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ARCHIVES: 1 March - 7 March 2003 WHY TYRANNY FLOURISHES3 March 2003 Australian columnist Sian Prior recently lamented the cruel juxtaposition of baddies and goodies in relation to life on and off the stage. In books, and especially in movies, the bad guy always gets his or her comeuppance by the end. But when we leave the theatre or put down the book to re-enter real life, it's the bad guys who inevitably win. On the silver screen the ruthless gangster who calls in unpaid debts with hired assassins, the corrupt politician who treats the people who elected him as chumps, the cattle baron who preens his black mustachios while his henchmen rustle everyone's livestock...these are the quintessential bad guys who always go down before the credits roll. We especially cheer the cooperation of the townsfolk in routing the rustler and his mob because in real life the townsfolk don't give a shit and the bad guys rule with impunity. George W. Bush is mocked and hated throughout a world that sees him as all of the above, but he too is ruling with impunity. Saddam has remained in power for decades. Osama, dead or alive, will wreak havoc for the foreseeable future, Pinochet is still enjoying peace and tranquillity in his blood-stained dotage. Margaret Thatcher, certifiably mad, is revered by the Ayn Rand-worshipping corporate/political plutocracy. The list goes on and on. Tyrants rarely pay the price. It's the rest of us who do. And we pay through the nose because we are too uninvolved to stop the tyrants in the first place. This tendency of firmly shutting our front doors on civic responsibility has allowed lawmakers to ensure that there are no mechanisms in place for us to stop them when they go off the rails. We merely wake up one day and find ourselves at the mercy of a Bush, a Saddam, a Sharon, a Howard, a Blair. They are the masters, we are the servants. As civic sloth has been one of our defining characteristics since the dawn of time, allowing us the apparent freedom we enjoy seems more than we deserve from our contemptuous masters. Then again, while Biblical slavery was a lot of fun for the roast fowl and goblets-of-wine set, there was little profit in it. Modern masters know how easy it is for them to pass off their selfish ideologies and Pavlovian advertising, those well honed methods of control under the guise of freedom of choice. We are kept just free enough to rush from TV ad to pay cheque to consumer emporium to TV ad in perpetuum. Big Brother said, "Freedom is slavery". And he should know, since he's older than God. AFTER THE WAR: IRAQI OCCUPATION WILL BE OUTSOURCED TO MERCENARIES 4 March 2003 Bernard Barrett reports the following: ABC Radio National's "Background Briefing" program--After the War: the US and Iraq--looked at the proposed US occupation of Iraq and how it will be contracted out partly to private military contractors (PMCs). And one of the most prominent PMCs (a computer services firm called Computer Services Corporation - CSC) is operating in AUSTRALIA, with a presence in Melbourne (see below). Points made by "Background Briefing" included the following: • After the US invasion of Iraq, about one in every ten of the occupying personnel will be employed by a PMC. In a quick search through Google, I noticed many mentions of private military contractors such as DynCorp, including the following examples: US pulls out Karzai's military bodyguards WOWSERS RISE FROM THEIR CRYPTS ON CUE 5 March 2003 The Australia Institute's report New study of youth and pornography (click on "Media Releases" for one of those irritating PDF documents) has been seized by Government wowsers for a new round of attempted Internet censorship. Let me get my opinion out of the way before going any further. Internet filters for porn or anything else belong in the realm of a tax on air. Short of banning the Internet altogether (the reactionary's dream), shielding computer-literate children from porn is impossible. Parents are the only workable filters required. They need to make sure their children know as much about sex as their age will allow, and then to ask them to close any sites they may come across, as well as deleting e-mail spam. Further, they need to counsel their children on being wary of predators in chat sites. They also need to insure that the computer is in a room accessible to all members of the family. Kids are not going to linger over gaping crotches if mum or dad are likely to pass by on the way to the toilet. That's about the extent of what can, or should, be done. As for child pornography or violent porn, I am on the computer some eight hours a day and not once have I accidentally come across a site portraying such. In other words, I will have to ask Google to find them for me. Spam is another case. We all get emails pointing to sex sites. Just this morning there was an e-mail invitation to "Fuck my tits". I used to chuckle at such spam, now I just hit the delete button. Now then. Net porn must be constitute a real dilemma for "family values" conservatives (for whom the family, in terms of this conservative government's legislation, means nothing). On the one hand, they know that internet pornography is the most successful model for business on that medium. On the other hand, porn conflicts with their expedient, vote-getting morality. Believe me, every conservative on this planet would have a money making porn site as a subsidiary business if they could. We're talking about a black-hearted mob who would sell their grandmothers' soiled knickers if there was a market. (And, God knows, there probably is.) The Howard Government, like most EconoRat faddists of the last few decades, talk tough about the benefits of small government, but when it comes to cultural mores outside their ideological framework, they come on like a Stalinist regime, ready to shove their social engineering down our throats. Thus, Wowser John and his inadequate Communications Minister Richard Alston have seized on the Institute's report with the usual missionary zeal. Among options being touted by Alston is a nationwide filter of all internet material coming into Australia. Gobsmacking idiocy, yes, but it plays to the same demographic who are scared out of their wits by refugees, terrorists, single mothers, the unemployed, and everything else this government has told them to fear. In the end, the greatest problem with pornography is that it is addictive and leads to the treatment of women as sexual objects. Like everything in life, it should be taken in moderation, or not at all. Because like prostitution, it will not go away. This is the lesson most people have learned in the course of their haphazard maturation. Conservatives have never, nor will they ever, get it. There is a period (usually fleeting) in the gnashing percolations of adolescence when the vastness of life's potential is so overwhelming that we become almost moribund. We want nothing to change and Stasis is our God. Conservatives, those human beings deprived of courage, seem never to have recovered from this failure of nerve. AMERICA NEEDS A MILITARY COUNTER-COUP 6 March 2003 The theft of America's government in 2000 was a coup by the Republican Party. Since then chaos has ensued as the world's remaining superpower struts and swaggers without challenge across the world stage. Being American, their strutting and swaggering is more like that of a schoolyard bully than a genuine tyrant. After all, America is the only country in the world where wizened Army Generals speak with boyish voices. It has been said that the average age of every American over thirty is sixteen. Which makes the current world dilemma so...so asinine. The human race has been slow to evolve, yes, but surely we don't deserve George W. Bush! He's been likened to a teenage glue sniffing gang leader, only instead of commanding a few pimple faced louts, he heads the most powerful military in the world. Me, I prefer the comparison to Crazy Lee in Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", except that Lee had a more humane sense of humour. Other than that, the two have a lot in common. Both like to kill and both have the telltale grin of a man with diminished frontal lobes; Dubya can't wipe it off his genetically weak face no matter what he's talking about. Faced with an intellectually deprived sociopath whose intent is to turn the world into a vassal of empire, there is only one solution that will avoid years of death and destruction in the battle to reinvent civilisation: Those in the American military who still have their heads screwed on should step in and take over the United States government and call fresh elections! Such a rupture on American soil has not occured since the Civil War, but it may shock the collective American psyche enough to restore their nation to the democracy envisaged by Lincoln and set out by their founding fathers. It's been a long, long time.BUSH TO INVADE POLAND IRAQ ON 23 MARCH 7 March 2003 War is an anachronism worshipped by atavists Gort Slypesunder Even though the war is already under way, illegitimate President George W. Bush will formalise the invasion of Iraq on the anniversary of Hitler's accession to dictator. It was on 23 March 1933 that Hitler's Third Reich passed the enabling act giving him full powers over life and death. What better date, 70 years later, to invade Iraq, thus acknowledging his empire-building predecessor while proclaiming to the world that he, George W. Bush, is the updated supreme commander of life and death on earth. Well, perhaps that's a bit fanciful. The acknowledgment bit, that is. Bush and his henchmen may be consciously refusing to acknowledge the lessons of history, but that just leaves them wide open to acting out their empire lust unconsciously. They won't know they are paying homage to Hitler, but they'll be doing it anyway. As events proceed inexorably, we who have more or less enjoyed a flourishing civilisation now know what the Germans went through during Hitler's rise to power. Under the mantle of "The Coalition of the Willing," a catch phrase steeped in American Christian fundamentalism, we who are part of it against our will must now watch helplessly as the latent racism and fearful xenophobia of the many is exploited and turned into a national psychosis by the warmongering few. For Americans, September 11 was the German equivalent of the Reichstag fire. The communists were blamed, but it was almost certainly Hitler's doing, a move to further consolidate power. It was in the aftermath, of well-founded suspicions met by murderous retaliation, that Germans began to accept their loss of freedom. Between the events of the Reichstag fire, the enabling act of 23 March 1933, and the ensuing invasions, all opposition to Hitler collapsed and people gradually became narcotised. During this time it became easier to cover up proper feelings of dread and disgust. Blinded by the comfort of their daily routines, they came to believe the relentless propaganda promoting the self-worship inherent in nationalism. A once thriving nation was finally enslaved. Will Americans follow this path to the cozy despair of enslavement? Only if they fail to exercise their ability to judge right from wrong in favour of a cowardly and wilful ignorance. As Hermann Goering said: "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." Here is another despairing summation of humanity, from SocratesSez, but it contains the seed of rebellion that will eventually topple the tyrants:"...this is the age of the great messiah Bush and this is not the America any of us have ever known. This is now a Texas Theocracy that murders at will and gives no quarter to kindness, mercy or the rights of humanity. This is a time of 'Total Information Awareness' and Patriot Acts that control the behavior of every individual and seek to usurp their thoughts in favor of faith. This is a time when people queue at the northern border in fear, to seek asylum from the United States and not asylum within. This is a time when men and boys are arrested without charge or trial and women with young girls and babies are left trembling in the snows of winter. This is a time when 'precision-guided' bombs and missiles are sent against innocent victims of the dictators our foreign policy once supported. This is the time of Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, it is a time when no man or woman is free, and fear is a greater power than knowledge. It is a time when the greedy, barbarous and cruel hold sway over the peoples and resources of the land. It is indeed a new dark age that has descended upon us all." This bleeding heart with balls is clearly not going to "be brought to the bidding of the leaders".I urge you to read the memoir, "Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner. He writes from the point of view of the everyday citizen, literally giving the reader an on-the-spot, blow by blow description of the rise of Hitler and the fall of the German people in the 1930s. The parallels are terrifying. |
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Published in Melbourne, Australia by the Political Prisoners of the Future.