Australian papers go black to protest against media restrictions

Source

http://www.aljazeera.com

Oct 21, 2019

Major newspapers run ‘heavily redacted’ front pages in protest against recent laws restricting freedom of information.

Australia’s biggest newspapers have run front pages designed to appear heavily redacted as part of a campaign against government secrecy and legislation that puts reporting and press freedom at risk.

National and regional mastheads including The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review hit newsstands on Monday with most of their front-page stories blacked out to give the impression it had been censored similar to how classified government documents are.

Advertisements have also been rolled out across the country’s television networks, asking viewers: “When the government hides the truth from you, what are they covering up?”

The protest is designed to put public pressure on the government to exempt journalists from laws restricting access to sensitive information, enact a properly functioning freedom of information system, and raise the benchmark for defamation lawsuits.

“It’s about defending the basic right of every Australian to be properly informed about the important decisions the government is making in their name,” Hugh Marks, chief executive of Nine said in a statement.

Nine News Australia

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National newspaper front pages have been printed blanked out in a united protest by the media industry against government secrecy and cover-up. #righttoknow #9Newshttps://www.9news.com.au/national/your-right-to-know-media-industry-calls-for-secrecy-reforms-australia-news/69922c4a-a083-4ad5-b1fd-c5c0190628d9?ocid=Social-9News …

Why secrecy must stop

National newspaper front pages have been printed blanked out in a united protest by the media industry agai…

9news.com.au

2:00 PM – Oct 20, 2019

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Australia has no constitutional safeguards for free speech. The government added a provision to protect whistleblowers when it strengthened counter-espionage laws in 2018, although media organisations say press freedoms remain restricted.

Australia’s Communications Minister Paul Fletcher was not immediately available for comment on Monday. The government has previously said press freedom was a “bedrock principle”.

News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller said people “should always be suspicious of governments that want to restrict their right to know what’s going on”.

Newsroom raids

Global attention turned to media freedoms in Australia this year when a court order prevented media from reporting that the former Vatican treasurer, Cardinal George Pell, had been found guilty on child sex abuse charges.

Some Australian outlets reported that an unidentified person had been convicted but some foreign media companies identified Pell because they were outside Australia’s jurisdiction.

Prosecutors are now seeking fines and jail sentences for three dozen Australian journalists and publishers for their coverage of the trial. Pell is appealing against his convictions.

The subject came to a boil again in June when police raided the head office of the ABC in Sydney and the home of a News Corp editor on suspicion of receiving national secrets.

The raids, which involved police examination of about 9,000 computer files at the ABC and sifting through the female News Corp editor’s underwear drawer, drew international condemnation.

In the UK, the BBC called the raids “deeply troubling”.

The ABC said at the time that the raid on its office was in relation to 2017 stories about accusations of military misconduct in Afghanistan. News Corp has said the raid on its employee concerned an article about government plans to spy on Australians’ emails, text messages and bank accounts.

Under intense pressure, the government issued a directive to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions in September that will require permission from Attorney General Christian Porter to approve any charges against journalists.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

The Day Australian Freedom Died: David Icke Banned from Entering the Country

Source: The Day Australian Freedom Died: David Icke Banned from Entering the Country | Humans Are Free

humansarefree.com

By Eve Fisher

Feb 22, 2019

 

Media outlets won’t touch this piece. One major group said there wasn’t enough room to run it … online! Another said it was “too polemic”. I’ll take that thanks very much…

The day Australian freedom died

Ask yourself this simple question. It needs just a yay or nay, with no middle ground. Do you believe in freedom of speech? No shades of grey. You either believe in it. Or you don’t. No picking and choosing about who gets to employ it, and who doesn’t. One in, all in. Unless you’re in China of course.

And, so it would seem, Australia.

Like him or loathe him, David Icke deserves the right to speak

Freedom of speech is fundamental to … well, our freedom. Funny isn’t it. We take it for granted in these days of over-sharing until we say something inflammatory. Some keyboard warriors give us a lashing and send us to our corner. But we don’t have our tongues cut out.

We take it for granted that we can say what we like, as long as we are not encouraging people to hurt others, or, indeed, themselves. Inciting violence is not the same as enjoying freedom of speech. Being hateful is also not inciting violence; it’s being nasty.

There’s a difference and knowing this difference is the defining line between those who believe in the fundamental tenets of freedom of speech and those who believe in it as long as it suits their politically correct, pandering agenda.

This week, Immigration Minister David Coleman couldn’t have played a more honest hand if he tried. I’ll give him that. His cancellation of leading conspiracy researcher David Icke’s visa just hours before he was due to fly to Australia was as swift as it was malicious. There was no warning – despite the speaking-tour visa being approved in September – and its timing was obviously designed to cause maximum disruption to Icke.

Coleman’s letter was clear. “Open source” (i.e. the media) information detailing Icke’s views on Zionism, vaccinations and global warming meant he was no longer a suitable candidate to be espousing his views on our fair shores.

I don’t remember giving the government permission to decide what views I’m permitted to hear.

Icke has spent 30 years detailing through myriad books his views on everything from mass population microchipping to Big Pharma. His contemporary dot-connector videos provide weekly headlines showing how his predictions during the years have become reality.

He sounds like a good candidate for the government-funded Festival of Dangerous Ideas doesn’t he?

I couldn’t care less if Icke was trying to enter this country to say the sky was green and the grass blue, but I have every right – as an allegedly free citizen – to hear what I want to hear.

And even if he is a holocaust denier, which he isn’t, why isn’t he allowed to argue his point? So what if he says vaccinations are dangerous or that climate change is caused by government weather modification. It’s his view, and he’s entitled to it.

If people think he’s such a nutter then they can avoid his shows and bitch about him on Facebook.

But banning him because the government doesn’t like his views – as detailed plainly in the Minister’s letter – is a direct and unmitigated assault on my freedom.

I did not immigrate to this country from South Africa – so I know a thing or two about government censorship and oppression – to be told by a bunch of self-serving, corrupt and ignorant politicians to whom I can listen and who I can’t. It’s worth noting that Labor supported the ban. I’d be curious to know what the Greens think about this apparent guilty verdict of thoughtcrime.

Contrary to popular belief, Icke is neither a holocaust denier nor a Jew-hater. If ANY of the journalists doing little more than copying each other’s ideas actually took the time to read his books they’d understand Icke takes issue with Zionism as a political organisation, not Jews. Since when are people not allowed to diss politics?

I’m a Jew. And I know what’s happening to Palestinians is a crime. But you can’t say that for fear of being anti-semitic. Incidentally, the term semite is actually defined as “a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs”. So being an “anti-semite” would be akin to saying a person is anti-languages of the middle-east.

You can’t even criticise a Jew without being called racist. I lost family in the holocaust and claims of holocaust denial levelled against Icke, who repeatedly says he sees all people as equal, are completely unfounded.

Not that journalists would know this, because they never read his stuff. They’re too busy rehashing his reptilian theories. So while 2.2 billion Christians are allowed to have their healer who walked on water, rose from the dead, and their saints who could perform miracles, Icke can’t have his otherworldly beliefs. The hypocrisy never ceases to astound. People kill for their religious beliefs. Icke just wants to talk about how our governments are controlling us.

I’m seeing a pattern here.

Icke coins it the totalitarian tiptoe: the slow erosion of our freedom in the name of so-called progressive protectionism that ultimately indulges the few at the expense of the many. One radio journalist actually said freedom of speech was important as long as the speaker was being sensible. Seriously? Let’s call Conditional Freedom of Speech then. Is that more like it?

Call it what you like but when a bunch of Zionists (I won’t even afford them the label of Jews because they sure as hell don’t represent me) think they can speak on behalf of the 99.6% of the Australian population who aren’t Jewish I call it fascism.

When some Melbourne Zionists can lobby a half-wit Labor candidate and find success because he knows it will help him secure votes in his Jewish electorate you know we’re screwed.

Josh Burns doesn’t gives a toss about our freedom, he just wants votes like so many other repugnant men and women who call themselves politicians in this nanny state of ours.

If you don’t like Icke’s views then ignore him. He’s been here 10 times before and never once has he preached hate or violence, nor has there been any incidents at, or in relation to, any of his events. He sees all people as equal and his only agenda is freedom from oppression. For everyone.

He said to me this week:

“Australians now have a choice between two parties who have utter contempt for the freedom of the people. If we’re going to sort this world out we need to put labels aside and treat everyone as an individual. I would challenge anyone to provide a clip of a politician in parliament standing up and saying the answer is for everyone to love each other. ”

Obviously that has never happened, but we can only wait.

In the meantime I keep hoping to wake up from this Orwellian nightmare.

By Eve Fisher — Writer, editor and producer, having worked in the media for more than 20 years, including eight years at Fairfax for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. English and journalism teacher with experience at both high school and university level. Former Surf Coast Shire Greens councillor and current member of Deakin University Masters of Politics and Policy Advisory Board.

Australia’s African Gangs (25 min)

101 East gets to the truth of the so-called ‘African gang crime-wave’ in Australia’s southern city of Melbourne.

Source: Australia’s African Gangs | Gang violence | Al Jazeera

http://www.aljazeera.com

GO HERE:

https://players.brightcove.net/665003303001/SJg0bzqkZ_default/index.html?videoId=5987449144001&usrPersonaAds=false

Overrun by African criminal gangs, its streets filled with violence, terror and menace – that’s how some local media and politicians are depicting the Australian city of Melbourne.

For more than two years, there have been reports that Melbourne is in the grip of a crime wave, with the finger of blame pointed directly at African street gangs.

“We need to call it for what it is. Of course, this is African gang violence … people are scared to go out to restaurants of a night-time because they’re followed home by these gangs,” said Peter Dutton, Federal Home Affairs Minister.

Images of brawling Sudanese teens and hooded armed robbers have spread terror and stoked a growing anger towards those “of African appearance”.

“They do all these criminal acts and you see on the news that they get away with it. Why do they get away with it?” says one resident.

It’s generating heated debate and social tensions – police are being accused of political correctness and inaction while the Sudanese community feels under siege.

“You get stared at. Imagine someone’s looking through you or looking … someone’s eyes are just burning into the side of your head. That’s what it feels like,” says a young Sudanese man.

But how accurate is the so-called “threat”?

101 East investigates the claims and counterclaims to unearth the truth behind the headlines of Australia‘s African crime wave.

Source: Al Jazeera

Hedges: Assange Has Done More To Expose American Crimes Than Any Other News Organization

“…he stated that because of the political costs of expelling Julian from their embassy was too high, the plan was to break him down mentally.”

Source: Hedges: Assange Has Done More To Expose American Crimes Than Any Other News Organization | Zero Hedge

http://www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Chris Hedges via TruthDig.com,

by Tyler Durden

11/12/2018

 

Julian Assange’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London has been transformed into a little shop of horrors. He has been largely cut off from communicating with the outside world for the last seven months. His Ecuadorian citizenship, granted to him as an asylum seeker, is in the process of being revoked. His health is failing. He is being denied medical care. His efforts for legal redress have been crippled by the gag rules, including Ecuadorian orders that he cannot make public his conditions inside the embassy in fighting revocation of his Ecuadorian citizenship.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to intercede on behalf of Assange, an Australian citizen, even though the new government in Ecuador, led by Lenín Moreno – who calls Assange an “inherited problem” and an impediment to better relations with Washington – is making the WikiLeaks founder’s life in the embassy unbearable. Almost daily, the embassy is imposing harsher conditions for Assange, including making him pay his medical bills, imposing arcane rules about how he must care for his cat and demanding that he perform a variety of demeaning housekeeping chores.

The Ecuadorians, reluctant to expel Assange after granting him political asylum and granting him citizenship, intend to make his existence so unpleasant he will agree to leave the embassy to be arrested by the British and extradited to the United States. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, whose government granted the publisher political asylum, describes Assange’s current living conditions as “torture.”

His mother, Christine Assange, said in a recent video appeal,

“Despite Julian being a multi-award-winning journalist, much loved and respected for courageously exposing serious, high-level crimes and corruption in the public interest, he is right now alone, sick, in pain—silenced in solitary confinement, cut off from all contact and being tortured in the heart of London. The modern-day cage of political prisoners is no longer the Tower of London. It’s the Ecuadorian Embassy.”

“Here are the facts,” she went on. “Julian has been detained nearly eight years without charge. That’s right. Without charge. For the past six years, the U.K. government has refused his request for access to basic health needs, fresh air, exercise, sunshine for vitamin D and access to proper dental and medical care. As a result, his health has seriously deteriorated. His examining doctors warned his detention conditions are life-threatening. A slow and cruel assassination is taking place before our very eyes in the embassy in London.”

“In 2016, after an in-depth investigation, the United Nations ruled that Julian’s legal and human rights have been violated on multiple occasions,” she said. “He’d been illegally detained since 2010. And they ordered his immediate release, safe passage and compensation. The U.K. government refused to abide by the U.N.’s decision. The U.S. government has made Julian’s arrest a priority. They want to get around a U.S. journalist’s protection under the First Amendment by charging him with espionage. They will stop at nothing to do it.”

“As a result of the U.S. bearing down on Ecuador, his asylum is now under immediate threat,” she said. “The U.S. pressure on Ecuador’s new president resulted in Julian being placed in a strict and severe solitary confinement for the last seven months, deprived of any contact with his family and friends. Only his lawyers could see him. Two weeks ago, things became substantially worse. The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who rightfully gave Julian political asylum from U.S. threats against his life and liberty, publicly warned when U.S. Vice President Mike Pence recently visited Ecuador a deal was done to hand Julian over to the U.S. He stated that because of the political costs of expelling Julian from their embassy was too high, the plan was to break him down mentally. A new, impossible, inhumane protocol was implemented at the embassy to torture him to such a point that he would break and be forced to leave.”

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Assange was once feted and courted by some of the largest media organizations in the world, including The New York Times and The Guardian, for the information he possessed. But once his trove of material documenting U.S. war crimes, much of it provided by Chelsea Manning, was published by these media outlets he was pushed aside and demonized. A leaked Pentagon document prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branchdated March 8, 2008, exposed a black propaganda campaign to discredit WikiLeaks and Assange.

The document said the smear campaign should seek to destroy the “feeling of trust” that is WikiLeaks’ “center of gravity” and blacken Assange’s reputation. It largely has worked. Assange is especially vilified for publishing 70,000 hacked emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and senior Democratic officials. The Democrats and former FBI Director James Comey say the emails were copied from the accounts of John Podesta, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, by Russian government hackers. Comey has said the messages were probably delivered to WikiLeaks by an intermediary. Assange has said the emails were not provided by “state actors.”

The Democratic Party – seeking to blame its election defeat on Russian “interference” rather than the grotesque income inequality, the betrayal of the working class, the loss of civil liberties, the deindustrialization and the corporate coup d’état that the party helped orchestrate – attacks Assange as a traitor, although he is not a U.S. citizen. Nor is he a spy. He is not bound by any law I am aware of to keep U.S. government secrets. He has not committed a crime. Now, stories in newspapers that once published material from WikiLeaks focus on his allegedly slovenly behavior—not evident during my visits with him—and how he is, in the words of The Guardian, “an unwelcome guest” in the embassy. The vital issue of the rights of a publisher and a free press is ignored in favor of snarky character assassination.

Assange was granted asylum in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to answer questions about sexual offense charges that were eventually dropped. Assange feared that once he was in Swedish custody he would be extradited to the United States. The British government has said that, although he is no longer wanted for questioning in Sweden, Assange will be arrested and jailed for breaching his bail conditions if he leaves the embassy.

WikiLeaks and Assange have done more to expose the dark machinations and crimes of the American Empire than any other news organization. Assange, in addition to exposing atrocities and crimes committed by the United States military in our endless wars and revealing the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, made public the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency, their surveillance programs and their interference in foreign elections, including in the French elections. He disclosed the conspiracy against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by Labour members of Parliament. And WikiLeaks worked swiftly to save Edward Snowden, who exposed the wholesale surveillance of the American public by the government, from extradition to the United States by helping him flee from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Snowden leaks also revealed, ominously, that Assange was on a U.S. “manhunt target list.”

What is happening to Assange should terrify the press. And yet his plight is met with indifference and  sneering contempt. Once he is pushed out of the embassy, he will be put on trial in the United States for what he published. This will set a new and dangerous legal precedent that the Trump administration and future administrations will employ against other publishers, including those who are part of the mob trying to lynch Assange. The silence about the treatment of Assange is not only a betrayal of him but a betrayal of the freedom of the press itself. We will pay dearly for this complicity.

Even if the Russians provided the Podesta emails to Assange, he should have published them. I would have. They exposed practices of the Clinton political machine that she and the Democratic leadership sought to hide. In the two decades I worked overseas as a foreign correspondent I was routinely leaked stolen documents by organizations and governments. My only concern was whether the documents were forged or genuine. If they were genuine, I published them. Those who leaked material to me included the rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN); the Salvadoran army, which once gave me blood-smeared FMLN documents found after an ambush; the Sandinista government of Nicaragua; the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Central Intelligence Agency; the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebel group; the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); the French intelligence service, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE; and the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosovic, who was later tried as a war criminal.

We learned from the emails published by WikiLeaks that the Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two of the major funders of Islamic State.

As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton paid her donors back by approving $80 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, enabling the kingdom to carry out a devastating war in Yemen that has triggered a humanitarian crisis, including widespread food shortages and a cholera epidemic, and left close to 60,000 dead. We learned Clinton was paid $675,000 for speaking at Goldman Sachs, a sum so massive it can only be described as a bribe. We learned Clinton told the financial elites in her lucrative talks that she wanted “open trade and open borders” and believed Wall Street executives were best-positioned to manage the economy, a statement that directly contradicted her campaign promises. We learned the Clinton campaign worked to influence the Republican primaries to ensure that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee. We learned Clinton obtained advance information on primary-debate questions. We learned, because 1,700 of the 33,000 emails came from Hillary Clinton, she was the primary architect of the war in Libya. We learned she believed that the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi would burnish her credentials as a presidential candidate. The war she sought has left Libya in chaos, seen the rise to power of radical jihadists in what is now a failed state, triggered a massive exodus of migrants to Europe, seen Libyan weapon stockpiles seized by rogue militias and Islamic radicals throughout the region, and resulted in 40,000 dead. Should this information have remained hidden from the American public? You can argue yes, but you can’t then call yourself a journalist.

“They are setting my son up to give them an excuse to hand him over to the U.S., where he would face a show trial,” Christine Assange warned.

“Over the past eight years, he has had no proper legal process. It has been unfair at every single turn with much perversion of justice. There is no reason to consider that this would change in the future. The U.S. WikiLeaks grand jury, producing the extradition warrant, was held in secret by four prosecutors but no defense and no judge. The U.K.-U.S. extradition treaty allows for the U.K. to extradite Julian to the U.S. without a proper basic case. Once in the U.S., the National Defense Authorization Act allows for indefinite detention without trial. Julian could very well be held in Guantanamo Bay and tortured, sentenced to 45 years in a maximum-security prison, or face the death penalty. My son is in critical danger because of a brutal, political persecution by the bullies in power whose crimes and corruption he had courageously exposed when he was editor in chief of WikiLeaks.”

Assange is on his own. Each day is more difficult for him. This is by design. It is up to us to protest. We are his last hope, and the last hope, I fear, for a free press.

“We need to make our protest against this brutality deafening,” his mother said.

“I call on all you journalists to stand up now because he’s your colleague and you are next. I call on all you politicians who say you entered politics to serve the people to stand up now. I call on all you activists who support human rights, refugees, the environment, and are against war, to stand up now because WikiLeaks has served the causes that you spoke for and Julian is now suffering for it alongside of you. I call on all citizens who value freedom, democracy and a fair legal process to put aside your political differences and unite, stand up now. Most of us don’t have the courage of our whistleblowers or journalists like Julian Assange who publish them, so that we may be informed and warned about the abuses of power.”

Australian TV Exposes Britain’s Westminster Paedophile Scandal

Source link

humansarefree.com

Oct 25, 2018

Australia broadcast an explosive 60 minute report on the Westminster paedophile network on Sunday evening, that has sent shockwaves around the world.

‘Spies, Lords and Predators’ looked at what the host described as Britain’s ‘biggest ever scandal’ that is likely to ‘rock the British establishment’.

[SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO]

Exaronews.com reports:

The programme features an interview with Richard Kerr, who lived as a boy at Kincora boys’ home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Earlier today, Exaro uploaded its own video interview with Richard Kerr, in which he says that child sex abuse at Kincora was all about political leverage.

The programme also filmed an interview with Esther Baker, who alleges that she was sexually abused by two politicians.

And a man identified by Exaro only as “Darren” is interviewed anonymously in the programme. Darren became the third witness to give an account to us of how prominent people carried out child sex abuse at Dolphin Square, the apartment complex favoured by MPs.

In addition, Kevin Allen, brother of Martin, who disappeared as a 15-year-old in 1979, is interviewed for the programme. Kevin believes that Martin was abducted and murdered by a member of the ‘Westminster paedophile network’.

When he raised his suspicions with police many years ago, he says that a senior officer told him: “You keep saying things like that, you could get hurt.”

Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative MP who was part of the initial cross-party group of seven who last year called for an overarching inquiry into child sex abuse, agrees with the programme’s reporter that the ‘Westminster paedophile network’ is the “biggest political scandal in British history”.

Goldsmith tells 60 Minutes: “There is very compelling evidence that very senior people engaged in terrible acts and were then protected by the establishment. I have no doubt at all about that.”

“But I think the genie is out of the bottle.”

‘Spies, Lords and Predators’ – full 60-minute report: 
[If you want to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, please follow this link].

Sources: Your News Wire; YouTube.com; The Franklin Cover-up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska 

World’s most shocking food scandals: From Tylenol murders to poisoned baby food

Source link

http://www.rt.com

18 Sep, 2018

Various food tampering scandals have caused widespread panic for decades © REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel

The Australian public is currently dealing with a spate of nationwide food-tampering incidents involving needles being surreptitiously inserted into fruit. However, this is far from the first ‘food panic’ to grip a nation.

Throughout the 20th century, ever since the industrialization of food production and distribution, various individuals and groups have targeted the public food supply chain to create widespread panic. Here, RT.com examines several of the most infamous cases.

READ MORE: Strawberries laced with needles land Australian man in hospital; mass recall from shops

2017 – German baby food extortion

© REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

In September 2017, police in the southwestern German city of Konstanz used CCTV footage to locate a 55-year-old extortionist who laced baby food with ethylene glycol, a key ingredient in antifreeze which can cause potentially fatal renal failure.

The man was caught on camera placing poisoned products in several German supermarkets. He threatened to widen the scope of his nefarious scheme if he did not receive a €10 million ($12 million) ransom. He was ultimately arrested and confessed to tampering with the food.

2012/2013 – European Horse meat scandal

© REUTERS/Darren Staples

In 2012, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) discovered horse DNA in over one-third of beef burger and ready meal samples taken from supermarkets. Some samples contained up to 85 percent pig DNA.

The potential scale of the contamination was so huge that the FSAI spent an additional two months retesting the samples to be absolutely sure before releasing the information to the public in January 2013.

The blame game went from Irish and British supermarkets to their continental suppliers in the Netherlands and Spain and, later, Poland. Additional investigations were launched Europe-wide leading to further scandals in France. While there was no clear risk to public health, the controversy sparked outrage across the continent and led to reputational damage for several supermarkets and food suppliers.

2008 – Children’s milk in China

© REUTERS/Nicky Loh

In 2008, roughly 300,000 babies were sickened by contaminated milk powder across China. At least six children died as a result while 54,000 infants in total were hospitalised.

The chemical melamine was added to allow substandard milk to pass nutrition tests and be marked for public consumption. Melamine can cause renal failure and kidney stones.

The firm at the heart of the scandal, Sanlu, proceeded to anger the public further when it neglected to inform the authorities for months. A dairy farmer and a milk salesman were executed for endangering public safety and for the production and sale of toxic food, while 19 others were jailed for their role in the milk contamination scandal.

The Chinese government also carried out a complete overhaul of their dairy industry as a result of the scandal.

1982 – Chicago Tylenol murders

© REUTERS/Gary Cameron

In 1982, seven people, including a 12-year-old girl, died after ingesting tablets laced with potassium cyanide that were labelled as popular pain medication Tylenol. The whole episode led to the introduction of tamper-proofing mechanisms like plastic seals, pop-up caps, cotton wool wadding and foil coverings.

“We concluded we were never going to be judged by what caused the problem,” Alan Hilburg, a member of the public relations team enlisted by Johnson & Johnson to handle the crisis said, as cited by the New York Times. “We were always going to be judged on how we responded to it.”

James W. Lewis, a tax consultant who told Johnson & Johnson he would “stop the killing” if paid a million dollars was arrested and convicted of extortion but was never prosecuted for the deaths of the seven victims. Copycat incidents were also reported across the US in the immediate aftermath.

1920 – 1933 ‘Denatured’ alcohol during US prohibition

© REUTERS/U.S. Information Agency/NARAE

The 18th Amendment to the US constitution introduced alcohol prohibition between 1920 and 1933, banning the consumption, production or transportation of the substance outside of industrial uses.

Governmental regulatory agencies encouraged making industrial alcohol undrinkable via the addition of toxic chemicals like methyl alcohol (‘wood alcohol’) to the grain alcohol (a process known as ‘denaturing’) to dissuade unscrupulous black marketeers from attempting to circumvent the law. Despite online claims to the contrary, the government didn’t expressly aim to poison alcohol meant for human consumption. Good intentions did not prevent unnecessary deaths, however.

During just the holiday season in New York City, 1926 alone, 31 people died and a further 60 were hospitalized after consuming tainted alcohol. Up to 10,000 may have died throughout the prohibition era from drinking toxic alcohol but definitive figures are elusive.

Australia Forms a New Government

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journal-neo.org

Author: Vladimir Terehov

Sept 8, 2018

A number of different events are contributing to the political puzzle in the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. Not the least significant of these are the recent changes of government in several of the region’s countries. This journal has already looked at the possible consequences for the region of the coming to power of new governments in countries such as Pakistan and Malaysia.

The changes in the make-up of the Australian government, including the appointment of a new prime minister, is equally deserving of attention. On 23 August the previous prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was replaced by his colleague from the Liberal Party, Scott Morrison. Readers will remember that in September 2015 Malcolm Turnbull himself succeeded Tony Abbot, also from the Liberal Party, as prime minister.

There have thus been three prime ministers in the six years that the Liberal Party (which won parliamentary election victories in 2013 and 2016 and rules in coalition with the National Party) has been in power.

Two points should be noted in connection with Australia’s change of prime minister. Firstly, unlike the changes of government in Pakistan and Malaysia, in Australia the change was related to the personal qualities of the two men, and took place against a background of political intrigue within the government party. The change did not have any real effect on the “political essence” of Australia’s ruling elite.

The change in leadership may turn out to have an effect on that “political essence” in just under a year, following the next elections for members of the House of Representatives, Australia’s lower chamber of parliament. It is, of course, still too early to make any kind of predictions, but it is worth pointing out that Australia’s second most important political party, the Labour Party, was in power relatively recently, from 2007-2013, i.e. for two consecutive terms of office.

We shall not go into detail about the differences on matters of internal politics between the Labour and Liberal parties, but rather focus on some important aspects of various foreign policies favoured by rival politicians within the current coalition.  These policies depend on the strength of the political ties that Australia has developed with the two major world powers, the USA and China.

Although Australia has been a member of a military and political union with the USA (ANSUS, formed of Australia, New Zealand and the USA) since 1951, it is now extremely interested in developing trade and economic links with China. China is Australia’s most important trade partner, and its share of Australia’s total foreign trade is 5 or 6 times that of the USA.

No other country could replace China as Australia’s main market for such key exports as iron ore, coal and, increasingly, liquified natural gas. For both main parties, that situation serves to dampen what we could refer to as Australia’s “zeal” – real or feigned – for its fulfilment of its obligations as a US ally.

Nevertheless such “zeal” is clearly at a lower level within the Labour Party than among the Liberals. To give just one example, at the end of the last decade, when the Labour Party, headed by the pro-China Kevin Rudd, were in power,  the USA’s failed in its first attempt to persuade India, Japan and Australia to join it in an anti-Chinese military and political alliance of four. Incidentally, the USA’s second attempt, launched at the beginning of 2016, may also now be off the agenda.

This important foreign policy issue explains why next year’s Australian parliamentary elections are so important for the situation in the region. As yet, it is hard to say how the latest change of prime minister and reshuffle of the Liberal Party government will affect the results of the elections.

But one thing is certain: when the ruling party’s MPs voted Scott Morrison in as prime minister and party leader, the upcoming elections were at the front of their minds.

Equally significant is the fact that Scott Morrison was a member of the high-profile Australian government delegation, headed by Michael Turnbull, which visited China in April 2016. During that visit, the discussions focussed on developing economic ties between China and Australia. Scott Morrison, who was Treasurer at the time, made a highly complimentary speech in which he called China “our number one trading partner, and developing our relations with it will be crucial to our future economic prosperity”.

It is highly unlikely that, in the few months remaining until the elections, he will decide to stage a display of military strength similar to that of his predecessor in November 2017. Back then, a group of six Australian Navy warships, rather sarcastically referred to by journalists as a “small armada”, entered the South China Sea, 80-90% of which China considers to be its own territorial waters.

The event met with a restrained, and ironic, reaction from Beijing, which rarely misses an opportunity to call for a step back from confrontation, and, instead, an increase in bilateral cooperation in a wide range of areas.

For example, China is in favour of collaboration to provide all-round support to island nations in the Pacific Ocean. This initiative is clearly aimed at countering the attempts to give an anti-Chinese character to the so-called Pacific Islands Forum, which was held between 16 countries in the region, including Australia.

Observers also note a readiness in Beijing to increase its level of investment in the Australian economy, in which it still trails a long way behind the USA, Japan, and the EU. However, as yet the Australian government has not demonstrated any willingness to increase the opportunities for the flow of Chinese capital into its economy. This is particularly true for facilities which are considered to be important for Australia’s national security, or for the protection of its competitive advantages in international markets. That fits in with the general strategy of imposing limits on China’s “economic expansionism” , which has, in recent years, been followed by all western nations, including in Europe.

Foe example, in August 2016 a request by the Chinese state electricity distribution network for approval to buy 50.4% of the shares in its Australian equivalent, Ausgrid, for the huge sum of 7.7 billion dollars.

This August, the well-known Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei, among the world’s leading manufacturers of contemporary communications systems (Huawei, has an annual turnover of almost 80 billion dollars), both met with a unceremonious rejection. They had offered to set up the joint manufacture of 5th-generation mobile phone equipment in Australia.

In general, the current Australian government’s refusal to enter into a highly promising collaboration with China, in various aspects of international relations, so far seems rather artificial. And it is unlikely that the “reshuffled” Liberal government will decide to make any radical changes in its policy towards China in the run-up to the 2019 parliamentary elections.

Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.