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
“The conservative faithful would no doubt nominate any and all of the parliamentary leaders who failed to win government, so the question needs refining: Which leader of the federal Liberal Party has done the most damage to Australia?
Source: “The… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Talkfests can’t fix global tax evasion by multinationals and billionaires for one simple reason: the US will never agree to a plan where their billionaires and multinationals pay more tax in other countries like Australia. Callum Foote and Michael West report on the futility of G20 and OECD efforts to address the world’s biggest scam.
A few years ago we outed News for orchestrating a $903 million loan to Foxtel. As if Foxtel needed a loan at the very apogee of its profitability. No matter, the loan carried a hefty interest rate of 12 per cent. So News was effectively lending money to its cashed-up pay TV business Foxtel at 12 per cent, claiming tax deductions on the loan and lending the money back to itself at an interest rate of zero.
Why would Australian corporate media present headlines as if they were surprisingly exceptional or evil in Australia? The idea that Israel be destroyed isn’t strange, particularly in an anti-Semitic racist country like Australia. A country that recently voted No to any institutional recognition of its own First Nation’s peoples. Whites have refused to share this country with people who have been living here for 65,000 years. Like Israelis, we have been present here little more than the Jews in Palestine. They haven’t been there since 1948 but claim Palestine is theirs because they once lived there 3000 years ago. Despite the fact that the majority of Jews, 66% aka the diaspora, don’t want to even live there now.
Israel it might be argued is the product of anti-Semitism no European country wanted to take them after WW1 when the Balfour Agreement was signed and by the time WW2 was won the Allies had accepted the state of Israel in the British mandate of Palestine which allowed for the dispossession and evacuation of 750,000 Palestinians. Israel is a man-made construct, a domino, that many believe deserves to be knocked over.
Netanyahu has amplified the idea that Israel needs to be destroyed and set back any thought of a two or one-state solution His want for a Theocratic Apartheid State that held 2.3 million people in a concentration camp called Gaza needs to be gone. Doing, what they call “mowing the grass” is a crime against humanity. Israel has done what Hamas did on October 7th on more than one occasion and didn’t think it a big deal. They did more damage than Hamas when killing 2,200 people 500 children 200 combatants, and the rest civilians while destroying 18,000 homes and breaking the cease-fire. They just coupled it with a massive PR campaign.
The Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network president has advocated for the destruction of the Israeli state in comments criticised by a prominent extremism expert.
Source: Israel Hamas: Palestine spokesman Nasser Mashni defends 3CR comments on Israel
U.S. corporate media outlets have granted Israeli military commanders pre-publication review rights for “all materials and footage” recorded by their correspondents embedded with the Israel Defense Forces during the invasion of Gaza, a precondition condemned by press freedom advocates.
Israel’s ludicrous and failed PR exercise reveals their level of desperation and lack of Intelligence.
As for the matter of making sure the attacks of October 7 are never repeated, the point is all too obvious. It will keep happening again with dreary, bloody predictability. If not next year, then the next decade. Or generation. Eliminating Hamas will simply be a bloody pruning exercise verging on genocide, allowing fresh vegetation to thrive. The forest of vengeance will continue to grow; the thousands of children who survive will never forgive the IDF for what they have done and continue to do. Each dead family brings with it a family of converts for the Palestinian cause. Israel’s publicity relations wonks would be best advised to pay Johnson and Morrison and wish them on their merry way.
Source: Showboating for War: Johnson and Morrison in Israel – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The war in Gaza serves as a smokescreen to the escalation of settler expansion and violence in the West Bank, writes Dan Steinbock. Meanwhile, Biden’s hawks refocus on Iran. Last of a 5-part series.
Are we sending Bushmasters??
The Biden administration put out a three-page list of arms for Ukraine, but information on weapons sent to Israel could fit in one sentence.
Source: U.S. Weapons Transfers to Israel Shrouded in Secrecy
A nuclear strike on Gaza, by the way, would create many tons of radioactive fall-out, which would rain down on Israelis.
Source: Israeli Minister’s Threat to Nuke Gaza displays Genocidal Mood: “There are no Civilians in Gaza”
When two conservative parties go head to head and one pretends their progressive
A national Newspoll, conducted October 30 to November 3 from a sample of 1,220 people, gave Labor a 52–48% lead over the Coalition, a two-point gain for the Coalition since the final Newspoll before the October 14 Voice referendum.
This is Labor’s narrowest lead in Newspoll since the 2022 federal election. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (up two percentage points), 35% Labor (down one), 12% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (steady) and 10% for all others (down one).
Source: Albanese and Labor slump to worst position in Newspoll since 2022 election
The conservative think tank once defined conservative politics. Now Heritage is turning to the right-wing fringe in an attempt to recapture its glory days.
Refugee Action Coalition Media Release PNG refugees have been left without income, food vouchers for at least the last two weeks – in some cases longer. Some have had their power cut because they cannot afford to pay for electricity. Transport has been cut. Medical appointments at PIH (Pacific International Hospital) now have to be…
Source: No money, no food: PNG refugees can’t wait another week – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Nothing seems to have changed in the subsequent century and a half. Humans are still killing other humans because of their differing gods or how they look, or the things they believe, and the children still fall first. We are only more efficient at our killing. Bullets and bombs are more deadly than swords and arrows, and if Israel is attempting genocide, we may not know until it is a fait accompli, but we will be complicit with our billions in military aid. Hezbollah, backed by Iran, may also be prompted to enter the war, and Israel could be more endangered and seek increased American support, maybe even troops. What then? Will the American president not call for a cease fire? When will it be too late? Or is it already?
There are parents on both sides of the conflict who already have an answer to that last question.
Source: The Second Casualty – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“Israeli doctors who signed a letter promoting [the] bombing of hospitals with patients inside have committed a betrayal to their noble profession and bear responsibility,” said a group of doctors in Gaza.
Source: Doctors in Gaza Respond to Israeli Doctors Who Endorsed Bombing of Hospitals
“Israel is killing the journalists that expose their crimes, then bribing the journalists that cover for them,” said one critic. Brett Wilkins Nov 06, 2023 2
Source: US Corporate Media Outlets Allow IDF to Vet ‘All Materials’ From Embedded Reporters in Gaza
Any journalist who wishes to avoid colluding in the genocide unfolding in Gaza ought to be wary of repeating the Israeli claims about what happened during the initial Hamas assault, writes Jonathan Cook.
The “savages” narrative is being weaponised by Israel to justify its mounting campaign of atrocities in Gaza. Which is why it is so important that journalists don’t simply allow themselves to be spoon-fed. Far too much is at stake.
Hamas committed war crimes on Oct. 7 on a scale that is unprecedented for any Palestinian group. But there is little more than Israeli narrative spin so far to suggest that there was an unparalleled depravity to Hamas’ actions. Certainly from what we know, it is hard to see that anything Hamas did that day was worse, or more savage, than what Israel has been doing daily in Gaza for weeks.
And Israel’s actions — from bombing Palestinian families to starving them of food and water – has the blessing of every major Western politician.
The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’…. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most.
The UN is calling the Israel-Hamas war a ‘graveyard of children’…. an adult conflict, in which the young are suffering most. What we see on our TV screens every night is impossible to watch. Did Netanyahu see the young lad who had just carried the decapitated body of his friend from the rubble. If so, what did he think? He almost certainly thought the same as Natali Bennet the former Israeli prime minister who said to a reporter on Sky News: “Are you seriously asking me about Palestinian civilians? What is wrong with you? We’re fighting Nazis”.
In other words, there are no civilians, there are no innocents, all Palestinians, including children, are the antithesis of us, all deserve and need to be exterminated. In fact, in this logic, there is no entity that can be called Palestine, there are no peoples to be called Palestinians. This is not just the slaughter of innocents, it is the annihilation of innocence, it is the breeding ground of the next generation of retributive violence and of lives lived out of pure hatred.
It is past time that truths were stated with utmost clarity.
Israel may have survived this phase. It is doubtful whether any Arab state would any longer attack it, although Iran, and some of the Gulf states, continue to fund Palestinian causes. The longer-term threat – one that will persist until Israel makes some peace and accommodation with the Palestinians — is of increasing international disdain from the wider international community, including from nations that supported its establishment in 1948. Despised for the obvious ill-treatment of Palestinians and accused of establishing apartheid. Not hated for being Jewish but for being a continuing threat to the peace from its encouragement of illegal settlements.
No longer a decent and liberal society, forgetting for a moment its treatment of the Palestinians, but threatening to become an intolerant ultra-nationalist theocracy, as backward as its equivalents in Saudi Arabia, Iran or Afghanistan. A nation run by a crook who is in the process of subverting the judiciary.
That’s not what the idea of a Jewish homeland promised. If the state imploded, the risk is not of a new Holocaust or program of extermination, but of a new diaspora, going elsewhere for the educational and intellectual and
Source: Israel’s moral power ebbing away in a human rights catastrophe – Pearls and Irritations
The most recent Israeli poll indicates that more than 75 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. It can’t be soon enough.
Hamas is winning the public relations war as Netanyahu leads Israel into becoming a pariah state. Hamas, however horrifying and grisly their actions may be, is playing three-dimensional chess with world opinion. Netanyahu is playing whack-a-mole, resulting in a horrific death toll that Hamas anticipated would weaken support of Israel and halt its rumored incipient recognition by Saudi Arabia.
For Israelis concerned about security, having Netanyahu as Prime Minister is like having an arsonist guard the fire station.
(Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to destroy Hamas, whatever the cost to civilians in Gaza, is based on a brutally cynical reality that such a goal will not be achievable without completely decimating Gaza or forcing the Gazans into exile in Egypt (either of which many of his political partners endorse, calling all Gazans ‘beasts’ or ‘sub-human.’) Recently, Netanyahu referred to a biblical old testament passage that called for the killing of every Amalekite, as he sought to justify the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. As reported on November 3rd in Mother
Source: Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Performative Genocide in Gaza
Gaza is the start. The West Bank is next.
Source: Chris Hedges: Israel’s Final Solution for the Palestinians – scheerpost.com
The civilian slaughter in Gaza today did not begin solely as a consequence of the monstrous Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, writes Dr Jennifer Wilson.
Source: Gaza and the Law of return
I want to use today’s letter to reassure you.
First, as I’ve noted before, polls a year before an election are not predictive of outcomes.
Source: Trump v. Biden: How worried should we be? – Robert Reich
From the Outside Looking In 40 years ago
He actually lived here for 10 years in Elizebeth Bay
David Bowie lived in an apartment at Elizabeth Bay, Sydney for approximately 10 years up until 1992. His Sydney apartment was used as a base for month-long adventures to the outback and far north Queensland rainforests throughout the 1980s.
When David Bowie visited Australia in 1983, the superstar had a blunt assessment of the nation. “He described Australia as one of the most racist countries in the world,” Indigenous man Daniel Browning told SBS News.
Source: David Bowie’s exposure of Australia’s Indigenous struggle inspires new art project | SBS News
Since the 2000s, Australia has run a system of spectacular cruelty demonising those seeking asylum by sea. With nauseating consistency, the Australian body politic continues to keep concentration camp outposts for imminent asylum arrivals in Nauru and Manus Island. The government may have changed in May 2022, but the demonology had not. The Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil, continues to use such expressions as “breaking the market model” and deterring people smugglers.
Despite this negligible number, the Daily Telegraph was keen to treat the attempt by eleven desperate individuals seeking Australian shores as a horrendous attempt at penetrating the country’s own vaunted borders. This was blamed on the account keeping types in the Labor government. “There has been a 14 per cent reduction compared to the previous year in the time when planes are out patrolling the borders and a further 6 per cent reduction in the days when there are ships out patrolling.” Be wary of those flotillas, threatening Australia.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton was beside himself with joy at the revelation, as was the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, Senator James Patterson. In the Coalition, a lacerating sadism continues to fascinate.
Source: Taking the Refugee Hysteria off Ice – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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
We have been down this road before. In 2006, Alyawarre woman Pat Anderson was appointed, together with Rex Wild, KC, as a board of inquiry with four terms of reference relating to sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. Despite the comparable incidence of such sexual abuse in the main and regional towns, the focus – at least in the media – was more on remote Aboriginal communities and on the suggestion made by a person initially identified as a “youth worker” that there were paedophile rings in the community in which he had been living and working. Long after, this story unravelled, with confirmation the claimed “youth worker” was in fact an assistant secretary in the Commonwealth government Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination, reporting directly to then Indigenous Affairs minister Mal Brough, and had not been residing in the community in question.
Source: “I went to… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
What racist jokes will he be able to come back with this time?
WORN OUT FROM non-stop sledging of “Airbus Albo” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has jetted off to India for a few days in India for “trade, security talks” while many of his Coalition sledging mates headed to London.
Source: Despite constant criticisms of Albanese, Dutton jumps ship to India
There is something extremely suspicious about the mechanical repetitious reporting about the Gaza-Israel war. Not much mention is made that of the 1400 Israelis killed between 400-700 were IDF personnel. They seem to have been killed by friendly fire. It has also been said that the 240 hostages are hidden in tunnels that are being bombed by Israel in order to save them. All in all that repetitive sound of the 1400 and hostages sounds more like an ad necessarily placed in all media reports but without ” Israel’s Military says “attached.
However the “The Gaza Health Officials” are always named when the daily Palestinian death count is delivered. 9488 in this case but what isn’t always reported is that 4,888 of these are children and another 30,000 have been injured. Furthermore, not mentioned is Hamas has constantly tried to negotiate a hostage swap with Netanyahu to stop the carnage of civilians but Netanyahu has simply refused. One of his MPs called it just “mowing the grass” while one suspects Netanyahu sees it as an opportunity for genocidal dispossession, the total takeover of Gaza under the guise of righteous “justice” and Scott Morrison’s media revivalist second coming
Israel’s ground forces have encircled Gaza City after stepping up a bombing campaign aimed at “annihilating Hamas” after the group, considered a terrorist organisation by the Australian government, killed 1400 people and took more than 240 hostages in an October 7 assault in southern Israel.
Gaza health officials said on Saturday that 9488 Palestinians have been killed after Israel cut off power, food and water – allowing in a small number of aid trucks – while unleashing a bombing campaign that has targeted hospitals, refugee camps, ambulances and schools.
Source: Scott Morrison lands in Israel, Australians arrive home from Gaza
It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day.
There is a possible reason for those similarities – one that the BBC is studiously failing to report, despite mounting evidence from a variety of sources, including the Israeli media. Instead the BBC is sticking resolutely to a narrative crafted for them, and the rest of the western media, by the Israeli military: that Hamas alone caused all this destruction.
Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.
Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?
And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?
Source: What our Media fails to tell you about October 7 – Pearls and Irritations
Netanyahu an anti-Semite shows just who he is. While some politicians might support him the tide has turned against him. The sea of hatred that once parted for the Jews has parted a second time. This time a humanity that believes in Universal Human Rights is walking through it Palestinians and Jews together against the would-be king of Israel
Huge crowds of protesters filled the streets of Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities on Saturday joining hundreds of thousands around the world to demand a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Hamas, which has killed and wounded more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip in just one month.
Hamas has been all over the news since its brutal October 7 attack, but there’s much less understanding of how the group emerged. Only by studying Hamas’s history can we chart a better way forward.
Source: How Hamas Became the Violent Face of Palestinian Resistance
“In over 30 years, no one has killed journalists at the rate Israel is currently killing them (not to mention their families) in Gaza,” said one analyst. Jessica Corbett Nov 03, 2023 4
Source: Israel-Gaza War Is Deadliest Month for Journalists Covering Conflict in Over 3 Decades
For decades, the western world has been fed Israeli/Zionist narratives about their country being exceptional, Palestinians not existing or being less than human. False Israeli accounts have been swallowed by a compliant media and by politicians scared of being accused of being even slightly anti-Semitic.
A narrative polished and promoted for decades has reached its inhumane crescendo in a refusal to admit cruelty as policy – Palestinians as animals indistinct from Hamas, the thousands of children in Gaza blown to bits, unending dispossession and murder on the West Bank, hundreds of children and thousands of Palestinian adults imprisoned in Israeli jails without charge.
Given western governments seventy five years long responsibility for the carnage in Israel and genocide in Gaza, their leaders have stayed largely silent or have tasted and swallowed the Israeli narrative whose major objective is to impose a world rule which says no one should criticise Israel.
For too long, at the expense of the Palestinian people, this toxic narrative has contributed to confusion, untruths, murder and mayhem.
After the Gazan genocide, the chance of small steps being taken to foster peace with justice will depend on truths emerging, on diplomatic posturing and arrogance being discouraged, on this narrative being derided and dismissed.
Expose and dismiss the dominating Israeli narrative
When the West keeps accusing China of it’s inhumanity it always seems embarrassing, to say the least. Because the Chinese lead in calling for Unity and a World Body to oversee AI more urgently than the West.
From within the summit itself, limiting China’s limited contribution may have revealing consequences. A number of Chinese academics attending the summit had signed on to a statement showing even greater concern for the “existential risk” posed by AI than either the Bletchley statement or President Biden’s executive order on AI. According to the Financial Times, the group, which is distinguished by such figures as the computer scientist Andrew Yao, are calling for the establishment of “an international regulatory body, the mandatory registration and auditing of advanced AI systems, the inclusion of instant ‘shutdown’ procedures and for developers to spend 30 per cent of their research budget on AI safety.”
Source: Rishi Sunak’s AI Pitch: The Bletchley Declaration – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Indonesia is the biggest economy in the South East Asian region, and our closest neighbour. It’s the tenth largest economy in terms of purchasing power in the world, yet doesn’t rank among our top ten trading partners. Yet another report is unlikely to help, Duncan Graham explains.
Source: The Moore Report on South East Asian trade unlikely to lead to more trade – Michael West
Politics is a game for Dutton by no means an application for the job of providing a service for a whole Nation
It seems the Coalition under Dutton isn’t planning to work with the government anytime soon. Dutton and his cohort are throwing whatever they think it takes out there to go negative. Any positive measures (such as a second referendum to acknowledge First Nations people in the Constitution) are reversed almost before they are announced. After all, absolute opposition eventually got Abbott the Prime Ministership. ‘Back to the Future’ was a successful movie franchise and Dutton’s betting it is a good political strategy as well.
Source: The proof is in the pudding – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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
Britain’s BBC is one of the world’s most influential and trusted news sources. But pressure from conservative political elites has warped its coverage of Israel’s war and caused it to downplay the violence being inflicted on Palestinian civilians.
Source: The BBC Is Failing to Report the Ugly Truth About Israel’s War On Gaza
This process of ethnic cleansing in the remote areas of the West Bank, with the forcing of impoverished unprotected shepherds out of their lands and homes by violent “hill top” Israeli settlers and Israeli youth, supported by the Israeli military, is violent ethnic cleansing on a wide scale. The attempt is to leave a vast area from east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho emptied of Palestinians. With the taking of more and more land, the prospect of a two-state solution (long dead) cannot be touted by our Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong as a solution. It is dead, dead and the Palestinians are still there in apartheid enclaves. They surely know this to be the case but are refusing to support the possibility of peace which begins, at the very least, with a ceasefire on Gaza.
Israel didn’t release the footage of Jewish Settlers and IDF behaving atrociously like brutes in the West Bank because humans behave badly and in stomach-churning ways no matter which side they are on. But rest assured brutish Israeli behavior has been captured and found on video too. Hamas or simply Palestinians aren’t able to call a press conference to hammer home their truth.
It has little or nothing to do with justice. Hamas like Viet Cong have no planes and are less able to kill as clinically as the Israelis do. They kill from a distance “surgically” and cleanly like “professionals” not challenged by death the most likely outcome for Hamas fighters. But the photographic images of the results on the ground would in reality be as, if not more, horrific. Israel with its technology easily hides the voices and sights of its revenge. The indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocents after bomb and drone raids leaves far more unrecognizable body parts.
Justice seems all but missing in this exercise. We were shocked at the footage of Mai Lai, Abu Ghraib, the waterboarding, and the extreme torture that we know the Americans were capable of because journalists like Julian Assange, became must-get targets, for releasing the footage of innocents being killed in the Middle East. Some 30 reporters have been killed by Israel alongside 50 UN staff, Doctors Hospitals and schools destroyed because in reality “precision enemy targets” really means “anything goes”
Horror is horror and justice is never achieved by more horror. Justice can’t begin to be achieved for everyone without taking a step back. But that doesn’t mean the what’s being done isn’t planned which makes it worse.
“The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
There is no intended Justice in simply taking a pound of flesh but there is intent and another plan and it’s more than just “mowing the grass” as an Israeli MP described it.
The Israeli military showed unreleased bodycam video from the Oct. 7 attacks, as the death toll in Gaza rises and some activists deny Hamas’ atrocities.
Source: IDF Screens Raw Hamas Footage For Journalists | HuffPost Latest News
There is currently a unique and rare opportunity to evacuate [sic] the entire Gaza Strip in coordination with the Egyptian government. An immediate, realistic and sustainable plan for the resettlement and humanitarian rehabilitation of the entire Arab population in the Gaza Strip is required which aligns well with the economic and geopolitical interests of Israel, Egypt, the USA and Saudi Arabia.
Source: The Reality of Gaza’s Forced Exodus: Unveiling Israel’s Secret Plan – scheerpost.com
They’re dropping bombs on a concentration camp full of kids. Even shitlibs and pseudo-leftists who get every other foreign policy issue wrong are managing to get this one right, it’s that obvious. Anyone getting this issue wrong can be permanently dismissed without any real loss.
Source: The moral complexities of bombing a concentration camp full of children – Pearls and Irritations
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.
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