The last time Carmen Lawrence staged “an action” was during an anti-war rally at the Perth Town Hall more than thirty years ago, when she urged young men who’d been drafted to tear up their draft cards then quickly disappeared (such urgings were a criminal offence).
Her column on yesterday’s attempt to inspect the US warship U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln off Freemantle for weapons of mass destruction is at carmen16Jan. The Herald news story on the action is at smh.
Scott Burchill has been busy too, dissecting Simon Crean’s latest policy on the war – not to back a US unilateral strike against Iraq unless United Nations’ authorisation was vetoed by one of the permanent members of the UN security council. To end, Andrew Mamo and Helen Ferry discuss their anti-war protest, ‘garage doors against the war’.
Webdiarist Jozef Imrich recommends a passionate piece by John le Carre in The Times, ‘The United States has gone mad’ (times) and a Boston Globe piece, ‘Arms deals criticized as corporate US welfare’ (bostonglobe).
To begin, Merrill Pye likes this extract of a WB Yeats poem:
The Stare’s Nest by My Window
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
…
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love;
…
(from “Meditations in Time of Civil War – VI”, 1928, at rice
***
Scott Burchill, Lecturer in International Relations, Deakin University
While his policy seems to be moving in a more sensible direction, Mr Crean’s caveat that ALP support for a war against Iraq is still possible if one of the permanent five of the UN Security Council exercises its veto over a resolution authorising an attack when such a strike is widely supported by most member states, is bizarre.
According to the Leader of the Opposition, “the exception to this position [of only supporting UN authorised action against Iraq] might occur in the case of overwhelming UN Security Council support for military action, but where support for such action was subject to veto”. Three points need to be made.
(1) This position is simply a copy of the new UK Government position. PM Blair said today that if one country on the Security Council imposed an “unreasonable or unilateral” block “we can’t be in a position where we are confined in that way”.
(2) On the one hand Mr Crean is saying only the moral authority of the UN can legitimate a strike against Baghdad. On the other he is effectively saying the process by which the UN arrives at that position – via the normal process of passing Security Council resolutions – is so corrupt it can be disregarded when convenient.
It’s like someone saying they will only obey laws which are passed by a two thirds majority of the Australian Parliament even though a simple majority suffices. He can’t have it both ways. Either he accepts the legitimacy of the UN process as it is and has been since 1945, or he doesn’t.
(3) What are the implications of this new policy for relations with Israel? Since the early 1970s, the US has vetoed 22 draft Security Council resolutions on Palestine alone – this figure doesn’t include 7 vetoes relating to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the 1980s. In Government, would the ALP disregard Washington’s “unreasonable [and] unilateral” use of its veto to protect Israel, blocks which routinely defy “overwhelming UN Security Council support”?
***
Andrew Mamo and Helen Ferry
Upon reading recent webdiary forums regarding the impending invasion of Iraq, it is obvious there are many people who feel helpless or overwhelmed in the face an onslaught of lies and propaganda that speak of war as an inevitability. Collective activism is of course necessary, but does not seem to be garnering any mainstream attention, as the majority of (mainly television and radio) journalists duly toe the ideological line.
My family has sought its own expression of dissent. We have come up with a concept called “Garage Doors Against The War”, based on the following premises:
Premise 1: The War on Terror is essentially being fought in the suburbs of the USA, UK and Australia via our TV sets, while the real atrocities are carried out clandestinely. An ‘Information War’ is being fought for the hearts and minds of Western citizens who live in predominantly suburban environments. These environments are sometimes enclaves of cultural values, where little of the so-called multicultural society can be experienced.
Premise 2: Current large scale protests occur in urban environments, where the voice of dissent must be broadcast and compete in a space already co-opted and dominated by advertisers. Furthermore, inner city residents, for a number of socio-economic reasons, are more likely to be progressive in their views, and with the media currently reluctant to cover or even admit to these protests, the effect of the protest is limited – the protesters are just preaching to the converted. Needless to say, protest against government is an anachronistic agency of change. Contemporary strategies call for actions against corporations and the media, the real centres of power, but these actions are dependent on an informed populace, and with control over information becoming increasingly tighter (witness the Total Information Awareness initiative), getting a message of dissent out to the suburbs is more crucial than ever.
Premise 3: One of the major driving forces of the war is the lust for oil. Suburban commuters are one of the major consumers (and polluters) to whom the oil industry caters. Urban residents have no problems living without cars but it is much harder for suburban residents to get by without one (or two). Movements such as ‘Reclaim The Streets’ again target urban environments, but to a large degree the alienating effect of suburban life can be pinned down to its focus on the car. The latest suburban developments merely provide housing arranged around clusters of dead ends and cul-de-sacs linked to major traffic arteries or to the nearest mall or business park. Footpaths and sidewalks are scarce. Suburban architecture makes the garage the dominant feature of the suburban domicile’s facade.
Based on these premises, we have proposed to use the suburban space as a space of dissent and protest against the Bush administration’s grab for global domination. Each house has a ready-made billboard just waiting to shout out a message to sleepy neighbours, waking them up to the reality of our current situation – the garage door.
GARAGE DOORS AGAINST THE WAR wants dissenting people to turn their garage doors into loud, colourful canvases where they can make their disapproval known. Protest the war on terror, protest the war on Iraq, protest globalization, protest media complicity, protest Bush! Make it funny, make it angry, make it artistic, make it simple, make it clear, make it true. Whatever you make it, just make it!
We live in the suburbs and we know how precious a lot of people are about their homes. But we ask: What’s a few coats of paint compared to the lives and liberties that have been and will continue to be lost if we all stand back and say nothing?
It will take guts to do this – for people to change their houses and to risk the ire of their neighbours – but that’s what protest is all about; the courage to stand up for your convictions. Even if people are unwilling to paint their doors, or find it too difficult, there are alternatives, such as putting up a protest sign in your front yard.
We have put our money where our mouths are and are painting a protest on our garage door. (We will send photos through when it’s done, and we will put up a website soon where people can send us shots of their protests.) For those who are not artistically inclined, we hope to establish loose co-operatives of artists in particular areas to offer their services. There are many possibilities and many opportunities.
We have put this idea out on the web and already it is going global, having been featured in forums at nologo.org, alternet.org and freevision.org, with a terrific response from activists in the US. By taking the fight to the suburbs, the real heartland of the War on Terror, maybe, just maybe, we can change a few minds, and changing minds is crucial if we are to win the War of Information.