Pip Hinman

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, in Washington last week to meet US President Barack Obama, made clear the ALP government’s support for the US’s wars overseas. The Australia-US war alliance is as strong as ever, he declared.
After the Australian Jewish News decided on March 11 to pull a paid advertisement for the upcoming lecture tour by Professor Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Emanuel Synagogue, which had agreed to have Halper speak to a class of 12 people, suddenly withdrew its invitation.
The Iraqi workers movement is again beginning to organise, despite contending with the difficult conditions of occupation and war, and in defiance of harassment and arrests by the US military.
NSW police have entered an out-of-court settlement with anti-war activist Paddy Gibson after he sued them for wrongful arrest during the APEC protests in Sydney in September 2007.
Deputy PM Julia Gillard’s outspoken support for Israel’s attack on Gaza earlier this year prompted angry criticism from many, including from inside her own party.
Such is the outrage caused by Israel’s latest attack on Gaza in December-January that even some local governments in New South Wales have passed, or are considering, motions condemning the attack and calling on the Australian government to ban the sale of any military material to Israel.
On February 13, Australian troops killed five children and injured at least two other adult civilians in a night-time “operation” in Afghanistan’s southern Oruzgan province.
The news, on February 3, that South African dock workers in Durban had decided not to unload an Israeli ship due in on February 8 was welcomed by the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), a section of which wants the union to join the international campaign of sanctions against apartheid Israel.
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On Armistice Day, November 11, anti-war protesters marked the end of the war that was supposed to end all wars with “troops out” banners and placards outside the US consulate. Sydney Stop the War Coalition (STWC) is campaigning for all Australian troops to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.
Pat Dodson, a Yawuru man from Broome, Western Australia, used his Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech on November 5 to slam the Northern Territory intervention. He described it as a “crude, racist and poorly considered policy”.
The Sydney Stop the War Coalition has described the US people’s rejection of President George Bush’s war policies and the election of Barack Obama as “historic”.