It is not difficult to
speculate about what a Neo-Fascist government, masquerading as a “Liberal”
government, will do and will not do. The new Australian Government has begun a
process of turning Australia into the nation that many Australians thought was
in the past. Australians, however, seem oblivious to the likely effect of the
changes and Australia’s place in the world.
On the international
stage, the new Australian Government follows the same script of past Australian
governments by remaining an obedient U.S. lapdog. It has immediately recognised
the illegitimate U.S.-installed Neo-Fascist junta in Ukraine and imposed, as
directed by the U.S., sanctions on certain Russian individuals. Australian
politicians are not well-known for their intelligence, especially when they
have to choose between defending Australian interests and U.S. interests. If
Russia retaliates, the sanctions will backfire and the Australian farmers will
bear the brunt. The new Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a practicing Catholic and a
clone of the bigoted John Howard, obediently echoes the U.S. regime and blames
Russia for the U.S.-sponsored upheaval in Ukraine.
Australia has also voted
with the U.S. in favour of UN General Assembly Resolution A/68/L.39 condemning Russia’s legitimate
action in the Crimea. One wonders, if Australia is concern about “international
law”, why the Australian (“Liberal”) government did not impose sanctions
against U.S. and British officials when the two governments committed one of
history’s greatest criminal acts of premeditated aggression against the
sovereign nation of Iraq in 2003. Australia, of course, was a willing
participant in the bloodbath and remains complicit in all U.S.-British war
crimes. The invasion and occupation of Iraq destroyed Iraq as a modern nation
and caused the death of more than 1.5 million of innocent Iraqis. Today’s Iraq
is in ruins, poor and mired by U.S.-inflamed violence. To further prove its
support to U.S militarism (participating in U.S. aggression), the Abbott
Government will spend $12.4 billion buying 58 F-35 fighter aircrafts, at the
same time the new Government is cutting funding to education and health.
Australia’s support for
the fascist state of Israel and its annexation of Palestinian land has, in
recent times, raised eyebrows in Australia and around the world. On 17 January
2014, on a visit to Israel to attend the funeral of Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s
most decorated war criminals, the inexperienced and naïve Australian Foreign Minister,
Julie Bishop (the only female in Abbott’s Government), made headlines when she
questioned the international law that has declared Israel’s colonies on
Palestinian land are illegal.
We do know it is a fact
that the Israeli colonies on Palestinian land are in violation of UN
Resolutions, including Security Council Resolution 465 of 1980,
deeming Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem and its settlements on occupied land
to be illegal. According to the Fourth Article of the Geneva Convention, signed
by Australia, it is a war crime for an occupying power to “transfer part of its
own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. In 2004, the
International Court of Justice ruled “the Israeli settlements [colonies] in
occupied Palestinian Territories (including East Jerusalem) have been
established in breach of international law”. The foreign minister of a country
that claims to “play a significant role” in international affairs should know
something about international law. It was later revealed that Ms Bishop was
instructed by her handlers, the extreme right-wing and anti-Muslim Jewish lobby
in Australia, to endorse Israel’s fascist policies of annexing Palestinian land.
Her empty and unwise comment prompted the former Foreign Minister, Mr Bob Carr,
to make a useful statement. "I found it very frustrating that we couldn't
issue, for example, a routine expression of concern about the spread of Israeli
settlements on the West Bank." (ABC 7:30
Report, 09 April 2014).
Another
important issue is Australia’s impacts on the environment. Prime Minister Tony
Abbott has embarked on reversing the progressive legislation and policies that
have been introduced by the last Labor government of Prime Minister Julia
Gillard. The Abbott gang have already dismissed the science of climate change
as fiction. Mr Abbott’s first priority is to abolish the carbon price, wrongly
known as the “mining tax”, to appease mining corporations and the “super rich”.
Mr Abbot is telling the ignorant and fearful Australian masses that electricity
will be cheaper if the mining tax is abolished. It is just another lie, like
all his pre-election broken promises. Electricity cost is increasing no matter
what the Government is saying. The policy to create clean renewable energy and
restore some of the damage to the environment is already consigned to the
‘dustbin of history’. Abbott’s advisor is the Business Council of Australia,
which represents the CEOs of the top 100 corporations.
Mr
Abbott’s destructive plan to clear what remains of Australia’s old growth forests
will further accelerate global warming. Deforestation releases
large quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere, which
increases the overall carbon emissions and exacerbates anthropogenic climate
change. In
fact, “deforestation
adds more atmospheric CO2
than the sum total of cars and trucks on the world's roads”. (Scientific American, November 2012). In his recent tour of
the state of Tasmania, Mr Abbott told a packed room of redneck tree loggers:
"You are the ultimate conservationists”. Hearing this, some Australians
must felt very sick indeed. Mr Abbott’s aim was to appease the Timber Industry
and gain the votes of a few hundred tree loggers.
Mr
Abbott wants to delist a world heritage (Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area)
listing of 74,000 hectares of forest in Tasmania for clearing. Australia emits about 1.5 per cent of global
GHG emissions. However, on a per capita basis, Australia is one of
the world's largest polluters. Australia's per capita CO2 emissions
are nearly twice the OECD average and more than four times the world average. The largest contributor
to Australia's emissions is electricity generation (using coal), accounting for
36 per cent of total emissions and agriculture (land clearing and water-intensive
monoculture), accounting for another 18 per cent. Furthermore, Australians’
love affair with the car and lack of worthy regulations to reduce emissions and
to adapt to changes have great impact on the environment in terms of GHG, air quality, ozone
depletion, water quality, and use of natural resources. According to the Australian Bureau of
Statistics, there are 750 motor vehicles per 1000 Australians, one of
the highest in the world and increasing exponentially (ABS, 2013). A motor
vehicle emits an average of 4 to 5 tonnes of CO2 per year into the
atmosphere (1litre petrol = 2.3 kg of CO2). Australians
can take responsibility by mobilising (changing their habits) to reverse the
ongoing destructive policies of their government.
Meanwhile, Australia’s
“War on Refugees” is continuing with horrendous results. The Australian navy is
now conducting military operations against a few hundred desperate refugees,
who risk their lives to come to Australia by boat, intercepting them on the
high sea and returning them back to Indonesia in breach of the UNHCR Convention.
The war’s latest victim was a 23-year-old Iranian refugee Reza Berati murdered
by Papua New Guinea thugs hired by the Australian Government to guard the
prison camp housing refugees on Manus Island. The notoriety of PNG and its
reputation as a lawless country racked by violence is used as a deterrent to
refugees. The Camp is run by the British Security G4S, a private security
company that helps Israel run prisons at which Palestinian prisoners are held
without trial and subjected to torture. According to Ruth Hudson, a lawyer with
Stacks Goudkamp law firm in Sydney, the refugees “are being involuntarily
detained in torturous, inhumane and degrading conditions including being
exposed to possible murder, attempted murder, threats to kill, threats of
cannibalism, grievous bodily harm and obviously the very unfit living conditions”.
According to reporter Natalie O’Brian: “photographs smuggled out [of Manus Island camp] show
detainees holding their identity cards and showing the wounds they suffered.
The pictures show slashed throats, large machete cuts to the scalp, bruises and
a bullet wound above the buttocks’. (Mad and Missing from Manus Island, The Age, 10 May 2014).
According to the ABC, journalists
and media who visited the refugee camp on Manus Island have been ordered (and
threatened) to delete video footage. It is the Australian Government’s view
that anything that contradicts the Government’s own narrative is unacceptable
and should not be made available to Australians. Anyone who speaks out or wants
to speak out on behalf of refugees will be intimidated and bullied by the
Department of Immigration.
Like all refugee deaths, Berati’s
death is seen by Australians as comeuppance. Contrast this cruelty of Australia
towards desperate refugees with that of Sweden. Sweden, a country with less
than half of Australia’s population and several times smaller in size, has a history
of welcoming refugees. In 2013 Sweden welcomed over 15,000 displaced Syrian refugees.
Australia agreed to settle only 500 Syrian refugees as part of its existing
annual intake, which is capped at 13,700 refugees. While Sweden would like to
see other EU countries take in refugees, unlike Australia, Sweden has refrained
from sending refugees to other countries.
In
addition to PNG and Nauru, the Australian Government has co-opted the
governments of other poor countries (e.g., Cambodia) with appalling human
rights records to imprison refugees destined for Australia. The irony is that the
governments of these countries have lobbied successive Australian governments
to allow their nationals to do seasonal work in Australia. The draconian policy
is inhumane and in violation of the UNHCR Convention. Furthermore, Australia is
also trafficking hundreds of children across national borders, causing serious
abrogation of duty of care and violating UN protocols. There
are nearly 1,000 children detained behind razor wire camps in Australia and
another 177 children detained in grim conditions in Nauru. Their long detention
period is "being used as a form of deterrence to refugees, and placing
children at risk”, said Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human
Rights Commission. Many of these children are suffering acute psychological stress. One
wonders how Australians would feel if the same treatments were applied to their
own children?
Without a voice to defend
them, refugees are demonised and used as scapegoats by politicians and the
media to promote racism and xenophobia among Australians. At the same time,
approximately 100,000 backpackers from Britain, Ireland and former bogus
students from India and China are left unbothered to live and work in Australia
(illegally) even though they have overstayed their visas.
Although most Australians
know that the Government’s refugee policy is cruel, a poll in January 2014
found 60 per cent of Australians support the Government policy of harsh
treatment of refugees and urge the Government to “increase the severity” of the
policy. As Henry Giroux writes, “Shallow consumerism coupled with an
indifference to the needs and suffering of others has produce a politics of
disengagement and a culture of moral irresponsibility”.
Moreover,
the anti-refugee contagion has infected the new waves of economic and “life-style”
seeking immigrants from Europe, Britain, New Zealand, and Asia (overwhelmingly
Chinese and Indians). This writer has, in the past, interviewed newly arrived immigrants
(Brits, Indians, Europeans and
Chinese) and can attest that the majority of these new immigrants are bigoted
racists and hold hostile views towards refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous
Australians in particular. They feel inferior to white Australians, but very
superior to other non-white immigrants and refugees. Most of these new immigrants
have resources, know how to manipulate the corrupt Australian Immigration
system, and had no problem entering Australia on bogus student visas and the
flawed “Skilled Occupation” visas. As a result, the education system has turned
into a predatory broken system, and Australia’s skilled (and unskilled)
workforce has well and truly reached saturation levels. Furthermore, many of
these new immigrants (the ethnic yuppies) are recruited by white Anglo Australians
and placed in important positions to provide a mask to cover the ugly face of Australian
racism. To use an
analogy by American sociologist James Petras, the new immigrants imitate the
worst of white Australians’ racism and their attitudes towards refugees and
other dark-skinned immigrants are driven by white Australians identities that
preclude any sense of solidarity with other immigrants. In addition, these new immigrants
have brought with them all the paraphernalia of racism and cultural malaise
that they were expected to leave in their own homelands. If they own businesses
(most of them do), they treat their employees the same way they were treated back
home and pay them the same wages they were paid back home.
While
refugees are not saints – there are bad ones – most of them (particularly the young),
if given the opportunity, have shown themselves to be more loyal and adaptive
to life in Australia.
The
Abbott Government is considering introducing legislation that protects racist
and bigoted Australians, despite opposition from the two most populous states,
NSW and Victoria. The two states released a joint statement warning "the
proposed changes threaten the social cohesion and well-being of not just our
states' culturally and religiously diverse communities, but also the wider
Australian community". Attorney-General George Brandis, “Australia’s top
law maker”, who compares himself to Voltaire (an insult to a great man), stated
that, “Australians do have rights to say things that other people find
offensive or insulting or bigoted”. In other words, white Australians have the
right to incite hatred and decide on what racism is and what it is not. But
white Australians have always had the right to be bigoted racists, and do not
need new legislation to protect them. A society that proposes to legalise
bigotry and has put bigots’ rights ahead of protections for
the most vulnerable Australians (Muslims and Indigenous Australians) has no right to call
itself civilised. Australia remains a backward society.
It
is important to emphasise that, while most Australians claim to abhor racism
and often brag about Australia’s “fair go” attitude, racism is deeply
entrenched in Australian society. You only have to scratch the thin surface and
the venom of racism and aggression will be spewed out. Anyone who complains
about victimisation and stands up to racism will have to face dire consequences.
With the exception of a tiny minority of decent and honest Australians, most
Australians breathe racism and cannot live without it. From early childhood,
Australians are conditioned by the media (TV in particular), music, sport,
pornography, politicians and even their parents, to objectify others –
dark-skinned people and women. They are fed a daily American diet of consumerism,
racism, and xenophobia. By the time they have reached adulthood, Australians
are completely indoctrinated and brainwashed. They see the world in black and
white. They are treated by the political and media establishments (the elite)
as “restless children”.
Unlike the overt violent racism that is practised in many other countries
(e.g., India, Israel, U.S.A. and parts of Europe), Australian racism is institutionalised
systemic (more subtle) racism nurtured and/or exploited by white Australian
elites. The Government and its agencies, the media, the education system, the
justice system, and the police depend on the contagion of racism to function.
Jobs, particularly in government departments and in higher education, are
exclusively reserved for white Australians and Brits to preserve white
privilege. At Australian universities, known as the breeding grounds for elite
racism, this writer – as a student and as a staff – has experienced the most
bigoted form of racism; not by students, but by senior academics and executives.
These are the most bigoted and racist Australians. They are protected by the
high walls of the universities and a culture of rampant corruption unmatched by
any other country. Their main target for discrimination and exclusion is Australians
from non-Anglo-Saxon and low socio-economic backgrounds. Despite government
funding, the number of Australian students from low socio-economic backgrounds
in higher education remains low.
For example, at Australian universities racism is practised
overtly and designed to enforce white supremacy. Employment decisions in
Australian universities are not based on merit; they are made on the basis of nepotism
and cronyism. A case in point is the daughter of the former
University of Queensland’s vice-chancellor Paul Greenfield, who jumped 343
better-qualified candidates to gain entry to a highly-competitive medicine
course. A report by the Crime and Misconduct Commission found that the then
VC’s daughter was not qualified to be offered a place in the
2011 medicine intake and at least four other senior officials at the university
were informed it was improper. Only when someone blew the
whistle and exposed the corruption – and it is very rare – did Mr Greenfield
resign. But not without a generous handshake paid for by the students. After he
left, his “mates” took-over the running of the University, one of Australia’s
largest public universities. Now and then, a few crumbs are
thrown for those “ethnic Australians” who are ready to serve whites and provide
a veneer for a shallow “multiculturalism”, which is nothing more than a
collection of designated ethnic boxes – they despise each other – designed to
protect white supremacy. The latest Mapping Social Cohesion survey by the Scanlon Foundation (PDF) found 19 per cent of Australians were
discriminated against because of their skin colour, ethnic origin or religious
beliefs last year – up from 12 per cent in 2012. It was the highest level since
the survey began in 2007.
Finally, Indigenous
Australians continue to suffer under white-Anglo rules. Indigenous Australians
make up 2.3 per cent of the Australian adult population, but account for 26 per
cent of all adult Australian prisoners. Furthermore, Australian authorities
continue the racist policy of removing Indigenous children and babies from
their biological parents. In addition to having a lucrative market among
whites, the criminal policy is creating a new stolen generation. Imagine the
outrage if white children and babies were forcibly taken from their parents and
sold in the black market. Moreover, preventable diseases like trachoma and gonococcal
conjunctivitis are two eye infections that have been eradicated around world yet continue
to cause havoc among Australian Indigenous communities. It is high time
Australians stop bragging about Australia’s “fair go” myth.
Only
by pursuing an independent path and abandoning its race-based inhumane policies,
can Australia move forward and join a truly civilised community of nations. It
is up to Australians to hold their government accountable and deny it
constituency to carry out changes that affect not only most Australians but
also other human beings. Overcoming self-induced ignorance and fear is the
first step to a truly free and sovereign Australia.
Ghali Hassan is an
independent researcher and writer living in Australia.
Read the bio and more articles by
Axis of Logic columnist Ghali Hassan
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