Another day and another serious allegation: A former Serco employee at Curtin Detention Centre says treatment of detainees by some staff members was “outrageously brutal” and they were bullied constantly. Seven asylum seekers were flown from Curtin and put in isolation on Christmas Island on Tuesday night because of increased tensions at the remote centre,…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
BDS isn’t akin to Nazi Germany and damn those who say so
My following essay appears in New Matilda today: Equating the BDS movement with Nazism is both offensive and outrageous. So why aren’t members of the Jewish community speaking out on this, asks Antony Loewenstein Joseph Stalin changed his name and so did New South Wales Federal Greens MP Lee… Rhiannon. Stalin, writes Alan Howe, executive editor…
KBR is company that needs investigation and yet officials love ’em
KBR is a leading contractor that operates in America, Australia and across the world. Its human rights record is constantly found wanting time and time again and yet governments continue giving them contracts. That’s privatisation on crack. Read this and weep: The skirmishing has not yet subsided in the high-profile suit brought by Jamie Leigh…
Who really run immigration detention in Australia? Unaccountable Serco, that’s who
The kind of story that is happening every day around the country: Three asylum seekers were denied appointments at Broome Hospital and returned to Curtin Detention Centre after speaking to a member of the public in the waiting room. The news comes amid reports that seven asylum seekers were flown to Christmas Island from Curtin…
One Australian politician who rightly sees Israel as rogue state
Well, that’s my words, not his, Labor MP Doug Cameron, but his comments on this week’s ABC TV’s Q and A were rare for a mainstream politician: Look, I think the issue of Israel and Palestine is huge in terms of trying to get world peace. I think Israel have had a massive amount of…
Too much to expect Murdoch press to cover BDS fairly? It’s Nazi Germany folks!
Yet another article in a long line of pieces in the Australian media – this time in Murdoch’s Adelaide Advertiser – that obscures the real issue behind BDS against Israel. The photo caption is wrong (there is no person called “Max Brenner”), the word “occupation” is absent and the real reason activists are protesting Max…
Roll up to see “liberal” Australian Zionist power-broker ignore occupation
The Australian Zionist lobby has spent years demonising Arabs, Palestinians and moderate Jews in the name of “saving Zionism”. The effect? A Jewish state with a serious image problem. That’s money well spent, people. Now, a more “moderate” Zionist lobbyist is around, Albert Dadon. There’s nothing really different here – “we want peace”, he says,…
Australia’s future is not ignoring human rights in the region
My following book review appeared in yesterday’s Sydney Sun Herald newspaper: There Goes the Neighbourhood Michael Wesley (New South Books, $32.95) Australia’s insecurity in the Asia-Pacific region is legendary. Over decades prime ministers and commentators have urged a close relationship with Washington while remaining open to romance with leading powers such as China to buy…
Breaking news; Afghan Hazaras are human beings still being oppressed in their country
I’ve just received this message from a refugee activist in Perth, Western Australia. It’s a release from the… Coordination of Hazara Refugees in Curtin immigration detention centre, a remote camp away from public view.… Freedom It is known to all and history has also proven that Hazaras have always and systemically been target of national, religious…
Privacy and censorship in the online world are foreign concepts?
I was recently spoke in Sydney at the University of New South Wales at the conference of the Australian Law Students’ Association on the issues of privacy and censorship in Australia and globally. Here’s extracts from that event (though my comments here are very brief and rest assured I said many other things, including citizens…