WHO SHOULD MAKE THE DECISION?

by Jeremy Lee
Prime Minister Howard has just made a startling assertion. While conscious, he said, of public opinion, he would personally make the final decision as to whether or not Australia went to war. He didn't even say his Cabinet, his Party, his Government or the Parliament. He made no reference to a referendum. Just he alone. This, surely, is the completion of the power-circle from "the divine right of Kings" to "the divine right of Prime Ministers".

The wars of history were usually led by Kings, Princes, Emperors or Generals who advanced with their forces into battle. From Alexander the Great to Napoleon, they shared the risks with their soldiers. When Henry IV shouted "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more!" he did so from the front. The change in the last 100 years has seen politicians making military decisions without risk to themselves. This coupled with the enormously-increased potency of weapons, has made the main sufferers civilians - mainly women and children - who in earlier times were protected. We have now reached a point where an outbreak of fighting can obliterate hundreds of thousands of civilians in days.

John Pilger, writing on January 29th of Tony Blair's position (see his article in the February New Times Survey) said: " ...Using the archaic 'royal prerogative' he did not consult parliament or the people when he dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a foreign power, the Washington regime. "Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and ambitions of 'endless war' and 'full spectrum dominance' are a matter of record ...."

It may be that the amazing growth of the Peace Movement round the world is finally enough to deter leaders from the insane step of war. If it cannot, the resulting carnage may finally be enough - if any of us are left - to produce a universal determination that it will never happen again. This means withdrawing from one or two elected "servants of the people" any right to declare war against other nations in the name of "peace".

Sincere though he may be, John Howard is now claiming a power which does not belong to him. He is by-passing the elected parliament, the people and the age-old injunction "thou shalt not kill". He cannot foresee the consequences of his actions.

MORE ARE SPEAKING OUT

I was never an enthusiastic supporter of Jon Valder, former federal president of the Liberal Party (1985-87). He was also once chairman of the Sydney Stock Exchange. But a recent article in the Australian Financial Review (11/2/03) was forthright and hard-hitting. He pointed out that Australia had never attempted to gain justice for its own citizens interred in the atrocious conditions of Guantanamo Bay.

He went on: "... So much for the reciprocal benefits of our alliance with the US and all this hypocrisy about liberty and justice. But it is a glaring example of how weak-kneed and pathetic we have become in our relations with the US. Our government keeps telling us over and over again how we must go along with everything the George Bush team says and does. This includes his coterie of Christian fundamentalist colleagues and advisers who probably begin each day by singing 'onward Christian soldiers marching as to war'. But the frightening reality is that they and George Bush control the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction the world has ever known. And that's not to mention the pressure being applied from the New York Jewish lobby ...."

Valder concluded with his hope that John Howard in Washington "might be fair enough to tell George Bush what a huge majority of the Australian people feel, despite what he himself might think. He might also find a moment, and the nerve, to put in a word for those 'detainees' still languishing in cages at Guantanamo Bay....."

John Valder has recently launched a loose alliance of "Liberals Against War". By the time this is read, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix will have made his second report to the UN Security Council. It seems unlikely that anything he says will deter the war-mongers, who appear to have made up their minds. There is no logical reason to shorten the time weapons inspectors need. The cost of the team is $A135 million a year. If war is declared a sum of $US100 billion is being touted. Some weapons have now been discovered. Is this a sign of better Iraqi compliance? If so, it should be extended rather than cut short.

THE PRICE WE PAY FOR RHETORIC

CONTRITION

As this is written (Friday, 14/3) ABC news portrayed the massive peace march (150,000 plus) through the streets of Melbourne. It covered the political spectrum, was orderly and peaceful, but was an expression of concern shared by the big majority of Australians. Here in Toowoomba - a country town - 1,000 people assembled - church leaders, the elderly, school-children, ex-servicemen. Again, there was unanimity: war is no longer a solution.

What does it take to turn such an agreement into a force which the nation's leaders agree to represent? How can elected representatives be made to realize that they do not have a monopoly of wisdom, and that serving other masters will, in the end, destroy them and their nation? It can be easy and glib to quote Scripture to support a personal argument. But occasionally it can be of benefit when we are clearly off the track. In September 1995 the World Bank cited Australia as by far the richest per capita nation on earth. It is turning to ashes before our eyes. The book of Deuteronomy offers a timely warning:

"Beware lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments ... lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart becomes proud and you forget the Lord your God .... "Otherwise, you may say in your heart, My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth. "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth ...." (Chapter 8, 11-18)

BRAVO TO OUR SAILORS

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

New Zealand On Target, 2/03, quoting from the records of a United States Senate Committee hearing, explains why we should be worried, not only about the threatened war with Iraq, but with what sort of people are now in control of the American Administration and with whom John Howard commits Australians to the "coalition of the willing".

The United States Commerce Department, under the first Bush administration authorised eight shipments of cultures that the "Centres for Disease Control and Prevention" later classified as having "biological warfare significance". Testimony on these shipments was offered in 1994 to the Senate Banking Committee headed by then Senators Donald Riegle Jr., D-Mich., and Alfonse M. D'Amato, R-N.Y., who were critics of the policy. The incriminating evidence was brought to light during hearings that were held about the poor health of some returning Gulf War veterans.

It was the "US Export Administration of the Commerce Department", which licensed the shipments of the dangerous biological agents. Between 1985 and 1989, the Senate testimony shows, Iraq received at least 72 US shipments of clones, germs and chemicals ranging from substances that could destroy wheat crops, give children and animals the bone-deforming disease rickets, to a nerve-gas rated a million times more lethal than Sarin.

How well will American (and Australian) military forces be protected? Disclosures about such shipments in the late 1980s not only highlight questions about old policies - but pose new ones, such as how well the American military forces would be protected against such an arsenal - if one exists - should the United States once again invade Iraq.

"Saddam (Hussein) took full advantage of the arrangement," Riegle said in an interview with The Buffalo News. "They seemed to give him anything he wanted. Even so, it's right out of a science fiction movie as to why we would send this kind of stuff to anybody." The new Bush administration, he said, claims Hussein is adding to his bio-weapons capability. "If that's the case, then the issue needs discussion and clarity, but it's not something anybody wants to talk about."

Iraq an ally in the 1980s
The shipments were sent to Iraq in the late 1980s, when that country was engaged in a war with Iran, and Presidents Reagan and George Bush were ostensibly trying to diminish the influence of a nation that took Americans hostages a decade earlier and was still aiding anti-Israeli terrorists. "Iraq was considered an ally of the US in the 1980s," said Nancy Wysocki, vice-president for public relations for one of the US organisations that provided the materials to Hussein's regime. "All these (shipments) were properly licensed by the government, otherwise they would not have been sent," said Wysocki, who works for "American Type Culture Collection", Manassas, Va., a non-profit bioinformatics firm. The shipments not only raise serious questions about the wisdom of former administrations, Riegle said, but also questions about what steps the Defense Department is taking to protect American military personnel against Saddam's biological arsenal in the event of an invasion.

Gulf War veterans' list, some now desperately ill
Riegle said there are 100,000 names on a national registry of Gulf War veterans who have reported illnesses they believe stem from their tours of duty there. "Some of these people, who went over there as young able-bodied Americans, are now desperately ill," he said. "Some of them have died. One of the obvious questions for today is: How has our Defense Department adjusted to this threat to our own troops?" How might this potential war proceed differently so that we don't have the same outcome? How would our troops be protected? What kind of sensors do we have now?

In the Gulf War, the battlefield sensors went off tens of thousands of times. The Defense Department says they were false alarms." US bioinformatics firms in the 1980s received requests from a wide variety of Iraqi agencies, all claiming the materials were intended for civilian research purposes. The congressional testimony from 1994 cites an American Type shipment in 1985 to the Iraq Ministry of Higher Education of a substance that resembles tuberculosis and influenza and causes enlargement of the liver and spleen. It can also infect the brain, lungs, heart and spinal column. The substance is called histoplasma capsulatum.

American Type also provided clones used in the development of germs that would kill plants. The material went to the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, which the US government now says is a front for Saddam's military. An organization called the "State Company for Drug Industries" received a pneumonia virus, and E. coli, salmonella and staphylococcus in August 1987 under US licence, according to the Senate testimony. The country's Ministry of Trade got 33 batches of deadly germs, including anthrax and botulism in 1988.

Researchers at the "Centre for Strategic and International Studies" said American companies were not the only ones to send anthrax cultures to Iraq. British firms sold cultures to the University of Baghdad that were transferred to the Iraqi military. The Swiss also sent cultures. The data on American shipments of deadly biological agents to Iraq was developed for the Senate Banking Committee in the winter of 1994 by the panel's chief investigator, James Tuite, and other staffers, and entered into the committee record May 25th, 1994. The committee was trying to establish that thousands of service personnel were harmed by exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons during the Gulf War, particularly following a US air attack on a munitions' dump - a theory that the Defense Department and much of official Washington have always downplayed.

Business is business - these pharmaceutical companies have surely 'captured' the market. Not only do they produce the viruses that harm us, they produce the vaccines to counteract the harm of the viruses! Hopefully... Business! Oh Business! How sweet it is!

THE WELSH APPEAL FOR HELP

"Are any of you descended from Welsh Ancestry - from WALES in Western Britain UK? If so, you may be interested to know that most of our beautiful scenic mountains and coastlines of this small nation of only approx 8,000 sq miles is being threatened by THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of ugly, inefficient, subsidised, giant WIND TURBINES - to make very little electricity - but to appease the trendy false 'Greens' in the Blair Government. Prime Minister Blair and his cronies want to sacrifice Wales to comply with the terms they signed up to at the KYOTO World summit - yet keep most of England's hills and coasts free of flailing ugly machines. Most of these machines are being imported from Denmark (a country that's just abandoned its Wind Turbine policies) and from the USA. In fact the USA is the culprit in pollution - 25% of the world's Carbon emissions come from the USA.
We all know from the Iraq situation how Blair is desperate to appease Bush in everything. Please help:- write a brief protest email letter to :-
(1) The First Minister at the Welsh Assembly Government at Cardiff - Rhodri Morgan at:- rhodri.morgan@wales.gov.uk and
(2) also a similar e-mail letter to the two top newspapers circulating in Wales to:- readers@wme.co.uk and postbox@swwp.co.uk
You could send me a separate copy to ioan.richard@swansea.gov.uk

Thank you, Ioan M. Richard, City & County Councillor at Swansea in South Wales, British Isles.

BASIC FUND

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF ON TARGET

Letters are coming in from readers who have been receiving On Target for many a year and such questions as the following are being asked:

Why aren't we hearing more about the terrible plight of the people in Zimbabwe under the Marxist dictator Mugabe? . Why don't you mention in 1978 the Bishop of Gippsland, Bishop Delbridge, publicly defended the grants of money by the World Council of Churches to the Patriotic Front, a communist terrorist group? At the time the Bishop justified the grants as needed to take care of the Rhodesian refugees who had fled to Botswana and Zambia....Why don't you mention the refugee problem resulted from the Patriotic Front's destruction of the existing tribal structures, they targeted the chieftains and tribal elders. Their atrocities included rounding up a family of twenty three, including women and children, and burning them alive.

Or from another reader:
Why aren't we hearing that Karsai (the puppet president of Afghanistan) is a Jew? (We hadn't heard that he was.) . Why aren't we hearing that 90% of modern Jews are of Caucasian/European descent and have no historical claim to Israel? Only the Arabs have that right, whether they be Christian, Moslem, Druze and/or Sephardim-Jews. The Arabs are semites, the Chazaar Jews are not. . Why aren't we hearing the Zionist Jews already technically control, by terror and water deprivation - the countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as well as North Africa (including sanctions on Libya)? . Why aren't we hearing more about the real reasons for the pending attack on Iraq? . Since the 1940s Jewish terrorism, torture and atrocities against the indigenous Arabs has extended in the most hideous way into Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, into Syria. . Since the Jews are controlling the Jordan River, then Jordan is subservient to Israel. The refugee situation alone runs into millions of displaced Palestinians Arabs - homeless in their own land, and in refugee camps in surrounding countries. . It is incredible that in the year 2003, when countries have enacted anti-terrorism legislation, western governments are sending military and ancillary personnel to the Middle East to aid a rogue terrorist state in furthering its genocidal plans for Eretz Israel (Greater Israel).
There is mention in the Old Testament of the 'Royal Grant to Abraham' from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates'. The Zionist Theodore Herzl referred to the area as 'the brook in Egypt to the Euphrates'. This area today is part of Syria, Lebanon, part of Jordan, a tiny portion of Saudi Arabia and almost half of Iraq (Euphrates River is its eastern border.) . Why aren't we hearing more about the Zionist's long-term plans for a 'Greater Israel' stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates?

Response
Bush's threat of a war against Iraq must puzzle many people. Why Iraq? Why not Israel, or North Korea? Both states are known to have 'weapons of mass destruction'. Why manouvre the west into a war with Islam? The answer to the question is bound up in the ambitions of the Zionist Jews for a 'Greater Israel' and their claim of being 'chosen'. Much that is happening right now suddenly starts to make sense when presented in the historical context to which it belongs, and religious convictions are of extraordinary importance when asking oneself the question: Why?

Why is Daniel Pipes urging: "Why Stop in Iraq: here's a chance to reform the entire Arab world", Sydney Morning Herald, 11/2/03. He is insisting that while outsiders wonder if the Security Council will endorse Washington's goal of toppling Saddam Hussein, insiders assume there will be an American war, and victory, followed by Iraq's 'rehabilitation'. We can only speculate the insiders are those who have grander plans for a 'Greater Israel'. But of course, it will be the stupid westerners who will fight their war for them, and at their own taxpayers' expense. It will be the westerners' sons and daughters who will be: irradiated by depleted-uranium bombs, blown up or hideously wounded and/or infected with deadly viruses originally produced by 'western' biological 'research' companies - and all for a Greater Israel!

For further information look up our website. The letters do remind us that we must not presume all readers know the historical background to current events. Those who have access to the internet will find our website has a wealth of information on it. The reports are not only from Australia, but Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and also from America.

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