Time Gentlemen, Please … Bulletin 4
Dear reader
Earlier bulletins have established that I believe we live in times that are both interesting and scary. But then I suppose paradigm shifts always are and we are certainly at the beginning of an acute paradigm shift right now. What do paradigms do? They structure and dominate our feelings, thinking, values and policy making.
My reading of the times is that the dominant neoliberal paradigm crashed and burned in the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. We then entered what Reinhart Koselleck (1923-2006) called a saddle-time (Sattelzeit), a period of intense intellectual and political ferment when a new paradigm struggles for dominance. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci expressed a similar view when he wrote ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.’
If you think Gramsci exaggerates, you have only to look towards the White House and you will see a pretty big monster.
What is the monster in the White House up to? I think that the American Deficit is finally forcing hard choices on the US. The great American Marxist Richard Wolff’s analysis sounds coherent to me. He argues that America’s economic problems, especially the debt, are forcing a retreat from the role of “World Policeman against the Communist Menace” especially in Europe. They have to cut the budget back. However, defence spending or the “Permanent Arms Economy” is still pretty sacrosanct, so they have to look elsewhere for savings. The obvious target is the “enabling state” which was built up by Franklin Delaware Roosevelt to cope with the Great Depression and WW2.
The fantasy of “America rules the World” has fallen back into a President McKinley type orientation that leads to a retreat from providing the military defence of (i.e. dominating) Europe to the orientation of dominating the Americas. Most startling of all is that this domestic domination is taking the form of a land grab for Greenland, Panama and Canada.
“Holy Toledo, Batman!” as Robin once said.
The Trump plan is so startling for the powers that be, that it has been classified under Top Taboo- not to be talked about in public. We need to break that taboo and try to figure out what is going on and to do that we have to embrace, I think, the concept of the Deep State.
Now, I don’t like the notion of the Deep State. It is too conspiratorial & comic bookish, even Dan Brownish, for me. It almost seems to entail looking for the Illuminati under the bed. And besides it has a libertarian whiff that offends the sensibilities of this old Hegelian Leftist. But I concede that there are power blocks around Britian’s MI6 and the United States’ CIA which have considerable autonomy & power within their respective state apparatuses. Likewise, for ASIO in Australia.
It would seem that, at the moment, MI6 is doing all it can to prevent a rupture between the US and the UK/Europe. That for me is the meaning of the “Ceasefire in Ukraine” move which MI6 got the Trump regime to support, possibly via the CIA.
The somewhat significant problem for the British Ukraine policy is, though, that they have no army! Nor do they have much of a navy. What they do have in the MI6 is an organization adept at dirty tricks, sabotage and propaganda. But that will count for nothing on the battlefield in any confrontation with the Russian Army. The UK Leader Sir Keir Starmer has been told now by his generals that his proposal to put British “boots on the ground and planes in the air” over Ukraine just can’t be done. Frankly it is a stupid and desperate idea.
One assumes that the mouse that roared in Canberra has been given the same advice by the High Command of the ADF. Where the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) will jump in all this is anyone’s guess, especially with its historic and cultural ties to the UK. Albanese’s pledge to join The Fools’ Crusade in Ukraine may be indicative of how the Labour govt is thinking. I hope not.
However, a stable and dominant narrative over what is happening won’t emerge for 10 years or so. In the meantime, it is an open process. Trump is desperately unpopular here and that is a problem for the Right in Australia. They had clambered on board the MAGA bandwagon and now that looks like a stupid choice. Peter Dutton did himself no favours when he described Trump as a “great thinker” and one who brought “gravitas” to international affairs. That has turned out to be a badly timed piece of rimming. And super nervous Albanese might yet emerge from his stupor to defeat the Tories.
Watch this space!
2: “Today nearly everything is made in China, except for courage, it’s made in Palestine” – Anthony Bourdain
Life has a habit of providing only fleeting opportunities to do the right thing. We always have good intentions but somehow before we know it the chance to do good and make a difference is gone. In the coming Federal Election I have been granted the chance to do the right thing. I can make a difference, and I can do so by voting for Remah Naji the Greens’ candidate in the Moreton electorate. She is a proud Palestinian Australian. And truly I feel honoured to be able to vote for her.
I will be changing my vote from Labour. I do so in protest against Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese and the Australian Ambassador in Washington. I will be voting against the Gaza Genocide which I see on my phone every single night. I will be voting for the sake of the slaughtered babies – the victims of one of the evilest governments of my lifetime. Never did I think that I would live to see anything on the scale of the atrocities of WW2 and the Vietnam War.
But I have now.
There is no moral case for voting for Labour in the coming election. None. Of course, the LNP does not ever factor in morality or the ethical. Theirs is the politics of resentment and malice and an overwhelming need to punch down on the vulnerable. But that does not excuse the Albanese government. and I will vote to show Labour that. On Palestine the Australian Greens have been very good. As has Senator Lydia Thorpe.
I urge all my friends and readers to seriously seize this moment. Let us say no to cynical cowardly compromises. I will vote against genocide. Please consider joining me.
Let’s vote for a better world. Let’s vote Greens 1.
Remah Naji, candidate for Moreton
