Instead of stepping up as a party of opposition, Labor has thrown Tony Abbott a mass surveillance lifeline and indicated it will support his attack on our freedoms, writes Scott Ludlam.

This earnest and reasonably accurate tweet from Labor Party headquarters caught my eye this morning, and momentarily seemed to capture everything that is broken about Australian politics:

"The worst Prime Minister in Australian history, mortally damaged from a series of self-inflicted political disasters, gropes towards the only thing he thinks can save him: fear. To terrify the Australian people into putting up with him until the 2016 election."

 

To this end, he is clutching at laws to force Australian telecommunications providers to entrench passive electronic surveillance across everyone in the country: a two-year mandatory data retention regime.

Condemned by the Australian technical community, media organisations, the legal fraternity, privacy and civil liberties organisations from across the political spectrum - and described in 2012 by Liberal MP Steve Ciobo as "akin to tactics that we would have seen utilised by the Gestapo" and by the Victorian Privacy Commissioner as "characteristic of a police state" - there is no doubt that this is bad policy pulled into the service of bad politics.

So what does the Labor Party propose to do when the "worst Prime Minister in Australian history" demands we all submit to mass surveillance in the hope he can squeeze a few points out of the next Newspoll?

You saw this coming, didn't you: Labor proposes to cave in. Tough talk about protection of journalists and their sources has come to nothing; evidence tendered by everyone from the Law Council to the Communications Alliance has gone unheard. Instead of stepping up as a party of opposition, Labor has thrown Tony Abbott a mass surveillance lifeline.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-27/ludlam-we-need-this-opposition-to-oppose/6269504

 

 

Uri Avnery is without doubt the most intellectual, philosophical, prescient leftist Israeli seer I have ever met. Like TS Eliot, he has a habit of using the fewest words to tell the greatest truth. Every essay he writes, this reader always says the same thing: Exactly! Yet, for the first time in 40 years, I disagree with the great man.

He has just suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu’s agreement to address the US Congress at the invitation of Republicans tomorrow – two weeks before an Israeli general election – and Barack Obama’s decision not to see the old rogue, has destroyed Israel’s bipartisan support in America. For the first time, says Uri, Democratic politicians are allowed to criticise Israel.

Absolute Tosh.

Congressmen of both parties have grovelled and fainted and shrieked their support for Bibi and his predecessors with more enthusiasm that the Roman hordes in the Colosseum. Last time Bibi turned up on the Hill, he received literally dozens of standing ovations from the sheep-like representatives of the American people, whose uncritical adoration of the Israeli state – and their abject fear of uttering the most faint-hearted criticism lest they be called anti-Semites – suggest that Bibi would be a far more popular US president than Barack. And Bibi’s impeccable American accent doesn’t hurt.

And his aim – to earn votes for himself and to destroy the one foreign policy achievement within Obama’s grasp – will have absolutely no effect at all on Israeli-US relations. When Bibi made himself the laughing stock of the UN Security Council – by producing an infantile cartoon of an Iranian bomb with a red line in the middle, indicating that Iran could build nuclear weapons by the end of 2013 – his charade was treated with indulgence by the American media.

read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-difference-between-america-and-israel-there-isnt-one-10078658.html

 

 

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Asked about Dyson, West takes the high road: “I just want him to address the issues, you know. Let’s talk about Wall Street domination of government, let’s talk about the “drone presidency”. Let’s talk about Edward Snowden and massive surveillance, let’s talk about Chelsea Manning, let’s talk about police brutality.”

In full flow: “People say, well you’ve been harsh on the president – it’s always tied to his policies. If I called him a ‘black puppet of Wall Street’, it’s not the puppet that needs to be stressed, it’s Wall Street that is the major concern, and the fact that he has not been a countervalent force against Wall Street domination of the government ... We live in a state of emergency; we don’t have time for these little narrow narcissistic exchanges.”

West says the Obama administration is neglecting racial and economic crises. “You’ve got a black president, a black attorney general, a black head of homeland security, cabinet secretary. Every 28 hours a black and brown person is shot by police or a security guard – not one federal prosecution of a policeman for those shootings. So those black faces in high places do not translate into justice for poor and working people who are black and brown and white and others.”

 

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/09/cornel-west-australia-is-on-the-path-to-us-style-fascism

 

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Australia has had closer ties to fascism than previously believed, writes Peter Henning.

FOR MANY YEARS, it has been de rigueur in Australia to dismiss any comparison of local reactionary right-wing political organisations with European fascists of the 1930s, especially Mussolini’s regime in Italy and Hitler’s regime in Germany. 

In general terms, attempts to draw parallels between the hard right fringe of the Australian political spectrum, in its various manifestations, and fascism of the 1930s, is usually met with howls of derision and condemnation, usually on the basis that it is offensive to the reality of the Holocaust, the attempted genocide of European Jews.

We should remember, however, that back in the 1930s, when Mussolini was in power in Italy and Hitler was Germany’s Chancellor, there were plenty of Australian conservative politicians, business leaders and members of the military establishment who were profoundly impressed with Mussolini’s and Hitler’s successful destruction of trade unions, freedom of the press and political opposition.

Australian Prime Minister Joe Lyons was impressed by Mussolini and, in 1938, Robert Menzies expressed his "admiration" for the achievements of Hitler’s regime. An important context of Australian support or sympathy for fascism was that it crushed "communist" or "socialist" trade unions, promoted white racial, cultural and religious superiority, and made things nice and cushy for the industrial oligarchs and the anti-democratic aristocratic establishment.

Menzies, their icon, was an idiot too. 

"History will label Hitler as one of the great men of the century" - Robert Menzies, Perth Mirror June 1939.

3 months later the World was a War.

50 million dead.

Antecedents to the highly-secretive Old Guard were established in Australia in the early 1920s to fight the ALP and its "socialist" agenda, formed and funded mainly from within the socio-economic-political conservative establishment of NSW. They were actively supported by the Bruce Federal Government and used to violently disrupt Labor meetings and pit returned servicemen against unionists, using the propaganda of "loyalty to King and Empire". 

Both the Old Guard and its more public New Guard offshoot recruited about 40,000 members in the early 1930s to destroy the NSW Lang Labor government.

The significant irony for the Old and New Guard was that a number of its senior members in the military establishment between the two world wars would hold senior commands in the AIF during the Second World War, fighting fascism rather than supporting it.

One significant example of this story was the appointment of Lt-Col WJR Scott to command the augmented 2/21 Battalion (called Gull Force) sent to Ambon in 1941. According to Professor Joan Beaumont, who wrote a history of Gull Force, Scott was a key member of the King and Empire Alliance, and likely

‘... responsible within the Alliance for recruiting a secret army which was intended to take over the State in 1922 should the Labor government attempt to introduce "Bolshevik’"measures.'

In 1925, Scott was apparently asked by Bruce to recruit 500 men to assist police ‘in the event of there being civil disorder when two waterside workers’ leaders, Thomas Walsh and Jacob Johnson, were to be deported’. The High Court of Australia ruled the attempted deportation illegal, so Scott’s paramilitary force was not mobilised.

In 1930, Scott was a leader of the Old Guard and in 1932 he ‘had plans to oust Lang by force’, and was about to mobilise his troops when the NSW Governor, Sir Philip Game, dismissed Lang. Scott was also prominent during the 1930s is supporting Japanese military expansion into Manchuria and China, a supreme irony, because in February 1942 Scott and Gull Force were captured when the Japanese invaded Ambon.

That was not the end of the story because during imprisonment Gull Force POWs came to hate Scott due to his policy of handing Australians over to the Japanese to be disciplined. They ‘despised him with a venom that was to last through the rest of their captivity and well after the war’.  Scott never attended reunions of Gull Force survivors held after the war.

Scott’s story is salutary, for after 1945 Nazism-fascism was thought to be relegated to the dustbin of history, never to return, just as he became persona non grata with his own men.  Any notions that Nazi sympathisers existed in the corridors of power in Australia during the 1930s were buried or went underground for a generation. 

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/australias-hi...

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And the Nazis infect the Australian parliament about the New Zealand terrorist act...

 

Condolences to the families and to the little country of great peace. Though this is one of the darkest day for New Zealand, it is one of the most shameful day for Australia. 

 

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OK, we need to talk about fascism. Not just any kind of fascism. A particularly insidious kind of fascism. No, not the fascism of the early 20th Century. Not Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. Not Hitler’s NSDAP. Not Francoist fascism or any other kind of organized fascist movement or party. Not even the dreaded Tiki-torch Nazis.

It’s the other kind of fascism we need to talk about. The kind that doesn’t come goose-stepping up the street waving big neo-Nazi flags. The kind we don’t recognize when we’re looking right at it.

It’s like that joke about the fish and the water … we don’t recognize it because we’re swimming in it. We’re surrounded by it. We are inseparable from it. From the moment we are born, we breathe it in.

We are taught it by our parents, who were taught it by their parents. We are taught it again by our teachers in school. It is reinforced on a daily basis at work, in conversations with friends, in our families and our romantic relationships. 

We imbibe it in books, movies, TV shows, advertisements, pop songs, the nightly news, in our cars, at the mall, the stadium, the opera … everywhere, because it is literally everywhere.

It doesn’t look like fascism to us. Fascism only looks like fascism when you’re standing outside of it, or looking back at it. When you are in it, fascism just looks like “normality,” like “reality,” like “just the way it is.”

We (i.e., Americans, Brits, Europeans, and other citizens of the global capitalist empire) get up in the morning, go to work, shop, pay the interest on our debts, and otherwise obey the laws and conform to the mores of a system of power that has murdered countless millions of people in pursuit of global-hegemonic dominance. 

It has perpetrated numerous wars of aggression. Its military occupies most of the planet. Its Intelligence agencies (i.e., secret police) operate a worldwide surveillance apparatus that can identify, target, and eliminate anyone, anywhere, often by remote control. 

Its propaganda network never sleeps, nor is there any real way to escape its constant emotional and ideological conditioning.

The fact that the global capitalist empire does not call itself an empire, and instead calls itself “democracy,” doesn’t make it any less of an empire. The fact that it uses terms like “regime change” instead of “invasion” or “annexation” makes very little difference to its victims. 

Terms like “security,” “stability,” “intervention,” “regime change,” and so on are not meant for its victims. They are meant for us … to anesthetize us.

The empire is “regime-changing” Bolivia currently. It has “regime-changed” most of Latin America at one time or another since the Second World War. It “regime-changed” Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Indonesia … the list goes on.

It very much wants to “regime-change” Iran, which it “regime-changed” back in the 1950s, before the Iranians “regime-changed” it back. It would love to “regime-change” Russia and China, but their ICBMs make that somewhat impractical. 

Basically, the empire has been “regime-changing” everyone it can since the end of the Cold War. It has run into a little bump in Syria, and in Venezuela, but not to worry, it will get back there and finish up eventually.

Now, let’s be clear about this “regime-change” business. We’re talking about invading other people’s countries, and orchestrating and sponsoring coups, or otherwise overthrowing their governments, and murdering, torturing, and oppressing people. Sending in terrorists, death squads, and such.

We have organizations that train guys to do that, i.e., to round people up, take them out to the jungle, or the woods, or wherever, rape the women, and then summarily shoot everyone in the head. We pay for this kind of thing with our taxes, and our investments in the global corporations that our militaries and intelligence agencies serve.

We know this is happening. We can google this stuff. We know “where the trains are going,” as it were.

And yet, we do not see ourselves as monsters.

The Nazis didn’t see themselves as monsters. They saw themselves as heroes, as saviors, or just as regular Germans leading regular lives. When they looked at the propaganda posters which surrounded them (as the Internet surrounds us today), they didn’t see sadistic mass-murderers and totalitarian psychopathic freaks. They saw normal people, admirable people, who were making the world a better place.

They saw themselves. They saw “the good guys.”

This is primarily how propaganda works. It isn’t meant to fool anybody. It is there to represent “normality” (whatever “normality” happens to be in whatever empire one happens to inhabit). It is Power’s way of letting us know what it wants us to believe, how it wants us to behave, who our official enemies are. Its purpose isn’t to mislead or deceive us. 

It is an edict, a command, an ideological model … to which we are all expected to conform. Conform to this ideological model, and one is rewarded, or at least not punished. Deviate from it, and suffer the consequences.

It is a question of obedience, not one of truth.

This is why it doesn’t matter that there is no actual “Attack on America,” and that the Russians didn’t “hack,” “subvert,” “meddle in,” or otherwise significantly “influence” the 2016 presidential election or otherwise put Donald Trump in office. John Brennan and the CIA say they did, and the corporate media say they did, so all Good Americans have to pretend to believe it. 

Likewise, it also doesn’t matter if an organization like the OPCW collaborated with the empire’s regime-change specialists who staged a “chemical weapons attack” on helpless women and children in Douma (because, no matter what the empire did or didn’t do, Assad is a Russian-backed, baby-gassing devil!), or if The Guardian just makes up stuff about Julian Assange out of whole cloth and prints it as news.

This is also why, when The Guardian runs an enormous color propaganda photo of a beneficent-looking Hillary Clinton and her soon-to-be-Democratic senator daughter posing as our last line of defense against the Invasion of the Putin-Nazis, and as the future of Western democracy, and whatever, on the cover of its cultural Review, this isn’t perceived as propaganda. 

Never mind that this woman (i.e., Hillary) is directly responsible for the deaths and misery of God knows how many innocent people in the course of her lucrative service to the empire. 

Never mind that this is the same exact person that sadistically cackled on national television when the empire’s associates anally knife-raped and murdered Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and then transformed a developed African country into a hellish human-slavery market.

For fascists (and authoritarian personalities generally), facts are completely beside the point. The point is to robotically conform to the ideology (or hysterical ravings) of whatever leader or system of power happens to be in charge of things.

Authoritarian personality types are skilled at determining exactly who that is (i.e, who is really in charge of things) and obsequiously currying favor with them. For some, this is an innate talent; others have this talent conditioned into them (or beaten into them) over the course of years. Either way, the result is the same.

Put a bunch of random people together in a group and give them a problem to solve, or a complex project or objective to accomplish. Don’t give them any organizational guidance, just put them in a room and watch what happens.

The first thing that happens is … a “leader” emerges. Someone (or a few people) decides that someone needs to be in charge of this project, and they feel pretty strongly that it should be them. If more than one such “leader” emerges, or if the need for a leader itself is challenged, a struggle for power will immediately ensue. 

The aspiring “leaders” will compete for the support of the “followers” in the group. Sides will be taken. Eventually, a “leader” will be chosen. Occasionally, this will happen openly, but, more often than not, it will happen unconsciously. 

Someone in the group will want to dominate … and the rest of the group will want them to dominate. They will experience discomfort until a “leader” is established, and they will feel an enormous sense of relief once one is, and they can surrender their autonomy.

I assume you’re familiar with the Milgram experiment, but, if not, you should probably read up on that, and maybe read Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality. 

It’s a bit outdated, and over-focused on the Nazis (it was originally published in 1950), but I think you’ll get the general idea. Once you’ve done that, turn on your television, or your radio, or scan the news on the Internet, or walk down any big city street and compare the content on the digital billboards, movie posters, and advertisements to historical fascist propaganda … that is, if your boss will let you leave the workplace long enough to do that, which he probably will if you ask him in that special way you have learned over time that he likes and generally tends to respond to.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get inside your mind. That’s kind of a fascistic thing to do.

Look, the point is, we all have an “Inner Fascist,” with whom we are either acquainted or not. I’m a playwright and a novelist, which means I’ve got a big, fat, Sieg-heiling Inner Fascist goose-stepping around inside my head. 

I invent whole worlds, which I dictatorially control. I put people in them and make them say things. It doesn’t get much more fascistic than that. 

The way I see it, my art is how I sublimate my Inner Fascist, so that he doesn’t run around invading Poland, exterminating the Jews, or “regime-changing” Bolivia.

I’m not a psychiatrist, or a fascism expert, but I figure this is probably the most we can do … recognize, acknowledge, and find some way to sublimate our Inner Fascists, because, I guarantee you, they’re not going away. (If you don’t believe me, go watch that Planet Earth episode featuring the fascist chimpanzees.) 

Seriously, I recommend you do this. Get acquainted with your Inner Fascist, in an appropriate set and setting, of course. Give him something safe to dominate and then let him go totally totalitarian. You’ll be doing yourself and the rest of us a favor.

Ironically, it is those who are not acquainted with their Inner Fascists (or who deny they have one) who are usually the first to make a big public show of loudly denouncing “fascism,” brandishing their “anti-fascist” bona fides, accusing other people of being “fascists,” and otherwise desperately projecting their Inner Fascists onto those they hate, and want to silence, if not exterminate. 

This is one of the hallmarks of repressed Inner Fascism … this compulsion to control what other people think, this desire for complete ideological conformity, this tendency, not to argue with, but rather, to attempt to destroy anyone who disagrees with or questions one’s beliefs.

We all know people who behave this way. If you don’t, odds are, one of them is you.

So, please, if you haven’t done so already, get acquainted with your “Inner Fascist,” and find him something harmless to do, before he … well, you know, starts singing hymns to former FBI directors, or worshipping the CIA, or Obama, or Trump, or Hillary Clinton, or supports the empire’s next invasion, or coup, or just makes a desperate, sanctimonious ass of you both on the Internet.

I’m not kidding. Reclaim your “Inner Fascist.” It might sound crazy, but you will thank me someday.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/11/23/reclaiming-your-inner-fascist/

 

 

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Following the alleged US raid and destruction of a house in NW Syria on 28th October where the notional leader of Da’esh was allegedly living, I spent some time analysing photographs and satellite images of the site.

While the main focus of commentary and scepticism was over whether Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had really died, in the way so graphically and poetically described by Donald Trump, inconsistencies and peculiarities surrounding the existence and destruction of the house went largely unnoticed. 

And there were many! The first report from Al Jazeera, who had a local correspondent walking over the bombed site the following morning, conveniently identified its location near the village of Barisha in a “zoom-in” from Google’s satellite map, and the map displayed in their report was the same as the one that came up when I found it in a search on the 30th October. Inexplicably at the time, the house appeared to have already been destroyed!

Perhaps this also confused Al Jazeera, as they had identified one of the neighbouring houses as the “suspected compound” hit in the strike, despite this house being clearly visible in the video report from Alaa Eddine Youssef which followed.

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/11/21/knocking-off-the-odd-man-out/

 

 

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