Zimbabwean Senator Sekai Holland wins the 2012 Sydney Peace Prize. Announcement made last night in Harare at a reception hosted by the Australian Ambassador to Zimbabwe at his residence. Guest of honour and lifetime friend of the 2012 recipient, Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, was there to congratulate Sekai and give a moving account of [...]

By Stuart Rees: Sydney Uni is exhibiting all the symptoms of a sick institution: bureaucracy, endless forms and breakouts of middle-management. Stuart Rees dons the mask and attempts a diagnosis A serious disease has re-appeared at Sydney University. Like tuberculosis, as soon as a cure is found and staff have been inoculated, a more virulent [...]

The federal government’s decision to allow US troops to be stationed in Darwin is “provocative” towards China and the arrangement should be scrapped, the Greens say. The deal was announced when US President Barack Obama visited Darwin last year, with the Northern Territory welcoming the first wave of 200 US troops earlier this month. The [...]

By Jake Lynch, Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies: There is a growing danger that the political leaders responsible for the greatest single atrocity of recent years will suffer no consequences. Journalists, not governments, have taken a lead in raising the issue to the international agenda of command responsibility for violations of [...]

By James Dhizaala and Stuart Rees The frenzy of conversation about the reach and effect of the Kony 2012 video has covered a lot of ground. What hasn’t been addressed, however, is the Uganda government’s complicity in the oppression of the Acholi, Teso and Langi people — and the international community’s blind co-operation. Discussing the video [...]

The formidable force that is Rap News has released a sobering assessment of the hysteria surrounding KONY 2012, dissecting with surgical precision all the reasons why KONY 2012 is irresponsible and ill-placed. Well done Rap News! http://thejuicemedia.com/

By Professor Stuart Rees: In the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza, the Qdeh family’s modest rabbit farm is one of several Australian trade union humanitarian aid (Apheda) projects which is bolstering food security for poor families. On a Spring evening in April 2011, Najah Qdeh and her 21-year-old daughter Nidal were in their backyard [...]

The United States should seize the opportunity as push for peace while Palestinians increasingly embrace non-violence. Khader Adnan spent 66 days on hunger strike, a symbolic, self-denying act of non-violent resistance to Israel’s practice of “administrative detention” or imprisonment without charge. His story quickly became well known and began to inspire other Palestinian political prisoners [...]

The militarisation of Australian history and public memory has a seemingly unstoppable dynamic. I would even say that the conflation of national history with military history, that is, the assumption that national history is military history, is pretty much complete. Rather than celebrating the diversity of Australian historical and cultural experience, it seems the only [...]