Author: Alex Mitchell
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Journos who expose ASIO now face ten years in prison
My union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, has denounced the Abbott Government’s National Security Legislation Amendment Bill No 1 as “an outrageous attack on press freedom in Australia”. It was passed with the full support of the Labor Opposition led by Bill Shorten. Only Greens MPs objected. MEAA federal secretary Chris Warren condemned the…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Why Tony Abbott is called the Mad Monk
When I said Prime Minister Tony Abbott and some senior Cabinet members were suitable cases for clinical treatment, I meant it. Here’s just one reason why. At a Sydney press conference on September 19, Abbott said: “It is a serious situation when all you need to do to carry out a terrorist attack is to…
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ALEX MITCHELL’S WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Charge the ‘lying rodent’ with war crimes in Iraq
The legendary Canberra political correspondent Alan Ramsay was asked why he referred to Prime Minister John Howard as “toad” in his sulphurous columns. “Because the Herald won’t let me use turd,” he replied. Fair enough. However, I prefer “lying rodent”, the description given to him by a Liberal colleague, Senator George Brandis, in 2004. Charge…
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Abbott’s war is driven by his sick rating in the polls
Australia is at war again in the Middle East. This time in Iraq and Syria, two leading Arab nations with a century-long history of struggle for national independence. Both were ruled for almost half a century by rival branches of the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party, a bourgeois nationalist party which talked “socialism” but sponsored native…
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There is nothing like a dame
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the London-born monarchist and British Empire loyalist, has brought back knights and dames, another dumbfounding initiative never mentioned in the Coalition’s election manifesto. This was a step that even uber-royalist John Howard, now the Queen’s Warden of the Cinque Ports, didn’t dare inflict on the Commonwealth, but the “mad monk” has.…
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Churchill and the Spirit of ’45
1945 was a watershed year in post-war British history. Not only did it mark the end of World War Two but it also saw the humiliating defeat of wartime leader Winston Churchill in the landslide victory of a Labour Government. Nobody predicted a Tory defeat. Indeed, the mainstream media and the entire British Establishment were…
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Rinehart scores jackpot with US state bank loan
Happy New Year and welcome to the wonderful world of Tony Abbott and his richest supporter, mega-billionaire Gina Rinehart. In case you missed it in the Christmas rush, the world’s richest woman has pulled another jackpot to the tune of $784 million. That’s the amount she has been given by a US Government agency, the…
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Japan: Land of the Rising Gun
Prime Minister Shinto Abe’s right-wing government in Tokyo has announced military spending of $270 billion on drones, submarines, fighter jets and armed patrol boats. It is a military provocation against China at the instigation of militarists in the US State Department and the Pentagon. It forms part of their policy of “encirclement” and “containment” of…
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Car making – it’s time to get real
The Australian car making industry was a complete misnomer. There was no such thing. It was always a foreign-owned car industry. Australia was merely a postal address for the auto behemoths when they were globalising their market share and their profits. Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Mitsubishi milked the generous subsidies and tax breaks offered by…
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Tanya Plibersek vanishes amid Abbott foreign policy disasters
Has anyone seen Tanya Plibersek, shadow foreign minister? If so, please report the sighting to Missing Persons and then contact the Federal ALP so they can pick her up and get her talking. The Abbott Government has committed a series of disastrous foreign relations blunders but hardly a word from Ms Plibersek. She appears to…