No Royal Commission could possibly deal with all the social and structural issues that afflict the treatment of the aged in a country where they are commodified and forgotten.
The Red Alert exercise is yet another dangerous exercise in the manufacturing of consent for war, an amorally bankrupt exercise that will sideline peaceful approaches. Again, Australian personnel and citizens will find themselves perishing in conflicts at the behest of an insensible hegemon.
Should Assange find himself shackled in the less than salubrious surrounds of the US carceral system, he will face one of the country’s most vicious statutes. The Espionage Act of 1917, also known as 18 USC 793, has worried the US legal profession for decades.
Unfortunately for those who still believe in the merits of international human rights laws, the Australian model, revised for European application, is bound to become ever more popular for populists and reactionaries.
The Manchurian candidate accusation can be said to be part of the toolkit of politicisation that has characterised the brief history of the Australian Commonwealth.
The prime minister may have stopped the revolving door of palace coups and knifed leaders, but he has also ensured the thriving of a mephitic culture in desperate need of an airing by an integrity commission.
The Australian Way meant ‘technology, not taxes’. The airy assumption here is based upon technology that has yet to bear fruit and upon a total absence of modelling and detail.
AUKUS is also a screeching message to powers in the region that the Anglophone bloc, with its vast historical baggage, intends to police the region against a country never mentioned in the joint statement but crystal clear to all present.
