An important letter sent by Reporters Without Borders: The Hon Kevin Michael Rudd Prime Minister Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 Australia Paris, 18 December 2009 Dear Prime Minister, Reporters Without Borders, an organisation that defends free expression worldwide, would like to share with you its concern about your government’s plan to introduce a mandatory Internet…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
Call for Israel to lift siege of Gaza
The following article by Pam Walker appears in this week’s Sydney City Hub newspaper: Author and journalist Antony Loewenstein is among a group of prominent Sydney activists who will travel to Gaza to join the Gaza Freedom March on December 31, an international protest demanding the opening of the borders and the breaking of the…
We Australians are going to Gaza
The following story appears in this week’s Sydney Wentworth Courier:
The ghosts of Gareth Evans
Murdoch columnist Piers Akerman can usually be relied upon to defend the most powerful in society and belittle the least able to respond. He’s a corporate commentator, after all. But a piece this week, writing about Gareth Evans, the new chancellor of the Australian National University and former Australian attorney-general and foreign minister, surprisingly reminds…
Australia snubs Tamil refugees
My following article is published in US magazine The Nation: Sri Lanka’s brutal war against the Tamils, a native ethnic group that has suffered legal, economic and political discrimination for more than half a century, has come at a huge domestic and global cost. Human rights in the Sinhalese-dominated nation are consistently violated, with journalists,…
Tzipi Livni avoids UK for fear of quiet time in prison
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was welcomed in Australia recently with open arms by the Rudd government. In Britain, however, Israeli leaders are having far more issues: Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to Britain this weekend over fears pro-Palestinian lawyers would seek to have her arrested. Ms Livni had been due…
Australia uses Israeli tools in its futile Afghan mission
From a state that knows all about bombing innocents to a nation that craves becoming more experienced in the art: Ten new Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will debut in Afghanistan in the coming weeks, after the Israel Aerospace Industries made the first delivery of the Heron UAV to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)…
Analysis must not be a war casualty
My following article appears on ABC’s Unleashed: The Iraq war has virtually dropped off the media radar. The country remains far more dangerous than Afghanistan and yet Barack Obama’s “surge” against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is the biggest international story of the day. Even leading neo-conservative William Kristol writes in The Washington Post that Obama…
The Australian government has no idea what’s happening in Palestine
Michael Shaik, from Australians for Palestine, on Australia’s slavish support for Israel: Just last week, at a Sydney lunch for a delegation, led by Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom, Rudd asserted “the Australian people’s deep and high regard for the modern state of Israel”. And on Sunday night, Shalom was hosted at a “gala…
Australia trades any good will towards Tamils for a cheap buck
Western Australia human rights group Project Safecom released a statement yesterday that captured the hypocrisy at the heart of Australia’s foreign policy. We care about human rights until we don’t. In other words, human rights is far less important than keeping rogue states on side for trade or diplomatic benefits. Maybe the government should just…