The latest Suburbtrends “Rental Pain Index” for May 2024 uncovers the escalating severity of the rental market crisis in Australia. As rental prices continue to climb and homes remain scarce, the report highlights the urgent need for comprehensive solutions to alleviate the stress on renters throughout the nation.

Kent Lardner, founder of Suburbtrends, delivers a critical analysis and a dire warning about the future implications of current policies: “This month’s data signals a looming reckoning for the political class, who have long neglected the growing distress of the renter class. The barriers to homeownership are especially daunting for first-time buyers without familial financial support, leaving shared equity schemes in capital cities as one of the few remaining options—yet many will still find these schemes out of reach.”

The data illustrates a disturbing trend:

• In Western Australia (WA) and Queensland (QLD), rental pain indices have escalated to 85.71% and 81.39% respectively, underscoring the acute stress felt by renters.
• South Australia (SA) and Victoria (VIC) are also experiencing significant increases in rental stress, with the index rising sharply, indicating that the crisis is widespread across major population centers.

Kent emphasises, “Our immediate focus must be on implementing emergency accommodations and creating incentives for homeowners to offer underutilised properties for rent. These measures are crucial stopgaps that can provide some relief in the short term.”

He elaborates on strategic solutions: “To address the twin challenges of availability and suitability, we propose tax incentives or financial benefits for homeowners to bring under-occupied houses into the rental market. This approach not only maximises the use of existing housing stock but also alleviates some pressure from the rental market.”

Kent concludes with a powerful call to action: “As the construction of new homes lags behind demand, exacerbated by stringent building codes that drive up prices, we find ourselves at a critical juncture. We must act decisively to deploy emergency shelters and rethink our housing policies to include more immediate, practical solutions such as mobile home villages and prefabricated homes. The time to act is now, to prevent a deeper crisis where more Australians face the grim reality of homelessness.”

In his 2021 annual threat assessment, the director-general of ASIO, the Australian domestic intelligence service, pointed to an active spy ring operating in the country, or what he chose to call a “nest of spies”. The obvious conclusion drawn by information-starved pundits was that the nest was filled with the eggs and fledglings of Chinese intelligence or Russian troublemakers. How awkward then, for the revelations to be focused on another country, one Australia is ingratiatingly disposed to in its efforts to keep China in its place.

At the start of this month, a number of anonymous security sources revealed to various outlets, including The Washington Post, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, that the spies in question came from the Indian foreign intelligence agency, known rather benignly, even bookishly, as the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).  

The range of their interests were expansive: gathering information on defence projects of a sensitive nature, the state of Australia’s airport security, and classified information covering Australia’s trade relationships. The more sinister aspect of the RAW’s remit, and once it has extended to other countries, was monitoring members of the Indian diaspora, a habit it has fallen into over the years. According to Burgess, “The spies developed targeted relationships with current and former politicians, a foreign embassy and a state police service.” The particular “nest” of agents in question had also cultivated and recruited, with some success, an Australian government security clearance holder with access to “sensitive details of defence technology.”

In details supplied by Burgess, the agents in question, including “a number” of Indian officials, were subsequently removed by the Morrison government of the day. The Washington Post also revealed that two members of the RAW were expelled from Australia in 2020 following a counter-intelligence operation by ASIO.

Given the recent exchanges between the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, all efforts to pursue the sacred cows of prosperity and security, this was something of an embarrassment. But the embarrassment is more profound to Canberra, which continues to prove itself amateurish when it comes to understanding the thuggish inclinations of great powers. Beijing and Moscow are condemned as authoritarian forces in the dark tussle between evil and good, while Washington and New Delhi are democratic, friendlier propositions on the right side of history. Yet all have powerful interests, and Australia, being at best a lowly middle-power annexed to the US imperium, will always be vulnerable to the walkover by friends and adversaries alike.  

Grant Wyeth writes with cold clarity on the matter in The Diplomat. “With countries like Australia seeking to court India due to the wealth of opportunities it provides, New Delhi knows that actions like these won’t come with any significant consequences.”  

The lamentably defanged responses from Australian government ministers are solid proof of that proposition. “I don’t want to get into these kinds of operational issues in any way,” explained Australia’s Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, to the ABC. “We’ve got a good relationship with India and with other countries in the region, it’s an important economic relationship, it’s become closer in recent years as a consequence of efforts on both sides, and that’s a good thing.”

Operational issues are exactly the sort of thing that should interest Chalmers and other government members. In targeting dissidents and activists, Modi’s BJP government has taken to venturing afar, from proximate Pakistan to a more distant United States, particularly Sikh activists who are accused of demanding, and agitating, for a separate homeland known as Khalistan. The methods used there have not just involved plodding research and cool analysis but outright murder. The Indian PM, far from being a cuddly, statesmanlike sort, is a figure of ethnoreligious fanaticism keen on turning India into an exclusively Hindu state.

In September last year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke of “credible allegations” that Indian agents had murdered Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Khalistan advocate designated in 2020 by New Delhi to be a terrorist. He had been slain in his truck on June 18, 2023 outside the Surrey temple, Guru Nanak Gurdwara. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil,” reasoned Trudeau, “is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty. It is contrary to the fundamental rules by which free, open and democratic societies conduct themselves.”  

This month, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that three Indian citizens resident in Edmonton had been arrested in connection with the killing. “There are separate and distinct investigations,” stated the RCMP assistant commissioner, David Teboul. “These efforts include investigating connections to the government of India.”

Given that Australia has a Sikh population of around 200,000 or so, this should be a point of nail-biting concern. Instead, Canberra’s tepid response is all too familiar, tolerant of violations of a sovereignty it keeps alienating it to the highest bidders. Tellingly, Albanese went so far as to assure Modi during his May visit last year that “strict action” would be taken against Sikh separatist groups in Australia, whatever that entailed. Modi had taken a particular interest in reports of vandalism against Hindu temples in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney featuring pro-Khalistan slogans.

Be it Washington’s seduction with its promise of nuclear-powered submarines and a security guarantee against manufactured and exaggerated threats, or India’s sweet undertakings for greater economic and military cooperation, Australia’s political and security cadres have been found wanting. There has even been an open admission by Burgess – expressly made in his 2022 Annual Threat Assessment address – that “espionage is conducted by countries we consider friends – friends with sharp elbows and voracious intelligence requirements.” The ABC similarly reports, citing unnamed government sources, “that friendly nations believed to be particularly active in espionage operations in Australia include Singapore, South Korea, Israel and India.” Something to be proud of.

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia Media Release  

The decision of the Australian Government to cut student debts has been welcomed by the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent skills training, higher education, and international education providers.

The Australian Government will cap the higher education HELP indexation rate at the lower of either the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the Wage Price Index (WPI) with effect from 1 June 2023. This relief will be backdated to all HELP, VET Student Loan, Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan, and other student support loan accounts that existed on 1 June last year.

“The Australian Government’s initiative will be most welcome for the millions of people with student debt struggling to deal with cost-of-living pressures,” said Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive.

The universal application of the cut to student debt has been welcomed by ITECA.

“ITECA welcomes the fact that this important measure will support students that undertook their studies with independent skills training and higher education providers,” Mr Williams said.

In welcoming the move, ITECA said more could be done to support students studying with independent Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and higher education institutions. One such measure would be to remove the 20% student loan tax (formally referred to by bureaucrats in Canberra by the more innocuous term ‘loan fee’) that many students taking out an Australian Government loan to study with independent RTOs and higher education providers face.

“It’s abhorrent that the Australian Government whacks a 20% student loan tax on the debts of people investing in study to achieve their life and career goals. It’s time for the Australian Government to end the student loan tax,” Mr Williams said.

ITECA will continue to lobby the Australian Government to end the student loan tax.

Monash University Media Release

The spotlight is yet again shining on the national crisis of violence against women in Australia, and the calls for increased action and improved responses to all forms of domestic, family and sexual violence has intensified over the last three weeks. 

With the need for a perpetrator register or a disclosure scheme emerging as one option to improve women’s safety, Monash University and University of Liverpool researchers have published a study examining whether such schemes actually improve women’s safety.

Domestic violence disclosure schemes (DVDS) provide a mechanism – for victim-survivors, individuals who feel at risk, and/or an individual’s friends and family members – to apply for information about whether a person has a documented history of domestic violence. The schemes can also involve police proactively providing information to protect potential ‘high risk’ victims from harm from their partner. 

Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, who led this research, said the study revealed significant gaps in terms of both timeliness of data sharing and also the lack of follow-up supports and safety planning provided to applicants. 

“This study represents the first examination of the operation of the domestic violence disclosure scheme in Australia,” said Professor Fitz-Gibbon. “It raises significant questions as to the value of the scheme, and serves as a word of caution for other states and territories that are currently considering this approach.”

The research team, including Professor Sandra Walklate and Dr Ellen Reeves from University of Liverpool, interviewed scheme users, relevant practitioners, academics and policy makers in Australia and New Zealand to generate the evidence required to inform decisions about the introduction of a DVDS. 

Despite the often used political justification for disclosure schemes – that it provides women with the information they require to secure their safety – this study found that of the applicants interviewed, the majority had already experienced abuse and since separated from their partner when they accessed the same. For these applicants, the information disclosed did not necessarily come as a surprise, but rather a confirmation of suspicions they already held. 

“Applicants in this study did not necessarily require the information disclosed to them to support immediate safety planning and relationship decision making, but rather to confirm decisions they had already made about the viability of their intimate partner relationship and their safety in it,” Professor Fitz-Gibbon said. 

Sharing information with no follow up may put the applicant at greater risk of harm and represents a missed opportunity to keep the victim-survivor’s risk in view. 

In Australia, only South Australia has a domestic violence disclosure scheme. NSW piloted a scheme in 2016 but it was discontinued in 2018. No other state or territory has as yet introduced a scheme, although several have considered a scheme. 

Professor Fitz-Gibbon said DVDS carry significant resourcing implications; administrative workload, data sharing, training, support services and access. 

“The specialist domestic, family and sexual violence sector are calling for an urgent increase in funding to ensure they can support the safety needs of victim-survivors across Australia. At a time when funding for services is falling short across the country, it is imperative to critically question what policies are supported. ​​While several practitioners described the value of the scheme – whether it is the best use of resources in a chronically under-funded sector was of paramount consideration,” she said.

With national and state conversations currently underway around implementing reforms to end violence against women and children, this study assists policymakers in understanding not only what works, but also what policy approaches may be less effective. 

This research calls not for the introduction of a DVDS but for evidence-based policies and adequate funding for wraparound specialist support services to support safer outcomes for victim-survivors. 

What a stinking story of inhumanity. A country intent on sending asylum seekers to one whose residents have actually applied for asylum and sanctuary in other states. But the UK-Rwanda deal, having stalled and stuttered before various courts and found wanting for reasons of human rights, has become law with the passage of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.

The story of this deal has been a long one. On April 14, 2022, the government of Boris Johnson announced the Asylum Partnership Arrangement with Rwanda, which was intended “to contribute to the prevention and combating of illegally facilitated and unlawful cross border migration by establishing a bilateral asylum partnership.” Rwanda, for a princely sum, would receive those whose asylum claims would be otherwise processed in the UK through the “Rwanda domestic asylum system” and have the responsibility for settling and protecting applicants.

This cynical effort of deferring human rights obligations and not guarding asylum seekers and refugees from harm has been made all the more hideous by Kigali’s less than savoury reputation in the field. Refugees have been shot for protesting over reduced food rations (twelve from the Democratic Republic of Congo died in February 2018). Refugees have also been arrested for allegedly spreading misinformation about Rwanda’s less than spotless human rights record. And that’s just a smidgen of a significantly blotted copybook.

Notwithstanding this, UK home secretaries have gushed over Kigali’s seemingly falsified credentials. Suella Braverman, who formerly occupied the post, was jaw dropping in her claim that “Rwanda has a track record of successfully resettling and integrating people who are refugees or asylum seekers.” This is markedly ironic given that the Rwandan government has been accused of creating its own complement of refugees running into the tens of thousands.

The UK government has a patchy legal record in trying to defend the legitimacy of the exchange with Rwanda. The Court of Appeal in June 2023 reversed a lower court decision on the grounds that those asylum seekers sent to Rwanda faced real risks of mistreatment prohibited by Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Rwanda, it was noted, was “intolerant of dissent; that there are restrictions on the right of peaceful assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of speech; and that political opponents have been detained in unofficial detention centres and have been subjected to torture and Article 3 ill-treatment short of torture.”

The government also failed to convince the UK Supreme Court, which similarly found in November 2023 that people removed to Rwanda faced a real risk of being returned to their countries of origin in violation of the principle of non-refoulement. That principle, by which persons are not to be sent to their countries of origin or third countries if they would be placed at risk of harm, is a cardinal rule in several instruments of international law and enshrined in British law.

In what can only be regarded as a legal absurdity, the Safety of Rwanda bill essentially directs the home secretary, immigration officials, courts and tribunals to deem Rwanda a safe country in accordance with UK law and UK obligations to protect asylum seekers. It also bars decision makers from considering the risk of refugees being sent by Rwanda to other countries and disallows UK courts from drawing upon interpretations of international law, including the European Convention of Human Rights. Effectively, a sizeable portion of the UK’s own Human Rights Act 1998 has been rendered inconsequential in these determinations. 

A final, nasty feature of the legislation is the grant of power to a Minister of the Crown to decide whether to abide by interim measures made by the European Court of Human Rights regarding any removal to Rwanda. This is astonishing on several levels, not least because it repudiates the binding nature of such interim measures.

Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, could barely believe the passage of such an obnoxious bit of legislation. Not only did it fly in the face of obligations to protect refugees, it constituted a direct interference in the judicial process. “The United Kingdom government should refrain from removing people under the Rwanda policy and reverse the Bill’s effective infringement of judicial independence.”

Shadowing these proceedings is an unmistakable, ghoulish legacy of Australian origin. The former Home Secretary Priti Patel openly acknowledged that elements of the “Australian model” of processing asylum claims in third countries were appealing and something to emulate. The particularly attractive element of the plan was the refusal by Canberra to ever permit those found to be refugees to ever settle on Australian soil. Other countries, including such European states as Denmark, have also chosen Rwanda as an appropriate destination for unwanted asylum seekers. 

The entire affair is a stunning example of political entropy, a howl from an administration marching before the firing squad. With each failure, the Tories have tried to claw back respectability in the hope of appearing muscular in the face of irregular migration. They have accordingly cooked up a scheme that is not merely cruel, but one of staggering cost (each asylum seeker of the current cohort promises to cost the British taxpayer £1.8 million) and ineffectualness. Sunak, a laughably weak and unpopular prime minister, is, politically speaking, at death’s door. Despite getting the legislation through, legal struggles from potential deportees are bound to tear into the arrangements. What Britain’s judges do will prove a true test of character.

By James Moore  

“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.” – Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

Dan Rather was twenty years a legend by the time I began to work in Houston television news. Eventually, I was to become an alum of the station where he got his start, KHOU-TV. His rise to prominence began there in 1961 when he was looking at a weather radar screen of Hurricane Carla and its spinning clouds covering the entire expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. The story told is that the young correspondent had his cameraman turn his lens on the image to enable the audience to get a sense of what would soon make historic and devastating landfall. The decision probably saved an untold number of lives because the evacuations of Galveston accelerated and people were compelled to leave the island for inland safety.

Ultimately, I began to think of Rather as destiny’s darling, which is, effectively, an insult to his abilities and preparation as a reporter, though he was not without luck. His career followed American history’s arc, in part, because he was always aware and ready. CBS hired Rather away from KHOU-TV and sent him to run a bureau in Dallas. When the president announced a trip to the city, Rather is said to have asked his editors for additional resources because of the politics manifesting under community leadership in 1963. Texas later became a location for jumping over to Dixie and reporting on the brutality confronting the Civil Rights Movement, which was followed by an assignment covering the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where he was roughed up on live TV. Rather also got sent to report on the War in Vietnam and was later back in Washington covering Watergate before, finally, succeeding Walter Cronkite as anchor of the evening news.

Shortly after the Texan had ascended to the lead role at CBS, I was working at the network’s affiliate in Omaha. I had managed to come across the fact that a group of historic re-enactors were about to commemorate an anniversary of the Pony Express by riding from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California, and I was able to prepare a feature report, which had interested editors in New York. My piece was the closing story on the CBS Evening New with Dan Rather that day, a moment of great note for an ambitious young man. I did not encounter Dan Rather in person, though, until August of 1992, when he came back to Houston and anchored his newscast from the city hosting the Republican National Convention. I was a lead political reporter at his early employer’s news department, KHOU-TV, and he briefly introduced himself in the hallway. Our futures, however, were to become entangled in a little more than a decade.

During the 1994 gubernatorial campaign between George W. Bush and Ann Richards, I had asked Bush how he had managed to get into the National Guard in Texas and avoid the draft and combat in Vietnam. My question grew out of the loss of friends who had died in Vietnam and my own anti-war activities as a protestor. I had decided that, short of leaving the country, the only way to avoid the draft was to enlist in the National Guard. Unlike Bush, I was told the waiting list to become a pilot was five years and it was three to join the infantry. Bush, however, simply walked into the Guard headquarters at Ellington Air Force Base outside of Houston and signed up to become a pilot, and told me during that statewide TV broadcast of the debate that his father, a U.S. Congressman, did not exercise influence to get him the slot. His answer was not just disingenuous, it was a lie.

“People,” he claimed, “did not want to spend the amount of time necessary to become a jet pilot. It requires a one year commitment to learn how to fly. It required another six and a half months to learn how to fly the F-102, as you may recall. I decided I want to learn how to fly a jet. And I did fly a jet. It took a year and a half worth of training something that most people did not want to do.” (40:15 below).

Houston, though, had numerous pilots home from Vietnam wanting to keep current on their qualification certificates, and there was no need for Ellington to spend a million dollars training a congressman’s son to be a pilot. Although it took decades for the truth to come out, the Texas House Speaker during that time, Ben Barnes, acknowledged in 2004 that he had gotten Bush into the Texas Guard as a favor to his father.

“I got a young man named George W. Bush into the National Guard when I was lieutenant governor of Texas, and I’m not necessarily proud of that, but I did it,” Barnes said in a brief video. “I became more ashamed of myself than I’ve ever been because the worst thing I did was get a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance into the Guard and I’m very sorry about that and I apologize to you and the voters of Texas.”

Bush never acknowledged the privilege or influence, and still has not. The morning after my debate question in 1994, I got a call from the communications director of Ann Richards’ campaign telling me that I needed to call Barnes and he would give me the full story. Barnes led me along, telling me he had the guy who ran the “political list” for the Guard, and he was willing to give me the full story of Bush’s enlistment. Barnes, however, the ultimate political animal, sniffed the political breezes blowing across Texas and decided Bush was going to be president, and pissing him off would not help his business or fund raising. He made up a story about why the source would not talk.

I spent the next ten years very quietly filing FOIA requests to the military and federal government to get relevant documents on Bush’s time in the service. Responses were incomplete, and clearly missing timelines and relevant documents. Eventually, though, I was able to piece together his history and his disappearance from the Houston air base at Ellington. The eldest son of the future president went to Alabama to work on a U.S. Senate campaign for a friend of his father and claimed he was still on duty at the Alabama National Guard in Montgomery. Records showed, however, he never showed up for duty and was only on base for haircuts and dental work.

After endless calls for interviews and searching for printed evidence, I was referred to a rancher in West Texas. Bill Burkett claimed to have been in the Texas National Guard and witnessed a purging of Bush’s military files by people on the governor’s staff. He told me he and a Guard colleague had retrieved certain pages of the paper files from a waste basket, and had retained them for future reference. No matter how many times I requested the materials, they were never delivered to me even after Burkett insisted they were proof Bush had gone AWOL and never performed his duty. His story was not, however, fanciful, and fit with the timeline I had developed from the files I had received via FOIA.

Dan Rather

Dan Rather’s producer, Mary Mapes, had been in pursuit of the same story regarding Bush and the Texas Guard. Burkett presented her with the documents he had consistently refused to provide me, even though he never wavered in saying he had them available in safekeeping. Mapes took the material to forensic experts whose analyses convinced her she was looking at copies of originals that explained Bush’s Guard absence and various failures while he was serving, including not passing a physical. Rather and her created a report, which I am convinced, was true, even though the documentation was never one hundred percent verified. The Guard materials I published in my second book corroborated the missing info that Rather’s piece had provided.

Rather and Mapes were assaulted online before his half-hour newscast had concluded. The Internet trolls claimed the letters purported to be National Guard documents were fake because they used a superscript type face that was not available at that time. In fact, the Texas Guard was one of the early purchasers of electric typewriters with superscript capitalization. Nobody wanted to hear the contradiction because the noise of the critics was too loud and the political right was ascendant. Mapes contacted me and asked me to go on the air with Rather, which I did, and although I was unable to speak to the veracity of the letters and other documents they had acquired, I affirmed my confidence the story they had reported was true.

A special commission investigated the reporting and concluded it was unsupportable. His own employer, CBS News, appeared to be coming after a correspondent and anchor who had frequently risked his life to serve their advertisers and his journalistic audience. There was, however, no chance of survival. Rather signed off, left the network, and, eventually, his producer Mapes was no longer employed, either. Mapes published a book that laid out the experience in great detail, Truth and Duty, which was later made into a movie with Robert Redford playing Rather. The early script had an Australian reporter in my debate role but the scene ended up on the cutting room floor.

My book on Bush and the Guard was released in early September of 2004 as the president’s reelection campaign was launching. In January, as I began work on a new book for a new publisher, I was catching a flight from Austin to Columbus, Ohio to begin research. While trying to print a boarding pass at a kiosk, I got the “see agent” message, and went to the airline’s ticketing desk. I was told by the agent that I was now on the “No Fly Watch List,” which is a lesser sin than the No Fly List. I demanded an explanation and she was unable to provide one but called Homeland Security and handed me the phone.

“Ma’am, I don’t understand,” I told the anonymous female voice. “How can I be on the No Fly Watch List?”

“I can’t answer that, sir,” she said. “And even if I had that information, I would not be able to give it to you.”

“Is there anything you can tell me?”

“Well, only that there is something in your background that is similar to, or might relate to, someone the government is looking for.”

“Seriously? I’ve never even had a parking ticket and I have the most mundane name in all of the English language. My dad walked across Europe shooting enemies of this country and now his son is getting screwed around by the government he defended?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I wish there were more than I could tell you.”

The No Fly Watch List does not prevent you from flying but it does make travel tedious. There was no checking in online, or using baggage curb check, no printing boarding passes on kiosks, either. I had to always go to a ticketing counter to get cleared and then was given a boarding pass that indicated I required extra attention when I went through security. I talked to an attorney in Washington about suing DHS but was told everyone who attempted was shut down during the discovery process.

“As soon as you get discovery,” I was informed, “The judge gets told that releasing the needed documents to plaintiffs will jeopardize national security, and the case gets dismissed.”

A process was finally developed to allow people to submit materials and information to appeal their status, and DHS would reach a conclusion. Even when a disposition was reached, though, you were unable to know what it was. Your case was assigned a number in the DHS that was recorded in the Traveler’s Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). Airlines can look at the number when you load it into their reservation system and it will determine if you are worthy to board an airplane. I have suspected from the first time I was informed that I was placed on the NFWL it was a consequence of my reporting on Bush’s military service record.

I am certain Mr. Rather had no such difficulties, though his accomplished career was treated cavalierly by an employer and a nation to whom he had been faithful. His story as a journalist and a Texan is compelling, regardless, and is the subject of a new Netflix documentary premiering tonight (May 1), and I’ll watch with my usual admiration. He was dogged, and unafraid, and at 92 still maintains a relevance with his Substack Steady. Turn on your TV. His story might be the best one he’s ever told.

And he’s told a lot of great ones.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

The rage and protest against Israel’s campaign in Gaza, ongoing since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, has stirred student activity across a number of US university campuses and beyond. Echoes of the Vietnam anti-war protests are being cited. The docile consumers of education are being prodded and found interested. University administrators and managers are, as they always tend to, doing the bidding of their donors and funders in trying to restore order, punish the protesting students where necessary and restrict various forms of protest. Finally, those in the classrooms have something to talk about.

A key aspect of the protest centres on university divestment from US military companies linked and supplying the Israeli industrial war machine. (The pattern is also repeating itself in other countries, including Canada and Australia.) The response from university officialdom has been to formulate a more vigorous antisemitism policy – whatever that means – buttressed, as was the case in Columbia University, by the muscular use of police to remove protesting students for trespassing and disruption. On April 18, in what she described as a necessary if “extraordinary step”, Columbia President Minouche Shafik summoned officers from the New York Police Department, outfitted in riot gear, to remove 108 demonstrators occupying Columbia’s South Lawn. Charges have been issued; suspensions levelled. 

Students from other institutions are also falling in, with similar results. An encampment was made at New York University, with the now predictable police response. At Yale, 45 protestors were arrested and charged with misdemeanour trespassing. Much was made of the fact that tents had been set up on Beinecke Plaza. A tent encampment was also set up at MIT’s Cambridge campus.

The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce has also been pressuring university heads to put the boot in, well illustrating the fact that freedom of speech is a mighty fine thing till it aggrieves, offends and upsets various factional groups who wish to reserve it for themselves. Paradoxically enough, one can burn the US flag one owns as a form of protest, exercise free speech rights as a Nazi, yet not occupy the president’s office of a US university if not unequivocal in condemning protest slogans that might be seen as antisemitic. It would have been a far more honest proposition to simply make the legislators show their credentials as card carrying members of the MIC.

The focus by students on the Israeli-US military corporate nexus and its role in the destruction of Gaza has been sharp and vocal. Given the instinctive support of the US political and military establishment for Israel, this is far from surprising. But it should not be singular or peculiar to one state’s warring machine, or one relationship. The military-industrial complex is protean, spectacular in spread, with those in its service promiscuous to patrons. Fidelity is subordinated to the profit motive.

The salient warning that universities were at risk of being snared by government interests and, it followed, government objectives, was well noted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his heralded 1961 farewell address, one which publicly outed the “military-industrial complex” as a sinister threat. Just as such a complex exercised “unwarranted influence” more broadly, “the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” The nation’s academics risked “domination … by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.”

This has yielded what can only be seen as a ghastly result: the military-industrial-academic complex, heavy with what has been described as “social autism” and protected by almost impenetrable walls of secrecy.

The nature of this complex stretches into the extremities of the education process, including the grooming and encouragement of Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students. Focusing on Lockheed Martin’s recruitment process on US college campuses in his 2022 study for In These Times, Indigo Olivier found a vast, aggressive effort involving “TED-style talks, flight simulations, technology demos and on-the-spot interviews.” Much is on offer: scholarships, well-paid internships and a generous student repayment loan program. A dozen or so universities, at the very least, “participate in Lockheed Martin Day, part of a sweeping national effort to establish defense industry recruitment pipelines in college STEM.”

Before the Israel-Gaza War, some movements were already showing signs of alertness to the need to disentangle US learning institutions from the warring establishment they so readily fund. Dissenters, for instance, is a national movement of student organisers focused on “reclaiming our resources from the war industry, reinvest in life-giving services, and repair collaborative relationships with the earth and people around the world.” 

Such aspirations seem pollyannaish in scope and vague in operation, but they can hardly be faulted for their intent. The Dissenters, for instance, took to the activist road, being part of a weeklong effort in October 2021 comprising students at 16 campuses promoting three central objects: that universities divest all holdings and sever ties with “the top five US war profiteers: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics”; banish the police from campuses; and remove all recruiters from all campuses.

Demanding divestment from specific industries is a task complicated by the opacity of the university sector’s funding and investment arrangements. Money, far from talking, operates soundlessly, making its way into nominated accounts through the designated channels of research funding.

The university should, as part of its humane intellectual mission, divest from the military-industrial complex in totality. But it will help to see the books and investment returns, the unveiling, as it were, of the endowments of some of the richest universities on the planet. Follow the money; the picture is bound to be an ugly one.

Oxfam Australia Media Release  

Australian dividend payments to shareholders from corporate investments grew six times faster than worker pay between 2020 and 2023, new Oxfam analysis reveals on International Workers’ Day (May 1).  

Accounting for inflation and through COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis, dividend payments in Australia rose 37%, while average real wages in Australia have fallen by 6%. This is as Australia’s biggest banks, miners and retailers record sky-high profits off the back of higher prices, supply chain disruptions and the alleged use of price gouging and unfair pricing practices.  

Globally, dividend payments to shareholders grew 14 times faster than worker pay in 31 countries, which together account for 81% of global GDP.  

Global corporate dividends are on course to beat an all-time high of USD $1.66 trillion reached last year, according to the Janus Henderson Global Dividend Index, which covers the world’s largest 1,200 corporations, representing 90% of global dividends paid. Data for both dividends and wages for 2020-2023 are available for 31 countries, and Oxfam’s research shows:  

• After adjusting for inflation, global dividend payouts climbed by 45% (USD $195 billion) in 31 countries between 2020 and 2023, while wages grew by just 3 percent.  
• Excluding China, which accounts for most of this wage growth, global real wages in these countries fell by 3% during this period.  

“The trend of rising dividends payouts has worrying effects on inequality. Corporate profits and payouts to rich shareholders have gone into the stratosphere, while wages continue to go nowhere, said Oxfam Australia Chief Executive Officer Lyn Morgain.

“Millions of people hold jobs that trap them in a cycle of working hard while still being unable to afford enough food, medicine or other basics. The super-rich don’t amass their mega-fortunes by ‘working’ – they extract it from people who do,” said Ms Morgain. 

Oxfam’s analysis of Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC) data from countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, found that:

• Only 2 out of 37 countries have a minimum wage above the living wage—a pay rate the GLWC estimates allows workers to meet basic needs, such as housing, food, healthcare, clothing and transportation. Minimum wages on average provide just 38% of the wage needed for living.  
• Bangladesh’s minimum wage provides a mere 6% of a living wage, and in Ghana it provides just 12%. 

These findings reinforce warnings by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of rising numbers of working people living in poverty – skipping meals, getting into debt, and going without the basics. Using ILO data on in-work poverty, Oxfam found that 66% of workers in low-income countries earn poverty wages – a level of pay that doesn’t clear the $3.65 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) poverty line. This is a 1% increase since 2020, which marked the reversal of a long-term decline. 

“No corporation should be shelling out to rich shareholders unless it’s paying a living wage to all its workers. Governments must cap payouts to shareholders, support trade unions and legislate for living wages. We should be rewarding work, not wealth,” said Ms Morgain. 

By Jane Salmon

A Story About Young Refugee or Stateless Children Born Overseas

Once upon a time, a group of brave children embarked on a perilous journey. A tornado of strife had upended their lives in Iran. Friends were lost. They had to leave.

Some of their companions had failings, but all along the way, they leaned on each other for support, their resilience shining brighter than the darkest of nights.

They decided to journey to a mystical place called Aus where problems magically disappeared. But on this trip, there were no yellow brick roads to security; only their own unwavering resolve to find a place to call home.

They missed everyone back in Iran, especially Grandma. “There’s no turning back now, Toto,” they whispered to their loyal companion, as they braved the overgrown and broken path ahead.

Their quest was fraught with challenges – crowded camps, discrimination, upheaval, tall seas, bad boats, wrong passports and uncertainty loomed around every corner. But through it all, they clung to hope and determination, building strength with every step they took.

Along the journey they met the wicked witches of immigration, the flying monkeys of Border Force, the trolls of Serco and some a kind witch or two, too.

They coped when their allies lacked heart, ideas or courage. They did not give up and lie down for long, even when drained by depression or frustration.

Despite every adversity, they pressed on: fuelled by their dreams of a better tomorrow. And finally, after overcoming countless obstacles, they reached the gates of the fabled Aus, a gleaming beacon of hope in a world filled with shadows.

But hardship was far from over. In Aus, they encountered new challenges like arbitrary guards and snobbish locals, elusive leaders, sloth-like ticket sellers, zombie lawyers and confused neighbours.

Yet, through it all, they refused to lose sight of their dreams. Flawed as Aus seemed, it was somehow still a sanctuary, a place where their aspirations could take root and flourish. It was where they found friends, opportunities, and a sense of belonging.

And as they explored some of the wonders of Aus, their hearts filled with gratitude and hope, they whispered to themselves, “This could be our home.”

But they had more to go through.

They had to deal with the silly school kids who teased them about their accents, customs and food. They had to do paperwork for everyone.

They had to write and tell their story a million times to the big-headed wizards of Aus that just didn’t seem to care.

These wizards hid in their offices and in an all-white castle in Canberra where the halls were lined with mirrors.

But they clacked their ruby red slippers together and pled “Fair Go For All” and “Permanent Visas Now” enough times that, FINALLY, after years and years, the longed-for work rights, Medicare and access to study came to them. They had a safe haven in Melbourne.

“We truly belong!” they exclaimed as they received their magic tickets.

At last, they were free! Poor old Grandma could visit. Their dreams and goals were within reach. Their parents could stop worrying and reap the benefits of their hard work and worry.

“There truly is no place like home!”, they whispered to Toto.

And they never forgot how to be kind and to treat others the way they wanted to be treated themselves.

In time, they replaced the old Wizards of Aus and made it a better, more interesting, colourful and welcoming place.

On April 25, along Melbourne’s arterial Swanston Street, the military parade can be witnessed with its bannered, medalled upholstery, crowds lost in metals, ribbons and commemorative decor. Many, up on their feet since the dawn service, keen to show the decorations that say: “I turned up”. Service personnel, marked by a sprig of rosemary. 

The greater the pageantry, the greater the coloured, crimson deception. In the giddy disruptions caused by war, this tendency can be all too readily found. The dead are remembered on the appointed day, but the deskbound planners responsible for sending them to their fate, including the bunglers and the zealous, are rarely called out. The memorial statements crow with amnesiac sweetness, and all the time, those same planners will be happy to add to the numbers of the fallen.

The events of April 25, known in Australia as Anzac Day, are saccharine and tinged about sacrifice, a way of explicating the unmentionable and the barely forgivable. But make no mistake about it: this was the occasion when Australians, with their counterparts from New Zealand as part of the Australian New Zealand Corps, foolishly bled on Turkish soil in a doomed campaign. Modern Australia, a country rarely threatened historically, has found itself in wars aplenty since the 19^th century. 

The Dardanelles campaign was conceived by the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and, like many of his military ventures, ended in calamitous failure. The Australian officers and politicians extolling the virtues of the Anzac soldiers tend to ignore that fact – alongside the inconvenient truth that Australians were responsible for a pre-emptive attack on the Ottoman Empire to supposedly shorten a war that lasted in murderous goriness till November 1918. To this day, the Turks have been cunning enough to treat the defeated invaders with reverence, tending to the graves of the fallen Anzacs and raking in tourist cash every April.

For the Australian public, it was far better to focus on such words as those of British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett written on the occasion of the Gallipoli landings: “There has been no finer feat in this war than this sudden landing in the dark and the storming of the heights.” Ashmead-Bartlett went on to note the views of General William Birdwood, British commander of the Anzac forces at Gallipoli: “he couldn’t sufficiently praise the courage, endurance and the soldierly qualities of the Colonials.” They “where happy because they had tried for the first time and not found wanting.” 

In March 2003, these same “colonials” would again participate in the invasion of a sovereign state, claiming, spuriously, that they were ridding the world of a terrorist threat in the form of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, whose weapons of mass destruction were never found, and whose subsequent overthrow led to the fracturing of the Middle East. Far from being an act of bravery, the measure, in alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom, was a thuggish measure of gang violence against a country weakened by years of sanctions. 

When options to pursue peace or diplomacy were there, Australian governments have been slavish and supine before the dictates and wishes of other powers keen on war. War, in this context, is affirmation, assertion, cleansing. War is also an admission to a certain chronic lack of imagination, and an admission to inferiority. 

The occasion of Anzac Day in 2024 is one acrid with future conflict. Australia has become, and is becoming increasingly, an armed camp for US interests for a war that will be waged by dunderheads over such island entities as Taiwan, or over patches of land that will signify which big power remains primary and ascendant in the Indo- and Asia-Pacific. It is a view promoted with sickly enthusiasm by press outlets and thinktank enclaves across the country, funded by the Pentagon and military contractors who keep lining their pockets and bulking their accounts.

Central to this is the AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the United States, which features a focus on nuclear powered submarines and technology exchange that further subordinates Australia, and its tax paying citizens, to the steering wishes of Washington. Kurt Campbell, US Deputy Secretary of State, cast light on the role of the pact and what it is intended for in early April. Such “additional capacity” was intended to play a deterrent role, always code for the capacity to wage war. Having such “submarines from a number of countries operating in close coordination that could deliver conventional ordinance from long distances [would have] enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances.” That’s Taiwan sorted. 

Ultimately, the Australian role in aiding and abetting empires has been impressive, long and dismal. If it was not throwing in one’s lot with the British empire in its efforts to subjugate the Boer republics in South Africa, where many fought farmers not unlike their own, then it was in the paddy fields and jungles of Vietnam, doing much the same for the United States in its global quest to beat off atheistic communism. Australians fought in countries they barely knew, in battles they barely understood, in countries they could barely name. 

This occasion is often seen as one to commemorate the loss of life and the integrity of often needless sacrifice, when it should be one to understand that a country with choices in war and peace decided to neglect them. The pattern risks repeating itself.

By James Moore  

“You don’t go on bended-knee to petition the official culture for your rights. You have to take them.” – Terence McKenna.

In a matter of days, 54 years will have passed since the National Guard shootings of unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio. They had peacefully assembled on their campus to protest the War in Vietnam and its expansion into Cambodia. In just 13 seconds, though, guardsmen fired 67 rounds that killed four students and injured nine, including one who was permanently paralyzed. The soldiers were all of the same approximate age as the students and eight of them later were charged with depriving the protestors of their civil rights. A judge acquitted the shooters, but what happened on the Kent State campus that day changed the politics surrounding the draft and the war in Southeast Asia.

Every generation of American youth since 1900 has confronted a war, and they are currently dealing with one not of our country’s immediate making. Unflinching, unilateral support, though, financially and politically, for Israel’s assault on Gaza, has left college campuses, especially in this country, restive. Israel has managed to be more horrific than Hamas terrorists during their October 7 attack, and the videos and imagery leaking from Gaza via social media have added an emotional overlay to geopolitics sustaining the war, though it looks more like genocide and a complete razing of infrastructure than any type of combat. The extent of devastation is almost beyond comprehension.

More than half of Gaza’s surviving population, one million people, is now homeless, and 77,000 of them are living with wounds caused by the Israeli invasion. Seventy percent of the wounded and the 34,000 killed are reported to be women and children, living in the streets because 221,000 housing units have been destroyed. An average of 88 children a day have been killed in the six months of attacks. A total of 26 hospitals are out of service and more than 400 health care workers have been killed, which may partially account for a recent mass grave discovered at a hospital site. When the White House said it wanted the discovery investigated, an IDF spokesman responded with, “Investigate what?” Meanwhile, all 12 of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed along with 56 schools, and 625,000 students are displaced without educational resources. Israel’s president, Bibi Netanyahu, labels American complaints about these statistics as “anti-semitism.”

Protesting the slaughter of innocents as casualties of war is not antisemitic just as marching in the streets against the Vietnam War was not anti-American. When a student rally to support Palestinians was organized for the University of Texas campus, the state’s governor had troopers from the Department of Public Safety immediately dispatched to break up the gathering, although there had been no apparent violations of the law or violence by anyone present. The governor, however, had more than 100 DPS officers at the ready to move in with riot gear and disrupt the student assembly. These are the same officers, who, under Abbott’s control, were unable to raise a gun against a mass murderer at a public school in Uvalde. UT reportedly has about $50 million invested in arms manufacturers and pressuring the administration to divest was a central cause of the protest.

In the video above, a TV news photographer from FOX7 News in Austin is dragged to the ground by officers and ordered to lay down. He seemed to be only doing his job by moving with the crowd and recording student and law enforcement interactions. The photographer, along with dozens of students, was arrested, though charges seemed vague and unsubstantiated. The Travis County prosecutor said the DPS lacked probable cause in the arrests and all 57 cases were dismissed even as the governor has characterized the students as criminals who belong in jail. DPS has indicated it plans to pursue a criminal investigation against the TV photographer because it believes he hit a trooper with his camera, an absurd notion, on its face.

The governor held a news conference the next day in Dallas to say he is going to be advocating for new laws that turn participation in “riots” and acts of violence into felonies, which is likely to give law enforcement great discretion in deciding what exactly comprises a riot. Like most radical right conservatives, the Texas governor conflates resistance to war and genocide with antisemitism, which politically characterizes citizens as criminals and racists simply for exercising their right to peacefully assemble and petition their government.

The Texas governor’s tactics are a common element of fascism. Using law enforcement in riot gear or soldiers is an effective method for suppressing and intimidating dissenting voices. It can also be a catalyst for political backlash against the governing institutions and their policies. If most of the Texas National Guard were not already deployed to a stretch of the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, he likely would have sent those troops as an exercise in asserting power, which is what Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes did at Kent State. Just as college students today are trying to execute a nationwide strike and protest over Gaza’s treatment, a similar one had been called for by activist groups after President Nixon announced the U.S. invasion of Cambodia to expand the War in Vietnam. Students believed the soldiers arriving at Kent State were armed with blanks but live bullets were fired the next day on May 4, 1970.

My friend, and also a frequent Big Bend habitué, John Filo, was a student photographer that morning when young people scrambled for cover as their government began firing into their midst for protesting an expansion of a wasteful war. John was a senior and without a specific assignment that day but was wandering campus with his camera when he heard shots. He still thought the gunfire was the sound of blanks until he saw a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Vecchio, kneeling and screaming over a young man’s body. Pointing his camera and snapping a photo, Filo took what has become a singular, iconic picture of the Vietnam Era protest movement. He won a Pulitzer for photography at the age of twenty-one.

“I dropped my camera in the realization that it was live ammunition,” he told CNN in an interview a few decades ago. ”I don’t know what gave me the combination of innocence and stupidity, but I never took cover. I was the only one standing at the hillside. After I did that self-check and turned slowly to my left, what caught my eye on the street was the body of Jeffrey Miller and the volume of blood that was flowing from his body was as if someone tipped over a bucket. I started to flee-run down the hill and stopped myself. ‘Where are you going?’ I said to myself, ‘This is why you are here!’”

The tragedy of Kent State coalesced the anti-war movement and prompted May Day Marches in Washington, D.C. Although U.S. troops are not presently involved on the ground in Gaza, our government’s continuous military and financial aid to Israel make this nation culpable, an unacceptable reality for millions of Americans, not just college students. The brutal crackdowns on campuses here appear hardly different than those often criticized by this country’s government when they occur in China or Iran or Russia. The University of Texas said it was concerned about the possibility of anti-semitic behavior. Too many Texans, though, are more worried about fascistic behavior by the current administration of the governor and lieutenant governor. Regardless of characterizations to the contrary, there were no indications of any pro-Hamas messaging in the crowd. Nothing had been done to justify such a dramatic overreaction by the DPS but the governor seemed to want to make an example out of Austin, which he has referred to previously as “the people’s republic of Austin,” vilifying the city for its historic liberal politics.

“These protesters belong in jail,” he tweeted. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

That is not what happened, and he knows it.

The current campus movement is driven by considerably different dynamics than those that prompted the protest marches against the Vietnam War. Young Americans are not being drafted into combat nor are any coming home in coffins draped with flags. Social media, however, brought the suffering of Palestinians into the living and dormitory rooms of this country in a manner that not even color film did for Vietnam, which became America’s first “living room war.” The U.S. is, historically, parochial and foreign politics seemingly have little impact until they are sufficiently dramatic to get our attention. The Israeli genocide, which is the definition given to the assault by international human rights groups and numerous diplomats, is, finally, beginning to affect American politics. I remain convinced, however, that Israel could drill a hole to the center of the earth, detonate a bomb that blew the planet in half, and there would be politicians of this country spinning off into space yelling their last words, “Israel has right to defend itself.”

The protest movement of the early 70s might have fizzled had there not been an overreaction at Kent State. The subsequent May Day Marches on Washington began to turn national politics away from support for the war after a few hundred thousand people took to Pennsylvania Avenue to get the president’s attention. One year I hitchhiked out from Michigan and another spring we squeezed five of us into a friend’s old coupe and went out across the Pennsylvania Turnpike and down into D.C. We camped out in Potomac Park and there were thousands of tents and trucks and people with fire pits and loudspeakers. The scene felt more like a rock concert than an important and historic political moment.      

I remember in great detail a conversation with a girl who had stopped by our campsite on her way to the concert at the Washington Monument held the night before the march. I wrote about her in a journal I occasionally kept to improve my writing during those years. She was already a bit drunk when she arrived and said she had been smoking weed most of the day. Drinking deeply from a bottle of cheap wine, she sounded like we had just entered a conversation already in progress that had been going on privately in her head.

“But I don’t give a shit, ya know?” she said. “They killed my fucking big brother for no reason. Just because of their communism paranoia. I hate Nixon. I hate his fucking war.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry. That’s pretty awful.”

“Yeah, well, I’m staying stoned and fucked up until he comes home.”

“But I thought you said he was…”

“Doesn’t matter. Long as I’m messed up, I can convince myself he’s coming home. My dad won’t talk, and my mom has Donny’s picture on the counter in the kitchen and she talks to him all day long like he’s there. We’re all fucked up.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing to say. I came up here from Georgia to feel like I’m doing something, you know, just being here in the street, being a number.”

“Yeah, seems like the only thing we can do, I suppose. Not sure how it makes a difference. Doesn’t look like anything more than another concert with a big stoned crowd.”

“Yeah, but they’ll notice us, and we’ll be on the news and tomorrow we’ll shut down Pennsylvania Avenue and that motherfucker president will know how many people hate him.”

“I think he should know by now.”

The sadness she carried was probably constant in every moment of her life and everyone around her suffered because that was what she intended. She was pretty with big round eyes and narrow, square shoulders but her darkness was visible even in the sunlight. Multiply her agony by the tens of thousands and you get the suffering of the Palestinians and the Israelis. Every war is the same.

Until it becomes genocide.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

The Israeli authorities, in their campaign of remorseless killing, doctoring and adjusting the numbers of the Palestinian populace for whatever future awaits, have been found wanting on accusations that Hamas terrorists packed, stacked and filled UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). 

Not that this, in of itself, negates the need to feed, clothe and provide medical assistance to Palestinians being pummelled into oblivion. Or avoid committing war crimes against them. Or avoid starving, humiliating, and degrading them through administrative fiat and bureaucratic oppression. By any estimation, bad apples do not destroy the entire crop, and still need harvesting.

From the outset, Israel asserted that 12 such individuals in UNRWA had participated in the October 7 attacks by Hamas, sharing the sparse details on January 29 with media outlets. The grateful recipients of the alleged scandal proceeded to gorge on the thin morsel comprising a few pages. The Financial Times, for instance, wrote of Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs having “something explosive on their agenda”, even if 12 suspects from a Gaza complement of 13,000 would have barely caused a ripple in any other circumstance. 

Fifteen donor governments, in a fit of stretched moral outrage, froze promised funding, insisting that investigations by the organisation be undertaken. The UN’s Office of International Oversight Services immediately commenced an investigation while US$444 million was withheld from an aid agency that has assisted dispossessed Palestinians for three-quarters of a century.

On February 5, the UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that an independent panel would assess “whether the agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.” The panel, chaired by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, and also comprising the work of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, released its findings on April 22.

The full report, titled “Independent review of mechanisms and procedures to ensure adherence by UNRWA to the humanitarian principle of neutrality,” was marked by a total absence of cooperation from Israeli authorities. Two requests from the Colonna-led inquiry in March and April requesting names and details to support Israel’s allegations died in silence.

In its findings, UNRWA was found to have, in place, “a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with the emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities.” 

It also noted that staff lists, comprising names and functions, are shared on an annual basis with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Israel and the US for East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. It falls on the states in question “to alert UNRWA of any information that may deem a staff member unworthy of diplomatic immunity.” The report further notes that “the Israeli Government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011.” Regarding the March 2024 list, Israel made public allegations “that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations. However, Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”

The report does not ignore the challenges facing the agency in the Gaza Strip, one made more complex since Hamas took over the reins of the territory in 2007. It found, generally, that the agency had been admirable in maintaining its neutrality in such trying circumstances, though identified eight “critical areas” for improvement, among them addressing the neutrality of education, the political position of staff unions, staff and behaviour, and management and internal oversight mechanisms. UNRWA schools, for instance, were not found to be breeding grounds of antisemitism, though some “host-country textbooks with problematic content” were being used in them. Other areas needing rectification are unlikely to be taken, given the need for Israeli cooperation.

As the report’s executive summary notes, “In the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, UNRWA remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”

Despite refusing to furnish any solid evidence, Israel was already preparing the ground for refusal and refutation ahead of the release. Any findings would be ignored with a fanatic’s adamance. While the country jumps at every opportunity to conduct investigations into its own military misconduct at the drop of hat, with the inevitable exonerations, no external review would convince them. Nothing short of the destruction of the agency would satisfy the objectives of the Israeli state.

In March, The Guardian quoted one Israeli diplomatic source (nameless, naturally) as claiming that a “double game” was being played by Hamas and the agency, “so much so that UNRWA is a Hamas strategic asset.” Another nameless diplomatic source was of the view that the aid agency was “so penetrated in Gaza, it cannot be repaired. This is the policy of the state of Israel. We want to see an end to UNRWA activity in Gaza. This is not a case of a few bad apples. It is systemic, consistent and cannot be ignored.” Out, it would seem, with the entire orchard. 

Presumption can therefore take the position of hard fact, a point made crystal clear in another round of allegations (no evidence supplied about that either) that 2,135 UNRWA staff were supposedly members of Hamas, of whom 400 were alleged to be active fighters.

From the perspective of lusty warmongers, UNRWA remains an obstacle, a nuisance, a nightmare of reminder to those wishing to be done with the Palestinian issue once and for all. May it continue to thrive, and, more ever, may its funders finally wise up to the fact that in the viciousness of conflict, civilians should never have to pay the price for military actions undertaken by others. Unfortunately, three months after, and a human-confected famine ravaging Gaza even as the killings continue, various donor countries such as the United States, Germany and the UK are still minding their wallets.

By Jane Salmon  

“Visa Amnesty, Permanent Residency, No Deportation After 11 Years”. Refugee Vigil Outside Minister Giles’ Thomastown Vic Office Monday 29/4/24 – 10am

Refugee and stateless families are urging the federal government to provide amnesty for the 10,000 refugees who have been living in Australia for the past 10 years – ahead of a vigil planned outside the Immigration Minister’s electoral office this coming Monday.

Families and individuals have been begging for an end to the ten-year legal deadlock that prevents them from becoming permanent residents of Australia. Minister Giles has the power to break that deadlock.

The protesters also call on National Party, Independent, Liberal and Labor Senators of conscience to vote against the Migration Amendment 2024 Bill which would expose them to increased risk of deportation.

The Refugee Council of Australia has offered six compelling reasons why the proposed Bill should be rejected by all parties in the Senate.

These reasons are:

Opposition to the Bill: The Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) strongly opposes the Bill due to its broad discretionary powers, the criminalisation of people seeking asylum, and the risks of breaching Australia’s protection obligations under international law.

• Criminalization of Asylum Seekers: The Bill raises concerns about potentially criminalising individuals for refusing to return to their country of origin, leading to mandatory imprisonment for those fearing harm upon return.
• Failures of the Fast Track Process: The Fast Track refugee protection assessment process has been criticized for not providing fair, thorough, or robust assessments, placing thousands at risk of returning to danger or facing years of incarceration.
• Separation of Families: The Bill threatens family unity, particularly for those seeking asylum, by potentially forcibly separating families as a result of compliance with the removal process.
• Broad Discretionary Powers and Visa Ban:The Bill grants the Minister extensive powers to ban visa applications from “removal concern countries,” risking arbitrary and discriminatory practices.
• Impact on Economy and Community: The visa ban could negatively impact diplomatic relations, trade, the education sector, tourism, and social cohesion, especially within Australia’s multicultural and diaspora communities.
• Unchecked Ministerial Powers: The Bill could expand the powers of future ministers, allowing them to designate “removal concern countries” and expand classes of visas for “removal pathway non-citizens” without sufficient oversight.
• Alternatives to the Bill: The Refugee Council suggests that a better approach would be to provide tailored individual support to facilitate voluntary returns in a dignified manner, rather than using coercive measures.
• Recommendations: The RCOA recommends rejecting the Bill in its entirety, re-assessing protection applications rejected via the Fast Track process, and using non-coercive measures to facilitate removal options for those not found to be refugees.

“There are less draconian and arbitrary alternatives to the proposed measures.

“The failed ‘Fast Track’ assessment process which was haphazard and has provided neither speed nor a clear pathway”, said X of Y. We are still waiting for a replacement mechanism that works well.

Former Iranian refugee Arad Nik says, “There is no genuine ‘Emergency’ that justifies the sudden imposition of these powers. The Immigration has dragged its feet on developing mechanisms that honour human rights for two decades. Nothing justifies the introduction of such sudden, extreme or sweeping measures.”

Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil, has admitted that some refugees and others targeted by this Bill are ‘not removable’; yet the government is intent on seeking extraordinary powers. Mandatory sentences of one to five years jail are punitive measures designed to re-introduce indefinite detention.

There is no indication that discriminatory travel bans anticipated by the bill, on countries such as Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Somalia, will shift those countries’ policies on accepting forced removals. But such bans will have an enormous impact on Australian migrant communities.

It seems likely that there will be a vote on this Bill in the latter half of May when the Senate reconvenes.

A Senate inquiry into the Bill attracted 109 submissions. (Another 30 submissions by individuals have not met the publication criteria). Only one of the 109 published submissions was in favour of the Bill and just happens to have been prepared by Home Affairs.

Children aged between 9 and 20 who have attended recent rallies have calmly articulated their situation.

“We kids are raised and educated here as Aussies. We know English than Farsi. We have friends and pets and dreams”.

“Our parents escaped a murderous regime. Some of them are from ethnic minorities who had fewer rights. Some spoke out for justice for women. It is not safe to go back.”

“After 11 years of struggle and uncertainty, please offer us safety and hope, Australia!”

“Australia has already invested in our education. Why not retain our talent?”

“We want the same chances as our classmates. They are allowed to work and to go on to higher study. We are left to rot in our rooms despite great marks.”

“We are innocent. We are children. Our parents did the best they could.”

“We should not be punished because countries cannot agree. We should not be punished because the appeal system is broken”.

“We are sick of powerlessness and would like the chance to become caring politicians ourselves.”

On Monday 29 April 2024 at 10am, refugee and stateless families will again rally outside the (187-189 High Street, Thomastown, VIC, 3074) electoral office of the Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, pleading for positive changes to their situation. Their vigil will last until 3pm on the same day.

It is unfortunate that column space should be dedicated to Britain’s shortest termed prime minister and, arguably, one of its most imbecilic and cringingly juvenile. But given that some people still sympathise with her and her views, it falls to one to tackle her latest work which resembles other types of the gloomy genre warning that action, if not taken now, will result in civilisational catastrophe. 

From the outset, the premise of Ten Years to Save the West is confused. She declares the work is not a political memoir so much as “a call to action for fellow conservatives who believe in our nation and our way of life and who share my frustration at what has been going wrong with our politics and governance.” But the aggrieved memoirist, rather than a sound political thinker, dominates the narrative.

In Ten Years to Save the West, Truss gives us what The Daily Telegraph describes as a “romp”. Certainly, it is not like other prime ministerial accounts more likely to induce a mild coma or soporific escape. She did have a mere 49 turbulent days in Number 10, a time so short it did not enable her to move in her furniture. During that spell, she managed to tank the British economy and cripple the Tory party. In a span of just over a month, her policies pushed 13% of Tory voters towards Labor.

Truss never tires of telling us that everything was stacked against her. In all the ministerial positions she occupied in government, she claims to have been a radical stymied by a host of forces. She faced opposition in the education portfolio. As environmental secretary, she battled Tory colleagues afflicted with “climate fever” while fighting off the Marxist climate lobby. She might have secured a UK-US Free Trade Agreement with the Trump administration were it not for her wretched colleagues.

Whatever undercooked notions she had – a loose collection of economic musings that came to be called Trussonomics – she laments the “sheer power of the administrative state and its influence on the markets and the wider polity.” But she has the order the wrong way around. The very markets that she sees as the state’s salvation – at least in terms those operating in them – had no confidence in her. It was her Tory idol, Margaret Thatcher, who endorsed the view that the state had a minimal role to play when it came to meddling in finance and money markets. Release the forces, cut back the state’s fetters. The libertarian Truss got exactly what she deserved.

With stunning incoherence, Truss is convinced that those forces at work were all infected by a left-wing virus, from the administrative wonks and lever pullers in White Hall to humble teachers and charity workers. Not that questionable, eccentric, even idiotic policies don’t find an audience in self-defeating bureaucracy. They always do, and always will. As an example of the latter Truss cites environmental policies that led to the construction of a “bat bridge” at considerable increased cost to expanding one of the local roads under her charge.  

The shrill, unhinged analysis by Truss in this half-manifesto, half-lament, is mysteriously capable of identifying the left-wing virus in such conservative institutions as the International Monetary Fund, the Bank of England, the Treasury, and the Office for Budget Responsibility, bodies that found her promises of indulgent unfunded tax cuts in the September 2022 budget unworkable, even dangerous. Throughout, she draws on the thesis of former US president Donald Trump of the “Deep State” that managed to hold her “at gunpoint”, one made up of a progressive and Marxist alliance that hates growth and cherishes decline. 

A few observations, at a pinch, should be taken seriously. The poor trappings of a British PM’s office are noted. Truss makes the point that discharging its heavy burdens are made nigh impossible by institutional impediments. The modern British prime minister “is treated like a president but has nothing like the kind of institutional support for the office that we would expect in a presidential system.” But Truss tends to spoil such observations with trivial whines: that she had to do her own hair and make-up.

She also complains about the media saturated, short-term horizon that characterises the workings of Downing Street. This is a tad rich coming from the same individual who made such extensive use of social media in her various postings, be it jogging in New York or driving a tank in military gear in Estonia. During her stint as Foreign Secretary, she uploaded upwards of 700 pictures or more a day in what came to be derided as Instagram diplomacy. 

The warnings for Truss’s demise were many. Many came from close to home. Her husband, Hugh O’Leary, predicted that her stint as prime minister would “all end in tears” though “accepted that this was the moment I was expected to run and that if I didn’t, people would say I had bottled it.” She even writes of her Norfolk constituency political agent’s harsh assessment: “I should run – but he thought it would be best if I came second.” The late Queen Elizabeth II, whose discussions with the prime minister of the day are, according to convention, never disclosed, is documented as giving the following advice: “Pace yourself.” Truss concedes that she “should have listened.”

This grossly, at times embarrassingly uneven thesis of Western doom and necessary salvation, wrapped up in personal resentment, is unlikely to do much to change matters in the corridors of power. But its occasional slips of candour and frequent revelations of sharp incompetence suggest that Truss’s 49 days in office were 49 days too many.