Drums of War

Thanks to John Ransley for putting together this compilation- Ed., 13 Mar 2023

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have been having a whale of a time writing about a war between Australia and China, which is coming ‘within three years‘. The Nine project [aims] to break ‘a taboo that exists in Australia of publicly discussing the true threat posed by China’. What it has done instead is offer insight into the kind of pompous, khaki hyperbole that captures government after government and defence minister after defence minister, privy to grave security briefings that traverse matters beyond the ken of the common person.

The “Day 2” of the Age–SMH communiqué ends with this handy catch-all conclusion from the experts: “Australia must equip itself for the age of crisis. It should plan for war in the near, medium and long term, understanding that a stronger Australia would help deter conflict by raising the risks and costs of war for the CCP. The key to avoiding conflict is deterrence.” Quelle surprise. Let a life insurance salesperson into your home and it won’t be long before you’re insured to the eyeballs.

Most alarmingly, the experts paint a picture of an Australian military machine that is barely ready for conflict with Tonga. If this is what the experts are telling us about the sorry state of our military after decades of billion-dollar spending, then it’s time for a royal commission into where all the money has gone.

And then, of course, there is AUKUS. Nine’s panel of experts has flat-out told us that if push comes to shove, it could be all over for Australia in 72 hours, with China crippling the nation’s electricity grid and generally paralysing everything we do before bombing the bejesus out of us. This could all happen in the time it takes for Joe Biden to remember that bloke from Down Under’s name. If this is the case, then is it impolite to ask why Australia will spend well over $100 billion for nuclear-powered submarines — submarines that will be ready around 30 years from now?

https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/09/nine-the-age-smh-red-alert-series-china-war/ ($)

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‘Red Alert’. Australia’s media attempts to manufacture consent for war with China: Caitlin Johnstone 8Mar23 (précis, 720w)

You’re never going to believe this but it turns out the five “experts” recruited by the SMH and The Age tend to work in professions intimately intertwined with the western imperial war machine. This first “expert” is Mick Ryan, who seems to feature in literally every single Australian news media piece geared toward propagandizing Australians into accepting war with China as an inevitability which must be prepared for. Ryan is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is funded by military-industrial complex entities like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and is also directly funded by the US government and its client states, including Australia and Taiwan. SMH and The Age make no note of this immense conflict of interest.

The second “expert” is Peter Jennings, who is a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), where he was the executive director for ten years. Like CSIS, ASPI is a think tank that is funded by US-aligned governments and the military-industrial complex. ASPI has been described as “the propaganda arm of the CIA and the US government” by Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh. The third “expert” is Lavina Lee, an academic who is a Council Member with ASPI and an Adjunct Fellow with CSIS, so when it comes to pro-war punditry she’s what they call a twofer.

The fourth “expert” is Australian defense insider Lesley Seebeck, a regular ASPI contributor. Seebeck is the chairperson of a swampy warmongering think tank of unclear funding called the National Institute of Strategic Resilience, which publishes woke-imperialist articles with titles like “Building Australia’s Strategic Resilience: A Spotlight on Military and Gender in the Pacific Region,” authored by Seebeck herself. The fifth is Alan Finkel, a scientist who works for the Australian government. Again, none of these conflicts of interest were mentioned by The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age.

There are rivers of tax money at stake here; delicious, Reserve-backed dollars straight into the old bank account, mountains of them! And essentially these people are the forward-facing public representatives of those companies whose job it is to sell the public on an outcome that directly benefits their backers. This is an elaborate advertorial and it is incredible that The SMH and The Age not only ran it as news, but hosted it.

These five “experts” say Australia must make these dramatic changes not to defend itself from a Chinese invasion, but to fight a war over Taiwan. This is entirely in line with the appalling propaganda piece put out by Murdoch’s Sky News last month. The panelists paint Australia’s participation in this war as a settled matter, an inevitability should the US wage war on China. These military industrial complex-funded pundits are lying. Australia’s participation in an American war against China is not an inevitability, and is not necessary. These guys are selling mass murder, human suffering, ecological disaster, and the violent deaths of our children.

In reality, the best way Australia can protect itself from China is not to prepare for war with China. An unresolved civil war between two adjacent bodies who both call themselves “China” is none of Washington’s business, and it is certainly none of Canberra’s. Let the Chinese sort out China, because China poses no threat to us. That last point isn’t actually debatable, by the way. As Antiwar’s Daniel Larison recently noted on Twitter, China’s military budget consistently sits at around 1.5 percent of its GDP, which is less than half of the USA’s.

In reality the US has been encircling China with more and more war machinery for years in ways it would never permit itself to be encircled, and has been preparing for a confrontation with Beijing for a very long time. The US is plainly the aggressor here, and Australia now has an existential interest in militarily uncoupling from that aggressor before it gets us all killed.

The reason the [panel] are saying the public needs to be spoken to and persuaded to psychologically accept hawkish escalations against China is because no sane person would consent to such madness if they weren’t psychologically manipulated into it. That’s why we’re seeing all these “news” reports about how urgent it is to prepare for war with China all of a sudden. Not because China poses a threat to us, but because we are allied with an empire that is planning to start a war of unfathomable horror.

Full article: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/03/07/no-australia-does-not-actually-need-to-prepare-for-war-with-china/

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The Red Alert fearmongers ignore a widely known analysis ridiculing the claim China is seriously contemplating a seaborne invasion of Taiwan: John Quiggin 10Mar23

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/red-alert-is-a-paper-tiger,17311

Bob Dylan – Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (6:29)