January, 2004

It's hard to make jokes about the world these days, or it is at my age. I remember a time when there was a great variety of political opinion, much of it on the Left, and in Nation Review, The National Times, The Australian, The Sunday Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph, Quadrant, Overland, The Bulletin, Meanjin, The Age, The Kings Cross Whisper, Man, Squire, Twenty-four Hours, Australasian Post you could savour its different gradations, and Channel 7, 9 and 10 ran good current affairs programmes and Four Corners had money.

It is not so now. More of the population lean to the Left now than in any other era (in the 441 State House seats there are only 79 Liberals) but you would never know it. The Right Wing hawks McGuinness, Albrechtsen, Akerman, Henderson, Pearson, Blair, Sheehan, Miranda Devine dominate the print columns, Paul Kelly has been cowed into globalist grovelling and Left opinion comes from Robert Manne, a former Liberal, Mike Carlton, a Barker graduate and Phillip Adams who must file his copy three weeks ahead of the news he writes of. And the cartoonists of course, who strike so deftly they somehow never wound.

And fascism comes by inches here and overseas. We know precisely the number -- 501 as I write this -- of American personnel killed in Iraq, but the number of Iraqis -- 40,000? 60,000? 70,000? 5,000 children? 7,000? -- we can only guess at. 'Freedom' has come to Iraq but seven or eight thousand Iraqis are in gaol on suspicion, or under torture, more than Pinochet's 'Disappeared', and 'crackdowns' nightly kill others on suspicion, or beat them up and bulldoze their houses. 'Freedom' has come to Iraq but we won't see majority Shi'ite rule any time soon. 'Freedom' has come to Iraq but 70 percent of its people are out of work. 'Freedom' has come to Iraq but Saddam can't see his lawyer. Nor can Tariq Aziz, who may have done nothing wrong. Both are being 'quizzed', the slippery new word for torture, about bombs and poisons they didn't have and religious fanatic allies they in fact avoided and never liked.

And every other thing we hear or read is pretty much a lie. That David Hicks is a danger to anybody. That WMDs, unused in nine months of guerilla war, will still turn up in a hole somewhere. That Michael Moore is only in it for the money. That helping twenty-three Bin Ladens out of America after September 11 was a good idea. That Ariel Sharon is a man of peace. That Saddam's capture made America, on orange alert over Christmas, much safer.

That it's safe for Hazaris to go home to Afghanistan and Palestinians like Akram al-Basri to go home to Gaza. That the hunger-striking Hazaris of Nauru should accept their likely deaths and go home. That people who have sold their property and spent their money on boat fares have something to go home to. That Woomera was like a 'luxury resort'. That imprisoning children, and humiliating their parents in front of them, has its good points.

It would matter less if these things could be debated but they can't. Blair, Pearson, Henderson have refused to debate me on any platform. No letter critical of Henderson is printed, these days, in the SMH. The 'freedom' we are bringing to Iraq is the freedom to say yes to George Bush. To say no is unpatriotic.

And fascism comes by inches. Soon George Bush alone will decide if David Hicks dies, or takes his Vegemite home to Adelaide rejoicing. Soon George Bush alone (if the current arrangement lasts) will decide if Saddam hangs. They used to call this the fuhrerprinzip. It's certainly not the rule of law.

And Americans shoot Iraqis most days of the week, for WMD denial I guess, and the British are shooting them now for throwing stones. And the mothers of boys taken away and 'detained' without charge can't find where they are. They are gone. They are disappeared. Feel like fascism to you? It does to me. What else would you call it?