http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow News and opinion from an authentic social democratic perspective - something which is virtually impossible to find in the print media these days. Entries are updated as information becomes available. Dates shown above the entries are therefore the dates when that particular entry was first posted. This blog is dedicated to the memory of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, who was assassinated by the Bush crime family in 1986, and to the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who is by far the most inspiring figure of political importance in the world today. en socialdemocracynow socialdemocracynow Sun, 14 May 2006 08:42:16 +0200 daily 1 ABOVE : John Howard with some of his Jewish admirers. Photos like those above may appear on Jewish websites, but they never appear in mainstream newspapers like the Herald , the Daily Telegraph and the Australian . It's not hard to see that such images are not considered appropriate for diffusion among Gentile populations, where they may not be regarded as sympathetically as they undoubtedly are among Jewish audiences. JOHN HOWARD QUOTE : 'The personal affection I have for the state of Israel, the personal regard I have for the Jewish people of the world, will never be diminished. It is something I hold dearly, something I value as part of my being and as part of what I have tried to do with my life.' ( SOURCE ) QUESTION : How does an Australian Methodist boy end up regarding 'the Jewish people of the world' as part of his 'being'? Wouldn't the most logical explanation be that Howard is actually a crypto-Jew? FURTHER READING : Brian McKinlay, "John Howard's Grand... Sun, 14 May 2006 08:42:16 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Sequel-to-previous-entry/60/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Sequel-to-previous-entry/60/ John Howard is off to Washington, reported the Sydney Morning Herald last night. According to this story, the purpose of the trip was to further cultivate relations with U.S. President George Bush: 'Mr Howard and Mr Bush will discuss the future of troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's nuclear program, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the growing importance of China and India in formal talks on Tuesday. The two leaders will meet informally on Sunday afternoon when Mr Howard will plant two saplings from the White House garden in the grounds of the Australian embassy. The trees are a gift from the president to mark the relationship between the two countries. President Bush will also host a black-tie dinner in the White House on Tuesday night - only the seventh such honour he has accorded to a visiting leader during his two terms of office.' What the Herald didn't tell Australian readers, but what the Australian Jewish News had no problem informing Australian Jews, is that... Sun, 14 May 2006 08:22:39 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/What-did-Howard-deserve-nai-rith-honour-And/59/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/What-did-Howard-deserve-nai-rith-honour-And/59/ Over the last few years, one of the more educational programmes that has appeared on Australian commercial television is Forensic Investigators . Despite being into its third series, the programme, whose executive producer is Fiona Baker, still has not touched Port Arthur. Given that this is the largest murder case in Australian history, and given the official claims that it is an open and shut case in which the perpetrator has correctly been identified and sentenced to life imprisonment, I decided to get in touch with Baker to find out what her reasons may be for ignoring what would seem to be a showcase study in Australian criminal forensics. BELOW : Fiona Baker of Forensic Investigators : I rang Southern Star, FI's production house, and learned that no programme had been made about Port Arthur because there were 'all kinds of legal issues' - and, anyway, it was left up to the discretion of the producer what programmes get made. Since I wanted to clarify the question of the 'legal... Tue, 02 May 2006 08:49:34 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Forensic-Investigators-case-study-the-Port-Arthur-coverup/58/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Forensic-Investigators-case-study-the-Port-Arthur-coverup/58/ One of the biggest mysteries in Australian history - especially if you believe the official story and can't see what anyone would have to hide - is why the Australian media pays virtually no attention to the Port Arthur massacre whatsoever. This is a subject of endless bafflement to me, given that the tragedy represents the biggest murder case in the annals of modern Australian crime: 35 deaths and 22 injured. Yet the only episodes the media in this country deems to be of public interest are those serving to illustrate the narrative that has been imposed upon the event: the story of collective recovery from trauma and return to normality. Corny as it is, this is the story, the one story, the one and only story. Everything else has slipped down a memory hole. After the case vanished from the headlines, it lingered on in the public's attention only insofar as it was synonymous with the suffering of just one person: Walter Mikac, a photogenic young pharmacist from the nearby town of Nubeena, whose wife... Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:47:05 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-Port-Arthur-massacre-the-media-coverup-continues/57/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-Port-Arthur-massacre-the-media-coverup-continues/57/ Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of the most traumatic episode in modern Australian history, the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, April 28, 1996. In summary, Carl Wernerhoff writes in his new e-book, What's Going On?: A Critical Study of the Port Arthur Massacre , the story the appalled public was told 'was that shortly before 1.30 p.m. that cloudless Sunday afternoon, the gunman had entered the Broad Arrow Café at the Port Arthur Historical Site [PAHS] and picked off, with unfathomable callousness, one tourist after another. He killed a number of other individuals [including small children - ed ] as he exited the PAHS and holed himself up in a nearby tourist guest house, the Seascape, in a siege that only ended when he burned the building down the following morning (an event that was seen shortly afterwards on television).' As Wernerhoff explains, in the immediate aftermath of the shootings the alleged perpetrator - a 29-year old simpleton (IQ 66) with practically no shooting experience... Thu, 27 Apr 2006 05:49:35 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-Port-Arthur-massacre-ten-years-ago/56/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-Port-Arthur-massacre-ten-years-ago/56/ One of the myths that enjoys general acceptance on the left is actually a millstone around its neck: the idea that mass immigration does no harm to native workers' wages, working conditions and employment opportunities, and therefore opposition to it is misguided or else it is disguised racism. As I will show in this piece, the idea that immigration does not adversely affect native-born workers is so wrong it's delusional. (I leave aside for now the idea that anti-immigration views reflect 'racism' because - even if true - this raises the question of whether it is the proper role of leftwing political activists to seek to reform people of their racist views.) Greece, the European country which has experienced the highest influx of immigrants in recent times, offers an open and shut case of the negative impact of immigration on a country, albeit one that, as we shall see, neoliberal commentators have tried to paper over by making unsubstantiated assertions about popular attitudes. From 1991, onwards,... Fri, 21 Apr 2006 06:40:09 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Debunking-illusions-about-immigration-the-case-Greece/55/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Debunking-illusions-about-immigration-the-case-Greece/55/ In his most recent writings, an Australian-born journalist based in London, John Pilger, minces no words about the iniquities of either the Bush regime in Washington or the Blair cabal in London. In the wake of the Blair government's accelerating attack on traditional civil liberties, Pilger has taken to referring to the British government in the darkest tones, e.g., 'A small, determined and profoundly undemocratic group is killing freedom in Britain, just as it has killed literally in Iraq.' ( SOURCE ) Few could disagree. Yet I read most everything Pilger writes and, while much is excellent from a moral point of view, I can recall no occasion on which he expresses scepticism or disbelief about the preposterous official narratives of 9-11 or the London bombings of July 7, 2005, nor any indication that he recognizes the current wave of terrorism as a synthetic phenomenon. In Pilger's distorted take on terrorism, everything changed on September 11: 'In the sublime days before 11 September 2001,... Tue, 18 Apr 2006 07:21:02 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/John-Pilger-s-political-fairy-tale/54/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/John-Pilger-s-political-fairy-tale/54/ Noam Chomsky is undoubtedly an icon of the mainstream left. Since the Vietnam War era, he's acquired a reputation as the leading leftwing critic of U.S. foreign policy. During the 1980s, against the backdrop of Reaganism, his books became fixtures in most leftwing households, and by the 1990s he was unquestionably the world's most famous 'leftwing' intellectual. His star is clearly not on the wane, for a recent poll of so-called public intellectuals planted him firmly at the top. ( SOURCE ) Typical of the quasi-veneration in which Chomsky is held is the reaction of a self-described 'leftie' of my acquaintance who, at the mere mention of the man's name, flew into raptures. 'Chomsky knows so much !' I was informed. 'And you know what? he reads everything . He reads the New York Times from cover to cover . And he cites amazingly obscure magazines and journals ! Although my friend agreed with me that Chomsky probably had a team of researchers culling newspapers and magazines for him, this did not... Thu, 13 Apr 2006 05:11:45 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Suspect-superbrain-Noam-Chomsky/53/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Suspect-superbrain-Noam-Chomsky/53/ France scraps youth job law By Elizabeth Pineau Mon Apr 10, 8:32 AM ET French President Jacques Chirac on Monday scrapped a planned youth job law that provoked weeks of protests, in a climbdown opponents celebrated as an unqualified victory. The move was a personal blow to Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who had championed the First Job Contract (CPE) and seen his popularity slump with the mass opposition and unrest. In a televised statement, Villepin said he regretted that weeks of strikes and protests showed the CPE could not be applied but gave no details about his own political future, on the line over his handling of the dispute. "The necessary conditions of confidence and calm are not there, either among young people, or companies, to allow the application of the First Job Contract," Villepin said, adding he would open talks with unions on youth employment. ... Mon, 10 Apr 2006 17:45:36 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/V-is-for-Victory/52/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/V-is-for-Victory/52/ Wayne Madsen on the diplomatic crisis looming between the U.S. and Venezuela over an act of anti-American 'terrorism' in Caracas: U.S. ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield is spinning a Venezuelan vegetable, egg, and fruit protest pelting of his motorcade as some sort of terrorist attack. The U.S. State Department complained to Venezuela's ambassador in Washington that Venezuela was in violation of the international treaty on the protection of diplomats. Spinning an unfounded conspiracy theory (they are only conspiracy theories when the left-wing cites them), State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the incident in a poor Caracas neighborhood was condoned by the city's mayor, police, and local government. McCormack vowed that the United States will not be intimidated by such attacks of vegetables, fruit, and eggs on U.S. diplomatic vehicles. U.S. embassy spokesman Brian Penn bemoaned, ''Our car is stained all over . . . the motorcyclists were throwing things at us for at least 10... Sun, 09 Apr 2006 06:59:24 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/A-staged-anti-American-incident-in-Venezuela/51/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/A-staged-anti-American-incident-in-Venezuela/51/ The past week's astonishing wave of demonstrations in France only proves again something I have believed since 1995 (which was the last time that anything on the scale of the present demonstrations occurred in France): the French are the only people on the planet vigilant enough to deserve democracy. Almost everywhere else, apathy rules. In all the English-speaking countries, so-called 'reforms' have eroded wages and living conditions more or less continuously since the late 1970s. Hardly anyone has ever felt bothered to do something about it. Only in France, it seems, are people sufficiently motivated to take on their governments. When you think about it, the rest of us are totally bloody pathetic. Here in Australia, in keeping with our reactionary Anglo-Saxon traditions, everyone grumbles every time the government does something to erode our living standards and/or working conditions, but does precisely nothing about it. People screamed blue murder, for instance, about the Howard government's... Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:54:27 +0200 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/In-praise-of-the-French/50/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/In-praise-of-the-French/50/ or, How the U.S. media struggles to keep the issue of Zionist control of American foreign policy buried. Part I: The New York Sun campaign The highlight of the past week was undoubtedly the publication of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," a working paper by the dean of Harvard's prestigious Kennedy School of Government, Dr. Stephen Walt, who is also Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Politics, and Dr. John J. Mearsheimer, Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago. (PDF download here ) This article was a clear, compelling and in every sense objective analysis of Israel's privileged relationship with the U.S. - one with which I am sure President Kennedy would have agreed heartily - even though I tend to disagree with the authors when they say that 'there is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway U.S. policy towards Israel.' (p.... Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:29:03 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Smearing-Walt-and-Mearsheimer/49/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Smearing-Walt-and-Mearsheimer/49/ There can be no question but that former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosovic, who died in his prison cell in Scheveningen in the Netherlands on March 11, was murdered: "Milosevic’s lawyer ... reported that his client had written a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just a day before he died pleading for help and charging that his jailers were giving him harmful drugs in an attempt to silence him. According to Dutch public television, a blood sample taken from Milosevic last month showed traces of a powerful drug used to treat leprosy which can neutralize other drugs the former Yugoslav leader was taking for high blood pressure and heart disease. ... [What's more] last month the court’s chief judge denied his request that he be allowed to receive treatment in Russia before resuming the trial." ( SOURCE ) Milosevic's murder proves that the International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) at the Hague is nothing more than a kangaroo court a la Nuremberg (where, as was pointed out in an... Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:46:31 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Milosevic-murdered/48/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Milosevic-murdered/48/ Today, February 28, 2006, social democrats all over the world mourn the assassination of Olof Palme , the last of the great Swedish social democrats and probably the last real social democrat ever to hold the top job in any country until the unexpected and still astonishing rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Do we know who murdered Palme? Perhaps we do. A petty criminal and longtime drug abuser, Christer Petterson, who died in 2004, confessed to the murder in 2001. He was identified as the assassin by Palme's wife, Lisbet, who was herself shot during the attack. Then, on February 24, 2006, Pettersson's close friend Roger Östlund claimed on his death bed that he had actually seen Pettersson shoot Olof Palme. ( SOURCE ) BELOW : Christer Petterson: Two motives have been offered for the murder. In 2001, Petterson's friend, Swedish journalist Gert Fylking, told the BBC that Petterson had had no grievance against Palme personally, but that while he was in prison, he had met someone who had.... Tue, 28 Feb 2006 02:04:01 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Twenty-years-ago-today-the-assassination-Olof-Palme/47/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/Twenty-years-ago-today-the-assassination-Olof-Palme/47/ NOTE : This is the conclusion of the previous entry, that seems to have been too long for Blogigo software. It doesn't make any sense on its own, so please read the previous section first! The entry begins here . BELOW : Dirk Moses of the University of Sydney's History Department: an example of the kind of academic hack under discussion. (For an excellent critique of Moses's disingenuous treatment of Holocaust revisionism, see here .) Moses reportedly refers to people who think there ought to be evidence for the Holocaust as 'crazed positivists.' Who would want to study history with this guy? In short, whether or not the Holocaust took place, the historiography of the Holocaust is a house of cards: it is a vast edifice constructed on the precarious foundation of mere transcriptions of documents which have never been examined by those who cite them and whose authenticity has never been and probably never can be established. One wonders how many academics have been honest enough to share... Sun, 26 Feb 2006 04:44:43 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/J-accuse-Conclusion-from-previous-entry/46/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/J-accuse-Conclusion-from-previous-entry/46/ Historians sometimes think of themselves as truthtellers and iconoclasts. One Canadian historian, for example, places the following quotation from Khrushchev as an epigraph at the head of her website: 'Historians are dangerous people. They are capable of upsetting everything.'(1) Yet this is only true of real historians, those who are prepared to tell the truth about the past without fear or favour. It is doubtful that more than a handful of such historians have appeared in any given century. Certainly, there is little reason to attribute to academic historians today either truthtelling or iconoclastic potential. Indeed, it is hard to think of a single academic historian who has ruffled a politician's feathers in a very long time, let alone one who has rocked a political establishment.(2) The risks of genuine scholarly independence, such as loss of tenure, the loss of prestige, professional and social ostracism, and the loss of a means of livelihood are so great that they ensure that most... Sun, 26 Feb 2006 04:15:23 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/accuse-indictment-academic-historians-for-their-unprofessional/45/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/accuse-indictment-academic-historians-for-their-unprofessional/45/ The right-wing Jyllands-Posten , the paper at the centre of the Danish cartoons affair, is an organ with a somewhat unsavoury past. Not only was it a forthright supporter of fascism during the interwar period, actually calling for the imposition of a dictatorship in Denmark in 1933, it is one of the main organs in an increasingly irrational Denmark for the dissemination of Islamophobia. That the furore over caricatures of Mohammed centres on Jyllands-Posten (by the way, the name means 'The Jutland Post') is no accident. There is evidence that, unbeknownst to the English-speaking world, the paper has been engaged in cranking up the 'clash of civilizations' for some years now. What's more, the impunity with which it has been allowed to do so is tantamount to proof that Denmark, at least in matters of the mind, is now Zionist-controlled territory. Back on August 11, 2002, Jyllands-Posten published a story written by a contracted freelancer, Stig Matthiesen, claiming that a militant Muslim group... Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:08:55 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/False-news-prior-Muslim-controversy-involving-Jyllands/44/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/False-news-prior-Muslim-controversy-involving-Jyllands/44/ 1. In September 2005, Flemming Rose, culture editor for the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten , which in April 2003 engaged in self-censorship by declining to publish drawings lampooning Jesus Christ on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers, ACTIVELY SOLICITED IMAGES OFFENSIVE TO MUSLIMS by asking 25 (or 40, it depends which account you read) 'cartoonists to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad, something that is proscribed by Islamic law as blasphemous. Spelling out the provocative and inflammatory aim of this exercise, the chief editor said its purpose was “to examine whether people would succumb to self-censorship, as we have seen in other cases when it comes to Muslim issues.”' (NOTE) Commentary : Please note that Jyllands-Posten solicited images not texts. It could, for example, have asked 25 or 40 historians to write short pieces on Islamic topics. But it didn't solicit texts. Obviously, the idea was to ensure that Muslims would be inflamed, a goal that could only be achieved by... Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:02:05 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-Danish-cartoons-affair-a-critical-chronology/43/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-Danish-cartoons-affair-a-critical-chronology/43/ This gem of interpretation from the BBC today: 'The row over the Danish cartoons is yet another dramatic illustration of the huge gap between secular liberal values in the West and the predominantly religious outlook of Middle Eastern societies.' ( SOURCE ) No, it's not. What the hell do you think would happen if large-circulation dailies like the Irish Times or El Pais or the Chicago Tribune published cartoons showing Jesus getting a blowjob from Mary Magdalene or Moses using the Ten Commandments as a dildo or snorting cocaine or something? [Use your imagination to think of offensive things Moses could be depicted doing.] As for the West's liberal values, these have been dramatically revised in recent decades to the extent that in practice they only apply to Zionists and their allies. Ask the Holocaust revisionists - those currently incarcerated including Germar Rudolf, David Irving and Ernst Zundel - what they have learned from experience about the West's 'liberal values.' Come to... Mon, 06 Feb 2006 04:04:49 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/BBC-twaddle-on-the-Danish-cartoons/42/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/BBC-twaddle-on-the-Danish-cartoons/42/ Part III: Schwarzmann thinks the Cold War is still on! NB: Part I can be read here . Part II is here ) In addition to his website Finland for Thought, Schwarzmann has hosted since September 2005 a Sunday night podcast entitled Radio Free Finland. (Programme archives here .) The name of Schwarzmann's show offers, I feel, a fundamental insight into the nature of his political imagination. Can you think of anything more patronizing than an American going to Finland and setting up a radio programme called 'Radio Free Finland'? With its echoes of the Cold War era's 'Radio Free Europe,' the name suggests that Schwarzmann thinks of Finland as some kind of oppressed country whose people need Americans like himself to liberate them. In my previous post, I suggested that Schwarzmann represents the latest manifestation of the 'Ugly American.' What I mean by this is that, whether he's entirely conscious of the fact or not, there seems to be a layer of the American imagination which cannot fully... Sat, 04 Feb 2006 06:39:00 +0100 http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-cyber-uglies-take-on-Finland-Part-III/41/ http://www.blogigo.co.uk/socialdemocracynow/The-cyber-uglies-take-on-Finland-Part-III/41/