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.

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.

Tactful, Charming, and most of all, Christian

Members of Westboro Baptist Church, known for picketing the funeral of US soldiers who died in Iraq — arguing homosexuals are the cause of the war, said Ledger is now in hell, OK! magazine reports.
"Heath Ledger thought it was great fun defying God Almighty and His plain word; to wit; God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers!" the church said in a statement. (source)

I trust all conservative Christians out there will follow the lead of this young lady, and rebuke these freaks.

Obviously, logic is not a strong-point for these guys. (Presumably they're not Catholic - Catholic theology at least has some λογος in it, however wacky).

By the same 'reasoning', we might well assert that 9/11 was Allah's punishment for US religious infidelity. Such an assertion would create an outcry.

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.

Into the Stratosphere

Thanks to a little spat in the radical right-wing blogosphere, we have further evidence of the wingnuts drifting so far to the right, they're falling off the spectrum.

The spat itself is some irrelevant internecine tiff among so-called conservatives, with allegations that one group are siding with anti-Semitic neo-Nazis, and counter-allegations that the said fascists were planted for the purpose of discrediting real Tories. This argument arose out of a demonstration of white nationalists in Belgium.

Closer to Australia's shores, we have the lunar right's take on the matter:

My position is going to be considered very radical indeed, even by those I
regard as friends and allies. It’s this:Our present track is taking us
inexorably towards slavery, whether by the bureaucrats and governments of the
left, transnational elites or radical islam. I see no effective way right now to
counter that, since every major public institution has been captured by the
left.Therefore, I’ll work with any organisation, any person who opposes it,
regardless of their ideology.Because their far-right ideology may (MAY) not
survive the resulting civil chaos, but neither will the left and we can sort out
the ideological details after the dust settles. The urgent task is to derail the
left and I’ll make a compact with the devil if that’s what it takes to do
it. (source)

Neo-Nazis, come on in! Just make sure you kick a Muslim or a lefty on your way. Apparently, this is justified because leftists and Muslims are forming an almighty alliance, and taking over vital institutions. Hey, we all knew that Marxists and Mohammedans ran the World Bank and the IMF.

The author explains his position further:

Should we on the Right insist on some ideal standard of ideological purity for
others before we'll accept them as allies? Revolting as anti-semitism is, the
far right hardly has a monopoly on it. The Left, remember is no friend of Israel
and anyone who doubts that has only to don a biohazard suit and trawl through
some of the more extreme lefty blogs.

I think he means those 'extreme' blogs that have the temerity to criticise Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people. This is somehow not merely anti-Semitic, but equivalent to neo-fascism.

We have to stop the left from setting the terms of this debate and if the
price of that is being labelled a Nazi or a fascist or a racist, then so be it.
They can take their labels and stick 'em where they belong--time enough to sort
that out after it has been made plain to the ruling elite that the voice of the
people will be listened to, or run the real risk of full-blown civil war.

The voice of which people? The ones rioting at Cronulla?

It's amusing that, at what should be the end of the Howard era, the true believers are either changing their stripes (like Bolt, for instance) or becoming increasingly unhinged (like Akerman, for instance).

As for the likes of our friend above, we will readily admit that most conservatives are not racist. Unfortunately for our friend, he is not a conservative, but a radical rightist. His talk of 'civil war' signifies that he has left the reality-based community, and is but one tinfoil hat away from a CAT referral.

Rage is All the Rage

Since rage against Islamo-Fascism continues to be the new black this season, I thought I'd share a couple of relevant comments/posts:

As a woman, I really hate the way that the government of Iran treats women
in Iran. That does not mean that I want to bomb the women of Iran.

And:

Oh the Feminists hate Republicans
And Republicans hate the Feminists
To mock all Feminazis
Is an old G.O.P. rule
But during Islamo-Fascism Week
Islamo-Fascism Week
You’ll see Ann Coulter On Our Backs at USC
She’s helping Muslims seek
Their Feminine Mystique
Simone De Beauvoir’s really very
cool...

From here.

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.

Nausea, ad nauseum

I probably shouldn't bother with digging up NewsCorpse material: there are a number of blogs in my sidebar who do quite a good job of debunking the latest nonsense emanating from Murdoch's stable.

But who could resist today's offerings, where pro-Howard leftist bashing is in full swing:

Thinking man's chickenhawk, Greg Sheridan, opines about the 'defence of our realm', and takes a swipe at Rudd's plan for staged withdrawal of troops in Iraq, should Labor win Government at the election:

This all speaks well of Rudd's essential centrism and conservatism in
security policy, but it demolishes his argument about the increased terrorist
threat to Australia. Can you just imagine Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri
in their cave at al-Qa'ida central, just inside or just outside Afghanistan,
saying to each other: well, we did have those infidel kangaroos high on our
terror target list when they were in Iraq but now that they're only fighting us
in Afghanistan, where we are, and supporting our enemies throughout the Persian
Gulf, we'll give them a free pass and not send any more terrorists after them.

Sheridan doesn't really address the question of what the hell Australian troops are doing in the Middle East in the first place, fighting dubious (I'm being extremely charitable) wars on behalf of the US and Britain.

Next, we have Noel Pearson, about whom I had occasion to touch on recently. Pearson still wants bipartisan support for Howard's unilateral intervention into Central Australian communities. He concludes:

The principal psychological problem of indigenous leaders is they are
bitter about the Howard Government and its history over the past decade. Our
progressive non-indigenous supporters can afford to devote all of their energies
to willing the New Jerusalem - after all, even a conservative government looks
after them, notwithstanding their contempt - but our people cannot afford this
indulgence.

For a bipartisan guy, he seems to spend a lot of time kicking one side of politics, whilst issuing apologias for the other. I guess that, by now, the 'progressive non-indigenous supporters', and, basically, all Aboriginals who disagree with the Pearson-Howard authoritarian approach should have realised that their reasoned critiques and alternative proposals are tantamount to a mystical enterprise - 'willing the New Jerusalem'. And after all, who can seriously question Howard's exemplary tack record on helping Aboriginals, notwithstanding his contempt.

After Noel, we get Christopher, the more repulsive of the Pearsons, pontificating about how wonderfully the Church has dealt with modernity, 'unlike fundamentalist Islam'. It's possibly easier to deal with post-modernity when Western powers aren't bombing the shit out of you, but Pearson does not include this in his theological musings. One paragraph in particular caught my eye:

Both Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have been formidable
philosophers. They shared the view that the trajectory of modernity, considered
as a project, was along the nihilist lines laid out by Nietzsche in Beyond Good
and Evil. In the communist bloc it culminated in the gulag. In the capitalist
world they see people commodified as units of production and consumers in a
largely amoral, global marketplace.

I don't care to speculate on the philosophical abilities of Popes past and present. Nonetheless, Pearson obviously hasn't actually read the Nietzsche book he cites, or he might have noted that Nietzsche explicitly rails against 'nihilism' (or at least, a particular version of it), and could be expected to have virulently opposed both communism and consumerism. The irony of the likes of Pearson eulogising the world, whose innocence has been lost at the market-place should not be lost on anyone, excluding loyal readers of The Australian. It is appropriate that he concludes his jeremiad with a parting shot at the 'moralising' of Robert Manne, again caught out suggesting that Aboriginals might have suffered injustice in Australia's past.

Economics editor, Alan Wood, kindly assures us that, contrary to all of the evidence that adult Australians would encounter on a daily basis, there actually isn't a housing crisis. Sure, housing is frightfully expensive, but, Wood tells us, that's why the Howard Government has cut back on income tax. Moreover, he avers, the real 'wealth distribution' answer to any housing 'crisis' that may exist is to get grandparents and parents to fund homes for their less wealthy offspring. A perfect solution, one feels, as long as one has wealthy parents.

Not content to leave it there, today's Pravda also features a column by ABC board member, and the Hungarian answer to Piers Akerman, Imre Salusinszky. But, small mercies, he is merely extolling the virtues of Dickens, rather than righteously crusading against the madness of the left.

It is ironic that possibly the most intelligent article among this gaggle comes from Melbourne's tabloid, the Herald Sun. It's more propaganda from Hitchens, of course, but he at least is one member of the Politburo who appears to be trying.

No wonder 'the West' is losing every struggle, what with that 'liberal' (or Liberal) media.

On Liberty (At Gunpoint), and Collaborators

Only the fanatics and die-hard ideologues persist in apologetics for the Iraq War any longer. Not so in the case of Afghanistan, whom many, including the 'cruise missile liberals', believe is a 'just war', a legitimate response to the events of 11/9. Americans were justifiably upset; unfortunately, the wounds of the terrorist attack quickly festered until somebody, somewhere, hat to be hit. The War on Terror would commence, but to kick it off, some brute vengeance was needed. Afghanistan served as the piñata.

After the crime of September 11, the Taliban, presumed to be hiding Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, were given a series of ultimatums by Bush (20/9/2001):

By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And
tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban:
-- Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Qaeda who
hide in your land.
-- Release all foreign nationals, including American
citizens you have unjustly imprisoned.
-- Protect foreign journalists,
diplomats and aid workers in your country.
-- Close immediately and
permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every
terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate
authorities.
-- Give the United States full access to terrorist training
camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.
These demands are
not open to negotiation or discussion.

Understandably, the Taliban requested some proof of bin Laden's involvement in the crime, prior to opening their borders to foreign troops. This supposed recalcitrance on the part of the Taliban, and the alleged lack of a non-violent means of securing bin Laden, served as the pretext for war. It is now clear that the Taliban were, in fact, prepared to extradite bin Laden to Pakistan for prosecution, a fact usually lost on the Eustonites, and other apologists for murder. The Taliban even offered to try bin Laden under Afghanistan's (Islamic) laws, as the US would no doubt seek to do with its war criminals.

By October 7, 2001, Afghanistan was being bombed. The Taliban again attempted to negotiate with the US, offering to hand over bin Laden should American bombing cease. Bush preferred to keep bombing than to have bin Laden, and added, in relation to the Taliban's request for proof of bin Laden's guilt:'There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty'.

So the war continued, and has to this day, with thousands of civilians killed, and no signs of the imminent capture of bin Laden. Even Al-Jazeera's Kabul offices were destroyed; this is more or less the equivalent of bombing the Fox News Network of the Arab world, assuming that Fox had actual journalists.

Yet what a history lessons when a war is 'just', particularly a good, democratising, humanitarian war? With shades of Noel Pearson's comments last week, namely, that critics of the Iraq war were 'willing failure', so too did Christopher Hitchens aver that America's Democratic Party, and other critics of the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are apparently 'defeatists' who are 'rooting for bad news'.

It is in that light, then, that the past few days have brought more bad news, and certainly more 'rooting'. US and NATO forces have even killed more Afghan civilians this year than the insurgency:

Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance
Force, blamed the insurgents for hiding in areas populated by civilians, who are
then killed during attacks against militants, but he said "that does not absolve
ISAF of the responsibility of doing all it can to minimize civilian
casualties."
On Saturday, [Afghan President] Karzai accused NATO and U.S.-led
troops of carelessly killing scores of Afghan civilians and warned that the
fight against resurgent Taliban militants could fail unless foreign forces show
more restraint.
"Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as
such," Karzai said angrily.
The mounting toll is sapping the authority of the
Western-backed Afghan president, who has pleaded repeatedly with U.S. and NATO commanders to consult Afghan authorities during operations and show more
restraint.
Karzai also denounced the Taliban for killing civilians, but
directed most of his anger at foreign forces. (source).

More humanitarian intervention was evidenced during recent air bombardments in the southern province of Helmand, where it is estimated that over 50 civilians died. Meanwhile, the CIA continues to dole out millions in cash and arms to Afghan warlords, and the decidedly undemocratic Pakistani government, and Australia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, pledged that Australia's involvement in the region would be for 'as long as necessary'. He noted (and dismissed) the recent spate of civilian casualties:

It is very, very foolish for any person of goodwill to try to create some
sort of moral equivalence between NATO and what the Taliban does. (source).

Naturally, the equivalence is not to be found: the Taliban are a brutal regime who do their killing via bombs, and hand-to-hand fighting; whilst the US and NATO do it 'surgically', with tanks and planes. Moral outrage at 'Western' brutality, is therefore quite out of the question, especially as regards this, the most 'just' and 'necessary' of humanitarian interventions.

It is apt that the chicken hawks who condemn any anti-war Westerner invoke pre-World War II analogies, by referring to their ideological opponents as appeasers. Putting aside the fact that the Nazi war machine was nothing remotely like the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, perhaps we who oppose these wars could accurately term the chickenhawks as 'collaborators', propagandising invasion and ongoing invasion, in the manner of the most contemptible Vichy stooge.

Leaving Afghanistan for the moment, and turning to Iraq, two US soldiers have been charged for these charming little incidents:

Staff Sergeant Michael Hensley was charged with three counts of
premeditated murder, obstruction of justice and of wrongfully placing weapons
beside the dead bodies in an apparent attempt to cover up the crimes.
Specialist Jorge Sandoval was charged with one count of premeditated murder
and with putting a weapon by the body. (source).

But hey, who said democracy was meant to be easy? Perhaps, with a view to avoiding charges of 'moral equivalence', the US might consider having the said soldiers tried by the Iraqis themselves. But this would imply a degree of moral reciprocity, and for a Coalition that assumes its exceptionalism is self-evident and axiomatic, such things simply won't do.

Afghanistan remains on the brink of being a 'failed state', even according to the Americans, and bin Laden and the Taliban are still at large. At least the US thirst for post 11/9 vengeance was sated, albeit temporarily, and 'power' implied in the name of the world's last 'superpower' finally had an opportunity to vaunt itself.


UPDATE: The Age has a few things to say about Afghanistan and civilian casualties.

Don't know much 'bout history, Don't know much 'bout geography...

Polling at the commencement of the Iraq War found that a majority (75%) of Americans supported the invasion. When the same polling occurred in April 2007, a majority (58%) said that the invasion was 'a mistake'. Public opinion around the world was even less favourable about Bush's war.

With this in mind, take a look at another recent survey, this one by Newsweek. The survey examined the views and beliefs of 1001 Americans aged 18 or older. The results were not flattering.

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in
10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly
involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11,
even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection.

The work of Republican speechwriters and Faux News has obviously paid off, then. One wonders what support for the invasion would be like if that 41 percent had their facts correct.

A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a
multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were
born. Just 43 percent got it right—and a full 20 percent thought most came from
Iraq.

The pollsters don't speculate as to why this might be: perhaps it is because Iran's (soon-to-be-invaded?) theocracy has taken the limelight from Saudi Arabia's brutal Wahhabist regime. The latter regime is, of course, of great concern to human rights organisations, but of much less concern to our bearers of 'Democracy', who count the Saudis among their allies.

And perhaps because most (85 percent) are aware that Osama bin Laden remains at large, roughly half of the poll’s respondents (52 percent) think that the United States is losing the fight against his terror group, Al Qaeda, despite no military defeats or recent terrorist attacks to suggest as much.

No military defeats (the Iraq War was declared 'mission accomplished' 4 years ago) and no recent terrorist attacks, yet the War on Terror is being lost; more cause for Washington (or Canberra) fear-mongering, no doubt. It is amusing to ponder the responses of the 15 percent who believe that bin Laden isn't actually at large. Osama's doing Elvis gigs in Vegas, perhaps?

Other results of the poll are also embarrassing:

Roughly half (53 percent) are aware that Judaism is an older religion than
both Christianity and Islam (41 percent aren’t sure). And a quarter of the
population mistakenly identify either Iran (26 percent) or India (24 percent) as
the country with the largest Muslim population. Only 23 percent could correctly
identify Indonesia. Close to two thirds (61 percent) are aware that the Roman
Empire predates the Ottoman, British and American empires.

It would be easy to interpret these results as evidence of 'dumb' Americans, and make reference to anecdotes of crass and boorish US travellers. After all, anyone in America (or Australia) with the inclination and resources can readily obtain a few basic facts about the world. Yet I think we should resist the 'only in America' interpretation, and sketch some possible explanations.

When discussing political matters, I often take the media to task. The reason for this is that, all that most people know about politics is what media agencies choose to tell them. Entire speeches are routinely condensed into soundbites, and state propaganda is allowed to pass unfiltered through a complicit media. This phenomenon has been discussed at length by the likes of Chomsky, who argued that US propaganda is as effective and pervasive as anything the Soviets employed with Pravda. Faux News and Australia's own Government Gazette differ from Politburo literature only in their sophistication. Clearly, the constant linking of Iraq and 11/9 by Governments and the media is a possible explanation for the results above.

Yet this is not the full story. Another recent (June 2007) poll that I found (courtesy of Ken L) found that respondents generally did not trust the media in America. Only 23% said that they had a 'great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in television news. The figure was 22% when applied to the print media. State indoctrination cannot be the only explanation here. We might perhaps say of supporters of the war, after Žižek, that this is a case of 'they know what they are doing, yet they are doing it all the same'.

The next obvious target for criticism would logically be the education system, which, despite the bleatings of 'cultural warriors' here and in the States, has blatantly failed to educate its citizens with information that is damaging for the reigning regimes. Supposedly 'post-modern' teaching of history cannot be blamed for an ignorance of basic facts.

Whatever the explanation, it is likely that history shall remember the twin destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as the most significant political event of the early 21st Century. Like Lady Macbeth's spot, the stain of blood spilled for conquest is not easily washed off, even in the face of pervasive ignorance. This is especially true when the 'spot' of blood is often more reminiscent of a torrent.

Shakespearean analogies aside, the significant distortion of history by our pro-Government, chickenhawk cheer-squads ensures that where there would be tragedy, there is instead farce.

I am not optimistic, but perhaps a little knowledge would go a long way to slowing America's sabre-rattling towards Iran. The Venezualans too fear that the Coalition will seek to 'democratise' them. Whilst it may seem a little too interventionist for the weak-stomached libertarians out there, perhaps the following should be distributed to the public, as a kind of war prophylactic:

Fascism is back is Fashion

To my way of thinking, the art of good blogging may require more than simply recounting other people's facts, or reciting the contents of one's day, but must, of necessity, be brief. To that end, a precise and innovative juxtaposition is a useful tool.

On the topic of tools, today's juxtaposition is that of far-right ideologues, and their histrionic allegations of 'fascism'.

The progressive side of politics has often between too quick to throw out the 'f' word when denouncing an opponent. Today, 'fascism' has been re-appropriated by the right, and is used in conjunction with the term 'Islam', on a variety of racist and imbecilic sites of which these are but a limited sample. (Less often, but nonetheless regularly, such sites also peddle the utterly disproved notion that fascism is a variant of progressive, or even Green thought. This accusation is not even worth the time of refuting again). Before venturing to any of these sites, please be sure to wear gloves.

It is for good reason that 'fascism' is a term of fear and abuse - despite Marx's assertions to the contrary, fascism is the spectre that is haunting Europe, and much of the rest of the world, given that the destruction unleashed by the Nazis was without precedent or successor.

So what is fascism? I can think of no better, succinct definition than that provided by historian Robert O. Paxton:

Fascism may be
defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with
community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of
unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist
militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional
elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and
without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external
expansion.

Where have those of us of Antipodean extraction seen such a definition made manifest? We could start by point out certain riots that occurred in the Anglophone enclaves of suburban Sydney. Despite the post-hoc apologetics offered by the usual cohort of media brownshirts, who moved swiftly to blame the riots on the 'problem' of olive-skinned victims, evidence emerged of far-right nationalist groups attempting to galvanise support for a proto-fascist movement. The rationale for rioters was one of retaliation for alleged crimes by Muslim Lebanese youth. The reprisal consisted of street (or beach) rioting, by violent drunks, egged on by Australia's own bogan stormtroopers.

Whilst the riots themselves have, thankfully, not been repeated elsewhere in the country, the mentality underlying this has persisted. I shall call this the 'fascist mentality', without any attempt to be ironic or melodramatic. For, if we look at Paxton's definition, and examine some of the unpleasant media/Internet sources I listed above, we find a disturbingly close correspondence:

- 'Obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation and victimhood'; particularly in terms of the perceived evils of 'multiculturalism', and the perceived benefits apparently afforded to minorities. There are no shortage of examples from the sources above of commenters who loudly proclaim that white, middle-class Australia (or America) is the 'victim' of Islam. Note also that the 'elites', according to the perverse logic of far-right ideology, are not those with money or power, but with 'culture', that is, the intellectual left, compared to whom everybody is supposedly impoverished.

- 'Uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites'; we have seen how one such elite, Alan Jones, had his wrist slapped for his encouragement of the riots, and we have also seen how our fearless leader, Howard, was more than willing to accommodate such encouragement. The enablers of thuggery in the media (Bolt, Blair, Devine, et. al.) also reflect collaboration with 'elites'.

'Internal cleansing and external expansion'; It must be said that examples of 'internal cleansing' have been mercifully few and far between. All the same, the calls for such cleansing are sounding increasingly less like 'dog whistles' and more like outright barking. The will to 'external expansion' is expressed through Australian military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and through vicarious support for US and Israeli expansionism. It is profoundly ironic that many of the rightards who express the most virulent contempt for Palestinians, and the most uncritical support for Israel, are precisely those who, 70 years ago, would have been baying for Jewish blood, and debating, in the German and Austrian broadsheets, possible solutions to the 'Jewish problem'. Today they content themselves with the 'Islamic problem'.

One of the best refutations of anti-Semitic stereotypes that I have encountered is in James Joyce's Ulysses. In it, a character responds to the alleged financial deviousness of the Jews by retorting that a merchant is he who buys low, and sells high, Jew or Gentile. Whilst this is pure 'common-sense', it is also, incidentally, the properly Marxist response. We might also say, today, that a criminal is he who commits terror against others, whether Jew, Christian, Gentile, Muslim, or American Republican. Unfortunately, our rightards do not read Joyce; still less do they read Marx.

A contemporary fascism in Australia needs enemies, internal and external. The external enemies are to be found in the Middle East, whilst the internal enemies (Muslims, 'liberal elites') are relentlessly demonised in the media. 'Mooslims' now assume the place that 'the Rooskies' once held - an uncontrollable menace that is supposedly supported by the cultural elite. This is in spite of the fact that, even in the face of a monolithic superpower such as the USSR, communism never came remotely close to taking root in Australia or the US.

So what are we to make of this nascent fascism amongst our rightard friends? Slavoj Žižek mentions, in his latest book, The Parallax View, that the American expansionist project, of delivering Judeo-Christian values, 'freedom', 'democracy', 'justice', is not without its 'other'. That is to say, the sexual sadism, and senseless torture of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib is not incidental to America's project, nor is it a case of 'a few bad apples'. Rather, it is what Žižek calls the 'obscene underside', the perverse but inevitable corollary of American values of 'justice', 'freedom', etc.

The 'obscene underside' of this neo-fascism can be found in those conspiracy theorists who contend that 11/9 was the work of Jewish intriguers, who also, incidentally, control world finance and the media. These sorts of statements, quite rightly dismissed and ridiculed, are formally identical to the ravings of degenerate nationalist psychopaths, who pontificate about the 'growing threat' of conspiratorial Islam, and who cite the birth rates of various nations as 'proof' that the world is in the midst of an Islamic takeover. This, however, is no different to the 11/9 nutters who contend that the sciences of engineering or ballistics are 'proof' that the collapse of the Twin Towers was an 'inside job'. No reasonable person could abide by either theory, or accept the gross politicisation of science for such unenlightened ends.

It is striking that one paranoid conspiracy theory is routinely dismissed by individuals of all political persuasions, whilst the other is not merely tolerated, but openly supported by many sections of mainstream politics and media. Nonetheless, these are merely two sides of the same paranoid, proto-fascist coin, and are strictly equivalent. For an Australian or American to allege that Muslims are taking over the world is no different to the 1930's anti-Semites who ranted about Jews controlling world finance. That some terrorists and criminals have been Muslim is no more proof of the former than is the fact of some Jews being wealthy a proof of the latter. Of course, evidence makes little difference to these deluded souls, these botched human beings.The sooner such things are realised, the sooner the venom of these budding brownshirts, will be neutralised.

Freedom of (hate) speech

Margaret Simons in Crikey wrote an article the other day criticising the soft approach of the ACMA's findings against Alan Jones, on the topic of his incitements to violence that preceded the Cronulla riots:

Read the report, and it is clear that the biggest surprise in this case is not
that findings were made against Jones but that ACMA found that the majority of
his broadcasts on the Cronulla matter were not racial vilification or incitement
to violence. The broadcasts ACMA thought were acceptable included references to
"Middle Eastern grubs" and other choice remarks.
Read the report for ACMA’s reasoning, amidst a forest of legalistic and dictionary definitions on what amounts to vilification and what constitutes an "ethnic group". It’s hardly high level moral reasoning, and it certainly isn’t tough.

Some more examples of Jones' 'colourful' commentary can be found here and here. Unsurprisingly, for every article condemning Jones in cyberspace, one can find articles of unbridled support for Jones in the mainstream media.

We have David Flint, for example, dismissing the ACMA's decision on the basis that it damages freedom of speech. The AMCA finding is derided as 'inquisitorial', and Jones' accusers are 'faceless'. It is a shame that some of these keyboard warriors so intent on defending freedom of speech did not create a louder outcry when the Howard government passed sedition laws. Still, at least Flint had the chutzpah to condemn the attempts to curtail freedom of expression when the case did not relate to right-wing culture warriors.

But take this piece of 'writing' by Paul Kent, for instance, in Sydney's very own Pravda. Kent seems to think that the Cronulla riots were actually the fault of Muslim leaders, who 'let racial tensions fester, and cried racism when it spun out of control'. Perhaps I've got this terribly wrong, but I thought that when a rabble of drunken yobbos from Cronulla start belting people on the grounds of their perceived ethnicity, then this actually is racism. Irrespective of the purported precursors to the riots, or the alleged sins of the ethnic group in question.

Not to Kent, however. For Kent, it is the Muslims who are 'bullies', who receive sympathy only as a result of 'political posturing' by the ACMA. It would be interesting to see if Kent would remain consistent to his hardline stance if the recipients of the Cronulla beatings had been Jews, Sikhs, albino dwarf midgets, or anybody but Lebanese Muslims.

Nonetheless, poor Alan Jones 'got it right', for having the courage to stand up to 'bullies' from the vantage point of his broadcaster's chair. And so Kent remarks:

Bullies don’t deserve sympathy or false outrage to hide behind. They should get
what they deserve.

These precise lines are perfectly suited to Jones himself, the more so given that he did not hesitate to fan the flames of hatred amongst his brain-dead audience. But I could be very wrong - after all, Howard indicated that he believed Jones to be an 'outstanding broadcaster'.

But perhaps I am too harsh on Sydney's Pravda. After all, today's edition includes a groundbreaking piece on the latest all-important conflict to besiege the harbour city.

UPDATE: Another salvo has been fired at Jones, this time in relation to his treatment, and that of a certain loud-mouthed mufti. And Michelle Grattan presents a typically balanced and sober view of this matter, continuing the motif of Jones as bullyboy.