Protests in Hong Kong have continued to escalate over the last week. A teenage protester has been wounded by police, and Chief Executive Carrie Lam has invoked colonial-era emergency powers to ban face masks. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and shadow minister for foreign affairs Penny Wong have both expressed deep concern, cautioning China against inflaming the situation or eroding the rule of law.
That the situation in Hong Kong has received months of detailed media commentary (including in Crikey) is, of course, appropriate. But why haven’t anti-government protests in Iraq gotten the same attention?
At least 90 protesting civilians have been killed by the Iraqi army and police in less that a week, yet the reaction here in Australia has been sparse. The news led AM’s bulletin on Monday, and wire service pieces from Reuters, the The New York Times and the Associated Press have dutifully been run in the major papers. But there has been little response from the commentariat who have provided a flurry of commentary on Hong Kong. Likewise, there have been no statements from Payne or Wong on the deaths or unrest.
Why the relative lack of interest? Is Australia not as invested in Iraqi democracy that it is in Hong Kong? If not, it will be news to the thousands of troops we have sent to Iraq since 2003, and the hundreds still there. It may also surprise the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which administers the $100 million dollar “Humanitarian and Stabilisation Package” in Iraq, which is partly aimed at paying for the basic services the protesters are demanding.
Indeed, Prime Minister Scott Morrison noted that financial support when he visited with his Iraqi counterpart Adil Abdul Al-Mahdi in December and said Australia was “a friend of a free, independent and sovereign Iraq”.
Given that the Australian-backed invasion of Iraq was nominally intended to bring about a flourishing of democracy in the region, Iraqis might wonder why no one in our media or political class has anything much to say.
The idea of independent ordinary citizens protesting in Iraq is hard to squeeze into the usual narratives about Iraq. It suggests that despite billions spent, millions killed, maimed or displaced things are no better for the average Iraqi than under Saddam. It suggests quite pointedly that our invasion wasn’t just illegal or an ordinary disaster but a completely counter productive catastrophe.
And anyway who cares about protestors unless they’re protesting about those evil commies. Those same commies who’ve managed to avoid invading anyone and transformed their country from a poor backwater into a modern industrial state. As for those imprisoned minorities, there seem to be lots of imprisoned minorities elsewhere which doesn’t make it right but gives perspective.
Easier to ignore long suffering ordinary Iraqis just as it’s easier to ignore all those other long suffering ordinary folk everywhere. Including here.
Isn’t it only ‘counter productive’ if the outcome was not what was intended, Mark?
I’d argue some of the ‘designers’ found it very productive, and precisely in line with ‘projections’.
“Operation Iraqi Freedom’ – for who, to do what?
Just one part of the “7 countries in 7 years”, as explained by then retired General Wesley Clarke, around 2007.
Iraq (by then, ‘tick’), Lebanon (not Hezbollah, they won’t), Libya (‘tick’, and probably the best example of the TRUE motivation), Syria (nup, cos you-know-who stuck his oar in to prevent it), Somalia (WIP), Sudan (ditto, WIP) and the biggie, Iran (nup, and only if they fancy bringing the world economy to the ‘depths of depression’).
Rubbish plan, and too ignorant to ‘execute’.
So go declining Empires.
You’ll need a few chapters to cover the list of countries currently being subjected to ‘social stresses’, Charles.
Next you might like to cover Ecuador, where Moreno declared a state of emergency a few days back, to try and keep at bay those rising up against his latest round of austerity measures.
Those austerity measures, of course, were ‘recommendations’ from the IMF, after Moreno had traded Julian Assange’s right to asylum for an IMF loan of a few $Bil.
Moreno announced this latest ‘package’ under the slogan;
“Se acabó la zanganería, which roughly translated means; ‘Lazing about is over’.
‘Zanganeria’ is derived from ‘zangano’, which is the Spanish for male honey bee or, more particularly, drone.
Around those parts, ‘the establishment’ – meaning the well offs of European extraction, not the indigenous citizens, ‘slang up’ “zangano” to refer to those not so well off as ‘mindless, uneducated drones’.
Under that slogan, Moreno’s list included cutting fuel subsidies, cutting public sector workers incomes by 20%, privatising pensions (another IMF favourite), gutting worker safety provisions and job security.
Where would you like to go next? Peru? What about France?
The French rozzers, who have a very long lead over the HK rozzers, in the number of lost eyes and limbs they’ve inflicted on Yellow Vest protesters (have the HK rozzers even got off the mark?), downed batons, gas canisters and stun grenades a few days back, and had a protest of their own, against remuneration and job security cuts, and the ever increasing suicide rate among their colleagues.
What the World needs now is more plain speakin from Sam Armitage. How dare these demonstrators put our morning Latte at risk just to feed their darned families or save the flippen Earth.
The Iraq protests are eerily the same as the earlier Venezuelan protests.
Only in popular Western conception, applet, and in some similarities of Amerikan ‘coup engineering’.
But, Iraq is mostly about Iran, and Venezuela is mostly to do with Monroe.
Why not more about Iraq?
It’s brutally simple. There aren’t 100,000 Australians living and working in Iraq.
(Plus there’s undoubtedly a fair degree of shame at what the result of Oz’s role has been in Iraq.)
Spot on. We made a mess there and don’t want to take responsibility for cleaning it up – “don’t look folks there’s nothing to see”.
However I remain concerned that Scott may feel like wandering out into the sands of Iran – we can only hope he gets lost.
You needn’t pull up at Iraq, Paddy and John, to find utterly shameful participation by Australia.
When FUKUS (France, UK, US) bombed Raqqa to smithereens, Amnesty Int conducted an investigation, and found the coalition’s ‘tweaking’ of their rules of engagement for populated areas had led them to ‘relax’ their ‘acceptable risks to civilians. Amnesty concluded their was prima facie evidence of war crimes having been committed by the coalition.
Bishop, the FM Minister at the time, unaware of the Amnesty investigation, publicly spat the dummy because Australia had flown missions out of the UAE, as an ‘active contributor’ to the FUKUS coalition that destroyed Raqqa. Bishop demanded due credit be given.
Then, Amnesty Australia noticed Bishop’s dummy spit, and very publicly posed the question, as to whether Bishop would also like to ‘put her hand up’ for Australia to be investigated for the prima facie war crimes committed in Raqqa.
Amnesty did not get a response.
You can find all that on the Amnesty websites, and very few other places.
Further, nigh on 2 years ago, a French law firm lodged a request for investigation with the ICC Prosecutor’s Office, alleging war crimes had been committed in Yemen, particularly by foreign mercenaries at the helm of the UAE military.
The first nation listed as having provided those mercenaries was Australia. The pinnacle of the UAE military is the Presidential Guard, which reports directly to MBZ.
The Presidential Guard is headed up by the former head of the SAS in Australia.
His name is Mike Hindmarsh, and he has been working for MBZ in the UAE for around a decade, and has ‘recruited’ (by reports, in fragments, incl from the ABC – and Murdoch’s Australian!, but only ever in fragments) around 100 other former ADF, and just as concerningly, AFP, operatives to assist in the commission of the ‘alleged’ genocide in Yemen.
But, in this country, the delusions continue to reign supreme.