Discontented Soul

I have just heard John Howard’s Press Club speech (transferred to Parliament House ‘cos the Little Aussie Battler was afraid of protesters) and I must say that he didn’t change my mind and make me want to climb on the battle-wagon heading for Baghdad. Apart from the dodgy logic of "Saddam Hussein is a bad man, Saddam MAY have weapons, Saddam MAY give weapons to naughty terrorists, therefore we gotta get Saddam", the speech offered several points of debate: 1) ‘Saddam would not be disarming if it weren’t for THE UsofA.’ — BUSH and his advisers have constantly opposed taking the question to the United Nations, it was Powell who wanted to go the UN route. Probably the myopic from Kirribilli [The PM's Sydney residence] thinks that this distinction may escape Australians. Hmmmmm;
2) ‘If we don’t USE force, we’ll have to stay there, ‘cos if we turn our backs, he’ll be at it again.’— This is the argument that Victorian nannies used to justify tying boys’ hands to stop them masturbating. More dangerously, it is the diplomatic equivalent of Rooster Cogburn [John Wayne]saying, "What’s good a gun if ya ainna gonna use it, pilgrim.";
3) ‘Consider both sides of the humanitarian debate; many will die, but more will suffer if Saddam stays in place.’ — I cannot seriously credit that John Howard believes that ‘a little bit of CERTAIN death now’ is better than ‘a lot of POSSIBLE human-rights violations’ in future. Of course, such thinking is perfectly consistent from a civilization that believes that you can save a soul by destroying a body.
Question-time offered a few more titbits:
1) ‘Though we would like a second resolution, the USofA doesn’t NEED UN backing for a war.’ — I think, Mr Howard, that you should read the UN Charter again. If you indulge in offensive war without UN support, you are in violation of international law;
2) ‘We have no proof [that he has ‘naughty’ weapons] that will stand up in a court of law; you don’t wait for incontrovertible facts, you make judgements’ — A self-condemnatory statement which justifies US intervention anywhere at anytime.
3) ‘The only people who speak out are those who disagree.’ — Does silence only indicate assent? Is that why Bush/Blair/Howard and their allies can ignore protest? Maybe it indicates apathy, which may change when the body-bags arrive.

It’s no coincidence that our leaders refer to those who are eager to climb on board the Bush war train as the ‘Moral Majority’.
Such was the self-assumed designation of the conservative group of the 1980s who wanted to return the world to the Victorian Era of imperialism, repression and bible-thumping Christianity.
I must remind these worthies who are so eager to indulge in their ‘Just War’ that it is not immoral to say "Non, nein, nyet" or "bu shih."

[Last Christmas there was some debate here in Australia about whether it was 'appropriate' in a multi-ethnic and multicultural society to have nativity scenes and carols in stores and schools]

I cannot but suppress a wry smile at this ‘debate’ about Christmas traditions, given the underlying assumption that "Australia is a Christian country." As with most slogans, this one seems to compound several ideas in a simplistic — and, its proponents hope — ‘memorable’ fashion.
Firstly, Australia is not a country for ALL Christians, but only for those whose Christian heritage originates in Western Europe. We are granted public holidays for ‘Christmas’ and ‘Easter’, but not only do non-Christians — including our own Aboriginal people — have to ‘apply’ to take holidays to celebrate THEIR spiritual events, using valuable Recreation Leave to do so, but members of the various Orthodox Christian Churches must do the same, because for them, ‘Christmas’ and ‘Easter’ may fall on different dates.
The solution is to only mandate National/State holidays as PUBLIC holidays and grant everyone a set number of days to celebrate religious holidays. Of course, we would then have this peculiarly Australian debate as to whether these holidays should be paid or unpaid, but the Separation of Church and State will never be complete until this is done.
Secondly, many of the ‘traditions’ of Christmas are not Christian at all, but ‘pagan’, Christianity having been very good at assimilating the traditions of other cultures before exterminating them. Indeed the very idea of an end-of-year festival goes back beyond the Egyptians, and is found around the world, though sometimes not with pleasant associations. So, one can celebrate ‘Christmas’ with food and drink, presents, trees, Santa and reindeer, without ANY reference to ‘Christianity’. Any attempt to "put Christ back into Christmas" will NOT get my vote, for reasons explained in the next paragraph.
Along with many intelligent adults, I am not merely apathetic to, but totally repelled by the idiocies that are presented as ‘articles of Christian faith’. Oh, I know the arguments — Christianity is a ‘mystery religion’, with an ‘outer myth/meaning’ for the ‘ignorant’, and an ‘inner myth/higher truth’ for the cognoscenti. The trouble is that the ‘outer myth’ has been promulgated as ‘sole truth’ for nearly 1700 years, and shows no sign of being superseded by the ‘higher truth’ among either the vast bulk of the population or in the minds of our leaders. One would have thought that after so many millennia of ‘mystery religions’, humanity would have "put aside childish things" — or do we every so often have to, as Trotsky put it, "puke up [our] undigested barbarism?"

Wasn't it [US General] George Patton who said, "Greatness consists not in going to war and fighting and dying oneself, but in sending some other poor fool to fight and die in a war"?
This means that George W Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and their mouthpieces are the greatest people in History. I just hope that the 'greatness' of assuring a continuous supply of oil (or the ushering-in of a 'New American Century') is worth the body count!

In the phrase 'Department of Homeland Security' we can almost hear an echo of Goebbels - 'Das Amt der Heimat-Sicherheit'

[Talkback radio hear is often full of ageing 'weekend warriors' and silly old women who trot out that old adage, "if it eren't for the Americans, we'd all be speaking Japanese now." What follows is my e-mail to one such shock-jock who runs a popular morning talk-back radio show here in Australia]

I am sick and tired of hearing this mantra that "If it weren't for the Yanks, we'd all be speaking Japanese now." I have seen the documents in the Australian Archives and in the Australian War Memorial and talked with ex-diplomats and ex-soldiers who had contact with the Japanese at the time - the Japanese never wanted to invade Australia. They wanted to isolate us economically and strangle us maybe, but there were no invasion plans until Australia was 'occupied' by the Americans.
Then, as now, alliance with the USofA made us a target. That coward, Douglas MacArthur, used Australia as a stationary aircraft carrier to springboard US foreign policy interests in the Pacific, and push his own megalomaniac star to 'return' to the Philippines (there is a story in that too). Quite simply, it was easier and cheaper to fight the Japanese from Australia than from the west coast of the USA.
And consider the changes in Australia brought about by the US presence - Brisbane divided into two cities because the Yanks wouldn't let THEIR black troops mingle with THEIR white ones, US Marines forcing Australian workers in Darwin to load ships at machine-gun point, an Australian court not permitted to try a US soldier who killed four Australian women in Melbourne.
You and your listeners should think on THAT when next you're sucking up to George 'Warmonger' Bush. Read the real stories, not what you were taught in school!
PS: Many of us speak some Japanese. It is an elegant and beautiful language - you should try it.

[When asked how Australians would reaact when the first Aussie body-bags come home from Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard - the 'Little Aussie Battler' - said that Australians should 'remember Bali'. That cowardly rag, The Daily Telegraph, repeated this as a war-cry]

So the Little Aussie Battler has come up with a new argument to try to convince Australians to climb on board the Bush battle-wagon headed for Baghdad — "Remember Bali!"
Smoke’n’mirrors, of course. What neither John W Howard, nor any of his mouthpieces, public or private, have never managed to prove is that there is any connection between Bali and the regime of Saddam Hussein.

I remember how, when I was young, Mummy or Daddy would say, "When you’re older, you’ll understand why we act the way we do."
I feel exactly the same at fifty years of age when confronted by the Bush/Blair/Howard statement that, "We have information about Iraq, but it is beyond your capacity to understand or judge."
It is ironic that in the USA, which one imagines would be rife with war-fever, people are actually brave enough to ask whether it is right that such ‘information’ is being withheld from the judgement of ORDINARY folk. Here it seems that everyone, from politicians through shock-jocks to the man/woman in the street is satisfied with the parrot-like repetition of the mantra beloved of our spooks ‘n’ spies: "Just trust US to act in YOUR best interests."
Or maybe it’s the case that, "We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you!"

I grovel in my ignorance and naiveté before the politicians, spooks ‘n’ spies and shock jocks, but I most humbly beg an answer to my question — why is it that only the Anglo-Celtic nations are possessed of sufficient ‘morality’ to be allowed to keep ‘weapons of mass destruction’?
I realize that in ‘practical’ Australia, one must be either a fool or a traitor, if not both, to ask such a thing — it is axiomatic that the USA, UK and Oz are the ‘good guys’. But whatever Divinity exists must wonder at our arrogance and self-righteousness — and may even require more of us to be fools and traitors.
God may NOT, after all, be on our side!

"France announced last week that they will not help the United States remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Well, duh, they didn't help us remove the Germans from France…"
-Jay Leno

Leno, and the Bush Administration, should keep their disgusting anti-French sentiments to themselves. Several facts need to be pointed out:
1) The French having been pulling US irons out of the fire, since Your Revolution.;
2) While the US sat out three-fourths of WW1 in 'splendid isolation', French soldiers were dying in their tens of thousands in the mud of Northern France. In fact so many died that France didn't have an army of sufficient strength to resist the German war machine twenty years later; 3) While the US also sat out forty percent of WW2 in 'splendid isolation', French men and women were dying under German occupation and Vichy collaboration to get rid of 'the Germans';
4) The US didn't even get involved in WW2 till the end of 1941. In 1940, the German armed forces were the equivalent of the US armed forces today - a full military generation ahead of other nations. France’s entire army was destroyed in battle by the invincible Germans; had the US fought Germany in 1940, it too would have been routed.
5) The Soviet Union, not the US, defeated Germany, destroying over 100 German divisions. One wonders if Jay or George W ever heard of a place called Stalingrad or a Soviet Marshal called Zhukov - or the 20 million casualties, military and civilian, suffered by the people of the Soviet Union.
Instead of indulging in low-brow racist ranting, Leno and Bush should be thanking the French for holding the US back from the brink of one of the greatest mistakes it will ever make.

[After the 15 Februarary anti-war demonstrations, Australian PM, John Howard - 'the Little Boy from Earlwood', a reference to the comfortable middle-class Sydney suburn where he was raised, as well as the the naive Aussie of pre-WW1 days - referred dispagingly to the demonstrators as 'the mob' ]

John Howard’s reference to ‘the mob’ on a well-known TV show on Sunday night gives on a good idea of the nature of the triumvirate driving us to war.
The leader of the unholy trinity is, of course, that well-known aristocrat, George W Bush. Of course Bush’s ‘aristocracy’ is not based on land, like the corrupt aristocracies of ‘Old Europe’, but on oil shares and stock options.
The Deputy is Tony Blair, a petit-bourgeois neo-Victorian parvenu, steeped in West Country Methodism, who brought the world ‘mutual obligation’, aka paint rocks for the dole, and suck up to employers for jobs that don’t exist.
And finally, we have our own ‘little boy from Earlwood’, Johnny Howard, who, judging by his effusions, would have LIKED to go The Kings School, but missed out - and has since survived by portraying himself as a ‘Little Aussie Battler’, who wins the hearts of avuncular old men and empty-nest grandmothers by managing to look simultaneously clueless and eager to help.

"We really don’t WANT to go to war, but Saddam won’t obey a lawful instruction, so we have to go in and MAKE him obey."
Surely this is just the international equivalent of, "She wouldn’t do her wifely duty, Your Honour, so I had to beat her up."
Why is it that an ‘explanation’ which is despicable when advanced by perpetrators of domestic violence suddenly becomes ‘a noble call to action’ when uttered by sententious old men and women in grey suits or clerical garb?

Why should anti-war protesters wave 'anti-Saddam' placards?
There is absolutely no logical requirement for protesters to present a 'balanced view' - the beneficiary of the most powerful propaganda machine in the world (George W) does not need a sympathetic 'free ride' to garner support for his steenkeeng oil-war!

So Saddam Hussein has to prove that he does NOT have "Weapons of Mass Destruction"?
Poor beggar can't win - as any first year Philosophy student, charged with proving the non-existence of God knows, it is well-nigh impossible to prove a negative!

Yes, it’s about oil, it’s about unfinished business, it’s about Daddy. But basically the rationale for this war is a ‘spiritual’ one. It has its roots in the, basically religious belief, inculcated into every American — even the Native Americans, now that they have been properly ‘civilized’ — from infancy, that the UsofA is ‘a chosen people, destined by God to be a Light unto the Nations.’
This belief manifests in those of conservative or right-wing leanings as a determination to deceive, bribe, bully and, ultimately, crush by military means if necessary, those peoples who refuse to accept ‘democracy’ — in the shape of McDonald’s, but not (Gough Whitlam’s) Medibank.
Among the liberal, the belief surfaces in bleatings of, "Why do they hate us so? We are only trying to give them the benefits of our culture."
The conservatives don’t want answers — they are happy to ‘march into Hell for a Heavenly Cause,’ singing The Battle Hymn of The Republic, and ignoring the bloody tripes of ‘allied’ soldiers and Iraqi civilians lying in the doorways of the suburbs of Baghdad. For the liberals who seek ‘redemption’ from the nightmare, I would say, "Examine your core values — the ‘American Way of Life’ may not be the acme of Human Civilization, after all."

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING
"John TV" has been canceled by the City Council in Oklahoma City with nary a word of debate. The Oklahoman newspaper says the city cable show began in 1999 and showed photos of people arrested for prostitution-related offenses. Critics contended it gave the city a bad name and some say no one knows if it even helped cut down on prostitution or simply gave hookers a new advertising venue. "John TV" effectively had been off the air for months because it only runs photos of people charged with city offenses and the Oklahoma County District Attorney's office has been filling state charges against those arrested.

It's good to know that there's a country in the world that is prepared to launch an unprovoked assault on a sovereign nation AND save the souls of it's citizens by shaming them on TV!

Twice in my lifetime has a Liberal Government has sent the youth of my country overseas to fight and die for the adventuristic interests of the UsofA. Twice in fifty years have Happy Little Vegemites followed the American Vulture into a Mass Grave — it’s strange how the Vegemites (and 50,000 US 'doughboys') die, but the Vulture can always hover above the Grave.
I listened to the whiny, nasal voice of George the Warrior telling the American people — and through them the world — how he did not need UN permission to take action to ‘defend American security.’ I thought to myself that someone ought to tell the arrogant Seppo that — until the ‘New American Century’ actually dawns —he is STILL acting in contravention of the international law which his own country helped to set in place in launching an unprovoked assault on a sovereign nation.
But then ‘questioning the American alliance’ in this fashion would be treason. George the Warrior has not only told the world that ‘you’re either with us or agin us’, but has even assessed himself as competent to lecture the papal legate on how this war is ‘holy’, ‘just’ and ‘morally right.’ The ‘Little Boy from Earlwood’ ['The Little Boy from Bondi' was a cartoon character in Australian magazines before WWI, representing Australian innocence. John Howard was born in Earlwood, a suburn of Sydney] would not be the one to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes — THAT is left to the so-called ‘cowardly’ French and Germans.