“So we are outlawing people going to the Middle East to commit acts of violence and murder….unless they are doing it in our name…”

If you had to choose one single word to sum the Abbott government you would have a lot to choose from – arrogant, abusive, destructive, corrupt, the list continues. However, one word which you see being exemplified over and over again is “hypocritical,” ranging from challenging the whistle blower who exposed Abbott’s $60,000 scholarship deal for his daughter’s education (although in truth it couldn’t have gone to anyone more deserving and more in need of financial assistance.) To wider issues of war and the distribution of wealth. What they do is one thing.  What others do is something else altogether.

Now with the introduction of new anti-terror laws the government is deciding which countries people are allowed to travel to and which ones they are not. This places the burden of proof on the traveller to prove they were there just to visit “Aunt Jackie,” rather than to fight in jihad against infidels.

So we are outlawing people going to the Middle East to commit acts of violence and murder unless they are doing it in our name. Like most nation states, the Australian government has a monopoly on violence and murder.  Just exactly who Australian citizens may or may not kill is tightly monitored and policed both at home and abroad, although if you don an Australian military uniform you really do have a license to kill.

As the bombing of Iraq and Syria commences we already see innocent people being murdered – a cost they have decided is worth it for the eventual outcome of more control in the region. How many innocent lives are taken won’t matter to them, just like the baseless argument Israel used to murder people in Gaza “That Hamas were hiding  in citizens houses, so it’s Hamas to blame for them being killed.” The same will go now for any Syrians or Iraqis blown to pieces by US, UK and Australian missiles. It will be deemed as death caused by ISIS, which is extraordinary in its gall and arrogance; invading and dropping bombs on a region thousands of miles from your own country and then blaming that on the very people you are killing.

Quoting from the establishment representative, BBC, we see the briefest mention of five adults and three children being killed.

“The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground, said at least 70 militants were killed in the north and east of the country. Earlier, it said 30 al-Qaeda-linked fighters were also killed in strikes west of Aleppo, but it later raised the figure to 50. Eight civilians, including three children, were reported to have died.”

So the horror has begun and already we see starkly illustrated that some lives are worth more than others. When two American and one British person were beheaded, we saw massive amounts of TV and media coverage reporting this gruesome act. We saw in-depth analysis and scrutiny, all centred around the question “How shall we respond?” What about these five civilians and three innocent children? What are their names? How old were they? How did they die? Were they burnt to death as a result of the bombings or cut into pieces? Did they die instantly or was it a slow and agonising death? Do they have surviving relatives and how do they feel about this tragedy? Who is condemning the murder of these eight innocent lives?  We can be sure that those five words – “Eight civilians including three children” will be the last we ever hear of them, as they are consigned to the history books filled with nameless “miscellaneous people” who have also met with similar fates.

By contrast imagine the national outrage if one day ISIS indiscriminately bombed a building, thereby killing five adults and three children. Australia would be declaring World War III on ISIS and many Australian citizens would be baying for blood and revenge.

Adding to the legitimacy of the right of western powers right to murder who they choose, the media then further sanitises the full extent of western barbarity with double-speak language pointed out by medialen.org on their Facebook post – “Never talk about US ‘bombing’ and ‘civilians’. Instead, sprinkle your news scripts with frequent references to ‘targeted’, ‘air strikes’ and ‘militants.”

So the message is very clear from the Abbott government.

• We can choose to kill whoever we want.
• We will control the information you receive you know about our killings.
• We will decide which murders you are allowed to support and encourage and which murders you will be jailed for supporting.

The shamelessness of these double standards just astounds me. A week ago Tony Abbott called ISIS a “death-cult” and then in almost the same sentence he talks about bringing death to this very same faction, without any trace of irony or awareness of his crude double-standards. Although the government and the corporate sector control the narrative of how this is currently described and recorded, this won’t always be the case. I have no doubt that if the world survives long enough, in due course we will look back at our current leaders and see them, like we now see Genghis Khan, as barbaric, menacing psychopaths although with even less respect, as the murder and horror they unleash is always perpetrated on other people’s children and directed from the comfort of their affluent homes and offices.