Year: 2008

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Oz says no to cluster bombs

Despite the lack of attendance by the usual major human rights abusing nations including the United States, China, India, Pakistan, Russia and of course habitual, brazen, unapologetic user of the disgraceful anti-civilian weapons, Israel, Australia has signed the Wellington Declaration banning the use of cluster bombs.

82 countries signed the declaration which affirmed a ban on the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of the bombs, and called for a framework to care for survivors of cluster munitions.

Australia was accused of trying to water down the declaration to appease the United Stupids, yet an Australian delegation head, Caroline Millar, claimed they would have liked to have gone further.

Outstanding concerns Australia hoped to have addressed in Dublin included restrictions on defence forces working with allies such as the USA, which had not signed up.

Other matters included defining what a cluster bomb is, and how to deal with stockpiles used for testing and training purposes, she said.

Now that wouldn’t have happened under the US fawning leadership of little Johnny Rodent! Once again and very sensibly, Australia is taking prominence internationally against weapons of idiocy pushed like drugs by the most powerful, hateful industry lobby in the world.

Thus, no longer need we term our country Whorestralia … it’s back to good ole Oz. Not so with the uber state, who remain the United Stupids.

With typical disregard for the welfare of people of other countries and cossetting of their own and Israhell, the United Stupids expressed their ongoing repulsive commitment to cluster munitions, seeing them as useful for military purposes.

With armaments being a primary Stupids export and the Stupids exporting more weaponry than any other nation with rapid exports growth under the cover of the delusional ‘War on Terror’, any limitation on military production would naturally shoot their already corrupt and sagging economy in the foot. In desperation the US Reserve lowers interest rates, and ours goes up. Who pays for the maintenance of US environmentally destructive, greedy living standards and culture of selling death? everyone else in the world.

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With love from a sorry lot

The absence of joy and applause from the Opposition (how pleasant it is to write Opposition meaning the Liebs at last) following Kevvie’s very pleasant healing speech of apology to the Stolen Generation was striking.

With manners we have come to expect of ignorance and mean-heartedness, several notable rightwing twits boycotted the event including Wilson Tuckey, Don Randall, Alby Schultz, Dennis Jensen, and Sophie Mirabella.

Questioned in Parliament later over two of Rudd’s staffers turning their backs on Brendan Nelson during his inadequate, typically miserly and patronising speech wherein he attempted vainly to absolve the government from responsibility for the Stolen Generation, Kevvie insisted the staffers apologise. Why apologise for shunning a bigot with a track record like Nelson’s (recall his woeful attempts at improving Aboriginal health when he was Health Minister)? So Kevve can insist on a sorry from everyone – he has a boat to keep afloat.

For the record, we here are sorry … very sorry and look to the day when an apology is extended for the seizing of Australia and the specious imperial Terra Nullius justification. Let the healing begin and we all live with the land sustainably in peace.

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Sorry day tomorrow

It’s been a long time coming, yet finally the big word that caught in little Johnny’s throat may ameloriate some of the hurt inflicted on Australian indigenous people tomorrow and allow healing for some members of the Stolen Generation.

Kevvie wants to get his speech just right, with good reason – firstly to say it right, without inflicting guilt on everyone, and secondly to avoid any loopholes, and a flurry of personal financial compensation claims which might clog up the federal courts. Due to 200 years of exploitation, things won’t change overnight – but more government money for health, education and policing will go a long way toward creating a better future for aboriginals generally. Can the positive aspects of a tribal culture which treasured living at one with the environment be rescued at this late juncture after years of patronisation, scorn and neglect?

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Bush to visit apartheid state

Bush’s upcoming visit to Israel is unlikely to stimulate any relief for the collectively punished, long-suffering Palestinians, despite vague waffle by Olmert on illegal settlement evacuations. Israel has a political half nelson on the US, who are blinkered by pro-Israeli propaganda, who do not realise or do not care that they are co-conspirators in war crimes and heinous human rights abuses. For the uneducated, the Israelis are always the good guys and the Palestinians the bad. Nor do any of the Democrat presidential candidates offer any hope for change. The Israel First Zionist lobby is too strong – to speak of justice for Palestine would be electoral suicide. Why the presidential hopefuls speak of Israel as a democracy is mystifying – perhaps it is a reflection of the lack of real democracy in a country primarily driven and controlled by big money lobbies and corporations.

Jonathan Cook analyses the Barak Oslo offers and makes some chilling conclusions about Olmert’s present political plans toward those hapless people the apartheid State of Israel currently occupies and from whom it blithely and cynically continues to steal land:

In truth, Israel’s need for recognition as a Jewish state is proof that it is not a democratic state, but rather an ethnic state that needs to defend racist privilege through the gerrymandering of borders and population. But in practice Olmert may yet use the recognition test to back Abbas, a weak and unrepresentative Palestinian leader, into the very corner that Arafat avoided.

Before Annapolis, Livni declared: “It must be clear to everyone that the State of Israel is a national homeland for the Jewish people,” adding that Israel’s Palestinian citizens would have to abandon their claim for equality the moment the Palestinian leadership agreed to statehood on Israel’s terms.

Olmert framed the Annapolis negotiations in much the same way. It was about creating two nations, he said: “the State of Israel — the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state — the nation of the Palestinian people.”

The great fear, Olmert has repeatedly pointed out, is that the Palestinians may wake up one day and realize that, after the disappointments of Oslo and Camp David, Israel will never concede to them viable statehood. The better course, they may decide, is a South African-style struggle for one-person, one-vote in a single democratic state.

Olmert warned of this threat on another recent occasion: “The choice … is between a Jewish state on part of the Land of Israel, and a binational state on all of the Land of Israel.”

Faced with this danger, Olmert, like Sharon and Barak before him, has come to appreciate that Israel urgently needs to persuade Abbas to sign up to the two-state option. Not, of course, for two democratic, or even viable, states, but for a racist Jewish state alongside a Palestinian ghetto-state.

With Bush also wanting a two state solution by the end of his disastrous term of office, the future of Palestinians looks as usual, bleak.