With the net filtering, the Rudd gov is the most authoratarian so far.

OK Tristan. Relax that defensive reflex for a moment: I'll accept at face value your apparent anti-war sentiment. Nonetheless, I suspect that you have not thought through the imperialistic, warlike and fascistic implications of certain underlying ideological assumptions in your belief system, let alone the obvious compromises from your association with "liberalism" and organizations like the British Fabian Society.

I'm identifying the fascistic tendencies and actions of influential people with whom you associate. Granted, you are probably not a direct acquaintance of war criminal and serial sophist-liar Blair; maybe you have never even communicated or met with him. But his authority and influence as a Fabian are quite self-evident, as was his pivotal initiative in pushing the Big Lies on Iraq. Indeed, he's still at it, as if if nothing similar happened in the dark history of fascism; that's why I alluded to the "Chicago School" where Blair recently pontificated yet again on his pet, even obsessive, doctrine of modern imperialist aggression.

But consider the clear parallels in the overarching political crimes at those most important and definitive international levels of war and diplomacy. A self-identified "fascist" state sought to dominate and subjugate its neighbors to the east, namely Czechoslovakia and Poland. The pretext in the first case was "human rights abuses" and "discrimination" against an "oppressed minority" i.e., the Sudeten Germans. In the second case it was a simple intelligence fit-up using corpses dressed as German soldiers, claiming they'd been murdered by Polish troops in a cross-border raid.

On Iraq, Kosovo, Sudan, Burma, etc., such claims surround interventionist aggression and coercion by neo-lib snakes like Fabian Blair, and his accomplices (labelled "neo-con" - big deal!) Cheney and Bush. Servile bit player-accomplices Howard and Downer were just "lib-con artists".

These guys lack the honesty to wear jodhpurs and Sam Browne belts. But such fashion statements are irrelevant to the actual motives, intentions and results of their actions. Just as the fashion statements of a profoundly corrupted parliamentary and congressional democracy are irrelevant when considering the fundamental consensus these main parties express in their imperialistic and fascistic aggression, arrogance and criminality.

If anyone wants to know what my position is on Fabianism you're welcome to read the article from the URL below.

The Fabians both in Australia and Britain are a broad and diverse lot. As for me - I believe AFS is an important site of cultural and counter-hegemomic struggle.

see:

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/09/14/the-end-of-fabian-socialism-in-australia/

Yeah, well I got offered to join them. The offer was from an insufferable middle-class snob, but there you go. Ah, but if I'd taken the bait and jumped through the hoops: study opportunities, publishing access, even jobs, would magically appear! Just don't call it corruption, eh?

So you just back that latest scam from and for another Canberra rort?

And how wonderfully diverse! A leading privatizer and war criminal helping to "counter-hegemonize" too...Puke central.

Mil-Observer;

Yes there's corruption everywhere. But I've never had any personal experience with it in regards to the Fabian Society.

My own philosophy is to avoid compromise; to always be honest with regard to my political beliefs; to work towards a genuinely participatory democracy - including a strongly liberal education.

(If you want to know what I mean by this, check out my paper in Fabian Essays 2004)

Since 2004 I actually haven't had much opportunity to write for Fabian publications... (I have tried) Don't know why - but personally I have tried to stand up for a a more resolutely socialist stance.

There are many publications who have repeatedly knocked me back over the past three years - or have not even responded to my enquiries... Because of this, I deeply appreciate the opportunity OLO gives me to be heard.

Finally - the Fabian Society is of great strategic importance... Buy this I mean it is a potential means of encouraging cross-factional exchange - and of encouraging a democratic socialist perspective on a cross-factional basis...

"Corruption everywhere"? Was that meant to reassure? Anyway, you can rule out my small patches of turf in that assessment, for starters!

I really don't presume to have any idea about your own prospects via the London-based international network of Fabian luvvies. I alluded merely to the corrupt machinations as presented through their clear offers to me - including an offer of smooth, well-paid re-entry into cushy bureaucracies from which I was formally blacklisted! Yep, the power of grubby money...

In the long-prevailing conditions of institutional corruption, getting published seems more like a matter of vanity. If a writer/commentator poses any significant challenge to the established gangster networks, then going public simply means getting vilified and defamed under an avalanche of outrageous lies. Better off sticking to samizdat.

In that sense, notice how my comments on Fabian Blair were not in any substantial way controversial. But your own self even seems to embrace the likes of Blair on the grounds of Fabians being "a broad and diverse lot". That echoes the words of Blair friend, admirer and accomplice J Winston Howard, referring to the Liberal Party as "a broad church". Apart from Howard's filthy inheritances from PNG-based copra plantations, his father was a fully committed member of the fascist "New Guard" - part of a network of fascist militias funded by powerful bankers by the 1930s. These are simple facts too, however much the establishment powers try to sweep them out of sight.

Again, I'm not making wild-@55ed allegations here to try discrediting Blair, Howard, etc., but statements of simple historical fact.

Therefore, you are severely compromised: you say that your "own philosophy is to avoid compromise", but the horse has bolted, as it were. Your passionate (and admirable) idealism is exploited by the establishment in order to lend their networks a veneer of credibility, popular legitimacy and openness. Perhaps worse still, such compromise can easily distract and distort the perspectives and priorities of thinking people like ourselves. That has dangerous implications for any writer.

Of course they're not about to give you any serious voice within that system.