Archive for the ‘War’ Category
Monday, July 19th, 2010
Paige Taylor; 19/7/10 – 6 Items
Patrick McGorry, touched down on Christmas Island yesterday as a guest of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The leading mental health researcher, Australian of the Year and and outspoken critic of immigration detention centres, (he has described them as factories for mental illness), said he was there to “look and learn”.Professor McGorry will inspect the Indian Ocean island’s three detention facilities, including a former workers’ camp where families with young children are detained – amid increasing focus on incidents of self-harm and conflict among asylum-seekers on the island. Approximately 2500 people are detained on Christmas Island and two boats, carrying suspected asylum-seekers, are on their way there now. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship frequently allows refugee advocates inside its compounds on Christmas Island but it has never opened the gates to such a high-profile mental health expert.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Australia, Human Rights, Indonesia, Migrants & Refugees, Vietnam
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Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Hamish Macdonald; 8/5/10;
Worth reading; Jill Jollife; Scribe Pulications,2009
After the debacle of “sexed- up” intelligence and misleading statements to legislatures by George Bush’s administration and allied governments as they decided to invade Iraq, the use of “national security” to block public scrutiny of such decisions is not accepted as readily as it was. How much more so when defence and intelligence agencies use the same excuse to stop disclosure of the information that backed vital government decisions on foreign policy and the safety of Australian citizens 35 years ago? An interesting test comes up later this month when a Canberra academic takes on the Defence Department at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to get a series of secret intelligence bulletins put out by its analysts at the height of the East Timor crisis from October to December 1975, covering Indonesia’s invasion of the then abandoned Portuguese colony.
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Tags: Australia, Timor, UK
Posted in Human Rights, Indonesia, Terrorism, War | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
4/5/10; Matthew Clayfield; The Australian, No Internet Text; (2 Items)
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the infamous Kent State shootings in May1970 (photograph above by John Filo), when the US National Guard opened fire on unarmed students at Ohio’s Kent State University during an anti-Vietnam War protest. Four students were killed in the shooting and nine were wounded. To mark the anniversary of the tragedy — still known by some as the May 4 massacre — the University of Sydney’s University Art Gallery is presenting Kent State: Four Decades Later, a provocative exhibition opening next Thursday. The exhibition, curated by Ann Stephen and Luke Parker, features works from that time, including British pop artist Richard Hamilton’s 1970 screen print Kent State, as well as new works by artists from different generations. “The new work reveals how these contemporary artists are engaging new media and new audiences to reflect upon an art of social commitment, just as Hamilton’s historic work did for his generation,” Parker says.
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Tags: Terrorism, USA, Vietnam War
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Tim Soutphommasane; 28/4/10
Watching Q & A’s special Anzac edition on ABC1 this week, I was struck by a question posed by a young woman of Asian background: does the Anzac tradition have any meaning for Australians of migrant heritage? Former Defence Force chief Peter Cosgrove, sitting at one end of the panel, responded that it wasn’t for anyone to prescribe to others how they should feel about Anzac. Another panellist, historian Henry Reynolds, responded that Australians were indeed divided about Anzac because the tradition was bound up in Britishness and hence could never include those of non-British backgrounds. As someone of Chinese and Lao extraction, born overseas, I confess that I, too, have had my doubts about the Anzac tradition. I recall more than 10 years ago sitting in a eucalyptus grove at Hurlstone Agricultural High School in Sydney’s southwest, listening to a fellow student deliver a speech about the Anzac spirit. She spoke passionately about our celebrated old boy John Edmondson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his actions at Tobruk in 1941. She spoke movingly about how “our forebears” fought to defend our country and the Australian way of life.
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Tags: Australia, Migrants & Refugees, Tradition, War
Posted in Australia, Refugee & Migrant, War | No Comments »
Monday, April 26th, 2010
Andrew Herrick; 26/4/10
We still have a weakness for backing our allies anywhere, any time. Too close to Anzac Day, I reluctantly follow my son into an army disposal store. There I watch him unearth World War II gas masks, Korean War shell casings, Vietnam-era ammo boxes and dusty desert camouflage nets. These castoffs of history, redolent of suffering, tragedy and triumph, rest lightly in my son’s small hands. Seeing him clad in jungle greens and slung with bandoliers, keen to head into battle with adrenalised glee, I can’t help thinking of my grandfather, who waded ashore at Suvla Bay with the Anzac 1st Division on April 26, 1915, aged 23. My father’s father, Wilfred Herrick, served as a signaller at Gallipoli for eight weeks until he was wounded. After recovering, Wil was sent to lay telephone wires through the mud of the Somme. He survived the battle of Villers-Bretonneux and returned to Australia suffering the effects of mustard gas. The damage was more than physical. Withdrawn and moody, Wil began to drink heavily. His young family endured the wrath of his inner demons until he died aged 44, when my father was nine.
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Tags: Australia, War
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Tim Soutphommasane; 24/4/10; Ask The Philosopher
Is it disloyal to criticise aspects of Anzac Day because you believe it involves myth and ritualised militarism? Tomorrow our nation pauses to remember. At cenotaphs and shrines across our cities, at memorials in country towns, and indeed on the sandy ridges of Gallipoli, Australians will be greeting the dawn with solemn patriotism. Anzac Day is for many Australians our true and authentic national day. But for others it is a day that evokes ambivalence rather than pride. Why, some ask, should we lend such sacred importance to a day that glorifies death and war? What is there to be inspired by when the original landing at Gallipoli was a failure and a product of British imperial folly?
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Tags: Anzac Day, Australia, War
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
17/4/10
Renegade British Catholic bishop Richard Williamson was last night fined E10,000 ($14,530) by a German court for Holocaust denial in a case that has deeply embarrassed the Vatican. The court in the southern German city of Regensburg convicted Williamson, 70, of inciting racial hatred for stating in a television interview aired in January last year that only “200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps”. He also denied the Nazis had used gas chambers. “The statements by the accused represent a denial of the actions taken under the National Socialist regime,” said presiding judge Karin Frahm. “Bishop Williamson must have assumed that his remarks would draw attention. Williamson knowingly accepted that attention.”
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Tags: Christianity, Germany, Nazi
Posted in Christianity, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
13/4/10
Citing a series of fatal malfunctions dating back to 1777, flag manufacturer Annin & Company announced Monday that it would be recalling all makes and models of its popular American flag from both foreign and domestic markets. Representatives from the nation’s leading flag producer claimed that as many as 143 million deaths in the past two centuries can be attributed directly to the faulty U.S. models, which have been utilised extensively since the 18th century in sectors as diverse as government, the military, and public education. “It has come to our attention that, due to the inherent risks and hazards it poses, the American flag is simply unfit for general use,” said Annin & Company president Ronald Burman, who confirmed that the number of flag-related deaths had noticeably spiked since 2003. “I would like to strongly urge all U.S. citizens: If you have an American flag hanging in your home or place of business, please discontinue using it immediately.”
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Tags: Global, Human Rights, USA, War
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Saturday, April 3rd, 2010
Henry Reynolds & Marilyn Lake, 3/4/10
Why do we accord the Anzac story priority over all other aspects of our history? The contemporary focus on Anzac has not been a constant feature of Australian historical thinking. There has been opposition to the militarism inherent in Anzac Day celebrations at various times since the 1920s and it intensified after the late 1950s. Most of the general histories written in the middle decades of the 20th century paid little attention to Anzac even though many of those historians had served in World War II. War history was seen as a specialist sub-discipline with little relevance to the mainstream of history. Australian history focused on what had happened here, not on what our soldiers had done overseas. The emphasis of history was, as we show, on political and social reform, on the egalitarian Australian ethos and the shaping of a vision of a new society. What we find remarkable is the sudden reinvigoration of Anzac and its effect on the writing of Australian history, contributing to its militarisation. Recently government has promoted the celebration of Anzac Day and the more general history of this country’s many and ongoing military engagements. Federal government departments and instrumentalities have been involved in unprecedented ways in the creation and dissemination of curriculum materials relating to war in a direct attempt to influence the content of classroom teaching.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, War
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Michael Andersen; 1/4/10
When Nato and its allies went to war in Afghanistan, the alliance promised to curtail the export of drugs to Europe. Since then, the West has spent hundreds of millions of dollars setting up local agencies to fight drug trafficking, not only in Afghanistan but also along the main opium and heroin route through the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. As filmmaker Michael Andersen reports, the region is now facing another danger, a potential epidemic of HIV infections.
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Tags: Drugs, Europe, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Aid / Trade, Drugs, HIV-AIDS, Human Rights, Terrorism, USA, War | No Comments »
Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Phillip Adams; 6/3/10
HQ for the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party was the Kremlin. HQ for the Central Committee of the US Republican Party is the Supreme Court. As hostile to the democratic process as their counterparts in Moscow who ruled with hammer and sickle, the heavies in Washington DC rule, and overrule, with iron fist and gavel. Ignoring precedent and the cautions of the founding fathers expressed in an increasingly dilapidated constitution, the bloc of judges appointed by conservative presidents are rendering some appalling decisions. Such is the gratitude of these judges appointed by conservative presidents that they, in turn, appoint conservative presidents. The first was George W. Bush. Ignoring electoral chicanery in Florida – and America’s popular vote – the Supreme Court put Gore’s head on a pike and handed the oval office to the Republicans on a platter. Now other Republican candidates will be guaranteed an armchair ride to the oval office and their second-term prospects immensely improved. All because of a Supreme Court decision that Obama understates as “devastating”.
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Tags: Politics, USA
Posted in USA, War | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
25/2/10
The American people and the governing class have accepted that war has become a permanent condition. Protracted war has become a widely accepted part of our politics. – Andrew Bacevich, retired Army Col. (and now history professor at Boston University) whose son was killed in Iraq in 2007, on how eight years of war have affected American foreign policy. (Source: The Washington Post)
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Tags: USA, War
Posted in Terrorism, USA, War | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Angus Hohenboken; 25/2/10
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised last night for Britain’s role in sending thousands of children to Australia to face psychological and physical abuse and forced labour. An estimated 150,000 youngsters, aged as young as three, were sent to Commonwealth countries under the Child Migrants Program in an attempt to give them a “better life”. But many ended up being abused, physically and sexually, in foster homes, state-run orphanages and religious institutions. It is estimated 7000 to 10,000 child migrants were sent to Australia from Britain, Ireland and Malta between 1920 and 1967. After being told their parents were dead, most were separated from their siblings. Last night, Mr Brown conceded that the scheme left many people emotionally scarred for life.
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Tags: Australia, Children, Migrants & Refugees, UK
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Julian Ryall; 16/2/10
More than 60 years after the end of World War II, the mention of Unit 731 still has the power to generate shock, revulsion and denial in Japan. New details of the unit’s atrocities could be revealed after the authorities in Tokyo announced plans to open an investigation into human bones believed to have come from the unit. The bones of up to 100 people were discovered in a mass grave in 1989 during construction work in Tokyo. They bore the marks of saws and some of the skulls had drill holes and portions of the bone cut out. But the issue is so controversial in Japan that the remains have since been stored in a repository. The Imperial Japanese Army’s notorious medical research team carried out secret human experiments regarded as some of the worst war crimes in history. It subjected more than 10,000 people a year to grotesque tortures in the name of science. Russian soldiers and downed American aircrews were among the victims.
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Tags: Human Rights, Japan, Terrorism, WWII
Posted in Human Rights, Japan, War | No Comments »
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Steven Freeland; 15/2/10
There are approximately 300,000 children acting as front-line troops in armed conflict worldwide, with another 500,000 who are conscripted into government, paramilitary and guerilla groups as sex slaves, porters, cooks, spies and to plant landmines. These young boys and girls, who under international law are regarded as ”children”, are often forced to participate in the commission of heinous crimes. This horrific trend has a number of root causes. Children are seen as ”attractive” participants in armed conflict. They are vulnerable to outside influences, can be trained to become efficient soldiers and can be made to perform the most dangerous (and brutal) of tasks, through intimidation, manipulation, or under the influence of drugs. In addition, the proliferation of lightweight weapons such as the AK-47 means that children can be effectively deployed in active combat.
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Tags: Arms, Childrens Rights, Global
Posted in Health & Children, Human Rights, War | No Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
4/2/10 ; http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/ theaustralian/comments/blair_lacked_basis_for_war
As an expatriate Briton in Australia, I would like to comment on your editorial defending Tony Blair following his evidence to the Chilcot inquiry (“Blair has no case to answer”, 1/2). In the first place, the legality of the war on Iraq was, to say the least, dubious. Moreover, Blair specifically informed the House of Commons, and thus the British public, that the action was being undertaken on grounds relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, namely Saddam Hussein’s failure to comply with the UN’s directives to dismantle the WMDs, and the perceived threat to Europe and the Middle East that they posed. When the supposed WMDs proved to be a mirage, Blair (and George W. Bush) switched ground to the “removal of a tyrant” argument.
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Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, UK, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Terrorism, USA, War | No Comments »
