John Pilger on Australia’s infantile relationship with foreign wars: Staring at the vast military history section of the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organised killing. There was nothing I recognised from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
The confused identity of those Jews (and fellow travellers) who rather like occupation and bombing
Following the publication today of Overland’s smackdown of Zionist attempts to silence alternative views on the Middle East in Australia, leading Australian academic Scott Burchill – we like him on this site – sent me the following response: Political apostasy is rampant amongst the Australian intellectual class. Overseas too. Think of Robert Manne (former right…
Privileged Australian Zionists moan about censorship while Palestine disappears
A sorry saga that needs no introduction. Independent Australian magazine Overland recently received this letter from six Jewish academics. It was sent to the editors of the publication and the editorial board: 20/4/10 Dear members of Overland Editorial Board, We are writing to express our grave concern about your journal’s unbalanced coverage of Israeli-Palestinian issues…
Refugees won’t be demonised without a serious fight
How many of us feel in Australia these days after the government once again treats asylum seekers as criminals rather than a handful of human beings fleeing persecution and war. This was a sign seen on Friday night’s rally in Sydney on the issue.
Both major Australian parties are conservative so make an alternative choice
Marcus Westbury writes on the ABC that Australian voters have a real choice at the forthcoming election: For many progressive voters the Rudd government’s decisions in recent weeks to axe the ETS (and offer up no alternative), suspend the processing of asylum seeker claims, and belligerently persist with mad schemes like censoring the internet against…
Murdoch man says the Left is the Devil warmed up
The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan – predictably pro-Murdoch, pro-Israel and pro-American – offers his latest gem: The Left in Australia has great staying power. It is forever on the long march through the institutions. It creates nothing, but its destructive power is fantastic.
Australian Zionists remain in denial about Israeli dispossession
Earlier this year I initiated a petition for Australian Jews to reject their automatic right of return to Israel. In response, the predictably hysterical Philip Mendes (a Jewish social work academic from Melbourne) has responded under the headline, “Radical Australian Jews advocating for Israeli national suicide“: Last month a small group of Australian Jews signed…
Sydney seen as a global hub of anti-Zionist fervour (says Tel Aviv “thinker”)
The Israeli think-tank Reut Institute has spent the last months arguing that Zionists need to battle the “delegitimisers” and fight back against unfair claims of apartheid in Palestine. Now in a new piece, we’re informed by the group that Sydney, of all places, is a global centre of Israel hatred: …A few generic principles can…
Helping asylum seekers may soon be completely illlegal down under
Once again, like in decades past, Australia is becoming a country many of us simply don’t want to recognise: A modern-day Oskar Schindler would be jailed for up 10 years under the Rudd government’s proposed crackdown on people smuggling, lawyers say. In largely unscrutinised changes, backed by the opposition, the government is introducing new criminal…