city of Salisbury unless they support it. "We have prepared a draft statement for the Council. It will be a litmus test as to whether the UK and its allies are true to their words," he said. Rejecting that test will be a confirmation of their "dirty games," the diplomat added. On March 4, Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a so-called Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that a program aimed at developing such a substance had existed neither in the Soviet Union nor in Russia. [Skripal] [UNSC]
• As Security Council debates Salisbury chemical attack, Russia calls accusation absurd; UK stands by charge
  5 April 2018 Peace and Security During a heated debate in the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, Russia again rejected allegations levelled by the United Kingdom that Moscow was behind a deadly nerve-agent attack in the English city of Salisbury on 4 March. Russia “is not responsible” for the attack in Salisbury, that country's Ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said, stressing that the origin of the substance used in the incident has not been confirmed. Today’s meeting, requested by Russia, took place amid expectations that the results of tests of samples collected from individuals exposed to a nerve agent in Salisbury will be known by early next week. The United Kingdom sent the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) samples of the nerve agent within days of the incident, which left Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, hospitalized. After the incident, the UK wrote a letter to the UN Security Council, stating that it was “highly likely” that Russia was behind the incident using deadly nerve-agent Novichok. At the 14 March Security Council meeting requested by the UK, Russia – a State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) – firmly denied the allegations. The Convention, which came into force in 1997, outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors. At today’s meeting, Mr. Nebenzia accused the UK of engaging in a “theatre of the absurd,” and wondered why Russia would want to wage such an attack, eight years after Mr. Skripal was granted amnesty, and before the Russian presidential elections and the 2018 World Cup soccer event. Further, the Russian delegate said that his country does not have a copyright on Novichok and that line of toxic substances has been developed in many countries, including the United States and the UK. “Yet people are demanding that the Russian Federation acknowledged its guilt,” he said. His delegation has prepared a draft statement for the Council that will be a litmus test as to whether the UK and its allies are true to their words; rejecting that test will be a confirmation of their “dirty games,” he added. At an OPCW Executive Council special meeting on Wednesday, Russia proposed a joint investigation with the UK, which was rejected by the UK and its allies. Speaking after Mr. Nebenzia was UK Ambassador to UN, Karen Pierce, who said that her Government’s investigations into the use of chemical weapons involved 250 police detectives interviewing more than 500 witnesses, supported by a range of experts and partners that have gone through more than 5,000 hours of video footage. A military-grade nerve agent – a weapon of mass destruction – has been used in an attempt to kill civilians on British soil in a reckless fashion, she said. Telling the meeting that she would “take no lectures” from Moscow, Ms. Pierce said: “There is one country, Russia, which is playing a fast and loose with our collective security and the international institutions that protect us.” Noting that Yulia is now able to communicate and is getting better, Ms. Pierce said that the UK Government received a request from the Russian consulate for access to Yulia, which was already conveyed to her. [Skripal] [UNSC]
• Memory-Holing the “novichok” lie – we need to make sure that doesn’t happen
  With the announcement by Porton Down they they can’t – as most of us already guessed – identify the alleged “novichok” type poison that allegedly harmed the Skripals as being of Russian origin, certain things will inevitably follow. 1. The stunned silence while the mainstream media awaits guidelines on how to handle this unexpected intrusion of reality into the narrative 2. A subsequent massive retrenchment, in which recent history is re-shaped, language tortured, tweets deleted and an entire narrative is Memory-Holed before our eyes. The second part is already happening, and will develop over the next few days. Today’s EU statement to the OPCW shows the way. The UK’s flagrant hysteria of the last weeks, the war cries and spittle-flecked abuse is all being airbrushed away and being replaced with the idea the UK simply requested Russian co-operation and Russia refused – preferring to make nasty insinuations instead. [Skripal]
• Skripal case: belief in Russia’s guilt looks to be based not on evidence but on a guess
  by Alexander Mercouris at the Duran British authorities admit have no proof poison made in Russia; entire case against Russia based on a classified assessment On the eve of the meeting of the OPCW’s executive council – convened by Russia and scheduled for tomorrow – we have had a highly revealing succession of statements about the Skripal case from the British authorities. The one which is attracting the most attention is the admission by Gary Aitkenhead, chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down, that whilst British scientists are able to confirm that the poison used in the attack and Sergey and Yulia Skripal was a ‘military grade’ Novichok type substance (the Russian authorities say the British have told them it is A-234), they cannot confirm that it was produced in Russia. [Skripal] [Evidence]
• UK Govt rewords ambassador’s March 22 speech – makes it appear he DIDN’T say the novichok came from Russia – but he DID & there’s proof
  British Ambassador to Russia Dr Laurie Bristow briefed the international diplomatic community in Moscow on the UK Government response to the Salisbury attack, March 22 2018. The tweets have been scrubbed, spokespeople are currently lying or weasel-wording, but here are his own words. Here is the relevant section of Bristow’s words as they clearly appear in this footage and as the caption renders them: “…There is also no doubt that the Novichok was produced in Russia by the Russian state. This is how his words are being rendered on the UK government site – note the all-important missing “the”: By removing that “the”, which is beyond doubt there in the original, they are morphing Bristow’s statement from a direct accusation about “the” novichok allegedly used to poison the Skripals, into a general statement about the generic origin of the novichok class of nerve agents [Skripal] [Evidence] [Spin] [Language]
• ‘Orbanomics’: A Miracle for Hungary, or a Mirage?
  By Patrick Kingsley and Benjamin Novak April 3, 2018 Photo A national workfare program has found jobs for 73 of the 472 residents of Siklosnagyfalu, Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orban is trumpeting such economic improvements as he runs for re-election. Credit Akos Stiller for The New York Times SIKLOSNAGYFALU, Hungary — In seeking re-election, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orban, claims to have conjured an economic miracle since taking office eight years ago. One village shows he is right — and wrong. After winning power in 2010, Mr. Orban implemented a vast workfare program in which menial tasks have been given to hundreds of thousands of jobseekers — including 73 of the 472 residents of Siklosnagyfalu, a village near the southern border. As a result, there are roughly half as many jobseekers in the village as there were before Mr. Orban took office. (Over the same period, the national unemployment rate has fallen to 3.8 percent from 11.4 percent.) But the woolly nature of the jobs program in Siklosnagyfalu and hundreds of similar towns has left critics asking whether all is really as it seems — and whether workfare participants are really working. In the summer, program participants in Siklosnagyfalu are kept busy, said Gyongyi Orgyan, who takes part in a farming project. Photo In Siklosnagyfalu, a village near the southern border, the workfare program has included public improvement projects. Credit Akos Stiller for The New York Times But in winter, “there really isn’t that much work,” said Ms. Orgyan, 56. “There are days when we don’t do anything.” Mr. Orban has relentlessly transformed Hungary’s political system and remade the country's institutions and society — efforts that have been roundly condemned by democracy advocates. But the prime minister’s allies say that Hungarians really care about his successful stewardship of the economy and that “Orbanomics” will most likely decide the election on Sunday. [Orban] [Hungary] [Public opinion] [Election] [Media]
• Russia demands UN Security Council session over Skripal case April 5
  Russian Politics & Diplomacy April 04, 19:31 UTC+3 Russia has asked the UN Security Council president to convene an open session UNITED NATIONS, April 4./TASS/. Russia demands that an open session of the UN Security Council be convened on Thursday over the Skripal poisoning case, Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told a Security Council session on Wednesday. "In keeping with the shared by us principle that the use of chemical weapons by anyone and anywhere is inadmissible and must be investigated and punished, that impunity is inadmissible and the use of such weapons poses the risk of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, we, acting at our government’s instructions, ask you to convene an open session of the UN Security Council tomorrow afternoon, at 15:00 (22:00 Moscow time)," he said addressing to the UN Security Council president. [Skripal] [UNSC]
• Senior Russian diplomat says impossible to trust London in investigating Skripal case
  Russian Politics & Diplomacy April 04, 18:12 UTC+3 Only an independent probe by experts can establish the truth, Sergei Ryabkov said MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. It is totally impossible to trust Great Britain in investigating the Skripal incident, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS on Wednesday. "There is no trust in Great Britain, it is impossible to trust London, given its continuous misconduct and the unacceptable rhetoric against Russia, which is beyond the pale," he said. Only an independent probe by experts into the poisoning of former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain’s Salisbury can establish the truth, according to Ryabkov. "Our proposal (made at Wednesday’s special meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) was the organization’s Executive Council should agree on creation of an independent panel of experts empowered to look into all circumstances of the case," Ryabkov said. "Only thorough examination of all facts and circumstances with our representatives taking part will ensure truly unbiased probe into truth. This is the gist of our proposal, no more, no less." [Skripal] [Evidence]
• Anti-Russia accusations over Skripal case now facing powerful evidence to the contrary
  Russian Politics & Diplomacy April 03, 23:54 UTC+3 The kremlin says the United Kingdom’s accusations against Russia on the so-called Skripal case coming up against powerful evidence that counters those claims ANKARA, April 3. /TASS/. The United Kingdom’s accusations against Russia on the so-called Skripal case coming up against powerful evidence that counters those claims, Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. "The situation was abominable from the very beginning. And now evidence has surfaced that these insane accusations voiced by the British side just a few hours after the incident are based on nothing. The evidence from experts, which is entirely official, serves an eloquent validation," he told journalists commenting on Sky News recent reports on the Salisbury incident. "More of this direct or indirect evidence about the absurdity of the British side’s position will inevitably surface," Peskov stressed. "Now the question is what the British side used as grounds [for hurling accusation against Russia]. The British side must answer." He recalled that this matter would be discussed at a session of the Organizations for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) convened at Russia’s initiative. [Skripal] [Evidence] [Aitkenhead]
• MOFA condemns Russia’s involvement in poisoning of ex-intelligence agent in UK
  Publication Date: April 02, 2018 | A+ The MOFA stands with the international community in condemning Russia’s involvement in the poisoning attack of former intelligence agent Sergei Skripal, his daughter and countless innocent citizens in the British city of Salisbury. (MOFA) Russia’s involvement in the poisoning attack of former intelligence agent Sergei Skripal, his daughter and countless innocent citizens in the British city of Salisbury is of deep concern and condemned by the government, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs March 31. This incident violates international law and British sovereignty, MOFA Minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu said. Taiwan firmly believes in the value of human rights and rule of law, and urges Russia to avoid any further actions that would be of detriment to the international community, he added. [Taiwan] [Skripal] [Russia confrontation] [US dominance]
• Chemical weapons watchdog to meet on poisoned ex-spy case
  Military personnel in protective suits remove a police car and other vehicles from a public car park as they continue investigations into the poisoning of Sergei Skripal on March 11, 2018 in Salisbury, England. MOSCOW -- The global chemical weapons watchdog agency has said it will meet Wednesday to discuss Britain's U.S.-backed allegation that Russia is responsible for the poisoning of a former double agent in England. Russia requested the meeting and has demanded an "unbiased investigation" by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). In a statement released Tuesday, the OPCW confirmed that its Executive Council had received the request from the Russian representative to the group and that, "the confidential meeting will start at 10.00 am (0400 Eastern) at the OPCW's headquarters in The Hague." [OPCW] [Skripal]
• Hillary Clinton Ordered Diplomats To Suppress 'Novichok' Discussions
  While the last act of the 'Novichok' drama, the seasonally appropriate resurrection of the Skripals, proceeds, some additional details of the history of 'Novichok' nerve agents come to light. Details on 'Novichok' nerve agents were published in a 2007 book by Vil Mirzayanaov, a Soviet scientist offered asylum in the United States. After the publication the U.S. and the UK actively suppressed international discussions about the book and the 'Novichok' chemical weapon agents. Documents from the U.S. State Department published by Wikileaks show that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directed her diplomats to not talk about Novichok and to play down the matter should it arise in chemical weapon control talks. [Skripal] [Novichok]
• The physics behind this odd-looking, ‘stormproof umbrella’ from the Netherlands
  by Peter Holley March 30 at 8:30 AM Email the author Created by a Dutch student in 2006, the Senz umbrella is designed to redirect gusts of wind. The umbrella is popular in Europe, but remains relatively unknown in the United States. (Senz) There are few places in the world more hazardous for umbrellas than the Netherlands, a country under constant assault by stiff winds and pelting rain. Like many Dutch natives, Gerwin Hoogendoorn had grown accustomed to replacing broken umbrellas after storms. But after losing three umbrellas in a week, Hoogendoorn — a master’s student studying industrial design and engineering at the time — decided he’d had enough. “After doing some research I discovered 1.1 billion umbrellas are thrown away each year — the equivalent weight of 70,000 elephants,” the 38-year-old said. “I was fed up and I decided I had to solve this problem.” After analyzing dozens of broken umbrellas he’d collected from trash bins after rain storms, Hoogendoorn had an epiphany: The key to designing a better umbrella wasn’t blocking the wind, but using it to his advantage. A year-round windsurfer since the age of eight, Hoogendoorn realized he understood this concept instinctively. With little more than some glue and his grandmother’s sewing machine, an early prototype of the Senz umbrella was born. Capable of withstanding gusts up to 70 mph — according to the company — the aerodynamic umbrella looks like some combination of a Stealth bomber and a Batman cape and is designed to stabilize in high winds instead of crumpling. [Netherlands]

• Some Further Thoughts on the Skripal Affair
  Barrister at Law James O’Neill offers some thoughts on the Skripal case and the recent judgement by Mr Justice Williams in the High Court another restaurant photo of Sergey and Yulia Skripal Let the jury consider the verdict” the King said. “No, No” said the Queen: “sentence first, verdict afterwards”. “Stuff and nonsense” said Alice. The furore surrounding the alleged nerve gas poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia shows no signs of abating. It continuously puts one in mind of the quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland at the head of this article. For those of us with fond of memories of some of the traditional virtues of common-law justice, such as the presumption of innocence, the onus of proof upon the accuser, a verdict based upon evidence beyond reasonable doubt, and a prohibition on prejudicial pre-trial comment, it all seems like a very distant past. The latest development has been a group of nations, largely in the European Union, but also including United States, Canada, Australia and European minnows like Albania and Macedonia, joining the collective hysteria and expelling, at the time of writing, more than 100 Russian diplomats. [Skripal] [OPCW]
• "She Is Risen!" - Last Act Of 'Novichok' Drama Revealed: "The Skripals' Resurrection"
  It seems that the 'Novichok' fairy-tale the British government plays to us provides for a happy ending - the astonishing and mysterious resurrection of the victims of a "military grade" "five to eight times more deadly than VX gas" "nerve agent" "of a type developed by" Hollywood. Happy Easter! Yulia Skripal no longer in critical condition, say Salisbury doctors The condition of Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury along with her father, is improving rapidly, doctors have said. Salisbury NHS foundation trust said on Thursday the 33-year-old was no longer in a critical condition, describing her medical state as stable. Christine Blanshard, medical director for Salisbury district hospital, said: “I’m pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal. She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day." ... Her father’s condition is still described by the hospital as critical but stable. Only yesterday the Skripals chances to survive was claimed to be 1 out of 99. Nerve agents are deadly weapons. A dose of ten milligram of the U.S. developed VX nerve agent will kill 50% of those exposed to it. The 'Novichok' agents are said to be several times more deadly than VX. It seems less and less likely that the British government claim about 'Novichok' poisoning is actually true. Way more likely are other explanations, for example food poisoning or an allergic shock soon after eating out at a fish restaurant. The claims of a nerve agent and 'Novichok' seem to have been taken from the script of the British-American spy drama Strike Back (clip) which recently ran on British and U.S. TV. The sole purpose of the 'Novichok' drama is to implicate and damage Russia. [Skripal]
• Russian Scientists Explain 'Novichok' - High Time For Britain To Come Clean (Updated)
  March 21, 2018 A week ago we asked if 'Novichok' poisons are real. The answer is now in: It is 'yes' and 'no'. Several Russian scientist now say that they once researched and developed lethal poisons but they assert that other countries can and have copied these. 'Novichok', they say, is a just western propaganda invention. They see the British accusations as a cynical plot against Russia. The people who push the 'Novichok' accusations have political and commercial interests. [Skripal] [Evidence]
• Putin’s Favorite Tactic Has Finally Backfired
  By Kadri Liik march 26, 2018 to a rare nerve agent. Credit Will Oliver/EPA, via Shutterstock LONDON — In the early spring of 2014, the world watched, astonished, as soldiers without insignia took over government buildings in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, surrounded Ukrainian military bases and installed new leaders in the region. President Vladimir Putin of Russia claimed at the time that these were not Russian soldiers. Instead, he said, these were “local self-defense units.” Less than a month later, Russia annexed Crimea. And a year after that, Mr. Putin admitted what everyone had suspected all along: Yes, Russian soldiers had been involved. That was when the term “plausible deniability” became a standard part of Western discussions about Russia. The practice of carrying out dubious deeds through the hands of proxies or other hard-to-identify agents has since become something of a trademark of Mr. Putin’s. Sometimes, the agents are indeed Kremlin actors in disguise, as they were in Crimea. But in the years since, Mr. Putin has pushed this tactic even further, implicitly or explicitly encouraging independent agents to act on their own, keeping the Kremlin’s hands clean. On many occasions, this has left the West a helpless bystander, unable to force Russia to account for its actions. But time may be running out on this tactic. The attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent who was found unresponsive in southwest England earlier this month, poisoned with a deadly nerve agent, may be the moment when “plausible deniability” has reached its limits. In fact, it now looks as if it is turning against its masters in the Kremlin. [Russia confrontation] [Skripal] [Cui bono]
• In a brutal open letter, Jewish leaders in Britain accuse Jeremy Corbyn of anti-Semitism
  by Amanda Erickson March 26 The Labour Party has a long history of troubling behavior, according to Jewish leaders in Britain. In 2016, former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from the party after he said Adolf Hitler had been a supporter of Zionism in the 1930s. An internal review, conducted soon after, found that there was “much clear evidence” of “ignorant attitudes” toward the country's Jewish population. Current Labour chief Jeremy Corbyn is a fierce critic of Israel. Since his nomination as the party leader, he has been forced to defend himself against accusations that some of his supporters are anti-Semitic. Earlier this month, Corbyn acknowledged that he had been a member of a Facebook group that has posted anti-Semitic views, though he said he had never seen the messages. Then, on Friday, Labour lawmaker Luciana Berger, who is Jewish, challenged Corbyn’s office to explain something he had posted on Facebook in 2012. In the post, he was responding to Los Angeles-based artist Kalen Ockerman, who had complained that one of her London street murals was being painted over in response to criticism that it was anti-Semitic. “You are in good company,” Corbyn wrote. “Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.” [Jeremy Corbyn] [Israel] [Jewish lobby] [Anti-Semitism]
• Record number of U.S. Marines to train in Australia in symbolic challenge to China
  Colin Packham The United States will deploy a record number of Marines to train in Australia, the Australian defense minister said on Friday, as Washington seeks to counter what it describes as Chinese aggression in the region. FILE PHOTO: Australian Senator and Defence Minister Marise Ann Payne answers questions from the media on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers' meeting at Clark Field, Angeles City in Pampanga province, north of Manila, Philippines October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Dondi Tawatao Payne said 1,587 U.S. Marines will spend six months training in Australia’s remote north, an increase of nearly 27 percent on its 2017 rotation for the program known as the Force Posture Initiatives. [Australia] [China confrontation] [Joint US military]
• What did the Salisbury physician mean by “no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning”?
  Updated with link to Times article, March 21 Since we posted a tweet about the seemingly anomalous statements made in a letter to the Times by a senior doctor at Salisbury hospital we’ve seen the issue being raised in many places, most recently on Moon of Alabama. To recap: On March 14 Steven Davies, “Consultant in Emergency Medicine” at Salisbury hospital, wrote the following letter to the Times in response to this article (it’s behind a pay wall unfortunately): “Sir, Further to your report (“Poison Exposure Leaves Almost 40 Needing Treatment”, Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning. Several people have attended the emergency department concerned that they may have been exposed. None had symptoms of poisoning and none has needed treatment. Any blood tests performed have shown no abnormality. No member of the public has been contaminated by the agent involved. STEPHEN DAVIES, Consultant in Emergency Medicine, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust” (our emphasis) The article he is trying to correct alleges “nearly 40 people have experienced symptoms related to the Salisbury nerve agent.” [Skripal] [Salisbury]
• NHS Doctor: "No Patients Have Experienced Symptoms Of Nerve Agent Poisoning In Salisbury"
  There have been some interesting developments in the alleged poisoning case of the British-Russian double-agent Sergej Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The British governments standing on the issue is getting worse as more inconsistencies and doubts on its statements come to light. The international support for its claims is weakening. On March 4 the Skripals collapsed on a public bench in Salisbury in England after they had visited a pub and a restaurant. They were brought to the local hospital. A local policemen was probably also affected. (See our previous posts, liked at the end, for many additional details.) A week later, on March 12, the British government said that a nerve agent was the cause of the incident and accused Russia of being responsible for the act: [Skripal] [Salisbury] [Novichoks]
• Comment: A monstrous strategic mistake
  Kevin Rudd John Howard’s decision to commit thousands of Australian troops to the invasion of Iraq 15 years ago ranks as one of the two great failures of Australian foreign policy since the Second World War. The other is Menzies’ decision to send forces to Vietnam. Both cases represented an abysmal failure of Australian political leadership, driven by an unnecessary capitulation to strategically foolhardy decisions by the US administrations of the time. Both decisions were taken without independent Australian analysis of the legitimacy of American war aims, the credibility of American military strategy to both win the war and secure the peace, as well as the long-term consequences for Australian national interests. And both turned out to be strategic disasters against virtually every measure. [Australia] [US dominance] [Vietnam] [Iraq]
• Sharing the Best of British Expertise
  Musab Younis 16 March 2018 A year ago today, a boat carrying about 145 people, almost all of them Somalis with official refugee documents, was on its way to Sudan from Yemen. It was passing through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb strait when it came under fire. The shots, a confidential report to the UN Security Council confirmed four months later, were ‘almost certainly’ fired from a machine-gun mounted on a helicopter. Only ‘the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces,’ it added, ‘have the capability to operate armed utility helicopters in the area.’ (They are Apache helicopters, made in the United States.) ‘The helicopter was right over us and it had these huge lights on,’ a survivor later told a journalist. ‘They just kept shooting.’ Some of the people on the boat hid under the bodies of the dead. Others tried to signal that they were civilians by using flashlights. When the firing eventually stopped, the boat’s captain, who had been shot in the leg, managed to steer the boat back towards the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah before he bled to death. Dawood Fadal, the port’s head of security, told the New York Times that the workers at the port had been overwhelmed by the number of bodies when the boat arrived. ‘Our hospitals did not have room for them so we had to put them in the fish fridges. Can you imagine what that looks like?’ he said. At least 42 people had been killed. [Saudi Arabia] [War crimes] [Massacre] [Arms sales] [UK] [US]
• UK Scientists Refused Government Pressure To Say Nerve Agent Was Made By Russia
  Boris Johnson Attempt to Refute My Sources on Porton Down the Most Hilarious Fail By Craig Murray March 18, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has issued a statement to refute my report from well-placed FCO sources that the British government continually re-uses the phrase “of a type developed by Russia” because its own scientists refused government pressure to say the nerve agent was made by Russia, and as getting even agreement to “of a type developed by” was bloody, the government has to stick to precisely that rather odd choice of phrase. This is the official British Government statement: “We have no idea what Mr Murray is referring to. The Prime Minister told MP’s on Monday that world leading experts at Porton Down had positively identified this chemical agent. It is clear that it is a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. None of that is in any doubt”. Which is perhaps the most hilarious fail in the history of refutation. The BBC sprung that statement on me during a live interview on Radio 5 last night. They also sprung on me a statement by the Israeli Embassy and were attempting to lead me into accusing Israel of the attack. But even the BBC interviewer, Stephen Nolan, was flummoxed by the rubbish he had been given from the FCO. Here is an extract from that part of the interview: Stephen Nolan: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office have said to us tonight: “We have no idea what Mr Murray is referring to. The Prime Minister told MP’s on Monday that world leading experts at Porton Down had positively identified this chemical agent. It is clear that it is a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. None of that is in any doubt”. Well, you’ve already covered that Craig and you are zoning in on the fact that they are saying “developed by Russia”, they are unable to say whether it’s made – well they are not saying whether it was actually manufactured in Russia or the source of it or whether it was from Russia, right?” Craig Murray Yes, exactly. No-one doubts that the Russians had the idea of making these things first, and worked on developing the idea. It has always been doubted up till now that they really succeeded. The Iranians succeeded under OPCW supervision some time ago and the chemical formulae were published to the whole world twenty years ago. So many states could have done it. The “of a type developed by Russia” thing means nothing, undoubtedly. You can hear the whole interview here beginning about 5 minutes in. First Recorded Successful Novichok Synthesis was in 2016 – By Iran, in Cooperation with the OPCW 250 By Craig Murray The line that novichoks can only be produced by Russia is now proven to be a complete lie. As I previously proved by referencing their publications, in 2013 the OPCW scientific advisory committee note the evidence was sparse that novichoks had ever been successfully produced, and that was still the line being published by Porton Down in 2016. You can find the hard evidence of all that here. I have now been sent the vital information that in late 2016, Iranian scientists set out to study whether novichoks really could be produced from commercially available ingredients. Iran succeeded in synthesising a number of novichoks. Iran did this in full cooperation with the OPCW and immediately reported the results to the OPCW so they could be added to the chemical weapons database. [Novichoks] [Skripal]
• Boris Johnson Issues Completely New Story on “Russian Novichoks”
  Craig Murray 18 Mar, 2018 Boris Johnson has attempted to renew the faltering case for blaming Russia ahead of the investigation into the Skripal attack, by issuing a fundamentally new story that completely changes – and very radically strengthens – the government line on what it knows. You can see the long Foreign and Commonwealth Office Statement here. This is the sensational new claim which all the propaganda sheets are running with: The Foreign Secretary revealed this morning that we have information indicating that within the last decade, Russia has investigated ways of delivering nerve agents likely for assassination. And part of this programme has involved producing and stockpiling quantities of novichok. This is a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. This is an astonishing claim and requires close investigation. If this information comes from MI5 or MI6, there is a process of inter-departmental clearance that has to be gone through before it can be put in the public domain – even by a Minister – which is known as “Action-on”. I have been through the process personally many times when working as head of the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, monitoring Iraqi arms acquisitions. It is not, unless actually at war, a Saturday night process – it would have had to have been done on Friday.
  The Soviet Chemical Weapons programme was based in Nukus in Uzbekistan. It was the Americans who dismantled and studied it and destroyed and removed the equipment. I visited it as Ambassador to Uzbekistan shortly after they had finished – I recall it as desolate, tiled and very cold, nothing to look at really. The above paragraph seeks to hold the Russians responsible for anything that came out of Nukus, when it was the Americans who actually took it. [Novichoks] [Boris Johnson] [Allegation]
• Russia spy row: UK lab could be poison source, says ambassador
  Russia's EU ambassador has suggested a UK research laboratory could be the source of the nerve agent used in the attack on an ex-spy and his daughter. Vladimir Chizhov told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show Russia had "nothing to do" with the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. He said Russia did not stockpile the poison and that the Porton Down lab was only eight miles (12km) from the city. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described the claims as "satirical". Mr Johnson told the Marr Show that Russia's reaction to the incident "was not the response of a country that really believes itself to be innocent". He said the UK had evidence that Russia, within the last 10 years, had been developing and stockpiling Novichok, as well as investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purpose of assassination. [Skripal] [Evidence] [Boris Johnson]
• On Not Being Refuted
  Craig Murray
  17 Mar, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig Several million people have now read my articles on the lack of evidence of Russian government guilt for the Salisbury attack. That’s over 300,000 unique visitors on this little blog alone so far, and it has been repeated on hundreds of sites all over the internet. My own tweets on the subject have been retweeted over 12,500 times and received 8 million impressions. I know that journalists from every mainstream media outlet you can mention have seen the material, because of numerous tweets from them none of which address any of the facts, but instead call me a “Conspiracy nutter” or variants of that, some very rude. Yet what I wrote has not been refuted. It would be very easy to refute were it not true. The government would just have to say “Porton Down have stated that they have definitely identified the nerve agent as made in Russia”. They have not said that. Most extraordinarily, not one mainstream media “journalist” has asked a minister the question: “You keep using this phrase the nerve agent is “of a type developed by Russia”. Are you able to confirm it was actually made in Russia?” . There is no excuse for this. Literally hundreds of mainstream media “journalists” have slavishly reproduced the propaganda phrase “of a type developed by Russia” without a single one of them every querying this rather odd wording, or why it is the government always uses that precise wording again and again and again. It goes without saying that not a single mainstream media “journalist” has reported that fact either that until recently Porton Down believed that “novichoks” had probably never actually been synthesised successfully and that the OPCW has never banned them on the grounds that there was no evidence of their physical existence. [novichoks] [Skripal] [Media]
• Britain Hints at Tougher Blow Against Russia: Stripping Tycoons’ Assets Image
  By Ellen Barry March 15, 2018 LONDON — As she probes for Russia’s vulnerabilities during a week of deepening crisis, Prime Minister Theresa May does not have to look far. Within a few blocks of No. 10 Downing Street, she could find opulent homes owned by members of President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle. A short walk from Mrs. May’s office is an apartment registered to a company owned by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor I. Shuvalov, with a value estimated at $16 million. Roman Abramovich, a former member of the Russian Parliament and a longtime Putin associate, lives opposite Kensington Palace, in a house whose value has been estimated at $163 million. [Russia Confrontation] [Counterproductive] [UK] [Skripal]
• Theresa May's 'Novichok' Claims Fall Further Apart
  The British government claims that 'Novichok' poisons, developed 30 years ago in the Soviet Union, affected a British double agent. Such substances may not exist at all. The British government further says that the Russian government is responsible for the incident and has announced penalties against the country. A comparable incidents happened in 2001 in the United States. Envelopes with Anthrax spores were send to various politicians. Some people died. The White House told the FBI to blame al-Qaeda but the Anthrax turned out to be from a U.S. chemical-biological weapon laboratory. The case is still unsolved. The 'whistle-blower' who revealed the 'Novichok' program and its poisons published chemical formulas that should enable any decent laboratory to reproduce them. But neither the existence of the claimed program nor the existence of the alleged substances were ever accepted by the scientific community. The highly constructed drama around the alleged poisoning of a British double agent Skripal and his daughter has thus turned into a surreal play. The British government has so far given no evidence that the Skripal's were poisoned at all, or that they were poisoned by someone else. No detailed medical bulletin was published. The British accusations against Russia lets one assume that a suicide attempt has been excluded. Why? There is no independent evaluation of the alleged poison. The British government claims that its own chemical weapon laboratory at Porton Down, only a few miles from where the incident happened, has identified the poison as one of the 'Novichok' chemicals. [Skripal] [Evidence]
• Unilever to Make Netherlands Its Sole Headquarters, in Blow to Britain
  By Chad BraY March 15, 2018 LONDON — Unilever said on Thursday that it would make Rotterdam, the Netherlands, its sole headquarters, dealing a blow to Britain as it negotiates its withdrawal from the European Union. For nearly 90 years, the consumer products giant — whose brands include Dove soap, Lipton tea, Surf detergent and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream — has straddled the North Sea, maintaining headquarters in London and in the Netherlands. Investors have pushed Unilever for years, however, to eliminate the dual structure, arguing that doing so would make the company more agile and better able to pursue mergers. Unilever finally said last year that it would review its legal structure after Kraft Heinz briefly flirted with a $143 billion takeover of the company. That review has been complicated, though, by Britain’s planned withdrawal from the European Union and fears that the company’s decision could be politicized. “The proposed simplification will provide greater flexibility for strategic portfolio change and help drive long-term performance,” the company said in a statement. It said that it would continue to be listed in London, Amsterdam and New York, but that its various divisions would be divided between the British capital and Rotterdam. Unilever’s two headquarters mirrored its legal structure, in which the company maintained separate stock listings and corporate entities in both countries after its formation by the combination of the British soap maker Lever Brothers and the Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie in 1930. [Brexit]
• Skripal case: Theresa May now demands Russia prove itself innocent
  British government lacking evidence of Russian guilt reverses the burden of proof by Alexander Mercouris March 12, 2018, 23:24 After a week of speculation and allegations British Prime Minister Theresa May has finally spoken about the murder attempt on the former British spy Sergey Skripal, which has left both him and his daughter critically ill. This how the Guardian reports her statement Click here for the best news on Russia >> Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at Porton Down, our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so, Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations, the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal…. Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country. Or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others… Should there be no credible response, we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom…… This attempted murder using a weapons-grade nerve agent in a British town was not just a crime against the Skripals. “It was an indiscriminate and reckless act against the United Kingdom, putting the lives of innocent civilians at risk. And we will not tolerate such a brazen attempt to murder innocent civilians on our soil. I commend this statement to the House…. The first thing to say about this statement is that it is essentially an admission that the British authorities have not been able to identify any suspects who might have carried out the attack on Skripal. No person or persons have been identified as suspects in the case, and the only conclusion one can draw from Theresa May’s statement is that the British authorities either do not have the names of any suspects, or are uncertain about any names they do have.. [Skripal] [Russia confrontation] [Evidence]
• UK's effort to rally allies over Sergei Skripal poisoning may fall short
  Lack of EU consensus would make it difficult to sanction Russia over poisoning of ex-spy Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor The British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, has said he is encouraged by the response from friends willing to rally to the UK cause over the poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. But EU officials warned privately that the bloc’s existing consensus on further sanctions against Russia has already been cracking, and it may be impossible to forge collective agreement on new measures. One official said the best that may happen is that the EU resolves to stick to its existing sanctions position rather than see it diluted. Following a round of diplomatic phonecalls coordinated with Number 10, Johnson had been buoyed by support overnight from the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, only to find that Donald Trump had fired him after repeated run-ins. [Russia confrontation] [Skripal] [EU] [Friction]
• MACK WILLIAMS. Australia : US – Limits and responsibilities of mateship!
  2 March 2018 The recent quick visit of the Prime Minister to Washington has raised more questions than it has answered about the state of Australia’s relations with the US and China. Have the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister set out a new policy on China and the South China Sea or are they just playing at trying to distance themselves modestly from Washington? The so far scant reporting of Prime Minister Turnbull’s recent quick trip to Washington and his conversations with President Trump and senior members of the Administration has raised more questions than it has answered. His failure to report formally to Parliament on such an important international visit has only clouded the scene. The timing of the demise of Barnaby Joyce and the public controversy in the US about gun laws after the recent Florida school shooting diverted public attention here away from the substantive issues occasioned by the visit. But the Australian public needs to be much better informed about these issues especially in the light of reporting that the Chinese are toughening their approach to Australia on a number of issues. [Allegiance] [China confrontation] [Australia]

• Trump urges Turnbull to flex more muscle
  But Australia remains torn between joining America's new Cold War or playing the role of regional moderator By Alan Boyd Sydney, February 27, 2018 US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (L) at a news conference at the White House in Washington, February 23, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Donald Trump is pressuring Australia to lift its military presence in East Asia and the Pacific as Washington turns the screws on China and North Korea. But some are questioning how much more Canberra can offer. Trump made clear during a weekend summit with Australian leader Malcolm Turnbull at the White House that he expects America’s allies to shoulder a bigger share of the region’s defense, echoing his complaint of America’s disproportionate contributions to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato). [Australia] [Tribute] [China confrontation] [Military expenditure] [Liberal]
• The Walrus Wants Google to Strangle Global Research: Lessons in the New McCarthyism
  by Prof. Michael Keefer MichaelKeefer.com When David Berlin and Ken Alexander launched The Walrus in September 2003, their ambition was to create a Canadian equivalent to American monthly magazines like The New Yorker or Harper’s, which was then under the legendary editorship of Lewis W. Lapham. Who could have anticipated that not quite fifteen years later, The Walrus would be dipping its tusks into the tepid sludge of McCarthyist witch-hunting? It’s not an orientation Lapham would have recommended when David Berlin consulted with him about possibilities of collaboration a year before the magazine’s launch: as Lapham wrote in Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy (2004), [Censorship] [Canada] [Google]
• Henry Reynolds. Australia: A Belligerent Nation
  23 February 2018 Much discussion has been generated by the recently released Defence White. There were several penetrating essays in Pearls and Irritations. But looking at the text as a historian it seemed that some of the most interesting observations passed without notice. I was drawn to the statement that there was no more than a remote prospect of a military attack by another country on Australian territory in the foreseeable future. It was a truism which, it seemed, scarcely needed examination. After all it has ever been so. Australia has had no ancestral enemies, no neighbours with irredentist ambitions, an intimidating size and in most places wide oceanic moats. A curious visitor might well pose a few obvious question we rarely ask ourselves. With a sense of security few countries have been able to enjoy why has Australia gone to war on so many occasions and in so many distant places? Is Australia a distinctly belligerent nation? With no conflict likely on or near the borders why do we seek out war in distant places? Lacking the classic explanation for a just war—defence against an actual or likely attack on the homeland—how has Australia provided itself with moral and legal justification for carrying war into other countries? Are we so used to being at war that we have given up asking those difficult ethical questions? The armed forces do examine the way in which battles can be fought while observing the rules of war. They steer carefully away from the morality of war itself and the same is true of our politicians. [Australia] [Subaltern] [Imperialism] [Belligerence]
• WATCH: the Dutch Foreign Minister in 2016 lying about Putin to inflame fears of Russian invasion
  Halbe Zijlstra, Dutch Foreign Minister has confessed he has been lying for some time about an alleged personal encounter with Vladimir Putin – which, it turns out never actually happened. His completely bogus and dangerously warmongering narrative of hearing Putin describe a Hitleresque plan for a “greater Russia” (involving annexing Belarus, the Baltics, Ukraine and Kazakhstan) had been doing the rounds since 2016. Presumably Zjilstra felt it would enhance his career and reputation to have a narrative like this to share. Did he not also realise he was helping to create an atmosphere of fear and hysteria that could – and still could – ignite a global nuclear war?Just how cultist and brainwashed are Europe’s political class these days? Here’s Zijlstra telling a captive audience his completely made-up story back in 2016, when everyone believed him: Dutch Foreign Minister in trouble after he admits lying about meeting Putin in 2006 in his dacha (holiday house). This is what FM Halbe Zijlstra said during a speech in 2016. (including English subtitles). pic.twitter.com/SrP8DfzuS0 — Harald Doornbos (@HaraldDoornbos) February 12, 2018 [Russia confrontation] [Zijlstra] [Disinformation]
• Australia mulls rival to China's 'belt and road' with US, Japan, India
  by Phillip Coorey Australia is discussing with the United States, India and Japan the establishment of a joint regional infrastructure scheme to rival China's multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative in an attempt to counter Beijing's spreading influence. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to discuss the idea during talks in Washington DC this week, possibly during a scheduled meeting with US President Donald Trump. A senior US Official told The Australian Financial Review the plan involving four regional partners was still "nascent" and "won't be ripe enough to be announced' during Mr Turnbull's visit, but was being seriously discussed. He preferred to describe the plan as an "alternative" to the Belt and Road Initiative rather than a "rival". [China Confrontation] [B&R]
• Peace Games “Trumps” War Games
  In the lead up to the opening of the Winter Olympics, representatives from both North and South Korea held official talks. The talks were a result of South Korea President Moon Jae in accepting an invitation from North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and the proposal from the North to participate in the Winter Olympics. Within a short period, the world was to learn the positive news that the hotline between Pyongyang and Seoul would be reconnected, that top military officials from both sides would meet to find ways of reducing tension at the DMZ and that the North would participate in the Winter Olympics. Not only would the North participate with athletes, singers, musicians and cheerleaders, but, Korea would march (much to the shock and horror of the US) as one team at the opening ceremony. [Olympics18] [Australia-DPRK Society]
• British defense secretary says warship bound for South China Sea: media
  Reuters Staff SYDNEY (Reuters) - A British warship will sail through the South China Sea next month to assert freedom-of-navigation rights, British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said in remarks published on Tuesday Williamson did not specify whether it would sail within 12 nautical miles of any disputed territory, according to the paper. Several U.S. Navy ships have made their own freedom-of-navigation journeys that drew stern rebukes from Beijing. Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he was aware of the comments. “All countries in accordance with international law enjoy freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. There is no disagreement on this,” Geng said. “The situation on the South China Sea is also improving with each day. We hope all relevant sides especially those outside the region can respect the efforts made by regional countries,” he added. “Like I said last week, currently the South China Sea is calm and tranquil and we hope relevant sides don’t try to create trouble out of nothing.” In the interview, Williamson also encouraged Australia to “do more” in a region where it has conducted surveillance flights, but not freedom-of-navigation voyages of its own. “The U.S. is looking for other countries to do more. This is a great opportunity for the UK and Australia to do more, to exercise leadership,” he said. [UK] China confrontation] [FON] [South China Sea] [US dominance] [Ingratiation]
• The hypocrisy of Canada and Trudeau’s government
  Published February 9, 2018, 10:00 PM Getsy Tiglao By Getsy Tiglao Canada, which has not taken back the 2,450 tons of garbage it dumped on the Philippines five years ago, is lecturing us on human rights and said it is reviewing its contract to sell 16 Bell helicopters to our military. As an urban expression goes, “That’s rich,” coming from a country that cannot even show basic decency by taking back the garbage exported by the Canadian company Chronic, Inc., declared as recyclables, but found instead by Filipino environmental groups to contain hospital waste, soiled adult diapers, sanitary napkins, and other dangerous wastes. Canada’s Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne arrogantly stated that the $233-million contract to sell helicopters to the Philippine military would now be reviewed because they could be used to fight rebels. The deal was struck way back in 2012 during the Aquino administration but was only signed last Tuesday. Yes, Canada is afraid our military will kill rebels who have been killing soldiers, policemen, and civilians, and whose ultimate goal is to bring down the Philippine Republic. All this liberal fuss just because one of our military officials said the 16 Bell helicopters will be used for internal security operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief operations. What’s wrong with saying the helicopters will be used for internal security operations? To the Canadian mind, does this immediately equate to our air force men riding the choppers and shooting people? This is such an insult on the integrity and professionalism of our military. Instead of deigning to explain to the Canadian government what we will use the helicopters for (what are we, five-year olds?), the Philippine government should turn around and say it is reviewing the contract as well because the Canada has not retrieved the garbage it illegally dumped on our shores. Despite repeated promises since 2013 from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he will act on the problem, he has not moved an inch to remove the toxic and smelly garbage that are still festering in our Manila port. Imagine the health and environmental risks this Canadian garbage poses to our citizens – isn’t this a human rights violation, Mr. Champagne and PM Trudeau? The Armed Forces of the Philippines should stop its kowtowing to hypocritical foreign governments that say one thing but do another. Canada, for instance, loves to boast that human rights is a key element of its foreign policy. It is silent, however, on its active and direct participation in the 2001 Afghanistan War, the 1990 Persian Gulf War, and its indirect though deadly participation in the 2003 Iraq War. In the latter event, while Canada did not officially join the international coalition that invaded Iraq, it bragged that it seconded about a hundred of its officers to the US military. [Canada] [Philippines] [Hypocrisy]
• What It’s Like to Be a Patient With the N.H.S.
  Feb. 6, 2018 Britain’s National Health Service turns 70 this year, amid warnings of an existential crisis. At the end of last year, we interviewed several staff members to ask them what they hoped and feared for the system’s future. Now, readers tell us about their and their families’ experiences with the N.H.S. Here are their stories, edited for length and clarity. I believe they did all they could In 2015 my husband died from cancer at 35. It was a short time between realizing something was wrong and him dying, most of which we spent in the hospital. The staff were all caring and professional. I believe they did all they could, and when it became clear that he would die, they were very supportive. I was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, and they went above and beyond to look after us both. One example: We had decided not to know the sex of the baby, but when we realized he wasn’t going to make it to the birth, the midwives in the hospital brought a mobile scanner up to the ward so that my husband could have a last look at the baby, and we could learn the sex together. That meant so much to us. And after he died I had extra appointments and scans (at no extra cost) to reassure me that the stress and emotions hadn’t affected the baby. Again, not everything was perfect, but I just can’t imagine going through all of that, and having to deal with insurance companies and money worries as well. — Kate Trouw, United Kingdom I would not wish the U.S. medical system on anyone I am an American living in Britain. I would not wish the U.S. medical system on anyone. [Health] [NHS]
• WikiLeaks founder Assange loses latest legal bid to quash British arrest warrant
  Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, May 19, 2017. Photo by ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock . By Karla Adam and William Booth February 6 at 1:48 PM Email the author LONDON — Julian Assange lost one legal bid Tuesday that could have dramatically altered the long-running saga that has compelled the controversial WikiLeaks founder to take refuge in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for more than five years. But his case continues, with more hearings and court dates to come. A British judge rejected his lawyers’ first argument that an existing arrest warrant against Assange should be withdrawn because the Swedish charges that underlie it have been shelved. Lawyers for Assange argued in a London courtroom that the outstanding British warrant, issued after Assange skipped bail, had “lost its purpose and function” following Sweden’s decision last year to drop an investigation into sexual assault allegations. “I'm not persuaded that the warrant should be withdrawn,” Judge Emma Arbuthnot said in her ruling. [Whistleblower] [Assange] [Judiciary] [US dominance]
• Trump thought the British were protesting their health service. They weren’t.
  By Karla Adam February 5 at 11:23 AM Protesters demand more funding for British health system Thousands of protesters marched in London on Feb. 3, demanding more funds for the National Health Service. (Newsflare/AP) LONDON — President Trump took a swing at Britain’s beloved National Health Service on Monday, tweeting that Britons were marching in the streets because their universal health-care system was financially strapped and dysfunctional, and got a swift rebuke from the British prime minister. “The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!” he wrote. The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018 But the thousands of Britons who took to the streets over the weekend were marching in support of the NHS and calling for greater government funding. Trump's tweet about Britain’s universal health-care system — once said to be the closest thing that the British have to a national religion — provoked ire from across the political spectrum, including from British Prime Minister Theresa May. [Trump] [Tweet] [NHA] [Theresa May] [Special relationship] [Health]

• Cheonan investigation: Clarification on Canadian role (continued)
  posted by Miranda Weingartner, CanKor, 28 June 2010 The actual role of Canada in the investigation of the Cheonan incident continues to beg more questions than it answers. [Cheonan] [Coverup]
• Book about secretive NKorea wins UK literary prize
  By JILL LAWLESS The Associated Press Thursday, July 1, 2010; 4:38 PM LONDON -- A book that gives a rare glimpse of everyday life inside one of the world's most secretive states won Britain's leading nonfiction book prize Thursday. Barbara Demick's "Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea" was named winner of the 20,000 pound ($30,000) Samuel Johnson award at a ceremony in London. Demick, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, interviewed North Korean defectors and drew on smuggled photographs and videos to tell the story of six residents of the totalitarian Communist state, including a pair of clandestine lovers, a homeless boy and a patriotic factory worker with a rebellious daughter. [Media] [Softwar] [Thinktank] [Defector report]

• EU calls on China, Russia to join efforts to rebuke N. Korea
  BRUSSELS, June 17 (Yonhap) -- The European Parliament passed an anti-North Korea resolution Thursday, urging China and Russia to join international efforts to rebuke the North at the U.N. Security Council for torpedoing a South Korean warship. In the resolution, the parliamentary institution of the European Union accused North Korea of sinking the 1,200-ton Cheonan on March 26 with the loss of 46 lives, calling the attack a "provocative act against peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula." Tensions on the divided peninsula are high after a multinational probe concluded last month that North Korea was behind the attack. South Korea is seeking to hold the communist neighbor responsible at the Security Council, while North Korea has furiously denied its responsibility and threatened to wage an "all-out war" if punished. Still, it remains uncertain whether China and Russia, two of five veto-wielding Council members, would support the South's move. Beijing and Moscow have so far been lukewarm about censuring North Korea. In a statement accompanying the resolution, the EU parliament said it is "disappointed that China and Russia have still not taken a clear position on the conclusions of the report." Also, the EU legislative body calls on China "to exert a positive influence on North Korea" to ensure that the conflict does not escalate further. Earlier this month, a European Parliament delegation called off a trip to North Korea amid concern that such a visit could send the wrong signal to Pyongyang. Members of the European Parliament's Delegation for Relations with the Korean Peninsula (DKOR) had visited both Koreas annually as part of parliamentary exchanges, but they only visited the South this year. [Cheonan] [Coverup] [Softpower]
• European Parliament resolution of 17 June 2010 on the situation in the Korean Peninsula
  The European Parliament , – having regard to its previous resolutions on matters relating to the Korean Peninsula, – having regard to Council Decision 2009/1002/CFSP of 22 December 2009, – having regard to the statement of 20 May 2010 by the High Representative/Vice-President, Catherine Ashton, on the publication of the report on the sinking of the Republic of Korea (ROK) ship Cheonan , – having regard to the report entitled "Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS "Cheonan ", – having regard to United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1718 (2006) and 1874 (2009), – having regard to Rule 110(4) of its Rules of Procedure, A. whereas tensions in the Korean Peninsula have dramatically increased since the sinking of the Cheonan on 26 March 2010, with the tragic loss of 46 lives, B. whereas parts of a CHT-02D torpedo were retrieved from the seabed on 15 May 2010, C. whereas the High Representative/Vice-President, Catherine Ashton, has condemned the sinking of the Cheonan as a heinous and deeply irresponsible action, D. whereas an inquiry carried out by an international Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group (JIG) by means of an investigation and verification process undertaken on the basis of an objective scientific approach showed clear, indisputable evidence that the Cheonan was sunk as the result of an external underwater explosion caused by a torpedo made in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as did an independent assessment by the Neutral Nations Supervisory Committee, E. whereas all submarines from other neighbouring countries were either in or near their bases at the time of the incident, F. whereas the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, has described the report's findings as "deeply troubling", G. whereas the ROK Government has demanded a public apology and a promise that there will be no further provocations by the DPRK authorities, H. whereas the DPRK Government has denied any involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan , accusing the ROK of "fabrication", and has threatened open war in the event that the ROK imposes further sanctions, I. whereas the DPRK's armed forces have continued with provocative and reckless military acts, such as the killing of three Chinese nationals on the People's Republic of China-DPRK border on 4 June 2010, J. whereas, as a result of the incident, the ROK has announced the suspension of all relations with the DPRK, with the exception of humanitarian aid and operations connected with the Kaesong Industrial Complex, K. whereas the ROK Government has stated that it will not return to the six-party talks until appropriate measures have been taken in respect of the DPRK, L. whereas the EU strongly supports the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, and considers the resumption of the six-party talks to be essential for peace and stability in the region, M. whereas the governments of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation have not yet taken a clear position on the Joint Investigation Group's final report and conclusions, N. whereas the ROK has formally referred the issue to the UN Security Council for debate, while the DPRK has written to the President of the UN Security Council denying all responsibility for the attack and encouraging the Security Council to help the DPRK carry out its own investigations, 1. Deeply regrets the tragic loss of life aboard the South Korean corvette Cheonan , and conveys its sympathy to the ROK Government, the families of the deceased, and the Korean people in a spirit of solidarity and friendship; 2. Echoes the High Representative/Vice-President's condemnation of the attack, and commends the restraint shown by the ROK; 3. Acknowledges the conclusions of the Joint Investigation Group's final report, according to which the sinking of the vessel was caused by a North Korean torpedo, and firmly condemns the sinking as a provocative act against peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula; 4. Expresses disappointment that the governments of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation have still not taken a clear position on the conclusions of the Joint Investigation Group's final report; 5. Calls on both parties to exercise restraint, to use every possible means to improve inter-Korean relations and to step up their efforts to promote lasting peace and security in the Korean Peninsula; 6. Calls on the governments of the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, closely to examine the Joint Investigation Group's final report and conclusions; 7. Calls on the People's Republic of China – a permanent member of the UN Security Council and the DPRK'S main trading ally – to exert an appropriate positive influence on the DPRK and to attempt to ensure that the conflict does not escalate further; 8. Expresses its support for the ROK Government's referral of the matter to the UN Security Council; 9. Calls on the countries involved in the six-party talks to continue working together to ensure that the talks on ending the DPRK's nuclear programme are resumed; 10. Calls on the Commission to maintain existing humanitarian aid programmes and keep communication channels with the DPRK open, as these aid programmes directly affect people's living conditions in the DPRK; 11. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the President of the Commission, the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the President of the Council, the governments and parliaments of the Member States and candidate countries, the UN Secretary-General and the ROK and DPRK Governments. [Cheonan] [Coverup] [Opportunity] [Softpower]
• German scholar calls for thorough preparation for unification
  A noted German scholar suggested Monday that South Korea should be more detailed in preparing for unification to minimize the ill-effects arising from the integration of the two ideologically different states, which have long been technically at war. Speaking to a forum on the theme of the "20th Anniversary of German Unification: Achievements and Prospects" at the Korea Institute of Public Administration (KIPA), Prof. Ursula Maennle, deputy chair of the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation, warned that the cost required in unifying the divided territories would be extreme in the absence of social integration. [Takeover] [Unification costs] [Think tank]
• Swedish National Day Marked
  Pyongyang, June 3 (KCNA) -- Mats Foyer, Swedish ambassador to the DPRK, arranged a reception at his embassy here on Thursday on the occasion of the national day of his country. Present there on invitation were Kung Sok Ung, vice-minister of Foreign Affairs, Jon Kuk Man, vice-minister of Education, Hong Son Ok, vice-chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries who doubles as chairperson of the DPRK-Sweden Friendship Association, officials concerned and diplomatic envoys of different countries and representatives of international organizations here. Speeches were made there.
• New Ambassadors to North Korea and Cambodia
  The Government today, 3 June, approved the appointment of two new ambassadors. They are Sweden's new Ambassador to North Korea, Barbro Elm, and Sweden's new Ambassador to Cambodia, Anne Höglund. Barbro Elm has been appointed Ambassador to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). She is currently Senior Adviser and Press Officer at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs Press, Information and Communication Department. Barbro Elm has served at the embassies in Bratislava, Madrid and Havanna, among others. She has also worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs Americas Department and with UN issues. During a one-year exchange appointment at the Norwegian foreign ministry in Oslo she worked with security policy issues. Barbro Elm has also previously been head of the European Correspondent section at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The ambassadors will take up their posts in autumn 2010.
• Just the facts, ma’am
  Posted by Timothy Savage, Seoul, 31 May 2010 Since the South Korean government announced, as long expected, that a North Korean torpedo attack was responsible for the sinking of the warship Cheonan, many progressive groups in Korea have been issuing statements disputing the official account. I won’t bother trying to do a point-by-point rebuttal of these claims, as I’m not an expert in any of the sciences that one would need to understand to objectively evaluate the conclusions of the investigative team. But neither are the people who have been raising questions about the findings, and in the absence of some objective evidence to the contrary vetted by someone with the proper expertise, I see no reason not to accept the official story, particularly given that it was the conclusion of an international team of experts and not just the South Korean government. And even if one is inclined to doubt the veracity of the United States and its allies like Canada, Australia, and the UK, how to explain the acquiescence of Sweden, a country that has not fought a war in nearly 200 years and has spent the last five decades carving out a role for itself as a neutral arbiter of peace on the Korean Peninsula? [Cheonan] [Evidence] [Sweden] [Motive]
• Confusion over Canada’s suspension of relations
  Despite widespread reports circulating in Canadian media that Canada "formally" suspended diplomatic relations with North Korea, sources in Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada informed CanKor that media reports have been "inaccurate". The DPRK Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York contacted CanKor to ask about the source of the information published in the latest CanKor Report #322, since they had not been informed of any suspension of diplomatic relations. (The UN Mission in New York is home to Ambassador SIN, Son Ho, the DPRK’s accredited ambassador to Canada.) Foreign Affairs Canada clarified that the only measures thus far taken as a response to the sinking of Cheonan, the South Korean vessel, are those announced by the Prime Minister in his 24 May statement and reiterated by Canada’s Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon on 25 May. Among the measures Canada is taking are the following: support of South Korea (including decision to bring the matter to the UNSC) addition of North Korea to the “area control list” (requiring permits for import and export of goods to and from DPRK) suspension of high-level visits between Canadian and North Korean officials One might add that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Lee Myung-bak will share co-chairmanship of the G-8 and G-20 meetings that are about to take place in Canada, a platform that will be used “to take North Korea to task”. [Cheonan]
• Kim Jong-il's Palaces as Seen on Google Earth
  The Daily Telegraph has published satellite images of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's houses and of jails in the Stalinist country. The daily carried the images under the title "A bird's eye view of the prisons and palaces of Kim Jong-il's North Korea." Images show Kim's Sinuiju palace complete with a private train station as well as a residence with a large swimming pool near Pyongyang. Other images show Pyongyang Golf Links, the North's only 18-hole golf course in Mt. Taesong; Kim's yacht moored at nearby Lake Taesong; and an ostrich farm and a chewing gum factory in Pyongyang. [Black] [Media]
• Euro Parliament Nixes Visit to N. Korea
  MAY 31, 2010 12:39 A delegation of the European Parliament has canceled a visit to North Korea scheduled for next month due to rising inter-Korean tension from the Cheonan sinking, Radio Free Asia said Saturday. The European Parliament has sent delegates every year to both Koreas to enhance diplomatic relations among parliament members. The delay was confirmed by an e-mail sent Friday by David Martin, a member of the delegation, to a rescue organization for those abducted by North Korea. Martin said that after a broad consultation on rising inter-Korean tension, the delegation decided against visiting Pyongyang though the trip to Seoul will proceed. The European Parliament delegation was scheduled to visit Pyongyang June 4-8 and Seoul June 8-12 to discuss matters on the Korean Peninsula. Europe has given aid worth 11 million euros to the communist country this year through non-governmental organizations. [Cheonan]

• Canada sends naval experts to ROK's Cheonan sinking investigation
  08:09, May 17, 2010 Canada is sending three naval experts to the Republic of Korea (ROK) to assist in a multinational investigation into the Navy Ship Cheonan's sinking, an official press release said on Sunday. These experts will join a multinational team currently conducting an investigation into the sinking of the ROK Ship Cheonan (PCC-772), which sank in waters near the Northern Limit Line on March 26 this year.
• Canada suspends diplomatic relations with North Korea over warship sinking
  By: The Canadian Press 25/05/2010 4:54 PM | Comments: 0 OTTAWA - Canada has formally suspended diplomatic relations with North Korea over the sinking of a South Korean warship. The move comes a day after the government announced new sanctions, including restrictions on trade, investment and other bilateral relations. Canada has had limited diplomatic relations with the North Korea, but those will now end. A spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says Canadian officials periodically made "advocacy" visits to North Korea to talk about its nuclear program. The March 26 sinking of the Cheonan killed 46 sailors. Canada sent three navy experts to the multinational team that investigated the incident, and concluded the warship was sunk by a torpedo. [Cheonan] [Evidence] [Coverup]
• North Korea kills to scare and keep the money coming
  May 25, 2010 North Korea has presented the world with a serious strategic dilemma that is quickly becoming a first-class crisis. With the unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean navy corvette, the Cheonan, and the deaths of 46 crew, the North has committed an act of war. Pyongyang denies responsibility, as it has denied every one of its many acts of terrorism and sabotage of the past half-century. But the international investigation, by 25 South Koreans and an international team of 24 Australian, British, American and Swedish naval experts, found remains of a North Korean torpedo at the site and last week delivered a finding of ''guilty''. [Cheonan] [Media]
• North Korea’s test of resolve
  May 18th, 2010 Author: William Tow, ANU Two developments critical to Asia-Pacific security transpired during early May 2010: the opening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (REVCOM) at the UN Headquarters in New York and North Korean Leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to China. They are inter-related by North Korea’s disregard of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guidelines prohibiting its development of nuclear weapons. A nuclear North Korea clearly threatens Australian interests. Any major conflict that explodes on the Korean Peninsula in the absence of North Korea’s denuclearisation, and that spreads throughout Northeast Asia, would cut Australia off from key trading routes, possibly involve Australian combat forces, and heighten prospects that Australia’s joint installations with the United States would be attacked by hostile regional powers (sic). [China confrontation] [Succession] [MISCOM]
• Evidence shows North Korea torpedoed ship
  Date: May 20 2010 Kirsty Needham South Korea will today release evidence that North Korea torpedoed the warship Cheonan, killing 46 sailors, after a multinational investigation involving five Australian Defence Force personnel. The South Korean government requested help from Australia, the US, Britain, Sweden and Canada in responding to the March 26 sinking, which risks developing into a dangerous regional flashpoint. The investigation team is expected to reveal today that a serial number and explosive traces show the torpedo that sank the warship was made in North Korea, South Korean media reported.
  A Royal Australian Navy accident investigation team, led by Commander Anthony Powell, arrived in Seoul on April 13. They provided expertise in piecing together clues in the ship's structure, as well as scientific skills. Two Australian maritime intelligence officers and a naval officer remain in South Korea as part of the investigation team that will make the public announcement today. Seoul is likely to use the findings to seek international diplomatic support for tougher economic sanctions against North Korea, and to raise the issue with the United Nations Security Council. While Japan and the US are likely to support such action, China, a reluctant critic of the North Korean regime, has a veto on the Security Council. Adrian Buzo, a former Australian diplomat in Pyongyang and author of The Guerilla Dynasty, said the South Korean public would demand its government take a stern line in blaming North Korea. ''They have 45 servicemen [who] have died by [a] direct North Korean act of war. They have a domestic political reason to be tough,'' Mr Buzo said. However, the world could expect ''continual loud and rude denials'' from North Korea in response. ''North Korea [seems] to be going through an aggressive phase towards the South,'' he said. ''They periodically engage in demonstrative violence. The tougher, more aggressive the stance they take the more they feel they are putting their opponents on the back foot.'' Dr Leonid Petrov, of the University of Sydney, said the South Korean government needed to tread warily, and was limited in what action it could take beyond words. ''North Korea may deny it or use it as a provocation. South Korea should be very careful because the war hasn't finished. It is an armistice regime on the peninsula … It is another pretext for six-party talks not to resume,'' he said. Six-party talks aimed at halting North Korea's nuclear weapons program have been stalled since 2008, and tough trade sanctions have already been imposed in response to a nuclear test by Pyongyang last year. Both the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, and the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, travelled to China this month before the release of the investigation findings. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, said in Shanghai on Tuesday that North Korea's ''ongoing conduct is a threat'' to the security of the region, and China could play an important role in bringing Pyongyang back to dialogue with the international community. ''China can be an important influence on [North Korea], as reflected by President Kim's recent visit to China,'' he said. [NLL] [Evidence] [Media]
• Kim Yong Il Greets UK PM  
    Pyongyang, May 14 (KCNA) -- DPRK Premier Kim Yong Il Thursday sent a congratulatory message to David Cameron upon his appointment as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Hoping that the relations between the two countries would develop on good terms, the message wished the Prime Minister successes in his work. Meanwhile, DPRK Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun sent a congratulatory message to William Hague upon his appointment as UK foreign secretary.    

• The Korea-Australia FTA: obstacle or building block?
  April 14th, 2009 Author: Brett Williams, University of Sydney Those of us who fear that discriminatory trade agreements (‘DTAs’: some call them Preferential Trade Ageements or Free Trade Agreements) may be becoming obstacles to rather than building blocks for multilateral non-discriminatory trade liberalization have listened to the Australian government’s arguments that multilateral and bilateral liberalization are compatible with each other. The opening of FTA negotiations with Korea ought to give us cause to reflect on the issue again. [FTA]
• EU expected to relax ban on N. Korean carrier Air Koryo
  BRUSSELS, March 25 (Yonhap) -- The European Union is expected to relax its four-year ban on the North Korean state carrier, Air Koyro, from all operations in its member states, a source at the European Commission said Wednesday. Air Koryo has been on the EU's blacklist of airlines failing to meet international safety standards since the list was first put together in 2006. Currently, five individual carriers, including Air Koryo, and all carriers from 15 countries -- 228 companies in total -- are on the blacklist. The EU's Air Safety Commission met last week to review the list and recommended that the restrictions on the North Korean airline be relaxed to "Annex B," which means that the carrier can operate in the region under "specific conditions," the source said.

• Kim Yong Nam Greets Irish President
  Pyongyang, March 17 (KCNA) -- Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, Wednesday sent a message of greetings to Mary Mcaleese, President of Ireland, on the occasion of the national day of the country. Expressing belief that the relations between the two countries will develop favorably in different fields, the message wished the Irish President success in the work for settling the economic problem.

• Australia Slams Lid on Immigration
  Australia has canceled visa reviews for 20,000 foreigners who applied for immigration to Australia before Sept. 1, 2007 under the General Skilled Migration program, and occupations such as hairdressing and catering have been removed from the occupation list to make way for more highly skilled positions. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship will refund visa fees to affected foreigners. [Migration] [Services] [Education]

• EU Blacklists N.Korean Leaders
  The EU has imposed sanctions targeting North Korea's top leadership over the country's nuclear weapons development. Twelve officials were blacklisted, many of them thought to be leader Kim Jong-il's closest advisers. The list includes Vice Marshal Kim Yong-chun (74), the minister of the armed forces, as well as Jang Song-taek (64), the director of the North Korean Workers Party's Administration Department who is Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law. Six of 13 members of the powerful National Defense Committee were blacklisted. At a session of the Environment Council in Brussels on Dec. 22, the EU approved new sanctions against North Korea, including an entry ban on individuals and goods. EU regulations are binding on the 27 member states and overrule individual national laws. [Sanctions] [Double standards]
• N.Korean Airline Banned from Europe
  North Korean carrier Air Koryo has been banned from flight services to Europe for the fifth year after failing to meet international safety requirements. According to Radio Free Asia, the airline has once again been included on the list of airlines prohibited from making flights to the 27 member countries of the European Union. Based on a report by the European Commission, Air Koryo not only failed to improve its safety issues but also refrained from truthfully and accurately informing the commission's safety inspectors. Air Koryo has a fleet of about 20 planes that were made in the Soviet Union between the 1960s and 1970s. [Sanctions]

• North Koreans banned from Asia-Pacific Triennial
  Des Houghton ASSISTANT EDITOR December 07, 2009 02:38pm THE Queensland Art Gallery has become embroiled in an international propaganda and censorship row with six North Korean nationals banned from visiting Brisbane's sixth Asia- Pacific Triennial. A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith said the artists' studio produces favourable propaganda images of despotic leader Kim Jong-il. The spokesman said the ban was also part of the Australian government's response to North Korea's missile and nuclear and weapons program. ``The artists concerned are from a studio that operates under the guidance of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il,'' the spokesman said. ``The studio reportedly produces almost all of the official artworks in North Korea, including works that clearly constitute propaganda aimed at glorifying and supporting the North Korean regime. ``To make an exception in this case would have represented a relaxation of Australia’s visa ban and sent an inappropriate message to the North Korean regime.'' Tony Ellwood, gallery director, said. ``We were hopeful there might be an exception, but we have to respect the wishes of the federal government on this. ``However, we are very disappointed.'' Mr Ellwood said the proposed visit by the artists would have led to a greater understanding of a country we know little about. He said the Queensland Art Gallery commissioned 13 works by North Korean artists for APT6. They included oils and water colours, wood cuts and sketches. They will continue to be displayed despite the travel ban on the artists. Mr Smith's office did not release the artists' names. However co-curator Nicholas Bonner said they were Pak Hyo Song, Kang Yong Sam, O Song Gyu, Rim Ho Chol, Ri Jong and Pak Yun Chol. He said the notion they were propaganda artists was ridiculous. Mr Bonner said Mr Smith had banned the artists without even seeing their work. He said all artists in North Korea were in the employ of the government. He said the works were “”exceptionally strong and beautiful’’. [Sanctions] [Softpower] [Human rights]

• French Envoy Meets N.Korea's No. 2 Leader
  French special envoy Jack Lang met with Pyongyang's second highest official Kim Yong-nam on Thursday during a five-day visit to the communist country. Lang arrived in Pyongyang on Monday on behalf of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to seek possible diplomatic ties with the regime and to discuss its nuclear program. France is one of only two European countries that do not have formal diplomatic relations with North Korea. Lang and his delegation leave on Friday but it is unclear whether they will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
• Pak Ui Chun Meets Swiss Foreign Affairs Min. Delegation
  Pyongyang, November 11 (KCNA) -- Foreign Minister of the DPRK Pak Ui Chun Wednesday met and had a talk with the delegation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland led by Division Head Pierre Combernous who paid a courtesy call on him.
• French Presidential Envoy Here
  Pyongyang, November 9 (KCNA) -- Jack Lang, special envoy of the French President, and his party arrived here by air Monday.
• France wades into bog of North Korean diplomacy
  By ANGELA CHARLTON The Associated Press Tuesday, November 3, 2009; 6:47 AM PARIS -- Nicolas Sarkozy is once again wading into international diplomacy. After trying a hand at Mideast peace, raising France's profile on Iran and reaching out to Cuba, he's homing in on another problem long seen as Washington's to solve: North Korea. By sending a special mission to Pyongyang next week, the French president wants to bring new ideas to a stale standoff. Among them, Sarkozy envoy Jack Lang said in an interview, is possible European aid to North Korea in exchange for nuclear guarantees. "No questions are forbidden," Lang told The Associated Press of his upcoming meetings with senior North Korean officials. He called himself a "soldier of peace." The official goal of the visit is to sound out the possibility of establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries. However, as part of the mission, Lang is holding talks with all six governments involved in North Korea disarmament talks - and it's clear the real aim is a longshot bid to achieve a breakthrough in the nuclear standoff.
  Beyond the stated aim of progress on diplomatic ties, France is hoping to up its diplomatic profile, mark another spot on the globe where French influence is felt. France, untainted by ties to the bloodshed of the Korean War, is hoping to be seen as a neutral, trustworthy player. "I'm overjoyed at France's return" to this region, Lang said. "There's no reason for our country to be completely absent." Asked why Sarkozy picked this moment for his North Korea mission, Lang brushed off any suggestion that it was aimed at circumventing the United States, saying the French effort was long overdue. "Why not yesterday?" he asked.

• Harper to make first visits to India, China
  28/10/2009 2:28:13 PM CTV.ca News Staff Prime Minister Stephen Harper will make his first visits to India and China over the next several weeks, in an effort to strengthen economic ties with two growing Asian powers. According to a statement issued Wednesday by the PMO, Harper will visit India from Nov. 16 to 18, after he attends an APEC summit in Singapore on Nov. 14 and 15. A separate statement announced that Harper would make a much-anticipated trip to China from Dec. 2 to 6.
• German Publisher Apologizes for Error About Korea
  A German publisher has issued an apology for a factual error about Korea in a textbook used by elementary school students there. Describing the problem of child labor around the world German publisher Auer depicts Korean children as working in sweatshops for 11 hours a day. The problem is that the textbook, which features photos and a description of squalid working conditions, does not specify the exact timeframe, leading to the misconception that children still work under such conditions in Korea. A Korean graduate student and father of a nine-year-old girl studying in Germany sent a complaint to the publisher, stressing that child labor is banned in Korea and such conditions were abolished a long time ago. [Image] [Labour]
• Korea inks free trade pact with EU
  FTA with U.S. is still in limbo over its automobile importing provisions October 16, 2009 Liquor imports from the European Union, including wine, vodka and whiskey, may cost 20 percent less in the next three years while auto imports from the economic bloc will drop 8 percent. Those are just some of the results that could flow from yesterday’s signing of the Korea-EU free trade agreement that had been hashed out for over two years. The deal still needs approval by respective legislatures. [FTA]

• The mystery behind the student debacle
  August 8th, 2009 Author: Sandy Gordon Problems with overseas students are not new. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke famously cried over the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and agreed to let 10,000 Chinese students stay. Many of them were on dubious short courses and on visas of doubtful provenance. Nevertheless, those who stayed have mostly made excellent citizens.
  None of this, of course, excuses Australians or their government for what has happened to overseas students here. But it does raise an important and hitherto un-asked question about India. Why Australia? Why has the Indian media chosen to signal Australia out for what has in some cases been a completely ‘over the top’ response – a response that was never witnessed in relation to similar problems elsewhere? [Services] [Education] [India]

• Kim Yong Nam Receives Credentials from Australian Ambassador
  Pyongyang, June 9 (KCNA) -- Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, received credentials from Sam Gerovich, Australian ambassador to the DPRK, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Tuesday. Kim had a talk with him after receiving the credentials.

• Vice-President of SPA Presidium Meets UK Delegation
  Pyongyang, May 20 (KCNA) -- Kim Yong Dae, vice-president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, met and had a conversation with the delegation of the Associated Press Television News of the United Kingdom led by its Executive Director Nigel Baker at the Mansudae Assembly Hall Wednesday.

• UK Journalist Illuminates 'Forgotten War'
  British journalist-author Andrew Salmon, right, appears at a press event in Seoul, Tuesday with Lee Kyung-sik, The Korea Post chairman, 77, who interpreted for British soldiers during the Korean War (1950-53). Salmon’s new book “To the Last Round” is the first to trace the United Kingdom’s bloodiest battle since World War II that took place in Korea in April 1951. / Korea Times Photo by Lee Hyo-won By Lee Hyo-won Staff Reporter Fifty-eight years ago on this very day, April 22, 1951, the Korean War (1950-53) had been blazing for almost a year, and U.N. forces were sure the war was won. The Imjin River front stood still in silence, as Britain's 29th Infantry Brigade stationed along this critical line was about to wrap things up. But catastrophe broke loose with the largest communist offensive of the war.
  ``The Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, Korea 1951'' (Aurum London) is the first comprehensive account of the conflict with China and North Korea and is being translated to film by internationally renowned director Daniel Gordon. [Korean War events]
• NK's No. 2 Leader Visits Europe in March
  North Korea's No. 2 leader made a secret trip to three European countries in March, but the purpose of his visit was not yet known, Yonhap News Agency reported Sunday, quoting sources familiar with North Korea affairs. Jang Song-taek, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law, visited France, Italy and Switzerland from early to mid-March, the sources said, without elaborating on the purpose. They, however, presumed that Jang may have met with doctors who treated Kim's suspected stroke in August last year. "His visits show that Kim's health has improved much, considering Jang took his place since he suffered a stroke," one of the sources was quoted as saying. Jang was Friday appointed as a member of North Korea's National Defense Commission (NDC), the country's powerful military board, at the first meeting of the 12th Supreme People's Assembly, the North's parliament. In the January-March period, he accompanied Kim to the latter's inspections of military units and industrial plants 19 times. [Bizarre]
• N Korea is more Confucian cult than rogue state
  By David Pilling Published: March 11 2009 19:59 | Last updated: March 11 2009 19:59 One can’t help feeling sorry for North Koreans. In addition to what, by all accounts, is a pretty rough life, short on political freedoms and Michelin-starred restaurants, they have a dearth of television channels. Pyongyang keeps trying to launch a satellite – which the US and Japan perversely insist is some kind of long-range missile – but it has not managed to get one into orbit. It tried in 2006 but, far from reaching Alaska as the Americans claim it can, it disintegrated 35-40 seconds after launch, plopping harmlessly into the sea. That mishap has deprived the isolated country’s 23m people of the range of viewing options they deserve. For the moment, at least, they must do without Pyongyang, 90210 and North Korean Idol. [Media][Bizarre]
• Response to “EU: On the Bench in Pyongyang”
  The following are comments on the essay, “EU: On the Bench in Pyongyang” by Axel Berkofsky, Adjunct Professor at the University Milan and Advisor on Asian Affairs at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels, which appeared as Policy Forum Online 09-019A: March 10th, 2009.
  II. Comments by Rudiger Frank Relations between the two Koreas are deteriorating, and the Six Party Talks are in jeopardy as North Korea announced plans to launch a rocket. Japan responded strongly, and many Koreans hope once more for an external solution. Some look towards Europe and hope it will join the talks as a formal member. But to which extent would this be realistic? As a European, and as a long-term observer of the situation in Northeast Asia from a Korean perspective, I would be more than happy if the EU joined the Six Party Talks (SPT). But to my deep personal regret, I have to argue that this might be little more than wishful thinking at the moment.

• Pak Ui Chun Meets EU Troika Delegation
  Pyongyang, March 23 (KCNA) -- DPRK Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun met and had a talk with the Troika delegation of the European Union led by Jiri Sitler, director of the Department of Asia and Pacific of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, which paid a courtesy call on him at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Monday.
• Conference Told of N.Korea Abuse of Food Aid
  The ninth International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees in Melbourne on Friday accused North Korea of grave abuses and discussed ways to improve the situation. The conference was organized jointly by the South Korean Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and the Australian Committee for Human Rights in North Korea under the joint sponsorship of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, and the Chosun Ilbo. One participant pointed out that international humanitarian aid to the North has not been properly distributed to the North Korean residents, children in particular. Joanna Hosaniak, the senior program officer for international cooperation for CANKHR, interviewed 40 North Korean children and juveniles and 10 adults in the South between 2001 and 2008 and heard that none of them had received rice sent by South Korea or the international community during this period. They said they had instead seen grain sacks marked "Republic of Korea," "UN," or "Red Cross" sold on the market. [Manipulation] [Spin] [Diversion]
• N.Korea Rights Conference Starts in Melbourne
  The ninth International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees starts in Melbourne on Friday and will seek ways to improve the situation. The conference is to discuss torture in political concentration camps and elsewhere in North Korea and the plight of North Korean children. "On The Border," a documentary produced by the Chosun Ilbo on the tragedy of North Korean refugees, will also be screened. The conference is organized jointly by the South Korean Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and the Australian Committee for Human Rights in North Korea under the joint sponsorship of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, and the Chosun Ilbo. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith will deliver a keynote speech and Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, will give a special address. [Manipulation]
• Korea Sore about British Talk of Crisis
  Minister of Strategy and Finance Yoon Jeung-hyun complained to his U.K. counterpart Alistair Darling about the British press' repeated talk of an impending financial crisis in Korea. At a meeting of G20 finance ministers prior to the group's summit, Yoon told Darling credit rating agency Fitch recently gave low evaluations to Korean banks following reports in the Financial Times and the Economist. "I wonder why British agencies have such a negative view of Korea," he was quoted as saying.
• After 10 years of leader's heroic struggle, pizza comes to North Korea
  Oliver Burkeman in Washington The Guardian, Monday 16 March 2009 For millions of undernourished North Koreans, the notion of eating at a restaurant belongs strictly to the world of fantasy. And so there is only the grimmest humour in the news that, for the country's ruling elite, Pyongyang's dining options just got a little more impressive: the country now has its first-ever pizzeria. [Bizarre] [Media]
• North Koreans seek inspiration in Switzerland
  March 9, 2009 - 5:36 PM Switzerland has hosted a semi-secret visit from a very secret country, with three diplomats from North Korea spending ten days studying the federal system. The guests were looked after by Fribourg University's Federalism Institute. After four days of study they travelled to different regions of the country speaking to local politicians and officials. News of the visit only made it into the newspapers after they had left. "They were certainly surprised by the complexity of the system. They realised everything was decentralised, but very efficient," Nicolas Schmitt, senior research fellow at the institute, who accompanied the delegation, told swissinfo. It may be a surprise to many that North Korea should be interested in federalism at all. But the former leader, Kim Il-sung - who ruled the country from 1948 to 1994 – spoke of uniting North and South Koreas through a federal system under which each would retain its own system, Schmitt explained. "Obviously they realised that the Swiss system could not be imported as it is to Korea [Unification]
• EU: On the Bench in Pyongyang
  By Axel Berkofsky March 10^th , 2009 Axel Berkofsky, Adjunct Professor at the University Milan and Advisor on Asian Affairs at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels, writes, “Sitting quietly on the sidelines of the process of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, the EU has never been invited or made any clear efforts to become actively involved in the six-party North Korea nuclear talks. And while the US, Japan, South Korea, China and, of course, North Korea, call all the shots, Brussels waits for the right moment to step in.”
• Kim Yong Nam Meets Australian Ambassador
  Pyongyang, March 5 (KCNA) -- Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, met and had a talk with Peter Jason Rowe, Australian ambassador who paid a farewell visit to him, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall Thursday.

• Choe Thae Bok Meets British Delegation
  Pyongyang, February 5 (KCNA) -- Choe Thae Bok, chairman of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, met a British parliamentary delegation led by Member of the House of Lords David Alton who is chairman of the British-DPRK All-Party Parliamentary Group, which paid a courtesy call on him, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Thursday and had a friendly talk with it. Present there were Ri Jong Hyok, chairman of the DPRK-U.K. Friendship Parliamentary Group who is deputy to the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, and Peter Hughes, ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the DPRK.
• Talks Held between DPRK and U.K. Parliamentary Delegations
  Pyongyang, February 4 (KCNA) -- Talks were held between the delegation of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK and the British parliamentary delegation at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Wednesday. Present there were members of the SPA delegation led by Deputy to the SPA Ri Jong Hyok who is chairman of the DPRK-U.K. Friendship Parliamentary Group from the DPRK side and members of the British parliamentary delegation led by Member of the House of Lords David Alton who is chairman of the British-DPRK All-Party Parliamentary Group and British Ambassador to the DPRK Peter Hughes from the opposite side. At the talks both sides exchanged views on boosting the friendly relations between the two parliaments and matters of mutual concern.
• British Delegation Arrives
  Pyongyang, February 3 (KCNA) -- A British parliamentary delegation led by Member of the House of Lords David Alton who is chairman of the British-DPRK All-Party Parliamentary Group arrived here today. The delegation was greeted at the airport by Ri Jong Hyok, chairman of the DPRK-U.K. Friendship Parliamentary Group who is deputy to the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly.

• Samulnori beats in an English heart
  Professor given credit for spread of Korean music January 24, 2009 Keith Howard, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, is an avid fan of traditional Korean music. [JoongAng Ilbo] One janggu, a traditional Korean drum, was all it took. Keith Howard spotted it on stage, began playing and immediately was having the time of his life. He played it like a pro. In fact, that’s what he is. Howard is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, or SOAS, at the University of London. He has been teaching about Korean music for 20 years now. Howard visited Korea recently for an international symposium marking the 30th anniversary of samulnori in Seoul, sponsored by Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Samulnori is a traditional form of music using four instruments: jing, a large gong; kkwaenggwari, a small gong; janggu, an hourglass-shaped drum; and buk, a barrel drum. It originated in farming villages, but four traditional percussionists led by Kim Duk-soo redefined samulnori 30 years ago. Their powerful, dynamic version has put the music on the international performing arts map. [Hallyu]
• Trust Building Through Institutions: European Lessons for Korean Unification
  by Dr. Sangmin Bae & Dr. Martyn De Bruyn Northeastern Illinois University Korean unification is a hot topic. But how to approach it and at what speed and through what models are matters for much debate. In their paper, Dr. Bae and Dr. De Bruyn argue that while important negative lessons can be learned from German unification, there are equally important positive lessons from the European Union (EU), which incorporated century old enemies into an economic union that built friendship through institutionalized interdependence and trust. They suggest that an institutional approach in preparation for possible future Korean unification is recommended over gradualism, and they highlight the great economic cost of German unification and compare it to the political and economic process of EU integration.

• Over 1,400 N.Koreans Win EU Citizenship
  More than 1,400 North Koreans became citizens of European Union member states from 2002 to 2006. Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, says most of them are assumed to be former North Korean refugees. The EU says a large number of Chinese people of Korean descent posing as North Korean defectors in search of freedom could be included in the figure. Germany was the most accepting country with over 500 North Koreans becoming citizens during the period, followed by France and Spain.

• Educational Equipment Donated to University
  Pyongyang, November 27 (KCNA) -- The Polish government donated educational equipment to Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the DPRK and the Republic of Poland. Roman Iwaszkiewicz, Polish ambassador to the DPRK, addressing a presentation ceremony held on Thursday, expressed the belief that the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries would further develop, wishing the university greater success in its educational work. A certificate was handed to Pak Jong Jin, rector of the university, by the ambassador
• DPRK FM Meets New British Ambassador
  Pyongyang, November 26 (KCNA) -- Pak Ui Chun, foreign minister of the DPRK, met and had a talk with Peter Hughes, new ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the DPRK, on Wednesday when the latter paid a courtesy call on him.
• The Canada-Korea Forum: developing ways to explore mutual interests
  Meeting of academics and business people in Seoul, Korea, seeks to define a forward-looking partnership for Canada and Korea Dr. Paul Evans, Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada, Dr. Han Sung-joo, Seoul Forum for International Affairs, Dr. Stephen Toope, University of British Columbia The renewal of the Canada-Korea Forum after five years shone fresh light on the opportunities of a strong relationship that has at times been overlooked by both countries' preoccupation with their neighbouring superpowers. First launched in 1995, the sixth edition of the Canada-Korea Forum was hosted this September in Seoul, Korea. The event brought together leading figures in academia and business, including a number of notable guests, among them former Prime Minister of Korea, Lee Hong Koo, now chairman of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs (SFIA). The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the SFIA co-hosted the event.