Thursday 25th of April 2024
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At some stage Albanese may need to re-examine Shearer’s role as head of the Office of National Intelligence.

Andrew Shearer did not expect to remain head of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI) after the election. It wouldn’t have been surprising if he were replaced from what is an extraordinarily powerful job at the pinnacle of the Australia’s sprawling intelligence apparatus. At the time of his appointment in 2020, a Labor staffer told journalists the Opposition had indicated to the then prime minister Scott Morrison that it didn’t have confidence in Shearer, describing him as a “partisan operative”. Others say he has a well established reputation as a right wing hawk keen to promote his own views. He has also worked for several military hawks including Tony Abbott when Prime Minister.

 

 

FROM BRIAN TOOHEY

 

However, the incoming prime minister Anthony Albanese immediately retained Shearer as the ONI head. Three hours after he was sworn in as prime minister, Albanese was flying to Japan with Shearer who briefed him at length about the forthcoming meeting of the Quad (the grouping of the US, Japan, India and Australia) set up to help contain China.

ONI gives Shearer privileged access to brief the prime minister in person every day.

Given all the other demands on a prime minister’s time, this access should be cut back. A briefing could be supplied in writing to a senior public servant or staff member from along with other views from other knowledgeable sources. Unfortunately, each side of politics now seems to treat intelligence as if it is always highly valuable. Instead, it has a terrible reputation for being badly wrong on major occasions. The phoney intelligence justifying the invasion of Iraq is a disastrous example. Paul Malone recently gave another example in Pearls & Irritations when he reported fresh evidence that US, UK and French planes bombed Syria in 2018 on the basis of false intelligence about Syria’s use of (non-existent) chemical weapons.

Albanese needs to spend a lot of time dealing on difficult issues facing his government, including the impact of floods, fires and rising prices. If he’s to make good on his statement on election night that Labor will ensure “no one is left behind”, he needs to focus on those at the bottom of the heap as well as deliver on promises to improve schools, lower the cost of childcare, reduce inequality, address rising Covid numbers, and make big breakthroughs on tackling global warming which is a primary concern of the Pacific Islands nations.

Fortunately, there is no plausible reason for treat China as a military threat to Australia requiring daily briefings and vast spending. In particular, there is no justification for Australia to spend at least $200 billion on nuclear submarines when modern conventionally powered ones are better, harder to detect, and available well before 2242 – the earliest date the first nuclear one could be operational.

Shearer got the job of getting Americans to offer to sell Australia nuclear submarines. It’s usually the task of departmental officials – not someone in charge of intelligence assessments – to take the leading role in choosing the best big-ticket defence acquisitions.

Less surprising Shearer and the head of Australian Secret Intelligence Service Paul Symon took an interest in the Solomon Islands. In April the Sydney Morning Herald reported from seemingly well based sources that Australian intelligence services knew a secret security pact between the Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavarre and China had been in the works for months and decided to encourage a leak from within the Solomons as a last resort to stop it. The SMH said the document was posted online on March 24 by an advisor to Sogavare’s rival Daniel Suidani, the Premier of Malaita. The SMH said it had confirmed “Australian spies were aware of the document before it appeared online and had a role in making it public, but declined to say what it was that role was”.

This was a long way from the earlier practice that neither Australian spies nor intelligence analysts should actively engage in “dirty tricks”, such as leaking against another country – in this case one that is a member of Australia’s “Pacific Family”.

Following the failure of the leak to stop a relatively modest agreement with China going ahead – it contained nothing about letting China build a military base there – Shearer and Paul Symon met with Sogavare to try to talk him out of the agreement. They failed. One larger point is why intelligence officials approaching a foreign political leader when this is properly is the job of diplomats.

Symon gave a speech at the Lowy Institute in May covering two issues of interest. One was his claim that an increasing number of disaffected Chinese officials are feeding information to Australian intelligence officers. It was an unusual disclosure for an intelligence chief that could that have alerted Chinese authorities to keep a closer eye on who’s in contact with Australia intelligence organisations. Secondly, during question time, he said what is going on in the Solomon Islands “is a very big deal for Australia, for the region and the citizens of the Solomon Islands”.

It’s not clear why it is such a big deal for Australia. The Solomon Islands is a sovereign country that can enter into an agreement with China if it wishes to provide police, and training for local police, after rioters burnt down Chinese businesses in the capital Honiara and looters destroyed shops. Sogavare said he won’t let China to build a naval base. Even if it did, it would be 2000 km from Australia. Other countries don’t panic because a neighbour that’s closer than that this has potentially hostile naval base.

The SMH said a Chinese naval base in the Solomon islands would strain Australian military resources and cut off shipping supply lines from Australia and New Zealand to Asia in the event of a conflict. This is most unlikely. Instead, the base would be of no significant military value as the long supply lines back to China could easily be interdicted and the base destroyed. What never gets a mention in these alarmist scenarios is that the US has five military bases on Pacific islands and it is getting more. The US is the country with the dominant military power in this region, not China.

The Pacific Islands Forum, which was held this year in Fiji from July 11 to 14, asked major powers not to speak at the leaders meeting on the last day. But US Deputy President Kamala Harris earlier gave a virtual address to the forum while China did not. It had spoken in earlier years. Harris said the US would establish two new embassies in the region and increase aid funding from $21 million a year to $60 million for 10 years. She also claimed that international rules and norms “have brought peace and stability to the Pacific for more than 75 years – principles that importantly state that sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states must be respected; principles that allow all states, big and small, to conduct their affairs free from aggression or coercion”.

That would be wonderful if true. The US and Australia engaged in a horrendous war in Vietnam which borders the Pacific Ocean. In a momentous act of foreign interference, the US also prevented an important election going ahead to unify Vietnam. The people of Indo-China were no threat to Australia or the US. But the US, and to lesser extent Australia, subjected them to death and disfigurement from carpet bombing, deliberate crop destruction, torture, massacres, assassinations, napalm, and dioxin – the persistent poison that still condemns anguished mothers to give birth to terribly deformed children they spend years nursing.

After having dinner with prime minister Sogavare while both were attending the forum, Anthony Albanese said he was “very confident” that there will be no Chinese bases in the Solomons. He should’ve been confident. Sagavare had made clear many months ago that there was no mention of a military base in the so-called security pact and one wouldn’t be built.

On the eve of this year’s forum, a group of former Pacific Island leaders urged Australia not to approve any new coal or natural gas projects because they were worried about global warming which seriously affects the islands. Australia did not agree But Albanese promised current leaders on Wednesday he would “bring a new era of cooperation” with the region.

Although the Forum has 18 members, four stayed away this year for various reasons, the most serious being that of Kiribati which complained Micronesian countries were not given as much power as the Polynesians. One commentator said Kiribati’s absence was due to Chinese influence, without offering a jot of evidence. Even if Kiribati doesn’t re-join, the US will be able to rely on three members that will never support China because they have Compacts of Free Association with America. Despite the title, they are de-facto colonies.

In any event, if Shearer was involved initiating a “dirty tricks” operation against the Solomons government, it would hardly help re-enforce Albanese’s messages of goodwill and cooperation to the forum.

At some stage Albanese may need to re-examine Shearer’s role as head of the Office of National Intelligence.

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-terrible-reputation-and-performance-of-intelligence-agencies/

 

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meanwhile in ukrainistan…….

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has fired Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova and the head of the country’s top security agency, Ivan Bakanov, citing allegedly rampant “treason” in both services.

In Sunday’s dramatic announcement, he claimed that a large numbers of staffers at Kiev’s successor to the KGB, the SBU —which Bakanov headed since 2019 — were working with Russia.

“As of today, some 651 criminal cases have been registered on high treason and collaboration activities of employees of the prosecutor’s office, pre-trial investigation bodies, and other law enforcement agencies,” Zelensky stated, announcing the decision.

Amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, “more than 60 employees of the law enforcement agencies and the SBU” remained in the “occupied territory” and are now working against Ukraine, Zelensky claimed. That vast “array of crimes,” as well as contacts between “employees of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine and Russia,” are posing “serious questions” to the heads of the respective bodies, he went on, warning that “every such question will get an appropriate answer.”

Bakanov, who assumed the spy-chief post shortly after Zelensky’s presidential victory in 2019, was removed under Article 47 of the Disciplinary Statute of the Ukrainian military. The article refers specifically to a serious failure in official duties “which caused loss of life or other grave consequences or create a threat of such consequences.”

While Bakanov’s successor has not been named yet, Venediktova, who had served as prosecutor general since March 2020, has been replaced by Oleksiy Symonenko.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/559149-reasons-why-sbu-head-prosecutor-fired/

 

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LITTLE SHIT ZELENSKYYYYYYYY-YYY-Y IS LUCKY HIS SBU DID NOT KILL HIM.... This is possibly because Zelenskyyy-yyyy is "Putin's Useful Idiot"....

 

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secrecy that push us into other people’s wars…..

 

BY Zacharias Szumer

 

Is playing deputy to America’s sheriff the reason Australian war powers remain unreformed? It’s clear that our politicians remain muddled on this critical issue, writes Zacharias Szumer.

For decades, minor parties in Australia have introduced bills seeking to give parliament greater control over military deployments. In the debates and inquiries that have followed, a wide range of objections have been raised.

We are told that, as military deployments are often made on the basis of confidential information, this information cannot be publicly disclosed to the parliament. Another common objection is that parliamentary decision-making would reduce the flexibility and speed needed to carry out military operations safely and effectively.

Most of the opposition to war powers reform, received as part of Michael West Media’s ongoing survey of politicians, follows similar lines. You can see myriad responses here.

However, some experts think there might be another reason — one that Australian pollies may be uncomfortable acknowledging.

Kowtowing to empires

Clinton Fernandes, professor of international and political studies at the University of NSW and former Australian army intelligence officer, contends that the bipartisan reluctance to infringe upon this executive prerogative should be understood within Australia’s ”sub-imperial” geopolitical strategy.

In basic terms, Australia has sought to integrate itself into the global strategy of great powers — firstly the British and, from 1942 onwards, the United States. In a 2020 article, Fernandes argues that this sub-imperial strategy has meant the “effective exclusion of the legislative and judicial branches of government from Australia’s national-security policy”.

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/this-means-war-how-australias-main-allies-take-the-biggest-step-a-nation-can-take/

 

Fernandes does not believe that Australian politicians and policy officials have been forced against their will into this position. Rather, he argues that Australia is an “active, eager participant in the US-led order” and restricting the Australian parliament’s control over the military has been “… a decision taken by the Australian government — at a bipartisan level — and implemented by senior policy planners.

“Australian strategic planners understand that this means a reduction in sovereignty, but they accept it because it achieves a higher objective — upholding US imperial power.” 

In addition to limiting parliament’s control over military deployments, Fernandes argues that Australia’s position as a “sub-imperial power” also limits parliamentary oversight of intelligence gathering. In the US, “intelligence committees and judiciary committees in the Senate and House of Representatives are regularly briefed about all authorised intelligence-collection programs, and relevant members of Congress receive detailed briefings prior to each re-authorisation,” Fernandes says. 

Five Eyes and whiteness

Meanwhile the Australian parliament has “deliberately restricted its own powers on intelligence matters” through measures such as the  Intelligence Services Act 2001 which ‘prevents the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security from ‘reviewing the intelligence gathering and assessment priorities’ or ‘reviewing particular operations that have been, are being or are proposed to be undertaken’ by ASIS, ASIO and the other intelligence agencies, and likewise ‘the sources of information, other operational assistance or operational methods’ available to the agencies”.

Dr Greg Lockhart, an historian and Vietnam War veteran, supports Fernandes’ argument, but stresses the importance of seeing Australia’s sub-imperial strategy through the lens of a wider “cultural self-deception” around racial anxieties. “Fear of the ‘yellow peril’ meant that our Anzac expeditionary strategic reflex was from its inception race-based,” he says. ‘It was also primarily defensive; it depended on “great and powerful” white friends for protection in our region; it has always depended on being in the Anglosphere”.

Dr Lockhart argues that, although the overtly racist rhetoric of the White Australia policy is largely a thing of the past, “our strategic culture is still inseparable from the Anglosphere, from wherein we have never needed to reassess its whiteness”.

Recently, he says, Australia has ”reaffirmed its whiteness in its commitment to expansion of the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing arrangements between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and, of course, to the controversial 2021 AUKUS nuclear submarine deal, which was nurtured in great secrecy”.

“And with secrecy comes deception. Sounding like a US proxy in the Pacific while asserting Australian ‘sovereignty’, Scott Morrison’s government “announces it is in ‘lockstep’ with “our allies”, while trumpeting the threat of China’s communism, territorial expansion, abuse of human rights, or its implied role as the origin of Covid 19 — anything but the anxiety about Chinese numbers, ethnic difference, and independent power that has shadowed Australian history since the 1800s – and that now determines the security culture’s mindless dependence on the US.’’   

Seen in this wider cultural context, Lockhart believes that “the Constitution was never going to impose legislative or judicial restraints on the autocratic war powers of the sub-imperial state. Since the First World War in 1914, almost every Anzac expedition has been a British or American imperial one. The exceptions are the Pacific campaign in 1942-1945 and Timor in 1999-2000. And in all those imperial campaigns the decision for war has been made undemocratically by the prime minister acting in secret conclave with only a handful of advisers”.

 

Parliamentary war powers

Fernandes and Lockhart aren’t alone in suggesting that there’s a relationship between strategic objectives and parliamentary control, or lack thereof, over the military. Intheir encyclopaedic 2010 study of war powers around the world, scholars Wolfgang Wagner, Dirk Peters and Cosima Glahn noted that several Central and Eastern European states — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia — abolished parliamentary approval for war in the process of joining the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

The authors argue that ‘’NATO accession apparently amplified the trade-off between creating legitimacy through procedures of ex ante parliamentary control and gaining efficiency through lean, executive-centred decision-making. From NATO’s perspective, having the governments of some member state tied by domestic parliamentary veto power must seem highly unattractive.’’

However, many of the more powerful NATO countries have far more wide-ranging parliamentary war powers than Australia or the aforementioned junior NATO partners. Although contested, the US War Powers Resolution significantly limits the President’s freedom to order military action without congressional authorisation.

For almost two decades in Germany, all major military deployments have been put to parliament for a vote. In the UK too, a parliamentary convention of seeking approval for military deployments in the House of Commons has also evolved over the past two decades.

 

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/the-dirty-secret-that-pushes-australia-into-other-peoples-wars/

 

 

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not fired yet….?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put forward a resolution to the country’s parliament to dismiss the head of Ukraine’s intelligence agency SBU, Ivan Bakanov, APA reports citing CNN. 

Zelensky suspended Bakanov and the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova on Sunday, as he announced an investigation into their departments, due to the alleged presence of Russian collaborators.

“In accordance with paragraph 14 of the first part of Article 106 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I am filing a motion to dismiss [Ivan] Bakanov from the post of Head of the Security Service of Ukraine,” the draft resolution reads.

The resolution will be discussed at the next plenary session, which is expected to take place in the next 24 hours.

 

READ MORE:

https://apa.az/en/europe/zelensky-submits-resolution-for-parliament-to-dismiss-ukraines-intelligence-head-381070

 

 

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