John Howard’s decision to incorporate our troops into the United States invasion force means Australia has consented to its invasion plan. If yesterday’s reports about those plans are true, he has agreed to a scorched earth invasion which would indiscriminately kill a huge number of civilians. If the Yanks go to war without UN authorisation, just about every country in the region, Muslim nations around the world and many Australians would see this as mass murder. What are we doing? Why?

Henk Verhoeven in Sydney writes: “The US intends to shatter Iraq physically, emotionally and psychologically by raining down on its people as many as 800 cruise missiles in two days. The deadly-accurate 880 km/h missiles can be launched from destroyers to deliver 450 kg bombs that cannot be detected by radar systems. The price of those 800 infernal killing machines? As much as 1,000,000 US dollars each, meaning the total cost could be the equivalent of around 1 billion 350 million Aussie dollars. No figures are available about the cost of the infra-structure needed to launch such a mass of lethal consignments. Who would give a child a stone when it asks for bread? Who would rain down bombs on fellow human beings when they ask for food and medicines?”

It looks like the United States is manipulating the world into a position where the Yanks will allow another few weeks for inspections on condition that war starts soon thereafter, when its invasion force has completed its build-up in the Gulf. In the time left I’d like your thoughts on some key issues.

Harry Heidelberg is interested in what Webdiary readers think is the main real reason for the war. I think intention and motivation is everything. What is the main reason for invading Iraq?

1. Weapons of mass destruction (apparently not – Scott Burchill and Jack Robertson have deconstructed this one out of the debate)

2. Oil (Europeans most strongly believe this one)

3. George Bush Jnr completing dad’s unfinished business

4. The start of a new order in the Middle East

5. A human rights improvement project

6. The US showing that it will implement a new security policy for global dictatorship

“Of course the reality could be a combination of all of the above but since the vast majority of people question the number one motive regarding the weapons, they are then under an obligation to identify an alternative number one motive. In Germany this is easy. They feel it is OIL. I’m curious because I think you can’t deconstruct anything until you put up an alternative. I mean to say, if this is not about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism……then WHAT EXACTLY is it mainly about? As said, the Germans are reasonably clear. I do not get this sense from the Australian debate.”

James Woodcock reckons he’s worked it out.

Regarding the up and coming war, I have been wondering “What the Hell (actually I said the word starting with F) are the Yanks thinking about?? I think I found the answer in Laurie Anderson’s “Oh Superman” written in 1981, a prophetic verbally sparse, almost childlike mantra:

“Here come the planes.

They’re American planes. Made in America

Smoking or Non-smoking?

And the voice said ‘Neither snow nor rain nor gloom

of night shall stay these couriers from the swift

completion of their appointed rounds.’

‘Cause when love is gone, there is always justice

And when justice is gone, there is always force

And when the force is gone, there is always Mom. Hi Mom!

So hold me Mom, in your long arms. So hold me.

Mom, in your long arms.

In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.

So hold me Mom, in your long arms.

Your petrochemical arms. Your Military arms.

In your electronic arms”.

 

There’s a great interview with Anderson in last week’s Bulletin magazine where she spoke of its refrain, “here come the planes”, taking on an eerie new meaning post-September 11. “I wrote O Superman during the Iran/Contra scandal,” she said. “Americans have short memories. They don’t realise that this is the same war that’s been going on for 20 years.”

Anderson, who’s touring Australia next month, performed in New York a week after September 11, and referred to the horror as an ‘opportunity’.

“I thought about that word a lot. I really believe that when something big happens, whether it seems good or seems bad, it’s a chance to jump out of your preconceptions. I was very disappointed that there was no dialogue in the year since then. I suppose instead of opportunity the word would be security because we’re now just too afraid – or too lazy. These pools of freedom and fear are really interesting ones. It’s a brand new question, what is it to be free and also afraid?”

I’ve got a related question to Harry’s. Why doesn’t the world trust George Bush and his regime? There’s lots of talk about this in Britain, where people wonder why Tony Blair, an acknowledged master political salesman, can’t convince his people about the need for war. The fashionable theory is that he’s drowned out by the British people’s aversion to George Bush. So why can’t George Bush convince the world he’s doing the right thing? Is it his style, his substance, or both? Why doesn’t the world trust America? And another question: What is your main fear about the possible consequences for Australia of joining a US invasion? If you want to answer any of these questions, how about sending in your answer in less than 200 words so we get a feel for how readers are thinking.

Harry’s column today, In Europe, don’t mention the Yanks, includes a piece by Bill Clinton late last year, ‘The United States should lead, not dominate’, which tries to answer the question: ‘What is America’s responsibility at this moment of our dominance?

The best article on the Yank’s attitude that I read last weekend was by billionaire financier George Soros in the Australian Financial Review, a piece first published in the New Statesman. Unfortunately you have to pay to read it on either website. He wrote that the Nazis and the Russian communists had one thing in common ‘- ‘a belief that they were in the possession of the ultimate truth” – and that America too now shared this fatal flaw.

“Since September 11, the threat (to open society) comes not only from terrorism itself, but from the war against terrorism. Amazingly, the government of one of the most open societies, the US, has embarked on policies that violate the principles of open society. The Bush administration contains a number of ideologues who believe that international relations are relations of power, and the US, being the most powerful state, has the right to impose its will on the rest of the world. They held this belief before September 11 and, to the extent they could, they acted upon it. They renounced international treaties and sought to make American military power absolute by militarising space.

“But they were constrained by the lack of a clear mandate. The events of September 11 changed that. The Bush administration could claim to be acting in self-defence and carry the nation behind it.

“The Bush administration arrogates for itself the right to decide how and where to fight the invisible enemy. It fails to acknowledge the possibility that (philosopher Karl Popper always emphasised – that we may be wrong. Military power is of limited use in dealing with asymmetric threats such as terrorism. The US needs to earn the support and sympathy of the world, and following the precept that might is right is not the way to go about it. Fortunately, the US is a democracy, and if its citizens of the US, believe in the principles of open society, they can prove the Bush administration wrong.”

David Grant was disturbed by the contributions of the two American contributors in George Bush, Australia’s war leader.

“I read the Webdiary correspondence on Saturday from contributors in the US and closer to home and two things struck me. Firstly, I was shocked by the severe degree to which critical analysis of the US (and current Australian) policy on Iraq have been taken to represent some strident anti-Americanism. Secondly I was struck by the failure of some of the writers to comprehend or acknowledge the implications of unilateral action against Iraq (even if that is a gang of ‘likeminded nations’) to the whole culture, history and mission of modern international diplomacy. Things are very dire indeed if we are encouraged to accept that we are doing something wrong when we question our involvement in an American war for oil, while at the same time we are encouraged to accept that there are ‘unseen enemies’ trying to impose upon us ‘a way of life’. If we are not allowed to speak and must run after shadows what hope is there for us?”

Karen Jackson, a member of the Democrats, was so cheesed off by the contribution of American Hal Wilson that she penned a piece she called ‘Ten reasons to be anti-American’.

Karen Jackson

Hal Wilson sent you several paragraphs of the usual simplistic slogans that we have come to expect from today’s war mongers. He also used that tired term “anti-American” so favoured by the “with-us-or-agin-us” brigade. It’s a useful label when trying to bully your way through a reasoned debate. I decided I’d beef out this “insult”, so we know exactly what it means to be “anti-American”.

10 Reasons to be Anti-American

1. They claim to be the greatest democracy in the world, yet only a small percentage of their population even bothers to vote. This means US governments gain power via pathetically small margins about 49,000 votes in the last congressional election. And this is labelled government by the people! Whats more, getting elected in the US now requires vast amounts money, and corporate sponsorship. Naturally this results in big business gaining more than their fair share of government help. Is that democracy? And does that give them the right to invade other nations in the name of their democracy?

2. Americans love trumpeting on about their love of freedom. However, they are currently dismantling a great many civil rights laws in their attempts to rid themselves of terrorism. At the same time, hundreds of prisoners of war remain in Cuba without legal representation, and with no hope of a trial. More murders occur in the US than any other Western country because of their freedom to own guns. The Bush government is keen to crack down on freedom of speech when it comes to sexually explicit material, something the vast majority of Americans indulge in. And sodomy is still illegal in dozens of US states. Is that freedom?

Whats more, the propaganda that says the terrorists hate our freedom is just so much bullshit. Its not freedom that these people hate; it’s America’s hypocrisy.

3. The Americans are supposed to be the good guys. Yet they have, over the last 50 years, engaged in numerous dodgy interventions in other countries, including Vietnam. On many occasions, this has involved supporting despots, and being accessories to mass murder. We have no proof that will allow us to believe they have learned from their mistakes.

4. The US champions free trade for everyone else. When it comes to steel, or their farm products, or any other US product with a vested interest, the rules don’t apply.

5. They have consistently undermined the UN for the last 10 years at least, and then have the gall to say it is a spent force and impotent. Their unswerving support of Israel is part of this, to the point of defending Israel when it defies UN resolutions.

6. When other countries defy or ignore international treaties, they should be bombed. When the US ignores or abandons international treaties, they are asserting their rights as a sovereign nation.

7. The US public has an incredible ignorance of the outside world, thanks to their media, and an accompanying arrogance. When Bali was bombed, we didnt hear a peep out of them. Australia was mentioned in passing as being south of Indonesia. Chances are that most Americans won’t know that Australia is about to be one of their few allies in the coming war. The less you know about the rest of the world, the more mistakes you can make.

8. The general neglect of the US’s own people when it comes to education and healthcare is atrocious. Their system of funding sees terrible inequity in these areas, and reinforces cycles of poverty. The US should be looking to clean up its own backyard, perhaps using some of its defence money to educate its children.

9. The US consumes vast amounts of the world’s resources, and its people are some of the most

affluent in the world. Yet they ignore their responsibility toward the environment (eg Kyoto) and see oil as a birthright. If the US had developed sustainable energy technology and industries, this war with Iraq would not be inevitable.

10. Jerry Springer.

Interestingly, Australia is also guilty of many of these transgressions (for Jerry, read “Stan Zemanek”). Perhaps the difference is that were not as proud of it as the US. Nonetheless, we too should be working to overcome our own hypocrisy and improve our own “democracy” and “freedoms”.

Reasons to like the US

1. The Simpsons and Seinfeld.

2. Star Wars (except for Jar Jar Binks)

3. Squirrels

4. The ideals behind their bill of rights.

5. The Grand Canyon

6. The friendliness of everyday Americans

***

I’ve republished below two weekend pieces. Peter Hartcher’s piece in the Australian Financial Review let’s you in on the chaos and unintended consequences behind George Bush’s last State of the Union address, and Lisa Wilkinson’s Sun Herald column is the best example of many columns asking the Prime Minister just why we’re off to war.

By the way, I’ve started using ‘Yanks’ again, after being dissuaded from doing so last year by many readers who claimed it was derogatory. The US Defence Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Richard Myers thinks otherwise, and who am I to disagree? He said last week: “Our military relationship goes back to every conflict we have ever been in. Australians have always been side-by-side with the yanks, and we appreciate that very much.”

***

Bush’s dilemma: bite his tongue or bite the bullet

by Peter Hartcher, 24/01/2003, Publication: Australian Financial Review

When George Bush delivers the President’s annual State of the Union address on Tuesday (Wednesday Australian time), it will be 364 days since his infamous speech declaring the “axis of evil”.

That speech electrified capitals around the world because it seemed to promise the confrontation of the three points of evil on the axis: Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

Note that this is not supposed to be the way of State of the Union addresses. They are traditionally dull laundry lists that the President presents to the Congress for it to work on in the year ahead.

They do not typically set out an aggressive global agenda in strident moralistic terms.

And in one sense last year’s speech looks soundly prophetic, signalling the US intention to remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Indeed, this has been a fixed goal of Bush’s from the moment he claimed the presidency.

If it has seemed in the intervening year that Bush has wavered from time to time, this is only because of the vagaries and oscillations of the media. Bush himself has been, and remains, singlemindedly determined to prove the dispensability of the man in Baghdad who calls himself the Indispensable Leader.

As 159,000 US troops and four US aircraft carrier moved into position around Iraq, the leaders of Germany and France postured on Thursday as if they were in a position to do something about it.

More likely, France and the other major powers “will make a lot of noise but in the end go along with the US”, predicts a foreign policy expert at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York, Walter Russell Mead.

This year’s speech by Bush will be keenly read for what it tells us about the year to come.

And while the White House spokesman says that it will not contain a declaration of war against Iraq or an ultimatum, Bush is preparing to use the speech, carried live on every TV network, to persuade the American public and the world community of the need for the forcible disarmament of Saddam.

But in another sense the “axis of evil” speech looks like a very bad idea. By seeming to signal confrontation with North Korea and Iran as well as Iraq, it was a dangerous piece of rhetorical over-reach. And in the case of North Korea, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The US can bluster, but it can’t do anything to stop North Korea. Pyongyang is too well armed and too dangerously positioned.

So while Washington is ready to spurn the UN to get its way in Iraq, it is now turning to the UN to help it manage North Korea.

The “axis of evil” speech, perversely, seems to have spurred one of the evil ones to move from a state of somnolent sinfulness into a condition of demonic dynamism.

Signalling resolve to confront evil, Bush accidentally provoked it. This was not how it was supposed to be. The presidential speechwriter credited with coining the phrase “axis of evil”, David Frum, says that in drafting the speech “my strong language had concerned only Iraq”.

“Now, Condoleeza Rice and Steve Hadley at the National Security Council wanted to go further. They wanted to take on Iran as well,” Frum says in a new book, The Right Man. Rice is Bush’s national security adviser, and Hadley her deputy. Frum doesn’t tell us who added North Korea to the axis, but he does tell us this: “Bush read the speech closely. He edited it in his own bold hand. He understood all its implications. He backed them with all the power of his presidency.”

That’s what his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was afraid of. Fearing the provocative power of those words, according to US officials, Powell’s staff asked the White House to remove the “axis of evil” phrase from a draft of the speech, but failed.

So Powell tried to recover afterwards instead. He told the Weekend AFR that the speech “should not be seen as a change in US policy or thinking”.

Said Powell: “We reserve all of our options to do something different, especially with respect to Iraq, but all of our previous policies remain.”

But it was too late. So, while the US wants to marshall all its energies to depose Saddam, it is desperately trying to manage North Korea’s threat of dangerous nuclear escalation at the same time.

So perhaps this year Bush will take greater care with the crises he wants to deal with, and the ones he cannot, and learn to tell the difference.

***

Can someone explain why we’re off to war?

by Lisa Wilkinson, editor-at-large of The Women’s Weekly, 26/01/2003, Sun Herald

OUT OF the mouths of babes … stopped in traffic the other day listening to the news, my nine-year-old son suddenly asked me a question. “Mum, why are we going to war against Saddam Hussein? What has he got to do with Osama bin Laden?”

We were two more traffic lights gone before I came up with the only answer I could muster: “Well … I just don’t know.”

The one consolation to my ignorance on this subject is that at least I am not alone. All over the world people are asking just what this looming war against Iraq is all about and how precisely it connects to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the whole war on terror.

Noted author John le Carre struck a chord with many last week when he was widely quoted asserting that “how Bush … succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks in history”.

Personally, I pretend to no expertise in matters of geopolitics and am still at a loss to understand why, on the one hand, we are falling over ourselves to sell Iraqis hundreds of millions of dollars worth of wheat and, on the other, wanting desperately to be part of a war on them.

But it is precisely for that reason that I’d like some answers to a few questions of my own …

* First, what is our specific beef with the Iraqi people? What have they done to us that we will send thousands of our soldiers there and put our resources towards visiting death and destruction upon them?

As a country, we have recently suffered the agony of seeing more than 80 of our families lose loved ones in the Bali bombings at the hands of a dozen or so deranged and evil terrorists. Are we, a good and decent country, to be a party to causing equally innocent families in Iraq to lose their loved ones?

Surely one of the lessons of September 11 is that a person with enough hate in them can become a weapon of mass destruction all on their own, and I can’t help but feel that dropping bombs on Baghdad will have the opposite effect to the one intended.

* All other world leaders bar Britain’s Tony Blair and our own John Howard have kept a careful distance from the George W. war rhetoric and, more pertinently, war preparations. Instead of backing America to the hilt, they have backed the United Nations.

So I ask: what can our Prime Minister see that the likes of France’s Jacques Chirac, Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and New Zealand’s Helen Clark can’t? I know there must be something other than the fact that Howard was in Washington on September 11 and so probably feels it all more personally it’s just that I can’t see it.

* Precisely what has the whole UN inspection exercise been about if the US intended to ignore their findings all along? Did we Australians really sign up to a proclamation which said “if we find something we’ll blow you Iraqis away, and if we can’t find anything we’ll still blow you away!”?

* I’m afraid I also don’t understand the whole military mindset. Time magazine reported this week that US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had assigned the key sections of the attacking force their tasks and that ‘the commandos’ primary mission will be to disable Saddam’s biological, chemical and nuclear-weapons capabilities.” How does that work?

All the UN inspectors have scoured Iraq for two months and haven’t been able to turn up the famed smoking guns, yet US commandos are magically going to go in and knock them out?

I wouldn’t be surprised if my words here become a target for the hardliners who maintain that my sentiments are typical of the latte-drinking, weak-kneed among us.

But I repeat: I am not alone.

This week, Time Europe has been running an internet poll with a simple question: “Which country poses the greatest danger to world peace in 2003?”, asking readers to tick off one of three possibilities: Iraq, North Korea or … the US.

Already I know you’re way ahead of me, but after 250,000 people had responded, Iraq was only viewed as the most dangerous by 8 per cent, while North Korea got 9 per cent and lock it in, Eddie fully 83percent voted for the US.

Of course, through all this, our thoughts are with the Australian servicemen and women now on their way to the Middle East. It’s just that many of us wish your cause was more clear.

Hi. Jack Robertson, an ex-soldier and the brother of an SAS officer now on deployment to the Gulf, details the crucial unanswered questions on invading Iraq, particularly from the perspective of our soldiers, in White House anti-Americanism, Australian patriotic blackmail.

Today’s Herald details where Howard has agreed our troops will fit into the US war machine in the Gulf, and their role in an invasion. (Forces to follow US plan of attack). It proves that John Howard has handed his decision on whether Australia troops will join an invasion of Iraq to the Americans. It is inconceivable that Australia would not go to war if the Americans did so given that it has agreed to play specific roles in an invading force. That would be treachery.

Yesterday -a day after farewelling our troops – Howard acknowledged his failure to explain himself to Australians. “They’re wanting to hear from me, I understand that and I’ll do my very best to talk to them and to explain it,” he said on radio 3AW. Yet he persisted with his false claim that he would exercise an independent judgement on whether Australian troops will invade Iraq.

Howard’s promised parliamentary debate on whether to go to war is a sham. He has handed the power to the Americans to decide. It’s that simple. And he’s failed to tell us the rules of engagement, or the plan for regime change.

Australians need to watch the US President’s state of the union address on Wednesday for clues on what we might be in for. George Bush will decide whether Australian troops invade Iraq and the circumstances in which they do so. John Howard – and Australian public opinion – are irrelevant to their fate.

Today, responses to my piece in yesterday’s Webdiary from Americans Hal Wilson and Charles P. Solomon and a selection of your emails which show just how bitter this debate is going to get, on both sides.

***

Recommendations

Glenn Condell recommends nowarblog, a joint effort by American progressive and conservative bloggers who oppose the war.

David Candy recommends an Australian National University publication, anu, on waging war on Iraq, in which Australia’s leading academics, military men and policy advisors discuss how we’ve got to this and what it could mean for the world.

A reader says that if an attack begins, there’s a rally at 5pm that day at Sydney Town Hall. Contact Nick Everett 0409 762 081, Hannah Middleton 0418 668 098, Bruce Childs 9386 1240. You can keep in touch with what the anti-war movement is doing by emailing StopTheWar_Announce-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

***

Hal Wilson in Tallahassee, Florida

The United States of America has been attacked by an organized group of terrorists whose stated goal is the destruction of our country and our freedom loving way of life. We are at war and there is nothing that you can say or do that changes this. As President Bush so aptly stated – you are with us or you are against us. It is that simple.

Anti-Americans such as yourself who seek to deny that freedom loving peoples everywhere are threatened do your readers a grave injustice. You seek to lull your readers into complacency by suggesting that by doing nothing, our enemies will leave us alone. Nothing could be further from the truth. That has been proven time and time again with horrible and vivid consequences. How much innocent blood must be shed? Not any more of ours, thank you.

This is a war unlike any the world has ever seen. Our enemies are unseen and for the most part difficult to target. But the risks of inaction are the same. Destruction.

Why is Saddam a threat to America and why must he be removed, now? Because we believe that he has the potential for making weapons of mass destruction available to terrorists who will use them against us and in doing so, kill innocent Americans. That is simply unacceptable and it is not worth taking the risk that he won’t. History is full of examples of inaction that have resulted in tragedy.

There is a very large group of radical extremists, well funded, and relentless who seek to impose their way of life throughout the entire world. These people are not champions of individual freedoms, especially for women. They seek to impose their will by first destroying Israel and all Jewish people everywhere (all those who worship on Saturday). They next plan to destroy all of those who worship on Sunday. This is no secret. Why is it so difficult for you to understand this?

Australians have been attacked and hundreds were slaughtered. Do you believe that if you do nothing the radical elements that attacked you will suddenly leave you alone? Hardly. Bullies seldom leave weaklings alone. Were you never in grade school?

It is sad that it seems that so many Australians have deserted America. So be it. However, I can assure you of one thing. Our President has sworn an oath to protect his country and his people and he will do so. So help him God. When it comes right down to it, this is a fight for survival and only the fit and the strong shall survive.

If you are with us, then you shall survive. If you are not with us, may God have mercy on you.

***

Charles P. Solomon, MD, Birmingham, Alabama

As an American planning a visit to Australia soon, I have been reading the SMH regularly to find out how Australians feel about current events. I read your essay In Australia’s best interests with great interest.

I do understand the reluctance other nations have to our nation’s stance concerning terror and especially Iraq and its dictator. It is encouraging to know that America does have friends who want to lend their support in this effort, but I also understand why other nations do not share our determination in this matter. I admit that if the terrorists had flown their aircraft into the Sydney Opera House, then the Sydney Harbor Bridge and finally the AMT Tower, that most Americans would not likely want to commit troops to finding and punishing the culprits so that such terrible deeds did not happen again. So your point of view is well-taken from your nation’s vantage point, I must admit.

However, if indeed this had happened to Australia and not to America, how would you respond if our President did pledge troops/support to the course of action your government chose to take? The world is a small place and is shrinking daily. To imagine that non-action will preclude future attention by terrorists is a flawed policy in my view.

9-11 changed America forever; it was the Pearl Harbor Day of my generation. I have served in the US Military previously and recognize that freedom is never free. Please also consider that we Americans have been affected and changed forever by what was done to us. May this never happen to your wonderful country. But, if it does, I believe you will find comfort in knowing that America will stand by your side as we have in the past.

***

Sue Arnold, an Australian in the US

I was lucky enough to be in San Francisco and take part in what surely must have been one of the biggest marches ever seen in this city. Those in the know reckon the crowd was around 200,000. It was the most awe inspiring incredible experience from the time my friends and I jammed ourselves into the crowded Muni trains around l0.00am. Everyone was smiling, carrying placards, badges – all drenched in good will. People of every age group and race walked, roaring their protests. It was almost impossible to move in the streets because of the ever swelling crowd. Here and there was street theatre, women lying down with “dead babies “, other groups making music, banging drums, singing. Everywhere placards which made so many of us laugh.

The anti Bush sentiment is tangible in this country in spite of what the polls say. It was the most peaceful, inspiring, wonderful experience to be in the midst of jam packed humanity – without identification other than being part of a sea of concerned people who refuse to accept that war with Iraq is any solution. In Washington DC more than 500,000 people were on the streets. The mood in America is almost beyond description, a sleeping giant has awoken . Bush will ignore these outpourings at his peril.

***

John Burnett in Sydney

Mr Crean,

Your statements before the deployment of troops overseas has merely cemented in my mind what I have long suspected. You and your party are playing the “race card” just as hard as the Liberals except you are bigots when it comes to America. In your mind and in the minds of the the party you lead all Americans are deserving of contempt and hatred. According to the ALP and the ACTU, both organisations with which you have strong ties, America is the source of all the world’s ills.

Funny how you didn’t take this anti-American line until after opinion polls started to confirm just how bigoted and racist the Australian public is against Americans. Playing on people’s prejudices is always morally wrong, Mr Crean… even when it’s against those damn Yanks.

***

Carlo Randazzo

You are right when you say that the prime minister is prevaricating in his responses to the Iraq war and our participation therein. Is he taking the Australian people for fools? I doubt that a seasoned political campaigner like him will. If the polls are right and this war goes badly (though, if it is anything like the last one don’t expect there to be much debate about the pros and cons after the event) he will be crucified at the next election.

The question is why is he risking so much: Australian lives, Australian international credibility and his political career. It appears to me that he is doing it for the same reason that we have backed the USA since WWII.

We exist because of their security blanket. To pretend otherwise would be to ignore the reality of the world we live in. That security blanket comes at a cost, and on this occasion it is at the cost of participating in a war that we may not support and is not at first glance in our national interest.

I note that we participated in Afghanistan and Iraq Mark 1 for similar reasons (our contribution was symbolic at best on both occasions) and I do not recall particularly sharp debate on those decisions.

Our national interest has long been about maintaining the US as our friend and ally. The greater change in our national strategy would not be that we are participating in a war at its behest – there is already a long list of precedents for that – but that we will not answer their call when it arrives (and we should not behave like babes in the woods when it does arrive). The US is a superpower (the only one left) and we are its ally. That best summarises our foreign policy.

As for the UN, do you really believe that participation in any conflict requires its imprimatur? How then do we explain US led attacks in Kosovo and Bosnia, not to mention older examples such as Panama and Grenada. Russia is also killing thousands of people in the Chechen conflict in what is a war in all but name. I could list many others but that is not the point here.

The UN has failed so often in recognising that conflicts may occur (eg Rwanda) or in resolving the ongoing ones (such as the myriad African civil wars) that you need to question whether that is even its role. For years the UN stood by while the USSR and the US played world domination and held its breath hoping that it wouldn’t explode into something more substantial, and now we expect that body to be the overarching institution that will deliver world stability. There is somehow a disconnect here that is beyond me.

If the UN is to become that, and it is not impossible, it will need the assistance of the world’s superpower – without such support it will face the same abyss as any dependant institution without a substantial benefactor (here you can read Australia without American alliance).

What then is our prime minister to do? In my view, he should spell out that we are answering the call of the US for better or for worse because it is in our national interest to do so as it has been for some 60 years now. When we are a significant international power then we can ignore them, until then we will continue to do what we have always done whether we like it or not.

However, is it an option to call the US an evil warmonger and tell them that we will not participate in a war on the peaceloving Saddam Hussein?

I’m glad I am not the prime minister and I do not have to make this call.

***

Chris Murphy

How can the “Coalition of the Willing” maintain its willingness, its steadfastness, and the morale of its troops when the truth of the matter is in real doubt? The Washington Post today reports that the White House lied about some of their “evidence”. This is beginning to look like Vietnam all over again, folks.

Conservative fools note: Little lies can undermine the entire credibility of superpowers, no matter how worthy the cause. And there is no greater traitor than the leader who abuses the trust of his people.

“When President Bush travelled to the United Nations in September to make his case against Iraq, he brought along a rare piece of evidence for what he called Iraq’s “continued appetite” for nuclear bombs. The finding: Iraq had tried to buy thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush said were “used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.”

Bush cited the aluminum tubes in his speech before the UN General Assembly and in documents presented to U.N. leaders. Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice both repeated the claim, with Rice describing the tubes as “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.”

It was by far the most prominent, detailed assertion by the White House of recent Iraqi efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. But according to government officials and weapons experts, the claim now appears to be seriously in doubt.

After weeks of investigation, UN weapons inspectors in Iraq are increasingly confident that the aluminum tubes were never meant for enriching uranium, according to officials familiar with the inspection process. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-chartered nuclear watchdog, reported in a Jan. 8 preliminary assessment that the tubes were “not directly suitable” for uranium enrichment but were “consistent” with making ordinary artillery rockets – a finding that meshed with Iraq’s official explanation for the tubes. New evidence supporting that conclusion has been gathered in recent weeks and will be presented to the U.N. Security Council in a report due to be released on Monday, the officials said.

Moreover, there were clues from the beginning that should have raised doubts about claims that the tubes were part of a secret Iraqi nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. and international experts on uranium enrichment. The quantity and specifications of the tubes – narrow, silver cylinders measuring 81 millimeters in diameter and about a meter in length – made them ill-suited to enrich uranium without extensive modification, the experts said.

But they are a perfect fit for a well-documented 81mm conventional rocket program in place for two decades. Iraq imported the same aluminum tubes for rockets in the 1980s. The new tubes it tried to purchase actually bear an inscription that includes the word “rocket,” according to one official who examined them.

“It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium,” said one expert familiar with the investigation of Iraq’s attempted acquisition. “But you’d have to believe that Iraq deliberately ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and money reworking each piece.”

As the UN inspections continue, some weapons experts said the aluminum tubes saga could undermine the credibility of claims about Iraq’s arsenal. To date, the Bush administration has declined to release photos or other specific evidence to bolster its contention that Iraq is actively seeking to acquire new biological, chemical and nuclear arms, and the means to deliver them.

***

Glenn Condell

I saw a bloke on FoxNews the other night who is leading an international group of volunteers through Europe and into Iraq to act as human shields in the event of a ‘coalition’ invasion. His name is Ken O’Keefe, a Gulf War vet who got wise to his government’s policies – he’s since been hounded out of the US on some trumped up car insurance charge and is being threatened with arrest as an ‘enemy combatant’ if he survives the initial confrontations in Iraq. He has renounced his US citizenship, and says he’s had thousands of inquiries and expects as many as 10,000 to join him.

I see the value of this in two ways. Foremost is that he would force the US to kill many of its own and other nation’s citizens in order to take Iraq. This would be an event even the docile US media would find hard to ignore or obfuscate. The other thing it does is neatly contrast the passion and genuine commitment of antiwar activists with the faux conviction of their opponents. He and his colleagues are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their beliefs; one their opponents wouldn’t dream of making. Oh, they’re happy to send soldiers to deal with Saddam’s WMD and general badness, but would they go, or send their children?

The other thing to say about this guy is that he is great media talent – he looks like Quentin Tarantino in a foul mood but is articulate and engaging. He belted the war toadies who ‘interviewed’ him on Fox into orbit the other night and it was inspiring. Here was someone who was prepared to move beyond the formal niceties and meet propaganda with an implacable combination of eloquence and contempt. His website is uksociety.

This is getting hairy. Last night, the Prime Minister declared that HE would decide what country we invaded, and the circumstances in which we invaded it.

“In the end, I have to take decisions that I believe in my heart are in the best interests of Australia.” 7.30 Report

This is the standard answer from prime ministers when they want to do something that’s against public opinion. And it’s perfectly acceptable, in most cases, to take that line – we elect Prime Ministers to take hard, tough decisions in our long term interest.

But not here. No way. If John Howard believes it is in the national interest to invade another country, it is his job, indeed his duty, to persuade the majority of Australians to that view. This is because it is manifestly NOT in the national interest to send our troops to a war we don’t want them to go to. It is a recipe for bitter division, chronic insecurity and instability at home, and could lead to a debilitating collapse in trust in our leaders. It is also a totally unacceptable dampener on the morale of our troops.

War is blood sacrifice, after all.

Many Australians have questions they want the Prime Minister to answer. When reporters ask him some of those questions, he plays a dead bat, as does his increasingly irritating defence minister Robert Hill, whose delphic smile as he evades every question asked is insulting to Australians, to say the least.

Last night Howard appeared to admit he had no guarantee from the US that it would not use nuclear weapons in the war! Asked if he could rule out their use, he said: “Well, if I thought there were going to be nuclear weapons used, I would not allow Australian forces to be involved, full stop.” But have you asked Bush for a guarantee? Unfortunately, the interview was over.

Howard’s obfuscation and failure to be open and honest with the Australian people is reprehensible. Last year he committed Australia to joining a US invasion, even offering to send an armoured brigade. After months of backtracking from that, he now claims with a straight face that the question of whether Australia would join a US unilateral strike is “hypothetical”. The duplicity of this answer is obvious to everyone.

We need to know why Iraq is so threatening to Australia that we need to invade it. We need to know what the terms of engagement are for our participation, including whether the US plans to use biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. We need to know how the US intends to effect regime change, and its timetable to establish democracy. We need to know the possible implications of our participation for our security in our region. Most of all, we need to know whether Australia accepts such a drastic change in international law norms, why, and the terms under which we agree.

The United States is rapidly implementing its new national security strategy – under which it rules the world according to its own interests – using international law and the UN to justify its actions when it can bulldoze agreement but refusing to itself be subject to international law. Clearly the Australian government has accepted that strategy, without saying so, of course. (The strategy is in Manifesto for world dictatorship.)

We need to know the details of this massive change in our foreign policy stance, this turning our backs on the UN as the international body charged with protecting world peace. We need to know the implications of this for us, and what guarantees the US has given that it will deal with the consequences for us of the dangerous stance we have taken at their request.

It is obvious that part of the reason for Australians’ ambivalence to this war is deep distrust of the United States government, due to its past actions, particularly in Iraq and the middle east, and the disagreement with US tactics within its senior political, intelligence and military circles. Surely the Prime Minister should address these concerns, not just pretend they don’t exist.

My guess about why most westerners outside the US are deeply concerned about an invasion of Iraq is that the US has no intention of sorting out the cancer in the Middle-East, the Israeli-Palestinian war. This war constantly threatens to ignite the region, so you’d think its resolution would be top priority before invading an Arab country. The world knows too that the US has the power to stop this war. Imagine the likely result if the time, energy and threats put into the Iraq saga had instead gone into forcing a peace accord, or at the very least a UN-sponsored peacekeeping force charged with separating the warring parties and imposing a forced peace while the parties sorted out a longer-term solution. It is impossible for the United States to prove its good faith on Iraq while this war goes on. It is a greater danger to world peace than Iraq, and many argue that the failure of the US to intervene in what has become a grotesque David and Goliath struggle is a central reason for the rise of extremist Muslim terrorists. Yet while Britain and other European countries try to get the parties talking, the US stands aside and Australia says nothing.

George Bush yesterday repeated his frightening declaration that if you weren’t with his country, you were its enemy. A nation’s past loyalty is irrelevant. September 11, as we know, was the beginning of history for the US president. George Bush’s brutal comments raises the question of whether the sudden US enthusiasm for a free trade deal is conditional on Australia backing a unilateral strike if the UN doesn’t play ball. Are we under duress?

Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday, in dismissing the opposition of France and Germany to a war, they they were “old Europe”, and that power was shifting to the east. He also claimed that many countries had privately offered support to a US invasion. What bribes and blackmail are they being subjected to? And what fate would befall France and Germany if they maintained their defiance of the world’s rogue state superpower?

Trading citizen’s lives for cash and favour is a big step.

Australians have the right to know what is going on. Tony Blair has faced his Parliament and answered MPs questions in detail. He’s argued his case hard and long. John Howard, in contrast, didn’t front the last debate parliament had on Iraq, leaving it to Alexander Downer.

He seems to think he can spin his way through this world crisis by emotional appeals to nationalism via paid mouthpieces like morning TV show host Steve Liebmann. Mr Liebmann is a front man. When he asks questions of guests, they’re given to him by a producer speaking into a microphone connected to his earpiece. He is paid by the government to read the script it gives him. Where is the credibility, where is the authority, in that?

Those TV ads on terrorism should have been fronted by a person of substance who the people of Australia trust. Someone who is prepared to be held accountable if a terrorist attack hits Australia. Someone who can answer our questions.

Australians, perhaps alone of all western Countries, are debating this war in the absence of input from its government. It’s a gross failure of leadership, and carries the risk that Australians will refuse to believe the truth of or the spin around what the government does say when it finally says something. The people of Australia and the troops sworn to defend them deserve better than that.

So many people wanted to read the Howard transcript today that it was inaccessible for a while due to volume of traffic. So many people who wanted their questions answered, and to get some idea of what all this means, were bitterly disappointed. KylieAnn Scott of Haberfield in Sydney watched the farce last night.

Watching Kerry O’Brien interview John Howard last night was absolutely pointless. Howard has become so seasoned in his dodgy avoidance of answering questions, whilst appearing to make the questions in themselves appear too hypothetical, absurd, and not worthy of contemplation or response.

Yet he has committed our troops on exactly that, on Unknowns. He will not answer hypothetical questions to Kerry O’Brien but he will commit our troops on yet-to-happen scenarios. He hopes that we will believe this quandary. I am not so sure.

Howard said he was pre-deploying troops as “an element in the diplomatic push”, but since there is already one hundred and twenty six thousand troops over there, what significant difference would our Australian contingent make to Saddam’s resolve to comply or not?

Why is our Prime Minister able to dodge around the truth and not be drawn on is real intentions? Surely the timing of this deployment is of the essence, yet he is able to skirt around all this on his favourite avoidance device: “I will not speculate”, “I will not answer questions on hypotheticals”.

Please, can someone find a way to catch Our Seasoned Avoider off guard and for once draw him on the truth? And if he won’t be drawn on them in words then all we have left are his actions, and if the old adage about “words and actions” is true, then I like my fellow Australians should hold grave concerns.

Martin Williams is unimpressed, and angry.

And what is the most reliable indicator of when the invasion will begin?

When the weapons inspectors are suddenly and without explanation pulled from Iraq. Because Hans Blix knows that if his team is still in Iraq when the US cross their Rubicon they will be captured, tortured and killed – possibly in the same way that Mark Wahlberg was tortured in the film “Three Kings”: electric shocks to the skull and gallons of oil straight down the throat.

And what is the signal that Australian defence forces are being misused and endangered?

When John Howard and his parade of sycophants refuse to explain what “national interest” actually is, and sprout neologisms such as “pre-deployment” to mislead Australians into thinking that this is all a carefully prepared diplomatic manoeuvre.

The most recent targets of such sophistry were refugees/illegal immigrants/asylum seekers. This time it will be Australia’s own servicemen and servicewomen.

Let’s see how the Australian people react when their children and parents and siblings start coming home in body bags at the pleasure of an unqualified and secretive “national interest”.

In twenty-five words or less, what will they have died for? Answer the question NOW, John Howard, before it is too late, or risk the stain of their blood on your hands.

Scott Burchill, a lecturer in international relations at Deakin University and regular Webdiary commentator on the war, summarises the implications of Howard’s latest attitude to the authority of the UN as expounded in last night’s interview:

(1) The process whereby international law is made – via the passing of UN Security Council Resolutions – can be disregarded if the outcome isn’t welcome. The veto powers of the permanent five members don’t count if the desired result doesn’t eventuate. It’s an interesting approach to ‘due process’ and displays extraordinary contempt for the UN Charter which specifies the respective powers of UN Security Council members.

(2) If the UN Security Council decides not to authorise an attack against Iraq, the use of force against Baghdad would constitute a crime of aggression. The international community doesn’t only speak when it passes UN Security Council Resolutions. It is speaking just as loudly when it rejects them.

(3) If Canberra opposes the current process which allows the permanent five members of the Security Council to veto resolutions, what steps has it taken to alter this power through reform of the UN?

(4) 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. The US has normally been outvoted 14-1 on these resolutions, though I cannot recall Mr Howard condemning Washington’s “capricious” use of its veto in these cases. According to the principle Mr Howard has just articulated, 14-1 resolutions in favour of actions can be regarded as constituting Security Council endorsement for, not against, the resolution.

The Howard Government has stated that one reason Israel’s defiance of UN Security Council resolutions cannot be compared with Iraq’s is because the resolutions Israel ignores are not Chapter 7 enforcement resolutions (as Iraq’s are). The reason for this is because Washington routinely and capriciously vetos all enforcement resolutions against Tel Aviv. Presumably these vetos can be dismissed in the future? Or according to Mr Howard’s new principle, from now on member states of the UN shouldn’t allow Washington’s “capricious” use of its veto power to “hold them back” in bringing Israel to account for its breaches of international law.

(5) Canberra’s new policy echoes both the ALP’s and the British Government’s positions. 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”. (The Australian Financial Review, 15 January, 2003).

Prime Minister Blair has said 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” (The Age, 15 January, 2003).

Crean, Blair and now Howard are saying that the moral authority of the UN depends on whether it does the bidding of Washington and its allies. If it reflects a different view, it’s very legitimacy is in question and therefore the process by which it has been passing Security Council resolutions since the 1940s can be disregarded.

You can see what they mean when they say that the future of the UN is at stake over the question of Iraq.

***

I’ve been inundated with emails on Iraq. Here’s a selection. And check out Polly Bush’s 2003 debut column, on a very strange Australia Day, at We are Australian, and we don’t quite understand what’s going on here.

David Spratt recommends this pic of an anti-war protest in Antarctica, vicpeace.

A reader recommends ‘Scenarios for Australian Military Contributions to the Probable War in Iraq’, by Alex Tewes and Kelly Kavanaugh in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group of the federal parliament house library. We’re now at CODE BLUE. aph

Australian filmaker John Weiley has organised an Australia Day ceremony in Byron Bay to protest the war, and the idea has spread. He writes: ” This proposal grew out of discussions within our family and with friends. If, like us, you feel appalled and shamed by the proposed attack on Iraq you will have been wondering if there is anything you can do to stop it. We are calling on everyone who is opposed to Australia’s involvement in Bush’s attack on Iraq to gather at their local war memorial at 5pm on Sunday 26 January – Australia Day. It will be a chance to recall the thousands of Australian lives ruined by pointless wars – the millions of people who have been slaughtered for the greed and ambition of a few. The crying need to put a stop to it. It will be a time to revive our determination to make Australia the decent country that our forebears dreamed it would be. There may be a couple of short speeches and a song or performance piece – perhaps the reading of a poem or two. A draft message should be agreed by each meeting and a delegation appointed to take the message to their local federal member of parliament. There should be a show of hands to move support for the message and the delegation. We don’t plan to do any shouting or marching. We hope that other Australians will support this movement by getting together at war memorials in every town and city in Australia – on Australia Day at 5pm. As individuals we are powerless but together we decide what is best for our country.” For more information call 02-66875544 or email weiley@helio.com.au

Catherine Marciniak says concerned Australians in the entertainment industry have put together an electronic petition at onevoiceforpeace, which includes links to other sites.

James Tedder (jtedder@midcoast.com.au) says there’s a Coff’s Harbour walk for peace, rain, hail or shine, at 11am Sunday, February 2, to show that Australians, who are a ‘friendly, decent, democratic people’ see no just reason to send troops to kill civilians in a war of dubious intent. It will start at 11am at Fitzroy Oval, next to the Coffs Harbour Swimming Pool, left into Gordon Street, left into High Street, then left into Hardacre Street, finishing at the Botanic Garden with a byo picnic lunch.

Gareth Smith: “Why don’t we get our Christmas lights out (ours are still out!) and bedeck our house fronts with NO WAR messages. It would be great if we could coordinate the switch on for Australia Day (Jan 26) and put out press releases. Let there be light not blight!”

Meaghan Phillipson reports on yesterday’s send-off of our troops.

At short notice I decided to go down to Cowpers Wharf to cover the departure of the HMAS Kanimbla for 2SER Community Radio. There were about a hundred or so protestors congregated along the fence line of the Navy dockyards, with about twenty or so journalists joining them while the police and navy keeping a vigilant eye over the entire scene.

My initial reaction was that the protestors shouldn’t be there intruding on the pain of friends and families as their loved ones sailed off to uncertain futures. It didn’t seem right, almost insulting to those ordered to go off and fight in our name.

Watching the ship readied for departure, small groups of families boarded then disembarked after final goodbyes. Women huddled together crying, young children played on the docks happily oblivious to the gravity of the situation, and parents supported each others weight as they waved their children off.

The scene struck home to me the seriousness of war in a way I had not expected it to. I had never seen a navy ship up close, let alone the heartbreaking scene of a ship full of people my age pulling out of dock and into the eye of a quickly advancing political storm.

Out of these scenes of grief, it struck me why the protestors presence was not only valid but also necessary. They were not there to criticise the troops onboard, they were there to protest their deployment. I’m not sure many of the protestors there were prepared for the palpable rawness of emotion witnessed as families were torn apart by a looming war.

But I think such an experience only strengthens the resolve of the anti-war movement, as I doubt nobody there (myself included) would wish to see this scene repeat itself ever again.

As the ship was readied to leave, the strains of The Seekers ‘I am Australian’ floated through across the dock and into the crowd of protestors. As someone who grapples to understand her Australian identity, this moment was perhaps the lowest point of connection Ive felt to the Australian nature entailed within popular culture. I imagined Prime Minister John Howard on the other side of the fence, singing along as he welled with national pride over what these troops are prepared to do for this country upon his orders.

Yet having people willing to risk their lives on behalf of a nation and its agenda is not something that should be wrapped up in a sense of nationalistic pride. It should be acknowledged as a serious pledge that should be respected in diplomatic actions aimed at avoiding the use of this promise by exploring and re-exploring non-combative alternatives.

Considering the circumstances of the deployment, a more appropriate feeling for the Prime Minister would have been one of sadness over his own governments inability to continue to patiently seek diplomatic solutions. In the case of Iraq, I don’t believe every avenue has been exhausted in order to prevent the path to war and so, in the truest sense of the word, war has become the ultimate failure of diplomacy.

As I watched the HMAS Kinimbla pull out of Cowpers Wharf, I couldn’t help but think that what I was witnessing was the first concrete proof of that failure. Perhaps more depressingly though for troops and their loved ones, today felt by no means like the last proof we will see but rather just the beginning.

***

Roger Diercks

As an American, I found your opening paragraphs of Always willing, we’re off to war again to be quite descriptive of public sentiment here in the US. Public resistance to a unilateral strike on Iraq is growing here. With thousands of military reservists being called up to active duty, the reality of war is starting to set in in everyday life in many places around the country. This has resulted in what was previously a fairly quiet reluctance growing louder and more widespread across the entire political spectrum.

Even many well-known conservative pundits have been quite outspoken against a war, and public opinion polls are currently showing that approximately 80% of Americans oppose any action against Iraq without a UN sanction.

Mr Bush has not made a clear case to the American people. His treatment of the crisis with North Korea through diplomatic channels only adds to the questioning of his motives in Iraq. I think that he will be committing political suicide if he leads the US into a war that will inevitably be followed by a long U.S. military presence in Iraq.

***

Tina Burge

I’m living in London and I haven’t read, seen or heard anything in the media regarding Australian troops being sent to the Middle East for this ridiculous folly. Before I left Oz, Correspondents’ Report on Radio National had a piece on the American coverage of the Bali bombing (I think in November) and cited the dearth of coverage in the US media. The media in the UK view an attack on Iraq very much in Bush/Blair terms – never any mention of Howard or Australia.. If Australian troops die in Iraq it will certainly be in vain, and our ‘allies’ won’t care and their media probably won’t even report their deaths – unless the dead once played cricket or tennis.

***

Mary Gardiner: At the risk of ditties getting out of hand, the local version of the “If you’re happy and you know it” lyrics Merrill Pye sent (Always willing, we’re off to war again) would be something like:

When the refugees stop arriving, bomb Iraq

While Canberra is surviving, bomb Iraq

When Uncle Sam comes calling,

And the UN are all bawling,

Then Australia goes a-brawling,

Bomb Iraq

*

When the housing industry’s dying, bomb Iraq

When the sheep farms are all drying, bomb Iraq

When ANZUS needs preserving,

Then Australia is deserving,

Our commitment is unswerving,

Bomb Iraq.

***

Phil Drayson in Perth: What can I say but quote Bob Dylan again:

There’s been rumors of war and wars that have been

The meaning of the life has been lost in the wind

And some people thinkin’ that the end is close by

‘Stead of learnin’ to live they are learning to die

(Let Me Die In My Footsteps, The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3, 1991)

***

 

Peter Woodforde in Canberra

 

As HMAS Kanimbla steams for Iraq, essentially under the command of a corrupt White House clique which armed and sustained Saddam Hussein for many years, it will bypass Australian servicemen in East Timor now reportedly under sustained threat from militias assembled by brutal US-trained and armed Kopassus forces. This is treachery, pure and bloody simple.

***

Peter Kelly

I like Darren Urquhart’s idea of boycotting American goods and services provided by 5 brands – Mobil-Exxon, Ford, Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Nike (Take a risk for human rights: Back Bush). I just think we should think further than these five corporations and adopt a broader context than simply the war. To spend dollars in the direction of multinational corporations is to bankroll imperialism. By boycotting corporate imperialism you can directly affect the power to wage imperial war.

Maybe other readers have ideas on how to substitute corporate products for non corporate ones. Other things that can be done is fronting schools about corporate “partnerships” and other subtle forms of colonising childrens’ minds with corporate propaganda. Parents can pressure schools and parliamentary representatives to find non corporate solutions to needs in schools. We need not need soft drink “partnerships” as happens in the USA nor for oil companies to be writing global warming curriculums pieces.

There are three ways to respond to the corporate noise crowding out of public space. One is to shout back and try to be louder. Second is to dim the noise through any way possible like “culture jamming”. The third is simply not to listen. If a corporate tree falls in a corporate jungle where there is no one to hear it does the sound exist? Boycotting multinational corporations is a way to simply not listen.

***

Paul Grant

I have no problems with this government’s user pay ideology. Indeed, hands up all those that wish our troops to go off to the Gulf before a UN War is even sanctioned?? Now divide the cost of such a troop exercise, by the number of hands up, and send each raised hand owner their full proportion of the bill!! Any hands still raised?

Ahh!!! democracy!!!!!

***

Chris Murphy

The question is: Given Saddam Hussein’s atrocious human rights record, why do Leftists (and liberals) oppose “regime change”? (See Jim Nolan’s piece in Take a risk for human rights: Back Bush.)

What a shame it is only the Left that is debating the issue. The Right – largely lead, supported and funded by the United States arms and oil industries – is happy to use the excuses that (1) Iraq presents a threat to the world because of its weaponry, and (2) Saddam Hussein is a human rights violator.

What the Right will not concede is that (1) they fully supported the arming of Hussein in the 1980s, and (2) they have continually supported many other dictators with similar human rights records.

What the Right really wants is for the West to (1) re-stamp its “authority” on the world, and (2) regain control of Middle East oil.

In fifty years time, when the textbooks are written about the “First War on Terror”, students will learn that, a century after the Great War, many young men and women were again sent to their deaths on a false pretence, ostensibly in the name of “freedom and democracy”, but in reality for land and money.

***

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION NEEDED :

HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: GEORGE WALKER BUSH

202.456.1414 / 202.456.1111

FAX: 202.456.2461

DEAR SIR / MADAM,

I AM GEORGE WALKER BUSH, SON OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH, AND CURRENTLY SERVING AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE NOT MET NEITHER IN PERSON NOR BY CORRESPONDENCE. I CAME TO KNOW OF YOU IN MY SEARCH FOR A RELIABLE AND REPUTABLE PERSON TO HANDLE A VERY CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS TRANSACTION, WHICH INVOLVES THE TRANSFER OF A HUGE SUM OF MONEY TO AN ACCOUNT REQUIRING MAXIMUM CONFIDENCE.

I AM WRITING YOU IN ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE PRIMARILY TO SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE IN ACQUIRING OIL FUNDS THAT ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ. MY PARTNERS AND I SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE IN COMPLETING A TRANSACTION BEGUN BY MY FATHER, WHO HAS LONG BEEN ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN THE EXTRACTION OF PETROLEUM IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND BRAVELY SERVED HIS COUNTRY AS DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

IN THE DECADE OF THE NINETEEN-EIGHTIES, MY FATHER, THEN VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, SOUGHT TO WORK WITH THE GOOD OFFICES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ TO REGAIN LOST OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN. THIS UNSUCCESSFUL VENTURE WAS SOON FOLLOWED BY A FALLING OUT WITH HIS IRAQI PARTNER, WHO SOUGHT TO ACQUIRE ADDITIONAL OIL REVENUE SOURCES IN THE NEIGHBORING EMIRATE OF KUWAIT, A WHOLLY-OWNED U.S.-BRITISH SUBSIDIARY.

MY FATHER RE-SECURED THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF KUWAIT IN 1991 AT A COST OF SIXTY-ONE BILLION U.S. DOLLARS ($61,000,000,000). OUT OF THAT COST, THIRTY-SIX BILLION DOLLARS ($36,000,000,000) WERE SUPPLIED BY HIS PARTNERS IN THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA AND OTHER PERSIAN GULF MONARCHIES, AND SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS ($16,000,000,000) BY GERMAN AND JAPANESE PARTNERS. BUT MY FATHER’S FORMER IRAQI BUSINESS PARTNER REMAINED IN CONTROL OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ITS PETROLEUM RESERVES.

MY FAMILY IS CALLING FOR YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE IN FUNDING THE REMOVAL OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRAQ AND ACQUIRING THE PETROLEUM ASSETS OF HIS COUNTRY, AS COMPENSATION FOR THE COSTS OF REMOVING HIM FROM POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, OUR PARTNERS FROM 1991 ARE NOT WILLING TO SHOULDER THE BURDEN OF THIS NEW VENTURE, WHICH IN ITS UPCOMING PHASE MAY COST THE SUM OF 100 BILLION TO 200 BILLION DOLLARS ($100,000,000,000 – $200,000,000,000), BOTH IN THE INITIAL ACQUISITION AND IN LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT.

WITHOUT THE FUNDS FROM OUR 1991 PARTNERS, WE WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THE OIL REVENUE TRAPPED WITHIN IRAQ. THAT IS WHY MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES ARE URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR GRACIOUS ASSISTANCE. OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLEAGUES IN THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION INCLUDE THE SITTING VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, RICHARD CHENEY, WHO IS AN ORIGINAL PARTNER IN THE IRAQ VENTURE AND FORMER HEAD OF THE HALLIBURTON OIL COMPANY, AND CONDOLEEZA RICE, WHOSE PROFESSIONAL DEDICATION TO THE VENTURE WAS DEMONSTRATED IN THE NAMING OF A CHEVRON OIL TANKER AFTER HER.

I WOULD BESEECH YOU TO TRANSFER A SUM EQUALING TEN TO TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT (10-25 %) OF YOUR YEARLY INCOME TO OUR ACCOUNT TO AID IN THIS IMPORTANT VENTURE. THE INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL FUNCTION AS OUR TRUSTED INTERMEDIARY. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MAKE THIS TRANSFER BEFORE THE FIFTEENTH (15TH) OF THE MONTH OF APRIL.

I KNOW THAT A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE WOULD MAKE ANYONE APPREHENSIVE AND WORRIED. BUT I AM ASSURING YOU THAT ALL WILL BE WELL AT THE END OF THE DAY. A BOLD STEP TAKEN SHALL NOT BE REGRETTED, I ASSURE YOU. PLEASE DO BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO CO-OPERATE IN THIS TRANSACTION, PLEASE CONTACT OUR INTERMEDIARY REPRESENTATIVES TO FURTHER DISCUSS THE MATTER.

I PRAY THAT YOU UNDERSTAND OUR PLIGHT. MY FAMILY AND OUR COLLEAGUES WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL. PLEASE REPLY IN STRICT CONFIDENCE TO THE CONTACT NUMBERS BELOW.

SINCERELY WITH WARM REGARDS,

GEORGE WALKER BUSH

Switchboard: 202.456.1414

Comments: 202.456.1111

Fax: 202.456.2461

Email:

I met Rick Farley seventeen years ago in Rockhampton, when I taught business law at the Capricornia College of Advanced Education and he headed the Queensland Cattleman’s Union. He lived in a beach house at Emu Park, a laid-back battler’s paradise.

He left paradise for the Canberra hothouse to lead the National Farmers Federation, helping to broker a compromise between farmers and Aborigines on native title in highly charged negotiations with the Keating government after the High Court’s Mabo decision. He also helped pioneer the Land Care policy, a grass roots program under which Australian communities came together to restore and protect ravaged lands.

He’s been in the rough and tumble of high-stakes policy and politics for a long, long time, and his approach has been to reach out for common ground and to think in the long-term interests of his constituents and the nation. He’s one of the people who’s done the hard work needed to bring together farmers and greenies on issues like salinity, to help people see that on some matters, their goals are the same.

I’ve just published his Australia Day speech, delivered yesterday (Our land, our duty of care), and highly recommend a read. To me, Rick is already a great Australian, a man who genuinely strives to serve the public interest. He is someone who – if put in a position of power – could be trusted to act with integrity.

“My perspective has been shaped over a long time by a very diverse group of Australians – cattlemen, farmers, conservationists and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” he writes. “I thank them all for the education they have provided me. It also has been shaped by over 25 years in the political and public policy arena, which represents both the best and worst of our national endeavour. This is my Australia – warts and all.”

Rick’s speech eschews the blame game – “We’ve made mistakes along the track, but we can try to correct them” – sets out the crisis we face with our land and water, proposes a vision, and sets out the structures and processes by which it might be achieved. He wants an environmental levy, and he wants all proceeds delivered to a new ‘Sustainability Commission’. No-one trusts governments or their bureaucracies any more. We know from experience that environment funds are abused to look after special interests governments want to curry favour with. We know they cook the books to pretend they’re spending new money when really they’re cutting money in other programs. We know the goals get lost in turf wars and cost-shifting between the federal and state governments.

A Sustainability Commission should be established by the Parliament, but be completely independent of political control by ministers. Like the auditor-general, the head of the commission should report directly to Parliament, and also at six monthly intervals to the Australian people via a letter box drop. The people fund it, so it reports to the people, honestly, about what’s been achieved, what hasn’t, what the roadblocks are and how they can be breached. The Commission could become as powerful and respected as the ACCC is under Alan Fels, if the right person is chosen to lead it – a person who inspires trust, communicates well with Australians, is tough enough to break through the spin of interest groups and is reasonable enough to find common ground. We need leaders, alright, but few if any of them are in the major political parties.

Rick’s vision is for regional resource management plans. I think they should be produced and run by local communities after expert advice from and endorsement by the Commission. The problem with centralised bodies divorced from communities is that they never know the local conditions, the local power structures, the local talents, the local dynamics. To get real breakthroughs in our land and water management, there’ll have to be intense, passionate, detailed debates and trade-offs in local communities all over Australia. There’ll be local complexities which can never be solved by one blueprint alone. Local communities can do it, and local leaders will emerge if communities are unlucky enough not to have one or more of them already. The process itself will help build or rebuild communities, and community spirit. If local communities own the problems, they’ll solve them. The Commission could provide incentives – for example special grants for communities which reduce their water usage.

I’d also like to see the Commission help individuals to change their habits. There’s stuff all of us could do to lower our use of water, to recycle our waste, to live in harmony with, rather than at war with, our land. But who’ll help us? After hanging around with greenies lately, I’ve done one little thing – stopped buying tailor mades and started smoking rollies instead. That’s 11,000 cigarette butts a year I won’t be inflicting on the environment. A little thing, sure, but something. I’ve also learned that there’s no need to flush the toilet after peeing – it’s just wasting water. A little thing, but something. And I feel good changing my habits a little, for a good cause. It reduces the alienation of city life – you fell a little bit connected with the world around you. These greenies have a lot to teach us about living well.

We need elders – men and women who know the game and how tough it’s played because they’ve played it, tried to fix problems and find solutions, done the tough negotiations, know how to bring people together, thought deeply about the problems we face and know how to harness scientific, academic, and people with practical skills to make things happen. There aren’t many people who can do all this, let alone want to keep doing it. It’s hard, largely thankless, mostly badly or unpaid work, and because such people often lock horns with powerful, rich, unprincipled people, they can get hurt. Badly hurt.

Rick is one of them, and I reckon retired NSW Liberal MP Kevin Rozzoli, our planning commentator for the NSW election, is another. His second column, The courage to reform, is on the NSW state election site now. (We’ve just put up the bare-bones site at NSWelection. Bells and whistles to come.)

Kevin’s column asks why we haven’t seriously tackled an epidemic of land-use and abuse problems in NSW, and details the mess we’ve created by failing to plan for the benefit of the community and instead treated every proposed development or land sell-off as a one-off deal isolated from its surroundings or community impact. His case study of the long fight by Western Sydney residents to preserve part of a big former Australian Defence Industry site for parkland in a choked city is a good micro example both of the mess we’re in and the growing power and commitment of local communities to take on government and developers. Imagine if all the unpaid time and energy newly activist community groups are putting into fighting the government and its sleazy arrangements could be spent working WITH it for the good of everyone!

I asked Webdiarist Jozef Imrich, who as a librarian in NSW Parliament House has known Kevin – a former Liberal deputy leader of the Liberals and Speaker of the lower house – for a long time, for his thoughts on the man. He wrote:

“Please permit me to do more than cite the qualifications and experiences of the former Parliamentary Speaker. There are many young readers who will benefit from an outline of a good family man and a good leader.

Unlike Vaclav Havel and Kevin Rozzoli, most people have forgotten that democracy is a dangerous business. Independent politicians like John Hatton know that for Kevin the parliamentary speakership was less a job than a life calling. Kevin was willing to accept the dangers of democracy by voicing dissent in the party room and by being fair on the floor of the Legislative Assembly.

They say that a master can never be a hero to his butler. However those who have worked for Kevin Rozzoli know he combined the soulful characters and plots of the real world with the smooth pulsing flow of a well written political saga.

Besides being one of the best natural parliamentary speakers around, Kevin has operated in a world hot spot, the Australian Bear Pit, at the historic period of hung Parliament. He gave warnings and put his sights on politicians in hostile environments, not just dreamed about it. When he describes what it’s like to be in a democratic confrontation, you’re reading the most factual representation possible because hes been there, done that. Like Havel, Kevin is the real thing. Kevin is one of those people who has a resume so chocked full of impressive achievements that it leaves one wondering how he managed to fit it all into one life.

Kevin took an active role in trying to raise the standards of behaviour and debate in the Parliament. He has been more active than almost all his predecessors in NSW in writing and speaking in public forums about the value of the parliamentary institution and how this value can be lost if parliamentarians themselves show a low regard for it. As Speaker he exercised a firm but even-handed control over those perennial problems of members’ use of travel entitlements and other entitlements the State gives them.

He’s also shown by personal example the way in which personal responsibility can be maintained in carrying out the full range of a member’s electoral and public duties. Although not a lone voice in speaking out against misuse of parliamentary entitlements, and privileges, there would be no stronger advocate than Kevin Rozzoli for a strong, self-regulating, transparent and publicly responsible parliament exercising an appropriate supervision of its members.

Kevin’s presentations at Parliament were captivating, not just because of the breadth and depth of his knowledge but also due to his style of delivery, which makes every person in the room feel as if he was talking to them personally. Kevin is leaving Parliament after three decades, but parliamentary loss will be university students’ gain. He’s been appointed as an Honorary Associate with the Faculty of Economic and International Relations at Sydney University.

It is ironic that in the closing days of the parliamentary term he received a citation from a Voter Help Line as the NSW MP most likely to help NSW constituents. Kevin was found twice as effective as the next member. So much for the judgement of the Liberal Party. (The Liberals recently disendorsed Kevin, triggering his retirement.

I hope that Kevin’s talents can be utilised somehow in reforming planning in NSW. Like Rick he’s got a lot to give, and like Rick, he’s got the integrity the community craves.

I’ve received many emails about Paddy McGuinness’s recent Herald column on the Canberra fires, all distressed or angry, most from Canberra residents. As someone who calls Canberra home and has many frightened friends there, I felt the same way when I read it, and fervently wished I hadn’t.

It’s a classic of the neo-liberal style – divide, blame, ridicule, accuse. Hate speech, really. But why waste your time complaining, why waste your energy getting angry? People like Paddy feed off the emotion of people’s responses. Yet Paddy’s diatribes give nothing. They tear down. In short, they aren’t useful.

I’ve said before that the extreme players in the culture war industry – right and left – are best left to themselves. In their world there’s no room for engagement, finding areas of disagreement, searching for consensus, or moving forward. Instead they yell abuse at each other and get off on it.

So don’t bother reading them. There’s something much more important happening in Canberra. People have had to work out what possessions they need to take with them, and found there’s not many. They’ve met people in their street they’ve never met before and cried with them. They’ve discovered the joys of community that our country towns already had and are now fighting a losing battle to preserve. They’ve realised that in John Stanhope, a man devoid of charisma and blessed only with intelligence, decency, and integrity, they’ve chosen the perfect person to lead the rebuilding of their city.

So don’t bother with Paddy. Read something that makes you think, that gives you hope, instead.

 

First garage door against the war, by Andrew Mamo and Helen Ferry

Here we go, sending our troops off to the Gulf as the government pretends it’s not committed to war when the United States give the word. Great way to avoid making the case, eh? The government knows it hasn’t convinced the vast majority of Australians we should back a unilateral strike – it hasn’t even tried to – yet that’s what we’ll do if that’s what George Bush wants.

If you’re against John Howard’s decision, don’t get mad, get active, and most of all, feel sorry for our troops. What a terrible feeling they must have, knowing they could lose their lives for a country whose people don’t want them to go and whose government won’t explain why they should.

Paul Gilchrist in Mosman writes: “I see that Tony Blair has given evidence to a Commons Liaison Committee over his actions on Iraq (independent). In this committee, Tony Blair has to answer questions from MPs about the justification for war in Iraq and how Britain will be involved. Here in Australia, John Howard brushes off these questions as “hypothetical” and does not have to justify his actions to parliament or the people. Do you know why our system is apparently less accountable than the mother of parliaments?”

Howard is scheduled to wave off the troops on board HMAS Kanimbula at 10 am tomorrow morning. If you want to protest or cheer, be at Cowper Wharf, Woollomolloo in Sydney. Greens campaigners have this advice for those who want to protest: “It’s VERY IMPORTANT that the protest targets Howard and the Government, rather than the troops themselves who are going off to a dangerous situation. Emotions will be running high with families being left behind, so we need to send a message that it is not the men and women in uniform who we are angry with, but the politicians who are putting them at risk. All slogans and activities must be non-violent and respectful towards the troops as individuals. Please come on down and bring your home-made banners and creative ideas!”

Today, your thoughts and ideas about what the hell is going on and what on earth to do about it. Pro-war Webdiary columnist Harry Heidelberg intervenes in the debate between Jim Nolan and Jack Robertson on whether we should go to war on human rights grounds. His column, Yes, it really is about getting the weapons, is at Harry22Jan. (At the end of this entry, Webdiarist Hamish Tweedy – a supporter of war provided it’s UN sanctioned – responds in detail to Scott Burchill’s popular piece on war myths last week.)

Paula Abood writes: ‘Remember when you read vague stuff about the US government ‘editing’ bits from Iraq’s declaration? If you read the quality press you’ll have wondered just who these corporations were who’d supplied Saddam but whose names were removed. Here they are, courtesy of Berlin daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung, No. 6934, 19 Dec 2002, page 3, “Exclusive: The Secret List of Arms Suppliers – Saddam’s Business partners” (taz, in German):

Key

A = nuclear weapon program

B = biological weapon program

C = chemical weapon program

R = rocket program

K = conventional weapons, military logistics, supplies at the Iraqi Ministry of Defence, and building of military plants.

USA

1. Honeywell (R, K), Spectra Physics (K), Semetex (R), TI Coating (A, K), Unisys (A, K), Sperry Corp (R, K), Tektronix (R, A), Rockwell (K), Leybold Vacuum Systems (A), Finnigan-MAT-US (A), Hewlett-Packard (A, R, K), Dupont (A), Eastman Kodak (R), American Type Culture Collection (B), Alcolac International (C), Consarc (A), Carl Zeiss – U.S (K), Cerberus (LTD) (A), Electronic Associates (R),International Computer Systems (A, R, K), Bechtel (K), EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (R), Canberra Industries Inc. (A), Axel Electronics Inc. (A).

In addition to these 24 home-based companies are 50 subsidiaries of foreign enterprises which conducted their arms business with Iraq from within the US.

Also designated as suppliers for Iraq’s arms programs (A, B, C & R) are the US Ministries of Defense, Energy, Trade and Agriculture as well as the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories.

FRANCE

Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (A), Sciaky (A), Thomson CSF (A, K), Aerospatiale and Matra Espace (R), Cerbag (A), Protec SA (C), Thales Group (A), Societe General pour les Techniques Nouvelles (A)

GREAT BRITAIN

Euromac Ltd-Uk (A), C. Plath-Nuclear (A), Endshire Export Marketing (A), International Computer Systems (A, R, K), MEED International (A, C), Walter Somers Ltd. (R), International Computer Limited(A, K), Matrix Churchill Corp. (A), Ali Ashour Daghir (A), International Military Services (R) (part of the UK Ministry of Defence), Sheffield Forgemasters (R), Technology Development Group (R),International Signal and Control (R), Terex Corporation (R), Inwako (A), TMG Engineering (K), XYY Options, Inc (A)

JAPAN

Fanuc (A), Hammamatsu Photonics KK (A), NEC (A), Osaka (A), Waida (A)

NETHERLANDS

Melchemie B.V. (C), KBS Holland B.V. (C), Delft Instruments N.V. (K)

BELGIUM

Boehler Edelstahl (A), NU Kraft Mercantile Corporation (C), OIP Instrubel (K), Phillips Petroleum (C), Poudries Reunies Belge SA (R), Sebatra (A), Space Research Corp. (R)

SPAIN

Donabat (R), Treblam (C), Zayer (A)

SWEDEN

ABB (A), Saab-Scania (R)

***

A Melbourne reader (name withheld) has found the White House propaganda sheet on Iraq, called ‘Apparatus of Lies: Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003’, at whitehouse. “With all the debate regarding when the war will start or if it should start at all, the document is an interesting salvo in the public opinion war in full swing. Some of the techniques described, with much gnashing of teeth, would seem quite at home in any western governments spin doctor’s arsenal. Maybe it will become required reading in Public Relations courses. I have no doubts that Saddam and Co have engaged in many if not all of the ‘black arts’ exposed in the paper – it just seemed ironic that the White House would be keen to toss such a stone in light of their own admitted policy of controlling was ‘information’ post the Vietnam period when those dramatic raw images caused such problems for morale back home. Surgical strikes, collateral damage etc etc etc.”

Andrew Mamo and Helen Ferry’s ‘garage door against the war’ campaign is now in business. Send your images and ideas to doorsagainstwar. Greens member and Webdiarist Max Phillips writes: “For those garage-owning suburbanites who are serious about displaying their opposition to the war, the Greens are producing large “No War” triangles. If you would like to place one in your front window or in your front yard, contact us office@nsw.greens.org.au or phone 02-9519 0877.”

The Labor Council of NSW has details of lots of upcoming protests against the war in NSW. Call Amanda Tattersall on 0409 321133 or email her at a.tattersall@labor.org.au for posters and leaflets.

Several readers recommend the website of US anti-war group Move on, at http://www.moveon.org/, which recently produced a TV ad as part of the campaign. Julienne McKay writes: “You are probably aware of the US anti war group Moveon, but just in case I’m doing as they ask, and forwarding details of their campaign in the US to an influential member of the media in my country. A friend in the US – a student radical in the 60’s, now approaching her 60’s – originally sent me the information.”

Webdiarist Jozef Imrich recommends opendemocracy Hot off the press from Susan Richards of Open Democracy, featuring John Le Carre, Salman Rushdie, John Berger, Christopher Hitchens, Roger Scruton, David Hair and Gunter Grass with Marina Warner, Anita Roddick and others promising to join what this global conversation on Iraq and the War.

Merrill Pye in Sydney writes: “I recently received this from a friend in Canada who received it from a friend in the USA. Perhaps not a very scientific contribution, but one that definitely relates to systems of belief? Just sing along folks, to the tune of ‘If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands’.”

If we cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.

If the markets hurt your Mama, bomb Iraq.

If the terrorists are Saudi

And the bank takes back your Audi

And the TV shows are bawdy,

Bomb Iraq.

*

If the corporate scandals growin’, bomb Iraq.

And your ties to them are showin’, bomb Iraq.

If the smoking gun ain’t smokin’

We don’t care, and we’re not jokin’.

That Saddam will soon be croakin’,

Bomb Iraq.

*

Even if we have no allies, bomb Iraq.

From the sand dunes to the valleys, bomb Iraq.

So to hell with the inspections;

Let’s look tough for the elections,

Close your mind and take directions,

Bomb Iraq.

*

While the globe is slowly warming, bomb Iraq.

Yay! the clouds of war are storming, bomb Iraq.

If the ozone hole is growing,

Some things we prefer not knowing.

(Though our ignorance is showing),

Bomb Iraq.

*

So here’s one for dear old daddy, bomb Iraq,

From his favorite little laddy, bomb Iraq.

Saying ‘no’ would look like treason.

It’s the Hussein hunting season.

Even if we have no reason,

Bomb Iraq.

***

Mark Paloff in Wollongong imagined the worst case scenario and penned this:

NEWS OF THE WORLD, 2005

Today, the Middle East continues to be a grizzly testament to the greed and misguided folly of disgraced ex-leaders Bush, Blair and Australia’s John Howard.

American, British and Australian forces remain bogged down in an occupation of Iraq that began two years ago, with no consolidation of their position in sight on the oil-smoked horizon. The oil fields of Iraq and Kuwait that were to underwrite the continuation of the “non-negotiable American way of life” have all been torched, filling the sky with acrid fumes since March 2003. World oil production has halved and western economies stagger along maimed by record negative growth, shrivelled GDPs and massive unemployment.

The direct human toll of the Bush/Blair/Howard folly will never be accurately counted. In Iraq alone, military casualties on both sides are approaching 100,000. Guerrilla fighting in the streets of Iraqi cities and towns adds hundreds more military and civilian deaths each day. Iran’s mischievous insurgencies from the north amplify the chaos and death. In the absence of electricity and clean water supplies, it has been estimated that another half a million Iraqi babies and children have perished since March 2003 to add to the half million that died during the American/Australian naval blockade that began 11 years ago.

President Gore, PM Saxby and PM Lawrence, although united in their efforts, appear powerless to unravel the monumental tragedy their predecessor’s policies have created. This human tragedy is now known as ‘The Bogus War’. The propaganda of three years ago spruiked unconvincingly that it was about disarming a minor dictator. Common but muted wisdom knew it was a brutal grab for oil at a time when the USA was consuming oil four times faster than new supplies were being found.

The introduction of conscription two years ago to provide reinforcements for the savaged armies of the USA, Britain and Australia has sent these three countries into bitter domestic turmoil, adding further debilitating divisions within already turbulent societies. The shameless flight of capital, with its owners, to havens in northern Europe and South America has exacerbated class divisions, bringing general strikes and the collapse of essential services.

None, it would seem, foresaw the opportunism of the Arab world to use the west’s preoccupation with Iraq to seek their final vengeance upon Israel. That always-contentious nation now lay as rubble and a new Jewish diaspora has begun.

The unleashing of Al-Qaeda’s international network upon the west last year, a network neglected by the West as the Iraqi adventure consumed its attentions, has viciously changed the world forever. Unchained, and assisted by the strategy of total unpredictability, this brand of terrorism has been successful in mortifying the populations and economies of dozens of countries. The poisoned water supplies of Liverpool, Washington, Seattle and Sydney have sent their citizens into exodus. The plethora of bombed structures, including Buckingham Palace, the United Nations and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, has us all feeling vulnerable, and strangely punished.

Perhaps George W Bush gave us a good warning of what to expect in August 2002 when he asked “Who knows how many wars it will take to secure our homeland?” What we are all asking ourselves today is, “How did Bush and Blair and Howard ever get away with committing us to this Bogus War?”. Why didn’t someone stop them in 2003?

***

Hamish Tweedy

Here is my take on Scott’s answers to eleven war questions and claims in Counterspin: Pro-war mythology (smh).

1. “Is Saddam Hussein likely to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the US and its allies?

Scott says:

* The development of WMDs by vulnerable states like North Korea and Iraq is as a direct consequence of the threat posed by US and that any responsible government should really develop them as it is the only way to curb US imperialism.

I think the characterisation of North Korea and Iraq as vulnerable states is perhaps just a little rich. More likely the argument could probably be framed along the lines of: If you are a despotic tyrant with regional ambitions and actively suppress your own population then the creation of WMDs is a good way to force the civilised world to deal with you other than by the use of force. Which kind of makes the US/UN’s position all the more understandable.

* Because Saddam Hussein didn’t use them during the 1991 Gulf War he won’t use them again.

Horses for courses: At the time the UN/US were only forcing him out of Kuwait. Therefore Saddam pulls/is forced out of Kuwait, develops appropriate delivery systems and tries again.

2. Saddam Hussein has form: He has used them before.

Scott says:

* Yes they have but only against those who didn’t have WMDs.

I’m not sure what the point is here. Is Scott suggesting that only Iraq’s neighbours without WMDs are at risk, an interesting and extremely threatening little arms race sounds like it has just been created.

* The US and UK continued to supply him with the means to manufacture WMDs after he had used them in 1988, so why does his continued ownership of WMDs concern them now.

Not a good idea, I agree, but I don’t see how a mistake (along with countless others I am sure Scott can name) somehow prevents the US and the UK from acting to rectify the situation now.

* If the US is genuinely concerned about Iraq why did Donald Rumsfeld normalise relations with Iraq in 1983 when they were using chemical weapons against Iraq on a daily basis.

That was twenty years ago during the Cold War. We were allies with the USSR during WWII were enemies during the Cold War and are on the brink of being allies again it doesn’t mean anything.

3. Hussein has invaded his neighbours twice.

Scott says:

* The US supported him when he invaded Iran during the 1980s.

I’m really not up to date on my history of the Iran-Iraq war but I understood that the US supported Iraq and the USSR supported Iran (the US was hardly likely to support Iran given the hostage situation was barely three years old).

* The US was ambivalent about the result of a border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait.

It is fairly easy for me to imagine that a country could express its ambivalence about the outcome of border dispute and reasonably expect that this wouldn’t be interpreted as tacit approval for the invasion of one country by another.

4. Saddam Hussein is a monster who runs a violent oppressive regime

Scott says:

* As Blair, Straw, Prescott, Blunkett, Cook or Hoon, did not speak out previously against Saddam Hussein during the 1980’s and 1990’s how can they have a problem with him now?

This is a point that proves absolutely nothing about anything. They have a problem with him now.

* As the West didn’t oppose the rise of Suharto’s brutal regime how can they oppose Saddam’s now?

The Cold War isn’t being fought.

5. Only the threat of force by the US has forced Iraq to accept weapons inspectors

Scott says:

* The use of force in 1998 had the opposite effect.

To point out the bleeding obvious, bombing over 4 days, no matter how effective does not carry the same weight as stationing 150,000 troops plus aircraft carrier groups around your border.

* Richard Butler pulled the inspectors out, Saddam did not kick them out.

This is semantics – if the weapons inspectors were pulled out because they could do their job the effect is the same.

* Why didn’t we inflict the same punishment on other countries?

The same reason we didn’t inflict it on Iraq at the time. The Cold War.

6. Has the threat posed by Saddam Hussein increased recently?

Scott says:

As his armed forces no longer have support from either the US or the USSR and due to sanctions imposed after the Gulf War not as dangerous as he was previously.

This is the million dollar question. An argument can be made that for the very reasons outlined he is considerably more likely to attempt to develop WMDs and more likely to rely on them. I am of the view that this is what the Weapons Inspectors are in Iraq to determine, and that what they report will, I hope, be the basis for any future action, if any. To this point Kevin Rudd and the Opposition have most clearly stated their case and it is one that I wholeheartedly support.

7. Saddam Hussein will pass WMDs on to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.

Scott says:

* There is no proof he has and they are natural enemies.

I am happy to accept this as fact based on Scott’s word. I think that Saddam having WMDs in his own right is sufficient enough threat. His secret service is probably just as capable of delivering them as Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group for that matter.

* This is a smoke screen to prevent identification of the real proliferators of WMDs.

Like Scott, I would like to know who is responsible and would agree it should be stopped (although I think this is a vain hope).

8. The US wants to democratise Iraq

Scott: The US isn’t interested in democracy in Iraq and will install a compliant dictator.

I agree. I hope, however, that the task of installing a democracy in Iraq after a war (if there is one) falls to the UN and not the US – a vain hope perhaps but it still not a reason for not acting.

9. What is the Status of Pre-emptive Strikes in International Law

Criminal, I hope.

10. The question of oil. Access or control?

I don’t really know or care. Whether Saddam has oil or not is irrelevant if he has WMDs, and whether he has oil or not is certainly not a reason for not enforcing UN resolutions.

11. The credibility of the UN and Canberra

Really it’s all just politicking. I’m not sure I care too much (although I probably should).

The point I’m trying to make is that the issue here is how to deal with Iraq and its development of WMDs (if they have them). Are people who are currently opposing it opposing it on the basis that any conflict will be led by the US, or are they opposing pre-emptive strikes? My main problem with Scott’s piece is that he seems to frame his argument against action on the basis that any action led by the US should not be supported.

Kevin Rudd has further clarified his position on support for a conflict with Iraq and again I find myself in agreement with his position. I don’t believe the debate over involvement should degenerate into conspiracy theories about the US and its intentions. The issue is Saddam Hussein and whether or not he is developing WMDs. The way I see the debate people should roughly fall into one of the following three categories should the Weapons Inspectors report that Saddam Hussein is in fact developing WMDs:

1. You don’t like Saddam Hussein developing WMDs but believe it is a legitimate course for a sovereign nation to take to provide itself with an adequate means of self defence and therefore would not support any action against Iraq whatever the Weapons Inspectors find.

2. You believe that Saddam Hussein’s development of WMDs represents a real threat to global/regional security but would only take action if it came under the auspices of the UN. Kevin Rudd did give himself some room to move here, which is prudent. We are dealing with hypothetical situations and boxing yourself in would not be smart. The main thrust of his position is that action must be UN endorsed.

3. You don’t give a tinkers cuss what the Weapons Inspectors find or don’t find because you want to destroy Saddam Hussein and Iraq anyway.

For what its worth, I started out at 3 thanks to John Wojdylo’s Saddam’s heart of darkness piece (John26Sep2002Part1 and JohnPart2) but have since tempered my position and moved to UN endorsement, due to the ongoing difficulties that a policy of pre-emption would cause.

I’ve been writing about professional ethics, the collapse thereof, and ways to resurrect them in the public interest for a while now, with the HIH fiasco the latest proof that we need a major overhaul of ethical standards and their enforcement.

I was brought back to the question of journalists’ ethics – and whether we had any right to throw stones- when archiving the early Webdiary pieces of Jack Robertson for his columnist archive. Jack debuted on Webdiary in late 2000, in response to a series of outraged columns I wrote on the Reith Telecard affair. In Questions to you journos (Jack2000) said it was a bit off for journos to take the high moral ground on political rorting and conflicts of interest when we were unaccountable for such matters ourselves.

It’s a great point. The media is an extremely powerful institution in our democracy, and journalists, while mere cogs in some ways, are not officially accountable to citizens in any way save for the law of defamation. Is it any wonder that we journalists are held in such low general esteem?

After Jack’s piece and a flood of supportive emails, a Webdiary poll found politicians were more respected than journalists! Reader’s reactions and my reactions to all the criticism are at Ink v Inc: Of hacks, bean-counters and the bottom line ( webdiary6Nov2000), Take two: Journos v pollies – too close to call, webdiary7Nov2000, Journos v pollies: the final edition, webdiary8Nov2000, Catharsis complete. What next?,webdiary9Nov2000, Journos v pollies: the tirade goes on …, webdiary9Nov2000, and So what are YOU prepared to do about journalism?, webdiary14Nov2000,

I’ve been thinking about how we could be more accountable through self-regulation for years now, but can’t see a way it can be done effectively on an industry-wide basis.

My interest is double-edged. Many members of the public see journalists as mere cyphers for their owners and the editors they appoint, and others see them as self-appointed moralisers and blame-pointers free of any real constraint. In reality, we’re between these extremes. I see a strong ethical culture in journalism both as as means for journalists to resist pressures to write stories in the interests of their owner’s businesses and interests and to unreasonably intrude upon the privacy of citizens, as well as a way to keep us honest and respectful of our readers and of the truth.

In a speech I gave last year (see Ethics overboard: How to promote integrity in the moment of choice, webdiary14Jan) I argued that journalists should be drawn into a broad-brush reform of ethics to apply to all the professions with public duties in addition to earning their living. Weblogger Scott Wickstein (who says he “used to be a network engineer … I got downsized in 2001, and after not being able to get a ‘real job’ I went back to the factory life whence I came”) disagreed. He wrote in eyeofthebeholder:

Margo Kingston has called for the government to regulate journalists ethics:

“I’ve been trying for ages to think of a way to enforce journalists’ ethics without government legislation. I can’t. Only journalists belonging to the union have a duty to comply with its code of ethics,and many aren’t in the union. The bosses have no such duty unless they voluntarily sign up to a company code of ethics, and can and do employ people not in the union. In any event, ethics should be seen as ideals to strive for, ideals that can be highly nuanced, and easily forgotten.

Ethics are also a group standard, meaning they requires constant discussion and thought between colleagues, and that requires openness.

So what I’m thinking of is framework legislation, to cover all jobs with ethical duties. It could require all professions to have an ethical oversight body comprised of a chairperson and directors agreed to by consensus between the profession’s leaders and consumer groups, and if consensus cannot be reached, by election. Membership of the professional body would be compulsory to work, and members of the oversight body would have legal protection against defamation and the like.

This is a very poor idea on several levels. For one thing, everyone has his or her own idea of what is ethical. Most of us have common areas where we would agree is ethical or not ethical but in most cases there would be cases where people would disagree. Legislation would legally enforce one set of ideas about ethics at the expense of others. This has cultural implications as well Ethics are drawn from many sources, but cultural values are part of that; so are religious ones. A legislative solution would have to be clever indeed to avoid legally enforcing one value set of ethics over all others.

Another quibble I would have is that legislation tends to draw a line in the sand. This is legal, that is not. This legalistic approach would re-inforce the trend to forget the ethical issues involved in a case. In a non-legal ethical guideline system that doesnt draw boundaries, a journalist is more likely to look at the grey areas and consider the principles behind the guideline then they are if they can merely consult the organisations lawyer and say Is this legal?. This sort of system doesnt work very well but it does occasionally focus minds on ethics. The legalistic solution is hardly likely to do that.

Margo wants this system to apply to all professions.

There’s a strong case to be made for compulsory standards organisations for doctors, lawyers and accountants- for journalism, there is no such case to be made. This smacks of professional trade unionism, and also possibly restraint of trade. What if I want to start up my own version of Crikey.com.au?

There is a case to be made for providing criminal sanctions to members of professions that do the wrong thing. Auditors, accountants, lawyers all need to be reminded of their responsibilities. Journalists probably have less need due to the defamation laws. But that is corrective legislation and will no doubt be complex enough of its own. Legislating ethics on to people is a bad idea.

First of all, I’m not arguing for the ethical standards themselves to be put into legislation. This would go against what ethics are – an ideal to strive for, the precise details of which evolve over time. My idea was for legislation setting up the structure for professional oversight bodies run by the profession (and consumers) to which it would be compulsory to belong.

Legislation would make it compulsory to belong to and abide by the decisions of these bodies, that’s all. It would be up to each profession to lay down its ethical duties in the light of the public interest each profession must serve. For example, a lawyer has a duty not only to his client, but to the legal system and the court. Accountants have duties to the investing public. Engineers have duties to deliver safe engineering solutions. And journalists – what is our higher duty? That’s a tough one, especially since the internet has so greatly expanded the variety and source of available information and opinion.

As I made clear in my speech, I wouldn’t like to see black-letter ethical standards, but more general principles which are made clear through the application of particular examples to them. Ethical behaviour relies to a great extent on peer group expectations, and adherence to them requires a system whereby professionals with ethical concerns or questions can seek guidance from their peers through their professional associations. This mechanism – if it’s in good working order – reduces the temptation for professionals to convince themselves in the privacy of their offices and under the pressure of client’s desires to find a way around ethical constraints.

Scott’s point about a journalists’ professional standards association being a means to impose compulsory trade unionism is not on point. Lawyers, accountants and doctors, for example, can’t practice without a certificate certifying that they have the necessary qualifications and have agreed to abide by their profession’s ethical codes.

However no formal qualifications or training are required to be a journalist. As I said in my speech, I became one not knowing there was a journalists’ code of ethics! The right to free speech is fundamental to our democracy, and it’s inconceivable that people would not be permitted to publish what they like – as bloggers, letter writers, whatever – if they’re not in a professional association.

On the other hand, should the public have a right to make certain assumptions on the basis that someone calls himself a journalist? Should they have the right to believe that ‘a journalist’ is bound by certain ethical standards he must comply with, just as someone who practices law or medicine must?

In a world where information transfer is instant and competing versions of the facts are routinely aired, I reckon there’s an argument for self-regulation backed by legislative imprimatur. It could be compulsory for all journalists in “mainstream media” to belong to the ethics association, and for others who wish to call themselves journalists to do so as well.

Last year saw a sensational example of a mainstream columnist, Janet Albrechtsen, accused of plagiarism with a twist – stealing the words of others AND changing them to suit her case. Media Watch exposed the matter, but her employer, The Australian, not only refused to issue a correction to readers and an acknowledgement of plagiarism, but gave her free rein to defend herself by attacking the motives of her accusers without responding to the substantive allegations.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that these days anything goes. That means that readers can be lied to, and misled, without redress. That’s got to be bad for the public debate, hasn’t it? We get privileges as journalists – responsibilities must attach, mustn’t they?

In 52 Ideas for a healthier Australian news media (Jack2000), Jack proposed another model for reform:

42. Ethics. Your Trade Association should establish an internet site on which ten senior Australian Reporters lodge unambiguous personal opinions on specific ethical cases as they arise. (Call it the ‘Council of Grand Ethical Poobahs’, or something.) Reporters could then check the site during high-profile debates (such as the Current Affair hostage one), and draw guidance (or not) from the judgements presented. These should only be as brief as ‘I think that such-and-such Trade behaviour from such-and-such Reporter was ethically unacceptable/acceptable’. Not a jot more no deconstruction, no lengthy dissection, no dissembling. Leave the empathy stuff for pub discussions. The judgements would carry ABSOLUTELY NO weight beyond simple peer group pressure. Passwords would be issued with Association membership, and the site would NOT be for public consumption. Finally, ‘Ethical Poobah-hood’ wouldn’t be optional, but obligatory. Every Reporter with over twenty years’ experience (say) would be required to eventually serve a one year ‘Ethical Tour of Duty’ on the ‘Poobah Council’ site. It would be an obligation of Association membership. Look, we all know that Reporters are individualistic and competitive, but ultimately it comes down to which is more important to you all: your individuality or your Trade’s long-term, collective credibility. And we don’t make distinctions between Reporters – we blame ALL of you for any INDIVIDUAL ethical cock-up. (Grossly unfair, but true.) Reporters are the only people who can influence other Reporters’ ethics. Not only is external regulation undesirable, it can simply never work. It’s up to you, and you know it. An internet site will remind a young Reporter, working out in the sticks for a prick of a proprietor and faced with an awful ethical dilemma, who the good guys are. They’ll be able to draw strength from the fact that the O’Briens, the Oakes, the Grattans and McKews to whom they are aspiring are on their side.

You don’t have to be a member of the union to practice journalism, so Jack’s idea is an opt-in one. In many ways, crikey.com.au is doing the job his website would have, except that it is open. I favour this, as readers have the right to have a say on what they want in the way of ethics from journalists.

It’s too glib to say that, in the end, ethics are a personal thing. Some people have young families to support – if insisting on ethical behaviour could lose you your job, they are under much greater pressure to compromise ethics than those without family responsibilities. This is a good reason why ethical standards should have a weight outside the individual – to protect professionals against improper pressure.

Another way to do ethical enforcement is through an individual employer. For a start, some employers wouldn’t do it because they shamelessly promote their owner’s commercial interests (or censor news against it), or because their quality control is so lax they’d be hoist on their own petard too often. If an employer does stick its neck out, as the Herald did a few years ago with its ban on journalists accepting junkets, its competitors hone in on every little thing and make a meal of it. Trying to take a stand for higher standards leaves you wide open to self-serving attacks from competitors who couldn’t care less about standards but see the chance to bring down a competitor who does.

But the core relationship here is between the media group and its readers/listeners/viewers (with the spin-off that the product’s credibility demands respect from other media). The goal of company-imposed standards is to foster trust in your readers. If you make a mistake, you correct it as quickly as possible. If a reporter plagiarises, he is disciplined and the error noted in print. The Herald has its own ethical code now but it has not yet been published in the paper, partly due to the fact that the question of how readers should be involved hasn’t been decided. Who would they complain to about an alleged breach? What process would be involved for a decision? How would frivolous complaints be dealt with?

A published code with a procedure for readers complaints and decisions requires as a bottom line a culture of trust between management and staff which strips away the naturally defensive positions of both journalists and editors. Staff need to have the confidence that an error can be quickly brought to management’s attention and fixed without undue recrimination or the targeting of staff who are unpopular with management. I love Jack’s idea of a closed website for detailed discussion this would help foster the openness and constructive attitude required for the system to work.

Anyway, all this is pie in the sky. All I can control is Webdiary. What should you expect of me?

I’m a member of the journalist union, the Media Alliance, and bound by its code of ethics, updated a few years ago after exhaustive consultation of members. It states:

CODE OF ETHICS

Respect for truth and the public’s right to information are fundamental principles of journalism. Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions, a privileged role. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, suggest and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression. Many journalists work in private enterprise, but all have these public responsibilities. They scrutinise power, but also exercise it, and should be accountable. Accountability engenders trust. Without trust, journalists do not fulfil their public responsibilities. MEAA members engaged in journalism commit themselves to Honesty, Fairness, Independence, Respect for the rights of others:

1. Report and interpret honestly, striving for accuracy, fairness and disclosure of all essential facts. Do not suppress relevant available facts, or give distorting emphasis. Do your utmost to give a fair opportunity for reply.

2. Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.

3. Aim to attribute information to its source. Where a source seeks anonymity, do not agree without first considering the sources motives and any alternative attributable source. Where confidences are accepted, respect them in all circumstances.

4. Do not allow personal interest, or any belief, commitment, payment, gift or benefit, to undermine your accuracy, fairness or independence.

5. Disclose conflicts of interest that affect, or could be seen to affect, the accuracy, fairness or independence of your journalism. Do not improperly use a journalistic position for personal gain.

6. Do not allow advertising or other commercial considerations to undermine accuracy, fairness or independence.

7. Do your utmost to ensure disclosure of any direct or indirect payment made for interviews, pictures, information or stories.

8. Use fair, responsible and honest means to obtain material. Identify yourself and your employer before obtaining any interview for publication or broadcast. Never exploit a persons vulnerability or ignorance of media practice.

9. Present pictures and sound which are true and accurate. Any manipulation likely to mislead should be disclosed.

10. Do not plagiarise.

11. Respect private grief and personal privacy. Journalists have the right to resist compulsion to intrude.

12. Do your utmost to achieve fair correction of errors.

Guidance Clause

Basic values often need interpretation and sometimes come into conflict. Ethical journalism requires conscientious decision-making in context. Only substantial advancement of the public interest or risk of substantial harm to people allows any standard to be overridden.

***

Journalists in mainstream media without an ethical code have only one real option to keep the culture honest – they leak. Luckily, we now have two outlets for leaks on unethical behaviour – Media Watch and crikey.com.au. From there, peer group pressure, and public reaction determine whether anything is done.

Webdiary has tested out my ethical parameters for a practical reason. Write for the paper, and your work goes through sub-editing. Word length can be cut. The words can be changed. The story might not even run. The sub editor writes the headline. News conference decides where to place it in the paper. Sub editors decide when to have your piece legalled.

In other words, there’s lots of checks and balances on your work, and lots of things can be changed or go wrong.

With Webdiary, the responsibility is mine. I write it, edit it, put the headline on it, decide whether it needs the lawyer to look over it, and publish it. Grammatical and spelling errors are mine. Errors of fact are mine. What I write is what you get. I decide which reader’s emails do and don’t get published. If you’re unhappy with Webdiary, you know who to blame. I’ve got nowhere to hide.

The relationship between writer/moderator and reader/contributor is direct and transparent. Still, not having anything written down leaves it to you to work out what my ethical values are and what I’d like from you in that regard, which isn’t ideal. I’m going to write a draft of what I strive for ethically on Webdiary, and what I’d like from readers who want to contribute, and put it up for comment. If you’ve got any suggestions, let me know.

Harry Heidelberg had a few thoughts on all that the other day:

You told me my piece on the Australian diaspora was the second most viewed article on Monday last week, and the next day the article by Scott Burchill was the most viewed piece. With all the hype that used to surround the internet and the painful process we went through with the bubble bursting, sometimes it is easy to forget that we have been through a revolution. I am sure we are just at the start of something even more momentous. This has all been a prelude.

There are a few realities that are easy to forget. It’s routine now for people to bank online. Bills are paid, airline reservations are made and goods are bought and sold. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s part of life now and it wasnt for most just five years ago. Profits are even being made.

Outside of the purely commercial arena is where Webdiary fulfills its charter. The idea of the Herald accessible anywhere in the world would have sounded like fantasy not that long ago. It all seems like such ancient history but its not really that ancient. If someone were to say in 1995 that the two of the most viewed articles in the Herald were actually produced by readers, I think most would be bemused by such an idea.

It reminds me of those grainy black and white pictures most Australians have seen where Bruce Gyngell says, “This is television”. Well this is the internet and some of the original dreams are coming true. People are being empowered.

Ethics and online journalism: That’s tough. Is it really any different? The readers’ contributions are kind of like letters to the editor, but when they are given such prominence as in the last week does it change anything? I’m not sure but I have a feeling it does. It seems to me that the line between the journalist and the reader-contributor becomes blurred. This of course is a wonderful thing in most ways because it is empowering people who would otherwise not be heard. It goes back to the Webdiary Charter.

You said once that the National Library is archiving this stuff so it’s not exactly chat. It’s more than that. We may not realise it but this is pioneering. Trail blazing! Then again from the contributor point of view maybe not that much has changed. Letters have always been at the key point in the paper where you see the editorial and columnists.

I’m not a journalist so I don’t know the ethics. This proves how nuanced they are. As an example, is objectivity an ethic or not? What about balance? In your own work I can certainly relate to your own views about this. I think much of what people expect is artificial. Nothing is really that objective.

What about the space? Is it ethical of you to sift out views that don’t suit your agenda? Do you have some ethical responsibility regarding balance within the space or is it just entertainment? I know you do allow varied views so I am not accusing you of anything, I am just curious.

Why be curious, why not find out? This just shows how different the era we live in really is. If you have an information need, something pretty curious to check out, it takes no time to find out. I just typed “journalists code of conduct” into “Google” and found 84,800 entries in 0.24 seconds. I don’t have to wonder what it is – I can check in an instant. There’s an old ethic there. Acknowledging the work of others. Apparently it is a huge problem in schools an universities now. Late in completing an assignment? No problem, find it on Google. I think plagiarism has to be monitored more than ever. I am sure with tight deadlines and unlimited information available in seconds, the temptation must become greater in the online world of journalism to break this old rule. Who would know if you adapted an article from the Kansas City Star?

On the other hand, this is where average people become empowered. I am able to check your facts and you are able to check mine. Either there is a million Australians living overseas or there isn’t. Before the net, I would hardly have been calling Canberra to find out such things. I just typed Australians living overseas in Google and it came up in a quarter of a second.

Would you check the facts though? If I make such an assertion, is it just considered opinion or does there have to be some checking?

Also, which source of information do you cite when you find something online? Just the original source? Like what if I found out about the DFAT figures from another site – is it OK just to cite DFAT? This may sound pedantic but I actually feel guilty for not mentioning that Southern Cross expat site. I think it was they who lead me to Professor Hugo. Sure it seems pedantic but someone key was left out of my sources. Was that unethical?

On the other hand it would become ridiculous if you had to cite every source you trawled through to get to what you wanted.

Also what about identity? This is not required to be checked on talk back radio so I don’t see why it should be online. My understanding is that letters pages used to do some checking.

What about the separation between advertising and content? Is this any different online? I assume if I am critical of a major online advertiser you treat it the same way as the hard copy version. On the internet advertisers know where you are, so when I read ads on top of Web Diary, they always appeal to me to come and find out about Australian property at a London showroom. The net knows I am in Europe, knows I am probably an expat and might be interested in buying an apartment in Melbourne. It probably doesn’t change anything……but not everyone sees the same thing. When you rally against development it is funny that your page seems sponsored by developers when I look at it in Europe! Often in Melbourne though. Right now they are telling me that I can get a free food and wine pack in London and Melbourne apartments are going for only 139,000.

Are contributors bound by ANYTHING? I feel I am. On the other hand I would hate the idea that people check guidelines before contributing.

Does time come into anything here? On the net everything happens at warp speed. Does this change your behaviour and does that change have an ethical aspect?

On the net it is possible to put things up and take them down quickly. You once removed a Polly Bush contribution – that’s something you couldn’t do offline. I’ve never noticed it but perhaps you’ve also altered history in other ways. Are the archives as originally published and does that matter? Is it OK to go back and change them?

Margo: I took Polly’s piece down at the editor’s request as it contained drug references to which he did not approve. The only other time this happened was about 18 months ago, when I took down details of a stop work meeting on proposals to merge the Canberra bureaus of the Herald and the Age at the request of the online editor, who convinced me that publication was an unreasonably provocative act in the circumstances. I correct back entries when people (and there are a few of them in the blogging world) point out grammatical or spelling errors. I don’t change archives on matters of substance.

G’day. Our columnists are getting into gear – today Jack Robertson makes his 2003 debut with Time for a question change on Iraq (jack20), a piece debunking Jim Nolan’s defence of war on Iraq on human rights grounds in Take a risk for human rights: Back Bush, webdiary17Jan.

Harry Heidelberg was inspired by HIH: Will Costello be nailed? (webdiaryJan17)to write two columns. His corporate eye view of the perils of outsourcing is at Outsource, then backsource at Harry20Jan). He goes to town on bad corporate behaviour in HIH: Time to stop the rot for good (Harry20Jan).

Michael (last name withheld) in Sydney, another financial type, blames the incentive-based pay which has mushroomed since deregulation for much of the sleaze:

“Having worked in stockbroking, investment banking and now for a large multinational (whew, there’s a list !), it seems to me that since the deregulation of financial industries around the world, starting in the late 1970s in the US and making its way here in the 1980s, the world of commerce has been engaged in a project to both increase the percent of employees remuneration driven by incentives and to push this methodology throughout as many levels in the organisation as possible.

What started as bonuses for bankers is increasingly becoming, in some shape or form, a feature of many people’s pay structure.

At the risk of a gross generalisation, the theory as taught in most business schools is about getting the employees to think like owners by “giving” them a stake in the economic outcomes of the firm. This then engenders greater commitment, productivity and performance and all’s right with the world.

In practice, I have very serious doubts about some of the unintended consequences of this approach. Let’s just put to the side the most egregious examples from recent corporate collapses. They’re far too obvious. What are some of the other problems of this path we seem to be heading down somewhat unquestioningly ?

Firstly, the design of incentive based remuneration systems is very difficult to get right. Problem is, if you give someone an explicit incentive, they may very well follow it to the letter. For example – bonuses based on current year performance can create dysfunctional short term behaviour, like the profit banking Harry Heidelberg discussed.

Secondly, what should be the measures? Accounting profits? “Economic” profits? Cash? There’s a whole world of literature out there on what metrics to use. Use the wrong one, or the wrong combination and it can backfire.

Thirdly, if people are rewarded on the basis of getting the deal done, the audit signed or the case won, we have seen all too clearly that sometimes the result can come a too high a price. Which might not be a problem for you if you’ve banked your bonus and moved on, right?

Finally there’s the issue of how to incorporate subjective judgments about performance in incentive pay. Another example from my experience was a bonus system largely decided upon the fees generated by the employee and the recommendation of the head of the business unit. There were no guidelines about how these recommendations were to be made. Consequently, the bonus system, which could account for anything from half to a multiple of salary (depending on seniority) became a black box. This did not make for a particularly healthy culture – intensely competitive politics, patronage, no co-operation etc.

But my biggest problem with the whole concept is that the underlying Pavlovian premise is people respond best to money and that all you have to do is provide a steady stream of cash based on the right targets and all will be well. As you noted in your speech, this goes to the monetisation of all values. If it can’t be quantified in cash terms, then we question its worth and importance.

So what has all this to do with ethics? In many professional services firms and large corporations, the structures in place to reward people often take no account of any concepts of ethical or fair dealing. That’s not to say that ethics isn’t a core value of the firm. “We value honesty and ethical dealing above all else” etc….

If anyone gets caught, of course they’ll be sacked, but is it any wonder that the actions (ie pay systems) speak louder than the corporate vision statement rhetoric? I firmly believe that unless there is some moderation (let alone reversal) in the magnitude and extent of incentive based pay, or at the very least a rethink of methodologies, governmental or societal responses will have great difficulty getting past incentive systems that can at best make it easy to ignore, and at worst actively work against, ethical behaviours.

And we’re spreading this approach throughout the economy. Hmmm. Not too sure about that.

Australian Financial Review legal reporter Chris Merritt wrote a disturbing piece about HIH on Saturday, opining that the perpetrators of the bankruptcy of one of our largest insurers would get away with it. “Those who had been expecting the nation’s governments to launch a crackdown of the insurance industry and its professional advisers are too late. Instead of a crackdown, state and federal governments are already implementing the exact reverse,” he wrote.

Chris notes that even if prosecutions of a few of the 1000 possible breaches of law identified by counsel assisting were launched, it would break the bank of the regulatory authorities. The big boys twist the legal system every which way, at enormous expense, to save themselves, and Peter Costello has given corporate regulator ASIC a mere $5 million extra to do the job. Even if Costello gave more money, the regulator would still only do targetted prosecutions, Chris said.

What’s more, ripped off consumers will find it harder to launch civil proceedings for damages because since the HIH collapse state and federal governments have begun changing the law to make it harder to sue company directors and professional advisers, including watering down the tests for professional negligence!! Looks like accountants and lawyers here are nearly as powerful as the US lobby groups who’ve been so successful in feathering their nests and limiting their accountability. NSW – home to the workers friend Bob Carr – has been first off the mark in legislating to protect professionals against consequences for their negligence. The others have yet to act, so there’s still time to knock off the rort elsewhere.

In announcing these drastic curtailments of liability for negligence, says Merritt, Governments “failed to recognise the dual nature of the law of negligence, which simultaneously operates as a system of compensation and as a system for enforcing community standards by punishing wrongdoers.”

“By watering down its effectiveness as a compensation system, the nation’s governments have also watered down its effectiveness as a system for enforcing community standards.”

Harry wants all the alleged perpetrators dealt with as a lesson to companies and the professions. I agree. Peter Costello, as architect of APRA, the disastrously failed regulator for the insurance industry, has a duty to fix up his own mess. He should do at least five things:

* Give ASIC enough funds to prosecute ALL cases where there is ANY chances of success, and instruct ASIC to do so. Let’s have an end to prosecution of all poor miscreants and selective prosecution of the winners of our society who do the wrong thing. That’s the best stick, by far, to ensure more businesspeople and their professional advisers think twice before breaking the rules. It would be money very well spent.

* Tell ASIC to publish a list of ALL adverse findings against all affected players – including professional lawyers, accountants and actuaries accused on unprofessional conduct – and publish regular updates of where they’re at on each.

* Tell ASIC to detail every legal ploy that every prosecuted player uses to delay proceedings and to recommend legal changes to cut off all possible technical means for corporate players to evade responsibility for their actions.

* Write to all professional bodies of the accountants, lawyers and actuaries involved and demand details of what action, if any, is being taken to discipline and if necessary expel errant practitioners. Two of Australia’s top legal firms, Blake Dawson Waldron and Minter Ellison, are implicated in this scandal, and it’s time to end the closed doors, only-if-we-feel-like-it responses from professional associations with the job of encouraging and enforcing ethical behaviour in their ranks.

* Convene a meeting of state governments to draft comprehensive laws to clean up and reform the associations of all professionals with ethical responsibilities. In the meantime, tell professional bodies to come up with their own reforms pronto.

I outlined one model in my piece Ethics overboard: How to promote integrity in the moment of choice (webdiary14Jan):

What I’m thinking of is framework legislation, to cover all jobs with ethical duties. It could require all professions to have an ethical oversight body comprised of a chairperson and directors agreed to by consensus between the profession’s leaders and consumer groups, and if consensus cannot be reached, by election. Membership of the professional body would be compulsory to work, and members of the oversight body would have legal protection against defamation and the like.

The group or individuals on it would give advisory opinions to members in a bind. These would be regularly published in a pro-forma way. If a professional accidentally breached an ethical duty, apologies could be lodged, and published. The body would look at complaints it judged worthy of consideration or those it found out about independently, in open session. It would seek the views of members. It would publish reasons.

Except for extremely serious matters, like a psychiatrist sleeping with a patient, there would be no penalty or a reprimand on proof of a first breach. What I’d be looking for is an ongoing conversation, a genuine engagement, for the profession, not a penal system. Because the system is not penal, the person under investigation would be required to speak for him or herself.

In his first piece for Webdiary, Harry Heidelberg detailed an horrific example of the laxness of many professional bodies these days:

Don’t believe existing bodies when they say they have it covered. I belong to one which has a members ethical counselling service. A mate of mine went to them in dire need of advice earlier this year and they were hopeless. They offered no help at all. The whole thing is window dressing crap. When you really need them, they won’t be there for you.

This mate of mine had to resign from his job to get out of his ethical dilemma and endure three months of frightening unemployment. Some people may treat this lightly but I think it is outrageous that a well known professional body has a so-called ethical counselling service that failed so abysmally. Sure, it may be an isolated case but it should never happen. In the case of my mate it was serious stuff. His employer was on the verge of bankruptcy and hadn’t paid “group tax” (ie the pay as you earn tax deducted from employees) in nearly a year. No one cared for him. He’s a good guy and no one cared or listened. He could only trash himself to survive and sleep at night. From My ethics, Harry10Sep2002.

Harry’s example was replicated during HIH. The Herald’s Elizabeth Sexton laid bare the inaction of the accountants’ professional body and the collapse of peer group pressure as a means of ensuring ethical pressure in a great piece in Saturday’s paper called Unheard voices of warning at HIH. I’ve republished her piece at the end of this entry. (Conflict of interest, the most basic professional no-no, is now broken at will by directors and professionals, as the HIH inquiry shows. crikey.com.au’s editor Stephen Mayne lists the worst of them, together with other corporate examples, in his list of ‘conflicted service providers’ at crikey.)

After Liz Sexton’s piece, a brilliant expose of the culpability of Peter Costello for the APRA mess and a compelling case why either he or the APRA board he appointed should resign or be sacked. Christopher Sheil’s piece, which appeared in the Australian Financial Review last Friday, also makes the old point governments never remember – if you want to deregulate markets you’ve got to have very tough, very well resourced regulators to keep the players honest. “Light touch” regulation in a deregulated environment always ends in tears. Always.

As Webdiarist Jozef Imrich writes:

What we’re dealing with here is not a shortage of regulation, but rather a deficit of morality and ethics in the rooms of the corporate executives. We have laws in place that require full and honest disclosure of assets and liabilities. These executives chose to either bend or break those laws, and they should be paying a heavy price for it.

The scandal has helped to show us once again that not only is government regulation necessary, but stronger government oversight is a must.

I suspect that those with high ethical standards who get appointed to the positions of government oversight bodies will ultimately prove most fruitful to the public interest. Each nation needs characters who are above the board, literally and metaphorically. Experienced and fearless operators, like former NSW auditor Tony Harris, ought to be placed in a position of power where they can enforce stronger government oversight.

I bet my life on the fact that people dedicated to public service would make CEOs responsible and liable for the accuracy of the financial statements of their company.

Without a stronger government oversight, the prosecution will continue to kick in only after we have caught corporate executives doing something wrong.

If there’s any justice in politics, Costello should be nailed on this one. A mea culpa is the least he can do. That, and a bloody good Costello blueprint for nailing the culprits and cleaning up the supervision of ethics in our professions.

Harry advises that the annual general meeting of the Davos forum will be on the topic “Building trust’. The preamble: “During the past year trust has broken down throughout society. The Annual Meeting will provide a platform for leaders to address the challenge of restoring confidence and building trust.” The meeting begins on January 23 in Davos, Switzerland. For details, and “trust survey results” go to weforum.

***

Unheard voices of warning at HIH

by Elizabeth Sexton, SMH, 20/01/2003

“When Jeff Simpson was wrestling with his conscience in mid-2000, three of his mates in the insurance industry were worried about him. “Their continual advice to me was ‘Be careful, Simmo, are you sure you know what you are doing?’,” he says.

Mr Simpson, who had resigned from his job as a middle-ranking accountant at HIH a year earlier, was considering alerting the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority to some of HIH’s dodgy financial habits.

His friends, also ex-HIH, were not anxious about the strength of his case, but they suggested he use rubber gloves to post the document to APRA. “I didn’t think they were joking,” Mr Simpson told the HIH Royal Commission 10 days ago.

Still, he found the nerve to contact APRA, although unfortunately the regulators could not see what was staring them in the face. At least he tried.

The commission has revealed other similar episodes in the sorry history of HIH and FAI that were capable of restoring our faith in human nature, but they can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

An overwhelming impression from last week’s closing submissions is the number of people who knew the place was rotten but did not tell. In a sense, their stories are more disturbing than the much shorter list of those accused of premeditated fraud.

How did a series of otherwise honest Sydneysiders working in two of the least glamorous fields imaginable – insurance and accounting – end up with their faces on the front pages and their names on lists of potential targets for court action?

The short answer is that they turned a blind eye.

It’s not hard to imagine why. With mortgages and school fees to pay, it is a big call to stick your neck out against your employer.

Despite his initial approach to APRA, Mr Simpson eventually got cold feet. He was worried that he was “perhaps in breach of confidentiality if I went further with this sort of thing or it would upset too many people or it might mean somebody trying to sue me”.

It is hard to criticise him for being discouraged, though, given APRA’s reaction and what he described as a “don’t go there” response from the Institute of Chartered Accountants the previous year. (In a black twist, the person the institute nominated to listen to Mr Simpson’s story in 1999 was named in the closing submissions as a central player in an accounting fraud in 1998.)

The potential for financial pressure to stop people rocking the boat did not apply only to employees. The commission heard that an “unhealthy” 50 to 80 per cent of the fee income of external actuary David Slee came from HIH. For the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, HIH was the biggest single Sydney audit client.

A counsel assisting, Richard White, SC, said this week the willingness of the auditors to call things as they saw them was compromised by constant pressure on the audit division from other parts of the firm to lift “underperformance” when it came to profit contribution.

There was extensive evidence that both the actuary and the auditors were well aware of HIH’s parlous state.

Mr White criticised Mr Slee this week for “optimistic assumptions and inadequate methodologies” in assessing how much money HIH needed to set aside to meet future policyholder claims. But, though his analysis was allegedly weak, Mr Slee was still alarmed and his reports to the board carried increasingly strident warnings of the dire risks facing the company. What a pity none of the non-executive directors ever read them.

The commission also unearthed a 2000 e-mail from an employee of the Australian Government Actuary to an APRA staff member, reporting Mr Slee had told him that, if Canberra made the insurance regulations tougher, it would “blow his major client out of the water”.

The audit certificate included in the HIH annual report was signed for five years running by an Andersen partner, Alan Davies. In early 1999, he told directors he would qualify his “true and fair” declaration if HIH did not change its ways.

Concerned by an utterly blank response, he arranged a lunch meeting with two non-executive directors. One of them, Neville Head, told the commission about the “angry” reaction from HIH’s chief executive, Ray Williams, that the meeting took place without his knowledge, which included the comment that “there appear to be people working against me”.

Andersen quietly shifted Mr Davies off the HIH account a few months later. Overall, the auditors failed in their duty to scrutinise the integrity of the published accounts, a counsel assisting, Wayne Martin, QC, said on Monday. “In virtually every instance of controversy, (Andersen) ultimately yielded to management’s view of the accounting treatment to be adopted, which invariably had the effect of overstating profitability and understating liabilities,” Mr Martin said.

Mr Martin described the evidence given about the reasons for shifting Mr Davies as “tortuous”, but concluded that it appeared linked to Mr Williams’ reaction to the lunch. Mr Williams did not go so far as changing audit firms, however. That would have been very much out of character for a man who counted his business relationships in decades.

Mr Slee first dealt with Mr Williams in 1970 and started as HIH actuary in 1980. Andersen audited HIH’s books continuously from 1971. Three of its former audit partners accepted invitations to join the HIH board. One of them, Geoff Cohen, chaired HIH from its 1992 stockmarket float until its March 2001 collapse. Sydney QC Bob Stitt, who served the same board term, had appeared regularly as the company’s barrister since 1971.

Loyalty was the highest praise Mr Williams could bestow on staff. Those who understood “the Heath Way” (HIH originally stood for Heath International Holdings) and stuck around could expect some of the lavish treatment for which HIH is now infamous.

Putting off confronting an unpleasant truth might be an understandable human trait, but, in the case of HIH, it made the final outcome much worse than it needed to be.”

***

Competition push needs safeguards

by Christopher Sheil, AFR, 17/01/2003

Christopher Sheil is a visiting fellow in the School of History, UNSW

The HIH debacle has lessons for the structure of other regulators, as Christopher Sheil explains.

Only the federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, can save the board of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

The fallout from the HIH Royal Commission may also set back the Howard government’s plans for a national electricity lawmaker, and should trigger a basic rethink of prevailing approaches to regulation.

But before we jump ahead, let’s look at APRA. Under the authority’s legislation, the board has the responsibility for determining APRA’s policies (“including goals, priorities, strategies and administrative policies”) and for ensuring the body’s functions are performed “properly, efficiently and effectively”.

In light of this charter, the survival of the board beggars belief, given that the senior counsel assisting the royal commission has not only charged that APRA “missed every one of the available opportunities to identify and react to the looming financial problems of the HIH group”. He has also claimed that the body “lacked the resources and the requisite culture to undertake any effective form of regulation” and “wasn’t well served by its senior officers”.

With criticisms as sweeping as the board’s responsibilities are broad, even in the event that the royal commission’s final report proves half as damning, APRA’s bosses should still be well on their way.

Of course, Costello can save the board, by taking the responsibility for APRA’s failure and resigning himself. Fat chance. Yet there is a case to be made. After all, APRA is wholly Costello’s creation.

The Treasurer established the now beleaguered regulator in 1998, following the recommendations of the financial system inquiry (the Wallis inquiry) he instigated in June 1996.

The Wallis inquiry’s main thrust was to separate the Reserve Bank of Australia’s responsibility for economic policy from the task of supervising bank prudential standards, which was devolved and amalgamated with other supervisory responsibilities including responsibility for insurance funds within the new APRA.

Back then, Costello boasted that his new competition-based supervisory system would cut costs by reducing regulation in favour of a level national playing field, thereby inducing investment and benefiting consumers.

The whole system, he frequently puffed, was “leading edge in world terms”.

How far away those heady 1998 days seem. This week, counsel assisting the royal commission observed that in “hindsight, there was never any realistic prospect that [APRA] would adequately perform its regulatory responsibilities with respect to HIH”. This week, Costello hasn’t uttered a word.

More broadly, the APRA debacle also spells trouble for the long-mooted national electricity regulatory authority, which is one of the Howard government’s headline objectives for 2003.

As with the Treasurer before him, Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has been trumpeting the case for the national regulator, promising benefits from separating policy from regulatory responsibilities and by “reducing government intervention and control” in favour of enhanced competition on a level national playing field.

Macfarlane is already puffing about the way his proposed national regulatory scheme will pronounce Australia “open for business”.

And just like Costello and the financial sector, Macfarlane is in grave danger of overlooking the distinctive features of electricity markets, which mean that increased competition will always demand more, not less, supervision.

The need for more regulation under conditions of intensified competition follows from two ready observations. The first is that electricity like compulsory insurance products contains many public goods and essential service characteristics, in addition to embodying natural monopoly elements.

These market characteristics are quite remote from the abstract model of perfect competition that underpins the assumptions upon which Costello’s past and Macfarlane’s envisaged regulatory reforms are based.

Most pertinently, when public goods, or monopoly, or near-monopoly features are present, governments can never escape the consequences of major market failures, as the HIH collapse amply demonstrates.

In turn, this automatically means that, unless governments flagrantly wish to widen their exposure to market failure, measures to increase competition in these kinds of industries must always be accompanied by more regulation.

This insight is scarcely novel. Unlike Australia’s economic rationalists, Adam Smith knew that regulations designed to protect the public interest always have to be strengthened with increased competition, for this will always oblige businessmen to “be more liberal in their dealings with their customers, lest their rivals should carry them away”.

The government did a lot of crazy things in the name of neo-liberal ideology when it first came to power – often for the benefit of its big business benefactors at the expense of the citizens who elected it. Senior ministers – including Peter Costello, former finance minister John Fahey and former higher education minister David Kemp – grotesquely misconceived the role of government and completely failed to fulfil their duties to the people.

The result has been disaster for the nation and its people, yet the perpetrators blithely refuse to admit error, rethink their principles for policy, or even wipe the self-satisfied smirks off their faces.

The Herald’s political editor Geoff Kitney nails the government’s responsibility, in part, for the HIF debacle in his column “Clubbing together for a soft touch” (smh). Big company collapses, just like development planning disasters, usually have a long and murky history, and HIH is no exception. Geoff traces the influence FAI and HIH bought over the years through generous donations to and heavy-duty networking within the Liberal Party, and shows that if John Howard as treasurer had not backed FAI in the 1970s the pain of HIH insurance holders and the cost to taxpayers in higher premiums and downgraded insurance coverage for risk might have been avoided:

“Had it not been for a decision by then treasurer Howard in 1978, when he overruled doubts by the insurance industry regulator about FAI’s ability to conduct an insurance business so that Larry Adler could do so, FAI would never have entered the industry.”

The contemporary political crime is that of Peter Costello, architect and implementor of “reform” of financial industry regulation on the advice of Stan Wallis, then a big business guru, since overseer of two more corporate basket cases, AMP and Coles Myer.

Yes folks, it’s the old “soft-touch” regulation model so attractive to Labor in government (remember the abolition of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal and its replacement with the pussy cat, powerless Australian Broadcasting Authority?) and then to the Coalition. APRA wasn’t a lame duck without reason – Costello’s reforms meant far fewer staff, a mandated culture of co-operation and hand-holding between the regulator and big business, and far too little time for the transition of power between the old and new regulators. As Geoff writes:

Set up by the Treasurer, Peter Costello, just weeks after the Government came into office, the Wallace inquiry concluded that prudential regulation which screened out riskier participants and reduced the likelihood an institution would fail “lessens competitive pressure and is a source of efficiency loss”.

Based on the Wallace recommendations, the Government scrapped the industry-specific system of regulation, replacing separate regulatory authorities for banking, credit union and building societies, superannuation and insurance with one financial system regulator, APRA. The new regulator’s brief was “soft surveillance of these institutions, with the emphasis on working with the industries on monitoring their financial condition and dealing with problems”…

The problem with all of this is that APRA was not even capable of carrying out its “soft touch” brief. To save money the Government gave the combined regulator 150 fewer staff than the former separate authorities. When the general insurance division was moved from Canberra to Sydney all but one of its experts resigned. When HIH was falling apart, five of eight positions in its industry monitoring division were vacant and none of the senior personnel had any experience with the insurance sector.

Little wonder it did not know what was going on. Which makes the Government’s washing its hands of any responsibility for the HIH disaster more than a bit rich.

The Australian Financial Review brought the matter even closer to the Treasurer today, with a story claiming Costello’s special big business advisory team for his financial reforms – the Financial Sector Advisory Council – told Treasury in 1999 “that HIH had been sharply undercutting insurance premiums in a bid to win business and that the whole sector needed monitoring”.

No wonder the government had to be pushed so hard to set up the Royal Commission! Yet not only is it not owning up to its role in the HIH collapse, it appears to have learnt nothing from it. Now the ACCC, a government regulator which takes its statutory obligations seriously and has done a great job in insisting that big business fulfils the ‘mutual obligations’ it owes to the community in exchange for neo-liberal policy, is under review. Big business pressure triggered the review – apparently competition policy is great until it suits the big boys to ‘soft touch’ its enforcement (for the beginnings of the big business push see Them and us,webdiary21Feb2001.)

The two other big management messes of Howard’s first term that come to my mind are IT outsourcing and the introduction of higher HECS rates to study maths and science.

The HECS decision was made on the basis that since it costs more to train mathematicians and scientists, they should pay more. The narrow focus of this cost-benefit analysis is almost criminal. The result is a collapse in enrolments for these two vital disciplines. Paying a penalty for a career that’s not highly paid is not something any government can expect most young people to do. Yet nothing has been done, and the system bleeds on.

And as Henry Ergas – the embodiment of pointy-headed economic rationalism – points out in a recent Business Review Weekly column, such crazy calculations proceed unchecked. Henry points out that the plan to refuse insurance coverage for dangerous pursuits like sky diving will mean fly-by-nighters will take over and the state will be saddled with the health bills of more accidents victims than before. Thanks Peter – you’re policies let HIH hold on too long, policy holders pay for it through levies on their policy premiums, and now you want them to pay more through reduced rights to compensation for injury caused by negligence! There’s got to be a better way – for example a low-cost, no fault compensation scheme for accident victims – but Peter Costello sure doesn’t want to think about it.

I sometimes wonder whether anyone in government these days cares about the public interest and really wants to work out good policy. Actually I don’t. They don’t.

IT outsourcing was John Fahey’s baby, assisted by Greg Barnes, now a member of the Democrats. It was pure ideology laced with short-term cost cutting and utter contempt for the public interest – including the legitimate expectation of citizens that personal information they’re forced to tell the state should not be handed over to the private sector. It led to maximum pain for government departments, a collective heart attack at the CSIRO, and a sensational lesson in the role of government from the head of the stock exchange, Richard Humphry. My feature on the policy, since dumped – again with no admission of mistake, no search for the lessons to be learned – follows.

I’ve argued for years that Labor needed, after government, to come up with some core principles about what government is for and why. It’s on a winner if it does, but it hasn’t.

***

System error

by Margo Kingston, 20/01/2001

John Fahey has only himself to blame for the computer outsourcing debacle.

Imagine if the welfare cheques of the nation failed to arrive one Thursday. It would be both a human and political catastrophe. Yet such risks were inherent in the Federal Government’s policy of outsourcing its information technology systems to the private sector, a Government report has found.

The biggest management scandal of the Howard Government – its almost inexplicably inept handling of information technology outsourcing – could have continued unchecked had it not been for the courage of the mild-mannered Auditor-General, Pat Barrett.

Barrett’s damning audit of the Howard Government’s policy of outsourcing forced the Finance Minister, John Fahey, to commission a review by the managing director of the Australian Stock Exchange, Richard Humphry.

The report, released by the Finance Minister on Friday of last week at 6pm, paints a truly alarming scenario of the potential risks in outsourcing the Government’s giant computer systems to the private sector.

“Centrelink performs a critical function for Government: around 6.4 million customers per fortnight receive payments from Centrelink,” Humphry wrote. “Many of these payments are for the most disadvantaged people in the community, whose livelihood and wellbeing depend in varying degree on government assistance.”

There was therefore “no tolerance for transition errors, unplanned downtime and system instability”, otherwise outsourcing could see “a substantial impact on individuals, the community at large and the broader economy”.

Despite this, “implementation risks have been magnified and the management of those risks subjugated in the pursuit of a contracted outcome”.

The Government swiftly accepted Humphry’s recommendations and immediately halted the Centrelink tender. It’s also abandoned the broader policy by accepting his recommendations that government agencies not yet drawn into the outsourcing whirlpool be given the authority to decide if, when and how to proceed.

It is a major blow to one of the key ideological planks of the Howard Government’s administration.

In 1997, Fahey persuaded Cabinet to decree that his Office of Asset Sales and Information Technology Outsourcing arrange total IT outsourcing at Centrelink and every other government department within two years, regardless of their needs, their business or the specialised nature of their information. It banned departments making in-house bids for the work, despite the fact that their specialist expertise and lower salaries would, in some cases, have made them the cheapest bid. It grouped departments into six big clusters and began ramming through tenders according to ludicrously tight timetables.

Fahey claimed, without producing evidence, that this would save the Government $1 billion, and slashed departments’ present and future budgets to reflect his guesstimate.

Barrett found the Finance Department had then overstated actual savings using a form of accounting it allowed no other department to use.

In reality, savings so far were $30 million, after deducting a staggering $15.2 million bill paid to legal consultants appointed by Fahey without tender, but before quantifying what Humphry called outage and service difficulties and “the considerable effort and cost” incurred by departments during implementation.

Humphry was incredulous that the departments involved had no say on whether it was cost effective or whether risks outweighed benefits.

“The Centrelink Board,” he insisted, “would need to be convinced that all relevant risks are identified and appropriately managed before agreeing to proceed with implementation.”

He continued: “It is possible that some aspects of Centrelink’s IT infrastructure are not suited to outsourcing, [and] the adoption of a selective outsourcing approach stands the best chance of achieving an optimal result.”

But the very process set up by Fahey did not give them that discretion.

Before Fahey grudgingly accepted Humphry’s recommendations, he was prepared not just to endanger welfare payments, but also to set in train a brain drain from the public sector.

Humphry noted that in any of these fields, outsourcing would end Government expertise in vital scientific areas by forcing staff with a mix of scientific and IT expertise to go private.

On the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), he said most IT systems “are directly linked to the monitoring of the nuclear reactor and security”. “In my opinion, this introduces special sensitivities which the chief executive should consider in assessing how ANSTO proceeds with outsourcing.”

CSIRO’s IT “is inherently research-oriented and does not easily lend itself to outsourcing. Much of the infrastructure forms part of the CSIRO’s core business in terms of specialist hardware and applications linked to highly specialised research. Communications links are also linked to research activities as well as universities engaged in collaborative research. In my opinion, this introduces special sensitivities …”

“Because of the time and safety critical nature” of the Bureau of Meteorology’s work, “it has developed a highly specialised technical infrastructure to provide critical meteorological data and information in real time. In my opinion this introduces special sensitivities …”.

On the IT outsourcing of law-enforcement agencies and the courts, Humphry saidthey “rely on high levels of security to protect sensitive data and electronic communications”.

“While it may be possible to outsource minor administrative components of these agencies, this may increase the risk of compromising security and exposing an agency to harmful consequences.”

The irony of a private-sector man such as Humphry explaining the concept of the public interest to government is frightening enough.

But before you breathe a sigh of relief that it’s all over, be aware that the IT infrastructure of the National Crime Authority, the Australian Tax Office, the Australian Electoral Commission and the Immigration Department has already gone under the hammer, with no protection for privacy.

The Privacy Act gives the right to complain to the Privacy Commissioner, get compensation, and ensure compliance only with respect to government agencies. There are no rights at all to take action against a private contractor.

In 1997, Fahey countered protests about the wipeout of citizen’s privacy rights by promising an urgent amendment to the Privacy Act, before contracts were signed, to extend its reach to contractors. The amendment was passed three years later, and will not come into effect until December this year.

Who can Fahey blame? No-one but himself and the Prime Minister. When he put up his Cabinet submission, every department bar his own and John Howard’s trenchantly opposed it.

Attorney-General’s warned of a privacy black hole, Treasury warned that “outsourcing posed major business and management risks without, in all cases, certain financial gains.” The Tax Office warned (correctly) of huge voluntary redundancy payments, costing government lots of cash to lose its expertise. Cabinet cleared the scheme, but left departments some discretion.

But when agencies such as the CSIRO said no, Howard stepped in, telling all departments in 1998 that outsourcing must proceed unless there was “a compelling business case [to be approved by Cabinet] for not doing so”.

The Office of Asset Sales used the prime ministerial backing to force the issue with recalcitrant departments.

The CSIRO tried to talk to Fahey about its special sensitivities but failed to make him understand, and the National Library and the Securities and Investments Commission demanded an indemnity from Fahey to protect it from future legal action before outsourcing. He refused.

No-one could make Fahey understand, and no wonder. Under questioning by Labor’s IT spokeswoman, Kate Lundy, in the Senate Estimates Committee, it was revealed that no-one in Finance or the Office of Asset Sales had anyone looking at best practice or overseas trends. The minister was flying blind.

If Fahey had bothered to look further afield, he’d have found that many private companies who outsourced IT were now “backsourcing”.

American studies have reported that economies of scale had proved illusory, senior executives were disturbed at their “lack of control”, and ambiguous contracts had led to protracted disagreements.

In making his findings, Humphry commissioned a report by the outsourcing expert Michael Reardon, whose checklist of best practice was broken on just about all counts by Fahey.

Reardon warned that outsourcing IT “involves a transfer of operational responsibility for an increasingly key business resource [and] failure to adequately address all the issues, and there are many, has the capability to seriously damage thebusiness”.

Despite agreeing to stop current tenders and let agencies decide how and what to outsource, Fahey insists that he’s already saved “hundreds of millions of dollars”. He also insists that “nothing’s changed in the policy”.

The business of government is government. Humphry’s dissection casts grave doubt on the Howard Government’s ability to manage the business for the long-term benefit of its shareholders, the Australian people. Unfortunately for John Fahey, in this case the bureaucracy was on the people’s side.

Hi. At the end Webdiary’s first week in 2003, pro-war readers have hit back with a vengeance.

 

Harry Heidelberg has big go at Carmen about her column yesterday (Proud to be juvenile, Carmen16Jan), but he’s begun the battle of our new columnists with style – engaged, constructive, and without personal abuse. He talks tough about what he calls the anti-war ‘nostalgia’ of the baby boomers at Harry17Jan.

I met Jim Nolan more than a decade ago when I covered the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal inquiry into Alan Bond’s fitness to keep the licence for Network Nine for the Herald and he appeared for the unions. Jim recently wrote a piece backing a war on Iraq on human rights grounds, and gave me permission to republish it. “What about us lefties who support Tony and George on this one? How about giving the left anti-Saddam, pro-human rights perspective a run?” he wrote. How could I resist?

After Jim’s piece, Darren Urquhart, inspired by the idea of Andrew Mamo and Helen Ferry for a “garage doors against the war” protest in yesterday’s Webdiary (webdiary16Jan) has another idea for suburban Australians to make their mark on the debate.

***

Regime Change for Saddam

by Jim Nolan

Disclosure: I am a Sydney barrister and labor lawyer who first joined the ALP in the mid sixties and was active in the anti-Vietnam movement and anti-Springbok South Africa movement in Brisbane. For the last fourteen years I’ve been a barrister appearing mainly for trade unions.

The prospect of a war against the fascist Ba’ath clique in Iraq has seen a predictable reaction by many in the political left in the United States, the United Kingdom Europe and now in Australia. It is well past time however for the knee jerk reaction to the prospect of ‘regime change’ in Iraq to be re-assessed. The rationale behind opposition to intervention in Iraq needs to be carefully considered.

Australians (and in particular the left) acted honourably in pressing for regime change in East Timor – even when the United Nations seemed to falter in its commitment to the East Timorese. Similarly, the intervention of the United Nations in Bosnia should have been welcomed by anyone who felt deeply about human rights. The actions of NATO in Kosovo – to rescue the most significant Muslim community in Europe from ethnic cleansing at the hands of the stalinist orthodox fascist – must also be regarded as a great humanitarian intervention. The same can be said for the British intervention in Sierra Leone. On the other hand, the international community can be condemned for its failure to intervene in a timely fashion in Rwanda.

These examples are sufficient to show that a blanket principle of non-intervention cannot rationally be sustained. The international community is and should be, obliged to act in the face of human tragedy and widespread human rights abuses. It has long been regarded as an important task for the left to take their own governments to task positively to require intervention in the name of human rights and democratic values. Campaigns against the racist regimes in South Africa and Zimbabwe and more recently, Cambodia, East Timor, Burma and Tibet bear this out.

Opposition to regime change in Iraq stands in stark contrast to these principled campaigns. It can only – objectively considered – lend aid and comfort to one of the most brutal and murderous regimes on earth. Anyone considering action which could lead to the prolongation of Saddam regime should be reminded of the ugly brutality of this fascist regime.

Have no doubt that the time will shortly come when this choice will have to be made. Saddam’s authority is not just built on fear and lies. His conduct gives every indication that he has long since lost the capacity for honest dealing. A material breach of the UN resolution by Iraq is as inevitable. So too will be the intervention which will follow.

Will the energies of the left then be spent in excoriating regime change or in championing the status quo of a fascist horror state which human rights advocates have described as having among the worst human rights records since World War II?

The Ba’ath party’s reign of terror

Early in its reign of terror, the Ba’athist regime liquidated communists, trade unionists and liberal democrats. Ever since it has systematically repressed and tortured its citizens- especially anyone suspected of opposition to the Ba’athist regime. Saddam continues to subject Iraqi citizens to forced relocation and deportation, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, “disappearance,” and summary political execution.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iraq said as recently as November 1999: “Extreme and brutal force is threatened and applied without hesitation and with total impunity to control the population”. The human rights situation inside Iraq is worse than any country since the end of World War II. Methods of torture used in Iraqi jails include using electric drills to mutilate hands, pulling out fingernails, knife cuts, sexual attacks and ‘official rape’.

Some recent examples of human rights abuses are: 3000 prisoners executed at the Mahjar Prison between 1993 and 1998; about 2500 prisoners executed between 1997 and 1999 in a “prison cleansing” campaign; 122 male prisoners executed at Abu Ghraib prison in February/ March 2000 and another 23 political prisoners executed there in October 2001.In October 2000, dozens of women accused of prostitution were beheaded without any judicial process. Some were accused for political reasons. Women prisoners at Mahjar are routinely raped by their guards, and prisoners at the Qurtiyya Prison in Baghdad and elsewhere have been kept in metal boxes the size of tea chests. If they do not confess they are left to die.

The Kurds

Opposition to regime change in Iraq also ignores and trivialises the plight of nearly thirty million Kurds – all of whom would dearly love regime change in Iraq. The Kurds are the largest disenfranchised Muslim community in the middle east – much larger than the Palestinians for example.

Iraq’s 1988 Anfal campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living within its borders resulted in the death of at least 50,000 and as many as 100,000 people, many of them women and children. The Anfal campaign has been widely recognised as a campaign of genocide against the Kurds. The Kurds hold the tragic distinction of being the only community to have been attacked with weapons of mass destruction by their own government.

Kurds in Northern Iraq currently enjoy significant freedom thanks to the protection against Saddam’s army provided by the air forces of the United States and United Kingdom. An absolute non-intervention policy would require withdrawal this air cover. This would serve only to permit Saddam to revive his campaign of genocide against the Kurds.

Saddam’s Shria laws

In 1994 Saddam – supposedly a secular ruler – introduced amputations and branding.

Saddam issued a series of decrees establishing severe penalties for ‘criminal’ offences. These include amputation, branding, cutting off ears, and other forms of mutilation. Anyone found guilty of slandering the President has their tongue removed. The branding was useful to distinguish war wounded amputees from ‘criminal’ amputees. (Information on the ugly truth of this regime is at humanrightswatch.)

Saddam as Sponsor of Terror

These well-chronicled human rights abuses should in themselves be sufficient to persuade the left to argue passionately for regime change. The prospect of Saddam and his clique as the wholesalers of weapons of mass destruction represents a clear and present danger to the civilised world.

It has been argued that there is no ‘smoking gun’ which associates Saddam with Al Qaeda. There is already clear evidence however that Saddam has long been an exporter of terror. Mostly this has taken the form of numerous assassinations of Iraqi dissidents living abroad who were opposed to the regime.

However the Ba’athist regime was also notoriously the sponsor and protector of the Abu Nidal group of Palestinians terrorists who were involved in a campaign of assassination of Palestinian moderates. Abu Nidal died recently in Baghdad – apparently of natural causes.

Saddam Gets ‘Religion’

In order to boost his credentials as a leading Muslim with theocratic fascists like Osama bin Laden, Saddam is presently squandering his limited oil revenues in the construction of grand Mosques. This is only one of numerous gross examples of using precious resources to shore up his regime at the expense of the welfare of the Iraqi population. The grandest will feature a moat in which an island landscaped to reproduce Saddam’s thumb print is to be built. An architect who worked on this bizarre project and gave a media interview about it recently died of ‘poisoning’.

Saddam is Iraq’s Ceausescu

The only possible objection to intervention in the interests of regime change is the civilian casualties which might ensue. The Afghanistan campaign demonstrated that casualties could be minimised. The Gulf war showed that the Iraqi army was a paper tiger and that its largely press-ganged ranks were eager to desert Saddam. The much vaunted ‘republican guard’ may be expected to collapse within days. So long as the Iraqi people are convinced that any intervention will be carried through with conviction – and not betrayed as it was in 1991 – they may be expected quickly to join the push to oust Saddam. Apart from some die hard Saddam loyalists, sensible army officers may be expected to surrender and defect.

Every rational indicator suggests that Saddam will sooner or later meet the same fate as that other joke dictator, Ceausescu. His recent farcical plebiscite and his amnesty for criminals (but not political prisoners) suggests that the regime is feeling the pressure. He has in the past few weeks reportedly recalled the children of Iraqi diplomats – no doubt as hostages against expected defections and denunciations.

When that time comes, if Saddam’s republican guard is permitted to strike out at the population without hindrance, many of his brave opponents may be expected to meet the same fate which befell democratic forces in 1991.

At the end of the Gulf war – at the urging principally of the corrupt Saudi oligarchy – the international community made the cowardly decision to permit Saddam to reassert his rule. The slaughter of his political opponents far exceeded the repression witnessed in East Timor. We in the west owe all these people and their families and comrades a significant debt which now waits to be repaid. The challenge for all of us is whether we are to be remembered as the supporters of those who will see Saddam off- or as having stood in their way.

None of the facts about the true horrors of the Ba’ath regime appear seriously to be challenged by anyone. What then (in the memorable phrase) is to be done?

There are two principal reasons for hesitation about intervention. The first is concerned with potential casualties. Many of my political comrades say that if a targeted assassination of Saddam and his henchmen could be arranged, they would not object. This in itself is a tectonic shift in thinking about the conduct of international relations – to recall for a moment Guatemala, Mossadeq and Allende! Leaving that aside, what this concession means is that the approach to intervention requires only a judgment about the probable results which flow from intervention or non intervention not about the morality of regime change itself.

This is a grim calculus but not one which suggests that one option is automatically superior. What it necessitates is a deliberate decision that a prolongation of Saddam’s regime will not lead to the murder, torture and further brutalisation and impoverishment of the Iraqi people on a scale which will exceed the human costs of intervention. In my judgment, another two or three (or more) years of brutality and its inevitable bloody and chaotic aftermath is too high a price for the Iraqi people to endure. It cannot be tolerated when the realistic alternative is a short sharp military intervention which can now confidently be predicted to topple the much hated Saddam in a matter of weeks if not days.

There is a second and perhaps in truth more substantial rationale against intervention. This is the visceral knee jerk anti-Americanism which still pervades political debate. America’s past sins, it is argued, disqualify it from any legitimacy in a struggle like this. A case in point is the former support for Saddam by the US.

Whereas the truth of this past alliance of convenience is incontrovertible, its justification to oppose US intervention now does not withstand analysis. Past sins to which the US and its allies were a party make the obligation to put things right all the more imperative, not otherwise. What better gesture to make amends to those who have suffered under the Ba’ath regime than to be their liberators – albeit belatedly. It is also worth reflecting upon the fact that that disqualification based on past conduct would have disqualified Australia from any role in East Timor.

The real campaign ahead will be to insist that the international community meets its obligations to the people of Iraq to rebuild the country, to develop democratic institutions based on tolerance and allow its people access to the benefits derived from its oil wealth. The price of that intervention must be that the international community is to be kept to its word in Iraq as much as in Afghanistan – even when more immediate issues distract the attention of decision makers. This task – to redouble the campaign for human rights, the rule of law, and secular democracy -is the far, far preferable call upon the left’s energies.

This article was first published in workersonline

***

Darren Urquhart in Sydney

I like the “Garage Doors Against the War” idea, and agree with its premises: The suburbanites in developed countries are the centre of the information war; corporations and the media are the real centers of power and contemporary strategies call for actions against them, and oil is at the center of the looming war.

I have a few points to add.

The rich suburbanites in the developed world (and that’s rich by “world” standards, not our standards) are at the centre of the ‘Information War’ because we hold the real power – the power that can see governments, and empires, fall. At the end of the day Bush, Howard, Blair are nothing without the support of the suburbs. However, the information war is being cleverly waged and we have been convinced that we are powerless.

Andrew Mamo and Helen Ferry say that “protest against government is an anachronistic agency for change”, but it can still work. The only problem is that suburbanites need to get thoroughly pissed off before they’ll leave the couch and wade through clouds of tear gas on the street. You need large numbers in street protests to get a government’s attention and you only get sufficient numbers when the suburbanites join in – see the Sorry march in Sydney and the anti-Vietnam war protests in the 60s.

However before the government will budge, the action must be sustained (see the failure of Sorry to impact policy) and that takes time. In the meantime much damage is done (see Vietnam).

In any event, protesting against the Howard government and even forcing policy change does nothing to impact the real source of power in Washington DC. Australia could tomorrow turn into a 18 million strong band of rabid tree-hugging commies and Washington wouldn’t blink. When it comes to influencing the power elite who seek to re-engineer our world we have no power as citizens. Zip.

However, we do have considerable power as consumers.

That oil plays a major role in the approaching Iraqi war and in the wider strategic goals of the Bush Administration is, surely, beyond question now. More and more people are seeing through the various smoke screens of WMD, liberating the Iraqi people, enforcing UN resolutions, tackling terrorism etc. The double standards and hypocrisy on display is pure comedy.

However, oil is just a part, maybe even a smallish part, of the overall Bush Administration strategy. The grand vision involves total US domination over land, sea, air and space (see newamericancentury). The authors of this report, written in 1999/2000, include Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), George W Bush’s younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). It is difficult to avoid the feeling that these people seek a level of power through military, economic and strategic domination that is beyond anything the world has seen before.

I have a few more premises to add to those made in “Garage Doors Against the War”.

Premise 4: Big business has the ear of the President. Big business finances the two US Presidential candidates when they campaign and so have a kind of veto right at that early stage. These campaigns are big, big deals and cost plenty. When the new king is anointed his benefactors line up for pay back.

Once in power the US President maintains close and serious contact with big business. Maybe someone could find out how many official conversations George W has had with the head(s) of Mobil-Exxon since coming to power and compare it with contacts with Howard. I wonder who wields the greatest power in Washington, Howard or Mr.Mobil?

Premise 5: Extremists pose a clear and present danger to peace-loving people all over the world. Islamic extremists flying planes into buildings, blowing up nightclubs and hotels causing considerable and understandable anxiety. Hindu extremism is on the rise in India. National extremism regularly rears its head and is apparently a concern today in Iraq. But another form of extremism is going unreported. American extremism is a dangerous reality in our world today. The views and actions of the Bush Administration are extreme.

Pre-emptive war without provocation or overwhelming evidence of imminent danger, is extreme.

Continuing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the world’s most advanced and deadly war machine and into a whole new generation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is extreme.

Pouring money into the war machine and ignoring the plight of millions of Americans with no health care, barely-there welfare and an annual murder rate that leaves any recent American war in its wake, is extreme.

Thumbing your nose at international law, treaties, opinions and UN Resolutions is extreme.

Invading dozens of countries, killing millions of people, overthrowing democratic governments and supporting terrorists is extreme.

To believe, really believe, that you are God’s chosen people, his special sons and daughters for whom victory is destiny, is extreme.

In my experience the American people are not extremists. My friends, family and business partners there are great people. They are not extremists. However, extremists have taken power. They reside in the Pentagon, the media, the corporate world and now the White House.

I propose we identify these extremists as Amerikans, or maybe Americists, primarily to avoid confusing them with the American people – our mates forever.

So:

* the suburbanites are the key to Western political power;

* effective protest against government is slow and, for Australians, probably ineffective against the Amerikans;

* the pursuit of oil and wider strategic goals dictate US foreign policy; and

* big business is heard in Washington and American extremism is real and terrorising (specially if you are currently a resident of downtown Baghdad).

Proposal:

We, the suburbanites of the developed world, can have our voices heard via the heads of Big Business. It is our consumer dollars that makes them Big in the first place – they owe us one.

We should appoint say five US companies to be our spokespeople in Washington. Big, big companies with well loved consumer brands, iconic American brands, and with plenty of business being conducted outside of America. Businesses whose products have equally well distributed competitors.

This proposal is for an Amerikan Boycott.

The companies we nominate to be our spokespeople will not see any more of our consumer dollars until they achieve effective policy change in Washington DC. We do yet seek regime change but we are running out of patience with the current regime. They must hear us, and act, or innocent businesses will feel our wrath.

As a starting point we could look to Mobil-Exxon (number 2 on the Fortune 500 with revenues of US$191 billion), Ford (#4, US$162b), Coca-Cola (#99, US$20b), McDonalds (#139, US$15b) and Nike (#204, US$9b).

A total of US$397,000,000,000 in Big Business revenue, about the same size as the US Defence Budget.

These companies products are, generally, easily identified. Any consumer anywhere, with total anonymity and security can take part in the Amerikan Boycott. Suburbanites all over the world can express their concerns about the extremism emanating from Washington by altering, ever so slightly, their habits of consumption. BP instead of Mobil, Holden instead of Ford, Pepsi (or even a juice!) instead of Coke, any mum and dad burger-joint instead of Maccas and Bonds instead of Nike. There are plenty of options. What is needed is massive, sudden solidarity in sending the message.

If their sales and profits drop their shareholders will demand something be done. What are they going to do? They can’t demand we return to buying their products. Like all great companies in difficult times they must listen to their customers. If the bottom line is hurting it will be because their customers are asking their loved brands to speak for them in the corridors of power.

This can happen fast. No march permits needed, no strategies for breaking police lines, no getting arrested on the grounds of “national security”. Just millions of concerned consumers all over the world having their say.

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.