The Albanese Government wants to render Australian citizen Dan Duggan to the corrupt authoritarian regime of Donald Trump. Michael Pascoe wonders at what point we officially surrendered our national self-respect.
“It is clear that under this administration, federal authorities cannot be trusted to tell the truth,” the SMH’s Michael Koziol reported from Washington on Friday in an article detailing examples of those federal authorities repeatedly lying well before the slaughter of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
He was stating the obvious or at least what was obvious to anyone who has been paying any sort of attention to the rapid decline of the United States, but it needs to be stated.
The US Government is run by serial, obvious liars.
In the case of the president, it’s reasonable to doubt if he even knows the difference between true and false anymore. In quick order, Trump, his Vice-President and his Secretary of Homeland Security all blatantly lied about Renee Good’s killing, defying everyone to believe their eyes given the copious video evidence.
By Minneapolis’ own precedent of a policeman killing Australian Justine Ruszczyk in 2017, Ms Good’s death was at least manslaughter but Vice-President JD Vance declared the shooter was “protected by absolute immunity”.
FBI and courts compromised
The investigation has been taken over by the FBI, its credibility damaged by being “politically weaponised”. The FBI’s investigations of the many scores of people its own agents have shot over the past three decades found each and every one justified.
As for the US Justice Department, it has been hopelessly compromised and corrupted by the Trump administration, now used as an arm of the Trump gang. While the President grants pardons to various criminals who know how to deal with the family, his Justice Department has brought frivolous actions against those Trump considers his foes.
The US Supreme Court itself has been stacked by Republicans. Multiple major law firms have struck “deals” with Trump, donating some A$1.5 billion in free legal services to MAGA causes, in the process forsaking whatever legal principles lawyers are supposed to have. As the New York Times summarised:
“Mr. Trump is going after law firms that have hired attorneys he perceives as his political enemies, represented causes he has opposed or refused to represent people because of their conservative and right-wing political beliefs. Some firms are also being targeted for their hiring practices that advance the principle of having a diverse work force.”
And then there’s the international side of American lawlessness, Trump telling the New York Times that there was only one limit to his power on the global stage:
“My own morality. My own mind.”
This is the United States than uses the greatest military force the world has ever seen to murder defenceless survivors clinging to boat wreckage, that declares itself above international law.
No fog, no war. Hegseth’s war crimes put Australian soldiers at risk
One of this observer’s many frustrations is watching the way media dutifully report US actions such as oil tanker seizures as enforcing “sanctions” when the sanctions were simply unilateral concoctions by the US to enable coercion and, in this case, straight piracy.
(It’s an old trick. Queen Elizabeth issued “letters of marque” to pirates, giving them protection under English law for attacking and looting Spanish ships, never mind the bloodshed. Sir Frances Drake, John Hawkins, Walter Raleigh, all of them pirates, like the present US military.
As for the CIA, its director under Trump 1.0 and subsequent Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo boasted:
“We lied, we cheated, we stole, we had entire training courses.”
So in short after 600 words, the US legal system, its “justice” system, is severely compromised and seriously corrupted from top to bottom especially when there is any element of politics or foreign policy involved.
Australia the vassal state
Yet the Australian government, like a vassal state meekly doing as it is told, is pushing ahead with rendering an Australian unto that system on a Trump administration indictment without contesting or checking anything the US is claiming and in the knowledge that what the Australian is accused of was not against the law at the time.
Yes, I’m writing about Dan Duggan, again, because the appalling nature of our government’s betrayal of a citizen has been made even more obvious by the events of the past week.
As I’ve written here before, our Attorney-General’s willingness to surrender a fellow Australian to a dysfunctional foreign power with a deeply suspect justice system broke my faith in Australian government.
Un cri de coeur. Where to, when trust in our government is gone?
Duggan has been held in solitary confinement here for more than three years with a final decision on his extradition pending. He was arrested in 2022 on a 2017 (Trump 1.0) grand jury indictment for allegedly training Chinese military pilots in South Africa in 2011. About the best summary of his case is here from Sydney Criminal Lawyers.
“Duggan’s case further highlights the flawed extradition system that results in local citizens being remanded without charge or any locally tested evidence for years on end, with the clincher being that it appears Australia conspired with the US in order to legislatively facilitate Dan’s extradition, via a 2018 Criminal Code amendment, as his alleged crime had not been an offence here.”
If China asked for an Australian citizen to be extradited without evidence on a politically tainted matter, we’d simply laugh at the audacity. The Trump gang asks for it, the Australian government rolls over.
Gormless and gutless.
I don’t know Duggan or his Australian wife and six children made destitute by the combined action of the American and Australian Governments, I don’t know if he’s a nice fella or otherwise, but I do know you wouldn’t take the CIA’s word for it and that this rendering of a fellow Australian to a crooked administration is wrong.
A nation with any self-respect would not do it.
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.