Category: Middle East
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – After Abbott’s demise, the heat is now on Bill Shorten
This week began with a mutinous insurrection by Liberal Party MPs against their own leader, Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Ghostly memories of the overthrow of Bob Hawke (1991), John Gorton (1971) and Margaret Thatcher (1990) floated by. By the end of the week Malcolm Turnbull was the new PM, Abbott was cactus after one year…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – It’s bombs away for Abbott’s by-election
Bolshevik leader V I Lenin once said that during political discussions and world diplomacy “there is a time for the brush and a time for the razor”. Prime Minister Tony Abbott, aka “The Mad Monk”, has decided to use both the brush and the razor simultaneously. His token humanity – offering residence to 12,000 Syrian…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Joe Hockey will be thrown overboard from sinking Oz ship
Wednesday, 2 September 2015, deserves a special status in Australia’s calendar as the day when things started to unravel: growth in the second quarter fell to 0.2 per cent, the Aussie $ dropped under 70 cents to a six-year low and is heading towards 50 cents, the share market crashed to a new post-GFC low…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Abbott’s plunge into the Syrian cauldron
To save his own political skin and to win next month’s khaki by-election in Canning, WA, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is on the brink of ordering the RAAF to bomb Syria. Any bombing raids would be illegal and they are not sanctioned by a UN resolution. The rationale will be that it is a humanitarian…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – IMF “trained” journalists on Greek crisis coverage
Journalists covering the Greek crisis were briefed at IMF seminars to give the bankers’ view in their reports from Athens. Panayiotis Roumeliotis, the former Greek delegate to the IMF, made the accusations in evidence to MPs sparking a media scandal of far-reaching proportions. ESIEA, the Athens journalists’ association, has launched an investigation into the corruption…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Stench of cover-up from Lindt inquest
Stage management of the coronial inquest into the Lindt café siege broke down in spectacular fashion this week with the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions scrambling to ban publication of embarrassing evidence. The DPP wants to suppress evidence of why the siege gunman Man Haron Monis was on bail on serious criminal charges when he…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott starts having delusions of grandeur
The age of entitlement is over, according to Tony Abbott, but not for his own family. While he orders Australians to tighten their belts to rein in the ballooning deficit, Abbott is loosening his own, and we are footing the bill. The family’s latest taxpayer-funded scam is to turn the historic Kirribilli House into their…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott’s Budget heralds an early federal election
This week’s Federal Budget was not about Australia’s economic future. And it wasn’t about the future of the country either. Its overriding purpose was to rescue Prime Minister Tony Abbott. It was the “Save Abbott” budget. It sets the stage for a snap federal election between now and the end of the year. He has…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – ANZAC spirit tainted by Abbott and greed
Politicians, the media, the RSL and the military lobby have kicked an own goal. Incredibly, they have managed to tarnish the Anzac legend and turn off a large number of Australians. How did they do it? By crassly politicising the event and grossly commercialising it. The Abbott Government invested some $200 million in the 100th…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Mad Monk remains toxic with electors
Two polls published this week came to conflicting conclusions. One said Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his scabrous federal government were clawing their way back while the other said Abbott remained unpopular and Labor would easily win an election if held now. The first conclusion to draw is that the polls are rubbish. Their modelling…