#australian intelligence

Tehran, June 13, 2025, 4:17 a.m. The first explosions light up the sky over Natanz. Israeli F-35s, invisible to radar, drop JDAMs on Iran’s largest uranium enrichment plant. Within minutes, no fewer than five car bombs detonate across Tehran, next to government buildings and the homes of nuclear scientists. The IDF, ever the courteous occupier, issues a warning to Iranian civilians: evacuate the…

Making Sense of ‘Cyber-Restraint’: The Australia-China Case

News emerged recently that Australian intelligence has concluded that the Chinese government was directly responsible for a cyber-attack before last May’s general election. Instead of calling China out, the Australian government determined to keep news of the attack quiet. For its part, China has denied the allegations.

The outcome is in line with what some observers have come to describe as…

At about 8 pm on Wednesday, 30 November 1983, the Manager of the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne was alerted by a guest to a disturbance on the 10th floor. The Manager entered a lift and upon reaching the 10th floor, he was accosted by a stranger who said 'Come with me, you're not going to get hurt, but come with me.' The Manager retreated back into the lift, the stranger followed and pressed the appropriate button to return to the lobby. The two scuffled while descending. The stranger's repeated insistence that 'nobody would be hurt' was not entirely reassuring. When the lift reached the lobby, the Manager ran out and called for his staff to ring the police. The stranger retreated to the 10th floor.

Shortly thereafter another lift reached the ground floor. A group of hotel employees were gathered near the door of the lift, and the Manager equipped himself with a nightstick - a 30 cm metal rod covered with heavy duty red tape - which was normally kept behind the reception desk. As the lift door opened, a group of men stepped out. Some were wearing masks, some were carrying weapons, ranging from Browning 9 mm automatic pistols to the formidable Heckler and Koch submachine gun. The intruders moved through the lobby into the kitchen, menacing the kitchen staff on the way, and departed in two getaway cars waiting outside a kitchen exit.

One of the cars was stopped by officers of the Victoria Police a short distance from the hotel and its occupants were taken into custody. When other police officers arrived at the hotel, they encountered a bystander, who rather strangely claimed that he could explain everything that had happened, and that he was willing to pay for any damages incurred. Hotel staff may have assumed that they were the victims of an armed robbery; in fact they were unwilling parties to an incident culminating a year of acute embarrassment for the new Hawke Labor government. The episode in question turned out to have been a resoundingly unsuccessful training exercise by officers of the super-secret Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

By Eric Margolis, November 24, 2013

JAKARTA, INDONESIA--Indonesians are usually an easygoing, amiable people.

But this week, they are boiling with anger and a sense of betrayal after revelations that Australia's Signals Directorate had been tapping the phones of senior Indonesian government officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and, worst of all, his wife, First Lady Ani Yudhoyono.

Aussie intelligence was also spying in the very same senior Indonesian cabinet officials who, like the president, are regarded as staunch allies of the US and Australia. This electronic spying was part of the by now notorious, top secret Five Eyes joint intelligence operation between the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Five Eyes is run by the US National Security Agency; its other Anglo-Saxon members act as loyal junior partners, spying on their neighborhoods and, often, their own people. How much of their local data is passed to Washington is unknown, but it is likely substantial. Disturbingly, it was recently revealed that the US NSA passes information on US citizens to another ally, Israel.

Indonesians are asking why Australia spied on them--supposedly a friendly neighbor--and, worse, on their president and first lady. Interestingly, Indonesians I've talked to, including the very bright editor-in-chief of the Jakarta Post, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, feel deeply insulted and personally offended. Indonesia and Australia have been trying to better relations for the past twenty years. They have been cooperating closely on a host of government, military, environmental and health programs.

Indonesia, with 248 million people is the closest major neighbor to Australia's 23 million people, a fact that has often made the highly xenophobic Aussies nervous even though their defense is guaranteed by Washington. US Marines are soon to be stationed in northern Australia, near Indonesia. This militarily useless act has angered Indonesia and China

Australia's new, conservative prime minister, Tony Abbot, arrogantly belittled the scandal as a minor flap and issued the same lame excuse as other red-hand spying western governments: "everyone does it." That excuse may work in schoolyards, but not with Indonesia--or with many Americans, for that matter.

Showing more courage than France or Germany, President Yudhoyono ordered his ambassador to Australia home, and severed many joint projects with the Aussies. Most important, Australia has been paying Indonesia US $608.7 million annually in "aid" to stop boatloads of desperate asylum-seekers from the Mideast and Afghanistan reaching Australia. This aid seems suspended for now.

Australia has been rebuked by the outside world, for adopting such a heartless policy towards non-white refugees.

As I've long written, Australia has always been an apartheid state. It's just that few noticed. While South Africa was blasted for trying to maintain white rule, Australia always kept a white-only immigration policy, accepting only small numbers of Asians. Seen any black Australians lately aside from its aboriginals?

Australia's hard-line right wingers have always warned that dark-skinned Indonesians plan one day to invade lily-white Australia.

Many Aussies, particularly older ones, regard Indonesia as a menacing, chaotic, violent neighbor filled with angry Muslims. Jakarta's murderous traffic may fit this description, but the rest is the same racist cant we hear from know-nothing, anti-Muslim American conservatives.

So far, Aussie PM Abbot's replies have been ham-handed and inept. He should climb down, apologize, and eat crow for the stupid misdeeds of his spooks.

Meanwhile, the US is getting blamed by many Indonesians for AussieGate. America has huge investments in resource-rich Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation and largest Muslim country. How foolish and counter-productive to antagonize and insult such an important ally and growing economic powerhouse.