HOWARD GOES TO WAR

by Jeremy Lee
Australian troops are once again deployed overseas, this time in a venture even more tenuous than the Vietnam saga. No official war has been declared and, apart from the shadowy and demonised Osama bin Laden, no-one is quite sure who the enemy is. It has already become apparent that, with today's modern warfare technology, the deaths of civilians including large numbers of women and children will be heavy. Superbly trained as they are, Australia's elite SAS soldiers will be entering a war environment more difficult and dangerous than any on earth. Afghanistan's terrain is formidable, an endless chain of rugged mountainous country riddled with caves and ambush vantage points.
The winter is as cold as that of the Russian steppes which proved the nemesis for Hitler's panzer and infantry divisions. The oxygen-scarce heights at which the fighting will take place mitigates heavily in favour of those who have fought there for over 30 years and know the area like the back of their hands. The Soviet Union lost 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan before retiring defeated, despite their superiority in weapon technology, mostly provided by America.

There is no way to tell friend from foe - the case in all guerrilla wars. There will be no point at which victory is assured. Civilian casualties will increasingly enrage neighbouring Islamic countries, as is already happening in Pakistan; and any future terrorist strikes in western nations will serve to dishearten societies whose enthusiasm for war will wane as the body-bags are brought home.

While, obviously, every support should be given to Australians serving in action, together with their families, our politicians should be constantly reminded of the ill-considered ramifications of this war. For example, according to the 1998 census, we now have 200,000 Buddhists in Australia, 70,000 Hindus, and 200,000 Mahommedans. The figures are much higher now than then. Population-wise, we had 170,000 born in Vietnam, 205,000 born in China and Hong Kong, 111,000 born in the Philippines and 202,000 born in the former Yugoslav republics. It would be interesting to know how many of these new Australians are serving in the armed forces. Or is this task left to the much-maligned Anglo-Saxons? Do we have multicultural defence forces? Somehow, we doubt it.

OF WARS AND RUMOURS

The Sydney Daily Telegraph (12/10/01) reported as follows: "About 100 members of four international terrorist groups linked to Osama bin Laden have been identified living in Sydney raising funds for the holy war against the United States.
A hunt by the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and other agencies, have found the men and women contributing to sham charities linked directly to terrorist work.
A confidential report prepared for Commonwealth security agencies lists the individuals as having various degrees of affiliation with the Egyptian Al-Jihad al-islami, the Algerian Groupe Islamic Armee and splinter factions of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group ...."

The days when Australia could present a united face against a common threat have long since gone.

FROM DAVID IRVING

The following comment from controversial historian David Irving appeared on the Internet AR Action Report Online on October 1st
"The Washington Post has published the extraordinary fact that an Internet firm in the World Trade Center received two hours warning from Israel of the impending terrorist attack. It kept this privileged information to itself and its employees, evidently, passing it on to the FBI only belatedly, and not before first sending it to the Israeli authorities. One may suspect that The Mossad had an informant who briefed them in good time; and that The Mossad, if it believed the story, decided to let the Sturm losbrechen, such an atrocity being – as Benjamin Netanyahu incautiously blurted out to The New York Times, after the acts of mass murder took place – "very good" for Israel.
Were this story not from The Washington Post, I would have placed the item in the bin where I have tossed all the rumours and scuttlebutt ...."

As if to re-enforce Netanyahu's gaffe, the following appeared in The Age (Victoria, 4/10/01) by Gay Alcorn, United States correspondent in Washington: "The Bush administration yesterday tried to shrug off the significance of claims that, before September 11, it planned a major Middle East peace initiative that called specifically for a Palestinian state.
This is from an administration that took a hands-off approach to the conflict since coming to office in January and which scoffed at President Bill Clinton's struggle to forge a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Analysts said the initiative was a radical departure from the administration's initial reluctance to be closely involved. They also said that the leaking of the plans to the media was a response to the internet pressure from Arab states for America to involve itself once again with the conflict in exchange for support for the struggle against terrorists ....."

Cui Bono? What is one to say about the increasingly advantageous situation for Israel as a result of the tragedies in New York and Washington?

LABOR PARTY PLATFORM

We've just been flipping through the 1986 Australian Labor Party Platform and Rules. Page 147 and 148 contain the following:

MIDDLE EAST: Labor seeks a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East. The attainment of such peace remains an urgent necessity. Labor thus affirms UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which seek such a peace; also UN Security Council Resolutions condemning acts contrary to such objectives, namely 388/73 (violation of Lebanese sovereignty); 508 and 509/82 (June 82 invasion of Lebanon); 501/82 (annexation of Golan Heights); 476/80 (annexation Arab section, Jerusalem); 465/80 (Israeli settlement in occupied territory).

We haven't noted aspiring Prime Minister Kim Beazley advocating any of these as part of a solution to the terrorism crisis. Perhaps he's forgotten?

JAPANESE DISASTER

Some 20 years ago I recall reading about the economic ethos that drove the Japanese economy. Workers sang hymns to the machines on which they were working. Any attempt to reduce working hours or production in times of recession was met by riots among workers at their factories, demanding to be allowed in to increase production. Japanese efficiency became legendary. They became the biggest producer of cars in the world. The electronics industry became the model which others attempted to follow. The Japanese 'balance-of-payments' surplus was bigger than many national economies. But the domestic economy, in keeping with other industrial nations, was debt-based. Public debt, and the cost of real estate, was astronomical.

The Australian Financial Review (12/10/01) gave the current picture of a crumbling colossus: ".... The banking system is riddled with 'bad' debts, estimated at between Y43 trillion and Y150 trillion (between $750 billion and $2.5 trillion). Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi insists magisterially but vaguely that he will solve the problem 'in two or three years'. However, his estimate of the sum involved, Y13 trillion, is well below the figure given by his own finance ministry (Y43.4 trillion) which in turn is far below independent estimates. Simply to write off the debts would constitute a 'shock therapy' that would deepen the recession and bring on a wave of bankruptcies and a tsunami of unemployment, adding between 500,000 and 1.5 million people – or in the view of some foreign experts maybe three or four million - to the three and a half million already unemployed. ..... Japan's public debt, ranked No 1 in the OECD, soared in the 1990s from 58 per cent of GDP to .... 140 per cent in 2001, and is on track to reach 200 per cent in 2005. If the deficits of public corporations are included .... It now constitutes one fifth of global debt....."

To attempt to keep the masses consuming, Japan resorted to a 'public works' programme unprecedented in history: " .... Japan's public works sector grew to be three times that of Britain, the US or Germany. It employs 7 million people, spending each year between Y40 trillion and Y50 trillion, about two or three times that of other industrial companies. Japan came to have more dams and more roads per unit of land than the continental US, half its coastline and most of its rivers lined with concrete, 90 per cent of coastal wetlands drained, its groundwater drastically depleted, its bio-diversity threatened. Such works soaked up unemployment, fattening farmers as well as bureaucrats, but slowly the collusive structures at the system's core corrupted both politics and society ...."

This is George Orwell stuff! Japan's crisis is philosophical. Production is not a religion; neither is employment. As Douglas pointed out, production is simply to meet consumption, and once that has been achieved the individual can be freed from productive labour to pursue a range of different activities – from fishing to music, from home-gardening to literature.

Nobody yet knows what the full potential of the individual, freed from "wage-slavery" really is. Japan has no shortage of production. Its productive machine is a marvel of technical ingenuity. But what it has done to the souls of its own people by turning production into a religion augurs catastrophe for the future. And, as a market for the "productive-religion" disciples in Australia's system, the collapse of our "biggest customer" will deeply hurt Australia. We should start treating the Australian people as customers, rather than "productive units". In the meanwhile, one wonders, does a fish swim near Japan's concrete coastline? Or a bird sing on the banks of its concrete rivers?

PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS COURTESY OF THE MOSSAD

from David Irving's website
By means of a 'blowup' photo on his website from Reuters, 18/10/2001, David Irving exposes Israeli secret service operatives posing as Palestinian terrorists. The blow-up clearly shows the 'star of David' necklace worn by the masked gunman and his white skin is evidence he is not an Arab. Says David Irving: "The Israeli secret service should teach its operatives to take off their jewellery first. Notice too the very white skin, and the designer-brand sunglasses worn to cover the blue eyes – and that he is carrying a brand new M-16, paid for by generous US taxpayers, as a US correspondent assures us. A real Palestinian terrorist carries an aged AK-47!"

Irving goes on to claim: "The evidence is hardening that the United Airlines flight 93 was shot down or met an end other than stated by the US Government in the skies above Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Today The New York Times published the transcripts of all three other doomed planes, while they note that the transcript of the voice recordings relating to the United Airlines 757 which crashed at Shanksville has been withheld by the FBI."

PALAST ON 'THE PRIVATISATION JIHAD'

by Antonia Feitz
In his latest "Inside Corporate America" column for the Observer (14/10/01), investigative journalist Greg Palast has given a credible if appalling answer to the question, cui bono: who benefited from the terrorist attacks on the US? In short, the globalists did. As Palast wrote, "Barely had the towers hit the ground when US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick proclaimed the way to defeat Osama bin Laden was to grant George W. Bush extraordinary 'fast-track' trade treaty negotiating authority. Ambassador bin Zoellick ... said Americans had to choose: for free trade or for terrorism." That sounds remarkably like a threat.

Palast alleged that the Bush Administration was panicking because the WTO talks scheduled to be held in three weeks at Qatar looked like collapsing, even before September 11th. But after the attacks, the 'war-spooked' Democrats look likely to cave in. It gets worse. Zoellick is deliberately linking anti-globalisation dissidents with terrorists. Palast quoted Zoellick as saying, "It is inevitable that people will wonder if there are intellectual connections with others who have turned to violence to attack international finance, globalisation and the United States."
Zoellick wants to discredit the anti-globalisation coalition of greens, populists and unionists who have so far successfully opposed the 'fast track' legislation "by wrapping the anti-globalisation movement in bin Laden's turban."

To render national governments completely irrelevant the globalists want the "national treatment in services" and "investor-to-state dispute resolution." Under the first, governments will be required to put ALL services – postal services, education, health, air traffic control – up to tender. No government will be permitted to favour national businesses. And the "investor-to-state dispute resolution" will allow foreign corporations to receive compensation from governments – i.e., taxpayers – for violations of a trade pact.

According to Palast, corporations have used NAFTA to demolish local governments' environmental and consumer protections. He gave a now famous example: a state government in Mexico tried to stop US Metalclad from building a toxic waste dump in an ecological preservation zone in 1997. But a NAFTA disputes panel ordered Mexico to pay $15.6 million to Metalclad for delaying its polluting plan. Expanding the powers of the WTO will reproduce these anti-people, anti-nation rulings worldwide.

VACCINATIONS, MERCURY AND AUTISM

An announcement was made by the American law firm of Waters & Kraus, that the firm is now in possession of a previously unreleased confidential report authored by "Centers for Disease Control" scientists which studied autism as a potential neurological injury caused by mercury in children's vaccines. Waters and Kraus is the firm that filed the first known lawsuit alleging that a mercury preservative in children's vaccines caused neurological damage to an infant ultimately diagnosed with autism.
Waters & Kraus is leading a consortium of 10 firms in as many American states that are actively prosecuting cases of this nature. The law firm want "to bring to the surface the truth on this issue, a truth that government agencies seem unwilling to admit, perhaps for fear that parents will stop vaccinating their children, and to force the companies that profited from this disastrous mistake to shoulder the responsibility that so many families now bear on their own, often without even the aid of health insurance benefits."

Those interested can view the material on https://www.vaccineinfo.net/autismHg.htm

WAR IS TERRORISM MAGNIFIED A HUNDRED TIMES

An American viewpoint by Randolph T. Holhut from The American Reporter

"An air war on Afghanistan is easy. The Taliban has little weaponry or infrastructure befitting a modern military power of the nations in the region save for Israel. The ground war, if it happens, promises to be much more difficult. The brutal weather and inhospitable terrain are the Taliban's greatest ally in this fight. Robert Fisk, who writes for the London paper, The Independent, has been covering the Middle East for decades and is one of the few Western reporters who have interviewed bin Laden. His take on the situation is simple. President Bush has walked into a trap – the trap of retaliation. Fisk wrote on September 16th that the September 11th attacks were "a crime against humanity. We cannot understand America's need to retaliate unless we accept this bleak, awesome fact. But this crime was perpetrated – it becomes ever clearer – to provoke the United States into just the blind, arrogant punch that the US military is preparing."

America's failure to act with honour
Fisk maintains the Middle East is a "vast place of terror and injustice," and part of the reason why is "America's failure to act with honour in the Middle East, its promiscuous sale of missiles to those who use them against civilians, its blithe disregard for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children under sanctions of which Washington is the principle supporter – all these are intimately related to the society that produced the Arabs who plunged America into an apocalypse of fire."

Fisk said the US looked the other way in 1982 when the Israeli Army, led by Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon at the cost of nearly 18,000 lives. The US didn't flinch when Israel's Phalangist militia allies massacred 1,800 people in a three-day orgy of rape and murder in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. That massacre, which was carried out with Sharon's blessings, began on September 16th, 1982, almost 19 years to the day of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks.
But our backing of Israel during these horrific atrocities was only the start of the Lebanon tragedy.

The battleship New Jersey shelled Lebanon in 1983 and we were shocked when suicide bombers retaliated by first blowing up our embassy and later the Marine barracks in Beirut. After the death of 241 Marines, the US quietly withdrew from Lebanon and let Israel do the rest of the dirty work.

United States world's top arms dealer
In the 1980s, the US spent more than $2 billion to train and arm the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, including bin Laden, to kill the Russians. We armed Iraq so they could kill Iranians, and secretly armed Iran so they could kill Iraqis. We propped up corrupt dictatorships and monarchies in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, and fought the Persian Gulf War on their behalf when Iraq became our enemy. And the US is the world's top arms dealer, with the Middle East countries we support among our best customers.

None of these facts excuses the attacks of September 11th, but this nation cannot ignore them in the conduct of this new war. Our conduct in the Middle East has indeed been less than honorable and has been more motivated by a desire to keep oil flowing to the industrialized world than a desire to help establish and maintain true freedom and democracy in these nations..."

LETTER

BOOKS, JOURNAL

The League has a truly great feast of reading and information for its supporters
SPECIAL CORRECTED PRICE FOR CHURCHILL'S WAR 2-Triumph in Adversity: Please note the special corrected price for Churchill's War Vol. 2. is now $75.00 including GST. The posted price is $80.00. Order from your State book service NOW.
David Irving's "Churchill's War: Volume 2" was launched at The New Times Dinner. The first volume was published in 1987, and after an uneasy birth, the second volume appears 14 years later. The second volume narrates the middle years of World War 2. This work benefits from the release of thousands of secret files. Thus, says Irving, we now know more about Anthony Eden's role in the murder of Admiral Darlan. The human side of Churchill reaches boldly out – lively, incorrigible, sometimes callous – but meek and subservient to Moscow and Washington."

"Vigilance – A Defence of British Liberty" – In his review of the book, Anthony Cooney poses the question, "Why have we not specified the penalties of EU treason which will be exacted from both politicians and high-ranking officials when Great Britain is once more free? Those penalties ought to be plainly specified and it ought to be understood that they will be pursued against both the carcasses and estates of deceased traitors. There is plenty of room where Cromwell's skull stood on Tower Hill!" $45 posted direct from your State bookmailing centre.

"Heritage" Journal: The latest edition of the "Heritage" journal is a must have. In the third federation issue, editor Nancy Lee has lined up such people as Peter Davis, Mayor of Port Lincoln, "Ye Cannot Serve God and Mammon"; Larry Noye, author "A Lesson of Suppression; Ashley Mote, author "Petition to the Queen"; and Nigel Jackson, poet and teacher "State of the Nation". The front cover features a reproduction of the hand-painted tiles by David Byard displayed in the decades-old Commonwealth Bank, Griffiths, NSW. Peter Davis describes the beautiful tiles and the stories they depict, "A tile offers borrowers the following, 'Borrow up to £10,000 for up to 41 years @ 4,5% fixed with half-yearly payments... Another tile states, 'The bank you own reports to you'. Not any more Peter exclaims! Nigel Jackson warns Australians, "The coalition can no longer be relied on to defend traditional Australia or Australian independence. The questions arise as to whether or not One Nation can be developed into a viable conservative party... it cannot be too strongly asserted that no 'third party' of a conservative, nationalist kind is going to have any chance of rallying the Australian people in sufficient numbers if it funks the necessary open and frank rejection of current political taboos... Single copy $8 posted; two copies for $15 posted. Or subscribe now $30 pa. Send to The Australian Heritage Society, P.O. Box 163, Chidlow, WA, 6556.

MEA TAPES NEW ADDRESS: Please note the new address for ordering MEA Audio Tapes, PO Box 405, Ashburton, Vic., 3147.

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THE LEAGUE'S BOOK SERVICES

As well as the publication of journals for the dissemination of information, the League publishes and distributes a wide range of educational books, videos and cassette tapes. These are available at meetings, at our Melbourne bookshop or by mail order from the following addresses:

Victoria & Tasmania: Heritage Bookshop, 2nd Floor, 145 Russell Street, Melbourne, 3000. (GPO Box 1052J, Melbourne, 3001). Phone: (03) 9650 9749; Fax: (03) 9650 9368.

New South Wales: Heritage Book Service, PO Box 6086, Lake Munmorah, 2259. Phone/Fax: (02) 4358 3634.

Queensland: Conservative Book Mailing Service, P.O. Box 7108, Toowoomba Mail Centre, 4352. Phone (07) 4635 7435.

Western Australia: Heritage Book Mailing Service, PO Box 163, Chidlow, 6556. Phone/Fax: (08) 9574 6042.

South Australia: Heritage Book-Mailing Service, PO Box 208, Ingle Farm, 5098. Phone: (08) 8395 9826; Fax: (08) 8395 9827

Election comment authorised by Betty Luks, 145 Russell Street, Melbourne, 3000.