{"id":331907,"date":"2017-10-24T18:27:26","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T17:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/australian-spy-agency-promotes-anti-china-witch-hunt\/"},"modified":"2017-10-24T18:27:26","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T17:27:26","slug":"australian-spy-agency-promotes-anti-china-witch-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/australian-spy-agency-promotes-anti-china-witch-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian spy agency promotes anti-China witch-hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Australian spy agency promotes anti-China witch-hunt<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Oscar Grenfell<br \/>\n    <br \/>24 October 2017<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country\u2019s main domestic spy agency, used its annual report, released last Wednesday, to further fuel a hysterical media campaign alleging widespread Chinese \u201cinterference\u201d in Australian politics.<\/p>\n<p>ASIO\u2019s public reports are always highly political documents. Their purpose is not to disclose the agency\u2019s activities, but to promote the anti-democratic agenda of successive governments, including ramping up the powers of ASIO and the entire military-intelligence apparatus.<\/p>\n<p>For the past 16 years, ASIO\u2019s reports have centred on declarations that Australia is threatened by \u201cIslamist terrorism.\u201d Such claims have been used to justify Australia\u2019s role in predatory US-led wars in the Middle East, and sweeping inroads into civil and political rights.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s report, while maintaining the \u201cwar on terror\u201d rhetoric, includes vague and unsubstantiated assertions that \u201cforeign powers\u201d are conducting a wide-ranging campaign of \u201cespionage\u201d and \u201ccovert influence operations.\u201d It declares that the \u201cthe scale of the threat to Australia and its interests is unprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>ASIO did not name any \u201cforeign powers.\u201d But the media outlets that function as little more than adjuncts of the intelligence agencies and the political establishment, filled in the gap.<\/p>\n<p>An article in the Murdoch-owned <em>Australian<\/em> newspaper was headlined \u201cASIO battling spy threat from China and Russia.\u201d The state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) declared that unnamed \u201cgovernment officials \u2026 believe China is becoming more aggressive with its activities against Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As in previous \u201cexposures\u201d of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2017\/10\/24\/asio-o24.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Australian spy agency promotes anti-China witch-hunt By Oscar Grenfell 24 October 2017 The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country\u2019s main domestic spy agency, used its annual report, released last Wednesday, to further fuel a hysterical media campaign alleging widespread Chinese \u201cinterference\u201d in Australian politics. ASIO\u2019s public reports are always highly political documents. Their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-331907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331907\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}