The federal Labor government announced a moratorium on processing claims for asylum for people coming from Sri Lanka or Afghanistan on April 9.
Tony Iltis
When the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they brought a president with them — Hamid Karzai.
Unlike some powerful (and brutal) warlords in his government, Karzai has no private army. But like the warlords, he is loathed by the people.
Even in the capital, Kabul, Karzai cannot venture out without a large contingent of US bodyguards. Soldiers from the US/NATO occupation force guard his palace.
On March 26, two Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed in a clash near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip when the Israeli army made an incursion into the besieged territory, the March 27 Guardian said.
On March 21, US President Barack Obama will depart on a short tour of the Asia-Pacific region. His main destinations will be Indonesia and Australia, but the trip will include a brief stopover in Guam.
On February 18, Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja was overthrown in a military coup. A military junta calling itself the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, headed by Major Salou Djibo, took power.
Israeli murders of Palestinian resistance leaders are not normally condemned by Australian government ministers. Not even the 2002 murder of Salah Shehade in Gaza, in which the murder weapon was a one-tonne bomb from an F-16 jet, and 14 other people, nine of them children, were killed.
The Dutch government collasped on February 20 as a result of growing popular opposition to Dutch participation in the US-led war in Afghanistan.
On February 15, five men who were convicted in October under “anti-terror” laws, were each sentenced in Parramatta court to between 23 and 28 years in jail. The shortest non-parole period was set at 17 years and three months.
On February 12, residents of the Palestinian village of Bilin attracted global attention by protesting dressed as blue, pointy-eared and tailed Na’vi from the blockbuster movie Avatar. Like the fictional Na’vi, the Bilin villagers are resisting occupation by a brutal military machine in the pay of corporate interests.
On February 13, 15,000 occupying troops from the US, Canada, Britain, Denmark, Estonia and the Afghan puppet state launched the Operation Moshtarak military offensive on Helmand province.
In October, when Ampilatwatja walk-off spokesperson Richard Downs toured the eastern states with Yuendumu elder Uncle Harry Nelson, they explained how their protest camp would demonstrate that Aboriginal people running their own affairs could build the type of sustainable community that the Northern Territory intervention, like past assimilationist and paternalistic policies, had failed to deliver.
Further evidence of the authoritarianism of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime came with the February 8 arrest of former general Sarath Fonseka, who had stood against Rajapaksa in the January 26 presidential elections.
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