Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Bush and Howard's pan-Pacific love-in
Imagine the scene, some four years from now. John Howard had won the 2004 Federal Election and is at the twilight of his political career. He has finally jettisoned his personal commitment to the Queen and Commonwealth and is watching the US President, George W Bush, on the cusp of his own retirement, sign into law Australia’s accession to become the 51st State of the United States of America.

Pretty unlikely, but Australia is certainly drifting ever faster eastwards across the Pacific, rather than northwards towards Asia.

This is a huge navigational shift away from the Keating era’s belief that Australia’s future lay in South East Asia. Since 1997, and the election of a conservative government, this course has been altered subtly and incrementally. But 9/12 saw Australia accelerate eastwards.
Of course, Australia has long been a strategic ally of the United States. Australian soldiers have fought beside their American counterparts in numerous occasions since 1941. Without the backing of its Commonwealth surrogate mother, Australian troops fought in Vietnam, backed up by the ANZUS Treaty of 1957.

Culturally, Australia has long been porous to US influences, albeit 20 years behind. Australia suburban highways are strewn with McDonalds hamburger joints and Chermside Shopping Centre in Brisbane was the first car-based out of town shopping mall to be built outside America. Americana can be seen everywhere, from the neo-Tuscan, triple garaged peri-urban sprawl, to the saturation coverage of US product on the commercial television networks. Many of these links resulted from commercial seepage - American TV ‘shows’ can be screened for just a fraction of the cost of home production - having already recouped studio costs from domestic markets. Economies of scale and experience can be very quickly rolled out in the form of Golden Arches to smother indigenous culinary talent.

In many nations this creeping americanisation has created backlash and resentment in variety of guises - from the French ‘slow-food’ movement to the more strident views about ‘Asian Values’ in the democratising nations in SE Asia. Even the ‘Australia Made’ brand here remains an important marketing tool.

But this is not a passive drift benignly influenced by commercial realism. It is a course actively plotted by the conservative Howard Government. Mirroring this, the Bush administration is clearly seducing Australia; and John Howard is only too willing to drop his trousers for a pan-Pacific love-in. The militant neo-conservative right in the US has found willing partner in the current conservative right in Australia.

In a range of policy areas, formal and informal relations have moved the Howard Government and Australia closer and closer to the US homeland.

Informally, the Howard Government’s support for US renegade policies has been rewarded by good old-fashioned backslapping and personal tributes from Washington. For the last few weeks, John Howard has been very publicly showered with political praise from the Bush Administration, particularly following Federal Opposition Leader, Mark Latham’s comments that the Australian troops in Iraq ‘will be home by Christmas’. In a recent speech, just two days before Australian elected representatives in the Senate were to debate a free trade agreement (see below), George Bush personally referred to John Howard as a “great leader” and intimated (as he would) that the agreement would be good for Australia. This gushing flattery and blatant political advocacy even became too much for former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who openly rebuked the Howard government for accepting the praise and allowing US pressure to influence the Australian electorate.

This politics, built upon the personal relations of world leaders, is not new, but is damaging, unaccountable and undermines democracy in polities such as Australia. Whether Bush does influence the forthcoming Federal elections in Australia or the Senators debating the trade agreement with the USA is yet to be seen, but it is undeniably his intention. His attacks on the Australian Labor Party are calculating and desperate. John Howard’s acceptance of them are shameful.

But it is the steady alignment of official policy that is most detrimental to Australia’s interests. On the environment, Australia has adopted the same supercilious stance towards climate change as the USA by not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Both governments maintain that ratification would damage jobs and economic growth. Never mind global warming, we've got voter's SUVs to think about.

Despite Australia producing a trifling amount of greenhouse gas when compared with some of the world’s giant economies, Australia's per capita levels of pollution compare unfavourably even with the gluttonous USA. Australia has agreed to adopt its own greenhouse gas target (an 8% increase) but by now there is little chance of the economy achieving it. So signing the Protocol would not save the world from global warming but would send a strong message out to the remaining Kyoto renegades. Conversely, not signing displays an arrogance and disdain for good science and global solidarity.

On a related issue, the two nation’s energy policies are similarly converging to become fully committed to a fossil fuel future. In the USA, Bush is continuing to push a new Energy Bill through Congress, which would strengthen the grip of the fossil fuel extraction industry. At the same time, the Howard Government has published a white paper, outlining his Government’s intentions to continue publicly subsidise private coal and oil exploration. Both economies have pitifully low targets for renewable energy production, which industry experts suggest is unlikely to attract the private investment needed in what is considered a high growth technology with a future in most industrial nations.

Three weeks ago, US law makers breezed the US-Australian bilateral free trade agreement through Congress. It was proclaimed as a “slam-dunk”, suggesting that the deal was something of a coup for US manufacturers but not so good for Australian primary producers who will still have to face uphill tariffs to get to the American consumer. It was further implied by a number of Congressman and women that safe passage of the Bill was more or less guaranteed as a reward for Australian support of the coalition of the willing in Iraq.

Which brings us neatly to the main driver behind the Australian application to be the 51st State: US Security policy.

10/12 and all that

The Bali Bombing on October 12th 2002, transformed the Australian psyche in much the same way that 9/11 brought home to the Americans the fact that not everyone likes them. This, despite the two traumas differing significantly - an objective fact lost amongst the horror, blood and body parts.

On September 11th 2001, four jetliners targeted American people in symbolic American political and economic icons inside the American homeland. The Bali bomb killed 190, mostly western/white holidaymakers in a predominantly Muslim country - it just so happened that a fair proportion of the clientele were Australians (70 lost their lives).

This does not make it any less of an atrocity: many hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as ‘collateral damage’ in the last 12 months: no one deserves to be subject to arbitrary slaughter.
But despite the very different emphases of the two events, Australia assumed it was directly under attack in the same way that the USA is being targeted - right in the line of fire for terrorist groups. Obliquely, Australia was a target - as part of the “Zionist-Christain alliance” as bin Laden sees it - but no more so than any nation who supported the UN action in Afghanistan.

Additionally, Australia’s efforts in East Timor, again under UN authority, put military personnel in direct danger. But following the horror in Bali, it seemed the Australian Government unquestioningly led the country into a opportunistic war in Iraq by slavishly subscribing to the US neo-conservative strategy of global hegemony. The American's war became the Australian's war. While the rest of the world listened to Bush's comments - that “you're either with us or against us” - with the patronising wry smile of a more intelligent sibling, John Howard took them seriously.

Giving staunch support to the US ‘War on Terror’ was a wise move for most rich nations and it payed off when the UN Security Council voted to go after Al Qa’ida and the Taliban in the mountains around Kandahar. But after Afghanistan, Australia unquestioningly supported the continuation of the neo-conservative agenda by going to war in Iraq on much the same assumptions as George Bush and not relying on the quasi-legal arguments of Tony Blair. America has been grateful ever since.

This geo-political strategic alliance has been personalised by Bush describing Australia (or more precisely Howard and Downer) as its own ‘sheriff in the region’ - “give that lil 'ole country a sheriff's badge, will ya”. A feather in the cap for Howard, or merely a disarming comment designed to ensure that Australia remains a strategic asset for the US in a region that contains both Indonesia and China? This military alliance has now been further bolstered by an agreement to allow the expansion of US military training facilities in Queensland and talks on using Australia as a radar base for strategic missile defence hardware.

US against the world

But the latest sidling up to a superpower has been a grave misjudgment and is, frankly, embarrassing. By backing Israel and the USA in the UN General Assembly and voting against the resolution denouncing Israel’s West Bank barrier, John Howard’s sycophancy has plumbed new depths. Australia was one of six nations to vote against the rest of the world; the three others being Pacific Islands, with a combined population of less than 250,000. This is despite the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, publicly stating that Australia maintained that the route of the barrier through the West Bank of Palestine was inappropriate and that it should follow the green line on Israeli territory.

(Palau, The Marshall Islands and Micronesia have all signed a 'Compact of Free Association' with the USA, thereby granting America jurisdictional responsibility on all defence and foreign affairs matters. It comes as no surprise then that these three 'nations' voted with the USA.In effect, this gives the USA 4 votes in the UN General Assembly.)

Ironically, this was precisely the opinion implied by the recent advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice. The Court did not question Israel’s right to build a barrier to secure its people from infiltrating suicide bombers, but did rule that the route of the barrier caused undue harm to Palestinians. It cut then off from their land and work and represented a de facto annexation of an occupied territory. Therefore it is in contravention of international law.
Downer attempted to justify the policy u-turn by referring to previous statements which iterated that the Australian Government did not believe the ICJ was competent (in a legal sense) in ruling on this matter - despite being asked to do so through a resolution of the UN General Assembly. Therefore, Australia’s opposition to the latest resolution is based purely on a technicality, not on principle.

Surely then, the logical position to take - and that which most accurately reflects the government’s position - was to abstain, alongside Canada and nine other nations.
In statements following the vote, John Howard said “Israel does have a right to protect herself and you can't hope to have any kind of lasting settlement in the Middle East until there is an understanding that those suicide attacks have got to stop.” By remaining silent on the matter of where any barrier should be, Howard remains either ambivalent or dishonest about his Government’s position.

This suggests that the vote backing the US and Israel has more to do with giving succour to the US and being seen standing shoulder to shoulder on all strategic issues. So rather than carving out a defensible and independent opinion on the barrier, the Howard Government has shown it will back Bush all the way.

Alarmingly, this view was openly espoused by US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage in recent interviews in Australia. He said that an alliance [with the US] was not an a la carte menu, from which Australia could pick and choose policies to agree with. This simplistic reductionism is dangerous: uncritical alliances degenerate into servitude and ridicule - not something that goes down well with 'fair go' Aussies.

Whether this will become an election issue in Australia is uncertain. Each political party would need to make a fine judgement on how this universal alliance with the USA is viewed by the Australian people. Whilst Australians do not live in the same reactionary climate of fear experienced by Americans and perpetrated by their government, it would require a skilled pollster to decipher the range of public opinion and brave political party to campaign hard either way.

The Howard Government’s continued strategic, cultural and policy alignment with the Bush administration undermines its own stated objectives of needing to practice independent decision-making on a geo-political scale. And it also comes with risks. On the environment and energy, Australia is threatened with Pariah status if it continues to slash and burn remnant vegetation, consume energy and not commit to Kyoto. On an international front, the benefits of ANZUS would be undermined if Australia could not take the position of ‘honest broker’ with China if trouble flares in Taiwan between the PRC and USA. And finally, where Howard’s slavish support of the neo-conservatives in Washington lead him to take an indefensible and derisory position in the UN General Assembly, it risks undermining Australia’s thus far impeccable liberal internationalist reputation in global governance.

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Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau vote to support Israel

Three of the globe’s foreign policy heavyweights have voted against a UN General Assembly Resolution condemning Israel’s security barrier through the Occupied Territories on the West Bank.

Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau, representing over 0.003% of the world’s population and some 0.00025% of the global economy, defied world opinion by supporting Israel’s construction of the 656km barrier.

Last week, the UN General Assembly met to consider a resolution sponsored by Jordan that sought to back up the International Court of Justice ruling that concluded Israel’s actions were illegal under international law. The Court’s ruling implied that the construction of the barrier in the Occupied Territories caused undue harm to Palestinians and was a de facto annexation of occupied land, in contravention of the Geneva Convention.

he vote was overwhelmingly in favour of a revised resolution that condemned Israel’s actions but also called on the Palestinian Authority to take action to arrest militants. The vote was 150 in favour, 6 against, with 10 abstentions.

Despite EU nations much of the rest of the world deeming the barrier illegal and an obstacle to peace, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau voted with three other minor nations (USA, Israel and Australia) in choosing to support Israel.

“We welcome the support of the three Pacific island nations,” said the Israeli Ambassador to the UN. “Political support amongst foreign policy big hitters such as Palau is important in retaining the credibility of Israeli policy in the international community.”

“The votes of Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands show that there is strong support for Israel’s actions. Although 150 nations voted against us, they are all wrong,” said the Ambassador.

“While America has responsibility for the foreign affairs of these states and financially supports them to the tune of $200m per year, they are still independent, sovereign nations whose votes and opinions count on the world stage,” he said.

The USA supported its traditional ally in the region, despite publicly disagreeing with the route of the fence. “We believe that Israeli settlements in Israel and the West Bank should be protected,” said the US Ambassador.

“This is not about making facts on the ground or stealing land. Israel is not seeking to control the movements of people, or drive the local economy further into the ground through collective punishment,” he said.

“And besides, we cannot start voting against Israel in the United Nations. We cannot also risk our strategic alignment and the economic benefits that flow from our alliance with Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.” he concluded.

“We just did what the Americans did,” said the Australian Ambassador.

The barrier, which in heavily populated areas, is an 8-metre high concrete wall, forces Palestinians to travel for many miles just to access local services. In many places, farmland has been arbitrarily confiscated, depriving many of their only form of subsistence. It also folds in to encompass many illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority says it has documents which show plans to completely encircle the West Bank, annexing over 40% of the area beyond the Armistice line. The Israeli government denies this.

Critics accuse Israel of a blatant land grab and of creating ‘facts on the ground’. However an Israeli Government spokesperson maintained that Israel will ‘always act within the law’. Whose law, was not made clear, as Israel continue to be in contravention of more UN Security Council Resolutions (even with the USA retaining a veto) than was Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Asked whether the wall was a marking out a de facto future border between two states, the spokesperson replied:

“The barrier has so far only cost $2 million per kilometre. By the time it is finished it will have cost us just over $1.3 billion. That is not a great deal of money. We can take it down as easily as we can put it up.”

“Now that there are settlements on the West Bank, we must protect them. We couldn’t build the fence on our side because there would not have been enough room for the tanks and watchtowers. Look, how much more room do 3 million Arabs need ?” he added.

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Monday, July 26, 2004
Eric's Sickbag

Earlier today, following the controversy in Sydney that resulted in the grounding of an American Airlines jet, we had to leave the building here in Brisbane.

Someone had found a sickbag in the toilet with the word Eric written on it. Security officials assumed that it implied that it meant “Evacuate. Ricin in cupboard”.

Police Superindendent Peter O'Brien was quoted as saying that the "threat" was a "hoax".

It is my understanding that a hoax is deliberate or mischievous deception. This was a misunderstanding.

• If it was a ‘hoax’, then it was not a ‘threat’, as a hoax is not a real threat.
• If it was a ‘threat’ then it cannot have been a ‘hoax’ as a threat is real.

So if it was not a 'hoax' and it was not a threat, what was it?

It was just a sick bag.

It is inappropriate and inaccurate use of language like this that all adds to the pervasive climate of fear.

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Friday, July 16, 2004
The Minority Report

Now that the second coat of whitewash has been liberally applied to the Blair Government and the Iraqis are in control of their own destiny (I was being 'ironical', by the way), a window of opportunity has arisen to reflect on the war in/on/with/against/for/over Iraq.

We have reached a stalemate. It is unlikely there will be any further 'reports'; opinion is now so entrenched and polarised that whatever new information arises, no one is going to change their mind; and besides, we had Euro 2004 to take our minds of it for a while.

Alas, we have to live with the reality that there will never be any definitive answer to whether the war Iraq was justified. There will be no scientific proof and therefore no 'closure'. It will just fester in our minds, until something else sufficiently distracts us from the nuisance of this unresolved, highly important and emotive issue.

It was doomed from the start: pre-emption is inadmissible in a legal context. You do not get a speeding ticket even if you wanted to break the limit but were cajoled not to by a nearby speed trap. This is not being caught 'in the act' or even 'with blood on your hands'. This is why police 'stings' are so intricately planned - the arrest can only be made once the crime has been committed. (However 'Pre-Crimes', celebrated by Tom Cruise in 'Minority Report', are creeping into UK law. It is now a criminal offence for an adult to lie to a child on the Internet, if it is considered they are 'grooming' them for an illegal act.)

Pre-emption is a political construct and pre-emptive action is therefore an overtly political act; but not one without precedent in the prosecution of war. Israel bombed its Arab neighbours' air forces on the ground in 1967 long before they had a chance to take off and bomb Israel - as Israeli military planners believed they were going to do. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to pre-empt the fall of a pro-Soviet regime. In the 12 years to Gulf War Part II, medium intensity bombing had taken place over Southern Iraq in order to pre-empt Saddam from establishing defensive military structures on its borders with the US backed Arab countries of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

But despite a precedent, pre-emption always requires a strong political objective. But to make things more difficult, a pre-emptive war could never have UN backing. Had Bush-Blair followed the direct political route (as occurred in Serbia and Kosovo), Iraq may well be at greater peace than it is now. No one disagrees with Blair-Bush-Howard when they attempt to assuage media opinion by resorting to the 'Saddam was a bad man' story - as is increasingly the case now the legal justification has unravelled. No one suggested that Slobodan Milosovic was a 'good guy'.

On Blair's insistence, Bush was persuaded to go to through the UN for a favourable resolution. Therefore the justification for a pre-emptive war had to be transformed into a pseudo-trial of whether Saddam had weapons of mass destruction or not. This would sit more comfortably with the traditions and conventions of the UN Security Council in making 'international law'. To bulldoze the prosecution's case through the 'court', intelligence was massaged, trimmed down and had the caveats removed. Was it 'sexed-up'? Definitely, in most people's understanding of the term. (Though clearly not Lord Hutton's.)

Two genuinely whitewashed UK reports and numerous US Senate inquiries (under different guises) have revealed that the intelligence used was too reliant on drunken dissidents and that senior planners were only too happy to see the intelligence bolstered by political judgement to be given the status of 'evidence'.

But caging a political strategy in legalese was always going to problematic and it was perhaps the biggest error of judgement made by Tony Blair. The burden of proof is required - 'beyond reasonable doubt' and often by a large majority of jurors in serious cases - was never going to achieved. Throughout the run-up to the war, the phrase 'smoking gun' was deployed to give the whole episode a flavour of a 1950s crime movie.

In this pseudo-trial there was no recognition of a civil defence, no rights of disclosure and when the cross examination started to reveal flaws in the prosecution's case, there was always enough wriggle room for the Minister to beat a retreat to using the 'intelligence cannot be made public' excuse.

In this trial, the jurors were simply asked to trust their leaders and policy makers; and this at a time when those in public office are the second least trusted profession after Journalists. But this is not how trials operate. Jurors do not convict because they 'trusted' the prosecutor. They convict if the prosecutor's case is solid, defensible and not undermined by a defence.

In the US, perhaps due to his stunted intellect or lack of legal training (a la Tony Blair), George W Bush kept his options more open. He often blurred his Administration's political objectives with the legal case by citing UN Security Council Resolutions as the primary justification but resorting to his 'War on Terror' and finally humanitarian relief when the going got tough and the questioning required more than a one word answers.

But the trial was never given time to finish. By the time the prosecution had finished making their case and the defence were left to make theirs, an unstoppable military juggernaut was rolling through the deserts of the Gulf. And a further excuse emerged: 'we cannot back down know, we will loose credibility'. It was a 'slam-dunk', to use an expression borrowed from the House of Representatives.

Furthermore, the defence's case was not made by some official Iraqi defence team but by a probing media and a duty bound 'Her Majesty's Opposition' (well, the Liberal Democrats, anyway.), sworn enemies of Tony Blair. It was also made after the sentence had been carried out, extra-judicially, by the heavy mob out the back.

But in the end political logic saw to it that the war was inevitable, despite the regular claims by Ministers on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme that it was not. One: Blair believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (or at least no inquiry has revealed a contrary view). Two: Blair also believed that whatever the UN Security Council resolved, Britain retained the right to act unilaterally as a sovereign nation. Ipso facto, the war was inevitable.

And so we are left with the one simple question: why did Blair choose to justify the war in legal terms? It was this decision alone that has delivered us to this impasse. Was it his lawyer background or the unease in his own party about aligning so closely with a neo-Conservative administration in Washington? Maybe it was the influence of his wife, herself a highly paid (and respected) Barrister?

It doesn't matter whether Blair truly believed that Saddam had a WMD programme or not. In fact he probably did believe it and Andrew Gilligan was sensationalising is his assertion that the Government 'probably knew [the 45 minute claim] was wrong'. But in attempting to 'prove beyond reasonable doubt' that Saddam was up to no good was never going to wash. Throughout, Blair and his Ministers stuck resolutely to their guns in justifying the war on legal grounds, despite unrelenting pressure from John Humphries and James Naughtie. And intense cross-examination no doubt revealed that there was no clear-cut case. Ministers resigned in disgust, but still the Government held the line. The Today Programme became compulsive listening at the time. It was like two heavyweight prize-fighters slugging it out, already blinded by swollen bruises. In retrospect, it was obvious that someone was going to die before the end.

All we can hope for in the future is that the Bush-Blair-Howard triumvirate has been so badly burned by this episode that pre-emption is unlikely to resurface in a similar guise again. Crack teams of commandos are unlikely to go charging in at the behest of their political leaders when they envision a Pre-Crime being committed, despite the bellicose rhetoric from neo-Conservatives. Well, either that, or they all get voted out in 2004.

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Thursday, July 15, 2004
Butler probe makes Blair's eyes water

The inquiry into the veracity of the intelligence used to justify sending UK troops to war in Iraq delivered its verdict on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack, with all the hallmarks of a probing government inquiry, Lord Butler concluded that the Government was guilty of 'Institutional Fibbing'. Characterised by no individual person telling an outright lie, but pervading the whole issue of whether there was or was not WMD in Iraq was a regime of collective dissonance and hiding from the truth.

"This was a case of one small porkie being told on top of one another." Explained Butler. "A bit like Chinese whispers."

"After information had passed through several hands, it bore no resemblance to the original truth."

"What started out as a shopping list scrawled in Arabic on the back of a fag packet in downtown Dauchanbe, ended up being interpreted as the sale of nuclear material in Niger and presented at the UN Security Council as a smoking gun." Said Lord Butler.

"But I found no evidence of Government Ministers telling outright lies and so their integrity is not questioned." Butler continued.

"In the preparation of the September dossier, a few phrases were edited out. Such phrases as 'maybe', 'potentially', 'uncertain', 'single source who was a known alcoholic' were deleted to make the paper more exciting."

"Readers would have got bored and not read it otherwise." Butler concluded.

Other key recommendations of the inquiry include:

• Government Officials should tell the truth to their Ministers, even if it damages their egos and/or their career opportunities


• Government Ministers should listen to the advice of civil servants without prejudice


• Government Ministers should tell the truth in Parliament


• Government Ministers should tell the truth on the radio


• Government Ministers should tell the truth under oath in Court


• Government Ministers should tell the truth to their electors

This is the second UK inquiry that seeks to shed light on how Britain ended up going to war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction and 16 months after the ending of hostilities.

However, all that has been found by inspectors given a free rein so far is half a bottle of out of date Nytol and two Hasbro Junior Chemistry Sets (featuring a free 'Grow your own Crystals' giftset).

Lord Hutton's Inquiry into the death of UN weapons Inspector, Dr David Kelly, cleared Tony Blair of having sex up the dossier with his closest allies in Downing Street.

But despite a damning report from Butler, Blair said he felt the same about Iraq as he had before the war.

"With the history of Saddam and what he did, not just to his own country but to the wider world, we are better, safer, more secure without him in office," said Mr Blair.

"With that bottle of Nytol, Saddam could well have brought, not just the region, but the entire world, into turmoil."

Asked whether he thought some cough medicine added up to a case for war, Blair replied that although this is all that months of intensive searching and scientific testing has found, Iraq posed a clear and present danger before the invasion.

"The intelligence was clear: (Saddam) continued to believe his WMD programme was essential both for internal repression and for external aggression."

"The biological agents we believed Iraq could produce include anthrax, botulinum, Carling Black Label and Marmite." - Tony Blair

"The biological agents we believed Iraq could produce include anthrax, botulinum, Carling Black Label and Marmite. All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death." Said Prime Minister Blair.

"Saddam was definitely hiding weapons of mass destruction. I know he was. I saw the evidence. I saw the evidence. He was lying. And laughing at us. We had to go in and get him. We did. We did. We did." Blair added, before being dragged off by men in white coats and pumped full of Prosac.

At a parallel Senate Inquiry in the US, Secretary of State, Colin Powell, gave evidence that supported critics claims that evidence of WMD was scant.

"I had the UN eating out of my hand." Said Powell.

"With any presentation, if the points you are making are weak or spurious, a kick-ass PowerPoint show is all you need to convince people you know what you're taling about."

"Especially when somebody back at the office knows haw to add graphics and sound." He added.

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Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Garret the Carrot

In what he thought was something of a coup d’etât before the forthcoming Federal election, Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader, Mark Latham has wooed ex-Midnight Oil singer, legendary conservation campaigner and once President of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Peter Garrett into the Labor Party fold.

Garrett has been selected to run for the safe Labor seat of Kingsford-Smith in Sydney in the next election.

Now that the ink has dried on his fast-tracked membership nomination form, committed environmentalists are dumbfounded, Coalition hawks are circulating above sensing a split and Latham still thinks he has picked a winner.

But there are many reasons to suggest that he hasn’t and all the ALP leader has done is famously clutch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Garrett has been courted and recruited in order to entice Labor votes from amongst the liberal conscious café-latté drinkers of Sydney who previously voted for Howard. It is also a gambit to woo the more environmentally conscious left-leaning from drifting towards the increasingly popular Greens. Labor needs these votes (particularly their second preferences) to win the few thousand votes that will swing this election.

The policies of the ALP do not dovetail with a radical green agenda. Already, for instance, Garrett has 'realigned' his views on the clear-felling of old growth forests in the Styx Valley, Tasmania. He is adamant that the ALP policy of supporting the persistence of this practice should continue. There people’s jobs (and votes) at stake, after all. Just two months after publishing a strong anti-felling article in a magazine he is redefining his rhetoric to support ALP policy, Garrett must now take a position that compromises his values as he wishes to be a self-proclaimed ‘team-player’.

In so doing, Garrett’s hard-earned credibility as the once outspoken and uncompromising President of the ACF has been undermined. Garrett has declared that he is "ready to come to the mainstream". This comment alone must have been enough to depress committed activists. And not only has he ‘sold-out’ in the eyes of conservationists, but he has become the laughing stock of the developmentalist and rural right. They must think they were right all along; Australia’s future lies does lie in clear-felling virgin rainforest – because even Peter Garrett has signed up for it.

And how far has Labor compromised its policy position to lure Garrett ? Not one bit. Despite Garrett being a big player, Mark Latham has been at pains to demonstrate that Garrett has joined the ALP, not the other way around. Labor Members in Canberra and Hobart can rest easy: the votes of loggers, hauliers and shippers can still be delivered.

Despite the ALP seeing Garrett as a boon, some savvy political manoeuvring by Howard and Downer will soon begin to expose some weaknesses and splits between the ALP (proper) and the ALP (with Garrett). With a trenchant conservationist and socially progressive past, Garrett is a liability in the mainstream, particularly vulnerable to having his past views quoted back to him in interview (which the media are always so keen to do).

He has already had to fend off accusations of being anti-corporate and anti-American. Whether he is or not is irrelevant - for everyone's views are more complex than simply being 'for' or 'against' anything - in the time compressed news room and four second comment from Garrett's past can do wonders for those seeking to exploit policy splits.

He has even upset the local ALP membership - "branch members do not want someone, a wealthy, ageing, former rock star who doesn't live in this local area who has no local connections being foisted on them as the new local member".

So, after having what looked like a fairly dominating lead in the polls, the ALP had taken a bit of a bashing from a Government embroiled in covering-up torture in Iraq, facing charges of incompetence in the handling of benefits payments. While this episode was, on the whole, handled robustly and up-front by ALP strategists, it was perhaps ill-conceived in the first place.

Garrett has allowed himself to be captured by the ALP for one simple reason: his ambition to take Route 1 to the top.

Route 1 involves firstly standing for the House of Representatives – that is where the real action (but surprisingly the least work) is. It is also where most Government Ministers sit. And this you can only do with a major party backing. (A little like the House of Commons, with very few independent MPs). A spot in the Senate (elected from party lists from each of the States and Territories) is easier for minorities and independents to achieve but consigns aspiring politicians to a life of committees and hard work. But as a minority, no chance Minister's job.

Federal Senator and veteran environmental grass roots campaigner, of Fraser Island and Lake Pedder vintage, Bob Brown, is one of two Green Party Senators in Canberra. Not a large contingent – not even a significant minority – but certainly one of the most vocal. As 'leader' of the Green Parliamentary Party, Senator Brown is one of the most commonly quoted Senators (outside and inside government) - earning media comment far and above what the Green Party's number of Senators should dictate.

Bob Brown is miles away from ‘power’. He will never be a government Minister nor have has hands on the levers of policy. But Brown is an idealist and has seen the benefits of retaining his ‘outsider’ status in Canberra. Whilst he has ambitions – ambitions to grow the Green Party popular base and ambition to spread the environmentalist's mantra, his values and beliefs have held fast to the green movement. One day there may be Green Party government. But Bob Brown knows that it won’t be in his lifetime.

Peter Garrett is in more of a hurry. He feels he has not got time to wait to play the long game. In this sense he is the greater pragmatist – diluting his (well known and ecologically deep) values - for an earlier shot at power. If Labor win power (and they just might) he could well be in a Junior Minister’s position within the first couple of years as part of his ‘payback’ for his celebrity name.

But environmentalists should be warned. Australia certainly will not turn green once Garrett is a Minister. Most comparative studies of polities show that where the green movement has achieved ‘insider’ status (Norway and Germany, for example) their political compromise has been many times the magnitude of the progressive leftist parties that have brought them inside the tent. This has seen the environmental movement become blunted, loosing its edge and struggling to define themselves against the broader left movement.

This is a natural result of 'mainstream' politics - the art of the compromise and horse-trading on entering party politics. But the green movement's strengths most often derive from its 'outsider' status, unconstrained by having to adopt a whole package of policies to maintain unity for government. In the UK, USA and still in Australia, the conservation movement is clinging to its radical heritage, despite Bob Brown being in the Senate and Greenpeace acting as green-wash consultants for oil companies. Peter Garrett's 'defection' will be a loss.

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Friday, July 02, 2004
Iraqis take the reins

Taking everyone by surprise, President George W Bush informed the world that sovereignty had been handed back to Iraqis, three days before the UN deadline.

"We are so advanced in our post-Saddam plans for Iraq that we were able to restore power early, although we haven't actually restored electrical power yet," claimed a beaming George Bush.

"Ever since the war started, we have been three days behind schedule. Now we have caught up and are ahead. That is why today the Iraqi people are free of the Yoke, earlier than expected".

UN Security Council Resolution 1489 was passed unanimously eight weeks ago, paving the way towards a hand over of power. Even the French agreed to this one. Even though no one really knew what 'transfer of power' actually meant.

This transfer signals an end to the status of Coalition Forces as an occupying power, even though they would still be a power occupying Iraq. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that US Forces would only stay as long as the Iraqi regime the US have installed in Iraq and are protecting, wishes them to stay.

The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority becomes a Multi National Force, led by the US. All the soldiers get new tee-shirts and badges to reflect the new realities.

It has been a torrid few months Iraq with almost daily casualties and gunfire. As the deadline drew closer, greater levels of violence erupted and US military officials feared total bloodshed at the hand-over. But realising that he was ahead of schedule, President Bush handed the reins over early.

"This is a historic moment for Iraq. The transfer of sovereignty represents a historical new beginning in a troublised land for historically great people", the President said.

"History will show that the historic actions of the Coalition of the Willing (the US, UK, Australia and the Cook Islands) in smashing the ironised grip of brutal dictatorship was the corrective course of actionism.

"With Saddam behind bars, alongside many other young Iraqi men who objected to American soldiers kicking down the doors to their homes in the middle of the night, Iraq looks set for a prosperising new future as a compliant oil producing state, acting in the best interests of oil consuming American business."

"Today, I signed a memorable document for the Iraqi emigres who are now returning to their country to run it for us."

"From today the people of Iraqi are in control of a historicalised destiny that we have gave unto them", President Bush concleded.

The transfer ceremony was a low key affair. US Administrator Paul Bremer handed over the keys to his office and headed to the airport and on home, leaving his army generals in charge of the country. The powers handed down from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Interim Iraqi Government are wide ranging and important and include:

• The issuing (though not enforcement) of dog licences


• The siting of all municipal bus stops. Regional bus services will remain in the hands of coalition forces


• Opening hours for hairdresser and personal grooming services


• The design of the official Iraqi State letterheads


• Nuisance bees


• Tourism promotion


• Restoring electricity to Iraq and oil to US

In security matters, a number of important administrative functions have been transferred

• The dimensions of police officers personal lockers


• The colour of frilly trim on army officer's shoulder pads


• Foreign policy (provided Iraq remains a friend of Israel, an enemy of North Korea and Iran and does EXACTLY what America tells it to do)

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