George Galloway is a British MP again, and it’s the moment he’s been waiting for. His victory in a Rochdale by-election, he told Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer, ‘is for Gaza’. (more…)
Alison Broinowski
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Australian Civil Society submits statement on Gaza genocide to the International Court of Justice
As a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Australia is obliged to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people and failure to do so risks complicity in genocide. In the absence of a response from the Australian government to the ICJ ruling, at least 100 groups representing civil society are observing with concern Australia’s failure to act to prevent genocide in Gaza, and have made the following submission to the International Court of Justice. (more…)
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Fractured consensus, fabricated facts, and the truth of Western wars
Why, when the majority of civil society opposes Australia going to war against China, and public confidence in the United States’ will and capacity to defend Australia is declining, do successive governments pursue AUKUS and a war with China over Taiwan with such enthusiasm? (more…)
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It will soon be too late for Gaza
Within two weeks the remaining people of Gaza, herded into Rafah, will all be dead, either from disease, starvation, or murder, an Australian medical specialist told me on Friday. Humans can’t survive in these conditions. What is Australia doing? he wanted to know. (more…)
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Enough is enough for Gaza and Assange
The International Court of Justice has responded rather toothlessly to South Africa’s appeal to the Genocide Convention. In less than a month, a similar result can be expected when Britain’s Royal Courts of Justice hear for Julian Assange’s last appeal against extradition to the United States. (more…)
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As Australia joins the US war on Yemen, Labor is a house divided
Not since the DLP split in 1955 has Labor been so divided on foreign and defence policy. And always for the same reason. (more…)
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Eyeless in Gaza
Our foreign minister’s first and hardest overseas task in 2024 is likely to be her visit to Israel. Penny Wong and other foreigners, apart from aid workers, cannot enter Gaza. This will circumscribe what she sees, whom she meets, and what she achieves. (more…)
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Yemen is none of our business
US presidents are losing their authority as the world’s policemen. Russia fights to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Israel fights in Gaza to wipe out the Palestinians. China and the Global South advance their national interests without fighting at all. All can and do ignore President Biden’s wishes. (more…)
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NATO wants Asia
Not content with expanding its membership from the original 12 to 31 nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is making a grab for a presence in the Asia Pacific as well. (more…)
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When is genocide ever balanced?
‘Balance’ between supporters of Israel and of the Palestinians is what most police and State governments in Australia say they seek. So does the ABC. But what’s happening in Gaza isn’t balanced: it is asymmetric warfare. (more…)
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Have Australian troops secretly deployed to an illegal war?
Australians have been assured by the Albanese government of greater transparency and accountability on defence. So soon after the 2022-23 parliamentary inquiry into how the country goes to war, that has already fallen over. (more…)
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The Australian Prime Minister’s talking points for Washington
Prime Minister: You may wish to draw on the following in your meetings with President Biden, Vice-President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defence Austin. (more…)
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Collective punishment, selective truth, and slow genocide
Facts about the Israel/Palestine conflict have always been hard to come by. Some Israeli leaders are now telling more lies than many of their citizens, and former friends of Israel, can swallow. Yet Western governments still do. (more…)
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Australia: High five for government inquiries designed to avoid action
Chat GPT can’t tell me which nation now has the most government inquiries running. But it says that common law countries – the Five Eyes, basically – tend to set up more of them than most. Australia must be high in the five. (more…)
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Pearls and Irritations is required reading for all who mistrust the party line.
But it needs your financial support to survive and grow. With the mainstream media handcuffed to the firewall, our governments self-censored by ‘freedom’ of information, and the national interest ignoring the public interest, Australians need an online opinion site that’s free, accessible, informative, uninhibited, and quick to read. (more…)
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Why is Australia so scared?
The world has just spent two decades paralysed by fear. Ever since 11 September 2001, the ‘war on terror’ has changed the lives of most people for the worse. Millions have been killed, either by terrorists or by militarists fighting them. Fearing violence, many people have fled their homelands as refugees. Others have absorbed repeated warnings about Islamist terrorism, and fearfully accepted that the response to it has to be militarism. (more…)
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A long war against China?
The recent visit to China by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken seemed promising, until we learned what he really had in mind: a long war with no finish line. (more…)
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AUKUS and the division of Labor
Delegates at Labor’s National Conference in August will have to pay more attention than usual to foreign and defence policy. Dissent on AUKUS is spreading, while Palestine is a promise to keep. (more…)
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War crimes? Don’t forget Jeju
Admitting guilt for war crimes doesn’t come easily to many nations, as Australia knows from our extended investigations of the activities of some ADF soldiers in Afghanistan more than a decade ago. (more…)
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Australia catching up with the Asian century at last?
Every word of Anthony Albanese’s address to the Shangri-La dialogue on 2 June was chosen with care. It was a balancing act, with the Prime Minister poised between peace and war, defence and diplomacy, the US and China, in a high-wire performance his Coalition predecessors wouldn’t have attempted. (more…)
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Shirtfronting Australia
Australians are more used to pointing the accusing finger at other countries than having it pointed at us. (more…)
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Limits, damned lies, and perception management
At a reconstruction site in Mariupol during President Putin’s visit in March, a woman cried from the back of the crowd, ‘It’s all lies’. Her comment was later taken down from social media, though it wasn’t clear who did that, nor whose lies she meant. (more…)
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Safe travels in no-go zones
The countries where it’s not safe for Australians to travel have multiplied, but not because of COVID. They include the places where we fought the war on terror. (more…)
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Australia prepares legal case for war over ‘non-sovereign nation’ Taiwan
Australia is inventing an unheard-of way to go to war at the invitation of a ‘non-sovereign nation’ – an obvious reference to Taiwan. The Government’s intent seems to be to have it ready for the conflict with China that US Generals keep telling us is coming. (more…)
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A boom-gate falls across the highway to reform
Reform has its limits. Even as the Labor Government makes good several of its promised changes in economic and social policy, the boom-gate has dropped on defence and foreign affairs. (more…)
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Out of touch, out of date, or out of their minds?
Our foremost practitioner of the quick and deadly put-down, Paul Keating, copped plenty of blowback after his National Press Club performance on 15 March. (more…)
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Here we stand: Twenty years after our first war of aggression
HERE WE STAND: We are standing here, as people were in Melbourne yesterday, to recall one of Australia’s worst days: the start of our first war of aggression. (more…)
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What our media don’t tell us: Has the D-Notice returned?
Many Australians have turned to non-mainstream sources of news. They are often more reliable, and cheaper. Without them, the Nordstream pipeline sabotage of September 2022 would still be unexplained. (more…)
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Don’t ask the government about the next war
This is war protest month, with more to follow. Will efforts against the Iraq war, that failed twenty years ago this week, succeed in heading off the next one? (more…)
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Wong surrenders to Canberra hawks, rejects war powers reform
Australia’s Foreign Minister, who advocates international law and better relations with Asian countries, has surrendered to the hawks in Canberra. (more…)