Trigger Warning: Community contains mostly bad environmental news (not by choice!). Community may also feature stories about animal agriculture and/or meat. Until tagging is available, please be aware and click accordingly.

🪲

Aussie Zone Rules.

Golden rule - be nice. If you wouldn’t say it in front of your ~~grandmother~~ favourite tree, don’t post it.
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. You are allowed to denigrate invasive plants or animals.
Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. Except invasive plants or animals.
No porn. Except photos of plants. Definitely not animals.
No Ads / Spamming. Except for photos or stories about plants and animals.
Nothing illegal in Australia. Like invasive plants or animals. Exotic microbes and invasive fungi also not welcome.
Make post titles descriptive with no swear words. Comments are a free for all using the above rules as a guide. Fuck invasive plants and animals.

🐝

/c/Aussie Environment acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, sea and waters, of the area that we live and work on across Australia. We acknowledge their continuing connection to their culture and pay our respects to their Elders past and present.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Australia's largest gas project approved for operation to 2070 (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

Corruption has become a bit of a new normal in the us and it's (unofficially) controlled territories it seems

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

What territories are you unofficially referring to?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Australia, for one. It's an odd situation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

What leads you to believe that American controls Australia and not China? Or its self ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's far from absolute control. I figured adding a bunch of nuance wasn't quite what op was looking for

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'd say maybe 2% more control then any other major player, probably even less with the chaos at the moment, Yer we're a few steps away from op by now lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Let's hope it's less. To my knowledge they don't push as much politically as much as they use the place as a military outpost

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Pine gap, useless $300 bn tribute subs, not updating travel advice for the USA, David McBride. This is but a short list.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm interested in the your reasoning? Why pine gap? A shared spy base built in the 60ies ? The aukus deal? Might not even go ahead last I heard of it. Whats McBride's connection?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

This is David McBride the Australian Army Lawyer turned whistleblower, not the US politician.

Turns out I somewhat conflated his whistleblowing on Australian war crimes, which landed him in jail, with the US influencing him being tried for whistleblowing.

War crimes that were committed, because we were in Afghanistan at the behest of the US (and Iraq, Vietnam and Korea before that).

So that's my bad, because I did hear of the US loving to send Australians on missions for the express purpose that the SAS wouldn't follow proper rules of engagement, though I can't find the place where I heard this after trying to find it again.

As for AUKUS subs deal:

This is a straight up tribute to the USA. 300 BILLION dollars. For what? A couple of submarines. What in the hell do we need nuclear subs for? Answer, we don't. Just use conventional subs. It's a subsidy for the US military-industrial complex.

Pine Gap is a "shared" spy base the same way you hand your little sibling a controller that's not plugged in so they can play the video game "together". We are the junior partner there.

The fact is that the US has massive sway over Australia with the implicit agreement that we allow US military presence in exchange for "protection", massive economic influence through investment (such is capitalism, and the US is top-dog there), making very little military equipment ourselves and just buying it off the US (and others, sure, but in large part, the US), and "allegedly" meddling in our affairs by engineering the Whitlam sacking, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_CIA_involvement_in_the_Whitlam_dismissal

We bend over backwards to keep the Americans on side. Even after police straight up shot an Australian reporter with a rubber bullet, on purpose, for no reason, the PM still had to be restrained in his response instead of calling out the United States more directly.

We follow them into a bunch of wars, we are dependent on their tech services, we are massively influenced by their media.

Australia is under the thumb of the US, but so are many other countries.

In summary: as a middle power, I would love for us to stay somewhat more neutral to the superpowers. Let's be close friends with like-minded middle powers (Canada, NZ, the EU), and polite to the likes of the US and China.

Being close allies with the US feels like a massive liability.

load more comments (4 replies)