4 July 2020 — American Herald Tribune
In the southeastern corner of Australia a State of Emergency has replaced what was known until recently only as the State of Victoria. The unseen enemy has been a fact of modern life since the 1950s but at least the red under the bed could be seen if found. COVID-19 is the ultimate unseen enemy, because it literally cannot be seen except through a microscope and noone knows where it is and when it will strike.
2 June 2020 — John Pilger
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam
The Australian High Court has ruled that correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General of Australia, her viceroy in the former British colony, is no longer “personal” and the property of Buckingham Palace. Why does this matter?
9 March 2020 — WSWS
The Australian government is helping spearhead moves by the Trump administration to force internet companies to hand over encryption-cracking capabilities, and to intensify data-swapping within the US-dominated “Five Eyes” global surveillance network.
19 February 2020 — Counter Currents
“I think that now it is time that the government I am a part of needs to be standing up and saying to both the UK and the US: ‘enough is enough, leave our bloke alone and let him come home.’”
24 December 2019 — WSWS
Without providing any details whatsoever, the front-page headline on last Saturday’s Weekend Australian declared: “Police launch raids on foreign agents.”
It began: “The Australian Federal Police has frozen the bank accounts of a suspected foreign agent and will move against a range of foreign operatives in the first half of next year as part of a crackdown aimed at curbing unprecedented levels of foreign meddling.”
14 August 2019 — Counter Currents
Australia has always nursed a contradictory, repressive relationship with its Pacific neighbours. Being a satrap of great powers, it has performed the role of gate keeper and monitor of regional instability, a condescending, often paternalistic agent. At stages, it has also entertained more direct colonial interests. For almost seven decades, Australia controlled Papua New Guinea, assuming power over the former British colony of Papua in 1906.
12 August 2019 — WSWS
A two-part documentary on Julian Assange by the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) “Four Corners” program, which went to air last month, has been rightly condemned by prominent figures in the campaign to defend the persecuted WikiLeaks publisher.
8 August 2019 — WSWS
Despite public outrage over recent federal police raids on journalists, the Australian government and the country’s intelligence and police commanders have declared that such raids and criminal prosecutions are essential.
11 July 2019 — WSWS
Strategic analyst Hugh White has reignited a debate in media and security circles about building nuclear weapons to defend the country against the alleged threat posed by nuclear-armed powers, particularly China. His recently published book, How to Defend Australia, argues that nuclear weapons need to be considered because the United States is in relative decline and can no longer be relied upon to defend Australia in a “more contested and more dangerous” region.
8 June 2019 — WSWS
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) called a news conference on Thursday to justify its raids targeting journalists at two media organisations this week.
Police spent seven hours ransacking a News Corp political reporter’s home in Canberra on Tuesday, and eight hours poring over and seizing files at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Sydney headquarters on Wednesday.
5 June 2019 — Global Research
“What’s gone on this morning sends clear and dangerous signals to journalists and newsrooms across Australia. This will chill public interest reporting.” — News Corp Australia spokesperson, The West Australian, June 4, 2019
These are dark times for journalists and publishers. It did not seem coincidental that Annika Smethurst, a News Corp journalist and political affairs editor, would be a target of an Australian Federal Police warrant. Chelsea Manning, courtesy of a ruling by Judge Anthony Trenga, remains in federal custody in the United States. Julian Assange is facing decline in the maximum security abode that is Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.
5 June 2019 — WSWS
Over the past 24 hours, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have carried out two raids targeting separate media organisations, for their publication of articles exposing government spying plans and war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan.
Thousands of internal ABC emails being gone through by the AFP [source: Twitter @TheLyonsDen]
