A Gippsland By Election?
The rumours continue that the recently elected member for Gippsland will soon be resigning and bring on a by election. Although the original decision to invade Iraq was no doubt Howard's, McGauran and his party are deeply involved in the crimes committed during the invasion and continuing occupation. Not one of the coalition members of parliament voiced the slightest opposition to the invasion or the war and they are therefore all accomplices. It seems likely that both the Liberals and the Nationals will run candidates and give those who think the war the most immoral act of our time a choice between putting them last and second last on our ballot papers - a procedure we continue to urge voters to follow.
Three Month Break in Publication from this Issue
We have decided to take a three month break after this issue. However should any unforeseen disaster occur in the Middle East during this time - like an invasion or the bombing of Iran - we may produce an extra issue.
The American Economy
The American economy and the gyrations of Wall Street are prominent in the news these days but few economists or commentators link the economic downturn with the escalating costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.(currently at $12.5 billion US per month) One who has consistently connected the rising price of fuel with the war and who has recently co-authored a book (The Three Trillion Dollar War) on the real costs of the wars is Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. An article on Informationclearinghouse noted that the "mismanagement by the Federal Reserve over the last seven years was one of the major factors underlying the current problem. 'They had the regulatory authority to prevent some of these bad practices that we are now paying for and he chose not to do it.' Stiglitz said the reason related in part to the war in Iraq and the very negative effect on the economy. "They didn't want Americans to know exactly how bad the war was for the economy so they flooded it with liquidity, they looked the other way with regulations and they deliberately, I think, postponed the problem into the future and now we're paying the price." (ICH 20/3)
The (Good and Bad) Middle East War News
1. Former UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix has described the Iraq war as "utter folly" and a "spectacular tragedy" (ICH 22/3)
2. The death toll of US troops in Iraq has passed 4000. (various)
3. In continuing clashes between Shiite factions in Basra - and other cities in the south - the Mahdi army is holding its neighbourhoods. J. Cole ICH 28/3
The Murdoch Boycott & other Media News
1. The Iraq war has receded from the front pages and now occupies page 10 of your Daily Blurb. The current US propaganda would have it that the war in Iraq has been won when they are merely one (admittedly the most powerful) of a number of military groupings. The US controls only their green zones - frequently the targets of rockets and mortars - and the ground their soldiers stand on at any moment in time. The situation in Iraq remains as it has been - chaotic - and the military situation is in reality a stalemate. But as has been pointed out previously in various numbers a stalemate is actually a loss for the US and one wonders how long the various media outlets will accept this propaganda after being sucked in with so many other lies over the last six years. (ed)
2."the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence the freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates and the bureaucrats." George Orwell 'The Prevention of Literature' (1946)
Recent Action
"At a demonstration in Washington anti war protesters "chanting 'war criminal' ...waved blood coloured hands at (the) US secretary of State..." ICH 14/3
Feedback from the last issue & other local happenings
Correspondence received from SB of Corryong. CS of Cassilis wrote in reference to the Afghanistan war: "In any of these invasions, including Iraq, I place myself in the position of the people of that country. I would fight to the death to stop anyone from taking over this country by force, even if they use our own government as a puppet to make us think that they have sanctioned an invasion. Even if our government had sanctioned such action, they would be thrown into the same sea directly behind the invader if it was my decision. I'm not certain that others feel differently and yet am surprised that they cannot see why these invasions are the greatest folly, and why people would wonder that there is this constant fighting, and factional conflict... I think the people from these countries, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinians feel the same way. They may not be right, but they have this desire to make their own decisions and to go to hell their own way. That's why there will never be peace in the Middle East, because the Israelis are trying to defend something they stole. The Palestinians are fighting for something they have lost, and believe lost unfairly, ripped from them. Time will tell what will happen, and it won't take a crystal ball to know it won't be pretty and the children witnessing what the invader/oppressor is doing to their parents/people and country will probably have a whole lifespan to allow their dislike to turn to hatred and their hatred to fester and infect their children....I dislike Australia the invader. (IGPN's position on Israel/ Palestine is basically the same as Gush Shalom - that the fixed boundaries between the two countries should be the so-called 'green line' of 1967. ed.)
ARA April Program PO Box 687 Cowes VIC 3922
Shane Elson asks: "if your local station isn't putting AR to air or has it buried in the 'grave yard' shift, ring them up, send them a letter or email and ask them why they don't have it in a more listener friendly timeslot."
7 April Martin Luther King - Beyond Vietnam. Every year, almost like clockwork Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech gets airplay. The charismatic orator is frozen on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963. No doubt it was a great presentation, deeply moving and full of dazzling poetry and inspiring images. But it was not his most important speech, nor was it his most courageous one. That was to come on April 4, 1967 in Riverside Church in New York. There King demonstrated his political maturity and understanding of how the system works. He moved beyond a simple race analysis to include class and foreign policy issues. He forcefully denounced the war in Vietnam. He called the US "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world" and he deplored the "giant triplets of racism extreme materialism and militarism." Exactly one year later King was assassinated in Memphis.
14 April Kurt Vonnegut - In Conversation. Kurt Vonnegut has become a cultural icon. His observation of the destructiveness and dehumanisation of the 20th century, distilled by his rich imagination and quirky view of events and their time frames, make for delightful reading and listening experiences. His irreverence is palpable, as is his disdain for Bush and the current administration. Asked by a journalist for an idea for a really scary reality TV show, Vonnegut responded, "C Students From Yale, it would stand your hair on end." In his book Hocus Pocus, published in 1990, he wrote, "Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe." Kurt Vonnegut was an infantryman in WW II and was captured during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. He was then taken to a POW camp in Dresden in time to experience the horrific Allied firebombing of the city from the relative safety of an underground meat locker. The destruction wrought was greater than that of Nagasaki. Kurt Vonnegut died on the 11th April 2007.
28 April Tariq Ali - War and the Media. When the U.S. marches to war, the media march with it. The din of collateral language rises to cacophonous levels. The mobilization and ubiquity of present and past high-ranking military officers on the airwaves is an essential component of manufacturing consent for war. Perhaps we need no-air zones for them. That's unlikely to happen when ABC and NPR's Cokie Roberts gushes, "I am, I will just confess to you, a total sucker for the guys who stand up with all the ribbons on and stuff and they say it's true and I'm ready to believe it." And the vaunted BBC? Not much better. In the lead up to the attack on Iraq it gave just 2% of its coverage to antiwar dissent
America's Blinders by Howard Zinn
Counting Iraqi Casualties -- and a Media Controversy by John Tirman
'Kill a Hundred Turks and Rest' by Uri Avnery
Palm Sunday Peace Rally on Sunday March 16 at 2pm at the State Library of Victoria. This rally marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Rallies will be held in all the capital cities and around the globe to mark this sorry occasion. The chosen day also ties in with the previously large demonstrations held by the PND during the 1980s. Go to or contact Jessica Morrison on 0431519577
Inflation, Labour Government and the Wars With the most recent rise in interest rates the new labour government is already facing some unwarranted criticism for its failure to act. This is absurd for a number of reasons including the fact that the inflation we having now is the result of actions or inaction of our previous government over several years. The causes of inflation are complex but basically boil down to too much money (or credit) for the goods available. Inflation can also be imported. Economic mismanagement in America and in particular the Middle-East wars are financed by a profligate US treasury. They are printing money as fast as they can whilst their productivity is declining. Inflation is a real, but mainly unrecognised, problem in the US and IGPN has noted previously that US inflation measurements are poor indicators. The American situation is complicated by the fact that a rapacious banking sector - with its various forms of chimerical financing - has helped bring on downward spiralling credit and real estate markets. (the US is in fact facing stagflation.) The imported inflation can be clearly seen in the price of fuel - as the dollar depreciates the price of oil in dollar terms appreciates. In Australia labour will need to make some hard decisions - like cancelling some of the contracts for expensive military hardware, reducing our overseas military commitments or forgoing or delaying the promised tax cuts.
The (Good and Bad) Middle East War News
1. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars now cost the US $US11 billion per month (ICH 25/1)
4. "Baghdad is drowning in sewage, thirsty for water and largely powerless an Iraqi official said today in a grim assessment of services...five years after the US-led invasion". (ICH 4/2)
5. The Defence Minister was "amazed when he found out NATO had prepared a comprehensive document on how the war (in Afghanistan) should be fought but that Australia would not have access to it." (The Age 11/2)
The Murdoch Boycott & other Media News
1."In the case of the Iraq war, the corporate US media failed to provide coverage of basic information that was widely available elsewhere...Foreign media sources... discussed Iraq and petroeuro issues before the war, but the US media completely failed to mention this noteworthy item... Fox News played a key role in forming domestic opinion, as it parroted - uncritically - the prewar claims of the Bush/Cheney administration." (Clark, W.R. Petrodollar Warfare, New Society publ. 2005, p.163)
2."How Never to Withdraw from Iraq" Tom Engelhardt
Feedback & other local happenings. Subscriptions and donations kindly received from BL of Ensay, DW of Brookville, LC of Wy-yung, YC of Hinnomunjie, RK of Cassilis, TF of Pakenham and S McC of Swifts Creek. Correspondence received from SB of Corryong and JB of Wy-yung.
The Medical Association for the Prevention of War is trying to increase its membership to 1000 members.email
Recent Actions
"The people of the northern Italian city of Vicenza,... are continuing to block the construction of a US military base on their soil...the company building the base backed off and a small town outside Vicenza has refused to allow the Unites States to construct a residential village for troops. Recently on December 15 80,000 people rallied against the base on a bitterly cold day in this conservative city... which has no tradition of protest." (Peace Priorities Jan/Feb 2008)
Interesting Quotation "..it is time we realized that military alliances with aggressive powers always lead to peril and that in the world's eyes we are damned for the crimes of our associates even when we do not take part in them," George Woodcock The Rejection of Politics and other essays p.95
Pax Christi On April 20 at 4.20pm Jill Jameson will speak on "Faith and struggle in Burma" at the Kildara Centre rear 39 Stanhope St East Malvern. A 10 week course entitled 'Our World in Crisis? Interpretations and Responses" will be run from the 29 April. Pax Christi PO Box 31 Carlton South
Pine Gap 4. Donna Mulhearn reported: "An appeal has been lodges by the prosecution against what they consider too lenient sentences (fines) handed Down by Judge Sally Thomas at the conclusion of our trial last year 2007. As well , two of us have lodged an appeal against our conviction based on various points of law relating to the use of the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act and other matters that did not allow us to have a fair trial. In the meantime warrants for our arrest have been issued in the Northern territory following our decision to appeal and our refusal to pay our fines.This means we will need to serve time in prison and will likely be arrested soon after our arrival in Darwin." (Disarming Times 33:1)
Mayors For Peace Gets 2020 Members Mayors for Peace has been campaigning for four years to rid the world of nuclear weapons by the year 2020. It now has over 2020 members, including 46 new ones. Contact the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, to find out more about signing up your local council. For the list of 2,028 members, see www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/membercity/map.html
Undersea Internet Cable Sabotage? The cutting of internet cables to the Middle-East have fuelled speculation that it may be either a) an attempt to stop the opening of the Iranian oil Bourse or b) the prelude to an attack on Iran. (ICH 6/2) As many as 8 cables may have been damaged, (ICH 7.2) which can hardly be a coincidence. The intenet has been running hot on these stories typical of which was "Connecting The Many Undersea Cut Cable Dots" by Richard Sauder.
A Pre-election Attack on Iran Remains a Possibility by Leon Hadar
Swan Song for NATO: The Real Cost Of Defeat In Forgettistan by Mike Whitney
The US Abroad and at Home
Iraq is out of the news for the moment perhaps being temporarily replaced by the turmoil in Pakistan. Bush et al continue to threaten Iran on various grounds, the latest threat being a purported clash between the Iranian and US naval ships which has been compared to the Gulf of Tonkin incident - a fabricated 'event' which was used to drastically escalate the Vietnam war. Imagine being in a country with two of its large neighbors occupied by foreign troops and with a large and threatening naval force continuously just off its shore. The folly of the naval threat was clearly illustrated in expensive war games carried out in the US five years ago. In the 'game' the fictional enemy (Iran/Iraq) destroyed the US fleet using a strategy known as 'swarming' where a multitude of fast small crafts overwhelmed superior US forces. Any escalation of the war to include Iran would have the US fleet (plus an Australian frigate) trapped in a hostile sea and vulnerable not only to 'swarming' but to land based missile attacks from the Gulf's northern shore. Whilst Bush now only has limited opportunites to pursue such madness, both the leading democratic candidates - one of whom is likely to succeed Bush - are 'hawkish' on Iran. And at home for various reasons including the war America's economy continues to unwind. The problems include the war related depreciating currency and continuing petrol price rises along with a collapsing real estate bubble and related stock market and credit crunches. As these troubles intensify and expand the US will find it increasingly difficult to finance its wars. (see article below) It seems unlikely they will be able to stay in Iraq the further ten years Bush has suggested.
More Diggers for Afghanistan?
The Age (16/1) recently headlined an article on page 2 "Australia may boost troops in Afghanistan". There are many doubts and unanswered questions on the Afghanistan war. After 6 years there is little evidence of progress in this war. Opium remains the main cash crop and much of the country is controlled by war lords. Will the boost occur before or after the promised partial withdrawal from Iraq? What numbers will constitute a boost? When will this boost occur? How long will the commitment to the Afghanistan conflict be? 'Till the job is done' according to our new defence minister to which we reply 'What job?' One wonders whether the unspoken strategy for Australia in Afghanistan is it still of the 'all the way with LBJ' type? Certainly there is no indication that the NATO allies are winning the war. And the war from the air - as has been noted many times in IGPN - is bound to fail. For every 'suspected Taliban' indiscriminately murdered from the air - read women and children - new recruits are made and the resistance reinforced. The larger strategy of which we hear little or nothing is ominous with an enemy to the west (Iran) and the disintegrating allie to the east and south (Pakistan). Is it possible that the Afghanistan war is even more complex than that of Iraq? Afghanistan remains a mosaic of ethnic groups and tribes with a largely Pathan south and east - the main tribe that supports the Taliban. This tribal grouping extends well into the western region of increasingly unstable nuclear Pakistan. As the cliche goes we 'ignore history at our peril' and Mr Rudd and the relevant ministers could well benefit from studying the disastrous Afghan Wars (1839-42) and the complete destruction of a British army to the more recent, but similar, defeat of the Russians in the 1980s. The proposal for a surge of US (and Australian) troops does not inspire confidence. In a follow up article Scott Burchill noted: "The problem for Rudd and his Western allies in Afghanistan is that the war is unwinnable by any criteria that make rational sense. Defeating the Taliban seems no closer six years after the country was first attacked. This week's suicide attack on the Serena Hotel in central Kabul - a building that housed the Australian embassy - is just the most recent illustration of how little progress has been made." Burchill concludes: "Interventions inevitably produce many unexpected consequences and insoluble problems, including terrorism, insurgency and resistance. As has been seen in Iraq wars usually go awry and often become uncontrollable. Afghanistan is no different. There are no military solutions to its complex...challenges. Only diplomacy and compromise will spare its benighted population from further misery." (The Age 18/1)
The (Good and Bad) Middle East War News
1. 2007 was the deadliest year for US troops in Iraq. (ICH 2/1)
2. An Iraqi soldier killed 3 American soldiers when they kicked and beat a pregnant woman. (ICH 8/1)
3. Bush has signed a $US 20 bn weapons deal with the repressive Saudi Arabian regime. (ICH 18/1)
4. Rumania will begin pulling its troops out of Iraq this year. (ICH 19/1)
5. Turkey continues to bomb 'Kurdish' targets in northern Iraq. (ICH 19/1)
6. "On January 13 an emerging Sunni - Shiite nationalist bloc signed an agreement aimed at ending Iraq's civil war, blocking the privatisation of the Iraqi oil industry and checkmating the breakaway Kurdish state." (Robert Dreyfuss The Nation 20/1)
7. "The cultivation of opium... is spreading rapidly across Iraq as farmers find they can no longer make a living through growing traditional crops." (Patrick Cockburn Counterpunch 25/1)
The Murdoch Boycott & other Media News
1."There is simply no other Democrat, including John Edwards, who has an equal record when it comes to relying on grassroots support, opposing plutocratic policies, and earning the enmity of Big Business. This is why the Wall Street Journal and FOX News detest the 'Ron Paul Revolution.'" see article by Jeff Taylor below
2. The circulation of the Murdoch 'Sun' in the UK dropped below 3 million, in spite of drastic price cuts, for the first time since 1974. (ABC 13.1)
On the Beach and Global Warming An interesting article by Peter Christoff (The Age 15/1) entitled "The end of the world as we know it" has compared the annihilation of man after nuclear war in Nevil Shute's On the Beach (Heinemann 1957) with the 'WMD' of global warming. Christoff noted: "that five decades later (after publication) the book remains enthralling and unmitigatingly bleak" and "John Osborne, a scientist (from the CSIRO, as it happens) comments that his doomed compatriots lack the imagination to see what lies before them. Trapped between fatalism and denial, they nurture their sustaining delusions. They falteringly try to pretend the world around them remains normal, while knowing that Europe, North America and China have been extinguished and their own fate sealed." It is an interesting coincidence that a few numbers ago (No.36) IGPN also ran a short article on Shute's book and the subsequent film shot in Melbourne, Phillip Island and other locations.
Feedback from the last issue & other local happenings The Right Reverend John McIntyre Bishop of Gippsland made a donation to IGPN and wrote: "I want to encourage you in its ongoing publication and your obvious commitment to peace and justice." Thank you for your kind words. Correspondence also received from PN of Warburton and AM of Sale.
Kyoto and Disarmament In a short article of the above title Ted Craill wrote: "The Estimation of the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere due to all aspects of war would take into account the manufacture of weapons, their use and the amount released in repairing the damage resulting from their use. Understanding the extent of damage to the environment caused by the manufacture of weapons and war, and acknowledging that war inflicts great suffering, logic inevitably leads to the realisation that this is a nonessential human activity that we should discontinue. To this end, the Nuclear-Non-Proliferation Treaty (NTP) provides a sound legal basis to argue for the inclusion of disarmament as a component of environment-protection measures."
Only one thing unites Iraq: hatred of the US: the Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies. by Patrick Cockburn (12/12/07)
Contact Pax Christi PO Box 31 Carlton South
Hard Times A-Coming - The Bush Dollar Trap by Dave Lindorff
The West's Orwellian Monopoly on Morality by Paul Craig Roberts