Understanding Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt is an intelligent, sensitive and highly informed
columnist. Many of his articles are meticulously researched and rich in detail.

They are also designed to delberately misinform his readers.

It takes an especially perverse mind to devote a career to concealing truth. In this short post I will offer an explanation as to why Mr. Bolt is so dedicated to misinforming his readership.

In my view there are three motivating forces behind Bolt’s systematic and deliberate dedication to obscuring truth:

1) His dedication to a higher cause, namely the protection
of decent society from the Green movement, which Bolt believes wishes to enact a totalitarian Communist anti-human One World Government

2) His assimilation and adoption of systematic deception and
propagandist techniques learnt while an employee of Graham Richardson
in the infamous ANiMaLs section of the ALP.

3) His personal emotional and psychological history as a victim
of bullying.

Bolt The Animal.

As is now more widely known, Bolt had two periods of employment working for the ALP including the infamous aNiMalS or National Media Liason Unit, sometimes described as the ALP’s ‘fearsome attack machine’.

It was during those engagements Bolt was first exposed to – and soon intoxicated by – the journalistic dirty tricks, disinformation and propaganga tactics employed by professional political parties.

Bolt immensely enjoyed these jobs working inside the soulless ‘whatever it takes’ political machine created by Graham Richardson and has ever since dedicated his own efforts as Richardson did, to the achievement of political goals irrespective of truth.

Revealingly, Bolt describes an emotional satisfaction and moral justification in defeating one’s enemies through lies and distortion.

Says Bolt:

“It was just really intoxicating and it was the first time I got that real buzz you get from politics which is really dangerous.

You know, that space where you’re so convinced that your side is right and
in those conditions the other side is immoral and therefore you’re excused
all sorts of things.

You start thinking:
“they’re immoral so why should you be nice to them? Why should you follow all the rules?’’’

Spin

Because Bolt has a personal and moral commitment to distortion, because Bolt’s primary mode of opertion is to distort the arguments of his opponents, then naturally he sees distortion (a.k.a. ‘spin’ in the propaganda/marketing
speak of the well trained aNiMaL) in all the utterances of his opponents.

A search for the word ‘spin’ on Bolt’s own Herald-Sun Blog finds many hits, not merely in the copy of his Blog posts but in the very titles. Spin is constantly uppermost in Bolt’s mind; he therefore decorates his Blog journalism with the name of his god.

Ergo:

Calculating ABC spin May 22, 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/calculating_abc_spin

How the Age drowned its readers in spin
blogs.news.com.au/…/index…/how_the_age_drowned_its_readers_in_spin/

G20 spin unspun 31 Mar 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/g20_spin_unspun/

Big boat comes in to spoil Gillard’s spin 20 Jul 2010 …
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/big_boat_comes_in_to_spoil_gillards_spin/

Spin overboard 21 Oct 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/spin_overboard1/

How will Garrett spin this? 4 May 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/…/how_will_garrett_spin_this/

The lie in Gillard’s population spin 23 Jul 2010
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/…/column3/

Smith demands better spin doctors to hide the kind of damage he’s …17 Apr 2011 blogs.news.com.au/…/smith_demands_more_spin_merchants_to_clean_up_his_mess

Tanner unleashes on Gillard and Rudd’s spin .24 Apr 2011
blogs.news.com.au/…php/…/tanner_unleashes_on_gillard_and_rudds_spin/

The essence of spin 30 May 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/the_essence_of_spin/

Tanner spins Labor’s obsession with spin May 2011
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/tanner_spins_labors_obsession_with_spin

Rudd gets 1000 to help him spin Feb 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…php/…/rudd_gets_1000_to_help_him_spin/

Rudd’s spin unspun
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/rudds_spin_unspun/

Another leak exposes Gillard’s spin 2 Aug 2010
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…php/…/another_leak_exposes_gillards_spin/

So much spin 21 Mar 2011 .
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/so_much_spin

Rudd spin makes Ferguson ill
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/rudd_spin_makes_ferguson_throw_up/

Ellis on Gillard’s cold spin 19 Dec 2010
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…/index…/ellis_on_gillards_cold_spin/

How Rudd’s spiders spin 17 May 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index…/how_rudds_spiders_spin/

Rudd can’t say “billion”, Oakes can’t say “spin” 30 May 2009
blogs.news.com.au/…/index…/rudd_cant_say_billion_oakes_cant_say_spin/

New spin needed
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/new_spin_needed/

Let the part tell the whole. Spin is an instrinsic and instinctive part of Bolt’s thinking and modus operandi; He is continuously producing it, continuously ascribing it to his opponents and continuously genuflecting to it in his Blog Post titles. Spin simply pours out of Bolt.

As a wise man once said “From the overflow of his heart, so a man speaks”;
or more prosiacally “The fox detects his own stink first”.

Bolt’s treasure is spin. His mind and heart therefore continually attend it.

Higher Truth

Bolt is a moral man. His dedication to distortion is justified because it serves a higher truth; namely the salavation of Australia from TEH LEFT and most particularly The Greens.

Bolt is an Independent Advisor to the hilariously misnamed “Galileo Movement”, an AGW denialist group whose patron is the spittle-flecked Alan Jones.

The Galileo Movement’s semi-rational manifesto has five planks of which four (by discarding ‘protect the environment’) can be taken seriously and two of which reveal the slightly nutty character of the typical One World Government conspiracist.

These latter two are:

- Protect freedom – personal choice and national sovereignty;
- Protect people’s emotional health by ending Government and activists’ constant destructive bombardment of fear and guilt on our kids and communities.

The reference to ‘national sovereignty’ is a dog-whistle for ‘escape the clutches of the evil United Nations and IPCC’ while the second is the polemical paranoic utterance of persons too much acquainted with Ayn Rand and Frederick Hayek, where dwell the modern under-read Libertarians, Cold War dinosaurs and careerist, knee-jerk reactionary anti-Leftists (Bolt is in this category) for which revilement of TEH LEFT and GREENS is as merely automatic and as reasoned as the tribal hatreds bedevilling suburban football fans.

A quick Google for ‘Fear Guilt Left’ on Bolt’s Blog easily shows how Bolt shares with the Galileo Movement the nuttiest fifth plank of its manifesto, while reading his posts on The Greens (e.g the Hamilton one below) soon show that he considers them innately totalitarian in agreement with the polemic associated with the Galileo Movement’s first plank.

The posts also contain elucidations of various other anti-left/Green memes including

- How the Left (surely typified by the Greens) encourage disprespect for
institutions and engender societal sickness and therefore violence and thus are
seeking its ultimate collapse (in order to institute a totalitarian
Communist Green dictatorship);
- Are rampantly hypocritical and morally sick.
- Are Anti-Human
- Poison the minds of children

Here’s “Fear Guilt Left” from Bolt’s Blog

Hamilton stands for Greens – and for fear and less democracy …23 Oct 2009 .
blogs.news.com.au/…/hamilton_stands_for_the_grees_and_for_fear_and_less_democracy/

Attacking what they no longer respect or fear 14 Feb 2011
blogs.news.com.au/…/attacking_what_they_no_longer_respect_or_fear

The Left vs Israel 9 Aug 2006 ..
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/the_left_vs_israel

The ABC of spreading baseless fear 4 Aug 2008
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…of…fear/…/P20/

Better left unsaid | 12 Aug 2009 .
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…better_left…/P20/

This “good” racism of the Left is killing black children .9 Nov 2010

Bullies of the Left 3 Sep 2007
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…of…left/asc/P20/

Save the planet! Hurt people! 14 Mar 2009
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/…/save_the_planet_hurt_people

Earth Hour bores 28 Mar 2010 … Messing with children’s minds
by installing a sense of guilt and fear over …. From
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/…/earth_hour_bores

This is the real Australia 1 Jul 2011 … As someone so aptly said today,
‘white guilt is heroin for the left’.
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index…/this_is_the_real_australia

Why David Marr dances 9 Nov 2010 …
Guilt and fear were instilled in young people from an early age. … Marr is an act, this ultra left, ultra permissive, contrarian view on every …
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index…/why_david_marr_dances/

Arnie gases on about “sexy” greens 13 Apr 2007 …
You know the kind of guilt I’m talking about: Smokestacks belching pollution and …
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/…php/…/arnie_gases_on_about_sexy_greens/

This is why Bolt has no compunction about misrepresenting his enemies. Bolt’s enemies are evil. They do not deserve truth or fair play. They deserve only defeat and preferably destruction.

To reprise Bolt’s own words about his experience as a political apparatchik:

“You know that space where you’re so convinced that your side is right and
in those conditions the other side is immoral and therefore you’re excused
all sorts of things.”

Bolt joyously inhabits that dangerous space. In fact, the article in which he made those statements is, in my view, a confessional. Bolt is telling the world that truth is irrelevant to him because his enemies do not deserve it.

Revenge Of The Nerd.

Bolt has an extremely poor self image and was an outsider at school,
an experience he did not enjoy.

This explains his constant projection of victimhood, his hurt at people
apparently trying to victimize or silence him for no good reason apart from their innate bullying or their own farcical self-confidence at being part of the
brainless clique/mob of conformists/insiders.

Maybe at times Bolt was derided or the victim of name-calling or other anti-social acts directed at he, Bolt, the quiet, shy Dutch boy not fiting in.

Bolt’s first published piece was a poem he wrote at 13 years of age about
his abhorrence at bullies and at becoming a bully himself in order to fit in.

Bolt’s sense of victimhood is eternally fresh. Always present, it has been
conspicuosuly on display somewhat pathetically twice. Once when Bolt asserted
that he was in physical danger of mob violence agitated by an obscure (but brilliant) political blog, and most recently when whinging and moaning at his finding of guilt by the Federal Court of Australia for Racial Discrimination.

David Marr succintly skewers Bolt’s nonsense here. detailing how Bolt simply ignored inconvenient facts while penning the articles which led to his conviction

Robert Manne here notes the side-splitting insanity of Bolt who has a newspaper column and a blog in a wide-circulation national newspaper, his own TV program and a regular Melbourne radio slot claiming that his views are muzzled and that being held accountablee for untrue and racially-based slurs is an unfair prohibition on his free speech.

David Penderbethy here describes the embarrassment his colleague, Bolt, embodies to serious journalists and journalism ans also notes the imbecility of Bolt’s claims to be silenced or otherwise victimized.

I see Bolt’s articles and certainly his persona as strongly informed
by those boyhood experiences. The ‘mob’ is transmuted into his poltical enemies, The left/Greens, but now the power relationships are inverted.
Bolt has freedom to excoriate ‘the mob’ protected by the financial resources
of his attack dog newspaper, and as his boyhood poem prophetically stated,
Bolt has become the attack dog and bully himself.

The well-spring of Bolt’s rage, as all emotional hurts are, is inexhaustible.
As an adult Bolt is now able to channel that rage into excoriating the left/Greens dressing it in the fig leaf of moral justification since the Greens themselves are irredeemably evil and therefore deserve it.

Bolt’s articles are the revenge of the hurt boy.

Bolt’s Fundamental Motivation

So, in the end, what motivates Bolt ? To answer to this question I believe one must look to where Bolt expends most energy: Aboriginal Affairs and Climate Change.

Bolt came to prominence as a Poison Pen for the Right on the back of the ‘Stolen Generations’ issue which was the centrepiece of the ‘History Wars’ in Australian Politics from 1996-2007.

Bolt engaged in an extended public debate with one of Australia’s leading public intellectuals, Robert Manne, over the Stolen Generations. The question is why would Bolt bother to expend such energy on this particular issue ? That question has added salience now that Bolt has been found guilty of Racial Discrimination by accusing nine prominent part-Aboriginal Australians of falsely claiming or duplicitously emphasizing their Aboriginal heritage merely for financial benefit. What is it about Aboriginal issues that engages Bolt to such a degree ? Why does this issue in particular motivate him to write with such passion ?

Bolt gave a significant clue in an article of his ‘Why I Wont Change’ which appeared in the Herald-Sun in Feb. 2004.

In the article Bolt cites a plea for help from a Year 12 student seeking accurate information about the Stolen Generations. The student sent Bolt a Stolen Generations ‘Fact Sheet’ supplied by the school which Bolt typifies as full of ‘luxurious falsehoods’ and says:

I admire that girl for already knowing that what matters is that she first be told the truth, before she’s taught what to feel about it. I admire her for demanding the right to exercise her own conscience, rather than mimic her teacher’s. How can we tell lies to such a young woman — however noble our motives — and have such contempt for her perception, her reasoning and her moral sense?

So Bolt claims his motivation is the defence of the minds of Australia’s youth from the fear/guilt propaganda inflicted on them by TEH LEFT via the education system. i.e. Bolt is standing up for the fifth plank of the Galileo Movement manifesto:

Protect people’s emotional health by ending Government and activists’ constant destructive bombardment of fear and guilt on our kids and communities

.

For Bolt, the Stolen Generations history is a myth invented by the Left to poison the minds of children, presumably to engender mistrust in our institutions in order to foment leftist revolution.

Ironically, of course, the Stolen Generations is a true history; but like former Prime Minister John Howard, Bolt prefers the received myth of Australia’s white settlement, that it was concluded largely without violence and without racism expect for some limited and unfortunate mistakes made only in the best interests of Aboriginal persons by those trying their best at the time.

Bolt styles himself as a truth crusader. On Aboriginal issues, however, he is in reality a myth crusader. His recent conviction for Racial Discrimination has bought out that Bolt ignored facts inconvenient to him when compiling his dossier on prominent Australian ‘false Aboriginals’. His previous conviction, for Defamation in 2002 also showed that Bolt ignored facts known to him when writing an article containing defamatory untruths regarding Magistrate Jelena Popovic. Simply, Bolt prefers myth to fact and falsehood to truth as he serves his Higher Truth.

As Emile Durkheim noted, the function of myth is to validate, explain and preserve an established belief or authority system.

The question then becomes ‘what Higher Truth is Bolt serving’.

I submit that Bolt’s Higher Truth is the salvation of Australia from Leftists and Greens. The battle is fought on ideas. Therefore no Leftist idea, Stolen Generations or otherwise, must be allowed to survive. Leftists ideas must be defeated and, as Bolt learned as an aNiMaL, truth is the first casualty of this war. Lies must be mobilized to preserve truth. The minds of Australian youth must be fortified with good Right-wing lies in order that evil left-wing lies be defeated.

In short Bolt has adapted a Vietnam War dictum: The minds of Australians must be destroyed in order to save them.

The Utility Of Andrew Bolt

Bolt is allowed his privileged safe haven at the Herald-Sun because he serves the interests of power. His strident and duplicitous vocalisation of anti-Left, anti-Green propaganda buttressed by his sneakily adduced statistics provides a superficially authoritative denunciation of the Left/Green perspective.

Bolt’s passionate advocacy provides a pseudo-intellectual justification for the rejection of progressive reforms and entrenchment of the privileged status quo.

Bolt is a useful tool for entrenched privilege. So the Herald-Sun is prepared to pay well to keep Bolt’s megaphone open. Which is why the Herald-Sun is gritting its wallet to pay Bolt’s legal fees and keep Bolt’s misogynistic, homophobic, counter-factual and anti-scientific diatribe page open…for business.

Inter-Species Justice: Signage Uproar At Agricultural Show

Went to a country Agricultural Show on the weekend and read this unintentionally funny sign over the Pig Exhibit:

“Pigs are the fourth most intelligent species on the planet after humans, apes, dolphins and whales”.

Noting the counting error in the above information I suspect the signage might have been prepared by a less intelligent differently intelligented species than those listed; or maybe an ungulate outside the Top 4 with a trotter axe to grind about not cracking the elite. That would be a P retty I nsightful G uess

As to the actual information contained in the signage, uproar descended on the show as Octopi demanded a recount and inclusion in the prestigious Top 5.

Which has led to Simon Cowell producing “IQ Idol” to determine the species most popularly considered “most intelligent”. Its five weeks before Grand Final and the remaining contestants ar: Xyloryctes Jamaicensis (Beetle), Paigene Englosaxen ALP Focus Group Member from Lindsay in Western Sydney (Human), Enteroctopus Dofleini (Octopus), Sus Scrofa Domesticus (Pig) and Balaenoptera Musculus (Whale); Dolphin having been controversially eliminated as Beetles flooded the voting lines to get their representative over the line. Over to you Simon:

Simon: Species: Who or what is the Prime Minister Of Australia ?
Paigene: As if I care. I’m goin’ home to feed me Pit Bulls and collect me Centrelink.
Balaenoptera: Crrrooooo-aaaaaaaaa-wheeee-sss-WHARK WHARK WHARK oooooo WOO CLICK CLICK srrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaaaaaaaa WHARK etc etc…
(17 mins later)….
…. CLICK CLICK WHARK WHARK
Scrofa: He always say that. As to the PM can I eat its intestines?
Dofleini: Please do not bother me with inane questions. I am plotting world domination and don’t have the time.
Paigene: Aargh! What’s that horrid thingy! SQELCH!!!
Simon. And so Beetle cannot contest the semi-finals due to a sudden unforeseen illness. We’ll give that one to Octopus.
Audience: Boo!
Simon: Species: What is the most efficient way to catch and consume krill ?
Paigene: Flamin’ rigged mate. Spewin.
Scrofa: Do they have intestines ?
Dofleini: Krill? So dull. With a nicely chilled Sauvignon Blanc it could be palatable.
Baleanopetra: (Vey excited) WHARK WHARK WHARK oooooo WOO CLICK CLICK srrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee-aaaaaaaaaaaaa WHARK etc
(2 Hours Later)…
CLICK whoooo whooo whooo WHARK AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRKKKKK CLICK!!!!!!
Simon: The question specifically said ‘efficient’. That’s two for Octopus.

Come back after the break for more IQ Idol.

Parkinson’s Law Collides With Chang Tzu In Kitchen Sink

Pre-reading

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality (also known as the bicycle shed example, and by the expression colour of the bikeshed) is C. Northcote Parkinson’s 1957 argument that organisations give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.

From Wikipedia:

ArgumentThe concept is presented in C. Northcote Parkinson’s spoof of management, Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson dramatizes his Law of Triviality with a committee’s deliberations on a nuclear power plant, contrasting it to deliberation on a bicycle shed. A nuclear reactor is used because it is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot understand it, so they assume that those working on it understand it. Even those with strong opinions often withhold them for fear of being shown to be insufficiently informed. On the other hand, everyone understands a bicycle shed (or thinks he or she does), so building one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to add his or her touch and show that they have contributed.

Here Is The Problem

The sink at my workplace looks like this:

The photograph was taken by a colleague and inserted into an email with the following text:

Hi Everyone,

At some point we have to start using a little common sense. This is ridiculous!
Please place your dirty dishes over to the right of the bench so the sink it still useable. Thank you.

I think the suggested solution is insane. I said so to another work colleague. He looked at me as if I were insane. Now I don’t not know whether I am insane or merely a sane person dreaming that I am insane office worker.

Please to imagine alternative possibilities.

Look, On Balance, Objectively Christmas Without Santa Is Better Than Christmas With Santa

In our place we don’t do Santa.

We have informed the children that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus’s birthday and that Santa is a way people have of remembering the very nice man St Nicholas of Patara who would give presents to poor children for Jesus’s birthday because they had no one to give them presents.

Just The Facts

Objectively this is a factually historically sound precis of the identities of the major personages associated with Christmas and far closer to the truth than the western secular culturally approved Christmas story which is that Christmas is a day when the entirely mythical Santa Claus pilots a team of magic reindeer around the planet and distributes presents to children on the basis of good behaviour, completing his global mission in one night assisted by a team of magical elves.

So on a factual basis my family explanation of ‘Why Christmas?’ beats the objectivity index of the major alternative explanation by about 100-NIL.

Even if you think that Jesus is a myth Himself it is nevertheless true that Christmas Day came into being a celebration of Jesus’s birthday. Yes, yes I know, the actual day was appropriated from a pagan midwinter festival but it wasn’t called Christmas then.

Name That Stereotype

Now if you’re a hard core atheist you despise myths of all kinds so you wouldn’t be wanting to be feeding the children’s minds up with Santa nonsense. You’ll be telling them that Christmas (without the deliberate mis-spelling with ‘X’) is a celebration of a mythical person called Jesus’ birthday ’cause that’s factual, but that in your family Christmas is just about whatever you want to do at Christmas.

And if you’re an agnostic you’ll have no objection to Jesus as a putative historical personage or even putatively as God, so you would have at least no objection to be going with the basic facts about ‘Why Christmas?’, but you might decide to go with the Santa story because its fun for kids to play make-believe.

I guess the ‘Christmas is about Santa’ story would also be adopted to easy-going or less dogmatic atheists like Julia Gillard, Prime Minister Of Australia, who don’t believe in God but who don’t share the relentless atheist insistence on myth-elimination associated with, say, Richard Dawkins and just like to see the kids get entranced in ‘the magic of Christmas’.

And from observation it would also apply to the general Australian public for whom neither Jesus nor atheism nor agnosticism registers at any meaningful resonance.

As far those who believe Jesus is God, such as myself, we obviously want to emphasize that Christmas is about Jesus’s birthday, but many Christian families also integrate Santa into their Christmas Family narrative. In my opinion this makes Christmas worse, not better.

Why Santa makes Christmas Worse

When our kids get a Christmas present they know that Mummy and Daddy have bought it for them, not Santa. So this is tangible evidence that M&D love giving them great stuff, and the greatest stuff that kids get, materially speaking, comes on Christmas Day. Pooh-pooh it if you like but gift-giving is a practical demonstration of love. Why should my kids think that Santa loves them more than M&D ? I think that its a positive for the children that they know that M&D bought them the big shiny bike or the Hot Wheels Trick Tracks Mega-Dino Challenge or the Dora The Explorer magnetic toothbrush with built in compass.

Secondly, the kids express their joy for the gift directly back to M&D and it goes like this WOW! THANKS DAD! THAT IS AWESOOOOMMME! Sorry Santa, you don’t deserve that gratitude since you don’t even exist anyway and I’m sure as eggs not letting you have it. So the M&D’s get to express the full volume of their children’s delight at the Christmas gifts, instead of vicariously filtered via Santa.

Third, we as M&D give Christmas presents to our children because we love them, not on the basis of whether or not they have been good. Our children get validated for who they are, not on the basis of their transitory behaviour. Our children know they do not have to earn the love of M&D unlike that fickle impostor Santa whose favour can at any time evaporate like summer mist.

Fourth, the children get facts not fiction. No matter how you slice it, Santa is made up. A truthful explanation of Why Do We Give Presents At Christmas must include some reference to Jesus, even if He is relegated to myth. Face it, Santa entered the Christmas narrative at some point many centuries after Jesus and doubly so the magic reindeer and elves.

Much as many hate it Jesus IS the ORIGINAL reason for the season and the reason why Christmas exists. Here’s a theoretical question your child may ask:

Child: ‘Mummy, Why DO people go around saying ‘Christmas is a time of peace and goodwill to all men’ ?
Incorrect Answer A: Because Christmas is a time when we get together as a family.
Correct Answer B: Its because that’s what the Angels said to the shepherds on Jesus’s birthday.

Quite simply, an integrated understanding of Christmas requires reference to Jesus.

Fifth, for those who are Jesus-friendly, awarding Christmas to Santa robs Jesus of richly deserved recognition. Americans have a thing called Martin Luther King Day. Contrary to current popular preferential meaning, this does not commemorate the day when Santa led a Freedom march on Washington DC to eloquently demand equal rights for African-Americans. I think you get what I mean. Even if you think Jesus is just a man, why not let the kids admire and learn from His example ?

Santa Is Not All Bad

Ejecting Santa from Christmas is not without cost. My kids do miss out on the awestruck wonder of waiting for Santa to visit and some really great make-believe. And yes, my kids are almost the only ones at school who don’t think Santa is real, which can make them seem like Alien Life-Forms to the others who have been fed the 100% guaranteed Santa myth. Ironic that, but it doesn’t seem to lead to teasing.

But even without Jesus, Christmas is better without Santa (see reasons one, two and three above). Of course WITH Jesus there is another kind of awestuck wonder which happens to be based in historical truth, but even if you really wish to persist with Jesus is A Myth, at least you can tell tell the myth that is related to the actual origins of Christmas rather than the one that originated with Coca-Cola Inc.

Paul Kelly: The Innocent Extremist

Here’s a piece I wrote as a personal response to an article by Paul Kelly which was critical of Mark Latham’s viewpoints on the Australia – US Strategic Partnership.

At the time Latham was Opposition Leader and having a good run. At that point he was regarded as a serious threat to unseat John Howard as Prime Minister.

Latham made a speech to the Lowy Institute which prompted a full-barrell assault from Kelly using the most hypocritical of logic.

In my view Kelly revealed himself at that time as a Howard/Liberal partisan. Usually Kelly is very considered and equitable in his comentary but just occasionally, when he smells blood in the water, he drops his guard and shows his true allegiances.

This was one occasion when he did so:

Paul Kelly: The Innocent Extremist

Paul Kelly, Editor-at-large of the Murdoch-owned “The Australian” newspaper is an Australian patriot and strongly pro-American. Befittingly, he is a member of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, a selective association of high-profile business and political leaders and journalists. Kelly has a vision for an Australia which is militarily capable, economically dynamic and secure from foreign threat. He wants Australia to take positive steps to maintain its middle-power status, achieve real and increasing influence in international affairs and guard against the slide which has, in his view, seen New Zealand fall to the bottom levels of influence amongst Western nations.

For Kelly the primary determinants of a nation’s strength and influence are population, GNP and technology (especially military technology) supplemented by participation in regional and global economic and political forums. Underpinning all this for Australia in Kelly’s strategic model of Australia’s international political economy is a close relationship with the USA. This special relationship provides Australia access to advanced military technology and influence-by-association.

Kelly does not emphasis a direct guarantee of security as a product of a close bilateral relationship with the US, rather stressing that insider access to sophisticated US military technology makes Australia capable of military self-reliance. Self-reliance incorporates Australia’s capacity to defend itself in its own right and ability to act as a metropolitan power within the Australia-US ANZUS alliance, itself located and operational within the logic of a US hegemonic world order.

Kelly therefore describes a layered approach to the way in which Australia should approach its foreign policy. He believes Australia should pursue multilateralism through the UN alongside regionalism within ASEAN simultaneous with honouring and protecting the bilateral US alliance. He sees these bilateral, regional and multilateral layers as synergistically reinforcing each other producing an Australia capable of playing a constructive role in world affairs.. For example, close bilateral relationship with the USA gives Australia credibility with and thus potentially greater entrée into ASEAN and the ears of regional leaders most importantly China and Japan, but influence in ASEAN and regional nations simultaneously makes us more useful to the USA as a holder of insider influence within Asia. This expert status on Asian affairs gives rise to the possibility that Australia may successfully advise the USA on wise Asian policy and (non) interventions.

While Kelly advocates that Australia participate fully within the UN and maximize its opportunities for influence there, he sees the WTO as the more important world body. Kelly believes that thorough-going adoption of the WTO “free-trade” proscriptions will vitalise Australia’s economy, drive up our GNP and hence increase Australia’s international standing in a far more direct way than the slow and patient accumulation of influence through constructive negotiation.

Kelly believes the Unites States is a far better guarantor of international security than the “fragile” UN which “need[s] … U.S. security policy leadership” but is eager that the US remains within it. He wants the USA to work within the UN for two reasons. First, without the US, global institutions would be “crippled” leading to a breakdown in worldwide political and economic structure and stability; Secondly and patriotically, Kelly sees it in Australia’s interest that the US work within the UN since if the US turned its back on the UN to intervene unilaterally and arrogantly in world affairs, Australia’s regional standing with South-East and East Asia would be compromised.

This follows because of Australia’s strong, perhaps over-strong, identification as a US agent within East and South-East Asia. Kelly identifies a worst-case scenario for Australia in regard to arrogant US unilateralism for Australia where Australia could be barred or expelled from Asian regional forums if Australia is seen merely as an agent of US global power, the US’s “deputy sheriff”. Kelly supports America’s status as global hegemon and organiser of the global trade regime, but he wants the USA to be a “prudent hegemon” (Kelly, Australian for Alliance, The National Interest, Spring, 2003) working within the UN and sensitive to regional alliances and sensibilities.

Ultimately, however, Kelly always preserves and valorises the US prerogative for unilateral military intervention and places the onus on the UN to accommodate and legitimise US unilateralism.

“This is not an argument against all [US unilateral] military action. It is an argument for more attention to the tone of U.S. policy, and for legitimizing military action by law and through coalitions whenever possible.” (Kelly, Australian for Alliance, my emphasis)

Kelly believes that UN accommodation and legitimisation of US hegemonic power is the only way that the UN can survive as a credible organisation. The rights of the US to be global hegemon and take unilateral actions in its own interests are not questioned. Writing in the Weekend Australian (7-8/9/02) Kelly said:

“If the US does return to the Security Council, that will become a decisive moment in world history. It is when the main powers must decide whether they will allow the US to solve its problems within a UN framework or whether they confirm for the US that the unilateralists were right all the time and that it [the US] must commit to a new go-it-alone phase.”

Kelly is so pro-US that he is even somewhat antipathetic toward Western Europe which he sees as being prisoner to a consensus model of international affairs to the detriment of decisive and warranted interventions.

Australia therefore does not want an America so imprisoned by the search for consensus that it is paralyzed from taking military action….Indeed, nothing would cause more dismay in Australia than seeing the European Union prevail within [the UN and other multilateral] institutions at the cost of those institutions’ ultimate viability.

Kelly’s overall views lead him to advise the US to tread carefully in the world, surely to wield hegemonic power but prudently and constructively so as to encourage open world trade and, therefore, mutual weal. But Kelly also believes that the US is entitled to act unilaterally where warranted. In relation to Al-Qa’aida, Kelly is clear that US action is not only warranted but necessary.

In Kelly’s view the “transforming impact of September 11” , when Al-Qa’aida smashed those aircraft into the World Trade Centre, has changed the world. To Kelly, Al’Qa’aida represents a barbaric movement at war with civilisation itself. September 11 in Kelly’s view was “an attack on universal values” . Negotiation with this atavistic force is “folly” since “appeasement would usher in a new dark age” . Al-Qa’aida must be destroyed. In these circumstances the US is legitimised by moral imperative to act as the “prudent hegemon” to preserve order and peace.

In this transformed world Kelly notes a transformed mood of the US towards its allies. America now expects more action and more obedience from its allies.

“The US is less interested in historical allies and more interested in allies that perform, a point John Howard knows. Its sense of being the “indispensable nation” is in play again. Driven by both fear and resolve, the US is making harsher judgments about its friends.”

In Kelly’s view the US’s unswervable determination to intervene in Iraq makes it impossible to ignore the US call to arms since to do so would imperil the ANZUS alliance so crucial to Australia. It would amount to national suicide to ignore US the at a time when it is willing to demote non-performing allies, in particular who fail to provide political support for non-UN authorized intervention through participation in America’s Coalition of the Willing.

Thus Kelly speaks of Australia being “hostage” to the US “regardless of the quality of the arguments the President makes or fails to make” that Latham’s call to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq is not only wrong but “chilling” because it will “enrage the Bush administration” and is “at odds with the US political spectrum from George W. Bush to John Kerry”. Surely, Latham is “asking for trouble from Washington”. In Kelly’s view Australia has “no choice but to join an Iraq war” “anything less would imperil the 50-year US alliance” and he believes that Australians understand this instinctively knowing it to be “the Australian way of war”.

For Kelly the parameters of Australia’s freedom in foreign policy engagement are delimited by the mood and dictates of the United States. This is why “September 11 has created a new strategic challenge for America’s allies”. America is demanding more of its allies and Australia is beholden to deliver even where other relationships, whether regional security or trade, are imperilled. ,12

The tension between Australia’s relationship with the US and our regional relationships and security is a special concern of Kelly which he discusses regularly in his columns and speeches. For some time Kelly insisted that Australia’s participation in the Iraq invasion should be contingent on sanction through the UN in view of the danger of alienating Indonesia, the single most significant Islamic nation in Australia’s orbit. Kelly’s view, shared by a respectable cohort of Defence commentators, is summarized as follows

“Australia’s security will be determined by its ability to promote the dominance of moderate over radical Muslims in Indonesia. Accordingly we cannot afford to generate resentment among Indonesian Muslims by siding with the US in any invasion of Iraq not sanctioned by the UN.”13

But Kelly’s commitment to the UN is skin deep. Writing a few months after the preceeding article appeared Kelly made explicit that the value of the UN is that it provides “a cloak of respectability” for US unilateralism sufficient to deflect “anti-Americanism”. Even if “anti-Australian sentiment” generated by participation in US military ventures “fans hatred among [Indonesian] Muslim radicals…this is not a conclusive argument against Australia’s participation in Iraq or other U.S.-led coalitions if such participation is justified on its merits”. 14

It can be seen then that Kelly’s support for the US is near total and his support of the position that Australia should militarily support the US on-demand is likewise near total. The only hypothetical brake Kelly would pull on Australian participation in US-led military ventures is when that participation would compromise Australia’s inclusion in regional economic forums or severely harm Australia’s trade with China. At that point Australia’s support for the USA could only be “declaratory” as in a hypothetical US war with China over Taiwan.15

Even so, in the real world Kelly is prepared to tolerate major disruptions to Australia’s trade in order to appease the US. On July 29 2002, The Australian Finiancial Review noted with concern that Iraq halved a one-million tonne wheat order, perhaps jeopardizing the $829 million per year wheat contract with Australia’s second-largest wheat customer. This Kelly dismissed as a “short-term commercial cost” in support of the bilateral relationship.16

Kelly, then, notwithstanding increased security risk to Australia, marginalisation of the UN and hence international law, the damage of trade and regional relationships and his concession that “[the Iraq] war is not essential but war by choice of the US”17 is in favour of the invasion of Iraq and Australian involvement in it.18 It is, apparently, “justified on its merits” which can only be the need to avoid imperilling the ANZUS alliance.19 The only element that Kelly remains true to in his so-called layered approach to Australian foreign policy is the bilateral relationship with the US. Everything else is discardable. This tells us the truth about what Kelly really believes. Despite his projection of a moderate, layered, foreign policy viewpoint, Kelly’s views,in truth, are better presented as “All the way with LBJ”.

Intertwined with his nuanced public views on the relationship between Australia, the US, the UN and Asia, Kelly reproduces many of the statements from the Howard, Blair and Bush governments which argue for continued involvement in what Kelly knows is a US war of choice. Kelly has repeated for example, that Western nations must stay on to rebuild the Iraq they destroyed in order to prevent the legacy of a failed state (“A Misinformed Curtin Call”. March 31, 2004), that to withdraw from Iraq will encourage terrorist action against the West (“Jihadists keen to repeat Spanish effect”, March 24, 2004), that “Iraq is a decisive theatre in the war on terrorism” (“Howard Plays The Man”, April 3, 2004), that Australian involvement in Iraq does not increase Australia’s security risk – contradicting himself on many previous occasions – (“Spanish-style backlash for PM?”, March 17, 2004), that French and German caution in the UN is an impediment to effective world security and that Al-Qa’aida represents a vandal’s attack on civilisation itself which the West would be as foolish to ignore as Rome the Visigoths (see note 9)

Given his significant agreement with government propaganda some wonder if Kelly is shifting politically to the right following a trend in accordance with perceived management directive of the Murdoch newspaper group. In support of this one can also note an apparent hardening or contradiction of Kelly’s previously held views: that Australian involvement in Iraq does not increase security risk, that American militarism must be legitimized by the UN and that the Australia-Indonesia relationship must balance the Australia-US relationship

In my opinion Kelly’s fundamental political viewpoint has not shifted much, if at all, for years. While his columns shed crocodile tears for the UN and the negative effects of US unilateralism on Australia’s regional relationships, Kelly’s heart lies firmly with the US. In his pieces which explore the meaning of his support for the UN, Kelly is quite straight-forward that he expects the UN to be subservient to his preferred hegemon, free even from the “paralyzing” effect of other Western democracies. Kelly’s published opinion has hardened as the US demands on its allies harden. This is to be expected within Kelly’s framework of pre-suppositions about the world. Quite likely, Kelly’s support of the US is independent of that of Murdoch’s.

What is initially unexpected from Kelly though, is the energy and negativity of his reaction to Mark Latham’s recently enunciated views on Australian foreign policy. In reviewing Latham’s speech to the Lowy Policy Institute For Foreign Affairs, “Labor And The World”, Kelly branded Latham “radical on the US alliance”, representing a “generational leap beyond The Hawke-Keating-Beazley era” which “was genuinely pro-American”. Kelly said Latham instead sees “an America for which [he and the ALP] has scant regard” representing the”visceral hatred” of the ALP towards America.20

Latham was in fact very complimentary to the US which he described as “a great and robust democracy and committed Labour to “the Alliance with the United States” which he described as “a Labor legacy of which we are very proud.” noting that “[The Alliance] has been strong in the past. And it will be strong in the future”

Far from being a radical, Latham utilised language that marked him as being unopposed to the prudent use of US hegemonic power noting that “[The US] has assumed the ultimate responsibility: global leadership for the purpose of global cooperation and security.” He is comfortable in using the US-sourced term for its current foreign policy “the war on terror” which Latham believes “will be long and sustained.” since “the dangers terrorism presents have to be addressed on many fronts”. Latham is not opposed to “humanitarian intervention or pre-emption under Article 24 of the UN Charter”, one of the pretexts for the American invasion.

In fact Latham’s foreign policy viewpoint maps very closely to Kelly’s own oft-repeated views. Latham described Labor foreign policy as being based on “three pillars…” support for the United Nations and multilateral institutions, our alliance with the United States and our engagement with Asia”. This is identical in tone to Kelly’s own layered approach. Like Kelly, Latham makes special reference to China in foreign trade calculations and again like Kelly, Latham carries special regard for an open economy based around WTO guidelines – in Latham’s words “Labor believes in multilateralism, most of all through the WTO”.21
Given that Latham’s views so well overlap with Kelly’s it is superficially unexpected that Kelly is so opposed to Latham’s viewpoint and so unfair in his characterization of Latham’s supposed “hatred” of the US. Latham’s mistake of course, and what makes him “chilling” to Kelly is that Latham really does seem to believe in a semi-autonomous, layered foreign policy for Australia not dictated by shifts in American mood or demand.

This makes Latham “dangerous”. He opposes the American doctrine of pre-emptive war – not the UN definition – which is the ideological lynchpin for the war on terror, does not support the Iraq invasion and favours a “Defence of Australia” military posture rather than an expeditionary force posture. Clearly Latham’s views carry the possibility that Australia will not provide troops for subsequent US pre-emptive invasions. This risks the rage of the Americans and a possible downgrading of the bilateral relationship. For Kelly this represents national disaster, hence his hostility toward Latham.

Kelly’s criticism of Latham extends to odd lengths. Kelly writes

“[Latham’s Lowy’s Institute speech] says nothing about the value of the US role in
the world or the US as a force for good. Nothing.”

By “a force for good” Kelly presumably means that the USA is devoted to foreign policy goals incorporating the furtherment of democracy and human rights around the world, the relief of suffering, humanitarian aid and so on. In contrast, in the same article Kelly considers China to be something less than a force for good and chastises Latham and the ALP for

“a touching innocence about China that seems devoid of
critical assessment.”22

But who is the innocent: Latham or Kelly? Is the US really “a force for good”? Since Kelly’s article on Latham was written in the broader context of Latham’s call to return Australian troops from Iraq I will restrict my comments to recent US policy and actions there.

Kelly is apparently unaware that the US actively supported the murderous Saddam Hussein during the period of his worst crimes including his mass killings of Kurds by gas attack.

Throughout the 1980’s the US provided military equipment to Saddam along with strategy advice and intelligence, acted decisively to prevent Iranian victory in the Iraq/Iran war, donated billions of dollars in financial aid, sold Saddam chemical agents including VX Nerve Gas and Anthrax and underwrote his Ballistic weapons programs. The CIA even calibrated Saddam’s Mustard Gas weapons for use against Iran.

The USA blamed Iran, not Iraq, for the notorious Halabja gas attacks knowing the truth to be different. Even after a U.S. delegation travelled to Turkey at the request of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in mid-late 1988 and confirmed that Iraq “was using chemical weapons on its Kurdish population” the State Department was urging closer relations with Saddam. In Sept. 1988 the Reagan administration overturned its own Senate’s “Prevention of Genocide Act” which would have made Iraq ineligible to receive U.S. loans, military and non-military assistance, credits, credit guarantees, and items subject to export controls. In Oct. 1989 President Bush signed National Security Directive 26 providing Iraq with a further $1bn in aid amongst further significant support. 23

The US was not in the least concerned about the mass killings of Kurds under Saddam. The US at the time was pro-Saddam in order to prevent the rise of Iran as a regional hegemon. The Kurds were completely expendable in the face of the Iranian threat to the greatest strategic asset in the world, namely, Middle East oil.

The US committed numerous atrocities during the first Gulf War including cluster bombing in civilian areas, deliberate withholding of medicines and medical equipment from hospitals, destruction of civilian water supplies and the use of radioactive weapons.24

Contrary to US and British claims, the No-Fly zones instituted after the first Gulf War were not designed to protect the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs, Turkish troops and aircraft regularly entered the northern no-fly zone covering Iraqi Kurdistan to bomb and kill while the US and British stood aside.

Similarly, in the Southern zone, Iraqi troop movements were not prohibited, not even Iraqi military helicopters, only Iraqi jets. Hence, US and British planes circled overhead or stayed grounded while Saddam marched in with customary brutality to crush the 1998 rebellion. Entire towns were leveled, mass summary executions ordered and historic Shia shrines and mosques bombed. It is estimated that Saddam’s forces killed 100,000 Marsh Arabs in the five months ending September 1998. American troops were ordered not to prevent the mass killings. The extra concession to allow Iraqi military helicopters into the Southern No-Fly zone but not the Northern was obviously made to facilitate Saddam’s murderous rampage 25

The trigger for the latest US invasion of Iraq was the infamous 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, not concern for democracy or human rights. The US Administration moved quickly to make political capital out of the sorrow and anger amongst the public to blame the attacks on Iraq in a knowing untruth and so justify their invasion.

Bush Administration claims in regard Iraqi WMD’s “’dangled in front of [the media] failed the laugh test,’ the editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists commented, ‘but the more ridiculous [they were,] the more the media strove to make whole-hearted swallowing of them a test of patriotism.’ (Linda Rothstein, editor BAS, July 2003) But they served their intended purpose. Quickly a majority of Americans came to believe that they were present targets of Iraqi WMDs. Foolsd by their own government who knew otherwise, almost fifty per cent of Americans linked Saddam Hussein to the World Trade Centre tragedy. All this helped Bush and his insiders drum up support for the Iraq invasion. 26

In September 2002, Donald Rumsfeld repeated these untruths to the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Senator Mark Dayton: “What is it compelling us now to make a precipitous decision and take precipitous actions?”
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld: “What’s different? What’s different is 3,000 people were killed.”
The CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack summarized the effectiveness of the Bush administration’s propaganda assault against its own people like so:
‘The real difference was the change from September 11th. The sense that after September 11th, the American people were now willing to make sacrifices to prevent threats from abroad from coming home to visit us here made it possible to think about a big invasion force.’ 27

Western power is not committed to democracy in Iraq. In calling for the “people of Iraq” to overthrow Saddam following the first Gulf War, President Bush was really calling for a military coup – another Saddam, but an obedient Saddam. This is admitted by the US itself and seconded by the British:
“We clearly would have preferred a coup. There’s no question about that,” – Bush’s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft Interview on ABC News, 26 June 1997 30
‘I don’t recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection ….We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein” – British Prime Minister John Major, ITN interview, 4 April, 199128
“..for very practical reasons there was never a promise to aid an uprising. While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf.” – President Bush and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 2 March 1988

In summary the US is willing to countenance mass killings including the extermination of a half a million children32, use radioactive weapons, cluster bomb in civilian areas, destroy civilian water supplies, deprive civilians of medicines, sell Nerve Gas and Anthrax, build the Ballistic weapons program of a megalomaniac dictator, back military coups and lie to its own population and the world community. And that’s just in Iraq.
Latham has excellent reasons for not eulogizing the US as a force for good. It is Kelly that is the innocent, but I am not certain that this innocence is “touching”.

Kelly is a very influential journalist with access to a large newspaper readership and appears regularly as a mainstream commentator on national TV. His views on US, Iraq and Australia reach into every home. As such his views on the proper attitude of Australia politicians toward US policy (rhapsodic praise) have the potential to influence the entire polity. It is therefore alarming that Kelly’s naivety is so far removed from the truth about US realpolitik and imperial ambitions.

Kelly does not settle for a lack of criticism or even quiet agreement in regard to US foreign policy. The proper attitude for Australian politicians in regard to the USA in Kelly’s view is unrestrained applause. Latham didn’t describe the US as a ‘force for evil’ or less emotively, ‘an outlaw terrorist state’. He just didn’t say they were a force for good. Does Kelly expect Australian politicians as a matter of obligation or respect for the Australia-US alliance to repeat US propaganda verbatim regardless of what they may or may not believe?

Kelly is able to discover that China is sometimes worthy of criticism, presumably due to its repression of democracy in Tiannemen Square, in Tibet and of the Uighur of Xinjiang, but he is apparently not able to discover the facts about American invasion and support for repression in Iraq. This in incredible, if not frankly unbelievable, for a person of his experience and exposure to international affairs.

Paul Kelly is the radical on the Australia-US relationship, not Latham. It is Kelly who is prepared to risk increased security danger, trade reprisal, disrupt regional relationships, fan Islamic fundamentalism in Indonesia, fight non-essential wars of choice and turn a blind eye to the death of hundreds of thousands to remain in the good graces of the USA.

This being so Paul Kelly is a dangerous man. Kelly knows, but will not directly state, that the US is committed to preserving its global political, economic and military supremacy through raw power35 as described in its National Security Strategy delivered in Sept. 2002 34. Since we are “hostage” to the US in its present mood in Kelly’s view and “have no choice” except to agree with our ally, Kelly is therefore committed to endless war as long as the US is prepared to wage it.

True, Kelly expects the direct costs to Australia to be very small.33 But as for the costs borne by Iraqis under aerial bombardment, showered by radioactive dust from American depleted-uranium warheads, for the children playing in ruined cities amidst unexploded cluster bomblets with their homes, hospitals and water supply smashed to oblivion – well they are irrelevant.

It can be expected that Kelly will use his position of influence within the electorate to continue to argue for loyalty to the US regardless of how many the US chooses to kill in advancement of its economic and political goals. He can also be expected to energetically argue against those, such as Latham, who will not stomach being associated with such slaughter.

Kelly apparently attended the recent Cancun conference for Murdoch editors and commentators addressed by Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condaleeza Rice. A directive to present the US as “a force for good” sounds like just the sort of “editorial guideline” one would expect to appear in an internal memo or media briefing paper. Unfortunately the results of Kelly’s appalling ”innocence” impact disgracefully on Australian’s ability to make informed voting choices about our association with US foreign policy and hence the practice of our democracy.

The Touching Innocence Of Paul Kelly

The Touching Innocence Of Paul Kelly

Paul Kelly’s piece in The Australian, 10 April-2004 entitled “Damage In Isolation” contains an odd criticism of Mark Latham’s foreign policy speech to the Lowy Institute made on the 7 April previous. Kelly writes

“[Latham’s speech] says nothing about the value of the US role in the world or the US as a force for good. Nothing.”

By “a force for good” Kelly presumably means that the USA is devoted to foreign policy goals incorporating the furtherment of democracy and human rights around the world, the relief of suffering, humanitarian aid and so on.

In contrast, in the same article Kelly considers China to be something less than a force for good and chastises Latham and the ALP for “a touching innocence about China that seems devoid of critical assessment.”

But who is the innocent: Latham or Kelly? Is the US really “a force for good”? Since Kelly’s article on Latham was written in the broader context of Latham’s call to return Australian troops from Iraq I will restrict my comments to recent US policy and actions there.

The US actively supported the murderous Saddam Hussein during the period of his worst crimes including his mass killings of Kurds by gas attack.

Throughout the 1980’s the US provided military equipment to Saddam along with strategy advice and intelligence, acted decisively to prevent Iranian victory in the Iraq/Iran war, donated billions of dollars in financial aid, sold Saddam chemical agents including VX Nerve Gas and Anthrax and underwrote his Ballistic weapons programs. The CIA even calibrated Saddam’s Mustard Gas weapons for use against Iran.

The USA blamed Iran, not Iraq, for the notorious Halabja gas attacks knowing the truth to be different. Even after a U.S. delegation travelled to Turkey at the request of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in mid-late 1988 and confirmed that Iraq “was using chemical weapons on its Kurdish population” the State Department was urging closer relations with Saddam In Sept. 1988 the Reagan administration overturned its own Senate’s “Prevention of Genocide Act” which would have made Iraq ineligible to receive U.S. loans, military and non-military assistance, credits, credit guarantees, and items subject to export controls. In Oct. 1989 President Bush signed National Security Directive 26 providing Iraq with a further $1bn in aid amongst further significant support.

The US was not in the least concerned about the mass killings of Kurds under Saddam. The US at the time was pro-Saddam in order to prevent the rise of Iran as a regional hegemon. The Kurds were completely expendable in the face of the Iranian threat to the greatest strategic asset in the world, namely, Middle East oil.

The US committed numerous atrocities during the first Gulf War including the following:

• Cluster bombing in civilian areas
• Deliberate withholding of medicines and medical equipment from hospitals
• Destruction of civilian water supplies
• Use of radioactive weapons

Contrary to US and British claims, the no-fly zones instituted after the first Gulf War were not designed to protect the Kurds or the Marsh Arabs, Turkish troops and aircraft regularly entered the northern no-fly zone covering Iraqi Kurdistan to bomb and kill in the Northern zone while the US and British stood aside.

Similarly, in the Southern zone, Iraqi troop movements were not prohibited, not even Iraqi military helicopters, only Iraqi jets. Hence, US and British planes circled overhead or stayed grounded while Saddam marched in with customary brutality to crush the 1998 rebellion.

The consequences were devastating. Hussein’s forces levelled the historical centres of the Shiite towns, bombarded sacred Shiite shrines and executed thousands on the spot. By some estimates 100,000 people died in reprisal killings between March and September. Many of these atrocities were committed in proximity to American troops, who were under orders not to intervene. The extra concession to allow Iraqi military helicopters into the Southern No-Fly zone but not the Northern was obviously made to facilitate Saddam’s massacre of the Marsh Arabs. (Peter W. Galbraith, “The Ghosts of 1991”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10874-2003Apr11?language=printer”)

The trigger for the latest US invasion of Iraq was the infamous 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, not concern for democracy or human rights. The US Administration moved quickly to make political capital out of the sorrow and anger amongst the public to blame the attacks on Iraq in a knowing untruth and so justify their invasion.

Many of the charges about supposed Iraqi WMD’s “dangled in front of [the media] failed the laugh test,” the editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists commented, “but the more ridiculous [they were,] the more the media strove to make whole-hearted swallowing of them a test of patriotism.” (Linda Rothstein, editor BAS, July 2003).

The propaganda assault had its effects. Within weeks, a majority of Americans came to regard Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat to the US. Soon almost half believed that Iraq was behind the 9/11 terror. Support for the war correlated with these beliefs. (Noam Chomsky, “Preventive War ‘the Supreme Crime’: Iraq invasion that will live in infamy”, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4030)

In September 2002, Donald Rumsfeld explicitly tied the need to invade Iraq to the 9/11 bombings in this testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

Senator Mark Dayton: “What is it compelling us now to make a precipitous decision and take precipitous actions?”
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld: “What’s different? What’s different is 3,000 people were killed.”

Former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack got enormous media exposure in late 2002 for his book “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq.” During a typical CNN appearance, Pollack explained why he had come to see a “massive invasion” of Iraq as both desirable and practical:

“The real difference was the change from September 11th. The sense that after September 11th, the American people were now willing to make sacrifices to prevent threats from abroad from coming home to visit us here made it possible to think about a big invasion force.”

Western power is not committed to democracy in Iraq. In calling for the “people of Iraq” to overthrow Saddam following the first Gulf War, President Bush was really calling for a military coup – another Saddam, but an obedient Saddam. This is admitted by the US itself and seconded by the British:

“We clearly would have preferred a coup. There’s no question about that,” – Bush’s national security adviser Brent Scowcroft Interview on ABC News, 26 June 1997

‘I don’t recall asking the Kurds to mount this particular insurrection ….We hope very much that the military in Iraq will remove Saddam Hussein” – British Prime Minister John Major, ITN interview, 4 April, 1991

“..for very practical reasons there was never a promise to aid an uprising. While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf.” – President Bush and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 2 March

In summary the US is willing to countenance mass killings including the extermination of a half a million children, use radioactive weapons, cluster bomb in civilian areas, destroy civilian water supplies, deprive civilians of medicines, sell Nerve Gas and Anthrax, build the Ballistic weapons program of a megalomaniac dictator, back military coups and lie to its own population and the world community. And that’s just in Iraq.

Latham has excellent reasons for not eulogizing the US as a force for good. It is Kelly that is the innocent, but I am not certain that this innocence is “touching”.

Kelly is a very influential journalist with access to a large newspaper readership and appears regularly as a mainstream commentator on national TV. His views on US, Iraq and Australia reach into every home. As such his views on the proper attitude of Australia politicians toward US policy (rhapsodous praise) have the potential to influence the entire polity. It is therefore alarming that Kelly’s naivety is so far removed from the truth about US realpolitik and imperial ambitions.

Kelly does not settle for quiet agreement or even a lack of criticism in regard to US foreign policy. The proper attitude for Australian politicians in regard to the USA in Kelly’s view is unrestrained applause.

Latham didn’t describe the US as a ‘force for evil’ or less emotively, ‘an outlaw terrorist state’. He just didn’t say they were a force for good. Does Kelly expect our pollies as a matter of obligation or respect for the Australia-US alliance to repeat US propaganda verbatim regardless of what they may or may not believe?

Perhaps as Editor-at-large of The Australian Kelly is beholden to his employer, Rupert Murdoch, to toe his line in political articles. Did Kelly attend the Cancun conference for Murdoch editors and commentators addressed by Bush’s National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice ? A directive to present the US as “a force for good” sounds like just the sort of “editorial guideline” you’d expect in an internal memo or media briefing paper. Unfortunately the results of this appalling ”innocence” impact disgracefully on our ability to make informed votes and hence the practice of our democracy.

PostScript
Turning now to the actual use of the phrase “the price is worth it,” we come to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s reply to Lesley Stahl’s question on “60 Minutes” on May 12, 1996:

Stahl: “We have heard that a half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And–you know, is the price worth it?”

Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Sources:

Paul Kelly, “Damage in Isolation:, The Australian, April 10, 2004, http://theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9233174%255E12250,00.htmlLast Accessed, Apr-21-2004-04

Eric Herring, “The No Fly Zones in Iraq: The Myth of a Humanitarian Intervention*, via http://uk.geocities.com/dstokes14/Eric/eric.htm, Last Accessed 15-Apr-2004
Sarah Graham-Brown, “No-Fly Zones: Rhetoric and Real Intentions”, http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/2001/0220nofl.htm, Last Accessed Apr-15-2004
Norman Solomon, “Exploiting Anxiety: The Political Capital of 9/11”, http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon09112003.html, Last Accessed Apr-15-2004
Peter W. Galbraith, “The Ghosts of 1991”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10874-2003Apr11?language=printer”, Last Accessed 15-Apr-2004

Center For Co-Operative Research, “US Support for Iraq in the 1980s”, http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/globalissue/usforeignpolicy/iraq1980scontent.html, Last Accessed 15-Apr-2004-04-15

Noam Chomsky, “Preventive War ‘the Supreme Crime’: Iraq invasion that will live in infamy”, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4030, Last Accessed 15-Apr-2004

George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, “Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam”, Time 2 March 1998, posted on http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/bushsr-iraq.htm, Last Accessed Apr-15-2004

Rahul Mahajan, :”’We Think the Price Is Worth It’: Media uncurious about Iraq policy’s effects- there or here”, http://www.fair.org/extra/0111/iraq.html, Last Accessed Apr-15-2004

Say NO! To Structural Racism! (as an explanation for attacks on Indian Students In Victoria)

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

Three threads over December 2009 -January 2010 on Lavartus Prodeo (here’s number two) addressed the issue of assaults on Indian Students, mostly in Western Melbourne, but also other parts of Melbourne and Western Sydney.

Its Racism

The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – - that’s all.’

The LP moderators who wrote or authorised the posts bluntly attribute the reason for these attacks to racism, despite the comments of Victorian Chief Of Police, Simon Overland, who said that while a number of the attacks were undoubtedly racist the bulk of the attacks were ‘opportunistic’

i.e. comprising robbery as the primary motive on the ‘soft targets’ of Indian students, mostly slight of stature, known to carry cash , iPods, laptops and mobile phones, walking or travelling alone to and from late night shifts as taxi drivers and service station and late-night convenience store attendants in low socio-economic area suburbs.

..which sounds to me eminently plausible.

Circumstances Are Irrelevant: Its Racism

While the LP moderators and contributors acknowledge the relatively risky profile of the work activities of Indian students they absolutely refuse to factor that circumstantial risk profile into their characteristaion of the attacks as racist.

Rather, the LP team say that the Indian students are forced to engage in high-risk jobs by a set of laws and practices which produce a disproportionately high incidence assault on Indian students. Since the Indian students self-evidently constitute a racial group and the attacks are concentrated on this racial group, the LP commentators state the set of laws and practices which cause these assaults are ipso facto racist.

Specifically, these laws and practices are an example of Structural Racism.

The Structurally Racist Laws Causing Indian Students To Be Bashed

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly verbs, they’re the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’

`Would you tell me, please,’ said Alice `what that means?`

The supposed racist structures that cause Indian students to be bashed were enumerated by Mark Bahnsich
in this post

Mark enumerates the following: The 20 hr per week limitation on foreign students, the requirement of foreign students to fulfill work experience requirements in their courses, incomplete, misleading or poorly researched information propogated private colleges and (Indian) education agents, that only low-skill employment opportunities are open to foreign students despite the fact they may already have foreign qualifications, negligent regulation of the private education sector, the fact that Indian students come to Australia with little money, the fact that Indian students are unfamiliar with our legal and bureaucratic system, , the fact that Australian-run private educators and the fact that Indian students are unfamiliar with the cultural, safety and social aspects of Western Melboune or Sydney.

Reading through Mark’s list, it is apparrent that not one of these laws and practices is framed with racist intent or motivation, a fact readily acknowledged by the LP commentators. That fact, however, is regarded as irrelevant.

It does not matter to them that the set of laws and practices faced by Indian students is not framed with racist intent, only that the combined effect of such laws and practices forces Indian students to take low-paying jobs in risky socio-economic areas and thus they get exposed to thugs and criminals and get bashed.

For the LP commentariat Structural Racism can exist without racist intention or motivation.

For me this is a lunacy worthy of Humpty-Dumpty from Alice In Wonderland, who, you may remember, assigned meanings to words based on his own personal whim and preference and for his own transient enjoyment.

Miracle Cure For Racism Discovered

`Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. `I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

`That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.’

`Oh!’ said Alice.

Mark Bahnsich and his supporters provide a number of solutions for what they consider the deeply-ingrained xenophobic gene in Australian society. They mostly boil down to one thing: give Indian students more money – then they wont have to take the aforesaid risky jobs and put themselves in the way of thugs.

Consequently the LP team recommend giving Indian students Cab Vouchers, providing subsidized or free student housing, ask or require them to bring more money with them, relax or abolish the 20 Hr per week work limitation and abolishing or amending their work experience requirements.

Its is a strange sort of racism that can be cured merely by providing money to the victims.

To my mind, this Miracle Cure indicates very clearly that the problem is not racism, but one of wealth. Its a poverty issue not atypical of that facing students of every nationality including locals, not a problem of racism which persists despite the persecuted group having money or not (e.g ‘rich Jew’ anti-Semitism).

If Its Not Racism Then What Is It ?

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

`That’s enough to begin with,’ Humpty Dumpty interrupted: `there are plenty of hard words there. “Brillig” means four o’clock in the afternoon — the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.’

Indan students are being attacked for precisely the reasons Vic. Police say they are: opportunistic attacks on soft targets icarrying valuable items in risky areas at risky times of night while travelling alone. What puts them in harm’s way is a their relative poverty. Therefore the problem is far better called ‘Structural Poverty’, not ‘Structural Racism’. The fact the problem can be cured by applying money is a clear indicator of its true cause.

Over Eager

`I see it now,’ Alice remarked thoughtfully: `and what are “toves”?’

`Well, “toves” are something like badgers — they’re something like lizards — and they’re something like corkscrews.’

Many on the left are over eager to identify racism. This is a result of the volumes of leftist literature that portray (Imperialist) Capitalism as inherently racist and sexist. This ideological inertia predisposes leftists to enthusiastically identify racism even where it does not exist.

Here follow two examples of leftist ideological polemic which illustrate how the understanding of the interconnection between Capitalism, Racism and Sexism is described in varying levels of correlation.

First, From CLASS STRUGGLE, CAPITALISM AND THE STATE by The Workers Solidarity Federation an Anarchist/Syndicalist organisation which believes in a revolution by the workers and the poor to establish Stateless Socialism.

Class struggle does not ignore sexism, racism etc.: insofar as the majority of people who are affected by these oppressions (and who are also affected the worst by these oppressions) are working class, insofar as these oppressions are rooted in the capitalist system, and insofar as the working class can only be united and mobilised on the basis of opposing all oppression, these issues are all class issues. It is impossible to mobilise the working class without dealing with all the issues that affect the working class. That is to say, the class struggle can only succeed if it is anti-racist, anti-sexist etc.

Second, from Defying corporations, Defining Democracy

In one sense, capitalism is not inherently racist or sexist – corporations are happy to exploit anyone in the drive for profit. But owners and managers have used racism to divide workers and solidify control, and sexism has been important in keeping certain jobs associated with women or “women’s work” (such as the expanding customer service sector) low paying. Those stories are also an integral part of the history of the corporation.

Examples could be easily multiplied.

Indian Students Are Divided As To Cause

While the LP moderators are insistent that Structural Racism is the cause of the attacks, a significant minority of Indian students, like Vic. Police, assign the cause to Opportunism.

Of course this does not contradict the Structural Racism hypothesis because Structural Racism is said to explain the preconditions for the attack, not the attack itself, which thus still permits the attacks to be bluntly described as racist even though robbery or thuggery may be acknowledged as the primary motive by Leftist analysts.

To my mind, this is a lovely way of having your explanation and eating it too as the emotive and unnuanced appellation of racism with all its accusatory power can be levied at Australian (Capitalist) society while the highly jargonized term of Structural Racism is employed as covering fire when the racist motivation is questioned.

Indian student Ruchir Punjabi, former President of the University Of Sydney Student Union, made the interesting comment that that portrayal of the attacks as racist was a distraction for the severe problems besetting private foreign education in Australia.

In this way he was drawing attention to many of the problems identified by Mark Bahnsich around the largely unregulated flow of under-resourced and under-advised Indian students into Australia which has led to a more than tripling of Indian student numbers in Australia between 2004 and 2009. As an informed Indian student national with intimate knowledge of Australian society and culture he has an unusually well-rounded perspective and does not cry ‘Racist!’

Anglos Are Largely Not Perpetrating The Bashings

Humpty Dumpty raised his voice almost to a scream as he repeated this verse, and Alice thought with a shudder, `I wouldn’t have been the messenger for anything!’

The testimony of the Indian students is that the attacks are largely perpetrated by Immigrant, non-Anglo groups. The attacks on Sydney’s Indian nationals are described by the victims themselves as coming from Lebanese youths:

Macquarie University student Mukul Khanna, called back home by his worried parents: “A lot of my Pakistani friends have left the place after being brutally attacked and robbed . . . Interestingly, the attackers are mostly not locals and are themselves people of foreign origin.

In Melbourne (same link as previous) This year between May 8 and August 2 there were 12 reported robberies on taxi drivers in Flemington, Moonee Ponds and Ascot Vale. “Police will not officially acknowledge any particular ethnic group is a target, or that any other group is carrying out the crimes. But in every case the victims told police their attackers were African . . .”

In The Guardian:

Pulok: The media is giving a false impression of this – it could have been any ethnic group that actually did this. Last year it was bunch of Somali guys smashing up an Indian shop in Sunshine [a suburb three kilometres to the west] and bashing the owner. But you see all kinds of people not in their senses on the street and they can be dangerous.

Rav: There are new migrants in this area from all over the place and not having much money is a big contributing factor. Indians usually find it much easier to find jobs (even if they’re not great jobs) than a lot of the African guys, so that probably causes some resentment.

While the fact that Anglo attackers are in the minority is acknowledged by the LP commentariat, this (fairly enough) is also regarded as irrelevent, but does not deter some commentators from explaining the racist nature of the attacks with reference to Australia’s Constitution, the White Australia Policy of 1908 (approx.) and pre-WW2 attitudes to Aboriginals and non-European persons in general as they hunt out teh various mainfestations of Australia’s ‘deeply-ingrained’ xenophobia

…all of which of couse is only germane to Anglo Australia and completely irelevant to the Lebanese youth gangs of Western Sydney, the Somali gangs of Melbourne or the mixed ethnicity cohorts of unemployed friends that are actually perpetrating the attacks with minority Anglo input.

Once again the predisposition to critique (White) Western Capitalist societies interferes with the ability of some leftists to discuss this issue objectively.

So What Should Be Done ?

In the short term I agree with the LP team. Give late-night workers Cab Vouchers, provide Student Accommodation, better policing, better lighting, everything possible should be done. We differ only on the description of the problem, not its severity or victims.

Its a poverty issue, not a race issue

In the medium-term, the repulsively negligent oversight of overseas student education should be addressed with primary attention on requiring overseas students to come to Oz with more money. The problem will then magically disappear and Australia will no longer be (structurally) racist.

I would retain the 20 Hr work week minimum as a sensible limitation on foreign students and also retain the work experience requirement for qualifications.

To conclude, more poetry from the incomparable Humpty-Dumpty:

I took a corkscrew from the shelf:
I went to wake them up myself.

And when I found the door was locked,
I pulled and pushed and knocked.

And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, but — ‘

There was a long pause.

`Is that all?’ Alice timidly asked.

`That’s all,’ said Humpty Dumpty. Good-bye.’

Dog Whistle Of The Century

Dog Whistle Of The Century

The Daily Telegraph has brilliantly employed juxaposition of text and image on its front cover 29-May-2009 to Dog Whistle to the fear and paranoia of Muslims and Islam felt by many of the ‘Howard Battlers’ or ‘working families’ of Sydney.

The cover is completely filled with a picture of one of Skaf brothers (notorious young Lebanese Muslim rapists) being visited by his parents in jail. Skaf and his mother occupy most of the shot. Skaf has his arm and hand extended towards his mother palm-up and is holding something indistinguishable. The text reads (to paraphrase) ‘How did the evil Skaf brothers get a mobile phone in jail ?’

The answer, supplied by the highly suggestive picture is that his mother smuggled it in under her Islamic garb in which she is dressed. Here’s the story from the on-line edition.

Islamophobic fear, for which female Islamic attire is a lightning rod, is thus aroused by the implication that a MUSLIM RAPIST has received COVERT SUPPORT from an ISLAMIC woman DECEITFULLY using HIJAB to CONCEAL CONTRABAND.

The sub-texts:
- They can’t be trusted.
- They are not repentant.
- SHE COULD HAVE A BOMB just as easily as a phone.

The sales strategy of the Daily Telegraph is to reflect, reinforce and justify prejudice (and supply the racing form guide). The May 29 issue is a surpassing example.

Whatever Skaf’s crimes I find it entirely understandable that his mother should wish to be able to speak to him and, notwithstanding the repulsive nature of Skaf’s crimes, it is understandable he wishes to speak with her. But its jail. He can’t have a mobile phone.

The Daily Telegraph does not explore this human angle on the story, but instead bashes on relentlessly in its supporting article about Law And Order issues, content to let its cover Dog Whistle the rest.

Which it does brilliantly for the coffers of the Telegraph, for the xenophobia of its readership and to the general poisoning of the mass culture.

Feminist Androgynists Are Everywhere

Reds Under The Bed, Femmos Under The Fridge

Miranda Devine makes a puzzling – borderline crazy – analysis of the recent Matthew Johns/Cronulla Sharks scandal in her article “Natural Men Scolded Into Timidity” which appeared in WA Today, 21-May-2009.

Johns was alleged to be the ringleader (Johns denies being the ringleader but admits being involved) in a gross humiliation perpetrated by him and his football club colleagues on a New Zealand woman in 2002.

Devine ascribes the outrage which followed revelation of this horrific event and the calls for retribution against Johns and his team-mates as being the product of Feminism and the Feminist movement.

She says:

The initial criticism of Johns was warranted [...] But since then, Johns has been crucified, with demands he name his teammates, sponsors threatening to pull out of rugby league, a school principal banning NRL players from visiting classes and mothers stopping their sons playing the game.

You always know when zealotry creeps into a story there is another agenda at work – and that is that the Johns case is a beachhead in the war against masculinity, waged by [...]the women’s studies movement.

Feminists v. NRL

In Devine’s conception, the women’s movement is responsible for the outrage directed against Johns et. al. and has an agenda to destroy Rubgy League since League is a place where men and boys can behave in unambiguously masculine fashion, this being anathema to Feminists who wish to

produce an androgynous utopia.

in which authentic masculinity and feminity are to be suppressed and replaced by non-gender identities and hence Feminists have the objective of

Killing off rugby league

The Awesome Power Of Feminist Androgynists

Devine’s attribution of such agenda-setting power to the minority viewpoint of Feminists seeking androgynous utopia (surely even a fringe within Feminism) is Howardesque in its gigantic view of the political power of selected elite minorities.

Howard famously identified Aboriginals, Feminists and Left-Wing Intellectuals as representing an near-irresistible tide of political power which had captured Australian society and thinking in order to promote their selfish, sectional interests against the ‘mainstream’.

In Devine’s view then, corporate sponsors, school principals and mothers are the foot soldiers of the Feminist Androgyny Movement, screaming the slogans of their ideological masters who remote-control their brains from command centres in Darlinghurst and Ultimo.

It’s plain weird.

Return To Sanity

In my view the general repulsion of a broad spectrum of society including the corporate sector, middle-class mums, male commercial media identities and famous famous Rugby League persons themselves reflects a sane rejection of vicious and sick behaviours exhibted by the Cronulla Sharks in 2002, Canterbury Bulldogs in 2004 and what Roy Masters (see comments by Bob Ellis here) admits has been common-place in League for years or decades.

Those vicious and sick behaviours include intimidating younger women into ‘consent’ when outnumbering them by twelve to one, self-abusing en masse while watching team mates perform such ‘consensual’ acts, rubbing themselves (more than one player simultaneously) over the face of the woman while other acts are in progress and queueing-up to join in and sneaking into the room to do so without the knowledge of the woman.

The Zealot’s Own Zealotry

It seems to me that Devine is missing the point in an almost unbelievable manner on this topic. In fact, it seems to me that Devine is a victim of the syndrome that she herself identifies:

You always know when zealotry creeps into a story there is another agenda at work

Devine’s agenda is the evil of Feminism possibly in conjunction with the moral laxity of certain young ladies which are topics to which Devine continually returns. Her zealotry has caused her to rather crazily ascribe outrage over this issue to the agency of the Feminist Movement and miss the central and obvious reason for the public outcry, which is consent and violence toward women.

Don’t Waste A Good Crisis

In my view, media commentators such as Miranda Devine and Steve Price of 2UE, who are fans of Rugby League, are missing a golden opportunity to save the game they love. League now has the opportunity to eradicate the culture of disrespect toward women which is producing the sick behaviours causing public disgust.

By confronting the problem squarely, by admitting responsibility and complicity, the clubs, players and NRL can establish a complete no-tolerance policy toward (group) intimidation of women into ‘consent’. They can clean themselves up, then get on with playing the game they love.

Hiding the problem and blaming Feminist Androgynists, the women involved or any other agency will only allow this game-threatening behaviour to linger and fester. Devine and Price should get smart and admit the problem.

Otherwise, left to its sick culture, NRL can expect to be held in contempt forever.

Its their choice.

Other Blogs

The Michael Duffy Files deconstructs Devine’s article into an entertaining series of self-contradictions.

Errr.. that’s about it.

A Shocking Hour With Steve Price and 2UE

Through The Looking Glass
Out of curiosity and since they are electorally influential to the point of being Kingmakers, I decided to listen to what the Shock Jocks were saying about the Budget and what their listeners thought, so I tuned into Steve Price 2UE on Wed 13th May from 10:45 to midday.

It was an entertaining 75 minutes in a gut-wrenchingly disgusting kind of way.

How To Miss The Point

The Four Corners report on NRL player behaviour ‘Code Of Silence’ .
Price’s take on this story was staggering. Ignoring the central issue of the Four Corners report which was the NRL footy culture of intimidating women into non-consensual sex, Price chose as the major issue of concern the effect of the Four Corners report on the career of Matthew Johns.

Moreover, it appeared to me that Price was insinuating that the girl assualted by Johns’ teammates got what she deserved. i.e. non-consensual sexual assault by four Rugby League players while eight others looked on, enjoying the humiliation and degredation poured out on the victim.

Price had a couple of interviews and several listener calls on the issue while I was listening. The first interview was with Channel 9′s Ken Sutcliffe who talked mostly about whether or not Johns would lose his job at Channel 9.

The second interview occurred at approx. 11:20 and contained some very noxious insinuations that the girl deserved it.

Price was happy to let these comments pass without challenge. The interviewee appeared to be known to Price, I didn’t catch his name but I’m pretty sure it was ‘entertainment reporter’ Peter Ford, because he was expressing outrage that Four Corners reporter Sarah Ferguson had described ‘our’ (i.e. Price and his) comments on the Johns incident as being ‘predatory’, which comments occur in the interview ‘Something Disturbing In The Code’ between Peter Ford and 2UE’s John Stanley of 12th May, currently on 2UE’s Home Page

Here’s what I wrote to Price:

The interview you just did approx. 11:20 Wed 13th May on the Johns group sex story was ludicrously biased.

Yes, the girl should not have gone to their room since she had a boyfriend. Yes, she must have expected and even perhaps consented to sex with the two players.

The reason why she is traumatised and which you and your interviewer did not mention was that she did not consent to sex with the additional four players nor to the six additional others who came in just to watch.

Your failure and that of your interviewee to recognise or even mention the non-consensual nature of the sex with the four players and the presence of the eight others watching (in this interview at least) may be why your interviews on the subject can be construed as encouraging sexual predation.

Price responded:

Barra – I spent 3 hours yesterday talking about this case and mentioned more than once the awful nature of that girl’s experience. What you were listening to at 11.30 was a talkback caller not an interview…not sure what your problem is SP

Awful But Not Undeserved

The girl’s experience was indeed awful.
But Price did not say it was undeserved, at least while I was listening.

My problem is that at no time today did Price say that the sex acts perpetrated after the initial two were non-consensual.

The focus of Price’s comments and those of his interviewees, not challenged by Price were:

1) Matthew Johns is being unfairly treated in that only he is being punished, not any of the other 11 also involved (A red herring – only Johns has a media career to lose. Of the others only one other is still in football. Furthermore, the victim identified Johns as having a leading role in the assault.)
2) The girl made a mistake and was morally deficient in going with Johns and the other player, especially since she had a boyfriend (A reasonable point)
3) The girl must have expected and consented to have sex with at least one of the players that she accompanied to the hotel room.(A reasonable point)
4) The incident wasn’t considered wrong enough to punish in 2002. (A reasonable point)
5) The girl wants to wreck the lives of the players involved. (Inferring she is mentally unstable and hence that her account of the Johns group incident is unrealiable)
6) Girls go nutty around sports stars. (Inferring she deserved or asked for the treatment he received)

The problem is what Price left out:

1) The girl did not consent to four players having sex with her while eight others were in the room.
2) Nor did she consent to the ‘watching’ players standing around her bed performing acts of self-abuse o rubbing their pensises on her face (which happened) while a string of others sexually penetrated her.
3) Even if she consented to one or two that does not permit the additional four or the eight watching.
4) The girl had her eyes closed while the assaults were taking place just wishing it would finish.
5) The assault lasted two hours and only finished when the players relesed her. She was intimidated nto submission by the physical strength and number of the players.

It is true that Price made or permitted the following comments that could be construed as sympathetic to the girl:

a) He ‘feels sorry’ for her because she is suicidal
b) She ‘didn’t go in with all them guys’
c) He permitted without challenge a comment from Sutcliffe that what Johns did was ‘morally wrong’
d) She ‘shouldn’t have felt frightened’. i.e. the fact she was frightened pointed to something amiss in the encounter.

But the overall effect of Price’s comments and interviews *today* was to insinuate that she deserved it.

Price did not say he feels sorry for her because she was sexually abused by twelve men, just sorry for its effect on her.

Making Martyrs Of The Perpetrators

Price said something like ‘What I find very disturbing about the case is that she wants to wreck the lives of those involved.’This to me is an inference she is mentally unstable and hence unreliable in her accounts of the abuse. The vengeful intention of the girl in giving her story is at best a sub-plot. Price uses it to switch outrage from the players’ actions to the girl’s actions.

Price’s assertions that he is sorry for the girl are limited to her current medical/psychological condition e.g. that she is suicidal. This neatly bypasses the central ethical issue involved which is that what happened to her was not consensual.

Steve Price today was far more interested in sub-plots than the main event. Those sub-plots have the intention of minimizing or excusing the non-consensual acts perpetrated on her. The non-consensual acts are the central issue and what deserves most attention. The sub-plots of course merit discussion but not at the expense of excusing non-consensual gang bangs.

Just saying ‘a caller said it’ (in fact it was Peter Ford, a reporter and Price regular on ‘entertainment’) does not excuse Price’s responsibility as a broadcaster to bring the full picture, or any propensity to use his interviewees as stalking horses for personal views especially on grevious issues such as non-consensual gang bangs.

Blind To The Issue

The following day, Price revisited the issue this time saying ‘let’s examine the wider effect of this report on NRL’. Interviewing Ken Sutcliffe again, this time in company with Sydney Morning Herald reporter Jacqueline Magnay, Price asked Sutcliffe what the main issue of concern in the Four Corners report was. Sutcliffe answered and Price agreed that it was ‘Group Sex’. Magnay said ‘Sorry, I disagree. The issue is consent and violence toward women.’. Price and Sutcliffe were silent. It would appear the thought had never occurred to them.

It would seem that Price is prejudicially blind to issues of violence toward women or ‘consent’ gained through intimidation at least where this interesects Rugby League. Price loves Rugby League and sees the Four Corners report as constituting a threat to the game which may cripple its popularity. Behind this, violence to women is nearly irrelevant.

Ostrich Time
Price’s initial ‘editorial’ on the issue, with which he opened his Monday morning program described the Four Corners report as ‘cobbled together’ from ‘two reports over seven years’, strongly inferring that incidents such as the Cronulla Sharks Christchurch encounter are isolated and that the Four Corners report was a witchhunt and not justified. Price therefore denies and ignores what any impartial observer of Rugby League knows (and as Magnay stated) that intimidation and trapping of women into non-consensual gang bangs is an entrenched part of the depraved culture of NRL footballers and has been for a long time.

If Price was smart he would welcome these revelations as an opportunity to clean up the game and flush out this repulsive behaviour. He would prefer, however, to stick his hands in the sand, to cast aspersions on the victims and Four Corners, make martyrs of the perpetrators deny the truth and in so doing maintain NRL as a haven for those who sexually assault women.

Price Spruiking The Interests Of Private Medical Insurance

Also in that 75 minutes, Price conducted an interview with Michael Armitage, Chief Executive, Australian Health Insurance Association.

Armitage and Price carried on like two sides of the same mouth in this interview being highly critical of Swan/Rudd for reducing the scope of the Private Medical Insurance rebate.

Price and Armitage dwelt on the fact that this action breaks an election promise.
They stressed many times it affects EVERYONE because
a) Private Health Cover premiums will rise as a result of people dropping out of health funds
b) The ‘beleaguered (Price)’ Public Health System will be additionally burdened

They dwelt on those likely to drop out
a) Young people earning approx. 80k
b) Older people as they have lower incomes

In my opinion Price concentrated on the elderly here as it takes the shine off their pension increases, the most unambiguous ‘winner’ item in the Budget.

Both Armitage and Price said, accurately, the additional cost to those losing the full rebate is 42%, not 30%.

On its own this interview was mostly just a dig at Swan/Rudd. What followed made it’s partisan nature clearer

Later in his show Price interviewed Steve James from CommSec on the sharemarket reaction to the Budget. James reported a generally positive reaction from Business with a particular leap in the fortunes of the HealthCare Sector.

You see, the Budget increased the overall funding for Medicare (which Price did not mention when interviewing Armitage) and so companies like Ramsay Health etc. can expect to be more profitable.

Needless to say Price did not express surprise or even comment that Swan’s supposed horror attack on health was construed as good news for the HealthCare sector by the sharemarket. That was in direct contradiction to his lovefest with Michael Armitage, a kick-Rudd-in-the-guts duet which Price said ‘cut through the spin’ of the Rudd government.

So Swan/Rudd have compensated the Public Sector for an expected additional burden resulting from drop-out from private health funds as a result of decreasing the rebate on private health insurance. There will not be an additional unfunded burden as Price implied.

In fact the 2009-2010 Healthcare budget contains a record $64 billion healthcare agreement with the states and territories – to provide record levels of funding for public hospitals and reduce pressure on emergency departments and includes specific new spending of more than $1 bn on Cancer treatment. I could go on.

Why Price should be giving Armitage’s Australian Health Insurance Association free kicks on his program is a matter of speculation. Probably it’s just a convenient vehicle for a partisan attack on Swan and Rudd.

Update 14th May:

Listening to Malcolm Turnbull’s Budget In Reply speech it was striking that Price/Armitage’s objections to Rudd/Swan’s means test of the Private Health Care rebate were identical.

Quite plainly the Libs have leaked this part of Turnbull’s speech to Armitage/Price to warm up the electorate to the Libs argument.

Price is utterly partisan. He is willing servant of the Liberal Party. Any political comment of his should be regarded as being written and authorised M. Turnbull Parliament House, Canberra.

Here is Turnbull verbatim:

Australians know that and that is why in the lead up to the last election the Prime Minister was asked time and time again whether he would change the private health insurance rebate.

Again and again he and his shadow health minister said they would not.

Never was an election promise given more emphatically and then broken so brazenly.

Every Australian knows that the cost of public health is growing as are the waiting lists for public hospitals.

Every Australian knows that as our population ages the need for more self reliance in the provision of health services becomes greater.

This broken promise will be a direct hit on the family budget of at least 1.7 million Australians and indirectly will result in higher premiums for all Australians – including those on very low incomes.

And it is just the beginning – the thin edge of the wedge.

And as private health insurance costs go up, more pressure is put on public hospitals.