The moral beacon Desmond Tutu on the moral responsibility to take a stand against Israel, an apartheid state that conjures up ugly historical comparisons: ‘The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own. We can…
Showing all posts in June 2019
The Sri Lankan Mark Regev steps right up
Welcoming (some) Tamils to Australia and Colombo’s Israel-style Canberra ambassador (aka the least credible man this side of Mark Regev’s identical brother):
Hold Western military powers to account (and the Hague beckons)
The message is clear; Western powers can’t be exempt from thorough examinations of their war crimes. Hardly a revolutionary idea and yet such plans are virtually absent from “polite” discussions: A United Nations investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan should be launched to identify and prosecute individuals responsible, says a former top-ranking UN official…
Selling every public asset isn’t a pretty prospect
Praying to the privatisation religion is a global trend, largely unquestioned and hopelessly mixed in result. Here’s the latest debate in New York city: In the face of drastic cuts in the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s bus service, the Bloomberg administration recently decided to allow private vans to carry passengers along several routes in Brooklyn and…
Moving Forward? Australia’s relationship with Israel
Kill Your Darlings is a wonderful new Australian literary journal. I have a lead essay in the latest edition. Here’s an extract: I first discovered the importance of the Israel/Palestine conflict in my early teens, in Melbourne. I remember sitting around the Sabbath table with my parents and cousins, discussing the events of the week…
Times are changing for the best; Zionist bigotry is simply not tolerated
The only way to mark Harvard’s shameful honouring of racist Zionist Marty Peretz is protest loudly. But of course, Zionists can’t be racist, right?
Now Washington can sell Australia far more deadly weapons to liberate Muslims
Boys who like to play with deadly toys, your wishes have come true: After some behind the scenes wrangling, the Obama administration and Congress agreed this week on terms for new defense trade agreements that will allow freer movement of military goods with two of its top allies. The Defense Trade Cooperation Treaties, which were…
The mainstreaming of Sinhalese fascism
The shameful lies of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to the United Nations General Assembly… on September 23: No nation on earth can wish Sri Lanka’s Tamil community more good fortune than Sri Lanka itself. The truth is far uglier.
Finally, some light on Serco but so much more needed
At last, some coverage in the Australian media about Serco, the British multinational running the country’s detention centres. It doesn’t offer much new – and there is a desperate need for a thorough examination of the real relationship between Serco and the government – so more, please: On Monday before the 36-year-old Fijian Josefa Rauluni…
Please don’t listen to King Abdullah on, well, anything
This is rather depressing. Here’s Jordan’s King Abdullah talking to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show about how “moderate” he is and the “extremists” are upsetting the Middle East. Yes, because running a US-backed police state completely makes you “moderate”. His country’s influence is decreasing, not least because he so slavishly follows US foreign policy in the…