Category: Media
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Top cop joins PUP and Parrot to rubbish Premier Newman
Two bizarre opponents have emerged to make life agonisingly difficult for the embattled Queensland Premier Campbell Newman in the closing days of the campaign for the state election on January 31. Mining billionaire Clive Palmer and Alan Jones, the millionaire commercial radio ham, have commenced personal vendettas against Newman alleging he is a “liar” and…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – The road to Hebdo and why I won’t be Charlie
1. Classical English liberalism was destroyed and buried in the trenches of World War One when British Prime Minister David Lloyd George shrugged off his pacifism and became a Cabinet warmonger. The fledging British Labour Party split over support for the imperialist bloodbath with Arthur Henderson leading the majority faction into a wartime Coalition in…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott’s secret begging mission to Baghdad
Just before New Year the Abbott government’s final action as chair of the UN Security Council was to vote against a resolution supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state and ending Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The only other country to vote against the declaration of Palestinian national rights was…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Heard the one about balancing the budget?
The words are burned into collective memories: “Today, we take decisive action to deal with the debts we have inherited.” The year was 2010 and Britain’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was announcing his plans to end the UK’s budget deficit by 2015. Now he’s wading through even deeper deficits and his promise…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Lies and deceit behind siege of Martin Place
This week’s Martin Place siege will be remembered as the greatest intelligence failure in Australian history. It cost the lives of two innocent people in a tragedy which was avoidable if NSW police, the Australian Federal Police, the ASIO security service and the criminal justice system had been doing their jobs. The report ordered by…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Canberra takes first step towards Palestine statehood
Maria Vamvakinou, Labor MP for Calwell in Victoria, has tabled a private member’s Bill in Federal Parliament calling for the diplomatic recognition of Palestine, a step already taken by the House of Commons in Britain and the parliaments of Spain and Sweden. Ms Vamvakinou, a co-convener of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, told MPs:…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Salute to a courageous university vice chancellor
Step forward Professor Stephen Parker, vice chancellor of Canberra University, and take a bow while the nation-at-large applauds. This week Parker emerged from the suffocating conclave of vice chancellors where political conformity and conservatism rule, and robustly rubbished the Abbott Government’s plan to privatise higher education and turn it into a wealth-driven free-for-all. The timing…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abe leads Japan to a frightening dead end
Japan’s right-wing nationalist government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an enthusiastic ally of Tony Abbott, will go to an early election in mid-December. If you read the mainstream media and its business pages, “Abenomics” is a gleaming beacon of innovative policy to resuscitate the chronically sick capitalist economy. Ever since Abe announced a 10.3 trillion…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Tony Abbott’s peculiar idea of “mature debate”
How many “mature debates” has Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for? The High Priest of Negative Destruction is suddenly desirous of steady, serious, sophisticated discussion. “That is my hope,” he told Parliament recently, “that just for once it might be possible for us in this Parliament, one side and the other, the national government and…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Has Labor noticed Israel is now a pariah state?
Israel is a sick society. Before anyone accuses me of being an anti-Semite or reports me to the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Anti-Defamation League, Sharri Markson of The Australian or Michael Danby, the Labor MP for Tel Aviv, I’d like to point that the words are not mine. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin said publicly…