Not 2007 – But the Excitement Lingers

Jul 30, 2013 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Fame, Legal, OzPol Values, Values

Not 2007 – But the Excitement Lingers

Like a Well-Fermented Fart

Preamble to “A Moron in a Hurry” — Sir Roger v Gough’s Gouls

Strangely enough this title could be, but isn’t, about the next election. It’s about Labor Icon Gruff Wiblam and his pale irritation Steel Rod.

As you may be aware it is no longer 2007 and John Howard is not a Prime Minister any longer, merely still a silly irrelevant old shit.

Sir Roger, overwhelmed at the time (2007) by the urgent need to remove the irrelevant but malignant old cunt, and replace him with Steel Rod, launched a wildly unsuccessful campaign to bring back an emblem of the dizzy dreams of hope from the early 70s – the “It’s Thyme” t-shirt.

Sir Roger had quite forgotten that he had created a sparkling opportunity to ignore this … er … opportunity which apparently no-one saw or, certainly, wanted.

Well, the UWS rozzer for the Whittling Institute has been onto Sir Roger by email (a bit like being dumped by text) with an order to cease and desist.

Anyway, you can’t get the shirt. It doesn’t exist. The opportunity is dead as Marley’s doornail.

The commercial ex-premises have been boarded up like an outback dunny in a sandstorm and bulldozed into the silage pit.

Sir Roger apologises profusely if you, dear reader, ever for a moment suspected that a t-shirt splashed with the ValuesAustralia.com logo was in any way sanctioned either by Teh Great Man himself, or indeed by his now legally wagon-encircled, immortally corporate self.

Sir Roger was slightly miffed that the letter-writer, who he suspects was in fact the junior office girl, wrote in that formal and threatening language which seems to the clean-living and unwary to accuse one of all manner of the vilest of premeditated and vicious crimes and to suggest that the recipient is the lowest bastard in the world if not a baby-eater – or worse, a catholic priest – when they could as easily have written, “Dear Sir, you may not have realised that [blah blah] and your intentions may have been honourable, but we would like you to not do that any more, please. We’d rather not, for both our sakes, have to ask you again if you don’t mind. Let’s know if you object. Love and kisses, Helen (via Allison).”

Sir Roger’s response, since he had no evil intent – quite the opposite – would have been the same, to help them out with their problem.

Except . . . .

Except for the excitement Sir Roger feels in anticipation of his now sanctioned like-minded retaliation (which you can be certain he will share with you).

He hasn’t anticipated so much fun since the Department of Something or Other threw the book at Values Australia and dropped it on their own foot.

He does, though, feel for the poor lawyers.

Much as they might have desperately wished they could write an understanding and thoughtful letter, they simply cannot. Their hands and pens and minds are chained to the formula and the style guides they learnt while articled. There is only one way to write such a letter and they must do it.

In this most free of countries lawyers, of all people, have no professional freedom. In their hearts they wish they could change the world for the better the way they dreamed, in the idealistic glow of youth, when they watched Boston Legal – or perhaps in Helen’s case, Perry Mason – but instead they sit in rooms lined with boring books doing unutterably boring, endlessly repetitive and eye-wateringly trivial things like conveyancing, or sending form letters to the wicked.

And that is why on Friday nights some of the lawyers Sir Roger has known blow up and get pissed to the eyeballs and shame themselves.

Sir Roger is so sad for so many lawyers’ existential struggle to mean anything.

Meanwhile, he is unfettered by any such constraints. Every day is a new excitement and a new challenge and an opportunity to influence his world and he has the freedom to write whatever he wishes.

Sir Roger will now seek legal advice whether:

1) he is permitted to use the phrase “Its Thyme” , in daily personal conversation about political matters, or whether he would need a tip jar to send off royalties on a monthly(?) basis to the corporate rozzers, and

2) whether he will now be required to return to himself the price he paid for the item [actually, is it okay to use the word “item” as it is strikingly similar to the word “time” and in any case may itself be trademarked? In fact how can we be sure that any word or phrase we use in certain contexts is not trademarked or otherwise proscribed?

Be careful people, or the University of Western Sydney will be down on you like a ton tonne of pricks!].

Life in Australia

Jun 25, 2013 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Freedom of Speech, Humour, Immigration, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Terrorism, Values, War

Life in Australia

One word: Durian

Robert – a self-styled “foreigner” to our shores – is most upset to have been hoaxed by the false promise and dashed hopes of life in Australia. A few days ago Robert commented on an ancient post here at Values Australia and his comment was upsetting.

Sir Roger cannot bear the thought of another’s pain and Robert surely is in pain.

So is Sir Roger. He had no idea how unhappy he himself must be, given Robert’s assessment of the Oz he had until then thought so wonderful.

So following is Sir Roger’s response to Robert.

Sir Roger has asked his manservant esteemed assistant to pen a response to Robert. He would have liked to have been able to respond personally but is unable as he is packing his belongings in preparation to leave this dreadful hell of a country.

He is astonished that he had been so blind in his comforts, his pleasures, his friendships, his safety and his freedoms not to realise how utterly miserable he must obviously be. And indeed he is at this very moment beset by a grotesque problem. That is, where he should move away to and how should he get there? By plane? Or by boat?

The United States may seem a much better option except for the constant shootings, the fundamentalist christians and the Tea Party.

The UK? Very civilised, at least on the surface, and the world’s funniest comedians, but, oh, the endlessly whining whingers! And the weather!

Somewhere in Africa, perhaps? Central African Republic? Chad, Nigeria, South Sudan? There are plenty of spaces becoming available there since so many of them are choosing to come to Australia. But the job opportunities are not so good and someone like Sir Roger is sure to be kidnapped. And he questions why, if it is so wonderful there, so many of them are choosing to leave, that so many could even find Australia preferable. Big question mark on that one.

Asia? He fears the death penalty for minor crimes in China. He values his internal organs (and his external ones for that matter) and doesn’t want them shared with a transplant tourist before his time.

Japan fails to offer the wide open spaces that he craves.

Malaysia? He just doesn’t like their appalling racism. You know? Of course as a white man he could live behind a tall fence in a white compound with fierce dogs but where is the interest in a bunch of self-absorbed, arrogantly superior, self-congratulatory, western businessmen and their bored wives and nasty children?

Thailand? One word. Durian.

Indonesia beckons…but trips at all the hurdles of entrenched – and world famous – political, judicial, law-enforcement and corporate corruption, not to mention brutality to animals, religious intolerance, terrorism, death by firing squad and plain ignorance. Pretty country, though, and lovely people if you get to know the ones who aren’t trying to rip you off.

India? Well, you know, of course it’s worth a visit but … Sir Roger doesn’t consider rape a worthwhile or even enjoyable pastime. One of his friends is moving to Bhutan. Would he have to convert to Buddhism, though? He’s not all that religious. AT ALL.

And South America is the most dangerous continent on earth.

There’s always western Europe, of course, and Sir Roger does love to spend large amounts of time there, especially in their restaurants and in the cheese and wine aisles of their supermarkets, but they can be cold to strangers who don’t speak their languages perfectly, don’t you think? And it’s all so old and the skies are so murky. There’s very little that’s fresh blue.

As for Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria … hmmm … you know, Sir Roger’s not much of a one for car bombs, Talibans, shooting young girl students, hatred, bigotry, religious intolerance, violence, bloodshed of any kind, actually – not even Rugby League – or cranky old narrow-minded farts in funny turbans and beards a pelican could nest in, doling out fatwahs like Easter eggs at Christmas.

So Sir Roger is struggling to find a country either

a) that would accept him or
b) that he would accept.

Perhaps after all he will have to remain for a little longer amongst the awfulness of:

religious tolerance (despite the fact Sir Roger is a little intolerant of religious beliefs in general),
freedom of speech
a more or less free press
freedom to congregate
personal safety
world standard education, free to secondary level
a social safety net
free medical treatment
stable democracy (with no shootings at election time)
astoundingly pleasant weather
mostly generous people
a thriving triple-A economy (no matter what they say)
a rich cultural life (very well, yes, much of it imported)
comparatively high incomes
comparatively low unemployment
electronic access to the fascinating rest of the world (while keeping it at a safe physical distance)

and many other such depressing qualities.

Perhaps therefore he will stay for a bit longer.

He has just phoned your writer now to explain that he is beginning to understand that when a person comes to another country of course they will come to that country with preconceptions.

Those preconceptions, when they come in hope, will often be that the new country will be just like the country they escaped but somehow better — their home country but without the bits they don’t like. And this will not work.

For example, Australia is Australia. It is not Sri Lanka, or Britain, or India, or Germany or wherever, with bells on.

It is Australia.

That is it.

Anyone who comes here will find strangeness and things that confuse and they don’t understand; social conventions they are not used to, and that grate with how things used to be in the old country.

When they come here their task is not to compare it to the world they know and the expectations they had. That leads inevitably to disappointment.

Their task is to discover Australia for what it is and to interact with that. And love that. Or leave.

If they don’t want to be here we have no wish to force them to love it or to stay. They have the choice.

In Australia we allow people to come and go as they please. Unlike North Korea or China or so very many other countries.

At least that is what Sir Roger told your writer to say.

Just a note or two to ‘Robert’ from Sir Roger’s own Montblanc:

“ This is Australia, Robert. And this blog is Sir Roger’s home. Here you do not have to be mealy-mouthed or pretend to be genteel, or try to swear without swearing.

If you write “fkcng” you are intending that people will think “fucking” and so you are swearing anyway. So writing “fkcng” is, you see, slimy. You said “fuck” and pretended not to. And it’s true that many Australians don’t like this sort of deceitfulness in anyone, not just what you call “foreigners”. You can write “fuck” here. And “fucking”.

And even ‘FUCK YOU, CUNT’

Also, Australia is not a “convict island”, at least not for 150 years. We are a big grown-up country now. We have cars and houses and the internet and everything, just like a proper country.

The only social-cultural vestiges of those origins are the remains of a belief in equality and fairness, and a healthy disrespect for authority, both sadly on the wane.

And when you talk about ‘the way foreigners see Australia’ this is blatant intellectual dishonesty. Certainly some foreigners don’t like Australia. Of course some don’t. It would be a miracle beyond all miracles if it were otherwise. So, a few “foreigners”, then? The ones who agree with you and are as stirred up about their disappointment as you are?

Robert, we are not required to create the country you wanted in your dreams in order to satisfy you, although we would very much like you to enjoy this country – very much. But we simply cannot create that country just for you.

So the use of the “convict” epithet and the lumping of all foreigners into your basket of betrayed hopes reveals both emotional desperation and intellectual dishonesty.

I really feel your pain that caused this outburst. I went to Sumatra once, hoping to experience a tropical paradise with generous, friendly people, only to discover it (Medan, anyway) was the absolute arsehole of the earth, even worse than Tehran, although the Batak people of Samosir Island were indeed very lovely.

But when I want my own arguments to be taken seriously I personally find it is best to refrain from corny, shouted insults and sloppy arguments.

Welcome to Australia, Robert!

The Next Big “Sorry”

Jun 10, 2013 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Immigration, Legal, OzPol Values, Racism, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

The Next Big “Sorry”

Sorry Bastards

Want a long-range heads-up? The question we should be asking Abbott and Gillard and all of their various immigration spokespeople right now is this:

How do you feel about the inevitability that — possibly in your lifetime — a future Prime Minister of Australia will stand up in Parliament to make a heartfelt apology on behalf of the Australian people

— an apology for you, for what you did, for who you were and for what you stood for?

Possibly in your lifetime. Certainly in the lifetimes of your children and grandchildren, your nieces and nephews and their children, so that they can share your shame, and hate you for the shame you spill on them?

Many others, and their children and grandchildren, will share the stain of complicity, or of not speaking up against you and your hideous policies.

74 years ago another terrible, vile event occurred. A boat full of refugees left the country they grew up in, fleeing from the persecution and horrors of their homeland and seeking refuge in a safe and welcoming country. They were Jews – 937 of them – escaping from Germany. The ship was the MS St. Louis. The year was 1939. They tried to land in Cuba, Canada and the United States. Each of these countries refused them entry by various means including creating retroactive laws, tightening existing ones, or bureaucratically reinterpreting existing ones, requiring unpayable financial bonds, or invalidating valid entry permits and denying the right to seek political asylum. All of this might have a familiar stench to you. The United States Coast Guard, the ship’s non-Jewish German Captain Gustav Schröder said, forced him to turn the ship back when he tried to land in Florida. Perhaps this rings a bell for you. Hypocrisy runs deep in all societies but no deeper than the United States in this case. Inside the Statue of Liberty since 1903 there has been a bronze plaque, a poem written by Emma Lazarus in 1883.

“ From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome” it says. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Of course there was much breast-beating and public displays of sympathy on the part of all the countries, who met to find a solution that could see the 937 refugees settled safely. Just not in the USA, Canada or Cuba thank you. But anywhere else. Eventually the ship was forced to return to Europe. Many were accepted by the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. As you know, Europe was at war and only the UK was not overrun and occupied by the Germans. It is estimated that 254 of the 937 were slain, mostly in Auschwitz and Sobibór and that of the 620 refugees who returned to the Continent only 365 survived the war. So apart from the human legacy what is the political legacy of this “harsh, pragmatic, no advantage”, hypocritical, boat-discouraging immigration policy 74 years ago towards desperate people fleeing the horrors of their home countries? After the war, Captain Gustav Schröder was awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1993, Schröder was posthumously named as one of the Righteous among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel. A display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum tells the story of the voyage of the MS St. Louis. In 2009, a special exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia explored the Canadian connection to the tragic voyage. The display is now a traveling exhibit in Canada.

In 2011, a memorial monument called the Wheel of Conscience, was unveiled at Pier 21, Canada’s national immigration museum in Halifax. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind. The memorial is of a polished stainless steel wheel. Symbolizing the policies that turned away more than 900 Jewish refugees, the wheel incorporates four inter-meshing gears each bearing a word: antisemitism, xenophobia, racism and hatred. The back of the memorial is inscribed with the names of the 937 passengers. On 24 September last year US Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns made a speech.

“ We who did not live it can never understand the experience of those 937 Jews who boarded the M.S. Saint Louis in the spring of 1939. Behind them, shattered windows and lives, loved ones in danger, crimes already underway and those crimes to come. Ahead, the hope of a new life in this country. We all know how this journey ends. The ship was turned away. Its passengers returned to a Europe that fell, country by country, to the cruelty they set sail to escape. Having made it so close to the safety of our shores, nearly one-third of the men, women and children of the M.S. Saint Louis perished, half a world away, in Auschwitz and other camps. … [T]he dangers were visible to those clear-eyed enough to see them. The warnings were already clear for those who cared to listen … And yet the United States did not welcome these tired, poor and huddled passengers as we had so many before and would so many since. Our government did not live up to its ideals. We were wrong. And so we made a commitment that the next time the world confronts us with another M.S. Saint Louis — whether the warning signs are refugees in flight or ancient hatreds resurfacing — we will have learned the lessons of the M.S. Saint Louis and be ready to rise to the occasion. … [A]nti-Semitism, genocide and mass displacement are – sadly – all-too-alive in 2012 … there are other M.S. Saint Louises setting sail right now … there is always more we can and must do.

Or in other words, “Sorry”. So Sir Roger offers the following notes for the future Prime Minister who will — inevitably — say “Sorry” to all those who have sought to come to Australia seeking asylum in boats – legally – as refugees and discovered that the story that we were a warm and welcoming people was a cruel hoax.

“ Many years ago our country was called upon to stand for the values we cherished as Australians. When people who had lost everything, their homes, their livelihoods, their hopes and their futures came to us; ~ when people full of terror who had seen, and often experienced, unimaginable horrors, or torture, came to us; ~ when people who were so desperate that they risked death in leaky boats and violent seas came to asking for our help; we were called upon as never before to show that we were indeed, and in our deeds, truly the people our story told about us; a people of humanity, hospitality and generosity, an understanding and tolerant people immensely proud of our multicultural triumph. We failed. We proved that the story was a lie. Our leaders failed us. Our institutions failed us. Our hearts failed us. Instead, when we saw fellow human beings who so sincerely and transparently needed our help, people who had fled for their lives from wars, religious and tribal violence, and brutal tyrannical regimes, we told ourselves that those people were in fact queue-jumping, disease-ridden, child murdering terrorists and criminals who wanted to rape our women and steal the mineral wealth beneath our feet and the coins from our purse. So to all those refugees we heartlessly turned away, or who we inhumanely imprisoned to the point where many of you went mad – and to those who never reached our shores but perished in the attempt – we say: Sorry. What we did as a people was based on greed, fear, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia, racism, hatred and ignorance. As a people we say: Sorry. What our leaders did was not based on any of these things. It was based on the desire for power, on the desire to defeat an internal opponent in our own country. You were merely the tool that they used. To achieve their narrow partisan goals they broke international laws and our own laws. They ignored international conventions and treaties. What those leaders did, along with those in our bureaucracies and agencies who conspired with them and abetted them, was unforgivable, unconscionable and inhumane and it disgraced and dishonoured our country. Their punishment is that their names and their reputations will be stained forever in the history of our country. As we allowed them the opportunity to do what they did we say: Sorry. As you know, today’s Australia is not that Australia. We have learnt from that dark time. Our laws now ensure that it cannot happen again. Our country truly is today — and thanks to so many of you — a people of humanity, hospitality and generosity, an understanding and tolerant people immensely proud of our multicultural triumph. We are once again true to our story and our values. Thank you again. I am so proud to be the Prime Minister of such a country, especially in the knowledge that we will never see such malignant, repugnant people assume leadership again.

Mount Migently Manifesto

Dec 22, 2012 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Immigration, Indigenous, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Love, Media Values, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Mount Migently Manifesto

Australian Values

Australian values have lately been enthusiastically asserted by some Australians and Sir Roger has been much impressed – in much the same way a washed-up prize fighter feels the repeated impressions of his opponents’ fists in his guts.

These assertions of “Australian values” tend to be energetically debated:

in Melbourne with French and Indian visitors to Australia on trains, buses and trams,

in university college meetings in Sydney,

in the halls, offices and party rooms of Parliament House in Canberra

and particularly on commercial radio breakfast programs everywhere.

Sir Roger was reeling from the onslaught and disheartened by the proponents’ ignorance, illogic, idiocy and illiteracy; by their fear, spite, narrow-minded prejudice, stupidity and frankly pre-agricultural social views.

Someone had omitted to convey to them that for their brain to operate as advertised it is necessary to update the database regularly and to calibrate it with reality.

Someone had omitted to explain to them that the texts on which their ethics are based and with which they (selectively) justify much of their self-righteous bombast are not actually sacred but were all simple rulebooks written thousands of years ago to enable the social control of brutal sand tribes, to suit their primitive times and conditions, calm their existential terrors, alleviate their ontological horrors, excuse their ignorance and justify their brutality.

Someone had failed to explain to them that the foundation myths, the stories of Australia on which they hang their narrative of Australian culture, are just that. Myths. It never happened, Bruce.

It’s just like when your girlfriend lied to you – you weren’t the first.

Dismayed by the galloping erosion of the humane, generous, fair and tolerant values of his Australia Sir Roger therefore repaired to the mountain top seeking counsel and wisdom from the winds, the silence and the intelligences of the cosmos.

Sir Roger was generously granted that counsel and has returned from the mountain top bearing enlightenment.

Over the next few days and weeks he will share with his world these insights into the best of human and Australian values.

Sir Roger: Archived in Perpetuity

Feb 26, 2012 | Arts, Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Fame, Freedom of Speech, Media Values, OzPol Values, Values

Sir Roger: Archived in Perpetuity

Fame of a Sort?

Can Lordship be far behind . . .

Sir Roger has just received a request from Canberra saying that the National Library of Australia wished permission to include ValuesAustralia.com in the PANDORA Archive of Australian websites.

So … Sir Roger … archived in perpetuity . . .

That’s a kind of immortality.

Although, as Woody Allen said,

“ I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Its fame of a sort, one supposes.

It’s better than not being archived, certainly.

So that’s nice.

[Sir Roger said yes.]

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

Dec 8, 2010 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Corruption, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, Terrorism, USPol, Values, War

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

… This was a lie and we could not let them publish it …

We keep thinking of Jack Nicholson‘s character’s justification for the secrecy that governments and their institutions maintain over their citizens – that is to say, their owners, their employers, the “sovereign people”:

“You want The Truth?
You can’t handle The Truth!”

It’s the only possible explanation.

Governments and their functionaries can only be thinking that their citizens – who are the actual authority of the State – are incapable of dealing with reality and need to be cotton-wooled, treated like mushrooms if you like, kept in the dark and fed bullshit, to play with their toys and live their fantasy lives while the powerful look after the real games like big boys, as such people have been doing since long before Machiavelli shone his own light on their games.

Rep Ron Paul tweets:

“ Re: Wikileaks- In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.

Daniel Ellsberg (re)tweets:

“ For less than $3 you can buy a copy of the Pentagon Papers from Amazon yet they won’t host Wikileaks.”

Here’s what Hillary Clinton said on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square:

“ A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.

This anniversary provides an opportunity for Chinese authorities to release from prison all those still serving sentences in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989. We urge China to cease the harassment of participants in the demonstrations and begin dialogue with the family members of victims, including the Tiananmen Mothers. China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally-recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform.

But wait! There’s more! Speaking at the Newseum in January this year she said a lot of fine things about freedom of speech and the internet, and how while it was a great organ of free speech and for good in the world, there were those who were trying to stifle it.

“ On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.

This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the First Amendment to the Constitution are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.

[ … ]

As I speak to you today, government censors are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

[ … ]

As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent thinkers who use these tools.

[ … ]

Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.

And much, much more hypocrisy like this on the foreignpolicy.com website

Clinton should take a good hard look at herself and take a leaf from her own book.

So to help Clinton, let’s repeat Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship, Nelba Blandon’s, statement:

“ They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.

Glenn Greenwald, in his column in Salon disputes The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Capehart’s assertion that there’s nothing new here (and I apologise for reproducing the entire list but please read the whole excellent article).

“ If there’s Nothing New in these documents, can Jonathan Capehart (or any other “journalist” claiming this) please point to where The Washington Post previously reported on these facts, all revealed by the WikiLeaks disclosures:

(1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;

(2) the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA’s kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;

(3) the State Department under Bush and Obama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA’s torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch today about this: “The day Barack Obama Lied to me”);

(4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War “investigation”;

(5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted;

(6) “American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world” about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post’s own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents;

(7) the U.S.’s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal — a coup — but the State Department did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter;

(8) U.S. and British officials colluded to allow the U.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons, and,

(9) Hillary Clinton’s State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.

That’s just a sampling.

The sadness of this is that it was The Washington Post that stood up so steadfastly and courageously for freedom of speech and truth, supporting Woodward and Bernstein and the independence of the Press against the secrecy and lies and machinations of Washington’s most powerful in the Watergate scandal – from which, of course, “Cablegate” inherits its name.

Meanwhile, where is GetUp on the shocking treatment by the Australian government of Assange, an Australian innocent of any Australian crime but nevertheless pre-emptively accused by both Gillard and McClelland of criminal or at least illegal activity. McClelland:

“ From Australia’s point of view we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by …… the release of this information.”

For goodness’ sake even Rudd and John Howard agree Assange is not at fault.

“ Mr Rudd appears to be in agreement with former prime minister John Howard, who earlier today said Mr Assange had not done anything wrong by publishing cables that contained ‘frank commentary’.”

The Guardian has a live blog of developments which you can follow including a large amount of support for Assange and the leaking of the (previously) secret documents.

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