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Dark and despicable dream-time
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Once again we see the spectacle of the of the Palestinians crying poor poor pitiful us because Israel has quite rightly lost all patience with their constant provocation in firing missiles into Israel. Once again we see them deliberately using the bodies of their own children as disposable shields so that they can claim that Israel is monstrous for defending their right not have missiles fired constantly at them from Gaza. Once again we have the usual suspects in the media making much of the death toll in Gaza without even considering that the culpability lays entirely with the constant provocation from Hamas and its affiliates. As I have often said in another context ” if you keep poking a sleeping lion with a sharp stick don’t be surprised if he turns around and eats you or your children” Sadly it suits the religious zealots who lead Hamas to have the reality of their own dead and maimed children front and centre in the world’s media because then they can claim to be victims and their own part in the suffering of the people of Gaza can be ignored. After all when you believe that the next life is more important than this one then what does it matter if a few children are sent into the paradise of martyrs? But I can’t help thinking that when these young martyrs come to enjoy their virgins that their heaven will be more of akin to a paedophile’s dream time than anything else.
Cheers Comrades
Related articles
- Israel Broadens Its Bombing in Gaza to Include Government Sites (nytimes.com)
- Israel attacks Hamas media operations in Gaza (thehimalayantimes.com)
- Israel shells Gaza from the sea (bbc.co.uk)
- Israeli tanks are ready for ground invasion of Gaza (independent.ie)
- Israel shells Gaza for fifth straight day (radionz.co.nz)
- Hamas Gives Egypt Conditions for Cease-Fire With Israel (news.antiwar.com)
Comrades
A very funny piece of mockery of Labor from Joe Hildebrand
Comrades,
These are dark days for the revolution. Reactionary forces are amassing against us.
Since seizing the capitol during the glorious people’s struggle of Year Zero (or 2010 in the old language) the counter-revolutionaries have waged a deliberate campaign of destabilization.
To begin with, my brothers, our enemies have infiltrated the fourth estate. Even the once loyal state-owned media has been sabotaged, with the formerly proud revolutionary bastions of Media Watch and Dateline now locked in a vicious fight to the death over who is best place to report on US military imperialism in the Middle East.
We suspect this internal corrosion has been caused by either SBS’s decision to allow advertising or the CIA. The only media outlet we can now rely on for support is John Pilger.
We are also under renewed attack from the bourgeoisie after our Dear Leader exposed a counter-revolutionary cell in Forestvillegrad. Reactionary local activists have waged a disinformation war seeking to disorient us by interchanging the terms “North Shore” and “Northern Beaches” so that our forces will be confused during the planned landing. We must tread carefully comrades. This has “Bay of Pigs” written all over it.
So too have the industrialist oligarchs exploited the injustice of the economic landscape to redistribute their wealth into propaganda machines clearly intent on the destruction of the workers’ government. I speak of course of Fairfax and Channel Ten.
For too long comrades we were deceived by both organisations. Their much vaunted display of adhering to socialist ideals by constantly losing money was in fact an elaborate ruse.
Like many of you, I too believed The Renovators was a noble-minded effort to redistribute advertising revenue to other networks, and that the Sydney Morning Herald’s endless series on Marrickville breakfast spots was an effort to distract Eastern Suburbs readers from underground revolutionary activity.
Sadly, we were mistaken. These organisations are now held captive by their capitalist overlords. TV executives, my media advisers inform me, really do control the means of production.
Many of you may recall a similar set of circumstances in the last days of Rudd the Oppressor, when the capo-fascists employed the new medium of “television” to communicate with the masses. Their campaign of fear and destruction manipulated people into mindlessly doing their bidding—at least those of us in the caucus room anyway. It must not be allowed to happen again.
We must also consider the possibility that we ourselves have been infiltrated. As you know we have already had a scare with Comrade Shorten, whom we suspected of being a double agent. Indeed the party was only spared thanks to Comrade Shorten’s quick thinking in explaining that it was the rest of us who were double-agents and he was on the right side all along. Obviously this is not an exercise that bears repeating. And we can’t afford to send the whole caucus to re-education camp again.
For this reason I have drawn up a new list of people suspected of disloyalty:
1. Combet, Greg
Again, we thank Comrade Shorten for his assistance in this matter.
We must also remain vigilant against other types of suspicious behaviour, as well as rewarding good service. Obviously anyone who puts the interests of the party first, performs well on their feet and shows natural leadership qualities belongs in the former category and will be punished accordingly.
As Comrade Crean so eloquently puts it, it’s a fine line between “charisma” and “capitalisma”. And they say socialists are humourless!
So let us go forth into the community and disseminate our glorious manifesto. Only by spreading a message of tolerance, inclusiveness and national unity can we truly lay waste to the capo-fascist pigdogs and shove their filthy backs against the wall.
In Solidarity,
Comrade One
PS Don’t forget it’s feminist theology night at the student union. Everybody bring a plate!
And cheers from me too Comrades
Related articles
- Video: First public speech by Kim Jong-Un (English translation) (redantliberationarmy.wordpress.com)
- English transcript of Kim Jong Un’s speech (iamiranaware.wordpress.com)
Egyptian rabbit holes
Despite my most strident critics insisting that I am a “know it all” type of writer I am in fact a rather modest, if opinionated. sort of person who likes to take a bit of time to absorb the facts and consider the consequences of the changes that I see in the world around me. Thus I have said nothing previously about the events in Egypt over recent weeks. However with the political demise of Mubarek I just can’t get that old aphorism which begins with “be careful what you wish for” out of my head.
It has been darkly humorous watching the Latte Sippers wet themselves with excitement over these events they seem to think that this is “all good” and that there will be nothing but positive outcomes from this roiling unrest in the Arab world. Melenie Philips quite rightly notes their naivety:
Nevertheless, Western progressives were shouting for regime change. At which point it began to seem that, like Alice, one had somehow been transported through the looking-glass.
For during the past seven years, Western liberals have fulminated without remission that George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair were criminally out to lunch to pretend that democracy could ever come to Iraq through ousting a dictator.
The neo-con article of faith, that the Arab or Islamic world, could or should embrace democracy and human rights, was held up as an example of cultural imperialism, racist bigotry or insanity, or all three.
But suddenly everyone in the bien-pensant world has apparently become a neo-con.
The US, they now fulminated, had been criminally obtuse in propping up the dictator Mubarak rather than helping turn Egypt into a democracy.
So what was the difference? Simple. Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the West; Mubarak was an ally. So progressives claimed that getting rid of the former was a crime against humanity, while not getting rid of the latter was a crime against humanity. Got that?
It would doubtless be uncharitable to add that, throughout this supposedly diabolical Mubarak presidency those same liberals saw no problem taking vacations rubber-necking round the Pyramids or steaming up the Nile. No boycott, divestment or sanctions movement there; such censure is never applied by the Left to any of the tyrannies of the Middle East, of course, only against the sole democracy in the region: Israel.
Nor do the double standards stop there. When the people of Lebanon made their pitch for democracy against the crushing oppression of Hezbollah, Western bien-pensants were totally indifferent. When the people of Iran made their pitch for democracy against the savage cruelties of the Islamic regime, the bien-pensants were totally indifferent. But when the Egyptians took to the streets, the bien-pensants all but wetted themselves with excitement.
What was the difference? If the Lebanese and Iranians had succeeded, the West would have been strengthened. But the risk still remains that the canny Muslim Brotherhood will bide their time before pouncing and coming to power in Egypt, which would of course furnish another major threat for the free world.
And this is the most frightening thing of all in this back-to-front universe: the way in which the West has sanitised the Muslim Brothers and even, in the case of the Obama administration, actually tried to push them into power.
Via the Australian
Personally I am still rather unsure that this will be a change for the better because as bad as Mubarek seemed to be he at least suppressed in the desires and aspirations of his country’s Islamists and anti-Semites and taking the lid of that noxious brew may have some rather messy consequences , you have to ask, will the resulting mess really be better than the rule of a relatively benign dictator?
Cheers Comrades
The second boat in a week, Hmm definitely not a one off…
When i wrote about the first of the Rudd regime boat arrivals my leftist commentators were so keen to down play the implications of that event .
A SECOND boatload of illegal migrants has been intercepted in the Timor Sea while heading for Australia, undermining an assurance by the Rudd Government that Labor’s softening of its refugee policy has not been exploited by people smugglers.
A wooden fishing boat carrying 17 people, believed to be three crew and 14 passengers, landed at an offshore oil facility called the Front Puffin in the Timor Sea at 1.30pm AEST yesterday.
The Front Puffin is located at the Puffin oil field, which is in Australian waters about 700km west of Darwin.
The people in the fishing boat, who are understood to be from the Middle East, were later picked up by the navy. Last night, they were en route to Christmas Island, where they will join a second boatload of suspected asylum-seekers who arrived almost exactly a week before them.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans denied the latest arrival was a consequence of Labor’s recent changes in policy.
“While people smugglers have continued to be active, regional governments have been effective in preventing people-smuggling activities in recent times,” Senator Evans said.
Keri asked
Are there any actual facts to back up your assertion that we will see more boat people in the future? Can you inexorably link any such increase to the policy implemented by Rudd?
The first question has been very clearly answered in the affirmative and the second seems to be very well supported by circumstantial evidence as well.
and Mark L demanded
This is an astonishing bit of crystal ball-gazing on your part, Iain. I trust that in a year’s time, if the quantity of boat people hasn’t increased as per your forecast, you’ll admit that you’re wrong? That’s if you don’t shift those goalposts again.
Perhaps Mark and Keri should be eating the humble pie and admit that they are the ones who were wrong on this issue.
Cue Leftist wriggling and “yeah but, no but, yeah” Vicky Pollard impersonations 😉
Cheers Comrades
😉
Saddam: Given enough Rope
The news that Saddam Hussein has been found guilty and sentenced to hang warranted news updates on the commercial TV channels last night and is of course the headlining item this morning.
Predictably although the guilty verdict is almost universally approved; the death sentence has however been condemned by spokesmen from several European states Though I suspect that this more for the public relations value than from any real conviction that this man does not deserve the ultimate sanction. Even if you oppose capital punishment for the more common garden verity of crime it is very difficult to justify an objection to someone who has presided over torture and death on such a huge scale like Saddam .
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 