'Self-defence'

Asked if Israel had targeted unarmed civilians, Chris Cobb-Smith, an artillery expert engaged by Amnesty, said it was "very difficult to come to any other conclusion".
Israeli troops forced Palestinians to stay in one room of their home while turning the rest of the house into a base and sniper position, "effectively using the families, both adults and children, as human shields and putting them at risk", Amnesty said. (source)


Israeli forces killed hundreds of unarmed Palestinian civilians and destroyed thousands of homes in Gaza in attacks which breached the laws of war, Amnesty International concluded in a new 117-page report published today - the first comprehensive report to be published on the 22-day conflict earlier this year...“Israel’s failure to properly investigate its forces’ conduct in Gaza, including war crimes, and its continuing refusal to cooperate with the UN international independent fact-finding mission headed by Richard Goldstone, is evidence of its intention to avoid public scrutiny and accountability,” said Donatella Rovera, who headed a field research mission to Gaza and southern Israel during and after the conflict. (source)

Another Central American Coup

The military of Honduras has reportedly seized power, exiling president Zelaya at gunpoint yesterday. This follows the recent murder by the military of a leftist presidential candidate.

Obama and Hilary have reportedly been tut-tutting the coup, but given that the US has a military base in Honduras, and directly funds the pro-US parties, it is highly unlikely the coup could have occurred with prior US approval, if not direct assistance. Some things never change, regardless of who is in the White House.

UPDATE:
At this time, the State Dept has officially condemned the right-wing military coup, and there is no clear evidence that the US has conspired to oust the legitimate president. We shall see what unfolds in the next few days.

Tell Me Lies about Vietnam

Where else but in The Australian do we see a shameless attempt to re-fight old culture wars, and bring back to life the long-since discredited spectre of the 'domino theory'? A fellow named Colebatch has decided that the domino theory was 'largely borne out' in events in South East Asia and Eastern Europe. Colebatch avers that we cannot allow 'Western military defeat' in Afghanistan, whatever this means, as Europe, having a large minority of Muslims, would be in strife - 'jihadist elements would be encouraged everywhere.'

This is the sort of imperialist bullshit that one expects to find on the stupidest of right-wing blogs (or in The Australian). There are lies and distortions from almost the first line. Take the claim that the domino theory was demonstrated in 1975, because 'Cambodia and Laos fell as, and plainly because, Saigon fell'. Putting aside the mass carnage wrought by US forces on all three Indochinese countries in this period, (strengthening support for the Khmer Rouge in particular), Cambodia went down the revolutionary path in spite of the Communists winning the war in Vietnam. It was actually the latter who eventually liberated Cambodia in 1979. Opposition between Vietnam and Cambodia was itself sympomatic of the Sino-Soviet split, wherein Cambodia was backed by China (and armed by Western Europe and the US), whilst the Vietnamese were backed by the Soviets. Hardly an example of 'domino theory'.

This shoddy, dishonest logic is at work throughout the piece, where Colebatch makes vague and sinister claims that defeat in Afghanistan (a campaign largely concerned with aerial bombings these days) will have 'consequences' for the West, because of the latter's supposedly latent radical Muslim population. In addition to the shameless bigotry, Colebatch insists that this scenario 'puts Australia's commitment of an additional 450 troops there into perspective'.

Indeed it does, but not in the way that Colebatch thinks. Once the 'good war' to Iraq's fiasco, Afghanistan has, for a long time, been a 'quagmire', where Coalition forces have supported all manner of butchers, warlords, and (despite official rhetoric) Islamists, for reasons that were dubious in the beginning, and utterly unjustifiable now. Casuistry such as the domino theory aside, there can be no military solutions to what are longstanding political problems.

Demographic Warfare and IDF 'self defence'

'Every successful joke indicates a victory against the inhibition that critical reason imposes on thought in the normal waking psychic state. Unlike dreams, there is no need for secondary elaboration or disguise to escape censorship. ' (source)


'Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty...

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.' (source, and here)

Terrorist Document Found

In the Middle East, a document has been found, threatening violence against British 'occupiers':

A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda... It adds: “Most of you have been in this country for quite a long time. You have learned what the word ‘terrorist’ means, some of you may even have come into direct contact with them (and heartily desire not to repeat the experience). But what do you know about them?

Which 'terrorist' group penned this piece? Hamas? Hezbollah? Or somebody else?

Some interesting polls

I'm reluctant to place too much faith in polls purporting to represent anything as abstruse as 'world opinion', but I've been forwarded a few interesting ones lately that I feel are worth sharing.

Firstly, one poll showed that in 17 of 18 nations surveyed, a majority of participants opposed the criminalisation of abortion. (The exception was Indonesia). This poll included countries whose current laws criminal abortion:

Contrary to their public's preferences, there are criminal penalties for abortion in Egypt, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, the Palestinian Territories, Poland and South Korea.

A second poll has shown that a majority reject the use of torture, even in the mythical 'but it's to prevent terrorism' scenario:

A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 19 nations finds that in 14 of them most people favor an unequivocal rule against torture, even in the case of terrorists who have information that could save innocent lives. Four nations lean toward favoring an exception in the case of terrorists.

Support for the unequivocal position was highest in Spain (82%), Great Britain (82%) and France (82%), followed by Mexico (73%), China (66%), the Palestinian territories (66%), Poland (62%), Indonesia (61%), and the Ukraine (59%).

Since the 'strategic' use of torture against terrorists is likely to be 'exceedingly rare', according to this report, it is reasonable to conclude that a majority of people reject the use of torture by their government. These are interesting results in a decade that has seen the decline of liberalism, and should (but won't) give the US government pause for thought with respect to its policies of extraordinary rendition and the like.

Smackdown, one lunatic at a time

Since the phony war on terror, we've heard plenty of nutters and propagandists invoke the ghost of WWII to justify otherwise indefensible policy by the US. But WWII rhetoric I mean the constant references to 'appeasement', or to 'Islamofascism', intended to conflate to radically different historical situations. In any case, it's nice to see one such winged monkey humiliated for such stupidity:

A few thoughts on gangland wars...

Like just about everybody else who has seen it, (and there are plenty in Victoria), I enjoyed Underbelly. The character of Roberta Williams stole the show, of course. There's nothing more charming than a strong, female character who utters such niceties as 'Suck my toe-jam!'. Many of the backdrops would be familiar to Melbournians, as would many of the characters and events which, among certain crowds, and in certain neighbourhoods, became the stuff of minor myth.

I has some minor quibbles - some of the characters were brilliantly cast, but occasionally I detected a misfire, particularly as regards the police. The lack of 'gentrification' of some of the criminal characters was good to see. Predictably, almost every murder was preceded by scenes of the soon-to-be-victim farewelling loved ones. The Victorian police were portrayed rather fawningly, with scant mention of the entrenched police corruption that allowed the underworld to function in the first place. Yes, there was a single, moustache-wearing villainous cop, but he was promptly caught in order to showcase the virtue of the others. In fairness, I can think of few precedents in Australian drama where police have been portrayed realistically.

Whilst the local detail is no doubt interesting to Victorians, the show has found popularity Australia-wide. This is not entirely surprising, given the success of the gangster genre. Like the most successful gangster flicks, Underbelly combined depictions of the criminal underworld with psychological explorations (extremely brief, in this case, but to be expected) and family scenes. This is a tried-and -true formula in this genre: consider the fact that The Godfather begins with a wedding, The Godfather II begins with a first communion, and Goodfellas focuses at length on the downward spiral of Liotta and Bracco's marriage.

There is thus a sense of universality depicted, even among these extreme characters. Perhaps, in the po-mo era, the brutal violence of the gangster genre is the closest thing we have to tragedy.

Two powerful (and sometimes, controversial) means of analysing some of these universalities in drama and literature come in the form of what can be broadly termed psychoanalytic and Marxist criticism.

Psychoanalytic themes are in abundance in Underbelly. We see characters with ever-shifting allegiances and identifications, we see primal fathers and Oedipal sons, the swapping of women, and the desperate, narcissistic need to confirm to a violent ideal ego, spurred on by an equally violent superego. Nonetheless, in this post, I'll restrict my comments to a few of the political themes of Underbelly.

All of the characters form part of what Marx termed the Lumpenproletariat, a class that is both excluded, and reactionary. The essence of Melbourne's infamous gangland wars, as depicted here, revolves around a dispute between two factions within the criminal wing of this class. One is an impoverished but 'up-and-coming' class, led by the character of Carl Williams, and ably revealed in the crass, vengeful consumerism of his Lady Macbeth, Roberta. The other faction consists of wealthy 'establishment' criminal criminals, the irony being that these characters were themselves once the impoverished sons of (mostly) Italian and Irish immigrants, with origins in the notorious Painters and Dockers Union. The complacency of this latter group, who live in gentrified neighbourhoods, drive expensive cars, and send their children to private schools, eventually explodes into violence when their supremacy is challenged by the up-and-comers.

In the actions of Williams and his crew, we see in microcosm what we have witnessed on the world stage for many years. The twin pillars of capitalism and imperialism are seen in Underbelly in miniature, and Williams and his proxies kill to maintain strategic supremacy, their control of trade, and, rather like the US, their 'prestige'.

Toward the end of the series, we see Williams' disingenuous attempts to exonerate his role in the gangland wars. When we see him tell a media scrum that he an innocent, a 'business man', merely defending the interests of his family, we hear an echo of Bush's justifications for the ongoing war on terror, and for pre-emptive strikes. When Williams callously dismisses the trauma of the children witnessing a murder he has commissioned against their fathers ('They'll get over it'), we are reminded of Rumsfeld's famous bon mot regarding Iraq ('Stuff happens').

After all, all capitalism is, at bottom, 'gangster capitalism'. A shadow market ruled by underworld figures is not an anomaly within a consumer capitalist society, but its logical extension. A worker, a sole individual, can never 'take on' an industry or state in the manner in which these entities can do to the former. And, in the last resort, these entities have force at their disposal, in order to prosecute laws and industrial edicts. (Flouting unfair laws has, however, brought at least one recent success). We need only see how entrenched, and how easily accommodated gangsterism is in some societies (such as Southern Italy, for one) to see how coextensive are the two worlds of legitimate and illegitimate business.

When we see this imperialism played out in dramas on the screen, we recognise it as crime. When we see it unfold on the daily news, we dignify it with the name of 'war', or, even more euphemistically, as 'peace-keeping' or 'nation-building'. It is as if relieving a long-suffering gangster's moll of her husband, by way of a few bullet wounds is a 'humanitarian liberation'. After all, our leaders are just good businessmen, protecting the interests of their (elite) families.

Action and Reaction/ Reality and Perception

I have little interest in engaging in the pseudo-debate over Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilder's Fitna. As far as I can see, it is the cinematic equivalent of street graffito saying 'Go home, Lebs'.

Nonetheless, certain sections of the media and blogosphere were falling over themselves in Australia and the US in their rush to tell us how necessary this film was to disabuse us of our illusions about Islam. Apparently, Islam is not a secret mission (arm-in-arm with the 'politically correct' crowd, you see) to take over the world, beginning with Europe. As Melbourne's resident cherry-picker, Andrew Bolt put it:

If Geert Wilders was very wrong about Islam, his film would not cause such panic...If Wilders is so wrong, people wouldn’t be so terrified as to try to ban his film, which does virtually nothing but quote the Koran and Muslim leaders, and show without comment the work of some Muslim groups. (source)

It is therefore heartening to see an article in the Israeli press that elaborates on this supposed panic, and the nature of the Islamic menace in Holland:

Dutch Jews are more outspoken than local Muslims in their criticism of the newly released anti-Islam film by rightist legislator Geert Wilders, says Dr. Ronny Naftaniel, head of the pro-Zionist Center for Information and Documentation (CIDI).

"They [the Muslim community] are afraid. They have been told by the Dutch government to keep quiet and be wise about this issue, and that's what they want to do," Naftaniel told Haaretz on Monday in CIDI's four-story headquarters near the American embassy.

"I was surprised by the silence of the local Muslim leaders," Naftaniel added. "If I were a Muslim, I would speak out and I would blame Wilders for this film. I wouldn't stop shouting about it. I don't understand their silence, I really don't. I think they are scared."

"We are never afraid to speak out in the harshest of terms against what we think is wrong, be it against Muslim extremism here in the Netherlands, or the Dutch or Israeli governments," he said. "But this movie portrays all Muslims as The Enemy. And this is just not true."

So much for panic on the streets of Amsterdam.

A Salvo Against Cruise-Missile 'Liberals'

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in light of 9/11 and the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories, a number of self-identified leftists or liberals underwent a period of colonoscopic self-examination. Many emerged from the process as supporters of US, British, and, more locally, Australian imperialism. Christopher Hitchens, Nick Cohen, Pamela Bone, the Eustonites - collectively these people are known as the 'Decent Left'.

A rather indecent comrade, who happens to be arguably the best solo blogger on the intertubes, has just published a book looking at this very subject:





It's published by the excellent Verso, who also provide a good deal of other indecent stuff, such as anti-imperialist tomes, and exegeses on Lacan. Pre-order the book, comrades, and tell your Decent friends to return to their colonoscopic self-examination!

In the meantime, if you'd like a shorter rebuttal of Decentism, you could do much worse than this hilarious rejoinder.

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.

She's Confused...

I'm referring here to a staffer of George Newhouse, the ALP's candidate for Wentworth in the election this Saturday.

Her name is Rose Jackson (daughter of former ABC presenter, Liz), and she had the audacity to make the following faux pas:

In an email addressed "Dear activists", Ms Jackson wrote to an internet education discussion forum last year: "I oppose Zionism because it calls for the creation of a Jewish state, and I think all governments should be secular.

'No Jewish, Islamic, Christian states anywhere in the world, just good, robust,
secular democracies,' she said. 'By speaking out on behalf of the Palestinians
and Lebanese people, we can give voice to those that some governments and media
would wish to silence...I'm just opposed to theocracy. I certainly support the
right of Israel to exist, but not as a Jewish state.' (source)

Naturally, those great defenders of freedom and democracy (the usual suspects, I mean) have fallen over themselves, using Jackson's comments to demonstrate that all who criticise the Israeli government, or Zionism, are incurable anti-Semites, and inevitably of left-leaning persuasion.

At one level, these critics of Israel's critics have a point. Jackson's characterisation of Israel as a 'theocracy' is confused, a point that Jackson herself later conceded.

The main objection to Jackson's comment, however, was not her mis-characterisation of Israel's Government - such slip-ups occur routinely, on all sides of politics. Rather, her detractors were outraged that she had the temerity to criticise the Israeli Government.

To clarify how the 'logic' goes - Palestinians are all either terrorists or supporters of terror. Terror is here used by the anti-Palestinian crowd to refer to attacks on civilians. Given that Palestinians can be more or less equated, wholesale, with terror, Israel's targeted assassinations can be understood as 'self-defence'. Collective punishment of the Palestinians is entirely appropriate - after all, they never learn in any case. Sure, the IDF feels free to kill with impunity, to execute without a trial - but special circumstances warrant special pleading. Sure, many more Palestinian civilians have been killed than Israeli - but these are 'accidents' (as if, after bombing or opening fire on civilians, IDF troops say 'Oops, my bad' when inspecting the aftermath). Sure, Israel may control almost every aspect of Palestinian life, and may have integrated Palestinian land and resources into their own economy, but hey - the Israelis won it fair and square.

This is more or less how the story goes, is it not? Supposed leftists who take issue with this narrative do not, as far as I can tell, endorse attacks on civilians, or support the Islamists' theocratic fetish, or deny that self-defence is a legitimate right. Nonetheless, these points are almost never granted.

Curiously, the Israelis themselves are not so squeamish when it comes to acknowledging that occupation may not be a barrel of laughs after all. Hardened Likudniks are ready to admit that the occupation is a nasty (though necessary) business - anti-Palestinians in the West are not willing to concede even this much.

As you can see, any criticism of the Israeli government, no matter how qualified, is liable to be 'rebutted' with accusations of anti-Semitism. After all, these charges against Israel have no basis in fact.

So never mind the ex-Israeli soldier who, writing of his experiences in the West Bank earlier this week, said:

[S]till the expansion continues, and still the stranglehold on the
Palestinians persists. While the Israeli public stays silent, while their taxes
swell the government's coffers, they are tacitly aiding and abetting slow
torture on a national scale. On top of the sporadic killing that the occupation
inevitably causes, the killing of an entire people's hopes and dreams takes
place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (source)

Perhaps he is one of those called 'self-hating' by the anti-Palestinians.

We should also ignore the death of a Palestinian teenager earlier this week:

Palestinian medical sources said nineteen-year-old Muhammad Al-Najjar was
riddled with 13 bullets.Eyewitnesses said Al-Najjar was standing in the door of
his house when Israeli soldiers disguised in civilian clothes approached him and
shot him without provocation. (source)

We should remain silent about the Palestinian children who are denied medical treatment by the State of Israel, according to well known Communist rag Ha'aretz - after all, 10-year old cancer patients are a threat to national security. And we should the alleged IDF storming of a refugee camp, shortly after Tony Blair visited it on a 'peace' mission. After all, any mention of such things would make you 'nasty and extreme', according to the blogosphere's least pernicious and most respected conservative commentator.

The Muslims are taking over Europe...

Or so some polemicists would have you believe.

In this article in the Financial Times, journalist Simon Kuper takes a long-overdue look at writers such as Melanie Phillips and Bat Ye’or, who eagerly propagate the notion that Islamic extremists are about to overthrow Europe.

The books in question in the review have salacious titles, such as While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within, or The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent.

It ought to be obvious to anyone who has spent 5 minutes in Europe over the past few years that these books are spouting bullshit. With that in mind, I won't comment on all of Kuper's points, but will highlight a few money quotes:

A fixed trope of “Eurabia’’ books is the writer behaving as though only
he or she and a few other resistance heroes see Europe’s impending doom. Bruce
Bawer, a US journalist living in Oslo, credits his aunt for coming up with his
title, While Europe Slept, but Melanie Phillips sees Britain as forever asleep
too. “Only if we take up this civilisational gauntlet that has been thus thrown
down at us will we stop sleepwalking to defeat,’’ she concludes her book.
(Phillips writes for the Daily Mail, and reading Londonistan feels like being
imprisoned with a never-ending Mail editorial.)

This is straight from the Steyn playbook - the heroic anti-jihadist who stands up against the might of the Islamic menace. All the while, it is necessary for these people to forget that, in Europe, at least, this 'menace' isn't all that mighty, except in the minds of a few white supremacists. Nonetheless, with the overblown rhetoric and feverish imagination of a Steyn or Phillips, its not hard for the paranoid to view Europe's present situation as analogous to that of 1938, and to label anyone who dares question this motif as an 'appeaser'.

All these authors start with disclaimers that not all Muslims support terrorist jihad. This is then swiftly forgotten as the plans for jihad in Europe are outlined. Ye’or, for whom Muslims are always the same, describes jihad as a 1,400-year-old strategy. Like Bawer, she explains that “they’’ never got over losing Andalusia in 1492.

This is another familiar theme of the far-right blogosphere, namely, that Muslims are carrying grudges held since they lost Spain. We might, just as (il-)logically suggest that Christian America's warmongering is a continuation of Christians losing Constantinople.

About 16 million nominal Muslims live in the European Union, less than 4 per cent of the EU population. A tiny minority are terrorists. Nobody sane denies that. But the “Eurabia’’ theorists - with the partial exception of Walter Laqueur, the most judicious of them - seem to regard the mass of Muslims as the enemy. Phillips sees “a continuum that links peaceful, law-abiding but nevertheless intensely ideological Muslims at one end and murderous jihadists at the other’’.

The refrain of the radical right - 'there are no moderate Muslims' - is here given its 'intellectual' legitimacy by way of the Eurabians' posturing. A 'continuum' is a convenient way of abolishing qualitative distinctions and lumping a diverse cluster of people into an undifferentiated mass.

Kuper helpfully attacks the idiotic myth that Muslims can simply take over by breeding everybody else out of existence. If power were simply a matter of numbers, Asia would have dominated that world stage for the past hundred years. As Kuper explains:

[B]irth rates are likely significantly to decrease “eventually in the
Middle East and North Africa’’. In fact, they already have. In 1970 Algerian and
Moroccan women averaged about seven children each. Today the Moroccan figure is
below three, while the CIA World Factbook estimates the Algerian, Turkish and
Tunisian figures at below two, lower than France’s. No serious demographer
expects an Islamic takeover.
The other problem with forecasting numbers of
European Muslims in 2100 is the premise that sixth-generation European Muslims
will still be a foreign body in the continent - Islam as a bacillus that even
secular former Muslims carry around, forever dangerous.

One thing that the opponents of Islam, specifically, and immigration, generally, fail to understand is that immigration is a two-way process. An individual does not simply move to a country, spend years there, and remain the same as when he or she arrived. We might expect that the North African and Turkish Muslims who move to Europe experience a kind of 'liberalisation', and, for the most part, this is indeed the case. The interests of the Turkish kebab salesman in Kreuzberg, or the Moroccan youth in Marseilles, are not so vastly different to the other inhabitants of these cities.

Finally, before recommending that readers take a look at the entire column, here is a parting shot:

Islamic terrorists have committed about as much carnage in Europe in
the last dozen years as far-left terrorists did in the 1970s. This is not
Armageddon. But to concede that would render “Eurabia’’ literature pointless.
Its target market seems to be the US.

He forgot to mention the bigots and idiots of Australia.

Democracy-Building: Hint #20167

Supposing, for a moment, that we are to take the Coalition of the Willing seriously when they aver that they wish to 'build democracy' in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As we all know, the parliaments of Iraq and Afghanistan are not the prime movers of this equation. The fate of these nations rests not with Baghdad, or Kabul, but with Washington.

It therefore follows that, if we take the CoW seriously, we should be seeking to give Iraqis and Afghans the vote. In US elections. This might substantially alter some of the rhetoric and policy-making that emerges from DC.

We might go further, and argue for a US vote for all citizens whose countries host the US armed forces, or are subordinate to the US as their primary source of 'aid' and trade. This would, of course, encompass most of the world, and create a sort of global state.

The power-brokers in the US would obviously have some objections.

But then again, as a Frenchman once said, 'Nous somme tous Americains'. Leaving aside the problematic status of this 'Nous somme', this statement means, more or less, that this 'war' concerns us all. We are all 'other' to the terrorist hordes, all linked together in our primal struggle for survival, all bound by the same neoliberal logic of the marketplace.

Consequently, 'we' are all Americans now. Leaders and ideologues of the USA loudly proclaim their democratic credentials.

Is it not therefore time that we were afforded our basic democratic rights?

A Belated Glance at 'Munich': Art, Ideology, Symptom

Some time ago, I was asked how it was that I, a supposedly 'politically literate' person, could listen to both East-coast and West-coast hip hop. For those who are unsure, EC hip hop is more likely to features raps on the 'gritty' nature of street life, injustice within America, or take a trenchant political stance on things. WC hip hop, on the other hand, is characterised by fairly simply motifs: money and 'bitches'. I am oversimplifying things here somewhat, but hopefully, you get the picture.



As often happens, I couldn't think of a particularly good answer at the time. Upon reflection, however, it occurred to me that the trashy, materialistic WC hip hop was just as 'political' as its EC counterpart, if not as directly so.



To explain a bit further, EC hip hop seemed to incorporate strident criticisms of the system that created the harsh soundscapes of rap, and served as an explicit political attack on injustice and inequality. WC hip hop, on the other hand, does not attack the system, so much as over-identify with it, exaggerate and caricature it, and thereby undermine it by other means. The preoccupation with violence, the obsession with cars and jewellery, and the sexualised objectification of women are not the antithesis of US consumer capitalism, but the logical consequences of it.



It is for this reason that, in the pantheon of cinematic myths, Michael Corleone is a genuine American hero, who, in Godfather II, is right to emphasise his credentials as a good businessman and patriot. De Palma's Scarface is an over-the-top, operatic riff on a similar theme, namely, the 'American Dream'. Both films (and their protagonists) are admired by a very large audience, in the US, and elsewhere. Neither film is overtly 'political', but both films nonetheless wear their ideology on their sleeves. This ideology functions as a kind of 'symptom', in a psychoanalytic sense; that is, as something to be interpreted.



Another example can be found in the HBO series, The Sopranos. The incorporation of ideology in this series is more overt and self-conscious than in my previous examples. Tony Soprano (and his goons) take explicit political stances on a number of issues throughout the series, by way of their discussions. The viewer is treated to mockery of gays, minorities, women, and the welfare system. Human beings are viewed as merely being a means to and end, and violence is routinely instrumentalised as a means of getting one's way. In short, we might say that The Sopranos is symptomatic of the dominant, conservative ideology, in that it embodies an extreme version of this Weltanschauung. Saying this is not to suggest in the least that the shows' makers endorse this ideology in any way, but rather, that they depict it.



With the forgoing discussion in mind, I'd like to turn my attention to Steven Spielberg's Munich. Yes, I know it's old, but I've only seen it recently, and it got me thinking.



Munich, for those who don't know, stars Eric Bana as the leader of a group of Mossad agents, following the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Bana's character travels through Europe, locating those responsible, and liquidates them. In addition to this basic plot, the viewer also sees glimpses of Bana's character wrestling with his conscience - that is, he attempts to rationalise his actions, minimise civilian casualties, and so forth. We also see his interactions with his wife and family, and his fidelity to the former.



As we might expect from any film touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the film was controversial, and attacked from both the left and the right (and the Zionists) for its depictions of the Mossad agents. One such attack came from Melbourne's very own village idiot and Murdoch lapdog, Andrew Bolt. I can't find Bolt's original article, as News Ltd. seem to take these offline after a while, but the Boltwatch response to the article contains a few original quotes. Here were some of the criticisms of Munich, coming from the Right:

AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein argued, “The film’s [Munich] message is both
historical nonsense and morally dangerous. There is a world of difference, both
ethically and legally, between deliberately murdering the innocent to promote a
political cause, and carefully targeted attacks on armed terrorists. To ignore
this distinction, even in the service of a naïve ‘all violence is wrong’ premise
that may feel ‘moral’, is to destroy the basis of the international laws of war
which are a vital foundation our civilisation.” The Daily Telegraph

Dvir Abramovich, senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, argued,
“Nowhere in the film is there historical background or context. Decades of
conflicts are reduced to clichés. Munich fails to mention that Israel suffered a
series of attacks before the Munich massacre…The image of the World Trade Centre at the end of Munich seems to suggest that Israel’s counter-terrorism policy of
the 1970s led to the September 11 atrocities in 2001.” The Herald-Sun

Andrew Bolt argued, “The most sinister thing about this hyped film, with
its noisy soundtrack of the wringing of well-manicured hands, is not that it
attacks Israel – although it does. Nor is it that in telling how Israel hunted
down the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the Munich slaughter and other
attacks on Jewish civilians Spielberg presents fiction as facts – although he
does that, too. No, the true shame of Munich is that he spent nearly $100
million to make a seductively deceitful film that warns we are evil if we fight
back against the terrorists trying to kill us… In fact, killing even in
self-defence makes us worse than the Palestinian terrorists who tie up Jewish
sportsmen and then machinegun them… Germany, for instance, let go three of the
Black September terrorists behind the Munich massacre after Palestinian
hijackers threatened to blow up a plane. France, Greece, Italy and Cyprus all
allowed Palestinian terrorism suspects to freely roam their countries. Spielberg
doesn't investigate that, of course. Giving in to violence doesn't seem to shock
him.” Herald Sun (source)

Some of these responses are predictable, of course. Any portrayal of Palestinian terrorists whatsoever (excluding 2-dimensional cartoon characters) is liable to accusations of anti-Semitism. The Palestinian terrorists in Munich are little more than caricatures, or cyphers, and naturally, do not receive the interiority of the Israeli characters. Apparently, to film them at all is to paint too sympathetic a portrait.



Given that the Mossad agents and their missions are central to the film, one might have expected reproaches of Spielberg for portraying these characters (and their goals) as murderous, or cold-blooded. Au contraire, amis. If memory serves, one of Andrew Bolt's foremost objections to the film was that the Israelis were portrayed as being too 'soft', too troubled by conscience, too possessed of hand-wringing questions. For Bolt, the film could be interpreted as sending a dangerously pacifist message.

At this point, we may do well to question precisely why Spielberg goes to such lengths to assure us that the Mossad avengers do indeed have human hearts beneath their breasts. Hirsute Slovenian Slavoj Žižek examined the propaganda function of these sorts of depictions:

How does Israel, one of the most militarized societies in the world, succeed
in...presenting itself as a tolerant, secular, liberal society? The ideological
presentation of the figure of the Israeli soldier is crucial here; it
parasitizes on the more general ideological self-perception of the Israeli
individual as ragged, even vulgar, but a warm and considerate human being. We
can see here how the very distance toward our ideological identity, the
reference to the fact that 'beneath the mask of our public identity, there is a
warm and frail human being, with all its weakness,' is the fundamental feature
of ideology. And the same goes for the Israeli soldier: he is efficient, ready
to accomplish the necessary dirty work on the very edge of (or even beyond)
legality, because this surface conceals a profoundly ethical, even sentimental,
person...This is why the image of the weeping soldier plays such an important
role in Israel: a soldier who is ruthlessly efficient, but nonetheless
occasionally breaks down in tears at the acts he is compelled to perform. In
psychoanalytic terms, what we have here is the oscillation between the two sides
of objet petit a: shit and the precious agalma, the hidden treasure: beneath the
excremental surface (vulgar insensitivity, gluttony, stealing towels and
ashtrays from hotels, etc. - all the cliches about Israelis propagated by
Israeli jokes), there is a sensitive core of gold. (The Puppet and the
Dwarf, 2003).

In this light, we have another perspective on Munich, whereby the film is symptomatic in the manner of a dream, with manifest and latent content. On the one hand, we have a portrayal of the Mossad agents as tortured sentimentalists, loving family men who kill only out of sheer necessity; this offsets the manifest content of the film, consisting of a series of 'extrajudicial' killings (to say nothing of the innocent civilians who were killed by Mossad in reality). Indeed, pre-emptive, extrajudicial killing by Israelis is more common now than it was back then, but, contrary to anything resembling fact, beneath these ruthlessly efficient and unquestioning killers' surfaces lies a 'sensitive core of gold'.



Aaron Klein, an Israeli military historian, said as much when interviewed about the film:

Asked about the portrayal of Mossad agents in the film as plagued by
doubts, Klein replied, “Well I've spoken with more than 50, as I said, more
than
50 veterans of Mossad and military intelligence and I must say that all
those
that I met and spoke with are very proud of what they did. They are
very proud,
they have no remorse, no second thoughts of what they did. They
saw their work
as the holy work – they were protecting the people of Israel.
This is the way
they see the whole incidence, the whole counter terrorism
campaign that they
were involved with,” ABC Radio “The World Today” (Feb.
13) (source).

Whilst Spielberg's film may not be factual in this regard, it'sembellishments serve a purpose nonetheless. Far from showing Israeli agents as'soft', equivocal souls, Munich preserves the ideological myth-making thatfacilitates the doctrine of 'preventative' murder, of execution without trial. It anaesthetises viewers to the killing, by assuring us that the killers areoverflowing with the milk of human kindness. I have no idea what Spielberg'sintentions were with making this film, but he has succeeded in propagating a colossal piece of ideology, and has converted this most symptomatic ideology into celluloid form.

Positive Content

I've been criticised by my detractors for merely taking a negative stance, and criticise what is, rather than offering an 'ought'.

In response, here are a couple of 'positive' proposals:

1. Racist warmongers should be deported to the country against which they display their enmity. For the Cronulla bogans, this means Lebanon. For Tim Blair, possibly Afghanistan. I'm sure Greg Sheridan will adapt to Iraqi life, and will be adept at using his purple prose to convince the locals of his wise, peace-making tactics.

2. Every time a warmongering cretin avoids an argument by hysterically screeching the words 'moral relativism', we should respond with the words 'moral exceptionalism'. For we believe in a universal morality that does not allow for exceptions. Murder is murder. No amount of 9/11's can morally justify the slaughter of civilians. Arguments to the contrary are, strictly speaking, non sequiturs, in the literal sense - the conclusion 'does not follow'. Nobody with a sound grasp of logic or ethics can abide such arguments.

In that spirit, here is today's cartoon from The Guardian:

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.

What's Right? A Couple of Rejoinders to the Pro-war Left

Division over the so-called 'War on Terror' has led to the emergence of a new species of second-rate, 'third way' spivs and turncoats, who theoretically consider themselves the True 'liberal left', whilst aligning their sympathies with US neoconservatism. Christopher Hitchens is probably the most famous example, a close second being Nick Cohen, whoring out his services to the cluster bomb cause. For the most part, neither writer has much to say, other than a few snide remarks on the perceived failings of the left, and some assertions on the wonderful character of World Bank grande fromage, Paul Wolfowitz. For this reason, this particular breed of 'liberal' is particular popular with hard-right commenters, who excitedly think they've found a new stick with which to beat the left.

With that in mind, it's worth noting this review of Cohen's recent book, What's Left?, the 'most substantial work of a pro-war left intellectual' (found courtesy of Crooked Timber). Reviewer Johann Hari (once a pro-war bedfellow of Cohen's) mounts a systematic and scathing rebuttal of some of Cohen's most flawed arguments. The review is relatively lengthy, and I won't enter into all of it here, but a few points are worth noting:

It's painfully conspicuous that Cohen's statements about neoconservatism consist
solely of assertions, primarily about the personal niceness of Paul Wolfowitz.
The overwhelming contrary evidence is simply ignored. A policy of systematic
torture? The immediate imposition of mass privatisations, causing mass
unemployment and sectarian unrest? The barricading of civilian men aged between
18 and 60 in Fallujah, a city the size of Baltimore, before attacking it with
chemical weapons? Cohen does not say how these neoconservative tactics have been
"fighting the Left's battles for them".

Hari also lays into Cohen's 'Enlightenment' pretensions, exposing the Realpolitik beneath the increasingly tarnished veneer:

It is increasingly clear that the invasion of Iraq was motivated not by
Enlightenment values, but by a desire to achieve US control over the Middle
East's oil supplies. After September 11th, especially since it was now plain
that the House of Saud's vast oil fields were vulnerable to an Iran-style
internal Islamist revolution - and Iraq's were the most appealing alternative.
As long ago as 1991 - back when the only thing George W Bush tortured was the
English language - Dick Cheney said about Iraq,: "We're there because the fact
of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil." Yet
the only times Cohen mentions oil is to mock the madness of the left for
bringing it up. Is his explanation - that Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were
suddenly gripped by Wilsonian idealism - more plausible?

Hari seizes on Cohen's imbecility in asserting that those who choose neither Saddam, nor Bush, are 'the greatest villains of all':

This injuction to "pick a side" is Cohen's way of ironing out the cognitive
dissonance that comes from being aware of crimes by the Bush adminstration, but
supporting them anyway. As for the idea that people who do not pick one of two
forces are "the biggest villains of all", using this logic, the greatest
villains in the Cold War were India - a rather eccentric judgement.

All in all, Hari is a little too charitable for my liking, considering the foolishness that Cohen has wrought upon the Anglophone world's op-ed pages. He also, inexplicably, fires a (wayward) salvo at Lenin (the blogger, not the Russian), which gets the requisite treatment here.

Complaints notwithstanding, the review serves as a creditable attempt by a pro-war intellectual to rethink his position, and to make evident the intellectual vacuity, and mercenary morality of the cruise missile 'liberals'. Cohen deserves nothing less than contempt; one of his latest opinion pieces is an idiotic attempt to argue that we need more Islamic villains on film and television, lest we 'liberals' be seen as trying to 'appease and deny' terrorism.

Whilst it is unfair to take the most contemptible elements of the pro-war right, and hold them as exemplars, it may nonetheless be worth illustrating for Cohen (and friends) precisely the sort of ideological company he is keeping. Perhaps considerations of 'fairness' ought to be jettisoned, when Cohen himself accuses anybody who refuses to endorse the war of having terrorist sympathies. We can find the same 'logic' on any number of pro-war right websites.

I despise linking to such sites, but here is an example of a pro-war rightist waxing lyrical, pondering a possible Muslim Holocaust:

"Muslims are being put on trains and sent to concentration camps, gassed
and buried in mass graves I suppose." We can only dream. (source).

Notably, the comment goes unchallenged. Another example can be found in this botched creature, who relishes the 'war on terror' as a suitable outlet for his violent racism:

Waging war militarily on the islamists certainly radicalises more
muslims.So what are we supposed to do, tolerate their murderous ways and hope
they go away? They won’t.
And here’s why the screams of outrage begin: The
more muslims it radicalises the better, because sooner or later they’ll detonate
a nuke or a dirty bomb, which will cause a devastating response from the
West...Ryadh and Mecca will do for a start. (source).

This, in a post entitled 'Affirming reality'. 'Tis a pity the warmongers have so little appreciation of irony.

The message is clear - Cohen wants us to hold our noses, disbelieve our senses, dull our intellects, and sacrifice the last of our principles for the sake of Bush's wars. We see the motivations of some of the war's supporters. Such 'humanitarian interventionism'. Such commitment to freedom. Such Enlightenment principles on display.

So to all of the cruise missile liberals, please take a closer look at your Faustian pact. These are the scum that Cohen and his ilk have chosen as bedfellows. These are the violent, bigoted cretins with whom he lies.

The Politics of 'Legacy'

It seems that even Melbourne's Herald Sun may be beginning to turn against the Liberals. In today's opinion section, Bernard Salt has a go at Howard for his alleged bias toward Sydney (as opposed to Melbourne). Whilst not groundbreaking stuff, such complaints are somewhat symbolic, given that Howard's rival, Costello, holds a 'blue-ribbon' Liberal seat in Melbourne. Ian McPhedran also criticises the Government's handling of Doctor Haneef.

The Herald Sun is not the most conservative of the Murdoch tabloids, and, to be sure, a couple of anti-Government articles do not count for much in the bigger scheme of things. Nonetheless, the context of these articles paints a different picture, when we consider that the polls once again point to a significant Labor victory, and even the bookmakers are concurring.

Once again, the question of the Liberals' leadership emerges. We might speculate that the polls would be more favourable for the Government had the leadership changed some time ago, but any change now, by an incumbent Government just months from an election, would be tantamount to conceding defeat.

People will no doubt engage in a few 'psychologisms', and aver that Howard has merely clung onto power for the sake of his own 'legacy'. As influenced by psychoanalysis as I am, I think we ought to resist any analysis of current events that boils things down to matters of individual psychology, and instead, rigorously pursue a political interpretation. In any case, as I have said elsewhere, Howard's Liberal Party colleagues give a much better assessment of his 'character' than I ever could.

So what is the political 'legacy' of Howard, as opposed to the speculative psychodrama? This is an enormous question, so I will just touch on a few points.

Howard rose to power in 1996. Whilst Culture War revisionists like to paint his predecessor, Keating, as some kind of arch-leftist, this was not the case. Keating was one of the most conservative Federal Labor leaders that the country had seen, though was portrayed by the media as indulging a range of 'minority groups', such as Asians, Aboriginals, artists, and environmentalists. It is no coincidence that the period of his demise saw the rise of Pauline Hanson's ironically-titled 'One Nation' party, built on a platform of Asian immigration, and also saw a relatively 'moderate' Liberal party move increasingly toward the politics of dog-whistling, and race-baiting. These latter phenomena are part of Howard's legacy as much as anything else, and are now incorporated into the standard political vocabulary of both major parties.

Howard is no 'statesman', even in comparison to Australia's previous Prime Ministers, on both sides of politics. He has ushered in the era whereby oratory is little more than a jingoistic soundbite, though, in fairness, he has been assisted in his cause by a compliant media. To return to what Slavoj Žižek said about Bill Gates (in The Ticklish Subject), Howard attempts to be seen as neither a 'patriarchal Father-Master', nor a 'corporate Big Brother', but rather, as a kind of 'little brother', a clumsy, bespectacled, tinpot 'patriot', whose ideological agenda is belied by his supposed 'ordinariness', and apparent opportunism.

Much is made of Howard's 'economic credentials', though the recent biography of Howard seems to further undermine this piece of mythology, given Howard's poor record as Treasurer. The best that can be said of Howard's fiscal abilities is that he has 'managed' the economy well, particularly for those who were already wealthy from the beginning. At the same time, a significant underclass of the chronically poor has been firmly sedimented in both rural and metropolitan regions during the Howard years, and the Government has shown no indication that it intends to change this state of affairs (other than by punishing 'bad' parents). Housing prices are, of course, a disaster, particularly for young people hoping to buy their first home, and interest rates are high by the standards of the rest of the developed world. At least investors would appear to benefit.

Then there is the Orwellian state of perpetual war to which Howard has enlisted Australia, a country little more than a US colony in economic and military matters. Howard, supposedly 'in touch' with the battlers, completely ignored the many thousands of ordinary Australians, from churchgoers, to unionists, who protested the so-called 'War on Terror'. I don't recall quite the same numbers of Australians protesting for the war.

In matters of foreign policy, Australia tends to take America's lead. Domestically, Howard encourages all immigrants to 'assimilate' to his version of white, middle-class, conservative Australia, and appeared to have a sanguine view of both the Cronulla riots, and Alan Jones' role in agitating for them. For this reason, Australia has been seen as racism in Europe and Asia for the past few years. Our Government is quick to condemn regimes run by friendless tyrants, such as Mugabe, but falls silent on human rights abusers whose allies carry a bit of international clout.

Political discourse has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. Whilst dissent is tolerated by the regime, it is quickly isolated by the acquiescent media, and repackaged as 'hatred', or some other pathology. A sane person cannot, apparently, be critical of the Government. When, for instance, Howard cobbles together a hastily-conceived 'intervention' into Aboriginal communities, anybody who forwards an alternative proposal is quickly denounced as an endorser of child abuse. The laughable standard of 'debate' in the mainstream media is echoed in Parliament, where 'Mr Speaker' ensures that Opposition questions go routinely unanswered, and Liberal abuse passes for political comment.

Surprisingly, for a 'conservative' Government, Howard has overseen significant growth in the Federal public sector. Part of his legacy has been to ensure that this sector is also heavily-politicised, from the cowboys running DIMIA, to stacking the ABC board full of hard-right cultural warriors. Perhaps public sector growth is necessary, as it is inversely proportional to political responsibility. Public servants make for suitable, and relatively anonymous 'fall guys' when faced with scandals such as AWB, or children overboard, none of which our Government considers as part of its jurisdiction.

Howard has nominally moved toward some recognition of 'climate change', but then, even that exemplar of the 'loony left', Rupert Murdoch, has publicly acknowledged that this issue is important. At this point, the climate change denialists should be pleased that Howard's commitment to this issue remains strictly rhetorical.

The Culture Wars and History Wars have continued throughout Howard's reign, despite the fact that the 'conservatives' are given air-time for increasingly vacuous and intellectually bankrupt views. Moderate commentators and academics such as Robert Manne are denounced for being left-wing extremist 'elites' - apparently, social class is now conceived along educational lines. Part of these 'wars' has seen a refusal to acknowledge one iota of Aboriginal suffering, and, when travelling abroad, it is not difficult to find foreigners who no more about the plight of Aboriginals than does the average Australian. Howard despises 'symbolic' gestures, such as an apology would be. An elementary grasp of any trauma theory would inform us that symbols are intrinsic to the 'working through' of any trauma, though symbols do not, of course, reverse trauma. It is for this reason that Vietnam Vets, suffering from their war-time experiences, campaigned vigourously for a 'symbolic' recognition of their status as 'traumatised', eventually succeeding in having PTSD made into an 'official' medical/psychiatric diagnosis. For Australia's Aborigines, it is not even worth considering additional services or resources - even as regards mere 'symbolic gestures', for Howard, such people, (and their subjectivity) are beneath recognition. New 'conservatism' is 'big-government' and authoritarian, and, naturally, being conservative means never having to say you're sorry.

Howard's IR laws are probably not worth mentioning, given the ink that has already been spilt on them. Among other things, these laws are intended as a bit of union-busting, partly as a result of Howard's ideological leanings, and partly because the unions constitute Labor's support base. The 'user pays' mentality has crept into a range of other areas, such as VSU, Telstra, and the increasing privatisation of the health and education sectors. Australia's great tradition of socialised public services, many of which were world class, appears to be drawing to a close. Perhaps we can look forward to the privatisation of roads and the like.

Howard quietly managed to change electoral laws, so that voting is now more difficult for the young, the transient, and the imprisoned. This will not be of concern to Liberals, given that these demographics probably would not vote Tory in any case.

Civil liberties have been eroded under Howard. The anti-terror legislation sits dubiously in relation to presuppositions of 'innocence until guilt is proven'. The re-introduction of sedition laws are of particular concern, given that such laws have been used (historically) to criminalise peaceful and democratic dissent. It seems to be a case of 'One more sacrifice, Australians, and we shall "win" this war on terror'.

Howard has cultivated the myth of his 'battlers'. Fortunately, for Melbourne, at least, this remains only a myth, as most of the working class reside in safe Labor seats. I cannot speak for the rest of Australia at the present time, but it is obvious that, if a working class person votes Liberal, they are not only being bent over a barrel, they are providing Howard with the lubricant. The backlash against IR laws may yet shatter this myth, as it is not only the 'elites' who are nauseated by Howard's relentless propaganda, with happy, AWA'd workers invading our television screens. In this era of the decline of Marx, 'Workchoices' should at least serve to drive home a few naked truths about capitalism, namely, that workers are merely commodities, cogs in a machine, means to (somebody else's) ends.

The only principled and courageous policy direction that Howard has taken is his stance on gun control. This is the only instance of him being prepared to finally challenge the whims of a minority, for the benefit of society as a whole. To be sure, underworld figures still have guns, but, more importantly, guns are more difficult to obtain for lone psychopaths (such as Martin Bryant, or Julian Knight), and feature less prominently in 'domestics'.

Many of the issues above are beyond any simplistic left-right distinction. Many Australians, of all political stripes, are concerned with such topics. That such ideology, of limited appeal, should have been relentlessly pushed by Howard only serves as a testament to how unrepresentative our 'representatives' in the political class have been.

Clearly, Howard has left a 'legacy' for all to see. Most likely, his decision to remain as leader was not prompted by history's memory of his deeds, but rather, was a cold political decision, based on raw numbers in Caucus, as well as in polls. Howard has won several elections (albeit, very narrowly, in 1998 and 2001), and there is no reason to believe that he will be replaced prior to the next election.

Whatever happens at the election, Howard will be gone in the near future. As we have seen, the Australia that he leaves behind is diminished in virtually every respect, other than in its preponderance of imported plasma televisions.

More Myths about Iraq are Shattered

We often hear, from apologists of the invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq, that the insurgents are largely freedom-hating Al Qaeda types, or stooges sent from mischievious Iran. Both myths have taken a fall recently, and are helped on their way by an article in today's Guardian. As it turns out, all of the main Sunni insurgents, (excluding Al Qaeda and the Ba'athists), are actually fighting against the occupation, and the Vichy-like regime that has been instituted as a consequence. The Sunni groups are planning to form a united political front after the occupation ends:

Leaders of the three groups, who did not use their real names in the
interview, said the new front, which brings together the main Sunni-based armed
organisations except al-Qaida and the Ba'athists, had agreed the main planks of
a joint political programme, including a commitment to free Iraq from foreign
troops, rejection of cooperation with parties involved in political institutions
set up under the occupation and a declaration that decisions and agreements made
by the US occupation and Iraqi government are null and void.
The aim of the
alliance - which includes a range of Islamist and nationalist-leaning groups and
is planned to be called the Political Office for the Iraqi Resistance - is to
link up with other anti-occupation groups in Iraq to negotiate with the
Americans in anticipation of an early US withdrawal. The programme envisages a
temporary technocratic government to run the country during a transition period
until free elections can be held.

Whether the Sunnis are to be believed is another question. Nonetheless, the nominal commitment to free elections, and the nationalist (rather than Islamist, or 'foreign') character of the insurgents aims and origins demolishes the standard propaganda lines that we hear about Iraq being centre-stage for the so-called 'War on Terror'. Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever that these insurgents are interested in terrorising 'the West' in any respect, except insofar as this latter entity seeks to impose its military domination upon Iraq.

The Coalition declared 'mission accomplished' four years ago, yet still harp on about the need for 'victory' in Iraq. What would a Coalition 'victory' look like? Would it involve the maintenance of a sympathetic puppet regime? The destruction of all nationalist or political movements? The continuation of a 'democracy' that presides over an ungovernable country, wherein politicians hold Parliament in the Green Zone, when they attend at all? One suspects that many Iraqis have had their fill of such 'victories', and, promisingly, many Australians, British, and Americans appear to be in agreement.

There is also an interview with the Iraqi resistance groups.