"There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future. Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time. That is why the parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, 13 February 2008.

This is a diary about the stories that form a country. About the actions, decisions, events and ramifications that crystallise the collective consciousness of a nation. It’s a story about confronting an attempted cultural genocide. It’s a story about grief, healing, and finally, hope. It’s a long story in itself, but I hope you’ll come with me, because I watched history being made yesterday, and it was an incredible privilege that I want to tell and share. I've included music to help you on the journey.

I had a lovely diary written, linkies and all, but somehow the draft diary monster ate it.

So I'll keep this brief.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum is about to take place, and this year it's in Sydney, hosted by Bush's biggest fan, Australian Prime Minister John Howard. On their agenda is more bullshit and obfuscation to undermine global efforts to negotiate the post-Kyoto climate change agreement. Their number one aim in this area is to resist efforts to set meaningful global greenhouse gas reduction targets.

And that's where you come in.

On the back fo several excellent (and in two cases, utterly heartbreaking) diaries discussing the impacts of misogyny and violence against women, I woke up this morning to a report on yet another piece of research that highlights just how f*cked up right wing "values" are when it comes to women.

From The Age (the best mainstream Australian paper for all those who make the mistake of heading to the right-wing Murdoch rag The Australian):

I'm hesitant to add yet another diary to the recent flood on what is happening in Lebanon, but I feel I have some facts that will help in terms of understanding and perspective.

There are 24,000 Australians in Lebanon; most of them are dual citizens. Several hundred of those families are trapped in the extremely dangerous southern part which Israel is currently focussing its bombing on. Australia holds grave fears for its people.

This diary is long, as a result of going through those changes in detail, and offering some analysis in terms of the underlying factors and facts relating to these changes.
[cross-posted at Booman & European Tribunes]

I don't apologise for the length, as this is without doubt the most major, fundamental restructuring of Australian working life proposed in probably 50 years. This is Howard's attempt to turn us into, once again, a cardboard cut-out of the US system, focussing on all the bad bits for individual workers, on breaking the back of the unions, and handing all the control to big business. It offers a nightmare vision that must be fought, and I fervently hope, denied.

If you are not interested in Australia, or industrial relations, this is not the diary for you.

Hi Michael,

First up I want to acknowledge the time and effort you are putting into this conversation, and simply, thank you.

This is my reply to Soonergrunt, who wrote me a most  thoughtful and honest reply on this thread.

please read on.

please also note that I may not reply for 12 hours from posting because of the time difference.

Once again, the
Asia Times is the only newspaper with the insight and guts to state baldly what is really going on here:

"A report in Newsweek that US military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated the Koran - subsequently retracted - initially set off protests....These protests have escalated and are expected to come to a head on May 27, when Islamic movements in 25 countries, notably Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, will launch mass gatherings.

A largely disjointed al-Qaeda could not have wished for better, as its underlying ideology is to stoke the fires of a civilizational battle leading to Armageddon - which the Bible sees as the final battle between the forces of good and evil, prophesied to occur at the end of the world when Christ will return to smite his enemies, led by the Antichrist. The same battle is predicted in the Islamic faith."

REad on for more from journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. .

That's the findings of a BBC World Service poll that surveyed 23,500 people across 23 countries.  In fact, the poll found overwhelming support for a reformed, stronger UN, with an expanded Security Council membership, and support for the removal of veto power from current permanent Security Council members.

The poll was conducted prior to Kofi Annan's announcement of a sweeping reform package for the UN, which I diarised in detail here.

The proposal to expand the Security Council, a key platform of Annan's reform agenda, was supported in 22 out of the 23 countries surveyed by the BBC poll. The results of the poll may well have lifted Annan's spirits and determination to pursue his radical reform agenda, in the face of unprecedented personal attacks on the UN Secretary-General. Read on for more...

Right, now I've got your attention. Bigger things are afoot people, bigger even than a hovering feeding tube. A hugely comoprehensive, radical raft of reforms have just been proposed for the UN, that if accepted, will change international relations as we know them. So take the time to read about it, either starting with my diary yesterday, or Madelaine Albright's take on the specific reforms posed around the doctrine of pre-emption. More below.

While the US and alas other parts of the world (the Murdoch media in Australia has been full of it) are utterly distracted by the Sciavo case, major changes are afoot at the United Nations.

Kofi Annan has proposed the largest reforms to the organisation for over 60 years, and they are changes that, if accepted, will have significant ramifications for international relations, the global power balance, and how nations work (or don't) together on issues such as international crises, human rights, military intervention, and global security. UN members will have a chance to vote on these changes in September this year, but in the meantime, expect negotiations and politicking to escalate dramatically, with so much at stake.

Keep reading to find out more...

Through the excellent diaries of SusanHu in particular, Kossians have read about the in-house treatment of ex-Guantanamo detainee Mamdou Habib, and since his release, his disgusting treatment by Australian Authorities.

Australia's acquiescence and active support of the USA's policies and treatment of suspected terrorists is in many ways, simply a shallow reflection of much deeper and insidious breakdowns in civil society, promulgated by our respective governments - although more often than not now, I feel I should say `regime' instead of government.

Which brings me to the subject of this diary. The USA and Australia's actively cultivated decline in adherence to basic human rights law, and the distortion of language to not just justify, but institutionalise such practices bear all the hall-marks of progressive moves towards fascism in both countries.

more below

Americans may not be aware that right-wing religious zealots are also trying to reawaken the abortion debate in Australia.

This response, from one of my favourite columnists (found in the otherwise frequently bereft Murdoch broadsheet the Australian), I think transcends geographical borders. It is both oustandingly on the money, and hilarious.

I'm reproducing this in full because it's short and publicly available. Full credit and copyright to the wonderful Ms Emma Tom.

Enjoy

georgia10 wrote a great essay on our generation (20s - 30s), but in truth I think she only really scraped a decent-sized hole in the surface of this topic, and there is much more to be teased out. (I'm 30 btw, but Australian, so there are some subtle differences.)

I'd like to offer some thoughts back, mainly in the spirit of continuing what I see to be a vital conversation.

please read on.....

I believe strongly that this is an election the USA and the world can't afford Kerry to lose, because of the threat Bush poses. All votes for Kerry are therefore valuable, no matter where sourced from. Yet it seems to me that far more effort and interest is displayed by Dems in finding common ground with & persuading centrist Republicans, than in doing the same with Nader voters.

Given that Nader is polling consistently at around 4% in many marginal states, there is clear reason to try and woo some of those vote back. And from the longer-term perspective of the fate of American democracy, I think this is a critical issue that needs addressing. But before I launch into the meat of what I want to propose for discussion, let me spell out a couple of things:

* I am not writing a diary in support of Nader
*I am not writing a diary where I wish to discuss Nader's character / purpose in this election (and therefore why people are stupid/evil to support him, yadda yadda)
*I would greatly appreciate it if anyone who responds to this diary could please avoid talking about the above, as they are essentially irrelevant to the discussion I'd like to generate.

please read on...

Forgive me if I've missed it - I did a mega-quick scan of CNN and a couple of other major sites, but didn't see it, and I'm at work so can't devote more time. I didn't spot it in a diary either but see above).

A major Australian daily (www.theage.com.au) is carrying this story:

"The Pentagon has ordered an investigation into the awarding of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's five Vietnam War decorations.

The highly unusual inquiry is to be carried out by the Inspector-General's Office of the US Navy. Senator Kerry served as a Swift boat captain for four months in 1968, serving two tours of duty in Vietnam.

He was wounded in action and awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star.

But in the past month, details of his military service have become shrouded in a controversy that the navy has now decided warrants a full-blown search for the truth."

Now that the Republican Convention has finished, surely there is time to pause and take stock of events unfolding globally, and seek to understand their root cause, and implications for our governments at home.

The terrible tragedy at the Russian school in Beslan deserves more attention, to  bear witness to the  grief of those involved, and to learn about another battle between a 'government' and 'terrorists'.

Here is Australia it was ANZAC Day on April 25th, the day as a nation we commemorate our war dead. It sparked some personal reflection on the increasingly militaristic flavour to Australian society courtesy of John Howard's leadership; and then some broader reflection on the acceptability and indeed celebration of military and war themes within our Anglo culture (USA, UK, Australia).

With the unholy alliance of Blair, Bush and Howard, I feel an emphasis on the use of force as both acceptable and inherently just has cemented itself within our societies. It feels like a brutal rebuttal of the end of the Cold War, and certainly to me indicates the successful replacement of `communist' with `terrorist' as the ubiquitous, shadowy foe who is then used to justify the military-industrial complex, hegemony, hierarchical injustice and disregard for human rights, slaughter.

But rather than get caught up in the politics of war, I'd like to pose some questions about the role and place of war in our culture. If any spark your interest, pick and choose as you please.

What really got me thinking was an `innocuous' story in the local paper about an arms and militaria fair, talking in glowing terms of a `fun family day', and illustrated by pictures of children gazing in delight and wonder at an artillery gun, and a small boy being shown an army rifle by his father. One of the obvious features was that history was implicitly used to justify the interest.

Why do we think that an exhibition of items specifically designed to kill and maim is a suitable educative and entertaining venue for children?  Am I the only one disturbed by this and what it indicates about our culture?

The corollary of this here and then overseas has been the recent ANZAC Day & Iraqi war coverage - not so subtly, our media has gone from commemorating the dead and pausing to pray for peace, to celebrating our dead and the bloody deeds of war.

This then links for me with a growing personal disquiet over the language and ideas used to justify a stance against the current Iraqi conflict. Consistently, our liberal commentators, ourselves, we talk in terms not of the civilian dead, but in the number of dead aggressors (coalition soldiers) as increasingly unacceptable. What this tells me is that

1. we are entirely racist and capable only of truly empathising with dead strangers from our own country / ethinicity and incapable of extending that to others
2. we are so afraid of being called 'peaceniks', 'pacifists' etc. that we pander constantly to the right with such language and justifications
3. we have no will and are afraid to attempt to lead our fellow citizens towards a broader definition and upholding of the term 'humanity'

Am I missing something?

We talk of the cost to our economies and societies, and only secondarily of the the staggering cost to Iraq.

There is little questioning of the acts of our military, yet it now uses a system of warfare that delivers a soldier:civilian death ratio of 1:9 (and is in fact far higher in Iraq and Afghanistan).

There is an automatic assumption that are military are acting honourably. Yet a few stories I've seen documented through the Iraq conflict alone are:

a)the shooting of a 10 year old boy for trying to collect unspent munitions
b)the consistent bombing of civilian targets
c)the massacre of unarmed civilians at a protest in Fallujah
d)the shooting of several women who were 'in the way' of a 'military target'
e) a staggering number of dead and wounded journalists, including the barabic and malicious bombing of the Al Jazeera building
f)soldiers filmed shooting a wounded Iraqi soldier and cheering

So why is there an automatic assumption that our military are performing honourably, when there is ample evidence to the contrary? Why do we assume that a tool like the military, specifically designed to kill on a large scale, to dehumanise people to the point that they will kill and accept killing as a norm, will responsibly and justly police its own actions?

Why is the military history of our countries the normative factor, rather than the history of our peacetime?  Why do we commemorate our military fallen above and before the untold millions of civilians who lost their lives in past conflicts?

Why has `pacifist' become a dirty word? What's it going to take to turn Anglo culture away from a broad acceptance and celebration of the `necessity' of a highly militarised government and culture?