G’day. The untruths they keep telling us, eh? The defence force, the defence department, the government. Now we’re supposed to believe that the government knew nothing about American war crimes in Iraq jails until April, when the pictures surfaced. This despite our man in Baghdad HQ Major O’Kane and his superiors knowing all about it from November. This despite O’Kane inspecting Abu Grahib several times, advising on the acceptability of intrrogation techniques and even claiming that the torture exposed by the Red Cross wasn’t really torture! No wonder Hill banned him from giving evidence to the Parliament. The truths he might tell!

 

If we believe that a matter so serious was not put before government then we’re forced to believe that bureaucracy and the defence force lost their collective minds or knew that, yet again, this would be something the government would not want to hear. But why mislead Howard and Hill until the deception was exposed by the Herald? Could it be that Australia actually condoned the torture? One thing we know after long months of revelations of the bad faith of Iraq’s invaders is that anything, ANYTHING, is possible. It’s that scary.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Tom Allard deserves a Walkley for his courage and persistence on this story. But what does he get? On the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, compere Barrie Cassidy tossed his story aside with a smirk and a smug president of the Canberra Press Gallery, Malcolm Farr, guffawed that he couldn’t understand what it was all about, except that some journos still followed the Carl Bernstein/Bob Woodward style of journalism – “What did they know and when did they know it”.

How terribly old fashioned of them. Much better to have a chat about the polls and who’s on top and when the election date might be.

How sad most the mainstream media is these days. How bloody sad.

Today Jack Robertson, a Webdiary columnist who argued the case before the war that it was all about oil, introduces us to the Carlyle Group, one the most powerful, best connected outfits in the USA, and how they do business with government. It’s stuff we need to know, because pollies here are fast becoming like their American counterparts – mere salesmen for the money men, the real power in our post-democracies. Check out this week’s Time magazine, for example. American Vice President Dick Cheney personally shepherded through a no tender Iraq contract to Halliburton, which he used to chair. Conflict of interest? Nothing wrong with that in the US military industrial complex. Halliburton is the company that’s overcharged the Pentagon for fuel and lots more besides, and cancelled an Australian company’s contract in Iraq allegedly because it refused to pay bribes to Halliburton. What’s the difference between bad old Saddam and good old America again? Seems like we, the people, have two enemies – the Islamic fascists and the Western fascists.

***

Meet the Carlyles, Australia

by Jack Robertson

“It doesn’t take an Einstein to recognise why Iraq is suddenly so important. A unilateral Saudi cut of even a few million barrels a day now – or the total overthrow of the government by extremist Muslim students and clerics, a revolution of the kind many current Bushies experienced up close in the friendly oil pump of Iran back in 1979 – would be globally, economically catastrophic.”Loony-Left anti-American Conspiracy Rant, Webdiary, 5 March 2003

“Oil Price Quakes as Hostages Killed” Loony-Left anti-American Conspiracy Headline” – Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 2004.

Saudis, oil, war n’ terror, lawyers, guns and money

Now that the mainstream media has caught up and it’s permissible to chat about the reason for the Iraq invasion – which has always been oil – we loony lefties at Webdiary might get away with talking about groups like The Carlyle Group without being labeled conspiracy theorists or Western self-blamers. Since an Australian was killed in the Saudi Arabian hostage tragedy, probably not, but let’s try anyway.

If you’re so inclined, the story of the Carlyle Group has everything any self-respecting Larouchian could wish for: money, arms, oil, political connections, involuntary taxpayer largesse, bloodied old warmongers, blown-out defence contracts, terrorist dynasties, corrupt Gulf Royalty, cold and blue-blooded Ivy Leaguers, the odd scheming cosmospolitan Jew, etc, etc, etc. But I’ve never claimed that there’s anything conspiratorial about the oily corner we Westerners have bowsered ourselves into over the last sixty-odd years. It’s just the way the big energy and arms businesses have developed in an commercially opportunist era and region.

The long overdue mainstreaming of the role of Saudi Arabian oil in the ‘war on terror’ will get a big boost from Michael Moore’s new film, but it should really begin with every commercial TV channel on the planet running this more measured documentary from the Netherlands, from mid-2003. (The January 2004 version is here.) Since the chance of that happening is roughly zero it’s worth watching online, even if it’s partly in Dutch. You can also check out the Carlyle Group’s website atthecarlylegroup.

All very respectable, isn’t it? ‘Global vision, local insight: Our mission is to be the premier global private equity firm, leveraging the insight of Carlyle’s team of investment professionals to generate extraordinary returns across a range of investment choices, while maintaining our good name and the good name of our investors…’

The defining point is that what Carlyle does is ‘legitimate’. Theirs is not some Enron or Worldcom-style transgression of the West’s ideal of globalisation, but its quintessential mode. To paraphrase Gordon Gecko: Carlyle is Good. Its executives don’t believe they are doing anything wrong. They make big profits for their investors. They break no laws outright. No doubt many Carlyle firms are even doing good things now in Iraq, too. Rebuilding, revitalising, providing employment, training, channeling trickle-down wealth, fostering new links with the West at microeconomic levels. Perhaps.

Because the problem is it didn’t work out quite that way in Saudi Arabia in the long-run. Nope; the Carlylian version of the West’s ‘free market economy’ was in fact what ushered in the new age of terrorism in the first place. And that’s the point – the Carlyle Groupers and their grubby mates might be about to do it all over again in Iraq.

Is Carlyle’s manner of doing business legal? Yes. Is it profitable? Very. But is it fair? No. Is it moral? Absolutely not. (Is it stupid? Yes – see Khobar.) And so what does that say overall about the newly fluid relationship between public policy (taxpayer investment), and free market enterprise (private profit-taking)? Answer: it’s one bloody great insider trading rip-off, and nothing better demonstrates this than the particularly loaded globalisation dice rolled by Carlyle. There’s little mention of George H.W. Bush himself in the Carlyle glossies anymore except to say that he stopped being a consultant in late 2003, but here’s just some of their team and what they do for Carlyle:

James A. Baker III: Former U.S. Secretary of State; Carlyle Senior Counselor. Mr. Baker gives strategic advice on Carlyle business matters and gives speeches at Carlyle events.

Frank C. Carlucci: Former U.S. Secretary of Defense; Chairman Emeritus of Carlyle. Mr. Carlucci provides strategic business advice to Carlyle management and investment professionals.

Richard G. Darman: Former Director of the Office of Management and Budget; Senior Advisor and Managing Director. Mr. Darman advises Carlyle senior management on strategic business matters; works on a range of venture capital and energy investments; and advises Carlyle investment professionals worldwide on venture capital activities.

William E. Kennard: Former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission; Managing Director in the Telecommunications & Media Group. Mr. Kennard works on telecommunications & media acquisitions and advises Carlyle investment professionals worldwide on telecommunications buyout and venture activities.

Arthur Levitt: Former Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; Carlyle Senior Advisor. Mr. Levitt advises Carlyle management on strategic business matters.

John Major: Former U.K. Prime Minister; Chairman of Carlyle Europe. Mr. Major provides strategic leadership and business guidance to Carlyle Europe’s investment operation, including buyout, venture, and real estate activities.

Thomas F. McLarty: Former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton; Carlyle Senior Advisor. Mr. McLarty advises Carlyle management on strategic business matters.

Charles O. Rossotti: Former Commissioner of Internal Revenue; Carlyle Senior Advisor. Mr. Rossotti advises Carlyle on information technology-related buyout and venture investments.

Luis Tellez: Former Mexico Secretary of Energy; Managing Director and Co-head of Carlyle Mexico Partners. Mr. Tellez conducts investment activities in Mexico.

This barely scratches the surface. European ex-treasurers. Phillipines ex-Presidents. Prime Ministers. Chancellors. Energy Commissioners. Central Bank managers. Political leaders from South Korea, Thailand, the Middle East. All the ex-politician bases are covered by the Carlyle Group. And these bespoke-suited operators have the nerve to wonder why we highly-strung Lefties are up to our eyeballs in conspiracy theories?

What matters is not anyone’s grubby personal stake, but the grim fact that this might be what the future of globalisation looks like for the rest of us. Private wealth, public killing. To put it deliberately in its nastiest anti-American form, does being an ANZUS ally in a neo-conservative, free market age mean that our brave diggers must fight alongside white-trash Americans so that the cell-phone company in which the Carlyle Group has invested is the one that gets to turn Baghdad into Arabic text message central? Or re-build the roads? Or guard the Oil Ministry?

Or defend the Iraqi government against the inevitable attacks by its own angry people – just as Carlyle sub-subsidiary Vinnell has helped the Saudi National Guard defend the repellant corrupt Royals against their own people for years?

But maybe I’m being too conspiratorial. Maybe all these public money defense contracts actually do get awarded strictly on merit. Maybe the Carlyle’s serendipitous investment eggs come before the chickenhawks make their policy moves. But who can tell anymore, and how? The whole point of Eisenhower’s premonition about the convergence of political defence policy and the commercial defence industry was that once the relationship had past a certain symbiotic point-of-no-return, you could never hope to define where legitimate strategic business advice ended, and policy-shaping inside dealing began. It’s no conspiracy, but it’s a hell of an anti-democratic tangle to unpick – if, like me, you’d very much like American voters to try, that is.

Not that they weren’t warned.

What sort of ANZUS do we want to be part of?

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech, 17 January 1961 .

The brain of man may devise wonders and the hand of man execute them, but they will all fall into evil and harmful uses unless the heart of man – the guide of conduct – is sound and true. The question we need to put to ourselves most frequently in these days is, ‘What do we believe in?’Robert Menzies in 1942. Menzies signed up to ANZUS, effective 29 April 1952.

The other night at the Institute of Public Affairs Mr Howard spoke about ‘seeing it through’ in Iraq. He talked about a battle of ‘wills’, of ‘values’, a fight to the death between ‘them’ and ‘us’. He was right, but he wasn’t speaking for you and me when he argued in support of the West, any more than Osama bin Laden is speaking for ordinary Muslims when he delivers his regular battle cries against us. Our Prime Minister was really only speaking for men like those at the IPA dinner, and like the men who run the Carlyle Groups of our globalising world.

Have a breeze around the IPA website and the Net to learn of its supporters’ views on the optimum free market relationship between economics and democracy, and the IPA’s intellectual debts to influential American think-tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and our old favorite theProject for a New American Century. IPA’s free market ideologue-in-chief Gary Johns will take you to the AEI, where he gave a speech on NGO’s in June 2003; it’s an easy step from there to PNAC. Or Carlyle. Or Halliburton. Bechtel. Kellog, Brown and Root. The Weekly Standard. Rummy. Cheney. Perle. Iran-Contra. Kissinger. Schultz. Vinnell. BCCI. The bin laden family

Yes, you can play conspiratorial games forever, but the less sinister reality is just that a lot of these wealthy businessmen and business groups have similar ideas about the way the world should (be) run, and a lot of them are quite naturally mates. So too the IPA simply believes strongly in a Carlylian vision of globalisation. Deregulate. Decentralise. Privatise. Reduce tax. Contract out. Minimise public scrutiny. Minimise checks-and-balances. Position yourself at the interface between politics and business. Schmooze. Make contacts. Grease the wheels of power. Keep the public at arms’ length. Use your influence quietly. Lobby behind the scenes.

Nothing illegitimate in any of that in itself. It’s what business people do.

But that our elected leader Mr Howard chose to update the Australian nation on the state of progress in Iraq at an exclusive, paying-guests only speech sharing such men’s hospitality is illegitimate, in my opinion. The IPA charged well-heeled insiders $4,000 for a public ‘product’ that rightly belongs to all of us: our Prime Minister’s honest and open update on a war our fellow Australians are fighting. You can’t ‘sell’ that information to a private audience. It’s not Mr Howard’s or the IPA’s to sell. That nobody so much as blinked an eye at this arrangement – one that Menzies would have despised – is a key to how far the corrosive, Carlyle-style symbiosis between politics and business has already developed under this allegedly traditionalist, Liberal PM, and where it will no doubt go if he wins the next election.

Could you afford one of those $4,000 top table tickets? Nor me. And were you at the PM’s 30th anniversary party at the Hordern Pavilion the next night? Neither was I. Ignore all the Menzian window-dressing at that ‘Westminster’ bash; like every other social conservative line trotted out by Mr Howard’s team these days, it’s simply convenient camouflage.

So at this next election, I think that Australia has to ask itself what sort of globalised future it wants to help America build. Which ANZUS ally do we want to be mates with? The America of the Carlyle Group? Or the America of those idealistic 800 plus GIs who’ve died so far in Iraq – who for all the responsibilities that must come with killing – are still closer to the America of Jefferson, Kennedy, Luther King, Spielberg, Springstein, Brubeck, Bart Simpson, Chomsky, the NYFD and Bill Gates. Theirs is the America I love; theirs is the America I want to be allied with.

Mr Howard on the other hand has put his ANZUS trust in the newer America, this not-quite-right convergence of political and corporate power to the exclusion of the wider citizenry. So as we sympathise with the grieving relatives of the hostages killed in Saudi Arabia – as we hear yet more condescending cant about why the terrorists murdered them (because they ‘hate us’) – just keep the Carlyle Group in mind. For all his exclusive bluster to the IPA the other night our own PM still hasn’t done his voting constituency the courtesy of explaining what’s going on in Iraq. And those $4,000 top table guests probably know more about Iraq than the average Liberal Party backbencher, too; just as almost no-one in the US Congress wants to mention the Carlyle Group, neither does anyone else in President Howard’s Rubber-stamping Department care to mention the Iraq War anymore.

We’ve moved on. It’s budget and election time. No doubt the PM and his neo-conservative hosts had a private chat about that the other night, too. Not to mention the obvious campaign fundraising whip-around. Money and politics; politics and war; war and money. And politics and war and money and politics and war and money. Honest John: meet Australia’s Carlyles. Aussie Carlyles: meet Honest John.

This is how you build an iron triangle. And it’s not a good look for Australia.