In this Global Outlook episode, we touch briefly on the Brazilian election, Russian developments in Africa, and El Nino impacting crop yields in India & UK, but the big ticket items are Alberta staying in Canada, and Australia's inability to consider the USA as a potential threat.
The recent referendum in Alberta where the majority of citizens confirmed their intention to remain in Canada has implications for Australia. Republican operatives from the USA were working in Alberta to help the separatist movement, leaders of that movement travelled to Washington to discuss offering resources in return for assistance, and the USA stated openly that it wanted Alberta to become the 51st US state. Given it was less than 100 years ago when Western Australia voted to seceed from Australia, it is entirely possibly that the same activities of the USA could be applied with WA to obtain access to minerals, bases and more.
Meanwhile, the National Preparedness discussions continue with commentators acknowleding the concerns about how the USA restricting access to Starlink/Starshield could be applied to Australia, driving the need for sovereign space capabilities. Sadly, at no point was the next step taken to point out how AUKUS offers exactly the same opportunity for leverage and coertion yet Australia continues to commit enormous levels of funding to this and FMS purchases without considering our exposure to foreign leverage.
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