Aborigines and Johnny-come-lately

A few weeks ago John Howard, in the face of scary poll results and the admitted threat of electoral annihilation, stated that he did not have a rabbit to pull out of the hat. Well, guess what! He has just found his rabbit. Child abuse in Aboriginal communities is Howard’s rabbit – the Tampa and children overboard rabbit that he has harnessed just 4 months out from the federal election. Of course none of us condone child abuse and all of us want to see it eliminated but WHY HAS HOWARD WAITED TIL NOW TO ACT? Once again Howard’s actions are driven by political strategy. We have seen it with Hicks, climate change, water, and many other issues. As Dr Tim Rowse of the ANU wrote: Recently, we heard through the Prime Minister's leaked analysis of the Government's electoral prospects that he has no 'rabbit to pull out of a hat'. In 2001, when the Howard government needed a rabbit it found one in the alleged 'child abuse' by unauthorised refugees (Children Overboard). The government won a mandate to deal firmly with refugees, and it exercised that mandate, in part, by imprisoning children. Now the government is facing defeat, and it has found -- in the dire circumstances of some Aboriginal communities and families -- the 'rabbit' that it needs. Again, the protection of children will be the Howard team's rallying cry. Today's announcement has the stench of 2001's rotting rabbit carcass.
If there is any doubt about Howard’s belatedness and his tricky strategizing then the following should put the doubt to rest.
Patrick Devery writes on Crikey:The abuse of children in Indigenous communities is an issue that was highlighted long before Lateline's report in May 2006 initiated the Northern Territory Government's report into the protection of Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. Below is a timeline of how the issue of sexual abuse in Indigenous communities has been publicly addressed.
1989: Judy Atkinson writes a report for the National Inquiry on Violence naming sexual abuse in Indigenous communities as endemic and epidemic.
1991: Ms Atkinson writes a similar report for the Prime Minister and cabinet.
1999: Aboriginal academic Boni Robertson leads an inquiry of 50 women, representing all indigenous communities in Queensland, to look into alcoholism and abuse of women and children in remote communities.
2000: Ms Robertson's report is tabled in the Queensland parliament.
2002: The Central Aboriginal Congress prepares a paper showing the number of Indigenous women being treated for domestic assault at the Alice Springs hospital more than doubled from 351 cases in 1999 to to about 800 cases in 2002.
7 July 2003: Prime Minister John Howard calls a summit on violence in Indigenous communities in response to statements by a number of indigenous leaders. The summit begins on 23 July 2003.
5 August 2003: Cape York community doctor Lara Wieland hands John Howard a 10-page letter outlining incidents of abuse, and claiming that child sexual abuse and neglect are out of control in the community.
26 November 2004: NT Chief Minister Clare Martin reports to a cabinet colleague that "social dysfunction" at central indigenous community Mutitjulu is driven by chemical addiction and passive welfare, and that two-thirds of its children are malnourished or underdeveloped.
15 May 2006: Lateline obtain a confidential briefing paper written by Nanette Rogers, Crown Prosecutor for central Australia. The paper -- originally intended for only a small number of senior police -- details endemic sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory. Remember how this dominated the media for several weeks!! Where was Howard and his white charger then? (my point in italics)
22 June 2006: The Northern Territory Government announces an inquiry into child sex abuse across the Territory's Aboriginal communities.
8 August 2006: NT Chief Minister, Clare Martin, officially appoints Rex Stephen Leslie Wild QC and Patricia Anderson to the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sex Abuse.
30 April 2007: Little Children are Sacred, Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse is presented to the Northern Territory government.
16 June 2007: Little Children are Sacred report publicly released.
21 June 2006: Prime Minister John Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough hold a press conference to announce a series of reforms directed at indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. The Prime Minister calls the situation "akin to a national emergency".
It is disgusting that Howard should compare this situation to Hurricane Katrina when alarm bells have been clanging since the day he became Prime Minister.

A fair go for the word fair!

The past week has seen both sides of politics trying to outdo each other with their commitment to fairness. Labor wants to scrap Australian Workplace Agreements and introduce a fairer system embodied in Forward with Fairness and Fair Work Australia. Howard responded immediately to make his Work Choices fairer with some 'finetuning' to protect workers on less than $75000. Big Business condemned Labor and we had CEOs of some of our biggest companies saying the sky would fall if Work Choices was scrapped. I have to smile at CEOs who are on multi million dollar salaries pontificating about threats to whole sectors posed by collective bargaining. The just retired CEO of Rio Tinto was the saddest: Leigh Clifford earned $6.7 million last year (about $18,356 a day) bemoaned Labor's union driven agenda. How can these people relate to some 20 year old kid on $14.00 an hour in the retail sector being screwed out of penalty rates?
Of course Labor is not averse to a little fairness bypass as the shafting of the Labor member for Newcastle to make way for ACTU secretary, Greg Combet shows. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!.......fairness....... like beauty it is in the eye of the stubbyholder.

Mateship and Water

Finally the Howard Government comes up with something I totally agree with. They suggest pumping water from the mighty Clarence river in northern NSW over the border to the huge population centres of Southeast Queensland. At the outset I must declare that such a project would have to have strict controls. NOBODY is talking about draining the Clarence DRY!!! To be viable it would be about harvesting the excess water only to the extent that the Clarence's ecology and biodiversity would not be harmed.
But of course as soon as the idea is raised political and self interest jump right in. Consequently there is no way this proposal will get off the ground. The (Labor) NSW government won't countenance a (Liberal) Federal government idea that might be popular in Queensland where votes in the November election will be critical. Then there are the locals who see the proposal as the end of the world and think the Clarence is to be replaced by a large empty drain.
So...... mateship in Australia does not extend to sharing water.
EXCEPT where I live. Premier Peter Beattie is working 24/7 building a pipeline from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast so that water can be pumped from our full dams to Brisbane's near empty dams. Of course this is a stopgap measure that governments excel in and it would be more visionary to be construct a pipeline from the bountiful rivers of northern Queensland. A short pipeline from NSW's northern rivers would be the simplest and most logical but simplicity and logic don't sit well with experts and governments.
FOOTNOTE: I wonder if the guy who cut down the last tree on Easter Island intended sharing the wood with his mates or whether it was for his exclusive use and if so whether he was beaten to death by envious others.

David Hicks

So David Hicks has pleaded guilty to providing support for terrorism. Who wouldn't have to just get out of the hell of Guantanamo? For people like John Howard to say this proves what a traitorous bastard he is shows a lack of understanding of what motivates a person to escape horrific conditions. Jail in Australia has got to be a preferable option. The bigger crime is that he had to languish there for 5 years while John and George played political footsies.
I often think how good it would be if we could return to the ancient times where leaders led their armies into battle. The invasion of Iraq with George, Tony and John in the first tank into Baghdad!!! The war would never have got off the ground. They would have said: 'Stuff the oil! Let's get serious about solar power.'

Aussie Values - Good Value??

I just saw an item on TV showing Fred Nile, under a huge banner with the Australian Flag and the words AUSSIE VALUES, calling for a halt to Muslim migration until it can be established that the existing 300,000 Australian Muslims can be vouched for as worthy Aussies. Stone the bloody crows!!! When jingoism, racism and Christian self
righteousness collide they make for a perverse mix.

Then there was the standard 60 Minutes piece which once again talked of Aussie Values being freedom, mateship, patriotism, resilience, optimism (the kind that begets ‘she’ll be right!’). The usual suspects were interviewed: the ex-convict (freedom); the soldier (mateship); the dynastic grazier (resilience and optimism); the migrant (the lot); the flag draped yobbo (patriotism to excess). Once again it was presented as if these values are the exclusive province of Australians. Somewhere in there I guess Aussie Values do reside but it is the misuse of them by anyone from politicians to ordinary people that really gets me. It’s such a copout to use Aussie Values as a weapon in any holier than thou attack on someone whose difference you can’t handle. When you look at the daily examples of ALL sorts of people behaving contrary to the Aussie Values that we all think identify us a Aussies then you realize they are more an ideal than a real thing. The unprovoked bashings, the corruption, the executive crime, the ridiculous salaries that company CEOs get paid, the preference for vested interests, the rip offs and exploitation, the road rage, the obscene defences lawyers mount for vermin, etc. etc etc. all have nothing to do with fair go and mateship and tolerance and all the rest that we think typically characterize Australians. Values are open to all sorts of interpretation, use and misuse. That's what I'm doing here you may say!

Aaaaaaaah!! Good old Mateship

Another week that showed that good old aussie value mateship in all its glory. Kevin Rudd really got caught out by including ex crims in his mateship circle. Even our mates can get us into strife!! (Howard's mate George Bush has got him into strife over Iraq). Then one of Howard's ministerial mates had to be cut loose so Howard and his cronies, Costello and Abbott could maintain the onslaught against Rudd.
The whole episode, which I'm sure will surface regularly for months to come, illustrates clearly what I've been on about in this blog. Mateship is not always the great thing it is often cracked up to be. Misguided mateship can see mates lead mates into the jaws of hell. Mateship also knows when it's time to pull the plug.
PS Costello's and Abbott's snarling performances in the Parliament probably did them more harm than good. Imagine them with an attack of road rage.

Dick Cheney has mates in The Australian

Here is a letter I sent to The Australian that didn't get published.

The Editor
The Australian

The editorial (26/2) on Cheney's visit acknowledges that Bush and Cheney 'did not have a clue what to do next' after Saddam's removal. Instead of saying they still don't and chiding Cheney, it goes on to present him in a favourable light even when that glow includes nuclear possibilities in Iran. It is as if Greg Sheridanial took over and pasted in the tiresome pro Bush/Howard/Cheney sentiments from his Saturday Inquirer interview with the Vice President. The editorial says Mr Cheney is ' indefatigable' and we Aussies should be grateful. Zealous would be a better label and most Aussies now know the price for Cheney's and Bush's zealotry has been far too high. How amazing that this cut and paste editorial appeared opposite the more realistic article by C. Layne entitled Dick Cheney has led America Down the Road To Hell in Iraq.

A Week of Mateship

Wow! What a week! US Vice President, Dick Cheney, came and went. He managed to extract some mileage from John Willimason - true blue is 'standing by your mates'. Well 70% of Australians don't think it's still OK to stand with John Howard and George Bush in Iraq. If only Cheney could see behind the trees and catch a glimpse of the forest.
And what about the gift to Rudd of a staged British withdrawal from Iraq? This just hours after Rudd was being lampooned by Howard's cronies that this was sky falling in stuff. Tony Abbot was the best. He wailed that a staged withdrawal was a staged surrender. When Blair made his announcement, they ran for cover saying the British were relocating, scaling back, adjusting priorities. JESUS!! they think we are dumb! But then journalists like Greg Sheridan and Paul Kelly of The Australian are always garnishing their lightly disguised pro Bush/Howard articles with preumptions that the public at large don't have the insights and real understanding that they have. They looked more journalistically arrogant than usual as they struggled with Defence Minister Nelson's sublime declaration that there could be no victory in Iraq. Nelson even compared the struggle in Iraq to the Battle of Kokoda. Of course this is all manna from heaven for Rudd.

Sometimes Mateship Can Diminish Us All

One of the beauties of the internet is that I can read Mike Carlton and Alan Ramsey in the Sydney Morning Herald online on Saturdays. They give me balance for the syrupy Howard line consistently presented in The Weekend Australian by the likes of so called experts like Greg Sheridan who just don't get how much Iraq and Howard's American sychophancy grate on many Australians. The Iraqi fiasco is central to disillusionment with Howard just as it was central to the recent Congressional elections that demolished the Republicans and by default, Bush. Even in the face of that electoral reprimand, writers like Sheridan were still saying that Iraq was not the key to the negative vote and the editorial in Sat 17 Feb's WE, repeats this myth. The Australian and the Liberal Party ought to have a Professional Development day where they invite Blind Freddy along to ask him what he thinks about a range of issues.

Dick Cheney is about to visit Australia and I can do no better than quote Mike Carlton's assessment from the SMH of Sat 17 Feb 07. It is excellent reading and says a lot about who Howard's mates are and the sorts of people he will stick by when even Blind Freddy knows the real score.

Stink of Blood Money in the Air – must be Deadeye. Mike Carlton, SMH 17 Feb 2007

The Chickenhawk-in-Chief is coming. We are to be visited next week by Deadeye Dick Cheney, the most odious individual to hold the office of US Vice-President since the criminal Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace from the Nixon administration.
A little history to begin with: first the chicken. Asked in 1989 by The Washington Post why he had dodged the draft for the Vietnam War, Cheney notoriously replied that "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service". Now the hawk. In recent years, his enthusiasm for military service - other people's military service, that is - has multiplied like anthrax. No man, not even George Bush, has done more to drive the American disaster in Iraq.
Cheney was the first to trumpet the delusion that the September 11, 2001 terrorist atrocity was linked to Saddam Hussein. Fixated on a punitive war in Iraq, he connived with his old buddy Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon to set up a personal intelligence network that would bypass the professional Washington spy agencies and construct the casus belli he needed. Cherry-picking the evidence, often relying on scheming Iraqi exiles with an axe to grind and money to make, Cheney vigorously pushed the fabrication that the Iraq dictator intended to attack the United States. "We discovered … the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague," he announced in March 2002.
"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us," he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 2002.
And then, a month later: "We do know, with absolute certainty that [Saddam] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon."
But not to worry, the war of shock and awe would be a cakewalk. "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators," he assured NBC television's Meet The Press in 2003, just days before the invasion began.
All these and more of the Vice-President's lethal notions have long since been exploded. Only a week ago, a Pentagon investigation confirmed that the supposed Prague meeting between Atta and an Iraqi agent never happened.
We know all about the non-existent WMDs. Cheney's claims about Saddam's nuclear program have been comprehensively demolished. And more than 3000 of the welcome "liberators" have been killed in Iraq.
And there is a scorching account of the nefarious career of Dick Cheney done for The New York Review of Books last year by the writer Joan Didion, on the net at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19376
The disastrous Rumsfeld was eventually fired, but Deadeye Dick miraculously survives, more arrogant than ever. His critics, he sneers, are "dishonest and reprehensible … corrupt and shameless".
WHILE the Chickenhawk's continuing lust for conflict in the Middle East springs from mad-eyed neo-con fantasies, it has added enormously to his personal fortune. Before becoming Vice-President, Cheney was, for five years, chairman and chief executive of Halliburton, the giant American engineering and oil services company. On his watch, this company - acting secretively through offshore corporate cut-outs - did many millions of dollars worth of oil and construction business with Iran and Iraq, in defiance of Clinton administration sanctions against those countries. The corrupt Soeharto regime in Indonesia was another favourite client.
In 1995, Halliburton quietly paid the US government a penalty of $US3.8 million for illegally selling nuclear technology to Libya, and in 2002, a subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, had to cough up $US2 million to settle a fraud case brought by the US Justice Department. In 2003, the company forked out $US6 million in compensation for "defective accounting practices".
Cheney, on leaving Halliburton to run for vice-president, was given a golden handshake worth more than $US33.7 million. The company has since won tens of billions of dollars worth of Pentagon war contracts in Iraq from the Bush Administration, many awarded without competitive tender, and several of which are under investigation for serious fraud and overcharging.
Cheney maintains that he now has no connection with Halliburton, that his stock is held in a blind trust. But for at least two years of his vice-presidency, the company paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars in "deferred compensation", a legal though arguably smelly tax avoidance device. And Cheney has also worked his old Halliburton connections to finesse the Bush Administration's oil, energy and conservation policies in favour of big business. Estimates of his current personal fortune, including Halliburton stock, run from about $US30 million to as high as $US100 million.
This is the man who will be greeted with open arms by Howard, Downer, Nelson and Co next week. They will be welcoming a deceitful and dangerous spiv. (my bolding)
FOR a penetrating account of the Bush Administration's assault on democracy and honesty, I can recommend a new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Penguin/Viking) by the excellent New York Times columnist Frank Rich.

Mateship overdone

John Howard's support for his mate George W. Bush really is over the top. In the past week he has disparaged a presidential candidate (Obama) and the whole US Democrat party in an effort to bolster the failing stocks of George and himself over their disaster in Iraq.

And the rhetoric from Howard and his cronies (like Brendan Nelson) reaches new heights. If America pulls out of Iraq the sky will fall in etc. etc. Well, hello!! the yanks and we were defeated in Vietnam and the domino effect in SE Asia that we were told would follow a communist victory just never happened. We withdrew in defeat from Gallipoli and managed to salvage a national identity out of that experience! These pricks that keep feeding young soldiers into the bottomless pit of Iraq would have been leading the pack in the pro conscription debate in Australia in World War One. It was stubborness like theirs that fed the human fodder to the cannons on the Western front and in many conflicts before and since. Sure it's a mess in Iraq but in many ways it is worse than what it was and is it any worse than a dozen conflicts in Africa that don't even appear on the West's radar because oil and Israel are not involved????

Maybe, just maybe, Howard, like Bush, has picked a loser here because the average Aussie appears to be fed up with the distorted and blind mateship between Howard and Bush. If Rudd remains steady Howard will be ruddy well finished.

A Fair Go for Hicks is a Fair Go for Howard

John Howard said this week he could get David Hicks home any time he wanted to. Hicks has now been charged and the convoluted and heavily biased legal process has begun. Howard said: ‘I will be watching very, very carefully the timetable towards the actual preliminary hearing and the actual trial before the military commission.’(The Australian 9/2/06) You betcha he will! Howard has a nose for the voters’ mood and he knows the pendulum has swung to the point that the majority of Australians are sick of this farce and the way Howard has let the Americans call the shots for 5 years. Howard’s timetable will certainly include getting Hicks home at precisely the moment which will generate maximum political kudos for him and therefore enhance his own electoral chances. Don’t be surprised to see Howard drag Hicks on stage at the Liberals’ official campaign launch!

Aussie Pride or Xenophobia

Under a heading 'Aussie Pride' The Sunshine Coast Daily published this letter on 27 January: 'Everyone should be waving the Australian flag on Australia Day. Anyone waving a flag from another country has no right to be here and should be deported to that country. Australia is for Australians to enjoy.'

Even though we espouse a 'fair go' and tolerance as Australian values it is clear that the ideal is a long way from the real as far as some Australians are concerned. I hope the writer did not watch the Williams demolition of Sharapova in the Australian Open on Australia Day as he/she may have had apoplexy at the sight of American and Russian flags! No guesses for what the writer's definition of an Australian would be.

I was reminded of a fabulous Bill Cosby piece I used when teaching. It was called 'On Prejudice' and Cosby just sat on a chair smoking a cigar and changing colour from lighting effects while he used every stereotype in the book to berate every minority group in America. He went through all races, age groups, geographical areas and then some, and then women. He just wanted them all deported -'just put 'em off somewhere'. Finally there is only himself and another man left in the country and he declares that 'I don't much care for him either.' In the final scene the voice over asks: 'And who are you?' Crosby says: 'I'm a bigot and I'm proud!'

A Fair Go for Justice on Palm Island?

In the latest step towards justice for Palm Islanders and Australia generally, an Australia Day present has been delivered. The Street Review has been completed and: 'Attorney-General Kerry Shine said Sir Laurence had found enough evidence to charge the officer with manslaughter - and to possibly warrant a conviction.
"Sir Laurence has advised me that he believes sufficient admissible evidence exists to support the institution of criminal proceedings against Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley for manslaughter of Mulrunji," Mr Shine said.
"Furthermore, Sir Laurence believes there is a reasonable prospect of a conviction."'

In my first blog I stated 'Blind Freddy knows what happened in the police cell on Palm Island'. Blind Freddy is a colloquialism for the obvious (sometimes referred to as the 'bleedin obvious'.)

After a coronial review, a DPP review and now an independent review the wheels of justice are now turning in the right direction. Richard Flanagan reminds us in The Unknown Terrorist of the Henry V line: 'Wisdom cries out in the streets, yet no man regards it'.

A Fair Go for David Hicks?

Our Prime Minister has demanded of the Americans that Hicks be charged by mid-February. This belated call comes, of course, because polls are showing that the majority of Australians now think the government has really stuffed up on this one. For five years Hicks has languished in Guantanamo Bay. Now the Yanks are saying that ‘evidence’ gained by torture will be admissible in court! What a fiasco. Even if Hicks is a deadshit who got caught out I think he deserves better than he’s got for the past five years. It will be an interesting test of the Bush-Howard friendship to see if this demand is met. It’s all to do with our election year so Bush might just come to the party. Will Howard be able to turn the Hicks thing into a Tampa or a 9/11 electoral winner? Who knows, but those spin merchants who scan every issue for the PM to make mileage out of will be considering all angles.

A Fair Go At Last

Thank you to the Prime Minister for giving us all a fair go by sacking Amanda Vanstone. No longer will we have to suffer her cold, calculated, heartless explanations for why her Immigration Department has implemented some cold, heartless, bureaucratic policy that has stuffed up the life of some poor bastard who just wants a chance to share the life that we, at the top of the human pyramid, were just lucky enough to be born into.

Wave the Flag on Australia Day - 26 January

How predictable (and timely) that John Howard should leap on the Aussie flag controversy that Big Day Out organizers started by trying to ban it. He can’t help but leap on anything that offers him the opportunity to portray himself as the defender of Aussie values and the champion of anything that is true blue. Yet there are a lot of deadshits out there who would use the Australian flag for purposes that are quite contrary to the values it is supposed to symbolize. Would Howard agree with the Cronulla rioters who cloaked themselves in the flag in order to give some legitimacy to their supremacist views? Would he agree with those deadshits who reportedly demanded people kiss it at last year’s BDO and assaulted those who refused. He says: ‘The proposition that the display of the Australian flag should ever be banned anywhere in Australia is offensive and it will be to millions of Auistralians’. Well, John, the flag is banned at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane so what are you going to do about it?

AN AUSSIE NOVEL THAT CHALLENGES SOME OF OUR VALUES

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan

I finally got around to reading this novel which was published in 2006. I really enjoyed it. It is a thriller with plenty of social and political comment. Set in post 9/11 Sydney it involves a Kings Cross pole dancer caught up in a whirlpool of murder, media hype and politically manipulated fear of terrorism. Readers will recognize the Australia that Flanagan portrays so clearly. The Australia where the ‘War on Terror’ has created all sorts of fears and uncovered the Australian racism that mostly lies dormant just below the surface of our fair go-tolerant-she’ll be right national persona. With disarming precision he taps into the Sydney psyche that we tend to ignore or at the least pretend is not really the Sydney we know and love: the obsession with real estate, the power of the radio shock jocks and the media, the disdain for the poor, the weak, the druggos, the Aborigines and the suspicion of all that is different from Muslims to Asians to those that only read either the Telegraph or the Sydney Morning Herald. Flanagan concentrates on the hard edge of Sydney and by extension Australia and there is little doubt that he attributes this hardening to the period since the election of the Howard government in 1996. When his hapless pole dancer walks past a street person getting beaten, the thugs ‘kept on for a few minutes more, kicking him as if he were to blame for everything in that dirty, dead decade they were all condemned to live through, a sack of shit that had once been a man, in a place that had once been a community, in a country that had once been a society’. Of course the government’s role in turning Sydneysiders and Australians inward, with all the xenophobia and paranoia that accompanies that, is aided by the media. Flanagan is caustic in his treatment of the media’s role in falling for the Governments agenda of fearmongering. His TV current affairs celebrity presenter is instantly recognizable and his contempt for Sydney shock jocks is palpable no less than through the name of his Sydney radio king, Joe Cosuk. Cosuk’s anagram is milked and its potentially abbreviated epithet adds to the readers’ distaste for this influential character.
Without doubt a major message in The Unknown Terrorist is that the terrorists have won. They won the moment those planes hit the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. They unleashed their most pervasive and formidable weapon: fear. The fear that has been generated and exploited, especially in the coalition of the willing has resulted in extraordinary legislative curtailments of democratic rights; a legitimizing of prejudice among many; a deadly fiasco in Iraq; and the nightmare of Guantanamo Bay. In so many ways the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. We have sacrificed so much of what we say we are protecting and in the case of Iraq, trying to export. Flanagan has shown us this in clear relief. Politicians, police, journalists, bureaucrats – those who are supposed to be the ‘goodies’ have succumbed and have compromised their own values to create an Orwellian world where the forest has been overtaken by the trees.

For Kerry O'Brien's 7.30 Report interview with Richard flanagan check the link opposite.

Connections with my novel, Kadaitcha.
It was interesting reading a post 9/11 Australian novel on terrorism. The first coincidence was early, on page 21, when there is a bomb scare at Sydney’s Olympic stadium. It is the threat of an explosion at the stadium that becomes the driving force for the fear and hype and hunt for the perpetrators that Flanagan weaves together in his novel. Where Kadaitcha gives considerable weight to the motives behind its main character blowing up the stadium at the Olympics Opening Ceremony, Flanagan does not touch on motive at all. He doesn’t have to because 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ have made terrorism a cause in itself. Mention terrorism and the fear, suspicion and the stereotyping will provide an automatic response that makes details of the cause irrelevant. Like Flanagan I tried to make comment on aspects of contemporary Australia. We run parallel on a few issues and vary our respective emphasis. Although I target the media I don’t do quite the hatchet job of Flanagan. My radio shock jock, Stan Dawes is not quite as big a prick as Joe Cosuck (forget the pun!). Where Flanagan and I are in complete synchronization is in our attack on the Howard government. My attack was focused on his treatment of Aborigines and his winding back of the Wik decision from the moment he was elected in 1996. I sat through debates in Parliament on the Native Title Act Amendment (remember his 10 point plan!) and was stirred to try and put this latest blow in the context of a disturbingly long history of repression. Of course Flanagan writing much later, when Howard had been in power nearly a decade, had more shit to deal with, especially when 9/11/2001 provided Howard the catalyst to take Australia into waters that many thought we had sailed away from forever.

MATESHIP

Today President George Bush decided to send another 21500 troops into the Iraqi quagmire. Because he is his mate, Australian PM John Howard blindly supports him. The alternative Howard said 'would be to start making arrangements for a withdrawal'. Well ...'Hello...' that is exactly what the majority of people in the US and Australia believe should happen.

Mateship is a funny thing because it can be both postive - sticking by your mates to achieve a successful outcome, especially when the situation is bleak. Or it can be quite negative - sticking by your mates when the situation is hopeless and continuing is folly. The time can come when mateship is questioning, challenging and offers wise counsel and wise options. Blind following is not mateship.

It looks like the Bush and Howard are not going to 'cut and run'. Rather they will stay on the basis of Iraq taking charge. If the Iraqi leadership fails then they will leave. Then it will be a case of 'cut and blame'. But the real danger is that Bush will turn on Syria and Iran and include them in the blame game. Defeat in Iraq will be everybody's fault but Bush's.

I can't help but think if John Howard had been PM in 1915 would he have acknowledged Australia's defeat at the hands of the Turks at Gallipoli and withdrew or would we have stayed on to accumulate more than the 9000 Aussies killed? The fact is that 'cut and run' was acceptable then because common sense ultimately prevailed, albeit at a heavy and belated price.

Make no mistake George, this has turned into another Vietnam and today's decision will affirm the folly of your 2003 decision to wage this war. The saddest bit is that your pigheadedness in the face of widespread professional, military and community opinion has cost tens of thousands of lives and will continue to do so. History will judge you harshly.

Compassion and Courage and Quick Thinking

Of course we like to think that Aussies are compassionate and courageous and quick thinking when that is required.

When I read recently about the New Yorker who left his two daughters to jump onto a subway track to save a man who had fallen there I was filled with admiration for his compassion, courage and selfless quick response. This was not a response governed by any cultural, ethnic, or geographic background - this was a human response.

Coincidentally I watched an interview today of an Aussie who responded to a car accident that happened in front of him a few days ago and performed similar compassionate, brave and quick thinking actions that saved the life of a small boy. So two good news stories from opposite sides of the world that show what ordinary people can do when they find themselves in circumstances that require big choices. In some ways this is what the captain of the Tampa was confronted with when he opted to save a number of refugees who were in dire circumstances.

Today I set up another blog (am I getting blogdicted??). This one is peterbulkeley.blogspot.com and the link is opposite. If you are interested you can check out some of my other stuff.