You are currently viewing the archive for February 2003.
To all those that think Indymedia is just hyperbolic nonsense: this report guesses at 30 000 protesting in Perth, but the link to it from the main page revises it downwards to 20 000. It’s been way better since they started the blog-like main page that filters out a lot of the crap.
Dubya says: “The axis of evil was a valid comment [but] I would note there’s one dramatic difference between Iran and the other two axes of evil”. Would someone explain to the man that if you put three axes together, you don’t get another axis; you get three-dimensional space. Maybe the “Box of Evil” or something.
Yesterday I was one of thousands of people who attended the Perth rally against war on Iraq.
The crowd
It was very impressive. I met friends at Perth Train Station about a quarter of an hour before the rally was due to start, and as we crossed Wellington Street it was immediately clear that there was going to be an impressive turnout. Forrest Place was teeming with people.
By the time the rally was under way, the square was densely packed with people, and they were spilling out down the steps to Wellington Street, in the Murray Street mall, and along the walkway on the first floor of Forrest Chase. I’m not much good at guessing crowd numbers, but there was certainly more than 10 000 people there. Channel 9 was reporting 20 000, which sounds like a reasonable estimate.
There were several speakers from a wide range of groups, including the Greens, Democrats, various unions, and the No War Alliance. I was disappointed that Labor’s Shadow Defence Minister didn’t say anything, despite being in attendance. The most interesting speaker, I thought, was a representative of the Perth Kurdish community. He opposed the war for various reasons but foremost was America’s thinly-veiled imperialism.
The march
After the speeches, we marched from Forrest Place along Murray Street, down William Street, across St George’s Terrace, up Barrack Street and back along Murray Street to where we started. The procession was so long that it had arrived back in Forrest Chase before the tail had even left.
The message
The message of the day was clear — this is not a war of liberation, it is a war of imperialism. Iraq poses no credible threat to either his neighbours or the world. The “evidence” presented by Britain and America is pissweak at best, and Howard should not have committed our troops in a secret deal with the US.
Among the placards and banners, the NO HOWARD message was prominent. A Liberal campaign photo of Howard marked with the words “Arse lickin liar” and “poo-head”, and a small moustache, was also entertaining. The cake was probably taken by a cartoon of Little Johnny licking American arse, though.
Another entertaining banner read, “Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity”. Very true — though I was quite surprised to see it being carried by two ladies who were sixty if they were a day.
Perth is a small, apathetic place. To get 20 000 people to turn out at the start of a campaign is no mean feat. Anti-war sentiment runs deep, and both the Coalition and Labor should pay close attention.
Went to the peace rally today. Details and a swag of photos to follow.
Had a chat to the Young Libs at O-Day today. Decent sort of people, as far as Libs go. Apparently, the real wanker faction was warned not to turn up after an Inside Cover report on the factional bitching.
I don’t often agree with Ironbar Tuckey, but this letter to the Australian Financial Review of a few days ago struck a chord on several important points.
The public attempt by West Australian Newspapers Holdings CEO Ian Law to highlight the declining circulation of a virtual monopoly publication, distributed in a state of expanding population and prosperity, clearly demonstrates his frustration at being the meat in the sandwich between his equally under-performing board and senior editorial staff.
At least one long-serving board member has retired in disgust after years of attempting to convince his colleagues of the failure of WAN’s senior editorial staff to present a quality, marketable product to a contemporary WA readership.
The board’s decision to replace editor-in-chief Paul Murray with a television news editor must have been the last straw.
The subsequent period of front-page stories based on TV current affairs style journalism was an affront to anyone seeking an alternative to that medium. WAN continues to employ the same feature writers over decades who continue to apply 1960s philosophy to current events, and poor Law laments the failure of WA’s new generation of consumers to have The West Australian delivered.
The West’s past failure to take the lead in exposing the excesses of WA Inc is duplicated today in the paper’s continuing failure to produce political balance.
To reverse the fortunes of WAN, shareholders must start with the board. Their accountancy skills are not to be questioned, but they should give Law the joint position of CEO/editor-in-chief and allow him to restructure the editorial process to one the people of WA want to read — and take more than five minutes to do so.
Wilson Tuckey MP
Canberra, ACT
I don’t necessarily agree that Ian Law should be given absolute control over the paper (according to Crikey he’s a bit dodgy) but the West has certainly descended even further into the tabloid market of late. I mean, when you’ve got a headline that fills half the front page, do you really need to underline it?
Does anyone seriously believe that the latest Osama bin Laden tape proves that he’s in cahoots with Saddam Hussein?
All it demonstrates is that he’s a smooth marketer — he recognises that the Arab world does not like the threat of war by the West against Iraq, and he’s trying to tap into that sentiment. He’s not helping Saddam, he’s leeching off him. It’s propaganda for a recruitment drive, nothing more and nothing less.
In fact, the only likely outcome is that Al Qaeida will attempt to attack any nations that jump in with the US as part of a “Coalition of the Willing” (or COW, as Vaara has it). And given the Government’s lapdog approach, we’re quite possibly very high on the list.
The arse is rapidly falling out of claims that war will lead to democracy in Iraq. As John Quiggin points out, the two more likely outcomes are a new dictator or more war.
This free-TVs-from-Telstra business gets stranger by the minute. After it was revealed that Communications Minister Richard Alston, who is responsible for regulating Telstra, has been given the loan of a $10 000 digital television, he struggled to explain it.
Apparently, though, “he found one sympathetic friend – John Laws”. The talkback host thought it was entirely appropriate for Telstra to give gifts of significant value to people in positions of influence. Of course, it’s pretty obvious why he thought that:
2UE’s website discloses that Laws receives “more than $100,000 but not more than $500,000 per annum” from Telstra for on-air endorsements.
First cash-for-comment, now television-for-policy.
Alston’s explanation as to why he accepted the gift was equally bizarre:
Senator Alston explained that he had some initial doubts about accepting the set from Telstra, but they were eased after a conversation with Prime Minister John Howard.
Sound reasonable, you reckon? Well, what would you say if you knew John Howard has one too?
The Prime Minister has his own $10,000 plasma screen digital TV on loan from Telstra to watch at Kirribilli House.
So, all the boys in Telstra’s back pocket are sticking up for each other.
What are the implications for digital TV policy? If nothing else, these loans demonstrate that Alston is entirely incompetent:
Senator Alston told 2UE yesterday that he would have remained “ignorant” of digital TV if he had refused Telstra’s offer.
Thing is, he’d formulated the Government’s digital TV policy long before Telstra gave him the TV. That is, while he was “ignorant” of digital TV, he wrote the rules for its implementation!
Worse still, he’s relying on Telstra, which are a major player in the industry (some would say it’s a monopoly) to inform him of the relative merits of one form of digital TV over another. The result is bound to be an anti-competitive regulatory system that entrenches Telstra’s market dominance.
It’s about time Ministerial Codes of Conduct had some teeth. Alston should be sacked over this one.
I mentioned as an afterthought yesterday that regime change had been ruled out as a cause for Australian involvement in a war on Iraq. Mark picked me up on it, and said that Downer said regime change was desirable.
Indeed he did, but if we go to war it will be about weapons, not human rights abuses. And we’re certainly not going to stick around to entrench democracy in a post-Saddam Iraq:
Longer-term involvement of an Australian peacekeeping force is highly unlikely. Mr Howard has said it would not be appropriate.
Perhaps I’m putting two and two together and coming up with four, but it seems to me that the Australian government does support regime change. We’re just using WMD as an excuse. It’s not about human rights, liberty and democracy, either — it’s about ensuring the US has a good dictator in the Middle East.
The losers will be the thousands of innocent Iraqis who expect liberation and get first American bombs and then another American-imposed dictator. Every day that goes by, the case for war grows weaker. And the arguments in favour of it grow ever more cynical.
No doubt Ken will again attack me for my “love affair” with unions, and Gareth will probably ejaculate a gigantic splurt of anti-unionism, but I’ll press on anyway.
The police are anti-union. This has again been demonstrated in Western Australia by the arrest of a union official who exercised his right of entry onto a building site. I’ll quote from an Australian report that is unavailable online:
Senior Constable Jane Leary told the Perth Magistrate’s Court yesterday that she did not understand the rights and obligations of union officials and did not check whether Joe McDonald had a right of entry into an East Perth building site.
However, that’s not exactly correct. She did check whether he had a right to be there — she checked with the builder:
Under cross-examination from Mr McDonald’s lawyer, Kevin Bonomelli, the senior constable admitted she had never dealt with an industrial relations matter before and had assumed [Pindan Constructions site manager Mr Vince] Corica was correct when he told her Mr McDonald was not allowed on the site. (My emphasis.)
It is not surprising that the police side with the bosses, but it’s neither right nor acceptable.
Yesterday, Gareth took umbrage at my suggestion that war on Iraq would involve “a violent, bloody and inhumane holocaust of innocent Iraqi civilians”. Unfortunately, that is likely what America is planning:
Have your heard of Harlan Ullman? Everyone in the White House and the Pentagon has. They may very well follow his plan for war in Iraq. He wants to do to Baghdad what we did to Hiroshima.
… When it comes to Iraq, Ullman likes the idea of cruise missiles — lots of them, right away. CBS News reports that Ullman’s ideas are the basis for the Pentagon’s war plan. The U.S. will smash Baghdad with up to 800 cruise missiles in the first two days of the war. That’s about one every four minutes, day and night, for 48 hours.
The missiles will hit far more than just military targets. They will destroy everything that makes life in Baghdad livable. “We want them to quit. We want them not to fight,” Ullman told CBS reporter David Martin. So “you take the city down. You get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.”
The US will target not the military, but Iraqi civilians:
Harlan Ullman, the military strategist who apparently developed the plan, last week characterized the Baghdad assault thusly: “You have this simultaneous effect, rather like the nuclear weapons of Hiroshima, not taking days or weeks but minutes.” It would be a firestorm, a Dresden with 60 years of new technology. It would be a war crime of quick and staggering proportions.
Even if that horrific war crime is not carried out by the US, their reliance on so-called “smart” weapons is equally concerning. They’re not that smart at all, as Stephen Romei points out:
The UN (aka anti-Americans who eat smelly food) has estimated war will result in tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed, hundreds of thousands affected by disease and millions displaced.
The US – and Alexander Downer – assure us so-called smart bombs will limit civilian casualties. They forget that even a Mensa-level bomb has a dumb human at the other end.
Smart bombs worked perfectly in 1991, burrowing through concrete to incinerate 408 Iraqi men, women and children huddled in an air-raid shelter the Pentagon mistook for a command centre.
In Afghanistan, smart bombs obliterated an Afghan wedding party and rained fire on the Red Cross – twice. An estimated 850 to 1300 innocent civilians were killed in Afghanistan.
Would Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard go to war if their nations faced the prospect of massive civilian casualties? Do Iraqi civilians deserve the same consideration, or is that just anti-American of me?
Now that Alexander Downer has ruled out regime change as being an Australian goal in any war on Iraq, there can be no “human calculus” carried out. We’ll be targetting hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, and we can no longer pretend we’re doing it for their own good.
So, Bush has effectively announced what we already knew — that Australia is committed to war:
He was asked this by Australian journalist, Laurie Oakes:
Q Could you tell us whether you count Australia as part of the coalition of the willing?
From an Australian domestic point of view, this is a dynamite question, as Howard hasn’t officially announced whether we would join a non-UN invasion. And I thought for one tantalising moment that Bush had fallen for it. He answered without hesitation:
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I do.
… Luckily for Honest John, after a very pregnant pause, Bush continued:
THE PRESIDENT: You know, what that means is up to John to decide.
That’s all very well, but what has Johnny decided it means?
“It means what he said,” Mr Howard said later.
“He believes that’s the case. He then went on to say that what that means is a matter for me.”
Err… yes, thanks for the clarification.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, we’re not worried about regime change any more, apparently. So all the pro-war people who are arguing in favour of democracy, human rights, etc can keep their traps shut from now on.
I don’t have time to post a long entry about the increasingly inevitable war on Iraq. I will briefly say that I don’t believe that a case has been made, and I think Powell’s speech even detracted from the evidence. I mean, we’re shown pictures of trucks and cranes, and expected to trust the Americans that they’re being used to create WMD. That’s drawing a very long bow, I must say.
Then we’ve got the outdated, plagiarised British dossier. If the British or American intelligence agencies had any real evidence of Iraq developing WMD or threatening its neighbours and the world, we would be shown more than stolen extracts of a student’s paper of ten years ago.
The most disturbing element of the proposed war remains its aftermath. Ken Parish recovers from his recent hawkish lurch with a very centrist response to the prospect of increased US hegemon. He raises a very pertinent question:
I wonder how many opponents of the Iraq military option would actually support it if it weren’t for the fact that they perceive (like Hugh White) that the major consequence (besides freeing Iraqis from an appalling tyrant) will be the semi-permanent entrenchment of the US as world hyperpower.
I can’t say for sure that I would support the war, but the prospect of a United States that is prepared to invade any country that it decides (for whatever reason, based on genuine evidence or not) is a threat to its interests, is one major reason that I oppose the war. The notion of “pre-emptive self-defence” is farcical in the case of Iraq. Even if it had WMD, it poses no threat to anyone farther afield than Israel, who already possess WMD and have regularly declared their preparedness to use them.
In fact, one of the concerns I have regularly raised when discussing this issue is the notion that Iraq has been chosen as a soft target for America’s redefinition of international law. After all, we have unfinished business with Saddam Hussein, he’s Arab, he treats his own people badly. We can make some tenuous connections between him and Osama bin Laden, even if they don’t stand up to scrutiny; and we can steal from grad students to pretend he has WMD. Once we’ve taken him out, we have a precedent to move on to other nations, as the fancy takes us.
Daniel Pipes thinks this is both legitimate and worthwhile. Ken respectfully disagrees. Pipes’ suggestion is quite disturbing, given that the outcome is less likely to be democracy and more likely to be mutual backscratching deals with whoever’s at hand.
Having said that, we need to do more than oppose war. Reform of the UN is vital if we are going to have a viable alternative method of dispute resolution. Ken notes that this needs to begin with the abolition of the veto:
I think we need to start some lateral thinking about other ways to engineer workable constraints on hegemonic power, while still allowing enough scope for decisive action against tyranny in clear-cut cases. Of course, the question of who should judge whether a given situation is sufficiently exceptional to justify military intervention is a dilemma to which I don’t have an immediate solution. A UNSC without any nation enjoying a veto might help, but the chances of any of the current permanent members (especially the US) agreeing to surrender their veto power is very remote.
I was chatting to a couple of people today, and the thought struck me (as it does occasionally) that this war is probably inevitable. From there, I tried to think of a least-worst case scenario for its trigger, and I think it is this: the Security Council succumbs to US pressure and votes for war. However, one nation exercises a veto (preferably China, as it would be bad for France to oppose the US as their hegemony becomes ever more complete).
This would lead to a war waged in accordance with the vote of the Security Council but against a veto. The result (apart from a violent, bloody and inhumane holocaust of innocent Iraqi civilians) would be an ultimatum for the international community — abolish the veto or let the UN fade into absolute irrelevance in the face of US arrogance and imperialism.
