My following piece appears in today’s ABC The Drum: In late September, the government of Sri Lanka released 1,800 former Tamil Tiger fighters. Colombo claimed they had been rehabilitated as President Mahinda Rajapaksa told them at a ceremony in the capital: “I hope you will work for peace and ethnic harmony in this nation of…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
What privatisation does to immigration detention
This is almost comical but sadly true (via the Canberra Times): The Commonwealth Government is suing its former immigration detention operators for failing to protect it against lawsuits lodged by people kept in detention facilities. The case will be heard in the South Australian Supreme Court on November 21. It is part of a long-running…
The information black hole that is Christmas Island
The details of the Australian immigration system are often kept secret, not least the activities of British multinational Serco running the detention facilities. The Australian’s Paige Taylor is that rare mainstream journalist who has been pursuing the story for years. Her feature in yesterday’s paper documented the absurd restrictions on finding out accurate information on…
ABC interview on BDS, Palestine and far-right love affair with Zionism
The ongoing blind establishment embrace of Israel and condemnation of BDS as akin to Nazi Germany shows no sign of abating in Australia. Yesterday’s ABC Radio National Breakfast featured a story on the issue and included a brief interview with me explaining the growing alliances between the fascist right and Israel; a mutual hatred of…
Rest easy, Israel, the storm has passed, keep on occupying
What’s that about an Israeli media bubble? You say there’s nothing to worry about? Sorry what? Occupying Palestinians is fine? Rising racism against Arabs best avoided? Yes, of course it is. Guy Bechor writes in Yediot, the country’s biggest paper, that Israel is now emerging from a down-turn and even falsely claims Australia has outlawed…
Don’t trust Serco and friends to manage asylum seekers in Australia
Under-trained. Under-staffed. Traumatised. And that’s just the employees of disaster capitalist companies, loved by governments, to add “efficiency” to a straining refugee system. Paige Taylor reports in today’s Australian: An English backpacker on a tourist visa, Australians straight from high school and overseas students are among hundreds of casual workers earning up to $450 a…
What really happened when Tzipi Livni came to Britain?
There are few lengths to which so-called Western democracies won’t go to protect Zionist leaders accused of war crimes: Britain blocked an attempt on Thursday to arrest visiting Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes, officials said. Livni, foreign minister during Israel’s three-week assault on the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip launched in December 2008,…
Lest we forget PNG’s pain and call for true independence
Mining and exploitation remain live issues in and around Papua New Guinea; it is disaster capitalism on a grand scale. These two clips, made in the 1990s for ABC TV and Channel 9 TV, show that the issues of today have been around for decades, as long as a poor nation has a resource curse:
Zionist apartheid is groovy for the Jewish Diaspora
Or is it? Bowing to pressure from religious subscribers, the Ashdod-based Israel Andalusian Orchestra has removed a concert from its subscription series featuring a female singer. In an announcement to subscribers regarding the new concert season, the orchestra management said it was aware that there are members of the public who refrain from listening to…