Reprinted from the WSWS By Peter Symonds 2 June 2012 The Australian Labor government has again demonstrated its role in international affairs as the loyal point man for Washington, with the announcement on Tuesday that two Syrian diplomats, including the chargé d’affaires, had 72 hours to leave the country.
Over the last year and a small group of antiwar activists from Melbourne have been escalating our nonviolent resistance to the war in Afghanistan, focussing on the Swan Island Military Base off Queenscliff, Victoria. Australia has 1550 troops in Afghanistan; most are involved in mentoring and training Afghan National Army, but approximately 350 are the elite SAS, who are doing the targeted killings. Swan Island is one of two major training facilities for SAS troops, as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).
Australian peace activists are taking direct action against military expenditure, war games, the U.S. alliance, the Afghanistan War and the trial of Julian Assange over the next few weeks. On June 28th in Adelaide, activists are picketing a Defence Industry Expo. From July 4th-8th a a blockade of the Swan Island military base is occurring to protest the Afghanistan War.
Mother’s Day has been reduced to a highly commercialised retail event but in 1870 in the US pacifist, abolitionist and sufffragette Julie Ward Howe wrote her “Mother’s Day Proclamation” which said women of the world should demand an end to war with the internationalist cry “We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
The full Mothers Day Proclamation reads
