person:julia gillard

Why is the West praising Malala, but ignoring Ahed?

When 15-year-old Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by a member of Tehrik-e-Taliban, the reaction was starkly different. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, issued a petition entitled “I am Malala.” The UNESCO launched “Stand Up For Malala.”

Malala was invited to meet then President Barack Obama, as well as the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and addressed the UN General Assembly. She received numerous accolades from being named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine and Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine to being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014 when she won.

State representatives such as Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard as well as prominent journalists such as Nicholas Kristof spoke up in support of her. There is even a Malala Day!

But we see no #IamAhed or #StandUpForAhed campaigns making headlines. None of the usual feminist and rights groups or political figures has issued statements supporting her or reprimanding the Israeli state. No one has declared an Ahed Day. In fact, the US in the past has even denied her a visa for a speaking tour.

►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/west-praising-malala-ignoring-ahed-171227194606359.html

New Facts Revealed on 2010 Ousting of Australian PM
▻http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/08/new-facts-revealed-on-2010-ousting-of-australian-pm/#more-55533

Interviews with senior Labor Party figures, both past and present, published in the new book Triumph and Demise by the Australian newspaper’s leading political journalist Paul Kelly, cast a further revealing light on the circumstances surrounding the June 23-24, 2010 coup that ousted Labor leader Kevin Rudd as prime minister and installed Julia Gillard.

Kelly does not delve into the driving forces of the coup, in particular the role played by the United States as the Obama administration set in place the anti-China “#pivot” to Asia. However, what he does present demolishes the fiction that Rudd’s removal was about poor public opinion poll ratings or his dysfunctional management style.

(...)

Kelly concludes: “The argument of the anti-Rudd faction chiefs that Rudd was in an irrecoverable position is unpersuasive. Former Prime Minister John Howard and his deputy, Peter Costello, said later they believed Rudd would have won any 2010 election against Tony Abbott.”

Polls, however, did play an important part in creating the conditions for carrying out the coup. But they were not those conducted by established polling organisations and published in the daily newspapers. These were “internal” polls conducted by the right-wing leadership of the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party, which had a leading role in the coup. They purportedly showed a 7 percent swing against Labor in four marginal seats and that the party was heading for a major electoral defeat.

(...)

In December 2010, leaked US diplomatic cables provided by #WikiLeaks showed that the main plotters in the anti-Rudd coup within the Labor Party and the trade unions, including Mark Arbib, David Feeney and the then Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes, provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and were characterised as “protected sources.”

While domestic factors such as the mining companies’ heavily-funded campaign against the proposed resource rent tax undoubtedly helped create an air of “crisis” around the government, the coup was the outcome of geo-political shifts emanating from Washington.

In 2010, the Obama administration was setting in place the foundations for its anti-China pivot to Asia. As events over the past four years have made clear, Australia and Japan are the two major anchor points for US preparations for military activities against China. However, before they could go ahead, political changes had to be carried out.

#geopolitique #Chine #Etats-Unis #Australie

Caravane : Julia Gillard, seule femme Première ministre d’Australie, rudoyée par Rudd et consorts
▻http://blogs.tv5.org/caravane/2013/06/julia-gillard-seule-femme-premi%C3%A8re-ministre-daustralie-rudoy%C3%A9e-

Dans son éditorial daté du 28 juin 2013, l’éditorialiste Alison Pearson, du Daily Telegraph australien constate que « le club des hommes gagne toujours en politique ». La preuve, « Julia Gillard est leur dernière victime. » Alison Pearson a la chance de pouvoir s’étonner encore de la vitalité avec laquelle son pays se surpasse en goujateries sexistes. Et la première Première ministre de ce pays, Julia Gillard, donc a dû affronter toute ce qu’il y a de pire en la matière, jusqu’au coup de force de mercredi dernier mené à l’intérieur de son propre parti par son rival Kevin Rudd, pour la chasser du gouvernement, et reprendre une place dont il estime qu’elle lui revient de droit éternel et masculin. L’ex et actuel Premier ministre n’a pas seulement reçu le soutien de ses partisans, il a été aussi fortement épaulé par ses meilleurs adversaires politiques pour parvenir à ses fins.

#australie #politique

The political crisis in Australia - World Socialist Web Site

▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/28/pers-j28.html

The political crisis in Australia

28 June 2013

The sudden reinstallation of Kevin Rudd as Australian prime minister and the removal of Julia Gillard, less than three months before a scheduled election, is an event without political precedent. Rudd’s comeback has been courtesy of the same Labor Party operatives who suddenly removed him as prime minister and installed Gillard in the inner-party coup of June 2010.

#australie #politique

Australian government imposes new spending cuts
►http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/myef-o23.shtml

C’est aussi l’austérité en Australie

Australian government imposes new spending cuts
By Patrick O’Connor
23 October 2012

The Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday announced additional socially-regressive spending cuts in its mid-year budget update, aimed at delivering the fiscal surplus it promised the financial markets and credit ratings agencies in May.