ITS OFFICAL - JOHN HOWARD A 'NEO-CON'

by Betty Luks:
John Howard spelt out the Grand Plan, we in Australia are to follow, at a recent address to the Institute for Public Affairs, "Iraq: The Importance of Seeing It Through" 19/5/04.
It appears, from a number of articles which have appeared analyzing the speech that some journalists are finally doing their homework, rather than looking up their own slanted newspapers' files. But while they have written that Howard's Grand Plan is the same blueprint as that of the neo-Conservative camp in control of the Bush regime - what they can't bring themselves to report is that it is a Jewish (neo-Conservative) Plan for the Middle East - and their 'regime change' is much grander than mere changes in the Middle East.
The Grand Plan was spelt out for them 50 years or more ago by such writers as Alfred L. Lilienthal "What Price Israel?" "There Goes the Middle East", and "The Zionist Connection".

Joshua Frydenberg, senior adviser to Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, announced it was time for the next phase of the Plan at a Sydney Jewish Community Appeal function in July 2002 - "'Moral division of good vs evil' says Downer's adviser."
"Since September 11, there is now a moral division of "good against evil", a battle of biblical proportions…" Frydenberg also just happened to meet up with Clinton's former national security adviser Sandy Berger in Sydney at the time (Australian Jewish News 5/7/02).

Greg Sheridan, whilst finally appearing to support Howard, wrote: "At last the truth is out - John Howard is a fully paid-up neo-conservative. This is the inescapable conclusion from Howard's speech (to the Institute for Public Affairs) last night." The Australian 20/5/04.

Brian Toohey in The West Australian, 24/5/04 wrote: "PM ponders regime change," "Mr. Howard embraced the Bush administration's "neo-conservative" rationale for the invasion (regime change to redraw the political map of the Middle East) just as it is losing favour in the U.S. The neo-conservative's goal was to bring a market-orientated (read monopoly capitalism…ed) democracy (read Jewish-American ideals…ed), to Iraq.
Brian Toohey reminded his readers: "in an address to the National Press Club shortly before the invasion, Mr. Howard explicitly ruled out regime change as a policy goal for the invasion…"
It is reported because of the dismal polling showing the Coalition are losing voter support, Howard is considering holding off the federal elections till he has buttered us up some more.

JEWISH-AMERICAN 'DEMOCRATIC' IDEALS?

The other prisoners
We asked a U.K. friend to check the following report for accuracy, concerned it could be another Daily Mirror 'scam'. It was considered reliable, but, at the same time, our U.K. friend asked: "What about the three, or more, highly reputable Iraqi female doctors who had compiled detailed dossiers over the years of the effects of depleted uranium." It seems they also have 'disappeared'.
Readers will remember it was our 'highly moral' western leaders who approved of depleted uranium bombs reigning down on the Iraqi people. Read on…

"The other prisoners", by Luke Harding, The Guardian 20th May, 2004
Most of the coverage of abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on male detainees. But what of the five women held in the jail, and the scores elsewhere in Iraq? Luke Harding reports:
"The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed not by a digital photograph but by a letter. In December 2003, a woman prisoner inside the jail west of Baghdad managed to smuggle out a note. Its contents were so shocking that, at first, Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi
women lawyers who had been trying to gain access to the US jail found them hard to believe.
The note claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees, who were, and are, in a small minority at Abu Ghraib. Several of the women were now pregnant, it added. The women had been forced to strip naked in front of men, it said. The note urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail to spare the women further shame.
Late last year, Swadi, one of seven female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, "happening all across Iraq".
In November last year, Swadi visited a woman detainee at a US military base at al-Kharkh, a former police compound in Baghdad. "She was the only woman who would talk about her case. She was crying. She told us she had been raped," Swadi says. "Several American soldiers had raped her. She had tried to fight them off and they had hurt her arm. She showed us the stitches. She told us, 'We have daughters and husbands. For God'' sake don't tell anyone about this.'"

The Targuba Inquiry
Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate. While most of the focus since the scandal broke three weeks ago has been on the abuse of men, and on their sexual humilation in front of US women soldiers, there is now incontrovertible proof that women detainees - who form a small but unknown proportion of the 40,000 people in US custody since last year's invasion - have also been abused. Nobody appears to know how many. But among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there are, according to Taguba's report, images of a US military policeman "having sex" with an Iraqi woman.
Taguba discovered that guards have also videotaped and photographed naked female detainees. The Bush administration has refused to release other photographs of Iraqi women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although it has shown them to Congress) - ostensibly to prevent attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, but in reality, one suspects, to prevent further domestic embarrassment…

In Iraq, the existence of photographs of women detainees being abused has provoked revulsion and outrage, but little surprise. Some of the women involved may since have disappeared, according to human rights activists. Professor Huda Shaker al-Nuaimi, a political scientist at Baghdad University who is researching the subject for Amnesty International, says she thinks "Noor" is now dead. "We believe she was raped and that she was pregnant by a US guard. After her release from Abu Ghraib, I went to her house. The neighbours said her family had moved away. I believe she has been killed."
Honour killings are not unusual in Islamic society, where rape is often equated with shame and where the stigma of being raped by an American soldier would, according to one Islamic cleric, be "unbearable". The prospects for rape victims in Iraq are grave; it is hardly surprising that no women have so far come forward to talk about their experiences in US-run jails where abuse was rife until early January.
One of the most depressing aspects of the saga is that, unaccountably, the US military continues to hold five women in solitary confinement at Abu Ghraib, in cells 2.5m (8ft) long by 1.5m (5ft) wide…"

THE THINGS BUSH DIDN'T MENTION IN HIS SPEECH

Are you taking notice Mr. Howard?
The re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed by Robert Fisk: 26/5/04 Taken from - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=524859

Robert Fisk wrote: "I can't wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans - at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam's brutality. That's what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on.
Million dollar refurbishment for 'Iraqi' torture centre?
Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib - by my favourite US General Janis Karpinski, no less - to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates. But now, suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture centre. It's still an Iraqi torture centre, and thus worthy of demolition.

The re-writing of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed
Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and al-Qa'ida? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's Abu Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it. Clear the decks for both "full (sic) sovereignty" and "chaotic events".
This is, at any rate, according to Mr Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as "Abu Grub" on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree. But we're in danger again of missing the detail.
Just as the unsupervised armed mercenaries being killed in Iraq are being described by the occupation authorities as "contractors" or, more mendaciously, "civilians" - so the responsibility for the porno interrogations at Abu Ghraib is being allowed to slide into the summer mists over the Tigris river. So let's go back, for a moment, to the long weeks in which the Department of Bad Apples allowed its jerks to put leashes around Iraqi necks, forced prisoners to have sex with each other and raped some Iraqi lasses in the jail.

'Interrogators' company's Israeli links: attended Israeli 'anti-terror' training camp
And let's cast our eyes upon that little, all-important matter of responsibility. The actual interrogators accused of encouraging US troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel. The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defence minister.
According to Dr J P London's company, CACI International, the visit of Dr London - sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including US congressmen and other defence contractors - was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defence and homeland security agencies".

The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only US citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib - but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship. The once secret torture report by US General Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.
General Taguba mentions Steven Staphanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Staphanovic, who worked for CACI - known to the US military as "Khaki" - was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' ... he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse". One of Staphanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan - who was not named in the Taguba report - now says that he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.
We know the Pentagon asked Israel for its "rules of engagement" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israeli officers have briefed their US opposite numbers and, according to the Associated Press, "in January and February of 2003, Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev desert ... Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a seminar on counter-terrorism".

Interrogator may hold Australian citizenship
Staphanovic of CACI, who may also be Australian, was accused by Taguba's army report of making "a false statement to the investigation team regarding ... his knowledge of abuses". Another outside interrogator, Adel Nakhla,who may be of Egyptian origin, was a witness to the "stacking" of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib. John Israel "misled" investigators by denying he had witnessed misconduct and did not have "security clearance". Israel, according to Titan - two of whose employees were mentioned in Taguba's report - works for one of the company's "sub-contractors". Titan refused to name the "sub-contractor". Why? Among the company's former directors is ex-CIA director James Woolsey, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, a friend of Ahmed Chalabi and a prominent pro-Israeli lobbyist in Washington. Dr London says CACI "does not condone or tolerate or endorse in any fashion (sic) any illegal, inappropriate behaviour on the part of its employees in any circumstances at any time anywhere".
But it is clear the torture trail at Abu Ghraib has to run much further than a group of brutal US military cops, all of whom claim "intelligence officers" told them to "soften up" their prisoners for questioning. Were they Israeli? Or South African? Or British? Are we going to let the story go?"

Editor's note: Actionists please get pen and paper or computer busy. Letters out revealing these facts to as many newspapers, politicians and prominent persons as possible. John Howard must not be allowed to get away with this. Those weak Labor Grey Sisters should also be made to take a stand against such barbarism and the high-jacking of our nation's foreign policies.

MORAL VERSUS EVIL TORTURE?

Our thanks to Neil Baird's Email for the following:
Here is the standard definition of torture featured in international laws and conventions to which the United States is signatory: "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession." (The definition comes from the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and exists in more or less the same wording in earlier customary law and in treaties, starting with Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and in many recent international human rights covenants, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European, African and Inter-American Conventions on Human Rights.)

The 1984 Convention specially declares: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
And all covenants on torture specify that torture includes treatment intended to humiliate the victim, like leaving prisoners naked in cells and corridors. Whatever actions this administration undertakes to limit the damage of the widening revelations of the torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere --- trials, courts martial, dishonorable discharges, resignation of senior military figures and responsible cabinet officials, and substantial reparations to the victims --- it is likely that the "torture" word will continue to be banned.
To acknowledge that Americans torture their prisoners would contradict everything this administration has invited the public to believe about the virtue of American intentions and the universality of American values, which is the ultimate, triumphalist justification of America's right to unilateral action on the world stage in defense of its interests and its security.
Even when the president was finally compelled, as the damage to America's reputation everywhere in the world widened and deepened, to use the "sorry" word, the focus of regret still seemed the damage to America's claim to moral superiority, to its hegemonic goal of bringing "freedom and democracy" to the benighted Middle East.

ECONOMIC REALITY FACING WESTERN WORLD

The announcement Mitsubishi was closing down part of its production plant in Adelaide, thus putting 700 workers out of a job, recently produced much wailing and gnashing of teeth by political and business leaders in South Australia. As we know, every politician's goal is More Jobs and Full Employment for all - even the elderly in time to come. Many a time Jeremy Lee has spelt out the true picture.
"Car production in the world now has a 30 percent over-capacity. Every car-producing nation is staring down the barrel of stiffer competition and stagnant markets…Both China and India are now competing to become the biggest and fastest growing economies in the world, swamping the industrial West with low-cost consumer goods with which we have no hope of competing.
China this year will produce about 2.7 million vehicles, of which 1.8 million will be sold on the Chinese domestic market. This leaves 900,000 for export. What brands are sold in China?
They're familiar names, of which Volkswagen has the largest share. General Motors is next. As world oversupply increases, competition for markets will intensify…

It was Australia, along with other industrialized nations, that welcomed China into the world of free trade via the World Trade Organization. We are going to reap the whirlwind with a vengeance. The idea that small-capacity nations like Australia, with highly taxed, highly paid labour forces, will be able to compete with Chinese output that is rising at an astounding rate, quite capable of flooding the world market at prices no one can compete with, is an exercise in wishful thinking.
Multinationals have poured $22 billion into 600 car manufacturing ventures in China since the 1980s. Volkswagen has just committed a further $A10 billion into further expansion over the next five years. China's over-capacity in producing cars will continue to grow. There will be no compunction in exporting the surplus at a price which finally displaces our own car industry.

India's expansion is scarcely less dazzling. Its predominance in communications technology is surpassing the legendary Silicon Valley. Multinationals are pouring investments, which once went into western economies, into India. Some estimate that India may even outpace China within five years. India's largest car manufacturer, Marun Udyog, is now turning out 600,000 units annually…"

Last death-rattles of 'full employment'
"If there is an advantage for Australia it is that we sit on top of some of the best iron ore and coking coal deposits in the world, and the infrastructure for exploiting these is in place. But we dissipate this advantage in giving away at rock-bottom prices huge quantities of these assets to nations now manufacturing consumer goods which threaten our own industries…
What should a country like Australia do, faced with such a challenge? Firstly, we've got to re-think the "growth-and-exports" merry-go-round, which is, traced back to basics, an attempt to catch up with a debt-based financial system. Why don't we aim to produce fewer cars, of a much higher quality? Why don't we take a lead in developing pollution-free vehicles? The technology is available. Mexico City runs its buses and taxis on compressed air engines. The use of hydrogen stations running compressors, which give every motorist an interchangeable compressed air tank instead of gasoline, would shock the world. New, high-quality technology and innovation is what we're best at.
Why don't we open up possibilities for the thriving, largely self-sufficient towns and villages that once abounded in rural Australia? And work out a way in which young Australians can get into their own homes debt-free? Do we want young, happy and enthusiastic Australians who raise families in an environment of contentment? We could do it. Visions do not come on time-payment. Perhaps they come when everyone has had enough of what Douglas Reed called 'Insanity Fair.'"

Isn't it time the pundits turned to the writings of C.H. Douglas, published eighty years ago, and looked at what he had to say about 'The Delusion of Super-Production' in "Economic Democracy" and "The Breakdown of the Employment System"? They might just catch a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel. They might just see how the real world could serve us - not us serving the world of financial figures.

In the over-production lie the seeds of a different kind of world
Jeremy continued: "The Social Credit movement has been pointing to this state of affairs for many years. But conventional political movements from left to right have held the common view that full employment is a "given absolute" for every economy. Yet, in the tragic personal disasters of 'down-sized' workers across the world, staring at over-production everywhere, lie the seeds of a different kind of world -- where it is not necessary for all to work in order to produce everything that the world needs.
"Well, how are people going to get money to live?" goes the conventional question.
Dr. Jim Cairns (former Labor minister in Whitlam government…ed) was agreeable to the creation of debt-free money for the government to devise ways of employing everyone. "Make-work schemes" would be an essential part of government policy, however useless and detrimental such work might be.

A National Dividend for all
The Social Credit proposal, on the other hand, is to supplement earnings with a National Dividend, paid to every man, woman and child, as part of the inheritance that the technological era has given them. This would provide individuals with a whole range of choices currently unavailable. The mad rush of whole populations going through the rituals of morning and evening rush hours would become unnecessary. Families, communities and, above all, children, would become more important than jobs. Despair and death would retreat before Life more abundant.
The situation was heralded in 1995 in the State-of-the-World Forum, held in San Francisco under the chairmanship of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, in which it was agreed by the many world figures attending that all the world's needs in the coming century could be produced by no more than 20 per cent of the workforce.
That situation is upon us. Unless there are changes to the way incomes are distributed, from an employment wage to a national dividend, the promise of a creative world will be dashed to pieces round our ears." (emphasis added)

HAVE WE FORGOTTEN WHAT THE DANES DID?

Whilst watching the recent Royal Wedding I was reminded of the Dane's relatively recent laws restricting the numbers of immigrants to their country. What TV glimpses we had of the people lining the streets to celebrate the occasion, showed a fairly homogenous population.
In 2002 the Sunday Telegraph reported on what was then happening in Denmark: "Danish curbs to force down refugee influx"-- "Denmark's tough stance on immigration has already began acting as a deterrent to asylum seekers, even before controversial new laws aimed at preventing foreigners settling there come into force on July 1.

The publicity that has greeted Denmark's move to the Right is thought to have prompted a big fall in number of asylum-seekers, which dropped from 3,033 in the first three months of 2001 to 1,877 in the same period this year. "The bottom line is that Danes want to keep the minorities out of Denmark," said Bashy Quraishy, the president of the European Network Against Racism and one of 20,000 Pakistanis in the country.
Even as the new laws passed through parliament asylum and refugee centres were being searched for suitable doctors and other professionals to plug gaps in Denmark's health sector. Government agencies have appealed to educated foreign workers to move to Denmark to help to shore up its workforce.

Denmark, where immigrants account for five per cent of the 5.3 million population -- a lower figure than in most European countries -- traditionally has offered refugees one of the most generous welcomes in the world. Now, however, the reception for refugees is distinctly chillier. Denmark is confronting a demographic time-bomb as its workforce shrinks, the number of pensioners rises and its generous social security system struggles to cope. (The Danish economists need to study C.H. Douglas…ed)
Nevertheless, its decision to clamp down on refugees claiming benefits has been fiercely criticised by the United Nations, other European countries and human rights organisations who claim that the legislation which has been under discussion since a centre-Right government swept to power in last November's general election - is racist.

The critics hope to embarrass Denmark which takes over the revolving presidency of the European Union in a month's time, into diluting the legislation. However, the Danish government plans to encourage the EU to adopt a uniform set of rules, to stop the influx of refugees.
With more than 60 per cent of Danes voicing support, the government is standing firm on its election pledges.
"Foreigners represent a net burden on society," said Bertel Haarder, the minister of immigration. "They cost more than they give back."

During the election, far-Right groups successfully played on voter's fears about the September 11 attacks, and immigrants' failure to integrate into Danish society. One poster contrasted a group of blonde Danish girls, captioned "Denmark today", with a group of hooded, blood-stained youths who were carrying weapons and appeared to be Muslims, captioned "10 years from now". (This is the imagery the 'Coalition of the Willing' are now promoting - for their own purposes of course…ed.)
The new laws severely restrict access to Denmark for asylum seekers, the ability of Danes to many foreigners and the legal rights of immigrants to bring in their immediate families. For those who do manage to get into the country, conditions have been made tougher. Welfare payments will be cut by between 35 and 50 per cent, depending on the size of the family. A married couple with two children currently qualifies for payments of about (UK)£1,500 a month." As the laws were legislated at least two years ago, it would seem the Danes have managed to cope quite well with protecting their own homogeneity…ed.

BASIC FUND

VALE NOEL WILLIAM (Bill) CLARKE

NATIONAL WEEKEND

BOOKS FOR YOUR INTEREST

Latin America: from colonisation to globalisation by Noam Chomsky & Heinz Dieterich. Chomsky informs his readers, "Gaining an understanding of what these last 500 years have meant is not simply a matter of becoming aware of history, it is a question of becoming aware of current processes." $21.00 includes postage.

The Founding Myths of Modern Israel by Roger Garaudy. Defying the French censors, the author broke the silence and shattered the taboos on Hitler's relations with the founders of modern Israel and links to Mussolini and on Zionism's hidden influence on American politics.
$27.50 includes postage.