POOR, POOR PITIFUL OZ
Journal of a Futurist, 27 September 2006

When the Prime Minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany, was caught telling the truth to his party about the lies he had told the electorate, and how he had "screwed up", citizens demonstrated outside Parliament and stormed state TV. When Australia’s John Howard was caught falsely accusing refugees in a leaky boat of "throwing their children overboard", he was voted back into office.

Gyurcsany admitted that "fucking Hungary" had only managed to keep its economy afloat thanks to good luck, an "abundance of cash in the economy and hundreds of tricks", which pretty much coincides with what the former governor of the Reserve Bank stated about Australia’s fiscal management. But the Prime Minister is still top of the pops.

It is said that a leader who thinks of the next election is a politician, but a leader who thinks of the next generation is a statesman. By that criterion, it is no mystery where history will place John Howard. The key threats facing Australia today, including environmental degradation, the rise of militarism and the decline of free speech, are rooted in a decade of toxic federal governance. Instead of storming TV, the views of voters are shaped by it and the shock-jocks.

SCRIBBLERS WITH FORKED TONGUES

Once we were larrikins with a taste of defiance; now we are lapdogs with a thirst for conformity. On the matter of values, John Howard and opposition leader Kim Beazley are joined at the hip. In Oz 2006, to be a "civil libertarian" is to invite abuse, while to dismiss human rights as "no longer sacrosanct", or to deny inconvenient facts about global warming or indigenous history, is to attract government patronage. Once we had bush poets, mocking the pompous; now we have scribblers, licking the hands of their feeders.

Puffed-up politicians on both sides of the House seek from new arrivals a pledge of citizenship that endorses "Australian values" at a time when our values are tangled in a global tumble-dryer. That a government should demand such endorsement is itself a violation of a core Australian value - the freedom to think what we please. To think, for example, that numerous values exemplified by our Prime Minister are crap. Like truth avoidance, flag fetishism, excessive secrecy, anti-intellectualism, witch-hunting the whistleblowers, appeasement of George Bush, boasting about this country's generosity, whitewashing black history, bribing Saddam Hussein to buy our wheat then bombing his people, toleration of US torture and its treatment of Guantanamo inmate David Hicks, to name a few.

The stature of Australia has not only been diminished in the eyes of the world, but this country now faces a future laced with nasty shocks. By branding the intelligentsia as a loudmouth latte-slurping "elite", and turning a deaf ear to the findings of scientists, Howard finds himself surprised by the arrival of climate change. Despite over a decade of warnings, this country is woefully unprepared. Leaders of developing nations are becoming enraged by our indifference to the impact of emissions on their citizens. A statesman would recognise that the fate of the earth is a shared responsibility, but we have turned our backs on potential climate refugees from waterlogged Tuvalu. Isn't it about time John Howard was asked to sign a pledge of global citizenship?

Families visiting California’s Disneyland on a holiday weekend saw a
life-size Guantanamo bay inmate standing inside the
Rocky Mountain Railroad. Artist: Banksy.

EXTENDING THE EXCESSES OF BIG BROTHER

Callous obstinacy was also on display in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, where propaganda was put above truth. The jolly hordes of peaceful protesters in Sydney and Melbourne were branded a "mob", and those who tried to alert the nation to the manipulations of intelligence and the subsequent outbreaks of torture were gagged or slandered. The result is continuing carnage, with the fingerprints of our leaders on the corpses. In the "war on terror", Australia's fair-go reputation was traded for "future security", cheap tanks and a White House banquet.

Unaccompanied child refugees from war zones are denied basic rights by the Department of Immigration, itself a hotbed of black values, including the silencing of the right to be heard. The horrors are documented in the study Seeking Asylum Alone, by Mary Crock, who has concluded that in comparison with other advanced nations, Australia's capacity to mistreat children stands out "like a sore thumb". Seven escapees from the Burmese dictatorship have been dumped on the isle of Nauru. Is cruelty an Australian value?

Freedom of information has been re-constituted into a new value, the freedom from information. Any document with the potential of "embarrassing" the Government is quarantined from public scrutiny. Academic Johan Lidberg compared the effectiveness of our Freedom of Information Act with the ones operating in Sweden, America, South Africa and Thailand, and found that ours was the worst, having "deteriorated into dysfunctionality". When Flinders University sociologist Riaz Hassan was awarded a grant to study the incubation of suicide bombers, he planned to enrich his research by interviewing leaders of terror groups. Hassan dropped the idea when Attorney-General Philip Ruddock threatened legal consequences. Not content with extinguishing habeas corpus and shrinking civil liberties, Ruddock plans to curb the excesses of Big Brother; that is, the TV show, not the excesses of his own office.

Bansky

THE DECLINE OF DEFIANCE

There was a time when Aussies scorned officialdom. The boys from the farms and the factories who swarmed to the front line in the First World War, including those who landed at Gallipoli, were renowned for their disregard of red tape and for pricking the pomp of superiors. Rebellion was in their genes. In the camps on the outskirts of Australian cities, and during their journey to the other side of the world, the diggers were irreverent as well as brave.

The huge anti-war moratoriums of the Vietnam era also displayed a sharp defiance for delusions of big-wigs, the like of which has failed to be re-ignited, despite the provocations of today's smug autocrats. Perhaps the penny will eventually drop. Sport and shopping cannot keep this country under sedation forever.

The first cause of today's global terror mess is a matter of opinion. Some are using the "Muslim riots" to ramp up support for yet another war against what George Bush this week told the UN are "the enemies of humanity". (The war against germs?)

LIGHTING FREEDOM WITH A
MILLION CLUSTER BOMBS

It is true that Muslims have carried out numerous acts of terror in Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and, most prominently, the United States. It is also true that Christian states have bombed untold thousands of Muslim civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan (even some in Pakistan), as well as condoning the ravaging of Lebanon and supplying Israel with illegal weapons.

How would you feel if "over a million cluster bombs" had been fired into your city? Since the end of June, more than 37 children in Gaza have been killed in operations mounted by Israel. In short, the wild reaction to the Pope's theological musings was not just about the Pope.

The Rapture

Meanwhile, the neo-cons backtrack though history to prove that "Islamic terror" long pre-dated September 11, 2001, so you're not allowed to blame the pre-emptive strike on Iraq for destabilising the world. Muslim mayhem actually "began in Iran 1979 with the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini", according to an editorial in The Australian, slyly stoking the fire for a future invasion, and implying that the populist cleric had leapt out of Aladdin's lamp, scimitar between his teeth.

In fact, the "revolution" was pre-ordained in 1953, after the CIA ousted the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, for his un-American aspiration to nationalise oil. Washington installed a puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran, who founded the feared secret police, SAVAK, while his wife hosted lavish international film festivals, flying in Hollywood celebrities to speak well of tyranny. By imposing the shah on the Persians for all those years, the West must surely accept some responsibility for the rebirth of radical Islam and all that's followed.

"Both the right and the left cultivate a politics of fear," writes, Kevin Clements, a Brisbane-based professor of peace and conflict studies, "where citizens are infantilised and we have become both politically and socially paralysed."

Today's TV politics is unable to provide perspective, history, meaning or foresight. For that, you need a statesman.

Bansky

BRASS BANDS, TALL STORIES,
SHOW TRIALS

The world is heating up, both climactically and militarily, and yet those leaders who are most responsible for underplaying global warming and overplaying the response to 9/11 are the least likely to look in the mirror and tell the truth - either to the voters or themselves.

While some pro-war enthusiasts have admitted their blunder, those politicians who led the charge seem incapable of candour. To accept that their actions have multiplied the instances of worldwide terror and so contributed to many thousands of civilian deaths and maimings.

Perhaps this country's mad, authoritarian lurch to the right is an unconscious attempt by those at the top to suppress their inner shame. To distract themselves with propaganda, brass bands, tall stories of war-zone reconstruction, terror laws, show trials, fear-mongering and boasting. Having lit the match, they are surrounded by fire, and are desperately seeking scapegoats. Is it beyond their capacity to accept that they might be the arsonists?

POST SCRIPT

The above was published last weekend in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper.

The strangest news flashed by on airport screens and in snotty hotels, during last week’s trip to Queenstown, New Zealand where I went to address a conference of Chief Financial Officers on the perils of Neanderthal leadership. The location was serene. Queenstown is Swiss Alps meets Kathmandu minus the teeming millions; minus the teeming hundreds even, as Kiwis seem to be deserting their paradise. Occasionally you see a swarthy local on a bicycle, but most are tourists in search of death defying adventures or the set of Lord of the Rings. The conference hall was a drab box on the edge of a crystal lake surrounded by snow capped peaks obscured from the delegates by bad design – no windows. Despite this architectural disconnect, respect for the environment featured heavily on the conference agenda. About ten years ago, if you suggested to CFO’s that what they term “growth” is often the destruction of natural capital counted as income, you’d be branded a loony. Now global banks aspire to be carbon neutral and fund managers are inching towards ethical investment. Yet what happened last week went further. The notion of rescuing the future seemed to reach critical mass.

California sued the world’s six largest automakers for creating a public nuisance by selling vehicles that spew out pollution. Virgin Group’s Richard Branson suddenly announced his commitment to spend three billion dollars on reversing global warming, promising all future profits from airline and train businesses will be invested in renewable energy. Branson named Ted Turner and Al Gore as eco mentors. A delightful unintended consequence of Al Gore losing his bid for the White House is that he is trying to win a reprieve for earth. Could a Powerpoint be mightier than a presidency?

The other “quickening” in the geopolitical slipstream is the rising tide of disparate voices exposing the frailties of the White House. Star billing surely goes to vaudevillian Hugo Chavez sniffing sulphur on the floor of the UN, brandishing a Noam Chomsky tome and equating Bush with Beelzebub. This footage will be still ringing laughs from our grandchildren, unless the icecaps melt. CNN was beside itself with indignation. Its newsreaders hit back with cutting slices of autocue, such as “in President Chavez’s homeland half the people are starving”, as in New Orleans. Unlike his Washington counterpart, Chavez is trying to do something about it. CNN offered no evaluation the speech or reported the reaction of UN delegates - a prolonged standing ovation.

This was capped by the revelation that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had blackmailed Pakistan’s dictator into supporting US foreign policy with threats to blast his country to rubble. General Musharraf was “so angered” by these threats, he “wargamed” a way of withstanding a US attack. In the end, he says he put the “interests of the nation first”. (So what did the charming bloodcurdling Armitage say to said to Tony Blair?). Finally came the “revelation” of the bleeding obvious from 16 US spy agencies, that global “terrorism is spreading and adapting” in response to the shortfall of the Bush brain. No kidding. This war predicted here in April 10, 2002.

“The wounded Goliath is on a rampage - armed to the teeth, adored by the polls, unfettered by law, answering to no-one and licensed to kill. Western nations fall in behind the furious avenger, beguiled by the notion of civilisation protecting itself, striding forth with the flame of freedom. Our commentators applaud. The "axis of evil" speech is hailed by The Australian's foreign editor as a "key defining document of the new era" in which George W. Bush guides us beyond the "magnificent" Cold War strategy of deterrence to the brave new magnificence of "pre-emption", where the US upholds democracy, topples tyrannies and makes the world a better place.

Bush's "new kind" of war in the name of freedom is actually an old kind of imperial excursion to extend America's grip on the wealth of the world. A wealth which belongs to everyone. But instead of a misnamed bombing spree, which incubates terror, what the world needs most is an ongoing, unconditional fairness revolution to eradicate the roots of rage”. This will never happen under the current administration.

Torture Tours

George Bush and the CIA have confirmed the authenticity of this site's WORLD TORTURE TOURS, launched back in August 2005.

George Bush has finally admitted the USA runs secret prisons abroad where suspects are put through "tough... necessary ... alternative" interrogation methods, which he won't reveal. But we did, over a year ago, in our WORLD TORTURE TOUR travel guide, where we showcased a range of alternative techniques to hurry up the spread of freedom, including shackles, hoods, electrocution, whips, mock executions, sexual humiliation, “fear-up, pride down”, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, dog terror, starvation, hypothermia, anal rape and genital mutilation... All in the name of freedom. Check out the original WORLD TORTURE TOUR, and play the pain game with the CIA.  

KILLING NEWS
Journal of a Futurist - 31 August 2006

The first death known to me, that was precipitated by a Rupert Murdoch headline, occurred in Sydney in March,1964, when a schoolboy committed suicide. More of that later. These days, the casualties resulting from military invasions championed by Murdoch are numbered in the thousands, though he is not the sole agent of destruction. One of his former TV producers in the Middle East, Serene Sabbagh, resigned from Fox recently because of its “bias and racism”. What tipped her over the edge was the bombing of Qana.

“As a mother of three, watching the images, the raw images of children being pulled out of the rubble … and then I switched to Fox News to hear some of their anchors claiming that these little kids that were killed, these innocent victims that were killed, were human shields used by Hezbollah. And one of the anchors went as far as saying they were planted there by Hezbollah to win support in this war. And it was unbelievable. For me, that was the breaking point…”

On August 6, Serene Sabbagh and a colleague sent a joint letter of resignation to Fox News: "Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism." A verdict which is widely echoed. “Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilisation, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border”, noted Andrew Gumbel in the UK’s Independent.

News Corp had “walked away from professional journalism and crossed over into dutiful propaganda”, wrote another analyst,” a dangerous new chapter even for Fox News”. The whole organization had shifted beyond warmongering into deep censorship, where it “purposely cordoned off topics of discussion… In fact, I could not find a single, authentic, independent expert on Arab politics and history who appeared on Fox News to discuss the roots of the escalating violence. Not one.”

BLAZING AWAY WITH
THE TOOLS OF HIS TRADE

In the editorial pages of Murdoch’s antipodean flagship, The Australian, the bombing of Beirut is presented as “Israel doing Lebanon a favour” and restive Arabs are described as “Nazis”. None of this should be surprising, as Murdoch revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that his media ventures are “not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs" (November 23, 2005). And these beliefs are dangerous. Murdoch’s influential Weekly Standard advocates the pursuit of “regime change in Syria …. and a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?”

It does not seem to figure in Murdoch’s personal accounting that over half a million civilians are now dead or disfigured as a result of the wars he has already promoted. Instead of reconsidering his politics, like other lapsed neocons, Murdoch is still blazing away with his tools of the trade: hate, lies, fear and censorship.

So here’s the nub. In a world facing a series of crises, should an unelected billionaire with a militant agenda and key politicians in the palm of his hand be allowed to preside over a global empire of propaganda? An empire continually expanding, one that gobbles up competitors and is now even blocking free speech on the internet. (See MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship)

DIRTY DIGGERS’ DEADLY DIARIES

On top of this, Murdoch’s minions reject the inconvenient facts of climate chaos and attack the greens as “a threat to the prosperity and well-being” of the world (The Australian September 02, 2004). Whereas a real threat to the well-being of the world and its people is Rupert Murdoch, as I first discovered long ago.

These days, Murdoch’s war-mongering is compulsive and his disregard for human wreckage is both calculated and global; but in the beginning, what marked his output was a casual (and sometimes fatal) disregard for the frailties of humans.

Murdoch’s rise to power took off in Sydney in 1964, when he acquired an afternoon tabloid, the Daily Mirror. On March 12, the Mirror front paged a report on “promiscuity” among the pupils of a city high school, which was based on the contents of a young girl’s diary. The resulting uproar led to the diarist and a fellow student being expelled from school. A job well done.

That’s where the story ended as far the Mirror was concerned, though not for those involved. The 13 year old schoolboy named in the diary, Digby Bamford, was found hanging from his backyard clothesline, having committed suicide. This news was “cordoned off” from public consumption. Even rival papers kept the secret, until a disgruntled Murdoch journalist tipped off an independent magazine. The author of the “school sex” diary was examined by a doctor from the Child Welfare Department and found to be a virgin.

During an interview years later, I reminded Murdoch of this event and his reaction was sharp: “Don’t you ever make mistakes?” Of course I do. Many. After acquiring the News of the World in London in 1971, Rupert discovered another diary, while he was campaigning against a popular BBC TV show, Top of the Pops. His paper accused its stars of “promiscuity” with young dancers in the audience. One of these was Samantha MacAlpine, aged 15, whose “leatherette bound book”, according Murdoch’s news desk, “could well blow wide open the scandal at the BBC”. The day after this report, Samantha MacAlpine committed suicide.

The News of the World tried to cover itself with the headline, THIS GIRL WAS A VICTIM … NOW SHE IS DEAD, but the coroner stated that Samantha’s diary was “pure fantasy…. unconnected with reality”, (like much Murdoch journalism). A Scotland Yard officer accused the paper of being “ludicrous and irresponsible”. As is the Murdoch style, the evidence from the inquest was kept from the readers. Also suppressed was the statement of the forensic pathologist, that in his opinion, Samantha had died a virgin.

OSAMA BIN LADEN
BLOWS UP
MELBOURNE TRAM?

Two weeks ago, when young Australian Jack Thomas appealed his conviction for receiving funds from Al Qaeda and holding a false passport, he was acquitted by the Victorian Court of Appeal. FURY AFTER JIHAD JACK WALKS FREE, headlined The Australian, although the fury was largely confined to Murdoch’s newsroom. A jury had previously acquitted Jack Thomas of two more substantial matters. The Victorian Court quashed his conviction on the lesser charges, because police statements had been taken from the defendant while he was incarcerated in Pakistan without access to a lawyer and subjected to assaults. (A US interrogator told Thomas he would crush his testicles, rape his wife and put her breasts in a vice). When the Appeal judges freed Thomas, as they were obliged to do under Australian law, the Murdoch media called for public outrage and demanded “rapid amendments to ensure that no judge can make the same mistake”. One of the first steps in the Third Reich’s campaign to win over the hearts and minds of the German people was to attack the judges. Another step was to consolidate the media. A third step was to fan the flames of fear.

In response to criticism of its assault on the judiciary, The Australian hit back: ‘what will it take to get Mr Thomas’s apologists to take the terror threat seriously? Suicide bombers detonating aboard Melbourne’s trams? A USS Cole-style strike on the Manly ferry?” And sure enough, as I write, another Murdoch missile hits the front page. SYDNEY WILL BE ATTACKED.

After interviewing 572 citizens, the Daily Telegraph has decided that “most Australians believe we are locked in a losing war against Islamic terrorists and an attack on our home soil … is inevitable”. The number who cite Murdoch’s compulsive belligerence as a factor in the escalation of terror is not revealed. On the same day, Jack “Jihad” Thomas is arrested on the beach, slapped with a newly introduced “control order” and ordered home, where his movements are to be restricted. Questioning voices are merely a “civil libertarian lobby that believes John Howard is a greater threat to our way of life than bin Laden”, according to MurodchWorld. No, the greatest threat is the control of information from the top. “Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism”, said Mussolini, “since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Beware of a global Goebbels.

FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN

How Mark Antony might have viewed Murdoch’s bloodlust:
Rupert Murdoch is an honourable man,
otherwise he would not be honoured so,
by other honourable men,
Like Mr Bush, Tony Blair and Mr Howard
Who, you all know, are honourable men.
Let’s not do them wrong; I’d rather choose
To wrong the dead. And the dead are many.
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

Ran Rupert’s dagger through a free and open press
Dismembering truth and good intent,
Then what a rent the cursed Bush-ites made
Upon the battered peoples of Iraq
Whose tears and gore besmirched the Tigris.

Mark how the blood of Afghans stained the sand,
And tearful Qana infants torched from sky.
Judge, free citizens, how loudly Murdoch brayed
To feed his oily thirst for power, growth and wealth
Beyond all proportion, cheered by underlings.

O, what a fall was there, my tarnished Democrats.
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody mindedness flourish'd over us.
O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of shame: Our good name squandered.
Our laws abused, our governance marr'd with traitors.

O piteous spectacle!
The evil that men do lives after them.

THE LAND WHERE
PINOCCHIO IS KING
Journal of a Futurist - 20 July 2006

Visit - Mati Klarwein - 1996

Familiar lies are music to our nation’s ears. Australians always punch above their weight. We are the most generous people on earth. Our soldiers are the most professional in the world. In fact, we’re so professional, that even when our troops shot at the Iraqi Trade Minister’s bodyguards in June, killing two people and wounding four others, our military carried out an investigation without bothering to interview any Iraqis. Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, found that our soldiers had “acted in accordance with their rules of engagement”. In November, when the US Marines murdered Iraqi women and children in their homes in Haditha, this action was also said to comply with the “rules of engagement”. In that case, the toll was 24. Perhaps it was this death disparity that led Air Marshall Houston to conclude, “the Australian soldiers might have been over-cautious”. While the government has agreed “in principle” to pay compensation, it has decided “in principle” not to apologise.

The Australian media have lately been enthralled by a public spat between the country’s Treasurer, Peter Costello, and its Prime Minister, John Howard. The treasurer publicly stated that the PM promised to hand the top job over to him before the start of the next next year’s election but John Howard denies this. On Monday, a poll of 1416 voters showed that most Australians believed the Treasurer’s version of events, which is not all that surprising, given our PM’s forked tongue. The rest of the poll is illuminating. Despite their judgment that John Howard is a liar, Australian voters still prefer him to stay on as Prime Minister. Part of me understands this. In today’s explosive world, there is something reassuring about a grey suited leader in a regimental tie who has, for over a decade, been shrinking our minds on the TV news, while spooning out imperial inanities. Iraq is doing great. Afghanistan is off and running. Kyoto is biased. Since our forefathers took possession of Australia, the treatment of indigenes has been even handed. We can be a future energy superpower, riding clouds of yellow cake and soot. The Pentagon’s Military Commissions are just. Foreign footy referees are weird. Gays mustn’t marry gays. Israel has the right to inflict collective punishment. And so on, endlessly repeated until the brain snaps.

Sandra Stanton "YEMAYA" Yemaya, the Yoruba Mother of the Sea, Mother of all life

Howard works hard for his country. The economy is purring. His unconditional embrace of White House is derived from a belief it will guarantee future security. From the outside, Australia looks good; the Opera House, Nicole Kidman, the Barrier Reef, jocks in hotpants. Some of this is an illusion. The interior of the Opera House is a letdown and the Barrier reef is dying. Sport dominates the media-scape. Listening to political debate today is like being locked in the Alzheimer ward with the treasurer and a shock jock. After ten years of John Howard, the image that speaks to the inner self is Edvard Munch on the Harbour Bridge, screaming. But this is a minority view.

JOHN WAYNE PLAIN-SPOKENNESS
AND VIGOUR

Not only have most Australians fallen in love with our self applauding fantasies, but citizens from other nations are following suit. “God, I love Australia”, writes Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, “an island of tranquility in a roiling region … Australia has no illusions about the ‘international community’ and its feckless institutions… For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigour”. (Actually, that sounds like America’s present). Most of all, according to Krauthammer, Aussies are “sympathetic to America’s predicament as reluctant hegemon”. True, our government couldn’t be more sympathetic if it tried.

José Roosevelt "Autumn Story"	Soundscape - Mati Klarwein – 1982

In his dubious role as deputy sheriff, our Prime Minister is assisted by powerful friends, especially global mogul Rupert Murdoch, a fervent supporter of George Bush and concocted invasions. VOTERS TELL PM TO STAY is a front page Murodchian headline and his commentators chorus it’s in everyone’s interest. Readers are being softened up for another term of amnesia. Oh, the Middle East Crisis? Turn to page 6, where we learn that valiant Israel is “resisting help” from an “international military force”, as it punishes the citizens of Lebanon. So far 254 people killed, over 500 wounded, “all but 13” civilians. Numerous tourists and Lebanese nationals are trapped, terrified and starving. Israel has denied the Australian government safe passage for its citizens. George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and the Murdoch media agree that Israel had been “obliged to strike back in self defence”, following the capture of its soldiers – one in Gaza, two in Lebanon. No mention that the number of Palestinian children currently in Israeli custody is 388. No comment on the unashamed sadism of Israel wanting “no one to sleep at night in Gaza.” No reference to the fateful 9 June explosion on a Gaza beach, which wiped out 8 Palestinians and injured another 30. Nor is the “valiant Israel” narrative clouded by mention of Palestinian casualties since September 2000, the killing of almost a thousand children and minors, the injuring “in various degrees” of another 18,800+.

STILL BLOWING HIS BUGLES

Such data cuts no ice with Bush, Blair or Howard, three leaders who put the match to Iraq, the ones who are loaded with moral responsibility for every innocent death and mutilation triggered by that squalid invasion, since descended into pack rape, pillage, torture and terror. More than 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the first half of this year.

Yesterday, 50 corpses, 100 wounded. Maybe the three leaders barracked for Israel’s right to commit war crimes to divert attention from their own. They trashed Geneva, let Ehud Olmert trash Geneva. Murdoch’s still blowing his bugles, eager for cheap oil. His paper’s editorialist glanced at the flames of Beirut from his Sydney office and concluded, “Israel is doing Lebanon a favour….”

Meanwhile, on the ground, Robert Fisk reports on the massacre of Marwaheen, “All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children”. In Haaretz, Gideon Levy puts it like this: "In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years with or without a trial - but only we're allowed to do that. And only we're allowed to bomb civilian population centers." There are bastards and angels on both sides, but noble leadership on neither. Israel has the right to defend its citizens, but not to annihilate neighbours.

All this carnage on the 70th anniversary of the fascist bombing of Guernica, which prophesised calamity. Four Islamic lands now under aerial bombardment, more in the firing line. For all the bright lights, witty musicals and executive jets, the world is reeling. Polluted heavens, clouded judgments, melting glaciers, declining oil, burning forests, rising seas and … that sinking feeling. At the dawn of the 21st Century, we are stuck with leaders whose mindset is medieval.

Annunciation - Abdul
Mati Klarwein - 1961

Info about Mati

Lush Life: Mati Klarwein (The Wire / 1998) - An extensive article on Mati by Rob Young, for The Wire in 1998.

A Thousand Windows - An interview with Mati by David Jay Brown in 1992 while Mati was visiting Santa Monica, California.

In Memory of Abdul Mati Klarwein 1932- 2002 by Alex Grey

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