Michael is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine; Antony is a journalist and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.

If you will it,” wrote Theodore Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement, in 1902, “it is no dream.” The dream to which he referred was the establishment of a Jewish state in the Arab country of Palestine.To realise the dream, he insisted, the Jews must be willing to seize the reigns of history by renouncing the classical Jewish tradition of pacifism and collaborating with European anti-Semites who supported the Zionist movement as a means of ridding Europe of its “Jewish problem”.

See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/a-celebration-that-ignores-the-plight-of-palestine/2008/05/08/1210131163195.html

Iraqis employed at the British embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone claim to have been sexually abused, the Times has reported. The British Foreign Office has received complaints from an Iraqi cleaner and two cooks that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the embassy, the report said Thursday. Accusations have been made against British employees of the US service company KBR which was responsible for catering at several embassies in Baghdad.

See: http://news.theage.com.au/iraqis-allege-abuse-at-british-embassy/20080508-2c9b.html

In the present scandal of the attempt to ship tonnes of arms and ammunition to Zimbabwe, it is the Chinese who have spoken the most sense. China’s foreign ministry said the country’s shipment of mortar shells, rockets and bullets was perfectly normal trade. It certainly is. Shipping arms to African governments who could use them to abuse their own people is an abhorrent but almost daily occurrence. And at present there is nothing the international community can do about it because there are no effective global controls on the arms trade. If you want to export weapons to a country that commits gross abuses of human rights, then you can. If you want to sell expensive kit to governments struggling to feed or educate their people, it’s really no problem. You might have to use a few tricks to get around the flimsy patchwork of controls that presently exist but it’s easy and it’s done all the time.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23667791-5013480,00.html

The Burmese Government has put self-interest ahead of its duty to its citizens, writes Graham Reilly. For the long-suffering people of Burma, life is misery piled upon misery. Since 1962 they have struggled under the repressive rule of an isolationist, economically inept and intensely paranoid military regime immune to domestic and international pressure to introduce political freedom, personal liberty or human rights. Once the region’s rice bowl, the country is now an economic basket case crippled by spiralling inflation and the regime’s allocation of 40% of the national budget to the 400,000-strong military, a commitment that perpetuates its own power and wealth at the expense of the interests of ordinary Burmese.

See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/a-people-abandoned/2008/05/07/1210131065703.html

The first UN aid plane arrived in cyclone-ravaged Burma last night, but US and other international efforts were on hold after the country’s military generals rescinded their approval for American planes to enter Burma. The generals had bowed to international pressure, agreeing to allow the US military to fly critical aid to survivors of last Saturday’s cyclone, which has left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million missing. Thailand’s Supreme Commander Boonsrang Niumpradit said yesterday Bangkok had convinced Burma’s secretive junta to accept US assistance using planes that have been in Thai-US military exercises. A US embassy official confirmed the decision, but US ambassador to Thailand Eric John said later the flight was not going ahead.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23669426-2703,00.html
80,000 dead in one Burma district; 8/5/08; See; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23664782-25837,00.html

The generals v the weather
Editorial; 9/5/08
Day by day, Burma’s generals are providing more evidence, if any further was needed, that they are not fit to govern. They are also illustrating perfectly the adage developed by the Nobel Prize winner for economics, Amartya Sen, who grew up in places around the Bay of Bengal, including Mandalay, that famines don’t occur in democratic states because leaders have to be responsive to the demands of citizens. This could be extended to include disease outbreaks, as democracies don’t tend to cover them up until they become epidemics. Burma is now threatened with both hunger and epidemic disease.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/editorial/index.html

In recent weeks the charter of rights “debate” has been heading largely in one direction - against. The antagonists have had longer at the megaphone than usual and have cranked up the volume. Cardinal George Pell is out on the barricades, and unsurprisingly he thinks a charter of rights is a bad thing, along with stem-cell research, contraception and abortion. The NSW Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, and the former premier Bob Carr have lent their voices to the anti campaign. They think you would be crazy if you let anyone other than NSW politicians look after your freedoms. A handful of conservative provocateurs from the fourth estate keep banging away about how awful such legislation would be. These voices are relatively fresh from saying the invasion of Iraq was a good idea, which gets me thinking that surely they cannot be hugely wrong yet again.

See; http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-ackland/horror-stories-unfairly-bedevil-charter-of-rights/2008/05/08/1210131163034.html

The WA state Government’s three-year overhaul of child protectionservices yesterday topped $500million and will include $112million over four years for more case workers in needy areas such as Aboriginal communities in the remote Kimberley. Within 12 months, an additional 210 child protection workers, service delivery workers and support staff will be deployed to the areas of greatest need.  At a cost of $5 million, remote community workers will be sent to Warmun and Oombulgarri in the East Kimberley.  “Following last year’s review of the former Department for Community Development, we made structural changes and invested significant further funding into protecting our children,” Treasurer Eric Ripper said. The budget allocation comes three months after West Australian Coroner Alastair Hope described the plight of Aboriginal children as “especially pathetic”.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23668762-5013404,00.html

The Immigration Department has blocked the release of documents relating to the Mohamed Haneef case as his second-cousin was yesterday deported from Britain for withholding information from police investigating last year’s failed bomb plots in London and Glasgow. A week after the opening of the Rudd government inquiry into the bungled case, Dr Haneef’s lawyers launched court action to overturn the Immigration Department’s decision to refuse the release of large numbers of documents under Freedom of Information because it may jeopardise future investigations and discourage bureaucrats from giving frank advice to ministers.

See: http://www.ozemail.com.au/

Australia and New Zealand deny they have ditched the possibility of legal action to stop Japanese whaling. Rejecting a report that New Zealand had abandoned taking the legal route, both countries say it remains an option although a diplomatic solution remains their preferred course of action. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who is on two-day visit to Tokyo, insisted international legal action remained an option among Australia’s strategies to get Japan to stop the annual cull. “We’ll make a decision about the need for legal action in due course at a time of our own choosing, but we are very keen to exhaust diplomatic measures to try and bring this matter to a conclusion,” Mr Smith said.

See: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23667198-29277,00.html
Concern over whaling stand; Andrew Darby; Justin Norrie; 9/5/08; http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/concern-over-whaling-stand/2008/05/08/1210131168238.html

A two-day conference on domestic violence ended yesterday with participants saying there is no justification in Islam for abuse of women and children. They also came up with a list of demands and recommendations to tackle the problem. Experts from across the Kingdom participated in five sessions of discussions at the first National Experts Meeting to Fight Domestic Abuse Against Women and Children, with all participants agreeing that Islam does not condone abuse and that the problem should be brought to an end. “Traditions that allow abuse should be brought to an end,” said Dr. Maha Al-Munief, executive director of the National Family Safety Program (NFSP), which organized the event. “We will start training courses for people who work with abuse victims… We need cooperation from all NGOs,” she said in a press conference held to announce the recommendations.

See: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=109688&d=8&m=5&y=2008&pix= kingdom.jpg&category=Kingdom

While Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, Palestinian refugees mourn the 1948 Nakbeh (catastrophe) when they lost their homeland. Often ignored in Middle East peace talks, they cling to a “right of return”. Alia Shabati was 12 when she fled Jewish attacks on her village of Kabri, occupied a few days after Israel’s creation. Now a matron of 72, wearing a flowery blue dress and white headscarf, her memories of Kabri in today’s northern Israel are vividly intact, unlike the village, which was wiped off the map. “We had houses and land,” Shabati said in the living room of her modest dwelling in the alleys of Beirut’s Burj Al Barajneh refugee camp. “We had olives, grapes, prickly pears and dates. We had orchards and fields. Now what do we have? Nothing.”

See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7722

Arab farmer dreams of return to lost village
Mehdi Lebouachera; 8/5/08
Standing on the roof of the old schoolhouse, Toomeh Maghzal looks over the green valley below at the ruins of the village of Biram which Arabs were forced by the Israeli army to abandon 60 years ago. “There used to be houses everywhere. We had orchards of olive trees, apple trees, vineyards,” says Maghzal, an 81-year-old Christian Maronite from the village. “Today, it is all in ruins.” Back on October 29, 1948, during the war that followed the creation of Israel, which marks its 60th anniversary on Thursday, the Israeli army entered the village of Biram which lies near the border with Lebanon. The 1,050 people residents, mostly farmers and Maronite Catholics, were forced to flee to the neighbouring village of Jish, but with the promise, never fulfilled, that they could eventually return to their homes. Israeli forces later bombed Biram. “They destroyed everything to wipe out our hopes of returning,” says Maghzal, still spry and with vivid memories of the village and its Christian Arab population.
See; http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7702

Encapsulating a conflict
8/5/08
Today and all next week Israel will celebrate 60 years of independence and Palestinians will commemorate 60 years of tragedy. Little else so perfectly encapsulates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Should anyone be in doubt, 1948 lies at the very heart of this conflict. More important than resolving the illegal Israeli occupation of lands in 1967 is resolving the dispossession of one people to make room for another that occurred in 1948. Everything else is a footnote. Unfortunately, the comparatively easier problem of dealing with 1967 shows no sign of making headway, leaving the problem of 1948 a long way off from finding resolution. With Israeli PM Ehud Olmert under police investigation, his future seems uncertain. That will put back any potential (so far unseen) progress in the peace talks and will render agreement by the end of the year even more unlikely.
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7706

Unprofitable negotiations to create the illusion that peace is sought
Michael Jansen; 8/5/08
It is significant that Israel’s 60th birthday celebrations take place this week while Palestinians will next week commemorate the “Naqbeh”, the catastrophe inflicted on their nation when Israel launched its war of establishment. The timing of these events is different because Israel relies on the Jewish calendar while the Palestinians count the beginning of their disaster from May 15, 1948, according to the Gregorian calendar adopted by the West, the geopolitical construct that inflicted Israel on the region. There is a great deal more to these events than the sight of Israelis in glad rags partying while Palestinians in black mourn their fate. The majority of Israelis care very little about the injustices the 1948 creation of Israel and its 1967 expansion have caused the native inhabitants of geographic Palestine. In a perceptive article about Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians, Jeff Halper, an Israeli academic who learnt to follow his convictions rather than the establishment line, made the points that Israelis refer to the Palestinians as “Arabs”, rather than the indigenous people of Palestine, do not use the term “occupation” for the regime installed in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (and the whole of Palestine for that matter), and insist that the decision whether to relinquish any territory to the Palestinians will remain with Israelis alone.
See: http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=7707

Give the people what they want
8/5/08
With the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel on May 14, all sorts of opinions and public polls are being undertaken to determine the sentiments of, primarily, Israeli Jews on its past, present and future. One poll recently undertaken threw up some surprising figures - surprising, that is, to the hawkish elements in Israel. Despite claims by many politicians that peace with the Palestinians will eventually be achieved, it seems that 70 per cent of the population do not agree, and believe that peace will never be attainable between the two. This depressing scenario probably reflects a more realistic attitude to the various negotiations that have taken place, rather than the vague promises of an eventual successful outcome which has, over the years, failed to materialise.
See: http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/editorial_opinion/region/10211551.html

In two weeks, my wife will bring our child into the world. The unborn baby is happy now, nestled within its mother’s womb and somewhat protected from the violence and suffering that exists in Gaza. I am naturally worried for mother and child. When she delivered our last child, my wife developed several medical complications. Due to the blockade on Gaza, such complications can no longer be treated in local hospitals and medical facilities.If my wife were to have an acute problem during natural birth there would be no medication or treatment available, putting her and the unborn at considerable risk. In light of this, we decided a while back that she would have a Caesarean-section rather than natural child birth. C-sections, at least, are available in Gaza.

See: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A7BF4452-7404-416C-A503-047017F2F7D0.htm

A Malaysian court has allowed a convert to renounce Islam, a rare decision for the conservative Muslim-led nation. Othman Ibrahim, Penang Sharia Court judge, said he had no choice but to allow an application by Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, a Malaysian citizen of Chinese origin, to renounce her faith and return to Buddhism. Apostasy, or renouncing one’s faith, is one of the gravest sins in Islam and a very sensitive issue in Malaysia where Sharia courts have rarely allowed such renunciations and have also jailed apostates”The court has no choice but to declare that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah is no longer a Muslim as she has never practised the teachings of Islam,” Othman told a packed courtroom on Wednesday.

See: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79676597-47A6-4175-BA54-6B7642B083CB.htm

In the heart of a grey refugee camp surrounded by dog-eared photos of dead men, on the eve of Israel’s 60th Independence Day today, a crippled old Arab warlord sits reflecting on the future of his one-time sworn enemy. Mohammed Ghawanmeh with a framed picture of deceased Palestinian Authority and Fatah leader Yasser Arafat. Picture: Stewart Innes Mohammed Ghawanmeh is the type of Palestinian who Israelis hope holds the key to the next six decades and beyond. Like others in the Jalazone refugee camp, near the West Bank administrative capital of Ramallah, Ghawanmeh accepts that another, older key - that to the coveted family home in what is now Israel - is no longer of use to him. “We are not going back and we know it,” he says. “It is time to look to the future.”

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23661578-28737,00.html?from=public_rss

Authorities in the state of Georgia yesterday ended a seven-month hiatus on executions in the US, putting to death convicted murderer William Lynd for killing his girlfriend in 1988. Lynd, 53, became the first person executed in the US since September 25. He was put to death at the Jackson state prison in Georgia, a prison spokeswoman said.  The hiatus in executions followed several challenges in the US Supreme Court on the constitutionality of lethal injections, the method used to execute most death-row inmates. But on April 16 the judges ruled 7-2 that the risk of suffering to those executed by lethal injection did not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment”, which is barred under the US constitution. The seven judges, however, were split in their reasons for accepting lethal injections, all but ensuring more legal challenges to the death penalty.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23661415-2703,00.html

Alcohol is one of the most well-established causes of cancer and there is no safe level of consumption, the Cancer Institute NSW has concluded after an extensive analysis of worldwide research. The state government agency will today release a new report on the strong link between alcohol consumption and cancer, highlighting alarmingly high rates of risk from just two drinks a day. The institute says alcohol is particularly linked to cancer of the upper-aero digestive tract, breast, colorectum, liver and stomach. Its report, Alcohol As A Cause Of Cancer, says the risk of cancer in the upper-aero digestive tract is increased by 40 per cent (voicebox) and by 75 per cent (mouth and pharynx) from two alcoholic drinks a day.

See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/even-two-drinks-a-high-cancer-risk/2008/05/07/1210131068838.html
Alcopop thefts soar since tax jump; Kelly Burke; 8/5/08; http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/alcopop-thefts-soar-since-tax-jump/2008/05/07/1210131068841.html

Scientists seeking to solve the riddle of the platypus have proved it is the first animal to have evolved from reptile to mammal and has the characteristics of both. One of the oddest creatures in nature, the semi-aquatic platypus is an egg-laying mammal which produces milk and has fur, has a bill like a duck and venom like a snake, flowing from a spur under its hind feet. It is so strange that when the first stuffed specimens arrived in Europe at the end of the 18th century, biologists believed they were looking at a taxidermist’s hoax, a composite stitched together from the body of a beaver and the snout of a giant duck. But now, in what is considered a milestone for Australian genetics, an international team of 100 researchers, including 26 from Australia, have mapped out the full set of chromosomes of the platypus.

See; http://news.theage.com.au/secrets-of-the-platypus-revealed/20080508-2c2x.html

Tommy Watson sits quietly and toys with his walking stick to trace an outline on the floor. His niece Jorna says the Alice Springs artist often uses a stick in the same manner to draw an idea in the dirt for what might become an acclaimed painting. While others talk around and about him, the elderly artist from the Northern Territory border’s Irrunytju community, has a faraway look in his eyes.He speaks only Pitjantjatjara and his niece and Agathon Galleries owner John Ioannou.

See: http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/outback-nomad-strides-to-success/2008/05/07/1210131064898.html

Frustrated aid groups rounded on Burma’s military rulers last night, accusing them of letting cyclone survivors die while the junta blocked urgent visa applications from disaster experts. The junta stalled on issuing visas to aid workers as millions of people were left homeless in the wake of Cyclone Nargis and tens of thousands of bodies piled up in the disaster zone.  The number of dead and missing soared past 60,000 yesterday, and was expected to climb as a vast swath of Burma’s inundated delta region remained cut off. Entire towns were swept away by the storm and ocean surge, leaving millions homeless and lacking food and clean water, triggering fears disease could push the death toll still higher.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23661392-2703,00.html

Burmese bodies pile up after cyclone
7/5/08
Millions of people in Burma have been left homeless by devastating Cyclone Nargis and piles of bodies have begun rotting in the disaster zone, aid agency Save the Children said today. Nargis, which slammed into the southern coast on Saturday, has left at least 22,000 people dead and another 41,000 missing by the official count, but the toll is expected to rise. “There are 41,000 people missing but most people assume most of those 41,000 missing are dead,” said Andrew Kirkwood, Burma country director for Save the Children, one of the few aid agencies allowed to operate there.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23659777-25837,00.html
Eyewitness to tragedy in Burma; Max Quincey; 8/5/08; http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/eyewitness-to-tragedy-in-burma/2008/05/07/1210131068710.html
Charlie McDonald-Gibson; 8/5/08; http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/anger-brews-on-devastated-streets-over-food/2008/05/07/1210131068726.html Million Burmese fight for life; 8/5/08; http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/million-burmese-fight-for-life/2008/05/07/1210131068181.html

Australia is likely to abandon its $1 million attempt to take Japan to the international court over whaling after New Zealand gave up its plans to use legal action to stop the annual cull. The Rudd Government embraced the use of the UN’s international court soon after theelection, using aircraft and ships to gather evidence against Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.  But the New Zealand Government has since discovered “significant difficulties” with taking Japan to the international court and has abandoned the tactic.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662989-5013404,00.html
Big fish fried again; Editorial;8/5/08; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662140-16382,00.html

Therese Rein demonstrated yesterday she will be quite different from her predecessor, Janette Howard, when it comes to public speaking. While Mrs Howard was notoriously wary of the media and kept a low public profile during her 11 1/2 years at Kirribilli House, Ms Rein was more assured yesterday as she mixed with some of the book industry’s senior figures after her first speech in Australia as the patron of a charity. The wife of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has become the patron of the Indigenous Literacy Project, a national book industry initiative in partnership with the Fred Hollows Foundation to improve literacy in remote indigenous communities by providing books for children.

See; http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662831-5013172,00.html

Ted Mullighan came up with 46 recommendations to tackle child sex abuse in South Australia’s Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands. He might have stretched himself and made it 47.  The former Supreme Court judge exposed some seriously disturbing matters in his report. But there was one thing too unpleasant to touch: ending the permit system in those lands.  Mullighan would have done well heeding the words of 19th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham - words the judge probably knows because they relate to making sure the courts operate in the full public gaze.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662835-5013404,00.html
Little children are sacred, yet still they are abused; Editorial; 8/5/08; http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/little-children-are-sacred-yet-still-they-are-abused/2008/05/07/1210131065132.html

Lone voice pleads ’save the children’
Pia Akerman; 8/5/08
When it comes to speaking out about child sexual abuse, a heavy culture of silence exists in the remote Aboriginal lands of far-north South Australia. It was one of the toughest hurdles facing Ted Mullighan as he investigated abuse in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands, hearing that women and community workers had been threatened with violence if they gave evidence. But Mantatjara Wilson, one woman who lived on the lands before moving to Adelaide, is speaking out for all those who are too afraid. “Save those children,” Ms Wilson told The Australian. “It’s not good news. Young children raped and everything. Children have got to be safe, and go to school. We need the police to go there.”
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662832-5013404,00.html

A Sydney councillor has criticised a playground sculpture for featuring an extract from Paul Keating’s Redfern speech, claiming the words were a “real guilt trip” to non-indigenous Australians who had already apologised to the Stolen Generations. Shayne Mallard, a Liberal member of the Sydney City Council, last night said the former prime minister’s message was inappropriate for a children’s playground. “This is political correctness going mad when you put this in the playground,” Mr Mallard said. “What happened to the age of innocence?” The sculpture, by indigenous artist Fiona Foley, includes several lines from Mr Keating’s acclaimed speech in the Sydney suburb of Redfern in 1992.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662833-5013404,00.html

Northern Territory Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour has reached across the top of Australia to give a sharp touch-up to the man she called “Saint Noel” and a “latter-day Martin Luther” - better known as Cape York Institute’s Noel Pearson. In a speech to parliament in Darwin, Ms Scrymgour doubted north Queensland’s Mr Pearson was any kind of visionary and described his views as “unremarkable”. She hit bombastic stride by likening the challenges of her Government to those faced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he entered the White House in the Great Depression.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662836-5013404,00.html

Kevin Rudd is poised to dump Labor’s post-September 11 plan to establish a US-style department of homeland security, amid warnings the administrative upheaval involved would be so great it would put national security at risk. It is understood next Tuesday’s federal budget will not include any money for the proposal, nor for Labor’s plan to create a coast guard. Mr Rudd shelved the proposals after his election, pending a review into the administrative consequences being prepared by former Defence Department head Ric Smith. Mr Smith’s report, due at the end of June, is expected to put the case against the creation of a new department that would encompass domestic security agencies including the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and Customs. Several sources have confirmed there is little appetite for change within senior levels of the government.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662741-2702,00.html

Peter Murnane OP became parish priest of St Benedicts shortly after I went to St David’s. I came to appreciate him as one of the most Christ-like priests I have met. Peter has the capacity to act in highly creative ways to ensure that the Gospel is demonstrated in life.

He planted - with others - a city garden on waste land on the edge of the Auckland motorway. With the Dominican nuns in St Benedicts, he had created an entire wall of the church property painted by graffitti artists who were being hounded by the city authorities.When prisoners were rioting on the roof of Mt Eden Prison, Peter was there providing food and blankets and standing with them to ensure their concerns were heard. With the other members of the Dominican community, he offered refuge to Achmed Zaoui while he continued to have his case heard for acceptance as a refugee.

Now he has again with others, created a protest of dramatic power against the international spy satellite network at Waihopai. As a member of the Order of Preachers, he stands in the classic tradition of prophetic protest. This time he has produced an image of a deflated balloon protecting the satellite dish that has gone round the world and which desrves recognition as an iconic image for the peace movement, (as John Minto said.)

Peter has a simple directness in his understanding that could be thought to be naive except that it has already faced squarely the cost of standing with Jesus against the invasive destructiveness of thte principalities and powers. Following Jesus all the way is costly, risky and dangerous. For Peter there simply is no other way.

The sign of a sickle puncturing the sailcloth is powerful. The accompanying image of three people preparing a shrine to offer their gesture to Christ for his blessing in broken bread, has not been highlighted nor has their readiness to wait for the guards to arrive.

Nearly forty years ago I was present at a briefing called by the Prime minister of the day to present Waihopai to NGOs as a benign communications tracking device. The member of SIS or its predecessor who made the presentation was confident that he had done an effective snow job on all the protest leaders present. I don’t think anyone believed a word then and they certainly do not trust Waihopai today.
Peace! Graeme Ferguson.

See: http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/your-views/2008/4/30/your-thoughts-waihopai-base-invasion/?c_id=1501154

The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police; Jonathan Richards; University of Queensland Press
The sad emptiness that pervades parts of rural Queensland is a curious residue of colonisation. I felt this keenly when, in the late 1970s, I lived in a small to,wn in central Queensland. The town had an Aboriginal name but there was little other evidence that indigenous people had lived thereabouts. The local historical society ignored the indigenous past and promoted stories about the hard-working, God-fearing folk who settled the district. Of course, for these pioneers to flourish local Aborigines had to be subjugated and “dispersed”, as it was described in colonial times. That euphemism crops up regularly in this disturbing book about a shadowy aspect of our nation’s history. “Dispersed” meant disposed of, run off or killed, sometimes by settlers, often by the much-feared Queensland Native Police, a force of largely. indigenous policemen that terrorised their countrymen and women and helped destroy their way of life.

See: The Australian Literary Review, The Australia, No Internet Text
The reputation of the native police has been a flashpoint for skirmishes in the history wars. Historians Keith Windschuttle and Henry Reynolds, commanding generals in this ideological conflict, have locked horns over the subject. In a public debate in Sydney in November 2000 they argued about the extent of frontier violence during the 19th century.
Reynolds cited the Queensland Native Police as a leading perpetrator of that violence and even of mass murder. He described it as “a paramilitary force which rode the frontier from 1848, continuing in a modified form to 1907″. “I believe my estimate of 20,000 Aborigines killed on the frontier is modest and utterly sustainable by vast amounts of evidence,” Reynolds claimed.
Windschuttle begged to differ. “Over the past 20 years, Australian historians have grossly exaggerated the degree of violence between Aborigines and colonists in Australia,” he said, claiming historical records did not support Reynolds’s claims.
The author of The Secret War, Queensland-based historian Jonathan Richards, admits there are gaps in the colonial records. However, he has spent a decade studying the available material and builds a convincing case, which supports Reynolds’s basic contention that the colonial frontier was a violent place, and nowhere was more violent than Queensland. Richards, a research fellow with the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas at Griffith University in Brisbane, writes: Despite the evidence, some people in 21st-century Australia still don’t accept that large numbers of indigenous people were killed in frontier clashes during the British annexation of the continent The Queensland Native Police played a crucial role in the dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land, the almost complete destruction of Aboriginal law and the disintegration of Aboriginal families.
What evidence does he have to back these claims?
He offers this: By collating the police staff files and the inquest files, with general correspondence and newspaper items, a reasonably good idea of how the native police operated …can be formed. The omission of frontier violence in published histories is inextricably linked to the denial of prior Aboriginal occupancy and ownership of land. Much of the frontier history written relies too heavily on the work of a small groupof men with an interest in perpetuating the stereotyped perceptions of the force.
Using a variety of sources, including diaries, police reports, newspaper columns, literature of the day and parliamentary records, Richards paints a picture of the native police as a brutal, often uncontrollable arm of an imperial power determined to usurp or subjugate the original inhabitants so their land could be taken over.
The British used similar tactics throughout their empire. Richards points out that locally recruited Sepoys were used to conquer and hold India and that elsewhere “armed indigenous units were deployed against local resistance to colonisation, and to advance imperial ambitions”.
In Queensland, the native police served under European officers. The official line was that they were supposed to uphold the law of the land, but in the wilds of colonial Queensland the law was open to interpretation, particularly when dealing with people Europeans regarded as savages. Resistance to colonisation was met with deadly force and, as well as warriors, women and children were often killed as justice was meted out indiscriminately, often by the native police.
Certainly there were massacres on both sides, but Richards agrees with Reynolds that revenge killings of Aborigines were far more widespread, and the evidence he has unearthed supports this. No doubt opinion on these matters will continue to divide along factional lines and this book will be seen by some to support the black armband view of Australian history. However, Richards’s study contends rather convincingly that there was widespread organised racial violence and mass murder on the Queensland frontier, often at the hands of the native police. His research also shows that many people abhorred the violence and injustice inflicted on the original inhabitants. But colonial settlement was an unstoppable force.
Importantly, Richards also highlights the military nature of the native police: Native police camps were opened, dosed and shifted as the frontier of settlement moved northwards and westwards — just as army posts were in other colonial wars. A number of officers in the native police were former members of British armed forces, and fought in other parts of the empire.
In their “secret” war the Queensland Native Police used military strategies and guerilla tactics to deadly effect. The idea that conflict between the colonial military or police forces and Aborigines could ever be regarded as a fair fight is a joke.
Writing about the Battle of Pinjarra, an 1834 confrontation between colonial forces and Aborigines in what is now Western Australia, Windschuttle described it as “not a massacre of innocent Aborigines but a genuine battle between two armed, warring parties with casualties on both sides”. But what chance did spears have against guns? “It is safe to assume,” Richards writes, “based on my research, that the members of the native police killed thousands of indigenous people in Queensland.”
And though the colonial authorities did not directly sanction such killings, Richards argues that is where ultimate responsibility lies, because the force’s actions had the implicit approval of the government and public service. Was this, therefore, a form of genocide? Richards writes: The difficultly with using genocide in a technically correct way arises because there must, according to the commonly understood definition, be clear evidence of government intention. Aboriginal people in Queensland and other Australian colonies were killed for their land, but there were no official orders for the action.
As another Queensland-based historian, Raymond Evans, has pointed out, the native police were assisted by settlers who helped accomplish “genocidal outcomes” and were never prosecuted for atrocities against Aboriginal people.
Richards’s fascinating, sometimes horrifying, but thoroughly credible account of this bloody aspect of our past shows that the history of race relations in Australia is as complex as it is tragic. In light of this, Kevin Rudd’s recent apology to indigenous people seems long overdue.

The latest charges brought against Tareq Aziz, the deputy prime minister of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, have reignited debate about the legality of the Iraq war. The specific charge that he now faces is of ordering the summary execution of a group of rice merchants. However, the campaign group Indict is also calling for him to be charged with war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression. This final charge, which centers on his role in launching the invasions of Iran and Kuwait, brings inevitable comparisons with the US-led invasion of Iraq five years ago. Indeed, it is difficult to see how a legal distinction between Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980 and some of the justifications that supporters of the invasion of Iraq now rely upon.

See: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=109624&d=6&m=5&y=2008

“Terrorism,” like “fascism,” is one of those words that people routinely apply to almost any behavior they disapprove of. We had a particularly impressive spread of meanings on display last week. At one extreme, the US State Department released its annual “Country Reports on Terrorism,” a congressionally mandated survey of all the incidents that the United States officially regards as terrorism. There were, it said, 14,499 such attacks last year. (That’s 71 down from the previous year, so there is hope.) At the other extreme, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s former pastor and current nemesis, when asked to justify his earlier remark that the 9/11 attacks on the United States were “America’s chickens coming home to roost,” helpfully explained that the US had dropped atomic bombs on Japan and “supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans,” so what did Americans expect?

See: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=109622&d=6&m=5&y=2008

Even if Kevin Rudd believes (as clearly he doesn’t) that some of the Stolen Generations were victims of genocide, it would have been foolish for him to have said so on the day when he offered them a prime ministerial apology. It would have been unnecessarily offensive to many Australians who would understandably have been hurt as much they would have been scandalised. Paul Kelly said of the Bringing Them Home report that its “verdict of genocide (was) so extreme that it provided no resolution to the injustice it identified” (The Australian, May 16, 2001). Rudd would agree, I suspect. Adapt what I quoted so that it no longer expresses Kelly’s judgment on the report but instead is a statement about how many people perceived it, and you have the reason why it would have been foolish for anyone to want Rudd to mention genocide on the day of the apology.

See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23620246-25132,00.html