Category: Middle East
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Why “star” MPs can be unpredictable disaster
NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley is rarely photographed without Jodi McKay at his side. She is the ex-TV host who has just won the seat of Strathfield after being parachuted into Sydney’s inner-west by Foley himself. Ms McKay is channelling the role which Cheryl Kernot once played for federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley. He would…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott’s military mission in Iraq becomes nightmare
Objectives of the mission by Australian Defence Forces in Iraq/Syria, masterminded by Field Marshal Tony Abbott, change from week to week. Amid the release of bloodthirsty and homicidal ISIS videos late last year, Abbott wrapped himself in the flag and ordered Special Forces and RAAF warplanes to “destroy the death cult”. Instead, Australian aircraft became…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbottwatch latest: he’s a goner
Tony Abbott is gone as Prime Minister. The only pertinent questions are how and when. All this week’s speeches, interviews and TV broadcasts are the actions of a desperate politician trying to save his skin. They won’t work. When he said that 2014 had been a “year of achievement”, voters shrank in horror. When he…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Update on the Mad Monk file
Popular ridicule spells political death for any political leader. That’s because it is almost impossible to overcome and undermines the capacity to lead and carry authority. In just 18 months Prime Minister Tony Abbott has managed to reveal himself as mad and bad. Now he’s a joke. What broke the back of his most loyal…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Syria: US poised for yet another atrocity
The savagery and barbarity of US imperialism is once again to be unleashed on the people of the Third World. This time the target is the people of Syria. For two years they have suffered the bloodiest civil war imposed on them by regime-changers – principally the Western powers led by US, Britain and Israel.…