ACTION ALERT: Cancel Massive,
Provocative Military Exercises in Australia
RootsAction
To: Legislators in Australia, United States, United Kingdom and Talisman Sabre participating countries:
CANCEL TALISMAN SABRE AND AUKUS!
We call for the massive 30,000-person military land exercises in Australia planned from July 22 through August 4, 2023 to be terminated, and the recently signed Australia, United Kingdom, and United States Alliance (AUKUS) be cancelled, as they are provocative war preparations against China. Please click to add your name!
To challenge Talisman Sabre and AUKUS, several Pacific region organizations including Pacific Peace Network and Independent and Peaceful Australia will be having a “Call for Peace in the Pacific” conference on July 29 in Brisbane with speakers from across the Pacific, followed by educational events in Sydney, Canberra and Darwin.
The conference will be preceded by two webinars in July with speakers on the militarization of the Pacific and Talisman Sabre and AUKUS for those unable to come to Australia for the conference.
The aim of these events is to raise awareness within Australia and the Pacific region of the full impacts of allowing the US to base its forces and materiel on the lands, by sharing the experiences of Pacific People including:
1. Complicity in wars of aggression
2. Becoming a target in the event of war
3. Loss of sovereignty
4. First people’s lands disregarded damaged and disrespected
5. Environmental damage
6. Economic drain
7. Sidelining of national legal system
8. Impacts on women and girls
Volunteers will deliver this petition to legislators in their respective countries.
We will also publicize the petition through articles and social media.
Please sign here and share! https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/cancel-talisman-sabre-aukus
After signing the petition, please use the tools on the linked webpage to share it with your friends.
Alison Broinowski and David Swanson on AUKUS
AUKUS: A US Trojan Horse
Undermining Australia’s Sovereignty
Bruce Haigh / Pearls and Irritations
(October 30, 2022) — We have been shocked, angered, and disturbed about what we learnt from The Washington Post about the secret insertion of senior US defence officials and Admirals into the Australian defence establishment. At least one served in a very senior decision-making role within The Australian Department of Defence as an American citizen.
The decision to hire these mercenaries was made by Morrison and Dutton. Who else in that corrupted government was privy to the decision? Once in place their presence and roles must have been common knowledge in defence, intelligence and foreign affairs departments as well as more broadly from their appearance at cocktail and dinner parties, the Canberra Club and Military Messes in Canberra and other capitals. It has to be presumed that ASPI was party to the positioning of this posse of hired guns.
The revelation of this extraordinary undermining of Australian sovereignty did not come from the Australian MSM but from a newspaper in the US. How pathetic.
I have long maintained that it was the US which undermined the French submarine deal and the insertion of the American Fifth Column would suggest this was so. All along they have known that the nuclear submarine deal was a smokescreen for basing US nuclear submarines in Australia. AUKUS was the half-cocked proposal they came up with. Half-cocked because they included the UK to give the notion some respectability and gravitas. How silly. The UK is a collapsing state. Cameron, Johnson, Truss, et al have seen to that. Brexit is one major Tory bugger up. There is no way the UK can deploy east of the Suez in any meaningful way, for any period of time.
AUKUS is the Trojan Horse that the US is deploying to turn the north of Australia into a US sphere of military influence to initially intimidate China and then as ‘base’ from which to attack China. For, make no mistake, the US is busting to have a go at China, knock its socks off, send it to the corner, teach it a lesson. Don’t mess with the USA. Don’t challenge the supremacy of the USA. It is a rewrite of West Side Story, crude and brash, all the more so if Trump becomes president again.
Defence work and preparations are being undertaken under the AUKUS umbrella. Much of it taxpayer funds which have not gone before the appropriate parliamentary committees. There has been no scrutiny by the Australian parliament. Nothing. One hundred and thirty five Abrams Mark II tanks have been bought from the US for $3.5 billion, which even before use have been mothballed in South Australia. Who pushed this unprecedented sale? Was it the inserted US lobbyist?
All this stems from Morrison secret governance. Was he also minister for defence over the period of US white anting? In the absence of any thing to the contrary it is safe to assume so. However, it is not Morrison behaving like the enemy of the people which is disturbing, it is that Albanese has acquiesced.
I am sure he has no greater understanding of AUKUS than the rest of Australia, but he has gone along with it. He and Marles must have known about the presence of the Pentagon in the offices of Russel Hill, but Albanese said and did nothing. Presumably he condones the undermining of Australian sovereignty, for why else would he remain silent?
One of the problems Albanese faces is that with AUKUS he could find himself at war without prior warning. US directed Australian naval and air patrols in the South China Sea, close to, if not over Chinese territory, could at any time result in military retaliation by the Chinese fed up with the provocation they represent. Equally US patrols could bring in the same result.
There is currently a move by Australians for War Powers Reform, AWPR, of which I am a committee member; in concert with others, to get the parliament to consider and debate going to war. AUKUS, through conducting war like activities, could see Australia at war before even the executive was aware. That is why all matters relating to AUKUS should be tabled and debated in the parliament, including the presence of US defence advisers acting in the interests of the US industrial/military complex.
Why has Albanese picked up and run with the failed foreign affairs and defence policy of the discredited previous LNP government? But in case no one noticed it was Howard who began the process of undermining Australian sovereignty with Iraq and Afghanistan, hiding all the while behind ANZUS and ANZAC, neither of which he had a clue about.
There was so much damage done by the previous self-seeking LNP government that alongside the domestic damage control that Albanese has undertaken, with the assistance of some very competent ministers, he looks good. Delve a little deeper and the picture is nowhere near as rosy. Wong must tear her hair out at his continuing wooden, near hostile, neocon statements on China. China, for better or worse, is there to stay. Their agenda is known and was reiterated at the 20th Congress. Albanese’s sabre rattling will change nothing. Better he deploys smart people into creating and carrying forward smart diplomacy.
Albanese is proving a disappointment in these difficult times. He sees the effect of climate change and yet prevaricates on creating a national body to manage the effect of flood and fire. He continues support for the fossil fuel industry.
We read about AUKUS, we ‘know’ work is being undertaken in WA, NT and Queensland to please the Americans and yet none of it is public knowledge. Everything about AUKUS should be tabled in the Australian Parliament. Australia is complying with the US at cost to Australian democracy. When the MSM, politicians and intelligence agencies believed China was inserting itself into decision making and universities they came down hard. When America has quantifiably done worse things, the compromised ruling elite turns away, averts its gaze. What is the point of foreign interference legislation if it is selectively applied?
China is not a threat to Australia; the United States is. We are being railroaded into another, disastrous war, all to save the ego of America’s predominantly white ruling elite.
Australia is in crisis, partly climate and partly of US making. Albanese has to find and/or to show some moral courage and common-sense. He needs to expose Morrison and Dutton, a thing he has been, for whatever reason, loath to do; and he needs to get rid of Marles, ASPI and the American Trojan Horse. The lop-sided alliance will survive a strong dose of Australian sovereignty.
Background:
>> How the NZ Cabinet Learned to Stop Worrying About the Bomb and Love NATO
>> Open Letter on AUKUS to Prime Minister of New Zealand
>> Solidarity Webinar: Cancel Talisman Sabre – No More War Games in the Pacific!
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
