On 4 December I gave testimony in Parliament House in Canberra at a Senate committee on Australia’s role and responsibilities in Afghanistan after the vast bulk of Western forces leave in 2014. I submitted a short statement to the committee back in September and was then invited to travel to Canberra for a more thorough…
Showing all posts tagged Julia Gillard
Baby steps towards neutering the fundamentalist Zionist lobby in Australia
Interesting piece in the Australian Financial Review that outlines the decreasing power of the Israel lobby to bully its way into the corridors of power. As importantly, its belief in apartheid in the West Bank shows that they speak for nobody but the Israeli government. They will never be independent players and should be ignored…
How Australia proudly defends Zionist apartheid
Canberra-based academic and writer Rick Kuhn appears in a book I co-edited this year with Jeff Sparrow, called Left Turn (still on the publisher’s best-seller list, six months after its release). Today in the Canberra Times Kuhn has a powerful piece about Israeli apartheid and the Australian government’s bankrupt position: Has Labor’s position on Israel…
Speech in support of Wikileaks and against 11 years of war in Afghanistan
This month is the 11th anniversary of the Afghan war, a disastrous conflict that has achieved nothing more than destruction for Afghans and foreigners. Yesterday Sydney’s Stop the War Coalition held a rally to mark this anniversary as well as supporting Wikileaks and Julian Assange in their struggle to tell the truth about Afghanistan, via…
Overland Journal tackles “After Zionism”
The following review of After Zionism by Jeff Sparrow appears in Overland Journal: After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor (eds) SAQI In the media, particularly in Australia, the ”˜two-state solution’ to the Palestine/Israel crisis – that is to say, the proposition that peace depends upon the creation of…
How Australia enjoys being a client state part 975432
The Washington Post explains how Canberra is desperate to help America maintain hegemony: The United States and Australia are planning a major expansion of military ties, including possible drone flights from a coral atoll in the Indian Ocean and increased U.S. naval access to Australian ports, as the Pentagon looks to shift its forces closer…
Wikileaks shows failure of MSM in pursuing real leaks (not officially sanctioned one)
I was recently interviewed for a global series about Wikileaks called Did You Have Any Idea? (part one is here):
Is there anything Julia Gillard won’t do to get closer to the Zionist lobby?
Apparently not, according to today’s Melbourne Age, though one has to wonder; our government can’t really support Zionist occupation more than it already does. Well, I guess she could order an Australian military invasion of Iran; that may keep Tel Aviv happy for a few minutes: Julia Gillard has moved to strengthen her already close…
Assange; Australian government thinks its true master sits in DC
Julian Assange tells The Power Index that Canberra needs to grow a back-bone (fat chance): WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains frustrated by the lack of assistance from the Australian federal government over his prolonged overseas legal plight, three weeks ahead of his appeal against extradition in the UK Supreme Court. In an exclusive interview with… The…
Supporting BDS and Palestinian rights as a Jew
An open and frank debate about BDS against Israel in Australia is long overdue. Crikey blog This Blog Harms invited five people to write 1000 words on the issue. This is my contribution: The logic of… boycott, divestment and sanctions… (BDS) didn’t appear to me immediately. When my first book,… My Israel Question, was released in 2006, the…