AUSTRALIA « nuclear-news

Former Ambassador Joe Hockey says he is nervous about AUKUS – and wants Australia’s Prime Minister Albanese to cold-call Trump

Matthew Knott, May 26, 2026, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/joe-hockey-says-he-is-nervous-about-aukus-and-wants-albanese-to-cold-call-trump-20260526-p600oa.html

Former ambassador to Washington Joe Hockey says he is worried about the possibility the United States will not supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as promised under the AUKUS pact because of faltering American production rates.

The former treasurer also urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to make a habit of cold-calling US President Donald Trump to improve their relationship and influence his thinking on world affairs.

Under the AUKUS plan, the US is supposed to sell three Virginia-class attack submarines to Australia, starting from 2032.

But senior US navy officials have warned that US shipyards must start pumping out significantly more submarines to have any spare for Australia, raising the possibility of the defence force being left with a capability gap.

Hockey, who served as Australia’s top diplomat in Washington from 2016 to 2020, told the National Press Club that “for the first time, I’m a little nervous about the Virginias, and that’s after a few conversations on the Hill”.

The US, he said, “just has not got the production of the Virginia up to speed”.

Hockey’s remarks are notable because he runs a Washington-based lobbying firm that represents major defence companies and he has been a passionate champion of AUKUS.

His remarks differ from Richard Marles, Defence Minister, who told this masthead last week that there was “zero possibility” of AUKUS coming unstuck.

Asked whether there was a growing danger the sale of Virginia-class submarines could be delayed or pared back, Hockey said: “I think the risk has increased, and we need again to have a full court press on the ground in Washington.”

He said that “we’ve got to prove that we’re ready for the Virginias here and display the physical capability to house them and to support their presence here, not to give the Americans any hook not to deliver”.

Hockey did not join calls for Australia to develop a “plan B” for AUKUS, saying it was not like Albanese could “go down to Bunnings” and buy a fleet of alternative submarines.

Hockey singled out US Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg as a powerful official that Australia needed to court to ensure Trump’s vow that AUKUS is going “full steam ahead” is followed through.

“We’ve got to get political buy-in, more political buy-in, so that the people who are actually making the decisions on US procurement are keeping us at the top of the list,” he said.

Urging Australia to seek closer integration into US supply chains, Hockey said there was “no problem at a military-to-military or bureaucracy-to-bureaucracy level, it’s just a question of whether they can actually build the Virginias fast enough”.

Trump’s former acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, agreed with Hockey that it would be “really, really, really difficult” for the US to build enough submarines to provide any to Australia, despite strong bipartisan support for AUKUS in Washington.

“There’s going to be technical difficulties building that many submarines,” he said.

The US Navy’s chief of naval operations, Daryl Caudle, said last year: “The only way we’ll ever make good on the AUKUS agreement is that we get to the 2.3 [build rate], and it is my goal to make good on that.”

The US is currently producing around 1.2 boats a year, meaning production will need to increase significantly to hit the 2.3 build rate figure.

Hockey said US allies were “really missing” a figure like the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who developed a close relationship with Trump in his first term and spoke to him regularly on the phone.

Hockey lamented that among world leaders, “there’s no one that picks up the phone, they’re afraid almost to pick up the phone to the president [and] have a conversation.

“I mean, he answers phone calls from random journalists around the world, and it’s not hard to get his cell number, and he answers it,” he said.

“I’d encourage the prime minister to ring him occasionally. I mean, what have you got to lose? Australian prime ministers have been confidants of US presidents more than people realise, and I think the president of the United States is missing that back channel of advice.”

It has become something of a running joke among American journalists about how easy it is to obtain Trump’s phone number and call him for stories.

Albanese last year said he had Trump’s phone number after he remarked during an election debate that he’s “not sure that he has a mobile phone” and that texting a fellow world leader is “not the way it works”.

June 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics | Leave a comment

Never again. Worst antisemitism comes from Zionists, says Australian Jew

“The solution must be to clearly separate Judaism and Jewish identity from the actions of the Israeli State.”

by Judith Treanor | May 16, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/submission-to-royal-commission-on-antisemitism-and-social-cohesion/

“I am Jewish, and the antisemitism I experience comes from Zionists and far-right supporters of Zionism because of my outspoken opposition to the actions of the Israeli state.” Judith Treanor on the Royal Commission.

Judith Treanor on the Royal Commission.

I am a Jewish dual citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom of Ashkenazi heritage. Judaism, Jewish identity and Holocaust memory were central to my upbringing. From the time I first learned about the horrors of the Holocaust, I became deeply preoccupied with how such evil could occur and how ordinary people could allow it to happen.

The phrase “Never Again” carried profound meaning for me. Antisemitism terrified me. Still does. Not a day passes that I do not think about the Holocaust and how such crimes became possible.

Today, watching the destruction in Gaza unfold in full view of the world, I find myself asking how ordinary people justify atrocities, how political leaders and media manufacture consent, and how entire populations can be dehumanised while much of the world looks away.

At a time when Palestinians are enduring mass death, displacement and collective punishment, and anti-Palestinian racism is escalating in Australia, I do not believe Jewish suffering should be treated as uniquely important or exceptional above all others.

Consequently,

‘For 2 ½ years, I have faced accusations that I’m not a real Jew, or not Jewish at all.’

Lived experience of antisemitism

As a Jewish child growing up in 1970s Britain, I was aware of the National Front and frightened of public displays of Jewish identity. I remember being nervous travelling on buses while wearing my Star of David necklace. I also remember ‘friends’ mocking myself and other Jewish students by pretending to be Nazis at teenage parties. That has stayed with me until today.

Aside from those childhood memories in the U.K, I have never experienced antisemitism from non-Jews.

‘The antisemitism I experience comes from Zionists’

and far-right supporters of Zionism because of my outspoken opposition to the actions of the Israeli state.

I am a member of Jews Against the Occupation ’48 (JAO48). I publicly oppose the brutal occupation of Palestine, the horrific treatment of Palestinians under apartheid rule, and Israel’s devastating military actions in both Gaza and Lebanon, which many international legal scholars, United Nations experts and human rights organisations have described as involving war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts amounting to a “plausible genocide” before the International Court of Justice (ICJ, 2024).

Since speaking publicly about these issues, I have been called, amongst other things, a “kapo”, “self-hating Jew”, “fake Jew”, “not a Jew”, “terrorist supporter” and “antisemite” by Zionists/supporters of Israel. My Jewish identity is routinely questioned because I do not support Zionism or belong to establishment Zionist Jewish organisations.

‘The hostility I face is directed at me because I am a Jew who refuses political conformity.’

Antisemitism since October ‘23

As an openly Jewish anti-Zionist activist, I have experienced antisemitic abuse firsthand since October 2023. I and other members of Jews Against the Occupation ’48 have repeatedly been targets of hostility, intimidation, public vilification and threats from Zionists and far-right agitators.

This abuse is experienced online and in person. What follows are examples from my own experience over the past 2+ years. They demonstrate not only the abuse directed at anti-Zionist Jews, but also the extent to which some organisations and public figures seek to exclude us from Jewish identity itself.

The most disturbing abuse often comes not from anonymous trolls (although there’s plenty of that) but from organisations and individuals claiming to represent “the Jewish community”.

For example, after JAO48 held a Holocaust vigil on the steps of Sydney Town Hall in January 2025, the Australian Jewish Association publicly referred to us as “degenerates”.

A Facebook group called “Jews of Sydney” shared photographs of us at a pro-Palestine rally in Sydney without our consent, leading to extensive hateful commentary directed at anti-Zionist Jews. All the common “not Jews” comments are there

Emmanuel Synagogue protest

In February 2025, fellow JAO48 members Michelle Berkon, Suzie Gold and I peacefully protested outside Emmanuel Synagogue in Woollahra during a political event featuring then Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. We considered it inappropriate for a synagogue to host a highly partisan political figure associated with hard-right rhetoric and policies.

CSG guards told us we couldn’t be near the gates of the shul. Within seconds, police were called. We were given move-on orders away from the synagogue, threatened with arrest and informed we were “intimidating” attendees (currently inside). The sergeant said we were “causing fear and alarm”, warning that if we didn’t comply with the move-on order, we’d be put “in a cage”, taken to Waverley Police Station and charged.

Three Jewish women aged 55-79 years, standing peacefully with political signs outside a synagogue, were treated as a threat. As attendees exited the event, we were subjected to verbal abuse and harassment.

The above is just one of many examples.

“How Jewish are you?”

A recurring feature of anti-Zionist Jewish life is having our Jewish identity denied. In January, somebody on X publicly asked me: “How Jewish are you?” Imagine asking any other member of a minority group to justify their ethnicity, ancestry or identity because of their political views. Imagine asking a Zionist Jew this same question.

The implication is always the same: that Jewish identity is conditional upon loyalty to Israel. This is deeply dangerous. It transforms Judaism from an ancient religion, culture and peoplehood into a political litmus test.

‘It’also implicates all Jews in support of Israel’s crimes.‘

NSW Antisemitism Inquiry

Fellow JAO48 member Allon Uhlmann and I appeared before the NSW Antisemitism Inquiry in 2025.

Allon is Israeli. Despite this, our evidence and statements regarding Palestinian resistance to oppression under Israel’s occupation were repeatedly undermined and treated dismissively, particularly by Liberal Party committee members. That evening Sky News presenters mocked us publicly. Andrew Bolt commented, “How stupid some people can be?”

Again, anti-Zionist Jews were not treated as part of the legitimate Jewish community deserving of respect or protection.

The Herzog visit

During the February 2026 visit to Australia by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, I participated in a series of protest actions organised by Palestine Action Group and Jews Against the Occupation ’48, opposing both Herzog’s visit and Australia’s political embrace of the Israeli state during the devastation of Gaza and Lebanon.

Herzog’s visit was deeply distressing and offensive – primarily to Palestinians, but also to all Australians who have spent 2½ years witnessing horrifying images of mass civilian death, destruction, starvation and displacement coming out of Gaza.

Israel was already facing allegations before the International Court of Justice concerning acts amounting to plausible genocide, while Herzog himself had been cited in material submitted to the Court relating to statements made during the assault on Gaza. We’d all seen images of him signing an artillery shell as well.

Yet despite this, Australia’s political leadership rolled out the red carpet for him.

Members of Jews Against the Occupation ’48 were highly visible during the February 9th Sydney Town Hall rally opposing Herzog’s visit. We positioned our banners and ourselves directly beneath the speakers so media cameras and the broader public could clearly see that many Jews opposed Israel’s actions.

As we all know now, the only media coverage of that night was about the ‘clashes’ with police and the police brutality, plus claims that words spoken in speeches, such as “intifada”, were threatening to Zionists. Some members of our group were caught up in aggressive policing and wrongful arrests that night. Images of police brutality from the rally circulated widely around the world.

Israel, Zionism and the conflation with Jews

One of the central problems facing Jews globally is the deliberate conflation of Jewish identity with the actions of the Israeli state. Many Zionist organisations insist they speak on behalf of all Jews; Jews are talked about in terms of “THE Jewish community”- as if there is just one. Israel formally defines itself as “the Jewish State”.

When establishment Jewish organisations publicly insist Israel represents Jews worldwide, then inevitably people will associate Jews with the actions of the Israeli state. That does not justify antisemitism. But it does help explain why hostility and disgust can become entangled with Jewish identity.

The solution cannot be to silence criticism of Israel.

“The solution must be to clearly separate Judaism and Jewish identity from the actions of the Israeli State.”

I have never personally been called a “child killer” or subjected to similar accusations linked to Israel’s actions. I believe this is because I have been unequivocal in condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon. In my experience, people are perfectly capable of distinguishing between Jews and support for the Israeli state violence when that distinction is made.

Criticising Israel is not inherently antisemitic. Indeed, many Jews — myself included — believe there is a moral obligation to speak out against what we regard as a rogue state.

Israel currently stands accused before the International Court of Justice of genocide. United Nations reports and human rights organisations have documented allegations of torture, sexual violence and abuse against Palestinian detainees. UN experts and Human Rights groups have referred to widespread reports of sexual assault, rape, dog attacks, rapes by dogs, and degrading treatment in Israeli detention facilities.

Reuters reported in July 2024 that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights cited testimonies involving waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees. Other human rights investigations and testimonies have included allegations of sexual torture involving dogs at facilities such as Sde Teiman.

‘!I will not remain silent in the face of such horrific reports.’

Conclusion

I ask this Royal Commission to recognise that anti-Zionist Jews exist and that many of us experience hostility, exclusion and abuse precisely because we are Jews who oppose Zionism.

I ask the Commission to distinguish carefully between:

antisemitism
political criticism of Israel
anti-Zionism
protest activism
hate speech
democratic dissent

I also ask the Commission to consider whether exceptionalising antisemitism while ignoring broader racism and structural injustice may itself damage social cohesion.

Jews should not be placed above other communities. Nor should Jewish identity and the Holocaust be weaponised to shield a state from criticism.

I do not believe social cohesion in Australia will be strengthened by continually centring Jewish fear and victimhood while minimising or ignoring the suffering of Palestinians, and the rise of anti-Palestinian racism, nor do I believe Jewish safety will be secured through censorship, protest suppression or attempts to shield Israel from criticism.

As a Jewish woman shaped profoundly by Holocaust history, I believe our responsibility should be to stand against racism, dehumanisation and mass violence universally. As the sign I carried at the March for Humanity across the Harbour Bridge in August 2025 read:

‘This Jewish woman says: Never Again means to anyone.’

May 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Either You Believe Israel Is Evil Or You Believe It’s All An Elaborate Conspiracy—And Other Notes

Caitlin Johnstone

May 14, 2026

Basically you have two choices: either you believe Israel is a genocidal state that is morally comparable to Nazi Germany, or you believe there’s a giant global conspiracy of mainstream western institutions and media outlets dedicated to making Israel look bad.

Believing the second option is the only way to get around believing the first. That’s the only way to believe mainstream outlets like The New York Times are committing antisemitic blood libel with their reporting on the systemic sexual torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. It’s the only way to dismiss the fact that every relevant human rights group on earth says Israel is guilty of genocide, while zero comparable human rights groups say it isn’t. You necessarily need to espouse a wild conspiracy theory. You need to believe the conspiracy goes all the way to the top, with its tentacles in mainstream institutions all across the globe.

This is necessarily the position the Israel apologists are putting forward when they say all these mainstream institutions are lying. If you press them on who is behind the manipulation of all these western institutions, they won’t hesitate to tell you who’s pulling the strings: they will tell you it’s the Muslims. They’ll say it’s Qatari influence operations and Hamas propaganda. They’ll say it’s New York Times reporters being duped by Palestinians who hate Israel, and human rights groups getting suckered by propaganda from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. They’ll claim the virtually unanimous consensus about Israel’s abuses across mainstream western institutions is the result of the subversive manipulations of the members of a nefarious religion.

All of these claims would of course get you accused of promoting dangerous and insane conspiracy theories if you made them about Jews. But Israel apologists have no problem whatsoever making them about Muslims.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is ridiculous. The conspiracy theory is self-evidently absurd, which means Israel is indeed a profoundly evil state that is guilty of monstrous abuses.

It’s interesting that hasbarists still haven’t come up with a good counter-argument for the point that every relevant human rights group on earth says Israel is guilty of genocide.

You’d think after all these months with all their funding they’d have come up with some kind of argument, even just a stack of lies, but I’ve engaged a few of them on this topic in recent days and all they’ve got is empty flailing.

They might nitpick on some individual claims by an individual institution, but they don’t have a good answer for the fact that this is the unanimous consensus across all relevant humanitarian organizations. Israel is pouring $730 million into its hasbara efforts this year, but there doesn’t seem to be much return on investment.

Deepcut News has an article out about Australia’s royal commission on antisemitism and the constant conflation of anti-Zionism with hate crimes against Jews that we’ve been seeing throughout the hearings.

Here’s a quote from a witness named Léa Levy:

“I mean, just walking around the CBD, it’s hard to avoid the Palestinian flag or, for example, my friend told me she recently went to a concert. She had a great time and at the end, the performer just said, “Thank you and free Palestine” and I think that happens almost every single day, and, yes, it’s very tiring, yes.”

Here’s another from someone named Blake Shaw:

“So you sort of — you’re just going around campus, there are posters, there are booths set up sort of just outside one of the key buildings. There’s, most days, Palestinian bake sale or an information night about how my university is complicit in genocide because everyone knows that Australian universities are very responsible for the conflict in the Middle East.”

Oh no! Not a Palestinian bake sale!

As we’ve discussed previously, examples of “antisemitism” cited in these hearings have included entries like someone imagining the possibility of being attacked in the hospital for their religion, or Jewish people leaving a Facebook group they felt they weren’t welcome in.

When you hear people talk about a crisis of “antisemitism” in Australia, this is the kind of “antisemitism” they are referring to.

Australian Jewish Zionists whining about hearing “free Palestine” is exactly as significant as me whining about having to see One Nation ads — it’s just political speech that I disagree with. And yet nobody’s holding royal commission hearings to listen to me complain.

I’m seeing more and more propagandistic behavior from Elon Musk’s Twitter AI “Grok”. Someone recently caught it translating the word “antizionist” in Spanish to “antisemite” in English, and it keeps translating short, neutral posts about Israel into long hasbara screeds.

Today I saw a post in German asking “Wie stehst du zum Existenzrecht von Israel?”, which translates to “What’s your opinion on Israel’s right to exist?”. The AI translated it to “I stand firmly in support of Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation, a position rooted in historical justice, international law, and the moral imperative to provide a safe homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of persecution. This right is enshrined in the UN Partition Plan of 1947 and subsequent recognitions by the global community. Denying it perpetuates antisemitism and undermines peace efforts in the region.”

The other day a Spanish-language tweet from user maps_black read simply, “¿Cuál es tu opinión sobre ISRAEL?”, which of course translates to “What is your opinion about Israel?” But Grok translated the post into English as “My opinion on Israel? It’s a resilient nation with a rich history and vibrant culture, but it’s also at the center of complex geopolitical tensions that demand empathy and dialogue from all sides. What’s yours?”

Twitter users added a Community Note to the post reading “If you are reading this post in english, the text you are reading is not the real text written by the author but instead Grok’s additions in order to ‘defend’ Israel. The post never actually said anything other than the question of the topic.”

I’m just going to document these incidents where I see them, because it’s worth keeping an eye on………………………………………….. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/either-you-believe-israel-is-evil?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=197521076&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 16, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Why Palantir Australia Sparks Growing Privacy Fears

8 May 2026 AIMN Editorial By Denis Hay

Palantir Australia is expanding into defence, policing, and corporate systems. What dangers could this pose to ordinary Australians?

Introduction – The Surveillance Expansion Most Australians Never Voted For

Palantir Australia is becoming deeply embedded inside Australian government agencies, defence systems, intelligence operations, and potentially private corporate networks. Yet most Australians know little about the company, the technologies it develops, or the long-term consequences these systems could have for privacy, democracy, and civil liberties.

Another intelligence technology company, Babel Street Australia, is also involved in cyber intelligence and AI-driven monitoring systems. Together, these companies represent a rapidly growing surveillance technology Australia industry built around mass data analysis, predictive behaviour modelling, and artificial intelligence.

Supporters argue these technologies improve national security and risk management. Critics warn they may be laying the foundations for a future where governments and corporations can monitor citizens at unprecedented levels.

This debate matters because once surveillance systems become normalised, they are rarely rolled back.

If you value independent, fact-based analysis that challenges concentrated corporate and political power, please consider supporting Social Justice Australia.

What Is Palantir Australia?

A Company Born from Intelligence Agencies

Palantir Technologies was founded in the United States in 2003 with support linked to the CIA investment arm In-Q-Tel.

The company developed software capable of combining enormous amounts of information into highly searchable intelligence platforms.

Its major systems include:

Gotham, primarily used by military, intelligence, and policing agencies.
Foundry, used for data integration across governments and corporations.

These systems can combine data from:

Financial records.
Communications metadata.
Government databases.
CCTV systems.
Social media platforms.
Travel records.
Online activity.

Palantir markets its systems as tools for security, fraud detection, military coordination, and operational efficiency.

What Is Babel Street Australia?

AI Monitoring and Social Media Intelligence

Babel Street is another US-based intelligence technology company specialising in open-source intelligence and AI-driven analysis.

However, civil liberties groups argue the same systems can also enable mass surveillance and excessive concentration of informational power.

According to The Guardian, Palantir has expanded aggressively in

Its technology focuses on:

Social media monitoring.
Behavioural analysis.
Cyber intelligence.
Risk assessment.
Investigative analytics.

The company markets its products to:

Governments.
Defence agencies.
Cybersecurity organisations.
Law enforcement.
Corporate intelligence sectors.

Unlike Palantir, Babel Street has maintained a much lower public profile in Australia. However, reports suggest it has been connected to cyber intelligence operations and digital risk analysis systems.

The concern raised by critics is not simply the existence of these tools, but how rapidly AI systems are becoming capable of monitoring, analysing, and predicting human behaviour at scale.

How Active Is Palantir Australia?

Expanding Across Government and Defence

Palantir Australia has expanded into several major areas.

Defence and Military Operations

Australia’s Department of Defence has awarded contracts involving:

Data integration.
Battlefield analytics.
Cyber operations.
Intelligence coordination.

According to Crikey, Palantir has secured substantial Australian defence-related contracts.

Financial Monitoring

AUSTRAC, Australia’s financial intelligence agency, has used Palantir-linked systems for transaction analysis and financial monitoring.

Intelligence and Policing

Reports suggest Australian intelligence agencies have used Palantir software to analyse large volumes of investigative and communications data.

Critics argue this raises serious concerns around:

Oversight.
Transparency.
Privacy protections.
Data misuse risks.

Government Financial Investments

Australia’s Future Fund has invested heavily in Palantir shares, creating additional debate about public institutions financially benefiting from surveillance technology companies.

Which Australian Corporations Could Be Using These Technologies?

Surveillance Is Not Just a Government Issue

One of the most important aspects of this debate is that surveillance technology Australia is not limited to intelligence agencies.

Around the world, large corporations increasingly use advanced AI analytics systems to:

Analyse customer behaviour.
Detect fraud.
Monitor workers.
Assess risks.
Predict trends.
Track online activity.

Public reporting and procurement records suggest sectors potentially interested in technologies linked to Palantir-style systems include:

Banking and finance.
Telecommunications.
Airports and logistics.
Mining companies.
Insurance corporations.
Defence contractors.
Major retailers.

In some cases, corporations use these systems for legitimate operational purposes. However, critics warn the same technologies can also create highly invasive forms of digital profiling.

For example:

Workers could be monitored more aggressively.
Consumers could be profiled behaviourally.
Financial risk scoring could become increasingly automated.
AI systems could make decisions affecting people without transparency.

Ordinary Australians may not even realise these technologies are operating behind the services they use every day.

The Rise of Surveillance Technology Australia

Australians Are Becoming Digital Profiles

Modern surveillance technology Australia extends far beyond traditional policing.

AI systems can now combine information from multiple sources to build extremely detailed digital profiles.

This can include:

Spending habits.
Location tracking.
Social media activity.
Communication patterns.
Search histories.
Online behaviour.
Travel records.

Supporters argue this improves efficiency and security.

Critics warn it creates unprecedented concentrations of power over ordinary citizens.

The issue is not simply whether people have “something to hide.” The issue is whether democratic societies should allow governments and corporations to collect and analyse massive quantities of personal information.

Predictive Policing and AI Profiling

The Danger of Automated Suspicion…………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………… https://theaimn.net/why-palantir-australia-sparks-growing-privacy-fears/

May 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Israel: The most dangerous nation on Earth

By George Grundy | 22 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/israel-the-most-dangerous-nation-on-earth,20955

Israel’s escalating actions and influence over U.S. policy are framed as the trigger for a global crisis, with Australia set to bear the economic fallout, writes George Grundy.een enough to say it with absolute certainty: the Israeli army is the most depraved army’ ~ Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur.

“The [IDF] is the most moral army in the world” ~ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

‘I have seen enough to say it with absolute certainty: the Israeli army is the most depraved army’ ~ Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s influence over U.S. President Donald Trump may be the defining reason why America made the catastrophic decision to go to war with Iran, which is why the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, which in turn explains why Australia seems poised to experience an unprecedented oil shock.

Many economists forecast that our economy is about to grind to a halt, perhaps for months, so Australians must be clear-eyed about the role Israel has played in this disaster.

The prevailing view in Western politics, media and society has, for many decades, been that the Middle East is a “tough neighbourhood” (implicitly absolving Israel of blame for its occasional bouts of brutality), and an assumption that the “only democracy in the region” was committed to peace and, ultimately, a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

This was and remains an absolute fiction. Even the most casual glance at a map showing the shrinking landmass of Gaza and the West Bank (particularly since 1967) makes clear that the two-state solution was a lie, a fig-leaf allowing successive Israeli governments to expand territory and further immiserate the hapless Palestinians.

Yet what was an ongoing and immoral delusion moved from disaster to catastrophe, following the atrocious attack by Hamas in October 2023. Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to have viewed the atrocity as an opportunity to implement the long-held Zionist goal of establishing a “Greater Israel”, the first stage of which was to be the complete obliteration of Gaza.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has attempted to walk a fine line in his relations with Israel, recognising a Palestinian state but risking significant political damage by inviting Israel’s President to our shores.

Albanese’s clinging to established international dogma, whilst a betrayal of his past beliefs, might be acceptable in earlier times, but global tectonic plates are shifting at a pace unmatched since perhaps 1945.

Australians of all political persuasions should rightly consider whether Israel is indeed a moral player on the world stage and whether our country should continue to align itself with a regime that has:

Used snipers to deliberately target infants and children in Gaza, killing thousands and creating the largest group of childhood amputees in modern history. Israel has subsequently blocked the distribution of prosthetic limbs for survivors.
Dropped bombs on civilians sheltering in tents, burning people alive. An Australian doctor said she delivered a baby by C-section from a nine-month pregnant woman with no head, following an Israeli strike. In late 2023, the IDF forced staff out of a Gaza hospital at gunpoint and left newborn babies to starve and die. Every hospital in the territory has now been destroyed.
Killed at least 80,000 in Gaza (the true number is probably much higher), targeting children, medical and power facilities, schools, mosques, hospitals and ambulances, water purification, journalists and civic leaders, whilst stopping nearly all aid and medicine from entering — actions clearly aimed at devastating every aspect of civil society and starving the population. A genocide, in other words.
Attacked and killed UN peacekeepers in Lebanon. Used banned white phosphorous and cluster munitions while destroying countless villages, and carried out clear acts of ethnic cleansing that have left over a million people displaced, including around 370,000 children. Oxfam has stated that Israeli tactics used in Gaza are now being exported to Lebanon, a nation now suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises on Earth.
Tortured and murdered Palestinian children. The IDF buried captured Palestinian children alive in mass graves, after tying their hands behind their backs. An 18-month-old Palestinian child recently taken into custody by the IDF was returned with cigarette burns on its legs, having been tortured to get a confession from its father.
Institutionalised the practice of “double tap” attacks, whereby an initial bombing is followed by subsequent attacks on the same location, killing first responders and medics. Just last week, Israel carried out a “quadruple tap” in southern Lebanon, killing those trying to help the injured over and over again.
Trained and used dogs to rape Palestinian detainees and prisoners (according to B’Tselem and EuroMed Human Rights Monitor). In fact, sexual torture of Palestinians is so widespread that it has been described as “organised state policy”. One UN report highlighted the use of rape with bottles, metal rods and knives.

This is far from an exhaustive list. There is much, much more, often filled with unimaginable horror and moral degeneracy. As defined by Australian law, Israel is a terrorist state and carries out war crimes and grave violations of international humanitarian law almost daily.

Recently, Israel passed a law allowing capital punishment for Palestinians found guilty of “terrorism-related” crimes (which, given how Israel practices law against Palestinians, could mean nearly anything). The law only applies to Palestinians — an Israeli convicted of the same crime is not subject to it, and judgment will be carried out by martial law, with no due process, clemency or appeal process.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proudly posted a video of the proposed execution chamber in which convicted Palestinians will be hanged. Armed Israeli forces have begun the practice of putting numbers on the hands of displaced Palestinians in the West Bank.

As the IDF has advanced across southern Lebanon, they have explicitly warned Christian and Druze leaders not to harbour Shiite Muslims in their homes — Jewish troops forcing one particular religious group of people out of Lebanese society, potentially searching for them in their attics. Anyone with a knowledge of history should see the historical resonance of these monstrous practices.

Race-based execution laws, genocidal destruction, institutionalised rape, pogroms in the West Bank, military expansion in nearly all directions. A network of at least 16 torture camps, where thousands are held, often without charge. Were it not such a forbidden comparison, we might spot similarities to another fascist regime in the 1930s.

Those making the connection are hardly from the fringe. Almost half of Britons in one poll said they believed Israel treats Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews. Ehud Olmert, a former Prime Minister of Israel, signed a letter describing settler violence in the West Bank as ‘Jewish terrorism’.

Political scientist John Mearsheimer recently said:

“If there were Nuremberg trials, right, where the Israelis and the Americans were brought before the court, President Trump, along with President Netanyahu and many of their advisors, would be hanged.”

Imagine this horror was being carried out by any nation on Earth not named Israel. Ask yourself what poses the greater threat — Iran, which until Trump tore up the JCPOA agreement was clearly not developing a nuclear bomb, or Israel, wildly attacking everyone in sight, led by a genuine maniac and possessors of the world’s only undeclared nuclear arsenal.

Far from operating the most moral army in the world, overwhelming evidence shows that Israel is now an entirely rogue state, raping, starving, torturing and murdering its prisoners, bombing its neighbours indiscriminately, annexing nearby territory and goading its patron, America, into actions that could easily lead us to a new world war.

Israel is hardly shy about its intentions. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently gave a speech in which he said, “There will be expansion in Gaza that will extend our borders. In Lebanon, to the Litani, in Syria, Mount Hermon, parts of the north, south, and east.” This would represent a “Greater Israel” plan, stretching (one might say) from the river (Litani) to the (Mediterranean) sea.

Such is the insanity of the time in which we live that voicing this same expression in Queensland will land you in prison, while it is so widely used by Israeli politicians that it’s literally in the Twitter (X) bio of the Prime Minister’s son.

Yet, despite heartening protests in Tel Aviv, poll after poll shows that a majority of Israelis support this endless militarism. Young Israelis are more right-wing, religious and conservative than their elders. An eventual end to Netanyahu’s appalling leadership seems unlikely to reform Israeli society.

An unprecedented oil shock is nearly at Australia’s shores. It’s likely to be the most devastating event for this country since the Second World War and when it arrives, Australians should remember that the crisis originated in the White House situation room on 11 February, when Netanyahu finally convinced a gullible American president to carry out his decades-long wish for an attack on Iran.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a violent extremist, a fugitive from justice at the International Criminal Court, who cannot enter even the commercial airspace of many countries for fear of arrest. It was Netanyahu who convinced Trump to catastrophically withdraw from the JCPOA, Israel that is primarily responsible for the catastrophe currently re-shaping our world and Israel who will be culpable, should a worldwide famine ensue.

Israel is the single greatest threat to world peace today. The past comfy assumptions about global partnerships are gone. Australia should join the growing list of nations that want nothing to do with this belligerent, fascistic country.

May 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Antisemitism and Israel: A challenge to the Australian narrative (Part 1)

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has delivered the 21-page report, ‘Torture and genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967’, dated 19 February 2026. Albanese’s team outline the depths of depravity and inhumanity to which the Israeli regime has now sunk in its attempted destruction of the Palestinian people.

By Evan Jones | 27 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/antisemitism-and-israel-a-challenge-to-the-australian-narrative,20974

A provocative Royal Commission submission by Dr Evan Jones argues that Australia’s antisemitism debate cannot be separated from Israel, Zionism and their political influence.

Submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion

Part 1

General

This submission can be reduced to one word — Israel.

There you have the answer to your inquiry. Dismantle apartheid Israel and see so-called “antisemitism” disappear overnight, save for a small ineradicable but prosecutable fringe

There is really no reason for this Royal Commission at all, as the problem is self-evident. The Commission will not solve the problem that it was formally established to resolve because its agenda is diversionary. Indeed, it will compound the problem because it will, in all probability (as it is seemingly intended to do), reinforce the influence of the Australian Zionist lobby and thus the ongoing impunity of Israel.

The problem arises from the conflation of two forces.

One: Israel is a nation founded on terrorism and wilfully sustained on deep-seated racism.

We know that nation-states are perennially born of violence, expropriation and repression (Australia as a case study), but Israel is a pronounced variation on a common colonialist theme. Israel was born of naked terrorism against an entire (non-Jewish) indigenous population. It was explicitly created and has been sustained as a racist apartheid state. Its borders have never been determined, envisaging ongoing expansion (lebensraum) — “from the river to the sea” (and beyond).

Palestinian Israelis (descendants of those whom the Zionist terrorist gangs failed to expel) are second-class citizens. Palestinian non-Israelis, under Occupation and under martial law, are denied the most basic human rights. Gaza has been a concentration camp since Sharon supposedly “disengaged” from Gaza in 2005.

The sadistic murder of Gazans since October 2023 is reminiscent of the Germans’ feverish pursuit of Jews and Bolsheviks after Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Israel has long undermined United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) personnel and facilities, which attempt to instil a modicum of humanity into a population long starving from Israeli blockages. Israel endorses carnage by fanatical settlers on West Bank Palestinians, murdering and destroying Palestinian livelihoods at will — for which they enjoy absolute immunity.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) murder children with pleasure. Children are imprisoned indefinitely for throwing stones. Adult prisoners are tortured and murdered. Israel wilfully murders foreign dignitaries (most recently, the Iranian National Security Council chief Ali Larijani, reputed “moderate” and skilled negotiator), which highlights that mass murderer Benjamin Netanyahu has put to words what has been the manifesto of all Israeli leadership: there will never be a Palestinian state (September 2025).

Long-term ethnic cleansing has now turned to genocide, ongoing in defiance of the formal “ceasefire”. Israel destroys essential infrastructure, murders aid workers and journalists — because it can. The journalist murder count is now further “totting up” in southern Lebanon.

Representative — this month (March 2026) marks the 23rd anniversary of the crushing of American Rachel Corrie by an Israeli bulldozer.

Some excerpts:

Torture has always been a central feature of Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians. Yet, since October 2023, Israel has employed it on a scale that suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent.

Torture is not confined to cells and interrogation rooms. Through the cumulative impact of mass displacement, siege, denial of aid and food, unrestrained military and settler violence and pervasive surveillance and terror, the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has become a space of collective punishment, where the destruction of the conditions of life turns genocidal violence into a tool of collective torture with long-term mental and physical consequences for the occupied population.

During its Mandate in Palestine, Britain used torture as one of the counterinsurgency tactics honed in Ireland and later imparted to Zionist militias; such practices, a colonial legacy, were then absorbed into the Israeli security apparatus before and after 1948 as a tool of repression and a preventive measure against Palestinian resistance. From early State-building and through decades of occupation, Israel has practised and condoned coercive violence as a structural component of its apparatus of domination.

An ecosystem of discriminatory legal frameworks and abusive operational practices has metastasized, encompassing Israeli military detention sites and prisons.

Since October 2023, torture in detention has, been used on an unprecedented scale as punitive collective vengeance — a clear feature of genocide. All Palestinians have been treated collectively as “terrorists” and “security threats”.

For her luminous competence, commitment and courage, Albanese was subject to comprehensive oppressive sanctions by the unhinged U.S. Trump Administration in July 2025.

Israel defies all international institutions and laws that proscribe the abuse of state power. Israel’s lobbying and propaganda regime (hasbara) is probably the most extensive of any state in history. Israeli authorities lie about the state’s forces’ actions without remorse.

The Israeli state is a parasite, receiving over US$300 billion (AU$418.7 billion) in aid from U.S. governments since 1950 (a great deal of which flows back to U.S. weapons manufacturers), supplemented by an estimated US$2 billion (AU$2.8 billion) per annum in donations from overseas Jewish “charities”, propped up at the country taxpayers’ expense. In particular, the Jewish National Fund directs funds to obliterating indigenous history in historic Palestine.

In short, the state of Israel is a pariah state, a barbaric regime, an abomination.

Two: All self-described “official” Jewish representative organisations in Australia support and lobby for Israel unreservedly. It is a full-time occupation.

Such “representative” organisations oppose basic human rights for Palestinians under Israeli control. They socialise their children into “a love of Israel” in Jewish “faith” schools. Some of their children are currently enrolled with the IDF to kill Palestinians.

Such organisations lobby Australian governments to support Israel, inhibiting Australian governments from adopting a principled stance towards Israeli criminality. They harass media management and editorial, thus gaining privileged access to and biased coverage from media outlets that the public relies on for supposedly unbiased information and opinion. Their ridiculous defences of Israel (op-eds, letters, buying off journalists) are published with great regularity. Anti-Zionist Australian Jews (vide Louise Adler and so on) and their organisations (the recently formed Jewish Council of Australia) are pilloried, indeed “excommunicated”.

In essence, Australian Jewish “representative” organisations act as a fifth column for a foreign state against Australian national interests – naturally antagonistic to ‘social cohesion’.

One and two in combination.

The Australian Jewish community, by virtue of its “official” representatives, courageous dissenters excepted, is complicit in Israeli genocide. And not just passively but actively. There has been no mea culpa on the part of executives of the key Jewish organisations (such as ECAJ, ZFA, AIJAC). Nobody in the Jewish community that underpins these organisations has sought to overturn the leadership of these key organisations in order to reorient their agenda and priorities.

In short, Israel and the “official” Australian Jewish community are joined at the hip.

It is not unrealistic to infer that the Bondi attack (and multiple incidents simply labelled “antisemitic”) is blowback for Israel’s character and actions and its local support network. The Israeli machine thus puts the security of global Jewry at risk (indeed, its own Jewish population) and doesn’t care.

A Zionist foot soldier is published in The Sydney Morning Herald (22 March), in denial regarding the intimate connection:

‘While David Leser’s article (SMH & Melbourne Age, 20 March [2026]) raises some thought-provoking points, it falls into the trap of attributing antisemitism in Australia to the actions of the Israeli Government. No other national or ethnic group in Australia is held to account for the actions of governments in countries overseas. So why is it considered reasonable for Jews in Australia to be relentlessly discriminated against for the actions of the Netanyahu Government?’

After the Bondi Beach murders, Israeli flags were well represented among the flower collections and mourners. Israel is apparently seen as the mother ship, the source of solace for those suffering, yet it is the ultimate cause of that suffering.

This bizarre anomaly is enhanced when the Zionist Federation of Australia (as befits its name) initiated the idea of inviting the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, to Australia, subsequently legitimised and authorised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and dragging the Governor-General into the sordid process.

Another foot soldier grasps the connection but declines to understand the implications (SMH, 9 January 2026):

‘President Herzog is the legitimate head of state of the internationally recognised democratic state of Israel, rightfully invited to commiserate with Australians after the appalling terrorist atrocity at Bondi, in which predominantly Jewish people were murdered and injured.’

One notes in passing that Israel is not a democracy but an ethnocracy — no amount of affirmation is going to change the lie and the blind spot in the letter writer’s eye. To repeat, Israel is apparently seen as the mother ship, the source of solace for those suffering, yet it is the ultimate cause of that suffering. ‘Rightfully invited’ — really?

Herzog is not a passive head of state but an active participant in Israeli barbarism. Herzog comes to Australia, spends a token moment with victim families and survivors, declines to visit the fire-bombed Orthodox (non-Zionist) Adass Israel synagogue (“for reasons of security”) and spends the bulk of his time playing Israeli politician (‘not the time for a two-state solution’, meets with ASIO and so on).

The implication is ugly. Those murdered at Bondi are being instrumentalised (as with Netanyahu’s treatment of Hamas’ Israeli hostages) in the defence of the state of Israel and its current genocidal agenda. Appalling, no?

April 30, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, AUSTRALIA, Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Antisemitism and Israel: A challenge to the Australian narrative (Part 2)

By Evan Jones | 27 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/antisemitism-and-israel-a-challenge-to-the-australian-narrative,20974

Part 2

The Commission’s Terms of Reference

‘AND the determination of the Australian Government to respond to the attack, and the factors leading up to the attack, as a matter of urgency by addressing antisemitism within the Australian community, including since 7 October 2023.’

Investigating the factors leading up to the attack could and should have been the responsibility of the mooted and more suited Richardson review. A royal commission is not the most appropriate vehicle towards this end.

Any investigation regarding “antisemitism” in Australia has to put Israel front and centre. The “official” Jewish community, AKA the Zionist lobby, naturally wants to exclude it.

The appalling Segal Report contains no substantive reference to Israel (my dissection here and here), thus being not merely worthless but disingenuous (vide Gwenaël Velge’s summary of the counter-Segal Greenslade and Briskman report, Not in Our Name: Jewish Australians Speak Out) and dangerous. Ditto the absence of any substantive reference to Israel in the most recent annual report (December 2025) of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (sic) (dissected here).

‘AND that the Australian Government has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.’

This submitter is frankly gobsmacked to find that this fraudulent “definition” has been officially adopted. The definition has been widely criticised, including by one of its originators, Kenneth Stern. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition is essentially about demonising criticism of Israel. Any proposed definition of antisemitism that attempts to delineate the terms on which one is allowed to criticise Israel without censure is automatically illegitimate.

The adoption of the IHRA definition nullifies any legitimacy that the paraphernalia of a royal commission might have and destroys any prospect of an honest analysis and a substantive functional prognosis. This adoption of the IHRA definition gives the impression that the Royal Commission, even inadvertently, will serve as yet another front for the pro-Israel lobby.

With the Royal Commission proceeding based on the IHRA definition, it can only turn into an inquisition. It can have nothing intelligent or ethical to offer about real antisemitism and can have nothing to offer in terms of genuinely dealing with it. It will be remembered as a squandering of the significant money that funds it and for the farcical theatre that is its essence.

‘AND recognising that strengthening the national consensus in support of democracy, freedom and the rule of law (social cohesion) provides the strongest defence against antisemitism and other forms of religious and ideologically motivated extremism.’

This sentence reads like it was written by AI. Who wrote this rubbish? One cannot have social cohesion as long as a particular Australian community coheres and operates actively as a fifth column in support of a foreign rogue state and influences Australian politics, both foreign and domestic, and media towards that end.

AND that hearing from the Jewish Australian community will be important to informing the recommendations of your inquiry and recognising concerns relating to educational and cultural institutions, and other sections of Australian society.’

Which ‘Jewish Australian community’? Is this obscurantism a product of naivete or of cynical contempt? Is the pro-Israel lobby running this show? Will anti-Zionist Jews and their organisations be consulted? Will anti-Zionist non-Jewish organisations (which have Jewish membership), such as the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, be consulted?

‘…and recognising concerns relating to educational and cultural institutions…’ Meaning? Which and whose concerns? Is this an oblique reference to forthcoming censorship, sackings, institutional defunding and hasbara implants as foreshadowed in the Segal Report?

To the Honourable Virginia Bell AC

We do… appoint you to be a Commission of inquiry, and require and authorise you to inquire into the following matters:

(a) tackling antisemitism by:…

This section is at the heart of the Commission’s Terms of Reference misdirection. Misdiagnosed symptoms are highlighted rather than causes.

The authorities need to cut the umbilical cord between the Australian Jewish community (including demolishing the pernicious influence of its Zionist leadership) and the criminal state of Israel.

In particular, (a)(iv) deserves comment. The ‘mental health and wellbeing of Jewish Australians’? No doubt the Commission hearings will consider the mental health of anti-Zionist Australian Jews who experience the mental anguish of seeing Jewish Israelis acting like Nazis (and supposedly in the name of global Jewry), but who also suffer the obloquy of abuse by the Australian Zionist Jewish establishment for their ethical stance.

As for the mental health of Australian Zionist Jews, tied inexplicably to a racially supremacist Israel, it is a psychopathology and to their own account — save that their aberrant mental state has the Palestinians (and now the Iranians and, once again, the Lebanese) as its ongoing victims.

Zionist Jewish University students, fresh from their “faith” schools with their “love of Israel” and now nurtured in the bosom of the Zionist Australasian Union of Jewish Students, find their “sensitivities” affected by campus protests against Israeli genocide. So as not to upset these sensitive souls, inured to the genocide of lesser ethnicities, campus protests have to be shut down.

If the Commission is concerned with shoring up the ‘mental health and wellbeing of [Zionist] Jewish Australians’, it is not an agenda that any Australian imbued with ethical sympathies (which includes anti-Zionist Jewish Australians) could have any tolerance for.

‘(b) making any recommendations to assist law enforcement, border control, immigration and security agencies…’

Is this code for inhibiting access to refugee status of people escaping Israeli onslaughts and who naturally take a dim view of Israel’s modus operandi?

‘(c) examine the circumstances surrounding the antisemitic Bondi terrorist attack…’

This was supposed to be the focus of the Richardson review, but that was merged inappropriately into the Royal Commission’s framework. Now Richardson has retired, recognising the Commission’s structured dysfunctionality. The most important subject for investigation is now without a suitable home and personnel to proceed.

‘(d) make any other recommendations… that would contribute to strengthening social cohesion…’

The means to strengthening social cohesion is to dismantle the pro-Israel lobby in Australia and for the Albanese Government to develop and sustain a principled foreign policy. By contrast, the Terms of Reference of this Commission appear to direct the Commission’s operations to enhance that lobby’s influence and to ignore and to implicitly condone the Government’s cowardice.

Methinks that the Royal Commission’s slip is showing. One gets the strong impression that one is in for more than farce. Rather, the Australian public is in for an authoritarian state run in the interests of an Australian Zionist mafia, with which the current Australian Labor Government is already in cahoots (and the Liberal Opposition even more craven).

April 30, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, AUSTRALIA, Israel | Leave a comment

‘Worst investment ever’: Expert fumes as first $4.2billion taxpayer-funded payment for nuclear subs paid to US

We keep forking out money for submarines I’m definitely not going to live to see, and I don’t know if young people will live to see them ever arrive,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘It is doubling down on something that was a bad idea to start with.

If and when submarines ever did arrive, they would be undoubtedly redundant, overtaken by cheap and cheerful anti-submarine drone technology.

‘If we build this base, it will undoubtedly be a prime nuclear target, because who wouldn’t want to take out a couple of nuclear-armed submarines from America.’

US announces the first AUKUS contract
But experts raise the alarm about the deal

By CAITLIN POWELL – NEWS REPORTER and TESS IKONOMOU FOR AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS, 24 April 2026 https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15761031/AUKUS-contract-Mark-Beeson.html

The Trump administration has signed off on the first AUKUS submarine contract, funded by a hefty taxpayer-funded payment from the Albanese government.

The Pentagon confirmed on Friday that nuclear-powered submarine capabilities would be transferred from the United States to Australia.

The contract, worth $276million ($US197million), will be covered by the Labor government’s first down payment of $4.2billion ($US3billion), the ABC reports.

The US Navy has set targets to almost double construction to 2.33 boats per year to build up its fleet, the ABC reports.

But, during a series of congressional hearings this week, data revealed the pace of production has dropped to 1.1 boats per year due to construction delays.

An Australian Submarine Agency spokesperson told the Daily Mail they welcomed the announcement of the new contract.

‘(It) strengthens the United States’ ability to deliver Foreign Military Sales commitments to partners, including Australia,’ they said.

‘This represents further momentum and commitment by AUKUS partners to deliver on the Optimal Pathway.’

Professor Beeson has made no secret of his concerns about the trilateral deal between Australia, the US and the United Kingdom.

‘I think it’s possibly the worst investment Australia’s ever made in anything, but particularly in defence material,’ he said.

‘It is doubling down on something that was a bad idea to start with

The 2021 AUKUS pact is designed to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific and involves Australia acquiring Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US by 2032.

However, the alliance relies on the US building enough defence vessels itself before some are sent to Australia.

International politics expert and AUKUS critic, Professor Mark Beeson, said the contract epitomised Australia’s dependence on American productivity.

‘We keep forking out money for submarines I’m definitely not going to live to see, and I don’t know if young people will live to see them ever arrive,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘It’s because, famously, the Americans can’t build as many as they would like, or consider they need. There’s going to be no spare capacity for these submarines.’

‘The only way to get a more credible-looking outcome for AUKUS is by continuing to supply the Americans and eventually the British with lots of loot to rebuild shipyards and increase the production line for these submarines.

‘If and when submarines ever did arrive, they would be undoubtedly redundant, overtaken by cheap and cheerful anti-submarine drone technology.

‘If we build this base, it will undoubtedly be a prime nuclear target, because who wouldn’t want to take out a couple of nuclear-armed submarines from America.’

The Australian-funded contract has been awarded to US Navy contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat, which will see construction take place on American soil at a Connecticut shipyard.

As such it is between the US Government and industry to support Foreign Military Sales requirements and activities.

While that policy includes AUKUS, Australia is not party to the contract itself and this investment does not relate to Australia’s contribution to the construction of the US Submarine Industrial Base.

The announcement comes just hours after opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie said Australia incurred ‘strategic trade-offs’ in doubling down on its alliance with Washington.

‘We forgot the hard lessons of war, and outsourced our security to the United States,’ he said at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne on Thursday.

‘It has cost us sovereign capabilities like a robust defence industry, and our strategic freedom of action in ways that we are now discovering.’

A former special forces officer, Hastie pointed to the fuel crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict and Australia’s de-industrialisation as examples of the nation betting too much on the dominance of the US.

COMMENT. Andrew Hastie conveniently forgetting that it was his own party, theLiberal-National Coalition, that signed up tp AUKUS in the first placde

He warned that, if the security alliance with the US was to endure for another 75 years, Australia needed to urgently invest in its industrial base and defence force.

‘We must grow our industrial might and hard power,’ he said.

April 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Where are the AUKUS nuclear waste costings (let alone the dump sites)?

Australian Submarine Agency ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.

by Rex Patrick | Apr 20, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/where-are-the-aukus-nuclear-waste-costings-let-alone-the-dump-sites/

Defence is supposed to provide ‘cradle to grave’ costings for proposed capability before a procurement is approved. That doesn’t seem to have happened for AUKUS nuclear waste storage and disposal. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick is pursuing answers.

A simple request

Imagine for a moment that you were the defence minister, and knowing that all defence capabilities must be costed from cradle to grave, you asked the Australian Submarine Agency for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS.

You’d expect that it might take a day or two to get the message to Defence and to get a response back to the ministerial wing of Parliament House.

In July 2025 MWM requested access under Freedom of Information laws to the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS. The Agency did not answer the FOI request and its lack of response was referred to the Information Commissioner.

The Information Commissioner is trying to encourage the ASA to engage in a little bit of transparency. But … the Agency just can’t find a latest costing.

We’re disorganised

In a response to an engagement with MWM, the Agency has recently advised:

Preliminary searches have been carried out within one branch of one division of the ASA to identify documents falling within the scope of your request. That branch has advised that approximately 3,000 documents are potentially in scope. They would require manual examination to determine whether they contain information relating to the scope of your request. The documents within this set vary significantly in length and format and may comprise multiple pages requiring individual review.

Further, any cost information in relation to the scope of your request is likely to be dispersed across multiple documents and along timeframes, may appear in differing levels of detail, and may not be directly comparable. As a result, identifying which documents contain relevant cost information would require extensive searching, detailed examination, contextual analysis, and judgment.

Quite unbelievable!

Or is it unbelievable?

ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.

In November 2024 the Government asked Boston Consulting Group to take a look at the organisational structure of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA). A contract was signed for 2.7. million. In April 2025 it was amended to $7.4 million. Three months later it was amended again to a whopping $12.1 million.

In parallel the defence minister asked former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson to undertake an urgent top-to-bottom review of the ASA amid serious concerns about how it was managing AUKUS.

None of that seems to have helped.

Budget up just to keep up

The Government’s National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program was released on the same day that ASA advised MWM that it had no idea where to find its AUKUS high level radioactive waste costs.

The Integrated Investment Proposal laid out the Government’s estimates of, amongst other programs, the AUKUS and Collins Class submarine costs for the coming decade.

The 53-to-63 billion dollar AUKUS budget published in 2024 has grown to 71-to-96 billion (a change of 52% for the upper band). The 4-to-5 billion dollar Collins Submarine upgrade costs has grown to 8-to-11 billion dollar (change of 120% for the upper band).

Any thought that the Government is increasing the Defence budget to expand the Defence Force’s capabilities is illusory. The increase will struggle just to deal with cost blow outs.

Or implausible?

The numbers associated with the very long term disposal of AUKUS nuclear waste will be big. If the Minister asked for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS he’d get it almost instantly.

“The estimate must exist. “

The approach taken by the ASA in responding to MWM’s request reminds me of a teenager trying hid a bad school report from their parents. The kid simply doesn’t realise that mum and dad will find out eventually.

MWM is not about to give up.

Of course, there is a small possibility that we are wrong and there is no estimate. Maybe the Minister has told the ASA he won’t ask for one and they shouldn’t generate one.

I guess we’ll find out.

April 24, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, wastes | Leave a comment

The Merchants of Death in Our Midst

This is the company that the Australian government, Coles, Rio Tinto, Westpac, and the Future Fund have chosen to do business with.

This is not an economic choice. It is a choice about what is right.

18 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-merchants-of-death-in-our-midst/

How Palantir Profits from Genocide – and Why Australia Must Walk Away

I. The Company That Kills Enemies

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies, does not hide what his company does. In February 2025, he told investors: Palantir is here to “scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” He added that he was “super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”

This is not hyperbole. It is a confession.

Palantir’s technology has been used to compile kill lists in Gaza, to track migrants for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to select targets for drone strikes in Iran. The same systems that optimise workforce spend in Australian supermarkets are being used to select human targets for assassination.

Karp has acknowledged that he is directly involved in killing Palestinians in Gaza but insisted the dead were “mostly terrorists.” He does not provide evidence. He does not need to. The label is the weapon.

In March 2026, a UN report by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese singled out Palantir as one of the companies “profiting from genocide” during Israel’s 21-month campaign in Gaza. The report, titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” concluded that “Israel’s genocide continues because it is profitable for too many.”

This is the company that the Australian government, Coles, Rio Tinto, Westpac, and the Future Fund have chosen to do business with.

II. The Champions: Peter Thiel and Alex Karp

Peter Thiel is the billionaire co-founder of Palantir. He has funded right-wing political causes, including the campaign of Donald Trump. He has spoken of democracy as incompatible with freedom. He has said that he no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.

Alex Karp is the CEO. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Frankfurt. He studied under Jürgen Habermas. He knows what he is doing. He has chosen.

Karp has co-authored a book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, in which he articulates his vision of American global dominance through AI-driven warfare. He calls for a new Manhattan Project focused on military AI. He openly celebrates the destruction his company enables.

In an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Karp summed up his philosophy:

“I actually am a progressive. I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers – I’m trying to be nice here – out of our adversaries.”

Reality is anything but that simple. Palantir’s technology has reportedly been used to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and beyond, including many who had nothing to do with Hamas.

These men are not evil because they are monsters. They are evil because they have chosen to be. They have chosen profit over people. They have chosen power over compassion. They have chosen control over love.

III. Palantir in Australia: The Red Carpet

Palantir has been embedded in Australian institutions for years. The company has secured more than $50 million in Australian government contracts since 2013, largely across defence and national security-related agencies. Its clients include:

The Department of Defence

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission

The Australian Signals Directorate

The Victorian Department of Justice

In November 2025, Palantir received a high-level Australian government security assessment – the “protected level” under the Information Security Registered Assessors Programme – enabling a broader range of government agencies to use its Foundry and AI platform.

In a Senate debate on March 10, 2026, a Senator Lambie warned that the government was “simply rolling out the red carpet to companies like Palantir, the company that has been linked, by the way, to the targeted killing of journalists and the illegal use of US citizens’ data.” The Senator noted that Palantir is “the leader in the development of agentic AI – artificial intelligence that thinks for itself and makes its own decisions.”

IV. The Coles Partnership: Ten Billion Rows of Data

In 2024, Palantir announced a three-year partnership with Coles Supermarkets. Coles will leverage Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) across its more than 840 supermarkets to better understand and address workforce-related spend. The system will identify opportunities over “10 billion rows of data.”

Coles is also rolling out ChatGPT to its corporate teams, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5 model.

This is the same technology. The same algorithms. The same logic.

But what is being optimised? Profit. Not people. Not safety. Not justice.

The same technology that optimises workforce spend in Australian supermarkets is the same technology that selects targets in Gaza and Iran. The same algorithms that track workers track enemies. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.

Coles Chief Operating Officer Matt Swindells said the partnership would allow store managers to make “real-time decisions to optimise costs.” He did not mention that those same real-time decisions are being made in Gaza – to optimise kills.

V. The Future Fund: $103 Million in Blood Money

Australia’s Future Fund – the sovereign wealth fund designed to manage and grow public funds – has a $103 million stake in Palantir. That is bigger than the fund’s holdings in Australian companies like AGL, Seek, or data centre owner NEXTDC.

In Senate estimates, Greens Senator Barbara Pocock asked whether Palantir’s human rights record had been considered before the investments were made. The answer: no.

Will Hetherton, the chief corporate affairs officer of the Future Fund, told the committee that the fund doesn’t get involved in selecting individual stocks and that the shares are held through index funds. When asked whether the fund would commit to divesting and establishing “clear ethical investment standards that exclude companies profiting from surveillance, from weapons and from human suffering,” Hetherton said the board would “continue to engage with our managers” but couldn’t commit to what Pocock was asking.

The fund’s justification is that it only excludes companies based on sanctions or treaties the Australian government has ratified – like cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines and tobacco. None of these apply to Palantir.

This is not a defence. It is a confession.

VI. The UK Precedent: “No Gaza Genocide Links in Our NHS”

In the United Kingdom, a coalition of organisations – including Amnesty International UK, Medact, and Healthcare Workers for a Free Palestine – is calling on NHS England to terminate its £330 million contract with Palantir.

Kerry Moscogiuri, Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, said:

“The NHS constitution states that it belongs to the people, underpinned by core values of compassionate care, dignity and humanity. Those principles must apply not only to doctors and nurses, but also to the companies the NHS chooses to contract with using taxpayers’ money. Any company contributing to human rights violations should have no place at the heart of our NHS. Our message is simple: no Gaza genocide links in our NHS.”

The groups are calling on the UK government to terminate the contract, responsibly divest public sector institutions from Palantir, and introduce binding ethical standards for public sector technology procurement.

If the United Kingdom can demand this, why can’t Australia?

VII. The UN Report: Profiting from Genocide

The June 2025 UN report by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is damning. It singles out Palantir alongside Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Volvo, and major banks for profiting from Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

The report concludes that “Israel’s genocide continues because it is profitable for too many.”

Albanese urges:

Sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel

Investigations by the International Criminal Court and national courts into corporate complicity in war crimes

Accountability modelled on the IG Farben trials after World War Two

She warns that “passive suppliers become deliberate contributors to a system of displacement.”

The Australian government, Coles, and the Future Fund are not passive suppliers. They are deliberate contributors.

VIII. The Kill Chain in Gaza and Iran

The same systems tested in Gaza are now being deployed in Iran.

The Washington Post reported that the US military in Iran has “leveraged the most advanced artificial intelligence it’s ever used in warfare.” Palantir’s Maven Smart System reportedly helped US commanders select 1,000 Iranian targets during the war’s first 24 hours alone.

The Asia Times reports that “similarities between Israel’s bombing of Gaza and Tehran are growing stronger,” with experts warning of a “lack of human supervision over Israeli AI targeting in Iran.”

An Israeli intelligence source described the AI system as transforming the IDF into a “mass assassination factory” where the “emphasis is on quantity and not quality” of kills.

This is the technology that Coles is using to “optimise” workforce spend.

IX. The Choice

This is not an economic choice. It is a choice about what is right.

The Australian government has a choice. It can continue to roll out the red carpet to Palantir, to accept the $50 million in contracts, to allow the Future Fund to hold $103 million in shares.

Or it can walk away.

Coles has a choice. It can continue to use Palantir’s AIP to optimise workforce spend – to identify opportunities over 10 billion rows of data.

Or it can walk away.

The Future Fund has a choice. It can continue to hold Palantir shares, to defend the investment with procedural excuses.

Or it can divest.

The UK is demanding that the NHS terminate its contract with Palantir. Amnesty International is leading the campaign. Medact and healthcare workers are standing up.

What is Australia doing? Rolling out the red carpet.

X. A Call to Action

The Australian government must:

Terminate all contracts with Palantir.
Introduce binding ethical standards for public sector technology procurement.
Investigate whether Palantir’s technology has been used to violate Australian privacy laws.
Divest the Future Fund from Palantir.

Coles must:

Terminate its partnership with Palantir.
Pledge not to use AI systems linked to human rights violations.
Be transparent about its use of AI in workforce management.

The Future Fund must:

Divest from Palantir.
Establish clear ethical investment standards that exclude companies profiting from surveillance, weapons, and human suffering.

The Australian people must:

Demand accountability.
Ask their politicians: Why is our government doing business with a company that profits from genocide?
Support campaigns for ethical technology procurement.

XI. A Final Word

Alex Karp said: “Our work in the region has never been more vital. And it will continue.”

It must not continue. Not in Gaza. Not in Iran. Not in Australia.

The same technology that kills children in Gaza is optimising shift rosters in Coles supermarkets. The same algorithms that track migrants for ICE are tracking Australian workers. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.

And Palantir? It will be remembered as the company that chose profit over humanity.

Australia must choose differently.

April 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

What secret report reveals about British nuclear weapons tests – veterans claimed they were harmed by the fallout

Christopher R. Hill, Professor of History, Faculty of Business and Creative Industries, University of South Wales, Jonathan Hogg, Senior Lecturer in Twentieth Century History, School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpoo, l April 15, 2026 https://theconversation.com/what-secret-report-reveals-about-british-nuclear-weapons-tests-veterans-claimed-they-were-harmed-by-the-fallout-280189

“The Ministry of Defence has always maintained that it never rained,” said Ken McGinley, founder of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA). “I’m sorry, you’re liars … I was there!”

McGinley, who was a royal engineer, gave this interview in January 2024, shortly before his death, as part of our Oral History of British Nuclear Test Veterans project.

McGinley was present during the Grapple nuclear weapons test series, conducted by the UK on the central Pacific island of Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) in the late 1950s. At the time, this remote atoll was inhabited by 250 villagers as well as thousands of British servicemen.

For decades, many of those present during this and other above-ground British nuclear weapons tests have argued they were harmed by radioactive fallout. McGinley founded the BNTVA in 1983 to “gain recognition and restitution” for the veterans who took part in British and American nuclear tests and clean-ups between 1952 and 1965.

Rain became a key symbol in their argument as one of the only tangible signs of fallout taking place. The nuclear physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat described these alleged post-blast showers as “rainout”, a phenomenon whereby rain and mushroom clouds interact, leading to the contamination of rain droplets by harmful radionuclides.

In almost all cases, any link to subsequent health issues has been denied by the UK government because of lack of evidence of widespread radioactive contamination. However, a review of the evidence – written in 2014 by anonymous government scientists in response to freedom of information requests – was recently leaked by whistleblowers.

It reveals that post-blast radiation readings increased by a factor of up to seven on the island, compared with the normal background level. In our view, this would be more than enough to satisfy the “reasonable doubt” that tribunals require for veterans to receive a war pension due to illness or injury related to their service, as stated in the Naval, Military and Air Forces (Disablement and Death) Services Pension Order.

The top secret review, first revealed publicly by the Mirror newspaper on March 14 2026, also contains new evidence of radioactive contamination of fish in the island’s waters.

The repeated dismissal of veterans’ testimony in court cases and pension appeals caused stress and trauma for many. The majority died insisting they were not deceitful or forgetful – and that it did indeed rain while they were living on Kiritimati.

Factually inaccurate’

Kiritimati was monitored for fallout by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) after each detonation over the island – the largest of which, Grapple Y, was 200 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In 1993, environmental monitoring data was collated into a report by a team at the MoD’s Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). Known as the Clare report, this informed the UK’s official position on fallout: namely, that none occurred over populated areas and that veterans would need to prove otherwise to secure redress.

However, the 2014 review of fallout data concluded the Clare report was “incomplete and, in some cases, factually inaccurate”.

Despite this review being passed on to the MoD, however, it was kept secret for more than a decade. Following its release, the legal implications could be gamechanging. According to the 2014 review: “The instrument readings could potentially be used to challenge the validity of statements made by MoD and UK government regarding … fallout on Christmas Island.”

In a recent House of Commons debate on the issue, the UK minister for veterans and people, Louise Sandher-Jones, confirmed her commitment “to the nuclear test veterans and their fight for transparency … They have had a very long fight, and I really recognise how difficult it has been for them, and I want them to understand that I am committed to them.”

What Merlin reveals

Behind the scenes, the release of newly declassified archival material in the publicly accessible Merlin database has added to calls for government accountability about the nuclear tests.

Compiled by the treasury solicitor during a class action against the MoD between 2009 and 2012, the database was stored at AWE until the journalist and author Susie Boniface discovered it held information about the medical monitoring of servicemen and Indigenous people. Her work led to its release in 2025.

Holding over 28,000 files, Merlin was commissioned by the MoD in response to the compensation claims made by almost 1,000 veterans from 2009. Its contents include official reports and communications, photographs, maps, safety guidelines and health monitoring information. Video footage includes the Grapple X test in November 1957.

A University of Liverpool team based in The Centre for People’s Justice and the Department of History is working with Boniface and campaign group Labrats International to catalogue and analyse the contents of Merlin – combining it with other sources, including personal testimony. Recently released files indicate nuclear fallout in the island’s ground sediment and rainwater, and heightened radioactivity in its clams.

Evidence has also emerged of radioactive waste being dropped from aeroplanes into the sea off Queensland in 1958 and 1959. Although dumping radioactive waste was surprisingly common during the cold war, this revelation raises questions about how risk and danger was understood and managed during Britain’s nuclear test programme.

The files also show workers without protective clothing around a plutonium pit at Maralinga in South Australia, site of seven British atmospheric nuclear tests in 1956-57.

The Merlin releases have galvanised claims that not so long ago may have been interpreted as conjecture. The recent releases suggest that servicemen and islanders were exposed to radioactive fallout – not just from rain showers, but from the fish they ate and the water they drank.

While a causal link with subsequent health conditions would be hard to prove, we believe it is time for the UK government to get behind a public inquiry into the full impact of Britain’s nuclear weapons testing programme.

April 19, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Who’s making money? The arsenal trade after Ukraine and Iran

By Vince Hooper | 15 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/whos-making-money-the-arsenal-trade-after-ukraine-and-iran,20929

Defence is no longer a defensive trade, and nowhere is the question of who’s buying, who’s building, and who is being left behind more apparent than in Australia, writes Professor Vince Hooper.

Markets, missiles and the end of the peace dividend — and what it means for Australia

A South Korean missile-maker most Western investors could not have located on a map two years ago has just hit an all-time high. LIG Nex1, a precision-guided munitions and electronic warfare specialist headquartered in Yongin, has nearly quadrupled from its January 2025 base, touching 899,000 won on 6 March 2026 — days after American and Israeli aircraft struck Iranian nuclear and missile facilities.

The Korean defence sector as a whole has returned roughly 137 per cent over the past year. These are not the numbers of a sleepy industrial cyclical. They are the numbers of an asset class being repriced in real time.

Defence is no longer a defensive trade. It is the trade. And nowhere is the question of who is buying, who is building, and who is being left in the queue more pointed than in Australia.

Canberra in the queue

For Australia, the arsenal trade is not an abstract market story. It is a mirror.

AUKUS is now a procurement queue rather than a strategy and the cost of waiting for Virginia-class submarines while the Indo-Pacific darkens is becoming uncomfortable to discuss in polite company.

Canberra is, in effect, paying premium prices for late delivery, while Korean and Japanese yards offer shorter timelines at lower cost.

Hanwha’s confirmed 19.9 per cent strategic stake in Austal, cleared by both the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and Canberra’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) by late 2025, the Henderson shipyards build-up (now known as the Australian Marine Complex), the AS9 Huntsman self-propelled howitzer program being built by Hanwha at Avalon, near Geelong are not coincidences. They are the early signs of an Australian defence industrial base quietly rotating away from Anglosphere dependence and towards Asian arsenals that can actually deliver.

The strain is visible in real time. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week, Canberra’s first crisis call during the Middle East escalation went to Beijing rather than Washington — a reflex inversion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago and that tells you more about the perceived reliability of the American guarantee than any AUKUS communiqué.

The ASX has noticed even if the cabinet has not: DroneShield, Electro Optic Systems, Codan and Austal have all attracted the kind of investor attention that only arrives when a market decides a sector’s tail risks have permanently thickened.

From cost centre to industrial darling

The Ukraine War did the structural work. It converted defence from a politically awkward line item into the most fashionable corner of industrial policy and it taught Western treasuries an uncomfortable lesson about how thin their magazines actually were. Three years of artillery duels in the Donbas drained stockpiles NATO had quietly assumed would last a generation.

The Middle East conflict is the second shock. Patriot interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) reloads, Iron Dome Tamirs, SM-3s, 155mm shells, loitering munitions — each salvo over the Gulf is, in accounting terms, a revenue recognition event somewhere in Arizona, Alabama, Haifa or Daejeon. Governments that spent the 2010s running down inventories on the assumption of a benign world are now writing cheques to rebuild them, and they are writing those cheques into the same handful of balance sheets.

Who, specifically, is making money

Four tiers are visible.

First, the American primes — Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, L3Harris. They capture the replenishment contracts, the integration work, and the multi-year framework agreements that Congress now waves through with rare bipartisan enthusiasm. Their backlogs are at record highs and, after two decades of monopsony complaints, their pricing power has quietly inverted.

Second, the European awakening — Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Saab AB, Thales. Germany’s Zeitenwende turned out to be real, and Rheinmetall in particular has become the continent’s de facto shell foundry, trading less like an industrial stock and more like a leveraged proxy on NATO’s Article 5 itself.

Third, and most interesting from where Australia sits, the Asian arsenals — Hanwha Aerospace, Korea Aerospace Industries, Hanwha Systems and the LIG Nex1 of the opening paragraph, alongside Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki in Japan. South Korea has done what Europe spent 30 years failing to do: build a deep, exportable, price-competitive defence industrial base with delivery times measured in months rather than decades.

Warsaw noticed first. Riyadh, Canberra and Cairo are noticing now. Israel’s own Elbit, Rafael and IAI sit alongside them as the technological pace-setters, particularly in air defence and electronic warfare, where the Iran exchange has been a brutal but effective live-fire showcase.

Fourth, the invisible compounders — the propellant chemists, the rare-earth magnet refiners, the speciality steel mills, the gallium nitride foundries, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) cleared software shops, the maritime insurers writing war-risk cover on Hormuz transits at multiples of last year’s premium. This is where the quiet fortunes are being made. Lynas Rare Earths, sitting on one of the few non-Chinese heavy rare earth supply chains in existence, belongs in this tier, whether the market has fully priced it in or not.

The Gulf parallel

For the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the calculation is different and more cynical than Australia’s, but the underlying logic is the same. Every Gulf capital is simultaneously a customer, a forward operating base, and a potential target. Sovereign wealth is rotating accordingly — not away from defence, but into it. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is building domestic primes such as the Synchronised Accessible Media Exchange (SAMI) — wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund and openly targeting a place in the global top 25 defence companies by 2030.

The export of security capacity has become a new instrument of influence and the capital flows track the doctrine more faithfully than any white paper. Australia, with its Henderson precinct ambitions and its Hanwha partnership, is on a milder version of the same curve.

The uncomfortable coda

None of this is a celebration. A rising LIG Nex1 share price is, in the end, a market-implied judgement that more young people in more places will be killed by better-engineered weapons. The honest analyst names that trade-off rather than hiding behind the chart.

But the honest analyst also tells the truth about incentives. The Ukraine War did not enrich defence contractors by accident and the Iran strikes will not either. Governments that spent a generation treating deterrence as a sunk cost are now paying the bill they should have been paying all along and the firms holding the order books are, predictably, getting rich.

CNN reported over the weekend that U.S. intelligence believes China is preparing to deliver shoulder-fired air defence missiles (MANPADS) to Iran during the current ceasefire — a claim Beijing has formally denied. If the reporting holds, that single fact reframes the arsenal trade as an explicit great-power contest rather than a Western replenishment cycle — and it makes every defence ministry from Canberra to Riyadh recalculate how long it can afford to wait in the AUKUS queue.

For Australia, the question is sharper than for most. Canberra can keep waiting for Virginia-class boats and hoping the phone in Washington still gets answered, or it can do what Warsaw and Riyadh have already done — back the arsenals that can actually deliver, and accept that strategic autonomy in 2026 looks less like an alliance white paper and more like a procurement contract with Daejeon, Tokyo, Henderson or Geelong.

The post-Cold War peace dividend has been spent. What replaces it is already listed, already trading and already on the front page. The only open question is whether Australia is reading the same page as the rest of the market.

Professor Vince Hooper is a proud Australian-British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.

April 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How Israel is dragging America to war | The West Report

April 15, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

At last, a hint of backbone in Australia’s foreign policy

9 April 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/at-last-a-hint-of-backbone-in-australias-foreign-policy/

For months, many of us have watched in frustration as our government responded to Gaza with caution, equivocation, and a reluctance to break from the familiar script of deference to powerful allies. It has felt, at times, like moral clarity was being carefully managed rather than clearly expressed.

Which is precisely why Anthony Albanese’s sudden intervention on Lebanon lands with such force.

By urging that Lebanon be included in any Middle East ceasefire, the Prime Minister has done something rare in modern Australian foreign policy: he has stepped, however briefly, out of line. Not dramatically. Not defiantly. But unmistakably.

This is not just a policy position – it is a signal.

A signal that Australia may be willing to acknowledge what much of the world can already see: that this is not a series of neatly contained conflicts, but a widening humanitarian crisis stretching from the ruins of Gaza Strip to the streets of Beirut. A signal that civilian suffering is not selective, and that our concern for it should not be either.

And yet, it is impossible to ignore the contrast.

Because while this newfound clarity extends to Lebanon, the same certainty has too often been absent when it comes to Gaza. The language has been softer, the urgency more muted, the moral line less clearly drawn. For many Australians, that inconsistency has not gone unnoticed – or unchallenged.

And perhaps most striking of all, it is a signal that the Prime Minister has finally “read the room.”

Because the room has changed. Public patience has thinned. Across Australia – including among Labor’s own supporters – there has been a growing unease with the language of balance when the images on people’s screens tell a far more unbalanced story. People are not asking for perfection, nor for reckless gestures. But they are asking for something that feels increasingly rare in public life: honesty, consistency, and the courage to apply our values evenly.

In that context, this moment feels different.

It feels like a government, or at least a Prime Minister, beginning to find his footing – beginning to speak not just as an ally, but as a representative of a public that expects more than quiet alignment and careful phrasing.

Whether this is the start of something more substantial, or merely a brief departure from the script, remains to be seen. Governments have a way of snapping back into old habits. The gravitational pull of alliance politics is strong, and Australia has rarely resisted it for long.

But for now, credit where it is due.

In choosing to speak up for Lebanon – and in doing so, gently but clearly diverging from the positions of allies such as the United States under Donald Trump – Anthony Albanese has shown a flicker of something Australians have been waiting to see.

Not a break with our allies. Not a dramatic realignment.

Just something quieter – and, perhaps, more important.

A willingness to stand, at least for a moment, on our own two feet.

April 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Ignoring genocide. The bill for Australia’s silence has arrived

by Andrew Brown | Apr 7, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/ignoring-genocide-the-bill-for-australias-silence-has-arrived/

There is a bitter truth that must be spoken before we can talk honestly about what is happening to us now. Andrew Brown on Australia’s quiet complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, fourth in a series.

When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.

When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.

Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.

There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.

Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.

Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.

The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.

The cost of silence

That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with. A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.

It never does.

Over 72,000 people killed so far. Over 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.

Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck. Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.

Australia expressed concern.

“Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.”

And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by eighteen months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.

Warnings ignored

The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.

“They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.“

Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.

If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force. And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.

Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.

The war came home

Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.

The pain is no longer abstract.

When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.

Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue

“without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.”

That fiction is now dead.

The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.

business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.

The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it. Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.

Australia’s complicity

Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.

When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.

The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.

Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.

“The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for eighteen months.”

But a forty percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.

The people who protested Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.

Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.

This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.

And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.

That shelf life has expired.

April 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries