APSNet Semi-Weekly Bulletin, June 7, 2007

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"APSNet Semi-Weekly Bulletin, June 7, 2007", APSNet Semi-Weekly Bulletin, June 07, 2007, https://nautilus.org/apsnet/apsnet-for-20070607/

APSNet for 20070607

Austral Peace and Security Network (APSNet)

Twice weekly report from the Nautilus Institute at RMIT, Australia.

Thursday 7 June 2007

  1. Canberra Joins Japan-US Missile Study
  2. Downer Defends China’s Military Build-Up
  3. Threat of Taliban Spring Offensive Quashed
  4. Rudd in Quest of a Pacific Solution
  5. Legal Chaos Raises Doubts in Hicks Case
  6. Anzac Legend and Rhetoric: Patriot Act
  7. National Pandemic Influenza Exercise

Policy Forum 07-13A – Chasing Shadows: Indonesian War Criminals and Australian Law – Mark Byrne and Kath Gibson


  1. Canberra Joins Japan-US Missile Study, Peter Alford, Australian, 2007-06-06

    Australia and Japan are expected to announce a ballistic missile defence research project with the US, as a first step towards the possible development of a regional missile defence system. This will be discussed in Tokyo by Brendan Nelson, Alexander Downer and their Japanese counterparts at the inaugural “two-plus-two” ministerial meeting under the new Australia-Japan defence and co-operation agreement.

  2. Downer Defends China’s Military Build-Up, Peter Alford and Patrick Walters, Australian, 2007-06-07

    Alexander Downer has distanced Australia from US and Japanese complaints about China’s rapid military build-up, saying, “I don’t think any of us need be unduly concerned about Chinese military expenditure. I think expressions of concern are much exaggerated.”

  3. Threat of Taliban Spring Offensive Quashed, Anne Davies, Age, 2007-06-07

    The 11,500 Australian and other multinational forces in southern Afghanistan have made big progress against the Taliban, the retiring NATO commander Major-General Ton van Loon said. “We launched major combat operations and we have clearly defeated them in objective terms,” he said. But he warned that countries involved in the effort should prepare to be there for “quite some time” – possibly a decade or more.

  4. Rudd in Quest of a Pacific Solution, Michelle Grattan, Age, 2007-06-05

    A new Pacific centre to co-ordinate civil and military planning would be part of a Rudd government’s efforts to anticipate breakdowns in Australia’s faltering Pacific neighbours. “This would mean joint planning for Australian police, military and civil authorities, as well as with our regional partners to ensure we are capable of early deployments before things get out of hand,” he said.

  5. Legal Chaos Raises Doubts in Hicks Case, Mark Coulton, SMH, 2007-06-06

    In the first military commissions to be held since the Hicks case, a military judge dismissed charges against two prisoners because they had been classified as enemy combatants instead of illegal enemy combatants. The rulings, if upheld by an appeals court, have implications for all prisoners who were brought to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in the first five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

  6. Patriot Act, Mark McKenna, Australian, 2007-06-06

    The uncritical and self-serving embrace of the Anzac legend by both sides of politics has serious implications for Australia’s future. With each new military engagement, our leaders mine the Anzac sagas to cloak their political decisions in the rhetoric of values, courage, mateship and sacrifice. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Anzac legend has been exploited to make the continuation of the campaign appear as a patriotic duty.

  7. National Pandemic Influenza Exercise: Exercise Cumpston 06, Department of Health and Ageing, Office of Health Protection [PDF]

    Exercise Cumpston 06 was the largest health simulation exercise ever undertaken in Australia The aim was to exercise and validate the capacity and capability of the Australian health system to prevent, detect and respond to a pandemic in accordance with the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza (AHMPPI) This evaluation report includes twelve key recommendations.

Policy Forum 07-13A: Chasing Shadows: Indonesian War Criminals and Australian Law, Mark Byrne and Kath Gibson

Writing about the Indonesian occupation of East Timor from 1975 to 1999 when “between 103,000 and 183,000 East Timorese civilians were killed or died of starvation” Dr Mark Byrne, (Senior Researcher with Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre till 2007), and Kath Gibson (who served an internship at Uniya in 2007), ask “is there anything that might be done in Australia to bring Indonesian military leaders to justice?” Byrne and Gibson provide a range of possible legal avenues that could be pursued and note that “holding perpetrators to account” is important to establishing “the rule of law within the emerging democracy of Indonesia”.


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