The ties between Abe and the group were not superficial. In 2005 and 2006, while a lawmaker, Abe sent congratulatory messages to events co-hosted by the Universal Peace Federation which has strong ties to the Unification Church.
According to materials from the National Network and public documents, in 2010 and 2012, Abe attended meetings of the Institute for Global Strategy, another allegedly church-affiliated organization. In 2011, he and other conservatives put out a one page opinion ad in the Washington Times denying Japanese war crimes. In 2013, under Abe, despite opposition within the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the organization was allowed to change its name—thus obscuring its problematic past. In 2016, Abe invited the chairman of the Japan branch of the Unification Church to the prime minister’s residence. In September of 2021, Abe sent a video message to an event organized by the Universal Peace Federation. He praised the church’s leaders and its “family values.” But Abe wasn’t alone, Donald Trump, Abe’s golf buddy and ideological pal, also sent a video praising the church’s leaders.
Look who’s back- and polls show the increasingly far-right are going to win.
*thread
These are countries well acquainted with deprivations caused by Soviet forces.
Must feel like deja vu all over again.
So it’s come out that during the lockdowns of last year, the then Prime Minister swore himself in as a co-minister of Health, and of Finance, and of Resources.
Secretly. Without telling anyone, including in two cases the actual ministers.
The general consensus from Constitutional Lawyers is "What? How? Why? How? Why?? You can’t do that, and even if you could do that, why would you do that?"
The response from the rest of Australia is “OK, fine, so the ministers were incompetent oxygen thieves, as were everyone else who could replace them. No argument. But, Scotty, so are you. So maybe that explains why your stepping in to ‘help’ resulted in no noticeable improvements.”
It gets better. It turns out that the Governor General really did sign secret Ministerial commissions for Morrison. For the Health ministry, it was with the knowledge and agreement of the Health Minister (who was a waste of space in any case, but still). In the case of the Ministry of Resources, it was done with the knowledge but not the consent of the Minister, and was done mainly so that Morrison could unilaterally override a Ministerial decision without having to actually tell anyone that he’d done that.
And the minister for Finance neither knew nor consented. That Finance Minister is now the Secretary General of the OECD, just in case you were wondering. And we still don’t know why he thought it so important to have secret override on Finance.
(Note, when the Leader of the National Party describes it as “pretty ordinary”, that’s Australian for “several different kinds of fucked up”.)
How do people cope with the daily fact that they live in a land-stealing, apartheid, genocidal state?
It seems that a lot of them just basically shut down a large part of themselves.
Throughout the brief operation in Gaza, Israeli consciousness turned itself off. It is hard to recall a single evocative statement – positive or negative, personal or general – uttered at any time during this operation. Even on social media it was hard to find any expressions of emotion. No one celebrated the results of this operation – except the public relations arm of the military – and no one objected to it either.
And that moment when a society goes from alienation or criticism or blind admiration to a state of dissociation and helplessness is a moment that is critical to mark. The disaster buried in any status quo is right there. Deep degeneration creates a sense of helplessness that eventually leads to dissociation. It’s much deeper than this operation, and has of course to do with the twilight time we are in, between recognition that the old order is dead, that its defilement is too deep, too irreparable, and a sense that “this is all there is,” that it can’t really be any different.
