Iran and the Left

A theme has developed in the wingnut media, namely, that 'the left' has neglected Iran. This is presumed to indicate either hypocrisy and double standard ('They always criticise Israel!') or tacit sympathy for Ahmedinejad, the Ayatollah, and the mad mullahs who run the regime.

The evidence for this charge lies solely in the claim that leftists have been mute on Iran. They probably have been mute in the News Ltd media, since they don't exist at all within Murdoch empire, but a quick click on the links of my blog, and about thirty seconds googling revealed anything other than silence or complicity when it comes to the Iranian autocracy:

Lenin's Tomb is probably the foremost socialist blog in the UK, if not the world, excluding the large group blogs. Bloggers Richard Seymour and Yoshie have repeatedly tackled the issue of Iran, the elections, and the uprisings. Significantly, this extensive coverage has also encompassed critique of the deceits and conceits perpetuated regarding this crisis by the ruling elites in the Anglophone media.

Slavoj Žižek has published a widely-circulated text supporting the protestors in Iran, and calling for the downfall of the current regime. From a rather different leftist perspective, Chomsky has given this interview on the subject.

In Australia, Mark Bahnisch made some cautious remarks in support of the dissenters. Quiggin looked at things with reference to Obama. Slack @ndy has compiled pro-protestor links, anti-regime, and has criticised a presumed concordance between Ahmedinejad and Chavez. Green Left Weekly expressed solidarity with the dissenters of Iran.

In the US and beyond, there has also been plenty of critical comment on the topic of Iran's sham elections and their aftermath. Minnesota-based Trot Renegade Eye lent his voice of solidarity. Counterpunch has been providing almost daily coverage, including these two pieces. AlterNet had provided a number of pieces on this topic, particularly attacking the lack of freedom of speech. Marxism.com has published multiple pieces int he past week or so - see the link here. Zmag has sharply attacked the democratic pretensions of the regime, as has Socialist Worker.

Now for some general remarks. The above pieces are all well worth reading. Many are sceptical about the possibility of the protestors effecting lasting change. Even greater scepticism is reserved for Ahmedinjad's opponent, Moussavi, whose 'reformist' credentials are regarding by many commenters as dubious, at best. (Interestingly, Žižek is an exception here). All the same, each and every piece is concerned with the welfare of the protestors, and none supports the existing regime in any respect whatsoever.

Another point worth noting is that, roughly speaking, the further left you go, the more decisive the statements you are likely to find in relation to Iraq. Centre-leftists and social democrats such as Bahnisch and Quiggin are far more equivocal than are the socialist and anarchist commenters above.

It goes without saying that everybody of value in the left supports the opverthrow of the existing Iranian regime, and wishes the demonstrators success in their task of liberating Iran.

Finally, the attempt by rightists to pretend that the left are somehow opposed or indifferent to the uprisings in Iran is sheer chutzpah, occasioned by years of controlling both politics and the mainstream press. Not only do these clowns attempt to falsify the past, they are now, increasingly, it seems, trying to distort history as it happens. They must presume that leftist audiences are as stupid and apathetic as their own. It is an ongoing fight to ensure that these deceptions are rectified.

The 'Good' War

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian has an article on Afghanistan, with which I find myself largely agreeing:

Vietnam began with President Kennedy's 1963 intervention to keep the communist menace at bay and make the world safe for democracy. That is what George Bush and Tony Blair said of terrorism and Afghanistan. By 1965, despite Congress scepticism, American advisers, then planes, then ground forces were deployed. Allies were begged to join but few agreed.

The presence of Americans on Asian soil turned a local insurgency into a regional crusade. The hard-pressed Americans resorted to ever more extensive bombing, deep inside neighbouring countries, despite evidence it was ineffective and counterproductive.

No amount of superior firepower could quell a peasant army that came and went by night and could terrorise or merge into the population. Tales of American atrocities rolled in. The army counted success in enemy dead. A desperate attempt to "train and equip" a new Vietnamese army made it as corrupt as it was unreliable. Billions of dollars were wasted.

Every one of these steps is being re-enacted in Afghanistan. Every sane observer, even serving generals and diplomats, admits that "we are not winning" and show no sign of doing so.

History is not a forte for most in the mainstream media. As history is occurring now in Iran, for instance, the conservative MSM is attempting to spin the protests as somehow being analogous to the 'colour' revolutions of the former Soviet bloc, protests that the left don't support as the left allegedly admires the Iranian regime's 'anti-Americanism'.

It's not merely the Tory shysters who are to blame, however. Jenkins hits the nail on the head when he says that 'a heavier guilt lies with liberal apologists for this war who continue to invent excuses for its failure and offer glib preconditions for victory.'

News in Brief

As we saw in the previous post, the wages of low-paid workers have often not kept up with inflation.

Adding insult to injury is a report that found that 41& of employers surveyed had cheated workers out of their wages. Most of the workers in question were young and low-paid.

Back to the Gaza Strip - Crikey has a decent wrap for a change. Note in particular the story about the doctor.

Finally, those well-known neo-Nazis at the Jerusalem Post have suggested that the Israeli Government should make the most of recent bloodshed, and grab a '$4 billion opportunity' by seizing control of gas reserves off the coast of Gaza. The ostensible reason for the proposed gas grab is to prevent any royalties being given to Hamas, apparently becuase in 'June 2007...Hamas violently ousted Fatah from power in the Gaza Strip, claiming ownership of the gas fields off the coast and the proceeds from the sale of the gas.'!

Ousted, voted in, who can tell these days?

Confrontations

The Age, Melbourne's leading broadsheet newspaper, has an undeserved reputation for leaning to the left. In reality, the paper adopts a series of often meaningless causes in a tokenistic fashion (such as its support for 'Earth Day'). It is harder to find articles on class struggle, or imperialism, or with an anti-corporate message, or anything else that is recognisably 'left'. On the contrary - if we examine the glossier sections of the paper (particularly the lift-outs and magazines) - the paper is filled with expensive consumer items (and not merely as ads) presumably pitched to well-heeled, middle-aged bourgeois types who are happy to regard themselves as 'progressive'.

It was therefore pleasing to note an article included in yesterday's columns, re-printed from the Washington Post. Its author, Dionne, argued that we are presently at an economic juncture equivalent to the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the stagflation of the 1970s, and that we can therefore expect to see significant challenges to neoliberal economic orthodoxy. Dionne doesn't advocate anything too radical, merely additional 'regulation'.

Let us briefly consider the context of this economic moment. In Australia, inflation is higher than it has been for some years. An ailing labour movement has failed to assert itself in the face of this inflation, and some have argued that wages for workers have stalled, in spite of the economy having 'rocketed along'.

In the meantime, we are seeing an unprecedented focus on addressing issues of environmental concern. Or course, the politicians who are discussing carbon-trading schemes and the like are unwilling to consider the possibility that environmental destruction is a symptom of capitalism, and is not going to be cured by this latter economic system. The focus on the climate change pseudo-debate as the centre of environmental concerns is misleading. We do not require complex modelling to note the appalling pollution of many of the world's cities, or the fact of the Mongolian desert, the Gobi, expanding inexorably toward Beijing, or the massive deforestation that continues in developing countries. That industrial capitalism could fail to be implicated in these problems speaks volumes about the dishonesty of our politicians and media.

These problems, economic and environmental, provide a challenge and an opportunity to the left. In Australia, as elsewhere, electoral politics has almost entirely failed to provide left-leaning individuals with genuine representation. Yet almost never before have leftist politics and the critique of capitalism been more relevant or more urgent.

Naturally, a moment of crisis can also be seized upon by the lunatic elements of the right, whose constituent feels the effects of economic calamity just as keenly as anybody else. In addition, perfectly legitimate concerns about globalisation are displaced onto minority ethnic and religious groups. Hence, we see the (re-)birth of 'protectionist parties'.

Our tasks are becoming clearer - to develop a genuine worker's movement, which may mean unshackling trade unions from fat bureaucrats and other careerists, as well as the ALP machinery. Environmental problems are well-explained by a critical, Marxist viewpoint - just like the expropriation of surplus value by capitalists, environmental destruction is absolutely not the raison d'etre of capital. It is, however, its logical and inevitable consequence. This link, between the economic and the environmental, must be made explicitly and repeatedly. Finally, Green movements and parties need to appeal to an economic, class-based constituent, and not merely those who profess 'progressive' views on the environment and other matters. A Greens party whose sole focus is on elections, which cannot muster sufficient votes in working class areas to achieve anything of note, and whose modus operandi is merely to serve as an ideological chorus on the margins of parliamentary politics is a party that is stillborn before it could ever really take off.

It's all about who you know

'Who is still standing with the regime in Harare?' asked Jeremy Sear the other day. The short answer - not too many people. For years the Mugabe regime has been brutalising its citizens - this has been well-publicised in the media, across the world. As a 'failed state', we are now permitted to seriously look at a range of options, and engage in the typical hand-wringing: multilateralism versus unilateralism, sanctions, humanitarian intervention, 'surgical' military strikes, the imposition of democracy from above, and so on.

That we are even asking these questions suggests something relatively unique about the Mugabe regime. We should not merely ask who is standing with Harare, but note who isn't. For there are a great many regimes across the world who are more or less brutal to their people. There are many dictators who routinely display their contempt for democracy and its trappings, yet we do not see them on our news.

Why are we not called upon to debate possible 'interventions' for Mubarak, for instance, instead of Mugabe? What about Israel - the analogy of 'apartheid' to describe the occupation is limited - the IDF's actions with respect to Palestinians are indistinguishable from those of Mugabe towards the opposition, Israel's superior technology notwithstanding. Why are we permitted to condemn atrocities in the Sudan, but not the rampant bloodshed in the Congo, or the crushing of the democracy movement in Uzbekistan? Why is Chavez denounced as a 'thug' and 'dictator', when, in the very next country, Colombian trade unionists are murdered on a regular basis?

The only reasonable hypothesis that I can see for this phenomena, whereby the suffering of some victims is noted, and others ignored, is that our media and governments are distinguishing between victims based on the client status of their governments. Brutality in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Central Asia and elsewhere is not merely tolerated, but largely ignored by our foreign affairs politicians and our media. Meanwhile, thuggish regimes who are outside of US hegemony or control are fodder for condemnathons - this category includes Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela (!), Sudan, 'terrorist' Somalia (but not Ethiopia), and, of course, Zimbabwe.

In all of this, I am not suggesting that Mugabe and his cronies are anything other than murderous. Nonetheless, even if such a thing as 'humanitarian' sanctions or military involvement were possible, I would still think it essential to point out that most of the world's 'failed states' are propped up by the US, or some other would-be imperialist (increasingly China and Russia, occasionally still Europe). South Africa is no more morally obliged to 'pressure' Mugabe than are we Australians when it comes to 'pressuring' the US government for its contempt for human rights and human life.

Mal Brough is a Joke

And not just to me, either. According to Chris Graham in today's Crikey, Brough has turned 'developer'. Remember those Aboriginal land rights that Brough assured us needed to be abolished to somehow 'save the children'? The rationale for these had little to do with child protection. Rather, according to Brough -

The idea is to make a profit in joint-venture partnerships.
This from a man who, when in charge of Indigenous Affairs at a Federal level, underspent the budget by about one-fifth, that is, $600 million.

In spite of all of this, Graham is correct to point out that our toothless media refused to criticise Brough's 'intervention', despite the fact it rested on little more than tough-talking rhetoric, and a shrill appeal to 'think of the children'. As Graham points out:

It all makes for a great spectacle. But the problem is Aboriginal Australia doesn't need another showman, it needs solutions. Brough doesn't have any now, and he didn't have any in office.
I said much the same thing about the media at the time:

A long-standing, genuinely tragic, but opportunely 'urgent' situation has to entail that all disagreement to the Government's proposal must be shouted down. One of the most authoritarian and hastily-conceived interventions in Australian history is to be imposed upon our most vulnerable people, without a whimper.

Noel Pearson was the most prominent 'bipartisan' (snigger) supporter of the NT intervention. He too has revealed himself completely politically inept, if not equally useless as a 'community leader'. In the May edition of The Monthly, Pearson attributes Obama's popularity in the US to little more than 'white guilt', a familiar trope with which he tried to chastise the left in Australia. Not only is this offensively patronising, it ignores that fact that the majority of whites in Australia undoubtedly feel no such 'guilt'. Australia's arid centre is far from the urban sprawl of the coasts, and on the basis of all available evidence, few citizens in the latter region know of care of the plight of desert-dwelling Aboriginals. Some know, however, that it is not Aboriginals who are the main source of child protection concerns (though they are over-represented), or the much-vilified Muslims or Sudanese. Rather, most child abuse in Australia, at least as far as official statistics report, relates to dirt-poor children of Anglo-Australian origins.

And what did Aboriginals think of the intervention? If the 2007 Federal election is any guide, they didn't think much. Several remote areas recorded 2PP results in favour of the ALP that were well into the 90% range.

Hopefully we can finally put to rest the destructive myth that these clowns, architects of an intervention in which genuinely informed opinion was eschewed in favour of media sensationalism, ever had anything other than their own wheelbarrows at heart.

KPI's Missed

Does anybody still remember Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 2006? Ostensibly an invasion to liberate soldiers being held prisoner, the war appeared to have been planned for some time prior to this. In addition, despite worldwide condemnation of the inevitable human rights abuses that would follow an Israeli invasion, the US ensured that any 'peace talks' were delayed long enough for large parts of Lebanon to be destroyed, thus allowing Israel's hawks to meet their KPI's.

When all of this was reported upon by the Western press and blogosphere, we were told that such views were based on propaganda, lies, or worse, anti-Semitism.

I was interested, then, to read the following report recently:

A key report into Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon has listed a series of major failings by the Jewish state but said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acted in good faith.

"Overall, we regard the second Lebanon war as a serious missed opportunity," the head of a government-appointed commission into the conflict, Eliyahu Winograd, said according to an official English translation of his remarks. (source)

A missed opportunity? One opportunity that wasn't missed was the opportunity to target Lebanon's civilian population with cluster bombs (pictured above), for what is sometimes called 'collective punishment'.

"The army should re-examine the conditions for the use of cluster bombs... especially given the need to reduce losses among the civilian population after a complete halt to fighting," the Winograd Commission said.

"The use of these bombs should be restricted to military objectives that justify their use," it said in the 630-page report which was initially released on Wednesday.

Cluster munitions spread bomblets over a wide area from a single device. The bomblets often do not explode on impact, but can do so later at the slightest touch, making them as deadly as anti-personnel landmines.

At least 38 people have been killed and 217 wounded by cluster bombs in the region since the end of the conflict, according to the United Nations.

During the war which raged from July 12 until August 14, 2006, Hezbollah militants whose capture of two Israeli soldiers sparked the war fired more than 4,000 rockets at northern Israel. (source)

Since cluster bombs function more as less as mine-spreading devices, they are the gift that keeps on giving. I won't link to pictures of the sorts of damage these devices do, but images are readily available on Google.

Of course, Hezbollah did fire 4,000 rockets into Northern Israel, according to the above report. I suppose my critics would suggest that would justify some form of measured retaliation, self-defense and all:

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. (source)

This comes from the mainstream Israeli press, I might add, not the Green Left Weekly. A ratio of four thousand bombs to 1.2 million seems reasonable. Can't imagine why anybody might have wished to criticise Israeli foreign policy. A missed opportunity, indeed.

Fact and Fiction in Indonesia

Shameless revisionism and dead, politically rightist, economically neo-liberal dictators seem to go hand in hand.

When Pinochet met his maker a year ago, the likes of Andrew Bolt (in Australia) or the Wall Street Journal (in the US) were falling over themselves to assure readers of Chile's economic prosperity, attributed to Pincohet's bloody rule. The deaths, torture, exile and disappearances of thousands were ignored as the apologists clamoured to give us a 'balanced' account of the tyrant's legacy.

It is difficult to imagine any mainstream media outlet eulogising a Castro or Khomeini in similar terms, despite comparable 'achievements', acquired with considerably less slaughter.

The MSM are not the only culprits when it comes to craven deference to elite opinion. Since at least Whitlam, it is arguably on foreign policy that the ALP is at its most repugnant, and this is particularly true in relation to Indonesia.

In light of the silence across one half of the political blogosphere, let us peruse a few examples:

Australia's Attorney-General Robert McClelland and former prime minister Paul Keating have made a flying visit to Indonesia to pay their respects at the funeral of former Indonesian dictator Suharto...The pair attended the funeral with Australia's Ambassador to Indonesia Bill Farmer.
"It respects the office that he held and effectively confirms the Rudd government commitment to an ongoing, strong and supportive relationship with Indonesia."
"We recognise also his achievements ... he brought Indonesia from a country that was subsistence to one with a developing economy...and a nation of significance in the world."
He said the government also recognised the "issues of controversy" with Suharto's rule. (source)

'Issues of controversy'? So delicately put!

Similar delicacy could be found in Wolfowitz, former US ambassador to Suharto:

"This ambassador didn't speak out about human rights here. He was perceived by the public as being close to the Suharto government," said Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara, who headed Indonesia's legal aid foundation and now chairs the National Human Rights Commission.
Nusantara said Wolfowitz appeared to ignore abuses committed by Indonesian security forces, which were fighting separatist insurgencies in the provinces of Aceh and Papua. Nor did he raise public concerns about East Timor, which had been invaded by the Indonesian military a decade earlier. Wolfowitz also remained silent about the mounting corruption within Suharto's family and inner circle, Nusantara asserted. (source)

Downer, Australia's former foreign affairs minister, viewed Suharto in similar terms to Keating and Rudd:
"He certainly took a rather regal and, if you like, patronising view of Australia but on the other hand he did understand it was important to have a constructive relationship with Australia," Mr Downer told ABC Radio.
"He wasn't a bad thing for Australia in a lot of ways." (source)

The WSJ, as might be expected, did not hold back in its praise for the newly departed:
Suharto was guilty of hubris when he styled himself Bapak Pembangunan Indonesia, or father of Indonesia's development, and even had this title printed along with his portrait on the 50,000 rupiah note. But that is a pretty accurate summary of his legacy. Like Deng Xiaoping, he rescued his country from totalitarianism and poverty, and put it on the path to prosperity and a large measure of personal freedoms. For all his flaws, Suharto deserves to be remembered as one of Asia's greatest leaders. (source)

One of Asia's greatest leaders?

Hiding out in the dense, humid jungle, Markus Talam watched Indonesian soldiers herd manacled prisoners from trucks, line them up and mow them down with round after round of automatic weapons fire.
"They gunned them down and dumped their bodies in a mass grave dug by other prisoners. I remember the sound of the guns clearly: tat-tat, tat-tat, tat-tat ... over and over again," said Talam, 68, who was later jailed for 10 years after being named a leftist sympathizer.
Estimates for the number killed during his bloody rise to power — from 1965 to 1968 — range from a government figure of 78,000 to 1 million cited by U.S. historians Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, who have published books on Indonesia's history. It was the worst mass slaughter in Southeast Asia's modern history after the Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.
The CIA provided lists of thousands of leftists, including trade union members, intellectuals and schoolteachers, many of whom were executed or sent to remote prisons. (source)

Score one for the CIA in another Cold War triumph.

Australia's ALP also had no problems in turning a blind eye to the regime's 'issues of controversy':

A political tempest...erupted in Australia over leaked official documents showing that the leaders of the former Labor government covered up casualty figures from the 1991 massacre carried out by Indonesian troops in the East Timorese capital of Dili.
The facts are that more than 200 people, mostly pro-independence demonstrators, were slaughtered in Dili in November 1991. The then Labor government supported claims by an inquiry set up by the Suharto regime that only about 50 were killed and that the deaths were the responsibility of a few individual officers and soldiers.
The truth is that the Labor leaders had compelling reasons of both "national interest" and "party political interest" for whitewashing the Dili massacre, and every other bloody crime carried out by the Suharto regime. For "national interest" read the profit interests of Australian big business.
In the case of East Timor, the Labor leaders backed the regime's repressive grip over the former Portuguese colony in order to provide BHP and other oil companies with guaranteed access to the immense resources of the Timor Gap--estimated to hold up to 1 billion barrels of crude oil. Just two years before the Dili massacre, Evans and his Indonesian counterpart, Ali Alatas, signed the Timor Gap Treaty in a champagne drinking ceremony as they flew over the Timor Sea, making Australia the only country in the world to legally recognise the Indonesian occupation of East Timor. (source)

Naomi Klein, in her latest outing, also spent some time discussing Suharto's Indonesia, and its wonderful economic prosperity:

Since the Second World War, the country [Indonesia] had been led by President Sukarno, the Hugo Chavez of his day (though minus Chavez's appetite for elections). Sukarno enraged the rich countries by protecting Indonesia's economy, redistributing wealth, and throwing out the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank, which he accused of being facades for the interests of Western multinationals. While Sukarno was a nationalist, not a Communist, he worked closely with the Communist Party, which had 3 million active members. The U.S. and British governments were determined to end Sukarno's rule, and declassified documents show that the CIA had received high-level directions to "liquidate President Sukarno, depending upon the situation and available opportunities."
After several false starts, the opportunity came in October 1965, when General Suharto, backed by the CIA, began the process of seizing power and eradicating the left. The CIA had been quietly compiling a list of the country's leading leftists, a document that fell into Suharto's hands, while the Pentagon helped out by supplying extra weapons and field radios so Indonesian forces could communicate in the remotest parts of the archipelago. Suharto then sent out his soldiers to hunt down the four to five thousand leftists on his "shooting lists," as the CIA referred to them; the U.S. embassy received regular reports on t heir progress. As the information came in, the CIA crossed names off their lists until they were satisfied that the Indonesia left had been annihilated. One of the people involved in the operation was Robert J. Martens, who worked for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. "It really was a big help to the army," he told the journalist Kathy Kadane twenty-five years later. "They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad [my emphasis]. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment." (source)

Indeed, Indonesia's leftists, secular democrats and trade unionists were all 'struck hard', leaving the Islamists, organising through one of the few non-banned institutions (the mosque), to resist. It is an inconvenient truth for the ruling elites that Islamic extremism emerges from the same globalised milieu as 'free trade' corporate rule.

So vale, Suharto. Te futueo et caballum tuum.

The Poverty of (rightist) Philosophy

One reason for my lack of recent blogging has simply been the paucity of decent counter-perspectives among the rightist media and blogosphere.

Increasingly, they're looking like a bunch of whackjobs and cranks.



Take this scholar's book, about 'Liberal fascism', invoking some of the more idiotic Godwin's violations around, by linking Hitler with the likes of Dewey and Hillary Clinton. According to the author:



The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.



No, this isn't a satire of the Fox News network.



What do we have elsewhere, but the usual retarded suspects making yet more 'scientific' arguments about the supposed intellectual inferiority of blacks. As the good folk of Grodscorp ably demonstrate, such cretinism is best met with mockery, and does not deserve anything so dignified as 'debate'.



Over in padded-cell territory, the um, 'Conservative Christians' are wetting their pants in anticipation of the Rapture, which naturally, involves getting Israel to slaughter as many of the towel-heads as is possible:



I would like to affirm that, as a Christian, I believe strongly and passionately in the destiny of the people of Israel and that they are truly a light on a hill that mustn’t be hidden.



A white phosphorous light, distributed by way of a million or so cluster bombs, methinks. And in the same post, 'IT WOULD BE DEADLY DUMB TO GIVE THEM [the Palestinians] A STATE'. My Christian teachers always told me the Church was meant to have a social justice component, but perhaps I learnt about Christianity at the wrong place. Like, not at the local Hillsong chapter in Alabama.



These are only some examples. Smears, obfuscations and diversions are routinely paraded as 'argument' by the rightists. Somebody like Keynes is conflated with Marx, and virtually all academic endeavour of the past hundred years is portrayed as a massive, leftist conspiracy.



The closest thing the rightards have to an 'intellectual', of course, is the execrable Ayn Rand. As far as I can see, Rand's readings of the great philosophers are more inept than the average high school kid's, and her 'philosophy' (ignored by philosophers regardless of political persuasion) is little more than a Reader's Digest style Nietzsche for retards. Like them or not, thinkers such as Trotsky would smash Rand in any debate, even if the guy had downed a bottle of Russia's cheapest vodka.



Lest we forget, recent Conservative leaders (Howard and Bush) have been instinctively and crudely anti-intellectual, both in their public personas, and their policies. For all of Rudd's faults, he at least knows something about something (i.e. can speak a bit of Mandarin; attempts, in writing, to engage with obscure German theologians).



Little wonder, when these are the Tory's mouthpieces, that these same dunces accuse 'teh left' of an enormous conspiracy, and dismiss opponents as being latte-sipping elites. This is precisely the 'politics of envy' that rightists loudly decry, whilst generally being too stupid to appreciate their own subordination to the same dynamic.



Ironically, the 'natural' constituent of anything resembling a 'left' is not the intellectual class, but rather, a class that ca be defined in economic, rather than educational terms. This is the class who put the Labor Government into power in Australia at the 2007 election. Many of them live in the poorer suburbs of Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart and Queensland, and they rejected rightist assaults on their class (qua economic entity) decisively and en masse.



With Conservatives this stupid around the traps, it's hard to imagine that many young people, possessed of intellectual curiosity, and interested in political and social issues, will ever come to designate themselves as 'Conservatives'. Even now, many of the semi-retarded hacks avoid the C-word, preferring to call themselves libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, Whigs, etc.



Revolution in Australia is not precisely around the corner but, nonetheless, these are exciting times.

Hang the Intellectuals

The weekend rag had an opinion piece by Chris Middendorp, asking why the works of Australia's greatest novelist, Patrick White, were more or less ignored by mainstream Australia. Middendorp attributes this phenomenon to 'cultural cringe'.

Clearly, Australians have much to cringe about, but most of our cringeworthy objects these days are not cultural, but political. We might ask some other questions about why a writer such as White is ignored, and ignored precisely by our good nationalists in the media.

To be sure, White is a 'difficult' writer, but no more so than any number of other modernists. We should find it striking that this era of cultural whitewashing, where Australia's racism is routinely re-branded as patriotism (or, in the cases of racism directed at Aborigines, as a 'goodwill' intervention), is precisely the era where Australians of international significance among the intelligentsia are either ignored (Patrick White), maligned (Germaine Greer) or co-opted (I'll refrain from citing examples for this last category).

It is no coincidence, of course, that during the past 10 years of Howard's rule, and subsequent cultural warfare, intellectuals have been a source of considerable angst to conservatives. It is also no coincidence that Patrick White, an avowed Whitlamite, homosexual, and Republican, is one such intellectual. As a Nobel Laureate, he is too well-regarded to be susceptible to an Andrew Bolt or Christopher Pearson smear-piece (though White's biographer is not so fortunate). Nonetheless, White is simply sidestepped, while the NewsCorp hacks and Liberal politicians (such as George Brandis, last week) aim at smaller targets.

It should be clear by now that, after years of 'intellectual' or 'elite' being used as terms of abuse, that conservative politicians, and a pliant media, have attempted, as much as possible, to push an anti-intellectual, anti-cultural agenda, except where the latter targets are sufficiently fairy floss-like to be considered no threat to the 'evil, Howard-hating elites' narrative.

In this vein, News Ltd. Political Hack-in-Chief Paul Kelly appeared on last Friday's Lateline, in an attempt to debate LaTrobe University historian Robert Manne. The debate topic revolved around the culture wars, and a recent essay by Kelly purporting to demonstrate that Australia has cultivated a clique of 'public intellectuals' concerned solely with Howard-hating polemic, who ignore the Liberal Governments policy 'success'.

Never mind that this 'success' is far from agreed-upon. Sure, the economy has not collapsed, and has been very generous (for some Australians only - but this topic can wait for another post). On every other front, however, there has been policy failure.

Good quality, affordable healthcare and education has become more difficult to obtain. Workers' long-held rights have been abolished. The sentiments of race-rioters are more or less echoed, repeatedly, by our Governing politicians.

Robert Manne, a long-time conservative who remains conservative (though not slavishly in awe of the Howard Government) made these points to Kelly, and noted that he, Raymond Gaita, David Marr, and Julian Burnside are all 'elites' who are systematically demonised by the News Ltd crew. Manne took Kelly to task successfully:

I don't dispute there is a large group of us who think the Howard
Government has on balance done a lot of harm to Australia in the area of
culture, not the economy, but there are only three people mentioned. I want to
say just one thing about that.

The three people mentioned are very distinguished
people, not second rate in any way. Paul might disagree with them, might think
they are too moralistic about Howard and so on. One has written a superb
biography of Patrick White, David Marr. The other, Raymond Gaita, is probably
the best known philosopher of Australia except for Peter Singer, maybe. And
Julian Burnside is not a public intellectual so much as a humane and extremely
fine barrister who's had major success.

I think the category - the three people
included, if he thinks they're second rate, he should look to the cast of
journalists in Australia. I think there is a real argument and I think it's a
left-right argument, as you said. And I think it's about those intellectuals
like myself and like Ray Gaita and like David Marr and many others like Julian,
who think the Howard Government in many ways has done great damage to this
country and the question of how angry we should be or what the right moral
temper is for all of that is an important and right issue. If I could start by
something. It we look at this week, we've had, for example, a defamatory attack
on a group of academics who happen to disagree with what the Government would
like us to believe on WorkChoices. I don't know what Paul thinks about this, but
we've had an attack on the entire character of a continent - Africans. I feel
really upset about it and I don't think sort of worldly calm, as Paul seems to
think, is the right response to an attack on an entire group of people. I think
it is racism, I have to say.

And therein is revealed the intellectual bankruptcy of present-day conservatism. Preoccupied with idiotic left-right cultural flaming, they cannot assert any coherent, positive position, or even identify who 'the left' actually are. For instance, as Manne correctly noted, Kelly's targets are not rabid socialists.

For instance, Gaita is a signed-up member of the execrable Euston crowd. Burnside is concerned primarily with human rights and due legal process, and is not a polemicist. Marr is a polemicist, but of a self-described 'soft-left' variety. Whilst his criticisms of the Howard Government are frequent, and articulate, they are hardly militant.

The stupidity continued today in the Government Gazette when the far-right News Ltd hack, and board member of 'our' ABC, Imre Salusinszky, opined that the 'intellectuals have gone too far'.

Last week, the Government's 'avuncular' Minister for Serfdom, Joe Hockey, attacked an academic report that demonstrated that the Government's Workchoices legislation left workers worse off. Always more 'idiot' than 'savant', Salusinszky continued Hockey's anti-intellectual smearing by way of Murdoch's megaphone:

A quick scan, using the internet, of research centres at universities
reveals that many are structured around the "softie Left" world view that former
Media Watch host David Marr memorably nominated as the primary qualification for
entry into Australian journalism.

One can accept the above statement as true, provided one excludes the actual content of 90% of what passes for Australian 'journalism'. Only one newspaper in the country is even vaguely to the 'left', and there is no television program that could be considered particularly progressive.

Salusinszky targets that author of the industrial relations study in particular, with this obtuse broadside:

And perhaps there is no reason to be concerned that, in the era during
which the mainstream political class has come to accept the logic of the market,
an academic paid to conduct research into the Australian labour market still
describes himself as a socialist.

This statement demonstrates Salusinszky's remove from the 'mainstream', as well as his sycophantic sloganeering. Who in 'mainstream' Australia has come to accept 'the logic' of the market, other than the HR Nicholls society and a few fundamentalists? Not the many Australians who opposed the sale of Telstra, and who oppose the increasing privatisation of every aspect of society. Not the majority of Australians who despise the Government's supposed 'deregulation' of industrial relations laws. Not the farmers, who are slated to receive significant subsidies or generous retirement handouts from the Government, in order to shore up votes in rural electorates. Imre's gripe, that a labour-market researcher describes himself as 'socialist', is likewise misguided. The Australian Labor Party still describes itself as 'socialist' (with the necessary qualifiers), and remains Australia's oldest, and single-most popular party.

Salusinzsky's most comical moment, however, comes at the end of his piece, where he cites is colleague and fellow-culture warrior, Paul Kelly:

"A healthy democracy will see a healthy gulf between its politicians and
its intellectuals. But this gulf in Australia is a chasm that demands serious
attention."

That the GG could even try to publish such material, without irony, and not intended as satire, suggests that some grave intellectual deficiencies exist either among Murdoch's staff, or his readers. That, or we need to hang a few 'intellectuals'.

Propaganda and Democracy

In a recent interview, Chomsky provided some remarks on the media, a favourite theme of his for some years now. He spoke of some other things, too, but I'll restrict this post to a brief discussion on propaganda.


To what extent, if at all, can the mainstream media's (MSM) output be considered 'propaganda'? Particularly in a democracy, with a supposedly 'free' press?


As Chomsky notes, countries such as America, or Australia, are not totalitarian states. Journalists are formally permitted to write as they please. Although this writing must account for commercial pressures, libel laws, and now, in Australia, sedition laws, nobody is compelled, with a gun at their head, so to speak, to write any particular thing.



In spite of this apparent 'freedom', however, we have some recent counter-examples. One that comes to mind has been the recent 'spin' placed on polls for Australia's 2007 election. The Liberal Party, liberal in name only, has been in power for 11 years. This year, the unthinkable has happened, and we have seen about 6 months worth of consistently strong poll results for the opposition, Labor.



In the face of these poor poll results, The Australian newspaper, Murdoch's mouthpiece, has been using its political 'analysis' to paint the polls in a favourable light for the Liberal Party. As has been pointed out on the Australian blogosphere, this has led to political chief of the newspaper, Dennis Shanahan, churning out a series of quite ridiculous statements, earning him comparisons with this guy:

This drew the ire of The Australian, who subsequently wrote this (fairly innocuous, as it turns out) blogger a letter, threatening to attack him in the newspaper's editorial. This duly occurred the following day, but was publicised widely on the Australian political blogosphere. In the end, any 'propaganda' value that Shanahan at which Shanahan may have been aiming was lost. He and his newspaper were reduced to a laughing stock among the politerati.


The strategy of personal attack, particularly by Australia's Murdoch media (and doubtless elsewhere), is not without precedent. In 2003, Andrew Wilkie, of an the Office of National Assessments (ONA, an Australian intelligence agency), resigned in protest at the Government's fabricated claims that Iraq had WMD's. This attracted considerable publicity at the time, for, even with a credulous press eagerly reporting the Government's claims, the Iraq War was never popular.

Enter Andrew Bolt, columnist for Melbourne's Herald Sun, and leading attack dog of the Murdoch press. Bolt appears to enjoy a 'special relationship' with Liberal Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who has given Bolt access to DFAT meetings, and has twice flown Bolt to Iraq, so that he may return to Australia and share as 'opinion' the official Government line.

In response, Downer and DFAT leaked to Bolt a 'confidential' report about Wilkie, so that Bolt could make 'misleading use of its contents to ridicule his analytical credentials was part of a concerted campaign to neutralise his criticisms of the government over the invasion of Iraq'. Nobody was ever charged for this apparent breach of State secrecy, though two of Bolt's stablemates, whose leaked material was not pro-Government, were prosecuted. Bolt was subject to a degree of condemnation, and cynicism over the Iraq was sufficient to allow us to suggest that this particular piece of propaganda was thwarted.


A third example comes to mind, also concerning reporting of the Iraq War. We know that it is to the benefit of the Governments of Australia and the US to portray this unpopular war as a war on 'terror', and, to that end, demonise the recipients of the Coalition's 'liberation'. Furthermore, the ongoing occupation is justified in public discourse with the notion that, if Coalition forces were to leave, 'Al Qaeda' would take over. A piece at Salon put paid to this fiction:

It's a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq
refers to the combatants there as "al-Qaida" fighters. When did that happen?
Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were "insurgents" or they were
referred to as "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly,
without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US
military
command is referring to these combatants as "al-Qaida".
Welcome
to the
latest in Iraq propaganda. That the Bush administration, and
specifically its
military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al
Qaeda" to designate
"anyone and everyone we fight against or kill in Iraq"
is obvious. All of a
sudden, every time one of the top military commanders
describes our latest
operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy
is referred to, almost
exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

This propaganda has been more or less successful, as the equation 'Insurgency=Al Qaeda' appears to be taken seriously, except in the margins of public discourse, and policy debate.


Finally, we have numerous examples of the phenomenon of 'astroturfing', whereby select individuals are used to feign grassroots support for something. This reportedly occurs on talkback radio, with some callers delivering what sounds very much like a scripted response to a particular topic. A more brazen example can be found in the US, when a number of identical letters, purporting to be from US soldiers in Iraq, and highly supportive of the ongoing occupation, were sent to various newspapers.


We have here a number of examples of Governments influencing and manipulating, either directly or indirectly, media coverage of political events. In some cases, this manipulation has reached extraordinary levels of sophistication and planning, and has come at a cost to those opposing it.


With this in mind, let us return to Chomsky's discussion of media influence:

It's a complex subject, but the little in-depth research carried out in this
field suggests that, in fact, the media exert greater influence over the
most
highly educated fraction of the population. Mass public opinion seems
less
influenced by the line adopted by the media.

Take the
eventuality
of a war against Iran. Three-quarters of Americans think the
United States
should stop its military threats and concentrate on reaching
agreement by
diplomatic means. Surveys carried out by western pollsters
suggest that public
opinion in Iran and the US is also moving closer on some
aspects of the nuclear
issue. The vast majority of the population of both
countries think that the area
from Israel to Iran should be completely clear
of nuclear weapons, including
those held by US forces operating in the
region. But you would have to search
long and hard to find this kind of
information in the media.

The
main political parties in either
country do not defend this view either. If Iran
and the US were true
democracies, in which the majority really decided public
policy, they would
undoubtedly have already solved the current nuclear
disagreement. And there
are other similar instances. Look at the US federal
budget. Most Americans
want less military spending and more welfare expenditure,
credits for the
United Nations, and economic and international humanitarian aid.
They also
want to cancel the tax reductions decided by President George Bush for
the
benefit of the biggest taxpayers.

On all these topics, White
House
policy is completely at odds with what public opinion wants. But the media
rarely publish the polls that highlight this persistent public opposition.
Not
only are citizens excluded from political power, they are also kept in a
state
of ignorance as to the true state of public opinion. There is growing
international concern about the massive US double deficit affecting trade
and
the budget. But both are closely linked to a third deficit, the
democratic
deficit that is constantly growing, not only in the US but also
all over the western
world.

It is one of the big differences between
the propaganda system of a totalitarian state and the way democratic societies
go about things. Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state
decides the official line and everyone must then comply. Democratic societies
operate differently. The line is never presented as such, merely implied. This
involves brainwashing people who are still at liberty. Even the passionate
debates in the main media stay within the bounds of commonly accepted, implicit
rules, which sideline a large number of contrary views.

The 'democratic' means of spreading propaganda tends, by its nature, to be more sophisticated than that found in totalitarian regimes. In one of Žižek's books, he cites an example of propaganda from Stalinist Russia. The State has provided a number of citizens with 'official' encyclopaedias, containing the official history of the Revolution, its heroes, enemies, and so on. During the period of the show trials, one former hero has been denounced as a traitor, and eventually executed. This leaves the authorities with a public relations problems, as this former hero has a glowing reference contained in his encyclopaedia entry. The solution? The authorities send out an alternative page, re-writing the history of this revolutionary-turned-villain, and ask those who own the encyclopaedia to replace the old page with this re-written history. In short, this clumsy attempt at propaganda does not even bother to hide the fact that its contents are bullshit. It even presumes that individuals will accept the bullshit, but go along anyway. In a democracy, nobody is ever told so overtly that what their Government is preaching is bullshit.

It is essential that the propaganda be sufficiently convincing, that it be assimilated to a broader discourse of less controversial assumptions. Yet, as Chomsky points out, even this propaganda is failing. Others, such as those at Larvatus, have pointed to the growing disconnect between the commentariat, and the public to whom the attempt to peddle their shoddy wares.


Clearly, as we have seen above, part of the role of the MSM is propagandist. Paradoxically, however, the propaganda does not entirely succeed. This raises the question of whether 'true' democracy may emerge through the cracks of a decaying media.

As we have seen the tactics of newspapers such as The Australian (known unaffectionately as The Government Gazette), have at times been so crude as to almost resemble the methods adopted by totalitarian states. Yet even the more subtle and sophisticated methods have also been failing. Polls are still showing strong support for the Labor Party, in spite of the overwhelming opposition to Labor by the Murdoch media (though, perhaps sniffing Liberal blood, this support has waned of late).

I contend that much of the utter irrelevance of the MSM is, far from merely being a manipulative influence, is actually an accurate reflection of our democracy at this time. The press mostly contains editorial lines that are completely removed from the concerns of ordinary people; however, the political process itself is largely conducted along similar lines.

Take, for example, the incessant debates about 'economic growth', a topic about which most Australians could not give a flying, and over which even fewer have any real input.

Or look at the faux 'debate' over 'union bosses'. The Liberal Party, and the media, depict a situation whereby, should Labor win power later this year, Australia will rapidly deteriorate into something resembling Zimbabwe. The 'union bosses' themselves are portrayed as working-class, thuggish individuals, and both parties, as well as the media, take this 'debate' seriously. This is in spite of the fact that most Australians would never have had any negative experience in relation to a so-called 'union boss', or the fact that Australia has not seen any major industrial action for some years, despite the Labor Party controlling every State and Territory. In this instance, as in many others, the media is only (more or less) accurately depicting the absurd preoccupations of our Parliament, with its stage managed press conferences, game-playing, and 'wedges', none of which have anything to do with the experiences of Australian people.

So, contemptible and propagandist as our media may be, it is just the symptom of the illness, not its cause. The media may be manipulative and deceitful; it may harp on about faux 'issues' that are worlds away from ordinary people's concerns; it may be a mouthpiece for an elite political and corporate class: but it is not only these things. It is also the mirror of our 'democracy'. Or, to put it slightly differently, our media is Dorian Gray, our democracy, his portrait.
After all, democracy is a Greek word (δημοκρατία), meaning 'the rule of the people'. When the people have no control of their politicians' agendas, over the unpopular wars in which their country is involved, over the economic, industrial, and social service policies that are presented to Parliament, when their political cynicism and disengagement are not merely provoked, but actively encouraged, it is only fitting that the media should capture this profound disconnect between 'the people', and 'the rule'.

This is what is meant as a 'free press'. Its influence is not as great as its proprietors would like. This is heartening - only a truly sinister and comprehensive propaganda machine could depict the gulf between people and politics, at the same time as persuading 'the people' that this gulf does not exist. As I said earlier, there a cracks in the facade - we shall see if the light gets in.

If the jackboot had been on the Other foot...

I'm sure the self-appointed moral guardians will be loudly trumpeting the importance of these stories, passing us by in news this week:

A soldier convicted of rape and murder in an attack on an Iraqi teenager
and her family was sentenced to 110 years in prison, with the possibility of
parole after 10 years.

During their courts-martial, [accused soldiers] Barker and Cortez testified they
took turns raping the girl while Green shot and killed her mother, father and
younger sister. Green shot the girl in the head after raping her, they
said.
The girl's body was set on fire with kerosene to destroy the evidence,
according to previous testimony. (IHT)

More collateral damage caused by occupation? 10 years for gang-rape and mass-murder?

Speaking of terror:

A former Australian Army sergeant has admitted to stockpiling a
$700,000 arsenal of stolen weapons and explosives including machine-guns and
assault rifles.
Read, who was head of the Puckapunyal army base's school of artillery, kept
the stolen weapons loaded and combat-ready. He said he stockpiled the weapons
because he was a patriot and wanted to be ready to defend Australia if there was
an attack.
But police said newspaper clippings on the Hoddle Street
shootings, the Port Arthur massacre and US sniper attacks found on Read's
properties suggested a different motive. (SMH)

Nothing to see here. Please move along.

My crackpot theories are better than your crackpot theories...

Pathetic Terrorgraph hack, anti-Muslim blogger, and botched abortion of a 'journalist', Tim Blair, has often justified his extremist views under the aegis of 'freedom of speech'.

For instance, the controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammad that sparked riots in Muslim countries, were published on Blair's site. Blair fixated on the issue for months, and newspapers that refused to publish the cartoons were treated with scorn. As the ABC's Media Watch pointed out not long ago, Blair's anti-Islamic posts are well-received by his clique of psychopath sycophants, who typically respond to the topic of 'Islamofascism' by agitating for anti-Muslim pogroms. Being fairly thick-headed characters, one suspects the irony is lost on them. One can only suppose that these champions of freedom would also have cheered the anti-Semitic cartoons of 1930's Germany and Austria.

In addition, as one would expect from a two-bit hack known mainly for spouting right-wing catchphrases, Blair has been a vocal critic of climate change activists, and has supported the ABC's screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle (aired last night). All in the name of 'free speech', and 'fair and balanced' reporting, you see.

It is rather amusing then, that this courageous advocate for 'free speech' (and moreover, of the 'free' market) should criticise the 'revisionist' pay TV's History Channel for airing a conspiracy-laden documentary entitled Loose Change. This latter 'documentary' purports to prove that 9/11 was an 'inside job' by the US Government. In his characteristic style, our champion of free speech and free markets doesn't actually argue against either the documentary, or the History Channel, preferring instead to merely 'dog whistle', and let his degenerate audience do the barking.

I suspect many readers will be familiar with the conspiracy theories surrounding the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I see no reason to consider them true, and think they ought to be consigned to the category of 'pseudo-science', along with the Swindle. There may well be holes in the 'official' narrative of 9/11 (to say nothing of suppressed elements), but there are 'holes' in virtually all of the US Government's narratives, whether these relate to Iraq or Afghanistan, to false reports of Saddam's WMD's, or to refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol. To be sure, the Bush Administration has used the terrorist attacks as a pretext for launching to ongoing wars. Nonetheless, we know from America's modern history that its Governments do not need to go to the lengths of 9/11 to fabricate a pretext for a 'pre-emptive strike'.

How comical then, that this clown, who supports the publication of inflammatory anti-Muslim material, and who supports a crackpot 'documentary' backed by frothing-at-the-mouth LaRouchites being screened as propaganda on 'our' ABC, all in the name of 'free speech', is opposed to a 'free market' pay TV station airing a similarly loopy film that opposes his views.

It will come as a surprise to nobody, but Tim Bleh can now confidently add the title of 'hypocrite' to his illustrious resume.

The Other Terror

With all this talk about swarthy, bearded doctors wanting to kill us all, one might be mistaken for thinking that nationalist fascist imbecility wasn't on the rise. Not so, it seems.

It is reasonably well-known that in Russia, and the former USSR states, anti-ethnic, anti-gay, and anti-everything nationalists have been on the rise. So too, in the US, proto-fascists and 'militias' still exist, though they are purportedly 'in a down cycle'. A recent article, written by a Hungarian member of Parliament, (ignored by our patriotic crusaders against terror around the world), pointed to the rise of ugly right-wing nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.

It is still unseemly to mention such things. Though fascist movements wreaked more death and destruction within a short time-frame than any other ideology, one is apparently a 'moral relativist' to attribute evil to any political movement other than the left or radical Islam. According to our contemporary post-modern, right-wing ethicists, fascism is not nearly the same danger as Robert Manne, or the menacing hijab.

Nonetheless, the excellent Lenin's Tomb pointed me to this article about some would-be bombers recently, forgotten amidst the kerfuffle of the doctors-cum-terrorists:

Robert Cottage, 49, a member of the British National Party, is standing
trial in Manchester for amassing material for chemical bombs – and instructions
for making them -- in his home. The prosecution said Cottage was acting on the
instructions of a fellow BNP cadre, David Jackson, a respectable 62-year-old
dentist from Lancashire. Cottage's 29-year-old wife testified against him,
having originally reported his alleged plans to test chemical bombs to a social
worker – the tip that led to the men's arrest.

The BNP are the UK equivalent to fascism, and they believe that native Britons are being oppressed by a 'quasi-Marxist multi-racial experiment'. The article discusses the plans of the two co-conspirators:

The two allegedly planned the chemical bomb attacks as part of a "war between
the Asian culture and the White culture," Mrs. Cottage testified. In the UK,
"Asian" is used to denote those of Pakistani origin – overwhelmingly Muslim –
and by extension most other Muslims of less-than-alabaster hue.

The BNP members apparently believed that their party was but 'one crisis away from power', and were hoping to foment a race war. Not merely isolated terrorists aiming at a bit of random carnage, theirs is a plot to gain power in Britain through legitimate processes in addition to violence. One might wonder why the Australian or US media did not remark upon such a thing, in this era of terror:

Now here we have a duly accredited political party -- its members sitting
in local governments, its leader a Holocaust denier far more vehement and total
than, say, the president of Iran -- with its activists on trial for allegedly
conspiring to use chemical bombs as part of a "culture war" to plunge society
into crisis and take power. As such plots go, this one is far more credible than
the "liquid explosive" scare last year that threw the entire global air travel
system into panic and disarray. You'd think it might rate at least a mention
somewhere in the terror-haunted house of horrors that is the American media. But
it raised nary a blip.

In the Australia of 2007, to remark upon the rise of white fascism is to be truly 'politically incorrect'. Only Islamic terror 'counts' as terror. State terror is always legitimised, and proto-fascist organising does not rate a mention at all. No doubt, any attempt to even raise the issue of nationalist violence will be met with cries of 'moral relativism' coming from the conservatives, despite the fact the fascism is a far more dangerous threat than Islam ever has been, or ever could be. 'Evil' is only evil when committed by bearded zealots - these good patriots amassing chemicals, or organising riots in Cronulla are merely exhibiting a 'natural' response to a perceived threat.

So please, when you next hear or read about the 'ideological sleeper cells' apparently in our midst, please remember that when true fascism comes to Australia, it will be neither with a Koran, or a Swastika; it will be draped in an Australian flag, it will praise the Anglo-Saxon kinship of the USA and the UK, and it will espouse the virtues of 'Enlightenment principals', or at least the Right's version of these principles, which somehow do not preclude those of Evangelical Christianity. In short, fascism in Australia will be something that will probably go unrecognised, or, perhaps, if recognised by Australian, it will be as a friend, at least to many.

I shall write a lengthier post on the topic of 'terror' in the near-future. In the meantime, the anarchist slackbastard has plenty to say on the topic of home-grown, 'dinky-di' fascists, hoping to find new converts in Australia.

Nobody does Tabloids like the Russians...

Moth to the flame that I am, every once in a while I cannot resist browsing through the English version of Pravda, former state propaganda organ-turned-trashy tabloid. Perhaps such things serve as a restorative after the depressing task of sifting through the Australian Government's own propaganda organ. Anyway, here is a Sunday night sampler:

Thousands forced into sex slavery to satisfy perverted fantasies of the rich
An organized criminal group specialized in human trafficking has been arrested in the city of Taganrog, Southern Russia, by a regional directorate for combating organized crime. The group comprised 2 men and a woman. Alexander Sviridov, 30, was the group’s leader. The man previously served a prison term for larceny. Svetlana Prokhorova, the 42-year-old mother of four, was Svidorov’s right hand and sidekick. Not unlike her boss, woman is no stranger to breaking the law either.

Love that translation - you can almost hear the authorial accent coming through: 'woman is no stranger to breaking the law either'.

Women going on sex tours look for big bamboos and Marlboro men
While men choose Asia for their sex tourism, women go to Southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Turkey, Croatia and Spain), to the Caribbean Basin (Jamaica, Barbados and the Dominican Republic), Genoa and Kenya in Africa, Bali, Indonesia and Phuket in Thailand to enjoy sex tourism. Nepal, Morocco, Fiji, Ecuador and Costa-Rica are less popular. Thailand, the Dominican Republic and Cuba are the countries that suit for sex tourism of both sexes, male and female.

Some rich men can pay up to 500 dollars for sex with disfigured prostitutes
Sex with scary prostitutes is becoming a popular pastime for Japanese men. There are a number of brothels staffed with inmates whose faces and heads were badly marred by burns, bruises or congenital malformations like hydrocephalus (accumulation of serous fluid in the cranium, often leading to great enlargement of the head). “I’ve learned to see my disadvantages as advantages,” reads one of the messages posted by the 22-year-old Mimiko on a web forum frequented by local prostitutes. Mimiko was born with cleft palate or a fissure at the roof of the mouth due to failure of the two sides to fuse in embryonic development. “In the past, I couldn’t even imagine having any sort of full-blown sex life. Nowadays men wait in line to get my favors. More importantly, I’ve already saved up enough money to pay for surgery!” Mimiko writes in her message.
Males offer their own reasons to explain a penchant for such a quirky kind of sensual pleasure.
“I’m just fed up with those shapely ladies. They have sex with you as if they’re doing some kind of job. On the contrary, girls who have been out of luck in terms of sex can attend each customer in the best way possible, they never fake it, they make love with total candor and passion,” said Andrei. A diversity of cultural and ethnical characteristics adds color to the Russian market of weird sex. For instance, some women from southern republics of the former Soviet Union are in demand. Their sex appeal has nothing to do their attractive curves or impulsive temperament. Those women look somewhat hairy; they have excess bodily hair – a condition caused by increased levels of male sex hormones in the female body.

Always making fun of the Uzbeks. And their 'inmates'.

I won't even bother with the 'photo-journalism' piece about the soccer lines-woman's nude photo-shoot (in the 'sport' section), the graphic piece on anorexics, several articles on Chavez, or the lake monster terrorising villagers in the Ukraine.

News in Brief: Stopped Clock Right

Erstwhile tosser and friend of imbecility, Michael Duffy from the Sydney Morning Herald, gave his $0.02 on the topic of Australia's 'crisis' in relation to Aboriginal child protection. This is a topic I discussed last week, stating my views here, and providing rebuttal to the claims of a moron here.

It seems that I am not the only one to have made a connection between the 'interventions' of Iraq and Central Australia. Duffy's article asks us to -

Consider this in conjunction with the regrettable absence of any new
foreign wars or upsets in this election year, and you can see why Coalition HQ
selected the Territory as this year's failed state requiring intervention. The
Government gets another khaki election without having to leave home.
If this
view is true, does it matter? I think it does, because while there is a national
emergency, this solution is woefully inadequate and might fail. I think
conservative and liberal theory tell us this. So it's curious that no one on the
intellectual right has stepped forward to say so, or even to reflect on the
obvious similarities between what's happening now and the invasion of
Iraq.

There's an 'intellectual' right now? (Cue accusations of latte-related 'elitism').

Duffy concludes:

The problem with much that has been said on this issue in the past week is that
the definition of the problem has been so entangled in Howard's solution that
the latter has dominated discussion. For 11 years this Government largely
ignored the horrific plight of so many Aboriginal Australians. (It says it's
acting now because of a recent report on child sex abuse. Many reports have said
the same things over the past decade.)
The Government's welcome realisation
that the situation constitutes a national emergency is therefore a dramatic
jump, one that could have led to serious national debate while the Government
worked on a wide-ranging solution. But the announcement of this crisis came in
the same breath as the proposed neo-military solution, leaving no space for such
discussion and focusing most attention on law and order.
I hope that in five
years these comments will appear misjudged, and that the Government will come up with a comprehensive plan and the billions of dollars needed to fund it. But at
the moment, it appears the right has learnt little from its conceptual and
military failures in Iraq.

Michael Duffy, former Government shill, has clearly joined the ranks of those 'willing failure', in Australia and abroad. Apparent appeaser of terrorism, and apologist for child abuse, may he repent by clapping his hands for Howard a little bit louder, that he may be able to 'will' success. Not that 'success' for the Government means 'success' for anybody else.

Maybe if one member of the right can discuss the issue non-hysterically, perhaps others can too. Nonetheless, I won't be holding my breath.

Friends, Australians, Countrymen...

Lend me your ears!

We have come to bury child abuse, not to praise it.

The evil that policies do lives after them

The good is oft' interred with...





As every Australian will be aware, the Federal Government, primarily Prime Minister John Howard, and Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, with the endorsement of Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson, have declared a 'national emergency'. The emergency relates to Aboriginals who dwell in Australia's mythic heartland, the red outback of Central Australia. Veritable 'rivers of grog' have left communities awash in a sea of child sexual abuse, brutal family violence, and rampant sexual abuse. Vital services that might have stemmed the flow of this tide have been chronically under-resourced. Plan after plan, committee after think-tank, has been implemented, without success. The time for talk, or indeed, for thought, is over. Now is the time for action.



At least, this is the message that we have been given by our Government, and by Pearson, repeatedly over the past week. This message has been repeated by many of those who provide opinions in Australia's media. Indeed, the central contention at issue here is not disputed - people of all political stripes believe that there is a problem, that this problem is devastatingly serious, and that something must be done.



Where agreement ends, however, is in the detail. Sceptics point to Howard's history, and paint a picture of a cynical man, who seeks to generate good publicity during an election year, in the midst of disastrous polls. These sceptics are derided as pathological ‘haters’ of Howard, too blinded by ideological enmity to see the benefits of his plan.

Critics point to the lack of consultation with Aboriginal communities. In response, they are told, that consultation has been tried and failed. Such 'niceties' must give way to direct intervention where an emergency is concerned. The gravity of the current crisis is such that a state of exception is in order, whereby the usual processes of debate must be suspended.

Never mind the fact that, of course, this emergency relates to a state of affairs that was near-identical last year, and the year before. Federal and Territory governments were perfectly well aware of this, and did not declare any state of emergency. The NT Government actually approached its Federal counterparts for assistance last year, and were ignored.

Never mind that community consultation has empirical support to suggest its usefulness in the development of these sorts of interventions.

Never mind that land rights will be swept aside, to make way for leases for the communities concerned, only a fortnight after the Federal Government sought to purchase the relevant land.

Never mind that child protection services, ordinarily a State Government jurisdiction, are overburdened to the point of shambles in relatively wealthy, and well-resourced parts of the country (a topic to which I shall return in another post).

Never mind that no amount of 'Leftist' or Aboriginal dissent will influence Government policy one iota, and is therefore completely harmless to Howard's plan.

Never mind that intrusive medical checks, and subjugation to dispassionate authority can re-traumatise those children who have already been hurt. (Of this, the Government says it will be 'mindful').

Never mind the fact that communities are scared that this intervention will see the onset of another Stolen Generation. Prevailing wisdom indicates that perpetrators, not victims, ought to be removed, but the past experience of some communities will prove contrary to this wisdom.

Never mind that the report that sparked this 'emergency' has been ignored, in terms of the detail of its recommendations.

These facts are irrelevant, according to several articles in today's Australian. Both parties have supported the intervention of police and army, therefore the issue is bipartisan. Furthermore, according to Sheridan, Pearson himself is politically bipartisan, a sincere man seeking only to drive politicians to assist his people. The sceptics should 'ditch politics'; after all, Pearson says so, and Pearson is an honourable man.

The Editorial piece advises us that dissenters to the Howard/Pearson proposal are motivated solely by 'blind hatred' - dissent is, obviously, a pathology. After all, dissent is a will to failure, and 'Those who would rather see children continue to suffer than for the Howard plan to succeed should be ashamed of themselves.'

In the same paper, talk-back radio host and News Ltd. writer Neil Mitchell takes umbrage at rival broadsheet, The Age, for its questioning of the proposals. As he puts it:

Get angry with this. Get angry with the chattering classes like The Age who
turn it into a philosophical discussion. This is about kids. It's about
protecting kids and women. This is about people.

It must be self-evident that matters involving people are beyond both politics, and philosophy, and 'chatter'. That is, beyond anything that might subject the Government's plans to even the slightest scrutiny.

Pearson himself made an appearance on ABC's Lateline a couple of nights ago, explaining his support for the plan. His speech was widely lauded for its passion and integrity. He too indicated that dissent to the proposal was equivalent to 'willing failure':

I think that those who have objections to immediate intervention have to
ask themselves whether they're willing this whole exercise to fail, and geez, if
you're willing the whole exercise to fail, what kind of priorities do you have
in relation to the wellbeing of Indigenous children?

The good-willed dissenters apparently also are responsible for current problems in Iraq. Pearson says so, and Pearson is an honourable man:

You know, I hear people bleat uphill and down about self-determination and
in my view self-determination is about people taking responsibility for
themselves, for their own families and for their communities and, you know, it's
an absolutely shameful hour that has descended on us, absolutely shameful hour
where even an emergency intervention to protect the safety of our children is
hindered, is hindered by people who supposedly have good will for Aboriginal
people and in fact, those people are willing, they are willing the protection
and succour to Aboriginal children to fail in the same way and as vehemently as
they will failure in Iraq.

This latter comment is of particular significance, given that it has been noted by the usual pro-Howard shills, in order to further condemn idle discussion. Any hesitation in implementing Howard's proposal is interpreted as yet more evidence of moral depravity from those who dissent. These people are not normally concerned for the welfare of Aboriginals, but priorities change when there are political points to be scored.

Pearson's reference to Iraq is a telling one. Prior to war in 2003, we saw the emergence of emergency, a state of crisis to which the only response was to suspend critical faculties, and proceed to direct action, for the greater good. A state of exception was declared, thus legitimising the extraordinary occurrence of a 'pre-emptive' 'shock and awe' campaign. Yes, thousands protested in the streets, and on the Internet; but then, as now, it made little difference. To disagree with the war was to will a failure of treasonous proportions. In any case, it is fortunate for these unpatriotic dissenters that Bush declared the mission accomplished in 2003, thus rendering failure impossible. The bloodshed that is occurring on a massive scale is apparently a measure of success for war-supporters.

We have an analogous situation here. A long-standing, genuinely tragic, but opportunely 'urgent' situation has to entail that all disagreement to the Government's proposal must be shouted down. One of the most authoritarian and hastily-conceived interventions in Australian history is to be imposed upon our most vulnerable people, without a whimper.

Thus years of inaction, and criminal neglect by Federal, State and Territorial governments gives way to a suspension of all thought. Forget about 'land rights', Pearson tells us, and Pearson, after all, is an honourable man.

Yet just yesterday, the same Federal Government ended its funding for an Aboriginal Employment program in WA.

An author of the Little Children are Sacred report doubts that the Government has got it right.

In a circulating letter, an Aboriginal activist pleads for the Government to reconsider its implementation of the plan.

Aboriginal community leaders have penned an open letter, asking for urgent consultation before the Government's solution is imposed on them.

The ACT's Human Rights Commissioner has condemned the discriminatory singling-out of Aboriginal families for special treatment at the hands of interveners.

Of course, in a time of national emergency, silence is needed. The kind of silence that has been shown by the Labor party, and that Howard himself found 'puzzling'. A silence is needed that will stifle any alternative proposals, any consultation, any questioning. After all, as Neil Mitchell and Noel Pearson say, this is not a philosophical discussion. And Noel Pearson, at least, is an honourable man.

Perhaps they are all honourable men. We can see who is condemning whom, in fits of moral righteousness. The well-meaning dissenters, the thinkers, the other Aboriginal leaders, and those who prattle on about 'rights', are finally getting their come-uppance. Major flaws notwithstanding, to disagree with the plan is to endorse child abuse! Silence is all that is required, and the plan will continue, if need be, irrespective of it.

I make no claims about Noel Pearson's 'integrity', or sincerity. I do not doubt for an instant that he is no Howard stooge. Yes, he is an honourable man. Yes, he is right - urgent action is desperately needed. Nonetheless, if, in his enthusiasm for change, he has 'backed the wrong horse' as they say, and availed his honour to the promotion of a rightfully distrusted Government, he shall be a Brutus to his people.