Tales from the dead

by Milly Caffrey

Former Prime Minister John Howard smiled broadly as he took the stage at the North Sydney Council Chambers in the Liberal heartland early this month. “The best Prime Minister we’ve had since Menzies,” called out one spirited spectator. Howard opened his speech with the declaration that as former PM, “you owe an account to your fellow Australians.”
In his memoirs Lazarus Rising Howard does controversially admit that he conspired to break apart the Maritime Union of Australia in 1998, supporting Patrick Corporation in their infamous anti-union strategy. Patrick dismissed all of the company’s employees and literally locked them out from ports to reduce the ability of the sacked workers and the MUA to take industrial action against the Howard government, who justified the mass dismissal under the Workplace Relations Act 1996.
The former leader did not elaborate upon this repression of the union movement in his speech, but did concede “an ingrained bias towards small business operators… we tended to favor small business owners even though it was not always the most economically logical thing to do.”
When quizzed about Australia’s involvement in Iraq, a war that had no support from the United Nations Security Council, Howard appeared visibly uncomfortable.
“Every case stands on its merits,” Howard said. “There was no real debate around (the presence of) WMDs in Iraq at that time.”
For Howard, it seems the protests across Sydney in early 2003 in which least 200,000 people marched in opposition to Australia’s involvement in the “coalition of the willing” did not constitute “real debate”.
Howard’s remarks also contradict statements made in his autobiography which explicitly address “widespread public hesitation” for Australian involvement in Iraq. In the book he even recalls a comment made by an ardent Liberal supporter, “Can’t we just this once not go along with the Americans?”
For Howard, it seems this was never an option, and throughout his speech he emphasized the importance of the US-Australia alliance and urged the audience “never to forget that the Americans saved Australia during World War Two”.
“I was careful in the language I used (about Iraq),” Howard said. “It turned out to be misplaced, wrong, whatever.”
It is this seemingly indifferent attitude to previous policies and decisions that makes it hard to read Lazarus Rising as a statement of accountability to the Australian people. Instead, the autobiography raises more questions than it attempts to answer.

Malalai Joya, interviewed by Liz Cush

Originally published in City Hub
 
INTERVIEW BY LIZ CUSH

Malalai Joya was the youngest woman in Afghanistan to be elected to parliament in 2003. She was also the most outspoken. Her vocal criticism to the US-backed warlords that control her country’s government saw her expelled from parliament. She has survived four assassination attempts and still lives in Afghanistan, under protection of bodyguards.

Malalai Joya is currently in Australia. She spoke to the City Hub about the war and occupation in her country, and the struggles of the pro-democracy movements, a different story to that shown on the nightly news.

It seems we are not meant to question the idea that Australian troops are having a beneficial impact on Afghan society. What do you see is the impact of having foreign soldiers in your country?

US and NATO occupied my country under the banner of human rights and democracy and they replaced one terrorist with another terrorist, these fundamentalist warlords. Now my people have been sandwiched between these two powerful enemies: in the sky occupation forces bombing, killing civilians, mostly women and children, and on the ground, Taliban and warlords.

In my own province in Farah, US troops in one day bombed and killed 150 civilians, they even used white phosphorus and in Kandahar they used cluster bombs.

During these nine years more than 8000 innocent civilians have been killed, and less than 2000 Talib. Now they formally invite these Taliban terrorists to join the puppet regime of Hamid Karzai.

These troops create more problems, more misery and more civilian casualties, it’s better that they leave Afghanistan, then we will fight one enemy instead of two. In these nine years, the western governments have not only betrayed Afghanistan, they betrayed their own people too.

They must leave Afghanistan, democracy will never come by occupation, with cluster bombs, white phosphorus, massacres and civilian casualties.

What do you see as the genuine reasons motivating the Australian government to keep soldiers in your country?

Australia followed the wrong policy of the US instead of acting independently… This is not only a military war in Afghanistan, this is a war of propaganda. The media sidelines the truth by decreasing the death toll and by describing innocent civilians as insurgents. The US is not in Afghanistan just for a short time, they have their own agenda. They are expanding military bases, they found copper they found uranium, they want to benefit from these rich mines.

The war on Afghanistan was sold to the public on the basis of outing the Taliban and bringing rights for women. How does that wash now that the Karzai government, backed by the Obama administration, is holding talks with so-called “moderate” sections of the Taliban?

The catastrophic situation of the women was a good excuse for the US and NATO to occupy Afghanistan, they justified their war through that issue, but now the situation of women is as catastrophic as it was under the domination Taliban. Now they formally invite the Taliban to join the government, but one terrorist group negotiating with another terrorist group makes no sense.

Today, we are far away from values of human rights, women’s rights and democracy as we were under the domination of the Taliban. Indirectly they support the Taliban already, for example Mullah Arsala Rahmani, and Mullah Rocketi are members of the parliament who committed crimes when the Talib was in power. The Taliban and warlords are brother in creed, their minds are carbon copies of each other.

Thousands in the world are against the occupation, this is why they want to deceive the people, they describe these terrorists as a moderate, while we have no moderate Talib. They are afraid of the resistance of the people, that’s why more and more they support the warlord and the Taliban, to be easier for them to eliminate democratic-minded people of my country who are active underground still, they are facing a lot of risk, and also people day by day they stand up too.

There is no justice for the women, women don’t have the limited rights they enjoyed in the 60s, 70s and 80s. There is more domestic violence, rape cases, beating women with lashes in public. A pregnant women was lashed in public, accused of having a illicit affair. The BBC reported that 2300 women have committed suicide this year because there is no justice for the women,

when the girls go to school, acid is thrown on their faces. Girls in a school in Kabul were poisoned.

Most of the women in my country are living in a hell. It is true that in big cities women have access to jobs and education and some women even in power, but most of these women in power have symbolic roles.

What forms of resistance are pro-democracy groups taking to oppose the rule of the warlords and the occupation?

We have two kind of resistance in Afghanistan, one is the resistance of ordinary Afghan people, we have some democratic parties, the students in the universities, ordinary people they are fed up, they even put the dead bodies of the civilian casualties on the trucks and come to the doors of government in the provinces and they hold demonstrations that hundreds of people attend, but nobody does reports of this resistance, which is the hope for the future of Afghanistan.

Recently in Helmand province, 51 civilians were killed in Sangin District. Afghan Solidarity party, a democratic secular party came on the streets and organised resistance against the occupation, against the warlords and Taliban, and nobody gave reports. The media only reports on the reactionary resistance of the Taliban.

The US doesn’t want to lose the Taliban and warlords, because through them them they occupy my country, so resistance day by day is getting more, as the situation is getting more disastrous, more people are joining the anti war resistance. Aside from parties, we have intellectuals, people coming on the streets. They must be supported for the bright future of Afghanistan, as the situation gets more disastrous the role of intellectuals and democratic parties is more important and necessary, and that’s why we are risking our lives.

They want to eliminate me, but I’m not leaving my country because I believe the nation can liberate themselves, no nation can deliver liberation to another nation, but we need the helping hand of democratic minded people around the world, we need the support of anti war movements, parties and intellectuals, they must support us.

Find out more about Malalai Joya at www.malalaijoya.com and more on Afghanistan’s democracy movement at www.rawa.org
Malalai Joya’s book Raising my Voice: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice is published by Pan Macmillan in Australia.

Gorgeous

This is just part of the tsunami that wiped away over 230,000 people across the world.
And I thought Dee Why was scary shit.
Now another tsunami in Indonesia is thought to have killed over 500 people. Go to smh.com today or dailytelegraph.com and I dare you to find anything about it.
And going with the format of Channel Ten nightly news...
"Over 500 are feared dead in Indonesia... now for the new Kanye West song Gorgeous!"

Iraqi Christians already at home

By Ramzy Baroud

• Another Baghdad massacre On Sunday, October 31, when a group of rebels seized a church in Baghdad, killing and wounding scores of Iraqi Christians, it signaled yet another episode of unimaginable horror in the country since the U.S. invasion of March 2003. Every group of Iraqis has faced terrible devastation as a result of this war, the magnitude of which is only now beginning to be discovered.

True, the situation in Iraq was difficult prior to the war. Having visited the country in 1999, I can testify to this. But the hardship suffered by many Iraqis, especially political dissidents, was in some way typical characteristic of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. Iraq could, at that time, be easily contrasted with other countries living under similar hardships. But what has happened since the war can barely be compared to any other country or any other wars since World War II. Even putting aside the devastating death toll, the sheer scale of internal displacement and forced emigration is terrifying. This is a nation that had more or less maintained a consistent level of demographic cohesion for many generations. It was this cohesion that made Iraq what it was.

Iraqi Christians communities had co-existed alongside their Muslim neighbors for hundreds of years. The churches of the two main Christian groups, the Assyrians and Chaldeans are dated back to the years A.D. 33 and 34 respectively. A recent editorial in an Arab newspaper was entitled “Arab Christians should feel at home.” As moving as the article was, the fact is, the fact remains that Arab Christians should not have to feel at home – they already are at home. Their roots dates back to the days of Jesus Christ, and since then they have maintained a unique identity and proud history under the most difficult of circumstances. 

I recall a group of Iraqi children from a Chaldeans school dressed up in beautiful dark blue uniforms performing the morning nashids (songs) before going to class. They were so innocent and full of life. Their eyes spoke of promise and excitement about the future. I dread to imagine how many of these children were killed, wounded or forcefully displaced with their families, like millions of other Iraqis from all ethnic and religious backgrounds. 

Today merely half of Iraq’s Christians are still living in the country, when compared to the 1987 census which listed 1.4 million Iraqi Christians. The number, following the most recent killings which resulted from Iraqi forces storming the church and exchanging fire with the kidnappers, is dwindling rapidly. The plight of Iraqi Christians seems very similar to that of Palestinian Christians, whose numbers have plummeted and continue to fall following the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The Palestinian Christian Diaspora was a direct outcome of the Israeli occupation and the original takeover of historic Palestine in 1948. The Israeli government sees no difference between a Palestinian Christian and a Muslim. 

But none of this was deemed worthy of discussion in much of the Western media, perhaps because it risked hurting the sensibility of the Israeli occupier. The troubling news coming from Iraq can now be manipulated by presenting the suffering of Christians as an offshoot of a larger conflict between Islamic militants and Christians communities in Iraq. 

The fact is that Iraqi society has long been known for its tolerance and acceptance of minorities. There were days when no one used such references as Shiite , Sunni and Christians; there one Iraq and one Iraqi people. This has completely changed, for part of the strategy following the invasion of Iraq was to emphasize and manipulate the ethnic and religious demarcation of the country, creating insurmountable divides. Without a centralized power to guide and channel the collective responses of the Iraqi people, all hell broke loose. Masked men with convenient militant names but no identities disappeared as quickly as they popped up to wreak havoc in the country. The communal trust that held together the fabric of the Iraqi society during the hardest of times dissolved. Utter chaos and mistrust took over, and the rest is history. 

There is no question regarding the brutality and sheer wickedness of those who caused the recent murder of 52 Iraqi Christians, including a priest, in Baghdad’s main Roman Catholic church. But to confuse the issue as one between Muslims and Christians, or as a UPI report misleadingly put it - “Iraq's Christians caught between majority Shiite and minority Sunni Muslims” - is a major injustice. It is also dangerous, for when such notions become acceptable, it enable foreign powers to justify their continued presence in Iraq on the premise that they are there to protect those ‘caught’ in the middle. In fact, for hundreds of years, every colonial power in the Middle East has used such logic to rationalize their violence and exploitation. 

Indeed, there are many who are ready to use such tragedies to serve their political interests or to retrospectively validate their wanton action in Iraq. This arrogant mentality compelled Republican strategist Jack Burkman in an Aljazeera English program last May to describe the people of the Middle East as “a bunch of barbarians in the desert.” 

Such hubris is further strengthened by such killings as the one that targeted Iraqi Christians. A US solider in Iraq, quoted on a recent Democracy Now program referred to Iraqi culture as a “culture of violence”, boasting that his country was trying to do something about this. 

Where is the soul-searching and reflection that might ask what brought this ‘culture of violence’ to the surface? What will it take to see the “bunch of barbarians” as simply human beings who, like any other, are trying to survive, fend for their families and maintain an element of normality and dignity in their lives?

As for “Iraq’s Christians”, I must disagree with that depiction which is used widely in the media. They are not Iraq’s Christians, but Iraqi Christians. Their roots are as deep as the history of Mesopotamia, their history as rich as the fertile soil of Tigris and Euphrates. No matter how far their numbers may dwindle, like the rest of Iraqis of all backgrounds, they will remain Iraqis. And their return to their country is only a matter of time. 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Iraqi-Christians-are-already-at-home.html 

-- Ramzy Baroud (Ramzy Baroud) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

Oh baby.

 

So for International Political Economy we have to do this "reflective journal" every second week demonstrating our "understanding" of the the topic. Mostly I really detest this compulsory task. But it only has to be 300 words and tonight I did my last "reflective journal entry" on the highly disturbing issue of female infanticide and what it means in the context of the global political economy.

Is it coherant? Maybe.

Should it be used as a legitimate source of information? No.

Do I sound like a bit of a wank? Yes.

It became apparent in my reflections of this week’s topic that the idea of reality as gendered is not merely a concept, but something that has significant and damaging consequences for millions around the world, as seen in the age old phenomenon of female infanticide.

However, my exploration of female infanticide led me to find that although it has been practiced for centuries, this systematic culling of girl babies has been exacerbated by the pressures of the global political economy. This is because I found contemporary reasons behind female infanticide to be almost always economic or political, rather than directly cultural or religious.

For example, in India, girl babies are often killed so that the family does not have to pay a dowry to the groom and his family when the girl marries. Although the tradition of a dowry is cultural, the financial burdens of it are inextricably linked to the pressures of the global political economy. This is also seen in China, where the introduction of the “One Child” policy in 1979 caused an upsurge in the “disappearance” of girl babies. Poorer families would choose to have one boy, as males are usually the main income earners, either because they are more employable or earn higher wages for the same work, or because they are able to do more agricultural work.

My reflection of this week’s topic brought me to the understanding that terms such as “gender” are not just concepts used in university lectures. It also confirmed my perspective of reality as gendered, as seen in the culling of female babies in poorer countries. This is a phenomenon which continues despite efforts (like those of the Chinese government), indicating that the pressures of the global political economy and the perennial question of “who gets what, when and how” has worsened if not directly caused in many cases instances of female infanticide.

No, gimme my oil or get fuck out my country.

I'm a soldier in the middle of Iraq
Well say about noon-ish, comin out the whip
And looking at me curious: a young Iraqi kid
Carrying laundry, what's wrong G, hungry?
No, gimme my oil or get fuck out my country
And in Arabian barkin other stuff
Till his moms come grab and they walk off in a rush
Distrust, feelin like I've pissed upon a wound
I'm like, Shorty, hope that we can fix our differences soon
Buyin white apples I'm breakin on
Huh you take every thing, why not just take the damn food?
I don't understand it, on another planet?
15 months of this stuff how I"m gonna manage?
And increasing this sentiment, gentlemen getting down on their middle-eastern instruments
Realize trapped in this crowd, walk over kicked one of my fabulous raps (la di da di)
I rip, jaw-drop, they well-wish, they Glad-wrap now ya kid considered like an Elvis of Baghdad

Revisiting Siem Reap

If you have never been to Angkor Wat you would probably underestimate how absolutely huge it is. The ancient temples sprawl out forever. Angkor Wat is about 5 km from Siem Reap, where I stayed for about a week. It seems like years ago but it was only about five months ago. So I'm sitting in this beautiful Hindu temple, kilometres from any other human soul, until I see two people approaching in the distance.

Nooo! I think. These people are going to ruin my solitude!

But then I met them, and they were these lovely Americans. We had a really interesting conversation and talked about photography and India... and Cambodia.

I recently saw some photographs that Katie Beth Gill took of Siem Reap, which despite what you might read on Wikipedia, is one of the poorest provinces in Cambodia. It was savaged by the Khmer Rouge, like the rest of the country, and survives off the thriving tourism industry that Angkor Wat provides.