The following guest post is written by reader Jim Dodrill: It was announced today that Iraq war apologist General Peter Cosgrove has been appointed the new chancellor of Australian Catholic University. This is an interesting development considering that Cosgrove, former head of the ADF during the Howard era, would have been well aware of warnings…
Showing all posts tagged John Howard
Gillard remains in the gutter over asylum seekers (and she feels fine)
Australia’s new refugee policy is truly a “he-man” competition. Who can seem toughest on those evil people smugglers? Who can maximise political capital over the handful of desperate souls from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq keen to make a better life? Opening a regional processing centre in East Timor smacks of a typical Western colonial…
It’s a good time to be in the detention centre business. Just ask Serco
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: The Australian government’s decision to re-open the Curtin detention centre in Western Australia has attracted predictable outrage from previous detainees and refugee groups but missing from the media coverage was any mention of who will run the facility. British multinational Serco is in charge of the…
Australia once again uses refugees as punching bag
After the Australian government announced the re-opening of the remote Curtin detention centre, these suggestions are completely supported: Human rights barrister Julian Burnside QC, who was an outspoken opponent of the Howard government’s asylum-seeker policies, said the Rudd government was following the same policy trajectory and urged people to punish Labor by voting for the…
The Israel lobby strikes back
Speaking of “journalists” who love Israel like an old wine; juicy if you know where to lick but corrupt to the core. Over to you, Murdoch columnist Greg Sheridan: The Australia-Israel relationship, normally a byword for geostrategic stability and enduring human warmth, has had some stormy passages lately. The use of Australian passports by the…
Dershowitz backs extra-judicial murder (and torture)
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has a love affair with Israel that has no bounds. It’s therefore unsurprising that he supports Israel’s recent assassination in Dubai: The complaints leveled against Israel by European countries and Australia, regarding the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, ring hollow and smack…
Over one million killed in Iraq but let’s not focus on details, writes Murdoch editorial
Unsure what to really think of the Iraq war? Let Murdoch’s Australian guide you through the complexity: Tony Blair was called a murderer on Friday by outraged activists after his evidence before the Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the war to remove Saddam Hussein. It is the sort of foolish sloganising that always characterised…
Australia rolls out the welcome mat for war criminal retirees
My following article appears in today’s Crikey: The news that defeated Sri Lankan presidential candidate and former army chief Sarath Fonseka may claim temporary asylum in Australia due to fears for his life… is the latest saga in the country’s ongoing tragedy. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith denies that Australian officials in Colombo ever received an…
What the Australian/American alliance really means
Scott Burchill and Kristian Lewis, The Age, 8 January: The only rationale left for our involvement in Afghanistan is to restore Washington’s military credibility, which was badly tarnished in Iraq. As John Howard said recently, a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be “an enormous blow to American prestige”. For the same reasons it bombed Serbia in…
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,…