When Prime Minister Gillard opened the recent Parliamentary debate on Australia's involvement in Afghanistan she warned that our role might last for at least the rest of this decade. "Australia will not abandon Afghanistan," she told the parliament in a statement that revealed more about her transition to the Right than anything else.

For the Greens, Senator Brown said the PM should develop an exit strategy as soon as possible.

The Prime Minister's flagging of an ongoing intervention, possibly military, possibly for 10 years, is no substitute for her Government's responsibility to give Australia a clear exit strategy for its servicemen and servicewomen. . . . This Parliament should recall that faced with no prospect of clear victory, the Anzacs were withdrawn from Gallipoli in World War I precisely because the justification for them remaining in Gallipoli had become less persuasive than the justification for them leaving.

Should Australian troops . . . have their lives threatened daily because of a strategic stuff up of George Bush and John Howard? . . . We owe it to our people there to justify the growing toll of death and injury and their exposure to the increasing ugliness and violence of this protracted civil war.

Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Ron Oakeshott also want Australia out of Afghanistan quickly. Andrew Wilkie is also particularly critical.

As for the Americans, the New York Times comments (21 Oct 2101) that:

President George W. Bush shortchanged the Afghan fight for seven years. We continue to wonder whether, at this late date, the United States can achieve even minimal success against the Taliban and their allies.

The cost of the war is still rising. Nearly 600 coalition forces, including 400 Americans, have been killed there this year. Yet Mr. Obama and his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, are only now putting in place the pieces of a more coherent plan.

[Obama’s] administration is doubling down on the fight against the Taliban and showing mixed results. That may not sound like much, but even mixed results are an improvement over the utterly bleak situation of several months ago.

Senator Brown is right. Australia is not well served by its support of a half-baked allied non-strategy.

[T]wo of the most fundamental problems have yet to be addressed: the Afghan government’s lack of credibility with many of its own people; and Pakistan’s persistent double game, taking American aid while sheltering and abetting the Taliban.

Mr. Karzai's government is rife with corruption, and he has either dragged his feet or blocked efforts to clean up things. His supporters committed vast fraud in last year’s presidential election. . . . The Obama administration has yet to find a way to pressure or cajole Mr. Karzai into saving his own government.

Australia is foolish to entangle itself in this mess. We would do better to deliver development assistance that is linked neither to military intervention nor to the Karzai government.

It is possible.

The Commonwealth Games are running quIte well and India has avoided serious humiliation, although there's been a steady stream of embarrassments.

Suresh Kalmadi, head of the organising committee, was roundly booed as he made his welcoming speech, and deservedly so. Cracks appeared in the running tracks. Australian athletes, the first to enter the stadium in the opening ceremony, were "treated like cattle" as they waited an hour in a stifling tunnel. Earlier, some venues were unfinished, a footbridge collapsed and rooms for athletes uninhabitable. There were bird droppings in the swimming pool. The scales used to weigh boxers were seriously inaccurate. The disqualification of the initial winner of the women's 100 metres may have been technically correct in the end but the handling of it was a disgrace. A large electronic scoreboard collapsed and was ruined when its mountings failed.

And so on, and on, and on.

Yet some athletes—diver Matthew Mitcham for instance—report that the facilities are fine are they having an enjoyable experience.

As always, some of the sporting achievements are superb. But few are there to witness them and the stands are almost empty. All in all it's a big yawn. All the more so as Australian dominance is so strong. Of the 206 events decided by early Tuesday, Australians (not Australia) had won 31%. The Indians and the English had each won about 15%.

The Economist mentions a letter also on the front page of the Times of India in which Azim Premji, head of Wipro, one of India's largest software firms, put the true cost of the games at $6 billion (way over budget) and asked: "Is this drain on public funds for the greater common good?" The Economist comments that India has not provided a convincing answer to that question.

We run them well, yet it's not for us in Australia to criticise India's priorities when we too spend huge sums on beer-and-circus public events like Olympic and Commonwealth Games, and Formula One motor races. But it's fair to be critical of corruption and waste.

Attractive advertisments tell us of Incredible India. I don't doubt it. To visit Goa or the Himalayan foothills or Kerala or an number other places would be "incredible" But not New Delhi, not during the rains and not for the Commonwealth Games.

The Australian Government's travel advisory for the Games tries very hard to say "don't go" without actually saying "don't go".

There is a high risk of terrorist attack in New Delhi. . . . In planning your activities, consider the kind of places known to be terrorist targets and the level of security provided. Possible targets include [just about anywhere a visitor might want to go is listed].

And in case you missed it . . .

Australians in New Delhi should be aware that the Commonwealth Games will be held in a security environment where there is a high risk of terrorism.

Of course you could be crushed:

On 21 September 2010, a footbridge under construction leading to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi (the main Commonwealth Games venue) collapsed. A number of injuries resulted. There have been reports about deficiencies in construction in some Games projects, and Australians should be aware that building standards in India may not be comparable to those in Australia.

Or catch a horrible disease:

A number of mosquito-borne diseases are endemic in New Delhi . . . There is no vaccination or specific treatment available for dengue. Malaria is a risk throughout India, including New Delhi.

Or simply be delayed beyond endurance:

You should be aware that the Indian authorities are responsible for security arrangements for the Commonwealth Games. [Is one supposed to be reassured by this?] . . . All events associated with the Games, including the Baton Relay, are likely to cause delays and traffic disruptions as additional security measures will be implemented. You should expect large crowds at the Games and possible delays in accessing Games venues.

Or perhaps be killed on the roads:

Traffic conditions in India, including New Delhi, can be hazardous. Poorly maintained roads and congestion cause a large number of serious traffic accidents, though the authorities have upgraded New Delhi's road and public transport systems for the Games.

In May the Queen decided not to travel to India and is to send the Prince of Wales in her stead. Perhaps she knew something.

Its reported that at least 16 major structures built or renovated for the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, including several large sporting venues, have been found to be the subject of fraudulent safety certificates. Several flyovers that are expected to carry hundreds of thousands of cars a day are also on the list, as are large stretches of elevated road leading to the 60,000-seat Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The Central Vigilance Commission, India's highest government watchdog, found months ago that safety certificates had been falsified to cover up shoddy work. Inferior concrete has been used instead of formulas approved for the Delhi climate. Anticorrosives used for steel reinforcements are substandard and electrical systems are potentially dangerous. The suspect work was carried out by the bodies responsible for the biggest Games projects, including the Delhi Development Authority, which built an athletes' village unfit for human habitation.

A New Delhi travel agent is offering well-heeled residents tour packages to escape the country for the duration of the Games. Only about 200,00 tickets to the Games have been sold of a targeted 1.7 million.

None of this makes India less than the vast, culturally rich and magnificent nation that it is. But it does show how foolish and improvident its government was to try showcase India with a wastefully overblown "bigger is better" event that ignores India's own abilities, appropriate technology and cultural strengths in favour of a boring and bloated 'international' model that has benefited no one except a corrupt few. In a nation where over 800 million people live on less than $2 a day, at least $4.6 billion has been essentially wasted on building and refurbishement, plus $2.7 billion more on a new airport terminal. I suppose that's only about $5 for every inhabitant of India. But I'd guess that most of them would prefer to have the $5.

As The Guardian's commentator, Simon Jenkins wrote,

the most obscene thing about last week's damnation of Delhi is the comparison with Beijing 2008. It persuades me that international sport is run by nostalgic revivalists of the mad chauvinism of 20th-century totalitarian states. An hour of glory justifies all. It was in this spirit that the International Olympic Committee encouraged the Chinese before 2008 to spend more than $US33 billion ($A34.5 billion) on flattering its members with an array of costly sepulchres, in return for China's admission to "the community of nations", to which the IOC claimed to control entry. . . . That the Commonwealth should be competing in this racket is sad.

Initial responsibility for this Delhi debacle rests on the Indian authorities, but only initially. In their desperation to rival the Olympics, the CGF rejected Canada's bid back in 2003 and went for India. It knew the risk it was taking. It knew the budget would expand to more than twice that of the previous Games in Melbourne in 2006. Anyone who knows Delhi could have told the CGF that, when it comes to corruption, Indian planners and contractors win all gold medals going. Every contract was likely to be dodgy, every corner cut, every utility inadequate. This was plain years ago. No conceivable priority requires Delhi's slum suburbs to be torn apart to provide a temporary playspace for high-living foreign athletes and their VIP retinues. The truth is that international sport has become so bloated by national pride and celebrity as to lose all sense of proportion. The Geneva centre on housing rights and evictions reckons sport to be one of the biggest displacers of humanity, perhaps second only to war. In two decades, some 2 million people have had to make way for Olympic stadiums and "villages". . . .

There is now what amounts to a cartel of architects, building contractors, security consultants and publicists practised at holding to ransom cities that find themselves hosting summit conferences and sports extravaganzas. They constitute what was recently described in the Times of India as a "lootfest". . . . Commonwealth officials must have better things to do than taxing Delhi's citizens to the tune of $US3 billion, knowing that the outcome will be their humiliation. They may take pleasure staging their parade in the land of the white elephant, but this is surely no way to honour this community of nations.

Dr Harry Hagopian is a consultant on Middle East and formerly Executive Secretary of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Committee and Executive Director of the Middle East Council of Churches. republished a Jul 2010 article of his from Mission Outlook titled "Christians of the Holy Land: An indigenous pilgrimage."

The number of Christians in the Holy Land has declined drastically. The first and principal cause of this is the Israeli occupation. Israeli colonization and the separation wall and hundred of checkpoints separate Palestinians and their institutions from one another. Encircled Palestinian communities are made into prisons of unemployment, poverty, despair and violence. "Is it still any wonder", Hagopian asks, "that Palestinian Christians are leaving in droves? " Hagopian reminds us of the Kairos Palestine document A moment of truth, December 2009, in which prominent church leaders spoke out in liberation theology terms about faith, hope and love in the heart of Palestinian suffering and Israeli practices that have weaken their communities.

Beside the occupation, two other contributors to the plight of Palestinian Christians, Hagopian says, are Christian-Muslim relations and Western Christianity. In the past, church leaders could work with the Palestinian authorities to avert trouble.

Today, those conduits of conflict resolution are far more complex and much less discernible, and the tensions between Palestinian Christians and Muslims are perceptibly more frequent.

Hagopian attributes this to "a growing political Islamisation" in much of the Palestinian territories and suspicion of the wider Christian church. "exacerbated by fundamentalist evangelical Christian constituencies in the West"

In my view, such Christians are not only limited by their faith-based periscope but are also ostracising 'other' Christians by adhering rigidly to the tenets of the Old Testament, ignoring the transformative message of the New Testament, being selective in their scriptural and prophetic quotations, and releasing Israelis from their obligations in relation to their covenant with God, let alone toward Palestinians. Surely, to be hemmed in by a faith perception that is literalist or exclusivist is not how our Lord and Saviour would have acted today.

Hagopian believes that these three challenges "are together leading some Palestinian Christians to re-calculate constantly their options."

[I]f we mean to tackle the root causes of the problems facing Christians in the Holy Land today . . . the first station should be an end to Israeli occupation and its illegal practices. . . . Only then could [Palestinians] be expected to put their own house in order — presently in shambles — and become accountable

Hagopian invites us not to be "Christians with anaemic faiths and to show instead resoluteness, fortitude and solidarity in our outreach to our neighbours during times of adversity" and to "spare no effort in reaching out with love, prayer but also action to those quarantined Living Stones (1 Peter 2:5) who face the daily vagaries of life in the midst of human pain and unholy conflicts."

Read it all.

The Rt Revd Dr Brian Castle, Bishop of Tonbridge, reminds that Anglicans continue to be victims of Zimbabwe's forgotten persecution.

As I left the Anglican church in a suburb of Harare, my Zimbabwean host said: "Don't forget us." Yet the persecution of Anglicans in the diocese of Harare, which is spreading, is being seen and remembered by few Christian communities across the world. My hosts do not worship in the fine building that was built by the Anglicans themselves—some told me that they even made the bricks with their own hands, freely and willingly giving their labour as a gift to God—but in a colourful marquee in a supporter's garden.

The marquee is so packed that some have to worship outside; the joy, energy and silences in the worship are indicators of the depth of commitment to God and each other. But not far beneath the surface is the pain of being exiles, forced from the spiritual home, built to the glory of God, that is rightly theirs.

Like all the congregations in the city and surrounding areas, they have been forced out of their place of worship by the police on the orders of Nolbert Kunonga, former bishop of Harare and avid supporter of Robert Mugabe. Kunonga was elected bishop in 2001, but his increasingly pro-Zanu-PF political stance alienated many Anglicans and he withdrew himself from the church in 2007, taking the church's assets with him, including cars, clergy houses and access to churches.

There have been long and costly legal wrangles, but the courts are reluctant to rule that these assets, illegally held by Kunonga, do not belong to him.

[Zim Daily reported on 5 May 2010 that Zimbabwe's partisan Supreme Court had declared ZANU-PF apologist Bishop Nolbert Kunonga and his board of trustees legitimate and granted them control of all properties belonging to the Anglican Diocese of Harare.]

Some court rulings, such as a decision that churches be used at different times by different groups, are flagrantly ignored by the former bishop, who has the power to summon police to support his cause.

A small number of priests followed Kunonga and have remained in their vicarages mustering only a handful of people into church on Sundays. Kunonga has described Mugabe as a prophet and, like Mugabe, wanted to cut off links with the west and change the Anglican church into a mouthpiece for Zanu-PF. He failed in this and was told by the Church of the Province of Central Africa that he was no longer a bishop, and has since taken every opportunity to identify the Anglican church with the Movement for Democratic Change. This has attracted the ire of Mugabe's Zanu-PF.

In Harare, arrest, threats and beatings can be the rewards of Christian commitment. Congregations meet in a variety of locations. As well as in tents, worship may take place under trees, in street squares and in supporters' gardens. But nowhere is safe. One priest told me how his congregation of 1,000 was given permission by the authorities to meet close to the church building but, when they did so, 21 canisters of tear gas were fired into the gathering as they were worshiping, a group of women were detained for four days and he himself was arrested.

At the recent Bernard Mizeki festival, an annual gathering in honour of Zimbabwe's first martyr, a heavily armed police force prevented the pilgrims from gaining access to the shrine, despite public assurances of safe passage from a government minister. The festival took place in a nearby showground, where the largest gathering in recent memory was witness to the fact that persecution and harassment strengthen the Christian faith.

The Anglican church's persecution at the hand of the Zimbabwean government points to disarray within as well as the inexplicable influence of a disillusioned former cleric. What is also inexplicable is the way in which the plight of Zimbabwe's courageous Anglicans has been ignored by so many. "Don't forget us," said my Zimbabwean host.