Twelve nations put a price on Israel’s illegal settlements. Canberra sat at the table for months, then remembered it had a Security Council seat to win.
Tag: Anthony Albanese
The Appropriate Time
Twelve countries signed a statement on trade with Israeli settlements. Australia was very much part of the process. The early part.
Labor’s National Conference: A Triumph of Unity
Bryan Dawe interviews a senior Labor figure about the smoothest national conference in decades — three days, one open debate, and not a face in the room. A tribute in the spirit of Clarke and Dawe.
Anthony Norman Albanese crossed Parramatta Road the way other people cross a street: with the calm and conviction of someone who has rehearsed the gesture for television. He came from a housing commission island ringed by depots and the click-clack of Catholic rosary beads, black as anthracite and polished to a gloss by the unrelenting petitions of the poor but faithful. He was, as the campaign line put it, a son of a single mum. It was also an opening line with longer ambitions.
The Stench of Desperation: Trump’s War on Iran and the Babushka of Greed, Ego, and Catastrophe
To make sense of Trump’s war on Iran, imagine a Russian
babushka doll. The outer layer is the story the Pentagon feeds
us. Inside it: petrodollar entanglements, Kharg Island
war-gaming, the strategic patience of Moscow and Beijing,
Netanyahu’s fantasy of the purifying blow. At the very centre,
smaller than it should be, is Australia. Urban Wronski opens
all six layers and does not like what he finds.
Iwo Jima, They Said: Marines Move on Iran as Tel Aviv Burns and the Alliance Dissolves
Lindsey Graham is evoking Iwo Jima. Iran is mining Kharg Island’s shoreline. Seven thousand five hundred US Marines are days away from the Persian Gulf. The war is 26 days old, has cost $18 billion, and the White House’s official position is that they need about a month to “get Iran by the balls.” Australia is calling for de-escalation. The crease in the trousers remains arrow-straight.
Are we at War with Iran?
INTERVIEWER: Are we at war with Iran?
ALBANESE: No.
INTERVIEWER: Then why did they bomb our base?
ALBANESE: Because they’re Iran.
One interviewer. One Prime Minister. Forty-five satellite dishes, three submariners, one Wedgetail aircraft, a peace negotiation bombed flat, a hundred and seventy schoolgirls, and a pocket square without a mark on it. A political interview in the tradition of Clarke and Dawe.
A War Built on Lies, Sold by Lobbyists, with Innocent Children as its Price
On the eve of a diplomatic breakthrough, the bombs fell. What followed was not a war of necessity but a war of choice, lobbied into existence, launched in bad faith, and paid for in civilian lives.
The Mushroom Treatment: A Government That Treats You With Contempt Cannot Be Trusted
The Albanese government gives us the mushroom treatment. Keeps us in the dark and feeds us BS. This week, while a US-Israeli war of questionable legality engulfs the Middle East and Pine Gap hums away in the desert night, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong delivered a bravura homage to John Cage: all performance, all silence, no content whatsoever.
The Perennial Persecution of the CFMEU: Demonisation as a Defence of Power
For thirty years, Australia’s most powerful construction union has served as a moral punching bag for the nation’s political and media establishment. Every few years another “reckoning” arrives: a Royal Commission, a regulator’s dawn raid, a media exposé discovering organised crime in high-vis. Each time, … Continue reading The Perennial Persecution of the CFMEU: Demonisation as a Defence of Power
