It’s clear that Labor and Liberal are yesterday’s parties
Greens MP Adam Bandt: The Greens are increasingly the natural choice at the Federal level for those who believe in small ”˜l’ liberalism.
Australia doesn’t seem to know what morality is re Wikileaks
Who is running the Australian government these days? Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday mounted a strong defence of Julian Assange’s legal rights. The WikiLeaks founder is preparing to face court in London early Wednesday morning (AEDT). Mr Rudd said he was prepared to intervene to have a laptop computer provided for Mr Assange in London’s…
Don’t forget the bigger Wikileaks picture
Agreed (via zunguzungu): If we moralize about Wikileaks and Julian Assange exclusively, we’re not doing our moral duties as citizens, and as human beings. Our job is to watch people with power and try to ensure that people with power don’t misuse it. Part of that is scrutinizing powerful men who have the opportunity to…
More Tamil exclusion in Sri Lanka
And the world mostly says nothing: The first cabinet meeting convened by Sri Lanka president Mahinda Rajapaksa after returning from London decided to abolish the Tamil version of Sri Lanka’s national anthem, Sunday Times reports. The ”˜shortcoming’ of having two national anthems should be rectified and in no other country was the national anthem used…
We pay drug dealers in Afghanistan
This is what the glorious “war on terror” is all about: When Hajji Juma Khan was arrested and transported to New York to face charges under a new American narco-terrorism law in 2008, federal prosecutors described him as perhaps the biggest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan, a shadowy figure who had helped keep…
Don’t tell us that Australia is an honest broker in the Middle East
This is the not the behaviour of an ally; it’s the actions of a country utterly incapable of viewing the human rights of Arabs as equal to Israelis: The Israeli ambassador to Australia found Kevin Rudd to be “very pro-Israel” and senior Australian diplomats warned the former prime minister that his condemnation of Iran risked…
Why should Palin actually speak to real Haitian people?
Tragedy as a media back-drop (assisted by the kind folk at Fox News): Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press. The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works…
Telling Fox News that Assange’s Australian rights must be protected
Fox News broadcasts yet another person who says Julian Assange should be murdered. Nice work, Murdoch. Get Up!’s Brett Solomon injects some sanity: