Notes From An Imperial Outpost Down Under

Bravest woman in Australia, Senator Fatima Payman (scroll down to read more).

Because of my focus on resistance to imperial domination it’s been really interesting to see this from a flipped perspective i.e. from Down Under. Some of my anecdotal impressions may be of interest to readers.

Liberals are the same everywhere, except here they’re called Labor and Liberals are the conservatives (don’t ask). For example, they love to hate bad guys on the other team while making excuses for the bad guys on their team. And most of the focus is on personalities. So, if Trump and former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have a meeting in the U.S., this is of great negative interest. (Morrison is a religious fanatic infamous for vacationing in Hawaii while bush fires swept Australia a few years ago.)

Excuses for bad guys on the Labor team are she’s not so bad, he seems like a decent bloke, he’s a good speaker, etc. Similar to defenses of the UK royal family such as, the former queen was a good sort who really cared about people. 

The royals happened to come up because Charles’ tampon-themed official portrait was unveiled back in the UK while I was here.

Further parallels include a devotion to lobbying elected officials who clearly don’t represent their constituents -- unless you consider the coal mining industry a constituent -- and a consistent failure to connect dots like warfare with climate crisis, or erosion of civil liberties with billionaire-sponsored government. And mum’s the word on the proto-WW3 military alliance AUKUS which I only heard mentioned once on the news in passing when Trump and Morrison were seen together.

You will search in vain for mention of Aussies Julian Assange, or Dan Duggan. There was a little bit on Army whistleblower David McBride being sentenced to 5 years in prison for revealing war crimes in Afghanistan for which no one has been punished.

That said, corporate news in Australia has a much more international focus than in the U.S. where Mark Twain once observed that wars were God’s way of teaching Americans geography. I saw lots about the revolt of the indigenous Kanak community in New Caledonia, one of France’s few remaining colonies, located in the South Pacific region. France is trying to impose new voting rules there such that French residents get a vote in local elections. The Kanak’s aren’t having it and have shut the roads and airport down.

Nightly reports on the color revolution in Georgia and on the Ukraine war depicting victimhood at the hands of the dastardly Russians but without a hint of the fact that Ukraine has already lost and just won’t admit it. We saw Putin received with fanfare by Xi in Beijing, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduced in a Kyiv nightclub inexplicably playing “Rockin' in the Free World,” a song he clearly doesn’t understand. (We did not see him eating neo-Nazi pizza.)

Coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza each day interviewed Palestinian refugees but without a whisper of Australia’s role. That is until extensive coverage of the "scandal" of a Labor member of Parliament saying her conscience was bothering her and asking PM Albanese on Nakba Day how many more deaths it would take before he condemned genocide. 

https://youtu.be/fqBFopusBzc?si=yv601M8vuE1Yb8Nt

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” concluded Senator Fatima Payman, an Afghan Muslim immigrant who was the first to wear the hijab in Parliament when her term began in 2022. 

Warmongering Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong joined 55 other senators in condemning the phrase as allegedly “antisemitic.” No one appeared to remember that Zionists coined the phrase back when they still called the land they coveted Palestine. TV news reported one Jewish organization in Australia objected while another organization lauded Payman’s statement (sorry, I cannot remember which was which).

Nightly reporting on students protesting genocide in both Australia and around the globe continued throughout my stay. Actually, protests of all sorts got a lot of coverage including Israelis protesting the Netanyahu government. 

Australian protests receiving coverage demanded more protection for domestic violence survivors, more crackdowns on teenage crime sprees, and reinstatement of a book about same-sex marriage that was removed from a local library.

One person interviewed for that story noted that they don’t want to see U.S.-style culture wars breaking out in Australia. Good luck with that.

Domestically, the high cost of living and related dearth of affordable housing were themes familiar to this USian. How will corporate overlords keep Australia from having the revolution it needs to reorient public policy toward meeting people’s needs? Foment civil strife, probably.

Or they could just let nature take its course and hope to reap the benefits of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Managing Our Grief Over Gaza

This sounds like the most privileged title ever, doesn’t it? Families in Gaza or elsewhere with loved ones anyplace in Palestine are overwhelmed with grief as they watch little children being torn to shreds, burned beyond recognition, or exhumed from having been buried alive. Buried alive in mass graves at hospitals where they had taken refuge.

Those of us in other places differ markedly in our belief that these truths are self-evident depending on where we get our news. I gave up consuming U.S. corporate news decades ago, peeling off television early on to protect my children from it, and then eventually shedding the liberal print news and opinion sources I’d grown up on. Who wants to subscribe to or even read a publication that signals Donald Trump’s ascendance by putting him on their cover over and over again?

But right now I’m in Australia responding to a family medical crisis and so have been keeping folks company while watching corporate t.v. news in the evenings.

Latest emblem of the resistance? An empty water carboy as was wielded by students at Cal Poly Humboldt to successfully to ward off police rioting.

Last night I was brought to tears several times as the mangled bodies of children in Gaza were rushed to makeshift medical facilities (all the hospitals were long since destroyed by Israeli bombs). The ambulances of Gaza are now the able-bodied men who carry wounded kids while running as fast as their malnourished legs can go. Those horrific scenes – are they shown on corporate t.v. in the U.S.? You tell me.

Next came something sure to appear on “news” throughout the evil empire: Joe Biden claiming that U.S. weapons aren’t killing Palestinians. Did Australian newscasters call him out on this giant lie? Nope. And me yelling, “Liar!” in the privacy of the home where I’m staying is just venting on my part.

So, I turn to social media platforms run by Zionists where a little truth and the scorching eyewitness videos out of Gaza and the West Bank can still be found. Twitter is complicit, Instagram is complicit, and still I continue to guiltily use them. I’ve never really invested time in building up a news feed on TikTok, but I probably need to do that soonish. Telegram overwhelms me but again it’s probably my ineptitude as a user that creates the attempting to drink from a firehose effect.

My email inbox is also a good source for real news. As are certain substacks, MintPress News, Popular Resistance, Black Agenda Report, and many more I’ve named before.

How soon before all my access to authentic information is blocked? Time will tell.

These bullying Zionists (redundant, I know) do NOT represent me. How about you?

To return my original question, how or even why shall we manage our grief over Israel’s genocide of Palestinian people?

Speaking for myself, I can’t dwell on my emotional response or I become incapacitated. Turning angry grief into action feels like the right thing to do. Diverse actions present themselves and not only provide an outlet but they put me in touch with other people I can trust and respect. I met my husband while protesting the impending Shock and “Awe” attacks on Iraq in 2003, and together we’ve met many kind souls who sincerely engage in resisting imperial warmongering -- and not just when the Republican Party controls the White House.

Many people use their creativity to remain sane in a genocidal world. One example: the keffiyeh sticker cropping up in random places.

Another example currently going viral: rapper Macklemore's "Hind Hall." The artist has pledged to donate all proceeds to UNRWA.

A person I respect a lot recently revealed that they had neglected a peripheral task associated with our work and that this might cost them a lot of money. We’re all in this together so others in the group consoled them and offered monetary support while awaiting the outcome of skilled negotiators working on our behalf. One said, “Hope you are all giving yourselves grace.”

And that is as good an answer to my original question as any.