The mining and banking companies creaming billions in super profits from the mining boom — the biggest mining boom in Australia’s history — have done very well from the federal budget that was delivered by the Gillard Labor government on May 10.
The big mining companies will continue to pay the lowest ever share in tax and royalties while they make their biggest ever profits.
Analysis
May 14 marked 63 years of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The Palestinian Arabs know it as al Nakba, which translates as “day of the catastrophe”.
In preparation for Israel’s independence from Britain, the Haganah — a Zionist paramilitary, or, as it would be described by the FBI today, terrorist organisation — set about its two objectives.
Her long red nails jabbed and waved in the air like a conductor dramatically tracing an absurdist symphony of propaganda, cajoling, and threats.
In a joint statement with Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on May 7, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced an agreement had been reached to swap 800 future “irregular maritime arrivals” from Australia with 4000 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognised refugees from Malaysia over the next four years.
Although the details of the plan are yet to be fully revealed, a number of myths about this so-called solution have already arisen in the media. Here are the facts.
In the past few decades, Christian and Muslim theologies have been misinterpreted and used tactically against Middle Eastern dictatorships with no success.
For instance, former US president George W Bush justified the “war on terror” as a fight against an “axis of evil” and called for a new Crusade to liberate the people of the Middle East.
This use of Christian theological concepts to justify the war in the Middle East requires a lot of spin.
To every complex problem there is a simplistic response, which is usually wrong. For instance, to the challenge of generating all of Australia’s electricity from renewable energy, the deniers repeatedly utter the simplistic myth that renewable energy is intermittent and therefore cannot generate base-load (that is, 24-hour) power.
Below is a letter from a 17 year old Afghani man, who has been held in a Darwin detention centre for more than a year.
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The refugee has a question. Best regards to Australia, the country in which people, all human beings, are equal; and all people from different ethnics, cultures and languages have the same rights.
Australia is one of the most civilised countries in the world. All people are literate. People work according to their expertness.
The following statement was released by Lim Chee Wee, president of the Malaysian Bar Council, on May 9 in response to the "refugee swap" announced by the Australian and Malaysian governments.
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The Malaysian Bar is opposed to the recently-announced arrangement agreed to between the Governments of Malaysia and Australia.
Left Flank, May 3 — Marrickville Council may have backed off supporting the Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign but by highlighting the plight of the Palestinians, the Council’s initiative in this area, and the pro-BDS stance of the NSW Greens, has ensured that this will only be the beginning of the debate, not least of all within the Greens themselves.
Refugees held inside Darwin’s Northern Immigration Detention Centre told members of the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network on May 3 of two recent suicide attempts by inmates.
The network has also received two letters from detainees. One of these letters, from a Rohingyan man held in detention for 18 months, is reprinted verbatim below.
After running a Google news search on Marrickville+BDS on April 18, I spent a half hour looking at just under 30 articles published over the past seven days on Marrickville council’s position of support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
I looked at every result published by a major news website (news.com.au, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Age, ABC) and omitted articles that contained duplicate AAP copy.
Last year, Marrickville council in Sydney passed a resolution in support of the non-violent struggle of the Palestinian people for their human rights.
Since then The Australian and other media outlets have gone into a hysterical frenzy, accusing the councillors of being dangerous, naive, anti-Semitic extremists.
Actually they are just ordinary community members; some of who are in the Australian Labor Party, some in the Greens and some who have no political affiliations.
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