/qresearch/ - Q Research

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CURRENT DOUGH

https://controlc.com/4c170ffa

Peter Dutton has warned the Taliban the world is watching Afghanistan

Peter Dutton has delivered an extremely blunt of assessment of who is to blame in Afghanistan and put the Taliban on notice.

Courtney Gould - AUGUST 17, 2021

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Peter Dutton has warned the Taliban “the world is watching” and Australia stands ready to act if terror takes hold in Afghanistan.

Mr Dutton challenged the Taliban to abandon its “barbaric” treatment of women and girls after regaining control of the war-torn country.

“The test is now on them and they need to perform,” he told the ABC on Tuesday night.

The defence minister also demanded allied forces be allowed to safely leave Afghanistan.

Experts have warned the situation in Afghanistan will be a “massive morale boost” for every jihadist on the planet.

Asked whether that suggested a new level of threat for Australia, Mr Dutton urged people to heed the words of US President Joe Biden.

“He was very clear that if another threat similar to al-Qaeda or to Osama bin Laden and the 9-11 attacks, if that manifests itself in Afghanistan … then the United States will strike,” Mr Dutton said.

“And so they should, and we would be supportive of them in disrupting any major terrorist attack, whether it was in the West or elsewhere.

“The United States has the ability in the air, on the ground, to conduct such an attack and people should be hearing that message loud and clear.”

Mr Dutton was extremely blunt while pressed on what the Taliban had achieved.

“What we need to reflect on is the failure of the ability of the Afghans themselves to take up the arms they were given, to use the training that was imparted on them,” he said.

“Many of those from the president down have abandoned their country and in that circumstance, either today, next year or in 20 years’ time, that makes for a very difficult exit.

“And a huge win for the Taliban or whoever it might be if the Afghans themselves aren’t prepared to fight for their own territory.”

Earlier, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned Australia’s rescue mission in Afghanistan would not reach “all that it should”.

Mr Morrison confirmed work was underway to evacuate Australian and Afghan workers from Kabul amid the ongoing crisis.

The Taliban reached Kabul on Sunday morning after the militant Islamic group quickly took hold of the final government-controlled provinces last week.

(continued)

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The lightning speed of the Taliban’s advance has left Australia scrambling, as the government is now at the mercy of the US to remain in control of Kabul’s airport and traffic control to get their people out.

The Prime Minister declined to go into details about the rescue, instead issuing a stark concession that the government may not be able to get everyone home.

“The scenes from Kabul have been absolutely heartbreaking. It's a sobering day for everyone and particularly those who have given so much over the past 20 years and most notably those 41 who were lost,” he told reporters in Canberra.

“I want you to know that we will continue to do everything we can for those who have stood with us, as we have to this day. But I want to talk openly to veterans that despite our best efforts, I know that support won‘t reach all that it should.

“We wish it were different.”

But several journalists at the briefing took issue with Mr Morrison’s comments and pressed the Prime Minister as to why he didn’t act sooner.

“You said that ‘you wish it were different’. Couldn‘t the situation be different? We’ve had former soldiers warning for weeks that military evacuation was needed. Why weren’t those calls heeded back then when we were getting those warnings?” one reporter asked.

Mr Morrison said the government had settled 430 Afghan workers since April, insisting the process couldn’t happen overnight.

“I would say that our government has been moving readily now over quite a period of time to bring as many people out as we possibly can, and the job is not yet done,” he said.

“Now, in any circumstance, it's impossible to give 100 per cent guarantees. That’s all I was referring to.”

The Prime Minister was pressed further.

“You were saying you were aware of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan since May, closed the embassy at that time,” one reporter said.

“Why did it take until now, mid-August, to send these 250 personnel and can you rule out that any of them that have been sent are in any way connected to the Brereton inquiry?”

The Prime Minister, visibly frustrated at the line of questioning, snapped back at the reporter for “casting slurs”.

“These are 250 Australians answering the call of their government to go and help Australians in need, and you're questioning their integrity,” he responded.

“They're going to do their service in our uniform and in our name. I respect it and I would ask others to respect it also and not to cast slurs against their integrity.”

https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/scott-morrison-concedes-afghanistan-rescue-mission-will-not-reach-all-that-it-should/news-story/b0837c65529901101aadb6994cb47c1f

Afghanistan rescue flight carrying Australians lands in UAE, with more Kabul evacuation missions planned

Andrew Greene and Georgia Hitch - 18 August 2021

The first Australian Defence Force evacuation flight from Afghanistan has landed back at a military base in the United Arab Emirates after collecting 26 passengers from Kabul airport.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said more flights would be organised into the Taliban-held Afghan capital in the coming days.

"This is not a simple process," he said. "This was the first of what will be many flights, subject to clearance and weather."

"We will bring out as many people as we can, as quickly and safely as we can."

Earlier, the ABC revealed the flight had made it into, and out of, Kabul, touching down in the UAE.

Mr Morrison said the flight landed at 10:45am AEST.

"That included Australian citizens, Afghan nationals with visas and one foreign official working in an international agency," he said.

"The transfers are done to our base in the Emirates, where capacity has already been established with medical support available, to provide that medical support and to process their further onward transfer to Australia."

Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said government officials were on the ground in Kabul, but that people heading to the airport were having to negotiate Taliban checkpoints.

"[It] is obviously a very complex and fluid environment, with a whole range of security issues," she said.

"We are working closely with the US particularly, the UK, others, Germans included, to try to improve or address those security challenges."

Seven people were killed as crowds descended on Hamid Karzai airport after the Taliban seized control of the capital on Sunday.

A number of people were filmed clinging on to an American military jet as it took off, with the US Air Force later confirming it found human remains in the wheel well of one of its aircraft that left Kabul.

Refugee visas for Afghans

Mr Morrison said he believed the government would be able to provide at least 3,000 visas under the humanitarian visa program to Afghans this year.

But he said he wanted to make it clear the government would only resettle Afghans through official and "legitimate" channels.

The current cap on humanitarian visa places is 13,750 after the government reduced the program by 5,000 places last year.

Immigration Minister Alex Hawke said the 3,000 places would focus on family members of Australians, persecuted minorities including women, girls, children, the Hazara — an ethnic minority group — and other vulnerable groups.

Mr Hawke said visa applications from people fleeing Afghanistan would be given priority, and reiterated the Prime Minister's suggestion that the initial allocation would likely increase in the future.

Flight tracking websites showed the RAAF Hercules flying in and out of Afghanistan this morning, as part of an urgent mission to rescue Australians and Afghans from the city.

A Hercules can carry around 120 passengers, while a C-17 Globemaster, which will also fly into Kabul, can officially carry 134 people.

However, an American C-17 which left Kabul earlier this week was pictured carrying hundreds of people who had crammed into the aircraft's hold as they fled the city.

A federal government spokesperson said the number of evacuees on each RAAF flight was expected to "ramp up" with subsequent flights.

Sources in Kabul said Australians were told to head to the airport last night, and another rescue flight could be launched as early as today.

This week Australia committed 250 troops and several military aircraft to the region with the hope of extracting around 600 people from Kabul.

That will include 100 Australian permanent residents and citizens and around 100 of their family members, plus 300 to 400 local employees.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton also confirmed yesterday that Australia would help get New Zealand citizens out of Kabul as well.

The airport in Kabul has been secured by US troops, something Mr Morrison said was crucial to facilitating Australian flights into the capital.

The PM said a number of states and territories had agreed to quarantine people brought back from Afghanistan above the current international passenger caps.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-18/afghanistan-kabul-rescue-mission-carrying-australians-lands/100386652

Father Anthony Caruana’s abuse of children destroyed lives and tore families apart, court told

The men who were abused as children by a priest at a NSW school have laid bare how their lives were destroyed by his evil acts.

Heath Parkes-Hupton - AUGUST 18, 2021

A pedophile priest who abused 12 boys at a NSW boarding school has been described as a “disgusting, filthy human” whose evil acts left permanent emotional scars on his victims and tore families apart.

For years Father Anthony Caruana got away with his crimes while the boys dealt with their pain without the support of loved ones who did not believe them.

Caruana sexually and indecently assaulted students, then aged between 11 and 15, during the 1980s while working at Catholic school Chevalier College in Burradoo, near Bowral.

In July, a jury found him guilty of 26 charges, including 22 counts of indecent assault and four counts of sexual intercourse with a student.

On Wednesday the Downing Centre District Court heard statements penned by his victims, who spoke of how the predator priest robbed them of their innocence and destroyed their lives.

As Caruana, 79, watched the proceedings via video link from prison, the court was told how the boys’ trauma at the abuse was worsened by their families’ refusal to believe their stories.

Many of them had suffered lifelong anxiety, depression and PTSD, and some had tried to take their own lives as they struggled to cope with the impact of Caruana’s heinous crimes, the court was told.

One man, who cannot be named, said prison was exactly where Caruana deserved to be and he “should have been there 30 years ago”.

The man recalled telling his devout Catholic family he had been abused by the priest as he sat across the table from Caruana, who had attended his home for a party to celebrate the man graduating college.

It was the last time the man spoke to his family as they kicked him out of home after siding with Caruana, the court was told.

“You are the most disgusting, filthy human being I have ever met,” he told Caruana in a victim impact statement.

“And if there is a God in that sky, he wouldn’t tolerate a man like you.

“You are where you deserve to be and should have been there 30 years ago. You can’t hide behind your collar anymore.”

A common theme of the victim impact statements was how the abuse the men suffered as kids made them feel abandoned by their families and prevented them from trusting people as they grew.

They said Chevalier College was meant to be a safe haven for them but Caruana, who they once saw as a role model, took that away.

One man said he had always wanted to be a dad but his low self-esteem, emotional anguish and trust issues meant he had never had an intimate relationship.

He imagines taking his children to play at the park but knows “this will never be a reality”.

“This is something I think about and grieve for every day of my life,” he said.

Another man remembered how Caruana groomed him by helping the boy read letters sent to him at the school by his mother.

“I looked up to Father Caruana but I now know this is how get got me to trust him,” the man wrote.

“When the abuse started I felt confused and scared. The things he did to me physically caused me pain and it felt wrong somehow.”

Although Caruana faces a lengthy jail sentence for his actions, another of his victims told the court he believed only God could truly impart justice for the deep hurt caused by the predator.

Following a lengthy trial, a jury of 10 women and two men convicted the priest of 26 out of 29 charges.

Caruana will return to court for a sentence hearing in September.

https://www.news.com.au/national/nsw-act/courts-law/father-anthony-caruanas-abuse-of-children-destroyed-lives-and-tore-families-apart-court-told/news-story/039992f3169879960bd44174c13ba0da

Prince Andrew is 'person of interest' in Epstein investigation: US prosecutors probing Ghislaine Maxwell's activities want to quiz Duke over friendship with paedophile billionaire - as he faces civil lawsuit from Virginia Roberts

MARK DUELL - 17 August 2021

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Prosecutors in the US investigating people linked to Jeffrey Epstein consider Prince Andrew to be a 'person of interest' in the inquiry, a source claimed last night.

Investigators probing Ghislaine Maxwell and other Epstein associates are said to want to speak to the Duke of York about his friendship with the paedophile financier.

As a person of interest, the Queen's son is viewed at least as a potential witness - and questioning him would form part of the investigation into possible co-conspirators.

Prosecutors last week said Andrew, 61, had 'sought to falsely portray himself to the public as eager and willing to cooperate' but had given no interview to federal authorities and had repeatedly declined requests to talk with investigators.

Andrew remains a person of interest to prosecutors in the office of the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, according to the source - but they do not expect to be able to interview him in the foreseeable future, if ever.

'He doesn't seem to want to talk to us,' said the source, who is familiar with the US inquiry. Representatives of the Prince declined to comment, but have previously denied any wrongdoing of failure to assist.

Earlier this month, Virginia Giuffre, who has said she was abused by Epstein, filed a civil complaint against Andrew in Manhattan federal court.

Ms Giuffre, who used to be known as Virginia Roberts, alleges Andrew forced her to have unwanted sexual intercourse at Maxwell's London home.

Andrew has denied the allegation. Epstein died in an apparent suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors.

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to charges that she procured teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse between 1994 and 2004. She is expected to go on trial in November.

Prosecutors last year sent the British government a formal request, known as a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) submission, asking for access to the prince so they could talk to him.

The MLAT is a procedure used in criminal investigations to gather material from foreign countries which cannot readily be obtained on a cooperative basis.

Ms Giuffre's lawyer had no immediate comment.

(continued)

>>14386072

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It comes as pressure mounted on Andrew this week to respond to sex abuse claims as an alleged witness said he was prepared to swear under oath that he saw the duke groping his accuser.

As royal aides were said to believe there were 'inconsistencies' in Andrew's account of his dealings with Ms Giuffre, a former employee of Epstein said he was prepared to testify about what he claims to have seen.

Steve Scully, who was Epstein's telecoms specialist, says he spotted the duke kissing and grinding against a bikini-clad blonde by a pool on the tycoon's Caribbean island hideaway 'between 2001 and 2004', the Sun on Sunday reported.

Mr Scully insisted to the paper that the woman was Mrs Giuffre –then 17 and called Virginia Roberts.

'If Virginia's lawyers call, I will definitely speak to them and I would give a deposition under oath,' the 71-year-old told the paper.

'The nice thing about the truth is that it doesn't change. There's no question in my mind that I saw Prince Andrew and Virginia together and no question he would remember the incident either.'

The existence of a witness who could support Mrs Giuffre's claims in a bombshell US lawsuit last week that Andrew sexually assaulted her in New York, London and the Caribbean in 2001 when she was just 17 comes as he faces mounting questions over his lawyers' continued silence.

Last week the UK's most senior police officer Dame Cressida Dick revealed she had told Met detectives to review the claims against the prince, warning: 'No one is above the law.'

Mrs Giuffre, now 38, is suing the prince for 'punitive damages' which could amount to millions of pounds if she wins her case.

The 61-year-old prince has strenuously denied her claims that she was forced to have sex with him on Epstein's orders.

He said he categorically did not have any sexual contact with her and does not even recall meeting her.

But the failure of his lawyers to formally respond to Mrs Giuffre's lawsuit has been met with incredulity, with palace insiders telling the Mail last week they were 'extremely unhappy with the strategy of stonewalling'.

The duke's lawyers may apply to have the case thrown out on the basis that the New York court has no jurisdiction in the UK, according to the Sunday Times.

While the prince vehemently denies her claims, with palace insiders pointing out that her account has changed over the past decade, they acknowledge there are question marks over his version of events too.

However a source told the Mail this week that Mr Scully's account was also 'questionable'.

The source pointed out that by his own recollection, the alleged sighting of Andrew with Mrs Giuffre might have taken place as late as 2004 – by which time she was married and no longer working for Epstein.

Epstein died in his jail cell in 2019 after being charged with sex trafficking.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9901295/Prince-Andrew-person-Jeffrey-Epstein-investigation.html

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority must rewrite draft curriculum: Alan Tudge

REBECCA URBAN - AUGUST 18, 2021

Education Minister Alan Tudge says the board of the country’s schooling authority must substantially rewrite its draft national curriculum, warning he will not endorse the proposed document amid concern student outcomes would be harmed.

Writing to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s acting chairman Norm Hart, Mr Tudge criticised the proposal for supporting “ideology over evidence” and presenting an “overly negative view” of the nation in the study of history and civics.

In the letter, seen by The Australian, Mr Tudge urged the board to seriously consider recent feedback from education experts, who have flagged concerns that the proposed changes amounted to a weakening of learning standards.

“Some of these groups, such as Australia’s peak mathematics association, believe that the current draft will take Australian kids backwards,” he wrote. “If the current draft is simply tweaked, it will not be supported. It needs fundamental changes.”

The warning comes as the ACARA board meets on Thursday and Friday to discuss feedback to the highly anticipated update of the Australian Curriculum – an important document laying out what students are expected to learn across the mandated subject areas of English, maths, science, the arts, humanities, health and physical education and languages.

The curriculum also seeks to cover general capabilities, or skills, such as critical and creative thinking, as well as ensure young people develop an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. Its release in April, however, sparked a torrent of criticism, including from high-profile historians, academics and reading specialists.

Among the most scathing criticism was from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, whose membership spans leading universities, government agencies and industry, which called for any ongoing review of the maths curriculum to be halted pending further consultation.

The institute was particularly critical of a proposed push towards having students learn maths by engaging in open-ended problem-solving activities, noting that “mastery of mathematical approaches is needed before student problem-solving can be effective”.

Under way for more than a year, ACARA’s curriculum review was launched in the wake of Australia’s declining performance on the OECD’s PISA, which has shown that Australian students have gone backwards in reading, maths and science over the past 20 years.

According to Mr Tudge, the curriculum should seek to be ambitious on students’ learning outcomes and should prioritise evidence-based practices, particularly in reading and maths.

“However, to my great frustration, evidence-based practices have not been consistently embedded in your current draft,” he said. “There is still too much emphasis on whole-language learning of reading and insufficient emphasis on phonics.

“Thirty years ago, determining the best way to teach reading may have been a legitimate debate, but it is not now. The evidence is crystal clear … that the teaching of phonics is vital.”

The minister also urged the ACARA board to re-examine the draft history and civics curriculum to ensure that it provided a balanced teaching of Australia’s liberal democracy that has made the nation attractive to millions of migrants.

“Your draft, however, diminishes Australia’s western, liberal, and democratic values,” Mr Tudge said. “The overarching impression from the curriculum is that the main feature of western civilisation is slavery, imperialism and colonisation.

“Important historical events are removed or reframed, such as the emphasis on invasion theory over Australia Day. Even Anzac Day is presented as a contested idea, rather than the most sacred of all days where we honour the millions of men and women who have served in war, and the 100,000 who gave their lives for our freedom.”

Referencing the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Tudge said the education system had “been shaken in the last 18 months … in ways we had never imagined”.

“I believe that the best way to serve the interests of our young people now is to seize every opportunity to lift educational standards,” he said.

“The draft of the Australian Curriculum is such an opportunity.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/australian-curriculum-assessment-and-reporting-authority-must-rewrite-draft-curriculum-alan-tudge/news-story/d2e0c0e1a824b3f1ce8652c0c0d18806

Marine Rotational Force – Darwin Tweet

Here Comes the Boom!

#USMC High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems with 3d Battalion, 12th Marines, 3d Marine Division fire rockets during Exercise Talisman Sabre 21 on Shoalwater Bay Training Area, #Australia.

(U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Alyssa Chuluda)

https://twitter.com/MrfDarwin/status/1427767193400348676

Department of Defence Tweet

#YourADF & @USMC & sailors of @MrfDarwin will enter a fictitious contested area of operations under a combined command throughout August.

Exercise Koolendong is the most integrated, realistic, high-end activity conducted in MRF-D’s 10-year history.

bit. ly/3AF9LcK

https://twitter.com/DeptDefence/status/1427586013224964097

https://news.defence.gov.au/international/soldiers-and-marines-prepare-training

>>14395401

Soldiers and marines prepare for training

Captain Carla Armenti - 12 August 2021

Throughout this month, Australian soldiers, with the US Marines and sailors of Marine Rotational Force – Darwin (MRF-D), will enter a fictitious contested area of operations under a combined command construct during Exercise Koolendong.

The contested area, Bradshaw Field Training Area, has been renamed Bradshaw Island for the purpose of the exercise.

Commander of the combined task force (CTF) Brigadier Ash Collingburn regards the training as the most integrated, realistic, high-end warfighting activity conducted in MRF-D’s 10-year history.

“This year, we will operate as a CTF, combining our significant combat and logistic capabilities to deploy to Bradshaw Island, destroy the fictitious enemy, handover security responsibility to local forces and then redeploy to Darwin Island,” he said.

Planning for the activity has been ongoing for about 12 months, with the final rehearsal of concept conducted and deployment orders issued in late July for the CTF’s subsequent move to the field.

“Conducting this exercise at Bradshaw allows us to increase the complexity of our training, to incorporate US Marine aviation assets, challenge our logistic systems, and extend our medical support while integrating combined Australian and US assets at every level, including within the CTF Headquarters,” Brigadier Collingburn said.

About 1500 Australian soldiers will train with a similar number of US Marines ahead of their final activity during this year’s rotation – a combined live-fire manoeuvre activity aimed at defeating the enemy on Bradshaw Island.

MRF-D Commanding Officer Colonel David Banning said he was satisfied with the comprehensive planning and rehearsals before US Marines departed into the field.

“The planning phase is complete and we look forward to putting the plan into action as part of a combined force,” he said.

Soldiers and US Marines will have the opportunity to rehearse expeditionary bilateral, joint warfighting in a simulated archipelagic region laid over the 6600 sqkm Bradshaw Field Training Area.

“Operating from Bradshaw allows us to integrate the full range of US Marine Air-Ground Task Force capabilities as part of a CTF,” Colonel Banning said.

“For MRF-D, this exercise is the culminating event of a tangible demonstration of our ability to respond to any type of crisis or contingency in conjunction with our Australian partners.”

The CTF will complete its training in the field next month before MRF-D depart Australia, wrapping up the April to October rotation.

https://news.defence.gov.au/international/soldiers-and-marines-prepare-training?linkId=127932507

>>14385947

Peter Dutton suggests some Afghans who worked with Australia have 'shifted allegiances'

Mr Dutton suggested some Afghans who assisted Australia's military have gone on to work for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

CLAUDIA FARHART - 19 August 2021

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has suggested some Afghans who worked alongside Australian forces may have "shifted" their allegiances, as the government faces pressure to take in more who are fleeing the Taliban.

Mr Dutton told the ABC on Wednesday "we need to deal with the reality on the ground, not how we want it to be".

"The reality is that people for their own survival instincts move allegiances around," he said.

"There are some wonderful people who have supported us at a point in time 10 years ago and they have gone on to work for the Taliban, they're working for al-Qaeda, they're acting out against our allies and their allegiances have shifted.

"We're not bringing them to our country. And those that provided us with support, wherever is possible, they will come to our country.”

During Australia's 20 years in Afghanistan, hundreds of Afghan nationals worked alongside the military as interpreters and embassy guards.

As the Taliban tightened their grip on the country over recent months, some guards and interpreters have spoken out, saying they feared they would be the targets of revenge attacks because of their close work with western forces.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday said the government expects to provide around 3,000 visas for Afghan applicants this financial year.

Visas granted to fleeing Afghans will come from the existing intake of 13,750, rather than a special allocation, though Afghans will be given priority processing.

Mr Dutton said some visa applicants had been subject to adverse security assessments but would not confirm how many.

"It's not insignificant," he said, when pressed to provide a number.

"They're coming from a very difficult part of the world. There are people that that that have helped us at a point in time who have since acted out either against our interests or those of our allies which includes passing on intelligence to ISIL and others," he said.

"In some cases, it's impossible to ascertain information or interviews have been conducted and the interviewers aren't satisfied with the authenticity of the responses that have been made."

Mr Morrison also confirmed on Wednesday 26 people - which included Australian citizens, Afghan visa holders, and a foreign official - flew out of Kabul.

Photographs of the flight drew critical comparisons to a United States flight earlier in the week, which saw 640 Afghans crammed onto a military plane that usually carries 134 passengers.

Mr Dutton defended the comparatively small flight and said there would be more evacuation flights to follow.

"We had limitations on how people can get to the airport and it's a very difficult situation on the ground," he said.

"It's not like turning up to a normal airport where people can come and go freely. It's clearly a difficult situation for people to make their way to the airport and I think that's the reality of the circumstances on the ground."

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/peter-dutton-suggests-some-afghans-who-worked-with-australia-have-shifted-allegiances

>>14385947

Howard: Donald Trump cannot escape blame for Afghanistan crisis

ADESHOLA ORE - AUGUST 19, 2021

Former prime minister John Howard says Donald Trump must accept some blame for the United States’ swift retreat from Afghanistan as the country faces a dire humanitarian crisis.

Mr Howard, who deployed Australian troops to Afghanistan in 2001 following the 9/11 terror attacks, has condemned the US withdrawal from Afghanistan under Joe Biden’s leadership. On Wednesday he described the exit as “too hasty” and argued the collapse of the opposition to the Taliban should “never have been allowed to occur.” Mr Howard has also defended his decision to send troops into the conflict, declaring “nobody who wears the Australian uniform ever dies in vain.”

Speaking to 2GB radio on Thursday, Mr Howard said the US withdrawal had “left a lot to be desired.”

The US president has faced criticism from his predecessor, who claims the nation’s exit from Afghanistan had “humiliated” the United States.

But Mr Howard said Donald Trump could not “escape blame.”

“He made the terrible mistake of saying that America was going before he secured any kind of understanding or deal with the Taliban,” he said.

“That’s a pretty ordinary way of negotiating with a ruthless mob such as that.”

But Mr Howard acknowledged that the “United States could not have stayed there forever.”

He said he feared for the future of Afghanistan, noting that gains made for women and girls would likely be lost.

“The human dimension of this is terrible,” he said.

A fraught security situation in Kabul is hampering Australia’s ability to evacuate citizens and Afghan locals who supported the nations’ troops during the two-decade conflict. Mr Howard previously said Australia had a moral obligation to help local staff who supported Australia. But he said it was “far too early” to tell if the government had left its evacuation operations too late.

“It should be said in defence of the government they have already settled about 400-500 of these people in Australia,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody a few months ago expected there to be such a rapid collapse as happened in the last two or three weeks.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/howard-donald-trump-cannot-escape-blame-for-afghanistan-crisis/news-story/e39f7643f936d226c934ac3127f91240

AstraZeneca to change vaccine name to Vaxzevria in Australia

JESS MALCOLM - AUGUST 19, 2021

AstraZeneca has changed the brand name of its Covid-19 vaccine to Vaxzevria after it was granted approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

The pharmaceutical giant hopes the name change will help to smooth the pathway for Australians vaccinated with the domestically produced Vaxzevria to travel internationally.

Vaxzevria is the brand name already in use in Europe and the UK, approved by both the European Medicines Agency and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK.

The use of its previous name (Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca) had triggered concerns that some European countries or the UK may not recognise the Australian-produced AstraZeneca vaccine, or that it would be seen differently to the same vaccine made overseas.

In a statement released on Thursday, the company said its vaccine will now be known as Vaxzevria to bring it in line with other regulatory bodies.

“The brand name Vaxzevria has now been registered for use in Australia for AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine,” it read.

“Use of the Vaxzevria brand name should help simplify international travel for people vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

“The vaccine has previously received emergency authorisation from the World Health Organisation. As such Vaxzevria, including Vaxzevria produced at CSL in Australia, is a valid vaccination for travel in Europe.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/astrazeneca-to-change-vaccine-name-to-vaxzevria-in-australia/news-story/018bc25e12b4eed5160328517de722b1

Sydney imposes nightly curfew as Australia battles Delta outbreak

Renju Jose and Colin Packham - AUGUST 20, 2021

SYDNEY/CANBERRA (Reuters) - Two million residents of Sydney will be under nightly curfew from next week to slow the highly infectious Delta variant of coronavirus that is spreading across New South Wales state, authorities said on Friday as they extended lockdown orders.

Australia's third wave of COVID-19 infections, centred on Sydney, has forced more than half the population of nearly 26 million into lockdown and pushed the world's 13th-largest economy to the brink of its second recession here in as many years.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian extended Sydney’s lockdown until the end of September and imposed new restrictions including the curfew, a requirement to wear a mask when outside and limits on exercise.

“I asked health and police to work together, to give me a final list of what we can throw at this, to leave no shadow of a doubt as to how serious we are about getting the rate of growth down, the case numbers down,” Berejiklian told a media conference.

A curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. would take effect from Monday in the 12 worst-affected council areas, covering about 40% of Sydney’s population of 5 million. Anyone caught entering those areas would be fined and required to self-isolate for 14 days.

With a similar curfew already in place in Melbourne, more than a quarter of Australia’s population will be confined to their homes at night from Monday, with the exception of essential workers.

NSW state reported 644 new infections on Friday, most of them in Sydney. Daily cases across NSW have topped 400 for the past seven days despite eight weeks of lockdown in Sydney, Australia’s biggest city.

With only about 28% of people above 16 years of age fully vaccinated, Australia has failed to contain the Sydney outbreak which has now seeded cases in other towns and cities across Australia as well as New Zealand here.

Australia’s Victoria state recorded 55 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases and warned it was at risk of being swamped by infections.

“We are right on the edge of this getting away from us and it’s not because contact tracing aren’t doing everything they can. They are. It’s not because we didn’t lock down fast enough. We did,” Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters in Melbourne.

Australia’s capital Canberra is also in lockdown, with 16 cases recorded in the past 24 hours out of a population of around 430,000, authorities said.

ON THE EDGE

Suicide prevention helpline Lifeline Australia said there had been a 40% rise in calls in recent days compared with pre-pandemic times.

“What that demonstrates is the level of anxiety, increasing levels of anger in the community, and of course stress and pressure,” Lifeline Australia Chair John Brogden told broadcaster ABC on Friday.

Australia has recorded just shy of 12,000 infections since the first Delta case was reported in Sydney on June 16. Four new deaths were confirmed in NSW on Friday, taking the total to 65 in the latest outbreak.

Even so, high vaccination levels among Australia’s most vulnerable mean the mortality rate is 0.54%, official data shows, below previous outbreaks.

Despite a third wave of infections from the Delta variant, Australia’s COVID-19 numbers are relatively low, with some 42,100 cases and 975 deaths.

($1 = 1.4025 Australian dollars)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/sydney-extends-covid-19-lockdown-imposes-curfew-on-worst-hit-areas-idUSKBN2FL03M

Lifeline

13 11 14 - 24 Hours

https://www.lifeline.org.au

Graphene… Australia… Health Minister & his Family

https://cairnsnews.org/2021/08/19/health-minister-hunts-family-involvement-in-graphene-and-vaccines/?fbclid=IwAR1NQX_MKLXYvTrtvaB1LRPoBxY6H5ZzcPZ4zfS2cPSEJm7yUZ6puixeivw

EXCLUSIVE: SAS soldiers who faced the sack after extraordinary press conference accusing them of war crimes will FINALLY keep their jobs - and at least one is already back in Kabul saving Aussies from the Taliban

STEPHEN GIBBS - 19 August 2021

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Special forces soldiers who faced the sack following the Brereton inquiry into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan have been told they can stay in their jobs.

Thirteen soldiers from the Special Air Service Regiment were sent show cause notices late last year asking why they should not have their employment terminated.

The notices were based solely on supposedly 'credible information' of war crimes contained within the multi-million dollar Brereton report.

All the soldiers were long-serving SAS members - some of them decorated for bravery - and the unproven allegations against them included taking part in unlawful killings.

In another backdown on the response to the Brereton inquiry, those soldiers still in the regiment threatened with termination have now been told no further action will be taken against them.

The move means soldiers recently considered potentially unsuitable for the Australian Defence Force - and according to the Brereton report, possible war criminals - are once again recognised as fit to serve their country.

One of those whose termination was withdrawn is understood to have been deployed this week to help evacuate Australians from Kabul as it falls to the Taliban.

A source close to some of the SAS members who were informed they no longer had to justify their continued employment said the show cause notices had been another 'knee-jerk' response by Defence.

A decision to revoke a unit citation awarded to 3,000 special forces members, including those killed in action, has already been reversed by the federal government.

'The reality is our defence force can't possibly consider these people to be war criminals because otherwise you wouldn't arm them with a weapon and send them back in,' the SAS source said.

The decision comes as questions are being raised about the military hierarchy's handling of Australia's withdrawal of Afghanistan and a royal commission into shockingly high rates of veteran suicides has been announced.

The show cause notices threatened imminent 'administrative action' and were issued in November after the release earlier that month of the Brereton report.

'Usually, once you've been issued with a notice to show cause it doesn't really matter what you say in response, you just get terminated,' the SAS source said.

NSW Supreme Court judge Paul Brereton conducted a four-year inquiry into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan for the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force.

No one has been charged with any war crimes, prosecutions are unlikely for years and much of the evidence given before Justice Brereton would not be admissible in court.

Retired major Heston Russell, who served in Afghanistan with the 2nd Commando Regiment, has warned former colleagues were struggling with ongoing uncertainty in the wake of the Brereton report.

'Some of the families have been involved with this inquiry since it started four years ago and still haven't had any resolution,' he told Network Seven in February.

More than 500 Afghanistan war veterans have taken their lives and 25 reportedly committed suicide in only two months after the release of the Brereton report.

(continued)

>>14404558

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Justice Brereton found 'credible information' that 25 Australian special forces personnel had been responsible for 39 unlawful killings in Afghanistan, along with cover-ups and other misconduct.

Those killings including cases where new SAS patrol members were allegedly told to shoot a prisoner to achieve their first kill in an 'appalling practice' known as 'blooding'.

There was also evidence of 'body count competitions' and troops covering up unlawful killings by staging skirmishes, planting weapons and retrospectively adding names to lists of Taliban targets, Justice Brereton found.

The heavily-redacted 465-page Brereton report blamed the alleged killings in part on a 'warrior' culture among special forces soldiers.

Australian Defence Force chief Angus Campbell said some SAS patrols had 'taken the law into their own hands', adding that 'rules were broken, stories concocted, lies told and prisoners killed'.

General Campbell said 'none of the alleged unlawful killings were described as being in the heat of battle.'

One of the killings was labelled in the report as 'possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia's military history' but details were completely redacted.

General Campbell apologised for any unlawful killings of prisoners, farmers and other civilians, adding the troops allegedly involved had left a 'stain' on Australia.

'To the people of Afghanistan on behalf of the Australian Defence Force I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for any wrongdoing by Australian soldiers,' he said.

'And to the people of Australia, I am sincerely sorry for any wrongdoing by members of the Australian Defence Force.'

General Campbell went on to outline how the 'self-centred warrior culture' had led to 'cutting corners, ignoring and bending rules'.

The Brereton report suggested 19 serving or former soldiers could face prosecution for war crimes and the findings were being reviewed by a special investigator for the Australian Federal Police.

It is understood most of those 13 soldiers were among the 19 who Justice Brereton recommended for prosecution.

The soldiers issued show cause notices were mostly from the SAS Regiment's 2 Squadron, with a smaller number from 3 Squadron.

Some were identified by Justice Brereton as being 'trigger pullers' in unlawful killings, or accessories in alleged murders carried out by other SAS members.

Some were accused of giving false evidence to the Brereton inquiry investigators.

Despite all the claims of war crimes against the soldiers, their versions of events have ultimately been preferred over what was found in the Brereton report.

Witnesses who appeared before the inquiry were compelled to answer questions, even if they incriminated themselves, and were forbidden from discussing their evidence with their comrades.

Information obtained by the inquiry under compulsion and any evidence derived from it will be inadmissible in any criminal proceedings against those individuals.

Billionaire Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes offered to bankroll the legal costs of all special forces soldiers accused of war crimes and misconduct.

(continued)

>>14404561

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In January, the SAS members who were subject to adverse findings by Justice Brereton provided written responses to the show cause notices through their lawyers.

In March, some of the soldiers were told they would have medical discharges approved rather than have their employment terminated.

Others heard nothing more until several weeks ago when they were told no further action would be taken against them.

The SAS source said soldiers had been condemned without proper evidence and Defence was now backtracking on their decision to sack them.

'They were so quick to announce their action against these "potential war criminals" but they haven't been quick to announce their inaction.'

Serving and former SAS members feel the entire regiment is being punished for unproven allegations against a few of their number.

They complain that non-commissioned officers such as sergeants and corporals are being singled out for blame rather than those further up the chain of the command.

No action has been taken against any of the senior members of the ADF responsible for overseeing the work of the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan.

A number of those whose show cause notices were revoked were leaving the regiment anyway after becoming disgruntled by their treatment, the source said.

General Campbell announced in November that 2 Squadron would be disbanded but Daily Mail Australia understands that in the interim rather than taking formal action all its members have been moved out to other squadrons.

General Campbell had also said the Meritorious Unit Citation awarded to about 3,000 members of the Special Operations Task Group who served in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013 would be revoked.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton overturned that decision in April, saying only those soldiers who had a formal finding of inappropriate behaviour made against them would lose their citation.

More than 26,000 Australian personnel served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014 and 41 were killed.

Following the withdrawal of United States troops after 20 years of war, the Taliban has in recent weeks re-taken most of Afghanistan, including the capital Kabul.

Defence has been contacted for comment.

Any serving or former member of the Australian Defence Force or their families in distress can contact the Defence All-Hours Support Line on 1800 628 036.

https://www1.defence.gov.au/adf-members-families/health-well-being/services-support-fighting-fit/need-help-now/all-hours-support-line

Defence Family Helpline: 1800 624 608.

https://www1.defence.gov.au/adf-members-families/health-well-being/services-support-fighting-fit/need-help-now/family-helpline

Open Arms - Veterans & Families Counselling: 1800 011 046.

https://www.openarms.gov.au

A list of welfare support services is available here.

https://afghanistaninquiry.defence.gov.au/welfare-support

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9808447/SAS-soldiers-named-Afghanistan-war-crimes-inquiry-jobs.html

Prosecutors Ask Judge to Withhold the Names of Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘Uncharged Co-Conspirators’ from Her

ADAM KLASFELD - Aug 19th, 2021

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Federal prosecutors urged a judge not to force them to provide Ghislaine Maxwell a complete list of her “uncharged co-conspirators,” arguing that those disclosure risks “harm to the Government from restricting its proof at trial.”

“Although it is not required to do so, the Government can state that—as of the date of this letter, and although the Government may change its view as it prepares for trial—it currently intends to introduce co-conspirator statements at trial from only two individuals,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe wrote in a four-page letter on Wednesday.

Maxwell asked to learn their identities earlier, as one of the categories of information her defense team requested to avoid a trial-by-ambush.

“The Government Regrets Any Confusion”

Last week, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan rejected Maxwell’s request for a bill of particulars, but that ruling pointed out that the government had not specifically responded to Maxwell’s request for co-conspirator names. Prosecutors urged the judge not to mistake their silence on the issue for consent.

“The Government regrets any confusion on this point,” prosecutors wrote in a footnote.

Prosecutor indicate that Maxwell’s upcoming trial in November will not shine a spotlight on many other people accused of aiding and abetting Epstein. Their letter states that they currently only plan to introduce “co-conspirator statements” by “only two individuals”: Epstein himself and an employee who scheduled his “massage” appointments around 2004.

“There is accordingly no significant risk that the defense will be surprised at trial by a profusion of co-conspirators and their statements, even if the government identifies statements for use at trial from additional co-conspirators,” the letter states. “This Court has twice concluded that no bill of particulars is warranted because the defendant has adequate information to prepare for trial and avoid unfair surprise.”

In a recent interview with Law&Crime’s podcast “Objections,” the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown—whose reporting has been widely credited with sparking Epstein and Maxwell’s prosecutions—opined that transparency has been getting worse on the dockets. Her public records battles in court led to the release of thousands of pages, which included the names of prominent men allegedly implicated in Epstein’s conspiracy.

Despite that flood of documents, courts remain “under pressure” to keep more files “under wraps and heavily redacted,” Brown said.

(continued)

>>14404614

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“No One Seemed Surprised”

Also on Wednesday, Maxwell’s lawyer Bobbi Sternheim raised a separate concern about her attorney-client communications. She claimed that third parties may have breached their video conference calls from the Metropolitan Detention Center, the federal lockup in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Maxwell is being held before trial.

Earlier this month, Maxwell says, the jail switched the video conferencing program from WebEx to Zoom after the accused sex-trafficker claimed to spot an unidentified party on the line: “NER/BRO.”

“When Ms. Maxwell raised these concerns to various staff members, no one seemed surprised,” Sternheim’s letter states. “The fact that MDC immediately provided a ‘more secure’ link (in their words) suggests there was some type of breach or interference with the attorney-client VTC which impinged upon confidentiality of privileged attorney-client communication and is placing an on-going chill on communication between Ms. Maxwell and her defense team.”

On Aug. 12, Maxwell’s team alleged a separate breach during a Zoom call, but the jail denied it.

“There was a miscommunication on our end internally,” the jail responded a day later, according to Maxwell’s letter. “There was no breach. The address provided was a very secure line, however, it was already one being used.”

Sternheim wants the jail to provide a sworn statement about the incidents.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/prosecutors-ask-judge-to-withhold-the-names-of-ghislaine-maxwells-uncharged-co-conspirators-from-her/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17318376/united-states-v-maxwell/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.539612/gov.uscourts.nysd.539612.320.0.pdf

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.539612/gov.uscourts.nysd.539612.319.0.pdf

ABC Media Watch Tweets

ABC's satanic slip-up. What was going on here? @abcnews

https://twitter.com/ABCmediawatch/status/1428495793363636227

—

From this week's #MediaBites:

https://twitter.com/ABCmediawatch/status/1428495914121920517

—

It appears the footage came from this Noosa Temple of Satan livestream (8.00 mark):

Noosa Temple of Satan

Everyone Welcome to our Satanic Black Mass at Noosa - 30 October 2020

https://www.facebook.com/105765934246791/videos/388798948829049

They've been in the media recently:

Devil in the detail as satanists’ fight with Education Dept hits Supreme Court

Toby Crockford - August 12, 2021

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/devil-in-the-detail-as-satanists-fight-with-education-dept-hits-supreme-court-20210812-p58i81.html

https://twitter.com/ABCmediawatch/status/1428606219082625025

https://qanon.pub/#1432

Ahoy, Ausanons. reposting >>14411392 (OB, QR Gen) for your viewing pleasure.

* * *

Shocking new TV investigation shows why Australia should be on red alert for the next neo-Nazi mass slaughter

[Damian Wilson is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU. kekekekek] 19 Aug, 2021

An undercover investigation has revealed Australia’s right-wing extremists hide behind suburban normality to hoard guns and raise money while planning a new ‘ethno-state’, and even exposed links to theChristchurch mosque killer.

There used to be a time when right-wing nutters were treated as a bit of a joke. After all, things didn’t end so well for their idolAdolf Hitler,and ever since his death in a German bunker his corrupt national socialist ideology has not exactly enjoyed any mainstream endorsement.

Anyway, Western governments have had more on their minds than neo-Nazis and their ilk. There was a new bunch of bad guys on the block, and those radical Islamists proved they were capable of large-scale atrocities, as demonstrated by dozens of attacks on Western targets around the world and the unforgettable events of9/11,now 20 years ago.

In focusing attention on overthrowingdespots like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi or, more recently, Syria’s Bashar Assad,in what we were all led to believe were successive attempts to deprive Islamist terrorists of shelter, support and finances, Western nations have taken their eye off the ball. They should have been paying more attention to the growth of the extreme right-wing movements from which evil killers likeNew Zealand mosque murderer Brenton Tarrant and Norwegian crazy Anders Breivik have emerged.

The fact they didn’t has proven to be a serious mistake. Because while everyone’s been distracted with fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and their offshoots in dusty, far-off hellholes, an Australian investigation broadcast this week shows domestic, right-wing extremists have been organising in suburban homes, just like the ones you or I might live next door to, and are far more sophisticated than most folk would ever believe…

According toAustralia’s top spook, Mike Burgess,the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), although some of these online neo-Nazis “are just talking a good game, it could unfortunately spur someone on who’s on the fringe of that group.”

Of course, he’s right. Both Tarrant and Breivik inhabited the online netherworld of right-wing extremism before their murderous endeavours. And there are surely others out there just like them, but who are able to keep whatever drives them in check and under wraps before they do something catastrophic.

Judging by the extent of organisation the investigators uncovered, widespreadgun ownership,the exhortations to raise funds, calls to buy up rural property as the first steps in forming a new, racist state and the encouragement to network domestically and internationally with fellow travellers, then don’t be surprised if that next extremist attack occurs in Oz.[FALSE FLAG, AUS Ed?]

While that might be the cause of much bloodshed, knowing what we know now, it should not be unexpected. One meeting caught on undercover camera finds a group of neo-Nazis swearing their oath: “It is my duty to be a warrior, to be strong and defend my people. It is my duty to speak the truth no matter the consequences. I may die, but my blood lives forever, until my end, this is my oath. Blood and honour.”

If that doesn’t ring alarm bells across Australia and beyond, then heaven knows what will.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/532427-investigation-right-wing-extremists-australia/

kek. tavistock types getting desperate to legitimize the tyranny in down under bolt hole.

* * *

heading back to QR Gen. love you fags (no homo)

>>14404403

Sydney police crack down on planned anti-lockdown protest

Lidia Kelly - August 21, 2021

MELBOURNE, Aug 21 (Reuters) - More than 1,500 police were deployed to the streets of Sydney on Saturday and rideshares and some public transport routes to the city's downtown were blocked to prevent a planned anti-lockdown protest.

"Public safety is our first priority and you will be fined or arrested if you turn up," the New South Wales police said in a statement on its Twitter account, adding that the protest was unauthorised and risked further spreading COVID-19.

Sydney, a city of more than 5 million people, has been in a strict lockdown for weeks now, struggling to contain an outbreak of the highly transmissible coronavirus Delta variant, which has now caused cases in other towns and cities across Australia as well as in New Zealand.

Australian media reported that a similar protest was planned in Melbourne, also a city of more than 5 million people, which is in its sixth lockdown since the start of the pandemic. On Saturday there were 61 new locally acquired cases reported in Melbourne and throughout the state of Victoria.

Compliance with public health rules had been one of the key cited reasons behind Australia's success in managing the pandemic before the third wave of infections from the Delta variant.

A July poll by the NSW-based market research firm Utting Research showed that only 7% of the people support the demonstrations. Australia's COVID-19 numbers are still relatively low with just over 42,200 cases and 975 deaths.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sydney-police-crack-down-planned-anti-lockdown-protest-2021-08-21/

COVID-19 is accelerating the rise of conspiracy and sovereign citizen movements in Australia

Eric Tlozek - 21 August 2021

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Graham Lyons does not think the COVID-19 pandemic is real, and he is willing to go to jail to prove it.

The experienced agricultural scientist, whose career includes a PhD in the field of micronutrients, is facing potential prosecution for failing to take COVID-19 tests.

He has also refused to wear a mask and will not sign-in to businesses he visits.

"The government has no right to track the citizenry like that," he told the ABC.

"I stand up against it, I don't acquiesce to that and if it gets me into jail, so be it.

"I am putting everything I've got into this because I don't want my little granddaughter growing up in a techno-fascist dystopia."

Dr Lyons's work relates to agriculture in public health — he is not a medical specialist — but he said he had nevertheless concluded that vaccination was ineffective and, like many others opposed to COVID-19 controls, believed the pandemic was a front for organisations and individuals advancing a "globalist agenda to institute a world government".

"The whole thing is fraudulent," he said.

"You've got a global cabal behind this.

"I call them 'global parasites' who think they own the world and everyone else should pay obeisance to them."

Dr Lyons believes the same group has previously made major attempts to control and change society, but that COVID-19 is their biggest challenge to his way of life, one that must be resisted.

"This is the big one. We've got to win this, otherwise we're f****d," he said.

Dr Lyons has a job, pays tax, and said he was opposed to violence.

He said he was not part of any organised group.

But other people with similar beliefs have been prepared to go much further and have been organising via the internet.

Last month, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) executed six search warrants in three states to disrupt a group that was meeting to discuss overthrowing the government and arresting politicians and bureaucrats.

The AFP said there was no evidence they had the capacity to carry out violent acts, but it told the ABC such groups had the potential to cause significant problems.

"Police are concerned when these beliefs manifest into criminal or violent acts," the AFP said.

"In relation to ideologically motivated violent extremism, we are witnessing the number of individuals who adhere to this ideology continue to increase and spread across the country.

"We are always concerned about groups that seek to undertake activities that would endanger the safety of the community. We work with our intelligence partners to identify criminality or threats to public safety, and act accordingly."

The group identified by the AFP was part of a loose movement of people claiming the government is corrupt and illegitimate, using a range of legal-sounding arguments, like "common law" or calling themselves "sovereign citizens", to justify their views.

(continued)

>>14412079

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'Pushing people into our open arms'

Some people have formed organised groups to discuss alternative governments.

Mike Holt is the convenor and "elected sheriff" of one "common law" group on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

"This is a spiritual movement more than anything else," he told the ABC.

"Common law is the law of man, of God, of the universe, so it's a natural law."

The Vietnam veteran, a retired businessman, said the movement was non-violent and described the people raided by the AFP as "power-hungry nutcases".

"They had nothing to do with us," he said.

"We are not trying to remove the government, we are making them inconsequential.

"We are not doing anything illegal, we are certainly not going out there to start an insurrection."

Mr Holt said he had become interested in "common law" theories after Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister in 2010.

He said the basis for the movement was the meeting of like-minded people to form assemblies that sign charters and elect sheriffs, pass by-laws and convene common law courts.

"We have the same powers as any other government but we're a local government, so people like this idea because it empowers them to take back control of their lives," he said.

Mr Holt said COVID-19 restrictions have increased interest in the group's activities.

"There's been a lot of people getting in touch asking how they can start an assembly, what they can do to empower themselves and how do we stop the attacks on their rights and freedoms by the government," he said.

"They're pushing people into our open arms and we're quite happy to help them."

Alternative legal movements have existed for a long time in the United States, but researchers have recently noticed a sharp growth in activity in Australia.

"The people who were arrested recently are a signal of big things coming up — that is, undermining legitimate liberal democracy and its authority, a rejection of what we count as government," said Mark Balnaves, an adjunct research fellow at Notre Dame University.

Dr Balnaves investigates the role of social media in spreading anti-government ideology, like the "sovereign citizen" movement in which people claim to be exempt from laws they disagree with.

"Two, three years ago in Australia there was no conversation on this," he said.

"[On] sovereign citizens you might have 10-20 posts, now you'll have something like 40,000 interactions in Australia online about the topic.

"It's entered the lexicon, it's part of the language and that's a problem.

"People are taking the core element of rejection of authority and using it in their lives."

The online ecosystem for anti-COVID, "sovereign citizen" and alternative legal groups regularly includes anti-vaccination groups, "wellness" enthusiasts and religious objectors, along with white nationalists, people opposed to progressive social change, and believers in the US-based QAnon conspiracy.

"A couple of years ago the NSW Police Force picked it up and they estimated it was a few hundred people as sovereign citizens," Dr Balnaves said.

"Now you've got a range of people deploying the same tactics, whether they're from anti-vaccination [groups] – and COVID makes a big difference here – and more recently you've got sovereign citizen-allied people clogging up courts, from lower courts to appeals courts."

(continued)

>>14412085

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While the movement has been associated with violence in the United States, in Australia the only conflict seen so far has been protesters clashing with police at anti-lockdown rallies.

But Dr Balnaves said the potential existed for such groups to become dangerous.

"I think that is the ultimate worry," he said.

"Violence is always the hard edge of it, but combine that with simple rejection of authority and you've got a toxic mix.

"If it was simply a narrow band of people who are violent, that's normally under counter-terrorism [measures and] you can control it … but what if it's your mum, or your dad or things like that?

"It becomes more difficult."

Legal experts and courts have continuously rejected the many arguments put forward by alternative legal movements, saying they are "legal fictions".

Dramatic increase in activity and interest

Robert Sudy, a former "sovereign citizen" who has become a researcher into the movement, said it greatly affected some followers' personal lives.

"What I've seen over the years [is that] different adherents of the ideology — they end up having a lot of problems in the home with family and relationships because it encourages that sort of narcissistic mindset, so it's pretty damaging for mental health," he said.

Mr Sudy has tracked the various methods and groups propagating these ideologies for close to a decade and said he has noticed a dramatic increase in activity and interest.

"It's grown from what it used to be when these concepts were first introduced … [when] it was basically tax evasion strategies and how to get out of different fines, whereas today it's grown into more of a social phenomena and it's growing as more people are exposed to it online," he said.

"Definitely the last couple of years people are looking for solutions and this is offered as a false hope."

Mr Sudy said the push for sovereign citizenship "provably has no basis in law".

But he said many people ignored the comprehensive rejection of their legal-sounding arguments by courts — which have ruled that people do not have the right to opt out or disregard the law — because those individuals had often developed a religious-like devotion to the ideology.

"I've watched people become radicalised just from very simple needs or legitimate matters they had in their own lives, whether it be paying rates on their property, paying a speeding fine," he said.

"It's gone from something so simple into [something] like a cult.

"Anyone who had a difference of opinion or tried to doubt the ideology in any way was shunned – they were called 'sheeple' [or] government agents.

"The paranoia was perpetuated."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/covid-19-accelerating-rise-of-conspiracy-movements-in-australia/100393666

Unmasking an international neo-Nazi group’s Australian recruiter

Nick McKenzie, Joel Tozer and Heather McNeill - August 21, 2021

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Counter-terrorism investigators raided an Australian neo-Nazi cell late last year whose members include a 23-year-old tradesman acting on behalf of a violent international organisation to recruit young men to their cause.

The federal police and ASIO have been investigating allegations that tradesman Matthew Golos was encouraging others to join the racist extremist group. Among them is a Perth-based neo-Nazi who later purchased materials that could be used to make an improvised explosive device.

A major investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes has also revealed that Mr Golos used the online alias Volkskrieger – German for “people’s warrior” – and encrypted communications platforms to lure Australians as young as 16 to join dangerous US-based neo-Nazi organisation The Base.

The identity of Volkskrieger has been one of the mysteries on Australia’s extremist scene after it emerged he was appointed The Base’s key Australian recruiter in late 2019.

In an exclusive interview, ASIO’s director-general Mike Burgess declined to identify specific targets of his agency but said he was alarmed to uncover connections between Australians and “material from The Base offshore”.

“That connection disturbs us because obviously it may well lead to people going down a path of radicalisation, and that’s our principal concern,” Mr Burgess said.

The Base has been banned as a terror organisation in Canada and the UK and has been investigated in the US by the FBI, which has charged several of its members in connection to violent crimes. Formed in the US in 2018 and with membership cells in North America, South Africa and the United Kingdom, The Base supports “accelerationist” theory, which involves neo-Nazis attempting to bring about a race war or societal collapse through violence.

The Australian Federal Police said in a statement in response to questions about Mr Golos that its counter-terror teams had launched “disruptive” raids in Perth late last year. The raids targeted Mr Golos and a local extremist group he is a member of, the Society of Western Australian Nationalists. Police say they launched the raids because “some individuals were agitating for the group to transition to a more aggressive posture”.

The raids had “disrupted” the police suspects and there was no imminent threat of a terror attack, police said, although no further details could be made public.

Mr Golos lives with his parents in the working-class Perth suburb of Ballajura, where he played football for the local team and attended a nearby high school. Repeated efforts to contact him and his relatives have been ignored.

This masthead’s investigation can also reveal that one of the Australians Mr Golos sought to recruit purchased materials that could be used to make a bomb.

James Greig, a Perth-based neo-Nazi, purchased two dozen cold packs of ammonia nitrate along with other materials that could be used to make an improvised explosive device in April 2020, according to multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity. Months earlier, he had boasted on leaked recordings from vetting sessions for The Base about his access to weapons.

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Mr Greig used two online aliases, AdvocateCannabilism and James Jameson, to disguise his identity in his discussions with Mr Golos in November 2019, but multiple sources and open source intelligence confirmed his identity.

During a vetting call with Mr Golos and The Base’s American leaders in November 2019, the 38-year-old Greig said he got “enjoyment watching … [terrorist Brenton] Tarrant do his thing”. Mr Greig also told Mr Golos he wanted to help build a group of networked survivalists across the country with access to firearms, legal access to firearms, so there’s no questions asked by the alphabets [the AFP and ASIO]”.

Mr Golos agreed to meet Mr Greig in person after hearing him espouse these views. There is no suggestion Mr Golos or Mr Greig plotted an actual terrorist attack. Mr Greig was charged last year with weapons and drugs offences and is still an active extremist. ASIO and the AFP have warned a key danger of neo-Nazi language and rhetoric is that it could inspire political violence by a lone wolf or small cell.

Western Australian court records show his case was referred from Joondalup Magistrates Court to the Perth Magistrates Start Court, which is a program for offenders with mental health issues. To be eligible for this program, a person has to admit their offences. He took part in that program between October 2020 and July 2021.

Mr Greig is one of at least five Australians who Mr Golos helped The Base recruit in 2019 and 2020, according to a trove of leaked communications leaked from The Base’s US leadership cell and which contain the voices and online aliases of aspiring neo-Nazis across the globe.

In March, The Age and Herald revealed how the documents and tape recordings leaked from The Base’s inner sanctum had captured the group’s leader, Rinaldo “The Wolf” Nazarro, appointing an Australian using the handle “Volkskrieger” to run The Base’s nascent Australian operation.

But despite extensive reporting and media investigations – in March the ABC asked members of the public to help identify Volkskrieger – his identity remained hidden until multiple sources identified Golos to this masthead.

The leaked Base recordings were first obtained by US investigative journalist Jason Wilson for the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which then provided them to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

The recordings show the organisation was open to recruiting Australian teenagers and that Brenton Tarrant’s murderous mosque rampage in New Zealand in March 2019 was admired by some.

In his recorded vetting interview in late 2019, a 21-year-old Brisbane applicant told The Base leadership: I “fully wholeheartedly agree with what he [Tarrant] did.”

Another applicant, a 16-year-old boy from Canberra, told The Base’s leaders that his father was a government security official who did not support his views and that the teen had been kicked out of a local nationalist group for “promoting violent tactics” and supporting Tarrant.

Other Australians who have attempted to join The Base include former federal One Nation candidate Dean Smith.

Mr Smith, who unsuccessfully contested the 2019 federal election, told The Base during his vetting interview that “I have come to realise that there really is no political solution” and that, “if I want to leave a legacy for my children, then I’m going to have to do something about it”.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/unmasking-an-international-neo-nazi-group-s-australian-recruiter-20210820-p58kef.html

>>14412582

From kickboxing to Adolf Hitler: the neo-Nazi plan to recruit angry young men

An unprecedented look inside Australia’s radical fringe shows their deep links to violent international groups, and what they’ll do if they are banned.

Nick McKenzie and Joel Tozer - AUGUST 21, 2021

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Sitting on the back deck of his home on the Victorian border town of Barnawartha, his outline blurred by bong smoke, a petty criminal and martial arts instructor is discussing the idea of taking over Australia’s largest neo-Nazi group.

Jarrad “Jaz” Searby, a convicted criminal and gym owner, was until May the head of an Australian chapter of the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys.

The group, which became infamous for bolstering Donald Trump and provoking confrontations in Black Lives Matter protests and the Capitol invasion, and which has been designated a terrorist organisation in Canada, has always stopped short of identifying itself as neo-Nazi. It has publicly disavowed anti-Semitism and its founder described it as “Western chauvinist”, “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt”.

Now Searby is explaining how things really work.

Talking to an infiltrator working deep inside the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network, Searby said his now-defunct chapter of the Proud Boys had been set up as a front, funnelling young men from the suburbs and towns of Australia through martial arts training, through “anti-white guilt”, then on to full-fledged neo-Nazism.

Once in, those recruits become part of a linked network of domestic and international groups considered by counter-terrorism authorities to be far more dangerous than the Proud Boys. Secret recordings revealed last week by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes show that inside that network operated a cult-like breeding ground for extremism, with groups ready to split off, splinter and form new cells if one was banned or a key leader jailed.

The investigations have also, for the first time, revealed the identity of the secretive leaders involved in a wave of extremist recruiting across Australia.

Dangerous liaisons

In August this year, in a report for the US military’s Combating Terrorism Centre, extremist researchers Mathew Kriner and John Lewis describe how some factions of the US Proud Boys “acted as a ‘gateway’ for even more extreme groups”, including international neo-Nazi terror group The Base.

The report also observed how the “tactics” used by some Proud Boys to “evade detection and maintain plausible deniability” about their support for political violence and neo-Nazism would “outlive” the group and be adopted by offshoots and splinter groups. Missing, though, was direct evidence.

Enter “Jaz” Searby.

The resident of a small red brick house in the border town of Barnawartha near the Murray River, Searby is opening up to an undercover agent assisting The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes. Months earlier, the agent successfully infiltrated the National Socialist Network’s Racism HQ in Melbourne. Now, as his last assignment, the mole has peeled off from the group for several meetings with Searby, whose importance, he feels, is growing.

“You know they ban any, like, they ban Nazis from the [Proud Boys] club … you know if you start to ask Jewish questions or something like that in the Proud Boys they will basically just try to kick you out,” Searby explained, unaware he was being recorded.

Searby, 37, has been introduced to the mole by Tom Sewell as one of the NSN’s key allies. He was one of four of the Proud Boys’ Victorian leaders but, growing angry at the group’s public disavowal of neo-Nazism and white supremacy, he’d decided to leave after using its brand to gain a band of several dozen followers.

His unkempt appearance and face tattoos are a stark contrast to Sewell’s army haircut and anti-drugs persona, but it was clear the two had struck an accord.

“Tom’s obviously, he was at the f-ckin far end of the scale [of racism], and you know me being more central was you know, I was with the Proud Boys, I had planned to be a gateway to Tom,” Searby explains. “I was going to funnel people in that direction, you know basically funnel people to do their own research, but we would generally lead them in that direction anyway.”

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Searby was in touch with the then US leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, who praised Searby for a video posted online.

But it was his talent as a martial arts instructor that reminded Sewell’s right-hand man, Jacob Hersant, of one of the most dangerous neo-Nazis in Europe, Russia’s Denis Nikitin.

The founder of extremist clothing and MMA brand White Rex, Nikitin has been banned from entering several European countries. In a 2018 interview, he explained White Rex was a tool to promote his white supremacist ideology: “If we kill one immigrant every day, that’s 365 immigrants in a year. But tens of thousands more will come anyway … So now we fight for minds, not on the street, but on social media.”

Nikitin was already an inspiration to the National Socialist Network (NSN) and Hersant disclosed on a hidden camera that the NSN had introduced Searby to him.

“He is a really good dude,” Hersant said of the Russian. “I got him into contact with Jaz and they just see eye to eye coz they are both interested in the MMA stuff,” Hersant told the mole.

Another senior NSN member explained that if Searby replicated Nikitin’s MMA neo-Nazi network, it could give the NSN an offshoot operation that counter-terror authorities could not easily ban.

“It is just a good way of sort of like protecting ourselves as well. If our organisation gets proscribed as a terror group, you know Jaz can still operate, because he is not affiliated, he can still operate as a gym, just an MMA gym.”

Proscription is no idle fear. The leaders of the joint parliamentary security committee this week agreed, across the political aisle, that the National Socialist Network should be considered for banning.

After Searby’s introduction to Nikitin, the Australian hosted the Russian on a video podcast, praising him for starting “white boy fight clubs”.

“There is [sic] not many men left in the West willing to fight for what they believe,” Searby told Nikitin. “I’m a big fan … The people here in Australia will be inspired to see you standing up.”

Leadership spill

By April this year, Searby’s role inside the National Socialist Network was growing. Sewell revealed in the secret recordings that he had directed Searby to offer the group’s financial support to an Albury-Wodonga teenager and alleged neo-Nazi facing terrorism charges.

“Jaz and his mate have been knocking on the [alleged terrorist’s mother’s] door every day. I found his address, but she hasn’t been home,” Sewell was recorded saying. Sewell had explained it was the NSN’s duty to contribute to his bail fund. “He is one of our boys …. We spread and share the risk. That’s how it works.”

By late April, Searby had agreed to start training neo-Nazis, travelling to Melbourne to teach MMA to National Socialist Network recruits. When Sewell was remanded in custody on May 13 over an alleged assault – a charge which he is contesting – Hersant, the group’s interim leader, asked Searby to lead the fight training sessions that Sewell usually oversaw.

He agreed, but Searby also spied an opportunity.

While Searby had publicly called for authorities to “free Tom Sewell”, he was privately scathing of the NSN’s unquestioning support for its leader.

“Everyone is saying Tom is a political prisoner – I’m saying you can’t f-cking say that because once it comes out that Tom’s done something wrong, if he has, we are all going to look like f-cking idiots.”

Hersant, Searby said, was also too weak to lead the NSN.

“That’s my only problem with Jacob … he is definitely very smart, but he’s a very soft kid … I’m not going to follow a 22-year-old … And I know, I coached them, I watched them fight.”

Away from the NSN base, Searby confided in the undercover agent that, with Sewell in jail and the membership splintering, Searby could make his own play at becoming leader.

“I know all eyes are on me at the moment and I need to make the right decision.”

In early August, Hersant was still promoting himself as NSN leader, but he too is now facing assault charges. Sources say Searby is now a core member of the NSN’s leadership cell and increasingly looking to take control of the white supremacist movement in Australia’s south-east.

If Searby and Sewell had developed their own recruiting model, they were not alone. Sewell’s NSN was partnering with group’s other than the Proud Boys. And Searby was not the only committed extremist with overseas links and big ambitions.

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The recruiters

Among Australia’s top national security figures, the director-general of ASIO, Mike Burgess, keeps a closer eye than anyone else on the neo-Nazi movement. What he sees disturbs him.

“This is spread across every state and territory and it’s regional and rural, as well as capital cities. So it’s truly national and they communicate effectively through their messaging apps,” Burgess says. They are organised as “a coalition of small groups,” they talk about “splitting themselves to hide”, and they are furiously networking with international extremists.

“It’s the online community that allows them to connect with other like-minded people, have access to hateful ideologies, and go into forums, very dark places, where they can encourage acts of violence, or be encouraged for acts of violence,” Burgess says.

Before he was remanded, Sewell had strong contacts with senior Australian figures in the violent, UK-founded extremist group Combat 18. The members of the group (whose number, 18, is an alphanumeric code for Adolf Hitler’s initials: 1=A and 8=H) are spread across Europe and have been charged with multiple murders and serious acts of political violence. In 2019, the group was designated a terror organisation in Canada.

Senior Victorian Combat 18 member Daniel Newman is the liaison between the NSN and a violent skinhead prison gang that has vowed to protect group members in Victorian jails.

One of Combat 18’s former UK regional leaders, Nigel Bromage, who now works to deradicalise neo-Nazis, says word of the NSN’s networking success has spread to Britain. He’s spoken to British extremists in awe of their “brothers” in Australia.

Bromage, who years after fleeing the group carries the shame of the violence he inflicted on its behalf, warns that the allegiance between the NSN and Combat 18 is disturbing.

“They’ve (UK neo-Nazis) spoken about the growing Australian far right. And they are … passing [on] good-practice rules for each organisation,” says Bromage.

An Australian Combat 18 encrypted chat room accessed by this masthead with the help of researchers in the White Rose Society, shows that shortly after Sewell was sent to prison to await his court case, Combat 18 was working to lure the NSN’s recruits, as well as those from another NSN feeder group, Antipodean Resistance (AR), over to the international group.

“He was in the AR/ NSN till we woke him up,” a Combat 18 member says in one thread obtained, describing a budding neo-Nazi he claims to have recruited.

Combat 18 is not the only violent overseas group expanding into Australia. In late 2019, American terror organisation The Base appointed its first Australian leader to oversee a recruitment drive. This Australian goes by the online alias “Volkskrieger” and his identity has been one of the best-kept secrets in Australia’s far right.

Unmasking Volkskrieger

The Base gained global notoriety in December 2019 when the FBI arrested several of its members for plotting violent hate crimes. In Canada and Britain the white supremacist group has been banned as a terror organisation for inspiring members to train with weapons and bring about a race war.

In Australia, it has also caused national headlines after revelations in March that it sought to recruit young men, including teenagers, who claimed to have been inspired or impressed by Brenton Tarrant’s massacre of Muslims at prayer in Christchurch, New Zealand.

A data leak from The Base in 2020 revealed its most important Australian leader was Volkskrieger – “people’s warrior” in German – who was putting up propaganda posters in Perth. The posters announced that The Base had set up shop in Australia: “We are here.”

By mid-2020, Volkskrieger had recruited at least five Australians. One of them was a Perth man using the alias “James Jameson” who boasted of his access to weapons and fondness for the Christchurch terrorist. But Jameson was also sloppy online, leaving a trail of clues confirming his identity as a 38-year-old Combat 18 member called James Greig who has previously faced weapons and drugs charges. Greig is of intense interest to national security agencies, including for purchasing equipment that could be used to make a bomb, although official sources have said there is no evidence suggesting he poses any imminent threat.

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Volkskrieger was much more careful. Recordings of his voice made and leaked by a Base insider reveal a thick Australian accent belonging to a young man unperturbed that he’s drawing teenagers into a life of violence and racism.

“Sometimes that’s a good thing because young people are more motivated and ready to make changes,” he tells fellow Base leaders in the US on one recording.

The recordings also suggest Volkskrieger is extremely security-conscious, giving away no biographical details and questioning how the group deals with informers and police.

But he still let slip a critical detail. He had joined a Perth group, the Society of Western Australian Nationalists (SWAN), a spin-off of one of the extremist organisations founded by Sewell. Volkskrieger told The Base’s US cell he was using his membership of this group to identify other young men to recruit.

If some Australian neo-Nazis are recruiting and expanding their movement by linking up extremist cells across the nation and overseas, not everyone approves. Members of Perth’s neo-Nazi sceneangry at Volkskrieger’s perceived betrayal, as well as other confidential sources who requested anonymity, identified Volkskrieger as Matthew Golos, a 23-year-old tradesman from the working-class Perth suburb of Ballajura.

Golos lives in a nondescript home with his parents and younger brother, who is still in high school. He didn’t respond to multiple attempts to contact him. Friends and relatives declined to comment.

In response to questions about Golos and SWAN, the federal police said in a statement that its counter-terror teams “are aware of this matter” and late last year raided “individuals connected to the Society of Western Australia Nationalists (SWAN)” seeking to disrupt the group. The AFP said the raids were sparked by concerns “some individuals were agitating for the group to transition to a more aggressive posture”, there was no immediate threat to public safety and no further details could be made public.

Photos of Golos in his high school years reveal a handsome teen, smiling at parties alongside friends and playing local football. There is no hint of his dark side in these images. But Jason Wilson from the US Southern Poverty Law Centre, who is the global expert on The Base, says recruiters such as Volkskrieger were intent on “trying to recruit and radicalise young men, and guide them towards acts of violence”.

“Some of the members have joined when they’re 15 or 16. And by the time they hit 19 or 20, they’re at the point of no return.”

There is nothing about Golos in the public domain that suggests he was The Base’s Australian point man, no hint of the man running between neo-Nazi cells and fielding calls from senior American hate merchants while holding down a job as a Perth tradesman.

The AFP says its raids in Perth last year had a “disruptive” effect. But given Golos is not answering questions, it’s hard to know whether he’s still on his journey of hate.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/from-kickboxing-to-adolf-hitler-the-neo-nazi-plan-to-recruit-angry-young-men-20210817-p58jfq.html

Crackdown on slavery after ‘evil crime’ soars

CAMERON STEWART - AUGUST 21, 2021

A sharp jump in the number of people trapped in slave-like conditions in Australia has led the Morrison government to step up efforts to combat what it describes as an “evil and pernicious crime”.

The move comes after the country’s worst case of domestic slavery in which a Sri Lankan ­couple were sentenced to jail last month for keeping an Indian slave in their Melbourne home until she almost died of illness.

The woman was enslaved and mistreated inside the Mt Waverley house for eight years without a passport, language skills or money to return to her native India, and her plight was hidden from neighbours and state and federal agencies.

That incident, told in The Weekend Australian Magazine, follows a doubling of the number of cases of so-called “domestic servitude” in the past 12 months where slaves, often housemaids, have been forced to live and work against their will in people’s homes. The number of reported cases of modern slavery – which also covers sexual servitude, forced labour, human trafficking and forced marriage – jumped to 223 in 2019-20, a 38 per cent rise since 2017-18.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the government had intensified its efforts to detect and prosecute those who kept slaves.

“While it may come as a surprise to many, slavery practices like forced labour or human trafficking pose a very real threat today – including here in Australia,” Ms Andrews said.

“It is an evil and pernicious crime and sadly, it is young women and children that are particularly vulnerable to being trafficked.

“Domestic servitude, sexual ­exploitation and forced marriage cannot be allowed to stand in our society.”

Jennifer Burn of Anti-Slavery Australia said there had been only 31 convictions in Australia for slavery since 2004, with the majority being for sexual exploitation.

Professor Burn said a recent survey in Sydney by her group found two out of three Australians were unaware that slavery existed in the country.

The Morrison government ­announced a national plan last year to address modern slavery but the hidden nature of the crime makes it difficult to obtain convictions.

Detective superintendent Jayne Crossling, the head of the Australian Federal Police’s Victorian Human Exploitation team, said: “It is really challenging to be able to meet all the individual thresholds (in the law) to put a really good quality brief of evidence for a prosecution (for slavery offences).”

She said one of the problems was that victims were vulnerable, often wary of law enforcement and unwilling to give evidence.

In 2020-21 the AFP received 224 reports of modern slavery, including 79 reports of forced marriage, 42 reports of sexual servitude, 35 reports of forced ­labour, 12 reports of trafficking in children and 15 reports of domestic servitude.

In March, the AFP obtained ­restraining orders over two properties in Sydney worth more than $3.8m, where an Indonesian national had been held against her will and subjected to forced labour for nearly six years. A Sydney couple were jailed in June for keeping a woman in forced labour at their home and business for three years.

Last month Victorian Supreme Court judge John Champion sentenced Sri Lankan immigrants Kandasamy and Kumuthini Kannan to six years and eight years’ jail respectively for keeping their live-in maid in slave-like conditions from 2007 to 2015.

He described the Kannans as “compulsive liars and deceptive individuals” who had exploited “a massive power imbalance” between themselves and the woman.

“To understand the concept of slavery, we must rid ourselves of ingrained images of rows of men chained together at the oars of a gallery, or man and women working in fields in bondage,” Justice Champion said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/crackdown-on-slavery-after-evil-crime-soars/news-story/60b5cc407fb0000648c806852e0087b1

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Eight years a slave: Melbourne couple’s shocking secret

A woman is kept as a slave for eight years by a couple in a suburban Melbourne home. How could this happen?

CAMERON STEWART - August 21, 2021

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When paramedics found her in the bathroom she was lying in a pool of urine, barely conscious and suffering from extreme hypothermia. Her body temperature was just 28.5C and her weight had shrivelled to 40kg. She had crusted sores on her feet and hands, multiple pressure sores and no teeth, along with septicaemia and bladder failure. In the words of a doctor at ­Melbourne’s Box Hill ­Hospital, the 61-year-old Indian woman who arrived by ambulance that day, July 30, 2015, was “fading away”.

Moments earlier, the triple-0 emergency line had taken a call from Kumuthini Kannan, who shared her Mount Waverley home with the ill woman. “Um, um, we have an old lady, sorry old lady that’s been staying with us for a while,” she told the ­operator. “She is, um, she is sort of like she’s a guest. She went to the bathroom and then she sort of didn’t want to get up and she stayed there for about three hours… lying down and ­urinating all over the floor… she’s fairly skinny.”

“I saw the ambulance arrive and take her out,” recalls a neighbour across the road. “We knew she was in that house but we didn’t see much of her. We had no idea what their story was at that stage, they just seemed like normal, friendly neighbours.”

To everyone in this quiet, ­middle-class cul-de-sac in Melbourne’s southeast, the family life of Kumuthini ­Kannan, her husband ­Kandasamy and their three children seemed normal. Both parents would smile and wave at their neighbours, stopping to make small talk. Some had spotted the shadowy woman who appeared to live with them, but to those who had asked, the explanation was always the same. “I was told she was staying with them because she was hiding from an abusive ­husband and I just accepted that as fact,” says “John”, a neighbour, who asked that his real name not be used.

The arrival of the ambulance that day triggered the unravelling of Australia’s worst case of domestic slavery. It was, in the words of the Victorian Supreme Court Justice John Champion, a “dirty secret” that the Kannans hid from the outside world for eight years from 2007. As Justice Champion said when passing sentence on the Kannans last month, theirs was the first case relating solely to slavery by domestic servitude to be heard by an Australian court, and one that “far exceeds any other slavery case finalised in Australia”.

“This case is unique for the length of time the woman was exploited, the pattern of her exploitation and the callous disregard for her humanity. It was just a terrible, terrible case,” says Jennifer Burn, director of Anti-Slavery Australia, a legal and policy centre at the University of Technology Sydney.

So how did Australia’s worst slavery case remain hidden for so long under the noses of state and ­federal agencies – and everyone who saw and knew the Kannan family?

On paper, the Sri Lankan-born Kannans ­presented a typical Australian immigrant story. Kumuthini came to Australia on a humanitarian visa in 1984 at age 17 after her parents fled the civil war in Sri Lanka. She finished high school in Melbourne and completed an occupational health and safety degree before agreeing to an arranged marriage with Kandasamy, an IT worker from Sri Lanka. She sponsored him to come to ­Australia on a skilled migrant visa and they were married in 1994 before having three children, who have each been diagnosed with ­varying degrees of autism.

The Tamil couple wanted a Tamil woman to come to Australia and be their maid and in about 2002, while on a visit to see family in southern India, they first met the victim, whose background could hardly have been more different. Their future slave, whose real identity cannot be revealed, was illiterate with almost no formal education; from the age of six she’d worked in the fields looking after farm animals. She was married at 14 and had four ­children before her husband died. She was a ­grandmother by the age of 29. By the time she met the Kannans in India she needed money; the idea of going to Australia to work temporarily in exchange for payments to be sent home to India seemed an attractive proposition.

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For the Kannans, a live-in maid would, in the words of Justice Champion, “allow you to maintain your respective employments and lifestyle, including annual overseas trips”. So the woman travelled with them to Australia in 2002 and 2004, living with them for six months at a time and returning home without incident. She was paid poorly, but at least she was paid.

When the ­Kannans sought to bring her back to Australia again in 2005 they were knocked back by immigration authorities, who were not convinced that the visit was for “work purposes”. To secure a visa, the Kannans put forward a series of lies in their applications between 2005 and 2007; in the end, the best they could secure was a 30-day visa in June 2007. So the woman volun­tarily returned to the ­Kannans’ five-bedroom, two-storey Melbourne home, although it soon became clear that the couple had no intention of allowing her to return to India after 30 days. They took her passport soon after she arrived and it has not been seen since. After over­staying her visa, she became an illegal non-citizen.

Justice Champion accepted the defence ­counsel’s arguments that there was probably no immediate slide into conditions that could be described as slavery. Rather, from 2007, the restrictions placed upon the woman, who now had no way of independently returning to India, gradually became harsher. The woman, who had recovered in hospital after her collapse in 2015, testified to the court that ­initially the family allowed her to eat at the table with them after she’d cooked their meals, but then Mrs ­Kannan banished her, forcing her to eat alone after everyone had finished. She testified that the family placed a sign on the back of the front door instructing her not to go outside. She was only allowed to go out alone to the garage to clean and to the backyard to take the bins out, or to take the children to a local reserve just metres from the front door.

“I remember her sitting just there,” neighbour John tells me, pointing towards the footpath ­outside his house. “She would walk the kids over and they would play on our swingset in the yard while she watched them. I would wave to her and she would wave back.”

Inside the house, the woman said, Mrs Kannan started yelling at her and treating her badly, and her living conditions gradually worsened. She said she arose at 5.30am each day and was constantly harassed, working around the clock cooking, cleaning and doing other domestic chores until past midnight each day. She was also ordered to cook food for community gatherings and social events. “Getting the clothes, folding, doing something, wiping something, no rest, no rest at all,” she told the court through a translator. She would wash the clothes by hand because she didn’t know how to use the washing machine, and slept in a bunk bed in the same room where she folded and ironed the clothes. She was allowed to have a shower just once a week, to avoid “wasting water”.

Each weekday morning Mr Kannan would leave early for his Southbank office, dropping his children off at school on the way; he would return home around 7pm and have a late meal with his wife. In her testimony, the victim distinguished clearly between Mr ­Kannan, who she said would sometimes treat her nicely, and his wife, whom she portrayed as being increasingly hostile towards her.

When the Kannans went on their annual trips to India they left the woman at home alone for a full month with strict instructions not to leave the house. “I must not open the door – even if anybody came, I must not open the door,” she recalled. While they were away she was given a phone that she did not know how to operate; it was to be used only to receive calls from the Kannans.

Because of her status as an illegal non-citizen, for the entire eight years that she was effectively held captive the woman had completely fallen off the grid. With no knowledge of English, no money, no concept of where she was beyond her own suburban street and with no recourse to government health services, help or protection, she found herself relying entirely on the Kannans for everything. “What can I do, helpless,” the woman testified.

(continued)

>>14412768

3/5

“In my opinion it is not possible to precisely determine when the condition of slavery first existed,” Justice Champion said. “It matters little that [she] may have been ‘happy’ for some or even a significant period defined by the condition of slavery. Whatever happiness to her may have meant, such a state, if it existed, must be evaluated in the context of her overall life experience and the circumstances in which she had previously been living. What matters is the fact of the powers being exercised over her. She was a largely uneducated, illiterate and vulnerable woman who you both took advantage of, irrespective of whether she ever comprehended that she was in a condition of slavery.”

The Kannans initially made three payments to the woman’s family in India in 2007 but these soon stopped without explanation. They made no direct payments to the woman herself. During the trial the prosecution estimated that in the eight years she was held captive between 2007 and 2015, she earned the equivalent of $3.39 per day “to be on call 24/7, 365 days a year, and performing, ready to perform, her household duties and childcare duties”.

While the Kannans were progressively enslaving their maid, to those outside their home they appeared to be upstanding citizens. “I worked with [Mr Kannan] as well as lived in the same street with him,” neighbour John says. “He was a really nice guy, very calm, reasonable and decent. I had no idea he was really an arsehole.”

Community references for Mr Kannan praised his “contribution to homeless orphans and disabled people in Melbourne and overseas” and for his “honesty, generosity, assistance to others within [the] community, charity work and fundraising”. Mrs Kannan threw herself into social causes and charity fundraising, teaching Sri Lankan culture and helping out at school. References written by community members describe her as having given “selfless acts of service” to her community, being “always respectful, being gentle and polite towards people of all walks of life and kind and compassionate towards elders in need of help”. Her eldest daughter described her as being a “very loving, thoughtful and caring mother”.

As Justice Champion remarked in court: “That really makes it all the more confounding that there is this raft of material from members of the community that [suggests they are] well respected, yet on the other hand at no point has there been a sense of humanity towards [the victim].”

Despite the qualities people saw in Mrs Kannan outside the home, inside it she became ever more abusive towards her captive. Doctors would later testify that Mrs Kannan was suffering from depression and anxiety and that she showed “obsessive personality traits manifested by longstanding ­perfectionism, high standards, the need to be in control, rigidity and difficulty adapting to change”.

The victim testified that Mrs Kannan largely controlled her husband and that she was the one who mistreated her the most. “You could hear her [Mrs Kannan] screaming quite often,” says neighbour John. “We were like, ‘My God, she screams all the time’ … we always thought she was screaming at [Mr Kannan] but it was probably the woman.”

Throughout this time, the woman said she was only able to communicate with her family back in India on the phone when the Kannans were listening in, and so she felt she could not complain or ask to be rescued. But her family became increasingly suspicious. In 2014, her daughter demanded that the Kannans return her mother to India. Mrs Kannan’s response was: “F.ck you.”

The Kannans’ secret was only revealed when the health of the woman, who had type 2 diabetes, started to deteriorate rapidly in 2015 and they refused to seek medical attention. Even on the day she finally collapsed in their bathroom, the court heard that Mrs Kannan called triple-0 only after taking her children to a school concert, leaving the woman on the bathroom floor.

At the hospital, Mrs Kannan admitted her slave under a false name, and claimed she had relatives in NSW but that she did not know their contact details. In the days that ­followed the Kannans gave vague and often ­contradictory information to officials about their links to the woman and her identity. It would be three months before the woman’s health recovered sufficiently for her to be released from ­hospital. By that stage, the authorities were finally piecing together the extraordinary truth of what had happened.

(continued)

>>14412772

4/5

Detective Sergeant David MacGregor, then head of the Australian Federal Police’s Victorian human trafficking team, was one of the first to walk into the Kannans’ house and recalls how ordinary it appeared. “It was a middle-class ­suburban house that was a bit ­cluttered but there was a married ­couple with ­children living there,” he says. He says he was struck by the couple’s apparent lack of remorse. “My sense was that they didn’t feel they had anything to answer to. I didn’t get any sense of contrition.” By contrast, there was a steely determination on the part of the victim to testify in the case. “She was stoic and determined to give ­evidence to make sure that her voice was heard,” he says. “I think she was determined to see that ­justice was done.”

Yet despite what appeared to be solid evidence against the Kannans, the prosecution had a fight on its hands to gain convictions for the rarely used charges of intentionally possessing a slave and intentionally exercising the right of ownership over a slave. Each charge carries a maximum ­penalty of 25 years’ jail and the Kannans were both charged with one count of each. “There have been only 31 convictions in Australia [for slavery] since 2004 and the majority have been for sexual exploitation,” says Jennifer Burn of Anti-Slavery Australia.

Modern slavery covers a range of offences including sexual servitude, forced labour, human trafficking and forced marriage. In 2020-21 the AFP received 224 reports of modern slavery including 79 reports of forced marriage, 42 of sexual servitude, 35 of forced labour, 12 of trafficking in children and 15 of domestic servitude.

“It is really challenging to be able to meet all the individual thresholds [in the law] to put a really good quality brief of evidence for a prosecution [for slavery offences],” says detective superintendent Jayne Crossling, head of the AFP’s Victorian Human Exploitation team. She says one of the problems is that victims are vulnerable, often wary of law enforcement and unwilling to give evidence. Even though the victim agreed to give evidence in this case, the Kannans chose to plead not guilty. The defence argued that while the Kannans clearly mistreated the woman and broke the law, their conduct fell short of the crime of slavery.

The defence pointed to apparent anomalies, including the fact that the family referred to the woman as Ammachi, an affectionate term in Tamil for a grandmother, and that they would take her to Phillip Island each summer holiday where they would share a house with another family. They ­tendered family photos and videos of the woman accompanying the family on trips to Mornington Peninsula and to Sydney.

The prosecution also struggled with the fact that the uneducated and illiterate woman was a poor witness. Speaking through a translator, she frequently gave contradictory evidence about her ­circumstances and her treatment. She made and then retracted claims that at various times the front doors of the house were sealed to prevent her ­leaving the house. She gave confused testimony over her allegations of abuse, including inconsistent claims about how Mrs Kannan cut her hand with a knife and pushed her down the stairs. The woman also made the bizarre claim that she was forced to stay awake for 23 hours a day every day. “The tea, the boiling water, pushing down the stairs, stabbing or cutting, hitting her over the head with a frozen chicken, all of the ­allegations of mistreatment by Mrs Kannan that were the subject of evidence given by [the woman] are matters that in our submission, Your Honour, cannot find beyond reasonable doubt to have occurred,” defence counsel said.

At one stage Justice Champion pondered openly whether the language and cultural factors in this case undercut the woman’s ability to give clear ­evidence. “How should I evaluate her evidence in the prism of coming from a different ­culture?” he asked in court, wondering whether her claim to be awake for 23 hours a day was really just her way of saying she worked hard.

(continued)

>>14412776

5/5

In the end, the prosecution also accepted that parts of her evidence were unreliable and it therefore did not rely on her claims of physical mistreatment to make its case. Instead it argued that it was the Kannans’ total control of all aspects of her life that created the condition of slavery. In April, a jury agreed, finding both the Kannans guilty as charged after a 10-week trial. The former slave, now 67, is currently living in care in ­Australia. Her identity remains suppressed.

Justice Champion said the Kannans had exploited “a massive power imbalance” between themselves and the woman, describing them as “compulsive liars and deceptive individuals” as he handed down his sentence of eight years’ jail for Mrs Kannan, now 53, and six years for her husband, 57, with a minimum term of four and three years respectively. The discrepancy between their sentences reflected the fact that Mrs Kannan was in charge of the household and was therefore more morally culpable. “[The woman’s] lack of education and the poverty-stricken circumstances starkly contrast against your own higher levels of education, continuing employment, financial position and apparent status you both enjoyed in your community,” the judge said. “You have grossly exploited a vulnerable ­person, of which you should be ashamed… you ­controlled almost all aspects of her life and her ­freedom [and] I am quite convinced that you both believe you have done nothing wrong.”

Justice Champion expressed astonishment that the woman was able to live in Australia for eight years “entirely outside the view” of institutions such as the health system and the Department of Immigration. As Crossling puts it, this was a case of someone “hiding in plain sight” from the rest of the country. She says the AFP is trying to lift awareness of all forms of modern slavery in Australia, including a public outreach campaign called “Look a Little Deeper” to educate people on how to recognise the signs of slavery.

“To understand the concept of slavery, we must rid ourselves of ingrained images of rows of men chained together… or men and women working in fields in bondage,” Justice Champion said. “Slavery can be much more subtle than that and may not involve physical restraint.”

Crossling says: “What this story has shown us is that the average member of the public really doesn’t know that this type of thing is ­happening in Australia. [Yet] we have every reason to think it is happening throughout Australia.”

Neighbour John wonders how he could ever have guessed that there was a slave living in his street. He says he talked it over afterwards with other neighbours and questioned whether they had missed a sign, a hint, a clue that something was amiss inside the Kannan home. “There was nothing that seemed particularly strange,” he says with a shrug. “I mean, how do you tell if someone is a psychopath?”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/eight-years-a-slave-melbourne-couples-shocking-secret/news-story/33d060b74f0368cc1b56560f4a99ddd4

>>14411862

Police overwhelm modest Sydney anti-lockdown protest

Josh Bavas and Kevin Nguyen - 21 August 2021

Police officers have extinguished an anti-lockdown demonstration in Sydney, where several people have been arrested while attempting to gather in the city centre.

Officers created a ring around the CBD ahead of a planned gathering spearheaded by anti-vaccine and anti-lockdown protesters.

It was supposed to start at Victoria Park, on Broadway, at midday.

Officers had been positioned on foot, horseback, bicycles and motorcycles since the morning.

Authorities also issued a prohibition on taxis, rideshares and other transport services from taking people to the city in response to a the unauthorised protest, which police said "seriously comprised the public's safety".

Roadblocks heading into the CBD were also established at main arteries, such as on the Warringah Freeway in North Sydney.

Despite the enormous law enforcement response, hundreds of demonstrators streamed into the city — many maskless and holding protest signs.

More than 1,000 police officers were deployed in central areas and began making arrests after splitting the crowd into smaller groups.

The ABC understands at least one police officer was injured.

After arrests, users inside encrypted messaging apps where the protests were being organised in real-time began to panic.

"Where are our leaders?!" one Sydney user wrote into the group.

"Where the f*ck are people who promised to lead it?"

One member of the channel said they were forced to turn around after running into the police blockade another called the event an "epic fail".

The Sydney protest lost momentum after one of its key organisers, Anthony Khallouf, was jailed yesterday for breaching public health orders.

Police said the Victorian man had travelled from Queensland to NSW without a reasonable excuse, in breach of COVID-19 public health orders.

Khallouf was yesterday sentenced to eight months prison, with a non-parole period of three months, after pleading guilty to four counts of not complying with a direction and one count each of encouraging the commission of a crime and making false representations resulting in a police investigation.

The 29-year-old was a key figure behind a July rally in Sydney that attracted thousands of anti-lockdown demonstrators.

He encouraged his thousands of followers on social media and on encrypted messaging apps to attend today's protest.

In Melbourne, however, anti-lockdown marches turned violent today after protesters lit flares and clashed with officers who used batons and pepper spray.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/sydney-anti-lockdown-protests-dispersed-by-nsw-police/100396384

>>14413607

Anti-lockdown protesters clash with police in Melbourne

abc.net.au - 21 August 2021

Thousands of anti-lockdown protesters have clashed with police in Melbourne, as a demonstration in the city's CBD turned violent.

Demonstrators were seen breaking police lines near Parliament House in Spring Street.

Police made a number of arrests at the scene and used pepper spray on a number of people.

Earlier, Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton urged people not to attend the protest.

"It is tagged as it is a 'freedom demonstration'. It's anything but," he said.

Many of the attendees were without masks as they marched through Melbourne CBD from Parliament to Flinders Street Station, with a heavy police presence lining the streets.

Some demonstrators blasted music and many yelled anti-lockdown slogans, while others held up placards alluding to unrelated conspiracy theories.

Flares were let off as the march unfolded.

A statewide lockdown came into force from 1:00pm in response to a growing cluster in Shepparton in the state's north-east and a rising number of mystery cases in Melbourne.

Chief Commissioner Patton said police had been unable to gauge how many people would attend the protest, as all communications had been via encrypted apps.

"I have over 700 police, on top of the police you're already seeing in the community, another 700 who are specifically tasked with this demonstration," he said.

Police in riot gear and mounted police joined uniformed officers.

Chief Commissioner Patton said five people had already been issued with infringements before the protest even started and warned all protesters who were apprehended would be given a $5,500 fine.

Anti-lockdown protests held in Sydney, Brisbane

Police have also arrested people attending a similar protest at Victoria Park in Sydney's inner-west.

There had been a heavy police presence around Sydney's CBD in anticipation of the demonstration.

More than 2,000 anti-lockdown protesters gathered in Brisbane's Botanic Gardens before a planned march through the city.

The event was largely peaceful, compared to the clashes in Sydney and Melbourne.

There were smaller gatherings in other cities such as Darwin.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-21/anti-covid-lockdown-protesters-clash-with-police-in-melbourne/100396458

Australia in the US Tweet

Ambassador @A_Sinodinos & Embassy Defence personnel visited @LockheedMartin's Huntsville, Alabama facility yesterday. They had productive discussions on space & Lockheed's plans to support Australia’s sovereign guided weapons establishment. #USwithAus

https://twitter.com/AusintheUS/status/1428804382464876555

>>14385947

>>14386058

More than 300 people evacuated from Kabul airport on four RAAF flights

'RICHARD FERGUSON - AUGUST 22, 2021

More than 300 people have been evacuated from Kabul Airport overnight by Australians, as Scott Morrison calls on Australians and visa holders to continue heading to the airport.

At least four Australian flights ran in and out of Afghanistan on Saturday night to rescue Australian citizens, Afghans with visas, and people from the United States, Britain and New Zealand.

As Americans are told by the Biden Administration to stay where they are due to the dangerous situation in Kabul, the Prime Minister said his government was still calling on people to get through the airport.

“We will continue to run those flights, working together with our partners and our allies. We are uplifting not just Australians and Afghan visa holders for Australia, but those from the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand,” he told ABC News.

“So as best as we can communicate in what is a very chaotic environment, with comms under constant pressure and very chaotic scenes outside the airport, then we continue to make that communication (to get to the airport) and get as many people through as we possibly can in the time we have available, as safely as we can.”

Mr Morrison refused on Sunday to say whether he agreed or disagreed with the US decision to withdraw, and if he had communicated any concerns to Mr Biden or his predecessor Donald Trump.

But Mr Morrison did say the Australian presence in Afghanistan was conditional on the US, and questioned how long Australian and American troops would have had to stay to maintain the now-fallen Afghan government.

“At the end of the day as the Taliban forces rolled in, it was very clear that that state was not able to defend itself and the question there goes: How long do the coalition forces remain in a place where you’ve sought to make it a success over 20 years? How many American, Australian and other lives are going to be committed to that end?” he told ABC News.

“Australia, the United States, so many of us, we have many interests around the world and we have to keep Australians safe as well, and that’s what we’ve been working to do.”

US warns Americans in Kabul: don’t go to the airport

Meanwhile, the US embassy in Kabul has told American citizens desperate to get out of Afghanistan not to go to the airport because of “potential security threats,” as senior Taliban leaders including feared militant met for talks over a new government.

“We are advising US citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a US government representative to do so,”the embassy said in a statement on its website.

The advice was issued “because of potential security threats,” the statement said although it didn’t elaborate on what those threats were. “We will contact registered U.S. citizens as the security situation changes to provide further instructions.”

The statement came as a representative from the Haqqani network, the country’s most feared militants, joined the Taliban’s top leaders in Kabul for talks on establishing a new “inclusive” government in Kabul.

Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar arrived in Kabul on Saturday for talks on establishing a new “inclusive” government in Afghanistan.

Other senior Taliban leaders seen in the capital in recent days include Khalil Haqqani — one of America’s most wanted terrorists with a $5 million bounty on his head.

Pro-Taliban social media feeds showed Haqqani meeting Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — a former bitter rival during the brutal civil war of the early 1990s, but still influential in Afghan politics.

Haqqani, the uncle of Taliban deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani is a leading figure in the Haqqani network, one of the most powerful groups behind the Taliban’s rise to power. On Friday he was seen leading prayers at a mosque in Kabul; he is seen as integral in the Islamists’ moves to set up a government.

Another key leader of the so-called Haqqani network - Anas Haqqani - was also in the capital and had met former president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, who led the overall peace process for the previous administration.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/more-than-300-people-evacuated-from-kabul-airport-on-four-raaf-flights/news-story/ae8513cd0458615ad89b9539c0307dd8

https://twitter.com/AusAirForce/status/1428922804234194947

>>14404403

Australia's PM Morrison defends lockdown strategy until majority vaccinated

Lidia Kelly - August 22, 2021

MELBOURNE, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday defended the country's lockdown strategy to combat coronavirus outbreaks until at least 70% of population is fully vaccinated.

On Saturday, Australian police arrested hundreds of people during anti-lockdown demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne, capitals of the country's two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, that are under a strict lockdown.

The federal government announced late last month a plan that envisaged lockdowns as a key strategy to quell outbreaks until 70% percent of population gets vaccinated and a gradual re-opening of Australia's borders when that number reaches 80%.

"You can't live with lockdowns forever and at some point you need to make that gear change and that is done at 70%," Morrison said in a television interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Victoria, in its sixth lockdown since the start of the pandemic, on Sunday recorded 65 locally acquired cases. On Saturday Australia saw its worst number of COVID-19 infections ever, with NSW and Victoria battling a growing outbreak of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Only about 30% of people aged over 16 have been fully vaccinated so far, according to health ministry data released on Saturday, mainly due to scarce supply of Pfizer shots and public unease about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The pace has picked up recently, as supplies increase and the Delta outbreak continues to spread. A Newspoll conducted for The Australian newspaper earlier this month suggests that 11% of Australians said they will flatly refuse to get vaccinated.

Despite a third wave of infections from the Delta variant, Australia's COVID-19 numbers are relatively low, with just over 43,000 cases and 978 deaths.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australias-pm-morrison-defends-lockdown-strategy-until-majority-vaccinated-2021-08-21/

Cop who killed US Capitol rioter cleared

Brian Niemietz - 21 August 2021

The Capitol Hill police officer who fatally shot pro-Trump extremist Ashli Babbitt while defending the US Capitol on January 6 has been cleared.

Citing a police memo, NBC News reports the unidentified officer was fully exonerated by an internal investigation, months after the Justice Department said in April it would not press charges.

Video shows Babbitt, wearing a Donald Trump flag as a cape, attempting to crash through the broken window of a door where elected officials were being led away from a far right mob attempting to stop the certification of the 2020 election.

"As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out," the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported.

"An officer inside the Speaker's Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor."

Thousands of protesters had gathered on Capitol Hill, many calling for the capture or execution of Vice President Mike Pence, whom they thought could stop Joe Biden from becoming the 46th president.

Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who had become a supporter of the cultish QAnon conspiracy collective that believes Trump will be reinstated as president, despite having lost the election by more than 7 million votes.

The uprising at the Capitol began with a "Stop the Steal" rally, where Trump further pushed false claims of election fraud.

Babbitt's death has become a rallying cry for far-right extremists who have come to see her as a martyr and demand the name of the officer responsible for shooting her. Trump, who campaigned as a "law and order" candidate, indicated last month that officer should be singled out.

"Who shot Ashli Babbitt?" Trump asked.

"People want to know and why."

The 35-year-old San Diego woman's husband filed a lawsuit requesting the identity of the cop who killed Babbitt.

A lawyer representing the officer called his client's actions "nothing short of heroic".

Arizona Republican Representative Paul Gosar has referred to the shooting as an execution.

https://thewest.com.au/news/world/cop-who-killed-us-capitol-rioter-cleared-c-3742029

Hang in there Aussies.

Maybe take some hints from our brothers in HK

https://www.bitchute.com/video/KNyJns31mSr9/?fbclid=IwAR391Jw9s1rTOU_whZWAV5JKdk2ZuBy86TZqWG2-c04sSgZcwslb68RSP8A

GO TRUCKIES!

AMERICA WATCHING/ PRAYING

>>14433434

oh… and Dan's a massive satanic POS P3d0 !!!

US gives Australia a cold shoulder on vaccines

RICHARD FERGUSON and JOE KELLY - AUGUST 22, 2021

The US has not given the Morrison government any vaccines throughout the course of the coronavirus pandemic, as tension points between the Biden White House and Canberra build.

Despite President Joe Biden promising to give Covid-19 vaccine doses to needy nations, the Health Department this weekend confirmed Australia had neither bought or received any shots from the US.

The vaccine confirmation comes weeks after The Australian revealed Scott Morrison’s government made as-yet-unanswered requests to the Biden administration for extra Pfizer doses, despite substantial support from US congress leaders.

The Morrison government was attacked last week by the US’s deputy envoy on climate change over its emission reductions policies, and the Prime Minister is yet to speak to Mr Biden about the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Foreign policy experts are warning the Australia cannot expect the US to be the same ally it has been in previous years and must become more self-reliant.

ANU defence and strategic studies analyst Hugh White said on Sunday Mr Biden was “unsentimental” about Australia and Washington was not prepared to help Mr Morrison on vaccines over developing countries.

“The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, is demonstrating that it is wholly unsentimental about Australia … We think we’re their little mates, but US policy ­towards Australia has always been determined by how much we help their strategic interests,” Professor White said.

“Biden’s pandemic policy has been pretty coherent in that he wants to send vaccines to developing countries with high Covid-19 rates. Washington is not interested in doing Morrison a political favour because he screwed up early acquisition of jabs.”

Mr Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal has been criticised by four former PMs – Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and John Howard – and there are concerns about the US’s ­reliability in the Asia-Pacific.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/us-gives-australia-a-cold-shoulder-on-vaccines/news-story/e9223d86091b95eed88e9a98cabe4535

>>14404403

Australia PM says pandemic focus must shift to reopening

Renju Jose - AUGUST 23, 2021

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia must start to learn to live with COVID-19 when higher vaccination targets are reached, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, despite concerns in some states about the impact of a surge in cases in Sydney.

With over half of all Australians stuck in weeks-long lockdowns to curb the highly infectious Delta strain, Morrison said the country had to move forward and start reducing restrictions as more people became vaccinated.

“(Lockdowns) cannot go on forever. This is not a sustainable way to live in this country,” he said during a televised media conference in Canberra.

“Because if not at 70% and 80% (vaccination rates), then when? Then when? We must make that move and we must prepare to make that move and we must prepare the country to make that move.”

Morrison’s comments come after differences have emerged between states that want to maintain a focus on suppressing the virus and the largest state of New South Wales, which is seeking a path out of lockdowns through vaccinations following a large Delta outbreak.

The federal government last month unveiled a four-stage plan to relax restrictions once 70% of its 25 million people aged over 16 are vaccinated, with stringent lockdowns “unlikely” to be required.

When vaccination coverage reaches 80% only “highly targeted lockdowns” would be necessary and vaccinated Australians would be free to travel interstate.

Western Australia and Queensland states, which are largely coronavirus-free, have flagged they may still maintain some restrictions even when vaccination targets are reached.

They say the national plan, which was agreed before the NSW outbreak, was based on having only small outbreaks present in the community.

On Monday, NSW reported 818 cases, most of them in Sydney, slightly down from the record 830 a day earlier.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian urged people to focus less on cases and more on the immunisation rollout.

“Once you get to 80% double dose, every state will have to live with COVID. You cannot keep Delta out forever,” she said.

In Victoria, home to Melbourne, 71 new cases were detected with 55 having spent time in the community while infectious, which state Premier Daniel Andrews said could derail plans to exit lockdown on Sept. 2.

While Australia has managed the pandemic better than many other developed countries, a slow vaccine rollout has taken the gloss off its early success.

Nationally, 30% of people above 16 are fully vaccinated, while 52% have had a least one dose. Vaccinations are running at a record pace but the target of 80% fully vaccinated will not be reached until December at the current rate.

Australia has reported just over 44,600 cases in total. There have been 984 deaths, although the death rate has declined since last year.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/australia-pm-says-pandemic-focus-must-shift-to-reopening-idUSKBN2FO06I

Why QAnon followers are like opioid addicts, and why that matters

Recognizing the similarities is helpful in both accurately diagnosing the QAnon phenomenon and trying to treat it.

Sophia Moskalenko and Mia Bloom, co-authors, "Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon," - Aug. 22, 2021

1/2

A few years ago, QAnon had an obscure internet following organized around a baseless conspiracy theory. It has now become ubiquitous, with regular and disturbing news stories reminding us of its reach.

Last week, we learned of a QAnon-related data leak of Colorado voting machine logins. The week before, people around the country struggled to comprehend a gruesome homicide allegedly committed by a QAnon-following father who, according to authorities, told the FBI he killed his two small children because he believed they’d inherited from their mother lizard DNA that would turn them into monsters. Last spring, a mother admitted to killing her three children, saying she wanted to protect them from becoming victims of a sadistic cabal of pedophiles whose existence is widely believed among QAnon adherents.

Why would such outlandish conspiracy theories hold sway over these parents and others around the country? One way to comprehend the incomprehensible is to recognize the parallels between QAnon and addictive drugs like opioids — which are also manipulated by malicious actors to trap vulnerable people in increasingly unhealthy spirals that ultimately result in the destruction of families and even death. Recognizing these similarities is helpful in both accurately diagnosing the QAnon phenomenon and trying to treat it.

For starters, QAnon, like the painkiller abuse epidemic driven by the drug oxycodone, engulfs people who are most vulnerable to its content. An overwhelming proportion of QAnon followers arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, for instance, have mental health problems, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a University of Maryland analysis. If you believe the world is out to get you, you are probably more likely to embrace QAnon narratives that explain exactly how the world is out to get you.

Their psychological pain may make these people especially vulnerable to QAnon’s content, which often speaks to fears, anxieties and anger. People who worry about contamination, for example, are probably more susceptible to lies about the Covid-19 vaccine carrying a contaminating agent that makes their children gay or transgender.

It is also likely that prolonged exposure to QAnon content exacerbates or even triggers mental illness, as watching video after video about horrific devastation can have a detrimental effect on anyone’s mental health. This then increases the appeal of the remedies QAnon prescribes, such as refusing Covid vaccines, protesting mask mandates or even storming the Capitol in Washington. Though to be sure, most people with mental health problems do not believe in QAnon conspiracy theories, just as a sizable proportion of QAnon followers are not mentally ill.

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>>14433988

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Moreover, the internet platforms through which most QAnon followers consume content are deliberately structured to sustain user engagement and foster a kind of addiction. In fact, these online QAnon experiences seem to engage the same brain structures responsible for addiction, as solving the “puzzles” revealed by conspiracy theories may prompt pleasure-driving dopamine hits.

After mainstream platforms booted many QAnon followers, other even more addictive platforms filled the void. These channels are echo chambers, so hooked people only see information that confirms what they already believe, pulling them further down the proverbial rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Crucially, just like drug hits, QAnon offers a quick “fix” for feelings of loneliness, fear and anger that those in pain want to alleviate. Individuals who seek out online communities often do so because they feel isolated and lonely. It’s no surprise that QAnon’s following grew immensely during Covid-19 lockdowns, when people were limited to socializing online, and QAnon chatrooms in particular offered a chance to vent frustration and outrage. Yet research shows the more time people spend on social media, the more isolated and lonely they feel, repeating an endless loop of trying — and failing — to fulfill social needs.

Because, like a drug of addiction, QAnon content doesn’t actually take the underlying pain away, bigger “highs” are needed to distract from the root causes of despair. Consumers of QAnon content thus experience cravings­­ for new and exciting conspiracies, such as former President Donald Trump’s prophesied return to the White House.

QAnon shares one last parallel with addictive drugs: There is a small but powerful group of individuals who benefit financially and politically from amplifying, spreading and legitimizing QAnon’s conspiracy theories. In the case of drugs, there are also powerful groups with vested interests — the major pharmaceutical companies that presided over a crushing opioid epidemic among some of the very same communities addicted to QAnon now and dealers pushing illicit drugs on the streets.

It is crucial that we curb QAnon’s damage before it reaches the staggering proportions of the opioid drug crisis, and to do so we need a variety of tools to attack the infodemic. These include increased transparency and responsibility from social media platforms, access to mental health assessment and treatment for vulnerable individuals, and critical thinking and media literacy education in our schools.

While it’s easy to see QAnon followers as crazy or evil, the example of the opioid epidemic offers a broader perspective that indicates pain, vulnerability and powerlessness are part of what brought them to their way of thinking. The best approach to help people out of QAnon is to do so with kindness and empathy. As with opioid users, QAnon followers are suffering and in some ways may feel powerless to their addiction.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-qanon-followers-are-opioid-addicts-why-matters-ncna1277323

>>14385947

Shameful Afghanistan retreat has shaken my faith in America

Alexander Downer - Aug 22, 2021

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It’s said the Taliban used to say to the Americans: “You’ve got the watches, we have the time.” I thought about that watching President Joe Biden’s press conference last Monday when he defiantly justified his decision to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan.

It followed harrowing pictures of desperate Afghans clinging to a US Air Force C17 as it spirited the lucky few to a faraway airbase. Those scenes will be forever with us, along with the helicopter leaving the American embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975.

These were terrible events: moments of great humiliation and defeat for a great nation which has been the bastion of liberalism and freedom throughout modern history.

America recovered from Vietnam and went on to win the Cold War. But this time we must ask ourselves whether Afghanistan is the bookend of a great and inspiring story going back at least to World War II.

Since 1941, Americans have led the world through turbulent and dangerous times, driven by a passionate belief in their core values of freedom, democracy and the civil liberties of every man and woman. They have shown generosity, patience and resilience.

America has vanquished one evil regime after another in the cause of freedom and democracy. They destroyed the Nazis, they defeated Hideki Tojo’s Japan, they saved South Korea, and they broke the Soviet Union. It is a remarkable record, and to do this they have shown – and I repeat the phrase – patience and resilience.

But now there is an awful question hanging over America. Has it lost its unifying national values, which were the foundation of its very existence, and has it lost it will to lead the world? I passionately hope not, but I fear they may have.

Once we looked to America for inspiration. Today we look upon the internal politics of America with despair. The country has salami-sliced itself into warring racial, gender and sexual groups, and partisan politics has made America as fissiparous as it has been at any time since 1865.

America has gone from being the beacon of freedom, democracy and opportunity to a country which doubts the legitimacy of its own history and throws up leaders who are minnows when compared with the inspirational leadership of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan.

Just think of the great Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who ended American isolationism to free the world from dictatorship. Just think of Harry Truman, who shaped America’s postwar alliances and saved South Korea; just think of Dwight Eisenhower who built on Truman’s achievements and consolidated America’s leadership through the Cold War; and then think of the great Ronald Reagan who destroyed the evil empire and made Mr Gorbachev tear down that wall.

And now America presents us with Joe Biden, the successor to the erratic and uninformed Donald Trump.

The decision initially made by Trump but implemented by Biden to leave Afghanistan without a serious negotiated political settlement has sent two messages to the world about the new America. America has no patience and resilience, which was such a feature of its earlier global leadership.

Leaving just 3000 troops in Afghanistan and air power would have been crucial to the morale and cohesion of Afghanistan’s army and government. And secondly, we are entitled to doubt the determination of an American administration to support its allies through thick and thin. Once it did, but would they now? I don’t know.

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>>14434031

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The American political class these days has been consumed with the idea the US should end the so-called never-ending wars. Yet America has been prepared to leave 30,000 troops on the Korean peninsula and 50,000 in Japan to underwrite the stability of the Indo-Pacific region. But can we be sure that Biden won’t withdraw if circumstances change?

Let us think about the issues the world needs to confront. The rise of China needs to be balanced by America and its allies.

So far, the Americans have shown a strong commitment to the Indo-Pacific region. But what would happen if China attacked Taiwan? What would Biden do in such tragic circumstances? Would he be prepared to save Taiwan with American forces? I don’t know.

I do know that Biden abandoned the government and people of Afghanistan because it suited his domestic political agenda. He didn’t try to change public opinion, to educate them about geopolitics and America’s role in the world. He just went with the opinion polls. Would he do the same elsewhere? We don’t know.

Dictators no longer fear the US

With Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Reagan, you never had to ask. Even Barack Obama, for all his failings over Syria, sent troops back to Iraq once Islamic State established itself there, and kept his commitment to Afghanistan. As his vice-president, Biden opposed that mission.

And that’s the problem. Where once dictators, the intolerant, grotesque human rights abusers and other evildoers lived in fear of America, Joe Biden has taken away that fear. He has sent a very different message.

He’s sent a message that America has other things to think about at home and isn’t so fussed any longer about what happens in the rest of the world. Oh yes, I remember the phrase: America first!

So where does all this leave Australia? We need our alliance with America and we should remain unshakable in our commitment to it. We should double down in supporting America’s continuing role.

But now we must accept that America has changed and the types of leaders it is throwing up are very different from the ones we knew so well in the past.

We’ll have to be prepared to build our own coalitions and alliances, and it’s a good thing we’ve made a start. We negotiated a security treaty with the Indonesians in 2006 and we are now an active member of the diplomatic architecture of the Indo-Pacific. We also have our own very capable defence force.

Last weekend was one of the saddest weekends I’ve experienced in my adult life. For me, who has been so inspired by America, so reassured by America’s values and the many good people who have governed that country, the shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan and the manner of that withdrawal has left my faith badly shaken.

Alexander Downer was Australia's longest serving foreign minister, from 1996 to 2007, and most recently Australian High Commissioner to the UK.

https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/shameful-afghanistan-retreat-has-shaken-my-faith-in-america-20210819-p58k2h

Rogue crossbencher Craig Kelly to run with Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party at the next election

RICHARD FERGUSON - AUGUST 23, 2021

Rogue crossbench MP Craig Kelly will run as billionaire Clive Palmer’s lead candidate at the next election, promising to push an “alternative narrative” about lockdowns and lead the charge in all 150 federal seats.

Mr Kelly – who left the Liberal Party in February over his support for unorthodox coronavirus treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine – will stay on to fight his NSW seat of Hughes under Mr Palmer’s United Australia Party banner.

But in a major shake-up, Mr Kelly will become leader of the UAP and Mr Palmer will act in a behind-the-scenes role as party chairman, as the billionaire promises to fight both Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese over lockdowns and Covid-19 vaccinations.

Mr Kelly said on Monday that he will lead the UAP into the next election and run candidates in all 150 seats, and Mr Palmer will not run himself.

“With endless authoritarian lockdowns … I no longer recognise the country grew up in,” Mr Kelly said in a statement.

“And this is all happening on my watch. Someone must lead a fightback. I have therefore decided to accept the offer, to lead the United Australia Party into the next election.

“The United Australia Party will be fighting to end the lockdowns and offer an alternate approach to the current mayhem and destruction that the Labor and Liberal parties have jointly created.”

Mr Kelly told The Australian before his announcement that the UAP campaign will be “very well-financed”, and Mr Palmer will act as the UAP’s party chairman.

With Mr Kelly now representing the UAP in parliament, the Palmer-backed outfit will now be free to run any candidates without having to meet strict new membership numbers set out in new Morrison government electoral reform laws now in front of the House and senate.

The Hughes MP had to have his preselection secured by both the Prime Minister and Malcolm Turnbull in previous preselections, but ultimately abandoned the government over its refusal to support unsupported treatments for Covid-19.

The Australian revealed Mr Kelly and Mr Palmer were in talks to join forces last May after the billionaire was seen walking the halls of parliament with the Hughes MP, and Mr Palmer said he stood ready to bankroll his campaign to keep his seat.

The Queensland tycoon has promised legal action against any federal policies which further push Covid-19 vaccinations and he failed in a High Court bid to bring down Western Australia’s hard Covid-19 border.

Mr Palmer is readying to repeat his advertising blitz against Labor in the 2019 election, credited with damaging Bill Shorten’s hopes of winning power, with a cashed-up campaign against both major parties.

Multiple sources have told The Australian Mr Palmer intended to specifically target Mr Dutton, who played a key role in overhauling the LNP’s hierarchy at the weekend’s LNP state convention.

Close ties between Mr Palmer and former high-ranking members of the LNP’s organisational wing were at the centre of internal debate ahead of the purge led by Mr Dutton and state Opposition Leader David Crisafulli.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/rogue-crossbencher-craig-kelly-to-run-with-clive-palmers-united-australia-party-at-the-next-election/news-story/8f5d80211ca22ca2f9b3670b67b990e1

>>14442992

The ABC’s big lie and the madness of Four Corners

JAMES MADDEN and ADAM CREIGHTON - AUGUST 24, 2021

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The ABC has used its flagship current affairs program to run a conspiracy-laden and error-ridden “expose” into Fox News, blaming Rupert Murdoch for Donald Trump’s refusal to accept electoral defeat, ignoring News Corporation’s prominent role in demanding the former president hand over to Joe Biden.

The two-part Four Corners series and accompanying reports on radio and online includes interviews with several disgruntled former employees of Fox News in an attempt to smear the Murdoch-controlled broadcaster with the baseless claim it had a “role in amplifying Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him”.

ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson, on assignment in the US since late last year, anchored Monday night’s episode, titled The Big Lie — but the program was more notable for its glaring omissions than any groundbreaking revelations. In the second episode, Four Corners will try to link Fox News with the insurrection at the Capitol by Mr Trump’s supporters on January 6.

Despite being immediately sacked by the Murdoch family after being exposed as a serial sexual predator, Fox News’s founding chief executive Roger Ailes — a lifelong conservative Republican — was bizarrely praised by the ABC as a voice of moderation. The program attempted to make the case that Fox News was more moderate under the notoriously hardline Ailes, who was forced out of the network in 2016.

Four Corners also made much of Fox News host Sean Hannity’s impromptu appearance with Mr Trump at a political rally in 2018, but failed to note that the network censured the on-air star for his decision to appear onstage with the president.

The ABC argued that Fox and Mr Trump were on a unity ticket but failed to mention the 400-plus tweets by the then president in which he heavily criticised Fox News’s coverage of the November election, including attacking the network’s marquee presenter Chris Wallace for his tough questions during the presidential debates.

Despite its thesis, the ABC showed how Fox News was the first major broadcaster to call the crucial state of Arizona for Mr Biden, a decision that enraged Mr Trump. The broadcaster’s political editor at the time, Chris Stirewalt, told Four Corners that while there was anger in the Trump camp, there had been no pressure from the company for him to overturn that call. “I received no instruction to reverse the call,” Stirewalt said.

The ABC’s contention that Fox News set the scene for the January 6 riot ignores the high-profile Fox News presenters who repeatedly blasted Mr Trump’s claims of election fraud. The ABC also does not acknowledge the role of Mr Murdoch’s other US media outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal and its critical coverage of the “inexcusable” behaviour of Mr Trump or The New York Post’s front page demanding the defeated president “Stop The Insanity” and move on from the White House.

Instead, the national broadcaster declared the program would expose Fox News for its “slavish support of Trump” and make the unfounded claim it “split the Murdoch family and spoiled Rupert Murdoch’s succession plans”. In doing so it ignored the plethora of evidence showing the network catered for a range of opinions on Mr Trump, from harsh critics to those more supportive.

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For example, after the January 6 riots, top-rating broadcaster Tucker Carlson said Mr Trump had “recklessly encouraged” the insurrection. The ABC also ignored evidence that a social media and Facebook-inspired frenzy had driven many rioters to the Capitol. Despite this, the ABC program accused Fox News of helping to “destabilise democracy” and put “US democracy in peril”.

“Fox News didn’t send the mob, but its worst outrage generators certainly fed their anger,” Ferguson reported on Monday.

The ABC spoke to former Fox News anchors, including Gretchen Carlson and Carl Cameron, all of whom had left the network before the 2020 presidential election and the public falling out between Mr Trump and Fox News. “The use of five former deeply disgruntled employees, only one of whom was part of the company during our coverage of the 2020 US presidential election and its aftermath, single-handedly discredits all credibility of the program,” a Fox spokeswoman said.

In a statement to The Australian, (published by Mr Murdoch’s News Corp), Fox News said the taxpayer-funded program “clearly violated the basic tenets of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s published standards by exhibiting bias and a failure to maintain any level of impartiality in the presentation of news and information”.

In the second of the two-part Four Corners report next Monday, the ABC attempts to link Fox News directly to the January 6 riots and claims this hurt democracy.

Mr Biden was sworn in as President without incident weeks later in a perfect display of US democracy at work.

The handover was handled by Fox broadcasters as expected. And Mr Trump’s claims of electoral fraud condemned. On one occasion, Fox News anchor Bret Baier told Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel in the days after the election: “We are not seeing any evidence of widespread fraud … we just haven’t seen it. You know, it hasn’t been presented. There’s all kinds of stuff flying on the internet. But when we look into it, it doesn’t pan out.”

Similarly, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called out Mr Trump’s lawyer Sidney Powell for making claims about electronic vote-switching with no evidence to back it up.

“She never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests, not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” he said on his program.

Another Fox News anchor, Eric Shawn, scrutinised virtually every election fraud conspiracy spread by the former president’s supporters.

“Election officials across the country insist, as of today, there is no evidence of any widespread fraud affecting the outcome the presidential election, that our precious democracy was not tampered with and that such baseless and false claims are an insult to the thousands of election officials and workers across the country who we have seen dedicating themselves 24/7 to ensure a fair and free election for all of us,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/the-abcs-big-lie-and-the-madness-of-four-corners/news-story/fc5850eef518445b1dd46b742e62959c

Lin Wood Telegram Post

Keep a close eye on events in Australia. The enemy plans to bring those events to a city near you in the foreseeable future.

But while you should keep alert and look around at events in other parts of the world, STAY FOCUSED on demanding and obtaining full forensic audits of the 2020 election in every state!!!

www.FightBack.law

https://strikebackforfreedom.com/

https://t.me/linwoodspeakstruth/5041

Scott Morrison’s blast for slow states as vaccine rates lag

GEOFF CHAMBERS and RICHARD FERGUSON - AUGUST 23, 2021

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Low vaccination rates in Queensland and Western Australia threaten to delay the easing of Covid-19 restrictions and lockdowns as Scott Morrison says Australia must adjust its mindset to living with the virus.

The Prime Minister on Monday stared down state leaders wavering on the four-phase ­reopening strategy agreed by ­national cabinet, warning that Australians would remain stuck “in the cave forever” if the plan to progressively ease restrictions at 70 per cent and 80 per cent full vaccination rates was abandoned.

With Queensland and WA ­indicating they may not stick to the plan because of high case numbers in NSW and a growing outbreak in Victoria, Mr Morrison said: “If not at 70 per cent and 80 per cent, then when? We must make that move and we must prepare to make that move and we must prepare the country to make that move.

“We have to break this cycle. The national plan is the way to cut through and for us to emerge from that. This groundhog day has to end, and it will end when we start getting to 70 per cent and 80 per cent.”

The Prime Minister’s intervention came as S&P Global Ratings said states and territories would put their credit ratings at risk if they failed to end lockdowns once 80 per cent vaccine coverage was achieved and business leaders called on WA and Queensland to ramp up their vaccination rates.

WA and Queensland continue to lag behind other states. NSW has delivered more than 59 per cent of first doses, but WA and Queensland are sitting at about 46 per cent.

On current vaccination projections, NSW will meet its 70 per cent double jab target around ­October 29 and 80 per cent around ­November 16, while Victoria will reach the 70 per cent full vaccination threshold around November 3 and 80 per cent around November 21.

However, Queensland is not expected to reach a 70 per cent full vaccination rate until about ­December 4 and 80 per cent around December 28, while WA is not projected to reach 70 per cent until around November 11 and 80 per cent around November 29.

The slower vaccination rates in holdout states will delay the whole country as thresholds are linked to national vaccination rates and could lead to borders being closed longer.

Under the four-step strategy, lockdowns and restrictions will be eased when the country moves to phases two and three after state and national averages reach 70 and 80 per cent of double doses. Queensland at the weekend threatened to walk away from the national plan, arguing it had signed the agreement before infections in NSW reached the current levels of more than 800 a day. Federal officials insist more cases will not radically alter virus caseloads once states open up.

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>>14443157

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Ahead of a national cabinet meeting on Friday that will consider higher Covid-19 caseloads in the Doherty Institute’s updated analysis, which underpins the reopening plan, Mr Morrison said states must commit to “living with this virus”.

“We must adjust our mindset,” he said. “Cases will not be the issue once we get above 70 per cent. Dealing with serious illness, hospitalisation, ICU capabilities, our ability to respond in those circumstances – that will be our goal. And we will live with this virus as we live with other infectious diseases.”

Mr Morrison, who spoke with Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce on Monday after the airline ­announced it would mandate vaccines for workers and offer incentives for vaccinated Australians, faces increasing internal pressure to pushback against states and territories undermining the national reopening plan.

But WA Premier Mark McGowan fired back at Mr Morrison and argued the national cabinet had agreed that targeted lockdowns would remain even at 80 per cent vaccination rates.

“Just because the NSW government has made a mess of it doesn’t mean the rest of us should suffer,” he said. “My view is we should do everything we can to stay in the state we are currently in, and at the same time vaccinate like hell.”

The federal government has shifted to a combination of vaccines, targeted lockdowns, testing, tracing and treatments to help move Australia out of the suppression phase.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said she feared jabs could go to waste unless more people joined the state’s vaccination waitlist. Only 79,599 people were in the jab queue as of Monday, compared with 112,000 people vaccinated last week.

A senior Queensland government source said no consideration would be given to removing border restrictions with NSW until the infection rate fell below 1 and case numbers fell to the “early hundreds”.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox warned that the nation could not wait for the “last person in the last state” to be vaccinated.

“I’m confident that the slower-to-vaccinate states will soon see that the cost of isolation is much higher than the cost of striving for the future, obviously unrealistic dream of maintaining Covid zero,” Mr Willox said. “If not, those states will be left behind economically and socially and they will make our national Covid recovery harder to achieve.”

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said vaccinations must be the primary tool to control Covid-19. Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott urged state leaders to stick with the Doherty plan.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said when NSW reached 70 and 80 per cent double dose coverage, residents would be able to “live more freely”.

Victorian Premier Daniel ­Andrews said while he was ­“highly unlikely” to impose a statewide lockdown on Victorians once 80 per cent were vaccinated, he could not rule it out.

As Europe, the US, Singapore, Israel and others shift their focus to lowering hospitalisation and death rates, Mr Morrison said lockdowns were “taking an ­extremely heavy toll both on the mental and physical health of Australians and on the economic success of Australia”.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/scott-morrisons-blast-for-slow-states-as-vaccine-rates-lag/news-story/8bffb81e5528c07786f5697dc6537c42

>>14421203

RAAF flights ferry another 650 out of Afghanistan in mass Kabul airlift as Taliban's 'red line' for withdrawal approaches

Jake Evans - 24 August 2021

Another 650 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan overnight as part of Australia's rescue operation, as the Taliban threatens the window to get people out is closing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said four RAAF flights and one New Zealand Air Force flight managed to land at Kabul Airport and rescue hundreds more people in recent hours.

Mr Morrison said it was the biggest night of Australia's operation so far.

"The people who are doing this job on the ground … they are real heroes, compassionate heroes," Mr Morrison told Channel 9.

"They are going through what is an extraordinarily tense time and they are getting people out."

PM warns every rescue flight may be the last

Mr Morrison said the situation at Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport remained highly unpredictable.

He said knowing "the form" of the Taliban, the country was operating under the assumption every flight it could get into and out of Kabul airport may be the last.

"We've been going like we won't be able to get another flight in the next day, so we've been trying to make every flight as successful as possible," Mr Morrison said.

"We'll keep doing that for as long as we can. If that deadline is able to be pushed out, we've made it clear to the United States we support that."

The Taliban have warned the United States that holding Kabul airport beyond the end of August would be a "violation" of the withdrawal agreement first struck under former president Donald Trump.

A spokesperson for the Taliban told international media August 31 was a "red line" for withdrawal that should not be crossed.

The White House has responded that US President Joe Biden would decide what date American forces withdrew.

More than 1,600 people, including Australians, Afghan nationals and other foreign citizens, have been evacuated by Australia and New Zealand in the past week.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-24/650-more-rescued-from-kabul-by-australia/100401324

Ron Brierley ‘scrubbed out’ after being caught with child abuse images

Perry Duffin - August 20, 2021

As millionaire businessman Ron Brierley basked in the glow of public success he was hiding a dark secret - a taste for pre-pubescent girls.

Now the corporate icon’s lawyers want him spared prison - but police prosecutors reject his claims he didn’t know confronting child abuse images were illegal.

Brierley, 84, pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing child abuse material after he was found with thousands of images on computer hard drives.

Australian Border Force officers had uncovered the images, mostly of children aged around 11-years-old, in his carry-on luggage as he prepared to board a holiday flight to Fiji.

Some of the girls were much younger, the NSW District Court heard on Friday, and “there are many” victims in Brierley’s files.

Brierley’s success brought fame and power, but his success has also made his fall from grace an extremely public affair, the court heard.

The New Zealand-born Brierley lost his knightship, has had his name “scrubbed” from cricket pavilions, and has become a social pariah, his barrister Tim Game SC said.

“Public recognition was a terribly important part of his own life and his image of himself,” Mr Game said.

“The downfall has been complete to the point donations are not accepted or returned if given.”

Mr Game said Brierley had dealt with his attraction to pre-pubescent girls for many years and it was a “significant affliction” and “disorder” for the businessman.

“He has kept this to himself and has been troubled by it for a long period of time,” Mr Game said.

“Maybe because he’s been forced to - he does appreciate the seriousness of the wrong done.”

The court has previously heard Brierley believed the images were “perfectly okay”, available online and he looked at them for “recreation”.

Crown Prosecutor Sean Hughes urged Judge Sarah Huggett to reject any claim Brierley thought the images were legal.

“(The court should reject) the high-functioning Mr Brierley did not know that, at the very least, the image of the pubescent girl exposing her anus and genitals in a sexualised pose was other than illegal,” he said.

Brierley is asking the judge to allow him to serve his time in the community on a release order.

Prosecutors acknowledge there won’t be a lengthy time in prison but said these were “real girls” in the images collected by Birerley and punishment would be needed to send a message to others.

“A message has to be sent to those in the community who sit in a darkened room with little fear of being caught that, if they are caught, they will be properly denounced,” Mr Hughes said.

“Not by being stripped of their knighthood - but properly denounced by way of a meaningful, substantial penalty.”

“They should expect a jail sentence, a heavy jail sentence.”

Brierley’s lawyers say he has suffered significant cognitive decline since the arrest in 2019 and he requires his vast resources to keep himself functioning.

He has the beginnings of dementia and vascular disease, Mr Game said, and has moved away from positions of responsibility.

Brierley did not appear in the Sydney court in person - neither did any of the lawyers - because the city’s coronavirus pandemic has forced all hearings to be conducted remotely.

Brierley will be sentenced in October and will remain on bail until then.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-nsw/ron-brierley-scrubbed-out-after-being-caught-with-child-abuse-images/news-story/a058db306ec03cfe58f6b86a99e3f4e1

Australian data reveals thousands of Covid QAnon conspiracies spreading online

New data shows there are thousands of Covid conspiracies spreading online, including QAnon quackery.

Perry Duffin - August 24, 2021

The Federal government is working to uproot thousands of “harmful” pandemic conspiracy theories including QAnon quackery - but the tech companies have often refused to act, exclusive data shows.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal the Department of Home Affairs has identified 2002 instances of misinformation since March 2020 and the end of July this year.

The government says the misinformation is “harmful” because it “undermines” government messaging on the virus, vaccines, restrictions and quarantine.

Last week frontline health responders told The Daily Telegraph their own loved ones were turning on them after being convinced of the online cult of QAnon and related conspiracies.

QAnon followers have signed on to a deranged series of beliefs including that a paedophile cabal is running the world and the pandemic is a hoax.

Since then more people from across NSW have come forward with stories of siblings, parents and friends lost to the unfounded conspiracy.

One person told The Daily Telegraph their father refused to complete the census because the “corrupt government was keeping tabs on him” but continues to collect unemployment benefits on the Central Coast.

Another said not a single person in her family or group of friends would get the vaccine because misinformation had spread through the Shire, where they live.

“Disinformation about COVID-19 should be rejected by everyone, as it puts our families and communities at risk,” Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said.

“Unfortunately social media can be a particularly effective tool in the manipulation of information.”

The department referred the misinformation to social media giants including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google and Tik Tok.

Of the 2002 reported instances of misinformation 1,221 were removed or the accounts banned.

Another 117 resulted in a warning while 664 resulted in no action.

Social media companies have been notoriously slow to act on the spread of misinformation.

It was only last year that QAnon was formally purged from Facebook and Twitter.

By then it had helped foment the insurrection in the US Capitol and spread across the world.

Last week an American QAnon believer allegedly spear gunned his children to death believing they would destroy the world.

In Australia the conspiracy movement remains quietly active on Twitter and flourishes loudly on Facebook groups and in encrypted chats where followers cast doubt on the very existence of Covid.

Minister Andrews said the government would continue to actively counter their efforts by ensuring accurate and authoritative information is available and accessible in many languages.

“I encourage everyone to get their information about COVID-19 from official, reputable sources, and be sceptical of what they may see or hear online,” she said.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/australian-data-reveals-thousands-of-covid-qanon-conspiracies-spreading-online/news-story/993067792d17d8160559a092eb9fe5d3

>>14443440

… and yet, the ABC airs a Satanic Ritual in prime time and barely a whisper…

https://www.rt.com/news/532575-australia-satan-worship-tv/

They want to start teaching it in schools for F's sake…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwowxkJIjgg

>>14404403

Australia pandemic panel backs reopening targets despite Sydney outbreak

Renju Jose - August 24, 2021

SYDNEY, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Australia can proceed with its reopening plans when the country reaches 70%-80% vaccination levels, the government's pandemic modelling adviser said, even as some states hinted they may not ease border curbs if Sydney fails to control its Delta outbreak.

The Melbourne-based Doherty Institute said the country's focus must shift to limiting the number of COVID-19 deaths and hospitalisations, from its current zero-cases strategy, when at least 70% of the country's population above age 16 is fully vaccinated.

"This level of vaccination will make it easier to live with the virus, as we do with other viruses such as the flu," it said in a statement late on Monday. "Once we reach 70% vaccine coverage, opening up at tens or hundreds of cases nationally per day is possible."

Currently, 30% of Australia's adult population has been fully vaccinated while 53% have had at least one dose.

Australia in July unveiled a four-stage plan back to greater freedoms with higher vaccination rates. But Queensland and Western Australia states flagged they may not stick with the agreement as it was framed when case numbers in Sydney were much lower.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison acknowledged the concerns of some states from the Sydney outbreak but said "forever lockdowns" will do more harm than good to the country.

"It doesn't matter whether it's 30 cases or 800 cases, the conclusions are the same, and that's what the Doherty Institute said … we can do this safely and we do need to do it," Morrison told Nine News on Tuesday.

VACCINE PIVOT

Australia has suffered less from the coronavirus pandemic than many other developed countries with about 44,600 cases and 984 deaths. But a third wave of infections from the Delta variant has plunged Sydney and Melbourne, its largest cities, and capital Canberra into a weeks-long lockdown.

Sydney, the worst-affected, has reported rapid growth in new case numbers as state officials pivot to a faster vaccine rollout strategy as more than two months of stay-at-home orders have failed to stop the spread of Delta.

"Let us focus on the vaccine rates because that is what will determine how we can live moving forward," New South Wales (NSW) state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

Berejiklian, who had promised more freedoms for the fully-vaccinated once total doses topped 6 million, said the state has crossed that milestone and changes will be announced later this week. Some 59% of people in NSW have had at least one dose, while 31% are fully vaccinated, slightly above the national numbers.

A total of 753 cases were reported in NSW, down from 818 on Monday, although daily infections continue to linger near record levels. Seventy-four deaths have been reported from the latest outbreak, although the rate of deaths has slowed from last year.

Neighbouring Victoria, struggling to contain its outbreak, expanded access to the Pfizer shots from Wednesday to anyone over the age of 16 to help reach a goal of a million doses over five weeks. Fifty new locally acquired cases were detected in the state on Tuesday, down from 71 a day earlier.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-pandemic-panel-backs-reopening-plans-amid-delta-surge-2021-08-23/

US-led campaign targets Wuhan Institute of Virology with 'vague, misleading, mysterious' rumors

GT staff reporters - Aug 24, 2021

1/3

Editor's Note:

On tracing COVID-19 origins, the US government has been making groundless accusations targeting China based on speculation and disinformation, but never on science and facts. The virus origins tracing mission in the US has been led by intelligence departments, which have a notorious record of creating disinformation for politicization purposes, and most of the rumors concocted by the US surround the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Focusing on the rumors and those who are behind the defamation campaign, the Global Times shall publish two in-depth reports on Wednesday and Thursday to expose the lowdown tricks employed in the West' COVID-19 origins campaign.

The groundless claims by Western politicians and media surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology have frequently been disproved by scientists from across the world. In a recent critical review published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell on August 18, 21 renowned international experts once again presented evidence that the scenario of SARS-CoV-2 having been first passed from an animal to a human is much more probable than the disease originating from the Wuhan lab.

The discussion over the origins of the pandemic has become politicized and heated, said Stephen Goldstein, author of the Cell article and evolutionary virologist at University of Utah. "We felt the time was right to take a critical look at all of the available evidence," Goldstein noted, according to a press release published on the university's website on August 19.

It's a pity that some Western countries led by the US remain busy politicizing the pandemic and slandering China with the "lab-leak theory," while ignoring their severe domestic situation, said Yang Zhanqiu, a virologist from Wuhan University. The COVID-19 origins tracing is a rational scientific issue, which "should be decided by scientists instead of politicians," Yang told the Global Times.

Rumors from the US targeting the WIV labs have been circulating since the beginning of the pandemic, trying to portray this Chinese research institution as "the root of all evil."

What are the main rumors spread about the WIV? Who are behind the conspiracy theories? The Global Times listed the following typical COVID-19-related misinformatio in chronological order, which have all been disproved by international authoritative scientists and the Chinese government.

Rumor: 'COVID-19 was created by WIV'

The claim that "SARS-CoV-2 was made or artificially synthesized by the WIV" first emerged in early 2020.

In an article published on January 26, 2020, three days after Wuhan announced a city-wide lockdown, American conservative newspaper the Washington Times quoted Dany Shoham, "a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare," as saying that COVID-19 was probably leaked from the WIV, and was possibly "included in China's biological weapons program."

Following the Washington Times' groundless article, the US started a conspiracy theory war against WIV, with an increasing number of anti-China politicians and media, who might have neither known about the COVID-19 nor WIV, pointing fingers at China for "making the virus."

Republican Senator Tom Cotton echoed the engineered-bioweapon hypothesis in the same month. "I would note that Wuhan has China's only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world's most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus," Cotton hinted at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on January 30, 2020.

Then Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai criticized Cotton's remark as "absolutely crazy." Cotton's ridiculous bioweapon assertion was soon refuted by 27 leading medical experts from eight different countries, who published a joint statement in The Lancet on February 29 and indicated that scientists from multiple countries have published and analyzed the genomes of SARS-CoV-2, and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus disease originated in wildlife, as have so many other emerging pathogens.

The Wuhan P4 Laboratory is a government cooperation program between China and France, with its design, construction, and management all following international standards, and operations are protected by special facilities and strict protocols. "There is… no factual evidence corroborating recent reports in the US press linking the origins of COVID-19 and the work of the P4 laboratory of Wuhan," an official at French President Emmanuel Macron's office said in April 2020, France24 reported.

(continued)

>>14452221

2/3

Rumor: 'WIV lab has lax biosecurity standards'

British tabloid The Sun said in an April 2020 article that the WIV lab "lied about taking safety precautions when collecting bat samples," attacking the WIV for having lax bio-security standards.

In an "exclusively revelation" report on April 29, 2020, The Sun showed a few photos and video screenshots of "WIV researchers" "catching bats in the wild," in support of its claim that "incredibly some [Chinese] scientists didn't even wear gloves as they entered caves to collect fecal bat swab samples, beaming for the camera, and oblivious to the dangers."

In the article, The Sun interviewed Matthew Henderson, director of the Asia Studies Centre at the Henry Jackson Society, which firstly published the photos and video online. "There is ample evidence of such a cavalier approach to biosecurity by Chinese scientists based in Wuhan laboratories," Henderson said.

The accusation was soon proven laughably false. The video clip and photos hyped by a few British organizations and media had little to do with the WIV. They had actually come from the fourth episode of a popular science documentary named Wild Youth, "and the people involved are not from the Wuhan lab," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying at a press conference in May 2020.

The video clip does not involve any staff member from the Wuhan lab nor their scientific research activities, Hua stressed.

Some of the photos British media published turned out to have been taken in the summer of 2007 in South China's Hainan Province, Hua added.

"We're not new to this kind of graft. We have seen it on issues related to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Do we have more effective ways to deal with these kinds of lies? Can we sue them?" asked Hua.

In an interview with Reuters, Yuan Zhimin, director of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, rejected theories that the lab had accidentally released the coronavirus disease it had harvested from bats for research purposes, saying the lab's bio-security procedures were strictly enforced.

"High-level bio-safety labs have sophisticated protective facilities and strict measures to ensure the safety of laboratory staff and protect the environment from contamination," Yuan said.

Rumor: 'WIV deliberately destroyed evidence of early COVID-19 outbreak'

In May 2020, right-wing Australian tabloid the Daily Telegraph published an article, in which the author, Sharri Markson, claimed that she had exclusive access to a 15-page "China dossier" showing "China deliberately covered up evidence of the virus [COVID-19] early on in a pure case of negligence."

In the article, Markson depicted the source in a vague, misleading, and mysterious way, saying it was compiled by the so-called "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance. But the so-called dossier was found by several news outlets as just a research report based on publicly available information, including news reports.

The "dossier" was actually a summary of publicly available material authored by the US State Department, no more than a "reading list" or "reference paper," The Guardian reported on May 26, 2020. Markson's unprofessional conduct "should be utterly humiliating to the Murdoch media, except that the Murdoch media has zero shame," it quoted the former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as saying.

However, Markson dismissed the mainstream media's criticism of her work on the origin of the virus and claimed to have been savaged by the left-wing Australian media.

Markson is infamous for her lack of credibility. During the pandemic she has co-signed lots of fake news attacking the WIV with hearsay and fake "experts" or "insiders."

Markson has two close partners; Robert Potter, a so-called "network security specialist," and Christopher Balding, "a China observer." Both of them appeared regularly on Markson's show, accepting her interviews, endorsing the so-called "intelligence" documents, and becoming the "exclusive sources" of her reports.

From May to September 2020, Potter and Balding relentlessly told the same story in the media, including in The Australian, on Sky News Australia, and in The Sun in the UK, to spread the rumor. But they failed to provide any evidence about "data obtained from the database," so even Western media themselves were reluctant to hype this topic further.

(continued)

>>14452232

3/3

Rumor: 'WIV researchers became sick in November 2019'

In an article published on May 23, 2021, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said it had heard from "a previously undisclosed US intelligence report" that three researchers from the WIV "became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care." The three had symptoms consistent with "both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses," it said.

Three days later, President Biden said he had directed the US intelligence community to further investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and "report back to him in 90 days," according to CNN.

The WSJ article on "sick staff at the WIV" is an outright lie that came from nowhere, Yuan later refuted. "I've read it. It's a complete lie," Yuan told the Global Times on May 24. "Those claims are groundless. The lab has never been aware of this situation [sick researchers in autumn 2019], and I don't even know where such information came from."

Earlier, Chinese health authorities said on March 31 that the WIV had found three adult COVID-19 cases during its retrospective screening of flu samples collected in Wuhan between January 2019 and January 2020. The three cases were not WIV staffers, but patients being treated at a local hospital that the WIV worked with. Moreover, the three patients had symptoms in January 2020 rather than "November 2019" as some US media claimed.

Nonetheless, audiences may not be surprised to find that the first author of the WSJ fake news report is Michael R. Gordon, who is notorious for co-authoring an article in September 2002, falsely asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

Gordon's article became an excuse for the-then US administration to attack Iraq. Over the subsequent decade and a half, Gordon continued to "serve as a conduit for fabricated 'intelligence' emanating from the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA," organization World Socialist Web Site said in an article published in June.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1232336.shtml

Police powers to hack and disrupt dark web pass Parliament

Katina Curtis and Anthony Galloway - August 25, 2021

Federal police and organised crime investigators will be able to take over the online “dark web” accounts of criminals and terrorists and hack into their networks under new powers that passed Parliament on Wednesday.

But legal and human rights groups are concerned the government didn’t adopt all the recommendations from a cross-party committee, particularly a call for judicial oversight, and the laws were debated and passed in less than 24 hours.

The Australian Federal Police and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission will now have unprecedented powers to penetrate the networks of criminals using domestic servers to operate on the dark web. They’re also able to modify or delete harmful content such as child exploitation material under the laws.

These powers will now be reviewed independently after three years, by Parliament after four years and end after five, and there are stronger protections for journalists and third parties under changes the government made in response to concerns raised by Parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said she had worked through the committee’s recommendations in good faith and amendments would ensure it was more likely warrants would be issued for more serious types of crime.

But she did not adopt a recommendation that warrants should be approved by either a Federal or Supreme Court judge, rather than a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The Greens attempted to insert this higher bar for warrants but were unsuccessful.

The Greens also argued the government had not properly made it clear why the new powers were needed, and that their scope was “disproportionately broad” compared to the threats they were directed at.

Ms Andrews said the changes would give law enforcement agencies tools that kept pace with technology.

She pointed to the arrests of 290 people in Operation Ironside, which involved Australian and American law enforcement cooperating to offer an encrypted messaging service to criminal networks.

“This bill is just one more step the government is taking to ensure our agencies maintain that edge,” she said.

“Under our changes the AFP will have more tools to pursue organised crime gangs to keep drugs off our street and out of our community, and those who commit the most heinous crimes against children.”

The Human Rights Law Centre accused the government of rushing the bill through Parliament, after it was debated and passed in the lower house on Tuesday then the Senate on Wednesday morning.

Kieran Pender, a senior lawyer at the centre, said the law created sweeping surveillance powers that would have a chilling effect on journalists and whistleblowers.

“Given the powers are unprecedented and extraordinarily intrusive, they should have been narrowed to what is strictly necessary and subject to robust safeguards,” he said.

“It is alarming that, instead of accepting [all of] the committee’s recommendations and allowing time for scrutiny of subsequent amendments, the Morrison government rushed these laws through Parliament in less than 24 hours.”

The Law Council of Australia said the failure to adopt the recommendation for judges to issue the warrants was disappointing.

“These warrants have the potential to cause significant loss, damage or disruption to lawful computer users who are not suspected of any wrongdoing,” president Jacob Brasch said.

He noted the government intended to consider these matters in other legislation, but said the committee’s recommendations were specific to the “novel, extraordinary and intrusive” warrant-based powers in this legislation.

Security officials and law enforcement have been pushing for similar powers for years. They became the subject of controversy after police raided the home of then-News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst after she was leaked an earlier proposal for the laws.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/police-powers-to-hack-and-disrupt-dark-web-pass-parliament-20210825-p58lsr.html

>>14395401

Marine Rotational Force – Darwin Facebook Post

24 August 2021

Australian Soldiers and U.S. Marines train together.

#Soldiers with the Australian #Army showed U.S. #Marines with Marine Rotational Force Darwin how to use the Australian Service Light Armored Vehicle and the F88 Austeyr Assault Rifle during Exercise Koolendong 21. Training with the Australian Defence Force enhances our abilities to work together and demonstrates the strength of the U.S.-Australian alliance.

https://www.facebook.com/MRFDarwin/posts/199950102167481

Dear Aussie Anons:

Take some time out this Saturday, August 28, 2021.

We need you!

Help us pray to God and Jesus for justice and liberty! For courage and honesty! For God, family, and country, Aussie Patriots!

11:11 AM Central Daylight Time (CDT) is the "Anchor Time". So, please based your own location/time from 11:11AM CDT so we can pray together in unison collectively with our minds!

I believe I got your times right, but by chance if I did the conversion incorrectly, please change them. (Note, you are almost a day ahead of the USA in time).

I included one for the Zlanders too!

Please forward these memes out on social media!

Help us take back the Spiritual Front!

May God bless you all!

Kek

Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation Tweet

Only 21% of parents think there is a likelihood that online child sexual exploitation can happen to their child. Please help us raise this number and increase awareness of online child sexual exploitation. #ChildProtection

https://twitter.com/ACCCE_AUS/status/1430413148620607499

http://www.accce.gov.au

http://www.accce.gov.au/help-and-support/what-is-online-child-exploitation

>>14404403

Sydney hospitals erect emergency tents as COVID-19 cases hit record

Renju Jose - AUGUST 26, 2021

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia’s new daily cases of COVID-19 topped 1,000 on Thursday for the first time since the global pandemic began, as two major hospitals in Sydney set up emergency outdoor tents to help deal with a rise in patients.

Sydney, the country’s largest city and the epicentre of the current outbreak, is struggling to stamp out a surge in the fast-spreading Delta variant, with daily infections hitting record levels even after two months under lockdown.

New South Wales (NSW) state, where Sydney is the capital, reported 1,029 new locally acquired cases, exceeding the previous record of 919 a day earlier. Of the new cases, 969 were detected in greater Sydney, up from 838.

The rapid rise in COVID-19 patients has forced Sydney’s Westmead and Blacktown hospitals, which service the city’s sprawling western suburbs, to erect tents to screen and swab patients to help manage capacity.

The makeshift unit in the emergency department for COVID-19 patients will help “to offload delays”, a Western Sydney Local Health District spokesperson told Reuters.

State Premier Gladys Berejiklian said authorities had quadrupled the number of the state’s intensive care ventilators to 2,000 early last year. Although the system is “under pressure”, it can withstand the current crisis once vaccination rates rise, she said.

“It might be different to the help you got before because of the situation, but please know the system is kicking in,” Berejiklian said at a televised media conference.

Of 116 people in intensive care in NSW, 102 are not vaccinated. Three new deaths were reported, including a man in his 30s who died at home, taking deaths from the latest outbreak to 79, although the death rate has slowed since last year.

In a video posted on Twitter Wednesday night, the Australian Paramedic Association said paramedics were given a choice to wait in their vehicles with infected people or “wait outside in the freezing rain” due to the rise in patients.

The fast-moving Delta strain has taken the gloss off Australia’s early success against the virus that kept its coronavirus numbers relatively low, with some 47,700 cases and 989 deaths. About 32% of people above 16 have been fully vaccinated while just over 54% have had at least one dose.

Besides Sydney, the country’s second-largest city, Melbourne, and capital, Canberra, are also in hard lockdowns, putting more than half of the country’s 25 million population under strict stay-at-home orders.

Cases in Victoria, home to Melbourne, surged to 80 on Thursday, up from 45 a day earlier.

The federal government is pushing ahead with the country's reopening plans here once vaccination rates reach 70%-80%, but some states have hinted they may delay given the rapid growth of cases in Sydney.

Berejiklian said NSW may reach 70% fully vaccinated by mid-October, and airline Qantas said it was preparing for international travel to resume here in December.

Also on Thursday, grocer Woolworths Group reported a surge in annual profit here as lockdowns sparked demand for household essentials.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/sydney-hospitals-erect-emergency-tents-as-covid-19-cases-hit-record-idUSKBN2FR000

Barack Obama asked Malcolm Turnbull for help with Donald Trump

TROY BRAMSTON - AUGUST 26, 2021

Barack Obama recruited Malcolm Turnbull to persuade Donald Trump to respect traditional alliances and adhere to international agreements that maintained America’s pre-eminent global leadership position during a secret meeting in Sydney after he left the White House.

In March 2018, Mr Obama met with Mr Turnbull, then prime minister, in a suite on the 29th floor of the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney. Mr Obama was visiting Australia for several well-paid speaking engagements.

Mr Obama expressed his deep concern about Mr Trump’s chaotic presidency and the battering of America’s prestige and influence around the world. He said it was like watching “a good friend drink himself to death and being powerless to do anything about it.”

Weathering the US president was proving harder than he had expected, Mr Turnbull replied. He said China was “asserting itself” and “playing into” domestic Australian politics at a time when the US seemed adrift from global affairs and reverting to isolationism, nativism and protectionism.

Mr Turnbull, then in the final months of his prime ministership, echoed Mr Obama’s fears and said he did not know how long the world could “hold the line” and where “the international order” would be after Mr Trump’s presidency.

The private conversation is revealed in a new book, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump, by journalist Edward-Isaac Dovere. It is published in Australia by Penguin Random House this month.

“Obama and I were absolutely of the same mind that the international system could not stand eight years of Trump,” Mr Turnbull recalled, “the damage would be irretrievable.” The former president and the then prime minister feared the cost of Mr Trump’s presidency.

Mr Obama was rounding up world leaders, especially from the centre-right, who could stand up to Mr Trump and influence his policies. The former president said German chancellor Angela Merkel would need to “stay in power as long as possible to be bulwark against Trump and the forces of protectionism.”

When Mr Turnbull asked who could defeat Mr Trump at the next election, in November 2020, he replied that he was not optimistic that he could be ejected from the White House. Mr Obama said there was no “obvious candidate” who could challenge Mr Trump. He did not mention Joe Biden.

Speaking to the Rekindling Hope podcast, hosted by Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen and former McKell Institute CEO, Sam Crosby, Mr Dovere revealed the meeting had a big impact.

When Mr Obama returned to the US, he began repeating Mr Turnbull’s assessment that America could withstand four years of Trump, but not eight.

“That meeting was an important moment,” Mr Dovere said. “After that trip and after that conversation with Turnbull, Obama starts saying something which then becomes part of the larger political conversation. Biden starts talking about it too.”

Mr Obama first appealed to Mr Turnbull to stand up to Mr Trump at the APEC meeting in Peru, held in November 2016. He argued that because Mr Turnbull was “an Australian conservative” this would have some weight with Mr Trump.

“(Obama) says, ‘Look, you can appeal to him because Trump thinks in these very black and white terms,” Mr Dovere says in the podcast. “When he hears the word conservative, he thinks you are like a hard-line conservative by American standards.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/barack-obama-asked-malcolm-turnbull-for-help-with-donald-trump/news-story/c58179aa3fa355b74cc4fcfe62b7471f

Race on for new Wuhan inquiry

TIM DODD - AUGUST 26, 2021

Scientists who were tasked by the World Health Organisation to probe the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic are calling for an urgent start to the inquiry’s second phase lest crucial evidence about the origin of the virus be lost.

The call from the WHO team comes ahead of the expected release in coming days of the review commissioned by US President Joe Biden of whether the virus leaked from a top secret research laboratory in Wuhan.

China has already rejected a WHO call for a second phase of the inquiry into the origin of the virus, with deputy health minister Zeng Yixin last month labelling it “political interference”.

The 11 independent members of the WHO team warn in an article in the latest edition of science journal Nature that “the window of opportunity for conducting this crucial inquiry is closing fast”.

“Any delay will render some of the studies biologically impossible,” write the group of 11 scientists on the WHO team, which includes University of Sydney ­microbiologist Dominic Dwyer.

In the Nature article they also say the team of Chinese scientists working on the inquiry “was and still is reluctant to share raw data, citing reasons of patient confidentiality”.

They have ignored demands from the WHO to access the information, the article states.

The withheld data includes details of 174 Covid cases identified in December 2019 before the new infectious disease had been reported to the world.

The 11 scientists also say it was agreed that the second phase of the inquiry – which was recommended in the WHO report published in March this year – would include a review of these cases.

In the article, the scientists call for the inquiry’s second phase to focus on several key priorities including further traceback studies and antibody surveys to search for early evidence of Covid circulating, traceback and community surveys at wildlife farms which supplied the Wuhan markets, surveys of animals to locate possible Covid hosts, and detailed risk factor analysis. They said the surveys and traceback studies should be conducted both inside and outside China.

Speaking to The Australian, Professor Dwyer said that the process to identify Covid’s origins had “dragged on”.

“That delay is going to make doing some of the investigation in those recommendations more difficult. The longer that takes the harder it is to do certain parts of the work,” he said.

Asked about the theory the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab, Professor Dwyer said the WHO report didn’t rule out the possibility, “it just didn’t find evidence to find it a likely cause”. And he said the team’s call to anyone with data supporting the lab leak theory to bring it forward had not led to new evidence appearing.

Professor Dwyer said the team of 11 scientists was not able to work independently to seek data to test the lab leak theory.

“You can’t waltz in and demand to see the books. It (China) is a sovereign country. There are international agencies which have to take the lead,” he said.

In the Nature article, the 11 scientists are at pains to say that investigating the possibility that the virus originated in a lab was not part of the original terms of reference given to them by the WHO.

But they say that because the laboratory origin hypothesis was “too important to ignore” they discussed it with Chinese counterparts and included it as a possibility in the March report.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science/race-on-for-new-wuhan-inquiry/news-story/52a2510f14617e20d550ab2d6f2276e9

Revealing four-step US misinformation campaign against China on virus origins tracing

The rumor-mongering loop

GT staff reporters - Aug 25, 2021

1/3

Editor's Note:

On tracing COVID-19 origins, the US government has been making groundless accusations targeting China based on speculation and disinformation, but never on science and facts. The virus origins tracing mission in the US has been led by intelligence departments, which have a notorious record of creating disinformation for politicization purposes, and most of the rumors concocted by the US surround the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Focusing on the rumors and those who are behind the defamation campaign, the Global Times shall publish two in-depth reports on Wednesday and Thursday to expose the lowdown tricks employed in the West' COVID-19 origins campaign.

The US-waged conspiracy theories warfare against China on virus origins tracing has clearly witnessed two stages. Former president Donald Trump jumped on the virus origins issue to blatantly blame China for the virus but social media platforms were reluctant to cooperate with him. The Biden administration followed Trump's strategy to drill on the "lab leak theory" to politicize the pandemic and stigmatize China.

How did the US' rumor campaign manifest itself? The typical process has been: The media first cites unfounded sources to propose conspiracy theories, and influential politicians hype up the theories with web trolls widely spreading it on social media platforms. Scientists then come out with hedged explanations to give room for conspiracy theory growth, and finally the top administrators pressure intelligence agencies to launch so called investigations against China.

Experts have said it is a sustained blow by the US political elites, media, and intelligence agencies.

Trump's virus rumor offensive

The US started vigorously carrying forward misleading assertions against China as early as January 2020, when the US-based newspaper the Washington Times published a report with a sensational headline meant to link the coronavirus disease origin with "China's biowarfare program."

The report attracted global attention soon after and triggered the first wave of the US' campaign to claim China's culpability by introducing the conspiracy that the coronavirus disease had originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Republican Senator Tom Cotton became the first in a batch of high-profile US politicians to fuel the fringe theories across the media starting in February 2020.

He introduced various potential scenarios of the virus origin on his Twitter account, from a manmade possibility to a lab accident, despite a group of 27 senior international scientists having publicly condemned the conspiracy of a manmade virus while overwhelmingly supporting the natural spread theory in The Lancet on February 18.

On April 18, 2020, then US president Donald Trump said at a White House briefing that the US government had probed the "Wuhan lab-leak" claim, but failed to provide any evidence to substantiate the unproven theory.

The claim then gathered momentum among many senior US politicians who wrote op-eds calling for a response from the Chinese government and a so-called "serious investigations" into it. Mike Pompeo, then US secretary of state and former CIA director, a well-known hard-liner against China, took the lead in pushing the US intelligence circle to launch investigation.

(continued)

>>14461827

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With mounting pressure from top politicians, the campaign next compelled US intelligence into the campaign to launch a so-called serious investigation, though there remained skepticism about there being any possible evidence to support it.

The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community released a statement declaring that the intelligence community "concurs with the scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified," but stressed that they would continue to "rigorously examine emerging information" to determine the conclusion's accuracy.

US media has reported that senior Trump administration officials then pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan was the origin of the coronavirus disease outbreak, The New York Times reported.

Meanwhile, powerful voices in the US were ramping up efforts to rebrand COVID-19 as "the China virus," amplifying the conspiracies.

Twitter accounts of Trump supporters and US conspiracy-mongers endorsing the QAnon movement have been at the center of a coordinated blatant campaign to spread rumors about the coronavirus disease, particularly the conspiracy theory that China created the virus as a bioweapon. This unverified accusation repeatedly embraced by the US president and his administration led many to suspect the far-right's motivations behind the coordinated Twitter campaign.

Although the rumor war was successfully waged by a combination of politicians, the media, and right-wing internet users, worldwide mainstream scientists remained skeptical about it. They argued its negligible probability, emphasizing the higher likelihood of the virus having transmitted naturally to humans from animals as other types of challenging viruses including Ebola and SARS.

Mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook have also since banned relevant posts containing rumors like "coronavirus is manmade."

Lab leak theory campaign 2.0

As Joe Biden won US presidency, the "lab leak theory" was quickly reignited, with a new round of mudslinging among US politicians and media. This time, it was again geared up to become a well-prepared and closely coordinated one-two punch against China by the US media and the US political establishment.

The second round of "lab leak" conspiracy war against China was triggered by the Wall Street Journal's report on May 23. The story cited an unpublished report coming from the final days of the Trump administration, alleging several researchers at the Wuhan lab had fallen ill in the autumn of 2019 and displayed symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.

WIV lab director Yuan Guoyong in an interview with the Global Times clearly refuted the WSJ's report on sick staff, calling the US intelligence document "a complete lie." The institute, as early as on March 23, publically clarified that it had no contact with the SARS-CoV-2 before December 30, 2019, and as of that date, the staff and researchers at the lab had revealed no COVID-19 infection. Chinese health authorities also clarified on March 31 that the three patients were not WIV staffers, but patients being treated at a local hospital that WIV worked with.

The WSJ's report was published on the eve of the World Health Assembly, which was expected to discuss the next phase of the research into COVID-19's origins, with speculation that such media hypes had aimed to redirect the trajectory of the next phase of investigations.

Soon CNN also followed suit and set up a special "Wuhan Lab" column on the upper right corner of its homepage on May 26 during the WHA.

(continued)

>>14461828

3/3

Concurrently, social media platforms started "unblocking" conspiracy theories. Facebook on May 28 claimed that it would no longer be removing posts that claim the coronavirus disease was manmade amid renewed debate over its origins. The policy change came as Biden announced he had ordered aides to find answers to the origin of the virus.

The academic arena stepped in to collaborate as well. Even Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the US, had shifted his long-held position that the COVID-19 virus developed naturally, and he then changed course to claim that relevant authorities "should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened."

Fauci's shifting stand on the virus origins issue, though perplexing, diminished doubts about US elites betraying their conscience due to political pressure.

As many international scientists loath the US' politicization of the issue, they oppose the US' stance and refuse to support the US government. However, the US government still continued its onslaught of threats, including doxing of scientists and their families, censoring of papers, and forcing employers to apply pressure on targeted scientists, a source close to the matter told the Global Times.

Under the attack of the US media and US academia, the US government quickly stoked up and demanded an investigation into the alleged truth.

On the day before Biden ordered an expedited investigation into the novel coronavirus disease source, US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on May 25 urged the WHO to follow a "transparent" probe in the origins issues, pressing Biden for further investigation.

Biden then doubled down on his request that intelligence community redouble their efforts in investigating and report back to him within 90 days.

At the same time, countries attending WHOs annual meeting of member states including European Union member states, Australia and Japan on May 25 called for a need to solve the mystery of how COVID-19 first began spreading among humans.

China rejected WHO's phase-2 COVID-19 origins study plan that was proposed as the US-led West intensified the politically driven conspiracy about a "lab leak" theory, due to the plan's "lack of respect for common sense and arrogance toward science."

Experts point out that the current US government, while criticizing Trump for spreading conspiracy theories about the virus, is continuing Trump's strategy of politicizing the epidemic.

"This campaign against China connected the basic components of the American mainstream political establishment - the government, the media, and members of Congress. The media created those claims citing alleged 'exclusive sources' which are most likely confidential leaks of presumed conclusions by senior politicians. This is a typical American political operation - power overtops the truth," Li Haidong, professor at the Institute of International Relations at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.

The US intelligence arena itself has been highly politicized since the 1970s. Far from being an institution that provides balanced and objective analysis to decision makers, it offers conclusions that cater to the mainstream political atmosphere, Li said. The virus origins probe campaign by the US reflects a typical politically manipulated American decisionmaking process, which is bound to be a tragedy in the end.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1232445.shtml

>>14404558

Dutton apologises to cleared SAS troops

Matt Coughlan - August 26, 2021

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has apologised to any special forces troops wrongly accused of war crimes in Afghanistan.

A group of 13 soldiers has been told there is insufficient evidence for their cases to be referred to investigators after being told last year to prove why they shouldn't be sacked.

Mr Dutton said he wanted to send a clear message when he took over the portfolio that he would have soldiers' backs.

"If people have been wrongly accused and they've now been cleared of that then I do apologise for what they've been through, what their families have been through," he told Sydney radio 2GB on Thursday.

The Brereton inquiry found credible evidence Australian troops murdered 39 Afghans and uncovered allegations of torture and other war crimes.

A special investigator was established to examine the claims.

"If people have got criminal charges to answer then that's a matter for the courts but for the rest, we move on from that chapter now," Mr Dutton said.

The defence minister said the allegations had reverberated across the Australian Defence Force and the Special Air Service.

"I know that it's had a big impact on the partners, the families of their mates that weren't there or haven't been accused of anything," he said.

"They've obviously got a tight-knit group where the wives are friends. They obviously feel the pain of what that particular family is going through."

Mr Dutton in April overturned Chief of Defence Angus Campbell's decision to strip meritorious unit citations from more than 3000 special forces soldiers.

One of the 13 soldiers, who was told there was not enough evidence to refer the allegations to investigators, is in Afghanistan assisting with rescue operations.

The minister said he wanted the focus to be on the work of the SAS in Kabul, given there were anxious families awaiting the troops' return.

https://www.perthnow.com.au/politics/dutton-apologises-to-cleared-sas-troops-c-3784102

>>14395401

Marine Rotational Force – Darwin Facebook Post

U.S. Marines and Australian Army forces hosted leaders from Forces Command to observe units training during Exercise Koolendong. Exercise Koolendong validates MRF-D’s and the ADF’s ability to conduct expeditionary command and control operations, demonstrating the shared commitment to being ready to respond to a crisis or contingency in the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Micha Pierce)

https://www.facebook.com/MRFDarwin/posts/200640652098426

>>14413620

Extremists hunt cops online as anti-lockdown violence surges

STEPHEN RICE - AUGUST 26, 2021

As police hunt down protesters photographed at anti-lockdown rallies, activists are posting the names and images of police online, threatening retribution and even death against individual officers.

Photographs of the senior Victorian police officer alleged to have ordered pepper ball rounds fired into crowds in Melbourne CBD on Saturday are being circulated on social media, with calls for him to be tried and executed.

A superintendent from the Special Operations Group, a sergeant pictured holding a weapon and other officers – whom The Australian has elected not to name – are identified in multiple ­accounts on encrypted platforms like Telegram.

“Put police like this in front of a firing squad,” says one.

“Hang them,” urge others.

Victoria Police said it was aware of threats made to police ­officers following Saturday’s rally and they were being investigated.

“This behaviour is not on – it’s criminal and Victoria Police will hold people to account for their ­actions” a spokesman said.

Counter-terrorism police fear pent-up anger and frustration evident in clashes around the country at the weekend will foster lone-wolf acts of terror, particularly as public protests are shut down by overwhelming shows of force.

The Australian Federal Police said it was witnessing the number of individuals who adhered to ideo­logically motivated violent extremism continuing to increase and spread across the country, with more people in forced isolation communicating with like-minded individuals on social media.

“Increased time spent online has seen extremist narratives ­influencing a broad mainstream audience,” an AFP spokesman said. “Where we see commentary cross into potential for a commitment to violent acts, we will act.

“If people commit a crime, they will be charged.”

State-based fixated persons units are paying attention to known individuals organising protest actions next week that include plans to blockade government buildings. A call to rally at federal and state parliament houses next Tuesday is causing concern among security agencies after the organiser, Karen Brewer, posted thinly veiled death threats against a NSW minister The Australian has elected not to identify.

“You … will be swinging from a rope and your carcass will be dumped in the sea,” she told her 13,000 followers on social media, attaching a photograph of the politician with a spider superimposed on his face.

Brewer is a conspiracy theorist who believes “child-raping Freemasons” occupy all positions of power in Australia, from parliament to the judiciary and police, and they must be arrested and put on trial. Like many previously ­single-interest conspiracy theorists, she has adopted violent anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown rhetoric.

Brewer warned that “any politician shredding anything, just so you know, those ropes will be swing regardless”. She also posted photographs of the Governor-General and the state governors, along with their addresses. Several followers responded by calling for the death of named politicians, government officials and journalists.

Brewer is in hiding in New Zealand after an $875,000 damages award against her for falsely accusing Nationals MP Anne Webster of being a member of a secretive pedophile network.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/extremists-hunt-cops-online-as-antilockdown-violence-surges/news-story/fae8cf9751f1fbc605922434419ea8a8

>>14385947

Australia's Afghanistan evacuation mission ends amid Kabul airport suicide bombing

Jake Evans - 27 August 2021

Australian troops had left Afghanistan before a deadly suicide bombing attack that killed soldiers and civilians at Kabul's international airport, Defence Minister Peter Dutton says.

At least 60 people including 13 US troops were killed in two bomb blasts orchestrated by Islamic State group (IS) offshoot ISIS-K.

Mr Dutton said the blasts occurred at the Baron Hotel and Abbey Gate airport entrance, where Australians were being brought through, but that Australian soldiers were safe.

"I can confirm that not too long before the attack Australian troops and the rest of our personnel were wheels up and out of Kabul," Mr Dutton said.

"I'm just so grateful they are safe."

The Defence Minister confirmed Australia's military evacuation mission has ended.

'Impossible' decision to leave Australians still seeking escape

Australians and visa holders who remain have been told to keep away from Kabul airport.

Mr Dutton said intelligence suggested more terrorist attacks were planned.

"There was very clear intelligence that [ISIS-K] intended to strike and strike hard, they've done that," he told Channel 9.

"People should avoid gatherings, they should avoid public places, and they should be very careful of their own safety and security in what is a war-like condition."

The Defence Minister said some people had received advice to travel to other borders following the attack.

The government had been preparing for some time for a situation in which it was not be able to get everyone it wanted out of Kabul.

But Mr Dutton said it was still a difficult decision to leave Kabul airport.

"It's an impossible situation, because the intelligence was clear to us that if we allowed our soldiers to stay on with the near certainty of terrorist attacks, then we would lose … Australian lives," he said.

"That wasn't a risk we were prepared to take.

"We hope that the Taliban is true to their word and provides a reinstatement of a situation where [commercial] flights can come in and out."

He said Australian forces had rescued more than 4,000 people from Kabul airport since the beginning of the evacuation mission, and they would be grieving the attack.

"It's a horrible, horrible day, and I just grieve like every decent person would at the loss of life, and in particular for us the loss of American lives."

"These are people who have helped literally thousands of Australian citizens and visa holders, permanent residents through those gates, through Abbey Gate into the airport."

In a tweet, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he was "deeply saddened" by the deaths of US military personnel and Afghans.

"We mourn your tragic loss. Australia condemns these heinous and barbaric attacks," he wrote.

US President Joe Biden has vowed revenge on ISIS-K.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-27/kabul-airport-suicide-bombing-australian-soldiers-depart/100411880

>>14385947

>>14471808

Prime Minister Scott Morrison mourns deaths of 'American and Afghan friends' in Kabul airport attack

Jake Evans - 27 August 2021

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he grieves with "American and Afghan friends" over the deaths of dozens in a terror attack outside Kabul airport.

"Australia condemns the evil, the calculated and inhuman attacks that were undertaken in Kabul overnight on the innocent and on the brave," Mr Morrison said.

"We join with our American and Afghan friends in mourning their terrible and awful loss."

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the government had been unable to confirm whether or not any Australians or visa holders were injured or killed in the attack.

At least 60 people were killed in twin suicide bombing attacks at the gates of Kabul's international airport.

Mr Morrison said Australian troops had been helping citizens through Kabul airport's Abbey Gate just hours before the attack.

"We are mindful of the reported 13 US military personnel who were murdered at the Abbey Gate at Kabul, a gate at which Australian personnel stood just hours before," he said.

"And like Australians who have been at that same airport and at that same gate and many others like it, over the course of these operations, these brave young Americans stood at that gate to protect lives, to save lives, but lost their own in providing a pathway to freedom for others."

The last Australian troops were pulled out of Kabul airport just before the attack.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton confirmed the Australian evacuation mission out of Afghanistan has ended.

Australian forces evacuated 4,100 people in the nine days between when the Taliban first entered Kabul and the terror attack.

Mr Morrison said the opportunity for remaining Australians to leave with allied forces was "restricted".

Senator Payne said those remaining should keep away from the airport.

"We know that this is a very distressing situation for Australians still in Kabul, for people with visas and for families and friends who are here in Australia," she said.

No plans for Australia to return as US vows revenge

Mr Morrison said he conveyed his condolences to United States President Joe Biden this morning.

Mr Biden has vowed revenge on the attackers, Islamic State Khorasan, a branch of Islamic State group in Afghanistan.

The government decided to airlift its last troops out of Kabul on Thursday, despite some Australians remaining in the city still seeking to flee, on "credible" intelligence a terror attack was being planned.

Mr Dutton said intelligence suggested it was highly likely there would be further attacks.

Mr Morrison said there were no plans for Australian forces to return to the chaos of Afghanistan.

"We have been there for 20 years seeking to turn a failed state into a successful state, and sadly that hasn't proved possible," he said.

"It remains an extremely dangerous place."

'Post-evacuation' plan to bring Afghan refugees begins

Mr Morrison said Australia would now move into a "post-evacuation stage" where the government would seek to resettle people through humanitarian channels.

3,000 places within the national annual intake of refugees have been reserved for Afghans fleeing the Taliban.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said priority for those places would be given to minority groups, women and children and people with family members already in Australia.

"This work is well underway and in the coming weeks and months we will be in a position to welcome more people to Australia to either return home or to call Australia home," Ms Andrews said.

Mr Morrison said Australia will continue to support its allies who remain in Kabul.

"We will continue to stand every single day with our partners, the United States and the United Kingdom. As they stand in the cause of freedom, so will we also," he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-27/scott-morrison-kabul-airport-attack-afghans-us-soldiers/100412192