Golden words:
"There has never been a subject of such immense concern concerning which there has been such ignorance as that of Palestine, nor has there been a subject concerning which more information has been withheld." (Palestine: The Reality, JMN Jeffries, 1939, p 395)
"[P]ublic opinion never seems to allow for want of knowledge amidst statesmen and politicians in general. They are always thought to be so fully informed upon any given matter that, according as their actions disclose themselves later on, they are judged to have acted in respect of it either with entire honesty or entire dishonesty. This is far from being true: one of the first things a journalist learns from contact with major politics is that highly placed persons can be quite ignorant and can act in ignorance." (ibid, p 402)
Monday, February 6, 2012
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Get Rhiannon! 3
The latest round of the Australian's witch hunt against those elements of the NSW Greens sufficiently informed and principled to support the BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid continues apace:
"A cameo appearance by a Greens state MP at a meeting of a far-left group has highlighted divisions within the NSW Greens. Eyebrows were raised within the party by the presence of upper house MP David Shoebridge at the annual Socialist Alliance conference in Sydney last weekend. The Green-Left [sic] website reports Mr Shoebridge was present to deliver 'greetings' from the NSW Greens." (MP's visit to far-left meeting roils Greens, Imre Salusinszky & James Massola, 2/2/12)
A cameo appearance... highlighted divisions... eyebrows raised... roils Greens.
Say it isn't so! Fair dinkum, comrade Shoebridge! If only you'd cameo-ed at, say, the annual conference of the state Liberal Party instead, said divisions would have been lowlighted, raised eyebrows remained as they were, and choppy waters returned instantly to calm.
But be still my leaping eyebrows, Salusinszky's really just introducing another promo for Sally Neighbour's Monthly essay on the NSW Greens, with a bit of reassurance by former Greens MLC Ian Cohen to the effect that the Greens are "not left wing or right wing," but "the whole bird," and a "party source" who followed him with: "The balance of power is shifting towards the national centre. There is a fight back... but the extremists are losing."
Then, yesterday, churnalist Christian Kerr was back for another stab at the Mother of All Comrades:
"When The Weekend Australian detailed Greens senator Lee Rhiannon's activities as a propagandist for the Soviet Union as a contributor to and editor of the Soviet-supported magazine Survey in the 1980s and early 90s, her reaction was to fudge."
This provided the opportunity for a rehash of his ASIO "revelations" of February 1, and a raising of the old eyebrow thus:
"Rhiannon seems to have moved seamlessly from the role of Soviet propagandist at Survey, 'a monthly digest of trends in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries', to loyal member of the Greens, [which] political rebirth raises questions of her credibility."
Kerr, who seems to have moved even more seamlessly from the role of Liberal Party staffer and propagandist (2008) to loyal employee of Rupert Murdoch (2008) without any credibility issues whatever, then gave the floor to Michael Danby, the Labor member for Melbourne Ports and "just one of several parliamentarians who have raised the issue." Danby, as a card-carrying Zionist and the ALP's go-to man for all things Israel, trifling matters Kerr correctly neglects to mention, also has no credibility issues.
In fact, as reported by Kerr, the great man's expressed solicitude for all victims of Soviet crimes (with the exception, of course, of those Palestinians who lost their lives and/or homes as a result of the Soviet's timely provision of arms* to the Zionist gangs engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948) is an absolute credit to him.
And when Danby, as reported by Kerr, calls on Rhiannon to publicly express "regret" for "the harm caused by [her] years of advocacy and activism for the Soviet regime," it would surely be churlish for anyone to suggest he do the same for his many more years of advocacy and activism for the apartheid regime of Israel. Oh, yeah.
[*On [24 May, 1948], the Israeli army had received a large shipment of modern, brand new 0.45-calibre cannons from the Communist Eastern bloc. Israel now possessed artillery unmatched not only by the Arab troops inside Palestine, but by all the Arab armies put together. It should be noted that the Israeli Communist Party was instrumental in arranging this deal." (Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, p 144)]
"A cameo appearance by a Greens state MP at a meeting of a far-left group has highlighted divisions within the NSW Greens. Eyebrows were raised within the party by the presence of upper house MP David Shoebridge at the annual Socialist Alliance conference in Sydney last weekend. The Green-Left [sic] website reports Mr Shoebridge was present to deliver 'greetings' from the NSW Greens." (MP's visit to far-left meeting roils Greens, Imre Salusinszky & James Massola, 2/2/12)
A cameo appearance... highlighted divisions... eyebrows raised... roils Greens.
Say it isn't so! Fair dinkum, comrade Shoebridge! If only you'd cameo-ed at, say, the annual conference of the state Liberal Party instead, said divisions would have been lowlighted, raised eyebrows remained as they were, and choppy waters returned instantly to calm.
But be still my leaping eyebrows, Salusinszky's really just introducing another promo for Sally Neighbour's Monthly essay on the NSW Greens, with a bit of reassurance by former Greens MLC Ian Cohen to the effect that the Greens are "not left wing or right wing," but "the whole bird," and a "party source" who followed him with: "The balance of power is shifting towards the national centre. There is a fight back... but the extremists are losing."
Then, yesterday, churnalist Christian Kerr was back for another stab at the Mother of All Comrades:
"When The Weekend Australian detailed Greens senator Lee Rhiannon's activities as a propagandist for the Soviet Union as a contributor to and editor of the Soviet-supported magazine Survey in the 1980s and early 90s, her reaction was to fudge."
This provided the opportunity for a rehash of his ASIO "revelations" of February 1, and a raising of the old eyebrow thus:
"Rhiannon seems to have moved seamlessly from the role of Soviet propagandist at Survey, 'a monthly digest of trends in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries', to loyal member of the Greens, [which] political rebirth raises questions of her credibility."
Kerr, who seems to have moved even more seamlessly from the role of Liberal Party staffer and propagandist (2008) to loyal employee of Rupert Murdoch (2008) without any credibility issues whatever, then gave the floor to Michael Danby, the Labor member for Melbourne Ports and "just one of several parliamentarians who have raised the issue." Danby, as a card-carrying Zionist and the ALP's go-to man for all things Israel, trifling matters Kerr correctly neglects to mention, also has no credibility issues.
In fact, as reported by Kerr, the great man's expressed solicitude for all victims of Soviet crimes (with the exception, of course, of those Palestinians who lost their lives and/or homes as a result of the Soviet's timely provision of arms* to the Zionist gangs engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948) is an absolute credit to him.
And when Danby, as reported by Kerr, calls on Rhiannon to publicly express "regret" for "the harm caused by [her] years of advocacy and activism for the Soviet regime," it would surely be churlish for anyone to suggest he do the same for his many more years of advocacy and activism for the apartheid regime of Israel. Oh, yeah.
[*On [24 May, 1948], the Israeli army had received a large shipment of modern, brand new 0.45-calibre cannons from the Communist Eastern bloc. Israel now possessed artillery unmatched not only by the Arab troops inside Palestine, but by all the Arab armies put together. It should be noted that the Israeli Communist Party was instrumental in arranging this deal." (Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, p 144)]
Friday, February 3, 2012
Get Rhiannon! 2
Hot on the heels of Christian Kerr's smearing of Greens senator Lee Rhiannon as a natural born Stalinist, and BDS as her anti-Semitic devil-child, came a February 1 hatchet job on the NSW branch of the Greens by the Australian's chief political correspondent Matthew Franklin: Greens 'riven by branch warfare'.
Kerr's Back in the USSR theme was revived, with Franklin quoting supposed "revelations" that the NSW Greens are "run by a 'cadre' of Leninist-style ideologues whose activities are making it appear to be populated by 'lunatics'."
Franklin's "revelations" were conveniently drawn from an article in the latest issue of The Monthly magazine by Sally Neighbour, curiously described merely as a "journalist."
Is the reader supposed to have forgotten that Sally Neighbour, far from being a genuinely independent journalist, is actually a News Limited employee?
So, since we're dealing here with a case of churnalistic incest, with Franklin simply paraphrasing Neighbour, why not bypass the monkey and proceed straight to the organ grinder herself?
But first, a general observation: Does anyone really believe that the Australian would be so obsessed with Lee Rhiannon but for her support for the Palestinians?
Does anyone remember its repeated lashings of Labor's Julia Irwin?
For any Australian politician to speak out forthrightly and honestly in defence of the Palestinian people is to cross the Australian's reddest line - its near automatic, knee-jerk editorial support for apartheid Israel. It is not, therefore, the Greens per se that get the Australian going, rather it's the prospect that, in seriously embracing the BDS campaign, the Greens may one day arrive at a clear and principled, anti-Zionist position on the Middle East conflict.
Let us proceed then to Neighbour's Monthly feature article Divided we fall.
After a sketch of party history, she sets out her thesis:
"To... achieve... the success he aspires to, Brown needs to run a formidably tight and disciplined political ship, steered by a dedicated, professional party organisation, with the absolute support of its members and branches. Which brings us to their real dilemma. For like all political parties, the Greens are bedevilled by factional rifts, personal animosities and turf wars, which have intensified as the party has grown and have recently erupted in an acrimonious contest for the heart, soul and future of the party."
You can see where all this is coming from. Rather than a rigorous, disinterested and objective assessment of party travails and prospects, we're essentially getting the Bob Brown version.
Brown seems to me to be afraid of the Murdoch press (See my 5/4/11 post Murdoch Spooks Bob Brown on Palestine), and happy to talk to its churnalists in an effort to appease and reassure the beast, even if to the detriment of any of his colleagues courageous enough to cross the rag's red line on criticism of Israel. As for Sally Neighbour and the Australian, the prospect of the BDS campaign gaining traction in Australia's rising third political force is a major concern. The language says it all:
"Nine days after the Christmas drinks in Canberra, a far more toxic atmosphere prevails as the NSW Greens assemble for their bi-monthly meeting of the State delegates Council (SDC)... It's been a tortuous year for the party in New South Wales, with festering tensions brought to a head by an ugly bunfight over BDS... The fracas has culminated in a motion condemning 3 state Greens MPs who failed to support the policy, MLCs Cate Faehrmann, Jan Barham and Jeremy Buckingham. The motion states: 'MPs who do not support the position and policy of the SDC, thus being in violation of the NSW Greens Constitution, will be asked to resign their seat in parliament'. Tempers erupt as the motion is moved, its backers arguing the renegade MPs should be punished for splitting the party, opponents condemning it as an outrageous bid to deny the MPs a conscience vote."
Given that Neighbour wasn't actually there (the Greens couldn't possibly be that stupid), the question arises: who can have been her source for the dynamics of this meeting? Then there's the absence from the above account of the motion's context. That the "renegade" trio chose, in effect, to climb into bed with the likes of MLCs David Clarke (Liberal right), Fred Nile (Christan Democrats) and Eric Roozendaaal (Labor right) when they voted for Clarke's motion viciously smearing BDS at the behest of the Israel lobby (two of whose representatives were present in the visitors gallery) and undermined the informed and principled positions taken at the time by fellow Greens MLCs John Kaye and David Shoebridge, was the context for the SDC motion, but Neighbour deliberately leaves it out at this point. Only much further along in the piece, does she make reference to it, but then only in passing:
"[W]hen Liberal MLC David Clarke moved a motion opposing BDS and the Max Brenner protests, Faehrmann and Barham spoke in qualified support of it."
That Faehrmann's "qualified support" of Clarke's disgusting motion was born of complete ignorance of the issue, part regurgitation of the Australian's editorial line that the protests were 'counterproductive' and part Israel lobby line that a certain chant heard at them is anti-Semitic, is, of course, of no interest to Neighbour and is misconstrued in her article as some kind of free-thinking and courageous "speaking out."
By way of introducing Lee Rhiannon into the 'discussion', Neighbour trots out the sinister "Leninist cadre" line already featured by Franklin.
Typically, such nonsense is always attributed to unnamed individuals who speak "off the record," presumably because they're in mortal fear of a 2 pm knock on the door by the KGB. The existence of a cowed and quivering Greens opposition is suggested by "another" (oh really?) who is alleged to have said:
"They are stuck in an old rut which is all about running the show, controlling the structure, maintaining a code of silence. This old guard, this control clique, has done a lot of damage to the Green brand in NSW'. They're jokingly referred to as 'the Eastern Bloc - because they live in the eastern suburbs, and they're all communists'."
OK, now that the reader has been softened up, it's time for Neighbour to finger the supposed Leninist cadre's Svengali:
"The lightning rod for much of this critique (!) is Lee Rhiannon... Rhiannon's membership of the Socialist Party of Australia in the 1970s and 1980s... has been well reported... Rhiannon is routinely held up in media commentary about the 'watermelons' (red on the inside) dragging the Greens leftwards..."
Well reported? But only in the Australian.
Routinely held up in media commentary about the 'watermelons'? But only in the Australian.
Did I not mention incest?
Further along, on the subject of BDS and Marrickville Council, Neighbour has former Greens MLC Ian Cohen screaming that "[Marrickville] made us look like lunatics, dealing with an international issue on local and state government level." But don't expect Neighbour to ask Cohen the obvious: Did he also consider the MLCs who used the Legislative Council as a platform to condemn BDS lunatics? Similarly, while Neighbour quotes Max Phillips, a staffer of Jeremy Buckingham, complaining that BDS is not a "core issue" for the Greens, she doesn't bother asking him whether he thinks condemning BDS in state parliament should be seen as "core" business for that body.
Neighbour concludes:
"Right at the heart of this contest [between the NSW Greens' 'old' and 'new' guards] is a profound disjunct over what should be the ultimate aim of the Greens. For Brown and his supporters, it is self-evident: attaining power by being elected, where possible into government, in order to implement their policies. But for others the primal purpose is staying faithful to the grassroots origins and philosophy, without which the Greens would have no support and no future - even if it's at the cost of attaining power."
Or, to put it another way, between those who put power before principle and those who put principle before power. And the most reliable litmus test for sorting out the two is, of course, Palestine.
Brown's mob, it seems, have made their bed, and it speaks volumes for them that they're prepared to share it with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his stable of court reporters at the Australian, and politicians such as David Clarke, Fred Nile and Eric Roozendaal.
Kerr's Back in the USSR theme was revived, with Franklin quoting supposed "revelations" that the NSW Greens are "run by a 'cadre' of Leninist-style ideologues whose activities are making it appear to be populated by 'lunatics'."
Franklin's "revelations" were conveniently drawn from an article in the latest issue of The Monthly magazine by Sally Neighbour, curiously described merely as a "journalist."
Is the reader supposed to have forgotten that Sally Neighbour, far from being a genuinely independent journalist, is actually a News Limited employee?
So, since we're dealing here with a case of churnalistic incest, with Franklin simply paraphrasing Neighbour, why not bypass the monkey and proceed straight to the organ grinder herself?
But first, a general observation: Does anyone really believe that the Australian would be so obsessed with Lee Rhiannon but for her support for the Palestinians?
Does anyone remember its repeated lashings of Labor's Julia Irwin?
For any Australian politician to speak out forthrightly and honestly in defence of the Palestinian people is to cross the Australian's reddest line - its near automatic, knee-jerk editorial support for apartheid Israel. It is not, therefore, the Greens per se that get the Australian going, rather it's the prospect that, in seriously embracing the BDS campaign, the Greens may one day arrive at a clear and principled, anti-Zionist position on the Middle East conflict.
Let us proceed then to Neighbour's Monthly feature article Divided we fall.
After a sketch of party history, she sets out her thesis:
"To... achieve... the success he aspires to, Brown needs to run a formidably tight and disciplined political ship, steered by a dedicated, professional party organisation, with the absolute support of its members and branches. Which brings us to their real dilemma. For like all political parties, the Greens are bedevilled by factional rifts, personal animosities and turf wars, which have intensified as the party has grown and have recently erupted in an acrimonious contest for the heart, soul and future of the party."
You can see where all this is coming from. Rather than a rigorous, disinterested and objective assessment of party travails and prospects, we're essentially getting the Bob Brown version.
Brown seems to me to be afraid of the Murdoch press (See my 5/4/11 post Murdoch Spooks Bob Brown on Palestine), and happy to talk to its churnalists in an effort to appease and reassure the beast, even if to the detriment of any of his colleagues courageous enough to cross the rag's red line on criticism of Israel. As for Sally Neighbour and the Australian, the prospect of the BDS campaign gaining traction in Australia's rising third political force is a major concern. The language says it all:
"Nine days after the Christmas drinks in Canberra, a far more toxic atmosphere prevails as the NSW Greens assemble for their bi-monthly meeting of the State delegates Council (SDC)... It's been a tortuous year for the party in New South Wales, with festering tensions brought to a head by an ugly bunfight over BDS... The fracas has culminated in a motion condemning 3 state Greens MPs who failed to support the policy, MLCs Cate Faehrmann, Jan Barham and Jeremy Buckingham. The motion states: 'MPs who do not support the position and policy of the SDC, thus being in violation of the NSW Greens Constitution, will be asked to resign their seat in parliament'. Tempers erupt as the motion is moved, its backers arguing the renegade MPs should be punished for splitting the party, opponents condemning it as an outrageous bid to deny the MPs a conscience vote."
Given that Neighbour wasn't actually there (the Greens couldn't possibly be that stupid), the question arises: who can have been her source for the dynamics of this meeting? Then there's the absence from the above account of the motion's context. That the "renegade" trio chose, in effect, to climb into bed with the likes of MLCs David Clarke (Liberal right), Fred Nile (Christan Democrats) and Eric Roozendaaal (Labor right) when they voted for Clarke's motion viciously smearing BDS at the behest of the Israel lobby (two of whose representatives were present in the visitors gallery) and undermined the informed and principled positions taken at the time by fellow Greens MLCs John Kaye and David Shoebridge, was the context for the SDC motion, but Neighbour deliberately leaves it out at this point. Only much further along in the piece, does she make reference to it, but then only in passing:
"[W]hen Liberal MLC David Clarke moved a motion opposing BDS and the Max Brenner protests, Faehrmann and Barham spoke in qualified support of it."
That Faehrmann's "qualified support" of Clarke's disgusting motion was born of complete ignorance of the issue, part regurgitation of the Australian's editorial line that the protests were 'counterproductive' and part Israel lobby line that a certain chant heard at them is anti-Semitic, is, of course, of no interest to Neighbour and is misconstrued in her article as some kind of free-thinking and courageous "speaking out."
By way of introducing Lee Rhiannon into the 'discussion', Neighbour trots out the sinister "Leninist cadre" line already featured by Franklin.
Typically, such nonsense is always attributed to unnamed individuals who speak "off the record," presumably because they're in mortal fear of a 2 pm knock on the door by the KGB. The existence of a cowed and quivering Greens opposition is suggested by "another" (oh really?) who is alleged to have said:
"They are stuck in an old rut which is all about running the show, controlling the structure, maintaining a code of silence. This old guard, this control clique, has done a lot of damage to the Green brand in NSW'. They're jokingly referred to as 'the Eastern Bloc - because they live in the eastern suburbs, and they're all communists'."
OK, now that the reader has been softened up, it's time for Neighbour to finger the supposed Leninist cadre's Svengali:
"The lightning rod for much of this critique (!) is Lee Rhiannon... Rhiannon's membership of the Socialist Party of Australia in the 1970s and 1980s... has been well reported... Rhiannon is routinely held up in media commentary about the 'watermelons' (red on the inside) dragging the Greens leftwards..."
Well reported? But only in the Australian.
Routinely held up in media commentary about the 'watermelons'? But only in the Australian.
Did I not mention incest?
Further along, on the subject of BDS and Marrickville Council, Neighbour has former Greens MLC Ian Cohen screaming that "[Marrickville] made us look like lunatics, dealing with an international issue on local and state government level." But don't expect Neighbour to ask Cohen the obvious: Did he also consider the MLCs who used the Legislative Council as a platform to condemn BDS lunatics? Similarly, while Neighbour quotes Max Phillips, a staffer of Jeremy Buckingham, complaining that BDS is not a "core issue" for the Greens, she doesn't bother asking him whether he thinks condemning BDS in state parliament should be seen as "core" business for that body.
Neighbour concludes:
"Right at the heart of this contest [between the NSW Greens' 'old' and 'new' guards] is a profound disjunct over what should be the ultimate aim of the Greens. For Brown and his supporters, it is self-evident: attaining power by being elected, where possible into government, in order to implement their policies. But for others the primal purpose is staying faithful to the grassroots origins and philosophy, without which the Greens would have no support and no future - even if it's at the cost of attaining power."
Or, to put it another way, between those who put power before principle and those who put principle before power. And the most reliable litmus test for sorting out the two is, of course, Palestine.
Brown's mob, it seems, have made their bed, and it speaks volumes for them that they're prepared to share it with the likes of Rupert Murdoch and his stable of court reporters at the Australian, and politicians such as David Clarke, Fred Nile and Eric Roozendaal.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Get Rhiannon! 1
It's not only the malevolent, defiant, dangerous, delusional, irrational and obdurate Iranian mullahs (See my previous post) Murdoch's Australian is gunning for. Oh no. The Australian has targets galore. Targets like federal Greens senator Lee Rhiannon, for example, the Green it most loves to hate. After a short absence from its pages, Rhiannon is back, the target of a puff piece by churnalist Christian Kerr: Secret past of Greens senator (28/1/12)
Hmmm, secret past! A supposed liaison, actually, but not quite the kind you'd expect to find in No Idea. Kerr, yawn, claimed to be in receipt of a 1970 "letter" by a former ASIO chief, yawn, to Britain's MI5, revealing not only that the young (18) Rhiannon was on her way to England on a Soviet cruise ship, yawn, but had received an on-board visit from a man "ASIO officers from that time confirm many in the security agency believed... to be the KGB rezident, the most senior Soviet spy in the country," YAWN.
But what a fizzer that turned out to be: "There is no evidence that Rhiannon... ever worked as a Soviet agent. But her activities earned her an ASIO file that runs to 5 volumes and more than 800 pages for the nine-year period 1969-1978."
So what was the point of all this? Well, here we go:
"The influence of former communists and members of hard-Left groups on the Greens has become a pressing issue in recent years, particularly with Rhiannon and a faction in the party declaring their support for the radical anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement, which equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa. It calls for an end to business with Israeli-owned and linked firms, a call critics claim reeks of anti-Semitism."
Got that? Green's the Old Red, Rhiannon supposedly caught a rather nasty strain of anti-Semitic Stalinism from a Soviet agent in 1970, and now, some 40 years later, the terrible Stalinist affliction has surfaced as support for a BDS campaign poised to snuff out the Middle East's - nay the world's - only Light unto the Nations!
But don't just take Kerr's word for it. A follow-up letter from our old friend*, Monash University academic Philip Mendes, concludes: "Rhiannon's support for the Soviet regime during this period poses questions about the motivation behind her support for the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign." (A pointed past, 30/1/12)
Need more be said?
Well yes. Bollocks!
I know, and you know, Kerr's smearing of Rhiannon is baseless, but let's survey the relevant history to see just how bloody baseless, shall we?
Rhiannon was born in 1952 to two leading lights of the Communist Party of Australia. Only two years before, Israel was born, a birth more than just welcomed by the Soviet Union. In fact, so supportive were the Soviets that they helped arm the Zionist forces through a Czech arms deal, giving Zionist forces their first dose of what they and their current American backers refer to as QME - qualitative military edge.
Rhiannon's parents, like the rest of the comrades who toed the pro-Russian party line, would have been equally supportive of the brat. In fact, so warm did the CPA feel about Israel that it wasn't until 1968 (!) that the first article on the plight of the Palestinians appeared in the party organ, Tribune. However, it wasn't really until the 1971 party split, that elements of the party's membership began seeing what they had hitherto been blind to, though never as clearly as their Trotskyist rivals.
Rhiannon though wasn't among them. She'd naturally followed mum and dad into the new Socialist Party of Australia (SPA), which continued to toe the lame Russian line of support for 'the just national rights of both the Jews and Palestinian Arab people living in Israel'. And after the Israeli seizure of the remaining 22% of Palestine in 1967, neither the Soviet Union nor the SPA contested Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, sticking only to a call for the Israelis to vacate the occupied Palestinian territories in line with United Nations resolution 242.
Hardly a source of inspiration for an embrace of the BDS campaign over 40 years late, I would've thought. Which effectively demolishes Kerr's Murdoch party line that support for BDS is in Rhiannon's alleged Stalinist DNA.
But don't take my word for it. Check out Craig Johnston's The Communist Party of Australia & the Palestinian Revolution, 1967-1976, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, November, 1979 (jstor.com)
Stay tuned for Get Rhiannon! 2.
[* See his comment on my 21/9/09 post Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In.]
Hmmm, secret past! A supposed liaison, actually, but not quite the kind you'd expect to find in No Idea. Kerr, yawn, claimed to be in receipt of a 1970 "letter" by a former ASIO chief, yawn, to Britain's MI5, revealing not only that the young (18) Rhiannon was on her way to England on a Soviet cruise ship, yawn, but had received an on-board visit from a man "ASIO officers from that time confirm many in the security agency believed... to be the KGB rezident, the most senior Soviet spy in the country," YAWN.
But what a fizzer that turned out to be: "There is no evidence that Rhiannon... ever worked as a Soviet agent. But her activities earned her an ASIO file that runs to 5 volumes and more than 800 pages for the nine-year period 1969-1978."
So what was the point of all this? Well, here we go:
"The influence of former communists and members of hard-Left groups on the Greens has become a pressing issue in recent years, particularly with Rhiannon and a faction in the party declaring their support for the radical anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement, which equates Israel with apartheid-era South Africa. It calls for an end to business with Israeli-owned and linked firms, a call critics claim reeks of anti-Semitism."
Got that? Green's the Old Red, Rhiannon supposedly caught a rather nasty strain of anti-Semitic Stalinism from a Soviet agent in 1970, and now, some 40 years later, the terrible Stalinist affliction has surfaced as support for a BDS campaign poised to snuff out the Middle East's - nay the world's - only Light unto the Nations!
But don't just take Kerr's word for it. A follow-up letter from our old friend*, Monash University academic Philip Mendes, concludes: "Rhiannon's support for the Soviet regime during this period poses questions about the motivation behind her support for the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions campaign." (A pointed past, 30/1/12)
Need more be said?
Well yes. Bollocks!
I know, and you know, Kerr's smearing of Rhiannon is baseless, but let's survey the relevant history to see just how bloody baseless, shall we?
Rhiannon was born in 1952 to two leading lights of the Communist Party of Australia. Only two years before, Israel was born, a birth more than just welcomed by the Soviet Union. In fact, so supportive were the Soviets that they helped arm the Zionist forces through a Czech arms deal, giving Zionist forces their first dose of what they and their current American backers refer to as QME - qualitative military edge.
Rhiannon's parents, like the rest of the comrades who toed the pro-Russian party line, would have been equally supportive of the brat. In fact, so warm did the CPA feel about Israel that it wasn't until 1968 (!) that the first article on the plight of the Palestinians appeared in the party organ, Tribune. However, it wasn't really until the 1971 party split, that elements of the party's membership began seeing what they had hitherto been blind to, though never as clearly as their Trotskyist rivals.
Rhiannon though wasn't among them. She'd naturally followed mum and dad into the new Socialist Party of Australia (SPA), which continued to toe the lame Russian line of support for 'the just national rights of both the Jews and Palestinian Arab people living in Israel'. And after the Israeli seizure of the remaining 22% of Palestine in 1967, neither the Soviet Union nor the SPA contested Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, sticking only to a call for the Israelis to vacate the occupied Palestinian territories in line with United Nations resolution 242.
Hardly a source of inspiration for an embrace of the BDS campaign over 40 years late, I would've thought. Which effectively demolishes Kerr's Murdoch party line that support for BDS is in Rhiannon's alleged Stalinist DNA.
But don't take my word for it. Check out Craig Johnston's The Communist Party of Australia & the Palestinian Revolution, 1967-1976, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, November, 1979 (jstor.com)
Stay tuned for Get Rhiannon! 2.
[* See his comment on my 21/9/09 post Israeli Apartheid: The Jury's In.]
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The Schlocky Horror Show
OK, so you don't read Murdoch's Australian, but the conga line of suckholes who mislead us, or at least those in their ears, do.
So, to ensure you're in the loop, and not left wondering why, when the shit hits the fan, we too are in like Flynn, here are some snatches of its near constant, remorseless editorial drumbeat for war with Iran - and this for the month of January alone:
"Iran's brinkmanship over the Strait of Hormuz and its threat to choke off oil supplies, an act of hostility that would send energy prices soaring and further imperil the global economy, demands a determined and unflinching response from the international community... Iran must be curtailed now... The mullahs' malevolence is palpable. So is their scurrilous intrique... The international community must be resolute... Difficult though it is, Iran is a challenge from which the international community must not shrink." (Troubled oil on Iran's waters, 4/1/12)
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's grim warning... about the catastrophic consequences for world security of allowing the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons could hardly be more timely or appropriate... [Sanctions] will work he says, only if accompanied by a clear statement from the international community, led by the US, that military action could follow if sanctions fail... Tehran is up in arms, threatening revenge over the assassination of another its top nuclear scientists. But given its flagrant defiance of world opinion, including 5 UN resolutions, it can hardly be surprised if it is being targeted in a clandestine war, most likely launched by Western and Israeli intelligence.... We need to face the fact that this country, run by a dangerous cabal of mullahs and led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, is on the cusp of being able to build nuclear weapons... There is no escaping the grim reality, as Mr Netanyahu says, that the world faces catastrophe if Iran gets nuclear weapons. Mr Netanyahu speaks from the perspective of the existential threat Iran poses to his country. But the entire world is threatened... Mr Netanyahu is right to suggest it must be made clear by the international community that if enhanced sanctions fail, military action will become a live option." (Iranian nuclear weapons a threat to global peace, 14/1/12)
"As an act of delusional bravado, the Iranian parliament's rush to impose an immediate embargo on oil sales to Europe as its way of pre-empting EU oil sanctions could hardly be more depressingly indicative of the mood of irrational defiance that persists in Tehran... Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, has indicated his government is again considering unilateral military action to prevent Iran from turning nuclear...In that warning by Mr Barak and the defiant response by Tehran to the EU's sanctions are the two sides of the challenge confronting the international community in trying to persuade the mullahs to pull back from the brink... [T]he mullahs must be left in no doubt the alternative to their obduracy and defiance is military action, something Israelis could well want to see happen in an election year when President Barack Obama may find himself left with no alternative but to support it... [U]nless the mullahs can be persuaded that this time sanctions really will cause major damage and that the doom-ladden scenario outlined by Mr Barak is a real possibility if all else fails, attempts to get Iran to negotiate are unlikely to get anywhere." (Hope for Iranian oil sanctions, 30/1/12)
Fair dinkum, is this The Schlocky Horror Show or what? And those mullahs, aren't they simply maleficent? Only in The Australian.
So, to ensure you're in the loop, and not left wondering why, when the shit hits the fan, we too are in like Flynn, here are some snatches of its near constant, remorseless editorial drumbeat for war with Iran - and this for the month of January alone:
"Iran's brinkmanship over the Strait of Hormuz and its threat to choke off oil supplies, an act of hostility that would send energy prices soaring and further imperil the global economy, demands a determined and unflinching response from the international community... Iran must be curtailed now... The mullahs' malevolence is palpable. So is their scurrilous intrique... The international community must be resolute... Difficult though it is, Iran is a challenge from which the international community must not shrink." (Troubled oil on Iran's waters, 4/1/12)
"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's grim warning... about the catastrophic consequences for world security of allowing the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons could hardly be more timely or appropriate... [Sanctions] will work he says, only if accompanied by a clear statement from the international community, led by the US, that military action could follow if sanctions fail... Tehran is up in arms, threatening revenge over the assassination of another its top nuclear scientists. But given its flagrant defiance of world opinion, including 5 UN resolutions, it can hardly be surprised if it is being targeted in a clandestine war, most likely launched by Western and Israeli intelligence.... We need to face the fact that this country, run by a dangerous cabal of mullahs and led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, is on the cusp of being able to build nuclear weapons... There is no escaping the grim reality, as Mr Netanyahu says, that the world faces catastrophe if Iran gets nuclear weapons. Mr Netanyahu speaks from the perspective of the existential threat Iran poses to his country. But the entire world is threatened... Mr Netanyahu is right to suggest it must be made clear by the international community that if enhanced sanctions fail, military action will become a live option." (Iranian nuclear weapons a threat to global peace, 14/1/12)
"As an act of delusional bravado, the Iranian parliament's rush to impose an immediate embargo on oil sales to Europe as its way of pre-empting EU oil sanctions could hardly be more depressingly indicative of the mood of irrational defiance that persists in Tehran... Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, has indicated his government is again considering unilateral military action to prevent Iran from turning nuclear...In that warning by Mr Barak and the defiant response by Tehran to the EU's sanctions are the two sides of the challenge confronting the international community in trying to persuade the mullahs to pull back from the brink... [T]he mullahs must be left in no doubt the alternative to their obduracy and defiance is military action, something Israelis could well want to see happen in an election year when President Barack Obama may find himself left with no alternative but to support it... [U]nless the mullahs can be persuaded that this time sanctions really will cause major damage and that the doom-ladden scenario outlined by Mr Barak is a real possibility if all else fails, attempts to get Iran to negotiate are unlikely to get anywhere." (Hope for Iranian oil sanctions, 30/1/12)
Fair dinkum, is this The Schlocky Horror Show or what? And those mullahs, aren't they simply maleficent? Only in The Australian.
Beautiful Sets of Figures
Hanging with the big boys doesn't come cheap:
"Each of the 1550 Diggers on the ground in Afghanistan is costing Australian taxpayers $1 million. That was the figure for Australia's war effort last financial year - and it is only going to get bigger. Taxpayers will be hit with a new bill of more than $1 billion next year to fund the war in Afghanistan as the government struggles to conjure up a promised May budget surplus. The cost of the war hit $1.6 billion for the past financial year. By June 2013, the overall outlay for the Afghanistan campaign will reach more than $7.4 billion..." (Million-dollar Diggers: What each soldier in Afghanistan costs taxpayers, Ian McPhedran, Daily Telegraph, 18/1/12)
"Australia's spies now cost more than $1 billion a year to run ... according to a landmark review of the country's intelligence community... ASIO alone grew by 471% between 2001 and 2010 and this year will occupy new headquarters in Canberra worth $590 million..." (Soaring cost of spy force passes $1b, Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)
Taxpayer? How stupid are you?
"Each of the 1550 Diggers on the ground in Afghanistan is costing Australian taxpayers $1 million. That was the figure for Australia's war effort last financial year - and it is only going to get bigger. Taxpayers will be hit with a new bill of more than $1 billion next year to fund the war in Afghanistan as the government struggles to conjure up a promised May budget surplus. The cost of the war hit $1.6 billion for the past financial year. By June 2013, the overall outlay for the Afghanistan campaign will reach more than $7.4 billion..." (Million-dollar Diggers: What each soldier in Afghanistan costs taxpayers, Ian McPhedran, Daily Telegraph, 18/1/12)
"Australia's spies now cost more than $1 billion a year to run ... according to a landmark review of the country's intelligence community... ASIO alone grew by 471% between 2001 and 2010 and this year will occupy new headquarters in Canberra worth $590 million..." (Soaring cost of spy force passes $1b, Dylan Welch, Sydney Morning Herald, 26/1/12)
Taxpayer? How stupid are you?
Monday, January 30, 2012
False Historical Narratives
The next time you hear some ignoramus out there prattling on about competing narratives in the context of the Palestine/Israel 'conflict', along the lines of the old cliche that there are always two sides to every story, recall the following, lucid analysis of the false historical narrative by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers from his important new book, Deceit & Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others (2011):
"False historical narratives are lies we tell one another about our past. The usual goals are self-glorification and self-justification. Not only are we special, so are our actions and those of our ancestors. We do not act immorally, so we owe nothing to anyone. False historical narratives act like self-deceptions at the group level, insofar as many people believe the same falsehood. If a great majority of the population can be raised on the same false narrative, you have a powerful force available to achieve group unity. Of course, leaders can easily exploit this resource by coupling marching orders with the relevant illusion: German people have long been denied their rightful space, so Dass Deutsche Volk muss Lebensraum haben! (German people must have room in which to live!) - neighbors beware. Or the Jewish people have a divine right to Palestine because ancestors living in the general area some two thousand years ago wrote a book about it - non-Jewish occupants and neighbors better beware. Most people are unconscious of the deception that went into constructing the narrative they now accept as true. Nor are they usually aware of the emotional power of such narratives or that these may entrain long-term effects.
"There is a deep contradiction within the study of history between ferreting out the truth regarding the past and constructing a false historical narrative about it. As we have seen in this book, we make up false narratives all the time, about our own behaviour, about our relationships, about our larger groups. Creating one for one's larger religion or nation only extends the canvas. Usually a few brave historians in every society try to tell the truth about the past - that the Japanese army ran a vast, forced system of sexual slavery in World War II, that the United States committed wholesale slaughter against Koreans during the Korean War and against Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotians in the Vietnam War, that the Turkish government committed genocide against its successful sub-group of Armenians, that the Zionist conquerors of Palestine committed ethnic cleansing against some 700,000 Palestinians, that the United States has waged a long campaign of genocide and murder against American Indians, from the nation's founding to the murder by proxy of more than a half million in the 1980s alone, not counting before or after, and it has sought through military means to determine the fate of the entire New World for well over a century. But most historians will tell only some version of the conventional, self-aggrandizing story, and most people in the relevant countries will not have heard of (or believed) the factual assertions I just made.
"One noteworthy fact is that the younger the recipient of the knowledge, the greater the pressure to tell a false story. So we are apt to tell our children a heroic version of our past and reserve for our university students a more nuanced view. This of course strengthens the bias, since views learned early have special power and not everyone attends college, or studies history if they do. Fortunately, the young often appear naturally to resist parental and adult nonsense, so there is at least some tendency to resist and upgrade. Just the same, there are strong pressures on professional historians to come up with a positive story, in part to undergird what is taught more widely.
"Make no mistake about it. People feel strongly about these matters. One person's false historical narrative is another's deeply personal group identity - and what right do you have commenting on my identity in the first place? Many Turkish people may well feel that I have slandered their country regarding its Armenian genocide, while I believe I have merely told the truth. The same may be true (though less strongly) for some Japanese people regarding their country's practice of sexual slavery during World War II. Most Americans could hardly care less. So we wiped out the Amerindians - so what? So we repeatedly waged aggressive war on Mexico and stole nearly half their country. They probably deserved it. And, yes, since then we have fought a staggering series of wars ourselves and by proxies - even recently supporting genocide in such diverse places as Central America, Vietnam, Cambodia, and even East Timor, while blocking international action against it in Rwanda - but so the hell what? Only a left-wing nutcase would dwell on such minor details. Isn't that what great powers do, and aren't we the greatest?
"Israel is no different from any other country or group in having its own false historical narrative, and Israel's is especially important because it exacerbates a set of troubled international and intergroup relations. The narrative is also one that is accepted almost wholesale in the United States, the most powerful military nation in the world. As the old joke goes, why doesn't Israel become the 51st state? Because then it would have only 2 senators. Again, feelings run high. Some regard as anti-Semitic any attack on the behavior of Israel (or its underlying narrative). I regard this as nonsense and follow instead what seem to me to be the best Israeli (and Arab) historians - and their (largely Jewish) American counterparts - in describing a false historical narrative used to expand Israel at a cost to its neighbors by waging regular war on them to seize land and water (with near-constant US support), all in the name of fighting terrorism, while using state terrorism as the chief weapon. The narrative inverts reality: Israel wants only peace with its Arab neighbors (from as early as 1928), who to this very day reject peace at every turn and seek the total destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.
"But what are we to do? Yes, feelings run high, but false historical narratives are a critical part of self-deception at the group level, often with horrendous affects on others - if not on those practicing them. To discuss the subject we need examples. Are we to leave out this important topic because on any given example feelings are easily bruised and controversy aroused? I see no sense in this. A theory of self-deception is not of much use if it can't be applied to cases of actual human importance. Of course, I am more likely to be biased on these topics than on, say, the immunology of self-deception, but for me the risk of appearing foolish, indeed self-deluded, is preferable to the cowardice of not taking a position." (pp 215-218)
"False historical narratives are lies we tell one another about our past. The usual goals are self-glorification and self-justification. Not only are we special, so are our actions and those of our ancestors. We do not act immorally, so we owe nothing to anyone. False historical narratives act like self-deceptions at the group level, insofar as many people believe the same falsehood. If a great majority of the population can be raised on the same false narrative, you have a powerful force available to achieve group unity. Of course, leaders can easily exploit this resource by coupling marching orders with the relevant illusion: German people have long been denied their rightful space, so Dass Deutsche Volk muss Lebensraum haben! (German people must have room in which to live!) - neighbors beware. Or the Jewish people have a divine right to Palestine because ancestors living in the general area some two thousand years ago wrote a book about it - non-Jewish occupants and neighbors better beware. Most people are unconscious of the deception that went into constructing the narrative they now accept as true. Nor are they usually aware of the emotional power of such narratives or that these may entrain long-term effects.
"There is a deep contradiction within the study of history between ferreting out the truth regarding the past and constructing a false historical narrative about it. As we have seen in this book, we make up false narratives all the time, about our own behaviour, about our relationships, about our larger groups. Creating one for one's larger religion or nation only extends the canvas. Usually a few brave historians in every society try to tell the truth about the past - that the Japanese army ran a vast, forced system of sexual slavery in World War II, that the United States committed wholesale slaughter against Koreans during the Korean War and against Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotians in the Vietnam War, that the Turkish government committed genocide against its successful sub-group of Armenians, that the Zionist conquerors of Palestine committed ethnic cleansing against some 700,000 Palestinians, that the United States has waged a long campaign of genocide and murder against American Indians, from the nation's founding to the murder by proxy of more than a half million in the 1980s alone, not counting before or after, and it has sought through military means to determine the fate of the entire New World for well over a century. But most historians will tell only some version of the conventional, self-aggrandizing story, and most people in the relevant countries will not have heard of (or believed) the factual assertions I just made.
"One noteworthy fact is that the younger the recipient of the knowledge, the greater the pressure to tell a false story. So we are apt to tell our children a heroic version of our past and reserve for our university students a more nuanced view. This of course strengthens the bias, since views learned early have special power and not everyone attends college, or studies history if they do. Fortunately, the young often appear naturally to resist parental and adult nonsense, so there is at least some tendency to resist and upgrade. Just the same, there are strong pressures on professional historians to come up with a positive story, in part to undergird what is taught more widely.
"Make no mistake about it. People feel strongly about these matters. One person's false historical narrative is another's deeply personal group identity - and what right do you have commenting on my identity in the first place? Many Turkish people may well feel that I have slandered their country regarding its Armenian genocide, while I believe I have merely told the truth. The same may be true (though less strongly) for some Japanese people regarding their country's practice of sexual slavery during World War II. Most Americans could hardly care less. So we wiped out the Amerindians - so what? So we repeatedly waged aggressive war on Mexico and stole nearly half their country. They probably deserved it. And, yes, since then we have fought a staggering series of wars ourselves and by proxies - even recently supporting genocide in such diverse places as Central America, Vietnam, Cambodia, and even East Timor, while blocking international action against it in Rwanda - but so the hell what? Only a left-wing nutcase would dwell on such minor details. Isn't that what great powers do, and aren't we the greatest?
"Israel is no different from any other country or group in having its own false historical narrative, and Israel's is especially important because it exacerbates a set of troubled international and intergroup relations. The narrative is also one that is accepted almost wholesale in the United States, the most powerful military nation in the world. As the old joke goes, why doesn't Israel become the 51st state? Because then it would have only 2 senators. Again, feelings run high. Some regard as anti-Semitic any attack on the behavior of Israel (or its underlying narrative). I regard this as nonsense and follow instead what seem to me to be the best Israeli (and Arab) historians - and their (largely Jewish) American counterparts - in describing a false historical narrative used to expand Israel at a cost to its neighbors by waging regular war on them to seize land and water (with near-constant US support), all in the name of fighting terrorism, while using state terrorism as the chief weapon. The narrative inverts reality: Israel wants only peace with its Arab neighbors (from as early as 1928), who to this very day reject peace at every turn and seek the total destruction of Israel and its Jewish population.
"But what are we to do? Yes, feelings run high, but false historical narratives are a critical part of self-deception at the group level, often with horrendous affects on others - if not on those practicing them. To discuss the subject we need examples. Are we to leave out this important topic because on any given example feelings are easily bruised and controversy aroused? I see no sense in this. A theory of self-deception is not of much use if it can't be applied to cases of actual human importance. Of course, I am more likely to be biased on these topics than on, say, the immunology of self-deception, but for me the risk of appearing foolish, indeed self-deluded, is preferable to the cowardice of not taking a position." (pp 215-218)
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