Thousands of protesters have been out in force in Melbourne last week to disrupt the Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition, where defence companies from around the world are showcasing their latest designs in weapons and technology.
What we know about Australia’s arms exports: we’ve analysed the data
A decision by the UK Government to curb arms exports to Israel has brought into question Australia’s reluctance to do the same.
“Our people have endured over 230 years of Genocide and Ecocide on this Stolen Land,” declared Uncle Robbie. “The so-called Commonwealth government of Australia is illegitimate, built on the theft and destruction of our lands and lives. It is time for the government to face justice for these ongoing atrocities.”
Key Points:
Becoming the latest recruit in a well-organised global program, Australia has joined the 24 nations which have appointed envoys to combat anti-Semitism. We still await an envoy for resisting Islamophobia.
“Sorry Mohammed”, says Australia to any citizens not pro-Israel, anti-ceasefire
Labor’s insistence that Australia will only recognise a Palestinian state as part of a “peace process” leading to a two-state solution wilfully dodges one very basic question – how can you negotiate a two-state solution, or any solution for that matter, without the participation of two states?
Over the past 6 months, the diarrhoea tsunami that is Australian political discourse found its new favourite meaningless phrase: ‘social cohesion’.
Those who use the phrase claim that it is about maintaining a respectful society, so we can all come together around the campfire at the end of the day and sing Kumbaya. Oddly enough, the ongoing genocide, which is attempting to wipe out an entire society, does not seem to count as a ‘threat to social cohesion’. Just the protests against it.
The real threat to ‘social cohesion’ is the ongoing genocide of Palestine
Information regarding war crimes committed by Australians against prisoners of war in Iraq has been ignored for over a decade.
The young man says that Australia was founded on racism, that our first 15 prime ministers were White nationalists and that the White Australia policy was about deporting non-Whites. He’s a supporter of racism: what about the panel? That’s the question.
Politics here has become hate-filled, debates reduced to headline grabbing one liners, where detail is given, the call for detail as in the announcement to encourage permanent residents to join our military as a pathway to citizenship, outlining both a timetable and who will be encouraged to join up, in other words, don’t listen, more detail, don’t listen, more detail.
Hate and division.
How sad a place the world has become.
Except when we take the time to meet a stranger and just chat about life, listen to their story, tell your story, engage and above all… take the time to LISTEN.
Have a real conversation.
Source: When will hatred stop? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australian university students channelled their peers around the world with encampments protesting the Gaza genocide. Will university leaders cow to pressure from the Zionist lobby and shut down free speech? Michael Sainsbury reports.
Source: Student protests echo Vietnam as pro-war lobby cracks down on peaceful protests – Michael West
We have known for some months that Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher were the only finance ministers in the world whose economy has enjoyed top credit ratings, both jobless and inflation rates below 4%, and positive economic growth every quarter last year.
Following last Tuesday’s Budget outcomes, Australia has joined Denmark as one of only two economies to have gained consecutive surpluses, reduced debt to GDP twice and kept average wealth per person above USD$350,000 (AU$520,000).
So, if the AFR approved the 2022 Budget, what superlatives would they lavish on the Albanese Government and these world-beating numbers?
Their lead analysis, headed ‘Spending addiction fuels a new decade of deficits’, attacked Labor for driving ‘the budget headlong into deficit for the next decade’.
The accompanying opinion piece declared, ‘This is the most irresponsible budget in recent memory’.
Other negative commentaries included, ‘Labor slammed for offshore gas approval backdown’ and ‘The big fail in Australia’s housing’.
Yes, wall-to-wall condemnation and pessimism. ABC News, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald were also highly critical. The Murdoch media was even more savage. The Herald Sun headed its critique, ‘Chalmed and dangerous’.
Source: Mainstream media fabricates disgraceful lies about Labor’s Budget
Can we ask that the HECS hex can somehow be removed, that those dedicated students who work so hard to gain an education and careers which not only promise them a quality of life and worthwhile careers, and incomes that bring them to higher income tax brackets so their contributions late in life more than repay the costs they have incurred?
That’s right, the Stage 3 tax cuts have worked to minimise that benefit… worse before the Albo ‘lie’ as he adjusted the rate thresholds to make the system a smidgeon more equitable.
Source: The HECS Hex – » The Australian Independent Media Network
On 27 February, we wrote to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) expressing concern that Australia had failed to fulfil its obligation under the Genocide Convention (1948) to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people. That failure continues.
Source: Australia is a silent partner in atrocity in Gaza and the West Bank – Pearls and Irritations
Israel is as slippery as an eel. Their false claim made before Easter intentionally crippled the distribution of aid in Gaza and increased illness and starvation in the process. Why does the WEST give Israel the benefit of the doubt?
Australia has welcomed an independent report Israel failed to provide evidence members of a United Nations agency that provides humanitarian relief to Palestinians were linked to Hamas.
Source: Australia backs report on Palestine aid agency UNRWA
Australia’s Defence Department has refused a Freedom of Information request about the details of an arms deal with Israel on the grounds that such information “could harm Australia’s international standing and reputation,” which suggests the details must be pretty damning. Equally as scandalous, this refusal was reportedly made in consultation with the Israeli government.
At least that is what is looks like to this citizen. Religious schools can discriminate when employing staff, ensuring that all teachers comply with a morality standard and that will inevitably affect the way education is delivered, especially when dealing with ethics and morality.
How easy would it be to make the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which Australia was involved in setting up and is a signatory to, actually make that law. There are thirty articles in the Declaration and Article 2 is an overarching statement:
Source: Human Rights or the Right to Discriminate? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The proposed bill on assessing, parcelling and dictating information (mis-, dis-, mal-) is a nasty little experiment in censoring communication and discussion. When the state decides, through its agencies, to tell readers what is appropriate to read and what can be accessed, the sirens should be going off.
“There is an anger across this nation that we choose not to acknowledge.
It is an anger fuelled by racism, prejudice, discrimination and poverty. A distressed discontent that is growing, not just here but around the world. But under anger is always grief…
Source: Cognitive Bias – » The Australian Independent Media Network
More than four months after a crushing defeat in the Voice referendum, and soon after the Closing the Gap report confirmed that there was almost no progress in improving Aboriginal lives last year, Aboriginal players in the yes case are moving towards an inquest into how their case went so terribly wrong.
Source: Australia’s First Nations still looking over the 1788 chasm – Pearls and Irritations
The border fetishists also make a crucial omission. The people smugglers, who are of all stripes of opportunism and exploitation rather than some monolithic bloc, are merely facilitating the provisions of the United Nations Refugee Convention. All who arrive should not be discriminated against on the basis of how they arrive or their backgrounds – the articles of the Convention state as much – yet Australia’s border policy remains persistently cruel and defiant. Whenever a boat appears with a small cargo full of desperate individuals who make it to land, the fantasies of invasion, unwarranted intrusion and unwanted infiltration catch alight. It was high time they were snuffed out.
Source: Border Paranoia in Fortress Australia – » The Australian Independent Media Network
As the Palestinian population continues to endure hell on Earth, nothing more is being done by political leaders other than offering “deep concern”, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
Israelis can’t understand what he did wrong. It’s just beyond them
It’s a failed strategy that Kerry Stokes, who is paying Roberts-Smith’s legal fees, used in the infamous C7 case he lost in 2009 and Kerry Stokes would know that Roberts-Smith’s chances of winning the appeal are Buckley’s or none.
“The Productivity Commission’s report is a wake-up call for all levels of government. We cannot afford to let Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander homelessness continue to rise. The governments must prioritise and implement the necessary measures to address this crisis.”
Will Israeli Zionists raise the Australian flag next to theirs in Palestine? What relevance has the ICJ decision in 2024 had for the teaching of Australia’s Colonial history, Our Frontier Wars,were aimed at Killing for the Country and they took place in our not-so-distant inglorious past?
Maybe time for a one-flag world the one that belongs to the longest-continuous living culture on the planet
Australia Day is a good day to consider the repercussions of the Voice debate. We need to understand the history, but also look forward.
Source: What voice will we give to Australia’s future and where does it leave Australia Day? – Michael West
Fostering aggrieved patriotism is a core right-wing gambit, and we should recognise it when Dutton applies his lighter to that fire in the next fortnight: it is part of a grim package.
Source: Lessons from the USA about patriotic beat-ups – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The ABC has succumbed
Once a reliable news source, the ABC has lately been relying on borderline plagiarism and clickbait to entice readers, diminishing its previously high standards. Rosemary Sorensen reports.
Source: ABC joins the charge against quality Australian journalism
How is it that those who fabricated welfare checks have not been charged? How is it those who locked him in a cell endlessly for months and in which his eyes’ last sight dwindled to fading light and into endless darkness, those who cruelled hopeless fate have not been held to account?
How is it that the people who designed and approved the inhumane Unit 18 have not been named and brought to account? Atonement calls. Family and others say it is an evil place where hopelessness destroys mortal life. Charges? And the guards who ticked off welfare checks at the beginning of their shifts — 60 days later, since a child’s eyes closed in that cell, never to open again, how have there been no charges? Fated a child’s death in that dank, dark dungeon.
The Quid pro Quo promise between Murdoch and the LNP made years ago that Abbott took on board to change the ABC and Australia’s Democracy
INSIDERS IS NO longer a program viewers can rely on for accurate information and analysis. This is extremely disappointing. This has come about through excessive reliance on Rupert Murdoch’s mendacious “news” outlets for its content.
Source: ABC complaint over Insiders’ collaboration with Murdoch’s News Corp
Murdoch has always held a personal relationship with Israel’s illegal occupation of the Golan Heights. https://michaelwest.com.au/compromised-genie-energy-and-the-murdoch-medias-climate-denial/
The United Nations General Assembly voted 91 in favor and 8 against with 62 abstentions to reaffirm U.N. Security Council resolutions 242 of 1967 and 497 of 1981 that demand Israel cease its control over the Golan Heights and return it to Syria.
Denying Indigenous Australians a Voice to Parliament has exposed an absence of compassion that has set our nation backwards in time, writes Dermot Daley.
Mark Dreyfus AG is related to Alfred Dreyfus the French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry from Alsace whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most polarizing political dramas in modern French history.
Australian replay of the U.S.-UK persecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; the war criminals are running the persecution while the whistleblower is facing five indictments for the leaks, which carry maximum sentences of ten years each.
A roll call of Australian whistleblowers and politicians was on hand to lend support. They addressed the assembled media and the McBride supporters, decrying what some described as a “war on whistleblowers” and others called the “war on truth”.
Being part of the global supply network that supplies parts for the Israeli F-35 jet fighters used over Gaza implicates Australia in their alleged war crimes.
With Australia previously spruiking the benefits of our global defence cooperation in supply and construction, it is now notable that the government is not being forthright with the Australian people about the extent of our involvement.
Australia needs to honestly acknowledge that atrocities like Gaza are exactly the kind of risk it has signed us up for.
Source: Australia’s role in the bombing of Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
Look, at what they have done Mum!!
While the operation to exterminate and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in Gaza has – quite rightly – monopolized the world’s attention for weeks, little or no attention is being paid to one of its crucial objectives, which is passing rather unnoticed: the habituation of our societies and of each and every one of us, i.e. of all humanity, to a new international reality devoid of the humanitarian law that has governed international or internal armed conflicts since 1949. In short, we are becoming accustomed to a world that increasingly resembles a jungle, where only the law of the strongest reigns, and where the worst atrocities against the weakest are “permitted”!
The resounding defeat of the recent Voice to Parliament referendum is another case in point. It reveals a lack of understanding of the historical nature of violence against Indigenous people, the racist foundations of settler Australia, and how these continue to impact communities today.
Seven federal politicians, which could include the Prime Minister, had complaints of sexual assault made against them in the period from the 24th of February 2021 until the 30th of June 2022 which is the year-and-a-half period after Brittany Higgins’ allegations first became public knowledge.
Yet the Australian Federal Police failed to charge any of them which is consistent with how the federal police operate a protection racket for federal politicians.
Review The Australian Wars review – a furious exposé of a place that celebrates murderous white settlers Wide-ranging, unflinching and horrifying, this documentary lets Indigenous people speak out about centuries of legalised killing. No wonder it created shockwaves
This is the grand outcome of the referendum loss. To the “No” campaign, the vote was never just about constitutional recognition. It was about undoing decades of progressive change. The prize to them is the ability to say aloud every cruel and anti-intellectual thought, to indulge every bigotry and pretend they are doing so on behalf of a country too fearful to listen to the people it dispossessed.”
Source: “There’s a… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Are we that tied to America? Dutton says not enough and is importing their political strategies
Australia’s political leaders have tip-toed cautiously around conflict in the Middle East, offering words of support but showing little else, writes Tom Tanuki.
Source: Twenty years of Australian PM cowardice on Israel and Palestine
Billions of dollars are being invested to kill what Right -Wing Israelis call rats trapped in a cage called Gaza. Why is the ALP government doing this? Are we America’s puppets their base in the Pacific or a sovereign nation? Albanese seems to be between a rock and a hard place and shames us. Dutton we know would be celebrating loudly while handing the keys to Biden. Albanese is not but are we doing what’s right and moral?
“Pine Gap facility is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources, and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel.”
Australia is not only providing diplomatic support for the Israeli government’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, but logistics support too. Peter Cronau of Declassified Australia reports.
The World viewed Australia as Voting No to Indigenous Rights and Voting No to Palestinian Rights. That makes us unique and exceptional assholes even among colonizing nations.
We should not be surprised if as a consequence of the defeat of the referendum the world judges us harshly, accusing us of bad faith and hypocrisy. The extraordinary fact that our international commitments were rarely, if ever mentioned, in such a consequential debate suggests, at least, that the face that we turn to the world is very different from the one we present to the domestic electorate, and that international documents we sign up to are kept from sight rather than explained and publicised.
Source: What happened to Indigenous Rights? The world will judge Australia harshly – Pearls and Irritations
Did News Corp really reveal that Sussan Ley was actually pro-Palestine not that long ago?
News Corp rags scoured the archives to dig up a grainy piece of footage showing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addressing a pro-Palestinian protest as a “Federal Labor MP” and condemning the Israeli military many years ago when the PM had thick brown hair.
Now, as Prime Minister, Albanese posts messages on social media, ‘Australia stands with our friend Israel’ and appears to walk in lock-step with U.S. allies by positioning Australia firmly on the Israeli side of the conflict.
Notably, over the past weeks, Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has also been making media statements condemning the Albanese Government for being too slow to act on the Israel conflict and calling the Government’s call for “restraint” as “disgraceful”.
In 2003, then a Liberal backbencher, Ley became Chair of the Federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group. Ley said at the time she had “a great and abiding attachment to the land and the Arab people. It’s something I gained as a child in the region where I grew up”.
Source: Political opinions shift on Israel conflict in wake of Hamas attacks
By failing to advocate for a ceasefire, western states have given a green light to Israel’s agenda of collective punishment.
‘Participants expressed disgust about a statue of John McDouall Stuart being erected in Alice Springs following the 150th anniversary of his successful attempt to reach the top end. This expedition led to the opening up of the “South Australian frontier” which led to massacres as the telegraph line was established and white settlers moved into the region. People feel sad whenever they see the statue; its presence and the fact that Stuart is holding a gun is disrespectful to the Aboriginal community who are descendants of the families slaughtered during the massacres throughout central Australia.’[13]
It’s difficult to avoid seeing commonalities between the feelings of the people of Charlottesville and the feelings of the people of Alice Springs.
These events and their consequences on vastly different continents encapsulate the transgenerational suffering and trauma among Indigenous and African American peoples. This writer can only hope that – post-Referendum – Aboriginal Australians will come around to believing that their trust has not been wasted, that despite the awful, politically-manipulated rejection of the Referendum, there remain great swathes of non-Indigenous Australians who will continue to stand with them through ‘Makarrata’ and beyond, no matter what it takes.
By Frances Goold Voice Crash Investigation [1] 1 ‘Mario, what’s your relationship to this park?’ ‘This is the park where my wife and I got married, roughly eight years ago.’ ‘And what did you father say to you at the wedding?’ ‘My dad told the photographer he didn’t want that statue in our wedding pictures’.…
Source: Voice Crash Investigation: Transgenerational trauma – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Australians had the opportunity to accept our invitation in the ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’. Only they had the power to decide whether to accept or reject constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by voting “Yes” or “No” on a representative body enshrined in the Constitution.
I hope I’m wrong, but everything around me is saying that today Australia will reject that invitation. It will choose to leave our hand outstretched.
Unlike elections, the thing about referendums is that there really is no hiding the truth.
This morning, I call to mind the Aboriginal woman who spoke at the end of a forum we held in Darwin on the Voice. She told us: ‘A lot of my people don’t understand all the law and politics about this Voice. All I know is that when they wake up on Sunday 15 October and if the answer is NO, they will think that they have been rejected once again by the people who dispossessed and colonised them without their consent.’ She wept.
Source: Rejected by the people who dispossessed and colonised them – Pearls and Irritations
A chorus of chagrin greeted news of a ‘No’ vote at Saturday’s The Voice referendum. But the damage for Australia – especially in our own Asia-Pacific region – could go further than a bruised reputation. Andrew Gardiner reports.
Source: “Stuck in a colonial past” – the world condemns Australia’s “No” vote on The Voice – Michael West
A Voice 2023 Stolen like the “Never Stolen Generation of Children” The odds against the referendum were already stacked by the electoral college hurdle it faced of 50% in each state and a majority of states required for it to pass. That alone proved it would be a highway to hell for yes and heaven for a Racist Australia
If the polls are to be believed, the referendum question will be soundly voted down this Saturday. It could – and should – have been so different.
Source: The Voice. A simple proposition of empathy to be ruined by time and politics? – Michael West
While Australian politicians complained and sniffed, Israel has imposed another blockade of Gaza, with news reporters limply avoiding the point that the enclave of two million inhabitants was already blockaded. Such a political entity was barely breathing to begin with, but the promise now is to cut off water (97% of the water in Gaza is already contaminated), food, fuel and access to electricity (this was already subject to regular outages) is seen as a logical, natural barbarism. Searching for the appropriate word, the Israeli forces had dubbed this latest measure a “siege”.
During a visit to the Israeli Air Force’s underground command centre, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant summed up the attitude to this approach of even deeper deprivation against an already exhausted civilian population. “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”
It has been a few days of slaughter-filled accounts. Starting on October 7 on the Jewish day of Simchat Torah, the State of Israel has faced assaults from hundreds of Hamas militants. Directed from southwards in the country, the mayhem has rattled the security and intelligence establishment smugly convinced in their reading of Palestinian motivations…
Source: Blue Light, Green Blood: Edifice Politics for Israel – » The Australian Independent Media Network
ABOVE IS WHO WE DO KNOW IN OPPOSITION TO YES IS A THE DARK ARMY WE DON”T KNOW!! SO VOTE YES!!
Led by Advance, the “No” campaign is supported by The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and the Australian conference of the international Far-Right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC — until recently, hosted by LibertyWorks), organisations with which Price and Mundine have been associated for years. All have long opposed climate policy. CIS, IPA and LibertyWorks are all affiliated with the little-known global Atlas Network.
Founded in 1981 by the English businessman, Antony Fisher, ‘to litter the world with free-market think tanks’, headquartered in Virginia by the U.S. Capitol, Atlas is not itself a think tank. It discreetly fundraises, networks and expands its vast public opinion, public policy and election influence machinery of 515 “partner organisations” in 100 nations.
Better-known U.S. think tanks include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato, Heartland and Competitive Enterprise institutes. All oppose climate policy and all have documented histories of oil-derived funding, such as from oil billionaires Charles Koch and Richard Scaife, along with ExxonMobil and other multinational corporations.
Source: Atlas Network’s fossil-fuelled campaign against the Voice
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.