Talisman Sabre-Bradbury's Vanity Project Shaping Up as Vacuous Jamboree! : Melbourne Indymedia

The mistake from the beginning in the organising around Operation Talisman Sabre is deeply entrenched in the cult of celebrity. First we were told to line up all our anti-nuclear and anti-war sentiment behind Peter Garrett and Garrett delivered us to Rudd. http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/05/144323.php

We now have an anti-nuclear movement in Australia that has learnt to live with uranium mining/export and nuclear warfighting bases such as Pine Gap. Garrett last week held a public meeting in Alice Springs during a major trial of five people arrested at Pine Gap facing serious prison time on serious charges. Garrett not only refused to address the issue of Pine Gap at a meeting some of the defendants attended, he refused to have questions and answers at the end of the meeting. His arrogance instead offers a mix and mingle with a real live rock god. And gets away with it. It's a political meeting Peter, not a record/CD signing!

Garretless those organising around Operation Talisman Sabre have embraced the B list and geared their entire organising around Bradbury's dubious doc "Blowing in the Wind" and his marginal celebrity. It remains highly doubtful that Depleted Uranium is being used in these exercises. Many of the U.S. Iraq vets testify they did not see DU until they got to the theatre of operations. Bradbury's cynical exploitation of the born again christian family in his doc was a bridge too far for many who viewed his film. We have been told that the reason to travel north is to protect a pristine wilderness from military destruction. If it's a choice between the military and private developers, wilderness always stands a better chance with the former than the later.

Bradbury's latest communique (see below) to his groupie organisers is to celebrate Australia's glorious struggle against facism in WW2. The jury is still out on whether the cannon fodder in that one was motivated by anti-asian racism or an analysis and distatste of facism. Given that the war was not taken to fascist Spain and Australia signed up with the U.S. to support every facist dictator in South East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East it woul lead to the former than the later. Bradbury too is obssessed with celebrity he promises us Jack Thompson and Geoffrey Rush. Bring on the Wiggles!

Bradbury goes so far as to bring us grooming expectations from Rudd (hard to believe but see his statement below)....
"Please come wearing ‘your Sunday best’ to that demo so the media can’t yet again, dismiss us all as a bunch of what Kevin Rudd calls ‘ferals’ and hippie freaks. "

The private school backgrounds of the Bradbury-Garrett-Rudd troika is clearly evident in the dynamic. Headmaster Rudd lets his expectations be known what kind of anti-war phenomenon he wants leading into this election - passive, well groomed, houseboken, not beyond the moderate politics of Labor Party control. Follicly challenged head prefect Garrett is dispatched to deliver the movement in the way, shape and form demanded by the Head. The runt of this particular litter, Bradbury, takes the word to the rank and file.....moderate your looks as you moderate your actions and expectations. As Garrett has delivered a castrated anti-nuclear movement to the ALP, one that now has learnt to live with uranium mining and export but not nuclear energy (at this stage), Bradbury and his ilk want to deliver a well groomed and housebroken anti-war sentiment to Rudd. Shades of Jabiluka as the ALP machine demanded the end of direct action in the run up to the 1998 Federal elections

These internal dynamics and struggles are also evident in the U.S. anti-war movement controlled by the Democrates and their front Move On (see Cindy Sheehan's resignation form both the Democrats and the anti-war movement http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070530/ap_on_re_us/cindy_sheehan

And from last week's Guardian, "She (Cindy Sheehan) called MoveOn's reputation as a big player in the anti-war camp "hilarious", accusing it of being so tied to the Democrats that it clammed up when the party failed to protest about the war.

Military Families Speak Out admitted that the anti-war movement was "fragmenting". John Walsh, a commentator for the leftwing online newsletter Counterpunch, said:"The peace movement is in disarray. It's run by the Democrats and they are scrambling to try to show that they are anti-war, but no one is fooled anymore". (Guardian)

It is a pity Bradbury's ego has been given such reign and the whole campaign turned into a promotional tour for him and the hocking of his doc. Surrounded by celebrity obssessed sychophants in key organising positions he has been able to develop the campaign as vanity project at the cost of it contributing to the development of a grassroots anti-war movement. The proposal belows reeks of a 1950's ego gone unchecked by the circle that surrounds him.

Bradbury remains Garret's sock puppet who remains Rudd's sock puppet who will, as PM, serve whoever occupies the White House. An obssession with celebrity leads you to the scenes we have witnessed in Rostock, Germany over the past week......the Bonos, the Geldofs, (tomorrow, the Garrets and the Bradbury's) wining and dining inside with power as "the hippies the freaks, the ferals", the grassroots (Bradbury and the elitests need but despise and so cynically dismisses in his communique below) are left high and dry outside to be dealt with by the boot of the state. They prefer to work with the well groomed middle classes from which they spring, but it is the ferals (those who have not been housebroken and have not bought into the power/status/celebrity game) who confront and create the tension from the forests to the mines to the streets. The movement bureaucrats, NGO's teh Rudds/Garrets/Bradburys etc colonise the space created and then sell out the radicals.

It's a pity as there are decent local activists in central Queensland being used and exploited. If you're heading up there for the exercises, don't let it be an exercise in futility. Don't trust the celebrities or the self imposed leadership, don't be exploited by them as an extra in their fantasy, don't expect support or solidarity from them should you fall foul of the State - watch your back and don't get fooled again.
Support all people seriously resisting this war.

Latest Communique from Bradbury to his minions

**Come dressed in your Sunday best and bring a pair of shoes or two!!

Brisbanites and people coming from further a field for the Peace Convergence are invited to be involved in what we hope will be a huge stylised street march through West End, Brisbane on the morning of 16th June.

David Bradbury writes “This is how I ideally imagine the Saturday morning street theatre – all designed to appeal visually to the media so they will cover it and have it on their 6pm tv nightly news that night and in the Sunday morning tabloid papers.

The march will be lead by a young girl in a white dress carrying a single red rose. The child will symbolise Innocence and Idealism – the purity of vision that Australia lost after our fathers/grandfathers defeated fascism in the second world war, that we want to reclaim again.

The little girl will be followed by women in l950’s Sunday best garb from WILPF (Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom) and Quaker women walking at a funeral pace carrying signs that read, "Ban the Bomb" etc. We’d like some volunteers from the Aboriginal community to carry signs that read, “No More Maralingas”.

Then six men (including actor Tony Barry, possibly Jack Thompson and Geoffrey Rush) with short, back and sides haircuts dressed in l950’s double breasted suits will be carrying a black coffin aloft which represents the Death of Australian Sovereignty.

(Senator Hill, then Defence Minister, Downer, Rumsfeld and Colin Powell signed a secret pact in July 2004 in Washington just after the second Iraq invasion which allows the US military to come here for the next 20 years to bomb our country with their latest ‘smart’ bombs, unmanned drones and space age weapons as well as to use our country as a training ground for their troops and ours ‘embedded’ in the US war machine).

Why the l950's costume as part of the parade? Because that was the time that Australia swapped one imperial master (the English crown) and the atom bomb tests at Monta Bello island (WA) and Maralinga (SA) for another - our embrace of Big Brother America as our ‘protector’ living with xenophobic fear as we do, on 'the edge' of Asia, Down Under.

That short period in the late 40’s early l950’s after our men and women defeated fascism in the Second World War, at great cost to the Australian diggers (the only 'justifiable' war in our history if one can justify war...) provided Australia with a rare chance to make our own way as a sovereign nation in this world. Instead, we embraced the mantle of the US and all that means now in terms of 'trusting them' even though they are bombing our most pristine spots and coastline.

The coffin with gold script "Australian Soveignity" will be followed by musicians Rob Hirst (ex drummer from Midnight Oil), Nicky Bomba from well known Melbourne reggae group – Bomba - and 30 other percussionists will beat on their drums and horns Chopin's funeral dirge.

Behind them ideally 655 (!!!) people carrying a pair of shoes each - representing the 655,000 people conservativly estimated by the reputable British medical journal 'Lancelet' to have been killed in Iraq since the first Gulf War.

Please come wearing ‘your Sunday best’ to that demo so the media can’t yet again, dismiss us all as a bunch of what Kevin Rudd calls ‘ferals’ and hippie freaks. Sorry to play the game for the Establishment - and I can hear some of your squeals already of ‘sellout’ etc but we want to make a strong point and appeal to our fellow Australians watching this on the media that we are ‘just like them’. A small concession to make on behalf of all Iraqis. We want our fellow Australians to identify with our just call for peace and national sovereignty; not give them any easy excuse to dismiss us on our appearance. A demo with a difference. Some flair! We need your presence just to pull of this extravaganza..!

We will inform the media in a press release that will go out nationally a week before and follow up phone calls to the news chiefs as we get a few celebs on board that each pair of shoes represents a thousand people who have been killed in Iraq since the first Gulf War I invasion. People can also have photos around their necks showing Iraqi kids and women behind razor wire, suffering the effects of DU etc.

This is to be a stark reminder of what we as a nation have been complicate in by sending our troops to Iraq and hitherto remaining silent on the issue as the years go by and the slaughter continues on a daily basis with no end in sight.

The parade will include three pairs of combat boots representing the 3,000 American soldiers (poor blacks and whites, Hispanics mostly) also killed in that conflict. One of the pairs of donated boots comes from an Australian digger who served in Iraq. We've got 400 pairs of shoes so far, so please bring yourself and some spare shoes along with you to that Saturday morning parade!

On cue, we the people, we will then break forth into another more joyful beat with instrumental musicians and dancers and all you lovers of peace and national sovereignty who have turned up under your own steam or on the Peace Train from Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Kangaroo Valley, Newcastle, Kempsey, Lismore, Byron etc..drumming with Milo tins, soup cans, cymbals... anything you can lay your hands on, saying that we don’t want to dance any longer to the beat of John Howard and Bush.

Regards,

David Bradbury.