The Stench from behind the Tapa curtain - Na i Boi-ca sa kuvucake mai na daku ni i lati.

THE moral stench that emanates from Fiji’s regime is putrefying and can be smelt all over the world.

The wonderful Michael Leunig, contemporary philosopher & cartoonist said once,

“The time has come to be honest with ourselves and stop pretending we live in nicey-nicey, happy-clappy land”

Which is what Frank and Co would like to have us believe. .. Hello ... Atu’s Police Station .... praise the Lord.

Struth !!!!

To be frank (wonder why I loathe using that term now) , we live in a country driven by military madness. What is happening to Fiji is deeply ghoulish and evilly primal.

And we experience this unease everyday that we wake up and go out to work.

Each day I meet ordinary citizens who are very principled and who share their opinions; others who show no substance of character but who exist only to bend and twist in the wind, agreeing with Frank one day and siding with Ro Teimumu’s stand the next. These people are empty and creepy and lack a spiritual and moral soul.

Each day we also awaken to see the military and police spooks on their sinister watch in their suwai - in the streets, in our boardrooms and in the internet cafes. A menacing hovering specter in our daily lives.

The killings of Tevita Malasebe, Nimilote Verebasaga and Sakiusa Rabaka caused heartbreak and anger and now has come to symbolize what the regime is doing to the people of Fiji , especially to our young.

We are surrounded with sad stories each day - children who cannot afford to go to school , whose parents have lost their jobs, young ones forced to steal to live. The disasters of all of our coups continue to be infinitely terrifying and distressing.

I cannot help but wonder as the interrogative lights beam down onto us the itaukei, whether we as parents and grandparents will face the the question from our young ones in years to come :

“Where were you all those years ago when it really mattered? What did you do to change things or were you just ambivalent ? Why didn’t you try?”

I am sure the silence will be unbearable for a lot of you.

But that is for you to deal with.

It is unfortunate that as much as we try and dress it up in vakarokoroko and other cultural aspects, the 2 colossal ( and polar opposite) national traits and weakness of the itaukei - treachery & trickery - me vaka na malumalumu va-cikinovu, kei na rokoroko-va’kanace - remain glaring at us in the face. DAILY.

The same 2 weaknesses that are now the strength of the once glorious but now grimy Fiji military.

The guns have silenced the Churches , the Political Parties, the Media - the clamour of the peoples voices have been shut down, the brains depart our shores along with their dollars, there is no new investment, the economy is dying a slow but obvious death.

Fiji is on the same path that Burma and Zimbabwe and Nigeria went down - becoming desecrated, traumatized , disorderly and lawless.

But where have all the morons gone that promoted this gutless yellow-bellied coup? The academics, other country’s opportunists, fat-cat businessmen, failed politicians, the resident kaivalagi colonialist writers and social do-gooder commentators - even the odd bishop and excommunicated minister of the cloth who reached out their grubby paws to “help” with the regime’s foul and untruthful deeds.

Do they take any responsibility? What do these brutish maladroits have to say about the pickle we are in and the melancholia which is spreading like the swine flu?

OH BUT WAIT .. some have already worked on their exit strategy - VERY convenient. I note that a very unlikely beer-swilling lad of an academic called Ratuva has weasled his way into NZ (bully land) . Indeed. And whatshisname the $2 million charter-man ex ADB has also fled back to comfortable old bully land. An ex politician also a $2 million dollar man is now to be seen weasling his way through the ranks and all the others are most likely thinking on their exits too - manipulating, scumbucketing and creeping their way back to bula-bula-happy-clappy land.

In our bula-bula-happy-clappy land you must be happy-clappy and positive all the time - bad news is tabu.

Leunig also points to a book called “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence” by N. Dixon, where we read that one of the principle factors in the origin of military disasters is the inability of commanders to heed bad news or inconvenient intelligence reports; preferring to lie to themselves, their troops and their nation and to rely on flowery Maoist type thinking.

Oh how we do wish to move on from the daily odious essence of boi-da-da ! And worth noting, the wise Leunig also said on this same subject :

“The art of dogs receives very little attention or acclaim, except, of course, from other dogs”.

Whilst Bainimarama's canine cohorts bow and howl and sniff at each others shortcomings and disguise these as national accomplishments , we must never forget what this process is doing and has done to our nation.

We must also learn from it’s lessons.

And learn to concentrate on what is true .

We must focus on that truth and keep it close. Entwine the truth, our principals and our moral fabric together for the sake and future sanity of our nation.

This regime is only perpetuated by us. And why ? What are we? “Malumalumu va-cikivovu” se da “rokoroko-va’kanace”.

Only you yourself are to know, and for some of us oh what a painful truth may dawn! If you dare.

Editorial NZ Herald Aug 8th, 2009

Fiji's future in hands of its people

3:59AM Saturday Aug 08, 2009

At least two factors must be in place for a country to be subjected to successive coups. The first is the presence of a military force with ideas above its station and little time for notions of democracy. The second, and more important, is a populace that is fatalistic about the loss of its rights and threats to its well-being. So it is with Fiji.

Four coups within the space of two decades have engendered little outward antipathy towards military rule. Some say this reflects a traditional subservience, the product of centuries of oppressive rule by chiefs. But whatever the reason, it was fully appropriate for the Niuean Premier, Toke Talagi, to tell the Fijian people that they had a responsibility to secure the fate of their own country, and to "rise up to challenge" Commodore Frank Bainimarama's regime.

Mr Talagi, speaking in Cairns as the outgoing chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum, noted there was little that could be done to quell a mass uprising. "I wonder whether people realise you can't shoot 500,000 Fijians if they're rising up peacefully."

He was not, he said, advocating violent protests, but believed Fijians now had to take matters into their own hands for their children's sakes.

His speech attracted some odd responses, not least from New Zealand's Prime Minister. John Key described it as unhelpful, and concluded it effectively proposed trying to right a coup with another coup. "You can't have a good coup and a bad coup," he said.

Obviously, the death earlier in the week of the former Philippines President, Corazon Aquino, and the many tributes to her, had passed Mr Key by. The success of her "people power" movement, which in 1986 swept away 20 years of brutal dictatorship by Ferdinand Marcos, was the very model of the activity proposed by Mr Talagi. It inspired political change around the world, and should inspire the Fijian people.

At the moment, most remain passive. They have not reacted to Commodore Bainimarama's ongoing removal of their democratic rights, including the abrogation of the constitution, or the squashing of dissent, most recently through the arrest of a number of church leaders.

They have not responded to his refusal to meet international deadlines for the holding of elections, which has led to the suspension of badly needed foreign capital and aid, the application of sanctions, and pariah status for their country.

It appears those sanctions will have to extract a far bigger toll in human suffering and the economy to deteriorate further under the regime's foolhardy policies for unease and unrest among Fijians to grow. If that is what it takes, so be it.

Mr Key says encouraging dialogue between Commodore Bainimarama and other political players in Fiji is the right course of action, "not some sort of uprising of the people". Unfortunately, the regime has shown not the slightest inclination to heed that encouragement. Universal international condemnation of the regime has been disregarded and pledges dishonoured.

The latest casualty is a Commonwealth demand for elections by September next year. The commodore's self-appointed deadline, which keeps slipping further into the distance, is now 2014.

No one, least of all Mr Talagi, is suggesting the Fijian people stage a violent revolution. A peaceful solution must be found.

But that does not preclude widespread demonstrations by a populace no longer content to be ruled by a clutch of military officers.

The regime has shown only a willingness to sacrifice the well-being of the Fijian people. Worse is probably still to come.

At some time, the people must abandon their fatalism. They will have to send Commodore Bainimarama and his cohorts back to the barracks - once and for all.

Fiji a Transmogrifying State of Affairs

Back in May 11th, 2009, I remember being horrified when the wise Graham Leung, said there were rumours that responsibility for licensing lawyers could be taken from the Law Society. He said this could politicize the licensing system.

“The next step further down the track could be that persons deemed to be critics and detractors of the regime might be excluded from holding practising certificates. It’s obviously with a view to silencing dissent"

And so it has come to pass.
______________________

The above example is only one of hundreds of examples of our beloved land turning into a fictional society .

There is no where else in the world except prob. in Mao's old China, where you can find an insane Police Commissioner who knows nothing about policing but supposedly everything about Jesus, decide what conference can go ahead and what cannot, BUT change his mind in 5 minutes based on a prayer or some (un)intelligent (Chinese) whisper , or a (Korean) bribe - who knows ?? .....

A fictional society where everything is supposedly known about everybody and yet, at the same time, nothing is known about anything.

Teleni and Bainimarama's type and kind of phlegmatic ignorance can be likened to the once only 1989 address by the infamous and cruel Stasi leader, Erich Mielke, to his"comrades" in the GDR parliament when he announced: "I love all people. I put myself out for you…" ......... This was met with laughter from the crowd.

Fast forward to Fiji ...... to share with you Bhaini's vision for Fiji.Opening Address at the Nadi Chamber of Commerce Forum-Sep 17, 2007

Essentially, my vision is to rebuild Fiji into a non-racial, culturally vibrant and united, well-governed, truly democratic nation that seeks progress and prosperity through merit-based equality of opportunity, and peace ".

.... blah blah .....yaawwwwn. ..... laughter from the populace (qori nei Atu).

Mielke's unique brand of "love" transformed East Germany into probably the most spied-upon country in history. In its 40 years of rule, 'the Firm' generated the equivalent of all records in German history since the Middle Ages . It is worth repeating the statistics: 180 kilometres of files, 360,000 photographs, 99,600 audio cassettes, one in every 6.5 of the population an informer.

Fast forward to Fiji 2009 - we see the plain clothed informers military soldiers, prisons and the police too, being transmogrified into instruments of oppression; as they were with the practises of the Soviet KGB and the Stasi.

Police and informers remorselessly chronicled the most humdrum and pointless of activities, intercepted the most innocent of letters, and spent months , and the nation's entire budget for decades, trailing political suspects, even at funerals, while following absurd but detailed instructions on how to play the nonchalant passer-by.

The whole system would be a laughing-stock were it not for the fact that hundreds of thousands of unfortunate East Germans, most innocent of any political crime, were arrested, interrogated, routinely tortured and sent to prison camps and psychiatric hospitals.

But of course Repression was never called that by name: the Stasi saw themselves as revolutionary heroes, saving their fascist Germany from defectors and infiltrators.

Fast forward to Fiji 2009 - today's brutal reality of Fijian Military repression. Not many people in Fiji and overseas know this, but many ordinary villagers continue to be hauled up to the Military HQ in Fiji to be threatened and brainwashed about having any ideas about protesting. Many influential personalities have had trumped up charges placed against their good names in an effort by the Regime to besmirch their reputations. Many potential leaders continue to be harassed, their homes fire-bombed and burgled in the middle of the night by military thugs in an effort to terrorise them into silence with the threat against the safety of their loved ones. Many ordinary citizens especially academia, have their phones tapped, and military undercover personnel tailing their every move and meeting.

This paranoia points to the Regime's fear of individual thought, the first step in a process that History has shown is littered with systematic genocide and / or erasure of items on the regime's list such as ... Media, Cultural Icons and Cultural Structures, Indigenous Historical Records, Academic thought and research, Established Religion and Religious Bodies ... etc etc....

Like the Third Reich that preceded it, the East German system depended on the active participation of thousands of ordinary citizens who shopped their friends, workmates and colleagues to the authorities. Police states depend upon collusion, not simply upon coercion, which may explain why Fiji will never have a Truth Commission.

When we cannot be true to ourselves, who can we be true to?

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation. He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." Cicero

When we find that the "secret police"and the "secret informers" are not monitoring their own society, their own people, they have turned their eyes on others - like when they blame the Media and other Governments for their mistakes ..... NEVER for a moment looking in toward themselves - always externalising.

Like Suu Yan in Mynmar currently awaiting "judgement" in the most Mickey-Mouse of trials you could ever imagine, we see ourselves in the same insane situation where if one was deemed to be "inciteful" merely by writing a letter to the Commonwealth Leaders Meeting, one could be brutally interrogated and eventually imprisoned....

Fast forward perhaps to a couple of weeks from now when one may read in one of the Fiji Regime's stooge media outlets some inane pronouncement like this :

"Fiji's Judge Magistrate Rabuku has pronounced ..... (name of person ) Guilty ... and sentenced to 40 years jail and $500,000 fine for writing a letter and thinking aloud as 'inciteful'.

The Stasi flourished on such nonsense .............

Fast Foward to Fiji 2006 - 2009 and guess what ? I dont see any differences to what the Stasi leaders saw back then ..... even worse ...... I see the Fijian military usurpers are actually encouraged to flaunt such nonsense by the mischievous backers of this boneheaded and naked power grab by Military cowards in Fiji.

Anyone who harbours any lingering sympathies for this dreary and self-important dictatorship that bespeaks a paranoia that's both comic and horrible must have to have urgent therapy.

The function of the Stasi was to arrest, imprison and interrogate anyone it chose, to open all mail, intercept phone calls, bug hotels & businesses, spy on investors, and their own citizens, run its own hospitals and universities, and to train their own terrorists.

When we examine the reasons from history as to why people collaborated with the state to spy and inform on their neighbors and families and lovers and friends we see why they did it.

Many did it for money, some out of fear, others for the narcissistic thrill of feeling themselves indispensable to those in power.

This as we know reflects some of the worst aspects of human nature. And we can all point to the ones to date that have seriously pushed past the post lacking all the necessary ethics, honour, virtue, morality , fibre and fortitude that defines the difference between excreta and all of the above . Thats all I will say about that.

The crimes of Fascism offend our sense of justice and morality and offends our our intellect, our respect for logic, rationality, coherence, reason. At its worst it is the sense that to have an independent or logical thought, to insist on things as they are rather than as they are said to be, is to indulge in criminal activity.

Orwell chose the phrase "thought crime" well -- the crime isn't just in what you think but in thinking at all. And this is the infernal, literally maddening state that we must fight against.

The controversial free thinker, Carl Sagan has said that one of the saddest lessons of history is this:

If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous —