The British court ruling last week upholding the USA’s appeal on extraditing Julian Assange is the final straw. The US and UK pro-war faction, and their Australian apologists, want to kill the Australian journalist who exposed their war crimes; indeed, Assange has just suffered a stroke from the stress he is enduring—Australians must not stand for it.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance explodes the myth that by standing up to China, Australia is defending its “sovereignty”.
Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade is conducting an inquiry into whether Australia should legislate a Magnitsky Act, by which the Australian government would be able to sanction foreign officials accused of human rights abuses. Liberal MP Andrew Hastie is a member of the Human Rights subcommittee conducting the inquiry, and one of the agitators for the law.
Almost lost in all the coronavirus drama is the Parliament’s inquiry into “targeted sanctions to address human rights abuses” a.k.a. a Magnitsky Act. The Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry will today hear testimony from Bill Browder, the British hedge fund manager whose claims against Russian officials are the basis for the Magnitsky Acts that have been rolled out around the world.
Following along behind the United States into a crisis of the Trump administration’s own making, the Australian government has just torn the 200 Royal Australian Navy personnel on HMAS Toowoomba away from their families to send them into harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz on the fake pretext of freedom of navigation.
