Comments by "Catherine Birch" (@catherinebirch8263) on "ABC News In-depth" channel.

I for one. The Australian government has agreed to let the US use Australia as one of the venues for its upcoming war against China. That's insane. None of the countries the US uses for its wars come out of it well.
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I'd support that - provided Australia handed over the money in reparation to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
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Why is Zelensky wearing his undershirt on top?
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Australia is paying tribute money.
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2:45 Commentary that this deal is almost identical to a deal rejected by Israel last May. "it was rejected before an accepted now, what's the difference? The difference is Trump." The difference is tens of thousands of massacred Palestinians, many of whom children, and several generations of Palestinians with severe lifelong trauma, many of whom with permanent injury. Also journalists and aid workers killed by the IDF.
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@AKK5I That's A) Dishonest. It is nothing at all like Pearl Harbour. The US hadn't established a colony in Japan using terrorist tactics 80 years earlier. It hadn't been expanding its borders within Japan ever since by moving more American settlers into neighbouring areas accompanied by murders of the Japanese who were there earlier. B) Repulsive. Ethnic cleansing and genocide just are repulsive. So is trying to justify it, even if you hadn't lied.
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You're a bit wonky on the timeline of Ukraine's involvement with NATO, John. Russia has plenty of reason to fear American attempts to turn it into yet another vassal state of the Empire, and to fear Western European attempts at control also. We can't know what level of threat Russia felt when it invaded Ukraine but it would have been significant. I'm tired of paying for America's war against Russia. I read that Australia gave 1 billion dollars to Ukraine. Australia also paid the US nearly a billion dollars recently, linked to the nuclear submarine program, and apparently we've agreed to pay them that much annually into the foreseeable future. No wonder Trump said how good Australia has been to the US. Talk about protection rackets. The mafia has nothing on the US government. Our hospitals could really have used that money, Then there's the inflation caused by this war. Coming on the heels of the post-covid inflation, and caused primarily by Europe's economic attacks on Russia via refusing to buy their cheap energy creating huge upwards energy price pressure that bleeds into the cost of just about everything. I'm so sick of hearing American talking points about this war being transmitted by Australian voices.
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12:10 The guest says the war against Russia is about moral issues and American values. 🤣🤣🤣
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14:35 The guest says that Europe should steal permanently the Russian assets it has seized. Now I see what she meant about American values being involved in the war.
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@RexChaplin No. Australia killed Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraquis, and Afghanis not because of a concept of loayalty, honor, or dignity but because it was told to by the USA. The USA is essentially running a worldwide protection racket, in both senses of the word "protection". Essentially, the USA promises to protect their vassal states from invasion provided the vassal states do what they're told. (Kinda dumb of the vassal states really, because the US isn't going to allow their territory to be taken over by a competing Empire anyway.) Also the USA wields the massive economic carrot and stick of its soft power behind the scenes.
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Why? Trump's not giving Israel anything Biden didn't. The only difference is that Trump isn't pretending not to notice what Israel's been doing with it.
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Correction. Hundreds of billions. And it's not insurance money. It's a protection racket. It's far more likely that the US will attack China than it is that China would attack Australia - unless of course Australia agrees to let itself be a venue for the US to launch attacks against China .... oh, hang on ... In the unlikely event that China ever would attack Australia unilaterally the US will defend against China or not according to how it perceives its interests at that time, regardless of whether we've paid their protection money or not. Currently they would defend - because Australia is a strategic location it wishes to keep out of the control of its competitors.
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“Let all the poison that lurks in the mud, hatch out.”
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You can just buy it. It's an indirect purchase however, and quite expensive ... you have to pay foreign student fees, turn up to class, and then work in Australia for a few years afterwards. Don't worry, if you pay foreign student fees it's virtually impossible to fail. If that sounds too messy its simpler, and probably cheaper, to buy it by financial investment in Australia, although that route to zitizenship does have minimum stay requirements also.
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I'd like to hear something about the nearly 1 billion dollar nuclear submarine linked protection money payment Australia just made to the US. I cringe to think of how many hospital beds that could buy. Australia has agreed to pay this amount to the US annually well into the future. Apparently Trump says that because we've made this payment we're not currently on the list for a trade war. Protection money indeed. I always thought the US was running a protection racket on the world - Trump's just saying the quiet part out loud.
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My bad. I didn't read the article about in properly. Trump never said he'd exempt Australia from the US trade wars. And he hasn't. Wow. We killed Vietnamese and Iraquis, and lost some of our own soldiers, and we're paying an outrageous amount of protection money - but the price of this protection racket has just been raised. The USA is insatiable. At least Trump puts his cards on the table and the world can see things for what they are. Up until now the USA has been picking off other countries in the world one-by-one while both sides spout "friendship" rhetoric. The USA could not win a trade war against the rest of the world simultaneously. Australia should band together with the rest of the world to stop this once and for all. Instead I expect our "leaders" will cave in and offer (in some form) higher payments than we were making before the tariff threat. And then do the same the next time, and the next time, and the next time ...
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Hello, American. Australia is that fairly large island in the southern hemisphere; the one with kangaroos and poison spiders. It is not a member of NATO.
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@KuriosDiogenesJar Sounds like the whole of Europe for thousands of years.
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Yes, guys, the negotiations need to be between Russia and the USA. Because that's who the war is between. Ukraine is just the venue, the Ukrainian government the puppet, and the Ukrainian people the cannon fodder. The thing about Trump is, he says the quiet part out loud. Whereas the Biden government pretended that the war was between Russia and Ukraine and the US was just helping its ally.
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@kinngrimm Vietnam.
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... another deal ...
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A lot of people are beginning to think. Trump may be doing the world a huge favour there, opening a window on the workings of the American Empire.
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Yep. That's what the American Empire has been moving towards ever since WW2. Of course, they leave local governments in place or replace them with a more pliant local government, because that is needed for practical reasons. However the US tells them what to do.
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I disagree. I think you lost your democracy to some very smart people. For democracy to function in practice require the public to be informed, and the smart people figured out how to stop that. Instead of censoring information as they do in Russia and China, but which is illegal in the USA, they flooded the country with disinformation. Information remains available but widely un-accessed. The beauty of it is that this de facto censorship is actually protected by anti-censorship laws. It was simply a matter of packaging the disinformation in a way that made it attractive, then gradually introducing the idea of avoiding information.
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Look. The whole idea of framing the war in Ukraine as "support for Ukraine" is absurd. It is first and foremost a Pentagon proxy war fighter's wet dream. Russia gets weaker every day the war can be extended for and not a single life is being lost. No lives that matter in domestic American politics, that is to say. Meanwhile Ukraine, the venue for this current iteration of Russia-America conflict, is getting pummeled and its people are getting killed.
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You're effing kidding me! Australia's resources are already subject to claims by China and by the US; in fact many of them have already been claimed. American oil companies control huge amounts of Australian oil.
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13:20 The guest says that Russia and China are now inextricably linked together. She may well be right. Those countries are not natural allies and they weren't linked like that 3 years ago. However when Europe decided to try and crush Russia by not importing its gas, Russia turned to China to buy it. There's now been a huge infrastructure investment to deliver to China. It was obvious right at the start that one of results of this iteration America's war against Russia would be to throw Russia and China together.
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So what have the Americans got for their money in Ukraine? Quite a lot, really. First and foremost it has bought them not only a distant venue for a military phase of their ongoing war against Russia, but also canon fodder. It's the ultimate proxy warrior's dream. Not a single life is being lost - that matters domestically within the US anyway. The war is weakening Russia every day the Americans can keep it going. And seriously, who believes that access to high value Ukrainian mineral resources wasn't part of the deal the Biden administration made with Zelensky? All that's changing wrt to America threatening its way into getting cheap access to resources around the world (not just Ukraine) is that Trump has been saying the quiet part out loud. Before the US picked off countries one by one in semi-privateand covered it with a veneer of words about good friends and allies and partners. So why would Trump be wanting the war to end now? It's about timing. Trump doesn't take the long view for America's wealth. He wants those minerals NOW for domestic political reasons. Biden was prepared to wait because he takes the long view on expanding the American Empire.
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Simpler to just leave Palestine to the Palestinians and relocated the Israelis back to the US and Europe. Or allocate part of the US for them to establish a Jewish State.
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