Tag: AIMN

Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, at a press conference projecting institutional confidence while Australia’s defence procurement record, AUKUS submarine delays, the Washington happenstance encounter, and the Geelong refinery fire suggest a more complicated story

DeadWood Marles: Australia’s Liberal in Drag

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He is, in the most precise political sense available, a Liberal in drag. Same tough talk on alliances and deterrence. Same fondness for American hardware and AUKUS largesse. Wrapped in just enough factional red to keep the true believers satisfied. All suit, no spark. And a remarkable talent for making national security sound like a mildly confusing numbers meeting that ran somewhat overtime. Urban Wronski profiles Richard “DeadWood” Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence.

Mission Impossible

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Trump’s Hormuz blockade is live. Oil is at $102. China’s Defence Minister says the strait is open for Chinese ships and dares the US to stop them. A forty-nation coalition is forming against the blockade. And one of the last two tankers carrying pre-war oil on earth is heading to Australia. Urban Wronski on the war Trump cannot win.

The radome spheres of Pine Gap intelligence facility visible against the Australian desert sky at dusk, small against the vast red landscape

Not Reporting A War Part 2

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Pete Hegseth is the Peter Principle applied to the largest weapons arsenal in human history. Pine Gap guides the missiles. Australian-made F-35 parts are in the payload. And our media calls it a partnership. Part Two of Urban Wronski’s investigation into what Australia’s press is not reporting, and what our silence is costing.

The Erasure of a Civilisation Part 2 of Donald Trump, the War on Iran, and the Rules Nobody’s Enforcing

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On the morning of April 7, Donald Trump posted that a whole civilisation would die that night. He was not bluffing. Part Two of Urban Wronski’s Operation Epic Fury series examines the systematic destruction of Iranian universities, libraries and cultural institutions, the weapons tested on children, and what it means that none of the rules are being enforced.

Russian nesting dolls representing layers of the US-Iran war: money, military force, great power rivalry, and Australia

The Stench of Desperation: Trump’s War on Iran and the Babushka of Greed, Ego, and Catastrophe

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To make sense of Trump’s war on Iran, imagine a Russian
babushka doll. The outer layer is the story the Pentagon feeds
us. Inside it: petrodollar entanglements, Kharg Island
war-gaming, the strategic patience of Moscow and Beijing,
Netanyahu’s fantasy of the purifying blow. At the very centre,
smaller than it should be, is Australia. Urban Wronski opens
all six layers and does not like what he finds.

A cracked mirror lying in ash and rubble reflects a distorted television news broadcast showing a Middle East map and missile imagery, surrounded by torn newspaper pages and a broken press camera, symbolising the destruction of journalistic truth in wartime.

The First Casualty

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They told you Iran’s missiles were being swatted from the sky. They told you the Iron Dome was holding, the Patriot batteries were working, US and Israeli air power was surgical and winning. They told you this on the ABC. They told you this on Sky.
They were telling you nonsense.
MIT Professor Ted Postol — the man who proved the Patriot missile failed in the Gulf War while presidents were claiming a 97 percent success rate — has now established that current intercept rates against Iranian missiles run at a few percent at most. The systems are depleting. The decoys are multiplying. The official story is, in his own carefully chosen word, a fraud.
The first casualty of war is truth. But the deeper insight, the one Phillip Knightley identified fifty years ago, is that the lies are not random. They serve purposes. And right now, they are serving purposes that Australians have every right to examine.