WAR DRAWS CLOSER

by Jeremy Lee
We have said about as much as necessary on the manoeuvring for war against Iraq. It is amazing how many Australians have got the picture. National governments round the world are dividing on the question, while within their populations the peace movement has already grown to astounding proportions, considering the first "official" shot has yet to be fired. Political leaders such as Prime Minister Howard and the Opposition's Simon Crean must be looking back over their shoulders at a smouldering electorate, wondering at the fate of the politician who "doesn't get it right". John Howard, particularly, is doing his best to sound like a "reluctant moderate" on the question of war, when his usual position is gung-ho.

Federal Parliament is due to resume in a few days, and it is certain to be dominated by the Iraq question. For the first time in a long while the Prime Minister will be on the defensive. Is he committed to the UN process? What if the Security Council does not produce the resolution President Bush wants? Both Howard and Crean will be aware that the public is following the debate much more closely than usual.

Both the US and Australian administrations are ignoring the fact that under the UN Charter no member-state can take military action against another without express UN Security Council permission. If this is to be regarded as valid, it cannot simply be upheld when it suits our purpose and set aside when it doesn't. Our Foreign Minister, Alexander (Eiderdown) Downer was a keen advocate for the International Criminal Court (but not, he said, if directed towards Australian forces). Partaking in a war without UN sanction could well invoke international law against the aggressors. Are Howard and Downer prepared to countenance this possibility?

AUSTRALIA'S ECONOMY UNRAVELLING

Economist Gerry van Wyngen gave a picture of the Australian economy in The Australian Financial Review (Weekend, 24-27/1/03) that was truly sobering. The nation's exports are flatter than they have been for the last 20 years. Imports are running at double-digit figures. We are set for record current account deficits, which are consolidated into our foreign debt. The housing boom – which is just coming to an end – was the result of new credit to the extent of $84 billion being pumped in over a two-year period. One result was a massive, inflated rise in house prices over the two years – Sydney +35%; Melbourne +41%: Brisbane +53%; Adelaide +41%; Perth +21%; Canberra +34%; Hobart +25%; Darwin +14%

According to the latest figures, household debt is now 1.3 times income. Ten years ago it was 0.7 times.
Savings figures are abysmal. Ten years ago it was 5% to 7%. Now our savings ratio is 0.5%

Van Wyngen predicted that our dollar would start to wobble this year, our economic activity would contract, and our debt-rating downgraded. The drastic effects of the drought have still to be felt. Exactly a year ago the Australian Bureau of Statistics provided a statistical snapshot of the nation, listing the value of all our assets. Included was the value of all homes in Australia, valued at $555.9 billion. Later figures revealed that home mortgages were worth $557 billion. In other words, mortgages on homes was higher than the total value of the homes themselves!

THE GREAT DIVIDE

REPORT FROM THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

Among those who attended this gathering of the international glitterati was Robert Gottliebsen, veteran economic forecaster. He was startled by the announcement that a number of big economies – China, Japan included – were considering shifting their assets out of American dollars: "You could have heard a pin drop at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

An American commentator had just declared that as both Japan and China were investing their trade surpluses in US dollars, they were funding the US current account deficit (i.e currently about $400 billion annually – Ed.)
"Zuh Min, economic adviser of the President of the Bank of China, got up to respond. He was incredibly frank, saying that China did not want all its savings invested in dollars and might well diversify into euro. Everyone knew what that would mean when currency trading opened. The $US continued to fall against the euro, which contributed to the big fall in equities this week...." (Australian, 30/1/03) Any shift away from the US dollar as the world's "reserve currency" because of the intrinsic weakness of the US economy, plus the imminent war situation in the Middle East, would fracture the whole balance of power in the world.

Gottliebsen pointed out that China, with a population of 1.3 billion, was poised to take over manufacturing from such giants as Japan, Germany and the US.: ....The Chinese plan to dominate global manufacturing by combining low-cost labour with the best technology will have big repercussions for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the ASEAN countries and Australia. The Chinese were among many at the forum who believe that Afghanistan and Iraq are not one-off events and that stock markets will need to adjust to periodic US crises ...."

He pointed out that of China's population, 400 million lived in the coastal communities where GDP is growing at some 12% annually. The remaining 900 million live inland and are growing at about 2 or 3 percent: "China plans to swing half the 900 million rural people into manufacturing and services over more than a decade. This would enable land consolidation and much greater rural efficiency.

"Beijing is looking to attract the Asian tigers (Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Thailand) into the Chinese component supplier network ...."
Gottliebsen reminded readers that, with the introduction of Clinton's North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) in 1996, thousands of companies moved to the Maquiladores in Mexico: "But in Mexico few worried about infrastructure, the local community or the quality of labour, which was more expensive than China. Those US plants in Mexico are closing and shifting to China ...."

All of which indicates that Howard's insistence in hitching the Australian wagon to the ailing US star is short-sighted indeed. The flight of Asian investment from the US, coinciding with any war in Iraq, will plunge the US into immense crisis, sending ripples throughout the economies of the Industrial World. All Costello's golden claims about our Australian economy will turn to ashes in his mouth – to add to the ashes of the bushfires sweeping eastern Australia.

The Asian memory is long. Rightly or wrongly, many feel slighted by the insensitive patronage of our envoys and ministers. Timor still rankles in the Indonesian psyche, and its troubles are not over. With our limited forces committed to somebody else's war in the Middle East, Australia's current resources are over-stretched. We would do well to re-establish our genuine independence from the US State Department-driven fiasco.

Now is the time Australia should be looking to its own interests. We should be urgently building up our ability to defend out own country – not invading others. The resurrection of well trained Citizens' Reserve Forces, perhaps organized on a shire-by-shire basis, well decentralized, should be a major priority. An urgent re-building of Australian-owned self-sufficiency should be top policy. We should be planning to rebuild our own ability to withstand trade wars and the periodic retraction of markets without decimating our producers. If such a vision was spelt out to the Australian people, it is likely the nation would endorse the introduction of National Service, for at least a year, as a means of tackling unemployment and giving a sense of purpose and responsibility to young people.
And of course, we should re-examine how to finance this without continuing to sell Australia into foreign ownership.

Is there any major political figure capable of providing a lead in this direction? Hardly! Regeneration has never started among politicians, but through an increased sense of urgency at community level that throws up new movements and leaders. And it usually happens when it appears to be too late. The emerging "coalition of ordinary people" opposed to war with Iraq is more significant than we realize. Already, it is capable of changing the whole debate we are about to hear in Parliament. We can be sure it is having a major impact on both John Howard and Simon Crean. Letters to politicians, normally consigned to waste-paper baskets, will be counted very carefully, as the readers sense a new mood in the nation of Australia.

SOLZHENITSYN INCURS WRATH OF JEWRY

Nick Walsh, Moscow correspondent of The Guardian, 25/01/03, reports Solzhenitsyn's latest book, "Two Hundred Years Together", has raised a storm of protest amongst some Jewish leaders and historians. The title is a "reference to the partial annexation of Poland and Russia which contains chapters discussing the Jewish role in the revolutionary genocide and secret police purges of Soviet Russia." Now in frail health, the 84-year-old Solzhenitsyn insists, "Russia must come to terms with the Stalinist and revolutionary genocides – and that its Jewish population should be as offended at their own role in the purges as they are at the Soviet power that also persecuted them."

Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian Jewish Congress thought the book was "a mistake". Professor Robert Service of Oxford University, rated as "an expert on 20th century Russian history, said that from what he had read about the book, Solzhenitsyn was 'absolutely right'". The professor, whilst researching a book on Lenin had come across the details of how Leon Trotsky, who was of Jewish origin, "had ensured that Jews were enrolled in the Red Army". Trotsky also ensured "that Jews were disproportionately represented in the Soviet civil bureaucracy, including the Cheka" (the Soviet Political Police.)
The Jews "were not just passive spectators of the revolution," says Professor Service, "They were part-victims and part-perpetrators." He observed, "It is not a question that anyone can write about without a huge amount of bravery, and [it] needs doing in Russia because the Jews are quite often written about by fanatics..."

Retired "KGB colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD" thought the "question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD and Cheka were serving ideas of social change."
One would hardly describe the brutal Russian Revolution as merely a 'social change'! Referring to it as a social change, implies it stemmed from within the hearts and minds of the Russian people, that it was a genuine uprising on their part. Not so, the Russian Revolution's 'spontaneity', its 'springs of action' can also be traced back to sources outside of Russia.

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

by Betty Luks:
The Christian religion insists that the individual must examine his own behaviour, his own actions and compare them with at least two rules: Love of God and loving your neighbour as yourself. If the individual doesn't measure up to the 'terms of reference', for his own sake, as well as for his relationships with his fellow human being, he needs to 'come to terms' with the truth that he is 'found wanting' and needs a complete 'about face'.

Roger Markwick ("Clash of the anti-christs – Do we need another book about Stalin?" Sydney Morning Herald, 16-17/11/02) is typical of those who will not 'come to terms' with the role played by many westerners in forcing Communist regimes upon hapless peoples around the world. In his critical review of Martin Amis' book "Koba the Dread" (Jonathan Cape), he accuses Amis of "venting his spleen against all those intellectuals... who were foolish enough to identify with the Soviet experiment..." Experiment? Mr. Harkwick!
He complains the book "drips with lurid details of the fate of Stalin's victims – from the "bird-like" faces of starving Ukrainian peasant children in 1932 to the torture and murder" of a well-known theatre director.

Markwick excuses the terror, the torture, the man-made famines, the mass deportations and the massacres, on the basis of the need for Stalin to 'force-march' "a backward, isolated, agrarian society into the industrial era in the face of an economically hostile world". A great 'social experiment'! He would have us believe, "To label Stalin's crimes worse than Hitler's is to pull everything out of context" – and therein lies the crux of the matter.

To claim that Stalin's crimes were of a far greater magnitude in numbers and intensity and barbarity than Hitler's, would weaken the claims of the Jews to being the most persecuted of peoples, and, at the same time, would open up enquiry and debate as to the role of the Jews, both of the west and the east, in the Communist movements and regimes. Not only does Russia need to "come to terms with the Stalinist and revolutionary genocides", but so does the western world and the role its own intellectuals and elite played in the Communist crimes against humanity. But for that process to begin, they, individually, would have to "their own self be true".

FLY NOW, PAY LATER – WITH MUGABE

Such was the wording heading an article in The Strait Times (Singapore), 21/01/03. The writer, Greg Mills is national director of the South African Institute of International Affairs, Wits University, Johannesburg. He writes: "On Jan 12, I flew from Singapore to South Africa with Mr. Robert Mugabe sitting in the seat directly behind. At Changi Airport, more than 15 trolleys were piled high with shopping in boxes labelled 'Zimbabwe House, Harare'. As we were about to depart, into the aircraft strode the Zimbabwean President, his family and entourage. "Aside from their shopping spree, their 10 business-class seats would have cost at least US$30,000 (S$52,000), buying a lot of food and humanitarian relief for Zimbabwe's starving population, six million of whom are likely to experience food shortages this year.
"Yet Mr. Mugabe's regime appears to have fallen between the cracks of international concern with attention focused on Bagdad and Pyongyang." Listing the reasons why Pretoria is unwilling to provide any leadership to extract Zimbabwe from its spiralling economic and political crisis, Greg Mills insists the costs of doing nothing are too great and suggests (not hopefully) a major external state or coalition of states might be prepared to intervene directly and militarily. He argues, "Given the events not only in Afghanistan, but also in the former Yugoslavia and potentially Iraq, this 'Taleban option' should not be excluded..."

Has Mr. Mills forgotten the history of that small nation once known as Rhodesia? Surely he must be aware of the part played by western leaders, especially in Australia and the United Kingdom, in the downfall of that small land once known as Rhodesia? Why would they now rescue a people they once betrayed? One wonders just how far down George Bush's list of 'rogue' states is Zimbabwe? What will shift them? The outrage of decent human beings at the continuing 'social experiments'?

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Sir, Not allowing British historian David Irving into Australia to see his daughter who lives in Brisbane (Herald Sun, 18/1) is inhumane and contrary to the traditional Australian spirit of the fair go. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock claims that Irving "failed the character test". This test, of very dubious ethical validity, was introduced into Australian law precisely to accommodate the desire of Irving's political opponents to keep him out of the country. Its application by the Government to Irving's case relies on a series of decisions against Irving in other nations, most of which (if not all) have no true moral legitimacy. To claim that Irving is "notorious for the denial of the Holocaust" is to employ the prejudicial and misleading language of his enemies. One has only to read a few pages of Irving's latest huge book, the second volume of his Churchill's War, to realize that he is a writer of prodigious competence and that the historically unparalleled vendetta against him is both bogus and disgraceful.
Yours sincerely, Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic., January 21st, 2003.

WRITING IN THE NAME OF THE AUSTRALIAN HERITAGE SOCIETY

ACTION STATIONS FOR CONVENTION PROCESS

In a speech to the South Australian Constitutional and Parliamentary Reform Conference last August 2002, Labor's Attorney General Michael Atkinson had this to say: "In a recent paper, one of my caucus colleagues, John Rau, described the South Australian constitution as, 'an insect frozen in amber. The structure represents the best of British 19th century constitutional technology.' He noted, however, that, 'the British system has moved on in many ways since.' In comparison, he suggests, our system has not."

Peter Lewis has given South Australians a once in a lifetime opportunity to change governance for the better in South Australia and the planned Constitutional Convention has in Michael Atkinson's words: "brought the issue of constitutional reform into the very centre of political debate in this state." But we must play our part to ensure the people not only have their say but have the chance to change governance for the better – for themselves, not for politicians or political parties!

Enclosed with this edition of On Target is a detailed list of agenda, time frames, etc. The Attorney-General insists that a guiding principle of the whole process "is to involve the public of South Australia as widely and directly as possible". Another guiding principle is "to be informed, intelligent and brave in what we hope for and expect from the process". He even goes so far as to say, "The Government believes that such an important matter requires engagement of the people of South Australia, and their direct involvement in and control of the process."

After the convention is conducted – experts will be on hand to answer questions put by the attendees at the Convention – where positions on issues will be determined and recommendations will be drafted for Parliament. Parliament will finally decide referendum questions: According to Michael Atkinson, it will be the Parliament which will determine what, if any, recommendations are to be subjects of a referendum and/or amendments to legislation.

League supporters participate
League supporters, we urge you to make every effort to participate. You are invited to make submissions about all the issues listed – and also those not listed but of concern to you. Hundreds of letters need to be sent to the Steering Committee individual members also (four Labor politicians, four Liberal politicians and Independent Peter Lewis) so as to reinforce your submission to the Constitutional Convention.

The Members of the Parliamentary Steering Committee are:- Hon Peter Lewis, Chairman, Speaker of the House of Assembly; Hon. Ron Roberts, President of the Legislative Council; Hon. Michael Atkinson, Attorney-General; Hon. Robert Lawson, Shadow Attorney-General; Hon. Gail Gago, Member of Legislative Council; Mr. John Rau, Member of House of Assembly; Hon. Angus Redford, Member of Legislative Council; Hon. Dean Brown, Member of House of Assembly. All can be contacted by writing care of Parliament House, North Terrace, Adelaide, 2000.

Meeting dates and times in your region and or suburb have been announced and you have ready access to the Discussion Paper. What about organizing a house meeting and showing the video on CIR? Encourage each attendee to contact up to 10 more people and 'spread the message' of the importance of CIR?

BASIC FUND: Donations during this last week have brought the fund up to $16,087.50. Thank you to those who have given so generously. To those who have not yet made a contribution to the annual appeal, what about adding your contribution for the ongoing work of the League?

SYDNEY CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB: The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 26th, at the Lithuanian Club, 16 East Terrace, Bankstown. There is ample parking at the Club, situated only 600 metres from the Bankstown Railway Station. There are nearby facilities for a meal before the meeting. The cost of your attendance is $4 per person. The guest speaker is Mr. Keysar Trad (Executive Director of the Lebanese Muslim Association). His subject will be "Iraq and the Middle East". Mr. Trad is an excellent speaker who will explain the implications of the pressure on Iraq.

ADELAIDE CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS' CLUB: Adelaide supporters please note the February meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 18th. Guest speaker will be Port Lincoln mayor, Mr. Peter Davis. The title of his address is "What the Big Money is doing in Port Lincoln". Port Lincoln is a town of significant size and geographically unique. He tells us the problems of power and water supplies are increasing at the same time as the growing population. He will tell us of the future hopes and plans for the region which may involve some large business investments. Peter's address will commence at 7.30pm. A Two-Course Dinner will be served (from 6.30pm) for $18 per person (new caterer) and Dinner bookings must be in by Thursday, February 13th. Phone/fax: 8395 9826/7.

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS

NOW AVAILABLE – NEW EDITION OF "HITLER'S WAR" BY DAVID IRVING: Please get in touch with your State League Book Service if you have had Irving's book on back order. Plenty of stock. Price is $100.00 for hardcover edition posted.

"Terrorism and War" by Howard Zinn. The author is one of America's most articulate historians. He explores the growth of the American Empire, as well as the long tradition of resistance to militarism within the United States – from the socialist party in WWI to the opponents of military intervention in Afghanistan (and possibly Iraq?) today. Zinn was a bombardier during WW2 and has spent decades contrasting the rhetoric governments use to justify military conflict with the harsh and horrible reality of the impact of war, especially on the civilians who are increasingly the victims.

"Germs: The Ultimate Weapon" by authors William Broad, S. Engelberg and J. Miller. Bio-terrorism is the subject of this book and the authors say bio-terrorism is a more effective weapon of mass destruction than the hydrogen bomb! Definitely not light reading, this book explains 'germ warfare' has its origins in a laboratory and the 'bio-bomb' capable of wiping out whole cities can be transported in a brief case! Readers will learn of the Soviet Union's biological weapons programme, with the rows and rows of silos filled with anthrax germs and the efforts of such states as Iran, Iraq to recruit the scientists who created these horrors. An alarming but an authoritative and timely book. $35..00 posted from all League Book Services.

"Pawns in the Game" by Commander William Guy Carr. He was a distinguished Canadian and author of seven books, "Pawns in the Game" being the best known. This book is a classic exposure of the international conspiracy. After his retirement from naval services, Carr toured Canada warning his fellow countrymen of the dangers of this unchecked push for world power. His book remains in the category of 'essential reading'. Price $18.00 posted from all League Book Services.

"Water's War: privatisation, pollution and profit" by Vandana Shiva. In Water's War the author uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to analyse the historical erosion of communal water rights. Examining international water trade, damming, mining, and aqua-farming she exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of their right to a precious common good. She reveals many of the most important conflicts of our time, most often camouflaged as 'ethnic' wars or religious wars, such as the on-going Israel-Palestinian conflict, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural resources. Water's War celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in communities throughout history, and warns that water privatization threatens cultures and livelihoods world-wide. Price $50.00 posted. Available only from the Australian Heritage Society, PO Box 163, Chidlow, WA, 6556.