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Australia Tag

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 10, 2017 18 Comments
The conservative Australian writer Andrew Bolt was in the news this week due to an incident which produced a viral video. In the footage, Bolt is attacked by two masked Antifa type thugs but hits them right back. News AU reported:
Protesters get more than they bargain for when Andrew Bolt bashes back CONTROVERSIAL columnist and TV personality Andrew Bolt has “clobbered” a group of masked protesters who set upon him in Melbourne yesterday. On his TV program last night, Bolt explained how he was about to launch a book on US President Donald Trump at a restaurant in Carlton, in the city’s inner north, when a woman asked to take a selfie with him. Before they could take the photo, two masked protesters set upon Bolt, spraying his face and suit with what he described as “sticky liquid with glitter and dye”.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 10, 2017 3 Comments
Bassem Tamimi is a Palestinian activist  best known for using children, including his own, to confront Israeli soldiers in the hope of creating viral video and photo images. Tamimi has been quite successful at this, and many of the images resulting from these provocations have become international hits. This video of his daughter gained international fame, and a prize for her from the Islamist prime minister of Turkey:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on April 03, 2017 3 Comments
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was slated to begin her tour of Australia on Monday with an ABC Australia's "Q and A" issues discussion program. The show's tweet indicated that plans had changed abruptly, and it seems the reason is based on security concerns.
Hirsi Ali’s Hero of Heresy tour was due to begin in Brisbane on Thursday, before taking her to Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 23, 2016 4 Comments
Five individuals are in custody after Australian police thwarted an attempted Christmas Day bombing. According to the BBC:
Five men are in custody after early-morning raids on Friday, Victoria Police chief Graham Ashton said. Mr Ashton said the threat involved "use of explosives" and other weapons including "knives or a firearm".

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on July 17, 2016 11 Comments
The Brexit vote that resulted in David Cameron stepping down has also prompted a range of apocolyptic fear-mongering that British trade would collapse. In fact, numerous countries are beginning to explore free trade deals with Britain after its EU exit.  With the 2019 date for Britain's exit from the EU looming, the United States and Australia have emerged "at the front of queue" to line up trade deals.  Such deals with just these two countries "alone could be worth billions of pounds to the British economy." Australia, in particular, sees the opportunity to open up trading with Britain as a "matter of urgency." The Guardian reports:
Australia has called for a free-trade deal with Britain as soon as possible, in a boost for the newly appointed prime minister, Theresa May. In a phone call on Saturday, May spoke to her Australian counterpart, Malcolm Turnbull, who expressed his desire to open up trading between the two countries as a matter of urgency.
For her part, May states her belief that these talks are important in terms of showing that Brexit can work out well for Britons.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 06, 2015 20 Comments
In the wake of the "there've been more mass shootings than days in the year" hysteria, Australia's former deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer, is pushing for "better travel warnings" for Australian travelers to the U. S. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
"Three hundred and fifty two mass shootings in the USA so far this year but about 80 a day you don't hear about," Mr Fischer told ABC News on Thursday. "All [are] unacceptable because the US is not stepping up on the public policy reform front. But have we not reached the stage where the Smart Traveller advice of [the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade] needs to be muscled up?" Mr Fischer said a person is 15 times more likely to be shot dead in the US than in Australia and that travel advice should reflect this, as it does for Mexico.

Posted by Mike LaChance on October 04, 2015 57 Comments
After the shooting in Oregon this weekend, an angry Obama took to the airwaves and insisted that he would openly politicize gun control. The president cited Australia, a country with extremely strict gun control as a model. Would you believe bad guys can get guns even there? FOX News reports:
At least 2 dead in shooting outside police building in Australia, reports say At least two people are dead after a shooting outside a police headquarters in Australia on Friday, according to published reports. The Daily Telegraph Australia reports a lone gunman shot and killed a police IT expert outside New South Wales state Police headquarters in the Parramatta section of western Sydney The gunman was subsequently shot and killed by police, according to the newspaper. Police confirmed that a major operation was taking place between Hassall Street and Charles Street near the police headquarters. They advised the public to avoid the area. Sky News Australia helicopter footage spotted bodies covered in sheets near the police building.

Posted by Arsen Ostrovsky on September 17, 2015 18 Comments
This week saw the election of Malcolm Turnbull as the new Prime Minister of Australia, after having defeated the sitting Prime Minister Tony Abbott as head of Australia’s conservative ‘Liberal Party’. Some commentators in the United States have, erroneously, compared Turnbull’s ascension to power to that of Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders. But this could not be further from reality, with the two on stratospheric polar opposite ends of the political spectrum. Although Turnbull comes from the ‘Liberal Party of Australia’, like in Canada, it is the local conservative party, with the emphasis being here on ‘classic liberalism’ and conservative traditions. Whereas Sanders maybe be on the far-left in terms of both domestic and foreign policy issues, in Australia, Turnbull is considered a ‘moderate conservative’. Although Turnbull supports issues like gay marriage, climate change and social welfare, he is staunchly conservative on matters of foreign policy, economy and governance. He firmly believes in the free-market economy, private enterprise and free trade (including being a major proponent of Australia’s current negotiations for a free trade agreement with China), as well as lower taxes, reduced public spending and smaller governments. In other words, he is a ‘fiscal conservative’ in the truest sense of the word.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 06, 2014 33 Comments
Anti-Semitism is becoming a pervasive, worldwide problem hinged on anti-Israel attitudes. Australia has seen numerous anti-Israel protests and an increase in anti-Semitic incidents.  A Rabbi visiting from Israel was recently attacked.  Some of the Australian media have engaged in anti-Semitic tropes. In the Bondi area of Sydney, a group of religious Jews recently was attacked: The latest attack was on a school bus used by a Jewish school, from The Daily Telegraph - Australia:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 07, 2014 16 Comments
We wrote about how Australia just made an enormous contribution to the Middle East peace process by refusing to refer to East Jerusalem as "occupied" territory. Australia is historically and legally correct.  "East" Jerusalem was illegally seized and occupied by Jordan during Israel's War of Independence, and the Jewish residents ethnically cleansed.  Its recapture by Israel was simply returning the territory to its rightful owner. The reason that Australia's announcement was important, I wrote, was:
Because the history of Middle East peace negotiations is the refusal to speak the truth to the Palestinians, and instead, to cower at false claims of illegal occupation and Apartheid. Such diplomatic cowering, evidenced by John Kerry’s futile shuttle diplomacy, simply encourages even more unreasonable and unrealistic Palestinian demands. If peace ever is to be achieved, it will be when the Palestinians accept that they can get no more from international boycotts and pressure than they can get through direct negotiations and meaningful concessions. The Australian announcement brought that moment a little closer.
True to form, Palestinian Authority through one of its most senior leaders and negotiators is calling for the Muslim world to reevaluate ties to Australia, as reported by The Times of Israel, PA to seek wider Arab reprisal against Australia:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 06, 2014 10 Comments
Australia has announced that it no longer will refer to East Jerusalem as "occupied" territory. This is an enormous and important contribution to Middle East peace, as it corrects the false narrative that Israel's recapturing of territory illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948-1967 is not justifiably part of Israel. For the historical and legal background of why Israel's recapture of East Jerusalem and other territories is not illegal under international law, see Prof. Eugene Kontorovich's recent article at Commentary Magazine, Crimea, International Law, and the West Bank, as well as his lecture, The Legal Case for Israel. The Times of Israel reports, Australia drops ‘occupied’ label from East Jerusalem:
The Australian government will not refer to East Jerusalem as “occupied, territory” the government said in a statement on Thursday, in what one legislator called a “massive shift” in foreign policy Attorney General George Brandis explained Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s position that using the word “occupied” was judgmental and does not contribute to the dialogue about the contested area, the Australian Associated Press reported.
The move came, in part, as an Australian reaction to the verbal abuse Palestinians heap on anyone who supports Israel (been to a campus lately?):
Australia’s decision to stop referring to East Jerusalem as “occupied” territory and to adopt additional similar steps that will likely please Israel and anger the Palestinians came as a retaliatory measure against Palestinian officials who in recent months repeatedly and ferociously attacked Canberra’s Middle East policies in public, The Times of Israel has learned “The Australian government is irritated by how the Palestinians have chosen to pursue their disagreements with us in public,” a senior Australian source told The Times of Israel Thursday. “This is the kind of behavior you’d expect from the leaders of a student union but not from a government-in-waiting.”
As expected, the Palestinians heaped even more abuse on the Australians:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 21, 2012 22 Comments

down under, these tweets were posted. From a blog you should check out, Cattalaxy Files ("Australia's leading libertarian and centre-right blog"), which one of our commenters frequents. Be sure to click on embedded links. On guns: In the unarmed country the man with the illegal weapon rules bit.ly/NQfAtZ— CatallaxyFiles (@CatallaxyFiles)...

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