Thursday, April 23, 2020

FIRB Chairman David Irvine not capable of protecting Australia from Chinese raiders in the post COVID19 world: Bellamy's decision suggests Irvine is more dodol than dalang

by Ganesh Sahathevan


Photo of David Irvine
Mr David Irvine AO


In approving the acquisition of Bellamy’s Australia Ltd (Bellamy’s) by China Mengniu

Dairy Company Limited (China Mengniu) Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said:

The Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) has undertaken an extensive period of
 consultation that considered a wide range of issues. Consistent with the unanimous
recommendation of the FIRB, the Treasurer has concluded the acquisition is not contrary
 to the national interest.

This approval will ensure Bellamy’s can continue to support jobs in Australia and strengthen
its ability to expand its domestic market as well as its export opportunities, particularly into the
growing Asian market.

Readers are reminded that Bellamy's sells baby formula. It is a matter of public knowledge that
 Chinese buyers are bulk buying the product via retail outlets and in the process distorting the local
market. Why Bellamy's would need to be wholly-owned by a Chinese company in order to expand
its export opportunities is incomprehensible.

Given how Chinese demand for baby formula is distorting the domestic retail market it is also incomprehensible how ownership by a Chinese company will help Bellamy's ex[and its domestic
market.

The Chairman of the FIRB David Irvine, is the man who with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being
trusted to protect Australian assets from Chinese corporate raiders in the post Wuhan/COVID19 
world

When he was appointed chairman is was expected that he would bring to the job years of experience
as a spy master. Clearly that skill has not bee evident in the case of Bellamy's.
Irwin is a former ambassador to China, and that alone should have made him not suitable for the job
 of  FIRB chairman.   It is not unknown for ambassadors to go native. Ambassadors
are shown their host country's best face, and tend to live in a bubble. The realities of the countries 
they are assigned to can as a result remain a mystery. 

There is no reason to assume that Irvine is immune to host country influences. Mush has been said
of  his work in intelligence but his record as a spy is not stellar. He is reported to be an expert in
Bahasa Indonesia, so he will understand that the Bellamy's affair demonstrates  that he is more dodol
than  dalang.






TO BE READ WITH





Excerpt




Somewhat bizarrely, Irvine made a rare media appearance on a Muslim radio station to declare his 
“outrage” as an Australian at the idea that “we might be fighting Islam”. Maybe instead, Australians 
should be outraged that, despite its generous public funding, neither ASIO nor the AFP have much 
of a grip on a phenomenon that has been mutating in the West since at least the late 1980s.


Indeed, given their history of misunderstanding of homegrown jihadism, graphically illustrated by 
ASIO and ASIS’s complete ignorance of the Willie Brigitte cell operating in western Sydney in 2003, 
or the AFPs Keystone cop- style response to the Haneef case in 2007, it is logical to infer that the 
security agencies have little idea of what is driving Australian jihadism, who has travelled to the 
Islamic State or, for that matter, returned.



In other words, the security services in Australia are part of the problem, rather than the solution. In 
Britain, MI5 has come to take seriously the power of the ideological appeal of a version of Islam that sacralises violence and legitimates terror against the Kuffar. By contrast, the Australian government, its security agencies, its media and academic analysts of terrorism have promoted the view that to take 
Islamic rhetoric seriously is to play into “the politics of fear” and overreact to a problem associated 
with an irrelevant, fringe minority.


Security sleeps as death cult awakes

Illustration: Tom Jellett
Illustration: Tom Jellett Source: Supplied
PETER Leahy recently stated that the war against radical Islam could last a hundred years.
In the wake of the escalating violence in the new Islamic State under its self proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, aka al Baghdadi, and estimates that 60 Australian Muslims have joined the jihadist army in the new state, the government announced a $640 million budget increase for the Australian security agencies and the Australian Federal Police and a series of yet to be defined measures that will somehow both “reassure the Muslim community”, yet target those “at risk of radicalisation”.
However, given that the Howard government introduced comprehensive anti-terror laws in the wake of both the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings and, had by 2007, increased the budget of all the security agencies by more than 50 per cent in less than a decade, it might seem reasonable to ask: what do the current laws lack, and given that the security agencies are already well financed, where precisely is the extra bang for the buck? In other words, why has this outpouring of violence come as such a surprise?
Disturbingly, successive Australian and Western governments and their security agencies have since 2005 reacted to the homegrown jihadist phenomenon rather than seeking to identify the sources of its appeal and how it might be constrained. In this context, both the Labor and current governments officially bought into the idea that recruitment to jihad reflects the alienation of young Muslim males disaffected from mainstream culture.
The answer, it seemed was greater multicultural sensitivity and counselling. Significantly, Tony Abbott and the director of ASIO, David Irvine, have both recently said the problem Australia faces is the misguided “extremism” of a minority, rather than a radical, well-funded and highly attractive Islamist ideology.
Somewhat bizarrely, Irvine made a rare media appearance on a Muslim radio station to declare his “outrage” as an Australian at the idea that “we might be fighting Islam”. Maybe instead, Australians should be outraged that, despite its generous public funding, neither ASIO nor the AFP have much of a grip on a phenomenon that has been mutating in the West since at least the late 1980s.
Indeed, given their history of misunderstanding of homegrown jihadism, graphically illustrated by ASIO and ASIS’s complete ignorance of the Willie Brigitte cell operating in western Sydney in 2003, or the AFPs Keystone cop- style response to the Haneef case in 2007, it is logical to infer that the security agencies have little idea of what is driving Australian jihadism, who has travelled to the Islamic State or, for that matter, returned.
In other words, the security services in Australia are part of the problem, rather than the solution. In Britain, MI5 has come to take seriously the power of the ideological appeal of a version of Islam that sacralises violence and legitimates terror against the Kuffar. By contrast, the Australian government, its security agencies, its media and academic analysts of terrorism have promoted the view that to take Islamic rhetoric seriously is to play into “the politics of fear” and overreact to a problem associated with an irrelevant, fringe minority.
Indeed, most government- funded academic research into jihadism largely accepts the view of the nominally peaceful Islamist think tank Hizb ut Tahrir that “ISIS is but the new al Qa’ida used as a bogeyman by Western states to justify intervention”, and as their media spokesman Uthman Badar explained, “those travelling abroad to help the oppressed” undertake “a noble deed”.
In other words, before pouring money into the problem, the government might usefully ask why have publicly funded institutions failed to address the transnational power of what is essentially a death cult.
This is, after all, not very difficult to identify. As early as 2004, in the wake of the Madrid bombings, Islamists defined the divide between a pluralist secular world view and their brand of apocalyptic millenarianism with the formula: “You love life, we love death”. This slogan has gone through several mutations since 2004, notably in phrases like “The Americans love Pepsi Cola, we love death”.
In essence, this aesthetising of death defines itself against a secular liberal belief in life. As the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco observed, in a different ideological context, Fascism embraces political necrophilia: a taste for killing and martyrs is its purest form.
Jihadism is similarly obsessed. It means, as numerous slickly produced videos on the internet demonstrate, adoring and serving death, be it as the slayer or the slain. In fact, its beatification of terrorist violence, or the management of savagery, as the Islamic State’s official journal Dabiq proclaims, is more telling than the professed ideological dimension.
Indeed, to love death as jihadism does is to say that it is beautiful to receive it and to risk it and that the most beautiful and saintly love is to distribute it. This putrid need of death is evident today across the Middle East.
If that’s what jihadism at its fundamentalist core wanted, it got it. It is a form of political nihilism made possible by the sacralisation of violence.
This aspect of jihadism and the capacity of a version of Islam to play into the cult of death is not to desensitise youth to death (as some Western security analysts assert) but to sacralise it.
Before throwing more money at “extremism” and creating more sweeping government powers, the elected representatives of a secular democracy ought to do far more to defend a political way of life and target the promulgation and appeal of this potent and ultimately fascist death cult.
David Martin Jones teaches at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. Palgrave Macmillan recently published his Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age.
SEE ALSO

David "Sandline" Irvine must not be allowed anywhere near the SAS

Lke Airbus, Rolls Royce also may be prevented from dealing with Tony "Tajudin" Fernandes, AA and AAX

by Ganesh Sahathevan




The AirAsia group CEO says he’s using his spare time to understand his ‘brothers, sisters and their religion’. — Picture from Instagram/Tony Fernandes
How a CEO of any company might find himself with nothing to do even at these times is beyond this writer.T
he case of Tony Fernandes reminds this writer ofTajuddin Ramli, former of MAS.The parallels are frightening, 
and hence the nameTony "Tajuddin" Fernandes.



Apart from the Airbus admission (see below), Rolls Royce who supply AA and AAX jet engines and related services may also be prevented from dealing with AA and AAX given Rolls Royce's admissions to the SFO. Readers may recall that when the Rolls Royce/SFO story broke AA
responded with a press statement that implicated the entire AA and AAX board:

AirAsia Group head of communications Audrey Progastama Petriny, in a statement to Malaysiakini, said AirAsia and AirAsia X board of directors and management were kept informed at all times of the transactions relating to the jet.





TO BE READ WITH



Tuesday, April 21, 2020


Airbus will not, cannot deal with AirAsia, AirAsiaX-AA, AAX fleet is entirely Airbus, so how much are AA and AAX worth?

by Ganesh Sahathevan

                                               AIRASIA SUPERSIZES ITS FLEET TO LOWER FARES
                                                         This was the case just under a year ago


Reuters reported: 

Airbus (AIR.PA) has put six jets made for one of its largest customers up for sale after giving up on Malaysia’s AirAsia (AIRA.KL) taking delivery of them, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Airbus's sale comes after its admission before UK's Criminal Court that it bribed AA officials,which Tony Fernandes and Mehranun admitted was a reference to them. That admission effectively prevents Airbus from future dealings with AA and AAX: 

Airbus admission prevents further business with Airasia: BDO Governance Advisory findings meaningless. given Airbus admission before the UK Crown Court,and cannot be a substitute for MACC, police, SC investigation

AA and AAX's fleet is entirely Airbus. AA and AAX's growth is impeded, and operational issues, such as maintenance and parts, are likely. 
Add to that AA and AAX's financial problems, and what really are these companies worth? Are they worth anything at all?
END 

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Airbus will not, cannot deal with AirAsia, AirAsiaX-AA, AAX fleet is entirely Airbus, so how much are AA and AAX worth?

by Ganesh Sahathevan

                                               AIRASIA SUPERSIZES ITS FLEET TO LOWER FARES
                                                         This was the case just under a year ago


Reuters reported: 

Airbus (AIR.PA) has put six jets made for one of its largest customers up for sale after giving up on Malaysia’s AirAsia (AIRA.KL) taking delivery of them, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Airbus's sale comes after its admission before UK's Criminal Court that it bribed AA officials,which Tony Fernandes and Mehranun admitted was a reference to them. That admission effectively prevents Airbus from future dealings with AA and AAX: 

Airbus admission prevents further business with Airasia: BDO Governance Advisory findings meaningless. given Airbus admission before the UK Crown Court,and cannot be a substitute for MACC, police, SC investigation


AA and AAX's fleet is entirely Airbus. AA and AAX's growth is impeded, and operational issues, such as maintenance and parts, are likely. 
Add to that AA and AAX's financial problems, and what really are these companies worth? Are they worth anything at all?
END 

Monday, April 20, 2020

Morrison & Frydenberg's billions should be directed to ensuring energy security -Negligent not to do so especially now that oil price is negative

by Ganesh Sahathevan



$200
Price of oil
Financial
crisis
2008-09
150
U.S.-led
invasion
of Iraq
2003
100
50
Covid-19
pandemic
Sept. 11, 2001
0
Monday’s close:
–$37.63
’00
’05
’10
’15
’20

TO BE READ WITH


Thursday, March 19, 2020

Forget Qantas & Virgin, Australia needs a large scale  crude oil storage and refining facility: Morrison &  Frydenberg's  billions  should be directed to ensuring energy security, ask Singapore's Lee Hsien Loong for guidance 

by Ganesh Sahathevan




The agreement signed last week between Australia and the US that will allow Australia to access the US Strategic Oil Reserve is meaningless given distance and the lack of sufficient oil refining facilities in Australia. As reported, but ignored is the fact that the agreement is designed to address a compliance issue:
The oil stored in America will count towards Australia's overall supply, allowing the government to meet its IEA requirements

The Morrison Government is about to throw hundreds of millions at Qantas, Virgin and other industries to keep them from going bankrupt, and presumably save jobs but  Alan Joyce at Qantas has already shown that the government's efforts are going to be futile..

The billions should instead be directed to the immediate need to ensure energy security. That can be done by starting work immediately on a large scale oil storage and refining facility.
Singapore has built such a facility under the sea, so there is technical know  how that is readily available for such a project here, which is likely to be onshore ,easier to construct ,and less expensive.



END
To be read with

World's sharpest, shrewdest oil, gas and coal traders counting on Australian governments to ban local production, enforce use of expensive & unreliable renewables, and force Australia to import, oil, gas and coal.




SEE ALSO
Australia reaches breakthrough deal to buy US emergency oil suppliesBy Bevan Shields and Matthew Knott
March 8, 2020 — 12.05am




London and Washington: The Morrison government has struck a landmark deal to tap into the US government's tightly-guarded emergency fuel reserves, a move that will help lower the risk of Australia plunging into an economic and national security crisis.

The agreement, to be signed by Energy Minister Angus Taylor in Washington on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), will help shore up the dangerously low supplies in Australia that have left consumers vulnerable to price spikes and rationing in the event of a sudden supply disruption.


Petrol and diesel pumps at a service station in Sydney.CREDIT:AAP

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age revealed last year that the government was in talks with the Trump administration to buy millions of barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Australia imports 90 per cent of its liquid fuels but only has enough in storage to last 54 days – well below the 90 days it is obliged to stockpile under an agreement with the International Energy Agency (IEA).
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The need to bulk up oil supplies has grown increasingly acute recently because of the volatility in key shipping routes such as the Strait of Hormuz off Iran and the South China Sea.

The deal, which involves leasing US storage facilities, means the government will not need to spend billions of dollars building expensive new storage facilities in Australia.


Australia will now be able to tap fuel reserves in the United States in case of shortages.CREDIT:BLOOMBERG

The oil stored in America will count towards Australia's overall supply, allowing the government to meet its IEA requirements.

"This landmark Australia-US arrangement represents our joint commitment to maintaining fuel security and improving Australia’s resilience, as well as strengthening the close bonds between our two great nations," Mr Taylor said.



"The US is a trusted ally who has been essential for global oil security and we are glad to be building on our strong, longstanding relationship, while ensuring Australia is best prepared to act during a global oil disruption.

"This arrangement further improves our ability to ensure stocks of critical diesel, petrol and aviation fuel to keep the economy going in the event of disruptions to supply chains."

Stored underground in massive caverns in Texas and Louisiana, the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve was set up by president Gerald Ford in 1975 to keep the country running in a crisis.


'This arrangement further improves our ability to ensure stocks of critical diesel, petrol and aviation fuel to keep the economy going in the event of disruptions to supply chains.'Angus Taylor, energy minister

It holds more than 640 million barrels of crude oil. One cavern is so big it could fit Chicago's 110-storey Willis Tower in it.



The agreement to be signed by Mr Taylor and US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette will kickstart detailed contractual negotiations about how much crude oil Australia can buy from the US and how much space it can use in the underground caverns to store it.

No final decisions have been made about how much fuel Australia wants to buy or how much it is willing to spend.

US politicians have previously raised concerns about the idea of selling off fuel from the petroleum reserve to other countries. But the fact Australia's deal involves leasing facilities in the US - rather than shipping the oil directly to Australia - helped assuage some worries in Washington.

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last year, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said he welcomed the prospect of such a deal between the US and Australia.



While in the US, Mr Taylor will also visit the oil and gas state of Texas to meet with top industry executives.

He will also visit the US government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, which is leading research into production of biological hydrogen as a clean source of energy.

The Australian government has released a National Hydrogen Strategy designed to encourage the expansion of the local hydrogen industry.




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Bevan Shields
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Bevan Shields is the Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.


Matthew Knott
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Matthew Knott is North America correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Advertisement

1MDB: Najib Razak will sue Sarawak Report for publishing lies, falsehoods ; but still not Wall Street Journal

by Ganesh Sahathevan


Recalling, from 2015:

Najib has no choice but to sue Wall Street Journal for defamation, lawyers say


Now in 2020, under the new regime,a brave Najib threatens Sarawak Report, but still dares not go anywhere near the WSJ:


Dia ni banyak menipu.
Ini ialah saman fitnah kedua bagi dia.
Selepas kes-kes saya selesai, saya juga pertimbangkan untuk saman dia.
Antara contoh-contoh fitnahnya terhadap saya semasa PRU14 termasuk:
1. Saya simpan RM100 bilion diseluruh dunia selepas kapal terbang mendarat secara senyap-senyap di Malaysia selepas PRU14:
https://www.facebook.com/najibrazak/posts/10156074721520952
2. Kerajaan BN arahkan KWSP untuk bail-out projek Battersea
https://www.facebook.com/najibrazak/posts/10155941488010952
3. SR menggunakan surat palsu untuk fitnah saya curi RM10 bilion dari KWSP (siap menggunakan gambar bangunan KWSP terbakar kononnya untuk menghabiskan fail rekod. (eh.. ini zaman digital lah. Orang tak simpan rekod dalam bilik fail. Mereka simpan dalam cloud)
https://www.nst.com.my/…/…/epf-denies-posting-sarawak-report
MALAYSIAKINI.COM
Surat tuntutan undang-undang itu juga meminta permohonan maaf daripada laman itu susulan artikel mengandungi tuduhan melibatkan Cambridge Analytica.