When Stop The War directs kids to war, and other true tales

Book by STWC leader Andrew Murray. Cover picture shows the burning trade union building in Odessa "where 40 people died after supporters of the Kiev putsch government, Right Sektor activists and Chernomorets football ultras attacked."

The past two weeks has seen a unprecedented amount of attention on the Stop The War Coalition (STWC), because of their association with the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Endless press stories and media appearances for a leadership under siege.

The STWC response to the spotlight has been to label every criticism a 'smear' or a 'lie', however it has also been to engage in some tragic PR tactics. When the focus has shifted onto what they publish on their website the STWC response has been to start cleansing the website - and firing the poor Web Editor.

At the instigation of 'Soupy' a blog has been set up to cover what STWC are trying to hide or may be about to try to hide.

The Real Stop The War launched at the weekend and here is the content on Ukraine which I contributed.

When Stop The War directs kids to war

The STWC website has a number of posts about Ukraine,. The most egregious by far are by John Pilger.

Pilger methodically repeats a series of Kremlin war propaganda* memes: That the 2014 Revolution of Dignity was a fascist coup (see the response to this pap by Ukrainian socialists and anarchists I link to in my post on Corbyn's Ukraine fantasies); That there were pogroms against Russian speakers - a line lifted from Putin himself and a vicious fantasy.

The idea of NATO 'expanding Eastwards' and 'threatening Russia' - central to Pilger but also STWC more widely- not only ignores the agency of Eastern Europeans but also indulges one of the central myths used by Russia's imperial rulers to maintain their rule.

It's his post on the so-called 'Odessa massacre' that is the most dangerous. The violent events of May 2, 2014 were immediately seized on by Russia to paint Ukraine as fascist, Russia even toured exhibitions around Europe. Citizen investigations have shown that what happened was nothing like Russia says (and Pilger loyally repeats).

Among the mountain of falsehoods, Pilger includes the supposed eyewitness testimony of a doctor. This lie was very quickly debunked as Kremlin disinformation. There's a weasel note on the post, copied from The Guardian, which fails to say that this information has been proven false.

The May 2 events have been widely used as propaganda and have led to a number of left-wingers (including Brits) traveling to Ukraine to 'fight the fascists'. In reality they have arrived in 'Republics' where actual fascists wield power, anti-Semiticism is endemic, homosexuality is illegal as are free trade unions and humanitarian agencies are banned because they might 'foment counter-revolution'.

Those thug 'Republics' are backed by STWC leaders Lindsey German and Andrew Murray. They, along with Pilger, back war on 'fascist' Ukraine and could care less for the fate of any mugs encouraged by their website to participate.

*See this fantastic Lithuanian documentary for more on Russia's war propaganda machine (in English).



See Also:

• Deselect Stop The War Coalition
• Have Stop The War Coalition finally jumped the shark?
• Donbas can starve say 'rebel' leaders

Deselect Stop The War Coalition

Last weekend something remarkable happened, well two things.

First, Stop The War Coalition [STWC] actually walked something back. They had published, as is their want, a repugnant piece by Matt Carr which compared the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War to ISIS. Cue outrage on social media, including from a number of Labour MPs. Less than a day later Carr's work had been taken down but not before its author had 'explained' himself by digging himself a deeper hole.

Secondly, an anonymous spokesperson for the Labour Party was quoted in several media articles saying that the piece "had been taken down because it did not reflect the organisation’s [STWC] views." That person then went on to defend STWC and claim that during the group's existence they had "repeatedly called it right."

Paul Waugh quoted a source, not named as such but presumably the same Labour one, saying about the Carr post: "This is the second time this has happened, it won't be happening again." (The 'first' time was their also taken down response to the Paris attacks that the French were “reaping the whirlwind of western support for extremist violence.”)

How the heck would that Labour source know that? STWC is not an affiliate of the party, by what possible method could the party enforce its will and hence make that promise?

If the party is now saying it has this intimate connection to STWC then everyone needs to know what exactly it is tying itself to. Waugh also reports a source telling him that STWC will "get a grip" on its website so clearly a spring clean is being attempted in the hope that the world will buy it and move on. The world should not move on. The world needs to drop STWC like a stinky hot brick, and that includes 'anti-war' activists.

Forget 'Blairite smears'

Writing in the New Statesman the socialist Michael Chessum, co-founder of The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, lamented that the movement against intervention in Syria had been relatively small. Why?

At the core of the British anti-war movement there has been a failure of internationalism. In running a campaign against British intervention in Syria, Stop the War has seemingly run a campaign with as little reference to Syrians as possible, and it stands accused of outright apologism for Russia and Assad, giving platforms to regime loyalists. As a result, the relatively simple anti-war narrative – opposition to British bombing, condemnation of Turkey and Assad, and practical solidarity with secular and progressive forces in Syria – has lost its clarity and persuasiveness in the public eye.

...

In order to effectively oppose future wars and escalations, the anti-war movement will need to regroup and renew itself. The simplified, reactive politics of recent years needs to be replaced with a genuinely internationalist movement: one that builds solidarity with labour movements and progressive forces on the ground, and opposes dictatorships and imperialist ventures regardless of who is behind them.

He is hardly the first socialist to bemoan the behaviour of STWC. Way back in 2003 the activist and comedian Mark Thomas was warning that it was a front for a hard left interested most of all in recruiting new members. Twelve years ago, in a spooky echo of Chessum, Thomas wrote:

The peace movement could do a lot worse than start to organise a coalition free from SWP [ Socialist Workers Party] domination, one that regards peace as the goal and co-operation as the means of getting there.

Comrade Andrew Coates has made similar points to Chessum's. Responding to the traditional 'blowback' response from STWC's Lindsey German following the Woolwich killing Coates wrote:

We can agree that Western intervention is wholly wrong. It has stoked the fires of conflict in all the countries she cites.

But is removing it a solution to the rise of violent anti-democratic Islamism?

Perhaps we should be, as the left, giving some energy to supporting the democratic left in these lands who offer a real political alternative to Islamism, authoritarian, intolerant, or indeed jihadist.

That involves a genuine politics of human rights.

This is the way to start thinking of how a solution can come about.

The failure of much of the British left to back the Arab democratic left is part of the problem.

Another socialist, the writer, poet and broadcaster Anna Chen, is a former STWC publicity officer and one of those most responsible for getting the numbers to the anti-Iraq war march. Her insider account of the behaviour of those controlling STWC is eye popping. After putting up with a lot she finally left - with another message which should resonate down the years:

Who needs this crap?

We were warned

Chessum doesn't note this but other commentators have - there has been a dramatic withdrawal of support from Muslims for STWC over the past couple of years. Why might that be?

Could it be, as he cites, the sickening treatment of Syrians by STWC, something I have covered at length?

As Chen notes and as Jews, Ukrainians, Iranians and Iraqis, among others, have experienced before, this is nothing new from STWC. What is new is the spotlight. Here's an anecdote from this week's edition of The Economist, of all places:

“There’s a big Syrian group,” murmurs one. “But they’re not anti,” continues another, disgusted: “They were lobbying for Britain to bomb Assad.” Those present sigh as one. On to the logistics of the event. It is decided that stewards should guard the mic, poised to fend off any “pro-war Syrians or imperialists”. After all, notes the chairman: “We know what we’re talking about here.” Would that BBC Manchester possessed such discernment. The station is interviewing pro-war Kurds tomorrow, to the group’s disdain: “They dig ’em up.” “Amazing how they find them!”

Less well known but, to my mind, just as appalling is STWC leaders Andrew Murray and Lindsey German's backing for the (misnamed) group Solidarity with the Anti-fascist Resistance in Ukraine (SARU).

This group supports the so-called 'People's Republics' in Eastern Ukraine where open fascists operate unmolested, homosexuality is illegal, child soldiers are deployed and the people left to starve and die from lack of medicine as aid agencies are banned for ideological reasons.

This so-called anti-fascist group is behind the smears against the National Union of Mineworkers - of all people - as being 'pro-fascist' because of their solidarity work with their comrades in Ukraine.

STWC has promoted SARU on their website. Also on their website they have hosted vile, defamatory diatribes by John Pilger against Ukraine, posts by the well-known anti-Semite Alison Weir, poetry that quotes neo-Nazis, a piece headlined 'Time to go to war with Israel', a post saying that concern for women kidnapped by Boko Harem is "hysteria"and another that FIFA corruption is a Jewish conspiracy.

If they're going to be starting the scrubbing there's a lot of work to do.

Matt Carr may have had his latest piece scrubbed but he was the one wheeled out by STWC only last month to defame complaining Syrians fed up with being excluded by a group now commanding statements defending it from the Labour Party High Command. Carr, incidentally, is a 'truther' when it comes to chemical weapons in Syria. He thinks Assad didn't do it and the Syrians gassed themselves to make Assad look bad. The sort of person STWC is happy to offer a platform to, in other words.

This is not to mention all those other delightful people STWC have given a platform to over the years. Have you got all night? Or what they haven't put on their website. Such issues as the plight of the Kurds in Kobane or the imperial adventures of Russia.

Talk of sharks jumped

 

As noted, those burned in close contact with STWC have been sending out warning klaxons for twelve years. Just today I discovered that a number of Labour MPs, including the now well-known Mike Gapes, put down an Early Day Motion in 2004 decrying that STWC had distributed a message saying they backed "the legitimacy of the struggle of the Iraqi people, by whatever means they find necessary" to end occupation (meaning they backed Islamists such as those who beheaded the British civilian Ken Bigley). It asked STWC to "reassure the public that they have not lost their moral bearings." Jeremy Corbyn put down an amendment to delete all of that, blaming all the violence in Iraq on the Coalition (UK, USA etc). Of course he did.*

Yet only now, after years and years of this, are some of those who have given STWC succor pausing. Only now do they smell the stink from the giant pile of manure they are sitting on top of.

STWC's Galloway, Rees, + German.

Better late than never I suppose.

Today Caroline Lucas MP resigned as a Patron but Dave Wetzel still sits on the Steering Committee with 'Green Party' next to his name. Whether or not he is a representative I don't know (have asked and will update when I get a reply) as the STWC website is opaque on who sponsors them and where they gets their funding from.

One can only assume if Lucas is resigning because of, as she said, some of STWC's "positions" then Wetzel will too. But what of all the others? What of those who appear to be representing the NUJ, NUT, UNITE and others?

Are the members of these unions and other groups or those unnamed who may be funding STWC still happy with the association? If you're a member or supporter of those unions and other groups are you happy? Maybe you should start asking questions.


*Edited to add: Gary Kent has detailed the appalling behaviour of STWC at that time, particularly towards Iraqi trade unionists.

Ukraine's #fail over Odesa 'massacre' meme

'Euromaidan' activists helping rescue people from fire at Trade Union House in Odesa, May 2 2014. Pic vasaphotography.com

Since May 2014 Russian propagandists and fellow travelers, like John Pilger*, have made hay with the events during disturbances in Odesa. The fire which killed dozens of people has been dubbed by them 'the Odesa massacre'. Russia has toured exhibitions around Europe and pumped out massive amounts of material using the events to condemn Ukraine as 'fascist'.

Most disturbingly, the events have been cited by numerous left-wing activists who have traveled to the Donbas to 'fight the fascist regime'.

Civil society activists in Odesa. the 'May 2 Group'*, have conducted extensive investigations showing that the events were very different to how they have been painted but, as Halya Colnash explains, their work is being cut off at the knees by the useless Ukrainian state. This failure by the state to do its job properly is handing the Russians and their supporters an undeserved and dangerous propaganda victory.

Reblogged with permission.

====

Despite the clear importance of a proper investigation into the deadly disturbances and fire in Odesa on May 2, 2014, and the mileage gained by Russia’s propaganda machine from any delay, the number of investigators has been drastically reduced, just when they seemed to be making headway. The trial of one man facing serious charges is constantly obstructed and the ongoing detention of others accused of lesser offences has already been used by a Moscow-backed initiative to claim political prisoners in Ukraine. The Council of Europe’s International Advisory Panel has been assessing the investigation. Its report, due at the end of October, 2015, seems likely to be critical. (It was, see report here.)

It was widely feared in Spring 2014 that a scenario similar to the orchestrated seizure of control by Kremlin-backed militants in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts could be expected in Odesa. There had been express warnings from both the Security Service [SBU] and Interior Ministry of likely trouble, in particular with respect to a football match scheduled on May 2 between the Odesa Chernomorets team and Kharkiv’s Metalist, and the pro-Ukrainian unity march before it.

A crucial action plan codenamed Khvylya [Wave] had been prepared for the event of disturbances, yet was not registered and therefore did not come into effect.

People being rescued from the fire

Six people died of gunshot wounds and many others were injured during disturbances in the city centre after the pro-unity march was attacked by anti-Maidan (and pro-Russian) activists. The first two people killed were Euromaidan activists and the news of those deaths was instrumental in turning the disturbances uncontrolled and violent. More weapons began being brought to the scene and the other four deaths were of anti-Maidan activists. A large number of people were injured, including police officers. A further 42 people – all anti-Maidan activists - died as a result of a fire in the Trade Union building on Kulikovo Pole. That fire was certainly caused by a Molotov cocktail, however these were being hurled by activists on both sides and specialists agree that there is no way of knowing whether the fatal incendiary device was thrown from outside the building, or from inside. There would have been far fewer casualties had the emergency services responded when the first reports of fire were received. The 40 minute delay was fatal.

There are clearly major questions needing to be answered, most crucially:

• Who was responsible for not registering and/or implementing the Action Plan?
• Why were the emergency services so criminally slow in arriving at a fire they were informed about repeatedly from the beginning?
• The guilt or innocence must also be established of specific individuals.

Investigators

Maidan supporters desperately trying to save opponents from the fire

On Aug 18, Svitlana Pidpala from the May 2 Group reported that the investigative team was being reduced from 8 to 3 investigators. Her frustration was palpable. After a year the investigators, she says, had processed around 10 criminal prosecutions, some of them already in court, and they were also investigating others. She names, for example, the case of Astakhov who is believed to have brought weapons and ammunition to the centre of Odesa that day.

Now, suddenly, the team has been reduced with the head of the team, Mykola Rudnytsky recalled to Kyiv. “They reduced the team immediately after specific results appeared and criminal proceedings were initiated against the Emergencies Ministry and other cases. And after specific representatives of the Interior Ministry system began to be affected”, Pidpala writes. She is convinced that the removal of Rudnytsky and others is an attempt to effectively stop the investigation and suggests that this may be because it could get too interesting.

The Police

On May 13, Petro Lutsyuk, ex-head of the Odesa regional police was placed under house arrest on charges of professional negligence (Article 367 of the Criminal Code). Lutsyuk had given a verbal order for the Action Plan to be implemented and signed the document confirming this order. He is accused of not having ensured that the Plan was registered and implemented. Lutsyuk was freed from house arrest on Sept 1, with the court not convinced by the prosecutor’s argument that Lutsyuk could abscond or try to influence the investigation if free.

Lutsyuk’s deputy, Dmytro Fuchedzhy has been on the international wanted list since May 2014, and is believed to be in hiding in Transnistria. In his case, there are grounds for suspecting him of helping the anti-Maidan activists. He is believed to have enabled Vitaly Budko, known as ‘Botsman’, who is clearly visible in video footage shooting from a Kalashnikov rifle at pro-unity activists, to have escaped.

The May 2 Group have on a number of occasions stressed that they have found no evidence of a general police conspiracy and say that many officers were themselves injured trying to deal with the disturbances.

Prosecutions

There is almost no movement on an important bill No. 2885, tabled by Oleksy Honcharenko on May 20. This proposes to waive liability for all those accused only of taking part in the disturbances. In June, the relevant parliamentary committee found the bill to be in line with the Constitution, but no more has been heard of it since. Honcharenko stresses that the bill is aimed at easing social tension. It could also help identify those responsible for the violence. At the moment, activists are nervous to come forward, fearing that they will face charges of participating in the riot.

Another shot showing rescue attempt

If the law is to be passed, then there is no excuse for delay given the number of people currently in detention who would be directly affected. The May 2 Group have long expressed concern over the arbitrary nature of the charges against all but one of the 21 anti-Maidan activists on trial over the disturbances. For a long time, all were accused of the same vague “participation in mass riots’. The charge is now of causing mass disturbances in the course of which they attacked a peaceful march, using firearms, stones, Molotov cocktails, etc.

The charges are more serious, but the very fact that the wording is the same in each case raises doubts about how proven they are in any given case. This is especially disturbing since until recently, 11 of the young men had been in custody for well over a year. A court on Aug 27 released three of them pending trial, but that still leaves 8 men in detention.

There appears to be hard evidence against only one defendant – Serhiy Dolzhenkov – who is alleged to have organized and led the attack on the pro-Ukrainian unity march. Artem Davydchenko is in hiding but would otherwise be facing the same charges.

The May 2 Group believe that Budko (Botsman) was provably responsible for at least the first death of Ihor Ivanov.

There is also Serhiy Khodiyak, a Euromaidan activist, who is charged with shooting at people on Hretska Square and causing the death of at least one person (Yevhen Losynsky), Tetyana Herasimova from the May 2 Group, says that it is likely that Khodiyak’s lawyer will seek to get the charge of murder withdrawn since no weapon was ever found. Khodiyak was initially placed only under house arrest, while others, facing lesser charges, were remanded in custody. House arrest can only be extended twice and there are now no restrictions on his movements.

His separate case has just been transferred to the same court as the cases of the anti-Maidan activists. There has up till now been very little progress, largely because hearings into his case are regularly obstructed by members of the ultra-nationalist Right Sector who clearly don’t want him tried at all.

It has been argued that Khodiyak should be acquitted on the grounds that he was defending the country. There probably is reason to believe that a takeover, similar to that in parts of Donbas, was being planned and that the tragic events of May 2 were the jolt that saved Odesa from this fate. It is harder to accept that the use of firearms by anybody during riots can be viewed as necessary defence. In Kyiv on Aug 31, 2015, an activist angered by the ‘decentralization’ bill passed in its first reading in parliament threw a grenade causing the death of three National Guard conscripts. He may well have believed he was defending his country in opposing the bill. Many of the MPs who voted for the bill may equally have viewed their support as defence of the country, as a necessary measure, vital to ensuring an end to the conflict in Donbas.

'Pro-Russians' shooting demonstrators prior to the fire

Justification of one killing and not another is seriously dubious from a legal point of view and politically very dangerous. It is the country’s leaders ultimately who will end up making decisions which are not their prerogative. In neighbouring Russia, it is increasingly people who oppose the regime of Vladimir Putin who are accused of being against the state. Rule of law demands a different approach.

Respect for the law and the value of human life are the paramount reason why Ukraine’s leaders must make good their commitment to properly investigate the events of May 2, 2014. They should also, however, consider the damage their inaction is doing Ukraine. Moscow and the Russian media have pushed claims of a ‘massacre’ from the outset, using cynical lies and deliberately edited video footage to distort the truth. It is likely that they will continue to do so in any case, but they are only helped by Ukraine’s failure to fully examine what went wrong that day and ensure that those responsible are held to answer.

*Watch an interview with the May 2 Group on Ukraine Today.

* Pilger's Guardian article a week after the events included content directly lifted from debunked Russian propaganda - see the weaselly footnote added by the Guardian.

See also:

• Movement at last on Odesa 2 May investigation
• Finding the real culprits of the events in Odesa on May 2, 2014
• Russia Today, or why Odesa May 2 is different from Baltimore
• Odesa May 2 Investigation: A Failed Test for Ukrainian Justice
• More Evidence against Incendiary Lies about Odesa 2 May
• Continuing Obstruction of Odessa May 2 Investigation
• Propaganda that Kills
• Odessa May 2 trial turns into farce as Russia continues ‘massacre’ propaganda
• Bad Start to Crucial Odessa May 2 Trials
• Russia’s New Odessa File
• Odesa "Massacre" Propaganda vs. the Facts

Don’t link to CounterPunch

If you are a progressive then the chances are you will have seen a link to the online magazine Counterpunch - or even posted one yourself.

In a staggering expose Elise Hendrick may make you think twice as she shows that white supremacist and racist authors far outweigh the odd Jeremy Scahill or Noam Chomsky piece. She convincing argues that the website's history demonstrates that it is a far right 'entry' project. She says:

In writing for, and sharing articles published on, CP, Leftists are unwittingly helping to promote the agenda of the far right.

In addition to the authors relied on by CP for its left cred, ‘America’s best political newsletter’ also regularly publishes ‘independent investigative journalism’ by a wide variety of white supremacists, including Paul Craig Roberts, editor of the white nationalist website VDare, Ron Paul (who poses for photo ops with neo-Nazis and warns of ‘race war’), and Alison Weir, holocaust denier Israel Shamir, and that perennial saboteur of the Palestinian solidarity movement, Gilad Atzmon, author of the racist The Wandering Who.

Although there are some who have expressed concern on this problematic mix, when I have raised this issue in discussions with others in left activist circles, I have often found that it is dismissed as a triviality. In these discussions, the white supremacist contingent tends to be attributed to an unwillingness to bow to ‘political correctness’ or a mere desire to ‘piss off liberals’, and generally believed to be an insignificant deviation from an otherwise clear leftist editorial line, the sort of thing only an ‘ideological purist’ could get excited about.

My own research into the editorial practices at CounterPunch shows otherwise. Not only have white supremacist authors long been a fixture at CP; their ideology is shared by members of the editorial collective. All in all, it is entirely reasonable to say that the formation of a Querfront (an alliance between the far right and the left) is a longstanding project of the newsletter, consistently endorsed by the decisions taken by CP editors and their own stated positions. In the following, I will examine the relationship between the CP editors and the racist Right via individual case studies and several statistical investigations.

More: CounterPunch or Suckerpunch? « Meldungen Aus Dem Exil

And there's lots more about CounterPunch at the Jews Sans Frontieres blog.

Frankie Boyle and the Aborigines

If you enjoy laughing and have ever watched the British (knowing laugh) nihilistic comedian Frankie Boyle I very much doubt that you have never laughed at his jokes.

The joke about the Queen's vagina being haunted? If you heard it I would bet that something akin to laughter ensued.

Yet that and other comedic transgressions has resulted in transgressive Frankie being banished by the evil English establishment.

Except it hasn't.

Oh no. We have the BBC commissioning a show headed by Boyle after the Scottish referendum and then another commission for online after the UK General Election. Some banishment. The Boyle election show was on the BBC iplayer homepage for weeks.

In his election show Boyle had two female comedians to bounce off and a 'Grime' commentator - aka a black British bloke. All of whom polished his mantle.

Now I can think of a number of bitchy conservatives who could have been a perfect foil to Boyle. Were they even considered? It would have made for great TV.

But why I am even asking this? Multi millionaire Boyle needs his 'safe space', bless. He has no history of stepping outside of his comfort zone but let's try. Here we go Frankie. Here's me puncturing your safe space.

The treatment of Australia and Australians by Boyle and his 'Grime' commentator Akala was colonialist and racist.

Boyle cherry picked a brief extract from Australian morning TV to showcase how Australians are all stupid fucking colonials and so so racist. This was as bad as the treatment of the 'colonials' by the Brits going way back has ever been. Barry Humphries, Private Eye and Humphries' Barry McKenzie character were satirising this Brit attitude in the 1970s (the 70s FFS).

We recently had the Gallipoli hundredth anniversary. Gallipoli in the Australian imagination is all about how the Brits have traditionally treated Aussies as subaltern. This stuff has form.

After his cherrypick, Boyle, backed by Akala, then underlined by calling Australia, quote, "the most racist country in the world".

Worse than Mali? Worse than Russia? Worse than India? Worse than Brazil?

Akala cited the utter revelation, to much of the audience I would assume, that Australian Aborigines 'used to be ruled by the Flora and Fauna Act'. This is actually a myth (the Act is) but the bigger point is that nearly fifty years ago Australians voted to end that mythical status, change the  Constitution and grant Aborigines citizenship by 91% in favour. Right now Australians are 85% in favour of proposals to change the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal people.

Why does Akala mention the (non existent) Flora and Fauna Act? To back Boyle's claim that Australia remains "the most racist country in the world".

Boyle's claim, with Akala's backing, does two things: it denies that white Australia has moved one centimeter on from the 1960s; it denies that Aboriginal and progressive activism has had any impact.

Obviously both are wrong. Clearly they are wrong. But both Akala and Boyle have an investment in denying the reality in Australia: their British audience will love to hear Australia called "the most racist country in the world" - and Akala and Boyle know it.

In order to make that claim both have to behave exactly like colonialists. Racist, British colonialists. And they have to fail to listen to Aboriginal people.

I wrote about this a few years back. Listening involves understanding that Aboriginal people have different opinions on how to advance the interests of their communities. (Of course they effing do.) There are some who want sovereignty to be central. (If Akala knew anything he would mention the absence of treaties.) Then there are others working with capitalism to create Aboriginal owned business and create jobs. And then there's the mass in between, trying to get on.

Outside of this we have white people like leftie icon John Pilger and environmentalists like newly minted BBC star Professor Tim Flannery who also have opinions. And don't they ever have opinions - and the whites always know better than the bad blackfellas.

Who is going to get the attention of the likes of Boyle/Akala (and countless other Brits)? Short answer: the white people. They'll know and trust someone like Pilger (Akala's comment is a 'tell' here) and have never heard of the likes of Professor Marcia Langton.

Langton has slammed Flannery and the "racist assumption in the green movement about Aboriginal people being the enemies of the wilderness." She is a leading light in the national debate around Aboriginal advancement and particularly the role of mining and is one of the most well known Aboriginal people in Australia. Yet when Pilger covered the area of Australia she has focused on in a film he flat out ignored her because she was an inconvenient black woman. What would you call that?

It is not going to even vaguely occur to Boyle/Akala what they're doing, namely that Aboriginal people in their world view may as well be regarded as 'flora and fauna' - invisible, lacking any agency. They're just going to be led by presumptions and ignorance and what white leftie icons say, for that is what it is.

Invisible: Two examples

The Guardian's 'Avatar' view of Aboriginal people

Simplistic and out of touch could be one recent impression of The Guardian's publishing on Aboriginal people.

Take two current examples from the left presenting angry white, male and Western enviromentalist/socialist perspectives.

On the face of it, if you know nothing of the subject matter, Martin Lukacs 'View from the North' on land rights and mining/drilling in Canada is an odd bit of writing.

He describes a meeting with a Master of The Universe (MOTU) on Wall Street, accompanied by (natch) rape apologist Naomi Klein Wolf. The meeting's aim being to push indigenous land rights as having legal force and hence that they should be counted in consideration of a countries credit rating.

The MOTU, shock, agrees. Legally they may be right but "you and whose army" are going to enforce them.

Lukacs' subsequent argument (it's not really reporting) seems to be predicated on the idea that the battle over land rights in Canada will result in the end of mining/drilling. Literally, he seems to be arguing, Canada's First Nations (as they are known) will 'SAVE THE EARTH' from climate change because, y'know, Aboriginal people, like the inhabitants of Pandora, don't want 'land rape' ...

Not all 'Earth Warriors'

The other day I was watching 'Mabo', the ABC drama about the Murray Islander whose long legal battle ended the concept of 'Terra Nullius' -- empty land -- which meant that he had no legal claim to ancestral land.

Eddie Mabo had all sorts of issues to deal with and one of them was his own people. In one of the first scenes in the drama the elders police his behavior on behalf of the white 'protector'. Later fellows drop out of his legal claim and he is left alone.

The Aboriginal experience in Australia is not one experience and is not solely one of oppression by whites, the communities have their own internal problems, often ones experienced by lots of other communities and which come down to being human. Writers like Lukacs ignore all this grey.

Lukacs' hope for humanity's salvation via Aboriginal land rights is predicated on Aboriginal people not wanting any of that nasty mining/drilling. Now I don't follow First Nations' issues closely but a quick Google brings up negotiated settlements between nations and mining companies, here's one signed a few days ago by a community on Vancouver Island:

Elliott called the potential deal "huge" for his people."

"It's going to create jobs," he said.

Details on exactly how revenue would be shared between the company and the First nation have not been worked out yet, Elliot noted.

"I think any percentage is going to be significant," he said.

"We're going to have a big hand in how the whole project works."

Elliott pointed to an agreement his council signed with Fortis B.C. worth $6 million. The First Nation also has stakes in forestry, aquaculture, petroleum and commercial construction.

"This (new) partnership is going to be 10 times, 20 times larger in the sense of creating opportunities for our members," he said.

Now Canada may be having issues with such deals but clearly they exist and they sound, in terms of what Aboriginal leaders say, just like Aboriginal leaders elsewhere, just like those in Australia. They demand to be part of economic development.

Green/left Kryptonite

An Australia elder, Professor Marcia Langton, has caused consternation on the Green Left through her arguing that mining has been a massive economic plus for Aboriginal people:

When W.E.H. Stanner delivered the Boyer Lectures in 1968, After the Dreaming: Black and White Australians - An Anthropologist's View, he gave credence, perhaps inadvertently, to the widely held assumption at that time that Aboriginal life was incompatible with modern economic life. Today, the expectation is quite the reverse.

The policies of federal governments for the past decade have made explicit the expectation that educational achievement and employability will be the key outcomes of spending in indigenous affairs portfolios. This is a view shared by most ordinary Australians.

But on the left, and among those opinion leaders who hang on to the idea of the new ''noble savage'', Aboriginal poverty is invisible, masked by their ''wilderness'' ideology. Their unspoken expectation is that no Aboriginal group should become engaged in any economic development.

In her Boyer lecture Langton goes further, asking whether legendary environmental campaigner Tim Flannery had written something he intended to be "provocative and racist". Langton has caused mass outrage of course as environmentalists and the left struggles to deal with her arguments (or resorts to claims that she must be in the pay of the mining companies). I've embedded Langton speaking at last year's Indigenous Business Enterprise and Corporations Conference after the jump.

It is of a pattern. Another Aboriginal elder, Noel Pearson, has faced similar exasperation from the left as he has worked on alternatives to welfare dependency.

So how does the Guardian, which is trying to expand its reach to Australia, deal with this issue of mining and Aboriginal people? It publishes an 'woe-is-us' essay by John Pilger which is entirely about mining and Aboriginal people and which ignores Langton, even though the area he focuses in on -- the Pilbara in Western Australia -- is her focus too.

Pilger silences the major Aboriginal voice contradicting him and ignores the huge debate in his supposed country that her Aboriginal elder's voice has caused. What would you call that if it was not Pilger, the great white exposer of Australia's historic sins, who was doing it? Dare I say racist?

Writes Russell Skelton in The Age:

The attacks on Langton could be filed away as nothing more than a monumental storm in a tiny teacup. But I believe there is something far more profound going on - given the level of vitriol, she has touched some exposed nerves.

What Langton is saying sits uncomfortably with the way the Aboriginal industry - activists, NGOs, Amnesty and anti-intervention groups - have stereotyped Aboriginal Australians as a powerless, downtrodden, oppressed minority living in a world of disadvantage fuelled by government neglect.

It's a view that has its roots in our shocking colonial history and in the landmark battles fought in the 1970s when Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser led the charge on land rights, native title, equal pay, access to welfare and unemployment benefits against a coalition of belligerent miners, ruthless pastoralists and recalcitrant state and territory governments. An essential part of Langton's thesis is that times have changed, old ways of seeing are no longer useful.

Skelton says something which is like Green Left Kryptonite:

[The mining corporation] Rio Tinto has a far superior track record when it comes to creating skills and jobs than any government or NGO.

Australia 'Closing the Gap'

What Pilger fails to tell the Guardian's left/liberal British audience is that there has been an incredible development in Australia over the past decade. As I reported when comparing it to Australia's sickening treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat, there is now near universal and definitely bipartisan commitment to both Aboriginal development and facing up to history.

Pilger is flat out wrong when he claims that Australia is still trying to bury the past.

All political parties are committed to changing the constitution. Australian TV, as I have also reported, now features Aboriginal stories written, produced and directed by Aboriginal people in prime time and getting hit ratings and awards.

When Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2007 he also launched the bipartisan 'Closing The Gap' strategy of systematically meeting targets in education, housing and health. Five years on and one has been met, by the end of 2013 all Indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities will have access to early childhood education.

Australians are well aware of the problems -- the 'gap' -- which Pilger writes exclusively about. He is not telling any of them, that's any Australians, urban/rural, right or left wing, anything they are not both knowledgeable about or concerned about.

Pilger comes with no solutions, none. That is something Australians are sick of and if The Guardian is going to get any traction in Australia it had better start publishing some thinkers coming with solutions, ideas to end the horrors Pilger describes, and not just old white lefties that Brits still think are relevant whilst Australia has moved on.

Edited to add: Just noticed that for the Guardian's audio edition which features the Pilger article that they've picked a traditional, apparently stock, touristy image (pictured right) to illustrate rather than looked a bit harder for one of your average Aboriginal person.

Edited to add: I missed this excellent video report (not embeddable) via The Age about the Aboriginal run multimillion dollar businesses proving themselves in the Pilbara. It interviews some of the owners and I'm left wondering if a photo of one of them could best illustrate a 'typical Aboriginal person' rather than a stock traditional one, eh Guardian? Also wondering if any of these businesses will make it into Pilger's film, supposedly about their area, for ITV?

Listen to Marcia Langton at the 2012 Indigenous Business Enterprise and Corporations Conference after the jump: