A critical difference
Source: (1) A critical… – The Fiberal Party of Australia – Lies & Misdemeanours | Facebook
Tag: History
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.” Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour (2002)
If a heavy resume of crimes is a guarantee of longevity, then surely Henry A. Kissinger (HAK, for short), must count as a good specimen. The list of butcheries attributed to his centurion, direct or otherwise, is extensive, his hand in them, finger fat and busy. There were the murderous meddles in Latin America, the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. (The interventions in Laos and Cambodia are said to have left 350,000 Laotians and 600,000 Cambodians dead.) Then came the selective turning of blind eyes in Indonesia and Pakistan, and the ruthless sponsorship of coups in Africa.
Source: HAK Birthdays: Henry Kissinger Turns 100 – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Why truth-telling matters
Courts and policymakers are still making decisions about the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples without full knowledge of Indigenous histories and how they continue to affect people today. In our forthcoming book, I argue that even Australia’s highest court has presented a misleading, “whitewashed” view of the history of Indigenous belonging since 1788.
An Israeli writer asks a fundamental question: 75 years after its creation, has the Jewish state fulfilled its founder’s dreams?
Source: ‘Impossible Takes Longer’ Review: Israel Looks in the Mirror – WSJ
The military-industrial complex (MIC) that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about more than 60 years ago is still alive and well. In fact, it’s consuming many more tax dollars and feeding far larger weapons producers than when Ike raised the alarm about the “unwarranted influence” it wielded in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.
Source: This is not Your Grandfather’s Military-Industrial Complex: Unwarranted Influence
There is a common thread in the ultra-conservative anglo speaking world which is the promotion of the uncritical glorious history of Western Civilisation. In Australia, it has been heavily promoted by the Ramsay Foundation and politically forced on us by the LNP in the systemic teaching of history in the country.
Under such circumstances, reviving the political and moral imagination is more crucial than ever in order to resist the assassins of memory and social justice who have turned critical education and thinking into a crime.
Source: The Right Wing Is Waging a Dirty War Against History and Education | The Smirking Chimp
Shell, the other U.K. “super-major” oil company, also re-entered Iraq in 2009 after an invasion in 2003 that was widely denounced at the time as a war-for-oil on the part of the U.S. and U.K., Matt Kennard reports.
Source: BP Extracted £15 Billion of Iraqi Oil After British Invasion
20 years ago, on 20 March 2003, the US, the UK, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq in an illegal act of aggression. As with all wars, we were told this one would be quick. The pretext for the invasion was – despite authoritative doubts raised at the time – claims about the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. There were no such weapons in Iraq, although plenty of them in two of the invading nations. After on-again off-again ADF deployments, the last Australian troops finally left the country in June 2020.
Source: Twenty years on, ‘coalition of the willing’ rebranded – Pearls and Irritations
Who is missing? Australia’s John Howard of course! However, he’s not really missing, just regarded as totally irrelevant from the looks of this photo despite that he was a dutiful camp follower at the time calling out loyally about the fake WMDs.
He pushed us with Bush to Iraq and helped create ISIS. Howard didn’t give any thought to the LNP’s chant “All the way with LBJ” the chant that took us to Vietnam in 1965. All these fools simply went on to repeat history with their fabrication of the ” Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Now in 2023, the ALP has seemed to have joined them in accusing China to be a WMD when the facts and history tell us it’s not.
They’re all doing great, thanks for asking.
Voltaire said that humanity invented hell to dissuade people from doing wrong when they noticed there didn’t seem to be any consequences for it here on Earth. On this bleak anniversary, you can certainly understand where he was coming from.
“A country where the prime minister appoints all the judges and is responsible for promoting and firing them has a name, it’s called a dictatorship. When this prime minister is also a defendant who the state of Israel is accusing of serious crimes, it has a name, it’s called a dictatorship of criminals.”
Source: Israel has Always Been a Dictatorship of Criminals – CounterPunch.org
Redacting history and historical facts. The Germans teach and are reminded from the cradle to the grave of their part prior to and during WW2. All of Germany pays attention to its history good or bad. They as a consequence now have a more tolerant and united nation as a result compared to DeSantis’s, Trump’s and the GOP’s America.
“Florida is doing its best to shut down discussions about race, slavery, anything having to do with a challenge to the idea that racism is still a real factor in American life today,” said one author and former professor.
Source: Scholars, Lawmakers Outraged Over DeSantis’ Rejection of AP African-American Curriculum
Palm oil is in everything: what we eat, wear, read, drive. And like so much else that we consume and can’t disentangle ourselves from, palm oil is enmeshed in global supply chains that rely on brutal working conditions and the destruction of the planet.
When is a purge a genocide? When a young Australian researcher finds solid evidence that’s long eluded international scholars, proving the minds of millions have been poisoned with lies.
Dr Jess Melvin is an award-winning academic at Sydney Uni. In 2018 she published The Army and the Indonesian Genocide using official Indonesian documents.
Her book – since released in Indonesian – conclusively showed that the mass slaughter across Indonesia of real or imagined Communists in 1965 and 66 was not an impulsive uprising of angry peasants, but government-organised mass murder
Yes they proved to be the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
When it comes to foreign policy, Australia has long been in thrall to US interests. This isn’t because Australia is an American client state but because the Australian establishment knows that its own interests are best served by US empire.
Source: Australia’s Rulers Know They Need American Imperialism to Dominate the Pacific
MP Stuart Robert has ducked questions regarding possible dodgy dealings with an offshore business, adding another blemish to his chequered political career.
Source: Stuart Robert, Paul Pisasale and a tale of two Rolexes: FLASHBACK 2019
Marxist historians in Britain — like E. P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm — sparked a revolution in understanding the role of working people in making history. Their work is still fresh and vibrant today.Working people
Anthony Albanese’s Labor government claims that it views Australia’s neighbors in the Pacific as “partners.” For this to be more than hollow rhetoric, Australia must face up to the injustices it has committed as a colonial power in the region.
Source: Australia Must Confront Its Past as a Colonial Power in the Pacific
Gangsters are overtaking the planet and where they aren’t they are trying to in varying forms. By gangsters, I mean wannabe Caesars. Single heads of State representing themselves and/or a small minority of interests. That form of power has been far easier to organize than a majority in support of its own protection and any Democracy.
Trump, not as bright as most, tried with the advice of Steve Bannon in the USA. Now the Republicans have taken his lead. He may have tripped and we’ve yet to see if he failed. Or, has a replacement already been cloned? We’ve seen the rise of these would-be kings in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and in even self-claimed Democracies like Israel, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Italy Sweden and Russia all really being seduced by the siren’s call of religious Nationalism trumpeted by these gangsters.
Putin is seen as their hero despite being just another wannabe Ceasar too. He’s a role model of power, and toughness, in his own mind. Flaunting his ability to command the support of a nation while milking it for all its worth. His problem,he believes in his own propaganda and in less than 8 months has had to distance himself from even his inner circle of sycophants who he can no longer trust becoming more and more a Nero rather than a Caesar.
His truth America wants to crush him like a bug but do it by proxy
Vladimir Putin’s misguided views of Ukraine’s independence are inaccurate, as history reveals, writes Susan Bothmann.
Source: Putin claims Ukraine is not a country — history begs to differ
In the 80’s historic claims made against the Dutch were accepted as fact and Dutch history in WW2 was rewritten. But not historians attempts to correct the history of the formation of Israel.
“For unearthing that dark side of 1948,” Morris said that he was vilified by the “Zionist establishment.” He was accused of shattering the founding myths of the Israeli state and lending moral weight to the Palestinian cause. Morris rejected the claim as “untrue” and explained that he “was simply a historian seeking to describe what happened.”
Source: Catastrophe: Historians reveal Israel’s use of Poisoning, Typhoid against Palestinians in 1948
Ron DeSantis, is the governor of Florida, although he’s this Trumpian, maybe alternative to Trump from the right wing, was educated at the best schools in America. What is it? Harvard and Yale.
Jim Mamer: Harvard.
Scheer: And yet he mangled history so badly, and in your column, you raised a question of whether it was out of ignorance or malice or what have you, but really, tell us about the state of historical knowledge among young, well, any Americans. You’ve been at it for a long time and you just pointed out these blatant errors. So let’s go there. Do we Americans really know anything about our history, the world’s history, and whose fault is it?
Source: Jim Mamer: Fake Journalism Is Only the First Draft of Fake History – scheerpost.com
Matthew Guy AKA Matt Guy wants to be your Leader. The Premier of Victoria.
The Victorian State Liberal Party Leader proved once again that if anyone can take it to the next level of idiocy, it’s, well, Matthew Guy.
In his tribute to the late monarch, Guy chose Parliament to announce that Queen Elizabeth’s lineage (unbeknown to her) included children’s storybook favourite, “King Arthur” — of the Round Table:
Source: Queen Elizabeth, King Arthur and the knights of the ABC round table
Critics of Marx have accused him of imposing a European model of historical development on the rest of the world. But the real Marx rejected Eurocentric thinking and developed a sophisticated view of world history in all its diversity and complexity.
Julia Gillard to take ground-breaking misogyny speech to the stage
Ten years ago, Australia’s then-prime minister, Julia Gillard, gave a speech in parliament that would echo long after her leadership came to an end.
“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not,” said Gillard, in response to the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, accusing her of sexism.
“And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever.”
In other words, even if he avoids prosecution, even if he is never formally deemed a criminal under the law, Trump will be accountable to history. That is not as satisfying a form of accountability as a criminal judgment, to be sure. But it is a form of accountability that is inescapable. If the committee does its work properly — and I have every confidence it will — it will create a clear record. Which means that for our children and our children’s children — for as far as future generations will know of our recorded history — Donald Trump will live in infamy.
Source: A Final Thought on the Hearings: How Trump Will Be Held Accountable | The Smirking Chimp
Have you heard the one about how the Liberal leopard changed his spots? He moved from the Government spot to a spot in the shadows to pounce on progress at a future date. (Michelle Pini)
THE MORE the Liberal and National parties talk of change, the more things stay the same.
Apart from the front men (for they are usually men) who are quite regularly replaced or recycled, this is true no matter which Coalition yardstick you care to examine: health, gender equality, education, climate change, Indigenous affairs, the economy, cost of living pressures or corruption.
While the regression in these areas certainly fluctuates in terms of severity, the fact that they remain largely unaddressed by the previous Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government is testament to the degree to which the Coalition entrenches inequity across most social parameters.
Source: 9 Coalition years equal 50 years regression, Dutton notwithstanding
Labor is back in power. It is a rare gift. The ALP has held the reins of government for less than a third of the time in Australia’s history. And the party seems doomed to get the call from the electorate just as trouble is brewing.
Source: O Lucky Man? Albo out to break the Labor hoodoo – Michael West
What the LNP and Peter Dutton want stopped
When Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung man Tiriki Onus was a schoolboy, he recalls a year 10 teacher telling the class “that the Aboriginal people of south-east Australia were extinct”.
Source: Indigenous education: New resource seeks to teach Victorian history through Aboriginal eyes
New Liberal Leader Peter Dutton has a history of cruelty and corruption, despite the mainstream media telling us we should give him a chance, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
Source: Reactionary succession — Peter Dutton, Australia’s new Opposition Leader
Three phases The NRA’s more than 150-year history spans three distinct eras.
Long before Israel paved segregated road networks to maintain the separation of Jews and Palestinians, the British had already laid their foundations.
Morrison is doing a lot of political whining about fairness in our Democracy just as Abbott once did when complaining against the ABC. “Why aren’t they supporting us” he cried and banned MPs from the from any interviews on our national broadcaster, cutting funding by a $1bn over the past decade. “We are the Government and we should be supported” has been Morrison’s catch cry as well. The LNP wants flag-waving, not questions. Morrison is doing an Abbott crying, and always loudly that nobody loves his government loves or supports him despite the fact that all he’s done for the past 3 years has been campaigning for this election and doing it badly.
1) Abbott closed down Radio Australia and created a vacuum in the region
2) Abbott was far more interested in Europe War Memorials, Knighthoods and Shirt-fronting Putin. Being a Friend of China was a political and economic advantage.
3) However Murdoch Media were constantly rubbing China the wrong way and China asked the Abbott government to intervene but they ignored it because Murdoch was a far more essential associate of the LNP. He was their publicist.
4) Morrison and Dutton have always known “impressing Murdoch in Australian politics was a must”. More so than being friends of China’s and so they set out to do just that as neither were really Murdoch’s picks. China simply ran second to Domestic politics, the next election was always in the front of mind. Without Murdoch Media the LNP were dead in the water. It’s Murdoch that makes MORRISON’s MIRACLES HAPPEN.
As the Coalition campaign seeks to revive the talking point that Labor always “takes China’s side”, Scott Morrison implored reporters to “just look at the record”. So we did just that and found the claims by the prime minister and his senior ministers are either factually inaccurate, misleading, or lack context.
If you want PEACE
There’s a long and rich tradition of the Left’s opposition to militarism that dates back to the First International. It’s an excellent resource for understanding the origins of war under capitalism and helping leftists maintain our clear opposition to it.
Source: The Left Has a Long, Proud Tradition of Opposing War
The Real Nazi of Eastern Europe
Pointing to historical timelines, history professors are highlighting how Putin’s decisions are relatively similar to the same ones German dictator Adolph Hitler made during Operation Barbarossa, the mission he led when the German army invaded the Soviet Union.
Last week Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells called Mr Morrison unfit to be Prime Minister and said he had campaigned against a preselection rival, Michael Towke, because of his Lebanese heritage. The contents of statutory declarations signed in 2016 by Mr Towke and a preselector, Scott Chapman, were made public this weekend – first reported by The Saturday Paper – and included claims Mr Morrison had made comments about the political downsides of Mr Towke’s race while spreading misplaced rumours that he was a Muslim. “These are quite malicious and bitter slurs, which are deeply offensive, and I reject them absolutely,” Mr Morrison said while campaigning in Tasmania on Sunday.
Source: Scott Morrison engulfed by racism accusation as campaign looms
Liar
On August 16, 2010, five days before the federal election, Julia Gillard said “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”. On August 20, the day before the election, she said “I don’t rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism. I rule out a carbon tax.” When she announced the market-based carbon pricing scheme on February 24, 2011, the government’s press release said: The two-year plan for a carbon price mechanism will start with a fixed price period for three to five years before transitioning to an emissions trading scheme. Despite these easily verifiable facts, Peta Credlin and Alan Jones decided it would be politically expedient to label Gillard a liar, even promoting the puerile putdown “Juliar”. The fact that the Coalition got rid of a well-functioning emissions trading scheme only to introduce their own fatally flawed emissions reduction fund and carbon offsets scheme shows they are far more interested in the politics than the outcomes. Julia did not lie. Scott, on the other hand – well, how long have you got?
Source: A tale of two “liars” – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us,” declared Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. “It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” This conception of Ukrainian history forms the bedrock of Putin’s justification for invading the former Soviet republic, independent since 1991. On this week’s podcast, Ryan Grim talks with Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko about his country’s history, from the Dark Ages up the current war. They discuss Ukraine’s history of anarchist politics, the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that toppled pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, and the tangled question of modern Ukrainian identity.
Source: Deconstructed: The War Over Ukrainian History and Identity
Ukrainians tell a story of the origins of the Ukrainian nation going back to 11th century Kyiv, surviving centuries of oppression by Russia and Poland, and, finally, emerging out of the wreckage of the Soviet Union as a sovereign Ukrainian state in 1991.
Source: Ukraine as a ‘borderland’: a brief history of Ukraine’s place between Europe and Russia
The Reds are back. Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National government has recently launched an offensive of “red-baiting”, a practice long thought consigned to the history books, in preparation for an anticipated May 2022 election. Last November, Defence Minister Peter Dutton hounded Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, charging her with “not standing up for [Australian] values” in comments on the China-Taiwan dispute. This week, News Corp has targeted Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese after the Chinese Global Times offered him some backhanded compliments. A video also emerged of Albanese speaking Mandarin at an economic summit, and he was found to have participated in a forum for Tribune, newspaper of the defunct Communist Party of Australia. (This interview, it should be noted, was 31 years ago.) Such claims have long plagued the progressive side of politics. Since the first news of the Bolshevik victory in the 1917 Russian Revolution reached our shores, fears of Australia following Vladimir Lenin’s lead have been used and abused by conservative politicians for electoral gain. But, how successful have these “moral panics” been? And do they still pass muster with today’s electorate?
The Liberal Party claims its ethos is “free thinking” individuals. It’s reality is to create and action Institutional systems to produce the opposite. Single-minded thought is a priority and Education is their training ground. Education to teach individuals to think freely is in no way on their agenda and resistense begins in primary schools. Training not learning the emphasis and a strict control of history the planned method. History turned into myth and learned as truth. Hitler, it must be reminded, had exactly the same program in mind.
Everyone has an opinion about what should go into history curriculum. Politicians are especially good at expressing theirs. The acting federal education minister, Stuart Robert, has announced a delay in approving the revised Australian Curriculum until at least April. This means the ongoing debate about Australian history in the curriculum is likely to be dragged out to the eve of the next federal election. History curriculum is political but should not be used as a political plaything at election time. The federal government and Western Australian government are concerned that the revised history curriculum is “very busy”. Robert said Western civilisation “is well and truly back in the curriculum, but it remains quite cluttered”.
Source: The national history curriculum should not be used and abused as an election issue
Chief Justice Roger Taney said that members of the “Negro race” were not U.S. citizens and that they had no federal rights at all that white men were bound to respect, including the right to sue in federal court. He actually spoke of whites as the “citizen race” to the exclusion of “Negroes” and “Indians,” who were not eligible (unlike white immigrants from Europe) for naturalization. So President Biden’s nominee will be joining a court that once upon a time denied that Harriet Robinson Scott was or could be a citizen or had any human or civil rights at all. Harriet lived to see the Emancipation Proclamation and the Fourteenth Amendment, which bestowed citizenship on everyone born in the US. Only people who privately still believe in the exclusive privileges of the white “citizen race” will complain about having an African-American woman on the Supreme Court, in an epochal slap in the face to moral monsters like Chief Justice Taney.
Perpetuation of the myth that White settlers are the superior people of Western nations is inspiring racism and right-wing extremism, writes Bilal Cleland.
According to Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the rigidity of Facebook’s DIO roster risks causing what she described as “cultural and historical erasure,” a status quo under which one can’t publicly and freely discuss a group designated as an enemy by the U.S., even after that enemy ceases to exist. “We’ve seen this with some groups in Latin America that are still on the U.S. [terror] list, like FARC,” the Colombian guerrilla army that dissolved in 2017 but remains banned from free discussion under Facebook policy. “At some point, you have to be able to talk about these things.”
Source: Facebook’s Tamil Censorship Highlights Risks to Everyone
“The election of the Howard government marked a paradigm shift in welfare policy with the implementation of far reaching reforms around the concept of mutual obligation,” they wrote. “Howard’s new welfare paradigm defined welfare as a problem associated with ‘dependency culture’ and linked reforms to specific social groups (single mothers, young unemployed, new migrants).”
This groundbreaking volume fills a gaping hole in the literature on global peace movements, bringing to the fore the many peace movements and peacemakers of the Muslim world. From Senegalese Sufi orders to Bosnian women’s organizations to Indian Muslim freedom fighters who were allies of Mahatma Gandhi against British colonialism, it shows that history is replete with colorful personalities from the Muslim world who made a stand for peaceful methods.”
Source: You heard that Right – “Peace Movements in Islam” – Juan’s new Book Challenges Stereotypes
But we’re not as generous now. Even though the American economy is far larger than it was then, the middle class is a smaller share of it. For the last four decades America has been dividing into well-off professionals who don’t feel any connection to the poor, and a beleaguered working class that’s easily convinced any help to the poor will cause their taxes to increase. Hence, in 1996 even a Democratic president decided to end aid to poor kids, largely because polls showed that most Americans — including the vast majority of the working class — no longer supported welfare. Twenty-five years later — and even after the awful consequences of that decision have become apparent — a Democratic Congress has chosen not to provide permanent help to the nation’s poor kids. In other words, I don’t think we’ve prioritized the elderly poor over poor children. The big difference is we have become far less equal as a society, which has made us less willing to remedy poverty at all.
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