My following piece appears in today’s ABC The Drum: In late September, the government of Sri Lanka released 1,800 former Tamil Tiger fighters. Colombo claimed they had been rehabilitated as President Mahinda Rajapaksa told them at a ceremony in the capital: “I hope you will work for peace and ethnic harmony in this nation of…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
What privatisation does to immigration detention
This is almost comical but sadly true (via the Canberra Times): The Commonwealth Government is suing its former immigration detention operators for failing to protect it against lawsuits lodged by people kept in detention facilities. The case will be heard in the South Australian Supreme Court on November 21. It is part of a long-running…
The information black hole that is Christmas Island
The details of the Australian immigration system are often kept secret, not least the activities of British multinational Serco running the detention facilities. The Australian’s Paige Taylor is that rare mainstream journalist who has been pursuing the story for years. Her feature in yesterday’s paper documented the absurd restrictions on finding out accurate information on…
ABC interview on BDS, Palestine and far-right love affair with Zionism
The ongoing blind establishment embrace of Israel and condemnation of BDS as akin to Nazi Germany shows no sign of abating in Australia. Yesterday’s ABC Radio National Breakfast featured a story on the issue and included a brief interview with me explaining the growing alliances between the fascist right and Israel; a mutual hatred of…
Rest easy, Israel, the storm has passed, keep on occupying
What’s that about an Israeli media bubble? You say there’s nothing to worry about? Sorry what? Occupying Palestinians is fine? Rising racism against Arabs best avoided? Yes, of course it is. Guy Bechor writes in Yediot, the country’s biggest paper, that Israel is now emerging from a down-turn and even falsely claims Australia has outlawed…
Don’t trust Serco and friends to manage asylum seekers in Australia
Under-trained. Under-staffed. Traumatised. And that’s just the employees of disaster capitalist companies, loved by governments, to add “efficiency” to a straining refugee system. Paige Taylor reports in today’s Australian: An English backpacker on a tourist visa, Australians straight from high school and overseas students are among hundreds of casual workers earning up to $450 a…
As Chevron has destroyed the Amazon, now firm gets access in Australia
The development and exploitation of natural resources by corporates is on the march globally. Take the proposed gas hub in the Kimberely in Western Australia. Governments are usually far too keen to please corporations, with locals and environmental concerns largely ignored. Chevron recently announced a massive LNG project off the Western Australian coast. Such moves…
The desperate plea for Israel to hang onto land forever
It seems I’ve upset a man who rather likes Zionist occupation and dislikes my recent ABC piece on the UN Palestine bid and BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] against Israel. In this week’s conservative Spectator magazine, a column by Rowan Dean, headlined, “Three words you’ll never hear from Loewenstein and his BDS pals”, rehashes every…
Two, vastly different ways to report on asylum seekers
Today’s Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph in Sydney leads with this “exclusive”, deliberately designed to make readers angry towards these supposedly greedy refugees: Buying cigarettes and tobacco for immigration detainees is costing taxpayers more than $1.4 million a year. While the federal government spends millions on anti-smoking campaigns, the cost of keeping up detainees’ habits costs about…
A man out to save young, innocent lives in Asia
My following book review appeared in last Sunday’s Sydney Sun Herald newspaper: The Grey Man John Curtis (Macmillan, $34.99) Al-Jazeera reported in 2008 that the child sex trade in Cambodia was rampant, fuelled by local interest and Western tourism. In 2007, Cambodian authorities arrested only 21 people for sex crimes with children and many brothels…