Statement of Audience

I realize that nothing I say matters to anyone else on the entire planet. My opinions are useless and unfocused. I am an expert in nothing. I know nothing. I am confused about almost everything. I cannot, as an individual, ever possibly know everything, or even enough to make editorial commentary on the vast vast majority of things that exist in my world. This is a stupid document; it is meaningless drivel that I do not expect any of the several billion people on my planet to actually read. People who do read my rambling, incoherent dumbfuckery are probably just as confused as I am, if not more so, as they are looking to my sorry ass for an opinion when they should be outside playing Frisbee with their dog or screwing their life partner or getting a dog or getting a life partner. Anyone who actually takes the time to read my bullshit probably deserves to ingest my fucked up and obviously mistaken opinions on whatever it is that I have written about.

Signed: Douglas

Stolen from Why I Hate Personal Weblogs

Read more!

Obsessions overshadow vital lessons

Miranda Devine lets her Obsessions overshadow vital lessons by insinuating that Mamdouh Habib is guilty of something, but no one knows what.

Then we had the 60 Minutes interview with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib. Channel Nine paid big money to Habib for a sobbing rehash of his allegations that he was beaten, tortured by electric shock and had menstrual blood thrown in his face while in US custody. Habib, whose claims are being treated as if they are highly credible, showed viewers marks he said were the result of cigarette burns and bruises inflicted by his captors. He laid out a case for future litigation.

Emphasis Mine

So, all of those photographs along with the convictions of the military police at Ahu Gharib, the FBI and US Army reports, the testimony of the UK detainees do not lend credence to Mr. Habib's claims. By taking his testimony out of context can Ms. Devine hope to discredit him.

But he wouldn't explain why he was in Afghanistan in 2001, or how, as a former cleaner on a pension, he managed to afford the airfares back and forth to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Emphasis Mine

So much for the common-law (and legal) defense against self-incrimmination. The accused does not have to explain anything. The prosecution must prove its case. In this debacle, no one can point to a crime that Mamdouh Habib may have committed under Australian, Pakistani, or Afghani law. There are only insinuations that he may have been up to something.

Apparently, Mr. Habib's crime is live beyond his means.

As Habib is living free in Sydney, and as the ASIO head, Denis Richardson, told a Senate committee this week that Habib is a security risk, these are important questions.

Emphasis Mine

What security risk does a retired pensioner pose?

Meanwhile, Richardson was telling a Senate committee on Tuesday: "We had a fairly good idea of what [Habib had] been up to. He was actually with people in Afghanistan who have a history of murdering innocent civilians, rather than actually being kidnapped by anyone. So his claim about him being kidnapped while he was in Afghanistan and tortured simply lacked credibility in terms of what we knew."

Emphasis Mine

People in Afghanistan who have a history of murdering innocent people would include:

• The Taliban
• The Northern Alliance
• The Pakistani Secret Service
• CIA
• US Army
• Al-Qaeda

If Ms. Devine wanted to include Australia, the list would include:

• The various police forces
• Government ministers
• Military forces
• Murderers
• Company executives
• Newspaper columists
• Current Affairs Journalists
• Drink Drivers
• Speeding Drivers

Read more!

15 February 2003

I was one of 500,000 in Hyde Park, Sydney, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, to march against the war. In spite of trains not running, all of these people showed up - many for the first time to a protest. Everywhere you looked, there were rivers of people moving along the streets.

Sydney has a population of between 3 to 4 million. This means that between one-sixth and one-eight of the population was protesting against the war. Australia-wide, about one million people protested against the war - 5% of the population.

There are still people who say these protesters were not the majority - 17 million did not march. Silence is consent.

Even though, the war went ahead with Australian involvement. This was a great disappointment for many people.

I think it is a hard lesson about the workings of the Australian democracy. Protesting does not change the system but it changes people who protest.

Read more!

The Little Eichmanns

Prof. Robert Jensen writes that Ward Churchill has rights, and he’s right.

I take Churchill’s central thesis to be that (1) U.S. crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes around the world -- from the genocidal campaigns against indigenous people on which this country was founded, through the post-World War II assaults (both by the U.S. military and through proxy forces) on the people of the Third World -- are crimes, in legal and moral terms; (2) while contemporary non-state terrorism is a complex phenomenon, U.S. policies aimed at domination and control around the world are one of several key factors in spawning such terrorism; and (3) we must study that history and those connections if we want to prevent further crimes, whether committed by the United States or against U.S. citizens.

What goes for the USA goes some of the way for Australia as we are also a colonial-settler state that was built on the genocide of the indigenous population. The Australian colonial empire only extended to PNG, and our slave trade was limited to convicts and South Sea Islanders. Our chickens came home to roost at the Bali Bombing in October 2002. The likely motive for that is the about-face of the Australian government over E.Timor. Both the Indonesian military and radicals hated us for engineering the removal of their troops. Even Usama Bin Ladin cites this as a cause for all Muslims to avenge: the handover of Muslim territory to the Christians.

What seems to have got up everybody's nose is:

First, let’s go to the passage that has received the most attention, the labeling of the people described as a “technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire” as “little Eichmanns.” Churchill has said that the passage clearly wasn’t intended to include the janitors, food-service workers, children, rescue workers, or passers-by who were killed, and there’s no reason to doubt him about that, even if the construction was ambiguous enough that many read it as a broader condemnation. But even accepting that narrow construction, the statement is still problematic. Are all the stock traders in the United States really equivalent to Adolph Eichmann? It’s true that Eichmann was a technocrat who helped keep the Nazi machinery of death running, not the person pulling the trigger, so to speak. But Eichmann was a fairly high-level Gestapo bureaucrat, directly involved in the planning of that holocaust. Is it accurate to think of all stock traders -- even if marked as “little” versions of Eichmann, implying a much lower scale -- as being in an analogous position? ...

This really raises deep ethical questions. How much of what I do every day contributes to the oppression of others? What we think of as means to get enough money to live could be hurting other people. Being a worker in a capitalist economy does not give an individual much choice - you want to eat, you have to work. If you want to keep your job, you have to follow orders. There is not much leeway for an individual.

For groups of people, the choices become greater. Only a mass movement can truly change society. But you have to start with yourself, not waiting for others.

Read more!

More on the Draft

Rumours of a draft persist even though I discounted them in February and No Draft.

Rohan Pearce in his GreenLeft Weekly article Will ‘imperial overreach' lead to the draft?.

A January 28 letter to Congress by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) — the right-wing think-tank that has provided much of the blueprint for the Bush administration foreign policy — called for an increase in the size of the US armed forces to crush any Third World resistance to Washington's aggressive post-9/11 empire building.

...

The PNAC letter accused the Bush regime of failing to increase US ground forces to “the size needed to meet today's (and tomorrow's) missions and challenges”. The signatories advocated a combined increase in the number of active duty troops in the US Army and Marine Corps of “at least 25,000” per year for “the next several years”.

One conclusion is that a selective draft, especially of medical personnel

... despite the undoubted political cost such a move would have, and despite the White House's denials, a draft, particularly one aimed at reversing deficiencies in important skills in the US military, remains on the agenda. ...

I remember reading in the New Republic Online shortly after the 11 September 2001 attacks that the editors thought it was a good time to introduce a draft then. I suppose the Bush administration beleived it could rely on the flow of volunteers like Pat Tillman to bolster the armed forces. Now it finds that recruiting goals are not being and it is more explosive politically introduce a general draft now. What the Bush administration needs is another attack by Al-Qaeda to bolster the administration's fortunes.

Read more!

Like it or not, we are all shareholders now

Paul Sheehan contends that Like it or not, we are all shareholders now

... According to the Australian Stock Exchange, the market's value was equivalent to 102 per cent of gross domestic product on December 31. The market has moved onwards and upwards since then, enough to place Australia in the top 10 of global stock markets, even though Australia ranks only 42nd among nations by population, and 15th by size of economy. We've become a nation of shareholders, one of the leading stocked-up nations in the world.

In a single generation, Australia has evolved from a nation where a large number of people invested in various forms of mutual societies to a nation of listed corporations, big mutual funds and individual shareholders with a direct or indirect stake in the market. ...

In general, Paul Sheehan is comparing two different things: GDP and market capitalisation. Not all economic activity is captured by the GDP especially in countries, like Italy, that have large black economies. And market capitalisation only captures the value of large firms.

What Paul Sheehan omits is the destruction of small business. Large firms are listed on the stock exchange whereas small firms are not. The largest contributer to GDP has been the small firms through employment and economic activity.

Shareholders are not to be confused with owners. A small shareholder has no control over a firm he/she has invested in, even with other small shareholders. The rules are stacked against the small shareholder. Lenin, nearly a century ago, said that the capitalist wanted the small shareholders to invest so that the capitalist can control a firm with less capital (at least 40% of the shares is necessary to control a firm). The indirect shareholder (via the superannuation and insurance funds) have no control over their shares.

Don't confuse being a shareholder as being a part-owner.

Read more!

February and No Draft

In 2004, there were predictions on the left-leaning blogs and newsgroups that the US government would re-introduce the draft in order to get more troops for the invasions of Iran, Syria, etc. The timing was said to be February 2005. Well, we are halfway through the month and there is no draft. But there is sabre-rattling over Iran and there are incursions by US special forces into Iran. I would say that war is going ahead anyway without the extra troops. The only thing I can think of is that NATO will be required to provide the troops for the invasion and occupation of Iran.

Read more!

USAPATRIOT Has Negative Effect on Trade

The conflict between economic concerns and security concerns are beginning to deepen. In the Cuban press, Juan Antonio Niño, president of the Latin American Federation of Banks (FELABAN), is quoted in US anti- terrorism regulations negatively affecting regional trade as saying:

"The impact of the [USAPATRIOT Act] on the [Latin American] region’s foreign trade and its banks is direct," ...

He explained that exports to US territory cannot be shipped from their point of origin without having an access code and the authorization of the US Customs Office.

This process has caused an increase in export costs in technology, storage, inspection, certification and security, "not to mention the risk of losing perishable goods," he added.

My guess is that these restrictions will be lessened once the impact on the earnings of large US firms and banks becomes apparent. Then provisions of the USAPATRIOT Act will be waived in the national interests (i.e. the banks and large companies).

Read more!

Man Bites God

Ted Rall treats a homeless person as an object in Man Bites God. The third panel of the cartoon has the following dialogue:

Jesus: Look at that wino. If you were at all concerned about burning in hell forever, you'd invite him home. You'd fight off other do-gooders for a chance at him!

Man: Jesus dude. No one does that.

I agree with Ted Rall that Christians must be involced personally with the down-trodden but not as a means to collect brownie points. That wino is still a person who has dignity because he is made in the image of God. Any assistance offered to him must respect that dignity.

This is also a point where Communists, in general, fall down. They are more concerned with the abstract down-trodden not with the real people they meet on the streets. Yes, we are moving towards a better society but we need to include the poor now - not keep them waiting for that new world.

Read more!

CNN News Exec Quits Following Controversy

The thought police have another success. A dangerous thought was found and the perpetrator was punished. The world is now a safer place.

Michael Eason, CNN News Exec, Quits Following Controversy

...that he believed several journalists who were killed by coalition forces had been targeted.

I suppose he meant the following examples:

• Al-Jazeera
• Ramadi Palestine Hotel
• CNN reporters

He tried to clarify his remarks as:

"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.

The thought police had a different view on his resignation:

"This is a victory for every soldier who has honorably served this nation. To you we devote this victory."

Of course, those who started this illegal war, lied about it, participated in the crimes at Ahu Gharib and elsewhere, leveled Fallujah, shot up unarmed women and children, and the countless other war criminals (in uniform and out) are not included. But you cannot mention these thoughts as they are not safe.

Updated 13 Feb 2005

Read more!