The Sydney Morning Herald does not seem to be fazed by its stereotypical middle-class leftist image. Readers would be encouraged to hear that on current issues of world affairs, the recent online SMH letters section has a 100% anti-American, anti-Western (or fuzzy-wuzzy "multilateral", read anti-American, viewpoint) content. 100%. Not one single letter ventured outside of the accepted script. The implication is that public opinion runs about 10-zip on foreign policy.
And leftist isn't even a good description for the sorts of rubbish being published by the SMH. A kind of nihilism is on display. Take these contributions:
Australia plans to engage in a naval blockade of North Korea and in the Solomon Islands - neither with UN support. And John Howard and Alexander Downer have indicated that we should participate in other "coalitions of the willing" if it is in our interests.
It is by no means certain that US leadership is superior to that of the UN, and Australia should not participate in further international activities unless supported by the UN. We should give the UN our full support and not "cherry pick" only those policies which we like.
Peter Rutherford, Pakenham (Vic), June 29.
So if the Soviet Union had bothered to turn up to certain Security Council meetings to veto a UN defense of South Korea, presumably Peter would prefer we left them at the mercy of Kim Il Sung.
Apart from the fact that the US Administration cannot understand that "peacekeeping force" contains an intrinsic contradiction, does this mean that it wants to create a new UN, having undermined the old one ("US push for global police force", Herald, June 28-29)?
When will it begin to realise that the way to prevent conflict is to determine the cause of the conflict and try to fix it? If it had spent an equivalent amount on hospitals and doctors rather than horrific weapons and invasion, would Afghanistan still be in the terrible state it is in?
Will it ever understand why the Iraqis hate the US after being "liberated"? And does it really expect us to believe it is doing these things out of the goodness of its heart?
Fred McArdle, Brunswick (Vic), June 29
The cause of the Iraq war was Saddam, in case you forgot, Fred. He invaded Kuwait and sanctions didn't work. The Taliban could have given up Osama, but didn't.
It appears that the Australian Government is planning to send police and military to the Solomon Islands for a short term in order to re-establish peace.
I read (Stay in Touch, Herald, June 27) that conflict rages on in Afghanistan and things are souring in Iraq. How long is it going to take for Western governments to learn that these problems are caused by centuries of feuding and lawlessness and that outside intervention simply puts a new but equally corrupt group in power.
If a century of British colonisation could not provide a sound foundation for democracy, what will a few soldiers and policemen achieve in months?
Robert Gotts, Winmalee, June 27.
Very well, we should not send troops to prevent a civil war. Nor should we send aid. After all, if a century of British colonisation could not provide a sound foundation for democracy, what will a few million dollars achieve? We will give our neighbours no advice whatsoever in creating stable democracies, after all, if a century of British colonialism didn't teach these backward Islander types how to run their own countries, we might as well do nothing. Feel better, Robert?
Finally, Mario Napolitano believes multilateralism will cure everything.
Alexander Downer has raised the prospect of becoming part of more "coalitions of the willing" while criticising the principles of multilateralism and sovereignty.
The Howard Government has taken another cheap shot at the UN and diplomacy, and indicated an increased willingness to use armed force to resolve disputes.
That Mr Downer should use the example of the Rwandan genocide to try to smear the UN is dishonest, to say the least.
With memories of American soldiers killed in Somalia in 1993 still fresh, the US refused to consider the deployment of a multinational UN force.
The UN can be made to work. There is evidence of this in the Congo today (without US help), East Timor and in the response to SARS. The UN is as effective or as ineffective as the main players want to make it.
The "notion of building coalitions of the willing" is open to abuse. The coalitions are driven by the strategic goals of the more powerful nations and their actions are not necessarily for the best motives. The motives of such a coalition would always be in doubt.
Mario Napolitano, Corrimal, June 29.
Naturally, multilateralism (which is often code for, "let's support the foreign policies of our geo-political enemies") means that all cooperative, multilateral participants will just suspend their sectional agendas, as if by magic. After all, permanent UN Security Council members that aren't the USA would never put their own interests before the common global good, now, would they?
Anyway, some will be glad to see nothing has changed at the SMH since "Blaming Ourselves: September 11 and the Agony of the Left" was published. Why should Fairfax have an obligation to pretend that any views exist other than their own, anyway?
John Howard has sensibly not capitulated to our Esteemed Grand Mufti on his ridiculous campaign against airport baggage searches. The PM has chosen to believe the Customs version of events, rather than the usual whinge about "racism" and "discrimination" we have come to expect from the Mufti. I am not sure whether the Labor Party's apparent silence on this issue reflects their lack of interest (which is defensible - who cares about whining Jew-haters anyway?) or their adherence to some political agenda that they'd prefer not to mention.
The Mufti seems to think that it is unreasonable that he be subject to a 10 minute baggage search when he arrives at an Australian airport. This is "discriminatory", we are led to believe.
Having been welcomed into Australia, predictably, by Paul Keating and his wooly multicultural ideologues, the Mufti appears to believe that multiculturalism means the law doesn't apply to him. Warm regards must be conveyed to the NSW Labor Party and their limp-wristed Lefty colleagues for their brilliant immigration policies in the late 1980s.
John Sweeney puts the case that the link between depleted uranium and cancer rates in Iraq has been Pilgerised for the sake of propaganda.
Felicity Arbuthnot, Pilger’s senior researcher for the film, wrote in a magazine article published in September 1999, ‘By early 1992, doctors in Iraq were bewildered by the rise in birth deformities — some so grotesque and unusual that they expected to see them only in textbooks and perhaps once or twice in a lifetime. They compared them to those recorded in the Pacific Islands after the nuclear testing in the 1950s. Cancers, too, were rising, especially among the young, the most susceptible to radiation.’
Hang on a minute. Cancers don’t happen overnight. They develop after a latency period of at least four years. The Iraqis reported a rash of cancers in the south from 1992 onwards. The cancers that happened in 1992 cannot, scientifically, have been caused in 1992 — or 1991 when the depleted uranium was used — but at least four years before that. ‘To say any different is ridiculous; it would deny the evidence from Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ Dr Nick Plowman, the head of oncology at Barts, told me.
In the mid-1980s Iranian human-wave offensives almost took Basra, but they were stopped by Saddam’s chemical weapons. The UN found incontrovertible evidence that Saddam used mustard gas against the Iranians every year between 1984 and 1988. When the Iranians came close to Basra, the Iraqis dropped gas on their own people, too. Nearly all of the war was fought in Iraq, not Iran, so that’s where Saddam dropped his chemical weapons.
Mustard gas — sulphur mustard — is carcinogenic and mutagenic. That is, sulphur mustard causes cancers, leukaemias and birth defects. The children of Iranian soldiers who were gassed by Saddam’s men have developed terrible cancers and birth defects. No depleted-uranium weapons were used on them. The children of Halabja, the Kurdish town gassed by Saddam, have developed cancers and birth defects. Again, no depleted uranium was used on them.
There is plenty more for Pilgerwatchers.
2003 is a year of diverse commemorations, in that it is 50 years since the death of Joseph Stalin, and 100 years since the birth of George Orwell.
News Weekly uses this occasion to Cold War softies about Stalin's methods.
It was a long overdue reform, but for those that are interested, Liberty has included a fairly comprehensive list of links at the bottom of the page. The links are intended to be as politically balanced as is possible, although it is quite obvious which websites comprise the greater influence in the cultural and political content around here.
Most bloggers that have been mentioned in previous posts are listed. Other items of interest include private think tanks, media outlets, government agencies/commissions, scientists, and miscellaneous groups. Apologies to anyone who isn't linked; give us a shout and all will be sorted.
Gerard Jackson goes ballistic at the "mutual obligation" policies of the Howard Government.
Studies by the leftwing groups Much Obliged, the University of Melbourne's Centre for Public Policy, the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the St Vincent de Paul Society have roundly condemned the Government's so-called "mutual obligations" regime. For once the left has got it right.
But Gerard, you are considered by many to make Genghis Khan look like a pissant? What do you mean by this?
The Government's idea of a diary for the unemployed is stupid, costly and lacks compassion. It assumes, against overwhelming evidence, that there is a large body of dole recipients who are not really seeking work. Yet how can Howard, Costello and Vanstone, possibly suggest such a body of parasites exist when the ratio of unemployed greatly exceeds the number of vacancies?
The best that can be said for these ministers attitude is that it reveals a stunning ignorance of the cause of our widespread persistent unemployment.
Quite simply, the unemployed have been priced out of work. So long as markets are allowed to clear the present type of unemployment cannot persist. Instead of kicking the unemployed, Vanstone should start kicking union leaders and their mates in the arbitration commission who are responsible for the present level of unemployment.
A fair point here. Hacking the unemployed is very silly when they have been given no chance by the IR Club to gain employment. Of course, Gerard will be disappointed to find that most of those Lefty think tanks actually want to extend the power of the Club, but he has a valid and original point nonetheless.
Advocates of free education ought to ask themselves if taxpayers should be coerced into funding these courses if and when they make their way to Australia.
Certainly, "Knowledge Nation" buffs may seek to figure how greater public subsidies for the universities could make Australia more internationally economically competitive if some of that money was going into "Whiteness Studies".
Now, we didn’t have “Whiteness Studies” back when I was in college. Then, all the rage was multiculturalism, of which I got more than I could handle when, as a freshman, a scheduling snafu forced me into a section of the mandatory freshman-English program bearing the ominous title of “Differences.” There we studied literature through—to use the most pervasive cliché in academia—the lens of “race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.”
What that meant, in application, was that in the first weeks of class, we read books by African-Americans, the theme of which, unfailingly, was hatred for white people. Next we moved on to books by Hispanics, the theme of which was hatred for white people. From there it was books by Asians and Native Americans on—you guessed it—hatred for white people. There were a few variations, including some readings on anti-Semitism and homophobia, but otherwise, the theme was constant. This was a study of oppression, and the oppressors were always white guys.
Oh, but blind racism doesn't cut both ways, now, does it?
As Gregory Jay, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin, puts it, “‘Whiteness’ is that special property unique to ‘white people,’ the sum total of the supposed characteristics, traits, or essential qualitities [sic] of ‘white people.’” It “is a term derived from the historical practice of white supremacy.” The purpose of Whiteness Studies, Jay adds, is “to make visible the history and practices of white supremacy as found in social life, the law, literature, music, politics, and every other realm of our ‘civilization.’”
But the Australian academic Left isn't that bad, surely? They wouldn't demean Australian universities like that, would they? Andrew Bolt has had quite a bit to say, himself.
Last week, The Australian newspaper's brow-creasing Higher Education liftout carried a perfectly serious front-page story with a picture of a London artist wearing a corset over his face.
It reported, without a whinny of amazement, that Sydney's Macquarie University was hosting an international conference of academics, plus artists like this face-flattened Brit, to discuss "Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves".
The conference organiser, Queer Studies lecturer Nikki Sullivan, explained that they would for three days discuss how we pierce, tattoo, brand, stretch, suction and slash our bodies, and how bad people are to judge us for doing so.
She raised the example of people volunteering to have a leg or arm amputated, simply because they do "not feel at ease with it, or would prefer the look or feel of a radically altered body".
It was wrong to dismiss such people, proudly hacking off their healthy limbs, as mentally ill. This was, as the paper put it, actually a "legitimate phenomenon".
"What is self-mutilation and what is body art -- that line is very unclear," said Sullivan, a mother with five tattoos and piercings in her nose and ears.
I can only hope it was the taxpayer that funded such an important conference. Imagine if we left this sort of thing up to the tyranny of the private market sector?
Should we care that our taxes are spent on such stuff?
Oh, yes. It's bad enough that students even at the conservative Melbourne University now spend months writing postgraduate theses on such trivia as "Queer Narratives in 1990s Taiwanese Fiction and Film", "Stripping for Freedom", "Japanese Lesbian Manga" and "Schopenhauer, Sculpture, Pornography and Boy Bands".
Far worse, however, is that the academics who titter at their daring as they trash our fusty fun-crushing mores, seem so ignorant of what they're destroying and so indifferent to the harm they may cause in doing so.
We serious intellectuals save the most important stuff for the humanities.
Take Nikki Sullivan's fashionable pose on voluntary amputation, a sexy topic in cultural studies.
This bizarre fetish was so rare that it was only in 1977 that a psychologist published the first modern case history of what he had no trouble then in calling a psychiatric disorder.
But then it got mixed in with gender-identity politics, which preaches that you can be "trapped" inside a body that's not really "you", and a flick of a surgeon's knife can fix things.
And don't anyone dare say that what needs fixing in the patient isn't the bit between their legs, but the one between their ears.
With self-obsession the new religion, and the body the new temple, it's little wonder that the Internet hosts several chat sites for people with a craze for lopping off bits of their body -- a narcissistic urge some doubtless didn't feel until someone clever suggested it. Said it was "normal".
And so, three years ago, Scottish surgeon Robert Smith -- determined, like so many good people today, not to judge his fellow humans -- obligingly sawed off the legs of two men who'd become convinced they'd look better without them.
So it goes. Robbed of the right to judge, we let barbarities spread, even in our universities -- barbarities that nibble away at our civilisation and claim, as always, the most vulnerable.
It can't be long before we are brainwashing 17 year olds into believing that the "white race" is inherently evil (while typically ignoring what "non-white" people can get up to, as progressive academics ritually do).
What's been happening lately down at the 'tard school?
Well, little Kunte has been spending a long time in that toilet.
Once again, he spent a good 15 minutes in there, but I didn't hear any flushing or gurgling sounds. I knocked on the door and didn't get any response. Finally I opened the door to see what was going on.
Kunte was laying face down in the middle of the bathroom with his eyes closed. Immediately fearing the worst I rushed over to him to see if he was alive. As soon as I sat next to him and started looking for vital signs he sits up and looks at me. In a frantic voice, I asked him if he was alright, if anything was wrong. He smiled and said,
"No I was just sleeping."
"Sleeping?!?", I inquired, "If you needed to take a nap you could have asked to go to the nurse, why are you sleeping
in the bathroom".
"Because the tile is cool."
Maybe we could keep them awake with a brand new computer?
The administration of my school in their infinite wisdom decided it would be a good idea to give our classroom a new computer.
Never mind the fact that we have a filing cabinet that is older than any of the staff, and has a history of trying to kill my students. They decided not to replace that, but instead replace our perfectly functional computer. If I sound bitter, it’s because I am, but the administration soon learned the error of their ways.
Our classroom originally had an Apple IIe computer. The tards were allowed computer time as a reward for doing something correctly, i.e.. going a full day without swearing, not hitting anyone for a week, not shitting their pants, etc.
This computer was very simple to use. The aids put a game disk in the drive and turned the computer on. Most of the tards who manage to get computer time know how to mash the space and enter keys, and that tends to be all that their games require. This computer never gave us a problem, other than occasionally having to pull shit out of the keyboard or turn it off and back on again because it got dropped. It managed to sustain drool, temper tantrums, flying objects, and repeated unplugging.
The same could not be said for our new computer. First of all we had to get all new games. The tards didn’t like this. It was frustrating enough for them to learn how to play the games the first time, having to do it twice was just unthinkable. This lead to a general dislike of the new computer amongst the tards.
One day Leigh saw one of my aids insert a CD-ROM into the CD drive to install a program. As soon as the aid turned her back Leigh had hit the eject button and slammed her hand on the tray hard enough to break it.
This made the situation much worse. Not only didn’t the tards like the new games, but we couldn’t even install them. After disciplining Leigh (she lost computer time indefinitely), I called the librarian (our schools PC technician) to tell her what happened. She said she would bring down a new CD-ROM and install it around lunch time. I asked her if we could have our old computer back, and she told me that the new one was far better, and I should really forget about the old one. This pissed me off. No librarian bitch is going to tell me what’s best for my class. I decided it was about time Jason got some computer time.
It took Jason about 3 minutes of frustration before he kicked the monitor off the table and hit the computer with his chair. Apparently he couldn’t figure out how to get the games started. The librarian gave us back our old computer because the cost of replacing our new one was just too much. Jason got punished, I took away his computer time indefinitely, or more specifically until I need another computer smashed.
It seems that some people haven't taken too nicely to a blog by a couple of "special school" teachers that appears to be poking fun at their retarded pupils.
"All I want to say is that this site DISGUSTS me. I have worked with the mentally challenged. They are some of the nicest, sweetest people I have ever known. I know that it's a stressful job. But, if you can't handle it, then get out of the profession & go work w/ penguins in Antartica! I can NOT believe that a teacher can be so insensitive! I have a physical disability. If I had you for a teacher, I'd demand that you be fired!"
Unfortunately, some folk could not keep themselves from playing the "sexuality card".
Try and be yourself and not coverup your undoubtably queer personality when loving and caring parents come to pick up their kids?
Naturally some religious types would have an opinion on this site:
PLEASE DO TALK TO SATIN, YOU WOULD BE DOING EVERY ONE A FAVOR BY BURNING IN HELL! God wouldn't want to have you in heaven!
"YOU ARE GOING TO HELL."
"You nasty bitch. You should only burn in hell."
Me? I'm torn. I really want to email them to tell them where they are likely to go when they finally leave the world, but then there is something about this blog... Could I really be a heartless bastard?
UPDATE.
Anyone noticed how the people listed under "Hate Mail" tend to be parents of disabled kids or generally unattached, whereas many under "Love Mail" are former disability specialists, occupational therapists and teachers?
Thanks to the Bunyip for dicovering the pinko plot to turn Australia into a failed Sweden. It seems that the Sydney Morning Herald's Adele Horin has been lifting a lot of heavy weights lately, including large passages from ACOSS reports. If ever there was evidence of a media/welfarist conspiracy, here it is:
... millions of people do not earn full-time wages, and many (such as pensioners and unemployed people) have no earnings at all. When their incomes are taken into account, the middle income for all Australian households is just $31,000 per week (sic). That is, half of all households live on less than $31,000 per year. -- ACOSS
if you include the millions, such as pensioners and unemployed people, who have no private earnings, you find that half of all Australian households live on less than $30,000 a year -- A Dill Horin
Australia is the sixth lowest taxing country among the 30 OECD countries for which data is available. Among the 'rich' OECD countries, only the United States and Japan raised less revenue than Australia. -- ACOSS
Australia is the sixth-lowest taxing country among 30 OECD countries and among the "rich" OECD countries, only the United States and Japan raise less revenue. -- A Dill Horin
...some people confuse average and marginal income tax rates, believing that the marginal tax rate applies to all of their income... a person on $60,000 paid a marginal tax rate of 42% on their last dollar earned, but an average tax rate of just 26% on all of his or her income. -- ACOSS
[Australians] confuse marginal tax rates with average tax rates. Encouraged by obfuscating politicians, many think the marginal rate is applied to all their income, but it is not. A person on $60,000 pays a marginal tax rate of 47 per cent on the next dollar they earn. But they pay an average tax rate of only 26 per cent over all their income. -- A Dill Horin
Australians are not over-taxed but they are unfairly taxed -- ACOSS
Just because Australians are not overtaxed does not mean we are fairly taxed -- A Dill Horin
Sickening isn't it? Journalism is at a lower level than politics the way it is going. People cannot think for themselves, only group think their way to an acceptable consensus on issues. ACOSS puts out propaganda that Australians pay too little tax, Adele Horin, a "journalist", runs with it, and the public are drawn to believe this constitutes "news".
And Media Watch pretends nothing is going on.
The sorts of people that would disapprove of conservative G-G's would naturally approve of this proposal to the British Government to ban smacking of children. The vast majority of Britons, who, unlike transnational human rights lawyers, are calm and sensible people, will be revolted by the idea.
Apparently, the "human rights lobby" doesn't believe that Britain has the right to political sovereignty and is citing the expected UN Conventions to put a halt to it. Liberty says the idea is a load of codswallop. There is nothing wrong with "reasonable chastisement" of children, because children are incapable of reason. Smacking does not hurt very much, nor does it leave long lasting damage. How these UN-lovers expect parents to reason with an irrational four-year-old is beyond understanding. It would be interesting to see how many of these bleeding hearts have ever had children.
In short, it is an absurd and unworkable idea that will only escalate (through undisciplined youths assaulting people) the problems that it sought to contain (violence).
Liberty believes our new G-G is a fine choice, not just for the qualities he will take to the office (he will be a kind of right-wing William Deane, minus the bleeding heart) but because of the sorts of people who will inevitably dislike the G-G.
It will be interesting to see when the campaign to remove him starts. There is no question there will be a campaign, given that G-G Michael Jeffery supported the war against Saddam, and had this to say on Vietnam:
One can only speculate what the region would have looked like if North Vietnam had been allowed to take control of the south unimpeded in 1954 and used the substantial battle-trained forces and resources it had available for employment elsewhere in the region. Similarly on the potential impact on the Malayan emergency, Thailand and Indonesia if there had been no resistance in South Vietnam.
There was thus, in my view, very sound strategic reasons for the commitment to Vietnam, including the buying of breathing space for the other key players in the region. The problem was not so much in the strategic decision to support South Vietnam but in the strategy employed to prosecute the war. Fundamentally, the political and military objectives were never synchronised – a fatal mistake that was not repeated during the Gulf War of 1990 when the political objective was simply to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait and the military commanders were given the freedom of action, the resources and the time to do that without political interference.
I believe passionately that Vietnam was a just cause in the circumstances of the time.
Also, Jeffery committed the cardinal sin of suggesting that Aborigines should be "assimiliated" into the rest of society. It has only just become acceptable to say that immigrants should be assimilated into society (and so they damn well should), thanks in no part to the left-liberal hysteria that obfuscates most cultural issues, and such is the loaded nature of the word. Jeffery meant no harm by it.
Howard is on a winner here. He's found someone to distract the cafe latte set from serious policy criticism (as if that was ever hard) while reinforcing the sorts of values that Howard cherishes. It was a very smart political appointment.
Easily the blog comment of the week would have to go to this reader of Gareth's website.
Look for the pundit under the name of "FirstIraqThenChiraq".
All journalists are equal, but some, it seems, are far, far more equal than others. Take Philip Adams, for example, who has committed at least one incontrovertible case of "creative lifting" (some people have used the word "plagiarism"), and quite recently has written possibly the worst article about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq ever seen...at least outside of the student press. Philip Adams, who implied that Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction after 1995, and not to mention misrepresented the testimony of Hussein Kamel, is a very lucky journalist indeed.
For he, unlike Piers, Janet, and friends, is able to write blatant falsehoods without a peep from Media Watch, the self-selected "monitor" on bad journalism from the ABC (our politically neutral "impartial" national broadcaster that is not at all biased). Tonight, Media Watch, after a nine day "investigative" period, failed to notice the actions of the worst journalist in News Limited, and instead spent it's programme investigating star signs, online polls, and some banter about shares between News and Fairfax. Not that this isn't important of course, but then Media Watch spent some weeks arguing with Tim Blair over the origins of a US flag, or something like that. It makes you wonder how much time they are prepared to spend on uncovering far more dangerous mistruths as propagated by hacks. It would be nice to believe Media Watch when they said they would take on "lefty" journalists when they slip up. However, it appears they are not prepared to really put the boot in when that might involve digging up inconvenient facts that may contravene the entire ideology of the ABC (and admitting without intending to that Saddam Hussein was not a misunderstood peace-loving leader who had every intention of disarming).
Australian universities are, as we know, a disgrace. They are filled with courses that are devoid of anything remotely resembling intelligence and rigour and are filled with rubbish like queer theory, wimminism and the like. The people who study the nonsense humanities and social sciences are typically the same people who demand increased public spending for the universities, and of course "free education", because presumably the whole community receives a social benefit from a lunatic education. They believe that free education is an individual "right" to be fully paid for by consumers, small and big business, and PAYE employees. This is rent-seeking but it is called "social democracy".
I digress.
Many American universities are far worse, as Joe Sabia writes. In fact, "academia" accounts for little more than partisan political activism in the name of a "progressive" intellectual agenda.
Cornell University’s professors and researchers are becoming increasingly brazen in their ideological war against President George W. Bush. During the last several weeks, a professor in the Department of Asian Studies has developed and advertised a new course on President Bush’s attempt to create “an imperial empire.” At the same time, a university-funded Latino research center is proudly selling propaganda posters that compare President Bush to former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.
That's right, he is just like Adolf Hitler.
Asian Studies Professor Brett de Bary is promoting a course that he says will be “team-taught” by the Cornell Forum for Peace and Justice (CFPJ). This course will not permit students to do much critical thinking since the instructors have already reached conclusions on the major issues to be covered. The class, entitled “Empires and Imperialisms,” is being targeted to students affiliated with the CFPJ Coalition and is described by Dr. De Bary as follows:
“I'm trying to get as much information as possible from colleagues throughout the university about events that are ALREADY SCHEDULED for the Fall Term which offer critical perspectives on "Empires and Imperialisms." This can include historical and cultural analyses of prior empires and colonial regimes, as well as work on any aspect of the Bush administration's military, economic, and environmental policies, the dismantling of civil liberties, detentions and racial profiling, and so forth.”
Dr. de Bary has already reached his conclusions. He has decided that (i) the Bush administration has created a colonial empire; (ii) that the Justice Department has dismantled civil liberties; and (iii) that the administration has endorsed all racial profiling, which (if it were true) he equates with racial discrimination. Of course the good professor is entitled to his point of view, but these conclusions should not be the basis of an academic course at a prestigious university.
Yes, we mustn't profile people. Which is funny, because the people who oppose racial profiling for police and justice matters are typically the same people who are forever demanding greater hand-outs in the name of "affirmative action".
Anyway, read the whole thing. I'm coming around to the view that Australia should have a "National Curriculum Review" sometime soon, where we just gut the Humanities and rub out at least a third of the units. That will be fun. People who have never done a day's work in their lives will finally be put through the humiliation of having the private sector heap scorn on the last 20 years "work" they have down on their CV, because their "experience" will be worth nothing in the real world.
Also, we could look at the idea of "zero base budgeting". This means that once in a while, the Federal Budget is wiped clean and started from scratch. All social and expenditure programmes are abolished and have to justify their on-going existence. It's an easy way to savage the size of government, because the onus is on "big spenders" to make the case for their programmes, rather than the "razor gangs" having to wade through all the stop-gap arguments for keeping unjustified or inequitable programmes. Perhaps it wouldn't be done in every Department. But certainly it may be worth looking at as a concept outside of the private sector.
Let's hope that no bleeding heart judges get any silly ideas about "parole" and "restorative justice" for these despicable individuals.
Christopher Hitchens has a (fairly) recent article on Paul Wolfowitz. I am looking forward to seeing his book "A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq".
Tim Blair was the first out of the blocks to link this article by Michael Duffy.
To those who aren't aware, on September 14 1976, the Federal Parliament passed a motion expressing "sincere regret at the death of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, expresses to the people of China profound regret and tenders its deep sympathy to his family in its bereavement".
It is such a shame we missed our chance to pass a bereavement motion in 1945 expressing "sincere regret at the untimely passing of Adolf Hitler". Why don't we do this sort of thing more often, pass motions of grievance at the deaths of mass-murderers? Simon, John, what do you say? It adds life to a normally dull parliament. Saddam is still on the cards, Kim Jong Il could be the next victim of regime change, and Robert Mugabe is 79. Hell, we could even give Martin Bryant the Fraser send-off. After all, Bryant had a better human rights record in Port Arthur than Mao had in China.
Speaking of counter-cultural madness, I was fortunate enough in 2000 to be elected as a National Union of Students delegate from UWA. Everything that is atrocious about radicalism was on display at their 2000 National Conference. Anyone who wants to find out about the sorts of views most student politicians hold should get a copy of NUS policy volumes. The 2000 policy volume, for example, is required reading for all counter-counter-culturalists.
Take the Multicultural Policy (Miscellaneous 4.0), for instance. There is no explanation of why "multiculturalism" is a good thing, just a demand that it must be adopted in the preferred manner of the NUS.
4.2.4 NUS understands multiculturalism to entail:
...
4.2.4.3 a recognition that the most dynamic and progressive society is one in which people constantly engage in cross-cultural social interation (;) being exposed to different ideas and practices;
4.2.4.4 a truly global out look (sic), that is one which sees Australia not as a society of its own but a sub-set of humanity which exists across all borders; and
4.2.4.5 the equalisation of socioeconomic power between cultural and ethnic groups.
How does the NUS want to achieve these ideas?
4.2.5.1 education campaigns run by government and multiculturalist organisations to instill multiculturalist values in the broad community;
4.2.4.2 resources and programs from government to redress existing socioeconomic inequalities that are linked to culture and/or ethnicity;
4.2.5.3 an open and non-discriminatory immigration policy that provides individuals from AUstralia and abroad the opportunity to move freely across its borders and seek refuge, find employment, meet relatives and friends or study;'
4.2.5.5 an education policy which ensures that curricula at primary, secondary and tertiary levels provides a diverse range of cultural perspectives and allows students to maintain their culture while being educated;
Even more odious, the NUS links racism with monoculturalism:
4.2.7.3 if organisations such as ours do nothing then the beneficiaries of our inaction (are) those whose interests are in the maintenance of a monocultural and racist society.
This is as good an insight into the deranged mind of the political extremist as any. Australia is not a society, we are told, but a subset of humanity across borders. And if people do not want to believe this, then we have no choice but to run massive government propaganda campaigns (4.2.5.1), turn our education systems into vehicles for brainwashing (4.2.5.5) and let in any immigrant who wants to come here regardless of their qualities (4.2.5.3). Perversely, despite Australia not being a society and presumably having no distinguishable culture, we must introduce a redistributive tax and transfer policy that doles out goodies according to race and culture (4.2.4.2). Tick "Muslim" on your tax return and receive a bigger rebate.
This is a bizarre form of New Left cultural relativism which simultaneously states that all cultures are equal (which is nonsense) and all cultures are better than Australian culture (which is inconsistent). Despite that Australia is one of the oldest democracies in the world with one of the best human rights records, our culture is illegitimate. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a racist. It speaks volumes for the humanities and social sciences of our universities that the majority of elected delegates to a conference of (mainly) undergraduates could believe such totalitarian hogwash.
But cultural policy is not where it stops. The NUS opposed the Olympic Games (Miscellaneous 5.0). I am not kidding. In the policy it is implied that Australia's human rights record is equivalent with China's (5.1.2), that Australia has a genocidal history that continues "to this very day", and that the Olympic Games are bad because they "rely on a spirit of nationalism and competition". "Australian nationalism is a destructive and racist force", we are told. NUS couldn't resist from playing the Indigenous Card by stating that "the Sydney 2000 games will be held on stolen land". To the extent that the doctrine of Terra Nullius has been revoked, practically everything occurs on stolen land and should therefore be condemned. Many parents of NUS delegates procreated on stolen land and should certainly be condemned.
The NUS dumped the following under "Education Policy".
1.1.2 NUS recognises that under capitalism the University deos not function as a site of critical learning, but rather as a training ground for industry and big business, ensuring the continued entrenchment and replication of an exploitative system. NUS believes that genuinely accessible and equitable education is a central tenet of any truly democratic system and that a fundamental restructuring of the education sector, and of society, is necessary in order to produce a genuinely equitable education system.
In other words, all entrepreneurs and business-owners are criminals who are controlling the universities, and graduates should not get jobs because this only encourages criminal behaviour.
There is, of course, Sexuality and Queer Policy. The NUS rails against "consumerism" in the queer community, stating:
10.1.1 NUS recognises the existence of the 'pink dollar' as exploitative of queer students.
10.1.2 NUS recognises that the overt consumerism inherent in this concept benefits capitalist privileges and polerises members of the queer movement, giving advantages in particular to white, upper class, gay men.
Having railed against queers for getting too rich, the NUS leaps to the defense of queers from non-English speaking backgrounds. I couldn't find anything about Aboriginal queers, but I'm sure it's in there.
I used to believe that the sickness of the NUS was an accident, that the sheer lunacy of the majority of delegates (and cowardice of the minority) was only really because political extremists are attracted to easy sources of perceived political power. But then it became clear on reflection that the NUS is the natural and inevitable outcome of our corrupted and debauched tertiary education system in Australia. Undergraduates must have got these perverse ideas from somewhere, and indeed we can find out where. Women's Studies, Queer Theory, Sociology...all of these nonsense courses of sloppy analysis and vigourous brainwashing had to produce pupils who fundamentally are abnormal fools. The product of a tertiary education is a function of the inputs - loony left lecturers and terrible textbooks. It will take a government of some courage to cut out the fat that has accumulated in our universites, particularly over the last 30 years.
Greg Sheridan, who John Pilger refused to debate over Iraq, has given another back-hander to the usual Pilgerites:
ONE thing I've always admired about the Left in Australia is its obsession with history – not understanding history but controlling it.
For an ideological movement, controlling the past is much more important than preparing for the future.
In particular, the construction of certain defining myths that determine the orthodox interpretation of key events is a critical task.
In this way the Left, which normally loses the election, can win the symbols. This process has the incidental result of making our history perpetually disgruntled, as actions overwhelmingly approved at the time are later interpreted as dishonourable.
One thing I've always admired about Greg Sheridan is his take-no-prisoners approach to journalism.
The WMD argument is, of course, nonsense. We know that up to 1998 Hussein had vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons. We know this because the UN inspectors discovered the stuff. When Hussein threw the inspectors out in 1998, he kept the WMDs. There is a long record of his having claimed he had destroyed all his WMDs, only for us later to discover that he had not destroyed them.
The idea that from 1998 to 2003 Hussein had destroyed all his WMDs but refused to show the UN that he had done this, thus needlessly enduring sanctions, is inherently ridiculous. Every serious intelligence agency – American, British, Israeli, our own and many of the European agencies that had independent information – concluded that Hussein still had chemical and biological weapons.
Despite all the facts, not a few history textbooks in 20 years time will no doubt be claiming that Saddam was the only one telling the truth.
Speaking of Sheridan, I have in front of me an article by him in the November 1989 Quadrant (back when he was welcome in Quadrant) titled "The 1960s God That Failed". He really has it in for the counter culture (as do I), and he didn't store much goodwill for his favourite targets back then either. Here are some passages:
"Indeed the immaturity of the Australian New Left, the almost masturbatory nature of their involvement in politics, is evident from their almost complete lack of concern for human rights in Vietnam once the Americans were driven out and the South Vietnamese defeated."
"It was as if the whole Western world had taken LSD in its morning coffee. The world went mad and it went mad at what had seemed its sanest points, the universities. University presidents embraced black power storm-troopers, free speech was denied on campuses, the whole principle of scholarship was undermined. Bourgeois life was turned into a bizarre caricature of itself. Therapists recommended perverse sexual practices more odious than the conditions they were meant to ameliorate. Teachers and even physicians embraced the notion that hallucinogenic drugs could enhance creativity and sensitivity. Every form of traditional authority was cast in the role of villain... Most especially did this apply to parental authority as youth was glorified and the decade's most representative youths themselves descended into a kind of drug-induced solipsism in which me and my feelings were where it was at. Policemen were pigs, university administrators were fascists and democratic politicians war criminals. War was also declared between the sexes. Men were informed that they were all guilty of complicity in the crime of rape, since rape, and the threat of rape, were central to the maintenance of patriarchal, capitalist authority."
As much as I'm glad I didn't have to grow up in such a deranged decade, one has to wonder how much any of the above is really different from the state of campuses such as Monash, Melbourne and UWA.
Circumstances have compelled Liberty to create an editorial policy on censorship at this site.
As much as censorship is a deplorable concept, and one should not believe that anyone has the right to shut down debate for their own purposes (usually for financial or political gain), it has been necessary to delete at least five comments from this blog.
The weren't deleted because Liberty was afraid the power of their arguments posed a threat to the entire political philosophy of this site, nor were they deleted because they were such a successful rebuttal of previous blogs that it was embarrassing to keep them on. The deleting occured because anonymous individual/s attempted to pollute the course of debate with junk posts usually containing silly expressions like "Penis Bird" written 500 times or other childish nonsense.
Some cretin showed their feminist credentials by writing "cunt" over and over again. This is completely illegitimate and will be dealt with. Opposition is always welcome here because it tends to raise the standard of dialogue. The more loony lefties about the better. But "Penis Bird" does not represent a strong case against the culturally conservative philosophy around here, nor does "Squirrel droppings" (or whatever the other posts were saying) refute the cause of micro-economic reform and public sector prudence.
Personal abuse (which is usually false) against Liberty will be forever preserved on this site if it is coming from a clearly identifiable source who doesn't mind putting their thoughts on the record. In fact personal abuse is even encouraged. It is great when opponents cease to attack ideas, as it proves that well known saying from Margaret Thatcher - "They know they have lost the debate when they have to resort to personal attacks" - or words to that effect. Swearing should be used as sparsely as possible (or not at all), but won't be censored. However, anything that is clearly hyper-babble will be struck from the pages immediately, particularly as this site is checked every two hours or so.
Media Watch has yet again failed in its mission to expose journalistic lies, plagiarism and malpractice in its refusal to take Phillip Adams to task over his recent antics in The Australian. A grave shame, indeed.
Adams had committed at least one act of plagiarism, as shown by Professor Bunyip, and has written a highly truth-distorting article in The Australian, yet Media Watch has said nothing whatsoever about this. Could it be that Adams is one of the ABC Untouchables, who must not be criticised for anything? Or is it that Media Watch could not criticise Adams for his latest article because that would entail some concession that Saddam Hussein was not a peace-loving hippy?
Could this be an example of...bias?
Media Watch has until next Monday to finally prove that it doesn't play favourites.
You'd normally expect the sorts of lefties who love mass movements would be harping up non-stop in the case of Iran. Doubly so given that youth and students are by far the largest sector of the Iranian population, and that they have been for some weeks now fighting a war on the streets against clerical fascism. The reaction of the clerics has been typical - beating up students, bashing young women to within an inch of their lives, and breaking up the protests with the most appalling gutter tactics imaginable.
A regime that has an atrocious record of economic management, an absense of the rule of law (roving packs of paramilitary thugs have been "laying down the law" to the students), and little democracy to speak of (and a bigoted, misogynistic system at that) would be precisely the sort of regime that most good "progressives" would be interested in seeing off. Those who marched so bravely in the streets to prevent the "genocide" of innocent Iraqi people and wanted to prevent the massive denial of human rights that would be inevitable under the American empire, would leap to the defense of the Iranian students, or so the theory goes. And America has given strong support to the students without firing a single shot or fighting yet another "imperialist" war.
Alas, it is not the case, as Andrew Sullivan writes. There has been nothing whatsoever from the usual suspects who simply aren't interested in the freedom of long-suffering Iranian youth who seek a more tolerant outward looking democratic system. But where are the lefties? Certainly, as Sullivan points out, they are pretty quiet about it on Indymedia. A visit to the Perth indymedia collective has nothing whatsoever about the student uprising. The only nod in the direction of Iran is to criticise the government for sending back failed asylum seekers to possible repercussions back home. Not that this is necessarily a bad cause. But one often gains an insight into the mentality of people not just by what they say, but equally what they omit.
Nor is there anything on Indymedia proper. That global web of Leftism has nothing at all to say about the students of Iran. It is as if they don't exist. Why is this? Why are rallies against global capitalism, rallies against building shopping malls in nature zones, and rallies against anything but the kitchen sink reported so dutifully, yet an actual mass-movement that could possibly threaten the appalling status quo (and a rotten status quo bereft of morals, legitimacy and benevolence) is thrown aside. Just another bunch of whining Muslims.
Sullivan has a theory about this.
Much of the antiwar left has sadly long since stopped caring about the actual freedom of people under oppressive regimes, except, of course, if their plight is a way to blame or excoriate the United States. The antiwar left's blindness toward the evil of Saddam is now compounded by its refusal to grapple with the next great part of the struggle against Islamo-fascism.
Check out some of the more mainstream publications of the left: The Nation's home page has nothing -- nothing -- about Iran on it. Search for Iran on its Web site and you get more results still gloating over the Iran-Contra scandal than anything that's going on in Iran today. "What Liberal Media?" blogger Eric Alterman has said nothing as the story has unfolded. This magazine has been a little better -- but not by much. The Boston Globe editorialized -- but mainly against what it sees as counterproductive American support for the dissidents. The New York Times has covered the news but has yet to put its full weight behind the story. The BBC, to its credit, has provided several excellent reports.
Sullivan, as a gay activist, takes much of the bigotry prevalent in the Middle East to heart, quite understandably. To hear such fascist nonsense espoused by lunatic mullahs is offensive not only to the people they have oppressed, but to all people around the world. If I were gay, I would be personally offended upon hearing what could happen to me if I was in Afghanistan or Iraq (homosexuality was a capital offense under the Saddamites, as we know). However, not all gay activists have had as much to say as Sullivan has, and in fact many have said nothing at all. The Greens, those wonderful human rights activists (Bob Brown to his credit did speak out against Saddam's oppression of the Kurds back in 1990 - but didn't come to the logical conclusion of seeking to take out the one source of continuing threat to them...Saddam), don't seem to care either.
Whatever the case - Iran is on the brink. Responsible global superpowers ought to have the courage to back the students, and thus it was most refreshing to hear the US administration go gunning for these people, even if their contemporary opponents cannot bring themselves to admit the existence of an organised opposition to Iran's awful government. It makes me wonder if anyone is going to call a General Meeting of the UWA Guild to pass motions of solidarity with the students of Iran.
Professor Bunyip has taken up the cause of accountability for our beloved Phil Adams and of course the ABC.
Truth, Liberty and an Akubra has blogged extensively on Adams' refusal to accurately report the sequence of events starting with the Hussein Kamel interview, and ending with Richard Butler's damning report to the Security Council in 1999. Liberty welcomes Bunyip's excellent addition to the campaign. As we now know, Adams attempted to use an interview involving Iraqi defector Hussein Kamel as evidence that Iraq was disarmed of its WMDs.
It would be good to get more people firing up on this issue, because not only did Adams, as Bunyip points out, completely ignore the fact that Hussein Kamel believed Iraq was biding its time and preparing to replenish its WMD stocks, Liberty has shown that Adams also ignored the fact that Iraq did indeed fulfill the prophecy of re-armament, as proven by Richard Butler's report to the UN Security Council in 1999. Adams implied that Iraq was disarmed in 1995 and that was the end of it. He didn't even bother to read what Hussein Kamel actually said, nor did he bother to go to the UN website to read Richard Butler's reports to the Security Council.
When you combine this latest effort in deception and spin with Bunyip's proof of plagiarism down at Adamsville, you would have a formidable file on Phillip Adams for Media Watch to peruse, astonished at the antics of their pal... before flat out rejecting to report it on their show.
Liberty gives Media Watch until next Monday night to take these two issues on board, or show yet again why they simply do not meet standards of balance and impartiality.
Of late I've been thinking about this Israeli strike against Hamas. When you consider it, Israel is just doing the PA's job for it, as the PA has demonstrated it is utterly incapable of upholding the rule of law. One of the most important parts of the Roadmap is an immediate end to all violence and suicide bombings by terrorist organisations. So really, if the PA simply cannot stop declared terrorists from basing their activities in the West Bank and Gaza, the obvious thing to do is help them. They have nothing to complain about whatsoever when Israel attacks terrorists in this manner.
This is a completely separate issue from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for which there are very good arguments in favour of dismantlement. These latest attacks on Hamas should not derail the peace process, as Hamas have no legitimacy whatsoever. If Abu Mazen has any sense he will support Israel doing his job for him.
I have just read through Margo Kingston's only good prose contribution to politics - Off the Rails. It is something of a travel diary as Margo follows the 1998 One Nation campaign juggernaut around the country, watching with bemusement as chaos reigns.
The book is at many points hilarious. Kingston was a much better writer back then than she is now. She brilliantly captures the mood of total lunacy and insanity that bred within One Nation's shadowy organisation particularly -
-The unprecedented amateurish campaign run by Hanson and her "svengali" David Oldfield.
-The ad hoc and disorganised way of One Nation generally, particularly how they had no capacity for keeping a secret and often casually discussed preferences and campaign strategy as it was being formed around journalists.
-The bizarre relationship between One Nation and journalists like Kingston, particularly her status as almost a media adviser to Pauline.
-The appalling policy statements. Margo described the family policy launch as "sociopathic" and the product of disgruntled men's groups. The most amusing was One Nation's plan for unconstitutional "citizen's councils" to resolve divorce proceedings, to replace the entire structure of family law. And then there was the disastrous "Health Policy" announcement that Aboriginal health programmes will be abolished to pork-barrel the oldies and rurals. "Equality" One Nation style really meant a bizarre reverse affirmative action, all justified under the banner of "equal treatment".
-The hypocrisy of One Nation's complaint on one hand that the media never treated them fairly, yet showing on the other some serious Brownshirt tendencies in closing down press conferences once the questions got hard, and trying to arrest any journalists that dissented. The pathological muddle-headed approach to the media really did harm them. Irrationality was the rule of the day, and One Nation would use demagogue tactics to rile their travelling mob and shout down journalists who tried to reason with them.
-David Oldfield's weird personality. His obsession with his sexuality is covered, particularly his constant reminders to anyone who listened that "everyone seems to think I'm gay", when no one really cared. He had a thing for pulling chicks and telling the world after. Also he had a habit of furiously denying he was prejudiced, while feeding that very impression that he was a bigot in his asides to journalists. Something of a compulsive-obsessive. Margo toys with the idea that he is a warped genius, but realises that he in fact is a fool.
Overall, the hysteria, irrationality, incompetence, hype and emotions are captured very well in this book. Of course, Kingston allows her cultural prejudices to cloud her judgements as you'd expect. She refuses to accept that the Keating Government's cultural radicalism could have fuelled the backlash, but rather would blame economic rationalism like all the other parrots. The Keating Government's economic policies were of course one source of One Nation's anger which they sought to redress with "Easytax". But to blame hatred of minorities on National Competition Policy, which many of Kingston and her ilk like to do, is just hogwash - the reactionary backlash lay in the insufferable climate of political correctness caused by successive Labor Governments' refusal to allow any cultural dialogue outside of what the progressive elites found acceptable. By their refusal to accept the ingrained cultural conservatism of most Australians and their blind attempts to engineer Australia towards something that most people would not countenance, Labor Governments were making inevitable an equally large swing in public sentiment to the opposite extreme. For a few years people maintained their rage, but happily the Howard Government has found a stable compromise outside of the banter of the chattering classes, without making Australia's cultural immutable and closed to evolution. This is a significant achievement that owes none of its success to the "progressives".
Kingston accuses everything but the kitchen sink of "racism" but shows up the dark side of One Nation. Indeed one of their Queensland parliamentary colleagues nostalgically mused about the virtues of the good ol' days when Aborigines lived on the fringes of pastoral leases and worked for very little - and Pauline had much trouble denying the prejudice that often lay beneath the surface of One Nation. This and more would be disturbing to most readers.
There are two saddening passages in the book which suggest that Kingston believes that 1) anyone who opposes racial affirmative action is a racist, and 2) anyone who opposes an apology to the "Stolen Generations" is also a racist. This, too, is utter codswallop. She clearly has no idea what a racist is, and just wants any excuse to shut down whoever may disagree with her pet agendas. These sorts of attitudes are a hangover from the cloistered intellectual climate of the Keating Government where some myths just go without saying and are never questioned.
Aside from Margo's silly and slightly elitist ideas about Australians, her book Off the Rails is a necessary insight into what was Australia's Agony Aunt Party. It was the closest thing to a political Confessional that we had. Everyone got to focus their grievances in an incompetent political machine that was going nowhere and would threaten little, and therafter we could continue on, washed of the twin evils of Keatingism and Hansonism, neither of which offered a positive direction for Australia.
From reading Off the Rails (and other material) I have become convinced that a brief and sharp period of prejudice and bloodletting was inevitable in this country, and the blame must lie squarely at the feet of Paul Keating. Further, I am glad that One Nation was the vehicle for this prejudice and scapegoating. Indeed they did us a service by combining their prejudiced polices with complete incompetence and lunacy. Why? Imagine (as some have said) what would have happened if Jean Marie Le-Pen had an Australian counterpart waiting in the wings in 1996, ready to pounce on the moral panic of the electorate. Imagine someone with the political competence of Le-Pen, the eloquence, and indeed the all round intelligence. Le-Pen is a very smart man who has probably done much damage to France. If Hanson was anything but a lightweight, it would have meant a number of One Nation members in the House of Representatives, and twelve One Nation Senators for the foreseeable future. Economic policy would have turned into a living nightmare, not to mention the sorts of appalling compromises governments would have to make on things like guns and family benefits. Our foreign policy would be a load of screaming nonsense.
The National Front in France is a machine that regularly gets 10% to 15% of the vote. Rather than institutionalising extremist nonsense, it is better to flush it out of the system after addressing the grievances of the electorate (of course it is better to stay in touch with the electorate in the first place and avoid sneering at their social values). Australia has achieved that, and perhaps now we can turn to hosing out the loony lefties who have captured the Senate for their own purposes and look like doing as much damage as One Nation could have done with the same number of seats.
So the panic is over, the emotion has subsided, and the prejudice receding. People have registered their anger, got it over with, and moved on. This would have to be a positive development. Off the Rails is a good insight, with a sprinkling of bad attitude. Future Labor governments (if there are any) should never forget the division, the hysteria and the nastiness of this short period in our history. Further, they should not forget the humiliation felt by many collateral victims of the Dark Years. Many south-east Asian immigrants felt hurt by what happened, and many innocent people verbally attacked. Labor governments must learn to stay in touch with community feelings and aspirations, rather than just abusing the intelligence of ordinary people, if they want to avoid a repeat of the Hanson years, and a return of the "Howard Laborite" phenomenon among voters. The likes of Kingston will never assist them to understand the causes, but at least we know what the symptoms look like for future reference.
Kim Beazley's political career is effectively finished after today's leadership ballot came up a victory for Crean by 58 to 34 votes.
It is sad to see Beazley go like this. I believe, despite his political blunders over the years, he is a fundamentally decent individual who you could trust with all facets of government if he were Prime Minister. He is not the kind of Labor member who believes that national security is something to be smirked at, nor is he someone who would neglect any part of society because they didn't vote for him. He is well rounded enough to be convincing on foreign policy, defense, education, health, and (between 1996 and 1998) taxation.
Simon Crean probably will look a little stronger now, and he will gain a spring in his step that may help voters warm to him. I hope not, given that I will be voting for Howard over Crean, but to Crean's credit he has done well and may build on this victory. As unfit for office as Crean is (particularly given his fundamental ignorance of foreign affairs that could lead to him harming the national interest if he were Prime Minister), he may yet show that he has some qualities we weren't aware of.
He has gained ever so slightly from this - perhaps enough to redress the damage caused by the leadership challenge.
Phillip Adams has made yet another ill-advised foray into foreign policy in what could well be Media Watch's finest hour...should they choose to pursue this issue. Media Watch, an ABC programme that claims it is prepared to take on left wing journalists if they stuff up, will no doubt seize this opportunity with glee. Let this be their coming of age.
The latest piece from Phillip Adams carries the title "Defective Intelligence". It is about Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction, so you might already have an idea about what Adams may be thinking.
ENDLESS, relentless repetition. The same September 11 images over and over, until the frontal lobes threatened to collapse like the Twin Towers. And we got it in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Not visual, but verbal. Just the words: Weapons of Mass Destruction. Sledge-hammered. Gregorian-chanted. Mind-numbing.
But there weren’t any WMDs. They’d disappeared. As mysteriously, as magically, as the Iraqi Army. As the elite Republican Guard. As Saddam Hussein himself, who’s presumably moved in with Osama and Elvis.
So what are we dealing with? An honest mistake by Washington? Or was the world’s most powerful government lying to its people – and the world? Or were the intelligence agencies lying to the government? Or is it something far worse? Even more dangerous?
Good start, Phillip. Where are those WMDs indeed? Is it really possible that every single western intelligence agency could have been wrong in assessing that Iraq was lying about their weapons capabilities? Or are our leaders beating the issue up? I'm curious, but back to Phillip.
It would hardly be a surprise to learn that the government had lied. Governments do that all the time. Washington lied to the voters for years about the Vietnam War, about the Gulf of Tonkin, My Lai, the bombing of Cambodia, the body count. You name it and they lied about it. And if the WMDs were merely lies to justify a war that Bush was determined to have - if the WMDs were, as many suggested, “weapons of mass distraction”, then it would only confirm the suspicions of sceptics, cynics and conspiracy theorists.
True, true Phillip. But then journalists lied quite a bit about massacres themselves. Who heard about the 1968 Hue massacre where Viet Cong barbarians murdered over 5,000 innocent Vietnamese, more than 30 times the number of people that were killed in My Lai? Nor did we hear anything about the million people that fled the North after partition, some 10 times the number of people who left the South. And academics, such as Noam Chomsky, lied quite a bit about Cambodia, particularly in the despicable manner of suggesting that Cambodian refugees were somewhat insane and deluded and probably not telling the truth about the Khmer Rouge genocide. Imagine if Philip Ruddock said such a thing about Muslim refugees? But we all know that lefties never say sorry. All this proves is that no one can really be trusted until what they say can be proven beyond reasonable doubt. So back to Phillip.
Intelligence agencies, not just the CIA, are notoriously unreliable in their advice to US presidents – as such fiascos as the Bay of Pigs attest. As did the collapse of communism which, somehow, the CIA had failed to predict. Despite all the moles and spies and surveillance technology, the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon’s own Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) can get things spectacularly wrong. What greater evidence of these shortcomings could you need than September 11 itself?
Indeed, events can be very unpredictable. The CIA has made many mistakes. But where is this going?
But today’s concern is the possibility – the likelihood – that when it came to Saddam’s WMDs, the Bush administration wishfully misinformed itself. A group calling itself “the Cabal”, a team of advisers and analysts based in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, working to a brief by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, helped persuade the president, who needed no persuasion, and the public, who did, that Iraq was chocker with biological, chemical and perhaps nuclear WMDs.
To do this, they relied largely on information provided by INC – the exiled Iraqi National Congress. At the same time, they turned a deaf ear to the protestations of the UN weapons inspectors – most notably Hans Blix – and the DIA. And the Cabal also marginalised the CIA.
As W. Patrick Lang, the former chief of Middle East Intelligence at the DIA, said: “The Pentagon has banded together to dominate the government’s foreign policy, and they’ve pulled it off. They’re running [Ahmad] Chalibi [head of the INC]. The DIA has been intimidated and beaten to a pulp. And there’s no guts at all in the CIA.”
But surely Iraq had something, didn't it? After all, inspectors had not been in Iraq for years, and from past experience, inspectors have to be detectives at the same time. Not finding WMDs does not mean they do not exist. Did Hans Blix conduct any interviews with Iraqi scientists outside of Iraq, given that he had the authority to do so? No, in their final report to the Security Council on the 28th of February, UNMOVIC stated they were only "examining the practical modalities" for such an idea. UNMOVIC had only 202 staff, with 84 inspectors. In a country the size of...you know. So where is Phil really heading?
Any rumour, hint, exaggeration, self-serving nonsense or misinformation that supported the WMD hypothesis was eagerly embraced – while doubts, cautionary notes or evidence to the contrary went into the political shredder.
For full details on the farce, I commend “Selective Intelligence”, Seymour Hersh’s splendid work for The New Yorker, published May 12. There’s no doubt that Iraq had had WMDs since before Gulf War I. As Hersh reminds us, “What has been in dispute is how much of that capacity – if any – survived the ’91 war and years of UN inspections, no-fly zones and sanctions that followed. In addition, since September 11, there have been recurring questions about Iraq’s ties to terrorists. A February poll showed that 72 per cent of Americans believed it was likely that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks, although no definitive evidence of such a connection has been presented.”
Well, that's a bit of a side issue. Americans can think whatever they want. Surely Phillip Adams would have something to say about certain high level defectors who have presented undeniable evidence of WMD's?
Because Washington would only believe what it wanted to believe, would only listen to what it wanted to hear, the reliance on the INC and Iraqi defectors was almost desperate. And remember, any defector who wants to enjoy his defection in relative affluence will be inclined to overstate his case. It’s obvious that for many defectors, exaggeration wasn’t enough – many opted for fictions and fantasies.
Many, but not all. The case of General Hussein Kamel is most instructive. He was in charge of Iraq’s weapons program and defected to Jordan with his brother, Colonel Saddam Kamel, in August 1995. Hersh describes the crates of documentation they brought with them – detailed information about efforts to develop WMDs. They were thoroughly interrogated by UN inspectors and then, the following year, were invited back by Saddam Hussein with the promise of forgiveness. The dills returned to Baghdad and were promptly killed.
Indeed. Kamel had quite a bit to say about Iraq's weapons programmes. A transcript of an interview with Hussein Kamel can be found here. And Philip's big "Aha! Gotcha!" lies here:
Last September, Vice-President Cheney told the world that Hussein Kamel’s story should serve as a reminder that “we often learn more as a result of defections than we learn from the inspection regime”. In October, Bush upped the ante, relying heavily on the Kamel defections and their evidence that the regime has produced “more than 30,000 litres of anthrax and other deadly biological agents . . . a massive stockpile that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions”.
Significantly, the rest of Hussein Kamel’s interrogation was not reported. For he went on to emphasise that the chemical and biological warheads had been destroyed, in many cases in response to ongoing inspections.
If the Bush administration was so wrong about Iraq’s WMDs, how can we trust it when it refocuses its energies on Syria? On Iran? On North Korea? It doesn’t need much intelligence to be deeply suspicious of US Intelligence – or of the distortions that Washington markets to US voters, and to us.
Yes he did say that Iraq destroyed its chemical and biological warheads. But there are two curious issues here. Firstly, it is revealing what Phil chose to omit with regards to Hussein's interviews. Secondly, he seems to assume that nothing important happened after 1995. But first things first.
To imply that Iraq destroyed their weapons and basically gave up and went home is a very dubious claim. In 1995 Iraq was disarmed, according to Hussein Kamel. But let's look at some particular issues. What did Hussein Kamel say about Iraq's banned missiles? Particularly the hundreds they purchased from the Soviet Union.
"Not a single missile left, but they had blueprints and molds for production."
Indeed. So missiles had been destroyed, blueprints and molds remain, so what about those two scud launchers that remain at large?
"these two launchers are with the Special Guards. They are hidden in the same location where computer disks with information on nuclear programmes are. If you find one you will find the other."
So why keep these launchers? Because, Kamel continues, it is the first step to return to production. "All blueprints for missiles are in a safe place." Iraq wanted back in, and they knew how to do it. It was merely a matter of finding the resources again. I liked Kamel's statement that "in 1968 Iraq went to the Soviet Union" (ie, when the Ba'ath Party consolidated power), which says a lot about Iraq being a "US puppet".
In the context of a regime that knew exactly what it was doing, but had clearly put its plans on hold, one would have read Phillip Adams' article and concluded that nothing happened after 1995, the point at which Iraq was disarmed.
Unfortunately, Phil forgot to read his Australian only days before. He would have found an article by Richard Butler, former Executive Chairman of UNSCOM, on the 5th of June. This tenure was after 1995, and Richard Butler was chief weapons inspector from 1997-99. Here's what he found:
Our no-notice inspections were often compromised. Iraqi intelligence had penetrated us. Whenever our inspections found nothing, Hussein's deputy and inspections point man Tariq Aziz would insist how this proved Iraq no longer possessed illegal weapons.
I often found his claims difficult to accept because our experts had good reason to believe the opposite. This argument reached its height in early 1998 when we discovered significant Iraqi production of the most dangerous chemical warfare agent – VX. Iraq denied it had ever made VX.
We proved that this was not the case. The Iraqis then moved from denial to minimisation, saying they had made only 200 litres of the substance – one minute drop of which on the skin can kill in three minutes. We then proved that they had made at least 4000 litres and had loaded it into missile warheads.
Indeed. Iraq started from nothing in 1995, possessing only knowledge, and built up said arsenal in less than three years. Leaving aside the implications this held for sanctions and blockades which didn't work, what does it say about the honesty and integrity of Saddam Hussein and the futility of spending years trying to contain him?
The full text of Richard Butler's final UN report can be found here. It was, of course, not just VX nerve gas (which Hussein Kamel stated had a long shelf life) that was left outstanding. There were mustard shells that Butler referred to in his report:
Iraq declared that 550 shells filled with mustard had been "lost" shortly after the Gulf War. To date, no evidence of the missing munitions has been found. Iraq claimed that the chemical warfare agents filled into these weapons would be degraded a long time ago and, therefore, there would be no need for their accounting. However, a dozen mustard-filled shells were recovered at a former CW storage facility in the period 1997-1998. The chemical sampling of these munitions, in April 1998, revealed that the mustard was still of the highest quality. After seven years, the purity of mustard ranged between 94 and 97%. Thus, Iraq has to account for these munitions which would be ready for combat use.
There are plenty more gripes in the report. These are some of the main ones. So if Iraq went from nothing to producing a lethal arsenal of WMD's and related materials, why did Phillip Adams neglect to discuss this? A personal issue with Richard Butler? No, Butler was anti-war and therefore a virtuous man. Is it because Butler dared to work around Iraq by cooperating with western intelligence? Possibly. The usual smear tactic used against Butler is that he "worked with the CIA". Yeah. And it sure made his life a lot easier when it came to springing the Iraqis.
But the point of this lies with Phillip Adams. Why did Phillip Adams glibly state that Hussein Kamel "went on to emphasise that the chemical and biological warheads had been destroyed, in many cases in response to ongoing inspections" in a way that suggests the matter was settled back in 1995? Why didn't Philip Adams make at least a passing reference to the final years of UNSCOM - "Oh yeah, they might have found some VX or something". If Philip Adams did go through all this, he might have found something in Hussein Kamel's warning that Iraq was prepared to kick off its illegal missile programmes.
I tried a google search for Adams' claim that Bush, apparently relying on information from Hussein Kamel, stated that Iraq had produced over 30,000 litres of anthrax, amongst other things. Instead of Bush, I came across a speech by Alexander Downer including the following:
When UNSCOM left Iraq at the end of 1998, inspectors were unable to account for a substantial arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, including:
o 360 tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agent
o 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve agent
o up to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals
o enough growth media to produce 25,500 litres of anthrax spores
o and over 30,000 special munitions.
Indeed, we know from UNSCOM's experiences that Saddam hid these stocks and programs from inspections.
That was over four years ago.
Today, UNMOVIC has identified further Iraqi chemical and biological weapons unaccounted for, including:
6,500 chemical bombs, with about 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents
a number of 122mm chemical rocket warheads
laboratory quantities of thio-di-glycol, a precursor for mustard gas
indications that VX agent has been weaponised
two types of missiles – the Al Samoud and the Al Fatah – that exceed the permitted range of 150km.
Adams is an unreliable figure when it comes to facts, but was Bush in fact drawing on UNSCOM, US intelligence, and the Kamel dossier when he made his infamous claim? Again, Media Watch might be able to get to work.
Adams states in the second paragraph - "but there weren't any WMDs" and later concludes that this may have something to do with Hussein Kamel's contention that all WMD's were destroyed pre-1995. I hope Media Watch, or some other appropriate body, could take up this issue and ask Adams precisely why he left out everything UNSCOM (and UNMOVIC) have done in the last 8 years when he sought to write an article on Weapons of Mass Destruction. He may even have something on the reliability of western intelligence. But his history of WMDs is highly shoddy.
Everyone who knows me would say that I place a premium on civility in political debate with a deep reluctance to engage in unnecessary muckracking. It is always important to engage your political enemies in rational dialogue, even if they are a pack of money-grubbing Stasi-clones.
However, today I was perusing a blog that I don't normally visit, Niall's. The blog is naturally bad, coming from a place on the political spectrum that should be described as "wishy washy Kingstonism". But this posting was particularly awful, to the point where I found myself asking of Queenslanders "what are they putting in the water over there?".
So bad was this screed that it cannot go without comment.
do we *really* need this?
AUSTRALIA is considering a colour-coded terrorism warning system similar to the fire danger signs on the nation's highways. Federal Government senior officials have revealed the plan in Senate hearings.
Naturally, any discussion of "terrorism" or "security" will offend the usual cabal of namby pamby Lefties, as it would suggest that there are bad people out there in the world who wish to do evil. One mustn't let themselves think such things, because it may lead one to conclude that Australia is a nation-state with borders that need enforcing - a very dangerous conclusion.
The question I have to ask is, "do we *really* need this?", and even more to the point, why? Australian culture is and always has been one of 'she'll be right, mate!', come what may. This doesn't mean we ignore those things which impact upon our lives, but we don't let those events rule our lives either. Neither should we, in my estimation.
Of course, if you're about to get blown up by a gang of rabid Mullahs (for instance), then it would be nice for the Government to inform you of your imminent demise. Happily we don't accept rabid Mullahs in our immigration stream anymore, which is more than can be said for certain former Labor governments so besotted by multiculturalism that they saw fit to allow lunatics who praise suicide bombers and rail against Jews to become permanent residents. Niall doesn't seem to care about terrorists, you see, because:
If I'm fated to die in some kind of terrorist event, then so be it. If it's meant to be, then It's meant to be and no poxy government sign telling me how frightened I need to be to accomodate its sense of morality will ever make me think otherwise.
Certainly, Niall has no problem being blown to bits by fanatics. I, for one, do, and would like to keep these criminals as far from me as possible. The Government's sense of morality, that Niall disapproves of, is that it believes it should inform its citizens whether they should be out in the cafe strip, or locking their doors and bricking up their windows and stocking up on canned food. If terrorists are about to blow up innocent people, it would be nice if the Government gave them sufficient warning so they can at least catch the bus home. "Not so" say some!
No!! emphatically no!! scream it from your rooftop, "no fucking way!" I refuse. I will not have my life dicated by some colour-coded method of state manipulation of my anxiety level.
Don't let the colours control you, Niall. The evil is all in the colours! After railing against colours, Niall plays the fridge magnet card.
This current government spent $18.6 million of fucking fridge magnets and scabby brochures just this year and for what? so they can feel good?
Niall at this point is moving dangerously close to calm and reason. As if realising this, a hysterical ending is served up to the punters.
No, Johnny! Take your fucking colour-coded crap and shove it where the sun don't shine. You'll not govern my thought processes, which is what you & your kind ultimately aim to do.
Yes, that's what Johnny's trying to do, isn't it? He wishes to CONTROL YOUR MIND. Please Labor, Greens, Democrats. Save us from this scheme of mind-coercion! Before it's too late! There are no terrorists! It's all made up!
You'll notice that Niall has categorised the posting "politically oriented". This is what some people call "politics", is it? I think the Queensland Democrats have just found someone to be number 5 on their Senate ticket.
Loser Hip Hop group The Herd have announced that all white people are the same, and must therefore go back to England, in a carefully calculated racial slur against the Italian, German, French, Irish, Swiss, Danish, Croat, Serb, Bosnian, Belgian and Spanish migrant communities.
The latest pack of morons to pollute the airwaves have been spreading bile in their attempts to recruit more lumpen-intellectuals to the cause of racial separatism. What other conclusion could a serious commentator come to after listening to the hysterical track "77 percent/Tampa Tantrum"?
Here are the lyrics, courtesy of Manas.
so i'm left sitting here, staring into a beer
shaking my head at the same ol' loathing and fear
stranger in my own land, can't understand
how the very word australian has been damned
i fucking hate myself - take ozi from my name
erase this endless shame, forever casting blame
if you don't act the same will i destroy you?
everyone looks the same beaten black and blue
and so fuck you - you fuckin redneck pricks
fact is the only fuckin shit that sticks
watch as i tear the very skin from my face
so none'll see my race - my deep disgrace
you not even from here in the first place!
and those that are you wanna further debase
nup - no more - never again whether by fist or pen
i will defend - cos i'm at a loose end
the shattered remnants of ozi dignity
i'm a skip/whitey/round eye suprise me
by using your shrivelled brain to please explain
how the clever country has gone down the drain
we rode the sheep's back now the sheep ride you
if this is how it is don't ever call me true blue
i denounce my ancestors, wounds still fester
if you say it aint so i suggest ya wake up
this country needs a fucking shake up
wake up - these ***** need a shake up
nation of immigrants - height of hypocrisy
talkback? squawking hacks - won't relax
until jonesey, zemanek + laws are all axed
77 percent of aussies are racist
and if you're here - i'll say it your faces
rich redneck pricks still hold all the aces
so i'll buy ya a beer - with an arsenic chaser
better off dead? is that what i've said?
tempting to take for all the blood you've shed
just a couple of fools can make us all seem dumb
that's why mainsteam media makes me so fuckin glum
just anglo reality - intellectual cavities
channel 9 fostering prejudiced mentalities
i won't be a casualty - just mention casually
that i won't stand for you shit-eating bullies
preying on peeps without a mainstream voice
most of youse stay silent but i've got no choice
wake up - this country needs a fucking shake up
wake up - these ***** need a shake up
so i've yelled my lungs out but to no avail
that you're a stranger yourself is the sting in the tail
captain cook was the very first queue jumper
and it was immigrant labour that made australia plumper
enough is enough - whiteys pack your stuff
we don't wanna live in england? - well that's just tough
time for us to wake up
It is time for someone to wake up. We know now what happened to the clever country. It did not go down the drain, as suggested by this "song". It is just on hold for a while as the more sensible minds in this country wash away the self-loathing, belly-gazing, white-baiting goober that poses as modern "progressive" intellectual discourse.
If the mainstream media of Australia is a symptom of the inherent fascism of 77% of us, and is therefore worth writing a critical song about, perhaps The Herd will follow up on this musical tome with a sequel focussing in particular on some of the less tolerant elements of the Arab world. While Australians say quietly "oh, we aren't too sure about the credentials of some of these queue-jumpers", Arabs shout from the rooftops "Jews use human blood in their pastries".
Simon Crean's latest weapon against big bully Kim Beazley...his mum!
Don't forget to pack a big lunch for Simmo, Mum, Monday's gonna be a long day.
George Orwell was a fine essayist because he forced people to think hard about where they stand. Like many tracts in the bible, Orwell's writings are timeless and applicable to modern events. This could be partly because politics is a function of human nature, which, as we all know, doesn't change. He was in many ways a prophet, too; again, human nature (particularly the fundamental self-loathing nature of anti-westerners) is pretty much immutable.
Orwell would be the epitome of "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition" - opposing a status quo without giving comfort to the nation's enemies. This, of course, caused many lefties to hate Orwell. It was once said that conservatives hated him because he was a socialist, and socialists hated him because he told the truth. Today, everyone is prepared to pick and choose from him and claim him as their own - an Orwell a la carte of sorts. But when people from the Socialist Workers' Party say "Oh Orwell was a great man", do they really know what they are saying? For example, Orwell's brilliant essay - Notes on Nationalism (which Age journalist Pamela Bone has cited before).
There are some insights in this essay that are applicable to every single anti-war movement since the traitor Communist Party opposed the Second World War (because the USSR had a pact with the Nazis until '41).
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. ("No War"; "War is not the answer"; "Peace, not war")
But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. ("Iraq is trying to disarm"; "The Soviet Union was great for health and education"; "The Khmer Rouge were not trying to commit genocide"; "The USA is the Third Reich of our times")
Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. (For example few peaceniks mentioned that in Iraq homosexuality was a capital offence under the Saddamites, that Saddam Hussein's relatives trolled the streets for women that they then kidnapped and raped, and that Hussein gassed ethnic minorities...particularly if said peaceniks were too busy chanting "racist, sexist, anti-queer, Howard is not welcome here!")
Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. (Classic point. Remember 9/11? Bali? Tel Aviv? Any western country which takes the obvious step of seeking to destroy its enemies becomes either an "imperialist", "a violator of civil rights", "anti-Muslim racist", while nothing whatsoever is said about suicide bombing against civilians).
It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. (Et tu Pilger?)
Is this evidence enough that today's Nazi-Left would have thoroughly despised Orwell were he still around? Let's see what he had to say about the kinds of people who would exclaim "Great news, the Iraqis (Saddam) are holding out in Basra!"
Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, "enlightened" opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
A fine take-down. These words should be tattoed in fine print on the smug little faces of every sanctimonious fellow-travelling Greens Party member who did their best to keep the Taliban in power, and, when push came to shove, could not bring themselves to oppose the most racist, sexist anti-queer regime on the planet, Ba'athist Iraq. No, they would not even support a political assassination. Speaking of political assassinations, I would see that as a fairly good starting point on the issue of Iran.
There is plenty that more conservative types could disagree with Orwell on. Socialism is perhaps not my cup of tea. And I don't particularly agree with his definition of nationalism, although many of the observations are no doubt correct. But there is civil disagreement, loyal oppositionism, and then there is George Galloway. In times of conflict there is a fine line between disagreement and treachery (treachery is usually fashionable among self-styled intellectuals; it is cool to love nazis), and all good radicals should never cross it.
Labor is on the verge of a complete annihilation, if Michael Costello is to be believed.
On the basis of polling conducted several weeks ago, this would have been the result for Labor. It would have won no seats in Queensland. That's right. No seats. It would have won one seat in Western Australia. It would have lost nine in NSW, four to five in Victoria and two to three of the five seats in Tasmania. Apparently they did not poll in the Northern Territory or the ACT on this occasion. I was not told the South Australian numbers.
But Simon says that there has been a bounce. There sure has. Labor has moved from becoming the junior coalition partner to the Greens in the House of Representatives, to a respectable slaughter of the scale of the 1975 election.
In short, the party's latest secret polling shows Labor has moved from a political cataclysm unparalleled in its history to just a common or garden disaster of the 1975 variety. Cold comfort, I would have thought, for all the future Labor leadership aspirants who, even on these latest national Labor polling numbers, would likely lose their seats. How would Labor look without Craig Emerson, Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan, Mark Latham, Lindsay Tanner and Jenny Macklin, to say nothing of many talented backbenchers? Stephen Smith would be the last man standing.
Perhaps Labor could manage without Wayne Swan, Jenny Macklin and Craig Emerson. These people are place-men and time wasters. But Kevin Rudd? Where would foreign policy go once the most formidable intellects of the ALP Right are vanquished? It makes one shudder. Not that we should be worried, because a rabidly anti-American Labor Party will be separated permanently from the Treasury benches. Australians are not New Zealanders, and I respect the courageous ACT Party that have stood up to perhaps one of the most incompetent and appalling heads of government, Helen Clark.
Helen Clark's NZ Labour Party are of course the very model of what much of the Labor Left are planning for Australia over here. Reduced defense spending to the point where Australia would not even be able to commit forces to conflicts that the Lefties may actually support (let's not pretend that Australia could have sent more than a platoon musketmen to East Timor if the Labor Left had their way on defense in the years before). A foreign policy of managed decline and lost opportunities (Clarke has managed the US alliance so badly - with her irrelevant policy on Iraq plus the usual humbug over nuclear shipping - that ANZUS does not exist in any meaningful way. It is now AUS) where Australia is wiped out of bilateral trade negotiations. This will at first be denied, but then justified on the grounds that free trade is bad. An economy based on higher taxes and stagnant to negative real wage growth. Low economic growth, more money for statutory commissions, and discriminatory taxation scales based on race. Everything that would offend a good cultural conservative would be exported from New Zealand to Australia.
But we needn't fuss, because they will never get into power. Australia has never really had a Prime Minister from the Left of the ALP, and never will. However, the Labor Party is in a sick state, compared to its form in the 1980s. The leadership struggle has highlighted this. Once Simon Crean has gotten rid of the Bomber (and therefore Labor's last chance to rescue itself from total humiliation) he ought to release in full the secret polling figures that the ALP has conducted. He should have the courage to reveal that the Federal Labor Party is almost finished and then ask the obvious questions as to why. Otherwise the cause of political labour will silently and slowly choke to death never to return to office.
After almost two weeks of non-activity, I've decided to beat Gareth and Rob back into the ring. I apologise to my loyal readership consisting of some guy, some other guy I can't remember, and my Welsh Springer Spaniel.
This from Frontpagemag.com:
When I, a proud American of Arab decent and Muslim faith, took a stand on behalf of the liberation of my oppressed Iraqi brethren, the ASU Muslim Students' Association personally attacked me for not being a real Muslim and announced to the ASU student body in editorials in the student paper that I Oubai Mohammad Shahbandar was a hater of Arabs and Muslims. There was no press conference by the president of this university or anyone else in his administration in behalf of this Muslim victim of Islamist hate.
It really is quite appalling when the concept of morality is monopolised by the lazy totalitarian ideologues of academia.
I have been trying to keep up lately, by putting on a post or two a day, but I regret to say I shall have to have another of my infamous "time outs".
You see, I have been selected for jury service starting tomorrow. This may involve a week of work (but probably not), although it depends on whether I make the cut. As I intend to wear a suit and bow-tie to what I hope will be a case involving a poor drug addict, then perhaps not.
The common law might get a bit of a shake up over the next few days, so I suggest you all start stockpiling water and canned food as civil anarchy ensues.
Credit to Tim Blair for digging this one up:
Denouncing the United States, hundreds of former employees of Saddam Hussein's Information Ministry are protesting against the loss of their jobs following a US decree dissolving the ministry.
"America is against human rights. American democracy in Iraq means poverty and unemployment," they chanted.
The US civil administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, sacked more than 5,000 staff who used to run Iraqi state television, radio, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) and several newspapers, when he abolished the ministry a week ago.
"It is an unjust decision," Abdul Mutaleb Mahmoud, former journalist at al-Qadissiya newspaper, said.
Oh, yes, Abdul, it was undoubtedly the most significant violation of human rights in the entire Iraq war.
Exit Australia is a psychotic death-obsessed cult of extremists. Dr Philip Nitschke is addicted to death. The voluntary euthanasia lobby will (perhaps consciously, perhaps unwittingly) destroy the entire fabric of society and undermine individual self-respect, costing many innocent lives.
This may sound like hyperbole. But then the deathists do bring these accusations upon themselves, when you think about it.
The voluntary euthanasia lobby was created (under the leadership of Dr Philip Nitschke) for these reasons:
EXIT Australia is formed by the Voluntary Euthanasia Research Foundation (VERF Inc.) whose nation-wide membership has consistently expressed strong support for pressure for humane legislation for the rights of the terminally and hopelessly ill to be brought to bear and coordinated at a national level.
VERF, which was constituted in 1999 as a research body to investigate technical options for the terminally ill, has in recent years filled the role of a national organisation, initiating and supporting the initiatives of others, on a national basis, but without the constitutional and structural means to do so as effectively as required.
Note that Exit Australia stresses the current "prohibitive legislative" regime, as well as invoking the rights of the "terminally ill". In other words, they want people who suffer pain and are certain to die soon anyway to die "with dignity", as they put it. Nitschke himself has helped people to die. He assisted several people to "exit the world" in the Northern Territory before the Howard Government passed legislation (The Howard-Harradine Act, if you will) overturning the Northern Territory laws.
How were these people outed? Well, the first person to die was Bob Dent in September 1996.
Both Bob Dent and Esther Wild had a terminal illness (cancer) causing severe pain and suffering; were fully informed about their disease, its prognosis, options for treatment, and of the ability of palliative care to minimise their pain and suffering; moreover, they were of sound mind, were making persistent enduring requests for assistance in dying, and were not acting from external duress. These facts were confirmed by at least two experienced medical practitioners. Further a psychiatrist had concluded that they were not suffering from treatable depression.
Bob Dent, after due consideration, pressed a button indicating his decision to end his own life, and went to sleep within 30 seconds, and died within 10 minutes.
And who could humanely argue against Bob Dent's right to "press the space bar" three times, in a carefully considered decision, and leave the world peacefully? These crusty pro-life conservatives have to "get with the programme". Well, yes. Maybe we ought to consider the case of Nancy Crick, as highlighted recently by James Murray.
LAST Wednesday, Exit (Australia), an organisation devoted to voluntary euthanasia, observed the anniversary of the death of Nancy Crick, a Queensland grandmother who opted to take her own life, aided and abetted by Philip Nitschke and a bizarre group of 21 spectators.
Exit prides itself on selling more than 200 keys to Crick's home, so that many more than the number present when she died still had de facto access to her house in an expression of solidarity.
But it makes you ask: Who was really sick in this publicity charade? The rationale, that she was old, unwell and had cancer, was belied by her doctor's report that she was not terminally ill.
But wait a minute. What does this have to do with an organisation that has "has consistently expressed strong support for pressure for humane legislation for the rights of the terminally and hopelessly ill to be brought to bear and coordinated at a national level"? Are Exit Australia really arguing for the right to "end the pain" and opt for death when death is certain anyway, or are they arguing in favour of suicide generally?
Dr Nitschke is a man who has delicately stepped around the law by trying to not "encourage suicide", but simply give information about the sorts of things that might cause death. Leaving aside the fact that they held up the case of Nancy Crick to be some kind of example for others, some people may be concerned by the certain statements by Nitschke as implied here:
Dr Nitschke ended his talk with an inspired quote from Bishop Desmond Tutu:
"to break an unjust law is a moral imperative; not to break an unjust law is to collaborate with it."
It is a fair assumption that Desmond Tutu was talking about apartheid or the criminal activities of the quasi-Nazi South African National Party (who held office before Nelson Mandela). In the context of euthanasia, Nitschke's statement is very worrying indeed. In fact, given that he is supportive of the right of people who aren't terminally ill to euthanasia, then he seems to be lending weight to the idea that any laws that could prevent this behaviour are unjust and therefore invalid. If you don't like the laws of the land, call them "unjust" and it's alright to break them. This is precisely how communists and anarchists justify their destructive and often murderous activities which are neither legitimate nor just. It reflects a Jacobin mentality, common among political radicals, where the rule of law is derided as "criminal", which can in turn justify any number of criminal acts.
Clearly the voluntary euthanasia lobby has moved markedly from a position of delivering "justice" to the terminally ill, to a position of supporting euthanasia for anyone, while using the language of "compassion" as a cover. Does this not justify the "slippery slope" argument that we religious types have used against the legalisation of euthanasia? Does it suggest a kind of obsessive, quasi-Jacobin attitude amongst Philip Nitschke and his minions?
Remember - Philip Nitschke travels around the country giving advice to people on the sorts of methods that might kill them. He doesn't help in any way, but he does try to spread information on it. Now, people with clinical depression, alcoholic problems and others are one step closer to "dealing with their problems" and Philip can wash his hands clean of it. Nitschke is arguing for assisted suicide for anyone, not euthanasia. He wants people to think less about solving their problems, and be able to simply kill themselves if they so choose. He wants to make it easier for them.
And where to now? Well, it appears Exit Australia are investigating a "peaceful pill". Just pop a pill and lie down, dear, and all will be alright. In fact, a quote attributed to Dr Nitschke is very chilling indeed. Now we are talking about making death pills available in the supermarket so that "those old enough to understand death, could obtain death peacefully at the time of their choosing". If it was available in a supermarket, presumably anyone could buy it. Does Philip propose any safety measures to stop the depressed, the drug addicts and the alcoholics writing themselves off in a state of hysteria? Or does Dr Philip propose a sure way to make all notions of the sanctity of life, respect for life, or the right to life, virtually meaningless? Is that what we really want?
A far cry from the original scenario of Bob Dent, is it not?
That prophet of death, Philip Nitschke has unveiled his latest death machine. Apparently he launched his contraption at a conference to discuss, yes, death. If anyone here is planning their death, but is a little cagey about jumping in front of a train...FEAR NOT! Now you can suffocate in peace with the all-new Nitschke Carbon Dioxide Bag.
"The only side-effect is sudden death," Dr Nitschke said, insisting he was not trying to be trite.
What a relief! Death is a much preferred side-effect to incontinence, drowsiness, or losing my appetite.
Says Philip:
"Dying is a natural process like child bearing - you can do it yourself and you don't have to have a white coat and nurses standing alongside the bed."
Indeed it is. It is now a "convenience", easily accessible, and you can do it in the comfort of your own home. But there's just one teency drawback with our brand new consumer luxury. It is very much a solo performance.
The main drawback from the carbon monoxide device was that the dangerous gas prevented relatives and friends being present to comfort people as they died.
Nitschke may be an altruistic hero - champion of the disabled, the sick and the humiliated. But is there also a slight chance he may be a closet goth and a pathological death-obsessed lunatic?
Having succeeded in almost destroying ATSIC, and undermining any public goodwill towards the body, Geoff Clark has virtually buried himself. The junket that is ATSIC will be ended soon enough.