August this year marked fifty years since Australian troops were completely withdrawn from Vietnam. This was in accordance with the American drawdown of military forces at the time. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese paid tribute to the courage and sacrifice of Australian soldiers who served in that conflict. His speech was one of many commemorative activities held across the country regarding the final withdrawal of Australian troops.

While hailing the values of courage and sacrifice is all well and good, Albanese’s perspective serves a definitive political purpose; whitewashing the criminal and predatory nature of the US attack on Vietnam. The courage and sacrifice of soldiers in conflict sounds like a nice, value-free statement – who could dispute that sentiment? Only traitors and scoundrels question the heroism of frontline troops, surely? Such sentiments provide a soft scented candle to mask the odious stench of criminal wars lurking underneath.

PM Albanese, in an attempt to appeal to the normally conservative military lobby, spoke of the suffering of Vietnam veterans, stated that many of them were disrespected and ignored upon returning home. There is no evidence that anti-war demonstrators ever spat at, or hurled abuse at, returning veterans. Many of these myths of the badly-behaved protester are recycled as a way to distract from the criminal and barbaric nature of the assault on Vietnam.

The Vietnam veterans did suffer – from post traumatic stress disorder and various psychological afflictions. These conditions were the result of a predatory war waged by political masters in Washington and Canberra. The short-lived tyrannical republic of South Vietnam, based in Saigon, was propped up by American force of arms. Notorious for torturing and killing prisoners in its ‘tiger cages’, stories about the barbarity of the American backed Saigon dictatorship are overshadowed by the manufactured concern of the obnoxious protester.

The United States undertook military action in Vietnam, not for any humanitarian reasons, or for the dubious claim about promoting democracy and confronting Communism. The US sought to replace France as the preeminent imperial power in Indochina. Having ‘lost’ China itself in 1949 to the Maoist revolution, Washington’s ruling circles were intent on imprinting their own footprint in Vietnam. The latter defeated French colonialism in the 1950s.

Myths about sacrifice and nobility in war become the basis of self-serving fiction. Remembering the Australian troops who served in Vietnam is not a value-free, altruistic exercise motivated by pure dedication to nationalist ideals. Notions of heroic sacrifice for king and country obscure the cynical calculations involved in starting and prolonging imperialist wars. December 2022 was the 50th anniversary of the misremembered and euphemistically named Christmas bombing of North Vietnam.

Why does this Christmas bombing matter? That particular aerial attack, lasting over eleven days in December 1972, is said to have brought Hanoi to the negotiating table to sign a peace deal. That fictionalised memory, which elevates American air power to a decisive factor, not only misrepresents a crucial historical period. It also has provided a misleading influence on American foreign policies.

Peace talks between Hanoi and Washington has been proceeding since the early 1970s. Throughout 1972, the prospects of a peace agreement looks optimistic. The Nixon administration, in an exaggerated sense of aerial ‘military might’, began an intensive bombing campaign against Hanoi and Haiphong. Civilian installation were targeted, including electric plants, hospitals and schools. Operation Linebacker II, as it is officially known, was one of the largest bombing campaigns since the end of World War 2.

The scale of civilian deaths and destruction is difficult to contemplate. The Vietnamese victims of this bombing campaign are largely forgotten. To be sure, the US Air Force experienced heavier than expected losses. Hanoi and Haiphong were well defended by anti-aircraft installations.

What is also forgotten is that the peace agreement, signed by Hanoi in 1973, did not contain any new concessions or changes that had not already been agreed to in October 1972. The war was needlessly prolonged, escalated to new levels of destructive violence, and thousands more Vietnamese suffered the consequences.

This belief in ‘bombing power’ is a self-serving delusion. It has underpinned subsequent US invasions of, and defeats in, Iraq and Afghanistan. What is forgotten in all of the commemorations is that Vietnam veterans joined the anti-war demonstrations in the 1960s and 70s. Rather than being abused or assaulted, civilian demonstrators welcomed the participation of military veterans for the purpose of achieving peace.

The civilian-military divide was overcome precisely in the anti-Vietnam war movement. As the Vietnam conflict wore on, increasing numbers of soldiers questioned the American government and turned to the anti-war campaign. The Pentagon Papers, released by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, exposed a systematic pattern of lying about the conflict on the part of Washington.

In 2019, in an eerie parallel with the earlier Pentagon papers, the Afghanistan papers revealed the systematic deceptions and duplicity of American (and Australian) authorities in covering up the failing war in Afghanistan. Senior military figures questioned not only the motives of the war in Afghanistan, but also expressed alarm that the U.S. government was “failing to tell the truth” – in other words, lying to the public.

As the last American troops madly scrambled to the rooftop of the US embassy in Kabul in 2021, the parallels with the chaotic American retreat from Saigon were unmistakable. In the wake of the defeat of US forces in Afghanistan, serious questions were asked about why we have not learned lessons from similar defeats in Iraq and Vietnam.

In an ironic turn, US President Joe Biden will visit Vietnam for the purpose of strengthening bilateral relations. Following in the footsteps of former president Obama’s pivot to Asia, Biden is hoping to draw Hanoi into its anti-China military alliance. Hanoi, while welcoming reconciliation, strongly rejects any participation in a hostile military bloc against Beijing.

Whitewashing past imperial wars, and recycling durable myths about them, only serves to reinforce Australia’s relegation as a deputy mercenary in America’s criminal wars overseas. It is time to reevaluate our priorities, and take a stand against the wars that make the crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith possible.

Art is always created for art’s sake. Every artist, whether a painter, sculptor, novelist or film director, is passionate about their art. When does art cross over into propaganda? When discussing this question, we immediately think about Soviet Russia, China, Iran or other non-democratic societies. Art with a political agenda may be motivated by political agendas – that does not make it any less effective as a work of art.

It is naive in the extreme to think that our artistic practices are completely divorced from propagandistic purposes. In fact, the British empire was an exemplar of how art was deployed as propaganda. In this case, artwork became a way of expanding and solidifying a transnational British identity, unifying its colonies through cultural imperialism.

In the Art Gallery of NSW, there is an imposing, longstanding painting by Alphonse de Neuville entitled The Defence of Rorke’s Drift. Exhibited in 1880 in Sydney – when NSW was still a penal colony of Britain – the painting propagandises the role of the British army at the battle of Rorke’s drift during the Anglo-Zulu war. The battle, a victory for Britain, inaugurated a wave of imperial patriotism.

The British soldiers, rather than being portrayed as white colonisers making incursions into Zulu territory, are seen as heroic, resourceful defenders. The Zulus by contrast, are relegated as barely discernible, anonymous individuals enmeshed into one amorphous mass. The oil on canvas painting by De Neuville is an early, and typical, example of art as imperial propaganda. The painting contributed to establishing an identity of transnational and racialised British patriotism.

In another wing of the NSW Art Gallery hang the paintings of the Flemish artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640). A giant of Baroque painting, he combined Flemish realism with ideas from the Italian Renaissance, and became an enthusiastic student of the artistic resurgence known as the Northern Renaissance.

Was Rubens an exceptional painter? Emphatically, yes. Was he a propagandist? Yes, he was that also. In what way? Ruben’s’ works, involving religious themes, fall into the tradition of the Counter Reformation. The latter was a resurgence of traditional Catholic dogma against what was the Protestant European Reformation. In fact, while Rubens’ works were commissioned by the Catholic authorities, a number of his contemporaries – who fell foul of the Catholic Church in Flanders – went into exile.

The southern part of Flanders, which eventually became the nation of Belgium, saw the successful reintroduction of Spanish Catholic feudalism. In the north, in what became the Dutch Republic, the nascent capitalist and artisanal class fought against the heavy repression of the Spanish monarchy. Calvinist and aspiring to independence, the Netherlands held out against attempts at reconquest. In the midst of this epic class struggle, Rubens brush became a cultural sword of counterrevolution.

While his contemporaries died in poverty, Rubens became a wealthy man, honoured by the monarchies of England, France and Spain. His artwork was part of the Catholic church’s conscious mobilisation of art as a cultural weapon in the fight against the Reformation. His paintings are remarkable – they are also examples of ideologically driven propaganda.

Religious art is beautiful, haunting, awe-inspiring and remarkable. Mosques are wondrous displays of architectural imagination and impressive engineering. Architectural Digest lists, among other things, the world’s most beautiful mosques. One does not need any supernatural deities, or gods, or immaterial beings, to experience a sense of connection, community and compassion. All we need is our empathy based on our common humanity.

Subjecting art to the commercial imperative is at the source of its corruption into corporatist propaganda, an enterprise we call public relations and advertising. It is easy to point accusatory fingers at politically motivated iconographic art – ubiquitous portraits of Stalin in the USSR, or Mao’s ever-present gaze in Maoist China. Art helped Maoism go global. Socialist realism gave us idealised pictures of peasants and collective farms.

We can easily see the artistic practices, and their perversion, in societies other than our own. The Iranian Ayatollahs have deployed art to reinforce their theocratic rule, and public murals display motifs suitable to their post-revolution rule.

Murals throughout Iran celebrate Karbala, martyrdom and political Islam. They also tell the story of Iran’s subjection to foreign powers, and the Iranian people’s struggle for self-determination. Political iconography is not the sum total of Iranian public art. It also tells of their resistance, and their ability to see through the scurrilous plans of the imperialist powers to re-subjugate the nation.

Art is the important bridge between the mind and spiritual uplift. If you want to believe in a supernatural realm, that is up to you. Art is not the exclusive province of one or another religion or spiritual outlook, but a deeply human, cultural production that makes us realise that we are more than the sum of our parts. As Larry Culliford writes:

The foremost reason that artists create, and the rest of us value their art, is because art forms a priceless living bridge between the everyday psychology of our minds and the universal spirit of humanity.

Denouncing the deployment of crude political iconography is a pastime of art commentators in the West. Yes, we can see how the Iraqi Ba’athist party, in the 1980s, elevated its leader Saddam Hussein to a heroic, larger than life figure in its propaganda. Standing beside Saladin and Nebuchadnezzar, Hussein combined Islamic motifs with pre-Islamic Babylonian history.

However, let’s also remember the words of Culliford, from whose article we quoted above. Making a strict distinction between art and merchandise, Culliford writes that art is contaminated by the drive for profit, status, wealth and success. Instead, true art conveys human emotions of compassion, creativity, patience and discernment.

It is not beyond the capacity of our modern capitalist institutions to utilise art for propaganda purposes. Let’s be honest with ourselves, and stop accusing other nations of crude cultural practices which we implement in more sophisticated ways in our own societies. Art is an expression of individual genius – that much is for certain. Let’s also be aware that art can express a collective imagination for political purposes.

There are anniversaries which mark events that help us in understanding the world we live in today. This month – August 19 to be exact – marks 70 years since the US-UK instigated coup d’état in Iran, toppling the nationalist government of Mohammed Mossadegh. The coup, orchestrated with the help of British and American intelligence, not only ushered in decades of savagely repressive rule for Iranians, but also restored crucial oil industry concessions for Western oil corporations.

Why is all this important? The 1953 coup d’état demonstrated the underhanded and criminal lengths to which oil and energy companies will go, assisted by the London-Washington political axis, in reversing measures by democratically elected, nationalist governments to confront their power and oil wealth. The 1953 indicates the falsity of claims by Whitehall (and the Pentagon) to be exemplars of democracy – they employ predatory and undemocratic methods to protect their class privileges.

Since the turn of the 19th-20th century, Persia, as Iran was then known, had been a British colony. No, there was never a formal declaration to that effect. However, through a network of political connections, coercion, economic agreements and concessions, the British came to dominate economic and political processes in Persia. The discovery of oil – large, commercially viable reservoirs of it – made Iran a target of imperialist interests. London was the first to push into Iran, and through its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), dominated the oil trade in Persia.

Business friendly Iranian politicians in Tehran, backed up by an informal network of British intelligence operatives and oil consultants, ensured that legislation was conciliatory towards Britain’s energy demands. No laws which restricted the outflow of profits, amounting to millions of pounds, would be tolerated by the largely supine political class in Iran. The Shah, indecisive and vacillating by nature, gave an air of imperial legitimacy to a ramshackle and corrupt regime.

The AIOC – formally known as Anglo-Persian Oil Company prior to 1935 – had a majority shareholder, the British government. Ironically, it was basically a nationalised oil company. I say ironically, because with the rise to power of Mohammed Mossadegh, he nationalised the AIOC assets, on the basis that the profits generated by Iranian oil should be shared by the Iranian people.

How were the Iranian oil workers treated? For an insight into how British-owned AIOC operated, we need look no further than its operational flagship refinery at Abadan. Workers laboured away in dangerous conditions, and child labourers were not unknown. While the oil company raked in the profits, people in Abadan existed on starvation wages, and the distended bellies of children attested to the existence of malnutrition. Not for nothing did the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, describe the city as ‘puking Abadan.’ Environmental and health-safety regulations were non-existent.

Iranian nationalist forces, part of a mosaic of Iranian political parties, came to power in 1951 in the shape of President Mohammed Mossadegh. Promptly nationalising the AIOC, Mossadegh struck down the crown jewel of British imperialism in Iran. Panic set in inside the corridors of power in London and Washington. The latter had their own reasons for wishing to see Mossadegh defeated, and the Americans swiftly began drawing up plans for Mossadegh’s removal – by hook or by crook.

The British government of Clement Attlee, (Labour) incensed at this display of rebellion by the uppity Iranians, moved into action. Using its network of sympathetic monarchist politicians, newspaper editors, British Petroleum (BP) oil executives and intelligence agents, London mobilised anti-nationalist Iranians for street rallies, sabotage and raising tensions inside Iran. The Shah, ever the coward, was leaned on by his British backers to acquiesce to Mossadegh’s removal.

By the way, BP is the rebranded image of the original AIOC.

The British relied on a collection of anti-Mossadegh Iranian forces – Islamic fundamentalists, monarchist military officers, pro-British street thugs and Iranian neo-Nazis. Yes, you read that correctly – Iranian racist neo-Nazi groups. The latter, while small, had a presence in Iran. Indeed, changing the nation’s nation’s name from Persia to Iran back in the 1930s, was a cynical manoeuvre by the then-Shah to curry favour with Nazi Germany. Iran means ‘land of the Aryans.’

The myth of Aryanism, its seemingly archaeological and esoteric ‘legitimacy’, was exploited by London to mobilise public hostility against the nationalist Mossadegh. The latter, in British and American propaganda, was routinely identified with the USSR and Communism. Initially, Britain’s plans went awry – Mossadegh was able to hang on to power. London’s tension strategy was not working. Masses of people, including from the rival but nationalist-friendly Iranian Communist Tudeh party, held off the weakling anti-nationalist forces.

To avoid a brewing civil war, Mossadegh relented and resigned office on August 19, 1953. The coup plotters were jubilant, and the Shah ruled with an iron hand from then on. The monarchist regime in Iran became one of the most savagely repressive governments in the world, and its Israeli-trained secret police, SAVAK, became notorious for its brutality. As for AIOC, now known as BP, the Iranian government negotiated a new concession, granting 40 percent ownership of Iran’s oil consortium. Britain’s power was diminished.

Another consequence of the 1953 coup should be noted here. Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, London and Washington have incessantly screamed about the dangers of the ‘mad ayatollahs’ in Tehran developing nuclear weapons. Whether the ayatollahs are mad or not I do not know. What is clear is that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were started and cultivated by the United States.

In the 1950s, US President Dwight Eisenhower initiated the Atoms for Peace initiative, which seeded nuclear ambitions for the Shah’s pro-American regime. The Shah, ever eager, wanted nuclear power, and sought out various vendors to build nuclear reactors. Tying his nation’s nuclear programme to Washington, numerous Iranian students studied the basics of nuclear engineering at MIT. The monarchy’s nuclear ambitions wedded it to an axis of pro-American regimes in the region.

Whenever we listen to the professed claims of concerns about human rights by Washington – and London’s – inside Iran, we must be skeptical. Former US President Trump may have committed numerous domestic crimes for which he has been indicted, but his main crime has gone unpunished – his war plans against Iran. It is not Iran’s theocratic practices that enrage the UK-US axis, but its political disobedience to Anglo-American dictates.

We must reorient our understanding of Iran, moving beyond the stereotypes of mad mullahs and domesticated hijab-wearing women, and examine the hypocrisies of our policies towards that rich and multicultural nation.

An old idea has been recycled, and making the rounds, in discussions about the anti war movement. In the face of the escalating Moscow-Kyiv confrontation, numerous organisations have asked why cannot the political Left join forces with the ultranationalist far right – at least with those ultrarightist politicians who have expressed anti war sentiments. Surely, the Trump-style MAGA Republicans, while holding obnoxious views, are to be commended when critiquing America’s predatory overseas wars?

No, MAGA Republicans are not anti war allies. Trump was never an anti war president. Oh yes, Tucker Carlson, the ultrarightist screaming shill, barked criticisms of the pro-war directions of the Obama and Biden administrations – attacking the covert US support for rebel antigovernment organisations in Syria, for instance. No, Carlson is definitely not an ally of the anti war movement.

Sam Carliner, writing in Counterpunch magazine, correctly observes that when MAGA conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene, criticise the Biden administration for escalating the NATO proxy war against Russia, they are doing so on the basis of anti-immigrant antipathy and isolationism. The ultranationalist Right, when expressing opposing to predatory wars, does so not because foreigners are being used as cannon fodder such as in Ukraine. It is because their xenophobic nationalism motivates them to denounce any kind of international outreach as inimical to US interests.

The isolationist tendency in conservative American politics, traces its lineage to the America First movement. Trump was certainly not the first to use that slogan. Based in racism, the claims of America First devalue non-American lives, and reject international cooperation and participation as unnecessary and unacceptable wastage of resources on foreign issues. While it is commendable to look after your own nation, that goal cannot be pursued in isolation from the rest of the world.

The MAGA Right, such as pseudo-populist and former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, advocate economic policies which favour big business, impoverish workers and promote racist sentiments which underscore rampant imperialism and militarism. While Carlson, who became a minor celebrity on the Fox News circuit, made moderate criticisms of the Obama administration’s pivot on Syria, he has been at one with the bipartisan consensus on the buildup for war with China.

The Democrat party, in a cynical and calculated way, exploited Carlson’s occasional deviations from pro-war orthodoxy by presenting him as a stooge for the Russians. This way of smearing any opponent of the war drive against Russia – and the current NATO proxy war supported by US imperialism – is a tried and tested tactic of the Democrat party. It serves to undermine critical examinations of imperialist war policies by maligning any critic as a potentially treasonous suspect.

Carlson has his dispute with his previous employer, and that is that. I am not taking sides with him nor with Fox News. What is relevant to point out is that Carlson, when he had a national platform, cheered on the American invasion of Iraq, and once called Iraqis ‘semiliterate primitive monkeys.’ These sentiments have no place in an anti war movement based on international solidarity.

Indeed, the MAGA ultranationalists do not understand that recessionary pressures and increased military spending go hand in hand. It is crucial to remember the connection between harsh neoliberal austerity at home, and escalating financial support for military intervention overseas. Why? The vision motivating the libertarian ultranationalist Right is precisely the philosophy that underpins reckless imperialist wars overseas.

Emphasising the above point is required, because there have been practical attempts to unite the Left (at least some particular groups on the broad Left), with the ultraliberatarian Right. I am referring to a specific event in the United States – the Rage Against the War Machine rally in February this year. Purportedly uniting disparate political forces on a common anti war platform, the rally in Washington DC, it turned out to be a bit of a freak show.

Organised jointly by the Libertarian party, and the supposedly leftist People’s party, the protest rally was better at marketing than actual attendance or political perspective. Uniting the far right and conspiracist groups of the ultranationalist Right, including the remnants of the Lyndon LaRouche far right cultist movement, the rally failed to live up to its promise of ‘raging’ against the US military financial complex.

The Libertarian party, advocating for a hyper-deregulated laissez-faire capitalism, is committed to the philosophy of Austrian-American economist Ludwig von Mises. His Ayn Randian vision would see society stripped bare of any type of government regulation. The Mises Caucus, the dominant group within the Libertarian party and co-organiser of the rally, is not only a hyper-capitalist in its orientation, but also neo-Confederate, basing themselves on a perverse and self-serving notion of individual liberty. It is not unusual to see Libertarian groups distinctly orient to far right militia and antisemitic forces.

While the media janissaries of the far right may posture as pro-worker advocates, in reality the policies of the MAGA Right have always been big business friendly. Tucker Carlson, throughout his stint as a media figure, consistently lined up with the policies of monopolies, proposing measures to make life harder for the working class. Not once did he speak up for public health and Medicare, or for environmental regulations to reduce pollution – he has been a populist for the 1 percent. The late English politician and racist, Enoch Powell, was cut from the same political cloth.

Surely the sign of maturity, both emotional and political, is to cooperate on momentously important and common issues with people and groups with whom we might otherwise disagree? That is true – not everyone can agree on everything one hundred percent of the time. We must also have the maturity to recognise that a dead end political strategy has been tried multiple times before, and failed. Broadening the scope and magnitude of the anti war movement is urgently needed; uniting with the MAGA Right is only allowing a poisonous weed space to grow.

Police procedural dramas on TV are very exciting, well-scripted and acted thrillers. The Law and Order franchise, The Closer and its follow up series Major Crimes, the old Columbo series featuring everyone’s favourite rumpled, brilliant detective – these are very entertaining programmes. They are also examples of the ubiquitous phenomenon known as copaganda – unrealistically positive and heroised versions of police officers on TV.

The TV networks are saturated with police dramas. They feature a range of characters and intricate storylines. Whether they are semi-comical goofy characters, or hard-nosed ethically upright partisans of the law, police and detective portrayals on TV and in film are a ubiquitous feature of our pop culture. They are very entertaining, but also misleading us in the way the police and justice system works.

The job of policing can be dangerous and stressful. Catching violent offenders is a perilous business; solving gruesome homicides can be traumatic for the officers involved. The killings of police officers at Wieambilla, Queensland, by vicious and fanatical ultrarightist survivalists was very saddening. Police dramas on TV however, are more about public relations and promoting a positive view of police forces in general.

Why raise the topic of copaganda? Adam Johnson, writing in AlterNet magazine, explains it this way:

Media critics spend a lot of time discussing how our military industry manipulates the press into war and bloated defense budgets. Far less time, however, is spent discussing how our local police departments plays the media to suit their ends. The reason for this mostly has to do with the fragmented nature of localized propaganda, combined with a prejudice that police aren’t very savvy.

Increasing funding for the police is easily achieved when a population is hooked on the appealing diet of copaganda. If the corporate media, fed by stories from the police PR departments, that street crime is on the rise, surely the solution is more police and prisons? This distracts us from two observations; first, that police funding has increased exponentially over the years, and second, that the problem street crime is wildly exaggerated, while corporate malfeasance and tax evasion reach unprecedented levels.

Corporate crime, while involving billions of dollars and tainting our financial institutions, makes for boring TV. Police procedural programmes are soap opera dramas, full of excitement, car chases, shootouts, forensic investigations featuring dedicated coroners, handsome David Caruso clashing with his fellow officers regarding some crucial piece of DNA evidence; what drama is there in tax evasion, which robs workers of their wages?

An Australian Senate Committee, in 2019/20, investigated the sustained, systematic and shocking magnitude of wage theft in Australia. The ABC summarised the findings of these investigations, and stated that billions of dollars in unpaid wages and superannuation was uncovered. Hospitality, universities and cleaning were just some of the industries where wage theft was rife.

Uncovering and prosecuting such systematic malfeasance takes persistence, poring through financial records, analysing the application of fiduciary obligations and identifying the areas of accounting deception – all very necessary, but hardly corresponding to the image of the heroic detectives waging a relentless war on crime we see on TV and in film. No car chases, no gunfights, no serial killers – but there are serial offenders in business suits.

Enforcing environmental regulations is necessary to protect human and animal life. Water pollution by large corporations leads to the deaths of people from various diseases and medical conditions, including cancer. Lives lost and marred by pollutants is a huge criminal problem, requiring the enforcement of clean air and water regulations. This requires the cooperation of victims, medical personnel, as well as police and law enforcement. Companies which pollute the environment hardly make the headlines.

Air pollution, while a serious and criminal cause of death and disease for thousands of Australians each year, barely registers headlines in the evening news. Where are the CSI teams of detectives, performing forensic analyses of air quality, determining the impact of pollutants on human health, and tracking down the culprits who caused the resultant deaths?

By emphasising the role that police play in taking down individual felons and street crime, particularly targeting people of colour and from ethnic minorities, copaganda builds upon a stereotype of ethnic crime. Racialised opinion pieces in the corporate media promote a vision of ethnic groups as abysmal swamps of crime. This skews our perception of police conduct, in particular, the violence of militarised police against ethnic communities.

Breonna Taylor, an African American emergency medical technician, was shot dead by police in her home while she slept. She was 26 years old in 2020. Police entered her home under the no-knock policy implemented by officers in Louisville, Kentucky. That means they were not required to identify themselves as police officers. Plain clothes officers used a battering ram to forcibly enter her premises.

Claiming that they were under fire from occupants in the house, the officers fired off multiple rounds, killing Taylor in her sleep. Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend who was present at the shooting, is a licensed firearms holder. He believed he was confronting home invaders. He survived the incident, and gave his account to the police.

None of the officers involved in the Taylor homicide were charged with murder. Her case is not unusual; there has been a spate of police killings in the US, targeting the African American community. Police departments and their vast arsenal of PR have swung into action, promoting images of officers taking a knee, holding black children for safety and solidarity. Once the cameras are gone, protesters and black communities have borne the brunt of police violence. Kneeling with anti-police brutality protesters one minute, beating the crap out of them the next.

But surely there are just a few bad apples? You know, a few rotten fruit must not be allowed to spoil the entire barrel? I understand the sentiment, because it originates with our culturally pervasive, heavily fictionalised background portrayal of police as essentially positive upstanding stars doing a difficult job in stressful circumstances. That argument of a ‘few bad apples’ is irrelevant. Airline pilots, surgeons, construction workers, paramedics, firefighters – all have difficult and stressful jobs. Any corruption or incompetence on their part would be met with the full force of the law, no excuses.

The esteemed Sir Stephen House, formerly the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police in Britain, admitted that the problems of corruption and abuse of power by UK police is not a question of just a few ‘bad apples’. He dismissed such folksy, simple slogans and demanded concrete solutions. Be that as it may, the argument of ‘bad apples’ frames the conversation about police on the basis of our fictionalised copaganda stereotype.

If you want to enjoy police procedural dramas on TV and in film, please do so. Just be mindful that the cheery, Heartbeat-style officer you see on the TV screen has more to do with copaganda than reality. Let’s be more aware of how pervasive copaganda influences our conversations around law enforcement.

The nation of Niger, located in west Africa, is under military rule. A coup d’état by a group of officers ousted the civilian president, Mohamed Bazoum, and installed General Abdourahmane Tchiani as leader of the country. The coup took place in late July this year. A former French colony, Niger gained independence in 1960, and currently has a population of 24 million people.

Let’s go into a bit of relevant background, so we can better understanding this coup in Niger. Why is Niger important to the Western nations? Why the focus on the Sahel?

France – former colonial power in the Sahel

Niger is located in the Sahel; the latter is not a country. A bio-geographic, eco-climatic region stretching in a band across Africa, it is the region below the Sahara where the desert conditions transition to savannah grassland. Niger, along with Mali and other west African nations, form a group of states economically and linguistically ties to France, the former colonial power.

For its part, France has maintained a web of intricate political and economic networks in the Sahel, intent on sustaining its predominant position in west Africa since decolonisation in the 1960s. Since the era of De Gaulle, the French ruling class has sought to aggrandise its international role, and kept west Africa as a network of clientele states – a policy of Francafrique.

Niger possesses extensive mineral resources, including uranium, diamonds, cobalt and platinum. Niger provides the uranium which powers the French nuclear and electricity industries.

French troops, since 2014, has been fighting Islamist and nationalist rebels in Niger, Mali, and other Sahel nations. Under the pretext of counterterrorism, Paris has deployed French troops and special forces in its former West African colonies. In 2020, no less a media outlet than the highly esteemed New York Times published an extensive article on the French military expedition in the Sahel.

The NY Times noted that the Sahel was becoming France’s forever war; a quagmire into which French imperialism has poured dollars and soldiers. In 2014, the French authorities promised that the deployment to the Sahel, and combat against Islamist extremism, would only last a few weeks. Seven years later, the French forces were still fighting. It is interesting to note how rival imperialist states are very effective at highlighting the crimes and misdeeds of their opponents.

The European Union (EU) nations have spent billions of dollars over the course of decades, outsourcing the policing and detention of migrants and refugees to sub-Saharan African countries. Niger, a mineral-resource rich nation in the Sahel, has served as a crucial lynchpin of this EU policy. Successive Nigerien governments have had formal partnerships with the EU to detain and corral would-be asylum seekers, preventing them from reaching Libya and Tunisia. The latter nations have served as embarkation points for refugees seeking asylum in Europe.

The US role

The United States, utilising its well worn rationale of a ‘war on terror’, constructed the largest, most expensive drone base in the world, in Niger. Located 5 kilometres south east of Agadez, Niger Air Base 201 cost millions of dollars to build, and requires millions each year for its upkeep. A hub of intelligence operations in the Sahel, the base is part of the expanding US military footprint in Africa. Since the recent coup, the base is unusable, and American military personnel are restricted to its premises.

American special forces have been active in Niger, with the permission of the previous Nigerien authorities. Elite units of American troops have been killed in engagements with Islamist militants, part of a covert war in the Sahel. The US deployment to Niger over the last twenty years has hardly been marginal or tangential to US interests. Not to be outdone, Germany has deployed contingents of troops Niger and Mali. The Bundeswehr, since 2018, has been training Nigerien troops in their fight against Islamist groups.

Not a Conradian ‘heart of darkness’

It is too simplistic, and woefully inaccurate, to dismiss the Nigerien coup as simply the work of power-hungry military officers. African politics is usually interpreted – if at all – by the corporate-controlled media as involving corrupt despots, power-mad generals and tribal warfare. This viewpoint reinforces our view of independent African nations unable or too incompetent to govern themselves.

The Nigerien military coup leaders did not decide to carry out their putsch on a whim. They did not seize power in a fit of semi-libidinous excitement for more authority. Niger is the fourth nation in west Africa to experience an anti-western coup by nationalist military officers. Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea have, since 2020, undergone coups by military officers who objected to the deployment of foreign troops (namely French and American) on their soil.

The leaders of Burkina Faso and Mali have explicitly stood by their fellow officers in Niger, denouncing suggestions by European governments to intervene militarily if ousted president Bazoum is not reinstated.

It is no wonder that numerous Western governments have watched the unfolding events in Niger with alarm. The role of Russia, if any, is still unclear at this time. The would-be putschist and mercenary Russian braggart Yezhgeny Prigozhin welcomed the Nigerien coup. Moscow’s attitude is more circumspect; however, given the recent high level Russia-Africa Summit, Moscow is making a strong push into African affairs.

Most of the corporate media are portraying the events in Niger as a worrying loss for the West in the fight against Islamist extremism. They are correct up to a point – however, the Nigerien generals are fully committed to combating religiously extremist groups. The ascent of nationalist officers to power in Niger – along with Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea – is, in a way, the revenge of Gaddafi. The latter was a Libyan patriotic officer who overthrew a weak, imperialist-backed proxy regime in that northern Arab-African nation in 1969.

Since the 2011 demise of the Gaddafi regime, Islamist organisations have spread throughout the Sahel, including in Niger. Rather than a Conradian ‘heart of darkness’ to which African nations are condemned by pro-imperialist writers, the darkness is not in the skin colour of the Africans, but in the imperialist project itself.

Tobias Ellwood, conservative MP in Britain, has faced heavy criticism for posting positive comments regarding the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. After a visit to the country, Ellwood claimed that a sense of calm has returned to the war-ravaged nation, and that corruption has been significantly curtailed by the Taliban authorities. The drug trade has also been suppressed under Taliban rule.

In August 2021, the Taliban returned to power after American and NATO forces abandoned Kabul in a humiliating defeat. Ellwood urged the British and western governments to reengage with the Taliban, stating that shouting demands from afar is a failed approach. After making these comments, Ellwood backtracked, and removed the posts from his social media footprint. He has faced calls from within his own party to stand down from the defence committee of which he is the chair.

His comments regarding engagement with the Taliban may be outrageous, but they are not outside the mainstream line of thinking. Only a few weeks prior to the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, no less a figure than Britain’s army chief General Nick Carter advised his colleagues that we must give the incoming Taliban a chance. General Carter opined that we may find the Taliban militia more reasonable in their outlook, and effective in government. So Ellwood’s call for engagement was not out of the ordinary.

Ellwood ignored the deplorable treatment of women under Taliban rule, the growing restrictions on women’s freedom of movement, employment and education. There is another cause of the plight of Afghani women, a cause which is within Ellwood’s power to address. The US and Britain have imposed economically crippling sanctions against the country since the August 2021 assumption of power by the Taliban.

Afghanistan relied heavily on overseas sources of revenue to keep its public services, education and infrastructure going. Those millions in overseas holdings have been frozen since the US imposed sanctions as collective punishment on the Afghan people. For instance, after NATO forces pulled out of Kabul, the US not only froze $9.5 billion worth of the Afghan Central Bank’s assets, but also pushed the IMF to stop funding for Covid relief.

There is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe inside Afghanistan; thousands of women teachers, health care workers, public servants, cannot be paid their salaries. The health care system is breaking down, impacting millions of Afghani women and children. So, if Western feminists want to help Afghan women, they could start by demanding the end of sanctions against Afghanistan.

Farrah Haseen, writing in Counterpunch, notes that the Afghani people do not bear any legal or ethical responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. She points out that the families of the 9/11 victims, have written to the US President denouncing the freezing of funds belonging to Afghanistan. The last thing they want is to take money away from starving Afghans.

Binoy Kampmark wrote, in February 2022, that nothing could be more counterproductive than hitting Afghanistan with sanctions, in an act of collective revenge for the defeat of US military forces in that nation. In fact, by imposing sanctions, thus producing a humanitarian disaster Afghanistan, the US is ensuring that the nation becomes a failed state. I seem to remember American scholars talking about how failed states are conducive to producing recruits for terrorist groups?….the very outcome the Washington beltway pundits claim to oppose…..

If Ellwood’s suggestion to reengage with the Taliban was outrageous – and it was – he was not the first to pursue such a course of action. In the mid-1990s, when the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, their cooperation was actively courted – by the United States. A bevy of conservative oil tycoons and US politicians sought out the Taliban government, in order to construct transnational oil pipelines across Afghan territory.

Why is that important? Have a look at a map of Afghanistan. It straddles Central Asia, whose former Soviet republics contain profitable mineral reserves of oil and natural gas. However, they are landlocked – and constructing pipelines across miles of territory requires the cooperation of friendly governments. In the early 1990s, the newly independent Central Asian republics wanted the investments of oil and energy multinational companies.

The Taliban, after taking power in 1996, were visited by US officials and businesspeople from Unocal, the Union Oil Company of California, now owned by Chevron. Taliban officials were flown to the US in 1997, where they enjoyed the hospitality of their American hosts. One of the go-between for this burgeoning engagement with the Taliban was conservative politician and US policy strategist Zalmay Khalilzad.

Khalilzad, a cunning political operator, wrote an extensive opinion piece at the time, explicitly calling for engagement with the Taliban government in Afghanistan. His article, published in the Washington Post, admitted that while the Taliban were….a little bit on the ultra conservative, misogynistic and Pashtun-centric side of the spectrum, this did not mean that they could not be effective partners. They would be similar in theocratic policies like our other friends, Saudi Arabia.

He was very enthusiastic about the upcoming extraction of mineral resources from Central Asia, with a little help from our Afghan Taliban allies. After all, the US and its subcontractor allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, spent millions of dollars on fundamentalist Islamist groups in Afghanistan for their covert war against the Soviets. Now it was time for a return on investment.

Sadly for Khalilzad and the oil barons, these plans were interrupted. In August 1998, Al Qaeda militants attacked two US embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania. Killing over 200 people with these suicide bombings, the Taliban had provided refuge for Al Qaeda. In the immediate aftermath, the Taliban were transformed in the corporate media from reasonable business partners to monsters incarnate.

The suggestion by Tobias Ellwood to reengage with the Taliban was not his idea alone. He is travelling down a well-trodden footpath of US-British policy. Once the shooting war has stopped and the dust settles, the US and Britain do not hesitate to cozy up to fanatical groups in pursuit of geopolitical and economic interests.

The cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games by the Victorian State government has been met with a chorus of shrieking denunciations and condemnations by the conservative commentariat. Let’s leave Sky News commentators to scream their venom at this decision – there are more important subjects to talk about.

The Commonwealth Games – the rebadged Empire games – were about cementing cultural and sporting ties with the British empire. Colonialist in origin, the Commonwealth games were designed to promote a feel good narrative involving the colonised peoples of the now defunct empire. Australia, as an Anglo-origin outpost of Britain, has had an ambivalent relationship with the British empire. Aware of our status as a penal colony composed primarily of British rejects, we have bristled at the arrogance and pomposity of the effete British aristocracy. However, we are covetous of a greater place within the rebranded empire, the Commonwealth.

The British empire, in similar fashion to other empires, did not rely exclusively on brute force to maintain its rule. Yes, slavery, racism and exploitation are inherent features of the British empire’s expansion, but cultural ties were/are just as important. Promoting an ideology of empire loyalism gains the English ruling class recruits from among the ‘natives.’ Sport is a powerful factor in shaping identity; not for nothing did some empire loyalists suggest the creation of a British empire Olympic team, appealing to a narrow racial patriotism.

Constituting a supranational organisation, the Commonwealth (empire) games were a curious anomaly. Most sporting events involve geographically consistent entities – the Asian cup, African games and so on. Yes, the Olympics involve multiple nations, but they participate voluntarily. The British empire was not built on a voluntary basis. So while it may be sad for some to see the Commonwealth (empire) games reach obsolescence, it is hardly a cause of mourning among millions of people.

It is saddening to see the athletes and sportspersons, who have trained hard for so long, to have their hopes dashed with this cancellation. This does not blind us to the fact that the Commonwealth games are a faded relic from a long lost era of empire. Sean O’Grady, writing in the Independent, states that the Commonwealth games can be likened to an afternoon bacon sarnie – nice snack between meals, but won’t be missed once it is gone.

International sporting events are always a double-edged sword. Yes, they bring publicity, tourism and dollars to the host nation or city. However, they involve the demolition of local infrastructure purely for the international competition at hand; after all the competitors and fans have left, the stadiums and associated infrastructure become white elephants. The Olympics are the prime example of the putative benefits of hosting the event, being heavily outweighed by its post-event costing blowout.

There are no tears for the cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth (empire) games. The FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer however, is an exciting international sporting event for Australia. Hang on a minute….am I not being a hypocrite? Why celebrate the FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer, but welcome the demise of the Commonwealth Games?

The Commonwealth games were aggressively promoted by the sporting powers-that-be; never short of funding or publicity, the Commonwealth games has had an unending conveyor belt of financial and cultural support. The women’s soccer, and soccer in general, has had to fight for recognition and its very existence in Australia as a legitimate sport. Long stigmatised as the ‘ethnic’ football, or more crudely, the ‘wogball’, the hosting of the international women’s soccer marks a qualitative step forward in the legitimation of soccer, and women’s sport in particular.

It is true that Australia’s soccer clubs have their foundations in the various immigrant communities that settled in Australia. The Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Macedonians, Maltese – founded not only their respective social clubs, where migrants could find a safe haven amidst all the challenges of taking up a new life in a new home nation. They also began various soccer clubs – in fact, today’s Matildas can trace their beginnings to St George Budapest and Sydney Prague, two soccer clubs from a non-English speaking background (NESB).

The Italians founded Marconi and APIA Leichhardt in Sydney; the Croatians founded, among others, SC Croatia in Melbourne; the Serbians started the White Eagles in Bonnyrigg, Western Sydney; European Jews started the Maccabi Hakoah club in Sydney’s East; the Hungarians St George Budapest – you get the idea. Sydney Prague (founded by the Czech community), and St George Budapest formed the initial grounds for women’s soccer.

Samantha Lewis writes that the Australian women’s soccer teams, after proving their exceptional talent in local competitions, went on to participate at the international level. In the 1970s, Australian women Socceroos competing in Asian football tournaments, proving their mettle against Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. This history is steadily being lost due to, according to Lewis, decades of apathy and neglect. While men’s sport has been assiduously catalogued and celebrated, women’s soccer achievements have been largely ignored. We have the opportunity to correct that omission.

Let the Commonwealth Games die a dignified death – and let’s celebrate the Matildas and their historic achievements in Australian sport.

Growing up in the 1980s in western Sydney, one cannot help but become familiar with the loud, overpowering rendition of the Cold Chisel song, Khe Sanh. Told from the viewpoint of an Australian Vietnam veteran, the lyrics reference not only the battle itself, but the aimlessness and drifting of the veteran in the post-Khe Sanh world.

After his return to Australia, the veteran recounts his life of post traumatic stress, womanising, working in various jobs, alcoholism, and his trip to Hong Kong for casual sex. As an adolescent listening to this most ‘Aussie’ of songs, its undercurrent of sadness indicates the restlessness of youth. The nightclubs of Sydney would consider their repertoire incomplete without the bellowing sounds of Jimmy Barnes, Cold Chisel’s lead singer, belting out Khe Sanh. Barnes’ own struggles with alcoholism and trauma are a reflection of the artist’s life taking on the dimensions of their lyrical subject – a pathos that only adds to the poignancy of the song.

I have often wondered though – what do the Vietnamese veterans think about Khe Sanh? Surely, if our Australian veterans suffered horrible stresses, is there not a comparable experience on the Vietnamese side? Actually, there is.

Colonel Tran Duc Binh, is a Vietnamese soldier; he is a veteran of the battle of Khe Sanh. On July 9, the Vietnamese government marked the 55th anniversary of that engagement. The North Vietnamese army at the time, supported by the National Liberation Front (popularly known in the West as the Viet Cong) battled American troops in Khe Sanh, starting from January 1968. Colonel Duc Binh returns to Khe Sanh every year to honour his fallen comrades.

Khe Sanh was not just an isolated battle, but a ferocious, bloody engagement. US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara, and General Westmoreland, were committed to a strategy known as the McNamara Line, a barrier protecting the US client state of South Vietnam from infiltration and attacks by the North Vietnamese. The US military deployed its entire arsenal in Khe Sanh, in the northwest region of the Quang Tri province. From January till July 1968, Khe Sanh was the most heavily bombarded place on the planet.

General Westmoreland, frustrated by the persistent resistance of the Vietnamese, considered deploying chemical and nuclear weapons, but was overruled by President Lyndon Johnson. The dense, mountainous terrain, it was argued, would limit the effectiveness of non conventional weapons, and result in unnecessary casualties among American military personnel.

The McNamara Line failed, and Khe Sanh fell to the North Vietnamese. The United States still disputes what happened at Khe Sanh, and insists that its forces withdrew to avoid further casualties. There have been numerous competing re-tellings of Khe Sanh, motivated by a nationalistic desire to preserve pride in the face of a military confrontation.

Khe Sanh, and the wider Quang Tri province, has been rebuilt since the end of the war. The pollution and Agent Orange is cleaned up, and the greenery is returning. Agriculture has returned to the province. There are the graves of the fallen, a solemn reminder of the human cost of Khe Sanh.

Subjects like the battle of Khe Sanh must be remembered, not only out of respect to the Australian veterans. In the context of the current Anglo-American war drive against China, there will be untold numbers of future Khe Sanhs, involving Australian and non-Chinese proxies as cannon fodder for American imperial ambitions.

Self-determination, client states and proxies

Being a supporter of the Palestinians involves two essential tasks; keeping up with the news of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories, and also the contortions of US and British foreign policies regarding national self-determination. It is curiously fascinating to watch how, for instance, the Washington beltway experts loudly and forcefully advocate for Taiwan’s independence from China, and yet stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the legitimate demands of the Palestinians for an independent state.

The enthusiasm for Taiwan separatism can be explained by the growing role of Taiwan as a military armaments depot for the United States. The Biden administration has just approved new shipments of American military technology and hardware to Taiwan.

To be sure, Taiwan’s utility as an American base – an island version of the defunct and artificially-constructed Saigon South Vietnamese state – is diminishing with each passing year. Numerous countries are shifting their recognition to Beijing, and Taipei is losing supporters.

Nevertheless, Taiwan is becoming a proxy force for the US regime change plans, no matter how fanciful the latter may be. The Washington beltway punditocracy are experts in deluding themselves. That is fine, but they do not confine their delusions of grandeur to themselves, but spread them throughout the world, grabbing up proxies in the process.

One of the fanatics caught up in his own delusional fantasy land is former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. He traveled to Taiwan in 2021, and dutifully played the role of war making chicken hawk. Goading Beijing, parroting the line of the Washington beltway, this featherweight pugilist allowed his delusions of heavyweight contention to carry him away. His ranting speech, delivered to a forum in October 2021, gave comfort to ultranationalist phantasms of regime change.

What he actually achieved was expose his lack of credibility – a cringeworthy performance of a barking chihuahua with pretensions of being a German shepherd. If Taiwan is used as a proxy force, backed by the political support for its separatism by the Washington beltway class, it was make a war with China catastrophically global. The magnitude of Vietnam war will recede into the rear view mirror. Numerous future Khe Sanhs will consume the youth of today in futile battles. The time to speak out is now.

A good start would be to cancel the current Talisman Sabre war games.