HUMAN RIGHTS & EQUALITY FOR ALL,FREEDOM & JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE, ZIMBABWE, BURMA, EVERY COUNTRY SUFFERING FROM WARS, DROUGHTS, STARVATION, MILITARY ADVENTURES, DICTATORSHIPS, POLICE STATES, RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION, HOMOPHOBIA, CENSORSHIP & OTHER OBSCENITIES.INTERNATIONAL ASYLUM SEEKER SUPPORT
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Palestinians search through the rubble of their destroyed homes hit by
Israeli strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, during the 2014 assault.
(IMAGE: UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan, Flickr)
Almost six decades on, there’s an enduring silence by those in the
halls of power – and in the media – on Palestine, writes John Pilger.
When I first went to Palestine as a young reporter in the 1960s, I
stayed on a kibbutz. The people I met were hard-working, spirited and
called themselves socialists. I liked them.
One evening at dinner, I asked about the silhouettes of people in the far distance, beyond our perimeter.
“Arabs”, they said, “nomads”. The words were almost spat out. Israel,
they said, meaning Palestine, had been mostly wasteland and one of the
great feats of the Zionist enterprise was to turn the desert green.
They gave as an example their crop of Jaffa oranges, which was
exported to the rest of the world. What a triumph against the odds of
nature and humanity’s neglect.
It was the first lie. Most of the orange groves and vineyards
belonged to Palestinians who had been tilling the soil and exporting
oranges and grapes to Europe since the eighteenth century. The former
Palestinian town of Jaffa was known by its previous inhabitants as “the
place of sad oranges”. One of the many orange orchards seized from Palestinians in Jaffa. (IMAGE: gnuckx, Flickr)
On the kibbutz, the word “Palestinian” was never used. Why, I asked. The answer was a troubled silence.
All over the colonised world, the true sovereignty of indigenous
people is feared by those who can never quite cover the fact, and the
crime, that they live on stolen land.
Denying people’s humanity is the next step – as the Jewish people
know only too well. Defiling people’s dignity and culture and pride
follows as logically as violence.
In Ramallah, following an invasion of the West Bank by the late Ariel
Sharon in 2002, I walked through streets of crushed cars and demolished
houses, to the Palestinian Cultural Centre. Until that morning, Israeli
soldiers had camped there.
I was met by the centre’s director, the novelist, Liana Badr, whose
original manuscripts lay scattered and torn across the floor. The hard
drive containing her fiction, and a library of plays and poetry had been
taken by Israeli soldiers. Almost everything was smashed, and defiled. Ramallah, Palestine. (IMAGE: Michael Rose, Flickr)
Not a single book survived with all its pages; not a single master tape from one of the best collections of Palestinian cinema.
The soldiers had urinated and defecated on the floors, on desks, on
embroideries and works of art. They had smeared faeces on children’s
paintings and written – in shit – “Born to kill”.
Liana Badr had tears in her eyes, but she was unbowed. She said, “We will make it right again.”
What enrages those who colonise and occupy, steal and oppress,
vandalise and defile is the victims’ refusal to comply. And this is the
tribute we all should pay the Palestinians. They refuse to comply. They
go on. They wait – until they fight again. And they do so even when
those governing them collaborate with their oppressors.
In the midst of the 2014 Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the Palestinian
journalist Mohammed Omer never stopped reporting. He and his family
were stricken; he queued for food and water and carried it through the
rubble. When I phoned him, I could hear the bombs outside his door. He
refused to comply.
Mohammed’s reports, illustrated by his graphic photographs, were a
model of professional journalism that shamed the compliant and craven
reporting of the so-called mainstream in Britain and the United States.
The BBC notion of objectivity – amplifying the myths and lies of
authority, a practice of which it is proud – is shamed every day by the
likes of Mohamed Omer. A file image of Gaza in 2009. (IMAGE: gloucester2gaza, Flickr)
For more than 40 years, I have recorded the refusal of the people of
Palestine to comply with their oppressors: Israel, the United States,
Britain, the European Union.
Since 2008, Britain alone has granted licences for export to Israel
of arms and missiles, drones and sniper rifles, worth £434 million.
Those who have stood up to this, without weapons, those who have
refused to comply, are among Palestinians I have been privileged to
know:
My friend, the late Mohammed Jarella, who toiled for the United
Nations agency UNRWA, in 1967 showed me a Palestinian refugee camp for
the first time. It was a bitter winter’s day and schoolchildren shook
with the cold. “One day …” he would say. “One day …”
Mustafa Barghouti, whose eloquence remains undimmed, who described
the tolerance that existed in Palestine among Jews, Muslims and
Christians until, as he told me, “the Zionists wanted a state at the expense of the Palestinians.”
Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician in Gaza, whose passion was raising
money for plastic surgery for children disfigured by Israeli bullets and
shrapnel. Her hospital was flattened by Israeli bombs in 2014.
Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, whose clinics for children in Gaza
– children sent almost mad by Israeli violence – were oases of
civilisation. UK
Minister of State for International Development, Alan Duncan MP, visits
Gaza, 10th December 2012. He is the first British minister to visit
Gaza since the ceasefire entered into force on 21 November. (IMAGE:
UNRWA/Shareef Sarhan, Flickr).
Fatima and Nasser are a couple whose home stood in a village near
Jerusalem designated “Zone A and B”, meaning that the land was declared
for Jews only. Their parents had lived there; their grandparents had
lived there. Today, the bulldozers are laying roads for Jews only,
protected by laws for Jews only.
It was past midnight when Fatima went into labour with their second
child. The baby was premature; and when they arrived at a checkpoint
with the hospital in view, the young Israeli soldier said they needed
another document.
Fatima was bleeding badly. The soldier laughed and imitated her moans
and told them, “Go home”. The baby was born there in a truck. It was
blue with cold and soon, without care, died from exposure. The baby’s
name was Sultan.
For Palestinians, these will be familiar stories. The question is:
why are they not familiar in London and Washington, Brussels and Sydney?
In Syria, a recent liberal cause – a George Clooney cause – is
bankrolled handsomely in Britain and the United States, even though the
beneficiaries, the so-called rebels, are dominated by jihadist fanatics,
the product of the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction
of modern Libya.
And yet, the longest occupation and resistance in modern times is not
recognized. When the United Nations suddenly stirs and defines Israel
as an apartheid state, as it did this year, there is outrage – not
against a state whose “core purpose” is racism but against a UN
commission that dared break the silence.
“Palestine,” said Nelson Mandela, “is the greatest moral issue of our time.”
Why is this truth suppressed, day after day, month after month, year after year? Israel’s ‘security wall’, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. (IMAGE: Chris Graham, New Matilda).
On Israel – the apartheid state, guilty of a crime against humanity
and of more international law-breaking than any other – the silence
persists among those who know and whose job it is to keep the record
straight.
On Israel, so much journalism is intimidated and controlled by a
groupthink that demands silence on Palestine while honourable journalism
has become dissidence: a metaphoric underground.
A single word – “conflict” – enables this silence. “The Arab-Israeli conflict”,
intone the robots at their tele-prompters. When a veteran BBC reporter,
a man who knows the truth, refers to “two narratives”, the moral
contortion is complete.
There is no conflict, no two narratives, with their moral fulcrum. There is a military occupation enforced by a nuclear-armed power backed by the greatest military power on earth; and there is an epic injustice.
The word “occupation” may be banned, deleted from the dictionary. But
the memory of historical truth cannot be banned: of the systemic
expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. “Plan D” the Israelis
called it in 1948.
The Israeli historian Benny Morris describes how David Ben-Gurion,
Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by one of his generals: “What
shall we do with the Arabs?” The Knesset, Israel’s parliament. (IMAGE: Ze’ev Barkan, Flickr)
The prime minister, wrote Morris, “made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand”. “Expel them!” he said.
Seventy years later, this crime is suppressed in the intellectual and
political culture of the West. Or it is debatable, or merely
controversial. Highly-paid journalists eagerly accept Israeli government
trips, hospitality and flattery, then are truculent in their
protestations of independence. The term, “useful idiots”, was coined for
them.
In 2011, I was struck by the ease with which one of Britain’s most
acclaimed novelists, Ian McEwan, a man bathed in the glow of bourgeois
enlightenment, accepted the Jerusalem Prize for literature in the
apartheid state.
Would McEwan have gone to Sun City in apartheid South Africa? They
gave prizes there, too, all expenses paid. McEwan justified his action
with weasel words about the independence of “civil society”.
Propaganda – of the kind McEwan delivered, with its token slap on the
wrists for his delighted hosts – is a weapon for the oppressors of
Palestine. Like sugar, it insinuates almost everything today.
Understanding and deconstructing state and cultural propaganda is our
most critical task. We are being frog-marched into a second cold war,
whose eventual aim is to subdue and balkanise Russia and intimidate
China. Russian president Vladimir Putin (IMAGE: Screengrab, RT).
When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke privately for more than
two hours at the G20 meeting in Hamburg, apparently about the need not
to go to war with each other, the most vociferous objectors were those
who have commandeered liberalism, such as the Zionist political writer
of the Guardian.
“No wonder Putin was smiling in Hamburg,” wrote Jonathan Freedland.
“He knows he has succeeded in his chief objective: he has made American
weak again.” Cue hissing for Evil Vlad.
These propagandists have never known war but they love the game they
play. What Ian McEwan calls “civil society” has become a rich source of
related propaganda.
Take a term often used by the guardians of civil society – “human
rights”. Like another noble concept, “democracy”, “human rights” has
been all but emptied of its meaning and purpose.
Like “peace process” and “road map”, human rights in Palestine have
been hijacked by Western governments and the corporate NGOs they fund
and which claim a quixotic moral authority.
So when Israel is called upon by governments and NGOs to “respect
human rights” in Palestine, nothing happens, because they all know there
is nothing to fear.
Mark the silence of the European Union, which accommodates Israel
while refusing to maintain its commitments to the people of Gaza – such
as keeping the lifeline of the Rafah border crossing open: a measure it
agreed to as part of its role in the cessation of fighting in 2014. A
seaport for Gaza – agreed by Brussels in 2014 – has been abandoned.
The UN commission I have referred to – its full name is the UN
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia – described Israel as,
and I quote, “designed for the core purpose” of racial discrimination. The United Nations.
Millions understand this. What the governments in London, Washington,
Brussels and Tel Aviv cannot control is that humanity at street level
is changing perhaps as never before.
People everywhere are stirring and more aware, in my view, than ever
before. Some are already in open revolt. The atrocity of Grenfell Tower
in London has brought communities together in a vibrant almost national
resistance.
Thanks to a people’s campaign, the judiciary is today examining the
evidence of a possible prosecution of Tony Blair for war crimes. Even if
this fails, it is a crucial development, dismantling yet another
barrier between the public and its recognition of the voracious nature
of the crimes of state power – the systemic disregard for humanity
perpetrated in Iraq, in Grenfell Tower, in Palestine.
Those are the dots waiting to be joined.
For most of the 21st century, the fraud of corporate power
posing as democracy has depended on the propaganda of distraction:
largely on a cult of “me-ism” designed to overwhelm our sense of looking
out for others, of acting together, of social justice and
internationalism.
Class, gender and race were wrenched apart. Only the personal became
the political and the media the message. The promotion of bourgeois
privilege was presented as “progressive” politics. It wasn’t. It never
is. It is the promotion of privilege, and power.
Among young people, internationalism has found a vast new audience.
Look at the support for Jeremy Corbyn and the reception the G20 circus
in Hamburg received. By understanding the truth and imperatives of
internationalism, we understand the struggle of Palestine.
Mandela put it this way: “We know only too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” A Nelson Mandela bust in London. (IMAGE: Paul Simpson, flickr)
At the heart of the Middle East is the historic injustice in
Palestine. Until that is resolved, and Palestinians have their freedom
and homeland, and Israelis and Palestinians are equal before the law,
there will be no peace in the region, or perhaps anywhere.
What Mandela was saying is that freedom itself is precarious while
powerful governments can deny justice to others, terrorise others,
imprison and kill others, in our name. Israel certainly understands the
threat that one day it might have to be normal.
That is why its ambassador to Britain is Mark Regev, well known to
journalists as a professional propagandist, and why the “huge bluff” of
charges of anti-Semitism, as Ilan Pappe called it, was allowed to
contort the Labour Party and undermine Jeremy Corbyn as leader. The
point is, it did not succeed.
Events are moving quickly now. The remarkable Boycott, Disinvestment
and Sanctions campaign (BDS) is succeeding, day-by-day; cities and
towns, trade unions and student bodies are endorsing it. The British
government’s attempt to restrict local councils from enforcing BDS has
failed in the courts.
These are not straws in the wind. When the Palestinians rise again,
as they will, they may not succeed at first – but they will eventually
if we understand that they are us, and we are them.
This is an abridged version of John Pilger’s address to the
Palestinian Expo in London on 8 July, 2017. John Pilger’s film,
‘Palestine Is Still the Issue’, can be viewed here.
John Pilger is a regular contributor to
New Matilda, and an award-winning Australian journalist and documentary
film-maker. Some of his more famous works include Secret Country, Utopia
and Cambodia: Year Zero.
Many pieces of media have written eulogies and obituary items on the death of Peter Bonsall-Boone - Bon to all and sundry - talking about his activism and things he was involved in during his long activist life - he died on 19 MAY 2017 aged 78.
I have not yet come across one, not even the AIDS Council of New South Wales - ACON - who have mentioned Bon's involvement with Community Support Network and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s.
Community Support Network circa 1990
-
"Bon did something about AIDS today"
- Bon walked the dog, then cooked a meal for Stewart. Stewart can't do
all the things he was strong enough to do before. Stewart has AIDS. Bon
visits Stewart as a volunteer of the Community Support Network. CSN
volunteers learn many skills at our FREE course which enable them to
assist a person living with AIDS to live with dignity and choices in
their life.
It doesn't take much to do something about AIDS: ring today to find out about one of our information sessions.
Bon was involved with the training of volunteers who did the training course allowing people to care for people living with, and dying from HIV/AIDS.
Over the years Bon not only looked after people who were very ill, but often those who had been abandoned by friends and family because they were gay/lesbian and or had AIDS.
These were terrible years and they exacted a heavy toll on those who were carers - and cared!!! - and left many traumatised and in a worn-out emotional state.
Bon, who did so much, and cared so much, was not immune to the ravages of these times and abused his health many times, leaving him susceptible to all sorts of health problems, which no doubt created problems for him as he aged.
When Nichole McLaughlin asks her partner Paul Joyner what time he will be home from work, he often cannot answer.
With
no finish time on his roster, Mr Joyner - a permanent part-time worker,
not a casual - does not know what time he will leave work at Aldi's
Stapylton distribution centre.
Paul Joyner said Aldi's work arrangements causes disruption to
family life: "The school pick-up time would be the hardest thing." Photo: Bradley Kanaris
The father-of-three also said he had worked for free for the
retail giant to pay off "negative hours" accumulated because he was not
given enough shifts to complete the hours he is contracted to work.
"I was at minus-78, and now I work extra to pay back those hours," Mr Joyner said. "And I don't get paid."
His claim is "categorically rejected" by Aldi, which said in a
statement: "The enterprise agreement provides for an averaging
arrangement of hours and employees receive payment for every hour
worked."
Mr
Joyner, who used to coach his son's soccer team, said the uncertainty
caused disruption to his family life. He said it also made it difficult
to make commitments such as taking his children to sporting events and
leisure activities.
"The school pick-up time would be the hardest thing," Mr Joyner said.
"We get it drummed into us 'You don't have a finish time'."
This
lack of certainty created other worries for workers with children, he
said. "Childcare's until 6 o'clock and then you start paying $2 every
minute. So 10 minutes – there's 20 bucks. You do that a couple of times a
week and it soon adds up."
Aldi is celebrating its one year anniversary this year.
Tim Gunstone, an organiser for the National Union of
Workers, said Aldi's "peculiar employment arrangements" were stressful
for workers.
"Workers are sent home early when it suits Aldi, but
when the work is busier, or poorly planned by management, workers are
told they have to stay at work until everything is finished," Mr
Gunstone said.
"The lack of any finish time on rosters makes it impossible for workers to refuse the overtime they are being required to do."
Mr
Gunstone said the NUW believed Aldi's employment practices were against
the law because permanent part-time workers should be provided with the
hours described in their employment contract in each pay period.
When a worker is required to work without pay to work off "negative hours" this is in effect wage theft.
Tim Gunstone, an organiser for the National Union of Workers.
"The second is that Aldi are requiring employees to work without
payment when they are "paying off" the negative hours," he said. "The
third is that permanent workers must be provided with a start and a
finish time for their rostered shifts."
Mr Gunstone added: "When a worker is required to work without pay to work off "negative hours" this is in effect wage theft."
However, an Aldi spokeswoman said: "The suggestion that employees work unpaid overtime is categorically rejected."
She said workers received payment for their "contract hours" even if they do not work the required amount of time.
"They
are then rostered to work additional hours above their contract in
subsequent fortnights, to complete the hours for which they have already
been paid," she said. "The Fair Work Commission has examined and
approved this work arrangement as being lawful and suitable."
But
the NUW is vowing to renew the fight and lodge a dispute with the Fair
Work Commission if Mr Joyner's concerns cannot be resolved with Aldi.
"We
would expect that such a dispute would be resolved by arbitration, and
expect that a Commissioner would find that Paul was owed money for every
hour he worked without payment while 'paying off negative hours',"
Mr Gunstone said. "This could create a substantial underpayment
affecting thousands of Aldi workers."
Associate Professor Angela
Knox, from the University of Sydney Business School, questioned whether
the arrangement was "good practice"
.
"There is a difference between a practice being legal and it being good, especially for workers," she said.
"This
type of practice has been used in large chain hotels for over a decade
but there are more 'checks and balances' in place, normally."
But Associate Professor Knox said caps were usually imposed to prevent workers accruing a debt as large as 78 hours.
She questioned
whether Aldi's workers understood the ramifications of the provision,
which created large "negative hours" balances.
"The specific
details that would explain how the system operates are not outlined,
hence managerial prerogative is maximised," she said.
Aldi's
spokeswoman said salaries were above market rates, while staff turnover
was low: "Our working conditions are also considered to be some of the
best in the industry, with independent employee satisfaction surveys
returning consistently high scores."
Mr Gunstone said he had
spoken to more than 100 Aldi workers who had concerns about the
company's practices but "they felt they had no choice but to accept it".
He said Aldi also tried to prevent its workers engaging with the union - a claim contested by the company.
"Aldi
routinely place managers in lunchrooms when union organisers visit
sites – for the explicit purpose of monitoring the unions engagements
with workers," he said. "At Paul's workplace managers have repeatedly
interrupted organiser conversations with employees."
Mr Joyner,
who is a union delegate, said many of his colleagues shared his concerns
about Aldi's work practices but feared the consequences of speaking
out.
"They'd like to say stuff too but they're scared," he said.
With the impending arrival of retailers such as Amazon, Mr Gunstone said the conditions for warehouse workers were at risk.
"Aldi's
work practices are one example of the ways in which these jobs are
increasingly becoming insecure, and how many major retailers are
increasingly involved in a race to the bottom when it comes to job
security and casualisation," he said.
"Amazon – which is setting up in Australia – are known for their low wages and anti-union attitude."
Larissa
Andelman, a barrister who practices in industrial law, said the
Australian labour market had a very high level of casualisation, and the
line between casual and permanent employment was often blurred.
"However
the rise of 'zero hour' contracts in England has caused a significant
financial hardship to those affected and there has been political and
legal action to limit and cease these kind of arrangements," she said.
"It
would be most unfortunate if these kind of arrangements were found
lawful in Australia as they impact adversely on the most low paid and
marginalised workers who are often young people and women."
A '$47 million development' is about to force two elderly men out of
their retirement village. Sign the petition to keep Richard and Stephen
in their community:
This
is a script that appears to be similar to The Castle movie. However at
this moment, it is more of a tragedy than a comedy. Unfortunately there
is nothing “that is going straight to the pool room,” in this tragedy.
It
is taking place at the Parkview Village in Waitara, where the residents
were informed in mid 2014 that the village would be demolished by the
owner, Vasey Housing Association, and replaced by a $47m 12 story
building containing 117 units. This was the start of a drive to get all
residents to vacate the buildings. They were successful in that there
are only two residents left, Richard Best and Stephen Baume.
At
a Tribunal on the 9 June, Mr David Elkins the CEO of Vasey, has engaged
one of Australia’s largest law firms to terminate the lifetime resident
contract and evict Richard and Stephen, who will then be homeless.
Richard
and Stephen are the only two souls left in the village that housed 55
residents. There was a lot of pressure on the residents to leave, which
included bullying by way of a threat. At a budget meeting in late 2015,
the residents were informed that due to the closure of the village,
there would be an increase of $500 per quarter in their charges for
residents remaining in the village. The oldest person to leave
was a 92 year old lady; a terrible age to be forced to leave her home,
friends, doctors and other support systems she had relied on for years.
Richard
and Stephen are in their seventies and have lived there for 7 and 10
years respectively. They had been told that they had lifelong leases and
could stay there until they died!
Have
they been too demanding in their negotiations, which have caused this
impasse? All they are asking for is like accommodation, but it must be
in close proximity to where they are staying. They chose this village
because it was ideally suited for their needs. Richard grew up and lived
in this area for most of his life. There are extensive medical
facilities close at hand with a variety of specialist doctors in the
fields of oncology, cardiology which are needed. They have been using
these services for years and would not like to change any of this, at
this stage of their lives.
They
do not want to change homes but if they have to, it is essential that
they do not change their local environment and support systems.
Walking around this deserted village without knowing if or when this
matter will be resolved is extremely stressful and is potentially
damaging to the health of a senior citizen. The anxiety caused has
manifested itself in changes to their normal sleep patterns.
Richard and Stephen have been engaged for almost a year in fighting their cause, mostly on their own.
However, as a result of the Tribunal proceedings to evict them, the
RVRA (Retirement Village Residents Association) has started this
petition on their behalf. Peter Hill, Hill & Co Lawyers, the RVRA
honorary solicitor has agreed to defend these disadvantaged residents in
this case, on a pro bono basis.
This is a very worthy cause, which we hope you will support by voting for this petition.
Your one vote could easily turn to three, if you share this with two friends. Please do so;
it makes an enormous difference to how soon we will be able to present
the petition to the CEO of the Vasey Housing Association.
Thank you for your support!
For more information, come to our website: RVRA- www.rvra.com.au
In late 2015 I had just arrived in London on sabbatical and was
staying in a scruffy part of the city's north – full of cultural
diversity and social disadvantage. On the first morning, as I emerged
from my basement flat in search of the Sunday papers, a woman came
towards me brandishing a greeting card and pen.
"Would you like to
sign?" she asked. Just up the road was the strangely incongruous sight
of a group of photographers pointing lenses at a modest
'60s maisonette. "It's a congratulatory card," she explained, "from his
neighbours to Jeremy. He's won."
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn greeting supporters on the final week of the election campaign. Photo: Getty Images
And then it dawned on me. I was lodging just along from the
newly elected leader of the British Labour Party: Jeremy Corbyn. I
signed the card, explaining I was only a temporary neighbour, but was
overjoyed at his victory.
Corbyn's rise is a most improbable
political story. A complete outsider more at home marching with the
comrades than debating in the Commons, he fought against apartheid,
welfare cuts, privatisation and successive Gulf wars. He was on the
progressive side of every major vote in his long parliamentary career.
In this week's election Corbyn is pledging to create a million new jobs and to scrap zero-hours contracts. Photo: Getty Images
The grim technocrats who ran Labour for a generation
despised him or, at best, saw him as a sort of harmless beatnik curio.
In the era of spin, a man who bought his clothes from the co-op
supermarket and spent weekends tending cabbages on his allotment was
never going to be taken seriously as a politician.
He made it onto the ballot paper only because a few MPs with no intention of voting for him signed his nomination form. They wanted to broaden the debate, but Corbyn's candidature prompted thousands of supporters to join the party. Under a system where the votes of ordinary members carry considerable weight, he won by a large margin.
Corbyn took up the job as leader of the opposition with the support
of only a handful of the MPs who sat behind him. Most were convinced he
was unelectable: the complete opposite of the polished, poll-driven
sound-bite savvy politicians they believed themselves to be. But these
disgruntled parliamentarians sat on their hands for a year until a
challenge could be mounted.
Then a second ballot produced another
emphatic Corbyn victory despite the fact Labour MPs had lined up to
deliver withering public denunciations of a sort that would have sent
most of us under the doona, sobbing. He responded to these attacks with
an almost saintly forbearance.
Corbyn's equanimity comes from a
sense that his constituency is beyond Westminster; that it is possible
to cut through the white noise of public life – and the bilious scorn of
the tabloids – by speaking directly to working people in the
old-fashioned language of redistribution and social democracy. When
radical MP Tony Benn retired from parliament in 2001, he declared he now
intended "to devote more time to politics". Corbyn too, sees politics
as a vocation, not a career.
Like Bernie Sanders he has thrived on
the campaign trail, delivering passionate stump speeches to adoring
crowds, with plenty of spontaneity, warmth and popular engagement.
Theresa May, by contrast, appears wooden, remote and scripted.
The
media paint Corbyn as a hard left ideologue, but Labour's manifesto
simply revives the Keynesian tax-and-spend politics of social democracy,
an approach Tony Blair jettisoned in favour of neo-liberalism. There is
nothing frightening or outrageous in promising more resources for
public health, transport and education. The nearly 30-point opinion poll
lead the Tories enjoyed early in the campaign has narrowed to just a
few points in the lead up to polling day.
But to win the election
Labour must court the sort of voters who preferred Trump to Clinton
last year. Those from the rustbelt towns are suspicious of the inner
urban cultural elite members, which are well represented
among Corbyn's constituents in Islington. As Simon Kuper wrote in
the Financial Times the poor and disenfranchised don't believe those who
"talk equality while living privilege".
Although Corbyn has been
described as looking more like a geography teacher than a leader of the
working class, he nevertheless has the common touch. When asked whether
he would move into Downing Street if he became Prime Minister, he said,
"I did not become leader of the Labour party to get a new house. There
are going to be pressures. Security issues, no doubt. But I like where I
live.
My neighbours like me being there as well, most of the time." I
can vouch for that.
George Morgan is associate professor
in the Institute of Culture and Society and the School of Humanities and
Communication Arts at Western Sydney University.
In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people rightly warn
against blaming the entire Muslim community in Britain and the world.
Certainly one of the aims of those who carry out such atrocities is to
provoke the communal punishment of all Muslims, thereby alienating a
portion of them who will then become open to recruitment by Isis and
al-Qaeda clones.
This
approach of not blaming Muslims in general but targeting
“radicalisation” or simply “evil” may appear sensible and moderate, but
in practice it makes the motivation of the killers in Manchester or the
Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015 appear vaguer and less identifiable
than it really is. Such generalities have the unfortunate effect of
preventing people pointing an accusing finger at the variant of Islam
which certainly is responsible for preparing the soil for the beliefs
and actions likely to have inspired the suicide bomber Salman Abedi.
The ultimate
inspiration for such people is Wahhabism, the puritanical, fanatical
and regressive type of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, whose ideology is
close to that of al-Qaeda and Isis. This is an exclusive creed,
intolerant of all who disagree with it such as secular liberals, members
of other Muslim communities such as the Shia or women resisting their
chattel-like status.
What has
been termed Salafi jihadism, the core beliefs of Isis and al-Qaeda,
developed out of Wahhabism, and has carried out its prejudices to what
it sees as a logical and violent conclusion. Shia and Yazidis were not
just heretics in the eyes of this movement, which was a sort of Islamic
Khmer Rouge, but sub-humans who should be massacred or enslaved. Any
woman who transgressed against repressive social mores should be
savagely punished. Faith should be demonstrated by a public death of the
believer, slaughtering the unbelievers, be they the 86 Shia children
being evacuated by bus from their homes in Syria on 15 April or the
butchery of young fans at a pop concert in Manchester on Monday night.
The real
causes of “radicalisation” have long been known, but the government, the
BBC and others seldom if ever refer to it because they do not want to
offend the Saudis or be accused of anti-Islamic bias. It is much easier
to say, piously but quite inaccurately, that Isis and al-Qaeda and their
murderous foot soldiers “have nothing to do with Islam”. This has been
the track record of US and UK governments since 9/11. They will look in
any direction except Saudi Arabia when seeking the causes of terrorism.
President Trump has been justly denounced and derided in the US for last
Sunday accusing Iran and, in effect, the Shia community of
responsibility for the wave of terrorism that has engulfed the region
when it ultimately emanates from one small but immensely influential
Sunni sect. One of the great cultural changes in the world over the last
50 years is the way in which Wahhabism, once an isolated splinter
group, has become an increasingly dominant influence over mainstream
Sunni Islam, thanks to Saudi financial support.
A further
sign of the Salafi-jihadi impact is the choice of targets: the attacks
on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, a gay night club in Florida in
2016 and the Manchester Arena this week have one thing in common. They
were all frequented by young people enjoying entertainment and a
lifestyle which made them an Isis or al-Qaeda target. But these are also
events where the mixing of men and women or the very presence of gay
people is denounced by puritan Wahhabis and Salafi jihadis alike. They
both live in a cultural environment in which the demonisation of such
people and activities is the norm, though their response may differ.
The
culpability of Western governments for terrorist attacks on their own
citizens is glaring but is seldom even referred to. Leaders want to have
a political and commercial alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil
states. They have never held them to account for supporting a repressive
and sectarian ideology which is likely to have inspired Salman Abedi.
Details of his motivation may be lacking, but the target of his attack
and the method of his death is classic al-Qaeda and Isis in its mode of
operating.
The reason
these two demonic organisations were able to survive and expand despite
the billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars spent on “the war on
terror” after 9/11 is that those responsible for stopping them
deliberately missed the target and have gone on doing so. After 9/11,
President Bush portrayed Iraq not Saudi Arabia as the enemy; in a re-run
of history President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran of being the
source of most terrorism in the Middle East. This is the real 9/11
conspiracy, beloved of crackpots worldwide, but there is nothing secret
about the deliberate blindness of British and American governments to
the source of the beliefs that has inspired the massacres of which
Manchester is only the latest – and certainly not the last – horrible
example.
Article by Chrissie Foster in the Australian on Friday 7 April 2017
RIGHT TO THE VERY END, THE
CHURCH WASN’T LISTENING
Final royal commission
hearings revealed the ugly truth of indifference to victims
It is difficult to stop crying.
A child sexual abuse expert from the U.S. Bruce Perry,
simply picked a random example. He spoke via video link to the Royal Commission
into institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse; he was one of 36 experts in
the field who gave evidence last week at the final week of the hearing titled
case study 57, Nature, Cause and Impact of Child Sexual Abuse. Perry’s example
was of ‘a little five-year-old child and somebody is raping you’ and he talked
of what it does to the young mind.
They were painful words to hear because that is what
happened to our little five-year-old Emma and, not long after, to our
six-year-old Katie. To hear what their infant minds had to deal with was
crushing – a dreadful add-on to the vision of rape by the priest, which already
haunts us.
It was like a knife to the heart.
The priest was Kevin O’Donnell, he was 66 years older than
Emma, he was our parish priest, with access to the primary school and its 300
children where I, as a Catholic, sent our girls. He went to prison in 1995 for
14 months for sexually assaulting children (rape charges were dropped in a plea
bargain). I believe that from 1958 until he was arrested, he sexually assaulted
at least 100 children.
Memories haunted our girls. Emma took her life aged 26 after
a traumatic teenage and young adult life filled with despair, self-harming and
drug addiction. Katie began binge drinking and was hit by a car while drunk.
She spent 12 months in hospital and now, 18 years later, still receives 24-hour
care, as she always will. Childhood sexual abuse was the cause and
self-destructive behaviour was the impact.
Four weeks before came Case Study 50, titled Catholic Church
in Australia, a three-week hearing during which Australia’s archbishop gave
disturbing testimony.
In his evidence, on three occasions Hobart Archbishop Julian
Porteous said the reason they did not act to stop child sexual abuse was
because “nobody understood the seriousness of the effects of sexual abuse on
children”. This common, if absurd, excuse has been used by the hierarchy, both
here and overseas, since 1994. In using it, they admit knowing about the
crimes. And not stopping them. Crimes that attracted the death penalty until
1961.
Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge stated: “I have no right
to go to a priest, who is not an employee of mine, and say, “Excuse me, are you
in a sexual relationship?” What if that “sexual relationship” was with a child?
When, on a panel of five archbishops, one described the
forced, often violent, rape of thousands of children as “misbehaving”, not one
of them said a word. God almighty, what is wrong with these sanctimonious men
of religion? What do they need to make them understand? Another $450 million
royal commission?
I once handed my most precious treasure, my three children,
to the Catholic Church for their primary school education and at that school
was the pedophile O’Donnell. The archbishop of Melbourne, Frank Little, knew
about O’Donnell’s crimes by then. Evidence before the royal commission has told
us that in 1986, the year before Emma started school, Little received a letter
from a nun informing him that O’Donnell had sexually assaulted a boy over
several years.
We have lost count of how
many victims have taken their lives.
Little did nothing – an act of criminal neglect.
This was not the only time Little put his priests before the
safety of Catholic children. In 1978 a magistrate and a barrister approached
him about a boy in their parish who had been sexually assaulted by priest Bill
Baker. The archbishop yelled at the two men to leave his office. But he acted:
days later he transferred Baker to another parish, where his crimes were not
known. As adults, some of his victims went to police. Baker was jailed for a
few of his crimes and then lived on a generous church pension.
Further royal commission evidence shows the Catholic
hierarchy was told in 1958 that O’Donnell was raping children. They did nothing
and he raped others freely for another 34 years until retiring with an honorary
title from the church.
Can today’s archbishops be trusted with the safety and lives
of your children?
We don’t have to look far for the answer.
Last year some parents in Melbourne
tried to remove from their parish a priest after newspapers reported that the
church had made a $75,000 payout to a victim of his sexual abuse. The royal
commission has established that the maximum of $75,000 is only awarded in the
very worst cases. Tellingly, the church sided with the priest, who
denied the abuse, against the parents. Eventually he was
transferred. His new parishioners complained. He was moved again. His present
location is unknown.
We have lost count of how many victims of priests have taken
their lives. Of course, the crimes devastate parents and grandparents of victims,
siblings, spouses and children of victims, and loving friends. Emma’s closest
friend Lu, took her own life five months after Emma.
Where were the church hierarchy representatives at this
final royal commission hearing? There was much they stood to learn about the
damage their colleagues had done to the 4445 victims in their care. They might
have better understood those blighted lives, perhaps even developed some
empathy for them. But no. They stayed away. All of them.
They didn’t care then and they don’t care now.
My husband, Anthony, and I have attended 108 days of royal
commission hearings and seen many other days of evidence via webcast. We are
grateful to the royal commission for seeking truth and justice about these
crimes. Without it, victims would still be fighting a losing battle against a
powerful and once influential institution.
The royal commission will release its findings on December
15 but these will go nowhere unless politicians act on them. We hope they vote
for the safety and protection of voiceless, innocent children and not cave in
to the untrustworthy churches and their manipulative lawyers and lobbyists.
Implementing the recommendations will help make Australia
the safest country in the world for children.
Who doesn’t want that?
Chrissie Foster is the author of Hell on the Way to Heaven
with Paul Kennedy.
Anthony Foster died on Friday 26 May 2017 when he was taken off life support.
The following is probably the last tweet he made – a few
weeks ago:
Anthony Foster @Anthony Foster_.Apr 6
“RIGHT TO THE VERY END, THE CHURCH WASN’T LISTENING” By
Chrissie in today’s Australian tinyurl.com/zrqspx7#caRoyalComm @australian
It was almost prescient! But very tragic for everybody.
