Zaky Mallah

I thought the issues in this matter would be obvious from the background of the actual event itself and from the Wikipedia link I provided re Zaky's actual background in my article, "Zaky Mallah and the Zombification of ABC Australia". Public response elsewhere indicates that this is not the case. So I'll make this effort to present them explicitly.

1) Zaky's background:

He had his passport revoked in 2003. He sought formal appeal against this decision. He was refused access to the 'evidence' upon which the decision was made and the decision was upheld.

He was greatly upset by this and made a fair bit of public fuss about it. Zaky readily admits some of his response at the time was over the top, but he also submits that he was only 19 and that he can be a bit of an idiot.

The Australian and Alan Jones picked up on this and, for whatever reason, gave some public bandwidth to Zaky and his concerns.

Quite probably as a result of this publicising of Zaky and his gripe, an ASIO agent posed as a reporter and sought to induce Zaky to enact a siege upon ASIO staff and give him the 'scoop story'.

At some point in this induced farce Zaky made a death threat toward this ASIO agent. On the face of it, this sounds understandable.

Zaky was then arrested and charged for his threat. He was held in solitary at Goulbourn prison for 2 years and eventually tried under newly enacted terrorism laws that were not even in place at the time of his arrest.
The judge and jury found him not guilty of the terrorism charge. The judge allowed admission of the evidence regarding the death threat even though it was illegally generated via entrapment and should not have been admissible. Zaky pleaded guilty and was convicted.

2) The current event:

Zaky appeared on Q&A and asked Minister Ciobo how he would be dealt with under the new pending legislation to rescind citizneship. Clearly this question is vital to him and anyone in the community like him. They all pay their 8ç for the ABC just like we do and are fully entitled to be heard and to hear on the matter. More broadly though, the question and the answer provide a vital measure to to all of us who might want to better understand exactly what this new legislative bundle may or may not actually mean.

Ciobo's answer was revealed the chilling reality that decisions would be based upon visceral reflex and not any objectively considered merit. No surprise really but usefully shocking to have it out in the open.

Zaky observed that the Minister's attitude, and thereby it can be presumed the Government's, would help mobilise vulnerable local sentiment toward ISIS rather than away from it.

At that point the world melted down. Utterly unlikely allies, beginning immediately with Tony Jones, all worked together from that point to completely obscure these stark utterances of ugly truth beneath an incendiary mob attack upon Zaky and upon the ABC, which has offered itself up for sacrifice either out of stupidity, cowardice or complicity toward the weirdly horrible status quo that we are being steadily conscripted into.

3) Zaky's misogynous tweets:

He did not tweet about women per se. He tweeted about two particular journalists who happen to be women.
The gist of his tweet was that they were whores. Personally I find his concern for their particular behaviour, and his character analogy of them, quite compelling.

I am not about to insulate myself from the useful truth and meaning of his communication simply because he frames it in the language and imagery that is common to a youth from the western suburbs of Sydney. Why is elitism any better than so-called misogyny? Both are divisive and marginalising. Moreover, persons fortunate to have an education should be better able to rise above such failings rather than seek advantage in their own 'elevated' form of it.

3) Fundamentalism:

Zaky is a prominent and repeated denouncer of ISIS and advocate against Moslem youth joining them.

Due to this he has received personalised death threats directly from Mohamed Elomar, an active Australian ISIS operative in Syria.

Zaky has continued his anti-ISIS advocacy despite these threats.

Maybe those anti-ISIS identities who are denouncing Zaky might like to compare their own effectiveness and bravery regarding the task with his.

4) Why this is an important issue:

It reveals the innate character and implementation of a very severe, potentially far-reaching new 'security'' regulation.

It reveals the innate character and purpose of the Govt. implementing that regulation.

It reveals the ruthless and coordinated intent of a media and community sector in prosecuting this socio-political character and purpose.

It reveals the gormlessness of the rest of the media and the community toward objecting to both the actions and the purpose of such obvious manipulation. In fact, with some rare and largely muffled exception, they are all falling over themselves to not be seen as being in any way obstructive or oppositional to this purge toward an acceptable national orthodoxy. Any particular minority group or point of view (population and growth management?) should be extremely worried about this dynamic.

It suggests that the Government's purpose is, at best, careless toward the actual effect it might have upon vulnerable Moslem youth and their communities, and, at worst, it might actually seek to provoke young moslems to subscribe to ISIS et al. This serves to keep the domestic electoral fire on National Security alive for the Coalition and it helps maintain middle Eastern instability, which has been instigated and maintained as a western Geo-political agenda from the beginning. This in turn keeps the domestic border security issue alive. Deliciously cynical isn't it? Keep the refugee source ignited and then make a big electoral deal about keeping our shores safe from their consequent flow. Personally I find such abysmal futility utterly sickening, even if only stubborn stupidity is at the nub of it.

But no, say the crowd, this is all a meaningless distraction orchestrated by an attention-seeking misogynistic fundamentalist.

Yeah, and endless economic growth is good and population increase is both inevitable and beneficially productive. Essentially the same narrative and source, isn't it?

[Candobetter.net Editor: Updated with spelling corrections and some links on 2 July 20145.] My reaction to the short drama between Mr Mallah, Mr Ciobo and Tony Jones on the Q & A program of June 22 is different in some ways from Greg Wood's in his article earlier today, "Zaky Mallah and the Zombification of ABC Australia", although I agree with much of it.

Firstly, I have been pleasantly surprised at the mix of participants and topics in the last few Q & A programs. I thought the program of the 22nd June 2015 was really great. I thought it was fantastic to get a man acquitted of jihadist terrorism on to raise the issues that we all know exist in Australia's terrorism laws.

I was glad that Tony Jones and his team, whoever was responsible, allowed a citizen who had been at the margins of society to speak in this forum. With my own fairly extensive knowledge of interview techniques, I thought I recognised Ciobo's tactics as calculated to shame and inflame Mallah. Effectively Ciobo's personalisation of a legal issue caused Mallah to have to defend his 'face'. (You lose 'face' if you are attacked in public; it is much harder to deal with if a powerful figure tries to shame you in front of a crowd.) Very few ordinary people could have seen that one coming, nor could they have dealt with it any better. Perhaps only a seasoned politician could maintain apparent equanimity at such a public insult. Then again, maybe Ciobo was blowing off some steam he had accumulated after taking a drubbing from Antony Hegarty (Singer of Antony and The Johnsons) and Linda Tirago , (American anti-poverty campaigner). I think his response to Mallah probably even took Tony Jones by surprise, although I would have to review the podcast to know, and I'm not inclined to get into things that far.

Mallah's retort may or may not have been meant seriously and it may not have really made sense. Maybe he did mean, "Well, if you're so unforgiving and rude to a once extreme Islamist who has since tried to reintegrate and become a positive influence and make amends, that might reinforce the decision of others who are contemplating joining violent Islamist sects."

Or maybe he just retorted the first thing that came into his head, like a slap response to a public slap.

It is also shocking that Ciobo accused Mallah of having got off 'on a technicality' if, as Anne Aly, 'Counter Terrorism Expert' insisted on the next show, on 29th June, he was well and truly cleared.

But I also have to say that the whole government rhetoric which we live daily and which formed the context of the controversy on Q & A seems to me like an exercise in hypocrisy and a subtle encouragement for people to go to Syria and join 'rebel fighters'. It is our government and its slimy billionaire mentors in the United States and NATO who demonise the Syrian Government as an excuse to continue to rape and pillage a whole swathe of countries in the Middle East, in a fine old tradition begun at the beginning of the 19th Century in the Great Game.

You don't actually have to be a marginalised muslim immigrant with poor education to be taken in by the 'reforming the brutal Assad 'regime' (which is actually an elected government, not an illegitimate 'regime') spin. Plenty of apparently educated and intelligent people simply believe whatever Mr Abbott, Fairfax and Mr Murdoch's team tell them, which I find amazing.

The variation that probably occurs with some young muslims is that, as well as hearing about the 'brutal Assad regime' they also hear of how the West is raping and pillaging the Middle East. And they hear from religiose Arab sources, (sponsored by the Saudis, Turkey, Qatar for instance - Australia and NATO allies) ranging from The Brotherhood through Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, to ISIS, that Bashar al Assad's government is too secular and is repressing people in possession of religious truth. They rarely hear of how that government is the only one that provides Palestinians with effective citizenship and housing, nor that Syria has taken in a huge number of refugees from the surrounding countries wrecked and disorganised by western interference.

It must require extreme learning curves of sophistication and self-control for people who work out for themselves in the field that ISIS and various religious 'revolutionary armies' are actually led by crims, nutters and/or cynical politicians, often armed and financed by oil-states, the US and NATO, to then find some good in our own government and press, which endorse and amplify a host of transparently inadequate reasons to keep on bombing, invading and interfering with the Middle East.

Apparently Mr Mullah has also said some very nasty things endorsing sexual violence towards women. Well, I hope he learns that that is a pretty stupid and scurrilous attitude sooner rather than later. Now that everyone knows, let's hope girls stay well away from him.

Back to the ABC. Q and A did nothing wrong, in my opinion, in inviting a citizen with an unusual experience of notable relevance to the terrorism laws being debated on the program. Mr Ciobo, who is the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade, should be called out publicly for the way he addressed Mr Mullah. As Greg Wood (in Zaky Mallah and the Zombification of ABC Australia) implies, Mr Steve Ciobo sounded as fundamentalist and inadequate to foreign affairs as an infuriated Mr Mullah; he just had a nicer suit.

But the clash over terrorism and dual citizenship was only a cherry on a multi-tiered cream cake. Three guests, Grahame Morris, 'Political strategist' and Steve Ciobo and Joel Fitzgibbon (shadow minister for Rural Affairs, right wing NSW ALP) came off the worse as they were bluntly and skilfully challenged on issues of class entitlement, privatisation, poverty and environmental and social responsibility by Antony Hegarty and Linda Tirado.

Was that why the government really got so mad? Because the blokes on its side were so woefully inadequate to their ideology being challenged?

On the 22nd the Q and A program had as a guest Mr Paul Kelly, long time editor of The Australian. One felt as if one were in the presence of Mr Murdoch himself, as Mr Kelly articulated what strikes me as a delusional corporate media belief that the ABC is massively left-wing biased. My impression was that Kelly and another guest, Tim Wilson who is a former Director of the IPA and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs[1], were there more to claw back the lost face of the people from their political side of the fence who had been trumped the week before by Hegarty and Tirado. In the context of the Prime Minister's sublimely inappropriately themed recommendation that 'heads should roll' their poe faces were kind of scary.

In my view, the Government and the ABC management should step right back from any punitive or even finger wagging exercises against Q and A, which really does an excellent job of mixing right wing with left wing and 'academiccy' with business, ordinary or even marginalised. At candobetter.net we are often justly critical of the ABC, including Q & A, but not in this case.

Good job Tony Jones. Keep at it.

NOTES

[1] Now he is the Human Rights and “Freedom” Commissioner, serving under its President Professor Gillian Triggs.

Material has been added to this article on 1 July 2015. The general deception and essential horror active within the current bullshit storm being unleashed around the ABC and Mallah is fully revealed by simply reading the factual account of Mallah's background, linked below, and then considering what was actually said in the Q&A program in context to that factual background.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaky_Mallah

As stated at the outset by ABC chief Mark Scott, Mallah had a democratic right to ask the question that he did on that program. Beyond that though, every Australian citizen had the right, and a vital and pressing need, to hear Mallah's question and the Minister's answer to it.

In true fact and context, it was Ciobo's answer that was horrendous. His reflex response was steeped in ignorance, intolerance, exclusivity and malice. It flashed a stark, Freudian insight into this current government's purpose and will toward our national 'Freedom and Security'.

But having correctly established Mallah's democratic right, the ABC Chief then immediately resiled from his base position to also acknowledge that 'it was a mistake' for Q&A to have Mallah on the show.

What the hell? How? Why?

That weak-minded contradiction gave the hounds of fascism ground to swerve around the sound bulwark of Scott's fundamentally correct, crucially important argument. This avenue of circumvention allowed the rabid attack to proceed unabated; upon the ABC, upon Scott's compromised 'defence', and upon democracy itself and the free social dialogue necessary to its healthy function.

True to type, the ABC journalist group have since let these baying hounds set the parameters of the ensuing media 'conversation'. Every attack dog from every available right-wing brood kennel has emerged to swell a lobotimised howl for the ABC'c blood. The cacophony is now so loud, so pervasive and so disturbing that even moderate liberal puppies like John Hewson apparently feel they also have to join in with harmonic yelps, lest they be found socially and personally wanting in some indeterminable but viscerally uncomfortable way. To my mind, Turnbull has established beyond all doubt that he is utterly amoral and unable to control the fascist horde he sleeps with, or that he has fully resigned himself to being a part of it as the pragmatic mechanism for best maximising his own personal achievement. Labor and the Greens are both absent from the fray regarding the truth on this matter.

Faced with this unmoderated, slavering onslaught upon their own character, and quite possibly their own professional existence, the ABC journo group has proven unable to execute a competent and forensic examination and prosecution of the pertinent facts and context of the situation. No wonder they fail so abysmally on critical issues that are removed from their direct, immediate personal well-being, such as population, housing affordability, etc. They can't even effectively argue the case for their own professional freedom and identity. How then can they possibly act in any useful way to mediate due protection of our rapidly diminishing democracy, social equity or resource sustainability. Especially now that they have gone down so badly in this ugly episode of media and party political gang rape. PTSD now forthcoming or what?

Things are not at all well in this Nation at present. Very clearly our democracy now depends heavily upon citizens acting to inform themselves and each other. The mainstream media cannot be relied upon.

Footnote:

Within all of this it is also imperative to recognise that the frenzy and consternation of this attack upon the ABC has served to utterly obliterate any useful attention toward the nature of Government intent and character that was revealed by Minister Ciobo in his interchange with Zaky Mallah. Maybe the ABC is not in fact the primary objective of the current political exercise. Rather it is a subsidiary victim for the aggressors, although a desirable one nonetheless.

Notably, and perhaps shamefully, Tony Jones initiated this cover-up of spontaneous, 'pants-down' revelation of awful truth when he immediately declared that Zaky's final incisive observation be 'struck from the record'. What on earth did he mean? Zaky's comment can't be excised from the public record as its recording is not limited to a contained, formal transcript from which it can be simply and completely struck. It is recorded on public, readily reproducible media. It would have to be blasted out of its public domain existence by a campaign of mis-information and intimidation, which is exactly what has now been achieved.

Surely Tony's declaration at the time wasn't the invocation to begin this ensuing spiritual cleansing. Rather, was he simply prescient of its imminent arrival and reflexively at pains to be not too far on the wrong side as it unfolded? Which begs the question, just how well trained are the ABC cohort? Are they Pavlov's reporters, conditioned to familiar non-threatening ground by the constant bell-ring of the baseless but unchallenged accusation of them 'all being lefties'. My god! Why do they fail to challenge this inaccurate, essentially meaningless and effectively limiting generalisation of themselves as a work-group? Do they actually embrace the wistful but practically disabling and pathetic romance of it? Where might such a high profile embodiment of meaning render a real 'leftie'? As a pathological nut-bag or extremist? No wonder then that the parameters of social discourse have mutated so far to the right. And so excruciatingly clever to employ the self-absorbed narcissism of 'authentic' and wannabe celebrity journo's as vectors to deliver this mutation.

If the ABC journo group do actually embody the contemporary definition of being 'lefties' then I am indeed down a deep, dark rabbit hole and am in desperate need of the right drugs and/or implements to get back out again... and quickly please. Mind control is not the product of compulsion by the aggressor. It is one of submission by the victim. However no one person is an island. At some point within the labyrinthe of perceived reality and illusion we all need to access, and also to provide, some collective help. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' is an old film with a modern message in this regard. I've no doubt that Zaky could certainly do with some collective support right now. He deserves recognition of the merit of his basic position, and for his stoic courage and relatively calm consistency in the face of persistently mendacious attack, unreasonable accusation and confected collective hate being variously levelled at him by the voices of political neanderthals and 'progressives' alike. In this regard, Waleed Aly should very particularly bow his head in shame over his own efforts interviewing Zacky on a recent episode of The Project.

Thanks Zaky. Your effort has helped me to understand things more clearly than I did. However, with that understanding I also do feel more endangered, not by you, but by the horrific nature, breadth and scale of the social response to you. By many real measures, this country is not as safe as it once was. The enemy is how we think, or are lead to not think, about important things.