Australia is murdering people and threatening democracy. That’s the reality of Anthony Albanese kissing Donald Trump’s ring this week, writes Michael Pascoe.
Let’s be clear about this. If you support a criminal gang, provide it with weapons, keep schtum about its crimes, either pay bribes or accept being extorted, you are an accessory to everything the thugs and hitmen do.
That’s us, as represented by our government bowing before Donald Trump.
When Trump exercises massive economic coercion on Brazil because that democracy’s judiciary is dealing, as it should, with an attempted coup (unlike the United States), we’re supporting him.
When Trump threatens Brazilians with further unspecified pain if they don’t vote for his preferred right-wing candidate, we’re supporting him.
We’re all the way with Donald J, all the way with the mob that is the US administration.
When Trump, on zero legal basis, orders suspected smugglers to be summarily executed in international waters, we’re on his side. When he leans on corporations for a piece of their action, we’re okaying it. Heck, we’re joining the conga line offering a slice.
As a Trump vassal state, we’ve moved beyond merely being America’s Deputy Dawg in the South Pacific to active backers of Trump’s global shakedown.
The “rules-based international order” was always a façade for self-interest. Now it’s a pathetic joke, high farce, darkly ironic. Just as Trump’s Supreme Court has declared him above the law, Trump has declared the United States beyond any law, a piracy state free to exploit, extort, betray, reneg and kill at will.
Ready to kiss the ring
The local media demanding for months that the Australian Prime Minister have the opportunity to play a humble fool in the White House have their wishes fulfilled this week.
Embarrassingly, our major newspapers are reporting as a good thing that Albanese will either, depending on your perspective, bribe or be willingly extorted by Trump to curry favour with the lawless mob.
Rather than support free trade and that rules-based international order thing, we are expected to act like the sycophantic American companies and “give” Trump a large gift. Another billion dollars towards America’s military capacity is just an appetiser.
More galling, the reported main aim in compromising whatever moral stance Australia might once have had is to keep alive the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal. We’re compromising ourselves to further compromise our military sovereignty by locking into the American military’s strategic aims. “Integration”, as the American cheerleaders in the local security and military game call it.
And all complying with Paul Keating’s criticism that our governments keep seeking security from Asia when we should be seeking security within it.
As stated here before, contrary to the perspective of nearly all Australian media, most of the world is not in the Trump or China camps. Most countries recognise the failures of both those powers and seek to tread an independent path.
Not Albanese’s ALP or whoever’s LNP. Having already surrendered sovereignty by inviting and hosting American military and espionage bases, we’re doubling down by funding the American military machine on a bipartisan basis and mutely approving Trump’s international transgressions.
There is no pride in this, only a stain. Acting without integrity, supporting a bullying criminal, we are
accessories to everything that untrustworthy self-aggrandising joke of a US president does.
That’s Australia, us, you and me.
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.