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The high take up of the Local Shop campaign before Christmas and the popularity of the Directory section of the Westender indicates the hunger for services connecting local business to the community.

The next step in this campaign will be announced in the March print edition of Westender and will involve a relationship with the startup Internet company, ISaveLocal. This service is phone based and encourages readers to come into your business and redeem special offers promoted through the Westender.

More details will be provided closer to the launch date.

There’s a link doing the rounds that deserves a much wider audience and certainly a greater role in the national consciousness. This particular precis, which can be found here, is a study conducted by Dr Lawrence Britt in 2003 detailing the defining traits of fascism. The difference between facism and corporate feudalism is of purely academic interest. The reason that both views are so pertinent is because our current “government” displays a terrifying number of these traits. For your convenience I have re-posted the article below along with concrete evidence of the Orwellian abyss we find ourselves tumbling into. Please read and consider, because while the horse may have bolted there is still a chance that we can prevent further harm.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Here’s Abbott accusing the national broadcaster of being unpatriotic. Or that coalition policies will always have “an Aussie accent”. Or considering himself a “pragmatic nationalist”.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Such as breaching international human rights violations. Or how Abbott is OK with torture. Here’s the government’s massive cutback on international aid for people that aren’t Australian. Or appointing the man who most vocally called for the abolition of the Human Rights Commission as commissioner for the Human Rights Commission.  How about literally tearing a newborn from a mother’s arms?

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause 
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. 

The ad nauseum “stop the boats” bullshit.

How about Abbott’s staggeringly complex assessment of geo-political conflicts as “goodies vs baddies”

Here’s our man Cory Bernadi fueling the fire. And another one here. And here’s Tony continuing to declare boat people “illegal” despite that being, you know, grossly untrue.

4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

On the navy breaching sovereign Indonesian waters, firing upon asylum seeker vessels and generally treating asylum seekers like sub-humans, Abbott is pro navy all the way. How about the Immigration Minister not even reading the documents detailing this before sealing them up for eternity?

5. Rampant Sexism 
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

After a career of being dogged for his misogynist views (and actually being a misogynist on more than one documented occasion), Abbott appoints himself as minister for women. At the very best he is a confused, small minded sexist. Then there’s the plethora of “traditional family” agitprop that I’ve linked a fair bit elsewhere in this post.

6. Controlled Mass Media 
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Case in point

or controlling what people say. Upon failing to stop the boats instead stops mention of the boats.

7. Obsession with National Security 
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Such as spying on close neighbour and legitimate military threat Indonesia, admitting to spying on Indonesia on national television and then refusing to apologise for such. Or gagging discussion of asylum seekers. Let’s be scared of Syria for some reason. 

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

Tone Loc details his relationship with the big J here.
What about the antics of the ever lovable Cory Bernadi here, And here. Abbott of course tried to distance himself from Bernadi with these comments – only kidding, he’s all aboard the good ship God Hates Fags. Here’s the Ab-man not only denying equal rights for homosexuals but issuing a legal challenge to repeal those rights.

9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

T-Bone reducing the ability of small business to be competitive. Or caving to the forestry industry. Or giving Palmer a reach around. Or approving a fucking coal port in one of the seven wonders of the natural world. Allowing corporations to sue the Australian government. Boosting the powers of business at the expense of workers.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed 
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

Such as the Abbott witch-hunt on unions here, here and here, or this astonishing piece of legislation.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

Live music is out. Or repealing scholarships into loans. Cutting funding for universities. CSIRO? Fuck that. Abolishing the ministries of climate change and science.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

Like deporting asylum seekers for swearing or spreading gossip. Freedom of association is an outdated concept right? Oh, you like to go out at night? Only thieves and vampires go out at night, you should be tucked in ready to go to church in the morning.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

Exhibit A. Exhibit B. Exhibit C.

14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Just lie, beg, borrow or steal whatever you need to win office. Do whatever it takes, promise the world. Then do whatever the fuck you want once you’re there. Here’s a neat little summary of the Liberal government’s fraudulent promises to the Australian people.

People this is real, this is happening and this is scary. The worst thing is it only happens because you let it. You have the power to stop it. You had the power to prevent it and you failed and now we’re all suffering the consequences. But it isn’t too late for redemption. Switch on, pay attention, get involved and get active and maybe, just maybe, we can win the good fight.

Please.

Reposted from http://thedamiansmith.tumblr.com/post/75213269214/give-me-liberty

For similar articles seach Westender for feudalism

On a recent weekend visit to Brisbane, I lay on the carpet in my friend’s room watching the fan head push hot midday air towards me, wondering why I had thought it an acceptable prospect to be hung over in the heat that has lately enveloped Brisbane.

My friend was lying on another section of the carpet, melting into it, and another friend was fighting sleep on the bed. We didn’t even have it in us to crawl to the kitchen where there was water and cold tiles which, I knew from experience, offered sweet, energy-efficient relief.

We had spent the previous evening dancing in West End’s The Joynt to the indie roots sounds of the Bearded Gypsy Band. I was naïve about the heat that would come; I had left the sanctuary of my family’s coastal, shaded Byron Bay home just that afternoon, and West End at night was cool and felt through the glaze of good company and cold cider. We danced our way towards one am before letting the sweat dry on our skin and going our separate ways to find beds that we would wake in drenched in scorching sunlight, incapacitated by the thick weight of another summer day in the suburbs of Brisbane.

It may seem inane to complain about the heat of a Brisbane summer – Brisbanites are all aware of how cloyingly hot it is in the soupy bowl we call home. And besides that, for Australians we’ve got it good; our southern cousins swelter in the high forties as I write. We live at least on the edge of a country famed for its vast emptiness’s that are riddled with shimmering heat waves.

But as a lover of grey skies and cool temperatures, the heat I felt in Brisbane – a gorgeous city that I will soon call home again – has become all I can think about. My body ran sluggish and my mind became a miasmic fugue of half-formed ideas. I dreamt of giving up poor student life to become an entry-level career woman, just for the air-conditioned working spaces.

This dream, though, is not so hard to facilitate (take note, fellow heat-sufferers). Sure, without the career woman status I won’t make money there, but supermarkets, department stores and book shops are all havens in the summer for people like me: 20-somethings with a lack of funds and a bounty of time to squander on wandering aisles to escape the humidity outside. And when uni starts back I’ll be in icy heaven; lecture theatres and tutorial rooms and libraries perfectly chilled to facilitate young minds being forced to work again after months of alcohol and heat-induced hibernation.

But escape is intermittent. We can only spend our days hopping from cool zone to cool zone, waiting for the relief of a cooler day and then a cooler season, and then the next summer sweeps in, brighter and more ferocious than the last. The summer of 2012-2013 was Australia’s hottest yet, and the Bureau of Meteorology has told us that 2013 gave us our hottest spring on record – and now January is a furnace. Climate change deniers need only walk outside at lunchtime and the truth will drip down their brows and turn their skin pink.

Driving became my sanctuary; I would blast the air and the radio, temporarily ensconced while listening to news items about the dangers associated with rising heat all over the country. In Melbourne, tennis players dropped out of a sizzling Australian Open, one which has melted players’ shoes and caused a Canadian to faint from heat exhaustion. I remember my time in Melbourne summers ago when the only hope of getting sleep was by draping one’s supine body in a wet sarong – and it’s only gotten hotter.

Unlike Melbourne, Brisbane is enlivened and cooled by the fading of day into night.  And so are many of us without access to a backyard pool or a temperature controlled work place. Drunk on syrupy heat in the steamy summer days, a cooler evening brought a delicious reprieve in which I innocently made plans for the next day, thinking perhaps tomorrow would grant us kinder temperatures. Recalling my previous night spent dining, drinking and dancing in West End, I declared a warm night accompanied by cold beverages and a few good Brisbanites the best coping strategy during a Brisbane summer. I would wear the consequences of another fun evening yet again through the following day’s heat, safe in the knowledge that every hot day in Brisbane folds into the loveliness that is a comparatively cooler night.

Its chai teas and haloumi platters have enthralled the likes of Geoffrey Rush and Vanessa Redgrave and there aren’t many who can resist the lure of the ever bounteous cake cabinet.  Now, after 18 years in the game and more than a few flat whites to his name, Three Monkeys owner Ralph Stamos has decided to retire from his post.

It’s hard to believe now but at the time, The Three Monkeys was one of only two coffee shops in West End.

Stamos bought the shop with son Jordan in 1995, extending it from a boarding house and small cafe into a multi-room eatery with a popular suntrap courtyard. “We saw it on the Saturday and we bought it on Tuesday. I could really see a lot of potential,’ explains Stamos. ‘When we bought the shop, what’s now the Turkish Room was only a garage and the courtyard was only a very small area. We opened the whole courtyard up to the back wall and started doing renovations to the deck. Before, the place could only hold about 95 people and now it fits 180.”

The full interview with Ralph will feature in February’s print edition.

Look out for it on the street.

 

Tim Anderson looks at Syria, the attacks on Wikileaks and the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Sydney Morning Herald has dutifully joined in with the international chorus of protest over a delegation of Australians that has gone to Syria on a fact finding and solidarity tour. See: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/wikileaks-party-defends-its-cup-of-tea-with-bashar-alassad-20131231-304ne.html

Herald journalists Leesha McKenny and David Wroe do the profession no honour in producing their dirt sheet on the delegation’s visit that spins all the same old lies and insinuations and includes the gratuitous comment that one of the participants in the delegation was Dr “Tim Anderson – who was acquitted of the 1978 bombing of the Sydney Hilton hotel”. Well, if he was acquitted of an event that occurred more than 35 years ago why bring it up in this context, other than to imply that even though he was acquitted he was somehow guilty, or the crime somehow reflects on the nature of the man, even though he was found not to be guilty of the crime?

Likewise the key person the delegation met with, according to the authors, is “accused war criminal President Bashar al-Assad.” This claim, frequently made by those prosecuting the war against Syria, should be treated with caution by any journalist who claims to write objectively. Like the Anderson insinuation, here it is used merely to colour the article. In the absence of any substantial evidence to back the claim (as opposed to the mountains of evidence from the ‘rebel’ forces of their own war crimes), it is a mere reiteration that Assad and the Syrian government are the instigators of the war in Syria, and the chief perpetrators of crimes within the course of that war.

This demonstrates above all what tools these journalists are, given the mountains of evidence that the violence in Syria has been instigated from outside and is the result of a well prepared proxy war. This following Washington Post article, ironically enough the result of a Wikileak in early 2011 should make that clear. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.html

Also – the whole world – except the mainstream media and the politicians apparently – knows of this article from Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker in 2005, that revealed the making of an insidious alliance between US and Saudi governments to reshape the Middle East, which included the targeting of Syria, as an ally of Shia Iran. See: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh

The insidiousness of the journalists’ unsubstantiated, or actually falsified claims is demonstrated in the smear that the “Assad regime, … among other alleged atrocities is accused of using chemical weapons against its own people.” Once against, the journalists use an accusation to imply a truth. Conveniently, by ignoring the actual results of enquiries into the allegations, they do not have to deal with evidence that the US administration tried to use concocted charges against the Syrian government of chemical warfare against its own people to launch a military strike against Syria – what would have been another of what history shows to be many war crimes committed by the United States to defend and extend its empire. By avoiding the facts, or declining to actually investigate, the journalists and their employer continue to be a part of the conspiracy to smother the truth and parrot propaganda when it comes to Syria.

Simply the allegations that the Syrian government was the instigator of chemical warfare in Ghouta and other places has fallen apart, as revealed, among others, by Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books. See: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

His article has been studiously ignored by the US and Australian media, because it interferes with the narrative they are peddling. They have also ignored the findings of the UN Commission that investigated the attacks, which effectively dismantled the case against the Assad government. See: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/23/un-investigator-undercuts-nyt-on-syria/

The writers of the SMH article also trimmed the comments made by the Abbott Government’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop. The only reason for this could be the level of double think in her statement was too preposterous to reveal, if the dirt sheet was to retain any plausibility. Bishop is reported in the article to have ‘expressed anger’ saying the visit was “exceedingly counterproductive” and ”reckless”, adding that ”Assad has been accused of war crimes … It was exceedingly counterproductive of an Australian political party to meet the Syrian leader given the volatile conflict that is under way … This was a reckless action to take.”

What is not reported is her comment that: “It is not in support of the sanctions regime that Australia has in place, in fact it risks undermining the sanctions regime we have in place, and it risks aligning Australia with one side of the conflict in Syria, which is something we would not do.” See: http://news.yahoo.com/wikileaks-party-meeting-syrian-president-222339893–spt.html

How on earth do Australian governments impose sanctions on Syria – and close down the Syrian embassy – and join the predatory “Friends of Syria” that supports the US created “Syrian government in exile” and is already planning for the lucrative ‘post-Assad’ reconstruction of Syria, and consider themselves to not be taking sides? It is this “neutral” stance demonstrated by Australian governments that these journalists and the mainstream media generally are rock solid in supporting. It puts them firmly within the camp of those criminally conspiring to destroy Syria as part of a plan to re-order the Middle East in favour of imperialism and the most reactionary social forces imaginable.

And by the way – it makes a mockery of the Sydney Morning Herald’s motto – “Independent, Always”

sources:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/wikileaks-party-defends-its-cup-of-tea-with-bashar-alassad-20131231-304ne.html
https://www.facebook.com/wayne.sonter.7/posts/10152180014204391