Australia is not a real country, and it doesn’t have a real government, writes Caitlin Johnstone. It is functionally nothing more than a U.S. military/intelligence asset.
(Defence.gov.au)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
During a suspended parliament without properly elected supervision, the Australian government is slashing financial protections for its own economically struggling citizens while pouring vast fortunes into supporting dangerous U.S. Cold War escalations against Australia’s No. 1 trading partner.
In an article titled “Australian government slashes pandemic payments to workers after suspending parliament,” World Socialist Web Site reports:
“Despite a worsening COVID-19 surge in Australia’s two most populous states, the Liberal-National government yesterday announced the slashing of its pandemic wage subsidies and welfare benefits, as part of its drive to ‘reopen the economy.’
Under conditions of mass unemployment, this will impoverish more than five million unemployed or under-employed workers and welfare recipients. The blatant purpose is to give workers no choice but to go back into unsafe workplaces regardless of the danger of infection.
‘JobSeeker and JobKeeper are not do-nothing payments,’ Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared, saying they were not designed to prevent people ‘from going out and seeking work.’ Treasury had reported that the payments to workers ‘potentially blunted their incentives to work, or to take on additional hours of work.’ ”
Got that? It’s too dangerous for our own MPs to go back to work, but everyone else needs to or face economic hardship. These cuts come at a time when 13 out of work Australians can be competing for a single job.
Australian government slashes pandemic payments to workers after suspending parliament
The blatant purpose of the cuts is to give workers no choice but to go back into unsafe workplaces regardless of the rising danger of #COVID19 infection #auspol https://t.co/8G06NA4fnE
— World Socialist Web Site (@WSWS_Updates) July 22, 2020
This is happening at the same time that five Australian warships just concluded provocative naval exercises alongside the United States and Japan in the Philippine Sea as a “show of force” against China.
“As the U.S. rogue regime ramps up its new cold war on China, vassal state Australia joined Washington and Japan in joint military exercises in the Philippine Sea — an obvious threat to Beijing,” journalist Ben Norton observed of the operation on Twitter.
“Escalating tension with China might be good for Trump’s election campaign, but can’t see what it does for us,” tweeted President of Australians for War Powers Reform Paul Barratt.
This is also happening at the same time the Morrison government commits $270 billion over the next decade to implement a new long-range missile system and upgrade Australia’s military due to fears of a rising China and its increasingly heated relationship with the USA.
This idiotic expenditure against a nation that is still Australia’s leading trading partner by a very wide margin amounts to no less than $10,800 per Australian citizen. For a family of four, that’s $43,200 per household. The insanity of pouring billions of dollars into protecting Australian interests from Australia’s top economic partner has been hilariously spoofed on the ABC show “Utopia”:
Right now every US puppet around the world ??#Australia #China pic.twitter.com/w7d9grHsCo
— Enrique ?? (@Garou_Hidalgo) May 15, 2020
This is also happening just after the newly released Palace Letters gave us new insights into the way the British government collaborated with the CIA to stage a coup in Australia and oust our Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. Whitlam’s offense? Trying to assert Australia’s independence as a sovereign nation, of course.
Vassal State
Australia is Washington’s basement gimp. We’re not a real country, and we don’t have a real government. We are functionally nothing more than a U.S. military/intelligence asset, a useful stretch of land in the Indo-Pacific for stationing war machinery and running NSA operations. The rights of our citizens always come second to this role, as evidenced by Canberra’s complete abandonment of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as the U.S. fights to extradite him and imprison him for life for the “crime” of journalism which exposed U.S. war crimes.
And now Australians are being increasingly used as pawns in the U.S. empire’s slow-motion third world war against all nations like China which have refused to be absorbed into the imperial blob like we were. U.S. State Department-funded think tanks and our own Murdoch-dominated news media have been used to manufacture consent for our role in these world-threatening escalations, and for the most part our propagandized populace has put up little resistance.
Australia has expressed ZERO alarm over US hackers compromising networks across the world. Shame on @smh for spreading this blatant US propaganda. At least report the other side as well. Pathetic. #auspol https://t.co/F8EGWhFbWx
— Jaraparilla (@jaraparilla) July 22, 2020
People ask me why I focus on the U.S. empire instead of on my own “government.” This is why. My real government lies not in Canberra but in Washington, and in the U.S. government agencies and their allied plutocrats who pull its strings.
And we don’t even get the dignity of being offered a pretend vote in their fake elections.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books “Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone” and “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
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It’s not even about the most likely to be an evildoer comrades; it’s about who has done the most evil since the occupation of what is presently the US. I defer to the indigenous folks on this one. I need not mention the brutality meted out to the Aborigines by that “beacon of civilization” called Australia. Fascinating how the 4 of the Five Eyes kowtow to the master puppeteer!
Unlike her article on UFOs, a very perceptive article by Ms Johnstone. Which is the Australian ship in the photo? Its the tiny one at the top trying to keep up with the aircraft carrier.
Incredible as it may seem, our Australian government and media are considerably MORE blatantly anti Chinese than the Americans. I guess it must their convict origins and psyche, they grovel to those that threaten them and hate those that feed them.
if we side with the US we are a vassal state, if with China the same but the second doesnt have a good record or appealing outlook.
Can you imagine being a HK or Taiwanese Chinese
In the US, corporations have been shutting down/shipping out jobs since the 1980s. In the 1990s, Democrats ended relief (welfare aid) for those left jobless. We lost well over 6 million mfg. jobs alone since 2000. While the Obama administration actually did an extraordinary job of job creation, it couldn’t make up for all the jobs that had been lost. Now the pandemic. There are still short-term UI benefits for some, and when those expire, oh well. By the end of the Clinton administration, even liberals were successfully indoctrinated to view the jobless poor as something less than humans, so they are excluded from the public discussion.
”People ask me why I focus on the U.S. empire instead of on my own “government.” This is why. My real government lies not in Canberra but in Washington, and in the U.S. government agencies and their allied plutocrats who pull its strings.”
Same in Europe, particularly regarding the UK and Poland. Vassal states.
Don’t forget one of the most pathetic – Canada!
“…the Australian government is slashing financial protections for its own economically struggling citizens while pouring vast fortunes into supporting dangerous U.S. Cold War escalations against Australia’s No. 1 trading partner.”
A damning summary of a government if ever there was one, imitating the world’s most immoral government, that of the US, to the extent of endangering your own nation’s welfare.
‘People ask me why I focus on the U.S. empire instead of on my own “government.” This is why. My real government lies not in Canberra but in Washington’
Indeed.
The big problem that nobody seems to recognize is that the US is producing a magic act by misdirection. Be afraid, be very afraid of these other countries that aren’t like us (China, Russia, e.g.) while robbing everybody else blind to support our own imperial aspirations (see NATO spending, e.g.) whilst simultaneously forcing all our allies (vassals) to act against their own self interest by supporting our sanctions. That’s quite a racket that the US has going for ifl
In 1975 I was fresh back in the US after living and working in Sydney in 1973-74.
If I remember correctly, the Whitlam government was dismissed by Australia’s Governor General — appointed by the UK — who had the power to do so and used a parliamentary stalemate as an excuse/cover for his action. I also do not remember any particular protest which as a Yank I found distressing. I thought then, is the OZ still just a colony, or does it want its own identity?
Being a vassal of the US is definitely not a good idea either.
Aussie coins still have Queen Elizabeth II on them. I think this says it all for me.
I’m one of many unfortunate Americans that absolutely loves your work!
Right on target as usual Caitlin.
There is something very odd about that photograph. Can anyone explain?
Only one ship is Australian- it would have been sailing somewhere if not there.
Nothing odd here, just the US navy preparing to meet the Japanese Imperial Fleet.
It looks like someone relatively new to photography shot it and then failed to edit it whatsoever, but they were likely paid a hefty sum for doing so?
World governments generally bend over backwards to deal with the US.
Australian governments bend over forwards to accommodate its US master. None more so than Morrison.
No, not so much anymore. Most of the world acknowledges the US to be a long-sinking former world power. We’re no longer the strongest militarily or economically. Socially, we’re a basket-case — middle class vs. poor, workers vs. those left jobless, pitted against each other by race, etc. This country can no longer resolve crises because our established political and economic ideology so often contradicts reality.
While we bend forward to trade with China?
John Hall, China buys far, far more from Australia than Australia from China mainly because China is a vast market and Australia is a sparse market. The US however has literally trillions invested in Australia and they take the profits from Australian producers exporting to China.
Out of China, Australia and the US, which is the most likely to be an evildoer?