Entropy

It used to be the case that Nobel peace prices were awarded based on abstract notions like a person’s actual achievements in an area relevant to the prize itself. To make a quick example, people awarded the Nobel peace prize would have had to have done something not insignificant towards the goal of bringing peace to our troubled world.

In light of recent events, one could very well ask, “So, what the fuck has Obama ever done for peace?“. The problem is, there is no sane answer for that question.

What has Obama been up to?

• giving in-principle support for a nuclear-free world. The issue I have with this is that Obama only seems concerned about other people’s nuclear weapons. In fact, Obama is only really concerned with certain other people’s nuclear weapons. Actually, that’s not even right. Obama is concerned with some hypothetical nuclear weapons that Iran might or might not make, some time in the future. These are the weapons he wants to rid us of. Remember now that George Dubya Bush wanted to rid the world of Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons. He didn’t get no stinking peace price. Why should Obama? Has Obama made any plans to reduce the number of US nuclear weapons? No. Has Obama told Israel about his plans for a nuclear-free world? No. Does Obama want to do anything serious like halt the trade of uranium, which inevitably ends up in nuclear weapons? No.
• Re-affirmed the US’s support for Israel in no uncertain terms. Israel, being the next major destabalising force in the Middle East ( after the US of course ) continues to be one of the largest blights on the human race, and in particular the 21st century, practising a particularly brutal form of slow-motion genocide on the Palestinians. It is an absolute travesty that a supporter of Israel can win the Nobel peace prize, and hardly anyone bats an eyelid. It used to be, not so long ago, that peace actually meant peace for everyone, simultaneously, and not ‘relative peace for our political allies’.
• Maintained the US’s devastating military occupation of Iraq. Maybe some people will call me an idealist, but the President of an occupying imperial power should not receive any peace prize, and in particular not the Nobel peace price. Sure, Obama isn’t the one who dragged the whole world, kicking and screaming, into Iraq. And sure, if Obama was president during this period, it’s at least feasible that we wouldn’t be in Iraq right now. But we are in Iraq right now, and Obama’s not doing anything about that, despite promising voters that this is precisely what he’d do – in a hasty fashion – if he were elected. Not only has Obama not withdrawn troups from Iraq, but he hasn’t actually changed direction in any way from the course the Dubya adminstration had set for him. Why?
• Increased the number of troups in Afghanistan. Surely, after 3 decades of being the world’s war play-thing, Afghanistan has seen enough war, death, and imperial wrestling. Does Obama want us to believe he’s liberating the Afghani women that Dubya said we were liberating? Has he been there and asked these women himself? Is it at all possible that they’ve been liberated enough by foreign armies, and just want us to get the fuck out of their country so they can rebuild? Sure, the Taliban is still there. We put them there. The problem is that our presence has killed far more innocent people that the Taliban ever have, and while we continue to send troups there to fight a war, the war will continue, and more innocent people will die. While it’s true that theoretically, we could send a lot more troups and actually bring the place under our control, we’d then only have a situation closer to Iraq. But then of course we’d have to leave some time. Who would we leave in control? And please don’t mention democracy. I didn’t come down in the last shower. We’d leave someone like … the Taliban … or Saddam. At least that’s what we have done in the not-so-distant past. I don’t believe anything has changed. Hey – look at the current president – Karzai. He’s ex-Taliban ( but who isn’t these days? ). The ‘elections’ ( and remember – there is no such thing as a democracy while under military occupation ) were widely denounced as being riddled with election fraud. Karzai is big pals with his share of Afghan war-lords ( but again, who isn’t ). However, according to the US, Karzai’s biggest problem is that he doesn’t command shit, outside his own ‘green zone’ while encircles about 3 kilometres inside Kabul. You see, this control is the most important thing for ‘us’. Whoever can control Afghanistan will get it when it comes time to leave, despite whatever else they may be getting up to.
• Increased the number of unmanned-drone attacks on alleged ‘Taliban targets’ in Pakistan. ‘Taliban targets’ is another way of saying, ‘whoever the fuck we just killed’. Even using official ( ie mainstream media ) estimates, the number of innocent deaths vs Taliban deaths is a frightening 10:1. What ratio, exactly, can a US president achieve, and still expect to be awarded the Nobel peace prize? Really, I’d like to know.
• Kept Guantanamo Bay open for business, despite promising aplenty that it would be shut. He has since backtracked to the point of saying that it’s perfectly valid to be holding ‘these people’ indefinitely, and that he had improved things by reducing the time of their indefinite incarceration, as well as making the closed military hearings with secret evidence more ‘fair’.
• Kept Robert Gates, Dubya’s old buddy and defence secretary in his old position. Because he was doing such a good job? Because Obama had no intention of changing anything? Some other reason that makes sense?

To people’s credit, there are actually some raised eyebrows over this award.Reuters reports that Claire Sprague comments, “It would be wonderful if I could think why he won“. Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the peace prize in 1983, complains, “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is only beginning to act“. Meanwhile, ex-allies of the US, the Taliban, find it difficult to endorse the award, stating he had escalated the conflict there and contributed to the deaths of countless civilians.

Obama has brushed off these comments, seeking to deflect them with his … er … humility. He says he’s surprised and humbled. On both cases he’s lying. As for surprise – these things don’t just sneak up on you. It’s possible that he was surprised at one point, when someone in his office first came up with the idea ( yes I think this is a stunt ). But his days of surprised are long over. And as for humility … Jesus no. There is no such thing as a humble US president. My research does suggest that there is such thing as a humble US citizen, difficult as they may be to locate when you need one. But there are no humble US presidents.

Which ever way you look at it, Obama is a war-time president, who has done fucking nothing to withdraw from the multiple wars his country is engaged in. He has continued full-steam ahead with Dubya’s multiple ‘traditional’ wars, as well as the war on terror. Now sure, he hasn’t actually started any new wars. Is that all you have to do these days to get a Nobel peace prize … not start a war? If so, hey, I haven’t started any wars. Where’s my fucking prize?

The Aussie media is agush with reports on the first 10 years or East Timor’s independence. As usual, no mention is made of why we took military action against Indonesia, other than the usual lip-service to the Western value of ‘freedom’. At the same time, surveys are circulated claiming to prove that Australians believe that Indonesia is a credible military threat to Australia, attempting to justify our burgeoning military budget, even to those who see the fallicy of our involvement in the Middle East.

In reality, the East Timor ‘operation’ is remarkably similar to Iraq. We’re there for oil. The only difference is that we actually get the oil this time, instead of standing by while the US takes it all.

Protest outside the Australian embassy in Dili. Photo by Charles Scheiner.

Since ‘liberating’ East Timor, Australia has proceeded to steal over 1 billion dollars worth of oil and natural gas. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a nation is entitled to a 200 nautical mile exclusion zone around their coastline. When zones overlap, a mid-point line is defined between the 2 nations. Guess where we’re sucking all our oil and natural gas from? That’s right, on Timor’s side of the line.

2 months before Timor’s independence ( declared in May 2002 ), Australia declared ( quietly, mind you ) that it was withdrawing from all internationally binding agreements and processes with regard to the settling of maritime disputes. Co-incidence?

East Timor is one of the poorest nations on the planet. At least this much is reported. Indeed, it suffered many years of looting at the hands of Indonesian occupiers. It is currently completely dependent on international aid to prevent the country from collapsing. But a statement by pro-independence campaigners in 2004 claimed that East Timor was “the largest international donor to Australia”, which is of course quite accurate. Surely the noble thing to do ( and trust me, the media claims that no-one is more noble than us in respect to Timor ) would be to let Timor have it’s own oil.

While ex-prime minister John Howard, president Jose Ramos-Horta, and retired general Gosgrove continue to slap each other’s back over a “job well done”, they can rest assured that the mainstream media will cheer them on, and never once mention the back-room deal that went along the lines of:

We’ll make you president and sing songs of freedom and democracy, and you look the other way while we steal all these bastard’s natural resources.

It’s happened before. Anyone remember Saddam?

Australians are busy buying new LCD televisions with built-in support for digital channels. But there are some nasty surprises for them once they set up their new purchase. There are 2 main motivating factors driving these purchases; higherquality signal ( ie digital vs analog ), and more content. For the most part, you will get neither.

Which Signal?

First, though, the curse of the early adopters. All those who rushed out and bought a new tv or set-top-box the instant they were able. They were sold ’standard’ definition digital devices. But there were always plans to roll out ‘high’ definition channels. Planned obsolesence is obviously not a new concept in a crazy capitalist world. But punching early adopters in the groin, making them go an buy another digital device, even before the analog signal is turned off, is a rare low in customer relations. The cynical would think it was just a ploy to make people buy more electronic goods. Lucky I’m not cynical.

The Quality Signal

So now we’ve got either a standard-definition, or high-definition tv. We’ll get a better quality signal, right? Yes and no. Yes, the signal is technically capable of carrying a higher quality stream and you’d get with analog, but the large majority of content is still PAL/NTSC – ie what you’re used to with analog. Sure, new content can optionally be recorded in higher quality, but this really leads on t o our next point … the rapidly decaying quality of the content itself.

I’ve heard it said many times before of pay tv; 200 channels, and nothing worth watching. That’s the direct free-to-air television is going too. As noted above, new content is being produced in higher quality ( standard or high definition ), but stop to think about this content. It’s all crap.

Reality TV

‘Reality’ tv shows that fail to approach reality in any meaningful way. Big brother opened the floodgates for Australian viewers, and while it was scripted and heavily edited, it at least pretended to be reality, although obviously a highly distorted one where people sit in the spa in their bikinis and bitch about each other. Even reality tv is sliding though. Now the script writers can’t even manage to fit nominally ‘real’ people into reality tv, instead opting for idle ( no, not idol; idle ) actors and ‘celebrities’ to craft their particular take one ‘reality’.

News and Current Affairs

Re-runs of crap American sit-coms and reality TV aren’t the only types of content being broadcast. Who could forget news and current affairs? Half of our stations have savagely slashed their news and current affairs staff, and it shows. News is more about the presenters smiling and chatting amongst themselves, in between ever larger advertisement breaks, than is it about informing us about what is actually going on. The slide in ‘news’ content is nothing compared to the devastating decadence of so-called ‘current affairs’ reporting. Current affairs reporting now amounts to shameless self-promotion ( channel seven, I’m talking about you – exactly how many 15-minute specials on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ were you going to try to get away with  ), sickeningly condescending ‘how to save money in the financial crisis’ bullshit, and of course, the fabled ‘tennant from hell’ story, AKA ‘lets bash tennants and justify current rental prices’. None of this involves any actual investigation, formerly the corerstone of investigative journalism.

When Less is More

What’s happening? Why is this not the vibrant viewing landscape we were promised? Commercial television is about selling your attention to advertisers. Nothing more. Nothing less. As there is a clearly demonstrable maximum viewing audience, there is similarly a ceiling to the amount of advertising dollars business is prepared to spend on television advertising. Adding more commercial channels to the mix doesn’t magically increase the viewing audience.

In fact it spreads the available audience thinner across stations. What this means is that each 30-minutes segment is worth less to advertisers, which in turn means that stations must spend less on content, which explains all of the above complaints on the quality of content recently. In the long term, this thinning out of advertising revenue and associated shit-house content will lead to a complete collapse of the viewing audience, who will tend to watch something more interesting, such as dust accumulate on their knees.

Non-Commercial Content

But digital tv is also available for non-commercial content, right? Well sure, but it’s not as good as it sounds. ACCT ( Australian Christian TV ) shows some unique content. They’ve got 1/3 evolution-bashing, 1/3 gut-wrenching evangelical claptrap, and 1/3 assorted dribble that defies categorisation ( other than the preceding ).

It’s not all bad though. NITV ( National Indigenous TV ) gives a voice and communications medium to our indigenous society, and has some great documentaries, music, art and culture. ABC and SBS ( government-owned, or partly government-owned in the case of SBS ) actually have some different content on each of their channels. The teachers channel has some interesting content. Even the RTA have some channels, showing live footage from their many traffic-monitoring cameras. This is actually better than it sounds, and comes with music. In fact, it’s up there amongst the best in a challenged field.

Who Gets a License to Broadcast, anyway?

Now that’s an interesting question. Well, it goes without saying that the big players in analog broadcasting get ‘their share’. Channel 7 has 6 stations, all showing precisely the same content. Channel 9 gets 2 ( they have financial issues at present ). Channel 10 gets 2 for their ‘normal’ content, and also ‘One’, a new sports-branded channel. If I liked watching sport, I suppose I’d like this development. So for the big players, there are still 3 content streams, but they now spread over 3 analog and 11 digital channels. This channel-squatting is basically strategic denial; preventing competition from entering the market by buying all the channels.

There are some smaller players who have also bought into the new market. There are some 24/7 infomercial channels. The mind boggles. There is a new ‘Go!’ station, that appears to have re-runs of extremely old content.

But what about all the great content in the public domain? What about all the independant media begging for a way of distributing their content? What about some public forums, with a live audience, and interaction with home viewers? Sadly, none of this makes it, for … ‘whatever’ … reason, onto free-to-air television in Australia. Actively Radical TV used to broadcast on Channel 31 … before the license was given to Rupert Murdoch. Some optimists ( let’s call them naive people ) said, “Oh, don’t worry. When digital tv arrives, they’ll get a license there”. I’m still waiting.

All Is Not Lost

Internet to the rescue! There are some great content distribution networks online already.

First in mind is Miro. It’s an amazing collection of content, ranging from ‘questionable but different’ to ‘absolutely brilliant’. Miro has thousands of channels. It’s got some unbelievable independant news channels, such as ‘The Real News’ and ‘Democracy Now’. It’s got humor. It’s got documentaries. It’s great – really – and it’s all free, legal, and you download content on your PC before viewing, so you’ve got a copy of cool things once you’ve watched them. You can set up the Miro application to download new content as it becomes available, and view it at your leisure. It’s essential, honestly.

Then there are the alleged ‘illegal’ distribution networks. Let’s not pretend they don’t exist. If you feel like big business has warped your news coverage, corrupted your democracy, bombarded you with their propoganda and marketing, and given you absolute shit content on free-to-air tv, then you may very well feel justified in using peer-to-peer networks to equalize things somewhat. Mind that you look over your shoulder, particularly in Australia, as our government’s ‘filtering‘ solution is watching you, and feeding the big content producers with lists of trouble-makers. No, seriously, this is what it’s for.

Nestle, owners of the Jenny Craig and Uncle Tobys brands, but best known for it’s low-cocoa, high-sugar chocolate, has decided to support Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine, by opening a production plant in Sderot, on the border with Gaza.

Sderot was ‘founded’ in 1951, on the ashes and blood of the former Arab village of Najd. To achieve this, the village was ethnically cleansed, its residents either being slaughtered or fleeing, in a method synonymous with Israel’s violent beginning and consequent existence.

Today, 99.8% of Sderot’s population are Jewish, while just across the Appartheid Wall  ( ’security fence’ in Zionist-speak ) in Gaza, Arabs struggle to exist in the most densely populated area on Earth. Even as I type this post up, more news rolls in about further expansions of illegal ’settlements’ in the occupied territories.

Nestle’s explicit support for Israel isn’t the first of their controversial moves, and most likely won’t be their last. A selection of Nestle’s achievements:

- Widespread use of slave labour through Africa
- Use of Genetically Modified products without labelling
- Price Fixing
- Marketing their baby formula as a safe substitute for breast milk
- Selling a range of contaminated products in Venezuela

What Nestle have really done here is make it even easier for people with any sort of social conscience to decide which products not to buy. There are plenty of alternatives that don’t involve ethnic cleansing.

Media outlets and politicians around the world are scurrying around each other crying foul over North Korea detonating a nuclear device. To add insult to injury, they apparently then tested some long-range missiles. Scary stuff, eh?

Not really. The sad fact is that North Korea are by no means alone in their ability to detonate nuclear devices or launch long-range missiles. In fact, the rest of the world has been able to do this for quite some time. The image above, for example, is the US bombing of Nagaski. But they’ll have you think this was a bomb of freedom, while North Korea’s is a bomb of terror.

Indeed, here in Australia, we tested nuclear weapons for the poms for 8 years, killing many soldiers, Aboriginals and animals, gave many more horrific cancers, and poisoning our land for many millenia. The whole episode has been completely denied for decades. The official line now is “yes there were tests, but you can’t prove that this lead to your terminal illness or the death of your loved ones, so fuck off”. So while we continue to mine uranium and sell it to the highest bidder, including states such as Israel or India who refuse to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, we have absolutely no concern for what weapons our ‘allies’ will make with our uranium, no concern for the practically eternal damage to the environment caused during mining uranium, and there is no justice for Aboriginals who’s land we stole ( recently, not 200 years back ) and subjected to nuclear testing. At least North Korea had the common sense to carry out their test underground. In Australia, we tested our bombs above the desert, which is the absolute worst way to carry out such a test, because it throws up the maximum possible amount of radioactive dust into the air, carrying it thousands of kilometers around the world – even depositing some on satellites.

So why cry such crocodile tears when North Korea tests their own weapons? Sure, nuclear weapons are bad. But they’re bad, no matter who uses them. They’re not just bad when a member of the so-called Axis of Evil tests them. That’s just absurd hypocracy. No-one who talks about ‘progress in the middle east’, ‘defending Israel’, or how bombing Hiroshima and Nagaski was the right thing to do has any right lecturing North Korea ( or anyone else for that matter ) on their own military ambitions.

What should we do about North Korea then? Remove crippling trade sanctions and stop threatening them. Then practice what we preach and get rid of our nuclear weapons. Weapons proliferation, by definition, is a vicious self-reinforcing cycle. You don’t break this cycle by holding lots of weapons and then threatening smaller states. This will produce the exact opposite of our supposed goal of keeping the world safe from nuclear weapons. Of course, the wise individuals out there will point out that this goal is just BS propoganda that masks our real agenda: making sure our side is the only one with nuclear weapons.

So is North Korea really destabilising their region? Hardly. If you want to see someone destabalising things, have a look at the US and Israeli influence in the middle east. Now that is destabalising things. North Korea is just testing some weapons. Everyone does it. Who in their right mind owns weapons but doesn’t test them? But what are North Korea up to? Who knows. With a loonie like their current dictator ( it’s a dictatorship by the way, certainly not communism ), who really knows what’s driving this behaviour. Maybe they just want some trade consessions? Or some security guarantees. This is how states go about negotiating such things.

Amid allegations of gross negligence, corruption and political interventions, Mick Keelty has ‘resigned’ ( AKA ‘been sacked’ ) from his role as head of the Australian Federal Police.

Keelty's a happy boy

Mick’s dubious achievements include:

• Giving false evidence to federal parliament over the extraordinary rendition of Mamdouh Habib to Egypt, then Guantanamo Bay. Further to this, Mick was credited with pushing public opinion against Habib, while withholding evidence from the public that would counter-balance the politically charged allegations against Habib. It is instructive to keep in mind that Habib has never been even charged with a crime in any civilian court.
• Wasted $7.5 million of taxpayer’s money chasing Dr Muhammad Haneef for Howard’s criminal gang of war-mongers. This was widely viewed as an attempt to produce a ‘war on terror’ prosecution for the Howard government, which desperately wanted to add some substance to their hot air. An AFP investigation had already cleared Dr Haneef of any involvement in a 2007 bombing in the UK, so Keelty restarted the investigation, massively increasing the human and monetary resources that poured into the investigation. AFP officers voiced their concerns – some of them publicly – claiming that Keelty’s intervention was completely unfounded, absolutely bizarre, and clearly politically motivated. AFP officers subsequently took more than 300 witness statements, dealt with 16 telephone intercepts, six surveillance devices and 22 search warrants. They seized 623 gigabytes of computer data and examined 349 forensic samples. Even after all charges were dropped against Haneef, they still kept up the contraversial ( and most likely illegal at this point ) surveilance and investigations. It wasn’t until an ‘independent’ ( ie not very ) investigation was started into the AFP bungling of the Haneef case that Keelty finally backed down and ordered an end to the witch-hunt. At this point he had little choice.
• Acting as self-appointed judge, jury and executioner for the Bali 9.
  

  Keelty decided to murder these 9, instead of bringing them to justice under Australian law

  A concerned parent contacted the AFP, tipping them off that their child might be involved in drug trafficing, and asked them to intervene before they got into trouble. Here in Australia, we have rejected the death penalty, instead opting for more civilised responses such as non-lethal punishment, coupled with rehabilitation. Keelty opposed this ’softly-softly’ approach, instead preferring to butcher these young Australians, despite the fact that this is explicitely against the law, and against his duty of care to Australian citizens. So Keelty, in his infinite arrogance, contacted the Indonesian police, tipping them off, and inviting them to execute as many Australian youths as they saw fit. He calls this ‘co-operation’. Of course one could point out that the parent who original ‘co-operated’ with the AFP had done so in good faith, but Keelty clearly didn’t give a flying fuck about this, and was more interested in getting blood on his hands to show how tough on drugs he could really be when faced with an international loop-hole and a sympathetic extreme right-wing Howard government.

• Pushed full-speed ahead with Australia’s war on drug users. This is of course to be expected. What’s also to be expected is that this policy continues to demonstrate monumental failure to achieve any of its supposed objectives. Drug-use across-the-board has increased under Keelty’s watch. Many drug-related deaths during this period can be placed squarely in Keelty’s lap, as his ‘zero-tolerance’ policies have lead to tragic deaths that could easily have been prevented by simple harm minimisation policies and realistic, truthful drug education, as opposed to ‘just say no’ bullshit that youths rightly reject as propoganda.

Did he get anything right? Sure. You can’t be wrong all the time. He:

• Had a monumental brain-fart when he admitted on national television that there had been less violence over New Years because youth were kerbing their alchohol use ( which produces violent, anti-social behaviour ) in favour of ecstacy ( which produces pretty much the opposite ). It figures that I couldn’t actually find a link for this story ( media have ‘disappeared’ this story, evidently ).
• Demonstated jaw-dropping clarity when he admitted that our partnership with the US in their imperial adventures in the Middle East were increasing the risk of a terrorist attack on Australia. Of course, he later backed down, presumably under duress from Howard.

Can we expect something better of Keelty’s replacement? One line of thinking says it would be difficult to do worse. Being a realist, however, I would expect Captain Kevin Rudd to find someone of similar character and corruptibility. Prove me wrong, Kevin.

In an appauling demonstration of what Obama refers to as ‘change’, the US has boycotted the UN conference on racism, citing its uncritical support of Israel as the justification.. So it’s business as usual for the US on the foreign policy front for the entire Middle East. Indeed the US has strengthened its occupation forces in Afghanistan, while Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has ‘pledged support’ for Iraq beyond the official end of the Iraqi occupation.

At the heart of the US’s opposition to the UN conference on racism is the observation by many at the previous conference that Israel is a racist state. Both the US and Israel consider this obversation itself to be racist. The term ‘anti-semitic’ is used regularly in such an occasion, branding any criticism of Israel to be racist and patently incorrect. But it’s not just the previous conference on racism, or anti-war activists, who consider Israel to be a racist state. Firefox’s search bar has autocompletion for google’s most common searches. When searching for ‘israel’ and ‘racist’, the autocompletion suggests:

Google common searches for 'israel' 'racist'

Why is Israel a racist state? The foundation of Israel in 1948 was a blatant act of racism and aggression. The justification for Israel becoming a state was being spearheaded by the Zionists. Zionism is the explicitely racist ideology that Jews and non-Jews can’t live together. Further to this, they consider all other humans to be in fact non-human, not possessing a soul, and not destined to go to heaven. In Palestine, this translates to everyday behaviour such as Palestinians being beaten to death by mobs of Israelis, Palestinians mothers dying during childbirth at Israeli checkpoints, and of course constant rocket and US jetfighter attacks on so-called ‘militant bases’, which is just code for ‘any Palestinians who oppose the occupation’ … which in turn means just any Palestinian.

Ha’aretz, an Israeli media outlet which is often cited of an example of Israel’s supposed liberal, critical media, has images with these texts, only on the Hebrew-language version of their website:

• A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription “Better use Durex,” next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him.
• A sharpshooter’s T-shirt from the Givati Brigade’s Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull’s-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, “1 shot, 2 kills.”
• After Operation Cast Lead, soldiers from that battalion printed a T-shirt depicting a vulture sexually penetrating Hamas’ prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh
• Another sniper’s shirt also features an Arab man in the crosshairs, and the announcement, “Everything is with the best of intentions.”
• A shirt printed after Operation Cast Lead in Gaza for Battalion 890 of the Paratroops depicts a King Kong-like soldier in a city under attack. The slogan is unambiguous: “If you believe it can be fixed, then believe it can be destroyed!”

Ha’aretz also regularly carries paid advertisements openly advocating the total destruction of the Palestinian people, the murder of large numbers of Muslim civilians, the assassination of the family members of Arab rulers, and the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against dozens of countries.

If Ha’aretz is the ‘progressive’ media outlet ( and in mainstream circles at least, it is ), then you can imagine the racist propaganda that comes out of the conservative media, the government, schools, ‘defence’ forces, etc.

Israeli children signing bombs destined for Lebanon

So what did President Ahmadinejad of Iran say at the conference on racism that caused such an international stir? He said that Israel was founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering” during the Second World War. There’s nothing racist in that. This is in fact precisely what happend. The Zionists leveraged their treatment under Hitler to gain support for the creation of the state of Israel. This started with the expulsion and killing of millions of Palestinians, referred to as Al Nakba ( the cataclysm ). Zioniosts are all too eager to attack  Ahmadinejad on the grounds that he is a so-called ‘holocaust-denier’, yet the Israeli state itself denies the Palestinian holocaust, claiming that the land was vacant when they arrived, or that any Palestinian inhabitants voluntarily abandoned their land as the Jews seized it. While the Germans have admitted their crimes during World War II and made it a crime to deny the holocaust, Israel and a very large majority of Jews living around the world are themselves still holocaust deniers when it comes to Al Nakba.

Ahmadinejad and Iran are regularly denounced in the Western media for their nuclear ambitions. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel refuses to sign this same treaty, and already possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Why should Iran be criticised for wanting nuclear power plants ( no-one has a shred of evidence that there is a nuclear weapons progam at present ) when Israel, and aggressive enemy with a frighteningly expansionist policy already has nuclear weapons? And if Iran did want a nuclear weapons program, why should they be denied while we applaud Israel’s secretive program? Why should we invade Iraq to rid the world of said weapons ( that turned out not to exist, by the way ), when Israel not only possesses WOMD, but uses them regularly in wars such as the Lebanon war, and of course the on-going Palestinian occupation? The answer to all these questions is simple: racism. We are constantly bombarded with propaganda from our own governments and media, and of course Israel’s unprecedented public relations campaign, that Israel is some bastion of hope, peace and democracy, and needs WOMD to defend itself from the hoards of barbaric Muslims. Unfortunately many people accept this idea, just as they accepted the need to invade Iraq, Vietnam, etc.

There is an incredible danger in such unconditional support for a fundamentalist, racist state. The US would do well to consider the problems they have now with the Taliban. The US established, funded and trained the Taliban to help them fight USSR. The linked Wikipedia article states:

“Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and “by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war.”

The Taliban were very handy at the time, and successfully fought off the USSR. Now the US has somewhat changed its tune, and is trying ( and failing ) to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. It’s certainly not inconceivable that the geo-political importance of the Middle East will subside ( for example if we manage to transition from oil ), and when that happens, Israel will have outlived its usefulness as a rabid watchdog in the Middle East. Will they turn into another Taliban? Of course, Israel’s neighbours already claim this is so. But what if Israel is seen more as a threat than as asset in the region?

The incredibly narrow-minded short-term support for Israel, dependant on accessible oil in the region is sure to pave the way for disaster. This is particularly so now that Israel has the US’s full arsenal of dreaded weapons of mass destruction. It reminds me of the story of an old woman who swallowed a fly …

For 3 days running now, Israel has carried out an unrelenting terrorist campaign against the citizens of Gaza. The current toll is 345 dead and 1,500 injured. Israel boasts that it has done enough damage to Palestinian infrastructure to set the country back 20 years. Of course this just sets up conditions for another generation of Palestinians to see armed struggle as the only solution. Time for another intifada?

Officially, it originally claimed to be targetting only tunnels that were supposedly being used to transport weapons into Gaza. There are a number of problems with this stance. Firstly, the tunnels are necessary precisely because Israel has carried out a massive blockade of Gaza. This blockade has starved Gaza of essential items such as food, medical equipment, fuel ( and therefore electricity ) and tax revenue, basically since Palestinians voted Hamas into power. If the tunnels are also being used to transport weapons, this should come as no surprise to anyone. The key point in the issue is that Palestinians, and particularly those in Gaza, have no alternative but to fight on. The ‘peace process’ which has been discussed for decades and passed from US president to US president like some war baton offers no hope of peace or even relief from the ongoing blockade. Eyewitness reports from Gaza ( an example being shown on Australian Channel 7’s Sunrise program ) reject Israel’s claim that only tunnels are being targetted. They instead report that Israel is targetting infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, shopping centres, and also residential areas and mosques. This sounds more like the Israel we came to know in the recent short-lived war with Lebanon. Here are some Israeli children signing bombs destined for Lebanon:

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What’s almost as tragic as the terror campaign itself is the response from the international community. Our own Prime Ministrer, Captain Rudd, refused to condemn Israel, only being able to bring himself to call for an ‘end to hostilities’ ( or words to such effect ). The US, unsurprisingly, have reiterated their ’strong support’ for Israel in its ‘time of need’. Of course the millions of dollars in military aid that the US provides to Israel makes their position clearer than any half-wit president could ever hope to. However if there were any doubt remaining, Bush’s war-monger-adviser-extrordinairre Condoleezza Rice has held Hamas responsible for the attack, ignoring Israel’s continued blockaide, cross-border raids, assassinations, and general policy of genicide. By the way, Rice has recently been in the Middle East, supposedely talking up peace. Other world ‘leaders’ have been equally as cowardly and/or callous, prompting senior Israeli diplomats to claim that Israel is feeling no international pressure to end their campaign.

In response to this international indifference, Israel has now rejected its original claim that it’s just targetting some tunnels. Now it admits that this is all-out war, ‘to the bitter end’. It’s still a little confused about who the war is with; it says it’s at war with Hamas, but of course Hamas are the democratically elected leaders of Palestine … something which Israel refuses to recognise ( while still claiming to be a bastion of peace and democracy in the Middle East ). Targetting residential areas and infrastructure is hardly just a war with Hamas. It is of course the latest battle in Israel’s ongoing war with the Palestinian people.

So what of the Condi Rice’s stance that Palestinians brought this on themselves by allowing Hamas to fire rockets into Israel? This line of thinking seems to suggest that the problem originated with Hamas’ rocket fire. But Hamas is a movement that rose in response to decades of brutal military occupation on the part of Israel and the US. It emerged as a rejection of the failed peace process, that ongoing promise of peace which has always been accompanied with ongoing occupation … in fact increased occupation as more illegal settlements arise and are surrounded by an Apartheid Wall. Hamas is a diverse, loosely-knit organisation, with varied interests and methods. There is of course the military wing, which has arisen by pure necessity. There is also the political wing. Then there are individual activists and workers who offer their services in healthcare, education, and reconstruction. This last activity is of course never-ending, as Israel continually targets infrastructure. Israel’s policy of collective punishment is strictly illegal under international law. Of course I’m not suggesting that Israel or the US is at all concerned with breaking international law, but at any rate, it is instructive to consider what the rest of the world has encoded into law, despite their ongoing decades of silence when it applies to Israel. Probably more heartening is a recent EU survey indicating that Israel is considered the biggest threat to world peace. As usual, there is a large gap between what ordinary people think, and what their so-called leaders are willing to admit.

Apart from the obvious David-and-Galioth difference between Palestine and Israel, there is also the fact that the rocket fire the Israelis are crying over is coming from small groups of militants, and not the Palestinian state itself. Israel, on the other hand, has always practiced state terrorism, and quite inconspicuously so. The David-and-Galioth metaphor also applies to the casualties caused; militants’ rocket fire has killed 4 people in the past couple of months, whereas Israel has killed 350 ( so far in 3 days ).

Why is Israel allowed to occupy Palestine and kill as many Palestinians as it wants in the name of protecting itself, whereas Palestinians are to be denounced for their attempts at resistance? As George Galloway said in an interview with Sky News at the time of the Israel-Lebanon war, the mainstream media would have us believe that the problem started when they say so, and by who they say so, and that the blood of an Israeli is worth more than the blood of a Palestinian, Lebanese, or in fact anyone else on Earth. This racism is required by Western powers to justify their imperial projects in the Middle East, and Israel is at the heart of these projects, being the US’s guard-dog. This is proved undeniably by the absolutely uncritical western support for Israel in the face of such crimes against humanity as Israel practices daily, as well as the colossal level of military aid that pours in from the US, without which Israel would crumble in weeks, if not days.

Here at home in Australia, it’s high time Captain Rudd made good on his word to break somewhat the legacy of the Howard years, including the ‘me-too’ foreign policy of monkeying the US, and demand an end to the brutal occupation of Palestine, and a single-state solution, with equal rights for all citizens, the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and compensation for land stolen for those Palestinians who can’t return to their homes or their ancenstors’ homes.

No justice, no peace.

In a shocking fit of lucidity, the Wall Street Journal have run an opinion piece recently advocating ending drug prohibition. Excellent. 70 years too late, mind you, but ‘better late than never’.

Society has been trying to save itself from itself for far too long. The main justification for this failed policy of denial, deceit and persecution has been to prevent harm. But talk to any health care worker, social worker, psychiatrist, even some drug cops, and they’ll tell you that prohibition achieves precisely the opposite of this lofty goal.

The main effect prohibition has on society is to provide astonishing funding for organised crime. This is a lesson supposedly learned during the bad old days of alcohol prohibition. The link between prohibition and organised crime is one very rarely spoken of in the public domain. The reason for this is that a sizable proportion of the active police force are always involved in this relationship, receiving bribes, and those who know enough to talk are sensible enough to shut up.

The main effect on individuals is more complicated. For people with addiction issues, it makes them far less likely to get help when they need it, by stigmatising the problem. For everyone else – the large majority – it merely threatens to land us in gaol ( sorry non-Australians … jail ).

Prohibition is also the most expensive and least effective way of discouraging people from using drugs ( not that this is a valid goal, but it is the goal of a majority of those who support prohibition ). In particular the ‘education’ campaigns that warn of ‘reefer madness’ or suggest that we ‘just say no’ are only going to be effective against the most docile of the population, and then only until a friend ( sorry … ‘peer’ ) encourages them to loosen up. Once the ice is broken and the cat out of the bag, there is little reason to believe what we’re told about  any illicit drugs. Conservative do-gooders are always falling over themselves to point out that some people die from drug overdoses. An Australian favourite is Amy Woods, why died after taking ecstacy. Tragically, what could have saved Anna is some truthful education about the risks associated with various drugs, and a simple list of things to remember to do, and remember not to do. For example, you don’t drink excessive amounts of water after taking ecstacy. That’s not so hard. Some simple harm minimisation is all it would have taken, and in all seriousness, I place Anna Wood’s death at the feet of the ‘just say no’ crowd who only want to talk abstinence, and ‘be damned’ with everyone else.

As the WSJ article ( linked above ) brushes over, prohibition has devastated many 3rd world countries, from Cuba to Mexico to Brazil to Aghanistan. Of course this isn’t their only issue, but it certainly hasn’t helped. The US also regularly sprays chemical weapons on crops, civilians and water supplies in these countries to rid itself of it’s drug problem – to no avail.

If there’s one thing I can’t handle, it’s hypocracy. The same people that support prohibition will laugh at the suggestion of adding nicotine, alcohol and caffiene to the list. But a drug is a drug, and the most harmful drug by far is alcohol, closely followed by nicotine. What I find most offensive is that people are allowed to smoke in public, even after the absolutely exhaustive evidence showing the link between cigarette smoke and cancer. Why is it OK for people to expose me to known carcinagens when I walk down the street? No-one is out to save me from other people’s drugs, only to prevent me from taking ones of my own choice … and statistically far safer ones, I might add. People even get upset when I suggest that smoking is OK, but away from footpaths, schools, etc. Do I walk down the street smoking a bong? No. That’s not OK. I expect cigarette smokers to do me the same courtesy and hold off until they’re away from people who haven’t opted to inhale their smoke.

Why is it all so? Well, apart from the organised crime element already discussed, there is a current of thought that says that anything good is actually bad. This is particularly popular amongst backward religions. From what I gather, doing anything that causes pleasure is giving in to the Devil. This of course includes sex, drugs, and yes, rock & roll too. People are supposed to reject these tempations and live a pure life, blah blah blah. Fine – as long as the religious nuts keep to themselves. The problem is that they’re not content making their own life a misery; they want to impose their vision of a model life on the rest of society as well.

This is why we have a separation of religion and state. It goes like this … Religion guides us on personal issues, and the State enforces some rules for public interactions. The State has no business telling me how to live my personal life; it’s up to religion to guide. It’s my option to listen to advice from multiple religions, and then choose my own path. So what is the state doing prying into my personal choices? Getting up to no good … that’s what.

On a more positive note, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), an organisation dedicated to researching psychadelics and their relationship to consciousness, spritiuality and health, have completed a study on MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. This is a major breakthrough, both in psychotherapy and in the ideological war on drugs.

I contacted Australian Ethical Investments ( AEI ) the other day, after some more information on their investment strategy before committing. They sent out a very informative Product Disclosure Statement. The 5th point in their charter is about supporting:

the amelioration of wasteful or polluting practices

Great. So they must invest in some pretty ecologically sound companies, right. Well sure, they do – there’s a decent list of warm-and-fuzzy-sounding green companies. But there are also some pretty questionable ones that they use as examples, and I imagine there would be plenty more that they don’t use as examples. But take Hastings Diversified Utilities Fund. They own a massive network of natural gas pipelines. AEI go on to explain that natural gas is better than other fossil fuelds. They’re right, of course, but burning one fossil fuel and pointing to others that are worse isn’t what I’d call ethical. I’d call it opportunistic, and unnecessarily so.

There’s more to come. Fairfax Media are now considered an ethical investment!

The company’s Corporate Values identify a commitment to truth, accuracy, integrity, fairness and balance in journalism.

No shit. This is the neo-liberal, war-mongering, union-bashing, climate-change-denying, dissent-silencing media empire that own the maximum allowable of all available media under Australian law. It’s no ethical investment. I concede they aren’t quite as bad as Rupert Murdock’s alternate empire, but again, pointing to someone else that is worse than you doesn’t excuse what’s still some awefully unethical behaviour. There are plenty of smaller, less biased, independent media outlets to invest in.

AEI is also not a not-for-profit fund, so they have no problem with slapping numerous fees and charges on their customers. What sort of fees? How about 4.1% per contribution? You see, it costs these bastards a lot when we give them our money to invest. Then there’s 3.1% when switching investment strategies. 3.5% ‘adviser commissions’. 1.1% per annum ‘trailing commission’. The list goes on. Apparently you can apply to have fees waived, but really, is this how we have to deal with our superannuation?

The search continues …