WHY AUSTRALIA GOES TO WAR

It is interesting to note the gradually changing reasons offered by the Prime Minister for the recent war in Iraq. He now finds himself in conflict, not so much with the Labor Party, for which he has always had a healthy contempt, but with his partners in "the Coalition of the Willing", Tony Blair and George Bush, who are very much on the defensive about their intelligence sources. Both have publicly conceded that claims prior to the war were wrong. It wouldn't matter so much if weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. But they haven't, making the whole edifice of "incontrovertible evidence" flimsy and contrived. Blair is in real trouble in his own Parliament, from his own party, and both Republicans and Democrats in the US are asking penetrating questions about Bush and his White House 'cabal'.
Now we have the Office of National Assessments in Australia making an unprecedented public statement that it had evidence that one of Prime Minister Howard's claims prior to the war was wrong, but that it hadn't told him.
Will anyone be sacked? We doubt it.
Howard's current stated reasons for war have shifted from "a threat to the world" to "humanitarian intervention". In other words, it is our duty to liberate other nations from brutal dictators. All dictators? Or just those that might offer a future threat to our security? Like the Solomons?
All very noble, of course. But why not take Australians into his confidence? What about Mugabe in Zimbabwe? Is he less brutal than Saddam Hussein?
THE PICTURE IN ZIMBABWE: A recent E-mail from a contact in Zimbabwe provides a picture which should nudge Howard's zeal for humanitarian military action:
"No transport, no fuel, no power, just sackfuls of banknotes - a report from a collapsing nation.
My maid, Nyarai, failed to turn up for work yesterday. There was no public transport and private minibuses have doubled their charges since a 283 per cent increase in petrol prices a month ago. She was unable to call because the telephone boxes no longer work. Nyarai would have come if she could. Her boyfriend is on forced leave because the textile factory where he works as a machinist can work only half time because of power cuts.
Zimbabwe is a country rich in resources and with great potential. It used to have a well-oiled infrastructure that even South Africa, with its far bigger economy, envied. It was robust enough to withstand the first two decades of President Mugabe's rule but it has now reached the point of collapse. An advanced society is returning to the primitive.
Turn-of-the-switch technology for heating, cooking and water is being replaced by fuel-gathering, wood fires and water collection on foot. The bizarre and dysfunctional is the norm and very little surprises people. The expression "the wheels have come off" is on everyone's lips.
In Colquhoun Avenue, an upmarket area of embassies and apartment blocks, a young man uses a long metal rod to break twigs from trees for kindling. On Samora Machel Avenue, hundreds of battered white Japanese minibuses - the core of Harare's commuter street - form a mile-long queue for petrol. Roads into the city from townships on the outskirts are thronged with people who have to walk to work.
The country's sole sugar refinery closed this week. There is ample locally-grown raw sugar but no coal for the refining process. Wankie Colliery, the state-owned company that sits on one of the world's biggest coalfields, has suspended production. The massive dragline that scoops opencast coal was halted when it ran out of spares. There is no foreign currency to import new ones.
Harare Hospital, which serves the capital's townships, is on the verge of closing. Unable to purchase coal, the hospital has its boilers out of action and cannot sterilize instruments, launder bedding or cook food. Air Zimbabwe, the state-owned airline, could soon be grounded. It confirmed this week that it had only "two or three days" of fuel. That is more than most motorists have. A two or three day wait in a fuel queue no longer ensures a full tank. Most queues outside service stations are referred to as "hope queues", where people leave their cars for a week at a time.. When a petrol tanker arrives, bedlam erupts. Opportunists cut in front of those who have waited. Fights break out and sometimes shots are fired.. Riot police arrive late, blaming the fuel shortage.
In the past month, the South African and Mozambican utility companies that supply Zimbabwe with power have declared the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, the state company run by Mr Mugabe's brother-in-law, as an "interruptible customer" because of its failure to service its 22 million-pound debt. This means that the company gets only ten minutes' notice of power cuts.
Factory machinery jerks to a halt. Companies moulding tyres or plastics are left with hard, useless lumps oozing from moulds. The Zimbabwe Chamber of Commerce estimates that fuel and electricity crises have cut industrial output to 35 per cent of normal. Officially inflation is running at 228 per cent. In reality it is out of control. The official exchange rate is 824 Zimbabwe dollars to one US dollar but on the black market it is 2,200. A white loaf cost five Zimbabwe dollars in 1998; it now costs 350. A businessman carjacked in the affluent suburb of Borrowdale last month offered ten million dollars as reward for his year-old Mercedes SUV. That was the sum listed in the national budget ten years ago for procuring vehicles for the entire police force. The central bank still refuses to print denominations bigger than 500 dollars. At banks, depositors line up with sacks of money. At the withdrawal counter, tellers and customers can barely see each other over the wall of notes.
The 500 dollar note is nicknamed the Ferrari because it is red and goes fast. It is disappearing from the streets as people hoard it. The central bank is not printing more because it has no foreign currency to import the high-quality watermarked paper and silver strips. Commercial bank officials say that it costs 700 Zimbabwe dollars to print a single 500 dollar note. This week a bank told a businessman who buys large quantities of cotton in peasant areas that it could offer him only 50 dollar notes. "He laughed", the bank manager said. "He says he needs one billion dollars a week. In fifties, that's 40 cubic metres of banknotes".
This week it cost me 2,750 dollars to airmail a letter to Britain containing 3 A4 sheets of paper. I covered the back and front of the envelope with 100 dollar stamps - the highest denomination - except for a small patch where I wrote the address. Interestingly, the stamp features a pretty sketch of the Tokwe Mukorsi dam, which has not been built because Cabinet Ministers have been fighting over bribes for the lucrative tender for the past 15 years.
The cheapest telephone call is now 24 dollars, but the largest coin is 5 dollars. The coin boxes in busy public telephones would fill much faster than the post office could collect the coins, so they have been removed. They would be replaced by computer chip card phones "depending on the availability of foreign currency", a spokesman said.
Signs of poverty: Life expectancy at birth: 42.9 years, down from 56.0 years in 1975.
Proportion of children dying before they are five: 11.7 per cent.
Proportion of adult population with HIV/Aids in 2001: 33.7 per cent.

COMMENT BY J.LEE
Called up on national service in a British Territorial regiment in 1953, I did my basic six-months training in Salisbury (now Harare). Rhodesia as it was then was a beautiful, prosperous and stable country, self-governed, with a seemingly prosperous future for all races. Rhodesians were conscious that their own troops - black and white - were serving alongside Australians in the Malayan Campaign, where the Communists were defeated.
Twelve years later, under incredible outside pressure for "one-man-one-vote" democracy, Rhodesia declared independence, under the leadership of Battle-of-Britain war ace Ian Smith and a cabinet all of whom had served in World War II
Against both world economic and trade sanctions - in which Australia participated - and terrorist warfare directed from outside its borders, Rhodesia survived, built many industries, became almost totally self-sufficient and fed its people. At the time of its independence thousands of Australians and New Zealander contributed to the delivery of a tanker of petrol to the Rhodesians, organized by the Australian League of Rights, as a symbol of affection and kinship. This hit the world news, and those who had contributed were labeled "racists" and "nazis" for their trouble. When the war ended a decade later, Rhodesia had no foreign debt.
Terrorist leader Robert Mugabe became President. The legacy he will leave the country he re-named Zimbabwe can be seen in the letter above. All that remains when he is overthrown, or flees, is for the multinationals and international agencies such as the IMF and World Bank to move in and complete the slavery of the once-happy and prosperous people of Rhodesia.
Unless, of course, the "Coalition of the Willing" - perhaps this time led by Australia's John Howard and his henchman Alexander Downer - sets out to "liberate" Zimbabwe in the same fashion as it has "liberated" Iraq. Surely we can find evidence of some threatening weapons of mass destruction? Perhaps uranium-depleted knob-kerries? Or it may be Mugabe is secretly buying enriched uranium from Timbuktu?
The ghastly mess that is Africa today - from East to West and North to South - should not be laid at the feet of long-past colonial regimes, as is so often done; but the international agencies and money-lenders who have helped return Africa to the jungle. Plus the elevation of crude dictators such as Mugabe to positions of total power.

A MUCH ADO ABOUT… WHAT???

David Irving's video and audio, "The Search for Truth in History" are readily available from the League's Melbourne Book Shop.
Prices include postage. Video: $35.00. Audio: $10.00. Send cheque/money order to: Box 1052, GPO, Melbourne 3001. The League carries the full range of David Irving's books.

The festival's director, Richard Wolstencroft, said the tribunal's decision was a "victory for Voltaire", who famously said: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

UNPATRIOTIC? NOT SO!

by Betty Luks
We are sometimes accused of being unpatriotic because of our criticisms of western leaders such as Bush, Blair and Howard, and, because we disagree with Australia's involvement in the wars of aggression against, and occupation of, Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, we have been reminded by the letter writers, they are 'our' troops in the war zones. Yes, much to my shame.
My answer is summed up in a scene from Shakespeare's "Henry V":
King Henry's army captain Fluellen, in confirming his allegiance to his king declares:
"By Chesu, I am your Majesty's countryman, I care not who know it; I will confess it to all the world: I need not to be ashamed of your majesty, praised be God, so long as your majesty is an honest man." To which Henry V replies: "God keep me so."

And there you have it. When the so-called 'leaders' of our 'so-called' Christian nations act with honesty and integrity we will not be ashamed - as we are now! When their policies are based on Christian civilised values, when we see their policies result in good fruit, instead of the evil fruit from wrong policies, when they practise the Golden Rule, they will be accorded respect.

Can Australian soldiers still legally claim 'following orders' as a defence?
I would also remind our readers, "following orders" as a defence was removed from the Australian War Crimes legislation, so that persons such as Ivan Polyukhovich could be tried for 'war crimes' within Australia. One wonders where that legally leaves our soldiers in any overseas conflict. To my knowledge the legislation still stands.

THE BIG IDEA

Remember John Howard's claim of the 'high moral ground' for the war of aggression against Iraq? Clifford Douglas gave us the right response in "The Big Idea", penned in the 1940s:
"I do not think that, at any rate in the first place, "morality of objective" has much to do with integrity - I should not deny a much higher degree of integrity to a New York gangster than to quite a large number of highly esteemed ecclesiastics. (and politicians…ed)
It consists in a certain simplicity and directness - a clear view of what you want to do, and an indifference to by-products… So far as I can judge, little or no integrity has been applied to political affairs in this country for some years, but a great deal to the advancement of politicians and functionaries. For instance, I should regard Mr. Winston Churchill as a man of high integrity - I should judge that he regards every situation from the single-minded point of view of its effect on the fortunes of Mr. Winston Churchill. What is wrong is that far too many other fortunes are affected at the same time.
That is to say, a centralised system of totalitarianism requires, even if it could be made to work, a completely selfless integrity which is not only unknown, but is not Christian. "thy neighbour as thyself", presumably means what is says. So far as I understand Christianity it is the easy (not necessarily the immediately easy) way - e.g., the proper way - to do things - "… my yoke is easy, my burden light".
It is not a pathetic and everlasting effort to do the undoable. The Satanic ideology of work, employment, austerity, sacrifice, is not an ideology of achievement. Surely anyone can see that. It is an ideology of sabotage, destruction, corruption and decay."
"The thief comes to destroy and to kill… I have come that you might have Life."

Further reading: "Churchill's War" by David Irving. Available from all League Book Services.

A CIVILISATION IS…
We couldn't do better than to consider the words of Eric D. Butler in "The Moral Implications of the Centralisation of Power", (to be published in booklet form later this year):
"A civilisation is the incarnation, it's the substance of things unseen, it is the concrete manifestation of transcendental values. A civilisation is not merely a mechanical contrivance, but it is a complex form of human association, and this complex human association, enables individuals, by their diverse attributes, to enrich and enlarge one another's lives.
The physical death of the individual does not necessarily mean the death of the values which governed his private, personal and social activities. These values can, and are, passed from generation to generation. And, so long as this is achieved and these values find expression, civilisation continues.
It can continue indefinitely, constantly making it possible for man to continue to spiritualise his life through self-development - if we hold fast to these underlying truths!"

QUAGMIRE ALERT

by Bill Berkowitz:
"There are so many cartoons where people, press people, are saying, 'Is it Vietnam yet?' hoping it is and wondering if it is. And it isn't. It's a different time. It's a different era. It's a different place." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon Briefing 30th June 2003

"On May 1, President Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq. It's those minor operations, however, that have resulted in at least 63 dead U.S. soldiers since the president's much ballyhooed declaration aboard the Abraham Lincoln.
On June 26, in yet another grim report reflecting the everyday reality in Iraq, the Associated Press reported that bomb and grenade ambushes resulted in the deaths of one American soldier and two Iraqi civilians. Two other American soldiers were reported missing. The day before, a U.S. Marine was killed "while responding to an ambush in which three other Americans were wounded." On June 28, the missing soldiers turned up dead.
With American casualties growing daily; the streets of Baghdad snarled by unrest, chaos and confusion; the rest of the country in a gosh-awful mess; oil pipelines being blown up regularly; and US officials -- including Paul Bremer, the head of U.S. reconstruction efforts -- appearing to be improvising rather than acting from a well written script, all sorts of critics are starting to point fingers at the administration's lacklustre post-war performance in Iraq. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld's protestations to the contrary, despite this being "a different time" and "a different era" and "a different place," an old-fashioned Vietnam-style quagmire appears to be brewing.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in late June, Lieutenant General John Abizaid, President Bush's nominee to replace General Tommy R. Franks as head of U.S. Central Command, said that while it was "perplexing" that weapons of mass destruction had not yet been found in Iraq, he expected that they will soon be discovered.

U.S. and British troops targets of three primary groups
On the issue of U.S. troops in the country, General Abizaid said that there may be a troop reduction from the 145,000 still in Iraq, but that "for the foreseeable future, we will require a large number of troops for Iraq." General Abizaid, who speaks Arabic fluently and is a Middle East expert, warned that U.S. and British troops would continue to be the targets of three primary groups: foreign fighters, remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and common criminals.
Several members of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on a late-June fact-finding trip to Iraq, urged President Bush "to be more forthcoming about the breadth of the U.S. commitment and the cost of rebuilding Iraq," Reuters reported.
"I think we're going to be there in a big way with forces and economic input for a minimum of three to five years," Sen. Joseph Biden, the committee's ranking Democrat, told reporters in Baghdad.
Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the committee's chairman and fellow panel Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska "agreed that five years was a realistic figure."
At home, both the Senate Armed Services and Senate Intelligence committees were taking up the issue of "the accuracy of prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," the Associated Press reported. However, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff recently told NPR's Terry Gross that he wasn't expecting very much to come out of these investigations: "Given whose leading them… they're unlikely to be really aggressive… and it's not going to be as thorough as it should."

Permanent chaos in Afghanistan
And then there's that messy business in Afghanistan where the situation has atrophied into permanent chaos: President Hamid Karzai is basically a captive in Kabul while warlords and their well-armed militias control much of the countryside; intermittent U.S. patrols net a Taliban remnant here and there as well as an occasional American casualty; aide money is scarce and no one is clear on how it's being spent; and U.S. cluster bomblets continue to scatter the body parts of Afghan civilians around the landscape.

Come clean on Iraq
The Senators visiting Iraq weren't the only folks counselling the president on the mess in Iraq. Perhaps the weirdest bit of advice came from John Lott Jr., the now-discredited resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Lott, who believes the American people would be safer if we all are armed, suggested that trying to force Iraqis to turn in their guns was a mistake.
A monumental 'bog up':
Lott asks:
"Is it really clear that our soldiers are better off by attempting to disarm Iraqi citizens? ... If guns are banned, who would turn them in? Presumably the most law-abiding citizens -- not the terrorists and Ba'ath Party members whom our troops should be concerned about."
Guns don't kill U.S. soldiers, bad Iraqis do.
"There is no longer any way to tap dance around the responsibility of the administration for what more and more looks like a monumental bog up," Thomas Houlahan told United Press International in late June. Houlahan is a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division and staff officer with the 18th Airborne Corps, and is currently the Washington-based director of a military assessment program for James Madison University.

The CFR's 'serious' advice
For 'serious' advice, you can turn to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) -- the prestigious establishment foreign policy outfit -- which recently cranked out a policy paper suggesting ways to reverse the current downward spiral in Iraq.
Candidly admitting that the administration's post-war policy for Iraq has been a disappointment, former UN Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering and former Defense and Energy Secretary James R. Schlesinger, the co-chairs of CFR's Independent Task Force on post-war Iraq, recommend that President Bush give a "major address" to the nation and outline the U.S.'s long-term goals and objectives in Iraq.
The president needs to explain to the American people "the importance of seeing the task through, as well as the costs and risks of U.S. engagement in postwar Iraq," they write.
"So much of the future effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, will turn on whether we can help Iraqis to a better future and whether others around the world see this is happening," Pickering and Schlesinger write in a paper called "Chair's Update," which is an addendum to the Task Force's.

CFR's Independent Task Force report "Iraq: the Day After" - a chilling read
Pickering and Schlesinger synthesize and update a series of recommendations that came from a late May meeting of the Task Force. They focus on a broad range of policy areas that are being either overlooked, mishandled or insufficiently dealt with by the administration. Included in their analysis are suggestions that the US: "Develop a clearer political vision and strategy"; "Employ a wiser approach to communicating with the Iraqi people"; "Promote security and the rule of law"; "Improve management and operations in the oil industry"; "Share the burden with international partners"; and "Prepare for the next peace stabilization and reconstruction challenge after Iraq."

In light of Bush's glaring post-war policy failures, the fact that Pickering and Schlesinger suggest that the US needs to get on the right track so that it will not jeopardize or inhibit the preparation "for the next peace stabilization and reconstruction challenge," is chilling. That these folks are still thinking about future interventions and invasions might be the most startling part of their entire report. (emphasis added).
And in a move that is guaranteed to stir up more discontent: On June 28, the Washington Post reported that "U.S. military commanders have ordered a halt to local elections and self-rule in provincial cities and towns across Iraq, choosing instead to install their own handpicked mayors and administrators, many of whom are former Iraqi military leaders."
https://www.workingforchange.com

WEBSITE - www.bankwatch.info - LAUNCHED IN ADELAIDE

BETTY LUKS FOR TASMANIA
National Director Betty Luks will be in Tasmania for a number of League 'in-house' and public meetings, including the Launceston Conservative Speakers' Club, Wednesday 16th July 2003. The visit will be from Friday 11th through to Wednesday 16th July.
Details are: Hobart Friday, 11th July; Launceston Monday, 14th July, North/West Coast Tuesday, 15th July, Launceston Conservative Speakers' Club Wednesday, 16th July.
For further information please phone: 03 6331 6414.