Wednesday 24th of April 2024

sinking to the bottom...

subsubDocuments show Australia issued numerous warnings that its submarine deal with France was at risk, with a 2020 report from Canberra’s Auditor-General flagging concerns that the agreement was not in the national interest.

Australian officials have stood by their decision to turn to the new AUKUS deal to build submarines, citing documents going back several years that highlighted Canberra’s concerns about delays, cost overruns and suitability of the vessels made by France.

A 2018 independent oversight board, headed up by the former US Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter, suggested Australia seek alternative options to the French naval project and a 2020 Auditor-General report cited concerns about whether the French deal was in the national interest.

The 2020 Future Submarine Program report, examining the French deal, which, at the time, represented “the largest Defence procurement in Australia’s history,” was clear about the increased risk of the planned acquisition, set to cost more than AUD$50 billion (USD $36.24 billion). The independent Auditor-General’s office warned that concerns were growing over potential further delays, which could “create a gap in [the] Navy’s submarine capability.”

Independent Senator for South Australia Rex Patrick, who served in the Royal Australian Navy, declared this week that France “would have to have their eyes shut not to realize the danger they were facing,” referring to the risk of the deal being scrapped.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison stood by the AUKUS deal on Monday, telling reporters at the UN Conference in New York that “we chose not to [proceed with the deal] because we believed to do so would ultimately not be in Australia’s interests.”

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/535431-documents-australia-france-submarine-deal/

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.....

the deal is a conspiracy...

The manner in which the deal was cut and the deal itself are folly by a fake evangelical primal minister of a fair country. The French and all of Europe should be weary. The US, even under the not so loony but derelict Joe Biden CANNOT BE TRUSTED. The submarines are secondary to the affair. What matters is that the US, the UK and Australia (already members of their 5 eyes spying organisation that spies on its friends as well as its designated enemies) have made a deal that shows their sneaky ways to revive the US empire just after it took a torpedo in Afghanistan. 

The old gambit "the national interest" shows that the Liberal (CONservative) government of Australia, is playing politics AT HOME (building subs in Adelaide to suit their devious political hubris at election time and salvage Pyne) then ditch the INTERNATIONAL contracts to suit their conspiratorial mates who speak the same lingo. If you don't see a conspiracy, you're as blind as Scummo-the-liar and dirty dealer.

The next part of this saga will be to polish the French ego, to make sure Europe plays the game of US empire. Would I be the European, I would go cold on these traitors and start being INDEPENDENT. Throw NATO out, build your own defence network, now that the UK has brexited. And don't tell a single English speaking person what your plans are. And be weary, every deal you make between yourselves, do it in secrecy and in places where electronics don't work, like in a faraday cage. I mean it. 

"La brosse à reluire"? It's a French euphemism for "the brush that hypocritically polish someone else's ego"

You've been had. Don't fall for the trick again... The French have a La Fontaine fable:

The Crow and the Fox...

 

The Crow and the Fox

At the top of a tree perched Master Crow;
In his beak he was holding a cheese.
Drawn by the smell, Master Fox spoke, below.
The words, more or less, were these:
"Hey, now, Sir Crow! Good day, good day!
How very handsome you do look, how grandly distingué!
No lie, if those songs you sing
Match the plumage of your wing,
You’re the phoenix of these woods, our choice."
Hearing this, the Crow was all rapture and wonder.
To show off his handsome voice,
He opened beak wide and let go of his plunder.
The Fox snapped it up and then said, "My Good Sir,
Learn that each flatterer
Lives at the cost of those who heed.
This lesson is well worth the cheese, indeed."
The Crow, ashamed and sick,
Swore, a bit late, not to fall again for that trick.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.........................

 

compare the subs...

On paper the US subs, the UK subs and the French subs are somewhat equivalent. The major problem was the Australian government demanding diesel power rather than nuclear. Whether the US, UK or French sub, this would create some redesign problems. In regard to armament, the US, UK and French subs are designed to carry NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Is this the road that the Scum-dog government is taking Australia, slowly? Using a nuclear submarine without nuclear weapon is like having a broom with no brush. It's a stick.

 

And despite being "a stick", these new useless weapons make Australia a greater target of "enemies" should we have one. I would place the scorned French approaching this category, though they might ignore the "kangourou" and dump champagne on the Aussie shores nonetheless, making this household happy....

 

"NOT HAPPY, SCUM!" shall be our views of Scomo and his band of idiots... This of course is in line with "NOT HAPPY, JOHN!", the line that started our existence. The point now is (what we knew all along — 10,000+ read) who is the worse of the Australian Primal Ministers has been resolved in the affirmative: SCOMO is the prince of thieves, the most devious of kings, the hypocritical bottom-feeder evangelical, the clown that Australia does not deserve but got — because of Uncle Rupert...

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.........................

 

targettarget

 

Australia’s decision to join with the United States and the United Kingdom to build Australian long-range nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) has little to do with the defence of Australia.

 

The aim is to make possible an Australian contribution to US battle plans against China which that country will view as profoundly threatening with implications also for war planning by Russia, North Korea and other nuclear-armed states.

Even leaving aside the fiscal profligacy and defence opportunity costs for Australia of the literal blank cheque issued by the Morrison government, the nuclear submarine decision takes Australia into the heart of naval warfighting in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Further, the Australian nuclear submarine decision will have knock-on effects in Japan and the Republic of Korea, leading them not only to move their already highly capable submarine fleets to nuclear power, but also thereby heighten the likelihood they will then equip those submarines with nuclear weapons.

For several decades the US has been concerned to negate two military advances the Chinese regard as essential protection against literally existential threats. The Australian submarines will be designed primarily to contribute to negating both of those military advances.

Firstly, over the past decade China has constructed the basis for a submarine-based nuclear deterrence force that could survive the effects of an expected US attack against Chinese land-based nuclear missile sites. If Chinese nuclear missile-launching submarines can safely get out of their homeports and reach the depths of the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea they may have a small chance of remaining undetected by highly superior US anti-submarine warfare platforms — including US and now possible Australian hunter-killer submarines.

If those Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are found and destroyed, especially after US attacks on Chinese ground-launched missile silos, and US and Japanese ballistic missile defence destroying most of the missiles that are launched by China, then, in the Chinese view, China in fact has no survivable nuclear-deterrence force. Whatever the validity deterrence by a balance of vulnerability — or of terror — may have, without a survivable second strike, China has no effective nuclear deterrence against the United States.

China’s four operational nuclear missile submarines are mainly based in the north of the South China Sea on the island of Hainan. China’s militarisation of its concrete islands in the South China Sea is in large part motivated by a desire to provide extended defence in depth for those SSBNs.

The fundamental requirement for that capability — apart from questions of missile range, crew training and naval submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and nuclear submarine doctrinal development — is that the submarines are able to reach the deeps of the western Pacific undetected by US and Japanese anti-submarine warfare (ASW) sensor networks. Only there do they have any chance of fulfilling their intended role as a second strike nuclear deterrent force immune to US attack. One key part of US ASW capabilities, in addition to the Fish Hook underwater surveillance network from Japan to the boundary of the South China Sea, are its attack submarines hunting Chinese ballistic missile submarines. Australia’s submarines could play a modest but frontline role, especially in the waters to the west of Borneo, the Philippines and Japan.

For this reason alone, China will view Australia’s decision as a wilful contribution to an existential nuclear threat to China.

The same strategic logic applies to the Russian strategic missile submarines operating from Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russia has recently rebuilt this force with the latest Borei class submarines operating in the “strategic bastion” of the Sea of Okhotsk and beyond into the Pacific and Arctic oceans. US nuclear attack submarines track these submarines, guided by the US-Japanese-Korean network of underwater acoustic sensors and with surface and aerial anti-submarine forces.

Secondly, Australian long-range attack submarines likely will be deployed in South-East and East Asian waters to protect US aircraft carrier task forces moving into position close to China for attacks on Chinese coastal facilities, as well as against Russian or North Korean land-based forces. US and coalition SSNs will hunt and try to destroy Chinese submarines lying in wait for the US carriers; or stand as one of the point guards that move in advance of US aircraft carrier battlegroups as they move around.

China has devoted a great deal of money and energy to developing the naval, air and missile capabilities to deny US carrier battle groups the access they had in the past to Chinese waters and its immediate coastal zone inside the island chain from Japan to the Philippines.

US carrier battle groups aided by Australian submarines do not in themselves constitute an existential threat to China, but they do open a vulnerability that the US would certainly not accept for itself.

Moreover, given the acknowledged risks of escalation to use of nuclear weapons in what may begin as a conventional war on the Korean peninsula, especially together with a Taiwan crisis, Australian submarines attached to US carrier battle groups may be sailing into a nuclear war.

Australian nuclear submarines may not be allocated offensive missions against Chinese, Russian or eventually North Korean ballistic missile firing submarines. But the roles that they likely will be allocated in American naval operations in the western Pacific, especially in aircraft battlegroups deployed against Russia, China, or North Korea, will enable US anti-submarine operations against the nuclear forces of these states.

Other lone-wolf long-distance missions for Australian nuclear submarines can be envisioned such as inserting special forces onto land, blockading straits, but none of these can justify the crushing direct cost and massive opportunity cost to the rest of Australia’s armed forces already short of essential capacity to defend Australia’s territory against actual maritime attack.

The AUKUS project for Australian nuclear submarines carries a third nuclear risk. Much has been written about the implications of damage to French amour propre, not to say export income, but the US decision to allow Australia highly preferential access to sensitive submarine technologies only allowed out of the US once before when the US gave such access to Britain in the 1950s.

For Japan and the Republic of Korea, both US allies of considerably greater military and political significance to the US than Australia, the nuclear submarine technology export to Australia will have two consequences.

Japan and South Korea both have advanced indigenously developed and constructed submarine fleets, for which they will demand equal treatment from the US, further stimulating the dynamic underwater arms race in East Asia.

But more importantly this break-out will occur at a time when powerful political elements in both countries are pressing the case for indigenous nuclear weapons. The preferred nuclear-launch platform in both countries would be from submarines.

Anxiety in both countries about China-US tensions sits alongside not-so-latent long-standing doubts about the reliability of US promises of nuclear protection. Grievances flowing from the Australian submarine deal may well feed the domestic cases for Japanese and South Korean nuclear weapons.

The timing of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcements also merits some consideration. In our view, this project is a political stunt aimed to distract from Covid failures, please coalition constituencies, and split the Labor Party and render the Greens shrill and sidelined. In reality, it is likely that after a passage of years of staged announcements and pseudo-planning there will be little to show for it, and the enormously expensive, strategically ill-considered, and force-structure distorting project will quietly die.

But, to use Morrison’s phrase, “let us be clear”, in terms of Australian security, it is a gigantic nuclear election stunt that in the long run may increase the risk of nuclear war while drawing Chinese return fire on our vulnerable export sectors, including iron ore.

“To be clear” again, it is utterly mendacious of Morrison to say that these forces have nothing to do with nuclear weapons because Australian submarines won’t be so armed, assuming it does not cross that barrier in the future if the submarines ever come to pass. As noted above, they may play a crucial role in US nuclear strike and defence operations.

This capability has everything to do with nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war. The net detrimental effects on strategic instability caused by supplementing US forces devoted to strategic nuclear missions in the region may be substantial, especially in the perceptions of American nuclear adversaries who may well target Australia already, and must be properly analysed and debated before any decisions are made to proceed.

 

Read more:

https://johnmenadue.com/scott-morrisons-giant-nuclear-election-ploy/

 

Scott Morrison is a dangerous imbecile...

 

assangezassangez

after f**king unity, biden demands unity...

The gall of the teleprompter!:

 

In his first address to the United Nations, US President Joe Biden has urged global cooperation through "a decisive decade for our world".

His calls for unity come amid tensions with allies over the US' Afghanistan withdrawal and a major diplomatic row with France over a submarine deal.

The US also announced it was doubling its climate finance pledge by 2024.

Reaffirming his support for democracy and diplomacy, Mr Biden said: "We must work together like never before."

The 76th General Assembly in New York City takes place against the backdrop of a climate crisis and a once-in-a-century pandemic, both of which have sharpened global divides.

Mr Biden pushed for cooperation on these fronts, saying: "Whether we choose to fight for our shared future or not will reverberate for generations to come. Simply put, we stand, in my view, at an inflection point in history."

 

Read more Biden bullshit : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58642139

 

The new buzz word of the year, UNITY... It used to be Freedom... And please note: We've been at an inflection point in history, for the last 2000 years. Using corny clichés is a teleprompter's privilege...

 

FREEING JULIAN ASSANGE WOULD GO A LONNNNNNNGGGG WAY TOWARDS UNITY, BUSTER...