So, ladies, gentlemen and beings who will not or cannot be categorised, I present to you the best and worst people, movers, shakers and organisations of 2011, and in the time pre-blog, leading up to now.
The best and worst are not necessarily people, they might be organisations, movements, and sometimes one entry will be two or more people who represent the same kind of idea. Entries are NOT in any hierarchical order.
The Best
People and organisations that I think have done some good this year and in the time leading up to 2011.
1) GetUp!
GetUp! are Australia's most hated activist organisation. Most hated by anyone vaguely conservative through to fully reactionary that is. The bile and venom spewed at GetUp! by our more goose-steppery political elements is truly staggering, Eric Abetz come on down! However, among the many, many activist campaigns GetUp! ran this year this video, created in time for the ALP Nat Conference, blew the world away. Gathering millions of views just in a few short days, the video went viral and became a solid hit internationally. It proved that you'd have to be completely without any form of human compassion to stand against same-sex marriages.
Thus it also proved that a good portion of the ALP and most if not all of the Coalition are soulless monsters.
2) Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren
Reading US news about Occupy Wall Street, and about the sheer ineptitude of most of their political figures fills the average reader - certainly myself - with a great weight of despair. Are all of the political figures over there completely self-centred, insane and fucking useless? Well no. Over the course of the year two figures have stood out as brilliant exceptions to that mind-buggeringly stupid rule. Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders was a driving force behind the push for a one-off audit of the Federal Reserve, an audit that revealed the trillions of dollars worth of near-to-zero % interest loans the Fed had given out as well as shocking instances of corruption and conflict of interest. Elizabeth Warren is the Democratic party hopeful for the 2012 Senate run in Massachusetts, and has also been a fervent critic of the mind-bogglingly corrupt practices of America's financial institutions and the Fed Reserve. Both have shown symapthy to the ideals of the Occupy movement.
Both of these figures represent some small sliver of hope that the US has some forces on 'the inside' who don't want to see the nation go to rack and ruin.
3) Occupy Melbourne
While originally a small solidarity protest of the broader global Occupy Movement, OMEL has become one of the smaller global protests that the US movement is avidly watching. What could have frittered away in its early days was catalysed as an ongoing protest when the police broke up the encampment that was first established on Swanston St. The police crackdown was criticised for its violence, and Lord Mayor Robert Doyle became an outspoken critic of the protest and an unashamed apologist for violence. As the protest has relocated and relocated again, the sheer pettiness of Melbourne City Council has been starkly revealed, despite - to my current knowledge - a court hearing to determine if they have operated outside of their powers.
Lately OMEL has had their camp interfered with on International Human Rights Day, after an earlier assurance of non-interference from MCC, and an OMEL protestor has had a tent costume forcibly cut off her. OMEL's protest is ongoing and has highlighted, that though we are a world away from the concerns that sparked OWS, we have our own corruptions nestling in our midst.
4) Wikileaks
Love them or hate them, and no matter what you think of their spokesman Julian Assange, the organisation Wikileaks has forever changed the relationship of a citizenry to its government. We always used to suspect that politicians were lying crapsacks, but now we have proof! Wikileaks have made public the dirty little secrets our governments have wanted kept private. Instead of offering a mea culpa, and trying to pull up their socks, our governments in turn have degenerated into blatantly corrupt monsters. The desire of governments in the western world to see Assange black-bagged and most Wikileaks staffers assassinated is a testament, not only to how brutal and amoral our governments have become, but also the value of Wikileaks as a whistleblower.
Wikileaks won a coveted Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism this year. One of the few moments I've been proud to be Australian in recent years.
5) Anonymous
Some may find Anon's inclusion here a trifle controversial 'They commit crimes!' I hear you cry. Well, here's why I think - at least some members of Anon - are worthy of inclusion. Activist groups have always had one big problem. You want to be honest and upstanding and decent, so you go on a march or wave a placard. Meanwhile some cop or government spookshow is busy snapping away photos of you to throw in a big old database labelled 'Filthy Dissidents to Black-Bag when we can get away with it'. It grew out of the Scientology protests, the wearing of V masks, where goons from the CoS would litigate the sweet fuck out of anyone they could identify, in what is technically known as a SLAPP.
Anon are hard to categorise as a group. Anyone with the right set-up can call themselves Anonymous, making the 'group' hard to analyse or predict from the outside. Some Anon activists however have taken on an ideology that sympathises with many of the broader activist groups around the world.
Ask yourself this. You know from Wikileaks data dumps that governments commit illegal acts all the time. If someone fights for you, using illegal means against a goverment using illegal methods, who is committing the greater evil? Anon have forced that question into the open - who does our law serve? Us or the people who can bend or rewrite it to suit their whims?
6) RINJ
The Rape Is No Joke campaign started on Facebook. I've written about RINJ on this blog a few times. I often find it incredible that Facebook as a corporate entity have stonewalled them so much. If a service you ran was being used by trolls to make jokes about rape, and even possibly plan events where you could get away with rape, wouldn't you be horrified? Wouldn't you be thankful to have that pointed out? Wouldn't you descend in volcanic wrath on the heads of the trolls doing these heinous things? Yes, yes and yes. Unless you're Facebook, who have proved themselves to be quite chummy with the rape apologists/enablers. RINJ has elevated the awareness of this problem, causing FB to have a heap of problems with sponsors who demand to be taken off the offending pages.
The RINJ campaign has spread far in a short amount of time. One of their current actions is to try and drive the odious Kyle Sandilands off the air, particularly for some of his more recent comments which you can read about here. Note: I wouldn't honour Sandilands with inclusion in my 'Worst' list.
7) Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook
Another campaign from Facebook, WHOF's goal is simple - to take down FB pages that advocate violence or hate against LGBTI folk. Their successes to date are numerous, and having seen some of the targeted pages myself, I can say that their targets are not chosen arbitrarily. They also provide links to crisis services.
Kel from WHOF writes some of the best putdowns to hate mail I have ever seen as well. He has a wickedly funny sense of humour and its laudable that he deals with such hate-ridden misanthropes with a deftly handled levity.
8) Occupy/the 99%/Scott Olsen
One movement has come to represent the anxieties of the modern world, to encapsulate the failings of corrupt capitalism and broken democracy, to stand united for a better way of living. That movement is the global Occupy movement.
Reading the mainstream media does NOT give you any clue just how massive or pervasive this movement is. Although it started out as Occupy Wall Street, and was an evolution itself of earlier protests across the United States, the movement has grown and is now found all across the United States, and scattered across the world.
Occupy is the movement to watch for this part of the early 21st century. More than anything else it encapsulates a simple idea - that true democracy is needed, wanted and demanded, and that the age of the corporate oligarchy is facing serious resistance, if not coming to a much-deserved end. Occupy has highlighted many other problems too, including the overwhelming trend of police brutality.
Perhaps one of the most recognised figures of the Occupy movement is Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen. While at the Occupy Oakland protest, he raced out into the street to recover a protestor who had been injured (while Oakland PD stood and watched this and other injured protestors bleeding out on the street I might add). While trying to drag the protestor to safety, an Oakland riot cop fired a 40mm gas grenade at his head. He has recovered now, but for a long time it looked incredibly dicey. Olsen's injury has galvanised many military personnel into supporting Occupy.
9) The Sophie Lancaster Foundation/
Friends of Dom Crouch Against Bullying
Friends of Dom Crouch Against Bullying
The stories of these two young people are heartbreaking. Sophie Lancaster was brutally beaten by a group of neanderthalic little thugs for the sole 'crime' of being a Goth, while Dom Crouch was bullied into suicide. I'd go into more detail, but a small paragraph alone cannot do their stories justice.
You can read Sophie Lancaster's story on Wikipedia here. The Sophie Lancaster Foundation can be found here. If you're on Facebook, check out 'Friends of Dom Crouch against Bullying' for more info.
It may seem strange that, in a list of people and movements fighting the big struggles of corruption, injustice and violent crime, two groups dedicated to remembering a loved friend and family member appear. Both the Sophie and Dom groups highlight something very important to me. We live in a world where too often some idiots think it's their bloody right to victimise and assault people because of who they are. The brave people at the SLF and FoDCAB remind us that such abuse is never 'okay', it is never tolerable. Their human struggle is an uplifting one. Their cause is one we should all share. I advise anyone and everyone to check out their groups and lend support, even if it is just a small message of understanding.
10) Avaaz.org
Avaaz is perhaps one of the biggest, if not the biggest organised online activist group in the world. As of this writing their home page boasts 10,384,498 members. Yeah 10 million and change.
They have been instrumental in a vast number of successful campaigns. If I had an entire piece dedicated to them, I doubt I could scratch the surface of everything they are currently doing and have done in the past.
Avaaz prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that online activism works, and can work globally. If you want to see the barest tidbits about them, I advise you check out this link.
And now, over to the dark side....
The Worst
It would be easy to pick the tyrants and despots of the world. To pick a Muammar Qadaffi or a Robert Mugabe. For the worst however, I'd like to focus on what I think is a greater evil - those who should know better, but choose the easy path of tyranny, bigotry and lazy, lazy callousness.
1) The Australian Labor Party
If ever there was a political party that had given up standing for anything, and had instead stood steadfast, buffeted by public opinion, and run headlong into doing the wrong thing, it is the ALP.
It seems difficult to pick out one act of callowness or self-serving poll-chasing from the sea of debasement this party has become, from continuing the immigration policies of the Howard years to the hypocritical buffoonery they've conducted over the same-sex marriage issue, to the contemptuously irresponsible and shameless decision to sell uranium to India, this is a party that stands for nothing but opportunism, bigotry and pig-headedness, a party that has laid bare the often-suspected tendency of a political party to care for nothing, and throw ideals to the wind when it suits them.
Has Australia ever had a more visible puppet of shadowy right-wing power-brokers than the risible coward Julia Gillard? What does this party stand for anymore? What are its principles?
2) The 'No-alition'
I was wrong, there is one party that is a more contemptible gang of opportunists, and that is the Coalition of the Liberals/Nationals/Liberal Nationals/National Liberals/one lone guy in Queensland who can't decide which one he belongs to/other right-wing splinter from a main right-wing party.
Where do you begin? Such a rich tapestry of calamity, ineptitude, schoolboy stupidity and blatant bigotry contains so many flaws that it seems impossible to find a starting point.
What do you say of a party whose only response all year has been to say 'No!!' earning them the nickname from ALP attack mutt Albanese of the 'Noalition'. Of a party that can't cost a single policy? Of a party that seems to have NO policy to begin with? Of a party that yo-yo's out support for a conscience vote, purely dependent on whether they think they can block it or not? Of a party who gladly supports protest from American Christian hatemongers and LaRouchians?
They tell us with a straight face that their gormless, clueless, glory-hungry Opposition leader is a credible alternative as PM. Well maybe against the low bar set by Julia Gillard, but even then I'd still say 'hell no'. This science-denying fool has publicly admitted to lying and making up policy on the fly. If he didn't have a major media company going to bat for him and his gang of sideshow critters every day, maybe we'd all wise up and realise that the only credible alternative he is, is to a sock puppet.
3) 'Lord' Christopher Monckton
The goggle-eyed king of climate denialism. After having all of his claims debunked at one time or another, after having his claims to use the title of Lord and the associated iconography of the House of Lords roundly rejected, after being revealed as little more than a delusional compulsive liar, this fool is still roundly touted as a climate 'expert' by the aforementioned shills in the Coalition and the yet-to-be mentioned shills of the Murdoch empire.
What does this delusional idiot gain by his rantings? Attention? Speaking fees? Is it really valid that a fool of this calibre should so hideously derail one of the most pressing concerns of the human species to make himself feel important? Can't any of his supporters see what a nonsensical idiot this man is? There are few people I find as thoroughly contemptible as this man.
4) Rupert Murdoch and his media empire
I would go out on a limb here and say that I can think of few people as intrinsically dangerous to western democracy as this man and his media empire. This is the man who has done more than any other to turn news media and journalism into a game of sensationalism and the active shilling for conservative and right-wing governments. This is the man whose media outlets became embroiled in the phone hacking scandal, the man who owns Fox News - the Republican's propaganda arm in the United States. This is the man who owns such rags as the Herald Sun and that wanton shill for the Coalition, The Australian newspaper.
His is the media empire that has continually attacked and denied climate change, disproportionately highlighting errors or bad research and pimping frauds like Monckton.
This is the man who wants to undermine governments to get his rich old white man's way. The man who wants more and more and more of the media you read, so that you don't think thoughts he finds inconvenient. It is his media arms that constantly attack any politics slightly to the left of the beer hall putsch. And yet, when his underlings get caught out in criminal wrongdoing, he'd gladly feign ignorance and hang them out to dry, even his own gormless son.
Do you really think he doesn't know what's going on?
5) The Republican Party
If you could hold up only one example of a political party that ruled through superstition, fear and brutality, but were prevented from choosing either or both of the Duvalier dictatorships in Haiti, the US Republican Party would likely be close to the top of the list. This party has been on a downhill roll since the days of the fuzzy brained old moron Reagan, a man so crooked he probably had to corkscrew his pants on.
These days the ills of the Republican Party are multiple. They have become the party of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, climate denial, science denial, Christian fundamentalism, Christian reconstructionism, idiocy, delusion, hatred of the poor, warmongering, economic suicide, anti-Constitution, anti-Bill of Rights, pro-corporate, anti-environment. The list could go on all day. Pick any issue. ANY issue. Their performance on it is either piss-poor and stupid, or outright belligerent.
A joke has been circulating recently that the only reason Sarah Palin isn't running this year is because the field of competing candidates is beneath her. When the Alaskan crook and moron seems like the best choice you have to worry. Until you look at the runners that had lined up in that race;
• the vapid 'anti-gay, because my husband is a reformed gay' Christian Reconstructionist Michele Bachmann
• the 'gung-ho hang em all and let me frack their land' Rick Perry
• the 'I'll believe in whatever you tell me to believe in' Mormon Mitt Romney
• the 'sexual assaulting 9-9-9' Herman Cain
• the 'put poor kids to work in the factories, sanctity of marriage is important, but I dumped my wife while she was dying of cancer' Newt Gingrich
A more motley collection of soulless, moronic traitors and monsters has never been seen.
6) Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle
Quite frankly if one small twist of fate had occurred, Doyle wouldn't be a blip on my radar. If he'd let Occupy Melbourne be, treated them like Occupy Sydney was treated in the early days, then I would have ignored him.
OMEL's when he went from just another washed-up Liberal Party hack and became an idiot of the first grade in my eyes. The police crackdown was one thing, but then to go on and excuse the police brutality, to viciously attack the protest and to instigate an ongoing process of harassment when it is still not clear if he overstepped the mark is quite another.
He could have been Premier once. If this is how he acts as Lord Mayor I - for one - am glad he never achieved that position. Victoria has a charter of human rights, something the current State Government has been fighting tooth and nail to get rid of. That charter protects protest, but that's not good enough for Melbourne's angriest oompa-loompa. When you ask why a young woman needs a tent cut off her, why she needs to be left crying on the ground in her underwear, go ask this fool. I'm sure he'll bluster some pompous answer at you. Congratulations Doyle, your actions prompted me to give OMEL their own entry in 'The Best' above.
7) Scott Lively and Abiding Truth Ministries
There probably aren't a lot of my readers who know about this noxious dick of a man, although I did mention him and his hate group way back here. Scott Lively and ATM are the driving force behind many, many iterations of a bill in Uganda that would make it illegal to be gay.
Illegal. To. Be. Gay.
ILLEGAL. To. BE. Gay.
The bill has been nicknamed the 'Kill The Gays' Bill and with just cause. This turd in human form is actively campaigning for legislation to enact a pogrom of murder. I am aware that it is bad form to invoke Godwin's Law, but in this instance, I cannot think of another analogy apart from that of the Nazis that would be as apt.
When people accuse me of being down on organised religion (as opposed to personal) faith, Scott Lively and ATM are reasons #1, #2, #3 and #7 why I am against organised religions. How plainly do you want me to put this? HE IS ADVOCATING, CAMPAIGNING FOR, LOBBYING FOR AND ASSISTING IN WRITING LEGISLATION FOR THE STATE-SANCTIONED MASS-MURDER OF HUMAN BEINGS IN THE NAME OF HIS GOD. Is that clear enough?
8) Pope Benedict XVI
Okay, let me make something really clear right off the bat. I am not picking on him because he's a Catholic or because he's the current figurehead of a religious organisation. I have chosen Benedict XVI for one simple, single reason. That of child rape and the network of obfuscation he has been instrumental in building.
I am well aware that he faces no charges himself, that he has not committed such an act himself. What I want to attack here is something very simple that few apologists choose to recognise. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he penned the letter 'De delictis gravioribus' which outlined the official stance of confidentiality in inquiries into sexual abuse by priests, including child rape. He reaffirmed the official stance of the 1962 'Crimen Sollicitationis'. Whenever there is any discussion of why the Chruch does not make public evidence or accusations of child rape by church figures, you need look no further than this man.
He has been one of the most powerful and influential church figures for a quarter century, even before he became Pope.
Now, ask yourself, one single, basic question. If you worked for a major corporation, let's say a firm of accountants, and some of your work colleagues raped children, and your managers swept it under the rug. In fact one of the senior managers enforced an internal protocol to not report this, not comply with law enforcement, and actively frustrate external inquiries. Let's then say that high-up manager is made CEO. Do you think any of that is even remotely supportable? Would you champion this company's right to continue on as they have?
Bottom line: the interpretation of the faith he champions is built on raped children and criminals who get away with it. The faith itself is irrelevant. This is either a crime everywhere or it is not a crime everywhere. To defend an exceptionalism, you have to say why it is better for clergy to rape children than an ordinary citizen. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't touch that argument with a 10 foot pole.
9) The Axis of Torture
It was, I think one of the most shameful eras in recent Australian history, and I'm not talking about the war. You can argue the validity of the war until the cows come home. Yes there were no WMD's, and yes Hussein was not a nice person, and yes, Al-Qaeda were probably responsible for 9/11 and yes Al-Qaeda and Hussein hated each other and yes bin Laden wasn't particularly nice either.
That's not what earns the triumvirate of Bush, Blair and Howard a spot on this list. It's torture. The 'mainstreaming' of torture and one of the major signs of the fall of the respectability of democracies, indeed the whole concept of the rule of law.
Bush and Blair have been charged with war crimes recently. Their list of travel destinations is now heavily curtailed. That wacky war of western adventurism in the dusty Middle East, that war of revenge that took a sudden detour to secure some oil and overthrow an old ally, it opened the floodgates on torture. When a major western democracy fails to respect human rights and violates the Geneva Convention, less scrupulous nations are more likely to do the same thing. So the US mainstreamed 'aggressive interrogation' aka 'waterboarding' aka 'torture'. The UK stood by and whistled while it happened, but 'Honest John' took it one step further as I've earlier mentioned here.
These three threw away something precious and vital. They threw away, what was perhaps an illusion all along, that we value justice, that we respect human rights. 'Fuck that' these three devout and respectable men said 'turn on the tap and towel up that fucker's head'.
10) The Corporate Oligarchy
We've lost something. Democratic representation. Your vote counts for shit, as does your voice and as do your concerns. In the US, business can buy government. They can buy a Supreme Court vote, they can fund preferred candidates with little to no checks or balances. Even if they don't do that, there's always the major throwing of a tanty if they don't get their way. 'We'll take our jobs overseas if we have to pay a shiny cent in tax more!' they scream.
It doesn't matter if it's the Koch brothers in the US, banks in the UK or the ATI here. Government is more likely to roll over and beg for the corporate dollar than they are their own constituents. Hey, here's some cash, let me frack anywhere I please. Sure, says Government, I'll just forget that environmental impact survey.
What goes through their heads I wonder? Do they truly think they're doing some good? Are they just focused on building the profit margin? Who knows? I sure don't. But their money has become poison. Maybe it's spineless government or paid-for shills in the same who are really to blame. Still money stolen from a bank and money stolen from an unattended wallet are both instances of thievery.
Let's face it, they don't want to be citizens anymore, they're all on a crazed smash n' grab to get whatever they want. They only care about you insofar as you'll work for them and not complain too loudly when they dump you on your ass and move your job offshore. Let's call them what they are - pirates.
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/anonymous
ReplyDelete@Furore
ReplyDeleteHeh. Wicked keen. It's the big dilemma talking about Anon isn't it? You're not talking about Anon, you're talking about the Anon that did that thing/those things your ideals agree with.