This story in today’s Sunday Independent caught my eye: David Cameron accepted an all-expenses paid trip to apartheid South Africa while Nelson Mandela was still in prison, an updated biography of the Tory leader reveals today. The trip by Mr Cameron in 1989, when he was a rising star of the Conservative Research Department, was…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
Is Zionism really racism?
During last week’s Durban II conference, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave a speech that some in the West regarded as outrageous and others as merely representing public opinion in much of the world (personally speaking, I think it harmed the Palestinian cause no end). This clip from the BBC is startling for its honest questioning…
The world already knows this little secret
Seumas Milne, The Guardian, April 23: What do the US, Canada, …Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy and Israel have in common? They are all either European or European-settler states. And they all decided to boycott this week’s UN …conference against racism in Geneva – even before Monday’s incendiary speech by the Iranian…
How many balls did we crush?
As more information appears about the Bush administration’s use of torture, there is still much to learn about the role of Australia in this sordid process: The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released an exhaustive review of torture under the Bush administration that, among other revelations, torpedoes the notion that the administration only chose…
Holding onto confused thoughts
What do Australian bloggers think of the Durban II conference in Geneva?
Slavery is the key
A real reason that many Western nations, including the US and Australia, backed out of Durban II? Ijm Dike of the Urban Justice Center’s Human Rights Project, the driving force behind much of the US delegation, has an entirely different frame on what’s really going on here- why the US and other states backed out…
History will keep repeating until a solution is found
With the Durban circus continuing, the editor of the Independent Australian Jewish Voices opinion and letters page, Sara Dowse, has a few reflections: In June 1975 I was a member of the Australian delegation to the UN Conference for International Women’s Year. It was held in Mexico City, where for the first time a motion…
Israel to bomb Iran? Don’t believe the hype
My latest column for New Matilda is about the relationship between Israel and Iran and the prospects for war: The Israel lobby want to bomb Iran, but calmer heads can see plenty of reasons not to. This time the lobby may not get what it wants, writes Antony Loewenstein Roger Cohen, a columnist for the…
When will anybody even acknowledge Palestinians?
Murdoch’s Australian editorialises today on the Durban II conference and predictably focuses on the rantings of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (rather than even acknowledging the issue of Palestinian suffering): Australia was right to have no part of Durban II Before its second conference on racism opened in Geneva, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the UN’s reputation was…
Iran, apartheid, Zionism and other such matters
A fascinating collection of letters in today’s Melbourne Age newspaper, proving once again that debate about Israel/Palestine is far more robust in the public than the mainstream media usually allows: The most frustrating thing about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the UN anti-racism conference (The Age, 21/4) — aside from his flagrant anti-Semitism — is the…