Tag: Five Eyes

Editorial illustration showing split screen of US military helicopters bombing Caracas at night on left, with oil infrastructure and corporate symbols on right, representing imperial resource extraction in Venezuela

The Venezuela Playbook: How Australian Media Sold Us Another War

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Venezuelan strongman Maduro seized in daring US operation.” That’s how our ABC led the coverage. But what we witnessed was an illegal military invasion of a sovereign nation dressed up as law enforcement. This is the anatomy of an imperial project: demonisation, sanctions, crisis, military intervention. We’ve seen it in Iraq, Libya, Syria. Now Venezuela. The pattern is identical. The oil is the prize. The “narcoterrorism” is just marketing. And Australian media are selling it with a straight face while we’re complicit through intelligence sharing and lockstep UN votes. Part One of an investigation into how empires manufacture consent—and why we keep falling for it.

Billion Dollar Balcony Part 2: A Failure to Protect

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Australia’s intelligence agencies had the data, the powers and the warnings. What they lacked was the capacity, or the incentive, to act. Part 2 examines how lawful firearms, foreign travel to militant regions and prior extremist scrutiny failed to trigger intervention before fifteen people were killed at Bondi. Surveillance was abundant. Prevention was absent.

The Billion-Dollar Balcony: ASIO’s Sovereignty Failure

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When another nation’s intelligence operatives are called in to assist with a domestic security catastrophe, the admission is plain: our billion-dollar spymasters cannot clean up their own mess. The Bondi massacre exposes not just intelligence failure, but the hollowing out of Australian sovereignty itself. ASIO’s budget exceeds $700 million annually, yet perpetrators “known to authorities” strike with impunity while the surveillance state watches from elsewhere.

The Goon Show Goes On

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A goon show. That’s what Paul Keating called it. ASIO chief Mike Burgess, a Marina Abramović in drag, runs political theatre dressed as national security, kneecapping the Albanese government’s China diplomacy with strategically timed intelligence bombshells. The pattern repeats, the press reports dutifully, and Australian foreign policy shifts without anyone deciding anything.