Rupert Murdoch is pro-war, and thinks a lower price for oil after Iraq is conquered will be better than a tax cut. After those comments (see Murdoch: Cheap oil the prize), a reader sent me Their master’s voice by Roy Greenslade in The Guardian, which reports that all 175 Murdoch editors around the world just happen to agree with their boss. It begins:

What a guy! You have got to admit that Rupert Murdoch is one canny press tycoon because he has an unerring ability to choose editors across the world who think just like him. How else can we explain the extraordinary unity of thought in his newspaper empire about the need to make war on Iraq? After an exhaustive survey of the highest-selling and most influential papers across the world owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation, it is clear that all are singing from the same hymn sheet. Some are bellicose baritone soloists who relish the fight. Some prefer a less strident, if more subtle, role in the chorus. But none, whether fortissimo or pianissimo, has dared to croon the anti-war tune. Their master’s voice has never been questioned.

The reader wrote: “It is unrealistic to think that media owners do not influence media content and this article attests to an agenda beyond – and unfortunately more sinister than – objective news reporting (if there is still such a thing these days). You only have to pick up a copy of the Daily Telegraph to know that Murdoch’s papers are pushing for a war. On one hand, it astounds me that Murdoch is so unabashedly blatant about his pro-war stance as it relates to cheaper oil if the coalition of the willing is successful, and yet I find his honesty a breath of fresh air amid the pretences and lies of Bush, Blair, Howard.”

Jack Robertson was so incensed by yesterday’s Daily Telegraph that he penned a Meeja Watch on Murdoch’s war. Sue Stock in Nimbin, NSW recommends medialens for “critical reporting on the media’s role on the Iraq situation, particularly in the UK”. Veteran journalist Phillip Knightley’s speech to an Evatt foundation seminar I attended on Sunday on the death of investigative journalism and what to expect of the impending war coverage is at evatt.

After Jack, expat Kerryn Higgs reports on the rallies in New York and Barcelona. To end, Phil Clarke’s choice of Wilfred Owen’s WWI poems, which “might bring home the reality of war which seems to be missing from the debates”.

“Owen was killed in action 1918,and it is frightening to think that his poems are now nearly 100 years old and still so applicable”.

I’ve just published Harry Heidelberg’s column on Chirac’s untimely outbreak of French arrogance, Chirac blows it. Me, I remember a comment by the Herald’s then foreign affairs correspondent in Canberra, David Lague, when I asked if he was boycotting French goods in protest at its nuclear testing in the Pacific. “Think big picture, Margo. France is the only western nation prepared to take on the United States.”

The war is so dominant in people’s minds that the NSW election can’t get off the ground, but we’ll launch the election webpage next week regardless. I’ve just published the fourth article by our planning and development commentator Kevin Rozzoli, Community consultation: A plan of action, and commentator Noel Hadjimichael’s column on questions voters might like to ask before they vote, Labor’s lost years. He begins:

Given the informal acknowledgement by both sides of NSW politics that we facing a short three week campaign – during which time the caretaker Carr administration will do its utmost to play by the rules – voters should look back over the past four years and ask themselves three questions:

1. What has Bob Carr done to improve our lifestyle, job prospects or environment since 1999?

2. Who has performed best in their roles as Ministers over this period?

3. What does the next four years offer?

***

Jack Robertson

I recommend In bin Laden’s Mind, a Good Start on Goals by James Pinkerton in Newsday, especially given some of the headlines coming out of the peace marches, such as the pathetic ‘Iraq Gloats’ in yesterday’sDaily Telegraph. And this from editor Campbell Reid’s editorial (my bold):

“Yet another fundamental truth also confronts us. Saddam Hussein heads a murderous regime and according to the most reliable evidence, he has an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. In addition, he is strongly suspected of sponsoring Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation. He has murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of his own citizens and he remains in “material breach”, as the Americans say, of United Nations Resolution 1441.”

Campbell Reid is a a Goebbelian media processor. That statement (in my bold), is simply untrue. Saddam Hussein is NOT ‘strongly suspected of sponsoring Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation’, not even by Reid himself, I’ll bet (unless he has started to swallow his own tabloid propaganda). Every Muslim expert, every reputable scholar, every Middle Eastern historian and every terrorist-hunter would reject both that ‘strongly’ assessment itself, and also the piss-weak ‘passive voice’ way it is presented, even after all the fumbled attempts at such linkage. (They would ask straight off: ‘It is suspected strongly? By WHOM exactly, mate?”)

The truth is, even the most hawkish Pentagon, White House and pro-invasion representatives have only made such link attempts half-heartedly. In addition, the recent tape by bin Laden confirming that he still regards Saddam Hussein as an ‘infidel’ also exposes Reid’s line as the purest propaganda. Terrorism expert Clive Williams, for example, writing in Reid’s stablemate The Australian last week, said just that – that the tape rather strongly suggested, if not confirmed, a LACK of past link, not any bloody ‘sponsorship’ nonsense. He is only an Al-Qaeda expert, of course; Campbell Reid is a newspaper editor.

Today, of course, the PM has in fact been downplaying any future causal link between an Iraq invasion and Al-Qaeda terrorism. Although we must at the same time stop ‘terrorism-sponsoring’ rogue states, too. Lies, lies, lies and opportunistic twisting and turning; our leaders looking for any pro-war excuse when it suits, backing off from them when it doesn’t. This is NO way to justify an invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The Murdoch Press has of course been doing this stuff in the US for a long time; It’s no wonder that so many Americans now believe there were Iraqis among the S11 terrorists. I wonder how long before Australians start thinking the same way?

And you simply have to ask this critical question, more urgently every day: If the case to invade and occupy Iraq is so compelling, why do pro-invasion propagandists need to lie while making it? Doesn’t the truth matter anymore? Is that what you think our soldiers are going to be fighting for, Campbell?

Read Pinkerton’s ‘Osama’s memo on progress’ carefully, and ask yourself if it rings true or not. If those of us who oppose the invasion and occupation of Iraq to ‘disarm’ Saddam are ‘Saddam appeasers’, then those likeDaily Telegraph editor Campbell Reid who would lie to have us do what I think is Al-Qaeda’s most fervent hope – the West invading and occupying Iraq – are surely ‘Osama appeasers’.

Or maybe neither group are in fact ‘appeasers’ at all. Maybe there’s a smarter middle path to follow. Maybe it doesn’t have to be War, or No War. I’ve said what my middle path is (Looking for John Curtin). So have the French and the Germans. I wonder what Campbell’s might be. Or Rupert Murdoch’s, I should say, since that’s doubtless where Reid goes to do his independent editorial thinking.

***

Kerryn Higgs in New York

First, many thanks for Webdiary. I live in Syracuse, NY State for several months a year, so I read it every day and consider it a lifeline to Aussie debate and politics. I’ve never written to Webdiary before, but thought you might like to hear a bit about peaceniks in New York City and Barcelona on Saturday. (For Webdiary readers who like a good laugh, black comedy at its best is Bush’s “real” State of the Union address(http://downloads.warprecords.com/bushwhacked2.mp3) The mp3 file should automatically download from this link and play on Real Player.)

It was a great day in New York City, even if we weren’t allowed to march the way people nearly everywhere else could. It was a day of very cool conditions for standing around, about -4C when we got to our spot, -6C by 3pm, and with the “wind chill factor” (a crucial part of weather-speak here) it was the equivalent of -14C. At least 300,000 – and maybe a million or more – stood out in the freezing air for three or four hours, keeping their blood circulating by waving placards (of which my favourite said: “Empty Warhead Found in White House”, and pictured Bush’s hollowed-out head lying on its side, with the top sawn off.)

The official rally was supposed to take place in 1st Avenue north from 49th Street, just around the corner from the UN. My companions and I actually made it onto 1st Avenue and found a good spot near 64th Street. The stage was maybe a kilometre away, though we could see a screen on an overpass from there – sort of – and there was a sound system broadcasting the speeches at that corner, which was better value than the tranny we brought with us.

I think it was Desmond Tutu who suggested that the reasonably clement weather we got was a sign that god was on our side. The snow which had been forecast for Saturday didn’t come – and lucky it wasn’t a day or two later, when the biggest blizzard for 6 or 7 years is howling through the region. I read that people demonstrated in Augusta, Maine, on Saturday in “below-zero” (Fahrenheit) conditions, ie below -16C.

Out on these frigid streets, with hundreds of thousands of US people, it complicates a foreigner’s sense of what it means to be “anti-American”. More than 200 demonstrations took place, from New York to the dozens of smaller gatherings in towns and cities across the US, and culminating in the 250,000-strong march in San Francisco on Sunday. It cheers me to see that there is such a strong minority here which is deeply opposed to the war on Iraq.

Why New Yorkers got arrested

The reason it’s so hard to estimate the numbers at our rally in New York is that many thousands of people simply didn’t make it onto 1st Avenue. The march past the UN building (original plan of the coalition, United for Peace and Justice) was banned by Mayor Bloomberg for alleged security reasons. I couldn’t help thinking the “Code Orange” terror alert last week was especially convenient for anyone wanting to impede the protest in NYC. (It was revealed, on Friday morning here, that the alert had been based, at least partly, on information discovered to have been fabricated.)

This is a city that gets the jitters these days, understandably – duct tape and plastic sheeting sold out after the alert went orange and the government recommended them to citizens – and before more sensible voices pointed out the limited utility of a sealed room, when a chemical attack was more likely to occur in a subway or ventilation system and would tend to disperse fairly rapidly if launched in open streets. (Duct tape was a popular accessory at the rally, plastered on jackets and hats and, on posters, across the mouths of Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld.) But, whatever the real chances of imminent attack, it certainly seemed unlikely to me that Osama, even had he decided al Qaeda should target the UN, would choose the Feb 15 peace march as a cover or vehicle for attack. And, why hit the UN anyway, when it still stands in Bush’s way?

What was ultimately permitted by the court was a stationary rally in 1st Avenue, stretching north from a stage at the corner of 51st Street. The Avenue is fairly wide, maybe a bit wider than, say, Flinders Street – though the NYPD had the footpaths and intersections barricaded off. Those who made it onto 1st Avenue were directed into “pens” made of portable steel railings, which were helpfully provided for us so that cross streets could remain clear. A series of these enclosures extended over more than twenty-five city blocks. There were various attitudes to the “pens”. Many young anarchist types saw them as tools of police repression, though one of my companions, a radical in his mid-forties, confessed that – at his age – he appreciated a bit of order.

The court had allowed the organisers to set up dozens of feeder marches into 1st Avenue. Most of the designated assembly points for these were across Manhattan, to the south and west of the stage area, which meant that vast crowds converged from the south on the footpaths of 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Like us, they were herded further and further north before being allowed to get across to the rally in 1st Avenue. Conflict arose from a combination of people losing patience with being ushered so far north, a mile or more from the stage, and of the sheer numbers who were trying to reach 1st Avenue. People eventually spilled off the designated footpaths, turned round and began marching south looking for a shorter route to the action, with police ultimately resorting to riot gear and horses in an attempt to push them back.

Overall, it seems to me that the denial of the right to march lies at the root of the violence and 300-odd arrests here. In a march, you simply take your place, everyone goes the whole route and you end up wherever you end up, even if you are a mile or two from the rally stage. In the non-march situation, there were hundreds of thousands of people trying to break into the fixed rally and no unifying march to keep them together.

The feeling in Barcelona

When I got back to Syracuse late Sunday night, the water pipes had frozen and there was an email from American friends in Barcelona, where – on my reading – the biggest demonstration of all occurred, rated officially at 1.3 million. Here are their impressions:

Jacquie: We just walked in the door from the demo in Barcelona. I have never seen anything like this, over a million people. I really feel like people are saying that we want things done differently from now on. We don’t want to continue with the same rules as before, we want to find alternative peaceful ways to solve problems. It seemed like everyone in Barcelona came to this demonstration. It must have been nearly half the population! All of the streets of the centre of the city were closed. All of the streets were packed with people. The demo took hours because it was impossible to move along the route. We took a side street with the other throngs in order to arrive at the final point to see what was happening there. After a few talks and chanting and acting out in unison the role of victims of war rising up from its destruction, we were asked to leave in order to make room for the others to continue arriving at this point, in order for the demo. to even move. So then we walked back to where we had been before. This took about two hours. And we saw the group we had been with – they were just starting to be able to move down the wide avenue along the route. We stood there on benches watching as everyone passed. I felt like crying from joy at seeing this entire society saying we want something else. This war will not be in our name.

Jed: The demonstration here was amazing. Over a million people! Possibly twenty percent of the population of Catalunya was out in the street yesterday demonstrating. In Madrid there were over a million people, in Sevilla over 200,000, in other smaller cities tens of thousands also. Now we just have to wait to see what kind of phoney crisis or situation the US cooks up to justify a war that at the moment seems to be impossible for them to wage.

Margo: Associated Press reported, regarding the Orange Alert:

WASHINGTON (Feb. 14) – A senior government official said Friday the administration now believes some of the information which led to upgrading the nation’s terror threat level last week to orange, or high, was likely fabricated. Authorities drew that conclusion based on polygraphs given to terrorist suspects interviewed by the government, said this official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The apparent fabrication came from terrorists with ties to the duct tape and plastic wrap industry.

***

Futility

Move him into the sun–

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

*

Think how it wakes the seeds,–

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

Full-nerved– still warm,– too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

— O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?

***

At a Calvary Near The Ancre

One ever hangs where shelled roads part.

In this war He too lost a limb,

But His disciples hide apart;

And now the Soldiers bear with Him.

*

Near Golgotha strolls many a priest,

And in their faces there is pride

That they were flesh-marked by the Beast

By whom the gentle Christ’s denied.

*

The scribes on all the people shove

And bawl allegiance to the state,

But they who love the greater love

Lay down their life; they do not hate.

***

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,

And builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.

When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him. Behold,

A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

*

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

***

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

*

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, –

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

*

With a thousand pains that vision’s face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

‘Strange friend,’ I said, ‘here is no cause to mourn.’

‘None,’ said that other, ‘save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something had been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled,

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery,

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot- wheels,

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

*

‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now…’

 

Photo by web diarist Fiona Haines

Related:  Fiona Haines peace rally photos

What is the instinct at the core of the world’s largest demonstrations against war on Iraq? Why did so many protest for the first time? And what does this augur for the future?

It’s partly because many people – conservative, radical, right and left – believe war on Iraq will escalate terrorism and instability, not lessen them, and have become frustrated by the pro-war nations’ failure to address or engage with this belief and deeply fearful about what that failure means. They’ve become convinced that they’re being lied to to get their support for the deaths of their soldiers, and civilians, in their name, while war is being waged for quite another purpose. They are worried that right is not on their side – not on either side – and they’re deeply uncomfortable at the lack of moral certainty that the war is a just one.

It’s partly a profound lack of trust in the judgement and motivations of the US administration, fed by its assertion of the supremacy of its values in its national security strategy and its determination to break away from the constraints of the UN, the body set up after WW11 to try to prevent another world war. (For a critique of the strategy, see A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which is being used in the US anti-war campaign).

The complicity of western governments and companies in the rise of the monster they now seek to destroy because, they say, he has weapons – which they supplied; the exposure of their lies and secrets in previous wars; and their refusal to admit past mistakes in arguing their cause is destroying their credibility. Big change is in the air. People all over the world are learning about the UN, middle-east history, WMDs and their makers and distributors – stuff most hadn’t given a second thought to before now. A collapse of trust in our political and economic leaders means more and more people are getting the facts to make up their own minds, asking their own questions, finding their own answers, and, increasingly, taking their own action. They’re asking what values their respective nations really stand for. The energy, dynamism, and passion of this debate is unprecedented, all around the world. The peoples of the world sense that we’re on the verge of something momentous which could destroy our lives and those of our children if we get it wrong now.

When I heard about Osama’s latest tape my first reaction was that it should have been suppressed. World-wide publicity means terrorist cells across the world get the message to strike after the invasion of Iraq. This is the biggest downside of the American’s failure to find Osama. And that failure is the biggest weakness in the American case for war. We’ve been told over and over that war will be different from now on – that the world needs to unite to weaken the stateless enemy. Yet the Americans are doing the same old thing – attacking a nation state – without evidence that he’s in cahoots with Osama, an act which empowers Osama’s plan for a clash of civilisations. The West strikes first.

Last night I had a nightmare vision of the world becoming the Israel/Palestine war writ large. Israel has overwhelming force and the nuclear bomb on its side, and uses it’s military advantage without mercy, just as the Yanks will. Palestine is reduced to nothing but the willingness of its fighters to die in the cause. Is might winning? Perhaps, but the the price is endless insecurity and daily fear of death in the shops or on the bus. Freedoms and liberties disappear as the State swings becomes a police state to prevent terrorism. We lose our freedom, we lose our sense of safety, we fear our neighbour. More and more resources are thrown into protecting our water supply, our airports, our key infrastructure, so our standard of living goes down. If the terrorists really get going they could threaten our trade supply lines. Maybe the decision of the Europeans and the Japanese to subsidise their local agriculture will prove correct – that in the dark times ahead self-sufficiency will be vital to get food on the table and to ensure as far as possible that it’s not contaminated.

Most think the war, phase one, will be quick and pretty easy – what happens after that is the worry. This is what all the questions about ‘Why now?’, and the Americans failure to prove a link between S11, Osama’s terrorist network and Suddam are really about. To many, invading Iraq means the West could begin World War 111. Yet none of the three advocates for war ever really address this fear – let alone spell out what they plan for Iraq post-Saddam. We have been given no risk assessment of whether the war will make us safer or more vulnerable to terrorism in the short or medium term – Howard’s most contemptuous failure in the debate. No wonder more and more people think it’s really about something else altogether – oil, and in Australia’s case – about trade for blood and yet another downpayment on our hope for help if we’re threatened, while the very decision to go to war with Iraq makes the odds of needing that help higher.

There’s an even more corrosive factor in play. The culmination of the cynical governance of the major parties in western democracies is that they are just not believed. When Tony Blair recently called out the troops to London airports in response, he said, to a specific terrorist threat, many people thought he was lying – that his announcement was a tactic to increase support for the war. We can’t underestimate the Vietnam legacy here – million of people around the world know the US lied about that war from beginning to end.

So now we see an extraordinary and extremely dangerous new phenomenon – governments of democracies prepared to send troops to war in the face of sometimes overwhelming public opinion against it. This brings the very legitimacy of those governments into question, and the very meaning of democracy. As I’ve argued before, this is not a question of populism – I fully support the right of elected governments to make decisions they believe to be in the public interest in spite of public opinion. War is special. It is blood sacrifice. It requires at least the appearance of the sacrifice of citizens on behalf of fellow citizens, not on behalf of the government of the day. Democratic governments must make the case to their people. If they don’t, the social compact at the foundation of democracy is in tatters. Politicians may have squandered the precious gift of trust from the people for so long that it’s not there any more – and they are then in no position to say “WE will decide whether we go to war and how many troops we commit”. If people come to believe that the state, as well as the enemy, is their enemy, we could be in for tumultuous change in the system under which we live.

What does this impending war on Iraq symbolise? What’s made the world split asunder over it? What’s the really big picture here? What’s at the bottom of the intensity of feelings about it? Any ideas?

Today Mr Mecurious explores the difference between nation state’s rights and human rights, Alex Pollard argues that pacifists are the least naive of all when it comes to war, and Kingsley Thomas uses Jungian analysis to suggest a psychological reason why Australian’s aren’t buying Howard’s war. To end, more Webdiarist reports on the protest marches last weekend, and reactions to them.

To begin, Matthew Roberts writes that he’s been reading The Arrogance of Power by former US Senator J. William Fulbright, once Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, published in 1966. “It is astonishingly relevant to issues surrounding US Foreign Policy today, and given the many reflex references to the appeasement of Nazi Germany the following quote is of particular interest.”

The second great advantage of free discussion to democratic policy-makers is its bringing to light of new ideas and the supplanting of old myths with new realities. We Americans are much in need of this benefit because we are severely, if not uniquely, afflicted with a habit of policy making by analogy: North Vietnam’s involvement in South Vietnam, for example, is equated with Hitler’s invasion of Poland and a parley with the Viet Cong would represent ‘another Munich’. The treatment of slight and superficial resemblances as if they were full-blooded analogies – as instances, as it were, of history ‘repeating itself’ – is a substitute for thinking and a misuse of history.

The value of history is not what it seems to prohibit or prescribe but its general indications as to the kinds of policies that are likely to succeed and the kinds that are likely to fail, or, as one historian has suggested, its hints as to what is not likely to happen. Mark Twain offered guidance on the uses of history: ‘We should be careful,’ he wrote, ‘to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.’

There is a kind of voodoo about American foreign policy. Certain drums have to be beaten regularly to ward off evil spirits – for example, the maledictions regularly uttered against North Vietnamese aggression, the ‘wild men’ in Peking, communism in general, and President de Gaulle. Certain pledges must be repeated every day lest the whole free world go to rack and ruin – for example, we will never go back on a commitment no matter how unwise; we regard this alliance or that as absolutely ‘vital’ to the free world; and of course we will stand stalwart in Berlin from now until Judgement Day. Certain words must never be uttered except in derision – the word ‘appeasement’, for example, comes as near as any word can to summarizing everything that is regarded by American policy-makers as stupid, wicked, and disastrous.

I do not suggest that we should heap praise on the Chinese Communists, dismantle Nato, abandon Berlin, and seize every opportunity that comes along to appease our enemies. I do suggest the desirability of an atmosphere in which unorthodox ideas would arouse interest rather than anger, reflection rather than emotion. As likely as not, new proposals carefully examined would be found wanting and old policies judged sound; what is wanted is not change itself but the capacity for change. Consider the idea of ‘appeasement’: in a free and healthy political atmosphere it would elicit neither horror nor enthusiasm but only interest in precisely what its proponent had in mind. As Winston Churchill once said: ‘Appeasement in itself may be good or bad according to the circumstances. … Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble and might be the surest and perhaps the only path to world peace.’

***

On Sovereignty

by Mr Mercurius Summer Hill

This piece is intended to open a Webdiary discussion on the concept of state sovereignty and how this idea is used in contemporary international politics and rhetoric. The question is not an abstract nicety. All governments from time to time justify their policies to their citizens and the world using the idea of sovereignty. It has serious and immediate applications, and we would all be served by a fuller comprehension of this term.

I seek to show that sovereignty, or state rights, is divorced from citizen/human rights, that state leaders themselves understand this, and that they invoke the term to help carry out their political will.

I begin by disavowing any specialist technical knowledge of the topic – what I will do is observe some uses of sovereignty in recent times and invite consideration and response. There will not be verbatim quotes or citations – rather this piece conveys a general impression from which we can steadily become more forensic if this serves our aim.

Historically, sovereignty finds its origin in the imposition of a monarch’s powers across their kingdom. Although monarchism has declined, the idea of sovereignty has remained – distilled now into the powers of a states body politic. Depending on the nation in question, the body politic may consist of a single individual, or may extend amorphously across government and opposition parties, lobby groups, commercial interests, the judiciary and even, intermittently at the margins, the general populace.

Sovereignty has also retained at its core a key property of the old monarchic powers – that of a disjunction with the rights of the citizenry. Although sovereignty need not be in conflict with citizens rights, it equally need not represent them. Thus a dictator and an elected leader alike can employ the idea of sovereignty when they wish to assert their state power over their limited domain.

To me then, sovereignty and state rights appear to be interchangeable terms, at least in modern usage. The term state rights may also be more precise because it makes it clear that we are talking about something other than citizen’s rights or human rights when we discuss sovereignty. I will thus use these terms interchangeably – employing state rights when this helps to illustrate the disjunction. (If you think this is begging the question, please finish reading first and then tell me why.)

I now invoke the UN into this question, as it brings us closer to immediate affairs, and by observing UN declarations and resolutions we can learn more about how states view their own sovereignty.

Sovereignty appears to be a paradox at the heart of the UN that brings with it a dynamic tension capable of simultaneously galvanising and crippling the effectiveness of that organisation.

The UN was in part established with the hope that wars of conquest and expansion can never again occur, as member states territorial borders are in some sense inviolable. This is also a recognition of reality in this, for what state would sign up for membership unless the promise of inviolability was afforded to all members? No body politic, from a tin-pot dictator to the leader of the free world would agree to surrender an atom of their sovereignty to a larger organisation.

And yet there is also the recognition in many fine UN declarations that this sovereignty, which stops at each nation’s border, is not the same thing as human rights, which are said to be universal.

I seek neither to endorse nor criticise the resolutions/actions taken by the UN over the years, but rather to point out their functional outcome in which state rights have at times been subverted in favour of other rights. Nor do I deny that there are vested interests behind many UN actions – I would not dare to suggest that human rights are the sole, or even major motivation behind many resolutions – nevertheless they are a factor in many.

We should be mindful also that the UN is comprised wholly and solely of its member states. So what we see is that states themselves are sometimes willing to subvert the sovereignty of other states, through the forum of the UN, when they believe other rights take priority.

What is really going here? Why are member states willing to subvert the sovereignty of other states when this raises the possibility that their sovereignty may some day be infringed through the same forum? Perhaps by resolving publicly before the world forum to the temporary subversion of another states sovereignty, they seek to attain a legitimacy that they do not believe is present in unilateral action.

And yet there are limits. We observe frequently that states object to certain UN treaties or resolutions on the grounds that it would infringe their state rights. Except they don’t say state rights of course; in their rhetoric they say sovereignty. But should we buy this argument? Should we believe that when our leaders tell us they wish to protect our sovereignty, that they are doing this for our benefit?

They certainly wish to portray themselves as doing so. Yet we know that our leaders have a functional understanding that sovereignty is disconnected from our rights as citizens. So how can they credibly stand before us and claim to be protecting us when they act to protect our sovereignty? I think they rely on our ignorance of the interchangeable term state rights.

I invite you to consider these points the next time you hear North Korea or Iraq reject UN resolutions or demands from other nations to disarm on the basis of their sovereignty (or some similar term/motive/idea). Whose rights are they trying to protect? Their citizens? Hardly. It is easy to see in a totalitarian state that they seek only to protect their body politic and their absolute power.

I also invite you to consider these points the next time you hear our government refuse to sign the Kyoto protocol, or let any boat people in, on the basis of our sovereignty. Whose rights are they trying to protect? It is less easy to see in a formal democracy, because state power is not absolute. It would be comforting to believe that these are the times when state rights happen to align with citizen and human rights, but somehow I doubt it. I have nothing to substantiate the assertion except that if states themselves understand sovereignty to be different from citizen/human rights, then it leaves me little hope that they have my interests at heart when they talk about our sovereignty.

To further illustrate this point, our government appears to have little trouble negotiating on all sorts of things when it looks for free trade with the US. They are happy to allow GM crop imports for example, and they would only do this if they did not believe it to be an issue of sovereignty – other rights may be negotiable, but not state rights.

Please don’t tar me with any particular political brush. I am agnostic on Kyoto and GM crop imports – merely observing the bi-polar attitude our government has about how these two issues relate to state rights. They believe that one infringes sovereignty while the other does not. What’s the difference?

As for boat people, our government has held up its Tampa laws (and the mandatory detention policy inherited from Labor) as an assertion of Australias sovereignty. It follows that the government believes the current asylum seeker regime must be vital to protect state rights. I speculate that this is because the asylum seeker policy controls the movement of people, something any state wants to do.

But what does this tell us about the citizen/human rights involved? I think very little. Do we on one side of a border have more rights that those on the other side? Clearly not, if the term universal human rights is to have any meaning. Our government recognises universal human rights – but in practice they have shown that when it comes to asylum seekers, state rights will take priority.

So do you still think that defending the sovereignty of Australia affords your human rights any kind of special protection? It seems to me to be utterly disconnected with human rights concerns – like a fish without a bicycle, to borrow the phrase.

***

Alex Pollard

There is often an argument around pacifism; that That some wars ARE just, because circumstances make them unavoidable. But a survey of history shows that wars usually start with a lie.

The Spanish-American war started with an explosion on board the USS Maine. An apparent coal explosion, it was nonetheless blamed on the Spanish (historynavy).

Hitler started his invasion of Poland, and World War II, by claiming the Polish had attacked first. Hitler took half of Poland, and quite conveniently, the USSR invaded the other half (thehaus).

In the Gulf of Tonkin, an American vessel was reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese boats. When the US Congress finally figured out this was all made up they rescinded the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but that couldn’t bring back the millions of dead Vietnamese and Americans (militaryhistory).

To get the Saudis on side for their last Gulf War, Powell, Cheney and Bush Sr. produced fake satellite images of Iraqi forces supposedly massing on the border (guardian).

The world knows that the Bush gang has basically been lying flat-out for the last year about Iraq. So what alternative do these war mongers have apart from a humiliating climb-down? Throughout the last century, US Governments have sacrificed the lives and health of many American soldiers for some pretty flimsy reasons. So why should we assume that they consider the lives

of civilians any more worthy? Does this latest terror alert herald an event which will salvage the now hopeless case for war?

Pacifists are sometimes accused of naivety. But history shows that pacifists are the least naive of all.

***

Kingsley Jones

I wanted to bring attention to the writings of Carl Gustav Jung in The Undiscovered Self and Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The observations of these persons (both now dead) are germane to our time, and of special relevance to Australia as we ponder our own destiny at this time.

The nutshell view of both is that the development of the individual and society at large are generally ruled by matters of mythological story. They can be easily understood in such terms when the guiding myths of a society are recognised and understood.

This is not an assertion about historical truth or fatalistic destiny. It is rather more positive than that, being an assertion of what is common to both individuals and crowds when they rise above challenges of resident evil. The eternal human truth is to see in a simple story (a vision) how it is that intuitive understanding can lead one beyond limited logic to practical solutions of real and lasting transformative value.

Let us take this metaphysical statement and make it very concrete. In my view, Australia is, as yet, not a fully formed nation in its psychological self-knowledge.

However, it does definitely appear to favour subvert heroism to overt heroism. I mean that Australians would prefer to act heroically without being seen to, and do not favour the pomp and circumstance of the hero who would claim to be heroic. This is why our first popular heroes were sportspeople who were seen to succeed without really trying.

I suspect this very tradition is why the ANZAC mythology is now so powerfully invoked by John Howard. However, I suspect our Prime Minister truly does not understand the force and depth of that mythology.

Let us recall that the Dardanelles was a grave strategic error committed by Churchill on a whim, and without very good military foundation. An expeditionary force was committed and placed under the command of the British. The tale is really one about how Australians survived psychically in spite of a stupid military campaign that was poorly executed, and poorlycommanded, against an enemy (The Turk) who turned out to earn the respect of our soldiers.

This may not be the official history. However, it is as recounted by my departed grandfather. He was not a soft man, having eliminated by his own trigger finger upwards of eighty of the enemy as a sniper. He was decorated and managed to survive the Great War by the good fortune of being shot just before every major battle (including the Somme).

He never (in my memory) regarded this campaign as holding any individual glory bar survival for he and his mates.

I fear that our Prime Minister has now committed precisely analogous historic errors through invoking what he doubtless perceives to be the popular force of the ANZAC myth to dress up an unpopular military adventure.

He has committed our troops to an open ended campaign in a foreign war of dubious strategic merit, with no clear military objective, under the command of a foreign military whose troops operate somewhat differently. They are more in the Roman tradition – it really does not matter what horror is visited on the enemy, as the end justifies any and all means of securing victory (witness the US rhetoric that will not die regarding possible use of nuclear weapons).

I anticipate that the story of this war is likely true to the letter of the Australian ANZAC myth. If our troops are called on to fight, they will do so bravely, probably be killed primarily be our alleged friends through either poor command of military strategy or “friendly fire” incidents of honest but tragic confusion.

At the end of the whole sorry tale our troops will probably come to admire that “the enemy”, despite their poor standing and equipment, for the simple reason that they fought for their homeland (and not their leader) against invasion.

Of course, Australia could dispense with revisting this mythological past and embrace a rather more noble mythological future of realising that we are most probably more anti-heroic than heroic by nature.

I am saying it is more naturally Australian to break the rules and say: “Actually, this is an exceptionally silly war. We can ennoble ourselves and our region by breaking with the US.”

In taking that stand, we would likely succeed in elevating our political influence very considerably, in extending our relevance to our own region, and in exhibiting some signs of an emerging individuated national character.

This land is blessed with many able people whom I feel have always been wise enough not to blindly follow ideology or need to agree with one another about every little thing. Difference is accepted and tolerated if not encouraged.

However, about one thing I think we should all be agreed. Australia must be a nation that stands for the future and not the past. We must be a nation that leads the way rather than being a blind follower.

So much of the world is sunk into foolish rationalism and hair splitting over the finer points of agreement or disagreement about this or that obviously limited imported platitude, management fad or social fashion.

Why should we, safely isolated from the roots of such social pressure, seek to slavishly copy and imitate it? Can this nation not feel mature enough to step forward and make our own High Renaissance of cultural progress?

Why actively seek to be as vanishingly small in human perspective and aspiration as it seems possible to be? Does the nation not realise that by merely being ourselves and moving forward to celebrate difference and grow and nourish the creativity within all of our citizens that we can easily be far more than we ever thought possible?

I may perhaps have massively misjudged my fellow Australians, but I do not believe we were destined to be a tiny people, nor an arrogant people. I think we are best being a fluid people who easily intuit the wise middle path.

In terms of military history, I thought that was where Australians always excelled.

We favour some of the East and some of the West in matters of politics and strategy. It is not necessary for us to slavishly follow the order of battle: in real war or politics.

This is always much the best course of action for a people who have limited human and material resources.It is better to be like water and flow around rocks. Obstacles are only so to those who feel they must crush them.

Leave the grand strategic errors to the USA. They have already most ably forfeited their claims to world power.

MARCH REPORTS

Damian Shaw-Williams in London

I took part in the largest ever demonstration in London and it was a breathtaking experience in the midst of well over a million and a half people. The diversity of the crowd was amazing, from the ‘Old Fogies For Peace’ to the Socialist Workers Party to the Conservatives for peace. It was young, old, black, white, muslim, jew – a seething colourful solid wall of humanity.

It received far more sympathetic coverage than the previous march, and had the immediate immediate effect of Blair buying more time by waiting for yet another report. However I think the greatest evidence of its significance was the lengths to which the government here were trying to downplay the significance of the march and emphasise the divisions within it. These efforts were treated with the derision they deserved by nearly all media outlets as they (even the pro-war Murdoch ones) had to for a day at least acknowledge the will of the people, who will not be ignored on this matter.

***

Fiona Haines

I went to the rally in Sydney and it was overwhelming to see so many people embracing peace and showing support for the citizens of Iraq. The obvious focus now is to prevent war but the issue of how to deal with Saddam and his monstrous treatment of his own people also needs to be addressed. It’s a shame that is has taken so long to put his human rights violations onto the political agenda. (Margo: Today’s rally photos are by Fiona.)

Polly Bush in Melbourne

Mate, where is the Melbourne voice in all this protest coverage? I thought you were a Queenslander, for chrissake, what’s all this about “Sydney rarely matches the activism of Melbourne on the really big issues, let alone beats it hands down”? C’mon, we weren’t exactly a no-show. As you mentioned, the conservative guesstimates put it at 150,000. The organisers added on another 100,000 – the same as Sydney’s conservative guesstimates, and standing outside the State Library amongst the sea of infectious smiles on Friday evening it was entirely impossible to tell. A leg up on a TV car provided an extraordinary view – Swanston jam packed down the blocks, spilling over the Yarra towards the war memorial shrine. On Feb 14, many Melburnians ditched the intimate candlelit dinner options in favour of one mass inner city love-in. Bewdiful. Shame on you for reducing this to a sly dig at inter-city rivalry!

***

Sarah Moles in Allora, Queensland

I drove 3 hours to suburban Brisbane on Sunday with my teenage son. We took a train from Toowomg. It was like getting onto a Tokyo bullet train – absolutely stuffed with people. It was hot and humid, but not even the children (noses in dangerous proximity to adult armpits) complained. It was a sea of happy smiling faces. At Roma St there were thousands more – all ages, all races, from all walks of life, impeccably behaved, united in protest. It was impossible to get close enough to hear the speakers – only the applause and cheers could be heard. It was inspiring and emotional and restored my faith in my country.

PROTEST REACTION

Thomas Price

Wow ,some middle class hypocrites went on a Sunday walk for 3-4 hours. Big deal – after it they all went home to their comfortable houses with their oil driven cars to live off the fat of the west. The west that they claim is nothing less than Satanic! Now call me old fashioned but I was brought up to believe that if you were against something you didn’t use it. Until these protesters get real and stop living of what they claim we have obtained by ill gotten gains they will be exposed as nothing more than the slimy hypocrites that they are. Talk [ and walk ] is cheap. If you are for real give up your car, your HealthCare and your freedom. The marchers will never do it – hey that’s like a real sacrifice!! Stuff that.

***

Diann Rodgers-Healey

I hear the drums of war beating

WAR WAR WAR

I hear the voices of people pleading

PEACE PEACE PEACE

*

They say we have a democracy

And yes, we are the lucky country

So don’t ask why, unheard they remain

Our rights-filled fearful shrills for peace

*

We fear the loss of blood, so young

We fear the swell of death, so near

The loss of peace, the strength of rage

A future of divide, inequality more alive

*

But yet we teach our children

Peace. Don’t war.

Compromise negotiate mediate, never hate

Compassion understanding, never retaliate

*

So which path are we to create?

Armed with lessons from our past

Filled with respect and intellect

With relentlessness we must find

A bridge of peace to overcome war

A respect for humanity

An understanding of inequality

And the will power to change the roots of hatred

***

Constance Chew in Perth, Western Australia

“I don’t think the mob, to use that vernacular, has quite made up its mind on this issue and it can’t really make up its mind until we know what all the alternatives are.” John Howard.

I think John Howard should make up HIS mind. If those who disagree with this government’s stand on refugees are members of “the elite”, how can we now also be part of a “mob” when we oppose war against Iraq?

How does he know people “haven’t made up” their minds? How many people does he need to see on his plasma telly before he believes that a great many people strongly disagree with his kowtowing to Dubya? Maybe he should *ask* “the Mob”! NOT IMPRESSED!

***

John Douglas in Zhanjiang

What is wrong with these people? we have had the world trade centre then Bali as wall as many other terrorist acts around the world and now they want to allow a man like this to make his weapons of mass destruction. I wonder how many will stand up and say I supported Iraq after they use one of these weapons.

***

Simon Probets in Cromer, NSW

I protest the fools that marched in Sydney and around the world on Sunday. You do not represent me or the majority of Australians. Allow the rest of us to support our Aussie troops and thank God such brave men and women exist to provide our freedoms so that we can enjoy the simple pleasures of life such as sleeping at night without fear of being ripped from our beds and executed in front of our families. Evil exists in the world and it has to be dealt with.

***

Peter Dyce

I will be interested to see how Howard manages to worm out of this situation. Howard has no room to move. He can’t back out, and he has no ability to influence events. He can’t play down this weekend’s message. He can’t pretend to be listening to the electorate and take us into a war. Has he told the electors one too many?

A mighty lot of city people are not happy. I think the bush is still squarely behind him. But the drought will have a part to play in this too. Basically NSW over the range is totally rooted…. if they don’t have rain by March farmers will be shooting themselves on their own verandahs. So maybe they just won’t care who is office as long as they can get a hand out.

Wars are bloody expensive. Is he finally going to come unstuck? Somehow I don’t think he will because right now we have no other option, Crean? I don’t think so….maybe Costello stages a coup? What would his line be? Maybe a back bench revolt?

Maggie Thatcher got shafted by her own people and and the Tories ended up with a compromise politician in Major who lead them into the wilderness and years of righter than right Beau Blair…

Is this the seachange the Left is looking for? Stuffed if I know, Margo.

Brigadier Adrian D’hage debuted in Webdiary in the lead-up to the war on Afghanistan. Adrian served in the Australian Defence Forces for 37 years, and was awarded the Military Cross for Service in VietNam and was Head of Defence Security for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. He quickly became a mainstay of commentary about the war in the mainstream press, including the Herald.

He is in Turkey at the moment, and emailed this report. I’ve also republished Adrian’s first two emails to Webdiary – now eerily resonant with the atmosphere as we enter the next war. And remember, the war in Afghanistan has only just begun. Kabul is barely under the control of the new administration. the rest of the country is lawless, ‘ruled’ by warlords. Taliban training camps have set up again, and the fighting with American troops goes on. Now, another front.

Australia and the war on Iraq: A view from Istanbul

by Adrian D’hage

“But why would Australia want to join the war on Iraq?” Umran asks. Umran is an attractive young graduate of the famed Istanbul University and she is genuinely puzzled at Australia’s involvement. “For us, the war against Iraq is very close. Iraq is on our border. But you Australians are a long way away.”

Why indeed? For an Australian overseas the question is not an easy one to answer.

I have fallen amongst modern-day Ottoman thieves. “Young Ataturks”. We are drinking in the James Joyce Irish Pub off Istanbul’s pedestrian ‘Istiklal Caddesi’. Umran, Ekrem, and Kaan. Young, sophisticated, and educated. They are the hope of the future and more than prepared to question their own Turkish and other Governments’ decisions to join the US in a war against Iraq. Outside the only vehicles are the bright red Turkish equivalent of San Francisco’s trolley cars. Three kilometres of crowded pedestrian mall, although by Istanbul standards it is still early. The band in the Irish Pub will not start until midnight.

“What do you think of George Bush?” Ekrem asks. Ekrem is a student of politics, also at Istanbul University. That is easier. “I am reminded of Peter Ustinov’s answer to the same question,” I reply. “If the American people are really happy with George Bush, Clinton was a man of unnecessary brilliance.”

In Europe, perhaps far more than in Australia, the voices against war are growing more strident. Here they want justification and they don’t agree with the rush. Tens of thousands are marching against premature attack. After all, Europeans have seen a bit more of it over the years.

Istanbul and war. One of the world’s great cities, she has been attacked and conquered nearly as often as Jerusalem. In 513 BC Byzantium, as it was then known, was sacked by the Persians. Then in 408 BC by the Athenians, and in 339 BC by the Macedonians. Six hundred years later as the old Roman Empire faded and crumbled, Emperor Constantine renamed the city and Constantinople was established as the new Roman capital. It was then variously sacked by the Arabs, the Bulgarians and the Armies of the Fourth Christian Crusaders and then in 1453 by Mehmet, the first of the city’s long line of Ottoman Sultans. The past citizens of Istanbul could tell the world’s politicians a thing or two about the art of killing. And as it has so many times over the centuries, again in Istanbul the talk now turns to war.

The young Turks are afraid of their Government’s involvement and the real motives of the United States. “I wonder if Iraq did not have any oil whether we wouldn’t find another way?” Kaan asks. And as I listen to them question our determination to join the US I can’t help thinking about the rise and fall of empire. Throughout history all empires have over-reached themselves and fallen. The Greek. The Roman. The Ottoman. And now Pax Americana is exhibiting the same symptoms. Hubris, greed, control of other nations’ oil and a less than judicious use of power to the point where those who are oppressed revolt.

“But you’re a soldier. Why don’t you support the war?” Umran asks as she orders another bottle of raki.

“The inspectors must be given a chance to do their job,” I reply, “and if that takes a year, then so be it – Iraq poses no threat to anyone while they are there”.

And I am not alone. Far more distinguished soldiers than I don’t agree with this war unless it is an absolute last resort. The ex-British Chief of the Defence Force, Field Marshal Lord Bramall; the Falklands Commander General Thompson; the Gulf War Commander General Cordingley and General Sir Michael Rose; to name but a few who have expressed similar views in recent weeks.

Unlike our bellicose politicians, those who have seen the odd angry shot know that war is an ugly business. Lots of innocent people get killed. On current estimates, about a quarter of a million mums, dads, sons and daughters who have absolutely no say in the drums of war being beaten in the US and Australia. You need strong justification for killing on that scale.

And if Australian troops are committed without the clear sanction of the United Nations, and it appears they already have been, public opinion will be decidedly against their involvement. As it did in VietNam, this has the potential to adversely affect morale and any protest therefore must be against the Government and not the young men and women who are simply doing their duty.

And here the Government has a very difficult task because it has already politicised the Defence Force to a degree never before seen in this country. It is hard to imagine Tony Blair shouting across the House of Commons at the Leader of the Opposition that ‘my Admiral’s torpedo beats your Air Marshal’s exocet,’ but that is precisely what happened during the ‘children overboard’ fiasco. Given that situation, the next question from Umran was not without irony.

“You still have not answered why Australia is so keen on war in Iraq,” she says, but it is without malice. Australians, unlike Americans, are still welcome in this city. “Because as I see it you Australians are swimming against the tide. The French and the Germans are not going to give Bush a blank cheque. They don’t trust him. Do you trust your Prime Minister?”

I am immediately reminded of our leader’s penchant for cricket. The question is like a ball from Dennis Lillee at his best. Almost unplayable. “He is a very successful politician but unfortunately his Government has lied to the public too many times.” There is a loud ‘snick’ and the slips cordon goes up as one. I shake my head. “Trust? No.” The umpire’s finger is up in agreement.

It is time, Umran announces, to find a Turkish nightclub. Not the touristic ‘belly-dancing’ variety, but one with genuine Turkish music. We disappear down an alley where even the cats look ferocious.

“You see,” Kaan continues as the band gets into full swing and more raki appears, “Syria was paid $US 1 Billion for Gulf War I, but will be the next target in Bush’s axis of evil so she is not interested in Gulf War II. Here in Turkey we got $US3 billion but we have a big trade with Iraq and that and our tourist industry will disappear.”

“And I don’t think Iran’s hardliners are too keen on a US puppet next door that will take over the oilfields for US companies,’ Ekrem adds.

As I can only agree, I announce my intention to inspect the inside of my eyelids. Umran gives me a passionate farewell on either cheek. I put it down to Turkish friendliness and hospitality. With multiple ‘rakis’ on board and the cats seemingly less ferocious I wend my way back to my hotel.

The Pera Pelas. Like the Roman Empire and Pax Americana, it is in a state of decline. Like sleeping in an elegant museum. A bygone haunt of spies and the famous, the Mata Hari and Sarah Bernhardt stayed here. As did Agatha Christie in Room 411 where she wrote “Murder on the Orient Express”.

I decide to have a nightcap in the “Orient Express Bar” and reflect on the achievements of another famous guest, Ernest Hemingway. And the foolishness of Bush and Howard. And the fall of the American Empire.

***

September 20, 2001, in Bush’s rhetoric gets more disturbing each day

“WANTED – DEAD or ALIVE !?? Whilst our heartfelt sympathies are with those whose lives have been shattered by this truly criminal act, the rhetoric from the US President gets more disturbing each day. Already, US citizens have been promised a decisive victory – and decisive victories against unseen enemies can never be delivered.

The Australian Government has signed a blank cheque – without the foggiest notion of what might be planned. Whatever happens, history will question the wisdom of that course. And whatever we do, we will have to do it without the Army Engineers who are exhausted on Nauru.

It is time to take a very deep breath.”

Just how blank the cheque is became clear yesterday, when John Howard announced on ABC radio: “We leave open the option of any kind of military involvement which we are capable of and would be appropriate. And yes, that includes troops.”

That brings the reality home, as do comments by Afghan-American writer Tamim Ansary: “Maybe the bombs would get some of those disabled orphans, they don’t move too fast, they don’t even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn’t really be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it would only be making common cause with the Taliban – by raping once again the people they’ve been raping all this time.

“What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops.”

“We’re flirting with a world war between Islam and the West. And guess what: that’s Bin Laden’s program.”

“Read his speeches and statements. It’s all right there. He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he’s got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that’s a billion people with nothing left to lose, that’s even better from Bin Laden’s point of view. He’s probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not just theirs but ours.

Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?”

Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. But our leaders better start preparing us for it instead of filling us with puffed-up, emotional indignation.

And maybe we’d better realise that we’re already fighting our own war. Our fleet is patrolling the high seas boarding and repelling leaky boats. We have our own prisoners of war on the Manoora., We’re building our own prisoner of war camps in Nauru and Christmas Island. It’s costing us millions a day. War time powers are invoked as civil liberties and the rule of law disappear in the cause of, according to John Howard, “our national sovereignty”.

Labor has just agreed to the first case of mandatory sentencing in federal law. It will apply to only to Indonesians – the poor sods at the bottom of the people smuggling chain who bring the boats over. They’ll spend a minimum of three years in jail for a first offence. Labor has also agreed to exclude our Courts from any role in the fate of our prisoners.

Most strangely, our war is against the people fleeing the terror of today’s equivalent of Nazi Germany, the Taliban. As we back the USA in bombing the bejesus out of Afghanistan, as Australian citizens face execution for carrying the bible in Afghanistan, we wage our own war against Afghan refugees. And as in any war, we demonise “the enemy” by pretending they are really Taliban terrorists sent to infiltrate our detention camps.

Our defence force exhausts itself on a war against Afghan refugees before the war begins against their oppressors.

This is bipartisan policy. There is no mainstream political debate on the merits of this crazy farce. In the vacuum, prejudice, hatred and ignorance flourish. There is no space for reason.

September 21, 2001, from More on war fever

America has declared War, and ‘it is my melancholy duty to inform you, that as a result, Australia is also at War.’ With scarcely any Parliamentary Debate, we have pledged not ‘in-principle’ support but support ‘up to the limit of our capability’.

Normally such a declaration of war would result in an address to the Nation with an explanation of what this means – and it means we now support US policy in the Middle East. As part of that policy the New York casualty list occu rs every month in Iraq alone, except there it is mainly women and children.

Australians need to understand this because we are now at war and a much bigger target. It is behind the ‘why’ of this and any future bombings and other criminal acts. We might still have given an overwhelming yes – whatever you’ve planned – we’re in! But I’m not sure we all understand US policy, let alone support it.

In a democracy, it is sometimes useful to have that debate first.

 

Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies www.daviesart.com

It’s awesome. The front of Sydney’s march for peace arrived back at Hyde Park while tens of thousands of people were still waiting to join the march. We’re talking twelve city blocks here. As I write, people are still leaving Hyde Park on the walk half an hour into the speeches at the march end!

A colleague who marched in Sydney in the 1985 Palm Sunday march (170,000 people) and the Sydney Harbour bridge walk for reconciliation (200,000 people) said it was even bigger. Some are saying 250,000, the biggest protest in Sydney’s history. Some are saying it could be closer to 500,000! City shoppers were dumbstruck, hundreds lining the march route eyes wide, mouths open.

At the head of the protest marched three old, battle scarred men of Australian politics – Laurie Brereton, NSW Labor right hard-man and an opponent of any Australian ground troops if the UN gives the US the tick, Green icon Bob Brown and Peter Baume, Fraser Government minister, all shouting “No war”. The trio summed up the incredible diversity of people there in the stinking, sweating heat – North Shore matrons rubbing shoulders with skinheads, young families with strollers, groovy trendoids angsting over which anti-war T shirt to buy.

A friend of said on Friday she knew it would be big because friends kept calling to say, “What do you wear to a protest?” How Sydney.

It’s easy to get carried away at the sight of the people of Sydney reclaiming the city to make their point, but something this big has to have an effect. As does a turnout of 5,000 in the country town of Armidale – a quarter of its population.

It’s now hard to see Labor finding a way to support the war if the UN doesn’t endorse George Bush’s war – even if only one country exercises its veto. Simon Crean wasn’t scheduled to speak at any march this weekend, but it looks like the 150,000 people marching in Melbourne on Friday night changed his mind. This weekend could be one of those “turning points”, where suddenly the earth moves, the mood shifts, and politics is transformed in an instant.

This morning on the Sunday program, Laurie Oakes said to foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd: “Carmen Lawrence is out there giving fiery speeches to these demonstrations. Why aren’t you and Simon Crean addressing rallies as well?”

“Well, Simon will be speaking to the rally here in Brisbane today, Laurie. I’ll be attending that rally as well,” Rudd replied. Labor is getting locked in. It can’t afford not to, unless it wants to throw votes to the Greens.

Rudd also added another refinement to Labor’s policy. Before, it would consider agreeing to a unilateral US strike if one country vetoed a UN resolution for force. Now it will also require the very thing the United States has been unable to deliver so far. “If it gets to the stage where the United States was seeking to advance a case outside the framework of the United Nations Security Council that case would have to rest on establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and the events of September eleven,” Rudd said. “Or secondly, that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capability and threat represent a real and present danger not just a theoretical danger to our security today. As of today, no such case has been made.”

That’s very close to a no. Very close. The stage is set for a rip roaring political battle in Australia where the NSW election could become a defacto referendum on the war. Howard’s very legitimacy could be at stake if he defies public opinion to join a unilateral strike. Soldiers do not die for the Prime Minister, of for the Australian government. They agree to risk their lives for the Australian people. If the Australian people say no, there will be calls for the Senate to bring down a government which wishes to defy the people’s will on war.

Sydney rarely matches the activism of Melbourne on the really big issues, let alone beats it hands down. Right at the front of the march, behind Laurie Brereton, walked two of his factional opponents, Labor left shadow ministers Daryl Melham and John Faulkner. If the people’s voice isn’t enough, the threat of a split in the Labor Party is. Labor will now take on this cause. John Howard’s work will have just begun when he gets home from his “peace mission”.

Laurie Brereton’s speech to parliament on the war, where he argues against any Australian ground troops even in a UN sanctioned war, is at webdiary

 

Anti-Vietnam demonstrations in Sydney. Photos: The Fairfax Photo Library

How big will the peace marches be? Big enough to make a difference? A straw in the wind. A young bloke I sit near at work, a sports writer, says four friends have sent him emails about where to go and when on Sunday. None have ever protested before.

It seems so long ago, but 200,000 people walked across Sydney Harbour bridge in May 2000 in support of reconciliation. John Howard didn’t, of course, and he told Peter Costello not to either. And it was different, that one – a march of affirmation rather than protest.

Still, peace marches can be seen in the same light. At the first Vietnam war moratorium protest in May 1970, when 70,000 people marched in Melbourne and 20,000 marched in Sydney, organiser Jim Cairns said: “When you leave here you have a sacred trust. You have the trust to stand for peace and for the qualities of the human spirit to which we must dedicate ourselves…We can overcome, ladies and gentlemen, and I have never seen a more convincing sight than I can see now to give me confidence that we shallovercome.” Anyone with memories of Vietnam protests they’d like to share?

In 1985, more than 300,000 people marched across Australia in Palm Sunday anti-nuclear rallies. The biggest rally was in Sydney, where 170,000 people brought the city to a standstill. (SMH, 1-4-1985, p.1) NSW Premier Neville Wran told protesters the rally reflected the concern people had for the future, and that “the tens of thousands of children in this march should give a message to every politician.” Some multinational corporations didn’t get it – they helped Saddam and Pakistan with nuclear components. The world’s politicians didn’t hear – they, and their companies, supplied nations with chemical and biological weapons. Now George Bush won’t rule out using nuclear weapons against Saddam. I’d to hear from readers who attended the Palm Sunday rally.

In November 2000, a crowd variously estimated at 40,000 to 80,000 rallied in Sydney city to “Save the Rabbitohs”, the South Sydney Rugby League Club, from expulsion from the competition. Some other recent big protests: Thousands of workers rallied at Melbourne airport to protest the collapse of Ansett in September 2001, 10,000 people protested outside parliament house in Canberra in support of the ABC in February 2001, 10,000 people protested at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne in September 2000, 80,0000 workers in Melbourne protested against the federal government’s workplace relations laws in August 1999.

Here’s the Herald story on the anti-Gulf War rallies in January 1991. For another blast-from-the-past experience, check out the movie Bob Roberts, a devastating satire of American politics set during the first Gulf War.

***

Thousands join the fight for peace

by Tony Hewett

Publication date: 21-1-1991

In the biggest anti-war rallies since the Vietnam moratorium marches of the 1960s, thousands of Australians from all walks of life and in every capital city have condemned the Gulf war and Australia’s involvement.

In Sydney, a 25,000-strong crowd marched on the US and Israeli consulates on Saturday before gathering at the Town Hall to hear speakers vent their anti-war messages. More than 20,000 people demonstrated in Melbourne on Friday night, 10,000 in Adelaide, 5,000 in Brisbane on Saturday, 3,000 in Hobart, 2,500 in Perth, 1,000 in Canberra and 400 in Darwin.

And a big crowd of Sydney people will join residents in Canberra today to demonstrate outside Parliament House when the Parliament resumes to debate Australia’s involvement in the Gulf war.

Whether the anti-Gulf war message was carried in the speeches of peace activists like the former Labor Cabinet minister Mr Tom Uren, who called the US President, Mr Bush, “that six-gun specialist”, or in the music of Mr John Schuman, who wrote the song I was only 19 about Vietnam, the crowds applauded in agreement.

At the Darwin rally, Anglican Archbishop the Most Rev Clyde Wood told the crowd: “When war is considered to be a marvellous idea … it is almost enough to destroy one’s faith.”

In the Brisbane rally, Ms Maya Stuart-Fox, from the Environmental Youth Alliance, said the war could mean an environmental disaster, as Saddam had promised to burn the oil fields.

In Hobart, Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen’s Association (FEDFA) State organiser and Vietnam veteran Mr Mike Grey said Mr Hawke had failed to understand the growing mood against Australia’s involvement.

In Sydney, about 50 peaceniks have set up a camp outside the US Consulate in Park Street. Peace groups have loosely aligned themselves under Network for Peace, which hopes to combine the resources and organisational skills of each group to co-ordinate major anti-Gulf war activities.

In Sydney, the Network for Peace includes Bring the Frigates Home, People for Nuclear Disarmament, Australian Peace Committee, Rainbow Alliance, Conflict Resolution Network, Quakers Peace Committee, Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society. The Australian Democrats and some ALP members are also helping to co-ordinate rallies.

Besides marches, the peace groups – which will stage their next major event in Sydney at the Domain on February 3 – have gathered thousands of signatures on petitions opposing the war and Australia’s involvement. These will be sent to Mr Hawke.

It is exactly this – this wilful refusal on our part to learn from Humanity’s recent collective mistakes – that makes following this looming war exactly like watching George Bush’s bad movie rerun: a road accident in slow motion, running on a permanent loop.

Oil, of course, is just very, very old dead dinosaurs and dead-dinosaur fodder.

Fossil fuels are just that: fossils. Not unlike grumpy old neo-cons and angry lefties who go round quoting Marx, they are the rotting remnants of an age long past, when human beings were mere unthinking animals too, and the Law of the Jungle was not a cliche but an unavoidable lifestyle choice.

Transcending that meaningless way of existence – timeless, truthless, based on sheer brute power and rat cunning – is what has defined Mankind’s journey. It’s what has lifted us half-way out of the gutter, and half-way to the stars, or at least Mars. It doesn’t really matter whether you choose to believe that the spark of Human self-consciousness which first kicked off our miraculous journey was Divine, or Darwinian, or applied by visiting aliens, or just another weird kink in the very kinky Human genome. We think, therefore we have Free Will, therefore every single individual and collective thought we as a species choose to translate into action is our responsibility, and ours alone.

So I’m afraid we can’t blame God or Allah or Satan or even Milton Friedman for whatever it turns out we are about to unleash in the Middle East.

Nor will it be a function of ‘just the way the world is’. Nor is it ‘inevitable’. Nor is it ‘realpolitik’. Nor will it be any expression of ‘moral clarity’, or ‘patriotic duty’, or ‘scientific imperative’, or ‘philosophical logic’, or ‘the Market’, or ‘the moral high ground’, or ‘Manifest Destiny’.

It will simply be what our most powerful dinosaurs decided to do on our behalf, once upon yet another time when our ugliest abstract thoughts ceased to be abstract, and became ineradicable facts of history. Truths, the only earthly ones we Human Beings can ever really be sure of: That which we did yesterday.

Tomorrow, all the fine abstract arguments about the approaching war in Iraq, including mine here, will blow away on the hot desert winds, and the bloodiness in the Middle East will simply become what we chose to do – yesterday, and yesterday, and yesterday. Never to be undone, never to be wished away. The reasons simply won’t matter.

But it’s not tomorrow yet, and so the reasons for war, which are all bad on this occasion, still need to be pulled apart, urgently. Which is why I’ll gladly repeat myself, and at length: This invasion and occupation is all about oil. All about dead dinosaurs, and dead-dinosaur fodder.

I’m well aware that many readers will have thrown their hands up in contempt or despair at my simplistic reductions last time – ‘a violent crime of theft’ (No Blood For Oil!) – but the scarier truth is that sometimes, just sometimes, the simplistic reductions are the right ones.

This is an invasion for oil. Push it, prod it, poke that truth any way you like, write a million clever words explaining carefully why it’s not, but it is. What we are about to do is invade and occupy Iraq to ‘secure’ the energy future of the West. If some people find that too intimidating, too much like ‘Western self-blame’, then that’s just too bad. Since September 11, I’ve already been called every ‘anti’ under the sun anyway; the one ‘anti’ I refuse to expose myself to is ‘anti-truth’.

Yep, this invasion and occupation is about securing (what some energy industry dinosaurs anachronistically insist must be) the energy future of ‘Western Civilisation’. If that places me too didactically close to the likes of Osama bin Laden and his various nutty mouthpieces of late, then that’s not my fault, either. Like John Avery (see Murdoch: Cheap oil the prize), I’m among the many who’ve been trying to argue, since ten days after S11 (More on War Fever), that we should concentrate on hunting that very creep down and trying him like the minor criminal he is, as our very highest priority in this ‘war on terror’. Rather than doing our best to turn him into some hateful modern-day ‘Messiah’, which is exactly what our glorious global leaders have now almost managed to do.

I’m among the many arguing for the isolation, the de-legitimisation, the ruthless, focussed targeting of Al-Qaeda, not its exact opposite, which is what this invasion will represent. I’m not the warbloggy pill pushing hysterically from the geeky safety of my little closet Trekky bedroom, for an entirely unnecessary, counter-productive and wasteful invasion and occupation of Iraq to get rid of Saddam, either.

No, in this ‘war against terror’, I’m more than happy to fight hard where necessary, but I’m buggered if I’m interested in fighting stupid, in fighting like a twentieth century dinosaur. Like many, I’ve presented what I think is a workable alternative for dealing with Saddam (Looking for John Curtin). I find it grimly amusing that the pro-invasion crew sneers at such allegedly ‘unrealistic’ plans as that proposed by the French and the Germans, too, when the cunning ‘disarmament’ plan they are helping push into actuality is the wackiest, most disproportionate, most strategically-suicidal, most apparently short-sighted and most potentially-disastrous military folly in the history of the United States.

Mark Latham was dead right: America is currently being run by clowns. And still the only response, as from the refreshed Miranda Devine in the SMH yesterday morning, is: We cannot stick our heads in the sand and do nothing about Saddam. Nothing, Miranda? Nothing? As if anyone is remotely proposing doing ‘nothing’ about Saddam Hussein.

The international community has been doing ‘something’ about him ever since he stopped being America’s second best Middle Eastern mate. These invasionists are like brattish children; if they can’t get things exactly all their own way, they stamp their little feet and call Mum a terrorist-lover until she gives in.

In any case, as I have said before, and will keep saying until I am proven wrong by the explosive resurgence in the next few years of a wildly wealthy, free and politically-autonomous Iraqi populace, this invasion is not about Saddam Hussein, it’s about dead dinosaurs.

A first step is a Socratic one, to ask ourselves this question: Would this invasion be occurring if Iraq had no oil reserves at all? The answer is obviously no. All the key invasion arguments are themselves only important because of the global leverage Iraq’s asset lends them. The trumped-up WMD/rogue state line is as much about the threat of economic blackmail as activated, enabled terrorism. The fear of a regionally-emboldened Saddam is based upon what it would mean for the oil market. Even the Human Rights-democracy line is grounded in oil in a way, for it’s the external ramifications of Saddam’s dictatorial powers that matter geo-politically – the absolutist method of ‘governance’ that gives one power-crazed man the kind of omnipotent, focussed control over Iraq’s national ambitions that democratic rulers can only envy, and how those national ambitions might just include hijacking the global economy.

This is what the Western hawks really fear about The Butcher of Baghdad; how his vicious political rule might one day translate itself onto the world stage, not all the nasty things he does internally to dissenting Iraqis to maintain it. To agree that this would indeed be a bad thing for Humanity is one thing; to support the West’s application of Saddam’s very own methods to prevent it from happening – pre-emptively applying our global brute force to neutralise his potential global brute force – is quite another. The end doesn’t justify the means; the means are the end.

To note all this is not to say that these secondary arguments for invading and occupying Iraq aren’t genuinely embraced by many of those who present them; it is simply to recognise that without the oil, these arguments become largely moot. Remove the dead dinosaurs from the Iraq equation, and Saddam Hussein becomes, even at the very worst, just another minor, regional, terrorism-supporting, WMD-craving, HR-abusing anti-freedom thug; a Khaddafi, a Ceascescu, an Idi Amin, a Pol Pot – there’s never been a shortage of such beasts, and successive US governments have never been particularly averse to tolerating them before.

Nor will they be in future. Successive US governments have most certainly never invaded and permanently occupied another country just to remove one; the preferred methods more usually include equipping and training guerrilla groups, sponsoring coups, a little light heavy bombing.

Iraq aside, the current Administration is no different, and arguably far more fast and loose with concepts like HR than most. (To claim that the Bushies are something ‘new and visionary’, that Rumsfeld and Cheney and Wolfowitz are democratic ‘idealists’, is a jaw-dropping perversion of language.) They can still – thankfully – quite happily ‘chat calmly’ with a bristling North Korea, for example, unquestionably the most terrifying and unstable regime on the planet. They feel no great need to go to war with China. They are ‘relaxed and comfortable’ with dozens of other dictatorships elsewhere which also give rise to equally urgent WMD, terrorist, HR-abuse and ‘anti-West’ threats. Many such dictatorships, in fact, are right next door to Iraq. No; Saddam only matters because of Iraq’s mighty stockpile of dead dinosaurs and dead dinosaur fodder. How anyone can pretend otherwise beggars belief.

In many ways this invasion and occupation would be far easier to swallow if the US Administration was honest about the reason for its inevitability. The same applies to the posturing of the French, German, Russian and Chinese governments, too, whose machinations in all this, while far more ‘idealistic’ than the US grasps, are also heavily influenced by the oil spoils they either stand to retain or lose themselves or simply don’t wish others to get.

And I’m not pretending to be an ‘energy saint’ in this either, just by the way. I use as much oil energy as the next wasteful Western citizen. But this is exactly why what we really need right now is some brutal leadership, right from the very top. We need George W. Bush to come right out and ask us all, straight up, if we support going to war for the sake of our own oil energy future.

And then we would all have to ask ourselves where we truly stand on this invasion. None of us could be in any doubts about what is at stake, and why the post-S11 killing is about to escalate. At the very least, a little brisk openness of this kind from the war leaders would result in far less damage to NATO, to the UN, to the broad Western secular liberal accord. The diplomats could go home, the bleeding hearts and poets could fall silent, and those who were still willing to be part of the ‘coalition of the willing’ could go and slug it out on the sands in honest combat, winner take oil.

Not that this will happen in a million years. All the dead-dinosaur industry dinosaur-leaders are ‘horrified’ at the prospect of war in their name, naturally, and no sane democratic leader is ever likely to be so ruthlessly frank. One mustn’t ever ruffle the self-deluding savoir faire of the dainty East Coast patriarchs and the down-home Texas boys, the clubby Brits and the smooth Europeans, the hard-eyed new breed of Russian corporate mover.

And why yes, I just bet some of these chaps are Masons, and some might even be Jewish. Fancy that. Butan evil global conspiracy? What bloody rubbish. It’s no conspiracy, it’s simply the complicated and interlocking headless beast of international business doing business, doing its ‘accidental conspiracy’ business-machine thing.

Like the men who drove Enron and Worldcom and the IT revolution into the ground, these oil men are not evil, they’re not vicious, they’re not hateful, and they doubtless would indeed be ‘horrified’ if they ever had to see up close and in bloody detail what it will actually require us in the West to do, if we are to make Rupert Murdoch’s charming vision of our economic future come to pass: “I have a pretty optimistic medium and long-term view but things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us,” says Rupert. “But once it’s behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else.”(See Murdoch: Cheap oil the prize.)

Now Rupert Murdoch is in fact a pretty decent sort of bloke as bastard media tycoons go, and he is about to become a father again soon, too. I wish he and his wife nothing but joy and a safe and easy confinement, but when he can do no more than say prissily, of the coming savagery in Iraq, that it might indeed get ‘pretty sticky’ before the price of oil drops and the global economy soars anew, I cannot comprehend that we are members of the same Human tribe, with the same fears and hopes and fleshy vulnerabilities.

No, it is no ‘conspiracy’ and the casual callousness is not intended. The collective oil industry’s refusal to contemplate the ugly truth is just another human moral self-defence mechanism, not so very different from the head-in-the-sand response of the world’s civilised people to the rise and rise of all the other, the more explicitly totalitarian, dinosaur Big Lies of the last century.

“We only want to do our job,” is what the oil men of the world are saying to each other right now, and we are wrong to blame them for this war for oil because their job is to make our economy function, and if they don’t, then we are the very first ones to complain. It’s no conspiracy, and it’s nobody’s fault; we are all in this together, and none of us are being honest about what ‘this’ really is.

And yet we should know better by now. This is dinosaur stuff, yesterday’s news. We should have learned by now what happens when good and decent people refuse to confront Big Lies, and early, and most of all in ourselves, the small roles we each play in allowing them to grow to dangerous sizes.

It is exactly this – this wilful refusal on our part to learn from Humanity’s recent collective mistakes – that makes following this looming war exactly like watching George Bush’s bad movie rerun: a road accident in slow motion, running on a permanent loop. It makes you want to scream in desperation at what Mankind is in danger of becoming, again; to observe from afar so many intelligent, powerful, privileged, educated men behaving like brain-dead dinosaurs, for dead dinosaurs.

How pathetically twentieth century this all is. How soooo Second Millennium. This charade is from another era, surely, a testosterone-driven age of swung fists, angry bleating, chest-thumping, dirt-pissing. Some woman, I forget who, once wrote that waging war is the only thing men can do to stop women laughing at them.

How true that is; and how deeply embarrassing it is to be a man right now. How pitiful, this masculine squabbling in the desert over someone else’s booty, these little puffed-up egos trying to make grand ‘moral clarity’ excuses for what they will soon choose to do – kill and maim a lot of powerless people to get their hands on the loot.

All while a brutal dictator – another pathetic man – laughs at the fuss everyone is making over him; all while a religious maniac – another pathetic man – whips up an opportunistic storm of perhaps unprecedented fury; all while the powerless people who will suffer the most wait patiently to be bombed by all sides again. The old joke about why the Irish got spuds and the Arabs got oil – the Irish chose first – doesn’t seem funny at all, now.

So you really don’t think this is about dead dinosaurs, huh?

Well, it should not be necessary to explain by now just how thoroughly the West’s continuing economic hegemony and ‘way of life’, as we have arranged things, depends on the smooth flow of masses of it. It should not be necessary to point to the steady increase in US imports from the Middle East, nor the rising oil-energy requirement projections in most Western societies, but especially in America. It shouldn’t be necessary to remind the world of what happened in 1973, and the far-reaching implications that many now-powerful figures recognised clearly, even back then. It shouldn’t be necessary to point out the various reports, writings, and investigations into the looming US energy crisis, many of them written well before September 11. All this is no great big secret, no ‘conspiracy’, either.

It’s hardly any sort of grand revelation to point out that America’s oil energy requirements have increased by a third since 1973, and that the rate of the increase of Middle-East imports (since 1995) is itself increasing. It’s not controversial to point to the serious problems in the US refinery industry, and the fact that no-one wants to invest in it there because the profit margins in crude refinement are, in fact, hardly worth it, especially in a Western labour/environmental standards domestic marketplace (the new big capacity refineries will certainly all be in the new West-friendly Iraq; billion-dollar infrastructure contracts + cheap local labor + no pesky Greenies = Western economy heaven!).

It’s not controversial to point to the shortage of heating oil in this harsh US winter; it’s no crime to point out the sudden, marked reversal, around 1995, in the to-then growing popularity of fuel-efficient vehicles in the States; it’s not being anti-American to point out that the excessive US energy consumption per person in comparison with other countries has since S11 increasingly become not a matter of individual citizenly concern, but a swaggering point of patriotic pride.

It is, I’ll concede, a cheapish shot to point out the overwhelming interfusion of the US energy industry and the Bush Administration, and the recent dropping, in despair, of the lawsuit requiring identity disclosure of the government’s energy task force ‘advisors’. A cheapish ‘conspiracy’ shot, sure, but one simply has to ask: if the Bush Administration insists it’s not about oil, why such reticence? Not about oil? Then prove it, George and Co: Dump all your personal energy industry investments. Come clean about the Halliburton fiddles at last, Dick Cheney. You could knock all these silly oil conspiracy theories for six in one go, guys, with a full and frank disclosure of every oily backroom detail. No-one’s holding their breath.

None of this stuff is rocket science. Neither is it brain surgery to note that the non-ME sources of oil energy have dwindled or are not yet competitive with ME oil, and in fact simply never can be, no matter how much of Alaska is turned into a sump. It’s not quantum physics to point out that Venezuela, America’s fourth-largest oil provider, is hardly a paragon of political stability and ‘economically-rational’ globalisation, these days. Nor is it genetic engineering to see that the once manageable political-diplomatic nexus between the West and OPEC took a dramatic, and fatal, turn for the worse just after nine o’clock on September 11, 2001.

On current economic trends the West will need more and more and more oil in the next decade, and it will have to come from the Middle East. At the same time, on current political-theological trends, the Middle Eastern countries will grow less and less and less inclined or able to provide it via a peaceful market transaction, of their own accord.

You only have to note that Saudi Arabia has indicated that they will ask American troops to leave their country once Iraq is secured to grasp what sort of dramatic geo-political changes are underway right now. Have a look in an Atlas, and you will see that by this time next year, a small American beachhead will have been secured in the midst of what only a moron could pretend will be an increasingly friendly region.

There it will stand, a lone Judeo-Christian, charging capitalist dinosaur ‘state’ bang in the middle of a close scrum of mad Muslim, dying socialist dinosaur states, cheekily sucking out the natural wealth prize for the far-away benefit of the West. At best, the new Iraq will be a vaguely democratic beachhead, at worst a bristling GI-guarded oil tit perpetually under siege, an unstable arrangement far, far worse than the awful isolation the oil industry pointmen have endured to now in the friendly Saudi Arabian expatriate compounds.

And next door Saudi Arabia, with their highly-developed Western technologies, will have no reason not to become fully anti-Western ‘hot’, for the West will have destroyed their oil market dominance forever. There’s an awful lot of pent-up resentment between the US and Saudi Arabia, an awful lot of blood waiting to be let.

I do not think that the American population has remotely grasped what it is their leaders are about to embark upon here. It is pure colonisation; outright economic Empire-building from less than scratch in the most virulently anti-American region on the planet. Without the massive oil lure, no sane US Administration would remotely contemplate this kind of permanent geographical presence. What possible American interest is served by removing Saddam in this, the hardest and costliest of all ways, if not the energy pay-off? The answer is none, which is why this invasion and occupation is about oil, and why I continue to oppose it ferociously.

And I oppose it for America and the civilised West’s long-term sake, most of all. For God’s sake, I oppose it for the purest of self-interested, pro-American reasons.

This invasion and occupation will ultimately hurt America grievously, and America is the global superpower basket in which all of Australia’s security eggs, for better or worse, now rest. If America becomes entangled in a protracted northern hemisphere fiasco, or worse, withdraws into a new isolationism, stung by an Iraqi disaster and with her global credibility and force-projection greatly reduced, then Australian is in some trouble.

In my view, both outcomes are not merely likely, in neat turn, they are practically guaranteed. A simple perusal of the colonial history of the region – and it goes back a long, long way – should be enough.

Do the American people truly have the endurance for this? Do they have any idea of where it might, where it must, lead? Despite what a Daniel Pipes might argue about the grim necessity for an all-or-nothing ‘blood-letting’ in the Middle East as an ugly but requisite precursor to any serious, lasting Arab-Jewish accord, Israelis in particular should feel deeply anxious about what might transpire over the next few years. It will come down to a matter of American staying power, and democratic governments and mainstream public opinion can change with alarming swiftness.

But clearly now, Western Energy Inc. considers that the time is right and the risks are worth it. In a way, on the oil-energy question, the US is now damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t; inextricably locked as she is in a terrible energy impasse.

But it’s a tragic one too, because the vicious assaults of September 11 could have and should have marked a major turning pointing in the Western world’s energy vision for the future. Had we been intellectually tough and smart enough not to shout down completely, as ‘self-blaming’ and ‘anti-Western’ those who pointed out that the core source – yes, the ‘root cause’ – of the attacks was the unhappy historical confluence of brutal Middle Eastern dictatorships (and their ‘necessary’ tolerance of extremist religious clerics), and short-sighted, even if well-meaning, international oil companies, then the last eighteen months might have presented Humanity with an excellent opportunity to step firmly off the fossil fuel treadmill forever.

September 11, 2001: the day the world really did change, and the dinosaurs became finally extinct. Has a ring to it, even if only a bittersweet one, now.

Because all over the non-US Western world, and in many, many constituencies of the US population, too, the Global Green movement is gathering momentum. Energy habits are changing on a generational scale, treaties are being signed, sustainable business and industry is emerging as a major force, billionaires like Bill Gates are pumping enormous amounts of cash into private research, new technologies are emerging – startling, bold, breathtaking, far-reaching ones.

Ideas are being thrown up everywhere, even from cheeky speechwriters to a half-hearted oilman like George W. Bush. A nuclear powered spaceship to get us to Mars. A hydrogen powered car to get us to work. Roll-your-own cigarettes and flushless dunnies. Green politicians, too, are lining up in droves to pull power away from the old left-right divides, away from the fossil-burning fossils. (The German green revolution is no silly passing fad; it’s now deeply ingrained in that country’s political consciousness, a permanent feature of the legislative-power landscape.)

We’re hovering right on the brink of a major social transformation, and all that is really needed is a big healthy nudge from our global leaders, seriously big bucks, a degree of collective will, and just a little more time.

Except for the dead dinosaur men, and their dead dinosaur obsessions. Here we are, all itching to turn Green, and yet here our leaders are, on the point of committing us all unwillingly to decades of bitter fighting over more Black Gold. We grown-ups are about to start scrabbling violently (again) for a ‘prize’ that our kids just don’t want. To start with, anyway. To start with, this new Middle Eastern war will be over those few puddles of inefficient, go-nowhere-fast, dead dinosaur juice; before too long, it will have blossomed into an even more pathetic dinosaur fight: a clash of civilisations that will be wholly uncivilised, a Holy War in which none but a few scarifying zealots on either side believe in their ‘god’.

Yet another bestial jungle fight to the death, the reasons for which, at that death, no-one will remember anyway. Behaving like animals again, when ninety-nine percent of the world’s six billion are desperate to evolve forwards, and not backwards.

It’s hardly being anti-American or anti-capitalist or anti-energy to point all this out. ‘Nobody wants a war’. That’s what everyone (save a few idiots) says before every big war, and it’s what everyone (save a few idiots) is saying, now. So let’s do something different, this time: let’s not have one. It is up to us, after all. We have Free Will. Let’s all get naked, well-pissed, and drunk on love, too, instead. Being scared is a bloody bore, frankly.

This war is about oil, and oil is about our ‘Western way of life’, and since S11, our Western way of life is in danger of coming to mean little more than our capacity to protect ourselves and those we love by keeping the barbarian hordes at a distance, and by force.

To point out that this coming confrontation in Iraq is driven mostly by our frightened instinct to maintain the West’s protective inequalities, to shrink back behind our security fences rather than step boldly beyond them with our arms extended, is not being a Western self-loather. It’s being truly Western.

It’s in the traditions of intellectual rigour, secular reason, individual responsibility, Free Will, the sentient transcending of all external gods and gurus, of all ‘absolute abstract truths’ but the two that are inexplicable and irreducible: Love and Death. The only other truths Humanity can ever know are the things that we did yesterday, and yesterday, and yesterday.

Unless we are determined to doom ourselves to eternal dinosaur-hood, we cannot go on killing every one of those fellow Human Beings who happen to scare us. Most of our enemies are every bit as scared of us as we of them, and they do not have brute-force Tomahawk cruise missiles. But more and more of them every day are turning to their rat-cunning weapons, and they are rat-cunning weapons that our brute force ones cannot possibly guard against. The only way to defeat the dangerous among those fellow Human Being who scare us – those who our true enemies – is to use our brains, not just our muscle.

The people of Iraq, and even in many ways Saddam Hussein himself, are not our truly dangerous enemies. Yet they very soon will be, unless we use our brains.

So it may be harsh. It may be simplistic. It’s certainly a slogan, and it’s definitely a most unsophisticated reduction. It is also highly intimidating to us all, in the West. But it’s true. We are going to invade and occupy Iraq not to defend the essence of our ‘Western Way of Life’, but merely to secure more of the dead dinosaurs that give us the pretty clothes to dress it up in. It’s an invasion and occupation to secure Iraq’s oil for the West. Remove it, or better still remove our need for it, and there would simply be no invasion, and no ‘War Against Terror’. There would still only be what, in reality, we have to now been engaged in: a co-ordinated global campaign to reduce, and perhaps even eradicate, the nihilist crime of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism, a fight that is far, far easier for the Civilised West to win.

Personally, I think it’s mystifying that our leaders are so intent on locking our future economy into an energy source that is so old, so messy, so inefficient and so passe. (And so not ours to take.) Petroleum oil is ugly, sticky, smelly and slow. Plutonium. Hydrogen. Wind. The Sea. The Sun. Now these are sexy fuels. These are the fuels of tomorrow, the fuels America’s industrial and technical and economic might – the greatest innovative powerhouse in world history – should really be seeking to secure for the West. For us all.

I’d like very much to get a little bit closer to the stars before I die. Oil will never, ever, ever, ever pull it off. It’s a dead monster of a fuel. It’s yesterday’s fossil.

I say let’s leave Iraq’s buried in the ground, along with all the other redundant dinosaurs of ancient Human history.

 

Image by Martin Davies. To see his work go to www.daviesart.com

I’ve just published an empassioned piece against the war by Jack Robertson (What the third millennium doesn’t need: Yet more dinosaurs in power) which I highly recommend. “It is this wilful refusal on our part to learn from Humanity’s recent collective mistakes that makes following this looming war exactly like watching George Bush’s bad movie rerun: a road accident in slow motion, running on a permanent loop,” he writes. Another extract:

This war is about oil, and oil is about our ‘Western way of life’, and since S11, our Western way of life is in danger of coming to mean little more than our capacity to protect ourselves and those we love by keeping the barbarian hordes at a distance, and by force.

To point out that this coming confrontation in Iraq is driven mostly by our frightened instinct to maintain the West’s protective inequalities, to shrink back behind our security fences rather than step boldly beyond them with our arms extended, is not being a Western self-loather. It’s being truly Western.

Mark Pendrith in Kenmore Hills, Brisbane forwarded this speech by US Senator Robert Byrd (Dem. WV). “I find the speech remarkable both for its content and elegance of expression – it strikes me as an oasis of cool reason and eloquence in a desert of relatively incoherent and ugly grunts that have been emanating from American political leaders and commentators recently. I find it also remarkable that, to date, this speech seems to have been almost completely unreported in the mainstream press. For example, it appears the New York Times has seen fit not to report the speech at all. Not even a squib.”

“At the very least, Byrd’s speech demonstrates that it should be possible to question the motives and wisdom of the Bush administration’s plans for war in Iraq without having to fend off accusations of crude anti-Americanism. It deserves to be much more widely published and read – I believe it has the potential to materially lift the level of the debate in Australia.”

Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences

by US Senator Robert Byrd

Senate Floor Speech – Wednesday, February 12, 2003, published on-line at commondreams

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent – ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption – the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future – is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our – or some other nation’s – hit list.

High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together?

There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11.

Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with

less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher.

This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.

In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration’s domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.

In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill.

This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO.

This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned peacekeeper.

This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.

Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant – these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth.

Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letter cheering us on.

The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land.

Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace?

And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq’s oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation’s oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power after Saddam Hussein?

Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran, which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq?

Could a disruption of the world’s oil supply lead to a world-wide recession?

Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income?

In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.

One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.

But to turn one’s frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.

Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq – a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15 – this chamber is silent.

On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare – this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.

We are truly “sleepwalking through history.” In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings.

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is “in the highest moral traditions of our country”.

This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making.

Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.

Hi. The Fairfax library has found some more big protests to add to the list in Does peace have a chance?

On Australia Day, 1988, more than 15,000 Aboriginal protesters marched through Sydney to coincide with nationwide bicentennial celebrations. “While a crowd estimated by police at two million packed the harbour foreshore and Australians in other cities celebrated 200 years of white settlement, the marchers held a peaceful protest at the treatment of Aborigines past and present.” (AFR, 27.1.88)

And in September 1999 amid the massacre in East Timor after its people voted for independence, more than 25,000 protesters packed the centre of Melbourne to hear Xanana Gusmao appeal to his Australian “brothers and sisters” to pressure the Howard Government to send in peace enforcers.

Library staff also pulled out clippings of protests during US President Lyndon Johnson’s parade through Sydney streets in October 1966. More than a million people came along to cheer, but 10 protesters threw themselves in front of the presidential car at the corner of Oxford and College streets. Outside the art gallery, “about 3,000 anti-Vietnam demonstrators booed, cheered and waved placards (but) the booing was more than matched by cheers and shouts of welcome by an equal number of pro-Johnson supporters among the crowd.” (The Mirror, 22.10.66)

Sylvia Harmon says that on Sunday Feb 16th all trains on the Sydney north shore line (from Hornsby to Wynyard) will be cancelled due to track work. They will be replaced by buses. In case the number of buses is less than required, people might like to make other arrangements for getting into the City. Also people might like to let everyone on their email lists know, so that they can pass the info on even if they’re not affected themselves.

On the eve of the weekend peace protests, here’s your thoughts.

***

Michael Chong in Manly, NSW

In diplomacy nothing’s so diverse as

The mechanics of truth

You can even engineer in reverse

Evidence from proof

So shall we lose or confuse the plot

Of morality’s slender charter,

As we choose to undo the despot

With the tyranny of another?

***

John Englart in Melbourne

I remember the Vietnam Moratorim marches in Sydney. I was a fifteen year old concerned about the inhumanity of the Vietnam War. Premier Askin came out and said “Run over the bastards”, referring to protestors like myself. Premier Askin was part of the problem and it was good to be rid of him from State Politics. I have never lost my sense of injustice I learnt during this period.

In 1985 I was one of the people who marched in the Palm Sunday rallies, along with my family, my parents and my brothers family. I was a veteran protestor and had hand painted a banner for this march. (a photo of the banner is at takver)

The world seemed to draw back from the brink in the late 80s and early 90s. But one thing I learned is that if you don’t get out on the street and be vocal and resist injustice then you are as good as accepting the necessity of injustice. Public protest does affect public policy of governments and other organisations, although the bureacrats and politicians will never admit this.

I’ll be out there this weekend – Melbourne on Friday in about half an hour – handing out an anti-war songsheet this time – along with my partner and children, friends and even a few work colleagues.

As I say on my Takver’s Soapbox site at soapbox: “The horrors of war are many, but at the level of the common folk there are no victors: it is the survivors who feel the human suffering and deprivation caused by the generals and politicians. It will be the families of the dead and injured in Iraq, as well as the US or Australia that will be forced to endure the ongoing consequences of war.”

***

David Burnett in Melbourne

I’m just about to head off to the Melbourne peace march. I have also been utterly amazed at how many ‘non-protesters’ are going. There are scores going from here, including the CFO – the only fella ever seen sporting a suit round these parts – who is jumping on his bike and joining the Critical Mass. Bean-counters and Anarchists – where will it end? 🙂

This is exciting. Numbers in the streets is all we have left in this debate, I believe. Nothing gives pollies the willies more than the sight of thousands and thousands of voters who are clearly disinclined to vote for them!

Of course, there are exceptions. One large rally you missed in your list was the one opposing Jeff Kennett’s various policies (well – opposing Jeff Kennett, truth be told) in Melbourne in, ummmm, 1994? Not long after he came to power, anyway. In fact, this was the largest rally in Melbourne perhaps ever – I have no doubt that there were close to 150,000 people there. By the time the head of the densely-packed march had left Spring St, traversed Collins St all the way to Elizabeth St, moved a block to the north, and returned to Spring St, the tail of the march was only just setting off. Effectively, the rally filled more than eight major city blocks, and that’s a lot of people.

And Jeffery’s response? Effectively – “Bugger em.” And that he did…

Still, I reckon these peace rallies are enormously important.

Go peaceniks!

***

Dell Horey emailed the pre-protest editorial of the British Medical Journal.

In praise of dissent

One hundred years ago Germany launched a war against quackery (bmj). “Public meetings will be held and addresses delivered,” reported the BMJ. Today Germany leads a campaign to halt the war against Iraq, and anti-war demonstrators will march in Berlin on 15 February. The war against quackery included a strategy to infiltrate the meetings of quacks, “in order to confute their arguments and expose their misstatements”. The organisers of the global anti-war campaign would wish for something similar.

But this demonstration is not confined to Germany. Over 300 cities will unite in protest against the leadership of George Bush and Tony Blair. Arabs and Jews will march together in Tel Aviv. New Yorkers will hold a stationary rally on First Avenue after a federal judge refused the permit for a march, citing “heightened security concerns”. More than half a million protesters are expected to converge on Hyde Park, London – which also happens to be the number of Iraqis predicted to die in a war. An 80 year old woman from Hampshire, too infirm to make the trip to London, has offered instead to lie down in the middle of one of England’s busiest motorways. Rarely have so many of the world’s inhabitants united with such clarity of voice: no to war, they say, but will two of our six billion fellow earthlings listen?

Advocates for war are quick to liken dissent to appeasement. A more apt analogy may be America’s war in Vietnam – a war in which the USA used Agent Orange and napalm. Many are convinced that Iraq has produced, and may even be hiding chemical, biological, and nuclear weaponry. Many, though, are not convinced that an immediate war on Iraq will guarantee our future safety. The World Medical Association and the International Council of Nurses have joined other professional associations in condemning armed conflict, highlighting the catastrophic effects of war on civilians, especially women and children. A Canadian team this week reports that Iraqi children as young as four are fearful and anxious about the prospect of war (bmj). The World Health Organization and medical aid agencies have already produced gloomy estimates of the likely toll on the Iraqi people. Bush and Blair argue that many hundreds of thousands are at risk from a chemical or biological attack. The marchers are not persuaded.

Those in London will be tramping through a central area of the city that this week begins congestion charges for cars and trucks, following the example of successful schemes in Singapore and Norway. Ian Roberts suggests that Ken Livingstone, the politician behind this initiative, is introducing public health reform to rival that of Edwin Chadwick, who revolutionised sanitation in 19th century London (bmj). Chadwick’s opponents claimed there was “insanity in sanity” he had to fight to dissent. This week, hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of protesters will be participating in the most far reaching display of dissent that the world has seen. It should be recognised.

***

John Nicolay (nom de plume)

Today’s anti-Americanism watch: Your reference to nuclear weapons is another example of your stance of extreme credulousness towards anything that reflects badly on the American government, coupled with utter cynicism towards any argument advanced in their favor. Think for a second: If you ran a country with nuclear weapons which you had no intention to use, would you tell your enemies that?

Much as it pains people who grew up as anti-nuclear campaigners to admit, the jury is now in, and deterrence works. How can you deter if you rule out using what you have, even in self-defence?

The other example of extreme credulousness you’ve shown over the last couple of days is your cargo cult-like acceptance of the Franco-German “peace plan”. Where’s the critical analysis of motives there? (I saw a French government spokesman on the BBC program “hardtalk” freely acknowledge last night that the French position was driven by its “interests”, which included its oil dealings with Iraq – remember, these are REAL interests in Iraqi oil, not merely hypothetical – together with the desire to prevent American dominance of international ecision-making). Where, too, is the serious contemplation of what it would achieve – at the least, surely someone should be able to point out what is different between this plan and the staus quo of the last ten years, during which time Saddam has grown steadily more dangerous and the Iraqi people have continued to suffer.

But on to the peace march…

If war is averted, isn’t it most likely to be because the members of the Iraqi regime become convinced that it is inevitable, and therefore try to save their skins by absconding (or knocking off Saddam Hussein)?

If that is the case, aren’t these marches actually going to make war MORE likely, by providing the Iraqi regime with food for their belief that the west lacks the fortitude to go through with its threats?

And is not the correct slogan for the rally not “peace”, but “war later”?

***

John Passant in Kambah, ACT

John Howard is driven by the need to serve his class and their economic interests. The judgment he has made is that this is best done by supporting the US in its re-division of the world as the sole military and economic power. This re-division shuts out Europe and China – hence the German, French and Chinese reluctance to support the US.

This commitment to his class means Howard will plough ahead with war even if 300,000 turn out against the war. However, if the anti-war movement targets the flow of profits to Howard’s class, Howard may be forced to change his mind.

This idea is not new. During the Vietnam era, some sections of the anti-war movement adopted the slogan “Stop work to stop the war.” Such a slogan today would give hope to the people demonstrating that they can take action to stop the slaughter. If the union movement adopted the slogan and workers began to strike against the war, Howard could be forced to back down.

***

Rod Lever in Glass House Mountains, Queensland

Rupert Murdoch, unable to restrain his excitement about an opportunity to make money from the war, has let the cat out of the bag. The war to him is about flooding the world with cheap Iraqi oil and launching another US economic boom. Buy Amoco. Buy GM. Buy News Corp.

Murdoch has never been noted for humanitarianism but there is something sick about a multi-millionaire who can’t see beyond making more money while others remove the remains of roasted and dismembered bodies of small children caught in the crossfire.

For those prepared to gamble on a quick, smooth victory for the American war machine, there may be money to be made in a stockmarket rally based on $20 a barrel oil. But the thought just makes me want to throw up.

Webdiarist Tamsin Clarke agreed a while ago to write a piece for Webdiary on the State Government engineered collapse of the rule of law in NSW development. This has resulted in vandalism by lawless developers, because they know the law – and the conditions of development they’ve agreed to – will not be enforced by the State. They also know that most citizens don’t have the money or the time to force developer compliance and can be intimidated by threats to sue for defamation and the like.

However the pending war on Iraq saw Tamsin write a piece on the widespread attacks by governments on the rule of law – the foundation of democracy – in general, with the threat by the United States, Britain and Australia to invade Iraq in defiance of international law the latest, and most dangerous, example. Tamsin argues that we’ve taken step two in the march towards fascism, and urges citizens to fight back before it’s too late.

After Tamsin’s piece, the text of a petition to be presented to the United Nations in New York tomorrow by Judge Weeramantry, a former Judge of the International Court of Justice and Professor of Law at Monash University, arguing that a unilateral attack would breach international law. Activism is taking many forms as the world braces for the war on Iraq, and lawyers are in the vanguard. I’ve also published the names and positions of the 130 signatories and the contact details for the group which organised the petition, the International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms.

I’ve just published a brilliant but very depressing analysis on the wreckage of our universities – with even worse to come – by John Wojdylo. In The intellectual holocaust in our universities has just begun, he writes:

Western culture is rationalizing itself out of existence, destroying its own memory of itself. It is transforming itself into a universalized, globalized husk of economic exchange value. Amongst the academic fields threatened with extinction in Australia – virtually without exception – are those that since the Renaissance have played a major role in the development of our – Western – culture. Institutes of philosophy, history, classics and music have been decimated. Australia has lost world leaders in these fields, and is in serious risk of losing most of the rest.

***

Democracy, quality of life and the rule of law

by Tamsin Clarke, Sydney

Tamsin has been a corporate and trusts lawyer for more than 20 years, and is a PhD student at NSW writing about developing an Australian jurisprudence of free speech consistent with racial vilification legislation – ie which looks to European concepts of human dignity and the right to be free from racist speech rather than United States First Amendment concepts of absolute free speech and the ‘market of ideas’. She has written a few academic articles on these issues.

In the light of present world events these concerns, indeed the NSW State election itself, are on one level are quite insignificant. But at the same time, a war context demonstrates to us how essential the rule of law is to the maintenance of any democracy, and why we should be demanding respect for law and compliance with (national and international) law from our own governments. Perhaps if we had done so already we would not be in the situation that faces us now.

What happens in a ‘real’ war, when a country is under military law? Many basic elements of democracy are thrown out the window. The rule of law is one of the first to go. We lose the Westminster system with its balance of powers. We lose our independent judiciary. We lose what we know as the rule of law – which may be when we first appreciate our need for it. Military law is basically, sophistications aside, what its name says – whatever law the military chooses to impose.

In Australia, we have already been brought a considerable way along the path to acceptance of a single body as executive, legislator and judiciary, not because we have been on a war footing (although contemplating that possibility highlights the present failings) but because of the confluence of a number of trends:

(1) the increasing refusal of all levels of Government to enforce their own legislation, or that of their political predecessors, where it suits them – unless forced to do so by court action,

(2) the drafting of legislation which restricts or removes the right of judicial review of executive decisions (known as ‘privative clauses’) and

(3) at Federal level, a general disrespect for international law, conventions and treaties (except relating to trade), for international institutions such as the United Nations and the International War Crimes Tribunal, and even for our own High Court.

The combined effect of these various trends is to nullify and undermine the basic notion of law as a defence of the rights of the individual against an arbitrary executive – with serious implications for Australian democracy. Our collective failure to demand compliance with national and international law has, it would appear, given the present Federal Government the message that Australians will accept the rule of an arbitrary executive.

The concept of a single body as executive, legislator and judiciary is ‘acceptable’ under military law in a war context, despite the fact that there is no redress if the decisions of that body prove to be unreasonable or arbitrary. In other contexts the concept is known as fascism or totalitarianism.

Perhaps the analogy appears too extreme. Let’s examine exactly what is involved.

What is democracy?

The main elements of democracy are generally agreed upon as being:

* individual and group access to the political process,

* regular free elections, with votes of roughly equal weight,

* sequential and/or concurrent sharing of political power, so that no political group is able to maintain power over other groups indefinitely,

* maximisation of information available to voters on political issues, including free public discussion of political issues and free assembly,

* an independent judiciary,

* government self-regulation and accountability,

* just procedures, including in enforcement and interpretation of legislation, and

* maximisation of personal freedom/individual autonomy and privacy of citizens.

At the same time, we regularly put up with defects in these elements and still regard what we have as a democracy. Defects in the 2000 US Presidential election were expressed by the Florida bumper stickers One man one vote (not available in all States) and Don’t blame me, I voted for Gore – I think. Indeed, Justice Scalia of the United States Supreme Court has expressed the view that the US Federal Constitution does not guarantee the right to vote.

While such defects are of concern, what is particularly disquieting is a situation where any of the agreed elements of democracy is regularly or systemically undermined. This is something that has been happening at all levels of Australian government as the rule of law is whittled away by governments who do not want to be answerable to anyone except the TV cameras.

Disrespect for laws and the judiciary

The Liberal Federal Government has encouraged public denigration of the High Court, as it did when in opposition, as being ‘too political’. Now that the majority of the High Court members are Howard appointees, hopefully such criticism will cease.

Neither the Prime Minister nor Attorney General spoke up for Justice Michael Kirby during the infamous allegations against him. The Federal Government has steadfastly refused to honour international treaties or protocols, and came close to voting against an International War Crimes Tribunal. Howard has regularly presented the issue of Australia’s compliance with international covenants on human rights, the elimination of racism, work conditions and the like in terms of an international conspiracy to impose on Australia laws that we don’t want. He doesn’t have the same reservations in relation to international trade agreements, although they too would affect Australia, arguably in much more serious ways.

Former federal president of the Liberal Party John Valder petitioned John Howard to have the cases of the two Australians held at Guantanamo Bay brought before a judicial body. They had been held for more than a year without access to family or lawyers. His efforts were ‘futile’.

Legislation that excludes judicial review

In the last months of 2002, the NSW government passed the Terrorism (Police Powers) Act which purports to protect the decisions of the NSW Police Minister from any judicial review whatsoever:

s 13(1): An authorisation (and any decision of the Police Minister under this Part with respect to the authorisation) may not be challenged, reviewed, quashed or called into question on any grounds whatsoever before any court, tribunal, body or person in any legal proceedings, or restrained, removed or otherwise affected by proceedings in the nature of prohibition or mandamus.

As previously pointed out in Webdiary (eg Democracy’s watchdogs blind to the danger), the contempt that this piece of legislation shows for the Westminster notion of the separation of powers, let alone for the notion of a modern democracy underpinned by the rule of law, is breathtaking. Similar Commonwealth legislation has been brought before the Federal Parliament (ASIO Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002). The Federal Government has already heavily restricted judicial review of its immigration and refugee processing’ procedures.

While it may be argued that the NSW legislation is aimed specifically at terrorism and hence involves the suspension of normal laws, as in a war situation, it is drafted so widely as to protect the police and the government from judicial scrutiny in relation to non-terrorist activities as well. And unfortunately the legislation is consistent with Australian governments’ increasing disregard for the law across a wide range of areas.

Newly-appointed NSW Supreme Court Justice Jeff Shaw recently cautioned that judicial independence is central to democracy and that legislators should not circumscribe the functions of the courts – although there is a long history of governments doing so. The history of that kind of restrictive legislation was reviewed in the same week by the High Court in its decision in relation to the ‘Tampa legislation’ (Plaintiff S157/2002 v Commonwealth of Australia [2003] HCA 2). Chief Justice Gleeson quoted Lord Justice Denning’s dictum that ‘if tribunals were to be at liberty to exceed their jurisdiction without any check by the courts, the rule of law would be at an end’. However the court did not hold the legislation unconstitutional as such. Following previous English and Australian decisions the court found that the legislation would be unconstitutional only where it seeks to protect manifest jurisdictional errors or acts which are outside the powers of the government.

What History shows us – the First phase

It is not just the passing of new legislation that is the stratagem we should look for when we seek to protect ourselves against the totalitarianisation of our society. That is what we have been taught to look for, but a closer examination of history will show that the first sign of the approach of fascism is not the introduction of new measures, but the failure to enforce the existing ones that protect the structure of society and the interests of the individuals within that society. It is that first stage of fascism that we are now seeing.

Historically, the core of fascism is the placement of the interest of one sector of society above the interests of all others. One example is the placement of the interests of developers over and above the interests of those who must live in the cities that the developers build. There are no doubt other equally valid examples.

In 2002 the Joint Select Committee on Quality of Building in NSW received evidence about how various Councils across the State failed to implement their own Local Environmental Plans. In some cases, private certifying bodies owned by the Councils themselves certified developments as meeting the required standards without inspections or failed to redress clear inadequacies (such as the building of a house with only half of the correct number of supporting piers). Of course, such arbitrary enforcement of any law is itself an invitation to corruption. (See Developer heaven, Labor hell.)

Regular unjust or arbitrary practices at Local Council level are not investigated or corrected by State Government, nor in NSW by bodies such as the ICAC or State Ombudsman except for the most extreme examples.

Redress in relation to the most minor development matter is thus often only possible in NSW through the Land and Environment Court, where generally costs are not awarded even in favour of a successful applicant. Given that the costs of even a simple case are likely to be in the region of $40,000, redress is therefore effectively ruled out for most people.

Lack of government enforcement of its own laws is not just a practical problem – in this case, to the quality of our built environment and thus to our standard of living – but a real democratic issue. Laws impose restrictions, laws impose moderation. Ideally, laws impose civilised values and protect the rights of the individual against an arbitrary executive.

The effect of arbitrary government decisions, including as to when the government will choose to enforce its laws and regulations, gives the message that law does not reflect real social values. It is not as important as money, or power, or who you know. Or violence. Citizens are set against each other as Local and State and Federal governments fail to fulfil their enforcement roles.

What history shows us – the second phase

Once again, one need only look to history to see what the second stage in the introduction of fascism has been: It is the passing of anti-terrorist legislation. We have that now.

What history shows us – the third phase

What then is the third phase that we should be looking for? In Nazi Germany, it was the demonisation of a recognisable group of ordinary citizens selected by Hitler to be the scapegoats.

We learn through our culture precisely those groups against which we are supposed or allowed to vent our anger – the groups that our culture has stereotyped. By defining the enemy in unmistakable terms, our culture gives us implicit permission to attack. Social permission to act against people who are supposedly different is the first step along the road to genocide. Genocide and war are not due only to labelling, but labelling makes it easier to deny any common bonds.

What remains in the historical pattern is the destruction of the very machinery that brought the ruling party to power. In Nazi Germany it was the Rohm purge. Modern Australia is perhaps more gentle.

The process of introducing fascism or totalitarianism into a society that is traditionally democratic in nature must still in its early stages pass through the electoral process. But this can be interfered with in a variety of ways.

At an internal level, alienated party members are disengaged or overruled in preselections so that the parliamentary executive may have free reign in the choice of candidates and thereby in the construction and political nature of the organs of democracy. At a national level, history shows that what is required to bypass the normal electoral constraints is an external enemy that is seen to create an internal emergency.

Ironically, it is only by enforcing law and imposing laws upon itself that a democratic government can protect its own existence. Otherwise it will be destroyed, not according to the rules (which it has itself devalued), but by any available means. But before that happens, many people will be hurt in the process. And that process is happening now.

If we want to retain a true democracy in Australia we must all act to publicise lack of enforcement of legislation, and to oppose laws that prevent judicial scrutiny. We must put our names to submissions to enforcement agencies at all levels of government. Irrespective of whether or not we oppose the coming war we must protect and support the rule of law by every means available to us, in order to protect our own democracy.

***

Judge Weeramantry, former Judge of the International Court of Justice and Professor of Law at Monash University, has departed Australia to go to New York to release an international appeal drafted by the International Association of Lawyers AGainst Nuclear Arms and endorsed by more than 160 lawyers, law professors and jurists from 30 countries. It will be released at a press conference in the UN on Feb 14 (Australian time).

Here is the text of the appeal, followed by a list of signatories.

International Appeal by Lawyers and Jurists against the “Preventive” Use of Force

We the undersigned lawyers and jurists from legal traditions around the world are extremely concerned about conflicts in the Middle East regarding the suspected proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the possibility that force may be used in response to this situation.

The development of weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the world is contrary to universal norms against the acquisition, possession and threat or use of such weapons and must be addressed. However, the “preventive” use of force currently being considered against Iraq is both illegal and unnecessary and should not be authorized by the United Nations or undertaken by any State.

General principles of international law hold that:

* peaceful resolution of conflicts between States is required,

* the use of force is only permissible in the case of an armed attack or imminent attack or under UN authorization when a threat to the peace has been declared by the Security Council and non-military measures have been determined to be inadequate,

* enforcement of international law must be consistently applied to all States.

In further enunciating and applying these principles, we believe that the use of force against Iraq would be illegal for the following reasons:

Peaceful resolution of conflicts required

i) The United Nations Charter and customary international law require States to seek peaceful resolutions to their disputes. Article 33 of the Charter states that “The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall first of all seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements or other peaceful means of their own choice.”

ii) Under Article 51 of the Charter, States are only permitted to threaten or use force “if an armed attack occurs” and only “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

iii) In the case of an act of aggression or a threat to the peace, the United Nations Security Council is also required under the Charter (Article 41) to firstly employ “measures not involving the use of armed force.” Only when such measures “would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate” (Article 42) can the Security Council authorize the use of force.

No act of aggression or evidence of imminent threat of such act

iv) In 1991 the Security Council responded to an actual invasion of Kuwait by Iraq by authorizing all means necessary to restore the peace. In the current case, however, there has been no indication by Iraq that it intends to attack another country and no evidence of military preparations for any such attack. In addition, it is generally recognized that Iraq does not have the military capability to attack the key countries in dispute, i.e. the United States and the United Kingdom.

No precedent for preventive use of force

v) There is no precedent in international law for use of force as a preventive measure when there has been no actual or imminent attack by the offending State. There is law indicating that preventive use of force is illegal. The International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg rejected Germany’s argument that they were compelled to attack Norway in order to prevent an Allied invasion (6 F.R.D. 69, 100-101, 1946).

vi) The Security Council has never authorized force based on a potential, non-imminent threat of violence. All past authorizations have been in response to actual invasion, large scale violence or humanitarian emergency.

vii) If the Security Council, for the first time, were to authorize preventive war, it would undermine the UN Charter’s restraints on the use of force and provide a dangerous precedent for States to consider the “preventive” use of force in numerous situations making war once again a tool of international politics rather than an anachronistic and prohibited action. If the use of force takes place outside the framework of international law and the UN Charter, the structure and authority of international law and the UN Charter which have taken generations and immense human sacrifice to establish, would be severely undermined into the foreseeable future.

Consistency under international law must be maintained

viii) International law must be consistently applied in order to maintain the respect of the international community as law and not the rejection of it as a tool of the powerful to subjugate the weak.

ix) Security Council Resolution 687, setting forth the terms of the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War, acknowledges that the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is not an end in itself but “represents steps towards the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction.”

x) The International Court of Justice has unanimously determined that there is an obligation on all States to “pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” (Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, ICJ 1996). Meaningful steps need to be taken by all States to this end, and States wishing to enforce compliance with international law must themselves comply with this requirement.

xi) Action to ensure the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction should be done in conjunction with similar actions to ensure elimination of other weapons of mass destruction in the region – including Israel’s nuclear arsenal – and in the world – including the nuclear weapons of China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States.

Alternative mechanisms are available to address concerns

xii) The UN Security Council has established a number of mechanisms to address the concerns regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. These include diplomatic pressure, negotiations, sanctions on certain goods with military application, destruction of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and inspections of facilities with capabilities to assist in production of weapons of mass destruction. Evidence to date is that these mechanisms are not perfect, but are working effectively enough to have led to the destruction and curtailment of most of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capability.

xiii) Mechanisms are available to address charges against Iraq and the Iraqi leadership of serious human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. These include domestic courts utilizing universal jurisdiction, the establishment by the Security Council of an ad hoc international criminal tribunal, use of the International Criminal Court for any crimes committed after July 2002, and the International Court of Justice.

The use of force by powerful nations in disregard of the principles of international law would threaten the fabric of international law giving rise to the potential for further violations and an increasing cycle of violence and anarchy.

We call on the United Nations and all States to continue to pursue a path of adherence to international law and in pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the threats arising from weapons of mass destruction and other threats to the peace.

Appeal circulated by the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LAWYERS AGAINST NUCLEAR ARMS, ialana.

Southern office: Director, Alan Webb, Flat 10, 6 Seymour St, St Mary’s Bay, Aotearoa-New Zealand Auckland. Phone: (64) 9 360-1258 Fax: (64) 9 360-1258, alan@pacificlaw.co.nz

Northern office: Director, Philipp Boos, Postfach 1168, D-35037, Marburg, Germany. Phone: (49) 64 212-3027 Fax: (49) 64 211-5828, info@ialana.de

United Nations office: Director, John Burroughs, 211 East 43rd St, #1204, New York. NY 10017, USA, Phone: (1) 212 818-1861 Fax: (1) 212 818-1857, johnburroughs@lcnp.org

***

Appeal Supporters

Australia

Roy Baker, Project Director, Communications Law Centre, University of New South Wales

Jacoba Brasch, Barrister-at-Law, Brisbane

Patrick T. Byrt, Counsellor-at-law. Convenor- Reconciliation and Human Rights, Norwood.

Peter Cashmane, Maurice Blackburn Cashman, Lawyers, Sydney

Hilary Charlesworth, Professor and Director, Centre for International and Public Law, Faculty of Law, Australian National University

Paulette Dupuy, Legal Officer, Brisbane

Michael Flynn, Barrister& Solicitor Legal Officer, University of Canberra

Kate Gibson, Solicitor, Minter Ellison Lawyers, Sydney NSW

Paul Howorth, Barrister, Brisbane

Michael Hovane, Managing Solicitor, Child Support Legal Unit,Legal Aid WA

Stephen Keim, Barrister, Brisbane

Cressida Limon, Lecturer in Law, Victoria University, Melbourne

Lee McIntosh, Solicitor, Environmental Defender’s Office

David McKenzie, Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and of the High Court of Australia.

Elisa Nichols, Lawyer, Environmental Defender’s Office, Sydney

Polly Porteous, Lawyer, Sydney

Guy Powles, Professor of Law, Monash University, Melbourne. Pacific Law Consultant, University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu

Dr Murray Raff, School of Law, Victoria University, Melbourne

Gordon Renouf, Director, National Pro Bono Resource Centre

Peter Semmler QC, Barrister, Sydney.

Ben Slade, Maurice Blackburn Cashman, Lawyers

Jeff Smith, Director, Environmental Defender’s Office, NSW

Gillian Walker BA LLB (Hons) Graduate Lawyer & Lecturer in International Law, Sydney

Adrian Williams, Solicitor, President of Sydney Young Christian Workers, Sydney

Aotearoa – New Zealand

Linley Black, Earth Charter Aotearoa – New Zealand

Prof Dr Klaus Bosselmann, Director, New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law

Duncan Currie, Barrister, Christchurch

Jane Doherty, Lawyer, Auckland

Claudia Geiringer, Lecturer in Law, Victoria University of Wellington

Kevin Glover, Solicitor, Auckland

Kitt Littlejohn, Lawyer, Auckland.

Nicollette Phong, Lawyer, Auckland

Simon Reeves, LL.M. (Virginia), Barrister of the High Court of New Zealand, Vice-president, IALANA

Hon Matt Robson MP New Zealand Parliament. Former Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control. Former Minister of Courts.

Scott Sheeran, LLB hons, Otago. LLM international law, Cambridge, UK.

Alan Webb, Solicitor, Auckland. Director International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms Southern Office

Dr David V Williams, Associate Professor in Law, University of Auckland

Argentina

Anna Petra Roge de Marzolini, Lawyer Asociacion Ambientalista EcoLaPaz, Friends of Earth

Bangladesh

Sara Hossain, Lawyer. Inter-rights.

Dr. Faustina Pereira, Advocate and Public Interest Litigator, Supreme Court of Bangladesh

Belgium

Prof. Eva Brems, Human Rights Centre, Ghent University

Dr Prof.Tony van Loon, Free University of Brussels. Jurist of the public service, Flanders

Canada

Gina Fiorillo, Lawyer,Vancouver, BC

Holly Holtman, Counsel, Canadian Department of Justice

Pierre Sadik, LL.B. Lawyer, Ottawa

Clare Smith, lawyer (Ll.B.), Toronto,

Jane Stoyles, LLB. Lawyer, Ottawa

Michelle Swenarchuk, Counsel and Director of International Programmes, Canadian Environmental Law Association

Costa Rica

Dr Carlos Vargas, Interlaw Consultores Juridicos, San Jose.

Emily J Yozell, Attorney. Director Central America Program, Loyola Law school

Fiji

Sotia Vuli Coutts, Legal Officer, Fiji Law Reform Commission

Ropate Green Lomavata, Solicitor, Fiji Law Reform Commission

Villiame Bokini Naliva, Solicitor

Kemueli Qoro, Solicitor, Airports Fiji Limited

Lavenia Rokoika, Principal Legal Officer, Civil Aviation Authority of the Fiji Islands

Bhupendra Solanki, State Prosecutor

Marama Tubuna, Solicitor, Human Rights Commission

Raijeli Vasakula, Solicitor

Josaia Waqaivolavola, State Prosecutor

France

Monique Picard-Weyl,Lawyer

Roland Weyl, Lawyer, Vice-President of International Association of Democratic Lawyers

Germany

Lars Albath, LLM, Berlin

Peter Becker. Secretary, International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms

Torsten Block, Judge. Vice Director of the Magistrates Court of Neumunster

Philipp Boos, LL.M, Marburg. Director International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms Northern Office

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Daubler, Law Prof. University Bremen

Prof. Dr. Herta Daubler-Gmelin, Berlin, Tubingen, attorney, former fed. minister of justice

Volker Lindemann, Vizeprasident des Schleswig-Holsteinische=n Oberlandesgerichts, Member of IALANA (German Section)

Renate Reupke. Lawyer. Member of IALANA Germany

Roda Verheyen, L.LM, Research Unit Environmental Law – University of Hamburg; Global Climate Justice Programme

Grenada

Nicholas Barnes, Solicitor General

Hungary

Barbara Bedont, LL.B, Legal Officer Public Interest Law Initiative, Budapest

India

Ms. Niloufer Bhagwat, Advocate, Vice President, Indian Association of Lawyers

Neha Naqvi, BABL(hons) Hyderabad

P.N. Bhagwati, Former Chief Justice of India. Chancellor Hyderabad University

D.J Ravindran, lawyer.

Jitendra Sharma, President, International Association of Democratic Lawyers

Ireland

Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain, School of Law, University of Ulster. Member Irish Human Rights Commission.

Marie Baker, BL. Lawyer, Cork

Aileen Donnelly BL, Barrister-at-Law, Dublin

Michael Farrell, Solicitor, Dublin. Former Chairperson of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

Italy

Joachim Lau, Advocate, Florence

Fabio Marcelli, First Researcher at the Institute of International Legal Studies of the National Research Council of Italy

Japan

Akihiko Kimijima, Professor of Law, Hokkai Gakuen University, Japan

Osamu Niikura, Secretary General of JALISA and Professor of Law at Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo

Kenji Urata, Professor of Law, Waseda University School of Law, Tokyo

Netherlands

Phon van den Biesen, Advocate, Amsterdam. Vice-President International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms

Norway

Stale Eskeland, Professor, University of Oslo Institute of Public and International Law

Bent Endresen, Advocate, Stavanger

Fredrik Heffermehl, Norsk Medlemsgruppe IALANA

Hyesterettsadvokat Hkon Helle, Lawyer, Stavanger

Pakistan

Akhtar Hussain, Advocate Supreme Court of Pakistan, Secretary General Democratic Lawyers Association Pakistan. Bureau Member of International Association of Democratic Lawyers

Papua-New Guinea

Brian Brunton, former Judge of the National and Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea, former Chairman of the Law Reform Commission, former Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Papua New Guinea

Effrey B. Dademo-Kaili, Lawyer, Environmental Law Center, Malagan Haus – Boroko

Philippines

Gregorio T. Fabros, Legal Counsel, National Federation of Teachers & Employees Unions

Alexander Lacson, Legal Counsel, Victims of Toxic and Hazardous wastes in former U.S. facilities

Corazon Valdez-Fabros, Lawyer, Manila Philippines

Puerto Rico

Roxana Badillo-Rodriguez, Esq. San Juan

Roberto A. Fernandez, Esq., San Juan

Marcos Rodriguez-Frese, Puerto Rico Bar

Jose R. Ortiz Velez, Esq., San Juan

Luis Amauri Suarez Zayas, Esq. San Juan

Samoa

Shirley Atatagi-Coutts, Environmental Advocate, Greenpeace – South Pacific

Ioane Okesene, Assistant Legal Counsel, Samoa Tel Limited, Apia

Spain

Victor de la Barrera Naumann, Lawyer and former judge

Juan Ramon Capella Hernandez, Professor of Law, University of Barcelona

South Africa

Adrian Pole, Attorney, LRC-EJP Durban, South Africa

Sri Lanka

C.G. Weeramantry. Former Vice-President of the International Court of Justice. Former justice of the Sri Lanka Supreme Court. President of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms

Sweden

Maria Bideke, International lawyer and Director of Law Association Justice International

Switzerland

Urs Cipolat, J.S.D., University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Marcelo G. Kohen, Professor of International Law, The Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva

Ukraine

Dr. Svitlana Kravchenko, Carlton Savage Visiting Professor of International Relations & Peace School of Law, University of Oregon Co-Director, Oregon-Lviv University Partnership President, Ecopravo-Lviv

United Kingdom

Geoffrey Bindman, Solicitor. Visiting professor of law, University College London and South Bank University

Emma Chown, Solicitor, London

Lord Anthony Gifford, Queens Counsel, Barrister-at-law

Professor Nicholas Grief, Bournemouth University.

Richard J. Harvey, Barrister, Lincoln’s Inn, London. Attorney at Law, NY, Tooks Court Chambers

Dr Glen Rangwala, MA, LLB, PhD. Lecturer, Newnham College, Cambridge

Peter Roderick, lawyer

James Woolley, Solicitor, Sheffield

United States of America

James Abourezk, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Ian Anderson, Scottish Advocate. South African Advocate. Attorney & Councilor, State of NY.

Irene Baghoomians, Center for Constitutional Rights

Nancy E. Biberman Esq. New York

Robert Boehm, Attorney, New York. Co-Chair of the Board, Center for Constitutional Rights.

Audrey Bomse, Attorney, member of the National Lawyers Guild.

Lisa S. Brodyaga, Attorney, San Benito TX

John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Juliet Chin, Attorney of Counsel Stevens, Hinds & White, P.C. New York,

Roger S. Clark, Board of Governors, Professor of Law, Rutgers University.

Angela J. Davis, Professor of Law, American University, Washington, DC

Julie E. Dinnerstein, Director of the Immigration Intervention Project, Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services, New York

Mary Dryovage, Lawyer

Anabel Dwyer, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Honorable Laura Safer Espinoza, Acting Supreme Court Justice, New York State

Richard Falk, Professor emeritus of international law, Princeton University

Howard Friel, World Editorial & International Law

Jeffrey H. Haas, Attorney, Taos, New Mexico and Chicago, IL

Christine Haight Farley, Assistant Professor of Law, American University Washington College of Law

Professor Lennox S Hinds, Vice-President, International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL)

Wythe Holt, Professor of Law, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL

Mary Howell, Attorney at Law, New Orleans, Louisiana

K. Dean Hubbard, Jr. National Co-Chair, National Lawyers Guild Labor and Employment Committee. Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy and Advocacy, Sarah Lawrence College

Jean K. Hyams, Attorney

Abdeen Jabara, Attorney at Law, New York

Alicia Kaplow, Attorney at Law, New York

Natalie Kabasakalian, Attorney at Law, New York

Ken Kimerling, Legal Director Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund

David Krieger J.D., President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Michael Krinsky, Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky & Lieberman, P.C. General Counsel, Bill of Rights Foundation

Nancy K. D. Lemon, J.D., Lecturer Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, California

Judith Levin, Lawyer, Washingtonville, New York

Andrew Lichterman, Program Director, Western States Legal Foundation

Jules Lobel, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh Law School. Vice Pres. Center for Constitutional Rights

Saul Mendlovitz, Dag Hammarskjold Professor of International Law, Rutgers University.

Carlin Meyer, Professor of Law, New York Law School

Daniel Meyers; Attorney-at-Law, New York. Executive Committee, NYC Chapter National Lawyers Guild

Howard N Meyer, member American Society of International Law

Binny Miller, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University

Tina Minkowitz, J.D., Staten Island, NY

Phyllis Olin, Esq. Berkeley, CA

Mary Boresz Pike, Lawyer, New York

Pamela Pitt, Lawyer, San Francisco

Severina Rivera, Esq. Director Campaign for Labor Rights, Washington

Celina Romany, Professor of Law, American University

Stephen A. Rosenbaum, Lecturer, Univ. of California, Berkeley School of Law. Adjunct Prof., Golden Gate Univ. Scl. of Law

Harold Rosenthal, Attorney, Pennsylvania

Ronald C. Slye, Associate Professor, Seattle University School of Law

Michael S. Sorgen, Attorney, San Francisco

Andrew Strauss, Professor of Law, Widener University School of Law.

Jan Susler. People’s Law Office, Chicago, IL

Katherine Thomsom, Attorney, San Francisco

Jon Van Dyke, Professor of Law, University of Hawaii Law School

Peter Weiss, President, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Lois Whitman, Attorney, New York

Glenn Wiser, staff attorney, Center for International Environmental Law, Washington DC

It’s a wild poker game, this one. The go-to-war-now trio says Osama’s statement proves what they never could – that Saddam and Osama were in cahoots. The anti-war brigade say it reinforces its warning that invading Iraq plays into Osama’s hands, since he wants a war of civilisations, and can use the invasion against the “infidel” Saddam to attract more followers. If that’s true, George Bush has created an alliance link between Saddam and Osama which could give Osama WMD – the exact result he says he’s trying to avoid.

I’m in the latter camp on this one. I’m reminded of the first email I published after September 11, by John Avery in Adelaide (Tragedy). It chilled me then, and it chills me even more now.

It is a reasonable guess that the perpetrators of today’s terrorism in the US are an extreme faction identified with Islam and probably connected to the Taliban. Having said that, it is vital that the actual culprits are identified and punished with narrow particularity, not just for sake of justice but to defeat the purposes of these outrages.

President Bush has said no distinction will be drawn between terrorists and the regimes who support them. But that is the exactly the response these shocking deeds seem calculated to elicit. A key object of extremist factions, such as those competing with more moderate groups among the Taliban, is to prevent moderate groups defecting, to shut the escape hatches.

We have seen this tactic in Afghanistan with the desecration of the Buddhist monuments, the arrest of aid workers for (allegedly) preaching Christianity and the outrageous repression of women in that country. The terrorists believe that more extreme and outrageous the actions, the more reliably will their targets extend revenge to anyone tainted by association with them.

Under common attack, more moderate factions are forced to commit to the extreme hard line, whether they like it or not.

If this is correct, the US response should be to drive a wedge between the perpetrators and to their close supporters, rebarbative as they definitely will turn out to be. This course is unlikely to be followed because the extremity of the terrorists’ outrage is designed to amplify their victims’ hostility and harden their feelings of revenge.

Thus the huge scale of losses inflicted on the US are calculated to induce feelings of revenge that will not be satisfied with the punishment of a mere handful of scruffy tribesmen, even if bin Laden were among them (should his group turn out to be culpable).

The vividness and power of these events, underscored by presumed religiously inspired suicides, make it emotionally difficult for the Americans to resist the terrorists’ overt message that they are primarily engaged in war with the USA or the west.

The war with the diabolical west may turn out to be their platform, but the real purpose of their attacks and their extreme high stake tactics seem to be fame, self-preservation and advancement within a specific regional politics marked by labile factional and ideological commitments to forms of Islam ostensibly opposed to modernity with a western face.

The world will pay a high price if America succumbs to these forceful temptations. President Bush, contrary to what he has declared so far in the heat of the moment, should lend support to the more moderate factions to isolate the extremists, contrary to the extremists’ desire to draw a savage response from the USA, but this is unlikely to happen.

Chilling too, the enthusiastic endorsement of Rupert Murdoch for the war. It would help the world economy – better than a tax cut! Perhaps his compliant editors will now be a little more loathe to pooh-pooh the oil war theory.

Murdoch praises Blair’s ‘courage’

by Julia Day

Wednesday February 12, 2003, The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch has given his full backing to war, praising George Bush as acting “morally” and “correctly” and describing Tony Blair as “full of guts” for going out on a limb in his support for an attack on Iraq.

The media tycoon said he was completely behind Mr Bush and Mr Blair as they faced opposition from Germany and France. Much of the world, he said, cannot accept that America is the only superpower.

“I think Tony is being extraordinarily courageous and strong on what his stance is in the Middle East. It’s not easy to do that living in a party which is largely composed of people that have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist,” Mr Murdoch told the Australian news magazine The Bulletin. “But he’s shown great guts, as he did, I think, in Kosovo and over various problems in the old Yugoslavia.”

Mr Murdoch was unequivocal about war with Iraq. “We can’t back down now. I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it.”

He said the price of oil would be one of the war’s main benefits. “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.”

Mr Murdoch’s comments come just a week after he told Fortune magazine in the US that war could fuel an economic boom.

“Who knows what the future holds? I have a pretty optimistic medium and long-term view but things are going to be pretty sticky until we get Iraq behind us. But once it’s behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else,” he told Fortune.

Mr Murdoch believes there is no doubt that President Bush will be re-elected if he wins the war with Iraq and the US economy remains healthy.

“He will either go down in history as a very great president or he’ll crash and burn. I’m optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of two to one.”

***

Activism

Several readers have suggested sending a Valentine’s Day email to your federal representative.

Lynette Dumble: The Women in Black group holds a silent vigil against war and violence every Thursday at 5.30-6.30pm, Sydney Town Hall. www.womeninblackoz=.com

***

Recommendations:

See US Orders 100,000 body bags and coffins.

Mark Sokacic recommends black humor for the pre war weary at idleworm.

James Woodcock recommends The Guardian’s international guide to peace websites at guardian.

You can thank the Presidents of France, Russia and China for opposing a war in Iraq by going to greenpeace

Paula Abood recommends ‘Vulnerable but ignored: how catastrophe threatens the 12 million children of Iraq’ in independent and ‘YellowTimes.org Shut Down! Stifling the Voice of Reason’ at antiwar

***

One liners

Chris Munson: My question for the day is whether the US has managed to “turn” Hans Blix. They seem to be exerting unseemly pressure (coercing – forcing – bribing?) people and nations to their “Coalition of the willing” or “fellowship of the ring” as Mark Latham calls John, George and Tony. We’ll find out whether Hans is the man we think he is this Friday.

Trevor Kerr: I’d like to see “BAN WARS” banners hanging out of every public building, especially hospitals. If faction-paralysed Labor can’t get up a decent, enduring, visible national campaign, we can predict the size of the next Green vote – bigger!

Rod Lever: All Osama has to do is stick up his head and say “Boo!” and we all fly into a panic and call out the tanks and the army reserves. Who says terrorists are not winning?

Margaret: Thank you for publishing the Ian Macdougall view (Saddam as Stalin: The case for war). As an American I didn’t know what to believe until Mr Macdougall’s presentation of the pro and con of war with Iraq cleared my confusion. I am now totally convinced that we need to get rid of Saddam as quickly as possible.

Peter Woodforde in Canberra: I’m sure Saddam’s Republican Guard must be quaking in their boots. Any minute now, sabres flashing and mounted three-to-a-camel, the crack team of full and frank Miranda Devine (SMH 13 Feb), Young Liberal Student Movement bimbo heart-throb Sophie Panopoulos (ABC Insiders 9 Feb) and gnarled old desert veteran Piers Ackerman (Tele 13 Feb) will be at the gates of Baghdad. Undoubtedly their fierce cries of “Death to the Great Satan Simon Crean and the chattering class elites” will chill the entrails of the Iraqis. There is something immensely comforting in knowing we are protected by the likes of this trio, each of whom has pledged their blood to John Howard in the sands of Mesopotamia.

***

Scott Burchill

This is important. A real mess is brewing.

Exile Group Leaders Fault U.S. Plan for Postwar Iraq

By Karl Vick

Washington Post Foreign Service

Wednesday, February 12, 2003; Page A01

SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq, Feb. 11 — Iraqi exile leaders complained today that a U.S. plan to install a military governor for up to a year in postwar Iraq, as outlined by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, risks leaving in place an Iraqi administration dominated by the country’s Sunni Muslim minority and veterans of President Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

Leaders of the principal exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, said the administration plan, described by Khalilzad last week in Ankara, Turkey, seemed to reflect fears in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt that immediate democracy in Iraq could be destabilizing. The complaints also highlighted concern that the exiles’ role in postwar Iraq could turn out to be less than they anticipated in months of lobbying against Hussein.

“I think it’s a bad policy,” said an Iraqi National Congress official, Kanan Makiya. “I think it’s going to have the opposite effect that they want it to have.” The group, which recently moved here in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq from its base in London, aspires to form a government in exile and exert influence in postwar Baghdad with the support of the United States.

Ahmed Chalabi, the expatriate Iraqi who heads the group, warned that the U.S. plan would leave Hussein’s followers in charge even if Hussein were removed by a U.S. attack. Chalabi, who did not attend the meetings in Ankara but was briefed on them, said the U.S. plan envisions that only the top two officials at each Iraqi ministry would be removed and replaced by U.S. military officers.

“Power is being handed essentially on a platter to the second echelon of the Baath Party and the Iraqi officer corps,” said Makiya, an adjunct professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. By leaving in place Hussein’s “structure of power,” Makiya said, the U.S. plan offers a leg up in eventual elections to the Sunni minority that has run Iraq for decades, even though a majority of Iraq’s 23 million inhabitants follow the Shiite branch of Islam.

“I can see Saudi Arabia preferring this option over any other position,” Makiya said, naming the country that regards itself as the protector of Islam’s Sunni branch.

“What concerns us a lot is the perception of the Arab governments and their friends in Washington about the effect the example of Iraq will have on the future of the Arab world,” Chalabi said.

Another opposition leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed. “The Shiites are not going to like this,” he said.

But a Kurdish leader, also part of the anti-Hussein movement, put a softer face on what he acknowledged was a disappointing report from Khalilzad. “I want to keep an open mind about this news,” said Barham Salih of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls a section of northern Iraq beyond the authority of Hussein. “The important thing is to get rid of this dictator.”

Khalilzad, in his Ankara discussions, provided new details to the exile leaders of what the Bush administration has in mind for Iraq after the removal of Hussein. A U.S. military governor would rule the country for up to a year with the advice of an appointed “consultative council,” they said they were told, while a judiciary committee would prepare a draft constitution and elections for a constituent assembly, which would debate, amend and adopt it.

The prospect of a U.S. military government presiding over Iraq’s predominantly Muslim population has fueled concern among exiles and other critics. They point to the appeal of such voices as Osama bin Laden’s in portraying the war as a campaign against Islam as opposed to President Bush’s characterization of it as a war on terrorism. In addition, they complain, the emerging details of the U.S. plan raise questions about the extent of Washington’s commitment to bringing Western-style democracy to Iraq as soon as Hussein is removed.

Administration regard for Iraqi opposition groups has declined markedly since U.S. officials publicly courted the fractious organizations as an alternative to Hussein’s rule. Opposition officials acknowledged the sting of their dip in status. But the groups that claim to represent distinct constituencies — Kurds on one side of the country and Shiites on the other — have taken solace in the prospect of eventually asserting their power at the ballot box.

The groups include two Kurdish political bodies that have governed the rugged northern reaches of the country since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when U.S. and British warplanes began enforcing a “no-fly” zone that kept Hussein’s forces at bay. Their militias, once considered a possible auxiliary to a U.S. invasion force, have more recently been regarded as a possible problem.

Turkey, a key U.S. ally with a sizable Kurdish population, fears that a war in neighboring Iraq would kindle Kurdish nationalism within its own borders. To help win permission to base U.S. ground forces and warplanes in Turkey, the Bush administration has told the Kurds to stand down when Turkey sends thousands of troops into Iraq, officially to seal the border against a refugee flow and provide humanitarian assistance.

Details of the planned Turkish incursion were spelled out in the Ankara meeting, the exile leaders here said. At the same time, they said, U.S. officials warned about Kurdish ambitions for establishing a federal-style postwar government, which Turkey openly opposes.

“They told the Kurds to be very, very careful and very realistic about federalism,” Chalabi said.

In Iraq’s southern third, a Shiite militia also poses a challenge to Pentagon planners. The force numbers perhaps 10,000 Iranian-backed irregulars loyal to Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

In an interview last week in Tehran, the Iranian capital, where the group is headquartered, the ayatollah complained that U.S. reluctance to share war plans has fed anxiety among Iraq’s Shiite majority. Many Shiites answered a U.S. call to rise up against Hussein after the Gulf War only to be slaughtered by his forces.

“The people are suspecting the Americans’ role because in 1991 they supported the Iraqi regime when it was killing nearly half a million in front of the Americans’ eyes,” Hakim said.

While the U.S. officials were explaining their postwar plan in Ankara, Chalabi was drumming up support among other exile groups for a provisional government that would draw on exiles and democrats who emerge within Iraq. He pitched the plan to Hakim in Tehran before traveling to Sulaymaniyah last week to confer with Kurdish leaders in preparation for an opposition conference scheduled for this month.

The conference, postponed three times, is to take place inside the Kurdish-controlled zone, but only miles from Hussein’s forces. Officials expect Khalilzad to head the U.S. delegation, but Chalabi’s group said the Bush administration has been reluctant to encourage the provisional government idea for fear it would complicate war planning.

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OSAMA’S VOICE

Mike Lyvers in Queensland

I fear Bush and Blair are playing right into bin Laden’s hands. His plan is to eliminate all infidels from the Middle East, including Saddam. A war of the West against Saddam would help him fulfil at least part of his dream by pitting the hated infidels against each other.

And I wouldn’t count on democratisation working very well in Iraq, even if this could be achieved by force. The conservative forms of Islam widely practiced in that region (unlike the more benign Sufism practiced in Indonesia) are incompatible with western concepts such as democracy, religious tolerance or universal human rights.

Successive US governments have long quietly debated the issue of whether they should push for democratisation of their erstwhile ally Saudi Arabia, but the sad conclusion of many foreign policy experts is that if the Saudis were given the vote, they would probably elect an even more repressive theocratic regime than the current one. Likewise, if Iraq became another Islamic theocracy, even a (one-off) democratically elected one, this would hardly be an improvement over Saddam.

What to do? Spray the region with MDMA (Ecstasy) perhaps?

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Nadim Joukhadar

How pathetic is the US Administration going to get? Even in translated form the alleged tape from bin Laden shows what he thinks of Saddam and his cronies. Bin Laden clearly calls them “apostates”, meaning they are also enemies of Islam. does that sound to you like a terrorist link? Somehow the US hawks think so.

Quite frankly this tape sums up the Arab view of Saddam. He is despised globally. What it therefore proves is there is NO link between the War on Terror and the Invasion of Iraq. It would be nice to see one media editor make that statement or provide the story the way it is.

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Nick Emeljanow in Bicton, Western Australia

It seems that as the US are unable to find or capture the real, obvious, elf confessed global terrorist, it has decided to go hellbent in another direction, and likely to cause a massive humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq.

Unable as the US are to prove a link between the secular Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda, the quintessential irony is that based on the latest rhetoric from Osama Bin Laden, this would be a boon to Al Qaeda in their quest for radicalised Muslims.

Why would the US as the only superpower choose to threaten a former ally, and now a conventional enemy like Saddam Hussein, who has been adequately contained since the end of the Gulf War by the United Nations sanctions process? It seems to me that it’s because it is easier than fighting the phantoms of Al Qaeda.

This is all about seeming to do something and being re-elected. If you don’t believe me, think about the fridge magnets being delivered on behalf of John Howard.

VIEW FROM THE REGION

P Shasi

Like many others, I have been keeping myself updated on the news. I am an Asian (of Indian origin) with a residency in Australia (a choice I made) currently working overseas.

Much of my feelings for Australia has now been called into question, as Howard as done much to decimate my once proud opinion of Australia, its government and its role in Asia. Since I am overseas, much of my knowledge of Australian opinion is that of the government’s standpoint (based on the media’s take on Australia’s stand on the issue).

Had I not been keeping in touch (of late) with Australian current affairs via smh-online, I would have treated the government’s stand as that of the nation’s popular public opinion. It is my belief that Howard has clearly segregated Australia from the rest of Asia.

I am certain, much of Asia (Singapore being the exception) views Australia in much the same way, and will unlikely change their opinion for a long time. It certainly will not end for as long as Howard remains Prime Minister (capable as his government may be).

I believe, Howard has no choice now but to stand by Bush regardless of public opinion. He has already alienated his neighbours. He cannot afford to alienate his friends too.

CONVERSATIONS

M Mullaney in the USA

I find your simplistic assessment of world events and your hostilities towards the US extremely disconcerting. The world was fighting long before George Bush and will continue to do so long after. We here in the US have resolved ourselves to the facts that there will be another attack on civilian targets and most of our long term allies do not care – in fact, many, like the writers in your column, believe we deserve it. How hypocritical is it to oppose an American war against Iraq while subtly condoning terrorist attacks against the US as an understandable response to American arrogance.

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Tony Powers

Why is it you keep claiming to be a small “L” liberal when all evidence points to the contrary? One only has to refer to Rolling Your Own to see that you are obviously a Big “L” Leftie.

George Bush HAS NOT confirmed that Australia has committed to joining a unilateral strike by the US on Iraq without UN sanction. It does you no credit at all to perpetuate this myth being peddled by the Labour Party, A myth supported only by selective quoting of the US President.

George Bush, in responding to a question as to wether he counted Australia as a member of the Coalition of the Willing answered “Yes I Do, but what that means is up to John to decide”. It is rather informative to note that when quoting the President, Simon Crean neglects to mention the last part of the answer, presumably because it qualifies the first part of the answer and weakens Mr Crean’s argument. Quiet clearly if the PM had already committed to a multilateral strike without UN approval there would have been no need for the President to qualify his response to the question.

As I read the President’s remarks, what he’s saying is that he sees Australia as being committed to the Coalition of the Willing in trying to rid Saddam Hussein of WMD and in trying to get the UN to stick to it’s stated “serious consequences” for non-compliance with resolution 1441. However the second part of the answer “…what this means is up to John” shows that the President respects our sovereign right to make our own decisions about how far that commitment goes. As the PM has frequently stated there is no Australian commitment yet to supporting a multilateral strike without UN approval, and it is this non-decision that the President is referring to in the last part of his answer.

In other words Australia is a member of the “Coalition of the Willing” but we and only we decide how far our commitment to that Coalition goes. This has been the PM’s position for some time now and, in spite of the Labour conspiracy theories, supported more by innuendo and misinformation than any solid evidence or facts, it clearly remains his position.

Margo: Australia has agreed to slot into the US invasion plan (see the Herald story Forces to follow US plan of attack, cited in George Bush: Australia’s war leader, which it saw months ago, defence force chief General Cosgrove said yesterday. It is inconceivable that having agreed to do certain things during the attack, we then pulled out. That would not be the action of an ally, but an enemy, as it would upset the invasion strategy. It would be far worse than Canada’s decision not to deploy troops unless and until the UN sanctions an attack. As to George Bush’s comments, the Coalition of the Willing is by definition the allies who have agreed to join an invasion ordered by the United States. That’s what it means. If Australia hadn’t agreed, it wouldn’t be in the Coalition of the Willing, we’d be in the coalition of the maybes or the no ways. Bush’s remarks after confirming our membership of this select group could have referred to the fact that the terms of engagement – who gives the orders to our soldiers etc – have not yet been signed off, according to defence minister Hill on Lateline last night.

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Enrico Perrotta, letter to his friend Harry Heidelberg

Dear Harry,

I’ve just read your article attacking Carmen Lawrence (Anti-war nostalgia: Baby boomers strike again). I cannot believe what I’m reading there. Are you serious? Harry, you are a victim.

The US government claims that a terrorist attack is imminent. I don’t know whether it’s imminent or not – I do not trust to an intelligence that hasn’t foreseen September 11 – but I agree with the conclusion that other attacks are likely. Of course they will, do you think that Al Qaeda has disappeared with a bit of bombing over Afghanistan?

But what has Saddam to do with all that? Harry, explain that to me! British intelligence – shall I trust them more? – has confirmed last week that there is no link between the Baath party in Iraq and Al Qaeda. Iraq’s regime is not religious, is not driven by fundamentalism. There is no connection. Full stop. Period. End.

I know what you are saying now: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and will sell them to terrorists. Therefore, it’s a threat to the world community. I respond to you as follows: Most military experts affirm that Iraq might have some mass destruction weapons (biological), but only in residual amounts. They are not a threat to world security. Full stop. Period. End.

The US is concerned about homeland security. What kinds of weapons were used on the occasion of the biggest attack in US? Knives. Aircrafts. Brains. No Anthrax. No biological weapons at all. Brains, ideology, fanaticism – these were the weapons. We have to fight against them, not against Saddam Hussein.

Harry, you are a victim. A victim of a conspiracy initiated by Bush administration. If you make a survey today in the US and ask who is responsible for September 11 at least one third will say Saddam Hussein. You are all victims. You fear Saddam Hussein instead of being afraid of the real threats.

THE AUSTRALIAN WAY

Paul Walter in Adelaide

What is wrong with you press people? I sat down last night to watch on SBS the most bizarre, disturbing story I have yet seen on a news paper page or TV screen and the issue appears to have been embargoed, censored or just plain ignored out of the media completely.

I speak of the bizarre and horrific decision by the federal government to repatriate 1400 Timorese back to the third world slum we help create for them; after having them in this country for so long that they are now thoroughly “acculturated” to a western lifestyle and possibly unable to settle into a society like East Timor. Talk about a ship of fools; circa 1938!!

You will probably cavil, saying, “Well, he didn’t support the arrival of the boat-people”; why should I care?”.

But consider the differences that make this significant:

1. These people are a known quantity and have shown top citizenship requisites over nearly a decade, now.

2. This country has had a hand in the downfall of East Timor over a period of thirty years.We are not faced with being forced to assume another country’s responsibility; we are responsible in a tangible sense here.

3.We have “acculturated” them to our way of life.To dump these people back in Timor after this length of time must represent a direct threat to their well-being BY US that relates to our embrace of them within our society over a long length of time. Kittens and puppies abandoned after Christmas are treated better than this.

What, or where, are the “liberal values”guiding the thinking processes behind this travesty???? I have never been so affected as I was when 3 young students; young lasses who any Australian would be proud to call “daughter” talked in Aussie accents of their apprehension as to the future, given the government’s unrelenting attitude.

I can’t understand, or forgive Phil Ruddock. No wonder his daughter doesn’t want to know him! The time of emergency, given a possible flood of unknown-quantity “illegals” is long over, if it ever really existed in the first place.Time to “let up”!

I can’t forgive sections of the press and media either. I think of the rubbish that people like Miranda Devine, let alone a swag of unprincipled creatures from the Australian instead employ their print-space for, and I feel such anger, at times.