Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Australia is a small country and we cannot afford to waste lives or resources. We have growing threats much closer to home than Afghanistan and we should be concentrating on these threats. We should be fighting real terrorists, not chasing ghosts or nation building in distant countries that are no threat to Australia.

While the absorbing intricacies of the sometimes daily twists and turns of developments in Fiji, which I have chronicled closely since Easter, 2009, when any pretence to not being a fully-blown military dictatorship was removed, are fascinating, I want to here focus on how Fiji might, eventually, be returned to democratic governance. The first important point to at least try to establish is exactly what Commodore Frank is seeking to achieve in Fiji. This is trickier than might be initially expected because of the sometimes daily shifts or twists in his expressed thinking or planning.

It’s not the fear of Iranian nuclear weapons that makes the US Joint Chiefs of Staff so reluctant to get involved in a war with Iran. Those weapons don’t exist, and the whole justification for the war would be to make sure that they never do. The problem is that there’s nothing the US can do to Iran, short of nuking the place, that would really force Tehran to kneel and beg for mercy. (Gwynne Dyer)

Indeed, those sympathies of mine only reinforce just how foolish and self-defeating Israeli obstinacy has been in regard to accountability for Gaza. The diplomatic fallout has been immense, and the momentum it has given to boycott movements is something no one but Israel could have provided.

Depending on which reports you believe, the number of dead killed by the Israelis numbers between eight and fourteen, and many more wounded.  The deaths have been condemned around the world  The European Union has condemned the attack, and an emergency session of the UN Security Council is now debating a response.

"I campaigned on the promise of change –- change we can believe in, the slogan went.  And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change –- or that I can deliver it. " - US President Barack Obama

While we in the West can hold our nose when we read about these terrible troubles in the rest of the world, the reality is that our oil dependence means we help contribute to this ugly reality. Our leaders cheerfully extol the virtues of globalisation, but don't like to talk about the money that Saudi Arabia funnels into supporting fundamentalist causes.

One is reminded here of White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel's April words: “In the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister." It is enough for me to plan to be at his computer on the last Saturday in September rather than be watching the AFL Grand Final.

The Israelis also need to receive a message. In their case the message is that the world has changed and that the kind of tricks that allowed the continued expansion of the settlements do no longer work. Further, it is not just a single person in the White House but a change of perception of them by many people around the world including a substantial number of US Jews.

My claim to expertise on this is simply that I am, as far as I know, the only writer to have sampled the different conditions of these three regimes, or samples of regime; the kind of government as I'll start right out by phrasing it, considers the citizen essentially to be the property of the State. (Christopher Hitchens)

It would be better for us to see reality for what it is and exhaust any possibility of reaching an agreement now, with a pragmatic and moderate leadership, before it is replaced by zealous religious leadership that views violent Jihad as the main means in the struggle against Israel. (Yariv Oppenheimer)

Anyone following Middle Eastern politics, even if relying solely on the Australian media, would have been aware of the widespread condemnation of Israel eviction of 59 Palestinians from homes in Sheik Jarrah in East Jerusalem. ... While there have been some discussion in the Hebrew media, the legal implications of the court’s ruling have received scant attention. But they are huge.

Obama did not invent a new American policy. The United States has long held that the settlements are illegal; the same is true for the status of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Americans are sticking to the same road map drawn up seven years ago, it's just that Israel apparently didn't notice that the Palestinians have fulfilled the first article in the document almost completely. (Zvi Bar'el)

John Lyons is not the first observer to note that has no intention of resuming peace talks with the Palestinian Authority in the near future. But his observations are newsworthy precisely because his comments were published in the Australian – Murdoch’s flagship in Australia which is known for its strongly pro-Israeli stance. Had these comments been published somewhere else then, the hue and cry from certain quarters would have been unbearable.

What makes the publication even more unusual is Wakim and Zwier’s message. They do not subscribe to either side’s narrative but are motivated instead by a will for dialogue in reconciliation. At the same time they do not spare their verbal rod from either Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu or Palestine’s Mahmoud Abbas( Abu Mazen).

For a long time I have been baffled at the way no one else has looked at the similarities between the relationship to their traditional land of Bedouins and Indigenous Australians. ... It is quite common to come across arguments in the Israeli against Bedouins “encroaching on state land” and who have no title to it. They are some arguments used against Eddie Mabo’s claim before and after the court victory. (Joel Gibson)

So there are some questions that may be interesting to discuss. The longevity one, what next for Iran, and doubtless several more that others can raise. In the meantime, yesterday, as most Webdiarists will be aware, Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei delivered an address at the University of Tehran’s Friday prayers. The following is a summary from the Guardian.

While the economy boomed, it was easy for politicians to talk about reward for effort; and no one paid too much attention as they generously rewarded their own efforts. Their sanctimonious prattle about welfare cheats and mutual obligation also had plausibility – until they were revealed to be far more skilled in the art of the rort than any single mother or unemployed teenager. (Frank Bongiorno)

The point is that the glass is not static. Six months ago it wasn’t empty – it had a negative quantity in it! One needs to look at the context and dynamics of the glass. Barak Obama went as far any US President could go and then some. And nothing illustrates that better than the issues of settlements.

So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end. (President Obama)

If a company like General Motors can be allowed to go bankrupt then there is a big question mark about US unreserved support to Israel regardless of its actions. One does not have to share Burston’s world view to follow his logic.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has promised to dismantle the 22 illegal outposts "already in the coming weeks." But anyone listening to him will laugh. He didn't even evacuate one outpost when he was Ehud Olmert's defense minister, when he had the prime minister's full support to do so. Now he's going to evacuate settlements, under Netanyahu, who actually favors expanding them? (Nehemia Shtrasler)

A few weeks ago the Australian media reported, with some approval, a message from Netanyahu saying that he supported peace negotiations. I am sure that many of my Palestinian colleagues would have shared my own wry smile at the Israeli PM support for the negotiations rather than peace. The point is that negotiations have been used to obstruct the prospects of peace. Few people express it as clearly and succinctly as Akiva Eldar does.

We’ve all been there. You’re having a blue with your partner; your opportunity to retort opens so you throw in a ‘home truth’ and… your partner walks out. Us – 1; Them – 0. Cue: Your Smug Smirk.

In Fiji, the military regime has been exercising the time-honoured routine of silencing critique by media censorship. If the expectation was to ensure social stability and continued power, then, thus far, they have been successful.

In the surreal, bizarre and frequently deadly world of Middle Eastern politics, and against a backdrop of decades of compromise, incompetence, failure and corruption by secular movements like Fatah, the rise of ultra-conservative, ultra-nationalist Islamist factions such as Hamas and its Lebanese counterpart Hizbolla have signalled a tectonic shift in power relations in the region.

Malcolm Turnbull and others baying for the blood of Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, should think long and hard about their arguments. They appear to be saying that it is ok for officials of a government department to secretly and probably illegally, launch an investigation into the Minister to whom they are accountable. In the case of Mr Fitzgibbon, the intelligence gathering on him also smacks of racism. Mr. Fitzgibbon is friendly with an influential Chinese woman, a Ms Liu – so what?

Tibetans in Tibet live in constant fear and the Chinese authorities remain constantly suspicious of them. Today, the religion, culture, language and identity, which successive generations of Tibetans have considered more precious than their lives, are nearing extinction; in short, the Tibetan people are regarded like criminals deserving to be put to death. (H.H. the Dalai Lama)

Who am I, who are you, to judge this man as a terrorist when he is far more sinned against than sinner? ... My question is, “Who is the real terrorist here?” This is a book I simply could not put down.

In The Next 100 Years, George Friedman offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future wars will erupt (and how they will be fought), which nations will gain and lose economic and political power, and how new technologies and cultural trends will alter the way we live in the new century. (Black Inc Publishing)