When British essayist Samuel Johnson wrote in 1774 the famous words “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” the context was an aggressive British colonial expansionist push and associated wars with its European colonial competitors.
Peter Boyle
The Yazidi minority community in Sinjar, Iraq, is still recovering from the horrendous 2014 genocide by Islamic State (IS) terrorists. Yet, on January 15, it was the target of another deadly airstrike by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's dictatorial regime.
The latest fire emergency in four states has rammed home the meaning of the words “catastrophic climate change” in the minds of most people in Australia. Most now realise that this is a climate emergency and our society should mobilise all its resources to address it.
At the height of the fire crisis over the New Year an Aboriginal elder, who had evacuated from Lakes Entrance to Bairnsdale in Victoria, joined other evacuees in registering for emergency relief. But he was told by a St Vincent de Paul staffer that the agency had “helped enough of your people today”, given a $20 fuel voucher and told not to tell other Aboriginal people about it. The elder walked out, humiliated, and asked his niece to return the voucher.
Poll results released on January 9 by the Australia Institute think tank show that even before the bush fire emergency peak around the week following New Year's eve, 66% of people in Australia believe the country "is facing a climate change emergency and should take emergency action".
Sydney Extinction rebellion began an indefinite vigil outside NSW Parliament House on January 6 to demand that the NSW and federal governments declare a climate and ecological emergency.
"Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the fire crisis had escalated to an unprecedented level.
Labor’s federal election post-mortem ignores a giant elephant in the room — culpability for its defeat lies in its decades-long embrace of neoliberalism and abandonment of progressive “traditional Labor values”.
Twelve men were detained under Malaysia’s Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (SOSMA) on October 11–12, among them two state parliamentarians from the Democratic Action Party (DAP), part of the Pakatan Harapan ruling coalition.
Several trade unions, the Senate and the local Australian-Kurdish community have called on the federal Coalition government to condemn Turkey’s invasion of north-eastern Syria, a region commonly known as Rojava.
On October 9, after many months of military build up and threats, the Turkish military began a new invasion of north-east Syria where, seven years ago, Kurdish freedom fighters established a federation of democratic self-governing cantons popularly known as "Rojava".
This attack came just days after United States President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of US military units from the area and gave an implicit “green light” for Turkey's invasion.
On October 8, NSW Greens MP for Balmain Jamie Parker addressed the first of a round of emergency protests against Turkey's invasion of the Kurdish-liberated democratic autonomous territories in northern and eastern Syria, popularly known as Rojava.
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