If you are worried about your kids vaping, watch a few episodes of Euphoria.
What does a Foreign Policy of:
‘we don’t really like the Americans, and we know they break the law, but we publicly support them because they will protect us, and we all want an easy life?’
say about us, in the eyes of our kids?
We teach our kids not to be fearful. We teach them to be ethical. We teach them to stand up to bullies, and not make friends who exploit us.
Yet we do something different. Very very different. In our jobs, in our Govt.
If Aust stands by and let’s Julian Assange be slowly murdered in a US prison, and says absolutely nothing about the thousands of un-prosecuted war crimes the US committed, we stand for nothing.
We have betrayed our history because of fear of the future.
It’s not about one man. It’s a litmus test that will demonstrate whether we are ‘real’ or simply a BS American colony, aping their soulless TV Evangelist nationalism.
If we meekly accept someone else do something we know in our heart is wrong, we are broken.
In our lifetimes we have gone from tolerating the US, to being in total hostage to them. In that same period their own national moral compass has decayed to the point that now there is literally nothing illegal they would not do in the name of their ‘National Security’
I have great respect for @markdreyfusQCMP legal knowledge. He’s a QC and a good one. But one area I probably know more than him is Laws of Armed Conflict:
Assange may be in a civilian prison, but he is actually classified as ‘Member of a (Terrorist) Group’ by the US.
See 🧵
While you probably thought it was a joke, or the hyperbole of US populism, the US (the people that matter anyway) do truly classify Assange as a ‘Member of an Organised Armed Group’. While it’s a nonsense, it doesn’t matter. They answer to no one. Like ‘torture’ ‘black sites’ etc
Once Assange is classified as if he was the leader of ISIS or Hamas, he can be ‘legally’ killed ‘on sight’. By either the US or their proxies. If anyone complained the US would say their classification was sound. No US official has ever been prosecuted for misuse of the label.
Corruption will destroy Australia long before China will.
If a person in the most senior position in the Australian Defence Force, puts their own career ahead of the national defence, how safe are we in the case of an attack?
An integrity commission will protect us better than ten nuclear submarines that arrive just in time to be obsolete.
Those of you lucky enough to be able to come along to see the documentary opening in Sydney tomorrow are in for a treat: about twenty Afghan-Australians are coming along to watch and discuss the film, and afterwards will also take part in a Q and A moderated by @MaryKostakidis
The reason I’m so keen to have ‘Afghan’ point of view is so often in discussions of the West’s wars in the global South, there is an sense of ‘what would the locals know?’
Quite a lot, actually.
One thing in particular: while we ‘talk a great game’, we are very flawed.
The way Westerners see their invasions and the way ‘the invaded’ see us, are very different.
It doesn’t mean everything we do is bad. It’s not.
But we are not nearly as good as we think, and not half as good as we claim.
If he lived today he would have been censored by Big Tech, and imprisoned by the US for ‘disinformation’
Don’t be fooled into thinking Big Tech is aligned with freedom of thought. Big Tech cares only about Big Money and it’s survival. And to make Big Money, you have to suck up to the Govt. Which they do. And then some.
While some may think ‘this is not the biggest scandal’, it set the scene for ‘Afghanistan’:
The SAS ignored the rules.
The Aust Legal Officers covered for them.
The (NZ) Legal Officer who actually did her job was told to ‘shut up’.
The same corrupt Aust Legal Officers who told the NZ Major to “shut up” about illegal torture and abuse are giving evidence against me in my case.
The Aust Army Legal Corps is a corrupted organisation which sees its role as rubber stamping and, if necessary covering up, breaches of the law by our troops.
Whistleblowers are their real enemy.
By supporting the Legal Corps over myself, the Govt shows it’s true nature.
As an ex Military Lawyer, with the highest security clearance, I can confirm that it’s possible for the West to carry out False Flag attacks. There is even a Manual.